Romans 6:23, “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Deuteronomy 30: 19-20, “I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing. Therefore, choose life, so that you and your descendants may live, and that you may love the LORD your God, obey Him, and hold fast to Him. For He is your life, and He will prolong your life in the land that the LORD swore to give to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.”

The title may seem ominous, but it is as true as it gets without being dramatic. In Romans, we have the spiritual reality; in Jesus and Him alone, we can have eternal life. We are NOT good, and God can only have fellowship with what is good. So, you and I, as sinners, cannot have fellowship with God and be a part of His kingdom. Therefore, Jesus came; God in the flesh to be good for us and to die the death we deserve; and in Him, by faith in His death, burial, and resurrection, we can have eternal life.

But in Deuteronomy, this is a physical call. This is a call to the nation of Israel as they are about to enter the Promised Land. Shortly, Moses will die, and Joshua will be the new leader. A new generation of adults will walk over the Jordan and enter the land of Canaan. God reiterates the Ten Commandments to them and calls them to a life of separation. They are not to marry the people of the land, and they are not to take on their religious practices.

We see this in Deuteronomy 7: 2-4, “And when the LORD your God has delivered them over to you to defeat them, then you must devote them to complete destruction. Make no treaty with them and show them no mercy. Do not intermarry with them. Do not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons, because they will turn your sons away from following Me to serve other gods. Then the anger of the LORD will burn against you, and He will swiftly destroy you.”

There was no settling, no appeasement with these heathen religions and their people. There was no tolerance and no acceptance as far as God was concerned. Now, there are times when they would convert and were accepted. We see that with Rahab in Jericho; she and as many family members as she could fit into her house were saved, and Rahab trusted the God of Abraham and Isaac. If this happened, then, of course, the Canaanite folks would be accepted. But Israel was not to make any room for their religions to come in and compromise. Sadly, they did compromise. See Numbers 33:54-55:

“And you are to divide the land by lot according to your clans. Give a larger inheritance to a larger clan and a smaller inheritance to a smaller one. Whatever falls to each one by lot will be his. You will receive an inheritance according to the tribes of your fathers. But if you do not drive out the inhabitants of the land before you, those you allow to remain will become barbs in your eyes and thorns in your sides; they will harass you in the land where you settle.”

These pagan religions will not sit idly by and let the people of God exist. Instead, they harassed and killed many Jews. The entire book of Judges is about what happened to different tribes in Israel because they did not wipe out the Canaanites, the Moabites, and the other persons there. They subjected their children to slavery and poverty because they stopped obeying God. As you can see, the people of Israel eventually incorporated the pagan rituals, including child sacrifice, into their practices.

What does this have to do with us here in North America and the Western worlds? We have appeased the Muslim world in the name of peace, and now they are taking over places in Europe and the UK, and they rule these places. I saw where they have their own police, their own nightly patrols, tell British women how to dress, where to go, and they stop people from entering their areas.

In one very public situation, the police arrived at a home to find two 13-year-old children scantily clad in a home with 7 Pakistani men, and they arrested the girls for being drunk. The police stated that they were in fear of being called ‘racist’ as the reason for NOT arresting the 7 ADULT men in the home with almost naked female children. This has caused an outcry in the UK, but to no avail. The level of appeasement has risen to allowing grown men to rape young girls, and we do nothing. This is also happening in North America, and it will continue to grow. Our political leadership is more concerned with the feelings of the immigrants than the safety of our women, and especially young girls.

The next level is that here in Canada, our government is doing all it can to disarm us, the obedient and tax-paying citizenry. We will be left defenseless should an armed uprising take place. And make no mistake; the police are NOT coming to help you. We have chosen death over life.

In our last election, 41% of our citizens chose death rather than life. They do not understand or see that they will die first. They will be the first to be disillusioned and speak out, thus, as the ‘useful idiots’ they are, they will die first. Canada has allowed more than 800,000 people into the country as immigrants since January 2025, which is equivalent to nearly replacing the population of New Brunswick, which is approximately 975,000.

As a nation, we have abandoned Jesus, and the other option is death. I have no problem with allowing immigrants in (my family and I are immigrants) and that we allow them to practice their religion, but they should not be allowed into office; we should not change our ways to allow them more and more influence. If they do not want to become Canadian, then we can note that, and they are still welcome. But what we have done is to abandon the Judeo-Christian values that built the free world, and we have doomed our children, especially our girls, to be slaves in their own country.

Go and study Iran and truly look and see what is happening in Europe and the UK. If Jesus tarries, we will begin to see a lot of violence here in Canada. Our elites, who think they are inoculated by their money and power, are in for a rude awakening.

Oh Lord, please come quickly and rescue us, we plead.

Dr. Sean Gooding
Pastor of Bethany Baptist Church
70 Victoria Street, Elora, Ontario

Zechariah 12: 1-3

“The burden of the word of the Lord against Israel. Thus says the Lord, who stretches out the heavens, lays the foundation of the earth, and forms the spirit of man within him: ‘Behold, I will make Jerusalem a cup of drunkenness to all the surrounding peoples, when they lay siege against Judah and Jerusalem. And it shall happen in that day that I will make Jerusalem a very heavy stone for all peoples; all who would heave it away will surely be cut in pieces, though all nations of the earth are gathered against it.’”

