29 May 2023

We Are Losing the Transgender Battle

I’ve been watching the conflict over transgenderism with great wonderment. A secular mind would think that this debate is a bit silly because it’s about a very tiny part of our society, which is less than one percent. Any Christian should know that the struggle is over the fate of our nation.

The Gay Pride battle has been lost, and transgender advocates are using the same tactics to win over the minds of Americans. In the 1980s, there was no major corporation that would dare say that they support the homosexual agenda. AT&T began supporting gay events in liberal cities like San Francisco. The financial support was handled under the table. When people found out that AT&T was supporting Gay Pride, the main company said that was just the action of our local offices.

There are 5,000 major companies in the US, and I don’t know of any one of them that would now stand by biblical values on sexuality. Chick-Fil-A is often thought to be an anti-gay firm, but it has basically said it just sells chicken and doesn’t have any problem with all things LGBTQ+.

There are several activist groups that monitor all companies. One has a rating system that ranks firms on how well they fly the rainbow flag. These activities will stop by the corporate headquarters of firms and talk to human resources about how they can improve their ranking. Some major companies have dozens of people whose job is to promote the LGBTQ agenda. I did 20 years in the Air Force, and I was surprised to learn there is now an office of Inclusion and Diversity.

A major problem with the spread of transgenderism is that many support it despite the fact that it harms their gender. I found a video that had five women talking about trans rights. One of them said that it is very unfair to her as a female athlete to have former men compete in women’s sports. She said, “I need to utilize every option to go against people of my same sex.” She saw it as almost pointless to race against someone who still has a man’s body.

The other women acted as if she had just said blacks and whites should not compete against each other in sports. To promote fairness, they would gladly destroy all women’s sports.

The Bud Light Dylan Mulvaney fiasco has gotten much attention. Sales of the product are down 30%. The majority of the people who drink the product are male. This dumb move is like if the Tampons Tampax company decided to have shock Jock Howard Stern do promotions for their product.

The CEO of Anheuser-Busch InBev refuses to apologize for hiring Mulvaney. He has called the move a misunderstanding. Bud Light is now running ads that show Clydesdales horses and the American flag. The firm has offered distributors free beer. Saying they made a mistake would cause their diversity rating to go down.

I am amazed at how cultural norms can flip on their head over time. The Coon Chicken Inn was a fried chicken restaurant chain located in the Pacific Northwest from the late 1920s through the late 1940s. The chain was famous for its “Coon” logo, a caricatured African-American male rooted in 19th-century minstrel theatre and early 20th-century advertising. The most prominent manifestation of the Coon caricature was the 12ft high “Coon head” that served as the entrance to each restaurant location.

The logo is so shocking by today’s standards, you have to see it for yourself. Cut and paste Coon Chicken Inn into a Google search and press the images tab. When the restaurant was in its prime, I’m sure people had no idea there was a racial connection with the logo.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has gotten into a fight with the Walt Disney Company over a law that he helped pass. It bars teachers from talking to young students about sexuality. Years ago, it would be unthinkable for a non-parent to tell an 8-year-old boy that he may have been born the wrong sex.

The involvement of children is the key difference between the Gay Pride battle and the transgender battle. It is sick to read about children being given sex change operations and hormone treatments. Jesus said that the corruption of children is one of the greatest evils that someone can commit. We’ve reached the point where people are destroying not just a child’s mind but also their body.

“But whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to sin, it is better for him that a heavy millstone be hung around his neck, and that he be drowned in the depths of the sea” (Matthew 18:6 NASB).

— Todd


Tracking Toward the Tribulation Temple

Stage-setting for prophetic fulfillment surrounding all things Israel unfolds apace while we continue to examine developments on an hour-by-hour basis.

There continue to be constant intrigues involving interactions around and upon Moriah, with Muslim-Jewish contentions keeping an atmosphere for potential war-brewing. Yet there is a drumbeat to produce peace, with hostile insistence at its core that Israel give in to enemy demands.

Incoming rockets, intended to weaken Israel’s resolve to resist the need to make peace, only harden IDF’s dedication to punish the terrorist organizations. We get reports often of IDF forces taking out their leaders with precision drones and other strikes. Too many times, American mainstream media and left-wing political entities take the side of the Israel-hating enemies of the Jewish state.

Yet preparation continues for a time when, the religious factions in Israel believe, peace will reign and worship can again take place on the Temple Mount.

At present, that eventuation seems a pipe dream. Any such attempt to reestablish worship by the Jews on the Temple Mount would certainly bring down the wrath of all Islam. Yet the preparation continues.

The most previous Jewish Temple was destroyed in AD 70 when General Titus and the Roman legions tore down every stone of the structure. This was exactly as Jesus had foretold while teaching on the Mount of Olives. However, the Lord, while speaking during that discourse, indicated there will be a future Temple –the one that the abomination of desolation (Antichrist) would sit in, declaring himself to be God.

So there must be a Third Temple – thus because God Himself had said so.

We have watched developments, as stated above, intensely examining everything surrounding modern Israel. For example, we have seen that the implements of worship in that future Temple are already prepared. The red heifers have apparently been produced, which will act as cleansing purification in the worship process. Even a rail system is in preparation that, the experts say, is meant to bring Jews in from around the world to the Temple Mount once the edifice is constructed.

