Ebola is Back

One of the most fearful calamities to strike mankind is an infectious disease. During the Middle Ages, the Black Plague killed millions of people in Europe and Asia. Some cities lost half of their population from a single outbreak.

The Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 was the last great Pandemic. It infected an estimated 500 million people worldwide—about one-third of the planet’s population—and killed an estimated 20 million to 50 million victims, including some 675,000 Americans. It was fueled by close quarters and massive troop movements related to World War I; and strangely enough, the Spanish flu killed more people than the war it fed on.

The polio virus created much fear in the mid part of the 20th century. In 1952 alone, nearly 60,000 children were infected with the virus; thousands were paralyzed, and more than 3,000 died. The polio virus could cause permanent paralysis and even death, but it was very picky about its victims. In about 95% of all polio cases, the person has no symptoms at all. When Dr. Jonas Salk developed his vaccine in 1955, polio cases went into a rapid decline. By 1979, the virus had been completely eliminated across the US.

The virus that has institutes like the World Health Organization the most concerned is Ebola. This cagey virus will pop up in Africa, kill several people and then disappear. The West African Ebola epidemic of 2013 to 2016 was the most widespread epidemic of the Ebola virus disease in history. Ebola has up to a 70 percent fatality rate. Doctors that wore heavy protective gear still managed to become infected with the virus. We still don’t have any solid cure for Ebola.

We now have what has become the second-largest, second-deadliest Ebola outbreak in history. The outbreak was declared on Aug. 1 in the Democratic Republic of Congo. A total of 471 people have reported symptoms of hemorrhagic fever in the country’s eastern provinces of North Kivu and Ituri. There have been 273 deaths thus far, including 225 people who died from confirmed cases of Ebola. The other deaths are from probable cases of Ebola.

There is great concern now that the virus has spread to a major city, Butembo, a bustling city of almost a million people in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. There has been a “significant increase” in infections there over the past three weeks, with a total of 25 confirmed cases thus far, according to a recent bulletin from the country’s health ministry.

Another concern is how close Butembo is to neighboring nations. The city is in a region which shares borders with Rwanda, Uganda, and South Sudan. Butembo is on a major highway that leads to several large cities.

The warfare and ignorance in the region have at times stymied the response efforts. Health workers have had to battle misinformation and mistrust from the local community, partly due to many years of conflict in the region. There is a reluctance among some wary residents to seek care or perform safe burials. Many families will keep the infected bodies of relatives in their homes for spiritual reasons.

This is the 10th Ebola outbreak the world has seen since 1976, the year that scientists first identified the deadly virus near the eponymous Ebola River. It clearly has to be the one with the least amount of apprehension. This is how epidemics turn into pandemics. When the death toll goes from doubling from 500 to 1,000 to half a million to one million, it takes vastly greater resources to control the contagion.

The lack of concern about infectious diseases is a direct result of the moral state of the world. Ebola- carrying zombies could walk across the border, and the Trump-fixated liberal media wouldn’t notice. Because God has already determined to use plagues and pestilences to show His wrath upon a wicked world, the ultimate threat from these dangers is unavoidable. The next epidemic may not stop until we have a toll that fits the carnage described by prophecy.

“For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places” (Matthew 24:7).

“These have power to shut heaven, that it rain not in the days of their prophecy: and have power over waters to turn them to blood, and to smite the earth with all plagues, as often as they will” (Revelation 11:6).

“I saw another sign in heaven, great and marvelous, seven angels having the seven last plagues; for in them is filled up the wrath of God” (Revelation 15:1).

–Todd

---

Stench in God’s Nostrils

Christmas season is in moribund transition, if I may use the term. By that I mean the changes taking place with regard to what Christmas is all about represents much more than simply a decline of culture. The change taking place is moving culture in this nation and the world in direction that will engender deadly consequences.

This world system is dying.

The thought first pierced my thinking while listening to a news program of some sort. The story was about how the leftist, politically correct machine is attacking Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.

Now, I know I’m right off the bat offending the Christmas purists who view any secular characterization in conjunction with the Christmas story as near blasphemy. But, I implore that we get past for the moment how the Advent of Christ has been paganized to whatsoever extent–thus to make the point I hope to make: that we can know how near we might be to the midnight of the age and the call of Christ to His Church.

To get back to the TV news story, the report informed how much of social media is making the story of Rudolph one of how evil American culture has stigmatized anyone who is different. The Millennial view for the most part seems to be that the story shows that group bullying is approved of, thus Christmas is just an American cultural invention to keep those not like the majority in a position of inferiority. The news program’s host said that those who hold such a view obviously haven’t read the whole Rudolph story. She said that it actually was a story of anti-bullying and anti-bigotry.

