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In Memoriam “Irreplaceable” Rachel Marie Powers Duck
On August 16, 2020, Daymond Duck’s beloved wife for nearly thirty-four years, Rachel Marie Powers Duck, went to Heaven.
The daughter of Tavy and Willie Powers, Rachel was the seventh of ten children, three of whom became Baptist pastors like their father, Tavy, a pastor and a farmer.
Rachel, valedictorian of her high school graduation class, earned a scholarship to Union University in Jackson, Tennessee, where she studied to be a registered nurse.
She loved Jesus and was an outstanding wife, mother, church member, and more. All who knew her recognized her as one of the most selfless, beautiful, honest, compassionate human beings to ever grace this planet. She took an interest in all people, caring for them and loving everyone she encountered unconditionally.
Rachel was the ideal pastor’s wife to Daymond, who served in ministry until he retired in 2006. She urged her husband to write his first book, she served and taught in the churches he pastored, went with him everywhere he went, and took two grandchildren with her to church every Sunday. It was like Daymond and Rachel were joined at the hip. (If you saw Daymond, you were sure to see Rachel as well.)
An avid Bible student, Rachel studied her Bible constantly, with her number-one priority in life being to learn as much as she could from the Lord and to serve Him both in her church and community.
At church, she taught Sunday school for most of her life; led numerous Bible studies; worked with children on Bible drills; served in the nursery; was involved with the women’s mission group; regularly participated in visitation and outreach; and met with other women at church almost every week to pray for her pastor and others.
In her community, Rachel volunteered to answer phones and pray with those who called into a TV station, where she got Daymond involved in a program called Ask the Pastor. She also for many years led Bible studies for a group of folks who gathered at a local restaurant.
Rachel loved to go on mission trips and joined as many as she could, despite the fact that she had knee and hip replacements. Other church members sometimes pushed her in a wheelchair, etc., but Rachel was determined to go and minister for long hours even though she was not well. On two different occasions, Rachel had to be hospitalized when she returned from a mission trip.
On the inside cover of her Bible were Rachel’s handwritten words: “Make yourself irreplaceable.” That is exactly what she did. At her funeral, her pastor said, “It will take three or four people to replace Rachel at church.”
It is difficult to understand why God took Rachel with this world being in the mess it’s in, but Daymond believes with all his heart that he will see Rachel in the Rapture very soon.
Savior’s Signals!
Every word in the Bible is true—and from God the Holy Spirit. Even when the great apostle Paul says that it is he, not the Lord, saying something, if it’s in the Bible, it is absolute truth and put there by God Himself.
Every one of God’s prophets are to be given 100 percent attention. Their words were given by the Creator to all of humanity to heed, without exception. How much more important, then, are the words of Jesus Christ, the second Person of the Godhead, when He foretells the future?
Signals of prophetic import flashing with every so-called breaking news item today inundate our senses. Video and spoken reports fill our eyes and ears with the message that the end of the age is drawing to a close. Jesus’ own words of prophecy for this late hour of human history are in our headlines—thus this article’s title, “Savior’s Signals!”.
Lately it seems to me that prophetic signals directly from Jesus fill the news. I would like for us to look at a few of these.
To begin, we’ll consider the scriptural passages that most prominently feature Christ’s words about the end of the age. It’s a familiar portion recorded as part of the Olivet Discourse.
From the book of Luke, we first look at Jesus’ answers to His disciples’ questions about signs for His Second Coming.
Then said he unto them, Nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: And great earthquakes shall be in diverse places, and famines, and pestilences; and fearful sights and great signs shall there be from heaven. (Luke 21:10–11)
Pestilences
Jesus framed all of His Olivet Discourse teaching about things to come by saying the signals will be like birth pangs the closer to the end of the age mankind’s history gets. These signals will increase in frequency and intensity just before He comes back to the earth to put an end to this wicked system that is hopelessly corrupt and rebellious.
The most significant signal in this regard at this moment is wrapped in the term “pestilence.”
I don’t have to remind you of this fact. The COVID-19 pandemic is all we’ve heard about since early this year.
The disease has completely disrupted life not just in America, but around the world. There have been many pestilences throughout the centuries, but none has been as disruptive to all peoples of earth at the same time as the coronavirus.
Compared to recent flu epidemics, it is not as deadly in terms of the number of deaths as counted against the total number of cases. Yet COVID-19 has brought changes and immense fear to the nation and the world at levels never seen in history. This, I believe, makes the current pandemic a signal of pestilence in the end of the age like that prophesied by the Lord.
I believe this to be particularly the case because of all the other such signals converging simultaneously, indicating this to be the time of birth pangs for the wind-up of the age.
Seas and Waves Roaring
We look at the next signal Jesus gave for the end of the age that is prominent in current news. It is found a bit farther along in the Luke account of the Olivet Discourse. Here, the Lord repeats for emphasis part of His earlier words:
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. (Luke 21:25)
Here, Jesus puts together—side by side—two things that leap from our headlines hourly. Specifically, nations with perplexity and the sea and the waves roaring.
Never in my memory, nor I think in history, has there been the simultaneous convergence of these things on a global basis. Most every part of the world is now in some sort of crisis.
In our America, we are suffering through the pandemic, financial meltdown, riots and anarchy, and political differences, with irrationality at its core that pits race against race and ideology against ideology. The seas of humanity are roaring across the globe. We are all too familiar with the burning of major cities, murders, and lawlessness that wants to do away with all rule of law.
