Separated from God :: By Randy Nettles

Published on: by RR7 Category:General Articles

I believe we (Americans) are living in the equivalent of the times of ancient Judah when Manasseh came into power. Judah had previously enjoyed prosperity and relative peace during the righteous reign of their former king, Hezekiah. Now, I am not comparing Donald Trump to Hezekiah, as I do not consider Trump to be a particularly righteous person. However, he did what was right in regards to the betterment of his own people (Make America Great Again), as did King Hezekiah.

On the other hand, Manasseh did what was right in his own eyes and did not care how it affected the people in a harmful way. “Manasseh did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord, after the abominations of the heathen, whom the Lord cast out before the children of Israel” (2 Kings 21:1).

Manasseh worshipped idols and the false god Baal instead of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He believed in human (children) sacrifice, as did the heathens in the land of Canaan, for he murdered his own son by making him pass through the fire. Manasseh was an occultist, as he dealt with spirits and wizards. “He wrought much wickedness in the sight of the Lord, to provoke him to anger” (2 Kings 21:6).

King Manasseh also shed very much innocent blood, as he killed and persecuted anybody who opposed him, be it prophets, priests, or princes. The Bible says he filled Jerusalem from one end to another with this blood. Likewise, I am not comparing the evilness of Manasseh to Joe Biden, as Biden is a mere pawn under the control of evil men, powers, and principalities. However, Biden and his administration (as well as the media, big tech., academia, and billionaire progressive elites) are doing what is right in their own eyes with no regard for the American people and our way of life. They are only interested in their goal of accomplishing a one-world government, currency, and religion. These progressive/socialist Democrats copy Manasseh’s evil policy of child sacrifice by passing laws such as Roe vs. Wade, making it legal to abort (murder) unborn babies (up to the time of birth).

Yes, America has shed much innocent blood since 1973, from one end of America to the other.

As I wrote about in “The Fullness of Sins – Part VI,” if you average the three kingdoms of Israel’s (12 united tribes of Israel, 10 tribes of Israel, and the kingdom of Judah) existence, you get 225 years. They had a total of 44 monarchs (43 kings and 1 queen) including Saul, David, and Solomon. In comparison, America has been a nation for 245 years and has had 45 different presidents (Grover Cleveland was elected to two non-consecutive terms).

Manasseh worshipped idols instead of the living God as the New World Order elitists worship the false idols of power, money, sex, and control of the masses. Most of them are either atheists or occultists who worship the false god, Lucifer. Manasseh provoked the Lord to anger by not obeying God’s statutes and commandments, just as the current president of the U.S. and his administration are doing. For Manasseh’s and Judah’s evil actions, God declared, through his prophets, that He would destroy the kingdom of Judah. Will God judge America in a similar manner for our fullness of sins?

“The office of prophet was instituted during the days of Samuel, the last of the judges. Prophets stood with the priests as God’s special representatives. The prophet’s role was to speak for God, confronting the people and their leaders with God’s commands and promises. Because of this confrontational stance and the continuing tendency of people to disobey God, true prophets usually were not very popular. But though their message often went unheeded, they faithfully and forcefully proclaimed the truth.

The book of Isaiah is the first of the writings of the Prophets in the Bible; and Isaiah, the author, is generally considered to be the greatest prophet. He was probably reared in an aristocratic home and was married to a prophetess. In the beginning of his ministry, he was well liked. But, like most prophets, he soon became unpopular because his messages were so difficult to hear. He called the Jewish people to turn from their lives of sin and warned them of God’s judgment and punishment. Isaiah had an active ministry for 60 years (740 BC – 680 BC) before he was executed during Manasseh’s reign (according to tradition). As God’s special messenger to Judah, Isaiah prophesied during the reigns of several of its rulers, including Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, Hezekiah, and Manasseh.” {1}

Although Isaiah chapter 59 was written for the kingdom of Judah in regard to their rulers’ (kings, princes, priests, administrative assistants/elders, judges) great sins against their own citizens, Isaiah’s words are just as relevant to our present time here in America and the rest of the world. We are now facing the same tyranny, persecutions, restrictions, censorship, lawlessness, corruption, and evil (against God and humanity) as the ancient Israelites did under their governmental system.