That, at least, was my take on the news report I heard. Many amongst the Millennial generation increasingly view many things about Christmas as a cultural/societal device to oppress the downtrodden.

Of course, the birth of Jesus Christ, the Savior of the world, gets totally lost in all of this politically correct machination. Satan’s obvious plot therefore seems to be working effectively, as do many of the other nefarious elements of his blueprint to move mankind farther from their Creator and their only means of redemption.
Several items of news of late punctuate how the grand deceiver is working through human minions to bring about the moribund transition through subverting the true Christmas message.

One such story involves a city ordinance of municipal government in Austin, Texas, that might force churches to hire LGBT people, including pastors. Gay and transsexual employees, including members of the clergy, will almost certainly soon be part of Austin churches if things proceed as they look now.
A second news story reports that Facebook censored a photo of Santa kneeling before a manger scene. The photo was covered up by the Facebook thought police.

Facebook censored an image of Santa Claus kneeling before the baby Jesus, deeming it “violent” or too “graphic.” There was never a reason I could find why they found the scene violent or too graphic. But there was answer to the effect that the scene might offend, although there was no explanation as to how it might offend.

Again, I don’t want to give the impression that I condone mixing Santa Claus with the manger scene–the secular with the truly important truth about the reason for the season. I can see where that might “offend” some in some way. I simply want to make the point of how the moribund transition is taking place incrementally. The Christmas story–that Jesus came to save the lost–is being used as a political tool and a psychological tool to move culture and society ever farther from man’s only hope of redemption. It is a deadly track down which the world is going.

And, it is a worldwide war, not just one confined to America, that is taking place in this regard.
Another report from Italy told of a ten-year-old school girl who fought to have the name of Jesus reinserted into a song that was part of her school’s Christmas celebration. The Lord’s name had been removed from the song because it would “offend.”

The charge in taking the name of Jesus out of the song was that it might offend non-Catholics. The real reason, according to the report, was that the name was taken out because they feared it would offend Muslims and cause violent reaction from that quarter.

These reports , I am aware, are not earth-shattering in comparison to many, much more profound, things being reported around the world. But in God’s Holy Eyes, such treatment of His Son, who died for the sins of a world full of lost and eternally dying people, no doubt is among the most serious offenses.

Bible history is replete with God dealing with generations of people who deliberately flaunt their rebellion in His face. The book of Job reports the Lord’s displeasure and reaction to such rebellion: “Even as I have seen, they that plow iniquity, and sow wickedness, reap the same. By the blast of God they perish, and by the breath of his nostrils are they consumed” (Job 4:8-9).

–Terry

The Generational Shift Is Now

The devil plays a very long game when it comes to winning over nations to his evil agenda. He can have victory over his enemies by simply waiting for them to retire or die. Because he is immortal, it doesn’t matter if this process may take several decades. Satan can claim his prize by simply waiting for people to succumb to a sin-nature disease that he instigated.

As world leaders and celebrities fade away, they are replaced with people who have less respect for biblical values. I blame the influence of academia and the liberal media for this trend.

I wrote three weeks ago that the 2018 midterm election went reasonably well for the Republicans. We lost the House, but we retained the Senate. Most people on the right are focused on the loss of 40 house seats. There is another loss to consider. Between Democrats and Republicans, 60 people decided to step down from office.

The most consequential retirement announcement came when Speaker Paul Ryan told his colleagues he would not seek reelection to his House seat. At age 48, Ryan was replaced by Bryan Steil, who will be nearly 12 years younger than the soon-to-be former speaker when he takes office next month. Even though Steil was strongly endorsed by Donald Trump and Mike Pence, a dozen years will likely mean a large shift in his voting record.

When the President fired Senator Jeff Sessions, he removed one of the last “fuddy-duddies” in Washington, DC, that thought marijuana was a bad thing. There is little chance that any future attorney general will seek to restrict the usage of pot by enforcing federal law.

The loss of a whole generation to moral decay makes it nearly impossible to turn the tide. After the Brett Kavanaugh fiasco in the Senate, many Republican leaders expected a blowout for their party in the November election. Most voters didn’t respond to the violation of “due process” and “the presumption of innocence” because they don’t respect or know what these terms mean.

A recent Brookings Institution poll found that nearly half of college students believe that hate speech is not protected by the First Amendment. Fifty-one percent of college students think they have a right to shout down a speaker with whom they disagree. Nineteen percent of students think that it’s acceptable to use violence to prevent a speaker from speaking. The free speech movement of the 60s was started by liberals. It just shows how crazy things have gotten to have the left playing the role they once protested against.

The state of California is rapidly being taken over by the generational shift. In this year’s election, all nine seats in Orange County are now in Democratic hands.

