“Believe It or Not” was a syndicated newspaper series of brief facts about strange things in the world that ran for decades during the twentieth century. As I recall, each explanation of the strange goings-on was accompanied by an artist’s rendering that more or less encapsulated the weird story being told.

Later, actor Jack Palance snarled out in his usual villainous voice a TV series telling Ripley’s Believe It or Not stories. The viewers could make up their own minds about the truth of the stories. However, most had enough evidence to back up their veracity.

These were, of course, for entertainment purposes. The things told were mostly about events that had happened in the distant past, so, more often than not, they had no relevance to the well-being of or potential harm to the reader. You could believe it…or not. No further action was required.

There is one particular profound fact, however, that—as strange as it might be to some—requires a decision that involves total commitment to belief. To not believe invites personal destiny that is the most devastating imaginable.

This is not some imponderable factoid or matter of conjecture as to whether it’s fact or fiction. This is the truth we must believe, or else we’ll face a destiny beyond imagination:

For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved. He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. (John 3:17–18)

The whispers that come in soothing sounds from the creature that tells people to not believe is a million times more sinister than the snarling admonition by Jack Palance in the TV series. Satan says to each human being facing this all-important decision: “Yea…Hath God said?”

It is the same deception that brought sin into the world when the serpent whispered those words, and Eve, being deceived, convinced Adam to partake in tasting the forbidden fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

God’s Word says we are lost because of that original sin. Satan seductively says that God didn’t really say that but said something else because man, being God himself, can determine for himself his course toward ultimate destiny.

It is true that God created us in His own image. At the same time, He gave us volition (free will) to believe or not to believe. God doesn’t force Himself on us. He didn’t create robots. He wants men and women, boys and girls, to love Him because it is our decision. We can believe it—or not.

At the same time, however, there are consequences to that decision, individually. Whether we choose to believe or not believe determines where we will spend eternity.

To believe that Jesus came into the world not to condemn the world, but so the world can be saved through Him is the all-important decision we can make. Our choice sets our personal destiny.

To believe that Jesus came to seek and save the lost—those in unbelief—and to accept that He is the only remedy for this lost condition is what God requires to cover our sin that condemns us to an eternity apart from His holy presence.

Sin cannot enter heaven. That’s why Jesus said that we must be born again—otherwise, we can’t even see the kingdom of heaven, much less enter it.

We must believe that Jesus died for us to save us from our lost condition, we must believe that God raised Jesus from death, and we must confess with our mouth that we believe this (Romans 10:9–10).

Like it or not—believe it or not—this is the way, the only way to go to heaven either upon death or at the Rapture of all believers.

It is more important than ever for Christians—believers—to share this truth with everyone we meet. Conditions proliferating in every direction point to the any-moment removal from planet earth for the believers. We must look through God’s eyes, being one with Him in Spirit, and point to that one Way He accepts for redemption. Jesus addressed His disciple, Thomas:

Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me. (John 14: 6)

The Psalmist was given this to write by God the Holy Spirit:

Blessed is the nation whose God is the LORD: and the people whom he hath chosen for his own inheritance. (Psalm 33:12)

Despite America’s current condition, most Christians who are spiritually attuned to what the Lord of Heaven has to say about the peoples of earth know this has been, since its inception, a God-blessed nation. While we look around at the national and world landscapes today, we can say that America’s blessings look to be headed in the opposite direction.

Just considering the conditions that have resulted from the political chaos, the so-called pandemic, and now the complete disaster that the Afghanistan withdrawal seems to be producing, it is not difficult to reach the conclusion that the nation has been “weighed in the balance and found wanting.” It is being asked in such spiritually attuned quarters whether we are now seeing the “handwriting on the wall.”

While most believe the Afghanistan cut-and-run decision to be terrible error by a commander-in-chief who is of diminishing mental capacity, a more prophetically specific take piqued my interest recently.

