Category: Resource Notes

This week marks the anniversary of the beginning of the First World War.

There were many blunders and missed opportunities for peace leading up to the outbreak of the war, but most historians blame the Germans for the start of hostilities. The lesson for Christians today is how the home for Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation could have fallen so far as to start the First World War and then loose Adolph Hitler on his bloody march through history. The concern of Christians is that America seems to be on the same path.

By the 1880’s Germany had become the richest and most powerful country on the European continent. However, as the Germans prospered they became complacent and lost their religious zeal. German theologians began teaching the documentary hypothesis, denying the truth of the Bible and destroying the faith of many. The government stepped into the spiritual void, substituting the state for God and marginalizing the Church.

Spiritually weak and desensitized to the Scriptures, the Christians made no outcry when Kaiser Wilhelm I brought the Alter of Zeus from Pergamum to Berlin. This Altar is widely believed to have been the Throne of Satan described in Revelation 2:13. The curse which accompanies such an object, setting the owner apart for destruction (Deuteronomy 7:26), caught the Germans by surprise.

The curse first worked on the Kaiser’s family. His son, Frederick, would have been a good king but never ruled because he died of cancer three months after the Kaiser died in 1888. Wilhelm’s grandson, Wilhelm II, an immature, blustering, arrogant man who was unfit to rule, became Kaiser instead. Under Wilhelm II, Germany became more militant and belligerent. He started a naval arms race with Britain and led his nation and Europe into World War I in 1914. The lost war drove Wilhelm II from Germany in 1918 and brought the curse to all of Germany.

The defeat of the Germans in World War I did not bring repentance or an end to their suffering. Financial depression wrecked the nation, and social order began to break down. By 1932, fear of a communist revolution wracked the German elites, and they looked for a strongman to restore order. They turned to Adolph Hitler, who quickly assumed dictatorial powers and created a ruthless police state to retain power. By 1932, much of the German Protestant Church had become a faithless, powerless institution. Christ was viewed as simply a good man and sin considered a psychological problem. Hitler became sure he could control a Christless church, and for the most part, he was correct.

As a result of German church’s failure to repent and return to God, Hitler marched unopposed into World War II. Millions died in the war, and millions more Jews and others were killed in the Holocaust. The victorious Allies devastated and divided Germany. The church and the nation that birthed the Protestant Reformation experienced a tragic fall.

Like Germany was once, America has been a beacon of light in a dark world. Like Germany, we became prosperous and complacent, allowing our universities to rob the faith of millions. As with Germany, the government has taken over many functions of the Church and many are trying to drive the Church out of the public square. Our curse and our Holocaust is the abomination of abortion, which has killed over 60 million American babies. America stands on the edge of disaster, blinded by its power and prosperity, like Germany was in 1880’s.

In 1887 God sent a warning to the Germans, a Great Eclipse which ran across the country on the first day of Teshuvah, the 40 day Jewish repentance season. The Church ignored God’s invitation to return to Him and avoid judgment before it was too late, with tragic consequences.

Now, God is sending a warning to America like the warning He sent to Germany, the Great American Eclipse of August 21, 2017 on the first day of Teshuvah. God is giving us another chance to avoid the fate of Germany. For more information see our newly released book, Teshuvah Eclipses or our website at www. Teshuvah2017.com

Join us in praying through Teshuvah for repentance, Church unity, and healing our land.

Before it is too late.

The Bible speaks of unity as something that is “good and pleasant” (Psalm 133:1), and in unity “The Lord bestows His blessings” (Psalm 133:3). Jesus prayed for Christian unity, “May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me” (John 17:23).

For 200 years after the Protestant Reformation, the churches had tried to achieve unity by force. Countless martyrs, both Protestant and Catholic, were created by wars and persecution. The only unity achieved was the unity of the grave.

By the early 17th century, the nations were starting to appreciate the benefits of tolerance, but were unable to find a way to realize the promised benefits of Christian unity. They had not yet learned that unity is not the same as uniformity. To quote Pope Benedict XVI, “We should first try to find unity through diversity, in other words to accept what is fruitful in our divisions, to detoxify them, and to welcome the positive things that come precisely from diversity.”

It was not until the 18th century that Christians were taking their first halting steps toward unity in diversity, in the American Colonies.

