Special Report: Is Hell a Literal Place?

Special Report: Is Hell a Literal Place?
Vol: 69 Issue: 30 Saturday, June 30, 2007

Special Report: Is Hell a Literal Place?

I received an email from a reader asking me, “Do you believe in a literal hell where people will burn and be tormented forever and ever or is this a temporary place where people will go through a purging and purifying process for their sins?”

My correspondent directed me to a website that argues there is no hell and attempts to ‘prove’ it by ‘disproving’ the passage of Scripture that most clearly explains it. The website, published by one L. Ray Smith, takes the story of Lazarus and the rich man in Luke 16:19-31 and turns it into a parable.

Thus, as a parable, argues Mr. Smith, the passage does not teach of a literal hell. Instead, it is symbolism and allegory, he says. Then he goes on at length, ‘proving’ it is ‘just a parable’, and torturing various Scriptures from other places in order to make them fit his argument.

It is really quite convincing, until, at long last, you come to the end of the piece and realize what Smith says the ‘parable’ was all about.

He argues, “The real truth of this parable is not nearly as morbid as it may appear at first glance. God has a plan that eventually brings all the Jews and all the Gentiles to salvation. The very heart of the Gospel is the salvation of the Jews and Gentiles, the salvation of the WHOLE WORLD!”

Well, there you have it, then! You don’t need to be saved. You needn’t trust Jesus to save you, since He is going to anyway. The whole world is gonna be saved.

Hitler and Stalin aren’t going to spend eternity in hell — they are going to be in heaven — with their victims. Won’t that be pleasant? (Does that mean that Judas will be there, too?)

Smith makes his case by arguing that the Book of Revelation is a Book of ‘symbols’ and therefore worthless as an authority, since one can interpret symbols and allegory to mean whatever one chooses.

Smith also argues that God is not a Trinity of Three Persons and that the Rapture is a divisive theory deceiving millions.

In addition, Smith claims that only the Apostles were capable of ‘rightly dividing the Word of Truth’ and that ‘Death cannot prevent sinners from repenting’.

Smith’s theology requires allegorizing things such as, ‘For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God:” (Ephesians 2:8) because one can’t have ‘faith’ after one is dead.

Hebrews 11:1 tells us, “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”

If the dead can repent, it isn’t by faith. A lost person ‘waking up’ on the other side won’t NEED faith.

He’ll see for himself that God is real, and hell is real and his choice wouldn’t be made by faith, but rather certain knowledge. Given the choice between heaven and hell, knowing you are already dead in your sins, where would YOU choose?

Contrary to Mr. Smith’s ravings, hell is a real place, attested to more often and described more clearly in Scripture than heaven is.

Three times in Mark Chapter 9, in describing hell, Jesus said of it, “Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.” (Mark 9:44,46,48)

“And if thy hand offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched: Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.” (Mark 9:43-44)

Is this ‘allegory’? A ‘symbol’? A ‘parable’?

Revisiting Smith’s ‘parable’ in Luke 16, we read the following: “There WAS a certain rich man, which was clothed in purple and fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day: And there was a certain beggar named Lazarus, which was laid at his gate, full of sores.” (16:19-20)

Note that He didn’t say, “Now learn the parable of a certain rich man” — He said, “There WAS a certain rich man.”

Having established the players, Jesus went on to say of the rich man, “And in hell he lift up his eyes, being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom.” (16:23)

Note the rich man is in hell, but he can see Abraham and Lazarus ‘afar off’. The Bible teaches that those whose sins were covered by the “blood of bullocks” — the Old Testament ‘righteous dead’ went to Paradise — and not to heaven.

Jesus told the repentant thief on the Cross, “Verily I say unto thee, To day shalt thou be with me in paradise.” (Luke 23:43)

Jesus explains that Paradise — or ‘Abraham’s bosom’ was located in the same place as hell, but separated into places of torment and places of comfort;

“And beside all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed: so that they which would pass from hence to you cannot; neither can they pass to us, that would come from thence.” (Luke 16:26)

At His Death, Jesus ‘descended into hell’ in order to liberate the righteous dead and take them to heaven;

“Wherefore He saith, When He ascended up on high, He led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men. (Now that He ascended, what is it but that He also descended first into the lower parts of the earth? He that descended is the same also that ascended up far above all heavens, that He might fill all things.)” (Ephesians 4:8-10)

Once the righteous dead were taken to heaven, hell was expanded to make room.

Jesus tells us that hell is a place of fiery torment: “And he cried and said, Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame.” (Luke 16:24)

There are several other things we learn from Jesus about hell, and about those who are condemned to it. First, the rich man has no name, whereas Lazarus is addressed by name throughout the passage. The rich man needs no name. Nobody will ever call it again.

He is eternally separated from God; to all intents and purposes, he is ‘dead’ to God, and to everyone who ever knew him. He is only alive to himself. But the rich man is cognizant of his life, how he ended up in hell, and those he left behind. His memories of his earthly life are intact:

“Then he said, I pray thee therefore, father, that thou wouldest send him to my father’s house: For I have five brethren; that he may testify unto them, lest they also come into this place of torment.” (Luke 16:22-28)

Jesus teaches us that those condemned to hell are; a) in fiery torment, b) are self-aware, c) are nameless and without hope of reprieve, d) are conscious of their situation, and, e) their memories of their earthly lives are intact.

The Book of the Revelation teaches that what we call ‘hell’ is more analogous to a county jail, where prisoners are held pending trial and conviction. Once a county jail inmate is convicted, he is transferred to a state pentiteniary to serve out his sentence.

“And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works. And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death.” (Revelation 20:13-14)

When John describes the judgment against the devil, he writes: “And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever.”

Note two things. First, the beast and false prophet ‘are’ – present tense — in the lake of fire. They were not consumed. Secondly, it is a ‘lake of fire and brimstone’ and its inhabitants ‘shall be tormented day and night forever and ever’.

Of course, if the Book of the Revelaton were really ‘symbols’ and ‘allegory’ — as Mr. Smith teaches — then this passage is meaningless. So would the rest of the Bible be meaningless, if Mr. Smith is correct.

If this passage is allegorical, then maybe the part about “I give unto them eternal life, and they shall never die” is ALSO allegory.

Heck, maybe the whole Bible is allegory.

The facts are these. If heaven is real, then hell is real. If God is real, then Satan is real. The Bible is not a theological smorgasbord where one can pick and choose what to put on their plates and choose to reject other parts as unpalatable. The same Bible that reveals the existence of God and heaven also reveals the existence of Satan, hell and the Lake of Fire.

Despite the best efforts of false teachers to recreate God in their own image, hell is real, and was NOT created intitially for man — it was prepared for Satan and the rebellious angels.

Man was created in God’s Image — that is, with an eternal component that can not die. That existence continues somewhere; either in heaven with God, or eternally separated from God.

There is no third option.

That is why God places such great emphasis on the Great Commission. God knows what hell is really like, and gave His Own Son as a substitute sacrifice so that we could escape its torments.

Every person you see today, whether they are bagging your groceries or changing the oil in your car — EVERY PERSON — has an eternal destiny.

They will either spend eternity in unspeakable joy in the presence of the Father in Heaven, or they will spend eternity in equally unspeakable torment, separated from the Father, and remembering the opportunity they squandered to escape their fate.

For those of us that know the truth, that is an awesome thing to contemplate. It rekindles a sense of urgency for the lost. We are the watchmen on the wall.

It is incumbent upon us to be prepared, “and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear:” (1 Peter 3:15)

The Omega Letter exists — not to preach to the lost — but to equip the saved with the knowledge they need to “stand against the wiles of the devil.” (Ephesians 6:11)

The information in your Omega Letter is not for entertainment. We don’t sensationalize events to sell subscriptions. Our goal is to equip the one-on-one evangelist, to prepare you for such teachers and teachings as those presented by our Mr. L. Ray Smith.

We pray that Our Lord will continue to allow us to do so as the clock counts down to the end of the Church Age. Regardless of how false teachers try to frame things to suit, the Truth remains unspoiled.

“All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: That the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works.” (2nd Timothy 3:16-17)

Note:

I am teaching at the Shabbot Service this morning at Shalom Adonai Messianic Baptist Fellowship in Wichita, Kansas. Therefore, this morning’s column is a rerun from 2004.

I pray you find it useful. ~ Jack

Ahmadinejad’s Mussolini

Ahmadinejad’s Mussolini
Vol: 69 Issue: 29 Friday, June 29, 2007

Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been characterized many times as the 21st century’s answer to Hitler.

Before declaring Ahmadinejad as the 21st century’s Hitler, Presidents Bill Clinton and George Bush, Prime Minister Tony Blair, as well as members of their respective candidates, declared Saddam Hussein to be the Adolf Hitler of this generation.

The Hitler/Nazi Germany analogy can be a powerful indictment. Whenever it is used, stark associations flood the mind: appeasement, war, gas chambers, genocide, and the deaths of millions of people. Once we cry Hitler, all attempts at detente or diplomacy are dismissed as mere appeasement.

The ghost of Hitler was invoked in a speech by former Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Nentanyahu at the General Assembly of the United Jewish Communities this month. As the Jewish Telegraphic Agency recently reported:

“Netanyahu warned that Iran is aiming to develop 25 nuclear weapons a year, ultimately with a range that can reach the East Coast of the United States.

