Peace and Safety Like Never Before

The state of Israel has never had a time when it has been more tranquil. Since the nation was founded in 1948, it has been under almost constant threat of war, terrorism, economic sanctions and internal political unrest.

The forces that hate Israel suffered a major defeat in the election of Donald Trump. His key policies toward the Jewish state are still unknown, but Trump will mostly like mean a sharp reversal of the icy relations that currently exist between Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

While running for office, Trump has said he would move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Recent reports show that he intends to fulfill this promise. Trump senior aide Kellyanne Conway said, moving the embassy is a “very big priority” for Trump. She also said, support for Israel was integral to Trump’s agenda.

The threat of terrorism in Israel has declined with the collapse of what has been called the “Stabbing Intifada;” an unorganized effort to spread fear amongst the Israelis with a series of stabbings. According to Shin Bet, between 1 October 2015 and 1 October 2016 there was a total of 166 stabbing attacks and 89 attempted stabbings. The effort is now seen as suicidal because only 5 Israeli security personnel have been killed while 102 Palestinian attackers have died.

The campaign to boycott Israel is another failure. The reason for the boycotts is to protest against Israeli policies toward Palestinians. Various liberal organizations have somehow gotten the idea that Palestinians are being mistreated, and they want to apply “economic leverage” to force Israel to do something crazy—like tear down its West Bank security barrier. Since most Israeli index funds are up 40 percent over the past four years, the boycott has caused investors to miss out on healthy financial returns.

Israel’s relations with her Arab neighbors has become very positive. Now that Egypt is run by a military general, “Egyptian-Israeli relations are today at their highest level in history,” so says Nathan Thrall, a Jerusalem-based senior analyst for the International Crisis Group (ICG), a research organization.

Last week, Netanyahu embarked on a landmark visit to two Muslim-majority nations, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan. It is historically significant because no Israeli leader has traveled to the former Soviet Republics of Central Asia in 25 years. With Syria distracted with civil war, there has been little protest from that old enemy.

The only active concern for Israel is Iran. It’s Defense Minister Hossein Dehghan, while speaking at a conference in Tehran, said that Israel will be “destroyed” if Trump sparks war in the Middle East. Since Iran is always talking about Israel’s doom, the threat is just words.

The political environment of Israel has become very stable. Prime Minister Netanyahu has strengthened his hold onto power by adding religious parties to his coalition. The soon departure of Obama will free the prime minister from having to worry about negative comments coming from the White House.

There is now a general feeling of peace and safety here in America. The stock market has been soaring—with the Dow Jones pushing near to the 20,000 milestone. Even though stocks are at very high valuations, the folks on Wall Street are cheering proposals to cut corporate taxes and ramp up fiscal stimulus.

It’s not like all our problems have been resolved. America still has a crushing debt load; with the Federal deficit about to go over the $20 trillion level. Many of the banks in Europe are on the brink of collapse. Russia and China are becoming more aggressive with many of their neighbors, but still we have this general feeling of all is well.

As an end-time watcher, this period of historic calm has me wondering if it is a sign of our Lord’s nearness. Jesus said the time of His return to rapture His Church would take place at a time of when people have a general feeling of peace and safety. An environment of carelessness would allow Him to come like a “thief.” Since this time of peace and safety cannot last very long, we will soon find out it is an indication of the Rapture.

“But of the times and the seasons, brethren, ye have no need that I write unto you. For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night. For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape” (1 Thessalonians 5:1-3).

–Todd

 

–Todd

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Saving the World

My practice each week before beginning to think seriously on the next week’s commentary for this column is to pray for guidance from on high. This week’s essay, I sensed, would require especially intensive beseeching in order to receive direction toward the commentary leading up to Christmas Day. Just the opposite turned out to be the case.

An idea of what the topic should be came almost instantly upon my beginning to think on the matter. Next, within less than an hour into the process, came a message through email that validated beyond any doubt that the topic was chosen from above.

The email was from a regular family member of our website, raptureready.com. Her words were verification that the thought for the Christmas message to be delivered wasn’t mine, but from the One who sent that first Christmas message two millennia ago. I quickly dashed off an email-note thanking her.

I again thank her here and will include some of her words from her most timely cyber message to me.

As many who read these commentaries will know, my articles of late have involved the lead-up to and reporting of presidential election 2016. I view that election, I think I made clear, as being intervention by the Lord–and this for several reasons. His intervention was to, I believe, answer the prayers of His people who are called by His name, in accordance with 2 Chronicles 7: 14. His response was to begin to turn around the quick slide into the abyss of total moral decay. His action was to stop this nation’s almost certain march to globalism, which, I’m convinced, the losing candidate would have put on an even faster track than America was on, should she have been elected president.

