Our Upside-down Reality

For the past few years we have been locked in a relentless trend where the world’s contact with reality has been continuously melting away. As we keep hitting milestone after milestone of craziness, there is no way to know how deep this world will descend into insanity.

Whenever I think the madness has leveled off, we get another event that reminds me that we are still hopelessly adrift. The terrorist attack in New York proves this point. It was “Oh no, not again” when the news flashed that several people had been killed by a guy driving a truck down a bike path screaming “Allahu Akbar.”

The madman in question turned out to be Sayfullo Habibullaevic Saipov, a recent immigrant from Uzbekistan. He rented a small truck from a New Jersey Home Depot because he suddenly felt inspired to murder people. This idiot ended his rampage with him dancing around in the street, waving fake guns, so he could be gunned down and be sent off to his 42 virgins.

A few hours after the attack, New York Mayor de Blasio and Governor Andrew Cuomo came before the cameras and offered the standard remarks for all Islamic terrorist attacks. These two clowns said this was a “lone wolf” who committed a “cowardly act of terror,” but don’t worry because “we’re not going to let them win.” We just need to “go forward stronger than ever.”

The crazy part is that I lost track of how many times I’ve heard these talking-point statements. After each terror attack, there is always some liberal reporter who adds a new twisted observation to the insanity archive. In this case it was CNN’s Jake Tapper. He said that the Islamic phrase “Allahu Akbar” can be said “under the most beautiful of circumstances.” It must be very beautiful to look behind you and see a guy yelling it as he is driving a truck in your direction.

Another bit of lunacy is how Sayfullo Habibullaevic Saipov got into America. This monster entered the US through the Diversity Visa Program. It’s a lottery that basically encourages people who hate America to come to our shores. The Democrats decided that we need people from every nation to come and join America’s diverse melting pot. People living in I-hate-America-Stan are given free passage to come here and kill as they please.

The problem that the US has with recognizing Islamic terror is nothing compared to what is occurring in Europe. If you read Europol’s last ten EU Terrorism Situation and Trend Reports (TE-SAT), you will find, year after year, that terrorism in Europe has been in sharp decline. Since the year 2007, terrorist events are down 75%. In 2007 there were nearly 600 terror attacks. By 2016 that number had dropped to 150 terror attacks.

The folks at Europol (European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation) are obviously on drugs. In the last two years, there were 150 and 140 people killed by Islamic terrorism. As late as 2011, there were zero reported deaths from terrorism in Europe. The increase in the number of dead from terror attacks in 2015-2016 compared to the period from 2007-2014 is a staggering 2,291%.

The cover-up of terrorism is the result of a change in the EU’s definition of the word. For an incident to qualify as terrorism, there now needs to be the intent of “unduly compelling a government or international organization to perform or abstain from performing an act.” Someone blowing himself up to kill others at a concert or driving over people for no logical reason simply doesn’t count.

The blindness to reality is not just with terrorism. In Mexico, drug-related murders are out of control. Last year there were more than 20,000 killings. This year is on track to be worse, exceeding the 2011 record, which was thought to be the drug war’s apex. The vast majority of those drugs come to America, and our media gives zero news coverage of the carnage.

As I’ve stated before, the only logical explanation for why the people of the world show little resistance to this invasion of evil is that we are clearly witnessing a form of end-time madness. The world has become so evil that demonic forces are able to control the minds of the lost. The level of insanity is now so profound, it should be absolutely clear to all believers that the end of the Church Age is very near.

“The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel that displays the glory of Christ, who is the image of God” (2 Corinthians 4:4).

— Todd

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Departure Near

Author’s note: Because  I’m convicted that we are so near the time when Jesus will say “Come up hither,” I wanted to again present an article, somewhat revised, from my past commentaries. It is vital that the Church (all born again believers) be aware of the nearness of our Departure.

The Scripture is haunting. It echoes and reverberates throughout the spiritual hallways of the Church with each passing hour.

“Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils” (1 Tim. 4:1).

This forewarning fits into the last-days pattern, also given by the Apostle Paul, in the familiar prophetic passage: “Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of Perdition…” (2 Thes. 2:3).

The “falling away,” apostasia in Greek, means a “departure from.” Paul prophesied in the 2 Timothy 4:1 passage that there will come a time at the end of the Church Age when people will depart from the “faith.” He foretells in 2 Thessalonians that this will be a general “falling away,” the apostasy of the endtime. What is this “faith” from which people will fall away, and who are the “people” who will fall away? Another crucial question is: Can the departure that God, through Paul, forewarned about be recognized when it occurs?

