Category: Kingdom

How close are the end times? No really?

The sacrifice of the Red Heifer has happened only 9 times in Jewish history. The last was not long before the coming of Christ.

Jews believe that the 10th Red Heifer sacrifice will usher in the coming of Messiah. In order to qualify for sacrifice the heifer has to be completely red (brown!) without any two hairs of a different colour adjacent to each other. The heifer has to be in its third year. In 2022 5 red heifers were imported from the United States in readiness for at least one to qualify for sacrifice. They are currently under heavy security on a farm in Shiloh (where Joshua set up the Tabernacle).

This 10th sacrifice could happen around Passover this year, i.e. any time now. It will trigger the process of rebuilding the temple (destroyed by the Romans) on the Temple Mount. This of course is the last thing that Moslems want and as you’ll hear in the YouTube footage below one of the reasons for October 7th was anger around the existence of the Heifers and the implications for the possible destruction of the Al-Aqsa Mosque on Temple Mount to make way for the new Jewish Temple. Neither religion can countenance their temple being alongside the other’s. Some might argue that the Islamic Temple is what Jesus (and Daniel) referred to as the “Abomination of Desolation“. The Daniel prophecy will of course be on the minds of practising Jews in this context.

BTW there was an article in the Guardian a few years back.

What is truly intriguing is that Moslems are also looking for the coming of Messiah, well sort of, Mah·​di ˈmä-dē who assumes a messianic role before the return of Jesus. The huge irony for Moslems however is that the Bible predicts the coming of the one commonly called “The AntiChrist” – in 2 Thessalonians 2 we read, “Concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered to him, we ask you, brothers and sisters, not to become easily unsettled or alarmed by the teaching allegedly from us—whether by a prophecy or by word of mouth or by letter—asserting that the day of the Lord has already come. Don’t let anyone deceive you in any way, for that day will not come until the rebellion occurs and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the man doomed to destruction.”

The Qur’an even says that the Mahdi will rule for seven years. The exact same time as the Bible says the Anti-Christ will rule for! Why Mohammad didn’t have a better grasp of Christian teaching is remarkable. He dared to have more knowledge of the life and person of Jesus than the Apostles it seems, yet he missed this crucial point. Of course being apparently illiterate he couldn’t have read the Bible, so he was making stuff up from hearsay and snippets of information and downright imagination.

So is Jesus coming back a mere seven years or so from now? If so of course we have the seven years of Islamic domination of the world to get through!

I have been astounded at the effect of October 7th. Far from alienating people to Islam it has generated a bizarre backlash against Israel and by association Christians. Perhaps if that gets worse it might mean that Israel says, “Enough is enough, we will tear down the Mosque!”

I used to read Daniel and Revelation with some excitement, like a good Sci-Fi film! But the nearer the reality comes, the less romantic death and destruction on a collosal scale sounds!

See also Tews and Christian persecution and October 7th from the menu bar.

Time to pray.

Shalom and Maranatha.

As a child, from the age of about 8 I over indulged in chocolate and became overweight. The end result was name calling, being the last to be chosen in team sports and low self-esteem. When I was in, I think, my second year at Grammar school (still overweight) we went on a school trip to the Rhineland, to a lovely little place called Boppard, near Koblenz. As was the habit then, prefects came along to “look after” the younger boys. One of them decided it would be a laugh to come into the room I was sharing with two others and throw a cake at us. My instant reaction was to pick it up and throw it back, missing him sadly but making a bit of a mess down the stairwell. For that I got the cane.

I have long since forgiven the teacher concerned. He had the reputation of the school in mind, possibly even the image of the English abroad (O K probably not). It was simply the way back then. BUT!

All my life I have had a sense of fairness, of right and wrong, of putting things right.

It left me with an indelible sense of justice and injustice.

I knew that I had not really done anything that bad. I was the “victim” of an attack. Foolhardy maybe for retaliating, but it was in the heat of the moment. I should have been exonerated, not punished. Indeed I had always been “a good boy”, brought up not to swear, to fight, to steal (not even scrumping I recall). The sort of boy who was called to the headmaster’s office not to be punished but to explain “what really happened”, because I could be trusted.

