Luke records a spectacular miracle in Chapter 8 that happened in the country of the Gerasenes, where a severely demonic man, whose name was Legion, was delivered from his possession. In this powerful account, we read – Luke 8:32 “Now there was a herd of many swine feeding there on the mountain; and the demons entreated Him to permit them to enter the swine. And He gave them permission. The demons came out from the man and entered the swine; and the herd RUSHED DOWN THE STEEP BANK INTO THE LAKE, and were drowned.”

There is a well-known story – The Pied Piper of Hamlyn – where the Piper led the rats of the town, at the sound of his flute, to the river, and they were drowned. Later on, he led away the children of the town to an unknown land.

What do these two accounts have in common?

I am a life member of National Geographic magazine, and in the last few years, more and more, I am becoming annoyed at the increasing references to climate change. It is so bad, it is being forced into many articles. We could say, “Get on the prevailing bandwagon.”

Sometimes, I like to watch some space science fiction movies, and today, I saw one on YouTube called “Solar Storm.” The theme was that great solar flares were about to burn up the earth because they were igniting the ever-increasing methane caused by climate change. This term is becoming like a cracked record, and people use it even without thinking what it means. They have joined themselves to a mass acceptance of the term so it becomes a green religion.

In the examples I just gave, what is the common element?

[Regarding Climate Change, I don’t accept the prevailing philosophy behind it, but I think there is a possibility that God is putting His finger on a number of weather events to wake man up to the fact He is still in control. Currently, China is recovering from massive flooding, some places receiving around 700 mm of rain in 24 hours [28 inches]. Toronto has had its floods. Where I live, in December, we had between 50 and 55 inches of rain in 5 days, and shortly after, another 11 inches overnight.

The ancient world was awakened to the fact of God’s rule and authority in Noah’s flood, and I think these more outstanding weather events right now are pointing to the coming Tribulation judgment on the world. They are God’s voice of warning to a world that has turned its back on the Creator.]

Here is yet another example – John 10:3-4 “To him the doorkeeper opens, and the sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name AND LEADS THEM OUT. When he puts forth all his own, he goes before them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice.”

There is the good leading and the bad leading. The good pertains ONLY to the Lord’s sheep. The bad belongs to the world. This word is full of the bad leading. Religion is when an inner need is trying to be satisfied, be it the religion of paganism or the religion of climate change; even the religion of dead, ritualistic christianity. Without Christ, the empty soul remains empty but ever strives to seek fulfillment; a life buoy to grasp in the turbulent sea. What is common in these articles is the pitch toward destruction in a herd mentality. Follow the leader, but don’t think!

Satan is the Pied Piper leading away the children of Adam to certain destruction in the river of hell.” For the past week, I have watched so many of the speeches at the Republican National Convention (RNC), I dare say more than most of you. Certain things here have impressed me about this. (I try to keep abreast of things.)

The first has to be the enthusiasm, and that is because of the expectant victory the faithful Republicans have in their sights. The second thing is the many references to God and the Lord’s help in prayer and other aspects as well, regarding Christian values and morality. Nearly all speakers honored God with words and sentiments. I know some of you will come back at me and say that this is an appeal to the conservative voter to vote Republican. I acknowledge this may be a factor, but I also believe some of those speakers were genuine.

I dare say I would not be hearing such things at a Democrat Convention with its misled humanism and destructive policies. The last two things I watched today were Trump’s testimony of the shooting and his acknowledgment of God’s providential care. I think he is very somber about this. The other one was Franklin Graham, who spoke and then led the convention in prayer.

It concerns me that men and women try to advance in blindness to truth and godliness, and actually, today, are advancing in the opposite direction – away from God. Many Pied Pipers are leading them to destruction.

This world’s sheep (as opposed to God’s sheep) blindly follow facets of the world’s humanism and fractured thinking. They know no better. 2 Corinthians 4:3-4 “Even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing, in whose case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ who is the image of God.” That is sad, as they are rushing headlong into the river of destruction as Legion’s demons did in the pigs, into the lake.

