WANTED: A MAN -- A MAN WHO WILL STAND

By Frank Carlson, July 1968:

Frank Carlson was a member of the Senate Breakfast Group, which met every Wednesday morning to pray together & ponder the issues of a spiritual heritage. About 20 Senators--of all denominations--usually were present. 

For 27 years, a writer from the News and World Report had attended as the only regular member outside the Senate. What was said at those gatherings was generally not for publication, but the talk made by Carlson on June 19th so impressed his listeners that special permission was granted for this printing of excerpts from it. Senator Carlson has since retired after 18 years in the Senate. Prior to that he served 12 years in the House of Representatives, and 4 years as Governor of the State of Kansas.

“The subject of the text I am using is ‘Wanted a man--a man who will stand.’ We have had men in both ancient & modern history who have had the courage to take a stand & stand firm…

In Ezekiel 22:80, the Prophet says:

‘And I sought for a man among them who would build up the wall & stand in the breach before Me for the land, that I should not destroy it.’

God is searching for men who are unique, thoroughly saved, & filled to running over with His Spirit. God & the world need men who will stand in the gap…

Modern Americans have accepted & are tolerating conditions never before permitted by any generation of our ancestors.

Never have so many hated on such flimsy cause. Never have so many denounced so many with such little knowledge. Never has the dollar been as important as it is today. Never has wild pleasure or physical abandonment been considered fitting human behavior as it is today.

Never have public officials been so brazen & open in seeking the vote of the people through promises of things that are morally & spiritually wrong. Never have ministers of the Gospel turned their pulpits & their pastoral duties toward direction of the social order to the near exclusion of the salvation order as abounds in our time.

In that same 22nd chapter of Ezekiel, the Prophet speaks of Israel’s religious leaders in these words:

‘Her priests have done violence to My law & have profaned My holy things; they have made no distinction between the holy & the common, neither have they taught the difference between the unclean & the clean, & they have disregarded My Sabbaths, so that I am profaned among them.’

Israel's religious leaders of that earlier time would be appalled to observe what is transpiring in the churches of God today. Even the daily press--notoriously indifferent to religious news--reports a few lines on the inner & back pages that tell us clearly how growing numbers of Americans treat holy things with irreverence & sacred things with contempt.

Not only have vast numbers of Americans lost all sense of the sacred, the moral, & the ethical, but the spiritual leaders from both the laity & the priesthood are often found in the forefront of this irreligious pursuit of comfort rather than conviction--of accommodation rather than truth--of the pleasant life rather than the meaningful life.

If God is to have men who will stand in the gap & hold back the flood of destructive emotional & spiritual forces, we must first understand the nature of the problem & why things are the way they are.

There are 3 major forces that have brought about the chaos, frustration, & anti-Christian era in which we live. They touch both the philosophical & religious bases, were first voiced by few in number whose intensity deceived millions, & have been permitted to flourish by both the unwary & the fearful.

First, we live in this age of uncertainty because we have either accepted or endured a doctrine of universal conformity.

The forces that reduce the power of an influence of God & Christ in the lives of our people are seeking to become levelers of men. It is their conviction that only through lowering mankind to a dependency upon the ideas, ideals, & material judgments of superior people can we live together in harmony & peace.

Evidence is rampant that this kind of meddling & interference with God's natural law brings fearful conflict, death, destruction, riots, crime, & disregard of decency & principle among our people,

Today there is widespread devotion to the idea that nothing, absolutely nothing, can be allowed to remain the same. All things must change, & there is practically no consideration given as to whether the change is good or bad--right or wrong--easy or difficult--necessary or unnecessary.

The doctrine of change stands on just the precise idea that change is inevitable. That is absolutely true. Change of various kinds & sorts takes place every day everywhere. But irresponsible, erratic, violent change only for the sake of making things different, is as illogical & as unreasonable as it is unspiritual.

No intelligent person argues against the necessity of using question marks after many of our inherited ideas & practices of the past. But when the question mark is turned into a totem pole or a marble altar on which the people are supposed to lay their sacrificial offerings, such people have escaped the general limits of common sense & sound judgment, & have launched off into material idolatry & are rushing toward a degree of spiritual insanity.

