Hope for Revival, Hindrances to Revival

So many things these days work against the possibility of revival it is easy to give up on it.  For one thing if we are really in the last days shouldn't we just expect everything tn the culture and in the churches to deteriorate as it seems to be doing?  Lawlessness is one of the signs of the last days and we re certainly seeing lawlessness in the culture as protests grow violent day after day and there are active efforts by local governments to prevent the usual methods of restraining such violence.  A law was passed to deprive the police of their usual nonlethal methods of crowd control, prompting the police commissioner to say she couldn't in good conscience require them to put themselves in such a dangerous position without such protections.  I think that was in Seattle, but it might have been in Portland.  Both cities have been experiencing what seems like an endless daily attack by protests, protests that apparently start out more or less peaceful but become violent at some point in the evening.  Overall our "lawmakers" seem determined to interfere with laws meant to protect life and property rather than enforce them.   They seem happy to impose their political views on their opposition too, willing to lie to sway public opinion.  In the recent congressional hearing of Attorney General William Barr, the Democrats would seem to ask him a question but then refuse to let him answer.  They woulc castigate him for supposed transgressions they themselves invented, without any regard to evidence that he was at all guilty of such transgressions, and certainly no interest in taking his denials seriously let alone finding out the truth about any of it.

Then we have the COVID-19 pandemic 3which has been wreaking a different kind of havoc on the country.  "Pestilence" is another of the signs of the end days leading up to the return of Jesus.

So we have reason to be expecting the Rapture of the Church very soon, which will be the trigger for the seven-year Tribulation before His return.  

In such an environment how would it make sense to seek the revival of the Church?  What's the point?  There are plenty of churches that are disobedient in a vaqriety of ways these days, some teaching a completely false doctrine that denies God's word, some of them "liberal" churches that are supporting the lawlessness in the culture as if it were a righteous thing to do, as if it expressed God's love.   Churches have become lax on many biblical teachings such as divorce, the incidence of divorce among Christiansbeing no different than in the rest of the population.   Our laws have been perverted in many ways by our legislators and our courts over the last few decades, so that the murder of unborn babies is now legal and treated as a "right" as if our very Constitutional rights support it.  Same with the legalization of pornography, treated as freedom of speech.  These perversions have changed the character of American society dramatically over the last half century or so, and unfortunately many Christians have pretty much just fallen in step with it all instead of opposing it.  John Adams famously said that our system of government was designed for a moral and religious people, that it was "wholly inadequate for the government of any other."    Well, we are now that "any other," no longer that moral and religious people.  The devil has done his work well.  America is pretty much undone already, and now that we are under siege by this virus and these lawless violent protests, the nation's complete destruction wouldn't take much to accomplish.

The Church should act as a bulwark against such destruction but the Church has been weakened along with the culture.  We should be the "salt" that inhibits its corruption, but we are just as corrupt in many areas;  we should be the "light" that illuminates truth and righteousness and restrains lawlessness and falseness, but many congregations have already succumbed to false doctrine and become useless.

Many have been crying for revival for many years but it has not come.  Oh we've had some bogus revivals, such as the "laughing revival" that started in Toronto, and other "revivals" in Florida, based on "supernatural" phenomena that are not biblical.  In fact such bogus revivals discourage some of us from praying for revival at all because we don't want more of that and despite solid biblical opposition to it such as in the Strange Fire Conference at John MacArthur's church some years ago now, there area still many who think those were genuine revivals.  was God in them at all?  I don't know, but their tone was fleshly.  

What we want is a sober revival of godliness and biblical truth that characterized earlier revivals, like the one in Scotland I highlighted in a recent post.    God gave them revival as they agreed to the principles of the Protestant Reformation.   They no doubt had some things to repent of but nothing like we have today to repent of before we can expect God to revive us.

And repentance is the necessary first step as that video about Scotland affirmed.  Just praying for revival has not succeeded.  Perhaps the major effort was Leonard Ravenhill's.  He called for repentance and reform and constant prayer but revivgal didn't come through his efforts.  Why not?  I remember that some ten years ago or so Kay Arthur whose Precept Minitries exist all over the country called for prayer for revival among her Bible study groups, and that didn't bring revival either.

Somehow we've been failing to discover the necessary conditions that God would honor with revival.      What are we missing?   I speculated that Ravenhill gave too much credence to the charistmatic movement, which the Strange Fire Conference has definitively exposed as fraudulent.  That's just a speculation, I don't know if it is the reason though it could have been I suppose.  Beyond that I've speculated that our abandonment of the woman's head covering may be a strong reason God won't honor us now as well.   The reason I think both of these carry some weight as hindrances to revival is that they are both rationalized away, and treated as acceptable to God.   Perhaps now there are more Christians who reject the charismatic movement, but it's certainly not all, and the woman's head covering has been relegated to culture rather than bilbical principles.

The Strange Fire Conference made it clear that the "gifts of the Spirit" that are claimed by the charismatic movement are not the same phenomena described as those gifts in the New Testament.  The "gift of prophecy" is not prophecy from God, it's more like fortune telling.  The "gift of tongues" has no recognizable meaning as did the languages spoken through the Spirit by the early Christians.  Certainly God may still do supernatural works, but those supernatural works are not from Him.  We need to completely repudiate such phenomena if we are to have true godly revival.

The scripture about the head covering, 1 Corinthians 11:1-16, is too complex to argue here.  I've done that at my other blog, Hidden Glory.  All I'd mention here is that by that scripture we require men to remove their hats in church, showing that we still regard the covering of the head to be what that scripture is all about.  That being the case there is no excuse to interpret away that meaning for women.  The passage is about covering the head, it has no other meaning, and it is based on God's own principles, not on culture.  If we require men to remove their headgear, the only action that makes sense for women is that we require women to cover their heads in the same circumstances.  Besides this we need to note that historically women did cover their heads in church, pretty much up until the mid-20th century, which happens to coincide with the feminist movement in the general culture.   Then the abandonment of covering the head got rationalized in the theological literature, in ways I thihnk are pretty transparently illogical and unconscionable despite what I must assume is the sincerity and Christian spirit of the authors.  Yet such rationalizations have persuaded a whole generation of some of the best pastors in the nation and probably the world, just as a similarly questionable defense of the "oldest" manuscripts that are really corrupt and unworthy, has been used to deceive the same basically good teachers into using bad Bibles.  Perhaps this too should be one of the things the churches need to repent of if God would give us revival.   

