economy

In Joel's day Israel experienced the destruction of a massive locust plague. The nation's economy was crippled because of the decimation of the agriculture. The reason these plagues came was because of the people's negligence to worship and serve God with their whole heart. Because the people grew cold and eventually departed from God, they experienced incredible hardships. The result of their inner departure was multiple external crises.

 

In America today we face a similar crisis. We have watched sin escalate to a proportion the nation has never seen before. We live in the first generation in which the wholesale murder of infants through abortion is not only accepted but protected by law. Homosexuality has been embraced as an alternative lifestyle. Same-sex marriage is legal in six states and Washington, D.C. Pornography is available on-demand through the internet. Biblical signs of apostasy are before our very eyes. While the United States still claims to be a nation "under God" it is obvious that we have greatly strayed from our foundations in Christianity.

 

This year we have seen a dramatic increase in tornadoes that have taken the lives of many and crippled entire cities, such as Tuscaloosa, AL & Joplin, MO. And let us not forget that we are only six years from the tragic events of hurricane Katrina, which rendered the entire Gulf Coast powerless.

 

Furthermore, because of mismanagement and greed, our national economy is in incredible disarray, with our national debt topping 14 trillion dollars. We have effectively mortgaged our children's future, while spending money we do not have on entitlements as we search in vain for "the American dream". The first "wave of locusts" has begun to descend upon us and many are oblivious to the fact that destruction has come and is still coming.

 

God destined America to be a gospel beacon to the rest of the earth a nation under God who declares His goodness, truth and mercy to a world desperately in need. How we have strayed from God's original intent for us! The crisis is extreme and the hour is urgent.

The Response email includes several days' worth of items to consider.  And while Religious Right groups like the AFA often blame secularists, homosexuals, liberals, feminists, environmentalists, and President Obama for the nation’s problems, today's email suggests the real problem is that the Church has not been fervent enough:

The debt crisis might be the focus of most of the nation right now, but nothing can distract Elaine Donnelly from her campaign to prevent gay and lesbian soldiers from serving openly and honestly in our armed forces. Friday she told Frank Gaffney on Secure Freedom Radio:

Everyone in Washington is distracted by the debt crisis, and it is a crisis, but I think the damage done to our only military is much more serious because we can always fix the economy when things go wrong, most of the time, but once you undermine and destroy the culture of the military-what makes it better than any other armed forces in the world-once you make it a social experiment as a political payoff to the LGBT left, then you create problems.

. . .

The day and the hour that the president puts his hand to a paper, certifying no problems to the military, he will own the San Francisco military that he has created.

Donnelly may not agree with San Francisco’s politics, but perhaps she should stop and think before she degrades a “San Francisco military.” Does she just want to mock the sacrifices of service members from the Bay Area who are putting their lives on the line right now? Or is she just disparaging service members from San Francisco who have given their lives for our country? 

In the past, Elaine Donnelly has shown no compunction about denigrating gay and lesbian service members—after they’ve sacrificed for our nation, she’s pushed hard not to thank them, but to fire them. I guess today she’s added a new category to the men and women in uniform who aren’t worthy of her respect.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry has tried to distance himself from the many extreme activists he is working with to put on The Response prayer rally, like the pastor who labeled Oprah Winfrey the harbinger of the Antichrist and the self-proclaimed ‘Apostle’ who called the Statue of Liberty a “demonic idol.” But Perry is open about his ties to advocates of Seven Mountains Dominionism, an ideology which demands that fundamentalist Christians take total control over all aspects of society. Dominionism advocate Jim Garlow is directing “National Church Mobilization” for The Response and other Dominionist endorsers of The Response include Cindy Jacobs and David Barton. Even the American Family Association, which is the official host of the prayer rally, now promotes Seven Mountains Dominionism.

Today, Perry appeared on Barton’s radio show WallBuildersLive and announced that he has received support from televangelist James Robison,who is leading the effort to rally the Religious Right around a Perry campaign for the presidency (though of course the rally is “apolitical”). Perry also mentioned that he is working with Loren Cunningham and his “prayer warriors” to mobilize support for The Response.

Who is Loren Cunningham? Cunningham was one of three founders of the radical “Seven Mountains Dominionist” ideology, which he says he received directly from God:

It was August, 1975.My family and I were up in a little cabin in Colorado. And the Lord had given me that day a list of things I had never thought about before. He said "This is the way to reach America and nations for God.And {He said}, "You have to see them like classrooms or like places that were already there, and go into them with those who are already working in those areas." And I call them "mind-molders” or "spheres”. I got the word "spheres” from II Corinthians 10 where Paul speaks in the New American Standard about the "spheres” he had been called into. And with these spheres there were seven of them, and I’ll get to those in a moment. But it was a little later that day, the ranger came up, and he said, "There is a phone call for you back at the ranger’s station.” So I went back down, about 7 miles, and took the call. It was a mutual friend who said, "Bill Bright and Vonnette are in Colorado at the same time as you are. Would you and Darlene come over and meet with them? They would love to meet with you.” So we flew over to Boulder on a private plane of a friend of ours.And as we came in and greeted each other, {we were friends for quite a while}, and I was reaching for my yellow paper that I had written on the day before.And he said, "Loren, I want to show you what God has shown me!” And it was virtually the same list that God had given me the day before. Three weeks later, my wife Darlene had seen Dr. Francis Shaffer on TV and he had the same list! And so I realized that this was for the body of Christ.

