Come soonb, Lord jesus

God said Jerusalem would become the center of world agitation at the very end and here we are, all of a sudden, seeing Israel surrounded by the most vicious hate from all directions of the blobe.  All of a sudden, completely unexpected.  Yes we've seen a rise in anti semitism over the last decade or so but nothing like this, a sudden gigantic emergence of virulent hatred directed qat Jews.  The source is no surprise, Islam is dedicated to eradicating Israel and the jews, it's on their books and taught to all tgheir children, but for the world to chime in as it has, including crowds in the US, THAT is shocking.

But God said Jerusalem would become a cup of trembling for the world at the lastand, here we are.  A stumbling stone for the nations.  All nations.  Led by Satan of course, who is the ruler of this fallen world and always busy stirring people up against God and whatever god is doing, and Israel is a major representative of God on this earth.  Christians should be as well, but we have no specific geography.  Israel is a piece of real estate, a place, a location, and the Jews are known as the people of the Old testament, chosen by God, so getting rid of them is a prime objective of God's arch enemy.  

Jan Markell has et another program on this theme this week.  Whatever questions I still have about the specifics of the Pre Trib Rapture scenario don't keep me from seeing the role of Israel in this end times countdown.  And it does make sense that Israel would be the focus of the Antichrist just waiting to be catapulted to center stage.  Yes I am sure of his identity but that isn't terribly important except that it changes the timing of things somewhat from the usual pre trib schedule.  A covenant with Israel is to launch the Seventieth Week of Daniel as prophesied inj Daniel ...9 I think, but I'm often getting the chapter wrong.This coventnat is n't mentioned in the Book of Revelation, only in Daneil, but the Antichrist is represented in revelation in Chapter Thirteen by the beast from the sea and it has emblems that identity it with the fourth besast of Daneil's vision so we know it's the same person.  

Jan's guests talk about how some churches avoid mentioning these things and suggest that it's just cowardice, fear of losing church members.  I hope not but it could be.  This is no time for Christians to be owards, if there eever could be such a time.  Aren't we told we are to lose our lives for His sake?  Clinging to any kind of worldly securty is disoedience.  The greats of the faith listen in Hebrews Eleven even lived in caves in order to protect their faith.  this is no time to be depending on worldlyh comforts.  Hey, I'm no paragon of courage, believe me, but I recognize my fear and am trying to pray against it and beg God to give me the strengrth to risk everythinjg.

I'm worn out.  I wish it were over.  The good for evil and evil for good fallen world is exhausting.  And it's all finally comning to the point of disintegration with no going back and a lot of us are falling apart.  A lot of unbelievers for sure.  

Should add to this a strong recommendation to listen to this week's Understanding the times radio show from Jan Markell's Olive Tree Views webside.  It's also at You tube at least for now.  It covers the history of the situation pretty well for those who know little about it.  There is a short section between the first and second parts of the show where the history of the idea of a Palestinian people is tra ced whowing that such a people never existed but was invented as a weapon against Israel inj the sixties.    Israel's existence on that land is legtimate from every possible point fo ivew from the biblical foundation going all the way back to Abraham to the fact that the land was not occupied by any people of any identity whatever and in fact was a wasteland according to mark twain who vicited the area in the late ninettenth century, and the fact that they purchased land where necessary as well.  That loand belongs to Israel, they are not occupying any body else's land.  This history has been bured under Leftist and Islamic lies.

