6 Charismatic Doctrines That Should Be Retired

6 Charismatic Doctrines That Should Be Retired

May 20, 2014 | J. Lee Grady

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I will never apologize for being a charismatic Christian. I had a dramatic experience with the Holy Spirit many years ago, and nobody can talk me out of it. I love the Holy Spirit’s abiding presence in my life and His supernatural gifts. I love to prophesy, speak in tongues, pray for the sick and see people changed by the Spirit’s power.

At the same time, I’m aware that since the charismatic movement began in the 1960s, people have misused the gifts of the Spirit and twisted God’s Word to promote strange doctrines or practices. Seeing these errors never caused me to question the authenticity of what the Holy Spirit had done in my life. But I knew I had to stay true to God’s Word and reject any false teachings I encountered.

My simple rule is based on 1 Thessalonians 5:21-22: “But examine everything carefully; hold fast to that which is good; abstain from every form of evil” (NASB). In other words: Eat the meat and spit out the bones.

As I have traveled throughout the body of Christ in recent years, I’ve experienced the good, the bad and the ugly. I love God’s people, and I know there is a healthy remnant of Spirit-filled churches that are striving to stay grounded in biblical truth. But I also know we have reached a crossroads. We must clean up our act. We must jettison any weird doctrines we might have believed or practiced that are hindering our growth today.

Here are a few of the worst errors that have circulated in our movement in the past season. You may have others that need to be added to this list. I believe we are grieving the Holy Spirit if we continue to practice these things:

1. "Touch not My anointed." Chances are you’ve heard this weird doctrine based on 1 Chronicles 16:22. In an attempt to discourage any form of disagreement in the church, insecure leaders tell their members that if they ever question church authority, they are “touching the Lord’s anointed” and in danger of God’s judgment. Let’s call this what it is: spiritual manipulation. It creates worse problems by ruling out healthy discussion and mutual respect. Church members end up being abused or controlled—or even blacklisted because they dare to ask a question.

2. Dual covenant. We charismatics love and respect Israel. Some of us even incorporate Jewish practices in our worship—such as wearing prayer shawls, blowing shofars or celebrating Hebraic feasts. These things can enrich our Christian experience—but some leaders go too far when they begin to teach that Jews don’t need to believe in Jesus Christ to experience salvation. They imply that Jews have special access into heaven simply because of their ethnic heritage. This is a flagrant contradiction of everything the New Testament teaches.

3. Inaccessible leadership. In the 1980s, some charismatic ministries began to teach pastors and traveling ministers that in order to “protect the anointing,” they must stay aloof from people. Ministers were warned to never make friends in their congregations. Preachers began the strange practice of skipping worship on Sunday mornings—and then appearing on the stage only when it was time for the sermon in order to make a dramatic entrance. Shame on these people for attempting to justify arrogance. Jesus loved people, and He made Himself available to them. So should we.

4. Armor-bearers. The same guys who developed item No. 3 started this strange fad. Preachers began the practice of surrounding themselves with an entourage: one person to carry the briefcase, another person to carry the Bible, another to carry the handkerchief. Some preachers hired bodyguards … and even food-tasters! The armor-bearers were promised special blessings if they served preachers who acted like slave-owners. Reminder: True leaders are servants, not egomaniacs.

5. The hundredfold return. Before his death in 2003, Kenneth Hagin Sr., the father of the faith movement, rebuked his own followers for taking prosperity teaching to a silly extreme. In his book The Midas Touch, he begged preachers to stop misusing Mark 10:28-30 to suggest that God promises a hundredfold return on every offering we give.

Hagin wrote, “If the hundredfold return worked literally and mathematically for everyone who gave in an offering, we would have Christians walking around with not billions or trillions of dollars, but quadrillions of dollars!” Hagin taught that the hundredfold blessing refers to the rewards that come to those who leave all they have to serve God in ministry.

6. Money cometh. Jesus rebuked the Pharisees for giving money publicly to be seen by others. Yet in the 1990s, some charismatics got the wild idea that God would release a magical blessing if we would drop wads of dollar bills at the preacher’s feet while he was in the middle of his sermon.

Leroy Thompson of Louisiana popularized this flamboyant practice with his infamous 1996 sermon, in which he encouraged people to shout in King James English, “Money! Cometh to me now!” Then the people would run to the front of the auditorium to pour cash into his coffers. The money came, for sure, and more cash-hungry preachers jumped on the bandwagon. Taking an offering became a form of exhibitionism, and Christians began viewing their offerings like lottery scratch-offs.

