Christian

Mass Exodus From The Church: The Percentage Of Young Adults With No Religious Affiliation Has Nearly QUADRUPLED Since 1986

We are witnessing a religious shift that is unprecedented in size and scope in American history.  With each passing year, the percentage of Americans that claim no religious affiliation is growing, and this trend is especially pronounced among our young people.  If things continue to steadily move in this direction, that is going to have enormous implications for the future of our society.  The United States was founded by people that were extremely committed to their faith, and now we are rapidly becoming a nation where people are choosing no religion at all.  We live at a time when there is a mass exodus from Christian churches, and while it is true that some smaller faiths are growing, the reality of the matter is that most of the people that are leaving are remaining unaffiliated.  According to PRRI, if you go back to 1991 only 6 percent of all Americans were “unaffiliated”, but today that number has shot up to 25 percent…

In 1991, only six percent of Americans identified their religious affiliation as “none,” and that number had not moved much since the early 1970s. By the end of the 1990s, 14% of the public claimed no religious affiliation. The rate of religious change accelerated further during the late 2000s and early 2010s, reaching 20% by 2012. Today, one-quarter (25%) of Americans claim no formal religious identity, making this group the single largest “religious group” in the U.S.

The most dramatic change during this time period has been among our young people.

If you go all the way back to 1986, just 10 percent of Americans in the 18 to 29-year-old age group were “unaffiliated”.  Today, that number has skyrocketed to 39 percent.  Here is more from PRRI…

Today, nearly four in ten (39%) young adults (ages 18-29) are religiously unaffiliated—three times the unaffiliated rate (13%) among seniors (ages 65 and older). While previous generations were also more likely to be religiously unaffiliated in their twenties, young adults today are nearly four times as likely as young adults a generation ago to identify as religiously unaffiliated. In 1986, for example, only 10% of young adults claimed no religious affiliation.

And just because Millennials claim a religious affiliation of some sort does not mean that they actually go to church.

In fact, a study from the Pew Research Center discovered that only 27 percent of Millennials say that they “attend religious services on a weekly basis”…

Millennials – especially the youngest Millennials, who have entered adulthood since the first Landscape Study was conducted – are far less religious than their elders. For example, only 27% of Millennials say they attend religious services on a weekly basis, compared with 51% of adults in the Silent generation. Four-in-ten of the youngest Millennials say they pray every day, compared with six-in-ten Baby Boomers and two-thirds of members of the Silent generation. Only about half of Millennials say they believe in God with absolute certainty, compared with seven-in-ten Americans in the Silent and Baby Boom cohorts. And only about four-in-ten Millennials say religion is very important in their lives, compared with more than half in the older generational cohorts.

Of course not all of those that are “attending religious services” are going to Christian churches.  Some are going to mosques, others are attending synagogue, and yet others are involved in other faiths.

At one time you could count on fast growing groups such as the Southern Baptists and the Mormons to produce positive growth numbers, but those days are long gone…

The Southern Baptists have lost more than a million members over the last decade, according to LifeWay. Giving and attendance are down, and Baptists are seeing more gray and silver heads in the pews.

Meanwhile, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has seen its once-enviable U.S. growth rate slow to under 1 percent in each of the last two years. Mormonism, which grew by just .75 percent in this country in 2017, is barely keeping pace with the growth of the U.S. population (+.71 percent).

Europe has been described as a “post-Christian society”, and we are well on our way to joining them.

So what is causing this to happen?

Well, there is certainly a lot of debate about this within Christian circles.  From the outside, many experts are pointing to demographic changes.  The following comes from a recent article by Jana Riess…

One of the biggest demographic trends of our time is that millennials are delaying marriage or not getting married at all. And since there’s a strong correlation between being married and being involved in religion, the fact that fewer Americans are getting married is worrisome news to clergy.

In addition to a decline in marriage numbers, experts also point to the fact that Americans are having fewer children these days…

The number of children a family has is related to the couple’s religious involvement — couples without kids are a bit less likely to be religious. So the fact that fertility is on the decline is, again, worrisome news for organized religion.

But are those factors a cause of the decline of religious faith in America, or are they the result of it?

It could be argued that churches have always heavily promoted marriage and family, and if young Americans are no longer as engaged in church it would make sense that they put less of a priority on those things now.

The good news for churches is that even though atheism is rapidly growing, most Americans (even the unaffiliated ones) still believe in God…

Despite their lack of connection to formal religious institutions, most unaffiliated Americans retain a belief in God or a higher power. A majority of unaffiliated Americans say God is either a person with whom people can have a relationship (22%) or an impersonal force (37%). Only one-third (33%) of religiously unaffiliated Americans say they do not believe in God. Strong majorities of Americans who belong to the major Christian religious traditions hold a personal conception of God. Compared to Christians, Americans who identify with a non-Christian tradition are significantly less likely to hold a personal conception of God (33%) and are more likely to say God is an impersonal force in the universe (49%).

Americans still have a keen interest in spiritual things, but many of them are now attempting to fill that void in alternative ways.  For example, it has been claimed that Wicca (a very popular form of witchcraft) is now the fastest growing faith in America.

Many like to focus on the political changes that are happening in this country, but the truth is that these cataclysmic shifts in our faith numbers are going to have far more to do with determining the future course of this nation.

If we ever hope to restore the Constitutional Republic that our founders once established, we must return to the Christian values and principles that this nation was originally founded upon.

Any other approach is simply not going to work, and time is running out.

Michael Snyder is a nationally syndicated writer, media personality and political activist. He is the author of four books including The Beginning Of The End and Living A Life That Really Matters.

