judgment – Page 6

bible, days of lot, gay kiss sparks outrage, homosexuality, jesus, judgment

Gay kiss sparks outrage

Posted on October 24, 2011 by elizabethprata

Lots to discuss here.

Homosexual kiss at school assembly prompts student walk-out, parental fury

“Members of the football team stomped out of a Hartford, Connecticut, high school assembly when a pro-homosexual advocacy play featured two boys kissing on stage. When the actors locked lips, reports Vanessa de la Torre for the Hartford Courant newspaper, “a piercing clamor rang through the auditorium. “There were screams and loud voices and a bit of feigned or real disgust. Dozens of students, mostly male and a few in their Owls football jerseys, hurried out of their rows and walked out. A few jumped over seats to leave.”

The play was a fantasy portraying the world as entirely homosexual, and the few heterosexuals that existed were in the closet, ashamed of their non-gayness. Of course, we know satan’s agenda is to aim for exactly that. He comes to destroy the family to destroy the purity of marital sexual unions between the God-ordained one woman-one man inside of a marriage that God outlined for us. His agenda is to introduce perversity in all arenas and to saturate the culture with anything sexual goes.

It was good to see that there was a furor over the perverted display of males kissing in an auditorium where impressionable youth were attending. It was even nicer to see that it was in a school in New England, and not even the bible belt. The comment that ‘all the play was trying to do was instill a sense of empathy toward gays and lesbians,” was replied to by the principal that “our kids are not there yet.” Well, good.

While we have empathy for gays who are in sin as we do for any person caught in sin, we do not celebrate sin. We do not accord it a normalcy. We do not allow it to pass without comment. And when it occurs in the church, any sin, any church, it defiles the church. Immorality in a church must be judged. (1 Corinthians 5:1-12) while immorality outside of the church will be judged by Jesus.

I listened to the trailer for the documentary “Agenda: Grinding America Down” and in it the statement was made that in just 40 years we have gone from Norman Rockwell’s America to Hugh Hefner’s America. So true. Within one generation the nation’s morals have completely swapped, and who is to blame for that? Not the president, not the government’s policies, not the parents so much, but satan. We fight not against the president. We fight not against the politicians’ policies. We fight not against parents or leaders or bosses. We fight against powers and principalities and spiritual rulers of the heavenly realms (Eph 6:12). Satan knows what God expects and as a result he does the opposite. (John 10:10). Look how much we have let him.

Jesus mused to the Disciples that just prior to His Second Coming “will the Son of Man find faith upon the earth?” (Luke 18:8). Of course He knew the answer: the answer was no, not so much faith at all. He said as a matter of fact, that it will be as it was in the Days of Lot. (Luke 17:28-29). So, what were the Days of Lot like?

Lot was Abraham’s nephew who decided to go live near Sodom, (Gen 13:10-13) the worst city there ever was or ever will be, except for Babylon. Sodom and Gomorrah’s depravity had reached such a level that there was an outcry against the cities and their sin was a very grave. (Gen 18:20). The angels that had ‘come down’ to see what the outcry was about and to judge the cities. However all the men of the city, from every quarter, surrounded the house, demanding that Lot present the “men” (angels) so that they could be raped. The perverted lust was very real and had turned the men into a mob, with violent rape threats made against Lot when Lot refused(Gen 19:4-5) The door was bulging with the pressure of the men trying to get at the fresh meat of new men to rape. (Gen 19:9).

Their perverted lust was so great that even after the angels struck the men blind, they still tried to get at them! (Gen 19:11). The mob wore themselves out trying to find the door.

The lesson here is that proper lust, when perverted, is a sin and sin, as we know, leads you. You become a slave to it. (John 8:34). The story of Sodom is one that shows us the bottom of the pit of where sin leads: to an out of control person and then to judgment.

Expand that picture of the men trying to get into the door where fresh men were staying, with a mob blindly clawing their way to the door and trying to batter it down. That will be the scene many times over when the Holy Spirit Restrainer is removed from the earth at the Rapture and men’s passions and perversions get out of control during the Tribulation. The days of Lot.

I’m glad to see a semblance of restraint in Connecticut at that assembly-play and an outcry against such blatant sins. And I assure you, the outcry was not because the audience lacked empathy for the gays and lesbians portrayed in the play and by extension, all gays and lesbians, it was because there are still some people left who say such things are sins, and not to be tolerated. And let me assure you of this, the play organizer and writer was not trying to instill a sense of empathy for gays and lesbians, he was trying to desensitize us to the potent effects of perversion, to normalize it. I’m glad there are still some people around who just say no to sin’s drug of perversion and depravity.
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judgment, occupy wall street, sin

Occupy Wall Street: The Entitlement Generation

Posted on October 12, 2011 by elizabethprata

In 2008, Obama got elected and the economy crashed. Both of those events’ later dissections showed us that there was rampant voter fraud, and rampant government and banking fraud. People may become disappointed when their favored candidate loses, but overall acceptance of the system remains intact for one important reason: they trust it.

In 2009 people started to get angry. Their trust that though the people within the system may be flawed, the overall system is a good one was being tested. Scandals from Lehman Brothers in the form of outrageous bonuses and handouts and bailouts, to other banking institutions’ revelations of rampant corruption, mortgage fraud, insurance fraud, nepotism and favoritism, and general malfeasance took root as a germ of anger in the American psyche. We don’t mind the rich getting richer, as long as they do it fairly. The American Dream was still alive, then.

