Category: Book Reviews

Chapter Five: “A Theological Prophecy—The Falling Away

From David Jeremiah’s book “Where Do We Go From Here?”

“That Day will not come unless the falling away comes first.” 2 THESSALONIANS 2: 3

Last minute, I was compelled to include Ch. Five because I recall very little if any explicit teaching over the pulpit on Apostasy, but that is more of an admission of me not being attentive than it is such not being presented! I know full well I lost many of you the past week with these lengthy reads on content you that may rile you and that is ok with me; at least you know where the truth (you may say “my version”) can be found when needed or desired. My mission is only to present as I’m prompted.

Imagine writing your first book at age twenty-two and watching it land on bestseller lists everywhere. A few years ago, that happened to an American pastor. His book conveyed biblical advice about love and relationships, and it encouraged thousands of young people to make better choices. Here’s a quote from its pages: “The world takes us to a silver screen on which flickering images of passion and romance play, and as we watch, the world says, ‘This is love.’ God takes us to the foot of a tree on which a naked and bloodied man hangs and says, ‘This is love.’” 1

Those phrases pack a punch! It’s no wonder this pastor became known for his speaking, writing, and counseling, as well as for nearly two decades of pastoral ministry in a local church. But in 2019, he announced his marriage had come to an end. Then, in a follow-up post on Instagram, he disclosed something even more troubling:

I have undergone a massive shift in regard to my faith in Jesus. The popular phrase for this is “deconstruction,” the biblical phrase is “falling away.” By all the measurements that I have for defining a Christian, I am not a Christian. Many people tell me that there is a different way to practice faith and I want to remain open to this, but I’m not there now. 2

That cuts me to the heart, especially because he isn’t alone. Many others seem to be falling away from Christ and His gospel. I saw a recent op-ed with this title: “Everyone Is Leaving Christianity. Few Know Where They’re Going.” 3

This departure from biblical faith is happening so often that a new word has been coined. These defectors are no longer evangelicals; they are exvangelicals.

Why is that? And what does it mean?

This “falling away” is not a new phenomenon. Throughout history, many have taken up the banner of Christ only to lay it down again. Even the first generation of Christians faced this challenge.

Do you know about Demas? When Paul wrote to the Colossians and to Philemon, he sent them greetings from his coworker Demas, who was at his side (Col. 4: 14; Philem. 1: 24). Yet in his final letter, Paul told Timothy, “Demas has forsaken me, having loved this present world” (2 Tim. 4: 10).

Another book in the Bible is devoted to this topic—the short epistle of Jude, written by our Lord’s half-brother, the son of Joseph and Mary. It’s the next-to-the-last book of the Bible, and Jude stated his purpose succinctly: “To contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints” (v. 3).

It helps me to realize the apostles faced the same problem of falling away we’re seeing today. Yet the trend toward apostasy seems to be accelerating in our times. I’m almost hesitant to read Christian news sites because I don’t want to hear of another pastor failing or another prominent believer rejecting the faith. Recent headlines aren’t encouraging, and neither are the statistics.

There are more than 72 million Millennials in America—almost a quarter of the population. 4 An increasingly large percentage of that generation has walked away from faith of any kind, choosing to identify as “religious nones.” In 2008, researchers noted that close to a third of Millennials (31.9 percent) described themselves as religiously unaffiliated. Just ten years later, that number was 42.7 percent. 5

There are more troubling numbers. Church membership in America has suffered a decades-long decline. When Gallup first measured US church membership in 1937, the number came in at 73 percent. Even in the early 1980s, more than 70 percent of American adults were church members. In the year 2000, it was 65 percent. By 2010, it was 59 percent. In 2020, it was 50 percent. Now less than half of Americans belong to a local church, with corresponding declines in regular church attendance. 6

But the core issue isn’t that people are falling away from church, or even falling away from faith. We’re talking about falling away from Jesus Himself. We’re talking about branches that cut themselves off from the vine. These are people who have—these words are stark—“ trampled the Son of God underfoot . . . treated as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant that sanctified them, and . . . insulted the Spirit of grace” (Heb. 10: 29 NIV).

Remember Judas the disciple? He’s the clearest example of apostasy in the Bible. He was among Jesus’ inner circle. He had greater access to Christ than almost any other person in his day—walking and talking with the Savior, witnessing the miracles, and watching lives be transformed. Yet Judas still fell away.

So did a pastor here in California. After several instances of publicly criticizing the Bible’s views on sexuality, this man was asked to resign from the church. He also lost his teaching positions at two Christian universities. As a result, he decided to live for a year without God. In his words, he planned to “try on” atheism as a New Year’s resolution.

“For the next 12 months I will live as if there is no God,” he wrote. “I will not pray, read the Bible for inspiration, refer to God as the cause of things or hope that God might intervene and change my own or someone else’s circumstances.” 7

At the end of his experiment, he officially rejected his lifelong belief, declaring on National Public Radio, “I don’t think that God exists.” 8

Again, this man didn’t simply fall away from the church and from the faith. He chose to abandon the Savior, and it left him with nothing except atheism—which, literally, is faith in nothing.

I’ve been appalled in recent years when would-be shepherds of God’s flock have questioned foundational elements of Christian doctrine, including:

               The Denials of End Time Apostates

                              Denial of God – 2 Tim.3:4-5

                              Denial of Christ – I John 4:3

                              Denial of Christ’s Return – 2 Peter 3:3-4

                              Denial of Faith – Jude 3-4

                              Denial of Sound Doctrine – 2 Tim. 4:3-4

                              Denial of the Separated Life – 2 Tim.3:1-7

                              Denial of Christian Liberty – 1 Tim.4:3-4

                              Denial of Morals – Jude 18

If Jude were alive today, he would take notice. So should we. But don’t despair. There’s hope even in the face of apostasy. God knows those who are His, and He will bring them home safely. Jesus said, “I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; neither shall anyone snatch them out of My hand. My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch them out of My Father’s hand” (John 10: 28–29). Paul expressed the same hope, declaring, “He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ” (Phil. 1: 6). And don’t forget Jude, who ended his book praising “Him who is able to keep you from stumbling, and to present you faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy” (v. 24).

What Does This Mean?

To be clear, apostasy is not the same thing as atheism. By apostasy, I’m not referring to people in general who reject Christianity or deny the truth of the gospel. Apostasy doesn’t reflect the rise of atheism in and of itself, nor does it apply to everyone who chooses religious systems other than Christianity.

