In Old Testament times most, people were poor and lived at a subsistence level. Thus, leaving an inheritance (normally land) was vital to enable the following generation(s) to continue farming and raise livestock, without getting enslaved. The distribution of the inheritance was executed like this: usually, daughters did not receive land, for they commonly lived with their parents until they married, after which they benefitted from their husband’s land; but all sons received an equal portion of land except the firstborn son who got double:

If a man has two wives, one loved and the other unloved, and both the loved and the unloved have born him sons, and the firstborn son belongs to the unloved wife, then on the day when he wills his possessions to his sons, he cannot treat the son of his loved wife as firstborn in place of the son of the unloved wife—the actual firstborn.  Instead, he shall acknowledge the son of the unloved as the firstborn, by giving him a double portion of all that he has, for he was the beginning of his strength (generative power); to him belongs the right of the firstborn (Deuteronomy 21:15-17).

Only if there were no sons, daughters would inherit; with no daughters, the brothers of the deceased would be in line; with no brothers, the nearest relative would inherit (Num 27:1-11).

This law no longer binds in the New Covenant because polygamy is no longer acceptable. Second daughters are now eligible to receive the double portion if the deceased bequeathed it in their will. What remains is the principle of proportionality. The first son no longer automatically inherits either the double portion or the entire estate. Instead, the ‘firstborn’’ has an ethical responsibility, not a position granted by natural birth order.

It’s the reason why someone from the crowd said to Jesus: Master, order my brother to divide the inheritance and share it with me in Luke 12:13-21..” Jesus replied, “Man, who appointed me a judge or an arbiter between you?” Then he said to them, “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions.” (Luke 12:13-15) And the parable of the prodigal son: And He said, there was a certain man who had two sons; And the younger of them said to his father, Father, give me the part of the property that falls to me. And he divided the estate between them Luke 15: 11-32).

Ultimately, even if the land was sold at some stage, it remained in the family line as it reverted to them in the year of Jubilee when all debts were cancelled. All this is a background to the following Scriptures: Good people leave an inheritance to their grandchildren…. (Proverbs 13:22). Houses and wealth are inherited from parents…. (Proverbs 19:14) If we wanted to derive a law from the above scriptures to adhere to today, we’d also need to follow the biblical distribution pattern, i.e., giving only to sons and the oldest one a double portion, etc.

However, whilst especially in the subsistence-small scale farming sector land is still passed on to the next generation, it’s fair to say that biblical inheritance patterns are generally not followed at all. The reason may be that, especially in industrial countries, the entire economic landscape has changed leading to a different inheritance approach. Most people have no land and those who still have, rarely own productive grounds.

Children tend to leave their parents early and seldom carry on with the family business if there is one. They move to economic hubs where they build their own careers and mostly become financially independent. When they inherit real estate, these are typically sold. It provides a windfall for them that is not necessarily needed but welcomed to improve their living standards. The family property, however, is gone.

So, then what’s a biblical approach to inheritance today especially in the African culture?

The scriptures hint at the importance of handling wealth correctly, which applies to both parents and children: I have seen a grievous evil under the sun: wealth hoarded to the harm of its owners, or wealth lost through some misfortune so that when they have children there is nothing left for them to inherit (Eccl 5:13-14).

To be clear, there is nothing wrong with leaving a material or financial inheritance to our children if we can. Likewise, we also decide on the time of transfer. However, the parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-31) shows that there are no guarantees as to how the children will see their inheritance (older son) or use it (younger son). The question is, have we prepared our children to handle it well?

When raised with kid gloves, children will, when they grow up, expect life to treat them the same way their parents did. But life is pretty tough! I have found that out the hard way, and I have observed the lives of many people whose parents treated them with unscriptural self-indulgence and I would say that, in varying degrees, they have all had difficult lives. To spoil your children is not kindness or love. The most unhappy and unfulfilled children are the ones with no discipline in their lives.  It was Spurgeon who wrote:

If you want to ruin your children, never let them know hardship. If you want to prevent them from ever being useful, guard them from every kind of work and do not let them struggle. Pity them when they should be punished, supply all their wishes, avert all their disappointments. Prevent all trouble, and you will surely train them to break your heart. If you put them where they must work, expose them to difficulties, purposely throw them into peril, then you will make them mature and ready for life.

We have to teach our children the values of hard work, integrity, honesty, diligence, patience, empathy, mental strength, frugality, tenacity and the importance of starting from scratch or small beginnings. We must prepare our beneficiaries to own and move estates forward because wealth is generational. I have seen through personal experience that many Asians teach children to have hands-on experience so that they can gradually leave ownership of their estates to them as they become mature.

John Chrysostom said,

If you wish to leave much wealth to your children, leave them in God’s care. Do not leave them riches, but virtue and skills. For if they have the confidence of riches, they will not mind anything besides, for they shall have the means of screening (hiding) the wickedness of their ways in their abundant riches.

Although it can’t be seen, counted, or measured, a spiritual inheritance is the most priceless gift you can pass on to your children and grandchildren. To be brought up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord and an atmosphere of prayer and reverence for the Word is to be stamped in youth with impressions that are of great value, even though sometimes the results looked for are long in appearing. A godly upbringing is a priceless heritage. 

Any financial inheritance is worthless and usually wasted quickly, if the spiritual foundation for dealing with it properly isn’t laid (Proverbs 20:21). After all, a material inheritance cannot be taken to eternity, but a spiritual inheritance helps to determine where the heir will spend eternity.

Teaching and demonstrating the biblical approach to money is a vital part of the heritage that parents should give to their children. It is even more important than material wealth itself as it may prevent the child’s destruction by money (1Timothy 6:10, 2 Timothy 3:2, Hebrews 13:5). For Christians, every inheritance remains the property of God and must therefore continue to be administered in His interest. Only the trustee has changed.

Thus, parents need to teach their children what good stewardship means, and be an example of what it means that you can’t serve God and money at the same time (Matt 6:24). Teaching God’s principles and ways, imparting spiritual truth and wisdom, is an inheritance of eternal value in itself, and must never be underrated (see Proverbs 1-7).

The most important and powerful inheritance parents can pass on to their children is to show by their own lives that God is an omnipresent reality; that He is trustworthy in every way including provision; that He is full of love, care, compassion and eagerly interested in His children’s success and fulfilment. If parents fail to do this, they rob their kids of an inheritance of everlasting value.

What about Stolen Inheritance?

Unfortunately, we live in an era of greed and materialism. I have had so many stories even through the personal experience of people who are having family discords, distress, endless wrangles and ultimately death in families because of inheritances. Robert Anderson explains a personal experience in his book Operating in the Courts of Heaven. He writes:

There was a lady very close to our family that was diagnosed with breast cancer. When this lady was 13 years old, her mother had been diagnosed with breast cancer and she died at just 43 years of age. The disease had spread in her body just as it was now spreading in her daughter’s body. This friend of ours was 43 when she was diagnosed and also had a 13-year-old daughter. The parallels were astounding. I knew we were dealing with a generational, family curse.

When she was on her deathbed, her husband called me and asked if I would pray for her. I went to her home where there were already other people gathered at her bedside praying for her. I placed my hand on her head and as I began to pray, I felt the Father’s passion to heal this woman. It was unmistakable. I had felt this in many situations and knew it well. I prayed the best prayer I knew how to pray. I prayed with the unction and power of the Spirit of the Lord. It wasn’t a natural prayer; it was a supernatural one. Yet, twelve hours later, she died. She died at age 43, leaving behind a 13-year-old daughter – exactly as her mother had done! What a tragedy. It was only much later that I was able to explain why this had happened. At the time of my prayer, I did not know that this lady and her husband had connived to steal resources that belonged to someone else. Proverbs 26:2 says that a curse has to have a cause to alight. Like a flitting sparrow, like a flying swallow, So a curse without cause shall not alight.

Curses are pictured as sparrows and swallows flying around and looking for a place to land. They cannot land unless a legal right allows them to land. This woman had a curse in her family, that was circling her and looking for a legal opportunity to land and afflict her. She had actually confessed, professed and done everything she knew to do, to keep this away from her and her family for years. When she and her husband opened the door to this curse through their dishonour and thievery, the curse now had a legal reason to be able to land on her.

Micah 2:1-3 shows what happened in this situation.

Woe to those who devise iniquity, and work out evil on their beds! At morning light, they practice it, because it is in the power of their hand. They covet fields and take them by violence, also houses, and seize them. So, they oppress a man and his house, A man and his inheritance. Therefore, thus says the Lord: “Behold, against this family I am devising disaster, from which you cannot remove your necks; Nor shall you walk haughtily, for this is an evil time (Micah 2:1-3).

God says that if someone who has been granted power through trust, uses that power to steal away inheritances, a disaster can come upon them that they won’t be able to escape. This is what happened to this lady and her family. As a result of her participation in these deviant practices, the devil had a legal right to afflict her with a family curse.

