Bible Believers' Newsletter 717
"We focus on the present Truth – what Jesus is doing now. . ."
ISSN 1442-8660
Christian greetings in the precious Name of our Lord Jesus Christ. We are pleased you could join us for fellowship in the year of our Lord 2012. Your brother-in-Christ, Anthony Grigor-Scott
The year has had an inauspicious beginning:
As well as the continuing uncertainty over Pastor Nadarkhani's fate, a church in southern Iran was raided during Christmas celebrations, with everyone in the building being detained, including children. Although the majority of the congregation were eventually released, the senior pastor, his wife and two elders were detained, however the pastor's wife and one of the elders have now been released.
In Nigeria, over 40 people were killed in a series of Christmas Day attacks that targeted churches, a hotel, and members of the security services in five states in central and northern Nigeria.
The US City of London puppet is beating its chest and sounding the war drums based on yet another BIG LIE marinated in the "enmity" of the enemy of God and man. And in a news item, Tyranny in the Forecast, contributing author Paul Craig Roberts states "the outlook for liberty [in the United States and everywhere else] is dismal."
In our main Article this week we return to our study of Zechariah 14 with particular reference to metaphor and allegory in Bible prophecy and the prophet's allusions to the new heavens and new Earth.
This Newsletter serves those of like precious faith. Whoever will receive the truth is welcome to feed their soul from the waters of the River of Life. Everything here presented should be confirmed personally in your own Bible.
Judge denies Obama Motion to dismiss Complaint to keep Him off the Ballot
January 4, 2012 — Deputy Chief Judge Michael Malihi in the Office of State Administrative Hearings denied a motion by Obama asking to dismiss the complaint that seeks to keep his name off the state ballot during the March presidential primary. The judge's decision now sets the stage for a January 26 hearing on the issue in Fulton County. . . "He does not satisfy the 'natural born citizen' constitutional requirement for President to be on the ballot due to his foreign citizenship and allegiance to three other nations," the documents state. . .
Full story: ledger-enquirer.com
Imperial Brain Trust/Dominance and its Dilemmas
January 2, 2012 — In their book Imperial Brain Trust: The Council on Foreign Relations and United States Foreign Policy, authors Shoup and Minter tell us the influence of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) is unparalleled. Between 1945 and 1972, roughly 45% of the top foreign policy officials who served in the United States government were also members of the Council. That this is no less true today. . . the Council's "roster of members has for a generation, under Republican and Democratic administrations alike, been the chief recruiting ground for Cabinet-level officials in Washington."
Why isn't the CFR in the History Books? Hardly one in a thousand ever heard of the CFR, formally established in Paris in 1919 along with its British Counterpart the Royal Institute of International Affairs. The CFR and RIIA can trace their roots back to a secret organization founded and funded by Cecil Rhodes . . . intent on ruling the world. . . The members of these groups profit by creating tension and hate. Their targets include British and American citizens.
Noam Chomski's 2003 article Dominance and its Dilemmas reveals, "The most powerful state in history announced a new National Security Strategy, asserting that it will maintain global hegemony permanently: any challenge will be blocked by force, the dimension in which the United States reigns supreme. At the same time, war drums began to beat to mobilize the population for an invasion of Iraq, which would be "the first test [of the doctrine], not the last," the New York Times observed after the invasion, "the petri dish in which this experiment in pre-emptive policy grew." And the campaign opened for the midterm congressional elections, which would determine whether the administration would be able to carry forward its radical international and domestic agenda."
"The basic principles of this new "imperial grand strategy," as it was aptly termed at once by John Ikenberry, trace back to the early days of World War II and have been reiterated frequently since. Even before the United States entered the war, planners and analysts concluded that in the postwar world it would seek "to hold unquestioned power," acting to ensure the "limitation of any exercise of sovereignty" by states that might interfere with its global designs. They outlined "an integrated policy to achieve military and economic supremacy for the United States" in a "Grand Area" to include at a minimum the Western Hemisphere, the former British empire, and the Far East, later extended to as much of Eurasia as possible when it became clear that Germany would be defeated.
Full story: chomsky.info
Comment: These Illuminati groups control the Military Industrial Complex of the world and profit from the sale of medicine, munitions and food generated by the death and destruction caused by their "Imperial Grand Strategy." Chomsky neglects to inform readers that most of the names are CFR members.
The United States of America is the beast that arose "out of the earth that had two horns like a lamb [the separation of church and state powers], and spoke like the dragon [Rome], and exercised all of the power of Imperial Rome, made [atomic] come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men, and will force all men to worship Papal Roman dogma, or be killed" (Revelation 13:11-18).
The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA; H.R. 1540), signed on New year's Eve while Americans were partying like the Babylonians at Belteshazzar's feast repeals the US Constitution and is related to Amerika's "imperial grand strategy." Directly on the heels of the NDAA, that arguably makes US Citizens detainable by the military, comes the coup de grace in the form of a new bill called the Enemy Expatriation Act whereby you by your actions can be deemed to have committed an "act of expatriation" . . . [and] presumed to have done so voluntarily," deemed enemies of the federal government, striped of citizenship and protection under the Constitution.
