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07.18.2022
The Manifest Destiny of Russia and America
 

**After reading this letter please “forward” it to your family and friends who you think might be interested.**

Greetings friends and family,

I am including in this letter an article I found in “The Moscow Times” of all places.  I do not know, nor have I ever met the author.  The information found in Paul Ladouceur’s eye-opening article will not make for “breaking news” on Fox News or CNN, but I assure you that what he has to say about the history of the Russian people, President Putin, and the Russian Orthodox Church will reveal a lot to you about what is happening in this crazy almost insane world of religion and politics.  

The fallen angels under Satan who rule all the nations have created this craziness as they hate all men and women, and the God of Israel who created everything.  They want to kill as many people as they can before our Lord Jesus returns to imprison them in the Bottomless Pit.

When I first studied and learned about the term “Manifest Destiny” years ago the information mostly related to America’s place in Biblical prophecy.  Most American Christians today are unaware that the Christian colonists coming from Europe hundreds of years ago believed in the false teaching of post-millennialism where the bodily return of our Lord Jesus Christ couldn’t happen until Christendom and its government subdued and took control of all nations.  Many early Americans believed and taught that America was called and chosen by God to establish his Kingdom in all nations and then Jesus could come.  It was their “Manifest Destiny”.

Paul’s article clearly reveals that Russia shares a very similar “Manifest Destiny” belief as America.  In my last letter sent out to you I emphasized how the Jewish prophet, Daniel, was given by God visions of the last days on this war-torn planet.  He saw two “little horns” or nations that will compete for world empire or dominion among men.  Those two nations Daniel saw were America (Daniel 7:8, 9:27) and Russia (Daniel 8: 9,23, 11:40-45).

Today in Ukraine these two nations are bringing us all to the brink of a nuclear World War III all in the name of Jesus, believe it or not!  However, events will take place so that instead of destroying the planet with fallout, America and Russia will make peace and the world will rejoice.  Daniel saw this!  The American and Russian Presidents, the Pope of Roman Catholicism, and the Patriarch of the Orthodox Church will proudly declare the long-awaited Kingdom of Christendom has now begun, the Church has been reunited. The Jews of Israel, Jerusalem, and their desired Temple will be center stage in those days.

All of this means that Christians in America will have to first remove the Godless immoral forces (World Economic Forum) that have dominated this last generation.  It amazes me that America today has become what it once despised and fought against, and Russia is returning to its Christian roots and now able to powerfully reinsert itself among the nations.

If you read Paul’s article you saw how he stated that Russia’s coming together of the Orthodox Church and the Government will not bring Godliness, but the rise of antichrists.  He is right and the same will happen in America.  Can you now see that both America and Russia and their false militant forms of Christendom will only lead to the rise of the coming Antichrist?  How blinded these men are and how desperately they need to repent and be born again.  Our Lord Jesus said that in the last days “many will come in my name, saying I am Christ; and shall deceive many”, Matthew 24:5.  Russia and America are both following what the Bible calls the “great harlot” of Revelation 17, a false and counterfeit Christian system.  The New Testament is filled with warnings not to follow false teachers who profess “another Jesus, another gospel”, 2 Corinthians 11:1-15.

Please visit our website and send an email.  Thank you for reading this and I hope to hear from you soon.  Again, if you are interested in the questions above, please consider reading the articles “Then Comes the Fire”, “The Judgment Chronicles” and “The Fundamentalist” posted on our website.  For details concerning my military background during the Vietnam era, please read the articles “Vietnam: The Manchu’s of Charlie Company”, “Pacifist, Patriot, or Pilgrim” and “Moved with Compassion”.  Just click on the website link below and click on “Articles”.

Sincerely,

Jack

Babylon the Great is Falling
http://www.babylonthegreatisfalling.net

Orthodoxy and Russia’s Manifest Destiny

Russky mir is Russia’s new version of manifest destiny.

By Paul Ladouceur

Several times Russian church and state leaders have been enraptured by the idea that the Russian people and its political expression have a special mission or “manifest destiny” to accomplish. Successive iterations of this “Russian idea” reflect a growing convergence of religion, ethnicity, and nationalism with state power into an explosive secular ideology bent on imposing its worldview within Russia, surrounding countries, the Orthodox Church, and worldwide.

The first iteration became prominent after the union Council of Ferrera between the Roman and the Orthodox Churches in 1439 and the fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453. These two events precipitated the emergence of a sense of the role and responsibility of Muscovy as the spiritual and geo-political center of Orthodoxy, captured in the epithet the “Third Rome”: the first Rome had fallen into heresy and schism with the filioque and the papacy; Constantinople, the Second Rome, deviated from Orthodoxy by union with Latins and came under Turkish rule as a divine punishment, thereby losing its claim to pre-eminence in Orthodoxy. Muscovy, having rejected the union with Rome and freed itself from the Mongols, thus became the Third Rome of Christendom. The self-proclamation of the autocephaly of the Russian Church in 1448 and the election of the first patriarch of Moscow in 1589 reinforced the Third Rome theory.

Although the idea of Muscovy as the Third Rome was not a dominant theme in subsequent centuries, it still featured in more traditionalist Russian circles; the Russian Church emphasized the universal nature of the Church over its particular ethnic or national expressions. But the rise of nationalism in the 19th century assaulted this universalist perspective, and the idea of a messianic role for Russia and the Russian Church resurfaced dramatically, captured in the epithet “Holy Russia”: the divinely-endowed destiny of Russia founded on the preservation and expansion of Orthodoxy, under the guidance of the twin institutions, the monarchy and the Russian Orthodox Church.

In this vision, the tsar was expected to be “an apostle-like ruler,” with St. Vladimir as the prototype, leading his people to Christianity. This required the Church to support autocracy, which it did faithfully until the revolution. The Holy Russia theme was marked by key public events manifesting the union of ruler, church, and people: the 900th anniversary of the baptism of Rus, celebrated in Kyiv in 1888; the 500th anniversary of the death of St. Sergius in 1892; the canonization of St. Seraphim of Sarov in 1903.

A more political variation of the Holy Russia theme was the imperial motto “Orthodoxy, Autocracy and Nationality,“ and its later mutation “Faith, Tsar and Fatherland.” These socio-political motifs marked a departure from ecclesiological universalism, towards an identification of Orthodoxy with Russian nationalism and the imperial state, an “Orthodox patriotism,” seen as an alternative to modern secular nationalism.

The third manifestation, perhaps surprisingly, was the communist vision of an ideal socialist society. As an atheistic philosophy, communism might appear far removed from the religious and Orthodox content of the Third Rome and Holy Russia, but communism is often considered a secular, atheistic religion, with its inspired founders, sacred books, saints worthy of veneration, and rituals; an abstract “humanity” compensated for the previous theistic content of the Russian idea.

Russian Marxists saw their mission in much the same way as their Orthodox predecessors: to imbue all Russian society with their socio-political vision, and, beyond Russia itself, to neighboring lands, beginning with those which were part of the Russian Empire in 1914. The Red Army imposed Bolshevik rule throughout the collapsed Empire; forcible reinsertion into the Soviet Union was successful in Ukraine, Belorussia, Georgia, Central Asia, and Siberia (but failed in Finland and the Baltic States).

In the interwar period, the universal application of Marxist philosophy was visible in the activities of the Communist International (Comintern or Third International), established to promote world communism, headed by the Soviet Union.

After nearly collapsing from the assault of Hitler’s armies in the opening phase during World War II, the Soviet Union gained the upper hand on the battlefield as the Red Army marched through territories initially conquered by the Germans, then into neighboring countries to the West, all the way to Berlin, allowing the Soviets to impose communist-led governments throughout Eastern Europe—only Finland escaped. Flushed with its military, geopolitical and diplomatic successes in the war and immediately afterwards, the Soviet Union attempted to extend its tentacles even further, into Western Europe (where it was stopped by the formation of NATO), Latin America, and Africa, with some success.

This dismal history highlights Russian-dominated communist universalist ideology as a secular variation of the “Russian idea,” that the Russian people and its political expression have a special mission to bring their vision of the future of humanity to the entire world. Here, this mission is not divinely-ordained, but self-appointed, at best dictated by an imperative arising from humanity itself – however inhuman its actual implementation was.

The downfall of communism and the dissolution of the Soviet Union left an existential and ideological void: Russia no longer had a self-identity, a national purpose, an imperative world role. It was in this void that the “Russian idea” resurfaced in its earlier theistic and specifically Orthodox iterations of the Third Rome and Holy Russia. The Russky mir (Russian world) ideology, articulated by senior church officials, aims at extending the worldwide influence of both Russia and the Russian Orthodox Church. The contours of the Russky mir doctrine were spelled out in an address by Patriarch Kirill on 3 November 2009 at the Third Assembly of the Russkii Mir Foundation; Kirill mentioned God only three times and Christ not at all, while repeating 38 times the phrase Russky mir. The contours of Russky mir ideology and its theological weaknesses are well known.

But there are important nuances among these iterations, the acquisition of increasingly dangerous mutations, especially with the expansion of state power. The Third Rome concept was largely ecclesial, and only loosely connected with the pre-modern state. The Holy Russia concept had a more political connotation, a unity of church and state to promote internal cohesion in an increasingly fragmented and restless empire, in a desperate attempt to hold back the forces of modernity; still, the notion was basically inward-looking. Although Holy Russia retained a powerful religious component, nationalism and autocracy were equally prominent ideological features.

Under the Russky mir banner, Putin and Kirill are instilling into the Russian soul anti-Christian values far more successfully than Lenin and Stalin ever did, the cultivation of profound hatred, aggressiveness and violence against all enemies — those who refuse to submit to the personal and geopolitical ambitions of the Russian State and Church.

The communist version of a special Russian mission stripped away its previously religious content, replacing it with secular, atheistic and humanist philosophy. The full force of this universalist philosophy was felt after World War II, as the Soviet Union expanded its power and control over the lands newly-incorporated into the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and worldwide.

The notion of a divinely-appointed mission of the Russian people and the Russian State is thus deeply engrained in Russian consciousness, and it did not require much effort on the part of Patriarch Kirill and Vladimir Putin to re-awaken it in support of the ambition of the Russian Church to dominate world Orthodoxy, and of Vladimir Putin’s personal and geopolitical ambitions, especially the restoration of Russia’s territorial limits to those of the former Soviet Union. In practice in official state discourse, the religious component of Russky mir is decidedly secondary, far behind naked Russian nationalism and expansionism.

In this final mutation of the Russian idea, its promoters have learned from the Bolshevik consolidation of power after the Revolution and from World War II that persuasion and propaganda are of little use in spreading their ideas and ideology, that the only truly effective way is the use of force, brute, unrestrained military force.

Under the Russky mir banner, Putin and Kirill are instilling into the Russian soul anti-Christian values far more successfully than Lenin and Stalin ever did, the cultivation of profound hatred, aggressiveness and violence against all enemies — those who refuse to submit to the personal and geopolitical ambitions of the Russian State and Church. Whether Russia or Ukraine “wins” the war, one thing is certain: Putin and Kirill are fostering something very ugly in the Russian spirit, a spirit of ethno-nationalist hostility, aggressiveness, and violence, transparent under a thin veneer of Orthodoxy. Relaying aggressive state propaganda has replaced the Gospel as the prime message of the Russian Church. Even after Putin and Kirill are gone, Orthodoxy and the world will likely have to deal with this ugliness for long decades.

The temptation to nationalism, especially ethno-nationalism, is a persisting canker in the Orthodox Church. The Orthodox Church has a long way to go to recognize and to eliminate the evil of ethno-nationalism in its midst.

In the mid-19th century, popular imagination in the United States was captivated by the idea that it was American manifest destiny to expand westward across the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains, to the Pacific. Russky mir is Russia’s manifest destiny with its call to Russian domination under president and patriarch in Orthodoxy, Europe and the world, the latest and least Christian iteration of the “Russian idea.” Ukraine is the first major victim of this manifest destiny.

This article was originally published in Public Orthodoxy.

The views expressed in opinion pieces do not necessarily reflect the position of The Moscow Times.

Paul Ladouceur

Paul Ladouceur is Adjunct Professor, Orthodox School of Theology at Trinity College (University of Toronto) and Professeur associé, Faculté de théologie et de sciences religieuses, Université Laval (Québec).

 

02.10.2021

2-10-2021

Days of Daniel’s 70th Week

**After reading this letter please “forward” it to your family and friends who you think might be interested.**

Greetings friends,

The Jewish prophet of Israel, Daniel, was shown by the Lord the traumatic events that would take place at what we call the “end of the age”.  Many of the New Agers who see these things are gleeful that their long awaited Golden Age is about to be birthed in the world.  And more and more people are today wondering if the nations are racing towards a climactic battle due to the world wide pandemic caused by the China Virus and the obvious fraud and corruption of last November’s Presidential election.

Everyone knows that election was stolen from President Trump and the right-wing patriots by the left-wing socialists in league with their communist friends from China.  Will this theft stand or will right-wing conservatives try to somehow overturn what happened?  Or will they wait until the next election?  What does all this mean spiritually and prophetically, and what things did Daniel see?  To put it simply, he saw the rise of the Antichrist, the coming Messiah of the New Agers, the Communists, the Capitalists, and the Constitutionalists!

