"You will go on counting coup and living beneath the sun and the moon at one with the Great Spirit Who is beyond the skies until there come to you, in boats that ride the winds, a people with the voices of spring and eyes of the summer skies and hair of the rays of autumn sun and faces of the winter moon;
      and with long knives and thunder they will spoil the land and its life and corrupt your young braves with fiery drink and carry away your squaws to tend their cookfires and make your maidens great with children that are neither yours nor theirs;
      and they will rob you of your faith and pretend they have come from the Great Spirit and speak untruth without reason or sense.
      And many moons of summers will pass and the faith of your fathers will be only a dim memory; and as a people you will not be except scattered and vagabond;
      and the Great Peace will come and move throughout the land and dwell among those children who were neither yours nor theirs:  and they will return, your distant sons and daughters, to the Great Spirit of the faith of your fathers: and theirs will be the Great Peace.
      And so it has been told of the Great Spirit from the first day of our Migration after the coming of the Great Waters that divided the land."  

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Introduction

     There are many muslims in the world who believe The End is approaching.  Their homes are being dynamited and bombed, their daughters and mothers raped, their sons murdered for no good reason, and their cry for justice goes unheard.  They make up most of the world's refugee population, and what keeps most of them from literally going berserk is their faith.  We know some of these muslim families who have narrowly escaped some war somewhere and come to America, and their faith has enabled them to recover from the calamity that came to their village and usually to their family.  They are peaceful here and have found a place of relative safety, and they don't make fertilizer bombs.

     Many other peaceful muslims, both in America and abroad, believe The Hour is at hand because of the fulfillment of so many Signs.  They all sense that God is about to make things undeniably clear, purge mankind and usher in a new world governed by God's Laws and His Elected.  This same sense is strong, and a force in the lives of many people, in every House of religion.

     It is also a playground for pretenders, charlatans, and opportunists, and a trap for people in search of truth in the Scriptures or in writings or teachings that appear to be prophetic or apocalyptic.  The words and the grammar of Revelation often cannot be translated with any measure of their original sense, and the result of trying is too often a mysterious collection of symbols that might apply to almost any situation.  Apocalyptic figures are identified daily -- this year's crop includes both Clintons and the old stand-by, the Rockefellers, identified just as absolutely today as were Nixon and Reagan, Kissinger and Khomeini, and almost every Pope in their times.  Messianic cults have a field day with apocalypse, since "only those who know the secret" will be able to escape the tribulation and rule the world.  Apocalypse is promoted today to put political pressure on Congress:  Israel and the Second Coming get over six billion tax dollars a year.  Television, atom bombs, satellites, women voting, and steam engines have all, in their time, been seen as clear proof that the world was coming to an end, destruction was sure to follow.  And it has been this way for much of recorded history.

The Sources

     Our view of the end times comes mainly from four sources.  The oldest is the prophet Noah, who built the Ark and, with his wife Na'amah, became parents to all of us.  Among his three surviving sons and their families, his words have come down to us through the ages, through several channels, including one you will find cut into a corner stone of every courthouse in the country.  There are institutions with us today with their ancient roots in Noah, both public and secret, for example courts of law and the Grange.

     Next are the Hebrew sources -- the Books of the Old Testament, which Judaism and Jesus call The Law and The Prophets, the Talmud, which records the decisions and reasoning of the Sanhedrin who waited at the base of the mountain when Moses went up to receive the Law; the Apocryphal Books, some lacking revelatory content but canonized anyway; and the oral traditions of Israel that are still passed on from Grandmother to the coming generations, woven into teaching stories and memorized by orthodox school children in singsong voices never to be forgotten.

     Later are the sources from Jesus the Messiah, God's Word that He cast into Mary, the only man ever to walk the earth without sin or error.  He called the Children of Israel to fulfill their Covenant with the Creator and sent the faithful to the nations of the world to announce a new Law about to come for all humanity.  Here in America we have the versions of Paul and the Greeks and Romans -- but muslims also know the history from those whom Jesus himself sent to other nations, who spent time with Jesus and spread the Good News they heard directly from Jesus.

     And finally, and most recently, 1400 years ago today the children of Ishmael, the oldest son of Abraham, were still writing down what they heard from Muhammad, the Messenger of God, who had died six years before.  In the next century Islam -- the word means Great Peace -- would go on to give us algebra, calculus, hospitals, the federal system, surveying, navigation, vaccination, and the very building blocks of modern civilization.  It became the federal law from Spain to China and from the Steppes of Russia to Timbuktu in West Africa, opening the routes for pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the first time since the Roman destruction of the Second Temple after Jesus.  Islam filled the entire world of the Bible and beyond, securing autonomy, religious freedom, property rights and self-government to every community under God according to its own Law, whether Torah or Gospel or another.  American textbooks call this the Dark Ages.

     We won't have time to go over all of it, four thousand years, three major religions, and what lies ahead, in one or two hours.

     But it is amazing to see how consistent the sources are where they speak of the same things.  Noah spoke of the False Messiah and the Final Hour -- and muslims are in the Holy Land today looking for Jesus to lead them in that final battle against the False Messiah.  Many aspects of prophecy are found in more than one Scripture.

     Hebrew, Aramaic, Amharic and Arabic -- the semitic languages of Revelation -- share the same basic vocabulary and grammar, and different Scriptures in each of these languages refer to events in nearly the same terms.  Descriptions of events then yet to come that have since taken place have been very exact in details that can be clearly seen in the fulfillment.  The signs have always been completely reliable and utterly accurate.

     Pharaoh knew to the year when to expect Moses, he just didn't know he would show up in his own household.  Jesus came to Bethlehem, when expected -- but passing through, a visitor, not among the town's families.  And Muhammad came from Paran with almost exactly ten thousand saints -- we have their names -- and a new Law, as promised by Moses.  When Scripture says "a year according to the years of a hireling" then the event occurs in a year -- as did the fall of the glory of Kedar, prophesied by Isaiah centuries before, a year after the prophet spent three full days and three full nights hidden in the belly of the earth, as foretold by Jesus.  All of these signs were fulfilled exactly as Scripture described them.

     It really is one story, with one God, one history, and one outcome.  It has been forgotten, distorted, and denied, but it's not over yet.  We're living and watching it today.

The Story

     Much of today's political turmoil arises from very simple issues, fundamental questions anyone can ask.

     Many people believe that all people are collectively responsible for this world and what people do in it and with it and to it.  The usual parable is of a passenger in a ship who begins to chop a hole in the hull:  anyone finding him has a duty to take the axe away, however he has to do that, or else everyone will drown.  This is very persuasive when we consider that the very word "society" means that we are all in the same boat:  food, clothing and shelter are social products today as never before, orange juice comes through hundreds of hands.