The 13 American Colonies were a patchwork of religious beliefs. The Puritans were in Massachusetts, Quakers in Pennsylvania, Anglicans in Virginia, and Catholics in Maryland. Many other denominations were represented and quite a few Americans who had no religion at all. To reach this diverse group of people, God had to send something which would transcend their religious communities, which came to be known as the Great Awakening.

Beginning in 1739, George Whitfield preached the same message to all denominations, including Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Anglicans, Catholics, Quakers, Puritans, and Moravians. And, whereas prior reformers had tried to form new, pure denominations, Whitefield wanted his followers to reform the denomination they were in. Whitfield was the first to unite the Christians in the diverse denominations in Christ.

The Great Awakening prepared the American Colonies to unanimously come together to declare in the Declaration of Independence that God created all men equal. After the revolution the Americans united in their diversity to form the United States of America. When the Second Great Awakening came in 1801, it featured the largest Ecumenical meeting up to that point in modern history and Americans united in their diversity to help the needy and spread the Gospel at home and around the world.

Today America struggles under the weight of division as the Churches seem to be split between those who want only to help the needy and those who want only to spread the Gospel. Yet, if the nation is to survive, the Churches must unite in their diversity to both care for the needy and spread the gospel.

We must cry out to God for an awakening of unity in diversity which transcends the denominations like the Great Awakening and brings Americans together as in the meetings of the Second Great Awakening.

We ask you to pray for repentance, church unity, and healing our land during the 40 day Jewish season of Teshuvah, which begins with the Great American Eclipse on August 21 (See www.Teshuvah2017.com), and participate in ecumenical meetings such as Kairos 2017 to be held in Kansas City on October 24-26, 2017 (see www.kairos2017.com) .

Above all, pray that another Great Awakening will come to America’s we unite in our diversity once more.

In 1918 a new strain of influenza emerged which eventually killed as many as 100 million people. Unlike most illnesses, most of the victims were young and healthy. The reason for this mystery was soon discovered: the victims were not killed by the disease, but by their own immune system’s response to the disease.

Like the human body, our social body also has an immune system designed to fight off toxins. The immune system is composed of our laws and those who enforce them. The toxins are people whose behavior is damaging to society. But in America we are reaching the point where, like the 1918 influenza pandemic, our immune system is attacking the body.

Take the war on drugs. We all know that drug abuse is a terrible thing, so we passed laws against drug abuse and drug dealing. The effect of those laws was to criminalize common behavior in many minority communities and thrust the drug dealing business into a highly profitable big business. We passed more laws with tougher penalties, sending many minority community members to prison and allowing law enforcement to seize suspect property. The result is a devastated minority community and laws that let police confiscate cash from anyone, as in a recent case where a man on his way to buy a car had his money seized by police. The immune system has turned on the body, creating toxic results.

There is real oppression in the minority communities, but it comes not from the old evil of racism, but from the modern war on drugs. The minority community lives this reality, while most middle class whites are unable to understand what would drive young men into a life of drugs and gangs. Thus, more division is created as the social body is infected with more and more toxins.

It is time for Christians to deploy their spiritual weapons to bring healing to our society. The spiritual weapons needed are love and forgiveness, and we are going to have to let go of some of our cherished political positions to do so. We must admit that the war on drugs, like prohibition before it, is a good idea gone bad. We have made criminals richer and prisons fuller, destabilized minority communities, put all of our freedoms at risk, caused crime wars in our cities and abroad, and subsidized killers and terrorists around the world.

Drug crime can be stopped the same way prohibition era bootlegging was: legalize it, tame it, and tax it. Laws can be changed to restore our freedoms, and restoration can begin in the minority communities. Such monumental changes will not come unless the Church humbles itself, prays, seeks God’s face and repents (2 Chr 7:14). Then God will forgive and heal our land.

Let us pray that the Church will awaken to society’s immune system disorder and use its spiritual warfare weapons to heal our land.

Just ten days after the Americans celebrate their Revolution, the French celebrate theirs, on Bastille Day, July 14.

The two revolutions could not have been more different. The Americans honored God in their Declaration of independence. The French, on the other hand, adopted the atheistic, anti-Christian values of the French Enlightenment and set out to eradicate God from public life. Churches were closed, priests were persecuted, and the calendar was remade without any Christian holidays. To replace the Virgin Mary, the revolutionary leaders invented the atheistic “Goddess of Liberty”, which became the emblem of Godless Liberty.

