Commentary on world events that relate to Bible prophecy and on Rapture Ready issues world events.

Jun 21, 2010

Why Is America a Snake-Bitten Nation?

We seem to live in a time when everything that can go wrong has done so. Our run of bad luck reminds me of the play Pippin, in which King Charles proclaims, "It's smarter to be lucky than it's lucky to be smart."

Bad luck can only occur for so long before the odds require it to change. If misfortune persists, there has to be some controlling factor that guides the events. We have been stricken with such frequency that it is long overdue for our nation to reflect on the nature of our problems. Consider the following examples:

1. We currently have the worst oil spill in our nation’s history. According to government estimates of daily flow figures, anywhere from 73.5 million to 126 million gallons gushed from the breached wellhead—whether that crude spilled into the water or was captured. In case you were wondering, like me, whether the oil might run out, there are still 2.1 billion gallons in the reservoir. The vast majority of the released oil is still in the Gulf. Even if the flow were stopped today, the consequences of the spill would continue to mount for years to come.

2. There has been a spate of negative weather events. Tennessee was hit with a massive amount of rainfall, shattering numerous all-time records. There was also a deluge in western Oklahoma, with Oklahoma City being the hardest hit. Last week, folks in Minnesota saw the most number of tornadoes they had ever seen in a single day: On June 17, there were 31 twisters, topping the old record of 27 set on June 16, 1992. And in Arkansas, just down the road from Terry and me, a flash flood killed more than 20 campers at a state park.

3. It is well known that our federal government is facing a host of debt problems. The financial trouble goes right to the bedrock of our nation. San Diego and Detroit are on opposite scales from each other. The first has an economy-based defense, tech manufacturing, and tourism, while the Second City is a rust-bowl city with heavy ties to the automobile industry. Both cities are on the verge of bankruptcy. San Diego is being weighed down by an under-funded retirement and health system. Detroit is literally rotting away. There are now 10,000 abandoned homes in Detroit that the city managers want to tear down and turn into empty lots.

4. Our foreign policy has become a slow-motion train wreck. The war in Afghanistan is now the longest in our nation’s history. European heads of state are starting to doubt America's ability to be a global leader. Opposition to key aspects of U.S. foreign policy remains pervasive in the Muslim world. While America’s favorability rating in Egypt has dropped from 27 percent to 17 percent, nut jobs like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are able to travel the globe and make new friends simply because they are enemies of the U.S.

Commentators are now starting to say that Barack Obama's presidency is looking much like the disastrous term experienced by Jimmy Carter. There is one big difference: Obama was a Jimmy Carter even before he took office. American voters knew his record before he took office.

Many prophecy students would cite our treatment of Israel as the key reason we are lately such a snake-bitten nation. They base this assessment on Genesis 12:1-3: "I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing: And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee." I generally agree, but I don’t think it is as automatic as some claim. In other words, I don't believe that if our government does something on Monday, a calamity will necessarily strike us on Tuesday.

It's hard to deal with a problem when you don't know it exists. To the carnal mind, these four examples seem to have no connection to each other. Until enough people realize that there is a God with the power to grant and withdraw favors, the source of our "bad luck" will remain a mystery.

The current mindset in our nation is "wait until election day when we can throw the bums out and change our political course." We just got done playing musical chairs by switching from Republicans to Democrats. Until our nation gets back to choosing Jesus as our spiritual leader, the snakes of misfortune will continue to bite.

-- Todd

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Sea and Waves Roaring in Gulf Gaffe

Let me begin by stating that I don't see Jesus' prophecy in His Olivet Discourse fulfilled in the Gulf oil fiasco. However, the process of fulfillment has begun, I believe. The prophecy to which I refer is the following: "And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring" (Lk. 21:25).

It is obvious that the many people of the Gulf region are roaring in their distress--and rightfully so. The term "sea" is often used symbolically or figuratively rather than literally in biblical language. This is especially true in biblical prophecy. For example, in Revelation, John uses the term "sea" as follows: "And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy" (Rev. 13:1). Later, John prophesies about another beast: "And I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth; and he had two horns like a lamb, and he spake as a dragon" (Rev. 3:11).

These references, of course, are to the political leader who will be Antichrist in the first instant, and to the False Prophet who will be his sidekick--his John the Baptist--in the second. Antichrist comes out of the sea; the False Prophet comes out of the earth, or land.

Antichrist "coming out of the sea" refers to the sea of peoples of the world--the Gentile world (non-Jewish world). The second beast, the False Prophet, comes out of the earth. This, most of the Pre-Trib view of Bible prophecy believe, means this character will come out of the land of promise--that given to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob by God. Many are convinced he will be a Jew.

While the sea of humanity that this terrible accident so adversely affects is roaring in distress, the Gulf gusher is but a token of things to come. The Tribulation hour is looming just ahead in the murkiness of these strange times.

What leaps at the observer of the days in which we live--those who do so through the prism of God's prophetic word--is the swiftness of the global, in-our-faces grab for power so unabashedly inflicted. And, it is done overwhelmingly against the wishes of the American people. If I didn't absolutely know better from intensive study and prayer, I might join some of the wonderful, but not fully informed, folks whose emails I've received over the months since the last presidential inauguration.

These believe Barack Hussein Obama to be the prime candidate for the first beast of Revelation 13. He isn't, of course, although I've been called at least twice by The Daily Show trying to get me to say he is, so John Stewart can have his version of fun with us Christian types. When I told them I believe that Mr. Obama is not the Antichrist, they have asked me on each occasion to give them the name of someone--from among my colleagues, I presume--who does think he fits the bill.

The sea of humanity is indeed roaring, both here and around the globe. Not to the extent it will be in the coming Tribulation years, but it is roaring nonetheless, while governments seem to be striving almost deliberately to prevent people from working, in order to create a dependent class on a global scale. In this sense, the situation is in a very real way the stage-setting for fulfillment of prophecy, I think.

Economic desperation has the people and the world beginning to "roar in distress." This is a major birth-pang convulsion, in my view.

In these commentaries, we have detailed the many facets of America's multi-trillion indebtedness. We have chronicled Europe's even-deeper slide into the fiscal morass of these strange times. The Gulf oil spill and ensuing madness just exacerbate the conditions in which we find ourselves, and the sea roars ever louder. Rioting over socialistic largesse being withdrawn illustrates the addiction to the proverbial "free lunch" among those on the government feeding spigot. Others in Europe and Asia roar with demands that their freebies be restored. There has been bloodshed in some cases, and the nations are in perplexity as to how to assuage the collective anger.

And now the president of the United States has made the brilliant decision to pile on the good people of the Gulf region who have been, perhaps catastrophically, damaged by the British Petroleum oil spill. His presidential edict seems to me not a bad decision by an incompetent, but a calculated geopolitical move to begin the process of instituting his agenda and that of the globalists-elite to bring the U.S. under a larger governance.

Remember the words of the president's chief of staff, who said that a crisis is something that must not be wasted. We saw and heard his boss put those words into action Tuesday evening, June 15, from the Oval Office. He went--in not a subtle way at all--from talking about how the people of the Gulf were suffering and how BP would pay to how it all means that America must convert to "green" energy. The agenda is still to deal dictatorially with global warming--or climate change, as the liberal ideologues now call it. Obama declared a moratorium on offshore drilling, thus making it certain that the Gulf population will suffer. In addition to the environmental and tourist impact, as well as the loss to the fishing industry, none of the oil production jobs of the region will exist any longer.

There is method to the madness, even if this president and the pundits who rant in every confused direction can't see it all in terms of the biblically prophetic picture. There is a supreme crisis that is welling--not just in the Gulf of Mexico, but throughout the world. The sea is beginning to roar in increasing waves of volume and violence.

The crisis-storm will break in full fury, I'm convinced, when the Rapture takes the church to heaven, and the conscience of mankind is no longer restrained by the Holy Spirit. The apostle Paul foretold the following in that regard:

The mystery of iniquity doth already work: Only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way. And then shall that wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming: Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders, And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. (2 Thes. 2:7-10)

When the Holy Spirit, resident within the church--the body of believers--no longer restrains evil in mankind as before the Rapture, Antichrist will have the "roaring sea" crisis that he will use to enslave most of the planet. The stage-setting process for that ultimate prophetic eventuality is well underway.

--Terry