Judgment In The House of God

I have to say, sometimes — MANY TIMES — I feel like Jeremiah, who was known as the “weeping prophet.”  I do not claim to be a prophet, but I know what I know, and I cannot UNknow what I know…  Life would be much easier, I suppose, if I were to simply tune out and live like the rest of the world; focused on sports, worldly entertainment, easy living and comfort.

But I know God’s Word and I see what is coming upon this Earth, and surely, the judgment of God is coming soon, to all those who now live in ignorant bliss.  I feel such an urgency to sound the warning signal and call people to return to God in repentance, seeking Him with all their heart, NOW, while He may still be found.

As we read in 1 Peter 4, “It is time for judgment to begin with God’s household; and if it begins with us, what will the outcome be for those who do not obey the gospel of God?”  Yes, my friends, God’s judgment will BEGIN with those who claim to be a part of His Church…

Jesus said that “Wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it.  But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few ever find it.”  The truth of the matter is, MOST of those who sit with you in church every week will one day by VERY SURPRISED to learn that Jesus never knew them.

I wonder how many professing Christians are, in reality, walking that broad road, all the while believing they are safely and soundly “saved,” because they have been purposely misled by cowardly, people-pleasing preachers.

We live in a day and age of such deception and delusion, the likes of which I have never seen before in all my years.  If we cannot hear the truth of Satan’s lies exposed in our Christian churches, WHERE, I ask you, CAN we?

We are now two, if not three generations past the time when people had even a modicum of Biblical literacy.  Those days are long past.  Moses warned: “Fix these words of mine in your hearts and minds;  tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads.

Teach them to your children, talking about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, while you lie down and when you get up.  Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates…”

The words we were to hold onto so securely — AND TEACH TO OUR CHILDREN — included the knowledge, wisdom and understanding of God’s Holy Word. I dare say that today, most households in America probably contain numerous copies of the Bible, but they are rarely, if ever, opened.

Most church-goers no longer even bother to go through the motions of carrying them to church.  After all, the Scripture the pastor has chosen, to prove his point,  is placed up there (for our convenience) on the big TV or projection screen.  It seems, in our churches today, there is no more need for the Bible.

Thus we have a generation of people so far removed from the truth of God’s Word we  don’t even know what we don’t know.  A wealth of knowledge and wisdom — all the ancient Holy Scriptures, the very words of GOD HIMSELF — lay there at our fingertips, yet most cannot be bothered to even look, much less study.

We rely on what the “pastor” tells us; and sadly, most of the sermons preached in our modern American churches today PURPOSELY EVADE the whole counsel of God, lest one in the congregation might be offended.

One man recently asked the very serious question:  “Why must I go outside the church in order to get the truth?”  He was referring to the recent Wisconsin Christian News Ministry Expo and Conference in which we featured expert speakers to directly discuss the topics of Islam, Homosexuality, the God-ordained Family, Apostasy in our churches, Biblical Illiteracy, Political Correctness,  and what is required for true salvation in Jesus Christ.

We addressed these most important issues HEAD ON —  to standing-room-only crowds of people — hungry for truth that they will NEVER hear in their churches.  We had people attend our conference from far and wide —  coming from all over Wisconsin, at least 7 other states AND CANADA… yet the local pastors in the area actually BOYCOTTED our event, and would not even announce it to their congregations.

This man asked this question (“Why must I go outside the church in order to get the truth?”)  of his pastor, and his pastor’s pastor, and several men in leadership at his church. None would answer.

They consider him a trouble-maker because he presses for answers they are not willing to give.   The senior pastor even implied he might be “happier” at another church…. a “polite, non-offensive” way of asking him to leave.  This after years of faithful attendance.

I’m becoming convinced that the seminaries MUST have special training courses to teach new pastors how to evade the hard topics completely, lest someone be offended; how to be “people-pleasers,” how to run a successful money-making business, and how to be popular and well liked.

It seems that’s all they know… but there is such a HUNGER AND THIRST for the WHOLE counsel of God — for the WHOLE TRUTH AND NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH… and people are not getting it in their churches today.

After the terror attacks on 9/11, churches nationwide were packed with people…  they came to find truth and they came to find answers.  They came seeking God, but He wasn’t there….  And so within a month, the churches were emptier than before.

Those who were sincerely seeking God had to go OUTSIDE the churches in order to find Him.  I am sad to say that we have turned Christianity into a mere religious exercise, and our pulpits are mostly filled with “hirelings,” as we read about in John, Chapter 10:  Jesus said, “I am the Good Shepherd.

The Good Shepherd lays down His life for the sheep.  The hireling is not the shepherd who owns the sheep.  So when he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away.  Then the wolf attacks the flock and scatters it.  The man runs away because he is a hireling and cares nothing for the sheep.”

Am I too harsh?  Sorry, those were Jesus’ words.  Not mine.  Most of today’s pastors love to be praised by the people;  they love to be popular and well liked.  I’ve said it before, but in case you missed it:  PLEASE, show me ONE MAN OF GOD in the Bible who courageously spoke the truth — the whole counsel of God — who was well liked and popular among the people.  Such a one does not exist.

The writer of Hebrews tells us what REAL MEN OF GOD accomplished for their Lord, and what they endured throughout the Scriptures — and what REAL CHRISTIANS should EXPECT to endure even today:  “they conquered kingdoms, administered justice, and gained what was promised;  they shut the mouths of lions, quenched the fury of the flames, and escaped the edge of the sword; whose weakness was turned to strength, and who became powerful in battle and routed foreign armies…. Others were tortured, refusing to be released so that they might gain an even better resurrection.

Some faced jeers and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment.  They were put to death by stoning, they were sawed in two, they were killed by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated…”

Now I ask you:  how many of US are willing to endure such things in order to follow Christ today?  And perhaps more to the point, how many of our PASTORS would be willing?  Sadly, most today are afraid to even mention the hard things that are deemed “politically incorrect,” for fear of someone taking offense…much less consider enduring any sort of hardship — or fighting for righteousness.

A case in point:  I recently warned a pastor that there were people in his congregation who were embracing and promoting the apostate movie “The Shack,” in which God is portrayed as an African woman, in which Jesus states He does not want people to become “Christians,” but rather, ALL religious paths lead to God’s acceptance and forgiveness; and the Holy Spirit is portrayed as another woman with a Hindu name.

These regular church-goers said it was by far the best “Christian” movie they’d ever seen and were highly recommending it to others.

I warned their pastor — “You MUST speak on this!  This is apostasy of the highest degree and people in YOUR church are being led astray by this false teaching!”  But the pastor refused to address the issue in any way…. because some might be offended if he attacked the sacred cow of this Hollywood heresy.

Last summer I attended a funeral, where the pastor openly declared from the pulpit that “God needed another angel,” thus the untimely death of the deceased. SURELY this pastor knows that people are not transformed into angels when they die… yet he purposely led all those people astray, with false doctrine about a false future… he may as well have said, “every time a bell rings and angel gets its wings!”  That’s about the depth of the theology we are receiving in our modern American churches today.

I am most concerned about our children.  Scripture tells us that there is ENMITY between the seed of the serpent (Satan) and the seed of the woman (our children)…  Satan goes after our kids the hardest, because they are his greatest of trophies.  If he can steal the hearts and minds of our children, he can destroy all of mankind.  I believe we are seeing this come to pass in these last days, right now.

Our kids spend 6-8 hours a day, five days a week in government schools, better described as Liberal, Socialist indoctrination centres.  Then, a scant FEW will spend an hour or two in a church once a week, where they are taught Bible STORIES, as if they were fairy tales.

We have just recently observed the Easter season.  I received at least a dozen sets of photographs from people in various places; images from Easter celebrations at churches where they live.  The pictures showed senior pastors dressed up like clowns, movie characters and of course, the Easter Bunny.  The same thing happens at Christmas, when churches mix Santa Claus in with the birth of Christ.

We’ve turned HISTORY, wisdom and knowledge, found in God’s Word into fairy tales… all to attract kids to our Establishment churches…  and then we rejoice when so many kids show up for the Easter egg hunt, the bounce houses, the face painting, the jugglers and clowns….  we measure the success of our Easter “services” by how many kids came out and collected candy-filled eggs, after which they heard a short candy-coated message about a fictitious “Jesus.”

How can we be SO BLIND?!   Look what we are doing to our kids.   If only we could see the millstones we are heaping around our own necks as we deceive our own children.

I’ve heard it said that “Church is not supposed to be a museum for saints, but rather a hospital for sinners.”  I beg to differ.  THE CHURCH, (the one of which the gates of hell will not prevail against), is the BODY OF CHRIST…. unrepentant sinners will NEVER be comfortable there.

