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Dead Like Me - Sanctification
Vs Evil In Our "Final Hour"

By Anthony C. LoBaido
9-3-10
 
Author Michael H. Brown is a godly, humble man who was once a famous journalist reporting about vital world issues. He appeared briefly on a major U.S. network TV show about End Times/Y2K prophecies. Mr. Brown was clearly called by the one true God to piece together his maverick work "The Final Hour," a once-in-a-generation book which traces the development of evil in the modern world. Brown takes journalism to a whole new level in this religious classic.
Having personally read, studied and committed the major points of "The Final Hour" to memory, one might venture to state Brown looks all the way back to the French Revolution and even further -- to supposed appearances by the Virgin Mary at LaSalette, France and the better known appearance at Fatima -- as the siren's song of modern evil.
"The Final Hour" is a book written not just for Catholics or even Christians, but one which might also benefit Orthodox Jews, Muslims, and in fact all normal, remnant people seeking purity and spiritual enlightenment in the New Dark Ages currently ensnaring our civilization. As my late father Anthony Sr. often used to say, "It's no longer black vs. white vs. Mexican, or Christian vs. Jewish vs. Islam ... it's the decent vs. the indecent."
How do we separate our battles with intimate, personal evil with a never-ending stream of wicked and demoralizing national and global events? Is there any connection between them?
On an almost daily basis we find ourselves mesmerized by a plethora of seemingly unrelated disasters like the L.A. riots, 9/11 and WTC-7, 7/7, Madrid, Bali, the Army base shootings, Asian Tsunami, the BP oil eco-disaster, Rita, Katrina, the destruction of coastal Mississippi and New Orleans, the 1997 Asian financial attacks/meltdown, IMF and World Bank bullying, terrorist attacks on children in Russia and China, the fate of Princess Diana, Wall Street parasites calling themselves "investment banks," Federal Reserve and Treasury criminality (inventing fake money with ink and paper de-linked from gold or silver, and/or via electrons on a computer screen) the long lost wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, women in combat, the emerging American national financial collapse, the death of the American Dream and the rise of wicked and perhaps insane "leaders."
Add to that America's whored-out establishment mass media and the morally debased journalism schools which feed them, exploding space shuttles with their "eco-friendly tiles" and crews selected primarily because they were "people of color," the death of the American space program and the subsequent emerging reliance on Russia to fulfill America's space needs, the choking of our oceans with giant islands of photodegradable plastic garbage larger than the nation of France, the systemic attack on MLK's dream of a non-politically correct society where character matters instead of race, and perhaps most importantly the ultimate indictment against the horrifying Satanic zeitgeist gripping our society -- the horrible murders committed against people of all races by American citizens through the slayings of Abeer Hamza, Channon Christian, James Byrd and others.
Look around you at the signs of sloth, vanity the other examples of the seven deadly sins. Lament the obesity where is the personal pride when uncountable millions of Americans are so horrendously fat? These are not bad or evil people so what forces took them down this troubling path? Look again more deeply at the rise of fast food, cosmetic surgery, legal and illegal drug use, steroids for athletes, divorce/family break up, failed public schools, Marxist universities, gang clothes and rap music/non-culture, Big Pharma, body art and piercings and an obsession with media technology (texting, cell phones, Face Book, Twitter) which combine form a Satanic busy-like pseudo state which places people in various forms of bondage. The late John Paul II wrote an encyclical which stated that because of post-modern mass media systems, most people in the Western world won,t receive the chance to hear the gospel.
These changes have produced profound effects on society. The innocence of childhood which was taken for granted as late as the 1970's no longer exists. Our children are often unable to achieve personal health, define reality and establish normal boundaries. This new paradigm (what John Paul II expanded upon in his encyclical) represents a major breakthrough for the forces of darkness which is unparalleled in human history.
Where did this nightmare come from? Is there a Satanic Illuminati behind the scenes pulling our strings? Men like David Icke, Alan Watt and others (many of whom write for Rense.com) try to make sense of the madness all around us. If such a satanic elite does exist then how can we possibly fight them? Surely there must be some way. On a planet of six or seven billion people someone must have a plan. For now we can only try to make sense of the unfolding craziness.
Everything seems to be falling apart. The America we grew up in no longer exists. Over 20 million illegal aliens roam America's cities and rural areas (some rape and kill, deal in drugs, kidnap and thus ruin the reputation of all illegal aliens) while our "leaders" encourage the invasion like the incompetent, pagan Roman rulers of ancient days.
