Monsters, Gnats, and the Path of Least Resistance

We hear buzzing, knowing it’s far off, of no consequence, yet we focus on it. Overhead is the giant paw of a monster, and we’re aware of it. Yet we choose to ignore it. Sometimes the gnat is the focus of all the people around us. Sometimes we choose to focus on it of our own volition. We don’t want to recognize that giant paw in our personal lives either.

I take a look at what’s happening politically. We have a president and his Party that focuses on vaginas. Sex. Abortion. Contraception. A totally fabricated war on women. That’s the gnat. The monster whose paw we’re aware of and whose hot breath we can feel on our collective neck is the rise of terror which is dismissed in a barrage of euphemisms and apologetics, terrorists and diseases coming across open borders with the attendant humanitarian crises, over ninety million people out of work but not counted because their unemployment payments have run out, record number of people on food stamps, Russia making serious threats to the security of Europe and the world, China able to crumble our economy with the snap of its communist fingers, and cyber-attacks on both our military and civilian computer run infrastructure. Our national debt plus unfunded liabilities bring us very close to the limit of the total value of everything in this country. Plus, of course, anti-Semitism not only tolerated in Europe, but here in the US and supported by Jews. That last especially stuns me.

Not important; any of it. What’s important is that gnat. Vaginas, pay equality, and most recently, “free” junior college, and calling names, throwing insults at people that say, “Hey, we better pay attention to this monster”!

What or who is the big gnat, the evil in this country? Conservatives, Christians (more dangerous and evil as terrorists whose religion of death and destruction, but we better not say that of Islamofacists), TEA Party members, people that think the US Constitution is good law and should be followed, combat experienced vets. What’s good is abortion, the race industry (what Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton do) having open borders, protecting Hamas, PLO, ISIS, Muslim Brotherhood, and supporting the destruction of Israel and the attendant anti-Semitism. Heterosexual marriage is evil, homosexual marriage good. Hating the successful is good, unless the successful (wealthy) got that way through entertainment or corrupt politics. 

At the personal level, we find that far away gnat. Instead of expressing to someone how much they irritate us we take it out on some unsuspecting soul. Then they think, what the hell is wrong with him? They won’t say anything either. Then at work, if you’re in a position of authority, you find who you can rely on. Why take grief from a belligerent whiner when you can reliably and seamlessly get the job done by selecting the same people you know, regardless of the stress or unhappiness it causes them, will uncomplainingly get the job done. 

In church, we fall so short of our religion. There’s the power plays, the undermining, the badmouthing. There though, it’s expected the other cheek to be turned. The bad actors get a pass and the good guys get marginalized. This is of course an overstatement; just making the point. One would think we can escape the focus on the gnat, and support one another battling the giant in the room. Dare I say it? The Enemy. Our environment, planet, world, institutions and all the rest are the playground of Satan.

We have the gnat on entertainment (I’m guilty of overindulging too), the gnat of not communicating, of focusing on the buzz on no consequence.

The monster is breathing down our necks is roaring and we choose not to acknowledge it. What kind of men and women does this make us? 

Will the Cycle be Unbroken? The Fall of Civilizations Through Ignoring God

I’m not much on the Book of Revelations. No matter how much I listen to explanations, explications, read on it, it’s just messiness to me. I do believe prophecy, and wrote in 2009 about The Harbinger byJohnathan Cahn. Extremely detailed connection between what happened to ancient Israel when they fell to Babylon and what’s happened to the US (and by extension Western civilization) since 9/11. The connection to the fall to any civilization is directly connected to a nation turning its back on God.

My last post on New Years' Day bemoaned the terrible things that beset the year 2014. I don’t see things much improving in 2015, for reasons explained in that blog. Christmas for us Western Christians traditionally end Jan 6^th the Epiphany, so this is, I suppose, the last New Year thoughts.

I’m concerned we, as a nation, still think we can wallow in an oversexed world, reject the family, ridicule and reject and disrespect authority, have state funded abortion, reliance on excessive drugs and alcohol, and the abuse and abandonment of children. Lip service is given to support of the military, but cutting their budgets, sexualizing and feminizing the armed forces does not bode well for the protection of the US or Western civilization.

What comes around goes around; Babylon brought Jerusalem down and later Babylon fell. Scripture from Isaiah about Babylon’s downfall:

 “Come down, virgin daughter of Babylon, and sit in the dust.

    For your days of sitting on a throne have ended.

O daughter of Babylonia, never again will you be

    the lovely princess, tender and delicate.