Can we convince them otherwise? Many more now turn off you if you say anything. These last days are becoming more arrogant and violent and more hardened to godly thinking. I am sure you know that and see that.

Regarding Trump and Make America Great Again, I have said in the past that things won’t get better, but rather they will get worse. Speaking of the last days of the Church age, Paul wrote – 2 Timothy 3:12-13 “Indeed, all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. Evil men and impostors WILL PROCEED FROM BAD TO WORSE, deceiving and being deceived.” That makes me think that maybe Trump won’t be elected for some reason, BUT…

If the Lord tarries and the trump of God is on standby, and we do enter a Trump rule, then those days may be likened to the rule of Josiah, a godly King as was David. The prophets Haggai and Jeremiah ministered at that time, and the reforms implemented by Josiah were just amazing.

His own grandfather was the worst godless King in Judah’s history and had the longest reign, 55 years – 2 Kings 21:16 “Moreover, Manasseh shed very much innocent blood until he had filled Jerusalem from one end to another besides his sin with which he made Judah sin, in doing evil in the sight of the LORD” Manasseh’s son, (Josiah’s father) Amon, was just as bad.

Out of that dire wickedness that flooded the nation came Josiah and all his godly reforms. However, when you study Jeremiah, you see that the entire nation was corrupt, from priest and elder to all people. People were rushing to destruction as Hamlyn’s rats did. When the godly king died, his sons succeeded him, and they were vile and evil in all their ways.

What does this show? You can have a good person at the top, but evil festers underneath and grows worse. That is what will happen to the USA no matter who is at the top. My nation is like that already. A greater attitude to godliness is found in the USA, though, as the USA has a higher percentage of Christians. Christians follow the Lord, but the others follow Satan down to the destructive river.

Jeremiah was told to go speak to Judah several times by the LORD, but he was also told that the people would not listen because their eyes were blind and their ears deaf. However, the LORD is longsuffering, not wishing to visit destruction on His earthly people, and He gave them opportunity after opportunity. In focusing on the USA, is this their last opportunity? Why was Trump spared by God? Jeremiah preached right to the end, and God’s opportunity was open right to the end. The world is right at the end of its tether. I would say its very end and America’s last chance. Is the “last Trump” the last chance before the “last trump” sounds – 1 Corinthians 15:52 “In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at THE LAST TRUMP: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed” (KJV).

Biden’s White House has carried the nation closer to godless implosion possibly more than any other President, and he has led them to the river. He has been a Pied Piper. Those who honor God, He will honor; those who despise Him, He will judge swiftly.

I know when things happen that have tragedy as the outcome or are potentially tragic, people get a wake-up call. Why did God spare Donald Trump? It was only a centimeter of deliverance, a serendipitous turn of the head. We, as Christians, don’t believe in chance. The situation for David 3,000 years ago is the same for us today; the same for Donald Trump – Psalm 31:15 “MY TIMES ARE IN YOUR HAND. Deliver me from the hand of my enemies, and from those who persecute me.”

Let our prayer be the previous verse in that Psalm – Psalm 31:14 “But as for me, I trust in You, O LORD. I say, ‘You are my God.'” May Donald Trump come to a full salvation experience, learning humility and dependence on God. God’s hand is coming in severe destruction, as we know, beginning with the red horse and continuing until Armageddon. The Lord’s own people will not be here for all that, but the time is short.

I will be interested in seeing if any speaker on the Democrat side bothers to acknowledge God in any way in their convention coming up. Kamala Harris will probably be the endorsed candidate. I don’t think you will see any reference to God (maybe only a token reference), for how can a Christian ever be a member of the Democrats when their platform is built upon abortion, evolution, gender destruction, hate for Israel, homosexuality, WOKEism, and so many, many more anti-God practices, all underwritten by humanism?

I don’t want this to be a political coverage, though I am speaking on the signs of the time. I find politics divisive and still have concerns when Christians are too involved in politics, as they must be strong and well-committed. The political scene has become a bit of a dirty game.