Instead, the concept of falling away has a narrower focus. It applies specifically to apparent Christians—to those who claim to follow Jesus, but then turn their backs on Him. Here is the best definition I have found for the term apostasy:

The Greek word for apostasy is found only twice in the New Testament (Acts 21: 21, II Thess. 2: 3). . . . The word means ‘a falling away from,’ a deserting or turning from a position or view formerly held . . . Spiritual apostasy occurs when a person who once claimed to be a believer, departs from what he formerly professed to believe. An apostate is not one who was saved and then lost his or her salvation. An apostate, though having claimed to be a believer, never was saved in the first place. 9

Every apostate is an unbeliever, but not every unbeliever is an apostate. Do you see the difference? There are many people who have never had the opportunity to hear the gospel, even in part. They are unbelievers because they have not heard. But an apostate is well acquainted with the gospel. He or she knows more than enough to be saved and, yes, has even professed to follow Christ. But at some point, they turn their backs on the Savior. Their commitment wasn’t real, and their decision wasn’t authentic. Those who are Christians in pretense are non-Christians in reality, and sooner or later reality wins.

Why am I talking about this theme of falling away? Because the proliferation of apostasy is an important, but often overlooked, piece to the end times puzzle. As we know from Scripture, one of the signs of the imminent return of Christ is a rising number of self-proclaimed Christians who ultimately reject Christ.

The Bible says, “Now, brethren, concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering together to Him, we ask you, not to be soon shaken in mind or troubled, either by spirit or by word or by letter, as if from us, as though the day of Christ had come. Let no one deceive you by any means; for that Day will not come unless the falling away comes first, and the man of sin is revealed, the son of perdition (2 Thess. 2: 1–3, emphasis added).

This is indeed a prophecy about tomorrow that has implications for us today. This falling away that Paul was writing about is not just some gradual defection from Christ. Paul called this the falling away. This will be a specific, recognizable departure from the faith during the tribulation.

Let’s bring it a little closer. According to the Bible, the tribulation period will begin immediately after the rapture of the church. Paul told the Thessalonians that the tribulation could not begin until the Antichrist was revealed and the falling away occurred. Here is the order of events: Christ comes to rapture His saints to heaven. At that moment, tribulation breaks out all over the earth and the Antichrist is unmasked. Finally, at the same time, the falling away occurs.

We know from our study of prophecy that the rapture is a sudden signless event. Nothing needs to happen for Christ to return for His own. But here is what we are prone to miss if we do not think carefully. If the rapture could happen at any moment, the “falling away” could also happen at any moment. In fact, what we have been describing, what is happening right now, could very well be the front edge of the “falling away” that Paul was explaining to the Thessalonian believers.

The point I’m making is this: we see the acceleration of people falling away happening now. Apostasy is on the rise even as you read this. To me, it’s another sign that we’re moving toward the end with increasing speed. Paul wrote his words about “the falling away” to the church in Thessalonica, which was facing heavy levels of persecution. The Christians there believed the last days were upon them.

Paul told them not to be troubled, for all Christians will encounter difficulties, even persecution. The thing to watch for, Paul said, was increased apostasy. That is a predictive sign of the approach of Christ’s return and of God’s final judgment. Before the return of Christ, a great falling away will occur.

I hope to see a great spiritual revival before the rapture. It can happen. But there’s no specific evidence in Scripture that a spiritual awakening must occur before Christ comes for His church. On the contrary, Paul’s words in 2 Thessalonians 2: 3 reveal that unbelief will continue to rise on a global scale, including increased apostasy within the church, until a tipping point is reached prior to the day of God’s judgment.

John said, “It is the last hour; and as you have heard that the Antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come, by which we know that it is the last hour. They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us” (1 John 2: 18–19).

In His Olivet Discourse, Jesus said, “And because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold” (Matt. 24: 12). How can this happen? How could anyone who has tasted the goodness of Christ ever choose to fall away? There are many reasons, of course, but let’s focus three specific ones.

Some Fall Away Because They Are 1.) Deceived; 2.) Disillusioned; or 3.) Distracted

Where Do We Go From Here?

It’s easy to become discouraged when we consider the prevalence of apostasy in the church and in our world today, and if we’re not careful, we can begin to think of apostasy almost as a disease, something that can be “caught” like a cold or the flu.

But apostasy isn’t caught like an illness. It’s not something that happens to you out of the blue. It’s a choice.  A decision you make based on your on values and priorities.

So what can we do to protect ourselves from that ever happening to us? How can we make sure that we are never among those who fall away. I’d like to suggest three things you can do to immunize yourself against this danger.

1. Examine Yourself. 2 Cor. 13:5 Paul wrote: “examine yourselves as to whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Do you not know yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you?”
2. Encourage Yourself. We learn this technique from David who came to a very disheartening moment in his life while fleeing from King Saul according to 1 Samuel 30:6, “David encouraged himself in the Lord his God.”
3. Exercise Yourself. Finally, if you want to stay confident and strong, it is important to keep growing in your faith, and that requires exercise.

According to July 29, 2018 Business Insider, LeBron James spends about $ 1.5 million each year caring for his body. Where does the money go? LeBron keeps his home gym updated. He’s said to have replicated the Miami Heat and Cleveland Cavalier’s gyms in his home. He has a cryochamber in his home, which uses liquid nitrogen to give him something akin to an ice bath. He also has a hyperbaric chamber that puts more oxygen in his body. He doesn’t hesitate to hire and pay for the best trainers, massage therapists, and chefs in the world. He eats only the best and healthiest foods. And he invests in compression gear to wear on airplanes.

LeBron spares no expense to keep his body working like a sleek machine. His former teammate Mike Miller said, “He puts a lot of money behind taking care of his body. A lot of people think it’s a big expense, but that big expense has allowed him to make a lot more money for a long period of time.” 15

If a basketball player is that concerned about taking care of his body, shouldn’t you and I be diligent to take care of our souls? The Bible says, “For bodily exercise profits a little, but godliness is profitable for all things, having promise of the life that now is and of that which is to come” (1 Tim. 4: 8).

Stagnant faith is the devil’s playground, and he will fill your heart and mind with doubts. Just when you really need God, it will occur to you that He has not been very important to you of late.

Andrew Murray, in Holiest of All, wrote this powerful paragraph:

“In commerce, in study, in war, it is so often said there is no safety but in advance. To stand still is to go back. To cease effort is to lose ground. To slacken the pace, before the goal is reached, is to lose the race. The only sure mark of our being true Christians, of our really loving Christ, is the deep longing and the steady effort to know more of Him. Tens of thousands have proved that to be content with beginning well is but the first step on a backward course, that ends in losing all. . . . Let us press on. 16”

The apostle Peter said, “Therefore, brethren, be even more diligent to make your call and election sure, for if you do these things you will never stumble” (2 Peter 1: 10). “These things” refers back to eight character qualities listed in verses 5–7: faith, virtue, knowledge, self-control, perseverance, godliness, brotherly kindness, and love. Could Peter have been more emphatic? If we keep growing in these traits, we’ll never stumble.

Now, let me make one thing clear. When Peter said we will never stumble, he didn’t mean we will never make a mistake or commit a sin. He meant we’ll never shipwreck our faith. We’ll never fall away from Christ.

