Terry James Prophecy Line

Tim and Beverly were getting on the elevator at a hotel in Dallas last December just as Todd and I were stepping off. We were the only people aboard.

As usual, Tim and I hugged and we all had a personal moment of greeting before going on our separate ways. The Pre-Trib Study Group is always busy as we all shuffle to our various destinations during that three-day conference in December.

Tim grabbed the material of the sleeve of my cardigan sweater. “Boy, that’s really a nice sweater,” he said and examined it closer.

I told him that my wife thinks it’s out of fashion, but that it was one I really like, so defied her wishes in bringing it along.

Both Tim and Beverly assured me that it was right in style. (Of course we are of relatively the same generation…).

Todd said nothing, knowing little about fashion and of a much younger generation.

Sadly, it was the last time Tim and I would speak. I say “sadly,” not because I’ll never see him again, because I certainly will. I say “sadly,” because I will have to wait an indeterminate amount of time to see him again.

I will miss him while in this body of flesh and blood, awaiting that spectacular reunion above this fallen sphere we call earth.

Tim LaHaye devoted the last years of his life to thinking on what the Bible has to say about the coming of the Lord for His church. God made His opinion known in a spectacular way to the whole world by seeing to it that Tim and Jerry Jenkins’ treatment of that coming, great reunion has sold more than 80 million copies.

Todd tells me that even though the Left Behind series is well past its primetime sales, it none-the-less continues to sell 100,000 copies per month.

Only the God of Heaven could achieve marketing success of that magnitude for any genre within Christian book publishing.

So, the Lord of Heaven used this giant of the faith—as his Left Behind co-author called him following Tim’s passing into the presence of his Savior—to get out the message that Christ is about to shake this world like it hasn’t been shaken since the day Noah climbed into the Ark and Lot was whisked out of Sodom.

The Rapture is about to convulse the rebellious planet in one, stunning microsecond. Tim and Jerry were primary messengers in the Lord’s merciful gesture in seeing to it that many, many are properly forewarned.

One of the last acts of generosity and kindness Tim performed—and he was so kind and generous to everyone—was to endorse my just released book on the very topic of the Rapture. It is a matter I will indeed hold close to my heart.

Tim LaHaye didn’t quite make it to that stupendous event—the Rapture—while in this life. But, he is now outside of this linear restraint we call time. I have no doubt that at the moment of Rapture he will arrive at where our Lord is just a microsecond before those who are alive and are suddenly translated into Christ’s presence.

I know just how instantaneous is that trip into the heavenlies. A Good Friday “Widow Maker” heart attack experience had me there within a blink of an eye, three separate times within a matter of one half hour as my heart stopped before being shocked back to life.

I was sent back to this earth, among other reasons, to write about that subject for which Tim LaHaye became famously synonymous. He went to his and my—and I hope your—Heavenly home and stayed.

I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, but I do feel a pinch of envy over the joyfulness my great friend and mentor now must be experiencing.

The following is a news article synopsizing Tim’s prodigious career in God’s work over the years.

“The Rev. Tim LaHaye, co-author of the “Left Behind” series, a multimillion-selling literary juggernaut that brought end-times prophecy into mainstream bookstores, died Monday. He was 90.

“LaHaye died in a San Diego hospital days after having suffered a stroke, according to publicist Johnnie Moore.

“Co-authored with Jerry B. Jenkins, the 16-volume “Left Behind” series of novels sold more than 80 million copies worldwide, Moore said, and popularized a Bible interpretation that said born-again Christians will be instantly taken to God in the rapture, while those left behind on Earth endure seven years of tribulation.

“LaHaye was a key figure in conservative political groups, encouraging the Rev. Jerry Falwell to create the Moral Majority; forming the Council for National Policy, a secretive strategy group for prominent political and religious conservatives; and with his wife, Beverly, starting Concerned Women for America in 1979 as an alternative to liberal feminist organizations.

“He was also a prolific nonfiction author, writing more than 60 books that included the Christian sex manual “The Act of Marriage” and “The Battle for the Mind,” whose denunciations of secularism helped rouse the religious right.

“Born in 1926, LaHaye grew up in Detroit, served in the Air Force at the end of World War II and graduated from Bob Jones University in Greenville, S.C. He earned a midcareer doctorate at Western Seminary in Portland, Ore., and joined the Southern Baptist Convention.

“After leading churches in South Carolina and Minnesota, he moved to Southern California and for a quarter-century led a thriving congregation that eventually became Shadow Mountain Community Church in El Cajon. After 1981, he devoted himself to writing, promoting his view of Bible prophecy, family life seminars and political activism.

