Being a True Christian is Quickly Becoming a Crime

There has always been some place in the world where being a Christian was outlawed by the local government. Since the vast majority of Christians for two centuries were located in the free Western world, the church as a whole, was in little danger. Today, even liberty stalwarts like England and America are becoming hostile to the followers of Jesus Christ.

A couple weeks ago, Franklin Graham was in the news because his planned eight-date tour through the United Kingdom was in doubt. The preacher was dropped by all of his scheduled venues for making homophobic and Islamophobic comments.

Franklin, who is the son of the late prominent Christian evangelist Billy Graham, was expected to tour the U.K. in May, June, and October, making stops in Glasgow, Newcastle, Sheffield, Milton Keynes, Liverpool, Cardiff, Birmingham, and London, according to his website. All eight venues canceled his upcoming appearances due to intervention by an LGBTQ group.

Some of those remarks included how same-sex marriage was a “sin,” that the Islam religion was “behind the violence” around the world, and that conversion therapy is possible through accepting Jesus, as those in the LGBTQ community were “misled.”

Following the cancellation, Franklin’s team addressed the status of the Graham Tour on his website, telling his followers that his appearances would still take place on their original dates but that they were considering and “finalizing” new sites.

The ACC Liverpool Group, based in Liverpool, announced last week that they were no longer going to hold the Graham Tour UK event as previously planned.

“Over the past few days we have been made aware of a number of statements which we consider to be incompatible with our values,” stated the venue.

“In light of this we can no longer reconcile the balance between freedom of speech and the divisive impact this event is having in our city. We have informed the organizers of the event that the booking will no longer be fulfilled.”

The venue went on to claim that they “are proud to represent all communities and will continue to move forward with our aim as a business to drive profile major events and economic impact for Liverpool City Region.”

Most organizations in Europe and North America have become absolutely fixated on anything that can be labeled a hate crime. If you don’t fit with the growing list of rules, you can be denied treatment at a UK hospital. “Currently, staff can refuse to treat non-critical patients who are verbally aggressive or physically violent towards them,” reports Sky News. Starting in April, Patients deemed to be “racist,” “sexist”, or “homophobic” will be denied care in some British hospitals.

There is a huge push to establish rules for what can be said on the internet. Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg has called for regulation of harmful online content, saying it was not for companies like his to decide what counts as legitimate free speech. The Facebook founder urged governments to come up with a new regulatory system for social media, suggesting it should be a mix of existing rules for telecoms and media companies.

“We don’t want private companies making so many decisions about how to balance social equities without any more democratic process,” he said.

Zuckerberg is all for government rules because he has been under continuous pressure from liberals who claim his company allowed Russia to post information that influenced the 2016 election. The simple solution is to do away with free speech by allowing all grievance groups a veto right over everyone else.

We are quickly headed down a path that will outlaw Christianity. Once the government is able to make hate speech a capital offense, they will create the setting where Christians can be murdered for their faith. Since all true believers hold the view that Jesus is the only way to God, the left will use equality as their excuse for persecution of end-time saints.

“For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths” (2 Timothy 4:3-4).

“I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me” (John 14:6).

— Todd

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End-of-Days Delirium

Dr. Robert Jeffress, pastor of First Baptist Church of Dallas, is a regular contributor to Fox News and Fox Business channels. The host of one program I regularly listen to on Fox Business is Lou Dobbs. Dr. Jeffress appears on that show weekly.

Dobbs, the program host, recently gave a series of catastrophic possibilities that could soon affect us all:

The coronavirus, he said, was about to blow up into a pandemic. Already, at the time, more than 1,100 people had died. The numbers of those with the coronavirus was exploding in China and had jumped all boundaries to begin proliferating around the globe. The US had at the time only fifteen cases, with no deaths, but the doctors and scientists he had interviewed during the show I last tuned in to and during other programs painted a possibly disastrous scenario even for the US if they couldn’t soon get a handle on how to deal properly with the spread of the disease.

Then, there was the matter of fears of climate change. Many, especially among younger Millennials, fear they have but a dozen or fewer years to live on the planet, because the polar ice caps will melt and drown everyone, or worse. The earth, itself, will be depleted of breathable air due to carbon dioxide emissions and other toxic substances.

Then there is reportedly an asteroid that is to pass near the earth. It probably has done so by the time this article is posted. One pundit said the asteroid was large enough to be a continent-destroyer—capable of decimating all of North America. It was to pass within a million miles of the planet, but that is considered a near miss, according to scientists in the know. It is said to be but one of a number of such space objects headed our way.

Locusts in Africa and other regions are devouring all things edible. They are the largest swarms ever seen in modern history, according to the show’s host and his guests, who speculated what could happen if these creatures ever get to the crops on this continent.

Then, there is the matter of the wildfires and other disasters in Australia that look to be apocalyptic-like catastrophes.

Lou Dobbs then introduced his guest, Dr. Jeffress, by saying, “Pastor, is this the end of days?”

