Sunday, January 28, 2018

Is World War 3 On Our Doorstep? Better Hope Not.

Some Foretelling of Our Future, but Not From Me
by Web pastor Paul J. Bern
To view this on my website, click here :-)



This week as I continue to warn people about certain cataclysmic events that will happen in the fairly near future, I'm going to change the focus from one centered on the United States to that of a global focus. We seem to be headed for a combination of events in human history of great importance. Much of these traumatic events will be economic in nature. As you know, the US dollar is on the ropes, being in the process of being replaced by the Chinese Yuan as the World Reserve Currency. A major devaluation of the dollar is sure to follow, likely by 50% or more, and Wall Street will be just another financial center like the FTSE in London and so on. Never mind what the main stream media tells you, they lost all their credibility after the 2016 elections and have yet to regain it.


The Bible also prophesies about natural disasters of all kinds as the End Times come upon us, just as they currently are. For example, in Revelation chapter 8, where the apostle John wrote about the 2nd Trumpet, verses 8-9 read, “The second angel sounded his trumpet, and something like a huge mountain, all ablaze, was thrown into the sea. A third of the sea turned to blood, a third of the living creatures in the sea died, and a third of the ships were destroyed.” Further down in 'the 7 Trumpets' by just a few verses, John elaborates on a gigantic earthquake of unprecedented proportions, and Jesus corroborated this in Mathew 24 and Luke 21. But for today I'm going to go to a new place in the Bible where we haven't been before, the Book of Joel towards the back of the Old Testament, right between Hosea and Amos. There is a lot of prophetic stuff in this short little book that bears our attention, but for the sake of brevity I'm going to be sticking to the main points. For starters, let's go to Joel chapter 2, verses 1-2, and I quote:


Blow the trumpet in Zion, sound the alarm on my holy hill. Let all who live in the land tremble, for the day of the Lord is coming. It is close at hand – a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and blackness. Like dawn spreading across the mountains a large and mighty army comes, such as never was of old nor ever will be in ages to come.”


In the above verses, “Zion” is the hill just outside Jerusalem that is sometimes called “Mount Zion”. This is the small mountain – just 2,510 feet at its summit – from which Jesus Christ ascended into heaven, and to which he will return someday soon, just as we studied 3 weeks ago in part 3 of Luke chapter 24. “Blow the trumpet in Zion, sound the alarm on my holy hill.” On the surface this would appear to be a prophecy directed at the nation of Israel, and in fact that would be correct (see Deuteronomy 6: 4; Isaiah 27: 6; Mark 12: 29; Romans 9: 6; and Ephesians 3: 6). However, in order for this to be occurring the United States, Israel's greatest ally by far, would have to be either taken out of the way or would turn against Israel somehow. But I have searched the Scriptures and can find no such instance of that occurring. There are only three ways the United States could be neutralized or otherwise removed from its position as a global superpower – by military defeat, by a natural disaster or an economic collapse of some kind.


Let all who live in the land tremble, for the day of the Lord is coming. It is close at hand – a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and blackness.” As I wrote just above, this seems to describe a huge calamity of some kind. “.... darkness and gloom” and “clouds and blackness” could be the aftermath of the mountain-sized boulder striking the ocean as described in Revelation chapter 8, or what's left of the planet after a nuclear war. “Like dawn spreading across the mountains a large and mighty army comes, such as never was of old nor ever will be.....” Currently the largest and most potent military by far is that of the USA. So this is either a reference to American military power in the Last Days, or to a military alliance greater than that of the United States. Well, you probably know that Russia and China signed a sweeping treaty agreement a couple of years ago. This agreement pledged cooperation between the two giant nations both militarily and economically. Only time will tell whose military this is referring to in Joel's prophecy, but a Russia-China alliance is a distinct possibility.


In the closing verses of the Book of Joel he wrote: “Proclaim this among the nations: Prepare for war! Rouse the warriors! Let all the fighting men draw near and attack. Beat your plowshares into swords and your pruning hooks into spears. Let the weakling say, 'I am strong!' Come quickly, all you nations from every side, and assemble there. Bring down your warriors, O Lord.....The sun and the moon will be darkened, and the stars no longer shine. The Lord will roar from Zion and thunder from Jerusalem; the earth and the sky will tremble. But the Lord will be a refuge for his people, a stronghold for the people of Israel.” (Joel 3, verses 9-11, 15-16)


As you can clearly see, there in nothing ambiguous at all about this passage of Scripture. This is about as blunt and direct as you can get. Notice, too, all the armies of the world are gathering around the nation of Israel. As I wrote earlier, the only way this could occur would be for Israel's main ally, the USA, to be taken out of the picture completely. This doesn't necessarily mean the US will cease to exist, but it will be unable to respond to Israel's cries for help. This is ominous for America, to say the least. This also means Israel will be effectively isolated strategically, militarily and economically. “Prepare for war! Rouse the warriors! Let all the fighting men draw near and attack. Israel is strategically situated at the junction between the Middle East, Africa and Europe, facing the Mediterranean sea. Moreover, one of the world's largest deposits of oil and natural gas were found a few miles off Israel's coast back in 2015, making Israel energy independent just like most of the other Arab countries with large oil and gas deposits.


