Corporate Giants Have Too Much Power

There has never been a time when so few companies controlled such a large portion of the US economy. Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft have a market capitalization of nearly $4 trillion. Apple is set to become the first company in history to reach the $1 trillion milestone.

As these firms get bigger and bigger, they are rewarded with a huge valuation for monopolizing various markets. Google drives 89% of internet search; 95% of young adults on the internet use a Facebook product; and Amazon now accounts for 75% of electronic book sales. Those firms that aren’t monopolists are duopolists: Google and Facebook absorbed 63% of online ad spending last year; Google and Apple Inc. provide 99% of mobile phone operating systems; while Apple and Microsoft supply 95% of desktop operating systems.

I remember early interviews with Amazon’s Jeff Bezos. He was always laughing and telling reporters how his company was going to revolutionize the shopping experience. Today, Bezos has become the world’s richest man, and his company has expanded into dozens of retail categories. Amazon makes very little money because its main goal is to grab market share from other smaller companies. Amazon has 75 massive fulfillment centers around the country, which makes it nearly impossible for a new company to enter the field.

In the early stage of a monopoly, the consumer generally wins with cheaper prices for products. Back in the early 1900’s, Standard Oil controlled 87% of the oil market. Over a 30-year period, the price of oil used in lamps dropped in half. When the federal government sued to break up Standard Oil, the Supreme Court acknowledged the benefits generated by the company. The forced split of Standard Oil was ordered because of clear evidence of a single-minded determination to drive others out of the market.

A research paper by Mike Scherer, a retired Harvard economist, found that Standard Oil was a prolific generator of patents in its early years, but that slowed once it achieved dominance. Around 1909 Standard’s Indiana unit invented “thermal cracking” to improve gasoline refining to meet demand from automobiles, but the company’s head office thought the technology too dangerous because it involved heating heavier oils into a vapor. After the Indiana unit was spun off in the 1911 breakup, it commercialized the technology to enormous success.

In the 1990’s, the Department of Justice filed antitrust charges against Microsoft. One way that Windows got loaded onto most of the world’s computers is that Bill Gates made arm-twisting deals with computer makers. He had contracts that required companies to pay Microsoft based on every computer they built. In special cases where a firm used a different operating system, they would still have to pay for a Windows license. It was because of a fat and happy attitude that caused Microsoft to lose its way in the internet search and smartphone market.

I think the greatest danger from these oversized companies is the politics they promote. Every one of these firms is run by people who support the Democratic Party. They use their power to promote the leftist cause. Twitter has 100% monopoly in the tweet market. For years, it’s been accused of having an institutional bias against conservatives. Twitter would shadow-ban accounts by blocking the public from seeing posts. Scott Adams, creator of “Dilbert,” said Twitter was restricting his traffic over his outspoken Trump support.

I sometimes go to President Trump’s twitter page and noticed that Twitter’s “Who to Follow” recommendations at the top of the third column is always showing Hillary Clinton, CNN, and Barack Obama. On Hillary Clinton’s twitter page, the top recommendations are Bill Clinton, Joe Biden, and Chelsea Clinton. The President’s name is nowhere to be found.

I spoke with several congressional aides about this bias against people on the right, and they always say we can’t do anything because they are a private company. If Twitter and Facebook said we will only have White people as members, a dozen federal agencies would be on their case. The same rules that protect racial and sexual groups from discrimination need to be expanded to conservatives.

More and more people are calling for antitrust action against these corporate giants, but I don’t think anything major will happen. Bible prophecy warns that the last days will resemble an Orwellian police state. I believe we are very close to the tribulation hour, so I think our only hope for deliverance from persecution is the rapture.

“… you will be hated by all nations for My name’s sake. And then many will be offended, will betray one another, and will hate one another. Then many false prophets will rise up and deceive many. And because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold. But he who endures to the end shall be saved” (Matthew 24:9-13).

–Todd

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Sounding of Sirens

When that funny, irritating noise coming from your TV set goes off, what is your reaction? I’m talking about that grating   OINK!…OINK!…OINK! sound that disrupts whatever program you are watching or happen to have the television on while you do other things.

The noise is followed by an announcement: This is a test. This is only a test. If this had been an actual emergency… Well, you know what I’m talking about.

When that goes off, what is your reaction? I must admit that my first, instantaneous, thought is still: Could it be a nuclear attack?

This automatic reaction comes, I have little doubt, from the time of “duck and cover!”–the warning/instruction that dominated my days as a kid. We were told to get under our desks if at school, should the sirens sound announcing nuclear attack. We were told to jump off our bikes and try to get under something, get flat into a ditch, or  hide behind anything available if we were out and about.

