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CHARISMA NEWS STAFF
7:00AM EDT 11/5/2022

Christians and their faith are easy targets for the media and celebrities to mock. From late night talk-show hosts using them as punchlines (the comedy left years ago) to politicians screaming that they are the biggest threat to America, Christians often are in the targeting reticle for those who despise them.

Halloween always sees an uptick of anti-Christian behavior. Dressing up as a priest or nun has been around for decades, but modern America seems to take that and up the shock factor every year.

With her most recent Instagram post, actress Megan Fox and her boyfriend, musician Machine Gun Kelly, have taken the top spot for the worst thought-out costumes in recent memory.

Dressed in a dark, barely-there bikini, Fox is on her knees receiving communion from her boyfriend, dressed a priest.

Her Instagram caption read: "On Sundays we take communion."

This mockery of the holy sacrament and partaking of Jesus' flesh and blood was quickly lambasted online, but surprisingly from people of all walks of faith.

One user replied, "This is just distasteful and I'm an atheist."

Another commented on the fact that Fox is a mother, "...ya'll understand your kids will see this right??!!!"

Someone else correctly pointed out the reaction had this been any faith other than Christianity, "Imagine the outcry if they mocked literally any other religion. They would be canceled and we all know it."

Unfortunately, trends like this not only continue, but are getting more and more blasphemous in their displays.

Fox and Kelly's anti-Christian display, sent to her over 20.6 million followers on Instagram, desensitizes people to the mocking of faith in Jesus Christ.

Americans have seen this for decades in the forms of performers like Madonna and her disrespect for Christianity. Yet Madonna's notorious performances are tame compared to the displays of the present era.

Now, the very words of Jesus in Matthew 26 are being hyper-sexualized and mocked openly before millions.

This desensitization is what allows crimes like the firebombing of pro-life healthcare centers to be carried out because the victims are Christian.

These are the same tactics that Jews suffered under for decades. They were ridiculed and demeaned, they were called rats and de-humanized. This made it more palatable for many within Germany to turn a blind eye toward the atrocities that soon followed. Satan is not stupid, but he is predictable. He comes after anything that is of Christ.

Satan has attacked Jews and Christians for millennia and he will not stop. The Bible warns Christians about this, and that they must be watchful of the devil.

This is the physical manifestation of the spiritual battle American Christians are waging.

These two celebrities have no idea the spiritual bondage that is encapsulating them. The enemy has them dancing like puppets to the tune of mocking the One who died for them.

Mark 9 explains how Christians need to fight these kinds of spirits, with prayer and fasting. For the sake of these two celebrities, who in their ignorance are influencing millions with their actions, and all those who continue this trend of mocking their Savior, Christians must pray and fast for their souls. If not, they will suffer eternally for their actions because they did not receive the life-saving gift of salvation through Jesus Christ.

https://www.charismanews.com/culture/90558-absolutely-disgusting-megan-fox-and-her-boyfriend-get-torched-for-halloween-pictures-mocking-christianity

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By Ian M. Giatti, Christian Post Reporter
CP SOCIAL SCIENCE | TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 2022

Are Christian conservatives who support former President Donald Trump confusing the temporal for the eternal?

That question is the focus of The Political Seduction of the Church: How Millions of American Christians Have Confused Politics with the

Gospel, a new book from author and radio host Michael Brown that looks at whether the Trumpian political climate has hindered believers in Jesus from carrying out the Great Commission.

Brown says he voted for Trump in both the 2016 and 2020 elections and wants readers to know there's nothing wrong with being involved in politics, as long as the ultimate goal is advancing God's Kingdom, not man's.

"I do believe Christians should be involved in politics and should have a positive impact on politics, but somehow, especially in the last election cycle, we became obsessed with politics," Brown told The Christian Post. "We became more concerned with winning the election than winning the lost."

And while Brown believes the 2024 presidential election will be just as consequential as the previous two, he says the problem occurs when Christians merge the Gospel with the elections "as if a political party was the key to advancing God's Kingdom on the earth."

Brown, a Messianic Jew, is a familiar voice for CP. He is the author of over 40 books and over 2,000 op-ed pieces. He also hosts the nationally syndicated radio show "The Line of Fire."

With Political Seduction, Brown hopes to take a deliberate and measured approach in assessing the marriage of politics and faith underTrump, including the ongoing national debate over Christian nationalism, both its definition and application.

For Brown, there are three basic versions of Christian nationalism. The first is what he calls the "healthy" version, which essentially says, "I love Jesus, and I love my country," approximating the sentiments of tens of millions of American Christians.

Brown says there's also the "unhealthy" version, which equates America and her destiny with the Kingdom of God, merging Christian identity with Americanism.

But it's the "very dangerous" version of Christian nationalism that most concerns Brown.

Just as the Founding Fathers waged a war against British tyranny in the Revolutionary War, there are modern-day Christians who say, "We're we're going to have to take up arms against the government in the name of Jesus."

"That's what I warn about in the strongest terms" in the book, Brown added.

While he wouldn't completely write off the distant possibility of another Civil War at some point, Brown said he doesn't think that's something that will happen anytime soon.

