EndTime Issues ...

 
“But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God – having a form of godliness but denying its power” (II Timothy 3:1-5 – NIV).
 
Stunning! They have a “form of godliness,” they’re “religious people,” but they’re apostates. This must represent a large segment of the 83% of Americans who claim to be Christian. Satan’s wrath affects earth’s inhabitants and God’s truly committed. He taints the name of Christianity. His work is facilitated by “slaves” of deceit.
 
Noticing even now that something is terribly amiss, conservative pastor David Jeremiah of San Diego, CA, noted that “America is at a delicate tipping point in her national life and only God knows which way she will tip. I do not believe the world will get a permanent reprieve from chaos and confusion until the return of the Lord Jesus Christ.”[1]
 
Former attorney, now pastor of the Faith Bible Church in Edmond, OK, and prolific author Dr. Mark Hitchcock, explains that the insanity of our times cannot be grasped except in the light of the last days.[2]
 
The late Evangelical Jack Kinsella, in his book The Last Generation,[3] writes that Bible prophecy points to our generation, which will herald the imminent return of Jesus.

• In encouraging words, he notes, “It’s easy to get discouraged. But our home is not here, and our hope is not in our country or in its political solutions.”
• “If there has never been a time like this, it’s because we are on the edge of eternity, and that means Christ is even at the door, waiting to take His bride home.”

This echoes the words of expositor White: “The chaos caused by sin will not last forever. Someday we will live as God intended – in peace, love, and happiness. Death and Sorrow will be banished forever. And best of all, you can be a part of that amazing new world!”[4]
 
Radicalization of “Christian” America
 
John Q. Adams, the sixth U.S. president, observed: “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” Benjamin Franklin said, “Only virtuous people are capable of freedom.”

• Why those insights? Moral, virtuous and religious people have self-control and disciplined lives. They respect each other’s freedom. Otherwise, external controls from an ever more powerful government must be imposed.[5] True freedom and independence would be compromised if the nation were radicalized.
• The moral heart of America is being hijacked. A paradigm shift from the past is morphing its roots into evil machinations. Restlessness and uncertainty are accelerating. A divisive spirit has enveloped its thinking over racism, immigration, climate change, international trade and political corruption, while terrorism is on the ascendency. Political hate speech has become degrading and insulting. The word “assassinate” is even heard in the media.
• Might this explain the numb, almost blind, reaction people have toward the barbarism in Africa and the Middle East?

Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders came into Congress in 1990 as a socialist. He started the Congressional Progressive Caucus. This body is related to Communism with marginal respect for the U.S. Constitution.[6] He has always been in favor of a strong centralized government with restrictions on any descent. His totalitarian ideology does not need God.
Intriguingly, Hillary Clinton, a long-time follower of the late Chicago Marxist Saul Alinsky, identifies with Sander’s philosophy:[7]

• “Many of you are well enough off that … the tax cuts may have helped you. We’re saying that for America to get back on track, we’re probably going to cut that short and not give it to you. We’re going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good.”
• “We can’t keep talking about our dependence on foreign oil, and the need to deal with global warming, and the challenge that it poses to our climate and to God’s creation, and just let business as usual go on. And that means something has to be taken away from some people.”

Sounds like wealth redistribution. “Common good?” That’s a “buzz phrase” from the Roman Catholic Church’s Social Doctrines. The key elements of that dogma are the same as the Democratic Progressives against free market, managing all walks of life with a powerful “central control” to “maintain peace.”[8]

• Recall that Barack Obama removed the bust of the great British leader Winston Churchill when he entered the White House.
• Churchill had said that socialism was “the gospel of envy.” The bust is in storage.

Jewish Dennis Prager, author, talk show host and profound thinker, said, “Nothing guarantees the triumph of evil like refusing to fight it. Great evil is therefore never defeated by peace activities.”[9] Where is the moral and political concern on “both sides of the aisle” against this destructive evolution within America? It cannot be heard from godless hearts.
 
Founded in 1950, the NYC-based National Council of Churches has remained faithful to its legacy as a communist front group.[10]

• It adheres to a similar dogma of Liberation Theology – a Roman Catholic ideology that originated in South America – chronically appealing to relieving the plight of the poor – but at the economic expense of “everyone else.” It encourages the redistribution of wealth. This is endorsed by Pope Francis![10]
• These “liberation” tenets are Marxist-related. They strongly reject capitalism and encourage “global collectivization.”

The NCC’s parent organization is the Geneva-based World Council of Churches – an unwavering ally of socialism.[11]
 
Ideologically, the NCC links to the Democratic Party, forming a “religious left.” Intriguingly, this is fostering liberal trends, hijacking “Christian” America. This “body” favors social concerns over Biblical mandates. Conservative Christianity is even seen as a threat to these socialistic trends.[12] Is America playing into the deft hand of the dragon? Might the “terrible times” of
II Timothy 3:1-5 be emerging?