The devil was legally allowed to take her life even though God’s passion was to heal her. The only way that the Lord could have healed her was if she had repented of that which she had done. Then the power of the curse would have been broken and God as Judge could have fulfilled His passion as Father, legally.

The activity of dishonour and thievery opens the door for the curse to come upon the perpetrators, especially to those in power in countries like Uganda with a corrupted land registry system, inefficient police force, corrupt lawyers, judges, political interference in land disputes, compensation etc.

However, we, disciples of the Lord Jesus, have been promised an inheritance which is imperishable beyond the reach of change and undefiled and unfading, reserved in heaven for us (1 Peter 1:1-4).

If we seek like the people of the world, to increase our possessions, then those who are not believers may question whether we believe what we say about our inheritance and our heavenly calling. The Lord says the earth is a place where moth and rust doth corrupt and where thieves break through and steal. All that is of earth, and in any way connected with it, is subject to corruption, change and dissolution. No reality or substance exists in anything but heavenly things. Often the careful amassing of earthly possessions ends in losing them in a moment by fire, robbery, or change in the world markets.

Furthermore, in a little while, we must all leave this earth, or the Lord Jesus Christ will return. What use will earthly possessions be then?  Nothing is our own: time, property, influence, faculties, body and soul. ‘’ You are not your own (1 Corinthians 6:19). When we submit to the Lord, we surrender everything including our properties to Him to be ruled and disposed of at His pleasure. He owns it all.

Source of Image

The United States of America is undergoing a radical demographic shift, with tens of millions of people from various cultures and beliefs being imported into the country over the past few decades. This transformation raises a critical question: Can a nation survive such a significant demographic change and remain united? The answer, as history has shown, is unequivocally no.

Throughout history, there have been numerous examples of multi-cultural nations that have fallen due to their inability to address the underlying cultural and ideological differences within their societies. The Ottoman Empire, which was once one of the most powerful nations in the world but eventually fell due to its inability to address the cultural and ideological differences within its diverse population. The empire’s failure to integrate its various ethnic and religious groups led to a growing divide between the central government and the provinces, ultimately resulting in the empire’s disintegration.

More recently, the breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s serves as a stark reminder of the consequences of failing to address the cultural and ideological differences within a multicultural nation. The country’s diverse population, consisting of various ethnic and religious groups, was unable to find common ground, leading to a series of brutal conflicts and the eventual breakup of the country into several smaller, more homogenous states.

According to a recent Axios Vibes survey conducted by The Harris Poll, 50% of Americans, including 42% of Democrats, support mass deportations of illegal aliens. Additionally, 30% of Democrats and 46% of Republicans express a desire to end birthright citizenship, which is currently protected by the 14th Amendment of the United States Constitution. Unfortunately, although mass deportations appears to be a uniting solution that both the left and the right largely agree on, our elected officials will never have the backbone or political will to get it done.

The reality of our current situation is that our elected representatives do not truly represent the people; instead, they serve the interests of the ruling and donor class – the Zionists. This fact has become increasingly apparent in recent weeks, particularly with the passage of the TikTok ban bill and the allocation of billions of taxpayer dollars to Israel. Republicans and Democrats in Congress can’t agree on anything or get anything done, but when it comes to sending our money to Israel and banning TikTok in order to stop young Americans from criticizing Israel online without censorship, they act immediately.

These actions, coupled with the mass hysteria and immediate crackdown response to anti-genocide protests of Israel on college campuses, demonstrate that the politicians who are supposed to represent us are more concerned with appeasing their Jewish donors than addressing the concerns of their actual constituents. As a result, the people’s desires for solutions, such as mass deportations, are ignored.

The response to the current protests on college campuses has been characterized by hard crackdowns, the use of force, and nonstop media coverage demonizing the protesters. This approach is in stark contrast to the response of the ruling regime during the summer of BLM chaos in 2020, when cities were burning to the ground, violence took over the streets, and businesses were being looted.

During the BLM protests, the ruling regime took a more lenient approach, allowing the demonstrations to continue even as many churches and businesses were shut down from Covid restrictions. The media coverage of these protests was generally sympathetic, with many outlets highlighting the grievances of the protesters and calling for social justice reforms.

In contrast, the response to anti-genocide protests on campus has been much harsher, with authorities using force to disperse the protesters and the media painting them as “anti-Semitic” and dangerous. This discrepancy in treatment suggests that the ruling regime is more concerned with protecting the interests of Israel and its supporters than addressing the concerns of those protesting against Israeli policies.

The consequences of this disconnect between the ruling class and the people are becoming increasingly evident. As history has shown, when a nation undergoes a dramatic demographic shift without addressing the underlying cultural and ideological differences, the result is often balkanization – the division of a country into smaller, ethnically or culturally homogenous regions.

The term “balkanization” originated from the breakup of the Balkan Peninsula in the early 20th century. The region, once part of the Ottoman Empire, was divided into numerous smaller states, each with its own distinct ethnic and cultural identity. This fragmentation was driven by the desire of various ethnic groups to achieve self-determination and assert their unique cultural identities. The process of balkanization is not unique to the Balkans; it has occurred throughout history in various regions around the world. In each case, the underlying cause has been the failure to address the cultural and ideological differences that exist within a nation, leading to the eventual division of the country into smaller, more homogenous regions.

The United States is currently experiencing a demographic shift that is unlike anything in history. The country is becoming increasingly diverse, with people from various cultures and beliefs being imported in large numbers. This change is being driven by a combination of factors, including mass immigration, birth rates, and the changing attitudes of the American people. The impact of this demographic shift is already being felt in various areas of American society. For example, the political landscape has become increasingly polarized, with both the left and the right becoming more extreme in their views. This has led to a growing divide between different groups within the country, with each side becoming more entrenched in their beliefs.

Given the current demographic trends and the failure of our elected representatives to address the underlying cultural and ideological differences within the country, it is becoming increasingly clear that balkanization is the inevitable path forward for America. It’s not the ideal path, but it absolutely is the inevitable one. We don’t want it to happen, but we have to be realistic about the fact that it is already underway.

As the divide between different groups within the country continues to grow, the likelihood of a peaceful resolution becomes increasingly unlikely. The process of balkanization has already begun with the formation of smaller, more homogenous regions across the country, which we are already seeing unfold as conservatives flee blue states for red states and vice versa. These regions will be defined by their unique cultural and ideological identities, with each group seeking to assert their own values and beliefs.

As these smaller regions become more established, they will likely begin to demand greater autonomy from the central government. This could lead to the eventual breakup of the United States into several smaller, independent nations, each with its own distinct cultural and ideological identity. Again this is not the ideal, it’s not something we want to happen, but at this point the writing is on the wall.

In the era of balkanization, where the fragmentation of cultural and ideological groups is becoming increasingly prevalent, it is more important than ever to find a tribe that shares your beliefs and values. Individualism only works in homogenous societies, it cannot work in a multi-cultural one. By abandoning individualism and joining a tribe, you can find a sense of community and support that can help you navigate the challenges of an increasingly divided world. Failing to pick a tribe in this new era can leave you vulnerable to being conquered by those who have banded together to protect their interests and assert their cultural and ideological identities.

For decades, our enemies have worked tirelessly to promote an individualistic mindset within our society, knowing full well that individuals are easier to conquer, control, and destroy than strong, cohesive communities and tribes. By fostering a sense of isolation and self-centeredness, our enemies have sought to weaken our collective identity and render us more susceptible to their control. However, by recognizing this tactic and actively working to build strong, tight-knit communities based on shared values and beliefs, we can effectively counter our enemies’ efforts and reclaim our power as a people.

As the world around us becomes increasingly divided and fragmented, Christians must take proactive steps to prepare for the inevitable balkanization of our society. One way to do this is by building a parallel Christian society today, ensuring that we have a strong, firm foundation to stand on when times get tough. To build a parallel Christian society, we must first focus on strengthening our communities and families. This means prioritizing the development of tight-knit, supportive networks that are grounded in our shared Christian values and beliefs. By doing so, we can create a strong sense of camaraderie and support that will help us weather the challenges of balkanization.

We must work to create alternative institutions and systems that are grounded in our Christian worldview. This includes establishing Christian schools, businesses, and organizations that serve as a counterbalance to the secular institutions that dominate our society today. By doing so, we can ensure that our values and beliefs are not only preserved but actively promoted within our communities. Finally, we must be prepared to defend our Christian society against those who would seek to undermine it. This means being vigilant against the forces of secularism and cultural decay that threaten to erode our way of life, and being willing to stand up for our beliefs and values in the face of opposition.

By building a parallel Christian society today, we can ensure that we have a strong, firm foundation to stand on when balkanization inevitably comes. By doing so, we can protect our communities, our families, and our faith, and secure a brighter future for generations to come.

Andrew Torba CEO, Gab.com Christ is King

As mentioned in part one It is possible to be a professing Christian and not actually be in the faith. I shared 11 tips people should take to heart if they miss the rapture. Here are the final pieces of counsel to survive this terrible time if you miss God’s first roundup—the rapture.

