News and Prophecy Staff

The European Union is pushing for a financial transaction tax (FTT) and Britain is pushing back (BBC, April 30, 2014). Of particular interest to students of Bible prophecy is that 11 of 27 EU member states are going ahead with the FTT, even though the particulars have yet to be decided upon. The eleven nations are: “Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Belgium, Austria, Portugal, Greece, Slovenia, Slovakia and Estonia” (ibid.).

This week, severe weather spawned tornadoes across Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia, killing more than 30 people (New York Times, April 29, 2014).

Prominent religious leader Pat Robertson predicted the destruction of the world by a meteor, during a recent airing of The 700 Club. “A giant meteor will bring an end to the world is a prophecy by none other than Jesus Christ… It could be next week, it could be 1,000 years from now.

Resistance to drugs is a growing problem for a number of diseases. New research has discovered that the virus that causes AIDS is adapting to the human immune response (International Business Times, April 27, 2014). As a result, researchers believe the mutations could result in a decreased ability to fight HIV—especially in African populations where the infection rates are highest (ibid.). The HIV virus attacks and eventually destroys the immune system of its victims.

A papyrus unveiled in 2012 has just been pronounced “authentic” by archaeologists. The four by eight centimeter fragment known as the “Gospel of Jesus’s Wife” contains the phrase, written in Coptic, “Jesus said to them, ‘My Wife…’” (New York Times, April 10, 2014).