What an interesting time that we live in! Not a good time as we see more and more persecution of the followers of Christ across the world. And yet a time that must occur in order to fulfill the prophecies laid out in the Bible. And yet with the horror of seeing those who are killed, we must as well remember the promise. Always looking to God and not to man, to the future and not to relive and renew the past. What has gone before is not what He has plans for in the future and it is the future that we desire to be a part of.
English: Resurrection of Christ (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Revelation 20
Good News Translation (GNT)
4 Then I saw thrones, and those who sat on them were given the power to judge. I also saw the souls of those who had been executed because they had proclaimed the truth that Jesus revealed and the word of God. They had not worshiped the beast or its image, nor had they received the mark of the beast on their foreheads or their hands. They came to life and ruled as kings with Christ for a thousand years. 5 (The rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were over.) This is the first raising of the dead. 6 Happy and greatly blessed are those who are included in this first raising of the dead. The second death has no power over them; they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and they will rule with him for a thousand years.
“Today, we face incredibly well-funded gangs of fundamentalist Christian monsters who terrorize their fellow Americans by forcing their weaponized and twisted version of Christianity upon their helpless subordinates in our nation’s armed forces.”
Those words were recently written by Mikey Weinstein, founder of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), in a column he wrote for the Huffington Post. Weinstein will be a consultant to the Pentagon to develop new policies on religious tolerance, including a policy for court-martialing military chaplains who share the Christian Gospel during spiritual counseling of American troops.
Weinstein decries what he calls the “virulent religious oppression” perpetrated by conservative Christians, whom he refers to as “monstrosities” and “pitiable unconstitutional carpetbaggers,” comparing them to “bigots” in the Deep South during the civil rights era.
He cites Dr. James Dobson—the famous Christian founder of Focus on the Family—as “illustrating the extremist, militant nature of these virulently homophobic organizations’ rhetorically-charged propaganda.” Regarding those who teach orthodox Christian beliefs from the Bible, Weinstein concludes, “Let’s call these ignoble actions what they are: the senseless and cowardly squallings of human monsters.”
Weinstein then endorses the ultra-left Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), who publishes a list of “hate groups.” Alongside truly deplorable organizations like the KKK, the SPLC’s list includes a host of traditional Christian organizations (for their support of traditional marriage) and Tea Party organizations (for supporting limited government). Weinstein says SPLC correctly labels them all as “hate groups.”
Floyd Lee Corkins—the first person ever convicted of domestic terrorism in federal court under the laws of Washington, D.C.—told the FBI that he chose his intended shooting spree targets from the SPLC website’s map. Corkins was arrested at the offices of the Family Research Council (FRC) after shooting a security guard in August 2012. His court documents state that Corkins intended to kill as many people as possible.
Weinstein also supports Lt. Col. Jack Rich, the Army officer who wrote to subordinate officers that soldiers who hold traditional Christian beliefs agreeing with organizations on SPLC’s “hate group” list are incompatible with “Army values” and should be carefully watched and excluded from military service.
According to Weinstein, “We should as a nation effusively applaud Lt. Col. Rich.” He adds that the nation should “venture further” than Rich’s recommendations, saying, “We MUST vigorously support the continuing efforts to expose pathologically anti-gay, Islamaphobic, and rabidly intolerant agitators for what they are: die-hard enemies of the United States Constitution. Monsters, one and all. To do anything less would be to roll out a red carpet to those who would usher in a blood-drenched, draconian era of persecutions, nationalistic militarism, and superstitious theocracy.”
Many media outlets are silent on this disturbing new alliance between fanatical secularists and leaders in the Pentagon appointed by President Barack Obama and Secretary Chuck Hagel, under which the U.S. military would officially consult with someone with such foaming-at-the-mouth passionate hostility toward traditional Christians, including Evangelicals and devout Catholics. The military—America’s most heroic and noble institution—includes countless people of faith, and this represents a radical departure from the U.S. military’s warm embrace of people of faith in its ranks.
Yet the little coverage this story is getting is positive, such as this Washington Post columnthat somehow manages not to carry any of these frightening quotes from Weinstein and instead actually endorses the Pentagon’s meeting with him. Sally Quinn’s Post column also approvingly quotes MRFF Advisory Board member Larry Wilkerson as saying, “Sexual assault and proselytizing, according to Wilkerson, ‘are absolutely destructive of the bonds that keep soldiers together.’”