Church is SUPPOSED to be the House of God, but we have turned it into a worldly, carnal social club, designed to make everyone feel comfortable and accepted in their sin.  But Church is supposed to be a gathering place for the children of God — and contrary to popular belief, not EVERYONE is a child of God.  If you are not saved by the blood of the Lamb, then you are at ENMITY with God. You’re His ENEMY… you are a child of the devil.  For what fellowship can light have with darkness?  Yet many churches today, LITERALLY entice the unsaved in with darkness and carnality….

Is it any wonder, then, that there is now emerging a REMNANT — those who take the Lord and His Word SERIOUSLY… they are COMING OUT of these carnal social clubs and as Jesus said they would be, they are scattered — sheep without a shepherd — because of the wolves, and the hirelings that refuse to speak the truth.

Church should be a place of discipleship and growth, where shepherds teach their flocks to GO OUT and make disciples, teaching them to OBEY all Jesus commanded.  Not a place of entertainment and indulgence.

Our kids see through the hypocrisy clearly, and want no part of it, if that’s what “Church” is all about.  “Christianity,” they say, does not “work” for them…. thus they choose instead, the false doctrines of demons, if they follow any spiritual path at all.

You see, they’ve been taught that the Christian life is one of peace, prosperity, comfort and ease.  Free candy when they’re kids and comfort and ease when they grow up.  We, as adults, often believe just the same.

We are never challenged to study and dig into the Word of God ourselves.  We’re rarely asked to DO anything at all.   We simply come and sit, and pay our “dues,” and listen to a comforting message that makes us feel good about ourselves.

Contrast this to what Peter spoke of regarding what the REAL Christian life is like:  “Dear friends, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that has come on you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you.

But rejoice inasmuch as you participate in the sufferings of Christ…If you are insulted because of the name of Christ, you are blessed, for the Spirit of glory and of God rests on you…If you suffer as a Christian, do not be ashamed, but praise God that you bear that name.  For it is time for judgment to begin with God’s household.”

Jesus does not call us to a life of comfort and ease, indulgence, carnality and acceptance of sin.  He calls us to repent, to go OUT and make disciples, teaching them all He commanded.

That REQUIRES us to be politically incorrect in this world filled with demonic delusions and lies.  Those who follow Christ will NOT be popular or well liked.  But neither will they hear those awful words one day, “Depart from Me, you worker of iniquity… I never knew you.”

Copyright © 2017, News With Views, All rights reserved.

 



America Or Globalism? You Can’t Have Both

I have been traveling for the last week. Where ever I go, the message from the people is the same.  POTUS is doing a great job but he is working with one hand tied behind his back.  Why is Congress hindering, not helping?

Party lines do not matter any more. America now has Globalists in both parties making our fight today not Republicans vs Democrat, but Americans vs. Globalists.

Who are these Globalists and what do they want?  Think of a pyramid. Block off the top inch. That is about 1000 people who run both the Democratic and Republican party AKA  Globalist aka Elite aka Moderates.

The ideology of these Globalists is rooted in Communism. Globalists are communists.  Communism is anti-American. Why is no one reporting this?  Americans have learned in school through diversity training to be silent.  Americans are told; if you speak out, you will be labeled a racist.  End of conversation.

Why kids? How does that work? Recently we discovered that Obama gave taxpayer dollars to Soros’ Open Society. Open Society used the money to influence the election in Macedonia by giving out Sol Alinski’s,  “Rules for Radicals” to students before having them riot. Kids without purpose are followers.  Americans are silent.

Does that sound familiar? What was POTUS Trump accused of?  Notice how Globalists accuse their opposition for things they have done… By starting to train the young, and using WorldWide Common Core (a UNESCO and GATES partnership agreement signed in 1994) Globalists can use the same programming for kids throughout the world.

Focusing on the training with techniques created by Bell, Skinner, Pavlov, like Mastery Learning aka Outcome Based Education assures Globalists the proper response when key trigger words are used. The student is trained in a way that the outcome of their actions is now predictable.

Once that happens students lose their ability to choose and can easily be controlled (manipulated) by their choices.  Their choices are now controlled by the group. Any deviation from the group is racist.   Today the youth of the world can be called upon to riot for any reason in any city.  And Americans are silent.

When God is erased from school, from the government, immorality becomes the norm and lies are accepted as real. Right is wrong and the success of wrong is celebrated.  America is lost.   And Americans are silent.  Why?

History must be erased.

The lowest common denominator in America is???

What is the one thing every American in one way or another must do whether public, private or at home???  If you said education, you would be correct.  So I ask, if you were trying to take over someone’s belief system and alter it to match what you want, where would you start your messaging?

If I were in charge of evil, I’d start in school, elementary school, after all that worked best for Stalin, Mao, Castro, Hitler to name a few.  I’d change normal into my ideology by changing texts and history.

Once Michelle Obama let the cat out of the bag, it became more evident that this is exactly what is being done. Why do this to our kids? Well they do grow and become the future Globalists.  We now find Globalists in all American bureaucracies and government.  Globalists are intolerant of any opposing point of view.

Is there any surprise that we see the same failed programs in every state: Regionalism managed by un-elected bureaucrats, crony corporatism in Enterprise Zones, money designated and approved by the people are diverted into globalist programs without oversight.

Like: money for roads go into roundabouts, bike paths under the guise of saving the planet.   Democratic globalists say they favor big government, Republican Globalists focus on business. Once government manages and controls business, business controls government there is no difference.

All programs start in the same place.  Where? School. Today all school programs tout sustainability and man made climate change.  What is the real reason of this training? To REDISTRIBUTE WEALTH; to teach kids to rent not own. What do Globalists want?  Everything we own.  How do I know? Because Globalists tell us constantly.

“This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for the, at least, 150 years, since the industrial revolution,” UN VP Climate Initiative, Christina Figueres said.

What are the purposes of these programs? To ensure that future citizens believe man is destroying the earth and they must do more for less. Spending and regulation is the only answer to save the planet.

Students are taught they must rent not own for ownership creates wealth and creating wealth is unfair.  The entire program is right out of Agenda 21 oops, Sustainable Development, Smart Growth.  Why rent not own?  Renters are controlled by their landlords. Owners control themselves.   Globalists will never allow you to control yourself.

In 1989, Bush 41 was POTUS, Bill Clinton was President of the Governors Association.  Shirley Mc Clune, from the McRel Educational Foundation, presented a new face for American education.  Shirley told the group:

  • Students are HUMAN CAPITAL Education’s purpose is to train students to work.
  • Purpose of Education was to Transform Society from individualism to collectivism
  • Fact Based Education is not longer the primary focus of education

Gov Jeb Bush partnered Florida with the United Nations bringing sustainability to every aspect of Florida’s agencies.  NCLB brought the UN and Sustainability to Florida’s schools.  Common Core oops, Florida Sunshine State Standards have succeeded in dumbing our kids by creating individuals incapable of choice, self esteem, respect and empathy.  We watched as students who had graduated 26th in the nation are now 47th.

Dumbing down is complete and today’s graduates can hardly read above a 3-6 grade level.  Not only will we lose our land through massive environmental programs that accomplish little or nothing to solve the problems but our kids will lose their identity as individuals.   Mission Accomplished.

Goal of UNESCO: Education in 2005-2015 is the Sustainable Decade. “Integrate sustainable development into all levels of education in order to promote education asthe key agent for change.  Agenda 21,Chapter 36

Following the key principal teachings of Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin: Use emotion not fact

The Economic Philosophy now puts Government at the top of the pyramid dictating to business, for the good of the collective through education.

Marx:   Psychological education (brainwashing) will change a persons belief system.

Lenin:  Take away a person’s heritage and they will easily be persuaded.

Diversity touts Marx while open borders belongs to Lenin.  But once history is erased, who knows?

For the most part, today American history hardly resembles the history of America.  Education is based on truth (facts). Indoctrination is based on what others hope you will accept as truth (concepts).

The indoctrination in the school curricula prompts kids to feel the FLAG causes distress so it is removed.  The pledge is nationalist and will make students “feel bad” if they recite it. Even worst is the reference that America is a democracy. America is not ruled by the majority. America is a Representative Republic ruled by laws called the Constitution.

The Constitution states ALL are created equal.  But if citizens were taught the truth, they might learn that ALL means ALL and there is no need for labels or special groups demanding civil justice, religious justice or social justice.

Everyone is covered under the Law called the constitution. However our kids are taught the Constitution is a racist document promoting slavery. Why would anyone want to defend a racist document promoting slavery?

