Sep 2, 2019

Anti-Semitism By Demonic Osmosis

The study of Bible prophecy has always involved a fair amount of speculation about how world events will play out. God told us precisely what will take place in the future, but we are left to figure out how the prophetic events will progress towards being fulfilled.

Sometimes we get off track by trying to match the current event with prophecy. The Bible’s prediction of the rebirth of Israel is the centerpiece of end-time events. For thousands of years, the regathering of Jews to Israel was seen as impossible. To make sense of these prophetic passages, people began claiming that the Church was now Israel.

Another way that we go down wrong paths is by falling into the trap of group-think about prophecy. I think the coming global hatred of Jews is a good example. Adolf Hitler was such an evil monster, his systematic killing of 6 million Jews has become the prototype of how the Antichrist will interact with God’s chosen people.

There is a growing hatred of Jews around the world, but it is not the result of a despotic leader. The Nazi party is dead, and there is nothing like it on the world stage. In fact, the social and political climate is incredibly hostile to anyone with a National Socialist mindset. The left has developed a hypersensitivity to anything that can be remotely linked to Nazism.

There is a great amount of anti-Semitism that comes from followers of the Muslim religion. Attacks against Jews in Europe are a huge problem. The vast majority of the time that an anti-Semitic event occurs, the assailant is a Muslim. There doesn’t seem to be any logic in why Muslims have such a strong hatred for people they have no direct conflict with. Another thing that doesn’t make sense is why so few people in Europe care that these hate crimes are taking place.

Here in America, we have this same disconnect from logical thinking – with Jew-bashing in our own legislative branch. It is a mystery to me how Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar got elected to Congress. When the people of the Detroit and Minneapolis areas put these two Muslim Women in office, I knew their single focus would be on Jews and the State of Israel.

Rashida Tlaib’s short tenure in the House has been rife with accusations of anti-Semitism. Most recently, when confronted with the blatant anti-Semitism of Miftah, the Palestinian advocacy group that planned her failed trip to Israel, she dismissed criticism of the group as a “distraction.”

Ilhan Omar is equally a Jew hater, and I am stunned by several other moral problems with this woman. There is credible evidence that she was married to her biological brother to enter the US. Judicial Watch says, “Omar may have committed the following crimes in violation of both federal law and Minnesota state law: perjury, immigration fraud, marriage fraud, state and federal tax fraud, and federal student loan fraud.

I think the worst example of anti-Semitism in our day is Jeremy Corbyn. He heads the Labor party in England, and he has largely turned a blind eye to a rat’s nest of Jew-hating in his own party. In April 2016, a well-known right-wing blog revealed that Labor MP Naz Shah had posted anti-Semitic messages to Facebook a couple of years before being elected. One report revealed that between April 2018 and January 2019 the party received 673 accusations of anti-Semitism among members.

I would not just label Corbyn as anti-Semitic because he has rarely had any kind words for Israel, and he is buddy-buddy with nearly every terrorist group that hates Israel. What makes him noteworthy as a Jew hater is his willingness to stand by and allow anti-Semitism to do tremendous damage to his political organization.

Turkey’s Jewish community is still reeling from the content of a video that recently went viral. The video shows what appears to be a summer camp at which young children are being led on an anti-Semitic cheer in Turkish by what appears to be a woman counselor. In the 39-second clip, when the girl says, “The Jews,” the women and children reply, “Death!”

The reason why anti-Semitism is seeping into every nation on earth like the osmosis process is because of the spiritual state of the world. As people turn away from God, the influence of the demonic world invades the collective consciousness of mankind. Unless someone is a born-again believer, they are at risk of joining the chorus that chants death to the Jews.

I always end my articles with a scripture verse. Rather than reminding the Jews that dark days are right ahead, I decided to close by focusing on the purpose for this end-time persecution:

“And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and supplication. They will look on me, the one they have pierced, and they will mourn for him as one mourns for an only child, and grieve bitterly for him as one grieves for a firstborn son” (Zechariah 12:10).