     But not everyone agrees.  Some say "Am I my brother's keeper?" This was Cain's reply after killing his brother, when God asked him "Where is your brother Abel?" Cain repented -- but many people today do not believe they have any responsibility at all for anyone but themselves.  And some take the position of Abel himself, who did not defend himself from his brother but said "I fear God, the Lord of the worlds:  I would rather you bear the burden;" and they will not act even in self-defense.

     But man is social by nature, and the boat view is the natural Law:  so it is easy to organize a party of people to restrain other people.  It is not so easy to restrain the organizers:  limits on organized parties are harder to impose than limits on individuals; and the need for those limits is not so clear, not when security is made to seem at risk.  So:  what limits are there on that immense power to govern that is driven by our mistrust of each other?

     This question has been with us since Cain murdered Abel, in the second generation of humanity:  it is an old, old question.  And after ten long generations -- from Adam to Noah, 1500 years -- mankind were not able to resolve it but continued to become more brutal and tyrannical toward each other.  So God washed the world of mankind and gave Noah a remedy for this human condition, a Law, binding all who would come thereafter, that "Whoso sheds man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed."  Killers were ordered executed by men, and the order came from God, to everybody, for all time to come.

     This means that everyone is responsible, to God, to make sure that final action is taken, against another human being, and not become party to manslaughter by doing so.  An extreme level of care must be taken, and it is a public judgment, everyone has a share in it.  Someone very cautious to avoid error, someone very responsible, must examine facts, and must assure public certainty.  No one dare do this, alone or with some others in secret, on suspicion or popular opinion or hidden knowledge.  God gave humanity the Covenant of Law.

     Today we call this jurisprudence:  judgment by law.  After marriage and patriarchy, it is the oldest social institution and stabilizes human society because we are all subject to, and not above, the Law.  Without Law, man is a herd of beasts, like before The Flood -- With Law, we are a society and protected from our own human nature.

     The Covenant of Religion came later. Abraham and his son Ishmael built the first House for remembrance of God, which has been rebuilt by others over the centuries and still stands today with at least one original stone.

     This came ten generations after Noah, with humanity divided into kingdoms, living in cities and speaking different languages.  Abraham reasoned that there must be one God, not many, and that God must be present in the world's affairs and not absent.  God had a plan for Abraham, and for his children, born late in his life to his wives Sarah and Haggar.  God would establish His Kingdom, with His Law, which would be superior to any that man had devised.  But it would not happen overnight -- it was a Plan, and Abraham was the first to learn of it.

     First, God told Abraham, He would set up a Kingdom in the family of Isaac, Abraham and Sarah's son.  He would raise from among them a messenger, to give them a Law more comprehensive than the Law He gave Noah.  By this Law people could regulate their affairs and settle their disputes and organize and direct their society.  With God's help it would be invincible, and God would help them.

     It would be an exclusive Kingdom and would have nothing in common with the kingdoms of men, would not join those kingdoms or be a kingdom over them, like the federal government is superior over the States.  But anyone could become a citizen of this Kingdom as an individual or family, by joining it.  God would give them His Guidance and they would be His people, and He would favor them over all others. He would choose them -- the future children of Isaac -- and they would make their Covenant to obey Him and His Laws, similar to the way prominent men of Abraham's time made bargains with a king, becoming supporters and beneficiaries of the king.  This Kingdom would show the people of the world the benefits and plain good sense of living in a righteous Kingdom according to the Law of God, in preference to a worldly kingdom set up with laws designed by men.

     In time, God told Abraham, He would give them a Messiah, who would send these children of Abraham to the nations of the world to announce that God would soon set up a new Kingdom for "all the families of the earth," not just one, and would give that Kingdom a new Covenant -- a new Law that would never change or be forgotten.

     After that, God told Abraham, He would send His Last Messenger, to give humanity this Everlasting Law, and to establish the Kingdom of God among all mankind.  This Kingdom would become sovereign over the nations of the world and would establish peace and justice among the nations.  This messenger would come from the family of Abraham and Haggar's son, Ishmael, and would be joined by the family of Isaac:  the faithful of the old Kingdom would be ministers of the new Kingdom, the House of Abraham would be brought back together and would share the land from the Nile to the Euphrates as an everlasting inheritance of the House of Abraham.

     Only the cut off -- or people who chose not to join the Kingdom when it reached them -- would fail to realize their benefit in the Law of God, although they would benefit even though they might not realize it.  They would simply not be participants in it, since they would choose not to be.  And God would not destroy anyone for that choice, but only if an actual crime required it.  So even the hermits and the heedless and the humble of low degree would share in God's Mercy coming through Abraham.

     The result, God told Abraham, would be that all people in the world would benefit from Abraham, his name would never be forgotten, and everyone would know that God did this for Abraham because Abraham was the first to choose God's Design, to control his own willfulness and trust in God's Way as better for him than his own ideas. God called Abraham His Friend, and through him would give all humanity a Way to be God's Friends forever.

     Abraham had already done everything God had suggested to him, which is a story in itself, too long and rich in detail to start telling tonight.  Abraham started when he was eight years old by being thrown into a fire, which God made cool for him so he could walk out and escape.  He saw grandchildren from eight sons he hadn't even expected to have.  And today, nearly four thousand years later, a billion people -- one out of five human beings -- mention his name in their prayers five times a day; his descendants cannot be counted because there are too many in too many places; and he is the patriarch of three major faiths. His story is known everywhere.

     Because God keeps His Promises.  He has already kept many Promises to Abraham, all the way through history since then, and the Kingdom has come in Isaac and also in Ishmael.  It is established in the world, except in what has been cut off from it, where the Law has not been made known.  In fact it is hidden, by design.

     But God has also promised a Day in which the Books will be opened and all things made plain, the false distinguished from the true and removed, root and branch.  And the message given to Abraham, and to Noah and Adam, and to Moses and David and Solomon and Jesus, and to Haggai, Hosea, Isaiah, Nehemiah, Zachariah, Zephaniah, Jeremiah, Obadiah, and Daniel, will reach to the ends of the earth -- that there is one God, Who created the skies and the soil; and He has Mercy for human kind, who He created as His Own reflection in the world; and to whom He has entrusted the world and everything in it to care for, with God's help.

     History, by any measure, seems almost to that Day.  Noah and every prophet after him described the times.

The Times

     From the time of Noah, every nation has been ruled by people subject to some Law of God, either openly or secretly. Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed by God partly because they claimed to be exempt from that and could govern however they chose.  Lust and depravity were their individual obsessions, but their social crime was arrogance -- they claimed for themselves the power to make everyone join them in their perversion, and they would not leave the innocent unmolested.  In much the same way today, man's laws are making it mandatory to teach children that sodomy is a morally neutral "private affair" that must be tolerated and accepted, and allowing the unrestrained spread of a fatal disease to "protect the rights" of those who are spreading it, often to the innocent and unborn.  For the first time since Sodom and Gomorrah, law has been placed in the hands of those who call people to their sexual perversions, and people who fear God are prevented from protecting the innocent from molestation and from death itself in the womb.

