As Athen's Woes Grow

Those who don't know history are bound to repeat it. 

Sadly, since most of us have no clue about history we are in the process of repeating it.

Remember, when things collapse and order disappears...the majority of us will HAPPILY elect a leader who promises to restore order...so at least we can sleep at night....even if he is a Nazi OR even if he is the Antichrist.

If you want a glimmer of what is coming for Atlanta, Oakland, St. Paul or a city near you....check out what is happening in Athens today.

ATHENS—After two years of government cutbacks brought on by Greece's debt crisis, the signs of social decay are everywhere in Athens and the mood in the capital is despondent.

Downtown Athens today is a shadow of its former self. Its streets, formerly once lined with crowded elegant stores and vibrant cafés, are now scarred by shuttered shopfronts, crime, homelessness and periodic rioting.

Businesses are closing at a record pace, and unemployment in the greater Athens area has soared to more than 23%, above the national average. Regular demonstrations have frightened away tourists, and thousands of the city's hotels and retailers are teetering on the verge of bankruptcy.

"I'm no fascist, but this time I'll vote for Golden Dawn just to shake up the dirty political system," said Kostas Kalatzakos, owner of a small store in Athens. "Robbers have broken into my shop three times in the past two years, and the last time around the police sounded annoyed when I called them to come and investigate. Of course nobody is ever caught."

With such newfound supporters, Golden Dawn, using neo-Nazi rhetoric and a logo of an ancient symbol resembling the swastika, is poised to enter Parliament for the first time. Recent public-opinion pPolls show support for Golden Dawn, hovering between 5% and 6%, well above the 3% minimum threshold needed to enter Parliament and potentially securing them as many as 15 seats in Greece's 300-member legislature.

Here:  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304868004577378061358608028.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

So there you have it...as the unrest grows, people will gladly accept Nazis if it means they can feel safe.  And of course no one wants to look in the mirror and realize that THEY brought bankruptcy on themselves so they will gladly listen to someone who is casting blame on someone else.

Adolf Hitler did the exact same thing...and he ended up taking out 1/3 of the world's Jews in the process.

The Bible tells us that the Antichrist will take out 2/3 of the world's Jews...and a lot of other gentiles too.

How will we stand people?  Have we reconciled ourselves to make decisions today about what we will do when we face difficult choices if we witness this whole society collapse?  Would we elect the Nazi party if they blamed all our problems on the Mexicans and blacks and promised us a new glorious future as we return to "family values?"

Civil War Coming to USA

Maybe you have heard that Homeland Security ordered 450,000,000 hollow point bullets in .40 cal? 

You don't use hollow points for target practice....they are for shooting people and NOT passing through the person being shot.  And you can't use hollow points in war...because they are against the war rules of the Geneva Convention.

So what's up?  Who is Homeland Security getting ready to shoot?

In a riveting interview on TruNews Radio, Wednesday, private investigator Doug Hagmann said high-level, reliable sources told him the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is preparing for “massive civil war” in America.

“Folks, we’re getting ready for one massive economic collapse,” Hagmann told TruNews host Rick Wiles.

“We have problems . . . The federal government is preparing for civil uprising,” he added, “so every time you hear about troop movements, every time you hear about movements of military equipment, the militarization of the police, the buying of the ammunition, all of this is . . . they (DHS) are preparing for a massive uprising.”

Hagmann goes on to say that his sources tell him the concerns of the DHS stem from a collapse of the U.S. dollar and the hyperinflation a collapse in the value of the world’s primary reserve currency implies to a nation of 311 million Americans, who, for the significant portion of the population, is armed.

Uprisings in Greece is, indeed, a problem, but an uprising of armed Americans becomes a matter of serious national security, a point addressed in a recent report by the Pentagon and highlighted as a vulnerability and threat to the U.S. during war-game exercises at the Department of Defense last year, according to one of the DoD’s war-game participants, Jim Rickards, author of Currency Wars: The Making of the Next Global Crisis.

