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COME UP HIGHER
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, March 29, 2025 – You don’t have to do any of it – none of it. God hasn’t ordered you to serve him. He hasn’t forced you or coerced you, any more than he forced or coerced Jesus do give himself as a sacrifice for many. God made Jesus an offer, he invited Jesus, he gave Jesus the opportunity to come up higher, just like he gives us the same opportunity. No guns are pressed against temples, no arms twisted behind backs. It’s an invitation that no-one but God can extend – the chance to come up higher for all eternity.
Jesus was insistent, particularly during his final days among us in mortal form – Jesus was insistent that we understand that the trial he agreed to endure was his choice and his choice only. God had not forced him into it. Even in the Garden of Gethsemane, when Jesus was begging his Father to find another way to get done what needed to be done, God would have let him off the hook if he’d said he wanted off, only the terms could not be changed because prophecy had to be fulfilled. The sacrifice had to proceed as laid out in scripture or God would have to extend the offer to someone else. Yet even so, God mitigated the suffering that Jesus agreed to go through, allowing him to die so soon in the proceedings, it caught the guards by surprise. God softened each blow against Jesus as much as he could (even arranging for someone to carry the cross the final distance) while still keeping up his end of the bargain.
And it was a bargain, what happened that day, a bet made by the devil that Jesus wouldn’t make it all the way through. It was the devil who set the terms that God agreed to. It wasn’t God’s will that Jesus suffer; God permitted it, all the while betting that Jesus would indeed make it all the way through, which he did, and in so doing came up as high as he or anyone possibly could.
We, too, are in the process of coming up higher. With each test and each round of suffering that we don’t solicit but agree to endure, we inch up higher on the heavenly rewards scale. We come up higher. Sometimes it’s by a little bit and sometimes it’s by leaps and bounds. But just as we can come up higher, we can also slide down lower. God does everything in his power to prevent that from happening (the alarms ring loud and clear; trust me, you cannot not hear those alarms when you’re in danger of sliding), but it’s still up to us whether we want to go up or down, to say “yay” or “nay” to God. Heavenly rewards are not a guarantee until our time here is done. It ain’t over ‘til it’s over, and until it’s over, the upward trajectory can just as easily go downward.
Being born-again doesn’t prevent that slide. We still have free will. We can still say “no” to God. We can still go our own way or even the devil’s way. We’re fine now reading this, comfortable in our seats and with a full belly, but some day when the pain gets too extreme, some of us may choose to do or say whatever it takes to make the pain stop, including denying and betraying the Very Ones we now claim we’d die for. It’s happened before to others and will happen again, maybe to us. We need to pray and pray hard that it doesn’t.
This is a depressing article for me to write, knowing that some of you reading this have already made the deal that cannot be undone and that you’re only here to find a chink in my armour that you can use against me. It’s depressing knowing that some of you who haven’t sold your souls still resolutely refuse to accept any of God’s offers and that you’re only reading this because it amuses you and you look forward to mocking me afterwards. It was depressing for Jesus to dine with the hypocrites and to argue with them and endure their insults, but he did it because it was part of his duties, depressing or not. To get through these and similarly distasteful chores, Jesus always kept his eyes on the prize of his heavenly reward, knowing that with each sling he deflected and every arrow he endured, he moved up higher and therefore closer to God.
You have no idea how close Jesus was to God on that cross. No mortal being has ever been closer to God than Jesus was during his time of suffering. That’s how he got through it – putting himself entirely into God’s hands and letting God guide him, step by step, breath by breath.
You cannot endure what you have coming unless you do the same.
ISRAEL 2.0
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, March 28, 2025 – According to the results of several recent DNA studies, a large and increasing percentage of people today who identify as Jewish are not descended from Biblical Hebrews but from a mish-mash of other peoples, including Eastern Europeans, Iranians, and even Russians. If these results are accurate, it at the very least raises some compelling questions about the validity of claims regarding Jews’ Biblical right, based primarily on genetics, to the so-called Promised Land.
It is not, however, the role of this blog to get involved in geopolitics. Jesus never got involved beyond the odd comment now and then, and so I don’t get involved, either. But he did advise us to watch, and that I do, and what I see in the ebb and flow of the fortunes and misfortunes of the past and present state of Israel is fascinating. The drama never seems to end (although we know it will some day), with Israel perpetually painting itself as the victim perpetually owed special status and reparations of one sort or another. And woe betide anyone who comes against that resurrected state, not because God is fighting its battles, but because the devil is. You don’t want to go up against the devil, because whatever he does, he’s gotten prior permission from God to do, which means that if you fight against the devil you’re essentially fighting against God.