I likened the intervention in the matter of globalism to God’s erecting a wall even more profound than the wall the president-elect has promised to put along America’s southern border. For now, at least, America, apparently, will have a wall of sorts–a return to the constitutional concept of sovereignty and nationhood intended by the founding fathers.

That constitutional concept was formed by Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Franklin, and all the rest, based upon their strong belief in adherence to Judeo-Christian principles found in the Bible. This, the new world order architects cannot abide. Religion, they rant, is the bane of progressive thought and action. These most often champion the Utopian dream fostered by Karl Marx, who wrote: “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.”

The globalists elite who hate religion and despise Christianity in particular see Communism as the route to Utopia. If only they could have their blueprint for their version of socialism put fully into production, they would create heaven on earth. These have come to embrace fanatically their own version of religion. It is called “environmentalism.”

They were, until recently, calling it global warming. The scientific sophistry behind their claim came to light through exposure to the facts, so they changed the core of their religion to “climate change.”

These are of the save-the-earth cult which holds that man is destroying Mother Earth. Therefore, the globalists elite–the high priests of their religion–must see to it that all nations, all peoples, must be brought under their regulation–else we will all drown beneath the overflowing oceans because of icecap melting, etc. Greenhouse gases and carbon emissions and all of that are produced by evil Western mankind in particular and must be governed. They–the global elitists–of course, are the only ones who can thus save the world.

Pope Francis and some within the Catholic Church have wholeheartedly joined this save-the-earth cult to add their version of religious input. The following excerpted article explains:

Catholic Online reports that new priests will be expected to be familiar with and promote efforts to reduce carbon emissions…

The Church has a responsibility to care for people, and the environment. And care for one is also care for the other…

The new guidelines suggest that in the future, priests will also have a good grasp of the global climate change problem and will share this with their congregation… It must be said that some committed and prayerful Christians, with the excuse of realism and pragmatism, tend to ridicule expressions of concern for the environment. Others are passive; they choose not to change their habits and thus become inconsistent. So what they all need is an ‘ecological conversion’, whereby the effects of their encounter with Jesus Christ become evidence in their relationship with the world around them. Living our vocation to be protectors of God’s handiwork is essential to a life of virtue; it is not an optional or a secondary aspect of our Christian experience. Therefore it will be necessary for future priests to be highly sensitive to this theme and, through the requisite Magisterial and theological guidance, helped to “acknowledge the appeal, immensity and urgency of the challenge we face. (Source: Catholic Church: New Priests Will be Expected to Preach Global Warming, Guest essay by Eric Worrall,http://www.clerus.va/content/dam/clerus/Ratio%20Fundamentalis/The%20Gift%20of%20the%20Priestly%20Vocation.pdf)

There has been little reaching out by this pope since he replaced Pope Benedict to proclaim that conversion must be made to belief in Jesus Christ in order to save the souls of people of earth. But the cry at present goes out in every direction that conversion to the dogma of ecological sophistry must be instituted and enforced to save all people everywhere.

With regard to the luciferian religion called climate change, the words of my emailer say it plainly.

“No matter how much humans try to ‘improve’ on God’s plans, He has the last say. He allows us to experiment but then, rightly shows us that His way is the best way. No matter how much humans try to wreck Planet Earth, God always has the upper (and healing) hand.

The world belongs to God. His Creation. Wonderfully and perfectly made. There is no way He is going to allow some spiritually backward, egocentric lunatic, [to] ruin what He set up. For the RC [Roman Catholic] church to actually believe that they will influence or make a difference to what is happening to planet earth is spiritual ignorance of the highest order. They are implying that action from man can fix stuff. That they (the RC church) are running things. Astonishing!”

Let me be clear in saying that I’m fully aware and agree that we are expected, as Christians, to be good stewards of he earth. However,we are not to worship the earth and make that worship the means of our salvation.

It is the reverse of the true Christmas story that we are witnessing as Christmas approaches. Globalism preaches that it is up to man to save himself by saving the planet.

Like Lucifer told Eve, we are destined to become our own gods. We are to save the world, totally apart from any deity, except, of course, for the gods–he elite–of the globalist agenda.

But the truth of the Christmas story simply, powerfully and wonderfully tells all who will listen–and believe.