Let the weakling say, 'I am strong!'” Everybody wants to get in on this future war, even some of the smaller countries (like Syria, Lebanon and Yemen, maybe?). Why? Because there is no one to oppose them, since Israel's primary ally, the United States, is evidently no longer in the picture. “Come quickly, all you nations from every side, and assemble there. Bring down your warriors, O Lord...” Hurry up, there's no time to waste! All you various armies, take your positions and prepare for the order to attack! Strike now while the iron's still red hot! But what does the next sentence say? “Bring down your warriors, O Lord.” You want to fight with God, do you? OK, bring on your soldiers and God will bring forth his. That is precisely what the prophet Joel was saying here. This battle between the forces of good and evil, of God and Satan, is likely a reference to the Battle of Armageddon that is prophesied in Daniel chapter 12, Revelation chapter 19 (not Rev. 18, that's another battle), and other places.


The sun and the moon will be darkened, and the stars no longer shine. The Lord will roar from Zion and thunder from Jerusalem; the earth and the sky will tremble. But the Lord will be a refuge for his people....” What would cause that to occur, not being able to see the sun, moon and stars? What would blot out the sky both day and night? More smoke and soot than any of us could imagine, most likely. I can only think of 3 things that could produce that much smoke and soot to the point of nearly blotting out the sun and moon, while rendering the stars invisible at night. Every night, in such an event, would be like a new moon. Either a massive volcanic eruption, or the earth being struck by a comet or meteor, or the fires of World War Three – those are the three main things I can think of that would cause such a calamity as that. Any of the three possibilities based on today's scripture I have just named would be catastrophic. For any of us to fail to heed these warnings that are in Bible prophecy – and Bible prophecy is right 100% of the time – would be equally catastrophic. Remember, this isn't just my opinion, I'm taking this message right straight from the Bible. Be sure and receive this message the same way. Shalom....

Sunday, January 21, 2018

Watching Too Much TV Is Murder On the Soul

Reasons to Stop Watching T.V. 
For Secular and Christian Alike
by pastor Paul J. Bern
For viewing in any browser, click here :-)



I was asked by a reader this past week if I had ever considered posting a piece on the evils of watching television. Actually, in the past I had considered doing exactly that, but every time I got ready to, something of greater importance would come up with respect to current events. For example, I could have wrote about the US government shut-down that just occurred this past Friday, but everybody saw that one coming anyway. Besides, I'm hoping this shut-down will be short-lived! Moreover 0, since so much of this is continuously being disseminated in the Lame Stream Media, I will leave reporting on the US government shut down to them. The larger aspect of this is that the shut-down, along with all the other information you can possibly stand whether you like it or not, is being presented to the public via television.


According to some facts and figures from TV-Free America (1322 18th Street, NW Washington, DC 20036) regarding American television viewing habits, I categorize them as follows:
[1] FAMILY LIFE
  • Percentage of households that possess at least one television: 99
  • Number of TV sets in the average U.S. household: 2.24
  • Percentage of U.S. homes with three or more TV sets: 66
  • Number of hours per day that TV is on in an average U.S. home: 6 hours, 47 minutes
  • Percentage of Americans that regularly watch television while eating dinner: 66
  • Number of hours of TV watched annually by Americans: 270 billion
  • Value of that time assuming an average wage of $10/hour: $2.5 trillion
  • Percentage of Americans who pay for cable TV: 66
  • Number of videos rented daily in the U.S.: 7 million
  • Number of public library items checked out daily: 3 million
  • Percentage of Americans who say they watch too much TV: 49
[2] CHILDREN
  • Approximate number of studies examining TV's effects on children: 5,000
  • Number of minutes per week that parents spend in meaningful
  • conversation with their children: 3.5
  • Number of minutes per week that the average child watches television: 1,680
  • Percentage of day care centers that use TV during a typical day: 77
  • Percentage of parents who would like to limit their children's TV watching: 77
  • Percentage of 4-6-year-olds who, when asked to choose between watching TV
    and spending time with their fathers, preferred television: 54
  • Hours per year the average American youth spends in school: 900 hours
  • Hours per year the average American youth watches television: 1500
[3] VIOLENCE
  • Number of murders seen on TV by the time an average child finishes elementary school: 8,000
  • Number of violent acts seen on TV by age 18: 200,000
  • Percentage of Americans who believe TV violence helps precipitate real life mayhem: 79
[4] COMMERCIALISM
  • Number of 30-second TV commercials per hour: 40
  • Percentage of local TV news broadcast time devoted to advertising: 30
  • Percentage devoted to stories about crime, disaster and war: 53.8
  • Percentage devoted to public service announcements: 0.7
  • Percentage of Americans who can name The Three Stooges: 59
  • Percentage who can name at least three justices of the U.S. Supreme Court: 17
  • Number of TV commercials seen by the average person by age 65: 2 million
  • Percentage of survey participants (1993) who said that TV commercials
  • aimed at children make them too materialistic: 93
  • Rank of food products/fast-food restaurants among TV advertisements to kids: 1
  • Total spending by 100 leading TV advertisers in 1993: $15 billion



According to the A.C. Nielsen Co., the average American watches more than 4 hours of TV each day (or 28 hours/week, or 2 months of nonstop TV-watching per year). In a 65-year life, that person will have spent 9 years glued to the tube. Let me select a quote from the Old Testament about that: “You shall have no other gods before me, You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love for a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.” (Exodus 20, verses 3-5) Can your television become an idol? In many cases and with many individuals and even whole families, evidently so!


