GUNS, SLIDES, AND BREAD

In Matthew 16 the Pharisees and the Sadducees came to Jesus again and tested him by saying, "give us a sign, give us proof that you are God."

Jesus, did not play into this. He told his disciples beware of the impure yeast of these men. Jesus is reiterating the theme of diligence, excellence, and the notion of what I will term: SLIDE.

When we are at 100%, in our Family, in our lives; letting the slightest distraction make it's way through can have a larger impact than we at first, realize. The SLIDE little bits at a time slowly misdirects one off course in our lives, and before we know it we are at less than 50%.

We must realize that it will take over 100% effort to get back up to 100% from this point in the SLIDE.

THE PASTOR AND THE BURNING BIBLES

The right to stand for one's opinion against gays and abortion is a free right. The proposition to burn the Koran, certainly infringes upon the freedom of religion and is not in accordance with the teachings of Christ. Relationship, Faith, and the greatest of these is Love, none of which this action demonstrates.

My opinion as to why this is getting media is to make a mockery of Christians and to marginalize believers in Christ so that the enemy can spur more confusion and doubt throughout our world.

Christ is to judge, not us.

Furthermore, this only enables lawmakers to increase lawmaking. What I find unacceptable is that the website was unplugged in the name of a terms of service agreement violation. This is where the right to express one self has been violated.


PUBLIC ARTICLE:



(CNN) -- Military personnel threw away, and ultimately burned, confiscated Bibles that were printed in the two most common Afghan languages amid concern they would be used to try to convert Afghans, a Defense Department spokesman said Tuesday.

on March 3, 2009, at Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan.

The unsolicited Bibles sent by a church in the United States were confiscated about a year ago at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan because military rules forbid troops of any religion from proselytizing while deployed there, Lt. Col. Mark Wright said.

Such religious outreach can endanger American troops and civilians in the devoutly Muslim nation, Wright said. "The decision was made that it was a 'force protection' measure to throw them away, because, if they did get out, it could be perceived by Afghans that the U.S. government or the U.S. military was trying to convert Muslims," Wright told CNN on Tuesday.

Troops at posts in war zones are required to burn their trash, Wright said.
The Bibles were written in the languages Pashto and Dari.

This decision came to light recently, after the Al Jazeera English network aired video of a group prayer service and chapel sermon that a reporter said suggested U.S. troops were being encouraged to spread Christianity.

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The military denied that earlier this month, saying much in the video was taken out of context.

"This was irresponsible and dangerous journalism sensationalizing year-old footage of a religious service for U.S. soldiers on a U.S. base and inferring that troops are evangelizing to Afghans," Col. Gregory Julian said.

The military says a soldier at Bagram received the Bibles and didn't realize he wasn't allowed to hand them out. In the Al Jazeera video, which shows the Bibles at the prayer service, an unnamed soldier says members of his church raised money for them.

The chaplain later corrected the soldier and confiscated the Bibles, Wright said.
Military officers considered sending the Bibles back to the church, he said, but they worried the church would turn around and send them to another organization in Afghanistan -- giving the impression that they had been distributed by the U.S. government.

That could lead to violence against troops or U.S. civilians, Wright said.

Al Jazeera English, a Qatar-based international news service, said its reporters tried to get a response from military officials for its story but were unable to do so.

The U.S. military air base at Bagram is home to thousands of troops from all branches of the U.S. military. The vast majority of the troops do not leave the base and are in various support roles for U.S. troops across Afghanistan.

BIBLES, GUNS, SOLDIERS, AND WAR, NOT PERMITTED TO MIX

Soldiers unable to spread Christianity in a Muslim country. The soldiers fight for freedom, yet are inherently not free. the soldier is shooting to kill what difference does it make? An army fighting for Christ could well be even stronger, not weaker as the Generals may fear.

Such organizational behavior would have to be well developed prior to the engagement of battle to execute upon nevertheless. However, when one pulls the trigger, no doubt can there be as to for what this action is being performed.

The message is evidence to me that freedom is on the SLIDE. How far will it be left to go, before we realize we have been slow roasted. By the time we know it, the effort required may be extremely large. This is a wake up call brothers and sisters. We must come together as a nation, regardless of race, or religion, and put our differences aside to stand together.

Three branches together are stronger than one. United as one we must stand to stop the SLIDE now.

The Elites Have Lost The Right to Rule

From Michael Krieger of KAM LP

War is the growth hormone of the cancer that is big government.

