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http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-endtimes22jun22,0,7902314.story?page=3&coll=la-home-headlines

'End Times' Religious Groups Want Apocalypse Soon

'End times' religious groups want apocalypse sooner than later, and they're relying on high tech -- and red heifers -- to hasten its arrival.

For thousands of years, prophets have predicted the end of the world. Today, various religious groups, using the latest technology, are trying to hasten it.

Their endgame is to speed the promised arrival of a messiah.

For some Christians this means laying the groundwork for Armageddon.

With that goal in mind, mega-church pastors recently met in Inglewood to polish strategies for using global communications and aircraft to transport missionaries to fulfill the Great Commission: to make every person on Earth aware of Jesus' message. Doing so, they believe, will bring about the end, perhaps within two decades.

In Iran, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has a far different vision. As mayor of Tehran in 2004, he spent millions on improvements to make the city more welcoming for the return of a Muslim messiah known as the Mahdi, according to a recent report by the American Foreign Policy Center, a nonpartisan think tank.

To the majority of Shiites, the Mahdi was the last of the prophet Muhammad's true heirs, his 12 righteous descendants chosen by God to lead the faithful.

Ahmadinejad hopes to welcome the Mahdi to Tehran within two years.

Conversely, some Jewish groups in Jerusalem hope to clear the path for their own messiah by rebuilding a temple on a site now occupied by one of Islam's holiest shrines.

Artisans have re-created priestly robes of white linen, gem-studded breastplates, silver trumpets and solid-gold menorahs to be used in the Holy Temple �� along with two 6��-ton marble cornerstones for the building's foundation.

Then there is Clyde Lott, a Mississippi revivalist preacher and cattle rancher. He is trying to raise a unique herd of red heifers to satisfy an obscure injunction in the Book of Numbers: the sacrifice of a blemish-free red heifer for purification rituals needed to pave the way for the messiah.

So far, only one of his cows has been verified by rabbis as worthy, meaning they failed to turn up even three white or black hairs on the animal's body.
Linking these efforts is a belief that modern technologies and global communications have made it possible to induce completion of God's plan within this generation.

Though there are myriad interpretations of how it will play out, the basic Christian apocalyptic countdown �� as described by the Book of Revelation in the New Testament �� is as follows:

Jews return to Israel after 2,000 years, the Holy Temple is rebuilt, billions of people perish during seven years of natural disasters and plagues, the antichrist arises and rules the world, the battle of Armageddon erupts in the vicinity of Israel, Jesus returns to defeat Satan's armies and preside over Judgment Day.

Generations of Christians have hoped for the Second Coming of Jesus, said UCLA historian Eugen Weber, author of the 1999 book Apocalypses: Prophecies, Cults and Millennial Beliefs Through the Ages.

And it's always been an ultimately bloody hope, a slaughterhouse hope, he added with a sigh. What we have now in this global age is a vaster and bloodier-than-ever Wagnerian version. But, then, we are a very imaginative race.

Apocalyptic movements are nothing new; even Christopher Columbus hoped to assist in the Great Commission by evangelizing New World inhabitants.

Some religious scholars saw apocalyptic fever rise as the year 2000 approached, and they expected it to subside after the millennium arrived without a hitch.

It didn't. According to various polls, an estimated 40% of Americans believe that a sequence of events presaging the end times is already underway. Among the believers are pastors of some of the largest evangelical churches in America, who converged at Faith Central Bible Church in Inglewood in February to finalize plans to start 5 million new churches worldwide in 10 years.

Jesus Christ commissioned his disciples to go to the ends of the Earth and tell everyone how they could achieve eternal life, said James Davis, president of the Global Pastors Network's Billion Souls Initiative, one of an estimated 2,000 initiatives worldwide designed to boost the Christian population.

As we advance around the world, Davis said, we'll be shortening the time needed to fulfill that Great Commission. Then, the Bible says, the end will come.

An opposing vision, invoked by Ahmadinejad in an address before the United Nations last year, suggests that the Imam Mahdi, a 9th century figure, will soon emerge from a well to conquer the world and convert everyone to Islam.
O mighty Lord, he said, I pray to you to hasten the emergence of your last repository, the promised one, that perfect and pure human being, the one that will fill this world with justice and peace.