Destruction lurks everywhere, even for the unborn. Abortion has become a national pastime to rival baseball while Americans help fund a global abortion holocaust through the funding of the United Nations abortion programs in the Developing World. (Did you know that just after 9/11, Planned Parenthood offered free abortions to help Americans "cope").
Then there's the issue of the new god of global trade. There were sanctions for greedy, violent apartheid South Africa but these days we offer red carpet MFN status for Communist China the greatest violator of human rights in all of history via Mao's Cultural Revolution, The Great Leap forward, forced abortion and sterilization, the eating of aborted fetuses, forced organ harvesting, slave labor and other abuses. Normal, patriotic Americans and others in the West find themselves powerless to arrest these developments.
Can you believe that godless, fascist China is now America's bank -- this while the leaders of China (and Russia) continue to develop the modernized nuclear weapons, ICBMs, submarines like the Kursk, high tech cruise missiles and other delivery systems required to fight and win a nuclear war against the United States?
All of this is being done while America's nuclear deterrent is rotting and rusting away and our delusional "President" has a (perhaps psychotic) dream out loud about total global nuclear disarmament? As if the archetype Antichrist monsters ruining the nuclear-armed North Korea aren,t laughing in Mr. Obama's face ... just as they laughed at Mr. Clinton and Bush Jr.
Our ability to defend ourselves on a national level is being threatened as those who knew how to make nuclear weapons for the Pentagon in the 1950's are old and dying off. America no longer carries out live nuclear tests but rather relies on computer simulations. And those advanced computers not very different from the computers which help create fake money for the monsters "running" the Federal (actually privately owned) Reserve (there are no reserves and perhaps no gold left at Fort Knox) Bank.
How can we cope with these seemingly insurmountable obstacles? With powers and principalities whose influence seems beyond our capacity for understanding. Is this possible?
The fact is that we cannot hope to fight North Korea's or China's rulers, bring Mr. Obama back to reality, shut down the Federal Reserve Bank or stop Russia and China from modernizing their offensive nuclear weapons anymore than we can bring back the values of the 1950's.
Beyond the moral and financial wasteland we see around us might rest a nuclear and radioactive, biological and/or biochemical wasteland. Prophecies in the Bible and extra-Biblical sources all point to some kind of terrible Tribulation. The Tribulation must come on a global scale. As believers we should welcome this reality. But it should not blind us to the making the most important preparations for enduring what's yet to come.
Yes there will be horrible global events in the coming decades. There will be earthquakes, supernovas in space, more Tsunamis and nuclear explosions. These signs appeal to the flesh. They sound like scary bedtime stories about the Boogeyman. If we accept that these things must indeed happen as the old world dies off and the new world waits to be born, we must overcome the urge to resist accounting for the evil in our own lives first and foremost.
More to the point, we should be "working out our salvation with fear and trembling." We must prepare our souls for Judgment Day. This world and this universe are polluted with sin. It will be judged by God. How much time are you spending in preparation for the day when you finally meet God? Hell is real. Once you go there no one is getting out. So is there an escape for us?
In all humility, the first step is to get on our hands and knees and seek the Lord in prayer. Through prayer we find strength, and that strength will put us on the offensive against sin in our own lives. In time this new strength will dispel all fear; "For God has not given us a spirit of fear but of power and of love and of sound mind." We must seek personal sanctification (holiness, the hard work of repentance from sin, fixing what we have done wrong to God and to others) and then look at the directions left to us by the Old Testament and New Testament prophets who did battle with Satan and the demons of hell.
We are commanded to overcome the world. We have been told that friendship with the world means we are God's enemies. We are told to crucify the flesh on a daily basis. We are told that we will be persecuted and hated if we love, obey and serve Jesus Christ and follow in His footsteps. The fact that we are now living through such persecutions (look at the fate of Bob Dornan, Patrick Buchanan, Alan Keyes, the Afrikaners, Hmong, UNITA, South Sudan, Karen of Burma, Montagnards of Vietnam and Rhodesian farmers as archetype examples) show that Christ's words about persecution are indeed true.
Everyone and everything in the world that is pure, good and noble is under attack. From abstinence education to Mr. T telling children to drink milk, we see every single moral agent demonized and ridiculed. This jihad against purity even reaches to the professional sports world where athletes like Charlie Ward have been torn down for being positive role models.