As the radio show also makes clear, it needs to be understood that this is no ordinary pollitical conflict going on between Israel and the Palestinians or the whole Arab world for that matter, or the whole world for that matter by now, Islam itself prescribes the muder of the Jews and of all "infidenls"   this is no reaction to a supposed occupationm or any kind of pollitical oppression by anybody, this is engineered from the official supposedly sacred writings of Islam itself.  If Mustlims exist who do not follow all that , great, but that's because they either don't know about it or reject it, not because it isn't there if they ever decided to go back to their religious roots.  When they do they learn that they are ordered by what they supposed to be God himself to kill the Jews.  That is what makes all this so impregnable to reason.  There are no political solutions to this.  Two states would only give Islam more access to murdering Jews.  They HAVE two states, or did, in Gaza, but they didn't use it as a Paolestinain state in the sense of building it up to prosperty and success for the people, they gave it over too Hamas, they voted for Hamas, they show their allegiance to their religion and there is no way you will ever talk them out of that.  If God is telling them to take this position how are you going to get them to reject it?    But the Left continyues to spread the lies that it's just an ordinary political conflict, the have nots at the mercy of the haves, when they have had the means to become prosperous for a long timeand don't use it, they use it to try to destroy Israel because that is the whole meaning of their religion.   No sign the world is going to be waking up to this any time soon though.  \\

Well, I guess it makes sense that Satan gets his day in the end.  Not the VERY end at least, but the end of life on this fallen planet before He returns.

There is no earthly solution to any of this.  The only solution is salvation through faith in Jesus Christ.  That's all there is.  And it's a lot.  It's the whole point of v3eing here in this miserable world.

 I must be extraordinarily obtuse about this premill pretrib way of thinking.  Often Jan Markell's program makes a big effort to clarify it and still I don't get it, don't get something or other and don't know what it is I'm not getting or why.    This latest program makes the same attempt and by fifteen mintues into the show I'm more confused than ever.  It goes by very fast for one thing and I guess I can go back and slow it down to tr to get the points I'm missing, whichI hope I'll be up to doing, but all I ever get out of these things is hearing the story repeated again.  And again.  

I gather there is more to this idea of Replacement Theology than I've understood.  Okay that's a start.  I keep thinking it's not replacement theoogy beause it's about fulfilling the messianic promises and those promises were fulfilled in the Church.  Yes?  No?  That leaves plenty of room ofor further dealings God is to make with ethnic or unsaved israel.  But "true Israel" as Paul uses the term, I understand to apply to believing Israel, which includes Gentile believers.  Ethnic Israel is a different lvel of things.   And ethnic Israel is what is dealt with in the seventieth week of Daniel, the great tribulation and all that.    Ethnic Israel is not replaced, because it remains to be dealt with, and True Israel is not replaced because it is the fulfillment of the messianic promises and is a separate level of the story.  Or seomthing like that.  What am I not Getting?

However, apparently there are those who see the whole history of Israel as having come to an end entirely with God's divorcing them for their adulteries against Him.  That's a different element of things I wasn't taking into account and it doesn't make sense to me because ...  well I'm sure there are scriptural reasons but I'm thinking of the historical reasons and the unfulfilemt prophecy of the seventieth week.  Historically the return of Israel to the land and statehood is jawdroppingly sidnificant and I can't see how anyone cojuld dismiss that as a Big Nothing as apparently some do.    The fact that Israel is the center of so much turmoil in the world in itself points to it as God's own piece of real estate which gathers all the forces of evil abgainst it.  Cup of trembling scripture calls it.  How can that be ignored?

Scripturally I think of the prophecy of Hosea in which God makes it clear that His adulterous wife is nevertheless loved by Him and invited back.  I don't see a total abandonment there.

I think I'll stop there.  I still have a million questions about other facets of the premill pretrib scenario but I'll leave those this time.

Something \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\We Turned a Corner Didn't We?

 Yes, now it does feel like it is all over, we're never going back to anything like what we used to think of as normal.  I suppose I'll go on hoping and grasping at straws for a while nevertheless, but it's hard to avoid the impression that October seventh changed things in such a fundamental way it will be hard to grasp at straws for long.  In itself it was horrific, but the finality of it comes with the reactions to it by the forces of evil, the increase in threats and claims by the bad guys when one would ordinarily expect a loud reaction against it all.  As I talk about in the previous post too.  

