“I advise you to buy from Me gold having been fired by fire, that you may be rich; and white garments, that you may be clothed, and your shame and nakedness may not be revealed. And anoint your eyes with eye salve that you may see. I, as many “as I love, I rebuke and I chasten.” Be zealous, then, and repent.” H.R.B

“As prosperity blindeth the eyes of men, even so does adversity open them. Like as the salve that remedy’s the disease of the eyes does first bite and grieve the eyes, and makes them to water, but yet afterward the eyesight is clearer than it was; even so trouble does vex men wonderfully at the first, but afterwards it lightens the eyes of the mind, that it is afterward more reasonable, wise and circumspect. For trouble brings experience, and experience brings wisdom.” ~ Otho Wermullerus, 1551

“The Christian has reason to thank God that things have not been accommodated to his wishes. When the mist of tears was in his eyes, he looked into the word of God and saw magnificent things. When Jonah came up from the depths of ocean, he showed that he had learned the statutes of God. One could not go too deep to get such knowledge as he obtained. Nothing now could hinder him from going to Nineveh. It is just the same as though he had brought up from the deep an army of twelve legions of the most formidable troops. The word of God, grasped by faith, was all this to him, and more. HE STILL, HOWEVER, NEEDED FURTHER AFFLICTION; FOR THERE WERE SOME STATUTES NOT YET LEARNED. Some of gourds were to wither. He was to descend into a further vale of humiliation. EVEN THE PROFOUNDEST AFFLICTION DOES NOT, PERHAPS, TEACH US EVERYTHING… ~ George Bowen, in “Daily Meditations,” 1873.

When the Twin Towers were alleged to have been destroyed by terrorists, many Americans quickly started to seek out spiritual help and some went to churches for spiritual, emotional comfort and relief, BUT it was short lived. As the commentaries above so eloquently convey, it will probably take a lot more for most Americans to realize their need. A little adversity wasn’t quite enough, we still have need for “’further affliction’; for there were some statutes not yet learned. “

King David said it well: “It is good for me that I was afflicted, to learn Your Statutes.” Psalm 119:71 

“Before I was afflicted I went astray; but now I have kept Your Word.” Psalm 119:67

King Nebuchadnezzar

By God’s redeeming love and compassion, He stepped into King Nebuchadnezzar time and decreed upon him seven long years of tribulation, whereby the king lost his kingdom temporarily, until he learned that the Most High is ruler in the kingdom of men, and gives it to whomever He desires. He was driven from men, and he ate the grass like oxen, and his body was wet with the dew of the heavens, until his hair had grown like eagles’ feathers, and his nails like bird claws.

God brought Nebuchadnezzar to his senses because his heart was lifted up with pride, and because he must have seen that king Nebuchadnezzar’s heart would respond and benefit from God’s fatherly chastisement. God eventually restored the Kings kingdom. God was gracious toward King Nebuchadnezzar in that He gave Nebuchadnezzar an opportunity to learn that the Most High is ruler in the kingdom of men.  

God who is the Father of all fathers, and a Father to the fatherless; whose eye is even on a sparrow; If His great love can chastise King Nebuchadnezzar should we expect anything less with us??  We also have needed our eyes to be opened to learn that the Most High IS ruler in all our little kingdoms. Sometimes the only way for God to get our attention, is for Him to allow us to experience the refiner’s fire of adversity and tribulation, especially since we are near entering the time of The Great Tribulation.

While every statement in the current complete article may not be agreed upon, the following title and quote below has a chilling ring of truth, and foretells a disturbing future for America:

WikiLeaks cables tell the story of an empire in decline

By Aluf Benn

http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/wikileaks-cables-tell-the-story-of-an-empire-in-decline-1.328145

“Beyond the gossip, the indiscretions and the petty lies, the cables released by WikiLeaks tell a sad story. They depict the fall of the American empire, the decline of a superpower that ruled the world by dint of its military and economic supremacy.”

Do we need any further evidence of man’s lofty utopian plans of political salvation, that God is allowing our further chastisement? Go to the following link and read the article:

Friday, December 03, 2010:

Obama’s Emerging Enabling Act

Posted by Edward Cline

As the above titles and quote points out, America is in serious trouble, BUT “NOT,” I repeat, “NOT” because of the God who is always there in His-Story. Who’s providential hand and absolute eternal spiritual principles, raised this nation up to be a beacon of light, a city on a hill for all to see, and a superior example to the nations of the whole world. America is in trouble “NOT” because of some cabal of international intrigue of designing men which have taken advantage of a spiritual void. “NOT” in trouble because of some superior intelligence or armies with powerful weapons that have arrayed itself against the once greatest nation, (outside of the Hebrew Republic of King David’s time) that the world has ever known; BUT because of the fallibility that was and is in man; which began in “The Garden” of man’s fall from grace.