I gave it for the first time in Hamburg, Germany at the big cathedral there to a group of hundreds of young people that had gathered at that time. And I said, "These are the areas that you can go into as missionaries.Here they are: First, it’s the institution set up by God first, the family. After the family was church, or the people of God. The third was the area of school, or education. The fourth was media, public communication, in all forms, printed and electronic. The fifth was what I call "celebration”, the arts, entertainment, and sports, where you celebrate within a culture. The sixth would be the whole area of the economy, which starts with innovations in science and technology, productivity, sales, and service. The whole area we often call it business but we leave out sometimes the scientific part, which actually raises the wealth of the world. Anything new, like making sand into chips for a microchip, that increases wealth in the world. And then of course prediction sales and service helps to spread the wealth. And so the last was the area of government. Now government, the Bible shows in Isaiah 33 verse 22 that there are three branches of government, so it’s all of the three branches: judicial, legislative, and executive. And then there are subgroups under all of those seven groups. And there are literally thousands upon thousands of sub-groups. But those seven can be considered like Caleb: "Give me this mountain,” and they can be a "mountain” to achieve for God.

Dominionist Johnny Enlow explains the necessity to take control over the “government mountain” in particular because “Lucifer sits at the top of this mountain”:

The Mountain of Government is perhaps the most important of the mountains because it can establish laws and decrees that affect and control every other mountain. Therefore, we find Lucifer himself entrenched on this mountain as the usurping "prince” over the nations. Whereas God’s government is established through service and humility, Satan’s government is established through manipulation and pride. Lucifer sits at the top of this mountain, where he specifically functions as the Antichrist. His role over the nations is to stir and raise up whatever would defeat the purposes of God on earth. When he is firmly entrenched in a nation, that nation will manifest the following "antichrist” distinctives.

As Perry prepares his presidential bid, his close ties to extreme brands of fundamentalism continue to emerge.

Tea Party Nation keeps pushing anti-gay attacks, from supporting anti-LGBT bullying to defending Michele and Marcus Bachmann’s clinic’s use of ‘ex-gay’ reparative therapy. Now, Tea Party Nation president Judson Phillips is using the current debate on the debt and the Defense budget to launch another anti-gay smear against Rep. Barney Frank, the openly gay Democratic congressman. Phillips called on Tea Party members to oppose Frank’s proposal to cut defense spending, arguing that the Tea Party should support more spending since he believes “Obama wants to destroy the American military,” and taunted Frank by saying that the Defense Department “needs to send Frank a new ‘friend’” who can change his mind:

One of the leaders of the Party of Treason demanding cuts is Barney Frank. Right we should listen to Barney Frank. The last time we listened to Barney Frank we ended up with the sub prime crisis and a wrecked economy. And now he wants to do that to national defense? At least, unlike when he was regulating Fannie Mae, he isn’t sleeping with anyone in the Defense Department as he proposes future policy. Wait, maybe that is the problem. With the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, maybe DOD needs to send Frank a new “friend” and the DOD budget will do better.

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Defense is the one area, even in the time of a depression, such as the Obama depression, when we should be increasing spending. Instead of retiring a couple of aircraft carriers, what do you think would happen if the Obama regime decided to build a couple of new ones! (No, I’m not on drugs. I know Obama wants to destroy the American military. This is just a hypothetical)

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If we decided to build a couple of new carriers, thousands of workers would be hired for the shipyards. Thousands of employees would be hired for the steel mills that would provide the steel for the hull and various sub contractors would hire thousands. Do you know what that means?

It means they would receive paychecks and go out and spend that money. That would help a recovery. That is a shovel ready project! Increasing spending for the military does a couple of things. It not only not only [sic] stimulates the economy, it protects our nation. That is a better investment than say spending money on teaching Chinese prostitutes how to drink responsibly.

Religious Right activist and unsuccessful Republican congressional candidate Star Parker has a new column today lamenting that African Americans have yet to embrace her ultraconservative ideology. The outspoken anti-choice and anti-gay activist bemoans that African Americans are still predominantly Democrats since they don’t watch Fox News and because “too many blacks still don’t want to be free” despite advances in civil rights. Parker, who received just 23% of the vote in her failed bid for Congress, writes:

The message that massive government spending and borrowing does not grow the economy has not reached blacks. Rather, like our president, they seem to believe that the problem is we just haven't yet dug the fiscal hole deep enough.

