The Death Penalty Is Not a Joke, But It Has Become One

I was going to write about the Death Penalty based on a timely ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court, but I needed to put it off until this week for one important reason – I simply could not deal with how insane it has become. Over the past 10 years, I must have written at least four Nearing Midnight articles on the craziness of capital punishment.

It has become increasingly difficult to carry out a death sentence because of an ever-growing number of tactics. Lawyers for the condemned will raise issue after issue until they find a judge that agrees with them. The U.S. Supreme Court recently blocked the execution of a Buddhist inmate on death row because prison officials wouldn’t let his spiritual adviser be present in the death chamber. The adviser was said to be essential in guiding the inmate into the rebirth of his next life.

There has been a long battle over the use of drugs in executions. The left has convinced most domestic drug companies it would be bad publicity for their product to be used in an execution. The state of Texas had to create a secrecy law to shield the pharmacy that provided the Texas Department of Criminal Justice with the pentobarbital used in its execution.

When Oklahoma executed Charles Warner by substituting potassium acetate for the potassium chloride, the anti-death penalty purists whined that there had been a major violation of the state’s execution protocol. Both Nebraska and Ohio attempted to purchase sodium thiopental from overseas suppliers, and either the companies quit making the drug or they banned all exports to the U.S.

The lack of access to drugs has caused some states to turn to alternative execution methods. Tennessee reauthorized use of the electric chair, while Oklahoma passed a bill to make nitrogen gas asphyxiation its backup method. These two methods will likely be combated with the “cruel and unusual punishment” amendment that was first used to gum up the death penalty process.

When carried out in a timely manner, capital punishment has an enormous deterrent effect on the number of murders. Murder rates, which had trended downward since 1935, took off almost vertically after 1963, the year the Supreme Court started overturning state death penalty convictions.

The reason why we need a death penalty is to protect society from evil people. The press loves to give coverage to cases where someone is released from jail after being wrongfully convicted. They remain silent when a murderer is released, then kills someone else.

Last month, a man was released from jail who simply shouldn’t be breathing air. Thomas Kokoraleis was part of the four-man satanic cult called the “Ripper Crew” that terrorized Chicago in the 1980s, killing up to 18 women in the area, according to The Chicago Tribune. Kokoraleis went to prison for a single woman’s 1982 murder after he agreed to a 70-year plea deal. Because Illinois required the person incarcerated to get day-for-day credit for time served, Kokoraleis only served 35 years.

The mother of that slain woman was obviously outraged by Kokoraleis’s release:

“I will never understand how a man who was convicted of raping and murdering my daughter could be walking free in Illinois today. My daughter was an innocent victim,” she said. “Her murderer did not receive the justice that he deserved. But I believe in God, and I have no doubt that God will deliver the final judgment,” said Lorraine Borowski.

The Bible provides strong support for the death penalty with the Old Testament bluntly saying “Whoever takes a human life shall surely be put to death” (Leviticus 24:17). In Romans, Paul wrote that it’s indication of sound authority rule for leaders to properly punish wrongdoers. The fact that capital punishment has become such a massive joke is one more indication that this world is well deserving of God’s end-time wrath.

“Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer. Therefore one must be in subjection, not only to avoid God’s wrath but also for the sake of conscience….”(Romans 13:1-14 ESV).

–Todd

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Bad News/Good News

Our news as Christians today is filled with trepidation. It seems all is bad news.

Every aspect of life at present appears on the brink of contributing to the bringing forth of the dreaded Tribulation predicted by God’s Word.

Geopolitically, the world is on the verge of war and freedom seems on the cusp of being snuffed. Even the great bastion of freedom–the United States of America–appears subject to a future of such oppression.

Sociologically and culturally, evil men and seducers are growing worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived. Paul’s 2 Timothy chapter 3 “perilous times” are front and center in the news during our every waking moment.

Religiously, even the evangelical body of believers seems to be defecting–moving at breakneck speed into the apostasy of 2 Thessalonians chapter 2 and beyond.