Earlier I mentioned the book of Jude, a small one-page letter near the end of the Bible. It’s all about the dangers of false teachers and the temptation to fall away. Reading Jude can help us make the right choices when facing pressure. His words are critical for those of us living in a culture and in a church defined by increasing apostasy.

Jude wrote to Christians experiencing double pressure. They faced extreme persecution, and they were under spiritual attack from heresies of all kinds. Most of the influential leaders of the early church had been martyred—including Peter, Paul, and James—which left both churches and individual Christians feeling vulnerable.

In the darkness of that moment, Jude’s epistle provided a ray of hope. In just two verses near the end of his tiny epistle, Jude explained to Christians how to remain committed to Christ during a time of increased apostasy: “But you, beloved, building yourselves up on your most holy faith . . . keep yourselves in the love of God” (vv. 20–21). Jude was speaking to Christians, and the phrase building yourselves up conveys the idea of continuation. Jude was not speaking of a one-time event, but rather a life-long process. In other words, Jude told us to keep building ourselves up.

You will notice that these passages use the word yourself or himself. You must not wait for someone else to do this for you. This is your responsibility.

You must continue to cultivate your relationship with the Lord. Your walk with God is not static. You are either growing in Him or you are beginning to grow cold toward Him.

This is why God warned the church in Ephesus, “Nevertheless I have this against you, that you have left your first love. Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent and do the first works” (Rev. 2: 4–5).

Examine yourself, encourage yourself, and exercise yourself in the Lord. And most of all just keep going and growing. Don’t stop! Don’t look back! Just keep walking with the Lord.

“Chapter 5: A Theological Prophecy: The Falling Away

 Bibliography

1. Joshua Harris, I Kissed Dating Goodbye (Colorado Springs, CO: Multnomah Books, 2003), 67.

2. Caleb Parke, “Well-Known Christian Author, Purity Advocate, Renounces His Faith: ‘I Hope You Can Forgive Me,’” Fox News, July 29, 2019, https:// www.foxnews.com/ faith-values/ christian-author-joshua-harris-kissed-dating-goodbye-faith.”

Part II of Chapter One “A Cultural Prophecy: Socialism” from Chapter One of David Jeremiah’s book, Where Do We Go From Here?”

How, then, should we view socialism today? How should we define it? Listen to the definition offered by the World Socialist Party of the United States: “The establishment of a system of society based on the common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth by and in the interest of society as a whole. . . . We call this common ownership, but other terms we regard as synonymous are communism and socialism.” 7

Socialists believe the world’s means of production—including infrastructure, farms, factories, energy, natural resources, medicines, and more—should be under the control of “the people.” In other words, society as a whole should own the raw materials and the systems that produce wealth. In a free market system, these materials are usually controlled by companies or individuals, but in socialist countries they are owned by “the people.”

Of course, there’s no way to make decisions based on such a loose concept as “the people.” So under socialism, the government becomes the sole authority and controller of the means of production. Unfortunately, governments are controlled by specific people—often the kinds of people who seek out power. And those people are entirely corruptible by greed, selfishness, lust, vindictiveness, violence, and the overwhelming desire for authority. As more power flows to the government, the handful at the top become dictatorial.

While I was writing this chapter, a news network ran a story about a Chinese woman named Xi Van Fleet. She had survived the brutal communist regime of dictator Mao Zedong. In an impassioned speech to a Virginia school board, she elaborated on the similarities between what happened in China during the Chinese Cultural Revolution and what is happening in the United States right now. She said, “They use the same ideology, and same methodology, even the same vocabulary. And with the same goal. The ideology is cultural Marxism. And we were divided into groups as the oppressor and oppressed. . . . And the take out methodology is also very similar. It’s cancel culture. We basically canceled the whole Chinese civilization pre-communism.” 8

In his book We Will Not Be Silenced, Erwin Lutzer helped us understand the kind of Marxism we’re seeing.

Today we face what is known as cultural Marxism. It is not being imposed on people on the war battlefields; instead, it’s a form of Marxism that wins the hearts and minds of people incrementally by the gradual transformation of the culture. Bombarded with exaggerated and illusionary promises, people accept it because they want to; they welcome it because they are convinced of its “benefits.” It promises “hope and change,” income equality, racial harmony and justice based on secular values rather than Judeo-Christian morality. It is known for professing inclusion rather than exclusion and promoting sexual freedom rather than what they view as the restrictive sexual ethics of the Bible. It is not stifled by allegedly narrow religious traditions but espouses progressive ideas that are deemed worthy of an enlightened future. 9”

The Roots of Socialism

To understand socialism, we must first understand Karl Marx. When you understand who he was and what he believed, you’ll be able to trace much that’s happening back to him.

If you study the life of Karl Marx, you’ll learn he wasn’t just a hater of God; he was a cheerleader for the devil. His family thought him possessed by a demon. A biographer described him like this: “He had the devil’s view of the world, and the devil’s malignity. Sometimes, he seemed to know that he was accomplishing works of evil.” 10

On one occasion, Marx’s own son sent him a letter and addressed it “My dear devil.” 11 Marx’s partner, Friedrich Engels, declared that ten thousand devils had Marx by the hair. 12

In 2020, Paul Kengor wrote a book titled The Devil and Karl Marx: Communism’s Long March of Death, Deception, and Infiltration. Frankly, it was difficult to read, so dark was its subject. According to Kengor, Marx was a tyrant, a racist, and a misogynistic radical who hated God and wanted to see the world burn.

In his 1837 poem “The Pale Maiden,” Marx composed these self-descriptive words:

Thus Heaven I’ve forfeited, I know it full well. My soul, once true to God, Is chosen for Hell. 13

Four years later, in 1841, he wrote these lines, which are even more damning:

Look now, my blood-dark sword shall stab Unerringly within thy soul. . . . The hellish vapors rise and fill the brain Till I go mad and my heart is utterly changed. See the sword—the Prince of Darkness sold it to me. For he beats the time and gives the signs. Ever more boldly I play the dance of death. 14

In 1849, one year after publishing his crowning work, The Communist Manifesto, Marx was evicted by his landlord who was fed up with his filthiness. “Karl drank too much, smoked too much, never exercised, and suffered from warts and boils due to lack of washing. He stunk . . . As for the family apartment, everything [was] broken down, busted, spilled, smashed, falling apart—from toys and chairs and dishes and cups to tables . . . and on and on.” 15

Karl Marx fathered an illegitimate child by his maid, Helene Demuth. He blamed the child on Engels, who thought it was a great joke. Since Marx never had a job, he mooched off everyone—his parents, Engels, and anyone else that he could find. His wife, Jenny, was so miserable in their marriage she wanted to die, a wish she pondered daily. His daughters, Jenny and Laura, fulfilled their mother’s wish. Jenny poisoned herself when she was just forty-three. And in a death pact with her husband, Laura also committed suicide when she was sixty-six.

