Is America cursed by God or are we Blessed by God? Please don’t misunderstand me. I believe we live in the greatest nation on Earth. In our short history our Nation has done more for this world than any other country.
I’m reminded of another great Nation, one who was under God and enjoyed His Manifold Blessings, yet they too forgot His Word, they forgot God. As you read through the Old Testament, we see the children of Israel turn from God to the false gods of the world. We see them living in rebellion to God in every way imaginable. At some point, God says enough is enough and pours out judgment on Israel. That judgment came in many forms, but usually it was allowing the enemies of Israel to take their land.
God’s stages of Judgment: - A progressive lessening of divine protection and blessing
- Raising up of enemies
- Allowing (or sending) various catastrophes and trials.
God usually judges a people at two places in particular:
- The points of their greatest strengths or pride
- The most reassured idols of their heart. (ie money, sex, power, recreation, etc)
- His corrections and judgment typically target primary areas of idolatry and fleshly reliance.
God’s Judgment Always Has Purpose
- Children of Israel complained in the wilderness and accused God of bringing them into the wilderness to kill them. As a result, God caused them to wander until they did die.
- Moses required Israel to drink the ground up false idol they had worshiped.
- Because David used the enemies sword to kill Uriah, and then take his wife, the sword would never depart from his family and his wives would be taken by enemies.
- God took David’s beloved son because he took Uriah’s beloved wife.
- Israel forsook God and worshipped alien gods in their own land, so now they would be enslaved by aliens in a land not their own.
- Sins of physical immorality often bring judgment upon the physical body.
Amos 3:6-8 (NKJV) If a trumpet is blown in a city, will not the people be afraid? If there is calamity in a city, will not the Lord have done it? Surely the Lord God does nothing, Unless He reveals His secret to His servants the prophets. A lion has roared! Who will not fear? The Lord God has spoken! Who can but prophesy?
Amos 3:11 (NKJV) Therefore thus says the Lord God: "An adversary shall be all around the land; He shall sap your strength from you, And your palaces shall be plundered."
I think God has been revealing to His prophets, that our Great Nation may be in trouble, that we need to Remember what made this Nation Great and return to God, return to His Word.
IS AMERICA CURSED BY GOD?
Dictionary.net defines curse: “To bring great evil upon; to be the cause of serious harm or unhappiness to; to furnish with that which will be a cause of deep trouble; to afflict or injure grievously; to harass or torment”
To me, the best definition of God’s judgment, or cursing is in Deuteronomy 28 starting in verse 15:
Deuteronomy 28:15-68 (NKJV) "But it shall come to pass, if you do not obey the voice of the Lord your God, to observe carefully all His commandments and His statutes which I command you today, that all these curses will come upon you and overtake you:
Cursed shall you be in the city, and cursed shall you be in the country.
In 1870, half of the US population was employed in agriculture. As of 2006, less than 1% of the population is directly employed in agriculture.
In 2004, of the 145 million employed workers in the US, only 834,000 of them held jobs as agricultural workers. 83% of these jobs were as farm workers
Only 30 percent of the nation's 1.9 million farms will pass to a second generation, and less than 10 percent will reach a third generation. Another concern among the farming community is the average age of the Kansas farmer. According to the USDA, the average farmer is 59-years-old, which is four years older than the national average. Source: Legacy by Design: Succession Planning for Agribusiness Owners," Kevin Spafford
But dying along with the family farm is a symbolic image: the family unit working together to make an honest living, holding a reverence for God and country
Cursed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl.
Juan Jose Daboub, managing director of the World Bank, said it believes the phenomenon of high food prices is "here to stay for a few years, not for a few weeks or a few months. Food prices have risen worldwide, leading to riots in some countries, rice and flour smuggling in others and thinner wallets all around.
Daboub said that food inflation and skyrocketing gas prices in the last 2 years sent 100 million people worldwide back into the ranks of poverty living on less than $2 a day. The doubling of food prices in the next three years will counter the last seven years of poverty eradication, Daboub warned.