Economically, while the national situation in fiscal matters is pointed out by “experts” as going “great guns,” one doesn’t have to look too deeply beneath the surface of financial/monetary matters to know there is serious trouble brewing. With a national debt of $22.1 trillion and climbing exponentially, how can future prospects be described as looking other than bleak?

In every direction we look on the future’s horizon, we see the last seven years of human history quickly approaching.

So, the news is bad for the most part; there is no other way to put it.

It is with this fact in view that it was brought to mind the good news/bad news plethora of jokes that have assaulted the ears through my life. Here are a few of the clean ones just to give an idea of those similar to the ones I’m sure you’ve heard, too.

These are jokes aimed at pastors for the most part.

Good News: You baptized seven people today in the river.

Bad News: You lost two of them in the swift current.

Good News: The Women’s Guild voted to send you a get-well card.

Bad News: The vote passed by 31-30.

Good News: The Elder Board accepted your job description the way you wrote it.

Bad News: They were so inspired by it, they also formed a search committee to find somebody capable of filling the position.

Good News: You finally found a choir director who approaches things exactly the same way you do.

Bad News: The choir mutinied.

Good News: Mrs. Jones is wild about your sermons.

Bad News: Mrs. Jones is also wild about the “Gong Show”, “Beavis and Butthead” and “Texas Chain Saw Massacre.”

Good News: Your women’s softball team finally won a game.

Bad News: They beat your men’s softball team.

Good News: The trustees finally voted to add more church parking.

Bad News: They are going to blacktop the front lawn of your parsonage.

Good News: Church attendance rose dramatically the last three weeks.

Bad News: You were on vacation.

Good News: Your deacons want to send you to the Holy Land.

Bad News: They are stalling until the next war.

Good News: Your biggest critic just left your church.

Bad News: He has been appointed the Head Bishop of your denomination.

Good News: The youth in your church come to your house for a surprise visit.

Bad News: It’s in the middle of the night and they are armed with toilet paper and shaving cream to “decorate” your house.

When people approach with these good news/bad news matters, they usually ask: “Do you want the good news first, or the bad?” Most, I believe, answer: “Give me the bad news first.” –At least that’s most often my answer.

So, looking through Rapture Ready news recently, I found these headlines that fit in the bad news category. We will have a brief gander at these first.

* Diplomats at the U.N. commit anti-Semitic acts 
Global anti-Semitism can best be observed at the General Assembly of the United Nations.

*   Mystery E. coli outbreak sickens 72 people in 5 states, CDC says
A multistate outbreak of E. coli has raised alarms and questions: As of Thursday, 72 people in five states have become ill, yet the cause of their infection remains unknown, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Friday.

* China is ‘threat to world’ says dissident writer
A dissident writer…said…that his homeland is a “threat for the whole world”. Liao Yiwu, who was jailed for writing a poem called “Massacre” about the Tiananmen Square protests, told AFP that it would be better for mankind if the economic superpower “splits up.”

* Sources: UN nuclear watchdog inspects Iran ‘warehouse’ Netanyahu pointed to
The UN atomic watchdog policing Iran’s nuclear deal has inspected what Israel’s prime minister called a “secret atomic warehouse.”

Convention at major U.S. hotels showcases extreme sexual depravity

That weekend, major Cleveland hotels will host CLAW, the Cleveland Annual Leather Weekend It’s a large orgy of homosexual males focused on “sado-masochism.”

Well, we could have found even more significant signs of the approaching apocalypse. But you get the picture. Bad news is everywhere we look–and in every area of life.

Now for the Good News! Good News, of course, is the definition of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The Gospel is that Jesus came to die for the sins of mankind so that all people, if they individually accept God’s grace offer of redemption, will not die apart from God, but will have abundant life for all eternity.

