Things are not always as they appear. That statement is often repeated and is well said. I recall enjoying an evening at the Pikes Peak or Bust Rodeo at the Broadmoor Arena in Colorado Springs in the late 1960s. The guest celebrities were Doc and Festus of the Gunsmoke television series. In their segment they did several of their give and take comedy routines familiar to those who had watched the programs on television.
Then it came the time for Festus to sing a western ballad. In a smooth, rich baritone voice the ballad rolled out of that squeaky-voiced Festus, the stumbling, mumbling deputy of Marshall Dillon! I was really taken by surprise! It turns out that Festus was, in real life Ken Curtis, once a member of the Sons of the Pioneers after a prior notable career in other musical venues.
Things are not always as they appear to be.
Middle class America, sometimes describing themselves as being "in a rat race," often have the subtle sense that it looks like "the rats are winning!" When I was a practicing CPA, preparing tax returns and keeping track of records for that purpose, basically, as it turned out, it appeared that perhaps the rats were winning because the deck was stacked against people at the start.
A young couple-college graduates or not-decide to marry, have a family, fulfill careers, and enjoy the good life of American freedom. Several massive issues hit them immediately: They both get jobs; they both need a car; they want to buy a home; children appear on the scene; providing for their education looms over them; starting a retirement fund; paying college loans, car loans, home mortgage; financial needs mushroom; and they are told, in counsel, that they should have at least six months of emergency funds set aside to meet unexpected calamities! It looks like the rats are winning because they have a head start!
If the couple has no real, practical faith in God, they are way behind already. In today's American culture, there is a strong trend that when the son or daughter turns eighteen years old and graduates from high school, its "Goodbye, Mom and Dad, and your God, I am done with it!"
What a dismal picture I have painted, yet it is so often the way it is. Things are not always what they seem to be. The God of reality has been replaced with the god of things and stuff...and emptiness and hopelessness. If God didn't move, who did? Perhaps it is designed to bring man to face the question, "What will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul" (Mark 8:36).
When viewed through the lenses of spiritual reality, there is hope, for Jesus said, "In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world" (John 16:33). When Jesus asked His disciples, in John 6:67-69, "Do you also want to go away," Peter exclaimed, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. Also we have come to believe and know that You are the Christ, the Son of the living God."
As one of his subtitles in his paraphrase of Paul's letter to the Philippians, J.B. Phillips wrote, "Man's Extremity Is God's Opportunity." When we get to the end of our rope, God is there.
The godless mindset of the liberal, socialistic elements of our society swarmed to the appealing oratory of Barack Obama and allowed him eight years of almost free-wheeling manipulation of the basic foundations of our Republic, and any attempt at rebuke was met with an outcry of "racist" or "conspiracy theorist." No one was allowed to properly vet Obama and his background is, at best, a shadowy uncertainty.
No doubt, like most of the media and the Clinton campaign, he expected Hillary to end up winning the presidency. Evidently, that led him to quietly mutter, "The end of the Republic has never looked better" during the early moments of his talk at the April 30, 2016, Correspondents' Dinner in Washington, D.C. Why would a president say that, after eight years, unless he was on a planned program to accomplish just that? Yet, no one has challenged him on it, so far as I have seen. Not one.
Well, he did set out to "fundamentally transform America forever," didn't he? He told us that plainly, over and over during the 2008 campaign. And now he has summed up his legacy as a success and the country is in greater shape than it has ever been. Deceit and deception are two descriptive words that come to mind.
Sometimes things are not as they appear to be.
Why did God allow him to become president? How could it have been possible that so many fell into lockstep with him, even now claiming to hold him at a popularity level of fifty-three or more per cent of the nation? Was God allowing this nation, which has been the beacon of light and hope for the whole world, to test its real heart and commitment?
He has shown the nation what the liberals had to offer, and it was like a wet paper sack, empty and holding nothing. At this writing there are sixty-nine lemmings who are piled up at the bottom of the cliff, having plunged over the edge still committed to a failed leadership with a failed philosophy.
Fortunately, grassroots America, both evangelical Christian and every-day hardhats and blue collar patriots rose up and defied the so-called, self-identified "more intelligent" who were so sure they had captured the election and would have eight more years of Obama destruction of America's foundations.
Obama came into office with two agendas-one, an assigned task of "leading us into a new world order," which would require the destruction of America's sovereignty. The other one, in my own opinion, was a subtle and hidden desire and intent to effect the conversion of the world to Islam. His claim to be a Christian was an empty and totally unsupported effort to deceive and mislead from his true purpose. His most memorable moment, as he said in his opening remarks to the beginning of Ramadan, the Islamic holy days in 2009, was the early morning Islamic call to prayer.
What was the reason for that special tour of the Arab/Islamic countries so soon after becoming president in 2009, where he apologized for America and bowed down before the king of Saudi Arabia, a submissive, subjective gesture to the leader of another country?
Why has he been instrumental in overthrowing Islamic dictators, even, in Middle East countries? When the Egyptian military coup threw out the Muslim Brotherhood leadership, why did Obama send Secretaries Hagel and Kerry there to convince the new military government to allow the Muslim Brotherhood to have a part in it?
Why did he insist on calling the Fort Hood massacre "workplace violence" when it was clearly Islamic terrorism and everyone knows that to be so? Why did he mastermind such a benevolent agreement with Iran to allow them access to nuclear power and give them billions of dollars? Count the waste of American lives and tangible resources as the price we have paid. It makes one wonder about the integrity of his oath of office.
Even Obama's signature legislation, the Affordable Care Act, was too expensive to be acceptable, except for those who were subsidized by government funding, and insurance companies were abandoning the plan, wholesale, or pricing themselves out of reach of the needy. Some analysts have concluded that it was never meant to be successful but to be a tool to bring complete social medicine to America-a prime feature of the liberal, socialistic dream.
But America's choice was simply like deciding what will we have for supper? Shall we put together a salad or a crockpot of a variety of ingredients of our own selected choices, or do we just open up another can of soup like we have done for eight years? America has decided to try a new menu of its own choosing.
But things are not always as they appear to be.
Had Hillary Clinton won the election, is there any doubt whatsoever that the downward spiral of America would have continued? So if that would have brought in a New World Order as the forerunner of a one world government-the seven-headed beast prophesied in Revelation 13-why did God, apparently, put a stop to it?
It spills out this way: While God has that ultimate goal in mind, He has never allowed "flesh and blood" (ungodly mankind) to decide how and when prophetic events, even personal salvation, are to occur. A notable example of that is His death. The religious leaders desperately wanted to kill Him, but He said, "No one takes it [His life] from Me, but I lay it down of Myself" (John 10:18).
Remember what Jesus said in Luke 17:26-30 in regard to social and economic conditions at the coming of the Son of Man:
"And as it was in the days of Noah, so it will be also in the days of the Son of Man: They ate, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all. Likewise, as it was also in the days of Lot: They ate, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they built; but on the day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven and destroyed them all. Even so will it be in the day when the Son of Man is revealed."
The context continues through verse 37 with more detail, but it is clear that America and the world will not be devastated and subservient to a new world order when Jesus returns. Social and economic activities will be in full swing when Jesus comes. God has kept His plan free of the taint of Adam's "flesh and blood" input and has given a window of opportunity for evangelical Christians to tell the good news of salvation to as many more as possible. It reminds me of the words of an old country gospel song I heard many years ago and once again just recently: "Wait a little longer, please Jesus, a few more days to get our loved ones in!"
Perhaps one of your loved ones will be that final one He takes out of the Gentiles for His namesake!
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