In praying for revival I would want to emphasize at least the need to repent of accepting charismatic phenomena as from God, and repent of abndoning the head covering for women.  This is speculation and I can't argue for sure that ithese areTHE lreasons we haven't had revival but I do think it very well could be.  In either case it would be right to give them up because they are wrong and MAYBE God would honor us with revival if we did.    There will be many who resist both of these attitudes and that could keep us from true revival IF what I'm saying is right.

We need repentance for all our sins, both personal and corporate in any case if we want revival.  That is where we have to start.  We need to ask God to reveal to us where the hindrances lie and confess and pray according to His will.

It may be that the Rapture is at the very door, and the Tribulation is right behing it, and there isn't even time for revival, but I can't think of anything we would be better engaged in at any time.  Revival is when we become full of the spirit of God.  There is never a time when the Church doesn't need to be full of the Spirit of God.   We need to be praying that the lawlessness will be restrained and that righteouesness prevail in the culture, but above all we need the power of God in the churches and in our own lives if there is any hope at all of saving the culture.    And if not the culture, then human beings, since revivals not only renew the spiritual life of the churches but convert unbelievers.  When people re right with God, whether newly converted Christians or spiritually renewed Christians, the culture will naturally straighten out.

Hydroxychloroquine: Another Victim of Fake News and Political Suppression

There were two studies, actually three I think, done earlier this year that purpoted to show that the drug was either harmful or ineffective or both.   Both studies were based on bad science and one of them had to be pulled from the prestigious journal that had published it without careful review.  

Better studies have been coming out, such as the Henry Ford study:   .
https://www.henryford.com/news/2020/07/hydro-treatment-study  \

 Here's onet by Dr. Harvey A. Risch of the Yale School of Public Health:
The Key to Defeating COVID-19 Already Exists:  We Just Need to Start Using It

https://www.newsweek.com/key-defeating-covid-19-already-exists-we-need-start-using-it-opinion-1519535

(see interview with him linked below)

.  But the first thing that needs to be said is that the drug has been used for 65 years for malaria and lupus, entirely safely for hundreds of thousands of patients.    Dr. Daniel Wallace has treated lupus patients for decades with no problems.   Dr. Raoul Didier has had positive results with 4000 COVID-19 patients, saying only 20 didn't do well. And clinical experience of many MDs with the COVID-19 virus has been very positive.  If it is used early in the disease in the right dose, and especially with azithromycin and zinc it retards the growth of the virus in the cells.

The bogus study done by the VA a few months ago was based on using it with people who had serious conditions besides the virus and it was used late in their infection with the virus.  Such a study should not ever have been published and along with another similar bogus tudy it has done nothing but poison people's minds against a therapeutic drug that could be a powerful help against this virus.

Anyway, Hydroxychloroquine has a solid reputation with a great many MDs for its effectiveness against the COVID-19 virus.  We need an effective antidote to the poisoning of the public mind against it, but since the Left dominates every form of public information that's a tall order.  Golly gosh, here we are in the  USSRA lready, hey?
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* Here's the Gold-Wohlgelernter video again:
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Added 10/19   The discussion of Hydroxychloroquine starts about 13:00.    She discusses how three prestigious journals published faulty studies and then had to retract them.  The New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet, and the Journal of the American Medical Association.   The JAMA study was done in Brazil using not Hydroxychlorowuine but Chloroquine, a precursor to HCQ that has a known lethal dosage limit which was exceeeded with many of the patients in that study.  About 24:45 Dr. Gold starts talking about the VA study and how it went wrong in the first place by studying people in the late stages of the virus, that HCQ especially with zinc, works best in the vert early stage to prevent the virus from replicating in the cells, but that later there is too much viral load in the body, with a high inflammatory condition and organ failure as the immune system overreacts, and it's too late for the drug to do any good.  So of course people died in that study.

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And here's a segment of a pocast by Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying in which they discuss the Yale study of the drug among other things related to the virus.   They are liberals who definitely dislike Trump, but they are good at exposing the politicization of this pandemic as well as other things going on these days.

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Added 9/4:  DR. HARVEY RISCH, EPIDEMIOLOGIST AT YALE SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH INTERVIEWED BY MARK LEVIN

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6lNoFBTlfI

OCTOBER 19 added:  In the first three minutes Levin covers the basics.  Quoted one virologist  who said there have been 53 studies showing the benefits of HCQ for COVID, which we need to know more about, and only 14 with a negative conclusion, which were badly done as science.

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More news from 9/4          Dr. Simone Gold who was fired from her job after the video I posted above:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oSGIC_irVs

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Another update:   Update from a few weeks ago:  Interview of Twila Blase, RN, who runs the Citizens Council for Health Freedom, on a Christian radio program, Stand In the Gap:  https://standinthegapmedia.org/radio/?sapurl=Lys5MmE0L2xiL21pLytubTk3anBkP2F1dG9wbGF5PXRydWUmYnJhbmRpbmc9dHJ1ZSZlbWJlZD10cnVl

The discussion of HCQ begins about 13:20 and i've put the counter there but don't know if it will hold.  Before that they discussed masks and went on after it to other issues involving COVID- 19.