Howe and Strauss in their 1991 book, Generations, define the millennial cohort as consisting of individuals born between 1982 and 2004. This group of people has been heavily indoctrinated into the liberal agenda. In recent elections, they voted for the Democratic Party in number in the sixty percent range even in deep Red states like Arkansas, Alabama, and Mississippi.

Most people who follow Bible prophecy would probably think that we have more immediate problems than a generational shift. Because we are so much on the razor edge in the balance of political power, a small shift in power will make it impossible for Republicans to ever win another presidential election. If Texas or Florida were to become a blue state, we will have a government run by one Party.

The Bible provides example after example of generational decay in the history of Israel. God’s chosen people would be given a sound government, and it would repeatedly fall into chaos until the Lord sent someone to restore order. Because we appear to be so close to the tribulation hour, I do not see the possibility of reform. Things are going to continue to go from bad to worse because all generations ignore God’s warning. This is why I repeatedly say the rapture is the only hope.

“Listen, O my people, to my instruction; Incline your ears to the words of my mouth. I will open my mouth in a parable; I will utter dark sayings of old, Which we have heard and known, And our fathers have told us. We will not conceal them from their children, But tell to the generation to come the praises of the LORD, And His strength and His wondrous works that He has done.

“For He established a testimony in Jacob And appointed a law in Israel, Which He commanded our fathers That they should teach them to their children, That the generation to come might know, even the children yet to be born, That they may arise and tell them to their children, That they should put their confidence in God And not forget the works of God, But keep His commandments, And not be like their fathers, A stubborn and rebellious generation, A generation that did not prepare its heart And whose spirit was not faithful to God” (Psalms 78:1-8).

–Todd

---

Bridge over the Abyss

Part II

Terry’s note: This two-part series is from a chapter by the same name I wrote in one of my books years ago. Also, I’ve presented it in other published/posted forums. It is more relevant now than ever, so wanted to share it again. (Foreshocks of Antichrist, Harvest House, 1997)

Continuing on the deadly effects of drugs in these last days…
A recent news item testifies that politicians and their mouthpieces view the drug problem as nothing to be concerned about, even if their own staff members
are alleged to be heavily involved in illicit drug usage.

Barry McCaffrey, national drug control policy director, asked in Washington that all politicians stop trying to make an issue of whether an opponent has used drugs because “no good can come from it,” adding, “Drug use was a generational thing, and we should just accept that and move on.” Drug infection gushes through the nation’s and the world’s bloodstream, not only degenerating thought processes, but feeding lust and greed as well. Paul’s words ring true today: “The love of money is the root of all evil” (1 Timothy 6:10).

People of the great Tribulation era will not repent of their sorceries because, like the addicts and dealers of this present hour, they will be willing to pay any price to continue feeding their insatiable appetites. The tremendous growth we are witnessing in illicit drug trade is a foreshock of the coming Antichrist and his system–a system that will, no doubt, at the outset of Antichrist’s reign, promise seemingly brilliant solutions to all problems, including
those involving illicit drugs.

The Economic Abyss

Governmental and business institutions grow increasingly concerned about instability within world money markets. Stock market record highs, followed by wild fluctuations, cause worry and sometimes panic for global financial analysts. Despite the chaos, international banking conglomerates continue to merge and meld and network into what surely will soon become a one- world economic order.

The exponential growth in computer technology is without question moving our generation toward the time prophesied in Revelation 13.

Again, Antichrist will offer solutions to unbelievably complex fiscal problems produced when the four horsemen of the Apocalypse ride across the world, bringing war, famine, pestilence, and death. “It’s the economy, stupid” might have been a catchy–if somewhat deceptive–political slogan during the 1992 U.S. presidential campaign. Such a slogan will not be necessary during that future time of tremendous economic turmoil. Everyone will be agonizingly aware of the abyss in which they will be mired. They will beg the beast and his totalitarian system of computer control to institute world order.

Gods of the Abyss

New Age thought runs throughout government, business, and religion at all levels. Sadly, even evangelical Christianity suffers with New Age infection.

The same serpent who seduced Adam and Eve with the lie promising that they would be as God when they ate from the forbidden tree now whispers in the desensitized ears of this generation the same lie: ” You will become gods when you follow the New Age pathways laid out for you by the ascended masters.” But they are pathways leading to the end-time abyss of apocalypse.

Lucifer’s soothing lie that proposes many ways to God’s salvation salves the guilt-ridden conscience of fallen man. It appeals to the supremely arrogant pride that mankind inherited from father Adam when that first man determined to disobey his Creator and instead accept Satan’s offer of godhood.