Those hit hardest will be poor people in underdeveloped countries where 80.0% of individuals’ budgets go toward food, explained Len Blum, managing director of Westwood Capital, a New York-based investment bank. “It is a setback to world poverty and to those going hungry.”
Earlier this month, the United States Department of Agriculture said that in America, food prices at the retail level climbed 4.0% last year and will rise up to 5.0% this year, the largest increase since 1990. (See: “ Gird For Higher Grocery Bills”)
Families on Food Stamps are struggling to survive
CHICAGO -- Danielle Brown stands outside a South Side market at midnight, braving the spring chill for her first chance to buy groceries since her food stamps ran out nearly two weeks ago. For days, Brown said, she has been turning cans of "whatever we got in the cabinet" into breakfast, lunch and dinner for her children, ages 1 and 3. “Ain't got no food left, the kids are probably hungry," said Brown, a 23-year-old single mother who relies heavily on her $312 monthly allotment of food stamps -- a ration adjusted just once a year, in October.
This is what the skyrocketing cost of food looks like at street level: Poor people whose food stamps don't buy as much as they once did rushing into a store in the dead of night, filling shopping carts with cereal, eggs and milk so their kids can wake up on the first day of the month to a decent meal.
"People with incomes below the poverty threshold are in dire straits because not only are food prices increasing but the food stamps they are receiving have not increased," said Dr. John Cook, an associate professor at Boston University's medical school who has studied the food stamp program, particularly how it affects children.
On the South Side of Chicago, people like Brown wait for the stroke of midnight, when one month gives way to another and brings a new allotment of food stamps.
Dennis Kladis began opening his family owned One Stop Food & Liquors once a month at midnight nine months ago to give desperate families a chance to buy food as soon as possible.
"I'm telling you, by the end of the month they're just dying to get back to the first," said Kladis, who has watched other area stores follow his lead. "Obviously, they are struggling to get through the month."
Jean Daniel, a spokeswoman for the Agriculture Department, which runs the food stamp program, said there is only so much the aid can do."Food stamps were designed to be a supplement to the food budget," she said. They "were never intended to be the entire budget."
As prices rise, the number of Americans relying on food stamps has also climbed by 6.1 percent in the past year, increasing from 26.1 million in February 2007 to 27.7 million in February this year. The sputtering economy, persistent unemployment and the mortgage crisis have all contributed to the increase. The Agriculture Department expects the overall number of participants to reach 28 million next year.
Cursed shall be the fruit of your body.
Infertility is defined as the inability to conceive a child despite trying for one year. The condition affects about 5.3 million Americans, or 9 percent of the reproductive age population, according to the American Society for Reproductive Medicine.
In the United States, the total fertility rate - the number of children a woman has in her lifetime - fell from seven or eight in 1800 to slightly more than two today, says J. David Hacker, assistant professor of history at Binghamton University. And with a five-year $667,237 grant from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, Hacker hopes to find out why.
Declining fertility in that period was a major factor in the aging of the population. The median age of Americans rose from less than 16 years in 1850 to older than 35 in 2000, Hacker said. It is projected to reach 39.1 years in 2035.
"What's interesting about the fertility decline is that the vast majority of it takes place before there's modern contraceptive technology," Hacker said. "It's kind of ironic. Our best source of data on fertility - the U.S. birth registration system - was not in place until 1933, but at that point we've had almost 100 years of continuous decline in the birth rate."
He tracks child-naming practices as a proxy measure of parental religiosity, for instance. During the 19th century, he notes, there was an amazing secularization of the naming pool. Three-quarters of all children's names had biblical origins in 1800, while by 1920 just a fifth had such origins.
"What I've shown," Hacker said, "is that parents who rely on biblical names for their children have much larger families than parents who rely on secular names, controlling for economic and other factors." Article adapted by Medical News Today from original press release.
America's Children: Key National Indicators of Well-Being, 2007, the U.S. government's annual report that monitors the well-being of the Nation's children and youth.
