It’s really just a matter of time; the working man’s deal with his overseers is half dead already. But there’s still inertia in the system, and even the losers are keeping the faith. Hope dies slowly, after all.

Nonetheless, the deal is collapsing and a new wave of robots will kill it altogether. Unless the overseers can pull back on technology – very fast and very hard – the deal that held through all our lifetimes will unwind.

We All Know the Deal

We usually don’t discuss what the “working man’s deal” is, but we know it just the same. It goes like this:

If you obey authority and support the system, you’ll be able to get a decent job. And if you work hard at your job, you’ll be able to buy a house and raise a small family.

This is what we were taught in school and on TV. It’s the deal our parents and grandparents clung to, and it’s even a fairly open deal. You can fight for the political faction of your choice and you can hold any number of religious and secular alliances, just as long as you stay loyal to the system overall.

This deal has been glamorized in many ways, such as, “Our children will be better off than we are,” “home ownership for everyone,” and of course, “the American Dream.” Except that it isn’t working anymore, or at least it isn’t working well enough.

Among current 20- and 30-year-olds, only about half are able to grasp the deal’s promises. That half is working like crazy, putting up with malignant corporatism and trying to keep ahead of the curve. The other half is dejected and discouraged, taking student loans to chase degrees (there’s more status in that than working at McDonald’s), or else they’re pacified with government handouts and distracted by Facebook.

The deal is plainly unavailable to about half of the young generation, but as I noted above, hope dies slowly and young people raised on promises are still waiting for the deal to kick in. It’s all they know.

Regardless, the deal has abandoned them. It has made them superfluous.

Here’s Why

Put very simply, the deal is dying because two things can no longer coexist:

#1: New technology.

#2: A system geared to old technology.

Let’s start with new technology: New machines and methods have made so many jobs obsolete that there aren’t enough to go around. Both North America and Europe are already filled with the unemployed or underemployed children of industrial workers. But at the same time, we are suffering no shortages; we have an overflow of stuff and a double overload of inane ads trying to sell it all. And there’s something important to glean from this:

Where goods abound, additional jobs are not required.

We don’t need more workers. Machines are producing plenty of stuff for us, and this becomes truer every day.

Item #2 is the system itself; let’s confront that directly too: The system was designed to reap the incomes of industrial workers. Everything from withholding taxes to government schools was put in place to maximize the take from an industrial workforce. Whether purposely or simply by trial and error, the Western world was structured to keep industrial workers moving in a single direction and to reap from them as they went. Call it “efficient rulership” if you like, but the system is a reaping machine.

Technology, however, has advanced beyond the limits of this machine; it has eliminated too many jobs. At the same time, regulations make it almost impossible for the superfluous class to adapt. Nearly everything requires certification and starting a business is out of the question; fail to file a form you’ve never heard of and the IRS will skin you alive.

This system, however, will not change; the big corps paid for the current regulatory regime, and they still own their congressmen.

Enter the Robots

You may have seen this image (it comes from NPR’s Planet Money), but look again anyway. I count 28 states in which “truck driver” is the most common job. As inexact as this map may be, it makes a point we can’t really ignore: What happens to all these truck drivers when self-driving trucks pile on to the roads? And you may count on it that they will; automated trucks will be safer and cheaper and will use less fuel. So, millions of truck drivers will be dropped out of the deal, and probably fairly soon.

On top of that, the very last refuge for the superfluous class – fast food – is experiencing its own robot invasion. Wendy’s just ordered 6,000 self-service ordering kiosks to be installed in the second half of 2016, and KFC’s first automated restaurant went live April 25.

Is There an Answer?

“The deal” is very clearly failing. At the same time, the system is utterly unwilling to change; the people in control are making too much money and hold too much power. The impoverishment of a hundred million people in flyover country won’t move them to give it up. Their system, after all, funnels the wealth of a continent to Washington, DC, in a steady stream… and they’ve bought access to that steam. The system will be defended.

So, forget about orderly reform. Certainly there will be talk of reform, and plenty of it… there will be promises, plans, and a small army of state intellectuals dedicated to keeping hope alive. But the system will not reform itself. Did Rome? Did Greece?

If there is to be an answer, it will have to come from the ‘superfluous’ people… but that discussion will have to wait for another day.

Don’t Blame the Robots

One last point: Don’t make the mistake of blaming technology for all of this. Technology is doing precisely what we want it to do: It’s killing scarcity. And that’s a very, very good thing. Without technology, we all go back to low-tech farming. And if that possibility doesn’t alarm you, you really should try it for a month or two.

Technology is moving forward and should move forward. The death of scarcity is to be welcomed. Our problem is that we’re chained to an archaic hierarchy of dominance with a deeply entrenched skimming class. Either we get past it or we go back to serfdom… or worse.

© Copyright 2016 Free Man’s Perspective

Image courtesy: Wikipedia

On 23 June 2016, this British citizen will be voting to leave the European Union.

To me it’s clear: the EU has not only become too big for its own good, it’s too big to do hardly anything good.

Back in 1975 when the UK first confirmed membership in the EU (when it was called the European Economic Community), it made sense.

Britain has always thrived on international trade, and the EU promised more trade.

But that’s not what happened. The EU didn’t turn into a peaceful, efficient, multi-national trading bloc that enables commerce and prosperity.

Rather it has become an ever-expanding, unaccountable bureaucracy ruling over vastly disparate nations who are increasingly at odds with one another.

And it is precisely the size of this Leviathan that’s the problem… something that was first identified several decades ago by economist Leopold Kohr.

Kohr was an Austrian Jew who only narrowly escaped Hitler’s Germany just before the outbreak of the Second World War.

He had been born in Oberndorf in central Austria, a village of just 2,000 or so.

And Oberndorf’s tiny size came to play a crucial role in Kohr’s thinking about the wealth of nations.

Kohr’s premise was simple: when you get too big, you start having serious problems.

This applies to political unions, from the Roman Empire to the EU, as well as to companies.

Even Warren Buffett has warned that large companies will eventually find it difficult to grow.

