New York City Has Turned into San Francisco

It just dumbfounds me that one major city after another is having people vote into office individuals who are dingbats. When the people of Chicago voted for a cop-hating, Lesbian, leftist black woman, I knew it was going to be a disaster. Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot turned the city streets over to criminals.

The City of San Francisco is one of the most lawless cities in America. Drug addicts can shoot up with heroin in plain sight of a cop, and thieves can walk into a Walgreens and steal up to $950 worth of products with no consequences. The homeless can set up camp anywhere they like.

Seattle, like most other Democrat-run cities across the US, has experienced a massive spike in crime thanks to radical, felon-first policies that have emboldened criminals like never before. Employees of KIRO News Radio captured a shocking example of this new policy in action when they recorded a driver of a stolen vehicle casually driving away from several police officers who had surrounded the car with their weapons drawn.

In every other time in history, the reaction to what is taking place in Chicago, San Francisco, and Seattle would be an overwhelming demand for tougher policies on criminal activity. There would be a recall election for Lori Lightfoot to replace her with someone who makes the city safer for citizens.

Amazingly, the surge in crime has had no effect on the trend towards lawlessness. The people of New York City voted into office a D.A. that is clearly on the side of criminals. In his first memo to staff, Alvin Bragg said his office “will not seek a sentence” except with homicides and a handful of other cases, including domestic violence felonies, some sex crimes, and public corruption.

Bragg’s memo also detailed the following instructions for prosecutors to reduce charges filed by cops in various cases:

Armed robbers who use guns or other deadly weapons to stick up stores and other businesses will be prosecuted only for petty larceny, a misdemeanor, provided no victims were seriously injured and there’s no “genuine risk of physical harm” to anyone. Armed robbery, a class B felony, would typically be punishable by a maximum of 25 years in prison, while petty larceny subjects offenders to up to 364 days in jail and a $1,000 fine.

Convicted criminals caught with weapons other than guns will have those felony charges downgraded to misdemeanors unless they’re also charged with more serious offenses. Criminal possession of a weapon in the third degree, a class D felony, is punishable by up to 7 years behind bars.

Burglars who steal from residential storage areas, parts of homes that aren’t “accessible to a living area,” and businesses located in mixed-use buildings will be prosecuted for a low-level class D felony that only covers break-ins instead of for more serious crimes. Those more serious crimes, class B and class C felonies, would be punishable by up to 25 and up to 15 years in prison respectively.

Drug dealers believed to be “acting as a low-level agent of a seller” will be prosecuted only for misdemeanor possession. Also, suspected dealers will only be prosecuted on felony charges if they’re also accused of more serious crimes or are actually caught in the act of selling drugs. That felony would mean facing up to seven years behind bars.

Bragg also ordered his staff to stop pursuing low-level offenses. People involved in prostitution, drug use, and petty theft now have an assurance that even if they are arrested, they will never see any jail time. If you don’t enforce lesser crimes, you will end up with more serious crimes. Someone who gets away with stealing from a drug store will be just as willing to rob a bank.

“In Bragg’s Manhattan, you can resist arrest, deal drugs, obstruct arrests, and even carry a gun and get away with it,” Drug Enforcement Administration president Paul DiGiacomo said in a prepared statement.

The moves sparked immediate outrage from cops who said the new policies will lead to more crime and shootings. The head of the NYPD’s largest union, the Police Benevolent Association, expressed “serious concerns about the message these types of policies send to both police officers and criminals on the street.”

The reason why judges and district attorneys have gone soft on crime is because of our eroding moral foundation. Bragg doesn’t understand the basic nature of evil. He thinks if we just lower the standards on prosecution, the crime problem will go away. When New York quickly turns into San Francisco, there will be no backlash against Bragg’s policy change. San Francisco has a D.A. that operates just like Bragg, and no one cares because most people’s hearts are blind to the truth.

“And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold” (Matthew 24:12).

–Todd

---

Father of Liars

Jesus foretold that one of the great signals of His Second Coming and of the end of the age would be deception and deceivers. Paul, in 2 Thessalonians 2 tells us there will be strong delusion in the last days. He prophesied also that there will be “evil men and seducers growing worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived.”

God’s Word—Jesus Himself—declared that the evil at the core of all the deception is a being full of lies. He said in answer to the Jewish religious zealots who tried to entrap Him:

Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he spiked a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it. (John 8:44)

There is scriptural proof, therefore, that the charge is based on God’s truth when we say all the lies we see perpetrated in these closing days of this Age of Grace (Church Age) come from the chief minion of Ephesians 6:12. Indeed we have experienced an increase in lies coming at us from many directions.

