THE POWER OF
SELF-SACRIFICE:
TAKING UP YOUR CROSS
AND FOLLOWING HIM

Prophecy is like a road sign saying: "Slow down, sharp right hand turn ahead!" But if we fail to heed the sign, if we fail to slow down before we get to the turn, it will be too late to brake once we finally get there, and we will surely slide off the road and crash. Like a road sign, prophecy tells us things before they happen so that we can take evasive action before events catch up with us. If we wait until they finally overtake us, it will be too late to do anything - we will crash! Watch, therefore, for the "signs of the times," and don't wait to take action. You may wait too long! Jesus said, "... When it is evening, ye say, It will be fair weather: for the sky is red. And in the morning, it will be foul weather today: for the sky is red and lowering. O ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky; but can ye not discern the signs of the times?" (Matt. 16:2-3) And Paul warns us, "But ye, brethren, are not in darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief. Ye are all the children of light, and the children of the day: we are not of the night, nor of darkness. Therefore let us not sleep, as do others; but let us watch and be sober." (I Thess. 5:4-6)

INTRODUCTION

A dear brother told me recently,

"Steve, people really don't like you very much. They think you're cold and callous; that you're an 'unloving person'; that you're harsh, acrimonious, bad tempered, and brusque; and when the dear wives see you coming, they scurry to hide their husbands from you out of fear that you will 'steal them away' and involve them in one of your 'schemes' that will cost them their 'nests' and disturb the 'smooth functioning' of their families and their lives."

But these kinds of charges are nothing new to me. It's true - I don't seem to engender "warm," "fuzzy" feelings, and those who would like to throw a rock at me have to take a number and get in line. The fact is, it's a very difficult thing today for people to speak honestly and frankly on a subject that others find "uncomfortable" or controversial without being labeled "pompous" and "arrogant" - and this is certainly what happened to me in connection with my last article, "Re-thinking Our Mission: How Shall We Organize To Resist?"

It appears that many of our readers thought that the tone of my article was too "unyielding" and "inflexible" with regard to the ministry's move to Canada, and that I did not properly take into account what God might be telling others to do on the same subject - like staying in the U.S. and "taking a stand here;" or that I did not suitably empathize with the difficulties that some would face in making such a move.

"Pompous," "arrogant," "egotistical," "overbearing" - these are but a few of the descriptions that have been hung around my neck. It seems that being direct with people is considered to be impolite and ill-mannered. Don't back people into a corner; don't hurt their feelings; don't offend others by trying to push your convictions on them. Be "tolerant" and "civil" in everything you say and do - and, God forbid, if you do decide to make a direct statement on an "uncomfortable" or controversial subject, be sure to precede your statement with "weasel words" like, "I think," or "It's my opinion," and then - when you're finished - be sure to ask those who have been listening to you, "What's your opinion?"

EVERYBODY HAS A PIECE OF THE TRUTH

That's the "likable" thing to do; after all, nobody has a corner on the truth - and if we just listen to others, and if we are willing to "communicate across our disagreements" and "find common ground" then everything will work out. Typical of this kind of FEEBLE-MINDED thinking (OOPS, there I go again) is a letter I received several years ago from one of our readers who wrote to me in reaction to another one of my more intemperate and unrestrained articles, "Capitalism and Christianity."

The article dealt with the "deceitfulness of riches" (cf., Matt. 13:22), and the reader - who was evidently quite wealthy - was deeply offended by what I had said, and wrote to me in an attempt to "moderate" my views:

"While the content of the article is largely true, I found it interesting that you used, as support, references from the Bible - in particular one that is commonly read as "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven." My understanding is that the original Greek read "... for a tax collector..." rather than "... for a rich man..." and that the prevalent interpretation was introduced into the King James translation because of the effects that were becoming evident on the tax revenues flowing to the crown.

"While I am unsure as to the original, untranslated content of your other supporting scriptures, it seems to me that perhaps in the case of this particular verse, it is not altogether solid in its support of your stance. Thoughts on your part? THEY ARE WELCOME SO LONG AS THEY ARE POLITE AND RESPECTFUL."

BE POLITE AND RESPECTFUL?

Wow! I must tell you, this kind of wimpy, mealy-mouthed person makes me want to vomit! Be polite? Be respectful? Of what? - of this form of absurd, "limp-wristed" thinking? Is this what Jesus was doing when He said to the Pharisees and scribes (i.e., the "Religious Establishment" of His day):

"Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, HYPOCRITES! For you build the tombs of the prophets and adorn the monuments of the righteous,

and say, 'If we had been {living} in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partners with them in {shedding} the blood of the prophets.'

"Consequently you bear witness against yourselves, that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets.

"Fill up then the measure {of the guilt} of your fathers.

"You SERPENTS, you BROOD OF VIPERS, how shall you escape the SENTENCE OF HELL? (Matt. 23:29-33)

Where is there any respect here by Christ for the opinions of the scribes and the Pharisees? Where is there any willingness on Christ's part to "communicate across His disagreements" with them? Where is there any effort here to be polite? Surely, there is none!

Nowhere in any translation of the Bible can the STUPIDITY evinced in the letter above (and that's exactly what it is! - stupidity) be maintained - i.e., that the word for "rich man" should be translated "tax collector" in Matt. 19:24. The fact is, this kind of thinking is so far "out of line" that it can only be accounted for by some kind of pre-disposition of mind intent on emasculating the Bible's very clear injunctions against the rich. One needs only to take the time to consult Strong's Greek Lexicon (#4381) to dispel such thinking. Maybe the Bible according to the Republican Party (or the freakish Gospel according to Kenneth Hagin or Kenneth Copeland or Robert Schuller or Bennie Hinn) might offer such a translation, but nowhere else!

COURTEOUS GUIDES ON THE ROAD TO HELL

No! - this person is entitled to the UTTER contempt that I feel for him! - which is exactly the kind of loathing that Jesus gave to the "Religious Establishment" of His day (and, again, that's precisely what it was: loathing) when He referred to his religious opponents as "DESERVING THE SENTENCE OF HELL" and called them a den of "POISONOUS SNAKES" and a "BROOD OF VIPERS."

Moreover, one's disdain for such people should not be diminished by the rather "effete" and "polite" manner in which they present themselves and their opinions. The fact is, this kind of dishonesty in the handling of the Word of God leads to hell, and whether one is guided there in a courteous manner or not won't much matter in the end after one has at last arrived at that destination.

This is the sort of Christianity that has nothing definite to say to anyone, the kind of Christianity that is so "moderate" in its beliefs that it feels no chagrin in using such prissy phrases as "My understanding is," "The prevalent interpretation is," "While I am unsure," and that final wickedly delicious phrase, "Thoughts on your part? THEY ARE WELCOME SO LONG AS THEY ARE POLITE AND RESPECTFUL." These phrases are all typical of the kind of effeminate, sissified Christianity in vogue in America today; the kind that affluence inevitably creates; the kind that refuses to trespass on anyone's comfort zone.

COME OUT OF HER

Getting back to the irate reaction my last article elicited, one of the things that really seemed to "tick people off" and "grind on them" was the way I treated the subject of BABYLON THE GREAT in Revelation eighteen, verse four - which reads:

"... COME OUT OF HER, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues. (Rev. 18:4)

Concerning this matter, I wrote,

"Now we have never touched much on the PHYSICALITY of this verse because we knew that it was probably too much for most people to bear; but the truth is, in talking about "Babylon the Great," it is very difficult to tell sometimes when the spiritual gives way to the physical, and the religious gives way to the commercial and the political in Revelation chapters 17, 18, and 19. They are so intertwined with one another that it is difficult to tell where the one ends and the other begins ..."

Hence, the words of Scripture "Come out of her" might very well mean emigrating out of the United States. But most people felt that for me to suggest such a thing without attaching the requisite prefix "It's my opinion" or "I think," and ending it with the proper suffix, "What's your opinion?" evinced an egregious lack of compassion on my part for the feelings of those who might be "stuck" here in this country. Thus, the loud cries of "foul" that have been directed against me ever since.

But come on now, should we "pull our punches" with regard to the truth because some people are "stuck" or find it too inconvenient to seriously consider emigration - of becoming an émigré for Christ? The facts are the facts, whether people are "stuck" or not.

