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
It has generally been assumed that
this could only refer to a Christian scenario, but that is not the case. God had people in the world who obeyed Him
and spoke His truth since the beginning of time, Abel, Enoch, and Noah being
only the most obvious examples of righteous men from that time.
With this in mind we can now unveil the rest
of the book of Revelation.
Unveiling The
Book Of Revelation (1)
The first chapter of Revelation sets
the stage for what is to happen in the rest of this book. The glorified Christ appears in a vision to
His most beloved Apostle, John, and tells him to write down what he is about to
see and hear.
Apostle John, the youngest of the
Apostles, received this vision at an advanced age when all the other Apostles
had disappeared from the scene. Jesus
Christ did not want them to know the contents of this book, but why? The reason is rather simple: they had to live
and write as if He were about to
return any time. Had they seen the
contents of Revelation, they would have known that His return would be a long
time in the future, and that would have slackened their resolve and caused them
to write different things. Notice what
Apostle Paul told the Thessalonian Church.
Did Apostle Paul believe that he
himself would be alive at the return of Jesus Christ, or was he saying that
only in the general sense? Hard to say,
but in all likelihood he believed that Jesus Christ would return in his own
life time, otherwise it is hard to see how he could have said, “we who are
alive” if he believed that he would be dead at that time.
Now had he and the other Apostles
seen the Revelation, they would have written entirely different things to their
people and we would have an entirely different New Testament. But as it is, the Holy Spirit gave them only
what they needed to know in order to write exactly what He wanted, and so we
now have the New Testament in its current format and content.
We will now analyse chapter by
chapter, and unveil things that have remained secret since the beginning of the
world.
Rev 1:1 “The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God
gave Him to show His servants; things which must shortly take place. And He
sent and signified it by His angel to His servant John,
Rev 1:2 who bore witness to the word of God, and to
the testimony of Jesus Christ, to all things that he saw. Blessed is he
Rev 1:3 who reads and those who hear
the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written in it; for
the time is near.
Rev 1:6 and has made us kings and priests to His God
and Father, to Him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.
Rev 1:7 Behold, He is coming with clouds, and every
eye will see Him, even they who pierced Him. And all the tribes of the earth
will mourn because of Him. Even so, Amen.
Rev 1:8 "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the
Beginning and the End," says the Lord, "who is and who was and who is
to come, the
There are many things one could say
about this chapter, but for now we will only look at verses 5-6, for they are
the more relevant for the leaders of today.
Glory and dominion forever and ever be to “Him who loved us and washed
us from our sins in His own blood, and has made us kings and priests to His God and Father.”
Jesus Christ is creating a new set of
kings and priests for the Kingdom of His Father. But what will happen to the kings and
priests of today, why
is He not choosing them? Here is the
astonishing answer.
Rev 19:17 “Then I saw an angel standing in the sun; and
he cried with a loud voice, saying to all the birds that fly in the midst of
heaven, "Come and gather together for the supper of the great God,
Rev 19:18 "that you may eat the flesh of kings,
the flesh of captains, the flesh of mighty men, the flesh of horses and of
those who sit on them, and the flesh of all people, free and slave, both small
and great."
Rather than welcome Jesus Christ when
He returns to this earth to save humanity from self-annihilation, the kings and
priest of this world will take up arms against Him. The general tone of that verse indicates that
not only some kings and priests will make war against Him, but that all kings
and priests regardless of when or where they lived would do the same.
Isn’t this what the Apostles said
about “the rulers of this age” too?
1 Cor 2:6 “However, we speak wisdom among those who are
mature, yet not the wisdom of this age, nor of the rulers of this age, who are
coming to nothing.
1 Cor 2:7 But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery,
the hidden wisdom which God ordained before the ages for our glory,
1 Cor 2:8 which none of the rulers of this age knew;
for had they known, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.
1 Cor 2:9 But as it is written: "Eye has not seen,
nor ear heard, Nor have entered into the heart of man The things which God has
prepared for those who love Him."
It is not only the Jews and the
Romans that are guilty of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, but all “the rulers
of this age”. All of them would have
done exactly the same. Human beings in
their raw form are all the same – all are hostile to God.
It is in the character of this world’s
rulers to be hostile to God, to His laws, and to His people. This is why at the return of Jesus Christ
instead of receiving Him with open arms, they will take arms against Him. Those who think that this is a scenario for
an indeterminate future are gravely mistaken.
This is in the making right now.
All leaders have rejected the true Gospel of Jesus Christ and embraced
the false gospel of the one who is leading them to perdition.
None of them want to see Jesus Christ
return at present or in their life time.
He returns when He has to return, not when they want Him. As for those who do not want to see Him now
or ever, this is what He has to say.
There is another expression in the
first chapter of Revelation that needs some explanation. The words, “things which must shortly take
place” have led most people to believe that all things revealed in this book
were to take place after the book was given to Apostle John. Well, as we have seen in the previous
article, this is not the case.
If you have a New King James version
of the Bible, you will see that the term “shortly” is qualified and could also
have been translated “quickly” or “swiftly”.
The difference may not appear to be all that big, but it is big enough
to make us think about it and allow for other possibilities. When something passes quickly, it does not
necessarily pass shortly, nor necessarily in the future.
The book of Revelation was written
before the world began, and it contains the history of the entire world, not
just the history of the world after Jesus Christ.
Another thing that needs to be
brought to people’s attention is the appearance of the glorified Christ. This shows us why it is impossible for human
beings to convey through the works of their hands how Jesus Christ and the
Father look like. This is why the
Scriptures say that those who make idols and worship them are as dead as their
idols.
Psa 115:3 “But our God is in heaven; He does whatever
He pleases.
Psa 115:4 Their idols are silver and gold, The work of
men's hands.
Psa 115:5 They have mouths, but they do not speak; Eyes
they have, but they do not see;
Psa 115:6 They have ears, but they do not hear; Noses
they have, but they do not smell;
Psa 115:7 They have hands, but they do not handle; Feet
they have, but they do not walk; Nor do they mutter through their throat.
Psa 115:8 Those
who make them are like them; So is everyone who trusts in them.”
The next two chapters of Revelation
address seven specific Churches of God.
We will look at them in total.
Rev 2:1 "To the angel of the church of Ephesus
write, 'These things says He who holds the seven stars in His right hand, who
walks in the midst of the seven golden lampstands:
Rev 2:2 "I know your works, your labor, your patience, and that you cannot bear those who
are evil. And you have tested those who say they are apostles and are not, and
have found them liars;
Rev 2:3 "and you have persevered and have
patience, and have labored for My name's sake and
have not become weary.
Rev 2:4 "Nevertheless I have this against you,
that you have left your first love.
Rev 2:5 "Remember therefore from where you have
fallen; repent and do the first works, or else I will come to you quickly and
remove your lampstand from its place; unless you
repent.
Rev 2:6 "But this you have, that you hate the
deeds of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate.
Rev 2:7 "He who has an ear, let him hear what
the Spirit says to the churches. To him who overcomes I will give to eat from
the tree of life, which is in the midst of the Paradise of God."'
Rev 2:15 "Thus you also have those who hold the
doctrine of the Nicolaitans, which thing I hate.
Rev 2:16 'Repent, or else I will come to you quickly
and will fight against them with the sword of My mouth.
Rev 2:21 "And I gave her time to repent of her
sexual immorality, and she did not repent.
Rev 3:4 who have not defiled their garments; and they
shall walk with Me in white, for they are worthy.
Rev 3:5 "He who overcomes shall be clothed in
white garments, and I will not blot out his name from the Book of Life; but I
will confess his name before My Father and before His angels.
Rev 3:6 "He who has an ear, let him hear what
the Spirit says to the churches."'
Rev 3:7 "And to the angel of the church in
Philadelphia write, 'These things says He who is holy, He who is true, "He
who has the key of David, He who opens and no one shuts, and shuts and no one
opens":
Rev 3:8 "I know your works. See, I have set
before you an open door, and no one can shut it; for you have a little strength,
have kept My word, and have not denied My name.
Rev 3:9 "Indeed I will make those of the
synagogue of Satan, who say they are Jews and are not, but lie; indeed I will
make them come and worship before your feet, and to know that I have loved you.
Rev 3:10 "Because you have kept My command to
persevere, I also will keep you from the hour of trial which shall come upon
the whole world, to test those who dwell on the earth.
Rev 3:11 "Behold, I am coming quickly! Hold fast
what you have, that no one may take your crown.
Before we speak about the other
churches, we need to say a few things about the Church of God in Philadelphia
first.
The late Herbert W Armstrong of the
Worldwide Church of God used to say that his church was none other than this
particular Church. But this was an
internal matter for members only, not for the outside world. He felt that coming out into the open would
upset other churches and might bring unnecessary problems to his followers.
After his death, however, when his
church began to disintegrate, another man rose who saw a unique opportunity for
himself. He revived the old doctrines
and kept alive the spirit of the old man.
He and his underlings did away with any pretence of modesty, and called
their congregation by no other name than Philadelphia Church of God. Ever since that time, they have been beating
the drums that they are doing the work that Jesus assigned to this Church.
What they have not explained,
however, is which is the exact work that they are doing, for that Church
contains two kinds of people, each doing its own things. For example, Rev. 3:8 speaks of people of
“little strength” who have not denied Jesus’ word and kept His name, before
whom He opened a door that no one can close.
Revelation 3:9 on the other hand,
speaks of “those of the synagogue of Satan, who say they are Jews and are
not.”
Now, could a church, or churches,
whose members number into the thousands, and their income into the millions of
dollars, be said to be of “little strength”?
Yet this is exactly what the leaders of both WWCG and PCH have been claiming.
They have also been claiming that
their radio and television broadcasts are the doors that Jesus opened for them
to take their gospels into people’s homes.
Now what do you think would be more
advantageous for those who wants to study the Bible and find out the truth for
themselves, radio and television broadcasts, or the Internet? Why do you think the Internet has become the
tool of choice for students all over the world? Radio and television broadcasts cost a lot
of money, whereas Internet sites cost relatively little. Even a people of “little strength” can afford
to do that, and that is why the door that Jesus was talking about is the
Internet not radio and television broadcasts.
It is not for nothing that Jesus
Christ calls the larger group a synagogue of Satan, for they preach and
practice doctrines which belonged to the Old Testament but which have become
‘doctrines of demons’ under the New Testament.
They have become ‘doctrines of demons’ under the New Testament because
they disobey Christ and take people back to rudimentary things of the Old Testament,
whose sole purpose was to bring us to Christ.