Remember the explosion of lies following the presidential election of 2016. The accusation of Trump’s campaign and election being in cahoots with the Russians—with Vladimir Putin himself—was in our faces for Trump’s full four years as president. The lies kept coming, and were front and center on every mainstream news outlet and left-wing social media every hour of every day for those years.

Then it was proven that that the Russian collusion charge was all lies, based upon a phony, political dirty trick. The opposing presidential campaign paid operatives to concoct and distribute a false dossier involving charges accusing Mr. Trump of paying Russian prostitutes to do salacious things in order to spew vitriol against Barack and Michelle Obama, his predecessor and former first lady.

The same political party concocted lies against a Trump administration Supreme Court candidate. We remember the weeks and weeks of that parade of prevarication. The president was subjected to a daily barrage for weeks and months in impeachment efforts—all based on lies.

Mainstream newscasts, social media blogs, and other platforms made up lies about the Black Lives Matter and Antifa destruction of cities across America being peaceful protests rather than riots. The same news and entertainment media, while ignoring those destructive, anti-American insurrections, now accuse Trump supporters who protested—mostly peacefully—in Washington, DC, on January 6, 2021, as being insurrectionists. The vice president declared the protest and march to be the evil equivalent of December 7, 1941, and September 11, 2001.

Lies of less magnitude, but progressing geometrically on an hour-by-hour basis in order to maintain the political power they achieved through one of the biggest lies—those involved in the stolen election of 2020—continue to do their destructive work against the republic.

We have covered a number of times the fact that the globalist minions, both human and demonic, are working incessantly to set the stage for the coming Antichrist regime. I’ve pointed out that two prongs of this evil effort are primary in Satan’s blueprint. One is the climate-change mantra and the other is the COVID pandemic that, it is becoming obvious, isn’t likely to end anytime soon. Both are based largely on lies generated by the principalities and powers in high places.

The initial effort was the lies of global warming. That morphed into climate change, when the ice cap at the North Pole didn’t melt and submerge New York City in the waters of the Atlantic after the first prediction of such catastrophe some thirty years ago.

Reports have it that the University of Alabama at Huntsville data set presented from satellite reconnaissance has shown that there has been no global warming at all for the last seven years. Based on the HadCRUT4 data set, there has been no statistically significant global warming for more than nine years—August 2012 to October 2021.

Before the findings, the United Nations-backed Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) confidently said in its First Assessment in 1990 that global warming is a great deal and a climate emergency. But given the succession of long periods without global warning as shown by HadCRUT4 data set, it is safe to say that the IPCC’s warning is way off the mark.

One writer renders judgment on the climate-change hoax.

Journalist and blogger Christopher Monckton noted that the West is self-destructing due to its belief in global warming, which has benefited China and Russia…

Monckton noted that totalitarian administrations, such as that of the United Kingdom, is imagining climate emergency–giving as example the situation in rural Cornwall. He predicted that the first political party to find the courage “to oppose the global warming nonsense root and branch” will sweep the board at the next elections.

“There is no more of a climate emergency today than there was in 2012, so the only reason for declaring one now is not that it is true (for it is not) but that it is politically expedient,” wrote Monckton.

The political leadership in the West, said Monckton, is committing economic suicide as it allowed high-energy industries to be wasted because of the fear of imagined global warming. “Whole industries are have already been or are soon to be laid waste – coal extraction, distribution and generation (and, therefore, steel and aluminum); oil and gas exploration and combustion; internal-combustion vehicles; and a host of downstream industries which will create joblessness and hardship to income earners,” he wrote. (“Global warming statistically insignificant: Climate emergency is imaginary,” Matthew Davis, 1/6/22, Rapture Ready News)

With regard to the pandemic that has the entire world in fear of facing death, the deception—the lies involved—are beyond our ability to comprehend at this point. I’m of the conviction that could be at the center of the prophesied lie that leads to enslavement of the populations of planet earth following the Rapture of the Church.

Never has there been such a global effort among the leaders of the world’s nations in attempts to bring their peoples into subjection. Demanded compliance in the matter of vaccinations and mask-wearing constitutes a powerful mechanism that could soon force all into the one-world mold Antichrist will impose.