"I do not believe we are anywhere near that point, and I believe we need to be sober and careful in our rhetoric because there are a lot of irresponsible people — Christians in name only — that could get stirred by this, and it could lead to real harm," he said.

If Christians first begin to look in the mirror and "put emphasis on repenting from sin in our own lives" instead of prioritizing a political movement or political figure, the country will recover from the turmoil of recent years.

"If the Church will be the Church, we can avert bloodshed," said Brown.

It's no surprise that the first chapter of Political Seductiontakes a closer look at the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

As Congress met to certify the election results, hundreds of Trump supporters — many of them Evangelical Christians — violently stormed Capitol Hill, claiming the election was either stolen or fraudulently conducted.

According to the DOJ, hundreds of individuals were charged with various offenses for their alleged involvement in the Jan. 6 riot, including a
youth pastor from Colorado Springs.

Five people died during or after the attack, including four protesters and one police officer, while approximately 140 officers suffered injuries.

Unarmed veteran Ashli Babbitt was the only person killed by lethal force during the riot. She was shot trying to climb through a smashed door pane into the House Chamber. U.S. Capitol Police concluded the officer who shot Babbitt acted lawfully when using deadly force.

Three others died of natural causes, and 34-year-old Trump supporter Rosanne Boyland was trampled to death by protesters fighting a police line.

Brown said while "only God knows" whether the 2020 election was fraudulent, Christians across the nation "prayed and prayed" for God's will to be done.

"If this went all the way through the courts, and no one overturned what happened, then we must accept this is the result," he added. "Maybe it's divine discipline. Maybe things were stolen. But we prayed, we cried out, this is what we got."

"I accept this as the will of God," he said.

Despite his personal views, Brown said he understands why some Christians don't agree. He urged them to use "legal means" to expose any alleged fraud, adding: "Just don't break the law."

While he doesn't believe any "organized insurrection" was involved on Jan. 6, Brown said the way Trump handled the rally before the event was "abysmal." He pointed to crowds chanting, "Hang [former Vice President] Mike Pence."

"The rhetoric leading up to it was dangerous," said Brown. "It gave the Left all the ammunition they needed to make all of us who voted for Trump into 'white supremacist insurrectionists.'"

"This hurts our cause deeply, and it was part of the downside of the president," Brown stressed. "He was irresponsible in his actions on that day."

https://www.christianpost.com/books/christians-became-obsessed-with-politics-michael-brown-warns.html

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BY JONATHON VAN MAREN/BRIDGEHEAD.CA
NOVEMBER 05, 2022

As any reader of this site will know, the drag queens are at the forefront of the latest skirmish in the sexual revolution--specifically, the phenomenon of drag shows or drag queen-led story events for children. These events have sparked a parent-led backlash, and it isn't difficult for any sane person to understand why.

Drag queens are promoting gender fluidity to kids; teaching children how to "perform" and collect tips like strippers; and doing sexually explicit dances in front of children. The activists behind Drag Queen Story Hour have stated explicitly that their aim is to "create a site of queer pleasure" and subvert "childhood innocence." Those are their words, not mine.

In response to this, much of the mainstream press has engaged in a coordinated campaign of collective gaslighting, insisting that anyone who sees these sexually-charged and often sexually-explicit events as sexual is somehow perverted in turn; that anyone who says these events are inappropriate are bigots; and finally, when the sheer torrent of video and photographic evidence prove beyond doubt that these events are precisely what conservative journalists and horrified parents say they are, that they are "family-friendly" nonetheless. The media's willingness to defend every aspect of the sexual revolution reveals, once again, their complete moral bankruptcy.

Exhibit A is a recent article from Canada's CTV News titled "Drag queens and how they got pulled into politics." Of course, the answer to this implied question is a simple one. Nobody much cared about drag queens and their weird fetishes when
they weren't the featured attraction at children's events at schools and in public libraries.

Parents didn't think about drag queens at all before their performances morphed from a niche fetish into a "family-friendly" event (many of them funded by Democratic politicians). But as you might have suspected, CTV--which receives a substantial amount of funding from the Trudeau government--isn't interested in the obvious (and true) answer. They're interested in smearing those who object to sexual performances for children.

Here's how they start off:

Lately, drag has been dragged through the mud. The art form has been cast in a false light in recent months by right-wing activists and politicians who complain about the "sexualization" or "grooming" of children. Opponents often coordinate protests at drag events that feature or cater to children, sometimes showing up with guns. Some politicians have proposed banning children from drag events and even criminally charging parents who take their kids to one.

Performers and organizers of events, such as story hours in which colorfully clad drag queens read books to children, say the protesters are the ones terrorizing and harming children and making them political pawns -- just as they've done in other campaigns around bathroom access and educational materials.

The recent headlines about disruptions of drag events and their portrayal as sexual and harmful to children can obscure the art form and its rich history...Drag is the art of dressing and acting exaggeratedly as another gender, usually for entertainment such as comedy, singing, dancing, lip-syncing or all of the above. Drag may trace its roots to the age of William Shakespeare, when female roles were performed by men.

It is important to note that CTV's characterization of conservative opposition is an outright lie. LGBT activists are working hard to influence kids, and it is those who object to these performers who are somehow victimizing the performers. I have no idea how King Lear was performed at the Globe, but I'll bet it wasn't by a drag queen named Flowjob or a drag troupe calling themselves (for the gross, obvious reason) Glitter Hole.