The Intensity Grows with an Islamic “Push”
 
February 3, 2016, the U.S. President addressed the Islamic Society of Baltimore. He noted: “Like so many faiths, Islam is rooted in a commitment to compassion and mercy and justice and charity.”

• He failed to mention that only men were on the main floor – the women were forced to be in the balcony.[13] He did not address the fact that there were two sections in the Quran: one peaceful, the other composed later in Medina that promotes violence.[14]

He then visited the society’s associated Baltimore mosque.

• Mr. Obama ignored the warning by the FBI that this society has supported suicide bombings, Hamas, and the Taliban, and gave the late Osama bin Laden hundreds of thousands of dollars[15]

This agency and mosque are affiliated with the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), which began as the International Muslim Brotherhood in 1980. The latter is banned by many countries.

• The Obama administration has legitimized radical Islamic groups and refuses to utter the word “radical Islam.”
• The ISNA has a stranglehold on 70% of the U.S.’s 3186 mosques.
• The Boston Marathon bombers, the murderer of five U.S. servicemen, the San Bernardino attackers and Orlando murderer were all associated with one of those mosques.

Saudi cash to build and refurbish mosques is filtered through the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT). They and the ISNA dictate what the mosque teaches – all ideologies associated with the Muslim Brotherhood.[16]

• The FBI director, James Comey, told Congress that his agency is stretched to the limit with one thousand active Islamic criminal investigations (affecting all fifty states).[17]
• However, almost beyond understanding, the administration is abetting this by increasingly blocking criminal investigations into Islamic terrorism.[18]
• A new mosque that sympathizes with terror goes up every week in the U.S., according to Dr. Mark Christian, president and founder of Global Faith Institute (a former Muslim Brotherhood member – now a Christian).[19]

Pamela Geller, author and a voice against Islam’s growing influence in American society, said that the Obama administration has all but stopped monitoring U.S. mosques. In fact, all reference to Islam and terrorism has been scrubbed from military training manuals at the request of the Council for American Islamic Relations![20]
 
In addition, based upon what is now occurring in Europe, especially in Germany, it is expected that soon:

1. Muslims will be in key political posts (local to national).
2. Calls for prayer five times a day will be blasted over loudspeakers in many cities.
3. Muslim women will be faced with genital mutilation (a CDC report).[21]
4. Major curtailment of freedom for women will supervene.
5. Terrorism will increase.
6. Christians will be publically labeled as infidels.

Complicating all this, Christian nations, even churches, have been slow in calling Middle East Christian “extermination” genocide! However:

• Appeals from the Heritage Foundation, Knights of Columbus, Catholic University’s Columbus School of Law and the U.S. Commissioner on International Religious Freedom have urged a “Christian genocide” designation.
• Pope Francis noted that the jihadist atrocities were part of a “third world war” waged piecemeal, which we are now experiencing. A form of genocide is taking place, and “it must end.”[22]

Intriguingly, Huma Abedin, Hillary Clinton’s “shadow,” “traveling chief of staff,” “senior advisor” and “vice-chair of Hillary’s 2016 presidential campaign,” is a Muslim with strong ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and the Muslim World League of Saudi Arabia.[23]
 
Though there is an ecumenical “meditation room” without religious markings at the United Nations, Muslims have convinced Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and his executive staff that the General Assembly area needs to be used each Friday from 11:45 to 3:00 p.m. for prayers.

• It has become their “Islamic space.”
• It even affects tours through the United Nations complex.[24]

“Radical” Islam is represented by the “king of the south” in Daniel 11, which is beginning to exercise its negative power.[25] It is “pushing” against Christianity and receiving national/international favors that Christianity dare not block – yet!
 
This Danelic prophecy notes that dreadful woes will increasingly strike at the Christian World by this movement at a time when “the love of many waxes cold” (Mark 3:25). The word “push,” prophesied in Daniel 11:40 means to “wage war” (nagah –  H).
 
“Close to 100,000 Christians are being killed every year because of their faith, according to statistics from a Pew Research Survey and the International Society for Human Rights, a non-religious organization (early 2015).
 
“These figures, which represent an ‘unprecedented,’ number of deaths per year amount to 273 Christians killed daily, or 11 every hour,” said Bishop John McAreavey, chairman of the Council for Justice and Peace.
 
“The bishop added that an ever great number of Christians are ‘being tortured, imprisoned, exiled, threatened, excluded, attacked and discriminated against on a widespread scale.’”[26]
 
Against the wishes of 83% of Americans, the 680,000+ Muslim immigrants that have entered this country since 2009 are a powder keg ready to explode.[27]
 
Antichrist Concerns
 
A growing segment of the evangelical world is on edge that something momentous is about to occur. They see apocalyptic prophecy soon leading to:

1. A geopolitical nation/world – led by an “antichrist” – and
2. A geopolitical nation/world – given supportive power through a “false prophet.”

