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.

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)

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).

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)

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.

We are in what is considered by many the most troubling time in history. I would add that we are also in the most exciting time in all of history—the time very near the Second Coming of Jesus Christ to planet earth.

Considering all that is going on brings the need to think about what will be the most stunning headline ever to cross a newspaper front page or television newscast.

Much of what follows comes, with some editing, from a book I wrote many years ago.

However, with all that is transpiring with such swiftness and in such profusion, my thoughts back then might truly come to fruition at any moment.

************

But a stunning headline, as suggested by this commentary’s title, will one day –perhaps very soon—leap from the front pages of the world’s major newspapers. Things bursting across the world will, in that stupefying moment, make all going on before it seem as nothing.

Newscasters will break into regularly scheduled programming on television and radio programs. The Internet will rage with the distressing revelation:

Millions have vanished, and it’s as if the planet has been turned upside-down and inside-out.

This is the one event that will grab and hold the attention of every individual on earth who has ability to understand what has happened. Panic will ensue.

What happened? What’s going on? These will be the primary questions at the heart of the fear-filled thoughts of every person who learns of the disappearances. Many will have witnessed the sudden vanishings up close and personal, as ABC sports used to put it. The planet will be abuzz with terror.

America, the nation with perhaps the largest numbers of Christians, will instantly lose its very heart. The greatest nation to ever exist, in terms of creative genius and industrial acumen and productivity, will be forever changed in a microsecond of time.

America will suffer loss as will no other country when the calamity of all calamities sweeps millions upon millions from the planet. The instantaneous disappearances will leave the nation and the world terrified—and searching for answers.

Shocking Scenes

So, getting directly to earth-bound scenarios that I speculate will immediately follow the Rapture, let’s look at some dark probabilities.

The most immediate things that assault the senses while people look around them are the clothing and other things that fall to the ground, the pavement, and the floors. The only evidence that those who suddenly vanished were ever on earth are the clothing and other personal items they no longer need. The prosthetic devices of every sort, too, give the news pundits something to talk about on the programs that are dominated by one subject: the disappearance of millions.

But in my speculative view, the most frightening, then, as the knowledge sets in, the most agonizing thing that grips the world is the fact that every single child who hasn’t reached the age of accountability for his or her soul is gone from the planet in that millisecond. Every womb of every left-behind woman who is with child at the time of the disappearances is suddenly empty. God, in that astonishing moment, makes a monumental and unmistakable statement about His opinion of when life begins!

Can we even begin to imagine the excruciating emotional explosion taking place all over the world?

With the intimately personal cataclysms still raging, other just as staggering considerations flood the fear-filled thoughts of men and women left behind.

National Chaos

Again, in America, martial law is immediately invoked. But before the much-denuded military and law enforcement personnel can regroup to enforce order, looters of every sort move freely throughout decimated society, pillaging, destroying, and raping whatever and whomever they find in their rampaging paths.

The consciences of man are no longer under the control of the Holy Spirit, as in the time just before the disappearances occurred. Homes, empty of their vanished occupants, are open game, and the looters don’t stop to give a second thought to the horrendous future mankind now faces. They think, as I heard Dr. Charles Stanley once say, they have died and gone to their warped picture of heaven.

We’ve only begun to explore what the left-behind world will be like and the likely dynamics that will rearrange the earth for Antichrist’s appearance.

People have vanished all over the world in less time than it takes for light to enter the eye and strike the retina. The chaos is worldwide, but nowhere is it as profound as within the United States of America. Just a matter of time, however, will prove that the ramifications are geopolitically staggering—for one nation in particular, in addition to America. (More about that nation later.)

The American government at every level soon determines that every child below, most likely, the teenage years is gone. Every pregnant woman who remains suffers the loss of the baby in her womb. But some other things are even more troubling to the officials:

Government in Crisis

With officials missing at every level, government is totally disrupted, and the powers-that-be quickly recognize that not even martial law is going to be able to reestablish the revenue basis for carrying on government as usual. A huge part of the tax base—a fatally proportionate one—is no longer here to provide the funds to carry on government as usual. Much of the workforce, particularly the most vital, skilled force that is the heart and soul of American industry and fidelity to the good work ethic, has disappeared in that stupefying moment.