We see the same rioting and roaring of humanity in places like Beirut, Lebanon, where the people have witnessed hundreds dead, with anger over government not being able to protect against violence and being nonresponsive to the carnage suffered by the multitudes. The pattern is the same in many places in Europe and beyond. Jesus’ words should be resounding in the spiritual senses of every Christian. His return to put an end to the satanically inspired evil is on the brink.
Hatred for Christ
The veracity of the third signal Jesus gave that shows exactly how near the end of this age we must be is made manifest in our news. The Lord said:
If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you. If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you. Remember the word that I said unto you, The servant is not greater than his lord. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you; if they have kept my saying, they will keep yours also. (John 15: 18–20)
One stunning item that brought home the hatred for Jesus Christ is a stark reminder of just where this generation is in its absolute rebellion against Heaven. This excerpt about a professor at a public university needs no further comment to make the point.
Timothy Snediker, a PhD student in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Santa Barbara California, made a deeply disturbing Twitter post last week. Andrew Trask queried, “If you were dropped 2000 years back in time with nothing but the knowledge you have now—what would you do?” Snediker replied, “Easy. I would find and assassinate Jesus of Nazareth.”
He added, “Theologically speaking, it would be really important to get him before his calling and ministry begins, so that gives me roughly a decade to make it to Palestine, locate the man and make my move.”…
It is interesting to note that the Religious Studies Department is a strong supporter of Black Lives Matter and the move to defund the police.
“The Department of Religious Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara stands in support of the protests for racial justice and police reform. Black lives matter.”
“We commonly hear that ‘The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic’,” the department statement reads. “This sentiment echoes in the national response to the current health crisis, where thousands and thousands have died and continue to die daily…
Apparently the department’s concern for life does not extend to Jews living in Judea, no matter what the era. (“Religious Studies Professor Tweets Plan to Go Back In Time to Kill Jesus,” by Adam Eliyahu Berkowitz , Breaking Israel News, Latest News)
There can be no doubt that our Savior has given those who will observe the times through the prism of Bible prophecy signals of just how near the Tribulation is. That means He must be at the doors of Heaven getting ready to call His saints of this Age of Grace to Himself. Here is what He tells us of this generation of believers:
But of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father. Take ye heed, watch and pray: for ye know not when the time is…Watch ye therefore: for ye know not when the master of the house cometh, at even, or at midnight, or at the cockcrowing, or in the morning: Lest coming suddenly he find you sleeping. And what I say unto you I say unto all, Watch. (Mark 13:32–33; 35–37)
Devices and Dementia
This commentary will, I anticipate, meet with considerable eye-rolls and head-shaking.
What a fuddy-duddy, I can imagine the thinking will be behind the eye rolls and the head shakes. (The very fact that I use the term “fuddy-duddy” makes me a candidate for the very dementia to which I, at least cursorily, link their beloved devices.)
By the term “dementia,” I refer to a spiritual condition rather than a physical-mental one. Although medical studies put forth that total absorption in the cyberspace of the devices that are everywhere we look can cause organic disturbances, the spiritual damage might be, in my view, incalculable.
Smartphones and the many other devices that demand all but total allegiance to their human automatons are used by the powers and principalities in high places in their wicked endeavors. That is, the observably, highly addictive instruments turn the already-fallen minds of people, young and old, to directions other than toward God, who created humankind to fellowship with Him and to be His family for eternity.
We’re seeing the results of Satan having brought about the Twitterverse—a generation of social media-transfixed people who now have or are rapidly moving toward thinking in any direction other than God.
Of course I’m not referring to everyone in social media. Not every user of Facebook, Twitter, or other social media venues engage within the arenas of anti-God thinking. Many ministries use these as tools to put forward teachings from the Bible and the saving gospel message (that is, if their posts or tweets or whatever aren’t banned or taken down).
However, the vast majority of device users are held in what seems to be inescapable gravity. Those caught in the grip of cyberspace, by and large, think and communicate in terms that encompass anything but things of God and the Bible. The result is fulfillment of Bible truth. When people get away from principles of how to live God’s way, upside-down or reprobate thinking becomes the norm.
The devices have evolved from instruments for entertainment to those designed to evoke and cultivate a collective mindset that more and more embraces anti-biblical actions and activities. I believe it explains, at least in part, the insanity we are witnessing in every direction we look.
Again, here are the apostle Paul’s words that frame the matter. It’s an all-encompassing and powerful indictment from on high, to be sure.
And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient; Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, Without understanding, covenant breakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful. (Romans 1: 28-31)
Just like in the case of any human invention, the devices are not in themselves evil. In my teenage years, I heard all the warnings that TV would be the ruination of the nation with entertainment from the devil-influenced minds in Hollywood.
Well, I’m not so certain that those warnings weren’t well placed. I sure didn’t think so at that time. Neither, I’m sure, will the youth or even the more mature device users of today agree with my thoughts here.
But to anyone who looks around and is honest, this world suffers from a dementia that grows progressively worse. It has brought about a divide, a schizophrenia, within the culture in America.
I maintain that it is the electronic device instrumentalities that have at least exacerbated, if not engendered, the cultural and societal divide. I propose it is the all-pervasive electronic devices that are culpable in the matter of the reprobate mindset that has developed in this time so near the end of the age.