Jan Markll's weekly radio show Understaning the Times is all about this sense of finality and never going back that is felt by many of us.  This isn't a This Too Shall Pass moment, it's got to be the irreversible beginning of the End.   Part of her show was someone reporting on ... well no, giving a warning to Jews traveling anywhere in the world to be on the alert  because they are now targets in a way thaey haven't been before because it's all out in the open and stated baldly that their enemies are out to get them.  Warning to avoid their usual ways of dressing that identify them as Jewish and so on, and to keep alert as never before.  Travelers going all over the world.  ALL Jews everywhere.   Unprecedented.

Yes I'llhope and grasp a straws for a while, but recovery is looking about as improbable as ... well impossible really.

The Explanation of Absolutely Everything

The radical truth is that Christianity isn't just one of many relgioins, it is TH#E truth that explains everything.  I didn't choose Christianity because I liked it but because I believe that it explains everything, and of course it is wrong to speak of choosing it at all since from beginning to end it shows that God does all the choosing.  That theme is made very sharp and clear in the Bible although in our own lives it may not seem to be quite so clear.  I can see my own situation as having grown to appreciate this or that fact about Christianity without recognizing that God was doing the choosing of me by leading me that way.  But scripture is very clear that God chose Abraham and guided his life to the promised land despite Abraham's many excursions off the path of God's leading.  God also chose Moses when He appeared in the burning bush and called him to rescue His people from Egypt.  God called Joshua to take over from Moses, then alcalled all the Judges to lead the people in their various situations.  He chose Samuel the prophet, then David the King and so on and so forth.  We may be under the illusion that we had some kind of role in our own embracing of Christianity but we're wrong and the sooner we get it straightened out the stronger our faith will be.

But also God is in charge of everything that happens on Earth to everybody.  Thinking of God as able to change His mind makes it seem as if He could make things happen some other way than they do but that really isn't possible if you understand at least a litte about the nature of God and the Moral Law.  Scripture says here and there that God repents of this or that plan, but it also says that God cannot change and if He is in fact perfection itself, which He is, how could He change?  the only thing that makes it seem as if He can change is our own mental inadequacy for understanding the nature of God.  Scripture uses language that takes our mental inadequacy into account so that we aren't overwhelmed with concepts so far out of our realm of thought we'd lose interet in trying to understand any of it.

So I'mm watching with knots in my stomach the way things are going in this world, which do seem to me to be unprecedented expreassions of sheer evil tghat couldn't possibily have ever existed before, but of course I don't have the ability toknow that and could be wrong.  But I know I am among millions of others who are experiencing things pretty much as I'm experiencing them.  This is what makes us believe the End is very close of course.  But our sense of history may be far enough off that we're wrong and it's not so close.  Ther'es no way to know.  We just feel it is very very close.

I don't want things to keep going in the direction they are going, and know I'm not alone in this either.  I don't want things to get THAT bad as fast as they seem to be getting that bad.  I keep hoping we'll get a repreieve, that God will turn it back again, that the good guys will vanquish the bad guys once again as happened in the second world war, return us to a ormal way of life.  What a relief that would be.  But even as any of us thinks that it must be that most of us know it isn't going to happen, it really is going to keep going in this direction whether we are able to handle it or not.  Maybe believers will be raptures off the planet raptureD, let's get that d in there, beofore it all happens but there are lots of people who will suffer terribly after we're gone and I hurt for them and don't want them to go through it, let alone end up in Hell at the end of all of it.

But look how things are going.  Good and evil are being reversed to a breathtaking degre these days, more than everybefore in history or so it seems from here.  Evil ideologies lead to evil acts but then instead of the good guys rising up to defeat them the evil ideologies only flourish and grown stronger.  Surelyh Nine Eleven should have led to the vanquiaing o fht bad guys but it didn't.  They only grew stronger in inflouence and popularity.  Surely the evil that was done against Israel by Hamas on October seventh would result in Israel's pusing them back into a position of inability to continue with such attacks, but no, there is this uprising of the evil position against Israel with enough power behind it to suppress Israel's atempts to defend itself.  Has this ever happened before?  Anything like this?

