Blog to discuss the book "The Apocalypse - Letter by Letter: A Literary Analysis of the Book of Revelation" and current events that point to the events described therein.
After the event of the 200 million horsemen and just preceding the second woe we have this verse in the Book of Revelation:
"And they did not repent of their murders nor of their sorceries nor of their fornications nor of their thefts." Apoc. 9:21
Pharmakeia is a Greek word found in the New Testament that means medication, pharmacy, magic, sorcery and witchcraft. The verse seems to point to an increase of the use of drugs (as well as astrology and witchcraft perhaps) in the time leading up to the second woe.
Fornications can mean sexual licentiousness but can also refer to apostasy from the true faith. When the Bible speaks of adultery and fornication it often refers to a communal act of falling away from God's law.
In the article above, Mexico City, one of the largest Roman Catholic cities in the world, even in world history, has decided to give pharmaceuticals, Viagra, to older men to "make them feel better". In schools throughout the western world, the percentage of children on psychological medications is exploding. Pills are prescribed for depression, fat reduction, sexual deficiencies, and every real or imagined malady one can come up with. And of course there is "the pill" for preventing procreation, one of the greatest insults to one's Creator that man could devise.
As for murder, the slaughter of the unborn across the globe is unprecedented in human history. Not only does man not repent of this murderous plague, they exalt it as a right and as health care and force it even upon the faithful. The recent election of Barack Obama is a case in point as a key part of his platform is the abolition of any restriction on abortion on demand and the sexualization of public school children.
Lastly, it says men did not repent of their thefts. What is the greatest theft in history if not the recent transfer of trillions of dollars of retirees and working people's savings and investments to international bankers? Is there any repentance for the mismanagement of loans that led to this thievery? By all appearances, the announcement of the financial "crisis" was timed to elect Obama to the presidency, once his platform of ending the Iraq war fell flat due to recent successes in reducing the violence there undercut him.
All this evidence has to lead one to the conclusion that the time mentioned in the Apocalypse verse above has come. We are about to be plunged into the greatest crisis of faith in human history and how it comes out has already been written.
Note: Contraception is the greatest evil of our time. It's acceptance by Catholics against Church teaching drives a wedge between the faithful and the clergy and causes the clergy to be in grave danger of apostasy. It naturally leads to all other evils of the flesh - abortion, adultery, pre- and extra- marital sex. And once the sex act is divorced from procreation, homosexuality and all other perversions quickly increase. This is nothing new. But it is on the rise and is insidious.
The Challenges Faced by Humanae Vitae Priests and the Resultant 'Clergy Problem'
5/18/2008 8:27:00 AM By John Mallon -Human Life International e-Newsletter When priests lose the nerve to preach over concern for money, are they following after Peter, or Judas?First of all, I want to thank all of you priests, deacons and seminarians who signed on to this mailing list. It is very encouraging to see the humility and willingness to gain knowledge that will help you in your service to God's people. If this seems a strange statement, let me tell you that in the first 48 hours that this site was up we received emails from about 130 priests demanding to be removed from the mailing list. Some were quite nasty. Some took offense that someone sent in their email as though it were a personal affront.
It is no secret that orthodox priests who think with the Church often receive cold shoulders and outright hostility from their brother priests. Those who don't go along with the "CYA club" or the clerical mafia and preach Christ instead of the status quo, thus rocking the boat, soon know they are persona non grata. All too often a faithful priest who makes a mistake is much more likely to be called on the carpet and chewed out much more severely by the bishop than a dissident cleric whose errors are deliberate and treated with kid gloves.
A priest friend of mine, ordained within the last 12 years or so, told me that during his first parish assignment he dutifully preached on contraception, but immediately afterwards was "spoken to" by the pastor. The pastor ordered him "not to do that again," and muttered, "just watch the collection receipts go down."
Huh?
If this is what we are about, then we are no better than a governmental bureaucracy that self-perpetuates after having lost its purpose for existing. I should add that the pastor was not a wild-eyed radical or dissenter, but one of the stalwarts of the diocese, the type to whom bishops like to send the newly ordained to learn the ropes. He was the type that another priest friend of mine referred to as "a company man." In frustration he cried out to me, "John, they're company men!" By the company, he was not referring to the Magisterium, but the local diocesan system. They knew how to play the game, advance their careers, manipulate or get around the bishop when necessary, and keep their own backsides covered.
The Gospel? What Gospel?
If they only knew the true danger their backsides were in.
Christ didn't land on the Cross by playing it safe with the high priests of His day. In view of the corrupt system outlined above, when people ask about the sex abuse crisis, "How could this have happened?" the only answer is, "How could it not have happened?" when whistle-blowers were punished and abusers honored or at least coddled. The only response is "Thank God it happened!" Not thank God children were abused, but thank God the corrupt system that allowed it to continue was blown sky high. It is only the beginning, but it may well be the deliverance so many of us have been praying for. Recalling the famous vision of Pope Leo XIII where he saw God grant Satan's request of 100 years to destroy the Church, and chose the 20th century, was it an accident that this particular stronghold collapsed two years into the 21st century? Judgment begins with the House of God (1 Peter 4:17). Thank God.
