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We have had a great adventure going through the book of Revelation. Its practicality in Christian living is unquestioned because the promise at the beginning of the book says, "Blessed is the one who reads and understands." Its impact on our understanding of human history, the present, the future is profound. We know where the world is going. We know how it will all fall out in the end. There are so many specific prophecies, so many general things we have seen that have made us aware of Satan's great power escalating as we get closer to the end. We've tried to all the way through this book give you a fair, clear, sound interpretation of these passages without running in to the sensational. I want to avoid that because I don't want to go beyond the interpretation that Scripture allows.
I remember when I first came to Grace Church twenty-five years ago, a gentleman had come here on a Sunday night and he preached a sermon. He announced that he would be preaching on this sermon and he preached it, and the title was, "Why God will never allow man to walk on the moon." It wasn't long after that sermon that Neal Armstrong walked on the moon.
I have read prophetic books written in the thirties and the forties that identified Hitler as the Antichrist, Mussolini as the Antichrist. I have read books written in the sixties that introduced Henry Kissinger as the Antichrist. There have been all kinds of applications of the interpretation of Revelation that have gone beyond what an appropriate interpreter would do. Those books lie somewhere gathering dust. And the credibility of the one who wrote them is certainly in question when what he predicted so absolutely has not come to pass.
It's not necessarily a modern foible, to be honest with you. Even in the early church there were many early church interpreters of Scripture who identified certain specific Popes as the Antichrist...only to have missed. And so I want you to understand that interpreting the book of Revelation, we cannot be sensational, we cannot identify any current human being. It's very difficult for us to go beyond the Scripture without feeling that we have somehow pressed the Word of God beyond its intention. And frankly, there's enough here anyway that gives us specificity so that we can sense and feel that we are certainly living in a day that is nearer to the coming of Christ probably than any of us believe.
You don't need to sensationalize chapter 17 to have it shock you and leave a tremendous impact. You don't need to particularize it. You don't need to identify a given individual or a given religion by its name to feel the tremendous impact of this chapter. Revelation 17 tells us the story, the future account of the destruction of the final form of false religion. As we have been learning, the end of man's day of ruling this world under satanic influence will come to an end. We have been studying the ending, that's what Revelation is. It's the event surrounding the end of man's day and the return of Jesus Christ. We have learned very much about the end. We've seen it from God's standpoint, the standpoint of Christ. We've seen it from the standpoint of the church. We've seen it from the standpoint of Israel. We've seen it from the standpoint of the unredeemed people in the world. We've seen it from the standpoint of Satan. We've seen it from the standpoint of demons. We've crisscrossed it every way that the book of Revelation indicates.
One of the most fascinating, one of the most important develops of the end will be a one-world religion...which certainly seems to me to be an agenda in our current world religious culture. And the book of Revelation indicates to us here in this seventeenth chapter that there will be a one-world religion in existence, dominating the whole kingdom of Satan and Antichrist at the end, that kingdom, that religion will be destroyed by Christ when He returns and destroys Satan.
Now the name of that final world religion is given to us in verse 5. This is not necessarily going to be its official worldly name, but this is its descriptive name, the name is, "MYSTERY BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND OF THE ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH." We went into that last time and I just want to pick up the pieces of what we didn't say and maybe give you a brief review.
This final form of world religion described here in chapter 17 is, first of all, called a mystery. That is it is more than physical, it is more than geographical, it is more than human, it is more than that which is devised by men. It is mystical, it is supernatural, it is deep. It is demonic. And as yet, that final form of world religion has not yet been revealed, so it is still a mystery.
It is also called Babylon the Great because it is the final form of religion when all forms of religion roll into one. And as we described to you last Sunday night, all world religions have come out of one initiating religion, namely the religion of Babel or Babylon. When the Lord scattered all of those people who had erected a religion to other than the true God, when the Lord scattered them and changed their language, He scattered their false religion into many languages and cultures all over the face of the earth so that all false religion finds its birth in Babylon and in the end, all of those children will come back to mother. And the final form of Babylonish religion will be Babylon the Great. All the religions originally spawned out of Babel will recollect themselves as the final world religion, Babylon the Great.
It is further described as the Mother of Harlots. And I told you that all false religion and all idolatry is characterized in Scripture as harlotry, as prostitution, being intimate with other than the true God, a kind of spiritual fornication or spiritual adultery. And the system in Babylon gave birth to all of it. Babylon originally was the mother of all harlot religions, all false religions. And additionally, it is called not just the Mother of Harlots, but the Mother of the Abominations of the Earth. She is the source of every blasphemous abominable religious system on the face of the earth. They all came from Babel and they'll all come home to mother Babylon. This then will be the world religion of the last days.
This system that falls into its final form will be the spiritual side of Satan's world empire. The material side will be the economic system described in chapter 18. The leader of the spiritual side is the false prophet. The leader of the material side is the Antichrist. The spiritual side is the twin of the material side, or the political economic kingdom. Both will be destroyed when Christ returns.
So, our apparently increasingly irreligious culture, we are living in a culture when we feel it getting less and less religious is not at all becoming less and less religious, it is becoming less and less Christian but more and more pagan in its belief. Our seemingly irreligious world will become utterly religious, totally religious. Not atheistic, it will fall under Satan's power, under the leadership of Antichrist and under the influence of the False Prophet during the time of the Tribulation and it will become increasingly religious. It will turn to the supernatural, according to Revelation 13, only it won't worship God, it will worship Satan and it will worship the beast and it will worship the demons. And all the harlot religious all over the world will come together. And that final form of world religion will gather probably initially motivated by social action, by existential religious experience, that is that which cannot be defined by dogma, by emotion, a sort of an ethereal sentimentality and by mysticism. Mainly it will not be humanly engineered. We can look at the human side and say...what will draw these parts of religion all over the globe together, social acts and existentialism, emotion and mysticism may be on the human level, but the reality of what pulls them together is the influence of Satan, the doctrines of demons and seducing spirits.
We already learned that the great kings of the east are going to come to the battle of Armageddon and they're all going to be slaughtered there. We ask the question...what in the world would ever make all the great empires of the east march across the Middle East, across a dried-up Euphrates that God sovereignly and supernaturally dries up and march over to the land of Palestine in the end time to be destroyed by Christ? And the only answer that you could find in the Scripture is that they are deceived by Satan and his demons. The same kind of deception will form up the final world religion. So it's fine to look at some of the current components in anti-Christian, non-Christian pagan religion and to assume what will make men get together, what's going to be the common ground, social action, experience, or whatever. But in the end it's going to be a satanic process.
Now the entire empire of Antichrist that will exist in the time of the Tribulation just before Christ returns will be called Babylon the Great. I believe there will be a literal city, most likely. There will be a literal rebuilt Babylon as there is now a rebuilt Babylon in the Middle East. But the city is not really in view here. What is in view here in chapter 17 is the religious part of the system of Babylon and what is in view in chapter 18 is the material side, or the economic, political side of it.
The papacy and the worship of Mary are not Christian, they are Babylonish. On February 15, 1926, Catholic dogma tells us that the child Jesus came and urged Catholics, quote: "To spend this devotion of and reparation to the Immaculate Heart of the holy Mother Mary." And the child Jesus declared, "Reparation must be made to the Immaculate Heart of Mary in order for mankind to be saved." And I remind you that in that system, Jesus serves in some ways to bring the world to Mary. Catholicism persists even today in depicting Jesus as a helpless babe, or a small child, dependent on His mother Mary who is still called the Queen of Heaven. Lest you think this kind of preoccupation has faded, no...no one is more convinced of the authenticity of the apparitions and the supposed appearances of Mary than the present Pope. Nor is anyone more devoted to Mary. John Paul II has dedicated himself and his pontificate to Our Lady. He bears on his coat of arms an "M" and that "M" stands for Mary. His personal motto is embroidered on the inside of his robes and on the inside of his robes in Latin is Totus Tuos Sum Maria, Mary, I'm all yours. This current Pope has unusual personal reasons for his special devotion to Mary. While recovering from the assault on his life that occurred, remember back on May 13, 1981, an assassination attempt, it took place, interestingly enough on the anniversary of the Virgin Mary's first appearance, supposedly, on May 13, 1917 at Fatima in Portugal. In a vision she appeared to him to declare that she had spared his life for a special mission he was to fulfill. John Paul II made a solemn pilgrimage to Fatima on May 13, 1982 where he prayed before the statue of Our Lady of Fatima, thousands heard him speak and consecrate the world to Mary. On at least three other occasions, October 16, 1983, March 25, 1984, December 8, 1985 he consecrated the world to Mary.
So the Christianity of the Roman Empire which became known as Roman Catholicism and of which the Pope is the head today is never to be assumed to be the same as biblical Christianity. It is not the biblical Christianity of the early church, it is the old paganism of Rome surviving under a thin veneer of Christian terminology and form. No less than the great historian Will Durant writes, "When Christianity conquered Rome, the ecclesiastical structure of the pagan church, the title and vestments of the Pontifex Maximus, the worship of the Great Mother, and a multitude of comforting divinities, the sense of super-sensible presences everywhere, the joy or solemnity of old festivals and the pageantry of immemorial ceremony passed like material blood into the new religion and captive Rome captured her conqueror. While Christianity converted the world, the world converted Christianity." So says Will Durant.
Many of the lives of the Popes exemplified Antichrist-type evil. More than one Pope vacated when killed by a furious husband who caught him in bed with his wife. Even Catholic historians admit that many of the Popes were among the most inhuman monsters to walk the earth. In Vicars of Christ, a book by Jesuit Peter DeRosa(?), he reminds us that Pope after Pope engaged habitually on a grand scale in wholesale mayhem and murder, pillage, rape, incest, sodomy and corruption of the worst sort. Their evil lives...he said...are a blot on the pages of history.
So the mother of all harlots found her way to Rome and will find her way back to Rome again and the final form of world religion may well be centered there.
It should further be noted that the Roman religious system also confuses salvation by grace as do all other false religions, and also confuses the work of Christ. That is precisely why there was a Reformation. There had to be a Reformation to sort out true Christianity from the unholy mix. Sadly, if Martin Luther were alive today in the United States of America, he would be considered by many evangelicals a trouble maker, unloving and arrogant.
Roman Catholicism opposes the true gospel by imposing works and confounding the true work of Christ. Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones explained the cause of confusion among so many Protestants when he wrote this, "In one sense, you might well think that the Roman Catholic Church is the most orthodox church in the world. It believes that Jesus of Nazareth was the eternal Son of God. It believes in the virgin birth. It believes in the incarnation. It believes in His miracles. It believes in His substitutionary work on the cross and His resurrection," etc. "But at this point, the subtlety comes in and the difficult arises. To all that orthodox truth she adds with a damnable plus things which are utterly unscriptural and which indeed become a denial of the Scripture. So she lands us eventually in a position in which if we accept her teaching we're believing a lie," end quote.
For example, to the confession that Christ died for our sins. Romanism adds dogmas whose effect is to deny that His death was sufficient. One's own good deeds, obedience to the church, participation in the sacraments must be added to what Christ has done. The rosary, confession to a priest, baptism in the church and indulgences earned are also required. In addition to Christ's suffering on the cross, the individual must also suffer for his own sins in purgatory where the soul through...I should say...where the soul though cleansed by the blood of Christ must be more thoroughly purged. Then there is the endless of alms and good deeds and Masses that others must engage in after one is dead in order to obtain his or her release from purgatory and finally an entrance into heaven.
The Council of Trent came up with a lot of this. Lest you think that antiquated council no longer stands, it was affirmed by Vatican II. This is what they said, "If anyone says that after the reception of the grace of justification the guilt is so remitted and the debt of eternal punishment so blotted out to every repentant sinner that no debt of temporal punishment remains to be discharged by the person's own suffering, either in this world or in purgatory, before the gates of heaven can be opened, let him be anathema," which means eternally damned.
In other words, if you say that there is complete and total forgiveness through faith in Christ and there's no requirement to suffer in this life and in purgatory, you be damned. Further the Vatican II said, "We affirm that there is a purgatory and that the souls there detained are aided by the suffrage of the faithful and that the Bishops shall see to it that the suffrages of the living, that is the sacrifice of the Mass, prayers, alms, and other works of piety which they have been accustomed to perform to the faithful departed be piously and devoutly discharged in accordance with the laws of the church," end quote.