Read more: http://www.beaconequity.com/we-are-preparing-for-massive-civil-war-says-dhs-informant-2012-05-03/#ixzz1tvwL3Nqe

Holy unrest!  Everyone in America has guns in their basement...and when the unrest starts Homeland Security figures they better be ready to outgun all the Americans that are shooting at each other.

Question....  when is the collapse going to happen and when will the shooting start?

Russia Threatens

By now I think we all know to be watching what Russia says and does.  Putin is back at the helm and he wants to keep the Mother Land pushing for position and respect...in spite of the fact that Russia's economy is about the size of New Jersey's...and their birth rate is guaranteeing their own extinction.

It seems that Russia is now talking about a pre emptive strike on NATO if they go ahead with an anti missile defense.

Of course we realize that kind of talk is WWIII talk.

BERLIN (Reuters) - A Kremlin threat to launch pre-emptive strikes on a planned NATO missile defense system in Europe is unjustified as the system poses no threat to Russia's security, the head of the Atlantic alliance said on Friday.

NATO has long insisted that the anti-missile shield it is developing is aimed at protecting member states from a possible Iranian attack, but Russia fears the system could undermine the effectiveness of its own nuclear arsenal.

In a stark escalation of rhetoric ahead of Vladimir Putin's return to the presidency next week, Russia's military chief-of-staff said on Thursday that Moscow might be forced to carry out pre-emptive strikes on NATO missile defense installations.

General Nikolai Makarov, Russia's military chief-of-staff, told an international conference in Moscow on Thursday: "Decisions on the pre-emptive use of ... attack components will be taken in the period of heightening tension."

Makarov said European states should decide whether protection against a possible future threat from nations such as Iran was worth the risk of facing down Russian weapons that would pose a "real threat" to countries hosting the facilities.

Here;  http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/04/us-nato-russia-shield-idUSTRE8430Z020120504

So NATO wants the missile shield to defend against Iran....but Russia fears it could dampen it's ability to destroy the world with nuclear weapons....Holy Conundrum!!!

Can we all realize how quickly the world is going to spiral out of control?  If we can't have hope in the world, where should our hope be?  Pray that millions of unbelievers will come to realize that hope in the world is futile and only with hope in Christ can we live joyfully in spite of our surroundings as we wait for Him to return.

Hat tip to Gary A.

Freedom Tower...Harbinger of Disaster?

Have you guys all noticed that they are rebuilding the World Trade Towers in New York?

Did you see George Stephanopolous broadcasting from the top of the new (yet still under construction) tower a few days ago?   

Did you see that the picture of the new tower was on the front of the Wall Street Journal a few days ago...with the caption by the photo reading, "BACK ON TOP: FREEDOM TOWER RISES TO BECOME NEW YORK'S TALLEST"

Did you hear them interview the construction manager who proudly proclaimed that the new Freedom Tower was going to be the safest, structurally sound and most technologically advanced high rise in the country?

Have you guys seen that a top selling book on Christian lists is a book called THE HARBINGER...written my a messianic Jewish Rabbi?  It speaks about Isaiah 9:10 that says, "The bricks have fallen down, but we will rebuild with dressed stone; the fig trees have been felled, but we will replace them with cedars."

Watch him here explain this passage and what it may mean for America. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEJl_zpqBok&feature=relmfu

As you will find out when you watch, the passage in Isaiah was strangely quoted by Senator Tom Daschle and Senator John Edwards soon after the bricks had fallen down on Sept. 11, 2001.  They used the passage as an encouragement that America will rebuild and that terrorists won't slow us down....BUT....the passage in Isaiah is about God warning Israel that HE ALLOWED the bricks to fall in hopes it would get their attention to turn and repent...but they pridefully announced that they were simply going to build the buildings back up with even better materials.  (using dressed stone rather than bricks)

Israel was given warnings (Harbingers) before destruction came on them...and for the most part they ignored them.

Has America been given warnings that we also are ignoring??  Did the bricks fall on 9/11 and kill the fig trees (sycamores) at the little miracle church by Ground Zero?  Were those trees subsequently replaced with come type of cedar?  Is America about to be destroyed because we simply REFUSE to repent and turn back to the ONE TRUE GOD who has so blessed this nation??

