Jun 28, 2021

The State of News Today

About 20 years ago, 70% of the news we posted on the Rapture Ready News page came from a link found on Yahoo.com. About 10% of other news links came from CNN.com. Today, we rarely ever use Yahoo or CNN as a news source.

These two sites have become so biased in their news coverage, the vast majority of their articles contain leftist propaganda. You could be reading a news item about wildfires in California, and it would blame Republicans for causing the fires because they have doubts about climate change.

Some news articles from mainstream media sites are basically true; however, we can’t use them on RR because they’re written in the nastiest tone possible. In that case, I’ll look for a conservative site that covered the same subject.

I just took a fresh look at Yahoo news, and I found four articles that had negative news stories about former President Donald Trump. Over the past six years, Yahoo has probably posted 10,000 articles about him, and every one of them has been negative. Their writing is so predictable, I don’t know why they even bother to create a news story. They should just post: “Orange man bad” and leave it at that.

Yahoo could just as well fire all its reporters and replace them with software that only posts negative things about Republicans. You probably only need 10 lines of code to fish out the following two quotes:

Schumer said there is a ‘rot at the center’ of the Republican Party while making a speech to advance the For the People Act in the Senate on Tuesday. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said there is a “rot at the center of the modern Republican Party” over efforts to restrict voting after former President Donald Trump’s “big lie” of voter fraud in the 2020 election.

Mitch McConnell held his entire Republican caucus together to effectively kill the Democrats’ highest legislative priority of the year, a transformative 888-page bill intended to make it easier to vote, rein in the wealthy’s impact on elections and outlaw the gerrymandering process that constructs partisan congressional districts.

Right now, NBC’s Saturday Night Live is in reruns until this fall. Last year the show would make lame jokes about Trump, and the news media would report these jokes as being news. Yes, the radical leftist SNL would make fun of Trump, and for some odd reason, this would be seen as newsworthy by other leftist news outlets.

With the mainstream media having become useless as a source for news, we’ve had to turn to secondary news outlets for reports on world events. Some of our viewers think that we should not post news articles from sites that they disagree with. The site I get the most complaints about is Natural News over its anti-Covid-19 vaccine articles.

About a month ago, Natural News ran a story that misquoted a French virologist, claiming he said everyone who had gotten a vaccine would be dead in two years. We obviously didn’t post this on RR because it would be silly to think 2.6 billion are going to die in the next couple years. Otherwise, I allow stories about people getting the vaccine and then dying to be posted because I think it’s useful information.

If there was something seriously wrong with the COVID-19 vaccine, the liberal media is not going to tell us. Jeff Bezos kicked a doctors’ organization off his AWS server service because he didn’t like the views it had about the vaccine. If anyone dares suggest the possibility that the virus may have escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology lab, all the press will come after them.

The days are now long gone when you could trust the news to be 95% correct. For a growing number of subjects, truth is determined by the political views of the news article’s author. It seems that even with many conservative sites, their news should be listed in the opinion sections.

I find it very regrettable that we now have to question the reliability of all news. This is to be expected for the time we live in. The devil has been able to freely sow lies because we are in the last of the last days.

“The enemy that sowed them is the devil; the harvest is at the end of the world; and the reapers are the angels. As therefore the tares are gathered and burned in the fire; so shall it be in the end of this world…. So shall it be at the end of the world: the angels shall come forth, and sever the wicked from among the just” (Matthew 13:39-40, 49).

–Todd


Trending Temple Tensions

Author’s Note: I use some text, to some extent in this article, from my recent book with Tom Horn—ANTICHRIST and the Final Solution.

It is the most contested land in all the world. Diplomats fear it is the one place on earth that could ignite war that couldn’t be stopped. If conflict ever got started over this piece of real estate, nuclear exchanges could ultimately result in and bring about World War III.

God Himself considers this promontory the most important point on the planet. In Heaven’s economy, it is His touchstone to His creation called man.

All of this was fulfillment of prophecy. Daniel the prophet was told centuries earlier that the city, Jerusalem, and the sanctuary, the Jewish Temple, would be completely thrown down, with not one stone left upon another (Daniel 9: 26–27). The Temple Mount remains without a Temple of God until this day.

Muslim structures dot the flattened surface, with the Dome of the Rock, the golden, domed structure so familiar to anyone who has seen Jerusalem’s skyline, the central feature.

Tensions between Jews and Muslims constitute the fuse that makes this landmark the singular most volatile point on earth.

The Jewish Temple will, God’s Word promises, again dominate the promontory. But the next Temple—the Third Temple—will be the center of history’s most horrific era, the Tribulation, also known as “Daniel’s seventieth week.”

The Temple that Solomon built had at its heart the Holy of Holies, a 15-foot cubed inner sanctum wherein sat 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 tore from top to bottom, giving man direct access to God the Father through that sin-sacrifice, God’s only Begotten Son.

There will be a Third Temple built at a future time, Bible prophecy says.

The Third Temple is foretold to be in place during the last seven years of human history prior to Christ’s return.

Exactly when the Third Temple will be built is an unknown factor. The prophetic Word tells only that it will exist during the seven years of Tribulation—specifically, at the three and one-half-year mark of those seven years.

Many who study the Third Temple matter believe that structure must begin well in advance of the Tribulation era. The completion of such an edifice, they believe, will take quite a measure of time. Others hold that the Jews are even now contemplating the building of a tent-like structure like Moses’ tabernacle.

They believe that worship, with sacrifices reinstituted, could be going on in such a place while the more grandiose Temple is constructed around the temporary structure.