The U.S. Military Will Be Conducting ‘A Major Military Exercise’ On The Korean Peninsula During The Solar Eclipse

On August 21st, approximately 25,000 U.S. troops will join “tens of thousands” from the South Korean military to conduct a “major military exercise” that is already triggering threats from North Korea.  Considering the fact that any sort of provocation could cause a nuclear war to erupt on the Korean peninsula, is this really a wise thing to do?  The more research that I do on this upcoming solar eclipse, the stranger things become.  When I first started hearing about this eclipse many months ago, I didn’t pay too much attention, but now after looking into it extensively I do believe that it is going to be quite significant.

And I didn’t even know about this major military exercise that will happen during the eclipse until today.  The following comes from MSN…

The U.S. military is preparing to launch a major military exercise with South Korea in coming days, and faces a dangerous balancing act: How do you reassure allies in the region that you are ready for a war with North Korea without provoking an actual conflict in the process?

The annual Ulchi-Freedom Guardian exercise is scheduled for 10 days beginning Aug. 21, and will include about 25,000 U.S. troops along with tens of thousands of South Koreans. The exercise focuses on defending South Korea against an attack from the north, and each year triggers threats and rebukes from North Korea. But it comes at an especially sensitive time now, following the exchange of a series of threats between President Trump and North Korea.

Another thing that we just found out is that meteorologists are warning that a major hurricane could potentially start approaching the east coast of the United States during the time of the solar eclipse.  It has been almost 12 years since a major hurricane made landfall in this country, and so it is very odd that this would be happening all of a sudden.

As I have discussed previously, many believe that the upcoming solar eclipse and the 40 day period that follows may be some type of “warning” for America.  And traditionally, this 40 day period has been a time of repentance for the people of Israel…

On August 21, a total solar eclipse will mark a trail from the Northwest US to the Southeast Atlantic Seaboard. The eclipse will occur on the last day of the Hebrew month Av, a day known as Yom Kippur Katan, the “small day of repentance.” The morning after the eclipse, Jews will  begin blowing the shofar every morning for a 40-day period of profound repentance leading up to Yom Kippur. This corresponds to the 40 days Moses was on Mount Sinai atoning for the Jewish people.

It is also very interesting to note that this eclipse comes exactly 33 days before the “Revelation 12 sign” that will appear in the heavens on September 23rd.  The first state that the solar eclipse of August 21st will cross will be Oregon, and many have noted that Oregon is our 33rd state.  And the solar eclipse will finish crossing the nation on the 33rd parallel in the state of South Carolina.

So is that just a coincidence?

It might be.

Another extremely interesting fact is that the very first large city that the path of the eclipse will cross is Salem, Oregon.  Of course Salem is short for Jerusalem, and it turns out that the path of the eclipse will reach Salem at just about the same time that the sun is setting in Jerusalem.

Another coincidence?

Maybe.

Seven years after the eclipse on August 21st, another one will cross our nation in 2024.  Together, the paths of those two eclipses will mark a giant “X” directly over the middle part of the country.  And amazingly, the combined time of the totality of those two eclipses will be seven minutes.

And this eclipse is just the beginning.  Over the subsequent 40 days there are quite a few critical events that people are buzzing about.  The following list comes from one of my previous articles…

August 23 – A FEMA exercise known as “EarthEX2017” will simulate “catastrophes such as mega earthquakes, cyber terrorism or high altitude electromagnetic pulse attacks”…

An exercise sponsored by FEMA and the U.S. Department of Energy set to take place on August 23 called EarthEX2017 will wargame responses to catastrophes such as mega earthquakes, cyber terrorism or high altitude electromagnetic pulse attacks.

The exercise will simulate a “subcontinent-scale, long duration power outage, with cascading failures of all other infrastructures,” according to the official Earth Ex website.

“Black sky events” are defined as, “Catastrophic occurrences caused by man or nature that bring society to its knees.”

September 1 – This marks the start of FEMA’s annual “National Preparedness Month“.

September 1 – The U.S. State Department’s ban on U.S. citizens traveling into North Korea goes into effect.  Many are concerned that this is yet another sign that we are moving toward war with North Korea.

September 11 – This will be the 16th anniversary of 9/11.

September 20 – Rosh Hashanah begins at sunset.

September 21 – The UN International Day Of Peace

September 23 – This is the date of what has become known as “the Revelation 12 sign”.  If you are not familiar with this alignment yet, the following is a very brief summary…

On September 23rd a unique astronomical alignment of the Sun, Moon, constellation Virgo, constellation Leo, and planets Jupiter, Mars, Mercury, and Venus is going to fulfill this passage from the book of Revelation:

And a great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars.  She was pregnant and was crying out in birth pains and the agony of giving birth.

September 24 – Very important national elections will be held in Germany.

September 29 – Yom Kippur begins at sunset, and it concludes on September 30th.  Of course September 30th will be the end of a 40 day period that began back on the day of the Great American Eclipse on August 21st.

September 29 – U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin says that the debt ceiling will be breached on this day if Congress does not raise it by then.

September 30 – If Congress does not pass a budget by the end of this day, there will be a government shutdown just like we witnessed in 2013.

And all of this comes at a time when anger, hatred and racial tension are reaching a fever pitch in this country.

Let us pray for peace both at home and abroad, because at this moment we are rapidly approaching a boiling point.

Michael Snyder is a Republican candidate for Congress in Idaho’s First Congressional District, and you can learn how you can get involved in the campaign on his official website. His new book entitled “Living A Life That Really Matters” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.

Will The August 21st Solar Eclipse Begin A Period Of “40 Days And 40 Nights” For America?