The dynamics of what is transpiring in America can only be viewed as a “set-up” for Satan’s final plans. Radical Islam, upheaval in American freedom and social upheaval of the Christian faith are tools which the dragon needs to stage his final assault!
 
Olive Tree Ministries, a Protestant organization from Maple Grove, MN, observed that when you look at the faces of 150,000 people waiting to see Pope Francis emerge from his balcony, one should get alarmed. Strong delusions are at play. They are waiting for a god in elegant attire to greet them and bring relief to world chaos.

• He is adored as the antichrist will be.
• It can’t be forgotten that the Jesuits were the Catholics who were the most opposed to the Protestant Reformation and wielded power in the Counter Reformation.[28]

Without declaring him to be the antichrist, they questioned, “Might he be the antichrist?”
 
Even the Pope’s name sake, St. Francis of Assisi, is non-threatening and appeals to non-Catholics. This name draws people to trust him. Recall, however, he is a Jesuit.
 
Bible prophecy does reveal that a global leader, identified as a “beast” in Revelation 13 and 17 and a “little horn” in Daniel 8 will be singled out. He will be the antichrist.
 
In fact, it affirms that the “world will wonder” after this “beast power” (Revelation 13:3). The whole planet becomes enamored by its/his leadership, its policies and its appearance as religious.

• Chaos and calamity will soon lead the planet’s citizens to cry as Israel of old did to Samuel: “Give us a king!” (I Samuel 8:1-5).
• At a time of crisis, when loyalty to God was marginalized, they wanted a human king. Today, more voices are calling for some “moral leader” to put a check on the burgeoning evil.

The citizenry of many nations are already feeling growing helplessness. Whole cultures are being threatened by thousands of unwanted immigrants. Intriguingly, Pope Francis said that if you try to block them, you are not Christian.[29] This has brought dismay – but he asserts his claim is Biblical “that they may be one.” A spirit of desperation is in the air. The global political upheaval is demanding a tough-talking, charismatic leaders who can:

• Redirect humanity from its impending anarchy and implosion – and
• Assure that money, health care, food, safety and peace will come. Might that leader be undergoing grooming in the City of the Seven Hills by that dragon?

Change that Must be Believed[30]^,31
 
Is an unwanted, sinister agenda gripping mankind? Are the dragon’s minions taking charge?
 
Pioneering British psychiatrist and author of Battle for the Mind: A Physiology of Conversion and Brainwashing, William Sargant, notes that many types of beliefs can be implanted in people by enough fear, excitement, guilt and/or anxiety by a nation’s leaders.[31]
 
A good example recently related to President Obama’s reaction to the massacre in Orlando, Florida, June 2016. He addressed the nation – but his emphasis was on gun control – restricting a liberty that had nothing to do with the tragedy. The outcry against what really happened was marginalized. Crises, anxiety and blame are part of the agenda with, finally, chaos. Where was the media on this – sticking to “the agenda”?!
 
Strategies to distort the public’s thinking and weaken their resolve include:

• Bring in enticing moral changes into the culture through entertainment and the media.
• Talk often about homosexual behavior, and today, gay marriages and transgender bathrooms so people will get used to new mores.
• Promote tactics to create helplessness. Then exploit the crisis to create dependency, even if freedom is restricted.
• Make people feel they “don’t have enough” or project guilt on those who are wealthy.
• Hammer constantly that the economy and health care systems are broken.
• Instill a “feeling” that there is a war on women, rampant racism (Black Lives Matter), discrimination, homophobia, and today transphobia, Islamophobia, etc.

As anxiety and chaos increase, people “give in” to what seems the easiest reaction.

• Note how many “conservative Christians” today embrace gay marriage. A decade ago they were repulsed by it. The female body is idolized in ways that not long ago would have been reprehensible.
• Another example is the infiltration and slow incrementalism by Christian churches of new techniques to bring in “spiritual growth” and numbers. The Bible is being minimized; behavior and feelings are being touted.

How did our present leaders learn that chaos is a way to usurp power? For Hillary, Obama and those “progressives” it was, again, the late Saul Alinsky’s treatise, Rules for Radicals.[32]

• In his “community organizing” experiences in Chicago, Obama imitated Alinsky’s techniques.[33] 
• “It was that education that was seared into my brain. It was the best education I ever had, better than anything I got at Harvard Law School.”[34]

What did Alinsky teach?!

