Deadly Natural Disasters That Carry A Deadlier
Message
Could anyone still say that the
multitude of natural disasters of 2004 were mere cycles of nature, no different
from those that have struck this planet in the past?
For over a decade we have warned the
world that end time prophecies were in the making, that things would get
progressively worse until humanity has learned the lesson that it cannot live
without its Maker, yet few people took note of our warnings. Now, all of a
sudden, world leaders and scientists are up in the arms over what is happening
to this planet.
Year 2004 ended up with what the
United Nations said was the worst natural disaster in its history, a tsunami of
such magnitude that killed people in the hundreds of thousands and destroyed
the livelihood of millions of people in twelve countries around the Indian
Ocean. That was only the culmination of
a series of catastrophes that struck all over the world.
There were four times more devastating
hurricanes than usual in America, eight times more typhoons in the seas around
Japan, floods of the century in China, India and Bangladesh, droughts of the
century in Australia, mid west America, Africa and elsewhere, extremes of
weather from draught to floods in Europe, deadly earthquakes in many parts of
the world but especially in east Asia, plagues of locusts in Africa, the Middle
East, Australia, and elsewhere, epidemics that threaten the future of many
nations in the Third World, and general weather upheavals in all countries of
the world.
Some television stations had the
headline “Apocalypse” in the background as they read reports of these
disasters, but generally speaking few people took seriously the notion that we
are really in the end time. But if these are not the signs that Jesus
Christ said would preceded the Great Tribulation and His return to this earth,
then we would like to know what they are.
Let us have a look at what He said.
Mat 24:1 “Then Jesus went out and departed from
the temple, and His disciples came up to show Him the buildings of the temple.
Mat 24:2 And Jesus said to them, "Do you
not see all these things? Assuredly, I say to you, not one stone shall be left
here upon another, that shall not be thrown down."
Mat 24:3 Now as He sat on the
Mat 24:4 And Jesus answered and said to them:
"Take heed that no one deceives you.
Mat 24:5 "For many will come in My name, saying,
'I am the Christ,' and will deceive many.
Mat 24:6 "And you will hear of wars and rumours
of wars. See that you are not troubled; for all these things must come to pass,
but the end is not yet.
Mat 24:7 "For nation will rise against nation,
and kingdom against kingdom. And there will be famines, pestilences, and
earthquakes
Mat 24:8 in various places. "All these are the beginning of
sorrows.
Mat 24:9 "Then they will deliver you up to
tribulation and kill you, and you will be hated by all nations for My name's
sake.
Mat 24:10 "And then many will be offended, will
betray one another, and will hate one another.
Mat 24:11 "Then many false prophets will rise up
and deceive many.
Mat 24:12 "And because lawlessness will abound,
the love of many will grow cold.
Mat 24:13 "But he who endures to the end shall be
saved.
Mat 24:14 "And this gospel of the kingdom will be
preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end
will come.
Mat 24:15 "Therefore when you see the 'abomination
of desolation,' spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy
place" (whoever reads, let him understand),
Mat 24:16 "then let those who are in
Mat 24:17 "Let him who is on the housetop
not go down to take anything out of his house.
Mat 24:18 "And let him who is in the field not go
back to get his clothes.
Mat 24:19 "But woe to those who are pregnant and
to those who are nursing babies in those days!
Mat 24:20 "And pray that your flight may not be in
winter or on the Sabbath.
Mat 24:21 "For then there will be great
tribulation, such as has not been since the beginning of the world until this
time, no, nor ever shall be.
Mat 24:22 "And unless those days were shortened,
no flesh would be saved; but for the elect's sake those days will be shortened.
Mat 24:23 "Then if anyone says to you, 'Look, here
is the Christ!' or 'There!' do not believe it.
Mat 24:24 "For false christs
and false prophets will rise and show great signs and wonders to deceive, if
possible, even the elect.
Mat 24:25 "See, I have told you beforehand.
Mat 24:26 "Therefore if they say to you, 'Look, He
is in the desert!' do not go out; or 'Look, He is in the inner rooms!' do not
believe it.
Mat 24:27 "For as the lightning comes from the
east and flashes to the west, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be.
Mat 24:28 "For wherever the carcass is, there the
eagles will be gathered together.
Mat 24:29 "Immediately after the tribulation of
those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the
stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken.
Mat 24:30 "Then the sign of the Son of Man will
appear in heaven, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they
will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great
glory.
Mat 24:31 "And He will send His angels with a
great sound of a trumpet, and they will gather together His elect from the four
winds, from one end of heaven to the other.
Mat 24:32 "Now learn this parable from the fig
tree: When its branch has already become tender and puts forth leaves, you know
that
Mat 24:33 summer is near. "So you also, when you see all these
things, know that it is near; at the doors!
Mat 24:34 "Assuredly, I say to you, this
generation will by no means pass away till all these things take place.
Mat 24:35 "Heaven and earth will pass away, but My
words will by no means pass away.
Mat 24:36 "But of that day and hour no one knows,
not even the angels of heaven, but My Father only.
Mat 24:37 "But as the days of Noah were, so also
will the coming of the Son of Man be.
"For as in the days before the flood,
Mat 24:38 they were eating and drinking, marrying and
giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark,
Mat 24:39 and did not know until the flood came and
took them all away, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be.
Mat 24:40 "Then two men will be in the field: one
will be taken and the other left.
Mat 24:41 "Two women will be grinding at the mill:
one will be taken and the other left.
Mat 24:42 "Watch therefore, for you do not know
what hour your Lord is coming.
Mat 24:43 "But know this, that if the master of
the house had known what hour the thief would come, he would have watched and
not allowed his house to be broken into.
Mat 24:44 "Therefore you also be ready, for the
Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.
Every single sign that Jesus Christ
spoke about in this prophecy has been fulfilled, which means that the world is
now in line for their culmination into the Great Tribulation and His return to
this earth.
What is astounding about these
impending world shattering events is that although the world has been warned
about them countless times, it will still be taken buy surprise by their
fulfilment. If you think that the
earthquakes and the tsunamis that struck this planet last year were
unprecedented, consider the magnitude of the earthquake that will precede
Jesus’ return.
Rev 16:17 “ Then the seventh angel
poured out his bowl into the air, and a loud voice came out of the temple of
heaven, from the
Rev 17:2 judgment of the great harlot who sits on many
waters, with whom the kings of the earth committed fornication, and the
inhabitants of the earth were made drunk with the wine of her
fornication."
The current world travails are mere
warnings of a catastrophe the likes of which the world has never seen, an earthquake
of such magnitude that will flatten the cities of the nations, cover every
island and flatten mountains. Those who
think that this event is yet a long way in the future, will have a crude
realisation soon. Our writings are a
witness that we have done our duty before the world, before our Savior and before our God.
After providing countless scriptural
and historical proofs of the bona fide of this work, we can do no more than add
to it the latest scientific alarms about global warming and the threat it poses
to the very survival of life on this planet, and the need for our heavenly
Father to hasten the return of our Lord Jesus Christ and the setting up of the
Millennium Kingdom without delay.
“Polar Ice Caps Melting” “Scientists have found that the ice
caps in Greenland are melting ten times faster than previously thought. What’s happening to the
This is the frontline of what many
scientists see as a key factor in climate change. It’s remote and hostile, but what happens
here could affect us all. This is
volatile terrain. Huge icebergs brake
away all the time, but the latest evidence is alarming – the recent melting is
far beyond what normally happens in summer.
It is ten times faster than previously thought.
This is the very edge of the
icesheet, and scientists have discovered that it is in retreat at an alarming
speed. To give you a sense of scale,
this massive wall of ice behind me, is dropping in hight at a rate of one meter
a month. Whatever it causes, something
pretty drastic is going on here. “If
we’d been here three months ago, how much higher would we be standing”, asked
the reporter a local person.
“It’s all changed in just a century.
Back then the glaciers were pictured as being far larger. A satellite picture
traces the extraordinary retreat of the ice, speeding up in the last fifteen
years [Remember, fifteen years ago is
when we started this work]. As a simulation
shows what could happen – the whole thing is simply vanishing.”
“Ferdinand and his family, has
started cultivating potatoes. In the year 2000, he says, it got warmer [Remember,
in the year 2000 we unveiled Daniel’s prophecies about the end time]. Before that, the sea froze solid in
winter. Now we are growing things like
never before. Scientists don’t
understand it, but they are clear on two things: there is change, and the whole
world will feel it.” (SBS TV,
Antarctic Ice Caps Melting Eight Times Faster Than a Decade Ago
“As the UN latest climate control conference gets under way, the United
States has again resisted calls to ratify the Kyoto protocol. Leaders and environmentalists from 150 nations
are gathering in
Jason Om
(reporter): “Under the surface,
Bob Thomas, Project Manager: “This has major implications, certainly for
the next 10 to 100 years. Because if sea
levels start to raise from this course, it will be impossible not to turn it
into a rout.”
J.O.
“Researchers believe as the ice shells crack, the glaciers from behind
start to accelerate into the sea at a rate eight times faster than a decade
ago.”
Jim Yungel,
NASA scientist. “We’re finding this in
ice caps in Greenland; we’re finding this in ice caps from northern Canada . .
.” Almost everywhere we are making
measurements around the world, the ice is in retreat.”
J.O.
It’s more bad news for world leaders gathering in
New figures show that
Juan Carlos Villalonga,
Greenpeace. “There is absolutely no
balance. In ten years, the world hasn’t
been able to agree what type of effort to make to reduce emissions, despite the
fact that there is an urgent problem.”
J.O.
“
We strongly recommend that people
read our article “Is It A Question Of Survival Or
Salvation?” in The Christian Herald No 3,
which we published as early as 1993. They will see where the roots of many of
the current world problems lay. Here is
a quote from that article.
“The former Soviet
Union gave us Chernobyl then it collapsed.
The world breathed a sigh of relief in the hope that the Cold War and
the danger of nuclear confrontation were over.
What the world did not know then was that the legacy of communism is
just as catastrophic for the world as the danger from its nuclear
arsenals: "
People who are
environmentally conscious know about the devastation caused by the Exxon Valdez
oil spill in Alaska. But how many people
know that in the vast Russian wilderness, four times that amount is being
spilled every day from the decaying antiquated oil installations? The damage done to the environment by the oil
spill and its many accompanying fires is incalculable. The
topsoil is being destroyed and the ground below, which was permanently frozen,
is beginning to melt. Scientists fear
that this will affect the global climate.
Already in 1990, the temperature in the Arctic Circle reached 40 degrees
Celsius, eight degrees above the normal.
On the
political scene, things are hardly better.
The West has put all its hopes in President Yeltsin's ability and
determination to introduce democratic reforms in Russia. But what will happen when he is no longer on
the scene? He is in poor health, and
while there seem to be no obvious contenders who can step in his shoes and
continue his reforms, there are many powerful rivals who call for the
restoration of the Russian empire.
On the economic
sphere, the one great resource that gives
“Last year,
gathered at the Rio International Summit, more than one hundred heads of states
to discuss the frightening deterioration of the environment. They discussed things, and that's all. Has anyone heard anything about that event
since?
Human beings
have an uncanny ability to discuss things when they get to a crisis point, then
leave the problems to others to resolve.
This time, however, the problems will not be resolved by others. The world is no longer facing temporary local
problems, but intractable worldwide problems.
It is no longer a question of survival, but one of salvation. But science cannot save; only God can.
Human beings,
however, have decided that there is no room for God in their
deliberations. Even when the world is
crumbling around them, when it is becoming obvious that life itself is in
danger of extinction, they will not turn to the only source that can save them.
They seek
immortality through "scientific" methods such as cryogenics (deep-freezing
of the corpse in the hope that one day scientists will discover the secret of
immortality, cure their diseased bodies and revive them to eternal life), and
perpetual replacement of body parts with robotic devises or genetically cloned
body parts. That's the kind of
immortality science offers humanity.
That educated
people can come up with such absurdities is a witness to the bankruptcy of our
educational system. That is the effect
of compartmentalizing our tertiary studies in rigid disciplines without any
relation to each other. It should be
obligatory for all university students to study humanity subjects. As it is, we get medical graduates without
ethics, lawyers without morals, and scientists with distorted visions of the
future. They need to study not just any
humanity subjects, but the good old fashion classics, philosophy and
religion. During my university studies,
the head of the Religious Studies Department once said that "time was when
in philosophical studies people talked about God and the meaning of life, about
ethics and values, but no more." These days they have a "Theory"
that if people understand what they study, it is not worth studying.
Searching for
truth, God, and a moral purpose in life does not go well with evolutionary
thinking. In the struggle for survival
there is no room for compassion, altruistic feelings and transcendental
goals. Hedonistic materialism and the
pursuit of mindless pleasures, are the things that count in our "enlightened"
society. That is why humanity finds itself on the brink of catastrophe.” (The Christian Herald No 3, p.4).
When people wonder why the melting of
the ice caps has accelerated in the last decade or so they might wish to
remember the inferno of oil wells that were set aflame by Saddam Hussein when
he was in retreat from Kuwait.
Who is Saddam Hussein? The darling of France, Germany and Russia,
which even after the discovery of over three hundred mass graves in Iraq still
maintain that his removal was “illegal”, and of Kofi Annan who said that he could do business with him even
after he set up those enormous fires
which greatly contributed to the global warming.
The following is a report from
Australia’s ABC television network about the perilous condition of the world.
TONY JONES [reporter]:
Now to tonight's guest - David Goodstein is professor of physics at the
California Institute of Technology or Caltech.
In his latest book, 'Out of Gas' - the End of the Age of Oil', he
explores the consequences of oil reserves getting lower and lower in the coming
decades. Professor Goodstein joined us
from San Francisco. David Goodstein, thanks for joining us.
PROFESSOR DAVID
GOODSTEIN, AUTHOR 'OUT OF GAS': Thank you.
TJ: Your most alarming statement
you make in your book is that civilisation as we know it will come to an end
before the end of this century when we run out of fuel?