12. Do not in any way, under any circumstances, align with the world leader.

Everyone is going to love him and even worship him. But if you listen to his lies, you’ll be drawn into a strong delusion that will seal your eternal fate (2 Thess. 2:9–12). You will be soon banished to hell because you didn’t love the truth.

13. Refuse to take a mark, a name, a number or a chip in your right hand or your forehead.

Refuse any microchip injections because Revelation 13 says this powerful world leader will require everyone, small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to be given a mark on their right hand or on their forehead. But once you get it, you will belong to Satan forever. It’s better to be shut out of the world economy and lose your physical life than be damned forever to the lake of fire (Rev. 14:9–11). The life of many believers during this time of the final shabua will end in beheading for refusal to take the mark of the beast (Rev. 20:4).

14. Do not steal, do not commit any sexual sin, don’t murder anybody and don’t use drugs to ease your anxiety.

The temptation to steal, murder, use drugs and give yourself to sexual sin will be enormous, but you must resist. If you commit these sins, you may find it very difficult to repent (Rev. 9:21).

15. Pray for the Jewish people and the nation of Israel.

They’re going to be suffering to a greater degree than any other group on Earth. That’s why the final shabua is called the Tribulation and the time of Jacob’s trouble. Jesus said it’s going to be worse for the Jewish people than anything they’ve ever experienced in the past (Matt. 24:21). Psalm 122:6a says, “Pray for the peace of Jerusalem.” In Zechariah 14:2, we are told that all the nations of the world will be against Israel in her final holocaust.

16. Be prepared to suffer.

At some point, liquidation camps and facilities will be operating around the clock. As I understand the prophetic warnings of the Great Tribulation, famine will be worse than ever. Families will be separated. It’s going to look like a horror movie or science fiction, but it’s real. You may have to die for your faith, but it’s worth it.

17. Do not speak evil of Israel or her people, no matter the pressure.

God will contend with you if you are contentious with Israel. False prophets will tell you that the nation Israel has no right to exist. They will tell you that the people living in Israel are not really Jews and descendants of Abraham. Never speak against Israel or her people (Gen. 12:3; Isa. 49:25).

18. If you are captured by the authorities, do not deny Jesus Christ as Lord and God.

It is better to die than deny Christ (Luke 12:8–10). In Revelation 6:9–11 we see quite a few people who died after the rapture for their faith, and they made it to heaven. If you deny Jesus Christ, you will be assigned to the dungeons of the damned to await the awful great white throne judgment (Rev. 20:11–12).

19. Mark the day the world leader moves his image into the holy temple in Jerusalem.

When that happens, you will know that you have 1,260 days to survive. Daniel refers to 1290 days, which includes thirty days of cleansing after He returns.

20. Determine to endure to the end!

If you miss the rapture, there is still hope. Moses endured much tribulation by looking to Him who is invisible (God). Paul wrote, “If we endure, we shall also reign with Him. If we deny Him, He also will deny us” (2 Tim. 2:12).

Copyright © 2017, Dave Williams Ministries–All rights reserved.

It is possible to be a professing Christian and not actually be in the faith. Paul said, “Examine yourselves, seeing whether you are in the faith” (2 Cor. 13:5a). Jesus said, “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven” (Matt. 7:21-23).

If you are reading this after the rapture has occurred, it’s because you weren’t ready. Jesus said in Matthew 25:10 that “those who were ready went in … And the door was shut.”

Let me give you 20 pieces of counsel to survive this terrible time if you miss God’s first roundup, the rapture.

1. Do not believe the explanations given by the secular media.

Christians have not been beamed to some interplanetary spaceship to be reprogrammed. We have not been taken by aliens, and we’re not in Buenos Aires, Togo or Europe. We have left the earth on a cloud of glory to be with Jesus forever.

2. Get rid of your cell phone.

If you do not agree with the government of the final shabua and the charming world leader, you will be hunted. Your cell phone can be tracked. Throw it in a river or lake far from where you are going to be.

3. Do not kill yourself.

Whenever there’s social disorder and confusion, people tend to think suicide is the only way out. It’s not. You probably feel hopeless, but there is still hope. The Holy Spirit will still be working during the final shabua. Pray and ask Him to guide you, give you strength and dwell in you.

4. Repent immediately and make your peace with God.

If you’re reading this after the rapture, you’ve already witnessed many of the events we described. Now is the time to repent. Jesus Christ is the only Savior and only way to heaven (John 14:6). Pray, “Lord Jesus, be merciful to me. I have sinned against you. Save me now. I receive you as my personal Savior.” For, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved” (Rom. 10:13).

5. Make sure you have a printed Bible.

You will not want any electronic tablets during the Tribulation. God’s Word and promises will still work after the rapture because Jesus said, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will never pass away” (Matt. 24:35). Keep your Bible in a safe place because when the Antichrist’s government takes over, he will eventually try to destroy all the Bibles.

Read the Ten Commandments and follow them (Ex. 20:1-17). God’s grace is still available, but after the church is gone, the age of grace has concluded, and everything reverts to something like Old Testament times.

Make sure you read Daniel 2-12. Chapter 12 will give you the general time Jesus is coming the second time. Read Matthew 24, Mark 13, 1 Thessalonians 5, 2 Thessalonians 2 and Revelation. Everything will begin to make sense to you.

6. Leave your home and get away from the cities, especially the big cities.

You’re going to be tempted to wait and see what happens, but if you do, it will be a fatal mistake, just as it was for the Jews who waited too long during the holocaust years. Go to some remote area. Learn to live off the land. Don’t take your cell phone because you can be tracked down. Disconnect the transponder on your vehicle, or ditch the vehicle altogether.

Make sure your family is safe and in agreement with your decision to leave. Take them if they will come. If not, you must go alone.

7. Pray for God to help you and give you strength.

It’s going to be difficult to survive, but God will still hear you, and He’ll still help you. It won’t be easy, but Jesus said, “He who endures to the end shall be saved” (Matt. 24:13). You’re going to need His strength as you’ve never needed it before.

8. Don’t go to church.

That’s right—don’t go to church or join the world conglomerate religion because it will be under the control of the false prophet (Rev. 13). All true, godly ministers have left the earth in the rapture. Do not believe the lies of the ministers who are left behind. Even if you see miracles and apparent wonders, do not believe them. They are lying wonders (Matt. 24:24; Mark 13:22; Luke 21; 2 Thess. 2:9). Deception will be the order of the day. Delusion will be everywhere, especially in “churches.”

If possible, try to find others who may have accepted Christ after the rapture. You will be able to find ways to support and encourage one another.

9. Get a small, self-powered radio.

If you can’t get the kind you crank by hand, get a battery-operated radio and a good supply of batteries, because you’re going to need to listen. Don’t believe the propaganda, but believe when they tell you about certain events relating to wars and geophysical calamities. You’ll be able to know what will happen next by reading Revelation 6-19.

10. Keep praying for your loved ones who are unbelievers.

God will still answer prayers during the Tribulation. Your prayers may be the key to seeing your loved ones again after this period of supreme agony is over.

11. Leave copies of this list for as many people as you can.

Perhaps this will help others survive and come to Christ. Be discerning, however, in giving out books like this if the rapture has already occurred. Jesus said in Luke 21:16-17 that people will be betrayed by parents, brothers, relatives and friends, and some of them will cause you to be put to death. He was talking about the period you are living in right now if you missed the rapture.

Copyright © Dr. Dave Williams-All rights reserved.

One of the more difficult aspects of working in economic analysis is the problem of rampant disinformation that you have to dig through in order to get to the truth of any particular issue.  In this regard, economics is very similar to politics.  The propaganda is endless and debunking it sometimes feels like moving a mountain with a teaspoon.

Establishment media sources lie incessantly about our financial conditions, and when they are finally cornered and forced to admit how bad things are, they then lie about the causes.  That said, I find that these lies are usually designed to do one of two things:  Over-complicate the problem so that people give up thinking about it, or, distract from the problem so that people blame a scapegoat.

As for inflation, here is the bottom line:

Central Banks And The Fiat Flood

Rising prices are caused by two main drivers.  The first is money creation, or too many dollars chasing too few goods.  Central banks around the world have been FLOODING the system with fiat currency ever since the debt crisis of 2008 and the Federal Reserve within the US is the worst violator by far.  We are talking about tens of trillions (or more) in money creation, all supposedly as a means to stall or prevent a deflationary crash.

By the time the pandemic lockdowns were initiated and the Fed dropped $8 trillion+ onto the economy through stimulus measures like covid checks and PPP loans, the total US money supply was already at destructive levels.  The covid stimulus was simply the straw that broke the camel’s back.  So, if you want to know who is directly to blame for your daily expenses rising 30% or more in the span of three years, the first set of criminals are the central bankers.