- Alex Jones


A government always finds itself obliged to resort to inflationary measures when it cannot negotiate loans and dare not levy taxes, because it has reason to fear that it will forfeit approval of the policy it is following if it reveals too soon the financial and general economic consequences of that policy. Thus inflation becomes the most important psychological resource of any economic policy whose consequences have to be concealed; and so in this sense it can be called an instrument of unpopular, that is, of antidemocratic policy, since by misleading public opinion it makes possible the continued existence of a system of government that would have no hope of the consent of the people if the circumstances were clearly laid before them. That is the political function of inflation. When governments do not think it necessary to accommodate their expenditure and arrogate to themselves the right of making up the deficit by issuing notes, their ideology is merely a disguised absolutism.

- Ludwig von Mises

How Wall Street Died

Let me take you back to the fall of 1999. I was a senior in college without a clue what I wanted to do with my life. Wall Street was in a boom and seemed exciting. I had always loved the financial markets since I had first discovered them years earlier; however, I wasn’t convinced this was the profession I wanted. I had majored in Economics at school for practical purposes but I found almost all of the courses to be extraordinarily uninspiring with the exception of a few like Corporate Finance and the Economic History of China. It was the general micro and macro economics courses that I found the most painful to sit through. I wasn’t alone in this assessment. Many of my close friends were Economics majors as well and we all felt the same way (I later found out this was because we were being indoctrinated in voodoo Keynesian economics) . So even with the Economics degree I wasn’t sure that I wanted to pursue a career in finance given the fact that I found myself more interested in subjects such as English , History and Philosophy. Nevertheless, the firms were hiring, I had the degree and it would allow me to move back to New York City without living at home.

What I discovered as I interviewed for jobs disturbed me right away. Every single firm with the exception of one was completely obsessed with math. Entire interviews revolved around “how quantitative are you” and the like. Although I hadn’t had much experience with investing I had enough to know this line of thinking seemed preposterous. It seemed to me only basic math skills are necessary to be a successful equity investor. Besides that, it seemed that the key is understanding that the world is always changing rapidly under the surface and therefore what is a good business today might be bankrupt tomorrow and what is a start up today could be the next Microsoft. This seems obvious but the skill set to figuring all this out is more geared to an appreciation of human psychology, historical cycles and cultural shifts (both fads and structural changes) than math. What I realized later is the reason they were so focused on mathematicians and Phd’s is that Wall Street was moving away from what it was always meant to be - a conduit between the holders of capital and those that wish to deploy that capital in productive economic activity. Rather than trying to hire a well rounded workforce of intelligent college graduates the firms were hiring a cadre of quantitative robots that would play an instrumental roll in blowing up the world’s financial system.

When you get too many people of a particular mindset (in this case highly quantitative and academic) to aggregate in a field that is very much a people business and one where “street smart” common sense is of extreme importance you are asking for serious trouble. When you couple that with a Federal Reserve that keeps interest rates too low what you get is a bunch of quants inventing products that provide a yield sufficient for pensions and others struggling to earn a return. Products that are completely mispriced for the risk inherent in them. I am not placing all of the blame on the Wall Street firms (although they deserve a lot and the fact people haven’t been punished severely is a huge reason why there is no confidence on main street), rather I believe the Federal Reserve deserves 95% of it. If it wasn’t for them manipulating the price of money to absurdly low levels you wouldn’t have had the rush into toxic products in a search for yield. While the newly enthroned Wall Street quant army would surely have done their damage nonetheless it wouldn’t have resulted in the complete destruction of the financial and monetary system that we face today. In a nutshell, this is how I think Wall Street died and until it gets its act together will remain a corpse.

The Elites Have Lost Their Right to Rule

One of my favorite quotes is from Joseph Schumpeter who said “everyone has elites the important thing is to change them from time to time.” Of course, this is what happens in a well functioning democracy. The problem today and the reason why the United States is on the verge of some sort of revolution (I believe it will manifest as a revolution of ideas and not an armed one) is that the election of Obama has proven to everyone watching with an unbiased eye that no matter who the President is they continue to prop up an elite at the top that has been running things into the ground for years. The appointment of Larry Summers and Tiny Turbo-Tax Timmy Geithner provided the most obvious sign that something was seriously not kosher. Then there was the reappointment of Ben Bernanke. While the Republicans like to simplify him as merely a socialist he represents something far worse.

