Nov 15, 2004
Yasser Arafat and the End Times
As most of you folks already know by now, Palestinian Prime Minister Yasser
Arafat has died. Unlike a lot of liberal media folks, I have no tears to
shed over Arafat's demise.
The press did its best to paint him as a great man of the Palestinian
people, but nothing could be further from the truth. Arafat started his
career as a terrorist and he ended his career as a terrorist.
Columnist Jeff Jacoby did an excellent job of describing one of the most
grievous highlights of Arafat's evil career: “Perhap his signal Contribution to the practice of political terror was the introduction of warfare against children. On one black date in May 1974, three PLO terrorists slipped from Lebanon into the northern Israeli town of Ma'alot. They murdered two parents and a child whom they found at home, then seized a local school, taking more than 100 boys and girls hostage and threatening to kill them unless a number of imprisoned terrorists were released. When Israeli troops attempted a rescue, the
terrorists exploded hand grenades and opened fire on the students. By the
time the horror ended, 25 people were dead; 21 of them were children."
Arafat was also a crook. He embezzled funds given by Arab and western
nations to support the Palestinian people. According to several reports, he
skimmed at least $1 billion for his own personal use. The most fitting
inscription on Arafat's tomb would be, "Here lies the thief who robbed you
blind."
I think the reality of who Arafat truly was came to light in the year 2000,
when he failed to embrace an offer made by Israel. While at a summit hosted
by former President Clinton, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak agreed to
nearly all of what the Palestinians had wanted. Arafat shocked everyone by
declining the proposal. He did so because knew that without Israel as his
nemesis, the responsibility of running a nation would rest on him.
Arafat was obviously a man of an ungodly nature; however, I believe the Lord
had a purpose for him. I've noticed that certain people who hold key
positions act as prophetic blocking agents until the day comes when God is
ready for events to move forward.
Margaret Thatcher is a good example of a blocking agent. For many years, she
used her authority to veto a number of attempts at expanding the power of
the European Union. While nearly every other leader in Europe wanted to move
forward, Thatcher was the one who always applied the brake. Once Thatcher
was forced out of office, the EU was able to make rapid progress at
integration.
Because the Bible warns that the tribulation will start when Israel signs a
peace agreement, the removal of someone who was an expert at sabotaging all
peace talks related to Israel is a huge boom for prophecy. In fact, I regard
the death of Arafat as the greatest end-time-connected event of the past
three years.
President Bush wasted no time in announcing his interest in restarting a new
round of talks. The EU has also announced its desire to help, saying it will
meet with Israel and its Arab neighbors November 29-30 to discuss the Middle
East peace process.
2004 already has been an amazingly active year for prophetic progression.
Arafat's demise only increases the pace. As the world's focus zeroes in on
the city of Jerusalem, our attention should be fixated on the coming of our
Redeemer.
"And in that day will I make Jerusalem a burdensome stone for all people:
all that burden themselves with it shall be cut in pieces, though all the
people of the earth be gathered together against it" (Zech. 12:3).
"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: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together
with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever
be with the Lord. Wherefore comfort one another with these words" (1 Thess.
4:16-18).
-- Todd
Reprobate Mindset: An End-Time Indicator
A sound byte leaped at me from Brit Hume’s Fox News program. House Minority leader Nancy Pelosi was saying something like: "If we don’t do something to correct the direction this election is taking us, we are looking at the end of civilization."
The political invective was bad enough during the time leading up to the recent presidential election. But, the screeches of anger have now reached levels that indicate paranoia, even insanity, for those who are unaccepting of the results.
It is reported that on one website, the opponents of the Bush election have redrawn the map of Canada and the United States. They now call all of Canada and the "blue" states (those states that went for Kerry,) "The United States of Canada." All other states (the red states that went for Bush) they now designate "Jesus Land." Some are so distressed they are making psychiatrists and psychologists rich from the counseling they require. More than one celebrity has threatened –as they always do when they lose an election—to take up residence in a country other than the United States. Robert Redford,for example, said he is thinking about moving to his vast estate in Ireland.
One person in the Democrat hierarchy said he thought the red states should secede from the Union, and take their moral dogma with them. Geraldine Ferraro, a former US Senator and one-time Democrat candidate for vice president, implied that if the red states were separated from the blue states, all would be lost for the red, because all creative people are in the blue states. Another of the frantic party of loyalists proclaimed that the red states couldn’t make it, if not for the blue states, because the majority of taxes are paid by the people along the east and west coast blue states.
It is more than obvious that a large number of the people who lost in this year’s presidential election process have also lost all rationality. This, to my way of thinking, is not without reason –no pun intended.
The political left now seems to have lost its collective mind. This should come as no surprise, however. Its members are the ones who champion abortion, homosexuality, and judges who legislate from the bench, forcing upon us ungodly laws, thereby circumventing the sound legislative and judicial processes intrinsic to the representative democratic republic the founding fathers intended when they gave us the Constitution. The Bible addresses the kind of thinking that has brought them and our nation to this great divide.
"And even as they did not like to retain God in [their] knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient" (Rom. 1:28).
