The Mark of the Beast Goes Mainstream

One of the most helpful tools I use in the analysis of Bible prophecy is a comparison of how people perceived events years ago, and how they view these same events today. In the 1960’s the government believed that people with homosexual tendencies were mentally ill.

Here in the 21st century, gay is the way. You’ve probably heard about state officials who try to compel florists or bakers to violate their religious beliefs and participate in same-sex weddings. In Minnesota the state claims the authority to do the same to filmmakers. A Christian film company was told to add gay couples to its film to show the normalcy of same-sex marriage.

Another huge change in perception has been how people view technology that could compromise their privacy. I still remember when any news story about software or machines that could track your movements was viewed in a negative light. Today, people are blind to technology that can observe and track everything you do.

Employees at the Three Square Market in River Falls, WI, actually celebrated by wearing “I Got Chipped” T-shirts after they were implanted with microchips by their bosses. The firm’s Operating Officer Patrick McMullan dismisses any concerns that microchipping his employees is akin to Big Brother. He told detractors to “take your cell phone and throw it away” to defend this invasive practice.

Three Square Market is looking to drastically expand the technology and make it standardized, showing how it can already be used to open doors, buy food items, and turn on computer portals. The company’s CEO Todd Westby demonstrated how the microchips can effectively store biometric information as well. “I scanned my hand and here’s my driver’s license information,” Westby said, holding up his phone.

One of my neighbors has their house wired with Amazon’s Alexa device. You can ask Alexa to turn on the lights or play music. You can ask Alexa a silly question like: “Do you have a boyfriend?” or “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?” If you ask “Where can I hide a body?” or “What would be the best location to explode an improvised nuclear bomb?” there is a possibility that the FBI might pay you a visit.

The internet provides the government with vast powers in controlling the population. One example of this danger is the number of times authorities shut down the internet to control or stifle. Typically used during times of civil unrest or political instability, a shutdown allows officials to stifle the flow of information about government wrongdoing or to stop communication among activists, usually by ordering service providers to cut or slow their customers’ internet access.

When Zimbabwe turned off the internet during a recent crackdown, Obert Masaraure, a prominent government critic, had no way of knowing when it was safe to emerge from hiding. The Indian government employs the practice more frequently than any other. In 2018, there were at least 196 shutdowns in 25 countries, up from 75 in 24 countries in 2016, according to research by Access Now, an independent watchdog group that campaigns for internet rights. In the first half of this year alone, there were 114 shutdowns in 23 countries.

The horrifying vision of the future described by George Orwell in “1984” has been neutralized by the convenience that technology provides us. You can use your cell phone to watch the house, track the weather, and monitor the stock market. The apps on your phone also allow a dozen different companies to track your physical movement.

China has started ranking citizens with a sinister ‘social credit’ system. It gives a credit score for every citizen based on big data analysis. This surveillance system rewards and punishes people based on their behavior.

The global community should be outraged that China has become an Orwellian state. Many governments are viewing the social credit system as something to emulate. Last week there was a news story on the Drudge Report that discussed using the China model to control people’s access to guns.

When I was a kid, I remember reading a Christian publication that described the mark of the beast as the product of a world gone mad. The world has collectively lost its mind, and it is clear that the introduction of a 666 device would be welcomed by the vast majority of people. During the tribulation we may have individuals wearing “I Got Marked” T-shirts. We have had the ability to create the mark for at least two decades. The lack of any meaningful opposition to this type of technology tells us that the tribulation hour is very near.

“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” (Revelation 13:16-17).

–Todd

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End-Times War Intensifying

A man stood up the other day at one Democrat Party function or the other. He was a fellow Democrat with those gathered, as I recall.

The man with the microphone for that moment said something like, “Our nation is in serious trouble, and the only one who can make it right again is the Lord Jesus Christ.” That’s not his exact quote, but it was just as strong as I’ve paraphrased here.

There was immediate and loud reaction to his words. They were not in support of the speaker’s sentiment. Far from it; there were shouts for him to shut up and even stronger invective, as I heard the reaction.

They gave him the proverbial hook in no uncertain terms.

He was exactly right, of course, and what he was doing on that Democrat stage, I must admit, baffled me. Having heard all such references to God in a positive way shouted down by Democrat Party gatherings since well before the 2016 presidential election–shouted down with boos and hisses of serpent-like virulence–I was surprised that even one among them still held to the view he tried to express.

Now I am aware that there are many true Christians even among the Democrat Party as it is currently constituted. However, it is getting more and more difficult to come to that conclusion based upon the God-opposing madness that–again, in my view— has become manifest since the time immediately following John F. Kennedy’s presidency.

