All sorts of threats against our new president, Donald Trump, are pouring out of the Left. As just one example out of many, CNN has recently teased its viewers by reporting that, should some “disaster” kill Trump and Vice President Mike Pence tomorrow, before they can be sworn in, an Obama appointee, some “undersecretary for political affairs,” would then become president ( http://www.infowars.com/cnn-if-trump-is-killed-during-inauguration-obama-appointee-would-be-president/ ).
Again, that’s just one of many threats, too numerous to list here. The Left is frantic over the prospect of losing power, and, unrestrained by anything that we would recognize as morality, they’re making like they’ll do absolutely anything to keep it.
But we’ve seen a lot of this lately. First they were going to disrupt the Republican National Convention. Fizzle. Then there was the Great Recount. Fizzle. Then the flood of threats against the Electoral College. Fizzle. Then some really disgusting “news” about Trump that turned out to be a hoax. Fizzle. So, if past history is anything to go by, the mayhem and chaos threatened for Inauguration Day will turn out to be the final fizzle. I pray I’m right about this.
This succession of threats is in itself symptomatic of a deep spiritual sickness in our country. And although the Lord blessed us in sparing us a Hillary Clinton presidency, it’ll take more than winning an election to cure us.
Let us pray.
O Lord Our God, move us as a nation to repent our sins, to humble ourselves, and to turn back to you, so that you can heal us–as you have said, in the Bible, that you will. Turn us so that we know our sin and turn away from it, turn us back to sanity, turn us back to you, O God: and we shall be saved. We are in very deep trouble, Lord, and only you can pull us out of it. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Fizzle. But continue to pray…
Also, Infowars didn’t have to play it up – they could have played it down. It’s the same as negotiating with terrorists when we allow them to stir up the media expecting the media to stir us up. It becomes a domino effect of futility.
Lastly, I suspect this was Paul Ryan’s idea.
Amen.
I never thought that I’d live to see the day when the US sank to such uncivilized behavior. This is one piece of a very big puzzle, wherein the political landscape of the entire world is in upheaval. Our God will see to it that His will is done, but it’s not likely to be a smooth ride anytime in the foreseeable future.
Psalm 2:1 Why are the nations in an uproar
And the peoples devising a vain thing?
2 The kings of the earth take their stand
And the rulers take counsel together
Against the Lord and against His Anointed, saying,
3 “Let us tear their fetters apart
And cast away their cords from us!”
As I learn more about history, I see a common thread of opposition to the Kingdon of God in virtually all times. The holocost, the diaspora, anti-semitism: all of these are designed to oppose the Kingdom of God and his plan to bring a savior from among the Jewish people. They tried to kill him the first time and they’re going to try this time, as well.
No. They, if you mean “the Jews,” will not try to kill Him “again.” After much of Israel’s population is destroyed by war, the rest who see that Jesus’ did, in fact, return as He said he would, will believe – they will cry, kneel on bended knees and ask for forgiveness. They will be forgiven and all peoples and nations in the world will to honor Israel and make yearly trips to Jerusalem to worship Our Savior. Baruch haba b’shem Adonai.
I was thinking more the nations, overall, trying to hinder the Jewish people. Salvation will come through the Jews, we know that from scripture. If Satan and his hoard can wipe out the Jews, they would throw a big roadblock into the plan for salvation. Of course that won’t be allowed to happen, but that doesn’t mean that they won’t try.
Salvation has already come through the jews, because Jesus was born Jewish. I don’t the devil is as intent on the jews as a lot of Christians think he is. In fact it’s the jews who mock Jesus, who crucified him, and have a whole ‘holy book’ (the Talmud) that says all sorts of disgusting things about him.
I do hope that there is a mass conversion of jews at some point, but right now they’re not God’s chosen people; Christians are. We need to stop worrying about Israel and the jews and end times prophecies that are a bunch of nonsense. There isn’t going to be a new temple in Jerusalem, and sacrifices won’t be started up again; Jesus paid for our sins once and for all, and he destroyed the temple so thoroughly that no one could ever use it again. The veil was torn. All the promises God gave to the jews are now transferred to everyone who trusts in Christ for their salvation.
Paul assures us in Romans, chapters 9-11, and particularly in 11:25-36, that in the end, Jews and Christians will be united in Christ. After all, Paul was a Jew and most of the Christians of his time were Jews who probably still thought of themselves as Jews. And he reminds us, in 1 Corinthians 12:13, “For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles.”
We are all in a fellowship here on this blog, or so I had hoped, regardless of the inevitable shades of difference in our opinions.
To me the modern State of Israel seems a mostly secular enterprise: nevertheless, God did bring Jews back to their original homeland, when at the time they had no homeland. I am sure that counts for something.
Even Our Lord’s own disciples didn’t quite get it. In Acts 1:6, after the Resurrection, “they asked of him, saying, Lord wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel?” They didn’t understand that the Son of Man had a priority higher than that.
I won’t stop this as a topic of discussion here–but I pray we shall all of us remain friends.
