Why China Isn't a Superpower

Why China Isn't a Superpower - Frank Dikotter

China Crippled

Malaysian Flight MH370

Chinese Tofu Construction

The Illusion of Chinese Strength

Fake Steel and Chinese Builders

China is Finished & So is Obama - Mark Taylor

The Chinese Cannot Replace the U.S. Market - Rod D. Martin

China’s Tofu-Dreg Projects Spark Anti-China Wave in Thailand

Mark Taylor - Riots to Stop Obama from being Prosecuted

Mark Taylor - Riots to Stop Obama from being Prosecuted

China is Finished & So is Obama
ObamaGate
Be Known by Hell
Dream:  A Destructive Group Cut Off

_____

"A Chinese spy, Dong Jingwei, has turned himself in to the US authorities. Dong made some bombshell revelations. According to the Chinese spy, the 'pandemic' was planned by China as a way to attack the Western economy and later buy its best companies at cheap prices. Of course, the Chinese attack was successful because Western governments helped Beijing with suicidal lockdowns and the other Covid restrictions. The Chinese spy also stated that at least 1/3 of the Chinese students in the US are spies. However, these are not the most shocking revelations made by the Chinese spy. Dong said that he has the pedopornographic material of Hunter Biden and he already delivered these pictures to the US authorities. He also has proof of Joe Biden's business ties with China. This is the bomb that Trump put under the chair of the deep state and Communist China. The blast will be devastating."

--Cesare Sacchetti

Status / Gab Social

Christian Exodus from California

Three Witnesses

II Corinthians 13: 1:  "In the mouth of two or three witnesses shall every word be established."

A few days ago, I was hitchhiking out of Mountain Home, Idaho and I got a ride with a guy all the way to the intersection just south of Bellevue.  He told me that the Lord told him to move out of California ten years ago.  He now lives with his family in Idaho Falls.

The next ride going north, this guy said that the Lord told him to pick me up; he gave me a ride to Hailey.  He told me that he used to live and work in San Diego and had planned on retiring there with his wife.  But then his wife began to have these dreams.  In the dreams, she saw these Chinese soldiers attacking people in the United States (California?).  So he and his wife left California a year ago and now live in Hailey.  I asked him if the Chinese soldiers in his wife's dreams were part of an invasion force.  He said, no, that the Chinese soldiers were already here in the United States. 

Yesterday I was walking out of Stanley, Idaho when this guy with a pickup and trailer stopped to give me a ride.  His pickup and trailer were jam-packed with stuff, so it would have been hard for me to ride with him; I told him that I would get another ride.  He told me that he was leaving Burney, California permanently and moving to Salmon, Idaho.

The Lord has been moving Christians out of California for a number of years now.  I was hitchhiking in Idaho a few years ago and this guy from Winchester picked me up.  He said that he had heard of many Christians leaving California for eastern Washington, northern Idaho and western Montana.

(I hitchhiked out of northern California on the 12th of May.  I had been working for some friends for the past several months in Modoc County.  Maybe that is the last time I will be in California.) 

Kim Clement Prophecy of China vs USA Fulfilled

_____

I saw this in Range Magazine:

WHAT'S YOUR CHOICE?

CALIFORNIA
The governor of California is jogging with his dog along a nature trail.  A coyote jumps out and attacks and kills the governor's dog, then bites the governor.  The governor starts to intervene, but reflects upon the movie Bambi and then realizes he should stop because the coyote is only doing what is natural.  He calls Animal Control, which captures the coyote and bills the state $200 testing it for diseases and $500 for relocating it.  He calls the veterinarian.  The vet collects the dead dog and bills the state $200 testing it for diseases.  The governor goes to the hospital and spends $3,500 getting checked for diseases from the coyote and getting his wound bandaged.  The running trail gets shut down for six months while Fish & Game conducts a $100,000 survey to make sure the area is now free of dangerous animals.  The governor spends $50,000 in state funds implementing a "coyote awareness program" for residents of the area.  The state Legislature spends $2 million to study how to better treat rabies and how to permanently eradicate the disease throughout the world.  The governor's security agent is fired for not stopping the attack.  The state spends $150,000 to hire and train a new agent with additional special training for the nature of coyotes.  PETA protests the coyote's relocation and files a $5 million suit against the state.

TEXAS
The governor of Texas is jogging with his dog along a nature trail.  A coyote jumps out and attacks his dog.  The governor shoots the coyote with his state-issued pistol and keeps jogging.  The governor spent 50 cents on a .45 ACP hollow-point cartridge.  The buzzards eat the dead coyote.  And that, my friends, is why California is broke and Texas is not.