It is as if that political element within America is waging war on God. I’m not thinking here in terms of symbolically or allegorically or metaphorically, or any other way than literally. It seems the Democrat Party, with the full-blown assistance of the mainstream media and every other humanistic element of culture and society, is at war with God–specifically with Jesus Christ.

Lest critics brand me as a falsehood-spreading, right-wing deplorable, I offer a couple of pieces of evidence of recent vintage to support my case.

While the anti-God forces seek in every way, and on a daily basis, to push Christian beliefs from the public square, the champions of this force incessantly seek to claim that Christians are doing what they, themselves, are doing to remove all godly governance.

The Democratic National Committee (DNC) passed a resolution at its summer meeting championing “religiously unaffiliated” voters, who the resolution noted are the “largest religious group” within the party.

The DNC’s “Resolution Regarding the Religiously Unaffiliated Demographic” stated that “religiously unaffiliated Americans overwhelmingly share the Democratic Party’s values,” and “have often been subjected to unfair bias and exclusion in American society.”

The resolution also takes a shot at deeply religious voters, who are accused of using their religious beliefs to oppress other groups.

It said “those most loudly claiming that morals, values, and patriotism must be defined by their particular religious views have used those religious views, with misplaced claims of ‘religious liberty,’ to justify public policy that has threatened the civil rights and liberties of many Americans, including but not limited to the LGBT community, women, and ethnic and religious/nonreligious minorities…

DNC chair Tom Perez has been openly critical of church-going Americans in the past.

Perez said in December 2018 that Republicans have an advantage because “people buy” what they hear at church.

“It should come as a surprise to no-one that that person has elevated the issue of courts to the top because that person on the pulpit is saying ‘ignore everything else that this person has done and is doing, we have to focus on one issue of Roe vs. Wade.’ And people buy it. Because that’s their only source,” Perez said. (“DNC Resolution Celebrates Democrats’ ‘Largest Religious Group’ — And It’s Not Christians,” Daily Caller, Peter Hasson, senior reporter, 8/30/19)

The “religiously unaffiliated” designation is used to avoid “we are against any governance by any deity” label. America is still a nation that has a significant remnant of God’s people, and the Democrat elite know it. They are masters, it seems, of luciferically inspired language.

Nowhere is the growing war against true believers in Jesus Christ more pronounced than within the so-called higher education institutions of America. We can read or hear news reports almost hourly of professors ranting against the way America was founded. They always bring the slavery issue into the mix of their vitriolic condemnation of the Founding Fathers. They ignore the goodness within the Founders’ intention to, ultimately, bring about realization and acceptance that all men are created equal and that God is that Creator who favors no human being over another.

One example in American academia today of the hatred for all that is Christian is Jeff Klinzman, an adjunct English professor at Kirkwood Community College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. He claims to be in sympathy with the domestic terrorists called antifa, and posted the following on Facebook. “I know who I’d clock with a bat.”

He was referring to President Trump, who had said previously: “Antipas are Radical Left Wack Jobs who go around hitting…people over the heads with baseball bats.”

The professor also wrote that he wanted to “stop evangelical Christians” and posted a poem that said, “Kill them all and bury them deep in the ground.”

Klinzman explained why he shared the poem, “It’s not pretty, and I’m not proud, but seeing what evangelical Christians are doing to this [country] and its people fills me with rage, and a desire to exact revenge.”

When contacted by Cedar Rapids ABC affiliate KCRG, Klinzman said he was part of the group, “I affirm that I am antifa.”

Antifa is a far-left group that often goes to rallies to fight white supremacists or groups they perceive to be racist. They also have a history of attacking journalists covering the protests. (“‘Kill them all’: Iowa professor resigns after his comments about evangelicals revealed,” Washington Examiner, Julio Rosas, August 27, 2019)

 Jesus’ own words immediately came to mind when observing the treatment of that aberrant member of the Democrat Party’s most active membership, the man who stood with the microphone claiming Jesus as the answer to all problems.

They shall put you out of the synagogues: yea, the time cometh, that whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God service. And these things will they do unto you, because they have not known the Father, nor me.  (John 16:2-3)

Just as the pious Jews sought to kill those who believed Jesus was Messiah, the elite of that Democrat Party gathering seem to be of the mindset reflected by the words of the professor as given above.

But it is not just those within the Democrat Party who are waging war against Christ. The whole world is going mad with the reprobate mind that has infected mankind because of collective resistance to Heaven’s governance. They are primed, sad to say, to accept their false Christ, who will soon appear on the world scene. Antichrist will wage the ultimate war against Christ. He–and all who follow him—will meet their devastating end upon the killing field called Armageddon.

Don’t be part of that end-times war-making. Accept Christ as prescribed in God’s Word.

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

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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

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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