More Monetary Madness

With each passing day of the coronavirus crisis, it’s become more obvious that we can’t remain in this state of lockdown. The damage already inflicted on the economy is tremendous. We are still seeing record moves in the financial markets that are off the scale.

Oil prices spiked 25 percent after President Trump tweeted that Saudi Arabia and Russia would cut production by 10 to 15 million barrels per day. Incidentally, it was the biggest one-day percentage surge in the price of oil in history.

The Treasury currently has a record cash balance of $750 Billion. After a historic flood of bill issuance, the money will be issued to taxpayers. On the down side, the nation’s debt went from $23 to $24 trillion, which is the quickest time it has gone through a trillion-dollar milestone.

On Mar 26th, there was an unprecedented 3.3 million surge in initial jobless claims; a week later came an even more unprecedented report, adding a stunning 6.648 million in initial jobless claims. Last Thursday there were another 6.9 million people filing jobless claims. Before this coronavirus mess, the old record was half a million in a single week.

In the space of three weeks, 16 million new Americans are claiming unemployment benefits. The peak total number of people drawing unemployment in the Great Recession of 2009 was 6.35 million.

The Fed has announced it will buy investment-grade corporate debt for the first time in history. The Fed also announced that it will be directly buying investment-grade corporate debt ETFs. It has also launched a plan to buy US debt directly from foreign governments.

The folks at the Fed are of the belief that they can print an unlimited amount of dollars. “There is an infinite amount of cash at the Federal Reserve,” Neel Kashkari, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of  Minneapolis, told Scott Pelley of CBS on March 22, adding: “We will do whatever we need to do to make sure there is enough cash in the financial system.”

After just passing the $2.2 trillion stimulus package, lawmakers are realizing they need more money. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is floating ideas including another direct payment to Americans, expanded paid sick leave and infrastructure projects. This Democratic-led bailout will likely have a price tag of $1 trillion.

Key Republicans are signaling that they may not be willing to accept another major spending measure. Some analysts suggested that Republican reluctance to spend on public relief may not persist if, as expected, future reports continue the trend of enormous increases in unemployment and declines in economic growth. If unemployment hits 15%, we’ll likely see bailout four followed by bailout five.

The issuance of vast amounts of money has negative consequences. The FT reports that Chase has temporarily stopped accepting applications for small business loans outside the government’s Paycheck Protection Program. A Chase spokeswoman told the FT that the bank was now devoting all of its small business underwriting resources to processing these applications and had “temporarily suspended” taking other applications from small businesses. The bank was continuing to process non-PPP applications already in train, she said, and would revisit the issue of new applications at a later date.

I witnessed the decline in civil order with my own eyes. Last week I was standing in my front yard and heard four loud bangs. I looked up into the trees on a nearby hill and saw four flashing cop cars. That was the first time in my life that I’ve witnessed a shooting at a crime scene. I fear Benton, AR, is soon going to sound like the fourth of July on any given night.

Covid-19 has lit the fuse on an economic-debt time-bomb. I think a bigger bomb that is going to hit the global economy is the sudden loss of millions of Christians in the rapture. The world will be in total chaos, and people will be ready for any leader that promises to restore order.

“And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy. And the beast which I saw was like unto a leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion: and the dragon gave him his power, and his seat, and great authority. And I saw one of his heads as it were wounded to death; and his deadly wound was healed: and all the world wondered after the beast. And they worshipped the dragon which gave power unto the beast: and they worshipped the beast, saying, Who is like unto the beast? who is able to make war with him?” (Rev 13:1-4).

— Todd

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Who to Believe…

Depression, a deep mood of foreboding, is never far away in times like we’re enduring right now. There are so many different takes on COVID-19 that it’s impossible to form one’s own thoughts on matters involved. The claims and suppositions concerning prospects for the future are so varied—and, in most cases, so terrible—that some are driven to suicide.

