Posted in prophecy, salvation, woman at the well

Reviewing lessons from the woman at the well

The woman at the well in John 4:1-42 is one of my favorite passages of scripture. It never fails to bring tears to my eyes, and the glory of the Word is that each time I read it I’m moved by a different part.

If you are not familiar with the event, then take a moment to read it.

The woman who came at noon to get water at the well met Jesus. He struck up a conversation with her. As the conversation progressed she realized He is the Messiah and He confirmed it. The Disciples returned and watched and listened to the conversation. She ran off back to town, excited, to tell the news. Sounds simple, eh? There are many truths to be plumbed from this passage.

Here is what struck me today:

First, she might have been marginalized because of her promiscuous reputation, but she was not ignorant. She was well aware of the scriptures. She not only knew Jacob as the previous owner of the well, she knew that Jacob was her forefather in the religion. (John 4:12). Soon she understood that Jesus was not just “Sir”, but a prophet. (John 4:19). Immediately she took the opportunity to ask Him a religious question in attempt to gain understanding on a religious debate that had been going around, regarding where the Samaritans should worship. (John 4:20). I know that she used the question as a diversionary tactic to bring the conversation away from her sins, but the fact that she asked it on the heels of her discernment that the man she was peaking with is a prophet shows she understood in His authority enough to ask it in the first place.

By verse 25 she revealed that she knew the scriptures well enough to speak of her faith and hope in the promise of the coming Messiah. (John 4:25). In verse 26 Jesus states that He is the Messiah.

They talk a bit more and then excited, she runs into town to share the Good News, bringing back with her the men of the town to see for themselves. This tells of great faith and clarity in the extraordinary moment she found herself in. I mean, her joy in learning that Messiah had come trumped everything. She ran to town to tell everyone- including her 4 ex-husbands. When was the last time you had enough joy in the Word to share with people who hated you enough to put you out? Including your ex-husband??

Now let’s look at the theological implications. Here was a woman going about her daily business. Walking to the well didn’t take extraordinary strength or talent. Drawing water was humdrum. So her mind was likely on neutral, as mine usually is when I do the dishes or vacuum. As she got to the well she encountered something unusual, a Jew, talking to her, (“for the Jews do not associate with Samaritans.” John 4:9). Rather than shrink from something unusual, she asked questions, open and curious as to what was going on. Compare that to yourself. If you were involved in a mundane task, like at the checkout line at the grocery store, and someone out of the ordinary started talking to you, what would you do? Would you continue on your way, or would you look them in the eyes and converse, curious? Too many people today are wrapped up in the daily mundane, too dulled to notice something unusual, like salvation standing in front of them.

Further, the woman knew her scripture, and applied them to her immediate situation. How many of us do that today?

Last, when the disciples returned, they saw the woman and Jesus talking, but it was expressly stated, “And at this point His disciples came, and they marveled that He talked with a woman; yet no one said, “What do You seek?” or, “Why are You talking with her?” We should take that to heart as a lesson, as well. When salvation is knocking for your friend or loved one, and the door is opening, be sensitive to the situation. Don’t squash it, or hurry it, or interfere with it.

The woman went to get water, and met with the object of her faith in the flesh! It was a momentous occasion. She had been expecting the Messiah but was sensitive enough to the open door to walk through it: “I am the door. If anyone enters by Me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture.” (John 10:9).

If you are saved, then be aware of the people that the Lord puts in your path. They’re there for a reason. If you are not saved, then be sensitive to the knock at the door of your heart. He sends people to us to draw us to Him. Listen. Don’t be in such a rush that you focus on the mundane task to the exclusion of salvation standing in front of you.
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Posted in bank of america, economy, prophecy

Too big to fail? Maybe Bank of America is not too big

I’m not posting a lot of my own stuff this week, but I wanted to point you toward Michael T. Snyder’s blog entry today:
Too Big To Fail?: 10 Banks Own 77 Percent Of All U.S. Banking Assets

His blog entry contains a devastating amount of information that concludes with saying the ‘too big to fail banks’ are likely to fail soon, one of which is Bank of America. And even as I finished reading the essay, the first third of which I posted below, then I read this news: “Bank of America needs 50Billion or may go bankrupt

And of course, there was a bank run and a stocks shedding.

Here is Michael T. Snyder’s excerpt of today’s blog entry, I recommend it in its entirety.–

“Back during the financial crisis of 2008, the American people were told that the largest banks in the United States were “too big to fail” and that was why it was necessary for the federal government to step in and bail them out. The idea was that if several of our biggest banks collapsed at the same time the financial system would not be strong enough to keep things going and economic activity all across America would simply come to a standstill. Congress was told that if the “too big to fail” banks did not receive bailouts that there would be chaos in the streets and this country would plunge into another Great Depression. Since that time, however, essentially no efforts have been made to decentralize the U.S. banking system. Instead, the “too big to fail” banks just keep getting larger and larger and larger. Back in 2002, the top 10 banks controlled 55 percent of all U.S. banking assets. Today, the top 10 banks control 77 percent of all U.S. banking assets. Unfortunately, these giant banks are also colossal mountains of risk, debt and leverage. They are incredibly unstable and they could start coming apart again at any time. None of the major problems that caused the crash of 2008 have been fixed. In fact, the U.S. banking system is more centralized and more vulnerable today than it ever has been before…”
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Posted in israel, manasseh tribe, prophecy

"Lost" tribe of Manasseh given go-ahead for return to Israel

I’d written on June 27 about the “lost” tribe of Manasseh were captured by the Assyrians and carted off in the 8th century BC. They are now living in the far hinterlands of northeast India, near Burma, and have for 2700 years practiced the Jewish faith precisely as the original tribe did when they were captured.