Tyranny in the Forecast: the Outlook for the New Year
© Copyright Paul Craig Roberts, 2012
January 2, 2012 — The outlook for liberty is dismal. Those writers who are critical of Washington's illegal wars and overthrow of the US Constitution could find themselves in indefinite detainment, because criticism of Washington's policies can be alleged to be aiding Washington's enemies, which might include charities that provide aid to bombed Palestinian children and flotillas that attempt to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza.
The Bush/Obama regimes have put the foundation in place for imprisoning critics of the government without due process of law. . . Washington has set itself up as world prosecutor, forever berating other countries for human rights violations, while Washington alone bombs half a dozen countries into the stone age and threatens several more with the same treatment, all the while violating US statutory law and the Geneva Conventions by torturing detainees.
Washington rounds up assorted foreign politicians, whose countries were afflicted with civil wars, and sends them off to be tried as war criminals, while its own war crimes continue to mount. However, if a person exposes Washington's war crimes, that person is held without charges in conditions that approximate torture.
Bradley Manning is the case in point. Manning, a US soldier, is alleged to be the person who released to WikiLeaks the "Collateral Murder" video, which, in the words of Marjorie Cohn, "depicts US forces in an Apache helicopter killing 12 unarmed civilians, including two Reuters journalists. People trying to rescue the wounded were also fired upon and killed". . . The horror is that the US soldiers were playing video games with live people. . . They enjoyed killing the father who stopped to help and shooting up his vehicle with the two small children inside. This was not an accident of a drone, fed with bad information, blowing up a school full of children, or a hospital, or a farmer's family. This was American soldiers having fun with high tech toys killing anyone that they could pretend might be an enemy.
When I saw this, I realized that America was lost. Evil had prevailed. . . In signing the Bill of Tyranny, President Obama indicated that he thought that the tyranny established by the bill did not go far enough. He announced that he was signing the bill with signing statements that reserved his right, regardless of any law, to send American citizens, deprived of due process and constitutional protection, abroad to be tortured. President Obama announced that he had a list of Americans whom he intended to assassinate without due process of law, and Homeland Security, itself an Orwellian name, announced that it had shifted its attention from terrorists to "domestic extremists." The latter are undefined and consist of whomever Homeland Security so designates. . .
Local and state police forces have been militarized not only in their equipment and armament but also in their attitude toward the public. Despite the absence of domestic terror attacks, Homeland Security conducts warrantless searches of cars and trucks on highways and of passengers using public transportation. A uniformed federal service is being trained to systematically violate the constitutional rights of citizens, and citizens are being trained to accept these violations as normal. The young have no memory of being able to board public transportation or use public roadways without intrusive searches or to gather in protest without being brutalized by the police. Liberty is being moved into the realm of myth and legend.
In such a system as is being constructed in public in front of our eyes, there is no freedom, no democracy, and no liberty. What stands before us is naked tyranny. . . Of the presidential candidates, only Ron Paul addresses the Constitution's demise.
It might be too late for even a President Ron Paul to turn things around. A president has no power unless his government supports him. What prospect would President Ron Paul have of getting his appointees confirmed by the Senate? The military/security complex is not going to vacate power. Powerful monied interests would block his appointments. If he persisted in being a problem for the Establishment, he would be victimized by a scandal and fail to be reelected if not forced to resign.
Remember what the Washington Establishment did to President Carter. His budget director and chief of staff were framed, thus depriving Carter of the powers of his office. Even Ronald Reagan had to give away more than half of his government, including the White House chief-of-staff and vice presidency, to the Establishment. President Reagan told me that he wanted to end stagflation in order that he could end the cold war, but that he could not sign a tax bill if I could not get one out of his administration that he could send to Congress. . . [Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy].
How much longer will the Russian government permit NGOs funded by the US Endowment for Democracy to interfere in its elections and to organize political protests? How much longer will China confuse its strategic interests with the American consumer market? How much longer will Japan, Canada, Australia, Britain, Germany, Italy, Turkey, Egypt, and the Middle East oil states remain US puppets? How much longer can the dollar retain the reserve currency role when the Federal Reserve is monetizing vast quantities of debt?
How much longer can a "superpower" survive when it is incapable of producing political leadership? . . . Not even Stalin had indefinite detention. The closest the Soviets came to this medieval practice resurrected by the Bush and Obama regimes was internal exile in distant parts of the Soviet Union. . . In one decade the US has been transformed from a free society into a police state. The American population, to the extent it is aware of what has occurred, has simply accepted the revolution from the top. . . Full story: paulcraigroberts.org
Alaska Volcano sends Ash Plume up to 15,000 Feet
December 30, 2011 — A volcano in Alaska's Aleutian Islands sent up an ash cloud . . . 15,000 feet into the air. . . Cleveland Mountain is a 5,675-foot foot peak on uninhabited Chuginadak Island about 940 miles southwest of Anchorage. . . Cleveland Volcano's last major eruption was in 2001. It has had bursts of activity nearly every year since then and the ash cloud Thursday was not out of character. . . Full story: adn.com
Comment: "Since that (Good Friday, 1964] earthquake {Brother Branham spoke three days beforehand], there is a two or three-inch crack that come in the earth, starting in Alaska, goes around through the Aleutian Islands, comes out about a hundred and fifty or two hundred miles in the sea, comes back up at San Diego; takes in California, or Los Angeles, and comes out again just below the northern part of California there, a little place called San Jose, just below there."