At the appropriate time, according to Shiite tradition, the Mahdi will reappear and, along with Jesus, lead Muslims in a struggle to rid the world of corruption and establish justice.

For Christians, the future of Israel is the key to any end-times scenario, and various groups are reaching out to Jews �� or proselytizing among them �� to advance the Second Coming.

A growing number of fundamentalist Christians in mostly Southern states are adopting Jewish religious practices to align themselves with prophecies saying that Gentiles will stand as one with Jews when the end is near.

Evangelist John C. Hagee of the 19,000-member Cornerstone Church in San Antonio has helped 12,000 Russian Jews move to Israel, and donated several million dollars to Israeli hospitals and orphanages.

We are the generation that will probably see the rapture of the church, Hagee said, referring to a moment in advance of Jesus' return when the world's true believers will be airlifted into heaven.

In Christian theology, the first thing that happens when Christ returns to Earth is the judgment of nations, said Hagee, who wears a Jewish prayer shawl when he ministers. It will have one criterion: How did you treat the Jewish people? Anyone who understands that will want to be on the right side of that question. Those who are anti-Semitic will go to eternal damnation.

On July 18, Hagee plans to lead a contingent of high-profile evangelists to Washington to make their concerns about Israel's security known to congressional leaders. More than 1,200 evangelists are expected for the gathering.

Twenty-five years ago, I called a meeting of evangelists to discuss such an effort, and the conversation didn't last an hour, he said. This time, I called and they all came and stayed. And when the meeting was over, they all agreed to speak up for Israel.

Underlining the sense of urgency is a belief that the end-times clock started ticking May 15, 1948, when the United Nations formally recognized Israel.

I'll never forget that night, Hagee said. I was 8 years old at the time and in the kitchen with my father listening to the news about Israel's rebirth on the radio. He said, 'Son, this is the most important day in the 20th century.'

Hagee's message is carried on 160 television stations and 50 radio stations and can be seen in Africa, Europe, Australia, New Zealand and most Third World nations.

By contrast, Bill McCartney, a former University of Colorado football coach and co-founder of the evangelical Promise Keepers movement for men, which became huge in the 1990s, has had a devil of a time getting his own apocalyptic campaign off the ground.

It's called The Road to Jerusalem, and its mission is to convert Jews to Christianity �� while there is still time.

Our whole purpose is to hasten the end times, he said. The Bible says Jews will be brought to jealousy when they see Christians and Jewish believers together as one �� they'll want to be a part of that. That's going to signal Jesus' return.

Jews and others who don't accept Jesus, he added matter-of-factly, are toast.

McCartney, who only a decade ago sermonized to stadium-size crowds of Promise Keepers, said finding people to back his sputtering cause has been like plowing cement.

Given end-times scenarios saying that non-believers will die before Jesus returns �� and that the antichrist will rule from Jerusalem's rebuilt Holy Temple �� Jews have mixed feelings about the outpouring of support Israel has been getting from evangelical organizations.

I truly believe John Hagee is at once a daring, beautiful person �� and quite dangerous, said Orthodox Rabbi Brad Hirschfield, vice president of the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership in New York.

I sincerely recognize him as a hero for bringing planeloads of people to Israel at a time when people there were getting blown up by the busloads, Hirschfield said. But he also believes that the only path to the father is through Jesus. That leaves me out.

Meanwhile, in what has become a spectacular annual routine, Jews �� hoping to rebuild the Holy Temple destroyed by the Romans in AD 70 �� attempt to haul the 6 1/2 -ton cornerstones by truck up to the Temple Mount, the site now occupied by the Dome of the Rock shrine. Each year, they are turned back by police.

Among those turned away is Gershon Solomon, spokesman for Jerusalem's Temple Institute. When the temple is built, he said, Islam is over.

I'm grateful for all the wonderful Christian angels wanting to help us, Solomon added, acknowledging the political support from Christians who are now Israel's best lobbyists in the United States.

However, when asked to comment on the fate of non-Christians upon the Second Coming of Jesus, he said, That's a very embarrassing question. What can I tell you? That's a very terrible Christian idea.

