Giving "Life Unto the Image of the Beast" to Cause It to Speak

The Evangelical Christian Supremacists are making no secret of their unwavering support of the Donald Trump presidency, and we can anticipate similar support for any SUCCEEDING PRESIDENCY/PRESIDENCIES for which an impregnable foundation has been laid. The prophecies of Rev. 13 predict that the present theocratic wave cannot be rolled back. The Prophets of Baal are engaged in intense activity and America is increasingly identifiable as the False Prophet. The question remaining now is how rapidly the nation is advancing to the complete fulfillment of Rev. 13:15b-17? It is well to keep in mind the prophecy of Ellen G. White that "the final movements will be rapid ones":-

From [D]@gmail.com:

Nearly 100 Evangelical Leaders Met With White House Staff for 'Listening Sessions' Last Week

Donald Trump's White House expanded its engagement with faith leaders last week by holding three different listening sessions that featured nearly 100 different Christian leaders and activists, participants have told The Christian Post.

Just weeks after a gathering of about 30 evangelical leaders met for an all-day workday in Washington on July 10 that was highlighted by a prayer session over the president in the Oval Office, the White House Office of Public Liaison expanded its evangelical outreach by inviting faith leaders who have not yet been involved in previous meetings with the administration to voice their concerns and thoughts. . .

"The White House has continued to have listening sessions with evangelical leaders and they had three more this week. Almost 100 evangelicals [participated]," Moore, who heads a public relations company that serves many notable evangelical pastors, said Friday. "Each listening session was about two hours and involved briefings from administration officials and an opportunity for folks to express their thoughts on various issues." . . .

According to Moore, the listening sessions included quick briefings on various issues from officials in White House's legislative and judicial affairs departments. Most of the meetings, Moore added, consisted of open-table discussions between the leaders with White House officials in the room taking notes.

"It's a listening session. It's not about these leaders coming so they can be lectured to," Moore said. "It's about actually making an opportunity to come to the White House as citizens and faith leaders and talking about what was on their mind."

The meetings with White House officials gives the faith leaders the opportunity to learn details about issues that they wouldn't normally hear in the news. Moore said that one of the biggest areas of frustration amongst the leaders in the different meetings was the delay in judicial appointments. However, the faith leaders were told that the delay for many of these appointments was because of the Senate's "blue slip" tradition.

"The leaders expressed frustration when they learned about a blue slip system, which is an arcane Senate tradition, where a senator from a state in which an appointed judge resides would have to hand a blue slip of paper to the chairman of the Judiciary Committee as a courtesy before it proceeds in hearing," Moore said. "The Democrats are using the blue slips as kind of veto when it is just Senate tradition and there is no rule or anything. I would say a lot of the leaders zeroed in on judicial appointments and were surprised to hear the way in which the Democrats were being obstructionists as it relates to these judicial appointees."

Floyd added that besides judicial appointments, another issue that was brought up in the meetings he was in was Obamacare.

Moore asserted that as time goes on, there "will be more" of these types of meetings between administration officials and the faith leaders.

"What I understand is they intend on inviting lots and lots and lots of leaders to listening sessions among various constituencies," Moore said. "There will be more of them. They want this to be people's house and they want to make sure there is no problem getting in touch with them and expressing points of view and those points of view are taken into account."

Floyd agreed there will be "deeper engagement" between the White House and faith leaders.

"Regardless of what people say, ... there are two things we need to be encouraged [about]," he said. "First, this administration has proven that they care about what people of faith want and what people of faith are concerned about and they are addressing them. It is very obvious that they are addressing them. Secondly, this administration ... is zealous for people to pray for them. Obviously, they need it and we all need it in our country and they are very willing to pursue God about matters in this relationship and asking people to pray for them."

Moore states that the Trump administration officials want the White House to be "the people's house;" but it appears that in his mind this does not include the vast millions in this nation who have a jaundiced view of religion in government and the courts.

The frustration of the Evangelicals with delays in judicial appointments is particularly ominous. There is much that cannot be accomplished by legislation because of opposition by a majority of public opinion. The easier, and authoritarian, way to achieve the objectives of the Christian Supremacists is through the Courts. At all levels of the Federal Judiciary the increasing numbers of religio-political appointees can bend existing decisions to fit their Romanist and Christian Supremacist ideology. In addition, at the Supreme Court level there is the absolute power to overrule existing legal precedents or make transient decisions. Outstanding recent decisions of SCOTUS that have done lasting damage by advancing the cause of union of Church and State are Bush v. Gore, the Citizens United case, the Hobby Lobby case, and most recently in the Trinity Lutheran Church case. There are numerous other decisions that have contributed to the cause of promoting theocratic governance in America. The process of destroying the wall of separation between Church and State is far advanced.