If Liberty and Freedom and American excellence are not taught in school, who will fight for America? The classics are read to present period pieces in history to give a clear understanding of the time frame under which events occurred.

In Florida many of the classics have been removed from required reading lists and are being replaced in many cases by pornography.  Why?  Those that do not know the past will make the same mistakes again.

These agencies including the DOE and the FLDOE are merely a cover for a Globalist take over created to produced a core of drones aka slaves who will be trained to work for the government sanctioned corporation investing in their particular school.

Education is no longer about students learning, it is about money as billions are made in charters, texts, materials and tests.   Through the use of stored data, manipulated by algorithms, students will be given their “choice “ of career as early as elementary school.

There is little factual education attached to the programs, the focus is indoctrination forcing the student to become good global citizens at the expense of American nationalism. Any mention of nationalism is now considered racist in many Globalist circles.

What can I do?

I can’t tell you how many times I heard:  “I am but one what can I do?” The wonders of America is, each individual has the ability to act.  Each individual has the ability to use their power to make a change, to fight back.  We saw that with President Trump.  He fights back, he is proven right and he wins.  What a great role model!

Where is the one place you actually can make a change?  School, but you have to be willing to get out of your comfort zone. It is best if you can get a group but you can work individually as well.  The goal is to form a textbook review committee.

You will find that most texts are written by foreign authors and published by foreign corporations. Why?   How can foreigners understand America?  They can’t and don’t. But they make lots of money.  They are Globalists.  Could this be why our children do not know America?

Go to your school board meetings and district office. Request copies of all books used in each particular grade. They might resist but you must be persistent. Tell them you are a stakeholder and want to see what your investment of tax dollars buys.  Tell your legislators, newspapers, on line and fill out FOIA (Freedom of information Act) requests if you get no help.

Once you get the texts or know the names you will find most of the texts have already been reviewed.  Just check cfns.us  for the list.  If you form a committee, go back to the school board meeting and expose the propaganda and errors.

You can put passages on flyers, on line, in the paper, or read at community meetings.   Your goal is to change the books and curricula. POTUS just signed and Executive Order putting education back into the hands of the local community.  That is us. Will you act? Globalists are counting on the fact that you will remain silent and won’t expose so they can continue.

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

Martin Niemöller

Then they came for the children, and there was no one left to speak for them…..

Can we all say, “Leave those kids alone.”

Copyright © 2017, News With Views, All rights reserved.



Germany’s Speech Police Target Truth, Spawning Cold War Flashbacks

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 19 states that “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; yet not everyone receives it. This right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”

BERLIN – The Stasi Museum in Berlin is a monument to the ultimate surveillance society.  It is housed in the old Stasi headquarters. The Stasi were the state police of communist East Germany whose job was to spy on the population.

On display is every type of spy gadget imaginable for a pre-Internet era.

One in six East Germans were either full-time spies or informers for the Stasi, watching their neighbors.

When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 and East Germany collapsed, East Germans looked forward to living in freedom. But now, some are beginning to wonder just how free the new Germany is.

Germans Fear Speaking the Truth

Last year a married couple was convicted for creating a Facebook group that criticized the government’s open-door migration policy.

At the trial, the man complained that Germans cannot be critical of refugees without getting labeled ‘Nazi.’

And 60 others accused of writing so-called hate speech online had their homes raided by police.

In one poll, nearly half of all Germans said they did not feel safe in expressing their real opinion about the refugee crisis.

It is a fair question to ask, ‘Who really won the Cold War in Germany?’ Because today, former East Germans again live under speech oppression, similar to what they endured under communism.

Of course, today’s Germany very different from communist East Germany, but when it comes to criticism of migrants and the government’s migrant policy, some former East Germans see some disturbing similarities.

Former East German Pastor Relives the Past

Famous German pastor Dr. Theo Lehmann lived under persecution and surveillance for more than 40 years in East Germany. He learned after the Cold War that even his best friend had been spying on him for the East German police. He also learned that four local pastors spied on him.

“That meant that every word you spoke in public had to be thought through,” Lehmann said, “even in your own room.”

And Dr. Lehmann, now 82, knew what is was to be labeled and shunned for his views.  And he sees disturbing parallels between communist East Germany and the political correctness that rules today’s Germany:

He said, “It is extremely annoying that nowadays again you have to measure every word because later somebody could come and criticize it. That hurts any free discussion and it’s an incredible fear that is everywhere in society. Nobody dares to speak up anymore because you are always in danger when you say something that is against the mainstream. You could be called a racist or a fascist without any discussion. These labels are put on you right away.”

Those Who Dissent Pay

Although Germany as a democracy has the standard political labels of Left, Right and Center, but by American standards, most German politics and media range from Left to Far Left. Flag waving, patriotic anti-immigration Germans are regularly branded as fascist, racist, and treated as a dangerous element.

Former East German Heidi Mund, known as the brave German woman because of her strong stand against Islamization, has paid a high personal price for deviating from the Left-wing party line in modern Germany.

She told us, “We have had freedom of speech in Germany in the last few years but it is changing, very much. It’s not the same as it was in East Germany, but they want to control us and they do.”

Leftists cover her neighborhood in leaflets telling neighbors they live next to a Nazi. Her husband, Mathias, lost his job because he too has spoken out publicly.

He said, “No one is willing or daring to speak out because everyone would say you are right wing, you are a Nazi, you are a racist.  And they will bash you terribly and they will ruin your reputation. And I know about what I am speaking.”

Heidi added, “When you speak out the truth and only the truth about Islam, about politics, about the media, they attack you and they have done it with me.”

It’s a problem in many Western European nations.  

Next Stop: An ‘Opinion Dictatorship?’ 

Dr. Lehmann makes a bold assertion, saying he believes Germany is “moving towards a dictatorship. It is a dictatorship if one opinion is presented in such a way that everyone must conform to it. And he who does not do it is a fascist, racist or something, and immediately you are ‘out.'”

“This is what we had for 40 years under communism,” Lehmann said.

The German government is now trying to block so-called fake news on the internet, which to some looks a lot like the way communist countries tried to block information from the outside world.

Most Germans seem fine with it. Angela Merkel’s so-called conservative party is back in the lead, six months before the next election, even after a string of terrorist attacks tied to her open-door migration policy.

So, change may not come soon to Germany. Those who dissent will remain outsiders, labeled and shunned.

Some, like Dr. Lehmann, might say it looks a little like East Germany.

Copyright © 2017, The Christian Broadcasting Network, Inc., All rights reserved.



The State of Education in Britain

The state of education in this country today is truly deplorable. Education has become debased (some think, deliberately) from nursery schools to universities. It is a trite excuse to blame the government for every disaster, but in this case it is the governments of the country that are directly responsible.

The dead hand of politics controls all, and only the “politically correct” are allowed to have any say in education, and, as politics nowadays is essentially anti-Christian (no matter what profession some politicians make), education has become anti-Christian.

The history of our country has been the history of a Christian country; our culture is Christian, our morality is Christian. Therefore, our present anti-Christian governments have wished to destroy our history, our culture, our morality. They are succeeding. They are also destroying our freedom.

Forty years ago, it was possible for anyone to start a school. The requirements were minimal. This led to the creation of many worthless schools, but many more had their value. There was a choice. By increasing regulations made by governments almost wholly devoid of any knowledge of education, these small, independent schools closed. Nowadays, there is very little choice of schools, and the state-controlled schools dominate. Moreover, parents can be sent to prison if they keep their children away from school.

Again, there was a variety of examination boards, and one could choose which examinations were suitable, and which were more fairly marked. Now, nearly all examining boards are composed of the same people, few of them even nominally Christian, and most anti-Christian. I have had to warn my students not to include anything Christian in their answers, for then they would be likely to fail the examination, whatever their knowledge or ability.

The present system is like that of Eastern Europe under Communism, where children were taught lies at school, and the truth at home, where it was a crime to be a Christian and an equally serious crime to teach the truth. I was told by an Estonian that under Brezhnev, it was even a crime to tell a joke. I also noted that couriers in the Baltic States who were very outspoken about life under the Communists were not employed by my English holiday company the second time I went there.

The Solution

Given what little freedom we have nowadays, it is better that children should be taught at home rather than in some schools, where there is little discipline, because even the better teachers are not allowed to punish, and where immorality is openly taught, and encouraged by successive governments.

The difficulty is that parents often have neither the skill nor the knowledge, and there is a danger of the child being ill prepared for any career. Again, equipment that is so plentiful in some schools is prohibitively expensive, especially for scientific subjects. Nevertheless, it is better that a child should receive good, though limited, education at home, than be subjected to our present state education.