My interest in politics, and I do follow fairly closely BUT not involved, is for this reason – Matthew 16:1-3 “The Pharisees and Sadducees came up, and testing Him, asked Him to show them a sign from heaven. But He answered and said to them, ‘When it is evening, you say, “It will be fair weather for the sky is red,” and in the morning, “There will be a storm today, for the sky is red and threatening.” Do you know how to discern the appearance of the sky but CANNOT DISCERN THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES?'”

Jesus was among His people, the Messiah in their midst, and they did not know it; they could not discern the signs of the times. I believe Christians are obligated to notice the things happening around them (discerning the times) and to live and act accordingly. The churches are failing in this regard deplorably, and often, the people follow the blind leaders of the blind. RaptureReady is a bastion of awareness in this matter, and God will bless the contributors and the readers.

I find our times difficult ones. People are becoming more and more resilient against the gospel, more arrogant and self-willed, and more annoying, I find (hoping that is not the victim’s complaint). I can understand Christians who have fought the good fight just wanting the Lord to come. We should all be wanting His coming for us in the clouds when He comes to take home His Bride.

We want the Rapture, that glorious calling of the saints in an instant; a calling in power and victory to carry us into the Lord’s presence for ever more. Lord Jesus, come!

ronaldf@aapt.net.au

 

Ezekiel 37:1-14 describes the nation of Israel as a desolate valley of dry bones, devoid of life and significance. Ezekiel, like most of his fellow Israelites, had given up on the idea of ever being restored as a country. They were now in the land of Babylon, exiled from everything they had held dear. The temple that had been built by King Solomon hundreds of years before was now a ruinous heap. Jerusalem was in ruins, having been leveled to the ground by the armies of Nebuchadnezzar. The last king of Judah, Zedekiah, had seen his two sons killed and had his eyes gouged out, carried off as a prisoner, with most of the royal family killed or put in prison. It looked as if the Davidic dynasty had been, for all practical purposes, wiped out.

It was at its lowest point in Israel’s history that God took Ezekiel to the barren lands, showed him the valley of dry bones, and told him to prophesy to them. Obeying God, he did so and saw in the vision the bones being placed back together, muscles and flesh placed upon the bones, and the breath of life given to them, becoming a mighty army.

God showed Ezekiel that He was not done with Israel and that their restoration to the land would become a reality. God’s covenant with Israel that He had made with Abraham thousands of years earlier would never be broken nor thwarted by the plans and schemes of empires, tyrants, or kingdoms. God promised Abraham that whoever blessed Israel would themselves be blessed, and whoever cursed Israel would be cursed (Genesis 12:1-4). This promise holds true today. Despite what some theologians say, God is not finished with Israel. He has never abandoned nor forsaken them. He has, however, punished those nations and empires that have tried to eliminate or make war with them. This is something that the world has yet to learn.

Many Bible teachers and prophecy experts have taught that the valley of dry bones refers to the desolate and horrific conditions of the Jews after the time of the Holocaust (1935-1945) when the survivors of places such as Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, Sobibor, Dachau, and other places were freed by the Allied armies of World War II. We know of the efforts of Corrie Ten Boom, Oskar Schindler, Sir Nicholas Winton, and other brave souls who defied the Nazis in order to rescue the Jews. At the end of the war, however, the Jews had nowhere to go and no one to care for them. Even after their liberation, they found themselves in varied refugee camps and processed but were without a home or homeland.

The British Mandate of 1917 had only allowed a fixed number of Jews to enter the area known as “Palestine” before World War II. This strict quota system infuriated the Zionists, the group of Jews who wanted to re-establish the nation of Israel, such as David Ben-Gurion (who would be the first prime minister of Israel when it declared its independence in 1948). Great Britain had ruled Palestine since 1918 as part of its empire, yet even after World War II, only allowed a small percentage of Jewish refugees to enter the nation due to increasing protest and aggression by the Arab nations.

