“America’s pastime,” as baseball is termed, seems to also properly define this nation’s obsession as we approach July 4, 2026. By that, I mean the obsession with pride.

And I’m specifically referring to gay pride, which is made by the mainstream media today to look like America’s pastime so far as keeping this social perversion constantly in their stories.

Despite baseball’s popularity as a sport in the US, it is but a small part of American life, with most people having little to no interest in the sport. The same is even truer of the gay pride activities in our nation. In fact, a significant majority of the US population would even look at things involved with gay pride as being an abnormality—an obsession that for most of American history been relegated to salacious comportment to be shunned. Yet the mainstream media continues to make this wickedness akin to a religious worship requirement for all of us.

And now the great sport of baseball, which has given us beloved American stories such as that wrapped in the movie The Pride of the Yankees, has become interlocked with the once-shunned aberration of homosexuality now known by the perversion of a word once having an entirely different meaning—the word “gay.”

Baseball itself has, with the infusion of so-called analytics nonsense, become a perversion of what it once was. And I am one who, as a boy, and later while I could still see – Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris, Yogi Berra, Ted Williams, Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, and all the greats- before being blinded by a hereditary retinal disease – loved every second of every inning.

My uncle and aunt used to take me to Sportsman’s Park in St. Louis to see ol’ Stan the Man Musial and the Cardinals—on Sundays. This was a thing my mom opposed because Sundays were to be for Sunday school and church, not sports activities that took me away from Seventh Street Bible Tabernacle in Pekin, Illinois. But she sometimes relented because I was “the only child” those almost eighty years ago, and her brother insisted I see his favorite team. (Thanks, posthumously, Uncle Jesse and Aunt Deloris!)

Baseball now has, in my blind guy way of “seeing,” become unrecognizable. The analytics, to me, are nothing but wokeness foisted upon the sports world. It is political correctness, a thing that has been used to help change America into being also unrecognizable in comparison to the 1940s and 1950s when I went with my uncle and aunt to see the Cardinals.

But it is much more than that. It is prophetic stage-setting for the biblical description of the time of Tribulation Jesus Christ described through the prophet John in the book of Revelation. And the evil intrinsic to this change from America’s Judeo-Christian conception is ensconced within one of two pillars of Satan’s attack to make the change happen.

The two pillars are found in the Apostle Paul’s “perilous times” warning of 2 Timothy 3.

Paul prophesied that, in the last days, perilous times will come. The one term he gives in that prophecy regarding the evil today is wrapped in the statement: “For men shall be…without natural affection.”

The first of these two pillars of evil we see full-blown today is abortion, when mothers let their children be murdered in their wombs, and the second is homosexuality, which God’s Word calls “unnatural” and “an abomination.”

This wickedness represents “without natural affection.” And the current powers that be in Major League Baseball are in the middle of the attempt to change the national pastime into perilous times like Paul described.

Their going along with the gay pride evil, by strong-arm urging all the MLB teams to wear the rainbow caps to show support for that perversion, tells where this generation places us within these perilous times:

California State Senator and rabid gay activist Scott Wiener is the epitome of a typical woke cry-bully. He is perhaps best known as an advocate for the “kink community” and his defense of gender treatments (hormones and sex change surgeries) for children. He is also a militant supporter of sexualized LGBT propaganda in public schools…

[Senator Wiener’s words:]

“On San Francisco Giants Pride Night — also the tenth anniversary of the Pulse nightclub massacre — several players defaced their Pride caps with a biblical passage that has been hijacked by homophobes to ‘take back’ the rainbow from LGBTQ people. The players could have displayed this passage any night of the year but chose to do it only on Pride Night.

The Giants, sadly, took no action in response, which is inconsistent with the Giants’ longstanding support for our LGBTQ community. Major League Baseball then warned the players that MLB rules bar defacement of uniforms. The Giants should publicly commit to enforcing rules around uniform defacement and should not effectively create a homophobia exemption to those rules…”

The state senator acts as if the players broke some kind of law. Baseball club rules are private business arrangements, not statutes that require the frantic complaints of a homosexual Karen. That said, Wiener’s response to this event is quite revealing.

Biblical scripture references are not “defacement,” at least not of anything sacred. But to Wiener, the act is the same as if someone burned a Bible or a Koran. The woke seething over such a minor thing makes it clear that the LGBT movement is not a civil rights movement; that ended decades ago. Today, the LGBT movement is a political supremacy movement, and prominent athletes have every right to openly oppose it.