In other words, those people can't get out of there unless you're doing stuff that somehow is going to expiate their sin. Rejection of the simplicity and comprehensiveness of the biblical gospel could not be more clearly stated. How in the world then can Protestants join along with Catholics in evangelizing the world? Martyn Lloyd-Jones protested again, he writes, "There are movements afoot which are trying to bring a kind of rapprochement between Roman...that's a coming together...between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism. The Roman Catholic system is all together more dangerous...said Lloyd-Jones...than is Communism. Roman Catholicism is the devil's greatest masterpiece. It is such a departure from the Christian faith and the New Testament teaching that her dogma is a counterfeit, she is as the Scripture puts it, the whore. Let me warn you very solemnly that if you rejoice in these ecumenical approaches to Rome, you're denying the blood of the martyrs. There are innocent people who are being deluded by this kind of falsity and it is your business and mine to open their eyes."
It just shakes me to the core when the host and hostess of the popular Christian TV show, the largest Christian television network which we have here, we see it all the time, frequently give viewers the impression that Roman Catholic doctrine is no different from that of evangelicals. On one program while interviewing three Catholic leaders, the host declared, "The difference between Protestant and Catholic doctrine is merely a matter of semantics," quote. As for transubstantiation, a heresy so great that thousands have died at the stake through the years rather than accept it, the host said, "Well we Protestants believe the same thing. We were really meaning the same thing but just saying it a little differently. I'm eradicating the word `Protestant' even out of my vocabulary. I'm not protesting anything, it's time for Catholic and non-Catholics to come together as one in the Spirit and one in the Lord," end quote.
Transubstantiation was the belief, is the belief of the Roman Church that the priest literally turns the cup and the bread into the actual blood and body of Christ. And when they eat, they're eating Christ. As I said, thousands have died fighting that heresy. To just erase it as a matter of semantics and push it aside, foolish.
Furthermore, the Roman system always has absorbed its dissidence. You may read about dissident Roman priests. You may have heard or read of people like Hans Kung(?) and others who dissent. The system never throws them out, it just keeps absorbing and embracing so that it never divides, it always conquers. It just keeps getting wider and wider.
You have, for example, Mother Teresa whose place for the dying, sick and dying, which I visited, is right next to the most gross, unimaginable worship place in all of Hindu, India. It is so gross it's not even worth describing. And they're still offering blood sacrifice there and worshiping in a perverted and deviated way. She is right next door. This is what Mother Teresa said in her book, the book about her, I should say, called Mother Teresa: Her people and her work, published in 1976. "If in coming face to face with God we accept Him in our lives, then we become a better Hindu, a better Muslim, a better Catholic, a better whatever we are. What God is in your mind you must accept." Now that is an all-embracing and all-encompassing kind of statement.
A famous Roman Catholic mystical monk who has become very popular even with some evangelical people by the name of Thomas Merton(?) told an ecumenical gathering of representatives from many religions who were gathering in Calcutta, I'm quoting, "My dear brothers, we are already one but we imagine that we are not. And what we have to discover is our original unity." Let's go back to Mother Babylon.
So, I'm not saying this to be unkind to people who are Roman Catholic. I am bound in dealing with the Word of God to speak the truth. There are many Protestants who are lost and on their way to hell and will be a very large part of the final form of world religion. But Rome will also bear much of its foundation. The Roman Catholic hierarchy is courting Buddhists. Global religious unity is on the agenda.
So the final form of world religion will not be atheism, but sweeping supernaturalism, involving Satan, the beast, the False Prophet. And the one who deceived the people at Babel and started it all will deceive them again and bring them back to where they started.
That gets us to verse 1 of Revelation 17. Let's look at the text. The destruction of this final world religion is the theme of the chapter and I'm going to give you three points, one of them tonight. The exposure of this religion, the explanation of it and the extermination of it...the exposure, the explanation and the extermination.
Here is the vision of the judgment on the final Babylonian religion...the exposure of the harlot. Verse 1, "And one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and spoke with me saying, `Come here, I shall show you the judgment of the great harlot who sits on many waters."
One of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and spoke to me...now this connects this judgment here in chapter 17 with the last seven plagues being poured out. Remember there were seven angels that poured out the seven bowls described in chapter 16? One of those angels comes and tells him about this great harlot religion. This connects, as I said, the judgment with the last seven plagues being poured out. It is not some additional event. It is not in addition to. This is just the angel who steps out and says, "I've told you about the destruction, now let me tell you what it is that's going to be destroyed." It is a religious system...chapter 17, it is an economic or material system...chapter 18. He is no longer describing the judgments as in the seals and the trumpets and the bowls, but he is describing what and who is being destroyed by those judgments. And here you have in these two chapters the most comprehensive description of the final system of Satan in the book of Revelation, or for that matter anywhere else.
The bowl judgments are going to be the last judgments. Chapter 16 described them. They end in verse 21 with these hundred-pound hailstones crushing people. And whoever survives that, of course, is going to be destroyed when Christ returns to Armageddon and destroys the gathered armies of the world.
So chapter 16 really ends just before Christ returns. But Christ doesn't return until chapter 19 so we have chapter 17 and 18 inserted to describe for us the system that is going on in the world that will be destroyed by the bowls and by the return of Christ. Chronology halts. The scene goes back, looks carefully at the kingdom being destroyed.
So one of the seven angels then says, "Come here, I shall show you." This is a wonderful invitation to a great insight not only for John but for all of us. The angel says, "Come here, I'll show you a harlot."
Look at chapter 21 verse 9, just for an interesting comparison. Chapter 21 verse 9, same introduction. "One of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues came and spoke with me saying, `Come here, I shall show you...not a harlot, but what?...the bride, the wife of the Lamb." There it is, the bride, the wife of the Lamb, the true church cleansed from every stain, from all defilement by the shed blood of the Lamb, the bridegroom of the Lord, pure, holy, virtuous, magnificent, glorious forever. But here it is the harlot, mother of all harlotries and abominations and filthiness of idolatry. Before I show you the bride, I have to show you the harlot. I'm going to show you the judgment of the great harlot. The theme in the chapter is judgment. It takes us a while to get to it but that's the theme.
When that judgment falls, by the way, heaven rejoices. Chapter 19 verse 3, they're shouting hallelujah because the smoke of the destroyed Babylon rises up forever and ever.
As I told you, the great harlot is really a metaphor for spiritual false religion, spiritual defection, idolatry, religious apostasy. In prophetic language prostitution, fornication, adultery equals idolatry or apostasy. And we noted last time that in the Old Testament several cities are called harlot cities because their...their population was involved in idol worship. In Nahum chapter 3 verses 1 and 4, Ninevah is described as a harlot city. In Isaiah 23, Tyre is described as a harlot city. And sadly in Isaiah 1:21 Jerusalem is described as a harlot city. How is the faithful city become a harlot?...says Isaiah. Any city that has prostituted itself, committing spiritual fornication is a harlot city.
One commentator says, "All the harlot cities societies mentioned in Scriptures have certain common characteristics that are also reflected in John's description of the great Babylon in which he merges the descriptions of ancient Babylon and Jerusalem into one composite." What are those characteristics? Royal dignity and splendor combined with prosperity, over abundance and luxury, self-trust, boastfulness, power and violence especially against God's people, oppression and injustice and most of all idolatry. Wherever and whenever these characteristics have been manifested historically, there is the appearance of a Babylon. But here is the worst harlot, the great harlot...as noted in verse 1.
So the harlot is now to be exposed. First of all, let's look at the authority of the harlot...the authority of the harlot. This religion will be authoritative in the world. Notice the little phrase, "the great harlot who sits on many waters." Who sits, sitting is the mark of distinction, I remind you. Sitting is what kings did. They sat on their throne. It was a position of sovereignty. It was a position of authority.
By the way, some archeological material from Egypt and the Near East and the Greek world affirms the fact that sitting was to be always seen as the distinctive posture of deity...of deity. It symbolizes rule. It symbolizes sovereignty, taking one's place on a throne.
Notice what it says, as well. "Sitting on many waters." This metaphor continues. Cities were located seated by water. Isn't that true in ancient times? Water supply was everything. And no great city like Babylon could ever have existed apart from water. So great cities were built by waters, either a sea, rivers, lakes, springs. Babylon of old was built by the banks of the Euphrates. In fact, Jeremiah 51:13 says, "O thou...speaking of Babylon...O thou that dwellest upon many waters." Babylon had canals, trenches, marshes. In fact they tell us that one of the seven wonders of the world was the city of Babylon because they had developed a sophisticated, can you believe this, air conditioning system, using dripping waters through which the wind passed. And as Babylon was built by many waters, taking its seat there, so this great harlot is depicted in the imagery as seated by many waters.
What does that mean? Verse 15 of the chapter tells you. "And he said to me, `The waters which you saw where the harlot sits are peoples and multitudes and nations and tongues.'" And so it was in ancient times, when a city was built by a great waterway, what did that bring? Trade from everyplace. It meant peoples and nations and tribes and tongues would come to that place. And here is Babylon and Babylon has a seat of authority. And the great harlot has sovereignty. And the great harlot sits, as it were, in the position of commanding all kinds of people, all kinds of multitudes, all kinds of nations and tongues. And that again is that fourfold description of the unregenerate world in the future. The authority of Babylon is immense. This world religion will sit in the commanding position over all the peoples of the world. They all will come to worship the Babylonian system.
Secondly, not only the authority of Babylon is revealed here as the exposed harlot is seen, but the alliances of the harlot. The authority, and secondly the alliances...look at verses 2 and 3, and there are several alliances. First of all, "With whom the kings of the earth committed acts of immorality, and those who dwell on the earth were made drunk with the wine of her immorality. And he carried me away in the Spirit into a wilderness and I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast, full of blasphemous names, having seven heads and ten horns." Those two verses introduce us to the alliances of the harlot, the associations.
First of all, this harlot religion is associated with the kings of the earth. In this vision John sees that the harlot is engaged in committing acts of immorality with the kings of the earth. The scope of this influence is immense. The harlot becomes the ally of the whole world on the highest level of leadership, the kings, the sovereigns, the presidents, the emperors, the dictators, the premiers, the prime ministers, whatever they're called. Everybody comes to Mother Babylon. And their intercourse is described as epourneuson(?), fornication, porneia. Very important note for me to give you here. The symbolism of spiritual adultery is not used because adultery is a word used to define sexual sin on the part of someone who is...what?...married. And these heathen nations do not, nor have they have ever known God. They are not His. They never were His bride or His wife. And so what they did is not in the technical sense adultery, though that's what it was in the case of what nation? Israel. But not pagan nations. It is fornication. It is idolatry but it is clearly indicated here that it is fornication. And that term is always used of people who worship other deities. People who may name the name of the true God, but prostitute themselves to another deity. The concept of spiritual adultery is used in describing Israel's apostasy, you can see that in Ezekiel 16, Ezekiel 23, other places.
John sees these kings, the kings from all over the world committing fornication with the harlot. That is becoming absorbed in this religious power, deceived by the False Prophet, the demon seducers, Satan, the Antichrist. All the leaders of the world come together prostituting themselves for one solitary religion. They go to bed with the same harlot, end up with her infectious disease and are killed.
It's amazing that the whole world is going to come together on this basis. Well, we've proven, haven't we, that it come together on a political basis. Have you watched the United Nations or any other of those groups? It can never come together at that...at that vast level of cultures on a political, economic basis. But mark yourself, will you, the same power rules every false system of religion in the world, right? So when his day comes to pull it together, together it comes.
But the alliance is not just with rulers. It says also in verse 2, "And those who dwell on the earth were made drunk with the wine of her immorality." "Those who dwell on the earth," is another one of those terms in the book of Revelation and refers to unbelievers, those who dwell on the earth are unbelievers. The same folks described in verse 15...the people, multitudes, nations and tongues, the unregenerate. They all fall in, they are all victimized. Back in chapter 13 when the religion of Antichrist was being introduced and they were worshiping the dragon who is Satan, and they were worshiping the beast, it says in verse 8, "All who dwell on the earth will worship him." All of them fall into it. Over in verse 14 of chapter 13, "He deceives those who dwell on the earth." That is the False Prophet deceives them. They all come, they all worship the beast who has had a false counterfeit resurrection. Everybody is sucked in on this deception. And they are all, notice the imagery, they were all made drunk with the wine of her immorality. He's not talking about real wine and he's not talking about real sexual immorality. He is talking about becoming a part of the false form of religion. They all get drunk with it, they are all intoxicated with passion for this religion, totally, passionately, intensely. They give their hearts to this abominable Babylonianism. Satan orchestrates the whole thing...all the people and all the leaders come together in this great world religion.
And there is yet another component in the alliances of the harlot. Look at verse 3. "He carried me away in the Spirit into a wilderness and I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast full of blasphemous names having seven heads and ten horns."
