TBR News December 26, 2019

The Voice of the White House
Washington, D.C. December 26, 2019:“Working in the White House as a junior staffer is an interesting experience.
When I was younger, I worked as a summer-time job in a clinic for people who had moderate to severe mental problems and the current work closely, at times, echos the earlier one.
I am not an intimate of the President but I have encountered him from time to time and I daily see manifestations of his growing psychological problems.
He insults people, uses foul language, is frantic to see his name mentioned on main-line television and pays absolutely no attention to any advice from his staff that runs counter to his strange ideas.
He lies like a rug to everyone, eats like a hog, makes lewd remarks to female staffers and flies into rages if anyone dares to contradict him.
It is becoming more and more evident to even the least intelligent American voter that Trump is vicious, corrupt and amoral. He has stated often that even if he loses the
election in 2020, he will not leave the White House. I have news for Donald but this is not the place to discuss it.
Commentary for December 26:” As the popularity of drones for domestic surveillance grows in the United States, so do privacy concerns for citizens just going about their daily business. Designer Adam Harvey has come up with a line of anti-drone clothing that is much more stylish than an aluminum foil hat.
The anti-drone clothes include a hoodie, a scarf, and a burqa. They are made with a metalized fabric designed to thwart thermal imaging. They work by reflecting heat and masking the person underneath from the thermal eye of a drone. The designs may hide you from certain drone activities, but they would definitely make you noticeable to people out on the street.
The scarf and burqa are both inspired by traditional Muslim clothing designs. Harvey explains the choice, saying, “Conceptually, these garments align themselves with the rationale behind the traditional hijab and burqa: to act as ‘the veil which separates man or the world from God,’ replacing God with drone.”
The anti-drone garments are part of a larger line of clothing called Stealth Wear. These are called “New Designs for Countersurveillance.” The manufacturer states: “Collectively, Stealth Wear is a vision for fashion that addresses the rise of surveillance, the power of those who surveil, and the growing need to exert control over what we are slowly losing, our privacy.”
If drones get to be more commonplace in our communities, it’s not too much of a stretch to see this sort of fashion becoming more mainstream, much like RFID-blocking wallets and passport holders.”

The Table of Contents
• ‘Christianity Today’ again slams Trump, raises issue of ‘unconditional loyalty’
• Rudy Giuliani Turned NY’s Southern District Into a Spin Machine. His Legacy Is Coming Back to Haunt Him.
• Breakingviews – Buy now, pay later faces Juul-style backlash
• The Season of Evil
• What are the End Days? A study in deception

‘Christianity Today’ again slams Trump, raises issue of ‘unconditional loyalty’
December 23, 2019
by Heather Timmons
Reuters
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – ‘Christianity Today’, the magazine founded by the late Reverend Billy Graham, renewed its criticism of President Donald Trump in a new editorial that cited his “misuses of power” and asked fellow Christians to examine their loyalty to him, days after a controversial editorial that called for his impeachment.
The 130,000-circulation magazine, which has 4.3 million monthly website viewers, in its editorial last week cited Trump’s “profoundly immoral” conduct in office, drawing immediate criticism from Trump and dozens of evangelical leaders.
Evangelicals have been a bedrock of support for the Republican president, and the magazine noted in its new editorial, published Sunday, that Trump “has done a lot of good for causes we all care about.”
But the magazine’s president, Timothy Dalrymple, wrote in the editorial, headlined “The Flag in the Whirlwind,” that evangelicals’ embrace of Trump means being tied to his “rampant immorality, greed, and corruption; his divisiveness and race-baiting; his cruelty and hostility to immigrants and refugees.”
“With profound love and respect,” Dalrymple said, “we ask our brothers and sisters in Christ to consider whether they have given to Caesar what belongs only to God: their unconditional loyalty.”
The editorial praised the Trump administration’s judicial appointment, “advocacy of life, family, and religious liberty.” But it said, “It is one thing to praise his accomplishments; it is another to excuse and deny his obvious misuses of power.
Dalrymple pledged to open up a “serious discussion about how our activity as Christians shapes our activity as citizens” in 2020. He declined to be interviewed until after the Christmas holiday.
Evangelical Christians make up about 25% of the U.S. population. According to a Pew Research poll here from last January, 69% of white evangelicals approved of the job Trump is doing, compared with 48% of white mainline Protestants and 12% of black Protestants.
On Jan. 3, Trump will hold an “Evangelicals for Trump coalition launch” in Miami.
Graham’s son Franklin had slammed the original Christianity Today editorial and said his father knew, believed in and voted for Trump, an endorsement that other family members dispute here Dozens of evangelical leaders signed a letter criticizing the magazine’s impeachment call, and Trump said on Twitter he would stop reading the publication.
Christianity Today was founded in 1956, and its current impact in the evangelical community is limited, said Greg Carey, a New Testament professor at Lancaster Seminary in Pennsylvania. “Like other traditional media, their platform has fragmented, so I’m skeptical that they have the real punch to change a movement.”
Still, the way Trump and others have pushed back showed the outlet is being heard. “There are those who feel that a crack in that foundation (of evangelical support of Trump) is a threat” that needs to be patched, Carey said.
For evangelicals who have doubts about Trump’s conduct in office and the church’s embrace of the president, “having an institutional voice that has some respect gives them cover to voice their opinion,” Carey said.
Reporting by Heather Timmons; Editing by Leslie Adler and Cynthia Osterman