--Range Magazine
  Fall 2017


Flee California!
God Will Draw the Wicked into Cities Marked for Destruction
It's Time For Justice
Brian's Dream about the United States and Africa
Californian's Fleeing 'Nanny State' for Texas

This is Sodom! This is Sodom!
Southern California Wildfires
Los Angeles Earthquake Dream

The Destruction of California
California:  The Great American Wasteland

Truckers leaving California and will not deliver in California again

Watchman Nee - My Top 20 Quotes

Watchman Nee, 1903-1972

This is from the blog CrossQuotes:

Victory is the normal experience of a Christian; defeat should be the abnormal experience.

A Christian life is an unending engagement on the battlefield.

A Christian should know more about the operation of his spirit than about the activity of his mind.

Our prayers lay the track down on which God’s power can come. Like a mighty locomotive, his power is irresistible, but it cannot reach us without rails.

A forgiven sinner is quite different from an ordinary sinner, and a consecrated Christian is quite different from an ordinary Christian.

Our old history ends with the Cross; our new history begins with the resurrection.

The Blood deals with what we have done, whereas the Cross deals with what we are. The Blood disposes of our sins, while the Cross strikes at the root of our capacity for sin….

True spiritual life depends not on probing our feelings and thoughts from dawn to dusk but on “looking off” to the Savior!

He can only keep those who have handed themselves over to Him.

Now is the hour we should humbly prostrate ourselves before God, willing to be convicted afresh of our sins by the Holy Spirit.

Christians should not be content merely with knowing mentally the doctrine of the Holy Spirit as given in the Bible; they also need to know Him experimentally.

Oftentimes a carnal Christian is troubled by outside matters. Persons or affairs or things in the world around readily invade his inward man and disturb the peace in his spirit.

If you would test the character of anything, you only need to enquire whether that thing leads you to God or away from God.

They simply do what they feel like doing.

God wants us to love Him more than our Isaac.

God’s means of delivering us from sin is not by making us stronger and stronger, but by making us weaker and weaker. That is surely rather a peculiar way of victory, you say; but it is the divine way. God sets us free from the dominion of sin, not by strengthening our old man but by crucifying him; not by helping him to do anything, but by removing him from the scene of action.

The sight of any trouble strikes terror into the heart of those who do not have faith, but those who trust Him say, “Here comes my food!”

The breaking of the alabaster box and the anointing of the Lord filled the house with the odor, with the sweetest odor. Everyone could smell it. Whenever you meet someone who has really suffered; been limited, gone through things for the Lord, willing to be imprisoned by the Lord, just being satisfied with Him and nothing else, immediately you scent the fragrance. There is a savor of the Lord. Something has been crushed, something has been broken, and there is a resulting odor of sweetness.

Outside of Christ, I am only a sinner, but in Christ, I am saved. Outside of Christ, I am empty; in Christ, I am full. Outside of Christ, I am weak; in Christ, I am strong. Outside of Christ, I cannot; in Christ, I am more than able. Outside of Christ, I have been defeated; in Christ, I am already victorious. How meaningful are the words, “in Christ.”

Historically, Pentecost followed Calvary; experientially, being filled with the power of the Holy Spirit follows the bearing of the cross.

People who are lazy, careless, doubtful-minded or arrogant need not expect God to reveal His secret or covenant to them.

Following Christ

This is from Christian Quote of the Day:

"All who follow Jesus of Nazareth should be prepared for disgrace, not glory."

  --Watchman Nee

Spiritual or Mental?

Excerpt from The Messenger of the Cross by Watchman  Nee:

Page 80-81:  "Today's danger is that many people are seeking the knowledge of the Bible with their mind.  They understand a few mysteries, comprehend many spiritual principles, dig out some deeper meanings of God's word, and even appreciate to a certain degree the accomplished work of Christ.  Yet these are all in their mind.  These are not given them by the Holy Spirit and there is therefore no practical power involved.  With the result that the Bible is reduced to the level of a scientific treatise in which the reader and the writer have no personal contact whatsoever.  On the other hand, the word of God--though its contents had been spoken long ago and later recorded in what we have as the Bible--is nonetheless in the Holy Spirit even as God is in the Spirit.  If the reader receives God's word directly without leaning on the power of the Spirit, he will have no relationship with God.  This will reduce the value of God's word and make it as one of the dead books of the world."