There will be instant attention paid to formulating a completely changed monetary system to deal with the crisis.

The carnage alone caused by the many accidents and other disappearance-engendered problems require massive manpower and in many cases extraordinary skills to begin restoring order. These needed people are gone in great numbers.

Europe, on the other hand—while dumbfounded, even extremely worried over the vanishings—seems to have suffered little infrastructure damage. Economy, well structured by the European Union Parliament for the most part, has only minimum glitches in keeping things running. Now it is directed by the upper echelon of the American government that is left to advise and assist in helping with things–especially with reestablishing America’s economic base on sound footing.

Enemies on Alert

America’s particularly bad circumstances do not go without notice by others within the nation-states of the world. Russia and China take special notice. They assess how America’s military complex has been affected.

Islamics who want their religion to rule the world are delighted. The Great Satan has gotten its deserved punishment from Allah. Although Islamic children, too, have disappeared, the adults who remain in great numbers are still available to make war—and love, in order to replenish the children. The terrorist Islamic organizations are delighted, and immediately see jihad against their enemies—particularly against the Jews of the world and Israel.

Israel Comes to Attention

Israel’s governmental leaders come to two stunning realizations:

1) Their only ally, with the greatest thermonuclear deterrent in the world, is in chaos.

The US government officials who remain are doing all within their power just to make deals with the EU in order—somehow—to regain their own power. There is no time, or even facility, to see to Israel’s protection.

2) The greatest supporters of Israel and the Jews—their best friends—are no longer on the planet! While America’s top leaders who are still around are coming to understand there must be a complete rearrangement of economy and monetary matters, Israel is getting reports of plans for attack by the Arabs, Persians, and other Islamics who understand what has happened as an opportunity provided them by Allah to once-and-for-all eradicate the hated Jew and the impostor state of Israel.

Well, I leave it to you to paint your own picture of what transpires from this point. Just read the book of Revelation and the Old Testament books of Joel, Zechariah, Ezekiel, Daniel, and others to fill out your own scenarios.

Paul the apostle’s words will be a good place to start forming your own conclusions in thinking about the return of Jesus as given in Revelation 19:11.

Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition;

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.

Remember ye not, that, when I was yet with you, I told you these things? And now ye know what withholdeth that he might be revealed in his time.

For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way.

And then shall that Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming:

Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders, 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: That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness. (2 Thessalonians 2:3–12)

The past weekend this nation celebrated Independence Day 2020. The holiday is a sort unlike any celebrated by any other country in earth’s history. There will never be a holiday of its like again this side of Christ’s next intervention into the sordid and sorry affairs of man.

I can say this with certitude—at least within my own view—because America is the last hope, in human terms, for freedom to the extent America has enjoyed that blessing for 244 years. We are witnessing liberty’s last gleaming.

When thinking on this commentary, I first thought to title it “Why America Is Lost.” The thought was that the nation has since some time in the 1950s begun the dismantling of all that is good about her, as French philosopher and admirer of America, Alexis de Tocqueville, would have it.

By the late 1950s, influences by Karl Marx and especially of Charles Darwin, as well as by other anti-God minions, had so invaded the educational process in America as to weaken the undergirdings that held erect America’s “goodness.”

That “goodness” is the Judeo-Christian principles upon which the founding fathers placed the republic they created. By 1963, those principles had eroded to the point that prayer and Bible reading were banished in public classrooms. The Ten Commandments became anathema to the new masters of education. There were actually statements made to the effect that the commandments should not be posted anywhere in public places—especially not within public classrooms. The rationale? Because the children might actually read them and begin to think they have to obey and practice them. That insanity is recorded for anyone who cares to research it. I’m not making it up, as they say.

I remember a thirty-something-year-old professor standing before my political science class in my freshman year at college lauding the marvels that Marxism-Leninism offered as opposed to the evil presented by American adventurism and bloody war-making since the founding. By then, the erosion of American “goodness,” thus its “greatness,” was well underway.

So, as I say, I started to give this commentary the title, “Why America Is Lost.” I thought to present the fact that the disease of anti-God inculcation has so infected America at its core that the nation cannot be spared the inevitable fall that God’s righteousness—the only goodness that exists—ultimately demands.

