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My muse is clothed in sackcloth and ashes. Within a month’s time between March and April, the following random acts of violence were the starlit headlines in the US alone, such as the world has never seen. Matthew 24:8, warns there will be a marked increase of activity:
- Pastor Fred Winters was killed at church in Illinois.
- Four California police officers and one suspect were shot and killed.
- In Massachusetts a man stabbed one sister to death, attacked another, and finally decapitated his 5-year-old sister in front of a police officer when he broke down the door.
- Another gunman opened fire inside a nursing home North Carolina, killing eight.
- An engineer at Yahoo gunned down his family in a murder-suicide that killed six people.
- A Massachusetts woman, believing she was being stalked by a cult, used a pair of scissors to inflict 100 wounds on her 2-year-old. She can be heard saying, “Die! Die!” on a 911 call!
- A man barricaded the back door of an immigration center in New York with a car and went on a shooting rampage, killing thirteen.
- Three Pittsburgh officers were shot and killed after a man pulled over for a routine traffic stop opened fire.
- Five children were found dead inside their Washington state home, killed by their father in a murder-suicide.
In addition, The National Coalition for the Homeless reports over the years there has been a surge in the attacks on the homeless: 774 acts of violence, resulting in 217 murders of homeless people and 557 victims of non-lethal violence.
The spirit of the antichrist is egregiously evident. It is as much an act as it is a state of mind with many not giving a familiar second look to the beaten Samaritans. Have our hearts become so hardened that we cannot discern the signs of the times? These random acts of violence have become so commonplace that many no longer mourn them as evil or notice them increasing from two per year into dozens per month. Now I know how David felt in Psalm 69: 8- 9, “I am like a stranger and a foreigner…my love for your house burns in me like a fire, and when others insult You, they insult me as well.”
There are four stages of apostasy (outlined below): looking back, drawing back, turning back and falling back:
No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God. (Luke 9:62) But my righteous ones will live by faith. And if he shrinks back, I will not be pleased with him. (Hebrews 10:38) From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him. (John 6:66) So then… they will go and fall backward, be injured and snared and captured. (Isaiah 28:13)
Maranatha! Many perceptible antichrists have already come--we are snared, injured, captured and fallen; it is the worlds departure from the Living God inclusive of thoughts and deeds.
The author is unknown but I loved it and found it fitting.
The end is not as far as you can see
Already there is apostasy
Man cast his lot and gathered the coals
To stoke the fire that burns the souls
The days are numbered, the hours few
So work and pray, and try to do
The work that’s given in the light
Until that sad time when all is night.
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