D G: Yes, that is, it's
meant to be alarming, it's meant to alarm people, to wake people up and help
prevent that from happening.
T J: So, how long do you
reckon we've got in reality?
D G: Well, that's not an
easy question to answer. We will
probably have an oil crisis reasonably soon.
It may have already begun. We are much
too close to the situation to know for sure.
The information we're given is much too undependable for us to know for
sure.
It might not actually happen until later this decade or even in the next
decade. Those differences are very
important to us because we would like to go on living the comfortable lives we
lead. But on the long scale of human
history 10 or 20 years is absolutely negligible. So we will have a oil crisis. There are other fossil fuels that can be made
a substitute for oil, at a price. So we
might be able to muddle on for a while, though a much more likely scenario is
that we will have resource wars and other terrible things happening. But it is possible we'll be able to muddle on
for a while, even turning to coal, for example, which can be liquefied and used
as a substitute for oil and which is in very large supply. But if we do all that, for one thing we will
do an unpredictable amount of damage to our climate, and for another thing it's
my guess that we would start running out of coal. Let us say we would reach the point where
we're depleting the resource faster than we can develop new sources probably in
the this century.
T J: This is one of the
interesting things because people tend to think that coal and natural gas are
available in virtually infinite quantities.
If oil runs out you can turn to them.
What you're saying is all fossil fuels are finite?
D G: All fossil fuels are
finite. We don't have a very clear idea
of how much there is for the various resources.
The historical peak in oil discovery worldwide occurred around 1960,
discoveries have been declining ever since.
The historic peak and natural gas discoveries occurred in the 1970s and
so the maximum for natural gas production probably is only 10 years or so
behind that for oil. We seem to make
hundreds to thousands of years estimates at the present rate of extraction but
that's completely unrealistic because we use twice as much energy now from oil
as we do for coal. If you're going to
mine coal to substitute for the oil you have to mine it much faster, the
conversion process is inefficient, the world's population is increasing. the poorer parts of the world want to be more
like us and use more energy and finally, we will run out of, we will be in
trouble with coal not when we mine the last tonne, but when we reach the peak
production which is about the halfway point.
T J: We've just heard
about Hubbard's peak and the speculation that we passed the point of no
return. How does anyone know for sure
that we're actually past that point?
D G: We can't know for
sure. I've always thought that we will
know that the peak has occurred when Saudi Arabia maxes out, when it reaches
its peak in production. The Saudis claim
they will be able to increase their production by a million barrels a day in a
relatively short period of time. That
promise has not yet been kept. We don't
know whether it's true. If you look at
the history of what's called proved oil reserves. The proved reserves of oil
in the OPEC organisation of petroleum exporting countries, increased by 300 to
400 billion barrels in the late 1980s.
There were no important discoveries of oil during that period. What happened instead was that OPEC changed
its quota system how much oil each country could pump based on in part its
claimed reserves and the claimed reserves just appeared out of nowhere by
magic. So half the world's proved
reserves may be an illusion and the information we're given is so undependable
we really just can't say.
T J: Do you believe oil
companies have lied about this?
D G: We know that Royal
Dutch Shell did because they were audited by the SEC, by an external auditor an
independent auditor forced to reduce their estimated reserves by 20 per
cent. That sent shock waves through the
entire oil industry. But 90 per cent of
the proved reserves are held by countries, not by companies and nobody ordered
the Saudi books.
T J: Have we really
discovered all the remaining great oilfields though. We know for example geologists claim there is
a great lake of oil under Antarctica?
D G: The people who would
like to believe that the Hubbard's peak is further away than some of us fear,
believe that we may make great discoveries in the deep oceans and the
Antarctic, as you say, and central and northern Siberia and so on. I think they're grasping at straws. Two-thirds of the world's oil reserves are in
the Middle East the Persian Gulf. That's
10 times as much as Africa, ten times as much as the Middle East, ten times as
much as in the former Soviet Union.
There are no other important players in the game. We recently saw a spike because there were a
couple of storms in the Gulf of Mexico.
Just think of what's going to happen when the Saudi regime
collapses.
T J: As we know, many
scientists are convinced that global warming is happening so fast that if we
don't stop burning fossil feel fuels the earth will reach within 30 years a
catastrophic tipping point. Are you
saying that effectively we're going to run out of fossil fuels before we
destroy the environment?
D G: There are some
people who see that as the silver lining in the cloud. We'll reach Hubbard's peak and have to reduce
our burning of fossil fuels and that will keep us from damaging and doing
irreversible damage to the planet. It
seems to me that's like hoping that the patient will have a fatal heart attack
to save him from dying of cancer. It's
not the way I think we ought to do things.
T J: Professor James
Lovelock who's called by many the father of the environmental movement says
"the industry world must now embrace nuclear power as the only viable
alternative to oil and other fossil fuels". What do you say to that argument?
D G: It depends on what
kind of nuclear power you mean. If you
mean the kind of conventional power that we use for power in the United States,
burning uranium 235, which is a rare isotope of uranium, there are a couple of
problems. One of them is you would have
to build 10,000 of the largest power plants that are feasible by engineering
standards in order to replace the 10 terawatts of fossil fuel we're burning
today. 10,000 nuclear plants of the
largest kind possible - that's a staggering amount and if you did that, the
known reserves of uranium would last for 10 to 20 years at that burn rate. So, it's at best a bridging technology. If you're talking about nuclear fusion, then
in the long range the fuel is almost limitless but it's been 25 years away for
the past 50 years and it's still 25 years away.
It has been said of nuclear fusion and also shell oil which is one of
the possible fossil fuels that they are the energy sources of the future and
always will be.
T J: So, with nuclear
power, even if we could build those 10,000 nuclear power plants presumably
right around the world it would only be a temporary thing?
D G: It would only be a
temporary fix. You can use the rest of
the uranium to breed plutonium 239 then we'd have at least 100 times as much
fuel to use. But that means you're
making plutonium, which is an extremely dangerous thing to do in the dangerous
world that we live in.
T J: So, what do you say
then to the arguments of the Professor Lovelock and others, who say that
nuclear power is the only alternative to avoid reaching the fatal tipping
point?
D. G. I agree with
them. I think that we must make use of all
possible alternatives to fossil fuels, nuclear power included. I'm just trying to stress that it's not the
magic bullet that will by itself save us from our problems, but I certainly
think we have to use it.
T. J. There is one other
alternative we should be talking about and that is hydrogen as fuel for future
motor cars.
What do you think of the hydrogen alternative?
D. G. Hydrogen is made
from fossil fuel. It is not a substitute
for fossil fuels. It's just a way of
conveying energy. It is not a source of
energy. The economics today are if you
make hydrogen by burning fossil fuel to generate electricity and then
electrolyse water to make the hydrogen, it will require somewhere between three
and six gallons of gasoline to make enough hydrogen to replace one gallon of
gasoline. So, a hydrogen economy doesn't
solve anything really. In the long-term
future if you had plenty of fusion power available, stationary power, and the
only problem was to make it mobile to serve for transportation then making
hydrogen might make sense.
T. J. So, what you're
saying is that right now, making hydrogen could actually create more global
warming than we're seeing at the moment?
D. G. Yes, unless you
make it from renewable sources such as solar energy or atomic energy.
T. J. You were pointing out, and I think this is
one of your major points - there is no magic bullet. So, presumably we have to combine our efforts
using what we have - solar power, wind power, tidal power in combinations
unlike anything we have seen before. Is
that feasible though, would any politicians agree to make such great
changes?
D. G. Well, we went through a presidential election
in the US in which neither party mentioned anything having to do with this
problem, which I think is the most important problem of our era. Politicians do not want to touch this
subject. Any politician who tells
Americans that they'll have to give up their SUVs has committed political
suicide. But it does seem to me that a
courageous and visionary politician could say to us, "by burning fossil
fuels we're putting ourselves at the mercy of some very nasty and unstable
parts of the world and we're also endangering the climate of our planet. For the sake of our children and
grandchildren we simply must learn to kick the fossil fuel habit." If that kind of challenge were given to our
scientists and engineers I think we could do it.
T. J. But as you say, the
vision our political leaders is usually constricted to the three or four years
of their electoral cycles.
How long would be it be before the crisis reaches the point where great powers
have no choice but to a make radical decisions?
D. G. It's impossible to
guess. Everything we read about in the
papers every day suggests that the worldwide system for production and
distribution of oil is stretched to the breaking point. That certainly is a symptom one would expect
if we have already reached the peak. But
the fact we have a symptom doesn't mean we have already reached the peak, it's
just an indication.
As I say, we are too close to the situation.
The information we get is far too undependable for us to say. I can not predict how soon it will happen. But it will happen and when it happens there
will be a huge price shock in the cost of gasoline at the pump, in the cost of
everything that has to be transported and not insignificantly, in the cost of
all petrochemicals. There are 6.4
billion people living on the planet today.
Most of them reasonably well-fed as a result of what was called the 'green revolution'
in the second half of the 20th Century.
That consisted in a very large part of fertilising land using
petrochemical-based fertilisers. So,
that stuff is pretty valuable. I don't
think we can sustain the population we have today, much less what we'll have in
20 or 50 years without petrochemical fertilisers.
T. J. Just looking around
the world, do you see any political leaders who appears to understand the full
extent of this crisis?
D. G. If there is one I
have not met him or her yet.
T. J. All right. Let's try, if we can, to end on a positive
note. Are you confident that human
ingenuity, scientific ingenuity will in the end find a way out of this problem?
D. G. I'm hopeful, not confident.
T. J. Professor David
Goodstein, let's hope we have better news for our children and grandchildren
than you're predicting. We thank you
though, for joining us.
D. G. Okay. (Broadcast by Australia’s ABC television network
on November 23, 2004).
We conclude this article
with a short quote from Australia’s largest circulation newspaper.
“2004 in top ten warmest” “A
two-week hot spell in February, which set new temperature records, contributed
to last year being ranked the 10th
hottest year on record [in Australia].
The Bureau of Meteorology’s Annual Australian Climate
Summary released yesterday said preliminary data showed the country’s annual
mean temperature was 0.45C above the 1961-1990 long-term average, making 2004
the tenth warmest year since 1910. In
February, temperatures reached 48.5C in Ivanhoe in western NSW and 46.7C in Ouyen, south of Mildura in
Victoria. The general rise in
Australian temperatures during the second half of the 20th century
was in line with global warming trends, the survey said. The World Meteorological Organisation
reported the global mean temperature for 2004 at 0.44C above normal, the fourth warmest year since records
began in 1861. The survey showed
rainfall patterns to be far from uniform despite the 2004 average of 507mm
outstripping the long-term average of 472mm.” (The
Daily Telegraph, January 7, 2005).
"And you shall know the truth, and the
truth shall make you free”
Just
what did Jesus Christ mean when He made that statement? The Jews of His day thought that they knew
the truth and were free, yet He told them that they neither knew the truth nor
were free, but were in fact children of the Devil.
The
implications of these statements are enormous, not the least because they have
been misunderstood by most people, particularly by those who have transformed
them into a doctrine of hatred towards the Jews. What they fail to understand is that in their
natural state ALL human beings are the same, all are children of the
Devil.
Luke
13:1 “There were present at that season
some who told Him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their
Luke
13:2 sacrifices. And Jesus answered and said to them, "Do
you suppose that these Galileans were worse sinners than all other
Luke
13:3 Galileans, because they suffered
such things? "I tell you, no; but
unless you repent you will all likewise perish.
Luke
13:4 "Or those eighteen on whom the
tower in Siloam fell and killed them, do you think that they were worse sinners
than all
Repentance
is the catalyst that changes human nature, the conscious act of mature
individuals that changes them from children of the Devil into children of
God.
Since
the beginning of time God had people in the world who passed on this message to
humanity, people who spoke His truth without fear or favour. There are countless examples of people who
did so after the Flood of Noah, but not many people know that there were
prophets of God who spoke His truth before the Flood too. Here is but one such example.
Speaking
the truth of God in this world, however, has never been easy or welcomed. People would rather go their own way and “do
their own thing” than have God in their proximity and take note of His
messages. The very first human beings
run away from God when they sinned, rather than repent, a characteristic they
passed on to all their descendants.
Even
the “chosen people”, who saw an extraordinary array of miracles when they were
delivered from Egyptian slavery, became uncomfortable with God in their
proximity and demanded a mediator between them and God. It is worth having a fresh look at their
story.
Exo 19:3 And Moses went up to God, and the LORD
called to him from the mountain, saying, "Thus you shall say to the house
of Jacob, and tell the children of
Exo 19:4 “'You have seen what I did to the
Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles' wings and brought you to Myself.
Exo 19:5 'Now therefore, if you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, then you shall
be a special treasure to Me above
all people; for all the earth is Mine.
'And you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.'
Exo 19:6 These are the words which you shall
speak to the children of
Exo 20:1 And God spoke all these words, saying:
Exo 20:2 "I am the LORD your God, who
brought you out of the
Exo 20:3 "You shall have no other gods
before Me. (The First Commandment).
Exo 20:4 "You shall not make for yourself a
carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is
in the earth
Exo 20:5 beneath, or that is in the water under the
earth; you shall not bow down to them
nor serve them. For I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, visiting the
iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generations of those
who hate Me,
Exo 20:6 but showing mercy to thousands, to those who
love Me and keep My commandments. (The
Second Commandment).
Exo 20:7 "You shall not take the name of the LORD
your God in vain, for the LORD will not hold him guiltless who takes His name
in vain. (The Third Commandment).
Exo 20:8 "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it
holy.
Exo 20:9 Six days you shall labor
and do all your work,
Exo
Exo 20:11 For in six days the LORD made the heavens and
the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day.
Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it. (The Fourth Commandment).
Exo
Exo
Exo
Exo
Exo
Exo
Exo 20:18 Now all the people witnessed the thunderings, the lightning flashes, the sound of the
trumpet, and the mountain smoking; and when the people saw it, they trembled
and stood afar off.
