Ministering in the night season—just how critical is this night season of our providential appointed watch? The ever-mutating political and religious powers in recent months, both in our country and globally, have escalated to such staggering proportions that only the Bible’s promises and prophetic hopes can calm the heart. Note Daniel 9:2:
In the first year of his [Darius] reign I Daniel understood by books the number of the years, whereof the word of the LORD came to Jeremiah the prophet, that he would accomplish seventy years in the desolations of Jerusalem.
It is through the reading of the books of the Bible in the light of prophecy that we must view our age, an age swiftly culminating and ripening for the coming of the one-world government and one-world religion. How near will we get to the uniting of this now fragmented globalism before Christ calls His own in a secret Rapture from the earth? The very reading of the Bible in our day and time should inspire the heart in both living and praying without ceasing for the coming of our Blessed Saviour!
The Night Season of Our Time in History
Major changes in several countries throughout the world are setting precedent for other countries to follow in the pursuit of global unification. Our country’s present administration is in full sympathy with these precedents. Let us note several of these governmental decisions working to exert greater control over the people.
(1) In the Netherlands recently, the Royal Dutch Medical Association began to permit euthanasia upon children. Now, parents can order the deaths of their children who are terminally ill. Doctors first remove the child from the ventilator and the feeding tube and halt hydration. According to Dutch doctors, the child usually dies shortly thereafter; however, he may remain alive for a time and suffer. That’s when they administer muscle relaxants, and within minutes the child dies. Belgium is also considering legalizing euthanasia for minors as long as there is parental consent, and the minor is considered by a psychiatrist to have “capacity for discernment.” “Some children need to have an answer to their demands because they are suffering so much. They are asking for this,” said [Professor and Dr. Dominique] Biarent. The Brussels-based doctor said her fellow colleagues have faced this issue for years and need some legal clarity to take away the fear of possible criminal prosecution.
“Death with dignity”—that’s the sugarcoated phrase used to describe killing someone who is considered “beyond treatment.” Recently here in the U.S., Vermont became the fourth state to allow euthanasia through the passage of the Death with Dignity Act. The LA Times reported the following:
Under the bill, a qualifying patient must be at least 18 years old, a Vermont resident and suffering from an ‘incurable and irreversible disease,’ with less than six months to live. Two physicians, including the prescribing doctor, must make that medical determination. The patient must also be told of other end-of-life services, ‘including palliative care, comfort care, hospice care, and pain control,’ according to the bill.
It seems that as long as it is deemed “compassionate,” any act is permissible—even murder. The Bible remarks that “the compassion of the wicked is cruel” (Prov. 12:10).
(2) An atheistic monument to be erected in the courtyard outside the Bradford County Courthouse in north Florida will include quotations from Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Madalyn Murray O’Hair, the founder of American Atheists. It will also include a list of Old Testament punishments that mandate the death penalty for what they believe are absurd “sins.” This monument will stand next to a copy of the Ten Commandments.
We must remember that atheists have no moral standing in critiquing any moral law system. Atheism cannot account for morality in its worldview. Morality is not a thing; it is not made up of atoms. Morality cannot be derived from the stuff of the cosmos or extracted from our DNA. As a result, atheists can’t argue against murder, genocide, rape, theft, or any other moral aversion. In fact, the category “morality” does not exist in a matter-only worldview. Atheists have put together the “enjoy-yourself” campaign. Their growing slogan is, “There’s no God; now stop worrying and enjoy your life.”
Arthur Leff (1935–1981), who taught law at Yale Law School, concluded that, given atheistic assumptions, there is no way to prove that “any particular act, no matter how horrible, is normatively wrong.” Leff stated the following:
I will put the current situation as sharply as possible: there is today no way of ‘proving’ that napalming babies is bad except by asserting it (in a louder and louder voice), or by defining it as so, early in one’s game, and then later slipping it through, in a whisper, as a conclusion.
