The Real Target Of The Democrat Party Is Not Economic Class, It is JUDEO-CHRISTIANITY. Which Is Why America Will Soon Worship The Beast.

Jonah Goldberg – a politically conservative American Jew – makes a very strong case for that thesis; many of the immigrants are not voting “socialist” because they want to parasitically leech off of others, but rather because they are not Christian and the Republican Party strongly identifies with the Christian faith and Judeo-Christian moral and social values.  And so groups such as Asians vote overwhelmingly Democrat even though they themselves are hard-working people who otherwise would not want the socialism of the Democrat Party.

I ultimately disagree with Jonah Goldberg’s assertion – that the Republican Party must “de-Christianize” itself in order to compete with the Democrat Party for a post-Christian American culture as that culture prepares itself to worship the beast and take his mark.  Rather, I cite this to document just how hostile to Jesus Christ the Democrat Party has become and by extension how traitorous to the name of Jesus that Democrats who call themselves “Christian” truly have become:

Goldberg: The GOP — not a club for Christians
Perhaps the most common explanation for the Republican Party’s problem with Asian Americans is its pronounced embrace of Christianity.
By Jonah Goldberg
December 11, 2012

In the scramble to make the GOP more diverse, a lot of people are looking at Asian Americans, whom many believe are a natural constituency for the party. I would love it if Asian Americans converted en masse to the Republican Party, but the challenge for Republicans is harder than many appreciate.

President Obama did spectacularly well with Asian Americans, garnering nearly three-quarters of their vote. This runs counter to a lot of conventional wisdom on both the left and the right. On average, Asian American family income is higher and poverty is lower than it is for non-Latino whites. Entrepreneurship, family cohesion and traditional values all run strong among Asian Americans, and reliance on government runs weak.

And yet, Asian Americans — now the fastest-growing minority in America — are rapidly becoming a core constituency of the Democratic Party.

I’ve joked for years with my Indian American relatives and friends that they are the new Jews because their parents bury them in guilt and overeducate them. Sociologist Milton Himmelfarb observed that “Jews earn like Episcopalians and vote like Puerto Ricans.” Well, Indian Americans earn like Jews and … vote like Jews.

The comparison to Jews is instructive. Perhaps the most common explanation for the GOP’s problem with Asian Americans is the party’s pronounced embrace of Christianity, which turns off many Jews as well.

According to Pew studies, barely a third of Chinese Americans are Christian and less than a fifth of Indian Americans are.

“Whenever a Gujarati or Sikh businessman comes to a Republican event, it begins with an appeal to Jesus Christ,” conservative writer Dinesh D’Souza recently told the New York Times magazine. “While the Democrats are really good at making the outsider feel at home, the Republicans make little or no effort.” My friend and colleague Ramesh Ponnuru, an Indian American and devout Catholic, says the GOP has a problem with seeming like a “club for Christians.”

That rings true to me. I’ve attended dozens of conservative events where, as the speaker, I was, in effect, the guest of honor, and yet the opening invocation made no account of the fact that the guest of honor wasn’t a Christian. I’ve never taken offense, but I can imagine how it might seem to someone who felt like he was even less part of the club.

A few years ago, Robert Putnam, a liberal sociologist, reported this finding: As racial and ethnic diversity increases, social trust and cohesion plummets. “Trust (even of one’s own race) is lower, altruism and community cooperation rarer, friends fewer,” Putnam found. “People living in ethnically diverse settings appear to ‘hunker down’ — that is, to pull in like a turtle.”

The villain isn’t racism or bigotry or anything so simple. The phenomenon is much more complex. Indeed, it’s not clear why this happens, but it’s clear that it does. Economic inequality and cultural attitudes do not matter much. “Americans raised in the 1970s,” Putnam writes, “seem fully as unnerved by diversity as those raised in the 1920s.”

Part of the explanation stems from the fact that people with shared experiences and cultures draw strength from working together, whereas with strangers, language often becomes guarded, intentions questioned.

The GOP is not a Christian club, but there’s no disputing that Christianity is a major source of strength and inspiration for many Republican activists. This is nothing new. The abolitionist, progressive and civil rights movements were all significantly powered by Christian faith.

As someone who’s long argued for theological pluralism and moral consensus on the right, it strikes me as nuts for the GOP not to do better with Asian Americans, particularly given how little religion has to do with the policy priorities of the day.

Twenty years ago, conservatives started referring to Judeo-Christian values in an effort to be more inclusive. The challenge now is to figure out how to talk in a way that doesn’t cause decent and dedicated Christians to pull in like a turtle, while also appealing to non-Judeo-Christians and the nonreligious. That’ll be hard, requiring more than name-dropping Confucius or Krishna.

Now, one can go back and look over my blog and see how many times I have used the term “Judeo-Christianity” to refer to my own faith and worldview.  Here’s an example of my using that term as a reference to my faith in an article that also shows how determined Democrats are to undermine Christianity while promoting radical Islam in the guise of “cultural diversity.”  If that is all Goldberg is telling us to do, I’m already walking across that ground.  But the deterioration of our culture in this post-Christian era and the demonic divide-and-conquer nature of the Democrat Party has made anything short of abandonment of Jesus the only way we can reach the “potential Republican” minority groups that Goldberg is describing.

But my faith is far more important to me than my political party, and it simply isn’t an option.

Goldberg cites a statement by Dinesh D’Souza – a deeply Christian man of Indian descent I truly respect and admire – as saying that the Republicans (or should I more correctly say “the Christians” given that that’s who we’re really talking about) – have done a very poor job making “outsiders” feel at home.  And while that may be true, I can again point to my own example: in my church, which is overwhelmingly Republican, we started a Hispanic ministry years ago and now have a substantial Hispanic congregation.  We have a large ESL program on our church campus.  The Anglo congregation that devoted the resources to do these things is well over ninety percent Republican.  And many evangelical congregations who view themselves as “Judeo-Christian” have done the same things and more.

But that has done nothing to stem the tide of a massive wave of illegal immigrants pouring into America and helping the Democrat Party to transform our country into the failed socialist state from which those illegal immigrants fled.

To quote the sub-title (which Goldberg likely did not write), “Perhaps the most common explanation for the Republican Party’s problem with Asian Americans is its pronounced embrace of Christianity.”  I write as somebody who doesn’t believe the “pronounced embrace of Christianity” IS NOT A BAD THING THAT SHOULD BE STOPPED.

I am not writing this to in any way attack Jonah Goldberg.  He’s another man I deeply respect and I am very glad that he’s on the side of political conservativism.  I am merely citing his very correct and well-documented thesis that Christianity is the real target of Democrats while disagreeing with his “cure” for what I could call “the Republican Party’s Christian problem.”

There is simply more going on here.

The Bible told us in numerous passages such as 2 Timothy 3:1-5 that in the last days, there would be an increasing departure from the Judeo-Christian worldview and faith.  And when you look at the true debt of America – $222 trillion PLUS which doesn’t take into account the massive union-public pension debt of states like California which by itself has $500 billion in unfunded liabilities – you need to realize that America is very much in those “last days” just before Antichrist comes.  Revelation chapter 13 tells us that Antichrist will be the ultimate big government liberal who will so “socialize” the economy that his government will completely take over the “private sector” and impose a system of complete government control over the monetary system and the ability of the people to buy and sell.  Democrats will embrace his coming; they will worship him; and they will take his mark on their right hand or their foreheads.  Because the man described in Revelation as “the beast” will be the epitome of everything the Democrat Party has spent the last fifty years trying to impose: a one-world system in which the state controls the economy.

Jonah Goldberg cites a liberal sociologist in a telling passage:

A few years ago, Robert Putnam, a liberal sociologist, reported this finding: As racial and ethnic diversity increases, social trust and cohesion plummets. “Trust (even of one’s own race) is lower, altruism and community cooperation rarer, friends fewer,” Putnam found. “People living in ethnically diverse settings appear to ‘hunker down’ — that is, to pull in like a turtle.”

This is what is really happening: liberals have divided America into a land in which they divide women against men and race against race and Marxist class against capitalist class.  And as they have poured their demagoguery and demonization and hate on whites and on men and most especially on evangelical Christians, the fruits of their hate is “the plummeting of social trust and cohesion.”  And Democrats have been cynically exploited the fractures and divisions they have created, because as “social trust and cohesion plummets”, there is more opportunity to create more of the same, and still more of the same, until the Democrat Party divides and conquers and exploits its way to power.