Exo
Exo
They
loved their life so much they feared they would die if God spoke with them
directly, yet all He wanted was to test them and teach them a lesson so that
they may not sin and depart from His ways; that they may obey His Commandments
and treasure the Covenant He made with them.
That Covenant would have given them protection against their enemies,
and unsurpassed blessings, but He conditioned it on their obedience to Him and
on keeping His Commandments.
Exo
Exo
Exo
Lev
26:2 You shall keep My Sabbaths and reverence My sanctuary: I am the
LORD.
Lev
26:3 'If you walk in My statutes and
keep My commandments, and perform them,
Lev
26:4 then I will give you rain in its
season, the land shall yield its produce, and the trees of the field shall
yield their fruit. . . “
Lev
26:7 You will chase your enemies, and
they shall fall by the sword before you.
Lev
26:8 Five of you shall chase a hundred,
and a hundred of you shall put ten thousand to flight; your enemies shall fall
by the sword
Lev
26:9 before you. 'For I will look on you favorably
and make you fruitful, multiply you and confirm My covenant with you. . . ”
Lev
26:14 'But if you do not obey Me, and do
not observe all these commandments, and if you despise My statutes,
Lev
26:15 or if your soul abhors My
judgments, so that you do not perform all My commandments, but break My
covenant,
Lev
26:16 I also will do this to you: I will
even appoint terror over you, wasting disease and fever which shall consume the
eyes and cause sorrow of heart. And you shall sow your seed in vain, for your
enemies shall eat it.
Lev
26:17 I will set My face against you,
and you shall be defeated by your enemies. Those who hate you shall reign over
you, and you shall flee when no one pursues you.
Lev
26:18 'And after all this, if you do not
obey Me, then I will punish you seven times more for your sins . . .”
The
Israelites failed to keep their side of the bargain, and as a result they lost
everything: blessings, land, protection, and worst of all, they lost their
God. They had derailed so far from Him
that when He came in their midst they did not recognise Him and they killed
Him.
John
1:1 “In the beginning was the Word, and
the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
Yes,
“the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus
Christ”. The question is, does grace and
truth override the law? Let us go back
to the very beginning and settle this question once and for all in its
context.
God
felt so strongly about the Ten Commandments that He inscribed them again in
their Scriptures. We won’t list them
again here, as you can read them for yourself in Deuteronomy chapter five. What we want to look at here rather is the
emphasis He placed on the Second Commandment.
He repeated that Commandment not once or twice, but dozens of times
throughout the Old and New Testaments.
And that is the Commandment against idolatry. Notice what He told the Israelites
immediately after He gave them the Ten Commandments.
Exo
Exo
Exo
Exo
Exo
God
repeated the Commandment against idolatry, then He told them that when they
build Him an altar they must do it with stones on which they had not laid their
tools, for the moment they did so they had profaned them.
Can
you see why Jesus Christ said that in their natural state human beings are not
free, do not know the truth of God, and can never know God Himself? To use an Old Testament term, carnal human
beings are simply “unclean”.
Of course He was speaking to the Jews, but His
words have universal application. That
is why He sent His disciples into all the world to make converts of all
nations.
Mat
28:18 “And Jesus came and spoke to them,
saying, "All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth.
Mat
28:19 "Go therefore and make
disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of
the Son
Mat
28:20 and of the Holy Spirit, “teaching them to observe all things that I
have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the
age." Amen.
The
Apostles of Jesus Christ understood the true condition of humanity, and the
fact that they themselves were subject to the pulls of human nature even after
conversion and the receiving of the Holy Spirit. As Apostle Paul said.
All
human beings who live according to the flesh are children of the Devil, and all
who live according to the Spirit become children of God.
Rom
8:5 “For those who live according to the
flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according
to the Spirit,
Rom
8:6 the things of the Spirit. For to
be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.
Rom
8:7 Because the carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law
of God, nor indeed can be.
Rom
8:8 So then, those who are in the flesh
cannot please God. But you are not in
the flesh but in the Spirit,
Rom
8:9 if indeed the Spirit of God dwells
in you. Now if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not His.
Because
the flesh is the domain of the Devil, those who live according to the flesh are
easy pray for his wiles.
The
number one danger that comes from the Devil, after the temptations of the
flesh, is idolatry. From God’s point of
view, idolatry is a greater danger to human beings for it causes them to commit
spiritual adultery, and that sin is more difficult to repent of than the sins
of the flesh. For that is not merely a
matter of turning away from dumb and deaf images, but one of changing one’s
thoughts and frame of mind, and that is very difficult indeed. Why do you think people find it so hard to
depart from their idols and turn to the true God? One has to consider the fact that in the
Bible idolatry is more than just worshipping forbidden images; it comprises all
forms of disobedience to God.
I
will never forget how I agonized for almost a year against my own thoughts when
I entered into conflict with the leaders of the Worldwide Church of God some
three decades ago when I was a member of that Church. Having been brainwashed into believing that
they were true ministers of Jesus Christ, and that that was the “only true
Church of God in the world”, I refused to contemplate any thoughts that did not
conform with their preaching, believing that they were coming from the Devil,
as they were telling us.
The
truth was quite different. God was
trying to show me deadly scriptural errors on their part and I was refusing to
accept it. How could I see things better
then they did when I had been a member of that Church only for a few short
years while they for decades, not only as members but ministers as well? Few people who have not experienced such
agony would understand what it means to struggle against your own
thoughts. In the end I had no choice but
give in and admit that I was seeing things better than they did. I feared that by breaching this subject with
them would cause them to expel me from that Church, which I did not want to
happen for I still believed that that was a true Church of God. I had the sense to see that although they
were false ministers of Jesus Christ, the milieu of the Church was conducive to
the discovery of the truth of God for those who were diligently seeking it and
were applying themselves to the study of the Bible. One of my stunning discoveries was that
although they were telling people to study the Bible, they were not practicing
what they were preaching.
The
unwritten consensus in that Church, as in fact in most churches, was that you
studied the Scriptures to confirm what the preachers said, not to confront them
or discover new things. If you ever saw
things differently you needed to study even more, not so much the Bible as their own writings,
until you came to see things as they saw them.
Well,
I did my very best to study both the Scriptures and their writings, but the
more I studied the more things I saw in which they were wrong. In the end I did not care whether they
expelled me from their church or not, I had to tell them the truth and happen
what it may. That they expelled me did
not surprise me anymore, but the hatred with which they did it, and their
subsequent actions did. It was not
enough for them to disfellowship me from their
church, but they used the two people with whom I was sharing a flat to lock me
out and rob me of everything I possessed.
You have never felt real hated until you experienced it from church
people, from your own “brothers” in the faith.
When Jesus Christ said that they “travel land and sea to win one
proselyte, and when he is won, they make him twice as much a son of hell as
yourselves” He was not joking.
Now
I would not care to remember or mention those things anymore, for God Almighty
has saved me from those troubles and helped achieve far more than they ever
will, but I do so because they are now creating even more problems for us in a
series of panicked attempts to derail us from this course. The method they are using now is to burden us
with false brethren, who are not satisfied to study our writings and follow our
advise, but demand all sorts of material support as well.
How
they could imagine that two people who struggle to support a worldwide work
from their own pension could support them as well, we don’t know. Nor do they understand that it is not
outsiders who decide who and when one becomes a member of this Foundation, but
Jesus Christ Himself. We are merely in
tune with his will and comply with His wishes.
Membership
into this Foundation requires repentance, meekness, truth, and righteousness,
and we do not see such fruits on their part.
There
are enough charitable organisations in the world to cater for the needs of the
poor; our role is different.
We
have been called to restore the long lost Gospel of Jesus Christ, and given
enough resources to witness it to the world, a job we have done to the very
best of our abilities.
For
a decade and a half we have hoped and encouraged people to join us, and help us
do a better and more widespread work, but none has done so. Then suddenly we find ourselves with
‘converts’ and people who claim to be members of our Foundation whom we have
never heard of or seen before. Even so
we would welcome them in our Foundation, except that from what we have seen so
far we are not convinced that their works reflect a true repentance.
Moreover,
some of them are telling us that they are Sunday worshippers when we have made
it clear that Jesus’ followers are expected to be found, at His return, observing
the Sabbath (Mat. 24:20).
Our
role is to cater to the spiritual needs of those who seek the truth of God, not
to comply with the traditions of men that are so widespread in the churches of
today.
This
brings us back to the topic of the Commandments of God, and the question of how
relevant these are in the New Testament.
For this we need to go back briefly to the Old Testament, not to the
writings of Moses, so beloved by the Jews, but to the much later writings of
Isaiah.
Isa 56:1 “Thus says the LORD: "Keep justice, and
do righteousness, For My salvation is about to come, And My righteousness to be
Isa 56:2 revealed.
Blessed is the man who does this, And the son of man who lays hold on
it; Who keeps from defiling the Sabbath,
And keeps his hand from doing any evil."
Blessed
is the man who keeps himself from defiling the Sabbath. What man was this? Not the Israelite man, but the man of the
world. The Covenant of God was given to
Israel, but was intended for the whole world.
This was one of Israel’s greatest failures, for when God gave them His
laws He did not mean that they had to implode among themselves and hide that
law from the world. They were to be an
example to the world, showing other human beings the kind of blessings and
protection they too would enjoy if they embraced that law.
Isaiah’s
prophecy was addressing the whole world not only the Israelites.
Isa 56:3 “Do not let the son of the foreigner Who has
joined himself to the LORD speak, saying, "The LORD has utterly separated
me from His people"; Nor let the eunuch say, "Here I am, a dry
tree."
Isa 56:4 For thus says the LORD: "To the eunuchs
who keep My Sabbaths, And choose what pleases Me, And hold fast My
Isa 56:5 covenant,
Even to them I will give in My house And within My walls a place and a
name Better than that of sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting
name That shall not be cut off.
Isa 56:6 "Also
the sons of the foreigner Who join themselves to the LORD, to serve Him, And to
love the name of the LORD, to be His servants; Everyone who keeps from defiling
the Sabbath, And holds fast My covenant;
Isa 56:7 Even them I will bring to My holy mountain,
And make them joyful in My house of prayer. Their burnt offerings and their
sacrifices Will be accepted on My altar; For My house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations."
Lev
24:22 'You shall have the same law for the stranger and for one from your own
country; for I am the LORD your God.'"
Now
if a foreigner went to Israel today and told Jewish leaders that he would like
to live among them and be treated like one of them, do you think they would
embrace him and treat him as such? They
are hardly more obedient to God now than they were in ancient time. And they wonder that they never get the
blessings and protection that God promised them long ago. Apparently they do not give equal rights to
their own people who turn to Christ, let alone to foreigners who may want to
follow Him. Have the Jews ever stopped
to consider these words of Moses?
Deu
If
Jesus Christ is not that Prophet, would they pray tell us who might he be? We hope they have come around from the
apostasy of believing that that Lubavitcher rabbi,
who encouraged them to think that he was somebody and died crippled and in his
sins, is their “Mossiach”. Refusal to believe their own Scriptures,
about a quarter of which clearly identify Jesus as the Messiah, does not
nullify this fact nor spare them of the need for deep repentance.
We
find it incredible that they cling on to the Old Testament even after seeing
the light, insights, and incomparable advantages of the New Testament. All their sins – failure to conform with the tenets of the Old
Testament, failure to treat foreigners who settled in their midst as their own,
failure to turn the House of God into a House of Prayer for all nations – would be wiped out overnight if they repented,
acknowledged their errors, and became members of the new elect of God.
Their
current theology, which hardly conforms with the Old Testament let alone with
the Bible as a whole, is extremely inadequate.
And it cannot be otherwise for the Bible without the Holy Spirit is no
longer the World of God. Yet they cling
on to the Old Testament determinedly and as a result they continue to reap the
rewards of their unbelief and lack of repentance.
This
is the malaise of modern academic theologians too. They think they can understand the Bible and
God’s plan for mankind by dismissing the relevance of the Holy Spirit. They specialise in peripheral aspects of the
Bible – who wrote it, when and in what conditions – but are not particularly
knowledgeable of its content. And it
cannot be otherwise since they ignore the work of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit does not come to human beings
on the basis of titles and qualifications, but on the basis of repentance,
prayer, worship, and meditation of the law of God, and these are anathema in
academic circles. One can hardly think
of a better example of the blind leading the blind.
Even
documented historical facts about the Bible are no longer kosher with those
people. The biblical “documentaries”
that have been coming out from those quarters recently are nothing but
exercises in ignorance and incursions into demonism and spiritual
darkness. I would never watch those
programs anymore if I did not need to keep myself informed for the sake of this
work. Those who have no such need are
far better never looking at them.
The
Jews keep blaming Christianity for their troubles during the two thousand years
of Diaspora and for the Holocaust.
Christianity had nothing to do with it.
False Christians did all these things, the same that have been a thorn
on the side of true Christian for centuries.
We find it extraordinary that even after we have conclusively proved to
them that the Christianity of Jesus Christ had nothing to do with their
pogroms, they continue to blame His followers for their problems.
What
the mainstream churches have taken to the world IS NOT the Gospel of Jesus
Christ but a false gospel. The
Commandments of God were meant to form the basis upon which the New Testament
was built, yet those churches have not only been telling their people that the
Commandments of God have been done away with, but have been persecuting those
who have remained faithful to the true Gospel of Jesus Christ.
These
churches have been saying that the Ten Commandments have been substituted with
the general Commandment to love one’s neighbour as oneself. Well, this is true, but this Commandment
does not do away with the Ten Commandments; rather it augments and builds upon
them. One cannot love his neighbour as
himself if he does not keep all of
the other Commandments of God. If that
were the case we would see a lot more love and a lot less war in the world
today, but as it is, people keep neither the Ten Commandments nor love their
neighbour as themselves.
Let
us now go to Jesus Christ, the founder of the New Testament, and have Him speak
to us on this matter.