And it must be pointed out that these folks choose their own names, and so we can hardly be accused of homophobia simply for noticing them. But CTV insists that these events are, for the most part, child-appropriate, citing the fact that some child drag queens do performances, too. I don't think citing child drag queens is the defence they think it is.

Another example of CTV's "debunking" of conservative objections is their note that it is a "false claim that the head of the Drag Queen Story Hour organization was arrested for child pornography." In fact, the number of people associated with Drag Queen Story Hour arrested on such charges is long and growing longer.

A Child Court judge who sponsored DQSH was in fact arrested for possession of child porn. In 2019, the Houston Public Library admitted that a registered child sex offender had been reading to children as part of their Drag Queen Storytime program.

In 2020, UK Drag Queen Storytime tweeted out the pedophile slogan "Love has no age." In 2021, a sponsor of Drag Queen Storytime in Milwaukee was arrested on child pornography charges. And this year, a Pennsylvania drag queen named Brice Patric Ryschon Williams, who has danced explicitly for children, was charged with 25 counts of child pornography in Pennsylvania. Williams identifies as a "genderqueer social worker" and is a well-known LGBT activist.

That's just a partial accounting. None of those examples, I notice, made it into CTV's reporting. That is because they are simply a state-funded mouthpiece of the state-supported LGBT movement, and they are trying to gaslight parents who do not want children to be sexualized. Don't let them do it.

https://www.prophecynewswatch.com/article.cfm?recent_news_id=5706

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CP U.S. | WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 2022
By Nicole Alcindor, CP Reporter

Prominent Evangelical pollster George Barna says that most Americans blend their beliefs to create "a customized worldview" that is far from biblical as the country is in a spiritual "crisis."

The founder of The Barna Group, who now leads the Cultural Research Center of Arizona Christian University, spoke at the Family Research Council's Pray Vote Stand Summit last week, a Christian conservative voting rally held in Atlanta.

Barna, who also serves as an FRC senior fellow, told those gathered that he believes one of the "brilliant strategies of the evil one" is luring people into believing that they can combine and adopt as many worldviews as they want.

Barna warned that "America is a nation in crisis" because its citizens do not hold a biblical worldview and will instead add their own "worldly ideas."

"Your worldview is the filter that you use to see and understand and experience and respond to the world around you. Because your worldview enables you to make sense of the world, you need a worldview just to get through every day," Barna explained.

"In fact, every single decision that you make, and you make hundreds of them if not thousands of decisions every single day — every one of those flows through your worldview. The choices that you make are a result of what you believe, as described by your worldview."

The Pray Vote Stand event, which was a three-day summit starting last Wednesday, aimed to "equip and encourage believers [by] discussing current cultural issues impacting faith, family and freedom and evaluating these through the lens of a biblical worldview."

"The crisis is that the predominant worldview in America is syncretism," he said.

Barna cited research conducted by the Cultural Research Center showing that there are seven major worldviews that Americans are most influenced by: biblical theism, Eastern mysticism, Marxism, moralistic therapeutic deism, nihilism, postmodernism and secular humanism.

"As we look at America today, we know that there are a number of competing worldviews competing for the heart and the soul of the nation," Barna said.

"Each has a different understanding of everything that takes place in the world, a different explanation for why things are happening, a different concept of how you might best live your life."

The most common worldview isn't any of the eight main adopted ones, according to Barna, who noted that the primary worldview dominating America is "syncretism," or varying combinations of all eight worldviews into one belief system.

"As we've done this research, what we've discovered is that, frankly, we don't like any of them. Instead, what we do is we listen to all of them, and we take bits and pieces from each one. And we blend that together into a customized worldview that describes what we feel, what we think, what we want, where we want to go, how we want to live," Barna explained.

"[Syncretism] really doesn't have a mind of its own. It doesn't have a pathway of its own. It doesn't have a consistent, constant narrative. It is what you make it. And so, we live in a nation that's difficult to direct in a different way."

Barna called syncretism one of "the brilliant strategies of the evil one," because "when you have a nation of 255 million adults and another 80 million children who are choosing bits and pieces from many different worldviews, and they come up with their own personalized, customized way of thinking and living, that's much more difficult to combat because every person, in essence, requires a different strategy."

Barna reported that 6% of Americans currently possess a biblical worldview, meaning that less than 10% have "thinking and behavior [that] isn't perfect, but it's closely aligned with what the Bible teaches."

"In the 30 years or so that I've been measuring this, what we discovered is that [Americans with a biblical worldview] has been cut in half during that time. It's on the decline. And what we're finding is that right now, that decline is faster than it has been in quite a while," Barna said.

"The biblical worldview [is important because it's a] way of experiencing, interpreting and responding to reality that's consistent with biblical perspectives. It's interesting that we have a nation where almost seven out of 10 adults call themselves Christian, but only six out of every 100 try to think like Jesus so that they can live like Jesus. So, there's a big gap there."

A person's worldview is "crucial to defining who [they] are, and how [they] live," Barna noted, because a person will always do what they believe.