The fruit of the revolutions was also very different. America became a beacon of hope for the world as it worked to make its dream of equality and God given rights become a reality. In France, the godless foundation of the revolution meant that all moral restraint on power evaporated, and the infamous Reign of Terror began. Neither life no liberty were safe, and even the revolutionary leaders were carried off one by one to the Terror. Finally order was restored but all hope of liberty vanished under the iron fisted rule of Napoleon Bonaparte. It turns out that Godless Liberty is no liberty at all.

Sad to say, the lesson of the French Revolution has been repeated over and over since then. The Communist revolutions in Russia, China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Cuba, and elsewhere produced massive death and eliminated freedom. The same holds true for the Nazis in Germany and the Fascists in Italy who, like Napoleon, led the whole world into war. The post colonial socialists in Africa grabbed power after elections, giving rise to the famous statement of “One man, one vote, one time”. The same process has also occurred in countries like Venezuela, Argentina and Ecuador where authoritarians have uses the promise of Godless Liberty to subvert Democratic intuitions.

Even in America our God given liberties have been eroded by the proponents of Godless Liberty. Beginning in the 1960’s, the Government has banned God from our public schools, allowed the murder of unborn, worked against Christian morality, and now mandated same sex “marriage.” At the same time, Big Government has increasingly limited the rights of Americans to exercise freedoms of religion, speech, and property. The fruit of the Godless Liberty in America has been fatherlessness, poverty, crime, and a Government which grows larger while the people grow poorer and smaller.

The success of Godless Liberty has come about because of failure by the Church to preach the gospel of love and truth. Lying pastors condone sexual sin, even gay marriage, when they should be setting people free in the name of Christ. Churches have substituted failed social programs for the life changing gospel of Christ. And the love of Christ is often hidden behind condemnation, political agendas, and Church division. America is on the same path which led the great nation of Germany downward from Martin Luther to Adolph Hitler.

Let us pray that the Church will repent of its sins and return to the lifesaving work of spreading the gospel and the love of Christ. We must humble ourselves, come together, and repent if our land is to be healed.

We invite you to join us in praying for repentance, Church unity, and healing of our land during the Hebrew repentance season of Teshuvah which begins with the “Great American Eclipse” on August 21, 2017. See our recently released book Teshuvah Eclipse on our website Teshuvah2017.com.

Let us also pray that the precious gift of Godly Liberty, and especially religious liberty, can overcome the evil of Godless Liberty.

Yesterday on July 4, we celebrated the signing of the Declaration of Independence and called it Independence Day. Actually, our Independence came 7 years later, in 1783. On July 4, 1776 we made a declaration of our basic principles, and so the holiday should really be called Declaration Day.
Our Founding Fathers declared first of all that all men were created equal. This powerful statement acknowledges that we are created by God, and that all else comes from Him. It was God who created us equal, with no preference for ancestry, skin color, or other distinction. They actually echoed the Biblical statement that, in Christ, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal 3:28).

Secondly, they declared that it was God who endowed us with inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. No one can take our life, because “God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son.” (I John 5:11 b). In the same way, it is the Spirit of the Lord who gives us freedom (2 Cor 3:17b), not to indulge ourselves, but to serve others in love (Gal 6:13). The Lord gives us the choice of which path to follow in pursuit of happiness (Deut 30:19), but he guides us to happiness by showing us that life, prosperity, and honor come from pursuit of righteousness and love (Prov 21:21).

In the many years since 1776, our nation has struggled to live up to the principles declared by our Founding Fathers. The stain of slavery and racism, denying God’s declaration of equality, has only now begun to disappear from society. Yet, in modern times, many have forgotten that our rights come from God, denying Him and looking to the State as our source of rights and happiness. Even the right to life has been subverted to a false freedom to serve ourselves. We stand in grave danger of losing the rights and freedoms declared so eloquently in 1776.

Its time to turn things around.

Let us start with ourselves and join the Founding Fathers in their declaration:
* God created us, and everything comes from Him.
* God created us equal, to be one in Christ.
* God has given us the right to life through Christ.
* God has given us freedom in order to serve others.
*God has given us the right to pursue genuine happiness through righteousness and love.
Let us pray that the Church will recapture the Spirit of Declaration Day and pass it on to a nation desperately in need of real equality, life, liberty, and happiness.

