“They have made kings for themselves, but not by me: they have ruled, but they did not make it known to me: of their silver and their gold they have made images to themselves, that they might be destroyed.” Hosea 8:4
When will we say enough, giving power to people who only lead us into war or try to incite war in their belligerence? When will we let God Almighty, Father of Lord Jesus Christ guide us in our appointment of our rulers? That eagle of war just keeps on circling over our heads.
We see times of tribulation starting but we should remember that there are billions of the dead in torment in their spirit state in Hades too, now and continuing like that for the next thousand years. The living have tribulation but so do many of the dead. For us, now is the time we are alive, and in this time it is best for us to notice and help those who are suffering because they are poor, because we can actually do something to alleviate their suffering, lest we too end up in tribulation after death, as bad as tribulation many will suffer while still alive.
Do not be discouraged at the wars. The Father must deal with the way we fall short of the heavenly standards. It is grim but it must happen because we are too slow to repent of monstrous things we do. The natural way is not like this. Nature does not grieve God like us humans do. We especially grieve God, those who under the covenant with God, those whose wrong-doing is all the more grievous to God and to Lord Jesus because it violates God’s holy covenant. The trees and planets keep to their obedient order of natural, God-ordained behaviour because the name of the Lord Jesus Christ keeps that order powerfully maintained. So awful that we are under this cloud of war because humans fail to even live up to Nature’s faithfulness, certainly failing to live up to Lord Jesus the Christ’s faithfulness. Jesus wants us under His protection so that we can rest from our warring and self-protection. Have faith in Him. Let His wings shelter you. Those of you who trust God, trust Jesus too. The Father is God and Jesus rests in the Father’s protection. Rest in Jesus’ protection and cease from sinning lest your end be grim.
If only pharma workers would repent. Mostly they won’t, says the Spirit of prophecy in Revelation, but if they don’t they will end up grimly, says Jesus and the Father. (Revelation 21 and 22.)
Before God judges the world He first requires that His angels identify and mark the truly religious so they are not harmed when the trees and grass are destroyed. Then the true Apocalypse begins.
Besides the ongoing influences of both God and Satan all around us, there are two forces important to know are there: there are those rulers who exercise their power under Jesus, the lord alive and right next to God Himself, and then there are those rulers under influence of the seventieth angelic shepherd who for forty years will destroy the righteous in persecutions. Know the difference.
For many in the world a mushroom cloud is something we see in action movies. Growing up I had to regard it as the ultimate threat, the ultimate doom, as I lived through the seventies and eighties under the shadow of the Cold War. When I met God in the nineties He turned it into a prophetic likelihood of the outcome of sin. It became for me a symbol of the ultimate destination of the way children, supposedly of God, the spiritual Israel of God, miss the true path, missing the way of love and follow a path of sin and ensuing judgment. Israel has sinned, I was told in a vision from God. The result is looming war and the eagle of war, dark with its white watching eye, flying overhead, while generals thrash out their analyses and war plans down below, until the horizon is finally haunted by the rise of the mushroom cloud and the sight of military jets fly towards us away from that cloud. This was in the nineties on a day that subsequently saw the news announce the start of spy plane trips from the US to the Balkans before war broke out a little later and since then mass surveillance has become the norm. Today the mushroom cloud threat looms larger. Why? Because still the path we follow despite our heritage as children of God, as Israel, is a path of sin. Many were revived into proclaiming in social media the commands and teachings of God in love for God, yet the words fell on deaf ears, were read by blind minds. Teachings of God are still banned in schools. Governments still lead us down hypocritical blind alleys. God gave us all a lamb of perfection in a sacrifice of His Son but do we love God back? Not enough, it seems. That eagle is still overhead, watching.
How Christian is a tree? Answer: very Christian, and that is how it grows and buds and produces leaves.
