Peace on Earth

After 6,000 years of recorded history, global peace remains an elusive objective. At this point it's only fair to conclude that even when it comes to humanity's best efforts, in and of ourselves, -- it just ain't in us.

Fortunately, the Almighty has provided another means of attaining peace on earth -- and it starts with appeasing our offended God. Won by One, we're then in a position to master interpersonal relationships -- within families, communities, and nations.

While peace on earth will one day be realized, the history of man must first run its course. And as the commentary below suggests, the consummation of history is near.

Through it all, may you know the Lord's peace,

Roy Tanner



Steps to peace with God
Billy Graham


Step 1: God's Purpose: Peace and Life

God loves you and wants you to experience abundant peace and life eternal.

The Bible says ...

"We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ." —Romans 5:1 (NIV)

"For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life." —John 3:16 (NIV)

"I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly." —John 10:10 (NIV)

So why don't most people have this peace and abundant life that God planned for us to have?


Step 2: The Problem: Our Separation

God created us in His own image to have an abundant life. He did not make us as robots to automatically love and obey Him. God gave us a will and a freedom of choice.

We chose to disobey God and go our own willful way. We still make this choice today. This results in separation from God.

The Bible says ...

"For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." —Romans 3:23 (NIV)

"For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." —Romans 6:23 (NIV)

Our Attempts to Reach GodPeople have tried in many ways to bridge this gap between themselves and God ...

The Bible says ...

"There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death." —Proverbs 14:12 (NIV)

"But your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear." —Isaiah 59:2 (NIV)

No bridge reaches God ... except one.


Step 3: God's Bridge: The Cross

Jesus Christ died on the Cross and rose from the grave. He paid the penalty for our sin and bridged the gap between God and people.

The Bible says ...

"For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Jesus Christ."
— 1 Timothy 2:5 (NIV)

"For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God."
— 1 Peter 3:18 (NIV)

"But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us." —Romans 5:8 (NIV)

God has provided the only way. Each person must make a choice.


Step 4: Our Response: Receive Christ

We must trust Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior and receive Him by personal invitation.

The Bible says ...

"Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me." —Revelation 3:20 (NIV)

"Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God." —John 1:12 (NIV)

"That if you confess with your mouth, 'Jesus is Lord,' and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved." —Romans 10:9 (NIV)

Where are you?

Will you receive Jesus Christ right now?

Here is how you can receive Christ:

1. Admit your need (I am a sinner).
2. Be willing to turn from your sins (repent).
3. Believe that Jesus Christ died for you on the Cross and rose from the grave.
4. Through prayer, invite Jesus Christ to come in and control your life through the Holy Spirit.(Receive Him as Lord and Savior.)



America in Bible Prophecy
Jack Kinsella - Omega Letter Editor
Saturday, December 17, 2005

The Bush administration has started firing back at its critics, both at home and abroad, but it is the international criticism that is doing America the most damage.

When a Democrat says something outrageous like America can't win the war or our forces routinely torture prisoners or that the terrorists are winning, the domestic audience reacts with a yawn and chalks it up to 'political partisanship'.

When Congressman Jack Murtha calls for an immediate surrender, domestic audiences hear a partisan politician trying to make political points with his constituents or with his party.

The international community hears that America is on the ropes and tries to leverage that to their best national advantage.

The enemy hears a confirmation of his own leadership's assurances that America doesn't have the will to fight on for long. Instead of despairing of dying in a lost cause, he is re-energized to fight on by visions of ultimate victory.

Our own forces, on the other hand, become the ones that are despairing of dying for a lost cause. But to a partisan Democrat, that is an acceptable price to pay for bringing down the Bush administration.

And anyone who dares to suggest that encouraging the enemy and discouraging our own combat forces, holding America up to international ridicule, and providing the international community with political leverage to use against America's national interests is disloyal can expect to be immediately marginalized as a 'Bush' partisan.

It is as if Bush is the head of the Republican Party instead of President of the United States.