We should all remember that whoever occupies the White House instantly has in his hand the greatest sword of war this world has ever seen.  The White House is the seat of the coming Antichrist.  Will it be President Biden, having a sword in one hand and an olive branch in the other, who comes to the United Nations to restore order among the nations and establish the peace of the promised Kingdom of God on the Earth?

Whether he is or not just know this; the raging political-religious battle between the left and right wings of America’s Eagle has a direct bearing on the position and power of the United Nations organization headquartered in New York.

If the left-wing has its way, America will submit and surrender its power to the United Nations in order to establish world dominion and peace.  If the right-wing prevails, America will stand alone with its superior economic and military strength, convincing the United Nations to follow their lead in establishing the dominion of the Kingdom of Heaven as they understand it.

So we can clearly see there is already a New World Order in place ruled by the fallen angels under Satan that is just waiting for the “outcome” of the war between the socialist liberals and constitutional conservatives.  What we don’t yet know is whether the Antichrist will be a communist or a capitalist, or a combination of both.

For those who have yet to be saved from their sin nature remember this, the combined power of the precious blood and second coming of Jesus Christ is the “only” permanent solution to the death and destruction that men inflict upon one another to the hideous delight of Satan and his fallen angels, the masters of human manipulation.

The triune God who created and loves us wants us to experience sorrow of a Godly kind that works repentance unto the salvation of our heart, mind, and body, 2 Corinthians 7:10.  He will replace our genuine sorrow with his joy through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit surrounding our newly created and circumcised heart!  Then we will desire to obey the God of Israel because we love him, knowing that he first loved us and sent his Son to save us from our sin nature and the bondage of our fallen angel masters.

Below I have copied the Prophecy Timeline from our website that outlines the coming days of Daniel’s 70th week.  It is a week of seven years or 2520 days.  As I said in the beginning of this letter Daniel was shown how the “end times” would be fulfilled and remember this:  The judgments of God upon the nations will not begin until he removes from this Earth those who have been born again.  This is called the Rapture.

Please visit our website and send an email.  Thank you for reading this and I hope to hear from you soon.  Again, if you are interested in the questions above, please consider reading the articles “Then Comes the Fire”, “The Judgment Chronicles” and “The Fundamentalist” posted on our website.  For details concerning my military background during the Vietnam era, please read the articles “Vietnam: The Manchu’s of Charlie Company”, “Pacifist, Patriot, or Pilgrim” and “Moved with Compassion”.  Just click on the website link below and click on “Articles”.

Sincerely,

Jack

DAYS OF DANIEL’S 70TH WEEK

1st Day

Peace covenant between Israel and enemies arranged by America, Daniel 9:27, Revelation 6:2, 8:1. Construction of temple begins. Days of religious, political deception will be shortened when Russia invades within 1,230 days, Matthew 24:22. Rapture is history, body of Christ in Heaven, Revelation 4. Jesus comes in 2,520 days.

220th Day

Temple construction allows for sacrifices and oblations to begin. Taken away in 1,010 days by Russian-Syrian leader. Jesus comes in 2,300 days. Temple site then cleansed, Daniel 8:13-14.

869th Day

Two witnesses begin 1,260 day ministry, Revelation 11:3. They will be warning the Jews of the imminent Russian-Syrian invasion. Their ministry will be during both halves of the 70th Week because of Revelation 11:6, which shows God’s judgment of water to blood, which occurs in last half; and Revelation 11:10, which shows world rejoicing at the death of two witnesses. If they ministered only in the last half, the world would be terrified and mourning at sight of returning Lord, not rejoicing. If they minister only first half, how can waters turn to blood, which is God’s wrath? Witnesses preach against beast and harlot church and for the coming of Jesus in power and glory. Jesus comes in 1,651 days.

Days of religious, political deception (world peace) will be shortened or elect would be deceived. Days shortened by Russian confederacy invading the Middle East sometime between the 869th and 1,230th day, Ezekiel 38, Daniel 11. World War III erupts, probably nuclear and conventional. Takes peace from earth, Revelation 6:4.

1,230th Day

Russian-Syrian leader takes away sacrifices of Jews, Daniel 8:11, 11:31, 12:11. Within 30 days the first of seven trumpet judgments begin as God destroys Russian-Syrian armies, Ezekiel 38:22, Revelation 8:7. Days of war and sudden destruction shortened or all flesh perish, (nuclear war) Matthew 24:22. Jesus comes in 1,290 days, Daniel 12:11)

1,260th Day

Midweek. Antichrist from America has been resurrected from the dead. Armies of America and Western Europe have invaded and now occupy Israel and the Middle East. Antichrist causes sacrifices to cease. Makes temple desolate by saying he is God, Daniel 9:27, 12:11. Antichrist or beast given power over all nations, and persecutes the saints, Revelation 13:7. Jesus comes in 1,260 days.

Wrath of God meets wrath of Satan for 1,260 days. Days of Great Tribulation and days of Jacob’s Trouble. Great days of real revival through two witnesses and 144,000 Jewish evangelists, Revelation 7. Trumpet and then bowl judgments poured out by the angels of God. Harlot church hated by antichrist and burned.

1979th Day

5th trumpet sounds. 5 months (150 days) demon locusts torment unsaved, Revelation 9:5. First 4 trumpet judgments covered approximately 719 days. Jesus comes in 541 days.

2129th Day

6th trumpet sounds for 3 1/2 days. Two witnesses complete 1,260-day ministry. Killed by antichrist from America. Bodies left in streets of Jerusalem for 3 1/2 days, Revelation 11:8, 11. Antichrist will order their bodies to be untouched as a mockery to the prophecy of their resurrection. Their death and display of bodies angers God. Judgments will intensify. Last hour, day, month, year (391 days) of bowl judgments result of God’s anger. Fullness of God’s wrath, Revelation 9:15, 10:7, 15:7. Jesus comes in 391 days.

2132 1/2 Day

Two witnesses rise from the dead, ascend to Heaven before multitudes, probably watching on satellite television, Revelation 11:11-12, 15. 7th trumpet sounds announcing the beginning of the 7 bowl judgments. Last 387 1/2 days begin.

2,520th Day

Fire from Heaven has destroyed America or Babylon the Great, Revelation 18. Jesus Christ appears in the skies for all eyes to see Him. Antichrist and false prophet are cast in to Lake of Fire, Revelation 19:20. Jesus first destroys all world’s armies at Armageddon, who have been gathered by beast and false prophet to fight against Him, thinking He is an alien invading force, Revelation 1:7, 19:11-21. Satan is cast into the bottomless pit for 1,000 years, Revelation 20:1-3. All saints who were in Heaven come with Jesus. Judgment of surviving people of the nations begins. Temple cleansed of antichrist. 2,300 days completed, Daniel 8:13-14. 1,000-year reign of Jesus Christ begins. Praise God!

 

8-03-2020

Remember the Two Headed Snake

Greetings friends and family,

I ordinarily do not interject myself among friends when it comes to politics and religion, but lately it is becoming exceedingly difficult.  I have a different take and view things from a different angle, so please consider what I am saying in this letter.

Whether this Corona virus disaster is a “trial run” or the beginning of the “last days” on this war-torn planet I do not know.  Similarly, I do not know if the current wave of racial rioting coming from the communists and socialists in America is part of a larger world-wide plot or not.  It very well might be.  But everyone I talk to is saying the same thing:  “Something is happening that makes no sense whatsoever”.

Do you believe in angels both good and fallen, with Satan leading the fallen ones? I wrote to some of you earlier about the two-headed snake that is Satan’s political-economic-religious “world system” of institutions that rule all of the nations, sadly including America.  This God is allowing until he sends the Lord Jesus Christ to assume his position as King of kings and Lord of lords on earth.  Jesus is coming back to send these fallen angels led by Satan into the Bottomless Pit of Hell where they belong.  Satan wants to take as many human beings as he can with him when he is locked up by the Lord.  Lies and deception, coupled with his hatred for all men everywhere, is the motive that drives him.

Remember that one head represents communism and socialism that rules in many nations, including communist China which sent this virus around the world:  The other head represents capitalism, political freedom, and democracy that rules in the others in some form or another.  On the surface one head looks ugly and evil, and the other head looks right and Godly, but when closely investigated both reject the bloody atoning cross of our Lord Jesus, his resurrection, his offer of salvation from our sin nature through repentance and faith, and his imminent bodily return to this earth to set up his government.

We also know there are true followers of Jesus living within both heads in all nations who have been freed from the spiritual grip of the two-headed snake.  Their allegiance, citizenship, and heart is in the Kingdom of Heaven.  Ask yourself this question, what do the deceived and deluded followers of both heads have in common?  Answer; they all are people that Jesus Christ loves and wants to save from their sin nature.  He loves them all, both sides, and is calling each one to come out of their political-religious delusion before the soon coming day of judgment.

Again, are the anarchists of Antifa and Black Lives Matter, along with other revolutionary groups, working in conjunction with communist China to bring down America? Are we now seeing the Satanic led positioning of both heads to ready them for war?  After all, the hatred between both heads is growing with great fever is it not?  Who will win and then offer the infamous Antichrist as the savior of the world who will bring order out of chaos?

Your brother and friend,

Jack

Greetings family and friends,

After re-reading my article, Babylon’s Final Fall, written and posted to our website in February 2003, I decided to send it out to you one more time.  As you will see it is still very relevant today some fifteen years later.  When I wrote it back then it caused great emotions in my heart as the subject matter, America’s destruction, did not bring warm and fuzzy feelings to my soul.  But I knew it had to be said and sent no matter how many friends I lost.

I realized then and now that most Americans, and especially those who claim to follow Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior, don’t want to read and hear that their nation is coming under divine judgment from the God of Heaven.  This “bury your head in the sand” attitude reflects the “pride of life” sin the Apostle John warns Christians about in his letters.  Christendom in America from its foundation has forgotten or never understood that “all nations” are under the control of Satan and his fallen angels (temporarily allowed by God) until the second coming of our Lord Jesus.

Moreover, most in Christendom don’t believe these fallen angels work through the infamous “sin nature” that plagues all men.  Worse than that, the very thought of being a sinner, is negative thinking to many who name Jesus as Lord.  That hurts to even say such a thing but it is true none the less.  Sadly, those few who still acknowledge the sin nature inherent in all men have changed the definition of sin and actually teach doctrines that keep men obedient to the sin nature rather than freeing them from it.

There are three obvious examples of this to those who are interested.  First, American Christians are taught from birth that militant patriotic pride (the pride of life) is a good and Godly thing to possess, even to the point of killing the enemies of the nation in so-called just wars.  There is no such thing for Christians as Just Wars until Jesus returns to make war against the nations, which includes America who is Babylon the Great.  Keeping this doctrinal heresy in one’s heart grieves the Spirit of God who is trying to remove the control of the “pride of life” that is a core ingredient of the human sin nature.

This same principle applies to the popular Prosperity and Psychology Gospels which are the other two examples of keeping alive the sin nature (love of money and love of self) rather than freedom from it. As a born again Christian who spent seven years as a commissioned officer in America’s army, I know how difficult it is for military men who love Jesus to come to the truth that we have all been deceived.

America is falling deeper into its political delusions and most people in this nation have joined forces with either the liberal left-wing or conservative right-wing, both of which make shaky claims to following God.  While I would have more in agreement with the right-wing and have more friends and family in this camp, I still believe that both political movements are just two heads of the same political-religious snake.  For both movements have rejected the second coming of our Lord Jesus as the only hope for peace among the nations.  At his coming Jesus will imprison Satan and his fallen angels freeing mankind from his deception and corruption for 1000 years.

Remember, the only way to be part of our Lord’s coming Kingdom on Earth is to repent of your sins, seek forgiveness from God, and trust in the shed blood of Jesus as atonement for your sin as he instantly creates within you a new born again nature.  Please give some thought and prayer to our Lord over this cover letter and my article of fifteen years ago.  I hope we can remain friends and loving family members as I once again lovingly offer you a very hard pill to swallow.

Your eternal brother in Jesus,

Jack

www.babylonthegreatisfalling.net


Babylon´s Final Fall

02-01-2003

As we watch the violent religious drama of the Middle East unfold, centered on the ancient struggle between Israel and her Arab neighbors, many bible prophecy teachers are also proclaiming the imminent and sudden end of America as we know it. They say with America’s demise the infamous Antichrist will then arise in Europe or the Middle East to bring peace to Israel and the world. Some say that America is not mentioned in bible prophecy, so it must be destroyed prior to the rise of the Antichrist. However, by saying this they are acknowledging that America is presently the dominant power of this world system.

Some are saying that Osama and Saddam have already placed suitcase size nuclear bombs, obtained from Russia, in many of America’ major cities. One prophecy website even predicts the next 911 will be the nuclear destruction of Phoenix. They say all these hidden bombs will be detonated at some point after America invades Iraq, thereby using “self defense” as the rallying cry for the world’s Islamic people to make war on Israel and America. Are these teachers correct? Is America in bible prophecy? Is America Babylon the Great? If so, when will she destroyed?

