Things To Come: The Anti-Christian Movement

The Anti-Christian Movement

I used to be an atheist.  My understanding of "atheism" was simply that it is the belief that there is no God.  I was an empiricist: I believed in what could be seen – the material world and nothing more.  I did not hate Christians.  At worst, I thought they were naïve and foolish for their religious beliefs, but I knew many Christians I respected, including for their insight and intelligence.

Today, "atheism" means something entirely different from a simple lack of belief in God.  What atheism has become can be more accurately described as "the anti-Christian movement."  It is a movement that assumes that Christianity isn't merely naïve and false, but a major cause of social ills, something worth the effort to actively ferret out and purge from our society.  This anti-Christian crusade has been both supported by, and a natural outgrowth of, the much larger program of cultural Marxism.

Anti-clericalism is nothing new, but many atheists of the past were at least coherent.  They believed that the complex triune God of Christianity was silly, but they didn't think Shiva, Allah, or Zeus was any better.  Like me, they simply believed in the here and now and not in the unseen and scientifically unverifiable.  

The new atheists are different.  They are not really bound by cold, materialist, scientific facts.  Although they claim that science and reason are on their side, they often are not very knowledgeable about either.  More often, they are interested only in co-opting the human authority science has acquired.  Science is a brand for today's atheists, not a discipline.  The new atheism is generally forgiving toward Hinduism and can be almost reverent regarding Buddhism.  While I grant that Buddhism is essentially godless, it's a long way from being a collection of empirical facts.  Buddha's claims are certainly no more objectively verifiable than Christ's.  Nirvana is no easier to find on a star chart than the Christian Heaven.

Uninterested in hard materialism, today's atheists believe in an emotional narrative invented and reinvented at the whim of politically motivated human beings.  Today's atheism is not a philosophical position, but a political one.  Superficially, the anti-Christian movement espouses the view that Christianity is uniquely evil in its intolerance – their word for the fact that we have standards. 

Christianity, like Western civilization, is squeezed into the usual Marxist mold as just another instrument of oppression.  But without batting an eye, many of today's atheists manage to believe that Islam, an objectively more intolerant, more misogynistic, and far more bloodthirsty system of beliefs than Christianity – is somehow forgivable, or even a net social boon.  In truth, the new atheism isn't about helping the "oppressed" – any more than it is about the non-belief in God or the exclusive belief in the world we can grasp with our senses.  It is about being a vocal part of the identity group of avid Christian-haters.  A political entity.  It is about inventing yet another substitute sense of identity and purpose to replace the Christian sense of identity and purpose that it struggles to destroy.

The anti-Christian movement of today, like all other Marxist or neo-Marxist splinter groups, draws its strength from a simple, if unstated, promise: All the world's aggrieved can acquire social acceptance and the unholy grail of victim status by denouncing someone else as an oppressor and working for his destruction.

The anti-Christian movement of today, like all other Marxist or neo-Marxist splinter groups, draws its strength from a simple, if unstated, promise: All the world's aggrieved can acquire social acceptance and the unholy grail of victim status by denouncing someone else as an oppressor and working for his destruction.

NBC's Chuck Todd slammed on Twitter for Good Friday comments

NBC’s Chuck Todd has been slammed online after he took to Twitter last week to offer his thoughts about Good Friday. 

The “Meet the Press” host said that he was a “a bit hokey” about the religious occasion. 

“I don’t mean disrespect to the religious aspect of the day, but I love the idea of reminding folks that any day can become “good,” all it takes is a little selflessness on our own part,” he wrote. “Works EVERY time.”

Chuck Todd

✔@chucktodd

I’m a bit hokey when it comes to “Good Friday.” I don’t mean disrespect to the religious aspect of the day, but I love the idea of reminding folks that any day can become “good,” all it takes is a little selflessness on our own part. Works EVERY time.

6:40 PM - Mar 30, 2018

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Todd’s words drew ire online from some. 

“The day of Jesus’ crucifixion is considered a victory of Good over Evil, Chuck,” one critic responded. “Your ignorant and insensitive comment should get you fired.”

“Chuck, you just don't get it, another example of Media snobbery and dis'ing Christians in your own subtle way,” a different account tweeted.