Today, on June 28, we remember two anniversary dates which are linked together in a cycle of bloodshed and unforgiveness.

On July 28, 1914, 103 years ago, a young Serbian terrorist assassinated the Archduke and Crown Prince of the great Austro-Hungarian Empire. The act led Austria-Hungary to revenge itself by declaring war on Serbia. The Russians entered the blood feud to protect their fellow Slavs, the Serbians. The Germans came to the support of Austria-Hungary, France and England came to the aid of Russia, and Europe erupted into the massive slaughter we now call World War I. All because of a cycle of unforgivness.

Five years and millions of deaths later, the war was officially brought to a close on June 28, 1919 in the Treaty of Versailles. Once again, unforgivness carried the day as the victorious Allies imposed draconian conditions on the defeated Germans. The resulting hardship and resentment created an opportunity for Adolph Hitler and his Nazi party to drive Europe into a second horrendous conflict which became the Second World War. Then, for another 50 years, the Russians extracted their revenge by turning the Eastern European nations into subservient police states. The First World War, called the “War to end all wars,” ended with the peace treaty of Versailles, which a critic called “The peace to end all peace.”

It was up to the Americans to break the cycle of unforgiveness. With the Marshall Plan in Europe and a humane occupation of Japan, the Americans turned their German and Japanese enemies into friends. America has also forgiven its cold war enemies in China, Vietnam, Russia, and Eastern Europe, leading the World into a time of prosperity and relative peace, and making way for the unprecedented worldwide Christian revival.

The American ability to forgive goes back to our history as a Christian nation. The Lord commands us to forgive our enemies, and the experience after the Second World War showed how the Biblical command to love our enemies produces Godly fruit of peace and revival. Forgiveness is perhaps the most powerful spiritual weapon to change the atmosphere and bring God’s answers into a situation.

There will always be those who are driven to attack others, and we thank God for those who protect us. But we must also know that there is no true peace without forgiveness.

Let us pray that we will remember that we are called to bless and not curse, and that we can use the spiritual weapon of forgiveness to end destructive cycles of unforgiveness.

Today, June 21 the Summer begins on the Summer Solstice.

Astronomically, the Summer Solstice is the day when the sun reaches its highest point in the sky over the northern hemisphere. It is also the longest day of the year. The opposite solstice, the Winter Solstice, is the day when the sun is lowest in the heavens and the night is longest. The other seasonal markers, the Spring and Fall Equinoxes, occur when the sun is at mid point and day and night are of equal length.

These important calendar dates are important in God’s religious calendar. The first three Hebrew feasts, pointing to Christ’s death and resurrection, occur near the Spring Equinox, which the last three feasts, picturing the second coming of Christ, occur near the Fall Equinox. The Spring and Winter are associated with the appearance of Christ in Hosea 6:3, and the story of Christ’s advent begins with the conception of John the Baptist which is believed to have occurred near the Winter Solstice in 7 BC. Summer is associated with the second coming of Christ, as we are told that the Summer is near when the fig tree (Israel) comes to life. (Matt 24:32). See our book The Stars of His Coming for more information.

These important spiritual times have also been hijacked by the followers of the religion of the False Messiah, the Pagans. The Winter Solstice came to symbolize the birth of the False Messiah, and structures like New Grange in Ireland are aligned with the sun on the Winter Solstice. Pagans celebrated the Spring Equinox as the beginning of the year, as it was in God’s calendar, and celebrated the harvest at the Fall Equinox. The Summer Solstice, when the sun is highest, marked the power of their Pagan False Messiahs, and temples like Stonehenge were aligned with the sun on the Summer Solstice.

In modern times, the believers in the Godhood religion (i.e. we are all Gods) have latched onto the Pagan calendar in an attempt to get in touch with the spirits behind Paganism. They have also tried to revitalize the ancient Pagan sites with their New Age religion. They can be seen at Stonehenge, New Grange, Chitzen Itza, Angkor Wat, Chaco Canyon, and other sites trying to bring back the demon spirits. And, of course, the High Holy Day for many is the Summer Solstice.

As Christians, we need to pray for those poor New Age souls who are falling into demonic bondage. We also need to remember that dates like the Summer Solstice were created by God for his glory, and we can celebrate them as part of God’s prophetic calendar.

Yes, the Summer is near, and we should be telling folks the real meaning: the return of Christ is near.