As America Has Done to Israel/God's Final Warning to America

Map of China-Japan disputed islands

As America Has Done to Israel/God's Final Warning to America

The Deeper Work of the Cross

"When we forsake physical happiness and mundane pleasures we are apt to conclude that the cross has finished its perfect work in us. We do not perceive that in God’s work of annulling the old creation in us there remains a deeper cross awaiting us. God wishes us to die to His joy and live to His will. Even if we feel joyous because of God and His nearness (in contrast to being joyous because of fleshly and earthly things), God’s aim nevertheless is not for us to enjoy His joy but to obey His will. The cross must continue to operate till His will alone is left. If we rejoice in the bliss God dispenses but renounce the suffering He also dispenses, then we have yet to experience the deeper circumcision by the cross."

"This is a practical cross by which the Lord reveals to us whether we are living for Him by faith or living for ourselves by feeling. Frequently have we heard people say, 'I live for Christ.' What does this really convey? Many saints assume that if they labor for the Lord or love the Lord they are living for Christ. This is far from being exactly so. To live for the Lord means to live for His will, for His interest, and for His kingdom. As such, there is nothing for self--not the slightest provision for self-comfort, self-joy, or self-glory. To follow the mind of God because of comfort or joy is strictly forbidden. To recoil from, to cease or delay in, obedience because of feeling depressed, vapid or despondent is positively impermissible. We ought to know that physical suffering alone may not be regarded as enduring for the Lord, for often our bodies will be bearing pain while our hearts are full of joy. If we actually suffer for Him, then not only do our bodies suffer but our hearts feel pained as well. Though there is not the least joyfulness, we yet press on. Let us understand that to live for the Lord is to reserve nothing for self but to deliver it willingly to death. He who is able to accept everything gladly from the Lord—including darkness, dryness, flatness—and completely disregard self is he who lives for Him."

"We should inquire once again as to what the life of faith is. It is one lived by believing God under any circumstance: 'If he slay me,' says Job, 'yet would I trust in Him' (13.15 Darby). That is faith. Because I once believed, loved and trusted God I shall believe, love and trust Him wherever He may put me and however my heart and body may suffer. Nowadays the people of God expect to feel peaceful even in the time of physical pain. Who is there who dares to renounce this consolation of heart for the sake of believing God? Who is there who can accept God’s will joyfully and continuously commit himself to Him even though he feels that God hates him and desires to slay him? That is the highest life. Of course God would never treat us like that. Nevertheless in the walk of the most advanced Christians they seem to experience something of this apparent desertion by God. Would we be able to remain unmoved in our faith in God if we felt thus? Observe what John Bunyan, author of Pilgrim’s Progress, proclaimed when men sought to hang him: 'If God does not intervene I shall leap into eternity with blind faith come heaven, come hell!' There was a hero of faith! In the hour of despair can we too say, 'O God, though You desert me yet will I believe You'? Emotion begins to doubt when it senses blackness, whereas faith holds on to God even in the face of death.

"How few have arrived at such a level! How our flesh resists such a walk with God alone! The natural disinclination for cross-bearing has impeded many in their spiritual progress. They tend to reserve a little pleasure for their own enjoyment. To lose everything in the Lord, even self-pleasure, is too thoroughgoing a death, too heavy a cross! They can be fully consecrated to the Lord, they can be suffering untold pain for Him, they can even pay a price for following the will of God, but they cannot forsake that obviously trifling feeling of self-pleasure. Many cherish this momentary comfort; their spiritual life rests on this tiny twinge of feeling. Were they to exercise the courage to sacrifice themselves to God’s fiery furnace, showing no pity or love for self, they would make great strides on their spiritual pathway. But too many of God’s people remain subservient to their natural life, trusting what is seen and felt for safety and security: they have neither the courage nor the faith to exploit the unseen, the unfelt, the untrodden. They have already drawn a circle around themselves; their joy or sorrow hinges upon a little gain here or a little loss there; they accept nothing loftier. Thus are they circumscribed by their own petty self.

"Were the Christian to recognize that God wishes him to live by faith, he would not murmur against God so frequently nor would he conceive these thoughts of discontent. How swiftly would his natural life be cut away by the cross if he could accept the God-given parched feeling and could esteem everything given him by God as excellent. Were it not for his ignorance or unwillingness, such experiences would deal with his soul life most practically, enabling him to live truly in the spirit. How sad that many succeed at nothing greater in their lives than the pursuit of a little feeling of joy. The faithful, however, are brought by God into genuine spiritual life. How godly is their walk! When they examine retrospectively what they have experienced they readily acknowledge that the ordering of the Lord is perfect: for only because of those experiences did they renounce their soul life. Today’s crying need is for believers to hand themselves over completely to God and ignore their feeling.