Rudy Giuliani Turned NY’s Southern District Into a Spin Machine. His Legacy Is Coming Back to Haunt Him.
October 22, 2019
by Johnny Dwyer
The Intercept
Rudy Giuliani secured a dubious distinction earlier this month when he became the second known ex-U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York to face investigation by his former office.
The news followed a succession of incriminating allegations against Giuliani. The sources of these leaks are not public, but the information behind them comes from the U.S. Attorney’s office, where Giuliani himself introduced the media leak as one of the most devastating tools in a prosecutor’s arsenal.
The fact that Giuliani — who has advocated a distinct brand of lawlessness as President Donald Trump’s TV lawyer — merits the attention of federal investigators only emphasizes the through-the-looking-glass quality of Attorney General William Barr’s Department of Justice. The only other Southern District U.S. Attorney to be implicated in a potential crime by his own office was Morton S. Robson, who was accused of receiving a bribe from Roy Cohn to drop a case. (The prosecutor was never charged and Cohn was acquitted.)
More recently, New York City’s most famous former mayor has provided the president legal advocacy that suggests a contempt for the laws he once enforced. There was the time he said that alleged campaign finance violations are “not a big crime” because “nobody got robbed. Nobody got killed.” Or when he confessed Trump’s role in a conspiracy that involved “funneling” $130,000 through a law firm to pay off Stormy Daniels, the porn star with whom Trump allegedly had an affair. Or the times he floated pardons for Michael Cohen and Paul Manafort.
Indeed, Giuliani’s entire post-government life has provided a case study in ethical adventurism, if not actual criminal conduct. Among the many clients for whom he did political consulting was Peruvian presidential candidate Keiko Fujimori, whose father, a previous Peruvian president, was convicted of ordering the extrajudicial execution of 15 people. Fujimori lost both her campaigns for the presidency; she was named in the Panama Papers as a client of Mossack Fonseca, the law firm at the center of the document leak, and accused of funding her political career through money laundering and bribes.
Giuliani also consulted for Aleksandar Vucic, a mayoral candidate in Belgrade, Serbia, who once served as the information minister to accused war criminal Slobodan Milosevic. Vucic eventually won the Serbian presidency and the Trump White House sent a delegation to attend his inauguration. Last year, Vucic’s political party opened an office on the site of Staro Sajmiste, a concentration and extermination camp run by the Nazis during their World War II occupation of Belgrade. (In 1989, a Holocaust survivor charged by Giuliani’s prosecutors was placed opposite a blackboard inside the U.S. Attorney’s office with the slogan “arbeit macht frei.” The man was acquitted, and the judge in the case did not find evidence of Giuliani’s involvement in what the suspect described as an effort to pressure him to cooperate with federal investigators.)
Giuliani’s post-government work eventually brought him into direct conflict with Southern District prosecutors when he represented Reza Zarrab, an Iranian-Turkish gold trader charged with evading U.S. sanctions. The case raised immediate diplomatic issues, with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan pressing both the Obama and Trump administrations to release Zarrab. Giuliani did not intend to appear for his client at trial, according to his co-counsel; his role was to pursue an outside resolution to the case. That ultimately involved Trump seeking to enlist then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to ask the Justice Department to drop charges against Zarrab, as Bloomberg first reported last week. To break that down: Giuliani sought help for a Turkish-backed client accused of violating Iranian sanctions from a president who has a one-word policy for dealing with Tehran: sanctions. In the end, Zarrab pleaded guilty. After Erdogan embarrassed Trump last week by attacking Kurdish-held northern Syria, the Southern District announced new charges against a Turkish state-owned bank connected to the gold trader.
But it was Giuliani’s work in Ukraine that crossed whatever invisible line had existed between the former U.S. attorney and federal investigators in the Southern District and placed him at the center of the House impeachment inquiry. The rapidly unspooling narrative connects Giuliani to efforts to dig up dirt on Hunter Biden, presidential candidate Joe Biden’s son, as well as, oust former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, a career diplomat. Yovanovitch testified before the House earlier this month that “individuals who have been named in the press as contacts of Mr. Giuliani may well have believed that their personal financial ambitions were stymied by our anti-corruption policy in Ukraine.”
She was presumably referring to Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, who were recently indicted on the very same charges that Giuliani once called “not a big crime”: campaign finance violations stemming from their alleged efforts to funnel foreign cash into U.S. campaign coffers. Giuliani acknowledged receiving $500,000 in payments from a company called Fraud Guarantee, where Parnas serves as CEO. Federal investigators have also subpoenaed former Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Texas, for information related to his involvement with Giuliani. Sessions reportedly received a campaign contribution from the Ukrainians and shortly after meeting the men, sent a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo calling for Yovanovitch to be removed from her post. Giuliani, for his part, defied a subpoena from House investigators working the impeachment inquiry.
The volume and speed of the revelations about Giuliani can be daunting to follow. Yet it is worth considering the source. In the Southern District, authorized releases of information on the target of a criminal investigation make for reliable plot points in high-profile cases. It is somewhat ironic that Giuliani now finds himself on the opposite end of such leaks. When he served as Manhattan’s top prosecutor, he changed the tight-lipped culture of the office to one that actively shapes the narrative surrounding investigations. He made such frequent use of fortuitous leaks that judges repeatedly admonished him for talking to the media. As U.S. attorney, Giuliani’s use of the media soured the environment to such an extent that the judge overseeing Giuliani’s final prosecution — of Bronx Democratic boss Stanley Friedman and others as part of a bribery and fraud scandal involving the Parking Violations Bureau — moved the trial to New Haven because of the publicity surrounding it. When former FBI Director James Comey worked under Giuliani as a junior prosecutor in the 1990s, he learned quickly that “the most dangerous place in New York is between Rudy and a microphone.”
Giuliani’s reliance on leaks didn’t stop when he left the Justice Department. In the days leading up to the 2016 election, he relied on leaks originating from the FBI that agents had discovered emails relevant to the Hillary Clinton investigation on Anthony Weiner’s laptop. Those leaks prompted an inquiry by the Justice Department inspector general.
But the leaks surrounding Giuliani’s conduct have so far prompted an incurious response. There is little discussion of their origins or what’s driving them. Former Southern District prosecutors have achieved something of regulatory capture on cable news, podcasts, and in print. Networks rely on these former civil servants to interpret each revelation emanating from their former office’s work in real time. These are some of the same pundits whose laudatory and uncritical appraisal of special counsel Robert Mueller’s capabilities as a federal prosecutor failed to probe the limits of his authority under Justice Department policy, his decision not to depose the president, or the shortcomings of his performance before Congress.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District now faces challenges to be seen as impartial. Many of the line prosecutors in the office served under Preet Bharara, who has emerged as a vocal critic of both Trump and Giuliani. And the office won a conviction against Michael Cohen, demonstrating that one way to adhere to Justice Department policy against charging a sitting president is by pursuing his attorney instead. The office recently filed — and lost — a motion to protect Trump’s tax returns from a state subpoena. Many Southern District alumni expressed outrage, saying that the decision to do so marked a fatal breach of the office’s storied independence. But if you read the fine print, you saw that no attorneys from the Southern District signed the filing.
Federal judges in the Southern District may not fare much better when it comes to being viewed as impartial with regard to Giuliani. When Comey briefly held Giuliani’s job as U.S. attorney, he found that “Rudy’s demeanor left a trail of resentment among the dozens of federal judges in Manhattan, many of whom had worked in that U.S. Attorney’s office.”
If the investigation into Giuliani does take on an outwardly political character, he may ultimately bear historical responsibility for politicizing the prosecutorial culture in the Southern District. The capstone of his tenure as a federal prosecutor was a targeted attack on corruption in the city’s Democratic machine, which many saw as the overture to his political career. Neither Giuliani nor the U.S. Attorney’s office responded to requests for comment.
Giuliani closed his final trial with an appeal to the jury that resonates today.
“The people who know best about what was going on inside a cesspool of corruption like this one are the people who were wallowing in it,” he said. “If you don’t get your evidence from them, it keeps going on and on and on, and this kind of corruption will never end.”