If indeed physical and spiritual Babylon are so intertwined, doesn't there have to be a physical dimension to what is being said here as well as a spiritual one? Plainly, it seems so! - and if that's true, then the warning connected to this portion of the Scripture (i.e., "... come out of her my people, THAT YE BE NOT PARTAKERS OF HER SINS ...") seems to suggest that if people stay in this country, they will be tainted by Babylon's sin and spiritually corrupted.

PUSHING TOWARDS LOGICAL ENDS

Now really, isn't that the plain meaning behind what is being said here if one admits to the fact that it's all but impossible to separate "physical Babylon" (i.e., George Bush's American New World Order System) from "spiritual Babylon" (i.e., the church of Charles Stanley, Bennie Hinn, D. James Kennedy, C. Peter Wagner, Tim LaHaye, etc.)? [Please see our article, "A Woman Riding a Beast Going Forth Conquering and to Conquer" for an explanation of the relationship between George Bush's American New World Order System and the church of Charles Stanley, et. al.]

Of course, it's so much easier for people to think that the only thing that they have to do to "come out of her" is to "come out" of the "apostate church." To suggest that to escape the one (i.e., the "apostate church") NECESSITATES escaping the other (the United States) makes everything so much more difficult, and it certainly doesn't endear me to many people, even people associated with Antipas. Moreover, and much more somberly, there is the inherent danger that if I persist in "pushing" all this I will inadvertently expose people as nothing more than "game players" insofar as the Prophetic Scriptures are concerned - and that has the real possibility of generating a red-hot rage against me.

FEAR GOD NOT MAN

But I must tell you, brothers and sisters, it's not so much the fear of what people think of me that instructs me, as it is the fear of what the Lord will do if I fail to communicate the whole counsel of God:

"Son of man, speak to the children of thy people, and say unto them, When I bring the sword upon a land, if the people of the land take a man of their coasts, and set him for their watchman:

"If when he seeth the sword come upon the land, he blow the trumpet, and warn the people;

"Then whosoever heareth the sound of the trumpet, and taketh not warning; if the sword come, and take him away, his blood shall be upon his own head.

"He heard the sound of the trumpet, and took not warning; his blood shall be upon him. But he that taketh warning shall deliver his soul.

"But if the watchman see the sword come, and blow not the trumpet, and the people be not warned; if the sword come, and take any person from among them, he is taken away in his iniquity; but his blood will I require at the watchman’s hand. (Ezek. 33:2-6)

IS IT REALLY POSSIBLE TO STAY CONNECTED TO
BABYLON THE GREAT AND NOT BE AFFECTED?

You don't see what I'm talking about here? You really don't see it? Well, all I can say then, is if you don't, it's because you have PURPOSEFULLY chosen NOT to see it. It's not that hard to see - OR do you think that it's really possible to stay connected to "physical Babylon" (i.e., the United States) without being affected spiritually by your union with it, a nation that the Bible describes as -

"... DREADFUL and TERRIBLE, and STRONG EXCEEDINGLY with great iron teeth: that DEVOURS and BRAKES IN PIECES, and stamps the residue (i.e., those who remain) with its feet ..." (Daniel 7:7) [Please see our article, "The American Empire and the U.S. System of Client States."]

And a nation that Isaiah describes as an "OVERFLOWING SCOURGE" (Is. 28:18); a "BEAST-NATION" (Dan. 7:7) that aims at gaining mastery over the entire earth and establishing a ONE-WORLD EMPIRE that brings ruin and poverty to the peoples and nations of the world. [For a detailed Scriptural identification of this great "Latter Day" nation, please see our article, "In Search of Babylon" What Does the Bible Say?]

THE FUTILITY OF TRYING TO COMPARTMENTALIZE
ONE'S LIFE INTO SEPARATE PIECES

The truth is, if you think that such a thing is possible - i.e., to connect oneself to "physical Babylon" without at the same time being corrupted spiritually, then you're daft! Plain and simple! - and you have UTTERLY failed to appreciate what "Babylon the Great" is all about, and the power it possesses to corrupt people - even the best of people.

What you've done is - willy-nilly - succumbed to the same kind of murky thinking that millions of "good" Germans succumbed to during the Hitler era: the kind of thinking that could permit a "paper-pusher" (clerk) at the I.G. Farben Company in Frankfurt to think that he was doing nothing wrong when he faithfully "pushed paper" for I.G. Farben and made sure that the shipments of Zyklon-B gas made it to the death camps at Auschwitz, Sobibor, Treblinka, etc. on time, and then who afterwards tried to claim that he never knew what the gas was being used for. All he did was facilitate the shipments and make sure that the paperwork was in order.

He'd been a good man, a faithful husband, a loving father; a devout Christian. He had not been a member of the Nazi Party, he had not persecuted the Jews, and - in fact - he had secretly disapproved of everything that Hitler and the Nazis were up to - even to the point of praying night and day on bended knees for the souls of those that Hitler was persecuting and murdering - of course, always on the "QT" and only with those very few who SECRETLY gathered at his home once or twice a month to pray with him - and all the time continuing to process Zyklon-B shipments to Auschwitz.

Now, come on here! - do you think that on THAT DAY that man's personal holiness and personal goodness is going to count very much with God? Do you think that God will excuse him for his connection with I.G. Farben because of his much praying? If you think so, you're nuts! One's praying and one's personal life have to have a PUBLIC outcome; there has to be some connection between one's prayers and the way one PUBLICLY conduct's his life. The Bible says:

"If a brother or sister be naked, and destitute of daily food,

"And one of you say unto them, Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled; notwithstanding ye give them not those things which are needful to the body; what doth it profit?" (James 2:15-16)

And it goes on to say very, very ominously:

"Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe, and TREMBLE." (James 2:19)

THIS IS WHERE WE ARE HEADED IN THE U.S.

What had happened in Germany was that the life (so to speak) of the Nazi state had become so intertwined and twisted together with the lives of Germany's individual citizens that one could no longer function as a human being in Germany without at the same time being involved intimately with the crimes of that nation - AND THIS IS PRECISELY WHERE WE ARE HEADED IN THE UNITED STATES WHERE IT IS FAST BECOMING IMPOSSIBLE TO FUNCTION AS A PERSON WITHOUT BECOMING INVOLVED IN THE GREAT WICKEDNESS THE UNITED STATES IS VISITING ON THE REST OF THE WORLD. [Please see our article, "The American System of Client States."]

And I must somberly warn you, if one becomes entangled, no matter how peripherally, with this great "latter-day" nation and the crimes it is committing against the peoples and nations of the world, and most especially in linking Christ's precious name to these crimes [WHICH, AT LEAST, THE OLD SOVIET UNION, CHINA, ETC. NEVER DID (i.e., they never claimed, as the adherents of George Bush's American New World Order System are doing, that the conquest they were engaged in, they were engaged in for the sake of "Christ and the church)], there will be "HELL TO PAY." God will not hold such a person guiltless.

One cannot separate one's service to this MONSTER (i.e., George Bush's American New World Order System) - no matter how tangential - from one's walk with the Lord, no more than that so-called "paper-pusher" at the I.G. Farben Company could separate his work for I.G. Farben in Frankfurt from what was going on at the death camp at Auschwitz; for such a person to think that he is any less guilty before God than the SS "Death's Head" guards at the killing camp at Auschwitz is so moronic that one is left breathless at the stupidity of those who think so.

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN PRACTICALLY FOR US?

What does that mean practically for us? Well, ask yourself, Are YOU connected to one of America's multinationals that is currently responsible for pillaging the people of America's client-states? - for example, the Bechtel Corporation, Halliburton, Colgate-Palmolive, Swift and Company, ADL, Union Carbide, etc.? Are you? Then, believe me, YOU ARE A PART OF THIS MONSTER, no matter what kind of "godly life" you might be living at home and in private, and no matter how far separated physically your little portion of the company is from those parts of the corporation that are actually committing these crimes.

And more to the point, Are you involved with the U.S. military in ANY way as this BEAST cuts its murderous path through the world today? Do you work for companies that supply this modern-day "killing machine?" If so, then YOU ALSO ARE A PART OF THIS BEAST, and whether you pick up a gun yourself or not, you are still contributing to the work of this MONSTER, and on THAT DAY there will be a price for you to pay insofar as God is concerned.

THERE IS A DAY OF RECKONING COMING FOR ALL OF US

There is, after all, something called the Judgment Seat of Christ (cf. Rom. 14:10 and 2 Cor. 5:10) where we all must give account for the way we lived our lives as Christians:

"For the kingdom of heaven is as a man traveling into a far country, who called his own servants, and delivered unto them his goods.