When I was young I learned in Biology classes about the biochemical cycles of plants and their photosynthesis. It compelled me towards a university degree in Biochemistry, in which I was bitterly disappointed. The true instruction we might seek comes not from the wise of this world who know not God and who keep not God in their knowledge. God selects, elects, some of us to be instructed in His creation by the Holy Spirit. Such a privilege. The Holy Spirit gives instruction through spiritual gifts such as messages given in angelic language and supernaturally interpreted - gifts known in scripture as the charismata. It is by such gifts that I was once instructed about the trees, and planets and the creations such as these, that the tree buds do their growing and the planets do their moving through the power of the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. To my mind it is as though Natural things are really deep down in their workings effectively Christian. The name of Jesus is the true facts that Jesus is a faithful witness of the fatherhood of God and that Jesus is firstborn of the children in the family God fathers as His own. The Lord Jesus bears witness having risen from the dead, alive forever. This and Jesus’ teachings and ways and miraculous works are all part and parcel of His name, what He stands for and is known for. This underpins the very fabric of Nature and keeps the planet going round. To have such instruction is a great privilege and is a sign of election. Living up to this can make it sure. Hold to Jesus’ teachings, believing who He is. That is the way that leads to all truth. The truth sets free from sin’s dominion. This leads to eternal life, eternal life which is in Jesus the Son of God. The ancient prophet Enoch foretold these things and wrote about the angelic oath underpinning Nature and the weaving of the name of the Son of Man into this oath. Only together with us is Enoch now made perfect. Enoch is with us in our fellowship as we hear these instructive counsels from the Holy Spirit in our churches or read them and receive them in the persuasion of faith.
The Enoch prophecy of the dabela or billy goat is a little known prophecy of our times or near future times. The Book of Enoch was preserved mainly and most completely in the sacred ancient Ethiopian language Ge’ez, similar to Hebrew but written in Amharic-like script. This made it hard for Westerners to translate it two hundred years ago and the Ge’ez word for billy-goat, or he-goat was left untranslated as dabela. The prophecy foretold future events using analogy of animals for key people, where sheep are the righteous, other domestic animals are innocent in comparison to fierce aggressors known for unbridled oppressive violence which are depicted as preying animals such as lions and eagles. So a he-goat is a strong defensively aggressive but relatively innocent ruler. The prophecy of end times shows sheep being widely persecuted and living under threat and frequent attacks from eagles and other birds of prey attacking from above but there arises a protecting champion for them who rebuts the attackers and cannot be defeated even when all the world seems to try to destroy him. A sword is given to help the fending off of attackers and to defend the sheep against oppressors. Eventually heaven comes to his aid. This is all part of events leading up to a time of heavenly judgment and the rise of righteousness and judgment of angelic dark forces which are behind the persecutions. This has strong consistency with events today.
In March/April 2018, in an archaeological review in the Biblical Archaeology Review journal, a team published the finding of a seal in a archaeological dig in Jerusalem bearing the name of Isaiah from the eighth century BC. It bears the Hebrew text transliterated “leyesha‘yah[u]” which means ‘belonging to Isaiah’. In the book of Isaiah in scripture the prophet foretold (chapter 8) that he and his children were signs of salvation coming in the future from God. The names of the children of Isaiah had prophetic meanings as signs and therefore it implies that Isaiah foretold his own name being a sign too. His name indeed means ‘Yah saves’, yesha‘yah[u], but more that, the one foretold by Isaiah is a Christ and possibly a son of either a maiden or a virgin, but the fact that Jesus bore the name Yesha is significant here. Roll forward a thousand years to a sarcophagus in Cyprus, in Larnaca. The Byzantine emperor Leo VI found this sarcophagus and tomb in 890 AD with the inscription “Lazarus, four days dead, friend of Christ”. It had been lost during the centuries of Arab occupation of Cyprus but Leo had the remains contained in it moved to Constantinople but a church building, the Church of Saint Lazarus was built to house the sarcophagus which can be seen today. Two inscriptions. They intersect on the person Jesus Christ and the raising of Lazarus from the dead and the promise this held, first of Jesus rising from the dead a little time afterwards, and then of a resurrection in the future of all who are worthy of it. Salvation is the meaning of Jesus’ name. Yet another thousand or so years later to the present day and Jesus reveals himself to believers and even to me by spiritually interacting with us in ways that imprint upon us awareness that he is alive still and just the same as the Jesus we read about in gospels such as that of the apostle John. This is like a further inscription but one of faith imprinted in the human heart. It tells of the veracity of accounts such as John’s which carry the records of words and teachings and commands of Jesus by adherence to which we can show love of Jesus and get to meet him ourselves. That is the salvation way foretold by Isaiah that saves the people of God from their sins.