Thankfully we don't get to judge ourselves nor punish ourselves. That's God's job. Of course we have no right to judge others. We don,t wear robes, use a gavel and we have no authority to (again) judge ourselves or others. But the Apostle Paul said we should "discern all things." Those who love God hate evil. And if we hate evil we will do the hard work necessary to fight against it.
What is binding you these days? What drives your addictions and depression? Why do you remain in bondage, a slave to the world and the flesh? In my travels as a journalist I have worked in over 40 countries and published 337 articles on WND.com read by untold millions. I,ve taught more than 40 university courses between 2006 and 2010. Along the way I have learned much and have seen much evil. I have seen massive Aids in Africa, elephants stepping on landmines, the fruits of the Khmer Rouge at the Killing Fields in Cambodia, Lebanon, blood diamonds, blood thirsty mercenaries, the South African farm killings and many other things far, far worse.
Yet it is the smaller tragedies I have seen which hurt my soul in a deeper way. There are my students, friends and even a handful of troubled ex-girlfriends (very pretty girls with nice family support) who actually talked about committing suicide not to mention those who tried to kill themselves and failed. These women were not afraid of death. They were afraid of life. They wanted more than life had to offer them.
Then there are those trapped in bondage to alcohol many times because they were involved in abortion. This is especially acute in South Korea, which has the lowest birthrate of any industrialized nation. This is in part because the ritual murder of their beautiful little unborn daughters has been a national sport, along with Soju-based alcohol addiction.
South Koreans also have turned the United Nations into a transnational idol, since they owe their existence to U.S.-led United Nations forces during the Korean War. These days they understandably cheer the rise of UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon. Unfortunately as previously noted, the United Nations is the greatest murderer of unborn children in the history of mankind. The fact that they shouldn,t fly the UN flag on every street corner is lost on most South Koreans, who continue to wallow in their own female gendercide and general (though now ebbing) abortion Holocaust with the aplomb of a King and Queen tossing aside drumsticks at a Thanksgiving banquet.
One student at Texas A&M a world class athlete -- drove her friend for an abortion, paid for it and to her horror years later learned that a baby has a heartbeat and a fingerprint after only about seven weeks or so. (The gal who paid for this abortion repented and was baptized).
Another person I knew, after battling leukemia through her teen years, started to shoot up with a needle filled with Oxycon, a low-level alternative to heroin. This girl was one of the best, brightest and all-around most incredible people I have ever met. I guess everyone has their breaking point. But she beat it. This is why we should be on our hands and knees in prayer before God every day and looking at our own sins, rather than looking at the lives of others.
I met a young German man in perfect health living in Southeast Asia who overdosed on heroin. He was blonde, strong, seemingly happy and normal and had a nice business setting up Internet cafes. Others apparently did not understand that shooting up heroin is 100 times better than the best orgasm you,ve ever had. Well, who needs to experience that? Like King Solomon, people chase the wind. They become "human doings" instead of "human beings." And in the end nothing is enough for them. In the end any type of idolatry (money, sex, career) is destructive.
One of my old girlfriends -- a tall, blonde and totally gorgeous surfer-type -- almost overdosed on drugs, was put in the hospital and forced to have an abortion by her own parents. This had happened years before I met her ... Years later she finally found the strength to let someone else know. Later her ex-husband returned from the U.S. Army in Iraq, put a gun to his head and to her head. Yet she survived. This woman changed her life, was baptized, began reading the Bible, changed the way she dressed (she even wore my mother's old clothes after my mother died) and totally became a new person filled with joy and a great heart for God.
I could cite many, many similar stories from the people I know. People struggle. Good people struggle. Great people struggle. The Devil, stalking them like a lion, turns their hearts and minds a tiny bit away from God. This is the foothold. Then slowly the rot sets in think of Western Civilization since the French Revolution in 1789, or American culture since Elvis, Hollywood and the Sock Hop turned into Woodstock and then into Dennis Rodman and Paris Hilton.
This is what Michael H. Brown is getting at in "The Final Hour." But what we can,t leave out of our "Final Hour" is that Dennis Rodman paid for the funeral of James Byrd. (I actually ran into Dennis Rodman at DFW airport in May, 2006). America went truly insane when Dennis Rodman became a cultural icon. Yet God is calling Dennis Rodman. God is calling us. How should you and I and Dennis Rodman respond?
The book "The Way of The Heart" by Henri J.M. Nouwen, calls us to seek solitude just as St. Anthony and John the Baptist sought it. This book focuses on the Desert Fathers who fled the decadence of Rome in the First, Second and Third Centuries. These Desert Fathers went into the deserts of Egypt in an attempt to overcome the Devil and the world while seeking purity.