Governments and certain corporate partners are also to blame, but the central banks are the root mechanism for all inflationary movements.  It’s my belief (according to the evidence) that central banks have deliberately triggered a stagflationary crisis with the intent to forcefully replace cash based economies with a new digital and cashless global economy.  However, that’s a discussion for another article…

Shortages And Core Resources

The other primary cause of rising prices is shortages or disruptions in key resources including oil and energy.  Keep in mind that the war in Ukraine has led to the west being cut off from large portions of the resource rich Russian market.  And, the war in Gaza has led to groups in the Middle East like the Houthis denying a multitude of cargo ships and oil tankers from traversing the Red Sea.

By themselves, each one of these events seems like a small threat to the global supply chain, but when they pile up together the effects become detrimental.  For now, the biggest factor is rising energy prices because this is the key resource that allows all agriculture and manufacturing to function.  Every time oil prices rise you’re going to see prices in everything else rise.

This is the exact reason why the Biden Administration continued to dump the US Strategic Oil Reserves on the market for the past couple years.  This was their way of manipulating oil prices down in order to mitigate or hide the greater effects of inflation.  Now that they’re being pressured to refill those reserves and start buying (at a much higher price) global oil prices and US prices in particular are spiking again.

Media Disinformation And Crushing Food Costs

Food costs have risen by 30% or more depending on the product since the beginning of 2020, and even though CPI reports several months ago showed a “slowdown” in overall inflation, this does not mean prices are going to go down anytime soon.  In fact, they will only keep rising with each passing year.

CPI is a tool for measuring the AVERAGE price increases of over 80,000 products and services across a wide spectrum.  Many of these items are not necessities and so they dilute the actual inflation we are seeing in everyday expenditures.  If we were to look at an average of daily necessities like housing, energy, food, etc. then CPI would read far higher.

When the media touts a lower CPI print as a sign that the economy is improving, what they usually don’t mention is that the stat only represents how much higher prices are going to go.  A lower CPI does not mean costs on the shelf are going to go down.  Inflation is cumulative.

Meaning, that 30%+ increase in food that Americans have been dealing with – That’s not going away, it’s just not climbing as fast as it was.  And, as we’ve seen in the past couple months, inflation has the ability to return just as quickly to add even more gasoline to the fire.

Not long ago I was reading through an article from CBS that claimed they could explain why there’s been no respite in food prices lately.  In reality the entire piece was disinformation, blaming every possible scapegoat while ignoring the real causes.

Their main explanation is “Greedflation,” or the claim that companies are overcharging on food items.  In other words, blame businesses, don’t blame the Federal Reserve and don’t blame the government.  They’re “innocent” in all of this.

So far there’s no concrete evidence to support the Greedflation theory.  Every business has unique expenses, unique overhead, unique industrial costs, unique quality control and unique resource costs.  One cookie company’s bottom line will be different from another cookie company’s bottom line.  That said, there are universal costs that directly correlate to higher prices regardless of the company, and that includes energy, labor, and core commodities.

For those that track the markets it’s obvious that commodities are climbing.  The Industrial Commodity Index is far higher today than it was in 2020, along with oil and gas prices.  Every base resource that companies use to make products is increasing in value and thus it costs them more to manufacture.  Agriculture in particular is heavily affected by oil prices as well as prices in fertilizer and farming equipment, not to mention higher costs in labor.

From 2020 to 2023 the total costs paid by farmers to raise crops and care for livestock increased by more than $100 billion, or 28%, to an all-time high of $460 billion in 2023.  Funny how that number tracks very close to the 30% increase in overall food prices since 2020.  The establishment media wants you to believe that high food prices are going to go away soon, and in order to trick you they need to convince you that the cause is something that can be “controlled” or “regulated”.

There is no indication that agricultural costs are going to stop increasing in the near future, so, that means each year food is going to cost you more than the year before.  It might even cost you MUCH more than the year before.

In conclusion, this is why people need to start looking at food as an investment similar to the way they might look at their 401K or any retirement plan.  If you want to mitigate costs in the future in terms of food you will need to purchase foods with a long shelf life now.  If you think that inflation is a passing phase and that things will go back to the way they were before 2020 then you probably won’t take this concern seriously.  But, consider this:

Well before 2020 I was warning regularly about an impending stagflation crisis.  The food storage I bought in 2020 now costs at least 30%-50% more to buy in 2024.  Meanwhile, some of the top mainstream economists in the country were denying such a thing would ever happen.  When it did happen, they claimed it was “transitory.”  This was also proven false.  Now they claim food will drop after companies are forced through regulation to cut prices.

Whether government intervenes or the market continues to react to poor fiscal policies, it is quickly becoming a necessity to invest in food security as soon as possible.  Government enforced price controls have never actually proven effective in stopping inflation.  Once you remove all profit incentives many businesses will close up shop.  This causes the supply of goods to go down and prices then spike anyway due to shortages.

Do you want to bet your future on establishment economists being right for once, or, do you want to just store some food today in the knowledge that prices are only going exponentially higher?

This article was written by Brandon Smith and sourced from Alt-Market

A story is told of a fire in Scotland that destroyed the farm. In the aftermath of the fire, a farmer went into the barn to assess and make sense of what had happened. In the process, a farmer kicked one of the dead chickens and under the chicken wings were six live chickens the mother died protecting.

Another story is told of the forest fire that had been brought under control, and the group of firefighters were working back through the devastation making sure all the hot spots had been extinguished. As they marched across the blackened landscape between the wisps of smoke still rising from the smouldering remains, a large lump on the trail caught a firefighter’s eye.

As he got closer, he noticed it was the charred remains of a large bird, that had burned nearly halfway through. Since birds can so easily fly away from the approaching flames, the firefighter wondered what must have been wrong with this bird so that it could not escape. Had it been sick or injured?

Arriving at the carcass, he decided to kick it off the trail with his boot. As soon as he did, however, he was startled half to death by a flurry of activity around his feet. Four little birds flailed in the dust and ash then scurried away down the hillside.

The bulk of the mother’s body had covered them from the searing flames. Though the heat was enough to consume her, it allowed her babies to find safety underneath. In the face of the rising flames, she had stayed with her young. Her dead carcass and her fleeing chicks told the story well enough–she gave the ultimate sacrifice to save her young.

The lesson here is not all chicks can run to their mothers in times of danger. Some panic or try to find a way to save themselves and they get devoured. Worse still the mother hen cannot run around gathering them individually. They have to come to her. Most of the chicks that survive the attacks from cats and foxes stay close to their mother and all they have to do is run under their mother’s wings and they are covered.

The hen in the story was the only chance those chicks had for safety; she, being willing to spare her own life, had gathered them up under her wings to herself. At the point of terrible pain and death, when she might still have saved herself, she chose to stay through the ordeal. It is been noted that the “mother hen instinct” is a feeling that someone has, that they must “take care of somebody.” Anybody. A mother hen demonstrates behavioural habits that are different from a normal hen. Her priority shifts from her personal survival to protecting and ensuring the survival of her young. She puts her heart and soul into her chicks, educating them and protecting them from all predators. The Bible tells us:

At that very hour, some Pharisees came up and said to Him, “Leave and go away from here, because Herod Antipas wants to kill You.” And He said to them, “Go and tell that fox that sly, cowardly man, ‘Listen carefully: I cast out demons and perform healings today and tomorrow, and on the third day I reach My goal.’ Nevertheless, I must travel on today and tomorrow and the day after that—for it cannot be that a prophet would die outside of Jerusalem. O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones to death those messengers who are sent to her by God! How often I have wanted to gather your children together around Me, just as a hen gathers her young under her wings, but you were not willing! Listen carefully: your house is left to you desolate abandoned by God and destitute of His protection; and I say to you, you will not see Me until the time comes when you say, ‘Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord (Luke 13:31-35 AMP).

The greater story that is illustrated is the true story of our Creator Who made a way to save His wandering children. The Lord stretched out His arms on the cross and took the pain so that we didn’t have to. He stood between death and us and fought for us sinners like a hen protects her chicks. In other words, in a dangerous situation, when a fox is on the loose and the chicks are vulnerable, the mother hen gathers her chicks under her wings and fends off the fox as best as she can. Jesus gave His life to protect those whom the fox would destroy. We now live in the shadow of His wings and under His wings we find refuge (Psalm 91:1-4).

The righteousness of the law is fulfilled in those who walk in the Spirit. Christ lives again in His redeemed followers the life He lived in Judaea; for righteousness can never be divorced from its source, which is Jesus Christ Himself. The ethics of Jesus cannot be obeyed or even understood until the life of God has come to the heart of a man in the miracle of the new birth. Our Creator has made a way to save His wandering children.

Let us not forget that there were once two brothers. They lived in a society that had not had time to develop the many social evils we know today. Yet one killed the other because sin was there. If two brothers in the morning of the world could not get on together, how can we hope that the gentle teachings of Jesus can ever bring brotherhood to a race filled with complex iniquities, where men inherit hate and where the souls of all are lacerated by jealousy, murder, envy, egotism, greed and lust?