Mat
Mat
Mat
Is
that clear enough? One cannot reach the
Yes,
without God’s Commandments neither salvation nor genuine joy are possible. Now least people may wonder what Commandments
Jesus was referring to, He recorded this incident in the Scriptures for us.
Mat
Mat
Mat
Mat
Mat
Mat
Mat
Mat
If
you want to enter into life, KEEP THE COMMANDMENTS. What Jesus Christ was telling us here is that
what we have in this world is not life but misery, that only by keeping the
Commandments can one attain true life and salvation.
He
listed only the last six Commandments, the ones that deal with man’s
relationship to man, and left out the first four which deal with man’s
relationship with God, not because the first are not important, for they are
more important than the last, but because the last six are in the power of
human beings and are prerequisites for the first. In other words, those who brake the last six
Commandments have little chance of keeping the first, of coming near God, and of
knowing Him.
John
17:3 "And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God,
and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.”
Jesus
said that His sacrifice was necessary for the arrival of the Holy Spirit,
without whom no one could know God.
John
16:8 "And when He has come, He will
convict the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment.”
The
Helper, the Holy Spirit, is being sent by God to those who repent and follow
His Son, and to no one else.
Anyone
can prove this fact by repenting, turning to a righteous life, and joining the
elect of God. If he will not feel more
joy and happiness than he has ever felt in life, he is free to leave and go
back to the “pleasures” (enslavement) of this world.
Unlike
other people, Christians do not kill those who depart from their midst and go
after other gods and other religions.
Such self-inflicted punishment is enough for them. We conclude with the immortal words of Jesus
Christ, the One and Only true Savior of the
world.
The ‘Strictly Secret’ Communist Manifesto
The following document was sent from
Moscow in 1947 to the newly formed communist governments of Eastern
Europe. One of those Governments was
that of Romania. The document came to
life in late 1990s when Romanian democratic parties managed to wrest power
briefly from the party of the former communists, the PSD. We have done our very best to translate it
accurately and retain its intended meaning.
“Strictly Secret”
K
AA/CC 113
NK/003/47
1.
Embassies are forbidden to receive on their territories the natives who
work for us as informers. They will be
met by special service agents who are specifically trained and assigned to do
this job. Their information will be
passed on to the Embassies through these agents.
2.
All measures must be taken to prevent the establishment of any links
between our soldiers and local population.
It is inadmissible for our officers to visit the natives in their homes;
also, it is inadmissible for the simple soldiers to establish relations with
native women. It is inadmissible the
establishment of relations between our soldiers and the civilian population,
inclusive with native soldiers.
3. It must accelerated the
liquidation of citizens who maintain links, unauthorised
by us, with the Communist Party, the Socialist Party, the Youth Communist
Organisation, or with the Army and other associations. (Throughout this translation Italics are in
the original).
4. In military campaigns against the
opposition will take part those soldiers who have spent time on our territory [
5. There must be an acceleration of
the process of unification of all parties under a single umbrella, making sure that all leading roles are taken
by people who belong to our secret services.
6. It is necessary the unification of
all youth organisations. Positions of leadership will be given to
people who are approved by our special services.
7. It should be organized and ensured
that functionaries who are deputised to participate in congregational meetings,
cannot complete their mandate for the entire period for which they have been
elected. Deputies cannot under any
circumstances convene meetings between institutions. If another solution cannot be found and a
meeting must be convened, it should be ensured that those who had grievances
and been active in calling the meeting in order to put forward their own
concepts, are sidelined and prevented from carrying out their agenda. For every congress there must be new people
who are prepared for this purpose, but only those who have been endorsed by our
secret services.
8. Special attention must be paid to
those with organizing capabilities, with sure chances of popularity. These people must be coopted, but if they are
opposing it, they must not be given superior hierarchical positions.
9. It must be ensured that State officials (excluding Securitate organs
and those working in the mining industry) will receive small retributions. This must be especially the case with those
working in the areas of health, justice, and culture, respective those in
positions of leadership. [Emphasis added throughout].
10.
In all governmental institutions, respective in the majority of
factories, we must have people who cooperate
with our special services (without the knowledge of the local administrative
organs).
11. It shall be strictly watched that
local press does not publicise statistics regarding the quality and variety of
the goods that are made available. It
is not permissible that this activity be called commerce. It must be made clear that we are talking
simply of goods exchange.
12.
Pressure must be exercised on local authorities to ensure that no
documents are issued which prove ownership of land; the documents will show the
quality of the land in use, but not who owns it.
13.
The politics of the little country garden must follow this course in
order to render the particular garden unprofitable. After that, collectivisation must begin in
earnest. In the case of strong
opposition, there must be a reduction in the distribution of the mechanisms of
production, concomitant with an increase of State taxes. If the desired outcome is not achieved, it
must be ensured that agricultural output will not satisfy the country’s food
needs, so that additional imports are needed.
14. All effort must be made to ensure
that the decisions and orders – be they of judicial, economic or
organisational – are unpunctual.
15.
Every effort must be made to ensure that certain cases are discussed
concomitant in a number of commissions, offices and institutions, but without
any having the right to take decisions without the consent of the others (with
the exception of the mining industry).
16. Administrative bodies cannot
exercise any influence over the activities in their own factories. All they can do is to put in practice
decisions taken higher up.
17.
The syndicates have no right to oppose the administration. They must occupy themselves with other
matters, such as the organisation of leisure activities in vacations,
discussion of pension requests, cultural and entertaining programs,
organisation of excursions, distribution of defective goods, the justification
of points of view and decisions taken by the political organs of the
administration.
18. It must be organised that only
those leaders be promoted who execute impeccably the problems assigned them,
but who do not go beyond their particular sphere of activity.
19. In regard to the natives that
work for the Party, the State, or in administration, conditions must be created
for them to be compromised in the face of employees, so that it would be
impossible for them to return to their former positions.
20.
Native military cadres could be given positions of responsibility in
places where people in our special services have already been placed.
21. When army exercises are held, and
on the occasion of shooting practices, a strict control must be maintained on
the quantity of munitions used, regardless of the type of arms.
22.
Every laboratory and research institute must be kept under
observation.
23.
Great attention must be given to inventors and innovators, and their
activity supported and encouraged, but every invention must be registered with
consistency at the centre. It is
permissible the development of only those inventions that have applicability in
the mining industry, or those that have our special permission. It
is not permissible the development of inventions that would ensure the growth
in the production of finite goods, a reduction in the extraction of prime
materials, or which would interfere with the fulfilment of our decisions. If an invention had become known, measures
must be taken to be sold to foreigners.
The documents regarding the value and the description of the invention
must not be made public.
24. The punctuality of the means of
transport must be perturbed (less those
which conform with the directive NK 552-46).
25. In the factories in which professional
meetings and conferences are organised, an account must be kept of all
proposals, including their authors.
26. Discussions with the workers that
are in charge of solving production problems must be popularized, particularly
those which criticise the past and current problems. Such issues must never be set aside from
discussion.
27. Taking of positions by native
leaders could have nationalistic or historical coloratura, and they can lead to
national unity.
28.
Great attention must be paid that under no circumstances must there be
water networks that are not linked to the main network in residential districts
that are under construction. Old
unconnected channels and independent fountains of water must be systematically
liquidated, in time.
29.
The reconstruction of old
industrial objectives and the construction of new ones must be made in such a
way that their residual materials are deposited in water reservoirs which could
be used as reserves of potable water.
30.
In cities that are reconstructed
or newly constructed, it is not admissible to have excessive spaces that could
be used to hold animals for an extended period, or for the deposit of
foods.
31. Industries that are held privately and personal entrepreneurs must
receive only enough prime materials and utilities that ensure their failure to
produce quality products. The price for
their goods must be bigger than for similar products from State institutions.
32.
The expansion of State enterprises
must be of the highest order and facilitated in all domains. It is permissible the criticizing of
administrative organs, but under no circumstances will a reduction in personnel
of in their normal functioning be allowed.
33.
Great care must be taken towards all projects of production in the
mining industry, including in those institutions that are specifically marked
as such. Care must be taken in
preventing good provision of the international market too.
34.
Special attention must be accorded to churches. Cultural-educative activities must be
directed towards creating general antipathy towards them. It is
necessary to keep under observation church printing workshops, archives,
preaching content, songs, all religious education, but also burial ceremonies.
35. Popular professors in elementary
and special schools, but especially in lyceums and faculties, must be
removed. Their places must be taken by
appointed people. An analysis must be undertaken of their programs, with a
reduction in the number of documentaries. In
lyceums there must be a complete removal of studies of Latin and Greek
languages, general philosophy, logic and genetics. In regard to the teaching of history, it must never be pointed out which rulers
have served, or wanted to serve, the good of the country. What must be emphasized instead is the
conniving of the rulers and the struggle of the oppressed masses. In specialty schools must be introduced a
narrow curricula.
36. Initiatives must be taken to
organise activities of artistic or sporting nature which celebrate the struggle
of the natives against invaders (especially the Germans, but excluding the
Russians) and popularize the struggle for socialism.
37. On the local scene, it is
forbidden the appearance of productions about natives that lived with us [USSR]
before or during the Second World War.
38.
If an organization is formed that supports an alliance with us, but at
the same time insists over maintaining control over economic activities and
official leadership, a campaign of condemnation must be immediately commenced
accusing it of nationalism and chauvinism.
This must be done in the following manner: profanation of graves that
belong to us, destruction of cemeteries, spreading of manifestos that are
defamatory to our nation and culture, and the rising of doubts about contracts
made with us. Native people must be
involved in this propaganda work, channelling their hatred towards these
organisations.
39.
Particular attention must be given to the construction and reconstruction
of roads, bridges, and interconnecting routes, so that in case there is need
for armed intervention, the places of resistance and concentration of
reactionary forces can be accessible from all sides.
40.
Attention must be given to imprisoning the representatives of the
political opposition. Particular
attention must be given to those opponents that are popular with the native
population. Before they could imprint
themselves in the conscience of the native masses, they must be liquidated
through so-called unforseen circumstances
or imprisoned and accused of common crimes.
41.
It must be prevented the
rehabilitation of those who were condemned in political processes. If it becomes inevitable, such rehabilitation
is permissible on the pretext that it was a judicial mistake; no reopening of
their process must occur, and no convocation of those who accused them in the
first place.
42.
Leaders named by the party, who
through their activity have caused dissatisfaction among employees, must not be
brought before judicial courts. In
extreme cases, they will be recalled from function, and named in similar or
superior positions. In the end, they
must be placed in leadership positions and kept under consideration as reserve
cadres for the period of ulterior changes.
43. It shall be brought to the
knowledge of the public those persons in leadership positions (in the first
place those from the army, ministerial positions, important services, academic
cadres) who are accused of hostile attitude towards the people, socialism,
industrialization. It is an action that
must attract the ire of the popular masses.
44. Those who work in various [professional] functions must be removed and
replaced with workers of the poorest professional preparation, or unqualified.
45.
Priority for university studies must be given to those who belong to the
lowest social classes, who are not interested in further specialisation, but
only in obtaining a diploma.”
(Translated from,
Vladimir Alexe,
Ion Iliescu - Biografia Secreta, Annex 9,
If there ever was a document from
Hell, conceived by the Devil and his cronies, this certainly must be it.
Communism had nothing to do with
creating a utopia of well fed, well clothed, happy and contented individuals,
and everything to do with creating an atheist hell of hungry, cold, suspicious,
fearful and discontented individuals, with no God other than their own
belly. Now we can see and understand why
communist leaders were such insensitive hypocrites. Only one who had no compunction about lying,
spying, denouncing and setting people against each other could have become a
leader; one who had no feeling of compassion for his suffering compatriots; who
had become so hated by his co-workers that he could never return to work in
their midst again. And they wonder that
the system came to such a crashing end.
If one had not lived through it, or
seen it with his own eyes, he would have a hard time believing that human
beings could come up with such a system.
Those who have not lived through it and may still have doubts whether it
was as evil as that should visit the remaining communist tyrannies –
Contrary to the claim that communism
meant to do away with the class system, it reinforced
a rigid hierarchical bureaucratic system like no other in history, one which
engendered hatred and suspicion at every step and level of society.
A documentary film about Stalin
showed how he was so obsessed with the fear of poisoning and murder, that he
had his breakfast tasted and delivered on trays at the doors of three different
apartments so as to prevent anyone from knowing exactly in which one he could
be found at any one time.
What a life! Not to have a single person of trust near
you. Even those closest to him abandoned
him when they saw what kind of person he was: his wife committed suicide early
in his reign, and his daughter fled his ‘paradise’ to the hated capitalist West. Any wonder that
he became such a blood thirsty monster.
He used to send out his secret service agents to murder a certain number
of people to serve as examples to those who were reluctant to embrace
communism. The agents knew that they
would endear themselves to him by exceeding and even doubling that number. And we are not talking of just a few people,
but of thousands upon thousands. The total
number of communist victims in
Hundreds of millions of people
worldwide were sacrificed on the altar of communism, and millions more were
duped into giving their life willingly for what they thought was a worthy
cause. One can only imagine their
bewilderment at seeing what had become of their dream when they will be brought
up in the resurrected for the judgment.
Students of history ought to study
afresh the communist ideology in light of these revelations. But does anyone
imagine that leftist ideologues who have penetrated
educational institutions all over the world would include this document in
their curricula? Why should they be more
honest and conscious than their revered communist masters?
We would not be surprised if they
declare this document to be a forgery, as they did with The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, together of which form the
blueprint for communism. Amazon.com,
the largest online bookshop, withstood enormous pressure from Jewish quarters
to stop publishing that document. They
refused it in the name of freedom of expression. One suspects that they also did it because
they believe it to be true and historical.
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was also meant to remain secret, but once brought to
light their only option was to declare it a forgery. But there are a number of things that
mitigate for its authenticity. 1) Upon
reading it one simply does not get the feeling that it is a forgery. It is too complex and scholarly a document to
be a deliberate forgery. 2) How could
it be a forgery when the communist systems that ensued in
The march to an atheist new world
order has never stoped, only the means for achieving it have.