Marx died in despair on March 14, 1883. Just before his death, he wrote to his friend Engels, “How pointless and empty is life, but how desirable!” 16 He was buried in Highgate Cemetery, considered the center of satanism in London.

I wonder how many who are championing socialism and Marxism are aware of the poisonous roots of this doctrine. Their founder was a hideous person; and what he was, socialism became! This is a spiritual battle of truth versus lies. It brings to mind Ephesians 6: 12: “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.”

As many have noted, Karl Marx is ruling the world from his grave. Here are some of the characteristics of his hellish ideology.

Marxism Is Anti-God

Karl Marx hated Christianity, which he saw as a source of oppression. To him, religion was “the opium of the people.” For communism to succeed, loyalty to the church had to be replaced by loyalty to the state. On one occasion, he described the church as “medieval mildew” which must be scraped away. 17

Other socialist leaders have followed the same path, including Joseph Stalin, Fidel Castro, Pol Pot, and beyond. Each of these men saw organized religion as an enemy—a competitor that needed to be controlled or eliminated. As one scholar noted, “Religion was the enemy, a rival to Marxist mind control, and it had to be vanquished regardless of costs and difficulties.” 18 In the Soviet Union, one of their favorite slogans was, “Let us drive out the capitalists from earth and God from heaven.”

Another historian noted: “[ In Russia] as early as the spring of 1918, an open campaign of terror was launched against all religions, and particularly against the Russian Orthodox church. [It was a] policy of terror . . . felt by every religious faith.” 19 In the following years, countless Orthodox bishops and priests were murdered, and those who survived were denied their civil rights and subjected to economic oppression.

Despite what many claim to believe or propose, Marxism is not compatible with the free expression of religion.”

Marxism Is Totalitarian   There’s another general fact about Marxism we should grasp. It quickly becomes totalitarian. The term totalitarianism was first used by supporters of fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, who summed it up this way: “Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.” 20   Rod Dreher adds, According to Hannah Arendt, the foremost scholar of totalitarianism, a totalitarian society is one in which an ideology seeks to displace all prior traditions and institutions, with the goal of bringing all aspects of society under control of that ideology. A totalitarian state is one that aspires to nothing less than defining and controlling reality. Truth is whatever the rulers decide it is. As Arendt has written, wherever totalitarianism has ruled, “[ I] t has begun to destroy the essence of man.”   Today’s totalitarianism demands allegiance to a set of progressive beliefs, many of which are incompatible with logic—and certainly with Christianity. Compliance is forced less by the state than by elites who form public opinion, and by private corporations that, thanks to technology, control our lives far more than we would like to admit. 21   Marxism Is Divisive   Marxism thrives on division. In historic Marxism the division was promoted between classes of people: the oppressors against the oppressed; the bosses against the workers. Men like Hugo Chávez went out of their way to ensure that the poor hated the wealthy. In today’s cultural Marxism, the exploited divide is often racial, sexual, and/ or gender-related. I believe that’s one of the reasons we’ve lost some of the progress we’ve made on race relations. Whatever it is or however far it might be removed from actual racism, whenever a socialist or Marxist can’t figure out how to respond to an issue, they always—and I mean every time—call it racist.   This is tragic for many reasons. It’s very hurtful to be branded a racist if one has done or said nothing that would lead a rational person to make such an accusation. Once racism has been pinned on a person, it’s almost impossible to get rid of it, no matter what you do. But there’s another seldom-discussed sadness with playing the race card: if everything is racist, nothing is racist. All of us know there are still racial issues that need to be dealt with in America and around the world, but the true issues get lost in the avalanche of unwarranted accusations.   Marxism Is Deadly   In 1999, The Black Book of Communism attempted to calculate a Marxist-Leninist death toll for the twentieth century. It revealed the most colossal case of political carnage in history:   Latin America: 150,000 deaths Eastern Europe: 1 million deaths Vietnam: 1 million deaths Africa: 1.7 million deaths Cambodia: 2 million deaths North Korea: 2 million deaths USSR: 20 million deaths China: 65 million deaths   The butchers who led this assault on humanity included Joseph Stalin in Russia, Mao Zedong in China, Kim II-sung and Kim Jong-il in North Korea, Fidel Castro in Cuba, Nicolae Ceausescu in Romania, and others.   The death count that resulted from Marxism between 1917 and 1979 would “equate to a rate of multiple thousands dead per day over the course of a century. Even Adolph Hitler got nowhere close to that. In fact, neither did the two deadliest wars in history, World War I and II, which need to be combined and doubled to get near Communism’s butcher bill.” 22 Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was fooled by none of it. He taught that “socialism of any type and shade leads to a total destruction of the human spirit and to a leveling of mankind into death.” 23 Next time, Part III of Chapter One focuses on “What Does This Mean?” Headings include 1.) The Destruction of Monuments; 2.) Cancel Culture; 3.) The Dismantling of the Nuclear Family; 4.) The Redistribution of Wealth; & 5.) Defunding the Police. After Part IV, all the footnotes for the Introduction and Chapter One will be listed. You might ask “Why Merlin are you promoting this book so strongly? Because time is late and I unequivocally believe every Christ Follower should buy and read this book to help remove our cultural blinders. We are being blindsided. If convicted as I, you will then buy several copies and loan them to friends to read for further discussions. ThriftBooks last night had 19 hardcover for $7.19; new is $26.99. Three used for one new! Invest your loose change this month in books and change lives. Living & Building the Kingdom of God TODAY!

Part 3 of 4 from Chapter One “A Cultural Prophecy – Socialism” verbatim from David Jeremiah’s book “Where Do We Go From Here?”

“I’m afraid this new political trajectory in our nation is more than just a trend. It is a seismic shift toward a Marxist agenda. We are harvesting the weeds from Karl Marx’s toxic garden. If you look closely, you can draw the connections.

The Destruction of Monuments

It’s become common in recent years to see news headlines or live video of protest groups surrounding, defacing, and eventually removing statues and other historical monuments they consider to be offensive. These incidents began with controversial monuments of Civil War participants, but they have expanded to include key men and women from history—even figures such as George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.

When we witness these events, we’re not simply seeing a bunch of rowdy young people tearing down statues. Instead, these are part of a concerted effort to attack and ultimately erase the past.

As Milan Kundera wrote during the rise of communism, some people rewrite or erase the past. In that way, the masses forget who they are and can be drawn into a new future. He said, “The first step in liquidating a people is to erase its memory. Destroy its books, its culture, its history. Then have someone write new books, manufacture a new culture, invent a new history. Before long the nation will begin to forget what it is and what is was.” 24

Totalitarians are determined to wipe out everything that is not in their particular interests. Remember Mussolini’s definition of totalitarianism: “Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.”