It s 1938 and Iran is Germany. And Iran is racing to get atomic weapons, Netanyahu repeated again and again. When someone tells you he is going to exterminate you, believe him and stop him.

The former prime minister said he had been trying for a decade to warn world leaders that Iran represented the greatest threat not just to Israel but also to Europe and America but nobody seems to care very strongly.

While Hitler started a war and then tried to develop an atomic bomb, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is building nuclear weapons first and then will start a war, Netanyahu warned. Unlike 1938 and its aftermath, however, this time the Jewish people will not be the sacrificial lamb, Netanyahu declared to prolonged applause.”

Hitler was a singular evil in the pantheon of history. On many levels, his brand of evil is incomparable; any attempt to compare him to tin-pot dictators like Saddam or even Ahmadinejad tends to minimize Hitler more than it maximizes the target of such comparisons.

Hitler was evil unbound — he answered to no one, was beholden to his own ideology, which was uniquely Hitlerian. A comparison between Hitler and a common thug like Saddam Hussein is like comparing Al Capone and a common car-jacker.

Comparing Ahmadinejad to Hitler is similarly unsatisfactory on most levels, since, as evil as Ahmadinejad might be, he doesn’t stand alone the way Hitler does. Ahmadinejad is the product of a wider evil ideology, whereas Hitler was the founder and author of an evil without parallel in human history.

Ahmadinejad’s evil is replicated many times over within Islam; Hitler’s evil is such that it will be replicated only once more in the course of history. Ahmadinejad’s qualification as the 21st century answer to Hitler rests on the fact that Ahmadinejad is a head of state, as Hitler was a head of state.

But Ahmadinejad’s hatred of the Jews and his desire to wipe them from the map is rooted in the wider ideology of Islam. Ahmadinejad sees the destruction of Israel as a duty imposed on him by Islam.

Hitler’s destruction of the Jews was not rooted in a religious duty, but rather a matter a personal joy.

Ahmadinejad’s hatred is aimed at the ‘Zionist State’ which his religious convictions demand be eradicated. Hitler’s hatred was aimed at the individual Jew.

Ahmadinejad wants to see the elimination of the Jewish state as a corporate Zionist entity for the crime of usurping Islamic control over Jerusalem.

Hitler’s goal was the elimination of every living Jew for the crime of being Jews.

The only figure whose comparison to Hitler would be appropriate would be the antichrist — and only in that Hitler can be compared to the antichrist — and not the other way around.

That being said, Ahmadinejad is about as close to being the next Hitler to disgrace the ground he walks on as one can come without rising to the level of the antichrist. It isn’t my intention to dismiss him or minimize the threat that he poses.

I just don’t want to do an historical injustice to the evil that Hitler was, or to the victims of his evil. If anything, Hitler was Satan’s ‘trial run’ for the antichrist. But while Ahmadinejad doesn’t rise to Hitler’s level, Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez makes a pretty good historical repeat of Hitler’s henchman, Benito Mussolini.

Assessment:

Like Mussolini, Chavez is little more than a thug and a buffoon. In and of himself, he is not much of a threat, but when partnered with Ahmadinejad, the resulting combination increases the danger posed by both leaders by several orders of magnitude.

Like Mussolini, Chavez has no ideology of his own, apart from magnifying his own importance on the world stage. Mussolini introduced strict censorship and altered the methods of election so that in 1925-1926 he was able to assume dictatorial powers and dissolve all other political parties.

Skillfully using his absolute control over the press, he gradually built up the legend of the “il Duce, a man who was always right and could solve all the problems of politics and economics.”

Italy was soon a police state. In foreign policy, Mussolini soon shifted from pacifist anti-imperialism to an extreme form of aggressive nationalism.

While Mussolini had nothing particular against the Jews, when he allied himself with the Nazis, he adopted the Nazi racial policies that included the persecution of Jews and participation in their deportation to the Nazi death camps.

Like Mussolini, Chavez’ domestic supporters view him as a socialist liberator. He is seen as a champion of nationalism and anti-imperialism. He has used his popular support, as Mussolini did, to create the myth of a Latin American il Duce, a man who is always right and has the answers to all Latin America’s problems’.

As Venezuela’s il Duce, he has consolidated his power, claiming the right to rule by decree. He has assumed absolute control of all state institutions and achieved total political control. Like Mussolini, he has absolute control of the media and is not shy about using it.

An editorial posted at Venzuelaanalysis.com yesterday asked rhetorically;

“Why would the U.S. government go to such lengths to discredit Chavez when he is a democratically elected President who is more popular to his own people and to people of other countries than any president or leader in the history of the world?”

(The “most popular national leader” in the “history of the world”? No megalomania here.)

But Chavez, like Mussolini, knows that alone, the world views him as just another tin-pot dictator. As part of a wider alliance with Iran, however, Chavez importance on the world stage is more in keeping with his own self-image as a force to be reckoned with.

Ahmadinejad is playing Chavez like a bass fiddle. Last year, the Iranian president awarded Chavez its highest state medal in return for Chavez’ support of Tehran’s right to nuclear power. Chavez reciprocated for the honor by opening Terrorist Airlines, an air corridor from Tehran to the Americas via Caracas.

Last week, Tehran instituted gas rationing, which resulted in riots in the streets. While Iran has plenty of oil, it doesn’t have any refining capacity and is therefore 50% dependent on foreign suppliers for gasoline. Venezuela is awash with US-built refineries that he nationalized last year.

This week, Chavez went to Tehran, where he was received as a national hero. He emerged from the meeting to announce Venezuela is considering its own nuclear program.

Ahmandinejad emerged to announce gas rationing was only a ‘temporary’ measure.

While Ahmadinejad is playing Chavez like a bass fiddle, the orchestra conductor isn’t Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. It is Vladimir Putin.

Before his visit with Ahmadinejad, Chavez met with Putin for ‘talks’ outside Moscow. A Russian spokesman confirmed that the agenda was economic and military-technical cooperation between Russia, Iran and Venezuela.

Chavez expressed interest in purchasing Russian submarines. Caracas already has purchased some US$3 billion worth of arms from Russia, including 53 military helicopters, 100,000 Kalashnikov rifles, 24 SU-30 Sukhoi fighter jets and other weapons.

(The purchase of 100,000 Kalishnikovs is intriguing. Venezuela’s army, including reserves, numbers 83,000 men. Assuming they already had one rifle for each soldier, Venezuela’s arsenal of small arms is three times the number of men Chavez could deploy to use them.)

Ahmadinejad is no Adolf Hitler but Islamist Iran makes a passable Nazi Germany. Chavez makes a pretty fair Benito Mussolini, and Venezuela an historical clone of Fascist Italy. And ulling all the strings for both is the ubiquitous Vladimir Putin.

Benjamin Netanyahu was right on in his historical analogy that this is 1938 all over again. But this time, il Duce isn’t on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. He’s on the other side of the Rio Grande.

With 100,000 more Kalishnikovs than he has soldiers to carry them.

Lady Liberty’s Black Eye

Lady Liberty’s Black Eye
Vol: 69 Issue: 28 Thursday, June 28, 2007

A new Pew Research poll reveals that America’s international image continues to worsen, particularly in the Muslim world, but also among our ‘allies’ in Europe and Canada.

In analyzing the results of the polls, it isn’t hard to see why America is so tarnished, neither is it difficult to figure out who is responsible.

Al Gore, the New York Times, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Ted Kennedy, the Hollyweird Left, and the Leftist blogosphere can all take their bows.

The Pew survey was conducted in March and April, and is the most comprehensive survey of its kind since 2002, when America’s international standing was much stronger.

Majorities or pluralities in all but four survey countries excluding the United States itself – China, Israel, South Korea and Japan – say they dislike American ideas about democracy.

The country where America’s image is worst is Turkey, a NATO ally, where only 9 percent now have a favorable view, down from 52 percent before the United States went into Afghanistan in late 2001.

In Germany, traditionally one of the closest U.S. allies, only 30 percent now have a positive view, down from 78 percent before Bush took office in January 2001.

There has been serious slippage as well in Britain, America’s most reliable ally and its chief partner in the war in Iraq. A slim majority of Britons – 51 percent – now hold favorable views of the United States, down from 75 percent in 2002, before the Iraq invasion.

Support for the war on terror has plummeted since 2002, especially in Europe, where U.S. practices against inmates at the Guant namo Bay and Abu Ghraib prisons have been harshly condemned.

There is a widespread perception that the United States acts unilaterally in making international policy decisions.

This view is especially powerful in Europe, shared by 90 percent in Sweden, 89 percent in France, and 70 percent or more in Britain, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Germany, Russia, Slovakia and Spain.

A full 83 percent of Canadians believe that their neighbor to the south ignores their interests. Middle Easterners overwhelmingly share this view, as do many Asians, including South Koreans and Japanese.

Majorities in 43 of the 47 countries surveyed want a quick U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq. In the United States, 56 percent express this opinion. The exceptions are Ghana, Israel, Kenya and Nigeria.

Majorities or pluralities in 40 countries also want U.S. and North Atlantic Treaty Organization troops out of Afghanistan as soon as possible. This view, strongest in the Muslim world, was also held in many NATO member countries, notably Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain and Turkey.

It is interesting to note the issues that have given Lady Liberty her latest black eye; every single one of them a “cause c l bre” of America’s growing Marxist community of leftists.