I was recently sent an article that, in my estimation, helps explain how Satan and his minions, both human and demonic, have been able to induce anti-God thinking through the ubiquitous electronic devices of our time.
The article was by a person who worked within mental institutions of earlier times.
What is happening today in the West increasingly reminds me of what I saw in that long-stay mental hospital many decades ago, but is less humane. Today, when a person displays signs of deviating from political correctness, the cultural overseers leap into action and denounce the behavior and the culprit, whose guilt is incontestable. If confession, contrition, and penance are not instantly forthcoming, the only sentence is to be declared a “far-right bigot,” with the likely result that the mainstream news media will then pick up the story and try to ruin what is left of the pitiful target’s life. Only the most courageous and resourceful will stand fast to their values and principles and defy the modern Maoist cultural revolutionaries of the radical progressive liberal-Left. The task of enforcement by the latter is, however, made considerably easier by the almost ubiquitous Smartphone, which makes social conditioning extremely easy.
The Smartphone functions as a virtual Skinner box. The original Skinner box was constructed of clear Perspex inside which a hungry pigeon pecked at a lever. A reward of grain was delivered only for the desired behavior. Today the box is virtual, as humans tap the keys of their smartphones. Usage of social media from these smartphones appears to be highly addictive, and can turn even previously well-adjusted people into obsessive narcissists who crave ‘likes’ and will leap onto any bandwagon in an attempt to increase their virtual popularity.
Combine this with the credulousness and gullibility of willingly impressionable youth and one has the ideal material for social conditioning. Hence the smartphone as a virtual Skinner box. The radical progressive liberal-Left have—with great enthusiasm—seized upon this opportunity to socially-condition the young and anyone else with high suggestibility, and are intent on turning tens of millions of people into compliant instruments of their political will.
The astonishing feature of all this is that the involuntary but mostly compliant subjects of this vast experiment in social engineering appear to lack any insight into what is being done to them. They have surrendered their critical faculties to invisible minders who program them to feel emotions, think thoughts, deliver utterances, and commit acts at the behest of hidden controllers who can avoid taking any responsibility for what ensues. And, perhaps most alarming of all, these cultural automatons are voluntarily giving up their cultural history, allowing it to be replaced by political propaganda which misrepresents the past. The result is that such people live in a present that is created and controlled by someone else, as is their future. Their lives are no longer their own, yet they are oblivious of this. (“The West is One Vast Social Engineering Experiment,” Len Wryte, American Thinker, https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/08/the_west_is_one_vast_social_)
Although there is more than enough anti-God thinking and behavior to go around—in both major political parties in America—one, in particular, is manifesting dementia that can’t be missed. Even the person chosen to be its presumptive candidate in the upcoming presidential election is front and center in exhibiting the reprobate thinking. And I don’t mean to be cruel with my assessment.
The proposals and rhetoric of this particular political party go against practically every former rationale in the political process for appealing to Americans who love and want the best for their nation. This proves, I’m convinced, the degree of reprobate thinking that now infects their ranks.
That party’s leadership apparently insanely believes that a majority of Americans now want to tear down the nation’s founding and rebuild with ideology and structure of a socialist/Marxist sort.
I don’t think it to be taken out of context to use the following in the matter of devices and dementia. Neither do I mean it to be taken as a pun or tongue-in-cheek. God’s Word is truth.
Lest Satan should get an advantage of us: for we are not ignorant of his devices. (2 Corinthians 2: 11)
Messiah Mania
The nation and world are in the throes of increasing tumult.
Anxieties and fears of every sort have invaded the psyche of the human race in general as a result. There is, accordingly, a proliferation of pleas for something, for someone, that can calm or at least damper the trepidation that can’t otherwise be solved or even salved.
Jesus said this would be the human condition as the time of His return nears.
He said such turmoil will bring with it great deception. Deceivers of all kinds will foist their nefarious wares upon earth’s inhabitants, taking advantage of the spiritual-driven neuroses that will be affecting and infecting people everywhere.
Among the deceivers will be those who even claim to be Christ, Himself. Religious deception and a profound increase in lawlessness (iniquity) will be the order of the day as the time of the Second Advent closes in.
Jesus said, for example:
And many false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many. And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold. (Matthew 24:11–12)
He warned about a particular form of false prophecy that would especially be directed toward deceiving and misleading Israel—the Jewish people:
Then if any man shall say unto you, Lo, here is Christ, or there; believe it not. For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect. Behold, I have told you before. Wherefore if they shall say unto you, Behold, he is in the desert; go not forth: behold, he is in the secret chambers; believe it not. For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. (Matthew 24 23–27)
Jesus was telling his brethren, the Jews, that they didn’t need to look for Him when the false prophets—the deceivers—bid them to search out various places. His coming will be spectacular. It will be seen all over the world.
Now, I must be quite careful here.
There are increasing reports that the Messiah is on His way or is already amongst us on earth today. My purpose is not to point to the following example as the Jewish leader in question being a false prophet or a deceiver of the ilk to which the Lord was referring.
However, the fact that this topic is in the headlines points strongly at where we must stand on God’s prophetic timeline.