Kohr graduated in 1928 and went off to study at the London School of Economics with the likes of fellow Austrian Friedrich von Hayek.

In September 1941, Kohr began writing what would become his masterwork, ‘The Breakdown of Nations’.

He wrote that instead of expanding, Europe should be shrinking back into small political regions (like Switzerland) with a commitment to private property rights and local democracy.

“We have ridiculed the many little states,” wrote Kohr sadly, “now we are terrorised by their few successors.”

Simply put, size creates unavoidable limits… and problems.

And as the European Union has grown ever larger, it smashes horribly into Kohr’s thesis.

We can see this with the spate of problems in Europe ranging from horrific youth unemployment to major border crises to negative interest rates across the continent.

Of all the world’s population centers, Europe is the slowest growing (i.e. most rapidly shrinking) in the world.

The promises of growth and prosperity proved hollow. Yet the Eurocrats want to give Europeans even more: more regulation, more negative interest rates, more size.

Perhaps ECB Governing Council member Vitas Vasiliauskas sums this up the best from his comments last week:

“Markets say the ECB is done, their box is empty. But we are magic people. Each time we take something and give to the markets – a rabbit out of the hat.”

Vasiliauskas is the perfect embodiment of the EU bureaucracy: they believe they are special people capable of performing miracles.

The arrogance and hubris in this statement are overwhelming and tell you everything you need to know about the unelected, unaccountable people who control our lives.

If you want to understand this issue even more, I highly recommend the documentary Brexit: The Movie.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTMxfAkxfQ0]

It’s a well-presented masterpiece of government overreach that would likely win an award for Best Comedy if it weren’t sadly true.

If you’re pressed for time, here’s a 60-second snippet detailing the tens of thousand of regulations that crowd our daily lives:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGeDX-6DINM]

Editor’s note: This letter was penned by Tim Price, London-based wealth manager and author of Price Value International.

© Copyright 2016, Sovereign Man

Torn from an idyllic life with a loving, extended family in 1960’s Alabama, young Johnny Turnipseed found himself in Minneapolis, Minnesota with a father he no longer recognized and empty cupboards.

A.C. Turnipseed’s alcoholism and womanizing started a chain reaction of poverty, violence, addiction and despair that nearly destroyed three generations. From lost and frightened little boy to gang leader, drug dealer and pimp to one of the nation’s most respected pioneers of community restoration, John Turnipseed’s story of transformation and restoration is told with unflinching honesty and contagious hope.

The raw and painfully relevant portrait of one man’s struggle to heal from his father’s rage and find redemption from his own violent history bluntly shows the spiritual costs of unresolved sin and also the reach of its power over whole families and their generations. Here is John Turnipseed testimony on Sid Roth’s Supernatural program:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqImE62V2ko?rel=0]

When John Turnipseed first learned about bloodline curses, he began to break them off himself and his family, not knowing where it would lead. John’s extended family consisted of drug dealers, addicts, pimps, prostitutes — 34 of his family are in prison for murder. But John had an encounter with Jesus, and a new battle began.

He was a career criminal. His extended family consisted of drug dealers, drug addicts, pimps, prostitutes, and fatherlessness. He had 34 members of his family in prison as of now for murder. I mean, this pervaded the whole family. He had an encounter with the Messiah.

He learned about bloodline curses, began to break them on himself, on his family, his extended family and he has a passion to help other people break their curses. These curses can be things like sickness, poverty and their bloodline. It’s passed through the blood and you can stop it, and his passion is to help you.

When Sid Roth asked John Turnipseed’s understanding of a bloodline curse, he responded by saying:

My understanding of a bloodline curse is if you can look back into your family and certain things, devastating things, not just like a cold or anything. I’m talking about things such as like cancer and things of people being unemployed and prostitution or sexual immorality and things of that nature, or people going to prison, if you can trace that back one generation it might be a mistake, an abnormality. But if it happens in two or three, there’s definitely something going on there and you’d better address it right then because it can carry on into other generations……

Yes, starting with my father. My father got shot at a young age, did a robbery at a young age, went to prison and abandoned us as a father. I got shot at 16, abandoned my kids and went to prison for ten years. My son Little Johnny got shot 17 times, abandoned his nine kids and went to prison for 15 years, and his son got shot at a very young age in his teenage years and is doing life without the possibility of parole. Every generation it got uglier and stronger, and that’s when I knew that I had to do something…..

Sid Roth: With your family, you broke the curses. How can people watching you right now break the curses over their family, whether it’s sickness or whether it’s divorce, or whether it’s prison, or whether it’s addictions? Whatever. How?

John: What I had to do with my family is we had to sit down and come face to face with these are the things, and be honest, that are plaguing our family, okay: the prostitution and the gang, and the drugs, all of that, father absence, men walking away from their children. We had to say some very unpleasant things about the reality of who we were. Okay.

And then in agreement with each other we had to act on it. And then we had to arm ourselves because the enemy came and he, man, did he ever come. When I started talking this message he started attacking my family more than he had, because before he could just leave us alone because we were doing it all by ourselves. But once we started, we armed ourselves with the Word and the blood of Jesus Christ and stuff that he had to back off. He had to back off.

SID: Did you hear that? He armed himself with the Word of God and the blood of Jesus. That’s why they had to back off. And I tell you the devil, the curses, are backing off in Jesus’ name.

© Copyright 2016, Sid Roth -It’s Supernatural

Jolly Joe Kiwanuka (pictured below) was one of Uganda’s wealthiest and most influential citizens, He was stubborn and strong-willed, and his utter disregard for public opinion had made him a legend even to his closest friends. He owned a large wholesale business and among his many investments, he was also owner of Uganda’s champion soccer team, Express Football Club.

Jolly Joe Kiwanuka

He was a powerful man both politically and financially, founder of the Ugandan National Congress and a Member of Parliament. He was an atheist and humanist who had no time for religion and seemed impervious to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  On more than one occasion, while watching his team compete, he had rushed out on the field – stopped the game – and forced the referee to reverse his decision.

