Life Has Become a Parody of Itself

The world we currently live in is becoming increasingly illogical with each passing day. It seems that life has become a huge parody, with a host of actors deliberately performing exaggerations for comic effect. There is no laughing because this form of parody is no joke.

The hijinks of actor Jussie Smollett are a prime example. He manufactured this crazy caper that he was attacked by Trump-loving racists. Smollett alleged his assailants yelled, “This is MAGA country,” while attacking him in sub-zero temperatures at two in the morning on the streets of Chicago. Yeah, in Chicago, which happened in one of the most “progressive” places on earth.

The most ridiculous part is that he paid his phony attackers with a check. The second most insane moment was that he walked home with the noose they supposedly put around his neck, and kept it on until police arrived.

On Inside the NBA, Charles Barkley did a hilarious two-minute roast session of Smollett. Barkley didn’t have 20 comedy writers supplying him with material. Smollett made it too easy for him to say “America, do not write checks when you are about to do illegal activity.”

The ability of the Barkley video to go viral without any competition asks the question, “Where were all the late-night comedians? The hosts of The Tonight Show, The Late Show, and The Late Late Show should have been asking if the Smollett check was made out to “The Muggers.” They are too focused on attacking Trump to take advantage of an opportunity that was one of the reasons why these shows were created.

Another thing that has become a massive parody of itself is the Academy Awards. You don’t need to guess which movie has the greatest amount of acting to be chosen as best picture. The Oscars are political preaching disguised as an award show.

If you have a black guy who is gay, he will win out over another movie about heterosexual blacks. As a result of agenda-driven voting, Green Book won the top honor for 2019. Hollywood was able to pat itself on the back for show diversity, and then five white guys got up and accepted the award for Green Book.

Spike Lee is the biggest racist on planet Earth. He earned that title from years of griping about the constant oppression he received from this “white-dominated nation.” Lee’s film, BlacKkKlansman, was given an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. A film about a black guy who outsmarts the KKK was sure to win some award.

The lucky director was not happy with his single honor. As far as I know, he was the first Academy Award loser ever to throw a public tantrum right there in the auditorium. After Best Picture was predictably awarded to Green Book instead of Lee’s film, BlacKkKlansman, Lee had a fit. Deadline noted that a “furious” Lee left his seat and stalked back toward the rear of the theater. Then he feigned outrage by pacing in the aisle and headed for the back of the theater again. When he got back to his seat, he pointedly turned his back to the stage as Green Book producer-director Peter Farrelly gave an acceptance speech.

Lee is such a disgusting clown of bigotry that a normal person would not want to have him around them. Because no one wants to be labeled a racist, they tolerate Lee’s movies that make a mockery of racial harmony.

Life has become such a parody of common sense that the makers of actual parody are frequently mistaken for honest reporting. The supposed regulator of fake news, Snopes, embarrassed itself when the company dedicated precious resources to literally fact-checking the deliberately unapologetic satirical fake news Christian site, The Babylon Bee.

The Babylon Bee took aim at the Smollett fiasco with an article headlined, “Jussie Smollett Offered Job at CNN after Fabricating News Story out of Thin Air.” From The Babylon Bee:

“While Empire actor Jussie Smollett has been having a tough week so far, there appears to be a silver lining: cable news channel CNN has offered Smollett a job as an investigative reporter and on-air anchor after witnessing his skills at fabricating a story entirely out of thin air,” the article cheekily said. “CNN producers were reportedly impressed throughout the ongoing saga of Smollett’s apparent hoax attack on himself. They realized early on the facts didn’t add up but were fascinated with how well the actor kept the narrative going. An HR rep quickly reached out to Smollett to see if he’d be interested in taking on a position at the news organization after news broke that the entire thing was probably fabricated.”

The site’s footer gives away The Babylon Bee’s nature by describing it as “Your Trusted Source for Christian News Satire.” Snopes missed the satirical angle of the article because it’s run by people with a deep-seated liberal nature. The leftist cause takes priority in all matters of life.

