GREED, AVARICE AND
THE COMING DICTATORSHIP

ONE OUT OF EVERY FIVE WORKERS IN THE UNITED STATES IS NOW UNEMPLOYED OR UNDER-EMPLOYED

INTRODUCTION

Last month (July, 2003) the government released new jobless figures - figures which pegged the nation's OFFICIAL unemployment rate at 6.4 PERCENT (approximately one out of every sixteen workers). [NOTE: the rate recently fell two-tenths of one percent; but that's simply because a large number of workers gave up trying to find work.]

These figures, however, don't come close to divulging the real extent of unemployment or under-employment in America today. The fact is, for years now the actual unemployment rate in the United States has been PURPOSEFULLY understated by the government. This phenomenon - i.e., the circumstance of hiding the real rate of unemployment - has been occurring for some time now not only in the United States, but in Western Europe and elsewhere throughout the first tier of "client states" in America's New World Order System. It's done in different ways in different countries; but in the end, the result is the same: the true rate of unemployment is being persistently concealed from the public at large. [Please see our article, "Inside the American New World Order System."]

In the United States the unemployment figure is supposed to be based on a national survey of households. But in reality - after everything is said and done, and all the "mathematical models" (so-called) have been employed through which the survey numbers are supposedly "crunched" - the only people who are actually counted as "unemployed" are those who are drawing unemployment benefits. If a person has not found employment in the time allotted to him to draw these benefits, he is simply dropped from the unemployment rolls and counted as "no longer looking for work."

BUREAUCRATIC OBFUSCATION

What this generates is an open-ended condition of things where the number of people who enter the unemployment list is off-set by those who are exiting the list on the other end because their benefits have run out (usually after six months). It's a marvelous bit of bureaucratic obfuscation - a kind of "catch 22" in which the government can't lose. In addition, people who are seeking a job, and in the interim do volunteer work, are not counted; people who manage to scrape up occasional odd jobs are not counted, etc. It's all smoke and mirrors!

For example, in 1995 - eight years ago - the jobless rate for the country stood at 5.47 percent (7.18 million workers). But buried deep in the government report on employment for that year, and printed in fine print as caveats to it, data concerning the real picture could be found. For example, 4.4 percent of the population for that year had not been counted because they had just recently been dropped from the unemployment rolls because their unemployment benefits had run out (5.58 million workers - this is the "catch-22" we were talking about above). Another 2.5 percent of the population had been out of work for more than a year; they were no longer even being "tracked," and had been consigned to "bum" or "hobo" status by the government (about 3.27 million workers). An additional 2.3 percent of the population were working as unpaid volunteers; they wanted to be paid, but in the interim, they were "volunteering" their labor in the hope that they would eventually be put on "paid status;" paid or not, they were still counted as "employed" (about 3.01 million people). And finally, 3.4 percent of the population were part-time workers because they couldn't find full-time jobs (4.46 million workers).

What this translated out to for the year 1995 was a REAL jobless rate of 18.07 percent (23.5 million workers). [It should be noted that figuring the unemployment rate (i.e., the "official" rate of 5.47 percent for 1995) in this fashion and with these caveats has been a progressive phenomenon; each of these caveats has been added and "refined" as necessary over the years as the need arose to "tamp" down the official jobless rate while the real jobless rate for the country (i.e., 18.07 percent) was increasingly buried in the fine print of the report.]

THE REAL JOBLESS RATE

Assuming that these proportions remain the same for 2003, that means that today the REAL jobless rate for the country is 21.14 PERCENT. This means that ONE OUT OF EVERY FIVE workers in this country (not one out of every sixteen as the government contends) is UNEMPLOYED and / or under-employed. THIS IS APPROACHING THIRD-WORLD STATUS (or what used to be Third World status; in recent years, unemployment in the Third World has reached unimagined levels - in some countries, as high as eighty percent).

Unemployment and / or underemployment: this is the "stuff" from which the nightmares of the middle-class are fashioned - and it is happening now to one out of every five Americans. Think about that: one out of every five Americans! AND SOONER OR LATER, IT WILL PROBABLY HAPPEN TO YOU! Katherine Newman, a Ford Foundation Professor of Urban Studies at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University writes concerning this phenomenon:

"... people long accustomed to feeling secure and in control are finding themselves suddenly powerless and unable to direct their lives."

HIDING WHAT'S GOING
ON FROM ORDINARY PEOPLE

Now the question might fairly be asked, how is it that more people in the United States aren't aware of what's occurring. One of the reasons is that the corporate media is simply not reporting the true extent of joblessness. The truth of the matter is, the media in the United States has been "bought up" by the very people (i.e., the elites) who find it in their interest NOT to report what's happening - and honest reporting on the extent of unemployment in the United States is decidedly NOT in the interest of the American elites. [Please see our article, "The Corporate State and the Mass Media."]

Now this doesn't mean that the government has been practicing a policy of blatant government censorship insofar as joblessness is concerned in order to "cover" the elite's fanny here. Raw government censorship is not the elite's way in the United States - it's not the "American way!"

The fact is, it's not necessary for a plutocracy (government of the rich) to act in such an unsubtle fashion. All that's necessary for a plutocracy to do in order to silence its enemies is to buy up the press, fire the offending editors, install those who will "toe the Corporate Line" and subtly "shape the truth" to fit the corporate elite's world-view. And that's exactly what's happened in the United States over the last few decades: the press has been "bought up" and made to serve the corporate interests of America's ruling elite - and for those who wish to believe, for instance, that the only interest Westinghouse had in buying CBS and that General Electric had in buying NBC was to pursue the "public good," then I have some swamp land I would like to sell them in Florida.

The truth is, under the direction of its new masters in Corporate America - the American media has been "merged," and "partnered" among its various parts (i.e., print, television, radio, etc.) into keritzu-like arrangements which have resulted in the development of what amounts to a single media MONOLITH.

This is what government deregulation of the telecommunications industry has been all about: the development of "media harmony" and the presentation of "truth" which has been shaped to fit the interests of America's governing plutocracy. The fact is, today, whenever you watch television, whether from a local broadcasting station or via a cable or satellite dish; whenever you see a feature film in a theater or at home; whenever you listen to the radio; whenever you read a newspaper, book, or magazine - it is very likely that the information you are receiving comes from this MONOLITH. And be clear here, it's a MONOLITH dedicated to the interests of the corporate elite - and, again, IT IS NOT IN THE INTERESTS OF THE CORPORATE ELITE TO ADVERTISE THE TRUE JOBLESS RATE IN THE UNITED STATES.

In addition to all this, most employed Americans don't run across the unemployed in the course of their day-to-day lives. The iron discipline of today's real estate market makes it all but impossible for the unemployed to remain living in the world of the employed; high mortgage payments dictate that the unemployed will inevitably be driven from their homes to the "low rent" areas of the underclass, where they will sink into oblivion and effectively "be disappeared." [This is what happened to David Patterson (see below).]

AS IN THE OLD SOVIET UNION,
THE TRUTH DOES SEEP OUT

Nonetheless, news of what's occurring does seep out into the public consciousness from time to time like water from a leaky bucket - if not in the corporate news, then on the internet, in various leftist magazines, and in countless anecdotal ways. This is the way truth seeped out to the public at large in the old Soviet Union.

For example, there is probably not one person reading this article who doesn't have at least one friend or family member (and probably many more than that) that hasn't been "laid off" recently - and not only in "blue collar" neighborhoods, but in affluent, "white collar" neighborhoods as well. And what about all those families you know who no longer possess a "main breadwinner?" Everyone works two or more part-time jobs; they may still be able to afford the mortgage payments on their homes - but only at the cost of 60-hour workweeks at minimum or near minimum wage jobs with no benefits and no health insurance. Meanwhile, children are abandoned as virtual orphans at home. [We URGE you to read our article, "Making Men Cogs In A Machine."]

This is what's happening all over the country, and if you don't see what's happening, it's because you don't want to see what's happening. The truth is plain enough to see for those who want to look for it - despite the best efforts of the elites to hide what's going on.

HOWEVER, DON'T THINK - EVEN FOR A MOMENT - THAT THE INCREASING JOBLESSNESS IN THE UNITED STATES AND WESTERN EUROPE IS THE RESULT OF "BAD ECONOMIC PLANNING" ON THE PART OF THE GOVERNING ELITES. IT'S NOT. It's not the result of bad planning at all. IT'S PART OF THEIR PLAN to enrich themselves.

A PLANNED REALITY: GROWING RICH BY
IMPOVERISHING THE WORKERS OF THE WORLD

What the elites are doing is shipping the jobs of ordinary Americans overseas to people they can pay one-tenth the money they were paying to laborers in the United States AND POCKETING THE DIFFERENCE.

This is euphemistically called "raising the level of productivity" - and if that means impoverishing ordinary people in the United States and Western Europe, and reducing them to the gaunt and dreary levels of average people in America's client state populations, so be it. Moreover, when these new workers begin to demand higher wages, the elites pick up and "decamp" with their offices, factories and "assembly lines" to other countries where they can pay workers even less money (which is exactly what AT&T has done with many of its jobs in the United States: ship $60,000 a year jobs to India where they could pay workers there $12,000 a year; and then on to China where they pay workers in that poor country a paltry $2,000 a year).