God requires holiness not just in our behavior but also in our doctrine. Let’s discard these and any other foolish teachings that have brought confusion and dishonor to the body of Christ.

Read more at http://www.prophecynewswatch.com/2014/May20/204.html#BU54F2AVotxvO2F6.99

The Ultra-Lethal Drones Of The Future

The Ultra-Lethal Drones Of The Future

May 20, 2014 | Sharon Weinberger

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In 13 short years, killer drones have gone from being exotic military technology featured primarily in the pages of specialized aviation magazines to a phenomenon of popular culture, splashed across daily newspapers and fictionalized in film and television, including the new season of “24.”

What has not changed all that much — at least superficially — is the basic aircraft that most people associate with drone warfare: the armed Predator.

The Predator, with its distinctive bubble near the nose and sensor ball underneath, is the iconic image of drone warfare, an aircraft that grew out of 1980s work supported by the Pentagon’s future-thinking Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

Originally developed to perform surveillance, the CIA added Hellfire missiles and began using the Predator to hunt down members of the Taliban and al Qaeda after the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. Though the CIA and Air Force now fly an updated version of the Predator — named Reaper — the drone is still relatively easy to detect, and easy to shoot down, at least for a country with a modern military.

In fact, as terrifying as drones sound, they actually aren’t all that sophisticated compared to other weapons in the US arsenal. The original Predator plodded along at a pokey 84 miles an hour.

Its missiles, though lethal, are decades-old technology developed to destroy tanks, not terrorists. And despite concerns about autonomous killing machines, the Predator must be operated by a pilot (albeit remotely). The Predator has proved effective, but it is not exactly the sci-fi miracle that many might imagine.

Under development, however, is a new generation of drones that will be able to penetrate the air defenses of even sophisticated nations, spotting nuclear facilities, and tracking down — and possibly killing — terrorist leaders, silently from high altitudes. These drones will be fast, stealthy and survivable, designed to sneak in and out of a country without ever being spotted.

In fact, the Predator may someday be to drone warfare what the V-2 was to long-range ballistic missiles: a crude, but important, first step in a new era of warfare.

The Past

1980 — The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) launches “Teal Rain,” a top-secret study on high altitude, long endurance unmanned aircraft.

1984 — DARPA contracts with Abe Karem to design a UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) called “Amber.”

1990 — General Atomics buys Abe Karem’s company, Leading Systems. It sells Karem’s UAV, now called “Gnat,” to the CIA. In 1994, General Atomics is given contract to develop the Predator, a successor to the Gnat.

1990s — Pentagon secretly funds development of an unmanned successor to the SR-71 Blackbird (a stealth plane introduced in 1964 and famous in popular culture; it’s even used by the “X-Men”). Boeing, Northrop Grumman and Lockheed compete.

Modal Trigger

The Dark Star at the National Museum of the United States Air Force.
Photo: US Air Force

1998 — Retirement of SR-71 Blackbird. The Pentagon pursues two new spy drones: the Global Hawk, a high-altitude surveillance drone, and the RQ-3 DarkStar, a stealthy spy drone, which crashes and is cancelled.

2001 — October 7: First armed Predator strike in Afghanistan. The CIA attempted to kill Taliban leader Mullah Omar.

2007 — General Atomics delivers the Reaper, an upgraded version of the Predator, to the Air Force. The Reaper can fly higher and faster than the Predator, and carries a variety of weapons.

2009 — A photographer in Kandahar, Afghanistan, captured an image of the stealth RQ-170 drone, which aviation watchers called the “Beast of Kandahar.” Its mission: slip past air defense radar into countries like Pakistan and Iran.

US officials soon leaked that RQ-170 had been used to keep tabs on Osama bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad in 2011. One RQ-170’s life was cut short, however, when it was captured by Iran later that year, possibly after Iran intercepted the signal used to control it. Last week, Iran claimed it had cloned the drone. It’s unclear how many RQ-170s exist.

The Future

After the retirement of the SR-71 Blackbird spy plane, the military had an obvious gap in its arsenal.

In 2007, satellite pictures emerged showing new construction at Area 51, the Pentagon’s top-secret testing area in the Nevada desert. Veteran watchers of “black,” or secret, aircraft, immediately suspected that the Pentagon was preparing to test a new secret aircraft, and the most likely candidate was a stealth drone.

Now, two unmanned spy drones are under development. One that appears almost ready for combat is the RQ-180, a stealthy spy drone built by Northrop Grumman. Though the Pentagon refuses to confirm its existence, Aviation Week & Space Technology ran this artist’s concept earlier this year and revealed a little about its rumored design.

