EndTime Issues ...

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Introduction
 
Hatred against Christianity is burgeoning in the United States as a byproduct of the sexual “rights” revolution! It is not a simple competition between “value” ideologies. The accelerating intimidation, silencing and coercion of the Christian conscience have reached critical levels. This will be magnified if the Supreme Court, this month, redefines marriage. That would federally legalize an immoral “right” and bring unprecedented conflict into American lives.
 
The rising persecution of Christians worldwide through murder, torture, kidnapping, rape or being sold into sexual slavery is a heart-wrenching phenomenon. “But there is another story of Christian persecution,” notes journalist David Kupelian, “that is the rapidly growing marginalization, demonization and criminalization of the free practice of the Christian faith in the United States of America – a nation uniquely founded upon religious freedom.
 
“While Christian persecution around the world is perpetrated primarily by Muslims and communists, in America the persecution is driven by a seemingly odd and improbable source: homosexuality, and the influential activist movement that has grown up around it.”[1]
 
Beginning small as a “gay liberation movement” in 1969, it morphed into “gay pride,” “gay rights,” LGBT (lesbian, gay bisexual transgender rights) and now a list of over 58 sexual designations. Its influence has sparked:

1. Legislation outlawing counseling for minors who want help to overcome unwanted same-sex attractions.
2. Decreeing that boys and young men must be allowed to use girls’ restrooms and locker rooms with the verbal claim that they identify with the opposite sex.
3. Resisting parenteral wishes, mandating pro-homosexual indoctrination of children as young as five years old.
4. Integration of homosexuality into the military
5. Permitting same-sex marriage in 36 states[2]
6. Criminalizing Christian business people for declining services to homosexuals on moral or religious grounds

Ominous threats to America’s traditions and values will again accelerate this month (June 2015) if the Supreme Court rules that it is illegal to ban same-sex marriages.
 
Game Changing Events
 
In 1990 the Supreme Court, in Employment Division vs Smith, rejected decades of precedents regarding religious liberty in America relative to a Native American rite. This led to a bipartisan storm against the decision, leading Congress to pass the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) in 1993, which President Clinton signed.

• It is important to recall that both liberal and conservative leaders alike saw this as a necessary move to protect religious liberty.
• Since then, however, an almost concealed principle has been observed in subsequent bureaucratic “rights” decisions: Most politicians were cultural followers, not cultural leaders.[3]

In 1997 the Supreme Court ruled that RFRA only applies to the federal government. This caused a flurry of states to pass their own religious liberty laws. On March 26, 2015, Indiana Governor Mike Pence signed into law The Religious Freedom Restoration Act for Indiana.

• Within hours thousands protested!
• The governors of Washington State, New York State and Connecticut issued travel bans to Indiana using any public funds, as did the mayors of New York City, San Francisco, Seattle, Portland and Oakland.
• Why such an outcry? It marginalized homosexual activism against Christians!

Public pressure became so great that the State of Indiana legislature and Governor Pence capitulated and amended the bill. Those changes immediately eroded the freedom of religious exercise for most business owners of that state.

• It affirmed and legitimized the largest move in this nation’s history, supporting homosexual rights!
• It eviscerated any right by Christian businesses to deny services to homosexual clients on moral or religious grounds.[4]

The “Indiana Fix” not only prohibits “class-based” discrimination in places of public accomodation, it now requires involuntary engagement into the sexual revolution itself.
 
It’s no longer enough for bakers, florists, and photographers to provide service to everyone, regardless of their religious convictions, they must also participate in and facilitate any kind of action or ceremony their customers desire – no matter how offensive to their beliefs.[5] The “sexual revolution,” striking against one of God’s institutions from Eden, took a major advance.
 
Sinister and immoral is the victory for what was originally meant to protect liberty, but which has now become law that overtly harms religious freedom!
 
Roman Catholic Concerns
 
Already bruised by Pope Francis’ revolutionary positions in support of homosexuality, the Christian community has become less unified.

• Pope Francis, as Cardinal in Argentina in 2010 before his pontificate began, spoke out in favor of “civil unions.” Then in July of 2013 he said: “If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and his good will, who am I to judge?”[6]
• In March of 2015 he noted:
  
  “Matrimony is between a man and a woman” reaffirming the church’s position on that issue in an interview published Wednesday by the Italian daily, Corriere della Sera, and translated into English by the Catholic News Service.
  
  “However,” he said, “moves to ‘regulate diverse situations of cohabitation (are) driven by the need to regulate economic aspects among persons, as for instance to assure medical care.’” Thus softening the church’s position against homosexuality.[7]

Gay activists were emboldened. Jeran Artery of the homosexual rights group, Wyoming Equality, contended that churches do not have the right to speak out against homosexual behavior. If they do, they should lose their tax exempt status![8]
 
The seriousness of this mushrooming situation was addressed by former Congressman Frank Wolf on May 15, 2015:

• Freedom of conscience is under attack.
• The present legal situation suggests our conscience belongs to the state.
• “We are witnessing the imposition of a new state religion.”
• Prison could be the next step for American Christians.[9]

Battle lines are being drawn out of this sexual revolution. Everything seems legitimate to question, including what it even means to be a male or female. Christianity itself is being diminished and demeaned!
 