I’ve mentioned before in this column that when I was a sophomore in high school, the rumor had it that atomic war with the Soviets would happen on a certain Friday. It was cause of angst for some, but not all paid any attention to the rumor–or to the warnings to “duck and cover,” for that matter. I guess I’ve always been a bit geopolitically sensitive…

So it was that I tried to imagine what the people of Hawaii must have experienced when their devices and televisions announced there were incoming nuclear missiles. The announcement said this wasn’t a test–everyone should seek immediate shelter.

There was crying and gnashing of teeth, if I might use biblical language. People got under mattresses with their families or boarded themselves in garages. One grandfather herded his grandchildren into a sewer manhole. It was a time of anxiety far beyond anything I experienced as a child or have experienced since.

We think of how, if it had been an actual nuke headed to the beautiful islands of Hawaii, there would be no beauty remaining following the impact. It is almost unimaginable as to what that part of the islands would have looked like. But, it isn’t beyond our imaginations, because we have the films of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs to graphically remind us of the results of such weaponry. We have the films of the Bikini tests in the 1950s that demonstrated the horrific destructiveness of nuclear devices far more powerful than the bombs used on Japan to end the war.

Thankfully, the feared attack on Hawaii was a false alarm. The  people between the mattresses, in their garages, and in the manholes could emerge to consider how things could have ended so differently. We can hope that the accidental siren alert will serve as a wake-up call to everyone of just how short a time (less than twelve minutes from time of the alert) such devastation can come upon us.

There is devastation coming that has a much, much shorter time of arrival than 10-12 minutes upon a totally unsuspecting people. There will be no alert to forewarn those under this incoming destruction. That is, no OINK!…OINK!…OINK! will disrupt TV programs or announce on various devices what is about to occur.

However, the siren is blaring, warning that the catastrophic impact is about to take place. The siren has been sounding for some time. As a matter of fact, this column and a number of others have been sounding the siren alarm.

The devastation will far surpass what that nuclear-tipped missile would have caused, had it been an actual attack. The sirens of Bible prophecy have been sounding–especially in these end of days the secularists call the end times. The devastation, following this imminent, catastrophic event, will result in as much as three-fourths of people on earth perishing over a period of seven years.

Those upon whom this calamity is about to fall are oblivious to the sirens of warning. It’s sad to say that many who should know about the coming time of destruction and should be issuing the warning refuse to do so. Not only that, they refuse to believe the impending disaster is a prophetic fact. They even make fun of the notion.

I’m referring, of course, to the preachers who claim to name the name of Jesus Christ, but who don’t believe He is returning in a catastrophic way to planet earth.

These, if they have any opinion or care one way or the other, believe Christ will return and take over from the Church. The Church, they believe, will have made worthy His Kingdom, over which He will then reign.

Only, that’s not what the Bible says. That Revelation 19:11 return is to a war-torn planet where most of its inhabitants have died in the violence and wrath of seven years of Tribulation.   

Many of these type theologians will tell you they don’t believe the book of Revelation even belongs in the canon of Scripture. There is, they will say, no Rapture–no time of great trouble ruled over by somebody known as Antichrist. That stuff is all to somehow be taken in a spiritual way, not literally.

Jesus will indeed come back to rule and reign over a planet that is much like it was in the time of Eden before the fall of man. But, He–not the theologians who think they will prepare the way for Heaven on earth–will do the restoration. When Christ calls all believers to Himself at the Rapture, that very moment devastation will begin to fall. It will be just like in the time of Lot, when he was removed from Sodom. (Read Jesus’ words in Luke 17:26-30).

So, the siren of Bible prophecy goes unsounded, unheard by the vast majority of humanity. But, that siren is sounding more loudly every day in the Christ-sensitive ears of those spiritually attuned. That’s why we present these commentaries. We want to sound the siren a devastating time is coming–and it could come at any moment.

One siren-signal is most prominent. Israel is being forced by Satan’s globalist minions to give in to demands to divide God’s land further. The Lord is on the cusp of taking the Church Home with Him. He will then again begin dealing with His beloved Israel. It will be a time of His wrath, while He purges those who are rebellious earth-dwellers and rescues for Himself a people to populate the millennial earth.

The sirens are sounding!

–Terry

China’s Armageddon Road

The Bible’s prediction that there would be an army of 200 million “horsemen” had readers puzzled for several centuries. When the Apostle John wrote Revelation in around 95 A.D., there we’re only 200 million people on planet Earth. Since the biggest battles of John’s day only had a few thousand soldiers,  there is good reason for him to be baffled by the large number.

It was a very long time before the global population grew to fit that number. It took 1,650 years for the world’s population just to double to 400 million. At the beginning of the 20th century, the head count was only 1.6 billion.

The population of China was mostly stagnant at under 100 million, up into the 1600s. Endless war and famines only allowed China to grow at a gradual pace. It hit 400 million in 1831 and 600 million in 1953. In the past half century, China’s population more than doubled to 1.4 billion.