Seeking Revival

I've given up on revival and come back to it many times over the last few years,  It's easy to think God would not give us revival in our present condition, our many disobedient churches, our personal sins, the sins of the nation and the churches.   And without repentance there is no doubt that is true.  Yet there is no other help for us but God so what else can we do but seek revival? 

tart with personal repentance, ask God to show us our sins and grant us repentance, ask God to purge the churches of sin, of false doctrines, of fear of man, of fearfulness in the face of the growing threat from the world,  that He would give us the love that casts out fear, that we would become characterized by a self-sacrificial spirit, a spirit of dying to self, of becoming nothing that He may increase and guide us. 

False doctrine in so many churches is a barrier, the liberalism that pursues a false love is a barrier, and many other things we need the Lord to show us, which He will if we ask.  I alwaqys think of the abandonment of the head covering for women, which is the subject of one of my blogs, but I also know I have to start with confessing my own mountain of sins to God and seeking repentance.

I found this video about a revival in Scotland back in 1638, when a church was to vote on a National Covenant to embrace the principles of the Protestant Reformation.  The need for repentance and reformation is emphasized if we also want revival:

Is the Communist Revolution underway in America now?

I'm again watching the two films I mentioned earlier, Agenda: Grinding America Down and Agenda 2: Masters of Deceit, put together by Curtis Bowers.  You can rent or buy them at Amazon, or get them on DVD at Jan Markell's "Understqanding the Times" website.  The first one won awards, think the second one did too but not sure.  The first one has a rather antiquated feel because he uses so many clips from earlier decades.  I know liberals would dislike a lot of it because it is overtly Republican and overtly Christian, but I sorely wish liberals would come to see at least how we on the right see these things, with at least a modicum of respect if not belief.  

It isn't about current events because they were made in 2009 I think and 2017, and the current focus of that time was the Obama administration, but the overall content is how the Communist Party and Marxism in its many forms has been working behind the scenes for a hundred years to undermine America.  I' ve been very aware for many yeas of the Sixties contribution to the effort and how successful it has been in that most of our political terminology from the Left is easily traceable to that influence.  Political Correctness was invented by Marxism   and Social Justice was invented by Marxism.   And my impression is that the rioting we are seeing today in major cities has to have been promoted by forces organized by Marxists, which they may very well see as their hoped-for revolution finally getting the kickstart they've been waiting for through the last few  decades.  They've succeeded in getting enough radicals into local office to oppose efforts to quell the rioting, stifling the usual forces of law and order, much of it through their most effective weapon of lying propaganda.  It ls really amazingt to see how well they are pulling off their agenda.  And then it's amazing to see how radical are the platforms of the current Democratic Party, even by the formerly middle of the road Biden.  Stuff that most Democrats wouldn't have supported a decade ago.

Well-meaning liberals don't seem to know that the liberal Demcratic Party they may think they support is no longer that party and that they are actually supporting the Communist overthrow of America.  I fell for it myself for many years.  Most of us never learned enough about the principles that govern America to be able to object to any of it, and in the sixties the Left succeeded in getting the universities to throw out their required courses in American History and Institutions and Western Civilization, and the effort to vilify both has continued relentlessly while revisionist histories are being taught in their place.   Which is why today's generation is so willing to destroy our entire heritage, the good with the bad.

I'm certainly aware of how such an idea is going to be scorned and dismissed by most nice well meaning liberals.  You'll be able to find all kinds of criticism of these films and various of its concepts just about anywhere you look these days, much of it given a respectable academic framework, very persuasive of course.  At the same time the conservative point of view is being suppressed by major sources of news and information, including social media.  Hard to combat such an organized propaganda effort, and the sad truth is that they have become very very organized in recent years.  Yes I know it must be hard to believe. 

In the context of my recent end-times posts I am guessing that all this is setting the stage for the Tribulation period's world government after the Christian Church has left the planet.  

Quick Sketch of What's Going On (Hint: The Marxist Agenda)

A sketchy catch-all post is all I'm up to at the moment but it seems necesary to do that much.  I just got Jan Markell's most recent e-newsletter with her article titled  "Weary Remnant Watch" in which she talks about recent events as biblical signs of the closeness of the Rapture.  I wanted to link it but my bad eyes kept defeating my efforts.  I'm sure it's at her site "Olive Tree Ministries" so it should be easy enough to find with better eyes than mine.    Her theme is her usual of course, emphaasiziong the importance of watching as events unfold in order to be ready for the Rapture, as well as the odd fact that so few Christians and Christian churches are interested in these things these days.  So many of use who take it seriously and try to understand the times do feel like we are all alone in our concern.  I'm happy I have Jan's ministry to read, and John MacArthur's preaching as well, and I do know of Christians and churches that keep up with these things, although there are certainly many others that don't.

Her most recent radio show is also there, at Understqandinbg the Times Radio, which I plan to listen to, about how the current rioting isn't about George Floyd but merely makes an opportuity for the Marxists to tear down the country, which seems pretty clear to be the case to me too.  Here, I found that link:  "The One Hundred Year Agenda (Part1):   https://www.oneplace.com/ministries/understanding-the-times/custom-player/
(NOTE:  This radio broadcast is important.  Curtis Bowers spells out the Marxist agenda to take down America.  His movies on this subject are available on DVDs at Jan Markell's site, and I also found them for sale and for rent to watch online at Amazon.  Titles:  1. Agenda:  Grinding Down America, and 2.  Agenda:  Masters of Deceit.)


Recently I've discovered a group of people who consider themselves to be liberals but who nevertheless see the political situation very much as conservatives do.  They aren't Christians but they are honest thinkers and I enjoy listening to them.  Jordan Peterson is one of them, who has the Bible series I criticize in a recent post, and others more or less in the group or on its fringes are also rather aggressive atheists.  Nevertheless they are able to see the problems in the current uprising.  They don't much like Trump, or most of them don't, but those of us who do support Trump may find ourselves in agreement with many of their current political analyses.

I just watched for instance Coleman Hughes, a very young black man who does a fine job on the racism excuse for burning down the country.  "Is BLM Right" is the title of that video.

Other blacks who are not conservatives but have a similar perspedtive on these things are Glenn Loury, John McWhorter, and at least half a dozen others whose names are escaping me.  And there are also the conservative blacks such as Thomas Sowell, Larry Elder and Candace Owens who need to be mentioned, and i can't even remember more of them at the moment.    Of course they shouldn't have to be black to speck on these things but in the current political climate it may add some credibility that would help.  Maybe not too since the Left very aggressively dismisses anyone who disagrees with them, doesn't matter who they may be. \

Anotner theme I've been following is how the pandemic has been distorted by politics so that finding out what is really going on is difficult to put it mildly.   there is a video about the politicizstion of the drug hydroxychloroquine by a coupld of MDs who say it's completely safe, has been used for decades after all, but wsas badly misused in the  recent studies that found it to be harmful or at least of no benefit.  Dr. Simone Gold is one of them and I can't remember the man, I'll have to come back later to give that reference.   At the moment  I just want at least to point to some resources in case anyone might want to pursue them.  Again, better eyes than mine, or better memory for that matter, should be able to find these things with such scant clues.  I hope so anyway.

Found it (July 30):
Dr. Daniel Wohlgelernter is the other whose name I couldn't remember before:

Answering another religion-debunker

So I answered one unbeliever in a post below and then listened to another:  Sam Harris who is rather famously known for his arguments against "religion."   His main argument is that God isn't loving but unjust and cruel because so many "innocent" people die terrible deaths in this world, including millions of young children.  And for some reason it seems most Christians don't have good answers to this.  Perhaps I don't either and perhaps no answer would suffice for these moralists, but it does seem to me that the usual answers fail to get across the fallenness of this world.  It was the "original" sin of our first parents that brought death and disease and misery into the world in the first place, and it is our ongoing sins that keep producing these sufferings.  What is being blamed on God is in fact our own fault, the fault of the human race as a whole that is since normally we have no way of knowing the particular causal chain that leads to any given suffering or death.   Except sometimes our own suffering if we've been paying attention to events in our lives as we should, especially taking note of our own violations of God's Law. 

In the religions that teach "karma" this is maybe more appreciated than it is in Christianity, but karma always seems to me to be a partial intuition of God's Law as we are taught it in the Bible.  Buddhism teaches refraining from at least four actions that lead to suffering, that are roughly the same as four of the biblical Ten Commandments:  Not stealing, not lying, not committing sexual misbehavior, not committing murder.  Obeying these principles prevents suffering, and the same is true of obedience to the Ten Commandments.  One differences is that according to the Bible we inherit the consequqnces of the sins of our ancestors, as well as the propensity to those same sins, which in, say, Buddhism, seems to be explained in terms of sins committed in the supposed past lives of the individual rather than inherited from ancestors.

Asked about how Buddhism explains something like genocide, one teacher refers to the millions of people on the planet with their millions of past lives to explain how the accumulated earned suffering of them all could come together in such an event.   Biblical thinking would find the explanation in the inherited sins of ancestors.  Nevertheless Jesus taught that we err by imputing causes to such sufferings when we are all sinners who may deserve worse and eventually reap worse.

But the point I want to keep in mind is that it is sin that brings about suffering.  You can speak of God's judgments and mean the same thing but the judgment is calibrated to the sin, it's not some whimsical or inexplicable pain inflicted on innocent people, it is prfect justice.  We can only know this by believing the Bible of course, since the specific causdes are not usually evident to us.  In the case of the "genocides" unbelievers often complain about as described in the Old Testament, all that is said is that the sins have accumulated over time, often centuries, until a tribe has reached the point where this sort of punishment is the inevitable just result.  And it is just, though to an unbeliever like Sam Harris it is unjust and cruel murder of innocent people.   What may be known about a particular people that are subjected to such slaughter is that they practiced idolatry or worship of demons by human sacrifice, even the sacrifice of babies.   If you don't know that about them you may be inclined to think of them as innocent.  And of course if their babies are included in the punitive slaughter anunbeliever is liketly to be outraged that such innocents are punished along with their guilty parents, havintg no knowledge of the slaughtering of their own babies as sacrifice to the demon gods has over time accumulated the sins that deserve this kind of punishment.   You can still object to God's ways according to your own offended human nature, or really your inabiltiy to understand how God's Laws work, but anyone who trusts the Bible as revelation of how God's Law works, horrified though we may be because of our frail flesh, has to take it as something we need to learn about how sin and justice work in this world.

That's one kind of objection someone like Sam Harris has to "religion."  Another he rought up in the video I listened to was that believers are lying when we say that there is no contradiction between our supernatural beliefs and science.   The virgin birth of Jesus supposedly proves we are lying, as does His resurrection from the dead, and the miracles Jesus and others did.   You'd think he could ansswer this himself, it's not all that ifficult to understand.  The whole point is that these events are exceptions to the scientific rules.  Those rules hold up for all physical events in the universe, which is why science is possible at all (and in fact it really took the Bible's law-giving God to teach people that science was possible in the first place.  If we didn't know the physical universe operated by law and order we'd never have attempted to discover the laws that have led to the enormous knowledge we've accumulated about how things work.)  The point is that the supernatural events that are reported are one-time exceptions to the normal rules.  There was only one virgin birth, of God Himself taking on human flesh.  Everybody else is born according to the scientific rules.  So far only Jesus Himself has come back permanently from the dead.  Others were brought back to life in the Bible, but only to live out the rest of their lives until they die again.  None of this violates the rule that sinners die, that "the wages of sin is death."  (And by the way, Hell is the NORMAL end of the entire human race because we are ALL sinners. ) But Jesus does offer us eternal life through His own resurrection after paying the price for our sins, the price exacted by God's Law.  The physical laws reliably persist through all these supernatural exceptions.