Gabriele Kuby, anthropologist ideologue, spoke to Catholic World Report September 2014:
 
“No human society has ever tried to re-write human sexuality, and the current global trend may be leading the world down new dark paths of statist totalitarianism….
 
“‘Gender theory says our sexual orientation is the main criterion for our identity. The main value by which this is promoted is freedom. Our hyper-individualized society claims that we have freedom to choose our sex, whether we are man or woman, and it is our freedom to choose our sexual orientation,’ she said.
 
“‘No society … has done this. No society has ever said, “Live out your sexual drive any way you like,” but our society does.’
 
“At the core of this radical change, she said, is a totally new concept of human anthropology. ‘I think this issue of sexuality is the main attack on the dignity of the human being,’ one that will allow our societies to ‘tumble into anarchy and chaos.’ This, she added, ‘can result in a new totalitarian regime by the state.’
 
“‘A new totalitarianism is developing under the cloak of [sexual] freedom,’ Kuby said. ‘The destruction of the family uproots every single human being. We become atomized human beings who can be manipulated to do anything.’”
 
In her latest book, The Global Sexual Revolution: The Destruction of Freedom in the Nation of Freedom,” she pointedly criticizes the United Nations, the European Union and the World Health Organization as “gender mainstreaming” (that began in 1995 at the United Nations Beijing Conferences).

• She describes this “movement” or “trend” as “the deepest rebellion against the conditions of our human existence that you can possibly imagine.”
• When people don’t know who they are, they can be manipulated and be a subject of totalitarianism.

Out of the social revolution emerging from within the United Nations’ leadership the “global redefinition of marriage” is here.

• In the western world, the United States especially, this is being written into legal codes.
• This is already taking on the form of suppression and limiting the expressed values of Christianity in the name, astoundingly, of non-Christian rights.

Could this be what expositor White alluded to?
 
“There is soon to open before us a period of overwhelming interest to all living. The controversies of the past are to be revived; new controversies will arise. The scenes to be enacted in our world are not yet even dreamed of. Satan is at work through human agencies.”[10]
 
A seismic shift in America’s culture occurred in 2013 when the Supreme Court struck down DOMA (Defense of the Marriage Act). Same sex marriages spiked, and today more than two thirds of the states recognize this union. David Von Drehle, Time Magazine, in a major discourse on gay marriage, said that this was a rapid and unpredicted turn in public opinion.[11]
 
G. K. Chesterton once noted: “This triangle of truisms, of father, mother and child, cannot be destroyed; it can only destroy those civilizations which disregard it.”[12]

• The Supreme Court in Bowers v. Hardwick, 1986, had ruled that the Constitution doesn’t protect or confer a right to homosexual sodomy. In a reversal, 2003, Lawrence v. Texas, the court held that anti-sodomy laws were unconstitutional.
• Justice Sandra Day O’Connor strongly spoke out: “Moral disapproval of a group cannot be a legitimate governmental interest under the Equal Protection Clause.” What? That is the legal umbrella that many seek to cover their sinister behavior.

It is of interest that moral disapproval from a large segment of the Christian world has brought a growing number of legal actions against Christian individuals and businesses for defying the Equal Protection Clause!
 
Shortly before the High Court heard arguments regarding the imposition of same-sex marriage on the states (April 28, 2015), Bob Unruh wrote for World Net Daily an article reviewing cases where homosexual activists have legally “bludgeoned” believers.[13] Many have been fined, face heavy legal costs and have lost their businesses!
 
Now the Supreme Court is about to render an opinion (legal ruling for America) as to a potentially new protected right of marriages of the same sex. Why is this so important?

1. Most of the states already supporting same-sex marriage have done so by a federal judge overruling the will of the people! It would legitimize that judicial activism.
    
2. An informative brief has been filed with the Supreme Court outlining the horrendous havoc the High Court’s decision will bring if the states’ rights are undermined.
   
   “A decision from this court imposing same-sex marriage on the states would dramatically exacerbate this conflict between advocates of same-sex marriage and Christian ministers, teachers, and leaders, and would inevitably lead to untold violations of the latter’s First Amendment free speech rights.”[14]
   
   This brief was signed by many American religious leaders and organizations from this country. Rejecting this brief would be a rejection by the highest court of the fundamentals of Christianity.
    