“Some fellow conservative Christians pushed back against LaHaye’s end-times views, known as premillennial dispensationalism, emphasizing that the books were fictional and should not be read as an exact theological interpretation of the Bible. Still, his books strongly shaped evangelical views of Jesus’ Second Coming and popularized the ideas to the broader public. Jenkins called LaHaye a “spiritual giant.”

“LaHaye extended his influence by founding Christian high schools, San Diego Christian College and a church in the Atlanta area, along with helping establish the Institute for Creation Research, which rejects evolution and contends God created the Earth recently in six literal days.

“In 1987, LaHaye resigned as a co-chairman of Jack Kemp’s Republican presidential campaign after news reports cited his criticisms of Roman Catholicism and Judaism.

“LaHaye is survived by his wife, four children and nine grandchildren, among other relatives. No funeral plans were announced.” http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-tim-lahaye-20160725-snap-story.html

I wrote some years ago for one of my books a chapter I titled “Globalism’s Siren Song.” The chapter began as follows:

Come, young citizens of the world, we are one, we are one.

Come, young citizens of the world, we are one, we are one.

We have one hope, we have one dream, and with one voice we

sing: Peace, prosperity, and love for all mankind.

The lyrics are set to an enchanting, rhythmic melody and are sung by a chorus of sweet-voiced children. Soon you are humming, then singing along. What could possibly be wrong with those sentiments so innocently expressed? Peace, prosperity, and love for all mankind-are these not among the most noble of objectives?

Powerful humanistic allurements beckon seductively, promising a golden future if all of earth’s people will come together as one. Such a glorious world order, long dreamed about and even fervently pursued, seems at last achievable. Those who hold the worldview that national boundaries must fall and sovereignties must diminish because we are all citizens of planet earth passionately embrace the earth shrinking technologies that science continues to produce. For example, the Internet. Yes, the Utopian dream at last seems achievable. However, while the sirens of globalism – like the twin sisters who lured unwary sailors to their deaths in Homer’s The Odyssey -sing their lovely, mesmerizing songs of New World Order, the words pronounced by the Ancient of Days reverberate through the corridors of antiquity and leap at this generation from the pages of God’s Holy Word:

Behold, the people are one and they have all one language, and this they begin to do; and now nothing will be restrained from them which they have imagined to do (Genesis 11:6).

One World Order was at the time of that chapter’s writing a strong factor to consider in looking at where the world stood on God’s prophetic timeline. Like for most of the latter part of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first, the drive to return to Babel was in the news in one form or the other at least on a weekly basis.

The Soviet Union had dissolved after President Reagan’s demand: “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” There seemed great optimism then that the building of that new Tower of Babel could begin in earnest.

The many developing conflicts, however, as the Middle East lit up with increased Islamist fanaticism and terrorism, required that the globalists go from singing their siren song in a joyful, Kumbaya fashion to one sung with somewhat dampened enthusiasm. The “We Are the World” and all such anthems seemed to lessen into a holding-pattern hum while the new-world-order-builders were kept busy putting out fires that might ignite wars almost as dangerous as those that could have erupted in days of the Cold War.

For a time, there was a more or less disjointed effort on behalf of what might be considered the civilized nations to deal with the Middle Eastern madness. But, with the coming of the felling of the World Trade Towers on September 11, 2001, there was an almost instantaneous coalescence of the global powers, with a number of lesser powers. Operation Iraqi Freedom, you will remember, was the result.

While there appeared to be a new, powerful drive toward the new world order the first President Bush talked about so much, America was the hold-up. The U.S. was so overwhelmingly powerful in dealing with the Desert Storm campaign and later with the following war by President Bush 43 to oust Saddam Hussein from Iraq that the globalists dream of a one-world power was impossible to form.

Sovereignty and autonomy of nations were the order of the day. God’s hand moved upon the world of geopolitics to prevent the singing of the one-world anthems with increased vigor.

We come to the present hour. To the observer of the world scene today–and I’m not talking about the vast number of Americans or citizens of other nations, but the experts who watch for political rearrangement–the major roadblock to achieving global order is being dismantled as quickly as this presidential regime can manage–i.e., America is having its foundation chipped away as Barack Obama and all in cahoots with him around the world are striving for the fundamental transformation of America from being a constitutional republic to becoming–well, it remains to be seen…

America must be brought down so the new Babylonian order can be built. Mr. Obama is in high gear at every turn, using the presidency of earth’s most prominent nation to make the “hope and change” he promised before his election–a promise the true nature of which few in this country comprehended. The change, that transformation, is to be the removal of America as a hindrance to the larger order–that within which the powers that be can rule and reign as a central governing authority.

One report captures this president’s congratulating himself and his one-world order builders for their transformational efforts during the seven and one-half years of his presidency.

Globalist elite cooperation can defeat the “chronic violence” that is caused by real jihadist in France and supposed racism in police forces, President Barack Obama told a roomful of foreign ambassadors July 15.