The RQ-180 is designed to fly very high, for a very long time (perhaps as long as 24 hours). According to Aviation Week, it has a 130-foot wing span and a “cranked kite” stealthy design that would allow it to slip past enemy radar. Chances are it will only be used for surveillance, not attack, though it could carry out an electronic attack.

Another, recently revealed project is a high-altitude drone being developed by Lockheed Martin that can travel up to six times of the speed of sound. The drone would be both a spy and strike aircraft, according to Lockheed. But the SR-72, as Lockheed is calling the twin-engine aircraft, wouldn’t be ready to fly until 2030.

What about a replacement for a Predator? The original Predator was essentially a surveillance aircraft that was turned into an armed drone, so any future replacement aircraft would likely look very different. The Pentagon has openly funded work on unmanned combat aircraft, including Northrop Grumman’s X-47, a diamond-shaped drone that can take off and land from aircraft carriers. But aerospace watchers have long presumed that these programs are hiding even more secretive work.

Part of the difficulty of deciphering the world of drones is that the Pentagon for over three decades has run a series of overlapping projects, often using unclassified programs as “covers” for more secret unmanned aircraft work.

Aviation Week, for example, says the RQ-180 was part of a secret, three-way contest that involved competing drones from Lockheed and Boeing. What happened to those other unmanned aircraft is unclear. Figuring out which are “real” drone project meant for deployment, and which are covers for secret drones, is a shell game.

Small & ubiquitous

Even the stealthy killer drones known or suspected to be under development fall short of some of the unmanned aircraft depicted in science fiction or thriller novels, which often feature swarms of autonomous killing machines. It is true that the Pentagon has been funding work to make drones operate with greater autonomy — for example, one of DARPA’s latest proposals calls on researchers to design ways to have drones collaborate with each other, such as having drones share information about a target.

But drones that can operate completely without the need for a pilot sitting in an air-conditioned trailer on a base in Nevada are still several years away, at least, and the Pentagon has long insisted that drones won’t be allowed to use weapons without a “man in the loop.”

Yet another longtime goal of military work is to create tiny drones, possibly disguised as birds or even insects (the CIA did develop a robotic dragonfly, though it never proved useful).

In terror expert Richard Clarke’s new novel, “Sting of the Drone,” the CIA operates stealthy mini-drones that are capable of assassinating someone inside a bar, and there is certainly evidence such drones are of interest. A four-minute animated video created by the Air Force Research Laboratory showed up on the Web in 2009, illustrating the lab’s work on micro aerial vehicles. The video featured a kamikaze insect-sized drone loaded with high explosives.

But drones of that level of sophistication — able to perch on telephone wires or hunt down terrorists inside a building — still belong to the future.

The real drone revolution may come not through sophistication of drones, but the proliferation of drones. So far, unmanned aircraft have largely been the weapons of technologically advanced nations, but that is changing as drone technology becomes cheaper and more accessible.

Indeed, Hezbollah has already bragged of sending spy drones into Israeli territory, and Israeli leaders have warned of the possible drone threat that Hamas could pose from Gaza.

And a recent report by the Rand Corporation warned that, in the future, terrorist groups might be able to buy small, armed drones: “Smaller systems could become the next IEDs: low-cost, low-tech weapons that are only of limited lethality individually but attrite significant numbers of US or allied personnel when used in large numbers over time.”

The US military holds an annual exercise called Black Dart, which looks at ways to counter hostile drones, particularly small drones. Among the possible defenses are lasers to shoot down drones or systems that can jam the radio signals used to control drones. But this sort of counter-drone technology is scarce today.

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Read more at http://www.prophecynewswatch.com/2014/May20/202.html#B7U53i12zCWz3vXl.99

Hating The Jew You’ve Never Met

Hating The Jew You’ve Never Met

May 20, 2014 | Haviv Rettig Gur

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The ADL’s massive Global 100 survey of worldwide anti-Semitic attitudes, published Tuesday, offers some sobering statistics. Some 1.1 billion adults harbor anti-Semitic views. In the Middle East, 74 percent of adults agreed with a majority of the survey’s 11 anti-Semitic propositions, including that “Jews have too much power in international financial markets” and that “Jews are responsible for most of the world’s wars.”

The complexities uncovered by the study are fascinating and important. They include, for example, the jarring discovery that 52% of Germans and Austrians believe Jews talk too much about the Holocaust — but also that young Germans and Austrians are shedding their parents’ anti-Semitic attitudes.

The number of Germans holding such views dropped steeply from 33% among those over 50 to 15% among those under 34, and among Austrians from 41% to 12%. The German-speaking world is simultaneously growing tired of hearing about the Holocaust and more accepting of Jews.

