“I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live. And whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die. Do you believe this?” Jesus ~ John 11:25
Have a blessed Resurrection Sunday!
Photo by Gerd Altman. Courtesy of Pixabay.
This coming Sunday, the church will celebrate Palm Sunday, the day Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey. The people were praising him, saying , “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest.” Matthew 21: 9 But did you know that Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem was predicted almost five centuries before?
The Book of Daniel was written around 530 B.C. In it, many prophecies were given to Daniel about the people and land of Israel. They are so accurate that many don’t believe he could have written it. Some scholars believe it was written in the second century B.C. I, for one, believe it was written exactly when it says it was written.
Daniel had been studying the book of Jeremiah to try to figure out how long his people would be in captivity in Babylon. He realized that Jeremiah had spoken about seventy years. As he was praying for his people the angel Gabriel interrupted him and gave him more prophecies concerning his people Israel. One of these prophecies specifically speaks to Palm Sunday. “Know therefore and understand that from the going forth of the command to restore and build Jerusalem until Messiah the Prince, there shall be seven weeks and sixty two weeks; the street shall be built again , and the wall, even in troublesome times.” Daniel 9: 25
Prophecy experts know that each week is a week of years, i.e., sixty-nine weeks equals 483 years. The Jewish year has 360 days, so the total days would be 173,880 days. These numbers are certainly staggering. The decree went forth to restore and build Jerusalem by Artaxerxes Longimanus on March 14, 445 B.C., and Jesus rode into Jerusalem on April 6, 32 A.D., exactly 173,880 days later. This includes 116 leap days and 24 days between March 14 and April 6. (Information in this paragraph provided by Koinonia House, Chuck Missler 2004)
When you celebrate Palm Sunday this year, know for a fact that Jesus the Messiah’s entrance had been predicted centuries earlier to the exact day. Even though the people didn’t realize what was happening at the time, Messiah the Prince, did come to them on that very day.
This is just one example of predictive prophecy in the Bible. There were over three hundred prophecies that were fulfilled at the first coming of Jesus. You can be sure that the over two hundred prophecies that pertain to his second coming will be fulfilled in the same way. Nothing is random with the Lord. They will be fulfilled at the exact time; and on the exact day, they are supposed to.
Illustration courtesy of the Orthodox Church.
When our oldest son was about three, we met some friends up at a lake. I was standing on one side of the boat ramp, and my husband and his friend were standing a few feet away on the other side of the ramp. Our son wanted to come over to where I was, and my husband said, “Sure.” He took off, and my hubby just assumed he was with me. He was busy chatting with his friend, and since I was in plain sight, he didn’t give it a second thought.
A few minutes later, my husband came over to where I was and he didn’t have Shawn with him. Shawn had walked right past me and was who knows where. Inside of me, I began to panic. There were lots of people at the lake that day, which only added to my consternation. My friends took off down the path, and I just stood there frozen. I could barely breathe. If something happened to my son, I knew I would not be able to live with myself. Second after second ticked by as I fought back hysteria. Thankfully, a few minutes later, our friends found him following the path along the lake, looking for me. To say I was relieved would be an understatement.
The Lord brought this incident back to my mind recently. When I think about the way I felt about my son being lost, it may, in some small way, reflect how the Lord feels when He looks down at His children and sees so many of them lost. I do not believe the Lord is panicked or hysterical, but the thought of losing them forever must be heart-wrenching. Millions are looking for Him, but because they are on the wrong path, they will never find Him. They will just continue walking until they walk right past Him into a Christless eternity.
Luke 19:10 says: “For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.” That means that if you are lost, if you are looking for some sort of meaning in this life, some sort of God, some sort of something but don’t know what; He is looking for you…right now. He wants you to stop, turn around and look for Him, Jesus, the One who can save your soul and give your life meaning.
He cares for you more than you can ever know and He has no desire for you to spend eternity without Him. He will be crushed to lose you, a precious part of His beloved creation. No matter where you are, what you have done or where your search has taken you, it is not too late to find Him, the One your soul is ultimately looking for. His name is Jesus Christ and He will more than meet you half way. Turn around while you still can, while you’re still safe and while you still have hope.
Photo by Pexels. Courtesy of Pixabay.
