Reviews by Hubie Goode: America the Free - Not Chimerica

America the Free
- Not Chimerica

We often hear the term Chimerica when thinking about Chinese-American relations, and often assume that this means that China owns America. But this couldn’t be further from the truth. China is, indeed, a very smart opponent, but as those who examine carefully will see that America has this matter well at hand.

In these modern days of national strategy, a nation must look out for it’s own interests or face the consequences of not doing so. The most commonly used tactic by a nation to inflict harm, whether intentional or not, is to flood a willing nation with an abundant supply of some materials at such a low rate that it would be stupid for the receiving nation to create their own. An example is the flooding of America with cheap electronics from China. America just can’t compete.

This is no new event. Usually, a recipient nation who observes the flooding behavior of another will impose duties and import limits through their customs and excise departments in order to avoid such a circumstance. But, with the advent of free trade agreements and lobbying, this is proving harder and harder to do.

In the past, customs and excise formed a great part of a nation’s revenues, and so such departments were placed within the scope of income tax collection. Take, for example, Canada. Once Canada Customs and Revenue Agency, on the wake of September 11, it became the Canada Border Services Agency and the Canada Revenue Agency. This was caused directly by the attacks on the twin towers, and an emphasis on security rather than collection by Border Officers.

So with free trade, massive lobbying, and a focus on security rather than import control, countries are facing more and more import flooding by certain nations than others. America is not completely innocent this regard. America is well known for pushing products and services to other countries and implementing all sorts of leverage. And George W. was the master. He pushed ‘coolness’ and ‘oneness.’

How many Britons and Australians remember how proud they felt when George W.’s State of the Nation speech was aired in which he mentioned those countries. How proud a feeling was it?? And in Canada, how many people remember the complaints by our national news agencies and debates on why ‘America snubbed us.’ This is just brilliant! Say that another nation is not ‘cool’ for not letting you do something, and the other country will probably let you rape them or go along with what you want them to do for the ‘cool’ status.

So with China flooding America with cheap products, and America focusing on security rather than excise, China has profited quite nicely from America. So nicely, in fact, that it now backs the majority of American debt (holding most of the American currency).

And now, China is focusing it’s attention on rare earth elements, seizing Tibet, making slave-like agreements with Ceylon (Sri Lanka), and trying to pick away at parts of Kashmir in order to get more of it. The Chinese-Ceylon agreement is more subtle than it appears, as is Tibet and Kashmir, but this discussion is for another day.

The real question is, if China is giving up going for oil and banking on rare earth elements, why isn’t America or any other country following suit? Simple: it is ‘common knowledge’ (wink) that collection of these elements emits large amounts of ozone-depleting gasses that will cause global warming. Because nations are afraid to do this, they won’t. They will let China do the dirty work and collect those rare earth materials so that they can use them for green energy.

So, one would argue, because America is chasing oil whilst China is going green by polluting for a little while only, America is the real culprit. China, being the only gatherer will be making substantial profit ala the hoarding principle.

But, for a moment, let’s think very deeply about what’s really going on...

If you are America, the most powerful nation, you will, beyond doubt, have the best minds working for you and understand at a macro level and well-beyond what is going on. What if there are ample rare-earth elements on the moon? Let China waste their time grabbing the stuff from earth and raise prices because they are the only player, and then get it from the moon to sell to them when their time is up. By the way, it’s a no-man’s land between Earth and the moon, so if anyone wants to go there, they might just experience some malfunctions ala American gunfire - I mean micro-meteorites.

But America is working on getting back their debt as we speak. America is busy taking oil fields from Iraq and Afghanistan (with their eyes set on Venezuela), and will sell it to China so that they can fuel their earthly rape for rare materials the world so desires. And how to make these countries play ball?

Simple: do you really think a missile costs two million dollars?

Think about it, who will be responsible for the ‘war on terrorism’ costs of America inserting itself into countries for oil? The country that’s raped (not of their dignity but their materials) of course - I mean ‘freed from tyranny’ and/or ‘given democracy.’ (What wonderful doublespeak).

So China, don’t you worry, America will take back their dollars by selling you oil given to us from newly freed countries, and through their labour to repay the cost of their ‘freedom.’ They owe us that much, after all. And China, while you’re at it, pump-up those rare earth prices and don’t go to the moon because only America can. You don’t own us yet!

About the Author

Spiritual writes for http://www.ConspiracyChat.com, which is a site that analyzes and attempts to justify current and past events and anticipate or predict future events. Spiritual also maintains a site about day-to-day learnings with a spiritual angle. Visit his site at http://www.SpiritualMeans.com.

Reviews by Hubie Goode: Understanding the Christian Life: Part 1

Understanding
the Christian Life

Part 1

Here are some things all practicing Christians need to know when trying to understand the Christian life. You’ll always have hurdles to overcome in life, but when they do show up, it’s your perspective on those things which is really paramount. Remember, in life, no matter what happens to you, it is by no means more important that what you tell your self about it. If you break a leg, and it’s the end of everything, then it REALLY IS! However, if you break a leg, and you decide that it is not forever and just for now, and you’ll be back on your feet in no time, then that is REALLY HOW IT IS! Just keep in mind the young girl who is a surfer, who lost her arm to a shark while surfing. She is back doing it again today, with one arm. Think of those hurdles in life as a privilege to grow, to reach. Faith is often put to the test to produce patience, and that in itself has practical results for making you a more fully developed person and Christian in Christ.

If you are someone who has a hard time understanding the trials that we all go through, the answers are readily available from Jesus. You need only to ask, but you must ask knowing you will receive an answer. How that answer will come is sometimes a mystery, for it is often tailored just to you and not for anyone else. God often works in this way, that is why he never gets the front page. All too often he is quietly working in the lives of those around us, sometimes with amazing results, yet we never hear about it. But if you just can’t settle things inside your own heart, whether or not you will hear from God, then for sure, you will not. All arguments about God begin and end with his existence. They all lead down the same road. If God does exist, then there are millions of points of logic that follow, but if he does not exist, then those points are replaced by another group of points of logic. Settle this inside your own heart and mind and rely on the fact that we never need to question the love of Christ for us as his children, and you will receive an answer if you are not clogging the connection between you and God with the wrong things, things that don’t belong, in your life.