If human reason has so totally lost its respectability & no-one is allowed to go from a major & minor premise to some sort of orderly conclusion, then the welfare of our people is entrusted to the care of strange & weird people.

Great changes had to take place during these recent years, & even greater changes will have to take place in the future. But no safe & proper change seen in recent times--& certainly none of the irrational changes that outnumber the sane ones--can justify the wholesale abandonment of the safe & sure principles of God & this country which have brought us safely this far. In the face of great changes, we Christians have to remember that we have a firm point of view, & that we operate from certain unchanging foundations.

We believe in a God Who does not change--in human nature which does not change except for its accommodation with & acceptance of God--in standards of right & wrong that do not change--in death & judgment which are inescapable--& we believe in a truth that is absolute, not relative, & which is forever settled in Heaven & can never pass away.

The Christian today--even in the midst of the erratic & erotic commitments of irreligious leaders--does not follow the failing steps of the priests of Israel. Christians make a clear distinction between the holy & the common. They teach the difference between the clean & the unclean. They observe & keep the Sabbath, & they do not profane either the Name, the Spirit, not the power of God.

The third cause of our uncertainties in this time is the doctrine of universal criticism. Today man is taught not to accept anything until he has first put it under strong & critical examination. Trust nobody--believe nobody--have faith in nothing--& accept no truth until it has been proved to you with mathematical exactness & material demonstration. That is the agony of the hour when the doctrine of criticism has taken over our people.

You cannot pick up a paper, magazine, or a book that is not in & of itself critical of something or somebody, even including among its victims almighty God Himself. In truth, the criticisms of God rank well above almost all other criticisms of the hour. More people--in more ways & on more occasions--cast doubt, hurl darts, & throw charges against God such as this country has never seen in all of its history.

To accept the doctrine of universal criticism leaves us with almost nothing that is sacred--almost nothing that is absolute--& nothing that is eternal. So real has our acceptance of the doctrine of criticism become that even the word “indoctrination” has been turned into an evil word that must be shunned, like “discipline,” “disciple,” or “patriotism.”

These 3 doctrines--universal conformity, universal change, & universal criticism--have left our nation without moorings or anchors. We are being tossed about in the sea of doubt & uncertainty that is about to sink the ship of God before our very eyes.

2 Chronicles 16:9 King James Version says  For the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to shew himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect toward him. Herein thou hast done foolishly: therefore from henceforth thou shalt have wars.

Are you on God’s short list?

The world today is looking for:

Men who are not for sale;

Men who are honest, sound from center to circumference, true to the heart's core;

Men with consciences as steady as the needle to the pole:

Men who will stand for the right if the heavens totter & the earth reels:

Men who can tell the truth & look the World right in the eye;

Men who neither brag nor run;

Men who neither flag nor flinch;

Men who can have courage without shouting it:

Men in whom the courage of everlasting life runs still, deep, & strong;

Men who know their message & tell it;

Men who know their place & fill it;

Men who know their business & attend to it;

Men who will not lie, shirk, or dodge;

Men who are not too lazy to work, nor too proud to be poor;

Men who are willing to eat what they have earned & wear what they have paid for;

Men who are not ashamed to say ‘No’ with emphasis, & who are not ashamed to say ‘I can’t afford it.’

If we had men & women like this in abundance, our society would be dramatically improved. Our homes would be happier & healthier; our educational programs would be more effective; illegitimacy would drop dramatically; crime would be substantially reduced; the streets would be safe; opportunities would be greater; & everyone would benefit as a result.

God is looking for men. He wants those who can unite together around a common faith--who can join hands in a common task--& who have come to the kingdom for such a time as this. God give us men.”

The above speech was reprinted in the following book: Fourth Reich of the Rich by Des Griffin

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The Wild Man Prophecy

By Dennis Edwards: 

Most everyone knows that Abraham is the father of both the Jewish and Arab nations. However, most people do not realize that both Jews and Arabs are descendents of Shem. In fact, according to Biblical chronology, Shem and Abraham’s lives overlap by about 100 years. So Abraham could have known Shem. The point I am trying to make here is that both Jews and Arabs are Shemites or Semites, that is, descendents of Shem.

