The Lesson Taught by Mosul

On June 10th of 2014, a band of 300 Islamic State fighters walked into Mosul, Iraq. They took control with hardly any resistance. Kurdish intelligence had warned that the city would be attacked. But infighting among top officers, Iraqi political leaders, and panic by the Iraqi military—caused a city of over one million people to be handed over to the enemy.

Many residents initially welcomed the ISIS invasion. They were fed up with the sectarianism of the Shia dominated Iraqi government. Because most residents of Mosul are of the same Sunni sect as ISIS, they falsely believed they would receive better treatment from them.

Not since the time that the Russians welcomed the Nazi army as liberators from Stalin’s reign, has there been a greater misjudgment of an invading force. In the nearly three years of occupation by ISIS, the living conditions in Mosul have gone from bad to worse.

The Iraqi soldiers that laid down their arms and surrendered were the first to realize their mistake. They were marched out into the desert by the hundreds and mowed down with automatic gunfire. The civilian population has had plenty of time to reconsider their error—as their lives became subject to an endless list of horrors. One ISIS member claims to have raped over 200 women.

There is almost nothing left of the 70,000 Assyrian Christians that lived in Mosul. The fortunate ones fled from the cities. The few that remain are forced to pay a tax for remaining Christian. They live under the constant threat of violence. Dozens of Christian churches and monasteries have been vandalized or burned down.

Other great losses are the artifacts from 5,000 years of ancient Mesopotamian ancestry. These ISIS criminals have the mindset that anything that is not directly related to their religion  must be destroyed. Soon after their takeover of the city, ISIS released a five-minute video of its members smashing their way through the Mosul Museum, toppling statues and taking sledgehammers to centuries-old artifacts.

It has taken a great deal of time for the Iraqi government to turn the tide against ISIS forces. With help from Russia, America, and Iran, these evil thugs are slowly being driven back. The Battle of Mosul—a military offensive to retake the city begun in October 2016, is the largest deployment of Iraqi forces since the last Gulf War.

It is going to take a long siege to retake Mosul. The ISIS insurgents have a fanatical devotion to their cause. They have dug in with underground bunkers, booby traps, anti-tank missiles and car bombs. They are also using the civil population as human shields.

The city of Mosul has already suffered heavy damage. By the time the city is liberated, it will be unrecognizable to those who return home.

If the citizens of Mosul had been able to see into the future, I doubt the city would have fallen into the hands of ISIS. Knowing what horrors would come, they would have fought tooth and nail to the death. Those 300 ISIS fighters would have been wiped out in short order.

The devil wins many battles because people fail to count the cost of complacency. Adolf Hitler admitted that he would have had to retreat with his tail between his legs if the allies had reacted to his move to militarize the Rhineland. When he made his move in 1936, the Germany military only had 500,000 men. By the time Hitler invaded Poland, the German military had 4.5 million. The cost of stopping him went from a show of force to a bloodbath that left 60 million people dead.

I think where complacency has hurt us the most in America is how people on the right have allowed the forces of darkness to take over our schools, the news media, Hollywood, and much of the business world. We win some battles, but we are losing the war.

Elizabeth Johnston, aka the “Activist Mommy,” has regained access to her account after Facebook apologized for banning her for posting Bible quotes about homosexuality. If you work at Facebook, you still need to keep your Christian views to yourself.

There is an overwhelming spirit of complacency that has made this current generation ripe for the Tribulation. Many organizations that claim to represent Christian values are unwilling to resist evil and stand up for what they believe in—so there is nothing to prevent this world from coming under God’s wrath.

“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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Catalyst for Cataclysm

There continues to be anxiety over the political chasm now dividing this nation. And the schism involves much more than politics. There has developed a separation of worldview unlike any yet known in this nation.

We have all heard, particularly as of late, Lincoln’s words reflecting off Jesus’ declaration that “a house divided cannot stand.” Yet these United States, clearly a house not so united, as this presidential election showed, continues to not only stand, but seemingly is on the brink of entering boom-times, economically speaking at least.

