AUTHORITARIAN DECLARATIONS AND CRUEL
ACTIONS FORESHADOW
IMMINENT PROPHETIC EVENTS
Galloping Fulfillment of Rev. 13
WHAT ROME HAS DONE by actions on her centuries-long objective AND the insidious work of her crafty foot-soldiers - the Jesuits
The United States appears to be galloping towards the ultimate
fulfillment of Rev. 13:11-17. The signs are numerous. This collection of
signals is centered on the dictatorial statements of Donald Trump, his
cultlike religious following, and the callous cruelty of his
Administration. That callous cruelty has ranged from a plan to
revamp
the food stamps program for low-income families and
HUD Secretary Ben
Carson’s proposal to triple rents for poorest households (Ben Carson
is a professed Seventh-day Adventist,) to the savage and evil brutality
of separating children from their families seeking asylum on the
southern international border. This last policy has even provoked
protest from the very same
"Faith
Leaders," Roman Catholic and Evangelical whose continuing lust for
theocratic power projected Trump into the presidency (cf
'Disgraceful': Separating immigrant children from their parents is so
unpopular even Trump's base is not supporting it;
The Massacre of the
Innocents: Trump and America’s Evil.) Donald Trump may crash in the
first term of his presidency; but then there is Vice-President Mike
Pence, and always the Christian Supremacist base of leaders and
followers who have become an irresistable tide:-
Nine Notorious Dictators, Nine Shout-Outs From Donald Trump
The president of the United States continues to heap praise on the
world's most reviled rulers:
The Chinese Communist Party’s attempt to allow President Xi Jinping to
rule indefinitely set off harsh criticism in China, as well as
international opprobrium. But the power grab appears to have at least
one fan: Donald Trump.
“He’s now president for life. President for life. No, he’s great,” Trump
said of Xi at a lunch and fundraiser at his Mar-a-Lago estate, according
to CNN, which obtained a recording of the remarks. “And look, he was
able to do that. I think it’s great. Maybe we’ll have to give that a
shot some day.”. . .
Russian President Vladimir Putin
What Trump said about him: “If he says great things about me, I’m going
to say great things about him. I’ve already said, he is really very much
of a leader. I mean, you can say, ‘Oh, isn’t that a terrible thing’—the
man has very strong control over a country. Now, it’s a very different
system, and I don’t happen to like the system. But certainly, in that
system, he’s been a leader, far more than our president has been a
leader.” . . .
Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte
What Trump said about him: “I just wanted to congratulate you because I
am hearing of the unbelievable job on the drug problem.”. . .
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan
What Trump said about him: “Frankly, he’s getting very high marks. He’s
also been working with the United States. We have a great friendship and
the countries—I think we’re right now as close as we’ve ever been … a
lot of that has to do with a personal relationship.”. . .
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi
What Trump said about him: “We agree on so many things. I just want to let everybody know in case there was any doubt that we are very much behind President el-Sisi. He’s done a fantastic job in a very difficult situation. We are very much behind Egypt and the people of Egypt. The United States has, believe me, backing, and we have strong
backing.”. .
.
Indeed, his fondness for strongmen and dictators isn’t limited to Xi
Jinping or any other individual in power now. He has praised Iraq’s
Saddam Hussein (while also criticizing him as “a bad guy”) for killing
terrorists. “He did that so good,” Trump said in July 2016. “They didn’t
read them the rights. They didn’t talk. They were terrorists. Over.”
Trump also said in 2016 that Libya would be better off “if [Moammar]
Gaddafi were in charge right now.” He once tweeted a quote from Benito
Mussolini, the Italian fascist leader, and later defended the tweet,
saying: “Mussolini was Mussolini ... It’s a very good quote. It’s a very
interesting quote... what difference does it make whether it’s Mussolini
or somebody else?”
Trump even said China’s brutal crackdown on protesters in Tiananmen Square in 1989 “shows you the power of strength,” contrasting the Communist Party’s action with the United States, which he said “is right now perceived as weak.” Trump made those comments in 1990. When asked about the remarks during the presidential debate in 2016, Trump defended himself and appeared to take the Chinese Communist Party’s view of the events at Tiananmen. He dismissed the deadly military response as a “riot.”
Does Donald Trump Want to Be Dictator of the United States?
His behavior lines up alarmingly well with studies of authoritarianism:
It began the day he was sworn in, with his vow to end “American carnage”—a direct echo of his autocratic pronouncement when accepting the Republican nomination that “I alone can fix it.” Donald Trump has chipped away at the pillars of democracy ever since. According to a new report from Freedom House, an independent watchdog group that has monitored democracy globally for decades, “The past year brought further, faster erosion of America’s own democratic standards than at any other time in memory.” The nation’s core institutions, the report says, have been “attacked by an administration that rejects established norms of ethical conduct across many fields of activity.”
Trump Praises Kim Jong Un: I Want My People to Treat Me Like North
Koreans Treat Him
President Donald Trump gave a wild and impromptu interview to Fox &
Friends host Peter Doocy on Friday, and continued his praise of Kim Jong
Un, even suggesting he wished he received the same adulation as the
North Korean dictator from his own staff.
