Have You Ever Been a Republican or a Member of the Republican Party?

The hatred of anyone who is a conservative or a member of the Republican Party has become so extreme, it’s quickly becoming a now or never moment for people on the right. The Republican Party has ranks that are larger than most any political groups, and yet we are attacked by groups that only have less than one 10th of our numbers.

During the dark days of the 1950’s Red Scare, it would be a career-ending move to admit to being a card-carrying communist. Despite the risk, numerous writers, actors, and directors were willing to stonewall Washington committees that were seeking to identify their party affiliation. Today, if a member of the Hollywood club admits to being a conservative, they are the ones seen as un-American. Any actor who comes out of the closet as a Republican will quickly find himself blackballed by the entertainment industry.

It is very odd that nearly all the major studios are run by liberals. Since the nation is 50/50 on the Republican/Democrat split, you would think that the bias of studios would also be equal. In fact, liberals control 90% of Hollywood.

Actor James Woods is a rare conservative who has been active on Twitter. On July 4th, his liberal agent, Ken Kaplan, dropped him as a client. “It’s the 4th of July and I’m feeling patriotic,” the email from Kaplan began. “I don’t want to represent you anymore.” Woods fired back, “Dear Ken, I don’t actually. I was thinking if you’re feeling patriotic, you would appreciate free speech and one’s right to think as an individual. Be that as it may, I want to thank you for all your hard work and devotion on my behalf. Be well.”

At this point, Woods can just as well consider himself retired. Once a person identifies themself in the conservative camp, their career is at an end.

It is interesting that liberals are the ones who had been moaning for decades about the investigation in the 1950s over the influence that communists had in Hollywood. The House Un-American Activities Committee destroyed hundreds of careers by asking the basic question, “Have you ever been a communist or a member of the Communist Party?”

The liberal media have now become Senator Joseph R. McCarthy, and conservatives are the ones who have to be secretive about their party affiliation. Conservatives are one of the largest voting blocks in America, but we keep finding ourselves marginalized because we don’t have the will to fight back.

When Tim Allen was on Jimmy Kimmel Live on 3/17/17, he talked about going to President Donald Trump’s Inauguration. He jokingly said that “being a conservative in Hollywood is like being a Jew in 1930’s Nazi Germany.” Allen should have been more forceful in his remarks because he quickly became the Jew in the story by having his top-rated Comedy show cancelled by ABC for his conservative views.

Over many years, we have become a punching bag for the left. Today, the most celebrated form of comedy is political attacks on conservatives. If a comedian makes a sick joke about Trump, Yahoo.com will post it as news. If you mock leading Republicans at a correspondents’ dinner, they give you your own show, just like Michelle Wolf.

Cringe comedy is a specific genre of comedy that derives humor from being socially offensive. Sacha Baron Cohen is perfectly set for this form of vile humor because he seems like someone who is incapable of experiencing shame. He will say or do anything for a laugh. Cohen has recently generated news by duping several Republicans into fake interviews on a show called “Who Is America?” Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, Republican state Rep. Jason Spencer, former Illinois Republican Congressman Joe Walsh, and Senate Republican Trent Lott were some of his targets.

In his show, Cohen spends most of his time trying to paint Republicans as gun-loving, racist hypocrites. Since it is off limits to go after the true clowns in politics: Hillary Clinton; Maxine Waters; Nancy Pelosi; and Barack Obama, we end up with a very predictable plotline. The debut of “Who Is America?” attracted only 327,000 total viewers and a 0.1 rating among the key demographic of adults age 18-49, according to Deadline.

Showtime’s highly popular “Billions” delivered 1.4 million viewers when it launched in 2016, according to Deadline. The network’s anti-Trump “My Cartoon President,” an animated lampooning of the administration, averages roughly 310,000 viewers, according to Variety, which puts it in the same league as “Who Is America?”

What makes a Republican such an easy victim is that they don’t realize that the world is a constant battle zone. The left is empowered by Satan, and he fights to win.

“Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour” (1 Peter 5:8).

–Todd

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Missing Dave Hunt

Circumstances involving an email arose the other day,  revolving around a request that I address a question in Bible prophecy. A dear ministry friend had just received the email asking what I meant by something I wrote in a commentary that my friend posted on her website. The question was about Jesus’ prophecy in Matthew 24 regarding the days of Noah and days of Lot–Matthew 24:36-44.

