I can feel it coming…

Between stimulus and response there is a space.
In that space is our power to choose our response.
In our response lies our growth and our freedom.
Viktor Frankl

I can feel it coming in the air tonight, oh lord
And I’ve been waiting for this moment, for all my life, oh lord
Can you feel it coming in the air tonight, oh lord, oh lord
Lyrics by Phil Collins

(a single leaf suspended between tree and earth / Julie Cook / 2021)

I can feel it.
The question however is, can you?

Can you feel it?
Can you sense it?
Or have you been too desensitized to that which is taking place
all around us?

Change– a great, mighty and yes, even grave change is in the air.

Many of us are already well aware that we cannot possibly know the time
nor the place…
But yet, this change is coming nonetheless.

A great many of us sense that the change is coming and coming soon.

It might be incremental at first.
Slow and innocuous.
Seeping in quietly yet deadly, like a colorless and odorless gas.

Maybe it’s merely what we’ve been witnessing taking place throughout our country
in these past few years…
think BLM, Antifa, the Proud Boys…

Was it born during a crusade?
Was it born in the dark ages of the plague?
Was it born in a Spanish Inquisition?
Was it born in France during the Reign of Terror?
Was it born in the birth of a young nation following its own revolution?
Was it born on the fields of Antietam, Gettysburg, Bull Run, Vicksburg,
Appomattox…or the scorched earth tactic ravaged on Georgia?
Or was it born in the corded nooses dangling from trees?

It might have been born in the mustard gas wafting through
the trenches of WWI ….
It might have been born in the death chambers and ovens of Poland
and Germany.
Maybe it was born in Stalin’s iron fisted USSR gulags.

Maybe it was born in a fast paced and currently overreaching technology.
Maybe it was born on the heaviness of 9/11
Maybe it’s born on our southern borders?
Or was it born in Benghazi or Afghanistan?

Or was it simply born in the disobedience found in a now hidden garden?

Has it simply been unfolding, ever so slowly, for eons?

Division.
Anger.
Resentment.
Fear.
Paranoia.
Bullying.
Lying.

The latest pandemic has only helped to embolden this ensuing change.

Mandates.
Masks.
Ultimatums.
Us vs them.
Passports.
The clean vs the unclean.
Freedom vs dictation.

Virus and illness vs death or life…

Elitism.
Wokeness.
Liberalism.
Cancel Culture.

Christianity, morality, conservatives all now equated to pariah.

Persecution?
Yes.

And with these overwhelming thoughts of change—
in that change is indeed a’coming–
I was actually amazed at the coming together of some giant collective
thinking taking place on a single afternoon.

First there was IB offering a telling vid clip based
on a post found on http://www.aier.org

And I think it’s that ‘in your face’ flaunting by a maskless Squad debutant
that has been truly the taunting on the cake.
An exorbitantly decadent who’s who Met affair featuring
the likes of a young woman feeling her oats, daring
to wear her statement of taxing the rich, stretched across her derrière
as she tips her bareless shoulder, rubbing it with her ever so rich fellow guests.
It was enough hypocrisy to last a lifetime.

The Best Defense Against Violence

https://insanitybytes2.wordpress.com/2021/09/15/the-moral-vacuum-kate-wand/

Then our dear wise sage Oneta offered up her own take on
this air of change with the following post:

MANDATES AND WEARY CHRISTIANS

Posted on September 16, 2021 by oneta hayes

“I’m just not watching anymore TV,” stated my friend.
We had just attended a meeting in which someone said the mess
in our country was our fault, speaking of senior-aged Christians,
laying the blame on our lethargy in letting “stuff” happen without speaking up.
I agree completely.

We have been taught “Live in peace with all men”
and “let there be no divisions between you.”
Letters to editors of papers and magazines—almost unheard of;
attendance at local political rallies—almost unheard of;
protests on the streets—almost unheard of;
spitting fire on tweeter—unheard of.
That’s the way it has been!
It is the fault of sleeping Christians.
Too often Christians point out that we do not fight the way the world fights.
Our duty is to put on the armor of God and pray.
Yep.
But do you believe even five percent of people who
claim to be Christians do that?
Even if we do that, it does not absolve us of having
an obligation to be good citizens of the nation in which we live.

Meanwhile the evil has crept in tide by tide so it is
now a huge wave swamping the land.
Boy scouts have to take girls; “rainbow”
no longer represents a promise of God;
urinals removed from restrooms because it might offend
“persons with no male genitalia;” babies murdered by the millions.

So it goes. Evil has overtaken us. And Christians are weary.

My nephew, Teral, put the following scripture on FB this morning.
And he shall speak great words against the most High,
and shall wear out the saints of the most High,
and think to change times and laws: and they shall be given
into his hand until a time and times and the dividing of time.
Daniel 7:25 KJ

This is speaking of the anti-Christ.
I do not know whether or not the anti-Christ now lives.
But I do know there are things happening right now that
are preparing the way for him.
The current “mandate” orders are a significant sign.

Other translations of the above scripture say
“saints are worn down, oppressed, persecuted.”
I am witness to that truth.