Iraq's Christians: Eighty Percent Have "Disappeared"

Persecution of Christians is worse today "than at any time in history", a recent report by the organization Aid to the Church in Need revealed. Iraq happens to be "ground zero" for the "elimination" of Christians from the pages of history.

Iraqi Christian clergymen recently wore a black sign as a symbol of national mourning for the last victims of the anti-Christian violence: a young worker and a whole family of three. "This means that there is no place for Christians," saidFather Biyos Qasha of the Church of Maryos in Baghdad. "We are seen as a lamb to be killed at any time".

A few days earlier, Shiite militiamen discovered a mass grave with the bodies of 40 Christians near Mosul, the former stronghold of the Islamic State and the capital of Iraqi Christianity. The bodies, including those of women and children, seemed to belong to Christians kidnapped and killed by ISIS. Many had crosses with them in the mass grave. Not a single article in the Western mainstream media wrote about this ethnic cleansing.

French Chief Rabbi Haim Korsia made an urgent plea to Europe and the West to defend non-Muslims in the Middle East, whom he likened to Holocaust victims. "As our parents wore the yellow star, Christians are made to wear the scarlet letter of nun" Korsia said. The Hebrew letter "nun" is the same sound as the beginning of Nazareen, an Arabic term signifying people from Nazareth, or Christians, and used by the Islamic State to mark the Christian houses in Mosul.

Now a new report by the Iraqi Human Rights Society also just revealed that Iraqi minorities, such as Christians, Yazidis and Shabaks, are now victims of a "slow genocide", which is shattering those ancient communities to the point of their disappearance. The numbers are significant.

According to the report, 81% of Iraq's Christians have disappeared from Iraq. The remaining number of Sabeans, an ancient community devoted to St. John the Baptist, is even smaller: 94% have disappeared from Iraq. Even 18% of Yazidis have left the country or been killed. Another human rights organization, Hammurabi, said that Baghdad had 600,000 Christians in the recent past; today there are only 150,000.

These numbers may be the reason Charles de Meyer, president of SOS Chrétiens d'Orient, has just spoken of the "extinction of Christians". Father Salar Kajo of the Churches' Nineveh Reconstruction Committee just spoke of the real possibility that "Christianity will disappear from Iraq".

Many ancient Christian churches and sites have been destroyed by Islamic extremists, such as Saint George Church in Mosul; the Virgin Mary Chaldean Church, attacked by car bomb, and the burned Armenian Church in Mosul. Hundreds of Christian homes have been razed in Mosul, where jihadists also toppled bell towers and crosses. The Iraqi clergy recently warned, "The churches are in danger".

Tragically, Christians living in lands formerly under the control of the "Caliphate" have been betrayed by many actors in the West. Governments ignored their tragic fate. Bishops were often too aloof to denounce their persecution. The media acted as if they considered these Christians to be agents of colonialism who deserved to be purged from the Middle East. And the so-called "human rights" organizations abandoned them.

European public opinion, supposedly always ready to rally against the discrimination of minorities, did not say a word about what Ayaan Hirsi Ali called "a war against Christians".

Some communities, such as the small Christian enclaves of Mosul, are now lost forever. Syriac Orthodox Patriarch Ignatius Aphrem II said there is a "real danger" Christianity could just become a "museum" in the Middle East. He noted that Iraq has lost 80-90% of its Christian population.

Among European governments, only Hungary took a principled position and openly committed itself to save Iraqi Christianity from genocide. Recently, the Hungarian government opened a school for displaced Christians in Erbil; Hungary's Minister of Human Resources, Zoltan Balog, attended the event.

Imagine if all the other European countries, such as France and Germany, had done the same. The suffering of Christians in Iraq would today be much less and their numbers much higher.

California Has 3 Quakes Within 24 Hours On San Andreas Fault

Earthquake hits San Andreas ‘Big One’ fault line three times in SAME place in California

CALIFORNIA has been rocked by three earthquakes which have hit almost the same spot in less than 24 hours along the notorious ‘Big One’ San Andreas fault line, according to the United States Geological Survey. 

The first earthquake struck at 2.33pm UTC (3.33 GMT) on March 31, measuring 3.0 magnitude on the Richter scale.

