Post by Michael James Stone on Jul 3, 2012 7:27:29 GMT -8
Speaking Plainly
In Defense of the Faith
Jack Kinsella - Omega Letter Editor
“These things have I spoken unto you in proverbs: but the time cometh, when I shall no more speak unto you in proverbs, but I shall shew you plainly of the Father.” (John 16:26)
If there is a single word that permeates every discussion on virtually every topic of interest, particularly in the United States, that word would be fear.
Fear so palpable that politicians can mold it like putty, reshape it and use it to sell a fearful public pretty much anything.
Obama uses fear like a tool – in his world, the reason the Democrats lost the mid-terms was because the voters were too fearful or too intellectually challenged to understand his agenda.
But there are plenty of legitimate reasons for fear, not the least of which is President Obama himself. His policies, both foreign and economic, are terrifying to anyone not too fearful of being called a racist or too intellectually challenged not to understand his agenda.
There is the Federal Reserve’s ongoing theft of genuine wealth to be afraid of. Pat Buchanan ‘translated’ the Fed’s QE2 this way:
Translation: The Fed is committed to buy $600 billion in bonds from banks and pay for them by printing money that will then be deposited in those banks. The more dollars that flood into the economy, the less every one of them is worth.
Bernanke is not just risking inflation. He is inducing inflation.
He is reducing the value of the dollar to make U.S. exports more competitive and imports more expensive, so that we will consume fewer imports. He is trying to eliminate the U.S. trade deficit by treating the once universally respected dollar like the peso of a banana republic.
Sarah Palin noted Germany’s past experience with runaway inflation (think Weimar Republic) and said that when Germany called the Fed’s policy “clueless” and warns us to think again, maybe we should.
"We shouldn't be playing around with inflation. It's not for nothing Reagan called it 'as violent as a mugger, as frightening as an armed robber and as deadly as a hit man.' The Fed's pump-priming addiction has got our small businesses running scared and our allies worried.”
Those are pretty fearful images. So is the image of our president in action overseas, as painted by Lt. Col Oliver North, USMC:
[H]is [Obama's] appearances this week in India, Indonesia and South Korea have made it vividly clear to all that Obama is incapable of shaping events.
Though he still panders to every audience, his obsequious bows to foreign potentates and apologies for America's misdeeds no longer hold the allure and cachet they carried just months ago. In New Delhi, he reiterated his Utopian plea for a world without nuclear weapons and spoke of supporting India's bid for a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council -- without mentioning that both India and Pakistan hide their atomic arsenals from U.N. arms inspectors.
He paid homage to Gandhi, danced with schoolchildren in Indonesia and went to the G-20 summit in Seoul, where he continued to whine about trade imbalances and currency manipulation while defending further devaluation of the American dollar. Along the way, he missed yet another opportunity to define our enemy as radical Islam and ignored American troops in harm's way by treating Iraq and Afghanistan like flyover country.
The president's rhetorical flourishes and quests for applause lines on this trip provide striking examples of his chaotic, uncertain leadership at home and abroad.
When one takes into consideration the overall Big Picture; enemies on all sides, a rapidly failing economy, a disintegration of the social order unlike anything in living memory, the rise of radical Islam, radical national socialism, and the proliferation of nuclear weapons, it’s a pretty scary world out there.
A mother emailed me recently to ask if I had ever written anything to encourage young people that maybe she could share with her kids.
Boy, that’s a tough one. My kids grew up hoping the Lord would tarry at least long enough for them to learn to drive.
Now their kids are wondering the same thing.
Back during the comparative Good Times of the late 20th Century, Bible prophecy for the last days was scary stuff. First off, it forecast the economic, social, moral and political collapse of the Christian West.
Nobody wanted to hear that in the mid-1990’s. Life was good, inflation was low, the economy was booming, we won the Cold War, the Gulf War, the Culture War and the future looked bright.
(Sigh. It seems so long ago, now.)
My kids were in their teens and they wanted to have a future. Especially the future that they expected in the 1990’s. That future included peace in our time, a balanced budget and full employment. But Bible prophecy forecast doom and gloom and scariness.
And as the century turned, so did the fortunes of the West. Peace and prosperity faded into doom and gloom and scariness. Ten years into the 21st century, have you noticed that nobody is talking about ten years from now?
Everybody is talking about 2012 in some context, running the gamut from the general election, to the war on terror to the Mayan Indian calendar’s Doomsday myth, but interest in what comes beyond that sort of fades away.
Not even secularists are very interested in speculating where we will be a few years from now for the same reason that most churches avoided Bible prophecy in the 1990’s. Too much gloom and doom.
Today’s kids look forward to a debt-laden future for as far as they can possibly foresee. If the economy doesn’t collapse Western civilization, there are about a hundred million jihadists hoping to topple it by force.
With the proliferation of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons and the technology to deploy them, the future isn’t looking all that bright.
As Jesus was preparing the Apostles for what was to befall them, He told them that, until that point, He taught them in proverbs. But just before He was to be arrested, He told them plainly Who He was and what was to follow.
“I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world: again, I leave the world, and go to the Father. His disciples said unto Him, Lo, now speakest Thou plainly, and speakest no proverb.” (John 16:28-29)
Bible prophecy sounded pretty gloomy a few years back. But as you can see, God didn’t cause the mess we are in – He let us do it. The further we moved away from Him, the more He allowed us to.
Now that we are pretty much exactly where the Bible said we would find ourselves, Bible prophecy takes on a new relevance. The Book of Revelation doesn’t engender a lot more fear than does the New York Times, (and has proved itself infinitely more credible.)
Bible Prophecy, even ten years ago, seemed proverbial and symbolic. Today, it speaks so plainly that some Christians have come to the conclusion we are in the Tribulation already. (We are not.)
But I notice there is less dread about the Rapture than there used to be. And a lot less resistance to the concept, or so it seems to me.
What used to sound scary – being jerked out of this world before we had a chance to get a driver’s license, or get married, or have kids, or have grandkids . . . seems a lot less scary than being left behind in it.
“Jesus answered them, Do ye now believe? Behold, the hour cometh, yea, is now come, that ye shall be scattered, every man to his own, and shall leave Me alone: and yet I am not alone, because the Father is with Me.” (John 16:31-32)
Bible prophecy is like that. It forecast the coming catastrophe, the scattering, an-every-man-for-himself scenario, but yet we are not alone, because the Holy Spirit is with us and indwells us.
So as we see all these things begin to come to pass, it’s still scary, but less scary than if we were alone.
We were warned of what is here and we’ve been told of what is coming. But what is coming for the world is not what the Lord promised us.
“These things I have spoken unto you, that in Me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33)
The tribulation that is coming is coming upon the world. For His Church, the message is, "be of good cheer. I have overcome the world."
Maranatha!