Some of today’s most revered Jewish religious leaders have for some time been speaking and writing on how soon Messiah will come to earth to rescue and restore Israel in all the ways promised by Jehovah. The following is one example:
In his book Siach Nechama (Discourse of Comfort), Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky writes that the Messiah lives and is with us right now, and the redemption is ready and waiting. When Israel merits it. The Messiah will be revealed and redeem them immediately.
The rabbi’s new announcement was explained in the Hebrew language website, Hidabroot. As an explanation, Rabbi Kanievsky quoted the words of the Jerusalem Talmud in Tractate Brachot (2: 4) and Midrash Rabbah on the Book of Lamentations (Chapter 1), in which it is stated that on the day of the Temple’s destruction, the Ninth of Av, the Messiah of Israel was born.
“It seems that what the Sages wanted to say was that even though the Temple was destroyed, redemption exists everywhere. The Messiah is alive with us and passes on in each generation to another body,” Rabbi Kanievsky wrote, adding: “And this is the message: that you should never despair because redemption is already here, Amen.”
“It seems that [the Messiah] will only come in the moment of distraction, [which contradicts the commandment] to wait for him at any moment, in which case [the Messiah] will not come,” the rabbi wrote. “But there really is no contradiction here. Because the very belief and waiting every moment for the coming of the Messiah causes the desired distraction. He will come to His sanctuary and the Messiah will be revealed. Because even if you wait for him, you still do not think the moment will come.” (https://www.breakingisraelnews.com/155596/rabbi-kanievsky-announces-the-messiah-is-here-among-us/ )
Talk of the Jewish Messiah coming to make Israel the head of all nations, of course, doesn’t sit well with the majority of earth’s national leaders. All but a very few countries object vehemently to Israel’s right to nationhood. Most, by far, believe Israel is an intruder in the Middle East, an imposter that has usurped the Palestinians’ rightful claims to the land. All nations—sadly including America—still seek to divide the land granted to Israel by the God who created all that exists.
The “Messiah mania” we’re beginning to witness today is yet another end-times indicator for prophecy watchers to take into account.
Israel’s cry for their Messiah will, again sadly, result in their accepting a false savior, one who will impose upon on the Jewish people a holocaust more horrendous than the one with a capital “H” that was accomplished by the Nazi regime.
Antichrist will inflict upon that people a “Final Solution” that will try yet again to achieve Satan’s ages-long rage to rid the world of the Jew.
Thankfully, that attempt will result in Lucifer and his followers being destroyed in judgment from on high.
Israel will be a nation forever. We have God’s very Word on it.
And I will establish My covenant between Me and you and your descendants after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your descendants after you. And I will give to you and to your descendants after you, the land of your sojourning, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession; and I will be their God. (Genesis 17:7–8)
The Mask Master
I want to let it go, but I can’t. It’s central to the very wrap-up of this quickly fleeting age.
The mask is a symbol of the work of the most enslaving master ever to exist. The mask master is working his deluding evil and sophistry in ways that could not have been imagined even by Orwell, Huxley, or any of the dystopian fiction writers of past or present. And, that slave-master has done so in only a matter of a few months in ways that are astounding.
The realization is brought into high-definition focus in an audio that was brought to my attention the past week. I’m sure a number of readers here have already viewed it.
I hope it hasn’t been removed by the time you try to access it. Here’s the link:
(I had slight difficulty in getting to the audio, so I hope you don’t experience the same problem. I had to paste the link into the browser, as clicking on the link brought up the message that the site could not be accessed. It’s worth the effort, even though the ominous narration is quite disconcerting. It is nonetheless truth, not conspiracy, that is plainly laid out.)
The title of the audio is “It’s Only a Mask.” The narrator, in a sinister tone, presents all that’s taken place since the coronavirus was announced. He explains the ease with which the masses in America and around the world have been brought under the covering of a face mask in ways that have isolated us from each other and insulated us from corporate worship of God. He tells in stark, unambiguous terms just how we’ve been manipulated into lemming-like conduct. We are, the narrator implies, about to become more enslaved than the slaves of America’s past that are the center of the legitimate protests and at the hate-filled anarchy ripping at the nation.
Most who have no understanding of the manipulations within the “high places” of Ephesians 6:12 will likely view the message as mere fear-mongering rhetoric. Believe me—rather, believe your own spiritual senses—while you listen. This is a plan—a blueprint for enslavement—being carried out—and not simply by the globalists elite, as the naive narrator portrays the threat to our liberty. It is a devilish strategy spawned within the “powers and principalities of wickedness in high places” of, again, Ephesians 6:12.
Knowing the evil Satan and his minions—both demonic and human—intend for America and the world, it’s easy to understand why our Redeemer is called “the blessed hope.” Jesus Christ is the only hope for a world where the stage is being set for the final act of human history. You can be absolutely assured that Jesus will, ultimately, unmask the mask master and sit on the throne of this cleansed, pristine planet.
“Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ” (Titus 2: 13).
Bringing up the Beast
Planet earth is undergoing a “reset” of observable dimension, as the term “reset” is used by secular pundits. “Stage-setting” is the term we biblical prophecy watchers use to describe the things taking place at a phenomenal pace. In both cases—secular and biblical—the “reset” or “stage-setting” has undeniably accelerated to quantum speed since the American presidential election of 2016.
Secular observers see the dynamic changes taking place as ideological transformation that occurs cyclically—like seasonal weather patterns that can bring great, destructive storms. From the biblical view, the “reset,” the “stage-setting,” is heading in one direction, and for a singular purpose. Movement at such a swift pace is being employed by evil’s master strategist to bring to the world stage his final and most terrible tyrant of human history.