Breakingviews – Buy now, pay later faces Juul-style backlash
December 24, 2019
by Karen Kwok
Reuters
LONDON (Reuters Breakingviews) – Giving young shoppers easy credit to spend online doesn’t sound sensible. Yet a new craze called “buy now, pay later” (BNPL) is growing in popularity. The risk is a regulatory backlash like that which befell U.S. vaping heavyweight Juul.
BNPL acts like a credit card, but with even easier access. All an 18-year-old needs is a few details – as simple as a phone number and their name – to start deliveries without paying for the item upfront. Enthusiasts claim bespoke technology allows BNPL groups to do a “soft credit check” on consumers that then get a month to decide whether to actually buy the item, or return it. No fees or interest is charged before that. Klarna, a $5.5 billion Swedish startup bank backed by rapper Snoop Dogg, has 1 million active BNPL users in the UK, according to Citi. In the United States, it was the top trending shopping app on the Google Play store in October and the most downloaded app compared to direct competitors, exceeding rivals by more than 100,000 monthly downloads in September, Morgan Stanley data shows.
Everything free has a cost, though. Retailers like ASOS, which pays a fee to the BNPL providers who finance the free purchases, are popular among young shoppers. Easy credit provides scope to afford a dress just for a night out, before returning it. Marketing campaigns like Klarna’s “Shop like a Queen” indirectly encourage shoppers to buy more. The risk is younger users keep too many things and hurt their credit score if they miss a payment to Klarna, which provides finance in return for receiving interest. The danger for BNPL providers is increasing competition, and their technology being less smart than anticipated.
The sector is already facing a regulatory backlash in Australia, where the government is debating whether BNPL should be treated more like a bank loan for regulatory purposes. Share prices of Afterpay, which offers the service Down Under, fell 20% in October after UBS analysts cited regulatory risk as a concern. And, even though BNPL can on average increase each online order value by 30%, not all retailers are fans. UK clothing chain Next suggested in October that the form of purchase was dangerous.
As they expand in the United States, Klarna and peers could face a Juul-style backlash. The e-cigarette group started as a safer alternative to smoking, but now lawmakers are treating its popularity among teenagers as a menace. That could be what they wind up thinking about buy now, pay later.

The Season of Evil
by Gregory Douglas

Preface
This is in essence a work of fiction, but the usual disclaimers notwithstanding, many of the horrific incidents related herein are based entirely on factual occurrences.
None of the characters or the events in this telling are invented and at the same time, none are real. And certainly, none of the participants could be considered by any stretch of the imagination to be either noble, self-sacrificing, honest, pure of motive or in any way socially acceptable to anything other than a hungry crocodile, a professional politician or a tax collector.
In fact, the main characters are complex, very often unpleasant, destructive and occasionally, very entertaining.
To those who would say that the majority of humanity has nothing in common with the characters depicted herein, the response is that mirrors only depict the ugly, evil and deformed things that peer into them
There are no heroes here, only different shapes and degrees of villains and if there is a moral to this tale it might well be found in a sentence by Jonathan Swift, a brilliant and misanthropic Irish cleric who wrote in his ‘Gulliver’s Travels,”
“I cannot but conclude the bulk of your natives to be the most odious race of little pernicious vermin that Nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth.”
Swift was often unkind in his observations but certainly not inaccurate.