“Overnight in Nice [France], we witnessed another tragic and appalling attack on the freedom and the peace that we cherish … [and] it’s been a difficult several weeks in the United States,” Obama told the ambassadors gathered in the White House…

“After urging them to join in the effort to increase the policing of such “non-Islamic” terrorism, he patted his fellow global elitists and himself on the back.

“‘I want to thank so many of your countries for the partnership that we’ve forged and the progress we’ve achieved together over these past eight years in rescuing the global economy and securing vulnerable nuclear materials. A comprehensive deal to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. Halting the spread of Ebola, and thereby saving countless lives. In Paris, the most ambitious agreement in history to fight climate change. A new sustainable development set of goals to end extreme poverty and promote health and education and equality for all people.” (Source: Breitbart News, “Globalist Obama: Terrorists, Racist Cops Are ‘Chronic Impulses’ to Be Defeated by Global Elites,” by Neil Munro).

What he did not say was that every one of these “accomplishments” of his administration has caused problems that might never be undone. Also, he used executive fiat in almost every case, bypassing a non-resistant Congress and the U.S. Constitution at every turn.

So, the Obama administration has almost single-handedly–so the globalists elite must think– begun the process of dismantling the roadblock to their taking the world back to Babel. This, of course, is all preparation for Antichrist, the globalist of all globalists, to step onto the stage of human history for the final curtain call.

The God of Heaven says that will not happen until the church of Jesus Christ is removed. For it is in actuality the Holy Spirit indwelling the Church–not America–that is governing the globalists’ efforts to establish one world order.

In writing the chapter I mentioned in the opening of this commentary, I closed that chapter with the following, as I will do with this article.

The Lull Before the Storm

Thankfully, even though God’s judgment upon sin is sure, He is also slow to anger and His mercy is great. It is my opinion that we are currently in a lull that God has graciously granted just before the prophesied end-of-time storm that will devastate a wrath-deserving generation. Even so, a brisk wind is already snapping the flag of warning that apocalypse approaches.

God the Holy Spirit earnestly and tenderly beckons all who will heed His call to take shelter within the only harbor where protection from the deadly whirlwind to come can be found. That safe harbor is Jesus Christ. Those who refuse to accept the haven or safety offered by Christ will perish beneath the raging, crashing surge as surely as did the antediluvians during the judgment of Noah’s day.

Beloved Brother and Sisters,

Tonight I write to you with two, very special requests for prayer–in no particular order of importance.

First, I want to inform you that Dr. Tim LaHaye was reported to have suffered a severe stroke last night, and his survival is in question.

He is a dear friend and Christian brother and truly a champion for Christ like few others. Please join us in prayer for Dr. LaHaye and his family during this ordeal.

Second, I want to alert you to the knowledge that Jim Fletcher, our great friend and columnist for “Israel Watch,” at RaptureReady.com has suffered a severe injury to his eye while target shooting, when the weapon exploded because of defects.

Jim is now recovering at home, and we still do not know if his eye will be saved.  Please pray for the Lord’s healing touch and comfort during Jim’s time of suffering.

Warm regards,

Terry

It seems the prophetic moment has arrived that the apostle Paul warned about in more than one epistle: “But evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived” (2 Timothy 3:13); and “Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, stand” (Ephesians 6:13).

Unfolding events of recent days make clear the accuracy of God’s Word in foretelling things to come. Paul, in his perilous times prophecy of 2 Timothy, speaks to some very specific characteristics of end-times mankind that will mark the very end of the Age of Grace–the time just before Christ calls His church into Heaven (John 14:6; Revelation 4:1).

He writes in that 2 Timothy, chapter 3, forewarning, as I’ve picked and chosen, the following: “This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves…proud, blasphemers…unholy, without natural affection…false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good” (2 Timothy 3:1-3).

Issues and events, as they have developed in very recent days, are accurately described and defined by words I’ve chosen from Paul’s “perilous times” prophecy. It’s almost as if the public carrying on of one individual in particular epitomizes all of the characteristics that Paul prophesies for the very days in which we find ourselves.

More about that individual momentarily.

It’s as if we see personified the end- times characteristics of Paul’s prophecy manifested before our very eyes and ears in the cultural decay taking place minute by minute. Specifically, I see these characteristics displayed: unholy, blasphemers, false accusers, fierce, and despisers of those that are good.

The individual –the human subject which leaped to my attention–displays the last- days evil that has become a manifestation of America’s decline in my view. Media –both news and entertainment– proudly put this and other debauchery in the limelight for the eager eyes and ears of the American public. The nation’s naive, gullible, youth is the prime targets for the evil’s allurement-focus.

One “entertainer” who is infamous for his blasphemous references to God, Jesus Christ and anything considered “holy,” was “inspired” to take things to near the limits.