As de Tocqueville and any observer within the realm of rationality would rightly conclude, America has lost her goodness, her godly foundational mooring. So she has lost her greatness (the gleaming of freedom as testimony to God providing certain unalienable rights, among them life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness).

We have allowed the “wickedness in high places”—those principalities and powers in the lofty perches of academia and government—to replace the godly foundations. The nation has been and is at this moment being deconstructed by lawlessness in an avalanche of tearing down all values formerly held to as suitable for a good and moral people.

Founders like Franklin and Adams forewarned about dangers intrinsic within the populace ever abandoning the Judeo-Christian base they had erected. Any other people than a morally based, truly free people, they consistently forewarned, are unsuitable for God-given governance. Any people not firmly moored by such providentially influenced foundation are ultimately destined to lose their liberty, was the message.

That those liberties implicit and explicit within the Bill of Rights are even at this moment under assault cannot be denied. The anarchists, arsonists, and so-called deconstructionists of the radical left make liberty’s last gleaming a manifest destiny for Americans.

The Democrat party champions those who are fomenting a cultural revolution that mimics those of Mao and others. Lawlessness rules in major cities where the reprobate thinking of Democrat mayors and governors agrees with the Marxist demands that law enforcement be eliminated through defunding and other means.

The Republican Party for the most part refuses to stand up against the evil that has taken over much of the nation’s youth—the Millennial generation. From kindergarten through doctoral programs, these have been victims of a satanically influenced cabal of anti-God educators for more than six decades. The title, “Why America Is Lost,” therefore, would be appropriate for an article in this day and time.

But the impression struck as the depression deepened in thinking on these matters. “You have left out one ingredient to all this seeming madness afflicting the nation and world.”

Indeed, I had left out the most important ingredient when thinking on the insanity raging within our nation and beyond. That factor is God’s staying hand.

America, although it shows every indicator of precipitous decline from which there seems no escape, remains the freest nation on earth. Its economy, already untenable because of debt extrapolated into hundreds of trillions of dollars for future generations, remains intact, despite suffering a complete shutdown due to a largely contrived virus threat. Most of the nation’s heartland continues to function and show progress toward a return to a degree of normalcy, despite the most vicious attempts imaginable by globalist diabolists in DC and other capitals of the world to rip American sovereignty and autonomy to shreds.

It is incontrovertibly true from the perspective of Bible prophecy, within the observations of those spiritually attuned. God continues to restrain the raging efforts to bring down this supernaturally inspired experiment in liberty. America will be here, I’m believing, until that restraint is withdrawn when Christ calls all born again believers to Himself.

Meantime, it is incumbent to pray fervently that He who sits in Heaven—and obviously has the rebels of planet earth in derision as in Psalm 2—continues to restrain the satanically enraged evil with His omnipotent, staying hand.

Now they are determined to do away with the “Star Spangled Banner.” The suggestion, among other maddening ones, is that we replace it with John Lennon’s “Imagine.”

It is the latest wickedness from the same minions—the human ones—who follow the dictates of the minions—the demonic ones—who reside in the “high places” of Ephesians 6: 12.

We see the modern incarnation of ancient rebellion each and every day as the anarchy takes on greater intensity by the hour. The following news excerpt reflects that rebellion.

The woke libs are on a roll. They’ve progressed from tearing down Confederate statues in the name of racial justice to targeting statues of the president who waged war against the Confederacy to free the slaves, all in the name of some indecipherable cause that is presumably noble and beyond the comprehension of the unwoke masses.

But even when all the Abraham Lincoln statues are torn down and Mount Rushmore is firebombed into oblivion, the woke scolds still won’t be satisfied. A recent poll found that more than 40 percent of Americans who identify as “very liberal” want to change the name of our country and the design of its flag in the name of “pro-diversity cultural deconstruction.”

Some 80 percent of “very liberal” respondents also want to change the national anthem, so it was only a matter of time before the cancel mob came for slave owner Francis Scott Key and “The Star-Spangled Banner.” In fact, they’ve already begun. A statue of Key was toppled in San Francisco over the weekend, and a high school student in New York recently refused to sing the anthem at her (virtual) graduation ceremony to avoid “being complicit to a system that has oppressed people of color.” (Andrew Stiles, “John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’ Tops List of Woke National Anthem Alternatives,” Washington Free Beacon, June 25, 2020)

Those who would now ban the “Star Spangled Banner” as America’s national anthem would prefer that the world anthem written and performed by the former Beatle should take its place. Like Lucifer, who convinced one-third of Heaven’s angelic body to rebel, then humanity to try to usurp God’s authority by creating a one world order with the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11), the America-as-founded-haters want the United States under control of the globalists-elite.