Frienze, Italy
July 2018-August 2019

Chapter 39

His name, as it came out during the exposition, was Marcel LeBec. He was thirty-eight, a native of Quebec and by profession, a watchmaker. This fact interested Chuck because he could always have Lars examine him on the subject. He was also an amateur gunsmith and a target shooter who had won a number of awards in Canada by putting holes in paper targets. He did not hunt animals, only people.
This anti-social habit had been of fairly recent origin and had begun following a badly botched robbery at a suburban Chicago jewelry store. Mr. LeBec was attempting to get together enough capital to open a clock shop and had fallen in with a friend from Canada who made his living robbing jewelry stores. The clock aficionado was not overly excited about an armed robbery but his friend assured him that he had done quite a number of these without any trouble.
Wearing ski masks, they invaded a small, elegant store in an expensive strip mall, only to find the owner objected to losing his stock and expressed his objections by suddenly pulling out a large revolver and firing it at the watch man. In a great burst of numbing sound, the other robber fired an entire magazine from his 9mm pistol into the owner and his wife who emerged from the back with a shotgun.
They had no time to steal anything and fled in disarray leaving bloody carnage and shattered glass behind them.
The apprentice robber had been so traumatized by the incident that he resolved to find other means of achieving his goal and quickly disassociated himself from his fellow countryman.
Unfortunately for him, his crime partner was apprehended robbing another store in the same neighborhood a week later. Charged with a double murder committed during the course of a felony, the man immediately implicated his friend in an effort to spread the blame and perhaps escape probable execution.
The man who headed the investigation was Inspector Connors, a man with a number of sides to his personality, none of them of much social merit.
When he questioned LeBec, he implied that he might be able to save him from certain death. Connors had discovered LeBec’s hobby and decided that he might make a very good assassin. He already had several others employed in the same business but these were men who simply walked up to a victim and blew holes in him. There were occasions when a long-range attack was much safer and LeBec was perfect for this role.
In the last three years, the Canadian clock mechanic had shot three people from long range and Connors, who had received considerable money from his patrons, gave the man the sum of ten thousand dollars a hit and kept the balance for himself.
He kept warning LeBec that he had the signed confession of the partner, enough he said, to guarantee a conviction and the death penalty.
LeBec may have been a highly skilled craftsman but he knew nothing at all about the law, especially American law.
He was a reluctant craftsman and when Connors asked him to knife a priest in an elevator, LeBec refused. Shooting a man at long range is one thing but actual physical contact with a victim was impossible for him.
He spoke quietly and with conviction, basically resigned to whatever fate awaited him. He explained to Chuck that he was afraid of Connors and that he had specific instructions to call the police official the moment he had finished with his latest victim. Connors had informed him that the hit was very important and that it was necessary for immediate confirmation.
Chuck learned that LeBec had been told to wait at the post office until he saw someone who looked like the picture of Lars that Connors had given him. Of Chuck there was no photograph but only a physical description and there was nothing at all about a woman.
LeBec said that Connors had discovered Lars through his employment in California and had been in touch with the mother. LeBec had never spoken with the redoubtable Mrs. Cobb and had no idea who she was or where she lived.
He was, in short, a professional brought in for a specific job and given only the information he would need to execute his assignment, an assignment that was now sitting across from him and actually smiling.
“”I hope you believe me, sir, because I am telling you the truth.”
He crossed himself.
“I do believe you. What, by the way, is my name?”
LeBec shrugged, raising his eyebrows as he did so.
“I have no idea at all, sir, none. I know your friend’s name and that is all.”
“Of course they wouldn’t tell you. My name is Cyril Rush. Is the name familiar to you?”
“No sir, not at all.”
“Charles Rush?”
“No sir, I’m sorry I don’t know that one either.”
“How about Arthur Rush? The newspaper man?”
“Oh, I think I have heard that one, somewhere. He owns newspapers and television stations?”
“Did. He’s dead. Charles Rush is his son and I am his grandson. To shorten things up a bit, this is all a question of money.”
“Isn’t it always?”
Chuck smiled at his assassin.
“Mr. LeBec, what do you know about evidence?”
“Sir?”
“Evidence necessary to convict in a criminal case?”
“No sir, I never was in trouble before. Never. I only know that Mr. Connors has my friend’s signed confession that says I was there when he shot those people.”
“Did your friend admit to shooting both of them by himself?”
“Yes but Mr. Connors said that if I was involved then I was also guilty.”
“Morally, perhaps, legally no. Mr. LeBec, when the police got you, did they find any evidence on you? Something stolen from the store?”
“No, we took nothing.”
“Did you leave anything behind, like a wallet with identification?”
“No, sir, nothing like that.”
“And most important, did you sign anything for Mr. Connors or anyone else in which you admitted guilt?”
“No sir. They wanted me to but I would not.”
Chuck leaned over and patted LeBec on his arm.
“You are positive your answers to me are correct? If you lie, only you will suffer.”
“No, sir, I swear what I just said was right.”
Chuck leaned back and watched the snow through the window.
“Is everything all right, sir?”
“Oh yes, Mr. LeBec. It’s fine. For you that is. You see, the unsubstantiated statements of a crime partner are not sufficient for conviction. If there is no evidence to place you at the scene and I assume that the cameras did not show your face, your partner’s statement is not in and of itself sufficient to get you charged. Mr. Connors would have a great deal of explaining to do, probably to Federal authorities, about why he kept you around when he had reason to believe you were culpable in a double murder. In short, he’s conned you into killing people for him. Any good criminal attorney could prevent that statement from being introduced in a court of law.”
LeBec stared at him.
“You are right?”
“LeBec, I thought I was wrong once in my life but I found out later that I was mistaken. He’s conned you and I have no doubt my filthy uncle has put him up to killing me so he can inherit the trust. This I know you don’t care about. What about yourself? If you don’t call Connors or if he finds out you and I had this talk, what then?”
“He will kill me for certain.”
“Of course, and I will not.”
LeBec crossed himself again.
“I thank you, sir. What are we to do?”
“Clever to say ‘we’ and we are certainly going to do something. Tell me, are you certain that Connors or anyone else does not know where this house is?”
“Oh positive. This woman said she did not know, so I was supposed to follow you if you came to the mailboxes. He does not know.”
Chuck stood up.
“Fine. If he doesn’t find me, he can’t find you. We have until this storm goes away and then until the roads are cleared before we have to do something. Very well. You were hired to kill me….”

(Continued)

This is also an e-book, available from Amazon:

