Our Glorious Temples

From very earliest times, humankind has felt a need to consecrate certain places and take refuge in them; making them sanctuaries. Even very primitive societies made little shrines and objects for veneration, and certain spots - such as mountaintops - were felt to be special, sacred, or holy. Often temples were built there, and in many cases, these structures became the central focal point and expression of the very finest these societies could produce in art and technology. Nimrod's Tower of Babylon was one, as are the pyramids of Egypt, and the Parthenon on top of the Acropolis in Athens.

The Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem, dedicated to God the Creator and His ethical monotheism, was the most honored in its time; even today it's the most controversial. The Temple was built of fine white stone and beams of cedar, massive amounts of gold and bronze, and decorated with fine fabrics and gems. Pilgrims from all over the known world came to worship. Its mere foundation, called the Wailing Wall today, has sparked wars. Both Jews and Muslims claim ownership of it. 

Sometimes temples are used to honor certain kings or ancestors, but more often they honor a god. It's a very natural thing to do. Even in our modern age we build monuments to our desires, achievements, or loves. Consider the Statue of Liberty, Mount Rushmore, the Space Needle in Seattle, and the Eiffel Tower.

Modern science is coming to realize that our brains are hardwired for worship, and it's critical to our survival.  Research is showing that we must believe in and venerate something; if not the One God, then a false god: love, money, power, or other material things. 

We humans can't help but recognize that great powers - natural or man-made - can toss us around like rag dolls. We hate feeling vulnerable and powerless.  Take a look at this: Human Beings Are Hardwired For Religion

It matters a great deal what god we believe in. Power and money worshipers have a shockingly bad track record, and they frequently self-destruct. The same is true of sex and drug devotees. 

Similarly, Utopian ideas such as Marxism, liberalism, and socialism have been enormously popular and destructive. Look at Europe today, and what similar policies have done to the United States. Bankruptcy is rife. No invention of humans can begin to replace our need and love for one True God. 

 

Have you seen the Temple of Liberalism/Socialism? It exists largely in our minds, but is very real, and it has nourished hundreds of disastrous political schemes and  false religions. It's crumbling now, and should be pulled down as soon as possible. Worshipers are still making offerings to it, giving everything they have, even their lives, in vain.

It stands on four pillars of belief that deceive worshipers:

 1) Pacifism: Wars are brought on by people preparing for war or national defense. Peace is the normal state of mankind and nature. If we disarm, others will too.

This is patently false. The world is and always has been a very violent place, as Charles Darwin proved. Do police provoke crime by driving their special cars, wearing uniforms, and carrying weapons? No. The opposite is true. Weakness invites criminality.

2) Fairness: Inequities between individuals caused by gender, different levels of talent, and ability are "unfair", so a powerful central government must be used to "level the playing field".

Taking the property of others is stealing, unless they agree to give. Life is not 'fair' as we perceive fairness. Many people don't mind being poor. This author enjoyed it for many years because it gives one a lot of free time. Plus, there are few serious responsibilities. 

Free peoples in a free society prove their worth and succeed in many ways we don't see or appreciate. God does see. Moreover, all attempts to engineer societies and outcomes have led to tyranny, collapse, and suffering. Both Red China and the old Soviet Union proved this.
 
3) Atheism/Agnosticism: Belief in God and religion is a mark of weakness and lack of intelligence  It is absurd and impossible that the world is unfolding according to a Divine Plan. Either God is an illusion or God is distant and inaccessible. Science and reason are supreme. Morals and any concept of salvation are decided by the majority, collectively. Therefore, a powerful central authority using science as its guide must be created to dictate personal/national/world events and outcomes. This is historically inevitable and "right".
 
Again, human political systems are not wise enough or rich enough to accomplish this. Governments playing god bring on catastrophe. Friedrich Nietzsche declared, "God is dead" in the late 19th Century. Then he committed suicide. The wayward European empires followed in 1914. 

4) Reparations: Ancient grievances never die, and old ethnic, religious, and cultural conflicts and injustices must be retroactively corrected. This is done by monetary and legal compensation. Centralized government must confiscate wealth from those who have, give it to the poor, and put "disadvantaged" peoples  ahead of the line for jobs and benefits. It's the Christian/Jewish/Muslim/Hindu thing to do, and is 'right'.

There is a statute of limitations for all grievances, and the aggrieved must learn to forgive the sins of others.

Religious people know that truly effective charity must come from individuals, as Jesus, Moses, and all other true prophets have told us. Again, governments are a necessary evil, and are like children playing with fire when they play god. 