"And this scientist was speaking, being on a interview. We was watching on television. And he said, "Beneath that is just a churning lava." And he said this; he said, "That is. . . A chunk will break loose" (Ashamed, p. 9:53-54).
Cancel the British Imperial Food Control Laws
December 30, 2011 — "What you have to do to solve the food problem is very simple: You have to eliminate the British-centered control, over food production and distribution." Lyndon LaRouche said this Wednesday, in the LPACTV Weekly Report, referring to the present agriculture production breakdown and worsening food shortages. "If you just take those laws that are on the books now, cancel them! And you automatically will have a surge in food production."
The set of US laws suppressing food production, ruining family farming, and creating shortages and conditions for famine, include these major acts: the treaty-membership in the World Trade Organization (begun in 1995); the 2005 Federal mandate for bio-fuels; the 1970 Plant Variety Protection Act (allowing private patenting of plant improvements), among others. The impact of these is augmented by the non-enforcement of anti-trust laws; as well as the 1999 elimination of the Glass-Steagall Act, and the funding cuts in NASA, the Army Corps of Engineers, the Bureau of Reclamation, and other programs to promote discoveries and enhance Earth resources for agriculture.
Look at a few snapshots of today's farm chaos and food shortages in terms of impact of allowing these laws to remain in effect.
World Trade Organization
The WTO impact is conveyed in the 1988 slogan: "One World, One Market" of the Montreal summit of its predecessor, the UN General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, Agriculture Round, out of which the WTO was formed.
* The US and all member nations agree to eliminate food reserves, tariffs on food imports and exports, and similar food-security measures, under the imperial rationalization that these are "trade distorting." The US no longer keeps any food in reserve in its Commodity Credit Corporation system, still on the books, but empty.
In turn, trade and food processing have come to be monopolized by a tight set of cartel companies, dominating international food flows, and even domestic trade in many nations.
A handful of companies dominates over 80 percent of grains traded worldwide: Cargill, Bunge, Louis Dreyfus, ADM, and a few others. The last vestiges of national-interest institutions, serving farmers and/or consumers, have been taken down. In Australia, in the last two years, Cargill took over the wheat marketing system of the Australian Wheat Board, the once nation-serving facility, set up to represent farmers. In Canada, as of August 1, 2012, the Canadian Wheat Board is to be shut down on orders of the Federal government. In Canada right now, only four companies control 72 percent of all the grain elevators.
* The US and all member nations agree to respect the unlawful rights of a handful of agro-chemical companies to declare patent rights and issue demands for license-fees over crop seeds. The WTO enforces this under its "intellectual property rights" rules. The US—where patenting food seeds was never permitted—passed insane laws to approve it, beginning with the Plant Variety Protection Act of 1970.
Monsanto/Cargill, BASF, Syngenta, DuPont/Pioneer, Dow, Bayer CropScience, now exert monopoly control over supplies of high-yielding, genetically-modified corn, soy, and other seed supplies. The cartel controls and degrades plant life research.
For example, thanks to these cartel companies—interlocked with British Empire financial and political power, decades went by without the development of reserve strains of wheat resistant to stem rust and other blights. Now, for example, the UG99 wheat rust—first appearing in Uganda in 1999, and now spread eastward as far as Iran, has no effective counter-strain to put in use. This is the purpose of the monopolistic seed system.
Biofuels Mandate Law
In the mid-2000s, the United States, nations of Europe, and other nations began passing insane laws to mandate the annual volume of fuel which must come from foodstocks diverted to fuel—corn-ethanol, soy-diesel, canola-diesel, wheat-ethanol, palm-diesel, etc. For example, in the United States, the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (PL 109-58) set compulsory levels for annual biofuels.
In the US at present, nearly 40 percent of the entire corn harvest is going into ethanol. For the week ending December. 2, an all-time record volume of corn ethanol was produced in the US—a rate of 40.068 million gallons a day (954,000 barrels a day). Corn ethanol now accounts for about 11.5% of US gasoline usage. The largest distillers include Cargill and ADM. As LaRouche said December. 28, this system is genocide.
Full story: cecaust.com.au
Comment: Global depopulation by "warfare, famine, plague, and with the untamable bestial men" (Revelation 6:8).
Giants
Bert's heart almost stopped. "Hey, you guys, look at this!" He stood there, staring, his eyes roving above him, and all around. Over a mile below the surface, the machinery had broken from solid coal, clear into a huge open space. He pointed to the ceiling above. And all around. "Am I seeing right?"