The second shake arrived a little more than half an hour later, at 3.07pm UTC (4.07 GMT) measuring 2.8.

The third and last earthquake shook the earth at 10.46am UTC (11.46 GMT) today, April 1, measuring 2.6 magnitude.

All the quakes struck about 30 miles from south of San Jose, California, on the Western coast of the US. 

The shakes were only minor, with no one injured. But the area affected runs along San Andreas Fault, which is due for a major quake dubbed the ‘Big One’.

California’s most recent powerful earthquake was estimated to be 7.8 magnitude and happened in 1857.

The shake released some of the pressure on the fault but experts warned California to prepare for another major shake.

Robert Graves, a research geophysicist at the US Geological Survey USGS, suggests the “Big One” could be overdue by 10 years. 

Mr Graves said: "The San Andreas fault in southern California last had a major quake in 1857.

"Studies that have dated previous major offsets along the fault trace show that there have been about 10 major quakes over the past 1,000-2,000 years… the average time between these quakes is about 100-150 years.”

As the area is much more populated now, an earthquake of similar magnitude would bring much more destruction and death in every city in Southern California.

The USGS published a scenario foreseeing what a 7.8 magnitude earthquake on the San Andreas fault would do.

The number of deaths could be as high as 1,800, around the same number of people killed in Hurricane Katrina. 

According to the USGS prediction, more than 900 people could die from fires sparked by the earthquake, another 650 more from buildings collapsing and being hit by falling debris and at least 150 from transportation accidents, such as car crashes.

The San Andreas fault runs near the Santa Monica fault zone.

While San Andreas runs northeast of Los Angeles Santa Monica fault zone is roughly perpendicular, running east to west through Los Angeles.

The latest map shows the fault line ending underneath Beverly Hills, however, geologists believe it could go as far as Hollywood.

Tim Dawson, a senior engineering geologist with the California Geological Survey, said: “It’s possible it connects up with the Hollywood fault, and that’s what we’d really like to answer.”

Persecution Growing Worldwide As Predicted

9 “Then you will be handed over to be persecuted and put to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of me. 10 At that time many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other, 11 and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people. 12 Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold, 13 but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved.

(Matthew 24)

Report: China’s Underground Christians Feel Betrayed by Vatican Deal with Beijing

Members of China’s Christian community feel betrayed by the Vatican’s negotiations with Beijing over Chinese bishop appointments. In fact, the South China Morning Post (SCMP) writes of Catholics feeling as “betrayed and abandoned” as Jesus on Good Friday.

Christian faith occupies a curious position in Chinese society—frowned upon and distrusted by the Communist elite, but not currently oppressed as savagely as in neighboring North Korea. Some Chinese Catholics belong to churches authorized by the state, but others say those churches are controlled by the state and prefer to worship at “underground” churches free of political influence.

Some of those churches are not very far underground; the SCMP describes one that is festooned with government surveillance cameras, but forty or so Catholics congregate there anyway. Another passage in the article describes an entire village of 3,000 underground Catholics kept under creepy surveillance by cameras and undercover police. Some estimates suggested there are about 12 million Catholics in China, and 60 percent of them belong to state-sanctioned churches.

Amid much controversy, the Vatican has been negotiating the resumption of formal diplomatic relations with Beijing. One of the key issues concerns how bishops would be appointed. China’s authoritarian government wants politically reliable bishops to manage a Catholicism that harmonizes with the Communist Party’s political agenda.

To the dismay of many Catholics, the Vatican seems to have worked out a deal where it will retain an advisory role, but the government will have a major role in appointing bishops. 

There is tremendous controversy over whether the arrangement would give the Pope or the Politburo the final say in appointments. 

Even the most optimistic descriptions of the deal suggest that candidates will have to be acceptable to both parties, which angers many Catholics by putting the Chinese Communist Party on an equal footing with the papacy in a role no other government in the world enjoys.

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Supporters of the arrangement hope that it will allow the Catholic Church to flourish in China because the regime will no longer view the faith as a threatening subversive force. They portray giving the Vatican a voice in China’s state-controlled church network as a tremendous accomplishment.