     It was always the rule that whenever a nation arose that did not somehow bow to the ultimate sovereignty of God, then the other nations would gather and destroy it.  This failed with the Soviet Union, which held off the armies of five nations along a continuous battle line seven thousand miles long, and became the first militantly godless nation to persist since before The Flood.  Today it is gone, but the damage to the world has been done.  The ideas that there are no limits to democratic law-making, that morality and ethics and justice are for men to define, that power and authority to restrain wrongdoing are for men to decide whether to apply and not a duty from God, these have taken hold throughout the populations of the world; and people of moral convictions, especially arising from faith, are the objects of scorn and derision and their concerns are dismissed as trivial.

     And why not?  The houses of religion -- whether Judaism, Christianity, or Islam -- have failed to provide the guidance and the presence that the younger generations have needed.  Judaism, by and large, has regarded religious knowledge as a property to which others are not entitled, and have hidden it even from their brothers.  Christians, on the other hand, have no coherent law for others to follow, and rely almost entirely on common sense and decency, failing which forgiveness is a just solution; many seek to impose their heart-felt judgments on others in a dogmatic fashion, rejecting reasonable misgivings and caution in that as inspired by the devil and unworthy of notice.  The muslims may be the most guilty -- with the perfected Law and hundreds of years of experience in living under it, they have lost almost all understanding; and in the face of worldly defeat during the colonial period of Europe have turned to the glitter and manna of their conquerors and attempted to be like them, abandoning their faith by trying to rewrite it to please people who have little thought for any religion.

     In Babylon, the Children of Israel were stripped of their Scriptures and forbidden to speak the language at all, let alone a verse of their Books.  In Canada today, it is against the law to read certain passages of the Bible to others, and people are jailed for "hate crimes" against homosexuals and Jews for reading them.  A Paris court has forbidden the sale of a Catholic New Testament because the content is critical of Judaism -- sections that are "anti-Semitic" must be removed before copies may be sold.  Laws like this are being written in American State legislatures, and federal statistics on "hate crimes" are used as justification for proposed federal laws as well.

     Were God to destroy the world tomorrow and restore to paradise a handful of people who truly are innocent, who could complain of injustice?  The very people to whom He has given the wealth of the Kingdoms of God, which is the knowledge of God and His Design for human existence, have wasted that wealth and spent it on the things of this world, forsaking judgment and wisdom.

     So it is not surprising that people of every religion with any faith at all are watching for the signs of that destruction and praying for mercy for themselves and their families.  And it is characteristic of the times that these very signs, which have been related to people countless times over the ages, are today obscured and mysterious, vague and unclear and largely forgotten.

     This itself is a sign:  God's Promises have been made to seem insubstantial, weak and empty.  The history of it has been ignored.

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The History

     After Abraham died, Ishmael and Isaac buried him in Hebron, in what is today known as the Cave of the Patriarchs. By this time Isaac was established in the north, and Ishmael was established in Kedar, south of the Paran mountains on the caravan routes in Arabia. Later, Isaac's son Jacob, also called Israel, took the family to Egypt, where God had made Joseph the prime minister of the pharaoh.  Ishmael's sons populated Arabia and the entire area from southern Turkey to the Euphrates and the Sinai, and have been there ever since.

     Four hundred years later, Moses brought the Children of Israel out of bondage in Egypt and across the Sinai desert for forty years, receiving the Law from God on Mount Sinai and organizing the nation of Israel.  Joshua took them across the River Jordan into the Promised Land, and after a while Saul, and then David, were anointed kings over Israel, and then David's son, Solomon, who built the first Temple at Jerusalem.  The Kingdom of Israel was established in Isaac's family.

     But Solomon had called builders' guilds and stonemasons from the cut-off lands to help build the Temple, and using their secret sciences the rabbis of the Temple devised a devilish plan to preserve the Kingdom in Israel and not be replaced by the Kingdom that God would establish later from Ishmael.  They would change their Scripture, and when the Messiah came with the message of a new Law, they would deny him and twist and distort his message, and those who received it would be betrayed and subverted.  And whenever Israel lost the throne of Judah after that, they could still claim it as their divine right, at least until a day they hoped would never come.

     Solomon knew of this from God, and sent Menelik, his son by his wife Bilqis, the queen of Sheba, to preserve the Law of Moses and the royal authority in Ethiopia.  Jesus sent disciples to Ethiopia, who were welcomed and Ethiopia became Christian; and later, when Islam spread across Africa, the King in Ethiopia during the life of Muhammad had joined the muslims as the Torah required, and Ethiopia was a protected kingdom in the land given to Abraham.  Ras Tafari, or Haile Selassie, the last king in the Israel that God established, was murdered by the communists in 1975, twenty years ago.

     In Jerusalem, meanwhile, in history, the Temple was destroyed and the Children of Israel were enslaved in the Babylonian Captivity.  Their Scripture was taken from them and speaking Hebrew itself was a capital crime -- the language was lost.  But the betrayals of the Temple rabbis were not yet all done, and God sent them back to Jerusalem to build a Second Temple and to repent.

     From Solomon on, the prophets brought God's indictments of Israel for turning away from God's Promise.  These later Books of the Bible refer repeatedly to "The Lie," that the Messenger of the Covenant -- of Peace -- would come in Israel, that faithless scribes had forged into the Holy Books.  Jeremiah speaks of this at length.  Today the Bible says all creation is exclusively for Israel, forever.

     By the time Jesus came, the Children of Israel were expecting three people -- the same three they expect today. First was the Messiah, born in Bethlehem, who would bear the insult of Israel's wrongdoing by being denied and betrayed.  Second was Elijah, due to arrive before the coming of the Day of the Lord, who would make straight the ways.  And third was "that prophet" spoken of by Moses, from among the brothers of Isaac, in Ishmael, who would bring a Law to replace the Torah and make religion supreme.  Today, all three have long since come and gone. But in Jesus' time, by the time the pharisees and scribes were done, Jesus had been transformed into all three.  And although he didn't do what the others would do, when Jesus was gone the Temple priests carried out their final plan -- their lawyers joined Jesus' flock to twist the Signs and his Gospel into The Lie among the gentile Greeks as a new Law that would conquer the Roman world.  Jesus was said to have been the Messenger of the New Covenant, and would crown the faithful as kings later, on the Last Day.

     Not long after that betrayal, the Second Temple was destroyed and the Children of Israel driven out of the Holy Land again, becoming victims in every place they went as God promised them in the Law of Moses -- but in Ethiopia and among the children of Ishmael, other Children of Israel prospered as children of Abraham.  They still do.

     Ten Roman Emperors later, Constantine legalized the Greek bishops, who said that men became as gods by eating the miraculously created flesh of Jesus, which the Roman pagans could easily follow.  He had the terrified bishop of Rome brought in under guard by the Centurions and made him the Pope of the new Holy Roman and Universal Church. When he invited the shepherd bishops of the south, who kept the Law as Jesus had said, they would not join.  So The Lie conquered the world of Rome, and persecution became slaughter for Jesus' faithful.

