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TO OUR CYBER-VISITORS:
???HOW SICK IS THE UNITED STATES??? To our repeat visitors: You've probably noted that I haven't put up any WRAPs since February and its already the end of May. This is not because I have received no WRAPs, but because I have been so vexed in my spirit by what I've seen and heard on the local, national, and world levels—and so caught up in prayer—that I haven't been free in my spirit to answer your WRAPs. As this is being written, we can already anticipated the scoffers, the nay sayers--those who don't believe there is a God, or that say that man can never be sure that He exists. Remember our website is called DOWEKNOW and it was published so that we might ask ourselves to consider fact vs. fantasy vs. faith. We might consider the following which did cause a firestorm in the religious world: Pascal’s Wager: “Let us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that God is. Let us estimate these two chances. If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation that He is.”Isn't it better to believe, just in case? This questions is a variant of Pascal's wager. Blaise Pascal was a French philosopher, mathematician, physicist, theologist, etc. In one of his writings, Pascal made the argument that choosing to believe in Christianity was the safest bet. The atheist community took his quote and went into a frenzied debate. However, it forced them to reconsider a decision that they had made and as a result, they can never stand before God and say they did not know. Since the "new philosophy" in the United States is to "kick God out"—i.e., they want to get rid of "IN GOD WE TRUST"—It might be wise if some of our leaders stopped and asked themselves this question before they start legislating for the whole world. The question could be simply DOWEKNOW? A verse of Scripture has been resounding in my spirit for several weeks now. So, I'll put it up and and let it and my comments be our March-May 2006 WRAP AROUNDS.
The conditions that must be met to have God heal a nation are very explicit: i.e., God will only hear from His people (The only prayer that God will hear from those who have not accepted Jesus as Lord and Savior is "the sinner's prayer": i.e., Lord have mercy on me a sinner and save me for Christ's sake.), and then, they must be called by His Name—not by Allah or by the names of the gods of Hinduism or Buddhism, etc. The reason for this is that He claims to be Sovereign God, the Father of Jesus, Who is the only door to heaven. So... The rest of the verse is self-explanatory; however, I want to zero in on the healing of our land. A land or nation does not need healing unless it is sick and it has been made very real to me just how sick the United States now is—and not just the United States, but the whole world!!! However, for now, I want to talk explicitly about our United States. Sages of the past have said that a great nation like America can only fall from within—and unless God's people wake up, we in the U.S. are at risk of seeing those observations coming true! Just recently, B’Ann and I were watching the Country Music Awards. To our dismay, the master of ceremonies was a foul-mouthed, nightclub entertainer. His off-colored humor evoked laughter but when the cameras panned the crowd, you could see that the people where clapping and laughing, but that most of them were looking uncomfortable. However, there were two award winners that brought forth a spontaneous applause from the crowd: one was a little blonde girl who sang a song about wanting Jesus to take control and the other was a male duet that sang about the red-letter words in the Bible. The response to their songs brought to mind our Lord’s answers to Abraham’s question when they were walking to Sodom and Gomorrah just before fire rained down from heaven and devoured the cities. Abraham was interceding for the cities and Jesus summed up their conversation by saying that if there were but ten righteous in Sodom and Gomorrah, He would not destroy it for ten’s sake. The fact that the crowd was not comfortable with the off-colored comedian gives me hope that Christ will find at least "ten righteous" in America in the days that lay ahead. But I'm getting ahead of myself. First, let's consider the question: How are we sick AS A NATION??? WHAT ARE THE SYMPTOMS??? To answer, lets look first at the leaders of our land. THE PRESIDENCY It has always been expected and practiced by presidential candidates that they include in their campaign rhetoric: "for God and country." However, since Jimmy Carter, our thirty-ninth president, we have been inundated with Bible-totting candidates/presidents. (Poppa Bush, perhaps, being the only exception.) Let's consider these Bible-totting presidents for a moment:
For the purposes of this WRAP, I want to first consider George W. Bush's time in office. True, he did cut taxes as he promised; but he also promised to put the resources of our great nation to work developing an alternative fuel source so that we might be free of dependence upon the dwindling oil supply—and upon the foreign powers in control of those supplies. But when his program met a little resistance from the liberal left—which was a given—he wimped out and we heard no more about an alternative fuel until he made the same promise again during his next campaign. Still, we hear nothing about a comprehensive thrust to develop new fuel sources! (Fool me once, shame on you...fool me twice, shame on me!) While we have spend untold billions on a war in Iraq, Brazil has made its country totally independent from oil by developing synthetic gas from sugar cane. Here we are, the greatest nation in the world, and we are being held captive by high oil prices from the Middle East. If little Brazil can do it, why can't the U.S.? It is truly unfortunate that President Bush could not be a Bible-reader as well as a Bible-totter; for if he were, then he would know that Mohammed is a "false Christ" and