Some geo-strategists—former clandestine-service types I heard—caused me to think in another direction than the mental incapacity slant.

These were pointing out that whoever is directing the current American presidential administration is using the diminished mentality matter as a ruse. In actuality, these say, what is happening is the global reset being carried out.

The whole Afghanistan matter, they believe, is to pile on America’s inevitable fall. The Afghan debacle is one more part of the globalist blueprint. First it was the stolen American election. That followed the years-long internal assaults by the US intelligence services, news and entertainment media, some top military people, and the extreme left ideological wickedness. Then burst onto the scene the pandemic with the masks, vaccines, and all the rest of the efforts to control. It was and is all part of bringing on the global reset we’ve heard about now for several years.

That strategy is being implemented by the evil powers and principalities (both human and demonic) of Ephesians 6:12, I believe.  Seems Satan’s blueprint in that regard is at the center of the accusations by the collective, American patriot, geopolitical thinkers I heard putting forth their theory.

Again, that theory is that this president’s quickly diminishing mental capacity is being used as a ruse to, the minions hope, implement their global reset. The whole Afghanistan debacle was preplanned and is being implemented. What we’ve been witnessing in Afghanistan is not an egregious error in presidential or military planning.

It makes sense, to me. The Afghanistan travesty has, many believe, greatly weakened America in the world’s view, and it has given our chief nemeses such as China, Russia, Iran, and others thoughts that the US is in a vulnerable condition.

The following excerpt from an article written many months before the Afghanistan withdrawal catastrophe explains the globalists’ mad rush to implement its reset at its core.

Conservative Americans in particular have been a thorn in the side of the globalists for generations, and it really comes down to a simple matter of mutual exclusion: You cannot have an openly globalist society and conservative ideals at the same time in the same place. It is impossible.

Conservatives believe in limited government, true free markets, individual liberty, the value of life, freedom of speech, private property rights, the right to self-defense, the right to self-determination, freedom of religion, and the non-aggression principle (we won’t harm you unless you try to harm us). None of these ideals can exist in a globalist world because globalism is at its core the pursuit of a fully centralized tyranny.

There are people on this planet that are not satisfied to merely live their lives, take care of their families and make their mark peacefully. They crave power over all else. They desperately want control over you, over me, over everything, and they will use any means at their disposal to get it. I would compare it to a kind of drug addiction; globalists are like crack addicts, they can never get enough power, there is always something more to take. (Brandon Smith, “Globalists Will Need Another Crisis In America as Their Reset Agenda Fails,” Lewrockwell.com, April 19, 2021)

The writer of the above article predicted last April that if the global reset failed, the minions would concoct additional crises to bring America down. This makes the theory of the collective patriots I mention quite believable.

However, again, what is left out of all this is the restraining power of the Holy Spirit. I believe the problems these globalist resetters are experiencing in their nefarious efforts is their evil being exposed by that restraining Influence.

God will continue to frustrate these agents of the devil until He calls the Church to Himself. For Americans who are Christians—as well as all true believers throughout the world—that restraint we are seeing is indeed a blessing.

We are, in my view, in the end times described by the Lord—“like it was in the days of Lot” (Luke 17: 28-29). Despite all the evil literally bursting all around us—like that which the much-vexed Lot experienced—it is still business as usual; we’re buying, selling, planting, building, etc. The economic collapse all the doomsayers are predicting hasn’t been allowed to happen yet. Neither has the “great reset” yet been allowed.

These judgments are no doubt coming, but God the Restrainer has promised the following, and the promise is a true blessing for America and the world this side of the Rapture.

And now ye know what withholdeth [the Restrainer] that he [Antichrist] might be revealed in his time. For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he [the Holy Spirit as Restrainer] who now letteth [Restrains] will let [Restrain], until he [the Restraining Holy Spirit] be taken out of the way [in the Rapture]. And then shall that Wicked [Antichrist] be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming. (2 Thessalonians 2:6–8)