Now What?

December 21 has come and gone without even a hiccup. I am still looking for some photos or videos of those poor individuals who spent a small fortune building bunkers or flying half way around the world to some remote mountain in order to be spared the carnage. On one hand it is a little surprising that the... oh what shall we call them... globalists, elitists, power brokers... you know the people that think that they have a right to rule and that the rest of us are just "useless eaters" and should be eliminated... I'm surprised that they did not try to take advantage of all of the hype and stage something that would work to suit their ends. Perhaps they did and it has not yet manifested... perhaps God's people prayed enough that He extend an additional mercy. We may not know until His kingdom is established.

One thing that we can't discount is that this event may have been inspired by the enemy to cause fear, cause death and to become desensitized to any prophetic writings. I am praying right now for a good word to speak the next time I talk to someone about the gospel and prophecy. I expect that I will now run into many more people that will scoff even more at the prophetic warnings in scripture because of the false alarm of the Mayan calendar.

We do know that the trouble is not over. In fact, the Word says that when the world declares "peace and safety" that is when destruction comes upon them... if we are still here when those things are being announced, I too will want to check eBay for a "bunker sale"

There will be many trials ahead... we are headed into a time in history unlike any other. I've seen and read quite a bit regarding the horrors of WWII so it is a little hard to imagine things being worse yet our Lord has said so. We must be ready.... and I don't mean bunkers and remote mountain escapes. Make your heart ready. Prepare your spirit now to be lead by Yahweh so that when He says, "Speak" you speak and when He says, "run" you run.

It seems the next "big thing" to expect will be an attack on Israel. There is some debate whether the next attack will be the Psalm 83 war, the Ezekiel 38 war or whether it is one in the same. This author tends to believe they are separate events. If this is true then the next battle will be won by Israel's military. I pray that Israel has learned it's lesson about being prideful after military victories. It was their pride after the miraculous 6-Day war that almost cost them a defeat in 1972. I pray this time they give God the glory before they even launch their first tank. In any case God does give them the victory. If this battle is indeed the Gog/Magog war of Ezekiel 38, then Yahweh's victory will be spectacular to the point that the world will be forced to acknowledge Him or willingly choose to rebel.

Pray for Israel, pray for insight, pray for the strength to walk unencumbered. This will enable us to walk with a purpose and not be taken off-course by the next ancient hieroglyph-inscribed rock from South America. 

Be Peculiar This Christmas

As we move closer to the return of Yeshua and the start of His everlasting kingdom, it seems natural that many of us are questioning what is real and important. If we knew that we would be kneeling in front of the judgment seat of Christ tomorrow, how concerned would we be about renovating our houses, our retirement fund or celebrating Christmas? It is this last one I want to focus on. Assuming most of the people reading this are believers, I won't go through all the details about the pagan origins of what we now call Christmas... that information is all to easy to get. For the few that have not studied it, here are the highlights:

1) The early church did not celebrate Christmas. It was not until the church age of Pergamos (in which the church married the world) that Christmas became a church honoured holy day.

2) December 25th was originally a pagan sun-worship day... the winter solstice. Many pagan gods were supposedly born on this day and subsequently had festivals attributed to them, but the Roman festival of Saturnalia seems to have been the most popular at the time that the Roman church created Christmas and "discovered" that the date of Christ's birth was... surprise, December 25th.

3) Some of the elements of the pagan solstice festivals included ivy, holly, mistletoe and were rife with immorality, revelry, drinking and gluttony... sounds like the average company Christmas party doesn't it?

4) The familiar Christmas image of Mary and baby Jesus really has its roots in the common theme of pagan goddess and child such as Isis and Horace or more notably the Babylonian pair of Semiramis and her "Messiah" like son, Tammuz

5) The Yule log tradition comes from the worship of the Scandanavian fertility god Jule who was honoured in a twelve day ceremony in which a log was kept burning and daily sacrifices were made.

It's probably not necessary to mention the very anti-Christian roots and meanings behind Santa Claus. It seems most bible-believing Christians are uncomfortable with this pagan elf anyway so enough said.