     Dozens of gospels in Greek, and letters and visions and prophecies collected from all over the north, were put under a table in the great hall of Constantine's castle.  Constantine locked the door, put the key on his necklace and went to bed, and in the morning the books that we know as the New Testament were "miraculously" on top of the table.  The Roman Empire became, by decree, the Holy Roman Empire -- and the Christian believers in God's Law were searched out and attacked by the Roman legions at the order of the trinitarian priesthood for another three and a half centuries, as foretold by Daniel.

     And then, in the early seventh century, Muhammad, the Messenger of God, was sent in Arabia, among the children of Ishmael, to reveal the new Law from God.  It was complete after twenty-three years, and the muslims carried the Message -- and the Kingdom and justice for all -- to China in the east, to the Straits of Gibraltar and Spain in the west, to the edge of Russia in the north, and to central Africa in the south:  throughout and beyond the entire world of the Bible.  The Holy Roman Empire, by then the Byzantine Empire, simply ceased to exist. And the Latin Church kept the rest of Europe in the Dark Ages.

     The muslims bore the fruits of the Kingdom.  A century later, in the time celebrated in the Arabian Nights stories, collections for the poor, gathered from the muslim world to Baghdad, had no poor to receive them anywhere in the muslim world.  So the world's first teaching hospitals were established, with the world's first segregated hospital wards for different ailments, and smallpox and diptheria were identified as contagious.  In Spain, until Ferdinand and Ysabella, the Children of Israel enjoyed what they now call "The Golden Age of Judaism" as participants in the government of Islam.

     Texts on all sciences were translated into Arabic, and mathematics was developed to include algebra and calculus; astronomy and navigation became exact sciences; and the earth sciences of ecology, tectonics and geology, maps, and geography were developed. Regular communications over long distances were systematized, since the seas were safe from piracy and ships delivered carrier pigeons as they visited their ports; crime was all but eliminated, and a single woman could travel the roads anywhere in the muslim world and remain safe.  Education was prized and heavily subsidized by the rulers, and was made available to whoever the local religious leaders -- of whatever faith -- sent to the universities, at any age.

     The kings of Europe were not pleased. Dark Ages or not, the minstrels brought the news.  The Law of Islam made private property a sacred right of anyone, even women.  Eminent Domain was abolished, and rulers could not steal real estate by taxation.  The courts were open even to those without a counsellor to speak for them, and even against the governors.  Rulers were restrained by Law from ruling however they pleased, and those caught abusing the public trust were executed without appeal or delay.  All in all, it was a bad deal for all corrupt politicians, kings or priests, whose offices came through the power of the Church.  They would lose their power to raise taxes and tithes and execute competitors. They could lose their privileges and ownership rights over the serfs and peons they ruled.  And they might lose their lives as well if they did not begin to rule with justice.

     It was not long before the Crusades began, to "purify" the Holy Land.  The "infidel" muslims had taken the town dump off of the Temple Mount and had built a third House for God.  They financed restorations of the churches of "heretic" Christians and the synagogues of "faithless" Jews all over the muslim world; and in complete disregard of the Roman Church, were providing education and the Holy Books to people who weren't even monks.  But a hundred and fifty years later, after ten crusades, the world of the Bible remained the Kingdom of God for all faiths, and Europe would never be the same.

     Fortunately for us here today, when the Crusader knights were captured by the muslims in battle, they were taken to the seat of government and treated as honored guests.  Their wounds were treated and their clothes and armor and weapons repaired, their squires and grooms housed and fed and their horses cared for or replaced.  They met Christian and Jewish and muslim scholars and holy men; they were read passages from the Qur'an; they learned about glassmaking and medicine and alloys and writing, and municipal plumbing and the use of water and soap for cleaning the body and washing their hair.

     Those who had joined the Crusade for reasons of faith, not empire-building or loot, were helped to make their pilgrimage to Jerusalem.  Some went on to make the pilgrimage to Mecca, and at Medina were initiated into the sciences of government and schooled in the arts of ruling.  And all were returned after a time to Europe, when they vowed to live at peace with the people of the muslim world.

     They organized secret societies -- many of them are still with us today -- to use the knowledge they had gained without getting killed for it by the kings.  Their lodges and guilds and other hidden brotherhoods eventually led to the renewal of Europe -- and to the federal system of government we have in the United States, the system of contract laws and property rights we have, the sciences and industrial processes, medical arts, even the space program and satellite transmitters. All arose on science brought back by the Crusaders from the center of knowledge that shone like a sun in the muslim world during the "Dark Ages" of Europe.

     For over a thousand years, this Kingdom of God persisted and ruled the Old Testament world, until the Europeans invented artillery.  The tide turned, and the muslims lost territory year after year as the European colonial empires were carved out, the so-called Dark Ages ended, and the "enlightened" era began.  By the end of the period of muslim prosperity in the late sixteenth century, the muslim world had gone the way of kingdoms before, the rulers had become weak, the halls of justice filled with corruption, and favoritism and bribery were the pathways to power.  False scholarship had distorted the teachings of the faith, and although the original texts remain unchanged, the words had been given new meanings that the language did not include or even support, and the real significance of the Scripture was hidden by the schemes of the new scribes and pharisees.

     The stage of history was set for a new appearance.  And at the beginning of this century, as World War I divided the Holy Land among the European powers, it came.  From the land of Gog and Magog, in Russia.  The Soviet Union established man as their national god, a clear sign mentioned in most prophecies of The End.

The Signs

     In Biblical times, the signs of the next event in God's unfolding plan were explicit and incapable of confusion. This would happen here, that would happen there, and a prophet would appear, or a battle would be won, or a messiah would come to lead the new way. Pharaoh knew exactly when to kill the firstborn of the houses of Israel, to prevent the arrival of the Law-giver of Israel.  Herod knew when Jesus was due, and where.  And Heraclius, the Byzantine, and Chosroes, the Persian, recognised Muhammad by his emissaries as the chief of circumcision due to arrive.  In fact in Mecca, Muhammad fled literally "From the drawn sword and the bent bow" of Isaiah's verse -- Meccan assassins waited outside his house to kill him all together so no one tribe could be blamed.  In Medina, he found entire tribes of Jews and Christians waiting for him -- they had been taunting the Arab tribes for years that a new prophet was coming and they would soon have the upper hand.  They knew exactly where to go, and when, and who and what to expect.

     A Christian hermit monk spotted Muhammad on the caravan route when he was only a boy of nine, tending the camels. The monk said that someone had been waiting there for him to come since Jesus, walking by, said "The Messenger of the Covenant will pass by that tree."  The sheikhs of the Arab tribes of Medina were waiting with a letter in trust for him, written centuries before by the man who had established those tribes there -- a secret trust known only to the oldest.  Muhammad talked with them and was ready to leave, and they were sure of him, but the elders were going to wait and see before delivering the letter.  Then he said "Give me my trust."  And they knew without doubt that he was the Messenger of God they had been waiting for all their lives.