And the Marxist class rage – described here – is the most powerful tractor that Democrats have to rage their way to power.  In short, Karl Marx asserted that “religion is the opium of the masses” because of his view that the Christianity of the Russian people kept them content even in their poverty and difficulty.  Marx believed that rather than embrace the “opium” of faith and the teachings of Jesus to BE content in poverty, the poor should throw off the shackles of Christian contentment and happiness and instead rise up in a spirit of rage and violence and seize what was theirs by force and kill anyone who tried to stop them.  That’s Marxism.  That’s also Obama’s Liberation Theology.

It’s not that liberals, socialists, communists, fascists, Democrats – whatever the hell you want to call these sons of hell – don’t love religion.  It is just that they ONLY love religion if said religion advances the cause of their TRUE GOD of a big government which is intended to be the “savior” that replaces the true Savior Jesus Christ.  Don’t search for the peace, contentment and happiness of Jesus; rise up in anger and hate and demand what you greedily say is yours instead.  It was the tactic that Karl Marx created and it is that very same tactic that Barack Obama and the Democrat Party embrace today; God has failed you and you need to replace Him with the State.  Kick Jesus off the throne and let Government be your savior and the only savior with whom you have to do.  Obama is your messiah and Obama will save you with big government programs.  And Democrats have very literally pissed on Jesus Christ even as they forced taxpayers to fund that urination on Jesus and on His cross:

Because the “Piss Christ” attitude of liberalism and of the Democrat Party has replaced the Judeo-Christian values that propelled America to greatness, the nation now known as “God Damn America!” is about to go down and go down hard.

What kind of “religion” do liberals love?  Well, take the “Christianity” of Barack Obama and his spiritual leader and reverend Jeremiah Wright and their Liberation Theology; liberation theology came about in the 1970s as the Marxist Sandinistas struggled to dominate a population that was over ninety percent Catholic.  Heretical Marxist priests packaged communism with Christian slogans such that Jesus became a communist.  Cardinal Ratzinger – today better known as Pope Benedict – decried this “faith” as a true demonic heresy:

“…it would be illusory and dangerous to ignore the intimate bond which radically unites them (liberation theologies), and to accept elements of the Marxist analysis without recognizing its connections with the (Marxist) ideology, or to enter into the practice of the class-struggle and of its Marxist interpretation while failing to see the kind of totalitarian society to which this process slowly leads.“ – (Author: Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Prefect, now Pope Benedict XVI; written in 1984)

And:

“Wherever politics tries to be redemptive, it is promising too much. Where it wishes to do the work of God, it becomes not divine, but demonic.” — Pope Benedict XVI

Jonah Goldberg doesn’t grasp this terrible prophetic truth even though as a Jew his own Book of Daniel described it.  He thinks some gimmick or word-game or abandonment of “Christianity” will somehow save the Republican Party.  But the Republican Party is dying just as everything that made America great is dying as we become a nation that will worship the beast just as the Bible told us would happen.

We can’t be more like the party of hell and not expect hell.

If the Republican Party abandons Christianity to woo voters, it will stand for nothing; if it becomes more like the Democrat Party to compete with liberalism, it will join the Democrats in “fundamentally transforming” itself into the party of hell.

And if you don’t mind my saying, liberals form the army of hell.  We’ve watched unions strike at businesses the last couple of weeks during the rush of the Holiday shopping season much the way terrorists would strike; because what the unions did was sheer economic terrorism.  We saw the SEIU (that’s Obama’s bestest friend) union target Los Angeles International Airport on Thanksgiving – which happens to be the single largest flying day of the entire year.  Even though they were lying about the hardships that were being suffered by employees who were actually trying to get the hell OUT of their union.  That’s economic terrorism, waiting to strike at your enemy when and where it will cause him the most harm; especially if there’s lots of collateral damage with the American people being incredibly put upon by the lengthy delays and the canceled flights while trying to see their families.  We saw unions targeting Wal-Mart on Black Friday – the busiest shopping day of the year – trying to cause as much harassment and disruption as they could (it turned out they were far weaker than they figured they’d be).  We actually saw 5,000 Baker’s Union workers at Hostess decide to destroy a major and beloved corporation and eradicate 18,500 jobs by forcing them into liquidation.  That’s economic terrorism.  We saw a handful of union clerical workers shut down the massive Port of Long Beach for eight days and cost the Port over $8 billion in lost productivity in an attempt to force their way.  According to the LA Times, “600,000 truckers, dockworkers, trading companies and others depend for their livelihoods” on that port; but 800 union workers decided to shut it down during the rush of the Christmas shopping season when they could do the most devastating (i.e., economic terrorist) damage.  And no other union worker would cross the picket line no matter how immoral and insane the union protest was.  Because if you’re in a damn union, you are literally just that evil and that selfish and that hateful and that bitter.  And you refuse to cross the picket line for other stupid strikes so other unions won’t cross the picket line for your stupid strike.

Today, as I write, unions went violently nuts as Michigan tried to save itself by allowing people to actually have a right to work without being forced to pay union dues even if you don’t want to belong to the union.  Union thugs attacked a right to work group called Americans for Prosperity and forcibly tore down their tent with people inside; they also physically attacked a journalist named Steven Crowder just for asking a few questions – with union thugs literally repeatedly punching him in the face.  One is distinctly heard threatening to murder him with a gun.

A black hot dog vendor named Clint Tarver committed the “crime” of selling hot dogs to anyone who wanted to buy a hot dog.  For that refusal to mindlessly hate whoever the union thugs told him to hate, they called him a “nigger” and an “Uncle Tom” and tore his vending cart to pieces while he stood there helpless to stop these rabid hyenas.

Just yesterday an “arbitrator” decided that thirteen stoners and potheads ought to have a job at Chrysler for life because they’re in the UAW and that’s how thug unions work.  Because, yeah, they got caught on CAMERA by a REPORTER getting stoned and drunk during their break but apparently Chrysler doesn’t have a right to decent or safe or useful workers in a union shop.  Chrysler fired them after seeing the video and noting that they were easily able to identify the specific workers who were getting drunk and stoned, but the union went to bat for their fellow wastoid thugs and forced Chrysler to reinstate them no matter how despicable they are. And thus the criminal UAW guaranteed that thirteen lowlife scumbags can continue to crappily build the crappy cars your parents and your spouses and your children will be driving.  Until Chrysler goes bankrut just like Hostess did, anyway.

Today a Democrat congressman named Douglas Geiss threatened an eruption of violence from his side, claiming – and I quote – “There will be blood on the streets.”  Imagine the uproar that would be caused by a Republican congressman predicting violence from Republicans if they didn’t get their way on the fiscal cliff talks.  But it’s a liberal, so threatening violence is okay.  In the same way, asking for quid pro quo bribery is okay as long as you’re a liberal, too, judging by another Democrat representative named JoAnn Watson.  She literally specifically stated the precise technical language of an illegal act in urging Obama to commit precisely that illegal act in paying Detroit back for its vote for him.  Again, she’s a liberal, so her role in the destruction of the democratic political system for a quid pro quo political racketeering system is also okay.

This isn’t about economics; workers in right to work states enjoy substantially more personal income growth and higher real wages than workers in forced union states (see here for more).  Rather unions represent one army of hell in the corps of a truly demonic liberal army of hell that is seeking to throw religion out of America while it has murdered fifty-five million innocent human babies in abortion mills and imposed homosexual marriage and the destruction of the American family.  They’ve already crippled our criminal justice system with the liberal army of hell led by the ACLU and turned most of the large urban cities of America into violent, drug-ridden hellholes for welfare-dependent single mothers.

That liberal army of hell is going to win.  God has sovereignly decreed that very soon, the forces of hell are going to get their way in America and the rest of the world.  America will get the leader it truly deserves in the form of Antichrist just as now has the leader it truly deserves in the form of Barack Obama and a Democrat-controlled Senate.

The Tribulation that the books of Daniel and Revelation described is about to come to pass.  Liberals always said that if they could just get rid of the Christians (and Republicans) they could lead the world into a Utopia of Socialism By Any Other Name.  God is going to give them their chance.  He’s going to remove His true Christian believers in the Rapture and then He’s going to let the ultimate liberal a.k.a. Antichrist have at it for seven years of hell on earth.  And by the time Jesus returns as King of kings and as Lord of lords, it will be to stop the forces of hell from annihilating planet earth.

The beast is coming.  We just voted for him to come in November.