Next Monday, we are going to witness one of the strangest events in U.S. history.  This will be the first total solar eclipse to ever be seen only in the United States and nowhere else.  Millions upon millions of people are going to flock to areas of the country where the full eclipse will be visible, but everyone in the continental United States is going to be able to see at least a partial eclipse.  There are lots of very unusual numbers associated with this eclipse, but in this article I want to focus on the number 40, and as this article unfolds you will start to understand why.

Our planet is the only place where you can view a total solar eclipse, and that is because our sun and our moon appear to be the same size in the sky.  Of course the sun is much, much larger than the moon, but because the sun is approximately 400 times farther away than the moon they appear to us to be nearly the same size…

The sun and moon appear the same size in Earth’s sky because the sun’s diameter is about 400 times greater – but the sun is also about 400 times farther away.

At this particular moment in Earth’s history – although the sun’s diameter is about 400 times larger than that of the moon – the sun is also about 400 times farther away. So the sun and moon appear nearly the same size as seen from Earth. And that’s why we on Earth can sometimes witness that most amazing of spectacles, a total eclipse of the sun.

I have previously discussed the fact that the solar eclipse on August 21st is the first day in a 40 day period that ends with Yom Kippur.  But what I haven’t mentioned is that the month of Elul on the Jewish calendar begins on the very next day after the eclipse.

Elul is traditionally known as “the month of repentance”, and it is a time when people all over the world prepare for the High Holy Days…

In the Jewish tradition, the month of Elul is a time of repentance in preparation for the High Holy Days of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. The word “Elul” is similar to the root of the verb “search” in Aramaic. The Talmud writes that the Hebrew word “Elul” can be understood to be an acronym for the phrase “Ani L’dodi V’dodi Li” – “I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine” (Song of Solomon 6:3). Elul is seen as a time to search one’s heart and draw close to God in preparation for the coming Day of Judgement, Rosh Hashanah, and Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur.

It is also believed that the first of Elul was when Moses began a period of 40 days of fasting and prayer on behalf of the people of Israel after they worshipped the golden calf.  The following comes from Rachel Baxter…

According to Jewish tradition, the month of Elul is the time that Moses spent on Mount Sinai preparing the second set of tablets after the golden calf incident (Exodus 32; 34:27-28). He ascended on Rosh Chodesh Elul and descended on the 10th of Tishri, at the end of Yom Kippur, when repentance was complete. Elul marked the beginning of a period of 40 days that Moses prayed for God to forgive the people for worshipping the golden calf.

Of course the number 40 comes up time after time throughout the Scriptures.  Here are a bunch more examples…

In the Old Testament, when God destroyed the earth with water, He caused it to rain 40 days and 40 nights (Genesis 7:12). After Moses killed the Egyptian, he fled to Midian, where he spent 40 years in the desert tending flocks (Acts 7:30). Moses was on Mount Sinai for 40 days and 40 nights (Exodus 24:18). Moses interceded on Israel’s behalf for 40 days and 40 nights (Deuteronomy 9:18, 25). The Law specified a maximum number of lashes a man could receive for a crime, setting the limit at 40 (Deuteronomy 25:3). The Israelite spies took 40 days to spy out Canaan (Numbers 13:25). The Israelites wandered for 40 years (Deuteronomy 8:2-5). Before Samson’s deliverance, Israel served the Philistines for 40 years (Judges 13:1). Goliath taunted Saul’s army for 40 days before David arrived to slay him (1 Samuel 17:16). When Elijah fled from Jezebel, he traveled 40 days and 40 nights to Mt. Horeb (1 Kings 19:8).

And virtually everyone knows that the Lord Jesus was tempted for 40 days in the wilderness, and that there were 40 days between His resurrection and His ascension.

In addition, I already noted yesterday that the prophet Jonah gave the people of Nineveh 40 days to repent before judgment would strike.

It is interesting to note that there is a town known as “Nineveh” in the United States as well.  On Monday, 93 percent of the sun will be blotted out by the moon in that little town, and 7 years later the eclipse of 2024 will blot out 100 percent of the sun in that same town.

Many will dismiss the things that I have been pointing out about these eclipses as “coincidences”, but it is imperative to remember that these sorts of solar eclipses are actually very rare.  The following comes from Faithwire…

But, with that said, there are some intriguing and defining elements surrounding the coming Aug. 21 event, including the fact that it is the first time since 1257 that the entirety of the total eclipse is exclusively viewable from inside the U.S.

Parade noted that the 1257 eclipse went over the Hawaiian Islands — a fact that some might say differentiates it from what’s to come this month. With that in mind, to find a comparable eclipse, the outlet said one must go all the way back more than 1,500 years to July 29, 436 (yes, the year 436). And America won’t see another such total solar eclipse that is viewable only in the U.S. until Jan. 25, 2316, when anyone currently reading this story is long gone.

For centuries, many have believed that a solar eclipse is a sign that judgment is coming upon a nation.  I don’t know if that is what this solar eclipse means, but Jesus did warn us to watch for signs in the sun, moon and stars just prior to His return.

So does this solar eclipse start a period of “40 days and 40 nights” for America?

I don’t know, but God definitely likes to use the number 40, and throughout history He has repeatedly used His calendar to get our attention.

Michael Snyder is a Republican candidate for Congress in Idaho’s First Congressional District, and you can learn how you can get involved in the campaign on his official website. His new book entitled “Living A Life That Really Matters” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.

10 Very Strange Facts About The August 21 Solar Eclipse That Will Absolutely Blow Your Mind

In just a matter of days we are going to witness the most unusual solar eclipse in U.S. history. Could it be possible that all of the very strange “coincidences” surrounding this event have some sort of special significance?  The mainstream media has been buzzing about this upcoming solar eclipse for months, and it will easily be the most watched eclipse in all of U.S. history.  Last week, I published an article entitled “12 Critical Events That Are Going To Happen Over A 40 Day Period From August 21st To September 30th” that received an extraordinary amount of attention, and of course the first event on that list was “the Great American Eclipse” on the 21st.  As you will see below, so many numbers seem to indicate that this eclipse could have some sort of special significance, and it begins a period of exactly 40 days that many believe could be a turning point for America.

