Who Can Understand God’s Prophetic Plan?

“But as for you, Daniel, conceal these words and seal up the book until the end of time; many will go back and forth, and knowledge will increase.”
– Daniel 12:4

“I tell you that He will bring about justice for them quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on the earth?”
– Luke 18:8

For most people studying the book of Daniel, the emphasis would be on the visions, the miracles, and perhaps unraveling the various numbers provided which describe the timing of the unfolding of God’s prophetic plan. In other words, the quest is often to determine the meaning of those things which, as of Daniel’s time at least, were sealed up. But Jesus offers what at first blush is a contrast to the quest for knowledge in stating that the important character trait He will be looking for at His Second Coming is faith. (Lk. 18:8) I would offer that if we were to study the book of Daniel looking for what we as believers are to personally apply just like any other portion of Scripture, we will accomplish both goals simultaneously. In other words, the greater treasure provided in the book of Daniel is that biblical insight and understanding is promised not as a gift to a privileged few granted a superior intellect, but to anyone attaining to greater faithfulness by putting God’s Word and ways into practice. Continue reading »

Are we going mad…once again?

by Ronnie Cohen

I think that there’s just so much that a normal person could put up with. We hear the sword rattling and ongoing rhetoric of the Iranians as they thrive to achieve nuclear power for “peaceful” purposes but under the same breath make no secrete of wiping Israel off the face of the earth. We hear the ongoing ranting of the Turkish government concerning their “peace” flotilla to help the poor besieged and suffering Gazans. Their “Love Boat” had terrorists from all the lands of the Middle East and were planning, in advance, a violent confrontation with the Israeli navy and, hoping, that someone gets killed so they can film it and send it to all the international press organizations. The only thing that was filmed was the beating of the Israeli unit as it boarded the ship. They were beaten and clubbed and still the Turkish govt. together with the rest of the Arab world and, unfortunately, many other nations, condemned the affair as “piracy, murder and a massacre”. Well, it’s good to see that the impartial United Nations has began an inquest into the affair.

Last week a number of rockets were fired by Hamas from Egyptian territory towards the gulf cities of Eilat and Aqaba. The resort city of Aqaba had one killed and many wounded. It was obvious who fired them but initially the Jordanian govt. refused to acknowledge that it was done by their Arab brethren. There comment was, “It was fired from somewhere in the west”. And if that wasn’t enough, Hamas makes a statement that Israel fired them in order to blame Hamas. Wait! Things get better! It’s been an exciting week!

Along the Israeli-Lebanon border an Israel group of soldiers were cutting fallen a tree that had fell on the Israeli fence from the other side. Two shots were fired from snipers in Lebanese territory killing the commanding officer and wounding another. The Israeli army swiftly retaliated by hitting a number of Lebanese army positions killing four, including press reporter (Gee, did he just happen to be in the neighborhood?) It was a major incident and obviously well planned by someone on the other side. The UN troops stepped in to calm the scene and actually made a statement in favor of Israel that they were in their own territory and the assault was unprovoked. Right away the Arab press backed the Lebanese story that Israeli troops and entered their territory and they were protecting their sovereignty against Israeli aggression. It seems that since the Israelis were in the right, most of the world kept silent and made no comment of the affair.

Now, besides all this distorted press there seems to be another matter of grave concern that really bothers me and I assume, many others. What’s the deal with the Muslims getting permission to build a 13 story mosque at “Ground Zero?” Is this insane or what? Of all places, why there? It’s a slap in the face to all the families who have lost their love ones there. It seems to me a very much “In your Face!” by the Islamic world. I can understand tolerance of other faiths in the Home of  “The Brave and Land of The Free” but this has gone far enough. But the OK came from Washington. Is anyone really surprised? It’s going to be an Islamic cultural center as well. I wonder if they’ll have a little exhibit of relics from 911.

I think much of the world is starting to lose their minds. I think there should be an awakening before it’s too late! Hey, maybe now the Islamic world will be tolerant enough to allow a 3rd. Temple built upon the Temple Mount? Time will tell.