• “Any revolutionary change must be preceded by a passive, affirmative, non-challenging attitude toward change among the mass of our people. They must feel so frustrated, so defeated, so lost, so futureless in the prevailing system that they are willing to let go of the past and chance the future.”[35]
• “A revolutionary organizer must shake up the prevailing patterns of their lives – agitate, create disenchantment and discontent with the current values, to produce, if not a passion for change, at least a passive, affirmative, non-challenging climate.”[36]
• “The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition.”[37] (Especially Christianity – “right wing”)

Similar tactics are promoted in Marxism and continue within Liberation Theology, again, the latter propounded by the Jesuits and the present pope.
 
The President’s reluctance to use the words “Islam” or “Islamic radicals” is only to heighten the societal anxiety – who already know differently.[38] A growing “hatred” heightened towards Christians is boiling in a federal pot at Homeland Security. Jeh Johnson, its director, said recently (June 2016) that the threat from “right-wing extremists” in the United States was “just as real as the threat from Islamic extremism.”[39] Christians, beware!
 
Wielding unprecedented influence is a body of elites who control the world’s media spin. Sharyl Attkisson, journalist and TV personality, said in June 2016:
 
“Elites have become adept at controlling media narratives, going so far as to ostracize reporters who ‘veer’ from a particular narrative.” Their goal is to control the collective thinking of earth’s populace!
 
She noted that in a recent conference in Russia, global journalists reviewed how the media was to manipulate and stick with a unified narrative.[40] Those reporters were directed to be part of a cohesive “message” internationally. Centralized news restricts good investigative journalism and taints the truth as to what really is!
 
Alarming Christian Concern
 
Why is all this of importance? A Bible expositor of over a century ago understood these principles. Looking forward through the eye of Biblical prophecy regarding Sabbitarians, she observed that secular and religious leaders would use a reason to restrict liberty.

• This is what E. G. White said:
  
  “And then the great deceiver will persuade men that those who serve God are causing these evils [disease, disaster, famine]. [Societal anxiety, already high, reaches a peak.] The class that have provoked the displeasure of Heaven will charge all their troubles upon those whose obedience to God’s commandments is a perpetual reproof to transgressors. It will be declared that men are offending God by the violation of the Sunday-sabbath, that this sin has brought calamities which will not cease until Sunday observance shall be strictly enforced, and that those who present the claims of the fourth commandment, thus destroying reverence for Sunday, are troublers of the people, preventing their restoration to divine favor and temporal prosperity.”[41]

For this to occur, the cultural framework must be adept at blame, projection of guilt, searching for a “why” to explain and then be ready to punish. That evolution is well under way!
 
In 1956 Joost A. M. Meerloo published a paperback book, The Rape of the Mind, The Psychology of Thought Control, Menticide, and Brainwashing. In it he talks about:

• “Mass conditioning” – “political conditioning”
• Moving people to “total submission”
• “The myth of courage”

It was a monumental document to help rational people “prepare” for what he perceived was inevitably coming to America.
 
His first words in this book were insightful and a warning: “And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell” (Matthew 10:28).

• That is what every person on this planet will soon be challenged with.
• In a thousand forms, agencies for evil are working to break the will.[42]
• Satan wants to mold individual choices and our thinking.[43]

Elevated counsel that also goes back two millennia encourages: “Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you” (James 4:7). That includes his minions that are multiplying.

• Submit – hupotasso  – means to subordinate oneself to God.
• Subordinate personal desires in favor of heaven, regardless of what pressure the dragon and his representatives bear.

Society – our evolving Marxist culture – our government – wants us to:

• Avoid certain words, to not offend
• Pay carbon tax because of a non-existent global warming
• Have guilt over racism
• Believe men and women can share bathrooms
• Feel right about gay marriage
• Have greed toward the rich
• Think negatively about Christianity

An “elite” group are trying to convince the citizenry to accept less freedom for cradle-to-the-grave security by a small, “all-knowing” oligarchy in Washington.

• For the Christian, a keen awareness of Satan’s erosive incrementalism against the moral authority of heaven is imperative.
• True freedom comes when: “… the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed” (John 8:36). We need that assurance which heaven awards.

As Satan elevates the desire for power in despotic individuals, more and more destructive laws will follow.

• Freedom is not an emotional concept – though the “progressive” movement would make that appear as its desirable ideal.
• Freedom is a principle of a liberated will to choose right from wrong and let God handle the consequences.

No nation – no ideology – no power can destroy that will if we are submissive to God’s wishes. We are promised that the Holy Spirit will strengthen the will with an eternal resolve – no matter the outward forces.
 
“There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it” (I Corinthians 10:13).
 
Soon our consciences will be coerced through intimidation, threats, projection of guilt and blame. Somewhere, sometime soon, we all will have to come to grips with who our loyalty rests with. Hopefully, then, we’ll cry – “Lord save me!” Jan Merkell, Director of Olive Tree Ministries notably observed:

• The world may be falling apart –
• But everything is falling into place!

“Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ” (Titus 21:13).