Not a smart move. Not gonna win that war.
Which is why Jesus steered clear of geopolitics. Let the fallen and the worldly duke it out among themselves. We in the spiritual Kingdom of Israel have better things to do.
And we are the spiritual Kingdom of Israel. We are the prophesied remnant whose pedigree is unquestionable. Israel 2.0 is not a geopolitical realm but a spiritual one, and the entrance to that realm is by rebirth, not natural birth. In the Kingdom, our natural genetics are all over the place, which is fine (and scriptural) because genetics don’t matter here. All that matters if that we’re genuinely born-again. Rebirth – and rebirth alone – constitutes the basis for citizenship in Israel 2.0.
Despite being the valid inheritors of God’s Biblical promises, we claim no right to any land or worldly wealth here. In Heaven, literally endless land and wealth await us, but here on Earth we’re promised only that our daily needs will be met and that we’ll have access to the appropriate resources when required. We are the prophesied poor and afflicted remnant, so we should expect to be poor and afflicted, though never destitute, never without hope, and always blessed. You would think that being poor and afflicted would negate the being blessed part, but miraculously it doesn’t. There’s joy solely in the presence of God’s Holy Spirit, and if you’re genuinely reborn, God’s Spirit is always with you to a certain measure, sometimes more and sometimes less. The greater the measure of God’s Spirit, the closer you are to God and the greater your abiding joy.
In the end, then, it wouldn’t really matter even if 100% of modern Jews were found to be genetically identical to the Hebrews of Old Testament times. Your genetics don’t grant you entrance to the prophesied Israel 2.0; the presence of God’s Holy Spirit does.
EATING SOUP WITH A SCREWDRIVER
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, March 17, 2025 – All science is theory, so the phrase “the science is settled” is an oxymoron. God gave us science as a tool to make sense of the natural (not the supernatural) realm, but he never meant for us to treat it as a religion and to worship it as infallible. Science by very definition is perpetually in motion, perpetually flawed, and perpetually being upended: Settling something with those characteristics is impossible.
Still, the belief in science has for many people replaced belief in God. In scripture, God talks about those who’ve not only rejected him but have replaced him with “broken cisterns that can hold no water”. He was including science-believers in this group.
The number of people who are embracing broken cisterns in the form of science is growing larger by the day. So are their claims. One claim that recently caught my eye is that there are an estimated 10 quintillion insects in the world, and of these, an estimated 80% have yet to be identified. These kinds of broad, sweeping, and frankly quite silly pronouncements highlight the inherently flawed and profoundly unsettled nature of science. Yes, science is a tool, but tools that are not suited to the task at hand are pretty much useless.
Have you ever tried eating soup with a screwdriver? Of course not. That would be silly. So is saying there are 10,000,000,000,000,000,000 insects on Earth. Verging on criminal is expecting us not only to believe this nonsense but being forced to regurgitate it as gospel truth on a science quiz or be failed.
So, while God gave us science as a tool, people who blindly place their faith in science (i.e., Trust the Science™) have themselves become tools – useful tools of Satan. The rebranding of scientific inquiry from being a cautious, inconclusive explainer of the natural realm to being a dogmatic writ-in-stone fact (that you dare not question) has the devil’s pawprints all over it. As we well know, “those who believe in nothing will fall for anything”, and science dogmatists have fallen for the devil’s lies in the form of “the science is settled” and similar creeds. Even worse, they’re constantly evangelizing and infiltrating all aspects of human society so that to be (as I am here) an “unbeliever in science” (that is, one who questions scientific dogmatic claims) is akin to being branded a witch or a heretic in the Middle Ages: A burning stake is being prepared for me as we speak.
I am grateful to God for his gift of science as a tool to help explain nature. However, I don’t worship or “believe in” science. I don’t unquestioningly Trust the Science™. To me, scientific theories are just that – theories. They’re not truths and they’re not settled, and by very definition they can never be. They can only ever be flawed and questionable, as God intended them. Still, a flawed and questionable work-in-progress explanation is better than no explanation at all.