“Faith,” as here defined, must, by context, be the faith in the One who is at the heart of the Gospel–faith in the Lord Jesus Christ as the Lamb of God, chosen from the foundation of the world to be the propitiation for the sin that separates fallen man from God. It is the faith you and I must have in order to confess with our mouths that Jesus is the only begotten Son of God, and to believe in the deepest part of our spirits that God raised Him from the dead.

“That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved” (Rom. 10:9).

A person can’t fall from a position (doctrinally speaking in this case) he never has attained. The “people,” then, whom Paul the apostle is writing about in his prophecies of 1 Timothy 4:1 and 2 Thessalonians 2:3 are those who have believed in Jesus Christ for salvation of their souls.

This brings us to the question: Can the departure God, through Paul, forewarned about be recognized when it occurs? To recognize that “falling away”–that apostasia, or apostasy— when it begins to happen, will almost certainly give the Christian attuned to God’s will a heads-up on the nearness of the Tribulation era, thus to the nearness of the rapture of the Church.

We have looked at the “faith” as faith in Jesus for salvation, and at the “people”who will “depart” from the faith as being the Church–that is, the true Christians who are alive at the time of the end, when the apostasy takes place.

Although there are those who think this departure includes the possibility of one losing one’s salvation, the “falling away” of 2 Thessalonians 2:3 cannot include that meaning. A quick look at Romans 8:38 and 39, to name just one security-of-the-believer passage, shows that God’s Word teaches that the believer can’t depart from the Heavenly Father to the point of losing his or her family status. Jesus, in John chapter 17, makes that absolutely clear. I suggest that if you have questions about this, read the Scriptures I just mentioned.

What, then, is meant by “departing from the “faith”? Glad you asked. The “faith” mentioned in 2 Thessalonians and 1 Timothy 2:3 is a collection of faith principles wrapped up in the Lord Jesus Christ. These principles are doctrines put forth by the Word of God. The Word of God is none other than the Lord Jesus: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1).

“People” at the time of the “falling away” will “depart” from the “faith” –the doctrines put forth by the Word of God, who is Jesus Christ. This departure will mark the generation of Christians at the very end of the Church Age.

The question that applies most relevantly to us today is: Are we seeing signals of the departure about which Paul forewarned?

We have analyzed, dissected, examined, and inspected every endtime signal found in God’s Word many times in these raptureready.com webpages: Israel again in the land of promise; the EU looking to be the reviving Roman Empire; Russia, Persia (modern Iran) and other nations looking to be a nucleus that will one day form the Gog-Magog force of Ezekiel chapters 38 and 39. These, plus, all of the other endtime characteristics of this generation.

However, I believe the most insidious of all the things taking place under the clever, devious hand of the devil –Satan—is the falling away, the departure from the faith being currently orchestrated by Lucifer, the fallen one This departure is evident to the spiritually discerning when looking at the church growth movement. This “seeker friendly” approach to both the saved and the lost (all who don’t know Christ) through New Age, corporation-type seminar seductiveness and brainwashing techniques that water down or completely eliminate true Bible doctrine is leading in a profound departure from the “faith once delivered” (see Jude 1: 3).

The new paradigm instituted by the champions of the church growth movement is the shift from New Testament Christianity to “New Spirituality-Driven Christianity.”

Like in the modern corporate organization, invented in large part by German economic guru Peter Drucker, who mentored some of the leading designers of the church growth movement, the system is more an organism than an organization –adopting Drucker’s model based upon Freudian psychology and Darwinian evolutionary principles. The individual is assigned a value, and he must fit in, or be removed from the system. To put it as I heard one person of the movement say: “Pillars just hold things up. So, they need to be moved out of the way.” So, those who hold to doctrine must get out of the way so no one will have their feelings hurt by talk of sin, and blood atonement, and eternal punishment in the place called Hell, if repentance is not forthcoming. Again, the Apostle Paul wrote God’s view of this watering down of doctrine: “But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed” (Gal. 1:8).

Are we at the point of departure from the faith that is prophesied for the very end of the Church Age? Maybe we can get a better sense by looking at one more area of Scripture pertaining to the matter: “I charge thee therefore before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and the dead at his appearing and his kingdom; Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables” (2 Tim. 4:1-4).

