Some of his disciples were remarking about how the temple was adorned with beautiful stones and with gifts dedicated to God. But Jesus said, “As for what you see here, the time will come when not one stone will be left on another; every one of them will be thrown down.” “Teacher,” they asked, “when will these things happen? And what will be the sign that they are about to take place?” He replied: “Watch out that you are not deceived. For many will come in my name, claiming, 'I am he,' and, 'The time is near.' Do not follow them. When you hear of wars and revolutions, do not be frightened. These things must happen first, but the end will not come right away.” Then he said to them: “Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be great earthquakes, famines and pestilences in various places, and fearful events and great signs from heaven.” —Luke Chapter 21

The sky is falling.

Historic and unprecedented natural disasters have killed hundreds of thousands around the world, a world teetering on the brink of global economic collapse. Most every nation on the face of the earth is deeply in debt. China seems to own most everything, including a trillion dollars of U.S. debt. Meanwhile, there are precious few military leaders who do not believe the U.S. and China will inevitably be at war. We’re already at war economically and China has been repeatedly implicated in launching cyber attacks against sensitive U.S. computer networks. Pakistan is clearly not an ally, Israel is inflexible if not lying outright in phony, two-faced “peace” talks with the Palestinians. AIDS is killing off Africa and infecting much of the rest of the planet, while inexplicable cases of massive bird deaths—falling to the ground by the thousands—and mysterious outbreaks of salmonella poisoning sicken thousands. The U.S. housing market has collapsed, again, millions losing their homes. The natural and nuclear disasters in Japan have caused their economy to all but collapse, which, in turn, caused global markets to falter, which caused U.S. companies, flush with a reported trillion dollars of revenue, to continue to not hire because they’re uncertain about the market’s future. Which leaves millions out of work, the truth of which has been blunted by repeated extensions of unemployment benefits. But, as those benefits finally run out, we will begin to see more and longer lines at food banks, more desperate people taking to the streets, while block after block of homes sit vacant. Between corporate America’s greed and U.S. politicians’ posturing—the unfathomable evil of playing politics with what even a half-wit recognizes as a global recession on the brink of becoming a global depression—America is awash in anger and frustration, much of that being vented at the president, of all people, likely because of the idiocy we all grew up with: believing the U.S. president is like a king or some magically delicious leprechaun with the power to fix everything. The U.S. electorate is just desperate enough, just angry enough and just gullible enough to throw Obama out in the hopes that President Romney will be the leprechaun for them, that things will magically get better the moment the new guy is sworn in. That’s how desperate and desperately wrong we are, putting our faith in a political system, in flawed human beings. What on earth will we do when we realize President Romney's policies are no more effective than President Obama's? When it finally hits us that what's going on is much larger than politics and policy.

“There will be signs in the sun, moon and stars. On the earth, nations will be in anguish and perplexity at the roaring and tossing of the sea. 26 Men will faint from terror, apprehensive of what is coming on the world, for the heavenly bodies will be shaken.” —Luke Chapter 21

This mess going on with the planet is so much bigger than Obama, so much bigger than U.S. politics. How many of us have paid any attention whatsoever to the collapse of Greece’s economy? How many times has your pastor even mentioned the Greek economic collapse during a Sunday service or Wednesday bible study? And, yet, the failure of Greece’s economy could trigger a domino effect of European nations’ economies collapsing that could bring world markets crashing down and usher in the second Great Depression here at home. Global markets have become increasingly interdependent over the years, such that the infection in Greece’s market could cause real damage to America’s already weakened economic system. But how many of us even know anything about it? How many of us have any idea how the natural disasters of earthquake and tsunami affect the health of millions of Japanese and how both affect Japan’s industry which immediately and directly impacted our feeble economic recovery? How many of us understand how everything is connected—war, disease, economic collapse and natural disasters?