In the latest regard for that construction, the following item is of interest to the process of observing these times so near the Tribulation era:

Haim Dotan, an acclaimed architect who has won several international awards and also serves as a professor of architecture at leading institutes in China, recently became involved in the ambitious project of designing the third Jewish Temple in Jerusalem.

Known for his extravagant projects, such as the Zhangjiajie Grand Canyon Glass Bridge in China – renowned as the tallest glass-bottomed bridge in the world – Dotan last year joined the right-wing activist and literature scholar Professor Hillel Weiss and pitched a session of the Jerusalem International Conference: “From the Umbilicus Mundi to the Four Corners of the Earth and Back.”

The conference, scheduled to take place this summer in Jerusalem, will be organized by the Yad Ben Zvi Institute, a prestigious research center in Israel. Dotan’s pitch, “Building Jerusalem, the temple city, and the road to peace,” was divided into three sections.

The first was dedicated to the transportation and economy of the future “temple city” of the Israeli capital. The next pitch, entitled “From Vision to Practice,” described future plans for the Jerusalem of the Third Temple era, inspired by biblical sources.

“In the center of the plan, an open structure will be built above the Old City of Jerusalem. It will be shaped like a tent, a cloud, or a mountain. Six or eight bridges will connect constructive towers which will combine stairways and elevators, supporting upper Jerusalem,” the outline seen by i24NEWS stated…

This may be another far-fetched attempt that is ignored by authorities, but the fact that a prestigious architect – who is secular and doesn’t have any political background – is involved in such a project makes this case all the more interesting, if not more tangible.

Plans to rebuild the third Jewish Temple on the Temple Mount, the holiest site in Judaism and the third holiest in Islam, are not new but have mostly faced strong resistance. In 1990, a deadly riot erupted on the Mount after a fringe Jewish group tried to lay the cornerstone of a third temple… (The architect and activist who want to build Jerusalem’s third Temple, by Uri Shapira – Senior Producer, Holy Land Uncovered, I24NEWS, May 19, 2023).

David, king of Israel, wanted to build a house wherein God could reside. Jehovah, who called David “a man after my own heart,” proposed the question of whether He could be contained in such a structure. The answer, of course, is no… of course not.

The Lord did appreciate the thought, though, obviously. He told David that he couldn’t build a place where God could dwell among men in that fashion. David had too much blood on his hands from all the wars that he had fought to defend Israel and acquire the land God gave the chosen people.

Instead, God told David that Solomon, David’s son, would build God such a dwelling place.

The Temple that Solomon built had at its heart the Holy of Holies, a 15 ft cubed inner sanctum wherein set the Ark of the Covenant, the elaborately prepared container wherein the Shekinah Glory, the very presence of God, would dwell.

That spot is still somewhere upon the Temple Mount – Mt Moriah, most scholars believe. Religious Jews still are afraid to walk upon the Temple Mount grounds for fear of accidentally treading upon that one spot on earth where God chose to reside.

The Temple and the Holy of Holies constituted God’s Touchstone to humanity – and particularly to the Jews. It is the place where Abraham was to offer Isaac, before God intervened with the ram caught by its horns in a thicket, thus providing the sacrifice Abraham made to the God of Heaven.

Not far from the spot of the Holy of Holies is Golgotha, where the Son of God – Jesus the Christ – the once-and-for-all Sacrifice for all the sins of mankind – hung on the cross. When Christ died, the veil in the Temple’s Holy of Holies rent from top to bottom, giving man direct access to God the Father through that sin-Sacrifice, God’s only Begotten Son.

Solomon’s Temple, then, was the first Temple. It was the most glorious in beauty that stunned even the queen of Sheba when her eyes fell upon its splendor.

There will be a Third Temple built at a future time, Bible prophecy says. Solomon’s was the first Temple. Nebuchadnezzar destroyed it in 587 BC.

The building of the Second Temple took place following Israel’s Babylonian captivity. It lasted from 516 BC to 70 AD. It became known as Herod’s Temple when it was commissioned by the king to be greatly expanded in size and beautified to the extent it was considered magnificent by those who looked upon it.

As stated above, this Temple was destroyed by the Roman military in 70 AD.

The Third Temple is foretold to be in place during the last 7 years of human history prior to Christ’s return. Daniel prophesied about Antichrist: “…in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease…” (Dan 9:27b) This last, most vicious tyrant will enter the Third Temple and desecrate it.

This Tribulation Temple, like all other developments toward fulfilling the coming 7 years of hell on earth, Bible prophecy calls Daniel’s seventieth week. It can be constructed very quickly, according to those who study the matters involved. Many believe, as do I, that the rebuilding of the Temple will be a major stipulation required in order to get Israel to agree to a peace covenant of 7 years with its blood-vowed enemies – the covenant made with death and hell” (Isaiah 28:15, 18).

That 7 years era of horror must be very near. All who are left behind following the Rapture will have to endure the time Jesus, Himself, said will be the worst time of all human history (Matthew 24:21).

As we always say, you don’t want to be here during that time of horror worse than even the death camps of Hitler, Stalin and Mao. Here again is how to be ready to go to Jesus when He calls in the Rapture.

“That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation” (Romans 10:9-10).

–Terry