Did you get that? They say having someone share the Christian gospel with you is akin to being raped. Weinstein makes sure there are no doubts, being quoted by the Post as adding, “This is a national security threat. What is happening [aside from sexual assault] is spiritual rape. And what the Pentagon needs is to understand is that it is sedition and treason. It should be punished.” Read the rest at: Pentagon Taps Anti-Christian Extremist for Religious Tolerance Policy.
English: Jesus Christ – detail from Deesis mosaic, Hagia Sophia, Istanbul (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
We are living in perilous times where it is becoming apparent that those who are currently in power seem to have an almost visceral hatred of people who believe in God and follow Christ. We see that hatred coming to the surface in so many different ways, from a disregard to the founders intentions to establish a country where freedom to practice our religion was the force and pursuit of the founding, to actually promoting the idea that government should have the right to decide who is appropriate to minister to people of faith.
We are beginning to see laws being made to trap believers into disobeying those very laws in order to both persecute them for breaking the law, and to hold them up as examples of lawbreakers. We are in a place where the laws of the country themselves are against sound doctrine. Where murder is justified, fornication is encouraged, and sodomy is promoted and if you are against any of these, you are labeled as the one who is wrong. Our leaders lie with straight faces and perjure themselves without regard to the law or the cost to the people.
If one takes time to keep up with some of the news, we find that killing of babies is okay, hurting the feelings of a homosexual is not. Using drones to kill children in foreign lands is acceptable, catching rainwater is a crime. Our schools promote all kinds of perversion and start as early as their beginning school, and yet we as parents and grandparents are told that our morals are the ones that are bad, because God is the one who leads children astray in their minds.
We are living in the same kind of time as Lot, where perversion is becoming the standard practice and children are only worth what the government can get out of them. We are selling ourselves and our children back into slavehood with the masters those who are the worst of the lawless. We have naively trusted those in power believing that they shared our values and wanted what was best for them. To our horror we have discovered that we have opened the door wide and let evil enter in.
22 Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,
23 And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things.
24 Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves:
25 Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.
26 For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature:
27 And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet.
28 And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient;
29 Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers,
30 Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents,
31 Without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful:
32 Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.
Our only hope lies in the Lord God and His Son Jesus Christ who sacrificed in order that we do not have to forever be part of this evil but instead with our acceptance of Him have the promise of a different future. Our hope lies in the return of Jesus and the judgment of the wicked and evil.
15 See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise,
16 Redeeming the time, because the days are evil.
17 Wherefore be ye not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is.
Ephesians 6:10-12
King James Version (KJV)
10 Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might.
11 Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.
12 For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.
Until I can get I can get another site set up I will be posting at The Christian Gazette and A Needed Word along with posts at Grumpy’s Opinions. I hope all my loyal followers will read these, as I intend to keep my other sites up regardless of what happens with Loopyloo’s. If you haven’t checked out the other sites, please do and God bless you all! The Christian Gazette and A Needed Word are both wordpress blogs so you can just click follow and read them along with your other follows. Updates from Pastor Kerry Mauldin will be at the Christian Gazette, and is currently in India and I have a new post up for him today! Joy Among the Gypsies is his newest letter. A Needed word is simply a short daily (mostly daily) needed word. Grumpy’s Opinions is a daily news magazine and opinion digest that has many wonderful authors and is well worth your time if you have never read it. Please do check it out.
Stories about persecution seem to be dominating international headlines of late. On Tuesday, we told you about four Christian missionaries who were arrested in Benghazi, Libya, on charges that they were proselytizing. And now, Asia News reports that Saudi Arabian officials recently detained 53 Ethiopian Christians after they were caught holding a prayer meeting in a private home.
Among the 46 women and six men taken into custody were three faith leaders who are being accused of attempting to convert Muslims to Christianity — something that is forbidden in a country that only allows for religious practice and expression associated with the Islamic faith. The incident purportedly unfolded on Feb. 8 in Dammam, the capital of Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province. Read the rest: Saudi Officials Reportedly Arrest 53 Christians for Holding Prayer Meeting in a Private Home | TheBlaze.com.