The percentage of all births to unmarried women rose sharply from 18 percent in 1980 to 37 percent in 2005. The report noted that children are at greater risk for adverse consequences when born to a single mother because the social, emotional, and financial resources available to the family may be more limited.
This year's report included a new indicator, on child maltreatment in the Section on Family and Social Environment. The report defined child maltreatment as including "physical, sexual, and psychological abuse, as well as neglect (including medical neglect)." In 2005, there were 12 substantiated reports of child maltreatment per 1,000 children. From 1998 through 2002, the rate of substantiated reports of child maltreatment varied between 12 and 13 reports per 1,000 children and has remained at approximately 12 reports per 1,000 children since 2002.
and the produce of your land, the increase of your cattle and the offspring of your flocks.
Beef/Cattle: Deteriorating pasture and range conditions over much of the Plains and increasing livestock production costs are adversely affecting all cattle and beef sectors. Smaller inventories of U.S. cows, calf crops, and feeder cattle are likely in 2009 because of relatively heavy cow slaughter and apparent low levels of heifer retention thus far in 2008. Continued high demand for corn will likely lead to higher corn and feed prices, with declining profit margins, for most of 2008.
Cursed shall you be when you come in, and cursed shall you be when you go out.
"The Lord will send on you cursing, confusion, and rebuke in all that you set your hand to do, until you are destroyed and until you perish quickly, because of the wickedness of your doings in which you have forsaken Me.
- Is there anything more confusing than Politics in America? Chaos and confusion seems to reign in politics, economics, gas prices, our home life, you name it. It just seems like everything is off.
The Lord will make the plague cling to you until He has consumed you from the land which you are going to possess.
AIDS diagnoses and deaths
1. In June 1981, the first cases of what is now known as AIDS were reported in the USA. During the 1980s, there were rapid increases in the number of AIDS cases and deaths of people with AIDS. Cases peaked with the 1993 expansion of the case definition1, and then declined. The most dramatic drops in both cases and deaths began in 1996, with the widespread use of combination antiretroviral therapy.
2. Since 2000 the annual numbers of AIDS diagnoses have been relatively constant, with an estimated 37,852 in 2006. In total, an estimated 1,014,797 people have been diagnosed with AIDS in America.
3. The death rate among people with AIDS has also remained relatively stable in recent years; there were an estimated 14,627 deaths in 2006. Since the beginning of the epidemic, an estimated 565,927 people with AIDS have died in the USA.
STD’s
* Teens are especially susceptible to STDs because their bodies are still immature. Most people who acquire STDs in the US are under the age of 25.
* 3.8 million STDs are contracted each year by US teens. This is 10,000 teens per day, or every 8 seconds.
* 70 million Americans, or every fourth person, has a viral STD.
* Viral STDs are the most prevalent and problematic STDs today. Viral STDs have no cure and some can be fatal.
* The viral STDs are Herpes, genital warts, Hepatitis B, Papilloma, virus HPV, and Human Immunodeficiency Virus. (American Social Health Association, National Institutes of Health)
The Lord will strike you with consumption, with fever, with inflammation, with severe burning fever, with the sword, with scorching, and with mildew; they shall pursue you until you perish.
Arthritis:
- An estimated 46 million adults in the United States reported being told by a doctor that they have some form of arthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, gout, lupus, or fibromyalgia.
- One in five (over 21%) adults in the United States report having doctor diagnosed arthritis.
- In 2003–2005, 50% of adults 65 years and over reported an arthritis diagnosis.
- By 2030, an estimated 67 million of Americans aged 18 years or older are projected to have doctor-diagnosed arthritis.
- [Data Source: 2003 – 2005 NHIS]
- An estimated 294,000 children under age 18 have some form of arthritis or rheumatic condition, this represents approximately 1 in every 250 children.
Arthritis Care Res 2007;57:1439-1445 [Data Source: 2001–2004 National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey and 2001–2004 National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey]
PRESCRIPTION DRUG USE (from the National Center for Health Statistics)
Most frequently prescribed therapeutic class: Antidepressants
Source: National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey: 2005
From Robert Longley, Your Guide to US Government Info.