Even where a good school is available, the state system compels teachers to teach that which is immoral and untrue; and it is better that this teaching be corrected at home. Also, if the teaching at school can be supplemented, the child has a better chance in life.

The computer has allowed access to a good deal of information, but it must be remembered that it only contains information that has been fed into it. To rely solely upon a computer, is to limit one’s knowledge. Books are still the greatest source of knowledge in the world. Nevertheless, the computer is a great asset, if used wisely. Certainly for the basic learning of languages, it is most helpful.

My own special subjects are HISTORY, MUSIC, LANGUAGES LITERATURES (including English language and literature).

Unfortunately, modern trends have come into these subjects.

History is taught from a “politically correct” point of view, and text-books embody these views to the extent of printing lies. Truthful books have been allowed to go out of print.

English suffers in the same way, with inferior rubbish, and even pornography, replacing standard texts. It also suffers form an ignorance of the English language, even at university level. In one of the erudite Arden Editions of Shakespeare’s plays, the editor shows only too plainly that he does not know how English poetry is written.

The same applies to Foreign Languages; books once banned are now on our A-level syllabus (like Vipère au Poing).

If expertise in language is required, probably the best examinations are those of the Institute of Linguists. For courses, the Euro-Talk (www.eurotalk.co.uk) series appears, on the whole, good, but the Talk-Now programme is very basic.

It does a series for children, which I have not explored. Level Two is available in some languages, and Level Three uses the relatively harmless Asterix cartoons, but only in four languages. For teaching oneself, the best series is probably the Teach Yourself (TY) series by Hodder, which comes with a cassette (cassette-player and head-phones needed).

Certainly their Romanian Course (which I am using at the moment) is sensible and inoffensive. It even has the Romanian for the Ten Commandments! (cele zece Porunci) However, it is absolutely essential to browse the text first.

Other courses, such as Routlege, vary. Their Estonian and Latvian courses are good, but their Advanced German has two unintelligent divorcees who are obviously going to make a mess of a second marriage with each other. On the other hand, Routlege’s Ukrainian Course has near its outset a tongue-twister, and nowhere in the book does it tell the reader the meaning of it!

Another important point is that most foreign languages have nouns and adjectives affected by gender (masculine and feminine, and sometimes neuter); therefore if the course includes characters who make their way though various situations, it is vital that one be male and another female, so that the masculine and feminine forms are learned. One Italian course to be found in many book-shops has two young boys as the main characters.

Therefore, no feminine forms are learned. Moreover, when they arrive in Italy, they clamour to go to the opera, which is the last place I should expect to find the average English boy. The Routlege Hungarian has an American family, one of whom is a marine biologist – not a term I should ever want to use in Hungary (which is several hundred miles from the sea). As in so many other things, there seems to be a lack of common sense in text-books, far worse than even the lack of comprehension in the dreariest and most impossible moral “tale for children” of the Victorians.

When one has a reasonable grasp of the language, one can purchase cheaply a Bible from the Trinitarian Bible Society, which produces Bibles in nearly every standard language.

Music, long exempt from interference, is succumbing, with the great classics being replaced by inferior contemporary works, some of which are downright evil (Wozzeck). At Warwick, I am told, it is possible to get a degree in pop music. For practical examinations, one should explore the Colleges and Academies of Music.

The State of Education
by Dr. D. M. Stevens
3rd March 2004

Copyright © 2017, HomeSchooling.co.uk, All rights reserved.



Millennials Shunning Marriage

Did you know that the percentage of 18 to 34-year-old Americans that are married and living with a spouse has dropped by more than half since 1975?  Back then, 57 percent of everyone in that age group “lived with a spouse”, but today that number has dropped to just 27 percent.

These numbers come from “the Changing Economics and Demographics of Young Adulthood” report that was just released by the U.S. Census Bureau.  Some are postulating that the reason for this dramatic cultural shift is a phenomenon known as “extended adolescence”, while others fear that large numbers of young men and/or young women are giving up on the concept of marriage altogether.

Instead of getting married and starting their own households, many young adults are deciding that living with Mom and Dad is the best approach.  In fact, this new Census Bureau report found that one out of every three 18 to 34-year-old Americans is currently living with their parents…

According to the Changing Economics and Demographics of Young Adulthood report for 2016, one in three Americans ages 18 to 34 are living at home with their parents.

Coming in second place is living with a spouse (27 per cent), followed by other (i.e. living with a roommate or other relatives, 21 per cent), living with a boyfriend or girlfriend (12 per cent) and living alone (8 per cent).

Once the last recession ended, this trend was supposed to start reversing, but instead the number of young adults still living at home has just continued to increase.  This is going to have very serious implications for our looming retirement crisis, and that is something that I am going to write about later today on End Of The American Dream.

And a lot of these young adults are not being productive members of society at all.  In fact, this new report from the Census Bureau found that one out of every four 25 to 34-year-old Americans that are currently living at home do not have a job and they are not going to school either.

In other words, they need to get a life.  I really like how a recent CNBC editorial made this point…

One of the most memorable Saturday Night Live sketches ever was broadcast in 1986 when guest host William Shatner played himself appearing at fictional Star Trek convention. After fielding one childish question after another from costumed fans in their late 20s and 30s, Shatner loses his cool and shouts: “GET A LIFE, will you people? I mean, for crying out loud, it’s just a TV show! … Move out of your parents’ basements! Get your own apartments and GROW THE HELL UP!”

Thirty-one years later, it sure seems like all of America needs to heed that message. Here’s why: The Census Bureau now says that more 18-34 year-olds are living with their parents than with a spouse.

But a lot of young men these days do not even want to go down the traditional route of marriage, family, career, etc.

In fact, a lot of them are forsaking the concept of marriage together.  Author Suzanne Venker says that a lot of these men are blaming their lack of desire to get married on modern women…

When I ask them why, the answer is always the same: women aren’t women anymore.” Feminism, which teaches women to think of men as the enemy, has made women “angry” and “defensive, though often unknowingly.”

“Now the men have nowhere to go. It is precisely this dynamic – women good/men bad – that has destroyed the relationship between the sexes. Yet somehow, men are still to blame when love goes awry.”

“Men are tired,” Venker wrote. “Tired of being told there’s something fundamentally wrong with them. Tired of being told that if women aren’t happy, it’s men’s fault.”

On the flip side, a lot of women are extremely distressed that so few men seem to have the willingness to commit these days.  So many men just want to run around having sex with an endless series of women without ever putting a wedding ring on any of their fingers.

Of course many men figure that if they can get some of the best benefits of marriage (sex, companionship, etc.) without having to make a commitment then that is a pretty good deal for them.

Personally, I am a huge advocate of marriage, but the rest of society is moving in the exact opposite direction.  According to the Pew Research Center, 44 percent of 18 to 29-year-old Americans now believe that “marriage is becoming obsolete”.  And for a lot more numbers like this, please see my previous article entitled “43 Facts About Love, Sex, Dating And Marriage That Are Almost Too Crazy To Believe”.

But of course not all young adults that are living at home are doing it for the wrong reasons.  Thanks to our long-term economic decline, it is much more difficult for young people to find good paying jobs today than it was several decades ago.  The following comes from CNS News…

“More young men are falling to the bottom of the income ladder,” says the Census Bureau study. “In 1975, only 25 percent of men, aged 25 to 34, had incomes of less than $30,000 per year. By 2016, that share rose to 41 percent of young men (incomes for both years are in 2015 dollars).”

I have absolutely no problem at all with young adults that are living at home temporarily for economic reasons.  These Millennials are simply victims of our failing economy, and thus we should not be so quick to judge them.

And many of these young people graduate from college already saddled with tremendous amounts of debt.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the cost of going to college has increased by an astounding 63 percent since 2006.  We assure our youngsters that they will get good paying jobs when they graduate that will enable them to pay off those student loans, but once they do finally graduate many of them are discovering that the good paying jobs that we promised them do not exist.

Today, Americans owe more than a trillion dollars on their student loans.  It has become a major national crisis, and it is financially crippling an entire generation.

So the next time you hear of a young adult that is still living at home, don’t be so quick to judge until you know the facts.

Yes, there are many that need a good kick in the pants to get them going in life, but there are also millions that are simply victims of our ongoing long-term economic collapse.

Copyright © 2017, Economic Collapse.com, All rights reserved.



Mystery of the Resurrection

The apostle who later called himself the least worthy of the apostles was a man who originally was named Saul. Paul believed that the Christians were the greatest threat to Judaism there had ever been.