And it is not just AT&T. On July 23, 2003 Bloomberg News reported that IBM is planning to move thousands of Jobs to India and China to "reduce costs," or - once again, to put it euphemistically - to "raise productivity." And GE is doing the same thing. This is all part of a burgeoning trend as U.S. companies have discovered that they can export jobs ranging from simple data entry positions to sophisticated software engineering work to India and elsewhere in Southeast Asia where they can save anywhere from 30% to 70% in labor costs, according to the New York Daily News. Jonathan Berr of Bloomberg calls this trend "UNSTOPPABLE." Think about that: "UNSTOPPABLE."

MAKING SYCOPHANTS OUT OF ORDINARY PEOPLE

What's that mean to you? IT MEANS THAT SOONER OR LATER YOU TOO WILL PROBABLY BE CAUGHT IN THIS VORTEX OF JOB LOSS - NO MATTER HOW SAFE YOU THINK YOUR JOB MIGHT BE NOW; THAT YOU TOO MIGHT BE SUCKED DOWN INTO THE "PIT," INTO THE ECONOMIC ABYSS OF THE UNEMPLOYED AND THE UNDERCLASS - NO MATTER HOW HARD YOU SQUIRM, AND NO MATTER HOW HARD YOU TRY TO PREVENT IT. Only the most abject "brown-nosers" and the most servile "fanny kissers" will be able to escape this pathology - a process that will transform all those who are caught up in it into nothing more than a class of slavish, groveling, fawning sycophants willing to do ANYTHING for the elites in order to keep their jobs. [Please see our article, "The American Empire and the New Global Elite;" please also see our article, "Working Conditions in the Third World."]

And the very real fact of the matter is, the development of such a class of sycophants and "fanny-kissers" is already well underway; it is made up of the thousands and thousands of families who are - even right now - just a few meals and a few paychecks away from the despair of BEGGING their employers and the government for help; those people who are right on the edge of the abyss NOW, and are prepared to do ANYTHING to stop themselves (and their families) from falling over the edge into it. It is a sinister process that is creating a dangerous, menacing class of people who see themselves TOTALLY at the mercy of the elites, and who [like the flunkies who surrounded Saddam Hussein (and even right now surround George Bush)] are willing to do ANYTHING in order to curry their (i.e., the elites') favor and eat from the scraps that are from time to time thrown to them from the dinner tables of the rich. As John Stanton explains,

"This is the trick that every ruling class throughout time has mastered. It is easy. Keep the masses on edge. Apply the hot poker ... (of job loss) to their base drives of greed, hunger, domination, control, competition and accumulation. It is great sport and makes for wonderful theater."

And what "theater" and what "sport" all this is to the rich! - to watch us grovel so fawningly at their feet; to watch us do things in their name they would never do themselves, not only those things that animalize us, but those things that debase the humanity of those who surround us. We are their clowns, their buffoons, their fools.

THE DOLANS AND THE BHONSLES

But that's okay for most of us - so long as we are not cast down into the ABYSS of the underclass - which is precisely what happened recently to Don Dolan and Indrajeet Bhonsle. As reporter Barbara Pinto describes it, today Bhonsle sits perched behind his computer screen in Bountiful, Utah taking orders for clothing and porch furniture for a national retailer, and Dolan is selling movie tickets at a Chicago-area cinema. Both Dolan and Bhonsle are case studies of what's happening to workers everywhere today in the United States (and for that matter, in Western Europe). Months ago, Dolan and Bhonsle earned high salaries in high-powered jobs. Now they are among the 4.6 million Americans considered underemployed. Many are middle-class workers who have seen their jobs disappear as the elites have shipped them overseas to workers who will do the same work that they did for a fraction of what they used to make, while they (i.e., the elites) pocket the difference. Now, just to survive, Dolan and Bhonsle are forced to take jobs that offer far less money than they were previously earning.

"Seventeen months ago I was making six figures," said Dolan wistfully. "Right now I am making $6.25 an hour, and that's after a quarter raise last month." Dolan's paycheck - $120 every two weeks - is barely enough to feed his family and put gas in the car. But the cinema job is the only work this 45-year-old father of four could find since he lost his job designing computer systems. Since then he has frantically searched for another full-time job in his field - to no avail. In his basement, Dolan scrolled through his list of the thousands of companies he's contacted looking for work. He has sent out 7,000 resumes so far. Not one of them has resulted in a job offer.

Bhonsle has a similar story. He has an M.B.A. and 20 years of experience in the import-export business. When he lost his job, he was forced to return to a position he held in college - taking catalog orders. Like so many of the underemployed, Bhonsle has not only lost his financial security, he has also lost his health insurance. His heart medication is now too expensive. "I cut my dosage to half of what I'm supposed to take," he says, "so I can take it for a longer time."

THE BAUMGARDNERS

And make no mistake about it, people like Bhonsle and Dolan are everywhere today. For example, take what happened recently when Doug and I were in Columbus, Ohio for a conference we were giving a few weeks ago. We had two unexpected guests at dinner the night before the conference. Our hosts, Ron and Christine Huffman, discovered them - a husband and wife - asking for food in the parking lot of a local supermarket. What was strange about them was that they appeared so very "middle-class." Both were well-spoken and obviously very well-educated.

At dinner that night we learned that the husband (Mr. Baumgardner) had been an employee of the state of Ohio for sixteen years. He was a main-frame computer operator who had lost his job three years ago when the state "outsourced" his work. Since then, he has not been able to find permanent employment. The best he has been able to find is "temporary work" paying minimum wage. The longest period he has been able to work is five months because after he works six months, he is eligible for unemployment benefits, and employers today will do just about anything to avoid paying these benefits.

The Baumgardners lost their home about a year ago, and since then they have been living in cheap motels (when he has work) and in their car (when he doesn't). There is supposed to be "help" for people like them, but for the most part, this help exists only "on paper" and in the fevered imaginations of those who don't really want to believe that things like this are actually happening. The fact is, there is no real help for people like the Baumgardners - thanks to Bush and his Republican Party cohorts and evangelical allies who think that people like the Dolans, the Bhonsles, and the Baumgardners don't really exist, or if they do exist, they are nothing more than lazy "ner-do-wells" who deserve to be poor.

Well, if you think that the Dolans, the Bhonsles, and the Baumgardners deserve to be poor, you had better watch out! This is what's happening EVERYWHERE today - and it soon may happen to YOU.

THE CRAZED PURSUIT OF WEALTH

There are those, of course, who say that by purposefully lowering the wages of consumers in the United States and Western Europe, the elites are killing the "goose that laid the golden egg" (i.e., they're "killing" off the consumers of their products). As a result, many people naively contend that this can't really be going on, because if it is, who will buy the products the elites are producing? The elites are too smart for that!

But to believe that the elites think in these terms is to give them too much credit. The plain fact of the matter is, the people who comprise the American elite are selfish, small-minded and amazingly petty individuals whose lives revolve around only one thing: the pursuit of wealth. Money-making and the accumulation of wealth have become the raison d'�re of life.

These people have no real sense of "right" and "wrong." "Right" to such people is simply that which advances their own selfish pecuniary ends; "wrong" is that which hinders them; these words possess no other meaning beyond this. Their loyalty is to themselves and to their personal enrichment, and hang all those who get in their way. Concerning such people - people like Bernie Ebbers of WorldCom, Kenneth Lay of Enron, Jack Welch of General Electric, etc. - the late Professor C. Wright Mills of Columbia University writes,

"The pursuit of the moneyed-life is ... (the elite's) commanding value, in relation to which the influence of other values has declined, so ... (that they have) easily become morally ruthless in its pursuit ..."

"(They have) narrowed the meaning of 'success' to big money and in these terms condemn financial failure as the chief vice, raising money to the plane of absolute value."

And the Bible is much harsher; it condemns such people as -

"... wells without water, clouds that are carried (about) with a tempest; to whom the mist of darkness is reserved for ever." (2 Pet. 2:17)

COMING TO GRIPS WITH THE
REAL CHARACTER OF THE ELITES

It is sometimes difficult for ordinary people to believe that there exist such people - people who are so past all feeling toward others, and so lacking in any kind of compassion that they would purposefully impoverish their fellow man in order to enrich themselves by a few extra dollars.

But, of course, they do exist, and these are PRECISELY the people who are responsible for the massive job loss that is occurring in North America and Western Europe. In this regard, Americans and Western Europeans make a big mistake in believing that the elites differentiate between ordinary people in the United States and Western Europe (on the one hand) and average people in India and China (on the other hand). They don't!

"WORKING PEOPLE" AS HUMAN CHATTEL

To the elites, people are people; they're nothing more than "commodities" to be used up and discarded; "throw-aways" to be worked to death and then cast off as human trash the way the German chemical firm I.G. Farben did to the Jews in Auschwitz-Birkenau; the way the British elites did to indigenous workers in India, Kenya, Malaysia, etc.; and the way the old Planter Aristocracy did to black slaves in the ante-bellum South. In the elites' frenzied and deranged pursuit of wealth, working people are no more valuable than the iron, tin, cotton and other raw materials they use to create the "things" they "buy and sell" on the world's exchanges and in the world's market places. THESE ARE THE PEOPLE - i.e., THE ELITES - THAT THE BIBLE SAYS "TRAFFICK" IN THE "SOULS OF MEN;" PEOPLE WHO TRADE IN -

"... gold, and silver, and precious stones, and of pearls, and fine linen, and purple, and silk, and scarlet ... and all manner of vessels of ivory, and all manner of vessels of most precious wood, and of brass, and iron, and marble,

"And cinnamon, and odours, and ointments, and frankincense, and wine, and oil, and fine flour, and wheat, and beasts, and sheep, and horses, and chariots, and SLAVES, AND SOULS OF MEN." (Rev. 18:12-13)

OUR CHRISTIAN LEADERS: PARTNERING WITH
THE ELITES TO "TRAFFICK IN THE SOULS OF MEN"

"Trafficking in the souls of men" - that's what the Bible says the elites are doing when they don't pay their workers a "living wage" - and Christians who side with the rich in this matter and join them in their headlong pursuit of wealth are risking perdition in doing so. That's what the Bible says:

"... they (i.e., Christians) that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts WHICH DROWN MEN IN DESTRUCTION AND PERDITION." (I Tim. 6:9)

Of course, you won't here that from most of today's leaders in the evangelical church - leaders like Bennie Hinn, John Hagee, D. James Kennedy, Creflo Dollar, Charles Stanley, etc.