Therefore, it’s difficult to get our brains around the severity, or lack thereof, of what we face. It is even harder to discern fact from fiction—or worse, truth from deliberate misdirection. But the information on coronavirus and all attendant to it keeps coming at us, and those informed are deeply affected by that information—psychologically, spiritually, and even physically, in some cases.

Anyone listening to the daily briefing by the Trump administration and its highly regarded medical authorities staff is hard-pressed to get a handle on which way this disease is headed. It is even more problematic to try to determine what the economic picture will look like in the coming weeks and months. Will the pandemic pass, or are we melting into a situation that will devolve into national and world depression—one from the likes of which there is no chance of recovery?

Will, as the president hopes, there be a turnaround by the middle of the year, with medical breakthroughs and the virus dying in the heat of the summer months? Will business rebound from almost total shutdown to people going back to work and the economy soaring again to a time of boom? Will social distancing and sequestering in our homes get rid of the virus?

Or will the disease be without cure or preventative vaccine for months and years, bringing death and economic devastation never before experienced by mankind?

It’s all out there in the minute-by-minute briefings and reports. It is there in the ever-present punditry on networks and through cable channels. It is, in playing with a line from Dickens, the worst of times that might once again be the best of times.

Also, the obverse is there in the blogs, news reports, and opinion pieces from many sources that cut pathways of information through the blogosphere and other alternative media. This is the worst of times, period, and the good times are almost certainly gone forever.

Just a cursory look at a couple of the worst-of-times forecasts—feared by some to never end—can indeed produce a near incapacity for hope of recovery.

• The coronavirus is all part of the Cloward-Piven Strategy to collapse America. COVID-19 is, the blog writer declares, part of an eight-step plan from leftists/socialists Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven from 1966 that was designed to destroy the US from within.

The writer gives the eight steps of the plan, asserting that it is being currently implemented. He concludes, I take it, that all elements of the plan have either happened or are currently being exponentially exacerbated by this present crisis.

1. Taking control of the nation’s healthcare
2. Increasing the level of poverty so people must get assistance
3. Increasing debt to an unsustainable level so taxes can be raised to meet the crisis
4. Getting rid of private gun ownership so the police state can be created
5. Massively increasing the welfare state, taking control of every aspect of US citizens’ lives (food, housing, and income)
6. Taking over education, controlling what people read and what they learn about the nation (revision of history)
7. Taking over in area of religion, removing prayer and any mention of God
8. Dividing the nation into classes, pitting one against the other so one must provide welfare for the other. (Taken from Rapture Ready News, April 4, 2020, Geoffrey Grider, “Now the End Begins”)

The writer further declares:

[Steps] 1-5 and 8 are being executed right now in how our government is reacting to the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak, with steps 6 and 7 already having been implemented since 2008. The American economy is being split into pieces right now by the combination of a $2 trillion bailout with more coming, Americans under stay-at-home orders, and with more people right now on unemployment in two weeks of the coronavirus crisis than in the second year of the Great Depression of 1929.

America as we know it cannot and will not survive a three-month lockdown, it will fall and there is no question about that.

• The Coronavirus is part of China’s plan to defeat America. Another writer believes the COVID-19 crisis is a setup to bring down the much hated America and its leading role in the world. The writer writes that China accuses American soldiers of deliberately introducing the virus in China, as part of Chinese plans to give cover for the coming attack on the US.

 The communist regime, so it goes, will soon attack infrastructure and other American assets in cyberspace and elsewhere. That government has begun, the writer declares, to blame America for the pandemic, thus to have a reason that justifies the inevitable attack when it comes. This, he believes, will then escalate into a military action, and this nation’s internal forces, who are traitorous to America as founded, will do all they can to prevent America’s defense against the Chinese assaults. This is because these revolutionists believe the United States is at the root of all the world’s problems in one way or the other.

It is certain that the dire, apocalyptic, warnings far outnumber the hopes for recovery from the effects of the coronavirus pandemic—either the health effects or the economic effects. Many among those who study Bible prophecy believe the Tribulation, itself, has begun. The end of the world is upon us.