"What in the world . . . " One of the other miners broke off mid-sentence. The others gasped. "Those look like people!"
"They ARE people!" exclaimed another.
"They're so HUGE!"
"How did this happen? What are men doing inside coal? And they've even turned into coal."
The men cast their eyes over the whole scene. Yes, these were real human bodies; not just skeletons, these were bodies with noses, fingers, everything. They were on the floor, in the sides, and in the ceiling of the air pocket.
"Man, but this is impossible!" yelled Frank. "However did this happen?"
"Hmm . . ." mused a miner known as Jake. "It reminds me of what I heard about the Great Flood. Whole forests of trees were swept into gigantic heaps—and houses, people . . . the whole works. Could this be evidence of that event?"
"This had to have been violent," said another. "Slow, gradual accumulation—as evolution theory has it—doesn't make sense. Whatever did this was enormous—and violent!"
"We've got to report this," said one of the others.
One thing was certain. These coal miners in West Virginia had broken through a coal seam into an air pocket. The only explanation that made sense was that trees, men and all had been swept together by some force. And that force had to be water. What was now an air pocket must have been a water pocket that day, while the mass of trees was being swept thousands of feet deep. So the miners reported the discovery. And you know what?
Don't be too shocked! Immediately the area became a place of restricted access. Authorities rescinded the permit of the mining company to operate there. The spot was then permanently flooded and filled with silt. Soon a dam was built over that very piece of ground and the locality has now become a reservoir. A discovery threatens the established scientific theories. And heavy machinery is brought in to build a dam over the site. How convenient!
You ask, why do evolutionary scientists dismiss the Great Flood? It's for philosophical reasons . . . and not on objective reasons based on geological or ancient historical data. Often, their furious rejection of any alternative theories to evolution seems almost pathological. . . You have no idea of the corruption at the top, nor of the extreme measures taken to block the truth. Or how many scientists are fired when they renounce evolution.
Full story: beforeus.com
Zechariah Chapter Fourteen – Part IV
In Isaiah 64:1, 9 the prophet pleaded with the Lord to put an end to Israel's misery by a visible and grand manifestation of vengeance upon their foes as when He came down upon Mount Sinai in Fire, causing the mountain to melt and flow, "that the nations may tremble at Your Presence . . . behold, we beseech You, we are all your people." Isaiah speaks as if Israel were a unity of blood and faith without distinction between the godly and the wicked, but his prophecy is set in the end-time when statistics in the Encyclopaedia Judaica show well over ninety percent of "Israelis" and so-called "Jews" are non-Semitic imposters: "aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world" (Ephesians 2:12). Of course there will be no temple in the new Jerusalem, for Christ and His Bride is the temple. But the River of Life returns with the visible and grand manifestation of Christ's 'parousia' Coming to Jerusalem in vengeance upon Israel's foes as when He came down upon Mount Sinai in Fire. The River of Life is not a material stream but simply a testimony of His revelation of Himself and a further evidence that since Calvary the blessed embrace of heaven and earth is no longer restricted to the one people in one locality, but is diffused to "whomsoever will" throughout the whole world. This testimony will be reconfirmed through the ministry of two Hebrew witnesses anointed with the Spirit that endued Moses and Elijah "one on this side of the bank of the River, and the other on that side of the bank of the River." Christ, "the Man clothed in linen, who was upon the waters of the River" . . . [is] . . . "the tender twig" from the cedar of Lebanon gathering under its shadow "all fowl of every wing" (Ezekiel 17:22-24; Leviticus 16:4; Daniel 12:5; Matthew 17:1-9).
In response to Isaiah's prayer the Lord foretells how the Gentiles will find Christ. Isaiah 65:1-2: "I am sought by those who did not inquire after Me; I was found by those who did not seek Me: I said, Here am I, here am I, to a nation that did not call on My Name" (Romans 10:20). Then He retorts in their own words the Jews' plea to being exclusively "called by His Name" (Isaiah 63:19): "I spread forth My hands all day long to a rebellious people, who walk in a way that is not good, after their own devises." However Israel will not be entirely cast off but an elect 144,000 will be converted, blessed with eternal Life and "called by another name": Christian (Isaiah 65:1-16)! And as there is no distinction between Israelite and Gentile Christians (Ephesians 2:10-22) the distinction between Israelites and the Gentile world will cease and the entire Adamic race will be one new Israel (Isaiah 66:15-24).
Zechariah 14:1-4, "Behold, the day of the Lord comes, and the spoil taken from you will be divided in the midst of the city. For I will gather all nations against Jerusalem to battle; and the city shall be taken, and the houses plundered, and the women raped; and half of the city shall go forth into captivity, and the residue of the people shall not be cut off from the city. Then the Lord will go forth, and fight against those nations, as when He fought in the day of battle. And His feet [i.e. possession and judgment] shall stand in that day upon the Mount of Olives [in the theophany or Shekinah of the Pillar of Cloud and holy Fire], before Jerusalem on the east, and the mount of Olives will cleave in two from east to west by a very wide valley; so that one half of the mountain shall move northward, and the other half southward".
