deep roots cannot be moved (Pr 12:3)

Video must see.

2008-12-30T12:31:00.001-08:00

Exodus Cry:The Mission Briefing from Exodus Cry on Vimeo.

The kindness of His judgments (His correction)

2008-11-24T06:08:00.000-08:00

1st Corinthians 11:32 "But when we are judged, we are chastened by the Lord, that we may not be condemned with the world."

Psalm 19: 9-11 "The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever; the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. More to be desired than gold, yea, than much fine gold, sweeter than the honey comb. Moreover by them Your servant is warned and in keeping them there is great reward."

-------------------------------------------------------

Please consider with me these scriptures in light of the Lord's ways of loving correction. Usually when He corrects those that He loves, He uses broken people or wayward circumstances that without a sober prayerful look we rationalize with our hurting hearts justification for anger, bitterness, and finger pointing.

Yet in all His ways....He is slow to anger, abounding in love, full of mercy. Meaning that He is not the vengeful dad we have seen or heard....but wants to give us gifts and bless us...Yet His ways are completely backwards to our logical comfort preferences.

So to digress but to not really... This blog is to bring light to our momentary affliction....

You see... The Father knows once the soul of a human is brought into this world it is corrupted and exposed to sin immediately.... and then like a wet dog coming from the pond everything nasty is caught up in his coat all the way through the mud, the fields, and up to the house.... No dad is going to allow Him in the house without a thorough cleansing.....

Well, that's like how the Father treats our hearts before Heaven comes to earth when Jesus returns..... Jesus is bringing Heaven to earth (Rev 21/22) and it is going to be glorious. We are not being raptured away from the earth for eternity but a moment... So if you endure to the end, watch for the 7th trumpet (1st Cor 15:52).

So I am sure you are asking what does His judgments and those scriptures have to do with all of this. The Father will have a pure and spotless bride at His return... and some will flourish to the end and others will struggle and possibly be swept away by the apostasy and the Anti-christ system....

His current judgments and corrections are gifts to strengthen our hearts in the knowledge and love of the man Jesus and the Father! Without these we will never mature in love and the Spirit.... When you are in the middle of His judgment, you will think it is hell, but in reality, it is His mercy keeps you from the pit of eternal fire.... It’s his kindness.... and even more so it is His joy if you receive it well, because you will be more so as described in:

Daniel 11:32,33 "...but the people who know their God shall be strong and carry out great exploits. And those of the people who understand shall instruct many..."

So my prayer is this: May the Lord grant you eyes and hears in the mist of His loving correction.... May you not short-circuit His ways but seek for perspective of His heart... May you walk in forgiveness, repentance, and blessings those who hurt you... May you see His mercy and kindness and ultimately may your hearts receive the fear of the Lord and the revelation of the man Jesus!

Persecution is here....

2008-11-16T17:02:00.000-08:00

Since the California election passing Proposition 8, which bans same-sex marriage, protests, anger, rage, riots, and mobs have blanketed the state as well as the nation.

See this video for a brief example of the spirit/ demon that rages.

This is not a equal rights issue, its not a minority issue, its not a discrimination issue..... its a spiritual war and the very soul of our nation is at stake. The judgment of God and the principalities and powers are raging over California because they were defeated in a state wide vote....

This spirit that pervades our nation.... a Jezabeel spirit that infects the heart with perversity and complete indignation against God is raging and rising up in complete protest to the PRAYING CHURCH....

Mark my words.... this is the beginning of persecution and martyrdom of the followers of Jesus in the United States.... This new presidency coupled with the spiritual victory of this Prop 8 will cause a huge divide in the Church of America....

Those who will stand and war for supremacy of Jesus, righteousness, justice, and the fear of the Lord versus those who accept peace as the only formidable solution which in the end is evil.

These times will test the very fiber of our spirits, souls, and hearts....

Now more than ever those who follow and profess allegiance to Jesus must press in with fasting, prayer, love, and humility.... warring in the heavenlies for their own hearts and the generation to stand for righteousness and justice.

So FAST, PRAY, WATCH, and WAR.....

Do you know the Son of God as the Christ or Jesus?

2008-11-16T07:38:00.000-08:00

In my brief reading of Matt 1 & 2,

An angel told Joseph and Mary's little boy was to be called "Jesus" 1:21

But Herod called Him "the Christ" 2:4

Question: Is Jesus to you ...the precious glorious and miraculous prophetic-foretold coming babe whom the Heavens declared? Or is He merely "the Christ" from a place of fear, unknown, distance, and dread?

My prayer is that you may discover our soon and coming King, the lover of our Souls, the deliverer of darkness into wholeness and light, the Jealous Husband, the humble servant, the Just Judge,.... may you know His kindness, His mercy, and His desire for a spot-less bride.... may you know the depth of His love.... May you know the power of His blood..... that frees us from all sin, snares, and bondages.... He is the life giver and hope bringer! Jesus! He is alive. He is a man. He is coming back very soon! Jesus! Jesus! Jesus! He name is the faithful witness, the first born from the dead, and the ruler over the kings of the earth! He is alive!

Save the date event

2008-08-27T10:20:00.000-07:00

Additional blogs started....

2008-08-24T17:27:00.000-07:00

Well, I am enlarging my blogging space to include two additional sites.....

This current site has been recently more a news and Jesus' returning site instead of the kingdom of God site through Matthew 10....

So yeshuaisreturning.blogspot.com will now focus strickly on the signs of the Time and Jesus.

And there's the ever growing desire within me to learn about Renewable Energy.....
so I started renewableenergysolutions.blogspot.com

And then there's my personal blog that has life updates and the such at chrisbatz.blogspot.com

Please check them all out.....

Large US bank collapse coming...

2008-08-20T05:57:00.000-07:00

Large U.S. bank collapse coming:
former IMF economist warns Targets Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac as among possible casualties

August 19, 2008(Reuters)—

The worst of the global financial crisis is yet to come and a large U.S. bank will fail in the next few months as the world's biggest economy hits further troubles, former IMF chief economist Kenneth Rogoff said on Tuesday.“The U.S. is not out of the woods. I think the financial crisis is at the halfway point, perhaps. I would even go further to say ‘the worst is to come’,” he told a financial conference.“We’re not just going to see mid-sized banks go under in the next few months, we’re going to see a whopper, we’re going to see a big one, one of the big investment banks or big banks,” said Mr. Rogoff, who is an economics professor at Harvard University and was the International Monetary Fund's chief economist from 2001 to 2004.“We have to see more consolidation in the financial sector before this is over,” he said, when asked for early signs of an end to the crisis.“Probably Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – despite what U.S. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson said – these giant mortgage guarantee agencies are not going to exist in their present form in a few years.”Mr. Rogoff’s comments come as investors dumped shares of the largest U.S. home funding companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac on Monday after a newspaper report said government officials may have no choice but to effectively nationalize the U.S. housing finance titans.A government move to recapitalize the two companies by injecting funds could wipe out existing common stock holders, the weekend Barron’s story said. Preferred shareholders and even holders of the two government-sponsored entities’ $19 billion of subordinated debt would also suffer losses.Mr. Rogoff said multi-billion dollar investments by sovereign wealth funds from Asia and the Middle East in western financial firms may not necessarily result in large profits because they had not taken into account the broader market conditions that the industry faces.“There was this view early on in the crisis that sovereign wealth funds could save everybody. Investment banks did something stupid, they lost money in the sub-prime, they’re great buys, sovereign wealth funds come in and make a lot of money by buying them.“That view neglects the point that the financial system has become very bloated in size and needed to shrink,” Mr. Rogoff told the conference in Singapore, whose wealth funds GIC and Temasek have invested billions in Merrill Lynch and CitigroupIn response to the sharp U.S. housing retrenchment and turmoil in credit markets, the U.S. Federal Reserve has reduced interest rates by a cumulative 3.25 percentage points to 2% since mid-September.mr. Rogoff said the U.S. Federal Reserve was wrong to cut interest rates as “dramatically” as it did.“Cutting interest rates is going to lead to a lot of inflation in the next few years in the United States.”

Electricity Shortages: Future Shock?

2008-08-14T13:16:00.000-07:00

5 Years After Big Blackout, Fears Over Capacity Remain
By MARK WILLIAMS Associated Press
August 14, 2008

COLUMBUS, Ohio — -
Five years after the worst blackout in North American history, the country's largest power providers say the problems that turned out the lights on 50 million people have largely been resolved, but they fear that larger, systemic issues could soon lead to even bigger and more damaging outages.Excess capacity in the system, a hedge against problems, is shrinking. C

Construction, as well as plans for new plants, has slowed as costs to build and operate them have soared.At the same time, it is estimated that electricity use will increase 29 percent between 2006 and 2030 — much of it driven by residential growth, according to a government report issued in June."I'm really not a Chicken Little player, but I worry that no one seems to be focusing in on this," said Michael Morris, chief executive of American Electric Power, which runs the nation's largest electricity transmission system.

The blackout five years ago today shut off power to vast swaths of the Northeast and Midwest for as long as four days. Rolling blackouts continued in Ontario for a week. Parts of Southwestern Connecticut were affected.
Hundreds of thousands of people lost access to tap water for days in Ohio, and the mayor of Cleveland accused shop owners of gouging people in need of drinking water.

Millions of New Yorkers, with subways shut down and office towers darkened, left the city on foot.A U.S.-Canadian government task force largely blamed Akron, Ohio-based FirstEnergy Corp. for allowing a local power failure near Cleveland to cascade to the East Coast and up into Canada.Morris, a former CEO of Northeast Utilities, said massive outages this year in South Africa, which forced gold, diamond and platinum mines to stop production for five days, should serve as a warning to the United States.

Industry experts back Morris and say there is even more resistance to building new plants due to the debate over climate change and opposition to new transmission lines.
"The level of excess capacity has shrunk down in the last few years to a level barely within the planning toleration of the industry," said Marc Chupka, a principal with the Brattle Group, an energy consultant.Industry experts say changes have been made to protect against a similar outage that caused as much as $10 billion in damage to the U.S. economy.But Morris fears that in 10 to 20 years there may be greater blackouts as demand surpasses supply."

Just think of the economic hardship that would render," he said.Rick Sergel, president of the North American Electric Reliability Corp. of Princeton, N.J., the agency that oversees the nation's power grid, agrees with Morris."We're to the point where we need every possible resource: renewables, demand response and energy efficiency, nuclear, clean coal — you name it, we need it," he said. "

And we especially need the transmission lines that will bring the power generated by these new resources to consumers."In Connecticut and New England, power industry officials acknowledged that generation supplies and transmission lines were lacking. Since the blackout, Northeast Utilities has moved forward with large-scale transmission projects, and plans have been developed for new generation, some of it state-backed.

But even as Americans demand more power to feed central air conditioning, flat-screen televisions, video games, surround-sound systems and appliances, there is broad opposition to infrastructure that experts say is needed, and the costs are only going up.Construction of coal-fired generating plants has almost stopped, and new nuclear plants are years away, if they are approved at all, said Arshad Mansoor, vice president of power delivery and utilization for the Electric Power Research Institute. Better efficiency will only go so far, he said."If you don't have generation and transmission ... something has to give," he said, and that could be a blackout or brownout.

AEP recently announced efforts to expand the nation's transmission system. It will partner with Duke Energy in a $1 billion proposal to build 240 miles of transmission lines. Similar deals have been announced in Oklahoma, Kansas, Texas and West Virginia to Maryland, some including the use of wind power.But infrastructure projects take a lot of time. AEP announced a plan for a transmission line in West Virginia and Virginia in 1990 that was not finished until last year, due mostly to the regulatory approval process.

Power plants are an even bigger problem, Morris said, particularly for coal and nuclear power. In Kansas, for example, Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, has blocked plans for two coal-fired power plants.In conjunction with the anniversary of the blackout, FirstEnergy announced several technological improvements and greater efforts to keep its 11,000 miles of high transmission lines free of trees.A tree brushed a power line in Ohio in 2003, according to the task force report, setting off cascading outages.

The task force also blamed poorly trained grid managers and a lack of communication among power providers. Utilities have spent millions on improvements."The event was a major crisis and did probably force something to happen that would have otherwise not happened," said Larry Makovich, vice president/senior power adviser for Cambridge Energy Research Associates in Cambridge, Mass.

Our $100 Trillion National Debt

2008-08-11T14:36:00.000-07:00

by Bill Walkerby Bill Walker

The "official" debt of the United States is only around $10 trillion dollars as of August 6, 2008. This is a manageable number; we could pay it off in a few decades if we quit buying luxuries like food and clothing, and take a few other minor economy measures. Unfortunately, the "$10 trillion" number was produced by government accounting, which among other things allows one to ignore Social Security, Medicare, and the new prescription drug benefit. This is like ignoring rent, food, and utilities in your household budget… it will lead to a few bounced checks. Our real debt is about ten times higher.

Who says so? The President of the Dallas Federal Reserve, Richard W. Fisher. In a May speech at the Commonwealth Club of California, he states that the US national debt is close to $100 trillion. You can read his whole speech at the Federal Reserve web site.

The Real Debt

Here is what he said regarding the actual US debt:
"Add together the unfunded liabilities from Medicare and Social Security, and it comes to $99.2 trillion over the infinite horizon. Traditional Medicare composes about 69 percent, the new drug benefit roughly 17 percent and Social Security the remaining 14 percent."
Interested readers will notice that the new prescription drug benefit is projected to be more fiscally crushing than all of Social Security.