–Todd


Scanning Fearful Future Still on Track

Madness that assaults the senses every waking moment continues to expose the lateness of the prophetic hour. This generation is deeply into reprobate mindset the Apostle Paul forewarned will ultimately afflict any person or any generation of people who turn their backs on the God of Heaven.

Not intending to make myself out to have a word of knowledge or other strange wind of supernatural soothsaying ability, I nonetheless must recount a matter that constantly dominates my spiritual senses these days. It involves how the Lord spoke to those senses years ago about things that have proven to be insight with ongoing, unfolding validation.

My series of commentaries I called “Scanning a Fearful Future” covered the emails filled with panic I was at the time receiving on a regular basis. Pundits, including well-known Bible prophecy teachers and TV hosts, were saying that Christians in America faced imminent danger from dynamics taking place within ever-darkening governmental efforts to completely change the nation in deleterious ways. We would, these pundits proclaimed, wake up one morning and find that the America as founded was now a more or less totalitarian regime. Christians would soon be marching off to gulag. At the very least, we would no longer be able to teach and preach or even talk about Bible truth in public.

Just as ominously, these pundits were saying, the economy would completely collapse and we would return to times almost like those before electricity–at least that’s how the dystopian warnings sounded to yours truly. Indeed, the presidential administration then in power seemed to be moving America in the dire direction that was being forecast.

All of this was taking place during the latter part of 2010 and the first part of 2011.

The emails kept coming. Would the United States soon collapse and Christians in America be marched off to FEMA camps for internment? Or worse, would Christians suffer martyrdom as did believers in Christ during the time of the Roman Coliseum spectacles?

Again, even prophecy teachers of renown were intimating that this might be the case. Certainly, many secular pundits were almost in unison in predicting that the American and world economies were on the verge of collapse.

So, in light of the large number of emails I received from those who read our articles –all worried about future prospects—I undertook to write a series of ten commentaries. While writing these, the Holy Spirit, I’m convicted in my own spirit, imparted through those articles the answer to give these worried brothers and sisters.

I’ve written a number of times over the years since that time about the thoughts I believe the Lord gave through that series. The bottom line was and is that there would be no sudden collapse of the United States economy–there would be no incarceration and martyrdom of Christian Americans. I cautioned that there was indeed such incarceration and martyrdom of Christians all over the globe at that very moment. There continues to be this horrendous treatment around the world as I write this.

America, I wrote back then, deserves no special dispensation from such collapse. Christians in America are not, in our own righteousness, immune from the kind of torture and martyrdom being foisted upon Christians who live within evil regimes around the world. Any and all such dispensation is by the grace of God, and that alone. He determines who is born when and where. He, alone, will have mercy upon whom He will have mercy. And this does not mean He favors anyone in particular in the general sense of dealing with mankind.

In the case of America, God has obviously determined that the nation is on the planet and at this time for very specific purposes. We have gone over many times that it is believed those purposes are 1) to be a primary instrument of spreading the gospel around the world, and 2) to act first as midwife for Israel’s rebirth into modernity, then to act as military protector. The Lord can do that Himself, but He has chosen the US, it is obvious to me, at least, to be his human agency in providing that protection over His chosen nation.

In that regard, America is undeniably the apex nation of the world so far as earthly riches are concerned. America is the most materially blessed country of history. It has been among the most spiritually blessed as well.

As I stated in that series, the US has, sadly and tragically, become one of the most wicked nations of all times, as well. The evil stretches from pornography to the abortion of more than sixty million babies. So, our “goodness” as Alexis de Toqueville ascribed to this nation is more than overshadowed by the evil among us. As Ruth Graham is accredited with saying (and I paraphrase): “If God doesn’t hold America accountable for her wickedness, He will have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah.”

