Faith-based musings from a decidedly Biblical Protestant point of view, on just about everything, including Bogus Bibles, New Age Deceptions, Corrupt Politics and other signs of the Last Days before the World ends.
Uh oh. Trump is telling Israel to cool it about building settlements on "Palestinian" land. Sounds like the Islam lobby got to him. Big mistake, capitulating to a lie. There is no Palestinian land in that area, for starters, and there is no Palestinian people. It's all a political invention. The very idea of a "peace" in the Middle East is a big fat delusion. The Muslim world has said in so many words they want Israel dead, they do not want peace. They have refused every peace plan offered. They draw their maps without a hint that Israel ever existed. You can't negotiate a genuine peace and it's futile to keep trying. To ask Israel to pull back on their settlements for the sake of an impossible peace is to betray Israel.
Rather adds to my forebodings in the previous post.
I wrote the following at EvC Forums in response to a post about a utopian vision of the whole world made in the image of America's Constitution and Declaration of Independence.
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The idealism of the Left which is expressed in that post can only give a biblically taught Christian deep despair for America and the world, because the reality of evil is completely denied in it. And that gives evil great power to proliferate, and especially to express itself through that very misguided idealism. Communism for instance sounds good on paper, but in reality it can't exist without murdering people, because all utopian systems try to squash reality into a small box that leaves more of reality outside. But since the utopia is held with fervor that reality has to be exterminated to bring it about. THEN will come the Perfect Society. Etc etc etc.
I keep having this ...feeling? ... concern? ... premonition? ...paranoia? ... that because of the extreme opposition to Trump the hope his election gave so many of us may still go down in flames. A hope, ironically enough, for the very values the Left thinks it represents but doesn't.* The Left and the powers behind the Left may yet succeed in defeating this surge of goodness and hope for a renewal of prosperity, national strength and unity, and Constitutional liberty, and bring about their globalist tyranny over once-sovereign America, and in fact the world. Partly because there are truly malevolent forces on the Left that the Left refuses to recognize, but also because of this sort of idealism that misreads what it takes to establish freedom in a fallen world.
Since we've gone from any semblance of "peaceful transference of power" to violent methods of opposing the elected political position with no signs of remorse or intention of de-escalating, Trump would have to have supernatural ability to continue as he has been doing. He talks of God but I don't know how much of a believer he really is -- fairly superficial at this point I would think but maybe he's learning that what he's up against is bigger than politics and bigger than even prodigious human strength can deal with. I hope he prays, as many of us are praying for him. He may be able to continue for some time yet, and I hope so, but already he looks terribly tired in his pictures. He has bags under his eyes he didn't have a short time ago.
The point of all this is that although God is certainly giving us a reprieve in Trump, judgment on America and on all the nations of the world is still proceeding and may finally lead sooner than we'd anticipated to the globalist nightmare we Trump supporters have been hoping to stop. Biblical prophecy tells us it has to come sometime, and the signs have been growing for decades that it is getting closer every day, and reached some kind of peak with Obama, but the Trump win and Brexit and other signs of nations reclaiming some of their lost sovereignty seemed to promise a stay of execution at least for a while. But the forces of evil -- that are mistaken for good these days -- are not only not going away, they seem to be gathering power. Evil power. In some cases in the name of good.
I hope I'm wrong. I hope the true hope lasts. I just keep having this...foreboding.
Of course it's not a foreboding for most at EvC. Anything that would turn back Trump's win would be welcome, as it would be for the Left in general, because he's considered to be the evil that needs to be stopped. And besides, anyone who talks as I am talking here is obviously not to be taken seriously.
Upshot: Maybe, just maybe, the world is about to take a turn into the "Great Tribulation" or "The Day of the Lord" when God's wrath descends on the planet with unprecedented horrors and destruction for some period before the Lord Jesus returns.
I've never been completely convinced of the theology of the "Pre-Tribulation Rapture," but I've been even less convinced of other end times theologies. And I recently read a book about the Rapture (author Billy Crone) that resolved many of my doubts -- not all but many. Enough in any case to go with it provisionally for now.
America is no doubt the highest profile nation in the world, and the name Trump has an awfully biblical sound to it.
1 Thessalonians 4:16 For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first:
Hint? Omen? I don't know, I just keep having this foreboding because of the way the world has been going.