The One Child policy instituted by Beijing has made mobilization of a 200 million man army all the more possible. Normally, between 103 and 106 boys are born for every 100 girls. The preference for male children through selective abortions has tilted China’s sex ratio for the generation born in the 2000s to 124. The gender imbalance has grown to the point where there are now 33.5 million more men than women in China.

China could have 10 billion people and still not be able to outfit an army of great size. However, the economic boom that has occurred in recent years has been providential to this objective. For decades, China had the world’s fastest-growing major economy, with growth rates averaging 10% each year. In 1980 China’s GDP was at $306 billion. Today it at $11.5 trillion.

India has a higher population growth rate than China, and it will become the most populous nation in the next three years. According to Global Firepower, the Indian military has a combined 4,207,250 active and reserve personnel in service. India is so poor, there is no way it could mobilize an army into the tens of millions.

Now that China has the population and the economic might to outfit a large military, it needs a pathway to the Middle East. The Great Wall of China was impressive at keeping the Mongols at bay, but it is nothing compared to the Himalaya mountain range. This massive wall of peaks is the reason why there is such a drastic cultural difference between East and Southwest Asia.

To bridge this natural divide, China is working a complex series of Initiatives that go by the names, the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st-century Maritime Silk Road. The project is the brainchild of China’s president Xi Jinping, and its purpose is to establish road and sea connectivity between Eurasian countries.

The Silk Road will have major highways that reach to the doorways of Iran, Pakistan and India. The time scale is indefinite, and it will come with a huge price tag of between $4 trillion and $8 trillion. I doubt president Xi was thinking of military movement in his project, but it does show the massive amount of infrastructure that the “kings of the east” army will need to cross over to the Middle East.

To move a large army, a nation needs forward operating bases. This may explain why China has recently started building bases outside its territory. The Global Times reported last week that China is in talks with Pakistan to build its second overseas military base as part of a push for greater maritime capabilities along strategic sea routes.

Since the great invasion will take place near the end of the tribulation, China will have several years to work on the Silk Road. I read one stat that would seem to indicate that the 200 million man army will need to roll out in the not too distant future. The declining birth rate is a problem that naturally occurs with nearly every industrialized nation. The lack of children results in a country of old people. If Japan had a billion people, it couldn’t muster a large army.

Because God calls all the shots to prophecy, you can see why China following a step-by-step plan will play a major role in prophecy. With so many of the pieces of the puzzle that have already fallen into place, we can sense that time is short.

“Release the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates.” So the four angels, who had been prepared for the hour and day and month and year, were released to kill a third of mankind. Now the number of the army of the horsemen was two hundred million; I heard the number of them” (Revelation 9:14-16).

“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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Last-Days Sorceries

It’s almost like watching a war in much the same way people used to observe Civil War battles. The towns people would, in some cases–particularly early in the conflict–get their picnic goods together and sit in what they thought to be secure positions with their families to watch the blue and gray combatants go at it.

I feel sort of like that at the moment.

There is an end-times war going on–building toward Armageddon–and the individual battles are fascinating.

I’ve noted with amusement and a degree of schadenfreude the leftist, Hollywood types have their accusations against Donald Trump bounce off his administration and stick on them. The sexual harassment charges have made manifest their hypocrisy.

Satan has appeared to have been losing the battle as of late on several fronts. Of course, we know that neither he nor his minions, whether demonic or human, will ever give up their assaults until the war is over. They will seem to win many battles right up until the gathering at Armageddon.

Evidence of the battles Lucifer and his legions will continue to fight is observable in the conflict Attorney General Jeff Sessions has initiated regarding marijuana sales. It is a civil war in its own right.

The old devil never ceases to amaze in his ability to deceive and cajole. He not only has a majority of people clamoring to make “Mary Jane” accessible on a national scale, thus eventually making the nation unable to think clearly, he finessed the controversy into a political poison dart aimed at the president he is desperate to see removed from the reigns of power. The following hate-Trump news outlet piece illustrates my point, I hope. 

As of late Friday, POLITICO Magazine could not find a single member of Congress who had issued a statement in support of Sessions’ actions. In the end, this is a self-inflicted pot crisis that could prove to be a critical test of Trump’s ability to maintain his base.

“There’s a lot of old white men who are marijuana users, and the marijuana is keeping them alive,” Segerblom said from his cell phone while driving around Las Vegas. “Trump is going to have fewer to vote for him if he doesn’t keep marijuana legal.”

