Peace, Peace, Yet there is no peace...I remember

I remember the seventh grade, 1968, the last year of Bible reading and prayer in our school. Our homeroom teacher,  a part-time minister, always opened the morning with a verse and prayer. It was a time of lost innocence, as puberty and hormones were in full overdrive, and would continue for some time to come.

 

But, it was more than that, it was a time of both personal and national confusion. It seemed everything started to lose its way; Our home life, our school, our community, and very much, our nation. In the years following, it didn't get better, only worse. Over the next  several years, a host of calamities rocked my own little world, and my nation at large: The continuing Viet Nam "police action" (and our disillusionment with it), Kent State (our National Guard firing upon university students), a national economic crisis (gas embargo, groceries and interest rates skyrocketing), Israel attacked, escalating another war and Middle East tensions, and in my own school, racial riots destroyed an institution and a community. Was there any correlation between our spiritual disconnect from Almighty God and the chaos afterwards? In retrospect, it seems altogether a certainty.

Yet, we strived for peace; a pull-out in Viet Nam, the Camp David Peace Accord, a petro deal with OPEC, and things looked like they might get better, or at least, subside. But then, Congress had a budget crisis, and paralyzed our government for three months, an arms embargo with Turkey heightened more tensions, and most direly, Iran seized our Embassy, and took hundreds of hostages. Confusion, calamity and chaos ruled again. Even in this time of grave darkness, God in His infinite mercy, gave us a man of faith and hope, Ronald Reagan. Yet, we didn't heed the spiritual warnings, but used RR for our own prosperity and gain. Although pockets of revival broke out, and the Christian right was born, our nation still wanted to seek its own way; materialism, atheism, abortion rights, living off credit, greater government spending, socialization, and intrusion were what the masses AND the power brokers wanted. And we pursued that end even to this day.

Yet the warnings still came; our ships and more embassies attacked by Muslim radicals, violent hurricanes pounded the Southeast, fires in California, droughts in the West & Mid-West, floods in the Ohio valley region, record snows and blizzards in the Northeast, invasion of Kuwait and a short "war", and then, the first bomb attempt on the World Trade Center. Our leaders believed peace through negotiation, appeasement and consolation would set it all aright... But the worst was yet to come, and we hold our breath even now.

Sept. 11, 2001 shocked us to the core. Wall St. was already reeling from the tech and dot.com bust in April. And we went to war, first in Iraq, then Afghanistan...and we're still there. Two years ago, the mortgage and real estate markets collapsed, and are still treading water. The commercial real estate, bond & Treasury markets are waiting in the wings to implode. Rampant government spending and ensuing inflation are already in the works.  We're in the worst financial, economic, social, educational, government AND Spiritual crisis in our history, and yet, we still don't remember...the God of our fathers.

____________________NEWS______________________ 
Feds shutter 7 banks for a total of 140 failures this year
FDIC Billions in the Red

China Warns Obama Deficit Spending Must Stop

Citadel Broadcasting files bankruptcy protection

Dubai Wavers On Debt Default

The Generation of Fear

American generations past, our grandparents & great-grandparents, never knew retirement, Social Security, Medicare, instant gratification, and all the other amenities & entrapments of our present day society. What made our parents, us, and our children think it would always be so?
Now we see it all slipping away, eroding daily by selfishness, greed & overindulgence by every American who has the means & will to do so. But, it's not just an American failure, it's a global failure. Although third-world nations have suffered continually, now nearly every industrialized nation is experiencing the aftermath of extreme gluttony; inflated wealth & prosperity, too fast growth & girth, over abundance of credit & flatulence, irresponsible spending & binging, along with the heartburn of bankruptcies, foreclosures, too many bills, and runaway taxation. And yet, we're still stuffing ourselves...
Sadly, all levels of government are not only partakers in this gluttony, they are enablers as well. Their social programs not only encourage gluttony off the public teat, but promote sloth, apathy, indifference and parasitism from one generation to the next. Although they isolate themselves, along with their power & money broker cronies, in their halls & mansions of conspicuous consumption, their ideas and enactments of wealth redistribution only apply to the masses. They think that as long as they toss the moldy bread and fatty hamburger to the piranhic populace, the crisis is abated while they engorge on filet mignon. Yet, their filet mignon came with a huge price tag and fraudulent financing which even now they are unable to sustain. So, now they must mandate stricter rules, regulations and taxation to bleed the nation dry in order to maintain their existence.