The following account describes the debased “art” as it is called by some.

“Kanye West’s infamous music video for “Famous” is now available to on YouTube. After its world premiere, live-streamed on Tidal, it was available exclusively on the streaming-music service for a week. Of course, that didn’t stop it from being the talk of the internet.

“The NSFW video features Kanye buck-naked in a big bed with life-like nude, prosthetic bodies of celebrities, including Donald Trump, Rihanna, Bill Cosby, Taylor Swift and, of course, Kim Kardashian-West.

“They all silently lie still in bed, seemingly breathing, tangled together in a white sheet. Grainy, unflattering VHS-quality footage focuses on random (sometimes NSFW) body parts and faces from different angles for about 6 minutes before the video cuts to a vivid, picturesque overhead HD shot of the same sleeping Kanye. The camera then slowly zooms out into a wide shot that reveals the full tableau of bodies in the bed.” (http://www.cnet.com/news/kanye-wests-infamous-famous-music-video-now-on-youtube/)

In this selfie generation, where reality and delusion, where light and darkness and good and evil are indistinguishable because of the spiritual dumbing-down of particularly the youth, the lines of morality aren’t just blurred. They are erased.

Of the above debased presentation, more than just a few “fans” on social media agree with one post that defended the video as “one of the most valuable pieces of art in our time.”

We are indeed in Paul’s perilous times. This generation is facing a most evil day. We had better gird for the evil men and seducers–which include the mainstream media–who are out to remove every trace of morality from the face of America and the world. But, the same apostle who forewarned of this very hour was given the following from the Holy Spirit to comfort and reassure Christians alive in these troubling but exciting days: “For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind” (2 Timothy 1:7).

Jesus’ Olivet Discourse prophecies continue to come alive while today’s news flashes in lightning-like fashion across our television and computer monitor screens.

We most often consider the terrorism and pyrotechnics of Middle Eastern madness. We talk about Russia and Iran (Persia) preparing to fulfill the Gog-Magog prophecies as given in Ezekiel chapters 38 and 39.

Our efforts are often spent concentrating on what is happening with regard to the building one-world order in the areas of finance, religion and the many other ways such movement is manifesting.

We think in terms of the proliferating things happening within Europe –about the upheaval that seems to be rearranging for the prophesied revived Roman Empire. We look at monetary economic dynamics that are driving the world toward a global fiscal order that will eventuate in the 666 marks and numbers system of Revelation 13: 16-18.

Sometimes the natural order seems so disturbed that geophysical activity, such as earthquakes occurring simultaneously, floods raging and other phenomena erupting across the planet draws the attention of prophecy watchers. But, it is the creation called man that at present seems on the front-burner of prophetic progression –at least to this observer.

The Lord gave, during His prophecies of things to come as the time of His return in the Second Advent nears, a quite interesting description of the human condition at the very end of the age. The description seems to have a dual reference or application.

The particular prophecy of which I write is a foretelling by the Lord I believe we see developing at this very moment in time. It is building hourly in its virulence –in its evil, end times impact upon cultures and societies around the world. Here is Christ’s prophecy.

“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.” (Lk 21: 25)

It is parts b and c of this prophecy that I wish us to examine. Jesus foretold that there will be “nations in distress with perplexity.” The “sea and waves” will be “roaring.”

We have looked a number of times in these commentaries at the fact that nations across the world are in distress with perplexity. The financial upheaval going on has Europe to the point of near-dissolution. The “Brexit” is one such manifestation. The great turmoil in Greece and other EU countries make it clear that the western world is suffering a nervous breakdown of sorts. Our own nation is hard on the heels of the schizophrenia developing over there.

The next part of Jesus’ prophecy foretells that the “sea and waves roaring” will be a prime marker of the last of the last days. By the time the Tribulation is full-blown the disturbances will bring planet earth to the point of total destruction. Only Christ’s return will quell the “roaring.”

“Sea and waves” can indicate the geophysical disturbances forecast for that era. But, it is the symbolic application that is much more the meaning in this case, I’m convinced.

“Sea and waves” in this case are symbolic of the peoples of earth. Jesus was saying they will, as a result of the “distress and perplexity” be “roaring.”

Jesus indicated as given in Luke 21:28 that He will return (in the Rapture) when this indicator –and the others He gave as signals for His Second Coming at Armageddon– “begin to come to pass.”

John the revelator gave in the very first verse of the thirteenth chapter of Revelation the view of the Antichrist beast regime arising out of the “sea” of people that would be in tumult. It is the observation of a growing number of seasoned prophetic observers that the United States is now showing signs of being a part of this tumultuous “sea” of unrest that might soon bring history’s most ferocious tyrant to power.