Sessions’ antipathy for a drug that has lost much of its stigma among a wide cross section of Americans has only galvanized disparate factions in Congress to protect an industry that is expected to generate $2.3 billion in state tax revenue by 2020. (https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/01/06/jeff-sessions-marijuana-legalization-congress-216251)

I’m sure that among that 70 percent of Americans who are said to support legalizing marijuana for medicinal purposes are many who regularly read this column. There are those within my own family who think it is something that should be allowed without resistance.

I don’t.

It is the so-called recreational usage that is embedded within the satanic ploy that makes the battle plan an end-times issue in my view. It is the proverbial slippery slope to open more and more avenues to national inability to think rationally.

America already is plagued with that malady to an unacceptable degree. A glaring example is that at least half of the nation has been deluded into believing that supporting the murder of babies in their mothers’ womb and same gender partners engaging in sexual relations is natural and not abnormal.

The prophetic Word of God has things to say about this drug-induced delusion at the time of Christ’s Second Advent approaches.

John wrote about those rebellious earth dwellers who would populate the planet at the very end, as Armageddon nears:

“Neither repented they of their murders, nor of their sorceries, nor of their fornication, nor of their thefts” (Revelation 9:21).

Again, John, with dictation from Jesus Christ, writes the following: “And the light of a candle shall shine no more at all in thee; and the voice of the bridegroom and of the bride shall be heard no more at all in thee: for thy merchants were the great men of the earth; for by thy sorceries were all nations deceived” (Revelation 18:23).

The word “sorceries” here is from the Greek pharmakeia (#5331 in Strong’s). There is some connection here to the word “pharmacy.”

The following is informative about the use of the Greek term chosen for use.

Okay. Now lets ensure that we correctly understand this:

The root meaning of this group of Greek words [magos, mageia, pharmakeia, pharmakeus]  is “druggist” “poisoner” or, “giver of potions.” These particular “sorcerers” were persons able to prepare and dispense potions. But why did they dispense these potions? Was it in order to give relief from illness?

Absolutely not! It was in order to stimulate hallucinations or visions! We must understand that it was long part of pagan religious practice to administer potions, or drugs, which would encourage hallucinations! There is, of course, a direct parallel here to modern illicit drug taking. But these original “pharmacists” were involved in the black arts and in demonology; the basic idea was that taking certain potions could bring one into contact with the spirit world, and that this was to be desired. But the fact that the modern English word “pharmacy” happens to be derived from pharmakeia frankly proves absolutely nothing! Do people visit doctors in order to be given drugs which will bring them into contact with the spirit world? Of course not!! People visit medical practitioners in order to have an illness diagnosed, to be treated for sickness, or to gain relief from illness! Yet there are some extremist charismatic ministries around today which teach that we sin when we visit a doctor just because the word “pharmacy” happens to be related to these Greek words!

We must understand that on several occasions the Bible backs up the principle that sick people should look around for remedies for their sickness. This is a very clear biblical principle!…

While the English word “pharmacy” is indeed derived from a group of Greek words used to describe those pagans who used potions to encourage hallucinations in those who wanted to contact the spirit world, to suggest that modern medical pharmacists are in any way associated with the “black arts” is as ludicrous as to suggest that when my friend took penicillin for a very serious infection, he was really more interested in contacting spirits!!! (By the way, my friend was healed and gave the full glory to God who alone is our healer). (Robin A. Brace-2005, Sorcery in the Bible, Pharmakeia and Modern Medicinewww.ukapologetics.net/pharmakeia.html)

The battle waged by Satanic forces to bring in last-days sorceries, according to Bible prophecy, will be a victory in their column. We are, in my opinion, witnessing the beginning of their winning that battle in our beloved nation. But, one battle won’t win this war. We have God’s Word on that truth!

–Terry

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***Terry Recommends Ritter’s book***

For those interested in fiction with a powerful message through Bible prophecy, I recommend Sow the Wind by Gary Ritter. It’s a page-turner that will be worth your time.

We live in dark times that Jesus promised will get darker. He spoke of wars, rumors of wars, and much upheaval. Paul described the descent of many into unrighteousness, sexual immorality, and wickedness, people who would be haters of God, those who believe that faithful believers in Christ should be put to death. Timothy said that few will endure sound doctrine, and many will turn their ears away from the truth.

In the midst of such an onslaught from the enemy, there will be a remnant. There will be those who hear the voice of God and will obey His commands to be lights that shine in the darkness.

Gary’s intent in writing these novels is to point toward Jesus as the only One who can redeem and deliver us. Originally inspired by the Left Behind series, Ritter didn’t want to simply cover the same ground, he wanted to get us from here to there with an exciting story that is biblically faithful within the context of fiction. He has done so, and in a way that makes you sense you are right there, sharing the moments of action and interaction with the characters who populate the enthralling narrative.

Sow The Wind

Ritter’s website for more information is garyritter.com.

itter3390@earthlink.net<gritter3390@earthlink.net