Is America the most medicated nation on Earth? Could be, according data just released by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) showing that at least half of all Americans takes at least one prescription drug, with one in six taking three or more medications.
Prescription drug use is rising among people of all ages, and use increases with age. Five out of six persons 65 and older are taking at least one medication and almost half the elderly take three or more.
Adult use of antidepressants almost tripled between 1988-1994 and 1999-2000. Ten percent of women 18 and older and 4 percent of men now take antidepressants. Prescriptions for nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, antidepressants, blood glucose/sugar regulators and cholesterol-lowering statin drugs, in particular, increased notably between 1996 and 2002.
And your heavens which are over your head shall be bronze, and the earth which is under you shall be iron.
The Lord will change the rain of your land to powder and dust; from the heaven it shall come down on you until you are destroyed.
Drought is once again a problem. You think the price of oil is going through the roof. In 10 years water will be like oil.
The wrath of 2007: America's great droughtAmerica is facing its worst summer drought since the Dust Bowl years of the Great Depression. Or perhaps worse still.
From the mountains and desert of the West, now into an eighth consecutive dry year, to the wheat farms of Alabama, where crops are failing because of rainfall levels 12 inches lower than usual, to the vast soupy expanse of Lake Okeechobee in southern Florida, which has become so dry it actually caught fire a couple of weeks ago, a continent is crying out for water.
In the south-east, usually a lush, humid region, it is the driest few months since records began in 1895. California and Nevada, where burgeoning population centres co-exist with an often harsh, barren landscape, have seen less rain over the past year than at any time since 1924. The Sierra Nevada range, which straddles the two states, received only 27 per cent of its usual snowfall in winter, with immediate knock-on effects on water supplies for the populations of Las Vegas and Los Angeles.
But the long-term implications are escaping nobody. Climatologists see a growing volatility in the south-east's weather - today's drought coming close on the heels of devastating hurricanes two to three years ago. In the West, meanwhile, a growing body of scientific evidence suggests a movement towards a state of perpetual drought by the middle of this century. "The 1930s drought lasted less than a decade. This is something that could remain for 100 years," said Richard Seager a climatologist at Columbia University and lead researcher of a report published recently by the government's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
Predatory insects have started ravaging trees already weakened by record temperatures and fires over the past few years. Animal species such as frogs and red squirrels have been forced to move ever higher up the mountains in search of cooler temperatures, and are in danger of dying out altogether. Mount Lemmon, which rises above the city of Tucson, boasts the southernmost ski resort in the US, but has barely attracted any snow these past few years.
"A lot of people think climate change and the ecological repercussions are 50 years away," Thomas Swetnam, an environmental scientist at the University of Arizona in Tucson, told The New York Times a few months ago. "But it's happening now in the West. The data is telling us that we are in the middle of one of the first big indicators of climate change impacts in the continental United States." Across the West, farmers and city water consumers are locked in a perennial battle over water rights - one that the cities are slowly winning. Down the line, though, there are serious questions about how to keep showers and lawn sprinklers going in the retirement communities of Nevada and Arizona. Lake Powell, the reservoir on the upper Colorado River that helps provide water across a vast expanse of the West, has been less than half full for years, with little prospect of filling up in the foreseeable future.
According to the NOAA's recent report, the West can expect 10-20 per cent less rainfall by mid-century, which will increase air pollution in the cities, kill off trees and water-retaining giant cactus plants and shrink the available water supply by as much as 25 per cent.
The Lord will cause you to be defeated before your enemies; you shall go out one way against them and flee seven ways before them; and you shall become troublesome to all the kingdoms of the earth. Your carcasses shall be food for all the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth, and no one shall frighten them away.
Since the World War II we have had limited military success.
North Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq have proven not so easy to conquer. In fact you could say that we were defeated
The Lord will strike you with the boils of Egypt, with tumors, with the scab, and with the itch, from which you cannot be healed.