Local politicians are scarcely able
to enact the will of their people anymore. They are mere pions on a worldwide
chess table that seeks to do away with peoples
freedoms of speech, freedom of worship and of conscience, in the name of “human
rights”. Human rights
for lawbreakers and blasphemers, not for decent law abiding citizens. Consider this: A court in
The courts uphold the “human rights”
of homosexuals at the expense of human rights for Christians. And to think that that legislation was
supported by the churches! When God
says that such countries will have little chance of surviving the Great
Tribulation into the Millennial Kingdom of Jesus Christ, they think that this
is a joke. How painfully they will
discover the truth at that time, but it will be too late. Those who think that that event is far off
into the future will have another painful realisation soon. Very soon!
Having failed to reform the world by
means of violent revolutions, the enemies of God are now putting their efforts
into subverting society through the law, the media, education, entertainment
industries, and, of all things, the churches.
Examples of outrageous miscarriages
of justice, common in this country as I am sure they are in yours, are not mere
happenstances, but a well established agenda that serves two purposes: to
silver line the pockets of lawyers with further litigation, and to create
social unrest and optimum conditions for hypocrites to rise to the top and
demand reforms that further the interests of the new world order. More than any other people, judges now play
the role of social reformers. The fact
that people and their elected representatives are becoming exasperated by their
interpretation of the law seems to be of little concern to them. Their aim is to homogenise local laws into a
worldwide legal system that serves the goal of the new atheist world
order. Here is a sample of their work.
“Judge rejects ban on gays”
“The testimony and evidence
overwhelmingly showed that there was no rational relationship between the . .
. blanket exclusion (of gays) and the
health, safety and welfare of the foster Children,” Mr Fox said. ( The Daily Telegraph,
Demands for legal reform, usually
fomented by God haters, are answered with laws that further curtail people’s
freedoms and take the world further away from God, from His laws, and the just
society that His laws would engender.
If carried out equitably and
honestly, globalisation would be beneficial for the world, for it would spread
out the benefits of fair pay for equal amount of work from the developed to the
developing countries. As it is, workers in the
developing world, who are lucky enough to have a job, get a fraction of what
their counterparts in the developed world get.
An equitable system will operate in
the Millennium Kingdom of God when work will be valued equally everywhere. Those who push for a new world order now do so
not to prepare the world for the
Rev 17:14 "These will make war with the Lamb, and
the Lamb will overcome them, for He is Lord of lords and King of kings; and
those who are with Him are called, chosen, and faithful."
From
Beslan, a tiny town in Russia’s southern
province of North Ossetia, has become known around
the world as a result of an Islamic terrorist attack in September 2004 that
left hundreds of children dead or injured.
“Moscow:
Schools in the southern Russian republic of North Ossetia
are to resume today except for Beslan, the scene of a
hostage drama in which 339 people died, local officials said. In Beslan itself,
schools will reopen tomorrow, except for School No. 1 where the hostage seizure
took place. These children are with
their parents in rest homes, where they will attend classes but also receive psychological
back-up. The other schools in Beslan will be
inspected before they reopen.” (The Daily Telegraph, September 14,
2004).
What the world does not know is that
while Russian children were dying in North Ossetia,
an almost similar tragedy was taking place in another part of Russia’s
Commonwealth of Independent States.
Transnistria “A campaign for donations began today for the orphans who
are being starved by the Russian gendarmes of Igor Smirnov. Donations of money or food, clothes and books
should be brought to the Hall of the Bucharest Palace. For almost a month now, 70 school children
have barricaded themselves in their school against Russian gendarmes who want
to expel them and annihilate any Romanian identity in the province of Transnistria. The
campaign is supported by the Youth Romanian League, National Journal, newspaper
Ziua, Association of Civic Media, Romanian Global
News, World Romanian Council, and others. The World Romanian Council also
started an on line petition at www.petitiononline.com/nistru/
which they intend to send to the United Nations, European Union, the White
House, the USA Congress, and other world bodies.” (Ziua, August 20, 2004).
“Chisinau:
“The European Organisation for Security and Cooperation, OSCE, says that separatist Russians who want to create an
independent State in Transnistria, a province of the
Republic of Moldova, have thrown out into the street thousands of Moldovan
children and closed down their schools. The separatists of Igor Smirnov have no
intention of suspending the victimisation of Romanians from Transnistria.
More than a thousand students, of
both primary and secondary schools, have been refused access to their
schools. At the end of June, even orphan
children from boarding schools, were thrown out into the street by Russian
gendarmes.
“We demand that separatist leader,
Igor Smirnov, respects his promise to reopen the Romanian schools from Transnistria, and permit them to function normally”, said
William Dell, OSCE Ambasador
in Chisinau. Although Moldovan,
Romanian, American and European authorities have demanded several times that Russian separatists from
The difference between Beslan and Transnistria is that
those who were victims in one place were perpetrators in the other. Beslan made the world media and Moldova did not, because
Russia is what it is and Moldova is not.
President Putin of Russia, whose country extends over nine time zones,
felt that he did not have enough land and wanted a little bit more. So he decided to take it from the smallest
and weakest member of the ‘Commonwealth of Independent States’, and create
another Russian enclave, like the one in Kaliningrad.
A man of faith that he is, President
Putin was seen worshiping in a glittering Russian Orthodox Church alongside the
Russian Orthodox Patriarch in the aftermath of the Beslan
massacre. The Patriarch, a man of love
and piety, saw what Mr Putin was doing to his brothers in the faith from Transnistria and did not like it. So he showed him how he ought to deal with
them.
“Romanian Orthodox
Church persecuted on the eastern side of the river Prut”
“The Orthodox Church of Basarabia, which is
associated with Moscow, has began an intense campaign of persecution against
the Romanian priests of Moldova who want to affiliate with the Romanian
Orthodox Church. The campaign has gone
as far as burning down their churches.
Priest Roman Galben was assaulted several
times, the last time so severely that he ended up in hospital fighting for his
life. His Church, “The Descending of the
Holy Spirit’, was burned down to the ground.
Roman Galben informed the police of what
happened to him and his church, but they told him that they were not interested
in his problems. They mockingly suggested that he ought to forgive his
assailants. The priest was assaulted again and warned that next time he will be
killed if he insists on seeking affiliation with the Romanian Patriarchy. (Ziua, September
22, 2004).
Mr Putin got the message. He knew that if the Patriarch of the Orthodox
Church was doing the same and did not condemn him for what he was doing in Transnistria, no one else in the world would. After all, did the world care much when
Hitler annexed the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia? Of course there is a big difference between
Hitler and Mr Putin. For with all the
evil that he created in the world, Hitler is not personally identified in the
Bible; Mr Putin
is. (See the article ‘The Beats Of Revelation’ in The Christian Herald No 4).
About two and a half centuries ago, when the British and the French were
fighting in Canada, the French send word to their king that unless he was
sending reinforcements he would loose Quebec.
The king is said to have replied that when one’s house is on fire he
does not worry about the stables. Little
do the Europeans know that the fire from their eastern stable will soon engulf
their homes too.
A wise man once said that if might is right
then Christ died in vain. But might is
not right, and Christ did not die in vain.
He died so that those who have no hope and are week, may have hope and a
defender. Moldavian Christians value
life and do not fight dirty like the Chechen Islamists. Mr Putin will soon discover that when he took
on the gentle but hapless Moldavians, he bit more than he can chew.
There was an unexpected corollary to
this story. The Republic of Moldova
refused to take part in the next meeting of Russia’s Commonwealth of
Independent States. That reduced their
number from eleven to ten. Ten is the
number of countries Russia will lead against Israel in the end time. In biblical prophecies, Israel is not just
the nation of Judah, which the Jews have somewhat erroneously called ‘Israel’,
but the nations that come from all tribes of Israel, and that means virtually
all of Europe plus the Anglo-Saxon nations of the world. It seems that the end time Great Tribulation
will be primarily between the countries that have inherited
The Republic of Moldova has been
making tentative steps to come back into the bosom of its mother country. It is best if they do not hurry. That
friendly, gentle, musical, poetic, Latin culture, deserves to be preserved, and
since Romania has little chance of surviving the coming world vortex, that hope
remains with Moldova. Romania’s agents
of death – the Securitate men – have struck a deadly blow against us during Iliescu’s regime.
They shamelessly continue to interfere with our work as if to say, ‘see,
there is nothing you can do to prevent us from doing what we want’. So twisted are that country’s judicial and
investigative systems, that even after we exposed the murder of my mother to
the world, her murderers have not so much as even been asked a question, let
alone being brought to justice.
The new President, Traian Basescu, vowed to wage war against the country’s
entrenched corruption, and to clean its judicial, administrative and security
systems. We wish him well and pray for his success,
but we are not too confident that he will succeed in the short time that he
has. One of the country’s main
newspapers said that unless he removes the heads of that “cancerogen gangrene”
within a month he will suffer a similar fate as the former President,
Constantinescu, who barely survived one term in power (ZIUA, Dec. 31, 2004).
If the country is to have any chance
of surviving the impending wrath of God it must get rid of Dracula Park without
delay, and bring to justice the criminals that have struck against this
work. No country that has been dedicated
to Dracula and persecuted the servants of God can hope to survive the Great
Tribulation and make it into the Millennial Kingdom of Jesus Christ.
We warned
We have not put our lives in danger
for the sake of an ego trip, but because necessity has been laid upon us. Jesus Christ is the Life and the Foundation
of this work. Anyone who strikes against
this work strikes against Him, and He will not be crucified a second time.
Reflections On The Collapse Of An Atheist
Ideology
When the Soviet Union collapsed in
1990 after seventy years of tyranny, it seemed to us impossible that such an
important historical event would not have a prophetic meaning. Yet after more than two decades of
theological and historical studies, we had never come across any credible work
that would put communism in a proper prophetic context. We say credible because there are plenty of writings
about the Soviet Union that are not worth the paper they are written on.
I remember how soon after arriving in
Australia some thirty years ago, I was waiting for a train at a Brisbane
station when I noticed a billboard headline on another platform saying, “Russia
Invades Israel.”
I was shocked because there was no
major international crisis to justify such an invasion. I was convinced that we were on the brink of
a nuclear war, for that act could not be left unanswered by the West. I was puzzled that everybody was still going
about as if nothing serious had happened, until I rushed over and read the
small print.
That was not a newspaper headline as
I thought, but the prophetic surmising of a church called the “Christadelphians”. It was their belief that communist
Russia was about to strike Israel any time.
So sure were they of this fact that they did not even speak of it as a
possible future event, but as if it were an already accomplished fact.
I cannot begin to tell you how angry
I was, not the least because while rushing to read their poster, I lost my
train. Being a weekend, when the trains
were not running too often, I had to wait another half an hour or until the
next train arrived.
Now it is an undeniable prophetic
fact that Russia will one day make war against Israel, but the historical
context was not ripe for such an event.
Besides, what people fail to understand is that when the Bible speaks of
the countries of the far north coming against Israel, it does not refer only to
that tiny state in the Middle East, but to all the countries that came out of
the tribes of Israel, and that means Europe, the USA, and the white Anglo-Saxon
nations of the world.
That will occur in the end time, the
time of the Great Tribulation spoken of by Jesus Christ, and I knew that there
were yet a few prophecies which needed to be fulfilled before that could
happen. (Prophecies which have been
fulfilled by now, or are in the process of being fulfilled).
It is interesting to note at this
point that the Worldwide Church of God and its siblings have been preaching for
decades that there never will be a war between Russia and the USA, because “it
is not in prophecy” and because Germany still represents their mortal
danger. Until, that is, we showed them
this prophecy of Zechariah.
Zec 9:13
“For I have bent Judah, My bow, Fitted the bow with Ephraim, And raised
up your sons, O Zion, Against your sons, O Greece, And made you like the sword
of a mighty man."
Everybody knows who the sons of Zion are,
but few people knew that ‘sons of Greece’ in prophecy refers to the countries
of the Orthodox Church, whose strongest member is by far Russia. (See details in The Christian Herald No 13).
Now these churches are preaching a
different tune, without, of course, giving credit to whom
credit is due for their change of mind.
But then, do thieves and charlatans acknowledge their act when they
steal things from others?
The prophecy about the Great
Tribulation is still in the future, short or long as that may be, but we were
interested in placing the collapse of the Soviet Union in a prophetic context,
and that was in the past, an already accomplished fact.
For an event that had reverberated
around the world, it proved to be a surprisingly difficult task, until we came
across some very important clues.
The first one came when a television
documentary revealed Russia’s links to a Viking historical past. Russia’s underground archives contain many
Viking memorabilia, which the communist leaders did their best to keep from
public view.
Biblical scholars rightly believe
that Scandinavian people, from where the Vikings originated, are of Israelite
stock, descendants of the so-called lost Ten Tribes of Israel. But for reasons which they have never fully explained,
theologians have divided Europe roughly along the lines of the Iron Curtain:
the capitalist West versus the communist East, the goodies versus the baddies,
the noble Israelites versus the second class Gentiles. In so doing they have blinded themselves to
prophetic facts which unmistakably place Russia within the bounds of
Israel.
Many of Russia’s leaders before
communism, and just as many during communism, were of Israelite or Jewish
stock.
The second clue came when we
discovered that the famous Cossack warriors of Russia are of Israelite origin,
their name being a derivative of Isaacs, or sons of Isaac in the local
dialect.
And the third clue came with the
discovery of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the Jewish blueprint for a new
world order. The Russian Revolution,
like the French, and to some extent the American, was nothing but an attempt by
Israelite Freemasonry to free themselves from the strictures of religious
dogma, particularly the Catholic one, and create an atheist world state. The Jews held the most important positions
in the first Bolshevik Government. The
ideology was theirs, those in charge of the army and secret services were Jews,
and the Jews played important roles in setting up the communist governments of
eastern Europe too.