In the Scriptures, we are specifically told that one of the reasons why God created the sun and the moon was so that they could serve as “signs”.  The following is what Genesis 1:14 tells us…

“And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years“

And in Luke 21:25, the Lord Jesus specifically warned us to watch for signs “in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars” just prior to His return.

So we should be watching, and we should fully expect to see something happen up there before Christ comes back.

With that in mind, I would like to share some amazing facts about the solar eclipse on August 21st with you.  These were originally compiled by The Countdown Report, and when I first read them they definitely got my attention…

-First contact is in the state of Oregon, the 33rd state in the USA. The last contact is in South Carolina on the 33rd parallel. This eclipse happens on day 233 of the year. If the Revelation 12 sign is valid, then the eclipse is also 33 days before September 23, 2017. Jesus is thought to have been 33 when He died.

-Just for fun: It is 99 years (3 x 33) since the last eclipse to go coast-to-coast in the US, in 1918. From September 23, 2017 (Revelation 12 sign) to the end of the year, December 31, 2017 is 99 days (or 3 x 33). The number of days from the 1918 eclipse to the August 21 eclipse are 26,234 days. (2+6+2+3+4 = 17; 2017?). From August 12, 2017, the date of the Charlottesville Virginia “State of Emergency” declared to the August 21, 2017 Great Solar Eclipse is 9 days (3+3+3) and the dates are also mirrored – 12 and 21.

-First big city the eclipse hits in Oregon is Salem – Salem was named after Jerusalem. The eclipse also begins in Oregon exactly at sunset time in Jerusalem. So technically speaking, as the sun sets in America it will be setting in Jerusalem at the same time.

-The center line crosses through 12 primary states to receive total darkness. 12 disciples, 12 months in a year, the meaning of 12, which is considered a perfect number, is that it symbolizes God’s power and authority, as well as serving as a perfect governmental foundation.

-The eclipse path is exactly 70 miles wide. 70 has a sacred meaning in the Bible that has two perfect numbers, 7 that represents perfection and 10 that represents completeness and God’s law. 70 also symbolizes perfect spiritual order and a period of judgment. 70 is also specially connected with Jerusalem with so many references it would take a book to write.

-Another eclipse comes in 2024, 7 years after the August 21, 2017 and marks an X over the United States. The combined time of totality of these eclipses together will be 7 minutes. The day of the eclipse is August 21, 2017 – (7 + 7 + 7 = 21). The exact point where the two eclipses cross is right next to Cedar Lake in Illinois… specifically right next to SALEM Road. (Salem again!)

-The original form of the Hebrew letter Tav is like the English letter X or T – which is in the shape of a cross, or X– like the X that is made by the two solar eclipses on the cross paths over 7 years. The letter Tav means “a sign”.

-The path of the eclipse will be situated in such a way that every single state of the US will experience it, even Hawaii and Alaska.

-The totality will reach Oregon at 10:16 AM Pacific, and will end in South Carolina at 2:49 PM Eastern. That means it will take 1 hour and 33 minutes to cross the country. There is that 33 again.

-The eclipse is also exactly 40 days from Yom Kippur. Yom Kippur means “Day of Atonement” and is a time of repentance. While the eclipse day itself may come and go with everything remaining “normal” afterwards, we need to be focused on what could be coming soon after.

You can read the entire list of 33 facts that were compiled by The Countdown Report right here.  I just pulled out the ten that I considered to be the most remarkable.

According to Rachel Baxter, “40 is the number for waiting, preparation, testing or punishment. It is also the number to start a new chapter of the history of salvation”, and we see the number 40 pop up time after time in the Bible.

For instance, in Jonah 3:4 the prophet Jonah gave Ninevah a period of 40 days to repent before judgment would begin…

And Jonah began to enter into the city a day’s journey, and he cried, and said, Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.

Could this coming 40 day time period have some sort of special significance for us?

Like I said in my previous article, I don’t know if all of this means anything.

But Jesus did specifically instruct us to watch for signs in the sun and the moon, and the solar eclipse on August 21st involves both the sun and the moon.

On August 21st, I am going to be able to travel into the path of this eclipse.  Hopefully it will be a very clear day and I will be able to get some very clear pictures for my readers.

I don’t expect anything world shattering to take place on that particular day, but like millions of other Americans, I will definitely be looking up into the sky to see what happens…

Michael Snyder is a Republican candidate for Congress in Idaho’s First Congressional District, and you can learn how you can get involved in the campaign on his official website. His new book entitled “Living A Life That Really Matters” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.

12 Critical Events That Are Going To Happen Over A 40 Day Period From August 21st To September 30th

We are about to witness an extremely unusual convergence of events that many believe could represent a major turning point for our nation.  By now you have probably heard that on August 21st a total solar eclipse will move across the entire continental United States for the first time in decades.  In fact, we have not seen a total solar eclipse cross from the west coast to the east coast in 99 years.  And it will be the very first total solar eclipse that is only visible in this country since the United States first became a nation.  Starting with that event, there is going to be a whole lot going on until we reach the end of September.  The following are 12 critical events that are going to happen over a 40 day period from August 21st to September 30th…

August 21 – The “Great American Eclipse” will sweep across portions of Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina.  Seven years later, another very unusual total solar eclipse will move across our nation, and when you plot the paths of both eclipses on a map, they form a giant “X” right over the center of the United States.