It’s more than interesting, I notice, that those coming from the secular standpoint more and more use the word “beast” to describe this rise of powers in opposition to traditional Western cultural, societal, political, and religious norms. To my thinking, this is yet another proof that God’s Word is truth. Even those who would no doubt gag at the thought that they were validating anything from the Bible can’t help contributing to the outcomes foretold thousands of years ago.
I recently received an email containing an interesting article related to this. My thanks to Nancy, who apparently reads these commentaries.
The writer of the article Nancy sent seems to have no biblical knowledge as he gets into things going on in the “reset.” While his article would be considered conspiracy-laden by those in most news media, the author—despite not knowing Bible prophecy, so far as I can tell—lays out well what is likely behind the scenes in Lucifer bringing the beast to power.
Again, it’s the writer’s use of the word “beast” that is most interesting. He makes no reference throughout his article to the beast of Revelation 13, yet that beast is the very entity to which he unwittingly is referring.
Here is the beginning of the article. I highly recommend that you read the entire piece.
Imagine, you are living in a world that you are told is a democracy – and you may even believe it – but in fact your life and fate is in the hands of a few ultra-rich, ultra-powerful and ultra-inhuman oligarchs. They may be called Deep State, or simply the Beast, or anything else obscure or untraceable – it doesn’t matter. They are less than the 0.0001%.
For lack of a better expression, let’s call them for now “obscure individuals”.
These obscure individuals who pretend running our world have never been elected. We don’t need to name them. You will figure out who they are, and why they are famous, and some of them totally invisible. They have created structures, or organisms without any legal format. They are fully out of international legality. They are a forefront for the Beast. Maybe there are several competing Beasts. But they have the same objective: A New or One World Order (NWO, or OWO).
These obscure individuals are running, for example, The World Economic Forum (WEF – representing Big Industry, Big Finance and Big Fame), the Group of 7 – G7, the Group of 20 – G20 (the leaders of the economically” strongest” nations). There are also some lesser entities, called the Bilderberg Society, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), Chatham House and more.
The members of all of them are overlapping. Even this expanded forefront combined represents less than 0.001%. They all have superimposed themselves over sovereign national elected and constitutional governments, and over THE multinational world body, the United Nations, the UN…
Co-opted or created by the Beast(s) are also, the European Union, the Bretton Woods Organizations, World Bank and IMF, as well as the World Trade Organization (WTO) – and – make no mistake – the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague. It has no teeth. Just to make sure the law is always on the side of the lawless.
In fact, they have co-opted the UN to do their bidding. (Peter Koening, “The Deep State,” The Global Reset – Unplugged. July 24, 2020, https://www.globalresearch.ca/global-reset-unplugged/5716178)
As addressed in this column before, many are already falling under the delusion being foisted by those whom this secular-oriented author calls “beasts.” Koening further relates:
The supremacy of these obscure unelected individuals becomes ever more exposed. We, the People consider it “normal” that they call the shots, not what we call – or once were proud of calling, our sovereign nations and sovereignty elected governments. They have become a herd of obedient sheep. The Beast has gradually and quietly taken over. We haven’t noticed. It’s the salami tactic: You cut off slice by tiny slice and when the salami is gone, you realize that you have nothing left, that your freedom, your civil and human rights are gone. By then it’s too late. Case in point is the US Patriot Act. It was prepared way before 9/11. Once 9/11 “happened”, the Patriot Legislation was whizzed through Congress in no time – for the people’s future protection – people called for it for fear – and – bingo, the Patriot Act took about 90% of the American population’s freedom and civil rights away. For good.
We have become enslaved to the Beast. The Beast calls the shots on boom or bust of our economies, on who should be shackled by debt, when and where a pandemic should break out, and on the conditions of surviving the pandemic, for example, social confinement. And to top it all off – the instruments the Beast uses, very cleverly, are a tiny-tiny invisible enemy, called a virus, and a huge but also invisible monster, called FEAR. That keeps us off the street, off reunions with our friends, and off our social entertainment, theatre, sports, or a picnic in the park. (Ibid.)
It’s beginning to be more understandable how the beast of Revelation 13 will have little trouble ascending the steps of the platform that Satan’s globalist minions are in overdrive preparing for when the Church leaves this world.
Peace and Safety in Perspective
The prophetic cry for peace and safety is almost always seen as involving fear generated by the threat of the breakout of war. Particularly, the prophecy is thought to be scheduled to emerge to the forefront of end-times conditions as Christ’s return nears.
Further, that almost universal cry is believed by many to be centered around the fear of war breaking out because of Israel confronting its immediately surrounding, hostile neighbors.
The following prophecy by the apostle Paul frames the matter:
But of the times and the seasons, brethren, ye have no need that I write unto you. For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night. For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape. (1 Thessalonians 5:1–3)
The apostle’s use of pronouns makes it clear that he delineates between the people he is addressing (fellow believers) and “them”—those upon whom sudden judgment is scheduled to fall.
And, incidentally, this is exactly the same pronouncement Jesus makes upon the rebellious generation when He next catastrophically intervenes. (Read Luke 17:26–30.)
This means that the judgment of God is meant for those who don’t know Christ for salvation and who will be crying for “peace and safety” when the “day of the Lord” is introduced by a “thief in the night” intervention.