The closer and closer we get to the return of our Lord Jesus, the more and more the nation of Israel will be front and center in our news and scope. It all began in the early 1900s with the British Mandate for Palestine that ran from September 1923 to May 14, 1948. The goal was to set up a home for Israel. The British ran the mandate until 1948. Before the British showed up, the Ottoman Empire controlled the area. Over the years leading up to the 1948 declaration, there had been many revolts by Palestinians about land. There was one in 1929, another in 1936, and again in 1937 despite trying to really seek peace and set up borders for the two to co-exist peacefully.

In particular, during a 1937 uprising, the British killed somewhere between 2,000 and 5,000 people, and this soured the people back home. The view of the world was that there should be a two-state occupation of Jews and Arabs in Palestine. The Arabs keep usurping everything that is offered and even agreed upon. The British eventually ended their mandate on May 15^th, 1948. The day before that, the nation of Israel resurrected from the ‘dead,’ so to speak, after having been dormant since 70 AD. Almost 1,900 years later, they came back to life. Here we are 77 years later, and they are still here, the Arabs are still fighting, and the world is still seeking a peaceful solution.

Israel is a burden to the vast majority of the G-7 nations. There are Jews living all over the world. In little Barbados where I am from, we have one of the oldest synagogues in the world that is still operational. There is an understanding that until there is peace in Israel, the world does not really have peace. Thus, for more than 100 years, nations like England and the USA have worked tirelessly and spent billions of dollars trying to find a peaceful solution to the Palestinian dilemma. Today, we are sitting on a powder keg with Iran trying to acquire nuclear-grade weapons. The rest of the world knows that, if they do, they will try to eliminate Israel right away.

God told us that Israel would be a burden to the nations around her, but we can see that this burden extends to the whole world. There is a deliberate act being done to try to find a workable and lasting peace here. But no real peace will come without Jesus. In the meantime, one will come to negotiate a kind of permanent looking peace, but it will be a façade, a ploy to gain the loyalty of Israel with the intent of destroying her. In Daniel 9:27, we find out that someone will come and confirm a covenant with Israel for 7 years.

“Then he shall confirm a covenant with many for one week; But in the middle of the week He shall bring an end to sacrifice and offering. And on the wing of abominations shall be one who makes desolate, even until the consummation, which is determined, is poured out on the desolate.”

When we read Daniel 9:24-27, we see that the time allotted to work out all the things that will happen to Israel is set for 70 weeks; 70 seven-year periods, totaling 490 years. There is a deliberate end that comes with the death of the Messiah and ending the 69^th week. Then the ‘covenant’ and agreement that tells the world that the clock is ticking again is made with Israel, and they are allowed to begin making offerings and sacrifices again. This has not been done since 70 AD. But this ‘covenant’ is short-lived; in the middle of the week, or 3 and a half years in, the sacrifices and offerings are stopped. We know why; in Revelation 13:11-13, we see that the man who makes this covenant demands that the world worship him as god.

“Then I saw another beast coming up out of the earth, and he had two horns like a lamb and spoke like a dragon. And he exercises all the authority of the first beast in his presence, and causes the earth and those who dwell in it to worship the first beast, whose deadly wound was healed. He performs great signs, so that he even makes fire come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men.”

Israel will refuse, and then he and the armies of the surrounding areas will turn on Israel. If you notice the end of our verses in Zachariah 12, the armies of the world are gathered against Israel. (This man, this ‘covenant’ maker, will lead the armies of the world against Israel. Just as an observation, the idea of the ‘world’ may not mean the whole world. The writers like Daniel may not have known the world outside of the Middle East. Thus, the whole world to them may just be the armies of the surrounding nations and those connected by land.) Israel is a burden to the world right now. If nuclear war breaks out in Israel and the Middle East, it will be devastating for a lot of people, and it will affect billions of lives.

One day, soon, we hope, Jesus, the true and only Messiah, will return to bring lasting peace to Israel, and it will be the center of political power – not Washington DC, not London, not Brussels, and certainly not Ottawa. No, Jerusalem will be the center of political power here on earth. From her, Jesus will reign unchallenged for 1,000 years, and then once a rebellion is thwarted, He will reign long into eternity. God has a plan; God is in control; God knows where He is going, and we can be assured that Israel is not going anywhere.

While I appreciate the efforts of the US military, it is God who defends and protects Israel. In Jeremiah 10:16, Israel is called God’s inheritance. “He who is the Portion of Jacob is not like these, for he is the Maker of all things, including Israel, the people of his inheritance— the Lord Almighty is his name.” In Isaiah 19:25, Israel is called God’s inheritance once again. “Whom the LORD of hosts shall bless, saying, Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of my hands, and Israel mine inheritance.”  Then see in Deuteronomy 32:8-9, “When the Most High divided their inheritance to the nations, when He separated the sons of Adam, He set the boundaries of the peoples according to the number of the children of Israel. For the Lord’s portion is His people; Jacob is the place of His inheritance.”

No one will take God’s inheritance. It is His, and there is nothing that the world can do about it. When you get a chance, read Ezekiel 16 and see how God views Israel. It is His and no others, and He is not changing His mind anytime soon. Keep an eye on Israel; she is like the key to the end, and soon God will begin the final 70th week to complete Daniel’s vision.