This prophecy is one I consider most relevant to this very moment in which we find ourselves. I believe the Lord was talking specifically to the present generation. We have covered the prophecy a number of times in recent weeks. I am convicted in my spirit that we stand upon the very precipice of its fulfillment.

Here is that prophecy:

But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, And knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. Then shall two be in the field; the one shall be taken, and the other left. Two women shall be grinding at the mill; the one shall be taken, and the other left. Watch therefore: for ye know not what hour your Lord doth come.” (Matthew 24:37-42)

Jesus followed up the exhortation to be watchful with a second exhortation reinforcing the first: “Therefore be ye also ready: for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh” (Matthew 24:44).

After responding to the emails from my friend and her website follower, I began to think back on one of the great prophecy teachers I’ve been privileged to call friend and Christian brother. It is Dave Hunt to whom I refer, as the title of this commentary suggests. I’m sure that most all who read this article know about this superb speaker, writer, and teacher of God’s Word.

Dave went to his heavenly home a few years ago. His ministry is The Berean Call, which continues today.

The question of whether the Rapture of the Church is in Jesus’ Matthew 24 Olivet Discourse has long been a somewhat contentious matter among students of Bible prophecy. Most often, the seminary line has it that there is no reference whatsoever to the Rapture in that account, although some within that high realm of Bible academia believe the Rapture is within the prophecy Jesus gave.

I, of course, don’t belong to that high realm, but do believe with all that is within my spirit that Jesus was foretelling not only the Rapture, but a pre-Trib Rapture, meaning that the Rapture will happen prior to the Tribulation era, that great time of worldwide judgment and wrath prophesied by Jesus in the Olivet Discourse, Paul in 2 Thessalonians chapter 2, the prophet Daniel in 9:26-27, and John in the Book of Revelation.

The preachers and teachers of this present day continue to neglect Bible prophecy, and almost never express any thoughts whatsoever on the Rapture of the Church. These spend even less time presenting their parishioners with any teaching on the pre-Trib view of the Rapture.

It is with this lament weighing heavily that–upon dealing with the above-mentioned email–Dave Hunt came to mind.

Dave conducted a session at the Pre-Trib Study Group in Dallas on the Matthew 24 prophecy in 1998. I sat in on that early-morning session and was validated in my spirit by Dave’s facing the study group head-on with his lecture.

Many there that morning were of the higher academic sort–good brothers, sisters in Christ all. But, many–probably most–believed the Olivet Discourse held no mention of the Rapture. That prophetic utterance by the Lord, most held, was and is for Israel only.       

I looked into my computer and found my files on that session. I have both a transcript of the session and the audio file. I’ve had fun going over both since entertaining the email interaction mentioned above.

Dave Hunt gave a masterful rendering of  Matthew 24 that morning in 1998. He began with his terrific sense of humor in full force, although most of us were still trying to come to our senses as we sipped on black, caffeine-soaked coffee.

Dave said:

Well, if the truth were to be known, which is not easy, Tommy [Dr. Thomas Ice, Pre-Trib study group director] scheduled me at this early hour, hoping nobody would show up to here my heresies, and I was hoping the Greek scholars wouldn’t be here, to bombard me with errorist indicatives and that kind of stuff. Furthermore, I knew Tommy was throwing me to the lions this morning, and my name isn’t Daniel, so I got cold feet and decided to change the topic. He said the topic is “Is the rapture in the Olivet Discourse?” Well, I’d like to talk on the topic “The pre-trib rapture in the Olivet Discourse.” I couldn’t quite handle that question. I couldn’t justify why there ought to be any question at all. Why the pre-trib rapture, or the rapture, or the church, or anything else was in the Olivet Discourse.

Dave defended his–and my- belief that Jesus was indeed speaking of the Rapture and even more so to the pre-Trib Rapture in the days of Noah, days of Lot portion of His Olivet Discourse.
We are at a time in human history that Jesus described perfectly, as only the God of all creation could. Again, I believe that Donald J. Trump was put in the presidency of the United States for just this hour. We are, I believe, entering a time of building, buying, planting, socially intensive activity like marrying and giving in marriage, unprecedented in the annals of mankind. It will be just at such a time–“a time you think not”- that the “Son of man is revealed.”