"And unto one he gave five talents, to another two, and to another one; to every man according to his several ability; and straightway took his journey.

"Then he that had received the five talents went and traded with the same, and made them other five talents.

"And likewise he that had received two, he also gained other two.

"But he that had received one went and digged in the earth, and hid his lord's money.

"After a long time the lord of those servants cometh, and reckoneth with them.

"And so he that had received five talents came and brought other five talents, saying, Lord, thou deliveredst unto me five talents: behold, I have gained beside them five talents more.

"His lord said unto him, Well done, thou good and faithful servant: thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord.

"He also that had received two talents came and said, Lord, thou deliveredst unto me two talents: behold, I have gained two other talents beside them.

"His lord said unto him, Well done, good and faithful servant; thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord.

"Then he which had received the one talent came and said, Lord, I knew thee that thou art an hard man, reaping where thou hast not sown, and gathering where thou hast not strowed:

"And I was afraid, and went and hid thy talent in the earth: lo, there thou hast that is thine.

"His lord answered and said unto him, Thou wicked and slothful servant, thou knewest that I reap where I sowed not, and gather where I have not strowed:

"Thou oughtest therefore to have put my money to the exchangers, and then at my coming I should have received mine own with usury.

"Take therefore the talent from him, and give it unto him which hath ten talents.

"For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.

"And cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth." (Matt. 25:14-30)

NOTHING TO BE TRIFLED WITH

Listen to me, dear brothers and sisters in the Lord, this warning of Scripture is nothing to be trifled with. Moreover, we would do well to take note of the fact that when the "wicked and slothful" servant told his master, "I knew thee that thou art an HARD man ..." the Lord did not correct him. These are scary verses, and - as my beloved mentor in the Lord, Don Morsey, once told me - "Stevan, the object of the Christian life is not to see how close you can come to the edge without falling off."

And so, I say again, we must all someday give account for the way we lived our Christian lives, and if we have chosen to connect our lives to the BEAST of Revelation - however peripherally - then there is a certain very somber reckoning that awaits us on THAT DAY. There is a great deal of truth to that old saying, "Judgment begins first in the household of God."

LOOK AROUND YOU AND SEE WHAT'S HAPPENING

And make no mistake about it, this BEAST - i.e., the United States - is a ravenous beast indeed; one that rends and kills without conscience - which is precisely what it is doing today in Iraq; and, believe me, what it is doing there is so disgusting and scandalous that - out of a very real sense of shame - it is purposefully NOT being reported on by the corporate media.

Consider, for example, what the "MANHUNTERS OF TASK FORCE 121" have been up to. According to journalist Seymore Hersh (New Yorker, Dec. 15) the "Manhunters of Task Force 121" are the people most responsible for the savage brutality that is currently being carried out in Iraq by the U.S. military. Task Force 121 is a rapid-deployment ASSASSINATION team built out of elite Special Operations forces from the Army, Navy and Air Force. The individual death squads that comprise Task Force 121 have CIA officers officially "attached," and come with a large accompanying "conventional force" to seal off areas while the killing and "disappearing" take place (currently, specially trained unites from the Fourth Infantry Division and the 101st Airborne Division).

These are "Phoenix"-like operations and are similar to the kind of death squad campaigns that have been carried out for years and years by the American military and the CIA in Central and South America, Africa and elsewhere. Task Force 121 is currently engaged in death squad activity in Iraq, and it's being carried out there with a vengeance!

ABU HISHMA

For example, take what happened recently in the Iraqi village of Abu Hishma; U.S. occupation authorities believed that someone there was resisting the occupation, so occupation authorities responded with massive "collective punishment" - the kind of "collective punishment" that German (Nazi) authorities meted out to the inhabitants of occupied Europe during the Second World War. First the occupation authorities sent a "message" to the inhabitants of the village by dropping an enormous 500-pound bomb on the village from an American jet. The whole landscape quaked as several homes - evidently chosen at random - instantly became one huge crater.

Then five miles of razor wire were strung around the village, and a large "conventional force" from the 4th ID took up positions to prevent anyone from exiting or entering the town. After the perimeter was established, a group of heavily armed soldiers from Task Force 121 entered the village and rounded up the village elders - taking the mayor, the police chief, and most of the town council into custody and subjecting them to what has euphemistically become known as "intense interrogation" (i.e., torture). Shortly thereafter, a second team from Task Force 121 - armed with information gleaned from the "interrogations" of the village mayor, police chief, and members of the town council - re-entered the village and shots were heard that continued on intermittently throughout the night. Shortly before dawn, the second team from Task Force 121 exited the village with a large number of body bags and additional prisoners, all of whom were "disappeared."

"PEACE" COMES TO ABU HISHMA

The village is now officially described as "pacified," and "peace" has been secured for the inhabitants; but it's the peace of a prison house: the razor-wire perimeter around the village continues and the town is "locked down" 15 hours a day. The inhabitants of the village must line up at the only gate in and out of the village and display their photo IDs to the soldiers in order to go out into their fields in the morning and come back in the evening. "This is absolutely humiliating," said Yasin Mustafa, the town's grade school teacher. "We are like birds in a cage." The sign on the razor wire that surrounds the town reads:

"THIS FENCE IS HERE FOR YOUR PROTECTION. DO NOT APPROACH OR TRY TO CROSS, OR YOU WILL BE SHOT."

Is this what the Americans call "securing the blessings of freedom and peace to the people of Iraq?" Is this what freedom means in George Bush's American New World Order System? Evidently so, because what happened in the village Abu Hishma is happening to countless other villages, towns and cities across central Iraq today.

DEVELOPING A SYSTEM OF SNITCHES

The whole process is being reinforced by a huge network of informants that are being paid millions of dollars to "rat out" their fellow villagers. It's a system of "snitches" that seems to have been specifically designed to enlist the very worst elements of Iraqi society to the American cause. It's on the basis of this new "snitch-system" that thousands and thousands of men and women in Iraq have been arrested and interrogated, and some even tortured and "disappeared." Indeed, people are being imprisoned merely for being relatives of suspected resisters. And anyone who dares speak out against what's happening is risking being arrested, beaten up, or worse. For example, the Dallas Morning News (Dec. 9) describes how the Muslim cleric Abdul Qader was arrested by U.S. soldiers for criticizing the occupation in his Friday services.

After midnight one night, soldiers from Task Force 121 burst into Qader's home, hooded him, and took him away for interrogation where he was beaten black and blue - and so much so that the retina in one of his eyes became detached. He was beaten so badly that he was no longer recognizable; but rather than being "disappeared," he was released as a warning to others of what was in store for them if they similarly criticized the occupation authority.

HAWIJA

Then there is the example of what happened to the town of Hawija, another Iraqi town that occupation authorities singled out as not being sufficiently subservient to the dictates of the occupation authority. On December 2, Hawija was cordoned off like Abu Hishma before it, and this time a gargantuan 2,000-pound bomb was dropped on the village; after that, members of Task Force 121 entered the town and the killing began - evidently from lists that the occupation authority had earlier compiled from their system of snitches. In addition to all the killing, prisoners were rounded up, handcuffed, and had the words "black list" written on the back of their necks along with identifying numbers for use by interrogators.

U.S. officials admitted that most of the prisoners taken and subjected to torture that night were not themselves known to be active in the resistance, but so what; somehow or other, their names had appeared on the lists and they were beaten if only to serve as a reminder of worse to come if they did not become sufficiently compliant. Finally, as if punctuate the lesson that the occupation authority was trying to get across to the local villagers, whole families - including women and little children - were rousted out of their beds and taken to the crater where the 2,000-pound bomb had landed to gaze in stunned silence on what happens to those who defy the occupation authority. Captain Todd Brown, a company commander with the Fourth Infantry Division who has worked closely with Task Force 121, justifies all this by saying:

"You have to understand the Arab mind. The only thing they understand is force ..."

Eeee gads, the only thing the Arabs can understand is force? That's certainly reducing them to the status of animals - and, oh, that's so very "convenient" because, after all, it's so much easier to kill animals than it is to kill other human beings. It gives license to the slaughter the "Manhunters of Task Force 121" must carry out.