When asked about the progress of North Korea’s denuclearization, Trump
said of Kim, “He wants to do it. He wants to do something great with his
country. He wants to make his country great.”
Then, unprompted, Trump explained Kim’s leadership of North Korea, and
suggested he envied the dictator’s power.
“He’s the head of a country, and I mean, he’s the strong head, don’t let
anyone think anyone different,” Trump said. “He speaks and his people
sit up at attention. I want my people to do the same.”
It’s tricky to discern who Trump is talking about when he says “his
people” here, but a generous reading holds he is referring to his staff.
Steve Doocy moved swiftly on, to note that before Trump’s summit in
Singapore, Kim “cleaned house, three of his top generals, some of the
hardliners, he fired.”
Trump then joked that “fired” was “maybe a nice word” to describe what Kim did to the generals. “I think he ‘fired’ at least,” Trump joked.
Ex-CIA Chief Defends Tweet Comparing Trump Border Policy to Nazi
Concentration Camps
Former CIA director Michael Hayden defended Monday his comparison of
the Trump administration’s immigration-enforcement policy to the
treatment of concentration-camp prisoners in Nazi Germany.
Hayden, who tweeted a picture of the Auschwitz concentration camp
Saturday with the caption “other governments have separated mothers and
children,” said during a Monday appearance on CNN’s New Day that he made
the incendiary comparison because “he wanted to grab people’s
attention.”
Other governments have separated mothers and children . . .
—
Gen Michael Hayden (@GenMhayden) June 16, 2018
“This seemed to be a very important matter to my mind. I didn’t choose
that picture at random, I’ve been to that camp, actually several times,”
Hayden said. “I’ve walked down that railroad siding where the families
were separated and that’s why I used that picture. That’s the scene
where families were separated.”
“Now look, I know we’re not Nazi Germany,” Hayden conceded. “But there
is a commonality there and a fear on my part that we have standards we
have to live up to.”
“I was trying to point out we need be careful we don’t move in that direction.” he concluded.
The dangerous cult of Donald Trump
I am not the first person to point this out: There's been a cultish
quality to President Trump's most ardent supporters. He seemed to
acknowledge the phenomenon when he boasted that he could "stand in the
middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody" and not lose voters.
Throughout the campaign, and in personal appearances since then, Trump
has harnessed the kind of emotional intensity from his base that is more
typical of a religious revival meeting than a political rally, complete
with ritualized communal chants ("Lock her up!").
As we approach the one-year anniversary of Trump's election victory, the
zeal of some of his followers seems increasingly akin to a full-fledged
cult.
I
use the word "cult" in its pejorative sense, meaning a deeply insular
social group bound together by extreme devotion to a charismatic leader.
Such groups tend to exhibit a few common characteristics.
They are usually formed around an individual whom they've elevated to prophetic and near divine status. . .
America Stands On the Brink of an Evangelical/Catholic-Imposed Theocracy
(December 1, 2017)
All in the name of “religious freedom”…and Trump’s judicial picks will
be the sole arbiters.
A GOP theocracy coup against checks and balances is gaining momentum
through Trump’s court picks. Trump’s legislative failures are in the
news but his far-right theocracy-facilitating judicial appointments are
the bigger story.
Trump’s picks will have a lasting outsized impact on American life.
Trump has many judicial vacancies to fill because the GOP
anti-Obama-obstruction worked.
Trump doesn’t care about the religious right’s agenda but since he has
ceded the selection of judges to the Federalist Society and Heritage
Foundation, ultra-right groups that do care, the religious right is
literally being put in power in ways most Americans don’t seem to
understand. I do understand because in the 1970s and 80s I helped craft
this plan.
As Sunnivie Brydum notes in an article that I’m gratefully borrowing
from in this blog we’re well on the way to making Evangelical Sharia Law
permanent. Trump’s Federalist Society and Heritage Foundation judges
will roll back the expansion of civil rights and civil liberties that
have developed over the past seven decades. Women, gays, blacks- beware.
America is headed for Saudi-style repression and religious theocracy in
the name of “religious liberty.”
What’s been astounding in filling the open seats left because of GOP- Obama obstruction is the rapid pace of committee hearings and confirmations for Trump’s Federalist Society-Heritage Foundation far-right religious extremist judicial nominees. The breakneck pace is unprecedented. This is not a coincidence. It fulfills a dream hatched by my late father Francis Schaeffer and me. We crafted this in Dad’s book A Christian Manifesto (1983). It sold hundreds of thousands of copies. The media paid no attention. . .
Donald Trump, the Religious Right’s Trojan Horse (Jan. 27, 2017)
Driving around Iowa that January [2016,] I heard Christian radio hosts
rebuke Jerry Falwell Jr., the president of Liberty University, for
giving his support to Mr. Trump.
“Mr. Falwell, in light of Mr. Trump’s attacks on those he happens to
dislike at the moment,” asked one, Michael L. Brown, in a plaintive open
letter, “How can you point to his Christlike character?”
What a difference a year makes.