What are the End Days? A study in deception
December 26, 2019
by Frederick Norris
‘Armageddon’ is actually purported to be a battle. According to Pentecostal interpretations, the Bible states that Armageddon will be a battle where God finally comes in and takes over the world and rules it the way it should have been ruled all along. After this vaguely-defined battle of Armageddon, Pentecostals firmly believe that there will follow 1000 years of peace and plenty which, according to their lore and legend, will be the sole lot of their sect and no other.
The actual scene of the fictional battle is referred to by Pentecostals as being clearly set forth in Revelation 16:14-16. It is not. The specific citation reads, in full:
• “14. For they are the spirits of devils, working miracles, which go forth unto the kings of the earth and of the whole world, to gather them to the battle of that great day of God Almighty.
• “15. Behold, I come as a thief. Blessed is he that watcheth, and keepeth his garments, lest he walk naked, and they see his shame.
• “16. And he gathered them together into a place called in the Hebrew tongue Armageddon.”
This sparse mention of Armageddon has given rise to the elaborate but entirely fictional legend of the Final Battle between the forces of good and evil. There is no mention in Revelations 16: 14-15 whatsoever of Parusia or the second coming of Jesus, the apocryphal Anti-Christ, the Rapture or the many other delightful inventions designed to bolster the Pentecostal elect and daunt their adversaries. These adversaries consist of all other branches of the Christian religion with especial emphasis placed on Jews and Catholics. The Pentecostals also loathe Muslims, Buddhists, agnostics, atheists, and an endless list of anyone and everyone whose views clash with theirs, such as scientists and any academic who views the evolutionary theories of Charles Darwin and Gregor Mendel as anything but tissues of lies.
The Antichrist
The Antichrist is described by Pentecostals as the “son of perdition” and the “beast”!
They claim that this interesting creature will have great charisma and speaking ability, “a mouth speaking great things”.
The Antichrist, they allege, will rise to power on a wave of world euphoria, as he temporarily saves the world from its desperate economic, military & political problems with a brilliant seven year plan for world peace, economic stability and religious freedom.
The Antichrist could well rise out of the current chaos in the former Soviet Union. The prophet Ezekiel names him as the ruler of “Magog”, a name that Biblical scholars agree denotes a country or region of peoples to the north of Israel. Many have interpreted this to mean modern day Russia. It could also be Turkey, Greece, Macedonia, Croatia, Hungary, Poland, perhaps one of the Baltic States or even the lewd and dissolute Socialist Sweden.
His power base will include the leading nations of Europe, whose leaders, the Bible says, will “give their power & strength unto the beast.”
The Bible even gives some clues about his personal characteristics. The prophet Daniel wrote that the Antichrist “does not regard the desire of women.” This could imply that he is either celibate or a homosexual. Daniel also tells us that he will have a “fierce countenance” or stern look, and will be “more stout than his fellows”–more proud and boastful.
Unfortunately, the so-called Book of Daniel was written during the reign of the Roman Emperor Nero, not many decades earlier as its proponents claim, and has been extensively modified by early Christian writers to predict the arrival of their personal Messiah, or Christ, on the Judean scene. The so-called “wonderful” prophetic statements put into the mouth of Daniel are absolutely and wondrously accurate…up to the reign of Nero and then fall as flat as a shaken soufflé afterwards
It is well known that Pentecostals loathe homosexuals, among many other groups not pleasing to them, and would like nothing better than to shove them into a bottomless pit filled with Catholics, rock and roll fans, teenaged mothers, Communists, gun control advocates, Tarot card readers, Christian Scientists, abortionists, Wayne Newton fans, Asians, Jews, African-Americans and Latino Surnamed Hispanics.
The seven year peace-pact (or covenant) that is engineered by the Antichrist is spoken of a number of times in the Bible, and may even have already been signed in secret. The historic peace agreement signed between Israel and the PLO at the White House on September 13, 1993, vividly illustrates how dramatically events in the Middle East are presently moving in this direction eager Pentecostals, awaiting their Celestial Omnibus, will inform anyone who is interested and a greater legion of those who are not.
Under the final terms of the fictional Covenant, Jerusalem will likely be declared an international city to which Judaism, Islam and Christianity will have equal rights. Scripture indicates that the Jews will be permitted to rebuild their Temple on Mt. Moriah, where they revive their ancient rituals of animal sacrifice.
According to modern prophecy the Antichrist will not only be a master of political intrigue, but also a military genius. Daniel describes several major wars that he fights during his 7-year reign, apparently against the U.S. and Israel, who will oppose him during the second half of his reign.
For awhile, most of the world is going to think the Antichrist is wonderful, as he will seem to have solved so many of the world’s problems. But, three-and-a-half years into his seven year reign he will break the covenant and invade Israel from the North.
At this time he will make Jerusalem his world capitol and outlaw all religions, except the worship of himself and his image. The Bible, according to the Pentecostals, says that the Antichrist will sit in the Jewish Temple exalting himself as God and demanding to be worshipped. If this passage, and many others of its kind, actually appears in the King James Version of the Bible, no one has ever been able to find it
It is at this time that the Antichrist imposes his infamous “666” one-world credit system.
It must be said that the Antichrist does, in point of fact exist. He can be seen on a daily basis on the walls of the Cathedral at Orvieto, Italy in the marvelous frescos of Lucca Signorelli. He looks somewhat like a Byzantine depiction of Christ with either a vicious wife or inflamed hemorrhoids .
Pentecostals strongly believe that U.S. public schools “departed from the faith” when in 1963 the Bible and prayer were officially banned. Now, Pentecostals believe with horror, thousands of these same schools are teaching credited courses in “the doctrines of devils”–the occult and Satanism.
Even a cursory check of curriculum of a number of American public school districts does not support this claim but then the Pentecostals have stated repeatedly that they represent 45% of all Protestants in America. The actual number, excluding the Baptists, is more like 4%.
What they lack in actual numbers they more than compensate for by their loud and irrational views so that at times it sounds like the roar of a great multitude when in truth, it is only a small dwarf wearing stained underwear and armed with a bullhorn, trumpeting in the underbrush
Frantic Pentecostals estimated that according to their private Census for Christ there are over 200,000 practicing witches in the United States and allege there are literally millions of Americans who dabble in some form of the occult, psychic phenomena, spiritualism, demonology and black magic. Their statistics claim that occult book sales have doubled in the last four years.
What is seen by terrified Pentecostals as The Occult today is no longer the stuff of small underground cults. They believe that many rock videos are an open worship of Satan and hell that comes complete with the symbols, liturgies, and rituals of Satanism, and the Pentecostals firmly and loudly proclaim to anyone interested in listening, that “millions of young people” have been caught in their evil sway.
Popular music is termed “sounds of horror and torment” that Pentecostals firmly believe is literally “driving young people insane and seducing them into a life of drugs, suicide, perversion and hell.” It is forgotten now but the same thing was once said about ragtime and later, jazz. If this had been true, perhaps the real reason behind the First World War, the 1929 market crash, the rise of Franklin Roosevelt and the lewd hula hoop can be attributed to Scott Joplin and Ella Fitzgerald.
It is also to be noted that the immensely popular Harry Potter series of children’s books are loudly proclaimed as Satanic books designed to lure unsuspecting children into the clutches of the Evil One. Any sane person who has read these delightful fantasy books will certainly not agree with these hysterical strictures. In point of fact, it would be exceedingly difficult to locate any person possessing even a modicum of sanity who would believe any of the weird fulminations of the Pentecostals.
Outraged Pentecostals now firmly state that in the beginning years of the Twenty First Century, “even the most shameless acts of blasphemy and desecration are socially acceptable.”
“Acts of blasphemy and desecration” sound like human sacrifices carried out on nuns at bus stops during the noontime rush hour or lewd acts with crucifixes performed by drug-maddened transvestites on commercial airlines.
In his weird Book of Revelation the lunatic John of Patmos claimed he foresaw that in the last days the world would turn away from God in order to worship and follow Satan.
Such a prophecy would have seemed believable to previous generations, but not so in our more enlightened and secular humanist day. Hard-core Satanism has been called by rabid Pentecostals noise-makers as: “the fastest-growing subculture among America’s teens”, and the revival of witchcraft & the occult is “one of the World’s fastest growing religions!”

It is near; it is at hand. Maybe tomorrow but probably never
A compendium of endless predictions of the Second Coming based on period documents