For several years now, a representative has been appealing for aliyah, being allowed to return, en masse. They were making good progress until a few years ago when previous Prime Minister Ehud Barak inexplicably stopped all petitions and refused to hear them. In June of this year they had another meeting which was better received. The Rabbinical council acknowledged that this group is of the Manasseh tribe, and all that then remained was the go-ahead for the process to begin for them to return to Israel. That permission was granted this week.

Resolution to Bring Bnei Menashe Home
“The government has decided to draft a resolution to bring India’s Bnei Menashe populace home to Israel, after years of lobbying by the Shavei Israel Organization. The 2,700-year-old group, which claims its ancestry from the Lost Tribe of Menashe, has maintained many of the laws and traditions written in the Torah.The resolution, backed by Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and Absorption Minister Sofa Landver, is expected to go to the Cabinet by the end of this month.”

We often think of miracles of the blind suddenly seeing, cancerous tumors disappearing, tornadoes missing one particular house though devastation is all around. But this is a miracle too. It is a fact that by the second generation all displaced cultures begin assimilating. All displaced cultures absorb the culture around them. They lose their language, or it begins to be peppered with phrases from the culture in which they live. Maintaining perfect mirror-like images of the original culture, though thousands of miles away from their homeland has never occurred in all of anthropology- except the Jewish people. This is truly a miracle, a 2,700 year old miracle! If you are interested, here is an article from Haaretz newspaper from 1999, tracing the Manasseh Tribe’s winding history to the place they live in now:

Bnei Menashe in India

“Then they will know that I am the LORD their God, for though I sent them into exile among the nations, I will gather them to their own land, not leaving any behind.” (Ezekiel 39:28)

As we  read the rest of the news, particularly as it relates to Israel, please ponder the miracle that this is. His providential care is eternal. His promises from centuries ago hold in perfect truth until the day of their fulfillment. That means His promises for us, too, His church and bride, also are eternal, timeless, and perfect. He is mighty, not losing even one of His sparrows, whether they are in exile in the mountains of India for 2700 years, or are in the rolling hills of Georgia, He knows where all His children are, and He will not leave any one behind.
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Posted in bible jesus, end of days, end time, prophecy, sin

Why TV cooking shows have morphed into adventure programs

I’ve been talking about two things lately. First, are the increasing superlatives that must be attached to describe the events we’re seeing in the world. Because Jesus likened the time to birth pangs, we know that birth pangs get worse and worse, more and more painful as the big event nears. The weather is record shattering, this flood is the worst ever, this tornado outbreak is the biggest in history. Yet the superlatives keep getting attached to the events in ever bigger form as the events grow larger and records keep getting shattered. It is an upward spiral that eventually will bring everyone down.

The second thing I’ve been mentioning is ever-deepening sin. Sin’s depths know no bounds. In 1969, Charles Manson was discovered to have led a bevy of mind-controlled females and males into committing the Tate/LaBianca murders in California. Nine people died and it absolutely shocked the country. Nowadays if there aren’t at least nine killings on a television show the ratings dip. As one sin becomes passe, another worse one has to take its place. There is simply no where else to go for the rush except to top it and try and repeat the rush next time.

This deepening of sin and its combined adrenaline rush is played out in television show titles. I was noticing on the television listings about the nature of the titles of reality shows. The Food Network for example. In decades past, the shows used to feature gourmet chefs who were galloping, or were frugal. The titles were benign, inoffensive, charming. The very first cooking show on television was James Beard in 1946. (no, not Julia Child, she came along more than a decade later, in 1962). Beard’s show was simply called “I Love To Eat.”

Nowadays we have gone from:

Top Chef … to … Chopped …to… Iron Chef …to… Extreme Chef. Where once upon a time, people were content to simply sit still for half an hour and watch a competent chef teach them something new, we watch quick-edits of chefs running in the desert and dodging hailstones while extracting ingredients from a block of ice or using a Swiss Army knife as a lone cooking utensil, being are pushed to their physical and mental limit. All for a good pasta.

In 2003 “The Restaurant,” a reality show featuring two owners at odds with each other, was compelling enough to spawn more restaurant shows, each with a more adrenaline-rush name:

Hell’s Kitchen … to … Restaurant Nightmares… to …Restaurant Battle …to … Restaurant Impossible. Impossible! As each television season unveils a new show, the names have to be tougher, the people participating in them have to be rougher, the fights bigger, the injuries worse. And these are the cooking shows. In order to lure increasingly jaded audiences, they entice them with teasers promising blood, crashes, fisticuffs. Again, I’m talking about cooking shows.

