March Miscellanea

Here’s an interesting take on the possible origins of the Antichrist -- he could be a descendant of Esau. Esau began the whole idea of trying to wipe out the Jews by plotting to kill his brother Jacob who, of course, ended up being the father of the twelve tribes of Israel. Among Esau’s descendants were the children of Amalek and one of the most famous Amalekites was Haman who also tried to wipe out the Jews in Persia as told in the book of Esther. Herod was an Idumean, also descendants of Esau, and as we all know from the Christmas story, he tried to kill every single Jewish male baby in Bethlehem in order to hold onto his power.

Later during the siege of Jerusalem in 70 AD, the Idumeans pleaded with the inhabitants of the city to let them come inside the walls. The Jews allowed them in because they promised to help with the fighting. They came in, all right, and then they turned on the Jews and helped the Romans slaughter them.

The entire book of Obadiah shows God’s anger at Edom, the nation that sprang from Esau. Obadiah graphically depicts God’s fury concerning their treatment of his chosen people with prophecies of Edom's future punishment.

The Bible tells us that there will be one time when Esau breaks the yoke of his brother Jacob (as predicted by their father Isaac during that whole incident with the stolen blessing in Genesis 29). Can this possibly be the time when the Antichrist rules because the Antichrist is a descendant of Esau?

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As if we didn’t have enough to deal with on the gay marriage front, now a dictionary has gotten into the act. Merriam-Webster now includes one of its definitions of marriage as “the state of being united to a person of the same sex in a relationship like that of a traditional marriage.” Noah Webster, our founding father who created the Webster dictionary, must be turning over in his grave. Here’s what his original definition had to say about marriage... it’s “the act of uniting a man and a woman for life; wedlock; the legal union of a man and a woman for life. Marriage is a contract both civil and religious, by which the partied engage to live together in mutual affection and fidelity till death shall separate them. Marriage was instituted by God himself.”

Not many people know that Noah Webster included a call to repentance and the sinner’s prayer in the opening pages of his dictionary. We’ve come a long and not-so-good way since then.

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Are you feeling like you’re in the minority lately? If you’re a true Bible-believing Christian, it’s very likely you are. According to a recent survey, only 4% of adults have a biblical worldview. Even more chilling, only 1% of young adults hold a biblical worldview. We’re not doing a very good job of passing our faith on to the next generation. I’ve often wondered how God would be able to declare his church complete and to initiate the rapture, but with stats like these, it’s sadly getting easier to imagine, at least here in the United States. Happily the rest of the world is exploding with new believers, China and the Middle East in particular.

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Speaking of stats, here’s another sobering one. There were 14,000 pastors in Germany as Hitler was rising to power. Only a little more than 800 stood up to him. The problem was that the churches in Germany had divided their worldview between the secular and the sacred, something no Christian should ever do. And so Hitler was able to use their foolish -- and unbiblical -- worldview to gain political power with no one to stop him. The separation of church and state IS NOT in our constitution, but it was in the former Soviet Union’s!

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Five consequences for rejecting God according to Romans 1.

1. People become futile in their thinking and indulge in stupid speculations.
2. People exchange the truth of God’s word for the lie that we can be God ourselves (just like Eve did in Eden).
3. People accept homosexuality as normal.
4. The whole culture becomes violent and debased.
5. The culture encourages immorality which means we end up with corrupt judicial, executive, and legislative branches of the government.

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Some worldview trends taking the place of the word of God

1. POLITICAL CORRECTNESS which is also known as cultural Marxism. This is forced on the culture by the so-called elites who do everything in their power to deny God. Everything is equal except for the ultimate truth of the Bible and God.

2. PAGAN SPIRITUALITY from across the spectrum which is being heavily promoted by Oprah among others. This is a growing trend because it gives people license to rebel against the God of the Bible. It also provides spiritual salve for their guilty consciences -- people are able to do whatever works for them. Pluralism and tolerance become cool (for everything except the Bible). It also justifies people’s political liberalism so they can be in favor of abortion and gay marriage and other sins without feeling bad.

3. ONE WORLD SPIRITUALITY which is the amalgamation of Darwinian evolution, pantheism (God is everything and everything is God), and occultism (as evidenced by the explosion of movies and stories about vampires, demons, aliens, and superheroes with god-like powers, as well as the rise of the Wicca religion).

These trends have two goals in common -- to destroy Christianity and to create chaos so people will cry out for more government. The elites want socialism, but they want it to come through evolution rather than revolution.

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Have you noticed how the facts about Islam that keep turning up in the news and online get scarier and scarier and yet most people seem more oblivious than ever about the dangers of this all-encompassing political/religious system. The latest comes out of Turkey where half of all murders last year were honor killings. Now family members are forcing women to commit suicide, so the male members of the family won’t have to kill them and end up in jail. Families used to call on the younger men to do the killing because they felt the law would deal with them more leniently. Now, however, Turkey has passed a law that calls for mandatory life imprisonment for those who perform these honor killings. In order to avoid that penalty, after the family council decides that a woman should no longer be allowed to live for bringing ‘dishonor’ on the family, they leave her in a locked room with a noose, a knife, and rat poison until she complies with their verdict. How nice of them to give her a choice on how to off herself.