An untold number of people have tried to predict the return of Jesus by using elaborate timetables. Most date setters do not realize that mankind has not kept an unwavering record of time. Anyone wanting to chart, for example, 100 BC to 2000 AD, would have to contend with the fact that 46 BC was 445 days long, there was no year 0 BC, and in 1582 we switched from Julian Years (360 days) to Gregorian (365 days). Because most prognosticators are not aware of all of these errors, their math is immediately off by at least several years if not decades.
The return of Jesus Christ for His Church will easily be the most important event in Pentecostal fictive history and long before the Pentecostal sect evolved in 1900, empty-headed religious zealots, banging on their empty drums, have been predicting the Second Coming. Herewith we present a brief compendium of the more entertaining prophesies for the entertainment of the reader.
53 AD
Even before all the books of the New Testament were invented, there was talk that Christ’s Return had already taken place. The Thessalonians panicked when they heard a rumor that the day of the Lord was at hand, and they had missed the event..
500
A Roman priest living in the second century predicted Christ would return in 500 AD, based on the dimensions of Noah’s ark. Someone must have used a bad ruler because Jesus did not appear in 500 AD
1000
.All credulous members of what passed for normal society seemed affected by the prediction that Jesus was coming back at the start of the new millennium. The magic of the number 1000 was the sole reason for the expectation. During concluding months of 999 AD, everyone was on his best behavior; worldly goods were sold and given to the poor; swarms of pilgrims headed east to meet the Lord at Jerusalem; buildings went unrepaired; crops were left unplanted; and criminals were set free from jails. When the year 999 AD turned into 1000 AD, nothing happened. Many citizens of the world who had given their property away, but certainly not those who accepted it, were stunned but eventually hopeful that the event would be postponed until 1001. Nothing happened then, either.
1033
This year was cited as the beginning of the millennium because it marked 1,000 years since Christ’s alleged crucifixion.
1186
The “Letter of Toledo” warned everyone to hide in the caves and mountains. The world was reportedly to be destroyed with only a few spared, including the letter writer. It was not.
1420
The Taborites of Czechoslovakia predicted every city in the known world would be annihilated by fire. Only the five mountain strongholds they occupied would be saved from the Celestial Barbeque. This did not happen
1524-1526
Muntzer, a leader of German peasants, announced that the return of Christ was near. After Muntzer and his men destroyed the high and mighty, the Lord would supposedly return. This belief led to an uneven battle against government troops. He was strategically outnumbered. Muntzer claimed to have had a vision from God in which the Lord promised that He would catch the cannonballs of the enemy in the sleeves of His cloak. The prediction within the vision turned out to be false when Muntzer and his followers were mowed down by cannon fire. If one believes their stories, the disintegrated had the pleasure of going to heaven in a number of pieces which God Himself would lovingly sort out just like pious Jewish religious ambulance workers reassembling those fragmented in a Jerusalem bus attack.
1534
A repeat of the Muntzer affair occurred a few years later. This time, one greatly deluded by apparently very forceful, Jan Matthys took over the city of Münster in Germany. The city was to be the only one spared from Divine destruction. The inhabitants of Münster, evicted by Matthys and his men, regrouped and laid siege to the city. Within a year, every one of the strange occupiers in the city was dead. They also had an express ticket to Heaven.
1650-1660
In an England beset by religious fanatics, the Fifth Monarchy Men beseeched Jesus to establish a theocracy. They took up arms and tried to seize England by force. The movement, and most of the senior leaders of it, died when the British monarchy was restored in 1660. Jesus apparently was not listening or was otherwise engaged. Heads rolled, quite literally, as England finally escaped from the unwanted attention of dim-witted fanatics.
1809
Mary Bateman, who specialized in fortune telling, had a magic chicken that laid eggs with end-time messages on them. One message said that Christ was coming. The uproar she created ended when an unannounced visitor caught her forcing an egg into the hen’s oviduct. Mary later was hanged for poisoning a wealthy client. History does not record whether the offended and sodomized chicken attended the hanging.
1814
Spiritualist Joanna Southcott made the startling claim that she, by virgin birth, would produce the second Jesus Christ. Her abdomen began to swell and so did the crowds of people around her. This gathering is similar to certain primitive ethnic groups who see visions of the Virgin Mary on refrigerator doors or reflected on rooming house walls. The time for the birth came and passed with no Jesus appearing. As for the miraculous Southcott, she died soon after. An autopsy revealed she had experienced a false pregnancy. Her followers blamed the Antichrist for this.
1836
John Wesley wrote that “the time, times and half a time” of Revelation 12:14 were 1058¬1836, “when Christ should come” John Wesley was wrong in this matter as well as a number of other items of religious thought he preached.
1843-1844
William Miller was the founder of an end-times movement that was so prominent it received its own name, Millerism. From his studies of the Bible, Miller determined that the second coming would happen sometime between 1843-1844. A spectacular meteor shower in 1833 gave the movement excellent momentum. The buildup of anticipation continued until March 21, 1844, when Miller’s one-year timetable ran out. Some followers set another date–Oct 22, 1844. This too failed, collapsing the movement. One follower described the days after the failed predictions: “The world made merry over the old Prophet’s predicament. The taunts and jeers of the ‘scoffers’ were well-nigh unbearable.” People in general do not suffer fools gladly.
1859
Rev. Thomas Parker, a Massachusetts minister, looked for the millennium to start about 1859. It did not. Parker subsequently was placed in a lunatic asylum when discovered running, buck naked, down the street in Bainbridge, screeching that Jesus was right behind him. What were behind the Reverend Parker were local bailiffs with nets.
1910
The revisit of Halley’s comet to the earth’s bemused vision was, for many, an indication of Jesus’ Second Coming. The earth actually passed through the gaseous tail of the comet. One enterprising man sold comet pills to people for protection against the effects of the toxic gases. Toxic gasses, mostly vocal methane, from frantic Fundamentalists did not need pills. It might have been better if the predictors had used Thorazine tranquilizer pills but as they had not yet been invented, this is a moot point.
1914
Charles Russell, after being exposed to the lunatic babblings of William Miller, founded his own organization that evolved into the Jehovah’s Witnesses. In 1914, Russell predicted the return of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ was not listening and did not appear in 1914.
1918
In 1918, new studies assisted Russell from extending his predictions to that year. Jesus Christ, or His travel agent, did not oblige.
1925
The Witnesses had no better luck in 1925. They already possessed the title of “Most Wrong Predictions.” They would expand upon it with great zeal and no sense whatsoever in the years to come.
1967
When the city of Jerusalem was captured from the Arab inhabitants by the Jews in 1967, prophecy watchers declared that the “Time of the Gentiles” had come to an end.
1970