He was therefore determined to fight for the Jewish faith and, if possible, to remove this new sect. When Stephen was dying and who became the very first man to die for his faith in Jesus, after his sermon to the Sanhedrin (see Acts 7), Paul agreed to his execution.

He even looked after the coats of the men who threw the stones for his ‘blasphemous’ views.

But on his way to Damascus in pursuit of more Christians, a bright light from heaven literally struck him blind, and he fell to the ground. Accompanying the light, a voice said to him, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?

When Saul asked, “Who are you Lord?” the reply was, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.” Upon asking what he was to do, the voice directed him to go to Damascus and meet Ananias, who was a disciple of the Way, the name for Christians at that time.

Ananias was told that Paul would be sent to the Gentiles, kings and the descendants of Israel (see acts 9).

Paul’s most important credential of his apostleship was that he was an eyewitness of the risen Christ. The other apostles saw Christ in the flesh, but Paul was in the next generation of believers—yet Christ appeared to him.

In his first letter to the church in Corinth probably around A.D. 55, Paul deals with the resurrection which is fundamental to the Christian faith.  As Greeks, they would have believed in the immortality of the soul and would not have seen any value in the resurrection of the body.

Paul has to correct their thinking and help them to perceive the future in bodily terms. Just as Jesus had a new body after the resurrection that could eat fish and cook breakfast, so Christians will have a bodily existence in the future.

Paul emphasizes that the Gospel centres in the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.

For I passed on to you first of all what I also had received, that Christ (the Messiah, the Anointed One) died for our sins in accordance with [what] the Scriptures foretold (Isaiah 53:5-12).

That He was buried, that He arose on the third day as the Scriptures foretold, And also that He appeared to Cephas (Peter), then to the Twelve.

Then later He showed Himself to more than five hundred brethren at one time, the majority of whom are still alive, but some have fallen asleep in death Afterward He was seen by James, then by all the apostles.

And last of all He appeared to me also, as to one prematurely and born dead [no better than an unperfected fetus among living men (1 Corinthians 15:3-8).

Again, in Paul’s second letter to Timothy, he offers guidance to Timothy in his pastoral responsibilities, making him conscious of his duties and obligations as a man of God. He says,

Constantly keep in mind Jesus Christ (the Messiah) as risen from the dead, as the prophesied King descended from David, according to the good news (the Gospel) that I preach.

For that Gospel I am suffering affliction and even wearing chains like a criminal. But the Word of God is not chained or imprisoned! (2 Timothy 2:8-9 AMP).

Paul then stresses that the bodily resurrection of Christ is the centre of the Christian faith and is essential to salvation:

But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ is not risen. And if Christ is not risen, then our preaching is empty and your faith is also empty. Yes, and we are found false witnesses of God, because we have testified of God that He raised up Christ, whom He did not raise up—if in fact the dead do not rise.  For if the dead do not rise, then Christ is not risen.

And if Christ is not risen, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins! Then also those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished.  If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men the most pitiable.

But now Christ is risen from the dead, and has become the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since by man came death, by Man also came the resurrection of the dead. 

For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive. But each one in his own order: Christ the first fruits, afterward those who are Christ’s at His coming (1 Corinthians 15:13-23).

Our Final Victory

Paul goes on to tell us:

Adam, the first man, was made from the dust of the earth, while Christ, the second man, came from heaven. Earthly people are like the earthly man, and heavenly people are like the heavenly man.  Just as we are now like the earthly man, we will someday be like the heavenly man.

What I am saying, dear brothers and sisters, is that our physical bodies cannot inherit the Kingdom of God. These dying bodies cannot inherit what will last forever.

But let me reveal to you a wonderful secret. We will not all die, but we will all be transformed! It will happen in a moment, in the blink of an eye, when the last trumpet is blown. For when the trumpet sounds, those who have died will be raised to live forever.

And we who are living will also be transformed. For our dying bodies must be transformed into bodies that will never die; our mortal bodies must be transformed into immortal bodies. Then, when our dying bodies have been transformed into bodies that will never die, this Scripture will be fulfilled:

 “Death is swallowed up in victory O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?”

 For sin is the sting that results in death, and the law gives sin its power. But thank God! He gives us victory over sin and death through our Lord Jesus Christ.

 So, my dear brothers and sisters, be strong and immovable. Always work enthusiastically for the Lord, for you know that nothing you do for the Lord is ever useless. (1 Corinthians 15:47:58 NLT)

Paul summarizes the central theme of the gospel in 1 Corinthians 15:1-8.

  1. Christ died for our sins just as the Scriptures foretold. Without the truth of this message, Christ’ death was worthless and those who believe in Him are still in their sins and without hope. However, Christ as the sinless Son of God took the punishment of sin so that those who believe can have their sins removed. The Scriptures refer to Old Testament prophecies such as Psalm 16:8-11 and Isaiah 53:5-6. Christ’s death on the cross was no accident or afterthought. It had been part of all eternity in order to bring about the salvation of all who believe.
  2. He was buried. The fact of Christ’s death is revealed in the fact of his burial. Many have tried to discount the actual death of Christ, but Jesus did in fact die and was buried in a tomb.
  3. He was raised from the dead on the third day, as the Scriptures foretold. Christ was raised permanently, forever; His Father raised Him from the dead “on the third day” as noted in Gospels. This also occurred “as the Scriptures foretold.” Jesus quoted the prophet Johan in Matthew 12:40 (see Jonah 1:17) to show the connection to the “three days” as prophesied in the Old Testament.

Assurance of the Resurrection

When writing his second epistle to the Corinthians, a few months after the first letter, Paul again reiterates the same message, because the Greeks did not believe in the resurrection, and the church was surrounded by Greek culture, and many believers had difficulty with the concept of bodily resurrection.

The Greeks believed that at death the soul was released; there was no immortality for the body, and the soul enters an eternal state. But the Bible teaches that the body and soul are not permanently separated.

He contrasts our earthly body and our future resurrection body by stating that our present body makes us groan, but when we die we will not be spirits without bodies. Instead, we shall have new bodies that will be perfect for our eternal life.

For we know that if our earthly house, this tent, is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed with our habitation which is from heaven, if indeed, having been clothed, we shall not be found naked.

For we who are in this tent groan, being burdened, not because we want to be unclothed, but further clothed, that mortality may be swallowed up by life. Now He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who also has given us the Spirit as a guarantee.

So we are always confident, knowing that while we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord.  For we walk by faith, not by sight.

We are confident, yes, well pleased rather to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord. Therefore we make it our aim, whether present or absent, to be well pleasing to Him (see 2 Corinthians 5: 1-15).

According to the preacher and writer of Ecclesiastes, “God has planted eternity in men’s hearts and minds, a divinely implanted sense of a purpose working through the ages which nothing under the sun but God alone can satisfy…..(Ecclesiastes 3:11).

Because we are created in God’s image, we have eternal value and a spiritual thirst, and nothing but the eternal God can satisfy us. Our hearts are restless till we find rest in Him.

Just like the disciples, Paul never feared death because he was confident of spending eternity with Christ. Of course, facing the unknown may cause anxiety, but if we believe in Jesus Christ, death is only a prelude to eternal life with God. This hope of eternal life is what motivates us to pursuade men to be reconciled to God:

For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive the things done in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad.

For the love of Christ controls and urges and impels us, because we are of the opinion and conviction that if One died for all, then all died; And He died for all, so that all those who live might live no longer to and for themselves, but to and for Him Who died and was raised again for their sake (2 Corinthians 5: 14-15).

Image courtesy: Saint Paul delivering the Areopagus sermon in Athens, by Raphael, 1515. Public Domain



Proclaimers of His Resurrection

The Old Testament contains over three hundred passages that refer to the first coming of the Messiah. Within these hundred of prophecies, Bible scholars have found forty-eight specific details about the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.

If the disciples had would have gone back in their memories, they would have recalled an important event and statement Jesus had explicitly told them earlier, that:

The Son of Man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised the third day. (Luke 9:22)

It is a well known fact that the disciples of Jesus abandoned and denied association with Him during His arrest, trial and crucifixion. Their reason was fear for their own lives.  The Bible says:

And Jesus said to them, You will all fall away this night that is, you will be caused to stumble and will begin to distrust and desert Me for it stands written, I will strike the Shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered”(Mark 14:27; Zech 13:7).

Subsequently, the disciples had real experiences that they believed were literal appearances of the risen Jesus.

To them also He showed Himself alive after His passion (His suffering in the garden and on the cross) by a series of many convincing demonstrations unquestionable evidences and infallible proofs, appearing to them during forty days and talking to them about the Kingdom of God.