Once while competing with a Catholic team he had slapped a priest across the face. Later when reporters asked why he had struck the man, Kiwanuka refused to answer. He only said, “There is no God”, and walked away.

It was November of 1969 and Kiwanuka had come to London to bury Mutesa II, the last Baganda king.The Baganda, the southern tribe of Uganda to which Kiwanuka and I belonged, were traditional enemies of President Milton Obote’s tribe, the northern Langi.

King Muteesa had been Obote’s most outspoken and bitter opponent and in 1966, after an attack on his palace in which many Baganda were killed, he was forced to flee to England. He spent his last years living in London, where he died in early winter of 1969.

King Mutesa’s memorial service, was full of spies from Obote’s extensive international network. The presence of these informers forced the speakers to choose their words carefully and, one by one, they made a point of dissociating themselves from the king’s politics. It was in this atmosphere of tension and diplomacy that Joseph “Jolly Joe” Kiwanuka stood up to speak.

As the founder of the Ugandan National Congress and a member of parliament, he commanded immediate respect. Dressed in a grey, tailored suit, he looked once around the room with a cool and confident gaze. Then, in a loud voice, he addressed himself to Obote’s agents.

You spies,” he said scornfully, “I know you are here. It is nothing to me. If there is something I say that you want Obote to hear, you come tell me first. I’ll take you to the airport and pay for your plane ticket home.

The audience was completely silent. Kiwanuka stared sternly at each person he suspected of spying and he continued.

You spies are here,” he said, now speaking almost quietly, “because we black people have not learned to love ourselves. I have been all over the world. I have been to America, to Australia, to Europe and to Asia. Everywhere, black people live in the most miserable conditions. We live in the sewers of society. I tell you, we are alone. There is no man who cares for us. We will not be loved unless we learn to love ourselves.”

Several weeks later the news reached London from Uganda that Joseph Kwanuka had been arrested and imprisoned without a trial.  On January 25, 1971 General Idi Amin led the Ugandan army in a successful “coup d’etat.” Political prisoners including Kiwanuka were set free and everyone expected a golden age of liberty and progress to ensue.

As bad and oppressive as Milton Obote may have been, he was an angel of mercy by comparison with Idi Amin. Kiwanuka would soon come into confrontation with Amin’s disregard for the rule of law.

In the last three months of 1972, while the western world dismissed stories of genocide as wild exaggerations by frightened refugees, Idi Amin and his assassins had killed over 90,000 Ugandans. Like other communist dictators his victims were primarily among the prominent citizens in the community.

Initially the victims were buried in mass graves. But as the killings continued, bloated bodies were to be found everywhere. Many of the executions were on public television; others were private occasions in the presence of family members.

The assassins seemed determined not to merely kill, but also to torture and humiliate. On 21 September, 1971 armed soldiers broke into the chamber of the Chief Justice of Uganda and after humiliating him in front of the court, dragged him away at gunpoint. He was taken to Makindye Military Prison where his ears, nose, lips and private parts were cut from his body. After two hours of suffering he was disembowelled and the rest of his body was burned. 

It was in this context that Jolly Joe Kiwanuka gave his life to Jesus Christ. One week after the death of the Chief Justice, Kiwanuka met Kefa Sempangi the leader of a 14,000 member Redeemed Church who later became one of his best friends. Sempangi greeted him but Jolly Joe didn’t bother to shake his hands.

“Owanga,” he said abruptly, speaking in the language of our tribe, the Baganda. “You know what’s going on. What do you say about it…….How do you see it…Do you think God knows what’s going on….Do you think he is going to help us?” God is there, I said, forgetting my fears and suspicions. Have you considered that we ought to give ourselves entirely over to Him?”

I have considered it, Kiwanuka said in an urgent voice. What is to be done?” We walked together to a small house by the side of the compound and there we prayed, asking God to reveal Himself.

When we finished, Kiwanuka was weeping. I knew then some desperate tension had overtaken his life, and the depths of his anguish caused my own heart to mourn. Later I learned he had been an unwilling witness to the torturous death of the Chief Justice of Uganda, a man whom he had loved deeply.

In that moment when Kiwanuka had stood over the mutilated remains of his friend, the foundations of his life had been destroyed. The Chief Justice and he had worked together for more than twenty years. They had sacrificed themselves to make Uganda a strong, free country, and it seemed that both of their efforts had come to nothing.

When Kiwanuka finished weeping, he was silent for a moment. Then he turned to me with a grave but more settled face and said, So there really is a kingdom? …. Two weeks later at the end of the Sunday service worship, Kiwanuka stood before the congregation and spoke of the grace of God:

From the beginning…. I have been looking for a kingdom of freedom. I believed in the goodness of man and I believed that men and women could learn to love each other. Now I tell you, there is no good man. If God will leave us in our natural state, we will eat grass as the goats. But God has not left us!

He has made for us the kingdom that we cannot make for ourselves. He has rescued us from our own corruption and cruelty. The chains of our evil have been broken. It is I Joseph Kiwanuka, who am speaking and I know what I am saying! I have met the man of freedom, Jesus Christ. My sins have been forgiven. I stand before you as a new member of God’s kingdom.

In the midst of severe persecution, Sempangi, Kiwanuka and other elders of the church had a meeting that closed at 3:00 a.m. Sempangi says, the Redeemed Church as we had known it had come to an end. After one of the last raids it was unlikely that we could continue to hold public services. We would have to take the church underground.

We would have to develop a network of invisible leadership and begin meeting again in individual homes. The prospect of breaking up our 14,000 member church in this way seemed to us an overwhelming task and out of fatigue and perhaps even fear we all agreed that a discussion of a detailed plan should wait till the following evening.

But listen to what happened next, as recorded in Sempangi’s book, Reign of Terror, Rein of Love:

It is because of the resurrection we that we are free, Kiwanuka said, we are not slaves to this life or to our fear of death. We are slaves to Jesus Christ and He has risen from the grave.

Towards morning, one by one, the elders said goodbye. We embraced and tears ran down our cheeks as we said goodbye. The last to go was Kiwanuka. He grabbed both my arms in his large hands and seemed more confident and happy than ever.