 Take heavy millstones and grind flour.

    Remove your veil, and strip off your robe.

    Expose yourself to public view.

 You will be naked and burdened with shame.

    I will take vengeance against you without pity.”

 Our Redeemer, whose name is the Lord of Heaven’s Armies,

    is the Holy One of Israel.

 “O beautiful Babylon, sit now in darkness and silence.

    Never again will you be known as the queen of kingdoms.

 For I was angry with my chosen people

    and punished them by letting them fall into your hands.

But you, Babylon, showed them no mercy.

    You oppressed even the elderly.

 You said, ‘I will reign forever as queen of the world!’

    You did not reflect on your actions

    or think about their consequences.

 “Listen to this, you pleasure-loving kingdom,

    living at ease and feeling secure.

You say, ‘I am the only one, and there is no other.

    I will never be a widow or lose my children.’

 Well, both these things will come upon you in a moment:

    widowhood and the loss of your children.

Yes, these calamities will come upon you,

    despite all your witchcraft and magic.

 “You felt secure in your wickedness.

    ‘No one sees me,’ you said.

But your ‘wisdom’ and ‘knowledge’ have led you astray,

    and you said, ‘I am the only one, and there is no other.’

 So disaster will overtake you,

    and you won’t be able to charm it away.

Calamity will fall upon you,

    and you won’t be able to buy your way out.

A catastrophe will strike you suddenly,

    one for which you are not prepared.

 “Now use your magical charms!

    Use the spells you have worked at all these years!

Maybe they will do you some good.

    Maybe they can make someone afraid of you.

 All the advice you receive has made you tired.

    Where are all your astrologers,

those stargazers who make predictions each month?

    Let them stand up and save you from what the future holds.

 But they are like straw burning in a fire;

    they cannot save themselves from the flame.

You will get no help from them at all;

    their hearth is no place to sit for warmth.

 And all your friends,

    those with whom you’ve done business since childhood,

will go their own ways,

    turning a deaf ear to your cries. Isaiah 47:1-15

This is pretty much where we are now. History repeating itself, again. We know if we follow, listen to God, this cycle will be broken. Even something as simple as obeying the Ten Commandments, even if we threw out the first one about God to appease atheists and secularists, and just didn’t do stuff like murder, steal, covet other peoples stuff and relationships would be a vast improvement.

Thinking back on the 20^th century, and the horribleness of it; genocide many times over, WWI, WWII, intentional mass starvation, the Holocaust, Hitler, Mao murdering millions, Stalin and Lenin murdering millions, gulags and the rest of it. Abortion has killed millions of babies. I read one analysis that estimated the Black population of the US would be about 30%, not the about 13% it is now, if they had not aborted so many of their children. Yet the very attitudes that brought us all that horror continue into the 21^st Century, and at the beginning of 2015 I see no rethinking to restart working with God, with natural law, with love, to turn all that horribleness back.

I don’t see any indication that church attendance will increase, that people will fall on their knees and acknowledge God, or repent. This is where Revelations, talking about Babylon as a symbol now, since it has fallen, describes us:

After all this I saw another angel come down from heaven with great authority, and the earth grew bright with his splendor. He gave a mighty shout:

“Babylon is fallen—that great city is fallen!

    She has become a home for demons.

She is a hideout for every foul spirit,

    a hideout for every foul vulture

    and every foul and dreadful animal.

 For all the nations have fallen

    because of the wine of her passionate immorality.

The kings of the world

    have committed adultery with her.

Because of her desires for extravagant luxury,

    the merchants of the world have grown rich.”

 Then I heard another voice calling from heaven,

“Come away from her, my people.

    Do not take part in her sins,

    or you will be punished with her.

 For her sins are piled as high as heaven,

    and God remembers her evil deeds.

 Do to her as she has done to others.

    Double her penalty for all her evil deeds.

She brewed a cup of terror for others,

    so brew twice as much for her.

Yet we as a nation, as a civilization, embrace this as a home for demons, rather than God’s direction, rules, and discipline. How can it be that Satan and the destruction he promises and brings be embraced? Over and over, civilizations throughout history. The Church, Christians and Jews, must stand up to this. Many in the Church are ignorant of their own Faith, and have been successfully secularized. The Church, the Body of Christ is so so weakened.

All we can do is pray and educate in a way that doesn’t alienate more, and bring them back to the Church, and don’t let Satan or the State dictate to us how we should accept all this repetition of hatred and destruction. I’m terrified the 21^st Century will be a continuation of the 20^th. I think more in our daily lives and in Churches, we need to speak in a way about Repentance that doesn’t turn them off. The Enemy has even made the idea of Repentance something to be mocked. We need to pray for a miracle.  