1 Tim 4:1 “Now the Spirit expressly says that in latter
times some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and
1 Tim 4:2 doctrines of demons, speaking lies in hypocrisy, having their own
conscience seared with a hot iron,
1 Tim 4:3 forbidding to marry, and commanding to
abstain from foods which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those
who believe and know the truth.
1 Tim 4:4 For every creature of God is good, and nothing
is to be refused if it is received with thanksgiving;
1 Tim 4:5 for it is sanctified by the word of God and
prayer.
1 Tim 4:6 If you instruct the brethren in these things,
you will be a good minister of Jesus Christ, nourished in the words of faith
and of the good doctrine which you have carefully followed.”
The Jews were not allowed to
intermarry racially, and were required to practice strict dietary laws, things
which are no longer required for Christians.
And this is why.
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 and of the
Mat 28:20 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!
One cannot make disciples of all
nations if he forbids them from intermarrying each other, and eating whatever
is customary in their lands. It is for
this reason that Apostle Paul said this also.
“Imitate me, just as I also imitate
Christ.” Now do you think that those
who preach and practice these “doctrines of demons” imitate Christ? The lengths to which they go to “prove” that
these Scriptures do not mean what they say is truly unbelievable. More than that, they also impose heavy
burdens on their followers in the name of tithing and mandatory offerings which
neither the Apostles nor we have ever advocated. As Apostle Paul said.
Jesus Christ said that during the
work of those people of “little strength”, the hour of trial will come upon the
whole world to test those who dwell on the earth. Let us have another look at it for this is a
very important matter.
Rev 3:10 "Because you have kept My command to
persevere, I also will keep you from the hour of trial which shall come upon
the whole world, to test those who dwell on the earth.
Rev 3:11 "Behold, I am coming quickly! Hold fast
what you have, that no one may take your crown.”
The hour of trial comes for two
purposes. 1) It is God’s vengeance upon
an unbelieving, wayward, world, and 2) to test those who dwell on the earth and
see who deserves to receive a place in the eternal Kingdom of God. Remember what He said about the elect of
God?
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.”
It is clear that the “hour of trial”
and the “great tribulation” are one and the same thing, and that this
catastrophe will take place during the work of these “elect of God” of “little
strength” who have kept the word of Jesus and not denied His name.
We hope you understand the
implication of all of this and take the steps to become one of God’s elect by
bringing forth works worthy of repentance, for there is no other way by which
people may save themselves from this awesome tribulation.
Now to the other Churches of
God. There has been a great deal of
debate among biblical scholars as to what exactly is the meaning of those
Churches. They cannot have been
important as a result of their geographical location, for larger and far more
important cities of early Churches are not even mentioned, such as those in
Rome, in Corinth, in Galatia, and even the one in Jerusalem. No, these seven churches transcend both time
and geographical location.
Christians should look upon them not
as ancient entities of little relevance to them, but as congregations of people
that carry important messages for themselves.
Indeed, they must look upon them as if they themselves were members of
these Churches. For the seven churches
describe phases which all people undergo in their life as Christians. For example:
The Church in Ephesus reflects the
initial enthusiasm with which we all embraced the faith of Jesus Christ. Jesus praises it because it persevered and
had patience, and had laboured for His name's sake and had not become
weary. But then, as with all of us when
things do not quite turn out as expected, comes the let down: "Nevertheless
I have this against you, that you have left your first love”.
The Church in Smyrna went through a
period of stabilisation and trials, just as we all did. "I know your works, tribulation, and
poverty (but you are rich); and I know the blasphemy of those who say they are
Jews and are not, but are a synagogue of Satan.
Do not fear any of those things which you are about to suffer. Indeed,
the devil is about to throw some of you into prison, that you may be tested,
and you will have tribulation ten days. Be faithful until death, and I will
give you the crown of life.”
The church in Pergamos
is close to being dead, which is what happens when people become disillusioned
and lose faith as a result of trials.
"I know your works, and where you dwell, where Satan's throne is.
And you hold fast to My name, and did not deny My faith even in the days in
which Antipas was My faithful martyr, who was killed among you, where Satan
dwells. But I have a few things against
you, because you have there those who hold the doctrine of Balaam, who taught Balak to put a stumbling block before the children of
Israel, to eat things sacrificed to idols, and to commit sexual
immorality. Thus you also have those who
hold the doctrine of the Nicolaitans, which thing I
hate. Repent, or else I will come to you
quickly and will fight against them with the sword of My
mouth.”
Now there are some very interesting
things that we need to consider here.
This church is located where Satan’s throne is, where the faithful
martyr Antipas was killed. Now where is
that place, and who might this Antipas be?
Jesus Christ expected His followers
to know both these things, otherwise He would not have mentioned them.
People have known since ancient times
where Satan’s seat is. We were not the
first to discover that it is in the Vatican, though we came to this conclusion
independently. What no one has
explained, however, is who Antipas might be.
When you think about it, it is not
all that hard to find that out. We have
conclusively proven in previous editions that Apostle Peter never went to
Rome. Apostle Paul, however, was brought
to Rome in chains, was judged, and was martyred there on false charges. No one else could possibly be Antipas than Apostle
Paul, for no other personality in the New Testament has attained a greater
importance with the passage of time than he has. It was not too long after his demise that
true Christians were forced to go underground.
They remained so until after the Reformation which opened new windows of
opportunity for them. No historical personality
has arisen during this time who practiced the true
religion of Jesus Christ, who could have supplanted Apostle Paul in importance
as far as the Gospel of Jesus Christ is concerned.
The word “Nicolaitans”
associated with the Church in Pergamos, comes from Nicolas, or Saint Nicolas, or as is more
commonly known these days, Santa Claus.
Christmas is not the birth date of Jesus Christ. Even if it were, He did not sanction it as a
day of celebration. Instead He commanded
His followers to observe the Passover, the day He sacrificed Himself for us, a
Holy Day which the Nicolaitans do not keep.
The Church in Thyatira rises from the
ashes of Pergamos and brings forth some good
works. Nevertheless, because its members
have lost their first love, they are easy pray to the sins of the flesh and of
the spirit. Isn’t this what we all had
to cope with in our life as Christians?
"I know your works, love, service, faith, and your patience; and as
for your works, the last are more than the first. Nevertheless I have a few things against you,
because you allow that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess, to teach
and seduce My servants to commit sexual immorality and eat things sacrificed to
idols. And I gave her time to repent of
her sexual immorality, and she did not repent. . . “ The fallen woman Jezebel stands for a fallen
church.
The Church in Sardis, which follows,
is almost dead spiritually, which is what happens with all Christians who
become entangled in the sins of the flesh or of the spirit. "I know your works, that you have a name
that you are alive, but you are dead. Be
watchful, and strengthen the things which remain, that are ready to die, for I have
not found your works perfect before God.
Remember therefore how you have received and heard; hold fast and
repent. Therefore if you will not watch, I will come upon you as a thief, and
you will not know what hour I will come upon you. You have a few names even in
Then comes
the Church in
Now one has to be careful what he
says abut this Church for although it is a lacklustre Church, it is not a fallen
away church. It is still a Church of God
which is not the case with a fallen church.
Many preachers have failed to make a distinction between a fallen asleep
and a fallen away church, and have committed blasphemy by saying that Laodicea is a fallen away Church. There is no hope of redemption for a fallen
away church, as it is for a fallen asleep one.
Laodicea Church of God has not fallen away,
but fallen asleep, and that is a major difference.
You can see now how the progression
from one church to the other fits the stages which all Christians go through in
their life. We all start
enthusiastically then follow a rocky road of ups and down to the very end. But as Jesus Christ said, only those who
overcome to the end will make it into His Kingdom, not those who just cruise
along.
To the Church in Ephesus He said: “To him
who overcomes I will give to eat from the tree of life, which is in the
midst of the Paradise of God."'
And to the Church in Smyrna: “He who overcomes shall not be hurt by
the second death."'
And to the Church in Pergamos: “To him
who overcomes I will give some of the hidden manna to eat.”
And to the Church in Thyatira:
"And he who overcomes, and
keeps My works until the end, to him I will give power over the nations.”
And to the Church in Sardis: "He who overcomes shall be clothed in
white garments, and I will not blot out his name from the Book of Life;
And to the Church in Philadelphia:
"He who overcomes, I will make
him a pillar in the temple of My God, and he shall go out no more. . . “
And finally the church in
Those who think
that salvation is all about going to church on Sundays and prostrating before
icons have a little surprise coming their way.
Seven times the glorified Christ used the expression, ‘he who
overcomes’, and there are more in the Bible, which tells us how important it is
for people to pursue the right and true path to the very end and not to become
slack in their struggle for salvation.
It is not an easy struggle, but the rewards are worth any
sacrifice.
1 Cor 2:9 "Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, Nor
have entered into the heart of man The things which God has prepared for those
who love Him."
Now chapter four.
Rev 4:1 After these things I looked, and behold, a
door standing open in heaven. And the first voice which I heard was like a
trumpet speaking with me, saying, "Come up here, and I will show you things
which must take place after this."
Rev 4:2 Immediately I was in the Spirit; and behold,
a throne set in heaven, and One sat on the throne.
Rev 4:3 And He who sat there was like a jasper and a
sardius stone in appearance; and there was a rainbow around the throne, in
appearance like an emerald.
Rev 4:4 Around the throne were twenty-four thrones,
and on the thrones I saw twenty-four elders sitting, clothed in white robes;
and they had crowns of gold on their heads.
Rev 4:5 And from the throne proceeded lightnings, thunderings, and
voices. Seven lamps of fire were burning before the throne, which are the seven
Spirits of God.
Rev 4:6 Before the throne there was a sea of glass,
like crystal. And in the midst of the throne, and around the throne, were four
living creatures full of eyes in front and in back.
Rev 4:7 The first living creature was like a lion,
the second living creature like a calf, the third living creature had a face
like a man, and the fourth living creature was like a flying eagle.
Rev 4:8 The four living creatures, each having six
wings, were full of eyes around and within. And they do not rest day or night,
saying: "Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, Who was and is and is to
come!"
Rev 4:9 Whenever the living creatures give glory and honor and thanks to Him who sits on the throne, who lives
forever and ever,
Rev 4:10 the twenty-four elders fall down before Him
who sits on the throne and worship Him who lives forever and ever, and cast
their crowns before the throne, saying:
Rev 5:2 Then I saw a strong angel proclaiming with a
loud voice, "Who is worthy to open the scroll and to loose its
seals?"
Rev 5:3 And no one in heaven or on the earth or under
the earth was able to open the scroll, or to look at it.
