Peace and Safety Like Never Before
The state of Israel has never had a time when it has been more tranquil. Since the nation was founded in 1948, it has been under almost constant threat of war, terrorism, economic sanctions and internal political unrest.
The forces that hate Israel suffered a major defeat in the election of Donald Trump. His key policies toward the Jewish state are still unknown, but Trump will mostly like mean a sharp reversal of the icy relations that currently exist between Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
While running for office, Trump has said he would move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Recent reports show that he intends to fulfill this promise. Trump senior aide Kellyanne Conway said, moving the embassy is a “very big priority” for Trump. She also said, support for Israel was integral to Trump’s agenda.
The threat of terrorism in Israel has declined with the collapse of what has been called the “Stabbing Intifada;” an unorganized effort to spread fear amongst the Israelis with a series of stabbings. According to Shin Bet, between 1 October 2015 and 1 October 2016 there was a total of 166 stabbing attacks and 89 attempted stabbings. The effort is now seen as suicidal because only 5 Israeli security personnel have been killed while 102 Palestinian attackers have died.
The campaign to boycott Israel is another failure. The reason for the boycotts is to protest against Israeli policies toward Palestinians. Various liberal organizations have somehow gotten the idea that Palestinians are being mistreated, and they want to apply “economic leverage” to force Israel to do something crazy—like tear down its West Bank security barrier. Since most Israeli index funds are up 40 percent over the past four years, the boycott has caused investors to miss out on healthy financial returns.
Israel’s relations with her Arab neighbors has become very positive. Now that Egypt is run by a military general, “Egyptian-Israeli relations are today at their highest level in history,” so says Nathan Thrall, a Jerusalem-based senior analyst for the International Crisis Group (ICG), a research organization.
Last week, Netanyahu embarked on a landmark visit to two Muslim-majority nations, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan. It is historically significant because no Israeli leader has traveled to the former Soviet Republics of Central Asia in 25 years. With Syria distracted with civil war, there has been little protest from that old enemy.
The only active concern for Israel is Iran. It’s Defense Minister Hossein Dehghan, while speaking at a conference in Tehran, said that Israel will be “destroyed” if Trump sparks war in the Middle East. Since Iran is always talking about Israel’s doom, the threat is just words.
The political environment of Israel has become very stable. Prime Minister Netanyahu has strengthened his hold onto power by adding religious parties to his coalition. The soon departure of Obama will free the prime minister from having to worry about negative comments coming from the White House.
There is now a general feeling of peace and safety here in America. The stock market has been soaring—with the Dow Jones pushing near to the 20,000 milestone. Even though stocks are at very high valuations, the folks on Wall Street are cheering proposals to cut corporate taxes and ramp up fiscal stimulus.
It’s not like all our problems have been resolved. America still has a crushing debt load; with the Federal deficit about to go over the $20 trillion level. Many of the banks in Europe are on the brink of collapse. Russia and China are becoming more aggressive with many of their neighbors, but still we have this general feeling of all is well.
As an end-time watcher, this period of historic calm has me wondering if it is a sign of our Lord’s nearness. Jesus said the time of His return to rapture His Church would take place at a time of when people have a general feeling of peace and safety. An environment of carelessness would allow Him to come like a “thief.” Since this time of peace and safety cannot last very long, we will soon find out it is an indication of the Rapture.
“But of the times and the seasons, brethren, ye have no need that I write unto you. For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night. For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape” (1 Thessalonians 5:1-3).
–Todd
–Todd
Saving the World
My practice each week before beginning to think seriously on the next week’s commentary for this column is to pray for guidance from on high. This week’s essay, I sensed, would require especially intensive beseeching in order to receive direction toward the commentary leading up to Christmas Day. Just the opposite turned out to be the case.
An idea of what the topic should be came almost instantly upon my beginning to think on the matter. Next, within less than an hour into the process, came a message through email that validated beyond any doubt that the topic was chosen from above.
The email was from a regular family member of our website, raptureready.com. Her words were verification that the thought for the Christmas message to be delivered wasn’t mine, but from the One who sent that first Christmas message two millennia ago. I quickly dashed off an email-note thanking her.
I again thank her here and will include some of her words from her most timely cyber message to me.
As many who read these commentaries will know, my articles of late have involved the lead-up to and reporting of presidential election 2016. I view that election, I think I made clear, as being intervention by the Lord–and this for several reasons. His intervention was to, I believe, answer the prayers of His people who are called by His name, in accordance with 2 Chronicles 7: 14. His response was to begin to turn around the quick slide into the abyss of total moral decay. His action was to stop this nation’s almost certain march to globalism, which, I’m convinced, the losing candidate would have put on an even faster track than America was on, should she have been elected president.