Now we don't want to get carried away, we often use that expression and say...well you don't want to get carried away. But every time John got carried away, something pretty spectacular happened. He was getting used to being carried away. It happened to him in chapter 1 and chapter 4, it will happen again in chapter 21. The Holy Spirit just picked him up and took him out and showed him something else, to give more richness and more comprehension. Took him into the eremon, took him into the desert place, the lonely place, the place of desolation, took him into the wasteland. Surely the kind of place where the city of Babylon is today. And in that wasteland place somewhere, where he took him by means of vision, the vision came. The Holy Spirit had removed him from the conversation with the angel, taken him into this wilderness place. He said, "I saw a woman." Guess who that is? It's the harlot Babylon. And there's a nuance being added to the vision he's already seen. "And I saw her sitting on a scarlet beast." Well we know who the beast is, don't we? The Antichrist.
She is sitting on the beast. What's the significance of that? Well some say it means that the beast was supporting her. That's true. Some say it means she was in charge because the rider is in charge of whatever he rides or she rides. Perhaps both are true. The beast supports her, and at first is controlled by her. In other words, it is the religious system that really captures the world. It is the religious system that pulls the whole world together. It is initially the religious system that is in control in those last days. Religious power is the controlling power. In the end the world will turn to religion because economics and military might and politics are crumbling all around them at such a rapid rate, when all the powers of the heaven and the earth are shaking, the religious system begins to take charge. And while the beast certainly supports the religious system, it is the religious system that is the controlling influence.
They coexist for a while. But only for a while...only for a while because in verse 16 it says, "The beast will hate the harlot, make her desolate and naked, eat her flesh, burn her up with fire." You know what's going to happen in the end? The beast is going to rise up and devour the religious system and absorb it into one. And what is that? I believe that's when the worship of the world turns toward Antichrist and he becomes the whole world worships. And we find that back in chapter 13 when the False Prophet who must have headed up this world religion now demands the whole world worship Antichrist. He is the god of the new religion. He falsifies a resurrection to make him credible and does signs and wonders and the worship of the world turns to the beast and in that way the beast swallows up and devours the coexisting religious system and you now have the one system which involves the material side and the worship of the Antichrist in one great Babylonish system.
The beast further is described in verse 3 as a scarlet beast, the color of luxury, the color of splendor, the color of royalty. Isaiah would tell you the color of sin and some would say the color of blood. We could conclude a luxurious splendorous royal sinful bloody beast. And it says further of the beast, "He was full of blasphemous names." Why? Because the world is now identifying him as whom? God. They're identifying him as God and he's back in chapter 13 verse 1, on his horns are ten diadems and on his heads were blasphemous names. It says on his heads were blasphemous names, here it says full of blasphemous names. They were all over him, everywhere...self-deification, identifying himself as God by every name that God would have. Perhaps calling himself the Almighty, the sovereign, the creator, the giver of life. Who knows what is blasphemous names? He'll take every name that belongs to God and wear it himself.
Daniel certainly saw something of this incredible blasphemy. Chapter 7 of Daniel verse 25, "He will speak out against the Most High." In other words, he blasphemes God by what he says and he blasphemes God by what he claims for himself. Chapter 11 of Daniel verse 36, "He will do as he pleases, he will exalt and magnify himself above every god, he will speak monstrous things against the God of gods." That is his blasphemy, self-deification. And the self-deified Antichrist coexists, riding along as it were, bearing on his back this system that has been used by Satan to pull the world under his control.
It further describes this scarlet beast as having seven heads. Having seven heads, if you want to know what that means, all you have to do is go down to verse 9, "The seven heads are seven mountains on which the woman sits, and they are seven kings, five are fallen, one is, the other has not yet come. And when he comes he must restrain a little while." We'll get into the study of that when we get there, but the seven heads represents seven mountains and also seven kings...five who are fallen, one who exists, and another yet to come. So it refers to past and present governments at that time.
And then the beast also has ten horns...ten horns. Over in verse 12, ten horns are ten kings. Verse 13 says those ten kings have one purpose and give their power and authority to the beast. So this...this beast is sort of the fulfillment of all the past empires of the world and is the combination of the final ten powers that come together to form the future government. We'll say more about that when we get there. There's so much in this chapter. We have to let it unfold as we come to it.
What this does show us is his alliances are comprehensive. He is aligned with all the rulers of the world. The harlot is aligned with...the false religious system is aligned with all the rulers of the world, all the people of the world and is the culmination of all the governments of the past and is the culmination and the affirmation and the summation of all the governments of the future. In other words, this is a world-dominating religious system in every sense. One great world system to be crushed by Satan. When he says no more religion apart from the beast, and then he devours that system, makes the whole world worship the Antichrist which they willingly do because they're deceived to do it. And then Christ comes and destroys that system. One world religion is coming.
Newsweek, September 21, 1987 said this, "The jewel in the Pope's international design is a utopian vision of a unified and reChristianized Europe, stretching from the Atlantic Ocean to the Ural Mountains. Phase one would be to end divisions between eastern and western Europe," that would be the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church. "Phase two, the reconciliation between Roman Catholics and Orthodox Christians of the Soviet East." The Pope's international design is to break down the wall, to bring those divided parts of Romanism together. The Pope believes, as he has said on a number of occasions, that's the only hope for unifying Europe, common religion can tie them together.
You might be interested to know that in eastern Europe where I've traveled quite a bit, in the vacuum that has been left by the demise of ruling Communism, one of the great resurgent powers is orthodox Christianity. By that I mean the Russian Orthodox, the Eastern Orthodox church rushing in to power. And we shall see in the future that church will become the greatest persecutor of biblical Christianity in those countries.
Prostitutes, I guess, historically have generally adorned themselves in finery to attract attention, to allure with supposed beauty. And the harlot Babylon is no different. Let's look at her apparel in verse 4. Her authority, her alliances, her apparel. Let's see how she was dressed.
"The woman was clothed in purple and scarlet, adorned with gold and precious stones and pearls, having in her hand a gold cup full of abominations and of the unclean things of her immorality." We'll just take the first part of that verse. She was clothed in purple and scarlet. What is that? Royalty, prosperity, nobility, wealth. This prostitute is going to be a prosperous prostitute. This is a high-class prostitute, if there is, and there isn't such a thing. This is one who has plied her trade well and become extremely wealthy. This is one who has adorned herself.
Ezekiel 16, "Thus you were adorned...verse 13...with gold and silver and your dress was of fine linen, silk and embroidered cloth, you ate fine flour, honey and oil so you were exceedingly beautiful and advanced to royalty. Then your fame went forth among the nations on account of your beauty, for it was perfect because of My splendor which I bestowed on you, declares the Lord God. But you trusted in your beauty and you played the harlot because of your fame and you poured out your harlotries on every passerby who might be willing." The story goes on to say you took some of your clothes, you made for yourself high places of various colors, you played the harlot on them. You took your beautiful jewels made of My gold and My silver which I had given you and made for yourselves male images that you might play the harlot with them. You took your embroidered cloth, you covered them and offered My oil and My incense before them.
And He goes on to indict them. And He's talking about Jerusalem. "You had wealth and prosperity and I gave it to you and you prostituted all of it." The woman is clothed in purple and scarlet. By the way, scarlet has always been the color used by Popes and Cardinals. In fact, Pope Paul II made it illegal for anyone but a Cardinal to wear a scarlet hat. A Roman ceremony goes back three hundred years ago by Marsellas(?), a Roman archbishop, enunciated five articles of dress for Popes and Cardinals, all must be scarlet. They include a vest of pearl, gold and precious stones.
The harlot here is adorned with gold and precious stones and pearls. How interesting. Very wealthy, tremendous wealth this harlot has. And so does the Roman system today, hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars. And it's not just Rome, but I just see the parallels here so clearly. It's more than that. It includes apostate Protestantism as well.
John sees her having in her hand a gold cup, and that too takes us back to Jeremiah 51 verses 7 and 8. Another evidence of wealth is this golden cup. But out of each come abominations and the unclean things of her immorality. That is just so graphic.
Dr. Barnhouse said, "It is also highly significant that the abominations and filthiness should be spoken of as coming from a golden cup. Babylon hath been a golden cup in the Lord's hand that made all the earth drunken. The nations have drunken of her wine, therefore the nations are mad, Jeremiah 51:7 says." Barnhouse says, "To those who are acquainted with the history of ancient religions, this significance is heightened by comparisons with the rites of the pagan religious mysteries. A French scholar, Salvert(?), writing on the occult sciences tells of the drinking in connection with these demon ceremonies. He said to drink of mysterious beverages was indispensable on the part of all who sought initiation in these mysteries. These mysterious beverages were composed of wine, honey, water and flour, with various other ingredients used locally. From the nature of the ingredients avowedly used and from the nature of others not avowed but certainly used, there can be no doubt that they were of an intoxicating nature until the aspirant said, `Come under their power till their understandings had been dimmed and their passions excited by the medicated draft.' They were not duly prepared for what they were either to hear or see," end quote.
The harlot before she makes love to the victim wants to make the victim drunk. She brings out the golden cup that's so inviting and it's filled with abominations and the unclean things of her immorality. They're drinking filth. The apparel is very deceptive...very deceptive.
That leads to a fourth aspect of her exposure...authority, alliances, apparel, the abominations of the harlot. They're at the end of verse 4, we read them. The cup as beautiful as it is is full of filth. When the cup is offered in the ceremony, it defiles, it makes dirty, filthy. It contains nothing but wickedness, abomination. All idolatry is abominable to God, all of it. In fact, in chapter 18 it speaks of Babylon as having sins piled up as high as heaven. This system is wicked, vile, abominable, full of idolatrous obscenities. And the cup is full of unclean things of her immorality. That's a very graphic phrase. The cup is filled with the residue of her porneia.
And the abominations continue in verse 5. We've already discussed it. "On her forehead a name was written, MYSTERY BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTRIES AND OF THE ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH." A name on the head. From Seneca to Juvenal, two ancient Roman writers, we learn that it was customary for Roman prostitutes to wear a band with their name on it. Jeremiah 3:3 even notes a harlot's forehead. Parading their harlotry and their wretchedness without shame for everybody to see, they wore the name of harlotry, and so does this prostitute. And the name we've already seen. The source of all evil, giving birth to all false religion and idolatry. And now they all come home to mother.
Well lastly, we've seen her authority, her alliances, her apparel, her abominations, now her accusation in verse 6. Here is the indictment against her, the epitome of her crimes. "And I saw the woman drunk with the blood of the saints and with the blood of the witnesses of Jesus."
Like most harlots, this one is drunk. Only this one is drunk with the blood of the saints and with the blood of the witnesses of Jesus. Is there a difference in those two? Certainly the witnesses of Jesus are saints and the saints are witnesses of Jesus. Some would see the first as Old Testament saints and the latter as New Testament saints. Some would see it just two ways to speak of the same.
The distinction really isn't important. The point is, the harlot is a murderer. And her murder began in the Old Testament, there's no question about it. And proceeded from the beginning right on through to the very end, from those Old Testament saints through to those who gave testimony to Jesus, false religion born at Babylon has always been the murderer of the true saints..always.
While the world becomes drunk with lust for her, she becomes drunk too with the blood of God's people. She's getting drunk on something else. You can look back, best estimates are that just the Roman system itself has killed fifty million through the centuries. One million in the Inquisition alone. I was reading this last week about the massacre at St. Bartholomew's where Protestants were butchered. And the Pope in response to the butchering of the Protestants at St. Bartholomew's appointed a religious thanksgiving service and struck commemorative medals. It's not just that religion though that has murdered the saints, all false religions through the centuries have hated the truth and many of them have had occasion to slaughter the saints.
So this is her exposure. And this is some vision. And we read at the end of verse 6, "When I saw her I wondered greatly." Shock, astonishment, fright. What other reaction can there be? This is where religion is headed. Before this all comes to place we believe the church will be taken out, then comes the time of Tribulation. As the time of Tribulation comes, the False Prophet rallies the world, coexisting with the beast and his material kingdom. Somewhere around the middle of that time they merge into one great system. It has a spiritual side and a material side and both will be destroyed at the return of Christ.
That's the exposure. Next time the explanation and the extermination.
Lord, as we close tonight, our minds are just overwhelmed by all of this. Father, we know there are many people who are trapped in these false religions who will just blindly, blissfully under the deception of Satan go on their way to hell. Lord, how it behooves us to call them to the truth, to speak the truth, to preach the truth and to draw people out of these damning false religions so that they may escape that ultimate and frighteningly powerful deception of the end times. Father, we pray that You'll lead us to many with prepared hearts to hear and believe and be saved, who will escape the satanic deception that captivates the whole world and will reign and rule with the Lord Jesus Christ in glory. Make us faithful. You've committed to us this ministry of reconciliation and we want to discharge it. Empower and enable us, give us opportunity for Christ's sake. Amen.
This article is also available and sold as a booklet.
This sermon series includes the following messages:
Please contact the publisher to obtain copies of this resource.Publisher Information


