Category: Resource Notes

There are few things more important than understanding the times you live in.

In the Old Testament men from the Tribe of Issachar were commended because they understood the times and knew what to do. They helped bring about the ascension of King David and the establishment of Christ’s lineage. On the other hand, the generation who rejected Christ was criticized for not knowing the signs of the times, and they destroyed their nation. So it can be seen that understanding the times is the key to destiny.

One of the reasons that Jesus was so critical of His generation was the book of Daniel. Daniel’s prophecies described the nations of Babylon, Persia, Greece and Rome which came into power over Israel. He described the desecration and rededication of the Temple. And, most importantly, His prophecy of the 70 7’s pinpoints the year when Jesus began His ministry and dated His atoning death 3 ½ years later. Daniel wrote the history of the nations, Israel, and the ministry of Jesus almost 600 years before it happened. The signs were there for anyone to see.

Our generation also has a prophetic book which records the history of the nations and Israel, and of the coming of Christ. Our book also tells of a new prophetic player, the Church. This book spans a
period of almost 2000 years with amazingly detailed pictures of the nations, the church, Israel, and the second coming of Christ. We can look to the book of Revelation for the signs of our times.

Let us start with the nations, whose history is written in the vision of Babylon in the 17th chapter of Revelation. Here the book shows a seven headed beast which we are told represents seven great empires. Five, being Babylon, Egypt, Assyria/Babylon, Persia and Greece, had fallen when the book was written. The sixth was Rome, which ruled when the book was written. The seventh is believed to be the reformed Roman empire under the Popes. By now, of course, the sixth and seventh kingdoms are in the past along with the other five.

The vision next describes 10 Kings, which would be the European nations which formed after the Popes lost their power. These 10 nations became the great colonial empires and they, and their offspring, did in fact rule the world until the middle of the 20th century. Just look at a world map in 1914 to see the accuracy of the prophecy from Revelation.

But then two world wars broke out and led to the dissolution of the colonial empires. The 10 Kings are no longer in power, but they will make way for the 8th King, whom we call the Anti-Christ.
So, in the history of the nations, we are at the twilight of the era of the 10 Kings and are awaiting the appearance of the 8th King, the Anti-Christ. He is not here yet, and we know he is coming, but this is no time to hide out in fear as some are suggesting. We are not yet in the time of the end.

The times of the Church can be understood from the vision of the Seven Seals, which are opened by Christ because He purchased the Church with His sacrifice. The first four seals, popularly known as the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, actually represent four false religious systems which have attacked the Church. The white horse represents persecution under pagan Rome, the red horse war with Islam, the black horse persecution by the Secularists, and the pale horse persecution by the emerging New Age movement. All of these are present in the world today, with the New Age movement making its national debut in Hitler’s Nazi Germany.

The fifth seal answers the question of when God will bring an end to the persecution of the Church. It will end, says He, when the number of the Church has been completed. In other words, God is holding back the end while He is building His Church. And, if you look around the world today, God is bulding His Church by millions and hundreds of millions. This is the Great Age of the Harvest, the most glorious and exciting time in the history of the Church. And we who understand the times must forget about hiding in the hills and instead partner with God in His Great Harvest as this Age is winding down.

Time is also winding down for Israel, and its history can be told from the vision of the Seven Trumpets. The first four trumpet visions describe the effect of the Church’s enemies on Israel. Thus, the Romans drove them out of the land, the Islamics took the blazing Temple Mount, the Secularists persecuted the Jews, and the New Age Nazis killed one third of the “Sun, Moon and Stars,” a prophetic description of the Jews. As with the Church, these four trumpet visions are now history.

The fifth trumpet vision describes a people who worship a meteorite, are told not to harm the trees or grass and who have the key to the Abyss. This is an amazing description of the Arabs , who are prophesied to wage a 150 year war on Israel. This war, which began with Israel’s nationhood in 1948, would last until 2098 if the 150 year prophecy is correctly understood. Thus, there will be no peace in the Middle East as the world marches on toward the end of time.

The Bible tells us that after our times the Anti-Christ will arise on the strength of a new religion similar to the New Age religion. He will start a world war and will be victorious, establishing a totalitarian state which persecutes Christians and Jews. The Church will be “raptured” to meet Jesus, but only after He has destroyed the Anti-Christ in the battle of Armageddon. The Church is instructed to have patience, endurance and faithfulness during this time.