In 2000, The History Channel aired a 46-minute episode titled “Ice Road Truckers” as part of the ‘Suicide Missions’ series. The IRT episode became a break out show on its own. After four years, Ice Road Truckers alone wasn’t good enough (not enough of them sank beneath the cracking ice to drown their drivers in a frozen lake?) so we got IRT: Deadliest Roads in the Himalayas with constant quick-cuts to crushed vehicles at the bottom of precipitous inclines.

The shows titles and of course their material are getting more extreme. I think if we looked at a prime time television line-up schedule from 1965 and then looked at one now we’d be shocked at the mentions of extreme, death, deadly, etc. Like this- What’s after ‘Fear Factor’? “Terror Factor”?

The only place to go is down. Television is rapidly becoming more and more shallow, nasty, and polluted. However, being a mirror for our culture, it is only reflective of the people who watch it and our descent into sin is also rapid, polluted, and nasty. It is a progression James 1:15 aptly describes: “Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.” The lust he describes is not just a sexual lust, it is a coveteousness, desire, sensuality that seeks to fill the emptiness inside. That emptiness is a place just waiting for Jesus, His light, His holiness, His righteousness. But if they do not accept Jesus, they continually seek to fill it with ever deepening poisons and perversions.

Unbelievers say that they are free. They are not, they are slaves to their lusts. The television schedule shows us that, plainly. But Jesus is the INSTANT answer to the need for that emptiness to be filled. He is waiting to fill it. You will be a participant in His plan to regenerate you from the inside out. He replaces lusts and poison and depravity with light and holiness and righteousness. You feel fresher. You no longer seek and seek and seek the next high, because you have finally found the ultimate High: Jesus.
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Posted in crime, end of days, end time, holy spirit, prophecy, restrainer

Copper thievery and sinful conditions

Sin doesn’t end. Sin doesn’t settle. Sin doesn’t shrink. It expands, creeping bigger, more, deeper. A lie in your mind changes to a lie out loud, to two lies, to a tangled web … There is no end to Jesus’ love and conversely, there is no end to sin. The heights of Jesus love are mirrored by the depths of sin, and sin can go pretty deep.

Jesus, Paul, and Peter outlined the specifics of what was to come at the end of the age (in the Tribulation). But they all also taught about moral conditions that would be upon humanity. Jesus said “love will wax cold”, (Mt 24:12); Paul said they will be brutal, unloving, and without self-control (2 Timothy 3:3); Peter said the truth will be blasphemed and covetousness will rule (2 Peter2:2-3) just to give a few examples.

Jesus also said that the Tribulation will be a time like the days of Noah. In the days of Noah, the evil of man was so great that he only had evil thoughts, continuously. (Gen 6:5) That is 100% sin saturation! We are not at 100% saturation of evil now, but we are sliding down the hill quickly. After believers are removed from the earth at the rapture (Gen 6:3) and the ministry of restraint of the Holy Spirit is removed, (2Thessalonians 2:6) evil will have free reign to unleash whatever it will. It will be pretty bad. Jesus said that unless He cut short the days, no one would be left alive on the earth, it will be so evil and violent. (Mt 24:22).

So let me give you an example of the descent of sin. We are not in the Tribulation now, but we do have to move from the level of earthly sin we’re in now toward that 100% mark and I believe we are seeing the speeding up of it now, in this time just prior to the rapture.

The metaphor of deepening sin is encapsulated in an example of the copper thieves.

Copper thievery is a sin that has always plagued us. But it has spiked exponentially, said police in Alabama. “Record copper prices have caused a surge in U.S. copper thefts, plaguing law enforcement and local governments and prompting states to pass new laws. “Since the beginning of the 2004 spike in copper prices, copper theft and copper prices have been directly linked,” a 2010 U.S. Department of Energy study on copper wire thefts said.”

Thieves used to take coils from constructions sites, empty houses, when no one was around. Then they began stealing copper from churches. They graduated to gutters, and these kind of bandits are called “gutter grabbers.” Most often the house is occupied, the thieves not caring if people are about. They they moved on up to larger booty: transformers. In this article titled, “Antioch Copper Wire Thieves Reach New High – Or Low” you see, the lows just keep getting lower. “Just days after Pacific Gas and Electric lamented the ongoing and widespread theft of copper wire from its Antioch power poles, the utility is now revealing that a particularly brazen thief – or thieves – stole an entire transformer from a power pole.”

The booty is getting bigger, and so is the personal risk, both to the owners of the copper and to the thieves. More of them who attempt to steal copper from live wires are getting fatally electrocuted.

So then they ‘graduated’ from transformers to whole air conditioning units, attached to houses where the people are living. Stealing the unit puts the people inside at risk, of course. In a heat wave people die. Stealing the scrap metal or copper from live gas lines means houses explode, sometimes with the people inside them. These thieves sunk even lower, stealing the AC unit from an animal shelter, putting all the puppies and kittens at risk.