August 23 – A FEMA exercise known as “EarthEX2017” will simulate “catastrophes such as mega earthquakes, cyber terrorism or high altitude electromagnetic pulse attacks”…

An exercise sponsored by FEMA and the U.S. Department of Energy set to take place on August 23 called EarthEX2017 will wargame responses to catastrophes such as mega earthquakes, cyber terrorism or high altitude electromagnetic pulse attacks.

The exercise will simulate a “subcontinent-scale, long duration power outage, with cascading failures of all other infrastructures,” according to the official Earth Ex website.

“Black sky events” are defined as, “Catastrophic occurrences caused by man or nature that bring society to its knees.”

September 1 – This marks the start of FEMA’s annual “National Preparedness Month“.

September 1 – The U.S. State Department’s ban on U.S. citizens traveling into North Korea goes into effect.  Many are concerned that this is yet another sign that we are moving toward war with North Korea.

September 11 – This will be the 16th anniversary of 9/11.

September 20 – Rosh Hashanah begins at sunset.

September 21 – The UN International Day Of Peace

September 23 – This is the date of what has become known as “the Revelation 12 sign”.  If you are not familiar with this alignment yet, the following is a very brief summary…

On September 23rd a unique astronomical alignment of the Sun, Moon, constellation Virgo, constellation Leo, and planets Jupiter, Mars, Mercury, and Venus is going to fulfill this passage from the book of Revelation:

And a great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars.  She was pregnant and was crying out in birth pains and the agony of giving birth.

September 24 – Very important national elections will be held in Germany.

September 29 – Yom Kippur begins at sunset, and it concludes on September 30th.  Of course September 30th will be the end of a 40 day period that began back on the day of the Great American Eclipse on August 21st.

September 29 – U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin says that the debt ceiling will be breached on this day if Congress does not raise it by then.

September 30 – If Congress does not pass a budget by the end of this day, there will be a government shutdown just like we witnessed in 2013.

On top of everything else, the month of September is when the Federal Reserve is scheduled to begin unwinding  their 4.5 trillion dollar balance sheet…

The other big market force that could ruffle markets is clearly the Fed, which is expected to begin the untested task of unwinding its $4.5 trillion balance sheet in September.

In addition, it is very interesting to note that a large asteroid will come within 4,200 miles of our planet on October 12th…

The asteroid has not been seen since its 2012 discovery, when it sped past Earth at about one-fourth the distance from Earth to the moon. It’s been too distant and too faint to be detected over the last five years. As it starts to approach Earth this summer, large telescopes will be used to detect it and re-establish the asteroid’s precise trajectory.

The asteroid, known as 2012 TC4, could come as close as 4,200 miles to Earth, NASA said. That’s actually fairly close, when you consider that the moon is about 239,000 miles away.

So what does all of this mean?

I don’t know, but I am sure that I will receive even more criticism for putting this list together.  Those of us that monitor global events and warn about where things are headed are often highly criticized.  But in this day and age, we desperately need independent thinkers that are willing to challenge the system.  Way too often people just go with the herd and will believe whatever the mainstream media tells them to think.

Never let someone else do your thinking for you.  Investigate things for yourself and come to your own conclusions.  Learning to think critically is one of the most important skills that you can have, and you will find that it is one of the most common traits among those that are truly “awake” to what is going on in the world.

The truth is out there, and if you diligently seek it you will eventually find it.

Michael Snyder is a Republican candidate for Congress in Idaho’s First Congressional District, and you can learn how you can get involved in the campaign on his official website. His new book entitled “Living A Life That Really Matters” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.

Just Like Our Founders 241 Years Ago, We Need To Unashamedly Declare That Our Rights Come To Us From God

Why do we celebrate the 4th of July?  If you were to ask average people on the street this question, many of them would mumble something about “independence”, but the truth is that most Americans would not be able to tell you clearly why it is a holiday.  According to Wikipedia, the 4th of July “is a federal holiday in the United States commemorating the adoption of the Declaration of Independence 241 years ago on July 4, 1776.”  Unfortunately, most Americans have never read the Declaration of Independence, and if a similar document was authored today it would be banned from our public schools because it mentions God four times.  We have allowed the liberal elite to gain such a stranglehold over our society that even our most cherished founding principles have become politically incorrect.

If you ask most Americans to quote from the Declaration of Independence, almost everyone will give you something from this sentence…

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

This is one of the most famous sentences in the English language, but do most of us still proudly believe this?

And if you happen to be someone that does not believe in God, then where do your rights come from?

If they come from men, then men can take them away.  But if they come from God, then nobody can take them away.  This is a point that President Trump brought up in a major speech that he just delivered to a group of veterans…

“Since the signing of the Declaration of Independence 241 years ago, America always affirmed that liberty comes from our creator. Our rights are given to us by God, and no earthly force can ever take those rights away. That is why my administration is transferring power out of Washington and returning that power back where it belongs to the people,” Trump said.

“Our religious liberty is enshrined in the very first amendment in the Bill of Rights. The American founders invoked our creator four times in the Declaration of Independence,” said Trump. “Benjamin Franklin reminded his colleagues at the Constitutional Convention to begin by bowing their heads in prayer. Inscribed on our currency are the words: ‘In God We Trust.’”

It is so refreshing to hear a president talk like this, because these days most of our politicians are so careful to be politically-correct.  And I am not just talking about Democrats.  Many politicians that are supposedly “conservative” seem quite uncomfortable when matters of faith come up, and if you can get them to talk about God they usually want to switch topics as quickly as possible.