Power is not a bad thing per se. We are each obliged to obey lords over us. Even without such lords, we are still obliged to obey and serve our hidden lord, who is Jesus Christ. We might find we have clarity in how duties are allotted to us. Personally I found myself in my twenties working in local government in ‘public service’. Public service is a wordly, diplomatic euphemism because really to service duty of public servants, at any level, is collectively and maybe individually to the ultimate lord. Those in public service make profit from receiving taxes and providing services and seeking efficiencies in how this is carried out. We might improve the profitability and productivity of our work, whether in private sector work or public service, by maturing our methods and improving them continually. Then we have something to provide for needs of fellow humans. This is a service not only to society but to the lord, if we seek to serve this lord in doing all this. Virtue improves this. Faith inspires it and fuels and motivates it. Difficulties improve character which further improve our work and work ethic, if we endure those difficulties graciously. Knowhow can be fostered with self-study, organised training, reading, research and experimentation. Human kindness and consideration based on a godly way of life can help greatly to keep us productive. Personally my productivity was hugely increased by gaining direct spiritual experience of God through following Christ’s teachings. I suddenly went from local government office work to developing technology and laws for public procurement around the world. I am sure this was the grace of God. Love is the topmost piece of the pyramid of productivity, doing the best we can for colleagues, public and even mankind in general. The lord receives this service. He rewards it by assigning us spiritual duties, heavenly domain work. Putting life and soul into our service, wholeheartedly, leads to a fulfilling life and career and good standing and hope.
Zion is more than an ideal or a symbol. We have in the world today a glory of empire days of first Rome with its dominus status and its Renaissance, which gave way, in a shifting of power to other parts of Europe, with multiple empires rising with the Holy Roman Empire, and then successive empires continuing in its wake. Coronations in these empires have all been glorious. Even in the wake of waning empires, vestiges of that past glory remains. Globalisation distributes that glory around the world and magnifies its skill. technology and spirited positivity. Yet this is nothing like the new coming empire which will arise after the dark empires have had their day. Today we have the darkness of night which will last a while longer and our children might see the worst of it. That continuing darkness will have glory in its evoking of past empires and its reviving of their futility and vanity, with great fanfare and flourish. Yet there is coming a Zion. A new kind of Israel, not based on any worldly state but on a promise, will gain the status of having a great coronation. The true Israel will come out from the Babylon of past empires and their heirs. This new Israel, which already exists invisibly, will have as its king the anointed one appointed to be son of God on Earth, the true Christ. The coronation glory will outshine anything before. Yet the rising empire of this new king, the lord we know to be Jesus Christ, will not be meek and mild but powerful to the overthrowing of dark powers and setting aside of blind guides. Terrible in might, glorious in wisdom, truth and love. Darkness will perish and shadows vanish. A true way of holiness will be established to truly last. This will be a Zion. It will be the rule of all under subjection to God Himself brought about by the rule of the only begotten of God. Come Lord Jesus.
Magma chambers. Crystal caves. Giant geodes. Inner places within the world’s mountains and volcanoes. Crystal-lined walls. Smooth walls. Jagged walls. Lava flows. Rivers of fire. Rivers of water. Darkness. Underground light. Great heat. Coolness. All these aspects of the innermost structures of Nature as it occurs deep beneath the hidden roots pf mountains and the Earth’s unseen crust. We find all this in ancient scripture endorsed by Jesus Christ as essential reading. The Book of Enoch evokes all of these geological phenomena when describing places of heavenly and earthly spirits, God, the Son of Man, angels and human ghosts. Wonder where heaven is? Wonder where God is? Wonder where the dead go as ghosts? The answers might surprise you.
You notice how troubles are happening in rapid succession. It behoves the things of the last days to happen quickly and not to linger. It is like tearing off a wound dressing. Short sharp shock so there is no time for dread. These days are a build up. The deaths by pestilence. The conquering tyrant. The trees burning. The volcanoes erupting. The weather changing. There are going to be more trees burning till it brings on a reduction in sunlight around the world and crop failures as smoke from burning trees and grass fills the atmosphere worldwide. The pestilences will be frequent. The conquests intensive. The inflation and financial depression miserable. The rise of the Middle East and Eastern Europe and Balkans will be shocking. Even Israel will fall into its clutches. The preaching from Israel will not just shock Israel with revelations of truth but will torment the global public. The bad treatment of the preachers will bring wrathful earthquakes from so deep in the planet that globally widespread destructions will result. A dystopia will follow and there will be terrible consequences of going much too far with human ‘progress’. The end game scenarios we all watched in futuristic movies will be all too real. The rising empires will be tyrannical like none before them and more will die from tyranny and dystopian laws than ever in history. Then the one man who can rule rightly will come, Jesus Christ sent again by God. Only Jesus Christ can worthily be authoritarian without being dishonest or hypocritical. Come Lord Jesus.