What can we truly depend upon in this life? As we have seen, in both government and the public eye, money comes and goes like the wind. Fame and stature also can be whisked away or otherwise perverted and the rest of our lives can take a nasty turn down a dark alley. Someone can own a business today, and go to work on her every day for five years, then the government crashes and the business is gone overnight, or else the person dies suddenly and his business is turned over to others, sometimes it is merely closed and the assets sold off. And what has it gotten the owner?

Plant your root firmly in the ground and refuse to budge when those trials come to your life. We learn in these trails whom God really is, and this will not only please God, but it is a lesson we will carry with us forever, a lesson we could have not gotten any other way. For if Jesus was here with us in a temple somewhere, a place we could easily see him with our own eyes, would not you and I be constantly entreating him for assistance, and when that assistance was not in our best interest, we, as typical humans, would then convince ourselves that God could be manipulated our way. How blessed are you who have not seen but hold fast to the knowledge of who God is.

God cannot be manipulated by man, or any other for that matter. So, therefore, when you are tempted to go against God’s word, never ascribe that temptation to God himself. It is our own fallen and wrong desires that bring about the results to sin, and then once we have gone against the reality of God, we have broken the tie that should be binding us, our life line, and this break leads to death.

Keep in mind that we, as his children, are given every good and perfect thing directly from the throne of God, and this goodness has no sun up or sun down, no bad hair days, no sense of time as we have. What came from God to mankind as good 500 years ago is still the same goodness we today can receive. Not only has God never changed from the beginning, but there is very little within mankind that has changed in all of recorded history. Any student of history knows this and even our fairy tails and stories from long ago still apply and make sense to us today. How God has put up with it all this time, is a mystery to me, except that I know as a part of who he is, he understands the deepest parts of mankind, and his mercy and justice is always meted out with that understanding in mind.

Self control is a big linchpin of knowing God. Putting the tongue under submission is a huge part of doing the right thing, being quicker to listen and less purposed to say what we have on our minds. The same can be said of anger, which serves no one, not man or God’s purposes. If this is God’s universe and his reality, and not ours, then it is in our best interest to listen to what God has to say on everything, for there will come a time when there is no buffer zone between us and the immediate perception of God’s presence, and what will you do then? There will be no tantrums, no insisting on our own way, no crying and complaining, for those things are adverse to fitting into God’s universe. We people only seem to get away with it right now, but actually, we benefit from a rich storehouse of grace.

Our happiness with God has much to do with “programming” ourselves to follow his ways. To understand who he is and listen to his word, then turn around and insist upon what feels right to us, or what we have always done, when it directly conflicts with what God would have us do, and how he would have us live, is to deny the reality that we know, as children of God, that is really around us. A reality we accept by faith based upon who God is, and what he says to us and about us. Our existence here on the Earth is an anomaly in the universe, created for us to learn, by reliance on who God is, to ensure that those who choose to be on God’s side of things while not being able to see him, or figure him out, or know what his next move may be in our lives, will one day be cemented in our future positions in eternity knowing as we do what lives we had before, and what havoc and trials separation from the creator of the universe brings about. There will be no blind spot. There will be no doubt, for the horrors of mankind’s life here on Earth will be fresh in the minds of everyone who ever lived for ever an ever. The great thing though, is that we then will never have to fear that this life will ever be repeated, for eternity will be so far above our current existence that deviation from the presence of God will be anathema for us.

Keeping this reality of God in mind, despite what we see, we must then make sure we do not ignore the things we are called to such as care for the needy, whomever they may be, those usually who have no assistance and have fallen on hard times. To ignore the homeless, for instance, is to mock the one who created them. Even worse to arrogantly mistreat them as though they were worthless. If we could see who God is most pleased with today, by being present suddenly in the future, we would surely be shocked by the great crowd of unknown people who would be honored as God’s children, for his ways are not our ways, and his requirements for being pleased have little to do with the way in which we live, and the things we value.

Are We Really in the Dawn
of a New Age?
Part 3

Let’s continue our study by looking at the issues and subjects that are relevant to us today. John Dewey was indeed hard to understand on these points at times, but all too often he did indeed present these ideas candidly and in great detail. For one thing he had no faith in eternal truth. He believed that the closest you could come to eternal truth was in philosophy, that philosophers were often the creators of the future but most assuredly the creatures of the past. As we all are.

True to his own form, Dewey uses other terms to espouse his own inherent atheism. Cloaked in terms of philosophy and murky logic, he again and again denies the existence of God or an eternal truth of God’s word. Meaning is more important than truth, was his mantra and he felt that philosophy was more concerned with meaning than truth. Placing some type of separation between meaning and truth can be risky, as eventually you’ll have to prove that such a thing can be done, for how can falsehood have any meaning or function if you are a person who is concentrating on results rather than mechanics. This is just one more example of the grey area of logic that Dewey, a man who influenced the world of education, convinced the world of his “genius” with.

For this sort of thing, Dewey was known as an “instrumentalist”. Education and all other activities for him were to be evaluated by the consequences experienced by the person educated and not by their truth content. For Dewey, there was no content in truth. Dewey believed that the ultimate problem in production was the production of human beings. In my opinion, this is an obvious point put forth as though it were some kind of new rational, for without the humans to build the machines and run the machines, in all their faulty, mistake riddle ways, we would have no production at all.

Dewey felt that any final formulations of truth often lead to disaster for mankind, and he stated past historical activities related to what he called “dogma” as evidence of this fact. He once said:

“A great tragedy of the present situation may turn out to be that those most conscious of present evils and the need of a thorough-going change in the socioeconomic system will trust to some short cut-way out, like the method of civil war or violence. Instead of relying on the constant application of all socially available resources of knowledge and continuous inquiry, that may rely upon the frozen intelligence of some past thinker, sect or party cult, frozen because arrested into dogma.