IT'S NOT THAT WHAT THE U.S. IS
DOING IN IRAQ IS SOMETHING NEW

Of course, it's not that this HORROR is something new; the United States has been secretly visiting it on much of the world for some time now (please see our article, "Inside the American New World Order"); but in Iraq it is becoming so widespread and so visible that it's no longer possible for the U.S. to keep it a secret as it has done in Central and South America, Africa, Indonesia, etc. That isn't to say that the horror in America's other client-states is in any way diminished by the secrecy with which it has been cloaked. No! - by no means.

For example, the Comision Intereclesial de Justicia y Paz reports that some three hundred persons have recently fallen victim to torture, forced "disappearances," or "extrajudicial" execution in the small towns of Trujillo, Bolivar, and Riofrio in Valle del Cauca state in the southwest of Colombia. Among them were peasant farmers, journalists, teachers, small businessmen and carpenters. Many of them had been involved in community organizations launched by a parish priest Tiberio Fernandez, or had been involved in campesino demonstrations. [Father Tiberio, his niece, Alba Isabel Giraldo, and architect Oscar Pulido have since been "disappeared."] Many of the executions were bloody and barbaric. For instance, the Comision reports on one particularly brutal massacre:

"Those detained were dismembered with the chainsaw and left to bleed to death. The heads and trunks of the victims were deposited in separate bags and on the night of April 1 a blue Ford truck, vintage 1956, took the corpses to the Cauca River, where they were thrown."

Those implicated in the massacre included "death squads" from the Third Army Brigade commanded by Mayor Alirio Antonio Uruena, and the National Police commanded by Lieutenant Jose Fernando Berrio. These units are all connected to the government and supported by the CIA. Indeed, they have been known to operate directly under the command of CIA field officers, and Uruena and Berrio have both received training at the U.S. Army's infamous "School of the Americas." IT'S PRECISELY THIS KIND OF HORROR - THE KIND UNLEASHED RECENTLY ON THE VILLAGES OF TRUJILLO, BOLIVAR, AND RIOFRIO IN COLOMBIA - THAT IS NOW BEING UNLEASHED ON THE VILLAGES OF HAWIJA AND ABU HISHMA IN IRAQ BY TASK FORCE 121.

So there is nothing new here. What's new is the fact that the HORROR associated with the machinations of the American new World Order System can't be hidden in Iraq. It's simply not possible to hide the "goings-on" of 145,000 TROOPS.

THE HORROR THAT INEVITABLY
ACCOMPANIES IMPERIAL RULE

This has led David Brooks, a conservative columnist for the New York Times who is sympathetic to Bush's American New World Order schemes, to worry:

"What will happen to the national mood when the news programs start broadcasting images of the brutal measures our own troops are having to adopt?"

Brooks anxiously continues:

"Inevitably, these atrocities will cause many good-hearted people (in America) to defect from 'the cause'. They will be tempted to have us retreat into the paradise of our own innocence."

The answer, according to Brooks is to "HARDEN" the American public to the "reality" of war, and toughen them up for the HORROR they must inevitably wreak on the rest of the world if they are to be successful in "spreading the blessings of democracy" throughout the earth. Brooks writes:

"Somehow, over the next six months ... the president will have to remind us that we live in a fallen world and that we have to take MORALLY HAZARDOUS ACTION if we are to defeat the killers who confront us."

MORALLY HAZARDOUS ACTION

Now what is it that Brooks means here by the phrase, "MORALLY HAZARDOUS ACTION?" He means morally questionable activity that transcends the boundary of our individual consciences (cf. Rom. 1:19); specifically, the belief that it's permissible to engage in immoral (or amoral) activity if it's done to advance a "greater good."

But that's what the German SS Death's Head troops claimed they were doing in Auschwits, Treblinka, Sobibor, Dacau, etc.

As Russian dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn has said:

"To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he's doing is good ... instead of bad in his own and others' eyes, so that he won't hear reproaches and curses but will receive praise and honors." [We URGE you, if you have not already, to read our article "Body, Soul and Spirit;" also our article, "Individual Responsibility Before God;" please see John Weiss's book, The Ideology of Death: Why the Holocaust Happened in Germany, Ivan R. Dee, Publisher, 1996.]

TURNING INTO A "CHRISTIAN" MONSTER
FOR "CHRIST AND THE CHURCH"

This, of course, is exactly the kind of thinking that undergirds the death squad activity of Task Force 121 - and in this connection you might be surprised to learn that Task Force 121 is the brainchild of one of the Army's most outspoken (and decorated) "Christian Warriors," LT. GEN. WILLIAM BOYKIN, the new Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence at the Pentagon, and that the "MAN-HUNTERS OF TASK FORCE 121" are mostly "born-again" Christians.

THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN CHRISTIANS INVOLVE THEMSELVES WITH THE AMERICAN NEW WORLD ORDER SYSTEM. THEY INEVITABLE TURN INTO MONSTERS - and that's what will eventually happen to YOU if you don't get out. Don't be so naive as to think that the danger to you in staying in the United States is simply martyrdom. That's not such a bad thing! No, the real danger is that you will be corrupted like the "Manhunters of Task Force 121" - or how else should one understand the warning,

"... come out of her, my people, THAT YE BE NOT PARTAKERS OF HER SINS ..." (Rev. 18:4)

You didn't know that Task Force 121 is made up mostly of "born-again" Christians?

Well, it's true. Indeed, Task Force 121's Christian pedigree is pretty impressive, and can be easily traced back through the years to its origins at the Wycliffe Bible Translators jungle training camp in Limonocha, Ecuador in the early 1960s - specifically, to Boykin's mentor, the legendary "mastermind" behind the use of the modern-day death squad, Major General Joseph A. McChristian. McChristian justified his use of death squads by recourse to the concepts of "Christian Dominionism," the belief that, according to the late R.J. Rushdoony,

"In winning a nation to the gospel, the sword as well as the pen must be used."

McCHRISTIAN

As special assistant to the Joint U.S. Military Advisory Group in Greece from 1949 to 1950 (which coincided with the end of the Greek Civil War), McChristian had seen that Protestant Bibles were distributed to every Greek soldier fighting the communists. McChristian understood the value of religion in America’s war against communism. He believed that if soldiers could be made to think that they were "fighting for God," they would be that much more imbued with a "fighting spirit," and that much more confident in what they were doing when called upon to engage in the dirtier, more sordid side of counterinsurgency activity [what Brooks (see above) calls "MORALLY HAZARDOUS ACTIVITY"]. After all, not everyone is a sadist and a pathological killer; it’s difficult to kill, and if the killers can be convinced that what they are doing is "killing demons" in the name of God rather than killing innocent human beings, it makes the job that much easier. It eases the conscience when one is alone at night.

McChristian introduced this kind of thinking wherever he went. He believed in it! He wasn’t just pretending for the sake of convenience. To McChristian, spreading the Gospel was synonymous with spreading the American "free enterprise" system and expanding the financial interests of people like the Rockefellers, the Milbanks, the Swifts and the Morgans. [Please see our article, "Capitalism and Christianity."]

SINGING HYMNS, SPEAKING IN
TONGUES AND BUTCHERING DEMONS

It’s no accident or flight of fancy, therefore, when peasants in Central and South America - in describing the activities of McChristian's death squads - inevitably tell stories of death squad members praising God, singing hymns, and "speaking in tongues" as they go about their gruesome business of butchering people. This is what McChristian and people like him believe! - and this is precisely what makes it possible for death squad members to also be "members in good standing" in countless numbers of Protestant evangelical groups throughout Latin America. This is why - in following Oliver North and members of his entourage around the Contra-training camps in the 1980s - one reporter could describe it as similar to having followed a "traveling revival." [Please see our article, "The Death Squads: Bringing in the Kingdom of God through Terror, Torture and Death."]

LIMONOCHA

McChristian conceived of Phoenix (which is the progenitor of Boykin's Task Force 121) while serving - naturally enough - at Cam Townsend's Wycliffe Bible Training Camp at Limonocha, Ecuador in the early 1960s. When McChristian arrived at Limonocha in April 1962, he arrived with the silver leaf of an American Green Beret Lieutenant Colonel. Actually, that was just a cover; he was in fact a major-general working in army intelligence as chief of the Western Hemisphere Division.