The word anti-Semitism comes from Shem’s name. Since both Arabs and Jews are Shemites or Semites, the word anti-Semitism should mean those who are prejudice to both Arabs and Jews. Instead it is used to designate hatred or prejudice toward the Jewish people. According to Wikipedia the word was first “coined in the late 19th century in Germany as a more scientific-sounding term for Judenhass or Jew-hatred."[1]

In any event, Abraham is the father of the Jewish people through Isaac the son of Abraham’s wife Sarah. But Abraham is also the father of the Arab nations through Ishmael, his son through his wife’s handmaiden Hagar. Ishmael was actually older than Isaac. Because of the jealousy which was arising between Hagar and Sarah and ultimately between their descendants, Sarah asks Abraham to put away both Hagar and her son Ishmael.

Abraham laments, but God tells him to yield to his wife’s request. Hagar and her son are put out of the camp and wander in the desert. In her desperation Hagar calls out to the Lord for help and he helps her. The angel responsible for her rescue prophesizes over Ishmael saying,

And he will be a wild man; his hand will be against every man, and every man’s hand against him; and he shall dwell in the presence of all his brethren.[2]

The Lord also says, “For I will make him a great nation.”[3]

And later:

These are the sons of Ishmael, and these are their names, by their towns, and by their castles (or encampments); twelve princes according to their nations.[4]

Have the Arab nations been traditionally “a wild man?” Surely there manner of gaining converts during some of their reign over the Middle East since the time of Mohammed has been by force. Also, since they are a tribal people, each tribe tends to keep to themselves and have strong tribal preferences. Therefore, even though they are brothers, they find it hard to agree and have through history been in constant squabbles among themselves, which we even see today in the Sunni- Shiite division. We see it in the “liberated” nations of Iraq and Libya. Without a strong man dictator to force the different tribal areas to work together, the country soon falls into chaos which every man’s hand against each other.

The Israeli’s realizing that the Arabs are often against each other, have used the fact to their advantage in the Middle East conflict. Because of their knowledge of the Arab weakness, they have been able to prevent some attempted unions by Arab leaders which could have proved dangerous to Israel’s national security. Secret documents have shown that the Mossad have used the philosophy of divide and conquer as their foreign policy using their expert intelligence to foment division among the Arab nations. As long as the Arab nations are fighting among themselves Israel’s security is safe and Israel becomes the most dominant military power in the area.

On June 25, 2014 blogger Brandon Martinez wrote the following on his blog commenting on the fighting in Iraq between the different Muslim groups confirming Israel’s policy:[5]

On the June 22 edition of NBC’s Meet the Press, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu let slip his government’s intention to divide and conquer the Middle East. Remarking on the latest ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) incursions into Iraq, Netanyahu expressed the desire of his regime to promote internal strife in Israel’s neighboring states. “We must weaken both [Sunni and Shia Muslims],” Netanyahu said, implying that it is in Israel’s interests to have Muslims fighting and squabbling amongst themselves.

“When your enemies are fighting each other, do not strengthen either one of them, weaken both,” said the Israeli leader.

Martinez continues,

That is what ISIS was created to do. The terrorist militia’s American, Israeli and Saudi backers are content to see these roving bands of malcontents and marauders behead their way to Damascus and Baghdad. What better way to solidify Israel’s position as the sole hegemon in the region?

Fragmenting, weakening and Balkanizing the Middle East has been part and parcel of the Israeli impulse from the very beginnings of the Jewish state.

Martinez brings to our attention that oddly enough, back in 1982, Israeli military strategist Oded Yinon had written a paper called, “A Strategy for Israel in the 1980s.” At the time Iraq was Israel’s most powerful and potential adversary and Israel’s greatest threat. Yinon, therefore, advocated the territorial dissection of Iraq into three states. Each state would be based on ethnic and confessional roots, namely Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis. Yinon promoted the same scenario for the other Arab/Muslim states surrounding Israel, including Syria, Egypt, Lebanon and Iran. Some experts claim the idea of a Middle East divided along Arab tribal lines goes back as far as the 1920s.

According to Martinez, Yinon believed that fractured and divided Arab/Muslim countries could not pose any challenge to Israeli dominance. He insisted,

Every kind of inter-Arab confrontation will assist us in the short run and will shorten the way to the more important aim of breaking up Iraq into denominations as in Syria and in Lebanon.