Several years ago, I went to Portland for a seminar. At the end of the first day, my friends and I were walking to dinner after dark. We came to a street without a lot of traffic. They crossed ahead of me. I started out when suddenly the light changed, and several cars began coming my way. I stopped in the middle of the street and froze. Time stood still. I knew at any moment I could be hit by a car, that I would soon be just a statistic. I waited a while, and finally, the traffic stopped and the light changed. I was then able to cross. I will never forget how my life was spared that evening.
Have you ever been in a situation like that? You know that without some kind of intervention, you would not have made it out alive? I bet everyone who has a few decades under their belt can recall such an incident. Do we write the experience off as dumb luck, the luck of the draw, or perhaps something more supernatural? I believe the Lord intervenes in our lives to spare us from life-threatening situations. In fact, the Scripture says: “Our God is the God of salvation, and to God the Lord belong escapes from death.” Psalm 68:20 In other words, we can always attribute our rescue to the Lord when we have come through one of these experiences.
Does it surprise you that a loving God would look down on you and save you from something so lethal? I believe He loves each one of us and sends His angelic protection time after time to save us. More often than not, we have no idea that this is happening while we go about our daily lives.
What do we think that this loving God might want in return? When I was younger, I was taught that God wanted me to know Him, love Him and serve Him. That was pretty easy to understand even for my six or seven year old brain. But how do we do that, and where do we start?
Hebrews 11:6 says, “But without faith it is impossible to please God, for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.” The first place we need to begin is to acknowledge the fact that there is a God and that He does indeed exist. Several years ago, that may have been an accepted fact in most circles, but not today. Statistics run the gamut from those who do believe in God (not necessarily a personal one) to those who believe in a Cosmic Force and then down the line to those who definitely fall on the side of agnosticism or atheism.
Where do you fall on the belief spectrum…personal God, impersonal God, Cosmic force, perhaps no God, or definitely no God at all? Wherever you fall on that spectrum, why not explore the possibility that there may be a personal God who cares for you? Think back over your life and think about the times you have been spared from some life-altering or threatening event. Perhaps there is a personal God who has looked after you all these years, One who is looking after you right now and who would like you to come to the place where you do indeed acknowledge or believe He exists. That would be a good place to start.
Delusion – 1. a false belief or judgment about external reality, held despite incontrovertible evidence to the contrary, occurring especially in mental conditions. 2. the action of deluding or the state of being deluded. Oxford Languages
I have had a deep concern lately about deception, especially about the deception that will be coming on the world in the near future. I have already talked about AI. The advancements it has made in the past year are staggering. I have recently seen videos that have been produced by AI that are realistic and almost impossible to tell they were computer generated. For a point of reference, think about the movies you have seen in recent years with their computer generated images. Didn’t the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park seem real? What about the scenes in Star Wars? Those movies were made decades ago and think about the advancement that has been made since then. Now with AI, soon you could watch a person on a newscast with a computer generated image give you the “news,” and you will not be able to tell if it is real or not. Sound too futuristic? Believe me, it’s coming.
Yes, yes, yes, you may say to me…so what? I would say to you that that is just one level of deception that is on the horizon. There is even a deeper level of deception, i.e., delusion, that will affect the people of the world. As many have rejected God and His word, they will be open to the delusion that God Himself will send upon them. As they have rejected the real Savior, they will readily accept the false Christ that is coming to “save the world.” As we read in 2 Thessalonians verses 9-12, “The coming of the lawless one is according to the working of Satan, with all power, signs, and lying wonders, and with all unrighteous deception among those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this reason God will send them strong delusion, that they should believe the lie, that they all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness.”
How scary is that…that a holy and righteous God will actually send people strong delusion to believe the lie? And what lie is this, you might ask? Well, there will be one coming who will look like a man of peace, a man who can solve all the world’s problems, and people will believe him. At one point, he will declare himself to be the God and Savior of the world, and he will be satanically energized and show the world all power, signs, and lying wonders with all unrighteous deception. Sounds pretty far out, doesn’t it? But just think about it.
Already we have people searching for someone who can bring peace to the world; one who can solve all the world’s problems. At the moment, they are thinking in political terms. Where is the person who can bring peace to the Middle East, stop the war in Ukraine, solve the food shortages, put an end to the violence, and have a solution to the economic problems? I know people who are looking at certain political figures and believe their guy is the one who can do it.