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French Author Plagiarizes Wikipedia; Does That Mean His Entire Book Is Now CC Licensed?
from the a-legal-test dept
However, what makes this case more interesting, is what came next. Some folks realized that Wikipedia articles are licensed via a CC-BY-SA license, which in real terms says that you are free to share and remix the work, so long as it's with attribution and (most importantly):
"If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under the same or similar license to this one."If you're paying attention, you'll realize that it appears Houellebecq's La Carte et Le Territoire appears to "build upon" the Wikipedia works, which would then mean that his work, as well, must also be available under such a license. Thus, they've created a PDF version of the book -- with the proper Wikipedia references added back in -- and put it up for download under the very same CC-BY-SA license.
The question now is whether or not the author or his publisher will take legal action -- and whether or not the reading of the Wikipedia CC-BY-SA license is accurate. It certainly seems like a pretty strong argument can be made in favor of those now sharing the work. The terms of the Wikipedia content are clear, and thus, in using that content, it does appear that Houellebecq and his publisher may be required to abide by the terms of the license. Of course, there are other questions raised by this as well: such as the enforceability of a license that the person might not have read or understood. Before people automatically assume those posting the PDF are in the right here, remember all those stories we've discussed in the past about questionable end user license agreements that people agree to on websites without ever having actually seen them. In those cases, many of us feel that such licenses should not be enforceable. Is the same thing true for a Creative Commons license?
Update: As noted in the comments, the publisher has said it will take legal action against those who posted the work, though it's unclear if such proceedings have started yet.