Anti-Semitism Growing Rapidly in Tolerant Europe

The following is excerpted from “Jews Reluctantly Abandon Swedish City,” Haaretz.com, July 11, 2010: “At some point, the shouts of ‘Heil Hitler’ that often greeted Marcus Eilenberg as he walked to the 107-year-old Moorish-style synagogue in this port city forced the 32-year-old attorney to make a difficult, life-changing decision: Fearing for his family’s safety after repeated anti-Semitic incidents, Eilenberg reluctantly uprooted himself and his wife and two children, and moved to Israel in May. Sweden, a country long regarded as a model of tolerance, has, ironically, been a refuge for Eilenberg’s family. His paternal grandparents found a home in Malmo in 1945 after surviving the Holocaust. His wife’s parents came to Malmo from Poland in 1968 after the communist government there launched an anti-Semitic purge. But as in many other cities across Europe, a rapidly growing Muslim population living in segregated conditions that seem to breed alienation has mixed toxically with the anger directed at Israeli policies and actions by those Muslims–and by many non-Muslims–to all but transform the lives of local Jews. Like many of their counterparts in other European cities, the Jews of Malmo report being subjected increasingly to threats, intimidation and actual violence as stand-ins for Israel. … A continent-wide study, conducted by the Institute for Interdisciplinary Research on Conflict and Violence at the University of Bielefeld in Germany, released in December 2009, found that … 37.4% agreed with this statement: ‘Considering Israel’s policy, I can understand why people do not like Jews.’ … 86-year-old Judith Popinski says she is no longer invited to schools that have a large Muslim presence to tell her story of surviving the Holocaust. Popinski found refuge in Malmo in 1945. Until recently, she told her story in Malmo schools as part of their Holocaust studies program. Now, some schools no longer ask Holocaust survivors to tell their stories, because Muslim students treat them with such disrespect, either ignoring the speakers or walking out of the class. ‘Malmo reminds me of the anti-Semitism I felt as a child in Poland before the war,’ she said.”

Med Venlig Hilsen

The Real Problem is that it is Getting Colder

“‘Many false prophets will arise and will mislead many. Because lawlessness is increased, most people’s love will grow cold.’”
— Matthew 24:11–12

Something that has burdened my heart for more than 20 years now is why so few followers of biblically false personalities claiming to be “Christian” divorce themselves from that figure when it is proved that that such are false either by their fraudulent activities, when they prophesy something in the name of the Lord which fails to come true, and/or their own teaching laid side-by-side with God’s Word is proven to be nothing short of heresy. For example:

• The local hospital holds a press conference to confirm that contrary to Todd Bentley’s claims, there was not a single confirmation that any of the so-called miracles performed were true, directly contradicting his assertions to the contrary. On top of that he leaves his wife and children for the proverbial church secretary and yet none of these things persuade his followers of the truth about this heretic.

• You can print out entire websites devoted to documenting the false prophecies uttered by Benny Hinn for the last 15 years. (The really short list is comprised of those which came true.) No one leaves; he is bigger than ever.

• The public exposure of Ted Haggard’s secret life of sex and drugs should have come as no surprise after the years of discernment ministries documenting his false teachings. Nobody in his following slapped their head, repented, and saw this as evidence to change their ways on either count. Like a recurring movie monster who simply makes another sequel, people are once again flocking in significant numbers to him.

With the huge number of “discernment ministries” filling cyberspace who daily document and warn about these and an embarrassingly large host of others, why is it that the truth rarely seems to work? Remember…I am not talking about the unsaved outside the church; this is a phenomenon limited to those within the church. Continue reading »

The Value of Signs and Wonders

Nebuchadnezzar the king to all the peoples, nations, and men of every language that live in all the earth: “May your peace abound! It has seemed good to me to declare the signs and wonders which the Most High God has done for me.