There is another prophetically scheduled departure to consider. It’s the one to  which we should be looking forward. It is a God-ordained departure that will remove every child of God of the Church Age –living and dead—from Planet Earth in one millisecond of time:

“Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ” (Tit. 2:13).

–Terry

The California Wildfires

The wildfires that have raged through Northern California have caused at least $1 billion in damage to insured property. The fires killed over 42 people – marking the greatest loss of life from a single fire event on record in California, surpassing the 29 deaths from the Griffith Park fire of 1933 in Los Angeles.

It will take months to finalize the total insured losses from the fires. Insurers have so far found that there were 4,200 partial residential losses, 7,200 total residential losses, 1,000 commercial property losses, and over 3,000 auto losses. It is stunning to have over 8,000 structures destroyed in that state. The cedar fire in 2003 had the previous record with 2,830 structures destroyed by fire.

A couple of weeks ago, I was in Oklahoma City at the Blessed Hope Prophecy Forum, and one of the speakers talked about how California environmentalist policies have compounded the fire damage. He said lawmakers don’t allow for the removal of dead trees and brush that would have helped prevent the fire storms that consumed all those houses.

It is true that leftist rules on logging have provided more fuel for the fires, but we’ve had this problem for decades. In 1988, a large portion of Yellowstone park went up in flames. There has not been a major fire in the park since because the forest will take many decades to grow back to the pre-1988 density.

There is something very odd about this year’s fire that defies all other growth or drought explanations. The current fire season has burned less acreage than many recent years, and yet, it has been the most destructive. Historian Stephen Pyne noted, “It’s no longer just the case that we’re building homes where the fires are. The fires seem to be going where the houses are.”

In 2012, when the largest single fire in California’s recorded history burned 315,000 acres, only a single barn was damaged. During an average fire season, fires will burn in the high mountains for months without coming anywhere near populated areas.

Only a small portion of California’s 104-million-acre landscape goes up in flames each year. When 1,375,781 acres were burned in 2008, the most ever, that number was less than one percent of the state’s total land area.

It is incredibly strange to have fires cause so much destruction and loss of life over such a long period of time. I’ve looked at years of records for California fires, and most of the great fire events are single events that last one to two days. This month’s blaze had five notable fire events that devastated property for a solid week.

Lately, I’ve noticed that nearly every occurrence of a natural disaster has had some form of extreme classification. The most recent, Hurricane Ophelia, marks the 10th consecutive Atlantic-named storm to become a hurricane in 2017. This ties the record for the most consecutive Atlantic-named storms reaching hurricane strength, which last occurred in the 1800’s, according to Dr. Phil Klotzbach, Colorado State University tropical meteorologist.

The press has almost zero interest in why we are having so many disasters. Every time one occurs, they devote an increasingly smaller amount of time reporting on it. They don’t care about the welfare of the American people. Their main focus is on attacking Trump.

The worst type of disaster a property holder can experience is fire. When a house is flooded, there are many things that can be recovered when the water recedes. When a home is consumed by flames, there is nothing to claim but ashes. When I saw block after block of homes destroyed in many of those California cities, I could only think of how the rapture could deliver a believer from such a dreadful event. With natural disasters becoming a regular occurrence, the “blessed hope” is our only remedy from future calamity.

“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 Thess. 4:16-18).

“Waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ” (Titus 2:13).

— Todd

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Prophetic Indicators in View

Those who are watchful for Christ’s soon return from the pre-Millennial, pre-Trib view of Bible prophecy see this present time as inundated with significant signs. We more and more often these days hear the term “convergence” bandied about. “Convergence” is used to define the coming-together at once of most of the indicators the prophets–particularly Jesus–gave for the end of the Church Age (Age of Grace).

Two signals fitting within that definition, I believe, are in the news while we continue to observe these troubled but exciting times. I say “exciting,” because the signs are indicators that our Lord must be very near that moment of shouting from the clouds of Heaven, “Come up here!” (Revelation 4:1-2).

First, I would like to again look at the prophecy Jesus gave about when He will next be revealed to mankind in a catastrophic way. As those who read these commentaries regularly know, I believe Christ was talking about our present time very near the end of the Church Age in this prophecy.

The Lord, as recorded in Matthew 24:36-42 and Luke 17:26-30, said it would be just like the days of Noah and the days of Lot when He intervenes or is revealed. I believe this has to be the time of the Rapture. He said people will be buying, selling, building, planting, marrying, etc. It will be business, I believe He was saying, even better than usual when the Rapture occurs.