Rev 5:4 So I wept much, because no one was found
worthy to open and read the scroll, or to look at it.
Rev 5:5 But one of the elders said to me, "Do
not weep. Behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has
prevailed to open the scroll and to loose its seven seals."
Rev 5:6 And I looked, and behold, in the midst of the
throne and of the four living creatures, and in the midst of the elders, stood
a Lamb as though it had been slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which
are the seven Spirits of God sent out into all the earth.
Rev 5:7 Then He came and took the scroll out of the
right hand of Him who sat on the throne.
Rev 5:8 Now when He had taken the scroll, the four
living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb, each
having a harp, and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the
saints.
Rev 5:9 And they sang a new song, saying: "You
are worthy to take the scroll, And to open its seals; For You were slain, And
have redeemed us to God by Your blood Out of every tribe and tongue and people
and nation,
Chapters four and five go
together. They show us how in the
history of the world only one person was found worthy to open the scroll that
was in the hand of God. That scroll had
been written before the world began, just a Jesus sacrifice was preordained
before the world began. You may wish to
ponder a little upon the following Scriptures.
Mat
Mat
Mat 25:34 "Then the King will say to those on His
right hand, 'Come, you blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world:
John 17:24 "Father, I desire that they also whom
You gave Me may be with Me where I am, that they may behold My glory which You
have given Me; for You loved Me before
the foundation of the world.
Eph 1:3 “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord
Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly
Eph 1:4 places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of
the world, that we should be holy and without blame
Eph 1:5 before Him in love, having
predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to
the good pleasure
Eph 1:6 of His will,
to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He has made us
accepted in the Beloved.”
Heb 4:3 “For we who have believed do enter that rest,
as He has said: "So I swore in My wrath, 'They shall not enter My rest,'
" although the works were finished
from the foundation of the world.”
Rev 13:7 “It was granted to [the Dragon] to make war
with the saints and to overcome them. And authority was given him over every
Rev 13:8 tribe, tongue, and nation. All
who dwell on the earth will worship him, whose names have not been written in
the Book of Life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.”
Rev 13:9 If anyone has an ear, let him hear.
Rev 17:8 "The beast that you saw was, and is not,
and will ascend out of the bottomless pit and go to perdition. And those who
dwell on the earth will marvel, whose names are not written in the Book of Life
from the foundation of the world,
when they see the beast that was, and is not, and yet is.”
Now if all these things had been
determined and predestined before the foundation of the world – Jesus’
sacrifice, the righteous, the wicked, the ‘beast’, the Devil and his role,
etc., isn’t it reasonable to assume that a book of such importance like the
Revelation had also been written before the foundation of the world? The fact that it was revealed to the world at
the time of Apostle John does not mean that it was written at that time
too. And if it was written before the
foundation of the world, why should it contain the history of the world only
from the time of Jesus Christ to the end of the world? The truth is, it doesn’t. Rather, Revelation contains the history of
the world in prophetic symbols from the beginning of the world to the end of
it. Without this key in mind, no one can
make sense of this book. Now let us
continue with Revelation 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." And
I looked, and behold,
Rev 6:2 a white horse. He who sat on it had a bow;
and a crown was given to him, and he went out conquering and to conquer.
Rev 6:3 When He opened the second seal, I heard the
second living creature saying, "Come and see."
Rev 6:4 Another horse, fiery red, went out. And it
was granted to the one who sat on it to take peace from the earth, and that
people should kill one another; and there was given to him a great sword.
Rev 6:5 When He opened the third seal, I heard the
third living creature say, "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.
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
testimony which they held. And they
cried with a loud voice, saying,
We’ve already discussed this chapter
at length in the preceding article, so we will go to the next one.
Rev 7:1 After these things I saw four angels standing
at the four corners of the earth, holding the four winds of the earth, that the
wind should not blow on the earth, on the sea, or on any tree.
Rev 7:2 Then I saw another angel ascending from the
east, having the seal of the living God. And he cried with a loud voice to the
four angels to whom it was granted to harm the earth and the sea,
Rev 7:3 saying, "Do not harm the earth, the sea,
or the trees till we have sealed the servants of our God on their
foreheads."
Rev 7:6 of the tribe of Naphtali
twelve thousand were sealed; of the tribe of Manasseh twelve thousand were
sealed;
Rev 7:7 of the tribe of Simeon twelve thousand were
sealed; of the tribe of Levi twelve thousand were sealed; of the tribe of Issachar
Rev 7:8 twelve thousand were sealed; of the tribe of Zebulun
twelve thousand were sealed; of the tribe of Joseph twelve thousand were sealed;
of the tribe of Benjamin twelve thousand were sealed.
Rev 7:9 After these things I looked, and behold, a
great multitude which no one could number, of all nations, tribes, peoples, and
tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed with white
robes, with palm branches in their hands,
This chapter reflects the saving work
of God from the Flood of Noah to the end of the world. We have amply explained who the 144 000
people and the multitude of white robed people are in The Christian Herald No 1.
Rev 8:1 When He opened the seventh seal, there was silence
in heaven for about half an hour.
Rev 8:2 And I saw the seven angels who stand before
God, and to them were given seven trumpets.
Rev 8:3 Then another angel, having a golden censer,
came and stood at the altar. He was given much incense, that he should offer it
with the prayers of all the saints upon the golden altar which was before the
throne.
Rev 8:4 And the smoke of the incense, with the
prayers of the saints, ascended before God from the angel's hand.
Rev 8:5 Then the angel took the censer, filled it
with fire from the altar, and threw it to the earth. And there were noises, thunderings, lightnings, and an
earthquake.
Rev 8:6 So the seven angels who had the seven
trumpets prepared themselves to sound.
Rev 8:7 The first angel sounded: And hail and fire
followed, mingled with blood, and they were thrown to the earth. And a third of
the trees were burned up, and all green grass was burned up. Then the second angel sounded:
Rev 8:8 And something like a great mountain burning
with fire was thrown into the sea, and a third of the sea became blood.
Rev 8:9 And a third of the living creatures in the
sea died, and a third of the ships were destroyed.
Generally speaking, this chapter
deals with the physical history of the world from the Flood of Noah to the
latter part of the nineteenth century.
The mistake people have made with this chapter is to assume that the
devastation would come all at once. Not
so. One third of the trees and the grass
have disappeared gradually during that period.
In other words, desertification has been an ongoing process, as in fact
it is these days only more so and on a larger scale.
The effect of the second angel is
also highly metaphorical. “And something
like a great mountain burning with fire was thrown into the sea, and a third of
the sea became blood. And a third of the living creatures in the sea died, and
a third of the ships were destroyed.”
What this is really telling us is that in the same period there has been
a gradual erosion in the quality of water and a continuous disappearance of the
living organisms within it.
The third angel relates a similar
process of degradation in the rivers of fresh water and how their pollution has
affected people’s health in that period.
This brings us to chapter nine in which we see a sudden catastrophic
change for the worse.
Rev 9:1 Then the fifth angel sounded: And I saw a star fallen from heaven to the
earth. To him was given the key to the bottomless
Rev 9:2 pit.
And he opened the bottomless pit, and smoke arose out of the pit like
the smoke of a great furnace. So the sun and the air were darkened because of
the smoke of the pit.
Rev 9:3 Then out of the smoke locusts came upon the
earth. And to them was given power, as the scorpions of the earth have power.
Rev 9:4 They were commanded not to harm the grass of
the earth, or any green thing, or any tree, but only those men who do not have
the seal of God on their foreheads.
Rev 9:5 And they were not given authority to kill
them, but to torment them for five months. Their torment was like the torment
of a scorpion when it strikes a man.
Rev 9:6 In those days men will seek death and will
not find it; they will desire to die, and death will flee from them.
Rev 9:7 The shape of the locusts was like horses
prepared for battle. On their heads were crowns of something like gold, and
their
Rev 9:8 faces were like the faces of men. They had hair like women's hair, and their
teeth were like lions' teeth.
Rev 9:9 And they had breastplates like breastplates
of iron, and the sound of their wings was like the sound of chariots with many
horses running into battle.
Rev 9:10 They had tails like scorpions, and there were
stings in their tails. Their power was to hurt men five months.
The star of the bottomless pit is the
Devil. We don’t need to spend time on
that. But what is this bottomless pit
out of which came smoke and all those fire breathing “locusts” and
“scorpions”? What this chapter relates
is the oil that came out of the earth and the industrial revolution that it
engendered. We said that chapter eight
covers the history of the world from the Flood to the latter part of the
nineteenth century because that is when industrial revolution began.
Verse nine tells us that all this
horror will last for five months. Well,
in biblical parlance that is about 150 years (day for a year principle), which
means that something drastic will occur in the very near future to put an end
to it all.
Now what could possibly happen to
bring the industrial revolution to an end and stop the oil from coming out of
the ground and oiling the machinery of today?
That would pretty much mean the end of the world as we know it, wouldn’t
it? Well, yes and no. What it means is a return to a more natural
way of living. That will happen after
the Great Tribulation which will reduce mankind by a minimum of two billions
and a maximum of six. Jesus Christ will
return immediately after that enormous devastation. He will capture the angel of the bottomless
pit and lock him back until the end of the Millennium.
Rev 10:1 I saw still another mighty angel coming down
from heaven, clothed with a cloud. And a rainbow was on his head, his face was
like the sun, and his feet like pillars of fire.
Rev 10:2 He had a little book open in his hand. And he
set his right foot on the sea and his left foot on the land,
Rev 10:3 and cried with a loud voice, as when a lion
roars. When he cried out, seven thunders uttered their voices.
Rev 10:4 Now when the seven thunders uttered their
voices, I was about to write; but I heard a voice from heaven saying to me,
"Seal up the things which the seven thunders uttered, and do not write
them."
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,
Rev 10:7 but in
the days of the sounding of the seventh angel, when he is about to sound, the
mystery of God would be finished, as He declared to His servants the prophets.
Rev 10:8 Then the voice which I heard from heaven
spoke to me again and said, "Go, take the little book which is open in the
hand of the angel who stands on the sea and on the earth."
Rev 10:9 So I went to the angel and said to him,
"Give me the little book." And he said to me, "Take and eat it;
and it will make your stomach bitter, but it will be as sweet as honey in your
mouth."
This chapter speaks of the very thing
you are reading right now: the unveiling of the book of Revelation. The world is that close to the end of those
things and of the return of Jesus Christ.