Lee, regarding the modern State of Israel, God works through people, believers and unbelievers alike, to fulfill His Plan. They might not even know what they are doing, but God does. I think we forget at just how remarkable this event was.
There is not a single instance in history where a group of people are scattered for 1800 years without a homeland, retains their unique cultural identity, and return to their ancestral homeland to create a state and revives their dead ancient language. And this through fierce opposition and persecution. That simply doesn’t happen. I see the nation state of Israel as a means to an end to bring about prophetic fulfillment. For instance, Jerusalem couldn’t have become a stumbling block to the world if the nation state of Israel didn’t first “recapture” in the Six-Day War. Israel exists for a specific period of time for a specific purpose. All this of course is eventually leading to The Great Tribulation, and the return of Christ.
What you are espousing is Replacement Theology. God is not done with the Jews. Read Romans 11, Paul specifically refers to them as “His people”. There were specific promises made to Abraham and his decedents, which have yet to be fulfilled. Now, if end-time prophecies are “a bunch of nonsense”, then what is the point of these prophecies? It seems to me that for one to believe in Replacement Theology, then one would have to ignore these prophecies. Otherwise, it makes defending that position, which has lead to anti-antisemitism and persecution of the Jews, a lot more difficult. As for sacrifices, if they are done away with then why are they re-instated during the millennial kingdom? Ezekiel received a vision about the temple that will exist in the millennial kingdom, and the animal sacrifices that would be offered in it (Eze 40-46).
wasn’t Ezekiel’s vision fulfilled in the construction of the Second Temple? The Bible and other contemporary sources tell us it was a very grand building. According to Josephus, Julius and Augustus Caesar, and the kings of Parthia, sent yearly gifts to the Temple in Jerusalem: “a house of prayer for all peoples.” So if that Temple–whose construction was commanded and encouraged by God through the prophet Haggai–was not the fulfillment of Ezekiel’s vision… then what was it?
I think there is an obvious danger in taking Ezekiel too literally. What about those “living creatures” he saw in Chapter 1 and elsewhere? Are we to take those literally, and try to classify them zoologically?
I don’t want to back myself into a corner with liberals who say nothing in the Bible means what it says it means; but I do hope I know poetic language when I see it.
The only honest answer I can give, Lee, is I don’t know. I studied Ezekiel from a liberal-theology perspective when I was in my late teens and spent the next 45 years quite happily believing that everything written about Israel in scripture referred to the past.
Then someone pointed out the unprecedented nature of Israel’s regathering and reformation as a nation. Then I learned that the day after declaring their statehood, they were attacked by five nations, yet prevailed against impossible odds. And every war since then has ended in Israel’s favor. I simply cannot dismiss this as chance.
Then I read Jeremiah 23:8 where God talks about bringing His people back from the “north land”, so that cannot refer to being restored from Babylon in the sixth century BC.
I don’t claim to understand all the details, but it’s obvious to my sensibilities that something significant seems to be happening with regard to Israel. My personal conclusion is that the move of the embassy to Jerusalem will serve to coalesce resistance in the Muslim world. I’m watching Turkey with great interest.
In the various prophets, threats to Israel are often described as coming from the north. This is geography: to get from Babylon to Jerusalem, you can’t march an army west across the desert. You have to go north, following the Euphrates River, until you can finally turn south again. Thus most invading armies will come from the north. Although Babylon is east of Israel, it functions as if it were to the north.
Well stated, Watchman.
For most of my life I thought in terms of Replacement Theology but the fact that you mention, their regathering after 1,800 + years became impossible to overloook. I studied the scriptures.
This isn’t happening for Israel’s sake.
Ezekiel 36:22 “Therefore say to the house of Israel, ‘Thus says the Lord God, “It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for My holy name, which you have profaned among the nations where you went.
Jeremiah 23:7 “Therefore behold, the days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when they will no longer say, ‘As the Lord lives, who brought up the sons of Israel from the land of Egypt,’ 8 but, ‘As the Lord lives, who brought up and led back the descendants of the household of Israel from the north land and from all the countries where I had driven them.’ Then they will live on their own soil.”
As I now see it, this is a signal to everyone on earth; a single regarding God’s purposes being fulfilled. All of mankind will understand that the True God is at work, and it’s already having an effect.
It doesn’t get much press, but people in Muslim countries are accepting Christ even though they face extreme opposition. This is about saving as many people as possible, while vindicating God’s name and bringing together a common thread of salvation that goes back to the fall of mankind.
Amazingly, there are many faithful Jewish people that are seeing Jesus as being moschiac and many Christians that are seeing the Jewish people, not as a failed, rejected relic of the past, but as a living faith that remains part of God’s purpose.
I don’t claim to fully understand all of this, but current events seems to be shaping towards Gog of Magog, right before my eyes, so you can bet that my eyes will be open, and fixed upon the situation in the Middle East.