Or another wqay to think of it is that they are two different realms, the physical and the spiritual and they both operate by laws.  The spiritual realm is superior to the physical and can set it aside or overcome it, could even presumably completely overcome it and replace it.  But God has no reason to do that though He has had reason to override it in order to teach us about Himself and His plan of redemption.  Jesus'
 miracles were all for the purpose of showing that He is in fact God.  Throughout the Old Testament miracles also validated the God-sent identity of God's prophets and servants.  None of which interfered with the reliable operations of the physical laws.



So there are a couple of explanations for the debunkers.  Sam Harris probably wouldn't be impressed.

So is the Left going to destroy America or will we squeak by for another few years or what?

Watched the Netflix movie "Trumbo," which is about the McCarthy era when Communists in Hollywood were blacklisted for it through Senator McCathy's House Committee on Unamerican Activities hearings. 

The movie is of course sympthetic to Trumbo and all those who were blacklisted and I don't want to suggest that there was anything good about that blacklisting.  But at the same time we now have a nation that is on the verge of being destroyed by the Left, by Marxism, by Communism, and the way the McCarthy era played out no doubt has a lot to do with that.   McCarthy was right about Communists in Hollywood and it is certainly true that Communism is unAmerican, actually AntiAmerican but the problem is that so many of us don't know what's wrong with Communism and how it is such a danger to the nation.

The movie presented the Communists as idealists full of compassion for the downtrodden implying that there is something heartless about the American system that needs to be rectified by Commyunism.  Nowhere in the film was the difference between Communism and the American system even mentioned, let alone discussed.  The character Trumbo seems to consider his Communist belief to be completely American, and his opponents, such as Hedda Hopper, are of course depicted as unlikable people, and none of them ever has anything substantive to say about why they are so adamantly opposed to the Communists.  Just a lot of pattriotic-sounding hot air.   All you'll get from this movie is leftist propaganda you'll learn nothng about the reality of the conflict it's about./

We go on in that same ignorance even today as we are now faced with an election that pits the American system against Communism in such a direct way the contrast is inescapable.  It's never been spelled out so clearly before.  Would the American voters actually choose Communism given such a stark contrast?  I don't know.  It'[s sad to think that many might reject Trump based only on disliking his personality, with no idea that they would be choosing the demise of the country itself.

The problem in the era of McCarthy was that there was no real discussion of why Communism is such a danger, at least that I recall, and I don't think many understand it today either.   The blacklisting in Hollywood didn't make the issues clear to anyone, it caused severe suffering for many people who felt it was completely undeserved.  Those who considered their Communist affiliation to be an expresion of compassion never got challenged about it, and blacklisting only made them bitter.

So th4e blacklisting was finallyl condemned and we never did get the education we needed on these things.  McCarthyism is now a dirty word and.  We aren't getting any better understaing now either.   I hear some good discussions of it on conservative talk radio but those discussions never get a public airing.  Sean Hannity just wrote a book that may address the issues to some extent, and Mark Levin has written many such books and talks about it a great deqal on his talk show, but the people who need to hear it aren't listening.

If the Left wins it will be because of this ignorqance, but if it wins there will be no way ever to return to the real America.

Reducing God to the latest psychological or philosophical theory

Before I became a believer I sometimes encountered writings that purported to explain religious belief, of course mostly Christian belief, in terms of the prevailing theories of philosophy or psychology or whatnot.  It was frustrating and boring though I'm not sure I could have said why, since for all I knew that way of dealing with religion was all that was possible to us. 

But of course such thinking is merely human beings applying their imagination to systems that long preceded our time, as if there's anything persuasive about our mere cogitations.  We want truth, don't we?  But how on earth are we going to find truth by such means? 

Science is something else of coruse, the "hard" sciences that is, the phenomena that can be tested empirically by separate individuals arriving at the same results.  That method can't be applied to questions of the meaning of life, whre we are left with speculatons based on interpretations of history and the minds of other thinkers rather than any kind of objective knowledge.

The same is true of the theory of evolution, which is often defended as a science but really isn't, at least not in the same way the hard sciences are, since you can't replicate any of it or test any of it, and as in the case of religious or philosophical meaning all you can do is make intepretations based on some principles that were never empirically demonstrated though they are taken for fact. because some thinker in the past argued them persuasively.   Even if boring and frustrating this method is at least justifiable for philosophical questions, but when it is applied to an area of physical reality, i.e. biology, it becomes, in my opinion, pernicious and misleading, a body of pseudo-knowledge that erects a fake reality in the hapless minds of humanity.   It just sounds silly, sophomoridc, fatuous, the way evolutionist thinkers will talk about how the human race acquired this or that attitude or behavior at such and such a time in our history, as if they could possibly know such things.   Sociobiology's "altruism" of decades ago is the sort of thing I'm thinking of.  They don't seem to mind that they can't know such things, they can only speculate, or that it's mindnumbingly simplistic. Evolution is also applied to the attempts to figure out religion of course.

What got me into all this is that I listened to part of a couple of lectures on religion by the psychologist Jordan Peterson, who became known a few years ago for his very trenchant answers to some popular leftist political correctness.  He doesn't consider himself to be a conservative although many of his views are congenial to the conservative positions.  It's interesting that he also has a strong attraction to biblical Christianity, having given many lectures on the Bible, but it's all from the psychological/philosophical perspective.

In a nutshell this could be said to boil it all down to a very complex way human beings learn to aspire to high wisdom in conducting our lives.    That is, he reduces God to such higher wisdom, that some special human beings learned how to access, or something like that.  Which I gu3ess explains why it got written down and preserved for future generations.

Although he considers this to be a noble thing, to my mind it is the same kind of thinking I called silly and fatuous above in relation to evolutionist explanations for human behavior.  And  evolution is certainly part of his framework too, of course, as it's all about how humanity learned this or that, grew over time to develop, say, greater wisdom about life or whatever.

