Faith and belief in a good God require us to recognize God's opposite, an evil spirit who loathes God, rebelled against Him, crucified His son, and has been the source of all evil and death in our world. Just as God has innumerable armies of dynamic angels and saints at His command, so too does Satan have armies of devils and demons; though none can match the Archangel Michael and the more powerful Saints of Holy Spirit. Both armies are squaring off now, in ranks, for the Day of Judgment.
If it seems to you that world events are getting much worse, take comfort in the knowledge that you're right, they really are quickly worsening. But there are good reasons for it and they all work to our eventual benefit.
All the world's a stage, and all of us merely players, but it's also a "sting operation" like big city police departments often run. Undercover agents appear to be criminals, and the real criminals expose themselves, freely dealing with them. Audio and video evidence is gathered. After a period of time, entire crime cartels can be rolled up at once, and there's so much proof against them that a trial isn't needed (Link). They're caught dead to rights, as the saying goes. In this way the Lord is sifting out our hearts and separating the good from the evil.
For those of us who are willing to join with God, the world's strife and agony is awakening us to the power and necessity of spiritual growth. And anyway, what alternatives to God do we have? Drugs, money, sex, power, sports, and violence don't give us pleasure for long. They're dead ends, and we feel worse when they run their course.
This is humanity's oldest problem and most painful battle. How do we fill the emptiness and soothe the pain inside? The Bible, Homer's Iliad, Rome's greatest writers, Dante, Shakespeare, Dickens, and others, illuminated our souls, our common agonies, and wounds.
If we fail to rise to the demands of this new Day of the Lord, we won't survive the war. But if we do rise, there are unimaginably glorious honors to be had. The pleasure of being on God's side in this battle is a great reward in itself. Imagine how you'd feel being in Gen. Eisenhower's company on D-Day, and the following months of 1944-45. Conversely, how would you like being in Hitler's war room? We must choose sides. There's no middle ground anymore.
The war between our Creator and Satan is many thousands of years old. But now a time of shalom (peace, repair, wholeness, and goodness) is approaching. The ancient contest is coming to a victorious conclusion.
Never before have so many people talked openly about Armageddon, whether caused by climate change, nuclear war, pollution, or President Trump. The media's news cycle - which used to last a week - has been shortened to around 24 hours, and the word "crisis" is used daily for every subject under the sun. Last month's "bombshells" and "scandals" are forgotten - for awhile. New crises are created or recycled every day, and they're piling high, without resolution. Hysteria is rampant and increasing. Are we not like patients in a mental hospital that's being run into the ground by other patients?
The news just arrived that President Donald Trump has been exonerated of all supposed "collusion" and "obstruction of justice" after an almost two-year investigation by Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller. Since November of 2016, Leftist enemies of President Trump accused him and his associates of treason, collusion with Vladimir Putin to rig the 2016 election, and other crimes. The entire world media reported on faked events; consciously lied about the president, his family, and their associates; and assisted in the framing and conviction of innocent people. Prosecutor Mueller sent these innocent people to prison. The report Mueller has just submitted also vindicates dozens of people who were his intended targets, and who until now feared for their lives. The whole scenario was like the Salem Witch Trials of 1692 Massachusetts, on steroids. This long, demonic nightmare is finally over.
This author remembers a time - before the Twin Tower attacks on 9/11 - when prophets of doom were objects of ridicule and pity. They were socially ostracized because everyone remembered the triumphs of the western world over Russian communism, Nazism, Italian Fascism, and the Japanese Empire. The Soviet Union collapsed in 1989, and global optimism about the spread of representative government and human liberty was sky high. We in the west had finally won. Even Mao's China had failed and been reorganized around free market principles and basic democracy, it appeared.
Radical Islam was not seen as a threat of any significance outside of the Middle East. The 1990's were a time of giddy optimism in the power of personal computers and the new internet revolution. The stock markets soared, vast new fortunes were created, incomes increased overall, and advances were made in all the sciences; space, the human genome and DNA, medicine, pollution control, and disease prevention.
But underneath all of this, terrible currents were bubbling. Radical Islam was growing like a cancer that nobody wanted to see or talk about. Evidence was ignored, like the 1993 attack in New York City's Twin Tower One (6 dead, 590 wounded); the 1998 simultaneous US Embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya (200 killed, 750 wounded); and in 2000, the US Navy ship Cole (17 killed, 39 wounded). These murders were carried out by Al Qaeda before anyone outside of government knew what it was. Osama Bin Laden was recognized as Al Qaeda's terrorist organizer, and he was spotted by armed drones. President Bill Clinton had an opportunity one morning to allow a drone strike to kill him, but he declined. Bad public relations, he said.
Al Qaeda terrorists saw and knew how weak-willed we were, and grew larger by taking over the whole of Afghanistan.
