American Evangelicals on Immigration: The Culture or The Cross?

The following article was written and posted on the Internet on January 29, 2007, by Alexander Zaitchik, a freelance writer in Washington, D.C.. Photos and slug line added by Joe Ortiz.

     [Focus on the Family, which maintains a Spanish-language website and has been cautious on the issue (of how much the role of American culture plays in the Immigration debate). Last summer, the group's website chose to run a shining review of Victor Davis Hanson's Mexifornia, a lament for the defunct white-majority California of Hanson's youth. "Jobs do indeed have a lot to do with the issue (of immigration)," the Focus reviewer wrote. "But not as much as culture -- and that's what should really concern Americans most."]

     A grassroots movement is forming in which anti-immigrant rhetoric dovetails with the odes to God and country that have long constituted conservative evangelical boilerplate.
     When Joan Maruskin took the podium last April at a Family Research Council (FRC) immigration conference in Washington, D.C., it was hard not to think of Daniel in the lion's den: The liberal director of the Church World Service Immigration Program was addressing an audience convened by a major force on the Christian religious right. It was not her crowd.

     It turned out that the Book of Daniel was among the few books of the Bible that Maruskin didn't quote. While making the Christian case for amnesty, she demonstrated that the Old and New Testaments are chock-full of sound byte-ready advocacy for the "stranger." All told, she counts more than 300 scriptural admonishments to mercy toward immigrants.
     "The Bible is an immigration handbook," Maruskin told the FRC audience. "'Cursed be the person who oppresses the alien.' Can we forget that Christ himself was a migrant and a refugee, born in a stable? Under our laws, Mary, Joseph and Jesus would be sent to three different prisons."

     A powerful image, but Maruskin's position is far from dominant on the religious right. In a FRC member poll conducted last spring, 90% of respondents chose forced deportation as the appropriate fate for America's estimated 11 million-12 million undocumented immigrants. This response aligns the FRC base with fire-breathing hard-liners like U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.), the evangelical co-sponsor of an immigration reform bill notable for its criminalization of those who "aid and abet" illegal immigrants, something many religious leaders and laymen see as a Christian duty.

     So it wasn't surprising that Maruskin's social-gospel message received a tepid response from the FRC audience. Heartier applause greeted the conservative Catholic journalist John O'Sullivan, who followed Maruskin to the podium and scoffed at her liberal "proof-texting" of Scripture. Arguing that such selective quotation did not "contribute to the debate," he tried to debunk the argument for amnesty and dismissed Maruskin and her ilk as "moral bullies."

     "The fact is," said O'Sullivan, "most Christians are more hard-line when it comes to immigration than their Church leaders. Are all of these people going to hell?"

     A better question might be: When did immigration assume a place next to abortion and traditional marriage as a "family" issue for the religious right? And is this new and highly charged issue a threat to that movement's much-vaunted "culture war"? Or is it a legitimate part of it?

The 'definitive divide'?

     The ascendance of immigration as a burning issue on the religious right has been swift. Conservative commentators and politicians have both fueled and responded to a grassroots movement in which anti-immigrant rhetoric dovetails with the odes to God and country that have long constituted conservative evangelical boilerplate. Hard-right evangelical politicians like Tancredo have built national constituencies by blending anti-immigrant rhetoric into broadsides against secular liberals and Islamist radicals.

     After languishing for years in smaller Christian nationalist groups like Phyllis Schlafly's Eagle Forum, the immigration issue has now landed squarely on the agenda of larger religious right groups with political clout. Tony Perkins, president of the influential FRC, signaled this shift while opening last April's immigration conference. "At question today is, do we have an immigration policy that is serving to strengthen the cultural fabric of our nation, which has a great influence on the family?" he asked. "The answer is no. We must get this right."

     Getting it right will not and has not been easy for the religious right, any more than it has been for the country as a whole. Unlike abortion, the immigration issue has sharply divided the movement's leaders and political allies. Fierce "pro-family" culture warriors stand on both sides of the debate, with religious right advocates in Washington backing two radically different visions of immigration reform as symbolized by the House and Senate immigration bills unveiled last winter.