Jeffress, in his usual upbeat way, said something like, “No. It is not the end of days,” then added, somewhat more seriously, something like, “But these are all signals the Bible says will be occurring at the very end of the age before Christ’s return.”

The pastor went on to speak for a few seconds about what Matthew 24 and Revelation have to say about these sorts of signals. Dobbs then talked about the great fear that seemed on the rise, and asked if we should be afraid.

I was very proud of Dr. Jeffress’ answer, which went something like: “The way to not be fearful about these coming things is to make sure that you know the One who controls all these end-of-days signs. Make sure you know Jesus Christ as your Savior.”

I don’t know how many heard the Lou Dobbs program that night. His is program has some of the highest numbers of viewers for its time slot. So, several million at a minimum were listening, I presume.

Regardless of the number of people who watched the program that night, there is a nation and a world full of people who live daily in fear of things coming on the earth. But a more problematic number of people suffer a state of mind that even more egregiously adds to a world pointing in directions other than the one God has prescribed. That mindset consists of almost complete apathy about anything heading down the pike that looks like the age is coming to an end and God’s righteous judgment is on the brink of falling.

Both the fear of things such as climate change, etc., and the apathy infecting the fearless combine to constitute what I call the “end-of-days delirium.” Those who have no fear, especially of God and His judgment, mostly inhabit the Western world. The American populace in particular falls into this category.

The reason? Because of the comfortable, even opulent, lifestyle enjoyed by Americans when compared to the rest of the world.

Europe was, for the most part, long ago given over to the delirium of end-of-days apathy. America is now nearing the end of that exponentially spreading malady.

The progress of this humanistic disease has been eloquently dealt with by Alexander Tytler, a Scottish history professor (1714—1778) who is generally given credit for chronicling the stages of a democracy’s demise. I once filed away its essence as repeated by Kirby Anderson, a radio host and host of Probe Ministries.

If we stay on the road to decay, Anderson relates what awaits us:

The decline of this nation (just as the decline of every other nation) is due to spiritual factors. The political, economic, and social problems we encounter are the symptoms of the spiritual deterioration of a nation…. Each of the great civilizations in the world passed through a series of stages from their birth to their decline to their death. Historians have listed these in ten stages. (1). The first stage moves from bondage to spiritual faith. (2). The second from spiritual faith to great courage. (3). The third stage moves from great courage to liberty. (4). The fourth stage moves from liberty to abundance. (5.) The fifth stage moves from abundance to selfishness. (6.) The sixth stage moves from selfishness to complacency. (7.) The seventh stage moves from complacency to apathy. (8.) The eighth stage moves from apathy to moral decay. (9.) The ninth stage moves from moral decay to dependence (America with her growing addiction and servitude to the government—Socialism—has entered this stage). (10.) And the tenth and last stage moves from dependence to bondage.

Of course, there is the possibility of an eleventh stage, and that would be (11.) total obliteration—full annihilation or Armageddon.

It’s easy to discern that this nation could well be in stages 9 and 10 at this point. The septicemia I term end-of-days delirium has set in.

The only Rx to begin dealing with this disease that is infinitely more toxic than the much-feared coronavirus is that dispensed by the God of Heaven. His Holy Name is Jesus Christ. He will one day make all things right again.

—Terry

—Terry

How Lies Helped Spread the Coronavirus

With each passing day, we seem to know less and less about what is actually going on with the Coronavirus outbreak in the Chinese hot zone. China’s ruling Communist Party is facing public anger and recrimination over how it has handled the crisis. Each day the Chinese government puts out numbers that don’t seem to match observation from people on the ground.

One of the first persons to recognize the Coronavirus was Dr. Li Wenliang. In December, Li was treating a cluster of patients suffering from a virus apparently picked up at a meat and poultry market in Wuhan, a city in central China with a population greater than metropolitan Chicago. Li sent messages to a chat group of medical school alumni wondering if SARS—the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome that killed nearly 800 people worldwide in 2002 and 2003—had returned.

Li, a 34-year-old ophthalmologist, contracted the virus while treating patients, and his death was confirmed Feb 7th. Li, one of eight medical professionals in Wuhan who tried to warn colleagues and others when the government did not, had said that police forced him to sign a statement admitting he spread falsehoods.

Even the staunchly pro-government Global Times newspaper said the whistleblowers’ treatment was “evidence of local authorities’ incompetence to tackle a contagious and deadly virus.”

When Dr. Li became a fatality, there were only 450 reported deaths. The current death rate of 2 percent would make it very unlikely that a healthy 34-year-old man would die from the virus.

Every few days, a city would report numbers that were greater than the global total, and then they would be quickly changed to match an official data. Even in some official numbers, the death rate is greater than 4 percent.

The rapid construction of two massive hospitals that can bed 10,000 patients had the global news media expressing confidence that China had things under control. I see a couple red flags. First, that is a lot of money being spent for a virus that is reported to only have the same spread factor as the common flu. Secondly, these so-called hospitals are just giant buildings with rows of beds.