According to the Bible, the human race is morally fallen, spiritually alienated from God, lost and under the severe sentence of divine judgment. In sharp contrast to this, the Church is a body of regenerated persons who have withdrawn from the world in spirit and heart and have thrown in their lot with Christ to own Him as Savior and to follow Him as Lord.

The hope of the human race is that Christ shall come again to earth. I am reminded of this quote from CS Lewis:

When the Author of Life walks on the stage the play is over. God is going to invade, all right: but what is the good of saying you are on His side then? When you see the whole natural universe melting away like a dream and something else … something that never entered your head to conceive—comes crashing in; something so beautiful to some of us and so terrible to others that none of us will have any choice left. For this time, it will be God without disguise; something so overwhelming that it will strike either irresistible love or irresistible horror into every creature. It will be too late to choose your side. There is no use saying you choose to lie down when it has become impossible to stand up. That will not be the time for choosing; it will be the time when we discover which side we really have chosen, whether we realised it before or not. Now, today, this moment is our chance to choose the right side. God is holding back to give us that chance. It will not last forever. We must take it or leave it.

God’s covenant love to His people is: ‘I love you so much, I will never let the devil have you. I won’t let him take over your life, even when you fail me. It is impossible to stray too far from God’s love. There is no place in heaven or earth where you can escape it.’

Corrie ten Boom is well known for offering forgiveness to the guards who held her captive during the Nazi regime. She touched millions of lives through books and speaking tours before dying on her ninety-first birthday. She often recalled her sister Betsie’s hope-filled words: “There is no pit so deep that God’s love is not deeper still.” Do you think Satan wants to keep driving you into the loving arms of Christ to find mercy, love, and grace? No–The only sin he can tempt you with now is to attempt to turn you away from God’s incredible love. That’s where a hard heart comes from–not falling back, but from continually rejecting God’s love.

Even so, Lord, come quickly.

There is no specific instruction to celebrate or observe Easter in the New Testament. Easter is not about “Easter eggs” or wearing pastels. All these are pagan practices.

To a Christian, Christ is risen and alive ‘every day’, and his life should be enjoyed and celebrated as such. Christians also have a Passover meal regularly, for the Lord’s Supper is a Passover Meal, commemorating the liberation of Christ.

In fact the feasts of Passover, Unleavened Bread, and the First Fruits foreshadow the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:20 tells us, “But now Christ is risen from the dead, and has become the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep.”

He also speaks of keeping the feast and getting rid of the yeast or leaven because Christ our Passover lamb has been sacrificed (1 Corinthians 5:7).

What is more Jesus died at 3:00 P.M, “Now it was about the sixth hour, and there was darkness over all the earth until the ninth hour” (Luke 23:44). This was the very time when thousands of Passover lambs were being slaughtered (see Exodus 12:18-20).

This is confirmed in the gospel of Luke “Then came the day of Unleavened Bread on which the Passover lamb had to be slain” (see Luke 22:7-20).

Jesus said that He did not come to destroy the law but to fulfil it. So you cannot understand the New Testament without the Old.

That is why so many of the words in Exodus are used again in the New Testament-words such as law, covenant, blood, lamb, Passover, Exodus, leaven.These words are used in the New Testament but derive their meaning from the book of Exodus (see Exodus 12:1-11; 12:43-47).

Another example is six months before Jesus died on the cross He was 4,000 feet high on top of Mount Hermon in the north of Israel, talking with Moses and Elijah. Luke’s Gospel tells us that they talked about His exodus from this world, which was about to be fulfilled in Jerusalem (see Luke 9:28-31).

John the Baptist who was the forerunner sent to prepare the way before Christ intoduced Him with the words: “Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!”  (John 1:29).Thus he proclaimed Jesus as the appointed Savior whose sacrificial death and shed blood would accomplish all that had been foreshadowed by the Passover lamb.

Therefore, Christ is our Passover Lamb the one who has been sacrificed for us so that the angel of death would pass over those who trust in Him.

He rose from the dead on the third day and His resurrection liberates us from death, just as the Hebrews were liberated from slavery on the third day after the Passover. So we celebrate resurrection Sunday because:

The Tomb is Empty

The Gospels talk of Jesus being in the tomb three days and three nights, but traditional Friday-to-Sunday interpretations leave us with one day and two nights! Some Bible scholars believe that Jesus died on the Wednesday afternoon. For instance, prominent Bible teacher David Pawson explains:

We have assumed that Friday was the day he died, because the text tells us he died on the day before the Sabbath. But in the year in question, it was not the Saturday Sabbath. John’s Gospel tells us that the Sabbath was a special High Sabbath (see John 19:31-36).

The Passover began with a Sabbath and, in the year AD 29, which was almost certainly the year Jesus died, the first day of the Passover was a Thursday, with the Wednesday being the eve of the Passover.

This fits all the evidence better than all the other theories. So if he died at 3 o’clock on the Wednesday and he rose between 6 p.m. and midnight on the Saturday, every bit of the Gospel evidence fits.

The 12 Apostles and the Resurrection

When Jesus Christ chose the twelve apostles, their role was to confirm by their words and their lives the reality of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

After the arrest, trial, and death of Jesus Christ, these men initially fled in fear. They were devastated by His death because death seems so cruel and final.

They must felt terrible when they saw their Lord, whom they had left everything to follow, being crucified on the cross.

One of the twelve apostles known as Matthew records that immediately after Jesus had died, the tombs were opened and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep in death were raised to life.

And coming out of the tombs after His resurrection, they went into the holy city and appeared to many people (see Matthew 27:52-53). He also gives an account of the guarded tomb and the report by the soldiers that the body was stolen:

When they had assembled with the elders and consulted together, they gave a large sum of money to the soldiers, saying, “Tell them, ‘His disciples came at night and stole Him away while we slept.’ And if this comes to the governor’s ears, we will appease him and make you secure.” So they took the money and did as they were instructed; and this saying is commonly reported among the Jews until this day (Matthew 28:12-15).

The divine side of Christ’s death, however, is also brought out in Mark, for Jesus was sure from the very beginning that he had come to die. He predicted his death, and his resurrection, more than once.

Following the resurrection. He records Jesus’ return to Galilee and his meeting with the 11 disciples and more than 500 at one time (see 1 Corinthians 15:5).

Luke a doctor by profession from Antioch, Syria and the only Gentile writer in the Bible had a keen interest in researching the events surrounding the life death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

He describes that, after Jesus had physically risen from the dead, three women who were friends of the disciples went to the tomb early Sunday morning to anoint His body with spices.

When they arrived at the tomb, they were shocked to find the stone rolled aside and the tomb empty. It was only the linen cloths in which Jesus’ body had been wrapped that lay empty in the tomb. The two angels told them:

Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, but is risen! Remember how He spoke to you when He was still in Galilee, saying, ‘The Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and the third day rise again (see Luke 24:1–25).

The Bible tells us that, until then, they still hadn’t understood the Scripture that He must rise again from dead (see Psalm 16:10). “And they remembered His words. Then they returned from the tomb and told all these things to the eleven and to all the rest.”

In John’s intimate account, Peter and John decided to go and see for themselves where Jesus was buried. Indeed, they too were also surprised that Jesus was not in the tomb.

As Peter and John returned home, Mary was still standing at the tomb crying, and as she was weeping, she stooped down and looked into the tomb. Suddenly, the angels asked her why she was crying, and she replied that it was because they had taken away her Lord and she didn’t know where they put Him.

She decided to leave but saw someone standing there. Thinking it was the gardener, she asked Him where He had put the body of Jesus. The man then called Mary by her name. At that moment, she realized that she was not talking to the gardener but to her risen Lord.

Jesus said to her, “Mary!” She turned and said to Him, “Rabboni!” (which is to say, Teacher). Jesus said to her, “Do not cling to Me, for I have not yet ascended to My Father; but go to My brethren and say to them, ‘I am ascending to My Father and your Father, and to My God and your God.”

Mary Magdalene came and told the disciples that she had seen the Lord, and that He had spoken these things to her. (John 20:16–18)

That Sunday evening, the disciples were meeting in secrecy behind closed doors because they were afraid of the Jewish leaders. Suddenly, Jesus appeared to them.

As He appeared to them, He said, “‘Peace be with you.’ When He had said this, He showed them His hands and His side. Then the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord” (John 20:19–20).

Soon after Christ had appeared to His disciples, they told Thomas, who was absent, that the Lord had appeared to them. Thomas refused to believe them, saying he needed to see and touch Christ’s wounds and His side before he could believe such a report (see John 20:25).

He did not want to accept their account on the basis of faith only.

The faith of Thomas, much like the disciples’, was gone so he could not believe by mere faith alone. The time of three special years of personally walking with the Messiah had come to an end. Jesus was dead, so were the dreams that were once filled with hope and purpose.