The book states, "For them solitude is not a private therapeutic place. Rather, it is the place of conversion, the place where the old self dies and the new self is born, the place where the emergence of the new man and the new woman occurs." Nouwen also says that the modern world is a shipwreck, that mankind has gone insane and those who follow Jesus Christ can stand on the shore and direct others to sanity.
Nouwen additionally writes that "... compulsion manifests itself in the lurking fear of failing and the steady urge to prevent this by gathering more of the same more work, more money, more friends ... These very compulsions are at the basis of the two main enemies of the spiritual life anger and greed. They are the inner side of the secular life, the sour fruits of our worldly dependencies."
(Think about how over-use of the Internet, Instant Messaging, Text Messages, CD's, DVD's, I-Pods, cell phones and beepers continually inhibit our solitude and spiritual growth).
In the end we must never forget that no matter what we,ve done wrong drinking, drugs, abortion, bad parenting, sexual immorality, adultery, slandering others and driving them out from our circle, misleading them, stealing years of people's lives through fraud and false promises, misusing the talents of others for your own ends, abandoning your husband or wife and/or children, disrespect for parents, mis-educating children and/or failing to help children at moral and mortal risk, lying, theft, bad faith negotiations, false pride, attempts at suicide, sloth, gluttony or any other sin we are all only one decision away from turning back to God, repenting and seeking to overcome the flesh, the world and the pride of life.
How and where will you spend your current lifetime, your ,Final Hour,, on planet Earth and most importantly -- eternity? The formula for victory is simple: If you crucify your flesh on a daily basis you,ll find God's eternal Kingdom. And along the way you,ll inflict an agonizing day-long, pride-swallowing siege on the shadowy, Satanic and Illuminati forces that have hijacked Western civilization and our world. It is the primary way to victory. Remember that we are not called to victory, nor promised victory, but we are called to be faithful.
Putting it another way, would you put a rattlesnake in a crib with a baby? No, of course you wouldn,t. But every time you knowingly sin, that's exactly what you,re doing. Why does God hate sin? Because He knows how destructive it is. Why does God love righteousness? Because He knows how empowering it is. It's not about you being better than someone else. It's about you being better than you are ... or were. It's about being faithful to God, yourself and to others.
Like a spider you can create a web to capture and cast out all the things in your life God doesn,t want there. The analogy of the spider's silk is apt, for pound for pound the spider's web is stronger than steel and postmodern scientists and engineers study spider silk every day in an effort to create stronger building materials.
(How can people say there is no God when nature offers us never-ending examples of God's incredible, limitless greatness, goodness and power?)
Yet before we can know the triumph, love, goodness, resurrection, position at the right hand of God, miracles, healings of ourselves and healings for others through a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, we must first experience His trials in the desert vs. the Devil's mammon, pride and worldly status, His betrayal by alleged "friends," slander, abandonment, assault, agony, denial of self, hatred of sin, love of purity and crucifixion.
Make no mistake; those who came against Jesus in the form of some of the Jews, so-called pious religious leaders, Roman soldiers, Pilate and Herod were struck down. Pilate went insane, unable to wash the blood of Jesus off of his hands. Roman soldiers utterly destroyed Israel in 70 A.D. and scattered the inhabitants to the four corners of the Earth. The Roman Empire itself was terrorized by Attila the Hun (Rome's 9/11 after training Attila at Rome's finest military academy sound familiar?) and eventually sacked in 476 A.D. by the Goths and other scum of Europe. Surprised? You shouldn,t be. You hurt God, you hurt God's child. And that's the last place on this planet you ever want to be.
Putting aside all fear, may we follow the lead of Pope Benedict XVI, who in his inaugural homily, told the world; "Are we not perhaps all afraid in some way? If we let Christ enter fully into our lives, if we open ourselves totally to Him, are we not afraid that He might take something away from us?... No! If we let Christ into our lives, we lose nothing, nothing, absolutely nothing of what makes life free, beautiful and great. No! Only in this friendship do we experience beauty and liberation ... When we give ourselves to Him, we receive a hundredfold in return. Yes, open, open wide the doors to Christ and you will find true life."