Martinez concludes,

Yinon’s geopolitical blueprint is still very relevant today. His vision of a crippled and prostrate Arab/Muslim world is playing out before our very eyes.

Will Iraq be redrawn into three parts in the near future in fulfillment to Yinon’s suggested strategy?

Footnotes:

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism

[2]Genesis 16:12
[3] Genesis 21:18
[4] Genesis 25:16
[5] http://martinezperspective.wordpress.com/2014/06/25/isis-insurrection-serves-israels-interests/

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Isis on the run? The US portrayal is very far from the truth

Patrick Cockburn, The Independent, 3 May 2015

A graphic illustration of Western wishful thinking about the decline of Islamic State (IS) is a well-publicised map issued by the Pentagon to prove that the self-declared caliphate has lost 25 per cent of its territory since its big advances last year.

Unfortunately for the Pentagon, sharp-eyed American journalists soon noticed something strange about its map identifying areas of IS strength. While it shows towns and villages where IS fighters have lost control around Baghdad, it simply omits western Syria where they have been advancing in and around Damascus.

The Pentagon displayed some embarrassment about its dodgy map, but it largely succeeded in its purpose of convincing people that IS is in retreat. Many news outlets across the world republished the map as evidence of the success of air strikes by the United States and its allies in support of the Iraqi army and Kurdish forces in Iraq and Syria. The capture of Tikrit after a month-long siege is cited as a further sign that a re-energised Iraqi state is winning and one day in the not too distant future will be able to recapture Mosul in the north and Anbar province in the west.

How much of this comforting news is true? Recall that the loss or retention of territory is not a good measure of a force such as IS using quasi-guerrilla tactics. Good news from the point of view of Baghdad is that its forces finally retook the small city of Tikrit, though its recapture was primarily the work of 20,000 Shia militia and not the Iraqi army, which only had some 3,000 soldiers involved in the battle. It was not a fight to the finish and General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, said IS only committed a few hundred fighters to holding the city.

Success at Tikrit was trumpeted at home and abroad and was to be followed by an Iraqi army offensive in Anbar province and possibly an assault on Mosul later in the year. But, just as this was supposed to begin, IS fighters attacked Baiji oil refinery, the largest in Iraq, and Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province, showing that they retain their offensive capability. As of last Thursday, IS fighters had seized most of the 36-square-kilometre refinery compound with only a few pockets of Iraqi federal police and soldiers still holding out. “We have very little food and ammunition, and we can’t withstand the suicide bombers, snipers and rockets,” said a federal police officer reached by phone by the Iraq Oil Report. “All of us are thinking of committing suicide.”

What emerges from the latest round of fighting is not only that IS retains the ability to launch offensives over a wide area, but that the Iraqi army very much depends on rushing a small number of elite combat units like so many fire brigades to cope with successive crises. One source in Baghdad told me that the number of troops useable for these purposes was about five brigades or some 15,000 soldiers. Other published reports suggest the number may be even smaller at 5,000 men drawn from the so-called Golden Brigade, an Interior Ministry Swat team and a unit known as the Scorpions. When these small but effective forces succeed in repelling an IS attack there is nobody in the regular army to hold the positions they have defended.

A key question since IS captured much of northern and western Iraq last year concerns the ability of the Iraqi army to reconstitute itself after such a defeat. Going by recent fighting this is simply not happening, and failure here has important political consequences for Iraq and the region as a whole. It means that IS is not being beaten back by the regular army in its most important strongholds in Iraq. As a result the Baghdad government is this weekend poised to send Shia militias into overwhelmingly Sunni Anbar province to reinforce the army. “We are under tremendous pressure,” an army officer fighting in Anbar was quoted as saying. “We are in the midst of a war of attrition, which I am afraid will play into the hands of Islamic State.” He described their fighters as being “everywhere”.