When He comes back, the first resurrection will occur which will involve
bringing back to life those who have been trained to become the new kings and
priests of the world. Among these will be Apostle John who received this
Revelation. That is why he was told that
he must prophesy again about many peoples, nations, tongues, and kings. A wholesale conversion to the faith of Jesus
Christ will occur during the Millennial Kingdom, and the prime movers behind
this will be Jesus’ kings and priests.
Rev 11:1 Then I was given a reed like a measuring rod.
And the angel stood, saying, "Rise and measure the temple of God, the
altar, and those who worship there.
Rev 11:2 "But leave out the court which is
outside the temple, and do not measure it, for it has been given to the
Gentiles. And they will tread the holy city underfoot for forty-two months.
Here we need to make an injunction
before we proceed with the rest of this chapter. We need to do this because the first two
verses of this chapter have nothing to do with the rest of it.
Biblical scholars, particularly those
of a fundamentalist orientation, have surmised that the court of the temple and
the holy city would be trampled under foot by the Gentiles for forty-two months
after a new temple is built in Jerusalem.
They have been saying that this prophecy must be fulfilled before Jesus
Christ can return to this earth. It is
for this reason that they have vigorously supported the Jews in their battle
with the Arabs. They expected, and
encouraged, the Jews to build that temple as soon as possible. But as of late they have been not too happy
that the Jews have been dragging their feet in destroying the Muslim Dome of
the Rock and building their new temple in its place. They have not done so because that would have
aligned the whole world on the side of the Arabs, and because the Jews, like
just about everybody else, are not too keen on seeing the Man they had killed
set up a Kingdom of God that does not include them. Without repentance and conversion no one
could be part of that Kingdom, and the Jews have not been particularly keen
these things so far.
Those scholars fail to understand
that forty-two months represent not 1260 days, but 1260 years.
In our No 4 edition, when we
discussed the beast of Revelation 13, of which the Bible says that it was given
authority to continue for forty-two months (Rev 13:5), we demonstrated that,
according to the biblical principle of a day for a year (Nu. 14:34; Ezek.
4:4-6), forty two months represent approximately 1260 years. We say approximately because when prophetic
times are given in months, as opposed to days or hours, they require a certain
degree of approximation. That is because
a month is less precise than a day, and a day less precise than an hour. The lengths of time represented by each of
these terms must be treated accordingly.
Forty-two months
then represent 1260 years, give or take a few years. This is how long the Roman
Empire lasted when counting from the foundation of Rome in about 750 BC to its
collapse in about 510 A.D.
Since the Gentile
nations are said to trample under foot the court of the temple and the holy
city for the same length of time, we must look for the people who have been in
control of Jerusalem for about 1260 years.
When Jesus Christ was on earth, the Romans had dominion over Jerusalem. But the Bible does not refer to the Romans as Gentiles. The Roman Empire, alongside the Greek, Persian and Babylonian Empires, are referred to as “beasts”. Besides, the Romans did not have control over Jerusalem for that length of time. But what happened after the Roman Empire collapsed? In the West, the Popes created the Holy Roman Empire, and in the East, the Muslims took control of Jerusalem.
If we calculate 1260 years from the conquest of Jerusalem by the Ottoman forces in 655 AD or thereabouts, we come to the year 1915, the middle of the First World War, when the British forces liberated the city from Turkish domination.
The Muslims were the Gentiles who trampled underfoot the court of the temple for forty-two months. Why only the court and not the temple itself? Because there no longer was a temple in Jerusalem by then! The Jewish temple had long since been destroyed by the Romans, as Jesus said that it would happen, and that temple had never been rebuilt since.
The Muslims built their Dome of the Rock on that ground because there was no longer a Jewish temple there anymore.
Now we continue with the rest of chapter 11.
Rev 11:7 When they finish their testimony, the beast
that ascends out of the bottomless pit will make war against them, overcome
Rev 11:10 And those who dwell on the earth will rejoice
over them, make merry, and send gifts to one another, because these two
prophets tormented those who dwell on the earth.
In regard to these two witnesses we
have said a fair bit in the past. One
only has to look at the tables of contents in our web site to locate it. So we won’t repeat that here, but what we
will do instead is take you to an Old Testament prophecy that speaks about them
too.
Zec 4:1
“Now the angel who talked with me came back and wakened me, as a man who
is wakened out of his sleep.
Zec 4:2
And he said to me, "What do you see?" So I said, "I am
looking, and there is a lampstand of solid gold with
a bowl on top of it, and on the stand seven lamps with seven pipes to the seven
lamps.
Zec 4:3
"Two olive trees are by it, one at the right of the bowl and the
other at its left."
Zec 4:4
So I answered and spoke to the angel who talked with me, saying,
"What are these, my lord?"
Zec 4:5
Then the angel who talked with me answered and said to me, "Do you
not know what these are?" And I said, "No, my lord."
Zec 4:6
So he answered and said to me: "This is the word of the LORD to Zerubbabel: 'Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit,'
Says the LORD of hosts.”
Reference to the two olive trees
tells us that these are the same people that are mentioned in Rev.11: 4. The fact
that their work is being done “Not by might nor by power, but by God’s Spirit”
tells us who is behind their work and why though few in number their work
resonates all over the world. There is, however, another quite extraordinary
mystery about them.
Zec 4:12 And I further answered and said to him,
"What are these two olive branches that drip into the receptacles of the
two gold pipes from which the golden oil drains?"
Zec
Zec
When two of His disciples asked Jesus
Christ to grant them to sit on either side of Him in His Kingdom, He told them
that they did not know what they were asking.
Mat
Mat
Jesus had power to appoint the twelve
Apostles, who will reign with Him over the twelve tribes of Israel, “but to sit
on My right hand and on My left is not Mine to give, but it is for those for
whom it is prepared by My Father."
He was aware of this prophecy, and knew that God would be the One who
would chose the two witnesses and be behind their work.
This however is not the mystery we
were referring to. Have a look at
this.
Zec 5:1
“Then I turned and raised my eyes, and saw there a flying scroll. And he said to me,
Zec 5:2
"What do you see?" So I answered, "I see a flying scroll.
Its length is twenty cubits and its width ten cubits."
Zec 5:3
Then he said to me, "This is the curse that goes out over the face
of the whole earth: 'Every thief shall be expelled,' according to this side of the
scroll; and, 'Every perjurer shall be expelled,' according to that side of
it."
Zec 5:4
"I will send out the curse," says the LORD of hosts; "It
shall enter the house of the thief and the house of the one who swears falsely
by My name. It shall remain in the midst of his house and consume it, with its
timber and stones."
This is merely telling us that during
the time of the two witnesses, the Devil and his demons will do ravages in the
world, particularly among those who do not keep the law of God.
Zec 5:5
Then the angel who talked with me came out and said to me, "Lift
your eyes now, and see what this is that goes forth."
Zec 5:6
So I asked, "What is it?" And he said, "It is a basket
that is going forth." He also said, "This is their resemblance throughout
the earth:
Zec 5:7 "Here is a lead disc lifted up,
and this is a woman sitting inside the basket"; then he said,
Zec 5:8 "This is Wickedness!" And he
thrust her down into the basket, and threw the lead cover over its mouth.”
The mention of a woman in connection
with this prophecy can mean only one thing: one of the two witnesses is a
woman. That she is described as
‘wickedness’ tells us whose work she is doing.
If you think you are having problems in you life, spear a thought for
the man who has to contend with the Devil incarnate while doing the work of
God.
Now in light of these facts, have a
look at this prophecy in its entirety and consider its implications for our
time.
Zec 3:1
“Then he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the Angel of
the LORD, and Satan standing at his right hand to
Zec 3:2
oppose him. And the LORD said to
Satan, "The LORD rebuke you, Satan! The LORD who has chosen
Zec 3:3 Now Joshua was clothed with filthy
garments, and was standing before the Angel.
Zec 3:4
Then He answered and spoke to those who stood before Him, saying,
"Take away the filthy garments from him." And to him He said,
"See, I have removed your iniquity from you, and I will clothe you with
rich robes."
Zec 3:5
And I said, "Let them put a clean turban on his head." So they
put a clean turban on his head, and they put the clothes on him. And the Angel
of the LORD stood by.
Zec 3:6
Then the Angel of the LORD admonished Joshua, saying,
Zec 3:7
"Thus says the LORD of hosts: 'If you will walk in My ways, And if
you will keep My command, Then you shall also judge My house, And likewise have
charge of My courts; I will give you places to walk Among these who stand here.
Zec 3:8
'Hear, O Joshua, the high priest, You and your companions who sit before
you, For they are a wondrous sign; For behold, I am bringing forth My Servant
the BRANCH.
Zec 3:9
For behold, the stone That I have laid before Joshua: Upon the stone are
seven eyes. Behold, I will engrave its inscription,' Says the LORD of hosts,
'And I will remove the iniquity of that land in one day.
Zec
Zec 4:1 Now the angel who talked with me came
back and wakened me, as a man who is wakened out of his sleep.
Zec 4:2
And he said to me, "What do you see?" So I said, "I am
looking, and there is a lampstand of solid gold with a
bowl on top of it, and on the stand seven lamps with seven pipes to the seven
lamps.
Zec 4:3
"Two olive trees are by it, one at the right of the bowl and the
other at its left."
Zec 4:4
So I answered and spoke to the angel who talked with me, saying, "What
are these, my lord?"
Zec 4:5
Then the angel who talked with me answered and said to me, "Do you
not know what these are?" And I said, "No, my lord."
Zec 4:6
So he answered and said to me: "This is the word of the LORD to Zerubbabel: 'Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit,'
Says the LORD of hosts.
Zec 4:7
'Who are you, O great mountain? Before Zerubbabel
you shall become a plain! And he shall bring forth the capstone With
Zec 4:8
shouts of "Grace, grace to it!"' " Moreover the word of the LORD came to me,
saying: "The hands of Zerubbabel Have laid
Zec 4:9
the foundation of this temple; His hands shall also finish it. Then you
will know That the LORD of hosts has sent Me to you.
Zec
Zec
Zec 4:12
And I further answered and said to him, "What are these two olive
branches that drip into the receptacles of the two gold pipes from which the
golden oil drains?"
Zec
Zec
Zec 5:1 Then I turned and raised my eyes, and
saw there a flying scroll. And he said
to me,
Zec 5:2
"What do you see?" So I answered, "I see a flying scroll.
Its length is twenty cubits and its width ten cubits." Then he said to me, "This is the curse
that goes out over the face of the whole earth:
Zec 5:3 'Every thief shall be expelled,'
according to this side of the scroll; and, 'Every perjurer shall be expelled,'
according to that side of it." [This is the scroll that the ‘Lamb’ unveils
in Rev. 5].