The rotten and corrupt Temple of Liberalism/Socialism has to be demolished so that the new Temple of Solomon can be erected in its place. Scripture promises that it will be done, and we can assist God by remaining awake, and by helping others to see what's happening.

The World Is About To Be Transformed

Conflict in the world is escalating, and will transform our planet. This is all happening according to divine plan, which will remake and restore the world, eventually. 

From time immemorial humanity has been at war with itself, in a battle between individual rights and the elite rulers of nations. God is on the side of the individual, and wants each of us to have the freedom to prosper and seek Him. Good governments derive their authority from the consent of the governed, but they always tend toward corruption, abuse, and love of power. Left unchecked, they try to become godlike and oppress their citizens - a clear evil. King Nimrod of Babylon was the first to literally assault God from his tower with bow and arrow. 

The Pharaohs of Egypt were believed to be gods on earth when Moses - who was one of the elite ruling class - defected and led the Hebrew nation away from tyranny, and the deluded King Ramses.

Earthly power must never be given the same credibility as God's power. We must recognize the Creator, not the creation, as supreme.

There's little difference in spirit between Moses, Theseus of Greece,  Jesus and his Apostles, or the Founders of the United States. In each case, the battle with state authority claiming the Divine Right of Kings over individuals had to be defeated. Today, the technological state is claiming total dominion over humankind; a clear evil.

America is the last bastion of freedom in the world, the only nation capable of changing the course of human events; which are drifting toward totalitarian government and the complete subjugation of  individual freedom:

This video datws from 2019

These prophetic words of David, in his Psalm 2, were written a 1,000 years before Christ:  "The kings of the earth [will] rise up, and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord, and His anointed."  Only now, with technology, is such a thing possible. The pathetic King Nimrod of Babylon is alive and well in spirit.

The United States finds itself still intact because it was founded on individual freedom of religion, inalienable rights, the recognition of God's hand in world affairs, and the priceless inheritance of English Common Law; which sees the people - regardless of class or wealth - as sacrosanct. Those accused of crimes are presumed innocent, courts must prove guilt with solid evidence, and punishment must be proportionate to the crime. 

The conflict today is fierce, and getting fiercer. The outcome in the short term is far from certain. We've had many failures in our great struggles for liberation. But regardless of the outcome, the boundary line between earthly and divine authority must be drawn, and redrawn again. 

Abraham Lincoln said of this great war, "It is the eternal struggle between right and wrong throughout the world... It is the same spirit that says, 'You work and toil and earn bread, and I'll eat it.' No matter in what shape it comes, whether from the mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the people of his own nation and live by the fruit of their labor, or from one race of men as an apology for enslaving another race, it is the same tyrannical principle."  Lincoln knew we must fight and win a civil war in order to cleanse ourselves of the darkness, both within and without.

How can we tell when our leaders have reached the point of evil? They begin lying, and when caught, deny lying, and pile on more lies. History is rewritten to accommodate lies. Collapse always follows.

There's an election coming up in the U.S., on November 6, that will determine the future direction of world events. It marks the last possible point for America and the world to exit the highway to self-destruction.

The ruling political party in the U.S. has created an economic, ethical, legal, and foreign affairs fiasco of epic proportions. This party's philosophy is identical to the European Union's global socialist one - based on Karl Marx - that destroyed the old Soviet Union and is destroying the west daily. It creates a powerful central government that taxes producers heavily and redistributes wealth to many who are not productive. The result: reduced innovation, loss of productivity, slow or no growth, and burgeoning deficits. 

The E.U. monolith is imploding, and has only a little time left. But the ruling class in the U.S. - with the aid of a perfidious and craven media - is perpetuating the lie that everyone will prosper from their philosophy, eventually. Their track record is miserable. Greece, Italy, Spain, and Portugal are bankrupt. The United States is bankrupt as well, unless serious steps toward economic growth are taken. Meanwhile, the Democrat Party is saying only high taxes levied on the rich will save the nation. Class civil war is their tactic for re-election, borrowed from the oldest playbook in history, the one that denies and replaces God with the State. Karl Marx merely recycled it for 19th Century consumption.

The Marxist/Socialist tactic of blaming the rich for the suffering of the poor is as old as the Roman Republic, which collapsed over 2,000 years ago. The reason? Mark Antony whipped up the discontented mobs and started a class-based civil war. He lost, and Rome was forever afterword ruled by emperors. Individual freedom was lost.