"The blind leading the blind." (Matt. 15:14). Idiots - all of them! "Fanny kissers" to the rich; people (i.e., the rich) who are gnarled and twisted in mind and soul; people who are -

"... filled with ... covetousness ... deceit, malignity ... despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things ... implacable, unmerciful ..." (Rom. 1:29-31)

Why would Christians ally themselves with such people? But isn't that precisely what the leaders of the evangelical church have been doing in partnering with the country club patricians of the Republican Party? - conveniently forgetting what the Bible says about such alliances:

"Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness?

"And what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel?

"And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? ..." (2 Cor. 6:14-16)

You would have to say that they are blind - and money does that to people! It blinds them; and it has UTTERLY blinded the leaders of today's church to the malicious, dirty, miserable character of the "richy riches" who surround George Bush.

BLAMING THE POOR FOR THEIR OWN JOBLESSNESS

These are the kind of people (i.e., the "richy riches" of the Republican Party) who say that the expanding joblessness (or under-employment) one PLAINLY sees in this country isn't real, and who callously pass off the growing numbers of unemployed and / or under-employed as nothing more than "ner-do-wells" getting their "just desserts;" people who have lost their jobs because "they did something wrong;" "they didn't plan right;" "they didn't work hard enough," and so forth.

Wow! The cruelty of it all. It's as if stripping workers of their jobs isn't enough; now the elites brand those they have stripped of their jobs as "failures," and "bankrupts;" and eventually - once these workers have slid far enough down the ladder and out of sight - as "drug users," "potheads," "welfare moms," etc.; people who are poor because they DESERVE to be poor; because they have no "work ethic" and lack the requisite "good character" to be "successful."

THE STORY OF DAVID PATTERSON

Indeed, so "heavily" can this kind of opprobrium and censure begin to hang around the necks of the unemployed (and / or under-employed), that many of them can actually begin to believe it themselves. Professor Newman cites the example of David Patterson, a laid off corporate executive; and she uses Patterson as an example to show that "downward mobility" is no longer a phenomenon of "blue collar" workers, but it has now taken extensive hold in the "white collar" workforce as well. She writes:

"David Patterson was a PRACTICAL man. All his life - from his youth in a run-down working-class district of Philadelphia to his adulthood in the affluent suburbs of New York - he had made RATIONAL decisions about the future. David had a talent for music, but he studied business. He had a flare for advertising, but he pursued a job in the computer industry. He wore his rationality proudly. Having steered clear of personal indulgence, he had a lot to show for his efforts: a beautiful home, two luxury cars, a country club membership, a rewarding executive job, and a comfortable, stable family. The Philadelphia slums seemed a million miles away and a million years ago.

"When David's boss left frantic messages with the secretary, asking him to stay late one Friday afternoon, his stomach began to flutter ... When David saw the pained look on the boss's face, he knew his head had found its way to the chopping block ... He was given four weeks of severance pay, the use of the company telephone credit card, and a desk in a remote part of the building for the month. Despite these assurances, the credit card was canceled a week later, The company made good on the severance pay agreement, but David was made to feel increasingly uncomfortable about the desk. So he cleared out and went home.

"Wasting no time, he set to work on the want ads every morning. He called all his friends in the business to let them know he was looking, and he sent his resume out to the "headhunters" - the executive search firms that match openings to people. David was sure, in the beginning, that it wouldn't be long before a new position opened up. He had some savings put aside to cushion the family in the meanwhile. He was not worried.

"By the third month of looking, however, he was a bit nervous. Six fruitless months down the line he was in a full-fledged panic. Nothing was coming through. The message machine he had bought the day after losing his job was perpetually blank.

"After a while David stopped calling his friends, and they ceased trying to contact him. Having always been sociable people, David and Julia found it hard to cope with the isolation. But with no good news to share, they didn't really feel like seeing old acquaintances. FRIENDSHIPS IN THEIR SOCIAL CIRCLES REVOLVED AROUND OUTINGS TO FANCY RESTAURANTS, DANCES AT THE COUNTRY CLUB, AND THE OCCASIONAL BROADWAY SHOW OR SYMPHONY IN NEW YORK CITY. The Pattersons' budget simply could not sustain these luxuries anymore.

"For a time their friends were understanding, inviting them to dinner parties in their homes instead of excursions to places the Pattersons could not afford. But eventually the unspoken rules of reciprocity put an end to that. The Pattersons couldn't issue return invitations, and the potluck dinners of their youth were not a viable alternative.

"After nine months, David and his wife Julia were at a crossroads. Their savings eroded, they could not keep up the mortgage payments on their four-bedroom neocolonial house. Julia had gone back to work after a two-year hiatus, but her earnings were a fraction of what David's had been. His unemployment compensation together with her paycheck never amounted to more than 25 percent of the income they had had in the old days. The house, THEIR PRIDE AND JOY, and the repository of virtually all their savings, went up for sale. They reasoned that if the house sold, at least they could salvage some cash to support the family while David continued to look for a job. But their asking price was too high to attract many qualified buyers. Finally, it was sold for a song.

"Broke and distressed beyond imagining, THE FAMILY FOUND A SMALL APARTMENT IN A MODEST SECTION OF A NEARBY TOWN. David continued to look for an executive job, but (he continued to come up empty) ..."

David had now effectively "been DISAPPEARED." Out of sight, out of mind! - WHICH IS EXACTLY WHAT THE ELITES WANT TO HAPPEN TO THE UNEMPLOYED. And, again, one should remember that David Patterson's story here - like the stories of the Dolans, the Bhonsles, and the Baumgardners - is typical of a countless number of similar tragedies that are being "played out" in today's America; it illustrates the burgeoning catastrophe behind the unemployment statistics; not the official government statistics that indicate that this is happening to only one out of every sixteen workers in the country (that would be bad enough), but the REAL statistics that reveal that this is occurring to one out of every five workers - and not just blue collar workers anymore, but now growing numbers of high-paid executives as well.

But the nightmare doesn't end there with the descent of the Pattersons and others like them into isolation and oblivion! - THE "BLAME THE VICTIM" SYNDROME THAT THE ELITES HAVE SO ASSIDUOUSLY PROMOTED NOW KICKS IN. Newman continues:

"David and Julia were almost relieved by the ensuing isolation. It had been a strain to put on a calm countenance when, in fact, they felt that life was falling apart. At the same time, however, they interpreted the sounds of silence as abandonment ... Why doesn't anyone call me? WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME? WHAT HAVE I DONE WRONG? He would spend hours bent over his disk, rubbing his forehead ... EXAMINING HIS INNERMOST CHARACTER, WONDERING WHETHER THIS OR THAT PERSONALITY FLAW WAS HOLDING HIM BACK ..."

NOTE CAREFULLY THE SATANIC
PATHOLOGY THAT IS AT WORK HERE

Now note carefully the pathology that is at work here. Newman writes that "... friendship in their social circles revolved around outings to fancy restaurants, dances at the country club, and the occasional Broadway show or symphony ..."

In other words, their social life revolved around money and the things that money can buy - and while fancy restaurants, country clubs, and the theater might not be the fare of most middle class families, boats, SUVs, REI treks into the wilderness, skiing, etc. also require a good deal of money.

Strip people of their money, and you strip them of their friends and their social standing, and THAT ULTIMATELY LEADS TO ISOLATION - exactly what happened to the Pattersons.

Finally, as we just indicated, it leads to the question, "WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME?" Newman writes:

"America's Puritan heritage, as embodied in the work ethic, sustains a steadfast belief in the ability of individuals to control the circumstances of their lives.

"When life does not proceed according to plan, Americans tend to assume that the fault lies within. We are far more likely to 'blame the victim' than to assume that systemic economic conditions beyond the influence of any individual are responsible.

"This tendency is so pervasive that at times even the victims blame the victims, searching within to find the character flaw that has visited downward mobility upon them. EVEN THEY ASSUME THAT OCCUPATIONAL DISLOCATION IS SOMEHOW UNIQUELY THEIR PROBLEM ..."

IT IS PRECISELY HERE THAT THE EVANGELICAL
CHURCH BECOMES SO HELPFUL TO THE ELITES

IT IS PRECISELY HERE THAT THE EVANGELICAL CHURCH BECOMES SUCH A USEFUL TOOL IN THE HANDS OF THE ELITES: it helps to divert blame for what's happening from the elites, who are actually the ones really responsible for the joblessness, to the victims themselves.

THIS "BLAME THE VICTIM" MENTALITY OF AMERICANS IS EXACTLY THE KIND OF MENTALITY THE ELITES WANT (AND, INDEED, EVEN PAY) THE LEADERSHIP OF THE AMERICAN CHURCH TO FOSTER IN THE POPULATIONS THEY HAVE BEEN FLEECING - much in the same way people used to blame women who had been raped as much as they blamed the perpetrators of the rape themselves, and perhaps more so. [Please see our articles on this subject, "Capitalism and Christianity," and "The Deceitfulness of Riches and the Marxist Paradigm."]