You must know now, he said, whatever comes, we are ready to die. For we are no longer following Kefa, we are following Jesus Christ.

With these words he stepped out of the door. At the bottom of the steps he turned one last time before disappearing into the night. Goodbye Kefa, he said quietly. I will see you tomorrow. For once in his life, Joseph Kiwanuka was wrong. We would not see each other on earth again.

Kiwanuka had refused to believe his life was in danger and firmly resisted all efforts to persuade him to leave Uganda. His shop was surrounded one afternoon by Amin’s soldiers, but someone in the army had forewarned him of his danger. By the time the soldiers broke down the door, Kiwanuka was already on his way across the Uganda-Kenya border.

Sempangi who had now migrated to Holland wrote letters to Kiwanuka asking him to join him in training for the day when they would return to Uganda together, for the rebuilding of the country.

Unfortunately, Kiwanuka never received any of the letters. In utter frustration Sempangi wrote the last letter and prayed earnestly that the Kenyan postal authorities would finally deliver his message. Two days before Christmas, while Sempangi was still waiting for Kiwanuka’s reply, he received a letter from Leonidas Mukasa, an elder in Sempangi’s Redeemed Church.

Mukasa who had recently escaped to London, wrote:

My Dear Kefa,

It is with deep regret that I inform you of the death of our beloved brother in Christ, Joseph Kiwanuka, who ten days ago was kidnapped from Kenya. He was taken by force back to Uganda, to Makindye Prison, and badly clubbed about the head by Malire who was one of Amin’s killers and Amin himself. These men of Satan tried again and again to force him to renounce his faith but our brother lifted his hands to heaven and called the name of Jesus until his body collapsed dead.

It was only later that Sempangi had learned the details of Kiwanuka’s death. He had been kidnapped from his hotel room in Nairobi by gang of Nubians and taken directly to Makindye Prison.

After being kept in a cell and tortured for several days, he was taken outside to the public yard, where both Amin and Malire were waiting with hammers. Kiwanuka greeted them in a friendly fashion and, as their blows began to fall upon his body, he prayed aloud for the forgiveness of their sins.

Amin went into an uncontrollable rage. Forgetting his desire to see his former friend die a slow and torturous death, he grabbed a nearby sledgehammer and slammed him over the head. Kiwanuka, with his last breath, called the name of Jesus and collapsed dead at Amin’s feet!

After more than 20 years of suffering and hardship he had dreams of happiness on earth in his country which had once been described by Winston Churchill as the “Pearl of Africa.” Tragically, Idi Amin had dashed those dreams.

In utter desperation and despair Jolly Joe dared to turn his eyes from the storm clouds of earth to a land where moth and rust do not corrupt and where thieves do not break through and steal. He said,

From the beginning I have been looking for a kingdom. I have been looking for a kingdom of freedom. . . .” In Christ he found that freedom.

What Kiwanuka and other martyrs had sown in tears, they, and the church with them, would reap in joy. For the story of what God was doing in Uganda did not end with Idi Amin. What Pharaoah had meant for evil, God used for good. For every newspaper headline, for every story of atrocities and death, there was another story which went unreported and unnoticed.

It was the story of those who, by faith, had “escaped the edge of the sword”. It was the story of how God’s people, in the midst of great suffering, had come to understand the depths of love. And it was the story of how God in His providence, had led His children into the wilderness, to prepare a table before them.

Jolly Joe Kiwanuka and others did find the everlasting Kingdom!

Adapted from Kefa Sempangi’s autobiography, Reign of Terror, Reign of Love, A Firsthand account of Life and Death in Idi Amin’s Uganda. Copyright © 1979 Lion Publishing

Further Reading and Information:

A Distant Grief: The Real Story Behind the Martyrdom of Christians in Uganda, Publisher: Wipf & Stock Pub, 2006

From the Dust: A Sequel to A Distant Grief, Publisher: Wipf & Stock Pub, 2008

Related Stories:

• Twenty Years in the Making
• Hollywood stars for new Idi Amin film
• Ssekandi warns on Uganda’s turbulent history

Author Kefa Sempangi-Photo credit

Most Americans may not like to hear this, but the truth is that modern day America very closely resembles Nazi Germany.  If you initially recoiled when you read the headline to this article, that is understandable.  After all, most of us were raised to deeply love this country.  But I would ask you to consider the evidence that I have compiled before you pass judgment on the matter. 

Most citizens of this nation know that something has gone deeply wrong, and I would suggest that just like the Nazis, all of the pageantry and beauty in our society masks an evil which has grown to a level that is almost unspeakable.  And just like the Germans, we don’t do ourselves any favors by turning a blind eye to what is going on. 

The following are 10 stunning parallels between the United States and Nazi Germany…

#1 Human Experimentation

The fact that the Nazis conducted scientific experiments on their prisoners has been heavily documented, but many Americans may not realize that we have been conducting similar experiments for decades.  The following comes from author John Whitehead…

In Alabama, for example, 600 black men with syphilis were allowed to suffer without proper medical treatment in order to study the natural progression of untreated syphilis. In California, older prisoners had testicles from livestock and from recently executed convicts implanted in them to test their virility. In Connecticut, mental patients were injected with hepatitis.

In Maryland, sleeping prisoners had a pandemic flu virus sprayed up their noses. In Georgia, two dozen “volunteering” prison inmates had gonorrhea bacteria pumped directly into their urinary tracts through the penis. In Michigan, male patients at an insane asylum were exposed to the flu after first being injected with an experimental flu vaccine. In Minnesota, 11 public service employee “volunteers” were injected with malaria, then starved for five days.

In New York, dying patients had cancer cells introduced into their systems. In Ohio, over 100 inmates were injected with live cancer cells. Also in New York, prisoners at a reformatory prison were also split into two groups to determine how a deadly stomach virus was spread: the first group was made to swallow an unfiltered stool suspension, while the second group merely breathed in germs sprayed into the air. And in Staten Island, children with mental retardation were given hepatitis orally and by injection to see if they could then be cured.