So in a short time we have gone from a constant of petty wire thievery at abandoned homes or constructions sites, to huge AC units attached to homes, churches and non-profit centers, and from pipes to gutters to entire transformers that black out whole neighborhoods. But we don’t stop there.

These thieves stole an entire irrigation system in Modesto CA. “Thieves crushed a grape crop when they took off with the tools that help a local vineyard to grow. Grape grower Frank Rashid was on track for a record-breaking year. “See how beautiful?” said Rashid, gesturing toward his grapes.But in an instant, thieves crippled all of his hard work. “A lot of trouble for me, [and] the grapes; I can lose the crop, you know,” said Rashid. Bad guys stole the grape irrigation system worth more than $10,000.”

Copper thievery has gotten so persistent and so bad that there are states proposing laws regulating the sale of the metal. Copper thievery has risen sharply in Winston-Salem, with “more copper thefts in Winston-Salem in the first six months of 2011 than there were all of last year, city police said.”

The boldness of the copper thieves, the size of the booty, the heightening of danger, are examples of a downward progression in sin and evil in these last days. This progression is in all sins and crimes of course. We’ve gone from child abuse, to child abuse and kidnapping, to child abuse, kidnapping and murder, to child abuse, kidnapping, murder and dismemberment. Embezzlement is no longer perpetrated by a furtive, mealy-mouth man in some back cubicle at a tiny company. That sin’s depths were revealed to us in the Bernie Madoff schemes where he boldly made off with billions. Petty shoplifting is a thing of the quaint past, now we have whole mobs storming stores in full view of security guards and grabbing all that they can. Each and every sin on earth is getting deeper, worse, more corrupt.

The point is, you don’t want to be here when there is NO restraint. Things are this bad now but soon there will be free reign to plunder, steal, be brutal and selfish and the sanctity of life will mean nothing.

By His grace He died to save us from our sins. He will forgive you your unholy crimes if you ask him with penitent heart. He is sending these signs and warnings to us now to let us know the era is drawing to a close. He will remove His bride from the earth, He will send the Holy Spirit into retreat, He will allow satan full capacity to do his worst. You really don’t want to be here when that happens. And you don’t have to be. Just turn to Jesus.
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Posted in eu recognize palestinian State, Israel coast, prophecy, unilateral

"Palestinian envoy to UN: European states will recognize Palestine before September"

Here is an article for your consideration. Please read it in its entirety. I know it’s long but there is nothing more important these days in our Christian lives than the welfare of Israel, the lostness of the Arabs, and prophecy being laid bare before us. Pray.

The following article from last night’s Haaretz is extraordinary, and it resolved for me the feeling of imminence and burden I’d had all day. We know that in September, the United Nations may declare Palestine a sovereign state whose territory includes all of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem during its annual General Assembly meeting. Things are coming to a head with Israel, and the prophesied Psalm 83 war may be the result. It could be as soon as this fall. Let me give some background.

Psalm 83 is an intercessory prayer for success in a war that hasn’t happened yet. It involves Israel and her neighbors. Here is more information about it.

Over the last two years the Palestinian Authority has been engaging in successful shuttle diplomacy, jetting around the world to pitch their notion that the Palestinians deserve a state with actual land and borders. Adding to the mix was a new idea: to leave the negotiating table with Israel and go directly to the UN and ask the UN to unilaterally vote a Palestine into being, and be done with it. This isn’t unprecedented, that’s how Israel got their state when General Assembly resolution 181 passed on November 29, 1947.

The PA shuttle diplomacy has paid off, though they are not a nation now, they have gotten over 100 countries to formally and diplomatically declare recognition of any such future Palestinian State.

Meanwhile Palestinian Authority has been working with the UN on the criteria for being “allowed” to be a state. They must prove to the UN that they have competency in 6 major areas, education, infrastructure, governance, economy and the like. Recently, the UN declared that the PA has achieved those criteria and were ready to become a nation if the UN Security Council voted so and the General Assembly followed up with a 2/3 affirmative vote. You’ll read the Palestinian representative speaking to that in the news article below.

The UN itself has no authority to make this place or that place into a nation, but they lay the groundwork. After Israel was voted a nation in November 1947, the UK- which had occupied Palestine since 1917,  gathered its forces and on May 13, 1948 moved out. The next day, Israel declared its independence.

So back to the present. The PA has threatened to bring a resolution to the Security Council on making them a state. Here is how it is supposed to work as this UN fact sheet outlines: “The application is considered first by the Security Council. Any recommendation for admission must receive the affirmative votes of nine of the 15 members of the Council, provided that none of its five permanent members – China, France, the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the United States of America – has voted against the application.” Though nine votes are required from the Security Council to pass, five of those must be from the five permanent members. One ‘no’ vote kills it. It will never see the light of day in the General Assembly. The US has stated that they plant to veto any such resolution. Personally, I have my doubts that the US would stick to her guns, but the PA isn’t taking any chances. The deadline for submitting any resolutions to the Security Council is Friday, July 15. That’s tomorrow.

I’d read last week that they may skip the Security Council and go straight to the UN General Assembly. How can they do that? I’d wondered. That isn’t the process. I searched and searched and kept my eyes and ears open, and finally found this article last night. In it, the PA explains how.