The question I want to raise is this. Does Christmas's clear pagan origins mean that we should not celebrate it? After all... no Christian I know openly honours Jule or Tammuz, so what is all the fuss? The point is this... I believe that the Father cares VERY much about the origin of things when they are used in the worship of Him. He was extremely explicit to the Israelites to not conform to any of the ways of her Caananite neighbours even to the point of being commanded to not wear clothing of mixed fabric. There are so many Old Testament verses about avoiding paganism that you couldn't swing a curly-toed toy-making elf without hitting one. What about the new Testament? Some would argue that our newfound liberty in Christ affords us the right do whatever isn't clearly against scripture and to let no man judge us in holy days.

If taken in context, those New Testament scriptures (1 Cor 8:4-13; 1 Cor 10:14, 18-21; Rom 14:1-13) speak of our liberty in terms of continuing with Old Testament (Yehovah ordained) holy days and feasts, many of which were pictures of Christ and have now been fulfilled. In other words, there is no longer a need for us to go up to Jerusalem three times a year to sacrifice but if you really wanted to... well we couldn't anyway so the point is moot. What Christian liberty does not allow is to absorb pagan idol worship into our worship of Christ. Mixing practices like this is an offence to Yahweh. I used to love Christmas as much as anyone but as it became more and more commercialized, stressful, expensive and hollow I started to question it. It became really hard to picture being in the new kingdom and seeing nativity scenes everywhere or drinking eggnog as a way of celebrating the birth of our Saviour. This led to a study of it's roots and a fresh perspective of what the bible has to say about it.

I hope you do the same. I don't think that celebrating Christmas will send a person to hell but I do think that if you really truly want to honour the gift of Christ, you will do it everyday thorough obedience and real heart worship and not by following the fish downstream in a tainted commercialized stressful 3-week construct that originally honoured a sun-god and his mother. We are called to be a peculiar people. What a better way to show your peculiarity?

Blessings.

UN Resolution and the Gog/Magog War

Well this one seems to have snuck in under the radar.

When the PA's bid for recognition by the UN died out months ago, I figured they would eventually try again but that we'd hear about it before hand, like we did months ago but just like so many political decisions being made today, they seem to pass without the general public's knowledge or consent. Isn't it ironic that the very same organization that helped create the modern state of Israel now becomes the vehicle for the greatest threat to its survival?

Recognizing the PA seems in this case also recognizing the Palestinian-friendly map of the region in which Jerusalem is in PA territory and Israel becomes essentially indefensible. This decision by the UN changes nothing on the ground as Benjamin Netanyahu said but it certainly will embolden the terrorist state. It may very well be just the push that Israel's enemies need to launch an attack, in order to take back the territory lost in the 1967 war. This could be the groundwork for the Gog/Magog war mentioned in Ezekiel.

Could we have stopped this? Probably not but it does not matter whether this particular gambit could have been prevented. The fact is that Israel will be surrounded by her enemies because it was prophesied and that the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob will step in and save them in such miraculous fashion (major earthquake with a little dash of pestilence, friendly-fire, hail, torrential rain, and let's not forget fire and brimestone) that the nation of Israel will need to create a "department of grave digging" and spend the following seven months burying bodies. Alongside that, they will have collected enough weapons to burn in place of wood for seven years. Okay... that one escapes me a bit. How exactly does one use a spent RPG to bake bread? I'm obviously missing something. I wonder if some new type of weapons will be used.

What do we do? Only what we've been told in the scripture. Pray for the peace of Israel. Also give financially or materially, if we can, to build bomb shelters and support those on the ground already to counsel our Jewish brothers and sisters that are no doubt feeling a lot of stress right now. It may very well be that after this event, the 144, 000 Jewish men come on the scene (after having seen the power of God save them) and start evangelizing the rest of Israel (and I hope the world). This may also be the time that antichrist barters his peace treaty with Israel, only to break it 3.5 years later.