In times of lies, make truth your native tongue.
The spirit powers are rather beyond our understanding and imagination, and science does not help us here because scientific materialism tells us they do not exist. They exist. Some spirit powers are good, in particular the being we call The Father, The Almighty, God. Some spirit powers are not good, in particular a power being we call Satan. God is truthful. Satan is notorious for lies, the father of lies and liars. In a time such as this. Let’s be honest here, it could be said of any time. In times of lies, we could take the worst path and just keep in with lying and with liars. The end of that path is highly undesirable, unless you love the fire. There is another path. It might take an act of God to start you upon it. It takes conviction and that comes best from lessons given by God’s power that comes from Heaven. It is the conviction of lies being unworthy and deprecated, and of pride being deprecated too, when it leads us to lie. Heaven-ordained discipline can persuade us of this, powerfully imparted by conviction by the spirit of God. The truth of the news that Christ Jesus died for you on the cross is a powerful message that came make way for this powerful discipline. Lies bad. Lies unworthy of Heavenly endorsement. Truthful honesty good. Truthful candour and humility receives endorsement of heaven-sent power and wellbeing. This is the way that leads to life. Few there are who find it. Be humble. Admit your need. Allow your standing before God to be real in sober self-judgment and self-awareness. Then hear it that Christ died for you and is raised by God from the dead to improve your prospects. Then let the power from heaven persuade you to stop lying and practice only telling the truth, to make truth your native language by a change of your inner behaviour-driving mentality and intentions. Train yourself to consciously tell only the truth despite your proud urges to gain admiration by deception. In the grace of God it can become your nature. It can become your language. Lying can become a foreign language.
There are various kinds of people shouting out vehemence against Russia right now. Clearly some voices rise above others. God is above the vehemence, though and we should not confuse ourselves into thinking God takes sides along partisan lines. God’s love comes alongside even those we tend to readily condemn. God looks at the accused the way Jesus looked at the woman caught in adultery when Jesus said “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone”. It is horrific to have the crowd baying for your blood but Jesus did not side with that crowd but sided with restoration of the one accused. Then come the words, “If you adhere to my words you are truly my disciple”. It is not the one who shouts Lord, Lord who is the true disciple but the one who gives Jesus’ words central place in their thinking who is set free by being a true follower of Jesus Christ. “Go and sin no more.”
A leave request: Brexit might be more complete by leaving NATO too. It might even save the world from WW III. “Come out and be separate.”
To understand death, disease, guilt, life, wellbeing, wrongdoing, debt on a cosmic ledger, and creditability on a cosmic ledger, you must accept the existence of immaterial things invisible to science such as soul, cosmic ledger or rights and wrongs extending beyond our lifespan, persistence soul and spirit and consciousness long after death, sacrifice for sins and its efficacy, divinities keeping records of right and wrongful actions and knowing which is which, resurrection possibilities, final judgement and judgments and karma in this life and afterlife, all things hidden from a mind trapped in scientism and scientific materialism.
The scriptures were written for an audience who knew what spirits are. They knew about three kinds of spirits. More ancient scriptures show this. They knew about 1) ghosts = spirits of humans, 2) gods = spirits of non-human and non-animal beings (like ghosts which have never had a human existence or animal existence), and 3) partial human, partial god spirits. Cuneiform symbols capture this knowledge. There is a symbol for ghost, a symbol for deity, and a symbol combining the two. Scientific materialists have forbidden this belief in the last century or so. Obviously not everyone believes scientific materialists. A subset of non-human spirits is elemental spirits. Elements of nature have spirits. This is behind a lot of pagan ritual but also forms part of godly life, as seen is weird passages of scripture and mysterious doctrines such as some of the more mysterious things sometimes commanded by God. A concept or quality can have an essence which has a spirit.