"This should not at all be misconstrued to signify, however, that henceforth we shall become joyless persons. 'Joy in the Holy Spirit' is the greatest blessing in the kingdom of God (Rom. 14.17). The fruit of the Holy Spirit, moreover, is joy (Gal. 5.22). If this is so, then how can we reconcile this apparent inconsistency? Simply come to see that though we do lose joy in our feeling, nevertheless the joy we gain issues from a pure faith and cannot be destroyed. Joy of this caliber runs far deeper than emotion. In becoming spiritual we abandon the old desire for self-pleasure and hence additionally the former search for bliss; but the peace and joy of the spirit which arises from faith remains forever."

 

New Testament Circumcision

Burdens of the Spirit

The Spiritual Man 

by Watchman Nee 

Volume II 

Part Six: Walking After the Spirit 

Chapter 2: The Laws of the Spirit (5) Burdens of the Spirit 

 "The burdens of the spirit differ from the weights on the spirit. The latter proceed from Satan with the intent of crushing the believer and making him suffer, but the former issue from God in His desire to manifest His will to the believer so that he may cooperate with Him. Any weight on the spirit has no other objective than to oppress; it therefore usually serves no purpose and produces no fruit. A burden of the spirit, on the other hand, is given by God to His child for the purpose of calling him to work, to pray, or to preach. It is a burden with purpose, with reason, and for spiritual profit. We must learn how to distinguish the burden of the spirit from the weight on the spirit. 

 "Satan never burdens Christians with anything; he only encircles their spirit and presses in with a heavy weight. Such a load binds one’s spirit and throttles his mind from functioning. A person with a burden or concern from God merely carries it; but the one who is oppressed by Satan finds his total being bound. With the arrival of the power of darkness, a believer instantaneously forfeits his freedom. A God-given burden is quite the reverse. However weighty it may be, God’s concern is never so heavy as to throttle him from praying. The freedom of prayer will never be lost under any burden from God: yet the enemy’s weight which forces itself upon one’s spirit invariably denies one his freedom to pray. The burden imparted by God is lifted once we have prayed, but the heaviness from the enemy cannot be raised unless we fight and resist in prayer. The weight on the spirit steals in unawares, whereas the concern of the spirit results from God’s Spirit working in our spirit. The load upon the spirit is most miserable and oppressive, while the burden of the spirit is very joyous (naturally the flesh does not deem it so), for it summons us to walk together with God (see Matt. 11.30). It turns bitter only when opposed and its demand is not met. 

"All real works begin with burdens or concerns in the spirit. (Of course, when the spirit lacks any concern we need to exercise our minds.) When God desires us to labor or speak or pray, He first implants a burden in our spirit. Now if we are acquainted with the laws of the spirit we will not continue on carelessly with the work in hand and allow the burden to accrue. Nor will we neglectfully disregard the burden until it is no longer sensed. We should lay everything aside immediately to ferret out the meaning of this burden. Once we have discerned its import, we can act accordingly. And when the work called for is done, the burden then leaves us. 

"In order to receive burdens from God our spirit has to be kept continuously free and untrampled. Only an untrammeled spirit can detect the movement of the Holy Spirit. Any spirit which is already full of concerns has lost the sharpness of its intuitive sense and hence cannot be a good vessel. Due to his failure to act according to the burden which he already has received from God, the believer often finds himself painfully burdened for many days. During this period God is unable to give him any new one. Consequently, it is highly necessary to search out the meaning of a burden through prayer, with the help of the Holy Spirit and the exercise of one's mind." 

The Spiritual Man

Dr. John Sung:  Evangelist to China

The Messenger of the Cross by Watchman Nee

[15 December 2009]

John 12: 32: "And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me."

I will be staying here with a friend in Belgrade, Montana for a couple of nights. This morning I noticed a book by Watchman Nee, The Messenger of the Cross. I read Chapter One before I came to the library. Here are some good quotes:

Page 7: "Paul's message is the cross, and he himself is a crucified person. In the preaching of the cross, he adopts the way of the cross. A crucified person preaches the message of the cross in the spirit of the cross. How often what we preach is indeed the cross; but our attitude, our words and our feelings do not seem to bear witness to what we preach. Much preaching of the cross is not done in the spirit of the cross! Paul wrote to the Corinthian believers that he 'came not with excellency of speech or of wisdom when proclaiming' to them 'the testimony of God.' The testimony of God here refers to the word of the cross. Paul did not use lofty words of wisdom in proclaiming the cross but came in the spirit of the cross: 'My speech and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in the demonstration of the Spirit and of power.' Such is truly the spirit of the cross.

