What time is it? (Warning: long post ahead!)

So one of the things I've been thinking about lately is the time we are living in. Does anyone know what time it is? According to the clock it's about a quarter to eight pm on a Thursday night. Which reminds me, tomorrow is garbage day. Excuse me while I run and put out the can.

Time: almost 8:30. Well, that was longer than expected. Ran into my neighbor who was coming home from work and he is a single guy who gets lonely I think for someone to talk to, cause he sure can talk. He's older than us, I think, by quite a few years, talking about social security and stuff. Also, hates when people complain on facebook about the trash that gets left around the neighborhood instead of doing something about it, so he did something about it and its gone already.

Anyway, it's time for bed, but I just wanted to share a few thoughts about what time it is in history. Remember the statue in Daniel 2 that Nebuchadnezzar dreamed about? That was the timeline from Babylon all the way to the Second Coming. How do we know this? Because that's what God told Daniel it was. If you look at the visions Daniel had after that, it gives more and more detail as to what kingdoms came next and some defining things that would happen in earth's history toward the end. Guess were we are now? In the toenails of the image. Right before the rock smashed the whole thing to smithereens. Totally. Like, dust. Nothing left to tell what it was.

So, if we are in the tippy toe nails of the image, what happens next? Details. Not just, Jesus comes, because that's obvious. To find out we have to do some searching because sometimes the answers aren't so obvious in the passage we are looking at. We have to go to Revelation because John was the one that was shown a prophecy about the book of Daniel being revealed. What John was shown in the book of Revelation is not a mystery. Duh! The name of the book means something that is revealed. It doesn't mean secrets, or mystery.

Check it out. Revelation 1:1. "The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him, to shew unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass; and he sent and signified it by his angel unto his servant John."  God doesn't keep secrets.

So if we want to understand the book of Daniel better we need to compare it to the book of Revelation.  One of the things I noticed first is that in the books of Daniel and Revelation, there are similar timelines mentioned. This helps us identify who the prophecy is talking about. In Daniel 7 there is a vision of 4 beasts, which represents kingdoms just as in the image of chapter 2. The fourth beast is a great and terrible beast that has 10 horns and tries to take over the world and change times and laws. This beast is just like the one in Revelation 13. If you notice in verse 7, he also tries to overtake the saints and in verse 8 causes all to worship him. Now, here is an interesting point. Both visions describe a certain number of time given to him to have power. Daniel calls it time, times and half a time. John calls it forty and two months. Look up time in the Bible and in prophecy, you will notice that there are several places where it uses time to signify a year. So, Daniel says it is 3 1/2 years. Which is the same as 42 months. Now, in prophecy a day equals a year, which means 3 1/2 years is 1260 days or 1260 years. There is a lot more to this part of the prophecy which I don't want to take the time to go into at the moment. My point is to show you that the beast in Daniel is the same one in Revelation, which means we can compare the two and see what that last beast of the prophecy is going to do before Jesus comes.

Moving on. From history we know that the kingdom that took over the world after Greece was the Roman Empire. During the time of Jesus, that was who was in power. In fact, from Jesus time all the way up until the late 1700's they were the superpower of the world. When pagan Rome fell, religious Rome took over. From the time of the early Christians until the Reformation after the Dark Ages, religious Rome persecuted those who sought to bring the truth as it is in the Bible to light, and many people were burned at the stake for their faith.

However, towards the close of the 1700's, something happened. Reformers had been spreading truth for years and many rulers were starting to see that Rome needed to be taken down a notch, so they did something about it. The pope was taken captive and for a time Rome was no longer a superpower.

But guess what? Someone else took over. Because we see in the image the feet of clay and of iron. The beast wasn't completely gone. He had left behind some parts of him. Mixed in with the clay of men, is the iron of the beast. The influence of the beast is still there. Look in the last half of Revelation 13, we see the same thing. There arose another beast who causes everyone to worship the first beast. He deceives everyone into making an image to the beast who had been taken down.

What happens when you make an image of something? That thing then has power over you in some way. It influences you. When you worship something, it becomes a part of you, thus giving life to that something.

Now, I want you to think about that. Where do we see Rome coming back to life? Climate change anyone? Rome wants you to think that is all it is about. But it's not. Health mandates, anyone? The Second beast wants you to think they are just interested in controlling your life, or just interested in taking care of your health. But it's not. LGBTQ++, anyone? Rome and the second beast both want you to think they just want equality for everyone, but it's not.

I could pick almost any 'social justice' issue, or any 'religious liberty' issue, or any other issue and it would be the same. People on both sides of these issues are being played. Big time. 'Cause guess what? It isn't about these issues. Yes, these issues are important to speak up about, to bring out the truth on them, because there are many hurting people and things that need to be dealt with on these problems in our world.

What is beast trying to do? Get everyone to worship the image to the beast. How do you do that? You pit everyone against each other, then you bring in the big guns to try to control the masses, and then the masses are now pitted against the big guns and they unite to bring order. Does that make sense? It made sense in my head.