For a number of years leading up to the 2016 presidential election, America appeared to be a nation more and more moving toward unification. From our perspective on the Christian right, however, that coming together looked to be leading to disaster for religious freedom. Not only was religious liberty being cast aside, we thought, but all vestiges of morality and constitutional principles were being trashed at every turn. The libertines were having their way and hope to ever regain our national sanity seemed all but lost.

Those who prefer America detached from moorings the founding fathers provided, like most of those of us who love this nation as founded, thought the political left had won the presidency–that is, they thought they had won right up until late that night when poll results proved the opposite. The rage–the insanity–hasn’t stopped since that moment of epiphany.

The progressives were certain they had won the day and that now Bob Dylan’s lyrics, taken from the poetry of his self-chosen namesake, Dylan Thomas, were proving prophetic.

Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don’t criticize
What you can’t understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is
Rapidly agin’.
Please get out of the new one
If you can’t lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin’.

The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is
Rapidly fadin’.
And the first one now
Will later be last
For the times they are a-changin’.

The oft-quoted mantra during the Woodstock era was about to find its declaration chiseled upon the marbled, governmental walls of earth’s only superpower. “Do not go gentle into that sweet goodnight. Rage, rage, for the times they are a-changin’.”

The “rage,” as I said, is still raging. The losers of the election–the principals, Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama–are reportedly leading the charge from the shadows with their opposition community organization efforts, in collusion with the so-called deep state. The manufactured, paid-for, rage is manifest in Republican town hall meetings across the nation.

I continue to maintain that it is the satanically engendered, globalist agenda that is driving the rage. George Soros funding is unabashedly admitted by the liberal side to be adding inspirational fire to the vitriol and anger. America must be brought under control of the one-world minions. The Trump victory jolted the new world architects’ incessant drive to knock America off its constitutional foundation.

The new president, with each mention of rolling back regulations, of reformulating tax structures to make things more friendly to the business world and to middle class taxpayers, inspires the financial markets to record heights. Rather than America and the world collapsing into the deepest depression in history like many experts were predicting, the economic indicators are soaring in the opposite direction.

We are now heading into fiscal territory that is like that prophesied by Jesus. The Lord said the buying, selling, building, etc., would be going along quite nicely at the time he next catastrophically intervenes into the wicked affairs of mankind. I’m convinced that those times of buying, selling, building, etc., were referring not to just “business as usual,” but to a coming boom that is unprecedented.

So, we have all of the major elements in view that Jesus predicted when foretelling what the times of His next intervention into human affairs would involve.

He said the nations would be “in distress with perplexity.” The “seas and waves” (people of the nations)would be “roaring.” He said that people will, at the same time, be buying, selling, building, planting, and marrying. It will be a “think not” generation at the time of Christ’s sudden intervention, according to Matthew 24:44.

World conditions will be just like in the days of Noah and the days of Lot. It will be in the midst of this time of both anxiety and apparent affluence that He will suddenly and catastrophically break in on an unsuspecting world.

We are, I firmly believe, swiftly entering into just such a time. The Rapture of the Church will be, I’m convinced, the catalyst for cataclysm for those left behind.

–Terry

Censorship Attack

There is a tremendous battle over the right to freely share information in public and private places. Liberals are banding together to block conservatives and Christians from sharing their views.

On various campuses, the liberal establishment has banned anyone who would dare speak positively of Donald Trump. Because they define Trump as evil, school administrators feel they have a green light to trample on the liberties of others.

Something has gone horribly wrong when you have the younger generation screaming “Fascist,” yet have become the very thing they claim to loathe.

A mindset of intolerance has been normalized amongst the left, promoted by the media, even accepting violence in order to “stomp out” those  who are targeted as “hatemongers.”

The liberal media has become so convinced that it’s their job to tell the public what to think, those very words are starting to come out of their mouths. In a discussion about fears that President Donald Trump is “trying to control the media,” MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski slipped up and said that controlling “exactly what people think” is her job (and that of the rest of the media).