“It is not a great agreement but we don’t know what the situation will be like in 10 or 20 years. It could even be worse,” a source familiar with the negotiations told Reuters in February. “Afterwards we will still be like a bird in a cage but the cage will be bigger. It is not easy. Suffering will continue. We will have to fight for every centimeter to increase the size of the cage.”

One of the strongest critics of the deal, former Hong Kong bishop Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-Kiun, frankly denounced the Vatican for selling out to China, described the deal as a suicide pact, and even suggested the diplomats working on the agreement were misleading Pope Francis about what it entailed.

The South China Morning Post on Friday quoted underground church members who felt the same, including priests who spoke of retiring in protest. One of the most infuriating aspects of the deal is that two underground bishops who were appointed by the Vatican have been ordered to step aside for Communist-appointed bishops.

One of those underground bishops, 59-year-old Vincent Guo Xijin of Fujian province, was arrested on Monday for unclear reasons and held for a day. Amnesty International researcher Patrick Poon was outraged at the semi-official explanation that Guo was brought in for “talks,” which he said, “In the Communist Chinese context is always about detention and threats.”

“Quite a number of underground parishioners who would never walk into an official church approached us recently asking if the Vatican is really giving up on legitimate underground bishops for illicit ones. No one can wrap their head around the Vatican’s rationale,” a priest who asked to be identified as “Father Pedro” who leads one of the state-approved Chinese churches, told the South China Morning Post.

6 Christian Communities that Can't Practice Their Religion Freely This Easter

As Christians around the world prepare to observe the holy weekend of Easter, many will be asked at their services to pray for the persecuted around the world.

After years of advocacy groups raising awareness, the plight of the Christians of the Middle East, particularly in the former Islamic State territories, has become common knowledge among American Christians. Yet they are far from the only group that will celebrate Easter this year in defiance of state persecution, mob violence, and repressive cultural norms imposed by groups threatened by the spread of the Christian faith.

Below, six countries where Christians struggle to practice their faith freely against systematic institutional and cultural pressure.

China

China has experienced a Christian population boom so great that some estimates suggest it could become home to the world’s largest Christian population in decades. The total number of Christians in China today could exceed 100 million, more than the total number of members of the Chinese Communist Party. There is no concrete count of the number of Christians in the country largely because of state repression – while legal Christian churches exist, they are tightly regulated by the communist regime of leader Xi Jinping and, thus, unpopular.

Xi Jinping has led a systematic crackdown on “unauthorized” Christianity that has worsened year after year since he became “president” in 2013. Xi has led a movement to “sinicize” Christianity, forcing the legal Christian churches to deliver sermons extolling the virtues of his regime. “Unauthorized” Christianity is deemed a “national security threat,” and Christians who dare worship in their homes face severe law enforcement reprimand.

Late last year, the Chinese Communist Party began forcing rural Christians to replace crosses in their homes with photos of Xi Jinping. Demolitions of churches and arrests of dissident Christians, particularly any involved in human rights activism, are common. In one of the most recent incidents documented, the advocacy group China Aid reported that local authorities in Henan began “going door-to-door, forbidding all meetings of Christian citizens and disbanding house church groups.”

Venezuela

Venezuela is a predominantly Catholic nation whose socialist leaders claim to be devotees of the faith, so it represents a bit of a blind spot for advocates for persecuted Christians. Its presence on this list, however, is largely a product of the fact that the government claims a stranglehold on interpreting Christianity that has led to violence and intimidation against Catholic clergy in the South American country.

Dictator Nicolás Maduro and his subordinates have struggled for years to submit the Christian faith to their whims – publishing socialist Christmas carols, identifying their policies with the Gospels, and proclaiming that “Christ is Chavista.”

Yet Christians in Venezuela who oppose the regime are not free to practice. The Catholic leadership of the country has vocally called for Maduro to step down and return the nation to democratic republican rule. In response, chavista gangs have attacked churches, threatened priests, forced Mass attendees to listen to socialist rants instead of their weekly sermon, and left many churches looted and desecrated.

India

In India, the repression faced by many Christians is not at the hands of the government, but at the hands of violent Hindu nationalist mobs. According to Open Doors, an organization that tracks the persecution of the Christian faithful worldwide, the permissive attitude of a Hindu nationalist government has allowed for the exacerbation of violence against these communities, some of the oldest Christian congregations on earth.