The ‘True Light Church of Christ’ made its claim to fame by incorrectly forecasting the return of Jesus. A number of church members had quit their livelihoods ahead of the promised advent. In earlier time, such deluded creatures gave their property away to their gleeful, non-believing neighbors, donned white nightgowns and stood up on hilltops, waiting for the Celestial Elevator. It never came for them but pneumonia did.
1973
A comet that turned out to be a visual disappointment nonetheless compelled one preacher to announce that it would be a sign of the Lord’s return. It was not.
1975
The Jehovah’s Witnesses were back at it again with commendable zeal in 1975. The failure of the latest forecast did not affect the growth of the movement. The Watchtower magazine, a major Witness periodical, had over 13 million subscribers. Many of them actually are able to read, albeit very slowly, but the majority love the large pictures. However, over 40 millions have read the Left Behind books or, as they have irreverently been termed, the My Left Behind books.
1981
One author boldly declared that the rapture would occur before December 31, 1981, based on Christian prophecy, astronomy, and a dash of ecological fatalism. He pegged the date to Jesus’ promised return to earth a generation after Israel’s rebirth. He also made references to the “Jupiter Effect,” a planetary alignment occurring every 179 years that supposedly could lead to earthquakes and nuclear plant meltdowns. Also, there were saintly rumors of the Lost Continent of Atlantis suddenly emerging from the depths of Lake Baikal in Russia, or according to other enlightened cretins, Lake Michigan, New York Harbor, the Mississippi River just off of New Orleans or the main public reservoir of Phoenix, Arizona. There was no rapture and Atlantis never surfaced.
1982
The lunatic fringe was at it again in 1982 when they loudly proclaimed that the world as we all knew it was going to end in 1982, when the planets lined up and created magnetic forces that would bring “Armageddon” to the earth. Astrologers and religious predictors joined forces here and when nothing happened, all of them went back to the Ouija boards. Armageddon is, of course, pure fiction and is not found in the Bible, even in the weird rantings of the lunatic John of Patmos.
1982
A group called the Tara Centers placed full-page advertisements in many major newspapers for the weekend of April 24-25, 1982, announcing: “The Christ is Now Here!” They predicted that He was to make himself known “within the next two months.” After the date passed, they said that the delay was only because the “consciousness of the human race was not quite right…” Obviously, this same statement can easily apply to the mental stability of the Tara Center people. Unfounded rumor had it that Jesus in fact did arrive but was arrested by New York City Vice Squad for unmentionable acts in a public lavatory in Central Park.
1984
The Jehovah’s Witnesses made sure, in 1984, that no one else would be able to top their record of most wrong doomsday predictions. The Witnesses’ record currently holds at nine. The years are: 1874, 1878, 1881, 1910, 1914, 1918, 1925, 1975, and 1984. Tired of loud public scorn and derision, the Witnesses have modestly retired from the field and now spend their time banging on doors and hawking their magazines, T-shirts and Second Coming bath mats and ashtrays.
1988
The book, 88 Reasons Why the Rapture is in 1988, came out only a few months before the event was to take place. What little time the book had left to it and its feeble minded readers, it used effectively. By the time the predicted dates, September 11-13, rolled around, whole churches were caught up in the excitement the book generated. Not unnaturally, nothing happened. The writer and publisher, however, benefited greatly from the sales.
1989
After the passing of the deadline in 88 Reasons, the author, Edgar Whisenant, came out with a new book called 89 Reasons Why the Rapture is in 1989. This book sold only a fraction of the number of copies his prior release had sold.
1991
A group in Australia predicted Jesus would return through the Sydney Harbor at 9 a.m., March 31, 1991. Rumors are that He was doing the breast stroke in the Harbor but was run over by a car ferry and drowned.
1991
Menachem Schneerson, a mystic Russian-born rabbi, called for the Messiah to come by September 9, 1991, the start of the Jewish New Year. Apparently, Jesus was not listening and failed to appear. The good rabbi passed away and his followers eagerly anticipated his own return. He did not do so.
1992
A Korean group, called Mission for the Coming Days, had the Korea Church in a state of frenzied excitement in the fall of 1992. They foresaw October 28, 1992 as the date for the Glorious Rapture and arrival of the Celestial Ominbus. Numerology was the basis for the date. Several camera shots that left ghostly images on pictures were thought to be a supernatural confirmation of the date. Careless photography was a more likely suspect.
1993
If the year 2000 is the end of the 6,000-year cycle, then the rapture must take place in 1993, because you would need seven years of the tribulation. This was the murky thinking of a number of prophecy writers. They were all wrong.
1994
In the book, 1994: The Year of Destiny , F. M. Riley foretold of God’s plan to rapture His people. The name of his ministry is “The Last Call,” and he operates out of a Missouri that has produced both John Ashcroft and Jesse James.
1994
Pastor John Hinkle of Christ Church in Los Angeles caused quite a stir when he announced he had received a vision from God that warned of apocalyptic event on June 9, 1994. Hinkle, quoting God, said, “On Thursday June the 9th, I will rip the evil out of this world.” From a proper reading of Bible prophecy, the only thing that God could possibly rip from the earth would be the Christian Church. Some people tried to interpret Hinkle’s unscriptural vision to mean that God would the rip evil out of our hearts when He Raptured us. As usual the date came and went with no heart surgery or rapture.
1994
Harold Camping, in his book Are You Ready?, predicted the Lord would return in September 1994. The book was full of numerology that added up to 1994 as the date of Christ’s return. The numbers did not crunch and Camping joined a long list of failed prophets, seers and other mountebanks in blessed oblivion.
1994
After promising they would not make anymore end time predictions, the Jehovah’s Witnesses fell off the wagon and proclaimed 1994 as the conclusion of an 80-year generation; the year 1914 was the starting point. Magazine sales are up but the ashtrays are not doing as well as expected. This group of lovelies is now selling Rapture Travel Suits, matching Rapture luggage and Dramamine pills for the trip.
1996
A self-proclaimed California psychic Sheldon Nidle predicted the end would come with the convergence of 16 million space ships and a host of angels upon the earth on December 17, 1996. Nidle explained the passing of the date by claiming the angels placed us in a holographic projection to preserve us and give us a second chance. His doctors will not let him write any more and even took away his crayons.
1997
When Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat signed their peace pact on the White House lawn on September 13, 1993, some saw the events as the beginning of tribulation. With the signing of the peace agreement, Daniel’s 1,260-day countdown was underway. By adding 1,260 days to September 1993, you arrive at February 24, 1997. Jesus, on the other hand, did not arrive nor were the Elect of the Pentecostal cults shot up into the stratosphere like so many ballistic missiles.
1997