How true this is now more than even when she uttered that thought. We have watched the absolute debauching of society and culture through the LGBTQ and all forms of perversion involving sexuality. We now watch reports of transvestites or drag queens assigned to libraries to teach small children their perverted ways and perversions beyond theirs. We see the Vogue teen magazine instructing, in explicit detail, teenage girls and younger how to indulge in sodomy as a pleasurable means of avoiding sexual interaction that impregnates. We are barraged hour by hour with reports of every sort of inculcation that tries to destroy the institution God the Creator designed involving one man and one woman as husband and wife.

Yet, with all this, including our largest cities becoming infested with filth and lasciviousness that is the antithesis of all god intended, America is still here and not only still here, but far outpacing all other nations of the world in most every area of culture–except for turning back to God to a great extent. There are nations that are seemingly seeking God’s face much more than is our beloved America.

This will, ultimately, bring that judgment, Mrs. Graham forewarned those years ago.

America, as I think the Lord showed me,  is, however, going to be here for His specific purposes until He calls His Church to be with Christ in the Rapture. This is based on Jesus’ own prophecy found in Matthew 24: 36-42 and Luke 17: 26-30. He has put his man of the hour into the office of president of the United States in a miraculous way. Donald J. Trump defied all political odds and defeated the woman who the political world believed to be a sure thing as candidate for the presidency in 2016.

Mr. Trump is a builder perhaps unparalleled in modern history. He is a businessman with acumen few can in truth deny. He is a friend of Israel like no other president. He has accomplished things in Israel no other president has come close to attempting. Some Israelis even are calling him their “king.”

I don’t agree with the Israelis bestowing that nomenclature or the thought, but I put it here just to show the importance of this man who is not a godly one, but who is most definitely God’s man for this crucial hour at the end of the Church Age. No matter what Satan’s globalist hordes try against Trump, he prevails and even thrives. It is astonishing to behold. And, it is at least in part attributable to God’s people invoking the prayer of 2 Chronicles 7:14, I have no doubt.

The “Scanning a Fearful Future” series concluded by saying it is all in fulfillment of Christ’s prophecy as listed in the “days of Noah, days of Lot” Scriptures above. We are in an unprecedented time of economic upturn–of building, selling and buying in this nation, even while the rest of the world is struggling. Thus, also, even though the signals abound that all could come crashing down. And many economic experts say it will do so at any moment. This is what they were saying, remember, back in 2010 and 2011.

But God holds all in His omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent hand.

Just like Jesus said, I believe that it will be just like in the days of Lot when Christ next catastrophically intervenes into the affairs of rebellious mankind. That evil generation was buying, selling, and building. Business was great. But the day Lot and his family went out of Sodom, God’s judgment fell and destroyed the rebellious inhabitants.

As stated near the end of that series, Christians need not fear that coming judgment and wrath. It will be not a fearful future, but a fantastic future we will face when the glorious event we call the Rapture occurs and we are suddenly in the presence of our Lord and Savior.

As I view it, all is still on track to unfold exactly as I believe I was impressed to write those nine years ago.

–Terry

Aug 26, 2019

The Hateful Haters of Hate

The Democratic Party appears to have decided that its hope of gaining control of the White House in 2020 is to make racial division the centerpiece of its agenda. President Trump is constantly being compared to Adolf Hitler. Every act of hatred in the nation is somehow linked to him.

Senator Cory Booker told CNN that Trump is “worse than a racist.” That is a rather confusing pronouncement, implying that the senator believes racists are not the worst of all people. Booker tried to explain himself: “[Trump] is actually using racist tropes and racial language for political gains, trying to use this as a weapon to divide our nation against itself.” Booker was completely incapable of understanding the irony of his own words.

Booker is not the only person on the left whose rhetoric requires redefining the word “outrageous.” MSNBC put alleged investigative journalist Vegas Tenold on the air, back in July, to claim, “We’re at a point where Trump is more racist than neo-Nazis.” Again, this is an amazing revelation that Nazism was not the low point in history. People are being brainwashed into thinking that the ultimate in hatred is occurring right before our eyes.