Why I’m Getting Out Of Politics After This Election And What I Plan To Do With This Blog Beginning On November 7

One way or another, I am going to get out of day-to-day political blogging after this election.

I’ve said it before.  All the way back on April 29, 2009, I said to someone in replying to a comment:

I never intended to remain in political blogging this long.  I thought I’d blog through the election, do my best to prevent this country from choosing this terrible man, and stop.

But it’s just been one outrage piled on top of another – so many you literally can’t cover them all.  And I demand that there be a record of these outrages.

In April of this year, I wrote:

Whether Obama wins or whether Romney wins, I’m getting out of politics after this election. I’ll continue to blog, but I’ll be done with politics.

If Obama wins, frankly Obama’s God damn America will deserve whatever hell it descends into. I will have done the best I could do trying to warn people that Obama is leading us to hell, and if he gets re-elected I will be done with warnings. I’ll warn you while you’re pouring gasoline on yourself; I’ll warn you when you strike a match; but when you set yourself on fire you’re on your own. If Romney wins, I’m frankly just not going to carry water for him. I’ll vote for him as the lesser of two evils, but he’s not exactly the guy I’m going to spend the next four years carrying water for.

So I hope no one thinks that this announcement implies that I think Obama’s going to win and can’t face liberals anymore and blah, blah, blah.

Basically, my reasoning is this: if Obama is reelected, I did everything I could to try to warn you fools.  And if a nation is foolish enough to reelect a president with the record of failure that Barack Obama has now accumulated, well, that is a nation that is immune to wisdom or warning and my conscience is clean as I shake the dust of the coming economic implosion off my feet and ride off into the sunset.  On the other hand, if Mitt Romney is elected, well, his entire history (contrary to liberals’ demonization of him) is that of a moderate RINO and while he’s got the singular virtue of being “far better than Obama,” he’s not someone I want to devote thousands of hours carrying water for.  If Sarah Palin were president, if Herman Cain were president, well, maybe I’d buckle the armor back on and keep fighting for them.

There is a personal cost for an evangelical Christian conservative to dive into political blogging.  Politics is by its very nature an angry place.  It very quickly becomes mud wrestling.  And it was simply never a place that I wanted to spend my life fighting in.  I certainly don’t want to keep dealing with fools and I certainly don’t want to keep screaming at people every day.

What got me into blogging to begin with?  I saw those Jeremiah Wright sermon tapes – “No, no, no!  NOT God bless America!  God DAMN America!” – and I knew that Barack Obama was truly an evil man to have spent 23 years of his life in that Marxist, racist, anti-American hellhole and then climbing out of that toxic nest of demons and dusting himself off only when it became convenient to his political charade.  I had a vision of America under the leadership of this evil man; and sadly enough it looked very much like what I now see all around me today.  In some ways it’s not as terrible as I feared it would be, and in other ways it’s five times worse than I feared it would be.

I got into political blogging with the intent of 1) preserving a record of what Obama did to America, because the mainstream media refuses to do it and quickly purges the few things they DO print; 2) to try to explain both liberalism and conservatism so that people can see why the former is depraved and the latter is the best worldview for a moral and free people; and 3) to provide arguments and document the facts as I present them to try to help those who have their own arguments with their own circles of influence.

Let me just say that the future does not look bright for America, even if Romney wins.  Yes, we have a $16 trillion debt, and yes, Obama has piled on $6 trillion of that debt in only four years after the hypocrite demonized Bush for adding $4 trillion over eight years.  But that isn’t anything close to our real debt.  Our real debt is over $222 trillion and skyrocketing.

But even THAT isn’t our real debt, because our real debt is that more-than-$222 trillion-and-skyrocketing figure PLUS the debt of our states.  California alone has an unfunded liberal union pension gap of $500 billion.  And Illinois alone has an unfunded liberal union pension gap of $210 billion.  And we are seeing deadbeat states that cannot pay their debts and we are seeing cities going bankrupt.

Our real debt would be impossible to estimate even if all the liberal politicians who have bankrupted their jurisdictions at every level would honestly account for what they did.  And rest assured they never will until after it’s too late.

The Bible tells us in Revelation chapter six that the beast, the Antichrist, is coming.  We find that a global economic collapse is coming; we find that in the midst of this ghastly global landscape there will be famine and plagues and war and mass death.  And what we literally see is this big government false messiah called “the beast” riding in on a white horse to save the day.  And the world will literally worship him for his “deliverance” as he steps in with one plan of action after another.  They will so worship him that they will allow him to take over the world political system and the economic activity of every single human being on earth.

It is amazing how badly things are going in America and how little reporting is being done on how badly things are going.  The labor participation rate has plummeted every single year under Obama and is now at a more than 31-year low (i.e., worse than it EVER was under Bush).  In fact, if we measured unemployment by the labor participation rate that Bush handed off to Obama, our unemployment rate would be 11.6% now rather than dropping to 8.1% because we refuse to measure the millions of discouraged workers who have abandoned hope of finding a job.  For every job Obama “adds,” there are FOUR workers who drop out of the workforce.  There are 4 million fewer jobs than there were when Obama took office, in spite of the fact that 4 million Americans turn 18 and thus “age in” to the work force every single year.  Last year new start-up businesses were at the lowest level EVER measured in the 25-year history of recording that statistic; this year new start-up businesses plunged by another 24%.  And the median household income has plunged 8.2% under Obama’s failed leadership.  And, amazingly, household incomes have dropped TWICE as much under Obama as they did during the 2008 recession, just to document what a horrible job Obama has done since.  And with statistics such as the 13.2% plunge in durable goods in one month – which is the biggest drop since January 2009 – there is no reason to think things are going to get better under Obama’s policies.

If Obama is reelected, we are going to go on a ride to hell as a nation:

Only there will be no going back up this time.

And yes, if you want to give the above picture a racial element, it is also true that blacks and Hispanics and college graduates and young people and women and those groups that have most supported Obama have fared the WORST under his failed policies.  It’s almost as if Obama is saying, “I hurt you bad these last four years; vote for me again and I will finish you off and kill you dead in my next four years.”  And his supporters are saying, “Thank you, messiah!  It’s what we deserve!”

If the media fairly and accurately reported the truth, Obama wouldn’t have a chance.  But our media has descended into shocking levels of dishonest propaganda.  And bad people always choose to believe lies.  And if there are more bad people than good people now in America, we will vote for hell and we will get the hell that we voted for once and for all this time.

Things are also going terribly for Europe.  If America goes, Europe goes, and vice versa.

And if you look at China, things aren’t going nearly as well (see also here) as the false facade that they – like the Obama media – have plastered over their “news” coverage.  And if China goes down hill, well, whose going to keep buying our increasingly worthless debt???

This world has chosen socialism; and socialism is a cancer.  It is a cancer on morality and it is a cancer on economic health.  When people say as a nation that they deserve other people’s money and that they are willing to attack job creators to rob them, you get fewer and fewer jobs and all that really gets “redistributed” is pain and misery.

So the beast is coming.  As I’ve said over and over and over again on this blog.

If Obama is president on January 20, 2013, we’re going to get the beast in short order; if Romney is president, we may have a few more years as he slows (but does not stop) the collapse.

Mitt Romney may well win.  But what has he shown in his past that indicates that he will stand up and fight for the radical changes this nation will need to survive?  Obviously, I hope I’m wrong in my estimation of Romney; I hope that he wins and that his is the “second Reagan presidency” we so desperately need.  And as I’ve said before I would crawl out of my death-bed across broken glass to vote for Mitt Romney and vote OUT Obama.

America could very well collapse in the next few years.  When it happens it will happen fast; “economic experts” will assure the people on the mainstream media that everything will be fine the evening before, and then the people will wake up to find out that their country has literally collapsed under their feet while they slept.  But when I consider the structural, fiscal, economic realities facing America, I simply cannot understand how it could possibly survive for 20 years given our pathological refusal to rise up and solve our problems in the powerful manner that we need in order to have any chance at long-term national survival.

I believe that a true conservative president and a true conservative Congress could stop the collapse by having the courage to ignore the media lies and doing what is necessary to save America.  But I also believe that American people are now past the point where they are willing to do the right thing even to save their own lives.  Instead, we’ll keep voting ourselves more benefits until we reach the collapse-stage that Europe is in, and then we’ll riot over the necessary austerity measures that would take away some of our benefits.  Until the depression when nation after nation collapses into total anarchy as Revelation chapter 6 describes and the beast comes riding in.