We all know that if many of America’s major cities were destroyed by nuclear weapons, the fallout would spread across the nation killing millions, and effectively end America’s power grip on the world. However, these prophecy teachers fail to take into account that if America is suddenly attacked like that, the President would make every Arab Islamic capital and Moscow a nuclear wasteland in retaliation. This all out nuclear war would not only end America’s role as the world’s leader, but end the world as we know it.

I have written before that the day will come to pass that a limited nuclear exchange would take place on the Earth when the Russian-Arab armies invade Israel, igniting the third world war. This invasion will take place after the treacherous and deceptive peace treaty the Islamic world makes with Israel and America, Revelation 6:1-4, Daniel 8:25, 9:27. This is when all out nuclear war becomes a nightmarish possibility. But the risen Jesus Christ, the God of Israel, will cause the nuclear exchange to cease by supernaturally destroying, with angelic fire from the heavens, the Russian-Arab armies in the mountains of Israel. For if he did not intervene the entire human race would perish, Ezekiel 38:22-23, Revelation 8:7, Matthew 24:21-22.

Although it is possible for some kind of weapon of mass destruction to be detonated in America, which would be used by the President to solidify his international power base and to justify more attacks on Islamic terrorists and their host nations, America’s final fall from power and world dominance will not occur until the last days of God’s judgment on the nations. As a matter of prophetic fact, America will remain the greatest, richest nation on Earth during this judgment period known as Daniel’s 70th Week.

For Jesus Christ will reserve the final fall of America, Babylon the Great, for himself. He does not require the evil services of Islamic terrorists or the nuclear might of Russia to accomplish his plans. In a strange and ironic way, America will remain the lone superpower right up until the final days of Daniel’s 70th Week. Upon seeing the defeat of Israel and these deadly fires from the heavens destroying the Russian-Islamic forces, the great false church or harlot that dwells in America will initially reassure the President that because terrible death and destruction has befallen Israel and other nations, and not America, proves that God has destined America to be his chosen people, protecting them from the evil of the enemies of democracy and political freedom.

They will proudly announce that God has forgiven America of its sins that caused the judgment of September 11. This delusion and blindness to the truth is the result of teaching the corrupted patriotic, psychology, and prosperity gospel to the American people in conjunction with a distorted understanding of the end time biblical prophecies.

Daniel’s 70th Week of 2520 days begins with America establishing political, economic and religious peace in the Middle East, highlighted by the agreement to rebuild Israel’s Temple, Daniel 9:27, Revelation 6:2. Daniel’s week ends with the destruction of America from coast to coast, and the triumphant return of the Lord Jesus Christ to establish true peace and goodwill on Earth for one thousand years, Daniel 2:44-45, Jeremiah 25:26, Revelation 18, 19.

As the 70th Week draws down to its final days, the God of Israel has prepared three final knockout blows for America. I say this with immense sorrow, for no follower of Jesus Christ enjoys watching people perish. Like our Lord, we want all people to come to repentance, that none perish. For we all have sinned against God and deserve his wrath upon us. But we must keep in mind that our Lord has given the nations 2000 years to make up their minds who they want to serve, Jesus Christ or mammon (money and self).

It will be made very clear at that time to those who have rejected the returning Jesus Christ, to follow a false counterfeit of him, that they have consciously and deliberately rejected the prophecy of his imminent bodily return to establish his kingdom. The seal of this rejection will be the loyalty mark of the President, Revelation 13:16-18. Even the angels of God will openly appear, warning everyone not to receive the mark, that Jesus is alive and coming, Revelation 14:8-11.

In the final days, at the time of the 7th Bowl judgment poured out by God’s angel, the first of three lethal blows on America will come to pass. Read carefully the following scripture: Revelation 18:8-10….”Therefore shall her plagues come in one day, death, and mourning, and famine, and she shall be utterly burned with fire; for strong is the Lord God who judgeth her. And the kings of the earth, who have committed fornication and lived luxuriously with her, shall bewail her, and lament for her, when they shall see the smoke of her burning, Standing afar off for the fear of her torment, saying, Alas, alas, that great city, Babylon, that mighty city! For in one hour is thy judgment come.” We see here the complete and utter destruction of America’s political and economic foundations by angelic fire from the heavens, much like that which befell Sodom and Gomorrah, Genesis 19:24-25. America’s cities, which housed the abortion mills, the decadent homosexual lifestyle, the military fortresses, and the businessmen who were filled with covetousness and greed, will in one hour be burning out of control. No city will escape untouched by God’s holy angels.

At some point after the devastating fires, those who have survived by fleeing the cities, will tremble in fear and horror, as the second blow is struck upon America. Again, read carefully this scripture: Revelation 16:17-19….”And the seventh angel poured out his bowl into the air, and there came a great voice out of the temple of heaven, from the throne, saying, It is done. And there were voices, and thunders, and lightnings; and there was a great earthquake, and so great. And the great city was divided into three parts, and the cities of the nations fell; and great Babylon came in remembrance before God, to give unto her the cup of the wine of the fierceness of his wrath.”

The ground will shake beneath the feet of every human being on Earth. An earthquake of unprecedented magnitude, the “big one” many have been predicting for years will finally come to pass. It will level the charred remains of America’s cities and all the cities of the nations will be damaged. I believe the epi-center of this earthquake will be in America, thereby causing greater destruction. The land mass of America will be split and divided into three pieces, with bodies of water in between. As a result of this gigantic earthquake, the entire planet will undergo changes as mountains are flattened and islands are moved out of their place. In other words, God is going to re-configure the continents again, Genesis 10:25.

The few Americans who have survived these first two blows will not have much time to regroup, for the final third blow will soon finish them off. Again, I want all to know how hard it is to write these words, for all of my family and friends live here in America, and not all love the Lord Jesus Christ. Read carefully these scriptures: Revelation 18:21….”And a mighty angel took up a stone like a great millstone, and cast it into the sea, saying, Thus with violence shall that great city, Babylon, be thrown down, and shall be found no more at all.” Jeremiah 51:41-43….”How is Sheshach taken! And how is the praise of the whole earth surprised! How is Babylon become an horror among the nations. The sea is come up upon Babylon; she is covered with the multitude of its waves. Her cities are a desolation, a dry land, and a wilderness, a land in which no man dwelleth, neither doth any son of man pass by it.”

John the apostle is shown by vision an angel casting a great stone from the heavens, hitting the sea in such a way that gigantic waves will completely cover the divided, mountainless land mass of America, drowning all those who remain. As the waters later recede the land will be left desolate for one thousand years, as a reminder to those who repopulate the Earth in the kingdom of Jesus Christ, that the penalty for rebellion against God is death and Hell.

Along with its birth as the New Testament’s Babylon the Great in 1776, who can deny that America has also deteriorated or degenerated into the likeness of Sodom and Gomorrah. This society and generation has, by condoning and accepting the homosexual lifestyle, by murdering helpless children in their mother’s womb, by their bottomless appetite for money and worldly goods, and by their militant, religious arrogance and national pride, planted the seeds of their own destruction. God’s wrath and judgment is at hand. Are there any who want to be saved from this?

Before we can be saved from the wrath that is now at the door, we must understand the depth of our rebellion. We all have, in one way or another, cried out like the Jewish people did before Pontius Pilate….”We shall not have this man to reign over us,” Luke 19:14. How can we reject such love and forgiveness from God, who would come to this rebellious, demon infested planet as a man and allow himself to be humiliated and killed and at the same time pay the bloody price for all sins of all men. There is not one of us who is innocent of this horrible offense against the Lord Jesus Christ. If you haven’t done so already, please come to the bloody cross of Jesus Christ and let him come into your heart and give you eternal life, joy, and peace. Receiving the Holy Spirit, through repentance of sin and faith in his shed blood, is the only way to escape the approaching wrath to come.

 

11.15.2016

11/15/2016

The Judgment Chronicles: Trump and Putin

**Please “forward” this to your family and friends who you think might be interested.  Click on this link http://www.thebyteshow.com/Audio/JackHook/JackHook_JudgmentChronicles_TBS.mp3 to listen to my 2007 interview concerning what is to come upon this war-torn and sodomized planet** 

Greetings Family and Friends,

This letter is an updated copy of one of the last I posted on my website in 2013.  I hope it blesses you and helps you in your search for the truth which can be found only in the scriptures and by the power of the Holy Spirit.  As most of us know, the American political and religious system has for a generation now degenerated into the madness, delusion, and depravity of abortion, homosexual behavior and marriage, all sanctioned by the highest court in the land.  The move of former President Obama to force acceptance of transsexual behavior as a “good” thing rather than the “evil” it really is just strengthens my understanding that God’s wrath and judgment is at the door.  Are Christians in America wondering how the new President-elect, Donald Trump, will handle all of these things?  In addition, how will a President Trump deal with President Putin of Russia who was often mentioned during the campaign?

Those of us who are old enough to remember the cold war and the fear of a Russian-American nuclear war are “tempted” to view Russia’s dramatic re-emergence into the geo-politics of the Middle East with great concern.  But as believers in the Lord we must always follow the truth laid out by Jesus Christ in the Bible rather than succumbing to these natural fears of war that will ultimately lead to World War III and Armageddon. 

Those who have studied the Bible know the “literal interpretation” of prophetic scriptures clearly points to what is called the “Day of the Lord”, a period of time in which God’s judgment will fall upon the nations for rejecting his Son and his coming Kingdom upon this earth.  Moreover, the leaders of the nations ignore or mock anyone who declares the bodily second coming of Jesus Christ to this earth.  This tragically includes the leadership of today’s Jewish nation, Israel, who were brought back to their land by God after the horrors of World War II.  The Jews are being given another chance to embrace Jesus Christ as their Messiah and coming King. 

America’s policy toward Russia and the Middle East is forged by events and personalities beyond its control, with American and Russian leaders not knowing the prophet Daniel identified them as the two “Little Horns” that would arise out of the old Roman Empire to bring the nations to World War III at the end of this age.  This last world war will begin when the Russian President and his allies invade Israel after first signing a treacherous “Covenant of Peace” with his American counterpart and others.  All of this is recorded in my online book and “current articles” if you would like to know more. 

Just know that sooner or later Russia and America will “outwardly” set aside their differences which have for a generation brought them to the edge of war. The nations of the United Nations organization will think these two powerful giants have come to their senses when they sit down to arrange a much needed and sought after Peace Covenant which will include Israel and their Islamic enemies, Jerusalem, and a new Temple.  You should know that Syria and Iran are, according to the scriptures, two of Russia’s allies in the coming Day of the Lord.

The sad thing to me is that both political and religious leaders in America do not understand these evil and cruel Islamic terrorist events taking place in the Middle East and spreading throughout the nations are inspired by the fallen angels who rule in and through them and all people who do not follow the Lord Jesus and his teachings. 

Our Lord made it clear in the New Testament that Satan and his fallen angel friends have been given by God (because of sin) temporary dominion over “all” the nations with their varied governments and religions.  As hard as it is for us to believe this includes America.  And know this; America does not have a covenant with the Lord via the Declaration of Independence and Constitution as many of us have been taught since childhood.  America, even since its birth in 1776, is part of what Jesus calls the “world” systems under Satan’s dominion.  

Listen or read carefully:  These fallen angels have one goal and one plan:  Through evil events caused by them they can produce great fear and perplexity in the hearts of men who will then welcome Satan’s great counterfeit peacemaking Messiah, also known as the Antichrist, the last or final American President. 

Amazingly, the Russian and American Presidents do not know this awful “title” is what awaits them as they maneuver for power and dominion in the Middle East.  Donald Trump is blind to this truth just as he is when it comes to the homosexual perversion saturating the American culture.  And yet President Putin of Russia and President-elect Trump both claim to be Christians, don’t they?  Do they really care what our Lord Jesus has to say on all of these matters?  We all need to remember that Jesus said the last days before his second coming to judge the nations will mirror the days of Noah and Lot, when sexual perversion filled the land bringing God’s wrath and judgment upon them all. 

After listening to my 2007 interview please read my article “The Judgment Chronicles” posted on our website which describes in detail what is about to come upon this earth.  As I close this letter, all who name Jesus as Lord should make sure of their salvation from the sin nature we all inherited and which condemns us all to Hell.  The blood sacrifice of our Lord Jesus when he came the first time is the only way of escape from the wrath of God which is coming upon this war-torn planet.  Remember, Jesus said, “Unless a man is born again he cannot enter or see the Kingdom of Heaven”.  The apostle Paul took this into his heart and explained that a man or woman must know that Godly sorrow for our sin produces true repentance that brings salvation from the power of our sin nature.

Your eternal friend,

Jack

http://www.babylonthegreatisfalling.net

 

 1/4/2014

The German Patriot

Greetings new and old friends,

Ever since September 11th, 2001, as President Roosevelt said of Pearl Harbor, “a day which will live in infamy”, I have been searching the internet to meet people who might be interested in what the Bible has to say about events leading up to the second coming of the Lord Jesus Christ.  If you are a Christian you should have a deep interest in all of these current political-religious-economic-military events taking place among the nations as well as those of the past.