On the contrary, it’s interesting to discover that the word remember is found 164 times in the Old Testament. Socialism wants you to forget; Christianity wants you to remember. “Remember the former things of old,” God said through the prophet Isaiah, “I am God, and there is none like Me” (46: 9).

Yes, remember all that God has done for us. On the basis of past mercies, we can build a future of grace. We can say with the psalmist, “For You, O God, have . . . given me the heritage of those who fear Your name” (Ps. 61: 5).

Biblical heroes built monuments to remind future generations of God’s goodness and guidance. For example, when Israel entered the promised land they went through the parted waters of the Jordan River, a story told in four verses in Joshua 3: 14–17. But the entire fourth chapter of Joshua describes what happened next. Twelve strong men from the tribes of Israel erected a monument on the western side of the river. Joshua said, “When your children ask their fathers in time to come, saying, ‘What are these stones?’ then you shall let your children know, saying, ‘Israel crossed over this Jordan on dry land’” (4: 21–22).

Psalm 77: 11 says, “Surely I will remember Your wonders of old.”

The Bible itself is largely a history book, telling the stories of flawed heroes who, through faith, conquered kingdoms, worked righteousness, obtained promises, and became valiant in battle (Heb. 11). But revisionist historians are scrubbing our children’s textbooks of all that is biblical or Christian, and they are rewriting our history to suit their own secular and socialist agendas.

Cancel Culture

Don’t think it’s just statues and histories that are being torn down. It’s also anyone who doesn’t kneel at the altar of prevailing political passions. You are canceled. Elsewhere in this book you’ll find an entire chapter on this subject, but for now I want to point out that this, too, is a child of totalitarianism. In cultural Marxism, there can be no room for tolerance or dissenting opinions.

While working on this chapter, I found it frustrating to watch the news because I felt I was drowning in illustrations. For example, I watched a school board in New Jersey cancel the titles of the holidays on its scholastic calendar. It will no longer be Christmas or Thanksgiving or Martin Luther King Jr. Day. From now on, these will all be referred to as student holidays. But here’s the kicker: When one of the parents in the back of the room tried to raise an objection, the chairman of the school board slammed his fist on the table and said, “This is not a debate.”

Case closed. Discussion over. Opinion canceled. The attempt by that board of education to eliminate the holidays was later overturned, but perhaps not for long.

Dreher wrote, “Today in our societies, dissenters . . . find their businesses, careers, and reputations destroyed. They are pushed out of the public square, stigmatized, canceled, and demonized as racists, sexists, homophobes, and the like. And they are afraid to resist, because they are confident that no one will join them or defend them.” 25

Before the First Amendment is ushered out the door, let me remind you of what it says:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

The Dismantling of the Nuclear Family

Marxism reaches its cold fingers into your very home. Marxists want to raise your children and determine your income. Families based on Judeo-Christian values bred inequality, Marx thought. As Lutzer put it, Marx believed Christian homes “feed on greed and systemic oppression. Such families had to be dismantled if the Marxist vision of equality was to be realized. In Marxism, the family is perceived as a unit in which wives are suppressed by their husbands and children are suppressed by their parents. These clusters of oppression have to be broken up; mothers have to leave their homes and join the workforce.” 26

God created the family to be the glue in human society. For example, when God desired to create humanity itself and establish people within the ecosystem of our world, He did not reach down and fashion a full-blown society. He did not create cities or nations with laws and roads and structures.

No, He created a family. He began with Adam and Eve, and He told them to “be fruitful and multiply” (Gen. 1: 28).

Similarly, when God desired to reveal Himself more intimately to a human civilization that was staggering under the influence of sin, He did not accomplish that mission by fashioning a philosophical system. He did not thunder from heaven in great speeches with powerful rhetoric.

Instead, He spoke through a family. He told Abraham, “Sarah your wife shall bear you a son, and you shall call his name Isaac; I will establish My covenant with him for an everlasting covenant, and with his descendants after him” (17: 19).

And when God chose to take on human flesh in order to fulfill His promises and provide salvation for all people, He did not join a kingdom or seek to win an election. He did not attempt to connect Himself with an existing power system.

Instead, He joined a family. The angel told Mary, “And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bring forth a Son, and shall call His name JESUS” (Luke 1: 31).

Socialists know that as long as the family remains strong, socialism cannot flourish. So, there’s an ongoing attempt to subjugate the home to the government.

The Redistribution of Wealth

This ideology also teaches that all human assets should be claimed by the government and redistributed to the masses by a more equitable formula. This would supposedly rid the world of poverty. But somehow it has never worked out that way. It doesn’t take a scholar to see that wherever this principle has been implemented, the poor have gotten poorer and the few elitists who have been assigned to redistribute the wealth have themselves become filthy rich. Equality cannot be engineered.

Economist Iain Murray said, “The central issues with income inequality, is that the people who seem to be the most concerned with it never really ask the question, how are the poor actually doing? Because when you asked that question and look at the data that answers it, you will see that the poor do the best in economically free societies and do the worst in societies where they are controlled in one way or another, whether it be by socialist, or fascist or authoritarian regimes.” 27

De-funding the Police

Socialists are especially keen on keeping the reins of law enforcement in their tight fists. In America, their first step is to villainize the police, then to defund them. That’s why some cities have slashed their police budgets. And surprise! Each of these cities has seen a dramatic uptick in violent crimes in the months that followed. In Minneapolis, murders rose by a mind numbing 46 per cent. In Portland, Oregon, murders more than tripled. And the Los Angeles Police Department reported a 38% increase in murders.29

Police officers are retiring early, and the recruiting of new police officers ia t an all-time low. Unless something changes, our once beautiful cities will become wastelands where gangs rule while politicians go to and from work in their limousines accompanied by their expensive security personnel.

There’s a remarkable verse in the Bible about police and law enforcement officials. The apostle Paul called them “God’s minister to you for good” (Romans 13:4). Like all other humans, police officers are fallible, but without them our society would not be viable. The Lord views them as His ministers to maintain order on earth.

Whatever you do, don’t miss the socialist’s motivation for vilifying local authorities. No matter how loudly they deny it, they are simply trying to let the local government fail so that they can federalize our cities and states, moving control for all that happens to Washington.”

FYI

Tomorrow, Part IV, Where Do We Go From Here, first, Reviews What the Bible says; second, Refuse to Live by Lies; third, Resolve to Follow Christ and Not Just Admire Him; fourth, Rethink Small Groups; fifth, Resist Any Way You Can; and sixth, Remember Venezuela.

It is now time for us all to live by our convictions, not by convenience. And remember, the battle is the Lord’s, and the truth cannot be intimidated.

Don’t forget to order your own copy, The books Chapters are listed up front on the Jan 28 blog. A succinct treasure chest to focus your thinking and actions in 2023.