Following Jesus on the narrow path as described in the Book of Matthew (the narrow way, the narrow path, the narrow gate "and few be they that find it") might require that we backtrack on our life, fix our wrong attitudes and the damage we have done to ourselves and others. It might also mean finally confronting and eliminating other evil elements which we have the power to slay. These can be ideas, ways of thinking or other factors. There are internal demons and external demons that will have to be confronted. Popular culture, while secular and often outright hostile to the message of Jesus Christ, abounds with examples of such confrontations.
For example, in the popular TV show ,Dead Like Me,,, the character of Georgia Lass, (played adroitly by Ellen Muth) has been killed by a piece of the Russian Space Station Mir. Now she's bound on Earth as a "Grim Reaper" in the same town where she grew up. Every day she gets a new assignment on a yellow piece of paper and must "reap" that person's soul. In a parallel to her main task as a reaper, she now gets to watch over her little sister ,Reggie,,, her mother ,Joy,, and dog ,J.D.,,
In one memorable Halloween episode, Georgia Lass recalls Trick or Treating and ringing the doorbell of a man who turns out to be a serial killer. Little Georgia barely managed to evade this evil man. However, as young woman nearing the age of 20, she (as a Grim Reaper) returns to this man's home to reap his soul and stop him from killing any other children.
"I know you ... who are you?" the serial killer says to her when she rings his doorbell.
"No one you want to know," she replies stoically while touching his arm, which activates the power of the Reaper to take a person's soul.
"It's done. It's all over."
After reaping this sick man's soul and sending him to hell, Georgia Lass walks over to the local cemetery where she was buried. Halloween is now over and it's now All Soul's Day, November 1st. She finds her mother and her sister fast asleep by her grave, having slept there all night hoping that she might somehow contact them as an angel. As she walks by, she covers them up with a blanket, and gently shakes Reggie's shoulder. Reggie sits up and smiles as she sees her sister again for the first time since she died. Georgia stops, turns around and smiles back at Reggie.
Her voice, sharp like a razor, steady like a locomotive, tells the viewer, "I get to walk through a cemetery on a beautiful and calm November morning ... I don,t know if I,m supposed to watch over them (her family) or haunt them ... ... you know what ... it's not so bad being dead like me."
In another brilliant TV show, "Life" the gorgeous Persian actress, Princess Aahoo Jahansouz Shahi, (also known as the former Dallas Cowboys cheerleader 'sarah Shahi,,), playing the detective role of Dani Reese, is abducted by a man who tries to make her drink an entire huge bottle of vodka at gunpoint.
As a functioning alcoholic who drinks on the job, is a cocaine addict and has slept around with various men, Dani has known some serious depths on the show.
As the man who has abducted her continues to taunt her, she says to him, "You don,t know what's it's like to have a demon inside of you ... to be in a crack house and see some guy blow his brains out with a gun and you,re just glad he didn,t get any blood on you ... to piss yourself and lay there in your own crap and only think of getting high again ..."
Then she takes the rest of the bottle of vodka (after having chugged down about ten shots in five minutes) and drinks it all down in one gulp. Dani's partner, Charlie Crews, (played by Damian Lewis) finally rescues her along with a SWAT/SRU team and saves the day.
The TV character of Dani Reese stands as a role model in our own personal battle with Satan and his demonic kingdom -- for she has already outwitted her captor by throwing down the gauntlet. She has faced down the devil. She understands the power of the demon inside of her. She freely admits her sins. She admits what she has done and what she still is. This ultimately liberates Dani Reese (as it did for Samson and King David) even while still in captivity.
While mere TV characters, both Georgia Lass and Dani Reese stand in the trenches of the front we must all form against the evil in our own lives. The beautiful words, thoughts and inspiration we receive from godly men like Michael H. Brown and Henri Nouwen are important tools to help guide us in this struggle. But ultimately it is you, and you alone, who will have to find the strength, make the sacrifices, seek out sanctification and engage in repentance.
Only when each person who claims to believe in God (Christian, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Muslim or others) purifies themselves in preparation for their own "Final Hour," can we finally begin thinking about standing together against the vast array of forces which combine to make up the global, Satanic, Illuminati.
Like Georgia Lass, you have been painted with something special.
Like Georgia Lass, you were meant to see the darkness ... to see it for what it really is.
Like Dani Reese, it's time for you to look through the darkness and slay the idols and wickedness above, below, around and inside of you.
It is time for you to look into God's light ...  the same light which calls His children home to Him like the sails of a mighty ship catching flying doves.
Anthony C. LoBaido is an American university professor, journalist and photographer. You may contact him at lobaidoresponses@hotmail.com.

 
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