Stan Johnson of the Prophecy Club saw a “90 percent” chance that the tribulation would start September 12, 1997. He based his conclusion on several end-time signs: that would be Jesus’ 2,000th birthday and it would also be the Day of Atonement, although it wouldn’t be what is currently the Jewish Day of Atonement. Further supporting evidence came from Romanian pastor Dumitru Duduman. In several heavenly visions, caused by the imbibing of too much plum wine, Dumitru claimed to have seen the Book of Life. In one of his earlier visions, there were several pages yet to be completed. In his last vision, he noticed the Book of Life only had one page left. Doing some rough calculating, Johnson and friends figured the latest time frame for the completion of the book would have to be September 1997. There were, quite naturally, more bitter disappointments as the time came and passed without a sight of Jerusalem Slim.
1998
Numerology: Because 666 times three equals 1998, some people point to this year as being prophetically significant. This incredible information was posted on the internet where it stunned dozens of true believers. .
1998
A Taiwanese cult operating out of Garland, Texas predicted Christ would return on March 31 of 1998. The group’s leader, Heng-ming Chen, announced God would return and then invite the cult members aboard a UFO at group excursion rates, no meals served.
The group abandoned their prediction when a precursor event failed to take place. The cult’s leader had said that God would appear on every channel 18 of every TV in the world. Maybe God realized at the last minute, the Playboy Network was channel 18 on several cable systems, and He didn’t want to have Christians watching a porn channel.
1998
Marilyn Agee, in her book, The End of the Age, had her sights set on May 31, 1998. for the Glorious Arrival. This date was to conclude the 6,000-year cycle from the time of Adam. Agee looked for the rapture to take place on Pentecost, which is also known as “the Feast of Weeks.” Another indicator of this date was the fact that the Holy Spirit did not descend upon the apostles until 50 days after Christ’s resurrection. Israel was born in 1948; add the 50 days as years and you come up with whatever figure you like.
After her May 31 rapture date failed, Agee, unable to face up to her error, continued her date-setting by using various Scripture references to point to June 7, 14, 21 and about 10 other dates. Marilyn then set a new date for the rapture: May 21 or 22 of the same year, Again, she and the dozens of believers who read her works were doomed to disappointment. Eventually, later rather than sooner, Agnes joined the ranks of the Disproven and passed into blessed oblivion.
1999
TV newscaster-turned-psychic Charles Criswell King had said in 1968 that the world as we know it would cease to exist on August 18, 1999. It did not.
1999
Philip Berg, a rabbi at the Kabbalah Learning Center in New York, proclaimed that the end might arrive on September 11, 1999, when “a ball of fire will descend . . . destroying almost all of mankind, all vegetation, all forms of life.” Nothing happened on that date of note except that the Devil was arrested at a sex arcade in Times Square using counterfeit coins in a porn film viewer.
.2000
The names of the people and organizations that called for the return of Christ at the turn of the century is too long to be listed here. If there were a day on which Christ could not return, it must have been January 1, 2000. This day came and passed and the waiting multitude did not see Jesus descending on Dallas, arrayed like Solomon in all his splendor. Many had hangovers and the only visions they had on that day were of the double variety.
2000
On May 5, 2000, all of the planets were supposed to have been in alignment. This was said to cause the earth to suffer earthquakes, volcanic eruption, and various other nasty stuff. A similar alignment occurred in 1982 and nothing happened. People failed to realize that the other nine planets only exert a very tiny gravitational pull on the earth. If you were to add up the gravitational force from the rest of the planets, the total would only amount to a fraction of the tug the moon has on the earth.
2000
According to Michael Rood, the end times have a prophetically complicated connection to Israel’s spring barley harvest. The Day of the Lord began on May 5, 2000. Rood’s fall feast calendar called for the Russian Gog-Magog invasion of Israel to take place at sundown on October 28, 2000. It did not. Perhaps Prophet Rood might have considered the annual Harvest of the Floating Condoms from the waters of New York City as an alternative event.
2000-2001
Dr. Dale SumburËru looked for March 22, 1997 to be “the date when all the dramatic events leading through the tribulation to the return of Christ should begin” The actual date of Christ’s return could be somewhere between July 2000 and March 2001. Dr. SumburËru is more general about the timing of Christ’s second coming than most writers. He states, “The day the Lord returns is currently unknown because He said [Jesus] these days are cut short and it is not yet clear by how much and in what manner they are cut short. If the above assumptions are not correct, my margin of error would be in weeks, or perhaps months.”
2003
ARKANSAS CITY (AP) — A Little Rock woman was killed yesterday after leaping through her moving car’s sun roof during an incident best described as “a mistaken rapture” by dozens of eye witnesses. Thirteen other people were injured after a twenty-car pile up resulted from people trying to avoid hitting the woman who was apparently convinced that the rapture was occurring when she saw twelve people floating up into the air, and then passed a man on the side of the road who she claimed was Jesus. “She started screaming “He’s back, He’s back” and climbed right out of the sunroof and jumped off the roof of the car,” said Everet Williams, husband of 28-year-old Georgann Williams who was pronounced dead at the scene. She had been run over by several vehicles, including a long-distance truck. “I was slowing down but she wouldn’t wait till I stopped,” Williams said. “She thought the rapture was happening and was convinced that Jesus was gonna lift her up into the sky,” he went on to say. “This is the strangest thing I’ve seen since I’ve been on the force,” said Paul Madison, first officer on the scene. Madison questioned the man who looked like Jesus and discovered that he was dressed up as Jesus and was on his way to a toga costume party when the tarp covering the bed of his pickup truck came loose and released twelve blowup dolls filled with helium which floated up into the air. Ernie Jenkins, 32, of Fort Smith, who’s been told by several of his friends that he looks like Jesus, pulled over and lifted his arms into the air in frustration, and said “Come back here,” just as the Williams’ car passed him. Mrs. Williams was sure that it was Jesus lifting people up into the sky as they passed by him, according to her husband, who says his wife loved Jesus more than anything else. When asked for comments about the twelve dolls, Jenkins replied “This is all just too weird for me. I never expected anything like this to happen.”
This event is probably the most illustrative of all the great compendiums of Prophesy.
2011-2018
For the past several decades, Jack Van Impe has hinted at nearly every year as being the time for the rapture. Normally, he has only gone out one or two years from the current calendar year. However, Jack’s latest projection for the rapture goes out several years. His new math uses 51 years as the length of a generation. If you add 51 years to 1967, the year Israel seized Jerusalem from its Arab inhabitants, you get 2018. Once you subtract the seven-year tribulation period, you arrive at 2011. Dozens will be energized and will sell off their bicycle training wheels and lifetime collection of dignity pants but again, sad to say, nothing will happen.
2012
New Age writers cite Mayan and Aztec calendars that predict the end of the age on December 21, 2012.
2060
Sir Isaac Newton, Britain’s greatest scientist, spent 50 years and wrote 4,500 pages trying to predict when the end of the world was coming. The most definitive date he set for the apocalypse, which he scribbled on a scrap of paper, was 2060. The original scrap is now in the archives of Brother Pat Robertson. It appears to have been written in a ball point pen which was not invented until 1948.