That intelligence, when frozen into dogmatic social philosophies , themselves the fruit of arrested philosophies of history, generates a vicious cycle of blind oscillation, as strategically exemplified by the present state of the world.”

So, pray tell, what is the answer Mr. Dewey?

“But an immense difference divides the planned society from the continuously planning society. The former requires fixed blueprints imposed from above and therefore involving reliance upon physical and psychological force to secure conformity to them. The latter means the release of intelligence through the widest form of cooperative give and take. The attempt to plan social organization and association without the freest possible play of intelligence contradicts the very idea of social planning. For the latter is an operative method of activity, not a predetermined set of truths.”

Thus the trail of ambiguity left by Dewey infects all aspects of education today. How the world could have greeted a man who only raised questions but abstained from providing concrete answers as some sort of new age genius is a deep mystery. Eventually the world got wise though, and came away with the impression that Dewey was indeed a thinker, but only a thinker.

Dewey continued to speak all over the world, however, especially on the education system. He felt that education must move one way or another, either backwards toward the intellectual and moral standards of the pre-scientific age or forward to ever increasing utilization of scientific method in the development of the possibilities of growing, expanding and experience. Dewey loved that word experience and when he would speak of the “forward” method he would use it consistently along with “growing”, “expanding”, ....”change”. (Sound familiar?)

He believed firmly in the “experimental method” when applied to education. The current educational system, for him in the late 1800’s, was a failure. He believed a total revamp of the system was desperately needed. He also felt that there were inherent problems with education being solely focused on the promotion of literacy, i.e. the acquiring of skill in reading, writing and figuring. Educators of the past, he said, lacked uncanny insight and imagination in not seeing any other way for education to be performed, and this included higher education.

Historically, higher education was focused on foreign languages and mathematics as the core of education. These were the springboards toward all other education and would equip the student to find greater success in anything else they studied. Schools presented facts to students and then returned respect for conclusions drawn by students in relation to those facts. Dewey was against this sort of thing, as he believed that it was too parochial of an exchange to quickly give information and then derive new information from a set of facts absorbed by the student. Instead, he favored drawing conclusions apart from the facts as a gateway to higher thought. Education became a democratic process instead of developing concrete tools for dealing with the physical world around the student.

Little could he have imagined the influence of the democratic process on that of education as it has produced a society of lower achieving students who think they know everything. He believed that schools should be about producing social change, much in the same way that the ancient Greek philosophers sat around all day postulating man’s existence while other people did the hammer and nails work that put together the city they could sit around and debate in. For Dewey, since change was constant, education had to be constantly changing. He felt that this was a “modern” and “progressive” way of seeing the educational process and anyone who disagreed was operating from an ignorant fear.

His thoughts on the subject of Religion:

“Science has the same spiritual import as supernaturalism; that democracy translates into the same religious attitude as did feudalism; that it is all a slight change in the phraseology, a development of old symbolisms into new shades of meaning - such beliefs testify to that torpor of the imagination which is the uniform effect of dogmatic belief. The reconstruction of the church is a matter which concerns, indeed, the whole community so far as its outcome is concerned; while the responsibility for its initiation belongs primarily to those within the churches. The burden of conducting the development, the reconstruction, of other educational agencies belongs, however, to the community as a whole. With respect to its intellectual aspect, its philosophy, it belongs especially to those who, having become conscious to some degree of the modern ideas of nature, of man and society, are able best to forecast the direction which social changes are taking. It is lucidity, sincerity, and the sense of reality which demand that, until the non-supernatural view is more completely elaborated in all its implications and is more completely in the possession of the machinery of education, the schools shall keep hands off and shall do as little as possible.

We need, however, to accept the responsibilities of living in an age marked by the greatest intellectual readjustment history records.”

Dewey rejoices in the idea of society and education moving from a focus on the supernatural to the non supernatural. In other statements Dewey comes very close to calling religion a social faction, and in that way categorized a major strain in society that had been around for several centuries to a lower tier of social importance below that of science and societal development.

Dewey continues:

“But of one thing I am quite sure, our ordinary opinions about the rise and falling off of religion are highly conventional, based mostly on the acceptance of a standard of religion which is a product of just those things in historic religions which are ceasing to be credible. So far as education is concerned, those who believe in religion as a natural expression of human experience must devote themselves to the development of the ideas of life which lie implicit and are still new science and are still new democracy. They must interest themselves in the transformation of those institutions which still bear the dogmatic and the feudal stamp (and which do not?) till they are in accord with these ideas. In performing this service, it is their business to do what they can to prevent all public educational agencies from being employed in ways which inevitably impede the recognition of the spiritual import of science and democracy, and hence of the type of religion which will be the fine flower of the modern spirit’s achievement.”

How familiar is this? The religion that must now be put forward is the spiritual import of science and democracy. Sound like America to you?

Dewey shows his near utopian attitude about the progress of history, and as anyone reading the newspapers will tell you, we certainly have a problem with ideology in high political offices. The best way for progress to be achieved, he thought, was by influencing the content of education.

Before we get into the long term results of Dewey’s influence upon our world today, let’s just summarize his main ideas.

1) Final truth is illusory.

We live in a world that is ever changing and the only thing you can count on is change. With this idea Dewey stood in contrast to epistemologists who held any concept of eternal truth. And like wise, he stood against “the doctrine of objective value”, postulated by C.S. Lewis in his tome, The Abolition of Man. In this book he stated, “When we deny the doctrine of objective value, we must as an inevitable result finally produce the destruction of humanity.”

For Dewey, all of reality is merely in the mind of the observer. Nothing is valuable or true unless it means something to somebody... somebody human. However, the mind of man is teleologically oriented, and must have purpose and reason. To live on the edge day to day with no grounding is madness to the human soul, and has resulted in some of the most baffling bewilderments and confusions of all time. If reality begins with people and ends with people then you have nothing but circular thinking, which has no anchor in final truth.