Those same Christians are promised that they will not have to endure the Tribulation that is sure to come. They will be kept out of that time of God’s wrath (Revelation 3: 10). –And that’s the entire seven years of Daniel’s seventieth week (Daniel 9: 26-27).

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. (John 3: 16)

–Terry

Chicago Goes from Bad to Worse

The City of Chicago is the most populous city in Illinois, as well as the third most populous city in the United States. It is also a financial train wreck, with a debt so large it is set to replace Detroit as the city with the worst debt load. Chicago has billions in unfunded pension promises.

A recent analysis of the top 75 most populous U.S. cities by “Truth in Accounting’s Financial State” gave Chicago a grade of “F” in its financial health and ranked it at the bottom of the list. The report said Chicago’s debt burden was $40.5 billion, which would equate to about $45,000 for every Chicago taxpayer.

Chicago is also a basket case for racial strife. There is record black-on-black murder, but white cops are seen as the problem. The Jussie Smollett scandal made the racial discord only worse. The next time there is a real hate crime in Chicago, it’s going to be impossible to know truth from fiction.

The city has just had an election to select a new mayor. The winner was former federal prosecutor Lori Lightfoot, who defeated Toni Preckwinkle in a runoff. She swept all 50 wards in the city’s mayoral race. Lightfoot will be the first openly gay person and first black woman to lead the city.

Rahm Emanuel, who has been mayor since 2011, made the race possible by announcing in September that he would not seek a third term. When a city’s problems become so profound that even a powerful Democrat known as “the Godfather” decides to jump ship, you know that difficult days are ahead.

Lightfoot came in first in an election that saw a record 14 candidates vying to succeed Emanuel. Although a nonpartisan election, the candidates in the February main election were all attached in varying degrees to the Democratic Party. The Republican Party has virtually disappeared from the city, which is shocking for a city with so many problems.

In her acceptance speech, Lightfoot said that as mayor she would focus on investing in neighborhoods on the West and South Sides and bring transparency and accountability to City Hall. She also said she wants to end City Hall corruption and restore people’s faith in government.

“Out there tonight a lot of little girls and boys are watching. They’re watching us, and they’re seeing the beginning of something, well, a little bit different,” Lightfoot told a jubilant crowd at a downtown hotel. “They’re seeing a city reborn.”

I find it amazing that the citizens of Chicago could be so foolish as to elect someone who will obviously make the city’s problems worse. She wants to give money to poor areas that have already put Chicago into a massive financial mess. The “transparency” is about removing the rule of law in the black regions of the city. Going forward, the crime rate can only soar. With Lightfoot fixated on any perceived offenses by law enforcement, the blood is going to run like rivers in the streets of the Windy City.

This growing pattern of wickedness and lawlessness that is so evident in Chicago is a warning of more to come. By rejecting God’s Word as the ultimate authority in their lives, people are setting the stage for the downfall of our nation.

“Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator–who is forever praised. Amen. Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.

“Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them” (Romans 1:24-32).

–Todd

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End-of-World Mindset?

There is, according to some observers, a developing mindset among people in general that something wicked this way comes, as William Shakespeare put it. This developing mindset is particularly pronounced among the Millennials.

We can see this growing angst reflected in the words of U.S. House of Representatives Congresswoman Alexandria Ocassio Cortez (29, I think she is) and others of her politically ideological ilk. They are so concerned about the coming destruction of planet Earth–within twelve years, Cortez says–that they offer insane fixes to prevent the earth’s demise.

She and some others have declared they will work to do away with all airplane travel. They are determined to stop, or curtail at least, the eating of meat. We need, they believe, fewer cattle on the planet because of the cows’ …ahem… flatulence, which, they believe, adds to the methane buildup and other things destroying the breathability of air. Their plans, if they were possible to accomplish and were implemented, would cost upwards of $100 trillion. This amount is considered woefully low in estimation by many who study such things.