The question then arises: Why does Paul say that “of the times and the seasons, brethren, ye have no need that I write unto you”?
He then goes on to tell us that we know perfectly well that the ‘thief in the night” experience will introduce the day of the Lord. He says further that this time will be marked by “they” who will be crying for “peace and safety.”
This being a heads-up to us—Paul’s “brethren”; that is, Christians—it is essential to understand the matter of “peace and safety.” This is how we can know the general time frame of the “thief in the night” event.
Folks, that’s the time of the Rapture!
We should, Paul tells us, “know perfectly well” that when they are crying “peace and safety,” the Rapture is at hand. Judgment will then fall on those who aren’t our “brethren,” the lost who will be left behind when Jesus calls to the Church.
We’ve been hearing for decades the “cry for peace and safety.” The efforts to bring about peace in the world, particularly, in the Middle East, are legendary. The effort has been never ending, yet there are wars and rumors of war, and the quest goes on.
I want us to consider this matter from a different perspective for a moment.
There is a cry for peace and safety by the world’s populations at this very time in history. As a matter of fact, the fear of war being waged by the tiny entity called COVID-19 is so great that it shut down the entire movement of earth’s peoples for the most part. It has more than 90 percent of people in America believing they must wear masks to survive the battle against the coronavirus.
Media and governments tell us we must stay sheltered and apart from each other until a vaccine is developed and vaccinations are mandated and injected. The world is crying “peace and safety” in a way never witnessed. They want freedom of fear from an enemy they can’t even see.
Christians are also crying for “peace and safety.” It is, however, for a much more profound sort.
Almost every email I receive from those who look at the world through the lens of Bible prophecy are expressing their wishes for Christ to Rapture His own. They want to escape the things they see about to overwhelm this judgment-bound planet. They want the peace and safety offered by the glory of Heaven. It is a righteous cry for help.
Let’s take heart with great anticipation as we see that day approaching. Let’s look with thoughts of the “blessed hope” of Titus 2:13 at the balance of the prophecy Paul left believers with before he departed Heaven through the Romans’ sword of beheading.
But ye, brethren, are not in darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief. Ye are all the children of light, and the children of the day: we are not of the night, nor of darkness. Therefore let us not sleep, as do others; but let us watch and be sober. For they that sleep sleep in the night; and they that be drunken are drunken in the night. But let us, who are of the day, be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love; and for an helmet, the hope of salvation. For God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ, Who died for us, that, whether we wake or sleep, we should live together with him. Wherefore comfort yourselves together, and edify one another, even as also ye do. (1 Thessalonians 5:4–11)
Enough!
The lockdowns are again being initiated by those willing to follow the dictates of those I would like to say are just mistaken in their zeal to keep America healthy. I know better.
We as a people are beginning to come under the delusion of the master planner—and I’m not meaning the Dr. Faucis of the bureaucratic, inside-the-Beltway elite of the medical establishment—those of the CDC and the like. The master planner is the old serpent, Lucifer the fallen one. Of this I am absolutely convinced.
One can viscerally sense that the rage against the founding of this nation—against the principles that undergird America—is increasing, not lessening, day by day.
Again to keep harping on the matter, I guess, America is the chief holdup to Satan getting the platform from which to launch his man of sin, the first beast of Revelation 13. This nation is, somewhat like the Church (all born-again believers) the only thing standing between the devil and his being able to wage total war on mankind—particularly on God’s chosen people, the Jews.
Now, I’m not equating America with the Church in the spiritual sense. The nation is, I simply mean, the physical manifestation—the nation-state—that represents a roadblock to Lucifer’s plan to bring in the Antichrist regime.
The Church, indwelt by God the Holy Spirit, is the spiritual entity that blocks the devil’s ultimate plan to overrule God’s governance upon this fallen planet.
Against this spiritual entity, the Church, Satan and the gates of Hell will never prevail. That is a promise in God’s Holy Word.
But he will overcome all nations and (in the sense of physical death) even the Tribulation saints under the leadership of history’s last and most terrible tyrant (see Revelation 13).
America, too, will be overcome. The process is in full-blown fury. The plan of the devil can be delayed, but it can’t be stopped. America as it was founded will not survive the onslaught we are witnessing. It will be overcome, just like all other nations and peoples.
The Church is the greatest blocking mechanism against Satan’s drive to bring his evil one to earth’s throne of absolute control. The United States is still in place to be the national entity that is preventing the globalist agenda from coming to fruition. And it is the globalist agenda that Lucifer is counting on to provide the platform for bringing his man, Antichrist, to the stage for the final play of this great, end-times drama.
It is the Church of Jesus Christ that has been instrumental in God’s keeping America in place in order to block the globalist drive. God’s people offering the prayer of 2 Chronicles 7:14, I believe, is what turned the globalist agenda aside in the presidential election of 2016.
Even mainstream pundits, through their meltdown on election night, considered it a near miracle that their candidate lost and a “show-biz nothing” won. It was more like a nightmare to them, but it was indeed a miracle for all who love and cherish America as founded.
We have witnessed that insane rage we’ve written about so much each and every news-cycle hour since that election. The rage hasn’t abated, but has grown exponentially more virulent.