The “Black Lives Matter” protests are doing much to ratchet up civil unrest within the nation. The nucleus of that disruptive organization, many say, is made up of rabble rousers who are career thugs, paid by the likes of George Soros, who has openly said he favors upsetting the order of things that communist-style socialism might be brought forth in America.

Many more than just the “conspiracy nuts” are wondering  increasingly whether the current unrest being fomented might be the prelude to this president calling for martial law even before the November presidential elections.

The coup attempt in Turkey punctuates Jesus’ prophecy. That part of the world in particular is in great tumult, rearranging for fulfillment of things to come. The assaults on law and order –on the police in Baton Rouge that took the lives of officers and injured others is but the tip of the iceberg of the coming anarchy and chaos in our own nation as the end times play out.

Whatsoever is the outcome of this up heaving sea of human unrest we see heating up toward the boiling point, we can see Jesus’ prophecy for the end of days percolating in these troubled times. I believe that this means Christ’s Call “Come up here!” is very near indeed.

One of the literary descriptions of the Chinese people is often wrapped in one word–inscrutable. Among that word’s synonyms are the following: incomprehensible, unexplainable, unfathomable, impenetrable, inexplicable, ambiguous, and difficult. I think of the nation of China, in general terms, as two things more –extremely patient and schizophrenic.

One of the most validating proofs of the patience of the Chinese is found in, I think, the matter of the debt it has purchased and maintained on its financial books–especially the debt of the United States of America. It is estimated that China holds U.S. Treasury bonds and other debts totaling approximately $1 trillion. The Chinese nation holds indebtedness of other nations, also, to the approximate tune of $2 trillion. It is a troubling matter that this is the case, when one considers that China has been, since the revolution that brought communism to power, America and the world’s most dangerous adversary. It is the most dangerous because of the synonyms above that define the Chinese communist leadership since, particularly, the time of Mao Zedong. They have been all of those things: incomprehensible, unexplainable, unfathomable, impenetrable, inexplicable, ambiguous, and difficult.

And now they hold the wealth of America and the world in the palms of their inscrutable hands. The question arises: Why do they keep purchasing debt, when they might never collect, seeing as how all nations are headed, obviously, toward the fiscal abyss?

Is it just that they, like most of the world’s economic gurus seem to think, believe that no matter how bad it gets, a solution will magically be found, and the indebted nations will make good on their restoration to financial health? They have been, since that communist revolution, the most bellicose of enemies in terms of threatening anyone who crosses them. Why the patience now, gladly holding the debt of their enemies, who by any stretch of the imagination have no hope of repaying the debt that is growing exponentially?

Now, I know the Chinese have made protests and even threats of fiscal action if their debtors don’t straighten up their economic acts. But, for the most part, the Chinese leadership’s patience is…well…inscrutable. Add to all of this perplexity another piece of the Chinese puzzle.

The U.S. Defense Department first reported in 2015 Chinese dredging vessels around Fiery Cross Reef in the disputed Spratly Islands in the South China Sea. They have since completed literal island building, upon which now resides major air strips.

Coinciding with this obvious aggression in claiming for itself portions of international territorial waters are acts of provocation against other nations’ vessels—including those of the United states. Chinese aircraft from these man-made islands almost routinely harass even American ships as they traverse these supposedly free, international waterways.

The following news excerpt further enlightens.

In its annual report to Congress on China’s military activities in 2015, the U.S. Defense Department estimated that China’s reclamation work had added more than 3,200 acres (1,300 hectares) of land on seven features it occupied in the Spratly Islands in the space of two years…

The report comes at a time of heightened tension over maritime territories claimed by China and disputed by several Asian nations. Washington has accused Beijing of militarizing the South China Sea while Beijing, in turn, has criticized increased U.S. naval patrols and exercises in Asia.

The Pentagon report said China was focusing on developing capabilities to counter outside intervention in any conflict…

(Reuters, www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-china-pentagon-idUSKCN0Y42J1)

This is the same China that threatened to bring its hordes into the Korean peninsula in support of the North Koreans during the Korean conflict. It was even willing to go to nuclear war with the West if the North Korean regime looked to be losing, according to reports back then. Now China is acting like the peacemaker, even set to discipline its rabid North Korean pet, if necessary to preserve world stability.

Why the present level of civil comportment, despite the tremendous military threat it is building to intimidate?

To my way of thinking, the answer to the schizophrenia that afflicts its leadership is that China is exerting extraordinary patience for very special reasons. We are paying to outfit the army of 200 million we read about in Bible prophecy and in accounts from news sources that tell us China and its Asian allies could easily outfit such a military juggernaut today.

A just released decision by a governing, international authority tells the current state of China’s attempt at regional hegemony.

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — A tribunal ruled in a sweeping decision Tuesday that China has no legal basis for its vast claims in the South China Sea and had aggravated the seething regional dispute with its extensive construction of artificial islands that destroyed coral reefs and infringed on the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone.