The day will soon come when there is no room for parody. After the rapture, the world will suddenly wake up to a nightmare of endless calamity. For those of us who have faith in Christ, we have the promise of being rescued just ahead of that dark hour.

“In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also” (John 14:2-3).

–Todd

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Your Only Way Out

Critics of the pre-Trib Rapture continue to send email. Every week I get a number of messages telling me we are teaching error. Well…some accuse of much more damage done than simply teaching error. We are sometimes charged with leading people to accept the lie of 2 Thessalonians chapter 2. This, of course, is the great delusion Antichrist will foist upon mankind when the Tribulation is in effect.

By teaching that Rapture will occur before the seven years of Tribulation begins, we are, these in opposition to the pre-Trib Rapture accuse, likely causing people to not recognize Antichrist when he one day soon comes on the scene. These who are so duped, the critics say, might well take the “666” mark of the beast of Revelation 13:16-18 because they will be thinking the Rapture must occur first and not realize that they must endure all or at least part of the Tribulation era.

If they take the mark, they will be doomed forever, according to Revelation chapter 14.

I must say that I have to believe that anyone who views the Rapture as mid-Trib or post-Trib cannot believe in eternal security of the believer. They cannot believe in “once saved, always saved.”

Those who enter the seven years of Tribulation will have to make the choice of whether to take Antichrist’s mark of worship. If they take the mark in order to receive sustenance so as to not starve, or to avoid beheading, they are, God’s Word says, lost forever, with no chance for redemption. So, they will have lost their salvation.

In such case, the Age of Grace–in which one can be saved for all eternity–can’t be a dispensational fact. There is no separation of the Church Age from the Tribulation era within this view.

This is a double-jeopardy belief system. There is no comfort to be found within it. And yet, God’s Word says the following:

For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord. Wherefore comfort one another with these words. (1 Thessalonians 4:15-18)

Accompanying the charge that we are leading people to not recognize Antichrist, thus endangering them of taking the mark of the beast, is the accusation that we are practicing the false teaching of escapism.

This is the accusation, often charged in anger,  that we are telling Christians they can escape the coming time of God’s judgment and wrath. These who charge such most often teach that Christians must go through the time of Tribulation to prove their worthiness to inherit the eternal kingdom. They don’t explain why millions of believers who have lived and died since the Church was born won’t have to do the same.

I remember well the words of Thru the Bible Radio teacher and famous pastor of the Church of the Open Door, Dr. J. Vernon McGee . He once said that people accused him of being an escapist theologian–of teaching falsely the escaping from that horrendous time of God’s judgment and wrath. Ol’ Dr. McGee said that he wholeheartedly agreed. He was a believer in the escapist theology. He said something like: “If the building is on fire and I’m about to be burned up, I will go out the door, the window, up the chimney–I’ll go through any opening to escape the horror of that threat.”

And the Tribulation will certainly be seven years of unspeakable horror. It will make the Holocaust of Hitler’s day look like a Sunday school picnic, McGee went on to say.

Jesus said of that time: “For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be” (Matthew 24:21).

So, I, like Dr. McGee, will gladly take that open door into Heaven that the Lord will provide when this dispensation, the Church Age or Age of Grace ends and that time of horror, the Tribulation, begins. Short of death, it is my only way out of the most terrible time of all human history, according to the lord Jesus’ own words.

It is also your only way, other than death, to get out of the horrors of that time–a time that the signs proliferating all around this generation tells the observer of God’s prophetic Word must surely be near.

This is not a forewarning of gloom and doom for the believer in Jesus Christ for salvation. The glory that awaits the believer who is alive at this exciting yet troubling hour in human history is stupendous–spectacular beyond our wildest imagination!

Don’t fear things to come. Just believe and take comfort. Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved (Acts 16:31)!

Even beyond that, whether through death or the Rapture before this era of horror begins, you and I will instantaneously be in the presence of our Lord and Savior. We will inherit the entirety of Heaven’s unfathomable splendor!