"If you don't do it, you don't really believe it. So we have to see that consistency in there. A biblical worldview is critical because that's what enables you to become a true disciple of Jesus Christ. If that's your goal in life, what you're saying is 'I want to think like Jesus so that I can live like Jesus,'" Barna said.

"But in order to do that, notice first, as Romans 12 talks to us about, you have to have your mind' renewed,' you must be 'transformed' by that 'renewing of your mind' with God's principles at the core of all of your thoughts so that you can in fact live like Christ."

According to Barna, the only way to achieve cultural transformation is if people choose to "believe God's truths," which in turn will allow them to "act upon those truths based upon those things that you believe."

"We are here to be salt and light. That's what transformation is: changing the world around us forever based on God's truths. But in order to do that, we need a healthy Church — Capital C. We need believers who get it, believers who are willing to put their lives on the line," Barna said.

"As you're thinking about what you can do, first of all, think about your church wherever you go. Think about the other churches that you can influence through your relationships, through your activities. What can we do from top to bottom to cleanse the Church, to make it holy and righteous, to make it biblical, to make it capable of bringing people back to Jesus?"

Barna stressed the importance of pastors in helping parents raise godly children, saying that pastors who guide parents to know Jesus more intimately will allow those same parents to have biblical wisdom to guide their children.

"As you read the Scriptures, you find that biblically, it is the role of the community of faith, i.e., our churches, to be supporting families and particularly parents in that process, equipping them for raising up their children to be dynamic followers of Jesus Christ," Barna advised.

As he emphasized this need for pastors and parents to "get in the game and fight for Jesus," Barna also pointed to a CRC report which found that only 2% of U.S. parents with children under the age of 13 have a biblical worldview.

"Why does that matter?" Barna said. "Because you can't give what you don't have. And here we have 98 out of every 100 parents in America who cannot give their children a biblical worldview because they don't have one."

FRC President Tony Perkins, a leading evangelical conservative political activist who is also a Baptist pastor, blamed some pastors for being hesitant to "preach the full counsel of God."

"As a result, we have Christians that are hesitant to live out their faith. We need our pastors who understand the Bible and its application to the world in which we live, the times in which we live. That is what we talk about a biblical worldview."

A study released earlier this year by the Cultural Research Center of 1,000 pastors found that 37% of Christian pastors in the United States have a biblical worldview, while the majority possess the hybrid syncretism worldview.

The study was based on 54 worldview-related questions and found that only 47% of the pastors have a biblical worldview regarding family and the value of life; 44% concerning issues related to God, creation and history; 43% in relation to personal faith practices; 43% when it comes to matters of sin, salvation and one's relationship with God; 40% pertaining to human character and human nature; and 40% when it comes to measures of lifestyle, personal behavior, and relationships.

With pastors under the sway of syncretism, the Cultural Research Center also found that parents of preteens are in a "spiritual state of distress" because parents many don't possess a biblical worldview.

"The American Church has lowered the entry bar so much that it is difficult to identify any beliefs that disqualify one from claiming to be Christian. The parents of children under the age of 13 are a stellar example of this Christian nominalism that is widely accepted as spiritually normal and healthy," Barna said earlier this year.

"Indeed, a worldview is comprised of a unified series of beliefs that then determine behavior. The alarm bell has not been rung because there is no single belief, or even limited series of identified beliefs, that are acknowledged as undermining Christianity or disqualifying an amenable adult from being considered a disciple of Jesus."

As his address at last week's summit ended, Barna told the crowd that changing the statistics "is not going to happen overnight."

"America didn't get in this mess that it's in today overnight. And we're not going to turn it around overnight. But we need to start somewhere. It starts with you. And it starts today. And I pray that you will go out there and be Jesus to the world," Barna concluded.

https://www.christianpost.com/news/george-barna-says-most-americans-have-a-customized-worldview.html

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BY JONATHON VAN MAREN/BRIDGEHEAD.CA
NOVEMBER 09, 2022

When transgenderism began to go mainstream, many conservative commentators began to ask reasonable questions. If a man could become a woman and a woman could become a man simply by saying so -- by self-identifying as what they felt they were or what they would like to be -- then how could this not apply more broadly?

Could someone, for example, decide to identify as black even if they were white? Could they be "trans-species" and announce that they were actually something other than human? How far would society have to go in universally affirming the weird self-actualization exercise of the deluded and trendy?

These questions were dismissed as stupid and -- worse! -- disrespectful to the legitimate struggles and lived experiences of transgender people. Despite those who pointed out that if the biological boundaries of sex could be traversed at will there was no reason to assume that any other category would hold once the question of who we are was a question of how we feel, the elites embraced the idea that the Binary Was Bad.

Occasional disconcerting examples of how these premises could be applied in other situations -- like the case of Rachel Dolezal, the white woman who identified as black for years -- were dismissed as crackpot oddities. But that, as they say, was then, and this is now. The premises of gender ideology having been adopted, it is slowly but surely becoming more common for people to identify as different
races, as animals, aliens, or made-up creatures. And the "transabled" movement -- which I first wrote about in this space back in 2015 -- is beginning to attract attention.

This movement is made up of people who feel themselves to be disabled but are in fact physically healthy. Many of them wish to have a limb removed or to be otherwise mutilated so that their appearance and ability will match how they "feel"; a medical community which has embraced the practice of cutting off penises and surgically removing healthy breasts for the gender dysphoric doesn't have any compelling grounds to refuse.