Many don’t remember how then-Senator Joe Biden grilled Clarence Thomas on his belief in Natural Law. Thomas knew that any dialog with Biden over the idea that there is a God-given law would have doomed his nomination. Thomas was smart to let Biden ramble and get his analysis of Natural Law wrong and impossible to account for, given evolutionary assumptions which America’s new religion is based upon. To the growing atheism in America there is no basis for the categories “good” and “evil” in a matter-only cosmos. Anything that’s left of the idea of fixed moral laws is an illusion that will soon fade as our nation becomes consistent with what it has mandated from the courts and taught in our schools.
The acceptance of the atheist monument by civil officials and the courts as somehow being equal to the Ten Commandments is a prime indicator that secularism has become the public voice in America. It truly will bring our nation to its deathbed.
(3) Over the decades of the past 150 years, America has tended to follow the course of Great Britain in many ways. For instance, the hippie and free love movement back in the 1960s started in Great Britain and quickly made its way to America. It was at that time that the Beatles came to America and literally altered the course of Western culture through their music. National Health Care was established in Great Britain back in 1948; through our present administration in Washington, it is now coming true here under the guise of Obamacare. In the 1980s the number of Christians in Great Britain began to drastically decline. Church congregations in many areas became so small that they had to close the church and sell the buildings. Some of those church buildings were converted into pubs, some into hotels, and others into mosques.
In Great Britain entire communities have been taken over by Muslims; through much pressure, professing Christians have been driven out of communities where they have lived for generations. It is very evident now in Great Britain that there are more Muslims than Anglicans, and every day there is a growing influx of Muslims into that country. It is also true that there are more worshipers attending the mosques than the Church of England, and the latter continues on a steep decline in attendance. This is not only true of the Anglican Church but also of virtually every other Christian denomination in the United Kingdom. A more startling report came out in the 2011 census stating that the number of people in England and Wales who identify themselves as Christians is 4.1 million fewer than in the previous census. That is an overall decline of 10% in a relatively short time. But from the Muslim perspective, there has been a massive increase of their adherents in the country. The number of Muslims in England and Wales during the same time frame has increased by 75%. This influx is having a dramatic effect on the overall religious climate of the British Isles so much so that 1 of every 10 British under the age of 25 claims to be Muslim. The number of people under the age of 25 that claim to be Christian has dropped to less than 5 of every 10. Many in England have agreed with the words of Keith Porteous Wood, the Executive Director of the National Secular Society, who commented on the latest findings, saying:
In another 20 years there are going to be more active Muslims than there are churchgoers. The time has now come that Institutional Christianity is no longer justified; the number has dropped below critical mass for which there is no longer any justification for the established Church.
Since Obama became president, Muslims are rapidly taking over communities and cities in the US including Dearborn, Michigan, and Murfreesboro, Tennessee. We have seen Muslim judges rule on sharia law instead of American law with more and more courts turning to the Muslim law for their community. All of this is being done without the media informing us of such overwhelming changes in our courts. The concept of even Neo-Christianity is dropping in our country. All of this is drastically affecting America’s culture. We will soon be at Great Britain’s perspective of the concept of Christianity and Islam. In both these countries more and more killings and brutalities fall under the public cry of “in the name of Allah,” and especially in America the call for “one nation under Allah.”
(4) Another evidence of the night season in which we live is the vote by the leaders of the Boy Scouts of America on May 23, 2013, to allow sodomite youth into its membership. This more-than-a-century-old organization has been at least a beacon of morality, integrity, and honesty, commingled with a respect for God in our country. But its leadership has fallen into the pit of secularist vipers who have poisoned the organization with a death that will be permanent. The organization for the promotion of morality and God among male youth has in more recent years been led by godless men who believe that political correctness is more important than the organization’s birthright.
Some 1,400 adult BSA delegates from around the country gathered in Texas and voted to welcome open and avowed homosexuality into its ranks, and doing away with its “morally straight” Scout Oath. This organization was one of the last national bastions of moral decency left in our country. Those who are given to immorality cannot swear the oath, “On my honor I will do my duty to God and my country and to obey the Scout’s law.” Such a sympathetic vote by the leaders may indicate how aggressively the powers of sodomy have already invaded this organization. It truly will be a capstone to the intentional demoralization of our boys coming into manhood. May God have mercy on us.