And while times may have changed, the truth is that we are still being experimented on against our will.  Just check out what the New York Daily News says is happening in New York City this month…

Don’t hold your breath, it’s only a test.

The Department of Homeland Security will release “harmless particle materials” in the city’s subway system next week.

The “non-toxic, safe gas material” will be released at subway stations in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens in order to understand where hazardous material would travel in the event of a biological terrorist attack.

In addition, let us not forget that we systematically create and perform experiments on unborn baby children…

A shocking new report indicates scientists have found a way for human embryos to live outside the womb for 14 days, which is a record, so they can be experimented on for a longer period of time.

Leading pro-life advocates are outraged that scientists would specifically create unique human beings to purposefully experiment on and later destroy just for research. They are worried scientists will continue creating more unborn human people who will be subjected to research for a longer duration of their embryonic life.

What we are doing is so evil that it is hard to put into words, and yet most Americans have come to accept this kind of sick behavior as perfectly normal.

#2 Socialism

The Nazis were hardcore socialists, and they were very proud of this fact.  For example, National Socialist theologian Gregor Strasser once made the following statement…

We National Socialists are enemies, deadly enemies, of the present capitalist system with its exploitation of the economically weak … and we are resolved under all circumstances to destroy this system.

Unfortunately, the United States is rapidly moving in a similar direction.  An avowed socialist, Bernie Sanders, is wildly popular with Democrats, and more than half of all U.S. adults under the age of 30 now say that they reject capitalism.

#3 Free Stuff

Just like Bernie Sanders wants to do, the Nazis gave out lots and lots of free stuff.  Kitty Werthmann was a child living a peaceful life in Austria when Hitler took over her nation, and I will be quoting her extensively for the rest of this article.  She says that once the Nazis took control in Austria, they started handing out lots of freebies…

Newlyweds immediately received a $1,000 loan from the government to establish a household. We had big programs for families. All day care and education were free. High schools were taken over by the government and college tuition was subsidized. Everyone was entitled to free handouts, such as food stamps, clothing, and housing.

#4 Taxes

Free stuff may sound like a good idea, but someone has to pay for it.  According to Kitty Werthmann, once the Nazis took control of Austria “our tax rates went up to 80% of our income“, and that absolutely choked the life out of the free market system.

Sadly, things are moving in the exact same direction in the United States.  When the federal income tax was first implemented a little over a century ago, most Americans were taxed at a rate of just one percent.  But today, we are being taxed into oblivion.  I recently wrote an article in which I listed 97 different taxes that Americans pay each year, and when you add all of those taxes together some Americans end up paying out more than 50 percent of their incomes in taxes.

#5 Obamacare

Would it surprise you to learn that the Nazis had their own version of Obamacare?  The following is some more eyewitness testimony from Kitty Werthmann…

Before Hitler, we had very good medical care. Many American doctors trained at the University of Vienna. After Hitler, health care was socialized, free for everyone. Doctors were salaried by the government. The problem was, since it was free, the people were going to the doctors for everything. When the good doctor arrived at his office at 8 a.m., 40 people were already waiting and, at the same time, the hospitals were full. If you needed elective surgery, you had to wait a year or two for your turn. There was no money for research as it was poured into socialized medicine. Research at the medical schools literally stopped, so the best doctors left Austria and emigrated to other countries.

#6 Government Regulation

Just like the Obama administration, the Nazis wanted to tightly regulate virtually everything in the economy.  Here is more from Kitty Werthmann…

My brother-in-law owned a restaurant that had square tables. Government officials told him he had to replace them with round tables because people might bump themselves on the corners. Then they said he had to have additional bathroom facilities. It was just a small dairy business with a snack bar. He couldn’t meet all the demands. Soon, he went out of business.

If the government owned the large businesses and not many small ones existed, it could be in control.

We had consumer protection. We were told how to shop and what to buy. Free enterprise was essentially abolished. We had a planning agency specially designed for farmers. The agents would go to the farms, count the live-stock, then tell the farmers what to produce, and how to produce it.

#7 Gun Control

The Nazis believed in having a very strong military, but they were also obsessed with taking the guns away from the general population.  According to Kitty Werthmann, the first step was gun registration, and once the government knew where all the guns were it was very easy to round all of them up…

Next came gun registration. People were getting injured by guns. Hitler said that the real way to catch criminals (we still had a few) was by matching serial numbers on guns. Most citizens were law abiding and dutifully marched to the police station to register their firearms. Not long after-wards, the police said that it was best for everyone to turn in their guns. The authorities already knew who had them, so it was futile not to comply voluntarily.

#8 Spying

The Nazi secret police, also known as the Gestapo, became world famous for their brutal tactics.  The Nazis wanted to know everything about everybody, and anyone that was deemed to be “anti-government” was dealt with mercilessly.

Unfortunately, we are moving in the exact same direction in the United States today.  We spy on our enemies, but we also spy on our friends.  Control freaks working for the government are systematically watching us, tracking us, recording our phone calls and monitoring our emails.  At this point, government snooping has become so pervasive that 64 percent of all reporters believe that the government is spying on them.

#9 Abortion

The Nazis brought legalized abortion to Germany, and they were especially interested in having “undesirable” elements of the population engage in this practice.  It turns out that Adolf Hitler was actually a huge fan of the founder of Planned Parenthood, Margaret Sanger, and he adopted many of her philosophies.  As I have written about previously, Sanger once made the following statement…

The most merciful thing that a family does to one of its infant members is to kill it.”

Now compare that line from Sanger to this statement from Hitler in Mein Kampf…

The demand that defective people be prevented from propagating equally defective offspring. . . represents the most humane act of mankind.

Just like the Nazis, our disregard for human life is absolutely appalling.  Even after the American people were shown clear undercover video evidence that revealed that Planned Parenthood is chopping up aborted babies and selling their body parts to the highest bidder, one survey found that only 29 percent of Americans wanted to cut off the hundreds of millions of dollars that Planned Parenthood is getting from the federal government every year.

To say that we have become an “evil nation” is a gigantic understatement.