In one incident this year, a mob tortured and hanged a Christian pastor after six months of loudly disturbing Sunday services. Local police ruled the death a suicide, triggering thousands to protest for justice. Local protestors said police were afraid to prosecute individuals believed to be involved in the death because “if the four [suspects] are arrested, 10,000 will come out on the streets and there will be communal violence.”

In another incident last year, a woman who married a Christian was kidnapped and tortured by members of a “yoga center” repeatedly accused of threatening women out of conversions out of Hinduism.

In 2016, a mob estimated to contain 60 Hindu nationalists beat two Christian pastors and others at their church with cricket bats and forced them into a police station to file charges against the Christians for allegedly proselytizing. Radicals often cite local laws against proselytizing or converting to another religion to influence police into arresting Christians.

Nigeria

Nigeria’s population is 40 percent Christian, with many practicing freely in the nation’s south. In the north, however, Christians face severe persecution from jihadist groups like Boko Haram and violence by the majority-Muslim Fulani herdsmen against Christian farmers. The herdsmen are believed to be conducting raids targeting Christians and have killed an estimated thousands of civilians.

Boko Haram makes its home in Borno state, the furthest northeast territory in the country, where they routinely attack Christian villages and abduct Christian girls and women by the hundreds.

Boko Haram typically abduct Christian girls and women and force them to convert to Islam, “marry” their jihadist members, and serve as sex slaves and cooks. Some younger girls are used as suicide bombers, as they are considered less of a threat by civilian merchants and clergy who control the main targets of Boko Haram attacks.

Most recently, Boko Haram abducted over one hundred girls from a school in Dapchi, Yobe state, bordering Borno to the west. They returned all girls to their parents except for one – Leah Sharibu, who refused to denounce her Christian faith.

Sudan

Sudan, a nation run by Muslim tyrant wanted for genocide, is one of the most repressive states in the world, a Muslim-majority tyranny where Christians face destruction of property and arbitrary arrest if they are too visible. Open Doors ranks Sudanese Christians in the top five most persecuted Christian nationalities in the world.

Christians face legal repercussions for converting from Islam, opposing the destruction of their churches, and attempting any journalism about Christian populations there. According to Open Doors, “some Christians are arrested on charges of espionage, and many churches have been demolished, with others on an official list awaiting demolition.”

Apostacy, or the abandonment of Islam, is a crime in Sudan, and many Christians can be persecuted for this crime even if they were never Muslim. The most prominent such case was that of Meriam Yahya Ibrahim, arrested for “apostasy” while pregnant and forced to give birth in prison because her father, who she never knew, was Muslim and she had married a Christian man. Despite being raised as a lifelong Christian, Ibrahim was arrested for leaving Islam, released only after intense international pressure from human rights groups.

Indonesia

Indonesian Christians are under growing public scrutiny. While Christians have long coexisted in the world’s most populous Islamic country, they have increasingly fallen victim to radical Islamic mobs. A report in March found that Christians accused of violations of Sharia, the law of Islam, are agreeing in larger numbers to accept Sharia punishments, like public caning, in order to avoid an expensive legal procedure against them. Sharia bans “crimes” such as eating haram food and “blasphemy,” which Christians can easily fall victim to accusations of.

The government in Indonesia, concerned about potential violence, is often responsive to radical demands from Islamic groups, such as growing calls for a ban on selling alcohol, bans on public Christmas decorations, and prosecuting those accused of blasphemy. In one high-profile case, the former governor of Jakarta, an ethnic Chinese Christian, was convicted of blasphemy for warning against radical clerics who use the Quran to manipulate voters.

Signs I And Signs II

Do Not Miss His Coming

By Matt Ward

It still amazes me when I read how the Jewish religious leaders of 2,000 years ago managed to completely miss Jesus’ first coming? These were highly educated men, especially in the signs that would indicate the emergence of Messiah. Yet they failed miserably at discerning the time of their own Messiah’s advent.

These were men who spent their entire lives, from early youth, memorizing and learning Scripture, especially the Torah. They were by any definition experts.

How then did they miss the significance of Jesus’ ministry, this remarkable preacher and miracle worker from Nazareth? The actions of the forthcoming Messiah were well known to all Jews, especially at that time. In fact, they were obsessed with the coming of the Messiah.