The Lord's standard, ensign or rallying point in Israel will appear as the Shekinah or glory of His Presence (Isaiah 11:10-12; 49:22; 62:10; Ezekiel 43:1-2; Matthew 24:30-31), and the Mount of Olives will cleave in two (Isaiah 29:6; Zechariah 14:4; Revelation 16:19). This will precede Zechariah 12:3 by three and a half years, and the divided mountain will be an everlasting sign of the Lord's glory, for the Israelites who escape through the valley of His (new) mountains will announce this sign of Christ's 'parousia' Coming to their brethren dwelling among the Gentiles, predominantly in the now Muslim lands of the ancient Assyrian empire which the Edomite Jews are seeking to destroy (Genesis 3:15; 27:39-41; I Peter 5:8) . . . to gather them for redemption to the Land of their Covenant. Thus Zechariah 14:4-5 (Joel 2:32) will be the antitype of Matthew 24:16-21.
In Isaiah 66:18-20 the Lord declares, "I will gather all nations and tongues; and they shall come, and see My glory. I will send those [Israelites] who escape to the nations, to Tarshish [Spain], Pul [an island in the Nile between Egypt and Ethiopia], and Lud [Libya], to Tubal [south of the Caucasus, between the Black Sea and Araxes, probably Cappadocia, now part of Turkey], and Javan [Greece and Asia Minor], to the isles afar off, that have not heard My fame, neither seen My glory; and they shall declare My glory, [Jesus Christ "from whom the whole Family of God in heaven and earth is named," to the Israelites] among the Gentiles. [The glory of God is employed as the Lord's standard, His sign or rallying point in Israel (Isaiah 11:10-12; 49:22; 62:10, and Ezekiel 43:1-2)]. And they shall bring all your brethren for a [precious unbloody] offering to the Lord out of all nations upon horses, and in chariots, and in litters, and upon mules, and upon swift beasts, to My holy mountain Jerusalem, says the Lord, as the children of Israel bring an offering in a clean vessel to the house of the Lord." These verses confirm that the Mount of Olives will cleave at the opening of the Sixth Seal beneath "the sign of the Son of man coming [to Israel] in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory" (Matthew 24:30-31; Ezekiel 43:2; Revelation 7:2).
Not only will Israel be attacked, Brother Branham taught that the rogue nation, which is the image to the Roman beast will also be attacked, her homes plundered and the women raped. This eventuality will be obvious to anyone acquainted with the atrocities Amerika and her allies are committing around the world, devastating the infrastructure of weak defenseless nations whose leaders will not kowtow, looting their natural resources, slaughtering their citizens, and contaminating the land with carcinogens in their quest for global hegemony with massive world depopulation.
"What's going to happen? There's a sputnik up there. And what would happen? The nation would surrender, of course; that's the only decent thing the government could do. Then what happens? Wave after wave of ship loads of soldiers; wave after wave of airplanes would land in this nation. The women would be ravished in the streets. What would you do? It belongs to them. Kicked out of your home, they'll take it over.
What'll happen to you young girls, and you young men, and all of you at that time? Sin has to be paid for. No matter what nation it is, or who it is, it does it, individually, or a nation, it's going to be paid for. And a bunch of brutal, ungodly, whisker-jawed, communistic soldiers would grab your wives and ravish them, your young girls. And you'd stand and like it; there's nothing you can do about it.
What causes that? Because you have listened to such stuff as these television programs on rock-and-roll and sin, and some cold formal preacher not able to interpret the Supernatural. The handwriting is on the wall. That's right. And we are weighed in the balance and found wanting" (Handwriting on the Wall, #14:7, p. 10:77, 84-90).
"There's not one thing left to keep it from happening according to prophecy" (Handwriting on the Wall, #29:5, p. 19:154; Isaiah 13:9-16; Ezekiel 38-3; Daniel 11:40).
Satan having been cast down to Earth at the close of the Gentile dispensation (marked by earthquakes that sink Los Angeles and cleave the Mount of Olives), will incarnate Rome's pope. By marshalling "a universal assemblage of Catholics at the core; grouped with them the Protestant denominations, sects and churches; grouped around them believing Jews, believing Muslims, believing Hindus, believing Buddhists. . . . a universal religious assembly" (Uri Dowbenko, Bushwhacked: Inside Stories of True Conspiracy, p. 213), he will restore peace, free mainland United States from Russian occupation, and be acclaimed president of one totalitarian world government, the groundwork for which has been laid by a succession of reprobate US presidents.
His loudest cheerleaders will be (once) Protestant American citizens, trained over a century like Pavlov's dogs to salivate for material comfort—souls imprisoned now in wage and tax slavery under the strong delusion of unthinking mushroom existence, avoidance of personal responsibility and accountability. Among Fabians, Lucifer is Maximus; his covenant with Jewry's banksters will refinance the failed US dollar with gold backing, salvage their otherwise worthless script, restore international trade and commerce, and "all the world will worship the dragon [Lucifer] who empowered the beast: and they will worship the beast, saying, Who can compare with the beast? who is able to make war with him"?