All my life I have therefore had a sense of fairness, of right and wrong, of the need to put things right.

There are ways of doing things in a decent society, and ways of not doing things.

And so to Bristol.

It does somewhat beggar belief that an act that was filmed by many witnesses and confessed to in court can effectively be deemed not to have happened!

Now I am not arguing for one minute that the removal of the statue of Colston wasn’t long overdue, as was the renaming of buildings he funded. Bristol Council should have dealt with this decades ago. I can also almost excuse the people who tore it down as being carried along in the heat of the moment (Hmmm, half an hour or more I would hazard – time to check one’s conscience?). However to find them not guilty is a travesty of justice.

We have all done things, perhaps as children, that with hindsight we know were wrong. Should we have been punished? No, probably not. But should we be told that we did nothing wrong? Absolutely NO. In this case by so doing we not only turn these four into some kind of justice freedom fighters but open a very dangerous door to vandals everywhere.

What the judge appears to be saying is that if you believe in something passionately enough, or you just get a bit carried away, then you are justified in doing whatever you choose. It really doesn’t take a law degree to see the flaws in that argument!

There are ways of doing things in a decent society, and ways of not doing things. This was mob rule.

What would I have done you ask? I’d have found them guilty as charged, but then have seriously considered what was an appropriate punishment given the context and the numbers of other people cheering them on! I might even have used the opportunity to draw attention to the greater evils that were being protested. But to overlook criminal damage, no. That would be like justifying setting fire to car lots in Cleveland or looting in Portland. No. Simply no.

We keep coming back to the issue of how we deal with history and how we view ourselves as a result. Are we controlled by our past or liberated from it? Am I particularly bad just because I was born white? Am I forever a victim because I was born black? And for “black” you can substitute Jewish, Moslem, Hispanic, Irish, working class, etc. etc.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/01/05/blm-activists-dumped-edward-colston-statue-bristol-harbour-cleared/

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/01/06/colston-four-case-could-reviewed-avoid-setting-dangerous-legal/

Meanwhile over the pond a very different approach . . . . . .

https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/qanon-shaman-sentenced-trump-capitol-riot_n_618d4779e4b04e5bdfccfadc

So, I have COVID.

First reaction has to be that the vaccines have worked. That is to say I’m not dead yet and no signs of dying. This is just a bad bout of cold. Slightly tickly throat, runny nose, a dull ache around my eyes, muscle ache, slight giddiness, and lethargy. O K , maybe flu, not a cold! No particular problems breathing.

So to Vax or not to Vax. Well, that’s a notty one. It would seem from the above that they work, at least to an extent. I’ve still caught COVID, but it doesn’t seem to be killing me. BUT. What if they now tell us that we have to get injected every 3 months to maintain immunity? What if the variants keep defying science? What if the vaccinations end up killing us?

What if the vaccinations end up killing us?

Yep, you read right. But no I’m not going down the conspiracy theories route. I have to believe that this is too big to be some planned “Big Pharma”, “Illuminate”, Bill Gates inspired world domination masterplan. Where’s Bond when you need him (or her)?

As I understand it the vaccinations are not the traditional form of a mild version of the real thing, they are “harmless” artificial viruses that should trigger our natural immune system into identifying and fighting COVID-like viruses. But will such interference over time reduce our natural immune system’s ability to fight disease? Have we, in our “follow the science” optimism or arrogance played God and interferred with nature, getting ourselves into an ever increasing dependency on medical intervention?

Someone has suggested that we have effectively introduced AIDS to everyone! That sounds overly dramatic, but if we have introduced a man-made substance into our bodies, there’s no going back, no retrieval system and we’ve done it to millions. Rather like chemo-therapy, is the treatment worse than the disease?!

Well, anyway, there’s 7 billion of us. Worse case Bill Gates gets his population reduction! The planet becomes more sustainable. People can stop gluing their hands to motorways …………………………

Oh, just remembered, GOD! Oh yes Him. I seem to recall there is some kind of master plan, an end times, a winding up (or down) of all things. A return. A Kingdom to come.

COVID passports nothing. I’d better check that my Kingdom Passport is up to date!