Let's review, shall we? Americans spend an average of 6 ¾ hours daily watching or streaming TV. Half of Americans admit they watch too much TV – the rest just don't realize it yet. School age children watch nearly 1,700 minutes of TV weekly, while half of those kids would rather watch TV than spend time with their fathers. This fact in and of itself is a scathing indictment of American dads because it points to a lack of parenting.



Elementary school kids see 8,000 acts of violence on TV by the time they move on to junior high school. By the time they finish high school that number jumps to a breathtaking 200,000! Is it any wonder there is so much violence and even fatal shootings in our schools? Our children are being bombarded with violence nearly 24/7! At every turn all they see and feel is violence, inappropriate sexuality and a general disconnect from reality via the technology they're using that is very unhealthy. Moreover, one third of TV viewing consists of one commercial after another, while any given person watches 40 commercials for every hour of viewing. So now you know the real, underlying reason the networks advertise their news programs so much! They want to bombard you with a bunch of third world crap that none of us needs or wants. Everybody has had just about enough of these abuses, and that includes myself! And yes, by the way, your TV is your idol! You Christians spend an hour or two each week at church but you watch 6 ¾ hours of TV per day? You are all in idolatry! Repent of your sins, every one of you! Unsubscribe from your cable or satellite TV, and get a set of rabbit ears for the local news if you want. Stream what you want to watch over the Internet, and if you have children at home, block the TV on their phones so they can't watch it. If you really love your kids you will be glad to do this for them.



In closing, I will leave you with a quote from James chapter 1, verses 26-27: “If anyone considers himself religious and yet does not keep a tight rein on his tongue, he deceives himself and his religion is worthless. Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.” OK, so if we want to emulate the apostle James – who was martyred for his apostleship – and keep ourselves pure, we will have to make a choice – devotion to Jesus or devotion to our televisions. The fact that we are spending at least 20 times more time with our TV's than at church, even more if we count our prayer time, speaks volumes about where our hearts are. So do yourselves and your souls a favor – turn off your TV and disconnect your cable or dish and use that time to find someone who needs help. Go volunteer somewhere. All you parents, start spending more time with your kids instead of using your televisions for babysitters. The kids will appreciate you for it, and their grades will get better in school if they know their parents really care. Mass entertainment does more harm than good. The novelty of television wore off decades ago. Nowadays it's just a nuisance. Better still, take your TV out to the back yard and kill it.

Monday, January 15, 2018

Free book excerpt #18 from blogger, Web pastor and author Rev. Paul J. Bern

The Middle and Working Class Manifesto” by Rev. Paul J. Bern.

Watch the video at http://youtu.be/VZguRDJmCqc

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I Dare To Dream
(excerpt from “The Middle and Working Class Manifesto 3rd Edition” by Pastor Paul J. Bern)

The march of economic inequality, from which springs the source of racism, poverty, crime, violence, and lack of access to healthcare and higher education, has become the new civil rights issue of the 21st century. (I like to call it Rev. Dr. MLK, Jr. 2.0.) King's dream of unconditional equality throughout the country can finish becoming a reality when the economic barriers that we all face on a daily basis finally come down for good, like an economic Berlin Wall circa 1989. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke to the masses during the 1963 civil rights march on Washington and said, “I have a dream...”. By writing and publishing these words it is my intent to help take up where King's Dream left off, and to do anything I can to help finish the job that he started. And so let me slightly change that to, “I dare to dream”.

I dare to dream of a world in which the gap between rich and poor is gone forever. We all deserve to live in a world where wealth has been redistributed in a peaceful and orderly manner and not by the barrel of a gun. I dare to dream of a country where wealth has been redistributed in 4 ways. First, every worker earns a living wage so poverty can be eliminated. Second, free higher education and vocational retraining must be available to every worker for life, including daycare available to all, that would be based on the worker's or student's ability to pay on a sliding scale, because everyone has the right to better themselves at will. Third, I envision an America where quality health care is available to every worker at nominal cost for life. Single-payer healthcare based on the current Medicare model must not be reserved only for those who can afford it, but it must be a fundamental human right for all ages. I dare to dream of an America where there will be no such thing as someone without health insurance, where every citizen will have lifetime healthcare and prescription drug coverage without qualification, and where there will be the fewest sick days for American workers and their children of any country in the developed world. Fourth, “we the people” demand the abolition of the federal tax code, including elimination of the despised federal withholding tax, which would give every American worker or business owner an immediate 18% pay raise.

I dare to dream of a new America with a robust and viable economy. That is why I have been insisting on a $14.00 per hour minimum wage since 2010. I dare to dream of a new America where education will be subsidized from the cradle to the grave so that the US develops the most formidable work force the world has ever seen. I dare to dream of an America where all workers have the right to organize, to a flexible work week and to paid family or maternity leave. Most other developed countries already do this. The US is the only exception and that has got to change. The only remaining question in my mind is whether we can accomplish this peacefully or otherwise, and it looks more and more to me like it will be the latter.

I dare to dream of an America where affordable housing is the law of the land, where home ownership becomes a right and not a privilege so we can wipe out homelessness, and where the price of a house is limited to the sum total of ten years income of any given individual or household purchasers. I insist on a country where home ownership isn't part of an exclusive club with the highest “credit scores”. It is, and must become, a basic human right. Even the cave men lived in caves of their own!

I dare to dream of a country with new public works programs that put an end to unemployment forever so the USA can have full employment all the time. America's infrastructure needs to be rebuilt, and its inner cities are in dire need of an overhaul. What a better way to accomplish this!