that Islam is not a "great religion" as he stood before our nations TV cameras and exclaimed—except, maybe, in size. (Also, you'd think that Bush and his advisors would figure out that their policies concerning oil are actually pumping millions of dollars to Islam and helping terrorism to grow.) Moreover, it appears that President Bush has succumbed to the politically correctness that has played a great part in corrupting our government: saying that "Islam is a peaceful religion" and that only "radical Islam" is an enemy of the U. S. when the Koran leaves no doubt that all devout Muslims must consider the U. S., and any other nation that does not embrace the Koran, to be infidel nations—hated second only to Israel!!! In truth, the only Muslims that would not rejoice at the demise of our nation would be "nominal Muslims"—i.e., those who were raised in Islam but grew to reject its hate and militancy. (DOWEKNOW what is in their Koran?) But how can we know who qualifies as a "nominal Muslim" when their Koran teaches that Muslims do not have to honor their agreements with infidels and to destroy the hated infidels is glorious in the eyes of their god Allah??? Add to this the following news comments about Vice-president Cheney's history in oil and it becomes easy to understand the average American's dissatisfaction with the Bush Presidency.
{By the way, do not let our politicians mislead you into thinking that Jehovah, the God of the Bible, and Allah, the god of Mohammad, are just different names for the same God. The Bible declares over and over that the God Who sent His Only Begotten Son, the Lord Jesus, to die for the sin of the world is the one and only God. In addition, the Bible says that this God gives eternal life as a gift to all who will believe in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus the Christ—and the more abundant life to all who follow Him in this life. This God is a far cry from the god that Mohammad invented which requires his followers to have their children commit suicide/homicide in an effort to earn some weird man-made version of a carnal afterlife. (It should be noted that suicide is not an alternative to serving any type of a god. Suicide comes about when a person/people feel hopeless. They have absolutely nothing in their future that makes life worth living. Most of the time this act comes from a terrible mental condition. Sometimes it comes about because of a terminal, excruciating disease that makes life intolerable to live. The suicide/homicide bombers that we see do not appear to be terminally ill in the physical sense. Therefore, we can safely assume that they have absolutely no hope in their future. This is probable true because the Hope of the world is Jesus Christ Whom they utterly reject. Without Him, there can be no hope.) How sad that nations of people feel hopeless. Could it be because we who have the Hope of the world did not/do not go to their nations as missionaries and tell them of Jesus??? ("How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher?" [Romans 10:14].) Here, again, this puts the burden of what is happening on the political scene in the U.S. and in the world upon the Christians; for the Church, that has had the "Good News," did not go and share the "Good News" (which is John 3:16)! So, in essence, the Church has left a large portion of the world hopeless. In addition, the direction of the leadership in our nation, and the world, is probably a result of the Church's lackadaisical attitude towards the Lord's command: "Go ye..." And by the way, the Israelites are not without fault in this matter, for they rejected and continue to reject the "Good News" so that they that have none to share. Selah!!!} II. Congress
I was listening to a financial talk show on the car radio a couple of days ago when the host alerted his listeners to one of the latest credit card scams. It involves foreign entities and because foreign lobbyist influenced enough of our "representatives" in Congress to attach a rider to a bill limiting the amount of time that a consumer can challenge a bogus charge on a credit card or bank account to only 60 days—the scam has been very successful. It seems that these scam artists have permission from many of our banks and major credit card companies (which are no longer ours, but are controlled by foreign interests) to add small unsolicited charges to people's accounts. The charges are so small, usually being less than five dollars, that the average person either overlooks them—thinking, perhaps, that its some sort of tax charge—or just doesn't bother to check each item in his/her monthly statement. However, if someone has a computer that sends out a million such charges each month, that go unnoticed, then they've made close to five million dollars—for nothing. The talk show host alerted everyone to look for any small charge to their accounts that they don't recognize. The only hitch is, if you find such a charge and it has been going on for a year or so, THANKS TO CONGRESS, you have no recourse for any of the charges over 60 days old. He went on to say that some of these bogus, scam operators have made as much as $65,000,000.00 a year for absolutely nothing!!! This hit my ears because of an experience with one of our credit cards. They sent my wife a bill for $4.95, The only problem with this whole scenario was that we hadn't used this particular credit card for over two years. In our case, vigilant scrutiny kept us from being charged a late fee plus the bogus charge. The wife called and wanted to know what was going on. We got no satisfactory answer, but fortunately, we were still in the 60 day limit set by congress—so the charges were removed and the card was cancelled. The card was from an age old catalog company that started a great mail order business in the United States. It was a company that our grand-parents could trust. I say all this to say—I wonder whose financial gain our elected officials had in mind when they passed such a law!