In August, Robert “Beto” O’Rourke said of Trump, “He is a racist, and he stokes racism in this country, and it does not offend our sensibilities; it fundamentally changes the character of this country and it leads to violence.” Beto called President Donald Trump a white supremacist. When asked by MSNBC’s Jacob Soboroff whether Trump is a white supremacist, O’Rourke said, without hesitation, “He is.”

Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren also claims that the president is a white supremacist. Warren told The New York Times at a campaign stop in Iowa that she thinks President Trump not only fits the label himself, but has also “given aid and comfort to white supremacists.”

The Question, “Do you think President Trump is a white supremacist?” should be a simple test of a candidate’s mental fitness. Anyone with an IQ above 60 should be able to determine that Trump doesn’t fit into this category. Democrats are allowed to spout this nonsense because the liberal media is on their side.

The Democratic presidential contender Kamala Harris wants to ‘disarm violent hate’ by seizing guns from bigots. If elected, she will push legislation that would authorize federal courts to issue gun confiscation orders against people who express opinions that may indicate an intent to commit a hate crime. These “domestic terrorism prevention orders” would “temporarily restrict a person’s access to guns if they exhibit clear evidence of dangerousness,” including “violent racist threats or anti-immigrant manifestos.”

Her plan to “disarm violent hate” is pretty vague, and it would be difficult to make it consistent with the First Amendment. The creation of a federal “red flag” law would very likely infringe on constitutionally protected speech. If Harris is allowed to determine who will have their weapons confiscated, anyone who voted for Trump would likely make the list.

The political world doesn’t have a monopoly on irrational protests against racism. Carolina Panthers safety Eric Reid is still kneeling in silent protest before every football game. Reid is close friends with former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, and he was his sidekick in many protests during the national anthem. According to the Charlotte Observer, Reid’s current reason for kneeling is to “protest racial inequality and social injustice in America.” Maybe he is hoping to get fired so he can get a fat settlement check from the NFL and endorsement deals from Nike, just like his pal Kaepernick got.

The craziest recent statement on racism was made by Senator Bernie Sanders. Speaking to the Young Leaders Conference in Atlanta, Sanders pledged to “go to war against white nationalism and racism in every aspect of our lives.” The senator cited his personal history, saying that his father’s entire family was wiped out by “Hitler and his white nationalism.” Ironically, just as Hitler scapegoated Jews as being responsible for almost all of Germany’s problems at the time, so the modern American left seeks to hold white people of European descent responsible for all the Western world’s problems today.

The lack of a single Democratic candidate with a reasonable view on racism shows how dangerous the world has become. If voters are foolish enough to elect someone who sees his enemy as neo-Nazis, then any action they take will be justifiable. If there is no standard on what qualifies as hateful speech, there will also be no standard on who qualifies as a bigot.

“Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:10).

–Todd


Doors to Your Future

“Forget the book of Revelation. We have all the facts about Armageddon.”‘

The CNN anchorwoman’s opening statement into the lead story some years ago was given with lighthearted inflection. Although her words undoubtedly were intended to grab the attention of viewers in preparation for the ensuing story about Armageddon, the movie sensation of that hour, the tongue-in-cheek lead-in nonetheless appropriately reflected the worldview of biblical prophecy. Hollywood, the facetious opening implied, knows better than the God of the Bible what the future holds for mankind.

Dr. David Jeremiah remarked at that time, “Satan hates the book of Revelation because it foretells his doom.” It should not surprise us that a worldwide news medium should broadcast with such lack of understanding because Satan, who is the prince of this world, conducts an ongoing propaganda campaign that presents near truths designed to keep fallen mankind on the broad way that leads to destruction.

Jesus said, “Enter ye in at the strait gate; for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat; because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it” (Matthew 7:13,14).