     A unified evangelical position could do much to determine the shape of immigration reform, which was to be taken up again by Congress after the midterm elections in November. How the religious right tilts or fractures over the issue also holds stakes for the movement itself. A deep rift or further right turns could jeopardize the religious right's political coherence as well as its potentially natural alliance with America's growing and culturally conservative Latino and predominantly Catholic population.

     Already, there are signs of a split. According to the Pew Research Center, 63% of white evangelicals view immigrants as a "threat to U.S. customs and values," compared to 48% of the population as a whole. (Only 39% of secular respondents held negative views of immigrants.) Though the two most influential Christian Right groups -- James Dobson's Focus on the Family and its spawn the Family Research Council -- have avoided taking an official position on the issue, their mostly white flock has already tacked hard right.

     Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, says the Latino community is aware of rising anti-immigrant sentiment on the religious right and is "very concerned" about attitudes such as those reflected in the FRC poll.
     "Before immigration came along, we were building an alliance," says Rodriguez. "We had agreement on traditional marriage, partial birth abortion -- so many threads were being woven together. Immigration threatens to become the definitive divide."

     The Secure Borders Coalition is where the religious right meets and meshes with the extreme end of anti-immigrant politics. An alliance of Christian Right groups, hard-right organizations like Accuracy in Media and the Swift Boat Veterans, and strident but secular anti-immigration outfits such as the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, the coalition in June issued a strong statement opposing all amnesty and guest worker proposals. It vowed to oppose any candidate, regardless of his or her stance on other issues, who does not toe the line on immigration. Remarkably, it also calls for a near-freeze in legal immigration.

     "We favor a policy of attrition of the illegal population through strong enforcement of our nation's immigration laws, which includes, first and foremost, the securing of our borders," reads the coalition statement. "[W]e dedicate ourselves to defeating any 2008 presidential candidate who [disagrees]... . We pledge to do so regardless of political party and in both the primaries and the general election."

     The list of religious-right figures signing the coalition statement is long and varied. It includes Phyllis Schlafly's Eagle Forum, Lou Sheldon's Traditional Values Coalition, Howard Phillips' Conservative Caucus and Bishop Harry R. Jackson of Hope Christian Ministries. The signatories concerned primarily with immigration include English First, the American Council for Immigration Reform, the Center for Immigration Studies, Pro-English, and the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps.

     One possible future for this nexus can be glimpsed in the budding relationship between two Secure Border Coalition members -- a relationship that links religious-right political muscle to the literal muscle of the vigilante border-patrol movement. Last spring, Chris Simcox put his Minuteman Civil Defense Corps (MCDC) under the wing of Alan Keyes' Declaration Alliance, a group dedicated to overturning Roe v. Wade that also believes in a "founding mandate to freely and publicly acknowledge the authority of the Creator God." Along with imbuing the Simcox group with a touch of the divine, the MCDC/Keyes arrangement saw Simcox's mailing lists handed over to Response Unlimited, a Keyes-connected Christian mailing and telemarketing firm that now sells lists of MCDC donors for $120 per thousand names.

     Another, similar relationship is developing between the Eagle Forum (founded in 1972 and one of the oldest religious right groups) and the Minuteman Project of Jim Gilchrist, Simcox's former organizational partner (Gilchrist did not join the Secure Borders Coalition). The Eagle Forum's Schlafly, a long-time gay-basher, believes that guest-worker programs and amnesty are "immoral." The Christian thing to do, argued Schlafly in her newsletter last January, is to "erect a fence and double our border agents in order to stop the drugs, the smuggling racket, the diseases, and the crimes." Gilchrist, who holds a similar view, was a featured guest at the 35th annual Eagle Forum Conference in September.
     Other religious right groups may not be officially aligned with the border-vigilante movement, but hold views indicating sympathy or approval.

     "As the United States Senate continues debate on an immigration reform bill, the American people are backed up by the Bible in their demands that America's national boundaries are to be respected," writes Roberta Combs, national president of the Christian Coalition. "The left wing in this nation is thoroughly wrong when they argue that 'because Christ showed compassion to all of God's children, Christians should ignore violations of the law by aliens.'"