Mr. Fisher points out that this $99.2 trillion will be a bit of a burden to pay off:
"Let’s say you and I and Bruce Ericson and every U.S. citizen who is alive today decided to fully address this unfunded liability through lump-sum payments from our own pocketbooks, so that all of us and all future generations could be secure in the knowledge that we and they would receive promised benefits in perpetuity. How much would we have to pay if we split the tab? Again, the math is painful. With a total population of 304 million, from infants to the elderly, the per-person payment to the federal treasury would come to $330,000. This comes to $1.3 million per family of four—over 25 times the average household’s income."
You do have $1.3 million in your pocket, right? What, are you some kind of deadbeat?
Speaking of deadbeats, the "$99.2 trillion" estimate does not include the subprime bailout. So for those who like large round numbers, by the end of 2008 the real National Debt should be large, round, and about $100 trillion.

Other Unfunded Liabilities
The Fed’s numbers do not include some other liabilities the US has acquired over the years. One massive but unquantifiable liability is the probability of future wars. If it cost the US hundreds of billions of dollars to invade the fifth-rate kleptocracy of Iraq and the foreign-aid regime of Afghanistan, how many trillions would wars against real powers cost? Perhaps I should ask "how many US cities" such wars would cost.

Some nations could legitimately plan for peace. Sweden has not fought a foreign war since 1814 (as many Swedes have pointed out in emails regarding my Swiss article). Switzerland, not since 1815. The US record is less hopeful.

The US is rarely not in foreign wars, and the current Administration has openly announced that the "Global War On Terror" will never end. Yet our government accounting is predicated on perpetual peace, on an ever-increasing flow of money into the official pyramid schemes.
In any case, whether you are pro- or anti- Empire, real accounting demands some reserves for future war contingencies. When even a few US cities are burning radioactive pyres, the flow of funds to Social Security and Medicare will suffer some interruption.

Any fiscal plan demands amortization of the accumulated hatred our foreign adventures have accumulated. The US taxpayer has aided every evil dictator since 1945. Stalin, Castro, Pol Pot, Nyerere, Idi Amin, go right down the roster and US money helped pay for the barbed wire and bullets (and the nuclear reactors, in the case of the Kim Dynasty rulers of Korea).
So far blowback has been quite mild. But in a world full of easy do-it-yourself WMD technologies, our luck can’t hold forever. If the US were a private company, the "badwill" on our books would reach into the tens of trillions.

Tearing Up The Credit Cards

Most likely, the US will simply continue into bankruptcy. This is the most common pathway for nations with fiat currencies and unchecked ruling classes. But let’s assume that somehow a Clone Army of 435 Ron Pauls gets into Congress, while genetic technology brings back Jefferson and Gallatin to their old offices. Can the US be made solvent again?
I think so. Most of the unfunded liability is medical. We know why the medical system does not work. So if we eliminate the FDA, guild restrictions on medical professions, and the ridiculous tax laws that force us into medical-insurance serfdom to employers, we could cut medical costs enough to phase out Medicare and the new "drug benefit." In this way more than half the shadow debt can be wiped out.

The answer for the Social-Security pyramid scheme is well known. Chile fixed its Social Security disaster decades ago, by giving large IRA-style allowances and phasing out the government payments to younger recipients. The sooner we do this the easier it will be… the Boomers start retiring soon.

Most important, we have to listen to the Founder’s calls for free trade with all nations but entangling alliances with none. The US cannot stop every quarrel in the world even if we wished… and the actual record of our foreign-policy geniuses has been to send a couple of trillion dollars out to the very worst criminals in human history. Aid To Dependent Dictators must stop.

None of this will happen while Mordor-On-The-Potomac still possesses its plutonium credit card, the Fed. Just as we would for any other bankrupt relative, we must help Uncle Sam cut up his credit cards.

August 7, 2008
Bill Walker is a research technologist. He lives with his wife and four dogs in Grafton NH, where they are active in the Free State Project.
Copyright © 2008 LewRockwell.com

International law to illegalize Christianity

2008-07-10T18:57:00.000-07:00

Jul 10th, 2008 By Exodus Times

Dozens of nations dominated by Islam are pressing the United Nations to adopt an anti-”defamation” plan that would make Christians criminals under international law, according to a United States organization that has launched a campaign to defend freedom of religion worldwide.

“Around the world, Christians are being increasingly targeted, and even persecuted, for their religious beliefs. Now, one of the largest organizations in the United Nations is pushing to make a bad situation even worse by promoting anti-Christian bigotry,” the American Center for Law & Justice said yesterday in announcing its petition drive.

The discrimination is “wrapped in the guise of a U.N. resolution called ‘Combating Defamation of Religions,’” the announcement said. “We must put an immediate end to this most recent, dangerous attack on faith that attempts to criminalize Christianity.”

The “anti-defamation” plan has been submitted to the U.N. repeatedly since about 1999, starting out as a plan to ban “defamation” of Islam and later changed to refer to “religions,” officials said. It is being pushed by the 57-member Organization of the Islamic Conference nations, which has adopted the Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam, “which states that all rights are subject to sharia law, and makes sharia law the only source of reference for human rights.”

The ACLJ petition, which is to be delivered to the United Nations High Commissioner on Human Rights, already had collected more than 23,000 names in just a brief online existence.
The ACLJ’s European division, the European Center for Law & Justice, also has launched its work on the issue. It submitted arguments last month to the U.N. in opposition to the proposal to institute sharia-based standards around the globe.

“The position of the ECLJ in regards to the issue of ‘defamation of religion’ resolutions, as they have been introduced at the U.N. Human Rights Council and General Assembly, is that they are in direct violation of international law concerning the rights to freedom of religion and expression,” the organization’s brief said.

“The ‘defamation of religion’ resolutions establish as the primary focus and concern the protection of ideas and religions generally, rather than protecting the rights of individuals to practice their religion, which is the chief purpose of international religious freedom law.”
“Furthermore, ‘defamation of religion’ replaces the existing objective criterion of limitations on speech where there is an intent to incite hatred or violence against religious believers with a subjective criterion that considers whether the religion or its believers feel offended by the speech,” the group continued.

Interestingly, in nations following Islam, the present practice is to use such laws to protect Islam and to attack religious minorities with penalties up to and including execution, the brief noted.

“What should be most disconcerting to the international community is that laws based on the concept of ‘defamation of religion’ actually help to create a climate of violence,” the argument explained.

For example, just two months ago an Afghanistan court following Islam sentenced to death a 23-year-old apprentice journalist who had downloaded an article from an Iranian website and brought it to his class, the ECLJ said. Other instances include:

Award-winning author Mark Steyn has been summoned to appear before two Canadian Human Rights Commissions of vague allegations of “subject[ing] Canadian Muslims to hatred and contempt” for comments in his book, “America Alone,” the group said.
In Pakistan, 15 people were accused of blasphemy against Islam during the first four months of 2008, the organization said.
Another Pakistani man sentenced to life in prison for desecrating the Quran was jailed for six years before being acquitted of the charge.
In Saudi Arabia a teacher was sentenced to three years in prison plus 300 lashes “for expressing his views in a classroom.”
In the United Kingdom, police announced plans to arrest a blogger for “anti-Muslim” statements.
In the United States, a plaintiff sued his Internet service provider for refusing “to prevent participants in an online chat room from posting or submitting harassing comments that blasphemed and defamed plaintiff’s Islamic religion.”

The ECLJ said, “The implementation of domestic laws to combat defamation of religion in many OIC countries reveals a selective and arbitrary enforcement toward religious minorities, who are often Christians. Those violations are frequently punishable by the death penalty.”
The newest “anti-defamation” plan was submitted in March. It specifically cites a declaration “adopted by the Islamic Conference of Foreign Ministers” at a meeting in Islamabad “which condemned the growing trend of Islamophobia and systematic discrimination against adherents of Islam.”

It also cites the dictates from the OIC meeting in Dakar, “in which the Organization expressed concern at the systematically negative stereotyping of Muslims and Islam and other divine religions.”

It goes on to cite a wide range of other practices that “target” Islam, but does not mention any other religions, and urges all nations to provide “adequate protection against acts of hatred, discrimination, intimidation and coercion resulting from the defamation of any religion.”
According to published reports, the U.N. Commission on Human Rights’ 53 members voted to adopt the resolution earlier this year, with opposition from the United States and the European Union.

At the time, Cuba’s delegate, Rodolfo Reyes Rodriguez, said: “Islam has been the subject of very deep campaign of defamation.”

“They’re attempting to pass a sinister resolution that is nothing more than blatant religious bigotry,” the ACLJ said in its promotion of its petition. “This is very important to understand. This radical proposal would outlaw Christianity … it would make the proclamation of your faith an international crime.”

“In his recent dissent on the Supreme Court’s ruling on Guantanamo Bay, Justice Scalia said, ‘America is at war with radical Islamists.’ Never has this rung more true than today. Never have Christians been more targeted for their religious beliefs. And never have we faced a more dangerous threat than the one posed by the OIC,” the ACLJ said.

On the Grizzly Groundswell blog, the author described the situation as, “The United Nations: 160 cannibals and 17 civilized people taking a majority vote on what to have for dinner.”
The U.S. State Department also has found the proposal unpalatable.

“This resolution is incomplete inasmuch as it fails to address the situation of all religions,” said the statement from Leonard Leo. “We believe that such inclusive language would have furthered the objective of promoting religious freedom. We also believe that any resolution on this topic must include mention of the need to change educational systems that promote hatred of other religions, as well as the problem of state-sponsored media that negatively targets any one religion.”

[Source: http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=69163 ]

As food costs soar, it's back to basics for meal planners

2008-07-08T14:03:00.000-07:00

By Nanci Hellmich, USA TODAY

Rebecca Woods and her family in Lathrop, Mo., have turned to the land, planting hundreds of vegetables and relying on their own chickens for eggs.

Retirees Sally and Robert Jones of Alpine, Texas, have reverted back to some of the menus that got them through graduate school many years ago, living on beans, stews and soups.
Dave Snyder of Mobile, Ala., goes to four grocery stores in search of bargains. Nancy Sierra of Fort Myers, Fla., now eats peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch. And Tiffany Nicosia of Charlotte says that, more and more, she whips up new recipes with whatever is left in her refrigerator.

They are just a few examples of how Americans are changing their meal planning as food prices continue to climb.

When USA TODAY asked readers to report how they are coping with higher grocery bills while still eating healthfully, dozens of people responded with lists of ways they're cutting costs. Their ideas range from curtailing restaurant meals to planting gardens, using coupons, shopping smarter and cooking more economical meals.

Is all this necessary? Government statistics say yes.

Overall, food prices climbed 4% in 2007, the biggest annual increase since 1990, and prices are projected to rise 4.5% to 5.5% this year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
In a recent USA TODAY/Gallup Poll of 1,016 adults, 46% said the higher cost of food is creating a financial hardship. They said they have noticed an increase in the cost of milk, fruits and vegetables, meat, bread and eggs.

"The biggest problem is the food prices are not going to go back down," says Phil Lempert, one of the nation's top trackers of supermarket trends (supermarketguru.com). "Traditionally, we've seen an increase, and it comes back down as the commodities come back down," he says. "I don't think we are going to see that."

Often when food prices increase, the first items that grocery shoppers leave out of their carts are the healthful foods — fruits, vegetables, fish and lean meats, says Adam Drewnoski, director of the Center for Public Health Nutrition at the University of Washington in Seattle.
Instead, they buy more calorie-dense foods loaded with sugar or fat, such as sweetened cereals, packaged macaroni and cheese, and noodles to fill hungry stomachs, he says.
It doesn't have to be that way, Drewnoski says.

People can use these difficult times to their nutritional advantage by buying locally grown produce, growing some of their own food or brushing up on their cooking skills, he says.
"It takes three things to be well nourished: knowledge, money and time," Drewnoski says.
"If you have three out of three, you have no problem. If you have two out of three, you can manage. So if money drops out, you can use your knowledge and time to find and cook affordable, nutrient-rich food. If you have no time, then knowledge and money will tide you over. You can buy (nutritious) takeout.

"The problem is when you are zero for three, you are a recession basket case," Drewnoski says.
"It becomes a difficult situation, and I sympathize."
'We were sinking financially'

Several USA TODAY readers said that for years, they dashed through the grocery store, blithely grabbing whatever they needed, and didn't realize how high the prices had gotten until they took a hard look at their budget.

That was the case for Rebecca Woods, 50, a children's book author, who lives on 3 acres in Lathrop, Mo.

During the past year, the grocery bill for her family of five, including two teen boys and a college-age daughter, doubled from $800 to $1,600 a month.
When she figured that out, she says, "I about choked."

"We were eating whatever we wanted — yogurt, bagels, name-brand cereals. I wasn't looking at the price of anything. I was at the point where I bought the same thing every week. I ran into the grocery, I bought what I needed and ran out."

But, she says, "I realized we were sinking financially and couldn't go on that way."
The family decided to economize on dining out, food and gas. They cut back on eating out from a couple of times a week to about once a month. They've also consolidated their trips to the grocery store in Liberty, Mo., which is 23 miles from their home, Woods says.
"Now we call the list in to our daughter, who works in town, and she gets the groceries before she comes home."