I dare to dream of a new America with an all-new public school and university system that has an Internet-based curriculum that can be updated at will, and that is second to none in the developed world, with a new and more intensive school year, and that has viable replacements for standardized testing, and where class size is limited by law. I dare to dream of a country where teachers make what their Congressional representatives make, and vice verse.

I dare to dream of a new nation where unconditional equality is the law of the land for every citizen without exception, and this will include economic equality. I dare to dream of a new America where there is no more income tax, no capital gains tax, no alternative minimum tax, no estate tax, no self-employment tax, and where families and businesses can have a tax free income unless they are very wealthy. In its place would be a national sales tax, such as a Consumption Tax, where everyone pays proportionately the same tax rate on only what they consume, plus an “excess wealth tax” for persons with annual incomes exceeding $3 million, and for businesses with annual proceeds exceeding $300 million, so America's budget can be balanced and fair.

I dare to dream of a better USA where personal privacy is the law of the land, where identity theft is a thing of the past, and where it will be illegal for employers to obtain the credit files or credit scores of any job applicant.

I dare to dream of a more compassionate America where children have the right to a challenging and progressive learning environment, and where kids will be legally guaranteed freedom from hunger, sickness and violence, and where all God's children will have the right to safe adoption, foster care and day care.

I dare to dream of an all-new voting system, including the abolition of the elitist Electoral College, that is Internet-based, paperless, and that can be accessed from any location using any computer or wireless device, instead of wasting our time and fuel and losing work time going to polling stations, and instead of using unreliable and unsecured voting machines.

I dare to dream of an America of integrity where all of the dirty corporate money and all the filthy lucre is abolished from our political process. I dare to dream of an America where the Wall Street shysters who crashed the US economy are brought to justice, and where the keys to all of the fraudulently foreclosed homes are returned to their rightful owners.

I dare to dream of the end to America's sinister war on drugs, where all convicted nonviolent drug offenders can qualify for alternative sentences for their offenses so they may obtain early release, and where all the currently illegal drugs are legalized, regulated and taxed by appropriate legislation.

Finally, I dare to dream of a world in which all this is easily financially achievable because all the money that is being wasted currently on the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, and to a lesser extent in Pakistan, Libya and elsewhere will be redirected towards all these dreams that I have just mentioned. The money is already there, its just being budgeted in all the wrong places. Let me tell you why.

If the US military took all the money it spends occupying Afghanistan for just one day and put it into an interest-bearing account, there would be enough money available to send every American school kid from the first grade up to senior year in high school through 4 years of college fully paid for, including tuition, dorms, books, food, access to the Internet and to public transportation. Here's another example: If the US government took all that money set aside from one days worth of military expenditures in Afghanistan alone, there would be enough money to build a 2,500 square feet house, fully furnished and stocked with groceries, with all the utilities already turned on, for every homeless person in the US including all the homeless kids. That's how easily we can end homelessness in the richest country in the world.

Just as surely as there was an Arab Spring beginning in 2011 that is still ongoing in Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia and Somalia, to name a few, so I am telling you that there will be an American Spring in her near future. In fact, I'm surprised it hasn't already begun. Beginning in 2011 with the start-up of the “Occupy” and “99%” Movements, of which I am proud to be a part, this uprising of the American people against the top 1% will explode like an atomic mushroom cloud over the American political and economic elite, obliterating them all in a bloodless coup without anyone having fired a single shot – so that the remaining 99% of us can peacefully take back what has been stolen from us over the last 100 years. We can only accomplish this by uniting together as one and acting as one body to break free from the shackles of oppression that have us all enslaved. Who is with me today?

Get yours direct from the author ($9.95) at www.pcmatl.org/books-and-donations

Also available on Kindle ($3.95) at

For Apple devices or those using Kobo, Droid, Sony or Windows OS, click here ($3.95)

Watch the video at http://youtu.be/VZguRDJmCqc Thanks so much. Shalom!

Sunday, January 14, 2018

The MLK Holiday and the State of Racism in America

The Hijacking of a Dream:
Reclaiming Rev. Dr. King’s Legacy
by pastor and published author Paul J. Bern
To view this in any browser, click here :-)



As we celebrate another Martin Luther King holiday, America needs to perform a re-assessment of what this memorial holiday truly means to all of us. On August 28, 2011, the dedication of the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Memorial took place on the National Mall in Washington DC. Having the dedication of this memorial on the 48th anniversary of the March on Washington, was clearly a symbolic gesture — paying homage to one of the many defining moments in the great civil rights leader’s life. However, the corporate contributors of this event, along with many of the politicians that were in attendance, were and are symbolic themselves. They are symbols of everything Dr. King was, and would be, opposed to if he were alive today. These charlatans and hucksters know very well of this fact, which is exactly why they, together with the mainstream media and an ever-shrinking segment of prejudiced Americans of all colors and races, continue to desperately try to reshape the image of Dr. King. If these people have their way, Dr. King and his legacy will stand for nothing more than a superficial image. They fervently wish to recreate him into someone they can feel more comfortable with. This is why most children can only recite one quote in relationship to Dr. King —“I have a dream.” Our kids and many of their parents don't even know the whole message.



Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. stood for much more than what mainstream America has methodically reduced him to. In fact, if he were alive today, many of the corporate war mongering politicians, including President Trump, would be vilifying Dr. King as if he were some crazed angry black man. This is why we will never hear the likes of Barack Obama quote Dr. King when he referred to the US government as “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today”. Dr. King said those powerful and honest words on April 4, 1967 at Riverside Church in New York City, exactly a year before he was assassinated. Nearly five decades later, the US government is still the greatest purveyor of violence on earth. You can bet that the following quote will not be read at all in King's memory:


As I have walked among the desperate, rejected, and angry young men, I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action. But they ask — and rightly so — what about Vietnam? They ask if our own nation wasn’t using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today — my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of the hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent.”



After reading Dr. King’s “Beyond Vietnam — A Time to Break Silence” speech, anyone still thinking that he would be in approval of what this current administration is doing in places like Pakistan, Egypt, Syria, Libya and Afghanistan, need to rethink their conclusions. Dr. King was much more than simply a man who was anti-war; he was a man who stood for peace and social justice. He was truly a man of principles and convictions, which is why he was unafraid of speaking truth to so-called power. Remaining silent, as so many gutless politicians and celebrities do today, was not an option within Dr. King’s conscience. And because of this, he was routinely targeted by the US government, by way of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and devils minions such as FBI founder J. Edgar Hoover.



The American empire’s military-industrial complex is a vastly profitable behemoth that must be fed a steady diet of wars in order to maintain its existence. Those who threaten the existence of this killing machine become expendable. Dr. King’s outspokenness against not only the Vietnam War, but also the military industrial complex, secured his status as a target. Dr. King’s “crime” was that he dared to challenge the conscience of a nation entangled within the web of an imperialist war throughout Southeast Asia. Among other things he said, “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.” Which one of the political frauds, or entertainers, in attendance at the dedication to Dr. King’s memorial took such a courageous stance in solidarity with Martin Luther King, Jr.? None, that's how many. Zero.



Over a trillion dollars have been expended on these foreign wars since 2001 —- while people in the US are all losing their homes to foreclosures, school systems are being de-funded, and 40,000 Americans die each year due to a lack health insurance. That's more people than all who died in auto accidents last year. If Dr. King’s statement is true then America’s spirit must be on life support — needing an end to its profligate defense spending as part of a multi-tiered remedy for rehabilitation. Dr. King knew very well about the US government’s record of going into countries, whose governments refused to be obsequious to their addiction to other nation’s resources, and then destabilizing them by waging war, by assassination of leaders, or both. These are, in fact, the kind of immoral acts of war that Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. would be completely opposed to, along with the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq before that. His life should give us ample reason to come to this conclusion, and only this conclusion. However, how many children in America know this? Dr. King’s image has been reshaped by some amoral adults as well as by other adults who have been purposely mis-educated.



In regards to people of color, especially poor people, Dr. King had a knack for placing their living conditions within the context of institutional racism and its impact on their communities. In 1968, not long before his assassination, Dr. King said, “It is incontestable and deplorable that Negroes have committed crimes; but they are derivative crimes. They are born of the greater crimes of the white society.” The great civil rights leader said those words within a speech he gave to his staff at a SCLC meeting in Frogmore, South Carolina as he was preparing them for the Poor People’s Campaign. His commitment to black people – and poor people in general – was the polar opposite of the last several presidents, who seemed at times to excel at marginalizing those demographics while catering to their corporate and military bosses.



In the same “Beyond Vietnam” speech, Dr. King gave a prescient warning when he said, “When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.” Today in 2018 much of the world is suffering from the impact of America’s insatiable hunger for global domination. The USA’s runaway military industrial complex continues to take lives away from innocent civilians in places like Venezuela, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Somalia and Libya, to name just a few. The American military industrial complex creates carnage abroad while preventing Americans from having things like a world-class single-payer health care system. In 2018 institutional racism remains a disease that destroys the lives of people of color in America by way of ruthless police brutality, enforced economic inequality and intentionally unequal school systems — to name a few. Also in 2018, runaway capitalism is imposing economic terrorism on countless people and their rapidly disintegrating communities. Dr. King’s words are surely more relevant now than ever before.



The dedication of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial was assured to be a most superficial event replete with superficial politicians and luminaries when it was held back in 2013. The organizers of this event and their corporate cronies were promoting and selling everything from expensive hotel rooms, sponsorship opportunities, to high priced exhibitor space. In essence, they were “honoring” Dr. King by not embracing his legacy of social justice, but by financially capitalizing on his name. There were no speeches of ending America’s imperialist wars, like Dr. King did. Anyone with such a message trying to get on that stage would have been swiftly removed by security. There were no speeches about destroying institutional racism in America. Instead, the lie of America being a post racist country was and still is bandied all around. Don’t expect any talk about waging a war on poverty — after all, some of the sponsors of this event are in fact large multinational corporations (such as Wal-Mart, Monsanto and numerous others) that benefit from destroying local businesses while dissuading their workers from unionizing.



Dr. King once said, “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” He also famously said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” Ending institutional racism in America, eradicating poverty and homelessness, tearing down the US prison-industrial complex by ending the drug wars, and stopping the US military’s destructive and endless wars – these are the things that really matter. They matter so much that life and death hinge upon each injustice. It is obvious that we cannot expect Democrats or Republicans to vociferously break their collective silence about the cauldron of social injustices that have been brewing in America for quite some time — that job must be ours, starting with the clergy like myself, since Congress and the President refuse to do any such thing. We must raise our collective voices and speak out against them and stand up for justice. As the 2018 King Holiday comes and goes, this is the greatest way we can honor the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.!