As a born-again believer, I don’t reject science; I reject the dogma around it.
CHANGING TIME
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, March 11, 2025 – Time has a feeling. We associate certain times of the day with certain activities and therefore certain feelings. Mornings are typically for waking up, which means we engage in activities that help us do that. Evenings, on the other hand, have a whole different feeling. Evenings are typically for winding down, and our activities reflect that.
But what if time is changed? What if morning isn’t quite yet morning and evening not quite yet evening? What if the morning is not yet dawn and the evening not yet dusk? Would we still want to do the same activities an hour and half ahead of what our body is telling us is the “real time”? Because our body knows exactly what time it is, even if consciously we don’t.
When I was a kid, my bedtime was 8 p.m. sharp. I remember that, because I always had trouble falling asleep in the summertime. I remember lying in bed and staring out the window at the sunshine. And no matter how hard I tried, I could not get to sleep.
In real time in Halifax, 8 p.m. in the summertime is dark. What I mean by “real time” is solar time. In Daylight Savings Time, it’s not dark until nearly 9:30 p.m., which is almost an hour and a half later. If, as a kid, I’d gone to bed at 9:30 DST instead of 8:00 DST, I would have conked out the minute my head hit the pillow.
As a culture, we have the perpetual feeling that time is getting faster and faster and that our days just fly by. Is it possible instead that the shift from “real time” (solar time) to “fake time” (DST and Standard Time) has robbed us of our true sense of time, and in so doing has made us feel that we’re always falling behind? Our body says it’s one time, while our clock claims it’s much later.
Take now, for instance. My laptop clock tells me it’s nearly 12 noon, but my solar clock says it’s just 10:30 a.m. These two times bring with them entirely different feelings related to the activities attached to them. They also have entirely different qualities of sunlight. So if my body is telling me that it’s mid-morning and maybe time for a snack but the world is telling me it’s high noon and time for a full mid-day meal, how is my body to make sense of this conflict other than to feel that time is getting faster?
But the truth is that time is not getting faster. Time is getting changed into fake time that doesn’t reflect reality. When it’s 5:30 a.m. according to the sun but already 7 a.m. according to DST, should we really be surprised that it’s so difficult to drag ourselves out of bed?
Again – time is not getting faster; time is getting changed, like scripture said it would. But not in my house. In my house, time is set to solar time, so no matter what time the world tells me it is, I’m always pleasantly surprised to find that it’s much earlier than I thought it was, and I still have lots of time to do whatever needs to be done.
Feels good!
EVERYTHING
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, March 10, 2025 – Every problem in the world today could be solved by turning back to God and following Jesus.
There isn’t one problem that can’t be solved this way.
In turning back to God and following Jesus, you’d realize that what you thought were your problems are actually not your problems, and you’d let them go. The rest of whatever issues are plaguing you, you’d deal with through God’s guidance, in his way and in his time, following the example of Jesus.
Every problem can be solved by turning back to God and following Jesus.
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It could have been so simple. God means for it to be simple for us. He means for it to be so simple that even a child can understand.
It could have been so simple if we’d just turned back to him, like he invited us to do, all those years ago. It would have been so simple if we’d just turned back to him like he invited us to do, and then like he urged us to do, and then like he warned us to do.
And now, here we are, well past the warning phase. It’s become a Command now, to turn back to God; it’s do or die.
And it could have been so easy.
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I see this countless times, in deals that are offered to me or to someone else. You never get a better deal than the one that’s first offered you, because the one that’s first offered is made from a position of wanting. The people making the offer want you to want what they’re offering. And so they buff it and shine it up and lay it down tenderly at your feet, thinking of you as much as themselves, of what you want as much as what they want. They lavish their love on you and offer their best. The first offer is always the best, from a spiritual standpoint.
But if you decline that first offer, it’s all downhill from there. It might seem to you that you’ll get a better deal if you haggle, if you hold out until you’ve worn them down a bit, and then a bit more. But the deal doesn’t get better. It might seem to you that it gets better, but it doesn’t. The terms may seemingly shift in your favor, but the deal starts to rot from the inside. It changes into something that’s not quite as good, that rankles and sours and turns bitter whatever initial love and goodwill there could have been between you and the one making the offer. There is a palpable cooling of affections. One way or another, you lose if you don’t take that first offer, because the first one is always the best.