2) We must not consider truth but meaning instead.

Truth is restrictive and inconvenient. Meaning is better because it is the facts interacting with the dynamic of the moment.

Dewey’s insistence on meaning brings about a shifting sand of logic to stand on. When a word means something to you and another thing to me, and yet they are both acceptable, chaos is born. Truth on the other hand has a universality that anyone anywhere can stand on, when you remove it, you can eventually give let to any and all impulses as having merit. This can lead to passing laws for legalized murder, with those of the society who are the least defensible paying the ultimate price. The word meaning may sound sublime in light of using the word truth, but it only fosters the fog of misunderstanding and incomprehension.

3) Truth is resident in experience.

The truth of simple syllogisms that are contemplated by the mind, but not experienced in reality is to be denied. Experience, sparked by interest creating teachers, and rewarded by realization is what education is all about. Information can only go so far in its relating to the student the truth of a situation, thus the lecture method was devalued by Dewey in favor of education as experience and visa versa.

Thus due to this ontological view of the nature of experience, Dewey subverted nearly every faction of everyday life, including religion, with existentialism. In the years since, the spirit of the age, influenced by the doctrine that truth is experience, has brought forth ideas that would have been thought the height of madness in the past. It wasn’t too long before society decided that happiness, fulfillment, the thrill of the moment, and even anticipation (it’s making me way-yay-yate) where more desirable than black and white propositional dogma.

If truth is equivalent to experience than answer me this: What kind of experience? Since my experience can be different than yours in any different circumstance, how can we define experience at all? This is the practice of imaginary thinking that has polluted out educational system. When we ascribe that truth equals experience we being an emotional questing that has lead to a world which is more unsettled than at anytime in history.

4) Teaching fundamentally depends on experiment.

There is no final methodology, anything can be done in anyway as long as you find results. The ends justify the means, in both educational revelation and also in progressive life acquisition. “Give it a try and see what happens”, is the motto of the day. You only break the law... if you get caught. (Go ahead and take a bite of the forbidden fruit, who knows what will REALLY happen?)

School has ceased to be the place where your kids go everyday to learn objective truths about reality so that they may act wisely and responsibly tomorrow. Instead, it has become a testing ground for any and all new ideas to come from the powers that be “just to see what happens”, and our kids are the ginny pigs. School today is all about finding the truth that we get today and seeing what comes from the experiment of tomorrow.

Busing is a prime example of this thinking. Some sociologist put forth the idea of changing society by equally distributing kids all around the city so as to fill quotas and influence experience and open up social contact; this is not, however, an incentive to better education.

5) The idea of “God” has meaning to those who believe. Religion however, must be reformed to serve mankind.

Everything has to be redirected to facilitate democracy and freedom. God must remain a serviceable concept that serves the moment and not something written in stone. Dogma was anathema to Dewey. He did believe in teaching Christianity in schools, but was as usual, he was fuzzy as to what Christianity was, citing the multiple fractions of Christianity that had, by their own default, made the teaching unsuitable and unprofitable in public schools.

In Dewey’s opinion, God was a unifying force between the ideal and the actual. Results were everything, and if a group succeeded due to a set of religious ideas, then the process could be accelerated by removing those ideas which connect to the supernatural. In a sense, if some activity while serving God results in visible success, then you’ll have even more success and be quicker about it if you just lose the original God element.

The New Age Movement loves this sort of thing, for it makes God a “spacey gobble-de-goo” of the universe that is there to serve man in whatever fashion man sees fit.

Dewey was indeed a positive, forward thinker, who did outright reject fundamentalist religion. He did however, find a place for almost every strain of new thought that dared to come along and enter into his view of the universe. One might say he was the father of “the vast emergence” of ideas that broke upon the 20th century like a flood of locusts and soon entrenched themselves within the machinery of the American educational system.

So what have we gotten as a result of all this new age education and thought in our world today? What is the afterbirth of the dawn of the new age?

More on this next time.

Reviews by Hubie Goode: Summer 2010 and the Mahdi Pt. 4

Summer 2010 and the Mahdi Pt.4

There are many teachings in tradition about just who the Antichrist is supposed to be, and many of them come from old Jewish tradition. They say, for instance, that because Jesus was a Jew then the Antichrist is to be a Jew, and this is why the Jews will accept the Antichrist as Messiah and when he is accepted, he will bring peace to the world. But these sources are old theological teachings and not necessarily something that lines up with what the Bible says about this.

According to some, there is nothing that says the Jews will accept the AntiChrist as Messiah. There have been many who have come and gone and been accepted, but they weren’t necessarily the AntiChrist. Some also say that he has to be a Jew because he will rebuild the Jewish temple. But Solomon’s temple was NOT built by Jews, instead it was built by Hiram’s men who were workers from Lebanon (Gentiles). The temple itself was only “dedicated” by the Jews of the day. My facts aren’t quite secure on this next point, for I have read many variations, but according to the major view of my research, the temple is already built when the AntiChrist takes it over at the halfway point of the Tribulation. (After his forces invade Jerusalem)

The rebuilder of the Temple could actually be Elijah the Prophet. Scripturally, it is Elijah who must return and restore all things. The Book of Zechariah tells of the rebuilding during the time of the “Two Witnesses”. You might feel that the Arab nations who oppose such a thing would indeed stop the rebuilding, due to the fact that their own Temple is in the immediate vicinity, but they will already be severely weakened by this time, and they will be unable to prevent it.

There are, interestingly enough, Jewish leaders today who are promoting the rebuilding of the temple, and this seems to lead into the “Two Witnesses” idea as they will take over the temple mount and they themselves will be something the world has never seen before, something like “Supermen”.

True, tradition has spoken for a long time about the AntiChrist being from the tribe of Dan, however, there is much to consider when looking at the AntiChrist as a Muslim. Once you do a little homework on the Mahdi, it becomes a bit academic to see that this Muslim-AnitChrist is indeed a possibility.