Good questions.

The Pain in Spain

We pretty much know that the fate of Greece is sealed...but Greece is a tiny economy compared to Spain.  We are reading reports that Spain's unemployment rate is over 25%, which is about what it was in the USA during the Great Depression.

Check out what TIME had to say about why Spain could be a major problem for us all.

May 1, 2012 – SPAIN – We should all be very worried about what’s going on in Spain. Because Spain isn’t Greece. The Greek crisis was most likely not a direct threat to the survival of the monetary union. Its economy was simply too small. The danger was in the possible contagion effect Greece might present if it outright defaulted or bolted from the union. Spain, the zone’s fourth-largest economy (after Germany, France and Italy) can do a lot of damage all by itself. If Spain ultimately requires a bailout, it would strain the resources available in the zone’s rescue fund (the European portion of which was recently boosted to a total of $925 billion) and put pressure on the zone to fatten up the fund even more, which Germany and others have been reluctant to do. Such an event would also be the biggest blow to the future of the euro yet, likely reigniting the crisis in Italy and making other bailouts more likely (especially for Portugal). With emerging markets slowing down, Europe in the toilet, the U.S. recovery uncertain, and energy prices high, a Spanish meltdown is exactly what the global economy doesn’t need right now. Watching developments in Spain since the beginning of April has been source of non-stop déjà vu for anyone who spent 2010 watching events unfold in Ireland. There are a number of striking similarities between the position in which the Spanish government now finds itself and the Irish government’s situation in November 2010, just before it was forced into an EU/IMF bailout programme. Based on Ireland’s experience, a bailout for Spain seems inevitable.

Here;  http://theextinctionprotocol.wordpress.com/2012/05/01/economic-refugees-fleeing-spain-why-we-should-worry-about-spains-economic-pain/

Now, for all of us who are watching for news about "aliens"...check out what the first commenter said after reading this article;

"Sadly they have to take out the economy and start world war 3 and rely on an alien invasion before they can complete their goals of bringing in a one world government, religion, and economy."

Of course the top news here in Minnesota is about how we are going to go about getting $1 billion dollars so we can build a new stadium for our beloved Minnesota Vikings football team.

The violinists continued playing on the Titanic as the ship went down.

IRA's vs. IEA's

I heard Alistair Begg give a sermon yesterday on the radio.  He said that everyone is always talking about their Individual Retirement Accounts (IRA)...how much is in it, when was the last contribution, what type of investments are in it, what has your return been, is it going to be enough, etc...?  People in America are obsessed with how much money they have set aside for retirement.

He then said that he is going to spend the rest of the sermon talking about our Individual Eternal Accounts (IEA).  How much are we contributing, how much is in it, how long do we have to contribute, etc...

That is a great question. 

As Dr. Jeremiah said, "If people had any idea that what they are doing on earth today will decide what their job will be for 1000 years (during the Millennium), they would probably pay more attention."

How about each of us?  If we truly understand and believe that we are working for heavenly, eternal rewards....then does our IEA reflect that? 

Luke 12
¹⁶ And he (Jesus) told them this parable: “The ground of a certain rich man yielded an abundant harvest. ¹⁷ He thought to himself, ‘What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.’

¹⁸ “Then he said, ‘This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store my surplus grain. ¹⁹ And I’ll say to myself, “You have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.”’ (Move to Florida, golf, swim, read novels and eat at Applebees everyday!)

²⁰ “But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’ (Crap!  You mean I can't take my IRA and cash it in up in heaven?!) 

²¹ “This is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves but is not rich toward God.”

Friends, what if we have $300,000 in our IRA and very little in our IEA?  Should we be concerned?  Have we been spending more time managing our earthly treasure than we have managing our heavenly treasure?  What if we have a $500,000 home but can't remember the last time we studied God's word or made a disciple of Jesus Christ?