“For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved” (John 3:17).

–Terry

The Fake News Media Complain About Fake News

The new buzz phrase of the left wing is “Fake News.” The defeat of Hillary Clinton is being blamed on websites being accused of publishing false news stories about her. To preserve the “integrity” of the obviously biased liberal news industry, there is a movement to red flag all sites that they falsely claim to promote hoaxes, propaganda or disinformation.

There are sites that purposely post bogus news stories. The Onion is probably best known for fictitious “news” intention of being humorous. The left’s agenda is to try to silence opposing views. The liberal media claims to be the source of truth and all sites run by conservatives are bias in their news coverage.

Sites like MSNBC, Huffington Post, Slate, Mother Jones, and Think Progress are all partisan left outlets. You never see them on a “fake news” list because the liberal bias media has appointed itself as the gatekeeper of the Internet.

The arrogance of the left has no limit. When the president gave an interview to Rolling Stone magazine, he lamented the impact he believes so-called “fake news” had on the presidential election. It is pure irony for Obama to be lamenting about ‘fake news’ to a magazine that just lost in court after being sued for peddling a rape hoax.

The liberal media is following a standard socialist tacit: Blame the opposition for the same thing you’re doing. In October, Hillary Clinton was being investigated by the FBI for wrongdoing related to her emails and the Clinton Foundation. On one news service I counted 32 negative news stories about Trump, and there were zero negative news stories about Clinton. That is a good example of fake news and it is all being carried out by the liberal (progressive) left.

The greatest example of phony baloney media coverage occurred when Trump acted on this promise to save 1,000 jobs at the Indiana Carriers plant. The press could not hide their displeasure at having to report on Trump doing a good deed. Reporters for CNN were caught on a live feed joking about Trump’s plane crashing.

The topper of this story occurred in June when President Obama derided Trump for promising to save the Carrier jobs. He asked “What magic wand do you have?” This delicious news story never made is to the nightly news shows because we have a press that is heavily involved in the “fake news’ business.

The eagerness of the left to apply the alternative media with this “fake news” label has caused many of them to cross the line into defamation. The financial site, the Naked Capitalism has threatened The Washington Post with a defamation suit. The paper listed Naked Capitalism as a “fake news” site without providing any evidence for the claim.

Former Democratic National Committee chair Howard Dean called Breitbart News executive chairman, Stephen K. Bannon, a “Nazi” during a recent interview. Pressed on whether he meant to use such a damning term, Mr. Dean responded, “Well, he’s anti-Semitic, he’s anti-black and he’s anti-women.” If Bannon decided to take Dean to court for defamation, he would easily win the case.

Breitbart News is now the favorite target of the left simply because Bannon is president-elect Trump has named him as his chief strategist. So I guess Fox News can rest a bit easier.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has talked about creating a “fake news” filter for his social media site. He wants the majority of the news that gets posted on Facebook to come from a list of “trusted” sites. The firm already has a plug-in that blocks stories labeled as “fake news.”

Zuckerberg demonstrated the dangers of censorship when his own remarks on “fake news” were temporarily deleted from his own site.

Another way that liberals are going after conservative sites is by cutting off their ability to make money. Since nearly all news sites survive on ad revenue, “fake news” labeling can mean death. The Kellogg Company has stopped advertising on the Breitbart News website due to concerns about its content. If the Kellogg company doesn’t want anything to do with Hillary’s basket of deplorables, they should come right out and tell them to stop buying their products.

There is no logical reason why the left always has conservatives on the defense. A recent Gallup poll shows that trust in mainstream media fell to a record low 32 percent. Trust has been on the decline since 1972. The enemy controls the main media hubs, because the people on the right refuse to fight.

If the Kellogg company sales collapsed 20 percent because of a backlash boycott, Kellogg would be begging Breitbart to be its exclusive advertiser. If the same pressure would be applied to CNN, it would be renamed the Conservative Broadcasting Network.

Bible prophecy warns us that the day will come when there will be no freedom of the press. When the Antichrist system comes to power, all news will be fake. In the end, the only news that matters is the Good News of the saving grace that comes from those who put their trust in Jesus Christ.

“Now, brothers and sisters, I want you to remember the Good News I told you. You received that Good News message, and you continue to base your life on it. That Good News, the message you heard from me, is God’s way to save you” (1 Corinthians 15:1-2 ERV).

–Todd

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The Wall

Everyone who has access to any news outlet these days is familiar with the wall mentioned hundreds of times by Donald Trump throughout the presidential campaign season. Now president-elect Trump continues to proclaim that he will build a wall on America’s southern border.

