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.
=====================================
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.
Overall I'm very happy about Trump's win and now about his first week issuing executive orders that make good on his campaign promises. I hope God continues to bless us with sane political policies, and continues to hear our prayers for Trump's protection and success.
Nevertheless my happiness is rather heavily dampened by the persistence of the Liberal Leftist Globalists and the biased media that seek to bring down this sane development in our political life. Trump may be able to do good things in spite of it, but it makes for a heavy weight on his efforts.
There is still the overarching dangerous fact that idolatrous religion characterizes the uppermost levels of the nation, as the dollop of poison in the otherwise health-giving potion. The prayer meetings that always attend an inauguration event were as usual "interfaith" and ecumenical, meaning they include false religions that offend God. A couple of evangelical leaders prayed for the President at the inauguration itself, but sad to say they were accompanied by a rabbi, whose prayer was quite nice and pro-America, but can't help but be negated by his Christ-rejecting religion. Islam, Judaism, Roman Catholicism and other false religions are welcomed into the National Cathedral and allowed to represent the nation on an equal footing with Christianity. This is blasphemy and can only work to undermine any good any governmental administration can do.
Chris Pinto reports that the Imam prayed from a portion of the Koran that advocates the doing away with Christians and Jews.
How long will God bless a nation that rejects Him in these ways? Can the Christians involved really think their presence in such a context should suffice to please God? The God who punished ancient Israel for their observances of the heathen religions along with their own? No, the Christians who participated should instead have protested. Franklin Graham should not lend his presence to such a God-dishonoring menage.
How long can the current blessings last under such circumstances?
Could this rotten platform under the nation be fixed? We've been laboring under false religion for decades, does anyone dare touch it? Do we have to stand back and watch the nation go under even while we have the most hopeful political agenda we've had in all those same decades? Go under to Sharia Law perhaps? The mere presence of an Imam in an American religious service brings us under God's judgment and gives Islam a foot in the door, or a whole leg by now. Quite similar really to how Satan won the right to rule humanity back in Eden. What could be done? Christians need the courage to boycott ecumenical prayer for the nation for starters. Organize Christian prayer meetings.
I know I write hard stuff. I don't always write it in the right spirit either, but even when I do it's hard stuff. Even when I produce evidence I find that I'm accused of just personally feeling a certain way. That is, I can give evidence that the Roman Church is totalitarian, wants to rule the world, engineers the bringing in of illegal aliens, and even with the best evidence, people, yes usually on the left, insist that I just hate Catholics. It doesn't matter how often or clearly I say it's not about Catholics, it's about the institution, there's a mental set out there that's so fixed the information can't get through.
The same of course with Islam. Just as totalitarian, converted people by violence and murder, rules tyrannically. You can quote from histories of Islam and still it's just you being somehow irrationally personally biased against Islam.
I just encountered an enraged reaction to my complaints about illegal immigration, comparing the law that makes it illegal to Jim Crow. It takes the breath away that an intelligent person can't tell the difference between a law for citizens and a law to keep out illegal noncitizens, an unfair law on the one hand and a necessary law on the other. However, the same person then launched into an amazing litany of all the Marxist accusations made up against America since the sixties, so it's more of a case of the usual educational brainwashing than naivete.
I've been thinking it's the concerted pursuit of evil for good and vice versa that is the worst thing about the time we live in; but this is sort of a naïve version of that, and it's just as irrational and just as destructive and dangerous. Because of such false sympathy, which I suppose is how they see it, we may soon have jihadist attacks as a regular thing in this country. The illegal immigration problem will at least bring us down by crashing the economic system, but also by cultural incompatibility. Another example of the naïve type is the people who are against the death penalty, somehow having no sense of the difference between innocence and criminality. Staggering really.
I sometimes wish I didn't think the thoughts I think, write the posts I write, because I don't see any good coming from it. Those who already think the same way can share it but it's the people who don't who need to be reached. I can tell myself it's the truth against the propaganda and deceitfulness of the Left, but if all it does is get them angrier and more irrational what good does it do?
There is this idea people have that Jesus wouldn't be for keeping people out of the country, that's not "love." Same reasoning about the death penalty, it supposedly isn't showing Jesus' love to execute murderers. I've said a lot about this recently, how it's really hate if it puts other people in danger. There is a general concept involved though that should be spelled out: Watchman Nee said it in answer to the people who call those who defend the head covering for women "legalistic" -- He said we mustn't confuse God's grace with God's government. It's a necessary and important distinction between different categories of God's working in the world, and people do confuse them all the time. We are to cover our heads because of God's creation ordinance about the different roles of the sexes.
Jesus' love never violates God's government. Jesus love' did not rescind God's instruction to Noah that whoever sheds man's blood, by man must his blood be shed. Of course the most venomous hatred is expressed against anyone who argues for God's government, while they are wrongly contending that you should be applying God's grace and love in those cases. Another way to make the distinction is between grace and justice. Justice doesn't become irrelevant because of God's offer of grace to sinners. It is love to honor God's government and respect God's justice; it is hate to dishonor them.