Because of man falling away from God’s original Master Plan and purposes that began in “The Garden,” and was continuing at the time that the Messiah Yeshua, came into the world of men, the current political, social and economical upheaval that America and the rest of the world are experiencing is believed to be the result of God’s people losing their salt, the preserving power from corruption of the world’s cultures. …”When our influence is no longer felt, corruption will come to its climax, and the result will be total ruin.” Derek Prince

If our culture is not held back from ruin because our salt has lost its preservative, how will men who know not the Messiah be able to stop America’s destruction by their political machinations??

It should be becoming crystal clear at this time in the history of the world that America won’t be saved by the efforts of man’s political machinery, (which is beyond his tinkering) and whatever political party or movement is jockeying and vying to get in power. God puts in power whomever He wants, whenever He wants to, and can remove whomever He wants, whenever He wants to. He is the world’s Sovereign.

Believers and unbelieving men at this time in history may have reached the point where all their efforts are beyond their ability to control and correct because of the last day’s events, which are materializing before our very eyes. These events were predicted by the prophets and by our Messiah.

All mans efforts to “save” his nation and world maybe in vain, because of God’s own eternal time table, It is time for God to bring to a conclusion the sin of the whole world because man’s sin is reaching its fullness in our day, and nothing will be able to divert His timetable to bring down the entire god’s of this world.  He will be bringing down the god of syncretism, the mixing of the holy things of God with the unholy and corrupting ideas of pagan thinking within the Christian Church. He must judge first His people because of and for His righteousness sake, because He is a holy and just God, but God’s time table to judge the entire world is drawing closer.

Derek prince in his book first published back in 1973, shaping history through prayer & fasting, still has some very wise and profound comments. It should reveal to us in part, the time we’re in, by the kind of government America is transforming into, and how much closer we are in God finalizing world history. Derek’s deep understanding of God’s principles on good and bad government is emphasized in large print below:

…”On the one hand, GOOD GOVERNMENT MAINTAINS LAW AND ORDER, IT KEEPS COMMUNICATION OPEN, IT PRESERVES CIVIL LIBERTY, IT PROTECTS FREEDOM OF SPEECH AND FREEDOM OF ASSEMBLY. (It is noteworthy that nearly all these points are specifically covered by the CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES.) In short, GOOD GOVERNMENT, without becoming involved in religious controversy, PROVIDES A CLIMATE IN WHICH THE GOSPEL CAN BE PREACHED EFFECTIVELY.

On the other hand, BAD GOVERNMENT ALLOWS THE BREAKDOWN OF LAW AND ORDER, PERMITS UNSAFE TRAVEL CONDITIONS AND POOR COMMUNICATIONS, AND IMPOSES UNJUST AND ARBITRARY RESTRICTIONS. In all these ways, although in varying degrees, BAD GOVERNMENT HINDERS THE EFFECTIVE PREACHING OF THE TRUTH. At its worst, BAD GOVERNMENT EITHER RESTRICTS OR TOTALLY SUPPRESSES THE UNIVERSAL RIGHT OF ALL MEN TO BELIEVE IN GOD AND TO EXPRESS THEIR FAITH BY PUBLIC WORSHIP AND PROCLAMATION. In one degree or another, WE SEE THESE CONDITIONS IN COUNTRIES UNDER COMMUNIST RULE TODAY.”

There’s another very important equation to the Gentile Christian church losing its salt that needs to be brought out in God’s end time scenario:

God obviously knew that in the Latter Days those early believers in their Jewish Messiah would fall away from their Jewish roots and permit the beginning and long establishment of the Gentile Christian Church. The Jewish roots of the present day church is the studying and learning of the Torah (the Hebraic word meaning for God’s commandments or instructions). This separation, falling away and the early believers losing their salt that the Scriptures warn of, from our Hebraic roots, started after the time of Messiah’s crucifixion, and have continued down to our day. This has created all of the havoc, error and deception within the present day church, AND is at the root and heart of the whole world’s dilemmas.

The present day Gentile Christian Church needs to reconnect to their Jewish roots and to the Torah they were separated from.