When the beast takes over the government, he will be a man who seems to have all the answers.  His policies will seem to take the world back from the brink that failed leaders like Obama brought us to.  But in just a few years, the Antichrist will go from promising a Utopia to delivering a literal hell on earth.  And when the REAL Messiah, Jesus Christ, returns as King of kings and as Lord of lords as the Bible describes, it will be to prevent the planet from literally destroying itself.

That’s the direction I will be taking this blog in.  While I will continue to interact with current political events, it will largely be as part of an effort to inform readers about the message of Bible prophecy and how the events we keep seeing are bringing the world closer and closer to the last days scenario so accurately foretold in Scripture.  In addition to that, I will also simply be returning more to my Christian theology roots and writing about the faith.

As a student and teacher of Bible prophecy, I DO believe in what is frequently derided as “newspaper prophecy.”  That is, I believe that when the events described in Bible prophecy are fulfilled, they will be fulfilled in a way that a person at the time would read in a good newspaper.  The thing is, if you don’t understand the Bible, and economics, and politics, and military issues, you will most likely use the wrong newspaper and thus get your understanding of prophecy wrong.  As a simple illustration of what I’m trying to convey here, consider that many people believed during World War I and World War II that they were living in the last days when (as we obviously know now) they weren’t.  On the one hand, it was true that somebody during those periods could have read their Bible and read their newspapers, and seen things in their newspapers that very much seemed to be described in their Bibles.  But on the other hand, there was one singularly critical event that had not yet happened – the rebirth of the state of Israel as prophesied in Ezekiel 37 – that should have told believers that, no, they were not yet in the last days.  The Tribulation described in Revelation begins with the nation of Israel signing a 7-Year peace covenant with the Antichrist.  And since Israel did not yet exist during World War I or World War II, a biblically-understanding Christian could know that as bad as things were, we were not yet in the last days.  You need to be able to understand your Bible and match it to the what is going on in the world to accurately understand where we are in Bible prophecy.

At the same time, you need to be able to understand what is going on in the world and then match it to the Bible to understand where we are in Bible prophecy, as well.  For example, Christian scholar Dr. Grant Jeffrey wrote a book titled, Final Warning: Economic Collapse and the Coming World Government.  Chapter 14 of that book was titled, “The Coming Economic Collapse.”  And writing back in 1995, the man just nailed the 2008 collapse – which is by no means finished with us.  He understood that the dangerous derivatives market and what we were doing with mortgages could trigger a massive collapse just as occurred 13 years later and which is still undermining the economy today (unless you think we’re free and clear and there’s nothing but blue economic skies now).

The world is now a house of cards that could collapse at any time more than it has ever been.  Weapons of mass destruction, modern technology and incredibly complex financial trading did not make the world less like the world described in Revelation; it made it MORE like the world described in Revelation.  Think about the mark of the beast as just one example of what I’m talking about.  The beast is coming and he is coming soon.  And I plan to write a lot more about what the Bible has to say about the last days and why I believe we are in them after this election.

I’m sure I’ll lose some readers as I take this blog in a different direction.  Maybe I’ll lose a lot of readers.  Obviously, I hope I’ll gain other readers, but my primary goal is simply to stand up for my faith and for what I believe and to be true to the vision that I believe God gave me.

Will The World End May 21? Why No Man Knows The Day Or The Hour

The Lord Jesus Christ told us He would return like a thief in the night, and to watch and wait for Him.  So I would never presume that that return could NOT occur on May 21.

But I also know that the same Lord Jesus said regarding that same return, “But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone” (Matthew 24:36).

Harold Camping (who has already proven himself to be a false prophet over his false prediction of this very day back in 1994) has apparently said that “no one knows” only refers to the unbelieving world.  What makes that claim asinine is that according to that view Jesus Christ Himself is an unbeliever in Jesus Christ.  Because He told us that He the Son would also not know the time of His return.

So, let us just say that while I truly wish to be ready when my Lord returns for me, I have my doubts about Camping and his bogus timetable.

Interestingly, all the hype surrounding false prophet Harold Camping actually DOES reveal the truth about another prophecy of Jesus.  Jesus said (in the same chapter that He said no one knows the day or the hour of His return):

“And Jesus answered and said to them, “See to it that no one misleads you.  For many will come in My name, saying, ‘I am the Christ,’ and will mislead many” (Matthew 24:4-5).

And in light of all the media hype regarding Harold Camping pseudo-second coming, do you not see how it will be as false Messiah’s start popping up and people just like Camping will say, “Here He is! (Matthew 24:23-25)”???

Having said that I will go ahead and set my alarm for Sunday morning in spite of Camping’s assurances that doing so is completely unnecessary, let me move on to explaining just WHY no one can know the day or the hour of Christ’s return.

What if there was a code in the Bible placed by God that actually said that Jesus would return on May 21, 2011, or some other day?

What that would mean is that there truly is no human freedom.  What that would mean is that human beings are ultimately not responsible for anything; because no matter what human beings do or do not do, the end is inexorable.  Be good or be wicked; it matters not.

And that is simply not true.

God – through His prophets and through His Son – told us about the events surrounding the last days culminating in the ultimate return of Jesus Christ as King of kings and Lord of lords (Revelation 19:16).  Here is an interesting site that provides a great many of these biblical prophetic signs which I plan to read as soon as I get through writing this piece.

Think of some of those prophecies, and how uncanny they are.  The birth of the nation Israel (see prophecies #29 and 30 on the list above).  The very Russian-and-Iran-led Arab confederation predicted by the prophets 2,600 years ago as attacking that reborn Israel exists today (see prophecies #54, 56-58).  As does an army of 200 million from the East – prophesied at a time when there weren’t 200 million human beings on the whole planet (prophecy #61).  Along with the capacity to dry up the mighty Euprhates River for that army to cross (see prophecy #60).  Then there is the technology for the mark of the beast without which no man may buy or sell (prophecy #23).  All of these and so many other events are coming together right now.  And they are amazing; YOU try to make accurate specific predictions of what will happen in 2,000 years, and then have them all begin to come together at the same time!

But were all these things “determined” to happen on a given date and time, or did God – who knows the end from the beginning (Isaiah 46:10) – rather understand that a wicked human species would one day rise against Him in a way that would result in the end of the present world?

There’s a line from a movie I remember enjoying: “Infinite goodness is creating a being you know in advance is going to complain.” – Captain Cutshaw, in The Ninth Configuration.  And the fact of the matter is that God DID know that humanity would choose evil, and that God the Son would have to come to die in our place, to take the blame for our sins, if we were going to have a relationship with God on earth or in heaven.  Read the first fourteen verses of Ephesians chapter 1, especially verses 4-5.  God knew that Adam and Even would sin.  He knew that He would have to assume a human nature and die in our place so we could live in Him and with Him.

Through His prophets, and those to whom He revealed Himself, God progressively unfolded His plan for the human race in history.  He gave the law as a tutor, knowing we would not be able to keep it, to lead us toward Christ (Galatians 3:24).  He provided the substitutionary blood of animal sacrifices knowing that ultimately He would have to become the ultimate once-for-all-time (extending backward and forward in time) sacrifice (Hebrews 10:4).

But God didn’t just dictate.  Human beings aren’t just puppets acting out the roles and speaking according to the script that He programmed us with.  Rather, the God who created us knew what we would do; He knew the choices we would make and the situations that we would make them in.

God knew all possible worlds.  And He chose which of those worlds to create.  There are worlds in which I would not be born.  There are worlds in which I would not have been saved.  God sovereignly chose which world to create.  And He knew everything that would happen, including all the counterfactuals (what would have happened; what would have happened had I zigged instead of zagged?) for every single human being in this world that He alone chose and He alone created.

Which is to say that God knew what no human being could possibly know.

And God did not share that knowledge with humanity.  He didn’t even share it with Harold Camping.

Unlike Harold Camping, I lack the ability to make definitive, catagorical statements about what will happen tommorow.  But I’m guessing Sunday morning will find Camping waking up with egg all over his face.

Democrat Front Media Matters Goes Old-Style Soviet Thug In It’s War Against Fox News

One of the interesting things about the mainstream media’s wars on Fox is just how hypocritical the Fox News haters are.

As an example, Geraldine Ferraro passed away.  Fox News spent the day honoring the first woman to truly break the ceiling in the modern political era.  And although a famous liberal, Ferraro was a Fox News contributor.  Because Fox News actually is fair and balanced.  Roger Ailes personally honored Geraldine Ferraro as a woman who “made deep contributions on a number of significant issues.”  Which is to say that Fox News shows a degree of class that is entirely lacking in the media dominated by the unbalanced and hysterical left.