Now the assault has us wearing masks and cringing in fear of a microbe (if that’s what a virus is) that is, in fact, less deadly than strains of the flu experienced each year. Basically, one doctor of the CDC has, in consort with the so-called Deep State, dictated to the entire American populace that we must stop going to work, school, restaurants, and church. It is all to bring America into the orbit of the globalist order. American elections have to be overruled, and the way that will be done from the perspective of Satan’s globalist minions in high places is to make you and me vote out the man God obviously put in place on 2016 to delay their plans.
“It’s the economy, stupid,” is the mantra Democrat operative James Carville created during the Bill Clinton years. The slogan worked.
If they can convince voters that the economic coming-apart of America is Donald J. Trump’s fault, their mission of getting rid of him as a roadblock to their plans will be accomplished.
So we have the masks to remind us of just how the Trump years have caused us grief. It is the physical manifestation of the pandemic gulag that they, themselves, have perpetrated, and think they have convinced us to blame Trump.
I received an email from a Rapture Ready website friend who is fed up with the minions of the assault on America that is getting more vicious by the day. She wrote the following.
The word “ENOUGH” is a protest word. It is a conversation starter of “God is enough,” “Enough lies,” “Enough shut down.”
The enemy has stolen the “I can’t breathe” to be a protest. I would write that on my face mask because I literally cannot breathe under it.
We need to protest effectively.
We can write it on our face masks without triggering people, but allowing a conversation.
Please help me spread this message.
Well, Shelly, it’s a great idea, to be sure. One of these days soon, though—perhaps today—the Lord will say “Enough is enough,” and will shout, “Come up here!” The Church will no longer be that Body on earth the Restrainer indwells. Satan will install his wicked order on this doomed planet.
Meantime, I prefer to fight the evil going on with something stronger.
Let’s take off the masks altogether so the Lord can read our lips as well as our hearts. Let’s again say “Enough is enough” with words of repentance, in unison, lifted toward the throne as instructed by the God of Heaven.
If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land. (2 Chronicles 7: 1
Conclusion and Delusion
We just returned from a trip to Crane, Missouri, near Branson. The purpose of the trip was to tape four programs for Skywatch-TV, Tom Horn’s up-and-coming television production that covers an ever-widening range of biblical topics. The program concentrates especially on matters as they relate to esoteric things going on behind the scene and to today’s societal and cultural developments.
Their expanding television and ministry facilities are impressive, with much more to come, Tom explained. My traveling companion and great friend, Mike Hile, as always, enjoyed the warm hospitality.
More than that, the conversations, both in private with the Skywatch folks and during actually taping the programs, was stimulating, although profoundly troubling in what the future might hold for the nation and the world in the immediate future.
At the same time, there was the interjection of what is just ahead in the magnificent future that awaits those who believe and trust the promises from God’s Word.
The programs center on two books that are upcoming. The first is a book authored by my good friend Tom Horn and myself with the title Antichrist and the Final Solution. The other is the new book by my good friend, Lt. Col. Robert Maginnis. The title of his book is Collision Course: The Fight to Reclaim Our Moral Compass Before It Is Too Late. Bob is a retired army officer, Pentagon think-tank consultant, and frequent contributor to Fox News.
Many things came from the interview that emerged to the surface as we probed a number of important signals that this generation is deeply into the last of the last days.
The one thing that struck me in our on-air conversations as the single most relevant development was the way many people across America today seem to be in an almost hypnotic state. By that, I mean they seem to have lost the ability to discern—to delineate—between things of fact and fiction in matters that impact how we live and interact.
The one example that strikes me in this regard is the matter of wearing face masks. More and more, this is proving to be more detrimental than beneficial. Breathing one’s own carbon dioxide, for example, can lead to oxygenation problems in the blood as well as bacterial infections. Face masks can also have a cultural ill effect in that they prevent us from seeing facial expressions in our social interaction –something that goes against the freedom to “know” each other as God created humankind to do.
A nation divided against itself cannot stand, as Lincoln put it, based upon Jesus’ words. We have been divided by the insistence of the CDC—in effect, by one doctor within that organization.
People are divided in our nation as never before in this way.
It has caused problems. For example, on numerous occasions I’ve witnessed developing confrontations. I’ve noticed more and more that people wearing masks in public verbally chastise others for not doing so. Total strangers are increasingly at odds over whether to wear the masks or not. It is beginning to take on the same kind of confrontation as is seen in road rage. People are divided in this way, and I’m convinced this is a deliberate part of a master plan.
The master plan, although carried out by those such as the CDC as they insist on mask-wearing, etc., is in fact being orchestrated by Satan. And, it seems to be working.
If there was ever a question of whether an entire population could be brought under a delusion such as that prophesied in 2 Thessalonians 2, there should no longer be much doubt.
People in these days of COVID-19 have been shown to be lemmings in slavish adherence to total shutdown of life’s activities. They will wear the masks, lose their jobs, let their children be ruined by keeping them from school, and be subject to a plethora of other deleterious societal, cultural, and even physiological and psychological dictates.
This is perhaps the primary realization that came from my participation on the programs we taped. We don’t have to wonder whether people could actually be brought under such a delusion as prophesied by the apostle Paul. We are already seeing that delusion taking shape, I think. The master planner is at work. His minions are at work, too.