     There is certainty and clarity in the signs that God has given us for guidance, something we wonder about is not a sign, it's a wonder -- and God produces wonders that we are discovering even today, with telescopes that reach back in time and satellites that see the crack in the ocean's floors.  Signs point -- wonders inspire awe.  Signs told Pharaoh exactly when to abort the sons of Israel -- when he found later that he had raised Moses as his own son and royal heir in his own house, that was a wonder.

     Today is no different, but the events are.  We are not expecting a new prophet or king, but a global event that involves all of us at the same time.  Jesus told us what to expect, how we will know when the time has come.  He spoke of the fig tree, how it puts out new leaves, and by that we know that summer is near.  The Day and The Hour are like that -- not one thing leading to another, but a collection of many things that, taken together because they appear at the same time, are an indication that the time is at hand.  And then he went on to tell them of some of the things they could expect to see before that time.

     In fact every prophet since Noah has added to this collection of signs.  But in one place Moses is heard, in another Jesus only, and in others Muhammad is the only source said worthwhile. But some of the things that Muhammad said seem to have been forgotten -- he said that when we have a question concerning The Book, and by that he meant the Bible, then we should ask the People of Scripture, meaning the Jews and the Christians.  And although we have many reports that were given to us by Jews and Christians waiting in Medina fourteen centuries ago -- and who were among the early muslims -- the same kinds of prejudice operate among muslims that operate on everyone else, and many of these completely reliable signs are hardly known outside the communities of scholars.  He also said "Seek knowledge though it be in China" -- and in China we found prophecies that can only refer to Muhammad, such as what he would be called in Arabia behind his back, and an accurate description of his horse and its bridle and his battle standard -- and a few about The Hour.  And he gave us some more time references, things that would happen as the years passed by until then, and things that would happen in the days just before, as The Hour approached.

     From the perspective of all of the prophets, future events seem to have appeared just ahead, in order, but without a calendar; although before Jesus, there had been some very clear calendars which saw precise fulfillment in terms of the periods.  There are no more calendars like that, just a series of events that will come to pass prior to a final sequence of events.  The prophecies come in three groups:  signs or events before the End, signs or events at the beginning of the End, which is the approach of The Hour, and signs of The Hour itself.

     First we consider the second group, to see whether we might be witnessing the beginning of the End, or the approach of The Hour.  The Hour comes after the end of the first Islamic age, which lasted over a thousand years.  All of these signs occur together and are well-known.

     Wild animals will be gathered into captivity and kept in collections in pens and cages.

     Murder will be considered a minor act.

     Men will get payment for their reproductive organs.

     Reducing weights and measures of goods will be a means of increasing profits.

     The person earning a proper and lawful livelihood will be scorned and the person earning his living from unfair means will be admired.

     The main purpose in life will be earning and enjoying.

     Aphrodisiacs will be used to strengthen the body for sodomy.

     Usury will gain solid ground.

     Adultery will be commonplace.

     The murder victim will not know why he is murdered and the killer will not know why he killed.

     Mansions like palaces will be constructed.

     Bribery will become like a custom.

     There will be no regard for the ties of relationship.

     Murder will increase.

     Fools will be made rulers.

     Forbearance will be called cowardice and weakness.

     Ministers of government will be liars.

     The practice of divorce will increase.

     A liar will be considered an acceptable witness.

     Homosexuality will be openly practiced.

     Good people will keep silent fearing others' foul speech.

     Goodness and evil will be viewed from the same perspective.

     Young boys will be used like women on payment.

     Unworthy persons will meddle in affairs of state.

     Men will keep their hair in a ladylike manner.

     The governors will consider the wealth of the people as their own and they will attack the morality of women.

     Governments will stockpile grains to maintain prices.

     Government will be entrusted to those unworthy of it.

     These are signs of the approach of the Hour.  They are clear in meaning, refer to specific behavior or acts, and are observable in society by anyone without further information.  In a few cases, we can say "But that goes on all the time," or "That's a matter of opinion."  And this may be true.  But the characteristic of these signs as signs is that they are widespread, simultaneous, so plain as to be realistically undeniable, and well-known to people.  And it is clear that these are present in the world today.

     But they are not signs at all unless the events before them have already come to pass.  So second, we consider the early groups, things that happen before the beginning of The End, before The Hour even approaches.  These are the signs the muslims know, and like the last group, these are 1400 years old, and apply to the period starting with the establishment of the Great Peace, Islam.

     Chosroe (of Persia) will perish and no Chosroe will appear after him, and Caesar will be destroyed and there will be no Caesar after him.

     Count six things on the eve of The Hour:  my death, then the conquest of Jerusalem, then the plague that will overtake you like the disease of cattle, then the excess of wealth, so much so that when a man shall be given one hundred dinars, he will remain dissatisfied; then revolution from which there will not be left a single house in Arabia but to which it will not enter; then a treaty between you and the Romans, but they shall play treachery and march against you under eighty banners, under each banner there will be 12,000 soldiers.

     These things happened quite quickly, in the first century of Islam.  70,000 muslims in Arabia died of a widespread plague in the space of three days, not too long after the Mayor of Jerusalem gave the keys of the city to 'Umar.  The vast treasuries of Persia suddenly came to the muslims and prosperity proved a calamity.  The revolution began after 'Umar's time and is reflected in the modern republic of Iran, and particularly in the Ayatollah Khomeini -- after 1300 years, the parties of the revolution are still trying to overthrow fundamental institutions, and have large parties in Arabia and the Arabian Gulf states today.

     And the Roman Legions simply ceased to exist when the caesars threw them at the muslims.  The leaders didn't believe the survivors of the early battles, the stories were too fantastic -- so they kept standing together with their shields arranged in squares while massed Arabian horses and fighting camels charged into them with no regard for casualties:  martyrdom was something the Romans did to Christians and Jews, not something they fought to get like the muslims did.  It's in the annals of the old Church:  the popular books on the Fall of the Roman Empire look at earlier times, before the Roman armies started fleeing the battlefield in terror.

     The next reports were unclear to scholars for fourteen centuries, until oil profits finally started going to the Middle East oil producers after World War II.

     The earth will vomit oblong pieces of its liver like columns of gold and silver.  The murderer will come and say "I killed for this," and the deserter will come and say "I deserted my family for this," and the thief will come and say "My hand has been cut off for this."

     The Euphrates will disclose a mountain of gold over which people will fight.  Ninety-nine out of each hundred will be killed and every one of them will say "Maybe I will be the one who will escape."

     The Last Hour shall not occur until wealth will increase among you and become enormous, until a man takes out the charity due from his wealth but will find none to accept it, until the land of the Arabs becomes meadows and rivers.