GOD WANTS YOU TO BE RICH

The very real fact of the matter is, in church after church in America the message that is being preached is that if you are not successful financially, then IT'S YOUR FAULT! GOD WANTS YOU TO BE RICH! - AND IF YOU ARE NOT RICH, THE FAULT IS YOURS! Hence, joblessness is the fault of the jobless.

For Christians to say that this isn't EXACTLY the message that is being preached in today's churches in the United States is to expose themselves as liars, because this is PLAINLY what Kenneth Copeland, Kenneth Hagin, Creflo Dollar, C. Peter Wagner, Bennie Hinn, etc. preach OPENLY, and what D. James Kennedy, Charles Stanley and Jack Hayford preach SUBTLY and, like the SNAKES they are, with just the right amount of discretion and refinement. It's exactly this kind of haranguing of the poor by the rich and by the rich's lackey, the Religious Right, that makes it all but impossible for the unemployed and / or under-employed to salvage any sense of honor in a culture that measures success by the money one possesses and the occupation one holds. This is why the Lord called such people (i.e., the religious leaders of His day):

"... O generation of VIPERS, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come?" (Matt. 3:7)

And be clear, Jesus was talking here about the religious establishment of His day (the Pharisees, the Sadducees and the scribes), just as we are talking about the religious establishment of our day (e.g., Kenneth Copeland, Kenneth Hagin, Charles Stanley, D. James Kennedy, Bennie Hinn, Pat Robertson, Tim LaHaye, Paul Crouch, C. Peter Wagner, etc.).

SNAKES! POISONOUS VIPERS! - that's who these people are! - people who say they represent the Poor Carpenter of Nazareth here on earth [a Man Who said of Himself, "Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head" (Luke 9:58)], while they themselves live in palatial mansions. That's why they're called snakes (Matt. 3:7): Only someone as subtle and as cunning as a snake could pull that ruse off; people like the serpent (the devil) in Genesis 3:1:

"Now the SERPENT was more SUBTLE than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made ... (Gen. 3:1)

PIMPING THE CHURCH OUT
AS A WHORE TO THE ELITES

Serpents, snakes, poisonous vipers - that's who people like Tim LaHaye, Pat Robertson, John Hagee, Charles Stanley, C. Peter Wagner, D. James Kennedy, etc. are; people who have PIMPED the church out to the elites as a WHORE (Rev. 17:1-6) - a whore who rides the BEAST (i.e., the American New World Order System) and together with it CEASELESSLY SEARCHES OUT THE WORLD FOR WAYS OF MAKING MONEY IN ORDER TO MAKE MORE MONEY, AND STILL MORE MONEY. And in doing so this "BEAST" (i.e., the American New World Order System) and this "WHORE" (i.e., the church of C. Peter Wagner, Charles Stanley, John Hagee, etc.) trample under foot the poor and destitute of the world claiming all the while that they are doing service for God. These are the people about whom Jesus said,

"NOT EVERYONE THAT SAITH UNTO ME, LORD, LORD, SHALL ENTER THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.

"Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works?

"And then will I profess unto them, I NEVER KNEW YOU: DEPART FROM ME, ye that work iniquity." (Matt. 7:21-23) [Then what will the ostentatious mansions of John Hagee, Charles Stanley, Chuck Smith (who - while pretending to live in a modest home in Southern California, really resides in a huge hacienda-like mansion with the ultra-rich), Robert Schuller, D. James Kennedy, etc. mean to these reprobates? I don't imagine much on that day, when the Lord thunders at them. "Depart from me, ye that work iniquity, I never knew you."]

A WHORE; a PROSTITUTE; a HARLOT; a HOOKER - that's what this system of Christianity is; a hideous and repulsive system of belief that "programs" its members as sycophants, toadies and "fanny kissers" to the rich; a system of Christianity that HALLOWS THE HUMAN QUEST FOR PROSPERITY, AND SANCTIFIES GREED AS A MORAL IMPERATIVE. [Please see our articles, "The Elite, Money, and the End of Days," "Inside the American New World Order System," and "The Cedars: the House on 24th Street;" please also see Chapter 15 of the Antipas Papers: The Woman of Revelation 17."]

AN UNHOLY SYSTEM THAT CRUSHES THE
BONES OF THE POOR AND EATS THEIR FLESH

And what an evil, rapacious, bone-crushing, flesh-eating beast the church is riding! - a beast whose leaders, as British writer Chris Floyd puts it, are paid millions by corporations (e.g., Bechtel, Halliburton, Phillips, Exxon-Mobile, etc.) who are then given the fruits of aggressive wars launched by those same leaders (please see our article, "Making Merchandise out of the People of God: Selling the Upcoming War in Iraq").

In this "beast system" that the church has partnered with, a ruthless multimillionaire (i.e., George Bush) whose family has had DOCUMENTED ties with the Nazis (please see our article, "A Woman Rides the Beast") seizes power in the United States with the ENTHUSIASTIC support of the evangelical church despite losing the popular vote [You would think that conservative Jews would have taken note of the old "family ties" the Bush clan has with the Nazis; but they haven't (please see our article, "The Superman Theology of the International Christian Embassy's 'Feast of Tabernacles').]

He (i.e., once again, Bush) then proclaims - without shame or subterfuge - that he has the right not only to arrest and detain indefinitely any citizen of the United States, indeed, any citizen of the world, without any legal charges, but also to have them murdered by his secret services, on his sole authority, outside all judicial review or restraint.

A SYSTEM THAT INCREASINGLY RULES BY
RESORT TO TOTALITARIAN METHODOLOGIES

And make no mistake about it, men - and even children - have already been "disappeared" under this dreadful edict. And not only that, but some have even been killed by this order, AS THE PRESIDENT HIMSELF BOASTED IN A NATIONAL ADDRESS LAST JANUARY. Amazingly, however, as Floyd puts it,

"... this arouses no concern among the public - whose lives and liberty are now forfeit to the ruler's whim - no outcry in the media, no resistance from the opposition party. It's as if no one knows how to describe this EXTRAORDINARY situation - although in ages past, its name would be glaringly clear: "TYRANNY."

Floyd continues:

"Examples like these are now legion; they metastasize like an aggressive cancer of the blood, sending outcroppings of pestilent mutation to the farthest reaches of the body ... it seems we have no words left to convey the full measure of the extremist agenda now engulfing America."

And don't think - even for a moment - that the growing ruthlessness with which George Bush is governing has that much really to do with the "War on Terror."

The so-called "War on Terror" is nothing more than a shabby, rather pathetic excuse for the way the government is systematically replacing democratic institutions in this country with the ruthless institutions of a Police State - and not because the elites really fear the Saddam Husseins and the Osama bin Ladens of this world, BUT BECAUSE THEY FEAR THE WRATH OF THE POOR AND DISPOSSESSED OF THE EARTH, NOT ONLY IN AMERICA'S CLIENT-STATES, BUT HERE IN THIS COUNTRY AS WELL. After all, reducing ordinary Americans to penury by shipping their jobs overseas to Third World sweatshops in the mad pursuit of corporate profits is not a policy that has been calculated to win much popular approval in this country. [Please see our articles, "John Ashcroft, Theodore Olson, and the New National Security State," "Ashcroft: Making a List of Dissenters," and "The Birth of a Christian Police-State."]

"HOLLOWING-OUT" OUR DEMOCRATIC
INSTITUTIONS OF GOVERNMENT

Of course, all this (i.e., the creation of a "National Police State") must be done while preserving the facade of democracy; which means, in effect, that while the democratic institutions of the country are being "hollowed-out," the "look" of democracy must still be carefully preserved. Hence, as Sheldon Wolin writes in The Nation, the elites have created a "new reality" where -

"Representative institutions no longer represent voters. Instead, they have been short-circuited, steadily corrupted by an institutionalized system of bribery that renders them responsive to powerful interest groups whose constituencies are the major corporations and wealthiest Americans (the very people that evangelicals STUPIDLY and very, very NAIVELY call their "friends" - editor). The courts, in turn, when they are not increasingly handmaidens of corporate power, are consistently deferential to the claims of national security. Elections have become heavily subsidized non-events that typically attract at best merely half of an electorate whose information about foreign and domestic politics is filtered through corporate-dominated media. Citizens are manipulated into a nervous state by the media's reports of rampant crime (please see our article, "Cogs in a Machine") and terrorist networks, by thinly veiled threats of the Attorney General, and BY THEIR OWN FEARS OF UNEMPLOYMENT ..."

John Stanton agrees; he writes:

"Representative democracy was always an iffy proposition (in this country. Now it's a joke) ... It costs an average of $1 million to run for a House of Representative seat. It is roughly $5 million to run and keep a Senate seat (which means that only the rich or their 'flunkies' can hope to win 'public' office in the United States today) ... Toss in a couple of hundred million dollars for the U.S. Presidency AND IT BECOMES OBVIOUS THAT, FOR A MERE $2 BILLION, THE U.S. CONGRESS AND THE WHITE HOUSE CAN BE PURCHASED OUTRIGHT - something that is very doable for a man like Bill Gates of Microsoft. And in fact, that's just what corporations and the wealthy do. And these days, they boast outright about which representative or piece of legislation they own."