At the top of the list is global warming. Is there ANYTHING that isn’t being blamed on global warming?

Yesterday, Johannesburg, South Africa was blanketed with four inches of snow. It was the first snowfall in that country in 28 years. I’d ask you to guess who the culprit is, but you already know. Global warming.

It might seem counter-intuitive to blame snow on global warming, but that is one of the hallmarks of the principle of the Big Lie.

As Hitler outlined it, the lie must so outrageous and so incredible that it causes the population to think, it must be true because nobody would make up something so crazy if it weren’t.

For the Big Lie to work, it has be something that makes the population go, “Hmmmm. That’s just crazy enough to be true.”

Like global warming makes it snow. And who is responsible for global warming?

America.

Assessment:

The principle of the Big Lie also demands a culprit; a convenient scapegoat upon whom to lay the blame. Al Gore and the American Marxists blame the rich, especially Big Business and Big Oil.

And since George Bush and the Republicans are accused of being in the pocket of Big Business and Big Oil, it then follows that George Bush and the Republicans are responsible for global warming.

Al Gore and the American Marxist Left use the Big Lie as a club with which to beat their political opponents about the head and shoulders, but they are no less in the pockets of Big Business and Big Oil than are George Bush and the Republicans.

America IS Big Business and Big Oil. There isn’t a Marxist in America who actually wants to LIVE the alternative lifestyle they advocate.

Nobody wants to live without a transportation system, or electricity, or modern medicine, or law enforcement, or adequate supplies of food, clean water, medical supplies, etc. They want to talk about change, but only in the abstract sense.

It is capitalism that supplies all that, and capitalism IS Big Business and Big Oil. If one wanted an example of what America would be like if Big Business and Big Oil collapsed, New Orleans in the days following Hurricane Katrina comes immediately to mind.

It’s the NIMBY Syndrome. They advocate all kinds of change, just as long as its Not In My Back Yard. (Ted Kennedy is all about alternative energy, until somebody plans to litter his million-dollar view from Martha’s Vineyard with a windmill farm.)

The problem with Americans condemning America is that it resonates among those countries who ALREADY live in the kind of chaos the Marxist ideology would create in America.

“Most of the citizens in the global survey agree the environment is in trouble and most blame the United States . . .” Pew said.

Who told Joe Jihad that the environment is in trouble? Who told the denizens of the desert regions that the desert they live in was America’s fault?

Al Gore and his cadre of mind-numbed mantra-spewing Marxist robots.

Before that, they just thought they lived in a desert because it was a desert that they lived in. Now, they live in a desert because of the United States.

Until Ban Ki-Moon told the Sudanese that they were being butchered by the Islamists because of global warming, they thought the genocide they were experiencing was the fault of Islam.

Now they know their misery is really all America’s fault for causing global warming.

So the Islamist Sudanese government can continue its policy of death and destruction with impunity. It isn’t their fault! It’s America’s fault. If the African deserts had enough water, there’d be no war.

Since nobody ever remembers a time when the African deserts weren’t deserts anyway, how would they know if it is true or not?

If it isn’t global warming, it’s the Bush administration’s policies.

Over the last five years, favorable ratings of the United States have decreased “in 26 of the 33 countries for which trends are available,” Pew said.

According to the New York Times’ European sister publication, the Paris-based International Herald-Tribune;

“Confidence in President George W. Bush has dropped further in most countries over the past year, as the Iraqi “quagmire” has deepened and the world’s reprobation has increased.

“Global distrust of American leadership is reflected in increasing disapproval of the cornerstones of U.S. foreign policy,” Pew said in its report on the findings.

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, co-chair of the Pew Global Attitudes Project, linked this development directly to the Iraq war. “I think Iraq will go down in history as the greatest disaster in American foreign policy,” she said.”

So, there you have it. According to a majority of the world’s citizens, virtually every evil under the sun can somehow be traced to the United States, and, in particular, to the Bush administration.

It’s Bush’s fault for the war on terror, not Osama bin-Laden or Islamic ideology.

Overthrowing Saddam was, (according to Madeline Albright, former top cheerleader for Bill Clinton’s Operation Desert Fox air campaign against Iraq in 1998), “the greatest disaster in the history of American foreign policy”.

The Sudanese drought brought on by global warming is responsible for the Darfur genocide, not the Islamist government that is perpetuating it. America — and George Bush are responsible, since Bush refuses to ratify the Kyoto Treaty.

(Ratification of the Kyoto Treaty was rejected 98-0 by the US Senate in 1998, but that doesn’t stop the Marxist Senators like Teddy Kennedy, Harry Reid, Dick Durbin, et al, from blaming Bush for rejecting a treaty they themselves voted against)

According to the dictionary, treason means: “the crime of disloyalty to one’s nation.” In the basic sense of that word’s definition, half the country’s politicians are traitors. So are most of America’s mainstream media organizations.

So, too, are the mind-numbed Leftist communities of Hollyweird who haven’t a clue what it would mean to their cushy lifestyles if their Marxist rhetoric were ever translated into reality.

And their equally brain-dead fans who parrot their every pronouncement, not quite understanding that being a good actor is the semantic equivalent to being an accomplished liar.

America’s continued survival into the 21st century grows more perilous with each passing year, thanks to the very people who owe America the most.

The Apostle Paul wrote: “This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come.” He then outlined the main reasons for those perilous times. You can read the passage (2nd Timothy 3:1-7) for yourself, since I’ve quoted it so many times in the past.

But for the purposes of today’s briefing, let’s just look at the high points: “trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, high-minded, lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God, having a form of godliness but denying the power thereof.”

Now, let me ask you. Do YOU really think America is worse than Russia, China, Cuba, the Sudan, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Pakistan, etc.? No?

Why do you think that Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain and Turkey do? It isn’t like their citizens live here and have any personal knowledge on which to base their opinions. Who told them what to think of us? It was our own politicians, celebrities and mainstream media.

Why wouldn’t they believe them?

Special Report: The People of the Prince

Special Report: The People of the Prince
Vol: 69 Issue: 27 Wednesday, June 27, 2007

According to the Prophet Daniel, the coming antichrist will be a prince of a revived form of the Roman Empire and that it will be this revived Roman Empire — and NOT the United States — that will take a leading role in the peace process between Israel and the enemies that surround her on all sides.

“. . . and the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary . . . And he shall confirm the covenant with many for one week: and in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease . . .” (Daniel 9:26-27)

This passage also reveals much more about the events that Christians generally refer to as the Tribulation Period.

We know that the antichrist will “confirm” a covenant, or treaty, which suggests that that covenant is ALREADY in existence at the time that he somehow guarantees its terms, rather than being the author of said covenant.

When you call to confirm a dentist’s appointment, the dentist’s appointment, by definition, must ALREADY exist.

“Confirm” according to the dictionary, means to; “strengthen or make more firm” which is an entirely different animal than creating something that did not previously exist.

It is from Daniel 9:27 that we learn the length of this peace covenant; Daniel says it will be for one ‘week’ (Heb. shabua) which literally means ‘sevens’. The usage of ‘shabua’ in Hebrew is similar in understanding to the usage by the Greeks of ‘decades’ to denote a period of years.

A ‘shabua’ is seven years, whereas a ‘decade’ is ten years. Do you follow? What else do we learn from this passage?

We learn that, halfway through this ‘shabua’ the antichrist outlaws Temple worship. ‘Sacrifice and oblation’ requires the existence of a Jewish Temple, and that Jewish Temple must needs be legitimate under Jewish law.

Moreover, it must be legitimate before God. According to the Apostle Paul, the Third Temple is NOT the antichrist’s temple. It is NOT the ‘Jewish temple’. Paul calls it GOD’S Temple.

“Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the TEMPLE OF GOD, shewing himself that he is God.” (2nd Thessalonians 2:4)

Paul wasn’t referring to the 2nd Temple at some point prior to its destruction by Titus, despite the preterist’s argument that Daniel’s prophecy was fulfilled in AD 70.

Paul was himself a Pharisee — a Jewish lawyer — and as such, he was careful with his words. The efficacy of the 2nd Temple as the “Temple of God” ended with the birth of the Church Age at Pentecost. During the Church Age, WE are the ‘temple of God’.

“Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which temple YE are.” (1st Corinthians 3:16-17)

“And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? for YE are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.” (2nd Corinthians 6:16)

What does this mean? It means that during the Tribulation Period, the Church is no longer on the earth, because the Holy Spirit no longer indwells all believers. And so there aren’t millions of living “Temples of God” but instead, the Temple is a specific building in a specific place.

And Paul confirms in 2nd Thessalonians 2:4 that it is “GOD’S Temple” for that time. Why is THIS so important? (I’m glad you asked.) The Tribulation is Daniel’s 70th unfulfilled 70th Week. Daniel was given an outline of the final 70 weeks (490 years) of the Age of the Mosaic Law.

After sixty-nine “shabuas”, Jesus was crucified and Resurrected and the Age of Grace supplanted the Mosaic Law. The Age of Grace runs its course, the Rapture ends the Church Age, and during the final ‘week’ the Age of the Law resumes and runs its course.

It is both a distinction AND a difference. It freaks some Christians out to hear that the Age of the Law hasn’t been forever abolished, but that is because they try and blend the Church Age into the Tribulation Period.