     The Last Hour shall not occur until wealth will increase among you and become enormous, and the owner of wealth will search for one entitled to the charity due on it; and he will present it and the person to whom it will be presented will say "I have no need of it;" and barefooted shepherds will compete with each other in the building of tall buildings.

     The slave girl will give birth to her owner.

     When the geological field studies were done and the maps drawn of the oil deposits, World War I broke out and divided them up as spoil.  It happens that crude oil is first poured into large, open, rectangular settling fields acres in size, which from a distance look like nothing so much as a huge slab of liver.  Projects to desalinize sea water and use the desert for agriculture are top priority for a number of Arab businessmen and green fields of food crops are spreading quite quickly -- the Arabs have not stolen ancestral orchards and farmlands like the Israelis are still doing in Palestine, but have actually started to make the desert bloom.  Owners of land which had been grazing lands for sheep and camels for centuries became oil millionaires overnight, and with their new wealth they built offices in Dhahran and Riyadh and other cities in Arabia for their international financial dealings -- the tribal rivalries they had known for ages are just as evident in the height of their office buildings.  And although the Law requires a father to free and marry his concubine when she bears his child, concubinage is no longer legal in the Arabian kingdoms, and the children of unacknowledged concubines inherit their mothers as property from the father.  It is not common, but it does happen.  And there are more.

     The Last Hour will not come until there have arisen about thirty impostors, each one of them claiming to be a messenger of God.

     The Messenger of God did not omit a leader of wrong belief up to the end of the world whose companions will number three hundred and more, without mentioning to us his name and the name of his father and the name of his tribe.

     There have been hundreds of claimants to prophecy from among the muslims in 1400 years, but the muslims of the old world have counted but twenty-eight who had more than three hundred followers.  The last of these were Baha'Ullah, whose followers are now based in Haifa, Israel, and Ghulam Ahmad of Qadian, India.  Ghulam Ahmad claimed to be the reappearance of Jesus the Messiah, then was challenged by a muslim to join him in a prayer for the death of the liar -- and died of dysentery shortly thereafter.

     Here in America, apparently invisible from abroad, we have seen Noble Drew 'Ali, founder of the Moorish Science Temple of America, and Elijah Muhammad, founder of the so-called Nation of Islam presently headed by Louis Farrakhan.  Elijah Muhammad's followers today say he never claimed to be a messenger of God, although I personally remember that he did and have some old newspapers of theirs that show it. That completes thirty.

     And there are even more of these prophecies which must be fulfilled before the approach of The Hour can occur.  The last group of these we will mention is more dramatic -- from our perspective as muslims -- than any already described, even false prophets with followers you can see on television today, who are not considered muslims by any of the traditional groups.  Which raises an interesting point.

     We are a few of at least seven million practicing muslims in America, but the media can't find any actual muslims, but only pretenders and terrorists, who are none of them muslims.  Textbooks are comparable, and it is amazing that there is no group, faith, or other aspect of history or humanity that is so completely omitted and utterly falsified in every information source in America.  Islam is still a tiny cult of dusty Dark Age desert dwellers no one remembers, with no particular accomplishment, and ignorant human debris so uncivilized as to be enslaved in some backward land.  Except these relics are now the nightmare of the West, a billion muslims -- one fifth of humanity that just appeared from nowhere -- coming on camels to destroy America.  That this is all so far from reality is nearly a sign in itself.  And indeed it is, from this last group, dealing with the collapse of the millennial muslim world into the miserable condition in which we find it today.  This is what we were told that we -- the muslims -- would do:

     You will follow the practices of those who were before you, step by step, foot by foot, so much so that if one of them goes into the hole of a lizard you will follow.

     God will take up the knowledge, not by removing it from the minds of people, but by taking possession of the knowledgeable.  Then the people will call on the ignorant to inform them, and they will go astray and lead astray.

     The people will get up in the morning to carry on trade and there will be hardly anyone who will fulfill their bargain.  It will be said "There is a trustworthy man in so and so;" and it will be said of a man "How wise is he! How skillful is be! How resolute is he," while in his heart there will be no faith even to the grain of a mustard seed.

     It is near that the nations will call one another against you just as diners call one another to their dishes.  You will be numerous, but you will be so much rubbish like the rubbish of a flood.  God will take away the fear of you from the minds of your enemies and will put weakness in your hearts, from love for this world and dislike of death.

     Wait for the last Hour when allegiance will be destroyed.  Wait for the Hour when rule will be entrusted to those who will be unworthy of it.

     These signs accurately describe muslim history over the last 1400 years.  But just like the Children of Israel today are waiting for the arrival of the Messiah, muslims today are waiting for the knowledge to be taken up -- which, like the Messiah, came centuries ago.

     Here in America we have the advantage of a fresh view.  We have had no cultural bias to obscure the obvious history. And distance -- we are not the actual victims of the genocide in Bosnia or the open betrayal of democratic process in Algeria or the murder of praying muslims at Abraham's Tomb by an American doctor.  We see these incredible things as signs; just as we see that Islam has been betrayed just as badly by the muslims and their political and religious leadership, also signs.

     But Islam was unknown in America just thirty years ago -- and is now the largest religion after Christianity. Islam is spreading among all groups of Americans faster than any other faith.  The scholars and holy men of the old world come here now, to tell us the future of Islam is clearly in America.  And the events the muslims were told would happen have happened, that Last Hour looks near.

     But you may be wondering about Daniel's vision of the little horn speaking profanities against God, the new heaven and the new earth, the new Jerusalem, the return of Jesus, and the antichrist. These Biblical prophecies are also events, and should be just as clear to see.  And they are, on any world map -- we expect Jesus to return any day now, we've been waiting for him for a long time.

The End of The World

     The Biblical world consisted of distinct kingdoms and regions, usually referred to by the names of the people who went there after the Ark came to ground.  The Ark is still there, in eastern Turkey, it's never been lost.

     The children of Noah's son Japheth remained there and populated the area to the north and east and west, known in the Bible as The Isles.  This included all the areas outside what we today call the Middle East.  They became known as the gentle folk -- that's how we would write it today.  King James wrote it as "gentile," and it refers in the Bible to the strangers, outsiders not really included in the Promises God made to Abraham until Shiloh comes.

     Shem and Ham, Noah's other sons, went south together to the Fertile Crescent, what would later become known as the Holy Land and the Middle East.  And in Shem -- the Semitic people, or Semites -- came Abraham and the Kingdom of Israel and the Messenger of the Covenant.

     In the Bible, the gentile nations were promised that eventual Covenant, through Shiloh, "to whom the folks will gather."  When Shiloh comes, the gentile nations -- the other nations and tribes, mostly from Noah's son Japheth, from the old family -- will finally "dwell in the tents of Shem" as foretold for them by Noah.  They will find peace forever in the Kingdom of God brought forth from the semitic peoples, specifically from father Abraham, the Eternal Covenant.  When Shiloh Comes.