Once Mr. Trump seized the Republican nomination, religious conservatives
realized that their only path to federal influence lay in a bargain with
this profane, thrice-married Manhattan sybarite. So they got in line,
ultimately proving to be Mr. Trump’s most loyal backers. . .
In November, exit polls showed that Mr. Trump won 81 percent of white
evangelicals, more than the born-again George W. Bush garnered in either
of his races. Mr. Brown, the radio host, remained worried about Mr.
Trump’s temperament, but saw the hand of God in his victory.
“I believe Trump has been elected president by divine intervention,” he
wrote on Nov. 9.
Mr. Trump is known for failing to honor his debts, but in this case, he’s fully repaying his Christian conservative supporters. For all his flagrant sinfulness, he’s assembling a near-theocratic administration, his cabinet full of avowed enemies of church-state separation. . .
The Political Theology Of Trumpian Evangelicalism (7/28/17)
God sides with the powerful.
Even as the disgraces, crassness, and affronts to human dignity
increase almost daily in the Trump administration, many evangelical
Christians continue to stand beside this regime. Although the words and
actions of Trump’s government seem antithetical to Christian values, his
supporters seem unperturbed by the lies, conflicts of interest,
immorality, and lack of compassion that characterize this
administration. These contradictions, however, begin to make sense if we
analyze this kind of evangelicalism as a political theology directed
toward theocracy rather than an expression of authentic Christian faith
through political activism.
As a political theology, Trumpian evangelicalism arises from the
Christian Right’s history of wedding church and state in order to
further the political goals of Christian theocracy and triumphalism. In
other words, Trumpian evangelicalism seeks to impose on all Americans a
particular brand of evangelical thought and morality through legislation
and court decisions that affirm government by the dictates of the
(political evangelical) church and the triumph of the (political
evangelical) church over other forms of religious and political
organization.
Trumpian evangelicalism, then, rests on a number of theological tenets developed through the rise of the Christian Right and refined to direct the most effective political gain . . .
Destroying the Johnson Amendment Moves America Closer to Theocracy
(February 3, 2017)
Nothing threatens Jews more than theocracy. When powerful regimes have
tried to impose their beliefs on religious minorities, we’ve ended up
expelled (The Spanish Inquisition), dead (The Crusades) or coerced into
conversion (The Almohad Caliphate in Morocco).
It’s no less true today than it was in 1492: every single brick removed
from the American wall between church and state endangers religious
freedom. Jews fleeing the Tsar and Nazi Germany for America weren’t just
fleeing anti-Semitic violence – they were running toward religious
freedom, the opportunity to worship and observe as they pleased, without
fear or outside influence.
But President Donald Trump and Mike Pence intend to demolish the entire crumbling wall between church and state. The President just declared that he will “destroy” the 60-year-old Johnson Amendment, passed by the U.S. Congress in 1954, which gives organizations including synagogues and churches, tax-exempt status but prohibits such religious institutions to “participate in, or intervene in (including the publishing or distributing of statements), any political campaign on behalf of – or in opposition to – any candidate for public office.”
Amid all of the furor over the clear evidence of theocracy in the Trump
Administration as never before in American history, where is the voice
of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, which still believes that it is
"God's Remnant Church?" Seventh-day Adventists used to be thoroughly
acquainted with
the prophetic role of America in Rev. 13.
The true Remnant of God are soon to experience the full wrath of Satan's agents, the Baal worshippers of today, but the Corporate body of Seventh-day Adventists is silent - why? Ellen G. White provides the answers.
The definitive prophecy, of which the complete fulfillment is the sure
sign that the Second Coming of Jesus Christ is at hand, is our Lord's
own prophecy of
Luke 21:24. In verse 32 Jesus said,"Verily I say unto
you,This generation shall not pass away, till all be fulfilled."
Fulfillment of the prophecy of verse 24 was completed in 1980. How long
is a generation from that year?
There is a school of thought that a biblical generation can be 40, or
70, or even 100 years (What is a Generation in the Bible?)
Here it should be noted how Ellen G. White directed attention to Luke
21:24: "In the twenty-first chapter of Luke, Christ foretold what was to
come upon Jerusalem and with it He connected the scenes which were to
take place in the history of this world just prior to the coming of the Son of man
in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory." (Counsels to
Writers and Editors, pp. 23-24; italicized emphasis added.) Is "just
prior" more likely to refer to a period of 70, or 100, rather than to 40
years ?
Moreover, the number 40 in the Bible is of demonstrable significance:
Numbers In Scripture: The Number 40
Forty – A Period of Testing
The number forty is mentioned 157 times in Scripture.
The number forty
symbolizes a period of testing, trial or probation. . .
Just days before his crucifixion, Jesus warned his disciples that
Jerusalem and the Temple would be destroyed (Matthew 24:1 – 2, Mark 13:1
– 2). Forty years after his crucifixion in 70 A.D., the mighty Roman
Empire destroyed the city and burned its temple to the ground. Not one
stone was left upon another. . .
It will be noted that the disciples had asked a two-part question, and
Jesus gave them a two-Part answer. Luke 21:24 pertains to the second
part concerning the sign of Jesus' Second Coming and the end of the
world.