Palestinian envoy Riyad Mansour told Haaretz reporter in an interview that they will go directly to the General Assembly and ask for a vote. They say they have the necessary 130 votes for passage. When that happens, “they” [meaning the US] wouldn’t dare withstand the will of 2/3 of the world. It seems that his reasoning is that it is easier to vote no when voting against 8 others, but they would not want to be the only naysayer against a Palestine state in the face of  130. It’s about pressure. And if anything, Obama has shown that he eschews pressure and prefers going with the majority because it’s less uncomfortable. That the Quartet failed this week to get both parties back to the negotiating table worked in the Palestinian’s favor as you’ll see near the end of the article.

The article is long but it is fascinating in the PA’s specificity and confidence regarding their tactics. Of course it could be bluster. The article mentions stalemate, but we know that at some point the stalemate is broken because Israel’s land is divided (Joel 3:2) and she gets her temple. (Dan 9:27; Mark 13:14). The pressure being brought to bear on this unbearable situation is heightening to where the Psalm 83 war seems likely in the next few months, in my opinion. IF this comes to pass as the PA suggests it will, Israel will not stand for the Arabs making themselves a nation on their land. There would be war, the Psalm 83 battle and perhaps also the fulfillment of the Isaiah 17:1 prophecy. If the situation does NOT come about as the PA states, the Arabs could be so upset that they could spark an ‘Arab Summer’ and simply revolt, as we have seen happens so easily in the region these days. Any way you slice it, the tension is ratcheting up to a level where it seems inevitable that armed conflict would be the result to break this stalemate. Psalm 83 could be that conflict.

Palestinian envoy to UN: European states will recognize Palestine before September
Riyad Mansour tells Haaretz that the Palestinian Authority’s UN bid is last chance for a two-state solution.
By Barak Ravid

BUDAPEST − The Palestinian ambassador to the United Nations, Riyad Mansour, is in the forefront of the Palestinian diplomatic move − now gaining momentum − before the General Assembly meet in September. In the coming weeks, Mansour will submit to the UN secretary general an official request for Palestine to be accepted as a full member of the world body. Mansour hopes that September will see more than 130 countries voting in the General Assembly in favor of recognizing a Palestinian state, even if it does not receive full membership status.

What do you think about the fact that the Quartet [United States, Russia, the European Union, the United Nations] has not published a statement?

The Quartet decision to send envoys is a fancy way to say they failed. The Americans just could not deliver the Israelis.

Don’t you think that the Palestinian move in the UN is just symbolic and will not change anything on the ground?

The Israeli government is fighting us, saying that the international community should not let us do that. If it is symbolic, why are they fighting it so hard? It is definitely not symbolic.

What will happen if you don’t get the 130 votes that you are expecting?

If we go to a vote tomorrow, we will get two-thirds of the General Assembly. We have the votes. The significance of the number of votes is to maximize the pressure on the Security Council. What will be the argument of anyone to deprive us of the right to join the community of nations?

Do you think you will be able to get any EU member states to recognize the Palestinian state?

Just hold tight. You will be hearing interesting news soon about it before September.

Are you going to apply to the UN on July 15 and ask to become a full member?

We will apply when we are ready. Israel submitted it’s application in 1948 on the last week of the General Assembly session. They asked the Security Council to suspend the articles that dealt with time regimentation because of their special situation. It took Israel seven months to become a full member in May 1949. Look at South Sudan. It will take them two weeks to become a member, so the time procedures are not rigid.

But what will happen on the next day − after the UN resolution?

It is similar to [General Assembly] Resolution 181 in 1947. The following day nothing happened, but was Israel able to declare independence without 181? I don’t think so. We are going through the same process right now. The next day, the sun will rise from the east but the resolution will be historic and will lead the way for a declaration of independence. Huge things take time. Things will not change in 24 hours. All those who wish for a silver bullet, there is no such thing. But there is accumulation.

Do you see a Tahrir Square scenario in Ramallah?

It is not for me to decide but for the Palestinian people. Our people have a rich tradition of struggle and collective wisdom in doing what is proper. If they will believe and come to the conclusion that this battle is their battle, and not only the battle of Abu Mazen [Mahmoud Abbas] or Salam Fayyad, that will reflect itself. The Palestinian people are like the Egyptian people and are capable of doing remarkable things. But these things you don’t give orders for. If the Egyptian people managed to change the U.S. position in 18 days so that Obama told his ally Mubark to leave, what will the position of the international community be if the Palestinian people will say we what independence − and we want it now? We learned our lesson, and this is why our struggle will be peaceful, peaceful, peaceful. Why would anybody stand in our way?

You are not afraid to find yourselves in a third intifada?

I don’t want to give it names. It is just the will of the Palestinian people. If it exhibits itself in a peaceful way, it will enter the configuration of the dynamics of how to solve this situation. If the international community will not step up to the plate, as it should, and the Quartet is not doing anything, the Palestinian people who live under occupation might contribute in their own way.

You think that the Palestinians will conclude that the only way to change the situation is to resort to violence?