Another interesting thing about this scripture is
“think to change times and laws.”
Isn’t that referring to breaking down of traditions and laws?
Looks like it to me. We are certainly having a change in laws,
moral laws, even in Constitutional laws.
And traditions?
Now it is no longer to talk of mothers and fathers!
A combination of anything can be family –
if indeed one demands a family at all.

And lastly there was the wisdom of Mel Wild of In My Father’s House.
His latest post (actually last two posts) explores the current ignorance found
in those claiming that Christianity is actually Socialism in sheep’s clothing.
His post Sorry, Jesus is NOT a Socialist lays out the truth
that our current culture cares not to acknowledge.

https://melwild.wordpress.com

So let’s round out this small treatise with the master of drums himself,
Phil Collins…who sadly today, due to injury can no longer play his
beloved drums…

before heading back down to where life is full of blissful madness–the calm before the storm

“We do not have to visit a madhouse to find disordered minds;
our planet is the mental institution of the universe.”
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

(The Biltmore House / Asheville, NC/ Julie Cook / 2020)

Ok, I simply couldn’t go back to my self-imposed isolation, aka my never-ending
unpacking and sorting, without first offering my dismay at having caught a recent news popup
that showed up on my phone yesterday.
It seems that Madame Speaker never ceases to amaze me…and that is…
amaze me in a not so positive way.

The news tag read “The enemy is within”
It seems the Speaker is afraid of her GOP colleagues—calling them ‘the enemy within’
Madame Speaker is afraid of those Republicans who have gun permits…
in particular those members who might be ‘packing heat’ while on the job—
And given the recent precarious events of insurrections and occupations by
“enemy combatants” I would think those with permits might feel as if they
need a bit of personal security.

But to call one’s colleagues ‘enemies of the state’ takes this whole undercurrent push
for a one party state a step further into the surreal Twilight Zone we now call reality.

Yesterday, always in timely wise fashion, our friend Kathy, over on atimetoshare, noted that
Mr. Kerry is back to his typical pompous bombastic self by calling middle Americans
“the little people”…

Reminds me a bit of a Marie Antoinette sort of personality…let those hungry
little people eat cake.
Ode to those “little people” and ode one’s supposed colleagues.

A one party state
Little people
enemy combatants
the enemy within
security vs paranoia
pomposity
arrogance
disregard
double standards
hypocrisy

The underground is looking pretty peaceful for the time being…
I imagine it is the calm before the storm.

Likewise, you who are younger, be subject to the elders.
Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another,
for “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.”
1 Peter 5:5

time is not my friend…it’s not yours either

“We must now define what it means to be Christian because the hypocrisy
of some can be confusing to a watching world.”
David Fiorazo

Am I now trying to win the approval of human beings, or of God?
Or am I trying to please people?
If I were still trying to please people,
I would not be a servant of Christ.
Galatians 1:10

(the fishing seems slim / Rosemary Beach / Julie Cook / 2018)

Piggybacking on yesterday’s post regarding David Fiorazo’s book The Cost of our Silence,
I’ll admit that my reading of this book of his will be a slow go—because time is not my friend.
Not that it is a friend to any of us.

For time is of the essence.
But it is rapidly waning.

Time being a central theme I’ve now been sounding for nearly four years.
Ever since a trip to Ireland and a Divine revelation.

And yet it remains…not a friend.

Not a friend to our lives as in it eats up what we call our own.
And it is equally destructive to our Spiritual lives.
As in it’s running out…time is running out…
but who wants to hear about that…
because that would mean we’d need to get up, get out, remove ourselves
from our comfort zones and really get ourselves busy.

And as Spiritual Beings, the idea that our time is growing more and more limited
by the day, is, well…something that should have us all gearing up to get to work.

Here are a few more thoughts from our friend and author David Fiorazo’s introduction from his
book The Cost of our Silence.
A little more food for thought.
More of the impetus for our getting up and getting going before our time runs out.

America has more Chrisitan churches and more resources than ever before–
more than any other country in the world–
so why do we look less and less like a Christian nation every day?
We have more Bibles, seminaries, Chrisitan music, and Christian entertainment than ever before.
We have the fanciest churches, the finest Christian colleges, countless ministries and no profits,
and we have an abundance of Christian radio, television, and Christin bookstores across the country.
Now consider the swindling amount of Christian influence in our culture today.
Something is drastically wrong.

Christians in America are facing indoctrination from a multitude of directions.
Schools instruct our children in evolution, environmentalism, and earth worships.
Later they learn about Freudian psychology, social justice, and homosexuality.
We are deluged with secular entertainment, promiscuity, and promotion of the abortion business.
Society is inundated with Marxism, socialism, and secularism.
Our lives are bombarded with atheism, witchcraft, false religions, and liberalism.
Even in some church denominations, liberals (some may refer to them as religious
“progressives” or the “Christian Left”) have gained power and introduced theological
heresies including New Age philosophies.

“If we are serious about our faith, others will know.”

“We as Bible-believing evangelical Christians are locked in a battle.
This is not a friendly gentleman’s discussion.
It is a life and death conflict between the spiritual hosts of wickedness and
those who claim the name of Christ.”
Francis Schaeffer

So what name are we claiming because we don’t have much more time remaining to be deciding…

But the one who endures to the end will be saved.
Matthew 24:13