That highly controversial proposed wall involves Mr. Trump’s promise to keep illegal would-be immigrants from entering the United States. Those who support building of such a wall obviously believe this will prevent potential terrorists from entering the country en masse, as they fear is happening presently. A physical structure of the nature described by some will be a massive and expensive undertaking to be sure, as I perceive the project as proposed. It is to be constructed in order to keep American citizens safe.

There is a wall of another sort I would like to think on for a bit. This is a structure that also involves keeping America safe. However, it is a wall not of physical materials as in the case of the one proposed to stand between America and Mexico. I’m referring to the barrier that has suddenly appeared with this presidential election. Again, it is not a physical wall, but one that is made of much sterner stuff–as Shakespeare’s Mark Antony might put it.

Globalism’s growing invasion into the American way of life has been marching all but unchecked for at least two decades. Its force of movement into all strata of life has increased dramatically during the administration of Barack Obama over these past eight years.

Globalism’s threat is greater than just the hordes of illegals from the south–those illegals being but one ingredient within the globalist elite’s plans of action: to bring America into configuration with new world order as they envision it. The danger implied stretches across the broad spectrum of culture and society of our nation.

The inculcation has been a long time in process. The youth of America in particular have been dumbed-down to the point that they know little of truth about the country’s founding principles.

The churches of America have not, since the days of the Moral Majority efforts, resisted the globalist drive to take the nation as far away from God’s influence as possible. The godless teaching of the corrupted and corruptive educational system from K through the doctorate programs has convinced many that there must be a separation of church and state. That demand has come down, finally, to governmental dictate–approved by the Supreme Court–that opposition to social matters perceived as anti-biblical must be confined to the sanctuaries. Just as the president-elect plans to put up that wall to stem the physical flow of illegals in to America, there has suddenly been erected an even more spectacular wall.

It is a spiritual wall, as I view it. God, Himself, has put it up for His own good purposes. It is, almost certainly in part, a wall to stop the globalist invaders from continuing to move the United States farther along the pathway toward the new world order being prepared for Antichrist and his regime of horror. I wrote the following in my commentary that immediately preceded the November 8 presidential election.

Although the nucleus of God’s people who hold fast to the Heavenly Father’s precepts and promises might be a dwindling number, we are still here in the hundreds of thousands, if not millions. We are engaged in this prayer war for a restoration of sanity in America’s government, society and culture.

We are praying specifically that the evil forces that are raging to make this nation into a state totally apart from all godliness will be, at least on an interim basis, kept from their lucifirian goal.

I say “on an interim basis,” because Bible prophecy plainly foretells that the satanic, globalist forces will for a time one day achieve establishment of a one-world order as Antichrist’s platform of power. It will happen. It’s just a matter of time.

Meantime, however, while the church of Jesus Christ is here, thus the Restrainer(the Holy Spirit) resident within that body holding back evil, it is right and proper–and I believe expected–that God’s people, called by His name, are to pray the prayer of 2 Chronicles 7:14.

God has erected this wall in answer to the prayers of His people. Yet, only He knows the purposes in full. One reason, I sense, is to give the true church (all born-again believers) time and room to carry out the Great Commission. At the same time, as I’ve written previously, this wall seems to offer hope of a brighter economic future. The free enterprise forces seem to be saying this with their optimism.

But, this, if it does eventuate, makes these days just ahead precisely like the time predicted when Christ will next catastrophically intervene into the affairs of mankind.

Jesus indicated, as recorded in Matthew 24:36-42 and Luke 17:26-30 that business will be good–even perhaps booming–at the time He next intervenes. This will be the Rapture of the church.

There is one more wall I wish to touch on in this essay–the wall that separates lost mankind from God and Heaven in eternity. The wall is made of the awful, soul-killing matter called sin. Man himself constructed this wall with his disobedience in the Garden of Eden. This wall keeps all of the lost of mankind from entering into God’s Kingdom. They are aliens who cannot go through that great barrier.

But, God has provided a Gate in that great wall of separation. It is a narrow gate that leads to salvation, the Scripture tells us.

Jesus put it this way: “I am the door: if by me any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture” (John 10:9).

I believe the reason God has constructed this wall against globalism is primarily to provide time and opportunity to get out this message that Jesus is the only way to salvation. Let us who are called by His Holy Name do our utmost for His Highest in honoring Him for allowing this reprieve.

–Terry