We find similar complexity in the discovery that Britain, a hub of global efforts to delegitimize the Jewish state, is nevertheless one of the least anti-Semitic countries in the world, while Greece, Israel’s newfound regional ally, is one of the most.

And while the Internet has toppled tyrants and created new opportunities for openness and development in the Muslim world, Internet use is also a significant factor in a Muslim becoming anti-Semitic. The prevalence of anti-Semitic views grew by some 20 percentage points among Muslims who get their news primarily online compared to those who get their news from television, newspapers or even religious leaders, the study found.

These are valuable insights, and the survey offers many others.

Yet the study shines not in the details, but in its sweeping international perspective. In interviewing over 53,000 people in 93 languages across 102 countries and regions, the survey pieces together a global picture of the web of stereotypes and hatreds through which a significant swath of humanity views the Jews.

It enables us to go beyond the narrow confines of each nation’s politics and prejudices and think more deeply about the phenomenon and the essential question that lies at its root: Why do they hate us?

The question is put into sharp relief by the finding that fully 27% of people who have never met a Jew nevertheless harbor strong prejudices against him. Or, indeed, that a huge majority, 77%, of those who hate Jews have never met one. Even more starkly, the survey found an inverse relationship between the number of Jews in a country and the spread of anti-Semitic attitudes there. As a general rule, the fewer the Jews in a particular country, the more numerous the anti-Semites.

This should not surprise us. We already understood that anti-Semitism is skyrocketing in precisely those parts of the world where Jews fled from or perished in the last century, primarily the Middle East and Eastern Europe. But by giving numbers to these beliefs, the study allows us to think more carefully about the sources of the phenomenon.

A wrench in the works

No anti-Semitism has been better studied than that of modern Europe. It is there that we learned how little anti-Semitism has to do with the actual living Jews who are its subject, and how much with the ideological and social tensions that torment the anti-Semites themselves.

For 19th- and 20th-century Europe, the Jews were anomalies.

In an age of consolidating national identities, of the birth of “Germanness” and “Polishness” and other national movements, the distinctive duality of Jewish identity as both a religion and a quasi-ethnic peoplehood resisted easy national categorization, and thus called the immutability and authenticity of the new national identities into question.

What does it mean to be a German nationalist, wrapped in the imagery of the Volksgemeinschaft and imagining oneself the heir to an ancient, ennobling, and ultimately biological national community, when one’s Jewish neighbor demonstrates that it is also possible to be at once German and something other than German?

By straddling the boundaries of national identity, by sharing “Germanness” with his German neighbors and “Jewishness” with coreligionists in far-flung lands, the Jew’s very existence belied and endangered the organic immutability and exclusivity that nationalists sought from their new identities.

At its most extreme, this tension was the reason the Nazis made the eradication of the Jews a fundamental war aim. As Adolf Hitler indicated years before the Holocaust, in “Mein Kampf,” the Jews weren’t murdered for being different, but for being dangerously, indistinguishably similar, for implying by their very existence that the borders of “Germanness” are permeable, and thus, perhaps, not as real and innate as the romantic nationalist would like to believe.

In their unwanted role as the ubiquitous Other through two centuries of Europe’s struggles to understand itself, the Jews served as a kind of canvas onto which Europeans projected their own national insecurities and dilemmas.

It’s not about the Jews

Thus we find in the ADL survey that the two statements most affirmed by Greek anti-Semites – indeed, by a vast majority of Greeks – are “Jews have too much power in the business world” (85%) and “Jews have too much power in international financial markets” (82%). Battered by the global financial havoc of the past few years, Greeks have attached a human face to the actual, amorphous source of their suffering.

Similarly in Britain, the sixth-least anti-Semitic country in the survey, few people view the Jews as exceptionally evil or duplicitous – except when it comes to the Middle East. The two sentences that found the most agreement among Britons were “Jews have too much control over the United States government” (19% agreed) and “Jews are more loyal to Israel than to this country” (27%).

This questioning of the loyalty of British Jews is actually growing among the young — perhaps a sign that it is growing on the political left. Less than a quarter (24%) of Britons aged 35 and older agreed that British Jews are more loyal to Israel, compared to more than one-third (34%) among Britons aged 34 and younger.

These high figures are remarkable precisely because there is so little prejudice against Britain’s Jews in other areas. Just 12% say Jews have too much control in the global financial markets (the Western European average is 34%). Just 7% agree that “people hate Jews because of the way Jews behave” (Western European average: 22%).