There is other of God’s Commandments that contained not just the Ten Commandments that the current gentile Christian church has been aware of, but the many hundreds of other Commandments or instructions of God that will be found in the Torah. It was through all these other Commandments along with the original Ten that Moses gave to the Children of Israel, residing in Yeshua’s Jewish disciples that began to be corrupted. This is what the apostle Paul warned would happen in Acts.20: 28-31.

The foundation and roots of our Messianic faith is built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Yeshua Messiah Himself being the cornerstone of the building. Eph 2:20

There were only Jewish believers; there were no gentile believer’s at the time Yeshua was upon the earth, only Jewish brethren who followed the Torah and were being discipled by their Jewish Messiah Yeshua, who was a Jew who also observed and followed the Torah’s instructions. God’s Torah observant Jewish believers were the only ones who could have stopped the beginning and gradual falling away that began about 1800 years ago, but the enemy came in and blinded the eyes of the growing number of gentile believers. God never meant for believers in their Messiah to be cut off from their Hebraic roots (see Matthew 5:17-19).

“Here´s a basic axiom of biblical understanding: Every authentic Christian practice or experience has a Hebrew foundation. Simply stated, for every Christian fruit, there is a Jewish root! Christianity is – and always has been – a Jewish religion, and it will never cease to be a Jewish religion.

Neither Jesus nor his disciples ever intended to start a new religion called "Christianity" to replace a failed and lifeless religion called "Judaism." We have Jesus´ word on it: "Don´t even begin to think that I have come to destroy the law or the prophets [biblical Judaism]; I have not come to destroy but to fulfill" (Matthew 5:17). Despite the fact that Christian theologians, pastors, teachers, and laypeople – from the heretic Marcion to today´s academicians and pulpiteers – have attempted to contort the words from Jesus´ mouth to have him mean just the opposite of what he said, the words of our Lord have continued to echo across the corridors of time to this day.

Jesus was not a supersessionist: he was a restorationist and a reformer. He fulfilled Judaism by filling it full – bringing it to completion through his own life, death, and ascension. Jesus was a Jew, his religion was Judaism, and he never changed either his ethnicity or his religion. He knew full well that "salvation is from the Jews" (John 4:22) and he was "sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel (Matthew 15:24).

When Jesus´ death on the cross opened the door of salvation to all the world, he did not start a new religion but rather began to "bring also" the "other sheep" that were not of the fold of Israel (John 10:16). He did not destroy the house of Israel and create a new people of God. He rather grafted wild olive branches into God´s olive tree of salvation and covenant relationship (Romans 11). He did not terminate God´s covenant with the nation of Israel and create one with the Gentile nations. He rather made provision to include Gentiles in the commonwealth of Israel through a spiritual process of naturalization so that those who were "without God in the world" became "fellowcitizens with the saints" and "of the same body" (Ephesians 2:19; 3:6).

True Christian faith, therefore, is but an expansion of the faith of Abraham and of the Jewish people. Jesus was the reformer who restored Judaism to its original foundations and purpose (Hebrews 9:10). He advocated a radical return to fulfilling the spirit of the Torah, the easy yoke of obedience in faith, rather than being bound to the letter of the Torah in punctilious performance of prescribed ritual. John D. Garr, PH.D., TH.D. www.hebraiccenter.org Excerpt from “Christian Fruit: Jewish Root” http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/view/135893   God is gradually, slowly, removing the veil that is upon the eyes of the gentile believers in Jesus. The current Gentile Christian Church is becoming aware that there’s something more to their faith experience that has been long missing. That something more is their reconnecting to the Hebraic roots; this will correct the many errors, false teaching and problems that have accelerated in these last hours of the last days, and restore God’s people to their Jewish Messiah, Yeshua.

The soon coming Great Tribulation

Just like the examples that were given at the beginning of this article, the inhabitants of earth will be experiencing great adversity and “’further affliction’; for there are some statutes not yet learned.” There is great need for God’s people to be refined to prepare them to rule and rein with Him, and God will also be bringing many more to Himself through the suffering of unbelievers, “and many shall be made white.” Daniel 12:10 N.K.J

Many eyes will be opened and they shall experience, perhaps for the first time in their lives, the love and peace of God that passes all understanding.

A Multitude from the Great Tribulation

“After these things I looked, and behold a great multitude, which no one could count, from every nation and all tribes and peoples and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, and palm branches were in their hands; and they cry out with a loud voice, saying ‘Salvation to our God who sits on the throne, and all the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures, and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, saying, ‘Amen, blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might, be to our God forever and ever, amen’… ‘These are the ones who came out of the great tribulation, and they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb’… “And God shall wipe every tear from their eyes.” Rev 7:9-13, 17