Those desecrating the flag and demolishing statuary of the nation’s past actually haven’t any idea in most cases of why they do what they do. But the nucleus of their ilk serves their masters, those globalists-elite aforementioned. They serve their master—the same one the fallen angels followed into perdition and an ultimate fate in the ake of fire.

It is a worldwide insanity that has taken hold. We are witnessing the wind-up of history this side of the Tribulation.

Lennon, according to his lyrics, wanted us to imagine that God is a liar. Actually, the inference to be drawn from his lyrics is that there is no God. There is no Heaven and no Hell. We can just live in peace and harmony once we throw off the shackles of any pretense of there being a deity to rule over us.

As we can look around us at the present hour and see the increasing violence and tumult, we can agree that Lennon was right—to this point, anyway. It is the difference in believing in there being a God who rules and those who want to be their own gods that remains the reason there is no peace on planet earth.

There are those of us who still believe there is a God and Heaven, and there remains a Hell to shun. Therefore, there is constant conflict between these two realities. There are those who follow the ways of Heaven and there are those who foment the wickedness of the Hell-bound.

Of course, sadly and tragically, there are many in between, who are headed down that broad road—those who the powers and principalities in high places of Ephesians 6:12 are determined to keep herding toward the eternal abyss. There is no peace to be found within the wickedness that prevails in today’s world.

That wickedness is prophetically scheduled to get worse—much, much worse.

But evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived. (2 Timothy 2: 13)

While the presidential election of 2020 approaches, the battle for the spiritual hearts and minds of this nation in particular will be fierce. Satan is desperate to bring America into his globalist mold for launching his hellish world dictator—Antichrist. America’s autonomy and sovereignty must be destroyed.

The devil’s mantra has been fully adopted and the heathen are indeed raging. But be assured, all of this madness hasn’t taken the Lord of all Creation by surprise. Here, once again, is what God Himself has said in recognition of exactly what will be going on when He next intervenes into the attempt to establish a one-world order like in the time of the Tower of Babel.

Why do the heathen rage and the people imagine a vain thing?

The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord, and against his anointed, saying, Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us.

He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision.

Then shall he speak unto them in his wrath, and vex them in his sore displeasure.

Yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion.

I will declare the decree: the Lord hath said unto me, Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee.

Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession.

Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.

Be wise now therefore, O ye kings: be instructed, ye judges of the earth.

Serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way, when his wrath is kindled but a little.

Blessed are all they that put their trust in him. (Psalm 2:1–12)

Let us put our trust in the Lord Jesus. He is on the very brink of taking charge. He will begin doing so by removing His Bride, the Church, from this evil earth-system and placing her into the heavenly dwelling places He has prepared.

Listening to the many conservative voices as I do each week, my thought is most often “they get it—almost.” Sometimes they come closer to getting it than at other times. Some come closer to getting it than others.

Rush Limbaugh, for example, comes closer to “getting it” than most anyone else. But even he falls short of what is truly going on with regard to what is assaulting this nation and world.

And, just like salvation itself, if you miss it by an inch, you miss it by the proverbial mile, because at the root of the problems involved in both the case of salvation and the assault taking place is the same critical element. It is a profound cause that acts as a blinding agent to all else that flows from that root cause.

It is this element that gives Lucifer the deluding, deceiving ability to produce the sleight of hand that blinds most to what’s really going on.

Rush, for example, recognizes correctly that at least half of America has, apparently, gone insane. He talks for hours each day about how the educators have for decades now molded the minds of America’s youth through the public school system from K through grad school. They have rewritten—retaught—history by inculcating the “skulls full of mush,” as he puts it, with the lie that America was founded by evil, white slaveholders. And, he says in part, this inculcation, in cahoots with other deception, is why we have arrived at the point where there are more white people among the protesters and rioters than black people. He says, and the facts are there to prove it, that the current protests in the major cities where they are taking place are led in many cases by young, white, women who come from ”privileged”  backgrounds.