What does this all have to do with contraception? Contraception was the epicenter of the "sexual revolution." Contraception was also the epicenter of the movement for dissent against Church teaching, Humanae Vitae in particular, and the center of most of the fiercest battles in the Church today.
Contraception, abortion and homosexuality are the three legs of the stool upon which the Culture of Death sits. (We will have more on the contraception/homosexuality link in a future column.) Thank God for you priests in our midst who know the Gospel has always been preached at personal risk and that Humanae Vitae is part of that Gospel and an expression of God's love and protection for His people.
Note: I don't mean to be alarmist about the movement of large numbers of Muslims to the U.S. or event their attempts at political activism. What is more alarming is the drift away from the Catholic faith by Christians and the inactivity or even activism against Catholic faith and morals by nominal Catholics. 90% of Catholics in the U.S. practice birth control and 50% approve of abortion. Divorce rates are lower for "practicing" Catholics, but almost the same as the general population when all baptized Catholics are counted as Catholic. It will be in another generation when Muslims have assimilated to the degree that they also no longer adhere to their faith according to "The Enemy at Home" by Dinesh D'Souza. The question is whether or not Catholics we'll still be here. The best defense against having to adopt another culture's customs and values is to strengthen your own. To do so requires that you practice and value them. Has that train left the station for good in the west?
Amerabia: The Islamicization of the U.S. By: Center for Security Policy
Even Americans knowledgeable about Europe's growing accommodation to the totalitarian ideology, known alternatively as Islamism, jihadism or Islamofascism, tend smugly to believe the same thing can't happen here. Think again.
Every day, new evidence appears of similar acts of submission — the Islamists call it "dhimmitude" — on the part of the U.S. government, judges, the press and leading corporations.
Eurabia, meet the United States of Amerabia.
The Agenda, Loud and Clear
On May 4, an ominous alarm was sounded in a Pajamas Media column by Youssef Ibrahim, a former New York Times reporter. Ibrahim is an astute critic of the Islamists' steady, tireless and increasingly effective efforts to impose, on Muslims and non-Muslims alike, the repressive theo-political-legal agenda they call Shariah law.
He warned that "In the very real war on terror, a noisy squabble over 'fighting them there so we don't have to fight them here' clouds a simple truth: namely, that 'they' are here already. Indeed, Islamists are busy constructing a wing of jihad in America's backyard."
Among the most worrisome of the "they" now operating inside the United States are various front organizations systematically established by the Islamist organization known as the Ikhwan, or Muslim Brotherhood. During last year's federal trial of the Holy Land Foundation on terrorism-financing charges, the government introduced into evidence the names of many scores of such Ikhwan fronts.
Identified also as unindicted co-conspirators were virtually every one of the most prominent Muslim-American organizations, including notably the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC).
Prosecutors also presented what amounts to a Brotherhood mission statement. According to a memorandum produced by the group in 1991: "The process of settlement [of Islam in the United States] is a "Civilization-Jihadist" process with all the word means. The Ikhwan must understand that all their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying Western civilization from within and 'sabotaging' their miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers."
To be clear, this is not the agenda of all Muslims, certainly not all American Muslims. Yet, we cannot safely ignore the fact that followers of the Muslim Brotherhood are among those who do have such an outcome as their goal — let alone allow our "hands" to contribute to its realization.
Writing about this Brotherhood manifesto in the Dallas Morning News last September, columnist Rod Dreher observed: "The entire 18-page platform outlines a plan for the long haul. It prescribes the Muslim Brotherhood's comprehensive plan to set down roots in civil society. It begins by both founding and taking control of American Muslim organizations, for the sake of unifying and educating the U.S. Muslim community — this to prepare it for the establishment of a global Islamic state governed by Shariah."
Inside the Gates
Unfortunately, in the past 17 years, the Ikhwan has succeeded beyond its wildest dreams. Groups like CAIR, ISNA and MPAC not only made great strides in what Ibrahim calls "the common task [of] instill[ing] the notion among Arab-Americans or European immigrant communities of Muslim countries that they are not part of secular multicultural societies." Brotherhood fronts have also penetrated and exercised enormous influence over U.S. government agencies responsible for understanding and countering the Islamist threat.
Space limitations preclude more than a handful of examples: The FBI allows CAIR to provide "sensitivity training" for its agents. U.S. intelligence actively recruits at ISNA and other Ikhwan front conferences. One of ISNA's highly placed admirers, Pentagon deputy chief Gordon England's consigliere Hisham Islam, was allowed to purge the Joint Chiefs of Staff's Islamist expert, Steven Coughlin, for warning against such practices. Most recently, two key federal agencies, the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security, encouraged American officials to eschew, when describing our enemies, the use of such terms as jihadist, mujahedeen, Islamic terrorist, Islamist, holy warrior and Islamofascism. According to an Associated Press report, the government is supposed instead to "use the terms 'violent extremist' or 'terrorist.'