There is a person named the Dejal, who is expected to be the King of the Jews by the Islamic Nations. Dejal is found in the “Hadith” as a King who rises in the latter days. (Hadith being the traditions handed down by Muhammad’s listeners.) The Muslim world, however, is awaiting the arrival of the Mahdi as the anointed one who will rise in the last days. The Mahdi is expected to appear with Christ and they will both convert the entire world to Islam. Resisters to the directive will be “beheaded”, according to the Islamic tradition.

Now tie this in with Revelation 20 and Revelation 13 and you have a “beast” rising out of the sea who will be a military political leader. The False Prophet, Revelation 3:11, teams up with the Mahdi and will be accepted as Jesus by the Muslim world. The Muslims don’t believe that Jesus was ever crucified, so there will be no need for him to have the markings on his hands and feet and in his side that identify him as the Judeo-Christian Jesus. Further continuing with this line of thought, the false prophet is to come as a lamb, with two horns, possibly apostate Christianity and Islam.

Dejal is to arise near Syria and Iraq where the Kurds now live, and he is to operate for forty days going from East to West giving food and health to everyone. He is to be a man with twisted hair and a blind eye, in fact his eyes will be bulging out like a puffer fish. 70,000 Jews will be his followers and the world will know two years of famine before his arrival. According to the Islam tradition all believers will see the letters KFR (Kafir) on his forehead, which to them means “infidel”. (Keep in mind that they see him as the Jewish king)

(Stay with me now, I know a lot of this seems jumbled and disjointed, you have no idea how hard it has been to finish this blog series.)

This Dejal just might be one of the Two Witnesses. The Jews will see him as Elijah the Prophet, but because he takes over the temple mount, the Muslims will see him as Dejal. Dejal, as you remember will have 70,000 followers and the Two Witnesses will have 144,000 followers. Since Elijah and Dejal are the same person in both Torah/Bible scripture and Islamic tradition from their sources, it makes sense that Dejal/Elijah will restore Israel. Elijah must come and restore all things for the Jews and Dejal must take over the temple mount. They also both work supernatural miracles. Now at this point, the AntiChrist rises up and kills the Two Witnesses. (The other Witness being Moses or Enoch according to what source you take.)

Both Sunnis and Shias believe the Mahdi is coming very soon. The Islamic “money” even has the horse of the Mahdi on it like we have George Washington. Both groups living in Iraq believe that he will come from the Carballa, Sumara area which is the “Sunni triangle”. Apparently the Sunnis and Shiites are fighting over the Mahdi. But they all have one problem: the United States. As long as The United States has forces there the Mahdi cannot appear, and as long as Democracy works he also can’t just move in and take over. President Obama has promised to remove all troops by August 2010.

Democracy is hated in this part of the world for two reasons, for one, they see democracy as the gateway to many things they consider evil, such as homosexuality, drugs and others. I am referring to the family oriented Muslims who are very strict according to what they will allow in their own homes. We like to give these people freedom but they feel we are destroying their culture. Even China feels this way. China has said that Russia was destroyed by Democracy, and they want nothing to do with it. They prefer the unity of communism over the fracturization that comes with democracy.

Now remember that the AntiChrist as I am presenting him here comes from that Ishmael/Esau lineage. Ahmadinejad, the leader of Iran, has his eye on annexing the southern part of Persia and as soon as America pulls out of Iraq that is exactly what he will do. Why? Because he wants to be the one who introduces the Mahdi, a person HE CLAIMS HE KNOWS.

According to reports from intelligence sources who have captured terrorist computers, there is already a man living in a cave (as the Mahdi is expected to do) who has already described himself as the Mahdi and that man is Osama Bin Laden. Bin Laden believes he IS the Mahdi, and he feels justified because for six years we have been unable to bring him to justice and he is living in a well or a cave and has been untouchable. Not coincidentally, the rise in infants being named Osama has quadrupled past the name Muhammad in the Middle East. Over there they believe him to be a hero. You would be right to say that the world would never accept him as any kind of revolutionary hero, but Islam would.

I find it quite amazing that the two future texts of Islam and Judeo/Christian teaching are suddenly coming together after hundreds of years. The Islamics teach what is in the Bible and they don’t even recognize it. It’s an interesting hypothesis that America itself may be restraining the AntiChrist and not even know it.

Like some old Shakespearian play, the Middle East is a family squabble that goes on and on as the descendants of Abraham, Issac (Israel) and Ishmael (Arab nations), both with different mothers, hold tight to their birthrights and perceived superiority over one another. Poor little Israel is such a small nation surrounded by its sibling enemies, and yet it survives today in a way NO other nation ever has in similar situations. It’s surely a powder keg in the Middle East and if the world would ever follow someone with bated breath and admiration, it would be the man who brings peace to a part of the world that could explode at any moment. When America pulls out of the area in 2010, the “plug in the dike”, as it were, will be removed and the resultant flood of turmoil will destroy many walls of stability that can never be repaired back to their original safety.

President Obama may be the “professorial” type and he is indeed quite educated, but his policies and lack of understanding of deep tribal and blood feuds in the area will be his undoing. Israel is still the target of international leftist who dream of a new, more thorough Holocaust. The Arab nations will always need to have Israel to blame for their failures and the Arab on Arab killings that happen every day in their own countries. When Obama addressed Cairo, he seemed to give the impression to the fanatics that America was now more friendly to Arabia, and would not necessarily defend Israel if she was placed under siege. That could have been a huge mistake for everyone in America, but only time will tell.

In the scriptures of prophecy, many interpret Damascus as being the first place to face utter destruction in the coming conflict. Recently the father of the Lebanese Prime Minister was assassinated by Syria, more Arab on Arab killing. Syria has long penetrated the government in Beirut and various Lebanese factions who back terror organizations such as Hezbolla, have kept Beirut dependant on Damascus for breaking political deadlocks in Parliament. Hezbolla has been rearming itself with lots of firepower since its battle with Israel in 2006. Will they go to war again? Will they be the ones to devastate Lebanon and Damascus, who can say? Who really wants to look too deeply at this mess?

