Category: Politics

SETTING DATES FOR THE FULFILLMENT OF BIBLE PROPHECY

Here’s the article which many ministries-benefiting from your desire to know, and living an exciting life on your money and their speculation-aren’t giving you…

THE WESTERN WALL

One of the worst things a student or teacher of Bible prophecy can do is to set dates for its fulfillment. Having said that, I think there’s a place for asking if what we’ve been believing about end-times events is really true. This question, I think, affords and even requires a little ball-park speculation on the matter of timing. Yes-I’m going to set some dates! This article has few Bible references. I’ve listed relevant references elsewhere, and will do so again soon.

When we think about the possibility that we’re near the time of the return of Jesus Christ, the most compelling reason to believe that we are is the modern state of Israel. No, I’m not one of those fooled by replacement theology.

In 70 AD the legions of Rome destroyed Judea and Jerusalem, and expelled any Jews they didn’t kill from the ancient homeland. Against all odds and with no conscious intent to fulfill prophecy, but only to avoid another holocaust, the modern state of Israel was established officially in 1948. In 1967 Israelis regained control over all Jerusalem. Mirroring Bible prophecy, Israel since 1948 has very quickly grown and prospered. Its population has increased, with Jews immigrating there from all corners of the world. Its determination to hold on to the capital against the will of the world has been successful.

REMAINS OF THE SECOND JEWISH TEMPLE, WITH ISLAMIC DOME OF THE ROCK BEHIND IT

Also in line with prophecy the foretold enemies of the nation have been claiming the land belongs to them and not to Jews. Only the election of Donald Trump has temporarily halted the world’s schemes to remove Israelis, or at least professing Jews, from their ancient capital. Once he’s gone from power, for whatever reason, you can expect the pressure from all sides-including and perhaps especially the U.S., to continue apace, eventually culminating in a military assault as predicted in such Bible books as Zechariah.

Some commentators have mistakenly had the opinion that the current regathering of Israel cannot be the predicted one because, they assert, the Bible says Israel must be spiritually cleansed and holy as a prerequisite to restoration. To the careful reader, the Bible tells a different story: cleansing will not take place until the Messiah shows up to defend the nation at a time of extreme crisis.

TIME LIMITS, TIME CLUES

However, there are two potential problems with the entire Israel regathering “scenario” (to use a prophetic cliche). Perhaps they aren’t problems at all-perhaps they are in fact further indication that the time of fulfillment is very near.

1: THE “SECOND” RETURN FROM EXILE

The first problem concerns a Biblical limit to the number of returns of the nation from total exile. Isaiah wrote:

In that day the Lord will reach out his hand a second time to reclaim the surviving remnant of his people…he will assemble the scattered people of Judah
    from the four quarters of the earth (Isaiah 11:11-12).

In the Bible only two returns are allowed from total exile. The first occurred when ancient Israel and then Judah were invaded and carried off by the Assyrians and the Babylonians. The second return began officially in 1948.

The idea that the current return is bogus and the real one is yet future just doesn’t make sense. If the miraculous events of the past several decades and the struggles between Israel and their neighbors and the world are not those prophesied, they are an incredibly realistic dress-rehearsal. Also, believing that the real return is yet future, we would have to expect the current inhabitants of the land to be driven out by some huge war or other disaster. The land would have to be invaded and claimed by enemies again, and then left empty and waste for a long period of time. Israelis there now would once again have to be dispersed to all corners of the earth for a long period of time.

West_Bank_&_Gaza_Map_2007_(Settlements)
WEST BANK AND GAZA

How many times in the course of human history can the incredible set of events prophesied actually play out, in such an amazing series of what would have to be “coincidences”, as they have over the last several decades? It seems to me that either the 20th C restoration of Israel-the current one-must be the second regathering spoken of in Isaiah, or we would have to accept that the prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel and others were wrong, and therefore didn’t speak the word of God at all. In that case, no Biblical scripture could be trusted.