Let me be clearer, if I can. What I see happening is the masses are divided on many issues. One example is abortion. Some believe it's wrong. Others are for people to have a choice, while still others don't think its wrong. So, all sides are pushing for bills, ban abortion, preserve choice, etc. So, the government issues mandates. The majority of people, even pro-lifers, have a problem with government mandating anything, because it removes peoples right to choose their own care. So what ends up happening is then the people demand the government change their laws. So, the government does eventually cave to the people.

Now to bring this back around to the worship of the image. We know that the issue is worship, it says it right there in chapter 13 of Revelation. The biggest thing that Rome is pushing for right now is Climate Change. Many in the US of A are jumping on the bandwagon with that. The pope says we need Sunday rest, keep the Sabbath, to help combat climate change, global warming, or whatever you want to call it. Many people are agreeing with this too.

OK, some will say you would never get the whole world to agree to that. Well, maybe not at first. But think of it this way. You get everyone to agree the world is falling apart, and you now have them united on that. You get them to agree we need to do something, and now they are united on that. Get them to agree to one day a week, to help the world, and it s short step to pick a day. What ends up happening is the government can't mandate it because the people will rebel, so it has to be the people pushing for it to be mandated. So much can play into this. I don't know exactly how it will work, but unfortunately, the Bible is clear, the beast is creating this image, and will cause everyone to worship it. The first beast will rise, and its already rising.

There is so much more to these prophecies but this has already gotten to be such a long blog post, that I'm going to stop now. Share your thoughts below, lets discuss this.

Know this, we are in the last few moments of earths history. Who's side have you chosen? Who are you going to listen to? The beast or God? There is no middle ground. And the only way to know who's side you are listening to is to be in the Word of God.

God bless.

Ramblings and perspective

So, its been awhile since I posted. What I've discovered is that most of Forks Over Knives recipes are really good. Some of them, I don't like because they either use ingredients that can be more difficult to get, or ingredients I prefer not to use. Also, some of them are like gourmet style recipes, which is ok, but I'm more of a simple recipe kind of person so while some of them are delicious, I may or may not make them again, because they are more complicated.

One thing I have decided now is instead of finishing all the recipes in the book, I'm going to change my focus a bit.

Since baby Victor was born, I've been having quite a bit of inflammation going on in my back and in my gallbladder area. It has improved a bunch in the last couple of months, mainly because I stopped eating dairy again, for the most part. And the last few weeks, I've been fighting a sinus infection/cold that is hanging on. I know that the reason is the higher amounts of sugar that has been in my diet more recently.

So here is what is going to happen. I'm going to change up my personal menu a bit, add some more exercise, and try doing some more videos to document some stuff. I kind of really want to do more blogging, quit being so lazy and do more with Youtube and health videos, but what ends up happening is I try to make it good or perfect or plan it all out and then it never actually gets done, because I procrastinate and put it off because I haven't got it right yet. Forget that! I'm just going to do it! I figured out how to edit videos some, so I'm just going to do some and put them up and see what happens. I see all these people with their viral youtube channels and I wonder how they do that?!

There is this one guy, for instance, who is hilarious and yet it seems he just talks and is doing random things. Another young man, he's inspiring to watch. I've been binge watching his channel trying to catch up. He is hiking the Pacific Crest Trail to lose weight. Hiking 3-10 miles a day and now over 500 miles in. He actually has someone who edits his videos for him, he sends them from his phone.

Technology these days makes it super easy to start your own media based  programs, whether it's exercise channels, or cooking shows, or comedy central type shows, or whatever you want to do really. And all you need is a phone or computer to do it with. Editing software can even be free. It's an amazing time to live in, though it can get out of balance with too much technology sometimes.

This is one thing we struggle with in our family. Keeping the balance I mean. It's easy to get distracted in the scheme of things from what's really important. Even my kids already struggle with this in their own way. One of the boys, in particular, doesn't like the internet, but realizes its a necessary evil for some things. And he does like to play certain games with his friends and brothers online, so since most of their friends don't live close by, we have tried to have certain times when we play games. It's hard, because its so easy to get sucked in, away from reality and real life.

The biggest thing for me is that we are so close to Jesus coming, and the times ahead of us are going to be really hard. Our goal is heaven with Jesus and our focus should be in having our hearts and minds prepared for that. Keeping the goal in mind, helps us not get distracted by the things of this world. How do we want to be found when the Master shows up? Are we going to be found playing games, distracted by the world? Or are we going to be found serving God, sharing His love and salvation message with others?

Keeping our priorities straight is so important. If we allow God to work in us and through us, we will be a blessing and be made fit for eternal life with Him. If we love the world more than God, He's not going to force Himself on us. We have a choice. What is yours going to be?

Love and thoughts from this rambling mind tonight. Hopefully a little more interesting than usual. Now, I'm going to go plan my next posts and videos so I can have some idea of what I'm going to spontaneously, not procrastinatingly, talk about. 😁