#10 Pushing The Christian Faith Out Of Public Life

In this day and age, it has become “American” to remove every trace of the Christian faith from public life.  We don’t want God in our government, in our schools, in our parks or in our businesses.  Many people may not realize this, but the Nazis were the exact same way.  The following information originally comes from Bruce Walker, the author of “The Swastika Against the Cross: The Nazi War on Christianity“…

The Nazi tract Gott und Volk was distributed in 1941, and it describes the life cycle of German youth in the future, who would:  “With parties and gifts the youth will be led painlessly from one faith to the other and will grow up without ever having heard of the Sermon on the Mount or the Golden Rule, to say nothing of the Ten Commandments… The education of the youth is to be confined primarily by the teacher, the officer, and the leaders of the party.  The priests will die out.  They have estranged the youth from the Volk.  Into their places will step the leaders.  Not deputies of God.  But anyway the best Germans.  And how shall we train our children?  Thus, as though they had never heard of Christianity!”

And just like Nazi Germany, our end will be exceedingly terrible.

You see, the truth is that all evil regimes eventually fall, and America is headed for a day of reckoning.

Even now, our enemies are preparing weapons which could potentially destroy us in a single day.  For example, just check out what Russia is building…

The “Satan 2″ missile is rumoured to be the most powerful ever designed and is equipped with stealth technology to help it dodge enemy radar systems .

This terrifying doomsday weapon is likely to strike fear into the hearts of Western military chiefs, as current missile defence technology is totally incapable of stopping it.

It is being reported that the warheads from a single Satan 2 missile could destroy a state the size of Texas or a country the size of France.

Whether it is nuclear oblivion or something else, if we continue to behave like the Nazis it is just a matter of time before America is destroyed.

Let us hope and pray that this country wakes up while there is still time to do so.

© Copyright 2016, End of the American Dream

I visited a man on his death bed yesterday. I left confused.

This man had no relationship with Jesus, no interest in the gospel, yet no fear of death. His only desire was to ease his physical pain and die without a struggle. I couldn’t understand it. Really? No fear of death at all?

The first time I remember seeing a dead body was when I was eight. I was terrified! It was my stepmother’s body in a casket. My mother died giving birth to me, so this was the woman that I knew as mom. Seeing her lifeless body scared me. The whole concept of death confused me and gave me a sick feeling. There was nothing casual about it.

Seeing my dad in a casket four years later brought the same kind of fear and sobriety.

Forty years later, I still get deeply disturbed at funerals. Whenever I see a dead body, I inevitably think, That will be me soon. Then all sorts of uncomfortable thoughts follow.

Wisdom Ponders Death

I understand that Christians should not fear death. Jesus died and rose from the grave, therefore death has lost its “sting” (1 Corinthians 15:55–56). But just because the fear subsides, it doesn’t mean we are left feeling indifferent. Death has a way of jolting us into seriousness. Don’t you still get an eerie or maybe even sick feeling when you think about your own death?

Some of it is just trying to grasp something so foreign to us: the separation of the soul from the body. We are unable to fathom existing apart from the only body we’ve known. The other troubling mystery is trying to imagine what we will first see and experience after death. What will it be like when we first see a heavenly being or God himself?

Death is not an easy thing to meditate on, but the wise person will think about death often.

Teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom. (Psalm 90:12)

When was the last time you prayed that prayer? A wise man thinks about his death often, and the fool ignores it. This is why the enemy keeps us from thinking and talking about death. And this is why we must work to keep the brevity of life on the forefront of our minds.

Next week, one of my friends is going to court. There is a chance that he will be sentenced to several years in prison. As you can imagine, it is hard for him to think about anything else. As much as he will try to have a “normal” week, I’m pretty sure his mind will be preoccupied with what the judge is going to say.

Shouldn’t we also be preoccupied with our upcoming day in God’s court? The Bible says that one day we will stand before a Judge who is referred to as a “Consuming Fire” (Hebrews 12:29). Unbelievably, some will go their whole lives without ever considering what this moment will be like.

Ignoring Death Leads to Ignorance

I can only imagine how you as a reader are responding at this point. This may be the first time someone has encouraged you to think deeply about death and judgment. We are unaccustomed to conversations about death.

Our society goes to incredible lengths to hide the inevitable reality of death from us. It is considered intrusive or even rude to ask others to think about their deaths. Inevitably someone will quickly change the subject once it gets too serious or solemn. But should we?

It is better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting, for this is the end of all mankind, and the living will lay it to heart. (Ecclesiastes 7:2)

It is better to go to a funeral than a party? The fact that you’ve never heard this expression in conversation reveals just how far our society is from biblical wisdom.

I have performed many funerals. It’s not uncommon to see crowds go out drinking immediately following the service. It is their way to “move on” and not dwell on the severity of the situation.

Others may not get drunk, but they find other ways to intoxicate themselves — heading back to work, going to a movie, laughing, talking, texting, getting on social media. People will do anything to avoid thinking about the only thing that matters. Reality is right there before their eyes, but they’ll desperately pursue any alternative to facing the facts.

The Bible shows that ignoring death leads to ignorance.

The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth. (Ecclesiastes 7:4)

The wise man doesn’t quickly move past funerals. His heart lingers in a state of mourning. The fool tells jokes as soon as the funeral ends, not realizing the damage it does to his soul. Fools do whatever is easiest.

Eating pie is easy, but kale takes effort. The things that build us up require intentionality and work. Contemplating death takes work; watching a typical movie does not. The wise man makes time to think about serious issues. The hard work of mourning builds up the wisdom of the heart.

Linger in the House of Mourning

When I was in seminary, I learned that “the heart” refers to the mission-control center of our bodies. It is the seat of decision-making. This is why you and I make wiser decisions after our hearts spend time in the house of mourning. I tend to make good decisions at funerals and poor ones in restaurants. I have made wise financial decisions while surrounded by starving children, and poor decisions from the suburbs. We need to keep our hearts close to the house of mourning to avoid decisions we will regret.