China immediately rejected the arbitration findings, and their impact remained unclear as there is no policing agency or mechanism to enforce them.

While the ruling cannot reverse China’s actions, it still constitutes a rebuke, carrying with it the force of the international community’s opinion.

Even so, they are confident–I believe their patience shows—that they will recoup their losses when they one day have enough, in terms of superior military assets, to become bill collectors on an unprecedented scale. We begin to see how even the kings of the East–as inscrutable as that part of the world is—fit into the end-times prophetic puzzle.

Antichrist, the coming beast of Revelation chapter 13, will be the most attractive, charismatic personality ever to step foot on the planet. He will have a following that defies imagination. His magnetic personality and, no doubt, striking appearance, will be the antithesis of Jesus Christ in every way when he “magnifies” himself, as the prophet Daniel foretold.

Jesus was meek. He came as a lamb. The Bible tells us that He had no outstanding physical features or characteristics that would set Him apart from the rest of humanity. The exceptions were when He was on the Mount of Transfiguration when He was said to shine like the sun, and when He was said to be the most “marred” of all men at the time of His crucifixion.

Antichrist, that man of sin, will have, literally, a worldwide, totally devoted following.

I’m a “back number,” as Dr. Vernon McGee used to say, referring to his own naïveté when it came to keeping up with the pop culture of his time. But it was brought to my attention the meteoric career of a singer who started out as Katy Hudson and now entertains under the stage name Katy Perry.

She went from singing as a Christian recording artist to becoming a secular, recording/entertaining phenomenon. Her Christian album under Katy Hudson sold only 2000 copies or so. She switched to secular recording and soared to the top of the charts. According to Wikipedia: She became the first artist with multiple videos to reach 1 billion views on Vevo with the videos for the songs “Roar” and “Dark Horse.”

Her following on Twitter and other social media forums indicates that she has at least 90 million fans.

Those numbers are stratospheric. Neither ol’ Elvis nor the Beatles ever reached those heights–although they had their share of groupies, to be sure.

Antichrist, according to Revelation chapter 13, will be literally worshiped by the whole world. Those who don’t worship him will have their heads lopped off and worse. His numbers of followers will put Miss Katy’s numbers in the category of the infinitesimal by comparison.

We know of the Democrat Party’s incessant coming under pressure to remove any reference to God from their party platform. When the convention began for the 2012 presidential nominating process, we remember that the no’s were much louder than the yeas when the question was put up for keeping God’s name being used in official language of the party’s doings.

Just over a week ago, there was a report of an entertainer demanding that the song “God Bless America” be no longer sung at half times or at the beginnings of sporting events. He wants that offensive anthem, as he characterized it, forever discarded. Even in the Congress of the United States, there is a constant drumbeat from some of the “progressive” quarters to do away with prayer to open sessions and to remove “In God we trust” from coinage and other governmental officialdom. There has been much progress, as they would have it, in getting vestiges of God, such as the Ten Commandments, removed from public places. Prayer and Bible reading have long since been forbidden in public schools and other public places, as we know.

The perverting of human sexuality at every level and the slaughter of countless millions of babies assault our senses daily.

There is an ongoing effort to rewrite America’s founding history. The champions of godlessness revisionists insist that the founding fathers wanted a totally secular nation–one devoid of any moralistic governance. When confronted with the facts of those founders’ own words in this regard, they, in effect, put the palms of their hands over their ears, close their eyes, and start humming one or the other of this debauched culture’s musical atrocities.

While engaged in research for my book, Rapture Ready…Or Not: 15 Reasons This Is the Generation That Will Be Left Behind, I looked into what the founders of America spoke and wrote on the matter of God’s influence in their nation-creating efforts. I included many of their quotes in the book and could have put in hundreds more. Here are a few.

John Adams, second president of the United States, said:

“The general principles on which the fathers achieved independence were the general principles of Christianity. I will avow that I then believed, and now believe, that those general principles of Christianity are as eternal and immutable as the existence and attributes of God.”

“I have examined all religions, and the result is that the Bible is the best book in the world.”

John Quincy Adams, 6th president of the United States, said:

“In the chain of human events, the birthday of the nation is indissolubly linked with the birthday of the Savior. The Declaration of Independence laid the cornerstone of human government upon the first precepts of Christianity.”

Samuel Adams, Governor of Massachusetts, Signer of the Declaration of Independence, Ratifier of the U.S. Constitution, said:

“I conceive we cannot better express ourselves than by humbly supplicating the Supreme Ruler of the world . . . that the confusions that are and have been among the nations may be overruled by the promoting and speedily bringing in the holy and happy period when the kingdoms of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ may be everywhere established, and the people willingly bow to the scepter of Him who is the Prince of Peace.”