The evil ideologies are the work of Satah.  Of course the vast majoirity ty of people dn't believe in Satan, and even CHristians or Bible believers who do believe in Satan wmaynot believe he is a real being but more of a principle and so defang the concept in that way.  But heis presented as a being, a person, in scripture and a bible believer should khnow that he is a person from that fact.  In any case Satan is winning the Great Battle between good and evil at this point in history, beyhond anthing I can imagine ever happened, or know from my general overview of history ever happened.  The hardest part to take is knowing that people who ordinarily seem normal and resonble are taking the side of Satan's evil and jjustifying it as good.  This does involved their being ignorant of facts at least so that if they really know the truth about what led to pre present moment one can belive they wouldn't accept it all so readily.  Can hope they wsoldn't .    If they knew the truth history of the Israeli Paelestinian situation could they really side with Hamas aainst Israel as so mahy are doing?  Could they?  Well Ikeep hoping they couldn't.

Marxism appears to be Satan's most powerful weapon againt good these days, succeeding beyond anything I could ever have imagined.  I've seen it coming in slips and moments since the sixtiies but never imagined it could get this far and there are plenty who haven't seen it coming and only see it in its fullblown manifestation that seems to have come about almost overnight, a matter of a few years.  What can they make of it?  Ig you fifn'y  see it coming for decades already how could you know what to make of it?

And since the Left has always embraced it in its earlier stages how are they going to re cognize that it's their own favored ideology that is responsible for the evil that is comingdown on us now?    It all seems to them to be a matter of comjpassion triumphing over authoritarianism or the self interest of a ruling class of Oppressors.  How could that end up in the evil we are mired in now?

As usual they make it the fault of the designated Oppressor of course.  Today it's the White Race and even the Hamas position seems to some of them to be just an expression of a racial minority against thie evil whiteness.   Even the Jews are classes as whites although historically they were no doubt one of the brownigsh groups of the Middle East.  As of course would Jesus have been, just to answer that ridiculous idea that we all think He wsas whtie.  No, every culture makes Jesus into whatever fits their own image.

But some of us have been carried above our own tribal identities by the rising tide of civilization over the last couple of milllennia in the West.  That civilization that is about to go under thank sot the satanic Marxism that is calling the shots these days.

Islam is not just another religion, it is Satan's masterpiece of evil, murder set in religious terminology.  Marxism isn't just another philoszophical mistake, it's Satan's masterpiece of a wrecking ball against Christian civilization.

That is what the White Race seems to stand for in this context too I think, and I'm not the onlyh one who thinks it.  The whole racial mess that has been building up steam for decades now has finally reached its real goal in the vilification of the White RRace as responsible for all the evil on the earth.  That's because historically the whtie race has been the main carrier of Christianity.  It's not that Christianity is a racial thing at all, ikt's not, ub thistorically it was carried most successfully in Europe and spread through the English speaking world in particular.  This allows some to identify it wilth the white race although it's just a meaningless flueke that there is any connection at all.  Christianity is catholic, meaning universal, it has no skin color.    

But because it is associated with the white race, however unconsciously in many cases, an attack on the white race serves Satan nicely as the outer shell as it were of his real target which is biblical religion and the Biblbicfal God.  the Jews are the first line of representation of this true God but the White Race represents it more fullyyu.   It's really God and Christ Satan wants to wipe off the face of the Earth.

\\Unbeleivers aren't in a position to see things from this perspective, and even many Christians don't put the whole big picture together.    But this is the raidical fact of Christianity that it is THE truth and explains ALL of history.  There is a real battle between Good and Evil that has been going on since the Fall in Eden and will continue until Jesus returns but most people are confusedc because they aren't looking at it for a wide ehough angle to see it as it really  is.  they think Christianity, especially Protestant Christianity as they think of it, is just a sectarian expression of religion while Islam is just another relition and so is Catholicism.  I don't wse any way at this late date to get the truth out to enough people to make a difference.  it really is going to take the return of Jesus to do that.