There are, Christ tells us, two roads or pathways through life in the physical body. Because of man’s nature, fallen since the rebellion in the Garden of Eden, people are on the wide, easy path of least resistance that leads to their eternal separation from God, their Creator. Jesus Christ represents the other pathway–the narrow Way–that leads people to eternal life in Heaven, forever in the presence of God who adopts them as His children because of their trust in His Son as the only atonement for sin.

Every heartbeat moves you one moment nearer to eternity. You will enter that infinite realm through one of two doors. You may choose which of those doors you will ultimately enter while life yet pulses within your breast. However, by not choosing, you are swiftly moving toward the door beyond which awaits torment and damnation that will never end (see Luke 16:19-31).

While such a view runs counter to this world system’s theologies and philosophies of “feel-goodisms” and salvation by “do-goodisms,” and as unpopular as it is to point out that man is a fallen creature that needs saving, ignoring the truth of God’s Word means souls lost forever. Thankfully, “the Lord is … not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9).

The Hissing Serpent

Satan’s all-consuming purpose is to plant in the minds of men, women, and children a big question mark about God. Because there is within each of us a God-shaped soul-space, the great deceiver knows he cannot convince mankind there is no God. His drive is to create doubt about the Creator of all things: Is God a being or just a force of some kind like that portrayed in the “Star Wars” fiction? Is God existential in His dealings with His creation? Has He simply created and set all things in motion, then moved on, leaving that creation to evolve and fend for itself like is presented by the deist view? Or is God a deity who can be trusted? Can He be relied upon to keep His word, to see those who trust in Him through the vicissitudes of life and bring them into His loving, eternal presence when physical life on earth has run its course?

The latter of these deceptive questions was used by the serpent in the Garden of Eden (read Genesis 3). “Yea, hath God said?” was the question Lucifer the fallen one implanted within the minds of the first man and woman (see Genesis 3: 1). “Ye shall not surely die” the devil told the couple. He was implying that God wanted to keep them ignorant and under His thumb because He didn’t want them to become as gods, which gaining the forbidden knowledge would accomplish. In essence, Satan planted in their minds the belief that God is a liar. His Word cannot be trusted.

The serpent hisses the same subtle propaganda today into the ears of this self-willed generation of earth dwellers. If we will look and listen attentively, we can perceive an incessant assault upon the voracity of God’s truth coming at us from every angle.

Media Manipulation

The CNN story alluded to at the beginning of this commentary is mild in comparison to the many attacks on God’s truth-particularly in the area of biblical prophecy–while human history moves forward. Some might say that it is a natural thing for there to be increased interest generated during such a dramatic, exciting period. Movies, TV programs, speculation within news journalism–these things are to be expected to exploit the hopes, fears, and hunger for spectacular entertainment while earth moves ever deeper into the millennium. And exploited they continue to be!

However, it is not a natural exploitation. It’s a supernatural exploitation that more and more becomes evident to the spiritually attuned eye and ear. Satan, who has never ceased his assault against God’s truth, continues to intensify his attack at every point within the arena of human affairs. People’s almost-fanatic desire to gain supernatural knowledge about the future is fertile ground for the great deceiver to work his nefarious, anti-God subterfuge. Like the pied piper, Satan enchants the majority of humanity, enticing people to follow him down the broad way to the open door into the eternal abyss.

Satan’s attempted undermining of God’s truth is more and more observable in these closing days of the Church Age. He slyly chooses not to completely omit biblical prophecy as he influences media to create programs catering to their audience’s voracious appetites for knowledge of what the future holds. He subtly weaves sparse, disconnective textual bits and pieces from Bible prophecy within the nonsense and lies of false prophets in order to give their false prophecies an air of validity and believability. Always the message from the mind of the deceiver is that man and his humanistic solutions can overcome the dire predictions for mankind’s future if everyone will come together as one in peace and harmony.

