Videos: How ISIS Recruits Around the World (The NY Times)

(My note: I found the last video particularly interesting. It is about a young woman raised as a Christian. She makes the comment about how in Christianity you can pray to God whenever you want, therefore you don’t. What is the church doing wrong to produce this kind of attitude? How can we teach what a privilege it is to be able to speak directly with the Creator of the universe? Why would this young lady, as well as countless others, be attracted to and lured by the enslaving qualities of radical Islam? Our young people are desperately searching for purpose and “sense” in this chaotic, confusing world. They WANT to believe in and serve a Higher Being, so why aren’t we pointing them to the only One that can fill that void? She also makes the comment that she doesn’t believe ISIS is as bad as the media portrays them to be; that their atrocities are exaggerated. How one can exaggerate a beheading is beyond me, but she said it. Have we really brainwashed our children into thinking that all mankind is essentially good deep down? We aren’t. None of us are. We are all inherently evil and wicked. No, not all of us would ever think to torture and kill people…then again we rip little babies from limb to limb in the womb and call it healthcare. It is a screwed up world and Jesus gave us the job of spreading the Truth. Only He can heal the broken hearted and be a Father to the fatherless. Only He can fill that void.)

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/08/21/world/videos-isis-recruits.html?ref=world&_r=0

Thousands of young people, both men and women, are joining the ranks of the Islamic State despite the extremist group’s increasingly brutal tactics, including rape, immolation and torture.

In this series of videos, The New York Times reports on young people in the Middle East, Europe and the United States who have been lured by the group, also known as ISIS or ISIL. Continue….

Preterists in sheep’s clothing: the growing plague of end times deception by Susan Harris

http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/sharris/150820

“If you want to find out if someone understands Scripture correctly, ask them if they think Israel has a right to the land.”

In the 1980’s, when Hal Lindsey’s book, “The Late Great Planet Earth” was still popular, I was busy with high school and college. Frankly I wasn’t giving much thought to Bible prophecy. It was always in the back of my mind however – in a file marked “for future reference.”

And I believed I had all the time in the world. Most Bible prophecy was yet to be fulfilled: The coming of the Antichrist (who I believed would be a real person), the mark of the beast, the Gog and Magog war, and the armies that would surround Jerusalem – the burdensome stone.

As editor of the college newspaper, I covered Gorbachev’s reforms in the Soviet Union – Perestroika and Glasnost. The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty was paving the way for the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty; “mutually assured destruction” would march into the history books.

I watched as the Berlin wall came down. I remember thinking, “Certainly Bible prophecy is a long way from being fulfilled. The Soviets are our friends; Communism is collapsing!” The world was destined for peace.

I had read the Bible as Holy book. I believed that my interpretation of its teaching and prophecy was revealed to me with divine guidance. Now there is a doctrine gaining steam in the churches, however, which wants to convince me that the divine guidance I’d experienced was all a lie.

Not too many years ago, I hadn’t ever heard of the terms “dispensationalist” or “futurist.” If anyone had mentioned “eschatology,” I would have thought it was a French word for the study of snails. And I most definitely had never heard of “Replacement Theology” or “Preterism” – the idea that all Bible prophecies that I expected to be fulfilled in the future had already been fulfilled with the Siege of Jerusalem and the destruction of its temple in 70 A.D.

Not until I was faced with a Preterist that held these beliefs did I even know they existed. Worse yet, this Preterist was starting a Christian organization in my area and revealed to me that his secret goal was to convince Christians that their Futurist, Dispensationalist, end-times ideas were a manufactured lie. (He is currently working to spread his organization to 300 U.S. cities).

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