The doing away with airplane travel, travel by automobile, and many other brilliant such stratagem for saving the planet are just the tip of the supposedly melting iceberg in their plans to change the way life is conducted on earth. Worries of future, worldwide, catastrophe isn’t confined to Ms Cortez and her lot. A recent news item tells of a growing anxiety that something wicked this way comes.

In what may be seen as an ominous case of synchronicity, earthquake and tsunami drills were held all over the world in the last month.

On Wednesday, tens of thousands of residents of Oakland, California were shocked when their cell phones buzzed with a message: there had been no earthquake. Though intended to reassure them that the earthquake warning system was operational, many took it is an ominous reminder that they lived in a region with a history of seismic catastrophes… Earthquake drills were also held in other places around the U.S including Connecticut and Colorado.

On Tuesday, sections of the East Coast, including New Jersey and the Virgin Islands, held tsunami drills. Over the last month, a major drill preparing for earthquakes and tsunamis was held throughout the Philippines for the first time. Over the last two months, drills were held in Indonesia, Dominican Republic, Trinidad and Tobago, and several other nations.

Israel was also part of this informal global seismic drill. Two weeks ago, the Home Front Command held a tsunami exercise in schools throughout the country for the first time. (“End-of-Days Expert: Disaster Drills, Sign ‘Governments Know Something Big is Coming’” by Adam Eliyahu Berkowitz, Breaking Israel News, March 29, 2019)

The growing alarm among those in Israel as well as among the people of the world at large was brought to the attention  of journalists by Yuval Ovadia. He is an Israeli writer/researcher who has produced films on feared disasters that might be in prospect for the planet. Ovadia has been tracking such drills and government preparations as part of his research into the subject of the pre-Messiah astronomical event.

Ovadia commented, “Everyone, secular and religious, from every country, is talking about the end-of-days. It is clear that there is some knowledge out there driving this. So many governments are preparing for a global crisis, something unprecedented. The governments making these drills know that something big is coming.”

“It is understandable to hold hurricane drills or the like in a specific season,” Ovadia emphasized. “But there is no season for earthquakes. It is remarkable that so many countries decided to hold earthquake drills at the same time.”

While Ms. Cortez and her millennial brothers and sisters are looking for a coming calamity upon the planet within twelve years and the nations are expecting earthquakes and tsunamis of prodigious proportions, there seems no such mindset among–of all people–the people who call Jesus Christ their Savior and Lord.

I’m not talking about the fact that these people simply are not worried because they know they are safely within His wonderful arms. No. I’m saying here that these don’t seem to have even a clue–nor do they seem to think deeply enough on the matters to care–that there is in fact coming upon this planet a catastrophe so enormous that only a few creatures of flesh and blood will survive.

In America, the ignorance seems willful. It starts in the pulpits, with preachers who won’t touch Bible prophecy. Or, if they do touch on it, it isn’t even near the truth about what God’s Word has pronounced on this rebellious, judgment-bound world.

Of course, it is equally the fault of Christians who prefer to not think about the things we are supposed to be discerning, especially as the day of Christ’s return is appearing on the near horizon. Such things are gloom and doom–a downer. Best to just go about life ignoring such things. What will be, will be…

The end-of-the-world mindset held by those who are totally of the world–not Christ’s–is right, that something wicked this way comes. There is coming upon the earth the terrors they are expecting–and much worse.

But it will not be a tsunami that crashes across the upper east coast of the U.S. and destroys their precious New York City. It won’t be the man-made, climate-change, rising sea level that chokes the life out of them and all that is upon the earth. And it is not necessarily due twelve years from now. The catastrophe that is coming is from above. It is the harpazo–the snatching away of millions of Christians in the Rapture.

Jesus said that the very moment it happens, God’s judgment will fall–just like in the days of Noah and Lot’s day in Sodom.

Thankfully, God is not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance. May all of those with the end-of-the-world mindset look to Christ, for He is the only salvation available to them. May the Church begin to truly watch for their Lord, who could call them to Himself, literally, at any moment. And may we who belong to Christ begin living life accordingly.

–Terry