There is such a suppression of freedom in this country  that can find themselves in instant trouble for the most casual remark. Comedian Steven Martin was recently criticized when he posted the following note in the wake of Carrie Fisher’s death:

“When I was a young man, Carrie Fisher was the most beautiful creature I had ever seen. She turned out to be witty and bright as well,” said Martin. His sin was failing to match up her beauty and wittiness.

Offending other people’s cultures is another depravity that will force celebrities to issue apologies. Hilary Duff and Chris Hemsworth both had to beg for forgiveness when photos showed each of them dressed as Native Americans at costume parties. Justin Timberlake was accused of cultural appropriation after sending a tweet praising actor Jesse Williams’ BET Awards speech.

The pettiness of the left puts the average citizen in danger. A Florida Teacher was “reassigned” after she praised Trump’s Immigration police on Facebook. Liberal groups have been trying to get L.L. Bean to remove Linda Bean from the company’s board of directors just because she donated $30,000 to a pro-Trump Political Action Committee. It is disgusting to have arrived at the point where people can’t freely express their political views without being confronted by Nazi stormtroopers.

Web-based organizations are also under attack from the left. The Gatestone Institute is a non-partisan think tank that’s dedicated to educating the public about what the mainstream media fails to report. Last week, the president of GI sent out a letter that described the opposition with which the organization was having to deal:

Gatestone Institute has recently come under smear campaigns from both extremist websites and the mainstream media. Facebook has repeatedly obstructed Gatestone content — sometimes with outright acts of censorship. Google has restricted our access to its Google News platform, and banned us from using its advertising platform.

I’ve noticed suppression from Google against Rapture Ready and many other prophecy sites. In the past couple months the rankings for prophecy sites has been dropping. If you type the word “Rapture” in the search window at Google, the top results are now general references and old news articles. Rapture Ready should be in top three like it is on Yahoo and Bing. Chris of Rapture Forums told me his site was listed on page 12. It should be in the top 20 sites.

Alex Jones has posted several videos on the censorship attack against conservative sites. He created a site to fight to protect the First Amendment. It’s called the Coalition to Defend Free Speech. What I found interesting is that the Coalition to Defend Free Speech does not show up on Google. You have to go to Yahoo or Bing to find it.

The website NaturalNews.com has been totally blocked by Google. I don’t agree with some of this site’s views, but I don’t think a search engine should be able use monopolistic powers to set itself up as an Orwellian arbiter of truth.  Mike Adams runs NaturalNews and he has created a Petition page that will be used to get the attention of the White House. Please sign-up and make your voices heard. Here is the link: Petition to Ban Google’s Blatant Suppression of Free Speech.

It is ironic that the company founded under the mantra “Don’t be evil” is now doing the devil’s bidding. If Google is going to block people from finding accurate search results, it will find soon itself as the K-Mart of search engines.

When President Trump said the media are the “enemy of the people,” he was absolutely correct. I truly believe that Satan spends more time in the media headquarters of New York than he does in the political capitals of Washington D.C.

If the American people fail to rise up and put the media in its place we’re going to eventually find ourselves living in a North Korea type dictatorship. About 99 percent of the North Korean citizens believe that (fat boy) Kim Jong-Un is a god because that’s all they hear from the state controlled media.

The American press has already poisoned the minds of 50 percent of the country. They are dead set on getting the other half. If the Rapture occurs soon, they may get their chance.

“And many false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many. And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold. But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved” (Matthew 24:11-13).

–Todd

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The Departure

Author’s note: This week, I’m doing something I’ve done only once before during the course of writing for this Nearing Midnight column. I’m repeating a commentary I wrote previously –this one on January 16, 2006.

I am doing so because I believe the Lord Impressed upon my spirit that the Departure is so very near, and our minds and spiritual hearts are too often far from that stunning event that can take place at any given second. It’s time to “look up” is the exhortation of the hour.

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 end-time 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 end-time 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 we should be looking forward to. 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