But that isn't all; Wolin continues:

"... but I want to go further and name the emergent political system 'inverted totalitarianism'. By inverted I mean that while the current system and its operatives share with Nazism the aspiration toward unlimited power and aggressive expansionism, their methods and actions seem upside down.

"For example, in Weimar Germany, before the Nazis took power, the 'streets' were dominated by totalitarian gangs of toughs, and whatever there was of democracy was confined to the government. In the United States, however, it is the streets where democracy is most alive - while the real danger lies with an increasingly unbridled government."

THE CORPORATE ELITES: TAKING
BACK THE STREETS FROM THE MASSES

That may be true for now; that is to say, that the only democracy one finds anymore is the democracy one finds in the streets - the place where the elites were stopped in the late 1960s and early 1970s when (1) the black Civil Rights Movement under Martin Luther King, (2) the unions, and (3) the Anti-War Movement led by Robert Kennedy converged to stop the war in Vietnam - a "convergence" which effectively threw a "monkey wrench" into the elites' plans for world domination thirty years ago. But both Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy are dead now - most likely killed off by elite-sponsored MK-Ultra "hits;" and the streets are increasingly being "taken back" from "the people" by the elites through the naked use of brute police power. [Please see our article, "Making Men Cogs In A Machine;" please also see our article on MK-Ultra, "MK-Ultra: The Search for the Manchurian Candidate; A Study of the Mindset Behind Today's New World Order;" finally, please see our article, "The WTO and the Masses" which deals with "democracy in action" on today's streets in both the United States and Western Europe.]

Now, with the imposition of Patriot I (and - coming soon - Patriot II), which essentially finishes off the "militarization" of the nation's police forces and merges them with the nation's intelligence assets and the U.S. military, "street democracy" as practiced by the Left in the late 1960s and early 1970s is probably a "thing of the past." Anis Shivani agrees. He writes,

"The most sweeping set of changes in American history has occurred in two short years, all our cherished freedoms annihilated beyond recognition ... SOME TIME AGO, STREET REVOLUTION MIGHT ACTUALLY HAVE STOPPED THE PROCESS UNDERWAY AT HEADLONG SPEED. BUT NOW IT'S TOO LATE EVEN FOR THAT. EVENTS HAVE LOST ALL CONNECTION WITH FACTS."

Most Christians, of course, abhor street protests, naively believing them to be instruments of the "godless" - and all the while disregarding the "inconvenient" truth that America was born out of such "street protests" (after all, that's what the so-called "Boston Tea Party" was all about). Moreover, these same Christians also seem to forget the fact that the "right of assembly" and the "right to petition the government" are enshrined in the U.S. Constitution; and, finally, they seem to ignore the fact that - contrary to what is conveyed in the so-called "mainline media" - most violence at such protests is violence initiated by the police (and I say that as a former member of the army's 515th Counter Intelligence Group).

CHRISTIANS: FAILING TO COME TO GRIPS WITH THE
TOTALITARIAN REVOLUTION NOW UNDERWAY IN THE COUNTRY

Shivani - a leftist like Wolin above, and no Christian - observes, almost as if he had read the Prophetic Scriptures concerning the "Beast System" of the "end of days:"

"Dissenters (as well as Christians - editor) have failed to come to terms with the ENORMITY of the TOTALITARIAN revolution underway in the U.S. Radicals, leftists, progressives, liberals have all chosen, for the most part, different forms of denial and escapism. But now the time is at hand to decide once and for all how our individual lives must change in response to the BEAST that has arisen in this country."

Shivani's comments drip with contempt for his friends in the Left. He believes that they have abrogated their responsibility to stand up against Bush; that they have "caved in" to fear; that they are following in the footsteps of the Left in Hitler's Germany when it failed to stand up against Hitler after he assumed power in 1933, and after Hitler used the Reichstag fire in Berlin (which he claimed was started by his socialist enemies) as an excuse to pass the so-called "Enabling Acts" which gave Hitler the right to rule by decree - just as Bush and his cohorts have used 9/11 to pass the Patriot Act and follow-on legislation which effectively enables Bush to "rule by decree" and imprison his enemies. Shivani warns:

"None of us can wait anymore, to see what will happen next, nor can any of us remain fence-straddlers ... There should be no more reason to be surprised at events scheduled to happen, if there ever was any justification for being caught unawares.

"The disbelief among all those who love this country is understandable, but it is time to move beyond it. WE CAN ONLY ESCAPE INTO OUR PRIVATE SELVES FOR SO LONG; this regime (meaning the Bush regime) is so brutal that sooner or later there will be a knock on everyone's door ... Not one out of the 300 million people in this country will be left alone. Nobody will escape this vise, this continent-wide dragnet. IF YOU'VE EVER THOUGHT OR SPOKEN OR WRITTEN OR DONE ANYTHING THAT ... (BUSH AND HIS CRONIES) MIGHT NOT FIND ACCEPTABLE, BE VERY AFRAID. Make plans now, to protect yourself. All the love and good feelings in the world won't be any good if you're chosen to be the target of ... (Bush and his cohorts).

"The government has been conducting an unprecedented campaign of psychological warfare against Americans. ONE UNDERSTANDABLE RESPONSE TO THIS BARRAGE OF TERROR IS TO BECOME NUMB, HIDE WITHIN OUR SHELLS. But this is a luxury that will not be afforded to us for long. Make plans yourself, pre-empt their plans for you, before it happens to you and it's too late."

Shivani continues, comparing what's happening today to what happened seventy years ago in Nazi Germany:

"... (People) tell us that unlike Nazi Germany, there are (so far) no trains to (death) camps, no (death) camps themselves, no mass arrests, no mass deportations." But, in fact, the lives of tens of millions of people - not whites, for the most part, so far - have been radically disrupted. All noncitizens, legally or illegally in this country, have been terrorized ... (that's about a tenth of the population, or thirty million people, right there) ... In fact, there are mass arrests and mass deportations (mainly of noncitizens), with the potential for rapid escalation (to American citizens)."

TIGHTENING THE VISE AROUND OUR THROATS

In this connection it should be noted that until Patriot I, it was commonly assumed that the protections of the U.S. Constitution extended to EVERYONE in the country - citizen and noncitizen alike. That EVERYONE in the country had a right to "due process" in a court of law; that no one could be "rounded up" at the whim of the government, etc. No more! Noncitizens have now been completely stripped of these rights. The question fairly begs to be asked, How much longer will it be before - one way or another - citizens are stripped of their rights too?

In fact, precedents are already being set which can eventually be used to declare citizens who dissent from government policy "Enemy Combatants" (even though they have never advocated any violence whatsoever), strip them of their citizenship, and imprison them indefinitely, or worse. This is precisely what has happened to Jose Padilla, an American citizen who - although he has never been charged with any wrong-doing - has been clapped into prison, and a military prison at that (Padilla is not a soldier), with no access to his friends and relatives, and no right to talk to a lawyer. Stop and think about that for a minute, and then contemplate the FACT THAT THIS SPECIFIC PRECEDENT HAS ALREADY BEEN ACCEPTED BY THE COURTS.

And, moreover, what is particularly alarming about the Bush administration's enthusiastic foray into "preventative detention" and arrest without charges is that it is right now - even as we speak - appointing judges at all levels of the federal judiciary who have little or no respect for such "niceties" as habeas corpus or the right to face one's accuser. Surely it can be said that if we have not yet crossed the line into fascism here, we are certainly preparing to do so. Certainly that's what the evidence indicates.

There are some, of course, who would say, So what? Most of the people who have been arrested so far are "lefties" or "rabid Islamic fundamentalists!" At any rate, they're not Christians; the faster we are rid of them, the better. But Jesus NEVER made such distinctions. NEVER! Instead, He said:

"... I say unto you, That ye RESIST NOT evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also." (Matt. 5:39)

And He continued by saying:

"For if ye love them which love you, what thank have ye? for sinners also love those that love them.

"And if ye do good to them which do good to you, what thank have ye? for sinners also do even the same.

"And if ye lend to them of whom ye hope to receive, what thank have ye? for sinners also lend to sinners, to receive as much again.

"But LOVE YOUR ENEMIES, and do good, and lend, hoping for nothing again; and your reward shall be great, and ye shall be the children of the Highest: for he is kind unto the unthankful and to the evil." (Luke 6:29, 32-35)

Besides, one should ask himself, when the killing finally begins - and it will - what makes one think that it will end with the Muslims and the atheists? What makes one think that it won't be expanded to encompass all the regime's foes? - Christian or otherwise? When the killing began in Germany, it didn't end until over 12 million people had been MURDERED (which would be the equivalent of killing off 60 million people in today's America). And don't think that Christian fanatics like John Hagee, Bennie Hinn, D. James Kennedy, Charles Stanley, Tim LaHaye, Pat Robertson, et. al. - armed with the pernicious doctrines that pertain to "Warfare Theology" and the belief that "God is on our side" ("Gott mit uns") - aren't capable of such a thing. They are! - and the Bible says that they are! It's for this precise reason that Jesus warned us:

"... take heed to yourselves: for they shall deliver you up to councils; and in the ... (churches) ye shall be beaten: and ye shall be brought before rulers and kings for my sake, for a testimony against them." (Mark 13:9)

And He went on to say:

"... (indeed), the time cometh, that whosoever KILLETH YOU WILL THINK THAT HE DOETH SERVICE FOR GOD." (John 16:2)

Come on now! - what's Christ talking about here? People being dragged before church councils? People being killed in the name of God? Very obviously, if we are talking about people being killed with the sanction of the church (cf. Mark 13:9), we are talking about Christians killing other Christians. Come on now! - isn't that PLAINLY what Christ is saying here? Of course it is! - SO WHEN PEOPLE LIKE BENNIE HINN AND PAUL CROUCH TALK ABOUT "MACHINE GUNNING" ALL THOSE WHO OPPOSE THEM AS THEY DID SEVERAL YEARS AGO ON NATIONAL TELEVISION (TBN), ONE SHOULD NOT BE SO QUICK TO DISMISS SUCH TALK AS MEANINGLESS JABBER. It's much more than that!