What kind of religion is it that expects another religion will be destroyed?

But are all of these efforts to hasten the end of the world a bit like, well, playing God?
Some Christians, such as Roman Catholics and some Protestant denominations, believe in the Second Coming but don't try to advance it. It's important to be ready for the Second Coming, they say, though its timetable cannot be manipulated.

Hirschfield said he prays every day for the coming of the Jewish messiah, but he too believes that God can't be hurried.

For me, he said, the messiah is like the mechanical bunny at a racetrack: It always stays a little ahead of the runners but keeps the pace toward a redeemed world.

Trouble is, there are many people who want to bring a messiah who looks just like them. For me, that kind of messianism is spiritual narcissism.

But some Christian leaders say they aren't playing God; they're just carrying out his will.

Ted Haggard, president of the National Assn. of Evangelicals, says the commitment to fulfilling the Great Commission has naturally intensified along with the technological advances God provided to carry out his plans.

Over in Mississippi, Lott believes that he is doing God's work, and that is why he wants to raise a few head of red heifers for Jewish high priests. Citing Scripture, Lott and others say a pure red heifer must be sacrificed and burned and its ashes used in purification rituals to allow Jews to rebuild the temple.

But Lott's plans have been sidetracked.

Facing a maze of red tape and testing involved in shipping animals overseas �� and rumors of threats from Arabs and Jews alike who say the cows would only bring more trouble to the Middle East �� he has given up on plans to fly planeloads of cows to Israel. For now.

In the meantime, some local ranchers have expressed an interest in raising their own red heifers for Israel, and fears of hoof-and-mouth disease and blue tongue forced Lott to relocate his only verified red heifer �� a female born in 1993 �� to Nebraska.

Cloning is out of the question, he said, because the technique is not approved by the rabbinical council of Israel. Artificial insemination has so far failed to produce another heifer certified by rabbis.

Something deep in my heart says God wants me to be a blessing to Israel, Lott said in a telephone interview. But it's complicated. We're just not ready to send any red heifers over there.

If not now, when?

If there's a sovereign God with his hand in the affairs of men, it'll happen, and it'll be a pivotal event, he said. That time is soon. Very soon.

March 19, 2006

(CBS) As a government scientist, James Hansen is taking a risk. He says there are things the White House doesn't want you to hear but he's going to say them anyway.

Hansen is arguably the world's leading researcher on global warming. He's the head of NASA's top institute studying the climate. But this imminent scientist tells correspondent Scott Pelley that the Bush administration is restricting who he can talk to and editing what he can say. Politicians, he says, are rewriting the science.

But he didn't hold back speaking to Pelley, telling 60 Minutes what he knows.

Asked if he believes the administration is censoring what he can say to the public, Hansen says: Or they're censoring whether or not I can say it. I mean, I say what I believe if I'm allowed to say it.

What James Hansen believes is that global warming is accelerating. He points to the melting arctic and to Antarctica, where new data show massive losses of ice to the sea.

Is it fair to say at this point that humans control the climate? Is that possible?

There's no doubt about that, says Hansen. The natural changes, the speed of the natural changes is now dwarfed by the changes that humans are making to the atmosphere and to the surface.

Those human changes, he says, are driven by burning fossil fuels that pump out greenhouse gases like CO₂, carbon dioxide. Hansen says his research shows that man has just 10 years to reduce greenhouse gases before global warming reaches what he calls a tipping point and becomes unstoppable. He says the White House is blocking that message.

In my more than three decades in the government I've never witnessed such restrictions on the ability of scientists to communicate with the public, says Hansen.

Restrictions like this e-mail Hansen's institute received from NASA in 2004. � there is a new review process � , the e-mail read. The White House (is) now reviewing all climate related press releases, it continued.
Why the scrutiny of Hansen's work? Well, his Goddard Institute for Space Studies is the source of respected but sobering research on warming. It recently announced 2005 was the warmest year on record. Hansen started at NASA more than 30 years ago, spending nearly all that time studying the earth. How important is his work? 60 Minutes asked someone at the top, Ralph Cicerone, president of the nation�s leading institute of science, the National Academy of Sciences.