Also, I wonder what part Congress has played in the foreign
investment/ownership of so much of America's infrastructure: i.e., our
farmland, our energy companies and structures, our telecom and media, our
basic industries, and our important U.S. sea ports, etc. DOWEKNOW who
owns our businesses in the U. S.? I do know
that under Clinton's administration, the Muslim people were moved into the
U.S. in great numbers and that great pains were made to make them welcome, setting them
up in clusters throughout our communities—clusters that are now suspect
of being terrorist cells and many of them already proven to be just that.
(I'm sure that most of you are aware of the E-mails making the circuits
showing how that these aliens, and the aliens of many other nation have
made it onto our welfare roles—even though legitimate citizens are told
that the tax money collected from them for their welfare will probably run out before they
reach retirement age! Incidentally, the way that Congress has
decided to handle this problem that they've created is to just WARN
AMERICANS that they will soon lose their retirement security. Of
course, this warning won't apply to them for they have voted themselves a
secure retirement plan that the royalty of a monarchy would envy!
For instance, former Senator
Bradley, and his wife, may be expected to draw $7,900,000.00 with So far, we've examined some of the "political symptoms" of a sin-sick nation. The common cause of these symptoms, for the most part, has been the "disease" of greed. There is another particularly grievous political symptom that that has been brought about by greed: i.e., the exodus of so many of our great manufacturers—made great by American protection, American know-how, and American workers—an exodus to nations not nearly as developed as ours to take advantage of their cheap labor and raw resources. This exodus can be validated by just looking on most any package you purchase where you'll see: made in China, made in Japan, made in Korea, Made in Mexico, etc. I call this a "grievous" symptom because this exodus of our manufacturing skills and resultant wealth is not only costing Americans jobs and slowing our economy, but it could turn to bite us; for many of these nations have a history of being political unstable or have cultures which are in opposition to ours in many vital ways. So opposed, in fact, that talk of war against us is already taking place in some of them. I consider this to be one of the sicknesses of our government for it is their job to be ever vigilant for the welfare of our own citizens and this exodus could not have taken place without their knowledge. In fact, not only have they been aware of it, but the Presidency and the Congress have been key players in bringing it to pass. It's as if greed has dulled their ability to sense the inherent dangers! I'm sure that our visitors can think of many more "sicknesses" affecting our leadership (and feel free to share them with us), but there is at least one more that we need to address: i.e., their support of (and addiction to?) pornography. We can't look at pornography and its threat to destroy the very lifestyle which made our country great without looking at Congress. We need to understand that it could not be affecting our society and destroying homes and the minds of our young accept that our politicians have decided that it should have a legitimate place in our land. The only reason that this perverted, filthy rich industry can be producing/exporting its perversion and making it smutty millions is that our senators and representatives, along with our judicial system, have legalized their criminal activities. AND FOR WHAT REASON? Money? The love of perversion? God alone knows—but be assured that He does know!!! (It is common knowledge that the porno industry makes millions with its putrid perversions. However, I do not think that our economy would fall if we, once again, outlawed porno. In fact, we would actually see the taxpayers bills for the treatment of alcoholism, social diseases, drug rehab, AIDS, penal systems, etc., become much lower.) Of course, there is always those who would say, if you're unhappy with the way the politicians are behaving, just vote them out! Right? Wrong! Generation after generation have tried this only to find that their newly elected officials have, for the most part, been absorbed by the system—being taught well by their senior associates on just how to make money. The fact that so few Americans even bother to go to the polls is not because of the lack of patriotism—but because of the realization that their efforts to change things are becoming more and more futile!!!