People today by and large think of salvation, of going to Heaven when they die, as obtainable through self effort. If one lives a good life, God will weigh this against the bad and the person will be found worthy based upon his or her personal accomplishments on the side of good. People need no atoning sacrifice
by Jesus Christ to save them. Such is a narrow-minded concept they reject, even though the still, small voice convicts them of the truth during those lonely, empty times when their souls yearn for something, for someone, to fill the void.

Doug Groothuis, assistant professor at Denver Seminary and noted researcher and author on the New Age movement, recently pointed out who Jesus Christ is–rather, who He was, according to New Age thinking. He addressed the fact that New Age thought proclaims that there is no need for a Redeemer. Groothuis said:

The emphasis on Christ is not Christ as the unique and final liberator, the saviour of the human race because of what He’s done through His [crucifixion and resurrection], but that He is kind of an example, the model for what we can do. Jesus was a man who [tapped into] the Christ energy for the Christ Potential…. It’s not biblical Christianity at all.

Groothuis, in further explaining the insidious influence the New Age movement inflicts on this generation, talked about Jean Houston, the New Age guru who spent considerable time with America’s First Lady in the White House during the summer of 1996 as part of the now-famous Eleanor Roosevelt contact incident.

Groothuis said:
[Jean Houston] is very influential. She leads seminars all over the country and in fact all over the world basically on how to release the divine potential within us all. She has referred to herself as a global midwife. She means by that…we all have god within us. We all have the fullness of [deity] within us. But that somehow this god within us is stuck and we don’t realize it, we don’t actualize it so it’s up to people like her to tell us we are divine and how to put that energy out into the world.

Groothuis went on to say that New Age theosophy purports that there is a latent, divine energy that makes up the universe. God is that energy. But there is no distinction between the Creator and the creation. Everything is one and we are all part of that great cosmic unity.

Groothuis said that according to Jean Houston and other New Age thinkers:

The problem of the human race, the reason we have ecological problems, military crises, economic crises, etc., is not because of human sin against a holy God that has affected us all. It’s because somehow we are suffering from a kind of divine amnesia. We have forgotten the divinity within ourselves. So her role is to be a catalyst or midwife to bring out the latent divinity inside of all of us.

Groothuis said that consulting channelers, mediums, and indulging in other occult techniques to achieve one’s goals instead of going to God in prayer is dangerous. He said, “in fact, doing this sort of thing can lead to some kind of encounter with the demonic. We have to remember that Paul said Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light…. If [anything] is leading away from Christ and His gospel, then it’s not of God.”‘

Despite such warnings, mankind strives pridefully closer to the abyss and eternal separation from God. One of the New Age movement’s most renowned contemporary leaders sums up the audacious claim that man does not need God because he is God!

The great and growing interest in Eastern philosophy and religion, in reincarnation or the law of rebirth and the power of mind over matter, is part of a great shift in consciousness taking place everywhere and is a direct result of our sense that the old molds of thought and feeling are no longer adequate to express our growing awareness of reality, thus revealing a readiness for a new revelation.

This spiritual awakening must eventually lead to an era of world brotherhood–the keynote of the coming Age of Aquarius.

What is happening now is the outcome of inner forces that are affecting great changes in human thinking and consciousness. This will result in the complete
reorganization of the world’s institutions and social structures that no longer answer man’s true need. This will entail the reorganization of our political,
economic, and financial systems along more rational and just lines.

New Agers will achieve their paradigm shift to a society that is the antithesis of what God intended for man. The most vicious dictator ever known will then rule over that darkest period in human history, the black abyss of Apocalypse.

The Bridge over the Abyss

People do not need to discover, then nurture, the Christ-consciousness within themselves. No such entity exists. People need Jesus Christ to fulfill the God-shaped void that exists within every man, woman, and child born since Adam brought sin into the world, thus separating himself and his progeny from
God.

The Carpenter of Nazareth rebuilt the bridge over the abyss of eternal separation with timber constructed in the shape of the old rugged cross, upon which He willingly bled and died for you and me. Christ’s atoning sacrifice is God’s chosen way to reconcile us to Himself. There is none other.

Foreshocks of the coming Antichrist are everywhere. Those fearful signals that the Beast of Revelation 13 could very soon make his appearance upon the world stage should produce for the Christian not excitement based upon fear, but excitement based upon joyful anticipation. We are promised not Antichrist but
Jesus Christ! (Read Revelation 3:10 and John 14.)

No prophecy stands between this generation and the Rapture. Christ’s return for His Church in the air above planet Earth is imminent. You, too, can be part of those who excitedly anticipate that unimaginably exhilarating microsecond when Jesus shouts “COME UP HITHER!”

Accept Him today and receive God’s inward peace which assures that in life or in death, you are His own. So shall we ever be with the Lord.

Even so, come, Lord Jesus.

–Terry