I can't think of anybody who I would say is better than Hansen. You might argue that there's two or three others as good, but nobody better, says Cicerone.

And Cicerone, who�s an atmospheric chemist, said the same thing every leading scientist told 60 Minutes.

Climate change is really happening, says Cicerone.

Asked what is causing the changes, Cicernone says it's greenhouse gases: Carbon dioxide and methane, and chlorofluorocarbons and a couple of others, which are all � the increases in their concentrations in the air are due to human activities. It's that simple.

But if it is that simple, why do some climate science reports look like they have been heavily edited at the White House? With science labeled not sufficiently reliable. It�s a tone of scientific uncertainty the president set in his first months in office after he pulled out of a global treaty to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

We do not know how much our climate could, or will change in the future, President Bush said in 2001, speaking in the Rose Garden of the White House. We do not know how fast change will occur, or even how some of our actions could impact it.

Annoyed by the ambiguity, Hansen went public a year and a half ago, saying this about the Bush administration in a talk at the University of Iowa: I find a willingness to listen only to those portions of scientific results that fit predetermined inflexible positions. This, I believe, is a recipe for environmental disaster.

Since then, NASA has been keeping an eye on Hansen. NASA let Pelley sit down with him but only with a NASA representative taping the interview. Other interviews have been denied.

I object to the fact that I�m not able to freely communicate via the media, says Hansen. National Public Radio wanted to interview me and they were told they would need to interview someone at NASA headquarters and the comment was made that they didn�t want Jim Hansen going on the most liberal media in America. So I don�t think that kind of decision should be made on that kind of basis. I think we should be able to communicate the science.

Politically, Hansen calls himself an independent and he�s had trouble with both parties. He says, from time to time, the Clinton administration wanted to hear warming was worse that it was. But Hansen refused to spin the science that way.

Should we be simply doing our science and reporting it rigorously, or to what degree the administration in power has the right to assume that you should be a spokesman for the administration? asks Hansen. I've tried to be a straight scientist doing the science and reporting it as best I can.

Dozens of federal agencies report science but much of it is edited at the White House before it is sent to Congress and the public. It appears climate science is edited with a heavy hand. Drafts of climate reports were co-written by Rick Piltz for the federal Climate Change Science Program. But Piltz says his work was edited by the White House to make global warming seem less threatening.

The strategy of people with a political agenda to avoid this issue is to say there is so much to study way upstream here that we can�t even being to discuss impacts and response strategies, says Piltz. There�s too much uncertainty. It's not the climate scientists that are saying that, its lawyers and politicians.

Piltz worked under the Clinton and Bush administrations. Each year, he helped write a report to Congress called Our Changing Planet.

Piltz says he is responsible for editing the report and sending a review draft to the White House.

Asked what happens, Piltz says: It comes back with a large number of edits, handwritten on the hard copy by the chief-of-staff of the Council on Environmental Quality.

Asked who the chief of staff is, Piltz says, Phil Cooney.

Piltz says Cooney is not a scientist. He's a lawyer. He was a lobbyist for the American Petroleum Institute, before going into the White House, he says.

Cooney, the former oil industry lobbyist, became chief-of-staff at the White House Council on Environmental Quality. Piltz says Cooney edited climate reports in his own hand. In one report, a line that said earth is undergoing rapid change becomes �may be undergoing change.� �Uncertainty� becomes �significant remaining uncertainty.� One line that says energy production contributes to warming was just crossed out.

He was obviously passing it through a political screen, says Piltz. He would put in the word potential or may or weaken or delete text that had to do with the likely consequence of climate change, pump up uncertainty language throughout.

In a report, Piltz says Cooney added this line �� the uncertainties remain so great as to preclude meaningfully informed decision making. �� References to human health are marked out. 60 Minutes obtained the drafts from the Government Accountability Project. This edit made it into the final report: the phrase �earth may be� undergoing change made it into the report to Congress. Piltz says there wasn�t room at the White House for those who disagreed, so he resigned.

Even to raise issues internally is immediately career limiting, says Piltz. That�s why you will find not too many people in the federal agencies who will speak freely about all the things they know, unless they�re retired or unless they�re ready to resign.