It is not hard to draw a connecting line from Britain’s post-colonial guilt over the Middle East and the surprisingly high prejudices expressed about British Jews on that subject alone.

The Arab world may be the most startling example of this projection of national insecurities onto the Jews. The survey offers dramatic evidence that none of the reasons usually given to explain the astronomical levels of anti-Semitism in the Arab world — Islam, political tensions, the experience of war — are sufficient.

While huge majorities of Middle Easterners (74% region-wide) were found to hold anti-Semitic views, it is significant that the two least anti-Semitic peoples among the 18 polled were the two non-Arab ones. Over half of Iranians (56%) and two-thirds of Turks (69%) hold anti-Semitic views, but that still compares favorably to the whopping 82.5% average among the 16 Arab states surveyed.

Among all Muslims (Arabs included), less than half (49%) are anti-Semitic.

In some places, such as Eastern Europe, Muslims are less likely to be anti-Semitic (20%) than Christians (35%), while the Middle East’s Christians are much more likely to be anti-Semitic (64%) than non-Middle Eastern Muslims.

Political tensions also don’t offer a clear-cut explanation. Iran’s government, controlled by Holocaust deniers and viewed by Israel as its number-one enemy, rules a population far less anti-Semitic than Saudi Arabia, which proposed the Arab Peace Plan with Israel and whose geopolitical interests align closely with those of the Jewish state.

It is not surprising, considering the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict, that the Palestinians are the most anti-Semitic people in the world (94%); it is surprising that anti-Semitism is more widespread in Algeria (87%), Iraq (92%) and Morocco (80%) than in Lebanon (78%), though only the latter can offer ongoing conflict as an explanation.

Arab hatred of Jews is thus not explainable as a function of Muslim religious affiliation (Arab Christians are more anti-Semitic than non-Arab Muslims), by political friction (Iranians are less anti-Semitic — 56% — than Jordanians — 81%), or by the actual experience of conflict (Moroccans and Algerians are more likely to hate Jews than Lebanese).

Is it too much to suggest, then, that the Arabs’ problem with the Jews is not actually about the Jews, but about the Arab world’s own struggles with modernity, identity and political dysfunction?

Blessedly disinterested

Of course, there is good news, too. The ray of light in the dismal findings — and it is a powerful beam indeed — is the English-speaking world, where just 13% hold anti-Semitic views.

While Laos took the prize as the world’s least anti-Semitic country, with less than 1% expressing such views, it is far more remarkable that only 9% of Americans did the same. After all, the United States is the only country outside Israel that is home to millions of Jews. And American Jews, unlike their brethren in Europe or Asia, are visible, cacophonous, politically engaged and unabashedly influential.

In a world where the Jews serve as convenient foils for every sort of identity crisis and social tension, there is something hopeful about the way in which the Jews of America don’t appear to symbolize or evoke anything of note in the imaginations of their compatriots.

Perhaps Americans are less imaginative in their prejudices, or simply have a comparatively benign attitude toward what it means to be American. Either way, from the perspective of the Jewish experience highlighted in the ADL’s remarkable study, and bearing in mind that some three-quarters of the Jews outside Israel live in the United States, America’s blessed disinterestedness in the Jewishness of its Jews is cause for celebration.

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Read more at http://www.prophecynewswatch.com/2014/May20/201.html#Y7PtoVqcUDmQwjeP.99

The Final Babylon - America and the Coming of Antichrist (Book)

» The Final Babylon - America and the Coming of Antichrist (Book)

» Against All Odds: Israel Survives 6 DVD Set

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The Final Babylon Book - What if the Antichrist were an American leader? What if he were alive today and living in the U.S.A? What if he were only a few years away from revealing himself to the world? Instead of being omitted from Bible prophecy as many of the major eschatology scholars have taught for decades, what if America were at the very center of Bible prophecy? What if the U.S.A., rather than Europe, Rome, or Babylon, were the power base of Satan's conspiracy against the Kingdom of God? These three authors, Douglas W. Krieger, Dene McGriff, and S. Douglas Woodward, argue just that. Together, they have written what may be seen as a landmark book rethinking the traditional prophetic scenario in light of developments in America and the Middle East. Combined, these authors bring over 100 years of study, teaching, and writing to the subject of Bible prophecy. The amazing blend of their respective backgrounds in the foreign services, evangelical ministries, and corporate America, lends unsurpassed credibility to their stunning and remarkably fresh presentation. In some respects, The Final Babylon is a classic prophecy book, rich in exegesis of key scriptures most often overlooked or misinterpreted. The implications are life changing. Reading The Final Babylon, America and the Coming of Antichrist will awaken you to what has been happening right in front of our eyes that we simply couldn't see due to our love of country and our faulty assumptions concerning the antagonists in the traditional prophetic scenari o. This book may change your politics, your view of the Bible, and what you do day-to-day. 