Monday, January 8, 2018

Free book excerpt #17 from blogger and author Rev. Paul J. Bern

What If We Didn't Need Money?

(excerpt from "Occupying America: We Shall Overcome" by Rev. Paul J. Bern)

Watch the video at http://youtu.be/Z20l9ohORN4



What are these law enforcement folks protecting to begin with? The assets, infrastructure and personal privacy and security of the top 1%, that's what! The problem with that is the top 1% regard everything in sight as theirs, as if all the people in the lower income brackets – the other 99% – didn't deserve one stinking thing. In short, its all a game of acquiring the most stuff, the biggest collection of material goods of one kind or another, the fastest or most luxurious car, the most powerful truck and the biggest house. And for what? If one of us should die tomorrow, he or she can take absolutely none of it with them. As Rev. Billy Graham used to preach, “nobody ever saw a hearse pulling a U-Haul trailer behind it”. It's all temporary, left behind when we are dead and gone, as all of us eventually will be, including me. It's what we leave behind that counts.


Maybe we should ask ourselves – if you haven't done so already – what kind of legacy do we want to leave? Not someone who did great things in the sight of others or who made a great fortune, but someone who took care of the needs of the people on a case by case basis. Not someone who is lauded with praise by men and women, but one who seeks the praise and approval of Almighty God as I and others like me do. I love giving some homeless guy a couple of dollars, paying an elderly widow's electric bill to keep it from being turned off, donating a used computer to an inner city school kid who needs one, and never mind their skin color either. Performing volunteer work, giving generously to your church (it doesn't have to be financial aid, there are many ways to help), sponsoring a hungry kid overseas, or adopting one here at home are the things people remember about us after we have passed, and so will God. We are to be leaving behind the things that people remember about us long after we are gone, and they must be positive things that build people up, not negative things that tear us down. We are to be contributors, being sure to give wherever possible and not living just to see how much we can earn, or even take. Takers are losers who leave holes in time.


What if we didn't need money at all? What if we had an alternative way to buy things without using traditional cash, checks or plastic? What if we didn't have to work at all, or maybe not nearly as much? Using profit as a mechanism for the control of liquid assets by and for the top 1% when the overwhelming majority of Americans have no access to those assets is obviously an economic barrier that keeps the remaining 99% of us in a bare subsistence mode. This is clearly unethical – moreover, it is discriminatory and so its constitutionality is questionable at best! Eliminating the need for money instantly wipes out poverty while putting the 99% in a favorable position to have all their basic needs met, such as shelter with a minimum of 500 square feet per resident, clean and safe food and drinking water, electricity and internet access. The 3D printing technology already in use – and still being developed – can be used to manufacture much of what else we will need. The replacement of money, and of the work that is necessary in order to earn it, are already being accomplished by computers and robots.


Technology has eliminated jobs across the board on an alarming scale – from secretarial positions to auto workers. The resulting crisis is compounded by our culture's deep denial of the basic problem. I'm old enough to remember the '60s and '70s when so many pundits described the coming glories of the "cybernetic age." Then computers would at last liberate us, they promised, from the drudgery of 9 - 5 jobs. Back then the worry was, what would we do with all that leisure time? That leisure time has since proven frustratingly elusive. Instead, most of us are working harder than ever as our employing firms "downsize." Alternatively, we're pounding the pavement looking for non-existent jobs to replace those that have been "outsourced" to Asia somewhere. Moreover, so many of the "jobs" available to the more recently laid off labor force are extremely low-paying to a humiliating degree (such as the current and pathetic minimum wage of $7.25 hourly here in Atlanta; in rural Georgia it's a paltry $5.25!). In the end, these “jobs” are nothing more than useless make-work projects that are completely unnecessary, and in some cases even destructive. Things like weapons manufacturing, the military itself, many (but not all) telemarketing companies, most insurance companies and – above all! – Wall Street jobs connected with financial speculation. None of these occupations are truly productive. And naming them as I have represents only the tip of the iceberg.


Still other jobs can easily be eliminated by technology. Think of what happened to Encyclopedia Britannica that didn't see Wikipedia coming. Think of the music industry recently involuntarily "downsized" by file sharing. And what about newspapers, currently in crisis because of alternative media websites like Democracy Now!, The Corbett Report, Alternet, Rick Hunter, Op-ed News and Truthdig, among others? Similarly Web-based education (sometimes called "distance learning") is having its own impact on higher education as brick-and-mortar campuses find themselves headed for financial oblivion. Even the oil industry is sun-setting. Imagine what that means for an entire economy and lifestyle absolutely dependent on oil. New technology will soon turn every building into an energy power plant. Surplus energy will be stored in hydrogen cells. And the energy produced will be shared person-to-person across a "smart grid". Think of the jobs that will be eliminated as a result – including those required by the energy wars that will be rendered superfluous. We are kept from discussing it only because our "drill, baby, drill" politicians have their heads so firmly stuck in the tar sands of Canada and the oil fields of Saudi Arabia. Consequently, the U.S. economy is being left in the dust.


There is an enormous amount of productive work crying out to be done across our country. The U.S. infrastructure is crumbling at an alarming rate. Green technologies in general, particularly the “smart grid”, high speed rail and public transportation are the most obvious needs. The number of potential jobs connected with them is in the millions. But there are not nearly enough green jobs to replace the ones that have been eliminated by technology and those that should be discarded because they are unsustainable, environmentally destructive and morally deficient.