Jim Hansen isn't retiring or resigning because he believes earth is nearing a point of no return. He urged 60 Minutes to look north to the arctic, where temperatures are rising twice as fast as the rest of the world. When 60 Minutes visited Greenland this past August, we saw for ourselves the accelerating melt of the largest ice sheet in the north.

Here in Greenland about 15 years ago the ice sheet extended to right about where I'm standing now, but today, its back there, between those two hills in the shaded area. Glaciologists call this a melt stream but, these days, its a more like a melt river, Pelley said, standing at the edge of Greenland's ice sheet.

The Bush administration doesn�t deny global warming or that man plays a role. The administration is spending billions of dollars on climate research. Hansen gives the White House credit for research but says what�s urgent now is action.

We have to, in the next 10 years, get off this exponential curve and begin to decrease the rate of growth of CO₂ emissions, Hansen explains. And then flatten it out. And before we get to the middle of the century, we�ve got to be on a declining curve.

If that doesn't happen in 10 years, then I don�t think we can keep global warming under one degree Celsius and that means we�re going to, that there�s a great danger of passing some of these tipping points. If the ice sheets begin to disintegrate, what can you do about it? You can�t tie a rope around the ice sheet. You can�t build a wall around the ice sheets. It will be a situation that is out of our control.

But that's not a situation you'll find in one federal report submitted for review. Government scientists wanted to tell you about the ice sheets, but before a draft of the report left the White House, the paragraph on glacial melt and flooding was crossed out and this was added: straying from research strategy into speculative findings and musings here.

Hansen says his words were edited once during a presentation when a top official scolded him for using the word danger.

I think we know a lot more about the tipping points, says Hansen. I think we know about the dangers of even a moderate degree of additional global warming about the potential effects in the arctic about the potential effects on the ice sheets.

You just used that word again that you�re not supposed to use � danger, Pelley remarks.

Yeah. It�s a danger, Hansen says.

For months, 60 Minutes had been trying to talk with the president�s science advisor. 60 Minutes was finally told he would never be available. Phil Cooney, the editor at the Council on Environmental Quality didn�t return 60 Minutes' calls. In June, he left the White House and went to work for Exxon Mobil.

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-sci-warming23jun23,1,200411.story?coll=la-headlines-frontpage&track=crosspromo

U.S. Panel Backs Data on Global Warming

By Thomas H. Maugh II and Karen Kaplan
Times Staff Writers

June 23, 2006

After a comprehensive review of climate change data, the nation's preeminent scientific body found that average temperatures on Earth had risen by about 1 degree over the last century, a development that is unprecedented for the last 400 years and potentially the last several millennia.

The report from the National Research Council also concluded that human activities are responsible for much of the recent warming.

Coupled with a report last month from the Bush administration's Climate Change Science Program that found clear evidence of human influences on the climate system, the new study from the council, part of the National Academy of Sciences, signals a growing acceptance in Washington of widely held scientific views on the causes of global warming.

The council's review focused on the controversial hockey stick graph, which shows Earth's temperature remaining stable for 900 years then suddenly arching upward in the last century. The curve resembles a hockey stick laid on its side.

The panel dismissed critics' charges that fraud and statistical error were responsible for the graph's sharp upward swing, noting that many studies had confirmed its essential conclusions in the eight years since it was first published in the journal Nature.

There is nothing in this report that should raise any doubts about the broad scientific consensus on global climate change � or any doubts about whether any paper on the temperature records was legitimate scientific work, said House Science Committee Chairman Sherwood Boehlert (R-N.Y.), who requested the study in November.

The finding was a rebuke to global warming skeptics and some conservative politicians who have attacked the hockey stick as the work of overzealous scientists determined to shame the government into imposing environmental regulations on big business.

Geophysicist Michael E. Mann of Pennsylvania State University, lead author of the study that debuted the graph, said it was time to put this sometimes silly debate behind us and move forward, to do what we need to do to decrease the remaining uncertainties.

Though scientists have cited various factors as evidence of global warming � including the melting of polar ice caps and measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide � the hockey stick encapsulated the issue in an instantly recognizable way.