As difficult as it is, we need to be mindful of death. We must make decisions with our day of death in mind. Please, please, please consider spending just ten minutes in solitude today, meditating about your own funeral. Imagine standing before a God who “dwells in unapproachable light” (1 Timothy 6:16).

But don’t stop there. Perhaps ponder some major life decisions after meditating on death. Your heart, the seat of decision-making, will then be better conditioned to decide where to live, what to drive, and which shoes to buy.

© Copyright 2016, Francis Chan, Desiring God Foundation

Image credit: Desiring God

It is with the heart that man believes (Romans 10:10). It is with the heart that we are to seek (Deut. 4:29), serve (Deut. 10:12), and love (Deut. 6:5) God. It is only with the heart that we know God or worship God in spirit and in truth (John 4:23-24). It is in the heart, therefore, that the divine Word does the work.

……Now when they heard this they were (cut) to the heart, and they said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, Brethren, what shall we do? (Acts 2:37). 

It is into our hearts that the divine Word does the work. It is into our hearts that God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son. It is the heart, the inward life of desire and love and will, that the Holy Spirit guides into all truth (John 16:13).

We cannot lean on our own understanding

We have two powers at work in our lives: the understanding or intellect that knows things from ideas we form, and the heart that knows them by experience as they become part of our wills and desires. One of the main reasons Bible teaching bears little fruit in our lives as Christians is because we rely on our own insight or understanding.

We might argue that God gave us our intellect, and without it there is no possibility of knowing God’s Word. This is true, but in the Fall our whole human nature was disordered. It was the desire for knowledge and power that led Eve astray and was the outcome of the temptation.

Our wills became enslaved, our desires were perverted, and our understanding was darkened. We believers likewise don’t have the power of a holy will and that’s why we need the daily renewing of the grace of Jesus Christ.

We don’t have the power to love God and others unless it is given to us by the Holy Spirit. We don’t realize that the intellect is equally ruined spiritually and incapable of understanding spiritual truth.

To think that we can take the knowledge of God’s truth for ourselves out of His Word is still our greatest danger. We need a deep conviction of the inability of our understanding to really know the truth. We need to realize the terrible danger of self-confidence and self deception and to heed the warning in Proverbs 3: 5, “Trust in Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding.”

Our own understanding gives us only thoughts and ideas about spiritual things without the reality of them. This deceives us with the thought that the truth, if received into the mind, will somehow surely enter our hearts. It blinds us to the terrible experience that is so prevalent in the Church today: the practice of daily Bible reading, listening to God’s Word every Sunday and yet becoming neither humble, nor holy, nor heavenly minded because of it.

We need to come with our hearts to the Bible and trust God to be the Teacher Who will give us an understanding heart and a spiritual understanding.

Can we study our Bibles without using our understanding? Yes we can do that, but we shouldn’t use our understanding for what it cannot do. Our understanding can only give us a picture or thought of spiritual things like it happened to an Ethiopian eunuch.

The eunuch was very dedicated to God because he had traveled a long distance to worship in Jerusalem, and as he was returning, and sitting in his chariot, he was reading the Book of Isaiah but he could not understand what he was reading, unless it was revealed to him by the Holy Spirit through the disciple known as Phillip (see Acts 8:26-40).

The Burning Heart

A.W. Tozer delicious words apply to our day as accurately as they did to his. Let’s listen to him:

Pastors and teachers are giving sound Bible exposition—but all this may be carried on in such a way as to leave the hearers devoid of any true spiritual nourishment. For it is not mere words that nourish the soul, but God Himself and unless and until the hearers find God in personal experience they are not the better for having heard the truth.

The Bible is not an end itself, but a means to bring men to an intimate and satisfying knowledge of God, that they may enter into Him, that they may delight in His Presence, may taste and know the inner sweetness of the very God Himself in the core and centre of their hearts.

There is today no lack of Bible teachers to set forth correctly the principles of the doctrines of Christ, but too many of these seem satisfied to teach the fundamentals of the faith year after year, strangely unaware that there is in their ministry no manifest Presence, nor anything unusual in their personal lives. They minister constantly to believers who feel within their breasts a longing which their teaching simply does not satisfy.

Again, we have the wonderful story of the disciples on the road to a village known as Emmaus, which was about several miles from Jerusalem. The Bible tells us, their hearts were greatly moved and burning with them while Jesus had revealed Himself to them, as He opened, explained and interpreted to them in all the Scriptures beginning with Moses and throughout all the Prophets and the Psalms, the things concerning and referring to Himself that had to be fulfilled.  

Thus it is written that the Christ (the Messiah) should suffer and on the third day rise from (among) the dead, and that repentance [with a view to and as the condition of] forgiveness of sins should be preached in His name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. And behold, I will send forth upon you what My Father has promised; but remain in the city [Jerusalem] until you are clothed with power from on high. (See Luke 24:1- 49)

This proves to us that Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit is the only one who opens our minds to understand the Holy Scriptures. The true preacher knows that everything depends upon the condition of his/her heart. We have to go with our hearts to the Lord to make His Word life and truth in us.

If we lean on our own understanding we might take pride in our intellect. Nothing can save us from this except continual dependence of the heart on the Holy Spirit’s teaching.

The Holy Spirit interprets God’s Word

Only the Holy Spirit can, and most surely will be the Interpreter of His Word. Divine truth needs a divine Teacher. Spiritual understanding of spiritual things can only come from the Holy Spirit. The unique character of the Word is that it is essentially different from, and infinitely exalted above, all human understanding

When the Holy Spirit quickens the Word in the heart, then He can guide the intellect. The humble He guides in justice, and the humble He teaches His way” (Psalms 25:9) and the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” (Proverbs 9:10)

We should ask the Holy Spirit to make the Word of God true to us and to make it work in our hearts until the Word becomes the strength of our lives.          

Image credit: From the Have it All Album, Bethel Music

How do we resist evil? One woman’s approach was on the money. And soon, she will be, too.

When you open your wallet in few years, you may be seeing something different on the $20 bill: The U.S. Treasury Department is proposing to take President Andrew Jackson off the front of the bill and replace him with one of my personal heroes: Harriet Tubman.