These, he says, are full of guilt from their deluding inculcation. They are as enraged over perceived wrongs by the founding fathers and Civil War history as the African-Americans for whom they protest and riot, thus the bowing of the knees before even the anarchists.

We’re witnessing a cultural revolution not unlike the one of China a couple of decades ago, Rush declares. The turmoil and foment are all part of the long-sought determination by the Marxist educators and others to grab the biggest prize in the geopolitical grab bag of goodies.

If they can get America to agree that largesse stored in its vaults and printing presses should be given to those seeking reparations for slavery and to be used for other giveaways, they can create the welfare class that depends totally upon their governance. A permanent underclass will make globalism the wave of the future, once America falls to the utopian ideal long claimed to be wrapped up in communistic intent.

The following article somewhat presents this almost-got-it, sleight-of-hand expression of thought.

The coronavirus was a heck of a cover for the Federal Reserve’s failings, and the riots laid even more cover for what’s to come. While the masses focus on what’s happening on the surface, the real criminals laugh at our ignorance from their metaphorical ivory towers.

As we fight amongst ourselves and try to figure out which violence is more acceptable, looting or police brutality, the ruling class is tightening the chains of our enslavement. With the help of the mainstream media, we are distracted from the core of the problem while dividing ourselves as the masters command…

You cannot trust CNN. You cannot trust lamestream, fakestream media. We know that they have an agenda. We know that they cherry-pick facts. And we know they lay down heavy deception. They are there to distract, deceive, and divide the masses. And what’s really going on in this country, remember, make no mistake; the Federal Reserve is laying cover for their operation to get rid of the dollar and move us all into a one-world digital reserve currency. And once we get rid of physical currency, guys, that is the granddaddy of them all as far as a surveillance state. Because they will be able to detect every single purchase by every single person every moment of the day. (Tyler Durden, “It All Comes Back To The Fed: The NWO Is Being Shoved Down Our Throats,” Zero Hedge)

The above story goes on to recommend precious metals as a hedge against what is coming in terms of economic disaster. It is a man-made answer, they believe, to a man-made catastrophe to come.

And that’s where Satan’s sleight-of-hand delusion comes into play. Like in the game of thimblerig (now called the shell game) in which a pea is placed under a thimble and three thimbles are shuffled, and the gambler guesses which the pea is under to make his wager, the devil distracts our eyes and minds to other areas in our surroundings. He thus makes even the most astute observers among us miss what he is really doing.

He is, in fact, setting the stage for bringing in his man of sin, the Antichrist.

Tom Horn and I have written a book we call Antichrist and The Final Solution. It details, through Bible prophecy overlaid by history and current events, exactly where all of this sleight-of-hand is moving this world of rebelliousness. More about this book in the coming weeks. It is a fascinating look into our strange time upon this fallen planet.

This isn’t meant to be a commercial, but in researching, studying and writing on the sleight-of-hand going on, it becomes clear that those who are still of sound mind and not of the reprobate mind of Romans 1:28 just don’t see the true, root cause that will soon bring America and the world totally into the devil’s orbit.

These don’t see the problem as rooted in sin. They don’t comprehend that it is the spiritual battle laid out by Paul the apostle in Ephesians 6: 12.

These believe that what is needed is more legislation to take away liberal ideology from within society and culture that will do the trick—that will change the minds of the voters in order to restore America, and the world at large, to sanity.

But it is the spiritual hearts of mankind that must be changed. The battle is rooted in spiritual wickedness, not merely in ideological, polemical disputations.

The resolution to Satan’s evil isn’t legislation, but a Person – the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the only solution that can save the individual, the nation, or the world.

Detroit Police Chief Todd Bettison took a knee when confronted by a group of protesters of George Floyd’s death at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer. Bettison complied with the enraged protesters’ demands, later saying he did so for “tactical reasons,” apparently since a kneeling policeman threatens no action against anyone. Bettison said he did so because he “didn’t want any violence.”

The performance was against police protocol to be ready to put down actions of unruly gatherings that threaten public harm.

It was all quite ironic since Bettison, a black man, was kneeling before a mob that included a number of white people.

Again, his purpose was, he said, to prevent violence. It was a noble gesture, I suppose, since it seemed to work in that instance. Detroit, of all places, seems to have avoided some of the extreme acts of destruction and anarchy of other inner cities.

