Mi Casa, Su Casa! Why White America Fears A Culture in Transition!

     The word culture predominates much of the American dialogue, especially in the heated debate about "Illegal Immigrants" and how they are supposedly the cause of the economic problems America faces today.

     The word culture has many connotations. In America, it bespeaks of the tradition that has taken hold of the United States for over 200 hundred years. It’s mostly a “white Anglo” tradition, as history undeniably has recorded. Their perception of themselves included being the "new" Israel, God's children that were finally freed from slavery and oppresion from the church-state monarchy of the Western European world, and America was the "new" Promised Land!

    It is primarily a religious culture that was founded on Puritanical principles, those that have been perpetuated by a people who rejected the church-state behemoth that dictated the Western European monolithic thought for centuries.

     However, at the top of this elitist group think is an inborn ideology that is promulgated by the rich and powerful, the historic money changers of the world, who still possess the power to dictate and control the masses, especially the poor. Some of these poor actually include many of their white Anglo Saxon relatives, of whom they disdain solely because of their economic status; even though a myriad attempts by them to achieve true freedom is exercised daily. “Capitalism is great, work hard and you will soon be rich!”

     However, the Mexican national who has crossed the American border (legally or otherwise), solely to work hard and provide for his family, has now become America's Whipping Boy!

     Who are these Mexicans that have become the shooting targets of an insensitive segment of America's shame?

     Poor folk, many who have lived in this culture for centuries, have adapted well in many ways. Not that they fear or loath hard work. Mexico (especially its peasant laborers) and most Latin and South American countries) is filled with peoples from this unique group of humanity. For most of them, what money we Americans will spend at a quick drive through at a McDonalds, or pay to see the rave movie of the week at the local theater, could well feed a family of six for one whole week. Poor Mexican folks don’t spend their idle time going through their financial portfolio, perusing the Beverly Hills auto directory to pick out a ride for their kids, nor calling their next door neighbors to recommend a good landscaper to trim their roses.

      For the most part, they are humble, caring folks who lovingly teach their daughters how to feed her loved ones, in a tradition steeped with refried beans and home made tortillas ~

      and teaching their sons how to prune an apple tree, providing them with a different education that will go far towards not only in nurturing their family’s work ethic, but making a contribution to the predominate culture that few even recognize nor acknowledge their significance. No academic degrees required!

     The Mexican poor, believe it or not, have a special place in God’s heart, and it is becoming evidently clear to many spirit-filled people why this is so.

     Mi Casa, Su Casa is a colloquial phrase that comes straight from the Mexican heart. Basically, it means "Welcome, our home is your home." Visit a Mexican home and you instantly feel the warmth, the gentle meekness that fills the air. They may not have the type of luxuries we take for grant, their refrigerators and pantries may not be stocked to the brim, but what little they have in their black iron skillet they immediately offer it to you and are quickly willing to share.
     How this humble but yet such beautiful culture adopted this view towards their neighbors, is very telling about their relationship with God. I have always known (and grew up with) this graciousness, which has been handed down from our parents and their parents before them, we have always tried to teach this to our own children. But, I could never understand why other folks did not see this adoring attribute: “Hey guys! Don’t you realize how much we love and care for you?”

      But, instead of receiving this inbred love and compassion with open arms, it is rejected, just as Christ (who is true love) is rejected daily. Maybe its due to fear, that their own culture which has existed for over 200 years is now fading faster than last years Ipod. Not that the culture didn't mean well, but lately it has been too busy playing with its toys and other extravagances it forgot to practice one of God’s most important concerns: to serve our fellow man instead of our egos and bellies!

     Instead, it reverted back and remembered the elitists they so despised but yet deep down they also envied and desired their riches! They remembered the attributes of those they tried to escape from, (money, fame, power) and pursue them with greater lust and passion. They no longer fear hunger. They fill that urge instantly and incessantly which is evident by a society gone mad with diets and liposucacitous verve. They have forgotten the humility God seeks from His children. They tried to escape from one culture, only to adopt the same one they hated.

     Now we see another culture emerging, one that few understand other than those who live by it. Its a poor culture, but yet a grateful one. They find theirs to be a more redeeming culture:The servant culture! The culture God has sought from His children since eternity!