III. the judicial system I won't say much about this branch of government except that one must wonder from which mental institute the host of liberal judges escaped. Turning child molesters back into our communities to destroy more young lives, making the work of our fine police officers null and void by releasing the criminal element they risked their lives to capture back into the streets before the ink on their thumbs is hardly dry, working hand in hand with the ACLU to remove any reference to our Creator from our public buildings, being champions of sodomy, etc.—all such judgments are seen as insane by the average citizen who can only shake their head and wonder how in the world such judges ever got appointed to the bench! Also, who decided that we had to have the holocaust of abortion as a necessity for continuing our great nations. Think about this!!! iv. Media Also, we can't look at the role of Congress and the liberal courts in the demise of our nation without looking at the "liberal" news media—for they have worked hand-in-glove with these officials to bring it to pass!!! (When speaking of the Lord's return to set up His Kingdom for His thousand year rule, the Bible does say this about today's liberals. "The vile person shall be no more called liberal, nor the churl said to be bountiful" [Isa. 32:5].) Rather than fulfilling their role as a collector/reporter of what is happening in the world, today's liberal news people have set themselves up as "the world's experts" on everything—slanted journalist presenting their opinions as facts and using their positions in an attempt to force their will on others. No longer do they even bother to maintain a pretense of being unbiased in their reporting. Instead, through selective and biased, intimidating reporting, they are trying to shape the world to fit their perverted, liberal point of view. The news media has joined Congress and the liberal judges in being the champions of porno, racist via political correctness, and deceivers of the lowly masses (i.e., you and I—the unimportant, average law-abiding taxpayer)! V. Colleges/Universities In the 1950's, certain professors in our colleges and universities decided that the "faith in our Creator" approach to living in our society was obsolete and unreliable and needed to be changed. Consequently, they permeated their teaching with a humanistic approach to life which emphasized evolution over creationism and faith in man instead of faith in God. Rather than teaching both creationism and evolution for their students' consideration, they attacked the Bible, saying it was filled with myth and inaccuracies—ridiculing the way of faith all the while they were presenting faith in evolution and their teachings as a substitute for faith in the Christ of the Bible. This teaching spread over into all aspects of higher education, indoctrinating lawyers, teachers, etc.—and especially influencing the Social Work instructors which set as one of their agendas the elimination of any Biblical influence in their teaching/training. Vi. Entertainment. Sodom and Gomorrah, here we come!!! I don't need to say anything to those "with eyes to see" regarding the direction of Hollywood, the music industry, and television. VIi. Social Work Department Today's Social Work Agencies have adopted a philosophy that promotes free, irresponsible sex; homosexuality; single parent homes; etc.—rewarding those with a lasciviousness' lifestyle while condemning those who would pattern their life after the traditional American/Biblical standards. In addition, their lavishing of our tax dollars on illegal aliens has compounded that problem, as well. VIIi. The Beleaguered Educational System Enough cannot be said about the nightmare that our changing culture and our politicians have released upon our teachers and students. However, I will say that if all politicians and officials making rules and laws for our schools had to teach in one of them for at least two weeks—they would certainly do things differently. ix. Families—4 or 5 generations removed from the Bible The heartaches and confusion and self-destruction in today's families say more than any writer can ever say! Oh, that America would wake up and come back to the God of love and peace!!! X. THE CHURCH So far, we've looked at several entities in our society that are sin-sick and on a course 180o away from God; but if we will look again at our beginning Scripture, we will see that it is the Church that the Bible calls upon to repent if God is to heal our nation. And we should note that the Bible is not referring to the differing man-made church organizations, but the true Church: i.e., the individual believers whose bodies are the temple of the Holy Ghost, the born again individuals who hear the voice of Christ and will not follow another. It is for this reason that I have been caught up in prayer and not answering your WRAP AROUNDS as per usual. I have been asking the Lord to help me humble myself before Him, and to examine my heart to see if there be any evil way in me, and to help me turn from anything unpleasing to Him. If you will join me in this prayer—who knows—perhaps God will see "at least ten righteous" in the U.S. and spare our great land! For any of you who have not heard the voice of the Lord, be aware that it is not His fault but your own stubborn will that keeps you from knowing the Grace of God.
In conclusion:
"The
fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. They are corrupt, they have
done abominable works, there is none that doeth good" Psalms 14:10.
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