When the mainstream media outlets hires Sarah Palin as a highly-respected contributor, come back and see me.

If you watch leftwing liberal hatchet organizations such as Media Matters, and then watch the mainstream news coverage, it is remarkable how often talking points that started with the KoolAid-drinking Media Matters end up on the “respected” mainstream media coverage.

It’s amazing how you hear a leftwing narrative, and then the rest of the mainstream media start screeching that same narrative like parrots.

And then, unlike Fox News – which frequently features liberals such as Kirsten Powers, Bob Beckell, Geraldine Ferarro, Geraldo Rivera, Wesley Clark, Judith Miller, Mara Liasson,  Harold Ford, Jr. Juan Williams, Al Sharpton, Ed Rendell, and many others – there are no conservative voices to rebut the Media Matters-mainstream media talking points that invariably and regularly appear on the other channels.

Media Matters says it.  The mainstream media outlets pick it up and report it much the way they pick up and report other ideological leftist sources such as the New York Times, and it is spat out as “fact.”

Meanwhile, the Democrats made fellow KoolAid organization the Daily Kos a host of one of their presidential debates, the founder of that organization went to another mainstream media organization (Newsweek), and Arianna Huffington’s ideological liberalism went even MORE mainstream with her going into AOL News.  And then there’s George Soros, the far-leftist money man for Media Matters, also giving $1.8 million to “objective” NPR to hire reporters so they can cover the news more “fairly.”

Hopefully, this will make that hypocritical and intellectually bankrupt pseudo-journalist propaganda a little bit tougher.  But I doubt it.

Media Matters’ war against Fox
By: Ben Smith
March 26, 2011 07:23 AM EDT

The liberal group Media Matters has quietly transformed itself in preparation for what its founder, David Brock, described in an interview as an all-out campaign of “guerrilla warfare and sabotage” aimed at the Fox News Channel.

The group, launched as a more traditional media critic, has all but abandoned its monitoring of newspapers and other television networks and is narrowing its focus to Fox and a handful of conservative websites, which its leaders view as political organizations and the “nerve center” of the conservative movement. The shift reflects the centrality of the cable channel to the contemporary conservative movement, as well as the loathing it inspires among liberals — not least among the donors who fund Media Matters’ staff of about 90, who are arrayed in neat rows in a giant war room above Massachusetts Avenue.

“The strategy that we had had toward Fox was basically a strategy of containment,” said Brock, Media Matters’ chairman and founder and a former conservative journalist, adding that the group’s main aim had been to challenge the factual claims of the channel and to attempt to prevent them from reaching the mainstream media.

The new strategy, he said, is a “war on Fox.”

In an interview and a 2010 planning memo shared with POLITICO, Brock listed the fronts on which Media Matters — which he said is operating on a $10 million-plus annual budget — is working to chip away at Fox and its parent company, News Corp. They include its bread-and-butter distribution of embarrassing clips and attempts to rebut Fox points, as well as a series of under-the-radar tactics.

Media Matters, Brock said, is assembling opposition research files not only on Fox’s top executives but on a series of midlevel officials. It has hired an activist who has led a successful campaign to press advertisers to avoid Glenn Beck’s show. The group is assembling a legal team to help people who have clashed with Fox to file lawsuits for defamation, invasion of privacy or other causes. And it has hired two experienced reporters, Joe Strupp and Alexander Zaitchik, to dig into Fox’s operation to help assemble a book on the network, due out in 2012 from Vintage/Anchor. (In the interest of full disclosure, Media Matters last month also issued a report criticizing “Fox and Friends” co-host Steve Doocy’s criticism of this reporter’s blog.)

Brock said Media Matters also plans to run a broad campaign against Fox’s parent company, News Corp., an effort which most likely will involve opening a United Kingdom arm in London to attack the company’s interests there. The group hired an executive from MoveOn.org to work on developing campaigns among News Corp. shareholders and also is looking for ways to turn regulators in the U.S., U.K., and elsewhere against the network.

The group will “focus on [News Corp. CEO Rupert] Murdoch and trying to disrupt his commercial interests — whether that be here or looking at what’s going on in London right now,” Brock said, referring to News Corp.’s — apparently successful — move to take a majority stake in the satellite broadcaster BSkyB.

A spokeswoman for Fox News, Irena Briganti, declined to comment on Media Matters’ efforts, but the group draws regular barbs from Fox hosts Beck and Bill O’Reilly.

“Tonight is not an episode you casually watch and take out of context like Media Matters does,” Beck remarked last month.

A more extended attack came in February on the freewheeling late night show Red Eye, which conducted a mock interview with a purported Media Matters employee.

“It’s horrible. All we do is sit and watch Fox News and make up stuff about Fox News. It is the saddest place I have ever seen in my life. I think about it, and I want to throw up,” the mock employee said. “I get to work and I take off my clothes, and they strap me into a chair in front of a TV with [Fox News Channel] on. They keep my eyelids propped open like in “Clockwork Orange,” and I sit and type all day.

“If there was no Beck, George Soros would come down and demand we make it up,” the “interviewee” continued. “I would watch the “Flintstones” and transcribe Fred Flintstone’s words and attribute them to Beck. It was the only way to get Soros to stop hitting me.”

(A Soros associate said the financier, who gave Media Matters $1 million last year, did not earmark it for the Fox campaign. Soros suggested in a recent CNN interview that the Fox depictions of him as a sinister media manipulator would better be applied to Murdoch.)

In some views, the war between Media Matters and Fox is not, necessarily, bad for either side. Media Matters has transformed itself into a pillar of the progressive movement with its aggressive new brand of media campaigning. And the attacks cement Fox’s status on the right.

“Fox is happy about it — and it makes their position more vivid among their supporters,” said Paul Levinson, a media studies professor at Fordham University. “One way of keeping your core supporters happy is to be attacked by people your core supporters don’t like.”

But Media Matters says its digging has begun to pay off. The group has trickled out a series of emails from Washington Bureau Chief Bill Sammon, leaks from inside the network, which show him, for instance, circulating a memo on “Obama’s references to socialism, liberalism, Marxism and Marxists.”

The leaks are part of a broader project to take advantage of internal dissent, Media Matters Executive Vice President Ari Rabin-Havt said.

“We made a list of every single person who works for Fox and tried to figure out who might be disgruntled and why, and we went out to try to meet them,” he said. “Clearly, somebody in that organization is giving us primary source documents.”

Media Matters, he said, is also conducting “opposition research” on a dozen or so “mid- and senior-level execs and producers,” a campaign style move that he and Brock said would simply involve recording their public appearances and digging into public records associated with them.

And Brock’s 2010 planning memo offers a glimpse at Media Matters’ shift from media critic to a new species of political animal.

“Criticizing Fox News has nothing to do with criticizing the press,” its memo says. “Fox News is not a news organization. It is the de facto leader of the GOP, and it is long past time that it is treated as such by the media, elected officials and the public.”

The tactics that Media Matters are using – “sabotage” even on their own acknowledgment – ought to show any decent person that the mainstream media has truly been infiltrated by fascist, Soviet-style thugs.

I mean, think about it: “guerrilla warfare and sabotage”?  This is done by people and organizations who have “Little Red Books” or “Mein Kampfs” to accompany their tactics.  Fox News isn’t out there using “guerrilla warfare and sabotage”; it’s the people who say Fox News is evil who then use the most profoundly un-American tactics.  That should be very informative to non-moral idiots.

Sadly, while conservatives rose up in 2010, it seems that the long-term trend is that there are fewer and fewer decent people who are willing to do less and less.  And all the while the hateful left are busy working like ants stripping the dying carcass of America.

Bad people not only lie; they believe lies.  That’s why we’re seeing more and more lies today.  And it’s why the left can justify openly using “guerrilla warfare and sabotage” that would have been condemned by better people.

Jesus talked about the last days.  He said a lot of terrifying things would happen.  There would be worldwide economic collapses, wars and rumors of wars, many earthquakes and great signs in the oceans in many diverse places, and famines; all anticipating a coming antichrist (“the beast”) who would promise a Utopia but who would ultimately deliver hell on earth.

And it’s all coming while we watch NBC smuggle in Media Matters’ talking points in the guise of “news.”