And speaking of Damascus, would Israel be the one to destroy it first? Would this be the first strike that they would take despite America’s refusal to infringe on the new buddy relationship with Arabia? Syria actually looks pretty good these days, its getting stronger by the day and yet still backs terrorist groups, looks forward to Israel’s destruction and has nukes on its mind. Israel’s first strike would be proactive by any measure, and it would set off an unstoppable quagmire in the area.

The European Union, you’ll remember that they are supposed to be the revived Roman Empire in prophecy, has turned down the addition of Turkey to its ranks. 90 years ago there was a man named Kemal Ataturk who left the country a secular constitution and saved them from oblivion. This constitution has been systematically taken apart over the last century as the Islamic forces have continued to grow in the area. Will the military come forward to preserve the legacy of Ataturk? Obama’s administration would back the Muslims in a heart beat, and Turkey would fall ... well, like a turkey. One more power under the thumb of the coming AntiChrist.

Egypt is actually one of the “three horns” spoken of in prophecy that will be conquered by the AntiChrist, as he rises up in power among them. Egypt is a United States ally who has long been a bastion of stability in the area. Their President seems poised to have his son, who is considered not the man his father is, to succeed him upon his death. Islamic movements have been impossible to stop in this country and the military is more fractured than anyone knows. New leadership could quickly cave into Islamic pressures or perhaps turn against them, if the latter, this would explain in this one instance at least the motivation of the AntiChrist to conquer Egypt.

And what of Saudi Arabia itself? The birth place of Osama Bin Laden. Saudi oil funding supports a radical push for all Muslims to fall into the extremist side of the Muslim life. The Saudis could care less about the suffering of fellow Muslims, they bully Palestinians on a daily basis. They care only for their version of radical Islam. Saudi Arabia only disagrees with Bin Laden over tactics and strategy, but both want a forced compliance with radical Islam. Doesn’t this seem to connect with what I have already said here about Bin Laden, The Mahdi and the beheading of resistors? You bet it does.

President Bush was told by Ahmed Chalabi that America would be welcomed with open arms if we invaded Iraq. Upcoming elections have already been rigged against the Sunnis by banning over 500 potential candidates by Shia political agents close to Iran. The Sunni now feel betrayed. In the meantime all factions fight for greater share of oil revenues among themselves. And Obama has nothing to say, because this is George W. Bush’s mess. The upcoming elections could send Iraq into a reverse free-fall if the populace is not pleased with their outcome. By the way the man behind the Iranian move to ban the Sunni candidates is Chalabi himself. It would seem that unification under the Mahdi cannot come soon enough.

Iran today races to acquire nuclear weapons that would result in a war to lead to the “return of the hidden imam”, the Mahdi as you now know him. Hell bent on destroying Israel, Iran is still protected by Russia and China, postulated as the nations in prophecy that will surround Israel in the final world war. Starting to come together for you? Israel may indeed strike Iran first when it sees the first nuclear bomb test out in the desert of Baluchistan. Will Obama be there to back Israel up? Not if he’s shaking hands with the Arab nations. The idea of Israel standing all alone in the final battle is Biblically based, not to mention Islamic tradition based.

Much as many around the world hate to hear it, as Israel goes, so goes the world. She is God’s special people and land according to the Bible. You can see how this centuries old family feud can quickly involve the whole world, and is indeed coming to a head as countries, including the United States are being moved across the chess board of the world for positioning in the final act all laid out in scripture; and not just in Bible prophecy, but for the Islamics as well. This could all begin in the Summer of 2010 as America pulls out of Iraq, and for those who have been keeping a watchful eye on such things, it will be no surprise at all.

Reviews by Hubie Goode: Wow, The New Orleans Saints!

Wow, The New Orleans Saints!

Anyone who grew up in New Orleans is well aware of the ubiquitous presence of The New Orleans Saints. The team is now 43 years old and heading into its first Superbowl. An amazing feat by any stretch for those of us who lived though years of dopey leadership and bottom of the barrel living in the public view of the entire National Football League.

What I remember along with many of the landmarks of childhood, are how the Saints were born along side other popular items of the day, for instance, the Beatles where living some of their best years at this time too, Yellow Submarine was on the charts and the album “Revolver” had been released world wide. The old Batman TV show was in production at the time, and I can remember wanting to hurry up and have dinner at Corky’s hamburger joint after having just been to Barker’s department store, in order to catch the latest installment of the dynamic duo. The Good, The Bad and the Ugly was released in the movies that year, as was A Man Called Flintstone, the latter of which I remember having more of an interest in.

But as for the Saints, who can forget the early artwork. The Little guy with the big chin holding a shield was everywhere! There were all sorts of marketing items with that Saint’s “logo” on it from padded stadium seats to ash treys, remember ash treys? (For those of you who don’t know, back in the days of liberal smoking, ash treys were EVERYWHERE. You don’t see them anymore these days.)

I asked my dad back then, why they named the team the Saints, since it would be hard to say something like,”Kill ‘em Saints!” as a cheer at football games. He told me it was all about the song, “When the Saints go marching in”, and at the time Louis Armstrong had a big part in playing the trumpet version of the theme song. From what I understand, when the Saint’s were first born, an entrepreneur named Dave Dixon asked then prominent New Orleans figure, Archbishop Phillip Hannan if the name would be offensive. Prophetically, the Archbishop replied, “I think they’ll need all the prayers they can get. You’ve got to remember, most of the real Saints were martyrs.” I understand the Archbishop will be sitting with current owner Tom Benson for the Superbowl. Holy cow, history folds in on itself!