Brother Branham declared Revelation 13 "shows the power of the Roman Catholic Church and what she will do through organization. Remember this is the false vine. Let it name the Name of the Lord, it does so only in a lie. Its headship is not of the Lord but of Satan. It finally ends up completely identified with the beast. The whore riding on the scarlet beast distinctly shows her power is the god of force (Satan, Daniel 11:38) and not our God, the Lord Jesus Christ."
"In verse 17, it emphatically shows that she will gain absolute control of the commerce of the earth, for no man can buy or sell apart from her. This is borne out in Revelation 18:9-17 which shows her involvement with kings, princes, and merchants, all of whom have to do with Rome and commerce."
"In Revelation 13:14, we learn that the beast spreads his influence through the image which was built for him. The image that is made is a world-wide ecumenical council, wherein all the organized churches will get together with the Roman Catholics (they are doing it even now). It is quite possible this union will come in order to stop the power of communism. But since communism like Nebuchadnezzar has been raised up to burn the flesh of the harlot, Rome will be overcome and destroyed. Take note that everywhere the Romish church went, communism followed. It has to be that way. And let me warn you now, don't get thinking communism is your only enemy. No sir. It is the Catholic Church also, and even more so" (An Exposition of the Seven Church Ages, p. 236:1-3).
Daniel 11:33-34, "Those who are wise among the Israelites will have a wide teaching ministry in those days, imparting understanding to many, but they will be in constant danger, many dying by fire or sword, incarceration and plunder. Eventually these pressures will subside, and by flatteries certain ungodly men will pretend to offer a helping hand, only to take advantage of them." So it is not just the Judaeo-Roman church to whom the Israelites will succumb, but her two-horned image, the United States of America.
Daniel 11:31-45 describes the first three and a half years of Jacob's Trouble, the time of Christ's second or 'parousia' Coming to Israel. This is confirmed by Daniel 8:15-27 and 12:1-10 where it is called "the time of the end" when her Seven Trumpet mysteries will be revealed by the two witnesses of Zechariah 4 and Revelation 11. During this period Rome will be consolidating global imperium as her US image is doing now by murdering recalcitrant national leaders, crushing nations with irresistible force, and taking over their natural resources. After Rome has restored peace and "divided the land [of Israel] for gain" under the 1947 United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181 as prophesied in Daniel 11:39, Zechariah 14:2, and Revelation 16:19, the king of the South (Islam/Iran), "the king of the North" (Russia), and "the kings of the East" (Revelation 16:12, China, etc., which the US has encircled), will "trouble him".
Zechariah 14:3 "Then the Lord will go forth, and fight against those nations, as when He fought in the day of battle." Brother Branham said, "God will stand like He did in the valley for the children of Israel and fight again. That'll take place until the Gentile dispensation will be finished. And when that time is finished, she's cut off" (C.O.D., p. 77:111). I believe what the Prophet means is that this will be Zechariah 12 after the close of the Gentile dispensation and after the midst of Daniel's Seventieth Week. He was pointing back to II Chronicles 20:15, 22-24 in the days of good king Jehoshaphat when the Spirit of the Lord came upon Jahaziel the Levite and prophesied, "the battle is not yours, but God's. . . . And when Judah began to sing and to praise, the Lord set ambushments against the children of Ammon, Moab, and mount Seir, which were come against Judah; and they were smitten. For the children of Ammon and Moab stood up against the inhabitants of mount Seir, utterly to slay and destroy them: and when they had made an end of the inhabitants of Seir, every one helped to destroy another. And when Judah came toward the watch tower in the wilderness, they looked to the multitude, and, behold, they were dead bodies fallen to the earth, and none escaped".
II Chronicles 20 indicates the general course, as shown in many former instances (Joshua 10:14-42; 23:3; Judges 4:15) in which the Lord Himself goes forth against the foe and fights for His people (I Samuel 17; II Kings 19; Isaiah 29:7-8). Zechariah 4:7 prophesied, "Then I asked [Brother Branham] the angel that talked with me, What are these, my lord? The angel that talked with me answered, Do you not know what these are? And I said, No, my lord. Then he said, This is the Word of the Lord to Zerubbabel: Not by the might [of many], nor by the power [of one man], but by My Spirit, says the Lord of hosts. Who are you before Zerubbabel, O great mountain? Be a plain! He shall bring forth the Capstone accompanied with shouts of, Grace, grace to It, [and to the Temple or the Body of Christ which it represents, that it stand fast forever"].