But, Jesus told His disciples—and us by extension—that for believers (such as those immediate disciples who were just about to go into the Church Age or Age of Grace) that the end wasn’t yet.

The Lord prophesied that before the era of Tribulation comes, believers will live during a time when all the signals He foretold will BEGIN to come to pass (Luke 21:28). He told believers to look up and lift their heads in anticipation when these things BEGIN to come to pass, because He, their Redeemer (the blessed hope). was coming to rescue them.

He even told us what that time will be like. It will be a time of buying, selling, marrying, planting, and building. He said nothing of worldwide depression. It will be just like the days of Lot when He will next “reveal” Himself in a spectacular moment. It will be a time of extreme wickedness, but with commerce and even hedonistic pleasures humming right along. That’s what Lot’s day was like, we know, from reading Genesis chapter 19.

It cannot be claimed, and I certainly do not say, that things right now look in any way rosy. They do not. I fully understand the reasons for many at this moment fearing the nation and the world will at any moment collapse into apocalyptic rubble.

But I prefer to believe Jesus and His promises over any news report, ideology, or religious wind of doctrine. He is our One, True Reliance.

He has promised to keep His own out of the time of Tribulation (Revelation 3:10).

I hope you, too, are comforting yourselves with these Words Jesus gave the Apostle Paul to write:

Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ. (Titus 2:13)

—Terry

 

**** Please note, with most states on lockdown, we’ve decided it would not be possible for us to implement the quarterly donation drive for April to June. We will have one once we get an indication when people will be free to leave their homes.

Also, we have received a record number of new articles in the past couple of weeks.  The inflow is so great, it can takes us up to 10 days to post some articles. ****

 

The Beast Government System’s Big Leap Forward

Up until now, the 9/11 terrorist attacks stood as the most destructive threat to our personal liberties. The reaction to the coronavirus has turned into a far greater power grab.

The Federal Reserve is handing out trillions of dollars to any business and organization that claims to have a need for money. All these loans will lead to monetary enslavement.

The $2.2 trillion bill just passed by congress has a section that allows the Fed to leverage $500 billion into $5 trillion. It will buy debt from the corporate market or extend loans to businesses large and small. Because the Fed will be at zero risk of any losses on these loans, it will quickly control the whole debt market, effectively becoming a Central Federal Bank.

Any time a massive organization becomes in control of money, political corruption naturally follows. A pet project may get funded by the Fed just because a Senator voted to get a certain person onto the Board of Governors. By holding the debt of corporations, the fed can control the operations of the business. When a business fails, the bond holds take control of the corporation.

The Fed has created a number of facilities that have little or no oversight. The Federal Reserve last Tuesday announced the establishment of a “temporary” repurchase agreement facility for foreign and international monetary authorities (FIMA Repo Facility). This outfit hands out dollars to foreign banks; so much for Congress’ sole authority in controlling government spending. Because the Fed now controls a vast amount of the US business world, it is perfectly set up for what will become the Beast government system.

The free money handout from the stimulus package will turn millions of Americans into welfare addicts. In some cases, people will receive checks that are higher than their current salary. After sitting on their couch for six weeks watching Netflix, they will demand that Congress authorizes another $2 trillion because it’s still too dangerous to go back to work.

It frustrates me that Chinese leaders have been able to maintain the lie that they have contained the coronavirus. The demonic liberal media have taken China’s side so they can promote the message: If you want to control the virus, you need to turn your nation into a police state.

The truth is slowly getting out. People in China have posted videos of Long Lines in a Wuhan Cemetery. The Chinese investigative outlet Caixin revealed that when mortuaries opened back up last week, photos revealed a far greater number of urns than reported deaths. In one, a truck loaded with 2,500 urns can be seen arriving to the Hankou Mortuary. According to the report, the driver said he had delivered the same amount the previous day.