"The cross is the wisdom of God, though to unbelieving men it is foolishness. When we proclaim the 'foolish' message, we must assume the 'foolish' way, adopt the 'foolish' attitude, and use the 'foolish' words. The victory of Paul lies in the fact that he is indeed a crucified person. He can therefore proclaim the cross with the attitude as well as the spirit of the cross. He who has not experienced crucifixion will not be filled with the spirit of the cross; and consequently he is not fit to proclaim the message of the cross."

Page 8: "The word of the cross which we so often proclaim is actually not ours but is borrowed--it is gleaned from books or from searching the Scriptures with our brain power. People with clever minds and those who are used to preaching are particularly prone to such danger. I am afraid that all their research, study, reading, and hearing talks on the mystery of the cross in its various aspects is for other people and not first for themselves. Consistently thinking of other people and neglecting our own lives will eventually result in spiritual famine!"

Page 11: "We cannot give what we do not have. If all we have is thought, we can only give thought. If in our life we do not have the experience of co-death with Christ to overcome sin and self nor the experience of taking up the cross to follow the Lord and suffer with Him, and if our knowledge of the word of the cross is obtained through people's pens and mouths but we cannot impart life; all we can do is instill the idea of the life of the cross in people's minds. Only when we ourselves are transformed by the cross and have received its spirit as well as its life are we able to impart the cross to other people."

Page 12: "Man's thought, word, eloquence and argument can only stir up the human soul, since these reach to the soulical part of man. They merely excite man's emotion, mind and will. Life, however, may reach man's spirit; and all the works of the Holy Spirit are done in our spirit--that is, in our inward man (see Rom. 8.16; Eph .3.16). As we in our spiritual experience let flow our life in the spirit, the Holy Spirit will send forth His life to the spirits of others and cause them to receive either regenerated life or the life more abundant."

Page 13: "We become a living teaching and a living word; and what we preach is no longer simply an idea which we know but is our real life. This is the meaning of being 'doers of the word' according to the Biblical sense."

Page 15: "For if we really are full of the Spirit due to the deeper work of the cross in us, we will spontaneously diffuse life in our conversation and our talk--whether private or public--so as to enrich those with whom we have contact. This does not require any self-effort or self-fabrication, but should be something most natural. And this thus fulfills what the Lord Jesus declares in John 7: 38: 'He that believeth on me . . . from within him shall flow rivers of living water.'"

The Ronald Reagan Family

Dreams from the LORD 2007-2010
30 September 2010

Last night I had a dream where I was on a passenger train. It looked like the train was going through some mountains. Sitting across the aisle from me were Ronald and Nancy Reagan and their two small children: the boy looked like he was three years old and the girl looked like a few years older. Ronald Reagan was singing a song—I believe it was an American patriotic song. His wife, Nancy, glanced at me.

Then the train stopped at this station. We were in a foreign country. The Reagan family filed out of the train and onto the platform. It looked like we were in China. I followed behind the Reagan family as they left their seats. I did not get off at the exact place that they did. I may have got off the train at the next station.

_____

Dreams from the LORD 2011-2012
1 August 2009

Last night I had a dream where I saw President Ronald Reagan.  He was playing a guitar and looked very old.  It looked like he had been out of the White House for several years.  President Reagan was surrounded by many people—they looked like reporters.

President Reagan saw me, smiled at me and walked over to where I was standing.  We spoke for a short while.

Then this woman walked up to me; she looked like a reporter.  We talked for a while.  I told her that I had a book published.  She said that she had heard of it and told me the title of a book.  It was the wrong title.  I told her my book was High Plains Drifter.  I found a piece of paper, folded it in two and began writing High Plains Drifter:  A Hitchhiking Journey Across America.  I was writing with an old-fashioned fountain pen—the ink dripped onto the paper in a couple of places.  I was almost finished writing the title of my book when the dream ended.