The communist utopia was nothing but
a perversion of the biblical concept of the Kingdom of God. When they departed from the Law and the
Covenant of God, and God instituted a New Covenant and shifted the emphasis from
an earthly to a heavenly kingdom, instead of conforming with the requirements
for the new “elect of God”, the Israelites in general, and the Jews in
particular, decided that they will set up their own Kingdom of Israel on earth.
The Israelite’s predilection to
follow their own way was manifested very early in their history. First they would refuse to obey God, then
when He told them that they would be punished and told to do something else,
they would want to do what they should have done at first even though God did
not want them to do that anymore and told them to do something else.
They were defeated when they presumed
to do what God did not want them to do anymore. They repeated that kind of rebellion later
on with Joshua.
Josh 24:13 'I have given you a land for which you did
not labor, and cities which you did not build, and
you dwell in them; you eat of the vineyards and olive groves which you did not
plant.'
Josh 24:16 So the
people answered and said: "Far be it from us that we should forsake the
LORD to serve other gods;
Josh 24:19 But Joshua said to the people, "You cannot serve the LORD, for He is a holy
God. He is a jealous God; He will not forgive your transgressions nor your
sins. [Joshua understood the principle of
two kinds of people in the world, which did not become apparent until Jesus
Christ elaborated upon it in His parables and teachings, but he could not
explain it to the Israelites at that time].
Josh 24:20 "If you forsake the LORD and serve
foreign gods, then He will turn and do you harm and consume you, after He has
done
Josh 24:21 you good.
"And the people said to
Joshua, "No, but we will serve the LORD!"
Josh 24:22 So Joshua said to the people, "You are
witnesses against yourselves that you have chosen the LORD for yourselves, to
serve Him." And they said, "We are witnesses!"
Josh 24:23 "Now therefore," he said, "put
away the foreign gods which are among you, and incline your heart to the LORD
God of
Josh 24:26 Then Joshua wrote these words in the Book of
the Law of God. And he took a large
stone, and set it up there under the oak that was by the sanctuary of the LORD.
Josh 24:27 And Joshua said to all the people,
"Behold, this stone shall be a witness to us, for it has heard all the
words of the LORD which He spoke to us. It shall therefore be a witness to you,
lest you deny your God."
Josh 24:28 So Joshua let the people depart, each to his
own inheritance.
Josh 24:29 Now it came to pass after these things that
Joshua the son of Nun, the servant of the LORD, died, being one hundred and
As soon as Joshua and the elders who
knew him disappeared from the scene, the Israelites broke the promise they made
to him and the Covenant they made with God.
It was a habit that would remain with them to the present time, keeping
promises when it suited them, and going their own ways when it didn’t.
They behaved exactly the same way
with Jesus Christ too. They rejected His
Messiahship because He would not free them from the
Roman domination and would not set up ‘the Kingdom of Israel’ right then and
there. Then, when they realised what
they had done, and that they were no longer the ‘chosen people’, they decided
to set up their own ‘kingdom of Israel’, and make themselves ‘chosen
people’.
They had been fighting for that dream
for two thousand years. They thought
that they had accomplished it in Soviet Russia, but instead they created an
atheist hell on earth.
Now there is a problem with including
Russia among the descendants of Israel.
(Certainly not all people of the Russian Federation are descendants of
Israel; only those of European Russia, and most likely not all of them
either). The problem comes in relation
with the prophecy about “ Jacob’s trouble”.
Jer 30:7 “Alas! For that day is great, So that none is
like it; And it is the time of Jacob's trouble, But he shall be saved out of
it.”
It used to be generally assumed among
those who dabbled in biblical prophecies that the Great Tribulation would pit
the descendants of Jacob against the Gentile world. But if Russia is included among the
Israelites, this can no longer be the case.
Rather, what now appears more and more likely is that the Great
Tribulation will pit some tribes of Israel against other tribes of Israel that
have allied themselves with the Gentile world.
More precisely, the tribes that came out of Joseph, which have inherited
Jacob primogeniture blessings, and on which Jacob put his name – the
Anglo-Saxons – plus Judah who inherited the spiritual sceptre, will find themselves
facing the other tries of Israel and the rest of the world. In other words, that awesome end time
conflict will be a repeat on a larger scale of what happened in ancient world
when Joseph’s brothers ganged up against him and sold him into Egyptian Slavery. The outcome however, though painful on all
sides, will be quite different this time, for God says that Jacob will be saved
out of it”, which He does not says of any other
nation.
This however still does not quite
answers our question about the place in prophecy of the collapse of the Soviet
Union.
Since many of
But before we look at those prophecies,
we need some important clarifications.
Virtually all biblical prophecies have dual fulfilments: a minor and immediate one, and a major and
more distant one. Names
such as
If one were to take these terms literally,
he would be searching forever for Chaldea, Babylon,
Tyre, and others, which are no longer on the scene but which feature
prominently in prophecies that lead to the very end time. All these terms need to be placed in
prophetic and historic contexts that are quite different from the ones tat may
appear at first sight. Even ‘Jerusalem’
could mean more than the capital of Judea, often incorporating Jews who lived
in territories outside Judea.
Without accepting the principle of
duality in the Bible, one would never be able to understand its
prophecies. For example, we have the Old
Testament and the New Testament; the first Adam – a fallen man and the second
Adam – a saving One; the Devil versus Christ, an earthly Kingdom and an heavenly
Another point to be remembered when
discussing biblical prophecies, is that the term ‘end
time’ could mean up to a century or more.
For us that may seem quite a long time, but in God’s scheme of things it
is but a drop in the ocean.
It is a specific prophetic and
historical context that identifies and determines when a prophecy is being
fulfilled. With these in mind we can
now look at some of the prophecies that speak of a seventy year period that can
only refer to communist Russia.
The mention of seventy years would
make little sense if applied to the ancient city by that name because Tyre
existed for far longer than seventy years.
Rather, this prophecy could only refer to an easily identifiable period
in history, and we can think of no other time in which this seventy years
period could apply. Since we are now
coming to the wrapping up of all prophecies, there could never be a time when
this prophecy could be fulfilled in the future either. Moreover, since elsewhere in the Bible the
king of Tyre stands for the Devil and his rebellion against God, it is only
fitting that the seventy year period of communist Russia be identified with the
Devils rule on earth. After all, what
was the Soviet Union if not a demonic rebellion against God?
The
term ‘in that day’ confirms that this prophecy takes us to the end time
or close to it, for that is the time of God’s vengeance upon a wayward world,
the time of the Great Tribulation. The
world has been in the preceding stages to that catastrophe ever since the
Soviet Union collapsed. Is it not remarkable that that coincided with the
beginning of the work of restoration of the long lost Gospel of Jesus
Christ? Now back to Isaiah.
Isa 24:2
“And it shall be: As with the people, so with the priest; As with the
servant, so with his master; As with the maid, so with her mistress; As with
the buyer, so with the seller; As with the lender, so with the borrower; As with
the creditor, so with the debtor.
Isa 24:3
The land shall be entirely emptied and utterly plundered, For the LORD
has spoken this word.
Isa 24:4
The earth mourns and fades away, The world languishes and fades away;
The haughty people of the earth languish.
The prophecy began with
Who has broken the covenant? The Israelites, yet the whole world suffers
as a result of it. Why? Because the
Covenant was not only for the Israelites, but for the entire world. That is why we keep on telling people that
they must keep the Commandments of God, because these were not only for ancient
Israel, but for the whole world, and for all time.
Isa 24:19 “The earth is violently broken, The earth is
split open, The earth is shaken exceedingly.
Isa 24:20 The earth shall reel to and fro like a
drunkard, And shall totter like a hut; Its transgression shall be heavy upon
it,
Now why would the Lord punish the
exalted ones and the kings of the earth in
that day? Revelation tells us
why.
Instead of being happy that their Savior is coming to fix this world and set up a righteous
Kingdom, the “kings of the earth” are planing to fight him at his return. Not just some but all of them. Bear in mind that in the Bible all leaders
are referred to as kings. And why
would they fight Christ at His return? Because they have been
deceived by a certain “
Rev 17:3 So he carried me away in the Spirit into the
wilderness. And I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast which was full of
names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns.
Rev 17:4 The woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet,
and adorned with gold and precious stones and pearls, having in her hand a golden
cup full of abominations and the filthiness of her fornication.
Rev 17:5 And on her forehead a name was written:
MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND OF THE ABOMINATIONS OF
THE EARTH.
Rev 17:6 I saw the woman, drunk with the blood of the
saints and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus. And when I saw her, I
marvelled with great amazement.
Isn’t it extraordinary? Instead of being happy that the Savior of the world is coming, the Mother of Harlots
gathers up the kings of the earth to fight Him.
And they meekly follow her.
When we sent our magazines to world
leaders warning them of this fact, many of them made their way to the Vatican,
seeking the Pope’s blessings, and showing us exactly what they think of
us. So did our Queen - Elizabeth II, our
Prime Minister - John Howard, and President Bush of the USA, the three
important personalities that play such important roles in the prophecies of our
time.
The question is,
how are all those kings going to fight Jesus Christ at His return? They are unlikely to take arms to fight Him
in the air before He lands on Mount Zion, though given their madness they may
well try to do that too, but they will fight Him by sending out the message
that He is not wanted and not welcomed.
They do that by worshiping a false god, and by following an idolatrous
religion that presents a carved image, an abominable idol, as their
saviour. And they happily approve of it
and embrace that false religion.
Anyone who is not observing the
Sabbaths, the Holy Days and the Commandments of God, and not living according
with the true Gospel of Jesus Christ, is an enemy of God and of Jesus
Christ.
Rev 18:8 "Therefore her plagues will come in one
day; death and mourning and famine. And she will be utterly burned with fire,
for strong is the Lord God who judges her.
Now notice a parallelism between
Isaiah’s and Mathew’s prophecies, how they both lead to the Great
Tribulation.
Mat 24:29 "Immediately after the tribulation of
those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the
stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken.
Mat 24:30 "Then the sign of the Son of Man will
appear in heaven, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they
will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great
glory.
When we go to Jeremiah, the other
major prophet of the Bible, we also find prophecies that have an immediate
fulfilment and a distant one. Once
again, names that were real in ancient time, become allegorical in future
fulfilments.
The families of the north are real,
but “Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon”, like the ‘king of Tyre’, are
allegorical and stand for the Devil. The
Devil, of course, works through the agency of human beings. Once again, what we have here are the horrors
of communism and of the shambles that came of it. Let us not forget that ever since he came to
power, Putin has been doing his best to return Russia to the ‘glorious times’
of communism. It is opposition to this
trend that will result in the world exploding into the end time worldwide
devastation. We are now in the
preparatory stages for that calamitous event.
Jer 25:10 'Moreover I will take from them the voice of
mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of
the bride, the sound of the millstones and the light of the lamp.
Jer 25:13 'So I will bring on that land all My words
which I have pronounced against it, all that is written in this book, which
Jeremiah has prophesied concerning all the nations.
Jer 25:14 '(For many nations and great kings shall be
served by them also; and I will repay them according to their deeds and
according to the works of their own hands.)'"
Jer 25:17 Then I took the cup from the Lord's hand, and
made all the nations drink, to whom
the LORD had sent me:
All nations that were subjugated by
communism suffered grievously, but all
the kingdoms of the world were terrified by that subversive ideology. They all drunk from “Nebuchadnezzar’s” cup
whether they liked it or not.
Jer 25:27 "Therefore you shall say to them, 'Thus
says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: "Drink, be drunk, and vomit!
Fall and rise
Jer 25:28 no more, because of the sword which I will
send among you." '"And it
shall be, if they refuse to take the cup from your hand to drink, then you
shall say to them, 'Thus says the LORD of hosts: "You shall certainly
drink!
Jer 25:29 "For behold, I begin to bring calamity
on the city which is called by My name, and should you be utterly unpunished?
You shall not be unpunished, for I will call for a sword on all the inhabitants of the earth," says the LORD of hosts.'
A sword on all inhabitants of the
earth will occur only once, just prior to the return of Jesus Christ during the
Great Tribulation. This is why this
prophecy is more about our time than about the ancient time when it had only a
minor fulfilment. It is a prophecy that
takes us beyond the seventy years of communism, to the very end of this
age.
The term ‘the furthest parts of the
earth’, needs no further explanation.
The question is, why would all those people become refuse on the earth
instead of being lamented and buried?
The answer is rather obvious: there will be no one, or too few people,
to lament for them and bury them. It
will be a devastation the likes of which the world had never seen.
Mat 24:20 "And pray that your flight may not be in
winter or on the Sabbath. "For
then there will be great tribulation,
Mat 24:21 such as has not been since the beginning of
the world until this time, no, nor ever shall be.
Mat 24:22 "And unless those days were shortened,
no flesh would be saved; but for the elect's sake those days will be shortened.
Now finally a prophecy from Zechariah
which complements those of Isaiah and Jeremiah, but which brings us some good
news too.
Zec 1:3 "Therefore say to them, 'Thus
says the LORD of hosts: "Return to Me," says the LORD of hosts,
"and I will return to you," says the LORD of hosts.
Zec 1:4 "Do not be like your fathers, to
whom the former prophets preached, saying, 'Thus says the LORD of hosts:
"Turn now from your evil ways and your evil deeds." ' But they did
not hear nor heed Me," says the LORD.
Zec 1:5
"Your fathers, where are they? And the prophets, do they live
forever? Yet surely My
words and My statutes, Which I commanded My servants the prophets, Did they not
overtake your fathers?
Zec 1:6
"So they returned and said: 'Just as the LORD of hosts determined
to do to us, According to our ways and according to our deeds, So He has dealt
with us.'" ' "
Zec 1:7
On the twenty-fourth day of the eleventh month, which is the month Shebat, in the second year of Darius, the word of the LORD
came to Zechariah the son of Berechiah, the son of Iddo the prophet:
Zec 1:8
I saw by night, and behold, a man riding on a red horse, and it stood
among the myrtle trees in the hollow; and behind him were horses: red, sorrel,
and white.
Zec 1:9
Then I said, "My lord, what are these?" So the angel who
talked with me said to me, "I will show you what they are."