If you feel as I do, that there is no true justice administered these days (or it is prejudiced in favor of one side) for those who are guilty of crimes, falsehoods, slanders, and fake news, then read and meditate on Isaiah 59. God is not mocked. He will repay in His own time, for He is the ultimate judge and jury.

Isaiah 59

Behold, the Lord’s hand is not shortened,
That it cannot save;
Nor His ear heavy,
That it cannot hear.
But your iniquities have separated you from your God;
And your sins have hidden His face from you,
So that He will not hear.

For your hands are defiled with blood,
And your fingers with iniquity;
Your lips have spoken lies,
Your tongue has muttered perversity.

 No one calls for justice,
Nor does any plead for truth.
They trust in empty words and speak lies;
They conceive evil and bring forth iniquity.
 They hatch vipers’ eggs and weave the spider’s web;
He who eats of their eggs dies,
And from that which is crushed a viper breaks out.

Their webs will not become garments,
Nor will they cover themselves with their works;
Their works are works of iniquity,
And the act of violence is in their hands.
 Their feet run to evil,
And they make haste to shed innocent blood;
Their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity;
Wasting and destruction are in their paths.
 The way of peace they have not known,
And there is no justice in their ways;
They have made themselves crooked paths;
Whoever takes that way shall not know peace.

Sin Confessed

Therefore justice is far from us,
Nor does righteousness overtake us;
We look for light, but there is darkness!
For brightness, but we walk in blackness!
 We grope for the wall like the blind,
And we grope as if we had no eyes;
We stumble at noonday as at twilight;
We are as dead men in desolate places.
We all growl like bears,
And moan sadly like doves;
We look for justice, but there is none;
For salvation, but it is far from us.

For our transgressions are multiplied before You,
And our sins testify against us;
For our transgressions are with us,
And as for our iniquities, we know them:
In transgressing and lying against the Lord,
And departing from our God,
Speaking oppression and revolt,
Conceiving and uttering from the heart words of falsehood.

Justice is turned back,
And righteousness stands afar off;
For truth is fallen in the street,
And equity cannot enter.
 So truth fails,
And he who departs from evil makes himself a prey.

The Redeemer of Zion

Then the Lord saw it, and it displeased Him
That there was no justice.
 He saw that there was no man,
And wondered that there was no intercessor;
Therefore His own arm brought salvation for Him;
And His own righteousness, it sustained Him.
For He put on righteousness as a breastplate,
And a helmet of salvation on His head;
He put on the garments of vengeance for clothing,
And was clad with zeal as a cloak.

According to their deeds, accordingly He will repay,
Fury to His adversaries,
Recompense to His enemies;
The coastlands He will fully repay.
 So shall they fear
The name of the Lord from the west,
And His glory from the rising of the sun;
When the enemy comes in like a flood,
The Spirit of the Lord will lift up a standard against him.

The Redeemer will come to Zion,
And to those who turn from transgression in Jacob,
Says the Lord.”

Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus.

Randy Nettles

nettlesr@suddenlink.net

End notes: {1} Life Application Study Bible – Tyndale House Publishers, Inc. pg. 1310

Feb 8, 2021

Published on: by RR7 Category:Nearing Midnight

Selling America Short

The website Reddit has caused a great deal of excitement in the public financial markets. The social media site caused several heavily shorted stocks to soar in price, forcing hedge fund managers to suffer huge losses. Melvin Capital, which saw losses from its short positions quickly pile up, was forced to get an emergency loan of more than 2 billion dollars from another hedge fund, Citadel.

At first glance, it appears to be a story of the little guy getting the best of Wall Street fat cats. After a few days, the incident is just more evidence that the financial markets are rigged by the rich and powerful.

The 52-week low for the GameStop company is $2.57. After Reddit users began buying the stock, it rose from the $20 range to a high of nearly $500 per share. This is an insane price level for a company that is almost certainly headed for bankruptcy.