It isn’t blasphemy. The two periods are distinct. And they ARE different. Daniel says so. Paul says so. John says so. I am merely quoting them, not inventing some new revelation. The Bible hasn’t changed what it says in two thousand years. It says the same thing in YOUR Bible.

In the Church Age, we are saved by grace through faith and, upon our salvation, physically and eternally indwelt by the Holy Spirit of God. During the Tribulation Period, the only ones physically indwelt by the Holy Spirit are the 144,000 Jewish evangelists specially sealed with His Spirit, according to Revelation 7.

They are sealed with the Holy Spirit because they couldn’t preach the Gospel without His indwelling Presence.

“But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.” (1st Corinthians 2:14)

Before they were indwelt by the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, the Apostles led no one to Christ. After Jesus ascended, they huddled in fear in the upper room. After the Spirit of God indwelt them, they became evangelists. Not before.

Tribulation believers are not eternally secure because the Age of Grace has been withdrawn. There will be believers who will succumb to the antichrist and will accept his Mark. They will be lost by virtue of the action they take.

“And the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever: and they have no rest day nor night, who worship the beast and his image, and whosoever receiveth the mark of his name. Here is the patience of the saints: here are they that keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus. And I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, Write, Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth: Yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labours; and their works do follow them.” (Revelation 14:11-13)

During the Tribulation, the saints are not kept by the Holy Spirit, but are kept by their obedience and faith. Read the passage again.

God says it will be better for them to die “from henceforth” than to lose their salvation which is maintained by their ‘labours’ for “THEIR works do follow them”. The Tribulation is a DIFFERENT Dispensation.

That is why Paul identifies Church Age believers as ‘living Temples’ but refers to the bricks-and-mortar Tribulation Temple as THE “Temple of GOD.” It couldn’t be the Temple of God during the Church Age. That is what WE are.

The Church cannot be present during the Tribulation. Why not? There are three distinct reasons.

The first is because the Holy Spirit no longer indwells believers as ‘living temples’. The ‘living temples’ are withdrawn to allow the antichrist to deceive the whole world.

The second is because the antichrist is given the power to ‘overcome’ the Tribulation saints: “And it was given unto him to make war with the saints, and to overcome them: and power was given him over all kindreds, and tongues, and nations.” (Revelation 13:7)

During the Church Age, the saints CANNOT be overcome by Satan OR sin, because, “Ye are of God, little children, and have overcome them: because greater is He that is in you, than he that is in the world.” (1st John 4:4)

The third reason is because, during the Church Age, it is the duty of Church Age believers to preach the Gospel. It is our Great Commission.

But during the Tribulation, that job is split between the 144,000 Jewish evangelists and an ANGEL.

“And I saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth, and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people . . ” (Revelation 14:6)

Nobody else is preaching the Gospel anywhere in the Revelation account. Because nobody else CAN.

The Church is not there.

Assessment:

Now we return to the Prophet Daniel. He identifies the antichrist as a ‘prince’ of Rome and a covenant of seven years’ duration that must be confirmed. That covenant ALREADY exists in the form of the failed Oslo Agreement based on formula of ‘land for peace.’ Daniel 8:25 says that the antichrist, “by peace shall destroy many,” and Daniel 11:39 says he, “shall divide the land for gain.”

Let’s pull it together before moving on. The antichrist is a ‘prince’ of Rome who confirms a destructive peace agreement based on the principle of dividing the land for gain.

Until 2002, it had been the United States that has been banging its head against the wall in an effort to enforce the terms of Oslo. In 2002, the US effort was replaced by a joint four-power effort involving the US, Russia, the UN and the EU known as the Road Map For Peace. Both efforts ended in dismal failure.

Now the Europeans are going to take the lead. The ‘Quartet’ has named outgoing Prime Minister Tony Blair as the new peace mediator between Israel and the ‘many’.

The reason that Tony Blair was tapped for the job is because he is a European and not an American. Europe has been trying without success since the mid-1990’s to replace the United States as the leading peace broker between Israel and the Arabs.

The Europeans believe they can break the deadlock by guaranteeing the integrity of Israel’s borders. Israel is, geographically, in Europe’s back yard, and the Arabs trust the Europeans much more than they do the Americans.

Blair is a champion of the ‘two-state’ solution that would see the creation of a Palestinian state beside Israel. Israel will only agree to such a solution if there is a credible guarantor of its security.

Blair told parliament: “The absolute priority is to try to give effect to what is now the consensus across the international community — that the only way of bringing stability and peace to the Middle East is a two-state solution.”

That means a secure Israel and a Palestinian state “that is not merely viable in terms of its territory but in terms of its institutions and governance”, he said. “I believe it is possible to do that but it will require a huge intensity of focus and work.”

Blair’s credibility doesn’t come from his history as British Prime Minister, but from his position as a leader within the European Union. Not the ‘king’ — he isn’t the head of the EU, but a ‘prince’ so to speak. As an envoy from Europe, he speaks for Europe. As a former Prime Minister of Britain, he has the gravitas necessary to do the job.

I am NOT naming Tony Blair as the antichrist. I don’t know who the antichrist will be, and I really don’t care. It might be Tony Blair — it might be his successor. But with his appointment the torch has been passed from Washington to Brussels.

What is important to us as Christians is not the identity of the antichrist, but the recognition that someone who has his Biblical qualifications has stepped up to the plate.

As Christians, we are not charged with looking for the soon appearance of the antichrist. Instead, we are to be watching for the soon appearing of Christ. But when we can see the events of the Tribulation beginning to take shape and form, it tells us that the clock is indeed winding down quickly on the Church Age.

Before the antichrist can be revealed, 2nd Thessalonians 2:7 tells us, the Restrainer is ‘taken out of the way’ at the Rapture. It is AFTER that, Paul explains, “And THEN shall that Wicked be revealed. . .” (2nd Thessalonians 2:8)

Think of it this way. When the calendar says it is Thanksgiving, it means that Christmas is just around the corner.

When the signs point to a leader of the Revived Roman Empire taking a leading role as Middle East peace envoy, it at the very least means that Thanksgiving is just around the corner.

Another way of putting it is the way Jesus did:

“And when these things BEGIN to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh.” (Luke 21:28)

Hudaybiyah

Hudaybiyah
Vol: 69 Issue: 26 Tuesday, June 26, 2007

Terror has gone legit. Not that the terrorists have undergone a conversion from barbarians to civilized human beings, but that civilized human beings have surrendered to the fact that terror is a workable political ideology.

The Hamas takeover of Gaza and the world’s astonishingly subdued reaction to the birth of the world’s first truly terrorist state pretty much guarantees the eventual survival of “Hamastan.”

Hamas was birthed by the Palestinian Authority, a terrorist state wannabe that never quite got off the ground, not because it didn’t have all the support that it needed, but because it wasn’t quite terroristic enough to suit the population that it represented.

It’s parent organization, the PLO, was founded by the world’s foremost authority on terrorism, the late and unlamented murderer, Yasser Arafat.

Under his supervision, the PLO became a state within a state in Jordan, then Lebanon, then Tunisia, going through a number of transformations in the process, emerging out the other end as the Palestinian Authority.

At the time of Arafat’s death, the Palestinian Authority was on the verge of statehood in its own right, and certainly would already have become a state, had that truly been Arafat’s goal.

But despite Arafat’s skill at public relations, his seeming transformation to statesman and peacemaker, all he ever was was a terrorist, and that was all he ever wanted to be.

Arafat’s PLO failed to achieve statehood because Arafat’s goal was not Palestinian statehood, but the obliteration of the existing state of Israel. When offered statehood beside Israel in 1999, he turned it down cold. He knew that peace would end his reign of terror.

Arafat’s greatest enemy wasn’t Israel. His greatest enemy was peace.

Had he been successful in his plan to replace the Israeli state with a Palestinian state, it is likely he would have formed a new terrorist group to fight against the Palestinian state that took its place.

He died before he could do so personally, but Hamas stepped up to the plate and filled the void for him.

Arafat was a jihadist, and he lived for the jihad. It wasn’t until the world legitimized him and his tactics that his leadership began to falter. He knew how to govern by the sword; he had no interest in governing by the pen.

Arafat’s legacy was not the Palestinian Authority or the legitimizing of Fatah. Arafat’s legacy was Hamas. If it were possible for him to see the chaos being visited on Fatah by Hamas from his perch in hell, there is no doubt he would be immensely satisfied.

The reality is that Fatah is done. Fatah signed its death warrant after Arafat’s death when it tried to live up to Arafat’s public professions by abrogating his private aspirations.

When Mahmoud Abbas appeared willing to actually live up to the promises of peace made by Arafat, his people promptly elected Hamas to represent them. What happened? Abbas earned the label of ‘moderate’.

In a truly Islamic society, such a label is the kiss of death.

Assessment:

Here in the West, being labeled a ‘moderate’ is believed to be an honorific. A ‘moderate’ is someone who is willing to compromise his beliefs in order to achieve a greater public good. In a democracy, a ‘moderate’ is one who can find a balance between the extremists on both sides of a question and come up with a solution that both sides can live with.

In Islam, there aren’t two extremes. There is only one. Arafat understood that. Benjamin Netanyahu understands that. Ehud Olmert, Ehud Barak, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush do not.