subset: commoncrawl


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Bruce Springsteen, "High Hopes" (Columbia)
Bruce Springsteen albums are most often well-constructed, cohesive statements, but "High Hopes" is something different — a collection of covers and leftovers from the last decade or so.
As such, it feels like a musical tag sale, albeit one in a very nice neighborhood. Springsteen credits Tom Morello as his muse here, and his snarling, squealing guitar does more than anything to tie everything together. Their duet on a ferocious version of the two decade-old song, "The Ghost of Tom Joad," is clearly the album's high point.
Another song familiar to fans, "American Skin (41 Shots)," feels bloated and dated, not helped that a decade's worth of news has made the incident that inspired it recede from the mind.
The success of a tag sale depends largely on individual taste, of course. We're partial to some of the exuberant pop songs here: the title cut and "Just Like Fire Would" are both obscure cover songs. Springsteen's own "Frankie Fell in Love" is a lark with funny lyrics. They will remind fans of the treasure trove of unreleased material recorded before "Darkness on the Edge of Town," much of it so good that when it finally saw the light of day you wondered what he'd been thinking to keep it hidden so long.
Some of the material on this disc was originally set aside for good reason, but Springsteen's loyal audience will find things to enjoy. It's best not to come in with hopes too high.
Follow David Bauder at twitter.com/dbauder


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13A Hopetown Lane,
Station Road,
Darlington DL3 6RQ
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frequently asked questions
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You can glue the panels to the wall if the surface is completely flat.
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After fitting the supporting battens, you can begin to install the PVCu mouldings. Please note: ensure that the fixings (staples, nails, screws) are rustproof. The first step is to attach the starter mouldings around the wall or ceiling. After that is done the first panel can be inserted into the moulding, using the edge with the tongue. Use a spirit level to check whether the panel is completely straight before attaching it. It is advisable to leave about 5mm movement in the mouldings. The next panels are then inserted using the tongue and groove method.
For cutting the panels and profiles to size, we advise the use of a fine-toothed saw or a jigsaw.
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PVCu mouldings can generally be recycled. The recycled material is fit for reuse in many production processes.
Extrusion waste is also reused in the same way. It is therefore an environmentally friendly solution!
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PVCu mouldings melt in fire; however, they do not transmit the flames. A fire certificate has been issued for various products: M1 (for France and Belgium) and Class 1 (for England). Please contact us for further details.
Please don't hesitate to contact us should you have any further questions relating to our product range.


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March Newsletter: Page 4
Clarkson University Professor Pier Marzocca Wins Society of Automotive Engineers Award
Professor Pier Marzocca
The Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) has recognized Clarkson University Associate Professor of Mechanical & Aeronautical Engineering Pier Marzocca with the Forest R. McFarland Award. The award recognizes individuals for their outstanding contributions to developing, collecting and distributing technical information of value to society members through meetings, conferences and professional development programs.
Marzocca serves as the chair of the SAE's Unmanned Aerial Systems Technical Committee, which focuses on gathering and disseminating knowledge on unmanned aircraft.
"I was very pleased to hear that I was selected for this prestigious SAE Award," Marzocca said. "We are all expecting that unmanned aircraft will play a significant role in our future, to support not only military operations, but also the growing number of civil applications, such as firefighting, agricultural observations, and nonmilitary security operations, such as surveillance of pipelines."
Established in 1979, this award is administered by the SAE's Engineering Meetings Board and honors the late Forest R. McFarland, who was a member of the board.
"We are all expecting that unmanned aircraft will play a significant role in our future, to support not only military operations, but also the growing number of civil applications."
Professor Marzocca recently got a letter of congratulations for this award from Robert Duffy, State of New York Lieutenant Governor. Marzocca will receive a framed certificate at the upcoming SAE Aerotech 2013 Congress & Exhibition in Montreal. Thousands of the world's top aerospace professionals gather at the SAE Aerotech Congress & Exhibition to prepare for future aerospace challenges and opportunities.
Dr. Marzocca received his Ph.D. in aeronautical and aerospace engineering from Politecnico di Torino in Italy. He is a deputy editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Aeronautical and Space Sciences, and associate editor of the Journal of Aerospace Engineering and for the Journal of Thermal Stresses. His research interests are in the fields of aerospace and wind energy. He specializes in multi-physics modeling and the characterization of advanced materials and structures, dealing with the interactions among advanced structures and fluids, and magnetic, electric, and thermal fields.
Clarkson University Professor Lei Wu Receives $400,000 NSF CAREER Award for Smart Grid Research
Professor Lei Wu
The National Science Foundation has given Clarkson Professor Lei Wu a $400,000 Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award for "Smart Grid" research. Wu (in the University's Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering) is embarking on a five-year project that will provide a blueprint as the
United States updates its electrical grid in the 21st century. He will develop mathematical models and algorithms in order to find favorable sites for renewable energy facilities that will enhance the United States' "Smart Grid." The CAREER grant project will launch this September 1 and continue through August of 2018.
"The research will give power system operators and power companies more information to make better decisions," Wu said. "The research will also hopefully reduce the unpredictability and variability sometimes associated with renewable energy projects, thus making them more feasible and widespread."
This grant will fund two Ph.D. students who will work with Wu on the project. They may also travel to local high schools over the course of the grant to teach power systems concepts to students.
Professor Wu has more than 10 years of experience in energy and power systems research. He served as a consultant with the New York Independent System Operators (NYISO) organization to review their Business Management System and Energy Management System for power market operations in New York State. Wu will collaborate with NYISO and the New York Smart Grid Consortium on the research.
"The research will also hopefully reduce the unpredictability and variability sometimes associated with renewable energy projects, thus making them more feasible and widespread."_________________________________________
In addition, he received a Smart Planet Award in 2012 from IBM to develop coursework based on his research (of the future power grid) to educate the next generation of industry leaders to use the technology.


text: Home » News » GeForce 301.34 (Recomended) Driver for GeForce GTX 690 Only GeForce 301.34 (Recomended) Driver for GeForce GTX 690 Only MIG-31 May 3, 2012 News This driver supports GeForce GTX 690. GeForce R300 drivers are packed with new industry-leading, GeForce-exclusive features as well as some really nice performance increases in top games. New in R300 Drivers: NVIDIA FXAA Technology – shader-based anti-aliasing technology available from the NVIDIA Control Panel that enables ultra-fast anti-aliasing in hundreds of PC games. FXAA delivers similar quality to 4x multi-sample antialiasing (MSAA) but is up to 60% faster, enabling substantially higher performance in games. FXAA is supported on all GeForce 8-series and later GPUs. Note: This feature is disabled for games that already have built-in support for FXAA. Visit GeForce.com to learn more. NVIDIA Adaptive Vertical Sync – dynamically enables vertical sync based on your current frame rates for the smoothest gaming experience. Adaptive VSync is supported on all GeForce 8-series and later GPUs. Visit GeForce.com to learn more. NVIDIA Frame Rate Target – dynamically adjusts frame rate to a user specified target. Support for this feature is enabled via third party applications via NVAPI. Visit GeForce.com to learn more. NVIDIA Surround Technology – Adds the following new Surround capabilities. Visit GeForce.com to learn more. Add in a fourth accessory display to get access to your email, web, or other applications while you game. Maximize an application to a single physical display when in Surround mode (enabled by default). Confine the Windows Taskbar to the center display (enabled by default). Enable bezel peeking – a feature which enables users to temporarily peek behind the monitor bezels using a hotkey (Ctrl + Alt + B). This feature is designed to be used in conjunction with bezel corrected resolutions. Add or remove resolutions from the list of Surround resolutions (only those selected will be available to applications). Full center display acceleration for single wide display modes (center display must be connected to the master GPU). NVIDIA SLI Technology – Adds or updates the following SLI profiles: Alan Wake Call of Juarez: The Cartel Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Deus Ex: Human Revolution – The Missing Link Left 4 Dead Orcs Must Die! Portal 2 Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City Risen 2: Dark Waters The Darkness II Battlefield: Bad Company 2 Crusader Kings II Max Payne 3 Sniper Elite V2 Street Fighter X Tekken NVIDIA 3D Vision – Adds or updates the following 3D Vision profiles: All Zombies Must Die! – rated Fair Ghosts 'n Goblins Online – rated Good Oil Rush – rated 3D Vision Ready Postal III – rated Good Rayman Origins – rated Good SevenCore – rated Fair Stacking – rated Good Unigine Heaven Benchmark v3.0 – rated 3D Vision Ready Wargame: European Escalation – rated Good Warp – rated Good Wings of Prey – rated Fair Krater – rated Poor Adam's Venture Episode 1- rated Poor Blacklight: Retribution – rated Poor The Darkness II – updated in-game recommended settings Depth Hunter – updated profile Dirt: Showdown – rated Good Passion Leads Army Benchmark – rated 3D Vision Ready Resident Evil: Operating Raccoon City – Rated Fair rFactor 2 – changed rating to 3D Vision Ready Trackmania 2: Canyon – rated Fair Unigine 3.0 Heaven Benchmark – updated profile World of Tanks – changed rated to Excellent. Other Details Installs PhysX System Software v9.12.0213. Installs HD Audio v188.8.131.52. Supports OpenGL 4.2 Supports DisplayPort 1.2 Supports multiple languages and APIs for GPU computing: CUDA C, CUDA C++, CUDA Fortran, OpenCL, DirectCompute, and Microsoft C++ AMP. Download: 32 Bit / 64 Bit Please Discuss: Here Please Note: These are for Windows Vista/7 Only. Share On