The pride event featured a number of LGBT promotions, including 10 same-sex married couples renewing their vows before the first pitch (what this has to do with baseball is unclear). Interestingly, the crowd turnout for Pride Night games has been crashing in the past couple years. (“Democrat Politicians Seethe after Baseball Players ‘Deface’ Pride Night with Bible Verses,” Tyler Durden, ZeroHedge, RR News June 18, 2026)

The three pitchers on the San Francisco Giants team who had placed Bible Scripture on the Gay Pride caps undoubtedly are in for persecution in these perilous times. But bless them for standing against the perversion of God’s lawful righteousness. The Lord’s pride is no doubt upon these athletes, one of whom had the Genesis 19 verses reference on his cap. (Genesis 19:1-25).

Here is the bottom line of that story of God’s judgment and wrath:

“Then the LORD rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the LORD out of heaven; And he overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground” (Genesis 19:24-25).

Pray that America awakens from continuing down the same path as Sodom and Gomorrah.

Wtjames1@swbell.net

Yes. I hear from our family treasurer—wife Margaret—about the price of groceries. Same about gas at the pump. It’s almost the same economic bad news I was bombarded with by Margaret way back around 1976 as the two hundredth birthday of the nation was in full celebration.

It was thought then that America and the world were on the cusp of going into a 1929-type depression. Some in the Bible prophecy community were warning that it looked like the Tribulation could begin within short order.

Those of the pre-Trib Rapture view were assuring others that this could not, would not happen as long as the Church—all born-again believers—were here on Earth.

Hal Lindsey’s Late, Great Planet Earth book had been out about five or six years, and some came against his pre-Trib Rapture presentation, saying he was about to be proven wrong. The economy was trending not toward the Rapture, but toward the time when life would become hell on Earth.

Jimmy Carter’s economic handling-caused malaise made many feel like they were indeed entering the Revelation Tribulation. But along came the Reagan Revolution, and the economic evidence soon proved it wasn’t the end of the Age of Grace—the Church Age—to those who thought gloom and doom were immediately in the offing.

Many of those who watch issues and events unfold that might have prophetic significance consider evidence whether the same degree of economic malaise today as existed during the days of the Carter administration might mean America and the world are about to slip, alas, into the Tribulation. Doesn’t this mean the pre-Trib Rapture “theory,” as it’s called by detractors, is a false teaching that has duped so many, particularly since the release of Lindsey’s book all those years ago?

One writer believes this to be the case. His writing has demonstrated that he believes the pre-Trib Rapture teaching is not biblical. His book from years ago, The Rapture Verdict, would testify to this belief.

Since that time, he has presented many articles and other writings that propose evidence that things, economically, are getting ever more Tribulation-like. At least that’s how I view his writing regarding how Bible prophecy is unfolding. Christians of this Church Age will, that writer believes, go through, not be kept out of, the time of Daniel’s seventieth week –the Tribulation. Most who believe like this discount there being such a thing as dispensations, as a matter of fact.

His book came out about the same time those years ago as my book, Rapture Ready…Or Not, so I remember well his Verdict—that there will be no pre-Trib Rapture.

His most current appraisal of economic evidence that we’re entering a time of national and global catastrophic downturn confirms that his thought that there will be no pre-Trib Rapture holds firm. We will soon be in the time of Tribulation—that is, all who have trusted Jesus Christ during this Age of Grace have only that seven years of Antichrist rule to which to look forward.

Here is a brief excerpt of his presumed economic evidence of looming catastrophe:

Just over half of Americans say the American Dream is out of reach for most people right now, according to a new CNBC and SurveyMonkey American Dream Pulse Survey…

According to Brownstone Institute President Jeffrey A. Tucker, the purchasing power of the U.S. dollar has fallen by close to 50 percent since the beginning of the COVID lockdowns…

Think about the implications. Isolating from the beginning of the Covid period to the present, Elliott’s data estimates as much as a 40% loss in purchasing power over six years. Or perhaps closer to 50%…

Many U.S. households are now permanently in a state of financial crisis.

When your bank account is constantly near zero, it can be absolutely soul-crushing.

But that is where most of the U.S. population exists today.

As a result, Americans are using buy now, pay later platforms to purchase gas and groceries more than ever before…

Americans have run their credit cards to the limit. Now they’ve turned to buy-now-pay-later plans to buy gas and groceries.