The religio-political Evangelicals have declared their opposition to Obamacare on two grounds: (a) that it facilitates abortion and contraception, and (b) that it constitutes a redistribution of wealth.

Bankrupt in the knowledge of the Scriptures by the corrupting effect of the historical-critical method of biblical exegesis invented by the Church of Rome they, in common with other Protestants, were seduced into accepting Rome's tradition on abortion and contraception. Since the Protestants could not base their teaching on tradition, they eisegetically distorted the meaning of texts of Scripture into prohibitions against abortion and contraception that do not exist in the Bible.
Albeit specious, opposition to abortion (as applied to the apparent termination of a life in being,) and even contraception (encouraging promiscuity,) can be perceived as a moral issue. In reality, the whole issue revolves around the dogma of the Immortality of the Soul. This is most glaringly evident when the argument is made that a life in being begins at conception, and the debate rages about when "ensoulment" takes place.

There can be no perceptible moral basis for opposition to Obamacare on the ground that it constitutes a redistribution of wealth. What a travesty of the Christian faith, degraded to the level of a defense of the accumulation of wealth and power to the detriment of affordable health care for the poor and disadvantaged!:

Many Christians want you to preach against Obamacare: don’t do it.

In an article in the Aquila Report today Larry Ball argues that pastors need to start preaching about politics again, specifically in view of the Supreme Court’s refusal to overturn the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare. Ball suggests that Christians are entirely at a loss about how to respond to this development, both because the national slide away from the constitution has been going on for so long, and because the church no longer teaches what the Bible has to say about these matters. Ball writes,

Christians have been kept in the dark for lack of good teaching. In essence the Constitution today is null and void. The only answer to the modern political debate on health care is a return to biblical law. . .

Ball goes on,

Conservative politicians, and even the Church, are unable to apply biblical law to the political issues of the day. We still seem to believe that the separation of Church and State voids the application of biblical law in the public square. . .

I have three basic problems with this line of thinking. First, why is it that political conservatives are so confident that the Bible gives them a platform from which to denounce government taxation policy? If the Bible says anything about the relationship between Christians and the state, it is precisely that believers should not imagine Christ’s kingdom to say anything that would remove Caesar’s authority over money and taxation. Wasn’t it Jesus himself who asked the Jews whose inscription was on their money? And whose inscription is on those dollars that fill the wallets, bank accounts, and pension funds of Americans? . . .

By a 2-to-1 margin, Americans prefer Obamacare to Republican replacements

Republicans racing to pass a bill that would overhaul the Affordable Care Act (better known as Obamacare) certainly understand that their efforts aren’t polling well. In survey after survey, a majority of respondents view their legislative proposals unfavorably. At the same time, survey after survey shows Obamacare as more popular than not. . .

More worrisome for Republicans hoping to pass a new bill is how the support broke out by demographic. Only among Republicans, conservatives, white evangelicals and white men without college degrees did more Americans support the GOP bill than Obamacare. . . (Underscored emphasis added.)

Ex-Christian lambasts Evangelicals for cheering repeal of Obamacare in devastating Facebook post

With Republicans about to gut the Affordable Care Act — also known as Obamacare — an atheist has come forward to explain that it was Christian Evangelical attacks of health care for all that drove him from the church seven years ago. . .

Horst noted that, despite the fact that he made a good living while being self-employed, he was well aware that one trip to the hospital or a severe illness could wipe out every penny his family had.

With that in mind, Horst said he was horrified when his fellow Christians came out so strongly against President Obama’s signature achievement that would help the poor and children receive healthcare so many other American’s enjoyed. . .

“In 2010 I had been a Conservative Evangelical Christian for all of my adult life. I began to realize that others around me despised the thought of allowing people like me the benefit of affordable health insurance. For some reason, all of the Christians that I knew thought that offering health insurance to people like me would put them at some kind of a disadvantage that they were not willing to accept. Frankly, they had been lied to so they believed those ‘others’ were going to get healthcare and make their own healthcare inadequate,” Horst wrote.