If there is violence, it is from the Israeli army. Our people in Bil’in demonstrated peacefully against the [separation] wall, and they have with them Israelis and internationals [foreigners]. Those who brought violence there was the occupying army.

You think that the lessons of the first intifada were learned?

Our actions speak for themselves. Take Bil’in as an example. Those who oppose our move in the UN are coming every week with a new story. The Palestinian people do not need credentials to prove that they are struggling peacefully to put an end to the occupation.

Are you worried from what might happen if the stalemate continues?

This is the last chance for the survival of the two-state solution. Israel will be responsible for what will come later. By going to the UN, we are trying to save the two-state solution. The danger is that we will get to the extreme possibilities of the one-state solution that is suicide for Israel. Something has to give. Israel can’t continue holding the stick at both ends.

Why are you going for a unilateral move, and not going back to the negotiating table?

Our independence is not a matter for negotiation. The Israelis in 1948 did not seek permission from anyone to declare their independence. We are no different. The negotiation should be on the six core issues − not on our right to a state and independence. Everyone is telling us that we have done a great job building our institutions, and that we are ready to govern ourselves. Should we wait until Netanyahu is ready to negotiate with us?

This is not a unilateral action. We engaged many countries bilaterally, and they recognized us. One hundred and twenty-two states and very soon we will have more than 130. This recognition is an investment in peace, not a unilateral action.

We are going for a multilateral action. When we go to the UN and we want to legislate the results of what we have done in the last two years, how is that unilateral?
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Posted in end time, peace, prophecy, rapture

Peace be with you

Good morning,

Did you ever have a feeling of peaceful well-being that was saturating you completely? A feeling of rightness in the world, though it is fallen and corrupt, but of sweetness with the Lord anyway? Of needing nothing and wanting nothing, just content with what you have and relieved that all has been taken care of and provided for by the Almighty? Of gladness that you know the Holy Spirit and can feel Him doing the regenerative work in you? That is how I feel this morning.

“Now the God of peace, that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, Make you perfect in every good work to do his will, working in you that which is wellpleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ; to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.” (Hebrews 13:20-21)

Because He was loving and obedient to the Father:

We soon share in His peace forever

Please accept His free pardon that He offers for your sins. Pray to Him and confess, making Him Lord of your life and you will be cleansed from the sins that weigh you down so. You will then know true peace, being reconciled to the Prince of Peace.
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Posted in Obama, prophecy, son of God, son of strelka

Obama, Son of Strelka, and the unwitting creation story

On July 5th I’d written, “throughout the 2008 Presidential campaign and after Obama was elected, there were many blogs, comments, and social media essays purporting that Obama may be the antichrist. I don’t believe he is, but that dramatic feeling swept the country among Christians and I firmly believe there was a reason so many people felt that way. Collectively, we are not often touched with a similarly strong feeling of spiritual evil- so there must be some basis for it.” I’ve mentioned this before: I think he is a fallen angel. View these next comments in light of that possibility.

He is spiritually creepy. People get a weird feeling around him and about him. Chris Matthews gets a thrill up his leg. Others faint. Some swoon. Others just lose their minds. He has been described as being mesmerizing, hypnotizing, soaring, and most tellingly, “spellbinding.” He takes on a “Christ-like quality for many people”  and they call him the “brother from another planet.” New Yorker’s writer George Packer wrote in 2008: “No less an intellect than The New Yorker’s George Packer confesses that moments after a 25-minute campaign speech by Obama in New Hampshire concluded, he couldn’t remember exactly what the candidate said. Yet “the speech dissolved into pure feeling, which stayed with me for days,” he writes.”

Hypnotizing nebulous amorphousness that leaves no tangible mental trace but causes an altered physiology. Hmmm. Weird. And speaking of weird, but perhaps genius in a weird way, today we have Blogger Dan Warren’s project. Warren got so interested in the cadence, rhetoric, and detail of Obama’s distinctive speech patterns, he made an audio story using his voice. And now an animatic about it. Warren has spent four years snipping snippets of Obama’s self-read autobiography and putting the various separate phrases into a story. Kind of like auditory magnetic poetry.

Here is how Warren describes it. “Bit by bit I’ve dissected Obama’s self-read autobiography into thousands of very short phrases, usually one to ten words or so, and have used these snippets to tell a completely different story from the original.”

There is something behind how Obama speaks. What Dan Warren heard was the thing behind the thing, where the edges of his auditory perception end and his spiritual perception begins. His project is called Son of Strelka, Son of God. It is nine auditory parts. So far Warren has completed two visual parts and uploaded them to Youtube. It’s compelling, interesting, amazing, seamless, and WEIRD. Perhaps it is the real story…

Here are some summaries:
Slate: A demigod is born from a fruit tree, sets about creating the world, and eventually mates with a human woman to produce a son, called Stanley. “I was different, after all,” explains the god-child.