3. Defiance against Christians, and seemingly trying to manipulate the High Court’s vote, comes Justices Elena Kagan and Ruth Ginsburg’s recent conducting of same-sex weddings! They won’t recuse themselves from the vote. Then President Obama spoke out in support of same-sex marriage in an interview with the New Yorker.[15]

• To add tinder to the fire, Vice President Biden, on May 17, the “International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia,” issued a statement blasting “religious condemnation” of homosexuality. Yes – under the guise of “equality.”
   
• Geoffrey Grider wrote in his book Now the End Begins: “According to Joe Biden, the American Bible believing Christian who takes the Bible literally is violating the ‘rights’ of the LGBT by trusting in God’s word. And this is why old-fashioned preaching will soon be classified as a ‘hate crime’ because Liberals can’t stand it. Biden is also saying that the rights of the Christian are inferior to the rights of the LGBT individual.”[16]
  
  Grider wrote of Biden’s latest statement: “Instead of ‘respecting universal human rights,’ the Bible says that homosexuality is an abomination that needs to be repented of. Jesus Christ went to the cross to redeem the homosexual, that’s true. But He did not go to the cross to preserve homosexuality. He came to abolish that, and all sin.”[17]
   
• Then Hillary Clinton in May of this year said: “Deep-seated cultural codes, religious beliefs and structural biases have to be changed.”[18] Can you imagine these individuals claiming superiority over God’s Holy Word? Much is at stake by the Supremes’ decision!

4. A warning to the Supreme Court justices was recently levied from Catholics and Protestants via a “Marriage Pledge.”

• “A decision purporting to redefine marriage flies in the face of the Constitution and is contrary to the natural created order. As people of faith we pledge obedience to our Creator when the State directly conflicts with higher law. We respectfully warn the Supreme Court not to cross this line….
  
  “We pledge to stand together to defend  marriage for what it is, a bond between one man and one woman, intended for life, and open to the gift of children.”[19]

Rabbi Jonathan Cahn, author of the New York Times bestseller The Harbinger and the inspiration behind the “Isaiah 9:10 Judgment” move, has warned the justices of the ramifications of passing judgment on God’s plan for marriage.

“If then this honorable court should overrule the word of God and strike down the eternal rules of order and right that Heaven itself hath ordained, how then will God save it? 
 
“Supreme Court Justices, can you judge the ways of God? Can you, with manmade verdicts, overrule the eternal laws of God? There is another court, and there is another judge. And before Him, all men and all judges will give account.
 
“If a nation's high court should pass judgment on the Almighty, should you then be surprised if the Almighty should pass judgment on that court and that nation.

“We are doing exactly that which Israel did on the altars of Baal.”[20]
 
Christianity Marginalized – Irreversible?
 
Though representing a minority of citizens, the legal directives passed under the guise of “equality,” are threatening Christian “free expression” as never before in U.S. history.

• The fact that the Supreme Court will take their seats to possibly strike down the historic and Biblical definition of marriage unveils a sinister war against America’s foundation.
• Solicitor General Donald Verrill acknowledged in April of 2015 that if the Supremes affirm same-sex marriage, it will be a “problem” for Christian schools.[21]

The Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution will be administered, permitting intolerance of those opposing homosexuality on moral grounds.
 
There is a coercive element that is driving the gay agenda. Journalist and author Kirsten
Powers, in her new book The Silencing – How the Left is Killing Free Speech[22] recently said that it’s not only a legal matter but “gay rights” are being forwarded through intimidation.[23] She observes:

• No longer will the Left talk about the issue. There is no debate. Accept their side or be labeled as homophobic or a bigot.
• This has acutely accelerated in the past few months and is “picking up steam.”
• It has become very “authoritarian.” They are behaving like “religious zealots.” They cannot tolerate or will not tolerate people who think differently.

This has taken another twist. President Obama, at two Prayer Breakfasts this year, has sought to delegitimize Christians. His comments “culturally” normalize labeling them and undermine the “free exercise” principles this country was founded on.
 
Pat Buchanan notes (May 2015), “As faith dies, individualism, materialism and hedonism replace it.”[24]

• He said the Supreme Court postured (1882): “This is a Christian nation.”
• Then Woodrow Wilson (U.S. president 1913-1921) spoke out: “America was born a Christian Nation.”
• Harry Truman followed (U.S. president 1945-1953): “This is a Christian nation.”
• In 2009 – President Barack Hussein Obama: “We do not consider ourselves a Christian nation.”

Buchanan said that since the 1970’s churches themselves have been increasingly trying to embrace secular culture that emerged from the 1960’s. That has, in turn, accelerated their irrelevance, especially among young people.

• Moral standards are more and more relative.
• Church-supported homosexual leaders now, behind many pulpits, are marginalizing Christianity.
• “Sin” has become a taboo subject.