This spring, they took their gardening to new heights, planting 235 potato plants, more than 1,000 stalks of sweet corn — each with a pea or bean plant as a companion to climb the stalks — and dozens of winter squash, tomatoes, peppers and carrots.

They also have a small orchard with nine fruit trees — pear, apricot, apple, plum and peach.
Woods' family plans to can and freeze some of the produce and share the rest with neighbors and friends.

The family also keeps a cow for milking and several chickens, which produce about two eggs every day.

"In short, many of our habits are changing dramatically, and we are prepared to change them further if or when the times get worse," Woods says.
"It's very satisfying that we can take control of this portion of our lives without making any dramatic sacrifice."

A challenge for retirees
Retirees are hit particularly hard by higher food prices, and many have been forced to find ways to economize.
Sally Jones, 69, of Alpine, Texas, steers clear of processed foods and shops the perimeter of the grocery store.

"I'm buying the most reasonably priced fruit and am now making my own salad dressings, which is much healthier," Jones says.
"We're cutting back on portion sizes as well — something my husband and I both need to do anyway."

But Jones says she misses the times when she could buy whatever she wanted.
"The grocery store was one place where I could sort of throw all caution to the wind, but no more. I haven't been able to shop as luxuriously as I used to … as (prices) have slowly crept up."

Dave Snyder, 64, a retiree in Mobile, Ala., has a circular route that takes him to four grocery stores. He scouts out the specials and often buys meat that has been reduced for quick sale.
"You have got to get there early, and you have to learn to vary your diet based on what's on special," Snyder says.

He's wary of coupons. "I find that coupons are an encouragement to impulse buying — a real budget killer," Snyder says.

He and his wife, Beth, 62, are both good cooks, so they rarely dine out. But when they do, they order water with their meal, bypass appetizers and split an entree and dessert.
"We are not cheap, and I still give a 20% tip to our server, if he or she has earned it," Snyder says.

Nancy Sierra, 61, a behavior analyst for a school district in Fort Myers, Fla., says she has learned to skimp on meals.

For lunch, she and her husband often eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, carrots and bananas. Her cost-cutting evening meals: a can of fat-free ravioli, egg salad sandwiches or a baked potato.

"I like meat, but it's too expensive," she says, adding that sometimes she buys chicken breasts if there's a buy-one-get-one-free sale.

She has cut out salads and other expensive vegetables in favor of canned vegetables. She says she looks for sales in the produce department more than any other place.

"If something is on sale, we get it, and if it's not, we don't. I don't waste a thing. We eat all our leftovers. Now that gas is taking up a lot of money, I've had to cut down in other places. I think it will continue to go up, and it'll affect everything.
"I guess we'll be eating dog food next."
Many younger people have also made changes in the way they eat as a result of the higher prices.

Tiffany Nicosia, 28, of Charlotte, used to go out to lunch or dinner several times a week with friends, buy whatever she wanted at the grocery store and drive her gas-guzzling SUV to work.
No more.

Eating out is now an occasional treat, and when she goes to the grocery store, she shops sales, uses coupons and buys in bulk, repackaging the food into smaller containers when she gets home.

She frequently goes to farmers' markets in downtown Charlotte to buy produce.
"The other day I got four kiwis, two apples, one pound of green beans, a bunch of red potatoes and three oranges for $4. It's easy to eat healthy if you get creative with it," she says.
She makes new dishes out of whatever she has left over in the refrigerator. For instance, if she has chicken, celery and a few spices, she searches for a recipe on the Internet that uses those ingredients.

"A lot of things turn out kind of funky, but a lot of them turn out well," she says.
As a result of her efforts, she has trimmed her dining-out budget from more than $100 a week to less than $30, has cut her weekly grocery bill from about $80 to $45, and spends $12 a week to take the bus to work instead of $85 to drive and park.

Nicosia says that eating out less and cooking more with fresh ingredients has not only trimmed her budget but also her waistline. During the past year, she lost 42 pounds.
"You have to do what you've got to do," she says. "You want to get more bang for your buck, so you have to be creative about it. I don't want to waste money."
More planning, fewer frills

For some people, the higher food prices coincided with other life events that made them rethink their budget.

That was the case for Randy Vance, 52, and his wife, Linda, 50, of Winter Park, Fla. He is editor in chief of Boating Life magazine. She worked for a wine supplier, but the company was bought out, and in March she took a severance package.

Linda, a gourmet cook, used to stop at the grocery every few days and buy whatever she needed to prepare elegant meals for her husband and their 13-year-old daughter, Amy.
A typical dinner might be grilled chicken and goat cheese with a balsamic glaze, mushroom risotto and cooked baby carrots. Linda also relied on takeout food or partly prepared meals.
But those items were costly. She says she studied the total family budget and found the amount she spent each month on food was "shocking": $1,100 for groceries alone.
After doing an e-mail survey of a few friends and family members, Linda realized that in order to cut food costs, she had to dramatically change the way she planned meals, cooked and shopped.

She started to do menu planning for two weeks at a time and began shopping for less expensive cuts of meat (brisket, hamburger) and bulk items at discount clubs and other grocery stores.
Instead of buying packaged instant oatmeal or fancy rice pilafs, she now gets those foods in bulk and packages them in small plastic bags. She also buys fresh vegetables in bulk, and to make sure that none of the produce goes to waste, she roasts the vegetables right away and stores them in the refrigerator.

She makes simpler dinner fare for her family, such as Salisbury steak and hamburger casseroles.

Linda says she has cut their food bill in half.
"My refrigerator has half the foods in it that it used to have. The challenge is, can I go two weeks without going back to the grocery store? It takes practice."
But, she adds, "It's fun to beat the system and buy in bulk and still eat healthy food."

Meltdown Of US Banks Within Weeks

2008-07-08T12:08:00.000-07:00

Jul 7th, 2008 By Exodus Times

Expectations at Fortis that the U.S. markets are on the verge of “meltdown” were behind the Benelux bank’s decision last week to launch a sweeping recapitalisation programme, said chairman Maurice Lippens.

“We were saved at the last minute. Things in the U.S. are going far worse that people think,” Lippens said in an interview with De Telegraaf.

Forecasting bankrupties among U.S. banks amid declining credit cover, and also citing Citigroup and General Motors as blue chip companies impacted by the turmoil, he was quoted as saying: “The U.S. is heading for complete meltdown.”

Fortis last week surprised shareholders with recapitalisation measures worth a total of 8.3 billion euros, including a 1.5 billion euro capital hike.

[Source: http://www.iii.co.uk/news/?type=afxnews&articleid=6784150&subject=companies&action=article ]

Price jolt: Electricity bills going up, up, up

2008-06-18T06:39:00.000-07:00

By Paul Davidson, USA TODAY

Here's a shocker: Electricity bills are heading up. Way up.
Utilities across the USA are raising power prices up to 29%, mostly to pay for soaring fuel costs, but also to build new plants and refurbish an aging power grid.
Even more dramatic rate increases are ahead. The mounting electric bills will further squeeze households struggling with spiraling gasoline prices.

"Consumers now face a tough reality on electricity," says Mark Cooper of Consumer Federation of America.

The increases come after rising fuel prices already have driven up utility bills nearly 30% in the past five years, the sharpest jump since the 1970s energy crisis. Fuel costs are again the main culprit. In Virginia, Potomac Edison, citing high coal and natural gas prices, plans to raise rates 29% on July 1, pushing an average monthly residential bill from about $70 to $90. AmerenUE, Missouri's largest utility, recently asked for its first rate increase in 20 years, a 12.1% boost, mostly to cover higher fuel costs. Customers of Public Service Co. of Oklahoma were socked with a 25% rise on June 1.

The price of coal, which fires half of U.S. power plants, has doubled since last year, largely because of surging energy use in countries such as China and India. Natural gas prices are up nearly 50% on high U.S. demand. In California, drought has forced Pacific Gas & Electric to replace cheap hydroelectric power with natural gas, helping to prompt it to seek 13% rate increases.

The cost to build a power plant has also gone up, more than doubling since 2000. South Carolina Electric & Gas wants to boost rates 37% by 2019 to cover its share of two nuclear reactors costing $10 billion.

Some utilities are seeking several increases. In New York City, Con Edison, which raised rates 4.7% in April, seeks increases of 5% in each of the next three years to fund $5.5 billion in equipment after a 2006 Queens blackout. That's on top of an anticipated 13% rate increase this summer for higher fuel charges. "We must make sure that our system has the highest reliability," says Con Ed spokesman Michael Clendenin.

Queens Assemblyman Michael Gianaris says Con Ed wasted funds on new plants elsewhere and urges regulators to reject the proposal. "I say not one penny more until reforms are done," he says.

Expect bigger rate shocks if federal legislation, anticipated by 2010, passes and forces coal-fired generators to pay fees to emit global-warming gases. American Electric Power, the largest coal-fired generator, will have to raise rates 115% to pay higher fuel costs, build new plants and recover global-warming fees, says Hugh Wynne of Bernstein Research. But Wynne says regulators could temper increases by trimming profits.

Potential Hyper-Inflation

2008-06-12T15:01:00.000-07:00

Potential Future Hyperinflation - by Stephen Lendman 6-9-2008

(This long but worth the read to the end.)

Walter "John" Williams thinks out of the box. He makes disquieting reading, but you won't find him in the mainstream. At least not often. He runs a "Shadow Government Statistics" site with an electronic by-subscription newsletter. Anyone can access some of his data and occasional special reports. They can also assess his reasoning. In his judgment, government data are manipulated, corrupted and unreliable. He's not alone thinking that.

First, through technical changes over time in how data are collected and/or interpreted. The intent is to portray a more rosy scenario and ignore real world experiences of ordinary people. Calculating the CPI is an example:

-- in the 1980s, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) switched from using house prices to their rental equivalent;
-- then a decade ago, BLS made a spurious assumption for reasons other than it stated; it was that consumers substitute cheaper products for ones that have risen in price - such as hamburger for steak or chicken for meat; the idea wasn't to reflect their buying habits; it was to artificially lower inflation and distort its calculation; and
-- BLS has long adjusted prices for quality improvements; it's called "hedonic adjustment" that, in fact, cooks the books; so if computer speed increases, its cost is lowered proportionally even if its price rises; the same is true for autos with better brakes or other assorted innovations; again the result is distortion, and it affects all sorts of products; as a result, inflation is artificially and fraudulently lowered.

Another example is how federal deficits are calculated. Beginning with Nixon in 1969, a "unified budget" was adopted to artificially lower them by offsetting expenditures with "off-budget" Social Security revenues. The idea was to hide government's true cost at a time wartime and Great Society spending was high and would later factor into the 1970s and 1980s inflation. If deficits were calculated then and now by GAAP methodology (required of all publicly-traded corporations), they'd be much higher than annually reported - since the 1970s, in multiple trillions of dollars; fiscal alchemy sweeps them under the rug.

A further example was Nixon's "core inflation" idea. More artificial rigging - to exclude volatile food and energy prices to produce a lower figure. No matter that these items account for a large portion of consumer spending, especially for lower income households.Others like this are numerous. They all amount to manipulative rigging for political or financial market purposes, and the practice goes back decades. A recent Bush administration one is switching to monthly instead of semi-annual jobs data seasonal adjustments to make the number friendlier. Later on (too late for markets to react) they're matched against payroll figures for a once a year adjustment and more accurate jobs created or lost reading.

The Clinton administration was also manipulative. In calculating employment, it lowered its monthly household sample from 60,000 to 50,000, reducing it mainly in inner cities. The effect is to artificially lower jobless numbers among blacks, Latinos and the poor overall. The calculation is also rigged by keeping out the 2.3 million prison population. The overall effect is illusion, not reality - to erase "free market" capitalism's defects and make it look wondrous and beneficial to mankind.

Williams reverse-engineers the GDP, employment and inflation data for more accurate readings. He backs out manipulative changes to produce more valid figures. Take the 5.5% May unemployment rate for example. BLS calculates it on persons who looked for work in the last 30 days. Williams adds those who want to work but gave up in frustration plus people working part-time who want (but can't find) full-time jobs. Result: real unemployment of over 12%.

The same methodology works for economic growth. The real value of all goods and services produced is lower than official GDP numbers when adjusted for higher inflation. More of it means higher prices, not increased output. It's how Williams makes his calculation, and he's worried. He sees inflation rising and a threat of hyperinflation ahead. He highlighted his concern in a recent April 2008 report called "Hyperinflation Special Report" with three dramatic sub-headings:

-- "Inflationary Recession Is in Place;
-- Banking Solvency Crisis Has Opened First Phase Monetary Inflation;" and
-- "Hyperinflationary Depression Remains Likely As Early as 2010.

"Time alone will prove him right or wrong. But given current economic conditions, the financial malpractice that precipitated them, continued mismanagement since then, and resultant dangers they created, it pays to examine his analysis. It's not for the faint-hearted and hopefully won't bear out. But it's happened before at other times in other countries, and when it hits it ruins lives and savings. Is America now headed for that type future? Williams thinks so, and here's his argument.