So unless he could put his hands into Jesus’ side where he had watched the spear being thrust into the breast of his Master, he could not believe. He wanted concrete evidence.

Eight days later, the disciples were again in the same room, and this time Thomas was present. And after eight days His disciples were again inside, and Thomas with them. Jesus came, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst, and said, “Peace to you!”

Then He said to Thomas, “Reach your finger here, and look at My hands; and reach your hand here, and put it into My side. Do not be unbelieving, but believing.”

And Thomas answered and said to Him, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus said to him, “Thomas, because you have seen Me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed” (John 20:26–28).

We tend to think of Jesus doing nothing between his death and resurrection, being just unconscious, inactive in the tomb. But it says only his body was dead. His spirit was very much alive. He went to the world of the dead and started preaching as recorded by Peter in his first letter:

For Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive by the Spirit, by whom also He went and preached to the spirits in prison, who formerly were disobedient, when once the Divine longsuffering waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight souls, were saved through water (1 Peter 3:18-19).

Death Is Not Final

To the Christian, death is not final. A believer simply falls asleep in Jesus and wakes up instantly in the presence of God. But those who die without the Lord Jesus Christ are referred to as “the dead.”

Someday the dead will stand before the Great White Throne of God and be judged according to the things which were written in the books, according to their deeds.

They will then be cast into the lake of fire. “This is the second death, the lake of fire. And if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire (Revelation 20:14-15).

Some say that when Christians die, they sleep in the grave until Jesus returns and raised the dead. However, Paul said, “To live is Christ and to die is gain (Philippians 1:21).  To sleep in the grave would not be gain!

Paul knew that physical death would allow him to “depart and be with Christ,” which, he said, is very much better (Philippians 1:23).

We will be fully conscious one minute after we have died. We will know who we are, we will have our memory. It is only our body that dies, not our spirit. Death separates body and spirit. Later, spirit and body will be reunited in the resurrection.

When Paul talks about putting off our earthly tent, he says to be “absent from the body” is “to be at home with the Lord” (2 Corinthians 5:1-9).

In 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18, he refers to those who have died in Christ as having “fallen asleep in Jesus” because this is what death is to the believer- falling asleep and waking up in the presence of our Lord.

Because Jesus is the Resurrection and the Life, the Christian will not see death. This truth caused Jesus to proclaim,

I am Myself the Resurrection and the Life. Whoever believes in (adheres to, trusts in, and relies on) Me, although he may die, yet he shall live; And whoever continues to live and believes in (has faith in, cleaves to, and relies on) Me shall never actually die at all (John 11:25-26).

Death is conquered! The Tomb is Empty! Jesus becomes the Giver of Life (John 20:21-23). This is the Good News that Paul preaches to us. “It is this Good News that saves you if you continue to believe the message I told you—unless, of course you believed something that was never true in the first place” (see 1 Corinthians 15:1-2).

Jesus Christ is the divine, eternal Son of God, who became a member of the human race by virgin birth. He led a sinless life, died on the cross as a propitiatory sacrifice for the sins of humanity, was buried and rose again in bodily form from the grave on the third day.

He ascended into heaven, whence He will return to earth in person; to judge the living and the dead. Everyone who repents of sin and trusts in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ receives forgiveness of sins and the gift of eternal life.

During this weekend, Christians around the world will be celebrating the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. For the Jews, they will be celebrating Passover, which commemorates Israel’s escape from Egypt when the blood of a lamb was painted on their door frames and saved their firstborn sons from death.

The most striking fact about the Israelites’ crossing of the Red Sea is that it happened on the third day after the Passover lamb was killed.

This event foreshadowed Jesus’ work on the cross. As the spotless Lamb of God, His blood would be spilled in order to save us from the penalty of death brought by sin. At His last supper, Luke records that Jesus revealed Himself as the fulfillment of that event.

Jesus died at 3.00 p.m., the very time when thousands of Passover lambs were being slaughtered. So Christ is called ‘our Passover lamb’, the one who has been sacrificed for us so that the angel of death would pass over those who trust in Him.

He rose from the dead on the third day and his resurrection liberates us from death, just as the Hebrews were liberated from slavery on the third day after the Passover. And you probably know that the Feasts of Passover, Unleavened Bread, and First Fruits dramatically and poignantly foreshadow the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus.

The good news of Christianity is that God loves us and did not leave us in the mess that we make of our own lives. He came to earth, in the person of His Son Jesus to die instead of us (2 Corinthians 5:21; Galatians 3:13). This is what theologians call the self-substitution of God.

The Lord Chancellor, Lord Mackay of Clasern wrote:

The central theme of our faith is the sacrifice of himself by our Lord Jesus Christ on the cross of our sins…The deeper our appreciation of our need the greater will be our love for the Lord Jesus and, therefore, the more fervent our desire to serve Him.

In the words of the Apostle Peter, “He personally bore our sins in His own body on the tree (as on an altar and offered Himself on it), that we might die (cease to exist) to sin and live to righteousness. By His wounds you have been healed (1 Peter 2:24 AMP).

What is Self-Substitution?

In his book, Miracle on the River Kwai Ernest Gordon tells the true story of a group of POWs working on the Burma Railway during World War II. At the end of each day, the tools were collected from the work party. On one occasion a Japanese guard shouted that a shovel was missing and demanded to know which man had taken it.

He began to rant and rave, working himself up into a paranoid fury and ordered whoever was guilty to step forward. No one moved. “All die! All die! He shrieked, cocking and aiming his rifle at the prisoners. At that moment one man stepped forward and the guard clubbed him to death with his rifle while he stood silently to attention. When they returned to the camp, the tools were counted again and no shovel was missing. That one man had gone forward as a substitute to save others.

In the same way, Jesus came as our substitute. He endured crucifixion for us. Cicero described crucifixion as ‘the most cruel and hideous of tortures’. Jesus was stripped and tied to a whipping post. He was flogged with four of five thongs of leather interwoven with sharp jagged bone and lead.

Eusebuis, the third century church historian, described Roman flogging in these terms: the sufferer’s veins were laid bare, and…..the very muscles, sinews and bowels of the victim were open to exposure’.

He was then taken to the Praetorium where a crown of thorns was thrust onto His head. He was mocked by a battalion of 600 men and hit about the face and head. Jesus was well aware of the shame and public humiliation that He would experience on the cross.

In fact, one of the primary objectives of crucifixion was to shame the person. As the person hung on the cross, spectators walked by, made derogatory remarks, and sometimes even did obscene things which I will not describe.

In a prophetic vision, Isaiah glimpsed the suffering of Jesus seven centuries before they actually took place:

I gave My back to the smiters and My cheeks to those who plucked off the hair; I hid not My face from shame and spitting (Isaiah 50:6).

He was then forced to carry a heavy cross on His bleeding shoulders until he collapsed, and Simon of Cyrene was press-ganged into carrying it for Him.

When they reached the site of the crucifixion, He was again stripped naked. He was laid on the cross, and six-inch nails were driven into His forearms, just above the wrist. His knees were twisted sideways so that the ankles could be nailed between the tibia and the Achilles’ tendon. He was lifted up on the cross which was then dropped into a socket in the ground.

There He was left to hang in intense heat and unbearable thirst, exposed to the ridicule of the crowd. He hang there in unthinkable pain for six hours while His life slowly drained away. When His disciples saw Him die, they learned to despair of themselves and of everything on which they had previously based their hope.

The Deepest Wound

Now we come to the deepest wound of all-rejection. Jesus endured a double rejection: first by men and then by God Himself. Isaiah clearly portrayed the rejection of Jesus by His fellow countrymen:

He was despised and rejected and forsaken by men, a Man of sorrows and pains, and acquainted with grief and sickness; and like One from Whom men hide their faces He was despised, and we did not appreciate His worth or have any esteem for Him ( Isaiah 53:3).

The worst part of His suffering was not the physical trauma or torture and crucifixion or even the emotional pain of being rejected by the world and deserted by His friends, but the spiritual agony of being cut off from His Father for us-as He carried our sins.

He should have been able to live several hours longer on the cross, but He died of a broken heart. John records how one of the soldiers pierced Jesus’ side with a spear, bringing a sudden gush of blood and water. Incidentally, this extraordinary symptom indicates a raptured pericardium, a ‘broken heart’. What broke His heart? The ultimate rejection.

Now from the sixth hour (midday) there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour (three o’clock in the afternoon). And about the ninth hour (three o’clock) Jesus cried with a loud voice, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?—that is, My God, My God, why have You abandoned Me (leaving Me helpless, forsaking and failing Me in My need)? And some of the bystanders, when they heard it, said, This Man is calling for Elijah! And one of them immediately ran and took a sponge, soaked it with vinegar (a sour wine), and put it on a reed (staff), and was about to give it to Him to drink. But the others said, Wait! Let us see whether Elijah will come to save Him from death. And Jesus cried again with a loud voice and gave up His spirit (Matthew 27:45-51 AMP).