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I hadn’t realized that in loving God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, as Jesus taught us was the first and greatest Commandment – I had not realized that to love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength means to love him like that, too. Every love song ever written we’re to sing to God, and to God only. We’re to give him everything that he’s given us to give.
Everything, like Jesus did.
HERE AND GONE: THE RAPTURE ABDUCTION
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, March 8, 2025 – The powers-that-be have a plan. When their time comes (that is, when Satan’s time comes), they’re going to get rid of us, with God’s permission. To back their plan, they’ve twisted scripture until it states that the golden age of Jesus’ Kingdom will come only after true believers have been raptured and everyone else has gone through a tribulation. First comes the rapture, then comes the tribulation, and then comes Jesus’ 1000-year Kingdom, along with the return to Earth of all the previously raptured saints.
Sounds great, right? Really something to look forward to!
The only problem is that it’s junk theology. Scripture doesn’t back it up (except the part about God permitting us to be killed). In the “millennial reign” mentioned in the book of Revelation, the martyred believers reign with Jesus for “a thousand years” (i.e., a very long but indeterminate time stipulated by God). These saints died and went to Heaven, where their bodies have been glorified. Glorified bodies aren’t suited for long-term visitations on Earth, which is why angels don’t appear in their glorified form very often or for more than a few minutes at a time. Instead, most angels appear in an earthly-heavenly hybrid body, like Jesus during his 40 days of post-resurrection appearances. But hybrid bodies aren’t built for long-term earthly use either, so how are Jesus and his saints going to reign on Earth in physical form for a thousand years?
I’ve written about this before, but it bears repeating because the PTB have been going into overdrive lately beating their rapture drum (see the video here or below for an example). They’re hammering the rapture into people – even unbelievers – by simplifying and codifying its occurrence, so that when the mass abductions take place, most people will default to “rapture” and accept the disappearances without question or be threatened into silence.
I have zero doubt that there’ll be mass abductions. How else are they going to get rid of us when their time comes? Still, the truth of the matter is that Jesus has been reigning on Earth for almost 2000 years already. Jesus is King here and now, and his glorified saints rule with him in his spiritual Kingdom, while we, his Earth-bound saints, are its cherished and protected citizens. This is the prophesied Zion written about in the OT, taught by Jesus in the NT, and presented as the millennial reign in the book of Revelation. There will be no other Kingdom on Earth and no other Zion, golden or otherwise. This is it.
There will also be no rapture as framed by the PTB, though there will be individual ascensions, like Jesus mentions (“one shall be taken, and the other left”) and as exemplified by Jesus, Elijah, and Enoch. So no, there won’t be a mass rapture before the tribulation, but there will be mass abductions of born-again believers. That is the PTB’s diabolical plan.
But I guess you’ll just have to take my word for it, because if I’m still here when it all goes down (or allegedly up), I probably won’t be around to tell you “I told you so”, because I’ll be gone.
And so will you.
INTO THE BLESSINGS ZONE
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, February 26, 2025 – God blessed Nebuchadnezzar with a great empire not because he was a holy man or a child of Israel or a convert to Judaism, but because he gave the remnant (God’s children) shelter and allowed them to thrive under his reign. It didn’t matter that Nebuchadnezzar wasn’t a believer; he did God’s will, and so he was blessed.
It was God’s will that Judah and Jerusalem and all the cities and towns of Israel be overrun by the Babylonian and Chaldean armies and in most cases destroyed. God gave that responsibility into Nebuchadnezzar’s hands, knowing that the king of Babylon would carry out the destruction to the letter and without flinching. It was God’s will that the people formerly known as the children of Israel (but who had turned their backs on God and had become instead the synagogue of Satan) be punished, with the heathen Babylonian and Chaldean armies as their executioners.
Even today – especially today – those who do God’s will and look to the good of his born-again remnant are profoundly blessed by God, regardless of whether they themselves are believers.
“PRAY NOT FOR THIS PEOPLE”
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, January 10, 2025 – As born-again believers, we’ve been instructed by Jesus to love our enemies, which means we’re to pray for them and bless them even in the most egregious of situations, like when they’re killing us.
But what if God tells us specifically not to pray for them? What if he tells us to leave our prayers and let him deal with the situation in the way it needs to be dealt with?
I think of Peter rushing to tell Jesus that he’ll defend him to the death, and Jesus accusing him of being Satan.