“This isn’t happening for Israel’s sake.” Yes, and that is an import point Unknowable. Those who espouse Replacement Theology will talk about the current state of Jews. How they rejected Jesus as the Messiah, how most Jews today are either secular atheist or orthodox Jews who follow the Talmud, which rejects Christ. As if those things null and void God’s promises.There are seven distinct covenants that God makes in the Bible. Four of those covenants relate to the nation of Israel, and three of which are unconditional in nature. The Abrahamic covenant described in Genesis is an “everlasting” covenant for Abraham’s descendants. That means it’s unconditional and there was nothing the Jews could do to break it.
God says the he will not bring them back for their sake, but for His great names sake (and His promises to Israel), so that we will know that He is God. It’s not that the Jews are more righteous or deserving than anyone else, but they are beloved, even though they are rebellious and stubborn. I use the example of David and Saul. Saul tried to kill David out of jealousy, but when David had a chance to kill Saul he didn’t because he was God’s anointed (even though Saul was clearly in the wrong). In the same way, Jews today might not acknowledge God and have the same sins as the rest of the world, but that doesn’t change that they are still God’s anointed (or chosen) people.
That the Jews currently reject Christ should not come as a surprise to anyone. They were hardened in part until the time of the fullness of the gentiles come in (Rom 11:25). If they didn’t reject Jesus, then Christianity would have remained a small insular Jewish sect that would have died out a long time ago. But as Paul said, “if their fall is riches for the world, and their failure riches for the Gentiles, how much more their fullness! (Rom 11:12). But this rejection will not last forever, there is a physical restoration BEFORE a spiritual restoration. The physical restoration is happening now, the spiritual restoration will happen at the end of the Great Tribulation aka Jacob’s trouble. Hosea 3 describes the current state of the Jews and their eventual spiritual restoration, “For the children of Israel shall abide many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or sacred pillar, without ephod or teraphim. Afterward the children of Israel shall return and seek the LORD their God and David their king. They shall fear the LORD and His goodness in the latter days. (Hos 3:4-5)”
Food for thought, indeed.
As I said, the restoration of Israel as a state and homeland for the Jews has to count for something.
But the Church in America has a long history of getting sidetracked by End Times prophecies, and not altogether authoritative interpretations of those prophecies, and thus *not* obeying Christ’s command to “occupy until I come.” Some have gone so far as to say that anything we might do, of a practical or concrete nature, is only polishing the brass on the Titanic.
This is how anti-Christian “progressives” were able to take over America: no opposition from the Church.
The End Times will come when they come. We are not permitted a peek at God’s calendar. In the meantime, we have work to do. God will not thank us for burying the talent in the ground and doing nothing with it.
Watchman:
It’s obvious that you are well read on the subject and you explain it well. Many people miss the point with regard to the role of modern Israel in bible prophecy. Your explanation is quite good.
Lee:
I don’t want to ever be the guy telling others to go slack because The End is nigh. I’ve seen, firsthand, what happens when this is practiced and it isn’t pretty. Jeremiah 29 instructs the Jewish exiles to build homes and have families when they are in Babylon. Being aware of the End Times does not mean going slack while we await deliverance.
Prophecy serves several purposes. Predictions of future events gives us hope of deliverance, but we can also use prophecy to recognize events as they happen. The winds of change are blowing hard these days. The political landscape of the Middle East and Europe is changing before our eyes. The UN has all but disenfranchised Israel and the EU is in tumult. Turkey is trying to reassert itself as a world power including publishing maps that show their borders redrawn to those of the Ottoman Empire, which was the last functioning caliphate. I would have foreseen none of this just a few years ago.
It could all blow over, but it seems to be shaping along the lines of prophecy. So what should we do? Occupy, but be watchful. I’m not about to give up on life in the meantime. I still intend to show up for work every morning and do my best. I just initiated a project that will go on for years. I live for this sort of thing and the Second Coming will not make me into someone else. I intend to create data-comm networks for as long as such things exist. I just hope that I’ll get to create some in a righteous world led by Christ.
Amen, Mark.
As for Turkey–they would have to be plum crazy ever to want back the lands of the old Ottoman Empire. What would that get them but an endless headache?
Islam and secularism both threaten us. But Islam is a primitive enemy whose only tool is violence, while secularism uses seduction, lies, and money (among other things). ISIS can be stomped into the dust, if the civilized countries only made up their minds to do it. But getting out from under the wise fools who say they’ll give us Utopia if we give them absolute power over us–that’ll take some doing.
Just an opinion: but I’m beginning to suspect that the (Turkish) caliphate is the beast who was, was not and then came to life again. Some of what I see around me is totally illogical, and this makes me suspect that it is being driven by forces beyond those of the human realm.
Turkey is a minor player in many, many ways, but they control the Bosporus Straits, the demarcation between Europe and Asia. If Gog of Magog is literal, Turkey will likely be a major player, if for no other reason than geography.
Just to add, I agree with you both. I don’t believe in setting dates or holding up in a bunker or anything. I believe in delaying the decay as long as possible. I still have plenty of things I want to do in life. I don’t know how it’s all going to play out or when its going to happen, and I try not to be dogmatic about it. The more I’ve learned, the more I discover I don’t know.
Lee, I would agree.. of the two, secularism is the greater threat, particularly progressivism. It has allowed radical Islam to make great inroads into the West making it the threat it is today.