They all believe that there MUST be a moderate majority within Islam, even if they’ve failed to find a single example to support that contention.

To an Islamist, the label ‘moderate’ is understood to mean ‘apostate’. Because to an Islamist, that is what a moderate is. Mohammed didn’t compromise. He dissembled until he was strong enough to attack.

The only example of Mohammed appearing to compromise was the Quriyash Treaty, or the “Hudaybiyah”. Mohammed decided that Mecca should be the headquarters for his new religion after he and his followers were run out of Medina by the Christians and Jews who rejected his new ‘revelation.’

However, Mecca was controlled by the Quriyash, a powerful tribe of Arab pagans who had entered into an alliance with Jews and Christians who also made their home in Mecca. Mohammed, whose forces were too weak to take the city by force, sent an emissary to negotiate a ten-year non-aggression treaty with them.

Mohammed didn’t negotiate or sign the treaty himself because he had no intention of keeping it. The deal gave him time to strengthen and consolidate his forces. When he was strong enough, he attacked the city, slaughtered its inhabitants, and declared Mecca Islam’s holiest city.

When it became obvious that Abbas intended to live up to Arafat’s version of the Quriyash Treaty (which is how Arafat himself described the Oslo Agreement in Arabic at a rally in a Palestinian ‘refugee’ camp in 1994), he lost his credibility with Islamist Hamas.

To an Islamist, a moderate is an ‘apostate’ because recognizing the right of Israel (or any non-Islamic nation) to exist is a violation of Islam’s most basic principle. Islam divides the world into dar al-Islam (the Zone of Islam) and dar al-harb (the Zone of War).

It is every Muslim’s duty to do battle with dar al-harb until it becomes part of dar al-Islam. Any serious agreement to live side-by-side is apostasy.

That is why there cannot be peace between Israel and Islam. For Islam to recognize Israel’s right to exist is a denial of pure Islam. Just as any compromise that would surrender Jerusalem and the Temple Mount to Islam is a denial of the Bible.

For either side to prevail, the other side must deny its God.

Moreover, Islam can never recognize America’s right to exist as a Christian nation. America is part of dar al-harb. It is every observant Muslim’s duty to give up his life, if necessary, in the struggle to bring America into dar al-Islam.

Those Muslims who do want to live in peace with America, or IN America, are apostates, not moderates. They are as much in the Islamic cross-hairs as Christians, Jews or any other non-Muslims.

Islam’s “moderate majority” is a Western fantasy that the so-called ‘moderate’ Islamics are willing to allow to blossom for the same reason Mohammed was willing to let the Quriyash believe the ‘Hudaybiyah’ peace was serious.

Noted Tom Rose in this week’s “Weekly Standard”:

Washington’s decision to bail out Fatah in the hopes Fatah will defeat Hamas presupposes that Fatah is made up of Islamic apostates. After 45 years of ground work preparing for Hamas’ takeover by radicalizing Palestinian society through blood-curdling terrorism, mind-boggling corruption, and world-class inefficiency, the U.S. and Israeli governments have announced their gratitude to Fatah with a billion dollar emergency aid package.

Worse than being just another advertisement for diplomatic incompetence, this feeble response to the Hamas takeover will achieve the opposite of what we claim to want. Force- feeding life back into the PLO will not weaken Hamas; it will strengthen it by giving the PLO another chance to demonstrate its fraudulent duplicity. Palestinian society cannot be transformed by reviving the group responsible for its degradation. How does one fight terrorism by rewarding those who invented it?

How, indeed?

“And in that day will I make Jerusalem a burdensome stone for all people: all that burden themselves with it shall be cut in pieces, though all the people of the earth be gathered together against it.” (Zechariah 12:3)

The Battle for Jerusalem is joined. The whole world is gathering itself against it, and against Israeli control of it, hoping that doing so will put an end to the spiraling conflict.

But it is far more than a battle for control of a city. It is a battle for control of the Western world.

This is not a war against Islamic terror. It is the war prophesied by Scripture as the last war of human civilization. It is ostensibly over the city of Jerusalem.

But it will reach its ultimate conclusion on the plains of Israel, in the valley of Megiddo. In Hebrew, it is called ‘Har Megiddo.’

In the English Bible, it is called the Valley of Armageddon.

US Surprised By Iran’s Aggression

US Surprised By Iran’s Aggression
Vol: 69 Issue: 25 Monday, June 25, 2007

The United States government has formally accused Tehran of supplying arms to Taliban terrorists for use against US forces in the Afghani theater of war.

We have substantial evidence, Gen. Pete Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, said about six weeks ago that the Iranians had been transferring arms to the Taliban inside Afghanistan, Under-Secretary of State Nicholas Burns told CNN in June.

Some of those arms shipments have been intercepted by NATO forces. It’s quite surprising because, as you remember, the Iranians had said they were the mortal enemies of the Taliban in 2001 and ’02, but there’s irrefutable evidence the Iranians are now doing this.

Surprising? If the State Department is surprised that Iran is arming America’s enemies, then that goes a long way toward explaining the “intelligence failures” everybody keeps blaming for the war. There’s nobody at the State Department intelligent enough to understand it all.

Bozo the Clown could interpret Ahmadinejad’s “Let’s destroy Israel and America” rhetoric, but it “surprises” the US State Department’s top officials.

Burns went on to accuse the Iranians of arming Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza and the West Bank and Shi’a militants inside Iraq. With typically diplomatic understatement, he added; It’s very violent and very unproductive activity by the Iranian government.

Unproductive? That would depend on what Tehran intended to produce. If they intended to produce more dead Americans, then their efforts have been most productive. And weapons are SUPPOSED to be violent, but that, once again, is evidence of intelligence failure among the State Department’s top officials.

It was the first time a senior administration official directly blamed Teheran for the arms transfers, something intelligence and policy officials had been reluctant to do in the past, although it seems unclear exactly what is behind that reluctance.

Fear of angering the Iranians? What is Washington afraid of? That Tehran will arm Hamas, Hezbollah, al-Qaeda and the Taliban?

In his 2002 State of the Union address, President Bush enunciated the Bush Doctrine. “If you aren’t with us, then you are with the terrorists.” Under the terms of the Bush Doctrine, America is by definition, at war with Iran.

Under the terms of international law, historical precedent, common sense and logic that Bozo the Clown’s audience could work out on their own, Iran’s actions are a declaration of war against the United States.

Iran has been supplying large quantities of small arms, including sniper rifles and armored piercing ammunition, rocket propelled grenades and explosive device materials to insurgents in Iraq and the Taliban in Afghanistan. The weapons are new and of Chinese origin.

But it ‘surprised’ Nicholas Burns.

It doesn’t surprise FBI Director Robert Mueller. The only thing that surprises him is that the terrorists have not yet launched a nuclear terror attack against the US.

By some estimates, there is enough highly enriched uranium in global stockpiles to construct thousands of nuclear weapons, Mueller told a conference in Miami. And it is safe to assume that there are many individuals who would not think twice about using such weapons.

The economics of supply and demand dictate that someone, somewhere, will provide nuclear material to the highest bidder, and that material will end up in the hands of terrorists, he said.

Assessment:

It also doesn’t surprise Israel. According to Israeli intelligence, Israel is preparing for a war with up to five different Islamic states that it anticipates could break out as early as July.

On Sunday, Israeli military intelligence chief Maj. Gen. Amos Yadlin told the Cabinet that the Jewish state faces five adversaries in what could result in an imminent confrontation. Yadlin cited Iran, Syria, Hizbullah, Hamas and al-Qaeda.

“Each of these adversaries is capable of sparking a war in the summer,” Yadlin was quoted as saying.

Today, Ayman al Zawarhiri, al-Qaeda’s number two leader (and possibly, if intel speculations about Osama bin-Laden’s death are accurate, al-Qaeda’s Number One) added fuel to the fire by endorsing the Hamas takeover of Gaza.

Yadlin said Hamas could be planning a major attack to divert attention away from efforts by the Palestinian Authority to isolate the Gaza Strip. He said Syria might be promoting such an attack.

Officials said Iran has direct influence over Syria, Hizbullah and Hamas. He said Al Qaida has increasingly come under Iranian influence and was being used by Iran and Syria in such countries as Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon.

Already, military intelligence has assessed that Hamas acquired more than 50 missiles with a range of 22 kilometers. Officials said this would allow Palestinian missile strikes on any part of Ashkelon, the largest city in southeastern Israel and which contains strategic sites.

Hamas has also deployed at least 20 SA-7 anti-aircraft systems, officials said. They said the missiles threaten Israeli combat helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft that conduct missions over the Gaza Strip.

Israeli military intelligence has assessed that Hamas was being quietly supported by neighboring Egypt. Officials said that despite Egypt’s announced ban, Cairo has continued to allow Hamas leaders to enter the Sinai Peninsula from the Gaza Strip.

Over the weekend, officials said, a Hamas delegation led by former PA Interior Minister Said Siyyam entered Sinai. They said the 15-member delegation was escorted by Egyptian security forces to Cairo for a flight to Damascus, where they were scheduled to meet Hamas political bureau chief Khaled Masha’al.

Last year’s standoff with Hezbollah has, in the eyes of the Arab world, exploded the myth of Israeli invincibility that has kept them from launching another all-out effort at Israel’s destruction since the Israel’s 1973 victory in the Yom Kippur War.