My Father was never a big Saint’s fan, although he did follow them, but only “from the closet”, as it were. He scoffed at the first owner of the Saint’s, 27 year old John Mecom Jr., who as history now judges, was little more than a rich kid who had been given a big toy, a toy that involved the careers and lives of men who were not only older than he, but who had been the “little guy” for most of their lives. Remembering what it was to be 27 years old, and knowing some other folks who are in that age range, it boggles my mind to think that anyone so young and still in their 20’s could be given such a position. True to that sentiment, John Mecom Jr., made a real mess out of many of the formative years of the Saints, missing huge opportunities for quality players and making inane, unfathomable trades for players whose time had come, and gone.

People like Jimmy Taylor and Paul Hornung were men who had taken their best shot in pro football and were quickly entrenched on the down side of their bell curve abilities. The Saints picked players like Gary Cuozzo (1967), Les Kelley (1967), Joe Don Looney (1969), Jubilee Dunbar (1973), D’Aartagnan Martin (1971-1972), Happy Feller (1972-73), Jitter Fields (1984). Any of those names ring a bell? Here are some of the names they passed up on, Bubba Smith (1967), John Matuzak (1972), Bert Jones (1972), Chuck Foreman (1972) and Ray Guy (1972). Any of those names ring a bell? Of the 17 players taken in the 1968 draft, only one remained in 1970.

But it wasn’t just players that made the hall of shame, it was Mecom’s choice of coaches that made one scratch his head in bewilderment. Coach Tom Fears may have had a well known career at the time, but he found himself hamstrung by front office leadership, and after a 1970 season that began 1-5-1, he was fired and replaced by J.D. Roberts. Roberts, an ex-marine, was carried off the field as some sort of “new messiah” after Tom Dempsey (A name I know you have heard of) kicked the miracle field goal against the Detroit Lions that went 63 yards and has yet to be beaten even to this day. Of course it was Robert’s who should be carried off, right Saint’s fans? Little did anyone know how this would set the Saints backwards, as it gave Roberts some sort of clout and he remained in the job far longer than he should have, his most memorable addition to Saint’s lore being his ability to fall asleep during team meetings.

One of the positive landmarks of Saint’s memory was the acquisition of Quarterback Archie Manning, whose arrival in town was greeted with a fan based cheer of “Archie Who?” History folds in on itself once again as Mr. Manning is indeed the father of one of the ALL TIME great quarterbacks in NFL history, namely Peyton Manning, leader of the adversary team the Indianapolis Colts whom the Saint’s will play in the Superbowl. My father didn’t like ol’ Archie, true to form for him, and complained that his abilities were limited, he was also unable to find a secondary receiver. I didn’t know much about it back then, and I took what he had to say as fact. The thing is, everybody loved Archie, and sports writers still say in retrospect that he was the greatest quarterback who never had a team around him. So who was right? Archie once played in the Pro Bowl with the NFC stars at the time and delivered one of the greatest Pro Bowls that had ever been seen up until then. I believe the final score was something like 37-27, and Archie Manning was the main architect of that victory. Surrounded with talent, Archie Manning silenced his naysayers if you ask me. Proof is always in the puddin’, as they say.

Poor Archie suffered greatly from front office bungling as others benefited. Billy Kilmer was the Quarterback at that time and he was traded to the Washington Redskins for two picks and linebacker Tommy Rousell. (Tommy Who?) Kilmer went on to lead the George Allen coached Redskins to the Superbowl as QB for the “Over the Hill Gang”, a bunch of aging players who did things that “old guy” Saint’s draft picks could only dream of.

J.D. Roberts held his position as coach for a little while after this. During a game in pre-season, against the Buffalo Bills, he told Archie how impressed he was with the Buffalo running back, number 32. “I don’t know who he is,” Roberts told Manning. “But he sure can run.” That’s right J.D., he ran for 2,003 yards in one season, a record that held for a long, long time. If it wasn’t for the United States Justice System, O.J. Simpson would still be running.

Mecom hired famous astronaut Dick Gordon as the General Manager in 1972, a man who had circled the moon. Citing his reason for hiring a big name with no experience, Mecom was quoted as saying, “Experience wasn’t necessary since the image of Pro Football is changing.” One thinks that John Mecom Jr. would have been more at home in the XFL, where fantasy was the main marketing component. Having just landed on the moon in 1969, the pride of America was indeed showing and Mecom felt, I suppose, the Saint’s could benefit from some of that glowing praise. He was wrong.

Again.

The Saints would continue with bad coaches and opening days like the one in 1973 when the Atlanta Falcons throttled them 62-7 at home. In 1974, Saint’s fans held up a game 22 minutes as they booed a bad referee call. And the same year they missed another opportunity by passing up Randy Gradishar for another unknown player whose name you wouldn’t recognize.

1975 brought us Saturday Night Live, a monster night of Saturday evening sitcoms full of now classics, i.e. All in the Family, The Mary Tyler Moore Show and others, and the movies brought us Jaws, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Dog Day Afternoon, among others. In music we had Philadelphia Freedom, Only Women Bleed and One of These Nights among others. But it also brought us the Louisiana Superdome clocking in at $163 million dollars. Considering what an NFL franchise itself costs these days, this may not seem like much to you. But also consider that in 1971 one could buy a top of the line, fully stocked Monte Carlo for about $6,000 dollars, a car which if it were produced today I would estimate at around $30,000 dollars.... maybe.

John North was the invisible coach at this time and knowing Mecom’s penchant for big names, the next year, in 1976 he hired renowned coach Hank Stram to take over the reigns. Stram was hired with a five year, $1 million dollar contract. He had been to the Super Bowl with the AFL Champion Kansas City Chiefs who had lost the first Superbowl to the Green Bay Packers but then won the fourth Superbowl against the Minnesota Vikings in New Orleans. I cringe as I write this, for I could have attended this game with my dad and had a piece of NFL history for my own personal memory, but I turned the opportunity down. Hey! I was ten years old. (big long sigh) Anyhow, Stram had only two seasons, and he went 4-10 and 3-11. He was quoted at the time as telling John Mecom Jr., “We won’t win another game.” Stram didn’t last long after that.