Jesus Christ’s “revelation” to this rebellious world will come in the form of the Rapture of all born-again believers, both sleeping in death and those alive, when He calls, “Come up here!” (Revelation 4:1).

–Terry    

 

Why all the Hysteria Over the Recent Supreme Court Nominee

The people on the political left have lost their minds over the process to replace retiring United States Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy. Even before Trump had a chance to select Brett Kavanaugh as the prime candidate, Democrats were saying Trump was making the worst possible choice.

The conservative Campus Reform made fools out of people at New York University by asking people on campus what they thought of Trump’s decision three days before the announcement. Most generally described the decision as a racist move that would start something very negative. Trump was abusing his power by making a choice clearly granted to him by the Constitution.

The liberal media were predicting all manner of apocalyptic fallout from the new Justice. One MSNBC reporter claimed this nomination is going to “mean the end of the constitution.” Another guest of the network said it will “spell the criminalization of women.”

The new Supreme Court pick is very “controversial,” whoever he or she turned out to be. That was the consensus of ABC’s Nightline Twitter page, about 90 minutes before Donald Trump announced the name of Judge Brett Kavanaugh.

After the announcement of his nomination to the Supreme Court, Judge Brett Kavanaugh made it clear that his job was to use the Constitution as his primary guidepost. He stated, “A judge must be independent and must interpret the law, not make the law. A judge must interpret statutes as written, and a judge must interpret the Constitution as written, informed by history and tradition and precedent.”

He later added, “My judicial philosophy is straightforward. A judge must be independent and must interpret the law, not make the law. A judge must interpret statutes as written, and a judge must interpret the Constitution as written, informed by history and tradition and precedent. For the past 11 years, I’ve taught hundreds of students, primarily at Harvard Law School. I teach that the Constitution’s separation of powers protects individual liberty.”

Kavanaugh concluded, “I will tell each senator that I revere the Constitution. I believe that an independent judiciary is the crown jewel of our constitutional republic. If confirmed by the Senate, I will keep an open mind in every case, and I will always strive to preserve the Constitution of the United States and the American rule of law.”

The left is going to fight his nomination tooth and nail because it believes a set of leftist beliefs need to be pre-programmed in the interpretation of the Constitution. Gay rights and abortion are claimed to be protected by the document, even though these issues appear nowhere in the text.

For 100 years the Supreme Court ruled that slavery was legal. The right of one man to hold another man as his property was upheld by several rulings. This popularity test of the Supreme Court has been a major shortfall of the third branch of government. If you get enough racists on the court, blacks can once again be ruled as the property of slaveholders. All it would take is the ruling of one single justice to override the lessons of the Civil War.

The framers of the Constitution would be absolutely shocked to see how powerful the Supreme Court has become in our day. In 1790, there was one Supreme Court judge for every 600,000 Americans. Today, there is one Supreme Court judge for every 35 million Americans. Not even the Soviet Politburo managed that level of non-representation.

The Supreme Court has been a very useful tool in implementing the leftist agenda. The Gay marriage act became the rule of the law because of a single vote in the Supreme Court. In the house, you need to get a majority vote in both houses to pass a law that says two people of the same sex can get married. By going to the Supreme Court, a minority group can make any political fad a reality.

The Democratic Party has already proven that it is fixated on fantasies of tyrannical rule by openly talking about impeaching President Trump without any charges. At least one congressman wants to extend that option to the Supreme Court. Democratic Rep. Keith Ellison said that a Democratic Congress could impeach a Republican-appointed Supreme Court justice. I’m sure Ellison is for impeaching Republican members of Congress.

I don’t think the addition of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court will make any difference. Whenever conservatives have an upper hand in the court, they always respect previous liberal rulings. Whenever there is a liberal majority, they always expand the power of the court. The next time Democrats have a majority in the Senate, I expect them to approve judges that will rob us of our liberties. It is my prayer that God will keep them frustrated right up to the day of the rapture.

“For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way” (2 Thessalonians 2:7).

–Todd

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The Enragement

 There are many in America, it is more than obvious, who are only minimally aware or not aware at all of the enragement spawned by the 2016 presidential election. Because I am so intensely aware of the rage ripping at the heart of the nation, those who don’t seem to even notice the damage being done irritate me to distraction. My only comfort comes from the knowledge that God has it all under control. –That, and the conviction that a reconstituted silent majority will manifest its own enragement when it’s time to enter the voting booths during this year’s mid-term elections.