I have sent invitation letters to visit my website to thousands of strangers around the world and have received every conceivable response to my understanding of how current events point to the glorious return of the Lord Jesus and the establishment of his earthly Kingdom.  Many people who respond take great offense when I say that we as Christians are to follow in the footsteps of our Lord by loving our worst enemies, even those who would do harm to us. 

In that light, I think you will find my exchange with an old German patriot who served under and still adores Adolf Hitler most interesting.  He is now a citizen of Dresden, a city infamous for being fire-bombed by the Allies during World War II.  It is a short exchange but yet it reveals just how deceived and confused men become when they take their hearts and eyes off of the person of Jesus Christ and his teachings; to follow in the footsteps of men like Hitler who came upon the scene in Germany as the conservative cure-all to the immoral liberal culture that had overtaken Germany since the first World War.  Is America following the same path and pattern?  Will the immoral and bankrupt liberal policies of legalizing abortion and homosexual behavior, combined with the government takeover of the economic systems, produce a conservative backlash and the rise of another Hitler who will also claim to be a Christian?  When Jesus returns will he find America to be led by liberals like Obama, conservatives like Bush, or a madman like Hitler?   

As I have said repeatedly to remind us all, the scriptures teach us that the combined power of the bloody cross and second coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, is the only “permanent” solution for stopping the death and destruction that men inflict upon one another to the sick delight of their fallen angel masters.  Remember the words of the Lord….I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me, John 14:6.

Please visit our website and sign the “guestbook” or reply to this email.  Thank you for reading this and I hope to hear from you soon.  I hope you will consider reading the articles “Then Comes the Fire”, “The Judgment Chronicles” and “The Fundamentalist” posted on our website.  For details concerning my military background during the Vietnam era, please read the articles “Vietnam: The Manchus of Charlie Company”, “Pacifist, Patriot, or Pilgrim” and “Moved with Compassion”.  Just click on our website link below and click on “Articles”.

Sincerely,

Jack D. Hook

 

From: Heinz Knoake To: jdhook@cox.net
Subject: RE: Vietnam Veteran’s Confession

Herr Hook,
I can’t understand where you obtained my details as I am a very private. Like you I served as a soldier, but that was a very long time ago and I’m very old now. I had the honour to serve in the waffen SS and fought against the Russians on the Ost front as well as fighting the English in the west. I was wounded 5 times and lost an eye. I think the world would have been a better place if we had won….

Heil Hitler
Heinz Odo Knoake (Dresden)

From: Jack Hook
To: ‘Heinz Knoake’
Subject: RE: Vietnam Veteran’s Confession

Dear Heinz,

Thanks for responding, but I must confess you are the first person I have met online who thinks Hitler and the Nazi’s should have won the war.  In the first place, German Christians should have rejected any man who took them to war as should every American Christian.  This sickness or sin of hating and killing one’s enemies for any reason contradicts what our Lord Jesus Christ taught all those who follow him. 

Germany, England, Russia, and America all proclaimed to be Christian nations, but all of them have bitten into the evil apple that is the “just war” doctrine introduced into Christendom by Constantine and Augustine in the fourth century.  My hope and prayer is that you will allow the Lord Jesus to show you his truth from the scriptures.  It is not too late my old German friend. 

I hope my online book written in 1980 and current articles help you even more in understanding the greatness of our Lord Jesus Christ, his shed blood for our sins, and his glorious resurrection.  There is coming a day when the Lord will return in judgment and then imprison the fallen angels who are temporarily allowed by God to rule the nations because of the Adamic sin nature of all men. Until that Day of Judgment we are to call all men to repentance, to love and offer forgiveness to the worst of our enemies, even those who wish us dead.  Keep in touch.

Your eternal friend,
Jack D. Hook
http://www.babylonthegreatisfalling.net

 

10/1/2013

Presidents Obama, Putin, and the Middle East: The Judgment Chronicles

**After reading this letter please “forward” it to your family and friends who you think might be interested.** 

Greetings friends and family,

Those of us who are old enough to remember the cold war and the fear of a Russian-American nuclear war are “tempted” to view Russia’s re-emergence into the politics of the Middle East with great concern.  But as believers in the Lord we must always follow the truth laid out by Jesus Christ in the Bible rather than succumbing to these natural fears of Armageddon and World War III. 

Those who have studied the Bible know the “literal interpretation” of prophetic scriptures clearly points to what is called the “Day of the Lord”, a period of time in which God’s judgment will fall upon the nations for rejecting his Son and his coming Kingdom upon this earth.  Moreover, the leaders of the nations ignore, with some even mocking, anyone who declares the bodily second coming of Jesus Christ to this earth.  This tragically includes the leadership of today’s Jewish nation, Israel, who were brought back to their land by God after the horrors of World War II.  The Jews are being given another chance to embrace Jesus Christ as their Messiah and King. 

America’s policy toward Russia and the Middle East is forged by events and personalities beyond its control, with American and Russian leaders not knowing the prophet Daniel identified them as the two “Little Horns” that would arise out of the old Roman Empire to bring the nations to World War III at the end of this age.  This last world war will begin when the Russian President and his allies invade Israel after first signing a “Covenant of Peace” with his American counterpart and others.  All of this is recorded in my online book if you would like to know more. 

Just know, my friends, that sooner or later Russia and America will outwardly set aside their differences which have for a generation brought them to the edge of war. The nations of the United Nations organization will think these two powerful giants have come to their senses when they sit down to arrange a Peace Covenant which will include Israel and their Islamic enemies, Jerusalem, and a new Temple.  After the events in Syria and Putin’s offer to remove their chemical weapons and Iran’s new “happy face” it appears to be sooner rather than later.  Syria and Iran are two of Russia’s allies in the coming Day of the Lord.

The sad thing to me is that both political and religious leaders in America do not understand that these evil and cruel events taking place in Syria and the Middle East are not just in the imagination of Syria’s President Assad and the Islamic rebels he is fighting against, but are inspired by the fallen angels who rule in and through them and all people who do not follow the Lord Jesus and his teachings. 

Our Lord made it clear in the New Testament that Satan and his fallen angel friends have been given by God (because of sin) temporary dominion over the nations with all of their varied governments and religions.  As hard as it is for us believe this includes America.  Listen or read carefully!  These fallen angels have one goal and one plan:  Through evil events caused by them, like the chemical gassing of Syria’s women and children, they can produce great fear and perplexity in the hearts of men who will then welcome Satan’s great counterfeit peacemaking Messiah, also known as the Antichrist.  Amazingly, the Russian and American Presidents do not know this awful “title” is what awaits them as they maneuver for power and dominion in the Middle East.

Please read my article “The Judgment Chronicles” which describes in detail what is about to come upon this earth and how to escape.  Most of all please make sure of your salvation from the sin nature we all inherited and which condemns us all to Hell.  The blood sacrifice of our Lord Jesus when he came the first time is the only way of escape from the wrath of God which is coming upon this war-torn planet.  Remember, Jesus said, “Unless a man is born again he cannot enter or see the Kingdom of Heaven”.  The apostle Paul took this into his heart and explained that a man or woman must know that Godly sorrow for our sin produces true repentance that brings salvation from the power of our sin nature.

Your eternal friend,

 Jack

http://www.babylonthegreatisfalling.net

 

5/1/2013

What Sword Do We Trust

**After reading this letter please “forward” it to your family and friends who you think might be interested.  As always, if you want to be removed from this mailing list just let me know by replying to this email.**

Dear friends and family members,

This letter is written to those of you who were recently offended by Jim Baumgaertel’s article concerning Christians who might be trusting in the sword of the second amendment rather than the two-edged sword which is the word of our Lord Jesus Christ.  Some of you expressed similar attitudes regarding Pastor’s Rick Frueh and Anton Bosch’s writings which are also posted on our website.

All of you are on my mailing list, some a very long time, and have expressed your concerns without condemnation even though you are deeply offended.  A few have resorted to name-calling accusing us of being cowards and traitors, but even then have urged us to take your opinions into consideration.  This is appreciated, for these are matters of life and death and all of us who profess faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, his shed blood paying for our sins, and his glorious resurrection should be open to correction by other brothers in the faith.

In almost all of your replies there seems to be a common thread and understanding.  And it revolves around America and her place in this world since the rise of Hitler in Nazi Germany.  Those of us like Jim, Anton, and Rick, who suggest to our brothers in the faith that the teachings and example of Jesus Christ forbid the taking up of arms against our human enemies, are immediately chastised saying that if Christians would have followed our thinking we would all be speaking German right now under the might of the Third Reich.

I must admit that for the first year after being born again in 1978, I too held that position, for the pastors who I followed were all militant patriots who celebrated the victory over Germany as though it was a continuation of their conceived righteous military victory over England during the Revolutionary War of 1776.  I did not know at that time that it was impossible for Germany to win World War II, for the prophetic scriptures were clear that a great and mighty nation would rise up out of the ashes of the old Roman Empire in the last days to rule over the nations.  The United States is that nation my friends.

I suppose my attitude and acceptance of Christian involvement in wars among the nations can also be explained by the years of Army service including a tour in the war zone of Vietnam.  As I have written many times before, I entered the Army thinking I was a Christian, even boasted of being a “Protestant” as it was engraved on my dog tags.  But I was not saved because I had never truly repented and confessed my sin before the risen and living Jesus Christ.  Simply put, I was not born again and turned away from what I thought was American Christianity when I returned home from Vietnam in 1969. 

There were, during that first year as a born again disciple of Jesus, great doubts and many questions filling my mind while I towed the Church’s party line in supporting militant patriotism.  I began to realize these doubts and questions were originating in my newly born again spirit that had been created by the Holy Spirit.  Many of you are now going through the same thing as more and more Christian brothers like Jim, Rick, and Anton are daring to challenge long held doctrines in Christian America.  Here are some of the questions that filled my heart as I was growing in the knowledge of Jesus Christ:

(1)    Is militant patriotism rooted and grounded in the “pride of life” which the Apostle John said was one of the components of our inherited sin nature?

(2)    Does the Bible teach us that our heavenly Father has given temporary dominion of all Gentile nations, and their various political-religious systems, to Satan and his fallen angels because of the fallen sin nature in all men born of women?

(3)    Is America included in these Gentile nations?

(4)    Does the book of Revelation and the Jewish prophets of the Old Testament reveal how these Gentile nations will be arranged and judged by our Lord Jesus at his second coming?

(5)    Is America described in the Revelation as the Seabeast and Babylon in chapters 13 and 18?

(6)    What did Jesus mean when he said that his “Kingdom” is not of this world and that his followers would not fight like the world, even to save him from his divine appointment at the cross?

(7)    How did our Lord Jesus view his enemies as he was dying on the cross and did he tell his followers to do the same?

(8)    Did Jesus prophesy that in the last days before his second coming religiously deceived men would rumor and engage in world wars in the name of Christ, that many would say they were Christians but rise up in wrath against their brothers in other lands?

(9)    Did Germans and Italians, including Hitler, profess to be Christians as they made war against their Polish, English, French, American, Canadian, and Russian brothers in Christ?

How did professing Christians in World War II Germany, Italy, Poland, France, England, America, Canada, and Russia become so confused and deceived into making war against each other?  Is it because they failed to learn that it is not enough to just profess Christ Jesus with our lips, we must know him in our hearts?  They all made the same mistake that I did when I entered the U.S. Army thinking I was a Christian but had never confessed my sin before our risen Lord asking for his forgiveness.

There are many other questions that I can include, but if you find the answers to these above your life among friends and family will be changed.  Moreover, there is only one source of truth where these answers can be found and that is in the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit as he guides you through the Holy Scriptures.  Once again, I must encourage all of you to deepen your love for our Lord Jesus and know that he has great love for the souls of all men and women, even those who hate us for being his followers.

Remember, there is coming a time of judgment when all those who have despised his offer of salvation from their evil sin nature will find themselves in the midst of his great wrath upon this war-torn planet.  For this judgment must come to separate out of his Kingdom on Earth all those who refuse to admit and confess their sin and be saved from the eternal Hell that awaits all who deny that he is the Savior and Lord of all who bow before him with a sorrowful and contrite heart.

The five years I served as a commissioned officer in the United States Army helped me (when I was born again) to understand why nations war against each other.  Many who are interested in prophecy are pointing out that elitist organizations like the Illuminati, Freemasons, Skull and Bones, are involved in a great conspiracy to create a New World Order under a one-world government and religion. Others, like me, can see some of what they are exposing and the reality of it all, but know in our hearts that fallen angels are the real movers and shakers among these blind men who think they rule the nations, including President Obama.  I cannot tell you how important this truth about fallen angels is, for without it people will follow the coming Antichrist who first comes on the scene professing to be a Christian as he makes peace in the Middle East.

Please visit our website and sign the “guestbook” or send an email.  Thank you for reading this and I hope to hear from you soon.  Please consider reading the articles “Then Comes the Fire”, “The Judgment Chronicles” and “The Fundamentalist” posted on our web site.  For details concerning my military background during the Vietnam era, please read the articles “Vietnam: The Manchu’s of Charlie Company”, “Pacifist, Patriot, or Pilgrim” and “Moved with Compassion”.  Just click on the web site link below and click on “Articles”.