That passage is considered to be THE prophecy of the pre-Tribulation Rapture. The Rapture is expected to come unexpectedly, suddenly, without warning, taking "the Bride of Christ" off the planet to be with Him forever. That is a wonderful thing for me and other believers; not so much those who have rejected Christ.
The Rapure is to usher in a seven-year period when the world that is left behind goes through the Great Tribulation or God's Wrath or the Day of the Lord. A horrible time not to be wished on anyone. And since I have unsaved family I don't want to see them go through it.
But for the sake of those who will go through it, listen up: If this prophecy is true there will be a huge number of people saved during it, at great cost, through enormous suffering, but saved for eternal life by believing the gospel you refused to believe before. Beheadings will be one of the horrors. (Most of this is in the Book of Revelation), and beheadings are of course a hallmark of Islam. Islam is pretty much already set up to play such a role if all this comes down soon. And of course as I keep saying, I believe the Pope is what the Protestant reformers said he is: the Antichrist. Islam and the RCC are linked in some biblical symbols as the two halves of the revived Roman Empire that is to rule the world at the end. And it's not going to be your happy "American" utopia, that's for sure.
(Huge numbers of Catholics and Muslims will of course be saved}
But maybe Soros is the Antichrist instead. Or somebody else. In any case the Pope is going to be right up there with him/
One good thing in all that is that the Great Tribulation is to exist for a particular period of time, after which Jesus will return. It is possible to calculate that time from biblical prophecy in the Book of Daniel and the Book of Revelation. The Rapture is to come unexpectedly, as "a thief in the night," but the Second Coming will come according to a biblically given time frame.
"Repent and believe the gospel" is always the way to salvation and it would be better to do it now rather than wait to go through the Great Tribulation.
But maybe the Rapture won't come for a long time yet. Maybe my forebodings are premature.
Again I'm melancholy about the prospect of any enduring good to America to come through Trump's election. It's hugely good of course that we're free temporarily at least from a Marxist Leftist President. Like most Trump supporters I have been experiencing much relief that he won and his sane policies are being brought into effect.
But I have to face the fact that the obstruction being raised against his every move isn't just human evil, although it is that in any case, it must also and more importantly be understood as God's continuing judgment on the nation. It's not so much that the opposition is winning - yet, anyway -- it's hard to tell at this point since Trump seems to be continuing to do positive things for the country, fulfilling his campaign promises, maintaining the vision that earned him the election. But the persistence of the Leftist Islamist satanically inspired obstruction to his every move, and the continuing lies and smears in the media and the continuing baseless accusations by his opponents don't look like they are going to let up. Though Trump's win is surely God's blessing on the nation up to a point, this constant attempt to undermine it suggests the blessing is shaky.
I think it all reflects the continuing rottenness at the core of American life that God has been judging for some time. In my previous post I focused on the rottenness of ecumenism, religious syncretism and the presence of idolatrous religions in the ceremonies of the inauguration. But now I'm thinking of the nation's accumulated sins. As I've pondered Trump's policies I see that what he is doing is aimed at restoring God's blessings the nation enjoyed in years past. But the problem is those blessings were originally built on the nation's righteousness.
Trump's policies are all about healthy sane ways of running a government, building economic prosperity, relieving economic burdens on the average citizen and on businesses, to increase employment, protecting the nation against various threats and so on. This is in fact a partial list of God's blessings on a righteous nation as spelled out in the Bible, so we should probably understand Trump's policies as a humanly inspired effort aimed at undoing God's judgments which we've been laboring under for so many years. That may seem like a good thing, seem like it must mean God is smiling on us again, but I'm not sure of that, since nothing Trump is doing changes the unrighteousness that is the reason we've been under judgment, and if that doesn't change the blessings can't possibly last long.
Righteousness exalts a nation, says the scripture. Unrighteousness can only bring us down, and unfortunately what is today mistaken for righteousness is the exact opposite of the truth. Good for evil and evil for good [Isaiah 7:20] reigns in our political life, seen for instance in the aggressive defense of gay marriage as a Constitutional right and the vilification of anyone who opposes it as un-American and "bigoted" and so on.
"You can't Make America Great Again by Defying God." I found that quote somewhere on the internet a while back but can't find the source now. I had also noted this discussion of the probable failure of Trump's policies because he described the Supreme Court gay marriage opinion as "settled law," which they say could undermine his attempts to stop illegal immigration. It isn't directly addressing the point I'm making here, but it focuses on issues I agree need to be resolved if Trump's policies could really be a blessing to the country.