His counterpart in the CIA was Colonel J.C. King - another CIA confident of Cam Townsend’s Wycliffe Bible Translators who had gotten Townsend and Wycliffe heavily involved in the overthrow of the Arbenz government in Guatemala, which - like Goulert’s government in Brazil - had threatened to nationalize various American business enterprises there in the early 1950s, and which had cost the lives of thousands and thousands of peasants, many of whom had been converted to Protestant Christianity through the efforts of Wycliffe translators. It seems, sadly, that in instance after instance when "push came to shove" and the interests of the Gospel clashed with the interests of Townsend’s business backers, the business backers always won out. [Please see our article on "The American Empire."]

McChristian was only forty-seven years old when he made Wycliffe’s Limonocha jungle training camp the unofficial headquarters for his counterinsurgency activities in the Amazon basin which had by then been set afire by the adherents of "Liberation Theology" and Fidel Castro's Che Guevera.

McChristian was imbued with the belief that in fighting socialism in Latin America he was fighting for "Christ and the church," and he was reinforced in that belief by his many connections with conservative Christian churches in the United States which he had developed through his association with another military intelligence officer, General A. Van Fleet, an evangelical Christian who - like McChristian - genuinely thought of himself as a "Christian Warrior" in the service of "God's Redeemer Nation" (i.e., the United States). Van Fleet was McChristian's father-in-law.

Van Fleet was then a top counterinsurgency consultant to the Secretary of the Army on guerrilla warfare. He was also an outspoken critic of President Kennedy’s handling of the Bay of Pigs Invasion, and was closely connected to many of the shadowy figures within the intelligence community who were later implicated in the Kennedy and Martin Luther King assassinations. [Please see our articles, "MK-Ultra: The Search for the Manchurian Candidate, A Study of the Mindset behind Today's New World Order," "Conspiracy Theories;" please also see our article on the MLK assassination in "Greed, Avarice, and the Coming Dictatorship."]

MORALLY HAZARDOUS ACTIVITY
IN THE NAME OF CHRIST

So convinced of his own righteousness and the righteousness of the cause he served, and so sure that in battling for the "American free enterprise" system in Latin America he was helping to spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ, McChristian was not above helping things along for the "Lord’s side" by bending the rules a little in its advancement (more "morally hazardous activity?"). For example, when the government of President Carlos Julio Arosemena of Ecuador began making moves which McChristian believed would lead Arosemena down the same road Goulert had taken in Brazil and Arbenz had taken in Guatemala, he swung CIA assets in the country against Arosemena and provoked a rebellion at the CIA advised Cuenca garrison.

When, in answer to this rebellion, a group of young intellectuals in Quito associated with the University of Ecuador began training to defend Arosemena, McChristian sought to link the students to the local Communist Party. He turned Quito upside down looking for evidence, and finding none, he doctored interrogation reports (more morally hazardous activity) to the Ecuadorian military that falsely linked the students to the Communist Party.

Most of the students were shot, and Arosemena was so frightened by what had happened that he quickly caved. In doing so, Arosemena gave into a CIA demand that he launch a "civic action program" (utilizing death squads) - the first of its kind in Latin America - which combined $1.5 million in U.S. military assistance with another $500,000 in USAID funds for public works projects. [AND IT SHOULD BE NOTED IN THIS CONNECTION THAT ALL THE KILLING ASSOCIATED WITH THE STUDENTS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF ECUADOR WAS COORDINATED BY McCHRISTIAN FROM CAM TOWNSEND'S WYCLIFFE BIBLE TRAINING CAMP AT LIMONOCHA.]

McChristian took his death squad concept to Vietnam later in the decade and turned it into the PHOENIX PROGRAM. In 1969, PHOENIX was re-introduced into Latin America as a fully developed counterinsurgency program, and from there it has wound its tortured way like a snake up through the years to lodge itself finally in the hateful counterinsurgency activity of Task Force 121 - and all the while imbued with the halo of Christianity (so-called). In the light of all this, one can easily begin to understand that Lt. Gen. Boykin's outspoken Christianity is no anomaly, and neither is the "Christianese" of Task Force 121.

So again, I somberly and earnestly warn you, it's not without reason that the Scriptures warn, "... COME OUT OF HER" lest you be tainted by her sins (become "partakers of her sins") and - ipso facto - be judged ("receive of her plagues"). (Rev. 18:4)

Brothers and sisters in the Lord; please listen to me here! - YOU CANNOT REMAIN ATTACHED - NO MATTER HOW PERIPHERALLY - TO A COUNTRY (AND THE MULTINATIONAL CORPORATIONS THAT SUCKLE AT HER BREASTS) THAT ENGAGES IN THIS KIND OF TWISTED, GNARLED THINKING AND ESCAPE THE WRATH OF GOD BECAUSE YOU LEAD A PERSONALLY HOLY LIFE, YOU INWARDLY DESPISE WHAT'S GOING ON, AND YOU PRAY SECRETLY FOR THOSE WHO ARE SUFFERING AT THE HANDS OF THESE CORPORATIONS AND THE COUNTRY THAT GIVES SUCCOR TO THEM - WHILE ALL THE TIME DOING NOTHING TO SEPARATE YOURSELF FROM THEM.

WHEN PROPHECY IS A DREAM

This is serious stuff, and most people draw back in fear when confronted with it. They would prefer to ignore all this, to say that we are making a mountain out of a mole hill, that we are stretching things too far; or they prefer to believe that we are not as close to "the end" as we really are. These are precisely the kind of people about whom I wrote in my last article, "Re-Thinking Our Mission: How Shall We Organize To Resist?" -

"When prophecy is a dream - when it is nothing more than a mental image, a kind of fantasy or "furtive meditation" - it's sort of fun; it's like a secret GAME we can play on a cold night in the safety and comfort of our own living rooms with good friends, good food, a warm cup of chocolate, and a crackling fire in the fireplace - the kind of GAME that Tim LaHaye's "Left Behind" series of books casually and vacuously promotes. It lifts us out of the "ordinary" and elevates us into a whimsical world where we are no longer nameless cogs in a giant, uncaring socio-economic machine that doesn't give a whit for us, but are instead heroes and heroines ("Knight-Templars") of our Lord and Savior immersed in great feats of "daring-do." And the wonder (indeed, the pleasure) of it all is that this GAME doesn't cost us much to play. Maybe a little, but not much. No real sacrifices are demanded of us; we don't have to "pay to play;" no relationships are threatened beyond those we don't care that much about anyway; no jobs are put at risk.

"But when prophecy transmutes itself into reality, when it is no longer played as a game, when actual relationships are threatened, when money is really put at risk, when jobs are actually lost, and when lives are in fact jeopardized, then prophecy becomes something else altogether, AND NOT TOO MANY PEOPLE WANT TO BE A PART OF THAT."

VLADIMIR JABOTINSKY

In my book, the ANTIPAS PAPERS, I wrote:

"Today, Christians are facing a time of crisis, one which all evangelicals - if they really are evangelicals - have long expected, and one which shouldn't come as a surprise - CHURCH APOSTASY: the refusal of the church to see itself any longer as a "citizen" of a heavenly kingdom having nothing to do with this world ["My kingdom is not of this world ... my kingdom ... (comes) not from hence." (John 18:36)] to seeing itself, rather, as a "citizen" or "friend" of this present evil world and all that such a thing portends - from the church's involvement in the world's political affairs, to its rapprochement with the Roman Catholics, to its involvement in death squad activity in the name of God in South and Central America ["...Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God" (James 4:4)].

"But, again, why should we as evangelicals be surprised by all this? - isn't this what the Bible said would happen? - "Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day (i.e., the day of the rapture and the resurrection) shall not come, except there come a falling away (i.e., apostasy) first ..." (2 Thess. 2:3) [Please see our articles, "Evangelicals and the Roman Catholic Church" and "The Death Squads: Bringing in the Kingdom of God through Terror, Torture, and Death."]

"What then should we do with regard to this crisis? Menachem Begin, the former Prime Minister of Israel, faced a similar crisis in his life and in the life of the Jewish People in the early 1940s. The crisis he faced had to do with whether or not he should wait for the end of World War II and the plodding negotiations of Jewish "mainline moderates" like Dr. Chaim Weizmann and the World Zionist Organization to press the British Mandate Authority to facilitate Jewish immigration to Palestine (all this in addition to having to rely on the maddening timidity of the mainline Jewish defense organization - the Haganah - to secure their safety in Palestine), or whether he should join up with the radicals, Vladimir Jabotinsky, and the Irgun Zvai Leumi - and hang the 'niceties of diplomacy'. He finally chose Jabotinsky and the Irgun! - and he never looked back.