This is yet more evidence that American consumers are broke, stressed, and buried in debt as inflation steals their purchasing power…

Roughly 48% of Americans said their financial situation was worse in May than a year ago, the highest share since January 2023, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Survey of Consumer Expectations.

Consumers are also less optimistic about the future. The share of households expecting their finances to improve over the next year, relative to those expecting them to worsen, fell to its lowest level since October 2022, the New York Fed said.

If you are really struggling because of the rapidly rising cost of living, I want you to know that you are not alone.

There are millions upon millions of others that are in the exact same boat. Decades of very foolish decisions have brought us to this point, and there is no easy fix.

So hold on tight, because all of us are just going to have to do the best that we can to survive in this very difficult economic environment. (“The Purchasing Power of the Dollar Has Collapsed and the Majority of the Population No Longer Believes in the American Dream,” by Michael Snyder, End of the American Dream, Rapture Ready News, June 10, 2026)

Again, the above writer’s purpose, from the standpoint of his belief in there being no pre-Trib Rapture, is to, in my view, give evidence that Christians are about to enter the Tribulation along with all others of America and the world. (And here I want to say Michael is an excellent writer, and one who obviously loves the Lord and the Bible. I respect him as a brother in Christ.)

However, my own view, as written many times, is that Jesus said when He next catastrophically intervenes into the wicked affairs of humanity, the economic environment will be just like it was in Lot’s day in Sodom. There will be buying, selling, building, marrying, and planting—all the things that are “business as usual.” There will be no worldwide depression…no Tribulation as described in the book of Revelation.

I continue to contend that, even though my Margaret and many of you are griping about the prices in the grocery stores and at the gas stations, it is still business as usual—just as it was in Sodom those thousands of years ago.

Here is an excerpt of that fact:

Last week’s blockbuster jobs report, with more than 265,000 jobs added when including upward employment revisions, was very welcome news to almost all Americans. The exception would be the economists of the left who, throughout Donald Trump’s now-five-and-a-half years in the White House, keep getting the economy dead wrong…

Meanwhile, there is a construction boom going on in America driven by new spending on plants, factory equipment, road building and data center construction.

Manufacturing is roaring back. The Institute for Supply Management’s manufacturing index, which tracks factory activity across America, has registered the sector’s fourth straight month of expansion — the best numbers in four years. In sum: America is MAKING things again…

Yes, prices remain stubbornly high, and we are all feeling the pain at the pump and the grocery checkout counter. Consumers and voters are still in a cranky mood.

But the rapid rise in investment spending by businesses and the America-led AI and tech boom are likely to drive productivity up and prices down.

If history is any judge, it’s wise to bet on the Trump economy and against his critics — who have a perfect record of being wrong.

So on the eve of our 250th birthday, America is once again the world’s alpha male economy. The rest of the world looks at the U.S. economy with envy. (“Trump’s Critics Dead Wrong [Again] on the Economy,” posted on Tuesday, June 9, 2026, by Stephen Moore, AMAC)

And a later advisory of economic uptick reports the following:

According to Department of Labor data highlighted by Breitbart News, the average weekly paycheck for a nonsupervisory durable goods manufacturing worker is up 7.4 percent from a year ago. Hourly pay has increased 5.3 percent, and workers are putting in more hours as demand for labor grows. Even after accounting for inflation, real weekly pay is up approximately 3.5 percent while real hourly pay has risen about 1.5 percent. Those gains are significant because they represent something factory workers have rarely seen over the past several decades: meaningful increases in purchasing power. (“Blue-Collar Boom: Factory Workers See Their Best Gains in Generations,” https://trump2028.news/blue-collar-boom-factory-workers-see-their-best-gains-in-generations/?lctg=%%$lisubscriberid%% )

So, because it is “business as usual,” like in the days of Lot in Sodom, I see this time as more dangerous than does the writer of The Rapture Verdict. It is a more dangerous time for those who will be left behind to face the most terrible time in all of human history, according to the Lord Jesus (Matthew 24: 21). The pre-Trib Rapture will remove the righteous, and Antichrist will soon become history’s most evil and deadly tyrant during those seven years of Tribulation.

The evidence points to this being a time like the days when Lot in Sodom faced a wicked and evil generation of anti-God, reprobate thinkers. Like in Sodom, the economy was at the same time on a very high economic scale.

We are told by Paul the apostle, as given in 1 Thessalonians 4:18, that we are to “comfort one another” with the truth of the pre-Trib Rapture he had just prophesied.

Even so, come, Lord Jesus!