He sees the US economy in an "intensifying inflationary recession" heading for "a hyperinflationary great depression." He expects it as soon as 2010, maybe sooner, and "likely" no later than in a decade. Blame it on reckless monetary and fiscal policy - creating torrents of money, borrowing outsized amounts, and spending ourselves into bankruptcy by supporting short-term "big-monied special interests."

Things are so out of hand, Williams sees "no way of avoiding a financial Armageddon." We're nearly or already bankrupt; are creating money to cover our obligations; the more we print, the more we need; it's fiat currency unbacked by gold; and every new dollar created dilutes the value of all others in circulation. Double the money supply, and presto - every dollar is worth 50 cents. Double it again, and you get the point. We've been doing it for decades, especially since Nixon closed the gold window in 1971.

At some point, the music stops, the dollar collapses, it becomes worthless paper, and related dollar-demoninated paper assets go down with it. Williams quotes a law professor who experienced Weimar Germany's hyperinflation first hand. It was the worst by far ever recorded. "It was horrible. Horrible! Like lightening it struck. No one was prepared." Shelves in grocery stores emptied. "You could buy nothing with your paper money." At the trough in 1923, the mark plunged to an astonishing 4,200,000,000,000 to the dollar.

Can it happen here? It might, and rising world inflation is worrisome. Analyst Bob Chapman's International Forecaster reports current US inflation at 12.5%; China's 8.5%; Russia's 14%; Gulf oil producers on average 12%; India 8%; Indonesia 12%; Brazil 5%; Chile 8.3%; Venezuela 29.3% and Argentina 23%. This likely plays into the European Central Bank's (ECB) reluctance to cut rates and the Bank of England's holding off on further ones. It's also a factor affecting dollar weakness and rising gold prices that hedge against depreciating currencies and geopolitical uncertainties.

Williams is justifiably concerned as inflationary pressures build. First some definitions. Inflation results from a money supply increase that causes prices to rise. Williams refers only to goods and services, not financial assets like stocks and bonds. He also leaves out speculation and market manipulation that's key to understanding high oil and food prices. Markets don't move randomly. Big-monied speculators move them, but that's a separate topic from what Williams addresses.

He mentions various types of hyperinflation. They range from the double or triple-digit kind, several-fold that level, to what happened in Weimar Germany when it went to infinity. Once the genie is unleashed, there's no telling how bad things may get. Williams sees them getting pretty bad. So much so that dollars get dumped, holders flee to safety, and a downward spiral intensifies with no idea of a bottom.

In his view and others, the culprit is fiat currency, without gold backing. Its worth depends solely on the full faith and credit of the issuing government. Absent that and currencies crash. Print too much of it, and that's its future. Examine Fed policy under Greenspan and Bernanke, and draw your own conclusions.

They've been virtual money-creation machines unmindful of the history they should know. By issuing too much of a good thing for too many years, they fueled asset bubbles. When they burst, they made things worse and may now have headed the economy for collapse. In Williams judgment, America today is no different from other nations in other eras that followed similar policies. They all met the same fate, and today this country has already "obligated itself to liabilities well beyond its ability ever to pay off." Not a cheery assessment, and he's not alone believing it.

More definitions:
-- Deflation - a decrease in goods and services prices, generally from a money supply contraction;
-- Inflation - the reverse of the above;
-- Hyperinflation - extreme inflation, as explained above, to a level where money becomes worthless or nearly so; according to Williams, the coming hyperinflation is because of a "lack of monetary discipline formerly imposed....by the gold standard, and a (Fed) dedicated to preventing a collapse in the money supply (and preventing) the implosion of the (ongoing) extremely over-leveraged domestic financial system;"
-- Recession - officially defined as two or more consecutive (inflation-adjusted) GDP contracting quarters; many economists don't agree on this, and some gauge conditions by the relative strength or weakness of industrial production, payroll employment, retail sales, and so forth; add it up and clearly the US is in recession; how bad and for how long will only be known in time;
-- Depression - a recession "where (inflation-adjusted) peak-to-trough contraction exceeds 10%; and a
-- Great depression - one where the peak-to-trough exceeds 25%. It happened only once so far in US history in the 1930s.

Williams believes the current US contraction is about halfway to becoming a "depression," but before it ends it may become "Great Depression II" to distinguish it from the earlier one. We're now in an "inflationary recession," and available data confirm it - soaring food and oil prices, a weakened dollar, true unemployment over 12%, real inflation nearly as high, weak industrial production, and more. In his judgment, expect worse ahead when added "inflationary effects of soaring broad money growth....start" surfacing later in the year. In his judgment, by year-end 2008, "official CPI" figures should begin showing it.

Current computations cook the books, and not just for inflation. According to Williams, the economy has been in recession since late 2006 when it entered the "second down-leg" of a multiple dip contraction. It began in 1999, then showed up officially in 2001. His current outlook takes account of "further bounces and dips in economic activity." We may now be in an upward swing before reheading down. It happened during the Great Depression, only to fall to new lows.

Conditions today are hazardous. A major financial crisis precipitated them. Reckless policies caused it. It threatens the solvency of major banks and other financial institutions. It also hurts the greater economy. Solutions - massive liquidity injections, interest rate cuts and reckless deficit spending. Result - financial malpractice for a short-term fix. Consequences - "financial Armageddon" according to Williams.

M3 (the broadest money supply measure) growth is so high that the Fed no longer reports it. Economists like Williams do because it's crucial to know, and the data he reveals are disturbing - record M3 growth at a near 18% annual pace. Hyperinflationary seeds are now sown. Dollar valuation is falling, and at some point may accelerate when investors flee it for safer havens. The Fed again will respond. More debt will be monetized. It will build over time. Things will get worse and then be exacerbated when the government is less able to meet its obligations. "Therein lies the ultimate basis for the pending hyperinflation," in Williams' judgment.

He believes it will morph into a hyperinflationary depression, then a "great depression." And when it hits, it will be with "surprising speed." Already disposable income is falling in a weakened economy in crisis. As things worsen, politicians get blamed, and Williams raises an interesting possibility. If conditions get bad enough, voters may respond with their feet, declare a pox on both major parties, and turn to a third alternative around 2010 or 2012. It happened before in our history. The Republican Party is Exhibit A. It was created in 1854 at a time Democrats and Whigs were the two dominant parties. Exit Whigs, and enter Republicans with Abraham Lincoln its first elected president in 1860.

Williams shows US inflation data going back to 1665. It was fairly stable up to the Fed's 1913 creation. It then began rising and accelerated post-WW II. Government calculations mask it. Alternative ones are more revealing and accurate. Except for minor price declines in 1944 and 1955, the US hasn't had a deflationary period since the 1930s. Abandoning the gold standard is why. It imposed monetary discipline. Roosevelt went off it in 1933. He had to. The banking system collapsed, money supply imploded, and economic stimulus was needed. It released the Fed to create money freely. Therein lies the problem, and it shows up in the numbers.

Current Fed Chairman Bernanke and Alan Greenspan are students of the Great Depression. "Helicopter Ben" especially vowed never again, and his actions prove it to a fault. He knows the risks and stated them in an earlier speech. He said:

"Like gold, US dollars have value only to the extent that they are strictly limited in supply. But the US government has a technology called a printing press (now its electronic equivalent), that allows it to produce as many US dollars as it wishes." By doing so, it "reduce(s) the value of a dollar in terms of goods and services" which raises their prices...."under a paper-money system, a determined government can always generate higher spending and hence positive inflation."

So it has, according to Williams, and it caused a "slow-motion destruction of the US dollar's purchasing power" since 1933. It shows up in GAAP-based 2007 federal deficit figures - $4 trillion for the fiscal year, not the official $163 fiction reported. Williams estimates total outstanding federal obligations at $62.6 trillion. At least one other economist puts it over $80 trillion. There's no way to honor this debt level, so the "government effectively is bankrupt." At that point, it has three choices - default, declare a moratorium, or repudiate the entire amount.

Sooner or later, markets will react. Holders of US debt already are balking, but so far modestly and quietly. Ahead, that may change if dollar valuations plunge. It will force the Fed's hand. Greater debt monetization will follow. Dollar valuations will sink further, and so forth in a progressive downward cycle to oblivion if Williams is right.

If conditions get severe enough, the Fed can create huge amounts of currency in a few days or weeks - enough to match the dollar's lost purchasing power in the last 75 years. Combine it with fiscal irresponsibility and imagine the consequences.

Official data alone today are reason for concern - soaring food and oil prices, the dollar near historic lows, money growth at an all-time high, and off-the-charts federal deficits and debt. The trend continues, and it shows up in gold prices - topping $1000, then retreating, but nearly certain to soar way above previous highs on its way to numbers not discussed in the mainstream - $2000 an ounce, $3000? Who knows. Williams sees it "setting new historic highs."

In 1980, its price hit $850 an ounce. In CPI inflation-adjusted terms, around $2300 an ounce would match it today. But if the government hadn't cooked the CPI calculation, the number would be about $6250 an ounce. By that standard, gold today is cheap. It's way below its real 1980 top, and if inflation accelerates as Williams predicts, expect much higher prices as dollars keep deflating.

Under this scenario, the "US government cannot cover (its) existing obligations." Annual federal deficits are "careening wildly out of control, averaging $4.6 trillion per year for the six years through 2007." That's with all unfunded liabilities included like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, other social services, debt service and more.

Williams says things are so out of control that "if the government (raised taxes) to seize 100% of all wages, salaries and corporate profits, it still would (show) an annual deficit using GAAP accounting" methods. At the same time, "given current revenues, if it stopped (all) spending (including defense and homeland security) other than Social Security and Medicare obligations, the government still would (show) an annual deficit." The hole is so deep, it's impossible to dig out, according to Williams.

But given political realities, officials spend whatever it takes to get elected and keep their jobs. That's besides foreign wars, limitless corporate subsidies and more. Things, however, won't improve. They'll worsen, and that for Williams spells hyperinflation ahead. It's happening "with the full knowledge of political Washington and the Federal Reserve." It it weren't for the US's "special position," our debt would likely be rated "below investment grade instead of triple-A." Longer term bonds are especially risky. At some point, they'll lose their full value. They also risk default, and that's besides their loss in dollar terms.

It's just a matter of time before foreign investors get worried enough to act - buying fewer Treasuries down to none, then followed by redemptions. The Fed will have to compensate. Print more currency, and the problem deepens. Its value declines and inflation accelerates.

Trade policies worsen things. We're in a global race to the bottom. The once bedrock manufacturing base eroded. It's now 10% of the economy and falling. Services currently account for around 84% of it and rising. Jobs in all categories are being offshored to low-wage countries. Average inflation-adjusted wages keep declining. Real earnings are below their early 1970s peak. Living standards are falling. Consumer debt is rising to make up the shortfall. Savings are liquidated. Before the housing decline, mortgage refinancing helped when valuations rose. It meant taking on more debt. Fed policy encouraged it. Today's dilemma "is payback" for unsustainable bubble-creation policies. Recalling a relevant quote: "Things that can't go on forever won't."

Bad policy caused enormous structural change, and trade deficits are part of it. They've "risen to the highest level for any country in history." They're one more problem for a seriously over-extended economy. It places "the federal government and Federal Reserve in untenable positions, where they cannot easily or rapidly address the underlying problems, even if standard economic stimuli were available."

Given the federal deficit and out-of-control spending, fiscal policy limits have been reached. The Fed's in the same bind. It can neither stimulate the economy or contain inflation. Rate cuts have done little. Saving the dollar may require raising them, but that won't "contain non-demand driven inflation." It shows up in high food, energy, health care, and companies like Dow Chemical announcing on May 28 that it will raise prices across the board up to 20% to offset increased costs.

More cause for worry, and Williams anticipates depression. Hyperinflation will follow, and it will sink "the economy into a great depression." It will halt commercial activity. The greater disparity in income, the more negative its consequences. "Extremes in income variance usually are followed by financial panics and economic depressions. US income variance today is higher" than in 1929 and "nearly double that of any other 'advanced' economy."

Federal bailouts have worsened things. Dollar creation exploded. Crisis has been pushed into the future. Its enormity will be far greater, and foreign investors will get stuck with a lot of it. When it arrives in strength, capital outflow will follow, and dollar valuation will plunge with it. Williams believes that "both central bank and major private investors know that the dollar is going to be a losing proposition. They either expect and/or hope that they can get of (it) in time to lock in their profits (or for central bankers) that they can forestall the ultimate global economic crisis" as long as possible.

Dollars are very vulnerable in this environment. If Treasuries are dumped, the Fed will monetize debt to make up the difference. Inflation will then accelerate, multi-trillion dollar deficits will worsen things, and a "self-feeding cycle of currency debasement and hyperinflation" will follow.

Cash as we know it will disappear. A barter system and black market will replace it or possible introduction of a new currency. Since most money today is electronic, not physical, chances of it adapting "are practically nil." With hyperinflation, electronic commerce would completely shut down and economic collapse would follow. Gold and silver will be invaluable. Holders could exchange them for goods and services.

Physical goods will also be precious for survival and as a medium of exchange. Anything with a long shelf life may be stocked in advance, and providers of essential services could barter them for goods and other services. Forewarned is forearmed. Safety and liquidity are crucial. Anything retaining value is essential. Real estate, other currencies for example. Foreign equities and debt to a small degree because US financial assets hammering will spill everywhere.

