World News and Trends
Beyond Today Magazine
Good News Magazine: July - August 2001
Course Content
The Financial Times tells us that "in the US and the UK, household debt has reached a record level as a percentage of disposable income."
Of even more concern for consumers is that "the real burden of debt has shifted from paying the interest to repaying the capital, and the figures can be startlingly large."
In Britain and the United States millions of credit-card users are trapped in a potential lifetime debt sentence. Monthly payments used to be 5 percent of the total amount owed. In same cases this has dropped to as low as 2 percent, assuring thousands of pounds and dollars of extra interest payments for many cardholders.
If you would like to know how to properly handle your own credit cards, please see "Do You Know How to Use a Credit Card?" on page 10 of this issue. You might also want to request our free booklet Managing Your Finances. (Sources: Financial Times, Daily Mail [all London]).
John died on March 8, 2014, in Oxford, England, four days after suffering cardiac arrest while returning home from a press event in London. John was 77 and still going strong.
Some of John's work for The Good News appeared under his byline, but much didn't. He wrote more than a thousand articles over the years, but also wrote the Questions and Answers section of the magazine, compiled our Letters From Our Readers, and wrote many of the items in the Current Events and Trends section. He also contributed greatly to a number of our study guides and Bible Study Course lessons. His writing has touched the lives of literally millions of people over the years.
John traveled widely over the years as an accredited journalist, especially in Europe. His knowledge of European and Middle East history added a great deal to his articles on history and Bible prophecy.
In his later years he also pastored congregations in Northern Ireland and East Sussex, and that experience added another dimension to his writing. He and his wife Jan were an effective team in our British Isles office near their home.
John was a humble servant who dedicated his life to sharing the gospel—the good news—of Jesus Christ and the Kingdom of God to all the world, and his work was known to readers in nearly every country of the world.