Zec
Zec
Zec
Zec
Zec
Zec
Zec
The rebuilding of Jerusalem and the
cities of Judah after the seventy years of Babylonian captivity was only
minor. This future “seventy years”
prophecy was not about Jerusalem and the cities of Judah, which have been under
God’s curse not for seventy years now but for two millennia, but for the cities
and people that have been under Jewish domination for seventy years during
their ill conceived atheist empire.
Is it not remarkable that while
millions of people have been decimated under that tyrannical atheist ideology,
the Jews themselves suffered their greatest calamity ever, the Holocaust,
elsewhere in Europe? As God says, what
you do to others it shall be done to you.
But of course this is terribly ‘politically incorrect’,
and no Jew would admit to that.
Or would they? Unless they admit and repent of the horrors
they have brought upon the world through their disdain for the Covenant of God
and their ill conceived communist ‘utopia’ on earth they too will perish during
the Great Tribulation, just like the nations that would come against them. Enough of them have turned to Jesus Christ to
enable the remaining promises made by God to the patriarchs of old to be
fulfilled as stated.
The Bible says that when they are
brought back from Diaspora they would be blessed and protected by God. Well,
back they have been brought, but blessed and protected they have not been. Why?
Because when they came back they were supposed to repent, admit their
mistakes, turn to God in heartfelt repentance, and to the One they have
foolishly pierced.
Zec 12:8
"In that day the LORD will defend the inhabitants of Jerusalem; the
one who is feeble among them in that day shall be like David, and the house of
David shall be like God, like the Angel of the LORD before them.
Zec 12:9 "It shall be in that day that I
will seek to destroy all the nations that come against
Zec
The fact that the Jews have not
reached this point yet is no reason for anyone to turn against them, for as the
Scriptures make it clear, God is the final arbiter of all that is happening in
the world. Like other people, they have
merely fulfilled the role assigned to them from above. Although they have caused untold sufferings
to others, they themselves have suffered more than enough.
People should never forget what Jesus
Christ, who once said that they were children of the Devil, also prayed as He
was giving up Hid Spirit: “Father,
forgive them, for they do not know what they do." (Luke 23:34). Earlier He also said:
Mat 7:1 "Judge not, that you be not judged.
Mat 7:2 "For with what judgment you judge, you will
be judged; and with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you.”
As Jesus Christ would have said, go
and do likewise.
The
Benefits Of Meditation, But Which Meditation?
Meditation
seems to be the buzz word these days: Buddhist meditation, Hindu meditation,
Shinto meditation, yoga meditation, whichever way meditation – all meditations
according to eastern religions. These
kind of meditations are spreading like bush fire in the West, all promising
peace of mind on earth and happiness in heaven.
There
is no doubt that meditation could be beneficial to people’s health, but it has
to be the right kind of meditation for it could also be very harmful. All meditations have religious undertones,
and this where major problems arise, and where the differences between eastern
and western meditations become important.
For while both seek to slow down the mind and clear it of troublesome
thoughts, what they promise in regard to the ultimate destiny of life and soul
is very different and very dangerous for the people of God.
Salvation
in Buddhism means reaching Nirvana – a state of nothingness where all thoughts
are extinguished and all memory is lost.
Nirvana is achieved by meditating oneself to extinction – emptying the
mind of everything, and leaving behind a shell that is aware of nothing but the
immediate environment – a walking corpse, in other words. It is not for nothing
that Buddhists feel best when they can meditate in cemeteries. But, like in all other religions, over time
a huge gap has developed between Buddhist philosophy and Buddhist
practice. While telling their followers
that there is no God, they encourage them to worship the Buddha and seek their
fortune in idolatry, stargazing and witchcraft.
Idols of the Buddha, the stars, and the spirits of witches, have become
the new gods in Buddhism. But what does
the Bible, the Word of the true God, says?
Isa 47:12 "Stand now with your enchantments And
the multitude of your sorceries, In which you have laboured from your youth;
Isa 47:13 Perhaps you will be able to profit, perhaps
you will prevail. You are wearied in the
multitude of your counsels; Let now the astrologers, the stargazers, And the
monthly prognosticators stand up and save you from what shall come upon you.
Isa 47:14 Behold, they shall be as stubble, The fire
shall burn them; They shall not deliver themselves From the power of the flame;
It shall not be a coal to be warmed by, nor a fire to sit before!”
God
was addressing the people of Israel in this passage, but we know that the Bible
is a book for the whole world, especially since the New Testament. Jesus Christ is a Savior
of the whole world, and that is why He sent His followers to make disciples of
all nations.
Mat
28:18 And Jesus came and spoke to them,
saying, "All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. "Go therefore
Mat
28:19 and make disciples of all the
nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the
Holy Spirit,
Mat
28:20 "teaching them to observe all
things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end
of the age."
Having refused the New Testament, and the Holy
Spirit that comes with it, the Jews have made themselves easy prays for eastern
demagogues. They have one of the highest
percentages of people who fall victims to eastern religions’ idolatrous
philosophies.
By
comparison, Christian meditation, does not seek salvation through emptying
one’s mind of everything, or salvation through idols, stargazing and
witchcraft. Christian meditation aims to
slow down a troubled mind and replace harmful thoughts with calming beneficial
ones. This is achieved by meditating on
the Law of God, on aspects of creation, and on the purpose of human life. Salvation means attaining the mind of God,
expanding one’s consciousness to the consciousness of God, being at peace with
God, the self, and the universe. That
cannot be achieved through an empty mind, by separating oneself from God and
His creation. All things have been made
for Him and through Him.
John
1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and
the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
John
1:2 He was in the beginning with God.
John
1:3 All things were made through Him, and
without Him nothing was made that was made.
John
1:4 In Him was life, and the life was
the light of men.
John
1:5 And the light shines in the
darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.
God
did not create the universe and the human mind in their wondrous complexity,
only to have them annihilated in wilful acts of self immolation. Denying the existence of God means denying
the existence of the self. Which
explains why Buddhists, who say that there is no God, end up seeking salvation
in death and thought annihilation. Which
explains also why people who deny God, or act contrary to His life giving laws,
have aimless troubled minds and lives.
Proper
meditation leads not only to peaceful and contented minds and souls, but to
prosperity and success in life, the very things that are shied away by eastern
philosophies, which teach that life is sorrow and misery. Life is what you make of it: sorrow and
misery, or blessing and happiness. This
is what proper meditation is all about, and what it should lead to.
Josh 1:8
"This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate in it day and night,
that you may observe to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and
then you will have good success.”
Psa 119:97 Oh, how I love Your law! It is my meditation all the day.
Psa 119:98 You, through Your commandments, make me wiser than my enemies; For they are ever
with me.
Psa 119:99 I have more understanding than all my
teachers, For Your testimonies are my
meditation.
Psa 119:100 I understand more than the ancients, Because
I keep Your precepts.
Psa 119:103 How sweet are Your words to my taste, Sweeter
than honey to my mouth!
Psa 119:104 Through
Your precepts I get understanding; Therefore I hate every false way.
Psa 119:12 “Blessed are You, O LORD! Teach me Your
statutes!
Psa 119:15 I will
meditate on Your precepts, And contemplate Your ways.
Psa 119:16 I will
delight myself in Your statutes; I will not forget Your word.
Psa 1:1 Blessed is the man Who walks not in the
counsel of the ungodly, Nor stands
in the path of sinners, Nor sits in the seat of the
Psa 1:2 scornful;
But his delight is in the law of the LORD, And in His law he meditates day and night.
Psa 1:3 He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers
of water, That brings forth its fruit in its season, Whose leaf also shall not
wither;
Psa 1:4 And whatever he does shall prosper. The ungodly are not so, But are like the
chaff which the wind drives away.
Psa 1:5 Therefore the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment, Nor sinners in the
congregation of the righteous.
Psa 1:6 For
the LORD knows the way of the righteous, But the way of the ungodly shall
perish.
People
often speak with glee of the immediate benefits of eastern meditation, without
realising where it all leads to if carried to its ultimate goal. By contrast, there are no hidden dangers in
Christian meditation, only benefits all around.
Meditation
outside of God’s realm is dangerous because it lets people believe that they
can obtain happiness without God, through their own singular efforts. Christian meditation serves double purpose:
harmonious and happy existence in this world, and salvation in the next.
Christian
meditation can be done individually or in groups. It can be done at home – meditating on the
Word of God; in nature – meditating on the unfathomable riches and beauty of
God’s creation; listening to a soothing piece of music, travelling, and even
working. The Apostles of Jesus Christ
spoke about the beneficial effects of meditation in combination with prayer,
supplication and thanksgiving.
Phil
4:4 “Rejoice in the Lord always. Again I
will say, rejoice!
Phil
4:5 Let your gentleness be known to all
men. The Lord is at hand. Be anxious for
nothing,
Phil
4:6 but in everything by prayer and supplication, with
thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the
Phil
4:7 peace
of God,
which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds
through Christ Jesus. Finally,
Phil
4:8 brethren, whatever things are true,
whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure,
whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any
virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy; meditate on these things.
Phil
4:9 The things which you learned and
received and heard and saw in me, these do, and the God of peace will be with
you.”
1
Tim 4:8 For bodily exercise profits a
little, but godliness is profitable for all things, having promise of the life
that now is and of that
1
Tim 4:9 which is to come. This is a faithful saying and worthy of all
acceptance.
What
wonderful benefits Christian meditation can bring to one’s life: peace of mind, prosperity, success, wisdom,
and, ultimately, salvation. No contest!
Crying Aloud In A ‘Wilderness’ Of People
"Cry
aloud, spare not; Lift up your voice like a trumpet;
Tell My people
their transgression, And
the house of
Jacob their sins.”
(Isa 58:1).
It has fallen to us, people of little
significance, of another country and another tongue, to cry aloud the sins of
these people and warn them of the consequences of their wayward ways. As the Scriptures say:
Isa 28:9
"Whom will he teach knowledge? And whom will he make to understand
the message? Those just weaned from milk? Those just drawn from the breasts?
Isa 28:10 For precept must be upon precept, precept
upon precept, Line upon line, line upon line, Here a little, there a
little."
Isa 28:11 For with
stammering lips and another tongue He will speak to this people, To whom He
said,
Isa 28:12 "This is the rest with which You may
cause the weary to rest," And, "This is the refreshing"; Yet
they would not hear.
Isa 28:13 But the word of the LORD was to them,
"Precept upon precept, precept upon precept, Line upon line, line upon
line, Here a little, there a little," That they might go and fall
backward, and be broken And snared and caught.
Isa 28:18 Your covenant with death will be annulled,
And your agreement with Sheol will not stand; When the overflowing scourge
passes through, Then you will be trampled down by it.”
Now there is no doubt that Jesus
Christ was the precious cornerstone “Foundation” who will make justice the
measuring line and sweep away the refuge
of lies, but He was neither of another tongues nor of stammering lips.
On the other hand, neither myself nor
my companion in this work are native English speakers, nor are we particularly
good at public speaking. Only God knows
how much we have been struggling with this work, and how much we wished we had
someone to at least do the proofreading for us, but we haven’t had that person,
nor could we afford it. And yet, we have
done a work that was sorely needed in the world, one that does not resemble
anything in the world at present, and one which has reached far and wide.
What is even more extraordinary is that this
work is being done by people who received an atheist education in their
formative years, both of us having spent the first decades of our lives in
communist Romania. Our experiences from those early years gave us the strength
to cope with the trials that the work of God would inevitably draw from a world
full of unbelievers. We both put our
lives in danger when we escaped from one of the most totalitarian regimes this
world has ever seen, none of us having any idea at that time that we would end
our days working for God.
Our primary mission has been to the
English speaking people, but because this has coincided with astonishing
advances in technology we found it easy to extend this work to the whole
world. We are happy to see that even without
engaging ourselves in paid advertising we have managed to make this work known
“as a witness” to the furthest corners of the earth. Some people may wonder what we mean by the
words “as a witness”. Well, there are
myriads of missionaries out there in the world, seeking converts and preaching
all kinds of gospels to gullible people, but there are no reference points by
which people may judge whether what they are being preached is right or
not. Now they can do so by referring to The Christian Herald, for just because
someone is reading from the Bible does not necessarily mean that what he is
preaching is right. Our magazines are
free and easily accessible to everyone who is interested in them. We witness the original Gospel of Jesus
Christ that has become lost in the course of time.
It was our heavenly Father’s decision
to make His Word understandable only to those who gained merit by virtue of an
honest quest for truth and righteousness, and to seal it from those who did not
deserve to understand it, those who turned it into a commercial venture. As Jesus said:
Mat
Mat
We have done our very best to make it
easy for people to compare what people preach with what the Bible says. We have been supporting our viewpoints with
heavy scriptural quotations. We have
found that what churches and religions are preaching these days is in large
measure not true.
At no time in history were these
words of Apostle Paul more appropriate than they are now.
2 Cor 11:4 “For if he who comes preaches another Jesus
whom we have not preached, or if you receive a different spirit which you have
not received, or a different gospel which you have not accepted; you may well
put up with it!
2 Cor 11:5 For I consider that I am not at all inferior
to the most eminent apostles. Even
though I am untrained in speech,
2 Cor 11:6 yet I am not in knowledge. But we have been thoroughly manifested among
you in all things.
2 Cor 11:7 Did I commit sin in humbling myself that you
might be exalted, because I preached the gospel of God to you free of charge?”
2 Cor 11:12 But what I do, I will also continue to do,
that I may cut off the opportunity from those who desire an opportunity to be
regarded just as we are in the things of which they boast.
2 Cor 13:5 “Examine yourselves as to whether you are in
the faith. Test yourselves. Do you not know yourselves, that Jesus Christ is
2 Cor 13:6 in you? Unless indeed you are
disqualified. But I trust that you will
know that we are not disqualified.”
How many times have you heard
preachers tell their listeners to examine themselves in order to find out
whether they are in the faith or not?