But in the old days, Republicans and Democrats both acknowledged the importance of faith in our society.  The following comes from an excellent article by Dr. Gary Scott Smith…

Dwight Eisenhower insisted that the Founding Fathers “wrote their religious faith into our founding documents, stamped their trust in God upon our coins and currency, [and] put it squarely at the base of our institutions.” They strove to obey God’s commandments, live in freedom, and create a prosperous country. “The knowledge that God is the source of all power,” Eisenhower maintained, gave birth to and sustained America. Human dignity depended on the God-given rights that were “eloquently stated” in the Declaration of Independence.

Faith in Almighty God, John F. Kennedy contended, “was a dominant power in the lives of our Founding Fathers.” He urged Americans to “dwell upon the deep religious convictions of those who formed our nation.”

Ronald Reagan repeatedly stressed the religious commitments of the Founding Fathers, especially their contention that the United States would flourish only if its people acted morally. The founders, he declared, “believed faith in God was the key to our being a good people and America’s becoming a great nation.” Reagan regularly recounted how the founders, especially Washington, had relied on God in leading the nation. The Declaration of Independence, Reagan claimed, expressed America’s recognition of God’s power and authority. He noted that Benjamin Franklin, John Jay, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison all accentuated God’s providential guidance and the importance of prayer. The Founding Fathers ensured that Congress began each day with prayer, Reagan proclaimed, because they valued prayer so highly.

Of course in our day and time teens are actually being threatened with arrest for praying in school.

If we truly want to restore our Republic, we can’t throw out the principles and values that the Republic was founded upon.  The First Amendment guarantees that there will never be an official state church and that we will always get to worship God the way that we want, but there is absolutely nothing in there that says we must have a godless government.  On the contrary, our founders were more influenced by the Bible than any other book, and they quoted from it more than any other book.  Dr. Daniel L. Dreisbach is the author of “Reading the Bible with the Founding Fathers“, and I have used this quote from him previously, but I wanted to use it again here because it fits my point perfectly…

The founders, as I document in my new book “Reading the Bible with the Founding Fathers,” lived in a biblically literate society. Their many quotations from and allusions to both familiar and obscure biblical texts confirm that they knew the Bible from cover to cover. Biblical language and themes liberally seasoned their rhetoric. The phrases and intonations of the King James Bible, especially, influenced their written and spoken words. Its ideas shaped their habits of mind.

The Bible left its mark on their political culture. Legislative debates, pamphlets and political sermons of the age are replete with quotations from and allusions to the Bible. Following an extensive survey of American political literature from 1760 to 1805, political scientist Donald S. Lutz reported that the Bible was cited more frequently than any European writer or even any European school of thought, such as Enlightenment liberalism. Approximately one-third of all citations in the literature he surveyed were to the Bible. The book of Deuteronomy alone was the most frequently cited work, followed by Montesquieu’s “The Spirit of the Laws.” In fact, Deuteronomy was referenced nearly twice as often as Locke’s writings, and the Apostle Paul was mentioned about as frequently as Montesquieu.

The biggest reason why our federal government is such a mess today is because it has pushed God completely out of the picture.

So instead of defending life, our nation has murdered nearly 60 million children since Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973.

Instead of defending liberty, the control freaks at the federal level are suffocating us with hundreds of thousands of laws, rules and regulations, and if you throw in the state and local levels, the number of laws, rules and regulations governing us is in the millions.

And instead of promoting the pursuit of happiness, all of us have to work several months each year just to pay the dozens of different taxes and fees that various levels of government impose on all of us.  But we don’t actually have to have such a system.  If we got rid of our debt-based financial system and went to a much smaller federal government, we could abolish the income tax, the IRS and the Federal Reserve.

Government is not the solution to our problems.

As Ronald Reagan once famously said, government is the problem.

If we work together, we can dismantle the monstrous federal bureaucracy that the liberal elite have spent decades constructing, and we can restore the Republic that our founders risked everything to establish.

It won’t be easy, but we can get there, and the first step is getting back to the principles and values that made America great in the first place.

Apostate Evangelicals Are Poised To Become The Deciding Factor In A Hillary Clinton Election Victory

crowd-concert-music-public-domainIf you look at the numbers, there is no way that Hillary Clinton could possibly win the election without the support of a substantial percentage of evangelical Christian voters.  In fact, if evangelical Christians stuck together they could pretty much elect whoever they want as president.  According to the Pew Research Center, 35 percent of all adults in the United States identify themselves as “evangelical” or “born again”, and it has been estimated that there are  94 million evangelical Christian adults in this country.  If evangelical Christians acted as a single voting block they could determine the outcome of every single presidential election.  Unfortunately, that simply is not going to happen.

A survey that was recently conducted by LifeWay Research found that only 45 percent of Christian evangelicals plan to vote for Donald Trump and 31 percent of Christian evangelicals plan to vote for Hillary Clinton.

That same survey discovered that moral issues are becoming increasingly unimportant to evangelical voters…

Overall, the economy is the top concern for Americans regardless of religious affiliation (30%). National security (17%) and personal character (17%) also are significant issues. Supreme Court nominees (10%), immigration (5%), religious freedom (2%), and abortion (1%) are less important.

“For churchgoers and those with evangelical beliefs, their pocketbook and personal safety are paramount,” said McConnell. “Moral issues aren’t a priority for many of them.”

I don’t know how in the world abortion could come in at only 1 percent.  Even if you add “Supreme Court nominees” and abortion together, you still only get a total of 11 percent.

This just shows that evangelicals in America have their priorities way out of order.

And unfortunately for Donald Trump, he is getting a lot less support from evangelicals than other recent presidential candidates received.  According to the New York Times, previous candidates have generally received about 80 percent support from white evangelical voters, but Donald Trump is only getting about 65 to 70 percent support, and his numbers among non-white evangelicals are absolutely dismal.

