Nearing Midnight In depth weekly commentary (Apr 6)

Apr 6

Violent Crime Joins the "Here We Go Again" Club

Three weeks ago, my partner Terry wrote the article, "Violence Trumpets Christ’s Return." He focused on two key events: the teenage gunman who killed 15 people in Germany and the murder of Rev. Fred Winters during a church service. These were unusual events, and it was noteworthy that they occurred within days of each other.

Recent events have compelled me to address this issue again. In the past few days, there has been an explosion of violence across the land. I've never seen so many horrendous crime stories within such a short period of time.

March 21 - Four Oakland, CA, police officers and one suspect were shot and killed in two shooting incidents near a police substation. It was the deadliest day for U.S. law enforcement since September 11, 2001.

March 28 - Kirby Revelus, 23, stabbed his 17-year-old sister to death with a kitchen knife, and he also attacked his 9-year-old sister (she was taken to the hospital and survived). He finally decapitated their 5-year-old sister in front of a police officer when he broke down the door to their Milton, MA home.

March 29 - A gunman opened fire inside a nursing home in a small North Carolina town, killing eight people, including elderly patients in wheelchairs. A 45-year-old local man was arrested and faced eight counts of first-degree murder after the shooting at the retirement care home in Carthage, about 60 miles southwest of Raleigh.

March 29 - An engineer at Yahoo gunned down his family in an apparent murder-suicide that left six people dead. Devan Kalathat killed his two children and three other relatives at a family housewarming party Sunday before shooting himself.

April 1 - A Massachusetts woman who believes she was being stalked by a cult has been charged with using a pair of scissors to inflict 100 wounds on her 2-year-old daughter. Susan Johnson can be heard saying "Die! Die!" on a 911 call made by a security guard who helped to subdue the woman in a laundry room at a Gardner apartment building Wednesday night.

April 3 - Vietnamese immigrant Jiverly Wong barricaded the back door of an immigration services center in New York State with a car and burst through the front door on a shooting rampage, killing 13 people and then himself.

April 4 - Three Pittsburgh officers, were shot and killed after a man pulled over for a routine traffic stop opened fire and then battled SWAT officers at a nearby building, police said.

April 4 - Five children were found dead inside their Washington state home Saturday afternoon. The children, who range in age from 6-17, were apparently killed by their father in a murder-suicide, according to police.

In Matthew 24:8, we are told that the tribulation hour will be preceded by an exponential surge of activity. Jesus mentioned a great variety of signs — spiritual, natural, societal, and world political —then said these warning signs will be like "birth pangs."

Several times in the past few years, I've compiled lists of birth pangs to show how they are increasing in frequency. When I was writing in the ‘80s and ‘90s, the spacing for major birth pangs could be several years a part. Now, the contractions are weeks and even days apart. Go to our “Timeline” page on mass murder to see how this type of violence is increasing. Most years only have one or two events listed.

The birth pangs have become so active, they are starting to overlap. Here I am writing about violent crime, and at the same time, global leaders are in Europe working on the global financial crisis. North Korea’s launch of a long-range missile is another birth pang simmering on the back burner.

The danger of having to say “Here we go again” is the onset of apathy. Even the most shocking news story can only hold people’s attention for so long. One good example is homicide bombers. When they first started in Israel in the early part of this decade, these attacks would cause news organization to go into “breaking news” mode. Today, they occur all over the Middle East and are reported as if they were as commonplace as a weather report.

I think the disparity between the frequency of birth pangs and the general sense of apathy is the granddaddy of end-time indicators. Jesus gave us a long list of signs of His return, but warned us that the lack of awareness would be the cherry on top. Because they are both at levels never before seen in modern times, I can only conclude that we are near the tail end of the Church Age.

"Just so, when you see the events I've described beginning to happen, you can know his return is very near, right at the door" (NLT Mat. 24:33).

-- Todd

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Where is Antichrist? Part II

The question “Where is Antichrist?” is appropriate for this “time of the signs,” as my friend Chuck Missler has phrased his description of these strange days. There are so many signals on today’s prophetic horizon that one must ask, if he or she knows much about Bible prophecy, “Is Antichrist alive today?” Those who have looked at the world’s issues and events through the prism of God’s prophetic Word throughout preceding decades of America’s history have heard questions about the leaders of the times. Are presidents like Franklin D. Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, or non-presidents like Henry Kissinger and others, the Antichrist? Now the question is pointed at President Barak Obama: “Is he the Antichrist?”

This hour is more prolific with end-times signs than any in history. Obama’s watch as president marks one particular characteristic that adds, peripherally, to the more substantial signals pervading the news at present–I refer to conditions like Israel’s being back in its land and the center of world attention, the Roman Empire seeming to revive in the form of the European Union (EU), and the Gog-Magog coalition of Ezekiel 38-39 forming right before our eyes.

The peripheral matter of concern in this case is the deceit with which this administration is trying to steer the American ship of state. Mr. Obama’s campaign claim was that he would have “transparency” in all of his dealing with the business of the American people. Yet his administration, with the continuing ramrod tactics of his political party, has gone against the will of the American public and is in the process of running up trillions of dollars in debt, an action that even the most “progressive” economists have declared to be beyond any semblance of fiscal sanity.