Your eternal friend,
Jack
jdhook@cox.net

Babylon the Great is Falling
http://www.babylonthegreatisfalling.net

 

2/14/2013

Cult of the Second Amendment by Jim Baumgaertel

**After reading this letter please “forward” it to your family and friends who you think might be interested.  As always, if you want to be removed from this mailing list just let me know by replying to this email.**

Greetings family and friends,

I am sending you this well-written article by my friend and fellow military veteran, Jim Baumgaertel, hoping you will study carefully what he has to say and then test and filter it through your own Bible study and prayer.  This we should all do to keep ourselves from possible deception, for these “last” days are filled with many strange and delusional religious teachings.  I know that Jim’s understanding and positions have edified and helped me to better understand the teachings of both the Old and New Testaments, so I know you also will find his writings solidly rooted in the sound doctrines of our Lord Jesus Christ. 

There is much division and controversy among American Christians concerning governmental gun control, self-defense, the just war doctrine, taking up arms in revolution, and many related teachings.  As I understand these controversies the problem lies with “ignorance about” the characteristics of our human sin nature, God’s allowance of Satan and his fallen angels rule over all nations, and lastly, our ignorance of last days prophecy or what is to come upon the nations at the second coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.  When you mix with all of these problems the apparent disability for most Christians to walk in the supernatural love of God for their worst enemies, you have nothing left but a raging inferno of strife within an organized religious system called Christendom.  The bottom line and simple solution my friends and dear family members is to fall in love with the Lord Jesus Christ and “begin or renew” a relationship with him on a personal level.

I have written many articles about these things as has Jim and others on the internet.  In essence we are all saying the same thing:  For those not already born again prepare your hearts and minds by submitting to the working of the Holy Spirit who longs to enter into a repentant and contrite heart and bring the newness of resurrection life.  Then we will be able to gracefully discuss these divisive things, knowing that at times all of us have been seduced in our minds as we ignorantly followed the political-religious deceptions that are hi-lighted in most of American Christianity.  Those who already have been born again and had their old sin nature washed away from their hearts by the shed blood of Jesus Christ still carry this old nature of pride, ungodly hate, and various carnal lusts in our minds and need to be “renewed” in our minds on a daily basis.  I thank Jim for doing just that in his article

Please visit Jim’s website and send him an encouraging word.  His website and email address is:  http://procinwarn.com jimbaum@procinwarn.com

Your eternal friend,

 Jack

http://babylonthegreatisfalling.net

 

 Posted by Jim Baumgaertel

As we move toward global government, the rulers of this world want to disarm the people. Many, in the United States in opposition to the rulers, point to the second amendment of the constitution as the imperative for having guns and threatening to use guns. Those devoted to the second amendment include many professing Christians.

The people of God who returned with Nehemiah to rebuild the wall around Jerusalem were said to arrange themselves so that, “…with one hand they worked at construction, and with the other held a weapon.” (Nehmiah 4: 17) They were doing a great work of God in the face of great hostility and threats of violence against them. How does that apply to us, the Church, in the days in which we live? Should we defend the people of God and the work of God with guns?

Our unchanging God has demonstrated His manifold wisdom in various ways at various times throughout history, according to His purposes and plans and timing.

The Old Testament was given to ancient Israel. The New Testament was given to the Church. The Old Testament is the foundation for the New Testament. The New Testament interprets the Old Testament for us. Everything that applies to us, in these New Testament times, whether from the Old Testament or the New Testament, must first be drawn through the interpretation and understanding of the New Testament before it can be properly applied to us in this Church age.

Consider Nehemiah’s prayer in chapter 4 verses 4 and 5, as he cries out to God in the midst of the opposition of the enemies of God’s people:

“Hear, O our God, for we are despised; turn their reproach on their own heads, and give them as plunder to a land of captivity! Do not cover their iniquity, and do not let their sin be blotted out from before You; for they have provoked You to anger before the builders.”

Look at what Nehmiah is praying for. Is this how we should pray in this age we live in?

This is an example of imprecatory prayer, meaning that it calls out for curses and judgment. There are many other examples of this in the Psalms. For example, in Psalm 109:6-9, David cries out to the Lord about his enemy:

“Set a wicked man over him, And let an accuser stand at his right hand. When he is judged, let him be found guilty, And let his prayer become sin. Let his days be few, And let another take his office. Let his children be fatherless, And his wife a widow.”

Nehemiah and David, as Jewish people in ancient Israel, are appealing to a Holy God for judgment on the unrepentant, the wicked, the sinful, the rebellious. These prayers are spoken in a spirit of prophecy that this judgment is sure for the rebellious. God will demonstrate his terrible judgment on sin. These prayers are spoken during the dispensation of Law. And the purpose of the Law was to be a like a school master leading us to our need for a savior; leading us to Christ (Galatians 3:24). Nehemiah and David were looking forward to the Cross.

Ours is the dispensation of Grace. Not that we are saved differently. Remember that Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness (Genesis 15:6). But Jesus, on the cross, took upon Himself the wickedness, the sin, the rebelliousness. The judgment of a Holy God fell upon Him. God has demonstrated His terrible judgment on sin.

Jesus says in Matthew 5:44,

“But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you…”

The imprecatory prayer of Nehemiah and David is not appropriate for our dispensation of Grace.

And yet there is coming a time when imprecatory prayer will be called for, again. In Revelation 6:10, the Tribulation martyrs,

“…cried with a loud voice, saying, “How long, O Lord, holy and true, until You judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?””

God is patient, but His patience will not last forever. Judgment is coming.

Nehemiah and his brethren were rebuilding the wall around Jerusalem. The temple had already been rebuilt upon the return of the Jews from captivity in Babylon. The purpose of the return of the Jews and the rebuilding is expressed in Nehemiah 1:9, as Nehemiah is praying to the Lord and quoting the Lord:

“…but if you return to Me, and keep My commandments and do them, though some of you were cast out to the farthest part of the heavens, yet I will gather them from there, and bring them to the place which I have chosen as a dwelling for My name.’”

The temple, the wall, the city of Jerusalem were intended, in that era, to be a place for the name of God to be a witness to the world through the Jewish people.

In our day, we, as believers in Jesus are the temple of the Holy Spirit. Our lives and our lives together as the assembly of Christ are the dwelling place of God.

So, Nehemiah says in 4:17,

“Those who built on the wall, and those who carried burdens, loaded themselves so that with one hand they worked at construction, and with the other held a weapon.”

What does this mean to us?

Is the emphasis on literal weapons and physical warfare in the Old Testament the same for us in New Testament times?

How shall we draw this Old Testament pattern through the interpretation of the New Testament in order to apply to us in this Church age?

First, I want to acknowledge that the rulers of this world and the governments of this world want to disarm the people as we move toward global government. So every tragedy and shooting becomes propaganda for disarming the people. There is some validity, from a human point of view, in the bumper sticker that says, “Fear the government that fears your guns”.

On the other side, in this country, there are many who are zealous about the 2nd Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. They believe that the right of the people to keep and bear arms is necessary to keep a free country, meaning that when necessary the masses should rise up with guns to rebel against the corrupt government.

As noble as that sounds, it is not for us as disciples of Jesus Christ.

It is not for us to jump on either side: the corrupt government or the rebellious mob. Satan works both sides. Romans 13 says that we are to submit to the government and in doing so we trust God to work through the government which He has established, in spite of its corrupt nature.

When the people chose Barabbas instead of the Lord Jesus, the mob chose the rebel instead of the true King. Our heavenly hope is not in our guns, but in trusting and obeying the Lord Jesus Christ.

I recommend that our zeal for Jesus Christ and His word far exceeds our zeal for guns. If not, I’m concerned for many evangelicals that they are being drawn into the cult of the 2nd amendment.

I’m not anti-guns, I’m anti-idolatry.

Nehemiah and the people were called to work with one hand and defend with the sword in the other hand. How does that apply in our New Testament age? In this dispensation of the New Testament Church: The weapons of our warfare are not carnal (2 Corinthians 10:3-5)

“For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal…”

In Ephesians 6, where Pauls speaks of, “The whole armor of God”,  he is speaking in spiritual terms, not in terms of literal equipment and weapons of war.

Nehemiah and his Jewish brethren were doing a, “great work” (6:3), and they were in a state of war. We, as the Church, are doing a great work and we are at war! But our warfare is not against flesh and blood (Ephesians 6:12):

“…but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.”

There are differences in God’s intent, from age to age, as to how He has chosen to manifest His wisdom to mankind. What is different between Nehemiah’s time and ours?

Imprecatory prayer? We are to bless and not curse.

The temple, the wall, the city? We are the temple of the Holy Spirit.

Weapons? The weapons of our warfare are not carnal!

In our day, the whole world is being prepared for a counterfeit Christ. Our calling, in these days in the midst of spiritual war, is to build up the Church, one another, and to contend for the faith.

Nehemiah was building the wall. What are we building? The kingdom of God or the Tower of Babel?

Professing Christians who are being drawn into the Cult of the Second Amendment are, at the very least, in danger of idolatry. They may think they are pleasing God but they may be helping to build the structure of the anti-christ.

The Work and the War – Nehemiah 4

Four Ways Christians Are Being Deceived

 

 1/1/2013

Hedonists and Martyrs by Anton Bosch

Dear friends,

I am forwarding to you another well-written letter from Anton Bosch.  Like Rick Frueh, Anton’s writings awaken my heart and cause me to renew my mind and be strengthened by the Spirit of God.  Too many who profess to be followers of Jesus Christ are being put to slumber and sleep by the prosperity, psycho-babble, political, and patriotic gospel that rules over Christendom in America and the Western world in general. 

What first caught my attention when reading Anton’s letter was his declaration that what passes for Church history taught in religious schools usually is describing the apostate Church.  I couldn’t agree more.  This reminded me of what the Apostle John describes in Revelation 17 as the Great Harlot that was so close to the truth it caused John to be amazed and astonished. 

It is my hope and prayer that all of us renew our hearts and minds as we realize the tremendous suffering of our brothers in other lands will soon visit the Western world.  Our lives in America are about to change as there is an increasing bitterness and anger in the mouths of those who rule the political-religious institutions of the Great Harlot and Beast that she is riding.  Those of us who call them to Godly sorrow and repentance are becoming more than just a little thorn in their side.

Your eternal friend,

 Jack

http://www.babylonthegreatisfalling.net

From: Anton Bosch [mailto:anton@ifcb.net]
To: Anton Bosch
Subject: Hedonists and Martyrs

Hedonists and Martyrs

While reviewing church history recently I was reminded of some of the things we should learn from history. But before I share those with you, I want to remind you that what normally passes for church history is the history of the apostate church (lower case “c”). The history of the true Church is not normally taught in Bible schools and seminaries except for a passing mention to the little groups of true believers that were a thorn in the side of the institutional churches. 

The following are the central truths we learn from Church history:

·   Even in the darkest hours of the last 2,000 years there have always been true believers and true Churches in this world.

·   The real Church has always been small in numbers and poor in political power, finances and popularity. 

·    True churches and believers have always been persecuted.

It is on this third point I want to dwell for a few minutes. Persecution has come from many different sources, even though the ultimate source remains Satan and his forces.

The Jews, initially under the leadership of Saul of Tarsus, persecuted and killed believers beginning with Stephen. Of course Jesus was the first “Christian” martyr, and before the New Testament many prophets were also brutally killed by Israel because of their message.

The Roman government persecuted and brutally martyred the believers for almost 300 years until Constantine in 312AD.

Immediately after 312 the Roman church took over from the Roman government and began to persecute believers who did not submit to their authority. Persecution under the Church of Rome continued for the next 1700 years right up to the present, reaching its peak during the inquisition (c. 1200 to c. 1600). It is very difficult to find an accurate estimate of the numbers of people killed by the Roman church but the best studies indicate a number of around 80 million Christians in addition to witches and others killed by Rome![1]

Even while Rome was killing Protestants, the Reformation leaders were torturing and killing Anabaptists and other believers who disagreed with them. Just one of many to die at the hand of the Reformers was Michael Sattler, a true believer. “He was shamefully mutilated in different parts of the town, then brought to the gate, and what remained of him thrown on the fire, His wife and some other Christian women were drowned, and a number of brethren who were with him in prison were beheaded.”[2] All the Protestant leaders, including Luther, engaged in the most severe and cruel torture and murder of anyone who disagreed with them but the most vicious of all was Calvin. In Geneva he institutionalized torture and death as a legitimate means to change people’s views and purge the “church” of dissenters.

In addition there are the massive persecutions of Christians, many still ongoing, by Muslims, Chinese Governments, Communists and all sorts of other unbelievers right across the world. Just recently I was shocked to hear that a friend, and former colleague, as well as two women, were brutally killed and mutilated by Satanists in South Africa, making them (as far as I know) the first martyrs to die for the faith in South Africa. It is estimated that today[3], more Christians in the world are being persecuted than are free to worship the true God. A comprehensive Pew Forum study last year found that Christians are persecuted in 131 countries containing 70 percent of the world’s population. Other studies indicate that between 100,000 and 200,000 Christians are being martyred for their faith every year[4] and that around 200 million Christians are denied fundamental human rights because of their faith.