Then, I come to my spiritual senses and realize that politics are of a temporal nature that render effects on the human condition fleeting at best. Only investment in things of God will triumph at the end of the day. Humanistic influences—be they constituted of political or any other man-centered ingredient—are of no lasting consequence.

Still, we must endure present circumstance, so it’s best to do so by, as calmly and thoughtfully as possible, analyzing things as they exist.

Always, it is our purpose at Rapture Ready to probe with the sharp, revealing Word of Bible prophecy. Doing so makes possible the understanding of even the absolute insanity exhibited by the political left, pumped up in its enragement by ideological steroids injected by mainstream news and entertainment media.

It takes no more than a modicum of effort to get to the very center of the anger. The winner of the 2016 presidential election is the object of rage for hatred central—the political party which, it seems, becomes more radical by the day.

To get right to the proof of the pudding, as the term goes, we look at an individual party member that more than most others represents the radicalized left in the matter of hatred for the duly elected president.

Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., is the apex mover and shaker in the so-called resistance. We remember her inflammatory rhetoric upon her learning of White House spokesperson Sarah Huckabee Sanders being ejected from a Washington, D.C., restaurant because she worked for the Trump Administration.

Waters said, “If you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd and you push back on them! And you tell them that they are not welcome, anymore, anywhere.”

Despite some within her political party making limp attempts to distance themselves from Waters’ lunacy, the enragement just continues to mount. Waters, rather than back down from her incitement, continues to throw fuel on the fires started by the so-called Antifa movement, an organized group of haters equating the Trump Administration to the fascist government of the days of Benito Mussolini, axis partner with Adolf Hitler and the Nazis of World War II.

The enragement will soon reach a dangerous level, it is feared by those who observe from the perspective of students of history.

World Net Daily (WND) columnist Dennis Prager said the following:

“Because of the ever-descending moral and intellectual state of the mainstream news media, there has been no outcry against the leftists who call President Donald Trump and all Americans who support him Nazis. Indeed, members of the media now regularly do so.

 “Without that outcry, this labeling will only increase; and this steadily increasing drumbeat of hysteria is likely to lead to one result: violence against conservatives,” he warned.

“It is not plausible to foresee any other outcome of left-wing normalization of the terms ‘Nazi’ and ‘white supremacist.’”

A WND report presented the following regarding the political rage that is building. Veteran political adviser and longtime columnist Pat Buchanan warned inflammatory rhetoric sometimes is followed by very real violence.

 “The left, to the point of irrationality, despises a triumphant Trumpian right and believes that to equate it with fascists is not only legitimate, but a sign that the accusers are the real moral, righteous and courageous dissenters in these terrible times,” he explained.

 It has happened before, he pointed out.

 “After Dr. King’s assassination, a hundred cities, including the capital, were looted and burned. Scores died. U.S. troops and the National Guard were called out to restore order. Soldiers returning from Vietnam were spat upon. Cops were gunned down by urban terrorists. Bombings and bomb attempts were everyday occurrences. Campuses were closed down. In May 1971, tens of thousands of radicals went on a rampage to shut down D.C.,” he said.

And Buchanan cited the left’s frequent comparisons of Trump to Nazi Germany, which “are absurd.”

“Does anyone truly believe that the centers where the children of illegal migrants are being held, run as they are by liberal bureaucrats from the Department of Health and Human Services, are like Stalin’s Gulag or Hitler’s camps?” he wrote. (WND.com, July 3, 2018)

Again, while humanistic rage and political enragement are troubling, it is incumbent upon the spiritually-attuned to consider the real battle being waged. We find that battle in Ephesians 6: 12—We struggle not against flesh and blood, but against powers and principalities, against spiritual wickedness in high places.

We get right to the heart of the cause and effect by considering the following: 

“Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.” (1 Pet 5: 8) 

Satan—the devil—is enraged. So, too, are his minions, both demonic and human. However, we are not to fall victim to the enragement of minions who want to throw off the bonds of Heaven’s governance. Jesus is our strength and our fortress. We are told: “Greater is he who is in you, than he who is in the world.” (1 Jn 4: 4)

–Terry