With Iran now directly in the game for the first time, and with the US seemingly bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan, they seem to think that this time, they might have a chance.

This is the chance that the Islamic world has been waiting for. Israel has withdrawn to essentially the same lines it occupied in 1967, the United States is preoccupied with Iraq and Afghanistan, and Russia has outfitted Iran with the most sophisticated air defenses in existence today.

China has been pouring small arms and supplies into Iran for redeployment to Islamic terror groups throughout the Middle East.

The goal is two-fold; the destruction of the Israeli state and a decisive crippling of US military forces in the Middle East.

And for the first time in modern history, victory is within sight.

Boiling the Frog

Boiling the Frog
Vol: 69 Issue: 23 Saturday, June 23, 2007

Totalitarianism is a term employed by political scientists to describe a regime that regulates nearly every aspect of public and private behavior.

Under a totalitarian government, the state actively works to mobilize the population towards supporting the official state ideology, repressing such activities as are not in concert with the goals of the state, repressing free speech and disseminating propaganda.

The imposition of totalitarianism is almost always gradual; it takes time to ‘condition’ a population to accept it. It is often called the ‘Boiling a Frog” theory, and it goes like this.

If you drop a frog into hot water, the sudden change will cause it to try to escape. If you put a frog in cold water and gradually heat it, the frog won’t notice the gradual change until it is too late.

Adolf Hitler was appointed as Chancellor of Germany in 1933 following a free and open democratic election that gave the Nazis a majority in 1932.

What followed were gradual steps toward state supremacy, with each step predicated by some kind of managed ‘crisis’. The formula used to impose totalitarianism generally follows the three stage process outlined by Georg Hegel, a German philosopher who died early in the 19th century.

Called the “Hegelian Dialectic” it is divided into three parts: thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. The thesis is that a government wants to implement a policy that would face widespread popular opposition. To accomplish this (antithesis) it creates or exacerbates a problem or crisis whose solution is that same unpopular policy.

The synthesis is that the population will be more afraid of the crisis than the solution and will therefore demand the policy changes it had heretofore opposed.

A good example of Hegel’s dialectic in practice is gun control. In order to bring about a government ban on certain weapons, criminal use of guns is highlighted until it appears to have reached crisis proportions.

Any public reference to guns includes a litany of events in which guns were used in the commission of crimes. Any references to the use of guns to prevent crimes is suppressed.

Eventually, the public begins to accept the premise that guns are the cause of crime, and soon, the population is disarmed by popular demand. Does it work?

You tell me.

The City of Atlanta is hosting a gay rights convention held on public property this weekend. The ostensible theme of the convention is “Our Rights, Your Rights, Human Rights,” and is billed as an event welcoming, “diversity,” “tolerance” and “rights.”

However, anyone planning to be diverse from the state ideology of gay rights ‘diversity’ will be arrested by Atlanta police who will not ‘tolerate’ dissenting views.

Recently, Senator James Inhofe related a conversation he overheard between Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton in which they bemoaned the ‘imbalance’ of conservative voices on talk radio, suggesting the need for a legislative ‘fix’ was necessary.

Both denied the conversation ever took place, but both are championing the re-imposition of the so-called ‘Fairness Doctrine’ a piece of legislation that sounds good, but is little more than state-imposed propaganda.

WHY is there an ‘imbalance’ of conservative voices on talk radio? Because conservative is more popular. WHY is it more popular? Is it because liberals don’t have radios?

No.

It’s because liberal talk radio can’t attract a large enough audience to be economically viable. The liberal worldview can’t compete in a fair marketplace of ideas without imposing legislation FORCING you to hear their view.

Why not? It worked for Hitler.

Assessment:

This week, MSNBC broke a story it summarized in its lead this way: “Whether you sample your news feed from ABC or CBS (or, yes, even NBC and MSNBC), whether you prefer Fox News Channel or National Public Radio, The Wall Street Journal or The New Yorker, some of the journalists feeding you are also feeding cash to politicians, parties or political action committees.”

According to the report, 144 journalists made political contributions from 2004 through the start of the 2008 campaign season. Not surprisingly, most of them (125 out of 144) gave their money to Democratic politicians and/or left-leaning political action committees.

Of the nineteen remaining, seventeen contributed to Republicans. Only two out of one hundred and forty-four allegedly ‘impartial’ journalists made contributions to both parties.

Some of the contributors and contributions were astonishing; one CNN reporter made a political contribution to John Kerry while serving as an embedded reporter in Iraq. When asked, Guy Raz denied his political opinions biased any of his reports.

“I covered international news and European Union stories. I did not cover U.S. news or politics,” Raz said in an e-mail to MSNBC.com.

But, when asked how one could define U.S. news so it excludes the U.S. war in Iraq, Raz didn’t reply. I wonder why?

Mark Singer, a reporter with New Yorker Magazine was given an assignment to write a profile of presidential candidate Howard Dean. He also donated $250 to Dean’s political action committee. So, do you think his profile of Dean was impartial and based on facts? If you do, Singer has news for you. It wasn’t.

“Probably there should be a rule against it,” he told MSNBC, before adding, “But there’s a rule against murder. If someone had murdered Hitler a journalist interviewing him had murdered him the world would be a better place. I only feel good, as a citizen, about getting rid of George Bush, who has been the most destructive president in my lifetime. I certainly don’t regret it.”

Was Singer writing as a citizen, or as a ‘impartial’ journalist when he compared George Bush to Hitler and suggesting the world would be ‘a better place’ if Bush were murdered? Is it important?

It all depends on whether you wanted facts to use to help you make up your own mind, or whether you wanted someone else to make up your mind for you.

Judith Thurman wrote the New Yorker’s sympathetic profile of Teresa Heinz Kerry, published on Sept. 27, 2004. Ten days later, the Democratic National Committee recorded Thurman’s donation of $1,000.

MSNBC noted Thurman did not return their phone calls.

Randy Cohen writes a syndicated column called “The Ethicist” for the New York Times. His journalistic ethics didn’t prevent him from donating to Moveon.org. Ethically speaking, says Cohen, he didn’t think donating to Moveon.org was any less ethical than donating to the Boy Scouts.

(That’s like arguing that donating to al-Qaeda is the ethical equivalent to donating to the Jewish Anti-Defamation League.)

It is hardly a secret that the majority of the mainstream press has a liberal bias. The only ones that would claim otherwise are the liberals who work in the mainstream press and the liberals in Congress who demand a legislative ‘fix’ to correct the ‘imbalance’ in talk radio.

It is therefore equally unsurprising that the majority of polls suggest the majority of voters share their liberal perspective.

What IS amazing is the fact that it doesn’t seem to upset anybody that the allegedly ‘free press’ has degenerated into a national ministry of lefitist propaganda.

There exists, in America, a liberal media, and a conservative media. What does NOT exist is a legitimate media that reports the unvarnished facts as they see them.

But nobody cares. That frog has already been boiled.

It Takes a Monster To Control a Monster

It Takes a Monster To Control a Monster
Vol: 69 Issue: 22 Friday, June 22, 2007

During the 2000 campaign, George W. Bush argued against nation building and foreign military entanglements. In the second presidential debate, he said: “I’m not so sure the role of the United States is to go around the world and say, ‘This is the way it’s got to be.'”

I agreed with him then. But I admit that I also agreed with him after the 2001 terror attacks that the rules had changed and that taking a ‘hands off’ policy in the New Normal was a recipe for more attacks.

While US involvements overseas might have provided the motivation for al-Qaeda to attack us, the principle of fighting them on their home turf instead of ours seemed to be a sound one.

I still think that is a sound and logical way to look at it. Given all the available choices, the last place I would choose for a battlefield would be the streets of America.

I also agreed with President Bush’s assessment that, you can’t distinguish between al Qaeda and Saddam when you talk about the war on terror… they’re both equally as bad, and equally as evil, and equally as destructive.

THAT is where I was naive. I failed to recognize the real enemy. That’s not to say that Saddam Hussein WASN’T an enemy or that Iraq wasn’t an enemy state. Neither am I saying that al-Qaeda wasn’t equally evil to Saddam and his government.

Saddam was a grotesquely evil man. al-Qaeda was, is, and will continue to be an grotesquely evil organization made up of men so grotesquely evil that, had Saddam not been the leader of Iraq, he almost certainly would have been a major figure in al-Qaeda himself.

But Saddam wasn’t the real enemy of the United States. Neither is al-Qaeda. How did I reach that conclusion? It’s simple. Saddam is dead. The evil remains.

Most of al-Qaeda’s top leadership is either dead or in custody, but al-Qaeda is as evil as it ever was. If Osama bin Laden had died in the battle of Tora Bora, it seems unlikely that al-Qaeda would have packed up and gone home.

The real enemy of the United States, the true evil, the inspiration for Osama bin-Laden, Saddam Hussein, the Taliban, Hamas, the PLO, and all the myriad and disparate terror groups infesting the planet is Islam.

That is a no-brainer. Were it not for Islam, none of them would exist. Without Islam, none of them could continue to exist. Wherever Islam dominates, evil follows. Wherever evil exists, Islam finds an immediate foothold.

Islam is the fastest-growing ideology in America’s prison system, for example.

The Institute of Islamic Information & Education, based in Chicago, was one example cited at a 2003 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on terrorist recruitment in prisons and the military.