–Terry

How China Uses Financial Aid to Colonize the World

For many years, I’ve read headline stories about China giving out financial aid money to various nations. I always thought the money was being used to buy goodwill with various nations that it seeks to bring into its growing level of financial influence. I’ve now learned that China has a far more sinister reason why it is sharing its wealth with third-world nations

The Old Soviet Union would do this with military weapons. It would pour vast amounts of arms into a nation. Because the weapon system would be so expensive, the USSR would write off the loans. The Soviets lost vast amounts of money by giving arms to nations, which the West defeated with superior military technology.

The Chinese are not intending to be the world’s Santa Claus. Very little of the money it hands out to nations goes for humanitarian aid. Most of the projects supported by Chinese loans are for industrial developments. The top four categories of projects are oil and gas, Railroad, hydroelectric, and mining.

When the West gives money and the loans go bad, the investment is typically written off. When China gives money to a nation and the loans go into default, the Chinese move in to foreclose.

It’s not that China has bad luck or likes taking risks. The main goal of the Chinese loans is for them to go into default. Once a country can’t make the payments on its loan, China introduces a term that allows it to Colonize its victim.

The Chinese talked Sri Lanka into spending $8 billion to build the country’s second-largest port at Hambantota. Since there was little traffic in the area, there was no way for the port to ever be economical. When the loans could not be paid back, a Chinese state-owned subsidiary moved in and secured a 99-year operating lease for the port.

In Pakistan, more than 90% of revenues generated at the newly developed Gwadar Port at the mouth of the strategically significant Gulf of Oman are collected by the Chinese operator.

Since the amount of money lent to Africa has increased sevenfold over the last decade, China’s financial colonization of Africa is becoming a clear aim of all this easy money. According to a study by the China-Africa Research Initiative at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, China had lent a total of $143 billion to 56 African nations.

At $43 billion, Angola has the most Chinese debt that equals 35% of Angolan 2017 GDP. Angola recently reached a loans-for-oil settlement, with Beijing lining the country’s future oil production to shipments to China in order to service the country’s burgeoning infrastructure debt.

China built a giant railroad line in the nation of Kenya. It is the biggest infrastructure project in the nation’s history. The line was built with $7 billion of Chinese money. The huge price tag and the lack of paying customers will soon mean that this will be another project that will come under Chinese control.

There is little chance that China will face any competition from the IMF in the lending of money to Africa. Most nations in the region are so corrupt, there is no way to secure loans under a standard business arrangement. Because China doesn’t care about human rights, it was able to ignore a genocidal war and make an oil deal with Sudan’s dictatorial leader.

It would not be possible for China to Colonize the world without help from the U.S. The $500 billion trade deficit we have with Beijing gives it the credit needed to make all these loans. The more China uses our IOU bonds to make these deals, the weaker the dollar becomes as a global reserve currency.

China’s Colonization of large parts of the world has allowed it to reach the point where it can fulfill one of the most amazing prophecies of the Bible. When China decides to invade the Middle East with an army of 200 million soldiers, it will need a vast amount of resources. Thanks to years of pre-planning, the Kings of the East monster is nearly ready to move out.

“And the sixth angel poured out his vial upon the great river Euphrates; and the water thereof was dried up, that the way of the kings of the east might be prepared” (Revelation 16:12).

–Todd

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Deeper State of Depravity

It is not the Deep State of governmental cabals I wish to examine here. It is the deeper state of depravity into which America has entered that demands to be addressed.

That being said, the former matter, like the latter, is part of the same depraved nature of man. It is rebellion against the Creator that is moving the nation and world ever downward toward the abyss where sin will be incarcerated for all eternity.

We witness daily all the madness and say with a shake of the head: “It’s just insanity.”

We have seen it in the political realm. The party of the ideological left continues to seemingly self-destruct. They do things that make no sense from the perspective of what under the norms of times just past would seem rational. For example, New York City leaders, desperately in need of revenue to fund their “progressive” giveaways, let a 29-year-old, first-term congresswoman–who most often speaks like a teenager–cause  $27 billion in taxes from Amazon to be lost. The company instead moved to another state. The neophyte politician, who has an economics degree from Boston University or one of those schools, thought the city was going to give $3 billion to the company to come to the city.