The AMC Entertainment Holdings company is involved in the theatrical exhibition business. The company owns, operates, or has interests in theatres. Because of Covid-19, AMC’s stock has traded as low as $1.91. During the buying spree, its stock ran all the way up to $20.

Short squeezes result when short sellers of a stock move to cover their positions, purchasing large volumes of stock relative to the market volume. Purchasing the stock to cover their short positions raises the value of the shorted stock, thus triggering more short sellers to cover their positions by buying the stock.

When you short a stock, the most you can make on your trade is 100%. Your losses are unlimited if the stock rises dramatically in price. If someone shorted GameStop at $20 and closed the trade at the $483 high, they have to pay out 24 times their original investment.

The Reddit crowd then tried to create a short squeeze in the silver market. In early morning trading last Monday, the price of silver was pushed up to $30. Shares of silver miners surged, and retailers of bars and coins around the world struggled to meet demand.

The ruckus began after posts on the Reddit message board urged investors to buy physical silver. One post encouraged the buying of iShares Silver Trust (SLV), an exchange-traded fund whose shares represent ounces of silver sitting in a vault.

This would force the fund to create new shares and buy silver to back them, exposing a shortage of supply and pushing prices up, said the post under the headline “THE BIGGEST SHORT SQUEEZE IN THE WORLD $SLV Silver 25$ to 1000$.”

The problem with buying SLV is that it is likely backed by paper silver contracts that can be created at will. If the price of SLV is driven up past the spot price, the trust can create new shares by buying the physical metal.

Some people promoted the idea of purchasing Comex futures and demanding delivery of the metal when their contract came due. The exchange has changed the rules, which now allow it to settle any contract in cash only. To suppress the price of silver, the Comex increased the margin requirement to $16,500 per contract from $14,000. The increase means those who want to trade silver futures will need to put up more collateral to ensure they can meet their obligations.

The GameStop surge may have caused a few hedge fund managers to spill their coffee when the stock traded in the hundreds. The stock quickly tanked once people realized the company is likely to go the way of Blockbuster. I’m sure there are some hedge funds that shorted like crazy when it hit $480. Now that GameStop is way down, the hedge fund folks are probably out shopping for a new Rolls Royce.

I don’t have a problem with someone taking a short bet against a company. I think it becomes destructive when hedge funds use it to devalue whole industries. Many firms have gone under because they could not raise capital in the market or get a loan because their stock price was too low. We have a deficit in several key metals because big banks have sat on their prices for years.

I know we already have plenty of indications that we are living in the end times. This massive greed on Wall Street is just one more example of the depravity that is the lead-up to the last days.

“Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also . . . No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon . . . But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you” (Matthew 6:19-21, 24, 33, KJV).

— Todd

There’s Method to the Madness

I’m in agreement with my close friend and colleague in Bible prophecy commentary, Daymond Duck. I read where he wrote in effect that he really would like to move away from things surrounding the evils of the political, societal, and cultural war today and deal with strictly Bible prophecy study. But all of this is so closely related to where this generation stands on God’s prophetic timeline that, for the moment, at least, I, like Daymond, must deal yet again with these matters.

It is all maddening to those who still retain rationality while observing the things going on. It’s maddening because thinking from the other side—the side that wants to change America from the nation founded upon Judeo-Christian principles to one along the lines championed by Marx and Mao—seems to have lost all sanity in their plans to force us into compliance. This, we have alluded to before, is because, as Paul points out in Romans chapter 1, their rejection of God has caused development of the collective reprobate mind of verse 28.

Evangelist Mike Gendron correctly assesses a large part of the American populace turning their backs on God.