I have been a financial consultant for over 25 years and I can tell you a fact....most Americans spend more time planning a two week vacation than they do planning their entire financial futures...and most Americans spend way more time planning their financial futures than they do contemplating their spiritual/eternal futures.

So we can conclude that most Americans IEA's are VERY underfunded. 

How long can America stand if she is spiritually bankrupt?

"Western Education is a Sin"

While many of us Christians in America were in church on Sunday morning, sitting in our theartre seats, sipping coffee and being treated to some wonderful music piped through state of the art electronic systems....our brother and sisters in Nigeria were being butchered.

ANO, Nigeria— (TCSM) An early morning attack on a Christian church service in northern Nigeria left at least 16 people dead. The attack follows a string of violent incidents against Christians in the predominantly Muslim north.
 
Gunmen on motorcycles stormed Bayero
 
University spokesperson Alhaji Mustapha Zahradeen said seven people were killed. Eyewitness, however, said rescue operators have removed at least 18 dead bodies.

Security officials suspect Boko Haram, an Islamist insurgent outfit, carried out the attack. The group, whose name means "Western education is a sin," issued a statement last month warning that they will attack schools. Boko Haram has been blamed for killing more than 1,000 people since 2009 in its bid to overthrow Nigeria's secular government and establish Islamic sharia law nationwide.

Here;  http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0412/nigeria_bombing.php3

So we learned something new today...Boko Haram actually means, "Western education is a sin." 

That certainly would explain why so many fundamentalist Muslims can't read or write...it also would explain why they haven't added one single positve thing to advancing society or civilization.  They want to take the world to a place where the Koran is the final law, where women can be beat for sassing their husbands or refusing them sex, where women are ignorant slaves and can never be taught to read and where the men can have multiple wives.  Sounds like a brutal man's utopia!!

Persecution is increasing worldwide, friends.  I sure hope and pray that Jesus isn't disgusted with the money that U.S. churches have spent to make ourselves comfortable...while totally ignoring (and ignorant of) the trouble and discomfort that has already come for our brothers and sisters all over Africa and Asia.

Bankrupt Helping the Bankrupt

We have been asking the question for some years now...how can the International Monetary Fund(which makes no money itself) be collecting money from bankrupt countries to bail out other bankrupt countries in Europe?

Good question.  I guess they can just as long as no one asks how that works.

But now some people are asking how that can work.  Uh oh.

Egon von Greyerz, a partner at Matterhorn Asset Management out of Switzerland, recently noted how desperate efforts to sustain the current global financial system have become, “So they (the IMF) raised 400 billion from various nations, but where is the money coming from? The majority is coming from Europe and the EU. (They are) all bankrupt. They have no funds. They have to print money. Japan, which has the biggest debt to GDP ratio of most industrialized nations, they are a major contributor of about 60 billion. So it’s ridiculous. Here is the bankrupt helping the bankrupt."

Every time a major central bank like the U.S. Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank gets together for a meeting, the financial press is always speculating about whether there is going to be more money printing. With Western governments running annual shortfalls of nearly $4 trillion, of course, there will be more printing of currency. It's the only way to maintain what has become history's greatest Ponzi scheme.

Here;  http://raptureready.com/rap16.html

Friends, is it possible we are now days or months away from tumbling down this whole house of cards?  If we are...there are going to be a lot of unhappy people...food stamp people will not be happy, Social Security people will not be happy, people with money in savings accounts will not be happy, people collecting pensions will not be happy, people with student loans will not be happy, people on Medicare will not be happy....I guess that includes just about everyone.

Next question.....what happens in countries where EVERYONE is unhappy?  What does history show us?

Lack of Knowledge

^{In yesterday's sermon, our pastor gave some statistics which he had just received from a pastoral conference he recently attended.  Here is what he learned;}

Here are the statistics that I shared with the group this past Thursday. We have lots of work to do:
95% of churches in America today are less than 150 in size
80% of churches in America today are either plateauing or dying
400 pastors leave the ministry every week in America
Between 3500 and 4000 churches close their doors every year

46% of Builders (ages 67-85) are unchurched
51% of Boomers (ages 48-66) are unchurched
70% of Busters (ages 29-47) are unchurched
65% of Mosaics (ages 11-28) are unchurched

On any given week, 82.5% of Americans do not attend a church service.