All this should not come as a surprise since the New Testament is replete with statements that persecution would be the norm for Christians. In Jesus’ first mention about the Church he spoke of the war that would be brought against His Church. “…on this rock I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.” (Matthew 16:18). Paul said: “Yes, and all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution.” (2 Timothy 3:12). And Peter said “Beloved, do not think it strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened to you” (1 Peter 4:12).

In spite of the evidence of history and the plain teaching of the Bible, the vast majority of Christians in the so-called “Free World”, still believe that it is the right of Christians to be popular, fairly treated and respected and that a “happy” life should be the norm for believers.

But as I read again about how most true Christians have been mistreated and how they lived as vagabonds and fugitives throughout the last two centuries, I began to think about my own life and how easily I complain about the relatively minor inconveniences and rejection I experience because of the truth. I felt ashamed that I dare complain when thousands, right now, are experiencing the most extreme physical pain, emotional anguish and death for the sake of the Gospel. Who am I to grumble when I am free to come and go, live in relative comfort and enjoy the company of my wife while others are in prison, being tortured and killed?

But I also thought about how easily many stay away from the gathering of believers because it is too hot, too cold, or they are too tired because of watching TV or partying too late on Saturday night. I struggle to reconcile this picture with the one of men and women being torn apart by dogs, their limbs pulled from their bodies on the rack and the smell of burning human flesh on the fires of the persecutors. I struggle to understand how some are unwilling to give up their sinful pleasures when millions have to give up their very lives.

I struggle to understand how the pleasure-centered and self-centered “Christian” of the West can claim to share a common faith with the martyrs. I struggle to understand how preachers who preach a gospel of happiness, prosperity and popularity believe that their message is the same message that was preached by the faithful minority of the last 2,000 years, who like the prophets of old: “…had trial of mockings and scourgings, yes, and of chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, were tempted, were slain with the sword. They wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, tormented – of whom the world was not worthy. They wandered in deserts and mountains, in dens and caves of the earth.” (Hebrews 11:36-38).

Can the faith that results in persecution, torture, and death be the same faith that promises carnal happiness, a new Mercedes and popularity? Can the faith that pursues pleasure, comfort and earthly happiness be the same faith that counts it a privilege to suffer for His name?  Will the hedonist[5] and the martyr share the same heaven?

Anton Bosch
anton@ifcb.net
9070 Sunland Blvd
Sun Valley, CA, 91352
www.antonbosch.org
www.sunvalleycommunity.org
 

[1] David A Plaisted. Estimates of the Number Killed by the Papacy in the Middle Ages and Later. 2006.

[2] E. H. Broadbent. The Pilgrim Church. Gospel Folio Press. Grand Rapids, MI. 1999. p182. 

[3] October 2012

[4] David B. Barrett, Todd M. Johnson, and Peter F. Crossing in their 2009 report in the International Bulletin of Missionary Research (Vol. 33, No. 1: 32) say the figure is about 200,000 per year and rising.

[5] Hedonist = a person whose life is devoted to the pursuit of pleasure and self-gratification.

 

11/7/2012

The Judgment Chronicles

Greetings,

The United Nations organization has been waiting for the leader of Western civilization to emerge from the left wing-right wing political battle that has raged in America this year.  The UN has many pressing economic, political, religious, and military issues before it that are bringing chaos to the global order.  World War III is on the horizon if something is not done to prevent it. 

Obama has been re-elected, the left wing has prevailed.  What does this mean for the New World Order and to those of us who are followers of the Lord Jesus Christ, who look and long for his second coming because we have confessed our sin and trusted in the atoning shed blood of the Savior for our eternal salvation. 

I have been writing for some time now that the Western Roman civilization led by America has been “given up” or given over to divine judgment by the Lord Jesus Christ because of their rejection of him, his coming Kingdom, and his teachings.  This rejection goes back in time to when Christendom was overtaken by false Christian leaders (like Constantine and Augustine) who imagined that the Roman Empire was to be used by God to give Christendom dominion over the nations of the world.  Wars and rumors of war, and many diverse sorrows growing in intensity and frequency have filled the history books ever since this great delusion of dominion filled the hearts of most who professed to be Christians.  The worst is yet to come, as the saying goes.

It will be interesting to see how President Obama deals with his right wing adversaries now that he has defeated them on the political battlefield.  Remember, he is a professing Christian himself, even though it is obvious he has mixed his profession with his childhood Islamic faith.  He, like President Bush before him, continues to expose his ignorance of who Jesus Christ really is when he says Islam is a true religion of peace that lifts up Jesus as a prophet.  But Islam rejects that Jesus is the only begotten Son of God who came to this earth as God in the flesh being both fully God and fully man, and claimed to be the only way to inherit eternal life through his death and resurrection.  This makes Islam a false religion among many that reject the person and teachings of our Lord Jesus Christ.

On our website is posted an article I wrote in 2006 entitled “The Judgment Chronicles” that outlines the coming divine judgments of our Father in Heaven.  Please take the time to read it.  I would appreciate your comments, questions, and yes, even criticisms, so don’t hesitate to send me an email.  The amazing political-religious-economic events taking place in America, Israel, and the Islamic nations, are causing great perplexity for the leaders of the United Nations organization.  As I said, the fear of a nuclear World War III is paralyzing the minds of men as Iran’s leaders continue to declare that Israel will soon be wiped off the map.

Those who know and trust in our Lord Jesus understand these things must come to pass, just as the Lord said when he was here the first time to offer all men forgiveness of sin and entrance into his coming Kingdom by his shed blood.  Remember, it is Satan and his fallen angels who have temporarily been given by God dominion over all nations and kingdoms until the second coming of Jesus Christ.  It is these evil ones who are stoking the fears, lusts, and hatred in men who reject the wholesome teachings of our Lord as they work to set the stage for their false Messiah, known as the Antichrist.  Jesus Christ will, at his coming, chain these fallen angels in the Bottomless Pit for 1000 years when he sets up his millennial Kingdom on this earth.

Your eternal friend,

Jack

 

10/29/2012

Mormon Plan For America

Greetings friends and family,

I am forwarding this very interesting article I received concerning Mormonism and their prophetic understanding of the last days and how the “Kingdom of God” would be established upon the earth.  Some of you have suggested to me that I have gone overboard with all of this “last days” prophecy stuff.  But today every one of us is being encouraged to help elect Mitt Romney who is a priest in the Mormon cult whose very name is “Latter Day Saints”. 

I understand that because of your fear and dislike of Obama and his links to Islam, socialism, even communism, you have been reduced to a choice between “the lesser of two evils” as the saying goes.  Some of you don’t even see the religious views of Romney as evil.  But isn’t this a false choice?  Are we as Christians forgetting that our Lord Jesus Christ has risen bodily from the dead and called us to be loyal citizens of Heaven, to then be sent to the war-torn nations as Ambassadors of the coming Kingdom of Heaven?

Once again I am compelled to remind you that all nations are under the domain of Satan and his fallen angels until the second coming of Jesus.  This is a truth you must understand in order to see the role of America as Babylon the Great.  God’s wrath is coming upon Great Babylon and all the nations under its wing.  But our Lord has provided through his spotless shed blood for our sin the only way of escape from the wrath of God which is coming upon the nations.  It is through Godly sorrow for our sin against God that generates true repentance and salvation from our sin nature that thrives on the pride of life, and the love of money and ourselves.

Our Lord Jesus Christ taught his apostles and disciples (and us) that the last days would see a tremendous rise in false prophets and false Christs.  Catholicism and Mormonism are part of this prophecy’s fulfillment.  We need to examine ourselves by the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit to see if we truly love this American political system more than we love the souls of Muslims, Mormons, Catholics, and yes even Communists. 

I am still stung by the fact that Jesus showed his love for me on the cross, while I was yet a wretched sinner condemned to Hell.  Aren’t we as his followers to look upon all those still bound by sin and religious deception the same as he did and still does?

Your eternal friend,

Jack

 

—————————————————————-

This was written several years ago, but is even more important for TODAY.

Title:  Republican Mitt Romney and the “Mormon Plan for America”

Subtitle: Before anyone supports Mormon Mitt Romney for President, they need to know the extremely unique Mormon “End of the Age” viewpoint and especially the “White Horse Prophecy”!

Once properly understood, you will realize that no genuine Christian could ever support Mitt Romney for President.

Guest Column by William Schnoebelen – Former Satanist, Mason, and Mormon He’s for real!

The New World Order is coming! Are you ready? Once you understand what this New World Order really is, and how it is being gradually implemented, you will be able to see it progressing in your daily news!!

.

By William Schnoebelen

I spent five years in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS or Mormons). During that time I was highly active in church functions and priesthood offices. I held a “temple recommend” and went to the temple many times. This was from 1980-1985.

During this time, I developed friendships with many LDS people. Mitt Romney, like most of the people I met, is a fine, upstanding man of apparently sterling character. If his religious faith is not taken into account, Mr. Romney is probably better qualified than most other presidential candidates in this election cycle, from whatever party.

However, with the LDS church, things are never as they seem. When I was in the church, we were taught many things about the “Mormon Plan for America”. These were doctrines that were not so much widely discussed outside the Church, because they were somewhat radical or even revolutionary in nature.

At the time, I was a member of what was called The Freeman Institute. This was a group founded by BYU Professor and FBI Agent W. Cleon Skousen. This was not an officially recognized LDS group, but rather a quasi-political body of deeply conservative stripe. Skousen’s name is well known among 20th century right wingers. His conservative credentials are impeccable and he is the author of several highly regarded books, including THE NAKED CAPITALIST and THE NAKED COMMUNIST. He is well-known among groups such as the John Birch Society.

However, the name of the group “Freeman” comes from The Book of Mormon, of the three “standard works” of the LDS faith beyond the Bible.(1) There is a passage in the book of Alma (one of the “books” in the Book of Mormon) (2):

And those who were desirous that Pahoran should remain chief judge over the land
took upon them the name of freemen; and thus was the division among them, for the
freemen had sworn or covenanted to maintain their rights and the privileges of their
religion by a free government. Alma 51: 6-7

Now, there is nothing particularly sinister about that passage, except for the fact that it illustrates how strongly the Institute allied itself with Book of Mormon teaching. This should be disturbing to Christians. Because of this, in the later years the organization changed its name to the National Center for Constitutional Studies.

However, even that name has Mormon doctrinal implications. Mormonism is a uniquely American religion, embodying as it does many of the virtues of the frontier United States: self-reliance, individuality, and high expectations of morality.

One of its more unique doctrines in this regard is their belief that the US Constitution is a divinely inspired document. They view it in virtually the same way they view the Bible or the Book of Mormon or other standard works of their church. Thus, the National Center for Constitutional Studies has – as its underpinning – the idea that the document they are studying is virtually holy writ.

Skousen, like most knowledgeable Mormons, believed this doctrine and viewed with grave suspicions the rise of Supreme Court decisions which seemed to chip away at a strict interpretation of the Constitution. This would be much like Christians who have little patience with liberal theologians who interpret the Bible very loosely and do not regard it as the very Word of God.

This would put most Mormons on the same page politically as the conservative wing of the Republican party. This is why many conservative Americans see Romney as a viable alternative to Rudy Guiliani, who has many socially liberal views and a somewhat less than perfect marital background. Romney, of course, has the “perfect” Mormon marriage. He has been married to the same woman for many years and does not cuss, drink or smoke or even drink coffee or tea. He is also an incredibly successful executive in the private sector – having managed to saved the troubled Salt Lake Olympics and then successfully govern the state of Massachusetts.

At this point, many would say: so what is the problem?

The difficulty is this: Mormonism has a unique view of itself in American history. This is not like the “Catholic issue” when John Kennedy was running for president in 1960. Kennedy was able to look the press straight in the eye and tell them that if he were elected president, he would not be allowing the pope or his archbishop in Boston to dictate how he would run the country. That satisfied the press and pretty much quelled the Catholic issue. There was hardly a peep during the 2004 election about John Kerry’s Catholicism (unfortunately!).

But Mormonism is different, and Mitt Romney’s roots run deep into the LDS religion. It could be argued that Kennedy was a lousy Catholic. Both he and his father Joseph Kennedy were notorious philanderers and adulterers. But Romney takes his faith very, very seriously.

Like his father, George Romney — who ran unsuccessfully for president a generation ago (1968) — Mitt is a high priest in the Church priesthood hierarchy. What cost George Romney the candidacy was the LDS Church’s stand on race. Until 1978, the LDS Church taught that black people were “loathsome, filthy and lazy” (Mormon leaders’ words, NOT mine) and that no black could ever hold the priesthood until all white men had received it. But, in 1978, the Church received a “revelation” changing that teaching. However, young Mitt Romney grew up believing this loathsome doctrine about blacks! That belief alone might be cause for concern.

(It should be explained that Mormonism has a somewhat odd and complicated hierarchy for its priesthood. Unlike virtually every other religion, virtually all adult males in Mormonism are “priests.” In fact, at the age of 18, most “worthy”(3) Mormon young men are ordained elders. There are two priesthoods, the Aaronic, which is for boys under eighteen that includes deacon, teacher and priest. After 18, a worthy young man is ordained into the higher or Melchizedek priesthood. The offices here are Elder, Seventy and High Priest. Additionally, some elders are called to lead a ward [local LDS congregation) and they are ordained high priests [if not one already] and made bishops.)