I can understand the need to close the kissing both at the country fair, and the prevention of the gathering of large groups because of the pandemic. The mad lust for power in situations that don’t cause medical risks, shows the Orwellian mentality that is sweeping over America. The actions by many State and local officials needs to be called out.

Ten people decide to have a church service at Friendship Baptist Church in Northeast Baltimore, and they were following guidelines on assembly. About nine police officers showed up in five patrol cars right in the middle of the service. Security stopped the police officers at the door of the church and told them they could not come into the church.

Rev. Alvin Gwynn dismissed the church members and talked to the head Sgt.

“I said why are you here. He said did you read the Governor’s Order? I said I know the Governor’s order. It says ten people or less, I have ten people or less, and I have ten people, so tell me why are you here,” Rev. Gwynn explained.

When he asked officers to explain why they were there, Gwynn said, they looked “bewildered,” declined to answer, and called a superior.

“Why the government is so insistent on closing the church down on Sundays, restricting worship, restricting the size of the gathering in the church is totally against the first amendment of our constitution, which says congress make no law prohibiting the free worship exercise of peaceful assembly of people in the United States that include the church,” said Rev. Gwynn.

Several cities in Texas have told gun stores to close down. Luckily, Texas is still a state with some sanity. The Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton issued a letter warning city and county officials that they did not have the authority to shut down gun shops in Texas over the coronavirus pandemic. He said, local authorities do have the right to regulate the use of firearms, but that does not extend to the sale or transfer of firearms.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio is threatening to permanently close churches and synagogues that do not comply with his order to stop gathering during the coronavirus outbreak. He didn’t have any problem with abortion rights protestors having a large gathering.

When I was a young Christian, the description of the mark of the Beast often had a comical nature. I remember one book showing people walking around with 666 on their foreheads. Today, we have the technology to implement a global financial system. We now also have a world crazy enough to cut your head off for not taking the Beast number. I thank God that the Church will soon escape this dreadful dilemma.

“And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six” (Rev 13:16-18).

— Todd

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End-times Storm Steering Mechanism

Hurricane season brings the phenomenon known as a “steering mechanism.” I’m no meteorologist, of course, but know enough to understand that, in the United States, winds aloft blowing from west to east have an effect on hurricanes approaching our mainland from the Atlantic.

These winds can “steer” those massive storm systems away from the continent and back into the Atlantic. This is usually the case.

News media play these things for all they’re worth. They, with wind-blown reporters standing with their microphones on the shoreline, paint the worst-case scenarios each time there is a huge hurricane being generated by warm Atlantic waters as the storm heads eastward from the Horn of Africa or somewhere over that way. More often than not, then, the storm has less effect on our coasts than anticipated. The steering mechanism—these winds aloft—have done their job and lessened the severity of the hurricanes.

However, sometimes these steering currents can force storms up the coast. They then do severe damage to places in more northern latitudes rather than on the lower coastal areas where they initially were expected to make an impact.

It seems we are now in the middle of the most severe moments of an end-times storm. This isn’t the case, however. We are in the process of watching the Tribulation storm out in the proverbial roaring sea as it threatens to land full-force.

The full-blown hurricane will come. Bible prophecy makes that forecast abundantly clear.

But there are winds aloft, so to speak. They are the steering mechanism that will determine when the storm will become full-blown and where it will make its full impact upon the generation that will endure the storm and all the wrath its power will generate.

I think we can look at COVID-19, or coronavirus, if you prefer, as a major steering mechanism in this end of the Church Age. It is like that powerful wind aloft in meteorological terms, shaping things to come not only for America, but for the entire world.

One example of the way this pandemic is steering the great, incoming Tribulation storm is its movement being used by the globalists who are attempting to force America and the world into the model the globalists elite have been trying their best to bring about.

A news excerpt or two perhaps will illustrate.

A Rockefeller Foundation report produced 10 years ago imagined a viral pandemic as the perfect catalyst to implement “tighter top-down government control and more authoritarian leadership,” eerily similar to what’s unfolding during the current coronavirus outbreak.