Against All Odds: Israel Survives DVD Series - Many Bible scholars believe the time period of the Blood Moon Tetrads (April 15, 2014 - Sept 28, 2015) hold special significance for the nation of Israel.  Given the circumstances surrounding Israel's

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Biometric Applications In Consumer Electronics Expected To Surge

Biometric Applications In Consumer Electronics Expected To Surge

May 14, 2014 | Tom Olago

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Mobile commerce technologies are projected to highly accelerate in both number and value of transactions, due to impending wide-scale integration of biometric technology into smartphones. Research consultancy conducted by the Biometrics Research Group late 2013 expects that worldwide mobile payment transactions will reach $250 billion in 2014, with over 90 million smartphones with biometric technology expected to be shipped in 2014.

Due to large number of new smartphones that will ship in 2014, Biometric Research Group expects that the smartphone mass market will drive rapid growth in consumer electronics biometrics by at least 35 percent over next five years. A major contributing factor in this growth will be increasing demand for personal devices that can conduct safe financial transactions.

Mobile payment transactions are further projected to reach $750 billion in annual transactions with more than 700 million users by 2020. Biometrics will speed mobile commerce, especially in North America, because the technology can offer a higher level of security, while providing an intuitive customer experience.

These statistics, published in Biometric Update.com,also reported that at least three-quarters of current smartphone users do not secure their devices with a passcode, potentially leading to compromise of the integrity of payment processes. “Smartphone Biometrics” such as fingerprint recognition, are touted as the ideal answer to the goal of securing the user login process in order to enable more dependable user identification.

The consultancy group predicted that Apple would initially lead in the deployment of such devices, due to fact that the firm is the first consumer electronics provider to introduce biometric technology to the global smartphone mass market. Apple did release the Phone 5S which features a fingerprint identity sensor, entitled Touch ID, built directly into the device’s home button. 

Other industry leaders and competitors such as Samsung were expected to follow with similar biometric-based innovations on their mobile technology products and related systems. As of September 2013, when Apple released the iPhone 5s, Apple reportedly controlled 78% of biometric smartphone shipments, with Samsung’s share standing at 22% and all others combined at 5%.

Samsung are no longer to be left behind on biometric innovations: in February 2014, BBC.com reported that the next iteration of Samsung's Galaxy smartphone range, the S5, would feature biometric security. The product reportedly unlocks the device, powers payments via the fingerprint scanner, and offers payment-by-finger via PayPal.

Apple’s acquisition of AuthenTec Inc. in 2012, allowed Apple to obtain most of the foundational technology patents for fingerprint biometrics, along with a broad patent portfolio consisting of 200 issued and filed patents in the United States. The acquired technology reportedly utilizes an embedded sapphire crystal sensor, and also encrypts fingerprint data directly into the iPhone’s new A7 64-bit processing chip, so that biometric information will not be stored in the cloud.

A separate and earlier report from Biometric updates.com quoted the Biometric Research Group expectation that biometric identifiers such as fingerprints would eventually supplant written Apple ID passwords. By 2015, it might even become possible “to purchase new Apple devices at its retail store using your thumbprint impression”. The research firm also expects that biometric technologies will also be integrated to “phablets”, or niche mobile smartphone/tablet hybrids, which are extremely popular in Asia.

Separate reports also seem to support the upward trajectory in consumer interest towards smartphone biometrics. According to a report published in Znet.com, (based on new research by mobile network maker Ericsson, which polled 100,000 people over 40 countries) about 74 percent of respondents said they believe biometric smartphones "will become mainstream" during 2014. 

More than half at 52 percent want to use their fingerprints instead of a complex alphanumeric combination of letters, numbers, and characters, while just shy of half at 48 percent are interested in eye-recognition technology to unlock their phones.

So clearly, the battlefront for biometric smartphone applications between smartphone companies will not stop with fingerprints: eye/iris recognition technologies, as well as a whole array of biometrics approved so far, are poised to gain further attention and prominence once fingerprint-based mobile security applications become standard.

What’s nextnuance.com explains: “Recently, Gartner made the prediction that 30% of all companies will use biometrics on mobile devices by 2016, as reported by ZDnet. Biometric forms of authentication are being adopted by mobile platforms specifically for the increased experience and convenience they provide on-the-go users. The question that remains is which biometrics will experience the most rapid and widespread adoption? Amongst the key players are fingerprint, facial recognition, voice biometric, iris, and vein (such as vein-palm biometrics used by Fujistu.