One recent viral example of this is an October 28 interview on Good Morning Norway with a robust 53-year-old Norwegian male named Jørund Viktoria Alme, who now identifies as a disabled woman because, he told the interviewer, he has always wished he was born a woman who was paralyzed from the waist down. Almes, who works as a senior credit analyst in Oslo, first announced that he was transabled in 2020, and has received predictably sympathetic coverage from the mainstream media while being excoriated on social media. He has occasionally given interviews alongside his wife Agnes, who hasn't detailed how she feels about her husband's category switch presumably morphing her into a lesbian. Almes' story really is the sort of thing that, if pitched to a Hollywood producer, would probably be rejected as too far-fetched. He is perfectly healthy, but is in a wheelchair "almost all of the time." His identification, he says, is a combination of his gender dysphoria (leading him to claim he is a woman) and Body Integrity Disorder, which leads him to see himself as disabled.

Disinterested observers will note that he is neither a woman nor is he disabled. Almes' own description of his condition concedes as much: "It is a cognitive dissonance: in the same way that I experience being a woman in a man's body, I experience that I should have been paralyzed from the waist down. This is not a desire to be a burden on society. It is about the wheelchair being an aid for me to function in everyday life, both privately and at work."

Understandably, people who have actual disabilities have been less than pleased by Almes and his media interviews, with a number of actual women with actual disabilities noting that he is a "person with functional legs who chooses to sit in a wheelchair" and that his charade was a perpetual insult to the disabled community.

The TV station that hosted the interview attempted to defend themselves by saying that Alme (who they obediently referred to by female pronouns) had a "deep feeling that certain body parts or body functions feel foreign," but that their search for "independent professionals to explain what BID is" had "so far been unsuccessful." Almes responded by stating that his public airing of his delusions are for the purpose of facilitating "diversity and inclusion." But as Reduxx highlighted in their own coverage, Almes' performance has a weird aspect to it:

In September, Alme confessed to iNyheter that his identity as a disabled woman was sexually motivated. When the question of whether or not he was acting on the impulse to live out a sexual fetish was broached, Alme replied, "I don't know, maybe so."

"I often hunted for beautiful shoes that I bought for Agnes. Once I found a pair of shoes for her. Then I discovered that they had a pair of shoes in a large size. So I bought them too. There was a lot of excitement in buying a pair of shoes with high heels," Alme told Vi. After Alme began ordering women's shoes online, his wife Agnes questioned whether he had been wearing her dresses in private. When he told her he had, she responded with shock, which later turned to frustration. "When I heard that, I was shocked. And angry - which basically means I was scared. I felt that he had destroyed everything we had together and that I had to leave him," said Agnes. Yet despite his wife's outrage, Alme started dressing as a woman at home, a situation that "became a strain" for her, as she was struggling with a recent cancer diagnosis. Agnes has been open about her difficulties in accepting her husband's fetishistic behaviors, and has said that she initially "tried to leave" him twice "in despair and grief."

Now, Agnes accepts her husband's new identity, although she is clearly uncomfortable with it. Many women facing similar situations haven't been able to do that -- there has been a surge in the publication of the memoirs of "trans widows" recently, as self-actualization journeys carry people away from their spouses and families.

Plenty of people are responding to this story by claiming that those drawing attention to it are merely highlighting weird cases in order to smear the transgender movement as a whole. The truth is that Alme is being interviewed by mainstream media outlets who are utterly accepting of all of his claims, and deleting social media responses by respondents who are not.

Once you buy the idea that a man can become a woman, you've accepted that identity no longer needs to correspond with biological reality. A healthy man identifying as a woman paralyzed from the waist down is just a start.

Originally published at The Bridgehead - reposted with permission.
https://www.prophecynewswatch.com/article.cfm?recent_news_id=5715

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BY MICHAEL SNYDER/END OF THE AMERICAN DREAM
NOVEMBER 04, 2022

Are we going to see more war in the months ahead? Both sides just continue to escalate the conflict in Ukraine, but it may soon have to share top billing as more wars suddenly erupt around the globe. Now that it looks like Benjamin Netanyahu will be returning to power in Israel, a major confrontation with Iran is seemingly closer than ever. Meanwhile, tensions between North Korea and South Korea have risen to the highest level in my entire lifetime. Most people don't realize this, but the North Koreans are poised to launch an invasion at all times. All they need is an opportunity, and that may come when China invades Taiwan. Chinese President Xi Jinping recently reaffirmed his commitment to "reunification" with Taiwan, and officials in the western world are warning that this could come sooner rather than later. As I detail in my brand new book entitled "End Times", we truly are living in a time of "wars and rumors of wars". Let us hope that the potential wars that I just listed can be delayed for as long as possible, because the death and destruction that they would cause would be off the charts.

Personally, I am so glad that Yair Lapid has been defeated and that Benjamin Netanyahu will be the next prime minister of Israel. But without a doubt, it also brings war between Israel and Iran much closer. For years, Netanyahu has pledged that he will never allow Iran to develop their own nuclear weapons... "Iran has never given up its quest for nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver them," Netanyahu said. "I will never allow Iran to obtain the nuclear capability to carry out its genocidal goal of eliminating Israel." Unfortunately, the IAEA says that Iran has now reached a point where they could potentially create their own nukes. So the clock is ticking. One way or another, war between Israel and Iran will happen.