When we are looking for a human to provide the world’s answers, we are only a step away from accepting the man who will come on the world scene, one who looks and acts the part. It is not too far out to think that people will fall at his feet. Think about what Paul-Henri Spaak, former Belgian Prime Minister and Secretary General of NATO said, “We do not want another committee, we have too many already. What we want is a man of sufficient stature to hold the allegiance of all people, and to lift us out of the economic morass into which we are sinking. Send us such a man, and be he god or devil, we will receive him.” He made this statement decades ago before the world was in the state it is in right now.
This man is coming on the scene, the world is looking for him. The Bible says he will come, and I believe he is alive today, waiting in the wings to fulfill his role in the end times. It is important that we know these things ahead of time so that we can make the right choices now while we still have the chance.
Photo by Gerd Altman, courtesy of Pixabay.
Deception – 1. the action of deceiving someone, 2. a thing that deceives. The Oxford Language Dictionary
We live in a world cloaked in deception. In every area of society, lies are told as truth and then expected to be believed. Whether it is in the political, educational, social, or spiritual arena, we are fed lies daily. How do we sort through the fog and get to the truth? Well, for sure, we are going to have to do some digging to find the truth. However, sometimes the lies are so egregious that we wonder how those telling them can say them with a straight face. What we really need is discernment as we make our way through this miasma. What is called for is discernment.
Discernment – 1. the ability to judge well 2. (in Christian contexts) perception in the absence of judgment with a view to obtaining spiritual guidance and understanding. The Oxford Language Dictionary
Some of the lies we are being told are so obvious we can reject them outright. Others are presented by the media in a way that is portrayed as positive when, in reality, it is just the opposite. Have you ever seen a movie where people are hooking up with one another? It is just a bunch of fun and portrayed as normal. What could be wrong with a simple one-night stand? No one ever mentions pregnancy, STDs, or the emotional wreckage that can go along with the negative consequences of this type of behavior. A person needs discernment, i.e., the ability to judge well, before engaging in this kind of behavior.
What about the lies that are told daily in the political arena? “Age doesn’t matter,” The border is secure,” and “We care about crime,” are just a few we hear spouted daily and are obviously untrue. One doesn’t need much discernment to know they are lies; we just need to open our eyes and see what is going on around us to discover the truth.
Soon, we will need more than human discernment to pierce through the deception that is coming in the spiritual arena. We will need the discernment that only the Holy Spirit can give to be able to sort out the truth. Jesus warns us over and over in Matthew 24 to watch out for deception. It will be the hallmark of the end of the age. Many will be sucked into and fall for the spiritual deception that is coming. As they look for a savior to bring the world peace, they will fall for those who pretend to have the answers to the world’s problems. Jesus said in Matthew 24:24: “For false christs and false prophets will rise and show great signs and wonders to deceive if possible, even the elect. See, I have told you beforehand.”
For your own sake, don’t wait until these things come upon the world, seek the Lord now while He may be found. Get in His word and discover the truth for yourself. Pray for the discernment that only the Holy Spirit can give so you will not get sucked into the lies that are coming just over the horizon.
Photo by Stefan Keller. Courtesy of Pixabay.
When I was growing up, my father would often quote Edgar Allan Poe, “Believe nothing you hear and only half of what you see.” When he would say that to me, I would think to myself that my father was a bit of a cynic. He wasn’t one for believing every story that went around our small town.
Three decades later, after the movie Forrest Gump was released, my brother would say to me, “That movie ought to teach you not to believe everything you see on television.” Yes, I could see his point, but I thought he was a bit of a cynic also.
Fast forward three more decades, and we are dealing with deepfakes. Merriam-Webster’s dictionary defines deepfakes, as “an image or recording that has been convincingly altered or manipulated to misrepresent someone as doing or saying something that was actually not done or said.” Last week I was listening to John Haller as he was sharing a video of the President of Argentina at The World Economic Forum meeting in Davos. The man originally spoke in Spanish with a translator, but the next day someone had created a video of him (with his own voice) speaking in English. His lips were in sync with the English and the video looked real. This particular video had a disclaimer in front of it that said it had been generated by AI. If I hadn’t known it was generated by AI, I would have thought it was convincingly real.
Why do AI generated deepfakes concern most of the thinking public? There are several reasons. First, think about the harm they can do. This week, sexually explicit photos of Taylor Swift were sent out that had her face on another person’s body. These photos were up for nine hours on Twitter before they were taken down and had 45 million views. Last week, robocalls went out in New Hampshire with Joe Biden’s voice that told people NOT to go to the polls and write in his name. How many people believed that?