      Sadly, most folks have been too busy judging Mexicans because they didn’t look like the traditional American (Norman Rockwell) image, they spoke with an accent and didn’t sound like the folks of the predominate culture, which is the only one we see and hear through electronic media, daily! For the most part, they log Mexicans into the small stereotype memory banks they themselves created. Now, they are inventing the new Mexicans, the invaders, the terrorists, murders and rapists, who supposedly have Americans in their grasps, ready to maim, plunder and destroy them and their culture.

      Yet, even through these tumultuous attacks there is something deep within the Mexican heart that palpitates an attitude that gently touches many hearts who are willing to see a culture that Jesus knows full well. It’s embodied in their humble phrase, Mi Casa, Su Casa!

      Dr. Lindy Scott, from Wheaton College, has written an amazing piece that speaks to the heart of this matter. I have been wanting to write about this subject of Mi Casa, Su Casa for the longest time, but he beat me to it. He writes about something I not only know and feel throughout the day, but because it affirms who I am. Not just a Mexican American writer, but a servant of God, chosen to serve all peoples, all of His children, regardless of race, color, economic status or physical stature. If all of us could adopt just a little bit of this culture, America could again become the great country it once was. God's will for all of us resonates in that humble phrase: Mi Casa, Su casa!

Please, read Dr. Scott's article in its entirety. You will love it! Click here Mi Casa Es Su Casa

For more information about this blog and the author's two books, The End Times Passover and Why Christians Will Suffer Great Tribualtion, please click on Joe Ortiz

Trying to Decide? How Much Time Do You Really Have?

     For He says, "In an acceptable time I have heard you, and in the day of salvation I have helped you." Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation, (2 Corinthians 6:2)
     This is so desperately a matter of importance for every human being who comes into the world that I first become indignant, and then I become sad, when I try to give spiritual counsel to a person who looks me in the eye and tells me: "Well, I am trying to make up my mind if I should accept Christ or not."
     Such a person gives absolutely no indication that he realizes he is talking about the most important decision he can make in his lifetime--a decision to get right with God, to believe in the eternal Son, the Savior, to become a disciple, an obedient witness to Jesus Christ as Lord.
     How can any man or woman, lost and undone, sinful and wretched, alienated from God, stand there and intimate that the death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ and God's revealed plan of salvation do not take priority over some of life's other decisions? Christ the Eternal Son, pp121-122, by A.W. Tozer.

A Review of Tom Horn's Book, APPOLLYON RISING 2012

Are You Prepared To Suffer Great Tribulation?

     [Following is a review of Tom Horn's book, Appollyon Rising 2012,The Lost Symbol Found and the Final Mystery,by Joe Ortiz, author of The End Times Passover (Etymological Challenges to Millenarian Doctrines) and Why Christians Will Suffer "Great Tribulation (The Sequel to The End Times Passover).]

     Tom Horn has written probably the most informative book to date about the diabolical machinations that have lurked behind the shadows of humanity since the beginning of time, concerning what we believe is cognitive reality.

     It is this author’s opinion (which has been proven by many other authors besides Horn) that there exists a dimension few are aware of, where Satan and his minions have been manipulating the human mind since the beginning of time, in an effort to thwart the perpetual mission of God to reunite with His creation. Obviously, this was accomplished by the glorious act of Jesus Christ, on the cross, who sacrificed His life for us in order that we can spend an eternity with Him in His soon to come Kingdom.

     After Satan rebelled against his own creator, he began the most clever plan ever to drive a wedge between Christ and His creation through a myriad of efforts, beginning first with altering the DNA of God’s creation, resulting in a spiritual hybrid many of us recognize as the present demonic forces we struggle with on a daily basis, Ephesians 6:12

     My interest in this subject matter that Horn so masterfully reveals to the reader goes back to the early 70’s, after first reading Erich von Daniken’s book Chariots of the Gods. This book and a subsequent one by Hal Lindsey, The Late Great Planet Earth, actually planted the seeds for my conversion from Catholicism to becoming a Born Again Christian in1975. While after my conversion I spent the majority of the time with extensive Bible studies, I concurrently stayed in touch with the subject matter Horn deals with in Appollyon Rising 2012, by reading thousands of books and articles on the Illuminati, Freemasons, Bielderbergs, Nephilim, UFOs and numerous cults, and recognized how they connected with Bible truth.