That is why any potential provocation should deeply alarm all of us. For example, the following story was in the news on Wednesday... The United States and Saudi Arabia are on high alert after Saudi intelligence shared with the U.S. indicated that Iran is expected to carry out an attack on targets in Saudi Arabia, the Wall Street Journal reported. Officials from both countries reportedly told the Journal about the concern over coming attacks. Saudi officials said that in addition to Saudi Arabia, Iran is also looking to strike Erbil, Iraq, where U.S. troops are located.

The planned attacks are said to be intended as a distraction from protests taking place in Iran against the Islamic nation's leadership. In addition, the Biden administration is extremely upset that Iran has been sending highly advanced weapons to Russia. In fact, it is being reported that the Iranians are about to send the Russians a whole bunch more...

Iran is preparing to send approximately 1,000 additional weapons, including surface-to-surface short-range ballistic missiles and more attack drones, to Russia to use in its war against Ukraine, officials from a Western country that closely monitors Iran's weapons program told CNN.

While the precise timing of when the shipment will arrive in Russia is unclear, officials believe the weapons will definitely be delivered before the end of the year. The Biden administration absolutely hates the current Iranian regime, and so do the Saudis. When Israel and Iran finally start going at it, both the U.S. government and the Saudi government will be hoping that the Israelis score a resounding victory. Speaking of sending weapons to Russia, the U.S. is also accusing North Korea of doing this... The US is accusing North Korea of secretly supplying Russia with artillery shells for the Ukraine war by concealing where they are being transported to, according to newly declassified intelligence.

US officials believe that the surreptitious North Korean shipments - along with drones and other weaponry that Russia has acquired from Iran - are further evidence that even Moscow's conventional artillery arsenals have dwindled during eight months of combat. North Korea is trying to hide the shipments by making it appear as if the ammunition is being sent to countries in the Middle East or North Africa, the intelligence says.

As more and more countries get involved, the conflict in Ukraine is truly starting to become a "world war". But the North Koreans aren't going to get too involved in Ukraine, because a potential war with South Korea is looming. For the very first time since the Korean War, a North Korean missile has flown "over the de facto inter-Korean maritime border"... North Korea fired 25 missiles and around 100 artillery shells over the course of about 11 hours on Wednesday, the South Korean military said. But one North Korean ballistic missile unprecedentedly flew over the de facto inter-Korean maritime border and landed in waters south of the border for the first time since the division of the Korean Peninsula.

In response, the South Korean military fired three missiles from fighter jets toward the north of the inter-Korean maritime boundary to demonstrate its precision-strike capabilities, denouncing the missile launch as a "direct and very serious provocation." During the Trump years, it seemed like we were making so much progress with North Korea. But now everything has changed, and the North Koreans are openly threatening to use nuclear weapons against the United States and South Korea... North Korea issued a veiled threat Tuesday to use nuclear weapons to get the U.S. and South Korea to "pay the most horrible price in history," an escalation of its fiery rhetoric targeting the ongoing large-scale military drills between its rivals. However, I do not believe that North Korea would actually make a move against South Korea unless China invaded Taiwan first. Unfortunately, that day appears to be closer than ever.

In fact, the top officer in the U.S. Navy is warning that we are looking at "a 2022 window or potentially a 2023 window" for that to happen...
China could invade Taiwan as early as this year, speeding up naval experts' predictions of a 2027 attack, the Navy's top officer said Wednesday.

Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Mike Gilday said China's 20-year track record of delivering "every promise they've made earlier than they said" indicated the Communist country could try to take Taiwan by force any day now.

"It's how the Chinese behave and what they do," Gilday said during an Atlantic Council event. "So when we talk about the 2027 window, in my mind, that has to be a 2022 window or potentially a 2023 window."

Personally, I don't think that an invasion will take place during the last two months of 2022.

But 2023 is another matter entirely.

Meanwhile, the war in Ukraine continues to escalate.

The Russians have been hitting Ukrainian infrastructure night after night, and at this point much of the country could be heading into winter without any power and without any running water...

Much of the Ukrainian capital of Kiev is without electricity or water, after the latest round of major Russian airstrikes on Monday. The Russian military announced 'successful' strikes on multiple of the country's vital infrastructure facilities.

"The Russian Armed Forces continued to launch strikes with high-precision long-range air and sea-based weapons against Ukrainian military and energy facilities," the Defense Ministry said. "The goals of the strikes were successful. All assigned objects were hit." Meanwhile,
Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal confirmed direct hits on 18 sites - most of which were connected to the nation's energy supply.

These ramped up attacks have created a growing sense of panic with temperatures plunging and winter approaching.

At the same time, western powers just continue to get even more deeply involved in the conflict.

In fact, the U.S. military is now telling us that U.S. troops are on the ground in Ukraine in a limited supporting role...