Also, when you consider other conditions in our world at this time in relation to Biblical prophesies, it’s clear that there’s much more than just coincidence at work here.

2: THE INVASION OF A LAND RECENTLY REGATHERED

The second time-issue concerns a Biblical limit on the time which can transpire between the regathering of Jews to the land and the judgment of the nations. Prophecies in Ezekiel foretell an international assault on Israel and the Middle-East in general ending in God’s clear and decisive intervention, after which the whole world will know there is a God who is still the Protector of Israel. This assault is said to come:

…against a land that has recovered from war, whose people were gathered from many nations to the mountains of Israel, which had long been desolate (Ezekiel 38:8).

This and other passages indicate that Israel will be invaded by nations who recognize that its regathering is recent. So the vital question is, just how long a time period, scripturally-speaking, could be considered “recent”? Here’s my theory.

First, Israel, says the prophecy, would boom in population and in economic success. This would naturally take some time, but it has happened in just a few decades.

Israel, (that is, Jews and those from the northern tribes who had joined with Judah) were expelled from the land for seventy years (Ezra 1:1). God had told Isaiah many centuries BC that Ephraim was “about to” be judged by Assyria (Isaiah 8:7 NIV). That “about to” period was sixty-five years (7:8). We Bible students know that to the Lord “a thousand years is as a day”, so using that scale of what time seems like to God the “recent” period from the regathering of Israel to the invasion could be many thousands of years.

However, those two terms-“recent” and “thousands of years” don’t fit together well to us mortals, and the invading force of end-times certainly wouldn’t see an event thousands of years previous as being “recent”. God’s words, “sixty-five years” were just about meaningful as a short time period to Isaiah. The “recent” time period in Ezekiel must be seen as being truly recent to humans.

I’m not setting dates by saying that sixty-five years is the time period we must look for, but it seems logical that it’s a “ball-park” number. It could actually be fifty, or seventy, eighty, or more. At what point would the regathering of Israel not be considered by its invaders to be “recent” any more? And when exactly would the “prophetic clock” start ticking: 1948? 1967? Perhaps it would start when the majority of Jews had returned from the nations-perhaps the year 1990, or 2000, or 2010.

We could create a maximum time of fulfillment so that, say, seventy-five years from the dwindling of returnees to the land from the nations would take us to the year 2085. This would be the very latest date we could reasonably expect the prophecies of Ezekiel to be fulfilled. Alternatively, If we add sixty-five years to 1967, the year Israelis regained their ancient capital which figures so highly in last-days prophecy, we get the year 2032…only thirteen years from now.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Advertisements

I AM A MAN!

There’s a movement in the United States, and I suspect in most of the Western World, to overturn the created order of things…

untitled

It’s such an anti-God, anti-Christ, anti West and anti-anything-it-can-get-its-hands-on movement, that the determination is to supplant masculinity with just about anything else which can be cooked up. The goal is no longer “equality” between men and women, but the denigration of manhood, maleness, and male exceptionalism in any aspect of life you can think of. That’s of concern to me, not least because I am a man, as are my two sons.

The movement has gained such influence in the media, in education-particularly higher education, and in politics, that freedom of speech, once pushed as a vital goal by people wanting to overturn God’s order, is being rejected and stifled. I wouldn’t be surprised if this blog post were blocked and never seen again after about five minutes.

I am in no way a “misogynist” as I and many others are being labelled-simply by not falling in line with the goose-step march of the movement. It’s interesting and probably not coincidental that the Bible calls the devil our “accuser”, because the anti-maleness movement attempts to hack its way to ascendancy partly by accusing any opposition of many ugly things, in order to silence as many as possible, including the God of the Bible. Other gods are free to these people, including the one which truly denigrates women, and which wishes to assert total male authority over women. This movement, then, is not really a pro-women movement at its core, it is instead an anti-God of the Bible  movement.