This passage gives such a clear picture of the humanity of Jesus as He suffered intense pain and agony. Just think of that awful darkness. Think of the loneliness, the sense of being absolutely abandoned, first by man, then by God. You and I may have experienced some measure of rejection, but never has it been in that measure.

For the first time in the history of the universe, the Son of God prayed but the Father did not answer Him. God averted His eyes from His Son. God stopped His ears at His cry. Why? Because at that time, Jesus was identified with our sin.

The attitude of God the Father toward Jesus had to be the attitude of God’s holiness toward our sin–the refusal of fellowship, a complete and absolute rejection. Jesus did not endure that for His own sake, but instead to make His soul a sin offering for us. And then, look at the consequence, which was so dramatic and so immediate:

And at once the curtain of the sanctuary of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom; the earth shook and the rocks were split (Matthew 27:51).

What does that mean? Simply that the barrier between God and man had been removed. The way was opened for man to come to God without shame, guilt or fear. When Jesus bore our sins and suffered our rejection, He opened the way for our acceptance so that we might gain status as God’s sons and daughters.

Jesus took our rejection so that we might experience His acceptance. That is the meaning of the torn curtain. We now have direct access to God. “For it is through Him that we both whether far off or near now have an introduction (access) by one Holy Spirit to the Father so that we are able to approach Him” (Ephesians 2:18 AMP).

Life’s Purpose is Knowing God

For those who are willing to enter into this type of covenant commitment to God, the reward is great. It is beautifully expressed by the words that Jesus addressed to the Father in John 17:3:

And this is eternal life: it means to know (to perceive, recognize, become acquainted with, and understand) You, the only true and real God, and likewise to know Him, Jesus as the Christ (the Anointed One, the Messiah), Whom You have sent.

Here, indeed, is the ultimate purpose of all life-to know the one true God. Out of this knowledge, there comes eternal life, divine life, the life of God Himself, shared with the believer.

However, knowledge of this kind is not merely theology or doctrine. It is not knowing about God. It is actually knowing God Himself-knowing Him directly and intimately; knowing Him as a Person. It is a person-to-person relationship. It is a spiritual union.

So many of us come from broken or dysfunctional families, we still carry deep wounds from childhood-wounds that resulted from neglect, rejection, or abuse. These experiences make it difficult for us to see God as a loving, warm and intimate Father, and they can be difficult to overcome.

But God says, My precious one, I love you. I do not reject you. I have always loved you. Jesus was wounded for you and me. Your suffering grieves Him deeply. He does not condemn you, but loves you with a profound and everlasting love than you have ever experienced before.

Dr. Karl Barth was one of the most brilliant and complex intellectuals of the twentieth century.  He wrote volume after massive volume on the meaning of life and faith. During his lecture tour, theologian Karl Barth visited the University of Chicago in 1962.

After his lecture, during the Q & A time, a student asked Barth if he could summarize his whole life’s work in theology in a sentence.  Barth allegedly said:

Yes, I can. In the words of a song I learned at my mother’s knee: ‘Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.

I agree with Karl Barth. Why then do we often act as if we are trying to earn God’s love? Why do humans have such trouble accepting this love?

Power over Death

We have a Savior who has the power over death. He holds the keys of death and hell. When Christ was down here, He gave us a specimen of what He could do. Before His personal resurrection, He raised three people from the dead, Jairus’ daughter, the widow’s son, and Lazarus of Bethany that we might know that He is the Resurrection and Life.

Whoever believes in Him, although he may die, yet shall he/she live; and whoever continues to live and believes in Him shall never actually die at all (see John 11:25-26). How dark and gloomy this world would be if we had no hope in the resurrection. Paul says:

If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised.  For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either.

And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied. But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.

Yes, there is a glorious day before us in the future. Such hope never disappoints or deludes or shames us, for God’s love has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit Who has been given to us. While we were yet in weakness and powerless to help ourselves, at the fitting time Christ died for (in behalf of) the ungodly. 

Now it is an extraordinary thing for one to give his life even for an upright man, though perhaps for a noble and lovable and generous benefactor someone might even dare to die. But God shows and clearly proves and demonstrates His own love for us by the fact that while we were still sinners, Christ (the Messiah) died for us (Romans 5:5-8 AMP). Not only does God love the “pure and the holy”, He also loves the ungodly.

We get salvation for the past and peace for the present, but there is glory for the future in store. I cannot convince you enough that God loves you. The truth is, He would not have died for you if He had not loved you.

God sent Jesus to die for the sins of the whole world. If you belong to this world, then you have a part in this love that has been exhibited in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ

Jesus Christ has provided our salvation through His death on the Cross and resurrection. This cross, with its foolishness (1 Corinthians 1:18) and weakness, its humiliation and shame, is the everlasting sign of the victory that Christ has won by mighty weapons that are spiritual, not carnal (2 Corinthians 10:4).

All we need is to do to respond and accept His undeserved gift of salvation. He said: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no-one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). Is your heart so hard that you can brace yourself against His love and spurn and despise it? You can do it, but it will be at your own peril.

Wishing You a Happy Resurrection!

I recently had a dream I believe was prophetic. I want to submit it to you all to pray and ask you to seek the Lord about it. I believe there’s hope and redemption in it, but I believe it’s a warning.

There are some things we receive from the Lord that are conditional. We can pray about them, and it makes a difference. I know some things are set in stone, but some things can be altered and changed by human behaviour and prayer. Often, we talk about Hezekiah, who received the prophetic word, “Set your house in order, for you shall die and not live.” He turned his face to the wall and repented, and fifteen years were added to his life (see Isaiah 38:1-6).

So, I share this dream in the fear of the Lord. I’ve given it the title “The Rebirth of America Dream.”

I had an intense dream Saturday morning, March 9, 2024, that seemed prophetic. It was about the coming eclipse in April 2024 triggering an awakening that starts in April 2024 and lasts until July 2025—over a year. I was moving fast in time, starting in April 2024 with the eclipse that crossed over Texas. It seemed in this dream that Texas was pulled into this.

At the same time, around April 2024, a metaphorical conception happened. It coincided with this eclipse leading to something serious happening in the nation before the elections in November 2024. This event caused absolute chaos and affected the elections in the U.S. in November 2024.

It seemed like an epic October surprise, and pandemonium ensued. In the dream, I knew that President Joe Biden had fizzled out, and they had tried hard to prop him up. But this event right before the election caused a major division of America right before and during the election time. It intensified the division already in the nation to a very scary and intense level.

Then, the dream shifted. Somehow I was in 1968, and I was given an old newspaper which said, “Assassination of two major leaders in the same year of the Chicago convention.” Robert F. Kennedy—Bobby Kennedy—and Martin Luther King Jr., were both tragically killed in 1968.

What’s also interesting about 1968 is that the Democratic National Convention was in Chicago, and it’s in Chicago in 2024. I knew that was significant. But through all the chaos in the streets, in the economy, and on the news, America had a huge awakening—an awareness of evil and corruption going on in America. And it was like the vast majority of the nation after this said, “We can never let this happen again. We can’t.”

At the end of the dream, it was July 2025. For some reason, July 11 was highlighted to me on the calendar. It seemed like most of the chaos ended in the nation, and things were starting to heal by July 2025. It had all started in April 2024 with the eclipse coinciding with a conception, and there were forty weeks of pregnancy, with birth pangs intensifying before the delivery.

Then, there were complications before and after the birth. Since the conception happens around April, nine months later ,the baby being born in January 2025. What’s interesting is that’s also when the presidential inauguration takes place. But this baby was born, and the thing that happened right before the election was almost like a mother having false contractions. It wasn’t the birthing time, but it was still very intense and real. It was like the baby wanted to come at tht moment, but somehow was delayed.

The birth was in January 2025, and the baby was placed in an incubator for several months after it was born. The baby lived, and it was a beautiful baby. The drwithm ended by me seeing this baby wrapped in an American flag. It was like it was in a maternity ward where babies were lying in little beds with name tags at the top. The name of the baby was America.

I couldn’t help but believe it was the rebirth of America. The dream seems to portray an awakening, starting in April 2024, then a long, painful, and traumatic pregnancy. A traumatic event triggers chaos before the elections, and the chaos lasts for several months. The birth occurs in January 2025, requiring care in the incubator at least until July 2025.

Here’s the part we need to pray about in all of this. I think this is a warning and a call for the intercessors and the people of God to take seriously. Seeing the 1968 Democratic Convention reference and knowing Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy were both killed, I felt that the warning was there. It seems to be an indication of a coming assassination attempt sometime during this 16-month process from April 2024 until July 2025. We don’t want to see that happen to anybody.

I feel that this is important to share and to put before the body of believers to pray into, to see if the Lord can intervene and help us and show us what to pray and how to pray—and to see if some of this can be lessened or prevented. I believe the dream was significant. I think we are entering into a unique time in American history. Starting in April, there is a 16-month process that I believe is integral to the rebirthing of this nation.