The Creator’s Project:“The Biblically-influenced tale of Stanley, born from an Adam-like character, a proto-man, plays with the themes and conventions of the Greatest Story Ever Told. It chronicles the world’s creation via a falling monkey, the rise of civilization and the birth of Stanley, a deformed orphan son-woman who is to be our savior. Desolate, s/he wanders the earth as the world descends into war. Gods come down to earth, the world starts pouring blood and it all gets a bit Revelations-y. Stanley meets the cosmic turtle who supports the world, and even he can’t help to save the world’s ruin, so they go find Buddha, but he’s not much cop either. Stanley then realizes he has the power to create worlds, does so, and proceeds to fall asleep on his mother’s lap.”

I’ve watched both parts. They are poetic and strange, just the kind of think I like. Here are some stills from the video.

Poison fruit, hanging on the tree
The ‘thing’ that came from the fruit climbs up

Death unexpectedly enters the world.
men built cities

Oops! That’s not from the  movie Son of Strelka. It’s from Gobekli Tepe, the 11000 year old pagan temple! Oh well, some things never change… my blog about it
And the cities buildings grew bigger and taller…
and taller…OOPS I did it again.
This is a monolith of the first city-worship center, Gobekli Tepe in Turkey. I wrote about it earlier today

So that’s a peek into Dan Warren’s mind and his Son of Strelka, Son of God. Perhaps that feeling of Christ-likeness is wearing off, being only a counterfeit after all, and the real spiritual persona is being felt at last. What do you think?
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Posted in garden of eden, gobekli tepe, nimrod, prophecy

The Mystery of Gobekli Tepe

After Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden of Eden, what happened to them? We know that sin, having entered the world, spread quickly and the first murder occurred in a fit of jealousy. Adam and Eve’s son Cain killed Abel when God preferred Abel’s offering over Cain’s. (Gen 4:3-5)

People who are unsaved and therefore an enemy of God say it’s “not fair” that God didn’t accept Cain’s offering. However, Adam and Eve knew God and continued to worship Him after being expelled from the Garden. When Eve bore Cain she praised the LORD. (Gen 4:1). They taught their sons how to worship. If they hadn’t, Abel would not have known God, would not have known that he should make an offering, and not have known that offering should be a blood sacrifice. The problem was that Cain did not offer his sacrifice in faith. “By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, through which he had witness borne to him that he was righteous, God bearing witness in respect of his gifts: and through it he being dead yet speaketh” (Hebrews 11:4).” If you’re not offering to God by faith, it is by self, or by sight, and therefore is from your own presumption. That never pleases God.

After Cain killed Adam, God sent Cain away. “So Cain went out from the LORD’s presence and lived in the land of Nod, east of Eden.” (Genesis 4:16) Soon, Seth was born to Adam and Eve. So here we have a split, the believers dwelling somewhere presumably close to where Eden was, and Cain going east, marrying and having children away from the LORD’S presence. But where were they? It is believed the Garden of Eden was somewhere in Turkey. Are there any other remnants of those earliest people? Didn’t they leave anything behind?

In 1994, a Kurdish shepherd stumbled over a stone. German archaeologist Klaus Schmidt was called in and an extraordinary site was slowly uncovered over the decade. The world’s first temple, 11,000 years old. It is more enigmatic than Easter Island and more mysterious and complex than Stonehenge. It is universally agreed that it is one of the most important sites in the world. It is seven thousand years older than the Great Pyramid of Giza. “As Reading University professor Steve Mithen says: ‘Gobekli Tepe is too extraordinary for my mind to understand.’ If this place they unearthed is as old as they say, it survived the Flood.

UK Daily Mail says the temple stones at Gobekli Tepe might be the greatest archaeological discovery ever, “a site that has revolutionised the way we look at human history, the origin of religion – and perhaps even the truth behind the Garden of Eden. Nat Geo says,

“We used to think agriculture gave rise to cities and later to writing, art, and religion. Now the world’s oldest temple suggests the urge to worship sparked civilization.”

Previously every archaeological and sociological construct  was predicated on the assumption that agriculture came first, then worship. Gobekli Tempe shows that assumption to be wrong: worship came first, and a lot earlier than they thought. Then agriculture was born  in that very area. We know that wheat was the oldest and likely first domesticated grain, and it happened in that area of Turkey. “And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life;Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field;” (Genesis 3:17-18). And agriculture was born.

As for worship versus agriculture, Christians know worship came first. Our loving God created humans, who in turn worshiped Him in perfection and without sin was among the very first acts of humankind. Christians know that ‘civilization’ was created by God. He made the world, made humans and animals. He structured the world through a hierarchy of relational commands: worship of Him, hierarchy between man and woman, and of man over the animals. He gave them jobs to do. He recreated with them. Food was abundant and available. From the sixth day, all the elements of civilization existed: worship, employment, leisure, the foundational structure of the world: family unit, were all set in one day. It did not evolve and it did not progress. It simply was. (Gen 2:15-25).

Yes, but the urge to worship who? The God of Creation? Adam and Eve and their progeny worshiped God personally. Cain was away from the LORD’S presence, but perhaps he worshiped the serpent now. Were he and his people beginning to worship but worship something other than God, using advanced skills learned from the fallen angels to build a blasphemous temple?  The UK Daily Mail article says “It’s as if the gods came down from heaven and built Gobekli for themselves.” Ah! Perhaps that is a clue.