If you are an evangelical Christian and you have reservations about Donald Trump, I can respect that.  But there will be other names on the ballot and you do not have to vote for Hillary Clinton.  As I have said before, a vote for Hillary Clinton is an act of unmitigated wickedness.

Hillary Clinton has made support for abortion one of the central pillars of her long political career.  In fact, I don’t know if there is any politician in America that is more associated with abortion than Hillary Clinton.  Since Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973, more than 58 million babies have been murdered in the United States, and Hillary Clinton’s hands are drenched with their blood.

If you vote for Hillary Clinton, your hands will be drenched with their blood too.

Needless to say, I am absolutely horrified that so many prominent evangelical leaders have come out in support of Hillary Clinton during this election season.  For example, a group that represents over 6,000 Latino evangelical churches has just announced that they are endorsing Hillary Clinton…

An organization representing more than 6,000 Latino evangelical churches in the U.S. is endorsing Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump.

In a statement Thursday, the group OPEN USA says Clinton has proven her willingness to engage in difficult conversations, listen to contrasting opinions and engage faith leaders.

Meanwhile, 75 evangelical leaders recently signed a petition on Change.org that strongly denounces Donald Trump…

We, undersigned evangelicals, simply will not tolerate the racial, religious, and gender bigotry that Donald Trump has consistently and deliberately fueled, no matter how else we choose to vote or not to vote.

One of the truly alarming trends that we have been seeing this election season is the number of prominent women in the evangelical movement that are openly rejecting Donald Trump and embracing Hillary Clinton.  The following is a short excerpt from a recent Washington Post article that examined this phenomenon…

When Jen Hatmaker speaks to stadiums full of Christian women, she regales them with stories about her five children and her garden back in Austin, Tex. — and stays away from politics. But recently she took to Facebook and Instagram to blast Donald J. Trump as a “national disgrace,” and remind her legions of followers that there are other names on the ballot in November.

And Christianity Today recently published an editorial from one of the top female evangelical leaders in the entire country in which she publicly endorsed Hillary Clinton.  According to Christianity Today, Deborah Fikes is “the former Permanent Representative to the United Nations for World Evangelical Alliance, which represents a constituency of 650 million with alliance offices in 129 countries.”  Fikes says that she stepped down from some of her leadership positions so that she could openly advocate for Clinton…

My recent resignations from evangelical leadership positions to endorse Hillary Clinton speaks volumes of how important I believe it is that she is elected in November. The toxic tone and atmosphere that surrounds Mr. Trump and is fueled among his supporters has done irreparable damage to not only our country and the future of the GOP but also to the public witness of evangelicals in America who are seen as some of his biggest supporters.

There is no question in my mind or spirit that with the overwhelming challenges the next American president will face, Hillary Clinton is the most qualified person who has ever run for the Oval Office. On the issues of our national security, economic stability, seeing that healthcare reform continues to move forward, and tackling domestic challenges of poverty, inequality, and racism, we need her to be the person occupying this office.

A lot of these women seem to think that abortion shouldn’t be a major issue in this election, but that is like saying that the Holocaust shouldn’t have been a major issue in Nazi Germany.

Look, you don’t have to vote for Donald Trump or anyone else to be a good Christian.

But if you cast a vote for Hillary Clinton, you are casting a vote for the most evil, wicked and corrupt politician that this nation has possibly ever seen, and you are publicly endorsing the sinful positions that she is proud to stand for.

I know that I have been writing about the election a lot lately, but I feel that it is very important that I do so.  Most of the media coverage has focused on Donald Trump, but I feel that this election is far more about Hillary Clinton.  The things that her and her husband have done have been well documented, and if the American people willingly choose her they will know exactly what they are doing.

Unfortunately, not even Christians are standing united against the Clintons.  The political divide in the evangelical Christian world has grown so deep that it has even reached Liberty University.  The following comes from the Atlantic…

That’s why it was such a big deal when, two weeks ago, a group of Liberty students put out a letter explaining why they’re standing against the Republican presidential nominee. Jerry Falwell Jr., who has run the school since his father died in 2007, announced his support for Donald Trump back in January, and he has since spoken on the candidate’s behalf in interviews and at events. “We are Liberty students who are disappointed with President Falwell’s endorsement and are tired of being associated with one of the worst presidential candidates in American history,” the students wrote. “Donald Trump does not represent our values and we want nothing to do with him.”

Thousands of people signed onto the letter, including, the students said, roughly 2,000 students or alumni with liberty.edu email addresses. Dustin Wahl and Alex Forbes, two of the letter’s authors, were featured on MSNBC and CNN. They said they received supportive emails and tweets from Russell Moore, the head of the political arm of the Southern Baptist Convention, and Erick Erickson, the conservative radio-show host.

And the support for Clinton is particularly strong among young adult evangelicals.  When I read the following paragraph on the website of the New York Times, I was absolutely astounded…

Kate Shellnutt, 30, the online editor of Christianity Today and editor of the CT Women section, said she had observed that “the millennial generation has a lot less patience for Trump.” Of the 33 influential millennial evangelicals she profiled for a cover story two years ago, she says she can now find only one, Lila Rose, who is pro-Trump, and even she has been publicly critical of him. Several have been using the hashtag #NeverTrump, Ms. Shellnutt said.

The frightening thing is that this election might be the last chance for evangelical Christians to shape the political direction of this nation, because the truth is that demographics are rapidly shifting, and this includes the demographics of the evangelical community…

As Robert Jones has expertly documented in his recent book The End of White Christian America, the number of older, conservative, white male evangelicals is shrinking each year. Meanwhile, the number of younger evangelicals of all ethnic backgrounds — whose moral and political views extend far beyond positions on gay marriage and abortion — is on the rise.