Will you help me pray about this? Will you help me pray into this and take it seriously?

In a recent sermon called “When the World is on Fire,” I shared from Micah 7, which offers a lesson for our time. The prophet Micah described the dire spiritual crisis in his day, and we’re in a similar spiritual climate today. Micah gives us the solution in Micah 7:7: “Therefore I will look to the Lord; I will wait for the God of my salvation; my God will hear me.”

In a time of spiritual crisis, we as the people of God have to get our eyes on the Lord Jesus Christ, get in the secret place, and wait patiently upon Him. God is looking for a people who, when the world is on fire, will turn to the Lord. If we’ll follow this, it doesn’t matter how dark it gets. “For behold, the darkness shall cover the earth, and deep darkness the people; but the Lord will arise over you, and His glory will be seen upon you” (Isaiah 60:2).

Copyright 2024 Morning Star Ministries. All rights reserved.

We must give eleven gazillion dollars to Israel because ‘they are God’s Chosen People’ and ‘those who bless you I will bless’” is a refrain Christians have been told their entire lives. There is no single theological issue that is the cause of greater confusion among Christians than what the status of Israel is in the New Covenant. Christians are in the New Covenant. Most Christians understand this. But the confusion begins when we consider the Old Covenant. What was the point of the Old Covenant?

When God made a Covenant with Abraham and then developed it further with his descendants under Moses, what was the purpose of it? How is the New Covenant made in Jesus’s blood so radically different?

These are questions that were sorted out throughout the New Testament. And despite much of the New Testament dealing with this issue, and millennia of Christian tradition extrapolating from it, confusion reigns today.

There is a whole panoply of false notions many Christians have unfortunately been taught to believe. For many Christians today, the Old Covenant was “the way you got saved before Jesus.” Despite a host of examples of non-Jews getting saved in the Old Testament (Jethro, Naaman, the whole city of Nineveh in Jonah, Nebuchadnezzar, etc.) many who think of it that way believe that only Jews in the Old Testament were saved. They think the special regulations that Israel was under in the Old Covenant—laws of clean and unclean, food regulations, sacrifices, etc.—were what you had to keep in order to go to heaven.

Because we don’t read and study the Old Testament, we fall prey to totally false notions like these. Because we don’t know the Old Testament, we have a hard time understanding the New Testament and what is new about the New Covenant. Because ignorance of the scriptures abounds, even from those called to teach it, we are in a very similar situation to the church at the time of the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15.

It was at this point in the history of the apostolic period that the false teaching of Judaizing began to take off. Satan had done his best to attack the church through external persecution, through the killing of Christians, but these efforts failed—the church continued to grow. So instead, he took a much more insidious tactic. He began to attack the church from the inside. False apostles went to the churches and taught that in order to truly be saved, one must come under the rule of the Old Covenant—you must be circumcised and keep the Law of Moses. In the Jerusalem Council, Paul and Peter successfully made the case to the rest of the apostles that, no, the Gentiles—the non-Jewish believers—were just as much a part of the faith as Jews were. Peter had witnessed the Holy Spirit come upon the Roman centurion Cornelius and his household in the exact same manner He came upon the apostles at Pentecost.

Paul had just preached to the Gentiles in Asia Minor and masses of them came to the faith. James and the rest of the apostles had concluded that the prohibitions on occult practices such as eating food sacrificed to demons, eating blood and animals strangled so as to retain their blood, and sexually immoral practices that are found in Leviticus 17-18 had always been binding on Jew and Gentile alike, and remain in force.

The Gentiles in the Old Covenant era were under a covenant with God, too—the Noahic Covenant. And so this determination by the apostles was that this part of Leviticus was a universal feature of God’s moral law, binding to all mankind in the Covenant He made with Noah. The rest, laws regarding food, clean and unclean, what clothing you could wear, and requirements to keep the liturgical calendar and feasts, were not binding upon Christians. The reign of the Old Covenant had come to an end with the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

For us today, we are in a similar position as the church in Acts. In many cases, we are in a much worse place. We, generally speaking, don’t have any idea what the Old Covenant was about or what the Old Covenant was for. The best way to explain it is to look at the Nazirite Vow (Number 6:1-21). Samson, Samuel, and Paul later in this book, take Nazirite vows. A Nazirite was a special holy warrior who took on special restrictions during the time of his vow. He wouldn’t drink wine or eat grapes, could not touch anything dead, and could not cut his hair. But when his warfare was over, he cut his hair, made an offering, and resumed normal life. This is the Old Covenant that Israel was under in a microcosm.

God had set apart Abraham with circumcision, and later the children of Israel with the laws of Moses with special regulations on clean and unclean, what they could and could not eat, even the clothes they could wear. The reason He did this is not because keeping these laws saved them, but because they were the people He chose to be His priests who led the nations of the world to Him. That is why they were under all these special regulations. And Jesus, the true Israel, came and kept this law perfectly, and kept the point of this law perfectly: going to the cross to die so the world could be saved. He did what Israel could not and would not do. And once His warfare was complete, the Nazirite cut his hair, so to speak. The Old Covenant had been fulfilled by Jesus Himself.

This is the point that the Book of Hebrews makes: you don’t need a priestly people because a new High Priest, not in the order of Aaron but of Melchizedek, the Gentile, was serving as High Priest and this High Priest would never die. The world is now in something like a redeemed Noahic covenant. All of mankind has access to God directly through Jesus.

So this is why it is so abominable to assert that Gentiles need to become Jews in order to be saved. The Jews thought they were the only saved people in the world, which was always false, but this error crept into the church subverting it. You must not go back to the Old Covenant which at that time was quickly passing away.

Understanding this is crucial in our day for several reasons. First, we don’t really get what the law is. God has revealed His eternal standards for righteousness in His Law. Modern antinomians—people who say there really is no law at all—will say that in the New Covenant, we are under grace not the law and so everything that God says is righteous and just in the Old Testament just gets thrown out.

Similarly, unbelieving mockers like to attack Christians who don’t understand their Bibles as well as they should saying “Why are you saying homosexuality is a sin? Don’t you know that right next to all the passages about homosexuality being a sin is stuff about not eating pork and shellfish and not wearing clothing with two kinds of fabric? You eat bacon so you can’t say anything bad about Drag Queen Story Hour.” But James and the Jerusalem Council answered this objection. They took out their highlighter to Leviticus and said “These are the special regulations that God put upon the priestly people” and with another color, they highlighted chapters 17 and 18 and said, “these are the laws for all of mankind for all time.” They answered these stupid objections 2000 years ago for us.

The second reason we need to understand this is because many Christians are very confused about the status of Jews today. You have many popular teachers on TV who will tell you “Yes, Jesus said, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life, no one comes to the Father except through Me,’ but the Jews are God’s chosen people so they can somehow be saved apart from Jesus.” That is entirely untrue. And in fact, it is a species of what the Judaizers taught, just in the other direction. Being Jewish does not save you. Having the Torah does not save you. Only Jesus saves you.

But many Christians today do not understand this, and so we are easily manipulated by all sorts of false teachings. We misunderstand the promise to Abraham and His Seed, that “I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you, and all the families of the earth will be blessed through you.” (Genesis 12:3) Paul makes very clear in Galatians that the Seed of Abraham is Christ, not those who reject Him (Galatians 3:16). Instead of being manipulated into wanting billions of dollars to flow to a foreign country, Christians should be concerned with Christ and His people being blessed.

Hebrews, written just before the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple tells us very clearly what the status of the Old Covenant is: In that, He says, “A new covenant,” He has made the first obsolete. Now what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away (Hebrews 8:13). The very locus of the Old Covenant, its absolute center and beating heart was the temple in Jerusalem. And when that temple fell, the Old Covenant was finished forever. There is no more Old Covenant left. All the promises God made to His people are fulfilled in Jesus Christ. “And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise” (Galatians 3:29).

That is the great purpose of the New Covenant that all the nations belong to Jesus and they must fear God and glorify Him. Jesus has accomplished what Israel could not, He completed her warfare and now sits on the throne of David forever. We must have the same perspective as the apostles: that the world is Christ’s and we must announce the victory of Christ’s kingdom everywhere.

We must search out the scriptures deeply. We must recover the knowledge of the scriptures that we have lost. To not see the Old Testament as some kind of historical appendix to the New Testament that you can read only if you are interested, but rather to see it as one complete book that is unified. The Old Testament shows us God’s eternal purposes for the world not just one nation. It shows us the priestly people awaiting the King and High Priest who would finally do what they could not. It shows us a God who always wanted all the nations, who from the very call of Abraham had declared that all the families of the world will be blessed through you and your Seed. That Seed of Abraham has come and that Seed reigns over the entire world right now. That the world belongs to Him and you play a role in the conquest of His Kingdom.

Copyright 2024 Pastor Andrew Isker