So the story of Abraham is all about how he learned life's lessons, it's got nothing to do with what the Bible actually says, that believers understand it to mean, that there really is an objective God Who really did call the man Abraham for purposes of God's own that have nothing to do with ordinary human life.  Peterson's view would imply that all humanity could learn from this God that is really a reservoir of higher wisdom about life, or perhaps some special people could, but we understand the Bible to be telling us something absolutely unique that God chose to convey through Abraham, for the salvation of fallen humanity.   God chose Abraham for this unique purpose, as He chooses all thos4e through whom He speaks to us in scripture.   God is not just a wisdom by which Abraham can learn to conduct his life, God is teaching Abraham about Himself and His plan of redemption.  He is not teaching Abraham some abstract wisom about, say, sacrificing to gain higher knowledge, He is teaching us through Abrqaham's willingness to sacrifice his son Isaac, about the necessity of trusting God that some day a great sacrifice of His own Son will bring salvation to eternal life for all who believe.

How is it that unbelievers can permit themselves to impose such an alien philosophical system on the Bible?  In one of his lectures Peterson kept referring to what "we" think about the Bible, how "we" used to believe it but no longer do, which of course ignores the millions of us who do believe it even today.  How does he justify reducing God to a sort of faculty of our own minds?  How does he justify gnoring what the Bible actually says about the transcendent objective reality of God?  I wonder if he can answer that question.  It can only come down to the subjective statement, Well I just can't believe what it actually says.    And somehow that is enough for him?  No matter what millions have understood it to mean for thousands of years, his own psychological cogitations are sufficient against all that. 

Much the same thing as the "contemporary biblical scholars" who don't believe in the supernatural so they arbitrarily date the most prophetic books after the prophecies they so clearly state, with no regard for whatever how they destroy the whole fabric of the writing.

Oh well.  Nothing new under the sun there I guess.

It's so simple really.  Just believe it.  That's what it says, just believe it.  It's a simple honest account of things that actually happened, and it's only a deep prejudice embedded in your own mind that gives you the arrogance to think you can make it into something else.  Of course if someone did that to an honest accounting of your own about your own experiences you would be very unhappy, but no matter, you can do it to God's revelation that has taught millions over millennia.   Jung?  Nietsche?  Ugh.

It's all in place for the curtain to rise on the Last Act of Planet Earth -- Revived Roman Empire

The prophetic frame of reference surrounding the idea of the Pre-tribultionat Rapture requiresz a "revived Roman Empire" as having to be in place for the final events of the tribulation to unfold.   This is  because the prophecies place these events in the Roman Empire,  which we g4enerally think of as long dead in the distant past.   It all has to occur in the Roman Empire because that's what the prophecies show, at least the prophecies in the book of Daniel.  The succession of great empires is prophesied from Bablyon through Medo-Perisia through Alexander's Greece to a fourth empire unknown at the time which is to be the last, after which God himself will reign on the Earth.   All these prophecies came true in their time and the fourth empire was reigning in the time of the Messiah, which makes it the Roman Empire.

According to the current prophecy about the timing of the Rapture of the Church and the following Tribulation, this final empire is no longer n existence and therefore must be revived in order to be the setting for the final events.    The formation of the EU in recent years is regarded by many as the needed revival.  There are various elements associated with this formation that are taken to be signs of its role as this revived empire, including an empty seat in the Parliament with the number 666 and the statue of Europa that seems reminiscent of the woman riding the beast in the book of Revelation.

All this accompanies the idea that the Antichrist is an unknown figure to be revealed during the Tribulation period, an evil political leader who has inspired many creatire interpretations.   Well, Hitler was an Antichrist figure so the idea isn't far-fetched.  There were elements of his reign that were very religous in tone, and the Third Reich over which he presided was consciously modeled on the Roman Empire.  Also to be noted is that the title "Kaiser" in German and "Czar" in Russian are translations of "Caesar" which add to the general European identification with the Roman Empire.

The Holy Roman Empire in this case, the Second Reich.  The thing is, in a real sense the Roman Empire never died, it was carried on by the Roman Catholic Church headed by the papacy, for about a thousand years, during which it put to death every kind of dissident against its rule and its doctrines.   The prophesied fourth empire is said to be "different" than all the others, which would certainly describe the Roman Church.  Not your typical political entity, although the Vatican IS in fact a political state.

Although the Holy Roman Empire no longer exists the Roman Church does exist and boasts a membershup of a billion people all over the world.  It lost its political clout at the Protestant  Reformation but its essential structures are still in place and could easily be revived under the right circumstances, such as the disappearance of the true Church.   Since the Roman Church and the papacy have continued  despite the loss of its former political power, it doesn't seem unreasonable to think of it as the continuing existence of  the Roman Empire itself.   Besides being described as different from the other empires in the prophecy, the fourth empire in Nebuchadnezzar's dream of the statue, has legs of iron but feet and toes of iron mixed with clay.   Although some  divide this into a fourth and fifth empire, the vision Daniel had in Chapter 7 describes only one fourth kingdom, not a fourth and fifth, and since his vision parallels Nebuhadnezzar's dream it seems right to think of it as one kingdom or empire that has two phases, the solid iron of the original Roman Empire, followed by the iron plus clay of the empire ruled by the papacy, the Roman Church.  It is not like the other kingdoms or empires, it has weak "clay" or human beings mixed in with the institutions of its power, which probably indicates its its vast human memership, many of whom will defect and be saved during its reign under Antichrist.

The Reformation exposed the essentially Roman pagan nature of most of the pracdtices of the Roman Church.  The priests wear the garb of the priests of the old Roman pagan religions, the rosary is a pagan practice, as are candle lighting and many other superstitions.   The papacy, which was identified as the Antichrist by the  Reformers, had also taken on the Roman pagan title "Pontifex Maximus."  All of its outward forms and rituals are pagan and Roman, none of them are Christian although Christian symbols and doctrines are absorbed into them.    Although the Bible is quoted in many of its ceremonies, they deny the biblical teaching on salvation by faith in Christ alone without workd.   In fact in their Council of Trent they lay all the biblical teachings of the Reformation under anathema, or curse, favoring the specifically nonChristian faith-plus-works formula for salvation.