The big lie—the great delusion of 2 Thessalonians 2—might spring from the present delusion being foisted—that the jab will bring freedom from pestilences and freedom to be an accepted citizen of the new order.

What we are witnessing might be the catalyst for Antichrist’s underlings—his liars—to bring about control over humanity which the father of lies has desired for millennia.

Before that can happen, the One who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life will step out of the heavenly throne room and call those who belong to the eternal family of God the Father to Himself. You don’t want to miss that magnificent reunion in the clouds of glory.

Again, here’s how you can make sure you will go to Christ when He calls the saints.

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

The Problem with Having Managed Economies

There is probably no nation on earth that has a completely free economy. Although most western countries are nowhere near what it is like in China or the old Soviet Union, things have gotten pretty bad. The central banks of most western nations now assume that they have a duty to manage the general direction of the economy.

Whenever a government tries to manage markets, the typical result is a disaster. President Erdogan of Turkey has been fixated on strengthening his economy by lowering interest rates. This move has caused the national currency to rapidly decline in value.

Erdogan’s fervent belief that high-interest rates cause inflation is why he refused to abandon his crazy plan. The more the Turkish lira plunges in value, the more Erdogan screams for lower rates.

Turkey’s consumer prices have soared by the highest rate since 2002. Independent economic institutes such as the Inflation Research Group (ENAG) calculated last month’s annual inflation rate at 82.8 percent. Erdogan did cause the value of the lira to briefly soar when he announced that Turkey’s central bank would ensure the value of people’s bank accounts. It quickly dropped again when it became clear that the central bank could only accomplish this task by printing vast quantities of the lira.

After the Federal Reserve declined to guarantee its loans as it did for Bear Stearns, the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers triggered a cascade of other firms to become insolvent. From Lehman Brothers on, no other large financial firm was allowed to go into bankruptcy. Even banks that were in good shape would be given huge amounts of money.

The Federal Reserve has rapidly gone from helping the financial system when it gets into trouble to managing the markets from almost a day-to-day basis. If the stock market goes down 500 points, alarm bells sound at the Fed, and the Plunge Protection Team starts buying S&P futures. Another way that the Fed regulated stock price is by giving money to member banks that pass it on to Hedge funds that buy up stocks.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been reading up on the source of government taxes. From listening to various experts on the financial system, I’ve learned why the stock market and real estate are so important to the government.

In the early days of American history, the federal government’s income was raised primarily from taxes it placed on imported goods. It wasn’t until World War I that people started paying income tax. As time passed, more and more people were paying fewer taxes. About half the people in America don’t pay any federal taxes.

The government gets a huge amount of its income from the sale of homes and stock. During the Financial crisis of 2007–2008, the IRS lost 35% of its tax receipts from the decline in home prices. The only direction that equity prices are allowed to move is in the up direction.

All this pump by the Fed has created a massive stock bubble on Wall Street. Apple Inc. just became the first company to have a $3 trillion stock price. Five years ago, Apple was only worth $500 billion. A six-fold return for a company this massive in size should not be possible, but now on Wall Street, any valuation gain can happen. Tesla’s 23-fold rise makes Apple look like a “dead money” stock.

If it wasn’t for the COVID-19 stimulus spending, Washington could have had a huge surplus. That’s not how federal money spending works. Give any government $200 billion, and it will spend $350 billion. If Elon Musk cashed in his $340 billion in stock and had to write a $100 billion check to the IRS, we would soon be another $1 trillion deeper in debt.

The greatest danger is that soon few people will be writing checks to the IRS from their capital gain sales. Vast numbers of people have stock on margin that is at levels worse than the 1929 crash. Millions of employees are rich, on paper, because they were issued options as payment. Many people who own real estate borrow against the equity value of one home and buy another one.

The global financial system has survived so many crises in the past 14 years, I can only conclude that the hand of God is holding things together. Terry and I talk about this situation many times, and we can only presume that this monetary madness has a connection to the rapture.

“But ye, brethren, are not in darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief” (1 Thes 5:4).

–Todd

---

Woke or Awake?

Lou Dobbs, a long-time broadcast pundit on issues and events of the day, and his guest, Eric Metaxas, were discussing the guest’s new book, Is Atheism Dead? The conversation turned to the way culture in America has become victim of insane thinking wrapped in the term “woke.”