Isaiah and others described in detail who he would be and what he would do, that he would heal the sick, bring sight to the blind, heal the brokenhearted…raise the dead. The Bible told them that it would be through these signs that they should recognize Him.

This is why John the Baptist, in prison awaiting death, sent his disciples to ask Jesus, “…are you the coming one, or should we wait for another?” (Matthew 11:3).

Jesus responded, not by giving a straight “yes” or “no,” but by saying to John, “Go back and report what you hear and see: the blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised and the good news is proclaimed to the poor” (Matthew 11:4-5).

Jesus was telling John, “…don’t ask me! Judge for yourself by my works! By the signs you will know me!” And therefore, when we read the Gospels, we read accounts of one outstanding miracle after another. Each miracle, each healing, is a testimony to who Jesus is, that he is exactly who he says he is.

Jesus proclaimed himself to be the Messiah, and his works throughout his ministry validated that claim then, and still do today.

God loves us all deeply. He never does anything without revealing his ways to his prophets (Amos 3:7). That is why God gave, not general, but very specific details of what the Messiah would do and who he would be, so that those who were genuinely looking for him would be able to find him.

It was clearly written that the Messiah would be a descendant of Abraham (Genesis 12:3, 18:18, Matthew 1:1), be of the tribe of Judah (Genesis 49:10, Luke 3:33), be born in Bethlehem (Micah 5:2, Matthew 2:1, Luke 2:4-7); and the time of his birth was also prophesied (Daniel 9:25, Luke 2:1).

It was written that there would be a slaughter of innocent children (Jeremiah 31:15, Matthew 2:16-18) accompanying his birth. It was written that their King would come to them in humility, riding a donkey (Zechariah 9:9, John 12:13-14), that he would enter Jerusalem through the Golden Gate (Ezekiel 44:1-2, Mark 11:7-8), and that he would be betrayed by a friend for thirty pieces of silver (Zechariah 11:12, Psalm 41:9, Mark 14:10, Matthew 26:14-15).

It was written that the money paid in exchange for his life would be returned for a potter’s field (Zechariah 11:13, Matthew 27:6-7), that he would be silent before his accusers (Isaiah 53:7, Matthew 26:62-63), that he would be spat upon and struck in the face (Isaiah 50:6, Matthew 26:67), and that he would be hated without reason (Psalms 69:4, 35:19, 109:3-5, John 15:24-25).

It was written that soldiers would divide his garments (Psalm 22:18, Matthew 27:35) and that he would be crucified (this prophecy, one thousand years before crucifixion was developed as a method of execution!) (Zechariah 12:10, Psalm22:16, Matthew 27:35, John 20: 27).

It was written that he would be crucified with malefactors and would agonize with thirst (Isaiah 53:12, Psalms 22:15, Mark 15:27-28, John 19:28), that in his thirst they would give him gall or vinegar to drink (Psalm 69:21, John 19:19), that his side would be pierced but no bones would be broken (Zechariah 12:10, Psalm 34:20, John 19:32-36), and that he would be buried with the rich but deserted by his followers (Isaiah 53:9, Zechariah 13:7, Matthew 27:57-60, Mark 14:27).

The Bible tells us how the Messiah would be deserted and completely abandoned by God (Psalm 22:1, Matthew 27:46) but that ultimately he would rise from the dead (Hosea 6:2, Psalms 16:10, 49:15, Luke 24:6-7, Mark 16).

And these are just some of the signs of his first coming, and the leaders of his time completely failed to recognize who this miracle worker from Galilee really was.

So how did they miss his coming?

The Pharisees and Sadducees of Jesus’ day were expecting a Messiah; they just weren’t expecting the one they got. In Jewish tradition, there were two Messiahs to come, each fulfilling very different roles. There was Messiah ben Joseph and Messiah ben David.

Messiah ben Joseph is the suffering servant, the Messiah who had come to die. This is the Messiah who would come and take the place of sacrifice, and he is depicted in Isaiah 53. Isaiah 53 has always been a very difficult chapter for the Jewish people to accept or understand. Even to this day, Jews do not know what to do with it and what to do with this man of tragedy, this “suffering servant.” Most observant Jews simply try to ignore Isaiah 53 altogether and pretend it doesn’t exist.