I likened the intervention in the matter of globalism to God’s erecting a wall even more profound than the wall the president-elect has promised to put along America’s southern border. For now, at least, America, apparently, will have a wall of sorts–a return to the constitutional concept of sovereignty and nationhood intended by the founding fathers.
That constitutional concept was formed by Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Franklin, and all the rest, based upon their strong belief in adherence to Judeo-Christian principles found in the Bible. This, the new world order architects cannot abide. Religion, they rant, is the bane of progressive thought and action. These most often champion the Utopian dream fostered by Karl Marx, who wrote: “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.”
The globalists elite who hate religion and despise Christianity in particular see Communism as the route to Utopia. If only they could have their blueprint for their version of socialism put fully into production, they would create heaven on earth. These have come to embrace fanatically their own version of religion. It is called “environmentalism.”
They were, until recently, calling it global warming. The scientific sophistry behind their claim came to light through exposure to the facts, so they changed the core of their religion to “climate change.”
These are of the save-the-earth cult which holds that man is destroying Mother Earth. Therefore, the globalists elite–the high priests of their religion–must see to it that all nations, all peoples, must be brought under their regulation–else we will all drown beneath the overflowing oceans because of icecap melting, etc. Greenhouse gases and carbon emissions and all of that are produced by evil Western mankind in particular and must be governed. They–the global elitists–of course, are the only ones who can thus save the world.
Pope Francis and some within the Catholic Church have wholeheartedly joined this save-the-earth cult to add their version of religious input. The following excerpted article explains:
Catholic Online reports that new priests will be expected to be familiar with and promote efforts to reduce carbon emissions…
The Church has a responsibility to care for people, and the environment. And care for one is also care for the other…
The new guidelines suggest that in the future, priests will also have a good grasp of the global climate change problem and will share this with their congregation… It must be said that some committed and prayerful Christians, with the excuse of realism and pragmatism, tend to ridicule expressions of concern for the environment. Others are passive; they choose not to change their habits and thus become inconsistent. So what they all need is an ‘ecological conversion’, whereby the effects of their encounter with Jesus Christ become evidence in their relationship with the world around them. Living our vocation to be protectors of God’s handiwork is essential to a life of virtue; it is not an optional or a secondary aspect of our Christian experience. Therefore it will be necessary for future priests to be highly sensitive to this theme and, through the requisite Magisterial and theological guidance, helped to “acknowledge the appeal, immensity and urgency of the challenge we face. (Source: Catholic Church: New Priests Will be Expected to Preach Global Warming, Guest essay by Eric Worrall,http://www.clerus.va/content/dam/clerus/Ratio%20Fundamentalis/The%20Gift%20of%20the%20Priestly%20Vocation.pdf)
There has been little reaching out by this pope since he replaced Pope Benedict to proclaim that conversion must be made to belief in Jesus Christ in order to save the souls of people of earth. But the cry at present goes out in every direction that conversion to the dogma of ecological sophistry must be instituted and enforced to save all people everywhere.
With regard to the luciferian religion called climate change, the words of my emailer say it plainly.
“No matter how much humans try to ‘improve’ on God’s plans, He has the last say. He allows us to experiment but then, rightly shows us that His way is the best way. No matter how much humans try to wreck Planet Earth, God always has the upper (and healing) hand.
The world belongs to God. His Creation. Wonderfully and perfectly made. There is no way He is going to allow some spiritually backward, egocentric lunatic, [to] ruin what He set up. For the RC [Roman Catholic] church to actually believe that they will influence or make a difference to what is happening to planet earth is spiritual ignorance of the highest order. They are implying that action from man can fix stuff. That they (the RC church) are running things. Astonishing!”
Let me be clear in saying that I’m fully aware and agree that we are expected, as Christians, to be good stewards of he earth. However,we are not to worship the earth and make that worship the means of our salvation.
It is the reverse of the true Christmas story that we are witnessing as Christmas approaches. Globalism preaches that it is up to man to save himself by saving the planet.
Like Lucifer told Eve, we are destined to become our own gods. We are to save the world, totally apart from any deity, except, of course, for the gods–he elite–of the globalist agenda.
But the truth of the Christmas story simply, powerfully and wonderfully tells all who will listen–and believe.
“For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved” (John 3:17).
–Terry
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