Zechariah's vision embodied a compound prophecy intended in the first instance to encourage Zerubbabel in the work of reconstructing the Temple with the assurance the metaphorical mountain of difficulties before him will be made a plain by the grace of God, and without the intervention of human strength of any description the Holy Spirit will accomplish the work so that the Capstone shall be brought forth from the place where it was turned from rude matter into due form, and the completed work hailed as wholly of "grace" (Isaiah 46:30; Joel 2:32; Zechariah 14:4-8; Matthew 21:42). Beyond this it looked forward to the completion of the body of Christ which is God's true Temple, and to the new heavens and new Earth promised by the cleaving of the Mount of Olives making ready for the Mount Zion rapture as the 1,500-mile high Mount Zion begins its rise so that the "great mountain will become a plain". 
Brother Branham said, "There'll be plenty of room in the new earth. . . It'll be renovated by fire, but there'll be no more sea. The explosion dries up the sea, erupts the earth. Oh, my, and remember fifteen hundred miles square. What a City. But remember the sea is gone. . . In the earth's time of purifying by its baptism of fire, there will be volcanics, such as this earth exploding, and will push up a pyramid-like mountain. Plenty of room to do it; this whole thing'll be changed; the whole surface will be changed. You got it? It'll push up a pyramid-like mountain. This would exactly be with the Word if it does it, which it will. . . if you have a one dollar bill, they have the seal of the United States, the eagle on one end, a-holding the spears, the coat of arms, as it were. And on the other end, it's got the pyramid with the all-seeing eye on top of it. See, they didn't know what they were doing. And on there it's wrote in Latin, and you'll find out it says, "This is the Great Seal. They didn't know what they were doing. Neither did Caiaphas know he was prophesying. There's the Great Seal. Here it is. See? The City, it's not just a flat cube like this, but it leans up so it can be seen. And upon this holy mountain of the Lord, the Lord shall descend upon top of His mountain. Here He is. That's the reason the Capstone wasn't put on by Enoch. See? That's the reason the Capstone has to come now. And the mountain will be pushed up and it'll be the mount of the Lord and in here will dwell the redeemed" (The Future Home of the Heavenly Bridegroom and the Earthly Groom, p. 44:364, 369, 380, 411-412).
Notice, "He shall bring forth the Capstone accompanied with shouts of, Grace, grace to It"! The Capstone to the Body of Christ is Himself, the Word, the corn of wheat reproduced without hybreeding or denominational miscegenation with man-made creeds but "that which is perfect" incarnate in His end-time Bride. "For the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout" (I Corinthians 13:10; I Thessalonians 4:16). The "Shout" is the "midnight cry" of the Prophet's Message, which is the fullness of the Word: it is Christ the Logos (Matthew 25:6; Revelation 10:1-7). His end-time Bride, who alone can receive it praises the Lord for His mercy, declaring their blessing is all of grace, grace: amazing grave.
This compound prophecy is continued in Zechariah 14:4 where the earthquake that cleaves the mount of Olives when the Gentile dispensation ends in apostasy, and the escape of certain Israelites through the valley thus formed is likened to the earthquake that terminated God's relationship with Judah's sinful king Uzziah and the escape of the Jerusalemites in that day. And Zechariah foreshadows the prophecy of I Thessalonians 4:14 regarding Christ's 'parousia' Coming to we Gentiles, adding "then the Lord my God shall come, and all the saints with Him," for the resurrection and translation of His Bride of all Ages, and His unseen 'parousia' Coming to Israel with the sign of the Coming of the Son of man in the Shekinah over the Mount of Olives (Revelation 10:1-4).
This event will confirm the hour and strengthen faith in the heart of Christ's Bride for the manifestation of the Sons of God in the time of our latter rain, and confirm the hour and strengthen faith in the heart of believing Israelites in the time of their former rain (Hosea 6:3; Joel 2:23). The 'third pull' in Christ's end-time Bride cannot be impersonated by might nor power or by the will of man; it will be by grace through faith, as will the 'third pull' in the two witnesses by whom the Lord will fight for Israel in the first half of Daniel's Seventieth Week. Revelation 11:5-6, "And if anyone wants to harm them, Fire [of God's Word] issues from their mouths and consumes their enemies. Anyone wishing to harm them, must be killed this way. These have power to shut the sky, so that no rain may fall in the days of their prophecy: and they have power over waters to turn them to blood, and to smite the earth with every kind of plague, as often as they desire".
Zechariah 14:6-11 continues the compound prophecy, describing the spirit of Laodicea on all peoples in their attitude toward the Lord after the Church Ages and Christ's mediation are fulfilled: "lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot . . . not clear nor dark, not day nor night"—while alluding to the vision in the heart of "we who are alive and remain" and an election of Israelites not yet gathered in to the land of the Covenant, of the renewed heavens and earth.
"And it shall come to pass in that time that the Light of God's Word will not be clear, nor dark: but [a Babel of confused opinion]. This unique period will be known to the Lord [and to those who are constantly in the Word to know "the present Truth—what Jesus is doing now." Daniel said "the wise will understand and know their God, but none of the wicked will understand" (Romans 11:25; Revelation 3:17-20)]: but it will come to pass, that at evening time there will be Light." In the evening time, faith, or a clear understanding by Brother Branham's THUS SAITH THE LORD unveiled the mysteries of the Seven Thunders of Revelation 10:1-4 which are the revelations contained in the Seven Seals. These Divinely revealed 'mystery-truths' will literally turn the heart of the children to their apostolic fathers (Malachi 4:5-6; Matthew 17:11; Revelation 10:7). And following our translation, the Light will be revealed to the remnant of elect Israelites by two Hebrew witnesses, at which time Satan will have been cast down to Earth, the stars or denominational ministers will not shine their Light, and the Moon or church will become as blood (Revelation 13:15-18).