There goes freedom of speech and freedom of conscience and civility, along with God’s natural order of things. However, I know from simple logical deduction and observation that I am a man, and no college professor or extreme activist politician is going to convince me otherwise, or talk me out of my natural proclivities. I also know that God’s will and not that of the usurper will prevail when the time is right. I just feel for all those poor kids in school and college now, being indoctrinated and brainwashed out of their maleness and their natural attraction to women, and being fed a heavily revised version of history, biology, society and philosophy, .

I’m sorry to say this, rest of the world, but this powerful movement in the United States is turning over all the things the West has claimed to stand for. You may be on your own very soon, if it succeeds in gaining total power. One last position for its proponents to win is the presidency, and they’re working at that with all their might.

However, as scripture says, “But God…”

 

 

WHAT’S WRONG WITH BEING A WORLD CITIZEN ANYWAY?

Someone famous said not too long ago, if you don’t have borders you don’t have a nation…

800px-Pieter_Bruegel_the_Elder_-_The_Tower_of_Babel_(Vienna)_-_Google_Art_Project_-_edited

That, of course, is the goal of many now in positions of power: they don’t want nation states anymore. They want us all to be “world citizens”. For the most part, their goal up to now has been worked toward surreptitiously, by maintaining the outward appearance of nation states but by demolishing the sovereignty and independence of those states. Just look at the EU, already a pre-global governance power, with some in its sway only now waking up to what’s been going on.

This dream of removing the “ancient boundary stones” and founding a supreme power over all assumes that the ultimate human authority will be a just and fair one: a very large and very optimistic assumption. But if it’s not just and fair, who would we go to to remedy the situation? Most of us already see our governments as being out of touch, out of reach and uncaring, and making a lot of wrong decisions. We think that because for the most part it’s true. And even when we do get a politician who cares about the people and who isn’t self-serving, he’s smothered by other politicians and media people who want to maintain the status quo and the direction dictated by their own agenda.

There’s one thorny little problem in the whole idea of achieving a just and fair society: human nature. From the very first spat and assertion of one man’s will over another, as imagined in my previous post, “WHERE FREEDOM IS”, human government has been attempting to consolidate power and influence: what good has it done us up to this point? When do we ever, ever ever ever ever, ever ever ever…(for any length of time) get a government which is fair and just? The answer is “never”. So what makes anyone think a world government is going to be any better?

We’re told by those who would benefit-so they think-from consolidation, that just and enlightened elites, with a little help and guidance from the media who are now really another branch of government, not elected and unaccountable, will choose leaders who will be just and wise and fair and beneficent, and so everything will work out. Plato had that idea-2500 years ago. He said that a just society should be controlled and led by an elite band of philosophers, all-wise and all-knowing decision makers, while the rest of us -essentially the working rabble-carry out their will and roll around in unending joy, satisfaction and ecstasy. Kant and Hegel also were convinced that humanity would eventually come up trumps. I intend no pun here, because our current president, bravely battling the movement towards world authority almost alone, is definitely not what they hoped for, hence the frenzy of hatred and falsehoods against him.

Has it happened yet? Have the elites come up trumps-ever? Do you really think it will happen? Some people of the John Lennon variety actually do. They think that humans are basically good, and that we only need to have the right conditions and the right leaders, and Utopia will be achieved. Good luck with that.

If we think government is out of touch and out of range and out of control now, what makes us think that a world body will be any less so? Surely, it will be more out of touch, more out of control, more monolithic, more elite and aloof? Not only so, but huge decisions will be made by those totally out of our reach which will not be in our interests.

Scripture envisions, predicts and prophesies just such a world authority in which the enemy of society (there always has to be an “enemy” to deflect criticism of government) will be the Christian, and the Jew. Such a view is already present within the United Nations, and within the movement pushing for an end to borders and national sovereignty.

UNITY? NO THANKS!