Quotes from Thomas Jefferson
President McKinley's Dream
Ronald Reagan's Dream
A Dream about Donald Trump

Win Worley - Reagan Election & Reagan Assassination Attempt (20:10 - 22:00)

Consecrated to the Will of God - Watchman Nee

The Normal Christian Life
By Watchman Nee

Chapter 6: “The Path of Progress: Presenting Ourselves to God”

Page 102: “On one occasion a Chinese brother was traveling by train and found himself in a carriage together with three non-Christians who, in order to beguile the time, wished to play cards. Lacking a fourth to complete the game, they invited this brother to join them. ‘I am sorry to disappoint you,’ he said, ‘but I cannot join your game for I have not brought my hands with me.’ ‘Whatever do you mean?’ they asked in blank astonishment. ‘This pair of hands does not belong to me,’ he said, and then there followed the explanation of the transfer of ownership that had taken place in his life. That brother regarded the members of his body as belonging entirely to the Lord. That is true holiness.

“Paul says, ‘Present your members as servants to righteousness unto sanctification [A.V. ‘holiness to the Lord’ (Exod. 28:36)]. I gave myself over wholly to Christ: that is holiness.”

Page 103: “Then to what are we to be consecrated? Not to Christian work, but to the will of God, to be and to do whatever he requires.”

The Cross of Christ by Watchman Nee

17 August 2010

The Normal Christian Life by Watchman Nee
Chapter 2: “The Cross of Christ”:

Page 34: “So we see that objectively the Blood deals with our sins. The Lord Jesus has borne them on the Cross for us as our Substitute and has thereby obtained for us forgiveness, justification and reconciliation. But we must now go a step further in the plan of God to understand how he deals with the sin principle in us. The Blood can wash away my sins, but it cannot wash away my ‘old man.’ It needs the Cross to crucify me. The Blood deals with the sins, but the Cross must deal with the sinner.”

Pages 35-36: “How were we constituted sinners? By Adam’s disobedience. We do not become sinners by what we have done but because of what Adam has done and has become. I speak English, but I am not thereby constituted an Englishman. I am in fact a Chinese. So chapter 3 draws our attention to what we have done—‘all have sinned’—but it is nevertheless not because we have done it that we become sinners.

“I once asked a class of children, ‘Who is a sinner?’ and their immediate reply was, ‘One who sins.’ Yes, one who sins is a sinner, but the fact that he sins is merely the evidence that he is already a sinner; it is not the cause. One who sins is a sinner, but it is equally true that one who does not sin, if he is of Adam’s race, is a sinner too, and in need of redemption. Do you follow me? There are bad sinners and there are good sinners, there are moral sinners and there are corrupt sinners, but they are all alike sinners. We sometimes think that if only we had not done certain things all would be well; but the trouble lies far deeper than in what we do: it lies in what we are. A Chinese may be born in America and be unable to speak Chinese at all, but he is a Chinese for all that, because he was born a Chinese. It is birth that counts. So I am a sinner because I am born in Adam. It is a matter not of my behavior but of my heredity, my parentage. I am not a sinner because I sin, but I sin because I come from the wrong stock. I sin because I am a sinner.

“We are apt to think that what we have done is very bad, but that we ourselves are not so bad. God is taking pains to show us that we ourselves are wrong, fundamentally wrong. The root trouble is the sinner; he must be dealt with. Our sins are dealt with by the Blood, but we ourselves are dealt with by the Cross. The Blood procures our pardon for what we have done; the Cross procures our deliverance from what we are.”

The Spiritual Man

The American Malaise

Jimmy Carter and The Second Coming of Jimmy Carter

The Bible verses below describe the sinful condition of the United States today and the judgment of God that is happening now and the judgment that is to come. Judgment from God comes in varying degrees. The Lord doesn't necessarily have to wipe the United States off the face of the earth like Sodom and Gomorrah. God's judgment can be other things: like all the lukewarm, worldly churches in this nation. If the churches (and individuals) have no salt, our nation has nothing to preserve itself with.

Lamentations 4: 1: "How the gold is become dim! how is the most fine gold changed! the stones of the sanctuary are poured out in the top of every street." Lukewarm Christianity. Too many Christians are not abiding in Christ.

Lamentations 4: 2: "The precious sons of Zion, comparable to fine gold, how are they esteemed as earthen pitchers, the work of the hands of the potter!" Zion means the Presence of God. The sons of Zion have lost their salt; they have lost their light and their first love (The Word: the Lord Jesus Christ). They are of the earth, the world system, not of the Kingdom of Heaven. "All good things come from above."