So we, too, should have patience, endurance, and above all faithfulness as we understand our times. It is true that the dark times of the Anti-Christ are coming, and the world will be unstable because Israel will be at war with the Arabs until then. However, this is also the Golden Age of the Church and the greatest time ever to be alive for Christians.

Our calling, and our destiny, are to partner with God in His Great Harvest until the number of the Church is completed and Jesus comes to take us home.

It is our prayer that, like the men of Issachar, we will understand the times and know what to do.

It is time to revisit a classic work by Niall Ferguson, a recognized economic historian and bestselling author, who has identified a crisis in Western societies which he named in his book title The Great Degeneration.

The symptoms of social decay are all around us. The economies of the Western European countries have become stagnant, with little or no growth and rising unemployment. In the U.S. President Trump has revitalized the economy with his tax cuts and regulatory rollbacks, but our prosperity is under attack by Progressives and Socialists who want to impoverish the country through climate extremism and Big Government. Even with its current prosperity the economic future of the U.S. is clouded by the unfunded U.S. government debt, which is over 15 times Gross National Product and 3 times total U.S. net worth. This looming collapse of the once vibrant Western Economies is the “Great Degeneration.”

While the symptoms are economic, Ferguson identifies four root causes which go far beyond economics:

1. Western democracies have pandered to their voters by creating the huge unfunded welfare programs which are beginning to depress economic growth and opportunity. Essentially, we have committed massive theft of the resources of future generations.

2. Governments have instituted ever more complex regulations which have the effect of choking off economic growth and prosperity. The cost to the U.S. economy alone is almost 2 trillion annually. In their pride, governments fail to see the consequences of their regulations, such as the 2008 housing meltdown being caused by mandated expansion of home ownership, and then pile even more regulations to “fix” the problem they created.

3. The rule of law, which is foundational for the protection of our property, prosperity, and freedom, is under attack. Governments have whittled away at our rights in the guise of national security or crime fighting. The truth is, we live in an emerging police state where government power is turned against political opponents, entrepreneurs, and politically incorrect groups including the Church.

4. The fourth symptom of degeneration is the decline in voluntary civic organizations such as charitable organizations, private schools, and Churches. These organizations are increasingly being supplanted by government programs, as people are abandoning their responsibilities to care for their cities, schools, and neighbors. The result is a loveless dependency on government which alienates both the giver and recipient.

From a Christian perspective, these signs of degeneration illuminate the sins of our age. We have not only stolen from our children, we have also murdered many of them and sacrificed their educations and futures for political gain. Thinking ourselves wise, we have become fools by crippling our society with a vast web of destructive regulations and laws. We have sold our freedom for empty promises of safety and government benefits. And even the Church has abandoned many of its functions to the god of government.

As we see our sins and see the “Great Degeneration” all around us, the question is what to do about it. Ferguson pins his hope on a revival of voluntary civic organizations, focusing on education outside of the Government schools. Yet he overlooks the largest voluntary organization of them all, the Church, which still has 2 of 3 Americans as members. Our only chance to save our societies is through a revival in the Church.

We must start with repentance of our generational thefts and murders, and our idolatry of the government. We must defend the freedom of religion and speech, and the foundational Biblical principles of private property and free enterprise. At the same time the Church must take up its mantle of ministry to the poor and the marginalized, bringing social justice not through the false promises of police state coercion, but through the love of God. And Christians must join together in unity to speak with one voice, Christ’s voice, as He intended (John 17:23)

As intercessors, we must join together to pray for a revival in our Churches, so that God’s people will seek His face and He will heal our land (2 Chronicles 7:14)..

Only God can turn around The Great Degeneration.

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 a 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 and 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 Chronicles 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 used 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 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. Misguided pastors confuse love with exploitation to 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.

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

On July 4, we celebrate the signing of the Declaration of Independence and call 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, gender, 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 God given 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.

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

On June 28, 1914, 105 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.

This week on 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, while 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). You may have a free download of our book The Stars of His Coming at www.dropbox.com/sh/qa0m17n2q1f6gvv/AAAil7jgo8QIJHAmaHZEdbtya?dl=0 for more information.

Sadly these important spiritual times were hijacked by the ancient 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 New Age, or 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 which dominated these civilizations. 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.