With such history and Biblical prophecy that is involved with this place called the Temple Mount, then, it is no wonder that at this late hour we see such tensions developing. Satan and his minions—both supernatural and human—are determined to exert earthly power and authority over this promontory chosen by God to bring salvation to the fallen human race.

And tension there is at this late hour of the age.

The following report chronicles those mounting troubles.

Clashes broke out between Border Police and Palestinian worshipers at the Temple Mount on Friday, Israel Police said in a statement.

Video footage taken at the compound shows Palestinians throwing rocks at a unit of Border Police officers, who in turn responded with firing rubber bullets to quell the unrest.

Nine Palestinians were injured, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent.

Israel Police notes that the clashes began after Friday afternoon prayers, when several hundred worshipers made their way into the compound via the Chain Gate.

At the end of prayers, several dozen youths began to throw stones at the police officers stationed at the entrance to the compound.

The Jerusalem District Commander of the Border Police force ordered officers to locate suspects involved in disturbing the peace.

Police said 16 people were arrested for throwing stones and rioting.

The unrest occurred after the Air Force conducted airstrikes on Hamas targets throughout the Gaza Strip on Thursday night in response to Palestinians continuing to launch arson balloon attacks against Israeli communities near the strip.

Clashes at the Temple Mount were one of the purported reasons that Hamas and its allied terror groups in the Gaza Strip began firing the opening salvos resulting in the IDF’s Operation Guardian of the Walls, and have since warned that Jerusalem is a “red line.”…

Meanwhile, violent confrontations erupted between Palestinians and IDF soldiers near Beita in the West Bank, with at least 47 Palestinians hurt from tear gas inhalation and rubber-tipped bullets, according to the Red Crescent. (“Temple Mount: Clashes Breakout between Israeli Police, Palestinians,” Jerusalem Post, Israel News, June 18, 2021)

An excellent video analyzing the situation can be accessed at the following:

Israel and in particular the Temple Mount are at the very heart of Bible prophecy yet future. Things developing at a tremendous pace must certainly mean that major fulfillment for the wind-up of the age is at hand.

Again, it is crucial that we alert our family, friends and all within our spheres of influence that they must know Jesus Christ for salvation to avoid the most terrible times of human history just ahead.

That heavenly formula for escape of that coming Tribulation and from Hell for eternity is the following:

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

28 Jun 2021

The Israelis Get It

I was interviewed a couple weeks ago by a reporter with the Jewish News Syndicate, about recent polls that indicate evangelical Millennials are turning away from Israel.

Duh. I’ve been saying this for 10 years. Although I respect a number of pro Israel Christian organizations, a number of them seem to have not wanted to address this. At least not in the way I think it needs to be done, which is to say “outing” evangelical leaders embracing the Palestinian Narrative. When you confront someone like this, it is a person from your own neighborhood and community. And if you are prominent at all in evangelical circles, it can hurt your bottom-line, because at some level, cross-promotion is a thing.

Think a prominent Christian head of a pro Israel organization that also is a best-selling author and speaker. Is that person likely to confront the pro Palestinians within evangelicalism? Not bloody likely. It would be as likely as Charles Stanley admonishing his son publicly for his outrageous comments about the Bible. It just isn’t done in polite company.

If you had decided to expose Bill and Lynne Hybels’ pro Palestinian bent a decade or more ago, you would have run afoul of the vast Willow Creek network. Likewise, if you challenge Rick Warren’s dissing of Bible prophecy study, you are poking the eye of a media giant. In many cases, The Purpose Driven Life replaced actual Bible study in Southern Baptist churches. Think I’m wrong? Investigate the vast sums Zondervan Publishing put into shoving this book down the throats of SBC churches. It made Warren a multi-millionaire, among other things, and helped cement his reputation as a Church Growth Movement expert.

For so many reasons, a downturn in support for Israel in churches escalated some years ago. That’s why the recent polling data has alarmed so many people. But I’ve been contacted by a few Israelis this week and they understand it very well. Ironically, better than many American evangelical leaders.

Even with the departure (for now) of Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israelis will not top cultivating relationships with Christians. They are smart to do so. If such cultivation is not maintained, it will increase the slide away from the Jewish state. From the article:

“A recent poll commissioned by two University of North Carolina at Pembroke professors—Mordechai Inbari and Kirill Bumin—showing a sharp drop in support for Israel among the younger set has raised some eyebrows.

“It found that young evangelical support for Israel had plunged to 33.6 percent from 69 percent in a 2018 poll. Those supporting the Palestinian side rose to 24.3 percent, up from 6 percent in 2018. Those supporting neither side stood at 42.2 percent.

“The poll focused on evangelicals ages 18 to 29, and was conducted between March 22 and April 2 by the Barna Group, a polling and research firm focusing on issues of faith and culture.”

Interestingly, the Barna Group is well-known among evangelicals. Awhile back, George Barna stepped away from the operation and Dave Kinnaman became president.

You should know that among Barna’s prominent clients are World Vision and Habitat for Humanity. Kinnaman himself is comfortable in what I could call center-left circles within evangelicalism.

World Vision issued a report some years ago that softened the role of Hamas in conflicts with Israel. Habitat for Humanity of course is Jimmy Carter’s endeavor and a bigger anti-Semite you’d be pressed to find.

My point is, I’m sure Barna’s polling about Israel is accurate, but they are part of the community that likes the Palestinians and the Israelis…not so much.

I know there are committed churches out there that love Israel. I know there are pastors and individual congregants that passionately love the Jewish people. But those voices aren’t heard as much as the voices of the Warrens of the world.

We must band together and get serious about Israel support in this country. The numbers don’t lie. The love of the younger generation for Israel is growing cold.

Night is approaching.

Jim1fletcher@yahoo.com

www.thegodthatanswers.com