This phenomenon may well explain America's absence from the Bible's record during the Tribulation Period.

During the Tribulation, we find references to Russia and the modern Middle East in Ezekiel's Gog Magog vision. We find references to a massive Oriental power, called the Kings of the East, capable of fielding an army of two hundred million men. (The approximate strength of the modern Chinese army, according to the CIA World Factbook)

There are references to a pan-African alliance resembling the Organization of African States, and a huge segment of prophecy is devoted exclusively to the revival of the Roman Empire and the role it plays in advancing the antichrist's agenda.

But there is NO reference to anything resembling a fifth political power, especially not one as powerful alone as are the other four powers combined.

That is not to say there is no mention of America in the Bible for the last days-- just not during the Tribulation. I believe America represents the Church in the last days, just as the nation of Israel represents Judaism.

If Israel has an indelible identity in the eyes of the world, it is as 'the Jewish State'. If America's identity can be encapsulated in the world's eyes, it is as the world's most Christian nation, which is why Islam declared war on America in the first place.

To al-Qaeda, the war is against Christians and Jews, and therefore, by definition, it is primarily against America and Israel.

The Apostle Paul's ministry was to the Gentile Church. Although himself a former Pharisee, he was chosen as the 'Apostle to the Gentiles'. Paul says little about the Tribulation, but he wrote extensively about the events of the final hours of the Church Age leading up to it.

His description of the moral state of the Church in the last days is a letter-perfect description of American society in the 21st century.

Paul begins by setting the timeframe: "This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come." For America, times have NEVER been more perilous.

Not even during the darkest days of World War Two was the American homeland under direct threat. America had more friends and international prestige while engaged in a war with half the world than it did as it entered the 21st century.

America's social fabric is coming apart at the seams before our very eyes: "men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy . ."

That pretty much covers the top stories in this morning's newspapers.

"Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God. . ."

Parents killing kids, teachers raping students, American politicians telling the world America can't be trusted, Christ's banishment from 'Christ'mas, the politics of personal destruction replacing the politics of ideas, etc. Paul's outline couldn't be MORE descriptive of 21st century America. Could it?

The American Civil Liberties Union has made a century-long career out of defending civil rights by opposing national recognition of God as the Guarantor of our civil rights. They defend America's God-given civil liberties by mythologizing the God that gives them.

"Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof, from such turn away." (2nd Timothy 3:1-5)

Why America is so clearly envisioned by Paul in the final hours of the Church Age, but so completely absent from the Tribulation record is a subject of considerable debate.

Bible critics argue that America isn't in the record because America didn't exist when the Bible was written. In this view, America's absence is evidence the Bible is really a book written by men and not inspired by an all-knowing God.

2nd Timothy 3:1-5 mirrors 21st century America so precisely that it demolishes this argument without further comment.

The war on terror could account for America's absence from the record during the Tribulation Period. A nuclear missile launched from a terrorist freighter offshore and detonated 180 miles above America would generate an EMP pulse that would plunge much of America, technologically speaking, back to the 19th century.

So could a massive biological or chemical attack against America's major cities. Why would anybody assume that if a terrorist strike blinded and crippled America, America's pantheon of enemies wouldn't take advantage of the situation and finish the job?

Finally, there is a third alternative explanation, advanced by the same Apostle Paul, the Rapture of the Church. As noted previously, and despite constant propaganda to the contrary, America IS the world's most Christian nation.

What would happen to America if suddenly, millions of Americans, (including much of the administration, a good chunk of the Pentagon's military leadership and most of the US military) suddenly vanished without a trace?

America does appear in Bible prophecy. Just not during the Tribulation. Read 1st Thessalonians 4:15-18 again carefully.

"For this we say unto you BY THE WORD OF THE LORD, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep.

For the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first:

Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.

Wherefore comfort one another with these words."