“How great are His signs
And how mighty are His wonders!
His kingdom is an everlasting kingdom
And His dominion is from generation to generation. (Daniel 4:1-3)

To have a Gentile write in Scripture about his coming to faith in the One True God is an attention grabber in and of itself, but whereas so many people throughout Scripture are documented as remaining unchanged spiritually after witnessing a sign or wonder, here we have someone who actually testifies to being changed by them. But if you just flopped open your Bible and began reading Daniel 4 you would probably think Nebuchadnezzar is referring to the signs and wonders connected to the events in this chapter and miss the fact that these are actually the culmination of a series of signs and wonders. Yes, Nebuchadnezzar witnessed some very amazing signs and wonders recorded previously in Daniel 2 and 3 but the fact is that he did not allow them to change his heart. No, having missed the greater application of what God was teaching through those other signs and wonders, Nebuchadnezzar’s testimony here is that after one final round of signs and wonders he finally “gets it”. Continue reading »

Love in the Last Days

“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. (John 13:34)

A “commandment” is a very special thing within Scripture. I know that we sort of treat everything within Scripture as a commandment in view of the fact that all of God’s Word must be obeyed, but in reality a commandment is a very specialized thing. A commandment is something God has specifically ascribed as a responsibility we must maintain in order to live in a covenant relationship with Him. In the Old Testament a covenant relationship not only meant keeping the core Ten Commandments initially given by the very hand of God Himself, but Jewish scholars will quickly point out that the Torah actually contains a total of 613 commandments which must all be maintained. Jesus summarized them all as loving God with all one’s heart and loving one’s neighbor as their self: “On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets”. (Matthew 22:40) So how do we know for sure that Jesus was not merely giving us commandment number 614? Because from this point on, no one ever again quotes from the commandments of the first tablet; they only quote this new commandment as the fulfillment of the whole Law. Continue reading »

Street Preachers Killed In United States

Saturday, February 6, 2010 (8:39 am)
By Worthy News North America  Service

WASHINGTON, USA (Worthy News)– A religious liberty group warned Saturday, February 6, that “Anti-Christian hostility is getting increasingly deadly” in the United States after two street preachers were shot and killed by a teenager who apparently opposed their message.< .p>

“The increasing demonization of Christians in our culture makes some feel its open season on Christians,” said Gary Cass of the Christian Anti-Defamation Commission.

Tite Sufra, 24 (pictured above), and Stephen Ocean (pictures below), 23, were shot and killed late Saturday, January 30, in Boynton Beach in the U.S. State of Florida, where they evangelized, after meeting 18-year-old Jeriah Woody, local police said. Continue reading »

Twickenham MP Vince Cable ‘disappointed’ by ruling in Nadia Eweida case

3:49pm Friday 12th February 2010
By Chris Wickham

Twickenham’s MP has been left saddened and disappointed after a constituent lost a Court of Appeal ruling the wearing of a cross at work.

Nadia Eweida, from Strawberry Hill, was told in 2006 she could not wear the Christian symbol around her neck while working at Heathrow as a check-in operator for British Airways (BA).

Ms Eweida, of Strawberry Hill Close, was sent home when she refused to remove the cross on September 20, 2006, and was off work without pay until February 2007. Continue reading »

UK Elites Want to Muzzle Christians

February 9th, 2010
Don Hank
Laiglesforum

The UK political elites have come up with a legal scheme almost identical in its content to our EEO (Equal Employment Opportunity) law. Anyone who keeps up with alerts coming out of Christian, libertarian or conservative groups in Europe will easily see that the same fascistic programs are being pursued over there as they are here in the US. That will not surprise anyone who knows about the international left and its agenda and the scope of its action. But, sadly, few of us do. Continue reading »

Eschatology and Double Cross

“The Theology of Disillusionment”

by James Jacob Prasch

In the aftermath of the Hasmonean Period in the century before the birth of Jesus, Israel quickly degenerated from the spiritual revival of the Maccabees and the national resurgence that followed to causing itself to being sucked in to a bad deal that had tremendous religious and political ramifications. Her own leaders entered into a treaty, trusting people who should never have been trusted because they looked to man instead of to God. Part of their motives were economic and strategic in terms of their national security. There were also elements of cultural leanings towards Rome as their had been towards Greece before the Maccabees. At the time of the Roman triumvirate, the Roman general Pompei arrived from Rome offering Israel the protection of the Roman Empire and economic advantage. The spiritual corruption of the Levitical priesthood, and what emerged as the Sanhedrin, predisposed the national leadership to enter into a concordant not ordained of God. At one point the High Priest, John Huricanus, had himself proclaimed king, violating the Scriptural prohibition that a king must be a descendant of David from the tribe of Judah while the High Priest had to be a descendant of Aaron from the tribe of Levi. The Levitical priesthood became a political monarchy in a union of what in modern terms we would call “church and state”, that God’s Word prohibited even in the Old Testament. As Rome’s sphere of power blossomed and new potential threats bloomed, Israel’s leaders, both religious and political, with popular backing of much of the public, pressed for the protection of Rome. Plainly, Israel had forgotten the lessons of Isaiah 30-31 during the reign of Hezekiah when God castigated those pressing Judah to seek protection against Assyria from Egypt. Continue reading »