From here on out, political campaigns can rise or fall depending on deepfakes and how believable they are. You can bet that no matter who you are aligned with, there will be deepfakes put out disparaging your candidate and it could affect the political outcome of an election.
What about medical information? Deepfakes will come out sharing misinformation about several conditions. There was plenty of misinformation swirling around the internet related to the last pandemic. Can you imagine what will happen when the next pandemic sweeps the globe?
Jesus warned us that deception will be rampant at the end of the age. Over and over He warned us not to be deceived, “And Jesus answered and said to them, ‘Take heed that no one deceives you.” Matt: 24:4 Two more times in Matthew 24, He warns us about deception. This is not a game. It will take true discernment on our part to not be deceived by what we see.
As we move forward, AI-generated videos will be everywhere. It will not be enough to listen to one and think that it is true. We must not take what we see at face value but search out the truth. We would be wise to take Mr. Poe’s recommendation seriously. Reality is no longer “seeing is believing.” We must not believe everything we see, or we will be like the billions who will be duped on this planet.
Photo by Geralt. Courtesy of Pixabay
The other day, I received an offer for a credit card from one of the airline companies. Usually, I shred credit card offers, but in this case, I thought I would see what they were offering. Turns out, the APR (annual percentage rate) was between 20.24 % and 28.24%. I thought to myself, this is usury!
Surprisingly, most people have never heard the term used. Usury, defined by The American Heritage Dictionary, is “The act or practice of lending money at an exorbitant or illegal rate of interest.” In our society, we use the term “predatory lending.” Today, usury is just an accepted practice, but did you know that for millennia it was considered immoral and illegal? Let me share some historical context of laws and societal mores against usury.
This information is from James M. Ackerman, “Interest Rates and the Law: A History of Usury,” 1981. Taken from the blog “Americans for Fairness in Lending.”
*************************************************************************************************************
Old Testament – The prophet Ezekiel includes usury in a list of “abominable things,” along with rape, murder and idolatry.
1750 B.C. The Code of Hammurabi regulates the interest that can be charged on a loan.
800 – 600 B.C. Both Plato and Aristotle believed usury was immoral and unjust. The Greeks at first regulate interest and then deregulate it. After deregulation, there was so much unregulated debt that Athenians were sold into slavery and threatened revolt.
443 B.C. The Romans adopt the “Twelve Tables” and cap interest at 8 1/3%.
88 B.C. The Roman usury rate is raised to 12%.
533 A.D. The Roman “Code of Justinian” sets a graduated maximum interest rate that did not go over 8 1/3%. This law lasted until 1543 A.D.
800 A.D. Charlemagne outlaws interest.
Medieval Roman Law: Usurers are fined 4X the amount taken, while robbery is penalized at twice the amount taken.
1306 – 1321 Dante pens “The Inferno,” in which he places usurers at the lowest ledge in the seventh circle of hell – lower than murderers.
1553 – 1558 During the reign of Queen Mary, English Parliament again disallows the collection of interest.
1570 During the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, interest rates in England are limited to under 10%. This law lasts until 1854.
Early 18th Century – American Colonies adopt usury laws, setting the interest cap at 8%.
Early 1900’s – A move to deregulation causes 11 states to eliminate usury laws. Nine more states raise the usury cap to 10% or 12%. Banks are not making personal loans. “Salary Lenders” fill the need by “purchasing” a worker’s future wages in exchange for a high fee – equal to a lending rate of 10% – 33%.
1916 A Uniform Small Loan Law allows specially-licensed lenders to charge higher interest rates – up to 36% – in return for adhering to strict standards of lending.
1945 – 1979 All states adopt special loan laws that cap interest at higher than the general usury rate – at 36%.
1978 The US Supreme Court decides that national banks may export the state interest rate law of their home state into any state where they do business. In response, South Dakota eliminates its interest caps. Several credit card issuing banks moved to South Dakota and operate nationally with no interest rate cap.
1980 Congress preempts state interest rate controls on all first lien mortgages. This enables predatory mortgage lenders to make seemingly affordable loans, like adjustable-rate and interest-only loans, that lead to foreclosure for many.
1994 Congress adopts the Home Ownership and Equity Protection Act of 1994, which provides some substantive protections to home mortgage borrowers with interest rates or points that are extraordinarily expensive, but sets no limits on what can be charged for these loans.