Arming for Armageddon
By Charles Krauthammer

Lest you get carried away with today's good news from Iraq, consider what's happening next door in Iran. The wild pronouncements of the new Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, have gotten sporadic press ever since he called for Israel to be wiped off the map. He subsequently amended himself to say that Israel should simply be extirpated from the Middle East map and moved to some German or Austrian province. Perhaps near the site of an old extermination camp?

Except that there were no such camps, indeed no Holocaust at all, says Ahmadinejad. Nothing but "myth," a "legend" that was "fabricated . . . under the name 'Massacre of the Jews.' " This brought the usual reaction from European and American officials, who, with Churchillian rage and power, called these statements unacceptable. That something serious might accrue to Iran for this -- say, expulsion from the United Nations for violating its most basic principle by advocating the outright eradication of a member state -- is, of course, out of the question.

To be sure, Holocaust denial and calls for Israel's destruction are commonplace in the Middle East. They can be seen every day on Hezbollah TV, in Syrian media, in Egyptian editorials appearing in semiofficial newspapers. But none of these aspiring mass murderers are on the verge of acquiring nuclear weapons that could do in one afternoon what it took Hitler six years to do: destroy an entire Jewish civilization and extinguish 6 million souls.

Everyone knows where Iran's nuclear weapons will be aimed. Everyone knows they will be put on Shahab rockets, which have been modified so that they can reach Israel. And everyone knows that if the button is ever pushed, it will be the end of Israel.

But it gets worse. The president of a country about to go nuclear is a confirmed believer in the coming apocalypse. Like Judaism and Christianity, Shiite Islam has its own version of the messianic return -- the reappearance of the Twelfth Imam. The more devout believers in Iran pray at the Jamkaran mosque, which houses a well from which, some believe, he will emerge.

When Ahmadinejad unexpectedly won the presidential elections, he immediately gave $17 million of government funds to the shrine. Last month Ahmadinejad said publicly that the main mission of the Islamic Revolution is to pave the way for the reappearance of the Twelfth Imam.

And as in some versions of fundamentalist Christianity, the second coming will be accompanied by the usual trials and tribulations, death and destruction. Iranian journalist Hossein Bastani reported Ahmadinejad saying in official meetings that the hidden imam will reappear in two years.

So a Holocaust-denying, virulently anti-Semitic, aspiring genocidist, on the verge of acquiring weapons of the apocalypse, believes that the end is not only near but nearer than the next American presidential election. (Pity the Democrats. They cannot catch a break.) This kind of man would have, to put it gently, less inhibition about starting Armageddon than a normal person. Indeed, with millennial bliss pending, he would have positive incentive to, as they say in Jewish eschatology, hasten the end.

To be sure, there are such madmen among the other monotheisms. The Temple Mount Faithful in Israel would like the al-Aqsa mosque on Jerusalem's Temple Mount destroyed to make way for the third Jewish Temple and the messianic era. The difference with Iran, however, is that there are all of about 50 of these nuts in Israel, and none of them is president.

The closest we've come to a messianically inclined leader in America was a secretary of the interior who 24 years ago, when asked about his stewardship of the environment, told Congress: "I do not know how many future generations we can count on before the Lord returns; whatever it is we have to manage with a skill to leave the resources needed for future generations." But James Watt's domain was the forest, and his weapon of choice was the chainsaw. He was not in charge of nuclear weapons to be placed on missiles that are paraded through the streets with, literally, Israel's name on them. (They are adorned with banners reading "Israel must be wiped off the map.")

It gets worse. After his U.N. speech in September, Ahmadinejad was caught on videotape telling a cleric that during the speech an aura, a halo, appeared around his head right on the podium of the General Assembly. "I felt the atmosphere suddenly change. And for those 27 or 28 minutes, the leaders of the world did not blink. . . . It seemed as if a hand was holding them there, and it opened their eyes to receive the message from the Islamic Republic."

Negotiations to deny this certifiable lunatic genocidal weapons have been going nowhere. Everyone knows they will go nowhere. And no one will do anything about it.