How Tomorrow’s Prophecies Foreshadow Today’s Problems by David Jeremiah

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: A Cultural Prophecy – Socialism

Chapter 2: An International Prophecy – Globalism

Chapter 3. A Biological Prophecy – Pandemic

Chapter 4: A Financial Prophecy – Economic Chaos

Chapter 5: A Theological Prophecy – The Falling Away

Chapter 6: A Biological Prophecy – End Times People

Chapter 7: A Political Prophecy – Cancel Culture

Chapter 8: A Spiritual Prophecy – Spiritual Famine

Chapter 9: A geographical Prophecy – Jerusalem

Chapter 10: The Final Prophecy – The Triumph of the Gospel

Chapter 1: A Cultural Prophecy – Socialism

But as the days of Noah were, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be.” MATTHEW 24: 37

Under the cover of darkness, a middle-aged man inched out the window of his seventh-story apartment, then silently repelled seventy-five feet to the ground. A pair of bolt cutters snipped off his ankle monitor, and the man jumped into a waiting car. This was no movie. After fifteen years of imprisonment on bogus charges, Iván Simonovis was escaping Venezuela.

Simonovis had once been a Venezuelan hero. As a key member of an important SWAT team, he ended a seven-hour hostage situation, all of it captured on national television. That propelled him to celebrity status. After being appointed safety officer for Caracas, he dedicated himself to fighting crime and removing the corruption that had defined the capital’s police force for years.

Things changed when Simonovis ran afoul of Hugo Chávez, Venezuela’s Marxist president and emerging dictator. Chávez viewed the decorated safety officer as a potential rival and accused him of crimes against humanity. The charges were false, and the trial was a sham. In the blink of an eye, Iván was behind bars with no hope for reprieve. For stretches of time, he was allowed to see sunlight for only ten minutes a day.

In 2014, Iván was moved to house arrest to seek treatment for nineteen chronic health conditions, many of them caused by his imprisonment. Knowing this was his only chance, he arranged his daring escape. After speeding off in a car, he spent three weeks evading security in a cat-and-mouse pursuit. A fourteen-hour ride in a small fishing boat got him to a Caribbean island, from which he flew to the United States. 1

Iván could recall when Venezuela was the wealthiest nation in South America. The per capita income of its citizens was greater than those of China and Japan, almost rivaling the income of US citizens. The people of Iván’s generation enjoyed religious liberty, political freedom, personal dignity, and economic opportunity. 2

But when oil prices crashed in the 1980s, and then again in the 1990s, the Venezuelan economy experienced a dip. That dip became a dive in 1998 when the Venezuelan people elected Chávez as their president. Once in power Chávez relentlessly implemented the socialist playbook formulated by the Soviet Union, Cuba, China, and other nations. His first task was to rewrite the Venezuelan constitution, guaranteeing citizens the so-called free rights of government-provided health care, college education, and social justice. When the Supreme Court ruled against Chávez on several important issues, he responded by stacking the court with twelve new justices, all loyal to him.

Socialism totally engulfed the country when Chávez was reelected in 2006. Fully in control of the courts and the legislature, he moved quickly to nationalize the media, removing voices of dissent. Then he authorized government agencies to seize privately owned wealth and property from Venezuela’s citizens—all in the name of “fairness” and “equality.” Chávez took control of the nation’s oil industry, expelling foreign investors and influence. He nationalized power companies, farms, mines, banks, and grocery stores. His final step was to eliminate term limits for elected officials, setting himself up to rule for the rest of his life in the style of Russia’s Stalin and Cuba’s Castro. 3

Not even Chávez could evade the last enemy. He died from cancer in 2013. But his hand-picked successor, Nicolás Maduro, continued to implement Chávez’s agenda—even going further in some areas to force a Marxist agenda on the Venezuelan people. Today Venezuela is descending into anarchy, and record numbers of Venezuelan migrants are fleeing northward, trying to reach the border into the United States.”

 Right now, you might be wondering what all of this has to do with you. If Venezuela has proven that socialism is a bad idea, why should anyone care? You should care because socialist visions and policies are invading the United States.

You’ll hear them discussed under four different names: socialism, communism, Marxism, and cultural Marxism. From my studies, it seems many people consider these terms nearly synonymous. As you read the rest of this chapter, these four titles will show up, but they all refer to the same invasive ideology, one that seems to deceive people with unusual ease.

Consider this: Hugo Chávez had plenty of cheerleaders in the United States during his rise, including Hollywood stars like Sean Penn, Michael Moore, Oliver Stone, and Danny Glover. Socialism seems to hold an almost hypnotic power over many thinkers, and it’s spilling into the common culture. A 2020 poll showed that 40 percent of Americans had a favorable view of socialism. That was up from 36 percent in 2019. Even more frightening, 47 percent of Millennials and 49 percent of Generation Z viewed socialism favorably. 4 Indeed, one 2019 poll in AXIOS found that 61 percent of Americans between the ages of 18 and 24 have a positive reaction to socialism. 5

And then there is this: In 2020, Bernie Sanders nearly won the Democratic Party’s nomination for president of the United States. This is the same senator from Vermont who declared, “I am a socialist and everyone knows it.” 6

In addition to Sanders, recent elections have seen record numbers of socialist candidates win roles as representatives both in state legislatures and in Congress. Notable among them is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. In 2018, she became the youngest congresswoman in history.

Ocasio-Cortez is an avowed member of the Democratic Socialists of America, the largest socialist organization in the United States. Given her young age and massive following, many believe she’ll run for president of the United States one day. That’s a sobering thought given her stated goals of ending capitalism and implementing the same socialist agenda that failed so spectacularly in Venezuela.

I’ve come to the conviction that this ideology represents a real and present danger to the freedom and prosperity that has defined America and other Western nations for centuries. As I’ve researched this book, one verse keeps coming to mind: 2 Timothy 3: 1. Here it is in the Amplified Bible: “But understand this, that in the last days dangerous times [of great stress and trouble] will come [difficult days that will be hard to bear].”

Jesus said it like this, “But as the days of Noah were, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be. For as in the days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and did not know until the flood came and took them all away, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be” (Matt. 24: 37–39).

What were those “days of Noah” like? Genesis 6: 5 describes them this way: “Then the LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.”

The people of Noah’s day ignored and ridiculed his warnings. Noah built and preached for 120 years, and not one single individual outside his immediate family believed him. The people were so indifferent that they didn’t understand what was happening until it was too late.

The heedlessness of the people in Noah’s day will be duplicated in the last days of our world’s history. It will be a day much like ours, a day when ideologies like socialism can sneak in without much attention.

Ask anyone under communism and they’ll probably agree: socialism is an invasive weed planted by Karl Marx. Despite its catastrophic failures, it keeps spreading over the earth like kudzu. Will this be the dominant political philosophy on earth when the tribulation begins? Yes, that seems likely. Socialism is tailor-made for the Antichrist’s appearance. It creates global conditions that bring great stress and trouble, difficult days that will be hard to bear. And it demands a one-world system of government, which Scripture says will be established before the end of history.