U.S. military personnel are now on the ground in Ukraine, keeping track of and inspecting weapons the U.S. has shipped to Ukrainian forces, a senior defense official announced during a Pentagon background briefing on Monday. These U.S. personnel are some of the first the Pentagon has acknowledged have entered Ukraine since Russia launched its large scale invasion of the country in February.

The senior defense official who spoke on background during an official Pentagon event, said, "U.S. personnel have recently resumed on-site inspections to assess weapon stocks in country whenever and wherever the security conditions allow." The official said "the return of our defense attaché and Office of Defense Cooperation personnel in country has allowed us to resume this critical function."

So the good news is that there are no U.S. military forces on the front lines yet.

But will that eventually happen?

None of us should want to see U.S. troops and Russian troops directly firing weapons at one another.

Because that would put us dangerously close to a nuclear conflict.

Unfortunately, leaders all over the world are being exceedingly reckless right now, and that should make all of us very nervous.

Originally published at End Of The American Dream - reposted with permission.

https://www.prophecynewswatch.com/article.cfm?recent_news_id=5704

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The following is excerpted from “Mother Earth, Pregnant Mothers,” FrontPageMag.com, Sept. 29, 2022:

“A high-ranking Vatican official stunned Catholics during a recent television interview by inadvertently confirming the Catholic Church’s retreat from one of its fundamental moral positions ... The official in question said on Italy’s national network Aug. 26 that the church had no interest in opposing that nation’s law allowing abortion.

Enacted in 1978, Law 194 legalizes abortions in the first trimester and permits them afterward only if the mother’s life is in danger or if the fetus displays ‘serious abnormalities or malformations,’ the law states. That official even had the audacity to say that Law 194 represented ‘a pillar of our social life.’ ...

Astonishingly, the Vatican official who made those remarks was Cardinal Vincenzo Paglia, president of the Pontifical Academy for Life, which Pope John Paul II founded specifically to oppose abortion. Tommaso Scandroglio, reporter for the Catholic newspaper La Nuova Bus sola Quotidiana, perfectly described the impact: ‘It is as if the president of the Jewish Anti-Defamation League is declaring himself in favor of the Holocaust.’ ... In May 2021, the Vatican’s leading theological authority after the pope discouraged American bishops from withholding Communion from Catholic politicians who support abortion. In issuing that letter, Cardinal Luis Ladaria, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, contradicted both his own church’s catechism and canon law. ... The Catholic catechism describes abortion a ‘moral evil.’”

VOLUME 23, ISSUE 43 Way of Life Literature OCTOBER 28, 2022
https://www.wayoflife.org/pdf/fcnn-23-43.pdf

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Things haven't looked this bad for the U.S. economy since 2008. We are in the midst of the worst inflation crisis in decades, the housing market has started to collapse, some of the largest companies in America have begun laying off workers, and economic activity is slowing down all around us. Of course Joe Biden is telling us that our economy is "strong as hell", but that is just because he wants his party to do well in the upcoming elections.

Ultimately, anyone that takes a truly objective view of things is forced to admit that the outlook for the months ahead is incredibly bleak. The following are 12 reasons why it is impossible for any rational person to be optimistic about the U.S. economy at this point...

#1 According to a recent Gallup survey, two-thirds of Americans believe that economic conditions are getting worse. When such a large proportion of the population starts behaving as though an economic downturn is coming, that actually makes an economic downturn even more likely. So many Americans are starting to hold on to their money more tightly, and that is having lots of ripple effects.

#2 The second largest auto lender in the United States just announced that it "saw charge-offs for retail auto loans quadruple in the third quarter". We are also seeing credit card delinquencies start to rise. We certainly aren't at 2008 levels yet, but we are moving in that direction.

#3 Cargo traffic at the Port of Los Angeles just declined to the lowest level that we have seen since the early days of the pandemic. As I noted earlier, economic activity is beginning to slow down all over the nation. One recent survey discovered that 98 percent of corporate CEOs believe that a recession is coming, and those CEOs are behaving accordingly.

#4 Major retailers such as Walmart and Target have been canceling billions of dollars in orders as they seek to cut back inventory levels. In all my years, I have never seen our largest retailers cancel so many orders just prior to the holiday season. Are they expecting the next couple of months to be a total bust?

#5 Existing home sales just fell to a 10 year low. We all knew that the housing market was going to implode once the Federal Reserve started to aggressively raise interest rates, but at this point that implosion is happening faster than most of the experts had anticipated.

#6 U.S. homebuilder sentiment has declined for 10 months in a row. That is a brand new record. I really feel sorry for you if you are a homebuilder or if you work for one. The months ahead are not going to be pleasant for you.

#7 60,000 real estate deals were called off in the month of September alone. I was stunned when I first saw that number. All over the country buyers are realizing that they agreed to pay too much and are feverishly trying to back out of deals while they still can.

#8 Mortgage demand has plunged to the lowest level in 25 years. Things never even got this bad during the downturn of 2008 and 2009. To me, this is a really troubling sign.

#9 Ian Sheperdson, the chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, is projecting that home prices could fall 20 percent over the next year. Hopefully that will not happen, but there is also a possibility that they could fall even further than that. We will just have to wait and see how rapidly this new crisis plays out.