Thoughts and Observations of the Past Year, Macro Big Picture and Personally Looking Forward

Some observations about the past year. Understanding that this day is an arbitrary mark in time, it is nice to have a traditional place to stop, review, take stock, and think about what we need to accomplish in the next twelvemonth. Looking back on the past year, it was not good, macro or micro [my personal world].

I’ve put my personal life observations/experiences at the end. I think much more important are the things at the national and international level causing pain and destruction to millions of lives, which to me is pretty much the meme of the past year.

At the macro level, we must start with our President, whose personal agenda has replaced the traditional role of the office. He has been and is a force of destruction socially, politically and economically.  The first year Obama took office the Bush deficit was about $840 Billion which Obama said was irresponsible and unpatriotic. The national debt as of this past Dec was $18 Trillion. That is up $7.4 Trillion since Obama took office. Six years and a little over a $Trillion a year added.

When Obama and his political party lost the midterm elections in a landslide, from local to state to federal offices and legislatures, he response was, “To everyone who voted, I want you to know that I hear you. To the two-thirds of voters who chose not to participate in the process yesterday, I hear you too.”  We see stupid. That those who didn’t vote, he assumes they would have voted for him and his Party’s failed policies and totalitarian mindset. Some numbers on that election. Republicans gained nine seats in the Senate, and picked up seats in the House they already controlled. That House thing is the largest majority since 1946. [BTW, that was a repudiation of the Democrats and FDR then. Not put in history books is the FDR and Dems were seriously disliked by more than half the country then; this country was as divided as much as it is now. One of the best-selling books then was a repudiation and revealing of what really went on during the FDR years; all the hypocrisy, lying, corruption and illegality.  The Roosevelt Myth by John T Flynn.] Republicans will hold 31 of 50 governorships, and hold both house and senate in 24 states. Republicans are not so much liked or trusted either, but there ya go. Says much about Obama and the Democrat party and how they are perceived.

Epic failures. ObamaCare became the law of the land in October 2013. A billion dollar website crashed and no one could use it. It's still rotten.

The Veterans Administration falsified data that caused extreme suffering for some vets and their families and killed other vets through negligence.

Word went out to countries south of the border that the border was open to children. Tens of thousands of unchaperoned kids flooded the border causing a humanitarian crises. Hundreds of the “kids” were gang members. I remember reading at the time leaked memos that this invasion was planned by the Administration months in advance.  

The IRS targeted conservative groups to silence any effective campaigns for the 2012 elections. There were emails that proved this, that were “lost” but recently found. A lying corrupt federal Leftist “judge” recently ruled there was no law broken and there was no foul play since the targeted groups were eventually granted their tax requests, and the investigations that stopped their activity have been ended, and the emails were found. Even though the emails proved illegal activity, they are to be ignored by court order. I guess now getting away with breaking the law is okay according to Leftists as long at not caught at the time.

A major health threat to this country was created when Obama and his Departments of Health, and Homeland Security, allowed people into the country with the deadly disease, Ebola. Some of those refused to be guaranteed citing their civil rights were being violated by being asked to remove themselves from the general population. Put hundreds if not thousands at risk of probable death for personal feelings and comfort. The Obama and his administration changed rules all over the place to cover up their incompetence.

Obama and his political party claimed Al Qaeda on the run, the war in the Middle East over, war on terror pretty much done. Syria had used chemical weapons, Obama said this was unacceptable, and drew a “red line”. He erased it when it came time to take action on it. He pulled troops out of the Middle East against the advice of his generals, leaving a vacuum that is filled by ISIS, now slaughtering thousands, and conquering land. The murder of Christians by them is pretty much ignored by Obama; his disdain for them is only exceeded by his disdain of Jews.

Putin re-lit the Cold War by taking over Crimea and threatened to conquer Ukraine. Obama did not come out and support either country, offer weapons or military tactics/training.  Putin uses oil and gas energy as a political weapon, both of which we have an abundance of and could have sent to undermine Putin and cool Russia's heals.

Obama has aggressively attacked Israel and Prime Minister Netanyahu personally. Two senior administration officials (names not given to the reporter for the Atlantic) called Netanyahu a “chickenshit”. If anyone has any knowledge of the man, that’s one thing he’s not. Obama has tried to block, or spoken out against everything Israel has done to protect itself from terrorist countries and organizations. Obama and the Dems support in word and deed ($’s) Hamas, Iran, ISIS, PLO, and initially the dictator of Syria that slaughtered thousands.