Obama and his White House has tried to ban Fox News – one of the big four of the media – from being able to cover the news.   Obama’s White House has repeatedly launched flat-out propaganda campaigns against Fox news.  The news media – realizing how outrageous it would be if a conservative president did this same thing to one of them – erupted in outrage against Obama for his blatant attempt to control the media like a fascist dictator.  When Obama tried to freeze out Fox News even though Fox News had been a member of the pool consisting of ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox News since 1997, the ALL refused to send reporters until Obama backed down.  But Obama is STILL doing it as recently as yesterday.  At his heart, he is a fascist.  He demands that he be able to control the media and control the message.

The other day the Obama White House demonstrated this instinct toward fascistic control again: they literally shut a reporter in a cramped closet and kept demanding that he stay in there.

You can bet that the antichrist, the beast, will have control over the media and the message.

And sadddest of all, what Jesus said would precede all of this horror and misery as the leftwing socialist big government beast was the final apathetic and self-absorbed era of the Laodicean church.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer – who gave his own life in his stand against Adolf Hitler – said a few things that truly apply to us as we sit idly by watching our boob tubes while bad people with a bad agenda take the world away from us:

“When all is said and done, the life of faith is nothing if not an unending struggle of the spirit with every available weapon against the flesh.” 

“The ultimate test of a moral society is the kind of world that it leaves to its children.” 

“Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.”

Stop letting these people “frame the news” while you watch like a slack-jawed drooling imbecile. If you’re going to sit there, at least muster the moral outrage to change the channel.

The Crisis In The Islamic World, The Future And Bible Prophecy

A couple weeks ago I wrote an article titled “The Crisis In Egypt, The Future And Bible Prophecy.”  I have also written an article titled, “Iran, Iraq And The Future In Bible Prophecy.”  But I would now like to expand to the entire Muslim world, given the massive unrest that is going on as we speak.

The crisis in Egypt isn’t over; it has merely reached a new phase with the departure of Mubarak.  The largest and most powerful nation in the Arab world is now being ruled by a military council; who knows for certain what will happen next?  Only our Lord God, who knows the end from the beginning (Isaiah 46:9-10).  And to a much lesser extent, the Bible exegete who rightly divides God’s prophetic Word of truth.  And no one else.

Let me say at the outset that there is a great deal of disagreement in the area of Bible prophecy and eschatology (the study of “last things”).  I represent a very solid viewpoint in Protestant theology who embrace premillennialism (which holds that Jesus Christ will return to prior to establishing a literal 1,000 year millennium on earth per Revelation 20:1-7) and dispensationalism (the two basic tenants of which are that God has dealt with humanity progressively in an unfolding manner in history and that Israel is distinct from the Church).  On a dispensationalist view, God began with Israel and He shall faithfully keep all of His promises to Israel and end with Israel.  Dispensationalists read passages such as Romans 11:16-24 and recognize that God did not kill the olive tree of Israel or plant an entirely different tree; rather, He grafted Gentile Christian believers into the olive tree of the hope of Israel which He had planted in Abraham centuries before.  On a dispensationalist perspective, the purpose of the Millennium reign of Christ on earth will be to fulfill every promise that God ever made to Israel that Israel was not ready to receive: God will one day expand Israel to the boundaries that He promised Abraham (Genesis 15:18-21); one day all the nations trulywill one day go up to Jerusalem to worship Messiah on the forever throne of King David (see Zechariah 14:9, 16; see also 2 Samuel 7:9-16 and Psalm 89:29-37); the wolf will one day really lie down with the lamb (Isaiah 11:6), etc.

The dispensationalist will excitedly assure you that God’s promises are not like a human politician’s promises, in which some skilled lawerly linguist reinterprets the promises and explains that said promises were fulfilled, however unliterally was their fulfillment.  Rather, when God makes a promise, He will ultimately fulfill that promise LITERALLY in His sovereign timing.  It is God’s nature to fullfil His Word.

And all of this beautfiful fulfillment of God’s Word concerning Israel – according to the dispensationalist – will begin to happen when all Israel finally “will look on Me whom they have pierced; and they will mourn for Him, as one mourns for an only son” (Zechariah 12:10).  Israel is “the apple of God’s eye” (Zechariah 2:8).  Nations harm Israel at their peril.  And God will not ultimately forsake “His people” or “His land” of Israel.

There are other views toward eschatology.  The most dominant view in the Protestant world at one time was Postmillennialism.  It holds that the millennium is a metaphor, and that Christ’s millennial kingdom is even now being extended over all the earth by the preaching of the gospel.  And that when most of the world is converted to Christ, Christ will return to His kingdom.  It largely went out after World War I; World War II pretty much killed this view off as the optimism of humans ushering in the kingdom of heaven for God proved to be unattainable.

Then there is the more substantial view of Amillenialism – which is the view of the Catholic church as well as a number of Protestant mainline denominations.  It holds that there is no literal future millennium (a means no).  It teaches that although Satan is currently bound, the kingdom of evil will continue to increase in parallel along with Christ’s kingdom.  But when Jesus Christ returns, the end of the world will occur and there will be a general resurrection and a general judgment of all human beings.

We don’t see early evidence of amillennialist thought until Augustine described the view in the early 5th century.  I would argue that the key reason that Augustine set out the highly allegorical and metaphorical interpretation system of amillenialism was due to the apparent absence of national Israel.  Israel had been wiped out by Rome in AD 70, in fulfillment of Jesus’ words in Matthew 24:2.  With no Israel, any system based on taking Bible prophecy literally fell apart.  Prophecy was something to be explained away, rather than revelled in as proof of a God who truly knows the end from the beginning.

It didn’t have to be that way.  One just had to believe the Bible and to truly trust in the God whose Word the Bible is.

There is another key difference between premillennialism and its amillennialist and postmillennialist rivals: literalism.  Premillennialists want to take their Bible literally.  Oswald T. Allis, an amillennialist champion of covenant theology and a vigorous opponent of dispensationalism, said on page 17 of his book Prophecy and the Church:

“One of the most marked features of premillennialism in all its forms is the emphasis which it places on the literal interpretation of Scripture.  It is the insistent claims of its advocates that only when interpreted literally is the Bible interpreted truly; and they denounce as “spiritualizers” or “allegorizers” those who do not interpret the Bible with the same degree of literalness as they do.  None have made this charge more pointedly than the dispensationalists.”

And, while amillennialists have been quite willing to do a great deal of “denouncing” of their own, I agree with Allis’ point: premillennialists and dispensationalists DO seek to literally interpret their Bibles, in marked contrast to his own amillennialist and Covenant viewpoint.  There are passages that speak of the arm of the Lord, or refer to God as a great bird protectively keeping His people under His wing.  The biblical literalist knows that God doesn’t have arms or wings or feathers because many other passages tell us that God is Spirit and doesn’t have a physical body apart from Christ who assumed a human image in the incarnation.  So we rightly understand passages describing God’s strong arm or God’s wings as metaphors.  But there is no place in Scripture that tells us not to understand the 1,000 year Millennial Kingdom as a literal kingdom or a literal thousand years.  We read the Bible literally unless context demands that we read it otherwise.

On the other hand, every single mainline liberal denomination that has evacuated historic orthodox Christianity has been one that has interpreted their Bibles using the allegorical approach of amillennialism and postmillennialism.  And I will include the nation of Germany that first became the most atheistic nation in Europe and then became the hosts of Nazism’s attempt to destroy the Jews and their influence upon “Judeo-Christianity” and the Christendom that Judeo-Christianity created.  An illustration of this phenomenon was revealed in a Pew Poll in which respondents were asked the pluralist question, “Do many religions lead to God and eternal life?”  70% of all surveyed said “yes.”  Amazingly, amillennialist Catholics (79%) and amillennialist Mainline churches (83%) were the most likely of ALL respondents to abandon the orthodox Christian confession that only Jesus Christ gives eternal life.  And while their are many strong and staunch Christians who embrace amillennialist theology, once you embrace a hermeneutic approach that encourages highly allegorical interpretations of Scripture, you open the door wide to abandoning the doctrine of the deity of Christ, the substitutionary atonement and the bodily Resurrection.  All of these abandonments of genuine and orthodox Christianity have been done by the opponents of dispensationalism.  Whereas a literal interpretation of the Bible guarantees against such radical departures from the faith once for all delivered to the saints (Jude 3).

Dispensationalists also believe in the doctrine of the rapture of the saints prior to the divine judgment of the Tribulation.