We have all been whist­ling past the grave­yard for years, most cer­tain­ly dur­ing the sea­son of the Bush tax cuts, the Bush de­reg­u­la­tion po­li­cies, and Bush’s two off-the-books wars where the White House simp­ly didn’t in­clude the ac­tual costs of those en­gage­ments in the na­tion’s ledg­ers, thus cre­at­ing a false (and, one would imagine, illegal) sense of the nation’s economic health. Which is not to blame Former President Bush for all of this, but he is provably the root cause of the nation’s economic collapse. And we let it happen. We were working. The paychecks kept coming. The mortgage got paid and we went on trusting that government knew more and knew better than we did. I remember, many, many times, seeing our former president on TV, stumbling through some inane ramble, appearing uninformed and defensive about being so, and wondering is this guy some kind of nut? Despite my many rants on the former president, I quieted my fears by assuming—assuming—that Mr. Bush could not possibly be what he appeared to be: anti-intellectual, uninspired, uninformed, unengaged and  immature. He just appears to be that way, I told myself. we can't possibly have elected some child to run the country. I am certain history will judge this man harshly, that he will be remembered as the president who all but destroyed the American economy.

Mark of The Beast: We've Already Taken It

Popular culture has grown to Orwellian proportions to the point where few people go even a few minutes without being brainwashed by a TV or the internet. Everywhere you go, you see people wired in, zombies, wandering the streets, smashing their cars into one another, because their eyes are glued to some LCD screen, writing texts, watching videos. Young people, everywhere you see them, their ears stuffed with earplugs blasting, blasting, the most vile, ungodly, obscene noise you could possibly imagine. We are continually plugged in. We are constantly being programmed by what we mistake for entertainment. Nearly every bit of it offends the character of the Christian faith and glamorizes, to one extent or another, the occult. Nearly every aspect of successful popular culture, from music to movies to “reality” TV to the Internet, is an affront to the cross. There’s all this cussing. All this sex. An alarming trend toward pagan and occult symbolism embedded into visuals, most notably by the completely untalented, can-anybody-explain-to-me-why-this-guy’s-a-star Kayne West. There is no popular star standing up for decency, decency being, I suppose, out of vogue. Our young people are being conditioned to value and glorify everything that is dark, that is supernatural, that is taboo or forbidden, and to despise light, righteousness and purity. That stuff doesn’t sell. Kids want to break rules. Want to rebel. Want to do the exact opposite of what their parents warned them about.

“And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.”  —Revelation 13

Privacy is completely gone. Every search you have ever made on Google has been recorded. It can and will be produced under legal subpoena. Every single word you’ve ever typed into your PC can and will be recovered, all your secret dirt is locked somewhere in a corporate vault. GPS on your phone, in your car. They know exactly where you are at all times. They sold it to you as a “feature,” free driving directions, free price comparison. But your smartphone is reporting what you do, what you buy, what you’re taking pictures of, what you’re saying, what you’re writing. It amazes me that nobody seems bothered by this.

Either you were stupid enough to put your personal information on some social networking website or your friend has done it for you, loading their “smart” phone with your name, address, birthday, photo and, of course, phone number to your “smart” phone and linking their smartphone to Facebook, LinkedIn or some other social networking site. They are completely exposed. And, because they've stored your info in their smartphone, you are completely exposed as well. Printing technology has improved to the point where paper currency is all but meaningless. They change the design and security features and colors of paper money—at enormous government expense—but the counterfeiters change even faster. Many employers insist on using direct deposit to save money on having to print and maintain paper checks. Money goes into your bank, which is monitored by the government (ours and, likely, China), and is spent using debit cards or check-by phone, which are controlled by the bank.

It says right there, on your Social Security card, “Not To Be Used For Identification,” and yet your Social Security number has always been used exclusively for that purpose. You can’t borrow without it. You can’t earn a legitimate living without it. Because of that number, nearly every dime of the money you make and the money you spend is monitored and can be stopped with a few keystrokes at a computer terminal. And you’re stuck. Cannot buy or sell, homeless, hungry. That number determines where you live and the quality of that life. Identity theft is so prevalent that the emerging thought is to scrap the Social Security system altogether and move to biometrics: your thumb print, your retina pattern. Your credit history encoded on a chip, maybe implanted in your body. You have no secrets. And, when you get hungry enough, you’ll do exactly what they tell you.

Sound paranoid? You bet. It also happens to be true.