Zec 5:4 "I will send out the curse,"
says the LORD of hosts; "It shall enter the house of the thief And the
house of the one who swears falsely by My name. It shall remain in the midst of
his house And consume it, with its timber and stones."
Zec 5:5
Then the angel who talked with me came out and said to me, "Lift
your eyes now, and see what this is that goes forth."
Zec 5:6
So I asked, "What is it?" And he said, "It is a basket
that is going forth." He also said, "This is their resemblance
throughout the earth:
Zec 5:7 "Here is a lead disc lifted up,
and this is a woman sitting inside the basket";
Zec 5:8
then he said, "This is Wickedness!" And he thrust her down
into the basket, and threw the lead cover over its mouth.
Zec 5:9
Then I raised my eyes and looked, and there were two women, coming with
the wind in their wings; for they had wings like the wings of a stork, and they
lifted up the basket between earth and heaven.
[Both women are witnesses of God.
One replaces the other half way through the work of God. Each stands for one of the Covenants, God
having been married to both of them in the course of time].
Zec
Zec
Zec 6:1 Then I turned and raised my eyes and
looked, and behold, four chariots were coming from between two mountains, and
the
Zec 6:2
mountains were mountains of bronze.
With the first chariot were red horses, with the second chariot black
horses,
Zec 6:3
with the third chariot white horses, and with the fourth chariot dappled
horses; strong steeds.
Zec 6:4 Then I answered and said to the angel
who talked with me, "What are these, my lord?" And the angel answered and said to me,
Zec 6:5 "These are four spirits of
heaven, who go out from their station before the Lord of all the earth.
Zec 6:6
"The one with the black horses is going to the north country, the
white are going after them, and the dappled are going toward the south
country.
Zec 6:7 "Then the strong steeds went out,
eager to go, that they might walk to and fro throughout the earth. And He said,
"Go, walk to and fro throughout the earth." So they walked to and fro
throughout the earth.
Zec 6:8 And He called to me, and spoke to me,saying, "See, those who go toward the north country
have given rest to My Spirit in the north country."
These four horsemen – four spirits of
heaven – are the ones spoken of in
The dappled horse that goes to the
south country represents the Islamist world, and its culmination with the
terror that it is inflicting upon the world these days.
The ‘strong steeds’ represent the
West and its colonial past.
The second part of Revelation needs a
new key. We must leave that for our next
edition. We give our nemesis the chance
to try to take the wind from underneath our wings once again. Maybe they will have better luck and be more
successful this time.
Sign Of The
End Time: Islamic Terrorism
For
centuries, western society’s philosophy has been predicated on the notion that
religion was on its way out, yet now the world is more sharply divided along
religious lines than it has ever been.
The
United Nations was working towards a globalised world
when suddenly the children of Islam threw a deadly spanner in its works. One cannot speak of the condition of the
world today without mentioning what is on just about everybody’s lips: Islamic
terrorism.
The
problem with Islam is not that its children take human lives in their customary
gruesome manner, for, like everybody else, they have been programmed for their
role before the world began, but that in their zeal they have forgotten what it
is to be human. Since no one can reason
with them anymore and change their attitude, they have become not only enemies
of the West and of progress, but enemies of humanity and as such the enemies of
God.
Twice
in the history of the world, God has been heartbroken by human predilection for
evil and degradation. The first time was
before the Flood of Noah.
Gen
6:5 “Then the LORD saw that the
wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts
of his heart
Gen
6:6 was only evil continually. And the LORD was sorry that He had made man
on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart.
Gen
6:7 So the LORD said, "I will
destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth, both man and beast,
creeping thing
Gen
6:8 and birds of the air, for I am
sorry that I have made them.” “But Noah
found grace in the eyes of the LORD.”
The
second time has happened in our own time.
By trampling under foot God’s universal laws of hospitality, generosity,
gratitude and fair play, Islamic terrorists have forfeited the right to a place
in the civilised world. They have
revived the spectre of a dark age from which the world thought it had escaped
long ago.
What
the world does not know is that the angel of death which is behind their
actions, has been released from his “bottomless pit” and will not be restrained
before Jesus Christ returns to this world.
And He will not return before the world is cleansed of its physical,
moral and spiritual pollutions. That is
the very purpose of the Great Tribulation.
Only the true servants of Jesus Christ are safe from the ravages of this
angel, and that because death has no power over them anymore.
Rev 9:1 “Then the fifth angel sounded:
And I saw a star fallen from heaven
to the earth. To him was given the key to the bottomless pit.
Rev
20:1 “Then I saw an angel coming down
from heaven, having the key to the bottomless pit and a great chain in his
hand.
Rev
20:2 He laid hold of the dragon, that serpent of old, who is the Devil and
Satan, and bound him for a thousand years;
Rev
20:3 and he cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal
on him, so that he should deceive the nations no more till the thousand years
were finished. But after these things he must be released for a little while.”
The
problem with Islam is that, unlike Christianity, it has no notion of good
spirits and bad spirits.
1
John 4:1 “Beloved, do not believe every
spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are of God; because many false
prophets have gone out into the world.”
Islam
has no concept of false prophets, false teachers, false brethren, and false
salvation either. Everyone who is a
Muslim is supposed to be good and saved.
Well, what we have seen in the last few years is a side of Islam that
few people knew it existed.
It
is a horrible perversion of truth and reversal of facts to say that Allah is
most merciful and most compassionate when those who claim to be his followers
show so little mercy and compassion, and cut the throats of even well
intentioned guests, including women, who go to Muslim countries to help the
poor and helpless. By contrast, how many
Muslim missionaries do we see helping the poor in Christian countries? No one will ever cut their throats in these
countries. Which is why with all its
faults, God Almighty still greatly favours Christianity above all other
religions of the world.
So
callous have those terrorists become that they are massacring their own people,
because they are easy targets, in the hope that in so doing they may reach some
westerners too.
The
tragedy of Islam is that its spiritual and secular leaders have not raise their
voices in horror at such atrocities. In
so doing they have allowed themselves and their religion to be identified with
those terrorists.
No
one has tried harder than we have over the years to bring Islam out from the
cold, so to speak, and put it on the pedestal alongside the other ‘people of the
book’, but we have to admit with regret that our efforts have been in
vain. If you cannot reach people you
cannot reason with them, and if you cannot reason with them, you cannot help
them.
We
know that God Almighty does not like what is happening in the world, but has no
choice than to let it happen until the world has learned the lesson that it
cannot survive apart from its Creator.
As
for the work of those inhuman terrorists, this is what Jesus Christ is telling
them:
Mat
18:7 "Woe to the world because of offences!
For offences must come, but woe to that man by whom the offence comes!
Luke
17:2 "It would be better for him if
a millstone were hung around his neck, and he were thrown into the sea, than
that he should offend one of these little ones.”
No
murderer, no hateful destroyer of life, no unbeliever, no sinner of any kind,
will ever be among the blessed of the LORD!
State Of
The World – 2004
In
the Millennium Kingdom of God there will be a return to the kind of society
that was originally envisioned for Israel, with no separation between the
secular and the religious. No secular
publication, or any that have served the purpose of preaching false gospels,
can make a transition into that Kingdom.
This is why The Christian Herald
strives to provide as much a witness to the world of the true Gospel of Jesus
Christ, as a record of our times for future generations.
The
following is a selection of articles from the world media which reflect the
state of the world in our time.
“Defining the war we're
fighting” Something needs to be made very
clear: The war we wage, the
Two and a half years after the
A great irony of the Spanish election is that even as mass-murdering jihadists take credit for bringing about the Socialist
victory -- expected to result in
"The approaching general elections in
Maybe the conclusion to be drawn is too horrifying: namely, that
in warding off jihadist aggression, we combat an
ideology born of a religion. In the formerly Judeo-Christian, currently
relativist-hedonist West, such a thought triggers near-panic: How can religious
worship, pure and unhijacked, inspire anything but
goodwill among men? And aren't terrorist tactics opposed by all but a
statistically invisible Islamic fringe? Perhaps it's better to ask what kind of
religion offers salvation in exchange for unholy acts of violence. And better
to wonder how invisible a fringe is when a recent poll, commissioned by the
liberal British newspaper The Guardian, claims that more than
But most of us don't ask and don't wonder. Valiantly, we
fight "terrorism." Determinedly, we target "evildoers."
Maybe it is this same gauzy scrim that has obscured the
other kinds of jihad -- quiet jihad or even cold jihad -- that have transformed
the culture of Western Europe, from Granada, where the first mosque has opened
since Christian forces ended Muslim rule in Spain in 1492, to Oxford, where
historian Niall Ferguson reports that historian Edward Gibbon's prediction that
minarets would one day rise over the university will come true next year with
the opening of a grand new Islamic Studies center.
Such seismic cultural shifts mainly result from immigration
policies that have introduced vast concentrations of non-assimilating Muslims
throughout
“The XXVIII Olympiad in
"Even antiwar activist
and former Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean's heart had to skip a
beat when the Iraqi athletes walked into the magnificent stadium at the Olympic
opening ceremony. Boy, did they look
happy. Genuinely happy.
Compare
their elation - reaching towards the crowd, tapping their hearts – with the
athletes from Iran or Saudi Arabia, who had that smile-or-disappear look
Olympic athletes forlornly wore when they represented the Soviet Union or the
Eastern bloc nations. In a word, the
Iraqis looked free.
It
occurred to me watching this pageant of superb sportsmen and sportswomen that
much the same true freedom of spirit could be seen on the faces of athletes from
a list of nations with familiar names – Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia,
Afghanistan, Grenada, Kuwait, South Korea, the former captive nations of
Romania, Bulgaria, the Czechs, Slovakia, Estonia, Lithuania (all holding
elections since the early 1990s), and the other former Soviet republics.
These
Olympians have one thing in common: they come from the nations the
Across
the past half century, the
My apologies for ruffling the global fellow feeling
that lies officially beneath the summer Games. But for many Americans, it has become more
than a little tiresome of late hearing how much the Europeans "hate
us" and how the
Let's
consider Nedzad Fazlija,
the 36-year-old flag bearer for Bosnia-Herzegovina. He is old enough to remember the friends who
didn't survive the internecine war that burned in a corner of
Here
is the official reason the US entered that war: "Over the last four years,
a quarter of a million Bosnians have been killed, more than half of Bosnia's
people have been driven from their homes, a million of they are still
refugees. We have seen parents divided
from their children, children deprived of their dreams, people caged like
animals in concentration camps, women and young girls subject to systematic
rape. We have seen unbelievable
horrors. But now we have a chance to end
this misery for good and we have a responsibility to act."