What is the Tribulation?  It is described in the book of Revelation, beginning in chapter 6 and continuing through chapter 18.  It is a seven-year period of time that culminates the “Seventy Sevens” of prophecy given to Daniel (Daniel chapter 9).  It is a period during which God will give sinful mankind it’s chance to govern itself apart from God.  It is a period of divine judgment as God pours down divine wrath upon wicked humanity.  Interestingly the church is never mentioned even a single time after the words “come up here” in chapter 4.  Prior to that the word “church” was all over the place.  Where did all the Christians go?  What we see instead are Jews who become Christians after the rapture of the Christian church, and 144,000 Jewish Christians divinely sealed from each of the Twelve literal tribes of Israel (Revelation 7) evangelizing the whole world even as an insanely evil global dicator known as “the beast” or “Antichrist” reigns under the possession of the devil himself.

What is the Rapture?  Well, those words “come up here” (Revelation 4:1) sum it up pretty well.

The word “rapture” (to seize or snatch) was translated from the Greek word “Harpazo” in 1 Thess 4:16.  “Harpazo” has the same meaning as the Latin word “rapturo” in Jerome’s Latin Vulgate written in AD 385. We can consider the writings of early Christian exegetes such as Ephaim the Syrian, who wrote about AD 373 in a book entitled, “Antichrist and the End of the World”:

”We ought to understand thoroughly, therefore my brothers, what is imminent or overhanging. Already there have been hungers and plagues, violent movement of nations and sins, which have been predicted by the Lord.

Let us prepare ourselves for the meeting of the Lord Christ so that He may draw us from the confusion which overwhelms the world. Believe you me, dearest brothers, because the coming of the Lord is nigh. Believe you me, because the end of the world is at hand. Believe me because it is the very last time. Because all Saints and the elect of the Lord are gathered together before the Tribulation which is about to come and are taken to the Lord in order that they may not see at any time the confusion that overwhelms the world because of our sins.”

That’s just one particularly clear example from the Church Fathers. Papias – companion of Polycarp, the disciple of the apostle John – believed in the literal earthly pre-millennial doctrine. As did Papias, Irenaeus, Justin Martyr, Tertullian, Hippolytus, Methodius, Commodianus, and Lactanitus, Apollinaris of Laodicea, Melito of Sardis, Jerome, Gennadius, Hippolytus of Rome, Nepos, Ambrose of Milan, as well as others. Pre-millenialism was in fact the dominant view of the church for the first few centuries. It is the oldest eschatological view.

Contrary to a very oft pubilicized misconception, Charles Nelson Darby did not “invent” dispensationalism.  Dispensatioanlism had already been around LONG before Darby came onto the scene.  But Darby did systemize and popularize dispensational eschatology more than had been the case previously.  And it has since exploded to become the dominant view of the Protestant church, in terms of numbers of adherents.  This is hardly a point against dispensationalism, as we are frequently told: we knew that as the last days approached, knowledge would be greatly increased (Daniel 12:4).  And in fact as we see more and more things that the Bible described that are being fulfilled right in front of our eyes, that understanding shall certainly continue to be increased.  It seems quite unremarkable to me that as we get closer and closer to the last days, we would understand more and more about the last days and about biblical eschatology.

One of the things that Charles Nelson Darby and those who came before him did was literally predict that there would HAVE to be a state of Israel in order for prophecy as they understood it to be fulfilled. He implicitly taught that if his system for understanding Scripture was correct, there would be a powerful nation of Israel at a time when there was no evidence whatsoever that such a nation would arise literally from the bones and the ashes (see Ezekiel 37 and see here).  And, as God’s workings with man so often come about, it was because of his faith and the faith of early dispensationalists that Israel DID reassemble from the bones.  It was the early Christian “Zionists” who believed in the regathering of national Israel who largely funded the purchase of the land of Israel for the future establishment of a nation.  Prior to Darby and the dispensationalists, Israel had been an empty desert wasteland populated only by a few nomads; because of the biblical Zionists the land flowed with water in yet another literal fulfillment of Bible prophecy.

Darby and the dispensationalists also predicted that Russia – at the time a backwater and hardly a major international power – would become mighty as the land of Gog and Magog in the ultimate north (see Ezekiel 38).

Now allow me to get closer to our present day and refer to another “Darby” who correctly predicted events to come according to an understanding of dispensationalist eschatology: a Messianic Jew named Joel Rosenberg.  Allow me to quote from my aforementioned article “Iran, Iraq And The Future In Bible Prophecy“:

A Wikipedia article on Joel Rosenberg probably provides the most concise summary (accessed June 23, 2009):

Rosenberg’s novels have attracted those interested in Bible Prophecy, due to several of his fictional elements of his books that would occur after his writing of books. Nine months before the September 11th attacks, Rosenberg wrote a novel with a kamikaze plane attack on an American city. Five months before the 2003 invasion of Iraq, he wrote a novel about war with Saddam Hussein, the death of Yasser Arafat eight months before it occurred, a story with Russia, Iran, and Libya forming a military alliance against Israel occurring the date of publishing,^[7] the rebuilding of the city of Babylon,^[12] Iran vowing to have Israel “wiped off the face of the map forever” five months before Iranian President Ahmadinejad said the same,^[13] and the discovery of huge amounts of oil and natural gas in Israel (which happened in January 2009).^[14] The U.S. News & World Report have referred to him as a “Modern Nostradamus,”^[15] although Rosenberg tries to play down those proclamations, stating that “I am not a clairvoyant, a psychic, or a ‘Modern Nostradamus,’ as some have suggested.”^[16] He gives the credit for his accurate predictions to studying Biblical prophecy and applying to the modern world.^[16]

Why did Rosenberg predict that there would be a “kamikaze plane attack on an American city” by Islamic terrorists?  Because he accurately understood the evil at the heart of Islam.

Why did Rosenberg predict a war between Saddam Hussein and the United States resulting in the overthrow of Saddam and his brutal regime?  That’s where it gets interesting.

Joel Rosenberg had done a thorough study of the Book of Ezekiel and of the Bible (as a couple of overlapping articles summarize – Article 1; – Article 2).  He learned that one day, according to the Bible, a massive army under the leadership of Russia and many of its former republics (Magog) and Iran (Persia) and consisting of many countries that are today Islamic [e.g. “Cush” (modern-day Sudan and Ethiopia); “Put” (modern-day Libya); “Gomer” (modern-day Turkey); “Beth-togarmah” (modern-day Armenia); and many peoples “along the mountains of Israel” (modern-day Lebanon and possibly Syria)] would form an “exceedingly great army” that would one day attack Israel.

What Rosenberg noted was the absence of two countries: Egypt and Babylon (i.e. Iraq).  Egypt had been a perennial enemy of Israel until 1973, when Egypt alone in all the Arab/Muslim world forged a historic peace treaty with the state of Israel.  That left Iraq.  Rosenberg asked himself, “How could a nation like Iraq, under the leadership of someone like Saddam Hussein, NOT participate in this mega-colossal-last-days attack on Israel?

Rosenberg concluded that Saddam Hussein WOULDN’T refrain from such an attack.  And that meant that Saddam Hussein would have to go.

And so, NINE MONTHS before the 9/11 attack, Rosenberg in his “fiction” created a scenario in which terrorists flew a plane in a kamikaze attack, and the United States took out the Iraqi regime and replaced it with a stable Western-friendly government.

And because the Bible is the true Word of an all-knowing God who knows the end from the beginning as revealed through His prophets, the scenario laid out by Joel Rosenberg turned out to be eerily true.  It wasn’t a “lucky guess”; it was based upon the God who had revealed the last days to an inspired prophet named Ezekiel some 2,600 years ago.

Thus we have Iraq, its tyrant who had filled mass graves with the bodies of at least 400,000 of his own people, overthrown and a stable democracy growing in his place.  And we have Iran, a country strongly allied with Russia; a country bent on acquiring nuclear weapons; a country that has announced its intent on the destruction of Israel; a country under the leadership of men who in all likelihood believe in establishing a future by an act of violent apocalypse.  Two countries on two very different paths.  And both paths known to God 2,600 years ago.

It is not my primary purpose to attack other Christian viewpoints, but rather to argue that the predictive power of Bible prophecy viewed through the lens of dispensationalist theology has been nothing short of remarkable.  And to argue that when the Bible is given a chance via literal interpretation, it shines brightly as the true Word of the Living God.