“Historically, as faith dies, the culture and civilization to which it gave birth dies.”[25]
 
Redefining Freedom
 
Legitimizing homosexuality in classrooms has reached such a proportion that parental outrage, which is labeled as resistance to education and the right of children, is stifled.

• In Obama’s speech in Cairo, June 2009, he spoke of a Muslim America and its “freedom of religion.”
• At Fort Hood in November 2009 in a Memorial service for the soldiers gunned down by a radical Muslim, he termed this country’s religious liberty “freedom of worship!”

“Freedom of religion” is out! Even in questionnaires for new immigrants only “freedom of worship” is used. What does that herald?
 
“Catholic Online explained: ‘Let’s be clear … language matters when it comes to defining freedoms and limits. A shift from freedom of religion to freedom of worship moves the dialog from the world stage into the physical confines of a church, temple, synagogue or mosque. … It … could exclude our right to raise our children in our faith, the right to religious education, literature or media, the right to raise funds or organize charitable activities and the right to express religious beliefs in the normal discourse of life.’
 
“The Alliance Defending Freedom has cited the Obama administration’s use, since Cairo, of ‘freedom of worship’ to undermine ‘freedom of religion,’ as one of the ‘direct attacks on religious freedom’ by Obama.”[26]
 
How might that affect us?
 
“Obama appointed radical-homosexual activist Chai Feldblum to a federal office, and Feldblum is on record stating: “We should … not tolerate private beliefs about sexual orientation and gender. … Protecting one group’s identity may, at times, require that we burden others’ belief liberty … it is essential that we not privilege moral beliefs that are religiously based over other sincerely held, core, moral beliefs.”[27]

“Jonathan Imbody wrote in the Washington Times (2013) that the administration’s shift in language was major.

“Worship at its core is essentially a private and personal process, a communion between God and an individual. No government could restrict such worship, any more than it could monitor and censor every citizen’s thoughts and prayers. Even forbidding individuals to worship together in public, which coercive communist governments like China’s have done, cannot actually prevent individuals from worshiping God in private. So a law that merely protected the freedom to worship would hardly be worth heralding in a presidential proclamation.

“The free exercise of religion under the American Constitution, by contrast, includes the freedom to openly express, follow and live out our faith – not just in private but also in the public square – without government coercion, censorship or any other form of restriction.

“The concept of religious liberty held by the Constitution’s framers included not merely the freedom to worship, but also the free exercise of conscience – carrying out one’s moral beliefs with conviction and action.”[28]

The force to de-legitimize Christian values has now gone so far, British philosopher Adm Swift and Harry Brighous have proposed:[29]

1. A loving, happy family gives those kids an unfair advantage.
2. Bedtime stories read to children should be outlawed. A happy home life is an inequality.
3. Parents shouldn’t have as much control over the kids.
4. Perhaps the home needs three to four parents to bring proper equality.

“Equality” is becoming a legal excuse for “evil rights.” It will morph into totalitarianism. Can you imagine that even questioning the right to happiness is in print?!
 
Summary Thoughts – A Sequence
 
“God never forces the will or the conscience; but Satan’s constant resort – to gain control of those whom he cannot otherwise seduce – is compulsion by cruelty. Through fear or force he endeavors to rule the conscience and to secure homage to himself. To accomplish this, he works through both religious and secular authorities, moving them to the enforcement of human laws in defiance of the law of God.”[30]
 
Then comes this: “In accidents and calamities by sea and by land, in great conflagrations, in fierce tornadoes and terrific hailstorms, in tempests, floods, cyclones, tidal waves, and earthquakes, in every place and in a thousand forms, Satan is exercising his power. He sweeps away the ripening harvest, and famine and distress follow. He imparts to the air a deadly taint, and thousands perish by the pestilence. These visitations are to become more and more frequent and disastrous. Destruction will be upon both man and beast. ‘The earth mourneth and fadeth away,’ ‘the haughty people … do languish. The earth also is defiled under the inhabitants thereof; because they have transgressed the laws, changed the ordinance, broken the everlasting covenant.’ Isaiah 24:4, 5.”[31]
 
Then, because of a failure to understand and place the moral disorder of society where it belongs, a new and strange way of thinking infiltrates Chrisendom: “Those who honor the Bible Sabbath will be denounced as enemies of law and order, as breaking down the moral restraints of society, causing anarchy and corruption, and calling down the judgments of God upon the earth. Their conscientious scruples will be pronounced obstinacy, stubbornness, and contempt of authority. They will be accused of disaffection toward the government. Ministers who deny the obligation of the divine law will present from the pulpit the duty of yielding obedience to the civil authorities as ordained of God. In legislative halls and courts of justice, commandment keepers will be misrepresented and condemned. A false coloring will be given to their words; the worst construction will be put upon their motives.”[32]
 
What is next? When calamities bring helplessness, you can then see what shortly follows. A lack of moral restraints will soon bring further religious restraints – and then – the End will come.