#10 U.S. diesel inventories have fallen to the lowest level since 2008. This is something that we will want to watch very carefully, because the U.S. economy runs on diesel. Some experts are warning that we could face rationing or shortages in just a matter of weeks.

#11 The core consumer price index has just surged to "the highest level since 1982". Even though the Federal Reserve has been on an insane rate hiking spree, our inflation crisis continues to rage out of control. And as prices continue to soar, our standard of living is being absolutely eviscerated.

#12 A model created by Bloomberg economists Anna Wong and Eliza Winger indicates that there is a 100 percent chance of a recession within the next 12 months. Of course it is entirely possible that their model could be wrong. But without a doubt this is not a good sign.

Right now, even some of our society's most relentless optimists are warning that tough economic times are ahead.

For instance, in a post on Twitter Elon Musk just suggested that we could be suffering through a recession until the spring of 2024...If Elon Musk is any type of financial prognosticator, the market and economy could be in trouble for more than a year to come. When prompted in a Twitter thread early on Friday morning, the Tesla CEO said that he thought the current recession would last "probably until spring of '24". Because he is such an optimist, Musk believes that economic conditions will turn around eventually.

But what if they don't? What if the "perfect storm" that we are currently enduring ultimately results in the collapse of everything? Are you prepared for such a scenario?

Previous generations of Americans handed us the keys to the most prosperous economy that the world has ever seen.

But instead of managing it carefully, we have piled up the biggest mountain of debt in the history of the planet, we have transformed Wall Street into the globe's largest casino, and we have systematically destroyed the reserve currency of the world.

Thanks to a very long series of incredibly foolish decisions by our leaders, we are now facing a war with Russia, a collapse of the housing market, a global food crisis, a global inflation crisis and a worldwide financial meltdown simultaneously.

The entire system is starting to crumble all around us, but most people still believe that things will "return to normal" at some point.

Personally, I would love to see things "return to normal", but unfortunately it appears that is not likely to happen any time soon.

Originally published at The Economic Collapse Blog

https://www.prophecynewswatch.com/article.cfm?recent_news_id=5680

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BY JONATHON VAN MAREN/BRIDGEHEAD.CA OCTOBER 28, 2022

Earlier this month, I noted in this space that LGBT activists have so effectively taken over the curriculum of Canadian public schools that students were now being encouraged to choose different gender identities -- including fresh new categories such as "non-binary," which almost nobody had heard of until very recently

Our school system is not simply providing information about new "gender identities" -- it is actively encouraging and facilitating children to push boundaries and question their sex.

Indeed, the effectiveness of this indoctrination is creating a massive spike in children identifying as anything but themselves everywhere it has been implemented--even liberal comedian Bill Maher, long-time supporter of the LGBT agenda, noted the trend: "If this spike in trans children is all biological, why is it regional? Either Ohio is shaming them or California is creating them." The last few years have seen the trend escalate. A report by The Post Millennial, for example, highlights new data from Seattle Public Schools shows an 853% spike in students identifying as non-binary over only three years.

In 2019, 53 out of 55,417 students identified as "non-binary." In the 2022-2023 school year, that number was up to 505, including three children in preschool, 16 in kindergarten, 89 in grades 1-5, 125 in middle school and 272 in high school.

It is obvious to any reasonable person that a child of four or five years old identifying as "non-binary" has very little to do with the child's identity, which he or she cannot even conceptualize at that age. A non-binary preschooler or kindergartener is, as one wag put it, a bit like a vegan cat -- we all know who is making the decisions here.

But despite that, they have been recruited into an industrial-scale social experiment in which confusion is introduced, encouraged, and facilitated. Kids want to be popular and special. The fastest route to achieving that these days is to identify somewhere on the LGBT spectrum.

Two year ago, Politico published an essay explaining how Generation Z (those born after 1996) will change America's political landscape. This generation is thus far staunchly progressive on a range of issues, but where the future of religious liberty is in doubt is data that indicates "roughly 1 in 4 identify as gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, transgender, or 'genderqueer.'"

That number is mindbogglingly high, especially considering the fact that a few years ago, less that 3% of the population identified as LGBT. To put it bluntly, those stats are hard to believe. But as the Daily Mail noted last year, many teens want to identify as anything but straight: As rates of trans kids skyrocket (a "social contagion," as Dr. Lisa Littman noted), many students are afraid that they are "dumb and boring" if they do not identify as something other than heterosexual. Additionally, Politico noted that "a third of Gen Zers say they know someone who uses gender-neutral pronouns to refer to themselves and nearly 6 in 10 say forms or online profiles should allow more options than 'man' or 'woman,' according to Pew Research Center."

A more recent survey in the UK by the LGBT group Stonewall, found similar numbers in the United Kingdom, with more than a quarter of Generation Z identifying as LGBT.

As the popularity of identifying as LGBT grows, so will the trends. These numbers are truly stunning, and will have very real political and cultural implications in the coming decades.

Sure, some will grow out of identifying as "non-binary," and will be able to do so far less painfully than a child who underwent sex change surgeries or took puberty blockers. But the underlying worldview -- that I can be whoever I say I am and society is morally (and perhaps legally) obligated to positively affirm my delusions --are here to stay.

Originally published at The Bridgehead

https://www.prophecynewswatch.com/article.cfm?recent_news_id=5685