Isaiah 13:10, Joel 2:30 – 3:1, Matthew 24:29, Acts 2:16-21 and Revelation 6:12-14 identify Zechariah 14:4-5 with the opening of the Sixth Seal at the close of our dispensation, and Jeremiah 4:23 describes the people of Israel and Judah returning to the land of the Covenant presently occupied by Gentile and Serpent's seed impersonators (Jeremiah 30:3-8), while Revelation 7:2, Ezekiel 43:2 and Acts 1:11 show Jesus Messiah returning from the west to seal these elect Israelites with the blessing of Abraham. "And I saw another Angel ascending from the east, having the seal of the living God: and He cried with a loud voice to the four angels, to whom it was given to smite the Earth and the sea [with the curse of Malachi 4:6, which will include the annihilation of the United States, Vatican City State, and the consummation of life]".
"And it shall be in that day, that Living Waters [of the Gospel] shall go out from Jerusalem; half of them toward the former or Dead Sea [the former rain to Israel], and half of them toward the hinder or Mediterranean sea [the latter rain to "we who are alive and remain]: in summer and in winter shall it be".
Of course in the Millennium and renewed heavens and Earth there will be neither Mediterranean nor Dead Seas; indeed there will be "no more sea." Paradoxically, "Earth shall be full of the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea" (Habakkuk 2:14). Water is comprised of two explosive gases. Brother Branham said when Earth is sanctified by Fire the exploding oceans will sending flames thousands of miles into space. I expect this will restore Earth's protective canopy, providing a uniform climate by diffusing the sun's rays throughout the world so that subtropical conditions prevail from pole to pole. See Newsletter 715.
In Palestine the rivers normally run dry in the summer. However this metaphorical ever-flowing ever-increasing volume of water will not come from occasional rainfalls or tributaries but from the perennial fountain of the renewed Presence of the Lord in Jerusalem. Joel 2:32 "And it shall come to pass, that whoever calls on the Name of the Lord shall be delivered: for in mount Zion and in Jerusalem shall be deliverance, as the Lord has said, and in the remnant the Lord shall call."
Ezekiel 47:1-2 describes how the Israelites will immerse themselves in the River of Life, which is the Holy Spirit flowing from the Throne of God once represented by the Ark of the Covenant in the Holy of Holies now flowing from the riven side of Jesus Messiah . . . by three steps of faith: justification by grace through faith, sanctification, and the baptism with the Holy Spirit, which is the new birth.
"Be of sin the double cure,
Save me from its guilt and power".
Even the desert places of Earth will be made fruitful by the healing waters of the Gospel (Isaiah 35:1; Joel 3:18; Daniel 12:5-7; Revelation 22:1-2), and the Dead Sea whose bituminous waters cover the doomed cities of Sodom and Gomorrah and in which no vegetable or animal life is to be found is to give place to Life, as symbolized by the healing of its death-pervaded waters. So when the Israelites "make reconciliation for iniquity . . . the fountain will be opened to the house of David and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem for sin and for uncleanness" and the nation will be born in one day (Daniel 9:24; Zechariah 13:1; Isaiah 66:8). "And at that time the Lord will be king over all the land of Israel: in that day He shall be recognized and named as such" (Deuteronomy 6:4; Isaiah 45:21-25).
The trees of righteousness on either side of the River of Life are the Old and New Testament saints, seed or offspring of Christ, the Tree of Life (Psalm 1:3; Isaiah 53:10; 61:3). So we recognize that the prophecies of Ezekiel 40 – 48 are an allegory and should not to be understood as literal. See The Logos and the Rhema.
Zechariah 14:10-11 again takes us forward to the new heavens and new earth,
"All the land from Geba to Rimmon south of Jerusalem shall be changed into a plain: and [mount Zion and new] Jerusalem shall be exalted, and inhabited in her place, from Benjamin's gate to the place of the first gate, to the corner gate, and from the tower of Hananeel to the king's winepresses. And men will dwell securely, and there shall be no more utter destruction; but Jerusalem shall be safely inhabited." The ground of this security is that in new Jerusalem "there shall be no more curse" (Revelation 22:3; Isaiah 2:2; Jeremiah 23:5). And by the grace of God we will all be there. nl717.htm
Pass
it on . . . please send this article to someone you know
>Brother Grigor-Scott is a
non-denominational minister who has ministered full-time since 1981, primarily
to other ministers and their congregations in other countries. He pastors
Bible Believers' tiny congregation, and is available to teach in your church.
For Further Information Contact: | | |
No comments:
Post a Comment