So in a sense the Roman Empire is right here in our midst, hiding in plain sight, and has never gone away.  Reinstatement of its world political dominion to become the ferocious final power of the book of Revelation would seem to be merely a matter of an opportune change inb the political climate, which isn't too hard to imagine occurring soon considering our current global distresses.  Exit the true Church then, leaving it for the RCC to define Christianity and put its Pope in the place of the Savior.

There is some idea we won't know who the Antichrist is until after the Rapture, but the Reformers considered him to have been revealed in 606 AD when the Bishop of Rome was declared Universal Bishop, after which the Roman Church grew to be the religio-poltical power over the Holy Roman Empire.  There could of course also be a revelation of THE particular Antichrist-Pope still to come, after the Church is Raptured.   It's also true that the Pope himelf might not play that ultimate role, but one of the kings over which the RCC once reigned, meaning a political leader from today's kingdoms under the papacy, the way Hitler was the Antichrist figure supported by the Pope of his day.  In the Holy Roman Empire the Popes had power over the kings and something like that could characterize this final global empire. 

People ask where the United States is in Biblical prophecy.  Well, I have no trouble seeing it as one part of this continuing Roman Empire resuscitated to its former power.   We already have the abominations of a bulding that looks like St. Peter's basilica in Rome even down to the obelisk that fronts it, in our case the Washington monument.  And then there is that very romanesque painting in the ceiling lof the rotunda of the "Apotheosis of Washington" presented as a god, a very Roman pagan idea and certainly not Christian or in any way consistent with the principles of the fonding of America.  Or Washington's character for that matter since he could have been king but refused the honor.  However there is a very persistent rumor that he became a Catholic on his death bed.

Despite our completely incompatible political and originally Protestant religious character, given how we've deteriorated over the last half century or so I have no problem including the USA with the EU as one of the nations within the final Roman Empire/Church.  I have my guess as to who might be our king at that time too...

Closer and Closer Come the New World Order of the Last Days and Its Antichrist Leader

(Need to inform you that I've had to go through this a few times and edit for typos and clarity.  Sorry I'm so disorganized but I think it's easier to understand now.)

One of the signs, among many underway these days, that we are speeding toward the very last days of planet Earth, is plans in the works to set up a world government.  According to the Book of Revelation such a global government, headed by a man known as the Antichrist, will be in place at least by the midpoint of the seven-year Tribulation period.  There seem to be many events spelled out in Revelation for the Tribulation period already underway these days, as if to give us a heads-up that it is definitely very close.  Although the signs of the last days given by Jesus Christ in His Olivet discourse of Matthew 24 and parallel passages in Mark and Luke, are fulfilled at the beginning of the Tribulation, since it's all about when we are to expect the return of Christ and the first phase of His return is the Rapture of the Church, it makes sense that the signs would be operating before the Rapture as well.  Then in Revelation 6 the same signs become the judgments of God as the first of the seven seals are opened and we see "the four horsemen of the Apocalypse" being sent into the world, bringing  first spiritual deception in the form of a false Christ or antiChrist, ushering in a false peace, then war and famine and death by pestilence among other things.  So begins the outpouring of the wrath of God known as the Day of the Lord in various parts of the Old Testament.  All these things can be seen somewhere or other in the world right now, and a sense of global catastrophe is already brewing.  The formation of a global government has been in the works for decades and now seems to be gaining strength from the global pandemic.

Guess I was preoccupied with unimportant things and missed it, this radio broadcast from Jan Markell's "Understanding the Times" series done at the beginning of May, but God in His mercy didn't let me miss it altogether.    Here she is interviewing Gary Kah who has been following the developments toward The New World Order for decades and sees it shaping up now through the work of Pope Francis.   This of course buttresses my own view of this Pope as at least a major player in the end times, but specifically as a likely candidate for the Antichrist of the Great Tribulation period.  Antichrist would have to be both substitute for Christ and a political leader, which historically happens to describe the papacy already, so the idea isn't at all far-fetched.  The papacy as both religious and political power was once the leader of the western world at least, through the centuries of the "Holy Roman Empire," until Luther and the Protestant Reformation gave it what could have been thought of as a mortal blow.   But the RCC didn't completely die though its power was severely curtailed.  Various Popes since then have presented themselves as some kind of world leader, and Pope Francis is one of the most aggressive about it, as Gary Kah describes him in this radio show.

The papacy itself has a Latin title (VICARIVS FILII DEI) which in itself is a definition of Antichrist ("In the Place of the Son of God,") whose Roman numerals add up  to the infamous number "666," and this particular Pope was elected under odd signs that include a flurry of thirteens and even a 666.   I'll try to remember to find the posts where I lay out these things.  I suppose even such auspicious signs may not identify him as the final Antichrist, though it is hard for me to see how anyone else could come with better qualifications.  Note that IF he should be slated for that role, since he is in his eighties all these events must be very very close.

After Gary Kah the radio program turns to Pastor J.D. Farag who discusses his sense of urgency about these being the very last days before the Rapture, because of the COVID-19 pandemic and its likely impetus to the formation of the World Order.

Surely it is at the very door.  The Rapture must be right around the corner, the event that will restart the clock ticking where the prophecy of the Seventy Weeks of Daniel left off-- that was at the end of 69 of those weeks, at the announcement of Jesus the Messiah in Jerusalem on the day we still commemorate as Palm Sunday.   We couold say that Old Testament time came to an end on that day and God's dealings with Israel will then resume to fulfill the last week of Daniel's prophecy, or the seven years of the Tribulation or Day of the Lord, as the Church age comes to an end with the Rapture.    Those who are to go through the following seven-year period have a lot of catching up on biblical prophecy to do.  I pray for faith and courage for all those the Lord will save during that time. . .