I think of Jesus’ mother and sisters coming to “rescue” him in Capernaum, and Jesus refusing even to acknowledge them as kin.
I think of Saul ordering his troops to save (for later sacrifices) the conquered king and choicest animals from a city they’d just razed, and God condemning Saul for all eternity because of it.
God doesn’t want us praying for people he doesn’t want prayed for. He doesn’t want us protecting people he doesn’t want protected. He doesn’t want us rescuing people he doesn’t want rescued. What God does want (and what Saul found out too late) is our unhesitating and full obedience to him in all circumstances and at all times. So, if the spiritual status quo is the directive to pray for our enemies, we pray for them, but if God specifically says not to pray for them, you pray at the peril of your immortal soul.
God doesn’t want misplaced “love”, because misplaced love is no love at all. Love is only love if it comes from God. If God directs you not to pray for someone or for an entire people, you don’t pray for them, not one peep. You stand at command and voice your obedience, like the angels in Revelation stood in willing obedience while God delivered his terrible justice. You don’t badger God to change his ways and his laws, like the demonically inspired woke perpetually badger politicians. You don’t tell God he’s got it all wrong and this is the right way forward, the compassionate way forward, the “christian” way forward. No. You do whatever God advises you at any given time. You never question God, even if he advises you against loving and praying and blessing and sacrificing.
Because this ain’t about you and what you think is right, any more than it’s about the woke and what they wrongly insist is right. This is about God and what God knows is right. And if God says to you (like he said to Jeremiah): “Pray not for this people”, then you’d better not pray for them.
Remember what happened to Saul.
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Hath the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams. For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and adultery.
(1 Samuel 15:22-23)
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Therefore pray not thou for this people, neither lift up cry nor prayer for them, neither make intercession to me: for I will not hear thee.
(Jeremiah 7:16)
NO-ONE BUT GOD
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, January 10, 2025 – If you start with the concept that nearly everything they do, they do to kill you, then it all makes sense. They want you dead, though not necessarily physically dead: they want you spiritually dead, which means they want you worshiping the god of this world, like they do.
First and foremost, they want you spiritually dead, and once they accomplish that, what happens to you physically is of little concern to them. When I say of little concern, what I mean is that they want to keep you at least sufficiently functional that you’ll be able to spiritually kill others. That’s your job once you’ve been spiritually killed yourself, to spiritually kill others.
If you start with the understanding that they want you spiritually dead, then everything they do makes sense. There are no “good guys” and “bad guys” among those who are not born-again, there are just dead guys who are out to make everyone else dead.
You can only protect yourself if you truly understand this. And by protecting yourself, I don’t mean that you’re the one doing the protecting; I mean that you’re looking to God to protect you, and to God only, because God is the only one who can protect you.
Jesus well knew this before he started his ministry, which is why he left his family and friends behind and struck out on his own. He understood that even his family and friends were trying to spiritually kill him, though likely they didn’t know what they were doing. And there’s the rub – the devil uses people to get to you because he can’t get to you directly; you’re too protected. So he uses others, and he uses them in ways that appear to be good, even godly. In most cases, the people being used are unaware they’re being used. But you need to be aware they’re being used because that’s the only way you can put yourself under the full protection of God.
The worst thing that can happen to you as a born-again believer is to die spiritually. You must never let that happen to you, not under any circumstance. The devil is betting that he can spiritually kill you, while God is betting that he can’t. The same conversation the devil had with God about Job he’s having about each one of us, with God firmly taking our side, as he did for Job, and setting clear testing boundaries that the devil cannot overstep.
Yet for all his support, God’s not stopping the devil from tempting us; after all, that’s why he keeps the devil around. Tempting us is the devil’s sole purpose, and he’s very good at it, diabolically good, which is why we need God’s guidance and protection night and day. In fact, the devil’s so good at what he does, you don’t even know he’s doing it, he makes everything seem so easy and natural and right.
Our temptations, when they come, rarely look like temptations. They’re so meticulously planned and timed, they don’t appear to come from the devil. If anything, they seem on occasion to be blessings and signs from God, which is why we need to walk our every step with God. We won’t make it through our temptations unless we walk our every step with God. We should do nothing without first consulting God and then unhesitatingly doing whatever he says, like Jesus did. This is how we remain fully protected even while God is permitting us to be tempted by the devil.