MRSA Epidemic
Flesh-eating bacteria. A drug-resistant menace, spreading silently through hospital hallways.
An example of the boil that often accompanies MRSA infection. Many of those infected with the superbug are not familiar with these telltale signs.
(University of South Florida College of Medicine)
If one were asked to come up with a recipe for a panic-inducing disease, it would be hard to come up with something more horrifying than methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus -- or MRSA.
But even as new research suggests that the disease may be spreading though the homosexual community -- and could even be developing into a full-blown epidemic -- health experts studying MRSA say panic over the disease may be premature.
Just ask Dr. Daniel Pallin, director of clinical research in the department of emergency medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.
Pallin led a team of investigators to track the rise in the number of infections from drug-resistant staph germs between 1993 and 2005 using government-provided data. Their mission: to determine whether we have an epidemic on our hands.
"In simple terms, the answer is yes," Pallin says. "The number of emergency room visits for these skin infections increased by about triple."
Specifically, Pallin and his colleagues discovered that visits to emergency departments due to MRSA rose from 1.2 million in 1993 to 3.4 million in 2005. Community-acquired MRSA infections have become the No. 1 cause of abscesses in otherwise healthy emergency room patients.
Bottom of Form
But Pallin, whose study will appear in the upcoming issue of the journal Annals of Emergency Medicine, says that despite the confirmation that a MRSA epidemic is in full swing, the disease does not pose the level of disaster that the use of the term might suggest.
"This suggests to us that this actually is an epidemic, though it is an epidemic of a minor disease, and we don't want to create hysteria," he says. "I would say that people should be concerned but maybe not afraid or worried. But a certain level of concern is appropriate."
The Lord will strike you with madness and blindness and confusion of heart. And you shall grope at noonday, as a blind man gropes in darkness; you shall not prosper in your ways; you shall be only oppressed and plundered continually, and no one shall save you.
Alzheimers is a growing problem
The Alzheimer’s Association today reports that in 2007 there are now more than 5 million people in the United States living with Alzheimer’s disease. This number includes 4.9 million people over the age of 65 and between 200,000 and 500,000 people under age 65 with early onset Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias. This is a 10 percent increase from the previous prevalence nationwide estimate of 4.5 million.
The greatest risk factor for Alzheimer’s is increasing age, and with 78 million baby boomers beginning to turn 60 last year, it is estimated that someone in America develops Alzheimer’s every 72 seconds; by mid-century someone will develop Alzheimer’s every 33 seconds.
These new estimates, as well as other data concerning the disease and its effects, are issued today as hundreds of advocates from across the country gather in the nation’s capitol for the Alzheimer’s Association’s annual Public Policy Forum.
The report titled, 2007 Alzheimer’s Disease Facts and Figures, is being released at a hearing today chaired by Senator Barbara Mikulski. Senators Barbara Mikulski and Christopher Bond and Representatives Edward Markey and Christopher Smith have introduced bipartisan legislation to address problems identified in the Association’s report.
The Association’s report details the escalation of Alzheimer’s disease which now is the seventh leading cause of death in the country and the fifth leading cause of death for those over age 65.
You shall betroth a wife, but another man shall lie with her; you shall build a house, but you shall not dwell in it; you shall plant a vineyard, but shall not gather its grapes. Your ox shall be slaughtered before your eyes, but you shall not eat of it; your donkey shall be violently taken away from before you, and shall not be restored to you; your sheep shall be given to your enemies, and you shall have no one to rescue them.
Marriages are breaking up at record rates.
The United States has the highest rape rate among countries which report such statistics.
- It is 4 times higher than that of Germany, 13 times higher than that of England and 20 times higher than that of Japan.
Rape is on the increase. National studies reveal very high rates of rape. The most recent Department of Justice survey concludes 311,000 victims per year. (This includes male and female, gay and straight.) This figure is believed to be a low estimate. The National Victim Center concludes 683,000 per year. The FBI has concluded that 1 in 3 women will be raped during their lifetime. 91% of those raped are female; 9% of those raped are male; 99% of those committing rape are male.