So what should be done about all of this? Share the work! None of us has to work that hard unless we want to. Thanks to new technologies we could work four-hour days or three-day weeks, or for only six months a year, or every other year and still make a living wage. We could retire at 40. And this is possible world-wide. And how to pay for all of this? For starters, cut back the military budget 60%. That alone would make billions of dollars available every day just in the U.S. alone Tax the rich and the corporations – those who make up the "1%" that has ripped off the U.S. working class on an unprecedented scale over the last 30 years and more. (Remember the 91% top-level tax bracket that was in place following World War II? We could reinstate that!) Share the excess wealth or risk losing it. Boldly restructure the economy. Embrace new technology's promise along with the life of leisure and volunteer service that it offers. It is all now within our grasp. Since the government is unwilling or incapable of the restructuring I am calling for, it is up to us, “we the people”, to get the job done ourselves. Worker-owned co-ops and factories, little 1 or 2 person micro-businesses, and non-profits would make up the greater part of the business world of tomorrow.....

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Watch the video at http://youtu.be/Z20l9ohORN4



Sunday, January 7, 2018

Some additional warnings about the future of America and the world

Warnings About America's Future: a
Supplemental to Last Week's Message
by Web pastor Paul J. Bern
To view this on my website, click here :-)



I have decided to write this week's commentary as a kind of addendum to my message from last week after getting an even stronger than usual response from my readers, and I humbly thank you all for that. For anyone who missed the posting, you can see it on Wordpress.com here or Google Blogger here. Hundreds of views, not counting hits of course, plus dozens of comments have compelled me to do a follow-up piece for this week in that same vein. One of the comments came from an acquaintance of mine who is also a Web pastor and street preacher. This gentleman referred me to a certain book in the Old Testament, but when I read it a while ago and contemplated it as I prayed about its suitability for God's purposes, I found myself turning just two pages further to the quote I'm going to use this week to give ample warning that the USA is in far more serious trouble than it collectively realizes, regardless of who is currently president.


There is one other thing that bears mentioning here before I get into the meat and potatoes of this week's commentary. Although the reaction to last week's post was positive by far, the negative responses fell into two categories – religious and patriotic. Some “Christian” responses were deeply critical of my alleged quoting of the Book of Revelation, calling it “out of context”, among other things. It never ceases to amaze me how well-meaning yet misguided religious people can be. Unfortunately, many of them are also mean and ill-tempered, which makes me wonder why they bother going to church to begin with. They sure as hell don't practice what they preach! A few other responses accused me of being unpatriotic at best and treasonous at worst, along with other things I can't print here. If you don't love America with no questions asked like they do, then they maintain there is something morally lacking about that individual. I, on the other hand, maintain it's the other way around.


So for this week, having put on my Armor of God (see Ephesians 6, verses 10-18) to shield me from the flaming arrows and words of those who are hostile to the authentic cause of Christ, allow me to present a few verses from the prophet Zephaniah. In Zephaniah 1:1, the author introduces himself as “Zephaniah son of Cushi, son of Gedaliah, son of Amariah, son of Hezekiah.” Among the prophets, this is a unique introduction with its long list of fathers back to Zephaniah’s great-great grandfather, Hezekiah. So why stop with Hezekiah? Most likely, the prophet wanted to highlight his royal lineage as a descendant of one of Judah’s good kings. We can begin to pinpoint exactly when Zephaniah prophesied by accounting for a few details in the text. First, in 2:13 the prophet predicted the fall of Nineveh, an event which occurred in 612 BC. Further, Zephaniah made frequent quotations from the Law (for example, compare 1:13 to Deuteronomy 28:30, 39), a document that remained lost in Judah for much of Josiah’s reign. Therefore, Zephaniah more than likely prophesied in the latter part of Josiah’s rule, after the king discovered the scrolls of the Law in 622 BC (2 Chronicles 34:3–7). The first part of chapter 1 deals with the apostasy of and impending destruction of Judah, which is part of the nation of Israel today. But the following section of this small Old Testament book – it's just 3 chapters, about a 5 or 6 minute read – is the one that prophesy's about what it calls, “The Great Day of the Lord”. We can take this to mean something far off into the distant future, which would be our modern times since this prophecy has yet to be fulfilled.


The text I'm going to use for this week's commentary begins in chapter 1 and verse 14, and I quote: “The great day of the Lord is near – near and coming quickly. Listen! The cry on the day of the Lord will be bitter, the shouting of the warrior there. That day will be a day of wrath, a day of distress and anguish, a day of trouble and ruin, a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and blackness, a day of trumpet and battle cry against the fortified cities and against the corner towers. I will bring distress on the people and they will walk like blind men, because they have sinned against the Lord. Their blood will be poured out like dust and their entrails like filth. Neither their silver nor their gold will be able to save them on the day of the Lord's wrath. In the fire of his jealousy the whole world will be consumed, for he will make a sudden end of all who live on the earth. Gather together, gather together, oh shameful nation, before the appointed time arrives and that day sweeps on like chaff, before the fierce anger of the Lord comes upon you, before the day of our Lord's wrath comes upon you. Seek the Lord, all you humble of the land, you who do what he commands. Seek righteousness, seek humility; perhaps you will be sheltered on the day of the Lord's anger.” (Zephaniah 1, verses 14-18; chapter 2, verses 1-3)