Part 1 of the interview of Gary Kah is on this page:   https://www.oneplace.com/ministries/understanding-the-times/listen/the-new-world-order-cries-for-a-savior-816174.html
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Later:
A Sketch of  Biblical History and the Meaning of Salvation

I suppose I really need to say more in order for people who are not familiar with these things to understand what I'm talking about, I do tend to shoot off a post or an email on impulse that hasn't necessarily been written with unbelievers in mind.    And I'm not particularly good at knowing what an unbeliever needs to know either.

All this is based on prophecies in the Bible, particularly the Book of Revelation which is the last book of the Bible, which describes the very last period of time on Earth.   Overall the Bible is a history of God's doings on Earth starting with His creation of it all.  It chronicles the history of the people of Israel, now the state of Israel, from God's calling of its founder Abraham to be the father of a great people.  It follows the lives of his son Isaac and Isaac's sons Jacob and Esau and Jacob's twelve sons who become the patriarchs of the Twelve Tribes of Israel.

The story of Adam and Eve precedes all this, their disobedience of God which brought a curse on the human race under which we all are born.  Their disobedience brought the whole Creation under this curse.  They were made to live forever in a paradise of happiness but their disobedience brought evil and death into the originally happy world, which we call the Fall.  We are all born "fallen," inheritors of the original sin of our first parents and all subject to death as a result.

But from the very beginning God promised to send us a Savior from this curse, from this fallen nature or sin nature, and early humanity looked forward to this Savior, who is known as the Messiah.  From time to time the Old Testament reiterates the promise of the Messiah and builds up a view of His character over the centuries of Jewish history.   From these prophecies we know that He will be God Himself and that He will live and suffer as a man.  The book of the prophet Daniel includes a timeline that very precisely points to the time of the Messiah's coming which is quite accurate, counting from a particular decree of a heathen king to the day Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey which was the announcement of His being the prophesied Messiah.  The following Firday He was crucified and on Sunday, which we know as Easter Sunday,  He rose from the dead.

"Gospel" means "good news" and the good news is that Jesus died on the cross to save us from our sins, the sin nature we inherit from our ancestors, and all the sins we commit on top of it,  that brings death and ultimately eternity in Hell.  Jesus took our sins on Himself and bore our punishment for them so that we can be spared that punishement.   This is what salvation is,  it is being saved from eternal punishment,  and to have that salvation all you have to do is believe it (though believing it entails a bigger commitment than the word itself conveys, a giving of yourself to Christ)..

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The Rapture is the removal from Earth of those who are saved, to be transported into heaven, an event that is prophesied in the New Testament by the spostle Paul.  It is the event that triggers the Grand Finale of the outpouring of God's wrath in the Day of the LORD/ Great Tribulation followed by Jesus' return to Earth to rule for a thousand years.

From the Rapture on the Church is no longer on the Earth and the following seven years are when God deals with the nation of Israel and the unbelievers who are left on the earth.  Many will become believers during this time, receiving the gospel of salvation.

Is there any refuge from the coming storm?

Surely the Lord's return is close.  How much worse can it get on this miserable planet before God gives the signal and the final countdown begins?  I hate to think it but unfortunately I suppose it could get much worse.  On the other hand we know the Tribulation period which is soon to follow His coming to get His Church is to be the worst possible time on Earth and it won't reach that level until then.  And at that point the Church is not to be present.  Whatever happens now we are all going through it, and it does look like a sort of foreshadowing of the events of the Tribulation as spelled out in Revelation, particularly Revelation 6.

Although in a sense all this is God's judgment on human sinfulness, it is not God's pure outpouring of wrath which defines the Great Tribulation just before the Lord's return to reign on the Earth.   I confess to having some confusion about how to think of the difference.   That is, all disasters are from God in judgment, yet the Day of the Lord or the Great Tribulation is to be the fullest form of it.  Maybe that's the best I can do with it.

Because I have unsaved family and friends I want something to intervene to change the tide of this current wave of evil to give them time to change their minds and come to Christ before the Rapture.  The thought of the misery that awaits them if they are not part of the Rapture is immensely sad.  I pray nevertheless that they will be saved during that time.  Many will die saved at least, and some others will live through the whole catastrophe after becoming believers.

I think it must be close but what if it isn't?   Barring a miracle through God's mercy I don't see how we can prevent what looks like the inevitable train wreck of civilization that has been picking up steam for decades.  The fallenness of this world is racing wildly to its own perfection of evil if it makes sense to put it that way.  I pray and search my imagination for any way to build at least some kind of refuge from it and keep coming up against a dead end.   I guess there's the off-the-grid retreat into wild country for some people, but a refuge for many is what seems unlikely.  Maybe someone with more imagination than I have will come up with a way.

If we are right at the door of the Rapture which itself is the door to the Great Tribulation perhaps such a refuge is also needed, a global refuge in that case but my imagination can't reach beyond the US at the moment.  States opening themselves to refugees, first from the political mess in this nation but then from the events of the last days as spelled out in Revelation.  Some will live through it, which is hard to imagine as you read through the horrors described in that book of the Bible, and God can certainly preserve whomever He chooses to preserve, but perhaps such a refuge would be part of that preservation strategy.

Saving the whole country seems impossible now, meaning a return to anything like what we thought of as normal life seems impossible.  The forces of evil are entrenched and large enough to have their way.    John MacArthur's sermons on the current situation have focused on the breakdown of the usual means of restraining evil in this fallen world, which he sees as four:  conscience, the family, the police and the Church.  Conscience has been undermined by decades of teaching in the universities that justifies the kind of violence we are seeing now;  the family has been directly attacked by the policies of the Left, from abortion to feminism and the undermining of authority;  the police are now directly under attack as the insanity of actually removing them is promoted as a solution to inequities.   And the Church has been so compromised by false doctrines and capitulation to worldliness there is too little of it left to exert itself as salt and light to the culture.  God COULD give us a great revival even now, but would He?