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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, OCTOBER 28, 1983
My husband and I have taken Bible courses from more than one
denomination. We are now studying your Bible course. It is very
enlightening and the hours spent are so very happy and truly ex
citing. It is the only course we have found plain and truthful.
We both would love to be baptized in the Worldwide Church of God.
Mrs. C.K. (Fort St. John, B.C., Canada)
I have just received another lesson of your Bible Correspondence
Course, and wish to commend you on a job well done. Although I
have attended and graduated from a university, the subject matter
and its treatment has never been better. It has been a very re
warding course and has given answers to questions I had long
thought were unanswerable.
ON THE WORLD SCENE
D.H. (Anchorage, AK)
--Richard Rice, Mail Processing Center
ON THE SPOT MIDDLE EAST REPORT: VIOLENCE WRECKS DIM PROSPECTS FOR PEACE
JERUSALEM, OCT. 27
It could not be a more opportune moment to be in the Middle East than right
now, traveling as I have been with Mr. Herbert W. Armstrong and his staff.
After initial visits to Copenhagen and London, along with a brief side trip
to Brussels to meet once again with European Parliament member Otto von
Habsburg, we in Mr. Armstrong's party flew on to Amman, Jordan and lastly
here to Jerusalem.
The day before we left Amman, the latest eruption of violence rocked the
Middle East. Early on Sunday morning, October 23rd, two terrific explo
sions flattened the American and French command posts in Lebanon. As of the
latest count 229 U.S. Marines and 58 French paratroopers perished, with
more still uncounted for in the rubble. It was the worst single-day loss of
life for American military personnel since Korean war days. For the French
the loss was the greatest setback since the fighting in the Algerian War of
Independence in the late 1950s.
Evidence now strongly indicates thab the perpetrators of the barbaric act-
carried out by suicide "kamikaze" terrorists driving TNT-laden trucks into
the compounds--were members of a Shiite Muslim politico/military group with
a stronghold in a southern Beirut slum area near the airport where the
American forces were housed.
Shiite radicals are implacably opposed to Western military forces whom they
see not as neutral "peacekeepers" but as military props behind the weak
government of President Amin Gemayel. In turn the Gemayel government, the
Shiites believe, is strongly biased toward Maronite (Christian) Arabs, the
traditional moneyed class in sectarian Lebanon.
American intelligence believes that the one who masterminded the suicide
bombings was Hussein Mussavi, leader of the Shia Muslim "Party of God."
While Mussavi denies it (partly out of fear of avowed U.S. retribution), he
nevertheless told a TIMES of London reporter: "I personally consider this