Dobbs offered, optimistically, that he had seen his own church and his pastor beginning to awaken. The congregation was awakening to the evil of things going on that were, through the insanity of woke wickedness infecting American culture and society with a deadly virus spawned by neo-Marxists, determined to change the nation into a Soviet or Maoist-style tyrannical state. He said that we are awakening to what is happening. The attempted Marxist cultural revolution is being made manifest for Americans to see. There is, he believes, still a considerable majority of such patriots to prevail against the globalist efforts to bring America down. The founding fathers, he said, knew that we the people need God, thus built into the founding documents that reality and provided ways thereby to deal with such assaults. God has His hand on the nation, but we must exercise our courage to keep the nation as founded, was his exhortation.

Dobbs and his guest, like we do in presenting these commentaries over the months and years, discussed the upside-down thinking of the leftist radicals at the forefront of the woke insanity: how it all got started with the takeover of the public educational system, with Marxist becoming ensconced in the institutions of learning, and the ideological contamination then spreading from K to 12.

Study of the real disciplines—reading, writing, arithmetic, biology, etc.—under woke-ism has been cast to the rear of educational prerequisite. Now it has come to be that CRT (Critical Race Theory,) GLTBQ, and other crazy inculcation grips children in years as young as kindergarten.

Parents are attacked by the governing elements at every stratum, from the federal level to the local school board, for daring to assert that they, the parents, should influence curriculum. Concerned parents have been labeled as “domestic terrorists” for showing up at school board meetings, demanding that their children not be taught CRT or not be subjected to boys and girls sharing the same restrooms or locker rooms at the same time.

We have all been aware of these news stories. And unless we’ve tuned to mostly secondary news sources, not mainstream news outlets, we’ve been bombarded by news slanted so that we are made to seem like the lunatics for disagreeing with the woke culture, and the perpetrators of the woke culture are made out to be the enlightened, sane ones in today’s America.

Lou Dobbs and his guest had to admit that with the ubiquitous mainstream news and the governments in the hands of mostly woke types in many cases, it would indeed be a fight to awaken the numbers of Americans necessary to overthrow this evil. However, such a revolution of change back to sanity was possible with the awakening taking place because of the woke evil in our faces constantly.

One such news item seems to somewhat support the contention.

A majority of Americans say that male and female are the only two genders, and that schools shouldn’t be allowed to counsel children about gender or sexuality without parents’ consent, according to the results of a survey released Monday.

The survey was conducted by Rasmussen Reports among 1,000 American adults from Dec. 21 to 22, with a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points at and 95 percent confidence level. It comes amid a social media firestorm sparked by Harry Potter author J. K. Rowling, who was accused of engaging in “hate speech” for insisting that there are only two biologically distinct genders.

“Transgender activists have accused J. K. Rowling of ‘hate speech’ for saying it, but most Americans agree with the Harry Potter author that there are only two genders,” the report said. (“Most Americans Don’t Trust Teachers, Schools With Children’s Gender Identity: Survey,” by Bill Pan via The Epoch Times, ZeroHedge, December 30, 2021)

Despite the encouraging survey result mentioned here, I must say I can’t match Mr. Dobbs’ optimism. I believe that the year 2022 finds this generation in America and on the earth too far into the reprobate mindset of Romans 1: 28. Rather than seeing a great move within our churches and among our pastors to begin rectifying the cultural rot through turning to God in all the Heaven-prescribed ways, the church as a whole looks the other way to different priorities. The evil and wickedness manifest through this thing called woke run rampant. Our God, through Isaiah the prophet, put it this way.

Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! Woe unto them that are wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight! (Isaiah 5:20–21)

This condition of seemingly incorrigible corruption as we face 2022 seems to match Jesus’ words about His sudden intervention into the affairs of mankind, when things will be like they were in the days of Noah, and again in the days of Lot.

It is incumbent upon each Christian who reads this to seriously consider whether we are woke or awake. There might not be a Great Awakening taking place as secular pundits such as Mr. Dobbs and some religious personages apparently believe. As a matter of fact, I’m convinced there is no such movement coming. But it is time for each Christian to awaken to the fact that Christ’s Second Advent is blazing across the prophetic horizon.

First there must come a time of horror such as has never been or will ever be—according to Jesus Himself. That is the reality facing all of humanity–with the exception of those in God’s family.

It is time to be awake to how near is Christ’s call to His own in the air above this judgment-bound planet. This individual awakening should inspire each of us to do our utmost for His highest, as Oswald Chambers put it.

What a glorious eternal day it will be to hear our Lord and Savior say, “Well done, good, faithful, servant!”

—Terry