Lamentations 4: 6: "For the punishment of the iniquity of the daughter of my people is greater than the punishment of the sin of Sodom, that was overthrown as in a moment, and no hands stayed on her." The punishment of the United States should be greater than Sodom because the Gospel of Jesus Christ is being preached here; the Gospel was not preached in Sodom.

Lamentations 4: 11-12: "The Lord hath accomplished his fury; he hath poured out his fierce anger, and hath kindled a fire in Zion, and it hath devoured the foundations thereof. The kings of the earth, and all the inhabitants of the world, would not have believed that the adversary and the enemy should have entered into the gates of Jerusalem." The adversary and the enemy are all of the Godless, anti-Christians in positions of power in our federal government.

Lamentations 4: 13-15: "For the sins of her prophets, and the iniquities of her priests, that have shed the blood of the just in the midst of her, They have wandered as blind men in the streets, they have polluted themselves with blood, so that men could not touch their garments. They cried unto them, Depart ye; it is unclean; depart, depart, touch not: when they fled away and wandered, they said among the heathen, They shall no more sojourn there." False prophets and false pastors always scratch the itchy ears of lukewarm congregations. "They have wandered as blind men in the streets." Sin always leads to blindness.

Lamentations 4: 22: "The punishment of thine iniquity is accomplished, O daughter of Zion; he will no more carry thee away into captivity: he will visit thine iniquity, O daughter of Edom; he will discover thy sins." The church (Zion) is always judged before the world (Edom).

Lamentations 5: 1-2: "Remember, O Lord, what is come upon us: consider, and behold our reproach. Our inheritance is turned to strangers, our houses to aliens." China and Japan own much of our national debt.

Lamentations 5: 7-8: "Our fathers have sinned, and are not; and we have borne their iniquities. Servants have ruled over us: there is none that doth deliver us out of their hand."

Lamentations 5: 16-17: "The crown is fallen from our head: woe unto us, that we have sinned! For this our heart is faint; for these things our eyes our dim."

Lamentations 5: 22: "But thou hast utterly rejected us; thou art very wroth against us."

Sometimes the destruction of a nation's economy has to come before there is repentance for sin. When the Bubonic Plague (The Black Death) hit Europe in 1347, 30 to 50 percent of the population died in the next few years and changed Europe forever. The Lord used the Bubonic Plague to judge Europe for sin.

Shiloh
Wrath of God
A Nation in Sin

Wrath of God: The Black Death

A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century
By Barbara W. Tuchman
Copyright 1978. Chapter 5.

“‘This is the End of the World’: The Black Death”

Page 92: “In October 1347, two months after the fall of Calais, Genoese trading ships put into the harbor of Messina in Sicily with dead and dying men at the oars. The ships had come from the Black Sea port of Caffa (now Feodosiya) in the Crimea, where the Genoese maintained a trading post. The diseased sailors showed strange black swellings about the size of an egg or an apple in the armpits and groin. The swellings oozed blood and pus and were followed by spreading boils and black blotches on the skin from internal bleeding. The sick suffered severe pain and died quickly within five days of the first symptoms. As the disease spread, other symptoms of continuous fever and spitting of blood appeared instead of the swellings or buboes. These victims coughed and sweated heavily and died even more quickly, within three days or less, sometimes in 24 hours. In both types everything that issued from the body—breath, sweat, blood from the buboes and lungs, bloody urine, and blood-blackened excrement—smelled foul. Depression and despair accompanied the physical symptoms, and before the end ‘death is seen seated on the face.’

“The disease was bubonic plague, present in two forms: one that infected the bloodstream, causing the buboes and internal bleeding, and was spread by contact; and a second, more virulent pneumonic type that infected the lungs and was spread by respiratory infection. The presence of both at once cause the high mortality and speed of contagion. So lethal was the disease that cases were known of persons going to bed well and dying before they woke, of doctors catching the illness at a bedside and dying before the patient. So rapidly did it spread from one to another that to a French physician, Simon de Covino, it seemed as if one sick person ‘could infect the whole world.’ The malignity of the pestilence appeared more terrible because its victims knew no prevention and no remedy.”

Page 93: “Rumors of a terrible plague supposedly arising in China and spreading through Tartary (Central Asia) to India and Persia, Mesopotamia, Syria, Egypt, and all of Asia Minor had reached Europe in 1346. They told of a death toll so devastating that all of India was said to be with no one left alive. As added up by Pope Clement VI at Avignon, the total of reported dead reached 23,840,000. In the absence of a concept of contagion, no serious alarm was felt in Europe until the trading ships brought their black burden of pestilence into Messina while other infected ships from the Levant carried it to Genoa and Venice.”