“As a Christian, I believed that I would be judged on the Final Judgment Day on how I took care of the ‘least of these’ as described in the Bible book of Matthew, chapter 25,” He continued. “I came to the sober realization that Christians around me had no such convictions. If they didn’t believe Jesus’ words as recorded in the Bible, why should I? Then one day I discovered I could no longer believe any of it.”

According to Horst, he now has come to believe that some of his former Christian friends are, “not followers of Jesus. Not the Jesus that the Bible speaks of, anyway.”. . .

The reaction of this ex-Evangelical described above is an indicator of the grievous harm that the Christian Supremacists must be doing to the perceptions of the Christian Faith by billions of other religions or no religion at all.

The Evangelicals are the ascendant political power in the emergence of Image to the Beast and giving life to the Image, and this is exactly as prophesied in Rev. 13. It is an Image, and not the Beast itself. However, Romanism permeates the ideology and actions of the Christian Supremacists. This extends to their opposition to big government, which is inspired by the Roman Catholic Natural Law principle of subsidiarity, which is wholly inadequate to cope with the problem of poverty in this modern, complex, sophisticated, technological world.

It is worthy of note that the Roman Catholic hierarchy in America has been dominated by right-wing conservatives for decades; but there has always been a "liberal" wing in world Catholicism ever since Pope Leo XIII's encyclical Rerum Novarum. The current Pope is viewed by many as  a "liberal."# It is perhaps a reflection of his increasing influence within the USCCB that it has changed its attitude towards Obamacare, in contrast with the frustration of the Evangelicals that repeal has no as yet been accomplished:

Catholic bishops urge Congress to preserve health care coverage

(RNS) The U.S. Catholic hierarchy was one of the staunchest foes of President Obama’s signature health care law, nearly derailing its passage in 2010 over concerns about abortion funding and exacting a political toll that helped doom abortion-opposing Democrats who backed Obamacare while boosting Republican efforts to take control of Congress.

But faced with the prospect of the GOP following through on pledges to repeal health care reform, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops seems to be changing its tune.

On Wednesday (Jan. 18), the USCCB released a letter warning Congress not to overturn the law without providing an immediate replacement to provide continuing coverage for the millions who have been insured under the Affordable Care Act.

“We recognize that the law has brought about important gains in coverage, and those gains should be protected,” Bishop Frank Dewane of Venice, Fla., chairman of the USCCB’s Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development, wrote to House and Senate members.

He said the bishops will examine proposals to amend or replace Obamacare but said that “for now that a repeal of key provisions of the Affordable Care Act ought not be undertaken without the concurrent passage of a replacement plan that ensures access to adequate health care for the millions of people who now rely upon it for their wellbeing.”

For those on the lower rungs of the economic ladder, he said, a repeal “would prove particularly devastating.”

Update: U.S. bishops say Senate health care bill will ‘wreak havoc’ on families

On Thursday, Senate Republicans released their version of a bill aimed at repealing the Affordable Care Act, drawing swift condemnation from one prominent Catholic health group, which said it is “strongly opposed” to the measure. Catholic bishops took a more nuanced view, strongly condemning portions of the bill that they say harm the social safety net but praising language that would restrict funding for abortion providers. . .

Catholic bishops released a statement on Thursday evening saying that parts of the Senate proposal would “cause disturbing damage to the human beings served by the social safety net” and that it could “wreak havoc on low-income families and struggling communities, and must not be supported.” . . .

“It is precisely the detrimental impact on the poor and vulnerable that makes the Senate draft unacceptable as written,” he continued.

Bishop Dewane praised portions of the bill, however, which would temporarily freeze funding for Planned Parenthood. He lauded “language in the legislation recognizing that abortion is not health care by attempting to prohibit the use of taxpayer funds to pay for abortion or plans that cover it.”

Rome will never change in her opposition to abortion and contraception, which is an effective snare for millions of Christians who might otherwise be opposed to Romanism. On social policy she is flexible, and it is obvious that the pendulum is swinging to the side of the "liberals." Whether this will have an impact on the Evangelicals who are the active agents in forming the Image to the Beast remains to be seen. What is certain is the continuing fulfillment of the prophecy declared in Rev. 13:12.

The pendulum may swing from side to side; but the hour on the clockface advances inexorably towards the midnight which must precede the glorious dawning of eternal day.