Yet this was the role that Jesus fulfilled during his first coming, the role of the suffering servant who took the sins of the world onto his shoulders. The Jewish leaders missed him because they were not waiting for Messiah ben Joseph; they were waiting for Messiah ben David, an awesome political and military leader – a dramatic deliverer.

This will be how Jesus will present himself at his Second Advent, as Messiah ben David, the conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah. And in that day, as surely as the Lord lives, “every knee will bow” to the name of Jesus.

Two thousand years ago, they were looking for someone to come and free them from the yoke of Roman servitude, and that was not Jesus’ role in his first incarnation. His role was to free humanity from the yoke of sin and eternal death! He didn’t fit their ideology, so they ignored him. Ultimately they killed him for it.

Even the disciples after the resurrection asked Jesus, “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” (Acts 1:6). They were still expecting Jesus to free them from Roman oppression and believed that now Jesus would finally fulfill the role of Messiah ben David and establish his kingdom.

The Jews knew that Messiah had two roles: a suffering servant – Ben Joseph, and a mighty warrior – Ben David. They were expecting two different Messiahs to fulfill two different roles. What they could not grasp, and still to this day fail to understand, was that one man would fulfill both roles, but at two separate times in human history, separated by thousands of years!

Two thousand years after the first coming of Messiah, it looks very much to me like many in this generation are repeating the mistakes of the leaders in Jesus’ day.

Jesus told us the signs which would indicate his second coming to this earth. He told us how to recognize the season of his return. How many of us are paying attention? If the hundreds of prophecies concerning his first coming were fulfilled, literally and to the letter, then surely those related to his second coming will be literally fulfilled too. To the letter. Why would it be any different?

There are approximately three hundred prophecies of the first coming of the Messiah in the Old Testament, but over five hundred of his second coming! George Heron, a French mathematician, worked out that the chances of 40 of those first-coming prophecies being fulfilled in one man were 1 in 10 to the power of 157!

Dr. Peter S. Ruckman calculated that the odds of 60 (not 300) being fulfilled in one man were 1 in 10 to the power of over 895. That’s a one with 895 zeros after it.

The prophecies related to the Second Advent of Jesus are coming to pass now, so why are so many in positions of “leadership” spending their time talking about Kingdom Now theology, talking about seeker-sensitive models of church growth, and about “Having Your Best Life Now.”

The signs Jesus told us to watch for that would indicate the end of the age are burgeoning. They are increasing in intensity and frequency.

There are false prophets everywhere; famines and diseases ravaging entire populations; earthquakes and tribulations; there is godlessness and apostasy; the Roman Empire is reforming before our eyes; Hebrew has returned as the spoken language of Israel; and preparation for the rebuilding of the temple is common talk, as is the news of Red Heifer births.

Knowledge has increased and we all travel to and fro! Ethiopian Jews have returned to Israel; Russia has risen and its Jews have returned “from the north country;” the technology for the mark of the beast is upon us; and the New World Order is common currency. Israel is fast becoming the pariah state of the world, and every nation is obsessed with dividing Jerusalem. And I personally think that the gospel has been preached to all the world.

Don’t make the same mistake the Pharisees and Sadducees made two thousand years ago. No one knows the day or the hour, but all the signs indicating the emergence of the Messiah are present now, and become more pronounced with each day that passes.

So take it upon yourself, this day, to make yourself ready so that you will be found to be at peace with him when he does come.

“When it is evening, you say, ‘It will be fair weather, for the sky is red.’ And in the morning, ‘There will be a storm today, for the sky is red and threatening.’ Do you know how to discern the appearance of the sky, but cannot discern the signs of the times?” (Matthew 16: 2-3).

“Watch therefore, and pray always that you may be counted worthy to escape all these things that will come to pass, and to stand before the Son of Man” (Luke 21:36).

An 'Inconvenient Fact'

The Resurrection of Jesus: An Inconvenient Fact

This Sunday, Christians around the world will celebrate Easter.  Some prefer to call it Resurrection Day.  Now most Christians – whether nominal or serious – just accept the holiday without much thought. But if they would examine the claims, most Christians would be shocked.