_________________NEWS__________________
American Rural Elderly Eke Out a Different Life

George Burgess, 96, drives into Torrington, Wyo., every day for a hot lunch, but worries about renewing his driver's license.

Georgia Unemployment Funding Nearly Gone

Greece on the Brink of National Bankruptcy

Op-Ed: The Do-it Yourself Recession

Thought for Today

"The Bible is NOT a supposition or interrogatory, but a DECLARATION!" tc

America: Where & When Did We Fail?

History (secular) abhors regression. Mankind's journey through time is 'supposed' to be one of continual progress in his march toward the ultimate Utopian state. Without a doubt, the worlds' news headlines are more & more discouraging every day. Economic, social, political, and religious turmoil saturate every media outlet; tv, radio, newspaper & internet. The world and our nation have become a pressure cooker, ready to explode & boil over onto all citizens and surrounding neighbors. But, when & where did it start here in America? At least for the present...obviously past events can & have had lasting effects upon the American psyche; wars, the Great Depression, Supreme Court decisions, Presidential & Congressional mandates, and the like.

But let's be honest here...

Since inception, this country has had four institutions as the cornerstones upon which our nation was built; God, family, church &; school. YHWH God, first & foremost, with the other three working in agreement according to His Sovereignty. Individual responsibility, accountability and faith toward Him were accepted, taught and preached in each of these anchors of our society. There was no centralized government to wield its power over our heads and our lives. Most of our European ancestors came here to exercise religious & political freedom, without government restriction or intrusion. Then, for nearly 100 years, communities & states governed themselves for the most part. There was NO federal INCOME TAX to control and manipulate social engineering. But, the thorny issue of states' rights versus federalism came to a violent head, known as the Civil War, NOT SLAVERY. Slavery was a point of major contention with regard to states' rights, but NOT the cause of our civil war. Federalism won out, and has brought us to where we are today.

As time rolled by, God's Providence was usurped & replaced by the U.S. Federal Gov't. The Bible became regarded as merely a book of fantastical stories, myths, quaint & pithy sayings relegated to crazed, doomsday preachers, and those who followed them with outdated, too restrictive, and outmoded ideologies. Our families, schools and churches followed suit, buying into "modern" philosophies, materialism, Darwinism, idol worship (although not figures made of stone or precious metal, but celebrities), dependence upon government, and social depravity (if it feels good, do it). Our preachers, pastors & evangelists, and churches no longer stood for God's Sovereignty, Salvation by Grace through Faith in Christ, Repentance, Holiness, and Separation. Sermons no longer speak out against current social issues with regard to sin. Seminaries & pastors succumbed to congregational pressures, worries over money, and compromise to government, legal & social dictates. Churches value their tax-exempt status more than their allegiance to God, Christ & Scripture. The concept of Separation of Church & State took on the perverted, outlandish dictum of methodically isolating and removing all things YHWH God in Jesus Christ from every aspect of Americana. Soon thereafter, Denominationalism, legalism, false doctrine, false religions, false preachers & teachers sprang forth in our churches, into our families & schools, and into our society. Selfishness, greed, avarice, lust & corruption inundated these as well as our businesses, our gov't, and all other aspects of our lives. And, although YHWH God has always maintained a remnant, and exercised His Patience, Grace & Mercy beyond all human understanding, He has declared,"My Spirit will not always strive with man." "As in the days of Noe, so shall be the return of the Son of Man (Yashua, the Holy One)." How much more wicked can our world become, before Almighty God says, "that's enough!", and mercy is no longer...? Apparently, a lot more...

___________________NEWS____________________

U.S. Mortgage Delinquencies Reach a Record High 

Hotel owners, like home owners, behind on payments 

Jobless Rate Up in 29 States, Hitting Records in 4 of Them

Wave of Debt Payments Facing U.S. Government

Swiss ban mosque minarets in surprise vote 

Black Friday sales barely up, online surges

With F.H.A. Help, Easy Loans in Expensive Areas