THAT'S RIDICULOUS

There are those who say that that's ridiculous. That can't happen here. But that's what they said in Germany. It had never happened there before either, and - as Dave Lindorff indicates in Counter Punch Magazine - it's worth pointing out that Hitler was not the monster of 1939 when he took power in 1933.

Indeed, when he took dictatorial power in Germany in the wake of the Reichstag fire in 1933, a traumatized nations saw him as a savior of the German government, which at the time was a parliamentary democracy. Even as he began ratcheting down the rights of the citizenry, and as his brownshirted minions and his Gestapo began oppressing certain unpopular minorities and political enemies on the Left, there were many, including many in the United States, who saw Hitler in a positive light. SO THE FACT THAT THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION IS NOT AT THIS POINT A FASCIST GOVERNMENT SHOULD NOT PRECLUDE OR DETER US FROM BEING ALARMED AT WHAT'S HAPPENING.

Still, there're no death camps here - at least not yet; no Nazi terror. At best there are only rumors of "camps" that are being built (indeed, rumors concerning the existence of these camps proliferate on the internet - with pictures), isolated incidents of citizens being arrested and "disappeared" - and for now, that may be all that's necessary. Indeed, these rumors alone are scaring people half to death - and so much so that writer Ted Rall has noted the fact that -

"People who have spoken out against Bush are (actually) talking exit strategy (now) - not Alec Baldwin style, just to make a point, but fleeing the U.S. in order to save their skins. 'Do you or your spouse have a European-born parent?' is a query making the rounds. (If you do, you can obtain dual nationality and a European Union passport that would allow you to work in any EU member nation.) Those whose lineage is 100 percent American are hoping that nations like Canada and France will admit American political refugees in the event of a Bushite clampdown."

And this kind of panicked thinking is occurring not only among the Left, but it is also having a chilling effect on those connected to Antipas. For instance, I cannot begin to tell you of the number of people I have met while on the road this year who are actually afraid of associating themselves too closely to Antipas - AND THEY ARE NOT KIDDING AROUND. They're scared! This, of course, is exactly what the elites want! Wolin writes:

"The aim of the Nazis was not so much to imprison people as it was to promote a certain type of shadowy fear - rumors of imprisonment and torture - that would aid in managing and manipulating the populace."

Shivani agrees; he writes:

"(Most of us) ... are not going to be on a train to a gas chamber anytime soon, that's true. But the Iranians and Middle Easterners who dutifully showed up to register with the INS in Los Angeles have had their lives radically disrupted."

And how was that? - many of them were arrested and deported after having received assurances that that would not occur, and despite the fact that the overwhelming number of them were in the country legally. And what happened to them was dutifully noted by the press! - and that was no accident either. The elites wanted this to get out. They're not trying to hide the lies that were told; the false assurances that were given. They want it published - PUBLISHED AS A WARNING TO EVERYONE! THIS COULD HAPPEN TO YOU IF YOU'RE NOT CAREFUL."

Shivani says that the aim of all this is to end dissent against the regime - and that's certainly the effect it is having on the Left and on the Democrats. Shivani continues:

"What's in store for the next couple of years? Surely NO Democrat will dare to call for the suspension of the Patriot Act or any part of Homeland Security."

And this is just the beginning. Shivani warns:

"In the next stage of the crackdown, borders will be shut down, people will not be allowed to leave, and emergency orders will let them coerce us into feeling completely naked and exposed ... And this is just the beginning. WE ARE ONLY ON THE CUSP OF A TOTAL TRANSFORMATION THAT HAS BARELY BEGUN TO BE IMPLEMENTED YET."

LAYING THE FOUNDATION FOR A FASCIST STATE

And Shivani isn't kidding around here. Take, for example, what George Bush's lackey - Attorney General John Ashcroft, supposedly an evangelical Christian and a "lay pastor" in the Assemblies of God - has been up to in the trial of Farouk Ali-Haimoud, Ahmed Hannan, Karim Koubriti, and Abdel-Ilah Elmardoudi, all immigrants from Morocco and Algeria. Elmardoudi and Koubriti were convicted on charges of "providing material support or resources to terrorists" and "conspiracy to engage in fraud." Elmardoudi faces up to 20 years in jail. Koubriti faces 10 years. Hannan was convicted of conspiracy involving document fraud. Ali-Haimoud was acquitted of all charges.

Now, I know, as I have indicated previously, that most Christians will say, So what! They're Muslims. That automatically makes them guilty.

But I reiterate, that's not only extremely superficial, it's wrong! - especially in view of the as yet unexplained mystery that surrounds the events of 9/11 (please see our articles, "The Events of September 11, 2001: What's Going On?," and "Lies and Deceit in the Service of the American New World Order System").

Moreover, guilty or not (and most likely they are NOT guilty), precedents are being set in the trial of these individuals that will eventually and ultimately be used against all the opponents of the American New World Order System - INCLUDING, NO DOUBT, THOSE OF US AT ANTIPAS. That's what happened in Hitler's Germany:

• Set the regime's "dogs" loose on the outcasts of society.
• Establish a precedent.
• Expand the precedent to all the regime's opponents.

THE PROCEDURE AS USED AGAINST THE DEFENDANTS

The defendants were charged under the conspiracy statute of the 1996 Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act. To prove conspiracy, the government needed only to show that at least two people agreed to commit a federal crime and that one of them carried out an "overt act" to further the agreement, EVEN IF THE ACT ITSELF WAS LEGAL AND EVEN IF NO CRIME WAS COMMITTED. [Under Patriot I and the proposed Patriot II, even the showing that "two people agreed to commit a crime" is not necessary.] Think about that! - "conspiracy" can be "proved" even if the act alleged to "prove" the conspiracy charge is LEGAL, and even if NO crime is committed. My heavens! Under the provisions of this act, ANYONE can be locked up.

The main "evidence" that the prosecution threw against the defendants were the words of a snitch who made a deal with the government for a reduced sentence on charges of credit-card fraud in return for testifying for the prosecution. An experienced defense attorney not connected with the case commented that ordinarily no prosecutor would go to trial with such weak evidence - and the fact that this trial still went forward points to the "tenor of the times." The lawyer said that it's not unusual for prosecutors to rely on snitch testimony, but usually such testimony is backed up by other testimony or evidence of actual illegal acts. In this case, there was none of that.

Given the lack of evidence, what the prosecution mainly relied on was the wide latitude given to them by the 1996 law to convict people on slim evidence - and the climate of fear and repression whipped up by the government since 9/11, where all Muslim, Arab, and South Asian immigrants are to be regarded with suspicion as potential "terrorists."

In the introduction to its indictment, the government purported to give some background on several Islamic movements and groups that "became part of the loose transnational network of radical Islamists" led by Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida. Aside from some uncollaborated claims by the snitch, the government made no serious attempt to actually link the defendants with the groups or movements mentioned in the indictment.

So why was this historical background (or at least the government's version of it) featured so prominently in the indictment? An insidious "logic" is being promoted: THERE ARE TRENDS IN ISLAM THAT ADVOCATE TERRORISM ... THE DEFENDANTS ARE MUSLIMS FROM ARAB COUNTRIES AND WERE HEARD SPEAKING ABOUT FUNDAMENTALIST FORCES ... SO, ACCORDING TO THE GOVERNMENT, THE DEFENDANTS MUST BE GUILTY.

Throughout the trial of Ali-Haimoud, Hannan, Koubriti, and Elmardoudi, the prosecution freely threw around the term "jihad." The indictment, for example, stated that the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan drew Islamic fundamentalist forces "who were encouraged to engage in jihad as an essential element of their religious duty."

But the prosecutors never mentioned a pertinent fact: It was the U.S. that backed and promoted the Islamic fundamentalist forces in Afghanistan, including bin Laden, in a war against the Soviet Union, at the time the U.S.'s main imperialist rival (please see our article, "Radical Islam" for a detailed account of the CIA's involvement in the creation and promotion of Islamic fundamentalism").

THINK ABOUT THE LOGIC OF ALL THIS; ESPECIALLY
AS IT MIGHT EVENTUALLY PERTAIN TO ANTIPAS

Now think about all this for a minute. Think about what this kind of logic may ultimately mean for us in Antipas, especially as the evangelical church is linked ever more tightly to Bush's American New World Order System: There are "trends" in the Left that advocate terrorism; these "trends" are "plainly" visible in the anti-WTO, anti-IMF, anti-World Bank, anti-New World Order System demonstrations that Antipas is known to have attended (one has only to visit their website to see pictures of them with the sign, "The Christian Right and the Business Right: An Alliance Made In Hell." [Of course, the fact that Antipas was at these demonstrations to preach the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ will never be mentioned - especially in view of the fact that mainline churches preach the Gospel ONLY in their own churches and only to their own "kind" - i.e., the already saved, utterly having forgotten the words of Jesus when He said, "... they that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick." (Matt. 9:12).]