America has become a moral cesspool that is overflowing with ungodliness, unrighteousness and wickedness. Our government has given women the right to murder their babies in the womb, and as a result, tens of millions of human beings have been killed in abortion clinics. Sexual perversions of all types are defiantly flaunted and widely accepted. God’s unique design for marriage was overturned in a landmark decision by the Supreme Court in 2013. Our country has also become the largest supplier of pornography throughout the world. These are all symptoms of a greater evil which is the sin of idolatry (Col. 3:5). Our nation has turned its back on the one true God by worshipping gods of all the false religions (Exo. 20:3). As a nation, we should no longer ask for God’s blessings but instead expect His judgment. “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness” (Rom. 1:18). (Mike Gendron, “Let us not lose heart,” February 1, 2021, wwwproclaimingthegospel.org)

Again, half of the voting population, it is evident from developments since the 2020 presidential election, have observably rejected Heaven’s prescription for living under godly morality. The problems that have burgeoned in the nation’s division are from those who want America transformed and are determined to brutally enforce quickly accumulating executive dictates. Yet those against America as founded blame those of us who want to continue life under the Constitution as framed by men who claimed our rights as God-given to be the troublemakers.

They continue to tell lies through every venue available. Yet their chief cry as of late is that it is those who oppose their lawlessness and godlessness who are telling the “big lie.” The “big lie” accusation by the man currently occupying the White House claims that political opposition in constantly proclaiming the election to be fraudulent is alien in the same vein of Adolf Hitler’s and Josef Goebbels’ “Big lie” against the Jews that eventually brought on the Holocaust and the genocide against Europe’s Jewish people.

The following article excerpt explains to some extent.

[President Joe Biden and his cohorts accuse] President Donald Trump, Sen. Ted Cruz, and Sen. Josh Hawley of a “Big Lie” ; Rep. Mazie Hirono went on Anderson Cooper to accuse the Republican senators of a “Big Lie”; Dominion Voting Systems has alleged a “Big Lie” in their lawsuit against Rudy Giuliani; Jake Tapper has used the term repeatedly on Twitter and on air to describe allegations of fraud in the 2020 election.

Bloomberg explained the analogy in September: “Adolf Hitler and Goebbels, his minister of propaganda, espoused a technique known as the ‘Big Lie,’ which involved repeating a colossal falsehood until the public came to believe it was true.”…

[In his book, Mein Kamf] Hitler charges the Jews with destabilizing society by promulgating a big lie—the narrative that provided a sinister rationale for the detainment and mass murder of the Jewish people.

In the Hitler/Goebbels “Big Lie” analogy flowing freely from the mouths of Biden, Tapper, and others, the accuser would be analogous to Hitler, and the person being accused of lying would be analogous to the Jews.

In other words, the Hitlerian strategy is to accuse one’s enemies of using a “Big Lie” to gain and consolidate control. To accuse your opponent of a “Big Lie” is to borrow a murderous, anti-Semitic slander directly from “Mein Kampf”—and to align oneself with Hitler in the analogy. (Noelle Garnier, “The left keeps accusing conservatives of ‘The Big Lie’—a term invented by Hitler as he prepared to persecute German Jews, TheNationalPulse.com, Rapture Ready News, January 29, 2021)

So, to try to clear up a deliberately convoluted tactic by the present regime in the White House, the administration and their many mouthpieces are accusing those who claim the election was stolen through fraud are evil like Hitler. These rant that to claim the 2020 election fraudulent through illegal mail-in votes and the crooked Dominion Voting System is a Nazi tactic, using a “Big Lie” in the way Hitler employed the tactic.

In fact, it is these leftist operatives who are doing the very thing they accuse their opposition of doing. They are using Nazi-like methods with their “Big Lie” against those who see and report the fraud the left has perpetrated.

So there is method to their madness. All lies are from the father of lies, Lucifer the fallen one. His method hasn’t changed since the time of the Garden of Eden when He told Eve, upon tempting her to eat of the forbidden fruit, “Ye shall not surely die.”

Let us pray that many will turn from the father of lies to the Father of Truth, and be saved from the sin that ensnares them.

Paul, a servant of God, and an apostle of Jesus Christ, according to the faith of God’s elect, and the acknowledging of the truth which is after godliness; In hope of eternal life, which God, that cannot lie, promised before the world began. (Titus 1:1–2)

–Terry