As more news came out about these things, the American people began to get really angry. CNBC Pundit Rick Santelli seemed to capture the spark of anger and ignite it in his soon to be dubbed “Shout Heard Round the World” a reference to the phrase “The Shot heard Round the World” regarding the historical events at Lexington and Concord which ignited the American Revolution.

Santelli’s rant was 4 minutes of reverberating truth that captured the hard feelings about the injustice and corruption in the American system of governance and finance, and it sparked the Tea Party. For the first time, Americans began to think of a wholesale, instant change to the system, rather than incremental change from within the system. Protests were ongoing from 2009 to 2010.

Then in 2011 a series of other protests started, called “Occupy Wall Street.” Occupy Wall Street is an ongoing series of demonstrations in New York City based in Zuccotti Park, formerly “Liberty Plaza Park”. The protest was originally called for by the Canadian activist group Adbusters; some compare the activity to the Arab Spring movement (particularly the Tahrir Square protests in Cairo, which initiated the 2011 Egyptian revolution). (source Wikipedia).

The suspicion of the inherent corruption in the system had morphed to overt anger and calls for violence, something the Tea Party had never ventured so far as to do. The Occupy Wall Street (OWS) anger is evidently deepening, while at the same time, the focus of the anger is widening from mail in a tea bag to Congress to illustrate that it is still the people in charge, to peaceful protests at known locations against big government, to the OWS general mayhem of protesting against social and economic inequality, corporate greed, and the influence of corporate money and lobbyists on government, among other concerns. Many other concerns.

The OWS protests have been characterized by arrests, poor judgment, and violence and calls for violence. They are growing, and the world leaders are taking notice, as the Washington Post reports. The protests have grown in scope and momentum over the last 3 and a half weeks, spreading across the US and now to other nations.

Speaking of divergent demands, in an ongoing series in the National Review on the Occupy Wall Street protests, the latest posting shows us this:
An Occupy Wall Street protester wants college paid for because that’s what he wants.
“But nothing had prepared me for meeting this gentleman, who wants his college paid for because, well . . . that’s what he wants. He has perfectly articulated a sentiment I have heard repeatedly but was struggling to distill with anything like the clarity he achieved: That being that if there is something someone doesn’t like about their life, someone else somewhere should change it. And if they don’t, well then, the American Dream is dead:”

Though we know that in the Tribulation, peace will be taken from the earth, (Revelation 6:4), and that the very wealthy will live in gross luxury while most of the world starves, (Rev 18), there is a deeper root for the current OWS protests. The Christian Post explains:

“Like most protests, the Occupy Wall Street folks are better at identifying something that is wrong than identifying a way forward that is right. But even if the protesters don’t understand much about financial economics, they have a clear sense that something is wrong. That something, however, lies deeper than the behavior of a relative handful of Wall Street moguls. That something, I believe, is a sense of material entitlement that has crept into the American psyche. This sense of material entitlement has infected our personal choices, our politics, and our financial system.”

“The crisis has spiritual roots. Jesus warns his followers, “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions” (Luke 12:15, NIV). But a syncretistic form of Christianity has emerged in our country, a syncretism that mingles genuine New Testament Christianity with the consumer materialism of the American Dream.”

The reality is, ““In America, you are the 99%, but in the rest of the world, you are still the 1%,” reads one image that’s been making the rounds, juxtaposing the protesters with starving African children. … “As it turns out, the bottom 99 percent of the United States doesn’t make the top 1 percent of household incomes worldwide — but it comes surprisingly close. Branko Milanovic, lead economist for the World Bank research group, sent me this comparative analysis based on household income or consumption surveys worldwide, adjusted for purchasing power differences. Those at the 34th percentile of income in the United States are at the 90th percentile globally, and those at the 50th percentile in the United States are at the 93rd percentile globally. Even the very poorest Americans — those at the 2nd percentile of income in the United States — are at the 62nd percentile globally.”

In other words, by world standards, we are rich, even the poorest of us. Yet we want what we want. Like that young man in the video above idling his time away at the protests with a hand made sign asking someone to pay his tuition.

That mindset is not one which sacrifices for others, as the bible calls us to do. That mindset is opposed to the notion that we are poor in spirit and not worthy of anything good except what God in His grace gives us from above. It is the result of a corrupt American spirit rejecting Christianity because Christianity doesn’t give us anything and expects us to give what we have to others. The bible is clear that God does not promise ease to us. The notion of love under trying circumstances, giving, sacrificing, and humility is at odds with what we see on the streets these days. The nobility of a Christian character being purified through a Godly life is anathema to American entitlement culture today.

However, the last shall be first. The persevering will find satisfaction. The troubled will be eased. The tearful shall weep no more. “Shout for joy, you heavens; rejoice, you earth; burst into song, you mountains! For the LORD comforts his people and will have compassion on his afflicted ones.” (Is 49:13).

Entitlements. Pfffft. I’m only entitled to judgment and hell for my crimes against Jesus. But He pardoned them at the cross and rose again to extend that pardon to me. I believed on Him and now have been adopted into the family of God.

These protests may or may not spark a Second American Revolution, but we know for sure that the Tribulation will bring sin to the fore, and will be rife with violence as peace is taken from the earth. By His grace all believers can remain apart from the corruption of the world, knowing in secure promise that we will one day be living in a perfectly just, pure, and wholesome system of finance, governance and lifestyle for all eternity.

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four horsemen, judgment, revelation

World’s 7 Billionth Person Arriving Soon

Posted on September 24, 2011 by elizabethprata

From the Hindu Press recently, they report that the world’s 7 billionth person will soon be added to the world’s population. It is a really interesting (short) article. First the article and then the prophetic math.