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The cornerstone of the JRS mission is to offer holistic human services to forcibly displaced persons. All the subsidies in the world will never be able to replace the warmth of assistance rendered by one individual human being to another. JRS recognises the human dignity in refugees through its accompaniment.
It is this direct and personal approach of individual interaction and cooperation with refugees which mutually empowers refugees and JRS personnel alike. It is through providing accompaniment to refugees, touched by their reality in camps, conflict zones, detention centres or wherever else they may be, that JRS staff understand how best to serve and advocate on their behalf.
|"Our close and direct contact with people, our presence with them... lets us understand their real needs", said Fr Bernard Arputhasamy SJ, former JRS Asia Pacific Director.
To accompany means to be a companion. We are companions of Jesus, so we wish to be companions of those with whom he preferred to be associated, the poor and the outcast. It is practical and effective action. Not infrequently, accompaniment is a way of offering protection, and 'internationalising' a situation. The presence of an international team can sometimes prevent attacks on refugees. Moreover, presence can be a sign, that a free person chooses willingly and faithfully to accompany those who are not free, who have no choice about being there. This, is itself a sign, a way of eliciting hope.
Our accompaniment affirms that God is present in human history, even in its most tragic episodes. We experience this presence. God does not abandon us. As pastoral workers, we focus on this vision, and are not side-tracked by political manoeuvrings and ethnic divisions, whether among refugees or among the agencies and governments who decide their fate.
- Presence and listening count
- Accompaniment in detention
- Whites don't cry for blacks
- Being present
- Out of sight, out of mind
- Helping to heal the world
Presence and listening count
Sr Anne-Elisabeth de Vuyst, who worked for JRS in Latin America, Southern Africa and Europe, believes that being with refugees is the "cornerstone" of JRS' work. Knowing you are not alone is a transforming experience in that you know you are valued in the eyes of others. Sr Anne-Elisabeth takes Jesus as the model par excellence of a companion to the poor and marginalised, who can be inspirational for all of us. Full Article>>
Accompaniment in detention
"Please remember us." Taka Gani still recalls the words that a young detainee told her at the end of her first visit to an immigration detention centre in Indonesia. She could not know it then but this plea marked the beginning of a long friendship. Taka reflects on the challenges she experienced, as well as the wisdom she gained, from accompanying Donya, a Hazara man from Afghanistan, and other asylum seekers throughout their stay in detention. Full Article>>
Whites don't cry for blacks
Luis Fernando Gómez Gutiérrez describes his deeply moving experience of accompanying an Afro-Colombian community in Buenaventura. He says the JRS workers felt truly accepted by the community when they mourned together for 'Chila', an indigenous human rights activist who was murdered. Drawing on the Christian three-day celebration of the death and resurrection of Jesus, Luis Fernando says JRS' accompaniment of communities in crisis can be a real sign of God's love. Full Article>>
Being present in seemingly hopeless situations
The reflection of Mohammed Idris is deeply personal. Mohammed is an Eritrean refugee who joined JRS in Malta because the JRS team visited him in detention and continued to help him after he was released too. Their support made him feel that "I still had a value because they were doing all this for me." Mohammed's work as a cultural mediator gave him ample scope to accompany his fellow refugees in a very concrete way.
Out of sight, out of mind
Sr Inés Oleaga draws on her experience of working with JRS in East Timor and eastern Democratic Republic of Congo to show that accompanying refugees can be a very practical way of protecting them and of showing them that they have not been forgotten by all. "We are like a bridge over the abyss that separates the people from the world that decides, at least partly, what will happen to them," she writes. "When we witness what happens and tell the world what we have seen, others may be touched by what they can see through our eyes." Full Article>>
Helping to heal the world
As an observant Jewish woman, Shaina Aber was often asked how she came to work for a Catholic organisation like JRS. She says the accompaniment mission of JRS spoke to her on a spiritual level. This aspect of JRS' work, to offer friendship and be a witness to our common humanity and to the eternal and unconditional nature of God's love, was evocative of her own faith tradition and family history.


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...And the other way round
You are concerned about how to copy iPhone contact because you are:
- migrating to an Android-based phone from your old iPhone
- migrating to an iPhone from your old Android?
Copying iPhone contacts to Android and contact transfer from Android to iPhone are easy tasks but require you to follow a certain amount of steps. This page will quickly show you how to:
Transfer iPhone contacts to Android
The Steps:
- You would need a utility to first transfer your iPhone contacts to your computer. Download it from here: Transfer iPhone contacts.
- Once you run the program, connect your iPhone to your PC and let your contacts load
- Next, select all of your iPhone contacts you'd like to transfer to your Android and click "Export selected"
- Click on the "Android (multiple .vcf files" button and export the contacts to a folder on your PC of your choice - for example, your Desktop
- Your iPhone contacts are now transferred to your PC as vCard files ready to be imported to your Android
- Next, plug your Android smartphone to your PC and go to "My Computer". You will see your Android device appear, along with other devices on your PC. Double click on your Android phone from wihtin "My Computer" and drag/drop the vCard files from the folder on your Desktop to your Android device
- Disconnect your Android smartphone from your computer and tap on your Android's Menu button. Next, tap Import/Export > Improt from USB storage > Import all vCard files
- You will find your iPhone contacts transferred to your Android phone
YouTube Tutorial
Alternative Method: Transferring iPhone contacts to Android via Gmail
In this case, you will need an active Gmail account, so if you don't have one, go ahead open a Gmail account now.
- Open iTunes and plug in your iPhone to your computer via the USB cable
- Now, navigate to device settings within iTunes. In order to do that, simply click on your iDevice then choose the Info tab
- Once you see the options within the Info tab, tick the "Sync Contacts with" and from the drop-down list of options select "Google Contacts"
- You will be prompted to enter your Gmail username and password. Go ahead and do so
- After the iPhone contacts sync is complete, you will now have all of your iPhone contacts imported to your Google account. To verify, login to your Gmail via a web browser and navigate to your Gmail contacts
- Now it is time to switch on your Android. On your Android, navigate to Menu > Settings > Accounts and Sync
- Select "Add Account" and choose "Google Account" filling your Gmail username and password
- Make sure to tap on the "Sync Contacts" option. You can also select to sync other data with your Google account such as calendars, RSS fields, etc
Transfer contacts from Android to iPhone
There are at least two ways to transfer your Android address book to your iPhone contacts app
Exporting Android Contacts to a microSd card:
- Open your Android "Contacts" app
- Go to menu and select "Import/Export"
- Phone contacts will be exported to a file named "00001.vcf" within the root folder of your microSD card
- Connect your Android phone to your PC and select "Mass Storage"
- From the newly-opened contents of your microSD card, copy the "00001.vcf" file and paste it to your PC's desktop
- Now simply transfer the "00001.vcf" contact file to your iPhone using this utility (http://www.copytrans.net/copytranscontacts.php) via dragging and dropping the file to the tool's main window with your iPhone connected
- Your Android address book has now successfully been transferred to your iPhone contacts
Transfer Android contacts to iPhone: YouTube Video guide
Import contacts to iPhone via Outlook or Gmail:
- If you have already synced your Android contacts to Outlook or Gmail, you can proceed with syncing your iPhone with an Outlook or a Gmail account in order to import contacts to iPhone
- Go to Settings on iPhone
- Tap "Mail, Contacts, Calendars"
- Select "Add Account" and choose Google or Outlook
- Fill in the account details
- Tap "Next" and if you are using Gmail, enter the server name as follows: "m.google.com"
- Tap "Next" again and ensure that the "Contacts" option is slided to ON
- This is it! You now have your Android contacts imported to iPhone
Now that you know how to copy iPhone contacts to your Android phone, have a look at the following page for other useful tips and ways to sync iPhone contacts.