One day, the early dispensationalists taught, Israel would be regathered as a powerful nation.  It happened literally, not metaphorically or allegorically.  One day in the far north a nation would grow to prominence such that it could lead an international invasion against that nation Israel.  It happend as Russia became a superpower.  It happend literally, not metaphorically or allegorically.  The nations that would be led by Russia would include the nation of Persia (modern Iran) in a strategic alliance and and a host of nations that would have some powerful commonly-held ideological rationale to launch an all-out attack against Israel.  That has happened quite literally.  And today Russia, Iran and modern Islamic states have both a common alliance and a common hostility to national Israel.  Just as the Bible literally taught would happen in the last days.

There was a period during which naysayers ridiculed dispensationalist interpretations of prophecy, because many dispensationalist Bible scholars talked in terms of the Soviet Union, and the Soviet Union collapsed in the late 1980s/early 1990s.  But the same Gog and Magog in the north is back in international power, and the new Russia is more involved with its Islamic alliance than ever.  Literally.  Just as the Bible taught all along.  A good presentation of just how powerful this very literal last days alliance is can be read in Joel Rosenberg’s book Epicenter.  He supports this powerful endtimes alliance with documentation galore.

Joel Rosenberg described a world in which two powerful Muslim nations – Egypt and Iraq – would somehow NOT join the last days alliance.  I describe that further in my article “The Crisis In Egypt, The Future And Bible Prophecy.”

Right now Egypt is being controlled by the military.  And that is the best state of affairs for Israel, given that the military is the most pro-Western element in all of Egypt.  I don’t profess to have any idea what kind of government Egypt will ultimately end up with; I merely state that Egypt will ultimately-  and frankly amazingly (along with modern Babylon Iraq) – NOT participate in the war of Gog and Magog described in Ezekiel 38 and 39, in which a Russian-and-Iranian-led host of Islamic states attack Israel in the coming last days.

But what about the many other Islamic nations that are likewise experiencing great unrest with all of these “days of rage” erupting in first one Muslim nation and then another?

Here’s a map detailing the spread of protests currently erupting all over the Arab world:

You can add Iran to that list, as protests are erupting even as this article goes out.  You can also add Bahrain.  And I have no doubt other Muslim countries as well.

What about THESE countries?  Is democracy afoot throughout the Islamic world, which has never had democracy in its entire history?

People should stop and think: is it a mere coincidence that the Muslim world has been a world of tyrant kings and dictatorial regimes, while democracy spread throughout Christendom and as a direct result of Judeo-Christian principles?  Or is there something fundamentally and profoundly wrong with Islam as both a religion and as a political system?

We have the recent example of the Palestinian Authority, which had democratic elections only for the people to enthusiastically vote for the terrorist organization Hamas.  Secular humanists and liberal religionists have denounced this as an embrace of religion which makes democracy impossible.  But that is clearly not what our American founding fathers who created the first lasting democracy in human history believed.  Rather, our founding fathers argued that true religion and the morality which true religion fosters are ESSENTIAL for a democracy and a people capable of self-government.

I think now of the Andrew McCarthy book The Grand Jihad: How Islam and the Left Sabotage America. (and see the descriptions of this book here and here).  And I would submit that on the one hand we have the Islamic threat of radical jihadism, and we have the Western threat of serving as the useful idiots of radical jihadism.  It was liberals and liberalism which gave us the multiculturalism that leaders of the most powerful European countries (Germany, the UK and France) are now vehemently denouncing as having fomented the spread of radical Islam.  And as an example of this we have breathless mainstream media liberals describing the Egyptian people as a nation of freedom-loving secularists when the truth is very different.  According to a Pew survey:

“At least three-quarters of Muslims in Egypt and Pakistan say they would favor making each of the following the law in their countries: stoning people who commit adultery, whippings and cutting off of hands for crimes like theft and robbery and the death penalty for those who leave the Muslim religion. Majorities of Muslims in Jordan and Nigeria also favor these harsh punishments.”

Which is to say that rather than being a theory, it is a fact that secular humanist liberals have done more to spread radical Islamist jihadism than anyone short of the radical Islamist jihadists themselves.  And it is in fact those who embrace a literalist view of the Bible who have most strongly decried this moral stupidity for years.

God knew these days would come thousands of years ago.  He knew that the Middle East – for centuries a forgotten backwater – would become central in the last days due to the discovery of and need for oil.  God knew that Israel would be once again established as a nation literally coming to life from dry bones (Ezekiel 37).  God knew that ancient Persia and modern day Iran would once again come to dominate the Middle East in the last days.  God knew that Russia would rise to become a great bear in the last days.  God knew that something would unite virtually all of the nations surrounding Israel to join in an attack against the tiny nation that God founded through Abraham.  And God knew that these nations would come together in one massive force against that nation Israel as described inEzekiel 38-39.  Because God knows the end from the beginning.

Even as I write Libya’s Gaddafi is calling upon Palestinians to revolt against Israel.  Already the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt has been saying the treaty with Israel is over and calling for preparations for a war on Israel.  And this isn’t a bunch of allegories; it is quite literal, indeed.

As you read your newspaper and watch your news, does this all-out war described in Ezekiel 38 and 39 seem farfetched?  Or does this insane attack against Israel seem to be the far and away the most likely outcome as history unfolds just as God described through His prophets?  The only thing that should seem farfetched is the conclusion of this battle, as God supernaturnaturally comes to Israel’s aid and destroys this massive army that would seek to destroy His people.  But is such a demonstration of divine power really so incredible for a God who knows the end from the beginning, and revealed that knowledge in His Word?

And I would argue that an explosion of democracy in the Islamic world – which the very same liberals who cheer it now vehemently denounced when Bush was advocating it – may well backfore horrendously just as it did in the Palestinian Authority.  It may well be the agent that binds the Islamic world together into the coalition led by Russia and Iran that will one day come streaming toward Israel in the rapidly approaching last days.  Once any of these radical jihadist groups such as the ayatollahs in Iran, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in the Palestinian Authority – and outfits like the Taliban or the Muslim Brotherhood – gain powere through a popular vote, they become impossible to vote out.  Because they are fundamentally anti-democratic; in fact they despise democracy and everything it stands for.  And once they get power, they will never let it go.

Adolf Hitler and his National Socialist German Workers Party never had more than 37% of the vote in Germany.  But once in, he and the Nazis totally seized power.  The same thing happened with the communists in Russia and everywhere else that communism has spread.  And it has happened again and again with Islamofascists like the Ayatollahs and secular Islamic dictators such as Saddam Hussein alike.

As I consider the popular Islamic people’s uprisings in light of passages such as Ezekiel 38-39 and Psalm 83 (e.g., “They say, ‘Come, let us wipe them out as a nation; let the name of Israel be remembered no more!'” – Psalm 83:4), I believe that this move in the Islamic world will not end well for most of the nations experiencing these “days of rage.”

What the Bible predicted would happen as the Word of a God who knows the end from the beginning will happen.  And it will happen very literally indeed.

As Iran gets the nuclear bomb – and Iran WILL get the nuclear bomb, thanks to Western liberals and American Democrats (see my articles here and here) – it will become emboldened in a way that will make its previous insolence to the global community seem like nothing.  They will feel impervious, and they will most certainly join Russia in an attack upon Israel as leaders of a pan-Islamic international force.  And this coming world war against Israel will be no allegory and it will be no metaphor; it will be terrifyingly literal.

But you don’t have to be afraid.  Because the God who told us that these days would come is sovereign over the world.

I pray every single day, “Come quickly, Lord Jesus,” which is what Maranatha means.

As one who stands quite guilty indeed of being a biblical literalist, I believe that the Lord will rapture His people before the coming Tribulation which will test and judge the whole world and ultimately bring about the national restoration of Israel to its Messiah.  I believe that this rapture will “snatch” every single genuine Christian as the Lord comes for His people and meets them in the air (1 Thessalonians 4:13-18).  Jesus went to prepare a place for us; and we will soon be with Him in His beautiful and glorious presence before we return with Him as He comes to earth as King of kings and Lord of lords (Revelation 19).

I believe that the rapture will even catch those Christians who don’t believe in the rapture.  Even as I believe that as one who loves the Lord’s coming, I will be awarded a special crown in heaven.

Jesus said that in the last days before His return to earth as King of kings, the times would become so fearful and so terrifying that men’s hearts would fail them for fear (Luke 21:25-26. KJV).  But Jesus said to His own, “Do not be afraid” (John 14:27).

You don’t have to be afraid if you have Christ in your heart.  Especially if you also have the prayers for His soon coming on your lips.

Maranatha!