"Years later, in remarking on the single-mindedness of the organization he finally joined - i.e., the Irgun - he said: "In times like those, there is no greater force than people who (1) have the ability to see beyond the concerns of daily life, despite the sometimes very pressing nature of those concerns, (2) who possess the capacity for self-sacrifice, and (3) who are willing to get involved!" Begin believed that the rest didn't matter! And so it is with us today, the rest doesn't matter! - one's natural talent, one's standing within the church, one's ability to speak, one's wealth, one's education, one's personality, the number of mistakes one has made in his or her life, one's age, one's sex, etc. - all of that is inconsequential in comparison."

THE WILLINGNESS TO SACRIFICE ONE'S SELF

And so I say - like Begin before me:

"IN TIMES LIKE THESE THERE IS NO GREATER FORCE THAN PEOPLE WHO (1) HAVE THE ABILITY TO SEE BEYOND THE CONCERNS OF DAILY LIFE, DESPITE THE SOMETIMES VERY PRESSING NATURE OF THOSE CONCERNS, (2) WHO POSSESS THE CAPACITY FOR SELF-SACRIFICE, AND (3) WHO ARE WILLING TO GET INVOLVED."

The very real fact of the matter is, there are very few people in this world - even among those associated with Antipas - who have the ability to see beyond the concerns of their own daily lives and who actually possess the capacity for self-sacrifice. But just as Jabotinsky and the Irgun needed such men in the 1940s - men who were willing to sacrifice themselves for Israel (which was then only a dream in the minds of a small group of "crazies") - so also Antipas needs such people today.

That's what Canada is all about: SELF-SACRIFICE - the willingness of people to "throw themselves into the breach" and to place on the altar all those "things" and relationships they hold dear while all the time being hounded by the more timid souls who surround them: "What if we are not as close to 'the end' as we have been saying?" "What happens if we sell everything we have and get out of the country, and nothing happens?" "What if we're wrong on this or that specific item of prophecy as it pertains to the Gog / Magog War, or the beginning of the so-called 'Seventieth Week of Daniel'? (provided, of course, that there really is such a thing)." [We URGE you - if you have not already - to take the time to read, and re-read again the Antipas Papers.]

These are the kind of people - i.e., people who can rise above their doubts - about whom it can be said: "The zeal of thine house hath eaten me up." (cf. John 2:17) God is looking today for such people; people like the children of Issachar -

"... which were men that had understanding of the times, to know what Israel ought to do ..." (1 Chr. 12:32)

THE CAVE OF ADULLAM

Brothers and sisters in the Lord, what made the children of Issachar so precious in the sight of the Lord was their willingness to act on their understanding; these are the kind of people who gathered themselves to Jabotinsky and the Irgun, and caused modern Israel to transform itself from a dream into reality; the kind of people who "rallied" to King David in I Samuel 21:14-22:2):

"Then said Achish unto his servants, Lo, ye see the man (i.e., David) is MAD ("crazy") wherefore then have ye brought him to me?

"Have I need of MAD men, that ye have brought this fellow to play the MAD man in my presence? shall this fellow come into my house?

"David therefore departed thence, and escaped to the cave Adullam: and when his brethren and all his father's house heard it, THEY WENT DOWN THITHER TO HIM.

"AND EVERY ONE THAT WAS IN DISTRESS, AND EVERY ONE THAT WAS IN DEBT, AND EVERY ONE THAT WAS DISCONTENTED, GATHERED THEMSELVES UNTO HIM; and he became a captain over them: and there were with him about four hundred men." (1 Sam. 21:14-22:2)

Are you in "distress?" Are you "in debt?" Are you "discontented" with the course of your life? Then you're the kind of person that God is looking for! That's what Canada is all about! It's Antipas's "cave of Adullam" - a place for those who want to make their lives count for something insofar as the Lord is concerned!

SACRIFICING EVERYTHING FOR GOD

Yes, to join us at "Adullam's cave" will necessitate a great deal of sacrifice, but that's what the Christian life is all about: SACRIFICE. Brothers and sisters, in the cause of Christ, NOTHING can be done with people who are not "crazy" enough - like King David (above) - to be willing to sacrifice everything they have and hold dear for God. This is what God DEMANDS of ALL His disciples; this is what God DEMANDED of Abraham - that he (i.e., Abraham) should be so "eaten up by the zeal of God's house" that he would be willing to sacrifice the most precious thing he possessed - Isaac:

"And it came to pass after these things, that God did tempt (i.e., "TEST") Abraham, and said unto him, Abraham: and he said, Behold, here I am.

"And he said, Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of.

"And they came to the place which God had told him of; and Abraham built an altar there, and laid the wood in order, and bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar upon the wood.

"And Abraham stretched forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son." (Gen. 22:1-2, 9-10)

THERE ARE NO EXCUSES

We will never get anywhere with God if we are not willing to sacrifice our Isaac - and all of our excuses as to why we were unable to do so won't count for a thing on THAT DAY when at last we face God at the Judgment Seat of Christ (cf. Rom. 14:10 and 2 Cor. 5:10). Jesus somberly warned His disciples:

"... A certain man made a great supper, and bade many:

"And sent his servant at supper time to say to them that were bidden, Come; for all things are now ready.

"AND THEY ALL WITH ONE CONSENT BEGAN TO MAKE EXCUSE. The first said unto him, I have bought a piece of ground, and I must needs go and see it: I pray thee have me excused.

"And another said, I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I go to prove them: I pray thee have me excused.

"And another said, I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come.

Now all these things would be considered legitimate excuses by most Christians - after all, the first two excuses relate to common-sense business concerns, and the third excuse relates to a very justifiable concern for one's dear wife. What's wrong with any of these excuses? Nonetheless, the Lord didn't seem to care a whit for any of them:

"So that servant came, and showed his lord these things. THEN THE MASTER OF THE HOUSE BEING ANGRY said to his servant, Go out quickly into the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in hither the poor, and the maimed, and the halt, and the blind.

"IF ANY MAN COME TO ME, AND HATE NOT HIS FATHER, AND MOTHER, AND WIFE, AND CHILDREN, AND BRETHREN, AND SISTERS, YEA, AND HIS OWN LIFE ALSO, HE CANNOT BE MY DISCIPLE.

"And whosoever doth not bear his cross, and come after me, cannot be my disciple.

"So likewise, whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple. (Luke 14:16-21, 26-27, 33)

Pretty brutal! But if you disagree with this, your argument is with God, it's not with me. So much then for those who say that they have obligations to "fathers, and mothers, and wives, and children, and brethren, and sisters," etc. that somehow or other supersede their obligation to the Lord. NOTHING supersedes one's obligation to the Lord! NOTHING! No promises made in the past, no obligations (no matter how earnestly they were entered into), no contract, no agreement, no understanding, no covenant can supersede one's obligation to the Lord.

ONE GIANT TRAP

Brothers and sisters, listen to me here: I somberly and earnestly warn all of you who are tempted to hesitate in leaving this country, THE UNITED STATES IS FAST BECOMING ONE HUGE TRAP READY TO SPRING ON ALL THOSE WHO FAIL TO RECOGNIZE IT AS SUCH, AND WHO FAIL TO GET AWAY AS FAST AS THEY CAN. This trap relates directly to the enormous political, economic, and military strain the United States is under as the result of its emergence as the world's sole superpower.

The fact is, like Rome before the political and economic innovations instituted by Caesar Augustus (cf. Luke 2:1), America has gone about as far as it can go as a democracy (a republic), and if it is going to go any farther, it is going to have to reorganize itself into a dictatorship much as Rome did 2,000 years ago. IT IS AS INEVITABLE AS THE SUN RISING IN THE EAST - and it's happening right now.

THE PATHOLOGY OF DICTATORSHIP

The truth is, the cost of empire has metastasized to the point where it can no longer be sustained without an IMMENSE transfer of wealth from the pocket books and wallets of average Americans to the coffers of America's military machine, together with a HUGE, concomitant increase in the size of the military itself - so huge that some estimate that the size of the military will have to eventually be increased to World War II levels if it is to carry out all the "missions" the American elites have assigned to it in defense of their world-wide economic "interests." This means reinstating the DRAFT.

This is precisely what happened to Rome as the economic changes instituted by Caesar Augustus took hold and converted the economy of the nation from one that had been undergirded by independent yeoman farmers to a SLAVE ECONOMY where money flowed increasingly into the hands of the few (the patricians) at the expense of the many (the plebes); where the main business of Rome became making war on the rest of the world and living off the plunder of conquest; and where the largest employer of "free labor" in the nation became the army.