Revelation 13 describes the Antichrist as a beast having vast power and authority. “The whole world marveled . . . and gave allegiance to the beast . . . And he was given authority to rule over every tribe and people and language and nation. And all the people who belong to this world worshiped the beast” (Rev. 13: 3, 7–8 NLT).

This beast, or Antichrist, will be empowered by Satan, “who deceives the whole world” (12: 9), and aided by the false prophet, who “deceives those who dwell on the earth” (13: 14). The Lord warned us against this kind of deception: “Beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ” (Col. 2: 8).

Tomorrow will be Part II: What Is Socialism?  1.) The Roots of Socialism; 2.) Marxism Is Anti-God; 3.) Marxism is Totalitarian; 4.) Marxism is Divisive; 5.) Marxism is Deadly

You might ask “Why Merlin are you promoting this book so strongly? Because time is late and I unequivocally believe every Christ Follower should buy and read this book to help remove our cultural blinders. We are being blindsided. If convicted as I, you will then buy several copies and loan them to friends to read for further discussions. ThriftBooks tonight has 19 hardcover for $7.19; new is $26.99. Three used for one new! Invest your loose change this month in books and change lives. Living & Building the Kingdom of God TODAY!

How Tomorrow’s Prophecies Foreshadow Today’s Problems by David Jeremiah

Presented here verbatim, from the book’s Introduction because I believe the content has implicit succinct value for we truth tellers in community today. David Jeremiah should need no introduction. Enjoy. I have copies to loan.

“While writing this introduction, I’m watching the grim recovery efforts in Surfside, Florida, where the Champlain Towers South condominium collapsed in the dead of night, one floor pancaking onto the next, burying scores of people under tons of concrete. Most were sleeping in their beds, unaware of the suddenness of the coming catastrophe.

There had been signs, including warnings of water seeping beneath critical parts of the structure and weakening its integrity. But the alarm sounded too late.

Three thousand miles away, residents of San Francisco’s lavish Millennium Tower absorbed the news with apprehension. Their fifty-eight-story skyscraper with its dazzling views and luxury amenities has sunk eighteen inches into the soft downtown soil on which it was built. It’s tilting, and some view Surfside as a warning to the new Millennium.

I’m concerned about the new millennium too—our trembling twenty-first century. I’m burdened for the underpinnings of our culture, our eroding foundations and structural cracks. Like you, I’ve studied the signs of the times and believe we’re approaching a global cataclysm—one predicted in our Scriptures and unfolding before our eyes.”

All this came to me in a sort of rush months ago as my wife, Donna, and I were having breakfast. We made the mistake of watching the morning news. Every story was more distressing than the one before. We sat there viewing the burning cities, backbiting politicians, runaway infections, heated elections, social upheaval, racial tensions, skyrocketing crime, shouting pundits, deafening lies, eroding sands, and cracking foundations.

I looked over at Donna and said, “You and I are watching the dismantling of America.”

This book was born in that moment.

I began to look at these crises and controversies in a new way. I realized they are not isolated movements, philosophies, or events. They are as interconnected as a spider’s web. COVID-19 seemed like an arbitrary crisis as it unfolded, but it didn’t occur in a vacuum, and the world’s response revealed our souls. Add to that emerging globalism. We’re only one existential crisis from a one-world government.

And what about our worldwide economy, hanging by a strand?

Think of the degradation of our culture. It seems as if every member is a lover of self, a lover of money, a lover of pleasure—and eager to cancel anyone who disagrees with them. This translates to extreme persecution for the church in much of the world and to eroding religious liberty at home. Across our country, an unprecedented spiritual famine is causing an epidemic of emaciated hearts. In the process, many professed Christians are abandoning the faith. This has created a vacuum for the rising tide of socialism to flood into our land.

Simultaneously, events in the Middle East are turning Jerusalem into the powder keg of history. Again! Throw a pandemic in the midst, and there you have it—a world in chaos.

I’ve told you all that to say this: I refuse to be discouraged, and so should you!

This is no time to retreat. It’s time to live by conviction. When Moses sent the twelve spies into the promised land to reconnoiter the territory, ten of the spies were overwhelmed with fear and despair. They were daunted by the giants they saw. But two of the spies, Joshua and Caleb, said, in effect, “Let us go forward! We can take the land!”

Years later in recalling the event, Caleb told Joshua, “I was forty years old when Moses the servant of the LORD sent me from Kadesh Barnea to explore the land. And I brought him back a report according to my convictions” (Josh. 14: 7 NIV, emphasis added).

Well, in this book I’ve explored the territory of our times, and I am bringing back a report according to my convictions. This is not bravado. I’m speaking as honestly and as humbly as I can when I tell you we cannot be still, we cannot be silent, and we cannot live by lies. We must live by our biblical convictions. We can no longer ignore the warnings or sleep in beds of ignorance. I believe we’re approaching the consummation of the ages.

For as long as I’ve had a Bible, I’ve studied scriptural prophecy. I’ve preached and written about the last days from the beginning of my ministry. Perhaps you’ve read some of my previous books regarding the Bible’s message on the end of the world and the return of Christ. I love writing about biblical prophecy because it’s God’s transfusion of hope to our hearts.

But I’ve never written a prophecy book like this one. In the pages that follow, I’m going to deal with ten prophetic issues as current as the morning news. In each chapter, I’ll tell you where we are, what it means, and where we go from here. We’ll thread our way through problems that Jesus predicted—precursors of the tribulation—and we’ll learn how to do the next right thing.”

The Lord told us about this epoch in advance, and it’s a privilege to be His agents on the crest of history. We are not helpless, and our world is not hopeless. Even as the world collapses, the Lord is building His church. We can say something, do something, pray something, preach something, and live by the convictions of Christ.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote in The Gulag Archipelago, “In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousandfold in the future.” 1 God’s people are more than conquerors. We have a way forward. I urge you to study the marching orders at the end of every chapter in this book. Put into practice the things I’m going to recommend. Set your mind fully on the hope you have in Christ, and be ready to pay any price, challenge any foe, and confront any lie for the sake of the gospel.

At any moment, Jesus Christ will descend from heaven for His people. We haven’t long to wait. But until then, we need to understand what the age requires—and we need to do what the Lord commands.

In one of the strangest stories in the Bible, the Lord grabbed the ancient prophet Ezekiel by the hair of his head, transported him in a vision from Babylon to Jerusalem, and dropped him into a scene of unimaginable evil (Ezek. 8: 3). Ezekiel saw the depravity and decay of his own country, a country which he deeply loved. His nation was disintegrating. But God gave him a work to do. He commissioned him to be a watchman on the walls.

God may not grab your hair, but I pray He will grab your heart. I pray He will show you afresh the triumph of the gospel and call you as His watchman to sound the alarm and to proclaim the truth.