She is someone we should celebrate for what she did—rescue slaves—and for the lessons she teaches us today about when it’s appropriate to resist evil.

Harriet Tubman was born into slavery on a Maryland plantation in 1822. As she grew up, she was made to work driving oxen, trapping muskrats in the woods, and as a nursemaid.

Harriet’s owners frequently whipped her. And she endured the pain of seeing three of her sisters sold, never to be seen again. But when her owner tried to sell one of her brothers, Harriet’s mother openly rebelled. The would-be buyer gave up after Harriet’s mother told him, “The first man that comes into my house, I will split his head open.”

Her mother’s actions likely implanted in Harriet the idea that resistance to evil was right—and could sometimes be successful.

As a child, Harriet herself revealed a strong rebellious streak. She would run away for days at a time. But there were rays of joy in her life, as well. Harriet’s mother told her stories from the Bible, which developed in her a deep and abiding faith in God.

When Harriet was about 26 years old, she learned that she might be sold away from her family. The time had come to try to escape. She made her way some ninety miles along the Underground Railroad. She traveled at night to avoid slave catchers, following the North Star, until she reached Pennsylvania, and freedom.

Once there, she dared to make a dangerous decision: She risked her own freedom in order to give others theirs.

For eight years, as America headed toward the cauldron of Civil War, she made many dangerous trips back to Maryland, leading scores of slaves north to freedom. During these trips she relied upon God to guide and protect her. She never once lost a runaway slave. As Harriet herself later put it, “I never ran my train off the track and I never lost a passenger.”

She gave all the credit to God, explaining, “’Twant me, ‘twas the Lord. I always told him, ‘I trusts to you. I don’t know where to go or what to do, but I expect you to lead me,’ and he always did.”

No wonder she was known as Moses to her people.

Her faith deeply impressed others. As abolitionist Thomas Garrett put it, “I never met with any person of any color who had more confidence in the voice of God, as spoken direct to her soul.”

During the Civil War, Harriet worked for the Union as a scout, spy, cook, and nurse to wounded and sick soldiers. Amazingly, she even led an armed assault on Southern plantations, during which 750 slaves were rescued. In later years, Harriet donated property to be turned into a home for indigent former slaves.

She was an incredible woman—one we can and should celebrate and emulate. Today there still is, sad to say, plenty of evil that needs resisting. For instance, we’re increasingly facing the demands of bullies that we embrace laws and opinions that contradict the teachings of God. Who knows, like Harriet, we may be called upon to move to another state—one that puts a proper value on religious freedom. Or we may have to go to court to protect our First Amendment rights—or help others to do so.

When we lose heart fighting these battles, we should remember Harriet Tubman’s unflinching courage and unfailing faith in God’s guidance—and redouble our efforts to protect our own generation from efforts to enslave, not our bodies, but our heart and minds and souls.

© Copyright 2016 Breaking Point  

Image courtesy of Ms Magazine

Afterword:

Garland Favorito writing for the NewsWithViews.com says there was another reason why Andrew Jackson was  targeted for removal from the $20 Bill….

To help justify the removal of Andrew Jackson from the face of the $20 bill, elitists played the classic Marxist race and gender cards. To gain support from women and minorities, only women were considered and Harriett Tubman was selected to replace Jackson. Harriett Tubman certainly deserves to be honored for her place in history but not by removing the most fiscally sound President in American history and the most distinguished American General other than George Washington himself. It is especially ironic that Treasury Secretary Jack Lew would attempt to remove Jackson from the $20 bill even though he could never achieve the fiscal accomplishments of Andrew Jackson much less his statesman and military accomplishments….

MINGO COUNTY, W. Va. – There’s a new sound coming forth from the hills of southern West Virginia – a sound many prophets have foretold but haven’t heard until now.

For the past three weeks, the large sports complex in the small coal-mining town of Williamson, West Virginia, has been filled to the rafters with people crying out for God.

It all started when Tennessee evangelist Matt Hartley visited a local church for what was supposed to be a three-day revival service but it just kept going.

“This is not man-made, charismatic, hyper spiritual,” Hartley told CBN News. “This is the presence of God that is overwhelming us, that is being released upon hungry people that are tired of just stagnant Christianity and “safe” church.”

“They want Jesus more than anything else. That’s why they’re here,” he said.

Hartley also spoke at the local high school where revival seemed to break out among the students.

“Four-hundred to 450 students got saved at Mingo Central from Matt Hartley coming in and speaking at a voluntary prayer club,” Katie Endicott, with the Mingo Central High Prayer Club, told CBN News.

“It has just gone from school to school, from youth group to youth group,” she said. “Denominational barriers have just been cast down and we’ve just had a great spirit of unity.”

Many are calling it the greatest spiritual awakening in southern West Virginia history.

“We couldn’t have done this if we wanted to,” Endicott said. “We’ve had so many revival services, so many special services and nothing like this. This is true awakening.”

Endicott says prayer plus desperation has paved the way for this spiritual breakthrough, especially among the young people.

“Oh my gosh, it’s amazing!” 18-year-old Belfry High School student Andrew Fletcher exclaimed. “I’ve never seen something like this happen where the young people just get on fire.”

“It’s really cool to come to church and it’s really cool to worship God – nobody’s judging you or saying anything about it because they’re all with you,” he continued.

“We’re starting to have prayer circles at school and we’re reading and having Bible studies at school,” he said.

Others, like Erica Priest of Lenore, are seeing God answer very specific prayers.

“My husband just got saved this morning,” Priest said. “I’ve been praying for him for seven months and he’ll be baptized this Sunday.”

Hartley believes the sound of revival now being heard in these West Virginia mountains has the potential to spread around the world.

“I believe God has preserved this state for the end-time awakening that’s coming to America,” Hartley said.

“I believe that this is the beginning of where it happens and it’s going to spread as a wild-fire throughout the nations of this world, that Jesus is going to be exalted,” he predicted.

“And the more Jesus is exalted the more the river of God is going to flow — and we have not seen anything yet to what God is releasing,” he said.

© Copyright 2016, Christian Broadcasting Network