- Every hour, 16 women confront rapists
- A woman is raped every 6 minutes
- Every 18 seconds, a woman is beaten
- Since 1974, the rate of assaults against young women (ages 20 to 24) has jumped over 50 percent
- Three out of four women will be the victims of at least one violent crime during their lifetimes
- Only 50 percent of all rapes are ever reported and of those reported, less than 40 percent will result in arrests
- One out of every seven women currently attending college has been raped
CRIME IS AT AN ALL TIME HIGH
The crime rate is at an all-time high. According to a crime study from the Department of Commerce, Census Bureau, in the last 30 years the murder rate has increased more than 100 percent; violent crimes have risen 332 percent; and illegal drug use among youths age 12 to 25 has risen more than 400 percent. What's happened to America?
Your sons and your daughters shall be given to another people, and your eyes shall look and fail with longing for them all day long; and there shall be no strength in your hand.
- Our sons and daughters are being lost to godless educators, drugs, pornography, sexual promiscuity, abduction. We are powerless to stop them.
Students are killing their classmates, crime is up, families are falling apart, and academically, student success is at an all-time low. Since 1963 SAT scores have been dropping steadily, from an average score of "980" in 1963 down to a score of "901" more recently. In public schools, where teachers a generation ago reported the greatest challenges to be "talking in class" and "chewing gum," now violence, drugs, and sexual assault top the list. The disciplined, orderly classroom, providing the optimum learning environment, is a thing of the past. Students no longer typically regard teachers with respect or honor, nor take as seriously the education teachers try to give. What's happened to America?
A nation whom you have not known shall eat the fruit of your land and the produce of your labor, and you shall be only oppressed and crushed continually. So you shall be driven mad because of the sight which your eyes see. The Lord will strike you in the knees and on the legs with severe boils which cannot be healed, and from the sole of your foot to the top of your head.
- Rise in staph infections that are becoming increasingly resistant to antibiotics. They look like boils. (SEE ABOVE)
The Lord will bring you and the king whom you set over you to a nation which neither you nor your fathers have known, and there you shall serve other gods--wood and stone. And you shall become an astonishment, a proverb, and a byword among all nations where the Lord will drive you.
You shall carry much seed out to the field but gather little in, for the locust shall consume it. You shall plant vineyards and tend them, but you shall neither drink of the wine nor gather the grapes; for the worms shall eat them. You shall have olive trees throughout all your territory, but you shall not anoint yourself with the oil; for your olives shall drop off.
You shall beget sons and daughters, but they shall not be yours; for they shall go into captivity. Locusts shall consume all your trees and the produce of your land.
Due to drought we are already seeing an increase in aggressive insects.
The alien who is among you shall rise higher and higher above you, and you shall come down lower and lower.
- Washington projects that by the year 2030, one in three Americans will be a minority, with the most significant growth being in Hispanics.
He shall lend to you, but you shall not lend to him; he shall be the head, and you shall be the tail.
WE ARE NO LONGER THE WORLD LEADER IN MONEY
The End of Empire By William Greider September 5, 2002
The US financial position is rapidly deteriorating, due mainly to America's persistent and growing trade deficit. US ambitions to run the world, in other words, are heavily mortgaged. Like any debtor who borrows more year after year with no plausible way to reverse the trend, a nation sinking deeper into debt enters into an adverse power relationship with its creditors--greater and greater dependency.
The threatening implications are seldom discussed with any clarity or candor, but the numbers are not secret. The US economy's net foreign indebtedness--the accumulation of two decades of running larger and larger trade deficits--will reach nearly 25 percent of US GDP this year, or roughly $2.5 trillion. Fifteen years ago, it was zero. Before America's net balance of foreign assets turned negative, in 1988, the United States was a creditor nation itself, investing and lending vast capital to others, always more than it borrowed. Now the trend line looks most alarming. If the deficits persist around the current level of $400 billion a year or grow larger, the total US indebtedness should reach $3.5 trillion in three years or so. Within a decade, it would total 50 percent of GDP. Instead of facing this darkening prospect, Bush and team regularly dismiss the worldviews of these creditor nations and lecture them condescendingly on our superior qualities. Any profligate debtor who insults his banker is unwise, to put it mildly.