And while being in their company and eating with at the table with them. He commanded them not to leave Jerusalem but to wait for what the Father had promised, of which He said you have heard Me speak” (see Acts 1:3-4; John 14:16; 26; 15:26).

There were transformed from scared men hiding in the Upper Room into bold proclaimers of His resurrection. They were even willing to die for their conviction.

Indeed, all but one of the eleven remaining apostles died a martyr’s death, yet none ever denied seeing Jesus alive after His death, not even to save their lives.

However, these same men were totally transformed in their characters by the power of the Holy Spirit in the days following the resurrection of Christ, to the point that they were willing die very painful and brutal deaths.

Someone said, “People will die for what they believe to be true, but none will die for what they know to be false.”

The Martyrdom of the Apostles

Historical records of the first century clearly prove that every one of these men later faced a martyrs’ death without denying their faith in Jesus Christ as their Saviour.

The only reason why these men were transformed from defeated cowards to courageous men of God within a few days of the death of the Saviour was their personal knowledge and experience of the facts surrounding the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Non-believers, atheists, agnostics, etc… have suggested that the disciples, during the decades following His death, simply invented their accounts of Jesus. But these apostles were continually threatened and pressured to deny their Lord during their ministry; especially as they faced torture and martyrdom.

However, none of these men who spent time with Jesus chose to save their lives by denying their faith in Him. Each of the apostles was called upon to pay the ultimate price to prove their faith in Jesus, affirming with their life’s blood that Jesus was the true Messiah, the Son of the Living God and the only hope of salvation for a sinful humanity.

Most of the information about the deaths of the apostles is derived from early church traditions. The Church historian Schumacher researched the lives of the apostles and recounted the history of their martyrdoms.

Andrew died on an X-shaped cross in Patras of Achaia, Bartholomew (Nathaniel was flayed alive in Armenia, James (brother of John) was beheaded by Herod Agrippa in Jerusalem, James (son of Cleopas and Mary) was stoned, Jude (Thaddeus), the half brother of Jesus was shot with arrows in Armenia.

Matthew was slain by the sword in Parthia, Mark died in Alexandria, Egypt, after being dragged by horses through the streets until he was dead. Peter was crucified upside down in Rome because he told his tormentors that he felt unworthy to die in the same way that His Master and Lord Jesus Christ had died.

Stephen the first Christian martyr was stoned to death after preaching one of the longest sermons in the book of Acts. James the Just and half brother of Jesus was captured and taken to the very pinnacle of where the devil took Jesus in Matthew chapter 4.

He was told to blaspheme Christ, or be thrown off! James the Just replied: “I see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of glory! So they threw them off. But the fall didn’t kill him, so they started to stone him.

As he lay there, with his bones broken and the stones being thrown at him, he said, Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they do.” Finally someone, out of sheer mercy, got a big wooden club and clubbed his head, and he died.

John was the only one of the 12 apostles left after the others had already suffered a martyr’s death. He became a political prisoner on the island of Patmos because of his exclusive devotion to the word of God and the testimony of Jesus which was taken as treason by the Roman authorities.

He subsequently faced martyrdom when he was boiled in the huge basin of boiling oil but was miraculously delivered to become the only apostle of the 12 to die a natural and peaceful death.

The Early Christians

We also know that thousands of the early Christians and those of later ages suffered violent death, mutilation, burning and other processes that marred and destroyed their physical bodies.

Nero persecuted Christians by daubing them with pitch and burning them alive as torches for his nightly garden parties or sewing them in the skins of wild animals to be hunted by dogs and lions.

One notable Christian who was martyred in about 155 under Antonius Pius was Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna and once a student of the apostle John. Forced into the stadium, Polycarp was asked by the Roman proconsul to swear by the genius of the emperor and to curse Christ.

He replied, “Eighty and six years have I served Him, and He never did me any injury: how can I blaspheme my King and my Saviour? Before the day was over, he was burned at the stake. Like all martyrs before him and the multitudes after him, he had been transformed by the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

All this happened because His message and His physical resurrection transformed His early followers, who did not pick up the sword to defend themselves even during the brutal persecutions, but rather went about spreading His love and the need for repentance and forgiveness of sins to all-regardless of their race, sex, ethnicity, poverty, or wealth.

They did so because they believed with all their heart, soul and mind the Words of Jesus: “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). This echoed the conviction of Peter’s words spoken to his fellow Jews:

 And there is salvation in and through no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by and in which we must be saved (Acts 4:12).

There has been countless number of people that have been transformed by the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. These followers have produced revolutionary changes-socially, politically, economically, and culturally.

As someone has said, Christianity is not a religion; but a revolution against the kingdom of darkness.” And as George Sarton has said, “The birth of Christianity changed forever the face of the Western world.”

Christ’s transformed followers, especially during the first few centuries, effected that change because Christ’s life and teachings challenged almost everything for which the Roman world had stood. The Christians rejected the pagan gods of Greeks and Romans.

These gods, said the second century Christian apologist Aristides, were man-made and thus not gods at all; moreover they were given to all of the weaknesses and sins common to mankind.

Some of the gods, according to Roman mythology, committed adultery, murder, sodomy, and theft; others were envious, greedy, and passionate; still others had physical impediments; some had even died.

But Christians, said Aristides, worship and honour God who is neither male nor female, whom “the heavens do not contain…but the heavens and all things visible and invisible are contained in Him.

This had already been confirmed by Paul’s famous sermon at Athens on Mars Hill.  The Bible tells us while Paul was waiting for Silas and Timothy at Athens, his spirit was grieved and roused to anger as he saw that the city was full of idols.

So Paul began to preach to them about Jesus Christ, a man who had recently been crucified in Jerusalem. He drew their attention to a natural debate before he could engage them about the death, burial, and resurrection for sinners.

These Epicurean and Stoic philosophers thought that Paul was trying to be an announcer of foreign deities because he preached Jesus and the resurrection (see Acts 17:18).

Paul concludes that God overlooked people’s ignorance about these things in earlier times, but now commands all men everywhere to repent.

In the past God permitted all nations to walk in their own ways, but He did not leave them without any evidence of Himself and His goodness.

He sent rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, satisfying their hearts with nourishment and happiness.

However, the appointed time has come when He expects and charges all men everywhere to repent, and turn from their ignorance, idolatry, and superstition, because He has appointed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness by a Man Jesus Christ, whom He has proved to everyone who this is by raising Him from the dead (see Acts 17:19-31).

Image Description: The Last Supper, ca. 1520, by Giovanni Pietro Rizzoli. Source: Public Domain



The Deity of Jesus Christ

In 1999 during the presidential Republican debates in the campaign for the presidential nomination, one of the nominees was asked to name his favourite “political philosopher.” He replied that it was Jesus Christ. From that point on, most evangelical Christians in America voted for him because they thought he would represent their values based on his faith in Jesus Christ.

This Republican nominee should have countered the statement that Jesus Christ was not a political philosopher, but rather the very Son of God. It is not surprising that evangelical Christians are realizing that many political ties to evangelical Christianity appear to be simply for the purpose of producing political advantages.

What is a philosopher? The Oxford dictionary defines a philosopher “as a person engaged or learned in philosophy or a branch of it.” But couldn’t the same be said for Karl Marx or Plato or Socrates?

Unlike the leaders and philosophers of other religious and political movements, Jesus was no political figure; He had no connection with Herod or the Sanhedrin; He took no political action and His disciples were relatively uneducated.  To call Jesus just a political philosopher is disrespectful to say the least.

Jesus Christ is Lord and God because He is the exact representative of God the Father. God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness” (Genesis 1:26).

Jesus is God because He is the Word, explaining God the Father as the I AM. When Moses met God at the burning bush and received his assignment to be God’s spokesman before Pharaoh, he asked God a question and received an answer:

Then Moses said to God, “Indeed, when I come to the children of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they say to me, ‘What is His name?’ what shall I say to them?” And God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.” And He said, “Thus you shall say to the children of Israel, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’” Moreover God said to Moses, “Thus you shall say to the children of Israel: ‘The Lord God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you. This is My name forever, and this is My memorial to all generations.’” (Exodus 3:13–15)

The Jews wanted to stone Jesus when He said to them, “Most assuredly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I AM” (John 8:58). They understood clearly that Jesus was blaspheming the name of God by claiming to be God Himself. They knew that I AM was the memorial name of God to all generations, and they did not believe Jesus was God.

They refused to believe in the deity of Jesus Christ, which means they would die in their sins. Again, on another occasion, Jesus said, “I and the Father are one,” and again the Jews renewed their efforts to stone Him.