But, we have to look into other aspects of the way it was in Noah’s day in order to find reference to the prophetic signal I wish to examine here. We go to Genesis chapter 6 for that perspective:

And GOD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart. (Genesis 6: 5-6)

Paul, the great apostle, further enlightens on how it was in Noah’s day:

Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, And changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things.

Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves: Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.  (Romans 1:21-25)

The following item in the news is quite telling, in my opinion, regarding how this generation fits within God’ prophetic timeline.

“So many millennials read their horoscopes every day and believe them,” [Coco] Layne, who is involved in a number of nonreligious spiritual practices, said. “It is a good reference point to identify and place people in the world.”

Interest in spirituality has been booming in recent years while interest in religion plummets, especially among millennials. The majority of Americans now believe it is not necessary to believe in God to have good morals, a study from Pew Research Center released Wednesday found. The percentage of people between the ages of 18 and 29 who “never doubt existence of God” fell from 81% in 2007 to 67% in 2012.

Meanwhile, more than half of young adults in the U.S. believe astrology is a science…

Melissa Jayne, owner of Brooklyn-based “metaphysical boutique” Catland, said she has seen a major uptick in interest in the occult in the past five years, especially among New Yorkers in their 20s. The store offers workshops like “Witchcraft 101,” “Astrology 101,” and a “Spirit Seance.”

“Whether it be spell-casting, tarot, astrology, meditation and trance, or herbalism, these traditions offer tangible ways for people to enact change in their lives,” she said. “…

Astrology isn’t the only spiritual field overwhelmed by demand: Danielle Ayoka, the founder of spiritual subscription service Mystic Lipstick, said her customer base is growing exponentially. The self-described astrologer sells a “mystic box” subscription, which includes crystals, “reiki-infused bath salts,” and incense customized to the unique energy of the current moon cycle for $14.99 a month. She says she’s seen 75% increase in her audience in the past year. (Why millennials are ditching religion for witchcraft and astrology, MarketWatch, Rapture Ready News, Oct. 21, 2017)

Second of the prophetic indicators I think appropriate to mention here involves the incessant assault by the globalists elite.

The drive to construct the New World Order, as President  Herbert Walker Bush termed it, continues at a stepped-up pace. President Donald J. Trump’s call to “Make America Great Again” has sent the one-worlders into a frantic effort to get our thinking back on track. –Back on the track upon which President Obama faithfully took the U.S., in line with recent presidents who came after Ronald Reagan, who, for the most part, was a staunch advocate for American sovereignty.

Now, the son of the first President Bush has weighed in, demonstrating where his strongest allegiance lies. Without mention of Trump’s name, Bush 43 unloaded on any thought of America being given first place over the more important globalist agenda.

Former President George W. Bush delivered a public repudiation of President Donald Trump’s political identity, suggesting many aspects of the current administration are fueling division in the United States and around the world…

“We cannot wish globalism away,” Bush said, noting that the United States must sustain “wise and sustained global engagement” for the future of the country.

Bush indirectly accused Trump of fueling dangerous ideologies that threatened the unity of the United States and global stability, spending a large portion of his speech complaining about social ills in the country…

Bush urged Americans to “recover our own identity,” citing a commitment to global engagement, free and international trade, and immigration.

“We’ve seen nationalism distorted into nativism, and forgotten the dynamism that immigration has always brought to America,” he lamented…

Bush’s decision to publicly criticize Trump’s presidency is unusual after he made a point of rarely challenging President Barack Obama while he was in office. (Source: George W. Bush Emerges to Bash Trump, ‘Nativism’: ‘We Cannot Wish Globalism Away,’ Charlie Spiering -Breitbart, Oct. 21, 2017)

George W. Bush had qualities I admired in a president. His holding to his father’s desire to bring the world back to configuration like it was during the days of Babel is not one of them. Globalism is a satanic, not a godly, concept. It will eventuate, however. We are seeing stage-setting for producing the platform from which Antichrist’s regime will rule with an iron fist.

Here’s what the Lord says about that effort we see in development at present:

The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD, and against his anointed, saying, Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us. He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision. Then shall he speak unto them in his wrath, and vex them in his sore displeasure. Yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion. I will declare the decree: the LORD hath said unto me, Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee. Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession. Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel. (Psalms 2:2-9)

–Terry