     But in the Bible, Shiloh never comes:  his arrival will fulfill and replace the Bible, not only for the children of Abraham but for all people everywhere.  The Bible is the record of the Promises God made to Abraham and how they were kept to and by the Children of Israel in the Land God gave to Abraham.  The entire history of the Bible is of the Holy Land and the immediately surrounding area.  Babylonia, Persia, Greece, Rome, and other gentile nations appear in the Bible only when they are in the Holy Land in some manner.

     It is this world that appears in the visions of Daniel and others in the Old Testament, and in the visions of the Book of Revelation in the New Testament of Constantine.  And it is this world -- from Turkey in the north to the end of the Mediterranean in the west, far past the River Euphrates in the east and far past the Egypt of the Pharaohs, Sheba, Ethiopia and Abyssynia to the south -- it is the world of the Bible that became, in its entirety, the world of Islam. The nations of the Old Testament have not existed for over a thousand years, the old world was obliterated and made new.  And Shiloh is the Messenger of the Covenant, who came, from the family of Ishmael.

     But as the Bible itself tells us, a massive deception was worked on the gentile world -- The Lie, that the Messenger of the Covenant would come among the Children of Israel, forged into the Scripture by the faithless rabbis in the time of the First Temple and denounced by every prophet since then.  Even Jesus said it to his Disciples from the Children of Israel:  "Be careful that no man deceive you, for many will come in my name saying I am the Anointed One, and will deceive many."  And he continued, "...  there will rise false Christs and false prophets, and they will show signs and great wonders, so as to mislead, if possible, even the Chosen People.  You are witness that I have told you in advance."  And that is what happened.  The Pharisees led the way.

     The apocalyptic vision of Daniel saw the fourth beast, the last gentile world power, the Roman Empire, utterly destroyed, and this is exactly what happened.  Constantine replaced the Roman pantheon with the great wonder of the Trinity and the Mysteries of the Kingdom, changed the Jewish Sabbath and the High Holy Days, and outlawed the Law by criminalizing everyone who kept it, all in the name of Jesus. And Rome made war on the faithful of Israel, those Christians who preserved the Law as Jesus said, for another three hundred and fifty years.

     Then the Roman Empire -- at its greatest extent -- simply was no more:  the Promise God made to Abraham transformed the entire world of the Bible.  Rome fell, the empire vanished, and Europe was in the Dark Ages.

     This is the history told by the maps and by Roman and Byzantine Catholic Archbishops who leave the Church and become muslims.  Like Jewish rabbis who do likewise, they have no further reason to conceal The Lie and every reason to unburden themselves.  From Medina fourteen hundred years ago to Rome and Armenia in this century, they all say the same:  the Bible, read in its entirety, points to Islam; and Islam fulfilled the Promise of the Bible completely, while The Lie and Mystery and many who falsely come in Jesus' name deceive the multitude in the lands cut off from the Biblical view -- the gentiles.

     What the Romans had left was the mystery religion and the priesthood that had spread through the colonies in Europe -- no legions, no Mediterranean colonies, no trade or spice routes, no source of slaves or mercenaries, just a changing set of rituals, a mystery dogma beyond all common sense that the priests could not make plain, and a claim that Jesus never made that the new Law was already theirs, and dominion would follow the Rapture.  Of course, many of them knew that this was not strictly true, since they were party to the bargain made by the rabbis in the time of Solomon, to betray the Messiah and subvert his message. But neither did they know the truth, that Islam had fulfilled the prophecies of the Old Testament by replacing the world of the Bible.  They were cut off.

     It was a real problem for some of the kings of Europe, especially for the popes, who no longer had their Roman legions.  Crime, poverty, illiteracy, immorality, war, tyranny, slavery, disease, corruption, swindling, drunkenness, and a host of other social problems were all but eliminated, to the point where they hardly existed in the world of the Bible.  But they sure did under the Church.

     The solution was to keep it secret -- not hard when no one knew the Scripture, no one could read or travel freely, and only a few at the top of the Church of Rome and the builders' guilds and masons' lodges knew about The Lie so plainly contradicted by the muslim world on the other side of every border.

     So the good news was not reported. It still hasn't been.  Americans are still waiting for Shiloh to come.  Because every institution, every information outlet, every source of business capital and political power in Europe and in America was founded at the beginning by initiatory societies sworn to keep what they learned a secret.  And they did as Noah commanded:  they kept their promise.

     The lodges have not lost control to any extent over their secrets:  they still keep them.  But those in the lodges don't even know the story, or the history, or the news, except in parts as secret rituals and symbolic pieces of the hidden things not yet revealed.  They're in the dark.  So how could anyone else know?  It is only since the dawn of the industrial age that time has become short and distances small, and the knowledge of distant lands and bygone times has become accessible to the common man.

     And Islam has been predictably hidden, falsified and distorted -- the dusty bedouins are now sinister oil forces behind bands of terrorists waging jihad on the West.  In America, we are the "black muslims" and Iranian fanatics "right over there."  It is only in the last thirty years that the multi-colored, multi-cultural, multi-national muslim population of America has become the bright light of the muslim world, like the sun rising in The West.

     The last thirty years has also seen America finance the destruction of Christianity in its birthplace, another wholesale deception of the American people, again for the sake of The Lie -- the Plan of God and the one story of all Revelation are still very much alive today, and the bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki may well be from the Fire at the end of the world in all the Books and Visions.  There are still a few of the signs not fulfilled, but only a few -- everything else is done, The Hour has approached.

The Hour

     The early signs had to occur before the approach of The Hour, and they have.  The general signs -- widespread, wellknown, and simultaneous -- signal the approach of The Hour.  They are here.

     And The Hour might recede, and the signs would not all be there any more.  This is what The Hour does, it approaches as mankind deteriorates, and then God helps humanity to turn around and improve and The Hour recedes.  We are told "The Hour will come only when people are wicked."  People can change, and do.

     But there are a final few signs that appear as part of The Hour itself, and three of these can only happen once --their characteristic is that when they are clearly manifested, it is too late -- The Hour is established and repentance stops.

     Our name for the Anti-Christ is Masih ad-Dajjal, which translates from Arabic as "Anointed Liar" or as "False Messiah."  We call him Dajjal, The Liar.  He is a person who is also a nation. He alternately destroys and then restores the land and its ability to support farming and agriculture.  He passes through a destitute land and its hidden resources follow after him.  He causes rain.  He does not tolerate belief except that man has god-like power and authority and divinity.  He becomes instantly angry.  He provokes doubt in whoever disproves his claims.  His society contains what seems like paradise and what seems like hell -- they are reversed, his paradise is hell.  Only Jesus can defeat him, others who try will be martyrs.  He will come, it is widely believed, from among the muslims, east in the Holy Land.

     Jesus will return, live humbly and modestly as a judge among the muslims, and raise a family.  God will send him against Dajjal, and Jesus will search him out and kill him personally. Then God will send a fragrant, cold wind that will take the soul of everyone who has in his heart as much faith as a grain of a mustard seed.