It took the multiple airliners flown by Islamist madmen on September 11 to awaken us to a horrible new reality - that the good in us; the trusting, sacred and the holy, were under attack.
Faithful Sharia Muslims believe they have a God-given right to dominate the globe, and jihad (holy war) is the violent and bloody way to accomplish it. They expect their anti-Christ messiah, the Mahdi, or Twelfth Imam, to save them when global violence peaks (Link).
The last two decades of terror since 9/11 have mostly destroyed 2,000 years of humanity's genuine progress. These have been the decades from hell.
Satan's Profane War on the Holy and Sacred
The terms holy and sacred are the same, and they mean "worthy of religious veneration", and "entitled to reverence and respect."
Profane means "to treat the holy or sacred with abuse, irreverence, or contempt"; "to debase by a wrong, unworthy, or vulgar use."
Profane language has recently become socially acceptable in movies, television, and the general media. Our moral standards are in steep decline. Deviant sex is becoming normalized almost everywhere, even in grammar schools. Depravities, like the murder of babies in and out of the womb, are being legalized in many countries and American states.
When innocent human life - the purest expression of God on earth - is no longer sacred, nothing is sacred. Who benefits from this demonic evil? And what does the word demonic mean?
Do you believe you're entitled to power over others? Do you believe you deserve to have anything you want, without limit? And that there's no power you must submit to? This is demonic thought. It's lawless, and we see it every day in the news. The desire for "empowerment" is the subject of countless daily talk shows, and the word leaps off the covers of a hundred popular books.
What happens when millions, even billions, of people seek unlimited power, privilege, rank, and wealth? The world becomes what it is right now.
We must choose to not be demonic. We must submit to our Creator's plan for us, which means voluntarily accepting His limitations in this world. The Ten Commandments are a good start and solid foundation. Our next world will be limitless, joyful, and rich beyond measure. We'll share in God's power.
We can't be perfectly moral all the time, of course, but we don't have to be. We're only human, so none of us is entirely one thing or another; except for the small percentage - probably less than 5% - of people who are saints or psychopathic monsters.
So we mostly go through life in a state of indifference to the sacred or profane, and take more or less good care of our business, loved ones, and the myriad details of 21st Century life on earth.
But we hunger for more. The world is not enough for many of us, and we long to fill an emptiness inside. Drugs, violence, and excesses of all kinds claim a significant number of people, yet an equally significant number find real spiritual happiness and fulfillment.
Ours is a time of unimaginable opportunity, specifically because it appears so precarious and bleak. "Mighty oaks from little acorns grow" - Old English proverb.
If it seems to you that world events are getting much worse, take comfort in the knowledge that you're right, they really are quickly worsening. But there are good reasons for it and they all work to our eventual benefit.
All the world's a stage, and all of us merely players, but it's also a "sting operation" like big city police departments often run. Undercover agents appear to be criminals, and the real criminals expose themselves, freely dealing with them. Audio and video evidence is gathered. After a period of time, entire crime cartels can be rolled up at once, and there's so much proof against them that a trial isn't needed (Link). They're caught dead to rights, as the saying goes. In this way the Lord is sifting out our hearts and separating the good from the evil.
For those of us who are willing to join with God, the world's strife and agony is awakening us to the power and necessity of spiritual growth. And anyway, what alternatives to God do we have? Drugs, money, sex, power, sports, and violence don't give us pleasure for long. They're dead ends, and we feel worse when they run their course.
This is humanity's oldest problem and most painful battle. How do we fill the emptiness and soothe the pain inside? The Bible, Homer's Iliad, Rome's greatest writers, Dante, Shakespeare, Dickens, and others, illuminated our souls, our common agonies, and wounds.
If we fail to rise to the demands of this new Day of the Lord, we won't survive the war. But if we do rise, there are unimaginably glorious honors to be had. The pleasure of being on God's side in this battle is a great reward in itself. Imagine how you'd feel being in Gen. Eisenhower's company on D-Day, and the following months of 1944-45. Conversely, how would you like being in Hitler's war room? We must choose sides. There's no middle ground anymore.
The war between our Creator and Satan is many thousands of years old. But now a time of shalom (peace, repair, wholeness, and goodness) is approaching. The ancient contest is coming to a victorious conclusion.
Never before have so many people talked openly about Armageddon, whether caused by climate change, nuclear war, pollution, or President Trump. The media's news cycle - which used to last a week - has been shortened to around 24 hours, and the word "crisis" is used daily for every subject under the sun. Last month's "bombshells" and "scandals" are forgotten - for awhile. New crises are created or recycled every day, and they're piling high, without resolution. Hysteria is rampant and increasing. Are we not like patients in a mental hospital that's being run into the ground by other patients?
