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

May 20, 2013

Obama’s “Dirty Tricks” Administration

Scandal is breaking out in Washington DC like a bad case of chicken pox. As of right now, the Obama Administration is dealing with three major scandals: The Benghazi affair, the Internal Revenue Service targeting conservative groups and the Department of Justice spying on the Associated Press.

Long before that IRS scandal became known, I heard from fellow Christian ministries that they were being harassed: by the government. IRS auditors weren’t just interested in financial information. They wanted to know about the political views of their organization or what type of donor supported their ministry. Several people told me they were asked why they supported the state of Israel.

Christians who openly opposed gay marriage seem to get the greatest attention from the IRS. One Christian leader opposing gay marriage currently has three open IRS investigations against him. The two ministries founded by Billy and Franklin Graham, were both recently audited by the IRS. Franklin, wrote the president saying: I do not believe that the IRS audit of our two organizations last year is a coincidence─or justifiable. I am bringing this to your attention because I believe that someone in the administration was targeting and attempting to intimidate us. This is morally wrong and unethical─indeed some would call it “un-American.”

The cries of outrage are not just coming from conservatives. Jonathan Turley is die-hard liberal professor of law at The George Washington University, and he is regarded as an expert on the Constitution. He recently said:

The painful fact is that Barack Obama is the president that Nixon always wanted to be. Four decades ago, Nixon was halted in his determined effort to create an “imperial presidency” with unilateral powers and privileges. In 2013, Obama wields those very same powers openly and without serious opposition. The success of Obama in acquiring the long-denied powers of Nixon is one of his most remarkable, if ignoble accomplishments.

Former Constitutional lawyer, Glenn Greenwald, also invoked references to comparison to Richard Nixon when he wrote this last year about Obama:

We supposedly learned important lessons from the abuses of power of the Nixon Administration, and then of the Bush Administration: namely, that we don’t trust government officials to exercise power in the dark, with no judicial oversight, with no obligation to prove their accusations. Yet now we hear exactly this same mentality issuing from Obama, his officials and defenders to justify a far more extreme power than either Nixon or Bush dreamed of asserting: He’s only killing: The Bad Citizens so there’s no reason to object!

I think the most dangerous man in public office is Attorney General, Eric Holder. He is the most senior cabinet member responsible for law enforcement, and yet Holder has demonstrated an absolute contempt for the rule of law by lying, or stonewalling the Congress on every scandal that effects his department of government. In one combative congressional hearing, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) tore into Holder for refusing to investigate Islamic radicals in the United States while targeting Christian groups with undue scrutiny.

Of course, the liberal media rushed to find any Democrat-leaning groups, which received similar IRS inquiries. Only three were found compared to the reported hundreds of conservative and Republican-leaning groups, never mind the individuals claiming persecution by the IRS.

It never ceases to amaze me at how the press blindly follows Obama. I can understand their lack of enthusiasm over the IRS harassing conservatives, but revelations of the government spying on fellow reporters should have broken the spell. The liberal media continues to believe that Barack Obama is our nation’s greatest president and these mistakes by his underlings should have no negative reflection on him.

Even though the entire Executive Branch has been taking heat this past week, I don’t see any sign that we have reached a turning point on the path toward tyrannical rule. The federal government has become a monster that once you chop off one its invasive tentacles, two will quickly grow back in its place.

It absolutely astounds me how tolerant people are about the government incursion into their daily lives. It has now been three years since the TSA was allowed to feel up strangers at the airport. And Obama has the power to arrest anyone for any reason in the name of terrorism. When you add the latest breach of trust, I just wonder what would cause the America people to say, “Now, you’ve gone too far.” Because the Bible warns that the last days will be a time of global dictatorship. My fear is that they will wait too long to become outraged.

One of the most glorious benefits the Pre-Trib Rapture offers is the chance to be delivered from the seven-year Tribulation. I hope is that we can add the schemings of a certain Democratic administration to the list.

“Watch ye therefore, and pray always, that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of man”(Luke 21:36).

--Todd

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Demonic Divide

Dark, spiritual forces in high places are at work. There is no groundbreaking revelation in that statement regarding life in this nation and the world today. However, the true nature of the demonic delusion being foisted upon us is something even the most biblically mature among us will continue to miss─I’m convinced─if spiritual antennae aren’t properly attuned.

Additionally, it is time, like no other time before, to put on the whole armor as outlined by the apostle Paul in Ephesians 6:12-18. I perceive a most troubling schism developing amongst the brethren. I refer to those who watch --like the Lord commanded (Mark 13: 37) -- end-times developments in what many believe are the closing hours of the Church Age.

Reports come at us on an increasingly regular basis of behind-the-scenes activities that appear to be─to say the least─bizarre. I’m talking about things the equivalent of claims/reports of the U.S. Government actually planning and carrying out the assassination of John F. Kennedy─of George W. Bush’s administration being behind the planning and attack on the World Trade Center towers on September 11, 2011.

I’m certain that the reader of this essay has read the many articles of such mind-boggling reports─all written/presented as if they are unassailable truth. These accounts spring from unseen fly-on-the-wall sources that give the impression they personally witness the making of plans to imprison believers or to implant us all with computer chips while we sleep, or…whatever the conspiratorial imagination can conjure.

I will already have angered those who send such email with that word-portrait, no doubt. But before my thoughts on your side of the issue raise the blood pressure with words of anger, “I’ll never send him another article,” please hear me out. There is the other side of the developing schism. It, too, is deleterious to the task of being a watchman on the wall in these critical days leading up to our Lord’s catastrophic intervention into the affairs of mankind.

I’m talking about the mindset that writes off as complete lunacy every report issued by the likes of Alex Jones crossing their computer screens. To fold up the antennae of discernment and simply lump all things that don’t slip smoothly through one’s anti-conspiratorial filter, just might, in my view, constitute a deadly delusion in the making.

The rift, I sense developing between the watchmen during these fleeting days of the age is, inflicted by the father of lies, himself. It is all part of the great, spiritual, wrestling match Paul warns about in Ephesians 6:12. The devil likes to pit one side against the other, and it is easy for him to do, if the spiritual armor isn’t the battle gear of choice.

One side of the divide most often sees only collusion of governmental diabolists at every level, thus is, understandably, accused by the secular world and fellow Christian watchmen alike of being: conspiracy kooks. The watchmen on the other side of the divide too often, because of fear of guilt by association, run away from any talk of collusion of the human conspiratorial kind, sometimes failing to recognize the ways Satan directs his human minions to plot his end-times mischief.

Paul, mentioned at the beginning of this piece, must have, with his words of Ephesians 6: 12-18, been given his inspired thought particularly to give to this generation so near the return of Jesus Christ. Each Christian should daily put on the whole armor of God. This, obviously, hasn’t happened, and likely won’t happen.

The vast numbers within the body of Christ are turned inward, or in directions other than watching and yearning for the Lord’s coming back to put an end to this evil world-system. If we are honest, we must say that the body of Christ, as a whole today, isn’t even pursuing the Great Commission left to us by Jesus─to carry the gospel to the whole world and to do whatsoever He taught and instructed.

We must not seek out only the strange, secretive, evil doings in the dark, underworld of governmental collusion so as to make the findings shocking or exciting. Neither should we think that such collusion doesn’t exist at all, and point to all reports as lunacy. Let’s not wrestle violently, angrily against each other, but combine, with reasoned purpose, against our true foe. Here is how to dress for the battle that will surely grow more intensive by the hour as the Rapture of the church approaches.

“Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might. Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.

Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness; and your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace; above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked.

And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God: Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints” (Ephesians 6:10-18).

--Terry

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