Chicago Goes from Bad to Worse
The City of Chicago is the most populous city in Illinois, as well as the third most populous city in the United States. It is also a financial train wreck, with a debt so large it is set to replace Detroit as the city with the worst debt load. Chicago has billions in unfunded pension promises.
A recent analysis of the top 75 most populous U.S. cities by “Truth in Accounting’s Financial State” gave Chicago a grade of “F” in its financial health and ranked it at the bottom of the list. The report said Chicago’s debt burden was $40.5 billion, which would equate to about $45,000 for every Chicago taxpayer.
Chicago is also a basket case for racial strife. There is record black-on-black murder, but white cops are seen as the problem. The Jussie Smollett scandal made the racial discord only worse. The next time there is a real hate crime in Chicago, it’s going to be impossible to know truth from fiction.
The city has just had an election to select a new mayor. The winner was former federal prosecutor Lori Lightfoot, who defeated Toni Preckwinkle in a runoff. She swept all 50 wards in the city’s mayoral race. Lightfoot will be the first openly gay person and first black woman to lead the city.
Rahm Emanuel, who has been mayor since 2011, made the race possible by announcing in September that he would not seek a third term. When a city’s problems become so profound that even a powerful Democrat known as “the Godfather” decides to jump ship, you know that difficult days are ahead.
Lightfoot came in first in an election that saw a record 14 candidates vying to succeed Emanuel. Although a nonpartisan election, the candidates in the February main election were all attached in varying degrees to the Democratic Party. The Republican Party has virtually disappeared from the city, which is shocking for a city with so many problems.
In her acceptance speech, Lightfoot said that as mayor she would focus on investing in neighborhoods on the West and South Sides and bring transparency and accountability to City Hall. She also said she wants to end City Hall corruption and restore people’s faith in government.
“Out there tonight a lot of little girls and boys are watching. They’re watching us, and they’re seeing the beginning of something, well, a little bit different,” Lightfoot told a jubilant crowd at a downtown hotel. “They’re seeing a city reborn.”
I find it amazing that the citizens of Chicago could be so foolish as to elect someone who will obviously make the city’s problems worse. She wants to give money to poor areas that have already put Chicago into a massive financial mess. The “transparency” is about removing the rule of law in the black regions of the city. Going forward, the crime rate can only soar. With Lightfoot fixated on any perceived offenses by law enforcement, the blood is going to run like rivers in the streets of the Windy City.
This growing pattern of wickedness and lawlessness that is so evident in Chicago is a warning of more to come. By rejecting God’s Word as the ultimate authority in their lives, people are setting the stage for the downfall of our nation.
“Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator–who is forever praised. Amen. Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.
“Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them” (Romans 1:24-32).
–Todd
End-of-World Mindset?
There is, according to some observers, a developing mindset among people in general that something wicked this way comes, as William Shakespeare put it. This developing mindset is particularly pronounced among the Millennials.
We can see this growing angst reflected in the words of U.S. House of Representatives Congresswoman Alexandria Ocassio Cortez (29, I think she is) and others of her politically ideological ilk. They are so concerned about the coming destruction of planet Earth–within twelve years, Cortez says–that they offer insane fixes to prevent the earth’s demise.
She and some others have declared they will work to do away with all airplane travel. They are determined to stop, or curtail at least, the eating of meat. We need, they believe, fewer cattle on the planet because of the cows’ …ahem… flatulence, which, they believe, adds to the methane buildup and other things destroying the breathability of air. Their plans, if they were possible to accomplish and were implemented, would cost upwards of $100 trillion. This amount is considered woefully low in estimation by many who study such things.
The doing away with airplane travel, travel by automobile, and many other brilliant such stratagem for saving the planet are just the tip of the supposedly melting iceberg in their plans to change the way life is conducted on earth. Worries of future, worldwide, catastrophe isn’t confined to Ms Cortez and her lot. A recent news item tells of a growing anxiety that something wicked this way comes.
In what may be seen as an ominous case of synchronicity, earthquake and tsunami drills were held all over the world in the last month.
On Wednesday, tens of thousands of residents of Oakland, California were shocked when their cell phones buzzed with a message: there had been no earthquake. Though intended to reassure them that the earthquake warning system was operational, many took it is an ominous reminder that they lived in a region with a history of seismic catastrophes… Earthquake drills were also held in other places around the U.S including Connecticut and Colorado.
On Tuesday, sections of the East Coast, including New Jersey and the Virgin Islands, held tsunami drills. Over the last month, a major drill preparing for earthquakes and tsunamis was held throughout the Philippines for the first time. Over the last two months, drills were held in Indonesia, Dominican Republic, Trinidad and Tobago, and several other nations.
Israel was also part of this informal global seismic drill. Two weeks ago, the Home Front Command held a tsunami exercise in schools throughout the country for the first time. (“End-of-Days Expert: Disaster Drills, Sign ‘Governments Know Something Big is Coming’” by Adam Eliyahu Berkowitz, Breaking Israel News, March 29, 2019)
The growing alarm among those in Israel as well as among the people of the world at large was brought to the attention of journalists by Yuval Ovadia. He is an Israeli writer/researcher who has produced films on feared disasters that might be in prospect for the planet. Ovadia has been tracking such drills and government preparations as part of his research into the subject of the pre-Messiah astronomical event.
Ovadia commented, “Everyone, secular and religious, from every country, is talking about the end-of-days. It is clear that there is some knowledge out there driving this. So many governments are preparing for a global crisis, something unprecedented. The governments making these drills know that something big is coming.”
“It is understandable to hold hurricane drills or the like in a specific season,” Ovadia emphasized. “But there is no season for earthquakes. It is remarkable that so many countries decided to hold earthquake drills at the same time.”
While Ms. Cortez and her millennial brothers and sisters are looking for a coming calamity upon the planet within twelve years and the nations are expecting earthquakes and tsunamis of prodigious proportions, there seems no such mindset among–of all people–the people who call Jesus Christ their Savior and Lord.
I’m not talking about the fact that these people simply are not worried because they know they are safely within His wonderful arms. No. I’m saying here that these don’t seem to have even a clue–nor do they seem to think deeply enough on the matters to care–that there is in fact coming upon this planet a catastrophe so enormous that only a few creatures of flesh and blood will survive.
In America, the ignorance seems willful. It starts in the pulpits, with preachers who won’t touch Bible prophecy. Or, if they do touch on it, it isn’t even near the truth about what God’s Word has pronounced on this rebellious, judgment-bound world.
Of course, it is equally the fault of Christians who prefer to not think about the things we are supposed to be discerning, especially as the day of Christ’s return is appearing on the near horizon. Such things are gloom and doom–a downer. Best to just go about life ignoring such things. What will be, will be…
The end-of-the-world mindset held by those who are totally of the world–not Christ’s–is right, that something wicked this way comes. There is coming upon the earth the terrors they are expecting–and much worse.
But it will not be a tsunami that crashes across the upper east coast of the U.S. and destroys their precious New York City. It won’t be the man-made, climate-change, rising sea level that chokes the life out of them and all that is upon the earth. And it is not necessarily due twelve years from now. The catastrophe that is coming is from above. It is the harpazo–the snatching away of millions of Christians in the Rapture.
Jesus said that the very moment it happens, God’s judgment will fall–just like in the days of Noah and Lot’s day in Sodom.
Thankfully, God is not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance. May all of those with the end-of-the-world mindset look to Christ, for He is the only salvation available to them. May the Church begin to truly watch for their Lord, who could call them to Himself, literally, at any moment. And may we who belong to Christ begin living life accordingly.
–Terry