That
was president Bill Clinton on
It
is most certainly true that not all US interventions work out well for local
people. Haiti and Somalia remain
disordered. Sudan appears beyond reach. None has a team in Athens.
Serious
people can always measure and debate foreign commitments against America's
interests, goals and resources. Dean
Acheson in 1950 suggested South Korea lay outside America's defence
perimeter. A similar argument is being
made about Iraq – that Bush overstated the threat.
In
the meantime, perhaps the athletes from Bosnia, Afghanistan and Nicolae Ceausescu's Romania will find their way to the
Iraqi pavilion to hear familiar stories about living in a land of
exterminations - of Shias murdered in southern Iraq
and Kurds in the north. That has ended,
thanks, as in many other places around the world, to US intervention, however
unnecessary or poorly planned.
We
thrill to see Olympic athletes strain across the ground or through the air and
water to free themselves from limits set by nature on physical human effort. I, for one, am happy that America has
strained to free many more people from man-made limits on personal freedom,
most recently in Iraq. (Daniel Henninger, the author of this article, is deputy editorial
page editor of The Wall Street Journal,
from which this article was reprinted in The
Australian, August 24, 2004)
“Man of History” We are with President Bush who has
said, "I am the man who makes history." Who, other than President
Bush, can launch a war against terrorism? Who else will come to the rescue of
people suppressed by dictators? Who else was there to build and develop
nations? and above all who made democracy the new international system for all
the people in this world?
None of the Middle Eastern countries
could face terrorism alone. Some of them went to the extent of making promises
and allying with terrorist organisations. These countries were afraid to kick
out terrorists until the United States arrived on the scene, heading a
coalition of the willing to root out terrorism. Some people may be sceptical
about what the US has achieved. But we know it has not only liberated
Afghanistan from Taliban and its ally Osama Bin Laden but also created a modern
democratic country with its own police, army and other civil institutions. The
United States has also liberated the Iraqi people and created a modern country
from the ruins of the former regime. There are some people who still call the
war to liberate Iraq as "baseless," citing the failure of Americans
to find any weapons of mass destruction (WMD). What they forget is that the Americans did
find many mass graves where millions had been buried alive. This alone is
enough to prove Saddam's regime was more lethal than any WMD
man has known.
Quite recently the US forces have
cleansed the holy places in Najaf of the remnants of
the former regime and other infiltrators. When we consider all these there is
no doubt Bush is a man who creates history. Western countries, which were
against Bush in his war on terrorism, are now feeling the painful stings of
terrorism. France has two of its citizens kidnapped in Iraq. The kidnappers
have threatened to behead the French hostages if France fails to reconsider its
law, which bans Muslim women from wearing hijab in
schools. Terrorism can be tackled only through war and only the United States,
backed by a President who creates history, is capable of handling such a war.
We must remember Islam has nothing to do with terrorism. Terrorists exploit the
religion to achieve their objective, which is to destroy civilisation, kill
people, start wars and plunge the world into darkness. We saw how these
terrorists kidnapped and killed innocent people under the cloak of religion
only to forget all about their cause in exchange for a fistful of dollars.
The entire world is aware of the
cause and effect of terrorism. The killing and beheading of some innocent
people won't prevent the United States or its allies from confronting
terrorism. Americans are convinced of the need to fight this menace and no
country is better equipped to do this job except the United States, which has
the mightiest armed forces history has ever known. President Bush has the right
to say "I am the man who makes history" because he is fighting
aggression against modern civilisation. He is creating countries which enjoy
democracy, peace, stability and security.
These countries are now able to be a
part of the international community sharing their traditions and culture with
the rest of the humanity. Bush is the President of not only the United States
but the whole world for he is making history on this small planet. (Ahmed Al-Jarallah, Editor-in-Chief, the Arab Times – Kuwait,
September 9, 2004).
“Muslim leader plans commemoration of 9/11” “The spiritual leader of a British Muslim
group that is planning a commemoration of 9/11 says he supports abducting
British children, "because Britain has carried out acts of terrorism in
Iraq." The extremist leader of Al-Muhajiroun,
Omar Bakri Mohammed, said this week that he would support
holding women and children as hostages.
Mohammed told The Sunday Telegraph, "If an Iraqi Muslim carried out
an attack like that in Britain, it would be justified because Britain has
carried out acts of terrorism in Iraq.
As long as the Iraqi did not deliberately kill women and children, and
they were killed in the crossfire, that would be
okay." Mohammed, father of seven, came to Britain after being deported
from Saudi Arabia because of his membership in a banned group.
Relating to the horrific
school attack in southern Russia in which close to 400 people have been
reported killed, Mohammed said, "The Mujahideen
(Chechen terrorists) would not have wanted to kill those people, because it is
strictly forbidden as a Muslim to deliberately kill women and children. It is
the fault of the Russians."
Al-Muhajiroun plans to hold its
third annual commemoration of the 9/11 attacks with a convention in London
titled, "The Choice is in Your Hands: Either You're with the Muslims or
with the Infidels. We want the world to
remember this operation that lifted the head of the Muslim nation." Al-Muhajiroun
claimed, as of last year, no fewer than 30 offices across
“Child martyrdom promoted in Palestine”
“An alarming
television segment strongly promoting child "martyrdom" has returned
to official Palestinian Authority TV. The clip has been aired repeatedly in
recent weeks after being taken off the air over a year ago following widespread
outrage. At a
US Senate Hearing in October 2003, Director of Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) Itamar Marcus displayed
extensive documentary evidence that the PA was indoctrinating children to
aspire to heroic death as "Shahids"
(martyrs for Allah). Since then, many PA TV clips that encouraged children to
seek martyrdom through involvement with terrorism were removed. The removal was
ostensibly due to the inability of the PA representative at the Senate hearing
to defend the practice, accompanied by extensive outrage from both the print
and TV media. One such clip, which
presented a child's death in combat as "sweet," because it was Death
for Allah, was aired regularly up to the period of condemnations following the
October, 2003 Senate hearings. The clip was taken out of PA TV's rotation and
was not aired for almost a year. Suddenly, according to PMW,
the clip is being broadcast again - at least three times in the last two weeks.
The segment, known as the "Farewell Letter" clip,
features an Arab child writing a farewell letter to his parents, glorifying his
desire to die. The child then goes out to the combat zone, where he is shot and
achieves his death wish. As he falls in death, the words of his letter are sung
twice: "How sweet is Shahada (Death for Allah)
when I embrace you, my land." (The
Lekarev Report, September 9, 2004).
“Legacy of hatred” “The spectacle of world leaders from Jacques
Chirac to Kofi Annan
falling over themselves to pay tribute to a corrupt old terrorist such as Yasser Arafat is truly nauseating.
Let’s not
forget who Arafat really was. Besides
being the founder of modern terrorism, he was also a gangster, a showman, a
liar and a cheat – a man who salted away millions while his people starved. A man who signed agreements and then broke
them immediately afterwards. A man who
supported Saddam’s invasion of
Our
sympathy should go out instead to the innocent victims of terrorism still
living, those who have buried their children, parents, siblings, relatives or
friends, and to the thousands who have been scarred for life or have lost
homes, businesses and their livelihood.
The ghost of Hitler lives on in the legacy of hated and division that
Arafat has left behind.” (Arthur
Hurwitz, Letters to the editor, The Daily Telegraph (Sydney),
“Arafat successor al-Qaida sympathizer” “New leader of ruling Fatah quotes Mao, favors
For the last 30 years Qaddumi has
headed the Palestinian Liberation Organization Foreign Affairs Department. He
has made it clear that he sees terrorism as a strategic option for
Palestinians. Born in the
"Resistance is the path to reach political settlement
because we do not claim we are capable of defeating the Israeli army," Qaddumi told Hezbollah television last week.
"This policy was determined by the PLO when our brother
the martyr, our brother the president, Abu Amar
[Arafat], stood at the United Nations in 1974 and said: 'I hold a gun in one
hand and an olive branch in the other.'"
Already, Qaddumi has also called
for a wave of attacks against
Although he opposed the 1993
Israeli security sources said that after a lull of several
years Fatah agents have resumed using
Fuad Balbisi
has led the Fatah network in
Oil as weapon Qaddumi also has
advocated using the Islamic oil weapon against the
Qaddumi sees
"These events will serve as a lesson to the
“Syrian bank funded
insurgency with Saddam's millions” The United States has concluded that
The Commercial Bank of
During a hearing by the Senate subcommittee on Nov. 15,
Treasury Assistant Secretary Juan Carlos Zarate
asserted that
"What we found was when we sent our investigators to
Officials said that over the last 18 months
"We have folks on the front line right now that are
sacrificing their lives, that are under fire, and somewhere, somehow, there's
money being used to fuel that insurgency," Sen. Norm Coleman, chairman of
the permanent investigations subcommittee of the Senate Government Affairs Committee,
said. "And I would just hope that a very strong message is delivered to
the Syrians, that we get their cooperation, that we track this down and we
figure out what's what."
Officials said
Officials said
Officials said this would comprise a key issue when Congress
begins its new session in 2005. Zarate said Treasury was working with other
“Dutch go to war on terror.
Killing sparks action” An
investigation into the murder of controversial Dutch film-maker Theo van Gogh,
whose suspected assailant has ties to radical Islamists, pointed to a
“terrorist conspiracy”, prosecutors said yesterday . . . The alleged killer, identified by Dutch
media as Mohammed B, was remanded in custody for 10 days together with four men
of Moroccan and Algerian descent . . .
The suspect has so far refused to speak to investigators.
Dutch deputy prime minister Gerrit Zalm vowed, after a
meeting of all cabinet ministers yesterday, to fight Muslim extremism. A letter left on the body of van Gogh
threatened the Somalian-born Dutch liberal politician
Hirsi Ali because it said she had turned away from
Islam, as well as
“Medicines Sans Frontiers the latest casualty in a war with no
boundaries” These are dangerous times for doing good. Perhaps, the most dangerous ever. Citing the “extreme risk” to its workers, the
global medical relief agency, Medicines Sans Frontiers – Doctors Without Borders (MSF) – announced
yesterday it was pulling out of
CARE Australia closed its doors
following the kidnapping of its Irish-Iraqi office head, Margaret Hassan, last month.
In
These are frontline humanitarian
organisations, seasoned experts in running the gauntlet of perilous
battlefields. They do not scare easily, nor take lightly what it means to cut
the humanitarian lifeline in a conflict zone.