The great deceiver hisses convincingly into the already-inflated egos of the one-world builders that they are “as gods.” They must, he whispers, overcome all obstacles totally apart from the deity Christian fanatics claim is the only One who knows the end from the beginning. Satan’s voice whispers against the One who prophesies a time of unprecedented trouble for the world because of mankind’s rebellion against Him and rejection of His Son, Jesus Christ.

Revelation 19:10 says, “The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy. ” The book of Revelation is not just a series of revelations of judgments, although it does reveal great details about the coming wrath of God and the reasons for judgment. The book is the revelation of Jesus Christ–the unveiling of the truth about who Christ is in His glorified magnificence.

Satan is presently mounting an all-out offensive in an attempt to pervert and thwart the truth of God’s prophetic Word. The nucleus of his attack centers around the lie that the book of Revelation is confusing, cannot be understood and, indeed, is not meant to be understood because it is a mishmash of symbolism and allegory that was never intended to be in the canon of Scripture. Tragically, many people in the body of Christ choose to fall for this satanic lie.

Even some Christian seminaries choose to ignore God’s revelation of His Son Jesus Christ by treating biblical prophecy, and the book of Revelation in particular, as symbolic or as history already accomplished. This despite the fact that Revelation 22:19 states, “If any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part from the tree of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.”

Christians who fall for this luciferian deception not only are missing the blessing promised by God to those who read and heed the revelation (see Revelation 1:3), but they are unwittingly helping Satan in his full-fledged assault on God’s truth as he leads lost men, women. and children to eternity apart from God.

Consider the foreshadows of wrath inundating this world in profusion. From the rapidly spreading apostasy developing through ecumenism to the precise alignment of nations as predicted in God’s Word to the perilous times Paul warned about in 2 Thessalonians 3, everything foreshadows our redemption that thrilling moment as foreseen by John in his vision: “After this I looked and, behold, a door was opened in heaven; and the first voice that I heard was, as it were, of a trumpet talking with me; which said, Come up here” (Revelation 4:1).

In order to enter that door, you must first open your door, the door to your heart (your soul). Jesus said, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me” (Revelation 3:20). It is your decision to make. There will never be one more important than the choice you make regarding the doors to eternity. God’s Word says, “Be ye therefore, ready also: for the Son of man cometh at an hour when ye think not” (Luke 12:40).

Right this moment, choose Jesus Christ, who faithfully promises “surely, I come quickly” (Revelation 22:20). Even so, come, Lord Jesus.

–Terry


***Look for new book next week!***

Discerners: Analyzing Converging Prophetic Signs For the End Of Days is scheduled for release the week of September 2, 2019. We prayerfully hope our Rapture Ready Family will be blessed mightily by this vitally important book for these closing days of this troubling though exciting age.

We say it is vitally important because each and every believer in Jesus Christ is commanded by the Lord to be watchful as the time of His return nears.

Jesus said: “”What I say unto one, I say to all. Watch.” (Mark 13: 37)

He said also: “When you see all these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your head, for your redemption draws near.” (Luke 21: 28)

Signs of His coming again are upon the horizon literally in every direction one looks. Yet, sadly, God’s people are without knowledge about the lateness of the prophetic hour.

Discerners is the book that draws all major signals together in a single, powerful volume that will help the believer be the watchman the Lord wants him or her to be during these critical times.

Eighteen of the top Bible prophecy teachers, preachers, broadcasters and writers in the nation cover in-depth yet in understandable language what issues and events of these strange days mean in terms of things to come.

You can know what to expect while God’s Prophetic Clock continues to tick through the last increments of this Age of Grace.

Look for Discerners: Analyzing Converging Prophetic Signs For the End Of Days the week of September 2.

Consider getting a copy for your pastor and Bible teachers. It is our prayer at Rapture Ready that this book will generate interest among those charged with rightly dividing the Word of Truth for their flocks during these prophetic hours.

Watch for further information and how to order beginning the week of September 2, 2019!