Stram did draft a young talent named Chuck Muncie, who became part of a running tandem known as “Thunder and Lightning”, but Muncie had problems making the team plane for out of town trips. I read somewhere his grandmother died something like seven times and kept him from making the games. I remember Muncie and his buddy, Tony Galbreath were quite the combo, but they didn’t necessarily make the NFL all time roster. Someone tell me if I have this wrong.

1980 music brought us Head Games, Bebe le Strange and Def Leppard, along with movies The Empire Strikes Back, Airplane! and The Blues Brothers, and the Saints lost their first 14 games of a 15 game season. I do remember the new uniforms of this era were quite powerful looking and, if the team had been good, would have been a psychological advantage. Locally famous sportscaster Buddy Diliberto started wearing a bag over his head during his sportscast and the “Bagheads” and “Aints” were born. Diliberto was banned for life from the team plane and had to have films and reports smuggled in for his sports segment. Curiously, even though he performed his show on TV as though he had been there, owner John Mecom Jr., never got wise to how he could be doing this.

Suprised? You shouldn’t be.

Archie Manning later reported the alleged reason that the Saint’s were so bad that season. According to him, several players were melting solids into gasses on a hot plate in their rooms. Convenient, but it doesn’t explain the 14 previous years of “gaseous” playing by the Saints. Still, I’ll give Archie this one, if only because of his DNA.

Bum Phillips, former Houston Oilers coach who went to several playoff games with the Oilers and had the best years of Earl Campbell at his disposal, took over the Saints in 1981 and traded Manning away. He also passed up Lawrence Taylor in the draft. In 1984 he passed up a number one draft pick in order to bring Earl Campbell to the Saints. Campbell, too, like many of the Saint’s trades had his best years behind him and lasted only a year.

In 1987 then General Manager Jim Finks hired Jim Mora as head coach and the Saints had their first taste of respectability. Mora was an “army sergeant” type and complained bitterly even after respectable performances that ended in a loss. He’s best known for his “No more coulda, woulda, shoulda ” comment, and if you remember him from press conferences he always looked as if he was about to jump from the podium and punch out a few reporters. The Saints had a mighty team under Mora that went 13-2, I believe, and then they lost to Minnesota in the first playoff game with a score that was something like 44-7. This kind of silliness and snake bitten existence was nothing new to New Orlean’s faithful. (Mora later coached the Colts, and was known for throwing clip boards at the press and walking off the podium in a huff.) (“Playoffs?????? P-Playoffs?????)

Former Chicago Bears coach Mike Ditka also belongs to Saint’s lore, and in 1999 he traded away everything the Saints had for running back Ricky Williams, a man who has since been in and out of the NFL with drug problems. Ditka was known for coaching the Saints on the edge of his seat, not in anticipation, but in a readiness to leave and go play golf. Enamored with celebrity, he posed for the cover of ESPN magazine with Williams as a married couple. Williams was in a white wedding dress and Ditka was in a tuxedo. Ditka, after bringing one of the best NFL teams in history to the Superbowl, went 15-33 in three seasons with the Saints.

In my opinion, New Orleans and the Saints all suffered from a kind of city wide malaise. I dare to even mention that perhaps the city was covered over with a negative spiritual force. Known in educational circles for the “brain drain”, a term used to describe the phenomenon of college graduates from the area who had to leave town in order to get anywhere in life, all things New Orleans seemed to echo profoundly in the performance of the Saints. Even the local politics refused to make any improvements or changes to the city due to its “history”, and this stuck in the mud thinking is one of the things that led me, myself, to think resolutely to join that leaving brain drain. As an example, one Mayor’s race back in the 90’s had a contender who ran on the idea of “turning around the moving vans” and making sweeping changes to the educational system and workforce there in New Orleans. She came in fourth. One need only see the tragic aftermath of Hurricane Katrina to realize that what I am hinting at was indeed true.

Alas, perhaps from the greatest tragedies a new day dawns, and now that New Orleans has been washed clean, the influences, both seen and unseen, can now take hold for a brand new history. The levees are still not fixed, but the Saints, as of 2006, a year after the 2005 Hurricane, have risen in four years to NFL prominence. And prominent they ARE! Having seen them play this year on Monday Night Football against the Atlanta Falcons, a game I just could NOT have missed, I was convinced then that they had finally broken free. The sharp, almost magical play the team exhibited is almost surreal, much in the same way only a few other teams have ever done in NFL history.

Coach Sean Payton and Owner Tom Benson (despite his car dealership background) have finally struck gold, eh, black and gold that is, and with the acquisition of stellar players like Quarterback Drew Brees and Running back Reggie Bush, and many others who are too good to leave out but also too many to name, “I believe” is finally more than just a bumper sticker.

Peyton Manning is indeed good, and he’s going to be nearly impossible to beat, if not for his talent, but also for his ability on the field as a “General”. Having been judging a great deal of football from the critical standpoint over the last ten years, I think the Saints can indeed beat the Colts, and I am not just saying that from a “homeboy” stand point. It’s true, I have been a major Rams fan since 1972, the Saints made me a Rams fan. I can remember their own miracle years with Kurt Warner and Marshall Faulk, and I see the same, almost magical, abilities in this Saints team. The Colts have only a modest defense and many of their games this season have been close, somewhere in the 18-15 range and the like. They have NOT been blowouts, but Manning did indeed carve out a win. Like Joe Montana, Peyton Manning knows how to win a game. The thing is, the Saints offense has this pedal to the metal look to it that the Colt’s defense will be unable to keep under wraps. It is with this I now step out and predict a 45-35 range Saints win. Manning will be forced to play “catchup” football for most of the game, but he will lose ground over the long haul. That’s how I see it happening...... for all it’s worth.

Whatever happens I wish all you Saints fans the winning happiness you have so long waited for. 43 years is a long time to wait, and I never thought any of us would live to see The New Orleans Saints in the Superbowl. If only Dad were here to see it.

Ah, well. “Who Dat?” anyway.