Is this a racial thing? Whites will jump off the ship run by a black captain in a minute while blacks will ride it out until it hits the iceberg?

No, I don't think so. I think it's both a liberal information thing and a moral thing.

The liberal information thing is that blacks overwhelmingly get their information from liberal sources.

Blacks watch CNN and MSNBC, not Fox. They listen to urban black radio.

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But I think more corrosive is the moral thing.

Almost a half century since the passage of the Civil Rights Act, too many blacks still don't want to be free and accept the responsibilities that go with it. Too many blacks still believe that the condition of their lives is caused by what someone else does or has.

It is sad that this is true despite the fact that blacks go to church more often, pray more often, and say religion plays a central part in their life more than any other ethnic group in the nation.

Why does a people so inclined to turn to God so readily violate the Tenth Commandment's prohibition on covetousness and measure themselves in terms of what others have? And then use this sin to justify violating the Eighth Commandment and give government license to steal what others have in order to redistribute?

Perhaps most fundamentally, how can a church-going people buy into the materialism of socialism?

Gary Glenn of the American Family Association of Michigan is one of the most rabidly anti-gay Religious Right activists operating today.  Just the other day he and Linda Harvey were ranting about how the "severe medical consequences" of being gay make gays an "employment risk."

So, of course, he is contemplating running for the US Senate:

Gary Glenn is exploring a possible jump into the U.S. Senate race as a Republican challenger to incumbent Debbie Stabenow.

Glenn, 53, of Midland served as GOP Michigan delegate for a decade, is a veteran of the U.S. Army Reserves and has a pro-life stance. He has spoken at a dozen Tea Party events, including the 2009 Midland County Tea Party rally, and has served as the president of the American Family Association.

Although several people have been mentioned in political circles as a GOP challenger to Stabenow, a Democrat, only Oakland County Water Resources Commissioner John P. McCulloch has officially declared his candidacy.

Glenn, in an e-mail released this morning, said the country's founding values are under assault.

"Our nation's economy, security, liberties, moral foundation and founding principles — all that's made America and Americans exceptional in the history of the world — are under attack from within," Glenn said.

On Friday, Rachel Maddow looked into the extreme political activists and pastors that Texas Governor Rick Perry is working with to put on his The Response prayer rally. In the segment, Maddow discusses Mike Bickle, the founder and executive director of the International House of Prayer and an endorser of The Response. Maddow cites research from Right Wing Watch on Bickle and his claim that Oprah Winfrey is the precursor to the Antichrist. Bickle’s IHOP ministry is closely involved in organizing Perry’s prayer rally, modeling it after the IHOP-linked The Call prayer rally which preaches the use of spiritual warfare against legalized abortion and gay rights.

Pat Robertson has already warned that God will destroy America over New York’s new marriage equality law, and now Religious Right commentator Michael Bresciani is saying that marriage equality may bring the coming of the Antichrist. Writing for Renew America, Bresciani claims that America is abandoning God and will be led into a “foreign tyranny and a ruthless ruler the scriptures refer to as the antichrist”:

The children of Belial could not be expected to understand it but the hour is late and never has there been a time in our history when the following has been truer of America. "Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil." (Ec 8: 11) If clamoring for gay rights and gay marriage is pushing the envelope then more laws to dignify such perversion can only be just more to push us over the top in God's patience.

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No one says it better than the ancient prophet Micah. He was a contemporary of the prophet Isaiah and gave his message to Israel and Judah for a period of about fifty years. Although he like Isaiah saw the coming captivity that Israel would undergo after Babylon conquered them, those events were over 125 years into the future and no one paid much attention to either prophet on that matter. Micah saw the Assyrian captivity of Israel and that was only ten years away from his prophecies.

The results of our choices in America are closer than Micah's prophecies by far. But the result will be just about the same. We too will be led away captive but not to a foreign place but rather to a foreign tyranny and a ruthless ruler the scriptures refer to as the antichrist.

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The condensed version of the pattern God uses is this; A call to repentance, a graduating scale of calamities, natural disasters and disruption of nature, a collapse of the powers and the economy of a nation. Need I remind anyone that America is already in stage three of this pattern? After this it gets far more serious, what exactly does that mean? My answer is both; you don't really want to know and stay tuned there is more to come.

Last night, People For the American Way senior fellow Peter Montgomery went on MSNBC's The Last Word With Lawrence O'Donnell to discuss the American Family Association's chief spokesman Bryan Fischer and his organization's work with Texas Gov. Rick Perry.

Make sure to read our new Right Wing Watch: In Focus on Fischer here.

And watch the interview with O'Donnell:

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