No! - it's enough that they were at the demonstrations; it's enough that they are not "maintaining the unity" of the church in its attachment to Bush's American New World Order System; it's enough that leaders like Pat Robertson, Tim LaHaye, Charles Stanley, D. James Kennedy, and Jerry Falwell detest Antipas. That makes them guilty, fulfilling the words of Christ when He said,

"... they shall deliver you up to councils; and in the synagogues ye shall be beaten: and ye shall be brought before rulers and kings for my sake, for a testimony against them." (Mark 13:9)

Yes! - be assured, dear Christian, that will someday happen to all those of us at Antipas and those who have the courage to associate themselves with us. There is no way out for us! But life doesn't go on forever, and in this regard I am reminded of the words of Pete Seeger, whom I greatly admire, "Don't pity the poor sucker who has tried and failed; save your pity for those who have never even had the guts to try." I think that's apropos to all of us now. Paul the Apostle put it this way:

"For I know that this shall turn to my salvation through your prayer, and the supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ,

"According to my earnest expectation and my hope, that in nothing I shall be ashamed, but that with all boldness, as always, so now also Christ shall be magnified in my body, whether it be by life, or by death.

"FOR ME TO LIVE IS CHRIST, AND TO DIE IS GAIN." (Phil. 1:19-21)

THE IRRESISTIBLE LOGIC BEHIND WHAT'S HAPPENING

I know that all this "blows" the minds of many of you - especially those of you who have failed to come to grips with the fragile, transitory nature of life here on this earth. Our brothers and sisters in China, or in Uganda, or in Zambia, etc. are not shocked by these words: "For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain;" but for us, these words and attitudes are shocking. We're used to reading about these kinds of things in a book, or seeing them in a movie; the temptation here - as Shivani says - IS FOR US "ESCAPE INTO OUR PRIVATE SELVES," and "TO HIDE WITHIN OUR SHELLS." But none of that will do us any good. THIS IS FOR REAL - AND IT IS HAPPENING NOW!

The fact is, whether you want to believe the Bible with regard to what's occurring or not, or whether you want to escape into the mindless drivel of a Tim LaHaye novel, or the insane "Warfare Theology" that people like C. Peter Wagner and institutions like Fuller and Wheaton espouse, there is an IRRESISTIBLE historicity and logic connected to what's happening; and that is this: THE AMERICAN ELITES CAN NO LONGER CONTINUE TO RULE BY RESORT TO REAL DEMOCRATIC INSTITUTIONS. Their economic policies have become so onerous and oppressive insofar as average Americans are concerned, their greed so repulsive, their covetousness so disgusting, and their depravity so nauseous that no one in their right mind would willingly support them any longer.

Only evangelicals -- who probably are no longer in their right mind anyway as a result of the noxious poison they have been purposefully fed over the years by their leadership, a leadership that has "whored" the church out to the economic elites, and wickedly purveys a belief system that HALLOWS THE HUMAN QUEST FOR PROSPERITY AND SANCTIFIES GREED AS A MORAL IMPERATIVE -- are likely to stick by Bush and his elite cohorts.

And even here, as more and more evangelicals begin falling into the abyss of unemployment, the elites will have a difficult time. There's nothing like poverty to focus the mind on the inconsistencies of the elites - inconsistencies which reveal, for example, the morality of the elites to be the empty facade it really is. The emptiness behind the mask of elite morality has, of course, always been there, plain enough for most people to see - as, for example, when the same men (Tom DeLay, Newt Gingrich, Henry Hyde, etc.) that condemned Bill Clinton for his notorious affairs with Monica Lewinski et. al. were found out to be conducting equally notorious affairs themselves. All this to say nothing of the glaring inconsistency of Christian leaders like John Hagee, D. James Kennedy, Charles Stanley, Bennie Hinn, Paul Crouch, etc. living in luxury and opulence and pretending to represent the "Poor Carpenter of Nazareth" [once again, a Man Who said of Himself, "Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head" (Luke 9:58)], while all the time growing numbers of their parishioners drop into the abyss of the underclass.

DICTATORSHIP AND TYRANNY IS THE ONLY ANSWER TO SUCH INCONSISTENCIES AND THE KIND OF UNREST THESE INCONSISTENCIES GENERATE - NOT ONLY IN THE STATE, BUT IN THE CHURCH AS WELL. There's no real or rationale answer the elites and the leadership of the church can possibly give to these inconsistencies. After all, it doesn't take a "rocket scientist" to see the inconsistency between what the elites and the leadership of the church have to say about money, and what Jesus had to say:

"Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal:

"But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal ..." (Matt. 6:19-20)

That's certainly NOT what the leadership of today's church is purveying to its parishioners. And what do the elites and the leadership of the church do with verses like Matt. 19:23-24:

"... Verily I say unto you, That A RICH MAN SHALL HARDLY ENTER INTO THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN.

"And again I say unto you, IT IS EASIER FOR A CAMEL TO GO THROUGH THE EYE OF A NEEDLE, THAN FOR A RICH MAN TO ENTER INTO THE KINGDOM OF GOD." (Matt. 19:23-24) ?

And what about 1 Tim. 6:10:

"For the love of money is the root of ALL evil ..." (1 Tim. 6:10) ?

And how is possible for the elites and the leadership of the church to glorify and revel in their wealth in light of James 5:1:

"Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you." (James 5:1) ?

And when the elites and the leadership of the church tell their followers to take the rich as their example, what do they do with verses like James 2:6-7 that warn believers to beware of the rich:

"... Do not rich men oppress you, and draw you before the judgment seats?

"Do not they blaspheme that worthy name by the which ye are called?" (James 2:6-7) ?

The only answer to these inconsistencies is to see that no one arises to point them out - and that requires a great deal of BRUTALITY and SAVAGERY, the kind that only a cruel dictatorship can wield. And that's what both the state and the church are going to get: DICTATORSHIP.

The elites and the leadership of the church, of course, will NEVER admit that that's the direction they are taking both the state and the church. "Democracy" is what they are all about - but what the elites and the leadership of the church mean by "democracy," and what average people mean by it are two different things.

DEMOCRACY BY AND FOR THE ELITES: LIKE THE SO-CALLED DEMOCRACY THE ELITES PROMOTE IN THE THIRD WORLD

To the elites and the leadership of the church, "democracy" is a system of government best confined to those who know how to keep the "masses" (or, in the case of the church, the parishioners) in their "place" - the kind of "democracy" where, WHEN THE RULERS SPEAK, THE RULED LISTEN AND OBEY WITHOUT HESITATION. THIS IS THE ONLY KIND OF "DEMOCRACY" THAT WILL WORK ANY LONGER - AT LEAST INSOFAR AS THE ELITES AND THE LEADERSHIP OF THE CHURCH ARE CONCERNED.

THAT'S WHY THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION IS SO ASSIDUOUSLY BENT ON "HOLLOWING OUT" REAL DEMOCRACY TODAY; THAT'S WHY IT IS SO INTENT ON STRIPPING CITIZENS OF THEIR CIVIL RIGHTS; THAT'S WHY IT IS SO FIXATED ON ARROGATING TO ITSELF THE RIGHT TO JAIL DISSENTERS WITHOUT CHARGES, OF CONDUCTING WARRANTLESS SEARCHES, OF TAPPING PHONES, OF "DISAPPEARING" CITIZENS, ETC. THIS KIND OF BRUTALITY HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE SO-CALLED "WAR ON TERROR" AND EVERYTHING TO DO WITH PROTECTING THE ELITES FROM THE FURY OF THE "MOB."

AND THE SAME FOR THE CHURCH: THAT'S WHY ONE HEARS SO MUCH ABOUT THE NECESSITY OF THE SAINTS OF GOD BEING "COVERED" BY THEIR LEADERSHIP; THAT'S WHY ONE HEARS SO MANY SERMONS ABOUT "OBEDIENCE" - NOT NECESSARILY TO CHRIST, BUT TO THE LEADERSHIP OF THE CHURCH. THAT'S WHY ONE NEVER HEARS ABOUT THE LEADING OF THE HOLY SPIRIT IN ONE'S PERSONAL LIFE, AND WHY ONE NEVER HEARS VERSES LIKE MATT. 20:25-28 BEING PREACHED FROM THE PULPITS OF MEN LIKE JOHN HAGEE AND C. PETER WAGNER:

"But Jesus called them unto him, and said, Ye know that the princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them, and they that are great exercise authority upon them.

"BUT IT SHALL NOT BE SO AMONG YOU: but whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister;

"And whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant:

"Even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many." (Matt. 20:25-28) [We URGE you to read our article, "Body, Soul, and Spirit" in Chapter VIII in the Antipas Papers on the leading of the Holy Spirit in one's life.]

THE UNITED STATES IS NO LONGER
MERELY A NATION; IT IS A RELIGION

So intent are both the state and the church in the United States on creating a mutually reinforcing DICTATORSHIP, and so intertwined have both the state and the church become in this endeavor, that neither can survive without the other anymore. The state needs the church to give moral "covering" (i.e., legitimacy) to what it is doing (after all, it can no longer rely on the support of the people), and the church needs the money the state (and the elites) provide to feed its voracious appetite for material wealth.