With all that to deal with, consider another dilemma - the likelihood of painful political change, civil unrest, disruptive violence, and utter chaos. If Williams is right and hyperinflation arrives, Katie bar the door on what may follow. Revolutions are possible with three notable last century ones to consider - in Russia, Weimer Germany and Nationalist China. In each case, the old order ended, everything changed, but not for the good. How does Williams advise? Evaluate one's own circumstances, use common sense, and forewarned is forearmed. That will help, but hard times hurt everyone.

Hopefully they won't arrive, at least not full-blown as Williams predicts. But make no mistake. Excess has a price. The more of it the greater. America has an ocean of it. Sooner or later comes payback. "Things that can't go on forever won't."

Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to The Global Research News Hour on RepublicBroadcasting.org Mondays from 11AM to 1PM US Central time for cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests. All programs are archived for easy listening.

Coming Soon: $15 a gallon of gas

2008-06-06T06:52:00.000-07:00

http://moderndayexodus.com/?p=208#more-208

Think that gas prices are high now? Just wait until you’re paying $15 a gallon at the pump, cautions Weeden & Co. energy expert Charles T. Maxwell.

“We’re heading in that direction,” says Maxwell. Don’t rush out into the street screaming just yet, though. “I think it will be a number of years before we get there.”
Trading conspiracies aside, it really is all about supply and demand, Maxwell warns. And that picture isn’t changing long term. Governments have been way too slow, he says, to recognize and act on the problem.

“That’s the fundamental problem going on in the world today, and so many people don’t recognize it,” Maxwell says. It isn’t really a drilling problem, he warns. We’re drilling, but we’re finding less and using more at the same time. “This has never been so before,” he says.
Maxwell sees gas prices peaking between $4 and $4.50 this year, then dropping back to $3.50 to $4 and remaining at that level through 2009. He says that present gas supplies are sufficient — and that at $4.50, gas is priced about right for $130 a barrel crude.
“We’re not running short of gas, but we are running short of crude,” he says. “It’s not a serious problem because we’re about in balance now and will be for the next year to 18 months.
“But around 2010 to 2012, things will begin to go out of balance again and the problem hits hard.”

Acknowledging that current prices are very high by any historical standards, Maxwell expects that by then they will begin to rise again, pushing back through $4 to $4.50 and entering the $6 to $7 range by 2012 or 2013.

Maxwell points out that in his 48 years in the business, the oil supply system has always had a cushion to fall back on in times of bad weather and political unrest.
“Suddenly, we’re without that cushion because of demand in the last four or five years, particularly from emerging economies, and there hasn’t been a compensating increase in new production brought on stream for a variety of reasons,” he says.

Oil prices behave in quirky ways, Maxwell notes. A long, slow, upward line in a diagram drawn over the next five years may make things appear smooth, but the fact is there’s already been a huge jump in the price of crude.

Energy analyst Kevin Book says that the current oil market is running at 96.5 percent of capacity. “Do something to add capacity to the market and I think you’ll change some of the price dynamics,” Book says.

“Fewer SUVs could spell lower demand by millions of barrels per day.” Book also notes that gas prices are subsidized in many emerging economies, notably China, which holds $1 trillion in U.S. reserves.

“Governments that have been subsidizing the price of oil have to look at this and make sure things don’t get out of hand,” Book says. “Growing populations and prosperity increase (subsidy) cost to governments, and once people become accustomed to more they don’t want to cut back.”

[Source: http://moneynews.newsmax.com/streettalk/fifteen_dollar_gas_coming/2008/06/05/102042.html]

$200 a barrel for oil? Are you Ready?

2008-06-03T04:52:00.003-07:00

The Coming Energy Wars

Oil prices could hit $200 a barrel in the next few months. How the spike changes everything.
Rana Foroohar

NEWSWEEK
Updated: 10:51 AM ET May 31, 2008

This spring, America hit a historic point. With average gas prices per gallon edging toward $4, America's notoriously profligate ways started to change fast. Americans are driving less, using mass transit more, buying fewer gas guzzlers, indeed shopping less wantonly in general, and lowering their previously unshakable confidence as consumers. Suddenly, Americans are acting differently; if not exactly like Swedes, then not quite like themselves, either. It's a shift that could change the world.

And there are more changes to come. So far the price shock has triggered the most obvious consumer shifts in the United States. Europeans, already greener, are also are buffered by a stronger currency, and Asians are protected from the spiking price of oil by subsidies that control the impact on gas prices at the pump. But if oil prices continue to rise, and the subsidy dam breaks, as seems likely, the energy revolution now transforming America will spread. "We sailed through $80 a barrel," notes energy authority Daniel Yergin, author of "The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power" and chairman of Cambridge Energy Research Associates. "But that doesn't mean we'll sail through $200 a barrel. That sort of price would have enormous global consequences."

A year ago no one was talking about $200 oil, and now everyone in the markets is, for scary reasons. Oil prices climbed from $10 in 1999 to $95 last year without slowing the surging world economy, in large part because the markets believed the spike was at core driven by rising demand, particularly from India and China, which feeds growth. There was concern over supply, too, but nothing like the tumult prompted by the stranglehold OPEC imposed on the world in the 1970s, at least not until recent months. As the per-barrel price climbed over the last few months, with futures reaching $135 last week, the consensus began shifting to a new more gloomy view: that not only would long-term demand, led by China and India, continue to grow, but that the supply threats, including increasing conflict, falling investment, industry bottlenecks and downward estimates of big field reserves in major oil states—aren't going away any time soon. Now many (though not all) serious people take $200 oil—and the prospect of another '70s-style oil shock—seriously. Goldman Sachs warned that the $200 barrier could be hit within the next six to 24 months.

That's way too fast for comfort (or should be) even for those who welcome high gas prices as a way to induce energy conservation and fight global warming. Already skyrocketing oil prices are causing real pain for ordinary people, threatening global economic growth, and reviving the specter of inflation. The price pressure is now particularly acute in big emerging markets like China and India, which in recent years had become paragons of fiscal responsibility that tended to dampen global inflation by exporting cheap goods and services. Now they threaten to become exporters of inflation, particularly if energy price controls give way. Americans now making up for their losses at the gas pump by flocking to Wal-Mart for cheap Chinese goods would be out of luck. Make no mistake: $200 oil in 2009 would be a painful shock, not just a green tax on gas guzzlers.

Oil drives so much of the global economy, it's almost impossible to fully imagine the world of $200 oil. No question, the shock will force nations to go greener much faster than now, particularly by conserving energy and developing and adopting new non-fossil fuels. But none of this can happen full stop in six to 24 months. So the predictions tend to be gloomy: some analysts see a shift toward regional trade, and even a major reversal of globalization itself, as rising transport costs make it too expensive to ship many kinds of goods long distances. A major acceleration in the transfer of wealth that has, in the past five years, shifted trillions of petrodollars from oil consumers to producers would alter the world balance of power—including a boost for the troublesome oil autocrats of Iran, Venezuela and Russia. At $200 a barrel the proven oil reserves of the six Gulf nations alone would rise in value to $95 trillion, about twice the size of public equity markets, according to Morgan Stanley managing director Stephen Jen. That would make the Sovereign Wealth Funds of oil states market kingmakers. Western efforts to press more openness on these funds, many controlled by royal courts, would surely grow.

While some optimists believe the windfall could bring the Middle East into the modern world if it's smartly invested, that's a big if. Already many small states are struggling to wisely invest their oil windfall to date, and the corrupting curse of oil wealth is well known. Michael L. Ross, associate professor of political science at UCLA, notes that the percentage of the world's wars that take place in oil states is growing. The number of oil states is also rising—with Cambodia, East Timor and others joining the ranks—with more likely to follow as prices climb. Many of these newcomers are small, and ill equipped to cope with the corruption that often wastes the windfall.

No industry will be unaffected. Any company that moves goods or people needs oil. At $200 oil could make the long-predicted death of Detroit, or at least one of its Big Three, a reality. Airlines are vulnerable too. Skyrocketing jet fuel prompted American to announce it would cut flights due to the grounding of numerous older, less fuel-efficient planes. Air France-KLM recently warned that profits are likely to fall by a third this year, and CEO Jean-Cyril Spinetta suggests $200 oil would represent a far bigger shock than 9/11 or the SARS epidemic of 2003, which sent the airline industry into a tailspin. "It's more than a change, it's a revolution, a new industry, in fact," says Spinetta. "We would have a lot of bankruptcies very rapidly in Europe, the U.S., and Asia. And there will be restructuring of networks, cutting routes, cutting capacities." The effect of mergers and cutbacks may leave smaller cities from Tuscany to the American Midwest with ghost airports.

The oil-induced depression of the American consumer may be a harbinger of what's to come elsewhere. In the United States, consumer confidence is now at a 15-year low. Energy Department data show that $4-a-gallon gas is finally forcing Americans to cut back on driving; this year gas consumption in the country is expected to drop for the first time since 1991. No amount of "fiscal stimulus" looks likely to help: Citibank estimates that even if prices merely stay as they are, the year-on-year increase in the U.S. consumer-gas bill will siphon away the bulk of the $120 billion in expected tax rebates. As food and gas prices go up, spending on everything else will go down. No wonder big-box stores like Wal-Mart are having record quarters, and middle-market chains are suffering.

Expect these trends to hit Europe soon, too. Germans are actually beginning to slow down on the autobahn to save fuel, which has risen in price from 0.92 to 1.53 euros per liter since 2000 (a 66 percent increase). Analysts say that the more Europeans spend on gas, the less they will spend on furniture, clothing and white goods. Indeed sales in all those categories are already down. "It's going to feel like a global recession inside many companies," notes Citibank European equities economist Richard Reid. "We expect an increase in corporate failures, and a lot of M&A. You might well see flush emerging-markets firms [think Tata] swooping in to buy up ailing Western firms on the cheap."

With oil futures up 40 percent in just the last two months, the sense of an accelerating shock is already palpable in the United States. While American automakers were moving slowly toward smaller cars before the spike, sales of SUVs and pickups are now falling so fast, they appear to be caught flat-footed. "At $200, GM tanks," says energy expert Philip Verleger. "They just don't have time to fix their fleet." Ford CEO Alan Mullaly, warning two weeks ago that he no longer expects a return to profitability in 2009, said he believes the gas-price shift is permanent. Ford has slashed production of its F-series pickup trucks, an American best seller for 20 years. Meanwhile, Nissan unveiled a $115 million new plant outside Tokyo designed to build lithium-ion fuel cells to power a new generation of battery cars.

The individual decisions about what we'll drive, how often we'll fly and whether we'll upgrade our televisions as quickly are only part of the larger macroeconomic threat of higher oil prices. The threat has yet to be officially tallied; major financial institutions like Morgan Stanley have only just begun to seriously discuss the potential downgrades to the global economy should $200 oil become a reality. But already, it's clear that oil is catalyzing the threat of inflation in rich countries as well as poor. Inflation looks likely to be about 5 percent in the United States this summer, and about 3 percent in Europe. But in emerging economies, double-digit inflation could become the norm. "In America, it will feel like the opposite of the 1990s," says Morgan Stanley chief U.S. economist Richard Berner. "But if you think things won't be pleasant for industrial nations, think about developing economies, where people spend 50 percent of their income on food and fuel."

Indeed, there's concern that as higher oil prices force many Asian economies to reduce or even cut their generous fuel subsidies, growth will slow sharply, and there could be social unrest as the world's poorest become more desperate. The political ramifications of this (which already include moves away from free trade), combined with the ever-rising costs of doing business as usual, could force a retrenchment from globalization. "It's a harbinger of the reversal of globalization," says Jeff Rubin, chief economist for CIBC World Markets. "At $200 a barrel, you'll see transport costs rise so much that they will effectively reverse the trade liberalization of the last 30 years." He predicts that world trade will realign itself regionally, so that while Japan may continue to ship in goods from China, the United States will increasingly import from Latin America. "If you look at the period from 1973 to 1979 [when oil spiked] you'll find the same thing happened," he notes. "The share of imports to the U.S. from Latin America and the Caribbean rose by 6 percentage points. That was all about freight costs."

Regionalism won't stop at trade. There will be new financial and service hubs in energy-rich areas like Russia, Latin America and the Gulf. Sovereign Wealth Funds will continue to buy up big chunks of Western banks and blue-chip companies, as well as investing more broadly in a new range of countries and currencies (which is likely to make forex movements stronger and more unpredictable). The rise of the Sovereign Wealth Funds has already triggered a protectionist backlash, including U.S. moves to step up the vetting of foreign investors in American firms.

Worse conflicts are possible. "As areas like the Mideast and Africa, Russia and Venezuela continue to rise, you're going to see increasing energy greed, aggressive behaviors and neocolonial actions on the part of various countries," predicts Scott Nyquist, the head of McKinsey's energy practice. As Iran gets richer, Hizbullah might get stronger. China will clearly wield more might in Africa. Western ideas about civil society, the environment and women's rights could be displaced with new sets of values.

More blood will almost certainly be spilled. Oil wealth tends to wreak havoc on a nation's economy and politics, discouraging diversity, aggravating ethnic grievances and making it easier to fund insurgencies. Oil countries now host about a third of the world's civil wars, up from one fifth in 1992. "There's a vicious cycle, which you can see played out in places like Iraq and Nigeria, where conflict fuels higher prices, and higher prices in turn fuel conflict," says UCLA's Ross.