Plenty of choice to make consumer mobile transactions and interactions more secure, while simultaneously adding “more bottom to the bottom lines” of the smartphone companies. But should everyone smile and live happily ever after? Not quite from the consumer side: the can of worms gate crashing this party would likely be the fact that these smartphones can be used to track such private and sensitive matters as your movements, social habits and telephone records.

An extract from a recent report that illustrates this point was published on 13th May 2014 by the UK Telegraph: “….The British government's intelligence agency, GCHQ, is facing legal action over its alleged use of hacking tools to infect computers and smartphones with malicious software, to remotely hijack users' cameras and microphones without their consent…. GCHQ agents are also reportedly able to surreptitiously log keystrokes entered into a device, extract data from removable flash drives that connect to an infected computer, identify the geographic whereabouts of the user, and retrieve any content from a phone, including text messages, emails, web history, call records, videos, photos, address books, notes, and calendars.

Fortunately legal recourse and privacy groups are available to help resist GHCQ excesses. In the US, the Washington Post has recently reported that a bill that would end the National Security Agency’s bulk collection of Americans’ phone records cleared a major hurdle in the House on Thursday (15th May) and will head to the floor, where it is widely expected to pass.

But unless and until these privacy protection battles are won, it seems like we will need to get used to a major risk : our highly convenient and supposedly secure smartphones may just as easily be someone else’s spy phones – spying on us, and with the biometric factor leaving little or no doubt as to our identity.

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Read more at http://www.prophecynewswatch.com/2014/May14/145.html#F8CF5tkmFB9YM4um.99

New Survey Shows Many Americans Scramble Their Scripture

New Survey Shows Many Americans Scramble Their Scripture

May 14, 2014 | Tom Olago

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The American Bible Society’s (ABS) annual “State of the Bible” survey shows that about 20 percent of American adults falsely believe that the Bible encourages the repression of women,” and is silent on such topics as war or slavery. Geof Morin, chief communication officer for the society, states that the 88 percent of Americans claiming ownership of a Bible tend to overestimate their knowledge of it, with 82 percent considering themselves at least somewhat knowledgeable about the Bible.

These results were reported in a recent publication in Christian News.com. Answers to other related questions asked in the survey, validate Morin’s conclusion on the general ignorance of, and apathy towards the Bible. He says that of 1,012 U.S. adults polled in the ABS survey conducted by Barna Research, “43 percent can’t even name the first five books of the Bible.” Many also showed "fuzzy knowledge" of the attitudes and behaviors addressed in Scripture in relation to several critical social issues.

Most Christians however correctly say the Bible discourages prostitution, gambling and pornography; that it encourages generosity, forgiveness and patience; and that it is most certainly not silent on issues such as slavery, war and homosexuality. However, the survey also showed that there were distinct divides between “practicing Christians” — those who consider their faith important, attend church regularly and believe they are born again — and “notional” Christians who wear the label but disengage from practice.

The divisions and contrasts in view between the “practicers” on the one hand, and the “notionals” and “nones” on the other, were highlighted on several key Bible themes:

- Repression of Women: “Notional” Christians — nearly half of all participants in the survey — have a grimmer picture of the Bible’s view on women. Nearly three in 10 (27 percent) say the Bible either encourages repression or is silent on women’s status (28 percent). Among those who claim no religious identity (“nones”), 46 percent see the Bible advocating repression of women and 22 percent say it’s silent on the matter. In contrast, while 91 percent of evangelicals say the Bible discourages “repression of women,” that figure drops to 61 percent for other practicing Christians, such as mainline Protestants.

- Same-sex relationships: Strong majorities in every category say the Bible discourages homosexuality. But 24 percent of “notional” Christians, and 33 percent of “nones”, say the Bible is silent on this topic.

- War: About two in 10 (18 percent overall) also said the Bible is silent about war. However, this time the responses divided very differently: Only 11 percent of non-evangelical practicing Christians saw nothing in the Bible on this subject.

These thematic-based findings have also been corroborated in another similar but separate survey named ‘The Bible in American Life’, and conducted by the Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture. In a March article titled ‘American Bible Reading Statistics Reveal Who Is Studying The Good Book And Why’ , the Huffington Post reported that “consulting Scripture for personal prayer is three times more common than turning to the Bible to learn about hot-button issues like abortion, homosexuality, war or poverty”.