America is going through a similar process today as it converts from a "main street economy" of small, independent businesses and well-paid manufacturing jobs to a "Walmart economy" of minimum-wage jobs that require a husband and wife to EACH work 1 1/2 regular jobs at minimum or near minimum wage (that's a 60-hour work week each) to make what one worker used to make in the "old economy" working 40-hours a week (that's equivalent to Rome's SLAVE ECONOMY); where the main business of America relates to making war on the rest of the world and living off the plunder of conquest (which is exactly what businesses like Halliburton, the Bechtel Corp., Boeing, etc. are all increasingly doing); and where soon the largest employer of "free labor" will be the military as "regular" jobs are shipped overseas to the slave-labor sweatshops of America's giant multinational corporations.

Obviously, reducing vast numbers of Americans to poverty in order to get the money with which to fuel the American military machine is not going to go down well with most Americans! But the money has to be gotten from somewhere! - or do you really think that the rich are going to pay for it all; or that Exxon / Mobil, Philips / Conoco, Bechtel Corp., Halliburton, ADL, General Electric, Boeing, etc. are going to pay for it? No, they're the ones that are benefiting from these expenditures. It's their investments that the military is standing guard over in the rest of the world.

No, the money isn't going to come from them, it's going to come from YOU. All this to say nothing about conscripting the sons and daughters of average Americans to fight in this "killing machine" - or, again, do you think that the sons and daughters of the elites are going to fight the elites' wars? And make no mistake about it, universal military conscription is only a hair's breath away - as it is finally beginning to "dawn" on young people that they can actually get killed in the military (duh!). There's just not enough young people enlisting (or re-enlisting) in the military anymore.

THE DRAFT

Something has to be done, or there will be no one left to "man" the army. For example, the Associated Press reports on how this CRISIS IN MILITARY MANPOWER has affected Marine Gunnery Sgt. Elia Fontecchio, who spent several days last December trying to figure out how to break the news to his wife that after returning a few weeks ago from months of duty in Iraq, he would soon be going back to the combat zone. In the end, he told her in a private moment, simply and directly. At first, she was angry and disappointed. Now, she's just trying to make every minute with him count, as if it will be their last.

And the Fontecchios aren't the only ones grappling with this problem. Thousands of other military members and their families have also been struggling with the news that those who have already completed one tour of duty in Iraq will soon be sent back. As a result, many of these troops are clamoring to get out as their periods of enlistment begin coming to an end.

But the Pentagon quashed that option recently by issuing a "Stop-Loss" order extending the enlistments of thousands and thousands of young soldiers. What's the military to do? Again, the only answer is conscription. But this is not going to be a very popular government policy.

THIS IS NOT SOMETHING A DEMOCRACY CAN DO

Indeed, solving these twin problems - i.e., finding the money to engage in "endless war" and conscripting the sons and daughters of average Americans in unprecedented numbers to fight these wars IS NOT SOMETHING A DEMOCRACY CAN EASILY DO. Obviously the elites cannot rely on the "will of the people" to solve these problems - the "solutions" the elites support are just too unpopular.

In the long run, the only answer is to construct a POLICE STATE capable of quelling the dissent that inevitably will result when people begin to figure out that they are being economically raped by the elites, and that their children are dying in numbers that they had never anticipated - and, make no mistake about it, the construction of such a state is already well under way. Take, for example, the policies the Bush administration has adopted toward public protest (demonstrations) - probably the most important device available to average Americans with which to confront an unresponsive government, which is exactly what people did in the 1960s and early '70s to stop the war in Vietnam.

PROTEST ZONES

Consider, for instance, the government's new and bizarre use of "protest zones" to confine and control demonstrators who protest against the president or government policy to areas where, according to Denise Lieberman of the ACLU, no one can see them, they have no contact with the media, and where the protesters are imprisoned like caged animals. Bill Neel, a 65-year old retired steel worker ran afoul of this policy. Neel showed up at a Bush rally in Pittsburgh with a sign proclaiming, "The Bush family must surely love the poor, they made so many of us." Neel had his sign confiscated and he was arrested after refusing to move to a designated "protest zone" THREE BLOCKS away from where the president was speaking (he might as well not have demonstrated). So much for free speech, and the right to "peacefully petition the government."

Similar suppressions of "free speech" and the right to "peacefully assemble" have occurred during Bush's visits to Florida where three grandmothers holding a small handwritten sign saying "War is good business. Invest your sons and daughters" were arrested for being outside a designated "protest zone." Then there's the case of Christine Maines who held up an anti-Bush sign at a Boeing plant that Bush visited. Maines was arrested when she refused to move to a "protest zone," and she was separated from her crying 5-year old daughter who was whisked away in a separate squad car and taken to "Child Protective Services." The message to Maines? - You'd better be careful or we'll take your daughter from you and hold her until you comply with our wishes. And so it goes all over the country.

LAME EXCUSES

James Bovard who writes for the American Conservative and is the author of Terrorism & Tyranny: Trampling Freedom, Justice, and Peace to Rid the World of Evil, writes:

"The feds have offered some bizarre rationales for hog-tying protesters. Secret Service agent Brian Marr explained to National Public Radio, 'These individuals may be so involved with trying to shout ... that inadvertently they may walk out into the motorcade route and be injured. And that is really the reason why we set these places up (i.e., the "protest zones"), so we can make sure that ... they go home at the end of the evening and not be injured ...'"

Bovard continues:

"Marr's comments are a mockery of this country's rich heritage of vigorous protests. Somehow, all of a sudden, after George W. Bush became president, people became so stupid that federal agents had to cage them to prevent them from walking out in front of a speeding vehicle."

EQUATING PROTEST WITH TREASON

Bovard continues more ominously:

"Attempts to suppress protesters become more disturbing in light of the Homeland Security Department's recommendation that local police departments view critics of the war on terrorism as potential terrorists. In a May 2003 terrorist advisory, THE HOMELAND SECURITY DEPARTMENT WARNED LOCAL LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENCIES TO KEEP AN EYE ON ANYONE WHO 'EXPRESSED DISLIKE OF ATTITUDES AND DECISIONS OF THE U.S. GOVERNMENT'."

Pretty frightening. But that's not the end of it. The neoconservative New York Sun suggested in February 2003 that the New York Police Department "send two witnesses along for each participant (in an antiwar demonstration), WITH AN EYE TOWARD PRESERVING AT LEAST THE POSSIBILITY OF AN EVENTUAL TREASON PROSECUTION" since all the demonstrators were guilty of "giving, at the very least, comfort to Saddam Hussein."

Then there's Mike van Winkle, the spokesman for the California Anti-Terrorism Information Center, who told the Oakland Tribune,

"You can make an easy kind of a link that, if you have a protest group protesting a war where the cause that's being fought against is international terrorism, you might be able to say ... (that) is terrorism."

Bovard writes:

"The FBI is also urging local police to report suspicious activity by protesters to the Joint Terrorism Task Force, which is run by the FBI. If local police take the hint and start pouring in the dirt, the task force could soon be building a 'Total Information Awareness'-like database on those antiwar groups and activists ... How far might the feds go? It took over a decade after the first big antiwar protests in the 1960s before the American people learned the extent of FBI efforts to suppress and subvert public opposition to the Vietnam War ... Is the FBI now considering a similar order to field offices as the one it sent in 1968, telling them to gather information illustrating the 'scurrilous and depraved nature of many of the characters, activities, habits, and living conditions representative of New Left adherents' - but this time focused on those who oppose Bush's Brave New World?"

JUST THE TIP OF THE ICEBERG

This is just the tip of the iceberg on what's going on today - and we've only been talking about the government's efforts to suppress street demonstrators. This is to say nothing about all the new "Police-State powers" the government has arrogated unto itself recently, such as the new and massive increase of government surveillance; the "militarization of the police;" the "right" of the government to wiretap a phone, monitor email and Internet usage, search a home or business, and seize documents all without a warrant; the government's "new right" to arrest people without charges and hold them indefinitely (i.e., the "right" to "disappear" people); the increasing effort by the government to blur the wall between the police function of the state and its intelligence functions, and so forth and so on. [Please see our article, "The Birth of a Christian Police State," "Ashcroft: Making a List of Dissenters," and "John Ashcroft, Theodore Olson and the New National Security State."]