The first thing that needs to be pointed out here is that this passage is not directed only at individuals. God is not up in anybody's face accusing them because that's not how God works, although there are multitudes of 'religious' people who would love to have an opportunity to sway your opinions about that. One of the names that Satan goes by in the Bible is “the accuser of the brethren”, so it is for that reason that I do not believe this is directed at individual people, nor necessarily at groups of people. This is not directed at nationalities or ethnic groups either. This is directed at countries, or more accurately one particular country, the United States. Why do I think this? Hey, there are clues all over the place as to why this is so, so let me address these one at a time. But first comes a dire warning starting in verse 14. “The great day of the Lord is near – near and coming quickly. Listen! The cry on the day of the Lord will be bitter, the shouting of the warrior there.” 'The shouting of the warrior' tells us that this “Great Day of the Lord” in the above passage has to do with a great military conquest, causing a bitter cry to come up out of the land that is conquered. This also tells us that only a portion of the populace will be wiped out by this calamity to make sure there are enough people for that bitter cry that is prophesied in this passage.


Then the prophecy gets very specific about what will happen on this 'day of the Lord': “That day will be a day of wrath, a day of distress and anguish, a day of trouble and ruin, a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and blackness, a day of trumpet and battle cry against the fortified cities and against the corner towers.” It is conceivable that this could be a prophecy for some type of terrorist activity, but from the wording of Zephaniah's narrative the 'day of the Lord' appears to be a widespread event. Although the prophecy doesn't specify anything, it is evident when we read in between the words. A 'day of wrath' would be a day when Mother Nature, and God by extension, goes completely haywire. A mega-storm or typhoon, an exceptional tornado outbreak, an enormous earthquake or some other kind of natural disaster all come to mind. A killer impact from a comet or asteroid is another distinct possibility, and such things are predicted to occur in the second and fifth Trumpets in Revelation chapter 8. Moving along in Zephaniah verse 16, the “battle cry against the fortified cities” signifies an attack on a major military power. Since this prediction occurs in our time frame (I will finish proving this as I go along, so please stay with me), the “corner towers”, which once signified the outer fortifications of a city, could be roughly translated as 'tall towers', or today's skyscrapers.


Their blood will be poured out like dust and their entrails like filth. Neither their silver nor their gold will be able to save them on the day of the Lord's wrath.” Blood turning into dust is a reference to the book of Genesis. To find out more about the mention of human blood being “poured out like dust” please click here. For now, let's move on to the next phrase, “entrails...poured out like filth”. On the surface, this seems to be a metaphor for people being turned inside out, but it could also mean people being cooked from the inside out. In that event, their insides would be liquefied; not a pleasant thought, to say the least. There are only two things in existence that will do such a horrible thing – a thermonuclear explosion or microwave weapons. Nothing else I'm aware of would fill the bill, not in this case. The silver and gold hoarded by all these people will be worthless, since it will be melted in the nuclear blast or microwave attack along with everything and everybody else. So you can all forget about investing in gold or silver, and don't believe the sales pitches of the ubiquitous precious metals dealers either! They're all trying to milk you for a fast buck, which in itself is shortsighted since the US dollar is going to be devalued soon as well!


In the fire of his jealousy the whole world will be consumed, for he will make a sudden end of all who live on the earth.” The “fire of his jealousy” will consume the whole world! The “fire of his jealousy” will make manifest a “sudden end of all who live on the earth.” One of the names the Bible has for God is “a consuming fire”, something that dates back to the Book of Exodus, when the Israelite's followed a pillar of fire out of Egypt. But we're not wandering in the desert anymore, nor are we on our way out of Egypt. Moreover, of all the descendants of those ancient Israelis, over half of them live in the United States. So, although the “fire of His jealousy” will consume Israel, it will consume America as well since Israel's #1 ally is the USA. “....gather together, oh shameful nation, before the appointed time arrives and that day sweeps on like chaff, before the fierce anger of the Lord comes upon you....” “Shameful nation” is another major clue, since it alludes to a world power or super-power that wages war continuously and oppresses its people. Any American who does not think Americans are not oppressed by their government – constant surveillance, systemic corruption, economic inequality, abuse of authority at all levels, the abuse of our own children by brainwashing them with materialism – where have you all been? Wake up! Is it any wonder that God has such “fierce anger”?


Seek the Lord, all you humble of the land, you who do what he commands. Seek righteousness, seek humility; perhaps you will be sheltered on the day of the Lord's anger.” Seek the Lord, and him personally! This means we are charged with the responsibility of forming and maintaining a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. We can't have a personal relationship with God, I don't think, but we can approach him through his Son. Do what Jesus commands; seek righteousness and humility. Wear them on your shirt sleeves right next to your heart. If we do all these things, loving the Lord our God “with all our mind and all our heart and all our strength” and “loving our neighbors as ourselves”, we just might stand a decent chance to escape the calamity to come. Will this calamity be a series of natural disasters and devastating wars? Yes, it will be both. Do I know when these things will occur? Absolutely not! But I'm certain that it will, and that's why I'm getting ready. Are you?


Monday, January 1, 2018

Reasoned Musings: Why Is Jesus Delaying HIS Second Coming?

Reasoned Musings: Why Is Jesus Delaying HIS Second Coming?:             Would you agree with me that mentioning the word “delay” while discussing Christ’s second coming is tricky? “Delay” comes int...