The report, entitled, “Scenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development,” outlines several possible future global scenarios, including a “Lock Step” vision in which a “new influenza strain…infects nearly 20 percent of the global population…killing 8 million in just seven months…”

“In 2012, the pandemic that the world had been anticipating for years finally hit,” the scenario begins. “Unlike 2009’s H1N1, this new influenza strain—originating from wild geese—was extremely virulent and deadly.”

“The pandemic also had a deadly effect on economies: international mobility of both people and goods screeched to a halt, debilitating industries like tourism and breaking global supply chains,” the scenario continues, describing almost the exact events of 2020 in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak.” (“Globalist Think Tank Laid Out Scenario Where Virus Outbreak Prompts Authoritarian Crackdown,” Rapture Ready News, March28, 2020)

Another news item further illustrates the effects the pandemic-steering mechanism is having in this present hour, eight years after the Rockefeller Foundation Report’s scenario for their globalist ambitions.

The United Kingdom’s former Prime Minister Gordon Brown has called on world leaders to form a “temporary” global government to resolve both the medical and economic crises caused by the coronavirus pandemic reports the Guardian.

The ex-Labour prime minister stressed the need for a task force comprised of world leaders, health experts as well as leaders of the international organizations that could enjoy executive powers to execute the response.

A virtual meeting of the G-20 group of both developed and developing countries, chaired by Saudi Arabia, is scheduled to take place on Thursday. Brown lamented that the meeting didn’t include the UN security council. “This is not something that can be dealt with in one country,” he said. “There has to be a coordinated global response.” (David Sidman, “Ex British Prime Minister Calls on World Leaders to Form ‘One World Government’,” Breaking Israel News, March 26, 2020)

Yet another excerpt of today’s news even more dramatically illustrates the steering mechanism’s effects. It is a more profound example of the supernaturally generated winds aloft, I propose, because God’s prophetic time clock, the nation Israel, is directly in the path of the incoming, apocalyptic storm.

[Israel’s Prime Minister] Netanyahu put out a direct public appeal while dealing with an escalating coronavirus crisis on Tuesday, saying, “Benny Gantz, this is a moment which tests leadership and national responsibility. The citizens of Israel need a unity government that will work to save their lives and their livelihoods. This is not the time for a fourth election. We both know that the gaps between us are small, and we can overcome them. Let’s meet now and establish a unity government. I am waiting for you.” (Dov Lipman, “Unity Government Formed: Netanyahu Stays in Charge…For a Half Term,” Breaking Israel News, March 27, 2020)

The prime minister, in addressing the Israeli people, urged all to stay home, because, he said, “one who infects one person is akin to infecting the whole world.”

He said he doesn’t know when the pandemic will end. He reminded the people, however, that during past plagues, the Jews were stuck in exile. He said:

The coronavirus joins the family of other deadly plagues throughout history—the Black Plague, cholera, and the Spanish flu. When those plagues ran their course in previous centuries, we (the Jews) didn’t have a state. But today we do have a state.

He encouraged his audience by saying, “This gives us unlimited options to control our destiny,” adding, “we are one people, one country and now is the time for unity.”

He concluded:

[The Jewish] month of Nisan that begins tonight is the month of spring and of exodus from Egypt. It reminds us that our nation withstood intense storms. It gives us strength. It gives us hope. We overcame Pharaoh. And although the battle is difficult and challenging, we will overcome the coronavirus with God’s help and with your help, people of Israel.

Benjamin Netanyahu is correct; with God’s help, the Jewish people—a remnant—will get past the storm to come. The storm the Israeli prime minister seems to anticipate isn’t yet here. It will be horrific, to be sure. The steering mechanism—the strange, supernatural winds that are blowing—are shaping things prophetically, precisely as God’s Word has foretold.

If you know Jesus Christ as your Savior, you won’t experience the most terrible storm ever to rage upon this fallen planet. Again, the following is the prescription that will protect you from the Tribulation pandemic storm to come:

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