The United Nations, which had been established in 1945, had promised the Jews a homeland that would encompass not only what would be the state of Israel but also the area known as the Trans-Jordan, which is known today as the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. Opposition from the Arab nations made the UN reduce the area of land for a Jewish state to what is Israel today, and even that area was reduced, with Jordan out as a possible settlement. It seems as if the world wanted Israel to remain a valley of dry bones, but God is never intimidated by the plans of men (Psalm 2:1-12). Israel has flesh, blood, bone, and breath from the supernatural hand of the Living God, and that will never change.

In November 1947, fifty years after the declaration of the Zionist cause by Theodor Herzl (1860-1904), the UN voted to establish a Jewish homeland in what had been the ancient borders of the country. The Arab nations had voted against it, but other nations, including Stalinist Russia, voted in the affirmative. The British government was to leave Palestine and hand it over to Jewish control the next year.

On May 14, 1948, in the city of Tel Aviv, the leaders of the Jewish delegation, headed by David Ben-Gurion, declared the birth of the state of Israel. President Harry S. Truman recognized the new nation fifteen minutes after its declaration. Since then, the USA has been one of the staunchest allies of Israel, with some rough patches occurring over time. The new nation had to fight for its life in the first two years of its existence due to attacks from Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Iraq. Each time that Israel was attacked, she gained further territory. This also happened during the Six-Day War of 1967, where the Israel Defense Force captured Jerusalem, the Sinai Peninsula, the Golan Heights, and the West Bank of what had been part of the Kingdom of Jordan.

In 1982, Israel gave the Sinai back to Egypt as part of a peace treaty. The Yom Kippur War of 1973 almost wiped the nation off the map, and if not for the assistance of the USA under the administration of President Richard Nixon, it might have happened.

Israel’s tense relations with the world, as well as with her Arab neighbors, have not decreased in the seventy-plus years of its existence. The ongoing war in Gaza between the IDF, Hamas, and Hezbollah has been in the news since last October when Hamas and Hezbollah forces, financed by Iran, invaded the nation and killed over 1,000 men, women, and children. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to wipe out the terrorist groups and strike Iran’s proxy states with everything they have. The current administration has tried to pressure Israel into a cease-fire between them and their foes and has withheld aid at some point for refusing to do so.

The media and propaganda from the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), Israel’s oldest enemy in the region, have used this war to drum up support for Palestine and the destruction of Israel, a movement that nearly 30 % of American youth support on college campuses, along with the growing anti-Semitism worldwide.

The Bible says that Israel, especially Jerusalem, would become a “Cup of trembling” (Zechariah 12:2) and that there would be no nation that would come to her aid in the last days. Unfortunately, this includes the USA as well, and we see this happening with more frequency as this current administration tries to make nice with Iran and the other mortal foes of Israel. We see more so-called “Christian ministries” that oppose the state and policies of Israel, and anti-Semitism is growing in many congregations and denominations. The teaching of “replacement theology,” which states God is through with Israel and the blessings that were promised to it now refer exclusively to the church, is a major concern to those of us who support and pray for the Jewish people.

Those of us who are true followers of the Lord Jesus Christ must not and cannot turn our back on Israel. It is not a perfect nation. No nation has that characteristic. However, when we read the conclusion of Ezekiel 37:15-28, we see that God is going to not just restore Israel to the land but will make it the centerpiece of the new heaven and earth. The future place for Israel will be one of honor, redemption, and peace under the perfect rule of the King of Kings. In the future, there will be tribulation for the nation, but out of it will come the return of Christ to rule and reign as both King and Messiah forever.

Let us rejoice in the fact that all things will be made new, and we shall be united as Jew and Gentile in a coming world that will know no suffering or heartache. The Jewish people will be in their homeland for all eternity and be the first among nations. That promise from the Word of God is seen by many students and teachers of Bible prophecy as an event that will occur sooner than a lot of people expect as the days draw near to His glorious return (Luke 21:28).

donaldwhitchard@gmail.com

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