The specter of America's deepening weakness seems counter-intuitive to what people see and experience in a time of apparent continuing prosperity--and contradicts everything they are told by authoritative voices. But the quicksand is real. We are already in up to our knees.
Moreover all these curses shall come upon you and pursue and overtake you, until you are destroyed, because you did not obey the voice of the Lord your God, to keep His commandments and His statutes which He commanded you. And they shall be upon you for a sign and a wonder, and on your descendants forever. "Because you did not serve the Lord your God with joy and gladness of heart, for the abundance of everything, therefore you shall serve your enemies, whom the Lord will send against you, in hunger, in thirst, in nakedness, and in need of everything; and He will put a yoke of iron on your neck until He has
destroyed you.
JESUS BECAME CURSED FOR US
As Christians are we affected by what God does to America? Yes we are. But remember this, we are no longer under any curse.
Galatians 3:13-14 (NKJV) Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us (for it is written, "Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree"), that the blessing of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles in Christ Jesus, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.
REMEMBER GOD”S STAGES OF JUDGMENT:
- A progressive lessening of divine protection and blessing
- Raising up of enemies
- Allowing (or sending) various catastrophes and trials.
GOD JUDGES BY WEAKENING US AT OUR STRENGTHS AND OUR IDOLS.
- HE IS WEAKENING US AT OUR ECONOMIC MIGHT.
- HE IS WEAKENING US AT OUR IDOLS: OUR MONEY, OUR PRIDE, OUR LEISURE TIME.
- PERHAPS IT IS TIME TO SAY GOD HEAL AMERICA, INSTEAD OF GOD BLESS AMERICA.
Joel 2:12-17 (NKJV) "Now, therefore," says the Lord, "Turn to Me with all your heart, With fasting, with weeping, and with mourning." So rend your heart, and not your garments; Return to the Lord your God, For He is gracious and merciful, Slow to anger, and of great kindness; And He relents from doing harm. Who knows if He will turn and relent, And leave a blessing behind Him-- A grain offering and a drink offering For the Lord your God? Blow the trumpet in Zion, Consecrate a fast, Call a sacred assembly; Gather the people, Sanctify the congregation, Assemble the elders, Gather the children and nursing babes; Let the bridegroom go out from his chamber, And the bride from her dressing room. Let the priests, who minister to the Lord, Weep between the porch and the altar; Let them say, "Spare Your people, O Lord, And do not give Your heritage to reproach, That the nations should rule over them. Why should they say among the peoples, 'Where is their God?' "
God is saying He gets wearied by all of our songs and talking that everything is OK to Him, after all He loves us just the way we are. We even think that He does not judge, but He forgives us and loves us. After all, He made us, so He must understand.
Did God call His people (the wandering Israelites) His 'friends'? NO WAY! He called them murmurers and complainers. His wrath came upon them when they complained of His Ways and Provisions. They had no faith in God and therefore never entered into God's rest. On one occasion God's wrath upon them was such that God sent fiery serpents to kill them. 
offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises offered up his only begotten son, of whom it was said, "In Isaac your seed shall be called," (Hebrews 11:17-18)
cell phone is working sometimes. Arrangements are made to send him some gadgets (battery charger) that would allow Tulum to recharge his phone.
Rev Saw Augustus (pastor of Judson BC, Singapore) is scheduled to depart for Yangon on Wed morning. I am planning to hand him $13,000 received from preliminary donations received from a US donor, Calvary BC, Good News BC, Acts BC, Shalom BC and Redeemer BC. The money will be used to purchase mosquito nets, food & water and medicine. If I received more cash by tomorrow, I will include them for Rev Augustus to channel to MBC. I have full confidence that Rev Augustus is able to account for all the money received through the Convention. 
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