'Culture,' Christianity and Race'

     The kind of first-principle absolutism found in the Secure Borders Coalition statement, once reserved for the so-called culture war, indicates that immigration has touched a central nerve on the religious right. But it is not simply a national-security or law-and-order nerve, as no other national security issue generates so much heat within the movement.

     So what's going on? In the words of FRC's Tony Perkins, what's at stake is not so much guarding America's security as protecting its "cultural fabric."

     Gary Bauer, president of American Values and an icon of the religious right, has said as much. In June, Bauer wrote an op-ed for USA Today that decried the failure of Latino immigrants to integrate into American society. "Hyphenated Americans put other countries and affiliations first, and they drive a wedge into the heart of 'one nation'," he wrote.

     In choosing to highlight the "cultural" dimension of Latino immigration, Bauer echoed the nativist argument offered by Patrick Buchanan in his bestselling anti-immigrant screed, State of Emergency. Bauer also lifted a lid on the motivations of many anti-immigration voices on the Christian Right -- motivations more commonly cloaked in the rhetoric of law and order. Bauer admits as much, calling culture the "unmentioned undercurrent" in the immigration debate.

     Some, farther out on the intellectual fringes of the movement, are more blunt. Thomas Fleming, president of the Christian-flavored Rockford Institute and, like Buchanan, a Catholic, says "culture" sits at the heart of his anti-immigration position. At a September institute-sponsored conference in Washington where Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) delivered the keynote address, Fleming said that "the cultural ambience aspect of [the immigration debate] is the only one that interests me." Writing in the Rockford Institute magazine Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture, Fleming was plainer about what he means when he says "culture," admitting, "Whatever we may say in public, most of us do not much like Mexicans, whom we regard as too irrational, too violent, too passionate."

     "Some American Catholics think we should welcome the hordes of pro-life Catholics swarming across our southern border," continued Fleming. "But this is a mistake. Mexicans quickly become acclimated to America's culture of consumerism and infanticide. What they do not appear to relinquish is their own traditional style of violence."

     Nor has the contentious question of culture completely escaped the notice of James Dobson's much larger and more mainstream Focus on the Family, which maintains a Spanish-language website and has been cautious on the issue. Last summer, the group's website chose to run a shining review of Victor Davis Hanson's Mexifornia, a lament for the defunct white-majority California of Hanson's youth. "Jobs do indeed have a lot to do with the issue [of immigration]," the Focus reviewer wrote. "But not as much as culture -- and that's what should really concern Americans most."
     The issue of immigration, it seems, not only threatens the success of the religious right's larger culture war by alienating conservative Latinos. Immigration is also a growing component of that culture war.

     Nativism has been a recurring obsession among religious Americans since the colonial era. As they assume battle positions in the 21st-century immigration debate, today's hard-line crusaders echo mid-19th century Know-Nothings who decried "ignorant and depraved foreigners" from Italy and Ireland. Ditto 20th-century nativists like FDR's Assistant Secretary of State, Breckinridge Long, who thought Jewish and Slavic immigrants were "entirely unfit to become citizens of this country. ... They are lawless, scheming, [and] defiant."

     Such bald sentiments are not often heard in the larger religious-right groups, many of whose positions are informed by Biblical injunctions to mercy toward the "stranger," the groups' connections to the business wing of the Republican Party, and a desire to cultivate Latinos as religious and political allies in the culture war. But there is a clear trend-line running right among a segment of culturally conservative Christians, one that worries moderate evangelicals and Latinos alike. What remains to be seen is whether the larger Christian Right will drift into the arms of the hard-line anti-immigration camp, and how this will affect the movement.

     "I don't think white evangelicals are racist," says Rev. Samuel Rodriguez of the Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference. "But the Latino community is starting to have some concerns that need to be addressed. We must start changing hearts and minds through dialogue. The risk of polarization is real."

[Alexander Zaitchik is a freelance writer in Washington, DC.]

Is our race and culture more important than God and performing His will, to love and care for our neighbors, regardless of their difference to ours? Do we allow our own personal feelings about race and culture to come between us and God's written word? To view specific scripture concerning God's will and His advocacy for the poor and the alien? Click here to see How God Supports the Alien and what Happens to Those Who Don't.