Then yesterday I was rereading the book about Islam, Philistine (1995) in which the author, Ramon Bennett, describes some of the cultural reasons America and the West in general are regarded by Muslims as "The Great Satan." Americans sometimes impute ridiculously psycho-social causes to Muslim hatred of us, poverty and lack of opportunity and so on, or their outrage at American military aggression, and other reasons that are only marginally relevant at best. But there are genuine other reasons for their hatred of us, such as our huge public immorality which is being spread across the world and corrupting their societies as well as our own.
From page 61 of the book:
The United States has no moral law, although some might say it has. God has been thrown out onto the trash heap. Only lip service is paid to America's Christian roots by government officials; even less by educators, and corruption is rife throughout the judicial system. The moral has been exchanged for the immoral.
The United States pornographic industry is the biggest in the world, eaering billions of dollars annually ...
American television overflows with vulgarity, profanity, nudity, violence and murder. ... And few, indeed, are the movies that adults or youngsters can comfortably view without their minds being contaminated by sewerage packaged as "family entertainment."
The American population is ... deceived by Satan... This great nation was founded and built upon the Bible but has since gone a-whoring after other gods [which] manifests itself largely in sex for profit.
America, believing the answer to the ills of the Middle East to be simply a matter of Westernization, increases its aggressive marketing thrust into the Moslem states through the media, adding fuel to the already smoking fires of bitter hatred and boosts Islamic fundamentalism instead of decreasing it.
I tend to emphasize in discussions of Islam that their violence comes from their own sacred teachings, it doesn't need any external provocation. Their aim to rule the world is on their books. But by emphasizing this I think I'm wrongly ignoring that there are indeed other reasons for their hatred of the West, as Bennett outlines in the above quote. The Left is always saying that those of us who are trying to show the dangers of Islam to the West are in fact promoting their hatred by treating the whole religion as the cause, or by ignoring the psycho-social reasons mentioned above. This is just culturebound blindness, but there ARE reasons besides the religious call to jihad, as described by Bennett.
In a sense we deserve the title The Great Satan. The Left unfortunately has changed the meaning of the American Constitution to make all the abominable sins that the Muslim world hates and that God is judging us for a matter of Constitutionally protected "freedoms" and "rights." This is how they defend abortion, pornography, the normalization of homosexuality, gay marriage, now transgender rights and so on. THESE ARE SOME OF THE MAIN REASONS THE WEST IS UNDER GOD'S JUDGMENT. And one of the main instruments God is using against us is the growth of Islam in the west and their violence.
Trump's policies hit his supporters as a lungful of fresh air after years of Leftist globalist attempts to sell us out to our enemies. But if you take the perspective I'm laying out here, what Trump is doing can't succeed for long because it doesn't address the real reasons God is judging us, and all the Leftist globalist undermining of the nation should be understood as ways God is judging us.
I think I'll quote the way I just put this elsewhere:
I suspect that Trump's efforts to return the nation to sane policies may not work because the nation is under judgment by God, and until we do away with the causes of that we aren't going to get out from under that judgment. Which means causes like abortion and normalizing homosexuality and legalizing gay marriage and many other issues dear to the heart of the Left. Trump is not taking those on but focusing only on the practical projects that should protect the nation, protect it I've finally realized, from God's judgments against us. Since the Left isn't going to give an inch on its sin-liberation politics which is the main reason we are under judgment, I don't see any way for Trump's projects to succeed for long. That means we'll eventually be overtaken by Islam, which appears to be God's main instrument of judgment against us.
Trump has explicitly given in on the very issues that need to be addressed if the nation is to be made great again, when he refuses to tackle gay marriage or the LGBT movement and other reasons God is sorely displeased with us.
Avoiding all this is understandable of course because it's an aggressively defended political evil that has little chance of being reversed given its popular support, while the practical matters he focuses on are much easier to bring about.
But what this means is that our relief at the sanity of Trump's policies is misguided. We're still under God's judgment, there's no way He's going to bless the nation beyond a temporary reprieve at best. Is there an answer? Very possibly not. We may be beyond that stage.
There's always prayer. Maybe God would listen if enough of us pleaded for a way to turn back the nation to our former goodness so that our greatness could be His gift to us again.