If you follow my work regularly, then you already know that I have very little hope for the future of America.

But if Hillary Clinton is elected, there will be exactly zero hope.

If evangelical Christians stood united, they could stop her, but at this point it appears that is not going to happen.

Arch That Was A Gateway To The Temple Of Baal Is Going Up In New York’s City Hall Park On Monday

new-york-city-september-19-2016If you tried to put up a large cross in a public park in New York City there would be lawsuits flying all over the place, but apparently an ancient pagan arch that served as a gateway to the Temple of Baal is no problem at all.  On Monday, September 19th, a reconstructed version of Palmyra’s Arch Of Triumph (also known as the Monumental Arch) will be erected in New York City.  Specifically, it will be located in City Hall Park in Manhattan.  The organization behind this project is known as the Institute for Digital Archaeology, and they have confirmed the location and the date on their official website…

ida-letter-excerpt

This arch was originally constructed in Palmyra, Syria by the Roman Emperor Septimius Severus in the 3rd century A.D., and it stood there until it was destroyed by ISIS in 2015.  The following comes from the Wikipedia article about this arch…

The Monumental Arch, also called the Arch of Triumph (Arabic: قوس النصر‎‎) or the Arch of Septimius Severus, was a Roman ornamental archway in Palmyra, Syria. It was built in the 3rd century during the reign of emperor Septimius Severus. Its ruins later became one of the main attractions of Palmyra, until it was destroyed by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant in October 2015. Most of its stonework still survives and there are plans to rebuild it using anastylosis.

On this map you can see how Palmyra was laid out.  The Arch of Triumph (identified on the map as the “monumental arch”) connected the main street of the Colonnade with the Temple of Bel.  If you wanted to go to the Temple of Bel, there was essentially one way in and one way out, and everyone coming and going would pass through this arch.

temple-of-bel-and-the-monumental-arch-pinterest

Those that are familiar with ancient Middle Eastern deities already know that “Bel” and the “Baal” that we find in the Bible were one and the same.  Here is more from Wikipedia…

Bel (/ˈbeɪl/; from Akkadian bēlu), signifying “lord” or “master”, is a title rather than a genuine name, applied to various gods in the Mesopotamian religion of Akkad, Assyria and Babylonia. The feminine form is Belit ‘Lady, Mistress’. Bel is represented in Greek as Belos and in Latin as Belus. Linguistically Bel is an East Semitic form cognate with Northwest Semitic Baal with the same meaning.

Back in April, the arch that stood directly in front of the Temple of Baal was supposed to be put up in Times Square, but fortunately that project was ultimately canceled.   A reproduction of the Arch of Triumph (the arch discussed in this article) was put up in Trafalgar Square in London at that time, and there were rumblings that a reproduction of the Arch of Triumph would also come to New York at a later date.

Unfortunately, that has now become a reality.

So why are people getting so upset about some ancient arch that may be connected to an ancient god that nobody seems to worship anymore?

Well, the truth is that “Baal” is mentioned in the Bible more than 100 times.  A very high percentage of current world religions can be traced directly back to this ancient deity and to ancient Babylon, and the practices involved in ancient Baal worship are “eerily similar” to things that go on in society today.  The following comes from an excellent article by Matt Barber…

Ritualistic Baal worship, in sum, looked a little like this: Adults would gather around the altar of Baal. Infants would then be burned alive as a sacrificial offering to the deity. Amid horrific screams and the stench of charred human flesh, congregants – men and women alike – would engage in bisexual orgies. The ritual of convenience was intended to produce economic prosperity by prompting Baal to bring rain for the fertility of “mother earth.”

The natural consequences of such behavior – pregnancy and childbirth – and the associated financial burdens of “unplanned parenthood” were easily offset. One could either choose to engage in homosexual conduct or – with child sacrifice available on demand – could simply take part in another fertility ceremony to “terminate” the unwanted child.

Modern liberalism deviates little from its ancient predecessor. While its macabre rituals have been sanitized with flowery and euphemistic terms of art, its core tenets and practices remain eerily similar.

We tend to think that we are vastly more “advanced” than the pagan idol worshippers of the ancient world, but is that really the case?

They killed their babies by the thousands, but we have killed our babies by the millions.

They had “free love” around the altars of Baal, but we have turned it into a permanent lifestyle.

Multitudes would gather around the altars of Baal to watch the bisexual orgies, but we have turned watching others having sex into a multi-billion dollar industry.

Just like ancient Israel, our society has turned away from following the God that created all things, and instead we are embracing the ways of the ancient pagan world.  Unfortunately, there are very serious consequences for doing this.  Just consider what Jonathan Cahn recently told George Noory during an interview on Coast to Coast…

“Western Civilization was once totally pagan and then in a sense it got cleaned up,” Cahn said. “But what [one of these mysteries is] saying is, if it turns back away from God and turns to evil and immorality, it’s going to be seven times worse than it does before. And how that translates is, before you had the Gospel you had Nero, you had Caligula. But when you have a post-Christian civilization, it’s much more dangerous than a pre-Christian one. But that’s when you produce Hitlers, you produce Stalins, you produce ultimately the Antichrist. That’s end-time prophecy. We are witnessing that as well.”

I believe that it is quite appropriate that an arch that once served as a gateway to the Temple of Baal is going up in New York City on Monday, because we are going down the exact same path that ancient Israel once did.

Sadly, if we keep doing the same things that they once did, our ultimate fate will end up being very similar as well.

UPDATE: The arch has now been unveiled, and you can see video of the unveiling right here…

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