If I were to coin the phrase, “Holy Division”, it would not, contrary to the opinions of many out of and even in the Church, be an oxymoron: it would be a scriptural and practical imperative…

tracks

It’s common to hear many people across the political and religious spectrum to piously declare that we should “come together”, “unify”, “compromise” and “unite”. It’s a lovely, cuddly, warm-sounding sentiment, without any regard to reality. The problem for me, and for many others, is that we’re all expected to “compromise” not in the sense of meeting half way, but by capitulating entirely. This is the new definition of unity: surrender to change.

Those claiming to occupy the middle ground, but who in fact are a long way left of what has for centuries in the West been the middle ground, want us to unite… under their ideology. Doing so would mean the rest of us completely surrendering to what our hearts and minds tell us cannot be surrendered to. And more than that, those who want us to unify their way are intent on calling anyone who will not unify “haters”, “bigots” and…well, you know the rest… in order to shame us and beat us into submission. Having once been a very liberal person in my BC days, voting firmly on the left of politics, I now find that my Biblical views earn me the additional labels “extreme right-winger” and even “fascist”. Such name-callers don’t know the meaning of the words and don’t know anything about history except perhaps the “revised” version. Yes, history is being revised as part of the effort to move the world away from what was once the real “middle ground”.

It’s also becoming increasingly clearer that true Biblical faith is inseparable from our view of politics, because it’s the politicians (and judges) who now largely shape the society we live in, including its acceptance of what is totally ungodly. Our view of politics is one expression of where we stand in regard to the Word of our God. For example, the subject of taking the lives of children violently before they have a chance to be born relates very much to the scripture. As David said:

You saw me before I was born.
    Every day of my life was recorded in your book.
Every moment was laid out
    before a single day had passed (Psalm 39:16).

There is a good unity-one worth living for. As the apostle Paul said, the saints are being equipped by Christ:

“…until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God” (Ephesians 3:13 ESV).

That’s the unity I can go for. It doesn’t include, among other destructive and illogical concepts, the idea that there can be one God and at the same time no God, ten gods, and a million gods.

There is, in this ridiculous “post-truth”, post-modern age, a set of standards to live by which are as solid and unmovable as the biggest rock you can imagine, and that rock is Jesus Christ. He is the one who said:

“Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a person’s enemies will be those of his own household” (Matthew 10:34-36).

Doesn’t the scripture say that Jesus was born to bring peace on the earth? Not exactly. It promises “peace to those on whom his favor rests” (Luke 2:14). That’s a very different thing, because his favor doesn’t rest on those opposed to his ways. Jesus wasn’t stirring up division, he was describing reality, saying that those who choose him and his ways will de-facto be separate and distinct from those who do not. And that’s the way it has to be:

What agreement can exist between the temple of God and idols? For we are the temple of the living God. As God has said: “I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be My people.” Therefore come out from among them and be separate, says the Lord. Touch no unclean thing, and I will receive you” (2 Corinthians 6:16-17 NIV).

 

 

WHERE FREEDOM IS

Whatever our view of the beginnings of mankind, we can imagine the first humans having a huge amount of freedom…

img_0730

There-wherever it was-the first man and the first woman wandered the land. In every direction they looked they were free to roam. There were no streets, no traffic lights, no private lands, no “No Trespassing” signs, no busy roads, no Mc Donalds restaurants with one-way drive-in lanes and “stop” signs. It was all open, wild and free.

Adam and Eve, or if you like, “Aarg” and “Thug”, had no bills to pay, no car payments or mortgages to struggle with, no taxes, no boss to answer to, no fear of getting a ticket for riding their horses too fast, and no fear of getting locked up for trespassing or for trumped-up charges of collusion or lying to investigators. Their kids were content, attentive and helpful, because there was nothing to encourage them to be otherwise.