Jesus answered them, “Many good works I have shown you from My Father. For which of those works do you stone Me?” The Jews answered Him, saying, “For a good work we do not stone You, but for blasphemy, and because You, being a Man, make Yourself God.” (John 10:30–33) According to the law, they had every right to stone Jesus because He was claiming to be the exact representation of the Father (see Leviticus 24:16).

Jesus Christ is God because He is eternal. He always has been and He will always be. There is only one Man in all of time who was both God and Man—the Lord Jesus Christ. He was crucified on the cross as the only begotten Son of God, explaining the unconditional love of God the Father to a lost and broken world.

John tells us that the promised Messiah is the very Son of God, and that Jesus, like the Father, is eternal: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.

All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made” (John 1:1–3). John further says: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).

The prophet Isaiah says:

I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up, and the train of His robe filled the temple. Above it stood seraphim; each one had six wings: with two he covered his face, with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one cried to another and said:

“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory!” And the posts of the door were shaken by the voice of him who cried out, and the house was filled with smoke. So I said: “Woe is me, for I am undone! Because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.” (Isaiah 6:1–5)

After this experience, Isaiah’s sin was forgiven and his iniquity was taken away. Then after this he writes: “Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying: ‘Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?” (vs. 8).

The “Us” implies more than one. The Father is there, the Son is there, and the Holy Spirit is there. Remember that God had said, “Let Us (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) make mankind in Our image” (Genesis 1:26). But that likeness and image was destroyed when Adam and Eve chose to believe the devil rather than God, and man was separated from Him.

Intimacy and communion with God were exchanged for enmity because humanity wanted to be like God. As a result, Adam and Eve could no longer eat the fruit of the Tree of Life. But access to this tree was restored through Jesus Christ.

And through one man sin entered the world, leaving all of us without hope apart from the mercy and grace of God (see Romans 5:12).

But “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16). In Philippians we are once again given a confirmation of the deity of Jesus Christ:

Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. (Philippians 2:5–8)

In John 14:6–7 Jesus was talking to His disciples and said, “I am the way the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me. If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also; and from now on you know Him and have seen Him.” Then Philip responded to Him:

Lord, show us the Father, and it is sufficient for us.” Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you so long, and yet you have not known Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father; so how can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me? The words that I speak to you I do not speak on My own authority; but the Father who dwells in Me does the works” (John 14:8–10).

The Exact Representation

To see Jesus is to see God the Father because Jesus is the exact representation of His nature. When we get to know Jesus, we will get to know the Father, for they are one in essence. Paul brings this out so powerfully in the book of Colossians when he writes:

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him.

And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist. And He is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things He may have the pre-eminence (Colossians 1:15–17 AMP).

Those who do not believe in the deity and incarnation of Jesus Christ normally take Colossians 1:15 out of context, for as the Bible makes it very clear, Jesus is eternal. “Firstborn of all creation” refers to a priority of position.

Paul is telling us that Jesus rightfully has “first place” or preeminence “in everything” because He is God Almighty “and He is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things He may have the preeminence” (Colossians 1:18).

Again, Paul references the same point in Colossians 2:9–10: “For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily; and you are complete in Him, who is the head of all principality and power.”

And John writes in Revelation, “He is the Alpha and the Omega; He is the Beginning and the End” (Revelation 21:6). The most important issue that we will ever have to deal with about Jesus is the question of His deity. Everyone who has ever studied about Jesus must confront this issue because of His claims to be God. C. S. Lewis wrote:

I’m trying…to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: “I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.” That is one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher.

He would either be a lunatic—on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the devil of hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse.

You can shut Him up for a fool; you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher (or philosopher). He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.

God has chosen Jesus Christ to judge the world. He is the second person of the Trinity, who was born of the Virgin Mary and Who was finally crucified outside the gates of Jerusalem. He will come again to judge the world with both His divine and human natures.

As we have already mentioned, this was stipulated in the covenant of redemption. we are expressly told that:

And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:8-11)

The day is coming in which there will be a general righteous judgement of the whole world by Jesus Christ whom God raised from the dead.



The Obama Legacy: A Nation Rebels

In 2008, while running for the presidency, Barack Obama promised change. After he was elected, he delivered on that promise big time, and in fact, far beyond anything most people could have imagined. President Obama left a legacy, one that can be evaluated from a biblical perspective.

Were his changes for the good of the nation?

This question was asked of Bill Koenig on our television program Christ in Prophecy. Bill has been a White House Correspondent for the last fifteen years. He is president of a news website called World Watch Daily, and he publishes a weekly report called “Koenig’s Eye View from the White House.” Bill is also the author of a telling book titled Revealed: Obama’s Legacy.

(Note: Bill’s answer below has been edited slightly for grammar and clarity).

A Nation Rebels

Bill Koenig: No doubt about it. Every area of our lives that has mattered to us, especially as Evangelical Christians, has been negatively impacted. Even with Obama out of office, we are continuing to see his impact on a daily basis.

I think the number one way Obama has changed our nation concerns morality. Ever since the day Obama was sworn in — January 20, 2009 — and at the very moment he was being sworn in, his White House staff was busy putting up the LGBT agenda on the White House website under the Civil Rights category.

I remember when I read the website I just couldn’t believe it. On the very same day as Obama’s inauguration, the nation plunged towards a totally immoral cultural upheaval. The White House website from day one announced to the effect a declaration of war against biblical morality.

In my book Revealed: Obama’s Legacy, I made this statement: “Barack Obama has done more to promote immorality and perverse sexuality than any man in American history.” Though I hated to ever have had to put it that way, that’s what happened.

The nation continues to deal with battles over the “rights” of sexual perversion on a daily basis. Now eight years later, just think what it has become like for Christians in the workplace. Just think what it has been like for Christians in Obama’s military.

Look how difficult life has been for chaplains in order to just perform their service. In every area of our lives, Christianity has been treated as the enemy. Christians are considered the problem. Christians are considered the bigots.

Who would have ever imagined the day would come, and it did on June 26th, when the White House would be lit up with the colors of the moral perversion movement? Or, that there’d be a huge fight to allow transgender men to freely enter women’s bathrooms?

Even the sports leagues fought to make that happen. Almost overnight the country turned in favor of transgenderism when just a few years earlier we were very reserved about the topic.

Certainly, there’s no doubt about it. The downward slide towards our nation embracing homosexuality occurred during President Bill Clinton’s eight years in office. He made the last Sunday in June Gay Pride Day.

President George W. Bush had nothing like that in June. When President Obama took over, the entire month of June was designated the LGBT Pride Month. A “Q” was later added in case a person didn’t know what they were.

The nation’s celebration of sexual sin just keeps getting worse and worse. Unfortunately, in my chapter “LGBT- He Owns It,” I point out that no leader in the world has had a greater influence in the spreading of LGBT and same-sex marriage around the world as Barack Obama.

Here in the US, we fight for morality in an already pretty substantial Christian population. But, what about the little countries around the world that hardly have any Christians?

The celebration of sexual perversion just came right into those countries so quickly because there was no Christianity to restrain immorality.

Every time Obama visited an African country he felt compelled to unload on them the need for homosexual acceptance, and he even used federal funds to enforce his position.

Obama would use our taxpayer funding to tell other nations to get in line with the LGBT agenda or lose foreign aid from our country.

Just think about this. There’s a terrible civil war going on in Syria. Iran threatens the world with potential nuclear weapons development. North Korea is led by a crazy man who actually has nuclear weapons.

We have all these economic problems in America, but instead of dealing with any of these threats, Obama was totally obsessed with focusing on whether or not a man can go into a woman’s bathroom.

What has happened is the LGBT activists have worked their way into guest relations. They’re in charge of who gets picked to be a guest on the major TV networks. They’ve worked their way into positions of influence in corporate America, such as the sports leagues.

Look at what happened in North Carolina concerning the Bathroom Bill. The city of Charlotte declared the town needed to open up its bathrooms to whatever gender a person felt led to at that moment.

The governor countered with a state-wide bill limiting a person to their gender at birth, but the sports leagues and other corporations boycotted the state. A new governor was eventually elected and the Bathroom Bill revoked.

How true what the Word of God says! If a nation rebels against God, He will take a step back and lower His hedge of protection, allowing the consequences of sin to multiply.

Romans 1 actually states that three times. And the last time God steps back, Romans says He will deliver the nation over to a depraved mind. I think that’s where we are now as a nation.

A Detrimental Legacy

Here are a couple of examples of Barack Obama’s legacy’s detrimental effect on the United States. For one, Secretary Gates in the Pentagon said that President Obama showed hardly, if any, emotion at all concerning the plight of the underfunded military.