This is nothing less that the anti-Semitism of Obama and the Democrat Party. (Remember at the Democrat convention they removed God and support of Israel from the Party Platform until political backlash force them to put those back in.) That Party and Leftist anti-Semitism is fueling the reemergence of it here in the US, and it's getting more and more prevalent especially on college campuses. This is supportive of the dangerously increasing anti-Semitism in Europe, where Synagogues are being burnt down and Jews are being attacked and murdered. Coming soon to a town near you?

Economically about 92 million people are out of work. Not reported in the administration’s labor statistics because they are no longer counted since their unemployment ran out. People on Food Stamps are highest that any time in the history of the program. Bush 2 was excoriated in the Jurassic Press when unemployment got over 5%.  Now the “official” unemployment rate is 6% or 7%, and since the “new norm” at the beginning of Obama’s reign was 10%, this is now a good thing. Actual unemployment is between 13% and 17%. Hard to tell since Labor Statistics are controlled by the White House. I noticed that the month and weeks before the presidential and midterm elections, the unemployment rate dropped a couple percent and after those elections the Bureau of Labor statistics revised them back up. 

Racism, along with anti-Semitism is hugely on the rise. Whenever a Black man confronts the police and gets killed for his efforts there are riots. Racist Attorney General and his racist boss gin up the Black population to hate whites especially before elections as a get out the vote tactic. The Leftist New York Post found this out during the Ferguson riots. An accidental act of journalism. Still ignored are the hundreds of Black on Black murders, or Black on White murders, or the murder of police by Blacks.

I’ve gone on enough about this, thinking the point made. This has been a terrible year for this country, and the head of the fish that stinks is Obama and the Democrat Party. Anything done to protect America’s borders stopped, anything to decrease unemployment stopped, to produce lower cost energy stopped (anti fracking, anti-oil exploration, stopped Keystone pipeline, drove away offshore drilling) [there’s a vid of him before his run for president that he wanted to drive up the cost of energy, it was necessary].

Yet I keep going on about the macro stuff. It’s endless the badness that’s happened in the past year. I don’t see it improving much in this new year even with Republicans winning such a landslide election. They badmouth, push to the margins Conservatives, the base, campaign against them harder than they do against the Democrats. They are both incompetent and proving themselves they earn and keep earning the moniker ‘the party of stupid’.

Now the personal. I know I have friends that read my postings, and I thank you for your interest and support. At the micro level, my personal life, I have much less to say. Work is okay, with the usual corporate hassles, but it does provide, and I am able provide service through them, to customer service agents and the customers of UPS. With that I missed a lot of work due to illness, more of an affliction, vertigo. I’m amazed how many amateur doctors and healers there are with advice how to deal with it, get rid of it. Specialists, my GP and neurologist unable to do anything but help me maintain, but many still have better health advice.

I had stopped attending my church for a while. Got caught up in church politics, was personally attacked and was shown less than appreciation for my contributions. There’s enough aggravation in life, I don’t need it where I worship. After a couple/three months breather, I went back and the love shown let me know this is the right place for corporate worship. I had given a sermon on worship, and the theme was the unbroken connection between corporate and personal worship.  That was born out with my noting my diminished prayer time and study of faith and religion. Worship, corporate and personal, is the centerpiece of my life, and informs how I live.  {If interested, my last sermon, "Road to Emmaus" can be seen at fcclv.com>Webcast>and scroll down to sermons 6 months ago.}

Looking back at this year, which has been seriously ungood; the goals are to get back to reading and studying more, writing more, praying more. I’ve read less this year, and watched more vids. Mostly due to it really being hard to read when the vertigo and other illnesses I have make the Kindle move around, and/or nausea make the concentration necessary for reading, or writing, pretty much impossible. The books and movies I’ve read and seen are on the right of this blog. Noticeably fewer than years past, just as there are way fewer posts to this blog than years past. I don’t list the vids I watch, but the most entertaining for me this year were the series “Justified” (my fav) and “Longmire” and “Diners, Drive-ins and Dives”.  Lots of British produced mysteries with great stories and acting.  

I pray all a healthy happy holy coming year. We pray God to start working to remove, through each of us, all the bigotry, hatred, lies, deceit and violence that has marked this past year, and for us personally to stay in a worshipful spirit and state of mind to effect in a loving and positive way, those around us. It all starts with each of us, and our communion with God. He must be what informs every aspect of our lives.