Page 94: “Although the mortality rate was erratic, ranging from one fifth in some places to nine tenths or almost total elimination in others, the overall estimate of modern demographers has settled—for the area extending from India to Iceland—around the same figure expressed in Froissart’s casual words: ‘a third of the world died.’ His estimate, the common one at the time, was not an inspired guess but a borrowing of St. John’s figure for mortality from plague in Revelation, the favorite guide to human affairs of the Middle Ages.

“A third of Europe would have meant about 20 million deaths. No one knows in truth how many died. Contemporary reports were an awed impression, not an accurate count. In crowded Avignon, it was said, 400 died daily; 7,000 houses emptied by death were shut up; a single graveyard received 11,000 corpses in six weeks; half the city’s inhabitants reportedly died, including 9 cardinals or one third of the total, and 70 lesser prelates. Watching the endlessly passing death carts, chroniclers let normal exaggeration take wings and put the Avignon death toll at 62,000 and even at 120,000, although the city’s total population was probably less than 50,000.”

Page 103: “To the people at large there could be but one explanation—the wrath of God. Planets might satisfy the learned doctors, but God was closer to the average man. A scourge so sweeping and unsparing without any visible cause could only be seen as Divine punishment upon mankind for its sins. It might even be God’s terminal disappointment in his creature. Matteo Villani compared the plague to the Flood in ultimate purpose and believed he was recording ‘the extermination of mankind.’”

Page 104: “Beyond demons and superstition the final hand was God’s. The Pope acknowledged it in a Bull of September 1348, speaking of the ‘pestilence with which God is afflicting the Christian people.’ To the Emperor John Cantacuzene it was manifest that a malady of such horrors, stenches, and agonies, and especially one bringing the dismal despair that settled upon its victims before they died, was not a plague ‘natural’ to mankind but ‘a chastisement from Heaven.’ To Piers Plowman ‘these pestilences were for pure sin.’”

Page 109: “The hostility of man proved itself against the Jews. On charges that they were poisoning the wells, with intent ‘to kill and destroy the whole of Christendom and have lordship over all the world,’ the lynchings began in the spring of 1348 on the heels of the first plague deaths. The first attacks occurred in Narbonne and Carcassonne, where Jews were dragged from their houses and thrown into bonfires. While Divine punishment was accepted as the plague’s source, people in their misery still looked for a human agent upon whom to vent the hostility that could not be vented on God. The Jew, as the eternal stranger, was the most obvious target. He was the outsider who had separated himself by choice from the Christian world, whom Christians for centuries had been taught to hate, who was regarded as imbued with unsleeping malevolence against all Christians. Living in a distinct group of his own kind in a particular street or quarter, he was also the most feasible target, with property to loot as a further inducement.”

Page 123: “The plague accelerated discontent with the Church at the very moment when people felt a greater need of spiritual reassurance. There had to be some meaning in the terrorizing experience God had inflicted. If the purpose had been to shake man from his sinful ways, it had failed. Human conduct was found to be ‘wickeder than before,’ more avaricious and grasping, more litigious, more bellicose, and this was nowhere more apparent than in the Church itself. Clement VI, though hardly a spiritual man, was sufficiently shaken by the plague to burst out against his prelates in a tirade of anger and shame when they petitioned him in 1351 to abolish the mendicant orders. And if he did, the Pope replied, ‘What can you preach to the people? If on humility, you yourselves are the proudest of the world, puffed up, pompous and sumptuous in luxuries. If on poverty, you are so covetous that all the benefices in the world are not enough for you. If on chastity—but we will be silent on this, for God knoweth what each man does and how many of you satisfy your lusts.’ In this sad view of his fellow clerics the head of the Church died a year later.

“‘When those who have the title of shepherd play the part of wolves,’ said Lothar of Saxony, ‘heresy grows in the garden of the Church.’ While the majority of people doubtless plodded on as before, dissatisfaction with the Church gave impetus to heresy and dissent, to all those seeking God through mystical sects, to all the movements for reform which were ultimately to break apart the empire of Catholic unity.”

The Plague of Justinian (541-542 AD)
The Killer Angels
Watching Men Die

Wrath of God:  The Death Injection

You Reap What You Sow

Psalm 94:23:  "And he shall bring upon them their own iniquity, and shall cut them off in their own wickedness; yea, the LORD our God shall cut them off."