     But before the Dajjal, who all can see but only Jesus can defeat, the sun will rise from the west and at almost the same time, God will bring forth a beast from the earth who will speak to men -- and in all the languages of Revelation this means that a worldly nation, not a nation from Abraham founded on a Holy Scripture, will invite humanity to straighten their ways and will warn of the consequences of evil:  a beast speaking in any other way is always identified as that.  The beast and the western sunrise are almost simultaneous, we do not know which is first, so these two appearances are seen as one event.

     These are the three that can only happen once, but they occur with several other events that may occur and seem to be fulfillment, but are not, without the three.

     The Hour shall not occur until time contracts.  A year will go by like a month, a month like a week, a week like a day, a day like an hour and an hour like the kindling of a fire.

     Time will become short, learning will come to an end, troubles will appear, miserliness will be cast in the hearts, and murder will increase.

     The first of the signs to appear will be the rising of the sun in its place of setting and the coming forth of the beast in the morning.  Whichever of them comes first will soon be followed by the other.

     There is no prophet who has not warned his people about the one-eyed liar.  I tell you that he is one-eyed, but your Lord is not one-eyed.  On his forehead are the letters "k," "f," "r."

     He is one-eyed, and will bring with him something like paradise and hell, but what he calls paradise will be hell.  I warn you as Noah warned his people about him.

     Let him who hears of the dajjal go far from him, for I swear by God that a man will go to him thinking he is a believer and follow him because of confused ideas which he rouses in him.

     Hasten to do good deeds before six things happen:  The Smoke, the Dajjal, the beast of the earth, the rising of the sun in its place of setting, the rule of the people, and the one which applies more particularly to one of you.

     The Smoke; the Dajjal; the Beast; the rising of the sun in its place of setting; the descent of Jesus son of Mary; Gog and Magog; three earthquakes -- one in the East, one in the West, and one in Arabia; and a fire which will drive mankind to their place of assembly.

     The least of the signs of the last hour will be a fire which will gather mankind from the east to the west.

     There is much here that is not clearly established.  In the view of some, the fire that gathers from east to west is nuclear arms; the smoke is the smog, perhaps tobacco; the rise of the sun in the west is Islam appearing in America, and in turn America is the beast who speaks to men; the Dajjal is communism, Israel, America, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission and Bilderbergs, or a variety of western leaders; maybe.

     But this is not the characteristic of signs:  it leaves people wondering, while signs make matters clear.  Not that this keeps people from convincing themselves -- and others.  There are large parties of people who in one way or another are trying to bring about the fulfillment of one sign or another -- American fundamentalist Christians support giving Israel anything it wants, so that all the Jews will gather there and be destroyed in the battle of Armageddon and the Christians can sit on their throne and reign for a thousand years.  Six billion tax dollars a year is a small price to pay for the Christian Right to bring on Apocalypse, and Israel in fifty years has paid back not a dime on its loans:  Congress pays the interest itself and then makes the loans foreign aid grants.  So the fact that the signs do not seem fulfilled does not mean that they are not a guide to conditions in the world today.

     And so they are.  Social conditions before The Hour are well described in the prophecies, and we know a great deal about what to expect besides an increase in murder, drunkenness and immorality.

     Society comes into existence when people join in an agreement, with each other and hopefully with God, on the basis that they will honor it even when they may dislike it.  This trust enables them to govern themselves and protect what they have.  As the Hour approaches, trust will disappear, and with it the ability to protect society from violence and lawlessness.  People will not entrust their collective power but restrain themselves from doing justice, for fear of becoming party to some imagined unfairness or excess of severity.  Business dealings will become difficult as fear of losing goods and advantage through fraud become major influences on whether or how to do business.  Disputes and claims of broken agreements will increase and become a means of cheating in themselves and arbitration will fail.  And the general level of dissatisfaction, insecurity and frustration will rise, making every social process more difficult.

     Goods will become scarce and prices rise not due to a lack of the necessities of life but due to hoarding, both as a means of increasing price and as a means of being prepared for social collapse or calamity.  The weakness of society and of law will inspire contempt in people who formerly feared to do wrong and their criminal acts will become bold and increase, and no one will restrain them.  More and more, people will try to escape from the misery of their lives in drunkenness and fantasy and play.

     And eventually the sheer enormity of living through a day will become too much for people to bear and their minds will deteriorate.  They will become unable to do the usual things that people need to do each day, and become like drunk simply from the burden on their minds.

     And it all arises from people failing to do what they are supposed to be doing at the fundamental level, with God and the guidance that God has sent us repeatedly throughout all of time.  It comes from ignoring the signs.

     Teachers and preachers will abound, prophets and seers will appear like butterflies.  Their words will be soft as feathers, the promises of God will seem like cotton candy, the solutions they have for the problems at hand will make matters worse for inaction and indecisiveness.  Some will imagine from false inspiration or faulty interpretation that they or their party has a special role and a mission to save the world or a remnant, and messianic-apocalyptic delusions will drive them all mad.

     And as humanity reaches the end of days, the houses of faith are under attack:  no one can be trusted, no institution will function or hold or provide refuge, no sanctuary will go uninvaded but the wicked will enter with deceit and treachery and bring destruction. To gain the illusion of strength in numbers judgment will be abandoned, the very definitions of good and evil changed to admit to membership the very poison the Law and the prophets describe.  People will search for the guidance they were given and find that it has been lost, or denied, or falsified, or obscured, and despair of finding their way.  And the blind, leading the blind, will go nowhere.

     This is what we can expect -- or is it what we see?

     Commotion will increase.  Events will move so fast, and so many things will be happening at once, that action will be impossible to decide, let alone carry out.  Keeping the peace will become an impossible task -- people simply will not want to become involved, and will not cooperate with those whose job it is.  The burden of protection will fall more heavily on every house for itself -- and the weakest will be the first prey of neighbors who are also strangers.  How to tell who to trust will become an impossible question -- suspicion will become the dominant social force and doubt will become the only certainty.

     And then, when the false expectations that have passed for religion fail to save the day, people will blame God, rather than themselves, for their troubles and their despair, and start to curse Him and the messengers and prophets and holy men He sent, and those who believe.

     And then The Hour will come.

     Millions of innocent people, for almost two thousand years -- people not born Jewish, not even joined to the family of Abraham -- Gentile people, mainly European and American -- were cut off first from the Gospel of Jesus, and then from the Kingdom of Peace.  Today, Law has been cut off; education has been cut off; the sanctity of life has been cut off; and taxation has cut off nearly half of what you produce, more than any serf ever had to give to any feudal lord or baron.  America is seeing savagery and a failure of justice every day just like the days before The Flood.  And it gets worse every day.

     But God has promised an end to it.  And God, as we see from history, keeps His Promise.

     He will now.

     And may God have Mercy on us.

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