Rohr's Arrogance

There's so much scary going on in the world these days you'd think I wouldn't rate Richard Rohr so high on that scale but I do.  He's really really scary to me, that rewriting of the entire meaning of Christianity.  And I've been thinking about how arrogant that is, supremely arrogant, and he thinks he's so humblae and he calls traditional Christians arrogant, but that just makes him all the more arrogant it seems to me.  The arrogance it takes to rewrite the entire corpus of Christaint doctrine, even Catholic doctrine whichis bad enough it iteself, but true Christian doctrine.  How arrogant can you get?  And say it so dogmaticallyu that this is the truth, what hethinks is the truth and tradition is all wrong.  How arrogant can you get?  But he calls the rest of us arrogant.    Oh well it may not have been wroth a new post but there it is.

Hell and Fallenness and God's Wrath EWithout Restraints

I don't know how long it has been, over a year at lest, since I had the experience of fearing that I'd never been saved and was destined for Hell, a truly terrifying time for me which included the idea that I couldn't get saved now although I kept asking the Lord to save me.  I've never gone into the details about that and don't want to, just want to say that it was a very scary time and eventually I had an experience that convinced me I am saved and had been saved all along, just as I had thought was the case before all this happened.  

TThe point of bringing it up now is that it marks the \\\\a change in my view of things that is still with me.  I'd always thought of this world as fallen and of human beings as fallen and that this is the reason for Jesus' substitutionary death on the cross to save us, but during this experience which was so personal and intense the reality of Hell and of the fallenness of this world became  

Phone rang, forgot what I was saying.  Something about why I told that story.

It sensitized me to the reality of Hell and the fallenness of this world in a way that has become a permanent fixture in my mind.  It's always there now, coloring most of my thoguthts in a way it never was before.  Almost everything I think includes the idea that it's occurring in the context of fallenness and nobody knows it and if they did they'd take it all more seriously or think of it differently in omse sense or other.   When people say things that imply this world is just going to go on and on until the sun  finally burns out in the distant future or takes a political position that implies things could change for the better in some way that denies the reality of our sin nautre., (I either want to tell them otherwise or I feel hopeless about anyone ever getting it.

The idea includes the fact that this world is temporary and that God has told us Jesus is going to return and that will bring it to an end.  That, of course, is what so many Christians are now feeling is here right now, the End Times, the prelude to the final act of the drama of Planet Earth that I've also written so much about.

Even nonbelievers are feeling that things are far worse these days than has been the case forever.  That may be an exaggeration in all our minds since there have certainly been some terrible times in history that we've not learned much about, but still, open calls for the extermination of the Jews?  Really?  How can that ever have occurred even on this benighted planet?  How?  

But a main part of the theme of fallenness is that God is judging us and that the worse things get in terms of our violations of God's :aw the more of God's wrath comes against us.  People who don't believe in the Biblical God impute an increase in evil and even natural disasters to human causes which gets us insane theories about coimate change that are going only going to make it all worse.  Correction:  making it all worse just takes us to more of God's wrath even though we aren't caling it that.  

If the terrorists had any notion at all of the true God and His Law their eager violence against the Jews and other "infidels" would get quickly dampened by the knowledge that they are facing a terrible Hell and not seventy virgins.    If the people who are pushing all this transgender stuff had any notion of God's Laws they'd know that theyu too are storing up God's wrath against themselves.  They'd rather blame other people for their supposed transphobia, and all that, but no, it's God who makes the rules, in fact God's Law just IS, it's not something He applies as He decides in each case, it's part of His nature and acts inexorably against every violation of it.  The Eastern religions have an imperforce idea of it in the notion of Karma, but the point is that we're talking about a Law that operates in this universe that cannot be affected by any attempts we make to undo its effects.   We can repent, change and do good works and then we will be accumulating better things for ourselves but that isn't going to eradicate the bad things.  The only thing that can eradicate the bad things is Christ's death on the cross in our place IF WE BELIEVE IN HIM and put all ourt our trust in Him.