But, therein lies the first problem.
The battle fields of the so-called “war on terror” are not drawn in neat
lines on the map, with two sides decently sporting the colours of their
allegiance, the protective flag of neutrality raised over relief teams
scurrying around in the despair of no man’s land. The new battlefield is
virtually unrecognisable. “We are just
living it and experiencing it. In a few
years time we might be able to say what it was,” says Pierre Krahenbuhl,
head of operations at the ICRC, of asymmetric
unconventional conflicts, in which everyone – civilian or combatant – is a
potential target.” (Louise Williams, Sydney Morning Herald, Weekend Edition,
November
“Insanity and evil run in the blood”
“The bloody
knife used in the
A group of five black-masked gunmen
pose beneath an Arabic banner proclaiming blessings upon their ghastly mission
as their leader, understood to be senior al-Qaeda figure Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, reads a list of
bogus charges behind the kneeling and blindfolded captive.
Then the Jordanian-born al-Zarqawi steps forward, knocks the quivering prisoner over
and begins sawing at his neck with a large knife, knocking off his
blind-fold. The choked screaming made
as the blade tears into Mr Armstrong’s now blood-filled throat is horrifyingly audible. Hours later, the same group announced it had
“executed” Mr Armstrong’s companion, American Jack Hensley, and was preparing
to kill Briton Kenneth Bigley.
Mocking all pretence to decency,
humanity and civilisation, the murderers claimed that their slaughter was
carried out in the name of Allah. But
these acts are godless, furiously anti-religious. There is not a scintilla of mercy – only evil
hatred. As there was when three Kurds
had their throats cut earlier this week, and a dozen Nepalese, and the Turks .
. .
Al-Zarqawi’s
gang claim they wanted the release of “all Muslim women” being held by the US
military in Iraq but apparently there were only two – Rihab
Taha, a microbiologist nicknamed “Dr Germ” who run
Iraq’s biological weapons program in the late ‘80s, and Huda
Ammash, also in the weapons program and known as “Mrs
Anthrax”. Neither are in the Abu Ghraib or Um Wasr prisons.
That they played major roles in
Saddam Hussein’s murderous regime makes no difference to al-Zarqawi.,
they are no more than excuses for his bloody acts of barbarism.
Those opposed to the liberation of
As US Seretary of State Colin Powell told the UN of
Al-Zarqawi
was an honoured guest of Saddam’s in
With the ousting of the Taliban, he
took his team to north-eastern
Despite the clear lines running from
al-Qaeda to terrorists such as the captured September 9/11 mastermind Khalid
Sheikh Mohammed and his convicted Australian protégé Jack Roche, Opposition
Leader Mark Latham’s policy is not to recognise the threat of international
terrorism until it turns up within a boat ride of Australia and to then meet
with the coast guard.
British Labour Prime Minister Tony
Blair sees the problem somewhat differently and acknowledges that the second
Mark Latham wants
To do so would be to unravel the work
the international coalition has achieved since the fall of Saddam’s regime and,
though you wouldn’t know it watching the ABC and SBS
or from reading
As the respected military historian
John Keegan pointed out in The Daily
Telegraph in
“Western so-called progressives who
denounce the war of 2003 as a mistake are in fact illiberal and
reactionaries. They should be ashamed of
themselves.”
The evil medieval forces in
This is not the time to show weakness
by cutting and running. This is the time
for fortitude and resolution. Not since WWII has the civilised world faced a
greater threat to its existence than that represented by the brutal beheadings
in
“Ignorant attacks hurt innocent
Muslims” 11.10 am Thursday, September 23 – Female talkback
caller says she agrees that Australians should not allow Muslims to enter the
country and thinks Muslims already in Australia should not be allowed to leave.
11.29
am – Host asks why there is a prayer room [for
Muslims] at
Listening
to comments on talkback, one begins to understand why Muslims feel increasingly
under attack.
Islam
is misrepresented, Muslims are stereotyped and experts who are not educated in
the faith are telling mass audiences what the religion teaches – not based on
the teachings but their own fears and apprehensions . . .
Is
these comments were made in
Why
are these comments being made? Is our
society so desensitised towards Muslims that it will accept any criticism of
Muslims and Islam, regardless of how spurious such allegations are?” (Keysar Trad, Assistant to the Mufti of Australia and a director of
the Lebanese Muslims Associations, The
Daily Telegraph, November 2, 2004).
How
charming. Only a Mufti could give
“Muslim group takes responsibility for 9-11: We Are So Sorry” This September 11 marks the third
unforgettable anniversary of the worst mass murder in American history. After September 11, many in the Muslim world
chose denial and hallucination rather than face up to the sad fact that Muslims
perpetrated the 9-11 terrorist acts and that we have an enormous problem with
extremism and support for terrorism. Many Muslims, including religious leaders,
and “intellectuals” blamed 9-11 on a Jewish conspiracy and went as far as
fabricating a tale that 4000 Jews did not show up for work in the World Trade Center on 9-11. Yet others blamed 9-11 on an American right
wing conspiracy or the U.S. Government which allegedly wanted an excuse to
invade
After numerous admissions of guilt by
Bin Laden and numerous corroborating admissions by captured top level Al-Qaida operatives, we wonder, does the Muslim leadership
have the dignity and courage to apologize for 9-11?
If not 9-11, will we apologize for
the murder of school children in
If not
If not
If not suicide bombings, will we
apologize for the barbaric beheadings of human beings?
If not beheadings, will we apologize
for the rape and murder of thousands of innocent people in Darfour?
If not Darfour,
will we apologize for the blowing up of two Russian planes by Muslim women?
What will we apologize for?
What will it take for Muslims to
realize that those who commit mass murder in the name of Islam are not just a
few fringe elements?
What will it take for Muslims to
realize that we are facing a crisis that is more deadly than the AIDS epidemic?
What will it take for Muslims to
realize that there is a large evil movement that is turning what was a peaceful
religion into a cult?
Will Muslims wake up before it is too
late? Or will we continue blaming the Jews and an imaginary Jewish conspiracy?
The blaming of all Muslim problems on Jews is a cancer that is destroying
Muslim society from within and it must stop.
Muslims must look inward and put a
stop to many of our religious leaders who spend most of their sermons teaching
hatred, intolerance and violent jihad. We should not be afraid to admit that as
Muslims we have a problem with violent extremism. We should not be afraid to
admit that so many of our religious leaders belong behind bars and not behind a
pulpit.
Only moderate Muslims can challenge
and defeat extremist Muslims. We can no longer afford to be silent. If we
remain silent to the extremism within our community then we should not expect
anyone to listen to us when we complain of stereotyping and discrimination by
non-Muslims; we should not be surprised when the world treats all of us as
terrorists; we should not be surprised when we are profiled at airports. Simply put, not only do Muslims need to join
the war against terror, we need to take the lead in this war. As to apologizing, we will no longer wait
for our religious leaders and “intellectuals” to do the right thing. Instead,
we will start by apologizing for 9-11.
We are so sorry that 3000 people were
murdered in our name. We will never forget the sight of people jumping from two
of the highest buildings in the world hoping against hope that if they moved
their arms fast enough they may fly and survive a certain death from burning.
We are sorry for blaming 9-11 on a
Jewish or right wing conspiracy.
We are so sorry for the murder of
more than three hundred school children and adults in
We are so sorry for the murder of
train passengers in
We are so sorry for all the victims
of suicide bombings. We are so sorry for the beheadings, abductions, rapes,
violent Jihad and all the atrocities committed by Muslims around the world.
We are so sorry for a religious
education that raised killers rather than train people to do good in the world.
We are sorry that we did not take the time to teach our children tolerance and
respect for other people.
We are so sorry for not rising up
against the dictators who have ruled the Muslim world for decades.
We are so sorry for allowing
corruption to spread so fast and so deep in the Muslim world that many of our
youth lost hope.
We are so sorry for allowing our
religious leaders to relegate women to the status of forth class citizens at
best and sub-humans at worse. We are so sorry. (www.freemuslims.org,
“Sign Petition to Punish Religious Leaders who Preach Violence and
Justify Terrorism” “The Free Muslims Against Terrorism
(Free Muslims) have partnered with progressive Arabs and Muslims to hold
religious leaders accountable for justifying violence and encouraging
terrorism. The Free Muslims are petitioning
the UN Security Council and the
This petition is a follow up to the
recently adopted UN Resolution 1566 that reads in part: "...[A]ll members of the Security Council to consider and submit
recommendations... on practical measures to be imposed upon, individuals …
involved in or associated with terrorist activities…bringing them to justice
through prosecution or extradition, freezing of their financial assets..."
It is crucial to hold these religious
leaders accountable because most terrorists who kill in the name of Islam rely
on the fatwas and conclusions of these religious
leaders to convince themselves that they are going to heaven after their death.
The Following is an example of a
Fatwa that encourages terrorism:
Sheikh Yousif
Al-Qardhawi issued a Fatwa permitting the killing of
“fetuses” (unborn) Jews, because (according to him)
when Jews are born and grown-up they will join the Israeli army. Furthermore, on
These extremist clerics continue to
issue fatwas that incite terrorism under the false
umbrella of Islam. Join us in stopping
these religious leaders by signing this petition requesting the U.N. to create
an International Tribunal to prosecute them.
This petition has been organized by
Dr. Jawad Hashim (
All people are invited to sign this
petition by sending your name, profession, country of residence and nationality
to Jmhashim@hotmail.com and cc: President@freemuslims.org. Write “petition” in the subject line. For more information visit our website at: www.freemuslims.org (Free
Muslim Coalition Against Terrorism",
“Vatican
helps Saddam deputy fight war case” “London: Saddam
Hussein’s former foreign minister and deputy prime minister has persuaded
sympathisers in the Vatican to arrange free legal advise for his defence
against war crimes.
Tariq Aziz, a
practicing Christian (how a man whose
regime was responsible for mote than three hundred mass graves could be a“practicing Christian” we do not know. Ed.), secured
the services of Italian lawyers after contacting a group of Catholic priests
and bishops.
He wrote to his family from jail in
The campaign also has the backing of Monsignor Emmanuel Delly, the Patriarch of Baghdad and spiritual leader of
The church’s involvement in Aziz’s
defence could prove embarrassing for
Father Benjamin received a letter from Cardinal Abgelo Sodano, the
“Agenda for new
Congress: Get
For years, individuals and organizations have warned that
the United Nations is implementing an agenda that ultimately leads to total
global control. These warnings have been discounted by the media and ridiculed
by the "enlightened" as the blathering of "black helicopter
conspiracy freaks."
Putting aside, for the moment, the U.N.'s agenda, the
blatant corruption, deceit and open opposition to all things American, combined
with the U.N.'s consistent failure to stop the slaughter of refugees in the
What exactly does the
We get harangued at every U.N. meeting by people who blame
the
President Bush has indicated rather strongly that his
patience with the U.N. has limits. He has also indicated his willingness to
work with the U.N. in some areas, such as UNESCO. This position is confusing,
particularly to conservatives. It could be interpreted as the president's
effort to be engaged in the international community, but not bound by it. The
Why not get rid of it? The new Congress that convenes in
January could adopt Rep. Ron Paul's proposal to completely withdraw from the
U.N. Every year this bill has been introduced, it has received more and more
votes. The U.N.'s refusal to cooperate with congressional investigations of the
oil-for-food program could inspire sufficient wrath in Congress to finally
authorize withdrawal from the U.N. Congress could stop short of withdrawal and
stop all funding of the U.N., pending a congressional review. Each U.N. agency
should be reviewed for relevance and benefit before receiving
Should these U.N. agencies be subjected to a congressional
review, what would
quickly become apparent is the presence of a comprehensive agenda. While each U.N. agency is responsible for
implementing specific programs within its particular jurisdiction, each program
and every agency is working from the
same playbook – toward a comprehensive agenda.
The ultimate goal of the agenda is to transform the system
of governance for the entire world, regardless of the type of government in any
nation. The new system of governance is best described as "Administrative
Governance." In this system, public policy is made by professionals, with
input from the people only through approved and duly accredited non-government
organizations. Public policy is then
"administered" by participating governments – regardless of the type
of government – through treaties and agreements arranged and enforced by the
U.N. Implementation of public policy is policed by the same NGOs that helped
shape the policies.
The United Nations then becomes the supreme policy-making
body. Each participating nation – by treaty or agreement – becomes an
administrative unit. In the
The U.N.'s agenda and
its corruption provide ample reasons for the
“Irrelevant [UN] wingers let the world down” “The United Nations has failed the victims of
the Sumatran tsunami.
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who wouldn’t brake his
skiing vocation to tackle the crisis, should be thrown out the door of the
UN Humanitarian Affairs Under-Secretary Jan Egeland should be tossed out as well, after bagging the
Of course, it’s fashionable for the elitist latte-sipping
chiefs of the UN to be critical of the
Mr Annan’s biggest initiative so
far has been to call an international conference for January 11 – and that’s
still a full week away – while obliquely criticising US President George W.
Bush for moving to co-ordinate the activities of the flying foursome!
Typical of the latte-lappers is former UK development
secretary Clare Short who said the co-ordinating role should be left to the UN
because “I think this initiative from America to set up four countries claiming
to co-ordinate sounds like yet another attempt to undermine the UN when it is
the best system we have got and the one that needs building up. “Only really the UN can do that job,” she
told BBC Radio Four’s PM program. “It is
the only body that has the moral authority.”
Give me a brake. The US, Japan,
India, and Australia, already in the field, distributing supplies, setting up
field hospitals, arranging for sanitation and clean water, don’t have the moral
authority for tsunami crisis relief?
What a joke. I’m proud of the fact
that Australia is right at the forefront of the international aid effort, that
Australian officials are in charge of all consular activities for all nations
in Thailand and in particular are co-ordinating the international effort to
trace all missing foreigners in the stricken tourist areas, working to
establish the identities of the dead and locate all Western tourists.
It is to be hoped that our participation does not go
unnoticed by the Islamic community in
Perhaps our local Islamic leaders could let their brothers
abroad know exactly how much the Christian Western nations are contributing at
this time to the affected Muslims and counter propaganda that spews out of the terrorists’ news network, al-Jazeera. They might
even point out that their hated
Opposition foreign affairs spokesman Kevin Rudd has
complemented the Government on the manner in which it has risen to meet the
demands flowing from the disaster. His
positive and constructive stance can’t be faulted. . .
The tsunami has accurately shown how a coalition of
likeminded nations can act promptly and work together while dysfunctional UN
issues grandiose statements and attempts to justify its bloated presence. If the UN feels it has been snubbed by the
efforts of the coalition, let it raise this matter when it meets next week.
No-one could care less because no-one will be listening. The doers will be in the field flying
helicopters, unloading the C-130s, and setting up field hospitals where they
are needed, not sitting around conference tables in Geneva fiddling their claims
and trying to think up ways of demeaning the efforts of Australia, the US,
India and Japan.
Under Kofi Annan,
the UN failed in
This lesson must not be forgotten when the UN’s multilateralists jump on their soap boxes in the future and
presume to tell Australia, and other advanced nations, how they should conduct
themselves.” Pier Akerman, The Daily Telegraph,
“TROUBLE IN THE HOLY
LAND” “Officials praise Arafat as 'jihad'
warrior” Following announcement of the death of Yasser
Arafat last Thursday, Palestinian officials and leaders spoke candidly in
Arabic-language television interviews of their continued commitment to
"jihad," or holy war, and the elimination of Israel.
On Al-'Alam TV in Iran, Friday,
the Palestinian ambassador to Tehran, Salah Zawawi, praised Arafat as a "martyr" who
understood it was only a matter of time before Israel would be eradicated. The
video clip was recorded and translated by the Middle East Media Research
Institute TV Monitor Project, or MEMRI TV.
"This man knew that this path is the path of martyrdom
and jihad. He knew that this great cause requires martyrs, not leaders, who
look after their personal future and not the nation's future," Zawawi said.
Arafat "fought the jihad and we saw him in many
battles," the ambassador continued. "Sometimes he was right and
sometimes he erred. And whenever he erred, we would tell him: this is a
mistake. And whenever he was right we would praise him. And now he is gone.
"If you ask me what will surely be the end of this
Zionist entity, I will say to you that this entity will disappear one of these
days," said Zawawi. "And its leaders, who
can see what will be in the future, understand this. It's a matter of
time."
The Fatah leader noted a
"change in the world." "
In an interview that day with the same
After Arafat's death, the group renamed itself Yasser Arafat Martyrs Brigades. "We in the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades will direct our painful blows against
this monstrous entity," Al-Aidi continued.
"The Palestinian state will be achieved only by strengthening the
resistance, supporting the resistance, and continuing the resistance, until
this oppressing occupier leaves our land, since this occupier doesn't
understand the language of peace or surrender."
The terrorist group's leader said Israel understands
"only the language of gunfire and gun powder and we will teach this
occupier, Allah willing, a lesson as we have taught it in the past, in Tel
Aviv, Hadera, and everywhere." (WorldNetDaily.com,
“WARS AND RUMORS OF WARS” “
"The entire Zionist territory,
including its nuclear facilities and atomic arsenal, are currently within range
of Iran's advanced missiles," the ISNA students
news agency quoted Yadollah Javani,
head of the Revolutionary Guards political bureau, as saying.
"Therefore, neither the Zionist
regime nor
"Such statements by
An Israeli defense source said "
Iran to confront USA “Maariv has confirmed
through western intelligence sources that Iran's hardline leaders have decided
that risking a confrontation with the US over their nuclear weapons development
program rather than make any concessions is worth the risk. At a recent meeting
of the Iranian leadership, currently totally dominated by the conservative hard
liners, it was decided that Teheran could risk taking an uncompromising
position. This position was supported by most of the participants, including
former president Rafsanjani, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's
most trusted and respected counsellor regarding foreign affairs.
“
The National Council of Resistance of Iran, which has in the past given accurate
information on some of
Iran has acknowledged it can make large numbers of
medium-range Shahab-3 ballistic missiles, capable of
hitting Israel or US bases in the Gulf, but has repeatedly denied Israeli
accusations that it is developing the Shahab-4.
“Militarily speaking, by obtaining long-range and
medium-range missiles, the clerics are trying to put many regions of the world,
including all of
“Israel: EU Should Not Be Fooled by Iran”
The European Union should not be fooled by Iran, which will
"never" abandon its bid to make nuclear weapons, warned Israeli
foreign Minister Silvan Shalom yesterday. Shalom told the EU's Dutch presidency
in a meeting at
"I told them we are very sceptical because we know what
the real intentions of the Iranians are, we know that they will never abandon
their dream to have a nuclear bomb," Shalom said. (The Lekarev Report,
“
The weekly, citing a secret service file, said that Iranian
supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had personally
ordered the facility built last month near the uranium enrichment site in
“What's Wrong with this
Picture?” It is more than interesting to note that
Commentator Naomi Ragen noted,
"Given the fact that
“How We’re Helping Out” “The
massive injection of funds catapulted Australia to the top of a list of donor nations,
with A$I billion from the government and more than
135 million from private donations, creating ties with the region that no
amount of talk or trade cold have matched.”
In addition,
Australian aid workers – 18 Oxfam,
eight Red Cross, two Caritas delegates, four Medicines Sans Frontier, five CARE
Australia and CARE International. A 25-person civilian team arrived in Aceh
on Thursday. A 20-person medical team
from
THE
CHRISTIAN HOLY DAYS FOR THE YEARS
|
|
|
2005 |
2006 |
2007 |
|
The Passover (Pesah - Nissan 14) Unlike the Jews, who used to kill the Passover lamb “at the twilight”
of Nissan 14 (meaning in the evening towards Nissan 15), we, Christians,
observe the Passover when our “Lamb” – Jesus Christ – was sacrificed.
That happened on the afternoon of Nissan 14, before the twilight of Nissan
14, meaning that we keep it a little earlier than the Jews. We
commemorate His death, not His supper, which occurred the previous evening,
as some churches do. The time when His body was broken, not when He broke the
symbolic bread. |
|
23
April |
12
April |
2 April |
|
Days of Unleavened
Bread (Nissan 15 – 21) On the
first and seventh days there shall be holy convocations. No work shall be done on
these days. |
|
24 – 30 April |
13 – 19 April |
|
|
Pentecost (Shavuot – Sivan 6) |
|
13 June |
2 June |
23 May |
|
Feast of Trumpets (Rosh Hashanah - Tishri 1) |
|
4 Oct. |
23 Sept. |
13 Sept. |
|
Day of Atonement (Yom
Kippur – Tishri 10) |
|
13 Oct. |
2 Oct. |
22 Sept. |
|
Feast of Tabernacles (Succoth --
Tishri 15 – 22) |
|
18 – 25 Oct. |
|
27 Sept. – 4
Oct. |
On
the first and the eighth days there shall be holy convocations. No work shall be done on these days.