Minneapolis, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, and others didn’t fare so well. Seattle, of course, was completely taken over in one section of downtown by anarchists who demanded extortion money from business owners and even residents to “protect” them in the absence of cops, who abdicated even their precinct headquarters to the gun-toting mob.

Abdication of individual rights quickly turned into kneeling before the people who are determined to break the nation into individual “protectorates.” I use the term facetiously, of course.

These extortionists and destroyers of law and order are following the dictates of the minions that direct them. Satan is the lawless one at the head of all such activity, regardless of the noble purposes within which the destroyers try to deceptively couch their protestation.

There is a place in America for protests—for free speech against perceived or actual wrongs. The Constitution provides that protection to individuals and to groups of peaceful protesters.

But it is peace that is disturbed—is taken away—when the mob mentality takes over and lawlessness prevails.

When violence ensues if others don’t kneel before them and their “causes”—this is iniquity of the first order. This is lawlessness.

We see God’s thoughts on iniquity, the biblical synonym for lawlessness, throughout His Word.

And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold. (Matthew 24:12)

Everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness; sin is lawlessness. (1 John 3:4)

For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work. Only he who now restrains it will do so until he is taken out of the way. (2 Thessalonians 2:7)

And then will I declare to them, “I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.” (Matthew 7:23)

It can be conjectured, I think, whether the lawlessness we are witnessing is bringing about the cry for peace and safety prophesied for the time leading up to the day of the Lord—the time when the Age of Grace will end. This will be the moment of the Rapture.

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 5:2–3)

The officer in Detroit was kneeling as a symbolic cry for peace and safety for the people he was supposed to be protecting.

Santa Barbara Mayor Cathy Murillo attended a protest at which she did not agree to calls by protesters to take a knee. The mob became unruly and the crowd refused to allow her to speak. Two days later, she took a knee during the Pledge of Allegiance at city council meeting, but her action was rejected as “an encore performance.”

But the most despicable act for purpose of political pandering, in my view, came when Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi led House and Senate Democrats in a group kneel at the Capitol’s Emancipation Hall. It was a blatant statement against constitutional law and order yet perpetrated by an official at that level of federal government. It showed disdain for men and women in law enforcement who die every year to protect us from those who would make us kneel before them.

And make no mistake; it is indeed a thin, blue, line (law enforcement) between us and the tyrants who want to enslave Americans—enslavement, the history of which is the very thing this current kneeling nonsense is supposed to show solidarity against.

The following article excerpt offers a bit of hope for the nation in standing against the kneeling, if I may put it that way.

The ritual [kneeling in solidarity /protest] has caught on and people from around the world are now following suit…

Though the murder of George Floyd is universally condemned, not everyone who supports the fight against racism agrees with taking a knee. Lily Mei, the first Asian-American and the first woman mayor of Fremont California, was addressing a protest on Tuesday when the crowd called for her to take the knee.

“Taking a knee is something that I’m not going to be doing,” she told the crowd.

She explained her decision… “I have been asked why I will not kneel at events like the one from earlier today,” Mei wrote. “Because of my faith, I will never kneel to anyone but God. You will see me kneel in church, but you will not ever see me kneel at any other event except in prayer.”

This statement of faith was also expressed by Georgia State Trooper O’Neal Saddler, who was allegedly asked to kneel during a demonstration in Hartwell.

“If I didn’t have any respect, I wouldn’t [be here],” Saddler explained. “I was supposed to be out of town this weekend with my wife. I took off today, this weekend, but I’m out here to make sure y’all are safe.”

He added, “Don’t go there with respect, OK? I have much respect, but I only kneel for one person.”

Someone in the crowd replied: “And that’s God,” which the trooper confirmed: “God.”

This is Georgia State Trooper O’Neal Saddler. He was asked to kneel today, and this was his response.

God Bless him! (“Rabbis Agree: Kneel Before No One Except God,” Adam Eliyahu Berkowitz, June 9, 2020, Breaking Israel News)

People of America and the world take heed. Don’t kneel before the lawlessness perpetrated by the lawless one—Satan. Kneel only before the One Who truly has the keys to peace and safety, to death and hell, to salvation.

That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:10–11)