The lack of any spare capacity in the global pipeline makes it difficult to solve such situations with sanctions; taking any oil off the market would, at this point, merely ignite an already explosive situation. The megatrends fueling the global supply shortage tend to feed on one another. Higher prices fuel the growing tendency of oil states like Russia and Venezuela to re-nationalize fields. That often leads to lower output, due to the inefficiency of most state oil companies, notes Sanford Bernstein analyst Ben Dell. The publicly traded companies have to go where they can. As fields in peaceful places (Alaska, the North Sea) are tapped out, the hunt for new oil has moved into conflict zones (Nigeria and Angola) or geologically extreme territory (Siberia, the deep sea). And while higher prices are already driving down energy consumption in rich nations, that drop does not offset the booming demand in emerging markets.

Meanwhile, though numerous green technologies hold plenty of promise, none of them are going to save the day any time soon. "It's a false god," says Robin West, chairman of PFC Energy. "There will be step changes in technology, but people forget the scale of the oil business. Ethanol production was 5 billion gallons last year, with huge subsidies to farmers and rising food prices. But that's the size of one production platform off the coast of West Africa."

So, what's to be done? For starters, policy makers might stop grilling big oil companies about why prices are so high (since they now control only a small percent of known reserves, it's largely out of their hands), support smarter green initiatives (wind and solar credits rather than ethanol boondoggles) and stop pandering to voters with subsidies and gas-tax cuts that ignore the new reality—oil is a finite resource, more people want more of it, and the profligacy with which we've used it is going to change. "There's a fuel that's cheap, clean and readily available, and it's called conservation," says West. By some estimates, the world could save 25 percent of its oil usage with simple measures like driving the speed limit, turning off lights, and fully using the green technology we already have (hybrids, better insulation, etc, etc). While it's never been the inclination of rich nations—particularly America—to rein in consumption, it's a notion we'll undoubtedly become more comfortable with as energy prices rise. It happened in the 1970s. It will happen again—and if we're very lucky, it will become the important and lasting effect of $200 oil.

URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/139395
© 2008

Could it reach $12-$15 a gallon?

2008-05-23T07:45:00.000-07:00

The implications of gas reaching this price is astronomical.... gas goes up and everything else will follow...

Energy Experts Warn of $12-15-a-Gallon Gas
By Exodus Times on May 21st, 2008

It may be the mother of all doom and gloom gas price predictions: $12 for a gallon of gas is “inevitable.”
Robert Hirsch, Management Information Services Senior Energy Advisor, gave a dire warning about the potential future of gas prices on CNBC’s May 20 “Squawk Box”. He told host Becky Quick there was no single thing that would solve the problem, due to the enormity of the problem.

“[T]he prices that we’re paying at the pump today are, I think, going to be ‘the good old days,’ because others who watch this very closely forecast that we’re going to be hitting $12 and $15 per gallon,” Hirsch said. “And then, after that, when oil – world oil production goes into decline, we’re going to talk about rationing. In other words, not only are we going to be paying high prices and have considerable economic problems, but in addition to that, we’re not going to be able to get the fuel when we want it.” Hirsch told the Business & Media Institute the $12-$15 a gallon wasn’t his prediction, but that he was citing Charles T. Maxwell, described as the “Dean of Oil Analysts” and the senior energy analyst at Weeden & Co. Still, Hirsch admitted the high price was inevitable in his view. “I don’t attempt to predict oil prices because it’s been impossible in the past,” Hirsch said in an e-mail. “We’re into a new era now, and over the next roughly five years the trend will be up significantly. However, there may be dips and bumps that no one can forecast; I wouldn’t be at all surprised. To me the multi-year upswing is inevitable.” Maxwell’s original $12-15-a-gallon prediction came in a February 5 interview with Energytechstocks.com, a Web site run by two former Wall Street Journal staffers. “[Maxwell] expects an oil-induced financial crisis to start somewhere in the 2010 to 2015 timeframe,” Energytechstocks.com reported. “He said that, unlike the recession the U.S. appears to be in today, ‘This will not be six months of hell and then we come out of it.’ Rather, Maxwell expects this financial crisis to last at least 10 or 12 years, as the world goes through a prolonged period of price-induced rationing (eg, oil up to $300 a barrel and U.S. pump prices up to $15 a gallon).” According to associate of Maxwell at Weeden & Co., Maxwell is out of the country and currently unavailable for comment. Maxwell’s biography on the Weeden & Co. Web site said he “has been ranked by the U.S. financial institutions as the No. 1 oil analyst for the years 1972, 1974, 1977 and 1981-1986,” according to polls taken by Institutional Investor magazine. “In addition, for the last 17 years he has been an active member of an Oxford-based organization comprised of OPEC and other industry executives from 30 countries who meet twice a year to discuss trends within the energy industry.”
Although Maxwell’s prediction is for the long-term, not everyone supports high-end predictions, even in the short-term. CNBC contributor and the vice president of risk management for MF Global (NYSE:MF) John Kilduff said on “The Call” May 7that he expected gas prices to drop following the Chinese Olympics, as China’s economic boom slows down.

What if gas was $10 a gallon?

2008-05-17T11:17:00.000-07:00

Forget pizza delivery. And cheap airfares. And bottled water. In fact, forget a way of life that looks much like today's. But would that be so bad?
By Shirley Skeel on MSN.com

In four years, U.S. gas prices have doubled to more than $3.70 a gallon, and crude oil has tripled to around $125 a barrel. Allowing for inflation, that's higher than prices were during the 1978–83 oil shock that triggered a recession and sky-high interest rates. But . . .

What if gas cost $10 a gallon?
Thousands of truckers would go bankrupt. Airplanes would sit idle in hangars. Restaurants and stores would shut down. Car-pooling, hybrid vehicles, scooters and inline skates would swing into vogue. And telecommuting, rooftop vegetable gardens, home cooking and recycling would proliferate.

Yes, it would be painful. At $10 a gallon, filling a Ford Explorer could cost $225. Even gassing up a Honda Civic could set you back $132.
And suddenly the bus wouldn't look so bad.

A large recession, not a depression.

According to Todd Hale, a senior vice president for consumer researcher Nielsen, at $10 a gallon, the average family's gas bill would leap from 16% of its retail spending to about 40%. People would drive less, yes. But many have to drive to work or the supermarket, and they'd cough up the cash -- screaming all the way -- and cut back elsewhere.
(Above right: Use the calculator to see what your yearly gas bill would look like.)
Businesses and farmers, meantime, would be squeezed as the costs of transport, petrochemical fertilizers and plastics rose. If an oil shock came quickly, sending gas to $10 a gallon and oil to roughly $350 a barrel, the chain reaction of spiraling prices and sliced consumer demand would hit us hard.

"It would be a large recession, not a depression," says Michael Englund, the chief economist for Action Economics in Boulder, Colo. That would mean tight budgets and unemployment until the economy adapted and growth returned.

Here are some likely effects:
• Consumer spending on eating out, clothing, electronics, vacations and other little luxuries would fall sharply. A Nielsen study found that even at recent gas prices, 41% of consumers were eating out less. In total, 18% of those surveyed were cutting spending to a "great degree." That would bruise companies such as Applebee's, Macy's, Gap, Best Buy and others. But discount retailers, particularly those selling food and gas, could do relatively well. Think Costco, Wal-Mart and McDonald's.
• We'd see "a lot of parked planes," says Bill Swelbar, an air transport engineer for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The U.S. airline industry pays out $465 million in fuel costs for every $1 rise in oil. At $350-a-barrel oil, the industry would pay more than $100 billion extra, almost as much as last year's total airfare sales. Even if airlines ratcheted up fares 50%, half of their airplanes would be grounded because they'd be too expensive to fly, Swelbar reckons.
• Many independent truckers, who pay for their own fuel, would go bankrupt as their costs soared and shippers switched to barges and trains. Taxis and FedEx would be strictly for the well-heeled. And home pizza deliveries would cease. Pizza delivery drivers also pay for their own gas. "It'd be brutal," says Joseph Miller, an assistant manager at a Domino's Pizza in Seattle. "I would think we wouldn't have any drivers."
• Food prices could jump by a third or more, experts estimate. About 80 cents of the $4.50 retail cost of a box of cornflakes goes to transport it, says Dan Basse, the president of AgResource, a Chicago research company. On top of that, there's the cost of fertilizers to grow the corn and diesel for farm equipment. In 2005, transportation and energy made up 8.5% of all retail food costs, but energy was far cheaper then. As $10 gas pushed up food prices, pinched consumers would give up pricey fresh meat and vegetables for cheap pastas and oils. Ranchers and dairies with energy-hungry milking barns would struggle. And cities might sprout to life as people planted vegetable gardens on their roofs and balconies and in vacant lots.
• Plastics for appliances, packaging, pacemakers and myriad other products would jump in price as the natural gas that plastic is made with rose in value alongside oil. Bill Wood, the president of Mountaintop Economics and Research in Massachusetts, says shoppers would have a choice: "Paper or paper?" Small plastic bottles of water would disappear. Glass and metal containers would make a comeback. And recycling would explode. Families might even have nine bins in the hall to separate their trash, as they do in Japan, where consumer recycling tops 90%.

Prediction: $200 oil, $5 gas
Economists say oil prices could continue to surge in the next two years, with prices as high as $5.60 a gallon at the gas pump possible.
• As drivers began to switch to 100-mile-per-gallon plug-in hybrid cars (already expected to launch by 2010), the electricity grid could come under strain. Theoretically, if everyone had one and plugged it in at night, the grid could handle 84% of the nation's car fleet. But to avoid the risk of city brownouts, the grid capacity would have to rise. Solar, wave and wind power would ramp up. Giant solar thermal power plants, which use mirrors to concentrate the sun's energy, would be built. But in the rush to get power, we'd probably also step up the use of cheap, dirty coal (50% of our electricity generation now). Even nuclear power (21%) could be considered anew.
• Resistance to drilling for oil in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and off California would shrink. Environmentalists might stand their ground. But as James Williams, an energy economist for WTRG Economics in Arkansas, says, "Let's put it this way: Y'all wanna drive?" Oil reserves in both areas are thought to be more than 10 billion barrels, double the proven reserves in Texas. That would help feed America's 21-million-barrel-a-day appetite.
Continued: It might be good in the long run

After the hurt, some benefits
There'd be other ramifications, too. The federal government's deficit would balloon as it paid for energy incentives and social welfare. We could even see civil unrest as the poor scrambled to survive.
Suburbanites would crowd into urban town houses to avoid costly commutes, and working from home would become common. Eventually, public transportation might even improve.
Some of these things, such as small cars and excellent public transportation, are already entrenched in Europe and Japan. Gas prices there are the equivalent of $8 to $10 a gallon, largely because of high taxes. They live with it. We could, too.
In the longer term, we might even be better off.
As the economy adjusted to functioning with new energy sources and more-efficient energy use, jobs in engineering, science, alternative energy and conservation would boom.

Matthew Simmons, the founder of investment bank Simmons & Company International in Houston, says he thinks a good slice of the hundreds of billions of dollars that would flow to oil-producing nations would filter back to the U.S. He believes the oil industry infrastructure is aging and America would be called on to help.
"We'd have a more engineer, blue-collar, scientific world, versus the Starbucks, high-tech business that we've been in," he says. Not to mention that America's Achilles' heel -- its dependency on foreign oil for 60% of its needs -- would finally have a remedy. A painful one, but effective.
Will gas cost $10 a gallon anytime soon?
It's unlikely, though short-term expectations of $4 or even $5 gas this year are increasingly common.
But most oil specialists believe that in the near term, $10 gas couldn't happen -- or that if oil hit $350 a barrel through some Middle East disaster, it would be short-lived. They say demand would fall sharply, bringing oil prices back down. Adam Sieminski, the chief energy economist with Deutsche Bank in Washington, D.C., puts the probability at less than 3%.
Richard Heinberg, a senior fellow at the nonprofit Post Carbon Institute in Sebastopol, Calif., disagrees. He believes it could happen within five years (of course, $10 likely would be worth less then).
More than half of the world's oil producers, including the U.S., Britain, Mexico, Venezuela and Russia, are seeing production decline, Heinberg says. Meanwhile, demand is growing at 1.5% to 2% a year. Heinberg says the OPEC countries need their reserves to meet booming demand at home and that at some point, oil will become scarce.
The result: Prices will shoot up.
Published May 16, 2008
http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/SavingandDebt/SaveonaCar/WhatIfGasCost10DollarsAGallon.aspx?page=all

Signs of Jesus' return: Do you know what they are?

2008-04-25T17:28:00.000-07:00

I believe we as a people on earth are very close to the possible beginning of what was spoken in Matt 24 as the first sign of the man Jesus' coming return. I don't believe the church will be raptured or taken away before this starts and that is why I am devoting myself, my heart, my life to the man Jesus, His return, and His reign on Earth. I do believe the rapture will happen when He breaks into the sky with a shout and the sound of a trumpet (24:30-31).

24:4-8 speaks of false christs, wars and rumors of wars, and finally intense natural disasters. We are currently living in an age where people are being mislead by the droves to people who claim to be the christ. If you wonder who, just Google Jose De Jesus and see how many multitudes of people worshipping and following this man. War has escaladed since WWII and you can't read international headlines right now without hearing rumors of war coming between Israel/ US and the Arabic nations of the world. It is so emminent. Our planet is also seeing increased frequency of devastating storms, earthquakes, and rumors of worse to come... Did you hear about the bird flu that could wipe out a 1/3 of the population or how about the missing bees that could pertain to a coming plague? These are common headlines...