And so obvious has all this become, that even unbelievers can see it - not only in this country, but abroad as well. It's PRECISELY for this reason that the Bible pictures the relationship between the two [i.e., between the state (i.e., George Bush's American New World Order System) and the church (i.e., the evangelical church of C. Peter Wagner, Tim LaHaye, Pat Robertson, etc.)] as a WOMAN (the church) riding a BEAST (the state). For example, George Monbiot of the British newspaper, The Guardian, writes:

"The United States is no longer just a nation. It is now a religion. Its soldiers have entered Iraq to liberate its people not only from their dictator, their oil and their sovereignty, but also from darkness. As George Bush told his troops on the day he announced victory: 'Wherever you go, you carry a message of hope - a message that is ancient and ever new. In the words of the prophet Isaiah, "To the captives, 'come out', and to those in darkness, 'be free'."

"SO AMERICAN SOLDIERS ARE NO LONGER MERELY TERRESTRIAL COMBATANTS; THEY HAVE BECOME MISSIONARIES. THEY ARE NO LONGER SIMPLY KILLING ENEMIES; THEY ARE CASTING OUT DEMONS ... LIKE ALL THOSE WHO SEND MISSIONARIES ABROAD, THE HIGH PRIESTS OF AMERICA CANNOT CONCEIVE THAT THE INFIDELS MIGHT RESIST THROUGH THEIR OWN FREE WILL; IF THEY RESIST, IF THEY REFUSE TO CONVERT, IT IS THE WORK OF THE DEVIL ... IT IS NOT JUST THAT THE AMERICANS ARE GOD'S CHOSEN PEOPLE; AMERICA ITSELF IS NOW PERCEIVED AS A DIVINE PROJECT ..."

"SO THOSE WHO QUESTION GEORGE BUSH ... ARE NO LONGER MERELY CRITICS; THEY ARE BLASPHEMERS ... (AND) THOSE FOREIGN STATES WHICH SEEK TO CHANGE THIS POLICY ARE WASTING THEIR TIME; YOU CAN NEGOTIATE WITH POLITICIANS; YOU CANNOT NEGOTIATE WITH PRIESTS. THE U.S. HAS A DIVINE MISSION, AS BUSH SUGGESTED IN JANUARY: 'TO DEFEND ... THE HOPES OF MANKIND', AND WOE BETIDE THOSE WHO HOPE FOR SOMETHING OTHER THAN THE AMERICAN WAY OF LIFE."

What a marvelous system (a woman riding a beast) the elites and the leadership of the church have devised for themselves. It's "ready-made" for the conquest of the world - both insofar as the American New World Order System is concerned and insofar as the church is concerned. Think about it! - a religion that justifies the rich in their wealth and excuses them in the miserable way they work the poor for wages calculated to just barely keep body and soul together, and a state that feeds the voracious appetite the leadership of the church has for material wealth.

BETTER BE CAREFUL;
THERE WILL BE A PRICE TO PAY

I know that it is a fearful thing to speak out against this system. I am well aware of what might happen to those who do. But there is an OBLIGATION that attaches itself to us as Christ's disciples; and that is: to testify to the world that this system of Christianity is NONE of Christ's. It has NOTHING to do with Him. If we fail to speak out with regard to this matter, we will surely live to the rue the day we failed to do so. I tell you the truth, I somberly warn you, it is a much more fearful thing to fall into the hands of God than it is to fall into the hands of man (Heb. 10:31). We must speak out!

The fact of the matter is, so terrible is the form of Christianity that is being purveyed by today's church to unbelievers that unbelievers can no longer see Christ because of the shadow the church casts over the Savior, obscuring Him from view. Unless we speak out against this church, the unbelievers will not see Christ. The truth is, the church is in far worse shape today than it was when Luther thundered out against it five centuries ago.

Of course, if we speak out against it, and the unholy union it has made with the state, we will be persecuted. But we should think it not a strange thing to be persecuted for Christ's sake. The fact is, Jesus said, indeed, He promised us, "In the world ye shall have tribulation," and if we don't have tribulation, we should have concern as to the veracity of our own Christianity. Jesus warns us:

"... ye shall be brought before governors and kings for my sake, for a testimony against them (the false religious leaders of our day) and the Gentiles.

"But when they deliver you up, take no thought how or what ye shall speak: for it shall be given you in that same hour what ye shall speak.

"For it is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father which speaketh in you.

And one must bear in mind here that those Christians who remain loyal to George Bush's American New World Order System will be PRECISELY those we spoke of earlier - that class of abject "brown-nosers" and sniveling "fanny-kissers" who are so terrified of the elites, so in dread of losing their jobs - and along with their jobs, their status and worldly possessions - that they are prepared to do ANYTHING in order to curry the favor of their elite masters, even to turning in their own fathers and mothers, their own sisters and brothers, and even their own children in order to "prove" their loyalty to the "system." Now that is "boot-licking" writ large. That's what the Bible is saying here:

"And the brother shall deliver up the brother to death, and the father the child: and the children shall rise up against their parents, and cause them to be put to death.

And Jesus goes on to say:

"And ye shall be hated of all men for my name's sake: but he that endureth to the end shall be saved.

"The disciple is not above his master, nor the servant above his lord.

"It is enough for the disciple that he be as his master, and the servant as his lord. If they have called the master of the house Beelzebub, how much more shall they call them of his household?

"Fear them not therefore: for there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; and hid, that shall not be known.

"What I tell you in darkness, that speak ye in light: and what ye hear in the ear, that preach ye upon the housetops.

"AND FEAR NOT THEM WHICH KILL THE BODY, BUT ARE NOT ABLE TO KILL THE SOUL: BUT RATHER FEAR HIM WHICH IS ABLE TO DESTROY BOTH SOUL AND BODY IN HELL. (Matt. 10:18-22, 24-28)

Listen, brothers and sisters in the Lord: I tell you the truth; I SOMBERLY warn you: Christians who participate in such a religion, who misuse the Scriptures for their own selfish ambitions and purposes, or - for one reason or another - turn a "blind eye" to what's happening will someday pay a heavy price. Life doesn't go on forever. There comes an end to it; and after that, the JUDGMENT. It's not without reason, therefore, that the Bible warns:

"Ye who turn judgment to wormwood, and leave off righteousness in the earth,

"WHO TREAD UPON THE POOR, and take from him burdens of wheat (i.e., his just wages) ...

"I know your manifold transgressions, and your mighty sins ... YOU TURN ASIDE THE POOR IN THE GATE FROM THEIR RIGHT (again, their wages). (Amos 5:7, 11-12)

"... I WILL COME TO YOU IN JUDGMENT, and I will be a swift witness AGAINST YOU WHO OPPRESS THE HIRELING (i.e., the laborer) IN HIS WAGES." (Mal. 3:5)

Once again, I caution you: whether you want to believe it or not, these verses apply every bit as much to those Christians who - while professing ignorance of the bargain their leaders have made with the rich of this world - attend these churches Sunday after Sunday and support them with their "tithes and offerings." If they don't know what's happening, it's because they have PURPOSEFULLY chosen not to know, and that PURPOSEFUL choice makes them as guilty as their leaders and the "captains of industry" that they have been "PIMPED" out to as WHORES.

The Bible says that "GOD WILL COME AGAINST YOU." Believe me when I say that that's nothing to trifle with: again, life doesn't go on forever, and after that, the Judgment! (Heb. 9:27)

GOD WILL GIVE YOU UP

Christians who are inclined to make light of all this - who treat cavalierly God's INTENSE, BURNING ANGER at this form of Christianity that seeks to "make merchandise" of the poor and destitute of this world would do well to take careful note of the proximity of Amos 5:7 and 11-12 to the warning in Scripture in Amos 5:21-23 - specifically, that GOD WILL GIVE THEM UP!

Concerning such people and their form of Christianity which is based not on SUBSTANCE, but on APPEARANCE, the Lord says:

"I HATE, I DESPISE your feast days, and ... your solemn assemblies.

"Though ye offer me burnt offerings and your meat offerings, I will not accept them: neither will I regard the peace offerings of your fat beasts.

"Take thou away from me the ... (music) of thy songs; for I will not hear the melody of thy viols. (Amos 5:21-23)

What's that say about the "worship services" and all the pious singing and accompanying "hand waving" (i.e., "lifting up of 'holy' hands") at John Hagee's church in San Antonio or Charles Stanley's church in Atlanta, Georgia? - or do you perhaps think that God is just fooling around here when He says that He hates this kind of hypocrisy? Or, more specifically, when He said:

"Ye HYPOCRITES, well did Esaias prophesy of you, saying,

"This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with their lips; but their heart is far from me." (Matt. 15:7-8) ?

FLEE AT ALL COSTS

Is that the condition of those Christians who surround you? Of the church to which you belong? - if so, then get away from them as fast as you can. Do NOT think - even for a moment - that you can help them. This is a condition of the heart. You cannot reason with people who have given themselves over to this condition of things. It's NOT the result of a momentary indiscretion. So deep is their corruption, and the corruption of the church to which they adhere, that the Bible offers you only one way out! It says,

"... COME OUT of her (i.e., this corrupted, compromised church) my people ... that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues." (Rev. 18:4)

Again, I somberly admonish you - no, not I, but the Lord - that if you refuse to take His advice here (Revelation 18:4), if you think to stay to change the minds of the people you are connected to and the Christian institutions you are associated with, YOU WILL BE THE PERSON THAT IS ULTIMATELY CHANGED, NOT THEM. And ANYONE who tells you differently is LYING to you. Their lies may be honey-soaked and sweet to the taste, but they will turn to bitterness someday in your belly.

God bless all of you!

S. R. Shearer,
Antipas Ministries

Finally, please take the time, if you haven't already, to read our article, "Coaxing Christians out of their Hiding Places." Also, please see our article, "The Jesus Revolution and the Search for Community and the Church-Life."