“Before long–if not already–a baby will be born who will take the global population above 7 billion for the first time. No one is sure; no statistician would be prepared to say exactly when this event takes place.”

“The rate of population growth has soared over the course of recorded history. When Jesus was born, there are thought to have been around 300 million people on earth. The one-billion mark was reached only after 1800. As many as a billion have been added in just the last 11 years.”

“David Bloom of the Harvard School of Public Health speaks of the multitude of unpredictable factors in estimating future population growth: “Among them are infectious diseases, war, scientific progress, political change and our capacity for global cooperation.”

“It is generally assumed that population growth will tail off, with U.N. predictions for 2050 ranging from 8.0 to 10.5 billion. Assuredly the proportions will shift among the continents, driven by high birth rates in Asia and Africa. India (now at 1.2 billion) will soon take the lead from China (currently at 1.3 billion). Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country today with 162 million, is expected to have almost 750 million by the middle of the century.”

“Increasing population creates greater pressure on land, food and energy resources, already a source of contention between countries. Water wars are predicted between neighbouring countries. The environmental organization WWF estimates that with current usage patterns, the population of 2050 would require the resources of three planets. We will be forced to change our habits. “In the next 40 years we will have to produce the same amount of food as over the last 8,000 years,” the WWF’s Jason Clay believes. He notes that far too much is still thrown away in the industrialized world.”

If we look at the information in this article through a prophetic lens, and reduce the figures to match certain verses, the results will be startling. Revelation 6 begins the wrath (judgments) and the judgments come quickly. Remember, there are 7 seal judgments, 7 trumpets, and 7 bowls, not to mention maybe 7 thunders to be completed within 7 years. So in Revelation 6:8’s fourth seal, the 4th Horseman of the Apocalypse is unleashed to kill a quarter of the world’s population. A quarter of 7 billion is one billion seven hundred fifty million people dead in one swoop. The number of people remaining will be five billion two hundred fifty million.

Then a short while later in Revelation 9:18, “A third of mankind was killed by the three plagues of fire, smoke and sulfur that came out of their mouths.” These are the demons unloosed from the abyss. So if a third of the remaining population is killed, that means one billion seven hundred fifty million die in one swoop. This leaves three billion five hundred million. We started with 7 billion. Now we have 3 billion. But wait, there’s more!

Ezekiel 38-39 describe a future battle between Iran/Russia/Turkey/Sudan/Libya/Armenia and others, against what turns out to be God.. Many scholars believe that this battle will take place before the tribulation begins, or at least immediately at the threshold. Why?

Nathan Jones explains, “Ezekiel 39:1-8 describes the tremendous aftermath of the foiled Gog-Magog invasion. Before the massive coalition army can fire a single shot from their launching point on the mountains of Israel, God steps in and supernaturally devastates not only the invaders but also their homelands as well. Russia, Iran, Turkey, the ‘Stans, Sudan, Libya and other Muslim nations are reduced to a wasteland, and only one-sixth of their combined army remains, exiled to Siberia (Joel 2:20). For the nearly three-quarter million to a billion corpses left by God’s hand to rot in the land of Israel, the biggest cleanup process in all of history is ready to begin. Ezekiel 39:9-20 unearths the gory funeral purification ritual.”

Ezekiel 39:9-10 states that it takes 7 years to clean up the dead. There are so many dead it takes that long to bury them. How many dead? As Mr Jones mentioned, some estimates are as high as a billion. His essay continues with how he arrived at the math. So now we are down to 2 billion left alive on earth.

Then of course, there are deaths occurring from fallout from the wars, famines, natural causes, etc and we can see quite rapidly the stark reality of life on earth during the Tribulation when Jesus says that if He delayed there would be no flesh left on earth. (Mt 24:22).

But He will not delay, and prior to any of this beginning, He will snatch His children up from the world to be with Him. Glorious! Judgment is coming and it will be devastating physically, spiritually, and as we see from the above, numerically. But Glory is coming too, and if you wish to be on the side of Light, you must repent and appeal to the Judge for a pardon for your sins. Do not delay, or you might soon become a forgotten statistic.
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end time, hell, judgment, sins

God is gracious, He won’t chase you forever

Posted on September 12, 2011 by elizabethprata

Did you know that you already know about God? That you have known about God since you were small? Yes, you have! God put knowledge of Him inside us all. “Because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them.” We have a God-intuition, a sensitivity to a higher being that He puts within us, and goes a step further, and makes it evident.

He also makes Himself known another way, as well.

“For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.” (Romans 1:20)

What the verse is saying is that God’s attributes of creativity, intelligence, and love in preparing for us such a beautiful planet to live on are clearly seen simply by looking around. The verse also says that no one will have an excuse because it is so clear that God made the world.

He made this place for us, He loves us, and He made a way for us to be reconciled to Him through Jesus, and be made righteous. He does not like it when you know all this, and you deny Him anyway.

“For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness.” (Romans 1:18)

But wait! There’s more! He draw us to Him, too!! “And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me.” (John 12:32). What He is saying here is that “After I shall have died and risen again, by the preaching of my word and the influence of my Spirit, I shall attract and illuminate both Jews and Gentiles.”

“The LORD appeared to us in the past, saying: “I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with loving-kindness.” (Jeremiah 31:3)

When men suppress this knowledge, His wrath is revealed. Why? Because He also draws us to Himself, as well. “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up at the last day.” (John 6:44). It takes work to suppress all this knowledge. It is hard to blot out the knowledge intrinsic within us, and external to us, and is being used to draw us to Him as well. Therefore those who suppress it, earn His wrath.