The massive increase in beds has not made it any easier to check a loved one into a real hospital. Chen Jiaxin, 22, said by telephone from Wuhan that his father fell ill, but had to return home because no hospital would accept him. When he called for an ambulance after his father’s fever spiked, Chen said, he was told 400 people were ahead of him and “we were just told to wait and wait.”

Mother-of-two Rong Qin, 32, said that her 67-year-old father is feeling sick and is awaiting test results, but that she was told by local officials that even those with a positive diagnosis have to wait for a bed. “What I am hoping now is to put my father in a public quarantine facility so that he doesn’t pass the infection on to other family members,” she said.

The official quarantine zone is of some 50 million residents, but the actual number on lockdown may be vastly larger. One estimate has the number around 400 million. If true, it would show the government is in full-scale panic over a virus that is extremely easy to pass from person to person.

It was reported by the NY Times that in one city, authorities were going house to house to find sick people. Anyone sent to a quarantine center with a lack of proper medical equipment will be a death sentence for many patients. People with pneumonia would die unless they were put on oxygen or a respirator.

I still maintain that the virus will level out at some point and spare the western world from a tide of death that we haven’t seen in 75 years. Terry and I were talking the other day, and we both wondered if current events were part of a final push for the rapture. We will just have to watch.

“For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord. Wherefore comfort one another with these words” (1 Thessalonians 4:16-18).

— Todd

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History’s Most Viewed Event

Of all my cogitating on Bible prophecy, the thought just never struck.

I’m partner with Todd Strandberg in raptureready.com. I’ve written hundreds of articles on the subject. I’ve authored entire books devoted just to the topic. Yet I’ve never even thought, much less written about, one particular aspect of the matter. Some might correct me on that, but that is my memory—or failure thereof—on this thing specifically involved.

The topic, the subject, is the Rapture—that stupendous instant when Jesus Christ steps out on the clouds of glory and shouts with the last trump and the voice of an archangel, “Come up here!”

We believe that it will happen in an atomos of time—quicker than it takes for light traveling at 186,000 miles per second to enter the eye and strike the retina. That’s much faster than the eye can blink, I’m told.

Again, we believe that millions of all born-again believers who are alive will vanish in that instant. It will happen all over the world, but perhaps in no place on earth will the great event be witnessed by more people than in America. And, I’m not meaning that this is because there are more Christians—true believers—in the United States than in any other place on the planet. That might be the case, but that isn’t why I state it.

The thought, as I said above, had not crossed my mind until an epiphany came in the form of an email by a Christian sister, whom I presume is a long-time family member of our Rapture Ready website.

Although I won’t mention her name, I will relate a part of her email that struck deeply into my prophecy-watcher alert center:

Terry: Concerning the Rapture discussion about whether or not people will see us leaving when we are caught up. They will certainly see SOMETHING, because there are cameras everywhere constantly filming everybody.

So, if I’m out in the middle of the street talking to one of my neighbors when Jesus suddenly calls me up into the clouds, at least three of my neighbors’ security cameras are going to record my disappearance.  (Where did she go?  She was standing right there talking to Dave and then she just disappeared!”).

Whether we just disappear or can be seen rising up after we are transformed, the cameras at the grocery store, the bank, the jam-cam on I-10, the neighbor’s security camera or doorbell ring camera, all those cameras recording everybody everywhere all over the world are going to capture it all.

Again, this is just an idea that never struck me. But it will surely happen just as she describes, barring an unforeseen EMP attack or other phenomenon that shuts down all cameras in the nation.

Anyone who has watched forensic shows that record crimes in every possible location knows that we’re under constant surveillance. There is no way we can escape the cameras looking down on us from telephone poles, building roofs, or wherever.

Even drones now circle overhead and record every movement we make, both for law enforcement and commercial purposes. Private drones now keep track of us just for amusement and entertainment.

But it’s the cellphone and other devices held by individuals in every town in the country that make the emailer’s observation of special, prophetic significance.

People are literally filming on their phones every moment of every day and night, especially in America, where so many people have smart devices. There is no doubt that the disappearance of people around towns all over America will be captured in that staggering instant.

The news-gathering entities around the US will be soliciting every video they can find. Social media venues will go crazy with quantities of footage that will likely almost melt down many websites. It will be the most filmed event in history!

Many of those video recorders will still be going when they hit the ground, having been dropped by Christians doing the filming. These, too, will give credence to the message of those of us who have been teaching the truth of the pre-Trib Rapture.

Perhaps it is the many such videos that will convince a great number of people who have heard our message. The message? That Jesus has called believers to Himself. Those who see and are thus convinced might then seek earnestly all information left behind that forewarns of what they have just witnessed.

My thanks to my emailer friend who stimulated the thought about history’s most viewed event!

—Terry