Of course it is not just Obama. He is at the end of a long line of Presidents that think they have some sort of divine right of kings to rule. Think about the Presidency of the United States since 1988. Bush, Clinton, Bush…If Obama had not won the Democratic primary we would have ended up with President Hilary Clinton. Catch my drift? Something is not right here. This is the United States not some sort of petty monarchy. There is no divine right of any family or group of families to rule. When this starts to happen you get the disaster we are now faced with. That said, the bigger point is this. What Obama has attempted to do is to wipe a complete economic collapse under the rug and maintain the status quo so that the current elite class in the United States remains in control. The “people” see this ploy and are furious. Those that screwed up the United States economy should never make another important decision about it yet they remain firmly in control of policy. The important thing in any functioning democracy is the turnover of the elite class every now and again. Yet, EVERY single government policy has been geared to keeping that class in power and to pass legislation that gives the Federal government more power to then buttresses this power structure down the road. This is why Obama is so unpopular. Everything else is just noise to keep people divided and distracted.

Getting Into the Mind of Ben Bernanke

I do not have a clear window into the highest levels of power in many areas such as the military or the intelligence community but I do have a very good understanding of it when it comes to the financial system and the economy. At the end of the day everyone knows that those who can create the money and credit have the ultimate power over any political system. Therefore, at the top of the economic power of the world is the Federal Reserve and at the top of that is Ben Bernanke. This is why I took a great deal of interest in reading the full text of his speech today. Much will be written about it but I want to tackle it from two points. First, who is Ben Bernanke?

You can really see into his head from reading this speech. He is an academic who thinks he is smarter than everyone else which is why he is in the position he is in. He thinks the key to monetary policy is to trick people into doing things that will hurt them in the end. He believes the mal-investments he intends to push people and institutions into equals economic growth. What surprises me so much about the investment community and the American public in general is that so many fail to understand that we live in a top down centralized economic system much more similar to China in more ways than people want to admit. We look at how the government steers the economy in China and sneer. How are we so different right now?

As far as the speech itself, it confirms something I mentioned several weeks ago. Banana Ben absolutely wants to do a massive QE2 program. The only thing holding him back is gold is near an all time high. What he wants is gold much lower and stocks much lower to give him cover. Gold has not cooperated so he is in a bind. He cannot print a massive amount of money with gold here and stocks at 1055 because what happens if gold soars and stocks sell-off in the days that follow such an announcement? What if the response in the treasury market is not as desired? He is scared to do it here and he is right to be scared because such a reaction would be the end of the Fed right then and there. The Fed will be gone anyway within a few years in my opinion but it’s going to fight hard to survive and if you want to make money in this market you need to understand that. The most powerful institution in the world is fighting for its survival. Never forget that.

So what is he going to do? I believe that the Fed and government are doing a lot more than people think to manipulate all markets behind the scenes. After all, they have publicly announced their manipulation in many other ways so does it make any sense whatsoever to assume they aren’t doing a plethora of other things behind the scenes? Of course not. I think that with the Fed in a bind they will accelerate and become ever more aggressive in behind the scenes games. This will make markets even more volatile and extraordinarily challenging. This is financial war make no mistake about it. The only way in my opinion to survive this is to buy all dips in precious metals, agriculture and oil. It is in these three areas that I expect to see the most price inflation as money eventually figures out the end game. The end game is more and more people will eventually wake up to the fact that the markets are a hologram put in front of you by the magicians at the Fed. That what constitutes real wealth in the years ahead will be owning food, energy and a means of exchange that will be accepted should a black market economy arise as it has in virtually all nations at one time or another throughout history.

In the end, the elites will be overthrown and a power vacuum will form. The transition period will be extremely difficult as the elites will fight their demise to the end. For you see, they care nothing for you they care about their power and control. Nevertheless, rulers have always only ruled by the will (or apathy) of the people and when the people become overly taxed and abused they always rebel. The main thing to think about is what kind of society do we want to rebuild from the ashes. I am of the view that it must be a return to the Constitution and an elimination of central banking power and secrecy. Let’s not fall for a demagogue or be pushed into a war when things are at their worst.

Have a great weekend,
Mike

WE ARE BEING TRAPPED

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Good morning, brothers and sisters;
it's always a delight to see
the pews crowded on Sunday
morning and so eager to get into
God's Word. Turn with me
in your Bibles, if you will, to the 47th
chapter of Genesis, we'll
begin our reading at verse 13 and go through verse 27.

Genesis
47:13-27

Brother Ray, would you stand and read that great passage for us?
....(reading)....