Ouch!!  That is a sad state of affairs for America.  Is there any doubt what will happen to a nation that lacks understanding of the Truth of God's Word?

Psalm 49:20
People who have wealth but lack understanding are like the beasts that perish.

Jeremiah 7:28
Therefore say to them, ‘This is the nation that has not obeyed the LORD its God or responded to correction. Truth has perished; it has vanished from their lips.

And now today, Fox News had this to say in an article;

The research, commissioned by American Bible Society and conducted by Barna Research, found that the majority of Americans (69%) believe the Bible provides answers on how to live a meaningful life. But while 79% believe they are knowledgeable about the Bible, 54% were unable to correctly identify the first five books of the Bible. And approximately half of Americans surveyed didn’t know the fundamental differences between the teachings of the Bible, Koran and Book of Mormon, with 46% percent saying they believe all three books teach the same spiritual truths.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/04/29/does-bible-still-matter-in-2012/#ixzz1tXSg5KjH
So should it really surprise any of us to learn that 4000 churches per year are closing their doors in this country?  Should it really surprise us that lukewarm churches are being spit out?  Americans have no clue what the difference is between the Bible and the Koran!!!!

Paul clearly told us in 2 Timothy:  For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. ⁴ They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths. ⁵ But you, keep your head in all situations, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, discharge all the duties of your ministry.

Sounds like that is exactly where we are.  If we don't like the message of "repent" and we don't like the message that we need to change because our hearts are wicked...we will simply turn on Oprah or some other new age guru who will tell us exactly what we want to hear.

Faith Based Retirements Coming for USA

I think by now we all realize that most Americans have very little put away for retirement.  The figures are quite staggering about how ill prepared folks really are. 

And of course the last 10 years of stock market returns haven't helped.  Throw in a few million divorces where folks have to split up what little money they have and quadruple health care costs and you can see that we are heading for a train wreck.

When people are asked how they are going to afford to retire they shrug and say they believe it will all work out.  So really, most of America has faith they will have money in their old age, but really have no action or reality to back up their faith.  Hmmmm......

That data starkly backs up Ghilarducci’s contention. According to the Employee Benefit Research Institute, for instance, only 22 percent of workers 55 or older have more than $250,000 put away for retirement. Stunningly, 60 percent of workers in that same age bracket have less than $100,000 in a retirement account. Ghilarducci told me that the average savings for someone near retirement in America right now is $100,000. Even buttressed by Social Security, that’s not going to last very long.

What, then, will people do when they retire? I asked Ghilarducci. “Their retirement plan is faith based,” she replied. “They have faith that it will somehow work out.”

I laughed, but it’s not funny. “The 401(k),” she concluded, “is a failed experiment. It is time to rethink it.”

In truth, I’m one of the lucky ones. I do work that I love, which requires no heavy lifting and has no mandatory retirement age. If I become incapacitated, I will have assisted-living insurance. Otherwise, I can keep writing till I drop.

But, for the millions of others who have discovered, as I have, that their original enthusiasm for investing was unwarranted, their faith-based retirement plan is all they’ve got left.

Here;  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/28/opinion/nocera-my-faith-based-retirement.html

Jesus said to have faith in Him and Him alone.  Sadly, America has been taken over by the worship of the false god of Mammon and almost all of us have succumbed to the desire to worship wealth and material things.  False gods ALWAYS get torn down by the Living God.  So it should come as no surprise that most Americans have nothing left but faith in Mammon.  They watch for signs from him in the daily ups and downs of the financial markets.

How tragic that many of these folks will be bankrupted by Mammon and then it will be too late to turn to Living God.

A friend saw a bumper sticker yesterday that was pretty clever.  It said, "Many people turn to God in the eleventh hour.  Sadly lots of people die at 10:30."

Today is the day of salvation.