Please understand that I’m not pointing the finger, accusing all people who live within the "blue" states, or every person who is a Democrat, of being reprobate in their thinking. I am accusing the so-called "progressives" --those who lean far leftward on the political spectrum-- of egregious political action since they took over the party. That action threatens to harm this nation because it has brought with it the proposal that immorality should not be restrained in the American culture. This is reprobate non-reasoning, i.e., upside-down government.
When Sen. John Kerry, while candidate for president, implied that the Hollywood star/celebrity set represents America’s true moral center, the template was made manifest, presenting his party’s definition of "morality," thus how they intended to govern. Since the election, the rhetoric generated by the journalists and others from that mindset rages from the pages, screens and cyberspace of leftist libertine enclaves.
These journalists cleverly parse their words, co-opting the name of Christ, twisting the Bible’s words to fit their even more twisted worldview. One example is excerpted here:
I was told in Sunday school the word "Christian" means to be Christ-like, but the message I hear daily on the airwaves from the "christian" media are words of war, violence, and aggression. Throughout this article I will spell christian with a small c rather than a capital, since the term (as I usually hear it thrown about) does not refer to the teachings of the one I know as the Christ. I hear church goers call in to radio programs and explain that it was a mistake not to kill every living thing in Fallujah. They quote chapter and verse from the old testament about smiting the enemies of Israel. The fear of fighting the terrorists on our soil rather than across the globe causes the voices to be raised as they justify the latest prison scandal or other accounts of the horrors of war . The words they speak are words of destruction, aggression, dominance, revenge, fear and arrogance. The host and the callers echo the belief in the righteousness of our nation's killing. There are reminders to pray for our "christian" president who is doing the work of the Lord: Right to Life, Second Amendment, sanctity of marriage, welfare reform, war, kill, evil liberals. . . so much to fight, so much to destroy…
The solutions to the social issues used to manipulate good, decent people have no resemblance to how Jesus responded to the social concerns of his time. He never once mentioned the ‘right to life.’ The year he was born King Herod ordered the execution of all babies. (Matthew 2:16). He knew that passing laws does not change the heart. As a follower of his teaching I believe in the right to life, including the children in Iraq who stumble onto land mines, cross the street at the wrong time, or who are snuggly tucked within the warm bellies of their wounded or grieving mothers as US fighter jets fly overhead… The killing of these little ones are never even reported, and our tax dollars pay for these bombs. I believe in the right to life for those in the United States who are unwanted and impoverished. I believe in the right to life of the naive kid who was promised by the recruiter they could choose a desk job and still get their education paid or could see the world or could accelerate their life or could play a very realistic video game from a cockpit…
The true message of Christ still exists to some degree in the quiet of the land to peacemakers, but sadly these good people have been deceived by the angry words from a righteous sounding religious media majority broadcasting in cars and trucks and tractors all over our land ironically preaching the "good news of war for peace" and convincing 24-7 "liberal" bashing…
So I am no longer a christian but just a person who continues trying to follow the example of Christ…
[Source: "No Longer a Christian," by Karen Horst Cobb, a freelance writer and artist in Santa Fe, NM; published Monday, October 25, 2004 by CommonDreams.org
This presentation of the humanistic/ social gospel sounds good, doesn’t it? But, the tortured theology involved --that falsely accuses Christians who in the article writer’s worldview aren’t real Christians at all, rather are warmongers, homophobes, and social miscreants-- masks a luciferian desire to supplant God as final authority over how man must live in order to have true peace on earth. She misses the true message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, that He died to save the souls of all who will believe in Him for salvation. She seems to have no idea of what it means to be a Christian -- that only the born-again experience will change the hearts and minds of fallen men and women, thus can change the world.
Europe, which long ago threw off the bonds of Christianity, is almost as paranoid over the perceived moral turn of events in the presidential election as are the American leftists. Many want to divorce –at least to a great extent—from America, and long for total freedom from its dwindling, but still effective, Christian influence.
Here’s a small sample of what the European left is thinking about our nation:
They walk the walk. They talk the talk. But they don't think the think. In the wake of the huge support given to George Bush last week, it's time we realised how different America's majority culture is, and changed our policies accordingly. What Americans share with Europeans are not values, but institutions. The distinction is crucial. Like us, they have a separation of powers between executive and legislature, an independent judiciary, and the rule of law. But the American majority's social and moral values differ enormously from those which guide most Europeans. Its dangerous ignorance of the world, a mixture of intellectual isolationism and imperial intervention abroad, is equally alien. In the United States more people have guns than have passports… Many commentators now argue for Europe to distance itself…
["Nato is a threat to Europe and must be disbanded, our security doesn't depend on the US; we should free up our thinking" by Jonathan Steele, The Guardian, Monday, Nov. 8, 2004.]
Reprobate thinking has caused the schism to widen beyond repair. This divide is not to be unanticipated. Bible prophecy foretells the mindset that will bring God’s judgment upon a planet of earthdwellers who have become reprobate almost beyond redemption.
"Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD, and against his anointed, saying, Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us. He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision. Then shall he speak unto them in his wrath, and vex them in his sore displeasure" (Psalms 2:1-5).
--Terry