COMPLETING THE TRAP

The fact is, as dictatorship is ever more imposed on the people, and the institutions of the state are "coordinated" with each other in order to better advance the merciless and cruel ends of George Bush's American New World Order System, the individual citizens of the nation will find - much to their horror - that they are so enmeshed by the institutions of the developing Police-State that there is no longer any way to disentangle themselves. They'll find that they've been "BORGED" (to use an apropos term out of Star Trek; The Next Generation). They've been ASSIMILATED. The Nazis called this process of entrapment GLEICHSCHALTUNG ("coordination") - and Hitler used it to entrap the entire German nation in his crimes. In doing so, he turned Germany into a MONSTER STATE and the German people into DEMONS in its service.

NOW THAT'S BEING TRAPPED "BIG TIME" - and those American Christians who do not recognize what's happening in the United States and "... COME OUT OF HER" cannot help but eventually be tainted by her sins (become "partakers of her sins") and - ipso facto - be judged ("receive of her plagues"). (Rev. 18:4) THIS IS WHAT THE BIBLE SAYS; and, again, if you are going to argue with this, don't argue with us, argue with God.

DON'T GET TRAPPED

Brothers and sisters, I know of no other instance in the whole Bible where God's people are warned to come out of a whole nation lest they "BECOME PARTAKERS OF HER SINS" - i.e., unless they become tainted by her iniquity. This warning - in the first instance - has nothing to do with coming judgment, but rather it has to do with being tainted by sin. This is what disturbs God, and it should disturb you.

I repeat, the fact that we might suffer persecution (i.e., tribulation) is NOT what troubles God. Indeed, the Bible says, "... In the world ye shall have tribulation ..." (John 16:33) No! - it's the fact that we will be corrupted spiritually if we stay. Obviously, then, THIS MEANS THAT WE SHOULD TAKE THIS POSSIBILITY - THE POSSIBILITY THAT WE CAN BE CORRUPTED SPIRITUALLY IF WE STAY IN BABYLON - VERY, VERY SERIOUSLY. This is nothing to be cavalier about. Think about that! - no such warning was ever given to Christians living in the old Soviet Union, or in China, or in any of the nations of the Islamic world; only to Christians in the United States. Now that's heavy! That's very heavy!

ESCAPE TO ADULLAM'S CAVE

Like David before us, we need to "depart thence" (from the United States) and escape - ESCAPE TO ADULLAM'S CAVE.

"David therefore departed thence, and escaped to the cave Adullam: and when his brethren and all his father's house heard it, THEY WENT DOWN THITHER TO HIM.

"AND EVERY ONE THAT WAS IN DISTRESS, AND EVERY ONE THAT WAS IN DEBT, AND EVERY ONE THAT WAS DISCONTENTED, GATHERED THEMSELVES UNTO HIM ..." (1 Sam. 21:14-22:2)

That's what Canada is to us! - ADULLAM'S CAVE! - where the "crazies" and the "ner-do-wells" (1 Sam. 21:14-22:2) can "gather themselves unto Him." And it seems that there is quite a number that are making plans to do so. [We URGE you - if you have not already - to take the time and read about the ranch and what we are planning to do there.]

A STRING OF CHRISTIAN KIBBUTZIMS

And it's not just people from the United States that are coming, but from everywhere. We hope to train, build and team them all up, and then send them out into the world with the "GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM." [Please see our last article, "Re-Thinking Our Mission: How Shall We Organize to Resist?"]

In addition, we will work to replicate what we are doing in Canada in other countries as well - to establish a worldwide "string of Christian kibbutzims" that we can then use as "bases" to reach out into local communities and establish "house churches." Indeed, already, there's one beloved brother in Calcutta, India who (I've been told) is planning to come to the training in Canada. He has a house with a little land in the suburbs of Calcutta that we can convert eventually into a situation similar to the one in Canada - a rural kibbutzim if there is enough land (or we have the possibility to purchase more land) or an urban one, no matter. There is a similar possibility in England; possibly even in Karachi, Pakistan and in Ghana.

THERE IS A WORLD TO BE REACHED

Jesus said:

"Behold, I say unto you, LIFT UP YOUR EYES, and look on the fields; for they are white already to harvest." (John 4:35)

And He continued:

"... the harvest truly is plenteous, but the labourers are few;

"Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth labourers into his harvest." (Matt. 9:37-38)

And so I say unto you all, LIFT UP YOUR EYES. Don't be left behind. You can be left behind, you know! Don't think that God won't; He will! For instance, after the "rich young ruler" turned down the "calling" of Christ on his life, Christ left him and never returned. (cf. Luke 18:18-25)

And, moreover, don't think, whatever you do, that everything will necessarily work out for you if you do nothing. As I wrote several months ago in my article, "Now Is the Time to Do Something; It May Be Too Late Tomorrow," we are NOT simply -

"... a leaf in a river that is flowing down to the sea; a helpless captive of the stream's relentless current; AN OBJECT WHICH HAS NO WILL OF ITS OWN AND WHICH CANNOT ACT IN ITS OWN RIGHT, but can only be acted upon."

WE ARE NOT GOD'S LITTLE ROBOTS

We are not automatons (robots), as many would have us believe; neither are we called to surrender ourselves to a state-of-mind where "fatalism" is considered a virtue and "choice" a sin - hence to do nothing is "spiritual" (they misleadingly call it "trusting in the Lord") and "to act" betrays a "rashness" that is not only carnal, but "ungodly" and "untrusting." This is Hinduism, not Christianity.

I continued:

"Fatalism is nothing more than AN EXCUSE FOR INACTION, a pathetic reason for Christians to avoid uncomfortable choices and to put off hard decisions which might inconveniently impact the way they live and cause their friends and loved ones to disassociate themselves from them. Fatalism is a dissimulation - an hypocrisy which allows Christians to cheat insofar as their responsibility to God is concerned."

"Listen to me here, dear Christians; you need to understand something in all this: this PROCESS that you are calling "fate" and to which you have surrendered yourself and are naively calling "God's will" (but which is really nothing more than your pathetic excuse for inaction) AIMS AT YOUR DESTRUCTION. And it is truly a terrifying PROCESS: without feeling, accountable to no one - at least no one you will ever be able to discover and question. And when it finally takes you captive - and it will eventually if you continue to delay in preparing for it - it will pounce on you just as surely and as suddenly as it pounced on "K" in Franz Kafka's frightening but very "prophetic" novel, Der Prozess ("The Process") - without warning, in the middle of the night when you least expect it."

My cry to all of you is, "REMEMBER KAFKA!" [Again, please see our article, "Now Is the Time to Do Something; It May Be to Late Tomorrow."]

God bless you all!

S.R. Shearer
Antipas Ministries

We need your help to spread the word concerning Antipas Ministries and the eschatological viewpoint it represents; WE NEED YOUR HELP BECAUSE WE DO NOT "LINK" WITH OTHER SO-CALLED "CHRISTIAN" WEBSITES which are, for the most part, "in the tank" insofar as their loyalty to the United States is concerned - a loyalty that has made them partners in the BLOODY trail the American military has left in its TERROR-RIDDEN rampage throughout the world, as well as making them partners in the abject poverty that American corporations have imposed on the peoples and nations the American military machine has ravaged - A BLOODY, TERROR-RIDDEN RAMPAGE THAT HAS TO A LARGE DEGREE BEEN CARRIED OUT IN THE NAME OF THE "PRINCE OF PEACE." [Please see our articles, "The Third World as a Model for the New World Order," Inside the American New World Order System" and "The American Empire: The Corporate / Pentagon / CIA / Missionary Archipelago."] YOU CAN HELP BY EMAILING THIS ARTICLE TO YOUR FRIENDS AND NEIGHBORS PRESS HERE If you wish to SUBSCRIBE to our website, please feel free to do so; the subscription is free; all you need to do is give us your email address. There is no need for you to give us any other information. Your email address will NEVER be shared with others. PRESS HERE PS Have the courage of your convictions! Contribute to the ministry by making out a check to "Antipas Christian Ministry" and sending it to - Antipas Ministries 1112 Long Rd., #40 Centralia, WA 98531 Or donate through Paypal by clicking the Paypal image below: We DESPERATELY need your continued SACRIFICIAL financial help. Time is short - and we need to be about the Lord's business as quickly as possible. If you have any questions, please email us at staff@antipasministries.com.