As can be seen from the above explanation, Romney has risen to the highest levels of “local priesthood” power. He also served a 30 month stint as an LDS missionary, which is the “gold standard” for LDS young men. A successfully returned LDS missionary is the Mormon equivalent of a Congressional Medal of Honor winner.

In preparation for going on his mission, Mitt Romney would have had to “take out his endowments” in the LDS temple. While it is much too complicated to explain all that entails, (4) suffice it to say that it involves much ritual and ritual drama that teaches certain “sacred” things to worthy LDS that “gentiles” (non-Mormons) are never supposed to know. These include tokens and words which permit them to enter the highest degree of heaven. (5)

They also include what were (in the time when Mr. Romney first took them) dire blood oaths to observe certain secret “Laws” unknown to outsiders. These oaths were changed about 15 years ago and rendered less objectionable, partially in response to videos like THE GOD MAKERS (6) and our MORMONISM’S TEMPLE OF DOOM.

It is these oaths that are the problem for a Mormon President. There are several of these oaths, but the one of them that most concerns us is the oath of “Obedience to the Law of Sacrifice.” This is one all faithful temple Mormons have sworn. In part it says… (7)

“As Jesus Christ has laid down his life for the redemption of mankind, so we should covenant to sacrifice all that we [I] possess, even our [my] own lives [life] if necessary, in sustaining and defending the Kingdom of God.”

The key point to understand is that to a Mormon, the term “Kingdom of God” means the LDS Church. There is no difference. This oath involved a penalty which was demonstrated thus: (8)

“…by placing the thumb under the left ear, the palm of the hand down, and by drawing the thumb quickly across the throat to the right ear, and dropping the hand to the side.”

This is called a penal sign, meaning it symbolizes the penalty for violating the oath. In simpler terms, this is a symbolic gesture for slitting your throat! It is also virtually identical to the penalty for the First Degree of Blue Lodge Freemasonry.

This is not surprising because Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, put together the temple ritual very soon after he, himself, was brought through the Blue Lodge Masonic degrees. The resemblance between the temple rituals and the Masonic rites is so striking that for many years the Grand Lodge of Utah (Freemasons) regarded the LDS church as a clandestine Lodge (that is, a fake Masonic lodge operating without proper warrant).

In fact, the first five prophets (leaders of the whole church) were Freemasons! So this resemblance is perfectly understandable. However, it gets worse.

This “Kingdom of God” is believed by devout Mormons to be a theocratic kingdom run by the Prophet from Salt Lake City. They believe that ultimately they will head up a one-world benevolent dictatorship (or kingdom) run by the LDS Prophet. This will not only be a religious and political kingdom, but it will also be an economic kingdom.

It is not well-known that LDS church leaders (9) are chosen from among hereditary LDS families (like Romney’s) who are captains of industry and wealthy, self-made executives of extraordinary capitalistic skill. Most are millionaires before they even assume their callings. Because of this, the LDS church leadership has demonstrated remarkable skill in building an economic empire out of their small beginnings.

Today, the LDS church is probably the richest church – per capita – in the world. Of course, the Roman church is much wealthier, but it has had 1700 years to amass its capital and has more than a billion members. The Mormons have only been around about 176 years and have only one percent of the members of the Roman church. Yet they would be in the top fifty of Fortune 500 companies if they were categorized as a business.

Part of the strategy of the LDS leadership is to invest in very powerful and influential holdings. Unlike most churches, they own TV stations (local network affiliates). They own power companies. Most worrisome of all, they have made a concerted effort to buy up thousands of acres of farmland, orchards, etc. under their many “dummy companies.”

Part of the reason the Mormons are doing this, is because their peculiar view of the end-times. Here is where Mitt Romney (or someone very much like him) comes in.

Two separate Mormon prophecies impact this scenario. The first is a belief taught by many LDS leaders – including Brigham Young – that a time would come when the US Constitution would “hang by a thread” and that the elders of Israel (meaning the LDS leadership) would come in and save the day. (10)

Many LDS (and indeed many conservative Americans) believe that today the Constitution is indeed in peril, whether it is from the encroachments on civil liberties from the Homeland Security people OR from groups like the ACLU who seem determined to move through liberal courts to virtually outlaw religion (and especially Christianity) from the public square and public discourse.

How the “elders” would save the Constitution is not entirely clear, but it is presumed that there would be a restoration of the Kingdom of God (LDS church) over the whole nation and that the United Order (11) would be restored by a benevolent LDS Prophet who was also priest and king over America.

Not many Americans know that LDS founder Joseph Smith had himself crowned king over America (soon before he was shot at the Carthage jail by a mob). It is believed that all LDS prophets since him believe themselves to be sovereigns as well.

Believe it or not, Smith established a highly secret “Council of Fifty” which was called the “Council of Ytfif” to outsiders (fifty spelled backwards). With these fifty men, some of whom were not even LDS, he intended to set up the foundations for a secret government of the United States with himself as its head. Ironically enough, one of the LDS splinter groups which broke away from Brigham Young after Smith’s assassination established a similar council in rural Wisconsin. They called it “The Illuminati!”

The other prophecy is even more controversial. It is known as the “White Horse Prophecy” or the prophecy of the “One mighty and strong.” Now, this is not public, formal LDS doctrine, but it was taught by many leaders of the Church and is still taught today. It is said by LDS leadership that when the Constitution is in dire peril, one will come who is mighty and strong. He will come riding (figuratively perhaps) on a white horse and will wield awesome political and spiritual power.

This mysterious priesthood elder would somehow seize control of the US government to prevent the total abrogation of the Constitution. He would assume total power and create an LDS “Kingdom” in America. At that time, this “one mighty and strong” would be proclaimed the new “Prophet “ (First President) of the LDS church and would also be president of the United States. Thus, he would wield both supreme political power of the most powerful nation on earth and also be the “Prophet, Seer and Revelator” (12) of the LDS Church.

At the same time, through the vast corporate and agricultural holdings of the LDS Church (through its various subsidiaries), he would have the power to either feed the world or with-hold food from the world. The implication is that getting food would be dependent on being obedient to the United Order.

Now, to a Bible-believer, all of this sounds chillingly like the description of the “man of sin” (2 Thess. 2:3) or the Anti-Christ. He will be a great political leader (Rev. 13:2) but with a religious component (Rev. 13:4). He will control commerce and especially food distribution (Rev. 13:17). But most Mormons do not see that connection. They believe he will be a mighty spiritual and political leader who will save the USA from destruction and ultimately bring peace to the world.

Now, many might say: this is fanciful or alarmist talk. No one could really do such a thing in this day and age! And Mitt Romney – he is such a nice, upstanding fellow! However, look at how many of our God-given liberties have been chipped away at by that “nice fellow,” George W. Bush, in the last few years. Our nation has been changed dramatically because of one man at the helm.

Please understand, we are not saying Mr. Romney is even consciously aware of all this. He is probably not running for president because he thinks he can become a super-Mormon dictator. He is just doing it for his country because he believes he is the best man do the job. That is how Mormons are trained to think – that they can be the very best and usually ARE the very best.

But remember, this guy has the LDS teachings hard-wired into his very DNA. He is the great-grandson of LDS polygamists from a Mormon colony in Mexico, Gaskell Romney and Anna Amelia Pratt. There is a very real spiritual bondage there.

On top of this, the temple oaths and obligations Romney has taken make his first allegiance to the LDS “Kingdom of God.” In the part of the temple rite called the “Law of Consecration,” he swore as follows: (13)

You and each of you covenant and promise before God, angels, and these witnesses at this altar, that you do accept the Law of Consecration as contained in the Doctrine and Covenants, in that you do consecrate yourselves, your time, talents, and everything with which the Lord has blessed you, or with which he may bless you, to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, for the building up of the Kingdom of God on the earth and for the establishment of Zion.

Thus, he MUST do everything he can to bring about the Kingdom of God on earth and the “establishment of Zion” – which is the political form of the Kingdom. You must also realize that Mormons have been positioning themselves in government for decades. A disproportionate number of FBI agents, CIA agents, State Department people and other government officials are loyal LDS. At one time, three of the Joint Chiefs of Staff were loyal Mormons.

Whether or not any of this actually happens in this way is obviously up to the LORD, and to his prophecies concerning Anti-Christ.. But well-trained temple Mormons believe it is literally their manifest destiny to rescue the United States and bring about the Kingdom of God on earth, with their prophet as its head.

We will end with one final eerie note which I cannot prove, but which I will share. When I was a temple Mormon and doing temple work in the Washington DC temple in Silver Springs, Maryland [c. 1983], I had a conversation with a fellow LDS priesthood holder. He was a member of the US Treasury department and a Secret Service agent.

He was obviously very proud of the temple, which was indeed an awesome 20 million dollar structure (in 1970 dollars!) of white, glistening marble. He shared with me that very few knew what was on the fifth floor of the temple. I asked him what was up there, because even worthy temple LDS were not allowed on that floor.

He told me that there was a council room up there which was an exact replica of the Oval Office of the White House. He told me they even had all the radio and telemetry equipment in place, hidden beneath a dome on top of the temple. He said that from this council room, the prophet could run the nation just as easily as he could from the White House itself. He also claimed that these electronic devices on the roof were so strong that airlines had to avoid flying right over the temple or their instruments might be thrown off.

I cannot vouch for the truthfulness of this story. But Mormons normally do not lie, and this man seemed genuinely proud of this achievement – the setting up of a shadow “White House” within the confines of one of Mormonism’s holiest sanctuaries.

I share this partly because it illustrates what LDS truly believe to be the destiny of their religion in this land. Just the very fact that this priesthood holder chose to share this story says volumes about the LDS view of their destiny. Whether the story is accurate or not, it shows that this man, who was in charge of protecting our president, believed that Mormons would one day rule the US (and thence the world) from the Washington temple.

Right now, many of them believe Mitt Romney is their best and brightest hope for achieving that end. Would you really want a man in the White House who honestly believes he can become a god?? (14)

Please bear that in mind when you go to cast your vote.

Footnotes

1 These are extra-Biblical books which are – of course – spurious by orthodox Christian standards. They are: The Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants and the Pearl of Great Price.

2 The Book of Mormon has “books” in it, just as the Bible has the “book” of Genesis or Matthew. The names however, are quite strange to the Christian ear. One of the books is even called Ether.

3 “Worthy” means keeping faithfully to all the teachings of the Church, keeping the Word of Wisdom, which is a command to abstain from alcohol, tobacco, coffee and tea and also to be morally pure – no premarital sex and no masturbation and of course no homosexuality.

4 For more on the temple, see our ground-breaking book, MORMONISM’S TEMPLE OF DOOM (1987) by William Schnoebelen and James R. Spencer.

5 Mormons are taught that there are three degrees of heaven. First is the Telestial Kingdom, where spiritual slackers of all kinds go. It resembles earth as it is right now, in its fallen state. Then there is the Terrestrial Kingdom, where good people of all faiths go and also where mediocre Mormons go. It is like the Garden of Eden, a perfect world. Finally, there is the Celestial Kingdom, where Mormons who are true and faithful to all their covenants will enter into the presence of Heavenly Father and ultimately become gods and goddesses of their own planets and have an “eternal increase of seed” – meaning having billions of spirit babies with which to populate their planet. It is the lofty goal of every devout Mormon to achieve the third Kingdom and become a god.

6 By Ed Decker and Dave Hunt, Harvest House, 1984.

7 Www.saintsalive.com/mormonism/temple_ritual.htm

8 Ibid.

9 This higher level of the hierarchy is referred to as General Authorities and would be roughly analogous to the College of Cardinals in Catholicism.

10 See Journal of Discourses, vol. 7 p. 15.

11 The United Order was a socialistic economic system instituted by Joseph Smith in which every member of the LDS church would contribute their property and money to a common fund (the “bishop’s warehouse”) and that it would then be disbursed by the Brethren to members as needed. It did not work very well and ended up being abandoned “because of the sinfulness of the people.” But LDS believe it will be restored in the end times by the prophet. The United Order would also include Plural Marriage (polygamy) and Blood Atonement – the LDS doctrine that certain sins cannot be atoned for by the blood of Jesus, but only by the spilling of the blood of the sinner on the ground.

12 This is one of the official titles of the First President of the Mormon Church.

13 Ibid., temple ritual.

14 LDS are actually taught that if they are true and faithful they will become gods and goddesses. A popular LDS motto is: “As man is, God once was. As God is, man may become.”

 

10/23/2012

Revolution in the Arab world: What is the meaning of this?

Dear David and friends,

Thanks again, my Vietnam veteran brother, for keeping me updated on what you’re reading, experiencing, and praying about.  I agree that it is quite amazing what we are witnessing in the Arab/Moslem world.  I have some questions for all of you that have been burning in my soul for several weeks now.  I am seeking the wisdom and guidance from our Lord as well, for these events seem to be causing much confusion among Christians.  It has very much to do with your email, David, when you asked “why there is so much turmoil in the Arab world”. 