The Islamic “traditionalist” institute sends books on Islam to prison chaplains and says it responds to more than 3,000 letters from inmates annually, inquiring about Muslim dietary laws and teachings.

But its founder, Amir Ali, also ran another Web site until his death last year in Chicago after coronary bypass surgery.

Note: At the time of this column’s publication, I did not know that Ali had died. Many thanks to Tammy Swofford (www.tammyswofford.blogspot.com) for the head’s up.

In those postings, he called al-Qaeda leader bin Laden a “true Muslim” who wouldn’t hurt anyone and contends Hollywood producers fabricated the videotapes that have been broadcast over the last few years of bin Laden threatening more violence.

Imam Warith Deen Umar, who worked for nearly two decades as leader of the Muslim chaplaincy program for New York state before retiring in 2000, expressed support for the Sept. 11 attacks in a 2003 interview with The Wall Street Journal.

Jose Padilla became a Muslim convert while in prison. On his release, he trained at an al-Qaeda training camp in Pakistan and was arrested in Chicago on charges of conspiracy to detonate a ‘dirty bomb’ in the United States.

Richard Reid converted to Islam while in prison and was convicted of attempting to blow up an American Airlines flight enroute from Paris to Miami with explosives built into his shoes.

Kevin James was serving a ten-year term for robbery in Folsom Prison. While there, he converted to Islam, formed a group called Jamiyyat Ul-Islam Is-Saheeh and began to draw recruits.

These included those who became involved in the LA Jihad, which planned to attack synagogues and military installations in the state.

Nationwide, it is estimated that the percentage of Muslims in prisons is about six times higher than it is among the general US population.

Assessment:

The only system that has ever had any success in controlling a Muslim population is one that understands the true nature of Islam. Saddam Hussein, as sad as it is to say, was a perfect example. It takes a monster to control a monster.

We should have been able to logically project the failure of democracy in Iraq, in Afghanistan, or in the Palestinian Authority, had we not been blinded by the doctrine of political correctness that legitimized Islam as a pure religion and Allah as just another name for the God of the Bible.

One of the fundamental principles of Islam is that of forced conversion to Islam. Those who refuse to convert face enslavement or death. Islam divides the world into two zones; dar al-Islam (the Zone of Islam) and dar al-harb (the Zone of War).

It is the fundamental duty of a fundamental Islamist to make jihad against dar al-harb until it becomes part of dar al-Islam. The ‘fundamentals’ of Islam are derived from the Koran.

Followers of the Koran, by definition, fall into two categories, as well. Those who believe it is the inspired word of Allah, (fundamentalists) and those who don’t (moderates). When fundamentalist Islamists aren’t killing non-Muslims, they occupy their time by killing ‘moderates’. (Case in point: Hamas vs Fatah)

Islam is a destroyer of nations. al-Qaeda’s goal is to erase the borders of the Middle East and establish an Islamic caliphate similar to the Ottoman Empire that ruled the Islamic world from 1517 to 1917.

America is engaged in an effort at nation building, an effort which, while noble, is doomed to failure as long as Islamics make up the majority population. And so, despite our military victories in Iraq and Afghanistan, the war rages on.

America and Israel have devoted fifteen years to nation-building within the Palestinian population. Israel has surrendered ALL of Gaza and most of the West Bank. America has pledged to support an eventual Palestinian state.

Despite Israel’s territorial concessions and America’s political, financial and military support, that war rages on, unabated.

Despite our other flaws, America is mainly a good and gentle country populated by good and gentle people who are historically guided by the principle of religious freedom.

We are wholly incapable of grasping the absolute evil of fundamental Islam, and are therefore wholly incapable of meeting Islam on Islam’s terms.

For America to meet Islam on Islam’s terms, we would have to adopt Islam’s ruthlessness and share its goals. We would have to redefine the world the same way: the Islam-free Zone and the Zone of War.

Within the Zone of War, our goal would have to be forced conversion out of Islam. Those who refuse would have to face imprisonment or death.

As barbaric as that sounds, it is the exact model that defeated the Nazis and Imperial Japanese in World War II. The war raged on until we killed so many Nazis and Shinto Japanese that they could no longer resist forced conversion away from Nazism and Emperor worship.

Those who refused to convert were killed or imprisoned. To this day, Nazism is a crime in Germany. Imperialism is a crime in Japan.

We didn’t recognize either Nazism or Imperialism as being ‘religions’. If we had, it would have been our undoing. Instead, we saw them as political ideologies.

Islam is, first and foremost, a political ideology. George Bush’s misguided elevation of Islam to the status of a ‘religion of peace and love’ may well be OUR undoing.

There are those who will immediately accuse me of ‘hate speech’ for publishing today’s column. I must respectfully disagree.

“Hate” isn’t CALLING an ideology that cuts people’s heads off an evil ideology.

“Hate” is the ACT of cutting off people’s heads in the name of religious ideology and calling THAT ‘good’.

The Nazis and Imperial Japanese were defeated by just two things: superior firepower and superior ruthlessness. The British firebombed civilian cities like Dresden, burning them to the ground.

The Americans firebombed Tokyo, and deployed nuclear weapons against Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Superior firepower, combined with superior ruthlessness, is why you aren’t reading this column in German or Japanese today.

America has the firepower, but the ruthlessness necessary for victory has been replaced by political correctness. Admirable in a peaceful society, but dangerous in war.

Political correctness resulted in a standoff against North Korea in 1953, defeat in Vietnam in 1975, an unsustainable ceasefire in Iraq in 1991, and six years of military victory and political defeat in the war against al-Qaeda.

War is ugly. It has only one goal. Kill the enemy faster than he can kill you until there aren’t enough enemies left to resist. Whoever accomplishes that goal first is the winner.

It is political correctness that forbids us from learning the seminal principle of successful warfare, “know your enemy.”

We don’t know our enemy. al-Qaeda, on the other hand, knows its enemy all too well.

We have the firepower. They have the ruthlessness. And the proof, as they say, is in the pudding.

Who is winning?

Strongly Deluded

Strongly Deluded
Vol: 69 Issue: 21 Thursday, June 21, 2007

Michael Moore’s new movie, “Sicko” made its debut, not in theaters, but on the World Wide Web. Somebody pirated it and streamed it for free.

The documentary is billed as an “indictment of the US health care system” but, like all the rest of Moore’s films, if it is an indictment of anything, it is an indictment of America.

“[Monday] night’s standing ovation at the N.Y. premiere of SiCKO confirmed what we believed to be true since the film’s launch in Cannes, which is that audiences love the movie,” said Harvey Weinstein, co-chairman of The Weinstein Company, and one of the film’s executive producers.

Weinstein described sneak previews as “a great marketing tool” for a “strong movie” like Sicko.

“If you want to stay healthy in America, don’t get sick,” Michael Moore says about his new documentary, which focuses on flaws in the American health care system and problems pinned on the insurance industry.

“Sicko promises to be every bit as indicting as Moore’s previous films,” the filmmaker promises. Moore’s previous films include the Bush-bashing, anti-war “Fahrenheit 9/11” and “Bowling for Columbine,” an examination of violence in America.

On a website devoted to his new movie, Moore urges Americans to share their “healthcare horror stories” by submitting videotapes of “an experience you had with your healthcare insurance company.”

Moore said he will screen the videos and share them with Congress, as part of a push for government-run, universal health care. A number of people have already uploaded their video sob stories to YouTube.

In the movie, Moore takes several firefighters who suffered health problems related to the September 11 attacks on a junket to Castro’s Cuba, which Moore touts as the perfect model for America.

Moore fails to ask the obvious question: If Cuba’s health care system is so good, then why did Castro have to fly a Spanish surgeon, complete with specialized equipment, in from Spain to treat him? The answer? To fix the botched surgery conducted by his Cuban doctors.

Logically speaking, Castro’s doctors would, by definition, be among the best doctors in Cuba. Unless one is gullible enough to believe Castro, his life hanging in the balance, was treated by the next emergency-room doctor on call at Havana General. I’m not that gullible, but evidently, lots of Americans are.

If they were the best, what does that say about the average Cuban doctor? From Moore’s perspective, it doesn’t say anything. Moore’s goal was to slam America by any and all means necessary.

Moore’s film, and the gushing reviews that it garnered, are a monument to American gullibility. Few, if any, of the reviewers questioned the fact that Moore can’t possibly have first-hand knowledge of the true state of Cuban socialized medicine, since Cuba remains a tightly-controlled Communist country.

Of course, Moore COULD have gotten some idea from the fact that so many Cubans risk drowning or being eaten by sharks, making the 90 mile crossing to Miami aboard everything from overcrowded boats to makeshift rafts, in order to set foot on American soil, rather than live in the land of free health care.

Moore appeared on ABC’s Nightline with fellow leftist ‘journalist’ Terry Moran. (Moran’s questions made me wonder if Moran was his last name or a misspelling of his cognitive ability).

A few examples:

Michael Moore: “They have an excellent health care system, probably the best in the Third World. There is not religious persecution. There’s artistic freedom. I went. . .”

Terry Moran: (interrupting): “There’s artistic freedom in Cuba?”

At one point, Moore claimed his ‘documentary’ was prompted by Moore’s religious faith, telling Moran that he once wanted to become a Catholic priest.