The move of Shia militiamen, organised and in part directed by Iranian officers, into western Sunni Iraq creates a dilemma for the US. The Americans have been insisting that the militias be under the military control of Baghdad, though how you prove this is another matter. Washington had been hoping to repeat, if only in miniature, its success in using anti-al-Qaeda tribes and communities against the jihadis in 2006-08. Today this is almost impossible because there are no longer 150,000 US troops in Iraq, IS has shown it will kill anybody opposing it, and Sunni-Shia sectarian fear and hatred is deeper than ever. The 90,000 Sunni refugees who fled Ramadi for Baghdad when the fighting started found it difficult or impossible to enter the capital because they were suspected of being IS infiltrators. Their fate is a grim illustration of the degree to which Iraq no longer exists as a unified country.

At the heart of the failure of the US and its allies to defeat IS over the last 10 months is the problem that what makes military sense is politically toxic and vice versa. The strongest military force opposing IS in Iraq is the Iranian-backed Shia militias, but the US imperative to limit Iranian influence in Iraq means that it does not want to support the militias with air strikes. In Syria, there is a somewhat similar situation since the Syrian army is the most powerful military force in the country, but it does not receive US tactical air support when fighting IS or Jabhat al-Nusra, the al-Qaeda affiliate, because a US priority remains to displace President Bashar al-Assad. As a result IS is not under serious military pressure in Syria and its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, has recently issued orders for fighters to transfer from Aleppo to Iraq.

Wishful thinking about the strength of IS and other al-Qaeda-type movements is not confined to foreign powers. Baghdad governments are always inclined to believe their own propaganda or see themselves as victims of conspiracies. Last summer the Shia leaders in Baghdad had convinced themselves that they were the victims of a conspiracy in which the Kurds were in league with IS. It came as a shock to them when the Kurds were the next victims of an IS offensive last August. In Baghdad last week the Interior Minister, Mohammed Salem al-Ghabban, summoned dozens of journalists to meet him so he could blame them for creating the conditions for IS successes.

The Pentagon’s misleading map shows the degree to which false optimism dominates the thoughts and actions of the outside powers in Iraq, Syria and rest of the Middle East. It reminds me of the situation early last year when President Obama, in receipt of the best information US intelligence could give him, dismissed IS as being the equivalent of a small-time basketball team whose actions were of no importance.

Please see my article The Wildman Prophecy

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Jimmy Carter calls situation in Gaza ‘intolerable’ in visit to Jerusalem

Associated Press, May 2, 2015

JERUSALEM–Former US President Jimmy Carter said Saturday that eight months after a bloody war in the Gaza Strip the situation there remains “intolerable.”

Mr. Carter and his delegation were supposed to visit the isolated territory but earlier this week called it off citing unspecified security concerns. Speaking to reporters in Jerusalem, Carter said he was still determined to work for a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza.

“What we have seen and heard only strengthens our determination to work for peace,” he said. “The situation in Gaza is intolerable. Eight months after a devastating war, not one destroyed house has been rebuilt and people cannot live with the respect and dignity they deserve.”

More than 2,000 Palestinians were killed in the 50-day summer war between Israeli forces and Hamas militants who fired rockets into Israel.

Earlier in the day, Carter, 90, visited Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah and laid a wreath on the grave of former leader Yasser Arafat.

Carter was accompanied by Gro Harlem Brundtland, a former prime minister of Norway and fellow member of his Elders group.

But Carter was shunned by Israeli leaders who long have considered him hostile to the Jewish state.

Although he brokered the first Israeli-Arab peace treaty during his presidency, Carter outraged many Israelis with his 2006 book “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.” He’s also repeatedly reached out to Gaza’s Islamic Hamas leaders, considered terrorists by much of the West.

Carter did meet with a group of Israelis living in towns bordering Gaza and heard about life under the threat of rocket attacks and militant infiltrations from Gaza. But he said that he had no interest in meeting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has ignored him in the past.

“This time we decided it was a waste of time to ask,” Carter said. “As long as he is in charge, there will be no two-state solution and therefore no Palestinian state.”

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Nightlight with Simon Peterson

Nightlight-Larry-and-Sally-living-their-faith-in-Uganda

When Larry and Sally Jelvic were almost 60 years old the Lord told them to sell their house in the U.S. and all of their possessions and come by faith to Uganda. It was their first time ever to come to a mission field out of the U.S.

You will hear on this show how the Lord has rewarded their faith as well as many other testimonies that will inspire, encourage and challenge you.

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