According to Morin, the ABS survey was specifically intended in purpose to give the Bible society ideas for areas where it can work to strengthen Biblical literacy and help make Scripture the foundation in believers’ lives. Morin stated that “The American Bible Society wants to track what is happening in the culture and why people are less and less connecting the moral and political issues of the day with their Bibles”.

Clearly a lack of Bible studying by Americans, coupled with shallow and superficial Bible teaching in many churches, would account for the failure of many Americans to “connect the dots” regarding what happens in society and what the Bible says about it – whether directly or in principle . 

The impact of the decline in interest and application of the Bible is reflected in a 2010 national survey by the Pew Research Center on overall religious knowledge focused on core teachings, history and leading figures in five major world religions. It found the most knowledgeable were atheists and agnostics, Jews and Mormons, who outperformed Protestants and Catholics on most questions.

Quite an embarrassment - It’s no wonder that American Christians are therefore hardly well placed to ‘to contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints’ (Jude 1:3), and may instead be more easily converted by their better-read but misguided opponents and critics. They may yet be hope, however, if Christians opt to seriously heed the scripture:

Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. (2nd Timothy 2:15)

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Read more at http://www.prophecynewswatch.com/2014/May14/144.html#FXEChGHDEJ4BwPo6.99

Transhumanism - The Quest For Immortality

Transhumanism - The Quest For Immortality

May 14, 2014 | Ross Thompson

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Transhumanism has some spotlight at present with the release of Johnny Depps new film, Transcendence. Critics are not giving it the thumbs up though and the spotlight may be short lived.

Transhumanism is the movement whose goal it is to beat death by transferring or uploading the human personality into a robotic brain and body. One of their authors, James Barrat, has gone so far as to say that transhumanism is inevitable and when the breakthrough comes it will be the end of the human era.

In the movie Transcendence Johnny Depp plays Dr Will Caster, a leading experimenter in the field of artificial intelligence. He is also the target of anti-technology terrorists. The terrorists do him a favor by mortally wounding him and giving him the chance to be the subject of his own experiments with the help of his assistants and his wife. Will Casters body dies but he lives on as an artificial intelligence, a virtual personality.

In the real world, Google has shown a big interest in the subject, spending not millions, but billions over recent years, acquiring any company that has shown promise in the artificial intelligence or related fields. In January of this year they spent $400 million to acquire the British firm, Deep Mind. The company has not released any products as yet and because of secrecy it is not really known what they are working on except that it is to do with artificial intelligence.

High profile Transhumanism theorist, Ray Kurzweil, joined Google in 2013 as Director of Engineering. Kurzweil who apparently takes 150 pills a day and has weekly injections of an array of body boosting substances in the hope of keeping himself alive and well until the future transhumanism breakthrough, says that his present role at Google is, 'ultimately to base search on really understanding what language means.

When you write an article you are not just creating an interesting collection of words. The message in your article is information and the computers are not picking up on that. So we would like to have the computers read. We want them to be able to read everything on the Web and then engage in intelligent dialogue with the user and also be able to answer their questions'. The name tag given to this endeavour is natural language processing.

Here is a definition of the aims of transhumanism from a document put out by scientists working on the Blue Brain project, a continuing work attempting to put a simulated brain into a super computer:

"Today scientists are in research to create an artificial brain that can think, respond, take decisions and keep anything in memory. The main aim is to upload the human brain into a machine so that the man can think and make decisions without any effort. After the death of the body the artificial brain will act as the man. So even after death we will not lose the knowledge, intelligence, feelings, personality and memories of that man and they will still be available for the further development of human society".

Barney Pell, an associate of Ray Kurzweil, who has worked in Robotics and is at present involved in artificial intelligence games development, viewed the movie, Transcendence, and in an interview afterwards was asked if he thought the technology in the movie was possible and how far off are we from it?

His reply: "For the core AI technology in the movie which is intelligence vastly superior to humans, I believe it is possible that we will have such intelligences. However the technology approach in the movie in the form of uploading a personality based on scanning a living brain is more of a concept than a specific technology. I don't see anything close at present in the way of computational architecture in the scientific community today, much less an uploading approach compatible with such an architecture".

How To Create A Mind, is Ray Kurzweils most recent book. In it he also admits that the reality is that these theorys are all leaps of faith, We don't really know what consciousness is, what personal identity is, and thinking of the brain as a computer is a long way from understanding its function as a part of the human self.


Don't hold your breath, is probably the best advice we could give to someone who is thinking of putting their hope in Transhumanism.

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Read more at http://www.prophecynewswatch.com/2014/May14/143.html#WpbIvtBllUfHWHsr.99