Israel lobbying is to some extent driven by scripture understanding, prone to misunderstanding. It has huge influence on US and UK foreign policy. Iraq war. Intentions against Iran. Lybia invasion. Palestinians. And now attitude towards Russia. Key to some of this is clearly a prophecy in the scripture book of Ezekiel chapters 38 and 39. One influential conservative evangelical book I read as a teen in the 1980s told me to interpret Ezekiel 38 and 39 as a future invasion against Israel by countries it lists. In that list is Persia. Clearly, the book says, this is Iran. The writer became famous in Israel. Lance Lambert. In the UK many conservative evangelicals read the book and were inspired to lobby based on its interpretation of Ezekiel. Lobbyists seem to want the countries listed to be preemptively attacked by US and UK. Look at how this has influenced wars. The list includes Iraq, Libya, Syria, Iran, Egypt, and all because interpretations of Ezekiel’s prophecy point to these as modern equivalents of names given during Ancient Greece times. Also in that prophecy is mention of ‘prince of Ros, Meshech, and Tubal’ (Ezekiel 38:1-3, 39:1). The ‘understanding’ in the conservative evangelical view of this is that it points at Russia. Ros (Rosh) being Russia, Tubal being Tublinsk, Meshech being Moscow. Could it really be that influence on wars and attitudes driving Western countries towards wars, led by US and UK, influenced by lobbying, has been based on how this list of Ezekiel future enemies of Israel is interpreted? It seems so. Now Russia gets singled out. Nobody wonders if the interpretation is wrong. Yet nobody involved is asking what history tells us about possible meanings of ‘Prince of Rosh, Meshech, and Tubal’. Rus was possibly (etymology is not an exact science) an ancient Greek term for a people of Eastern Europe and for a taxation system associated with them. The term over the centuries was used for a region based, not on Russia, but on Ukraine, Kiev in particular. It was for centuries called Kievan Rus. The people known as the Rus might have included descendants of Eastern European Scythians, Tartars Cossacks, but also, perhaps most of all, the Vikings who used that region for trade. They had very fierce warriors in Byzantine times. Belarus and Russia have Rus in their names today but the historical leader of the Rus region was Kiev, Ukraine. Could the focus today on Rus as apocalyptic Armageddon future enemy of Israel be behind the current Western Russophobia? Could this all be because of a misunderstanding of Ezekiel 38/39? How awful if WW III starts from a misunderstanding of a prophecy.
Can we igmore a loved one’s last will and testament? What about the Lord’s? The will and testament of Jesus Christ from before the awful crucifixion? It was a crucifixion endured for us. Can we ignore the will left behind to us, for us to keep, as recorded in the gospel of John? Love one another while Jesus is gone. He will not be gone forever. Risen from the dead just days after dying, now with the Father, yet that last will and testament is enshrined as holy writ, we call the New Testament of the Bible after it. If a believer is in charge of a country at war with a country seeking a treaty with us, are we to forget the testament of Jesus Christ and hate that believer? God’s fellowship is promised to us in the will, if we keep its terms. Should we forfeit that fellowship and that of God’s beloved Son? No. God forbid.
As Jesus said, those who love God are those who keep the teachings of God taught by Jesus, and to these people God shows himself, and Jesus shows himself.
There are spirits, despite what materialists say. There is a mighty spirit who is God over spirits and ultimate Creator. This is the Father. There is another spirit who is a human who is the begotten son, the only begotten son, of this Father. This human spirit is Lord in nature, having topmost authority in Nature under this one God the Father. This lordship can be experienced directly in how this lord, this master over the believers, can interact with us in utmost authority even over our innermost being. This Lord has the fullest backing and love and favour of the Father. Nature bows to this authority, the authority of this Lord’s name, standing, ways, teachings and reputation. This Lord is Jesus Christ, whom evil men crucified but God raised from the dead to live forever. Believe in God and believe also in Jesus. To know the truth about Jesus, follow Jesus’ teachings. They will set you free.
Russophobia is no good for anyone, especially no good for russophobes. Hatred clouds the mind and blurs the vision. It sucks people into wars in which their children suffer. It enslaves the haters. It blocks dialog and undermines diplomacy. The haters lose God’s favour and risk His protection.
Contrary to the opinions of some, God (the top one) does do a lot today and does it often: Mingling with believing disciples in fellowship with us, saving the day in small or big ways, answering prayers, making things turn out well for us, directing us to love one another. Likewise God’s Son. They (God and Jesus) thus fulfil Jesus’ last testament before dying for us. We love them by following their teachings, and they in turn live in fellowship with us by answering our prayers and showing us themselves. This is the New Testament today and forever. Ever real.