Wow. He goes to lengths and extremes to ensure that all people on earth have an equal chance to respond to Him. However, we know that some reject. Those who continually reject Him don’t have a lifetime to keep their option open. At some point it closes. Then He hardens your heart against Him.

“For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, ‘For this very purpose I raised you up, to demonstrate My power in you, and that My name might be proclaimed throughout the whole earth.’ So then He has mercy on whom He desires, and He hardens whom He desires.” (Romans 9:17-18)

He also gives you over to your preferences, whichever sin it is that you are indulging in besides repenting and turning to Him. When you persist in remaining in your sin, after an unknown period of time, He lets you remain in them and refrains from drawing you to Him any longer. See the following block of text from Romans 1:21-28:

“For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures. Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, so that their bodies would be dishonored among them. For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.”

“For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural, and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error. And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper,”

Three times it says that God gave them over. He gives you over to your lusts, your degrading passions, and/or your depraved mind.

Let’s use an earthly metaphor to make this initial pass at understanding the concept of hardening your heart and giving you over.

When you send in a resume for a job, and the prospective employer likes you, he calls you to set up an interview. If you receive the message on your machine, and ignore it, the prospective employer may become perplexed but if he is really interested in hiring you he may call you again. If you ignore his message a second time, how many more times do you think he will call you back? None? Likely. Even if he calls a third time and you exhibit no interest, it is more than probable that your prospects for employment in that company are now nil. And that’s OK. That is normal, and we give no quarrel to the employer because the lack of interest on the part of the potential employee was so firmly demonstrated.

Let’s say you had a date. You thought it went well, and you called back for a second date. But you do not receive a response. You may try again, and possibly again. How many times, really, will you continue to call, asking for a second date? Three? Four? Too many times and we’d likely call the police and resister a complaint for stalking. So it is normal to quit calling after one or two or possibly three tries.

So why do we charge God with abnormal behavior when He stops calling at the door of our hearts after a lifetime, decades of rejection? He instills within our hearts knowledge of Him, He imbues into the world knowledge of His attributes, and then He draws us to Him…over and over through the course of years. He goes the distance. We have no quarrel with Him when in His sovereign knowledge and power He decides to harden whom He will harden.

When you continually reject Him you run the risk of being given over to your sins, or having your heart hardened. As Barnes Notes says, “None can come at first, unless he be drawn by the Father; and none can continue, unless he continue under those sacred influences which God gives only to those who do not receive his first graces in vain.”

Are you failing to receive His graces? Do not think in your narcissism that God is a doormat beholden to pursuing you your whole life. He isn’t and He won’t. The problem is, we don’t know when the moment comes for each person who has rejected Him. I implore you not to take a chance. Don’t put it off until tomorrow. Your death may come. Therefore you should “Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them;” (Ecclesiastes 12:1). In other words, sooner rather than later. The risk is too great.

Just what is a person risking who puts off reconciling their sins with the Creator before they die? If they die in their sins, or have rejected Him frequently enough and are hardened and given over, also to die in sin, then “It is everlasting wrath. It would be dreadful to suffer this fierceness and wrath of Almighty God one moment; but you must suffer it to all eternity. There will be no end to this exquisite horrible misery. When you look forward, you shall see a long for ever, a boundless duration before you, which will swallow up your thoughts, and amaze your soul; and you will absolutely despair of ever having any deliverance, any end, any mitigation, any rest at all. You will know certainly that you must wear out long ages, millions of millions of ages, in wrestling and conflicting with this almighty merciless vengeance; and then when you have so done, when so many ages have actually been spent by you in this manner, you will know that all is but a point to what remains. So that your punishment will indeed be infinite. Oh, who can express what the state of a soul in such circumstances is! All that we can possibly say about it, gives but a very feeble, faint representation of it; it is inexpressible and inconceivable: For “who knows the power of God’s anger?” (Sinners in the hands of an angry God“)

The call to your heart is ringing now. Answer it. Please.
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end of days, end time, hurricane irene, judgment, prophecy, warnings

The costs from Hurricane Irene are outweighed by the cost of not repenting

Posted on August 30, 2011 by elizabethprata

That natural disasters are on the rise is unquestionable. The data is the data and the facts are the facts. The debate is not whether they are increasing, but is over the cause of the increase. Some people say that these disasters are increasing because of changes in the magnetosphere, which, they say, caused the aflockalypse of bird deaths at the beginning of this year. Others say the cause is from government conspiracies such as HAARP, or High Frequency Active Auroral research Program which purposely disturbs a segment of our ionosphere and measures the effects. HAARP really exists but conspiracy theorists posit that it is being used for dark purposes. Others say it is global warming, such as the author of this first article. But whatever the cause (and it is GOD) the effects are real.

In this article by Bill McKibben, he attributes the recent increase of disasters to global warming but in his article he totes up the effects, which are devastating:

“Remember—this year has already seen more billion-dollar weather-related disasters than any year in U.S. history. Last year was the warmest ever recorded on planet Earth. Arctic sea ice is near all-time record lows. Record floods from Pakistan to Queensland to the Mississippi basin; record drought from the steppes of Russia to the plains of Texas. Just about the only trauma we haven’t had are hurricanes plowing into the U.S., but that’s just luck—last year was a big storm year, but they all veered out to sea. This year we’re already on letter I—which in a normal year we don’t get to until well into October.”

But then Irene hit.

In an incredible decision, all Mass Transit in NY City was closed in advance of Hurricane Irene, costing millions. There were no flights Sunday at the 5 NY-area airports; 9000 flights were canceled, and the George Washington Bridge lower level was closed in both directions. Amazing. What an incredible shut-down for our largest city. But that was not the worst of it. Upstate NY and Vermont were hammered.