One such expert comes across as almost fearful of Obama’s plan as put forward by his controversial secretary of treasury, Timothy Geithner. “HONG KONG (Reuters) - The U.S. government plan to rid banks of toxic assets will rob American taxpayers by exposing them to too much risk and is unlikely to work as long as the economy remains weak, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz said on Tuesday… U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner's plan to wipe up to US $1 trillion in bad debt off banks' balance sheets, unveiled on Monday, offered ‘perverse incentives,’ Stiglitz said.

The U.S. government is basically using the taxpayer to guarantee against downside risk on the value of these assets, while giving the upside, or potential profits, to private investors, he said…” (“Geithner plan will rob American taxpayers,” Susan Fenton and Deborah Kan, Reuters, 3/24/09).

The economic expert expressed his concern.

"Quite frankly, this amounts to robbery of the American people. I don't think it's going to work because I think there'll be a lot of anger about putting the losses so much on the shoulder of the American taxpayer" (ibid.).

Time and time again in this fledgling administration, Obama’s regime demonstrates a level of non-transparency that borders on treachery, in my view. To strap an entire nation’s citizenry with debt they don’t want, going against their will, expressed through legitimate polling methods, is beyond taxation without representation. This administration is taking liberty from Americans in a way that does so by deception and force by fiat, not constitutional vote. Such tyranny will enslave citizens and their offspring for generations–possibly into perpetuity—and is among the most despicable forms of deception and deceit.

Does all of this criticism mean I view President Obama as a prime candidate for the one who will be antichrist? No. In no way do I mean to express that Mr. Obama is the biblically prophesied man of sin. However, the way things are being done in Washington D.C. during these strange times should make the observer of issues and events from a biblically prophetic perspective sit up and take notice. They should know from their observations that this generation is seeing governmental razzle-dazzle not unlike the machinations that will mark the ultimate deceiver’s regime. Antichrist’s most tyrannical dictatorship will be one of ultimate enslavement to the 666 marks and numbers system of Revelation 13:16-18.

There is a peaceful revolution going on, about which most of us have at least heard–the neo-Tea Party to protest the forcing of trillions of dollars of debt on American taxpayers, their offspring, and their progeny yet unborn. People are putting tea bags in envelopes and mailing them to the appropriate address in Washington, D.C. At least, the White House kitchen help should, through all of the submitted tea bags, be able to save the taxpayers a few of the dollars that are coming off the presses like toilet paper off the roll. (Be aware, you Tea Partiers, however. Word is that the envelopes containing the bags--a powdery substance--are being summarily disposed of because of possible harmful substances they might contained. Best, I’m told, just to send the tags with the attached strings.) SH Something Rotten in Denmark–And Everywhere Else

The smell permeates almost every corner of America and the world. It is an odor of things to come.

Beyond the political exigencies of this troubling hour is the spiritual atmosphere that has the stench of Antichrist and his father, the devil. The scent was prevalent 2,000 years ago, and the Bible prophet John forewarned about its cankering, corrosive qualities, as well as defined it:

“Little children, it is the last time: and as ye have heard that antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last time… Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world. Hereby know ye the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God: And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world” (1 John 1:18, 4:1-3).

Denial of Jesus Christ and God’s prescription for living godly lives on Planet Earth saturate this generation. The antithesis of Christ’s words is not only carried out in the sinful lives of earth-dwellers; the opposition to the Lord is set in the hardened rebellion of manmade law.

The denial that Christ came to teach God’s standards for living on the planet He created is almost imperceptible. Most–even leaders of every conceivable religious sort--often agree that Jesus was a great teacher of good. But when Jesus is held up as the only Way to God the Father (John 14:6), the shrieks emanating from the spirit of Antichrist come from every dark direction of this fallen sphere.

During the present hour, there are even claims that Jesus taught that it is the mother’s right to choose whether her baby lives or dies. It is held among a growing number of clergy that Jesus himself gave blessing to those who chose homosexuality over heterosexuality. Most worrisome of all, the world is more and more embracing the lie that Jesus only represented the Christ spirit during His time on earth. He didn’t die for the sin of man. He didn’t resurrect from the dead because He didn’t really die at the crucifixion, but feigned death on the cross. He didn’t ascend to on high to sit at the right hand of God. He is, therefore, not coming back to rule and reign.

Jesus, the majority of the world–including many in our government as it is presently constituted, deny that Jesus is God–the second Person of the Godhead, the Trinity.

Just a cursory examination of the earliest phase of the new presidential administration tells the story of this time of the growing Antichrist spirit. The first months following the inauguration have brought changes by presidential edict that are diametrically opposite God’s will as given in His Word, the Bible. For example, the president ordered that money of the American taxpayers now be used to help with abortion practices in foreign nations, reversing former President George W. Bush’s presidential order that no such use of taxpayer money be made. This Obama did, despite the protestation of more than half of the American public.

The United States is being channeled and forced into a mold that looks like the biblically foretold one world order that will be ruled with a deadly iron fist by the one who is called “the beast.” With the stage of history’s last act set, for all practical purposes, it is perhaps not far-fetched that Antichrist is among us even now. He is here in spirit, for sure.

--Terry