1994 – 2005 Many states and cities try to protect their citizens by adopting state statutes and local ordinances to curb predatory lending, but preemption claims by the federal government impede their efforts. Numerous bills are introduced in Congress to protect consumers in a wide range of transactions, including rent-to-own, credit cards, payday lending, and predatory mortgage lending, but none of these bills makes it to a hearing.
2001 – 2007 Predatory and mainly subprime lenders make home loans to people who cannot afford them, boosting their own profits in the short term. Many of these loans are packaged and sold to Wall Street.
2005 After extensive pressure from the industry, the federal government changes bankruptcy laws, making it harder for consumers to discharge debts and get a clean start in bankruptcy.
2006 Congress passes the “Talent Amendment” which caps interest on loans to active military personnel and their families to 36%, reacting to findings that high-cost payday lenders had been targeting the military.
2007 Foreclosure rates begin to increase dramatically as a result of predatory mortgage lending.
2008 Unpaid mortgages caused mortgage-backed securities on Wall Street continue to “go bad,” triggering widespread downturn in both the United States and around the world. Some commercial and investment banks go bankrupt, and some are the object of government “bailouts.”
2009 The passage of the Credit CARD Act, which greatly curtails abusive credit card lending.
2010 The passage of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which creates a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to rein in predatory lending (though it cannot pass usury caps). The bill also reforms some of Wall Street’s greedy and excessive practices.
*************************************************************************************************************
I do not purport to be an expert in finance or economics, but I do know that usury or predatory lending is taking place today. Can we, as consumers, do anything about it? Since interest is regulated at the state level, we can put pressure on our local representatives to enact legislation that will protect consumers in our state from usury. According to USA Today, as of 12/13/2023, banks were paying 5 to 5.25 % for their Cost of Fund Rate. Any interest they charge on top of that is profit. It seems to me that legislation capping the interest that can be charged on loans or credit cards on top of their Cost of Fund Rate to 10% is fair. That would cap the interest they could charge on 12/13/2023 between 15 and 15.25%.
Let’s try to stop the silent crime of usury that is being perpetrated on unwitting consumers. It will certainly help gain financial freedom for the many and will lower the rate of bankruptcy for more than a few. This will put our economy on a more sure footing.
Photo by kalhh, Courtesy of Pixabay.
A couple of weeks ago, I finished reading “The Wormwood Prophecy” by Dr. Thomas Horn. In the book, he talks about the asteroid Apophis, named after the Egyptian God of Chaos, that is heading towards Earth and will make a very near flyby on April 13, 2029. NASA‘s website says that it will be so close to the Earth that it will “put some of our orbiting satellites in peril” and even be visible in the daytime sky.
Dr. Horn began investigating this asteroid in 2019, and his book is filled with interesting quotes from several scientists who believe that Apophis could possibly strike the Earth with a potential risk to life on our planet. The asteroid is 370 meters across and weighs an estimated twenty million metric tons. It is traveling at 28,000 miles per hour, and Dr. Horn states that it has “a mind-bending mass and potential inertia velocity encounter that most people cannot begin to fathom.”
Some scientists (including some who work at NASA) are of the mind that NASA is not telling the entire truth about this asteroid. Some are also concerned that their calculations are not accurate as they are not using the correct numerical quotient for pi. Unless the asteroid gets knocked out of its trajectory as it passes through the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, Apophis most certainly could constitute a significant risk to life on Earth.
Why am I sharing this information with you? I believe that it is important to be aware of and to do your own research. Dr. Horn believes that Apophis could possibly be the biblical asteroid Wormwood that strikes the earth and destroys one-third of the living creatures in the sea (Revelation 8:8). You can look up information about it on the NASA website and find what other scientists are saying about it on the internet. If you don’t want to do your own research, then I would certainly recommend the book, which has been thoroughly researched and annotated.
Just a cursory glance at the news informs us that we are living in interesting times. Many, myself included, believe we are living at the end of the age. We all have decisions to make about our lives and how we are living them. I would be remiss if I didn’t let you know what possibly may be coming upon the earth in 2029.
Since this is in the news this week, I am republishing this post!
“For unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given; and the government will be upon His shoulder. And His name will be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” Isaiah 9:6
Deesis – Pantocreator – Hagia Sophia – Photo by Robyn Stewart
Valerie Cullers 