The news just arrived that President Donald Trump has been exonerated of all supposed "collusion" and "obstruction of justice" after an almost two-year investigation by Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller. Since November of 2016, Leftist enemies of President Trump accused him and his associates of treason, collusion with Vladimir Putin to rig the 2016 election, and other crimes. The entire world media reported on faked events; consciously lied about the president, his family, and their associates; and assisted in the framing and conviction of innocent people. Prosecutor Mueller sent these innocent people to prison. The report Mueller has just submitted also vindicates dozens of people who were his intended targets, and who until now feared for their lives. The whole scenario was like the Salem Witch Trials of 1692 Massachusetts, on steroids. This long, demonic nightmare is finally over.
This author remembers a time - before the Twin Tower attacks on 9/11 - when prophets of doom were objects of ridicule and pity. They were socially ostracized because everyone remembered the triumphs of the western world over Russian communism, Nazism, Italian Fascism, and the Japanese Empire. The Soviet Union collapsed in 1989, and global optimism about the spread of representative government and human liberty was sky high. We in the west had finally won. Even Mao's China had failed and been reorganized around free market principles and basic democracy, it appeared.
Radical Islam was not seen as a threat of any significance outside of the Middle East. The 1990's were a time of giddy optimism in the power of personal computers and the new internet revolution. The stock markets soared, vast new fortunes were created, incomes increased overall, and advances were made in all the sciences; space, the human genome and DNA, medicine, pollution control, and disease prevention.
But underneath all of this, terrible currents were bubbling. Radical Islam was growing like a cancer that nobody wanted to see or talk about. Evidence was ignored, like the 1993 attack in New York City's Twin Tower One (6 dead, 590 wounded); the 1998 simultaneous US Embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya (200 killed, 750 wounded); and in 2000, the US Navy ship Cole (17 killed, 39 wounded). These murders were carried out by Al Qaeda before anyone outside of government knew what it was. Osama Bin Laden was recognized as Al Qaeda's terrorist organizer, and he was spotted by armed drones. President Bill Clinton had an opportunity one morning to allow a drone strike to kill him, but he declined. Bad public relations, he said.
Al Qaeda terrorists saw and knew how weak-willed we were, and grew larger by taking over the whole of Afghanistan.
It took the multiple airliners flown by Islamist madmen on September 11 to awaken us to a horrible new reality - that the good in us; the trusting, sacred and the holy, were under attack.
Faithful Sharia Muslims believe they have a God-given right to dominate the globe, and jihad (holy war) is the violent and bloody way to accomplish it. They expect their anti-Christ messiah, the Mahdi, or Twelfth Imam, to save them when global violence peaks (Link).
The last two decades of terror since 9/11 have mostly destroyed 2,000 years of humanity's genuine progress. These have been the decades from hell.
Satan's Profane War on the Holy and Sacred
The terms holy and sacred are the same, and they mean "worthy of religious veneration", and "entitled to reverence and respect."
Profane means "to treat the holy or sacred with abuse, irreverence, or contempt"; "to debase by a wrong, unworthy, or vulgar use."
Profane language has recently become socially acceptable in movies, television, and the general media. Our moral standards are in steep decline. Deviant sex is becoming normalized almost everywhere, even in grammar schools. Depravities, like the murder of babies in and out of the womb, are being legalized in many countries and American states.
When innocent human life - the purest expression of God on earth - is no longer sacred, nothing is sacred. Who benefits from this demonic evil? And what does the word demonic mean?
Do you believe you're entitled to power over others? Do you believe you deserve to have anything you want, without limit? And that there's no power you must submit to? This is demonic thought. It's lawless, and we see it every day in the news. The desire for "empowerment" is the subject of countless daily talk shows, and the word leaps off the covers of a hundred popular books.
What happens when millions, even billions, of people seek unlimited power, privilege, rank, and wealth? The world becomes what it is right now.
We must choose to not be demonic. We must submit to our Creator's plan for us, which means voluntarily accepting His limitations in this world. The Ten Commandments are a good start and solid foundation. Our next world will be limitless, joyful, and rich beyond measure. We'll share in God's power.
We can't be perfectly moral all the time, of course, but we don't have to be. We're only human, so none of us is entirely one thing or another; except for the small percentage - probably less than 5% - of people who are saints or psychopathic monsters.
So we mostly go through life in a state of indifference to the sacred or profane, and take more or less good care of our business, loved ones, and the myriad details of 21st Century life on earth.
But we hunger for more. The world is not enough for many of us, and we long to fill an emptiness inside. Drugs, violence, and excesses of all kinds claim a significant number of people, yet an equally significant number find real spiritual happiness and fulfillment.
Ours is a time of unimaginable opportunity, specifically because it appears so precarious and bleak. "Mighty oaks from little acorns grow" - Old English proverb.