Here is another tantalizing clue: “Nat Geo: “Bewilderingly, the people at Göbekli Tepe got steadily worse at temple building. The earliest rings are the biggest and most sophisticated, technically and artistically. As time went by, the pillars became smaller, simpler, and were mounted with less and less care. Finally the effort seems to have petered out altogether by 8200 B.C.”

Just as sin corrupts steadily downward, perhaps the skills, interest, and conditions at Gobekli Tepe caused the downward spiral in the worship there, just as sin causes a downward spiral in everything.

We may never know more about why Gobekli Tepe was built, or exactly where the Garden of Eden lay. As the Nat Geo article concludes, they quote the archaeologist. “Today less than a tenth of the 22-acre site is open to the sky. Schmidt emphasizes that further research on Göbekli Tepe may change his current understanding of the site’s importance. Even its age is not clear—Schmidt is not certain he has reached the bottom layer. “We come up with two new mysteries for every one that we solve,” he says.

Around 8,000 BC, the creators of Gobekli turned on their achievement and entombed their glorious temple under thousands of tons of earth, creating the artificial hills on which that Kurdish shepherd walked in 1994. We don’t know why. Perhaps the flood buried it. Or perhaps it was because another, ‘better’ city was being built, this time, by Nimrod. Its name is Babylon.
————————————————————–

Below, stunning photos from National Geographic

The elegant bas-reliefs of vultures, scorpions, and other creatures found on the T-shaped pillars had to have been created by skilled artisans, evidence that hunter-gatherers were capable of a complex social structure.

Pillars at the temple of Göbekli Tepe—11,600 years old and up to 18 feet tall—may represent priestly dancers at a gathering. Note the hands above the loincloth-draped belt on the figure in the foreground.

Another common icon of the world’s first organized religion was snakes. This example was found on the back of a human head from Nevalı Çori. Artifact photographed at Şanliurfa Museum, Turkey.

Images of vultures, like this stone carving, have been found at Göbekli Tepe. Because the birds are traditionally associated with mortality, these depictions suggest that Göbekli Tepe may have been a place for rituals related to the spiritual power of the ancestral dead.

Posted in jerusalem, jews, prophecy

Jews expelled from Jerusalem? Never Again!

Never again!” ?? Oh, but the sad prophetic truth is that it will happen again. (Matthew 24: 16, 21). Pray for the peace of Jerusalem! (Psalm 122:6). In doing so, we can lend sweet fragrance to the incense of prayers in heaven where God longs to bring in His Millennium reign!

From Arutz Sheva today, in the shadow of Glenn Beck’s speech to the Israeli Knesset, the Quartet’s meeting in Washington to divide Jerusalem, and the Palestinian Authority’s push for a state at the UN. The deadline for the Palestinians to submit their resolution for statehood to the UN Security Council is this Friday. It is a busy diplomatic week and a busy prophetic week. But let’s look back now, at past history, when the Jews were expelled from their eternal city in 1936: Arutz Sheva:

“Every now and then, a treasure is unearthed not by archaeologists digging in the ground, but by historians and others seeking information among the stacks of books in a library. Writer and analyst Lenny Ben David was doing exactly that when he came across a massive Library of Congress photo archive of life in Palestine, circa early 1900s. Prior to its rebirth as a commonwealth, the lands of the State of Israel were all referred to as Palestine by the British. Ben David, a former diplomat and lobbyist, writes on his blog, “As I skimmed through the pictures, one theme caught my eye – the expulsion of Jews from Jerusalem. Time and again.”

Expulsion of Jews from Jerusalem, 1936 (Israel news photo: courtesy of Library of Congress)

“Works of art that depict the Roman destruction of the Holy Temple and the Jewish people being led from Jerusalem into captivity in 70 CE are not uncommon. But Ben David saw that the Library of Congress had carefully archived photos of Jews being evacuated during Arab pogroms in 1929 – the same year the Jews of Hevron were massacred – and in 1936. The archive also contains photos by Life Magazine photographer John Phillips, who in 1948 managed to catch on film the horror and tragedy of Jews once more being captured or expelled from their homes in the Old Jerusalem’s Jewish Quarter by Jordanian soldiers.”

“Too many times,” writes Ben David. “It led me to post a photo essay: The Jewish People Will Not Be Expelled from Jerusalem Again.” In the essay, he made sure to include shots of the Jews’ expulsion from Jerusalem in 1929, 1936 and 1948 – to remind, and to ensure that it can never happen again.”

Luke 21:24: “They will fall by the sword and will be taken as prisoners to all the nations. Jerusalem will be trampled on by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.” That time has not yet been fulfilled. Dear Jerusalem, only a little longer, our God is faithful. Hear His promise!

“Therefore fear thou not, O my servant Jacob, saith the LORD; neither be dismayed, O Israel: for, lo, I will save thee from afar, and thy seed from the land of their captivity; and Jacob shall return, and shall be in rest, and be quiet, and none shall make him afraid.” (Jer. 30:10).
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