When it came to necessities in terms of our military readiness, preparation, and our budgets, Obama showed zero interest. But, he was very involved with getting rid of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.

Then there is Islam. No doubt Barack Obama is a Muslim apologist. He shows no emotion about the plight of Christians being persecuted and slaughtered for their faith in the Middle East. But, he demonstrates a lot of emotion over bringing Islamic refugees from the Middle East and Northern Africa into America.

Obama initiated and enforced people in public service and the military having to go into gay sensitivity programming. I have a friend whose son graduated from the Naval Academy and is stationed in South Korea right now.

He said one of the reasons he would like to leave the military is because he’s tired of all these homosexual and transgender sensitivity programs they now have to go through as part of serving in the military.

Sensitivity training has little difference from what the Chinese Communists have historically done with people who disagree with their position. They place objectors into a group, totally surround them, and then bombard the objectors with propaganda in order to intimidate the dissenters into changing their way of thinking.

Sensitivity training has made its way past government employment into the private sector. I have a friend that works for a Fortune 100 company. The company’s employees are required to go once, if not twice a year, through sensitivity programming about LGBT and transgenderism.

During Obama’s years in office, the country has gone from basically accepting homosexuality to requiring a person to openly endorse it. Tolerance now doesn’t mean to just accept something, that something also has to be publicly endorsed. Tolerance is a one-way street for homosexual activists. They’ve no tolerance for opposing views.

The Frayed Moral Fabric

Bill Koenig: My book Revealed: Obama’s Legacy identifies the following ways President Obama has fundamentally changed the moral fabric of the United States.

For one, Barack Obama is a Muslim apologist who has helped obfuscate the nation from understanding Islam’s hostile intentions. Number two, he has openly supported Islam in the Middle East and turned our citizens against our allies, such as Israel.

Number three, look at what has happened to our US military under an Obama presidency. Number four, when it comes to LGBT power, he owns it. Number five, President Obama’s “Christian” faith is a faith based on his terms and not those of the Bible.

So, will America ever recover from eight years of President Barack Obama? I believe there’s always the chance for both Obama and our nation to repent, which I address personally in my final chapter.

My book provides the background to get a better idea of what influenced Barack Obama to the lengths that he went to fundamentally transform American society. Actually, writing the book was kind of a catharsis for me as I saw these devastating advances in moral perversion going on for eight years.

Even as a White House correspondent, I couldn’t get actively involved in the press briefings to the extent that I wished because I would be shouted down… shouting down might be too strong a term, but the White House certainly didn’t appreciate any questions contrary to Obama’s view of morality, or as I call it, his immoral agenda.

Over eight years of the Barack Obama presidency, a lot of misdeeds were taking place that needed to be documented. I use Obama’s own words in the documentation. The Lord put it in my heart to use Obama’s own words and not report using second-hand information.

We as believers in Christ have a respectful fear of our Lord, and so once a believer reads these reports and sees what has happened to our nation, they’ll recognize President Obama for what he really is.

Most people I’ve encountered who read the book remain in complete awe of what has taken place to fundamentally erode the moral fabric of our nation.

Copyright © 2017, Christ in Prophecy Journal  

Other compelling posts:

The Obama Legacy: The Muslim Apologist

The Obama Legacy: The Ultimate Subversive

The Obama Legacy: Unraveling a Legacy

The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Watchman Research Media



Christians in Syria are Terrified

The old Christian quarter of Jdeydeh, Aleppo, Source: Wikipedia

U.S. President Donald Trump took the world by surprise when he ordered the U.S. military to launch a cruise missile strike on a Syrian airbase Thursday in reaction to a deadly chemical attack, allegedly by the Syrian government, on Islamic rebels formerly supported by Obama and now by Trump.

Dozens of rebels were killed, and at least 10 children. Republican neocons led by Senator John McCain used the attack to push Trump to attack the Syrian government. Hillary Clinton called for bombing of Assad’s airfields hours before Trump’s airstrike.

The major problem that Trump faces in foreign policy is neocons, and he clearly identified it before his election. But now he does not recognize this problem anymore.

Yet, the reason for Trump’s attack on Syria has been disputed.

Former senator Ron Paul said:

It doesn’t make any sense for Assad under these conditions to all of a sudden use poison gasses. I think there is a zero chance he would have done, you know, this deliberately.

Joseph Farah, WorldNetDaily (WND) chief, said:

I strongly disagree with President Trump’s decision to attack Syria… There are two warring parties in Syria – the Syrian government, which is attempting to repulse an invasion and partial occupation of Syrian territory, and ISIS, a terrorist plague on the entire world, not just Assad’s regime… Both of those parties have been accused of deploying sarin weapons against civilians, though I have yet to see any proof that Assad ever did… ISIS is the primary opposition to Assad.

According to Infowars:

The White Helmets, a al-Qaeda affiliated group funded by George Soros and the British government, reportedly staged the sarin attack on civilians in the Syrian city of Khan Shaykhun to lay blame on the Syrian government.

The Syrian government has been in a deadly war against two enemies: ISIS and Islamic rebels supported formerly by Obama and now by Trump. In 2015 Obama gave to these rebels $500 million for “training.” A multimillion dollar investment against a government fighting ISIS.

To fight only against ISIS is a huge challenge. How to fight at the same time against two enemies facilitated or trained by the U.S.? Even Trump recognized last year that ISIS was founded by Obama. But he never attacked ISIS as he is attacking Syria. By attacking Syria, he is automatically helping ISIS.

Hillary Clinton, John McCain, Lindsay Graham, Paul Ryan and leftists have praised Trump’s attack on Syria. Incidentally, all of them were or are in George Soros’s payroll.

But praises are not coming from conservatives.

Michael Savage, a powerful anti-neocon writer, had called Trump the “Winston Churchill of our time” in July 2015. But now, on his Thursday radio show, Savage complained, “The generals have gotten to him and turned him from peace with Russia. And the people standing in the way of war, like Steve Bannon, are being shown the door. This beating of the war drums with Russia has to stop.”

Alex Jones, of Infowars, said in February that he was “ready to die for Trump.” Now that Trump launched airstrikes against Syria, Jones said on a Friday livestream, “Trump is really disintegrating in my eyes on many levels.”

Ann Coulter, U.S. conservative author and political commentator who had been an ardent Trump supporter and wrote a book titled “In Trump We Trust” last year, has used social media to criticize the Trump’s decision. “Those who wanted us meddling in the Middle East voted for other candidates,” she wrote on Twitter in the early hours of Friday morning, adding:

“Trump campaigned on not getting involved in Mideast. Said it always helps our enemies & creates more refugees. Then he saw a picture on TV.”

— Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) April 7, 2017

“Christians who live in Syria are terrified of what will happen if Assad is gone.”

— Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) April 7, 2017

“What follows Assad? What followed Saddam? Gaddafi? 15 yrs, 6k lost heroes 500k massacred Christians $5 Trill–for what?”

— Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) April 7, 2017

Coulter and a number of Trump’s well-known supporters have expressed their surprise — and fear — at Trump’s hasty decision, which is totally at odds with his previous stance on interventionism. As a presidential candidate, Trump campaigned against military exploits abroad, often railing against Bush and his war in Iraq. In December, shortly after winning election, he said “we will stop racing to topple foreign regimes that we know nothing about, that we shouldn’t be involved with.”

When Obama was considering military action against Syria in 2013, Trump strongly urged him not to do it.

In one September 5, 2013 all-caps criticism, Trump tweeted, “AGAIN, TO OUR VERY FOOLISH LEADER, DO NOT ATTACK SYRIA – IF YOU DO MANY VERY BAD THINGS WILL HAPPEN & FROM THAT FIGHT THE U.S. GETS NOTHING!”

“Don’t attack Syria – an attack that will bring nothing but trouble for the U.S. Focus on making our country strong and great again!” Trump tweeted four days later.

During the presidential campaign, Trump also bashed Hillary Clinton for her disastrous foreign policy, tweeting, “Crooked Hillary Clinton’s foreign interventions unleashed ISIS in Syria, Iraq and Libya. She is reckless and dangerous!”

What has made Trump change his mind and act as Hillary would have done, by helping ISIS in Syria? What has made him listen to neocons?

After all, what is the point of being pro-life within the United States and not being pro-life for Christians directly threatened by ISIS in Syria?

What is for sure is that the Trump who attacked Syria and helped ISIS is not the same Trump who lambasted neocons last year. Where is the original anti-neocon Trump?

Copyright © 2017, Last Days Watchman

Related Article: A War With Syria Has Begun