Benjamin Franklin, Signer of the Declaration of Independence, Diplomat, printer, scientist, said:

“As to Jesus of Nazareth, my opinion of whom you particularly desire, I think the system of morals and His religion as He left them to us, the best the world ever saw, or is likely to see.”

Thomas Jefferson, Signer of the Declaration of Independence; Diplomat, Governor of Virginia; Secretary of State; third President of the United States, said:

“The practice of morality being necessary for the well being of society, He [God] has taken care to impress its precepts so indelibly on our hearts that they shall not be effaced by the subtleties of our brain. We all agree in the obligation of the moral principles of Jesus and nowhere will they be found delivered in greater purity than in His discourses.”

George Washington, Judge: Member of the Continental Congress; Commander-In-Chief of the Continental Army; President of the Constitutional Convention; First President of the United States; “Father of his Country,” said:

“While we are zealously performing the duties of good citizens and soldiers, we certainly ought not to be inattentive to the higher duties of religion. To the distinguished character of Patriot, it should be our highest glory to add the more distinguished character of Christian.”

“I now make it my earnest prayer that God would… most graciously be pleased to dispose us all to do justice, to love mercy, and to demean ourselves with that charity, humility, and pacific temper of the mind which were the characteristics of the Divine Author of our blessed religion.”

(Source: WallBuilders – Issues and Articles – The Founding Fathers on Jesus, Christianity and the Bible, David Barton, www.wallbuilders.com)

How far we as a people have strayed by allowing the groupies of godlessness to determine that Jesus Christ is anathema, but that the gods of entertainment in this world are to be glorified and followed into the abyss of national destruction. There is time to turn things around if the people who truly name the name of Christ will follow the godly directive of 2 Chronicles 7:14. Sad to say—to put it in terms the groupies of godlessness will understand–the trending is in the opposite direction.

Let’s continue to do our Christian duty in carrying out the Great Commission. Let us also vote the right way to the best of our ability. But, at the same time, let’s keep looking for the glorious appearing of our “blessed hope” (Titus 2:13).

Rapture Ready…or Not? Part I

Rapture Ready…or Not? Part 2

You see it in the teen-world. At least that was my first real introduction to the disturbing cultural transformation.

While sitting at a restaurant in Tulsa, I was aware that a large group was being seated near our booth.

I’m blind now, so was wondering what was going on. There was hardly a voice to be heard as the group gathered and settled into their seats.

A person next to me in the booth—not much older than a millennial herself—whispered to me that the group was a big party of high school prom diners obviously coming to the restaurant right after the big event.

“They are all looking at their devices and texting, then sometimes whispering to those next to them and showing them their devices,” my fellow diner said.

It was eerie. A large contingent of teenagers sitting in almost complete silence! A post-prom event—or any other cause for gathering—would have in my generation been noisy to the point of annoyance. Keeping a throng of teenagers quiet, I had thought, was impossible, to be sure.

Today, America’s millennial generation seeks a way out of the dark world they sense gathering around them. Facebook, Twitter, the blogosphere (all social media) is their shoal of safety. Therein they create their own cocoons of security cyberspace shelters where they can sequester in virtual worlds that insulate against the ominous, darkening environ that reality has become.

They look at the political and social worlds of deceit. They observe the cesspool of control and greed about them. They opt to withdraw from the reality that exposes them to the hurtful, adult world into which they seek to avoid being dragged.

America’s public educational system has ill prepared that generation to face competition, to resist taking the path of least resistance. They have been shown by an increasingly godless, self-serving hierarchy of elders in many cases, that worshiping at the altar of convenience is the path to utopia. Sexual desires and self-pleasuring proclivities take first place over all else—including them.

Religious leanings of any sort are to be assiduously avoided at all costs. Whether discarding human babies like refuse to be flushed, or bed-hopping without morality’s condemning restraint the millennials have learned well the pathway trail-blazed by those who begat them.

Rather than contemporary hedonism acting as a refreshing, cathartic freeing up to live a lifestyle of fulfillment and joy, however, the opposite has been the result. The youth—at least a considerable portion of America’s millennial generation, have immersed within the cyber existence, as if that electronic ether is a nurturing womb.

News and entertainment media pound the millennials—and the rest of us as well—with the “progressive” sermons that proclaim it is the central government that can and should provide everything needed for everyone from cradle to grave. Incentive to emerge from their cyber-incubators of safety is thus suppressed. Globalism’s burgeoning expansion has siphoned the jobs that would otherwise be available to the budding, millennial, work-force in this nation.

Force-feeding the young the constant diatribe that American greed makes ours an evil empire that is out to abuse those less fortunate—particularly the darker races—has made its impact. The founding fathers, a bunch of transplanted, white, European men, so the incentive-dashing, progressive, sermons go, were slave-owning capitalists who decimated indigenous people while sweeping all before them toward the Pacific with the pleasure-destroying, condemning rants of Christianity.