     About ten years after my conversion to Christianity, I began writing my two books in 1984 (originally one manuscript that has since been published into two volumes), dealing primarily with the subject of the Pre-Tribulation Rapture. After 25 years of research, I finally published my manuscript in 2007, which in essence out right refutes all premillennial and dispensationalism notions and its Left Behind progeny. Simply put, there will be no pre-tribulation escape to heaven!

     More importantly, after many years of studying and trying to connect all the dots together (theology with mysticism), I have to agree that Tom Horn’s book Appollyon Rising 2012 provides information that confirms (for me, at least) that we are one day closer to the return of Christ, but it doesn’t confirm for me his solution to the crisis facing each person who claims to be a child of God and a disciple of Christ. While I stayed riveted to all the information that Horn unveiled, as I came to the end of his book I was jolted by the reality that the percentage of writers who deal with this topic, more than often are seeking something else. Not necessarily how to get Christians closer to God, but to sell survival equipment and marketing other suggestions as to how to protect oneself from the impending horrors spoken of in the book of Revelations.

     Nowhere in the Bible have I ever read about any suggestions as to how God’s children should protect themselves from tribulation. Paul, and others always tell us to glory in the persecutions we are suffering, and that we (Jesus’ disciples) will be rewarded in ways we cannot even begin to fathom.

     After reading Horn’s book, many Christians will rush to stores and will seek the latest survival accoutrement of some kind to protect themselves from these horrors. But what Horn and other writers who see and brilliantly write about the diabolical schema in place, they seldom or never warn the disciples of Christ what Paul told us in Acts 14:22…… and that we must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God.

     None of these writers ever provide the scriptures that the disciples need to be made aware of, which is to warn and encourage the flock to trust in God as we prepare to experience such tribulations, because these modern-day prophets all believe in the Pre-Tribulation Rapture to Heaven. They believe they will be whisked away to Heaven to avoid any suffering. Their solutions are the soothing gospel that Timothy warned us about in 2 Timothy 4:3-4

     They don’t tell you about verses like Matthew 23:9-14 where we are told that anti-Christians forces will deliver up Christians to be afflicted, and shall kill them; that we shall be hated of all nations for Jesus' sake. They don’t mention scripture like Luke 21:12-19 which contain the fact that disciples will face ersatz Christian tribunals on charges of treason; that we shall be betrayed both by parents, and brethren, and kinfolks, and friends; and some who shall actually and directly be responsible for putting many of us to death. They don’t show you examples (Acts 7:1-60) where the first martyr Stephen was stoned to death for telling the church of that day that they failed to recognize the true Gospel of Christ.

     The disciples of Christ are not being prepared to deal with this impending doom the way Christ would have it. The apostle Paul, whom many viewed (and still do) as a crack-pot, boasted how we should feel about Christ, and be willing to even die for Him as He did for us. As we read in Philippians 3:10-11, Paul was not concerned for His life but more so with preaching the Gospel to those who hate us and, more importantly, about knowing the sufferings of Christ. He so wanted to intimately experience the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death; and if, by any means, that he might attain unto the power of the resurrection of the dead.

     But, we (especially American) Christians are too skittish; we want no part in such suffering, not for anyone! No one tells them that the only true way to survive the impending holocaust (if it be in the year 2012) that it will not be with high tech survival gear but, but by what we read in Revelation 12:8-11, which is adopting a willingness to lay our lives on the line for Christ as millions did during the Crusades, the Inquisitions and throughout history.
     These true believers that Christ seeks as we get closer to His return will not need survival gear or saftey camps to escape tribulation; these forever grateful servants will overcome the devil and his attacks by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they will not love their lives even unto the death.

     If anything, what these great prophecy writers should do, as intellectually and gifted as they are in providing answers as to who the enemy is, they should encourage at the end of their books not for their readers to buy their survival wares (as if they can truly provide them any protection from Satan's attacks), but to trust God and He alone in all things. But Most of all, to tell their readers they need to get over their fear of death, Hebrews 2:14-15!

For more information about this blog and the author's two books, The End Times Passover and Why Christians Will Suffer Great Tribulation, please click on Joe Ortiz.