Even by its own estimates, BSA leadership admitted that the decision would likely result in a mass exodus from Scouting. The anticipation was estimated at nearly 400,000 Scouts and Scouters to leave the organization. When Canada voted the same back in 1998 with its version of the Boy Scouts to welcome open homosexuality, its membership lost over half in the next five years. Before the passage in America, the membership was some 2.5 million boys. What will the final walkout be? Some have estimated nearly 1.5 million in the next months. It must be remembered that over 70 percent of America’s Scout groups are sponsored by churches and religious organizations. Thus, another organization in America for moral righteousness has now been destroyed by the present political-social climate.
We truly have come to the Post America that Obama has worked so hard to bring about. This vote has been part of the continued proof that our country is paralyzed with fear of this administration. We are escalating down the precipice of Romans 1 and God is giving us over to our flesh, to one another in sin, and to a reprobate mind. As for the changes to the Boy Scout organization, the pressure for more changes will not go away. Though they accept “boys” who are sodomites, the next step will be the permission of sodomite leadership. As the YMCA and other organizations have been taken over by such a sin, the Boy Scouts of America will resolve itself and its identification with this End-time, “strange flesh” sin.
(5) Another power that is ruling the night season of the End Time is that of increased government surveillance of a country’s citizens. This is not anything new. It was found during the days of Daniel (chap. 6) when they spied on everything he did, every word, every action, and every decision, even to his private life with God in his home. However, technology has now brought us to an hour when all transactions of life now can be monitored globally. This administration has been overt in its financial payoffs afforded to, and the campaign finance contributions offered by, private companies like, Google, Verizon, Yahoo, Facebook, Microsoft, and Apple aiding FISA court-authorized surveillance (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court).
HR 624, the “Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act” (CISPA), which passed in the House in April 2013 with bi-partisan support, allows private Internet companies to surrender information about its users to law enforcement and security agencies “in the event of a cyber attack.” In recent committee hearings, FBI Director Robert Mueller recommended the expansion of the “Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act of 1994 (CALEA).” CALEA requires internet providers and phone companies to maintain the technology necessary to comply with wiretap orders. The FBI requested CALEA be amended to include Skype, Facebook, and other budding electronic communications platforms. Apparently, the FBI was not aware of the “Prism” program set up by the NSA, supposedly overseen by Congress, which already provides for the funneling to the government of information gathered on targeted individuals by Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, Paltalk, YouTube, Skype, AOL, and Apple.
The “Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1996 (COPPA)” was designed to prohibit websites from gathering “personal information” data on users under the age of thirteen. COPPA has undergone various government reviews and revisions redefining the term “personal information.” In addition to a child’s name, home address, email address, SS number, and other contact information, COPPA now protects cookies, IP addresses, and mobile device ID’s that can be used to target children for product advertising based on their online behavior. The Internet Industries of US minors between the ages of 14 and 18 are not covered by the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act.
The World Wide Web has become America’s seduction of convenience; Americans have passively allowed publicly traded companies to archive information it initially assumed was private. Everything we do electronically is compiled, sorted, stored, and analyzed by the companies we employ to service our on-line purchases, searches, e-mail, texting, tweeting, and telecommunications needs. It should come as no surprise that information now used to profile Americans for the government was acquired while information superhighway clearinghouses serviced advertisers’ prospective customer identification needs. Hundreds of billions of tax dollars have already been used to develop software and hardware required by the laws already passed by the federal government. These have been financed with government grants and subsidies. The purpose of this is to monitor and document every individual using an electronic device during some form of electronic communication.
Bluffdale, Utah, has now become the storage and processing center of global surveillance by the National Security Administration. It is in the heart of Mormon country. Bluffdale is home to one of the nation’s largest sects of polygamists, the Apostolic United Brethren, with upwards of 9,000 members. The NSA is focused on deciphering cryptic messages that only they have the power to understand. Just off Beef Hollow Road a massive complex is being constructed that is so large that it necessitated expanding the town’s boundaries. Once built, it will be more than five times the size of the US Capitol.