How can one find that one out? By the standards of the Scriptures! There is no other way by which people may
know whether they are in the faith or not than by studying the Scriptures. You may seek help, you may read what other
peoples write, but in the final analysis unless you take your destiny in your
own hands, unless you check it out in the Scriptures for yourself, you will not
make it into the Kingdom of God. Those
who think that one can distinguish between true and false preachers just by
listening to them will almost certainly end up becoming victims of a cruel
deception.
It is not for nothing that Apostle
Paul warned people to beware of false preachers who transform themselves into
ministers of Christ, who present the Devil as a minister of righteousness. Do you know any of them? Of course you don’t. If you knew you would not attend their
churches. Or do you think that such
people cry aloud that they are false preachers, that they preach Satan instead
of Christ, that theirs is a false gospel which leads to perdition rather than
salvation?
It is everyone’s duty to “test the
spirits” to find out whether they are true or false, whether they are of God or
of the Devil. The spirits, good or bad,
work through human beings, through our feelings and actions towards others.
1 John 2:9 “He who says he is in the light, and hates
his brother, is in darkness until now.
1 John 5:2 begotten of Him. By this we know that we love the children of
God, when we love God and keep His commandments.
1 John 5:3 For this is the love of God, that we keep His
commandments. And His commandments are not burdensome.”
Here we have three tests by which
people may know if they are approved by God.
The first one is the test of love.
Those who hold grudges, who are short tempered, who cannot forgive, who do not love their
neighbours as themselves, who do not love even their enemies, who cannot say ‘I
am sorry’ when making mistakes, are not approved by God. And if one is not approved By God he cannot
be saved.
One should always remember the
example of Jesus Christ. As He was dying
on the cross, He looked at those who were rejoicing at His feet and casting
lots for His clothes, and said: "Father, forgive them, for they do not
know what they do.” (Luke 23:34). Do
you think that you suffered a greater loss than Jesus Christ? If you did not, why can’t you forgive them
and ask the Father to forgive them too?
When you do that, you may or may not help them much, but you will
certainly do yourself a lot of good. A
positive, loving and forgiving frame of mind works wonder upon your own body
and psyche. It heals you and helps you live
a happier, longer, and more fulfilled life.
Now to the second test: “ Whoever
confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God.” Without acknowledging Jesus Christ as Lord
and Savior no one can be saved. That requires faith, and faith comes from the
Scriptures.
And the third test that came out of
these Scriptures: “this is the love of
God, that we keep His commandments”.
The Commandments of God are the
surest standard and most visible test by which people may determine whether
they are being preached the Gospel of Jesus Christ or some other
concoction. (See The Christian Herald No 11, for further details on this
topic).
This then has been the purpose of
this work from the very beginning – to offer people an honest guide on their
road to salvation.
Now it is an extraordinary trait of
human nature that when offered something good and particularly useful for
salvation, to receive it with a great deal of cynicism and suspicion. Although thousands upon thousands of people
have availed themselves of our services, and an increasing number continue to
do so through our web site, no one has taken the plunge to join us in this
work. We knew that this would be the
case and said so in more than one edition of this magazine. How did we know it? Because we saw that this work fit into a
specific prophecy. The Bible told us
that those who would be engaged in it would have to do it alone to the very
end.
Now even though we knew this fact
very well, we were still amazed to see that people who started a religious work
at about the same time, whose gospels are demonstrably false, who put heavy
burdens upon their followers, have been surging ahead in leaps and bounds,
having amassed great wealth and large following by now, yet we are still in the
same condition that we started with.
Now what does that tell you about human nature?
Other churches and their preachers
would have been mortified to admit that they were so spectacularly unsuccessful,
yet we not only did not keep this a secret, but let the whole world know of our
predicament. Why? As a witness, and because this confirms our
bona fides.
Knowing what the Scriptures say abut
this work, we wrote years ago that if a single person converted to our religion
and became a genuine follower of us, we would not be whom we say we are. There was plenty of time for the world to
prove us wrong, yet it did not happen. No
one has joined us, and no one has lend us a helping hand, even though we have
exhausted ourselves trying to bring people to the true Gospel of Jesus Christ,
giving little heed to what that might mean for us if our prediction proved
wrong.
Now what shall we say or do about
that? Shall we be terribly heartbroken
about it, or rather should we say:
“Thank you world for making us who we are!”
The Secret to Unveiling the Book of Revelation
When we announced in our last edition
that we intended to unveil the mysteries of the book of Revelation, a new wave of
sermons about that book took to the air from our nemesis. They were determined to leave nothing for us
to talk about that they have not already covered. We were quite happy for them to do that, and
they did not disappoint us.
As we expected, as biblical scholars
have done for ages, when they talk about the book of Rev elation they begin
with the so-called “four horsemen of the Apocalypse.” It suits them well, for those horsemen are
usually accompanied by frightening scenarios that send shivers through the
hearts of those who watch them. Nothing
pleases preachers more than to keep their followers on their toes and ask for
more of the same. They are good at that,
for there is plenty of it in the Bible, but what they are not so good at is
placing them in their proper historical setting, in the context of the Gospel
of Jesus Christ.
Apocalypse is the Greek name for the
book of Revelation, except that in the course of time the term ‘Apocalypse’ has
acquired some sinister end time connotations.
Not long ago, there was a film called ‘Apocalypse Now’, which is still
being shown on our screens from time to time.
They used the Greek term for it instead of its English counterpart for
its suggestive end time sinister scenarios.
Imagine the effect it might have had if they had called it, ‘Revelation
Now.’ Not only would it not have stirred
people’s interest, but it would have caused them to run away for it would have
implied serious biblical staff.
Now there is no question that the
four horsemen of Revelation convey a frightening scenario. What is under question is when are they
supposed to made their presence in the world.
Modern theologians who have written
or spoken about them, have either placed them in an indeterminate future, or in
not very convincing scenarios in connection with the two World Wars and the
Cold War, and more recently with Islamic terrorism. In plain words, what they have offered us is
nothing but unsubstantiated guesswork.
Decades ago, when I used to be a
member of the Worldwide Church of God, its leader, the late Herbert W
Armstrong, used to say that ninety percent of biblical prophecies are yet to be
fulfilled, a theme which has been take by his disciples and still being
preached these days.
What I could not understand then was
how on earth could he possibly know that?
I resolved that mystery only recently when those who have been trained
in his school of thought said the same thing in connection with ‘four horsemen
of Apocalypse. You see, if those
horsemen are yet to make their presence in the world, or if they have struck only in recent times,
then indeed the vast majority of Bible’s prophecies are yet to be
fulfilled. That is because from chapter
six of Revelation, when the horsemen make their presence, to the end of it there
are sixteen more chapters, all full of prophecies.
That raises another question: why
would God put so much importance on the last few years of this age and treat
the whole of past history as if were just an appendage. The truth is He hasn’t. All of mankind’s history has been important,
and all of it has been permeated with prophetic meanings and outcomes. The best example is offered by none other
than these four horsemen.
Just because something has been
revealed in the last book of the Bible does not mean that those events are to
take place in the last years of history.
We should never forget how prophecy has been written.
Isa 28:9
"Whom will he teach knowledge? And whom will he make to understand
the message? Those just weaned from milk? Those just drawn from the breasts?
Isa 28:10 For precept must be upon precept, precept
upon precept, Line upon line, line upon line, Here a little, there a
little."
Isa 28:11 For with stammering lips and another tongue
He will speak to this people,
Isa 28:14 Therefore hear the word of the LORD, you
scornful men, Who rule this people . . . “
Who is to fall back and be caught and
be snared and broken? Not God’s true servants, but scornful men who rule their
people with cruelty. Contrast this with
what God says abut His true prophets.
Amos 3:7 “Surely the Lord GOD does nothing, Unless He reveals
His secret to His servants the prophets.”
We once said that virtually
everything that people have written about the book of Revelation is wrong. Now how could we have known that? Have we read and assessed everything that
people have written about that book?
No! We have read a lot, but by no
means all of it. Then how did we know
it? We knew it from this.
Rev 10:5 “The angel whom I saw standing on the sea and
on the land raised up his hand to heaven
Rev 10:6 and swore by Him who lives forever and ever,
who created heaven and the things that are in it, the earth and the things that
are in it, and the sea and the things that are in it, that there should be
delay no longer,
If what people have written about
this book were right, the mystery of God would have been finished, the end
would have arrived, Jesus Christ would have returned to this earth, and the
world would be now in the Millennial Kingdom.
But the mystery of God has not been
finished and none of those things have occurred, therefore those writings could
not have been right. Indeed, what we
have read about this book is so far off the mark, so speculative, as to render
them worse than useless. That is why we suggested that people gather them
together and make them ready for a good bonfire.
The biggest mistake people make when
talking about Revelation is to assume that this book is about the history of
the world since the time of Jesus Christ to the end of time. Nothing could be further from the truth. Revelation encapsulates the entire history
of the world, from creation to the end of time, as we shall prove. Let us go directly to chapter six.
Rev 6:1 “Now I saw when the Lamb opened one of the
seals; and I heard one of the four living creatures saying with a voice like
thunder, "Come and see."
Rev 6:5 "Come and see." So I looked, and
behold, a black horse, and he who sat on it had a pair of scales in his hand.
Rev 6:6 And I heard a voice in the midst of the four
living creatures saying, "A quart of wheat for a denarius, and three
quarts of barley for a denarius; and do not harm the oil and the wine."
Rev 6:7 When He opened the fourth seal, I heard the
voice of the fourth living creature saying, "Come and see."
Rev 6:8 So I looked, and behold, a pale horse. And
the name of him who sat on it was Death, and Hades followed with him. And power
was given to them over a fourth of the earth, to kill with sword, with hunger,
with death, and by the beasts of the earth.”
This is only the first half of this
chapter. As you can see, it deals with
the four horsemen. This is all one can
find in the Bible about these creatures, yet they have fired peoples
imagination perhaps more than any other prophetic event.
Now, there is general agreement among
biblical scholars that the first horse, the white one, represents spiritual
deception. Under him, people were
conquered and dominated through false religious dogmas.
The second horse, the red one,
represents war among nations.
The third horse, the black one, represents famine and
starvation.
And the fourth, the pale horse, is a
culmination and combination of all of the above: religious strife, wars,
hunger, epidemics, pestilences, earthquakes, etc. Not too dissimilar from what we see in the
word at present. In fact this is what
has derailed many biblical scholars who have tried to fit those horsemen into
our contemporary history. The problem
is, this prophecy does not describe our own time. The time of this prophecy is being revealed
in the second part of this chapter.
Rev 6:9 When He opened the fifth seal, I saw under
the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and for the
When would ‘the great day of God’s
wrath’ come upon this world other than at the end time?
The term “the great day of the Lord”,
is found many times in the Old Testament.
Almost in every case it refers to the end time Great Tribulation. Chapter six, however, cannot possibly refer
to that event for the following reasons.
1) Between chapter six and the end of
Revelation there are sixteen chapters of major prophetic developments. If the Great Tribulation comes as early as
chapter six, when would the other prophecies of Revelation be fulfilled?
2) The wording between these
expressions is somewhat different: ‘the
great day of His wrath’ versus ‘the great day of the Lord’. That may appear a minor nominal differences,
but in biblical prophecies nothing is minor.
Let us compare verses 12 – 16 of this prophecy with Matthew’s prophecy
about the end time Great Tribulation.
See if you can tell the difference.
Mat 24:29 "Immediately after the tribulation of
those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the
stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken.
Mat 24:30 "Then the sign of the Son of Man will
appear in heaven, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they
will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great
glory. "And He will send His angels
with a great sound of a trumpet,
Mat 24:31 and they will gather together His elect from
the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.”
Did you notice any differences? A casual reading of it could hardly reveal
any, but look at the timing. In
Revelation chapter six all of those events are in the past tense: ‘there was
a great earthquake’, ‘the sun became black as sackcloth’, ‘the moon became like blood’, the stars of heaven fell to the earth’, ‘the sky receded’,
and ‘every mountain and island was moved
out of its place’, whereas in Matthew’s prophecy all of these events are all in
the future: ‘there will be great
tribulation’, ‘the sun will be darkened’, ‘the moon will not give its light’, ‘the stars will fall from heaven’, and so on.
So when could Revelation chapter six
have occurred, if not in the future?
Only one time in history has the world been turned up side down in that
manner, and that was at the Flood of Noah.
Let us have a brief look at it.
Gen 7:11 "In the six hundredth year of Noah's
life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great
deep were broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened.
Gen 8:2 The fountains
of the deep and the windows of heaven were also stopped, and the rain from
heaven was restrained.”
Add to this Revelation 6:12-17 and
you get the full picture. Here it that
account again.
Rev 6:12 “I looked when He opened the sixth seal, and
behold, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair,
and the moon became like blood.
Chapter six gives us in prophetic
terms the history of the world from creation to the Flood of Noah. The four horsemen tell us what occurred in
the world during that time. This is the
secret to unveiling the book of Revelation.
People have been thrown off the track
by the events described in Rev. 6:1 and 6:9 – 11. Here is the first verse
again.
Rev 6:1 “Now I saw when the Lamb opened one of the
seals; and I heard one of the four living creatures saying with a voice like
thunder, "Come and see."
It is a well known fact that ‘the
Lamb’ could only refer to Jesus Christ.
What is not so well know is that from the time of Adam and Eve people
knew that a ‘Lamb’ would come to save the world from its sins. They did not know under what name He would
come, and that is why for a long time they only referred to Him as the ‘Lamb’,
and not as Jesus Christ.
Leaving aside the first chapter of
Revelation which merely sets the stage for Jesus’ revelation of this book to
Apostle John, the name ‘Jesus Christ’ appears for the first time in chapter
twelve, which is fitting for it is only in that chapter that we come to the
historical context of the New Testament.
Now let us look at the second case
that has thrown theologians off the track.
Rev 6:9 “When He opened the fifth seal, I saw under
the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and for the