I rtI think of this heretic Richard Rohr whose teachings I've been listening to so avidly for a while now.  He denies God's wrath, he denies the crucifixion as atonement for sin, says it's too violent to be what God intended, in these and other ways he denies the Bible as God's word although he likes to say how much he appreciates the Bible.  A lot of the Bible he simply rewrites to suit his preferred idea of how things ought to be , but some of it he simply denies outright.  He ridicules the idea that God is masculine, attributin gthat notion to us tribal human beings who must think in such terms, whereas in reality it is God Himself in His inerrant Word to us who identifies Himself as masculine.    And much more than that.  He either rewrites the whole revelation of simply pooh poohs it out of existence as he substitutes his own philsophies in its place.  

And that shakes me up when I think of people actually beleiving what he is teaching and trying to live by it.  Cathllic teaching is already problematic since it is few Catholics who live entirely for Jesaus or even know the gospels at all according ot the traditions that Rohr is denyhing them, so salvation for a Catholic is very iffy anyway,bbut if they follow Rorhr they are simply digging their own tunnels to Hell.  AND very probably adding to the stored up ratath that is coming on this Planet even before they die.

What could save us and save the planet ?   Well, believing in Christ for sure, but also taking the Law seriously and repenting of it and turning back as much of the vioollations of that Law as we can before it is too late.  Gay marriage is bfiringing wrath on us, abortion is bringing wrath on us, pornographny is bringing wrath on us, anything done by our government that violates God's Law is bringing God's wrath on our nation.  

When I look at it all this way I know it's all over.  Nobody is going to change at this late date, or to be more accurate, not enough are going to change.

Upping the End Times Ante As it Were

 hEARING ABOUT THE SUPPOSED OFFENSE OF iSLAMOPHOBIA WHEN iSRAEL HAS JUST BEEN SUBJECTED TO A VILE VICIOUS MURDEROUS ATTACK IS MAKING ME LITERALLY SICK.  mY STOMACH CAN'T TAKE IT.  tHE LIES ARE FRIGHTENING.   iSLAMOPHOBIA?    wHAT?  wELL, MAYBE i SHOULD JUST SAY THAT YES INDEED i AM FOR SURE iSLAMOBOBIC  iSLAMOPHOBIC.  hOPE THAT GOT IT SPELLED RIGHT.  yES i'M iSLAMOPHOBIC.  bECAUSE i KNOW THAT iSLAM IS A RELIGION INVENTED BY THE DEVIL THAT IS OUT TO MURDER ALL WHO REJECT IT, STARTING WITH THE jEWS.   

iT SEMS WE ARE LIKELY IN A NEW PHASE OF THE eND tIMES WITH THIS AGGRESSIVE DEFENSE OF THE PERPECTRATORS AGAINST THE VICTIMS.  tHE HEAT HAS BEEN TURNED UP.  i HAVE AN ADOPTED jEWISH NAME THAT I beolieve God told me I should not give up.  My daughter has that Jewish name and even my gransons have retained it, due to a legal situation that I'm not going to go into.  And they are a quarter Jewish anyway, enough to get them thrown into Hitler's concentration camps.  

They aren't saved and that worries me.   But with this latest upping of the evil lies in the world the danger is now much broader than anything in my own private life.  

And now we have Biden interfering with Israel's ability to wage war against their enemies by insisting on humanitarian moves in behalf of Gaza.  The reversal of everything true and good keps on keeping on.  I feel the bottom dropping out of my stomach as I sit here.

Some soon, oh come soon, Lord Jesus.