Remember what God later told Ezekiel, “I searched for a man among them who would repair the wall and stand in the gap before me on behalf of the land so that I might not destroy it, but I found no one” (22: 30 CSB).

I want Him to find at least two!

One you, and one me.

Come, join me in dedicating the rest of your earthly life to living by biblical convictions, exalting in the triumph of the gospel, and doing all you can to repair the structures of society and to stand in the gap before the Lord on behalf of the land. Don’t be fearful, and don’t let the times overwhelm you. This world will not end in rubble, but in His return! Our risen and exalted Lord Jesus Christ, our enthroned Savior—He knows the way forward.

He will show us where to go from here.”

And may The Strong Man give you grace in that man’s eyes so that he’ll send back your other brother along with Benjamin. For me, nothing’s left; I’ve lost everything. Genesis 43: 13-14.

Sadly today, for many of we Christ-Followers seeking truth amongst today’s chaos, while being the “quiet in the pews,” Jacob’s words might ring strangely predictive, “For me, nothing’s left; I’ve lost everything.” Shame on us for being such defeatists!

I wonder what those ten men, those grown sons of Jacob, talked about during their journey from Canaan to Egypt? I have an idea it might have been the same things we would have talked about had we been in their sandals. I also believe these men were beginning to be broken. Perhaps they spoke of how much they missed their brother Joseph. With Benjamin now among them, maybe they felt this was a great time to express their sorrow over their past actions and, together sincerely request El Shaddai’s power and protection.

I so want to believe that God was starting to melt their hearts before Him! In fact, that is the beauty of this story as it progresses. We’re led to wonder what exactly they were thinking. We so desperately want to cut to the chase to see the happy ending, but we must wait. Because there is always something to learn along the way, especially today for us.

I actually compare the unrecorded conversations during the ten brother’s journey from Canaan to Egypt, to quite possibly our conversations today while on our spiritual journey from decades of secure abundance  to now witnessing the attempt to either take down or at best, deconstruct western civilization. Its pending uncertainties as they are now being revealed to us, may indeed prove exponentially more traumatic than Joseph’s identity to his ten brothers. Perhaps as with them, we too tend to be negative rather positive when facing such challenges.

We tend to view life horizontally seeking relief and direction among our traditional western cultural sources and our peers rather than seeking our guidance from Almighty God vertically as being the forgiven, transformed, empowered discipling bond servants of Jesus Christ serving as His ambassadors until our death permits retirement. We need some course-correction techniques to break us free from the pervasive destructive narrative in the media.

I can think of at least three methods enabling our transformation to a vertical focus.

First, recognize and admit your negative mentality. So much of the cure is in our confession. Immediate correction begins with honest admission; as Jamie Winship says, “knowing your identity in Christ releases you then to be truth tellers in community.” A paradigm shift!

Second, force a vertical focus until it begins to flow freely. I have never seen a habit just lie down, surrender, and die; we have to make a conscious effort if we hope to break longstanding habits. If we are negative today, chances are very good that when we wake up tomorrow we’re still going to be negative. We must force our vertical focus.

Third, stay open to a new idea for at least five minutes. Don’t try it for an entire day; you might panic. Just rest in your spiritual optimism each day for five minutes at a time. When something new, something unexpected, confronts you, don’t respond with an immediate “Nope! Never!” Wait five minutes. Hold off. Tolerate the possibility for five minutes. You’ll be surprised at the benefits of remaining open.

 Bottom line though, the key to joyful vertical focus is only achieved by being obedient, forgiven, transformed, empowered discipling bond servants of Jesus Christ! Never Settle For Less!

Inspired by the Charles R. Swindoll devotional titled “Great Days with the Great Lives”and edited for our perspective today, by merlin.

We all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image… 2 Corinthians 3:18 The greatest characteristic a Christian can exhibit is this completely unveiled openness before God, which allows that person’s life to become a mirror for others. When the Spirit fills us, we are transformed, and by beholding God we become mirrors. You can always tell when someone has been beholding the glory of the Lord, because your inner spirit senses that he mirrors the Lord’s own character. Beware of anything that would spot or tarnish that mirror in you. It is almost always something good that will stain it— something good, but not what is best. The most important rule for us is to concentrate on keeping our lives open to God. Let everything else including work, clothes, and food be set aside. The busyness of things obscures our concentration on God. We must maintain a position of beholding Him, keeping our lives completely spiritual through and through. Let other things come and go as they will; let other people criticize us as they will; but never allow anything to obscure the life that “is hidden with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3). Never let a hurried lifestyle disturb the relationship of abiding in Him. This is an easy thing to allow, but we must guard against it. The most difficult lesson of the Christian life is learning how to continue “beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord….”

Too often today, the emphasis is placed on the furtherance of an organization; the bottom lined though usually unstated is, “We must keep this thing going.” Rather, if we are in God’s will, the work will go on, perhaps even thrive; if we’re not, it won’t. A recent book devoted to clarifying this is John Bevere’s “Good or God: Why Good Without God Isn’t Enough.” I have copies to loan. Click the link below to the Utmost devotional for Jan 23.

https://click.messages.odb.org/?qs=290d98d95e767655a9d950c48604d288e5fc6d1dcefffbfdf1073c8e7fcde7c84293a74edd1bdba716d99208e80a50c06309fe27468ccabe0bab4d3e10325595

Infinite Grace To Give

And God is able to make all grace abound towards you, that you, always having all sufficiency in all things, may have an abundance for every good work. II Cor 9:8

We used to think of air and water – perhaps sunlight also – as being available in super-abundant quantities, more than was needed; but no longer, as the question now is whether the scarcity is actual, or merely contrived to enhance an agenda or promote a narrative. Time will reveal all truth.

Today clean air has become a rarity in many parts of the world, and experts are predicting that clean water will be fought over by nations in the future. Food, air, and water are now becoming limited rather unlimited resources.

But take heart, there is one resource needed for life – indeed, the most important resource of all – that exists for Christ-Followers (C-F’s) in infinite quantities: the grace of God. Nowhere in Scripture is grace pictured in limited terms. There is always more grace to come, more grace to replace grace that has been given. Because true giving is enabled by grace, our ability to give knows no limits. Paul writes here in this passage that God is able “to make all grace abound” toward us, that we will always have “all sufficiency,” and “abundance for every good work.”

If you sense God is leading you to give, I urge you, do not hold back for fear of running out. When you open your hand to give, grace is able to fill your empty hand with exactly what you need, and much more. Take particular note that today’s predominance of fear of scarcity such as of material goods in our supply chain, may well be for C-F’s their empowering link to the infinite quantities of the grace of God by contemplating this year on Him capably “making all grace abound toward us,” that we possess “all sufficiency and abundance for every good work.” No limits! This infinite source is indeed totally awesome! And so freeing!

Enjoy!

Inspired by and adapted from David Jeremiah’s January 17 devotional, “Destinations: Your Journey With God.”