The basic premise behind Christianity is that humanity, and also by extension the universe, is flawed – the theological term is fallen – so flawed that there is no way any human could set himself right with a just, perfect, and holy Creator.  If humanity is to be reconciled to the Creator, it must be the effort of the Creator Himself, since only the Creator is capable of effecting  such as massive work.

Christianity's claim is that the Creator did come down to Earth, with the purpose of reconciling God to man, in the person of Jesus Christ, who is both man and God.  His human nature would be the Son of God through a virgin; his divine nature would be God incarnate.

Jesus would absorb all the wrongs of mankind in Himself to clear out the account.  The classic wording for this is that He (Jesus) paid the penalty for our sins.  If one is more modern, and eschews the concept of retributive justice, then one could say Jesus absorbed within Himself all the consequences of man's wrongs, with the idea of setting it right.

Now, the idea of suffering on someone else's behalf is not new, but Christianity takes the concept a large step forward and makes this claim: death would not be able to hold Jesus, and He would come out of the grave.  And this resurrection would be the signature that Christ indeed set things right between God and man.  Indeed, He would more than pay the price for man's transgressions.

Many of us, who came out of nominal Christian homes, of whatever denomination, gave it little thought and just accepted it sort of vaguely – but if true, such a resurrection should stop us in our tracks.

No other religion makes this claim.

Mohammed did not claim to die for our sins, nor did he resurrect.  In fact, Mohammed admitted that he had his own sins.

Hinduism offers mankind just the possibility of setting things right by endless reincarnations, with the idea that over time, we will finally arrive at perfection ourselves.  The problem is that even if humans arrive at perfection, it does not do away with the bad karma accumulated from prior reincarnations.  In fact, the hidden flaw of Hinduism is that each reincarnation only makes our problems worse with an endless accretion of bad karma.

Buddhism, which is an outgrowth of Hinduism, has the same fatal flaw.

But what about this Jesus?  Was He like other humans in being sinful?  Christianity addresses the problem by stating that Jesus was unique in His sinlessness, by virtue of the fact that He is God, and therefore He, Jesus, did not have our sinful nature.  He is a rather unique case.

This is further amplified by an Old Testament (Tenach) prophecy, where it is stated that Jesus would bear the sins of others, not his own.

He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.
Surely He has borne our griefs
And carried our sorrows;
Yet we esteemed Him stricken,
Smitten by God, and afflicted.
But He was wounded for our transgressions,
He was bruised for our iniquities;
The chastisement for our peace was upon Him,
And by His stripes we are healed. ...

And He bore the sin of many,
And made intercession for the transgressors.

This is the famous "suffering servant" passage of Isaiah 53.  

The whole process is conditioned on this person coming out of the grave.  If He did not resurrect, He would have been as sinful as the rest of us, deserving of death, and unable to pay for anyone else's sins.  But, if He were the Son of God, He would be infinite in value, and His sacrifice could atone for whoever accepted it.

The fact is that if Jesus did not come out of that grave, then Christianity is pointless, despite what liberal preachers say.  Christianity is not positive thinking or a good attitude.  Either Christ came out of that grave or the whole religion is a fraud.

As Paul wrote, "[a]nd if Christ is not risen, then our preaching is empty and your faith is also empty" (1 Cor. 15:14).

But if Jesus did come out of that grave,  then all of history changes.  The ramifications are immense.

1. Islam is false.
2. Hinduism is false.
3. Buddhism is false.
4. Rabbinic Judaism – which rejects Christ – is incomplete.

If He came out of that grave, then He is the only way to God.  Think about it: if we could save ourselves, why would God have even sent Jesus to die for us and then resurrect?  We can't earn our way back to Heaven.  Our good deeds will not save us.

Christianity, though producing a tolerant civilization, makes a unique claim.  Not only is there only one God – both Judaism and Islam agree on that point – but the only way to approach that God is through His Son – which both Islam and Rabbinic Judaism deny.

I am not going to go into other points such as the Trinity, denominational doctrines, etc.

The first thing you have to do – if you have not decided it already – is settle once and for all: did Jesus come out of that grave?

If He did, then that is a very inconvenient fact for much of the world, including merely nominal Christians – but it is also the central drama of history.