SWITZERLAND - It's that time of year when the rich, powerful and downright famous head to a Swiss mountain village to discuss the big issues of the day and attempt to put the world to rights. The World Economic Forum (WEF) has grown from a small huddle in the 1970s, when it was started by the academic Klaus Schwab, to hosting more than 3,000 participants, of which 1,200 are chief executives or company chairs and more than 50 are world leaders.
This year, the likes of Matt Damon, Will.i.am and Shakira will be jostling for pole position against Bill Gates, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Theresa May. Donald Trump's fast-approaching reign as US president, the Brexit vote and climate change are likely to be among the big themes.
As you can imagine, there are lots of meetings, surrounded by varying degrees of secrecy. The public ones - which anyone can attend. The closed ones - which only those participants with a white badge can attend (ie they've paid to attend the conference or have been invited) and then the private ones that you don't even know have happened. Those are where the big deals are discussed, behind closed doors.
The idea behind the gathering is to spark ideas and conversations - it doesn't pretend to solve them there and then. Perhaps the best-known outcome is Turkey not going to war with Greece in the 1980s when tensions escalated. The former Turkish Prime Minister Turgut Ozal had met his Greek counterpart Andreas Papandreou in Davos and felt he could trust him. More recently, the Brics New Development Bank - an alternative to the World Bank and the IMF launched last year - was conceived during a conversation between economists Lord Stern and Joseph Stiglitz in Davos in 2011.
“Just what is an APOSTLE?”
Today we find the Church of God in a “wilderness of religious confusion!”
The confusion is not merely around the Church – within the religions of the world outside – but WITHIN the very heart of The True Church itself!
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