But that wasn’t the case. The company would have paid $30 billion annually to the city, with the city government agreeing to give the company a $3 billion tax break, meaning they would pay $27 billion.

Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez convinced her constituency and hundreds of thousands of other “progressives”  that they  didn’t want their city paying $3 billion to Amazon, because one of their key hatreds in their ideology is hatred for the rich. Donald Trump, after all, is a billionaire…

This hatred could not be contained, even though Amazon leadership is totally left on the ideological spectrum in every sense of the anti-Trump political war.

In addition to the lost $27 billion in tax revenue annually, New York City lost what would have amounted to 25,000 jobs. The top officials in Ms. Cortez’s party hierarchy aren’t happy about this matter.

So, as we say here in the South, they cut off their noses to spite their faces.

It shows the growing spiritual dementia, I think. It is an ever-deeper state of depravity into which this generation is descending.

Other symptoms of this dementia-malady can be seen in the same political party in which Ms. Cortez is considered the up-and-coming darling. For example, more than 70 percent of all Americans, which includes those strongly in favor of abortion, say they are against after-birth infanticide. And, infanticide is exactly what a growing number of progressively run states are proposing following in the footsteps of New York City’s decision to let just-born infants die if they were intended for abortion but continue to live after the birth. Despite this large percentage against such horrendous action, the Democrat Party continues to expand the attempted legalization of this infanticide. Other states continue to attempt to pass laws allowing this satanic practice.

Excerpts of a recent news item frames the depravity.

The newly elected Governor JB Pritzker has promised to make Illinois the abortion capital of the world, and he’s making good on his word…

Illinois is taking extreme measures to ensure women are free to…abort their babies, even when they’re partially born…

[The legislation, if enacted] repeals the Illinois Abortion Law of 1975, the Partial-birth Abortion Ban Act, and the Abortion Performance Refusal Act.

That means doctors and medical facilities can be sued for NOT performing an abortion. You have a religious objection to abortion? Too bad Dr. Mohammad! You better suck that fetus out or you’re through! (“Illinois Democrats propose laws expanding abortion access — including repeal of parental notification for minors,”  https://t.co/XHk6k2hQiq, Rapture Ready News, Feb 16, 2019)

The genuine madness continues to rage. The Apostle Paul’s spiritual truth as given in Romans chapter 1 is coming to pass every day before our eyes and ears. Turning from God leads to reprobate (upside-down and evil) thinking and action. A stunning example of this is manifest in a recent news story.

A group of grandmothers in Maine is causing quite a stir for a little group they’ve formed “GRR!” which advocates for their children and grandchildren to have the right to abort any further progeny

 According to LifeNews.com, GRR!, or “Grandmothers for Reproductive Rights,” seeks to “educate women at the local level about the pro-abortion agenda, and encourage women to speak with their local government officials about supporting abortion and other reproductive health issues.”

About 40 grandmothers participate in GRR!, according to a report. (“Pro-Abort Grandmas in Maine Form Group to Promote Aborting Grandkids,” By ISRAEL WIRE, Rapture Ready News Feb 16, 2019)

Just the acronym for the “grandmas” organization alone should clue us. “GRR!” They are obviously angry at someone or something. Paul indicated the anger of this rebellious generation at the end of the age would be directed toward the Creator of all things. This prophecy has proven true. It seems that more than half of the U.S. is growling forth their hatred like an angry bear just out of hibernation.

We recall one of Paul’s key “perilous times” prophecies in 2 Timothy, chapter 3. He foretold that people will be without “natural affection.” For those grandmas and grandpas reading this, does this make a profound statement as you think of your love for your grandkids?

America and the world are moving swiftly down the road of Sodom and Gomorrah-like depravity. When the Church and the restraining power residing within Christ’s Body goes to the Lord Jesus when He calls, that movement will become an instant free-fall into the Tribulation abyss.

Even so, come, Lord Jesus!

–Terry