If you’re a born-again believer, the world really is out to get you. Still, you don’t need to be afraid of the world or of the devil’s diabolical temptations, not while you’re under the guidance and protection of God. As Jesus reminded us, the most they can do is kill the body. Jesus lived that mindset during his ministry years, which is why he was bold and fearless in every situation, right up to and including the moment of his physical death.
So yes, even though nearly everyone on Earth may in fact be trying to kill us, we should fear nothing and no-one but God.
BE RIGHTEOUS STILL
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, January 3, 2025 – In the instant before my rebirth, when I was still an atheist, God offered me the choice of two options and showed me a vision of two possible outcomes. In the first part of the vision, he showed me the outcome that would result if I chose to forgive, and in the second part, he showed me the outcome that would result if I chose not to forgive. Specifically, I was shown that if I chose to forgive, all my pain would disappear, and if I chose not to forgive, my pain would not only continue but worsen.
God offered me the choice and showed me the outcomes visually as well as by understanding. No words were spoken.
This vision has remained with me as a guide to this day.
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I mention the above because God gave me a choice that involved two options and their respective outcomes, and one of those outcomes was not good. Yet even though it wasn’t good, it also wasn’t immediate horrific death. God didn’t say: Choose this, and you’ll live forever, or choose that, and you’ll die immediately and horribly. Even with the bad outcome, I was offered the possibility of continuing my life on Earth, though in a progressively ever-worsening spiritual state and with the understanding that the opportunity I was being afforded at that time would not come around again.
Thank God I chose to forgive, but still, choosing not to forgive was also an option. I wasn’t forced to make the choice to forgive; I wasn’t threatened with immediate death if I chose not to forgive: I was simply shown the outcomes of each choice, urged to choose the option that would resolve my pain, and left to make the decision for myself.
I mention the ever-worsening spiritual state that results from choosing unforgiveness because many who have been given the same offer as I was given have chosen not to forgive, have chosen revenge. When you choose revenge over mercy, your life reflects that choice. When you take matters into your own hands, you suffer the consequences, with an emphasis on suffer. The suffering that comes to you after you exact what you think is your rightful revenge is of your own doing. In other words, you’ve brought your suffering on yourself and have no-one but yourself to blame.
Even worse, if you choose this course of action after rejecting the option that would free you of your pain, God himself can’t help you anymore. You might be mollified temporarily by earthly mollifications (booze, drugs, wealth, career success, deviant sex, and other diversions), you might even be shielded from further consequences for a time by making a deal with the devil, but your pain will never be purged like it would have been had you chosen mercy when you had the chance.
Geopolitically, nations undergo the same process as individuals, as nations are made up of individuals whose characters collectively determine the course of that nation. When the measure of righteous individuals in a nation is surpassed by the unrighteous, that nation begins an unstoppable decline into hell. Daniel writes of nations that had their dominions taken away and yet continued for thousands of years, though in a progressively humbled state. Examples include Iraq, Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia, Lebanon, and Syria. Their glory days are long behind them as they limp through the millennia, sinking deeper and deeper into poverty and chaos despite countless efforts at reform. Fast on the heels of the historically declined nations are the newly declining ones of former Christendom (Canada, US, UK, etc.). As with individuals, once the definitive decline begins, it cannot be reversed; it can be slowed, but not reversed.
Not one nation today is on the spiritual ascendent, and we can expect this trend to continue. There is a misguided notion of a future global messianic or Golden Age, a sort of Heaven on Earth, but nothing could be farther from the truth. Since the coming of Jesus, Heaven is as close to Earth as it will ever be. The Zion foretold in scripture is here and now, in the spiritual realm of God’s Kingdom on Earth. Scriptural Zion will only ever be in the spiritual realm, which is why Jesus pointedly stated that his Kingdom is not of this world.
Every choice we make during our time on Earth has consequences. At a pivotal point in our lives, God presents each of us with the opportunity to choose righteousness over revenge. The choice we make at that time cannot be undone and will determine our place in eternity, with few exceptions. If you’re genuinely reborn, you’ve chosen righteousness. Your job now is to keep on choosing righteousness, even if it means immediate and horrific death.
[H]e that is righteous, let him be righteous still; and he that is holy, let him be holy still.
And in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed…. As concerning the rest, they had their dominion taken away: yet their lives were prolonged for a season and time.
A BORN-AGAIN BELIEVER 