Joe Ortiz is the author of two books that refute the Rapture to Heaven theory, The End Times Passover and Why Christians Will Suffer Great Tribulation.

Derek Gilbert Interviews Joe Ortiz — The Flag and the Cross

CLICK HERE>>> VFTB 064: Joe Ortiz — The Flag and the Cross

Message to the Intellectual and Professing Wisdom Teachers!

     For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. 19 For it is written:
     "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate."
     Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 21 For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. 22 Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, 23 but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, 24 but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25 For the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength, (1 Corinthians 18-25).

     "Knowledge is power, is a phrase many of us have often heard, coined by Sir Francis Bacon, the Renaissance genius responsible for advancing the quality of the English language and scientific thought to possibly being responsible for some of the world's greatest literature. And many people have used the power of knowledge to advance their respective causes and goals, and most folks believe this is a good thing. Obviously, no one can deny that knowledge of a variety of subject matter is essential to succeed in life. A combination of knowledge and the ability to articulate its message has not only opened the door to to achieve greater power, some would say achievement in any endeavor is impossible without its respective wisdom. Especially in mastering the language of the society one has to deal with.

     Many individuals throughout history have been revered for not only their mastery of their respective language, but for their oratory and linguistic ability to influence millions to change the course of human history. In America, the names of Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King, Jr. instantly come to mind. Unfortunately, others have used those skills to wreak havoc on humanity, including Adolph Hitler.
     Nevertheless, neither intellect, esoteric knowledge nor higher education can ever match the power of the Word of God, which reigns supreme not solely for its prose and literary astuteness, but because of who the word of God is. We are told clearly in the first book of John:

     1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 The same was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. 4 In him was life; and the life was the light of men. 5 And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not. 6 There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. 7 The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all men through him might believe. 8 He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light. 9 That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. 10 He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not. 11 He came unto his own, and his own received him not. 12 But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: 13 Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. 14 And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth, (John 1:1-14 KJV).

     Throughout history, there appears to have settled into the haughty mindset of those who have achieved great success in academia, a certain degree of superiority over those less fortunate to afford the cost of the higher academic experience. Yet, as we are witnessing more so today, God is raising an army of dedicated servants to bring forth His message in a uniquely profound manner, one that is not only convincing the audience, but changing lives before our very eyes.
     The Internet (for one) is providing the opportunity for many of God's disciples to emerge from the swampland of electronic evangelicalism, not due to their charm and charisma, and great eloquence, but by their willingness to be humbled and used of God to speak forth the convicting power of God's word alone.

     The apostle Paul gave us a hint in 1 Corinthians 1:17 that reaching others for Christ would not be based on eloquence nor human wisdom: For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel—not with words of human wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.

     Therefore, many who engage in debates, especially in regards to matters of eschatology, need to be reminded that it is the Holy Spirit who confirms truth, and all the rhetorical (and academic) dogma and inference being tossed into the mix, will not be enough to convince (and move) hearts to follow Christ. Much of these debates is centered on the egocentric nature that comes from academic achievement, social, cultural and economic status. But, a person's seminary degree nor even years of study will be able to match the words spoken by the most unlikely persons who have been chosen by God to deliver His message, regardless of their shortcomings in regards to physical stature, personality and or their inability to put two sentences together, much less two words.
     These will be chosen because of their humility, their deep love and commitment for Christ, and a willingness to serve the Master rather than advancing their positional/community/economic status.

     Some would call these servants unqualified fools based on their lack of academic achievement, their ethnicity, culture, and their lowly economic and social status. So be it! But God's true servants know who they are! They were told by God that these earthly achievements, gains and gifts would never be used by Him to bring people back into His Kingdom.

     26 Brothers, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. 27 But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. 28 He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, 29 so that no one may boast before him. 30 It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption. 31 Therefore, as it is written: "Let him who boasts boast in the Lord!"

~

For more information about the author and his books The End Times Passover and Why Christians Will Suffer Great Tribulation

please click on Joe Ortiz

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.