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Fall is a time of wonder and discovery for children as the world changes around them.
The bright, colorful leaves and other seasonal changes capture children's attention and spark their imagination. Fall is also full of opportunities for children to learn about colors, science, and the five senses (sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch):
- Talk to children about seasonal changes and what changes occur in fall. Explain that fall is also called autumn. Ask children what changes they are noticing when they look or go outside.
- Discuss how and why many plants and animals are beginning to prepare for winter in the fall. Birds migrating and animals scavenging for extra food for storage are two good examples you can discuss with children.
- Incorporate fall colors (yellow, brown, orange, and red) into conversations and home decorations. Encourage children to learn and identify the colors.
- Explain that fall is harvest time. Apples, sweet potatoes, and pumpkins are great fall harvest crops to introduce to children. Encourage children to touch and feel any crops they are not familiar with and to try eating fall vegetables and fruit.
- Take the focus off of Halloween and candy. Plenty of other important events make excellent talking points and history lessons this time of year, such as the Great Chicago Fire for older children and the arrival of Christopher Columbus in America.
- Use Fire Prevention Week (October 6 -12) as an opportunity to discuss fire safety and evacuation plans with children. You could even incorporate the Great Chicago Fire into your discussion with older children.
Fall Activities for Parents and Kids
- Visit a pumpkin patch or apple orchard
- Carve or decorate a pumpkin
- Go on a hayride
- Attend a fall festival
- Go on a nature walk
- Collect fall leaves, pinecones, or acorns
- Have fun getting lost in a corn maze
- Play in the leaves and then do a little yard clean up
- Pick out a Halloween costume or make your own
- Do a pumpkin science experiment
- Donate food to your local food pantry
- Pick a cause or charity your family wants to help at Thanksgiving or Christmas
Let us know some of your favorite fall activities to do with your children!


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Ricardo Glenn scored 16 points to lead the Spartans.
The Associated Press
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Freshman Beau Beech tied season highs with 17 points and five 3-pointers to lead North Florida over Atlantic Sun Conference foe USC Upstate 77-53 Saturday.
Beach was 6-of-9 shooting, hitting his treys on seven attempts and adding six rebounds.
Parker Smith was 3-of-5 from 3-point range and scored 15 points and David Jeune added 12 for the Ospreys (12-17, 7-9), who hit 52.4 percent (11 of 21) from 3-point range.
The win was the 56th for this year's North Florida seniors, which is the most by any class in school history, surpassing the 2004 and 2005 classes.
Ricardo Glenn scored 16 points to lead the Spartans (14-16, 8-9).
Torrey Craig entered averaging 18 points and 13 rebounds in his past two games, but scored 13 points with six rebounds Saturday as USC Upstate dropped its fifth consecutive road conference game and sixth in its past seven overall.


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Married to my High School sweetheart 5-15-04
SAHM to:
born 6/1/10 tongue and lip ties nursed 13 months with sore nipples and mutually agreed it was time to quit!
born all natural 1/27/12 nursed for 16 months and lost interest
born all natural 11/4/14 nursing like a champ and growing like a weed!
So here is an update:
I am feeling a bit better - Monday was a very bad day and I was seriously thinking I would have to give up. But yesterday I decided to just take one situation at a time and not think long term (e.g. I have to feed, then pump, then feed, then pump...) as it was too depressing!
We also decided yesterday that we really needed to get him back on the breast and cut down on the bottles. Although the lactation consultant we have been seeing said bottles should not cause a problem, I have never really been comfortable with this, especially considering his latch actually seems to have got worse (he went from latching painfully to barely latching at all). Whether this is due to the bottles, the tongue tie operation and him needing to relearn to latch, or that we just haven't been practising enough and have been using the bottle as a crutch, I don't know. Anyway, we decided to try the Medela Softcup feeder, as I have read this is a better alternative to bottle feeding.
Does anyone have experience of cup feeding, and is it indeed better than bottles? He seemed to cope ok with it - he complained a bit at first, but once we had got some down, he finished the whole feed However, when my husband tried again later there was lots of screaming - I don't know if he was just too hungry and frustrated, although when I took over he did calm down. I had the same experience today and ended up giving him a bottle, but he only took a little bit and fell asleep, so I'm not sure he was really hungry and that may have been why he was complaining (I had nursed him several times so he really shouldn't have been that hungry!).
I don't know if it is a coincidence, but he does seem to be latching a little better - we are getting back to where we were the first couple of weeks, when he was latching but it was painful and I had a lipstick shaped nipple (instead of the situation for the past couple of weeks, when he has barely been latching at all and my nipple has come out practically flat). I am still having the dilemma though of whether to let him carry on nursing, even though it hurts me
Obviously we are still using some bottles, mainly in the middle of the night, or if he is just too hungry to use the cup feeder. Does this sound ok, or will it confuse him even more?
Finally, I have had a SNS suggested, but they look pretty hard to use, and I really would prefer not to go down that route. If he already has a poor latch, how will this help him improve? And what about nipple shields? I have tried these but his latch just seems even shallower as they seem too big for his mouth - how are they meant to improve latch?
I would continue to nurse at least part time. Babies- even tongue-tied babies- almost always eventually outgrow their latch problems. Babies grow fast, and a bigger mouth can latch on more deeply even if there's a tongue tie. And if you keep on nursing at least some of the time, your baby stands a better chance of remembering how to latch and being willing to latch. I always feel rotten when a mom comes to the forum and says "I had sore nipples so I just pumped for a few days and now the baby won't take the breast, what do I do?". Because if she had just kept the baby nursing a couple times a day, it wouldn't have worsened the nipple soreness that much and it would have kept her breastfeeding options more open.
The SNS is a good tool for a mom with low supply or whose baby is having trouble transferring milk (due to prematurity, or a tongue tie, or some other problem), and who wants to keep her baby on the breast as much as possible. It allows mom to feed the baby without using bottles, and trains the baby to equate the breast with being fed. It's not a fabulous tool for a mom whose primary problem is soreness or cracks, because she may want or need to limit the amount of nursing the baby does and give her nipples a chance to heal.
Nipple shields do not improve a baby's latch, but in some instances they can reduce soreness and allow mom to nurse. However, they can also negatively impact milk transfer, so they should be used only with guidance from a lactation consultant.
What I think an SNS might be useful for is retraining a baby who needs some suck training. When baby is on there right, let him have milk. If not, crimp the tube and readjust. And actually, the Lact-Aid one won't let milk out unless baby is sucking. You can also use it for finger suck training.
If you want to not get trapped into EPing hell, keep trying to nurse him, finishing feedings at the breast. This keeps your options opens for after getting TT snipped again or after baby grows up a bit more.
I wish I had not gotten my baby stuck on bottlefeeding. I might have had a better chance of nursing him post palate repair. It's a very real risk. I can't emphasize that enough to any mom.
Mama to my all-natural boys: Ian, 9-4-04, 11.5 lbs; Colton, 11-7-06, 9 lbs, in the water; Logan, 12-8-08, 9 lbs; Gavin, 1-18-11, 9 lbs; and an angel 1-15-06
18+ months and for Gavin, born with an incomplete cleft lip and incomplete posterior cleft palate
Sealed for time and eternity, 7-7-93
Always babywearing, cosleeping and cloth diapering. Living with oppositional defiant disorder and ADHD. Ask me about cloth diapering and sewing your own diapers!
I'm late to this thread - but just wanted to say I'm super amazed and impressed with what a great job you are doing! You are awesome!
I had a really rough time with sore nipples, poor latch, etc., too, but baby and I are still going with nursing at 9+ months. I remember thinking at 6-8 weeks, "There is NO way I could make it through all of this to a year," and feeling really stressed and sad about that. But you just take it one day at a time, and know that every single ounce of breastmilk you give your LO, however it is given, helps! And then later, when you aren't thinking as much about it - an amazing thing often happens; things get easier as your LO gets bigger and stronger. Once it got easier, my memory became blessedly fuzzy about the tough times in the early months (and I only have flashbacks when I read all the poor mama stories on here!). If you can get through these difficulties, it really is worth it. I know that may be irritating to hear over and over right now, but from the other side, I can confirm it has been true! In retrospect, I think our early struggles helped me to greater appreciate the good parts of our nursing relationship later, and made me passionate about sharing what I learned and helping other mamas whenever I could. I say that humbly, as others here have MUCH more experience and information than I do - but it feels good to pass on the info that helped me out!
On that note - you also mentioned you are still having nipple pain - and I sound like a broken record, because I've said this same thing to moms in pain on other threads - but try organic coconut oil on your nipples. It's more soothing and is healing (the major difference from some of the other topical stuff), and safe for the LO. It was the main thing that helped me recover from damage and pain due to poor latch.
Also, we used an SNS and were able to get past it and continue without it eventually. I'm not sure if that's what you need in particular (your LC should be able to advise in that dept, right?), but I think using it instead of only the bottle (which we starting also using 1-2x/day when our LO got to be 5-6 wks old) did help keep the breastfeeding relationship up. It is not easy at first (i.e., you may want to curse every time it pops out while you're trying to use it), but it gets better as you go along. However, like PP mentioned I'm not sure if that's what your particular situation requires. For us it was a way to improve our LO's weight gain.
Thank you all for your replies, and for the moral support It is good to know that most babies can improve their latch as they get bigger, and far from it being irritating, it really helps to hear people's experiences of how things improved for them. These stories keep me going, so keep 'em coming!
One good thing that happened this week is Toby had his 6 week check up and his weight gain is fine, the doctor was happy with everything, so he is getting enough milk and is healthy
We saw the lactation consultant at her clinic yesterday and she is happy with how Toby's tongue is healing (I don't know if I made it clear but she did snip it again last week). She said I've done really well to keep going, and to keep my milk supply up, and that I should persevere for as long as I feel able to. Toby also had a session with the osteopath, and we have another booked for next week.
I'm not sure if things are improving or not - his latch is still shallow, but I am breastfeeding more than I was this time last week. My nipples aren't too painful most of the time, although if he has been chewing them a lot they get quite pink and sore. I will try the coconut oil One big achievement was that I breastfed him through the night, the night before last, and I haven't done that for weeks (he was getting bottles instead and I was pumping). He has done a couple of reasonable latches, though nothing to write home about yet! We had to give up on the cup feeder because he really hated it and it was just too traumatic. We are now using the Medela Haberman/SpecialNeeds feeder, which seems like a good compromise and is better than a bottle as he has to work to get the milk. One of Toby's problems is that he doesn't use his tongue properly, and the Haberman teaches him to do this - if he just sucks on the nipple nothing happens, he needs to use his tongue too. It takes him ages to drink, but he is getting there. It doesn't solve the other problem of him not opening his mouth wide, but hopefully that will come with time.
We have a routine now that I breastfeed him first and he only gets the Haberman if I am too sore, or if he simply is unable to latch at that particular time. In the mean time I continue to pump as much as possible.
I mentioned I was worried he'd forgotten how to latch, but I think I have worked out what it is - when he is hungry, he does latch most of the time (although it is shallow), but if he's not that hungry then he can't be bothered and slips off. I realised this because there have been a couple of times when he didn't latch and I offered him the Haberman, he took a few sucks then fell asleep or started smiling! So he couldn't have been that hungry. However, I know if I'd offered him a conventional bottle he probably would have drunk it.
As for the SNS, I don't think we will go down that route, I think it would just upset me if I couldn't do it, and it would restrict the positions we could nurse in (e.g. lying down). Hopefully we can manage to improve things without it.
That's it for now, will update soon
Interesting about the Haberman, as we used those, and he learned to chomp on it to get milk out and destroyed his ability to nurse. It could be because my baby had no suction ability. I would be very careful IME with those and plan to ditch it as soon as possible. Plus they are horribly expensive. I spent $150 every 6-8 weeks on the replacement nipples for almost a year.
You can nurse with a Lact-Aid laying down, just in case someone else is thinking of trying it.
Mama to my all-natural boys: Ian, 9-4-04, 11.5 lbs; Colton, 11-7-06, 9 lbs, in the water; Logan, 12-8-08, 9 lbs; Gavin, 1-18-11, 9 lbs; and an angel 1-15-06
18+ months and for Gavin, born with an incomplete cleft lip and incomplete posterior cleft palate
Sealed for time and eternity, 7-7-93
Always babywearing, cosleeping and cloth diapering. Living with oppositional defiant disorder and ADHD. Ask me about cloth diapering and sewing your own diapers!
Thanks The Haberman seems to be working for us so far, but I will keep an eye out for any signs of chomping. We are also using the Breastflow bottles when the Haberman isn't convenient (e.g. we are out, or we don't have very long - he takes ages to feed using the Haberman) and he does have to suck using those, so hopefully this will counteract the fact he doesn't need to suck using the Haberman. He seems to have a pretty strong suck, so I'm not too worried at the moment.
It's not ideal using bottles/feeders but we do have to feed him and we feel these are the best option at the moment.
Aprilsmagic, I'm just curious - how did you find out the Haberman was responsible for your baby not being able to nurse? I'm still not sure what is causing our problems - whether it is the tongue tie, bottles, slightly receding chin, small mouth, the shape of my breasts (quite round with small nipples that don't stick out that much - not flat though), something else, or a combination of all of them!
We are still managing to nurse quite a lot of the time, although some days are better than others. Some days I get quite sore so can't do it as much, other times he seems to do better than others. For anyone who did struggle and it got better eventually, did you find that your baby had 'good days' and 'bad days'?
I'm still not sure if things are improving but I'm trying not to think about it too much and just concentrating on keeping going. If we keep this routine up it's not ideal, but at least I am feeding him and he is healthy I've started taking fenugreek and I think it is helping my supply, there suddenly seems to be a lot of milk in the fridge! Which is good as it means we don't need to give him formula so often. The downside is that I smell of maple syrup, and I think it makes the milk taste weird, but Toby doesn't seem to mind
I would still really like to hear from anyone who struggled and it got better with time, and how they coped.
Oh, I forgot to say - yesterday we tried the rebirthing, and it was lovely I put on the relaxation music I listened to when I was pregnant, had a soak on my own to relax, then my husband brought Toby in and put him in the back so he could sort of float on his back. I talked slowly to him and stroked him, telling him this was how his birth was meant to be, and then we put him on my chest. He made his way to my breast (the opposite one to which he usually goes for) and latched - I couldn't tell how good it was, but it didn't hurt, he was on there for a while, and my breast felt soft afterwards.
What is interesting is that when we got out of the bath, he was very calm, but then I lay down on the bed and put him on my chest - he went to the other breast (his usual one) and couldn't latch well, and got quite upset. In other words, there was a big difference to how he was in the bath. It was also interesting that the breast he went for in the bath is not his usual one, but it's the one he went for just after he was born, the first time he latched. It did seem that the bath reminded him of his birth! I also wonder if he associates our usual breastfeeding with the stress of the first couple of weeks.
Anyway, it seemed to be a success, and we will definitely do it again
I think most of the moms on this forum struggled to some extent. I think moms who have an easy time nursing tend not to look for online support!
With my first kid I had torn-up nipples and low supply from her awful latch, and needed to supplement with formula and pump round the clock in order to boost my supply and get milk to supplement with. It took a few months, but eventually I healed and she turned into a nursing champ. I nursed her for 3 years, and then had a much easier time with her little sister.