I am not sure if there is one war, one storm, or one plague that could say were have endured what Jesus spoke of... yet it would be prudent to understand the next sign to understand the transition. Matt 24: 10-12 speaks of the Great Falling Away or Apostasy (2nd Thess 2:3); other signs spoken are the False Peace of Israel & the Middle East (Dan. 9:27), the Great Harvest (24:14/ Rev 7:9,14;14:15), and counterfeit worldwide peace and safety (1 Thess 5:1-3; Rev 17:6; Matt 24:37-39....

Why should you know all these things? Because I believe that we'll be alive when it occurs and I also believe the next Sign of Jesus' Coming is the most important to identify....

The 3rd major sign of Jesus' return stipulated in Matt 24:15. This is the revelation of the AntiChrist, the son of Perdition, the man of sin... To many Christians, he will be a savior and be deceived because he will bring peace to the Middle East (Daniel 9:27)...but also he will eventually demand worship by setting himself up as God in the holy temple...calling the abomination of desolation. (2nd Thess 2:2-4; Rev 13:11-18).

When this happens the clock starts....3 1/2 years until Jesus returns... Daniel 12:8-12. Then we will see the most amazing & terrifying outpouring of God's wrath on the planet.

Do you know what the Bible says (Luke 21:35)Is your heart ready (Matt 24:13, Luke 21:36) ? Do you have oil(Matt 25)? Do you have an intimate relationship with the man Jesus now?

Its your choice...

2008-04-12T21:32:00.000-07:00

Please take a minute and really look at this picture... I feel it says everything. If you have questions, please do not hesistate to post a comment.

First Web Cam blog

2008-04-06T09:56:00.000-07:00

The Lord's or the Jews?

2008-03-30T08:38:00.000-07:00

Eversince the Lord has exposed me to Scott Dryer's teachings at theantichrist.net
I have been awakened or stirred to the desire to understand more of the Jewish
traditions and iterpretations of the Word along with understand the Lord's
heart for the Jews....

One area of interest has been what I've always thought growing up as the Jewish holidays or feasts. As a kid, I always remember these extra days off for Jewish kids and wondered why...

Looking into scripture I found Leviticus 23 where the Lord is speaking to Moses about these "feasts".....

Lev 23:1-2
And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, "Speak to the children of Israel, and say to the them: "The feasts of the Lord, which you shall proclaim to be holy convocations, these are My feasts".

I am struck by miss understanding and assumption.... I thought they were always just Jewish tradition that they established for their own religious desires... How interesting to see that the Lord has called them His Feasts... not "your" feasts or even "Israel" feasts...

So the question I wonder and ask is.... if the God I serve Ywh...has in His word....feasts...and they are His feasts.... shouldn't I also understand them and celebrate them as well?

I should think so....

Now this does not discredit the Jews in any way but it makes more appreciative of their obedience to the command of the Lord for such important celebrations to Him...

Oh, how easily we as non-Jewish people and more so Christians have created our own holidays with pegan roots rather than celebrating the Lord's feasts....

Interesting.

The antichrist

2008-03-19T08:35:00.000-07:00

We cannot ignore the scriptures and the signs of the times (Matt 24) regarding the son of perdition... the antichrist is coming and possibly already here on Earth...

For those of you who are curious, interested or even offended I mentioned this please...

oh, please watch this video on this website. It is solid Biblically, and it is a message few will teach... I promise you ....you will be blessed!

http://www.profoundprophecy.com/theAntichrist.html

The importance of Authority

2008-02-23T06:26:00.000-08:00

Excerpts from Watchman Nee's Spiritual Authority.... Chapter 1

We who are so self-righteous and yet so blind need once in our life to encounter God's authority so that we may be broken unto submission and so begin to learn obedience to the authority of God.
In serving God we must not violate authorities, because to do so is a principle of Satan.
The greatest of God's demands on is not for him to bear the cross, to serve, make offerings, or deny himself. The greatest demand is for him to obey.
Before we can work for God we must be over turned by His authority. Our entire relationship with God is regulated by whether or not we have met authority. If we have, then we shall encounter authority everywhere, and being thus restrained by God we can begin to be used by Him.
We are not find work to do, rather we are to be sent to work by God.
Likewise, a person who has once been smitten by God's authority fom then on has his eyes opened to judge what is lawless both in himself and others.
Only after we have known God's authority and learned obedience can we lead His children in the straight path.

These implications really rest in m spirit... I am definitely in a season of learning about submission, authority, and obedience.... it speaks to my understanding of God and my character. I am excited about this subject and its implications in my life.... May the Lord receive all glory and honor!

The fear of the Lord

2007-11-13T12:10:00.000-08:00

The fear of the Lord is something I've been praying for over 12 months. I have come to learn it through the severity and judgment of His hand by trangressing Him and not respecting the leadership He has place over my life (Romans 13:1-7). It is His kindness or goodness that leads us to repentance (Romans 2:4). Through being exposed of my sin I am learning the delight of His judgments and a swelling desire to love righteousness, because it preserves my soul and it is truly the fountain of joy in life. Loving righteousness and hating evil!

Psalm 19:9-13....speaks exactly where my heart is at right now and where it remains to stay.

The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever; the judgments of the Lord are true and righteousness altogether. More to be desired are they than gold, yea, than much fine gold; sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb. Moreover by them Your servant is warned, and in keeping them there is great reward. Who can understand his errors? Cleanse me from secret faults. Keep back Your servant also form presumptuous sins; let them not have dominion over me. Then I shall be blameless, and shall I be innocent of great transgression.

(The Lord records in a book those have the fear of the Lord)
Malachi 3:16 Then those who feared the LORD spoke to one another, and the LORD listened and heard them; so a book of remembrance was written before Him for those who fear the LORD and who meditate on His name.

I entreat you to seek the fear of the Lord. Our nation and its foundations of righteousness and justice is crumbling, if not already completely gone. This condition in the land cries out to the Lord to bring His loving fiery judgments to the US. Turn to the Lord, repent, and seek the fear of the Lord. The LORD is merciful and gracious, Slow to anger, and abounding in mercy. (Ps 103:8)

Please read these passages from the Word and what it says about the fear of the Lord....
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1 Samuel 11:7 So he took a yoke of oxen and cut them in pieces, and sent them throughout all the territory of Israel by the hands of messengers, saying, “Whoever does not go out with Saul and Samuel to battle, so it shall be done to his oxen.” And the fear of the LORD fell on the people, and they came out with one consent.
2 Chronicles 14:14Then they defeated all the cities around Gerar, for the fear of the LORD came upon them; and they plundered all the cities, for there was exceedingly much spoil in them.
2 Chronicles 17:10 And the fear of the LORD fell on all the kingdoms of the lands that were around Judah, so that they did not make war against Jehoshaphat.
2 Chronicles 19:7 Now therefore, let the fear of the LORD be upon you; take care and do it, for there is no iniquity with the LORD our God, no partiality, nor taking of bribes.”
2 Chronicles 19:9And he commanded them, saying, “Thus you shall act in the fear of the LORD, faithfully and with a loyal heart.
Job 28:28 And to man He said,‘ Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom, And to depart from evil is understanding.’”
Psalm 34:11 Come, you children, listen to me;I will teach you the fear of the LORD.
Psalm 111:10 The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom;A good understanding have all those who do His commandments.His praise endures forever.
Proverbs 1:7 The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge, But fools despise wisdom and instruction.
Proverbs 1:29 Because they hated knowledge And did not choose the fear of the LORD. Proverbs 2:5 Then you will understand the fear of the LORD, And find the knowledge of God.
Proverbs 8:13 The fear of the LORD is to hate evil; Pride and arrogance and the evil way And the perverse mouth I hate.
Proverbs 9:10 “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, And the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.
Proverbs 10:27 The fear of the LORD prolongs days, But the years of the wicked will be shortened.
Proverbs 14:26 In the fear of the LORD there is strong confidence, And His children will have a place of refuge.
Proverbs 14:27 The fear of the LORD is a fountain of life, To turn one away from the snares of death.
Proverbs 15:16 Better is a little with the fear of the LORD, Than great treasure with trouble.
Proverbs 15:33 The fear of the LORD is the instruction of wisdom, And before honor is humility.
Proverbs 16:6 In mercy and truth Atonement is provided for iniquity; And by the fear of the LORD one departs from evil.
Proverbs 19:23 The fear of the LORD leads to life, And he who has it will abide in satisfaction; He will not be visited with evil.
Proverbs 22:4 By humility and the fear of the LORD Are riches and honor and life.
Proverbs 23:17 Do not let your heart envy sinners, But be zealous for the fear of the LORD all the day.
Isaiah 11:2 The Spirit of the LORD shall rest upon Him, The Spirit of wisdom and understanding, The Spirit of counsel and might, The Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the LORD.
Isaiah 11:3 His delight is in the fear of the LORD, And He shall not judge by the sight of His eyes, Nor decide by the hearing of His ears.
Isaiah 33:6 Wisdom and knowledge will be the stability of your times, And the strength of salvation; The fear of the LORD is His treasure.
Acts 9:31[ The Church Prospers ] Then the churches throughout all Judea, Galilee, and Samaria had peace and were edified. And walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, they were multiplied.

Rejection and Mistreatment

2007-11-12T19:48:00.000-08:00

These comments are based on Bob Sorge's book "Dealing with the rejection and praise of man",
based on Alan Hood's teachings at IHOP, and my own experiences.

---------------------------------------
-Bob Sorge
Rejection is one of God's specialty tools in the school of the Spirit. When God takes a particular liking to a saint, He fashions (accelerates maturity) that saint by surrounding him with unusual doses of rejection. If He really loves you, He'll craft some particularly painful rejection for you. Those God loves the most are always rejected the most. Rejection is a vital ingredient in the training up of End-time leaders, and after we're trained and raised up it continues to be a necessary tool to maintain and guard our hearts in humility.

The more you become like Jesus, the more rejection you will know.

Steps in healing from rejection:

Total Forgiveness (Acts 7:60)
Accepting the love of the Father (John 3:16 & Jeremiah 31:3)
When Jesus accepts me, I need acceptance from no one else

It's a sign of maturity when we can receive correction without interpreting it as rejection.You won't be healed of rejection by analyzing the source of your rejection but by looking at your source of acceptance.

------------------------------------------ -Alan Hood

Growing in sanctification is never safe.

Fantasy...I am only one being mistreated. Truth.....everyone is being mistreated or mistreating.

Mistreatment reveals pride manifested in anger. It has truth and reminds us that we don't have it all together. We hate to face our weakness or fallness. We hate being exposed.

The great enemy to meekness is a good insight, because you can size up how wrong they are. Anger is the defense mechanism of pride to keep me from facing my fallenness/ my sin & run from correction.

Self-pity rushes in to stregthen one's anger. It is the insightful defense attorney to justify one's anger and cover up one's sinful condition.

Its better to bee free than to be right.

To endure mistreatment is a gift to suffer as Christ did. Receive something higher in the moment than being right.

Everyone is going to suffer in life, but Christians have the joy to count it a blessing and reward in our faith.

Entitlement is lawlessness and comes form the spirit of the ant-christ. As Christians we are entitled to the wrath of God or the Cross. Period.

---------------------------------- -me

What seems like mistreatment or rejection from the Lord or His people could really be His mercy and kindness leading you back to repentance. It could be the judgments of His fiery righteousness because you have strayed from His love or have sinned against Him. So the pain and offense of mistreatment or rejection can blind your heart and mind from the true work of the Cross. It goes back to exposure and shame; when you are exposed you tend to run from the very things that will heal you: the Cross and His people.

As one friend put it "Do you trust Him? Has He come with a dagger or a surgeon scalpel?"

Mistreatment and rejection is the testing grounds of a man's heart before the Lord and those around.

It is the fire that forges fine gold like meekeness and a contrite spirit. These things are not for free. And they are the choicest prizes in the Kingdom of God.

Rejection reveals who you fear and who you love. Mistreatment reveals how much you truly do or not have to defend.

Don't pray for humility unless you are willing to stick out the process of rejection and mistreatment.

Rejection and mistreatment are a gift if you can see beyond youself.

Confession & Forgiveness

2007-11-04T18:24:00.000-08:00

At some point I will share why I am expounding on the themes of Shame, Confession, and Forgiveness...and I am sure more like Rejection/Mistreatment to be for sure.

So I am going to share some more excerpts and paraphrasing from Andrew Comiskey's book called Strength in Weakness. His ministry's website is http://www.desertstream.org/. This blog will be from chapter 5.

I have been profoundly blessed and set free from the continued revelation and reminder of confession and forgiveness.

-----------------------------------------------
Confession is the final shaming through the cross as it was for Christ. Because of Christ on the cross, we can say "God freed me to acknowledge my sin. Before Him, I am free to be a sinner."

Sing can be erased only through its exposure, by confession before God and other human beings. This for sure is painful!

1st John 1:9 If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
James 5:16 Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed.

The cross of Christ is to be found in community, and it destroys our pride through public confession.

