Victor and Doves


Your post was a timely exhortation to all believers, not just American.


May I suggest that a relative decline in position for USA is a more
comfortable notion than ceasing to exist and don't forget that it may
yet be one of the ten horns of the beast.


I especially like your concluding remarks placing the Kingdom of God
before nation.


I believe that the present global financial turmoil is a time for
Christians to learn dependence on the grace of God and not lean on our
own understanding and financial resources. God uses health and money
to test and teach and usually delivers us through not out of trial. We
must learn these lessons now in relative good times to stand us in
good stead for real tribulation. In these trials our faith is
stretched to the limit but God is never late.


Those who are relying on early rapture to escape tribulation could be
in for a tough time if it turns out that the interpretation was wrong
and the lessons have not been learned.


Being Rome-centric in interpretation of the beast, I often wonder how
my own country (New Zealand) will come under its power and what will
be the actions of my countrymen e.g. KJV banned, Christians imprisoned
and executed. The latter is not hard to believe as Eugenics was big in
New Zealand and Australia in the first half of last century. At a
national Commission of Inquiry regarding defectives, several Doctors
advocated shooting and gas chambers. This was before Hitler perfected
that system.


I even wonder if we will reach that time given that we live on the
Pacific Rim of Fire. I can see two semi active volcanoes (Ruapehu and
White Island) 100 miles from where I live and they don't call us the
Shaky Isles for nothing.


Your last words bear repeating:


"As we look up, let us do so with hope; not fear.  Let us be motivated (and
I believe we are) by an eager desire to see the lover of our souls; not an
apprehensive urge to escape what is happening in the economy and politics".



Richard