And these are my questions:  Are Satan and his fallen angels, who created Islam centuries ago with such hate-filled war-like doctrines, now moving/manipulating these same fanatics to be freedom loving human beings who desire “peace and security” for themselves and their families, as they grow tired of dictators and life-sucking religious Imams and Mullahs? 

Doesn’t Satan have to work through the free-will agency of men just as God set up for himself?  Does this change in Islamic attitudes and behavior signal or point to a possible Peace Covenant with Israel and her Western ally, the United States, which inaugurates the coming of the Antichrist?  Or will there first be another major Arab/Israeli war ending with a significant victory for Israel that even enlarges the territory belonging to Israel?  If so, will that, once and for all, convince the Mullahs and Imams of Islam to change their tactics and make a counterfeit Peace Covenant with the Jewish state? 

In any case, all of this turmoil indeed signals the coming again of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, and for that I give our God praise as we continue to trust his shed blood and the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit for our very lives.

Your brother in Jesus,

Jack

http://www.babylonthegreatisfalling.net

 

07.13.2022

The Manifest Destiny of Russia and America

**After reading this letter please “forward” it to your family and friends who you think might be interested.**

Greetings friends and family,

I am including in this letter an article I found in “The Moscow Times” of all places.  I do not know, nor have I ever met the author.  The information found in Paul Ladouceur’s eye-opening article will not make for “breaking news” on Fox News or CNN, but I assure you that what he has to say about the history of the Russian people, President Putin, and the Russian Orthodox Church will reveal a lot to you about what is happening in this crazy almost insane world of religion and politics. 

The fallen angels under Satan who rule all the nations have created this craziness as they hate all men and women, and the God of Israel who created everything.  They want to kill as many people as they can before our Lord Jesus returns to imprison them in the Bottomless Pit.

When I first studied and learned about the term “Manifest Destiny” years ago the information mostly related to America’s place in Biblical prophecy.  Most American Christians today are unaware that the Christian colonists coming from Europe hundreds of years ago believed in the false teaching of post-millennialism where the bodily return of our Lord Jesus Christ couldn’t happen until Christendom and its government subdued and took control of all nations.  Many early Americans believed and taught that America was called and chosen by God to establish his Kingdom in all nations and then Jesus could come.  It was their “Manifest Destiny”.

Paul’s article clearly reveals that Russia shares a very similar “Manifest Destiny” belief as America.  In my last letter sent out to you I emphasized how the Jewish prophet, Daniel, was given by God visions of the last days on this war-torn planet.  He saw two “little horns” or nations that will compete for world empire or dominion among men.  Those two nations Daniel saw were America (Daniel 7:8, 9:27) and Russia (Daniel 8: 9,23, 11:40-45).

Today in Ukraine these two nations are bringing us all to the brink of a nuclear World War III all in the name of Jesus, believe it or not!  However, events will take place so that instead of destroying the planet with fallout, America and Russia will make peace and the world will rejoice.  Daniel saw this!  The American and Russian Presidents, the Pope of Roman Catholicism, and the Patriarch of the Orthodox Church will proudly declare the long-awaited Kingdom of Christendom has now begun, the Church has been reunited. The Jews of Israel, Jerusalem, and their desired Temple will be center stage in those days.

All of this means that Christians in America will have to first remove the Godless immoral forces (World Economic Forum) that have dominated this last generation.  It amazes me that America today has become what it once despised and fought against, and Russia is returning to its Christian roots and now able to powerfully reinsert itself among the nations.

If you read Paul’s article you saw how he stated that Russia’s coming together of the Orthodox Church and the Government will not bring Godliness, but the rise of antichrists.  He is right and the same will happen in America.  Can you now see that both America and Russia and their false militant forms of Christendom will only lead to the rise of the coming Antichrist?  How blinded these men are and how desperately they need to repent and be born again.  Our Lord Jesus said that in the last days “many will come in my name, saying I am Christ; and shall deceive many”, Matthew 24:5.  Russia and America are both following what the Bible calls the “great harlot” of Revelation 17, a false and counterfeit Christian system.  The New Testament is filled with warnings not to follow false teachers who profess “another Jesus, another gospel”, 2 Corinthians 11:1-15.

Please visit our website and send an email.  Thank you for reading this and I hope to hear from you soon.  Again, if you are interested in the questions above, please consider reading the articles “Then Comes the Fire”, “The Judgment Chronicles” and “The Fundamentalist” posted on our website.  For details concerning my military background during the Vietnam era, please read the articles “Vietnam: The Manchu’s of Charlie Company”, “Pacifist, Patriot, or Pilgrim” and “Moved with Compassion”.  Just click on the website link below and click on “Articles”.

Sincerely,

Jack

Babylon the Great is Falling
http://www.babylonthegreatisfalling.net

Orthodoxy and Russia’s Manifest Destiny

Russky mir is Russia’s new version of manifest destiny.

By Paul Ladouceur

Several times Russian church and state leaders have been enraptured by the idea that the Russian people and its political expression have a special mission or “manifest destiny” to accomplish. Successive iterations of this “Russian idea” reflect a growing convergence of religion, ethnicity, and nationalism with state power into an explosive secular ideology bent on imposing its worldview within Russia, surrounding countries, the Orthodox Church, and worldwide.

The first iteration became prominent after the union Council of Ferrera between the Roman and the Orthodox Churches in 1439 and the fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453. These two events precipitated the emergence of a sense of the role and responsibility of Muscovy as the spiritual and geo-political center of Orthodoxy, captured in the epithet the “Third Rome”: the first Rome had fallen into heresy and schism with the filioque and the papacy; Constantinople, the Second Rome, deviated from Orthodoxy by union with Latins and came under Turkish rule as a divine punishment, thereby losing its claim to pre-eminence in Orthodoxy. Muscovy, having rejected the union with Rome and freed itself from the Mongols, thus became the Third Rome of Christendom. The self-proclamation of the autocephaly of the Russian Church in 1448 and the election of the first patriarch of Moscow in 1589 reinforced the Third Rome theory.

Although the idea of Muscovy as the Third Rome was not a dominant theme in subsequent centuries, it still featured in more traditionalist Russian circles; the Russian Church emphasized the universal nature of the Church over its particular ethnic or national expressions. But the rise of nationalism in the 19th century assaulted this universalist perspective, and the idea of a messianic role for Russia and the Russian Church resurfaced dramatically, captured in the epithet “Holy Russia”: the divinely-endowed destiny of Russia founded on the preservation and expansion of Orthodoxy, under the guidance of the twin institutions, the monarchy and the Russian Orthodox Church.

In this vision, the tsar was expected to be “an apostle-like ruler,” with St. Vladimir as the prototype, leading his people to Christianity. This required the Church to support autocracy, which it did faithfully until the revolution. The Holy Russia theme was marked by key public events manifesting the union of ruler, church, and people: the 900th anniversary of the baptism of Rus, celebrated in Kyiv in 1888; the 500th anniversary of the death of St. Sergius in 1892; the canonization of St. Seraphim of Sarov in 1903.

A more political variation of the Holy Russia theme was the imperial motto “Orthodoxy, Autocracy and Nationality,“ and its later mutation “Faith, Tsar and Fatherland.” These socio-political motifs marked a departure from ecclesiological universalism, towards an identification of Orthodoxy with Russian nationalism and the imperial state, an “Orthodox patriotism,” seen as an alternative to modern secular nationalism.

The third manifestation, perhaps surprisingly, was the communist vision of an ideal socialist society. As an atheistic philosophy, communism might appear far removed from the religious and Orthodox content of the Third Rome and Holy Russia, but communism is often considered a secular, atheistic religion, with its inspired founders, sacred books, saints worthy of veneration, and rituals; an abstract “humanity” compensated for the previous theistic content of the Russian idea.

Russian Marxists saw their mission in much the same way as their Orthodox predecessors: to imbue all Russian society with their socio-political vision, and, beyond Russia itself, to neighboring lands, beginning with those which were part of the Russian Empire in 1914. The Red Army imposed Bolshevik rule throughout the collapsed Empire; forcible reinsertion into the Soviet Union was successful in Ukraine, Belorussia, Georgia, Central Asia, and Siberia (but failed in Finland and the Baltic States).

In the interwar period, the universal application of Marxist philosophy was visible in the activities of the Communist International (Comintern or Third International), established to promote world communism, headed by the Soviet Union.

After nearly collapsing from the assault of Hitler’s armies in the opening phase during World War II, the Soviet Union gained the upper hand on the battlefield as the Red Army marched through territories initially conquered by the Germans, then into neighboring countries to the West, all the way to Berlin, allowing the Soviets to impose communist-led governments throughout Eastern Europe—only Finland escaped. Flushed with its military, geopolitical and diplomatic successes in the war and immediately afterwards, the Soviet Union attempted to extend its tentacles even further, into Western Europe (where it was stopped by the formation of NATO), Latin America, and Africa, with some success.

This dismal history highlights Russian-dominated communist universalist ideology as a secular variation of the “Russian idea,” that the Russian people and its political expression have a special mission to bring their vision of the future of humanity to the entire world. Here, this mission is not divinely-ordained, but self-appointed, at best dictated by an imperative arising from humanity itself – however inhuman its actual implementation was.

The downfall of communism and the dissolution of the Soviet Union left an existential and ideological void: Russia no longer had a self-identity, a national purpose, an imperative world role. It was in this void that the “Russian idea” resurfaced in its earlier theistic and specifically Orthodox iterations of the Third Rome and Holy Russia. The Russky mir (Russian world) ideology, articulated by senior church officials, aims at extending the worldwide influence of both Russia and the Russian Orthodox Church. The contours of the Russky mir doctrine were spelled out in an address by Patriarch Kirill on 3 November 2009 at the Third Assembly of the Russkii Mir Foundation; Kirill mentioned God only three times and Christ not at all, while repeating 38 times the phrase Russky mir. The contours of Russky mir ideology and its theological weaknesses are well known.

But there are important nuances among these iterations, the acquisition of increasingly dangerous mutations, especially with the expansion of state power. The Third Rome concept was largely ecclesial, and only loosely connected with the pre-modern state. The Holy Russia concept had a more political connotation, a unity of church and state to promote internal cohesion in an increasingly fragmented and restless empire, in a desperate attempt to hold back the forces of modernity; still, the notion was basically inward-looking. Although Holy Russia retained a powerful religious component, nationalism and autocracy were equally prominent ideological features.

Under the Russky mir banner, Putin and Kirill are instilling into the Russian soul anti-Christian values far more successfully than Lenin and Stalin ever did, the cultivation of profound hatred, aggressiveness and violence against all enemies — those who refuse to submit to the personal and geopolitical ambitions of the Russian State and Church.

The communist version of a special Russian mission stripped away its previously religious content, replacing it with secular, atheistic and humanist philosophy. The full force of this universalist philosophy was felt after World War II, as the Soviet Union expanded its power and control over the lands newly-incorporated into the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and worldwide.

The notion of a divinely-appointed mission of the Russian people and the Russian State is thus deeply engrained in Russian consciousness, and it did not require much effort on the part of Patriarch Kirill and Vladimir Putin to re-awaken it in support of the ambition of the Russian Church to dominate world Orthodoxy, and of Vladimir Putin’s personal and geopolitical ambitions, especially the restoration of Russia’s territorial limits to those of the former Soviet Union. In practice in official state discourse, the religious component of Russky mir is decidedly secondary, far behind naked Russian nationalism and expansionism.

In this final mutation of the Russian idea, its promoters have learned from the Bolshevik consolidation of power after the Revolution and from World War II that persuasion and propaganda are of little use in spreading their ideas and ideology, that the only truly effective way is the use of force, brute, unrestrained military force.

Under the Russky mir banner, Putin and Kirill are instilling into the Russian soul anti-Christian values far more successfully than Lenin and Stalin ever did, the cultivation of profound hatred, aggressiveness and violence against all enemies — those who refuse to submit to the personal and geopolitical ambitions of the Russian State and Church. Whether Russia or Ukraine “wins” the war, one thing is certain: Putin and Kirill are fostering something very ugly in the Russian spirit, a spirit of ethno-nationalist hostility, aggressiveness, and violence, transparent under a thin veneer of Orthodoxy. Relaying aggressive state propaganda has replaced the Gospel as the prime message of the Russian Church. Even after Putin and Kirill are gone, Orthodoxy and the world will likely have to deal with this ugliness for long decades.

The temptation to nationalism, especially ethno-nationalism, is a persisting canker in the Orthodox Church. The Orthodox Church has a long way to go to recognize and to eliminate the evil of ethno-nationalism in its midst.

In the mid-19th century, popular imagination in the United States was captivated by the idea that it was American manifest destiny to expand westward across the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains, to the Pacific. Russky mir is Russia’s manifest destiny with its call to Russian domination under president and patriarch in Orthodoxy, Europe and the world, the latest and least Christian iteration of the “Russian idea.” Ukraine is the first major victim of this manifest destiny.

This article was originally published in Public Orthodoxy.

The views expressed in opinion pieces do not necessarily reflect the position of The Moscow Times.

Paul Ladouceur

Paul Ladouceur is Adjunct Professor, Orthodox School of Theology at Trinity College (University of Toronto) and Professeur associé, Faculté de théologie et de sciences religieuses, Université Laval (Québec).