Some of the reversal of morality and values in this country was intentionally produced to destroy the country. Yes, a real conspiracy. I've posted some on the big foundations that rewrote textbooks to favor Communism and denigrate American history, which was investigated by a Congressional committee in the 50s, and is reported by Senator Dodd in an interview you can find at You Tube. I'll have to collect all that information in another post when I can.
ot of us have known for a long time that the mainstream media are politically biased, that they whitewash their guys and their favorite political positions, and find all kinds of things wrong with their opponents. They do it as if it's just factual news, including the occasional fact contrary to their opinion for effect. This has been true for years and years and years. The idea of neutral objective journalism that we used to take pride in has been gone a long long time. And the bias is to the Left, in case anyone has any doubts. But you'll even see misinformation claiming the press is biased to the Right. It seems they will say anything. And we've known it, most of us on the Right have known it. It's depressing and demoralizing. Where has America gone?
In this election season they pulled out all the stops to vilify Trump and give Clinton the whitewash treatment. They put out fake polls and fake prognostics saying Trump had no chance to win. I guess there are uncritical people who unfortunately believe such stuff. Then what happens when they turn out to be wrong? They double down on their attempts to deceive the public. They accuse their opponents of putting out "fake news" when it's been their doing all along.
The alternative or independent media, such as Infowars, Drudge Report and Breitbart, were calling it like it is all along, so now the MSM has launched this attack on THEM, calling THEM "fake news." What a scurrilous bunch. Here's a page on the subject that Infowars just put out.
And on the excuse of "fake news" there are also rumblings about how those sites they've falsely called fake news should be shut down. No shame about calling for outright censorship of other points of view. Where has America gone?
It's gone to the Left, it's gone to lies and disinformation, it's gone to revisionist American history designed to discredit the nation in as many ways as possible, much of it aimed against the "evil" white man, and "Christians," making use of the weapons of Political Correctness, by calling us racists and so on; it's gone to manufactured destructive philosophies that are pushed on generations of university students, and for that matter on students at every level of American education. Postmodernism is essentially an attack on basic morality. The Jesuits couldn't have done a better job .... or perhaps this IS their doing.
Talk shows like Rush Limbaugh's and some on Fox News try to keep the truth on the table, and of course they are ridiculed by the Leftists. I'm afraid that some of us have seen it all happening but done nothing. We haven't really known what to do. Cry a lot I guess. Hide from it, hope we'll wake up and find out it isn't really going on? Some of us anyway no doubt. One reason I make so much of the need to pray is that I don't pray enough myself.
In my previous post I was hoping to find a way to help the Muslim refugees that wouldn't put the nation in danger. You can't love one neighbor while putting another in danger by that love, that would in fact be hating your neighbor. This is of course what all the "sanctuary" churches are doing, hating Americans while "loving" illegal aliens.
That's the Catholic churches. Now I'm hearing that Methodist churches in Texas are turning themselves into sanctuary churches to accommodate the Muslim refugees, adding some teachings from Islamic sources to their sermons, turning their buildings over to the refugees, taking down crosses and other Christian symbols and effectively making them into mosques. The scripture comes to mind that describes the "abomination of desolation standing in the holy place." That was first of all shown by the Protestant Reformers to refer to the Pope, who is the Antichrist who sits in the temple of the living God, the people themselves who identify as Christians. But Islam in a Christian church fits only too well.
I suppose the Methodists think they are showing Christian love to the Muslims. In fact this is the opposite of loving your neighbor. It's not loving the Muslims because it keeps them in bondage to their false ideology, when they desperately need to hear the gospel of salvation by Christ. And it is not loving your American neighbors because the ultimate aim of Islam is to convert or subjugate all nonMuslims and bring the entire world under "Allah."
But we're seeing the reversal of Christian values all over the place these days, love for hate and hate for love, good for evil and evil for good. Islam is an ideology that hates "infidels" even if many Muslims are peaceable at any given time. I've read enough about Islam to know that it is a totalitarian ideology whose agenda is to rule the world. That doesn't mean individual Muslims are pursuing that agenda, but they can become tools of their ideology in spite of themselves, by being indoctrinated in their mosques and in exclusively Muslim communities.
So it is to me a really difficult task to figure out how to live out Christ's love to them. I've often thought that missionaries to Muslim countries must start out with a mindset to possible martyrdom -- in fact the certainty of martyrdom -- certainly a well-developed dependence on Providence and a massive support group of prayer warriors, but first and foremost a willingness to die to get the gospel to the Muslims. You would think that the refugee situation would make missionary work a lot easier, and I suppose it does in many ways, but not if we are obligated to bring great numbers of them into our country.
If they are already in the country then it seemed to me that churches and Christians should be sure they are not isolated in Muslim communities, have a chance to hear the gospel and receive genuine Christian love. The idea would be to live out our Christian calling toward both Muslim and American neighbors, by reducing the threat of Islam if possible. Christians have been responding to the refugee problem in many ways already. Perhaps the most effective is the ministries that take Bibles to them in their refugee camps, to those who are hungry to hear it and there are many.
Turning Christian churches into mosques, or Muslim-friendly deChristianized sanctuaries, is in fact hatred: hatred of God, hatred of Christians, hatred of Americans, and hatred of Muslims.
Perhaps there are some Christians out there who are willing to do the self-sacrificial service I was contemplating in the previous post. THAT would be loving Muslims. But being a friendly resource is also a service, and a lot more feasible, as the email I received suggested.