The Last Days: Not a Test of Knowledge But Faith

But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come. For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power; Avoid such men as these. For among them are those who enter into households and captivate weak women weighed down with sins, led on by various impulses, always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so these men also oppose the truth, men of depraved mind, rejected in regard to the faith. But they will not make further progress; for their folly will be obvious to all, just as Jannes’s and Jambres’s folly was also.

— 2 Timothy 3:1–9 (NASB)

I have never doubted that sin and wickedness and every aspect of evil would increase as the Day of the Lord draws closer. We are warned in Scripture of the particular intensity of Satan’s wrath to come when he is thrown down to the earth in the waning days leading up to Christ’s return. So in the course of my life whenever I have read passages like this I have thought, “How awful things on earth are going to be in the Last Days for those who don’t know Christ.” But what I did not realize in my youth which has become painfully clear in my twilight is that everything spoken of here has already begun to occur, and it is not limited to non-believers. Every single behavior listed here has been adopted by a host of people claiming the title “Christian” and operating within the walls of the church – in stunning depth and not simply as an aberration here and there. Is there a Bible-believing, born-again Christian with even an ounce of discernment who does not recognize that the Great Apostasy – the “falling away” – signaling the imminent return of Christ is not already underway? Continue reading »

The Same Priesthood Now as Then

“For the lips of a priest should preserve knowledge, and men should seek instruction from his mouth; for he is the messenger of the LORD of hosts. But as for you, you have turned aside from the way; you have caused many to stumble by the instruction; you have corrupted the covenant of Levi,” says the LORD of hosts. “So I also have made you despised and abased before all the people, just as you are not keeping My ways but are showing partiality in the instruction. (Malachi 2:7-9)

The New Testament explains that the hereditary priesthood of the Old Covenant has been replaced by every participant in the New Covenant. (1 Pe. 2:5; 9) And so I cannot help but wonder that just as Israel so often serves as a reminder to the church in general of the nature of its relationship to Christ, so the Levitical priesthood might provide examples of right and wrong personal service to Christ. In this regard the book of Malachi can either be quite enlightening or particularly disturbing. The last book of the Old Testament sets the tone for the spiritual environment leading up to the first arrival of the Messiah and serves as an example of what it will be like leading up to His second and final arrival. One of the most visible problems is that spiritual leadership among God’s people became so corrupt that God begins to reject them so that they lose all public credibility with everyone – the saved and unsaved alike. Continue reading »

College Thought Police Enforce Global Values

By Mary Ann Collins
December 7, 2009

“The way to redefine a word is to get the new definition repeated as often as possible…. This, so far as words are concerned, is the public opinion battle for belief in your definitions, and not those of the opposition. A consistent, repeated effort is the key to any success with this technique of propaganda.” (L. Ron Hubbard, founder of Scientology) ^[1] Continue reading »

A Picture Paints 1000 Words

The nations conspire…the kings of the earth take their stand…against the Lord – Psalm 2:1-2 (also Psalm 74:8; Psalm 79:1-7 and especially Psalm 83:1-5. )

Left to right: Obama, Solana (EU), Ban Ki-moon (UN), Ahmadinejad (Iran), Netanyahu (Israel)

As the nations come against the Lord and His people, which side will you stand on?

Assaults on Faith and Family Part 3

The Ominous “Success”of Re-Education

by Berit Kjos
October 5, 2009

“The purpose of education and the schools is to change the thoughts, feelings and actions of students.” ^[1]

“As the home and church decline in influence… schools must begin to provide adequately for the emotional and moral development of children. …The school… must assume a direct responsibility for the attitudes and values of child development. The child advocate, psychologist, social technician, and medical technician should all reach aggressively into the community, send workers out to children’s homes….” ” Continue reading »