Hurricane Irene flood damage stuns inland areas
“Brattleboro, Vt. — Rippling creeks became deadly deluges. Bridges collapsed into roiling waves. Dry streets turned into fast-rising lakes, closing in around stunned towns. While Irene – first a hurricane and then a tropical storm – unleashed its initial share of damage along the sandy shores of the Eastern Seaboard, by Monday its greatest impact was felt far from the coastline, in places such as landlocked Vermont and the bucolic mountains of upstate New York. Even so, more than 48 hours after Irene made landfall early Saturday, about 4.5 million people remained without power in 13 states from North Carolina to Maine. The death toll jumped to at least 40, according to the Associated Press, and some rivers had yet to crest.”

“Hundreds remained stranded in communities cut off by washed-out roads, including at least 2,500 residents of remote Hatteras Island in North Carolina, where severed utility lines also left them without power. The only access to the island was via a ferry limited to emergency use. Police in suburban Parsippany, N.J., had to rescue dozens of people who became trapped in two hotels Monday when a nearby lake spilled over its banks and sent enough water into the streets and hotel parking lots to swallow vehicles. Evacuees included guests who had fled to the hotels after heeding advice to evacuate their homes in advance of Irene.”

The economic cost of the advanced protection and evacuations, the lost revenue from closed businesses, and the cleanup afterwards is incalculable.

Joel Rosenberg wrote a good piece this week titled “This was a wake up call: American East Coast shaken by Hurricane Irene.” Joel write in part–

“This was a wake up call. At its peak, Hurricane Irene was the size of the State of Texas. Had it remained a Category 3 storm — or even increased in intensity — it could have created the greatest natural disaster catastrophe in the history of the United States. Fortunately, that’s not what happened. The storm is now over, and even as the clean up begins, critics are saying it was hyped up and “overblown” by government officials and weather forecasters. But did the experts really badly “misjudge” Irene, or did God hear people’s prayers and have mercy on us by weakening the storm faster than the experts had predicted? I think both are true. I am grateful to the Lord for His grace and mercy on us. I am also grateful to the forecasters and the government leaders who warned us as best they could and took decisive action to put public safety first. As I have written about several times in recent months, the Lord is shaking us, trying to wake us up and get us to focused back on Him and on His Word. We need to recommit ourselves to prayer, fasting and reading the Bible and get our hearts right with the Lord. For Bible prophecy tells us that far greater storms are coming as we steadily approach the Day of the Lord.”

And another storm has formed. She is on the same track as Irene. Her name is Katia… I’ll repeat Joel’s good advice: “We need to recommit ourselves to prayer, fasting and reading the Bible and get our hearts right with the Lord. For Bible prophecy tells us that far greater storms are coming as we steadily approach the Day of the Lord.”

bible jesus, end times, judgment, prophecy

A strange news article from Texas: TX reservoir turns blood red

Posted on August 2, 2011 by elizabethprata

“This is the original headline:

“End Times? Texas Lake Turns Blood-Red“
“A Texas lake that turned blood-red this summer may not be a sign of the End Times, but probably is the end of a popular fishing and recreation spot. A drought has left the OC Fisher Reservoir in San Angelo State Park in West Texas almost entirely dry. The water that is left is stagnant, full of dead fish — and a deep, opaque red. The color has some apocalypse believers suggesting that OC Fisher is an early sign of the end of the world, but Texas Parks and Wildlife Inland Fisheries officials say the bloody look is the result of Chromatiaceae bacteria, which thrive in oxygen-deprived water. “It’s just heartbreaking,” said Charles Cruz, a fish and wildlife technician with Texas Parks and Wildlife in San Angelo, Tex.”
“Blood red reservoir”
“Texas is experiencing major drought this summer, with 75 percent of the state’s area in an “exceptional” drought, the highest level, according to the National Drought Mitigation Center (NDMC). The state had hoped for some relief from Tropical Storm Don last week, but the system fizzled and brought only an inch or two of rain to areas near the coast.”
“End times predictions”
“As of last week, all that remained of the lake was a small pond a few feet deep, Cruz said. There were thousands of dead fish, he said, but no sign of life. Pictures of this blood-red pool circulated online in fishing forums and caught the notice of Indiana preacher Paul Begley, who said in a YouTube video that the lake might be evidence of the apocalypse as predicted by the Biblical book of Revelation. “The second angel poured out his bowl on the sea, and it turned into blood like that of a dead person, and every living thing in the sea died,” the passage Begley cited reads. “The third angel poured out his bowl on the rivers and springs of water, and they became blood.” Begley may not have any more luck at predicting the end of the world than did Harold Camping, the radio preacher who set the date for May 21, 2011. But for as long as the drought persists, the OC Fisher reservoir is a reservoir no longer.”

Well. First, we are not in the Tribulation now. The ‘end times’ technically is the period when Jesus went up (Acts 1:9-12) and the time of the rapture when Jesus will come down. (1 Thess 4:17). After that there will be a period of judgment on the earth known familiarly as the Tribulation (Matthew 24:29) but known formally as the Time of Jacob’s Trouble. (Jeremiah 30:4-7).

The verse the article cites is Revelation 16:3, but actually Rev 16:4 is more apt: “The third angel poured out his bowl on the rivers and springs of water, and they became blood.” However, the whole point is moot, because when the verses above come true it’s actually quite far along in the time of the judgment period. In Chapter 19, Jesus returns, so we can see that quite a lot has been going on before the time when the sea is turned into blood.

For example, Revelation 6 describes wars in all parts of the world, a quarter of the world dying from diseases and other means, a great earthquake, 144,000 Jews have been supernaturally evangelized and are witnessing to the world, and much more. Since it is my interpretation that the Tribulation is mostly chronological, by the time Revelation 16 comes with its seas being turned into blood, many other markers will have let the world know that they were indeed IN the Tribulation. There will be no question.

I don’t find it mysterious or mystical that fish died in the reservoir. It has been incredibly hot in Texas for a long time. Here in GA the news just said that since May there have been only 4 days when temperatures have been below normal, and right now we are experiencing our 15th consecutive day of 90-plus degree temps. Texas has had it much worse. So it’s logical that the reservoir water temperature would increase to the point where fish life would die in intolerable conditions.

What I find is the interesting part is that someone didn’t say, ‘gee, it’s been so hot that the temps got high enough that the fish died.” Instead, a reference was made to Revelation judgments. And more interestingly, the comment didn’t die there, but was printed.

The end times are on people’s minds. That is for a reason. Judgment IS coming, but this long end-time period has been one of grace bestowed on the world and an example of His loving-kindness. As His warnings increase, the fact of the prophesied judgments are rising to people’s conscious minds, whether they believe in them or not. They’re thinking along judgment lines. The discussion of their imminence is happening in the secular world as well as the religious world.

Please heed these warnings from our loving God. He is giving you time to reflect on the fact that He is showing you He exists. He is showing you that judgment is a real thing. He wants you to reflect on your deeds, and know that they are sinful deeds rendered against a Holy God. (Mt 24:44). Please understand that anyone with a sin in them will never be able to enjoy the peace and closeness of heaven with Jesus because with unforgiven sin in them, you’re a criminal to him deserving of a sentence. The sentence is eternal separation from Him in hell. (Luke 21:34-35).

No, we’re not in Revelation times yet, but someday the world will be. But part of that same world will have been rescued from the coming wrath (1 Thess 1:10). His love is such that you get to choose which population group you will be in when that day comes. Don’t wait too long to decide.
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jerusalem, judgment, prophecy

Israel ready to negotiate Palestinian State borders

Posted on August 2, 2011 by elizabethprata

Well, blow me down with a feather. Did Israel Prime Minister Netanyahu just blink? With the United Nations being whipped into a frenzy by the Palestinians’ representative Abbas, and with a unilateral vote for Palestinian statehood looming which would be forced upon Israel, today Netanyau seemed to have ducked in the age-old game of chicken:

Israel Willing To Negotiate On Borders In Dramatic Policy Change
“In a dramatic policy shift, Israel’s prime minister has agreed to negotiate the borders of a Palestinian state based on the cease-fire line that marks off the West Bank, a TV station reported Monday. Up to now, Benjamin Netanyahu has refused to spell out his plan for negotiating the border. A senior Israeli official would not confirm outright that the prime minister was now willing to adopt the cease-fire line as a starting point, but said Israel was willing to try new formulas to restart peace talks based on a proposal made by President Barack Obama. In a speech about the Middle East in May, Obama proposed negotiations based on the pre-1967 line with agreed swaps of territory between Israel and a Palestinian state. Netanyahu reacted angrily, insisting that Israel would not withdraw from all of the West Bank, though that was not what Obama proposed. Now Netanyahu is basically accepting that framework, according to Channel 2 TV, offering to trade Israeli territory on its side of the line for West Bank land where its main settlements are located.”

Elenin is almost here…but so is Jesus

Posted on July 26, 2011 by elizabethprata

The posts I publish that I hope will get a lot of traffic, don’t, and the posts I put up about the weird stuff always gets a lot of traffic. The all-time top traffic-getter was the February 4 post about the “Ghost Horse of Tahrir Square on MSNBC“, with 22,254 views. Coming in a close second is the “Comet Elenin is Coming” post that same month, with almost 20,000 views.

I’d posted information about Comet Elenin, hoping to cut through the hysteria with some facts. I’d presented information from NASA’s ‘Ask an Astrobiologist’ site, and analyzed it. I also made the main point that the reason for the Elenin hysteria these days is that people are increasingly having a hard time finding truth in the news, and in frustration with their elected officials and their main stream media, are turning in droves to the fringe sites for information. It is increasingly hard to trust the people we used to depend on to tell that the facts, and anger is rising. Frustration leads to hysteria and soon we have a skittish population running to and fro to catch the wisps of the latest fact-filled conspiracy or conspiracy-laden facts, however you want to look at it.

That is because, like Isaiah’s day, we live in a time soon there will be “Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!” (Isaiah 5:20). These are the days when the sins are rampant. Increasingly there is no distinction of morality and religion. People prefer evil to good and we see this played out every day when some news organization is revealed to have plagiarized or made stuff up, some financial organization is revealed to have been horrendously greedy, some politician is revealed to have been perverse and immoral. The religious prefer erroneous and fake doctrines to the true; the people prefer evil to a righteous course of conduct.

The only truth is the bible, then, now, and forever. You can trust it.

Now add to that that even since February, the spiritual pressure has risen to almost unbearable levels. Even the most atheistic person feels something about to happen. What we’re feeling are the effects of the increase of sins. The sins are piling up to heaven, (Rev 18:3-5) weighing us down, pressing in on us. In 2 Timothy 3:1-6, Paul describes the Godlessness in the last days and mentions there will be silly women laden with sins, falling prey to the ones who have a form of godliness but deny its power. “Laden” is the word to focus on here. Just like the sins piling up to heaven, laden indicates that sin has a weight to it, a weight of guilt, a weight of a seared conscience. Isaiah 24:20 prophesies the day at the end of time when the earth is so heavy with sin it reels like a drunkard, and cracks and falls.

Of course, sin doesn’t have a real weight, it’s a metaphor, but you get the idea. When a kid has done something wrong, their face is downcast, their shoulders are slumped, they walk like they have a ball and chain on the end of their ankle. You ask “What’s the matter?” and they mutter, “Nothing” but every fiber of their being says otherwise. We’re all familiar with the phrase, “You look like you have the weight of the world on your shoulders.” THAT’S what we’re feeling now. Sins, guilt, the effects of sin, pervasive evil that is called good, all weigh heavily. The world is spiritually spooked, feeling the pressure of the last stages of pregnancy, the heft and weight of the portentous moment when the labor pains begin and the awful pressure will be released.

Is it any wonder that unsaved people are hysterical about Elenin? They feel something is coming, and Elenin is just as good a thing to focus on as any. Hey, it kind of fits with prophesies, right? The Mayan doomsday prophecy of December 21, 2012, Nostradamus’s prophesies about destruction and comets, even Revelation with the celestial bodies falling out of the sky. Maybe there is something TO all this prophetic stuff, they wonder. There is, but their mistake is equating any prophecy with the Bible’s prophesies. The world’s prophesies are wrong, only the bible is right. So is there an Elenin-like thing in Revelation or another prophetic book?

Let’s look at what people are saying about Comet Elenin, first. Has the hysteria died since last February? Have NASA and other’s efforts to dispel the frenzy been effective? Not really. Consider this humorous intro from The Economic Voice:

“It’s always nice to come across a subject on the Internet that evokes such difference in opinion. And Comet Elenin is one of those topics. The debate over Comet Elenin is polarised between two opposing views, with an almost infinite number of variations in between. On the one hand comes the official view that Comet Elenin is an obscure loosely packed dirty snowball of as much interest to the general public as a small broken snail shell beside a railway track is to the occupants of the speeding express train passing by. At the other end is the opinion that Elenin is an artificial comet camouflaging a fleet of galactic battle cruisers full of hideous aliens equipped with straws and the aching desire to suck our brains from our skulls via our collective left nostrils.”

Hilarious! The article continues:

“The trouble is that there are many end time prophecies such as the Mayan calendar and the Bible Revelations that seem to fit in with the timing of this visitor from the deepest regions of space. There is also the Comet’s name, Elenin. Some claim it was given this name as short for such things as ‘Extinction Level Event 9’. Then there are the theories of alignment causing the Earth’s poles to shift and earthquakes to rend our planet. Or Elenin’s magnetic field will somehow throw the Earth out of orbit despite it having no magnetic field to speak of. There are also concerns about the comet tail ‘engulfing’ the earth, even though it’s only one notch above an absolute vacuum.”

He’s right, that is a problem that there are so many prophesies describing nearly the same thing. People who are not saved don’t know what to believe, and will latch on to something that comes close to the truth but isn’t the truth. And then there’s Planet X/Nibiru, and other impending celestial disaster the conspiracy theorists have whipped themselves into a frenzy over. This information is from Fox News this week:

Believers in Mysterious Planet Nibiru, Comet Elenin Await Earth’s End
“The waxing obsession with the planet Nibiru, which conspiracy theorists say is a planet swinging in from the outskirts of our solar system that is going to crash into Earth and wipe out humanity in 2012 — or, in some opinions, 2011 — shows that an astonishing number of people “are watching YouTube videos and visiting slick websites with nothing in their skeptical toolkit,” in the words of David Morrison, a planetary astronomer at NASA Ames Research Center and senior scientist at the NASA Astrobiology Institute. Morrison estimates that there are 2 million websites discussing the impending Nibiru-Earth collision. He receives, on average, five email inquiries about Nibiru every day. “At least a once a week I get a message from a young person — as young as 11 — who says they are ill and/or contemplating suicide because of the coming doomsday,” Morrison told Life’s Little Mysteries, a sister site to SPACE.com. What’s the origin of this mass panic about Nibiru, which astronomers say doesn’t exist?”

Good question. It’s from Nancy Lieder, who claims she “has the ability to receive messages through an implant in her brain from aliens in the Zeta Reticuli star system.” She is being used by aliens to warn of the impending disaster of planetary collision that was supposed to have happened in 2003, and when it didn’t was changed to the more secularly accepted false doom date of 2012. Did you catch that above from the NASA guy? Millions are watching YouTube videos on the subject, the astrophysicist receives a hundred inquiries a month, and gets dozens of suicidal emails from people worried about the disaster. That is so sad.

I’ll show you one more article about a Doctor in Cape Girardeau, MO. He is getting bombarded with emails and personal visits from people who want to know more about survival in the Ozark Mountains when Planet X-Nibiru-Elenin arrives. He’s getting them because there is a chat room where the leader of the survivalist movement claims to know the Doc and is alleged to have said the Doctor is leading a team to the caves when the planet comes into view. Look at the link, the doctor looks like a really annoyed milquetoast and says he doesn’t know the survivalist chat room guy, and has no plans to move to a cave any time soon. Yet he is harassed daily. People are bonkers with expectation!

Here is a link to facts about Comet Elenin. if you’re interested in the scientists’ point of view. If you trust it.

I have no clue about Comet Elenin and its supposed effect on the earth. I have no clue about Nibiru or Tyche or Planet X. I do know about the bible. And the really sad thing is that people are whipped in a frenzy about things that ARE GOING TO HAPPEN. They do not have to check the NASA site. They don’t have to follow misguided survivalist leaders in chat rooms. They don’t have to listen to Nancy Lieder in her Zeta Talk show. They can read Revelation.

Because if the feeling of impending doom is pervasive, that is because it is real. The Sun will go dark. (Joel 2:31; Mt 24:29; Acts 2:20; Rev 6:12; Is 13:10; Ez 32:7; Joel 3:15). Men WILL hide in the caves. (Rev 6:15). Tremendous earthquakes will happen. (Zech 14:4; Ez 38:20; Micah 1:4; Rev 11:13 & etc). The unsaved feel the weight of the sins piling up, they feel the spiritual darkening, they glimpse eternity ahead. But they are not saved by the blood of Jesus so they do not know what to do to escape. They glimpse rightly but conclude wrongly.

The feeling of imminence of a ‘something about to happen’ is judgment. Judgment is not a popular concept these days. It is not even a popular doctrine within the church among people who should know better. Judgment reminds us that there is a Higher Authority. We are not our own authority. We have free will, but we will have to answer to Him for the choices we’ve made. Christians won’t be judged because at salvation our sins were forgiven (Col.2:13-14), but we will be held accountable for the things we did for Him after salvation, and the things of no use to Jesus will be burned up. (Romans 14:10-12; 2 Corinthians 5:10; 1 Cor. 3:10-15, 4:5). Unsaved people will have to answer to Him for rejecting His pardon and willfully rebelling against him. (Mt 25:31-46). The things coming on the earth will be real, not a conspiracy. Those who believed in Elenin chose poorly. Those who believed in Zeta Talk chose poorly. Choose wisely. Choose the only truth there is: Jesus, Holy and Wrathful, judging mankind.

I hear so often these days that God would never judge us, for God is love. Yes, God is love. Is that all God is? Are your parents only love? Or do they also delight in you? Punish you? Teach you? Chastise you? If our parents punished us because they loved us then God is the perfect embodiment of both love and justice as well as all His other attributes.

I am not going to say prepare for Elenin, prepare for Nibiru, prepare for Planet X. I am going to say Prepare for the Lord. Either you will meet Him as His friend, in which case you will be protected from all these things; or you will meet Him as His enemy, in which case all these things will be poured out on you. I know what the logical choice is. Do you?

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end time, judgment, lightning

48 years apart: Lightning strikes kill dad, son

Posted on July 15, 2011 by elizabethprata

It might be time to review what God has to say about lightning…

A story out of NJ today:

“HAMMONTON, N.J. – July 14, 2011 (WPVI) — The story seems almost unbelievable, but the bark blown off an old sycamore tree is a reminder this tragedy is all too real. It was in a Hammonton backyard that 54-year-old Stephen Rooney was struck by lightning at a family barbeque July 3rd as he stepped away from the crowd to light a cigar. The party host, Rooney’s cousin and next door neighbor, Funzi Digerolamo, says a giant bolt shook the yard. “Hit the tree, went up the tree. It electrified all through the root system of the tree at that time so he was standing right in the electric field,” Digerolamo said. Digerolamo’s son Scott was blown right off a bench, but survived. Steve Rooney died five days later.”

“Just before he was hit, Rooney downplayed concerns about the lightning. “He had just said that lightning doesn’t strike two people in one family right before it happened, not long before it happened, he said that,” neighbor Paula Weisbecker said. Lightning is not supposed to strike twice, but in this case it did.”

“Steve Rooney’s father George was also killed by lightning 48 years ago when Steve was just a 5-year-old boy. The odds of this happening to a father and son are astronomical. Everyone is stunned that a bolt of lightning could claim them both, almost 5 decades apart.”

A great sermon

Posted on July 1, 2011 by elizabethprata

I listen to several preachers but most often I listen to John MacArthur. I quote him a lot, as you know if you are a regular reader of this blog. MacArthur is one of only a handful of preachers, if that many, who preach through the bible verse by verse. He doesn’t speak topically and apply or overlay a few verses to make a point. He takes a verse or two or maybe three, and he spends 50 minutes teaching it.

He is the only preacher in the world now, I believe, who has preached through the entire New Testament, verse by verse. He started 43 years ago, and he finished in June. It was a poignant moment and I watched and celebrated with him and with his congregation via internet.

He isn’t going to go verse by verse through the Old Testament, he said. But he did do a wonderful series on the 7 days of Creation, here. You can listen or read the sermon. It is a fantastic and very uplifting series. He is now beginning some Old Testament sermons by using the verse from Luke 24:27, “And beginning at Moses and all the Prophets, He expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself.” This means that in all the books from Moses and all the books where the Prophets spoke, Jesus is present. He is in the Old Testament, everywhere from beginning to end, in actuality. Jesus is in Genesis 1:1 and He is in the last book of the OT, Malachi. But MacArthur is beginning his series limited to Jesus through the Old Testament akin to the Road To Emmaus, the place where He said he “expounded on these [Old Testament] things concerning Himself.” MacArthur’s begins with Jeremiah, here.

His aim is to show the parallels of Jeremiah the man and Prophet in his time amid an ungodly nation to our time here in this ungodly nation. Judgment came in Jeremiah’s life, and we who are burdened with the spiritual pregnancy of imminent labor feel judgment will come in ours too. Knowing that and listening to MacArthur’s preaching that won’t mean it’ll be a feel-good moment but it does give context and meaning to why and how God worked through this very human man, so sorrowful, and the doomed nation, but preserved in a remnant! Just as it is today.

I recommend the series to one and all.
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