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Celebrate America: Road to Roots/Americana Music: Denhard/McCready Duo
Sunday, September 8, 2013 at 2:00 PM
Westminster Branch Library
The American Music Association defines Americana music as contemporary music that incorporates elements of various American roots music styles, including country, roots-rock, folk, bluegrass, R&B and blues, resulting in a distinctive roots-oriented sound that lives in a world apart from the pure forms of the genres upon which it may draw. Perhaps the best way to learn what defines Americana music is to listen to it, so join us in September for Americana concerts in the Mary Lou Dewey Sculpture Park. If it rains, the concert will be inside. Children 3 and under must be accompanied by an adult caregiver. A Celebrating America program. This program is sponsored in part by a Community Arts Development Grant from the Carroll County Arts Council and the Maryland State Arts Council. The Americans with Disabilities Act applies to the Carroll County Government and its programs, services, activities, and facilities. Anyone requiring an auxiliary aid or service for effective communication or who has a complaint should contact Madeline M. Morey, The Americans with Disabilities Act Coordinator, 410.386.3800, 1.888.302.8978, MD Relay 7-1-1/1.800.735.2258 or email email@example.com as soon as possible but no later than 72 hours before the scheduled event.
Return to the Calendar of Events


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From Our Editors
Families have been gathering around the table to enjoy Harvester's famous grills and salads since 1983. With over 210 sites across the UK, from Perth to Portsmouth, every restaurant features the iconic Harvester fresh salad bar that is replenished throughout the day. The menu offers a selection of freshly-prepared meals from grilled classics such as steaks matured for 28 days, loaded burgers, spit roasts and farm-assured chicken dishes that sit alongside tapas and sharing platters. Guests are also welcome to use complimentary Wi-Fi access.


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Rate Case Overview
A rate case begins when a utility files a petition with the IURC to modify its rates and charges. A public utility must inform its customers of the pending case within 45 days of the filing date. Once the petition is processed, it receives a docket number and is assigned to an Administrative Law Judge who presides over the case. Although multiple commissioners may be assigned to complex cases, a single commissioner is routinely assigned to each case. The Indiana Office of Utility Consumer Counselor (OUCC) represents the public in all cases before the IURC.
Procedural Schedule
Prehearing conferences are where filing and hearing dates are determined and a procedural schedule is established by the assigned Commissioners and Administrative Law Judge after input from all parties involved.
Utility prefilings are the utility's case-in-chief evidence pre-filed with the Commission to support the relief requested.
Field hearings are public hearings held in the largest municipality within the utility's service territory.
- Field hearings give utility customers an opportunity to speak in favor of or against cases pending before the Commission.
- Field hearings are sometimes required by law. If a field hearing is not held, consumers can still comment on pending cases by submitting their written comments to the OUCC.
- Field hearings may also be held at the discretion of the IURC.
Public and intervenors' prefilings are the public's, represented by the OUCC, and any other interested parties' evidence in the case.
Settlement hearings occur when the parties present the terms of a negotiated settlement to the Commission for consideration. Settlements must generally be reached before the last evidentiary hearing.
Rebuttal testimony is evidence refuting the public's and intervenors' prefilings and is submitted by the utility.
Evidentiary hearings are hearings where the petitioner, the intervenors and the OUCC present their evidence and cross-examine witnesses.
Post-hearing filings are submitted by each party in the case stating their positions as well as their recommendations for the final Order. After these filings are made, the Commissioners review the evidence presented by all parties, as well as staff analysis. An Administrative Law Judge then drafts an Order for Commission review and approval.
Conference is where the Commissioners vote on the Order. It is typically held every Wednesday at 2:00 p.m. but is subject to change by the Commission.


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