However (and in every human story there has to be a “however”) at some point in the virtual bliss of life along came Mr X: the new neighbor. Mr. X decided that he liked Thug, Aarg’s mate, very much, and also that the land the Aargs were living on looked a lot nicer than the land he was on. X plotted in his primitive but fertile mind how he might extricate Aarg and acquire what Aarg was enjoying, and make it his. He first attempted to “move in” on Mrs. Aarg, who wasn’t altogether against the idea of being acquired, because X, after all, was more handsome than was that guy she’d been stuck with for some time.

There ensued a battle between Aarg and X, in which X’s features were somewhat re-arranged, and he didn’t look quite so handsome or appealing any more. So X plodded off with his metaphorical tail between his legs.

However (and there’s another “however” already) while X’s pride and face were damaged his determination was not. Remembering that just over the hill lived that rather large and imposing man “Donk”, with his rather large and imposing sons, he took some trinkets: shiny rocks, fruit, and a nice jaw-bone hair brush, and went to make a deal with Donk. The following morning X, Donk and his rather large and imposing sons swaggered over the hill to where Arrg was banging some sticks on the cave wall- working on some pretty intricate para-diddles, and, with the gang behind him, he raised himself above Aarg, X declaring that he was now king of all he surveyed-including Mrs Aarg.

Aarg was forcefully employed twenty hours a day, digging for shiny rocks and cooking mammoth chops. He was confined to his cave at night, because everything else now belonged to X and his deputy, Donk. Aarg’s rent was two shiny rocks a day, for the cave which once belonged to him.

The worst irony of the story is that after some time, Donk’s slow but deliberate brain determined that he hadn’t done quite so well out of the deal as he could have, and X shortly found himself digging for shiny rocks with Aarg, and doing the dishes. He was, however, Aarg’s supervisor, so that poor old Aarg remained on the bottom social level of X’s kingdom.

I write this sad little story not because I believe, as the Communists do, that “property is theft”-I don’t: or as an example of how all unpleasant human circumstances come about. Obviously there are other causes of loss of freedom besides violent tyrants. Instead it’s intended to be a demonstration of how we as humans have moved from being once free to being under the thumb of the society we live in. We think we’re free in the West, but compared to the original freedom Aarg enjoyed, we’re rather constricted and constrained.

Step out of your door and you immediately find that there are places you cannot go, things you cannot do. Where once Aarg could wander and roam, you have an extremely limited path of legality and propriety. The fact that you can see buildings and roads and gardens and fields gives a false sense of freedom, because if you walk over someone’s lawn or through their house or over the field you’ll have the owner’s dog, or the owner or the police, chasing you. Don’t wander in the road or you’ll get squashed by a forty ton truck. Don’t drive too fast or go through the red light or you’ll get a ticket. Don’t try to explore that interesting structure or the security man will evict you and turn you in. Don’t say certain things in public or you’ll be verbally or even physically attacked or jailed.

Pay your bills on time or you’ll be on the streets in the cold. Pay your taxes or the weight of the government will come down on you. Don’t grumble too loudly against the government or you could be locked up for incitement. Don’t dress out of fashion or people will sneer and reject you. Vote to please those around you or lose your “friends”. Construct your sentences well and like all the right things and say all the right small talk and wear the right clothes and appear meek and yet at the same time confident and cool or people will shun you.

We, like Aarg, have been enslaved to the society we live in. To top it all off we’re enslaved by our mortality, and our lives are limited in time. What we like to think of as a free world and a free life is actually very restrictive.

However, true freedom can be found in the creator of all that we are and all that Aarg, or Adam, surveyed. This is the creator who has promised to restore what he originally made-this time under his own, good government. For life in this present world, the apostle Paul said:

“Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom” (2 Corinthians 3:17).

And Jesus Christ said:

“If you hold to my teaching, you really are my disciples. The you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:31-32).

Freedom is to be found in Jesus Christ, and our Creator, who will be in us if we want Him, where no-one can take it away.