Both are widely understood terms that define our enemies appropriately and simultaneously deny them any level of legitimacy." (Evidently, President Bush has not gotten the word as he used what Andy McCarthy calls the "J-word" in his press conference last week.)
The Bottom Line
This astounding act of dhimmitude confirms Steve Coughlin's thesis: The enemy has so thoroughly gotten inside our decision-making as to preclude us from understanding his true nature and threat doctrine. By affording the Ikhwan such an opportunity, we have rendered this country, as a practical matter, incapable of countering our Islamist foes abroad — let alone here at home.
Fortunately, a courageous legislator, Rep. Sue Myrick, R-N.C., has come forward to challenge the emerging Amerabia. She has unveiled a 10-point program that calls for, among other things: investigations of Ikhwan penetrations of our prison and military chaplain corps; an inquiry into the legitimacy of CAIR's tax-exempt status; corrective actions with respect to numerous ill-advised policies vis a vis Saudi Arabia; and addressing the seditious nature of Islamist threats to our government and people.
For her exemplary leadership and determination to resist national dhimmitude, this column recognizes Congresswoman Myrick with its coveted "Horatius (or, for the first time Horatia) at the Bridge" award, for her willingness, like the legendary Roman, to take on singlehandedly the enemy hordes and try to save her country.
We hope she will add to her list and secure the broadest possible support for her efforts.
My note: More of these stories are popping up lately. It's really no surprise that the toxic soup we live in is responsible for adverse or unknown health effects. To believers, it's also no surprise that as we strive to rail against God's plan and violate our own nature with chemical birth control and abortion that we cause strange reactions. Those of us over the age of 40 remember when it was rare for a young person to exhibit homosexual tendencies. Now no one can argue that there is an explosion of homosexuality wherever you look. And seemingly its not all behavioral. Might there be an environmental link? The first story is about observations in the UK of changes in nature linked to the pill and the second story is about a scientific study that the pill in the environment caused the feminization of fish. Could this explain the shift in human behavior? Tampering with natural law is almost always risky. Unintended consequences are likely. And with powerful corporation standing to gain billions from trafficking the pill and using profits to corrupt governments, no one should be surprised how rare these articles are.
Singing starlings and why thousands of babies who should have been boys are being born as girls
By GEOFFREY LEAN
Next time you hear a starling sing, stop and listen hard. It may well be warning of a peril that endangers the whole world of nature - and the very future of the human race itself. For scientists have found that gender-bender chemicals - increasingly contaminating the environment, our food, our water and our bodies - are having a bizarre effect on common birds, causing the males to give voice to longer and more complex songs.
This is only the latest in a long series of increasingly urgent alarms being sounded by wildlife against an insidious but devastating danger that threatens our children.
But so far our leaders have steadfastly and scandalously turned a deaf ear to them - and, even more shamefully, ignored the first signs that the peril is already affecting birth patterns, causing thousands of babies who should have been boys to be born as girls instead.
Starlings and their diverse, complicated and mimicking - though not beautiful - songs have long fascinated humanity.
Mozart was entranced by a starling after it copied a tune that the great composer was whistling in a pet store.
Hormonal Contraceptives Pollute Drinking Water - Environmentalists Turn a Blind Eye
By Hilary White July 11, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - For some years now, reports have been growing from around the world that the massive amounts of synthetic birth control hormones being pumped into the water systems through sewage outflow is changing the sex of fish stocks.
Recently, scientists have also begun to warn of the possible carcinogenic effects of the build-up of estrogenic chemicals in drinking water. As early as 2002, the UK Environment Agency warned that fish stocks in British rivers were showing signs of gender ambiguity as a result of high levels of estrogen in the water. A survey of 1,500 fish at 50 river sites found more than a third of males also displayed female characteristics.
Research by Dr Jayne Brian and Professor John Sumpter at Brunel University's Institute for the Environment, showed estrogenic chemicals are affecting the reproduction and gender of aquatic life and warned of the affect on the reproductive ability of humans. The two researchers are calling for a reassessment of EU legislation regulating chemicals. "There is a cocktail of chemicals in our fresh water. We need to consider tougher safety margins to fully protect wildlife and humans."
Two years ago, University of Colorado scientists, sponsored by the Environmental Protection Agency, found that of 123 fish caught in Boulder Creek downstream from the Boulder sewage treatment plant, 101 were female, 12 were male, and 10 had both male and female characteristics. The strange case of the trans-gendered fish is "the first thing that I've seen as a scientist that really scared me," University of Colorado biologist John Woodling told the Denver Post at the time.