It's happening again, now, in America. The ruling party is fomenting a civil conflict, the haves against the have-nots. Democrats have used this trick since Franklin Roosevelt ran in 1932 (despite the fact that he, John Kennedy, Al Gore, and John Kerry were and are all multi-millionaires).

Of the many lies told every day, one of the worst is taking us to the brink of world war. It is the lie that a short promotional clip of a film about Muhammed, produced by a no-talent hack in Los Angeles and aired on YouTube, has inflamed radicals in the Muslim world against the west. The ruling class in America has apologized profusely, arrested the film's maker, and promises to limit free speech in the future. This is the price that radical Muslims have demanded to stop their rioting, and is a complete fraud. They hate us for a thousand reasons, but chief among them is that we will never follow their Medieval Sharia Law.

Now it turns out this is a complete lie. Congressional testimony is proving that the recent attacks on consulates and killings of ambassadors and aides are planned al Qaeda attacks. The appeasement-based Middle East policy of the Democrats is in shambles. the Arab Spring they took credit for is a mob upheaval, and they have endangered all of us westerners.

At the same time, this same ruling class has produced and is promoting a big budget film about the killing of Osama Bin Laden; and they're using that film to burnish the U.S. president's image as a freedom fighter. The Muslim rioters in Egypt and Libya recently screamed,  "We're all Osama, Obama!"

Let's get this straight:  The YouTube clip of Muhammed in a movie inflamed the entire Middle East, causing riots and killing; and that’s our fault. But this big budget, highly promoted film, and all the president's bragging about killing Osama is just good fun and politics.
 
Will American voters buy into their narrative? Upon this decision our nation’s existence hangs.

Just before the 2008 election, President Obama said to his followers at a huge rally, "We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America!" His version of transformation can still be halted. God is watching to see which version we prefer.

Here is a most apt description of who our enemy is:

"You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies." - Jesus to the Pharisees, from John, 8:44

Why Prayer Matters

Because we are frail beings in an incredibly violent universe, subject to huge forces we barely understand, we really need to appeal to the Creator of All. Our existence is a miracle, and may end at any moment. Life is short, and eternity is long.

When we pray we're stepping up and making ourselves available to God, to be used as needed in this chaotic battlefield of a world. When we do this we become a light shining in the pitch black darkness; for that is how this world appears to God and the good angels.

Forgiveness is an important first step, and the key to effective prayer. "When you stand in prayer, forgive anyone against whom you have a grievance, so that your Father in heaven may in turn forgive you your transgressions." - Jesus, Mark 11:25.  This can be painful, and it's why so few people pray seriously.  Grudges are a temptation when we're hurting. But we can't have peace of mind while we're stewing in resentment. Try saying to God, "Your will be done" with the injustice you've suffered. It gets a lot easier with practice.

It's an excellent idea to ask yourself if you have a grudge against God for not answering previous prayers, or allowing you to suffer in what seems to be a very unfair way. This author certainly feels that. A virtuous, dedicated, and pious life won't earn us a pass from suffering. On the contrary, people may envy us or hate us for our love of God. We will certainly become targets to some degree for some people, and we can be martyred for our love of God. This is made very clear in the New Testament.

As hard as it may be, start your prayer by thanking God for all the good things in your life. There must be some blessings in even the worst life. Then think of all those people who have a worse time of it than you do. Ask for guidance and light. Trust that you're being heard.

If we volunteer for long enough, and make ourselves a reliable partner with God, we become like a lighthouse on solid rock, above the raging and chaotic sea. A beacon of light and comfort to those who are storm-tossed and in danger; for the shipwrecked souls who are clinging by their fingernails to the flotsam of destroyed lives and dreams.  

Helping others is a powerful tonic for our self healing. Giving help and solace is often easier than isolating oneself, and the good feelings that result can lift our mood amazingly; giving great meaning to our lives. There is justice in the universe, and God judges and punishes, but often not in a way we can know about. It's natural to want justice, but mercy may be far more beneficial to us. We may have forgotten the many hurts and wrongs that we've perpetrated, and in a perfectly just universe we might find ourselves condemned. So ask for mercy and forgiveness first, before praying for punishment of the wicked. 

There is a kind of Zen to Christianity that enriches our understanding of God, Christ, and the Holy Spirit. The way to Salvation comes from working and trying without actually working and trying, ultimately. Heaven comes to us when we allow and trust Christ to work in us: