The Final Hour

Time And The Lord

2013-02-23T19:00:00.002-08:00

Lately I have been hearing a lot about conspiracies and the end of the world. I recently read over Revelation again and realized something. Every minute we are getting closer to the end. All things are working towards this goal, and if it is days or years or even centuries away still we are seeing the effects now.

“Above all, you must understand that in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires. They will say, “Where is this ‘coming’ he promised? Ever since our ancestors died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation.” But they deliberately forget that long ago by God’s word the heavens came into being and the earth was formed out of water and by water. 6 By these waters also the world of that time was deluged and destroyed. By the same word the present heavens and earth are reserved for fire, being kept for the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly. But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything done in it will be laid bare.” 2 Peter 3:3-10 (NIV).

The Lord does not see time as we see it. We have such small, fleeting lives that time seems like this huge thing. But to the Lord, the Creator of time and everything else, time is small. It is short. Everything that happens is happening now.

“Lord, you have been our dwelling place throughout all generations. Before the mountains were bornor you brought forth the whole world,from everlasting to everlasting you are God.You turn people back to dust, saying, “Return to dust, you mortals.”A thousand years in your sightare like a day that has just gone by,or like a watch in the night.” Psalm 90:1-4 (NIV).

Think about it this way. If you had a ruler and made a mark every other millimeter it would seem like the marks were pretty close together. In fact we might even think they were touching. However if a flea looked at the marks it might think that they were miles apart. It is all about perspective.

“All our days pass away under your wrath; we finish our years with a moan. Our days may come to seventy years, or eighty, if our strength endures;yet the best of them are but trouble and sorrow, for they quickly pass, and we fly away. If only we knew the power of your anger! Your wrath is as great as the fear that is your due. Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” Psalm 90:9-12 (NIV).

We need to not focus on the actions of the Lord, but on the ways of the Lord. For if we know His ways then we know Him. We know that the Lord is kind and merciful and yet holy. Therefore how can we expect anything less from Him, despite what we see happening around us?

“In you, Lord my God, I put my trust.I trust in you; do not let me be put to shame, nor let my enemies triumph over me.No one who hopes in you will ever be put to shame,but shame will come on those who are treacherous without cause. Show me your ways, Lord, teach me your paths. Guide me in your truth and teach me, for you are God my Savior, and my hope is in you all day long.Remember,Lord, your great mercy and love, for they are from of old. Do not remember the sins of my youth and my rebellious ways;according to your love remember me, for you, Lord, are good. Good and upright is the Lord;therefore he instructs sinners in his ways. He guides the humble in what is right and teaches them his way. All the ways of the Lord are loving and faithful toward those who keep the demands of his covenant.” Psalm 25:1-10 (NIV).

When you get disheartened or afraid, remember “For the LORD is good and his love endures forever; his faithfulness continues through all generations.” Psalm 100:5 (NIV).

Author Bio:

Jack Meyers is a regular contributor for www.nannybackgroundcheck.com. As a detective he wants to spread the knowledge of terrible things that can happen when people don’t fully verify the credentials of a caregiver or any employee. He also writes for various law enforcement blogs and sites.

Return To The Earth

2013-01-25T16:17:00.004-08:00

The world is not in balance. Predictions and prophecies aside, one does not need to look far to see that there is indeed, something amiss with the way things are going on our little planet. People are crowding to the cities when there is so much land, most of the land is owned by a handful of powerful people, and people are hungry/broke/ignorant, despite all the technological innovations that humanity has uncovered.

It seems that we have lost our way as a people, the supposed stewards of His creation. We don’t treat each other well, so it’s a stretch to believe that we would treat the environment and all other lifeforms any better. Even this portent of doom is exploited by many shrewd individuals, claiming to have the way to solve it, or some secret, exclusive path to salvation from the impending global holocaust.

I don’t have any secrets to reveal. All I have is an idea that has been there since humanity decided to be less nomadic and more agricultural. This world is God’s gift to us all, and just as we should take care of it, it can nourish and heal us. Whatever may happen in the coming decades, be it a man-made cataclysm or an event from the heavens, we should return to a balanced, essential, and natural existence. Yes, a return to the land that nourishes us, and a lifestyle that promotes love and faith between each other and the rest Creation.

Technology Used Responsibly

This isn’t a call to demonize all of the things we have crafted, as our skills and knowledge are just as much gifts from God as anything else. These are tools, and the tool wielder’s intent is the thing we should examine and guide, for the wielder is the one that can decide to do good or evil.

With what resources you have at your disposal, try to purchase land that’s fertile and remote. Rough and untamed is preferable; it’ll be more affordable and it will present a challenge that you can undertake. Purchase second-hand but serviceable surplus earthmoving equipment to aid you in your undertaking. Like I mentioned, technology is a tool, and you should have it in your heart to till the earth for the purpose of feeding your family and making good the blessings which the Creator has bestowed upon humanity.

United We Stand

There are others way more unfortunate than you, and the reason why this is the case is because you are being given an opportunity to help your fellow human being. Choose those who are willing to make an effort to better themselves and are not afraid to toil and sweat for a good cause.

There is no shame in working for food, lodging, and other essentials. In fact, before our civilization’s all-consuming greed for money and things not integral to good living, this was the norm. Be honest and explain to them your goal of creating a community that sustains and grows with one another. If they cannot accept that, do not insist. Just wish them well and find others that can share in your mission.

Body and Spirit Rejuvenated

Hard, but productive work and meaningful labor actually uplifts the spirit, as opposed to mindlessly toiling in an office cubicle, failing to see the purpose and value of your work. In addition to that, being in the embrace of nature also helps one reflect deeper and more profoundly on one’s existence and his/her relationship with the Creator and all His works.

As I have mentioned in the last two topics, technology should be used responsibly, and to share and trust in other people is also essential. Therefore, keeping yourself connected to the rest of humanity and utilizing the internet is something you should not forego despite living in a more remote area. It is your source of news, information, and an extended community beyond your locality. As with anything, learn to use it responsibly.

I wish all who have read my personal insights a blessed New Year, and may God shower His blessings upon you and your family. Live well!

About the Author

Stacey Thompson is a professional writer, marketer, entrepreneur, and a lover of weird little animals. She is based in San Diego, California, and is working on her gang’s group blog, Word Baristas.

Is Jesus Coming Back Soon?

2012-12-20T12:35:00.003-08:00

I am sure that we have all heard about the Mayan calendar and the prediction that the end of the world is the 21^st of December. In the midst of all this you read about people who are stock piling supplies and getting their survival gear together in expectation of the end. There are even those who are ready for the zombies and have all the latest weapons to be prepared for the final fight for the earth. Does it frighten you? It should not, in fact nothing should frighten a child of the King. Our Lord said in His Word that “"But of that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone.” Mark 13:32 (NAS)

“All the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the LORD, And all the families of the nations will worship before You. For the kingdom is the LORD'S And He rules over the nations.” Psalms 22:27 and 28 (NAS)

Our God is sovereign and He controls everything. No one can determine when He will return and nothing is outside of His control.

“And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.” Romans 8:28 (NAS)

Our God has our good in mind always and is working everything out for our good. If we believe the Word of God is true then we know He is in control and that He is doing everything for our good. If we know this then what is there to fear? He says He will never leave us or forsake us, that greater is He that is in us that He that is in the world, that the work He began in us He will finish, that He is our Light and our salvation, whom shall we fear? He is our hope, our only hope.

"Be strong and courageous, do not be afraid or tremble at them, for the LORD your God is the one who goes with you. He will not fail you or forsake you." Deuteronomy 31:6 (NAS)

“You are from God, little children, and have overcome them; because greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world.” 1 John 4:4 (NAS)

“For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.” Philippians 1:6 (NAS)

“The LORD is my light and my salvation; Whom shall I fear? The LORD is the defense of my life; Whom shall I dread?” Psalm 27:1 (NAS)

“My soul, wait in silence for God only, For my hope is from Him.” Psalm 62:5 (NAS)

God does not want us to live in fear of the unknown. If you know Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior there is no unknown. You must accept the Son to get to the Father; if you have the Son then you have the Father also. “Whoever denies the Son does not have the Father; the one who confesses the Son has the Father also.” 1 John 2:23 (NAS)

God does not want us to fear he tells us to abide in Him and rest in Him. If you have fear it is not coming from our Lord but from the father of lies. Satan wants us to be paralyzed with fear so that we cannot serve God and walk in His glorious light and in turn lead others to Him.

Living in this world is perilous and you must always remember to put on the full armor of God. You must stay in His Word and keep your minds on the author and perfector of your faith. He has not given us a spirit of fear. I am sharing these scriptures with you because His truth is the only thing that will set you free. The words on this page mean nothing if they are not coming from the Lord, I cannot give you life, only through God’s Word can you get the victory. Jesus is the victory that overcomes the world.

“Put on the full armor of God, so that you will be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil.” Ephesians 6:11 (NAS)

“Fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.” Hebrews 12:2 (NAS)
“For God has not given us a spirit of timidity, but of power and love and discipline.” 2 Timothy 1:7 (NAS)

“So Jesus was saying to those Jews who had believed Him, "If you continue in My word, then you are truly disciples of Mine; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free." John 8:31,32 (NAS)

“But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” 1 Corinthians 15:57 (NAS)

Do not be afraid even when the times look bleak. You must keep your eyes on Jesus or you will not be able to stand. I am often reminded of the story of Peter walking on the water to our Lord. As long as Peter kept his eyes on Jesus he was fine but what happened when he looked at the storm and the waves around him in that deep sea? That’s right, he fell under the water and the Lord grabbed Peter and brought Him to safety. If you do not keep your eyes on Jesus you will fall into the temptation to be full of fear but the minute you turn to Him He will lift you up and bring you to safety. He loves us so much. God loved us even though we were sinners and He sent His only begotten Son to die for us so that we could spend eternity with Him in heaven. If he would do this for us how will He not keep us in the palm of His hand?

“Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” Philippians 4:6,7 (NAS)

“And He said, "Come!" And Peter got out of the boat, and walked on the water and came toward Jesus. But seeing the wind, he became frightened, and beginning to sink, he cried out, "Lord, save me!" Immediately Jesus stretched out His hand and took hold of him, and said to him, "You of little faith, why did you doubt?" Matthew 14:29-31 (NAS)

“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.” John 3:16 (NAS)

“And I give eternal life to them, and they will never perish; and no one will snatch them out of My hand.” John 10:28 (NAS)

Nothing can happen that is outside of God’s purpose for our lives. He does not cause these horrible things to happen but He allows them to happen because we live in this world filled with sin. Everyone has a free will and a choice and God will not force Himself on them. If they choose the world over Him then they are vulnerable to whatever the world brings. For those of us that have been chosen by God for His Son to keep in the palm of His hand, we are protected. Even when bad things happen God is still in charge and using whatever the situation is for our good. He sometimes allows the bad into our lives so that our faith will grow and we will become stronger in Him for these times we live in. But we must be of good cheer because He has overcome the world and in Him we have peace.

“These things I have spoken to you, so that in Me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world.” John 16:33 (NAS)

Author Byline:

Kelsey is the editor in chief for findananny. She loves to write article and ideas that parents & nannies would be interested in hearing. She helps society on giving information about nannies through www.findananny.net. She is a professional writer & loves writing on anything.

Get Right With God - Only He Can Fix Things At This Point

2012-11-08T19:45:00.002-08:00

(Guest article authored by Dave Webb)

A lot of us still think in terms of right and wrong. I think it is really sad what our political parties offer us as candidates. That statement speaks volumes on what is wrong with our political parties right now. Both parties need to clean house. They need to get rid of basically dishonest people. This last election was a national disgrace of lies and counter-lies. But what was more of a disgrace is the people up for election. At a minimum, people seeking office should have the "appearance" of being honest. There were too many incidents on both sides that were reported by the media. Most people had a really difficult time figuring out who they wanted in office. Those reported incidents played a large part in that.

The mainstream media is owned, lock, stock and barrel by a small percentage of the population. I think the number is 6 percent. And it is owned by a group of very wealthy people. Might want to entertain the thought that they are behind the recent liberal agenda in our Congress. It looks to me like they own both parties in Congress. Look it up. How did the different reps vote on recent issues that mattered? Things like voting away our rights to Constitutional law.

In our educated group of Congress people what do you expect that they will do? Yes they are going for an agenda on both sides of the political parties. That agenda includes gay marriage being legitimatized. It includes gay representation in our Congress. It includes abortion on demand(murdering children for convenience) and a lot of other things like legalizing the smoking of marijuana. I don't smoke anything. I am very particular about what I put in my body. But I know a lot of people over the years that treated marijuana smoking as a modern prohibition law. These people have ignored the law. A lot of people have gone to jail for it.

I actually want illegal immigration stopped. We need to come to the realization that it has gone on for way too long. Who pays income tax on these people? If they are illegal then they are not paying their fair share of taxes anywhere. Are we putting their employers in jail for income tax invasion? No, it is a fine, and go on with life as it is. Just like any cash business, it is under the table and no one pays their freight on it. The entire system is wrong in this case. The victims are often their children. It is time to change that system to something that works for everyone.

The war we need to fight is for the souls of all these people. Both those bought off politicians, the liars, the thieves, the murderers(abortion), the cheats, eventually we all go to death. These people seem to believe that death is the end of things. We need to explode that lie. Death is the great equalizer of all humanity. Once you are dead, then your entire life is an open book to God. Only he makes judgment at that point. I know of direct evidence that this view of death as the end is wrong.

But convincing anyone is another matter entirely. Basically the only thing we can do is pray for our leaders. God will take care of the rest believe it or not. I know the temptation is to believe nothing will be done. I believe something will be done that has nothing to do with you and me. Only God can change things at this point.

The shift in the next few years is going to have to be to expose the dishonest behavior of people in both parties. A lot of them will end up in jail. Others will get off completely free. Or will they? There is justice within our legal system and justice of God outside that system that seems to occur no matter what we do. I have seen a lot of people in my life that apparently got off free, only later to be caught up in something totally different from what they were accused of. We need to pray for these people above everything else.

Anyone that has seen a young woman that has had an abortion knows what I am talking about. Often years later, you can see the haunted look in their eyes. You can see many of them in our bars getting drunk to seek relief. It doesn't work. The pain is there for anyone to see. The grief process is there. A lot are bitter. A lot are angry.

Only spiritual relief works. Ask any alcoholic or druggie. Their souls are enslaved. They are all ready in a form of hell of their own making. My experience says only changing your life with a religious experience is going to give you that relief.

What we are seeing in the current situation is the beginning not the end. I personally see a great revolution quietly occurring behind the scenes. Like a great ocean liner, it will take time to turn things around. It is ironic that it will occur under Obama's time as President.

And in 2014, we have another chance to change the Congress. In 2016, we can change the President. What I want to see in both parties is total honesty with us, the public. That, of course, is a dream on my part.

Is The End Near?

2012-10-02T14:36:00.000-07:00

It has been foretold in the book of Revelations that the Day of Judgment will happen at some point in time. For centuries, many people have interpreted a multitude of different happenings as a sign of the end of times. As of yet, it has not come to pass. Events that have occurred recently may be pointing to that time as being near. It is said in the Bible that no one will know of the exact date that Jesus will return. The date may not be known, but it will happen. Here are is some possible evidence pointing to the end of the world coming soon.

1. Natural Disasters- Earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes...They are happening. There is no denying that. It seems like once a month you hear of an earthquake striking some part of the world. Tornadoes have ravaged the United States mid-west more than normal in the past few years. Who can forget about hurricane Katrina or more recently, Irene? The devastation brought on by these occurrences is nothing short of biblical. Is it merely a sign that our ecosystem is getting out of whack due to global warming? It is possible. Yet, it could be evidence pointing to the end of days.

2. War- Mass destruction and more...Seems like every country now is developing weapons of mass destruction. Why is it that humans want to destroy each other? War has been taking place since the beginning of time but now people have the power to cause extinction level destruction. Massive wars have been spoken of in Revelations and throughout the Bible. Is it just a coincidence that we are on the verge of World War 3 at all times? It's not very likely.

3. Disease and Famine- Death and hunger...New, genetically altered super viruses are being created in labs every day. It would not take much for one of these to affect the entire population. Most have no cure and maybe virtually undetectable. This is scary. Combine that with the decrease in available food supplies for much of the planet, and you have a viable end of the world scenario. Food shortages used to be delegated to underdeveloped countries but are now spreading to the world's superpowers. A dramatic food shortage and/or mass disease could easily lead to the end.

It does seem a little odd that these possible signs of the end of the world are also tied in with the four horseman of the apocalypse. That seems like more than a coincidence. Whatever the meaning, each of these scenarios has the potential for death and destruction. Are they all simply coincidence, or is this the work of the Lord? It seems only time will tell.

Author Bio:

Roxanne Porter is a freelancer & a regular contributor for www.nannyjobs.org/. She helps in providing knowledge about nanny services & love writing on nanny related articles. She helps in giving a fair knowledge about nanny Jobs to the community. You can be in touch with her at “r.poter08ATgmail.com”.

Signs of the End: Christianity and the Warnings at Hand

2012-08-29T10:12:00.002-07:00

For many ages, man has thirsted for the knowledge of what is to come. When will Jesus return? What will happen when all is wiped clean and put right in the name of God? It is natural to yearn to know the answers, as we all do. There are though many current circumstances and modern events that are shaping up to point to end times being near. With Christian approach, here are some modern happenings that are certainly conversation-worthy.

1. Militarization and Stockpiling Since WWII, the world’s governments have stopped at nothing to stock the largest possible quantities and most dangerous mass destruction weapons. There are no exceptions and the odds are growing.

2. Tyrants Greatly Empowered As the days pass, leaders of rogue nations and philosophies grow drastically more powerful. Today’s weapons are not what they used to be

3. Global Unrest The masses are unhappy. A look at any news outlet covering any region of the world reflects this more than ever before.

4. World Wide Famine There is currently a food crisis brewing which is of proportions never before seen. Global weather and climate changes are turning region after region into lands of dead and dying crops.

5. Mysterious Animal Deaths Currently a phenomenon is taking place in which different animals are suffering mass death events. Science has yet to identify what is happening in most of these cases.

6. Monetary Failure Amidst greed and other evil reasons, monetary system failure has gone global. Debt buying countries are becoming unable to continue “bail outs.”

7. Proposed Unions New European Unions are being formed at this very moment. Revelations describes current circumstance with authoritative accuracy.

8. Aliyah, The Homecoming As the Bible promises, there will be a massive Jewish Homecoming to Israel. Today, current population numbers and the very real Aliyah, or mass movement to Israel is as never before seen

9. Weather Changes Climate and weather changes are currently very alarming. From bizarre patterns, droughts, floods, earthquakes, glacial melting, and warming climates, everything is changing right now.

10. Moral Decline For those of us familiar with the past, today’s state of morals is much decayed. Crime, evil, and selfishness are the constant in a very misdirected world today.

This is simply a list of ten warning signs that with Christian knowledge, can be used for wisdom on what is shortly to come. There are far more instances of great concern than are listed here though. The time is upon us. Are you on the right ship to salvation?

Author Bio

Ken Myers the editor in chief is a frequent contributor of http://www.gonannies.com/. Ken helps acquiring knowledge on the duties & responsibilities of nannies to society. You can reach him at k.meyerst20 AT gmail.com.

Supported Living Service Volunteers Making a Difference

2012-08-16T12:17:00.002-07:00

Volunteers can make a difference in the lives of people struggling with their special needs by offering a supported living service for these people. Sometimes to be independent a person needs a little help and to have someone there to give that support may mean the difference in that person being an active and vital part of our society.

Many disabled people need a supported living service to help in their everyday tasks in life and to stay independent they will need help in their day to day decisions. Sometimes it is as simple as having someone check in on them to make sure everything is going smoothly. Other people will have a greater need for support.

Support needs vary and each individual will have areas that they will need guidance. Sometimes a person will need someone to help in the area of their medications. They may need a person to help them with their daily medications or need help filing their medication boxes. It will be different from person to person.

There is always a need for a person with a disability to get help with transportation to and from appointments and shopping. Some of these people can manage a public transit system, but others may need rides and help with their venture out. Each case is different.

The importance of community support for these people can not be underemphasized. A person with a disability wants to stay as independent as they can but to have a support system is vital to have independence. That is where a volunteer with these skills can come into the life of a disabled person and help them keep their independence.

Many people have skills that they can use to better the lives of disabled people and when they do that they are giving back to their community a service that they can be proud of. To help a person is such a rewarding thing in itself and when a person gives to another, it is a gift.

Volunteering to give a person supported living service may be the only source of help for that person. Sometimes the funds are low for these services and a volunteer can be the only way for some of these people to get the help they need. What a feeling to know that being a volunteer is giving a person a second chance in life.

If you are a person with a set of skills and you want to make a great contribution to your community, you should consider being a volunteer for a supported living service. There are many different ways to volunteer and help these people from helping with their daily living tasks to giving an expert hand in their finances.

Any way you can help you can be sure that your supported living service will be appreciated and a much needed service in the life’s of these special needs people. You cannot find a better way to give to others than to give the gift of independence. With a bit of help from people with a vast array of skills, people that need help can live a more normal life.

Dark Times: How Modern Films Shadow the World's Broken Faith in Humanity

2012-08-02T12:22:00.001-07:00

I've always been a bit of a film buff. In my childhood days, I remember watching great films like E.T. and Apollo 13 on my tiny television in absolute awe. Classic films like these always managed to lift my spirits even in the worst of times. As the world around me was constantly going through dark times, I knew I could depend on inspirational films to restore my faith in humanity. Yet as the years have passed and I've grown older, I've discovered that as the world has grown darker, so have the films that are being produced in it.

What was once an industry of powerful, uplifting films has become something of a severe buzz kill. In fact, in the past few years I've noticed four box-office hits in particular that attest to the world's loss of faith in humanity. For those of you who haven't seen Avatar, The Dark Knight Rises, The Hunger Games, and The Avengers, here are some of the many reasons why these four films are a testament to our broken faith in humanity.

Avatar

This science-fiction phenomenon was a visually breathtaking film when it came out in 2009, yet so many people overlooked its allusions to modern imperialism. The film takes places on another world where humans are reaping the resources of a foreign, untapped planet called Pandora. Because the humans have so severely depleted Earth's natural resources, they must retreat to outside planets to access things they need most, such as natural minerals. Sound familiar? Director and producer James Cameron confirmed suspicions that the film was a criticism of the United States' role in the Iraq war and use of warfare to resolve conflict, saying, "We know what it feels like to launch the missiles. We don't know what it feels like for them to land on our home soil, not in America."

The Dark Knight Rises

When I was growing up, Batman shows and movies were usually campy, funny, and entertaining. Yet Christopher Nolan's adaptation of Batman Begins in 2005 changed the very identity of the famed hero. All of the sudden, we saw a self-conflicted "dark knight" who was battling men who had absolutely no conscience or moral fiber. Previous Batman villains we'd seen were more humanistic, self-conflicted, and sad, but figures like Heath Ledger's Joker and Tom Hardy's Bane completely emphasized just how dark the world around them has really grown. In the final chapter of the Batman trilogy – The Dark Knight Rises – we see a man who has literally had everything taken from him: he has lost the love of his life, the world despises him, and he might be forced to die in order to restore order and humanity to Gotham. It's most certainly a darker variance from previous Batmans, and I can't help but think that harsh modern times have something to do with that.

The Hunger Games

Suzanne Collins said the idea for her famous trilogy actually came from channel hopping on her sofa. Collins was flipping through the channels one afternoon when she realized just how juxtaposed the channels on her television really were: on one network she would see chronicles of New York housewives, but on another she would see violent footage of the Iraq War. Collins' Hunger Games brilliantly testifies to just how obsessed the world has become with accessing the "reality" of the world they live in. The film itself takes everything a step forward from the book and becomes all the more dark. In the box-office hit, we see a young, brave girl who is thrown into a ring and must battle 23 others in a fight-to-the-death match – all the while the world is watching her on television. The Hunger Games is an allusion to just how disillusioned the world's concerns have become. Why should we care about watching what celebrities do in their everyday lives? Shouldn't it matter more that there are starving people on the streets? Obviously not.

The Avengers

Can you imagine a scenario where things in the world have gotten so bad that it takes six superheroes to fight off the present evil? Growing up, I saw films where one brave man or woman could usually get the job done. Now we're seeing films where people must desperately turn to every superhero known to mankind in order to save themselves from the wrath of evil. I suspect that if things hadn't gotten as bad as they were now, people would be better able to believe that one man or woman could make a difference, but as we've all grown to learn, one man or woman standing in the face of evil can easily be pushed aside.

These are just four of the many films out there that attest to how dark the world around us has become. Take a look at some of the modern classics hitting the big screen today and don't be surprised when you discover just how dark they really are.

Barbara Jolie is a full time freelance writer and blogger. She is passionate about lifelong learning and online education. When Barbara is not blogging about all things education, she enjoys spending time with her calico cat, Moses, and her pet parakeet. If you have questions email her at barbara.jolie876@gmail.com.

Existential Threats To Mankind Multiply

2012-07-30T18:14:00.000-07:00

At this point it can be lost on no one, whether of a religious or secular bent, that the end of the world is at least a possibility in our own lifetimes. Of course, “the end” is perpetually “nigh” for a certain breed of doomsaying prophet, and they’ve been consistently wrong up until now...or we wouldn’t be here to worry about it today!

But the more powerful science has made man (who retains his flawed nature...just read any version of the Faust legend for a pretty incisive look at the trade-off we’ve made), and the more it’s enabled him to see the universe as it is, the more aware we become of what a fragile miracle life on this Earth is. Here are just a handful of the ways it could go down:

1. Thermonuclear war

This is the one that defined the era from 1945 (when the U.S. first “demonstrated” the bomb) or at least 1949 (when the rival Soviets, thanks to Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, showed off theirs) to the ostensible end of the Cold War in 1991. For fifty years, the world lived under the constant shadow of atomic holocaust. Thank God we survived. Yet is our complacency, since the bipolar conflict gave way to chaos, really warranted? Nuclear weapons did not go away, and the U.S. and other countries remain locked in the logic of endless competitive new weapon development. Who even knows what they’re up to now, in our own country or abroad? Someday, surely, all these technological wonders of murder will be used.

2. Environmental collapse

Here is an issue that has been absurdly clouded by our left/right paradigm, the ridiculous “enemy of my enemy is my friend” logic that divides us so neatly into two parties. You’re not supposed to be a conservative and care about the environment. Well, it doesn’t take an etymological genius to see that “conservation” and “conservative” share a root. Personally, I’m an agnostic leaning toward believer in global warming. But to me that’s almost a moot point; we’ll certainly find out the truth if we just hold on.

The larger question is: even if this particular catastrophe is a false alarm, will there ever be any externality created by the behaviors of every-man-for-himself capitalism that will kill us if we don’t regulate it? If so, and the global warming debate is the dress rehearsal, I don’t want to see the show. We need to take the idea of “freedom” more seriously by soberly considering its limits. The tragedy of the commons is a real problem, and there must be some middle ground between Big Brother and anarchy.

3. Supervolcano / Meteor strike / Solar event

I have refrained in this post from postulating a Biblical apocalypse per se because I don’t pretend to be qualified to assess such a possibility. But it is possible to imagine a TEOTWAWKI scenario without invoking religious paradigms, that involves no direct human cause and is unpreventable. If the supervolcano under Yellowstone were to erupt, or a giant meteor were to appear and no Bruce Willis to stop it, or a solar flare lashed out and fatally irradiated our planet, it would mean that, whatever your beliefs, for all practical purposes, God had ended us. And it’s not only possible, it’s inevitable, especially now that the dream of human spaceflight is being mothballed: the sun will eventually (though we’re talking about billions of years here) engulf the planet, and there’s nothing we can do about it.

Rather than letting this fact, or the equally incontrovertible small-scale equivalent of our own certain death, cause us despair, we should allow it to throw into relief the tremendous preciousness of our lives, and live them as if they were fleeting, for they are.

Melissa Miller is a blogger and freelance education reporter. Bewildered by the proliferation of accredited online associate degrees? Melissa can help break it down for you. Send any feedback to melissamiller 831@gmail .com.

Tent Cities: The Secret That Won’t Go Away

2011-10-21T01:13:00.000-07:00

Since the economic crisis began in late 2007, many Americans have suffered foreclosure. By October 2011 the foreclosure rate had climbed to 33%; greater than the 31% reported during the Great Depression.

For many, homelessness was brought on by job loss, but there are an ever-growing number of renters who have found themselves out on the street when the landlord lost the home to foreclosure. Others struggling to get by have found themselves the victims of escalating rent prices and for others; homelessness arrived when the social services they received was cut off as cities themselves experienced economic insolvency.

For every foreclosure, there is a heartfelt story to be told.

Not in My Back Yard!

Tent cities are a reflection of America’s insolvency and may be an indicator of what we can expect should we join the ranks of the unemployed. The US Department of Housing and Development reports that on any given night, 650,000 people experience homelessness.

Cities across America have chosen hard-line abandonment over compassion for the homeless. The plight of the homeless is difficult to unearth, as it is not being reported on to the extent it deserves. Yet, even though mainstream media seems to have swept their struggles into a dark corner of obscurity, there remains a voice being broadcasted daily through You Tube by ordinary citizens who care enough to report on their areas homeless.

Marginalizing the homeless has lead to draconian measures. In Phoenix, Cross Roads United Methodist Church received a verdict of guilty by a judge who ruled the pancake breakfasts they were serving to the homeless was illegal; http://www.azfamily.com/news/Judge-says-Phoenix-church-cannot-feed-homeless-69650502.html

Churches are not the only ones being punished for their good deeds. A couple in Houston, Texas who for over one year had been feeding the homeless each and every night was ordered to stop. The reason? They did not have a “permit” to do so; http://abclocal.go.com/ktrk/story?section=news/local&id=7898553

Where Have All The Homeless Gone?

The plight of the homeless in Lakewood, New Jersey was documented in this You Tube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xsYDvvgMevI where Pastor Steve Brigham discusses the tent city (in this case huts) he set up for the homeless that was ordered torn down. Pastor Brigham points to a woman who was employed in the garment district in New York City earning over $100,000 a year. She lost her job in the garment industry when operations were outsourced to China. Pastor Brigham states the 60 people about to be displaced were not likely to find warm shelter and hot meals to sustain life over the long winter.

A follow-up on the plight of the homeless in Lakewood New Jersey was reported on by Fox News on August 11, 2011: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/08/11/economic-woes-lead-to-proliferation-tent-cities-nationwide/

In Huntington, Virginia a tent city that was erected on vacant land was bulldozed after the homeless were warned to vacate or face arrest. On film, police officers patrol the ground in search of the homeless who will then be arrested for vagrancy should they be caught. Mayor David Felinton was paraphrased as having said, “The city has done what it could.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdZHraXFgKY

Tent Cities Are Disappearing all Across America

Although tent cities are disappearing, homelessness is growing as more and more lose their jobs or fall victim to eroding social services they had been receiving. Cities in financial trouble themselves are unable to answer the increased need to help the homeless with food and shelter, but neither are they willing to allow people to help themselves by allowing them to pitch tents, nor do they appear to welcome humanitarian efforts.

A report on one of the largest tent cities located in Sacramento, California reflects 1,500 homeless were living there with a reported 50 new arrivals each day who wished to avoid living on the streets. Like so many sites set up for the homeless, Sacramento bulldozed it in 2009. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGxKdDinkKk&NR=1

Even a tropical paradise is not immune. In Hawaii, the ranks of the homeless tops the national average as the problem continues to increase, but like city’s elsewhere, the displaced are told that it is illegal to sleep in parks http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGZE9PWPKts

In 2007, after a tent city located underneath pedestrian bridges by Cleveland Browns Stadium had been in existence for 15 months, Cleveland officials answered the need of the homeless by ordering them to vacate or face arrest. Officials had no advice for alternative housing. http://www.wkyc.com/print.aspx?storyid=69752

Who to Contact

To view a report with up to date information on 75 tent cities, visit the National Coalition for the Homeless http://www.nationalhomeless.org/publications/crimreport/allcities.html

*****

The preceding was a guest post for The Final Hour by author Barbara Fix.

Visit Survival Diva Blog http://www.survivaldiva.com/ for more information on rural living, gardening, home canning, food storage, and tips on combating skyrocketing food prices.

Survival Diva, Barbara’s preparedness book is available at http://www.survivaldiva.com/ Download for just $7.75

Just Confirmed: Don't Depend Upon The Water District!

2011-09-02T16:50:00.000-07:00

***The following is a guest post for The Final Hour by Barbara Fix*** People expect to turn on faucets, showers, washing machines, and garden hoses for their water needs. Better re-think that during a time of grid failure unless you have a well and a manual hand pump to draw the water to the surface where it will do you some good!

Over the years, I have heard conflicting reports over what to expect with regards to water delivery in a grid-down situation. Just this week I got the answer from a plant manager (who will remain unnamed for job security reasons). Keep in mind that each water district is set up differently, and should you be concerned over your areas water supply, it is worth investigating.

Now back to my source: this manager works for a water plant that serves millions of urbanites in a heavily populated, metropolitan area. When I asked him what steps they had taken for back up in a grid-down situation, the manager's answer was less than reassuring. This particular plant has battery and diesel back up for 3 days. No more. Should diesel fuel be unavailable when their supply runs out, the plant will be shackled with regards to getting water to their customers.

When asked if the area's populace should expect sewage backup to enter their homes, the manager offered a mixed bag of possibilities. Sewage is, in some cases, gravity-fed. However, for those whose homes sit higher than gravity feed will allow for safe drainage, expected sewage back up --most probably to bathtubs.

If you have abundant water storage, and plan to pour stored water to a tub for bathing or a sink to wash dishes, you should have an alternate plan in place for a situation when water is unable to drain properly. Toilet use, even when there is sufficient water to dump a gallon of water into them to get them to "flush" should not be assumed in a workable preparedness plan.

Those on a septic tank can thank their lucky stars! Septics will continue to provide drainage as long as you are not dependant upon a sub pump for below-grade levels of your home.

Those fortunate enough to have a well can expect to have a reliable water source, but that is only for those who have planned ahead and have installed a manual hand pump to draw the water when electric water pumps ceases to function. Generators will supply needed power, but can be relied upon only as long as fuel reserves are available. An alternate solution is solar panel or wind generator power, or a combination of both. Solar generators are another option for those who live in sunny climates.

Plan Ahead

If your preparedness plan has not taken into consideration drinking, bathing, laundry, gardening and household cleaning needs, it is time to put it at the top of the to-do list! You should always store a one-month 28-gallon supply of water for each member of your family or group. Store more if you can, as 28 gallons per person is the absolute bare minimum and does not allow for bathing. Additionally, this recommendation assumes that you are near a source of water: a lake, stream, or river where water can be collected and purified through a quality water purifier such as a Berkey or a Katadyn--get plenty of replacement filters.

If a water source is not nearby, consider a waterbed. Although this is only a short-term solution, it will get you past the beginning of a crisis and from there, you may be forced to relocate to a location with a reliable water source. Look into water containment systems, where water run-off from a roof can be collected.

To store water safely, add 1/8 of a teaspoon of bleach for each gallon of water. You can also purify water with Ion or iodine as well, but use caution with iodine as some people can be adversely effected when ingesting iodine. Water storage should be changed every 6 months. But if it's past its optimal shelf life, it is still drinkable. Simply pour the water from one container to another to re-oxygenate it for better taste.

The following list is what you will want to keep on hand for sustainability. On a budget? Each item can be found under the navigation link section of my blog site, including free Do-It-Yourself instructions: http://www.survivaldiva.com/index.html

Here's what you will need:

Store at least 28 gallons of water for each person in water containers or 2 -liter pop bottles (milk cartons leak)

Tough Stuff tub/small animal trough for bathing. A solar shower is another option--these alternatives assume abundant water.

Manual Washing machine—can be a Do-It-Yourself project or purchased

Clothes Line & Pins for laundry

Quality water filter such as a Berkey or Katadyn--always get extra filters

Liquid laundry detergent and dish soap--stock up! Dollar Stores are a good source & easy on the pocket-book (use biodegradable for reuse in gardens)

Portable toilet or an outhouse if your area allows them

Conclusion

Recently, the US and locations abroad have experienced extreme drought and flooding. That alone should have kicked us all in gear to provide the single most important item of any preparedness plan—water! Don’t put off providing for water for drinking, cooking and clean up.

Visit Survival Diva Blog http://www.survivaldiva.com/ for more information on rural living, gardening, home canning, food storage, and tips on combating skyrocketing food prices.

Survival Diva, Barbara’s preparedness book is available August 1, 2011 http://www.survivaldiva.com/ Download for just $3.95

Joel Osteen And Homosexuality: Does Joel Osteen Believe That Homosexuality Is A Sin?

2011-01-26T21:30:00.000-08:00

There has been a great debate regarding Joel Osteen and homosexuality in Christian circles for many years now. In interview after interview it has seemed that he was just extremely hesitant to come out and say that homosexuality is a sin. Well, now that has changed. In a new appearance on the Piers Morgan show, Joel Osteen very clearly comes out and says that homosexuality is a sin. In fact, as you watch the interview you almost get the sense that he was fully prepared for that question.

Do does Joel Osteen believe that homosexuality is a sin?

Yes.

That debate is now settled.

However, if you watch this new interview you also get the sense that Joel Osteen is almost apologizing for having to take this point of view. As Piers Morgan continues to press him on this point, it is obvious that Joel Osteen is very uncomfortable and that he would much rather be talking about something else.

The following is footage of the conversation about homosexuality that Piers Morgan had with Joel Osteen. It is really fascinating to watch....

However, it is important to note that Joel Osteen calls homosexuals "good people" during the interview.

So what is wrong with that?

Well, the Scriptures tell us that none of us are good.

Romans 3:23 tells us that "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God."

The truth is that we are all sinners and we all need a Savior.

But we should applaud Joel Osteen for at least being willing to take a stronger stand on homosexuality and for finally being willing to clearly say that it is sin.

We all need to stand up for what the Word of God says. It is only going to become more difficult in the months and years ahead.

God takes sin very seriously. It is not something that He just "brushes under the rug".

For much more on sin and judgment, we encourage you to check out an article that we have published on another website entitled "What Does The Bible Say About Judgment?"

So why should we care about what God has to say?

Well, because heaven and hell are very real. If you don't believe this, you might want to consider the testimony of some people that have been to those places....

*A Message from God

*Heaven is for Real: A Little Boy's Astounding Story of His Trip to Heaven and Back

*23 Minutes In Hell

*90 Minutes in Heaven: A True Story of Death & Life

In addition, if you are looking for more evidence for the Christian faith, we encourage you to visit some of our other websites....

#1 Evidence For Christianity

#2 Why God?

#3 Life After Death

The History Of Christmas: December 25th Was Never The Birthday Of Jesus But It Sure Is The Birthday Of Dozens Of Pagan Gods

2010-12-04T22:42:00.000-08:00

Have you ever thought about why people celebrate a holiday called Christmas? After all, the word "Christmas" is nowhere to be found in the Bible. There is absolutely no mention of December 25th in the Bible. In fact, we know that Jesus was not even born during the winter since the shepherds were still out with their flocks at night when He was born. So where did this holiday come from? Do you know the history of Christmas? The first Christians did not celebrate "Christmas". In fact, "Christmas" did not become an official Christian holiday until the 4th century. But December 25th was celebrated as a major holiday for centuries upon centuries long before Jesus was ever born. It was a very dark occult festival that celebrated the birthday of the "sun god" in all his various forms. Unfortunately, most Christians have never learned about the pagan origins of Christmas. Most Christians seem to believe that the history of Christmas began when Jesus was born. But that is not the truth. As you will read below, God established an entirely different holiday (that you can find in the Bible) for the birthday of Jesus. But instead, the Roman Catholic religion latched on to the birthday of the sun god and married it to the birth of Christ. This birthday of the sun god can be traced all the way back to ancient Babylon. In fact, most of our "modern Christian traditions" can be traced all the way back to ancient Babylon. But most Christians don't care. Most Christians are going to believe what they want to believe no matter what you tell them.

If you are curious about the real history of Christmas, read on, but be warned - it may "spoil" the Christmas holiday for you forever.

But at least you will know the truth.

In his classic work, "The Two Babylons", author Alexander Hislop explained that the Christian holiday of "Christmas" did not exist until hundreds of years after the time of Jesus....

"Indeed, it is admitted by the most learned and candid writers of all parties that the day of our Lord's birth cannot be determined, and that within the Christian Church NO SUCH FESTIVAL AS CHRISTMAS WAS EVER HEARD OF TILL THE THIRD CENTURY, and that not till the FOURTH CENTURY was far advanced did it gain much observance. How, then, did the Romish church fix on December 25th as Christmas-day? Why, thus: Long before the fourth century, and LONG BEFORE THE CHRISTIAN ERA ITSELF, A FESTIVAL WAS CELEBRATED AMONG THE HEATHEN, AT THAT PRECISE TIME OF THE YEAR, IN HONOR OF THE BIRTH OF THE SON OF THE BABYLONIAN QUEEN OF HEAVEN; and it may fairly be presumed that, IN ORDER TO CONCILIATE THE HEATHEN, AND TO SWELL THE NUMBER OF THE NOMINAL ADHERENTS TO CHRISTIANITY, THE SAME FESTIVAL WAS ADOPTED BY THE ROMAN CHURCH, giving it the name of Christ. This tendency on the part of Christians to MEET PAGANISM HALF-WAY was very early developed" (The Two Babylons, p. 92-93).

In fact, Hislop tells us that the world "Yule" can be traced all the way back to ancient Babylon. It turns out that the theme of a child being born to the Queen of Heaven was very prevalent throughout the ancient pagan world....

"That Christmas was originally a Pagan festival is beyond all doubt. The time of the year, and the ceremonies, with which it is still celebrated, prove its origin. In Egypt, the son of Isis, the Egyptian title for the queen of heaven, was born at this very time, 'about the time of the winter solstice.' The very name by which Christmas is popularly known among us -- Yule-day -- proves at once its pagan and Babylonian origin. 'Yule' is the Chaldee name for an 'infant' or 'little child'; and as the 25th of December was called by our Pagan Anglo-Saxon ancestors, 'Yule-day,' or the 'Child's-day,' and the night that preceded it, 'Mother-night,' long before they came in contact with Christianity, that sufficiently proves its real character. Far and wide, in the realms of Paganism, was this birthday observed." (Hislop, p. 93-94).

All of the ancient pagan religions can be traced back to ancient Babylon. The "gods" and "goddesses" came to be worshiped under dozens of different names, but when you start analyzing them closely you quickly realize that they all can be traced back to the same origin. This includes the winter solstice holiday that celebrated the birth (or "rebirth") of the sun god. All the way back in ancient Babylon, pagans celebrated a festival involving a heroic supernatural figure that visits an evergreen tree and leaves gifts on December 25th long before Jesus was ever born. From its early Babylonian roots, the celebration of the birth or "rebirth" of the sun god on December 25th came to be celebrated under various names all over the ancient world. You see, the winter solstice occurs a few days before December 25th each year. The winter solstice is the day of the year when daylight is the shortest. In ancient times, December 25th was the day each year when the day started to become noticeably longer. Thus it was fitting for the early pagans to designate December 25th as the date of the birth or the "rebirth" of the sun.

The truth is that thousands of years before there was a "Santa Claus", there was another supernatural figure who would supposedly visit a tree and leave gifts every December 25th.

His name was Nimrod.

According to ancient Babylonian tradition, Semiramis (who eventually became known as the goddess Astarte/Asherah/Ashtoreth/Isis/Ishtar/Easter in other pagan religions) claimed that after the untimely death of her son/husband Nimrod (yes she was married to her own son), a full grown evergreen tree sprang up overnight from a dead tree stump. Semiramis claimed that Nimrod would visit that evergreen tree and leave gifts each year on the anniversary of his birth, which just happened to be on December 25th.

This is the true origin of the Christmas tree.

On Bibletools.org, Mike Ford describes this ancient pagan tradition about Nimrod this way....

After Nimrod's death (c. 2167 BC), Semiramis promoted the belief that he was a god. She claimed that she saw a full-grown evergreen tree spring out of the roots of a dead tree stump, symbolizing the springing forth of new life for Nimrod. On the anniversary of his birth, she said, Nimrod would visit the evergreen tree and leave gifts under it.

On that same site, John Plunkett describes the ancient pagan myth regarding December 25th in this manner....

From many ancient writings, considerable is learned of this man, who started the great organized worldly apostasy from God that has dominated this world until now. Nimrod was so evil, it is said he married his own mother, whose name was Semiramis. After Nimrod's untimely death, his so-called mother-wife, Semiramis, propagated the evil doctrine of the survival of Nimrod as a spirit being. She claimed a full-grown evergreen tree sprang overnight from a dead tree stump, which symbolized the springing forth unto new life of the dead Nimrod. On each anniversary of his birth, she claimed, Nimrod would visit the evergreen tree and leave gifts upon it. December 25th was the birthday of Nimrod. This is the real origin of the Christmas tree.

From this original fable peddled by Semiramis (the "Queen of Heaven") came the tradition for pagans to go out to the holy "groves" and leave gifts for Nimrod (who later came to be worshipped as "Baal") at an evergreen tree.

Does that sound like a "Christian" holiday to you?

In "The Two Babylons", on page 93 Hislop bemoans the fact that the early Roman Catholics adopted this holiday as a way to attract pagan "converts"....

"Long before the fourth century, and long before the Christian era itself, a festival was celebrated among the heathen, at that precise time of the year, in honor of the birth of the son of the Babylonian queen of heaven. It may fairly be presumed that, in order to conciliate the heathen, and to swell the number of the nominal adherents of Christianity, the Roman Church, giving it only the name of Christ adopted the same festival. This tendency on the part of Christians to meet Paganism halfway was very early developed; and we find Tertullian, even in his day, about the year 230, bitterly lamenting the inconsistency of the disciples of Christ in this respect, and contrasting it with the strict fidelity of the Pagans to their own superstition."

But even though Christianity adopted this pagan holiday and renamed it, that doesn't mean that the pagans stopped celebrating it.

The truth is that the pagan holiday of "Yule" has been celebrated by the pagans of northern Europe from late December through early January for ages. Yule logs were traditionally lit throughout northern Europe to honor the pagan god Thor. The festival would continue until the Yule log burned out - which could take up to twelve days. This is where we get the so-called "12 days of Christmas".

In fact, Wiccans, neo-pagans and even many witches still celebrate Yule to this day. Many of them think it is incredibly funny when Christians use the pagan word Yule. Yule is one of the most important holidays for them. The following excerpt was taken from a website on witchcraft:

Birthday of the Twins:

Kemetic (ancient Egyptian) holy day. Birthday of the Twins, Heru Sa Aset and Bast, children of Aset [Isis]. Origin of Yule and Christmas. On Winter Solstice Asar [Osiris] dies. Aset [Isis] with the magick help of Nebt Het [Nephthys] creates a Djed Pillar [artificial penis] for Her husband and impregnates Herself. For three full days (December 22-24) Asar lies dead and the Twins grow in Aset’s belly. On this day (December 25th) the Twins are born, the reincarnation or resurrection of Their Father. The green tree is a symbol of the green-skinned Asar, God of fertility and vegetation. The colored lights are symbols of Aset, Goddess of magick and divine light. Red, green, and white are the traditional candle colors of Bast (this was Her birthday alone for several thousand years of early Kemetic history), later being adapted to red for Aset (the color of the Mother’s menstrual flow), green for Asar (the color of vegetation), and white for the Twins (the color of pure light).

So where did the word "Christmas" come from?

Well, the truth is that the word "Christmas" is not actually found anywhere in the entire Bible.

In fact, the word "Christmas" was not even invented until about a thousand years after Jesus left this earth.

The Catholic Encyclopedia even admits this....

"The word for Christmas in late Old English is Cristes Maesse, the Mass of Christ, first found in 1038."

But Jesus was not even born on December 25th.

The reality is that it would have simply been far too cold for shepherds to be out with their sheep at night in Israel on December 25th.

The vast majority of Christian scholars now acknowledge this.

So when was Jesus actually born?

Well, using the clues given to us in the Scriptures and by following the chronology given in the gospel of Luke, we can determine that Jesus was very likely born during the Feast of Tabernacles. In fact, it seems most likely that He was born on the very first day of the Feast of Tabernacles.

Now why in the world would God have His people do that?

Well, it was a "prophetic picture story" of what would happen in the future.

In the gospel of Luke there are clues that we can use to calculate the approximate time that Jesus was born.

Starting with calculating the time of the year when John the Baptist's father served in the Temple, we can come up with a Scriptural timeline that ends in the birth of Christ. The following video will break down all of the specific details for you....

Now, it must be noted that it cannot be proven with 100 percent certainty using the Scriptures that Jesus was born on the first day of the Feast of Tabernacles, but that seems to be the most logical conclusion when you consider all of the facts.

You see, as noted earlier, God always does the "big things" on his high holy days. If Jesus was born on the first day of the Feast of Tabernacles (which is a High Sabbath), then He would have been circumcised on the 8th day of the Feast of Tabernacles (which is also a High Sabbath).

In addition, it would better explain why there was no room for Mary and Joseph to stay anywhere. Bethlehem is only about 5 miles from Jerusalem, so the entire area around Jerusalem would have been absolutely packed with visitors who had come in for the festival.

But perhaps the biggest clue is the festival itself. You see, during the Feast of Tabernacles, God had His people live in humble temporary shelters which perfectly foreshadowed how His Son would come into the world some day.

In essence, God had His people go up to Jerusalem (which is about five miles from Bethlehem) every year, at the exact time when His Son would be born and He had them live in humble temporary shelters ("manger scenes" if you will) in order to foreshadow the circumstances of the birth of the Messiah.

For even more videos that show why there is incredibly strong evidence that Jesus was born during the Feast of Tabernacles, please see the following article: Jesus Was Born During The Feast Of Tabernacles.

So why are Christians still not celebrating the Feast of Tabernacles today?

Why are Christians celebrating "Christmas" instead?

Well, in the centuries following Jesus, there was a tremendous amount of anti-Semitism throughout the Roman Empire. Jews came to be deeply hated, and anything associated with the Jews was looked down upon.

Christian converts in areas of the Roman Empire outside of Israel started to find it very convenient to forget about anything that looked like "Jewish tradition" and many of them would even openly celebrate the pagan holidays that everyone else was celebrating just to "fit in".

By the time the Roman Empire legalized Christianity in the 4th century, most of the other religions in the empire were celebrating the birth of their gods on December 25th.

Leading up to December 25th in ancient Rome, a festival known as Saturnalia was one of the biggest celebrations of the year. Saturnalia was a festival during which the Romans commemorated the dedication of the temple of their god Saturn. This holiday began on the 17th of December and it would last for an entire week until the 23rd of December.

Saturnalia was typically characterized by gift-giving, feasting, singing and lots and lots of debauchery. The priests of Saturn would carry wreaths of evergreen boughs in procession throughout the pagan Roman temples.

Later on, the Romans also started holding a festival on December 25th called Dies Natalis Solis Invicti, which means "the birthday of the unconquered sun." Basically it was a way for the empire to consolidate all of the December 25th "sun god" birthdays throughout the empire into one holiday.

In the year 350 A.D., Pope Julius I declared that the birth of Jesus would be celebrated on December 25th from then on. There appears to be little doubt that Pope Julius was trying to make it as painless as possible for pagan Romans to convert to Catholicism.

However, the new holiday did not really take off with Christians at first. The widespread celebration of December 25th by Christians did not really get going until 378. It was apparently then dropped in 381 and then resurrected in 400.

But the truth is that December 25th was celebrated as the birthday of scores of pagan gods long before it was ever associated with Jesus.

As we discussed earlier, the celebration of December 25th goes all the way back to Nimrod (who eventually came to be worshipped as Baal).

Baal worship spread throughout the known world and provided the basis for all other pagan religions. The following are just some of the pagan gods that had "birthdays" on December 25th....

Mithras

Horus

Attis

Dionysus the son of Zeus

Tammuz

Hercules

Osiris

Perseus

Helios

Bacchus

Apollo

Jupiter

Sol Invictus - (The "Unconquered Sun")

When the Roman Catholics decided to make December 25th a "Christian holiday" in the fourth century, they simply "adopted" a pagan holiday and kept most of the same pagan traditions.

By adopting pagan holidays, the Catholic authorities hoped to make it easier for pagans to turn into "Christians". The following is a quote from the 2000 Encyclopedia Britannica, Volume 11; page 390....

"During the later periods of Roman history, sun worship gained in importance and ultimately led to what has been called a 'solar monotheism.' Nearly all the gods of the period were possessed of Solar qualities, and both Christ and Mithra acquired the traits of solar deities. The feast of Sol and Victus (open unconquered Sun) on December 25th was celebrated with great joy, and eventually this date was taken over by the Christians as Christmas, the birthday of Christ."

For example, the ancient Babylonian "Christmas tree" became known as a symbol of fertility throughout the ancient world. The pole, balls, and tinsel (phallus, testes, semen) represented various aspects of male fertility, while wreaths were always fashioned in a circle to represent female fertility.

In "The Two Babylons", Hislop describes some of the ancient traditions surrounding the Christmas tree on page 97....

"The Christmas tree, now so common among us, was equally common in Pagan Rome and Pagan Egypt. In Egypt that tree was the palm-tree; in Rome it was the fir; the palm tree denoting the Pagan messiah, as Baal-Tamar, the fir referring to him as Baal-Berith. The mother of Adonis, the sun-god and great mediatorial divinity, was mystically said to have been changed into a tree, and when in that state to have brought forth her divine son. If the mother was a tree, the son must have been recognized as the 'Man the branch.' And this entirely accounts for the putting of the Yule Log into the fire on Christmas Eve, and the appearance of the Christmas tree the next morning."

That sure puts a different spin on Christmas traditions, now doesn't it?

Most Christians don't even realize that God warned us about such things in the Bible.

In Jeremiah 10:1-4, God warns us against putting up these decorated trees like the pagans were doing....

Hear what the LORD says to you, O house of Israel. This is what the LORD says: "Do not learn the ways of the nations or be terrified by signs in the sky, though the nations are terrified by them. For the customs of the peoples are worthless; they cut a tree out of the forest, and a craftsman shapes it with his chisel. They adorn it with silver and gold; they fasten it with hammer and nails so it will not totter."

But we love our "Christmas trees" don't we?

In the Scriptures, God solemnly warns us not to adopt the practices of those who worship other gods. Deuteronomy 12:29-31 state the following....

The LORD your God will cut off before you the nations you are about to invade and dispossess. But when you have driven them out and settled in their land, and after they have been destroyed before you, be careful not to be ensnared by inquiring about their gods, saying, “How do these nations serve their gods? We will do the same.” You must not worship the LORD your God in their way, because in worshiping their gods, they do all kinds of detestable things the LORD hates. They even burn their sons and daughters in the fire as sacrifices to their gods.

The Puritans understood this. It comes as a surprise to most Americans to learn that the Puritans once banned Christmas trees in many areas of the United States because they were considered so pagan.

According to ancient Babylonian tradition, the springtime fertility festival of Ishtar (Easter) was a time when the "Queen of Heaven" was believed to become impregnated. Nine months later the sun god would be "born" or "reborn".

To the ancient Babylonians, these holiday trees came to be worshipped as the "Queen of Heaven", and gifts were brought to the "groves" of trees that had been grown in her honor and placed beneath them as offerings.

The Babylonians also used wreaths to represent the nativity of the sun, since they were objects that depicted the "womb" of the Earth mother.

Early Christians completely rejected these traditions. In the 3rd century, Tertullian wrote the following about these pagan celebrations....

"On your day of gladness, we [Christians] neither cover our doorposts with wreaths, nor intrude upon the day with lamps. At the call of public festivity, you consider it a proper thing to decorate your house like some new brothel. We are accused of a lower sacrilege because we do not celebrate along with you the holidays ..."

The truth is that the celebration of December 25th and most of the accompanying traditions have always been pagan.

But many Christians will protest and say that it is okay for them to celebrate December 25th because to them it is all about Jesus.

That was the same excuse that Aaron used when he and most of the rest of the people of Israel worshipped the golden calf while Moses was up on the mountain getting the Law of God. Aaron actually said that the worship of the golden calf was being done to the Lord as we read in Exodus 32:5....

When Aaron saw this, he built an altar in front of the calf and announced, "Tomorrow there will be a festival to the LORD."

But we know how that turned out.

God was not pleased.

At all.

In fact, He was furious.

In the same way, God is not pleased when we celebrate pagan holidays and keep traditions that have been pagan for thousands of years.

For even more on the pagan origins of Christmas, check out the following YouTube video....

Now, for something that will totally blow your mind....

Earlier we discussed how the celebration of Christmas goes back to an ancient Babylonian ruler named Nimrod.

So exactly who was Nimrod?

Genesis 10:8-12 tells us the following....

Cush was the father of Nimrod, who became a mighty warrior on the earth. He was a mighty hunter before the LORD; that is why it is said, “Like Nimrod, a mighty hunter before the LORD.” The first centers of his kingdom were Babylon, Uruk, Akkad and Kalneh, in Shinar. From that land he went to Assyria, where he built Nineveh, Rehoboth Ir, Calah and Resen, which is between Nineveh and Calah—which is the great city.

Nimrod was basically the first great "world ruler" after the Flood. According to legend, he married his mother (Semiramis) and after Nimrod's death Semiramis had a child named Tammuz which was supposedly Nimrod "reborn".

This story is the original source of the art all over the ancient world that depicts the "goddess" holding the holy child. For example, the whole mythology of Isis giving birth to Horus after the death of Osiris is a good example of this.

In fact, Osiris is a good example of a "god" that can be traced back to Nimrod. In Genesis it tells us that Nimrod was the first great ruler of Assyria, which many scholars believe was originally pronounced "Osiria".

The truth is that virtually all of the male deities of the ancient world can be traced back to Nimrod or his son Tammuz. In his wonderful article entitled "The Giza Discovery", author Peter Goodgame explains that the Greek god "Apollo" can also be traced back to Nimrod....

"And just who is this Greek god Apollyon who makes his strange appearance in the book of Revelation? Charles Penglase is an Australian professor who specializes in ancient Greek and Near Eastern religion and mythology. In his book, Greek Myths and Mesopotamia: Parallels and Influence in the Homeric Hymns and Hesiod, Penglase carefully and methodically demonstrates that the Greek myths and legends of Apollo were simply Greek retellings of the Babylonian myths involving the rise to power of the god Marduk, which were themselves based on earlier legends of the Sumerian hunter/hero known as Ninurta. Furthermore, according to David Rohl, the original name for Ninurta was in fact Nimurda, whose historical identity can be traced back to King Enmerkar of Uruk, the very same figure who is known in the Bible as Nimrod."

From Nimrod and his "son" sprang virtually all of the "gods" of the ancient world - Baal, Apollo, Osiris, Mithras, Adonis, Dionysus, Hercules, Perseus, Helios, Bacchus and Jupiter.

But there "gods" were not just worshipped in ancient times.

The truth is that secret societies throughout the world worship them today.

In fact, as Tom Horn documented very thoroughly in his excellent book entitled "Apollyon Rising 2012", many of these secret societies are obsessed with the belief that Apollo/Horus will return one day to head up a New World Order.

Not only that, but the Scriptures seem to tie in Nimrod/Apollo with the Antichrist.

There are many passages in the Old Testament which seem to refer to the Antichrist as "the Assyrian". In fact, in Micah 5:5-6, it not only mentions "the Assyrian" but it even calls Assyria "the land of Nimrod"....

And this man shall be the peace, when the Assyrian shall come into our land: and when he shall tread in our palaces, then shall we raise against him seven shepherds, and eight principal men. And they shall waste the land of Assyria with the sword, and the land of Nimrod in the entrances thereof: thus shall he deliver us from the Assyrian, when he cometh into our land, and when he treadeth within our borders.

In the book of Revelation, there is a reference to "Apollyon" which is a modified version of "Apollo". In Revelation 9:11, it says the following....

They had as king over them the angel of the Abyss, whose name in Hebrew is Abaddon and in Greek is Apollyon (that is, Destroyer).

But isn't the Antichrist supposed to be someone new?

Not necessarily.

The book of Revelation says that the inhabitants of the earth will be amazed that the person who will be known as the Antichrist has returned. Revelation 17:8-14 tells us the following....

The beast, which you saw, once was, now is not, and yet will come up out of the Abyss and go to its destruction. The inhabitants of the earth whose names have not been written in the book of life from the creation of the world will be astonished when they see the beast, because it once was, now is not, and yet will come.

“This calls for a mind with wisdom. The seven heads are seven hills on which the woman sits. They are also seven kings. Five have fallen, one is, the other has not yet come; but when he does come, he must remain for only a little while. The beast who once was, and now is not, is an eighth king. He belongs to the seven and is going to his destruction.

“The ten horns you saw are ten kings who have not yet received a kingdom, but who for one hour will receive authority as kings along with the beast. They have one purpose and will give their power and authority to the beast. They will wage war against the Lamb, but the Lamb will triumph over them because he is Lord of lords and King of kings—and with him will be his called, chosen and faithful followers.”

Many Bible scholars are now talking about "the return of the Antichrist" instead of "the coming of the Antichrist". Many believe that the Antichrist will be tied to Nimrod is some profound way.

So exactly what will that mean?

Nobody knows for sure.

But if the coming Antichrist is going to represent "the return of Nimrod" in some fashion, and if Nimrod's birthday is December 25th, then those celebrating Christmas may actually be celebrating the birthday of the Antichrist!

Just think about that for a moment.

Someday millions of people around the globe may be celebrating "Christmas celebrations" led by the ultimate false Christ - the Antichrist himself.

Do you really want to be celebrating the birthday of Nimrod/Apollo/Osiris?

Do you really think that it is appropriate for Christians to be indulging in deeply pagan practices? Just because we have slapped the name of "Jesus" on them does that make them okay?

It is time for Christians to wake up and to learn the real history of Christmas.

No Christian should be celebrating this pagan holiday.

Before you had an excuse because nobody has ever taught you these things.

But now you know.

Christians Are Being Sentenced To Death In Iran And Pakistan

2010-11-17T11:36:00.000-08:00

As Christians in North America sit on their sofas getting fat and happy watching Dancing With The Stars and Brett Favre, Christians on the other side of the world are being sentenced to death. This week alone, we have learned that a Christian pastor in Iran and a Christian woman in Pakistan have been sentenced to death in two separate court cases. So what were their crimes? They "insulted" Islam by refusing to back down from preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Now keep in mind that it is not just some renegade Muslims that are persecuting these Christians. These Christians were sentenced to death by the legal systems of those nations. Today there are a growing number of countries around the world where if you preach the gospel of Jesus Christ there is a really good chance that you will be killed.

In Iran, Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani has been convicted of "thought crimes" and he is now scheduled to be hung for the crime of apostasy. Please pray for him and his family.

In Pakistan, a 37-year-old mother of two named Asia Bibi has been was convicted of committing "blasphemy" and has been sentenced to death. According to Asia News, Bibi was the one that was actually abused and attacked.....

Some of the women workers had reportedly been pressuring Bibi to renounce her Christian faith and accept Islam. During one discussion, Bibi responded by speaking of how Jesus had died on the cross for the sins of humanity and asking the Muslim women what Muhammad had done for them.

The Muslim women took offence and began beating Bibi. Afterwards she was locked in a room. According to Release International, a mob reportedly formed and “violently abused” her and her children.

Unfortunately, it was not the violent Muslims that were charged. Instead, Bibi had to face trial and now her children are going to be deprived of a mother.

Yes, this kind of thing is really happening in our world today.

And persecution of Christians is going to get a whole lot worse.

But what else should we expect?

The Scriptures tell us that great persecution is coming in the last days.

So begin to prepare yourself now.

One great way to prepare yourself mentally is to read stories about the amazing Christian martyrs of the past. Two resources that we highly recommend for this are Extreme Devotion: The Voice of the Martyrs and Foxe: Voices of the Martyrs.

In addition,we encourage you to visit some of our other websites that discuss the news and events of our day....

*The Debt

*Truth

*Last Days

*End Of The World

*The End Times

What Does The Juan Williams Firing Mean? It Shows How Tightly Controlled The Mainstream Media Really Is

2010-10-25T11:19:00.000-07:00

The Juan Williams firing by NPR over remarks that he made on The O'Reilly Factor has gotten a ton of attention on the mainstream news since it happened. So what does the Juan Williams firing mean? Well, certainly Juan Williams had the right to say what he did. And certainly NPR had the right to fire Juan Williams for what he said. Also, there is little doubt that it is time to completely pull all federal funding from NPR. But the real significance of the Juan Williams firing is that it shows just how tightly controlled the mainstream media really is. Over the past several years, reporter after reporter across the nation has been fired for getting just slightly off the politically-correct script that they are all supposed to follow. In American today, those reporting the news are not allowed to think for themselves. They must tell us what they are told to say.

In the video posted below, Juan Williams responds to his firing by NPR....

Sadly, the vast majority of what we see, hear and read today is controlled by just a handful of monolithic media corporations. For much more on this phenomenon, we urge you to read the following article....

"Who Owns The Media? The 6 Monolithic Corporations That Control Almost Everything We Watch, Hear And Read"

If you are interested in doing even deeper research into how tightly controlled the media is, then we would recommend the following books....

#1 Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News

#2 A Slobbering Love Affair: The True (And Pathetic) Story of the Torrid Romance Between Barack Obama and the Mainstream Media

#3 Arrogance: Rescuing America From The Media Elite

Also, please don't forget to visit some of our other websites....

The Debt - A Blog About The Debt We Owe To Our Founding Fathers, To Those Who Have Fought And Died For America And To Future Generations

How To Get Out Of Debt - Practical Tips And Advice That Will Help You Learn How To Get Out Of Debt

Foreclosure Help - Tips, Information And Foreclosure Help For Those Seeking To Save, Buy Or Sell Foreclosed Homes

Unique Gift Ideas - A Guide To Finding The Most Unique Gift Ideas

What Does The Bible Say? - Have You Been Wondering What The Bible Has To Say About A Particular Subject? We Are Here To Help Answer Those Questions

In A Guide On Terrorism And Extremism The Department Of Justice Lists Constitutionalists And Survivalists Alongside Al-Qaeda And The Aryan Brotherhood

2010-08-31T09:58:00.000-07:00

Another document has emerged that shows exactly what the U.S. government thinks about the patriot movement. A recently discovered Department of Justice guide on terrorism and extremism actually lists "constitutionalists" and "survivalists" alongside Al-Qaeda and the Aryan Brotherhood. Apparently believing in the U.S. Constitution or preparing for the difficult economic times that are coming is enough to be labeled as an extremist these days. The guide, the cover of which you can see at the top of the article, is 120 pages long and it is entitled "Investigating Terrorism and Criminal Extremism – Terms and Concepts". You can read a full copy of this report right here. The guide describes itself as "a glossary designed primarily as a tool for criminal justice professionals to enhance their understanding of words relating to extremist terminology, phrases, activities, symbols, organizations, and selected names that they may encounter while conducting criminal investigations or prosecutions of members of extremist organizations."

It is a sad day for America when the U.S. government starts labeling American citizens as potential criminals and terrorists just because they have a different political view than the majority. This is the kind of thing that happened under Hitler, Stalin and Mao. But it is happening in the United States in 2010. People are being branded as terrorists and extremists simply based on their political speech.

The following definitions come straight out of the report....

Patriot Movement: The “patriot” movement is a general term used by its members to describe the collective movements and individuals on the extreme right wing. In one form or another, this practice dates back many decades; in the 1930s, many on the far right referred to themselves as “superpatriots.” In the 1960s and 1970s, it was common to refer to the “Christian Patriot” movement, but this term is less common now than then. Among the types of individuals that can be found within the “patriot” movement are white supremacists, sovereign citizens, tax protesters, militia members, and sometimes antiabortion or anti-environmental groups.

Constitutionalists: A generic term for members of the “patriot” movement. It is now often used to refer to members of the sovereign citizen or common law court movement. Sometimes the word “constitutionist” is also used.

Survivalists: The survivalist movement feared a coming collapse of civilization, generally as the result of nuclear war, and tried to prepare themselves to survive it. Survivalists typically stockpiled food, water, and weapons, especially the latter, and instructed themselves on topics ranging from first aid to childbirth to edible plants.

New World Order: A term used by conspiracy theorists to refer to a global conspiracy designed to implement worldwide socialism.

Information Warfare: Synonymous with cyberwarfare, information warfare is the offensive and defensive use of information and information systems to deny, exploit, corrupt, or destroy an adversary’s information, information-based processes, information systems, and computer-based networks while protecting one’s own. Such actions are designed to achieve advantages over military or business adversaries.

Council on Foreign Relations (CFR): Along with the Bilderbergers and the Trilateral Commission, one of the three key groups that conspiracy theorists claim operate behind the scenes to control the world and to establish the “New World Order.”

Bilderbergers (Bilderberg Group): Along with the Trilateral Commission and the Council on Foreign Relations, one of the three groups targeted by right-wing extremists for conspiring to dominate the world.

Keep in mind that these terms are listed alongside "Al-Qaeda" and "the Aryan Brotherhood" in the guide. It is clear that the Department of Justice considers "patriots", "anti-abortion groups", "constitutionalists" and anyone concerned about a "New World Order" to be extremists just like members of "Al-Qaeda" are considered to be extremists.

Are you starting to get the picture?

This is disgusting. Please contact your representatives and express your outrage over this report. All the authors of this report deserve to lose their jobs.

This kind of demonization of political speech is horribly anti-American and has no place in our republic. Hopefully some of the major mainstream media networks will pick up on this report and make it a huge story, because it deserves to be one.

If you enjoy this blog, we encourage you to check out our new website: American Dream.

Also, for much more on "the New World Order", we recommend that you check out the following resources....

#1) Shadow Government: How the Secret Global Elite Is Using Surveillance Against You

#2) Endgame: Blueprint for Global Enslavement

#3) Fall Of The Republic: The Presidency Of Barack H. Obama

The End Of The U.S. Economy As We Know It?

2010-07-26T12:46:00.000-07:00

Today we have a guest post from Phil Davis of Phil's Stock World that I think you are really going to enjoy. What he has to say about America's economic future is quite sobering....

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It's the End of the World As We Know It

By Phil Davis of Phil's Stock World

What are 308,367,109 Americans supposed to do?

First of all, despite clamping down on immigration, our population grew by 2.6M people last year. Unfortunately, not only did we not create jobs for those 2.6M new people but we lost about 4M jobs so what are these new people going to do? Not only that, but nobody is talking about the another major job issue: People aren’t retiring! They can’t afford to because the economy is bad - that means there are even less job openings… The pimply faced kid can’t get a job delivering pizza because his grandpa’s doing it.

There are some brilliant pundits who believe cutting retirement benefits will fix our economy. How will that work exactly? Pay old people less money, don’t cover their medical care and what happens? Then they need money. If they need money, they need to work and if they need to work they increase the supply of labor, which reduces wages and leaves all 308,367,109 of us with less money. Oh sorry, not ALL 308,367,109 - just 308,337,109 - the top 30,000 (0.01%) own the business the other 308,337,109 work at and they will be raking it in because labor is roughly 1/3 of the cost of doing business in America and our great and powerful capitalists have already cut their manufacturing costs by shipping all those jobs overseas, where they pay as little as $1 a day for a human life so now, in order to increase their profits (because profits MUST be increased) they have now turned inward to see what they can shave off in America.

How does one decrease the cost of labor in America? Well first, you have to bust the unions. Check. Then you have to create a pressing need for people to work - perhaps give them easy access to credit and then get them to go so deeply into debt that they will have to work until they die to pay them off. Check. It also helps if you push up the cost of living by manipulating commodity prices. Check. Then, take away people’s retirement savings. Check. Lower interest rates to make savings futile and interest income inadequate. Check. And finally, threaten to take away the 12% a year that people have been saving for retirement by labeling Social Security an "entitlement" program - as if it wasn’t money Americans worked their whole lives to save and gave to the government in good faith.Check.

As Allen Smith says: "Ronald Reagan and Alan Greenspan pulled off one of the greatest frauds ever perpetrated against the American people in the history of this great nation, and the underlying scam is still alive and well, more than a quarter century later. It represents the very foundation upon which the economic malpractice that led the nation to the great economic collapse of 2008 was built. Essentially, Reagan switched the federal government from what he critically called, a “tax and spend” policy, to a “borrow and spend” policy, where the government continued its heavy spending, but used borrowed money instead of tax revenue to pay the bills. The results were catastrophic. Although it had taken the United States more than 200 years to accumulate the first $1 trillion of national debt, it took only five years under Reagan to add the second one trillion dollars to the debt. By the end of the 12 years of the Reagan-Bush administrations, the national debt had quadrupled to $4 trillion!"

Both Reagan and Greenspan saw big government as an evil, and they saw big business as a virtue. They both had despised the progressive policies of Roosevelt, Kennedy and Johnson, and they wanted to turn back the pages of time. They came up with the perfect strategy for the redistribution of income and wealth from the working class to the rich. If Reagan had campaigned for the presidency by promising big tax cuts for the rich and pledging to make up for the lost revenue by imposing substantial tax increases on the working class, he would probably not have been elected. But that is exactly what Reagan did, with the help of Alan Greenspan. Consider the following sequence of events:

1) President Reagan appointed Greenspan as chairman of the 1982 National Commission on Social Security Reform (aka The Greenspan Commission)

2) The Greenspan Commission recommended a major payroll tax hike to generate Social Security surpluses for the next 30 years, in order to build up a large reserve in the trust fund that could be drawn down during the years after Social Security began running deficits.

3) The 1983 Social Security amendments enacted hefty increases in the payroll tax in order to generate large future surpluses.

4) As soon as the first surpluses began to role in, in 1985, the money was put into the general revenue fund and spent on other government programs. None of the surplus was saved or invested in anything. The surplus Social Security revenue, that was paid by working Americans, was used to replace the lost revenue from Reagan’s big income tax cuts that went primarily to the rich.

5) In 1987, President Reagan nominated Greenspan as the successor to Paul Volcker as chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. Greenspan continued as Fed Chairman until January 31, 2006. (One can only speculate on whether the coveted Fed Chairmanship represented, at least in part, a payback for Greenspan’s role in initiating the Social Security surplus revenue.)

6) In 1990, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York, a member of the Greenspan Commission, and one of the strongest advocates the 1983 legislation, became outraged when he learned that first Reagan, and then President George H.W. Bush used the surplus Social Security revenue to pay for other government programs instead of saving and investing it for the baby boomers. Moynihan locked horns with President Bush and proposed repealing the 1983 payroll tax hike. Moynihan’s view was that if the government could not keep its hands out of the Social Security cookie jar, the cookie jar should be emptied, so there would be no surplus Social Security revenue for the government to loot. President Bush would have no part of repealing the payroll tax hike. The “read-my-lips-no-new-taxes” president was not about to give up his huge slush fund.

The practice of using every dollar of the surplus Social Security revenue for general government spending continues to this day. The 1983 payroll tax hike has generated approximately $2.5 trillion in surplus Social Security revenue which is supposed to be in the trust fund for use in paying for the retirement benefits of the baby boomers. But the trust fund is empty! It contains no real assets. As a result, the government will soon be unable to pay full benefits without a tax increase. Money can be spent or it can be saved. But you can’t do both. Absolutely none of the $2.5 trillion was saved or invested in anything.

That is how the largest theft in the history of the world was carried out. 300M people worked and saved their whole lives to set aside $2.5Tn into a retirement system that, if it were paying a fair compounding rate of 5% interest over 40 years of labor (assuming an even $62Bn a year was contributed), would be worth $8.4Tn today - enough money to give 100M workers $84,000 each in cash! The looting of FICA hid the massive deficits of the last 30 years in the Unified Budget. Presidents and Congresses were able to reduce taxes on the wealthiest Americans without complaint from the deficit hawks, because they benefited. The money went directly from the pockets of average Americans into the pockets of the rich.

Now that it is time to repay those special bonds in the Trust Fund, we are inundated in opinion pieces in the leading newspapers and magazines complaining about Social Security and its horrible impact on the budget. Government finances have been trashed by foolish tax cuts, unpaid wars, tax loopholes for corporations and the very wealthy, the failures of economists, the greedy search for greater returns in financial markets and the collapse of moral values in giant businesses, but Social Security is supposed to be the problem that needs fixing…

Social Security is not "broken"--the money is in the Trust Fund. But the people who manage the finances of the United States don’t want to repay the bonds held by the Trust Fund. They want to default selectively against average people, their fellow citizens, who paid their taxes expecting to be protected in their retirement. Refusing to repay the $2.54 trillion dollars in bonds held by the Social Security Trust makes the US look like Greece, just another nation unable to govern itself coherently. The people who manage US finances come from the financial elites, the best that Wall Street and enormous corporations have to offer. Selective default exposes them as charlatans. The claims of the economics profession to expertise are puffery. Their theories about the benefits of tax cuts are proven false. Their mathematical proofs about free markets collapse in the real world.

So, what is this all about? It’s about forcing 5M people a year who reach the age 65 to remain in the work-force. The top 0.01% have already taken your money, they have already put you in debt, they have already bankrupted the government as well so it has no choice but to do their bidding. Now the top 0.01% want to make even MORE profits by paying American workers even LESS money. If they raise the retirement age to 70 to "balance" Social Security - that will guarantee that another 25M people remain in the workforce (less the ones that drop dead on the job - saving the bother of paying them severance).

What’s next? Is it fair to say that children can’t work in a struggling family business? Isn’t it to everybody’s benefit that kids should be allowed to help out at the family store? That will be the next step towards turning America into a 3rd World country. The seemingly innocent concept of "letting" kids work will deprive another 5M people of paying jobs - throwing them out into the labor force as well and driving labor costs down even further.

There’s an expression that goes "give them an inch and they’ll take a yard." The top 0.01% of this country have taken their inches and they are foreclosing on the yards and they will come for the rest of your stuff next. If you think you are "safe" from the looting of America, it is only because they haven’t gotten around to you yet. As I explained in "America is 234 Years Old Today - Is It Finished?" - the game is rigged very much like a poker tournament. The people at the top table don’t care how well you do wiping out your fellow players at the lower tables, they know they will get you eventually and your efforts to scoop up a pile of cash for yourself simply makes their job easier when they are ready to take it from you.

The average American is $634,000 in debt thanks to the efforts that Reagan and Greenspan put in motion 30 years ago and the richer you are, the more of that money is going to come out of your hide eventually and the more you lobby to make sure that the "rich" are not taxed unfairly, the less fair it will be to you because, no matter how rich you THINK you are, unless your income is measured in MILLIONS PER MONTH, you aren’t even close to the top 30,000.

No progressive tax? That means that people and corporations who make $1M PER DAY should pay no more tax than a person making $1M per year, right? Well that means that the $2.5M debt that your family of four owes will be paid by you over 2.5 years of labor while the $2.5M owed by your Billionaire competitor will be paid over a long weekend, after which he can turn his attention back to crushing your business by creating cheaper goods - maintaining profit margins by driving down local labor costs and outsourcing the rest.

It’s a new world, America, and you’d better get used to it - we were sold down the river on a slow boat to China long ago and we’re only just beginning to feel the first effects of waves that wash back to our own shores. The people who own the media don’t want CHANGE. That’s why you never hear this stuff in the MSM - things are going exactly according to plan and the old money crowd is playing a long, patient game and they already have most of the chips - the last thing they want is people questioning the system…

Living In A Finely-Tuned Universe Yet Refusing To Recognize The Creator

2010-06-29T13:45:00.000-07:00

An increasing number of scientists are acknowledging that our solar system, our galaxy and indeed the entire universe has been incredibly finely-tuned and seemingly designed for us. However, many of these same scientists absolutely refuse to acknowledge that it could have been God that was behind all of this fine-tuning and design. This baffling point of view was once again on display in a recent article published on The Huffington Post entitled "Is the Universe Merely a Statistical Accident?" In that article, Dr. Larry Dossey explains how a large number of scientists now believe that the fact that the earth is so perfect for human life is no accident. And yet in the entire article there is no mention of God.

Just check out the following quotes from the article.....

British physicist Paul Davies....

"The origin of life on Earth ... could well have been the result of a stupendous chemical fluke. [However,] ... computing the raw odds quickly shows that even the simplest known cell is so unlikely to form by accident it wouldn't happen twice in the entire observable universe. Or in a trillion similar universes ... Perhaps life's origin wasn't a freak event after all, but the automatic outcome of inherently bio-friendly laws of nature."

Another quote from the article....

The distinguished physicist Freeman Dyson suggests that life is so improbable, and the physical characteristics of the universe are so finely tuned to accommodate it, that in some sense the universe "knew we were coming."

Yet another quote....

Sir Fred Hoyle, one of the twentieth century's most respected cosmologists, seems to agree with the idea that the universe knew life was on its way. Reflecting on the fine-tuning of the conditions necessary for the universe to bring forth life, he suggested that the universe looks like a "put-up job," as if someone had been "monkeying" with the laws of physics, getting ready in advance for the appearance of life.

Yet there is not a single reference to God in the entire article.

Amazing.

The truth is that even world famous atheist Richard Dawkins admits the possibility of intelligent design. But instead of admitting that God could have been the Creator, he postulates that we could have been created by aliens....

What a bunch of nonsense.

The truth is that so many people will go to any length to avoid admitting the truth.

And the truth is that it was God who was behind the fine-tuning of the universe. If you have not heard about how precisely the earth has been fine-tuned for human life, please watch the following very short video....

But what about evolution?

Isn't it true?

After all, that is what we were all taught in school, right?

Well, the truth is that when you take a hard look at the scientific evidence, it just does not support the theory of evolution.

The following is an excerpt from an article we posted on our sister site entitled The Creation/Evolution Debate....

****

1) If evolution was true, we should have millions upon millions of transitional fossils.

But the reality that we find in the fossil record is this:

"I fully agree with your comments on the lack of direct illustration of evolutionary transitions in my book. If I knew of any, fossil or living, I would certainly have included them. You suggest that an artist should be used to visualise such transformations, but where would he get the information from? I could not, honestly, provide it, and if I were to leave it to artistic license, would that not mislead the reader?"

-Dr. Colin Patterson, senior paleontologist at the British Museum of Natural History (and a hardcore evolutionist), in a letter to Luther Sunderland, April 10, 1979.

In response to this point, Darwinists will usually trot out the same handful of incredibly weak, totally laughable examples of "transitional forms" that have been debunked and discredited time after time (for example Archaeopteryx):

http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v1/i1/archaeopteryx.asp

However, the truth is that if Darwinian evolution was true there would be millions upon millions of very clear transitional fossils in the fossil record.

But their "theory" has a huge problem.

The fossils are simply not there.

"Lastly, looking not to any one time, but to all time, if my theory be true, numberless intermediate varieties, linking closely together all the species of the same group, must assuredly have existed. But, as by this theory, innumerable transitional forms must have existed, why do we not find them embedded in countless numbers in the crust of the earth?"

-Charles Darwin

"In fact, the fossil record does not convincingly document a single transition from one species to another."

-Evolutionist Stephen M. Stanley, Johns Hopkins University

So, what the science actually reveals is that the "missing links" have always been missing and they always will be missing because they were never there in the first place.

2) If evolution was true, then we should see an "evolutionary tree" in the fossil record, with complex life developing very slowly from earlier, less complex forms. Instead, what we do see is the sudden appearance of fully formed and fully functional complex life in the fossil record (evolutionists refer to this as the Cambrian explosion):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambrian_explosion

The truth is that complex life first appeared on the earth in a very sudden, explosive manner.

"The earliest and most primitive members of every order already have the basic ordinal characters, and in no case is an approximately continuous series from one order to another known. In most cases the break is so sharp and the gap so large that the origin of the order is speculative and much disputed"

-Paleontologist George Gaylord

The reality is that complex life appears in the fossil record fully formed and fully functional.

There is no denying it.

There is no getting around it.

Now which worldview does the sudden appearance of fully formed, fully functional complex life in the fossil record support?

Creation science of course.

3) In addition, evolutionists are at a complete and total loss for how to explain the creation of new information that is required for one animal to turn into another animal.

As one creation scientist explained:

"The key issue is the type of change required — to change microbes into men requires changes that increase the genetic information content, from over half a million DNA ‘letters’ of even the ‘simplest’ self-reproducing organism to three billion ‘letters’ (stored in each human cell nucleus)."

Evolutionists cannot show us a single example of functional new information being added to any creature.

Evolutionist Stephen J. Gould, Harvard:

"Every paleontologist knows that most species don't change. That's bothersome....brings terrible distress. ....They may get a little bigger or bumpier but they remain the same species and that's not due to imperfection and gaps but stasis. And yet this remarkable stasis has generally been ignored as no data. If they don't change, its not evolution so you don't talk about it." Lecture at Hobart & William Smith College, 14/2/1980.

Christians, when you are in a debate with a Darwinist, the following is an outstanding question to ask of them:

"Do you have enough blind faith to believe that life just popped into existence from nonlife, and that such life just happened to have the ability to take in the nourishment it needed, to expel waste, and to reproduce itself, all the while having everything it needed to survive in the environment in which it suddenly found itself?"

****

When you really look at the facts, the reality is that the ridiculousness of the theory of Darwinian evolution rapidly becomes apparent.

But today people are desperate to explain away God. In fact, most scientific authorities have chosen to "deliberately forget" that there is a Creator just as 2 Peter 3:3-5 warned us would happen in the last days....

First of all, you must understand that in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires. They will say, "Where is this 'coming' he promised? Ever since our fathers died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation." But they deliberately forget that long ago by God's word the heavens existed and the earth was formed...

10 Of The Most Disturbing Facts About The Gulf Of Mexico Oil Spill

2010-05-30T14:05:00.000-07:00

Now that BP's "top kill" solution has failed and oil continues to pour into the Gulf of Mexico at a nightmarish pace, many people are wondering how bad things are ultimately going to get. The truth is that the United States has never experienced an oil spill of this magnitude, and environmentalists are telling us that we are literally witnessing the final hours of the cherished ecosystems along the Gulf Coast. Now, BP managing director Robert Dudley has come right out and admitted that it is possible that the oil flow from the leak will not completely stop until sometime in August. If this leak does not stop until August, then life in the Gulf of Mexico and along the Gulf Coast will never be the same again during our lifetimes. It is hard to even try to describe how much of a national tragedy this is. The Gulf of Mexico oil spill is now far, far, far worse than Hurricane Katrina in terms of the lasting damage that it will cause.

It is hard to even put into words how horrific this disaster is. But the more one looks into this oil leak, the worse it gets. In fact, there are a number of things that have recently come out about this leak that are beyond alarming. The following are 10 of the most disturbing facts that have recently come out about the Gulf of Mexico oil spill....

#1) Transocean, the firm hired by BP to operate the Deepwater Horizon offshore drilling rig, has just announced that it will distribute $1 billion in dividends to shareholders even as oil continues to pour into the Gulf of Mexico.

#2) Not only that, but Transocean also says it will make a $270 million profit on the insurance policy for the rig.

#3) A dire report prepared for Russian President Medvedev by Russia’s Ministry of Natural Resources is warning that the dispersal agent being used by BP in the Gulf of Mexico is about to cause the worst environmental catastrophe in all of human history.

#4) In fact, a large number of fishermen have already reported becoming seriously ill - and many of them believe that the chemicals that BP is using in the Gulf are to blame.

#5) Matt Simmons, an energy adviser to former president George W. Bush, recently went on national television and claimed that "there's another leak, much bigger, 5 to 6 miles away" from the leaking riser and blowout preventer which everyone has been watching on the underwater cameras.

#6) Prominent oceanographers are pointing the finger at the Obama administration of failing to conduct an adequate scientific analysis of the damage from the Gulf of Mexico oil spill and of allowing BP to purposely deceive the public about the spill's true scope.

#7) Scientists are now telling us that the first oil from the Gulf of Mexico spill has entered an ocean current that could take it over to Florida and up the east coast of the United States.

#8) One oil industry expert is saying that oil could pour into the Gulf of Mexico for up to 9000 days if the leak is not sealed.

#9) Local shrimpers in Louisiana are estimating that it will be seven years before they can set to sea again.

#10) In a very sick twist, some Internet gambling websites are now placing odds on what species will be first to become extinct as a result of all the oil flowing from BP's ruptured well in the Gulf of Mexico.

The Ogallala Aquifer Is Drying Up Which Means The Great Plains Could Soon Turn Into The Great American Desert

2010-04-30T13:15:00.000-07:00

America's breadbasket is facing an environmental crisis of unimaginable proportions and most Americans have absolutely no idea what is happening. The water that is used to irrigate much of America's Great Plains comes from a massive underground lake known as the Ogallala Aquifer. This gigantic underground lake stretches from southern South Dakota through northern Texas, covering approximately 174,000 square miles. So what is the problem? Well, it turns out that the Ogallala Aquifer is being drained at an alarming rate, and that means that the Great Plains could soon turn into the Great American Desert. If that happens, American could very well see a devastating repeat of the Dust Bowl days of the 1930s.

One of the scientists trying to get out the warning about this coming environmental nightmare is Dr. Kevin Mulligan, a professor of Economics and Geography at Texas Tech. Dr. Mulligan and his students have mapped the Ogallala Aquifer extensively, and what they have found is quite alarming. Not only have they found that the aquifer is much shallower in places than many originally thought, but they also have found that the aquifer is being drained much faster than anticipated.

In fact, Dr. Mulligan estimates that at peak times it is being drained at a rate of 800 gallons per minute. Not only that, but they have also determined that many areas of the Great Plains that are dependent on the Ogallala Aquifer will run out of useable water by the year 2030.

Are you starting to get the picture?

In fact, Dr. Mulligan recently made the following statement about this crisis to a stunned audience....

"This will certainly mean the end of pivot irrigation in the region."

The reality is that the Great Plains have not always been a great agricultural area.
Way back in 1823, a U.S. government surveyor named Stephen Long was mapping out the Great Plains, and he was quite unimpressed by what he saw. In fact, his geographer wrote the following in a report about the expedition....

I do not hesitate in giving the opinion that it is almost wholly unfit for cultivation, and of course, uninhabitable by a people depending upon agriculture for their subsistence.

Well, thanks to irrigation, the Great Plains are not only "habitable", but that region is currently one of the great breadbaskets of the world. What Long's mapping expedition referred to as "The Great American Desert" has been turned into an agricultural wonder thanks to an expanse of green circles defined by the reach of central pivot irrigation systems.

But all of that is changing as the Ogallala Aquifer rapidly becomes depleted.

David Brauer, program manager for the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service Ogallala Aquifer Program, recently told the following to AOL News....

"You go to areas where the aquifer has been depleted, [they] look pretty poor now."

So will we soon see the return of the infamous "black blizzards" that were so devastating during the days of the Dust Bowl in the 1930s?

To get an idea of how incredibly destructive these dust storms were, just consider the words of historian Donald Worster from his book entitled "The Dust Bowl"....

"The dust storms that swept across the southern plains in the 1930s created the most severe environmental catastrophe in the entire history of the white man on this continent. In no other instance was there greater or more sustained damage to the American land, and there have been few times when so much tragedy was visited on its inhabitants. Not even the Depression was more devastating, economically. And in ecological terms we have nothing in the nation’s past, nothing even in the polluted present, that compares."

Those days could soon be returning and most people who live in the Great Plains have absolutely no idea.

And all of this comes at a time when global food supplies are already stretched to their limit.

It is now being projected that global demand for food will more than double over the next 50 years. Today there are over 6 billion people on earth. Around 2040 or so there will be 9 billion people on earth. By the 2060s, there would be over 11 billion people on this planet.

So where in the world are we going to get the food to feed all of those people?

We take so much for granted today, but the reality is that disaster is just around the corner. America's breadbasket is going to quickly turn to dust if something is not done, and if that happens it is going to have horrifying consequences that most of us could not even imagine.

Our environment does not have unlimited resources. Once they are gone they are gone.

So what are we going to do once America's breadbasket is gone?

War Zone: The City Of Detroit Is Dying

2010-03-21T17:14:00.000-07:00

The city of Detroit has become the poster child for everything that is wrong with the U.S. economy - and for good reason. It literally looks like it is in the middle of a war zone or like a hurricane has hit it. The truth is that the city of Detroit is dying and it is simply not going to recover.

It wasn't always this way for Detroit. Decades ago, it was a shining example of America's incredible manufacturing prowess. It was the center of the automobile revolution. At the time, nobody could have ever dreamed that one day Detroit would be the biggest economic disaster in the United States.

But that is what has happened.

Just consider the following facts....

*During the boom days of the 1950s, Detroit was a teeming metropolis of approximately 2 million people, but today the current population is less than a million and people are leaving in waves.

*The mayor of Detroit has admitted that while the "official" unemployment rate in Detroit is 27 percent, the "real" unemployment rate in his city is somewhere around 50 percent.

*House prices of under $1000 are quite common in Detroit now, and there are some houses in the city that you can actually buy for just one dollar.

*Emergency Financial Manager Robert Bobb has announced a plan to close 44 Detroit schools.

*According to one estimate, the city of Detroit has 33,500 empty houses and 91,000 vacant residential lots.

*So how do you possibly save a city that is dying right in front of you? Well, the mayor of Detroit has unveiled his radical solution - you bulldoze one-fourth of the city.

But sometimes it is not enough just to read facts and figures. Sometimes you just have to see what is going on with your own eyes before it will start to sink in. The short video news report posted below shows just how bad things have gotten in Detroit. Would you like to live in a city that looks like this?....

But before you jump on Detroit too much, the reality is that this is going to happen to a lot more American cities before all of this is over. It is not just the economy of Detroit that is dying. It is the entire U.S. economy this is dying.

The United States has piled up the biggest mountain of debt in the history of the world, and now the day of reckoning is here. Millions of Americans have already lost their homes and their jobs, but this is only the beginning. Incredibly hard economic times are on the way, and unfortunately America is going to pay the price for going into so much debt. Please make sure to prepare yourself and your family for the times that are ahead because they are not going to be easy.

12 Signs The United States Is Headed For Financial Collapse

2010-02-27T18:44:00.000-08:00

Is the United States headed for total financial collapse? Most Americans seem to think that we are now recovering from the recent economic crisis and that we will be back to "normal" very soon. But what do the numbers say? Do the economic signs point toward a recovery or a major financial disaster? The truth is that if you take a close look at the numbers, they are very troubling. Just consider the following signs....

#1) The FDIC plans to open a huge satellite office near Chicago that will house up to 500 temporary staffers and contractors to manage receiverships and liquidate assets from what they are expecting will be a gigantic wave of failed Midwest banks.

#2) So is there are reason for the FDIC to expect so many banks to fail? Well, the FDIC recently announced that the number of banks on its "problem" list climbed to 702 at the end of 2009. This is compared to only 552 banks that were on the problem list at the end of September and only 252 banks that were on the problem list at the end of 2008.

#3) The U.S. Treasury Department has announced that foreign holdings of U.S. Treasury securities fell by 53 billion dollars in December, which was the biggest one month decline in history. China alone reduced its holdings of U.S. Treasuries by 34.2 billion dollars. If other nations quit buying up U.S. government debt, what happens then?

#4) A massive "second wave" of adjustable rate mortgages is scheduled to reset beginning in 2010. The first wave of adjustable rate mortgage resets absolutely devastated the U.S. housing market in 2007 and 2008. So what is this second wave of mortgage resets going to do to the U.S. economy?

#5) In fact, one shocking new study predicts that 5 million houses and condos will go through foreclosure over the next couple of years. If that actually happens, the impact on the U.S. economy would be enormous.

#6) A number of financial analysts are forecasting that the next "shoe to fall" in the ongoing financial crisis will be commercial real estate. U.S. commercial property values are down about 40 percent since 2007 and currently 18 percent of all office space in the United States is now sitting vacant.

#7) The number of Americans who are declaring personal bankruptcy continues to shoot into the stratosphere. 1.41 million Americans filed for bankruptcy in 2009, which represented a 32 percent increase over 2008.

#8) But how can average Americans possibly pay their bills without jobs? In some areas of the United States, unemployment is now at depression-era levels. For example, the mayor of Detroit estimates that the real unemployment rate in his city is now somewhere around 45 to 50 percent.

#9) Meanwhile, soaring unemployment insurance taxes are actually discouraging small and mid-size companies from hiring more workers. According to the National Association of State Workforce Agencies, companies in at least 35 states will have to fork over even more in unemployment insurance taxes in 2010.

#10) In addition, the U.S. is facing a pension crisis of unprecedented magnitude. The reality is that the vast majority of all pension funds in the United States, both public and private, are massively underfunded. With millions of Baby Boomers now at or nearing retirement age, there is simply no way that all of these unfunded pension obligations are going to be met. Robert Novy-Marx of the University of Chicago and Joshua D. Rauh of Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management recently calculated the collective unfunded pension liability for all 50 U.S. states for Forbes magazine. So what was the total that they came up with? 3.2 trillion dollars.

#11) Not only that, but Social Security and Medicare also threaten to decimate U.S. government finances. In fact, some economic analysts are now predicting that the coming wave of retiring Baby Boomers is going to bankrupt the entire Social Security system.

#12) All of these financial problems come at a time when the U.S. national debt is experiencing exponential growth. The U.S. national debt is now over 12 trillion dollars and it is rising at a rate of about 3.8 billion dollars per day. So just how much is one trillion dollars? Well, if you spent one dollar every single second of every single day, it would take you over 31,000 years just to spend one trillion dollars.

So is the U.S. headed for a massive financial collapse?

Unfortunately, the answer appears to be yes.

Very hard economic times are coming.

Now is the time to make sure that you and your family are prepared for what is ahead.

$400 Or $6000? For Health Insurance Companies, Abortions Are Far Cheaper Than Live Births

2010-01-12T15:29:00.000-08:00

More than ever, health insurance companies are viewing abortions as a way to cut costs. Why? Because as one local Planned Parenthood official recently admitted, abortions are much cheaper than live births. That is a huge reason why so many health insurance companies have become increasingly comfortable with covering abortions.

In an article on the website of Forbes magazine, Baltimore Planned Parenthood CEO John Nugent said that a first trimester abortion costs somewhere in the neighborhood of "$300 to $450" and that this is much cheaper than the alternatives....

"But if the gestational age is higher you're paying for a surgical suite. That's why the insurance companies think they should be offering it. It's cheaper to terminate an unwanted pregnancy rather than taking it to term."

According to the Forbes article, the difference in cost between an abortion and a live birth can be absolutely huge....

"Health Care Blue Book confirms the price difference. An abortion performed in an physician's office typically costs $397. A vaginal delivery costs $5,992, while a c-section is $8,558."

400 dollars for an abortion vs. 6000 dollars for a live birth?

The truth is that health insurance companies not only have an incentive to offer abortion services - they also have an incentive to promote abortions.

The health care system in the United States has very little to do with what is best for the patient anymore. Today it is mostly about cutting costs and making the biggest profits possible for the health insurance companies.

We live in a society today where humans are looked at as disposable and where human life has very little value anymore.

In fact, there are many organizations who celebrate abortions and anything else that serves to reduce the human population. For these radical "environmentalists", human life is a virus that is destroying the earth and they believe that our "herd" needs to be "culled" for the good of the planet.

Increasingly there are calls for the United States and Canada to consider adopting a "one child" policy similar to the one that China uses. Children are not looked at as a great blessing anymore. Instead, children are looked at as a burden and are viewed as something to be avoided.

The truth is that health insurance companies are likely to increasingly promote abortions for their customers because it will mean big profits for them.

But in the meanwhile we are killing off future generations and we are offending the Living God.

Abortion is not a way to save money and it is not a way to "thin out" the population.

It is murder, and nothing is ever going to change that.

A New Documentary And A U.S. Military Report Portray Evangelical Christians As Nutjobs Who Are Seeking To Bring About The End Of The World

2009-12-17T14:44:00.000-08:00

The demonization of Christians is happening so rapidly in the United States that most Christians are having a difficult time even grasping what is happening. For example, a stunning new documentary entitled "Waiting For Armageddon" portrays evangelical Christians as a bunch of loons who wish to bring about the end of the world. In fact, the Huffington Post is so excited about the film that they allowed co-director David Heilbroner to publish a lengthy piece talking about how great the documentary is.

According to Heilbroner, evangelical Christians are a dangerous bunch of nutjobs because they believe that war and chaos much be brought about for Jesus to return to earth....

Thus comes the central political reality explored in Waiting for Armageddon: that Evangelicals risk creating what the Rev. Barbara Rossing calls "a self-fulfilling prophesy of death and destruction."

That is truly the purpose of Heilbroner's film - to show that evangelicals not only want death and destruction and war in the Middle East, but that they are actively working to bring about those things.

But unfortunately, Heilbroner is not alone in that assessment of evangelical Christians.

A U.S. Army document entitled "Strategic Implications of American Millennialism" also portrays Christians who believe in Bible prophecy as very dangerous loons who are using their political influence to push the world towards war.

To what extent this shocking 2008 report represents official U.S. military policy is not known. However, the fact that the following quotes are in an official U.S. Army report is more than a little chilling....

Page 51:

"The U.S. millennial proclivity for an unqualified military defense of Israel will continue to be a potential flashpoint of great import. Both the United States and Israel believe that Iran poses a credible existential to the state of Israel – especially if it is able to develop or procure a nuclear warhead. The Iranian Shahab-III missile system has to range to deliver a warhead to Israel. Ayatollah Khomeini declared the elimination of Israel to be a religious duty and current Iranian president Ahmadinejad cites him frequently when making similar statements. Because of the pre-millennial worldview, the U.S. will continue to adopt an adversarial approach to any country perceived as at odds with Israel. Since these conflicts are seen as deterministic and inevitable, there is little incentive to employ diplomacy or any other instrument of power other than the military in these situations."

Page 53:

"Pre-millennial interpretations of biblical prophecy that predict the emergence of a one-world government led by an anti-Christ causes distrust and even antagonism toward organizations like the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, the European Union, NAFTA and OPEC. Reflecting on her time as U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., Madeleine Albright notes that many of her efforts were frustrated because the U.N. was widely perceived as playing the “villain’s role” as the architect of world government by many American Christians. Albright goes on to explain that she constantly found herself “on the defensive” and, as a functionary within the U.N., was perceived by many as “quite literally – the devil’s advocate.” The Christian right constantly works to undermine the U.N. One particularly noteworthy example was a videotape produced by Phyllis Schlafly’s Eagle Forum titled Global Governance: The Quiet War Against American Independence, which prominently featured future Attorney General John Ashcroft denouncing the U.N."

Page 54:

"Due to the influence of pre-millennialism, there is great distrust of Russia on the part of the U.S. The belief in a deterministic view of near-term events that make Russian military aggression inevitable understandably obviates any incentive for cooperation or partnership. This has contributed to a persistent distance and suspicion that permeates the relationship between the two powers. Because of this, it will prove difficult, if not impossible, for the U.S. relationship with Russia to evolve into one of constructive cooperation."

Page 60:

"Based on what we know about the effect millennialism has on our thinking, we may incorporate additional considerations into policy formulation and evaluation to assist ourselves in the identification of defects, diminished objectivity or unwarranted biases. As a result of millenarian influences on our culture, most Americans think as absolutists. A proclivity for clear differentiations between good, evil, right, and wrong do not always serve us well in foreign relations or security policy. Policy makers must strive to honestly confront their own cognitive filters and the prejudices associated with various international organizations and actors vis-à-vis pre-millennialism. We must come to more fully understand the background of our thinking about the U.N., the E.U., the World Trade Organization, Russia, China and Israel. We must ask similar questions about natural events such as earthquakes or disease. An ability to consider these potential influences upon our thinking may greatly enhance objectivity."

The reality is that evangelical Christians in the United States are increasingly being viewed as "outsiders" who do not share the values of society as a whole. Not only that, but many in positions of power view evangelical Christians as threats to peace and stability. Unfortunately, it is likely that attitudes toward evangelical Christians will only become more negative as we move into the future. Open persecution is on the horizon.

Not that Christians should be surprised. Horrific persecution of Christians is already happening all over the globe. If you are not aware of this, please read the following article that we recently published on one of our sister sites: "The Frightening Rise Of Christian Persecution: Christians Around The World Are Being Shot, Burned, Hanged, Tortured And Stuffed Into Metal Shipping Containers".

The truth is that the hour is late and Christians persecution is here. It is going to take a lot of guts to stand up for Jesus Christ in the years ahead.

Are you ready?

The EU Passes A Resolution Recognizing East Jerusalem As The Capital Of A Future Palestinian State

2009-12-08T14:40:00.000-08:00

On Tuesday, a meeting of European Union foreign ministers passed a resolution that formally recognizes East Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestinian state. This meeting of EU foreign ministers was the first since the Lisbon Treaty went into full effect, and it was viewed by many observers as an opportunity for the EU to attempt to take a larger role in world affairs. This stunning resolution can be found here, and it should deeply concern those who love the nation of Israel.

The resolution agreed to by the European foreign ministers appears to call for Israel and the Palestinians to divide the land of Israel along pre-1967 borders....

The European Union will not recognise any changes to the pre-1967 borders including with regard to Jerusalem, other than those agreed by the parties.

The document also unilaterally recognizes East Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestinian state....

If there is to be a genuine peace, a way must be found through negotiations to resolve the status of Jerusalem as the future capital of two states.

Of course many in the Israeli are less than thrilled about this EU resolution.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry recently released a statement in which it indicated that if EU foreign ministers were to push too hard, it would seriously hurt their chances of being involved in future negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians....

"The process being led by Sweden harms the European Union’s ability to take part as a significant mediator in the political process between Israel and the Palestinians."

In response to the EU resolution, Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat issued a statement Tuesday afternoon which stated that the decision represented "real danger" for the future of Jerusalem and that the plan outlined by the EU would "never work."

The truth is that the EU should not be meddling in the affairs of Israel like this, but the Scriptures do tell us that the city of Jerusalem would become a "stumbling block" in the last days.

In Zechariah 12:3 it says this....

"In that day I will make Jerusalem a stumbling block for all people"

That is clearly what is happening.

Jerusalem has become a stumbling stone.

Even if negotiations with the Palestinians are "successful" in the short term, the reality is that war is coming and there will not be lasting peace in Jerusalem until Jesus returns.

For much more on the situation in the Middle East, please visit our new website: The Last Days.