It's a pretty profound, easy-to-understand graph, said Roger A. Pielke Jr., director of the University of Colorado's Center for Science and Technology Policy Research. Visually, it's very compelling.

The chart drew little attention until it was highlighted in a 2001 report by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

After that, the hockey stick was everywhere, Pielke said.

It also became an easy target.

If you are someone who's interested in critiquing climate science, he said, the hockey stick would be a lightning rod.

One prominent attack came from the House Energy and Commerce Committee chairman, Rep. Joe L. Barton (R-Texas), who last year launched an investigation of Mann and his colleagues. Barton demanded information about their data and funding sources � an effort widely viewed as an attempt to intimidate the scientists.

Barton's committee has launched an inquiry into the statistical validity of the hockey stick. Larry Neal, the committee's deputy staff director, criticized the National Research Council panel Thursday for having only one statistician among its 12 members.

The crux of the dispute is that thermometers have been used for only 150 years. To determine temperatures before that, scientists rely on indirect measurements, or proxies, such as tree ring data, cores from boreholes in ice, glacier movements, cave deposits, lake sediments, diaries and paintings.

Mann and his collaborators tried to integrate data from many such sources to produce climate records for the last 1,000 years. Their report was filled with caveats and warnings about the uncertainties of their conclusions � caveats that were overlooked as the research achieved more celebrity.

The panel affirmed that proxy measurements made over the last 150 years correlated well with actual measurements during that period, lending credence to the proxy data for earlier times.

It concluded that, with a high level of confidence, global temperatures during the last century were higher than at any time since 1600.

Although the report did not place numerical values on that confidence level, committee member and statistician Peter Bloomfield of North Carolina State University said the panel was about 95% sure of the conclusion.

The committee supported Mann's other conclusions, but said they were not as definitive. For example, the report said the panel was less confident that the 20th century was the warmest century since 1000, largely because of the scarcity of data from before 1600.

Bloomfield said the committee was about 67% confident of the validity of that finding � the same degree of confidence Mann and his colleagues had placed in their initial report.

Panel members said Mann's conclusion that the 1990s were the warmest decade since 1000 and that 1998 was the warmest year had the least data to support it.

The use of proxies, they said, does not readily allow conclusions based on such narrow time intervals.

The report said that establishing average temperatures before 1000 was difficult because of the lack of data, but said the trend appeared to indicate that stable temperatures could extend back several thousand years.

He also terms global warming "a serious and urgent economic, environmental and national security challenge" and adds that "the problem isn't a Hollywood invention," according to excerpts of planned remarks his campaign made available Sunday.

in the wrong place and at the wrong time. Because from here on, you'll be told exactly what to do and when, and probably how you're supposed to feel about it.

Told what amount of money it is 'seemly' for you to earn, how much you MUST surrender to maintain the lifestyles of others, and how much you may be permitted to keep - if you promise to spend it properly. Told how much energy it is politically correct for you to use (please drive an approved vehicle) and what modern conveniences it is more 'green' to do without. Told not to think too much: 'The science is settled. The debate is over.' Told what medical tests and procedures it will be proper for you to receive and which (so very sorry) it would be better for society as a whole for you to forego, because there is only so much to go around. Told for your own good what to eat and taxed extra on the improper items you choose. (Unless, apparently, you receive food stamps, in which case limiting your choice would be unnecessarily judgmental.)

Perhaps some will see all this as gentle correction from a benevolent parent, but this micromanagement sneaking in incrementally cloaked in a smily face will not really make me feel better about being told what to do.

and down right vulgar (hence the expletives tonight). You're right.. the only time they have anything going here is when we come over. They have nothing constructive to talk about when they aren't looking down their noses at conservatives who question their statements or bashing Bush. It's a big yawnfest

That's why I'm using the moniker leftist/lib basher. The best way to rile them up is to call them by what they call themselves. Oh, wait a minute. They're progressives now. They'll be progressives until we call them that then they'll say we're calling them names and change it again. Yes, they have tender widdle feelings.

hmmmmm....? Just because everyone is voting for Barack doesn't make any of it right - they all are bad candidates to some of us......