“I do believe that this film is coming from a very deep place and a very spiritual place, in the sense that I believe, as a Christian, as a Catholic, that it’s my responsibility to make sure that, that not only that I’m covered, if something happens to me, but everyone else is covered (with national health insurance).

Moran: “And the source of that feeling is, in part, religious for you? It’s part of your faith?”

Moore: “It is. I mean, yes. Absolutely.”

Moran: “That would surprise people.”

Moore: “Yeah. I wonder why. You know, I went to the seminary to be a priest.”

Moran: “Father Michael Moore. Hard to imagine, maybe. Or maybe not. Well, try this one. SENATOR Michael Moore.”

SENATOR Michael Moore. Why not PRESIDENT Michael Moore? Moran asked Moore, not once, but twice, if he’d like to run for president.

Moran: “Seriously. You got a pretty good name recognition out there, a lot of people who agree with you. It looks like you enjoy it out there. Would you do it?”

A monument to American gullibility.

Assessment:

Free health care, like the pirated streaming video version of Moore’s film, “Sicko” worth what you pay for it. I speak from experience.

Free health care in Canada means waiting four to six months for an appointment with a specialist. It means waiting four to six months for ‘urgent’ life-saving surgery. It means waiting four to six months for critical X-Rays.

I recall the case of an Ontario man who needed a bone-marrow transplant to combat his leukemia. He was refused treatment because, at age 65, the government determined it was a waste of resources better used to treat a younger patient with a better chance of survival.

(He went to the US, got treated, and, at age 73, is doing just fine.)

Socialized medicine exists in Canada, France, Cuba and Great Britain, each of which was presented by Moore as evidence of why America should adopt similar systems.

The only thing in worse shape that France’s economy is its health-care system. In Great Britain, free health care is so abysmal that most Britons buy supplementary insurance anyway.

Canada’s Supreme Court struck down a ban on private health care. What it means is that there is a two-tiered health care system in each of these countries. One for the rich, and one for the poor. Guess which one is better?

In his film, Moore shows clips of homeless patients being dumped on the street by hospital workers as an example of how poor health care is for the poor.

Nobody seems to make the connection between the fact the hospitals Moore highlights are public hospitals owned and operated by the government and the fact that, if Moore’s utopia became a reality, ALL hospitals would be owned and operated by the government.

Recalling Moore’s interview with Terry Moran; “. . . as a Christian, as a Catholic, that it’s my responsibility to make sure that, that not only that I’m covered, if something happens to me, but everyone else is covered (with national health insurance).

He says he believes it is his “Christian responsibility” to make sure that HE is covered by free health insurance, and (secondarily) everybody else is. Michael Moore is worth probably fifty million dollars. There is something revealing in that statement.

I can guarantee you that, if Michael Moore were a Canadian who was suffering a life-threatening disease, Moore would take his fifty million dollars to the United States and seek treatment there.

It is fairly obvious that Michael Moore doesn’t trust the government. His previous films, “Bowling for Columbine”, “Fahrenheit 911” etc., have but one statement to make.

Moore consistently makes the case that America’s government is corrupt, inefficient and dishonest to the exclusion of virtually all other governments, including those of Saddam Hussein and Fidel Castro.

And in the same breath, he advocates giving that very same corrupt, dishonest and inefficient system absolute control over your health care?

Does that strike a discordant note with anybody else? Or is it just me?

According to the Bible, one of the hallmarks of the last days is rampant, universal deception. The antichrist will come to power on a platform of deception.

His government will operate on the principle of deception. The Scriptures say he will be physically indwelt by Satan himself, the penultimate master of deception.

Deception only works when one prefers the deception to the truth. It is an undeniable truism that a con game can’t work on an honest man.

The Nigerian email con game is a perfect example. It only works if the ‘mark’ is already predisposed to helping some “government official” or his son, daughter, widow, etc., spirit millions of dollars in ill-gotten loot out of some of the poorest countries in the world.

In 2nd Thessalonians 2:10 Paul tells us that;

“And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for THIS cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie:”

For WHICH cause? Because it is will be what those left behind after the Rapture WANT to believe. What is ‘the’ lie? When millions of believers suddenly disappear, those left behind will want to know where they went. But what they WON’T want to hear is the truth.

Truth, in our generation, isn’t what IS true. It is what we want to believe is true. That is why there is a ‘left-leaning’ media, and a ‘right-leaning’ media.

Try this experiment. Name a media source that is universally acknowledged as leaning neither to the left or right. Better yet, try and think of one that YOU believe has no agenda beyond telling you the unvarnished truth.

Bet you can’t.

Warming? Cooling? The Sky is Falling?

Warming? Cooling? The Sky is Falling?
Vol: 69 Issue: 20 Wednesday, June 20, 2007

Warming? Cooling? The Sky is Falling?

Almost from the time we arrived in Texas in early May, we’ve been hearing of ‘unseasonably’ hot weather, ‘unseasonably’ cold weather, not enough rain or too much rain.

We spent the past week in northeast Texas where it was too hot, too cool, too humid, too stormy and MUCH too wet.

I couldn’t send out this morning’s Omega Letter because of a black cloud over Lamar County so thick the RV camp’s satellite system couldn’t penetrate to grab a signal. (Please accept my apologies.)

What I’ve found fascinating is that all of these conditions are being blamed on global warming.

By the Weather Channel. By local weather forecasters. And by pretty much every ordinary Joe with whom we’ve exchanged casual pleasantries.

“Sure has been raining a lot, hasn’t it?”, is usually met with a grunted, “Global warming!” When we were in New Braunfels, the rains swelled the Guadalupe River to such a degree that the flooding attracted the attention of CNN.

A few days later, when we were in San Antonio, the blistering heat prompted several at the SBC to comment on global warming. On our way through Dallas, the weather guys were talking about the massive flooding, which was blamed on global warming.

It rained every day that we were in northeast Texas, where I found one person who evidently doesn’t own a TV set. I said something like, “Sure is raining a lot, isn’t it?” and he said, “Well, it IS north Texas and this IS June.”

I was so happy to meet somebody who hadn’t put his brain on hold for the duration that we sat and chatted for several hours.

When we pulled out of Texas this morning after the storm subsided, it was an unseasonably cool 68 degrees. Global warming? No. It had just finished RAINING!!

Besides, everybody knows that global warming causes wars!

Assessment:

An article published in Canada’s Financial Post today, written by R. Timothy Patterson, professor and director of the Ottawa-Carleton Geoscience Centre, Department of Earth Sciences, Carleton University, took an entirely unique look at the whole global warming argument.

Clearly a heretic, Dr. Patterson argues that global climate change isn’t caused by human activity. He said, (gasp) that the culprit is the SUN. The SUN! Who would have thought the SUN might play a role in the planet’s temperature?

And if that isn’t revolutionary enough, Dr. Patterson says that, despite the ‘settled science’ of global warming, what we REALLY need to worry about is global COOLING. “Dangerous global cooling”, the headline said.

Dr. Patterson noted that “climate stability has never been a feature of planet Earth. The only constant about climate is change; it changes continually and, at times, quite rapidly. Many times in the past, temperatures were far higher than today, and occasionally, temperatures were colder.”

What do you want to bet that Ottawa-Carleton starts looking for a new professor of geoscience?

I won’t bore you with the minutiae but the upshot of his article is this.

Solar scientists predict that, by 2020, the sun will be starting into its weakest Schwabe solar cycle of the past two centuries, likely leading to unusually cool conditions on Earth. Beginning to plan for adaptation to such a cool period, one which may continue well beyond one 11-year cycle, as did the Little Ice Age, should be a priority for governments. It is global cooling, not warming, that is the major climate threat to the world, especially Canada. As a country at the northern limit to agriculture in the world, it would take very little cooling to destroy much of our food crops, while a warming would only require that we adopt farming techniques practiced to the south of us.

So, is it global warming? I don’t know. Is it global cooling? I don’t know. Neither does anybody else. Is it man-made? Unlikely.

You don’t have to be a geo-scientist to know that the heat of the sun has a direct relationship to the temperature on earth.

You only have to go outside at night, and then go back outside again in the day time. (That experiment even works in the winter.)

Can mankind affect global climate change? If there IS any “settled science” on the subject, the answer can only be no.

Ninety-five percent of so-called greenhouse gases are generated by the oceans.

Mount Pinatubo’s eruption in 1991 spewed more pollutants into the atmosphere than all human activity throughout human history COMBINED.

Mankind’s share of global pollution is some percentage of the five percent left over from the oceans, exclusive whatever pollution the earth belches from volcanic activity.

But the entire world is convinced we did it, and the world’s governments have convinced us that we can fix it, provided we separate our garbage, don’t smoke and give them absolute authority to mandate how we live and impose punitive taxes on those who disagree.

It isn’t science, it is politics. The politics of fear. Scientists are split between blaming the sea, the sun, atmospheric particles, human beings, and cosmic rays.

The politicians don’t know what is broken, but they reserve the right to fix it until it is. The operative words here are fear and confusion.

In describing the signs of His soon return, Jesus encapsulated all the “settled science” into two verses.

“And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring; Men’s hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth: for the powers of heaven shall be shaken.” (Luke 21:24-25)

What does it all mean in terms of Bible prophecy? Read the next two verses:

“And THEN shall they see the Son of man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. And when these things BEGIN TO COME TO PASS, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh.” (Luke 21:27-28)

Maranatha!