The millennials, from their cyber-world, see themselves in many cases as victims. Many of these infer that they spring from the very race that did the founding, the enslaving, the conquering, the decimation. The very privilege they enjoy—of being highly educated through the financing by Caucasian parents—imprint upon their liberally-acculturated psyches that they are guilty by association. Thus they are, themselves, victims. They must therefore join in the constant diatribe against the founding of the nation—against the white, conservative-powers that be who lord their pseudo-morality over the whole of society.

Satanic influence, it is obvious to me, has inculcated and holds sway over the progressive minds who man the cyberspace blogosphere posts. These are gurus to the millennials who live within this audibly silent world. The bloggers and “news” disseminators in that environment constantly pound out the message that the white, conservative males who have always controlled western—particularly American culture, wants to prevent anyone and everyone from enjoying life at its fullest.

Thus, the young must support the progressive viewpoints that are steeped in the mantra that moralistic, religious governance must give way to liberation from such tyranny. The movement of the 1960s has now fully infected our way of life in most every aspect. The young of that era that sought to throw off all moral restrictions—to push God out of culture and society—are now in control of some of the highest offices of the land. They rule over all three branches of government nationally to one degree or the other. These products of the 60s, although representing a minority view on the moral issues, rule by fiat—by executive orders and by judicial rubber-stamping rather than by the will of the people through the constitutionally mandated voting process.

Luciferian influence is readily visible through media that spew anti-God progressivism through specious shaping of the news and blatant orchestration of entertainment presentations. Again, cyberspace is like the vascular system of culture that carries the infection to every societal nerve and cell throughout the nation.

Utopia is promised if the youth will but throw off the shackles of this liberty-dampening, Christianity-based oppression. The millennials who feed off of this vile, cyberspace nutrition, spooned to them while they sit before their computer screens in their pajamas, often in the basements of their parents’ houses because they haven’t the jobs to support repaying their student loans, much less to support their own independent living space, cannot recognize that it is dystopia, not utopia that their progressive plantation masters are creating.

This is not to be seen as a blanket indictment of the entirety of the millennial generation. There are many within my extended family I hold extremely close to my grand-fatherly heart who are of this age group. That heart goes out to that generation, with the prayer that many, many will begin to recognize that it is the embracing of the God of Heaven—of Jesus Christ—that is the key to their achieving the utopia for which the human spirit longs. It is the precepts for living found in the Word of God—the Bible—that constitute the prescription that is the antidote to the venom Satan injects through the cyber-world of deception.

Bible prophecy tells exactly what is happening at this present hour and has been taking place particularly since the 1960s when the “progressives” were allowed to begin removing God from our national conscience.

Paul the apostle foretold the following: “But evil men and seducers shall [become] worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived.” (2 Ti 3: 13)

All of the prophecies given in God’s Word for the very end of this present age are crushing this generation within a tsunami of convergence. The Lord Jesus, the greatest of all prophets, promised, speaking of this convergence of prophetic signals: “And when these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh.” (Lk 21: 28)

That will be the Rapture of all born again believers—when Christ calls “come up here!” (Rev. 4: 1).

Daniel the prophet said of these times so near the end of this Age of Grace (Church Age,): “and the end thereof shall be with a flood, and unto the end of the war desolations are determined.” (Dan 9: 26b)

That is what the observer of world news sees happening each and every day. We are seeing a flood of events—a convergence of the many prophetic signals that portend the soon coming war of Armageddon and Christ’s Second Advent. The Rapture will take place at least 7 years prior to that great event when Christ comes to planet earth the second time (Rev 19: 11).

This generation is submerged in the darkness deliberately perpetrated by the father of lies—Satan. That is the primary problem I deal with in my new book, “Rapture Ready…Or Not: 15 Reasons Why This Is the Generation That Will Be Left Behind.”

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The book’s purpose is intended to convince everyone, particularly those of this deluded, millennial generation, to be aware that Heaven is readying to, in one electrifying millisecond, stupendously transform this world into a time of God’s judgment and wrath.

He will use the Rapture to instantaneously make that transformation. We want as many as possible to escape that time of horror Jesus said will be the very worst of all human history (Matthew 24: 21).

God’s process of making sure you are not left behind to suffer the consequences of man’s rebellion against Him is made simple by the Lord who loves you so much that He sent His Son, Jesus the Christ to die for you (John 3: 16).

The Bible says: “That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.” (Rom. 10: 9-10)

Do this right now and become Rapture Ready this very moment!

To get a copy of Rapture Ready…Or Not: 15 Reasons This Is the Generation That Will Be Left Behind, for yourself, or those you love who are of the millennial generation, click on the following.

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