As we reach the conclusion of human history, we are seeing develop that grand delusion—the big lie—that will eventually enslave the earth’s populations. People are being prepared—being mesmerized, at least in my opinion—for what is to come when the restraining work of the Holy Spirit is no longer in effect as it is prior to the Rapture of the Church.
Lt. Col. Maginnis revealed many things within Washington DC about what is going on behind the scenes. There are dark forces at work that even eclipse what we know from the surface evil perpetrated by what has become known as the deep state.
He also repeatedly offered the biblical prescription for staving off, at least for a time, the onset of the great delusion that is surely coming.
The upcoming election is crucial. That has been said about every election we’ve had, particularly in recent decades. But this one is truly the most critical, Bob and I believe.
The prescription for retarding the progression of that delusion disease as the conclusion of the age nears is the one God has given us to take to heart. That, of course, is 2 Chronicles 7: 14.
Let us all pray that holy prescription at every opportunity in these upcoming days.
The Gog-Magog Specter
While we sense the powers and principalities at their nefarious work just beneath the surface of what we can see, the prophetic specter of one of human history’s most catastrophic wars emerges. I refer to the Gog-Magog war of Ezekiel chapters 38 and 39, which, of course, we’ve looked at many times in these commentaries.
Stage-setting for the final act of the age is taking place at a blistering pace. The drive to completely erase God from the minds of earth’s inhabitants and replace Heaven’s governance with man-centered authority is full-speed ahead. A borderless world suited for the one-world order longed for by both the human and spiritual echelons in high places is no longer a surreptitious goal. The minions are out in full force, trying, in a major step, to bring America down so as to form a more perfect union, in the eyes of those globalist entities. It will ultimately become a hellish order that God promises to deal with in the most bitter, harshest terms as outlined in Psalm 2.
It’s obvious that the consummation of the end of this Church Age (Age of Grace) is near.
Not even in the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918 has American liberty been so affected. World War I and all other activities in that pandemic, which was tremendously worse in terms of numbers of deaths than COVID-19, didn’t bring about a complete national shutdown. The minions in high places have used this so-called pandemic to forge their construction for Antichrist’s soon-to-come launching platform.
Two nations prophesied to be key in the assault are increasingly in the news. Prophetic overtones cannot be missed when analyzed by those who serve as watchmen on the wall.
Meantime, the Middle East is seething with the rise of evil that is barely restrained from bursting forth in one of earth’s final, major conflicts. Spectral foreshadows presaging the Gog-Magog attack from Israel’s north are darkening the region’s geopolitical horizon by the day. We will look at a couple of nations in current news that, in part, comprise Ezekiel’s Gog-Magog force that will assault God’s chosen people of Israel.
We begin with Turkey, which was within the region in ancient times known as Togarmah. The nation is one of three major countries scheduled to assault Israel in a coalition led by Rosh—or Russia, as most scholars conclude.
It is most interesting that this nation is sounding off on its plans for Jerusalem, and for the Temple Mount in particular.
Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowed to “liberate al-Aqsa mosque” from Israel after “resurrecting Hagia Sophia” as a mosque on Friday.
The decision to change the status of the ancient Hagia Sophia church, which had been transformed into a mosque in 1453 and then into a museum in 1934, was made controversially last week…
The resurrection of Hagia Sophia heralds the liberation of the al-Aqsa mosque, the Turkish Presidency website says. “The resurrection of Hagia Sophia is the footsteps of the will of Muslims across the world to come… the resurrection of Hagia Sophia is the reignition of the fire of hope of Muslims and all oppressed, wrong, downtrodden and exploited.” (Seth J. Frantzman, “Turkey Vows to ‘liberate Al-Aqsa’ after Turning Hagia Sophia to Mosque,” Jerusalem Post, July 11, 2020)
An even more key nation scheduled to attack Israel in the Gog-Magog assault is front and center in the news. We have covered a number of times the prophecy that the ancient area of Persia called Elam will suffer a catastrophe of some kind. We, along with others who study the prophecy, believe it will be a nuclear problem of some sort. People will, apparently, be forced to flee the area because of the disaster.
That mountainous area in Iran is thought to contain Iran’s nuclear development facilities. Strange things have been going on there recently.
Iran is facing a total intelligence breakdown.
With another explosion on Thursday night, reportedly at an Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps facility, the question is not only how anyone has pulled off up to seven attacks in around two weeks, but how has the Islamic Republic repeatedly failed to stop them…
What the world is witnessing right now is someone – the United States, Israel or Saudi Arabia, possibly with Iranian dissident proxy help – hitting Iranian nuclear and conventional weapons and IRGC facilities practically at will. And they are doing it in a way that has virtually never been witnessed in recent memory…
The questions remaining then, are how long these attacks can continue and whether Iran can cope with them or try to make some sort of secret contact to cut a deal to get them stopped.
If it does not, the message from whoever is making this happen is clear: Continued aggressive actions on nuclear and other fronts will lead to consequences that the ayatollahs had never imagined. (Yonah Jeremy Bob, “What the World Is Witnessing Right Now Is Someone Hitting Iranian Nuclear and Conventional Weapons and IRGC Facilities Practically at Will,” Jerusalem Post, July 11, 2020)
Hatred of Israel by these and other diabolist states of the Middle East are raising the specter of the Gog-Magog war a visible, looming certainty. We believe the Rapture will immediately precede that attack—the next-to-very-last war before Christ’s return at Armageddon.
Terry James Prophecy Line 