The NSA has become the largest, most covert, and potentially most intrusive intelligence agency ever. Its purpose: to intercept, decipher, analyze, and store vast swaths of the world’s communications as they zap down from satellites and zip through the underground and undersea cables of international, foreign, and domestic networks. The heavily fortified $2 billion center should be up and running this month (September) of 2013. Flowing through its servers and routers and stored in near-bottomless databases will be all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls, and Google searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails—parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases, and other digital “pocket litter.” It is, in some measure, the realization of the “total information awareness” program created during the first term of the Bush administration—an effort that was killed by Congress in 2003 after it caused an outcry over its potential for invading Americans’ privacy. It is also critical for breaking codes. And code-breaking is crucial, because much of the data that the center will handle—financial information, stock transactions, business deals, foreign military and diplomatic secrets, legal documents, confidential personal communications—will be heavily encrypted. The NSA made an enormous breakthrough several years ago in its ability to crypt analyze, or break unfathomably complex encryption systems employed by not only governments around the world but also many average computer users in the US. In the process the NSA has turned its surveillance on the US and its citizens. It has established listening posts throughout the nation to collect and sift through billions of email messages and phone calls, whether they originate within the country or overseas. It has created a supercomputer of almost unimaginable speed to look for pat-terns and unscramble codes.
Finally, the agency has begun building a place to store all the trillions of words and thoughts and whispers captured in its electronic net. And, of course, it is all being done in secret. The surveillance of one’s complete life is now becoming a reality. Foretastes of this were certainly known in the first two world wars, under Hitler, and under communist countries (where it is still a reality), but this global reality has now fully claimed America.
We must realize as Christians that all of these observations are a part of the reality of the times in which we live. And we must get ready, as in the days of Daniel, for our every move to be known by others. In our next issue of Straightway, we will present the need for the Christian to be prepared to live in this conceptual Big-Brother society.
Conclusion
Amidst the “powers that be,” and God has permitted them to come, we do not believe the Antichrist has come into full power at this time in history (though he may be living somewhere on the planet waiting to step forward at the appointed time in God’s plan). There will also be the False Prophet and the Harlot that are soon to be manifested in the unification of all the religions of the world. The End- time powers will include the return of the powers from previous empires mentioned in biblical history. This will be seen in the rise of the beast with the seven heads, ten horns and crowns.
God’s preachers must be ready for these days. Our ministerial burdens may shift in the light of the radical changes that have come and are coming. There is no turning back to better days; there is no spiritual awakening to take place in the institutional Church; there is no hope of the government’s return to moral righteousness. We have come to the morality of evil and the utter chaos of humanity. Only God’s providence is keeping the world from absolute destruction. We are certainly in the darkest hour of history.
Still we pray for God to raise up a remnant of men to lead us with insight and a spiritual heart through this final generation before the Trumpet sounds. The Fundamental churches are so caught up in their self-perpetuating ministries that they have lost sight of the greater economy or dispensation of God’s leadings concerning the Kingdom of Heaven at this time in history. Very little is being said from the pulpits about the apostasy; very little is being said about the contemporary now controlling Fundamentalism. Fundamentalist churches and schools have become enamored with their new ventures in sports and competitions in the secular world. As for those who are against such involvements and changes, they simply are viewed as the child in the womb who is giving difficulty and pain to the churches. They long for the voice of the Remnant to be silenced and their discomfort and nuisance to be done away with soon.
Dear reader, the only lamp we have to get us through this ministering in the night will be the Word of God:
We have also a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day star arise in your hearts (1 Pet. 1:19).
We are at the end of this dark place, anticipating the day to dawn and the day star to arise in our hearts. Let us pray for those who minister in the night by the Word of God, accompanied by the appointed providences of heaven.
In our next issue of Straightway, we must further the sights, sounds, and powers of the night season that will affect our ministering in a public way. May God have mercy upon us: to keep and preserve us unto the coming of the Lord.