Thank you for that fine reading, Brother Ray... So we see that economic hard times fell upon

Egypt and the people turned to the government of Pharaoh to deal with this for them.

And Pharaoh nationalized the grain harvest and placed the grain in great storehouses that he had

built. So the people brought their money to Pharaoh, like a great tax increase, and gave it all

to him willingly in return for grain. And this went on until their money ran out and they were

hungry again.

So when they went to Pharaoh after that, they brought their
livestock- their cattle, their horses, their sheep, and their donkey -
to barter for grain and verse 17 says that only took them through
the end of that year..

But the famine wasn't over was it? So the next year the people
came before Pharaoh and admitted they had nothing left except
their land and their own lives. "There is nothing left in the sight
of my lord but our bodies and our land. Why should we die before
your eyes, both we and our land? Buy us and our land for food and we with our land will be

servants to Pharaoh.." So they surrendered their homes, their land, and their real estate to

Pharaoh's government and then sold themselves into slavery to him, in return for grain.

What can we learn from this, brothers and sisters?

That turning to the government instead of to God to be our provider
in hard times only leads to slavery?.. Yes, That the only reason
government wants to be our provider is to also become our master?

Yes.

But look how that passage ends, brothers and sisters! Thus Israel
settled in the land of Egypt, in the land of Goshen.. And they gained possessions in it and

were fruitful and multiplied greatly." GOD
provided for His people, just as He always has! They didn't end up
giving all their possessions to government, no, it says they gained
possessions! But I also tell you a great truth today and an ominous one.

We see the same thing happening today,the government today wants to "share the wealth" once

again, to take it from us and redistribute it back to us It wants to take control of healthcare,

just as it has taken control of education, and ration it back to us, and when government rations

it, then government decides who gets it, and how much, and what kind. And if we go along with it,

and do it willingly, then we will wind up no differently
than the people of Egypt did four thousand years ago -as slaves to the government and as

slaves to our leaders.

What Mr. Obama's government is doing now is no different from what
Pharaoh's government did then and it will end the same. And a lot of people like to call Mr.

Obama a "Messiah," don't they? Is he a Messiah? A savior? Didn't the Egyptians say, after Pharaoh

made them his slaves,"You have saved our lives; may it please my lord, we will be servants to

Pharaoh"?

Well, I tell you this - I know the Messiah; the Messiah is a friend of mine; and Mr. Obama is

no Messiah!
No, brothers and sisters, if Mr. Obama is a character
from the Bible, then he is Pharaoh.
Bow with me in prayer, if you will...

Lord, You alone are worthy to be
served, and we rely on You, and You alone. We confess that the
government is not our deliverer and never rightly will be. We read in the eighth chapter of 1

Samuel, when Samuel warned the people of what a ruler would do, where it says "And in that day

you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves, but
the LORD will not answer you in that day."

And Lord, we acknowledge that day has come. We cry
out to you because of the ruler that we have chosen for ourselves as
a nation.

Lord, we pray for this nation. We pray for revival and we pray
for deliverance from those who would be our masters. Give us hearts to
seek You and hands to serve You and protect Your people
from the atrocities of Pharaoh's government.

Delivered by a Pastor of a predominantly black church in
Virginia

How much has changed in 4,000 years?

who is our real leader ....

In God We Trust...

****************************************************************

The Remnant of Israel

Brothers and Sisters,

Romans chapter 11 makes three enormous promises concerning the Messianic remnant of Israel. This seemingly insignificant group of people in the eyes of the world will actually be the key to:

Restoration in the Church
Revival in Israel
Resurrection of the Dead

For more on this, please submit your request by commenting on this article.

Nevertheless, the thought that came to mind today through the Holy Spirit was the following:

my opinion is that nation states and national boundaries are disappearing in some form and fashion. protectionism, travel and living restrictions, immigration control, may impact this, However, my question is?

Is ISRAEL in the future and in terms of bible prophecy a specific geographic location OR is it in terms of the people regardless of geographic location? If geographic location is removed from the conclusion, then prophecy that ISRAEL will never be destroyed becomes even more viable.

It is disheartening that where i once saw worlds with no border's, all it takes is the fear of economic hardship and men become afraid. the result: laws are forged to gather power, protectionism emerges.

I say to you brothers and sisters, no law made by man shall over ride FAITH in Christ. For it is the law made by men to gain more power and take away the people's freedom. FAITH in Christ contains nothing of this and breaks no moral or ethical law. therefore FAITH in Christ, as it is written in the Bible, is above the law of man, the result; ultimate freedom.