2 deaths are required for Confession to have its power:

Death to the False-self - to put away the false image of perfection. The false self loves to scheme and evade confessing to a brother/sister. In confession of concrete sins the old man dies a painful, shameful death before the eyes of a brother. Its humbling and humilating.
Death to Sin - confession is the deeper work of repentance. Its the call to lose one's life in order to find it in Christ (Matt 10:39) This involves a holy hunger, one made possible by refusing the false "food" we have depended upon.

Forgiveness is the first expression of Jesus' resurrection power. When Jesus resurrected, one of the first things he did with his disciples was breath on them the Holy Spirit and give them power to forgive the sins of others.

John 20:21-23 So Jesus said to them again, “Peace to you! As the Father has sent Me, I also send you.” And when He had said this, He breathed on them, and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”

Isn't this unbelieavably awesome!

Brotherly confession is given to us by God in order that we may be sure of divine forgiveness.

Through confession we become known: Church covering is the ongoing relationships with people in our worshipping community to whom we confess sin and whom we enlist in the struggle against sin...Rather than being alone.

The power and authority of the Church (Matt 16:18) - hell cannot prevail against it.

Yet much of the Church does not operate in advocating confession and indentification as a Chruch of sinners. Comiskey quotes Bonhoeffer wrote:
"This final break-through to fellowship does not occur, because, though they have fellowship with one another as believers and as devout people, they do not have fellowship as the undevout, as sinners. The pious fellowship permits no one to be a sinner. So everybody must conceal his sin from himself and from the fellowship. We dare not be on sinners. Many Christians are unthinkably horrified when a real sinner is suddenly dsicovered among the righteous. So we remain alone with our sin, living in lies and hypocrisy. The fast is that we are sinners."

The Steps of Confession:

Find a trustworthy priest(brother/sister)
Confess in plain terms what we have done wrong
The priest binds away from us the sin and puts it on the cross (Matt 16:18-19)
Loose forgiveness
Renounce the power of the confessed sin (2 Cor 4:2)

2nd Corinthians 4:2 But we have renounced the hidden things of shame, not walking in craftiness nor handling the word of God deceitfully, but by manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God.

And it is when "we have renounced the hidden things of shame" we can walk in God's mercy and not lose heart. (Losing heart and hope is a product of shame and unconfessed sin)

2nd Corinthians 4:1 Therefore, since we have this ministry, as we have received mercy, we do not lose heart.

Shame

2007-11-03T12:59:00.000-07:00

I have shame.

This has radically been revealed to me in freeing way recently.

Psalm 34:5
They looked to Him and were radiant, and their faces were not ashamed.
Isaiah 28:16
And whoever believes on Him will not be put to shame.

I am going to share excerpts from Andrew Comiskey's book called Strength in Weakness.
-------------------------------------------------
(Chapter 4)
Many factors contribute to shame, but ultimately the problem is that we resist the reality of the Father's love. We think we are disqualified from receiving His love.

Good shame leads us ot the mercy of God because of our separation from God and others.
Bad shame turns us away from God, mercy, others... LIFE.

It is an inner torment, a sickness of the soul.

Intimacy without shame... Before God it could mean full disclosure of oneself, unfettered love.
See Gensis 2:25
Shame causes a mask of separation corresponding with fear and flight.
See Gensis 3:10 (Concealment or covering)

Shame is an appropriate response to the exposure of separation from the Father and his intentions for us. It is "dishonor, fallen pride". First we become blushed, a down cast face, and then it infects the whole being, struggle to sustain eye contact, and clear communication.

The shamed does NOT want the world to see them. To see them exposed. The pain of exposure distances us from help or the cure. It floods the whole body with acute feelings of dread.

Exposure means more pain, a descent into self-hatred or rejection, not ascent into honor and empowerment. Shame deadens the soul.

We and others impose shame on others; shame subjects us to worldly attittudes to further alienate us from God and from each other.

Chronic shame is synonymous with not being wanted. It is a profound sense of ineligiblity for love. These are the seeds of powerlessness, inferiority, weakness, defilement, and lovability. They cloth themselves with self-hatred, blaming themselves/ others, and deserving of rejection.
The exposing of struggles and failures seem unsafe; cowering under the threat of exposure.

Shame has disabled one from receiving the LOVE necessary to truly accept him or herself.

Sin creates a huge gap between God's highest for us. Sin gives rise to appropriate shame (the realization of sin) and bad shame (sinful attitudes that we impose on others).

JESUS Christ's final act of being shamed was His humilation on the Cross.

It is the witness of His nonshaming people that frees us to actually grasp at the human level that is safe to be human - a child of God and an imperfect being who dares to reveal his fears and flaws to others.

The realization of LOVE will inevitably involve caring individuals who mediate the Father's tenderness to us.

Psalm 34:5 (New Living Translation)
Those who look to him for help will be radiant with joy; no shadow of shame will darken their faces.

Psalm 34:5 (Amplified Bible)
They looked to Him and were radiant; their faces shall never blush for shame or be confused.

Psalm 34:5 (The Message)
Look at him; give him your warmest smile. Never hide your feelings from him.

What are the Signs before Jesus returns? (an overview)

2007-10-20T14:37:00.000-07:00

The Bible (NT&OT) has over a 150 chapters mentioning the End Times. The importance of this subject is without argument on the heart of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

I want to start by sharing the events spoken by Jesus in the book of Matthew chapter 24 pertaining to what would happen before He returns to earth.

v3. Now as He sat on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to Him privately, saying, “Tell us, when will these things be? And what will be the sign of Your coming, and of the end of the age?”

Jesus separates 4 periods of events as Signs or Signposts for believers to "Take heed, watch and pray; for you do not know when the time is." (Mark 13:33)

1st Sign: Disasters.... (v4-8) ....verse 7 For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. And there will be famines, pestilences, and earthquakes in various places.

This will be a time of panic as wars and natural disasters will come in unprecented amounts. People will become weak in spirit and flesh needing answers and a savior. In verses 4-5, Jesus warns us not to be deceived by anyone. "For many will come in My name, saying 'I am the Christ,' and will deceive many."

2nd Sign: Apostasy...(v9-14) ...verses 9&10 Then they will hand you over to suffer affliction and tribulation and put you to death, and you will be hated by all nations for My name's sake. And then many will be offended and repelled and will begin to distrust and desert [Him Whom they ought to trust and obey] and will stumble and fall away and betray one another and pursue one another with hatred.

According to Merriam-Webster dictionary: Apostasy means renunciation of a religious faith. Others call it "the Great Falling Away" also mentioned in 2nd Thess 2:1-4. Jesus' only audience is His disciples and believers... It is believers that He speaks of who will fall away because of the persecution, the offense in their hearts towards Jesus, and because their "love will grow cold" (v12). BUT Jesus promises eternal life, everlasting salvation to those "who endure to the end" (v13.). I want to write another time regarding this... but after a little studying of the End Times I am seeing that salvation is NOT guaranteed.

3rd Sign: Antichrist...(v15-22) ...verse 15 "Therefore when you see the ‘abomination of desolation,’spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place” (whoever reads, let him understand),

The abomination of desolation is a quoted description from Daniel (9:27,11:31,12:11) referring to a Middle East dictator (son of perdition, the man of sin) who declares himself as god and performs a blasphemous sacrifice in the temple of God in Jerusalem (2nd Thess 2:1-4). In 1st John 2:1, he is called the "antichrist". Chapter 13 of Revelations also speaks of him. When he is revealed, Christians will experience the greatest tribulation or persecution the world has ever seen (v.21). And verse 22 states the kindness of the Lord "And unless those days were shortened, no flesh would be saved; but for the elect’s sake those days will be shortened."

4th Sign: Darkness...(v29-31)...verse 29 “Immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken."

Darkness will come...literally there will be no moon, no stars, no natural night lite, and I also imagine very little electrical light from all the devastation.... So imagine with me this...Complete utter darkness and then read verse 30 "Then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in heaven, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory." Jesus will appear in all His glory, fire, and bright shinning LIGHT. He will appear and....well, you will have to read the rest of the chapter, I guess.

Now there's much more in Scriptures describing these events and I included the general outline of Matthew 24 where Jesus Himself narrates. But you should read it for yourself also but there's much to consider.

Will Christians have to endure all these things? If you will re-read Matthew 24 you will notice how many times Jesus was not speaking of some other group of people but He kept mentioning "you". Christians are not exempt from what is coming...He simply states in v13 "whoever endures to the end will be saved" and v25. "See I have told you before hand". Also stated in 1st Thess 5:1-4 explaining the day of the Lord (His return) we shall NOT be caught off guard but others will think "it will come like a thief in the night". We need to decide for ourselves what we believe....
Are we ready for these events to come? Therefore you also be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect. (Matt24:44/Luke 12:40) So much of the scriptures pertaining to End Times refer to being ready. The great falling away was a result of Christians not receiving the love of the truth, which resulted in losing their salvation (2nd Thess 1:10). The truth is Jesus and loving Him with such an abondonment and voluntary love to the death... The two things needed to endure to the are: Holiness (2nd Peter 3) and Faithfulness (Matt 25). Are we taking steps to becoming extravagant lovers of Jesus? Steps towards intimacy with Him, knowing His heart, and love for us?

I hope this was helpful... I will be writing more on the End Times for sure.

To the glory, honor, and praise of the King Jesus, the One who Reigns forever and ever!

The cry of my heart...

2007-10-15T19:08:00.000-07:00

The more and more I am here in Kansas City, the deeper the void gets I have for and possess the knowledge of Jesus... to know His love, to have the fruit of Him dwelling in my heart, the experiencing fullness of the Father, and to truly know what's on His mind (aka...the knowledge of His will)... This is the pennacle of the Christian faith! To know God, which is eternal life (John 17:3) ....it is this intimacy, this intimate relationship with the King and man God Jesus that will enable us to to walk in joy this presentage and overcome in the End Times. May we all come to an intimate revelation and experience of Jesus...

Ephesians 3:16-19 (NKJV)
16 that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man, 17 that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, 18 may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height— 19 to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

Colossians 1:9-10 (NKJV)
9 For this reason we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you, and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding; 10 that you may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing Him, being fruitful in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God;

The 5 values of the crucified life?

2007-10-12T18:30:00.000-07:00

Upon encountering the Lord here in Kansas City for a National Transformation Summit with Fusion Ministries back in November 2006, I started on a journey of learning the jealous love of Jesus and His command to lay all down. I asked the Lord to know Him as a lover and I asked Him to learn what it was to lay it all down.... In that I knew I had to count the cost because it was great to me at the time...

Deuteronomy 4:24 For the Lord your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God.
Isaiah 62:5 My (Jesus) delight over you is like a Bridegroom rejoicing over his bride.

Luke 14:26-33 “If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple. And whoever does not bear his cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple. For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not sit down first and count the cost, whether he has enough to finish it— lest, after he has laid the foundation, and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish’? Or what king, going to make war against another king, does not sit down first and consider whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand? Or else, while the other is still a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks conditions of peace. So likewise, whoever of you does not forsake all that he has cannot be My disciple.

So since Nov. 06, my life has been riddled with continued revelation of the obstacles between me and my lover, my bridegroom. And I am also seeing more and more the true life Jesus lived which was one that was lay down... There's a reason He is called the "lay down lover. " He chose the way of humility and the cross so that we could love Him wholeheartedly free from the judgment of sin and so that we can rule and reign with Him as a beautiful bride...

So I have noticed 5 distinct values for "the crucified life":

The testimonies of the atoning work of the Cross: This is the daily communicationg and heart posture of gratitude for the power of the cross in a person individual life. It is also the praise of the power of the cross as people are healed, prophesied over, set free from darkness, and are given a greater revelation of Jesus through the atonement of the cross of Christ.
Humility and meekness: This is to live a life understanding one's position before God surrendured, self-emptied, and never stealing glory due the name of Lord. It a life of controlled power and fully knowing their own depraved state but standing valiantly bold before the throne of God.
Surrendured, self-less generosity and compassion: When one's life is emptied of self, they can give abundantly from the power of the Holy Spirit and the love of Jesus. It is living from a place of surrendured possessions and position to bless all those around you. It is a invitation in the heart to Jesus to experience all that God's emotions (What burns in His heart) and to do what the Father is doing because of His heart.
Bold love, courage, obedient faith, "nothing to lose": A crucified life has already expereinced death. It is a death of self, which says "Do or say what you want but I live abondoned for the One I love." They know obedience is the love language of the Father.
Persecution, fellowship with Jesus in His sufferings: It is inherit to those who live in reckless love for Jesus that suffering will come. It is a great reward to share with Jesus a small portion of the cross He carried.

May the coming Lord Jesus find a bride ready, watching, and lived a life of love...

The End of the Age

2007-10-06T20:46:00.000-07:00

A large part of why I moved to IHOP in Kansas City is to study the end times or escatology. I have started reading a book called When Jesus Returns by Pawson. Only being 35 pages into it, I am gripped by the intense and scarry reality of how little the Church teaches, knows, or lives by in regards to all the events leading up to Christ's return not including all that is mentioned in the Bible about what happens post His arrival.

As Jesus states in Matt 24:37-39 "As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man (Jesus). For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man."

Even though a great many will turn away from the faith or have their love grow cold (Matt 24:10,12), many could be spared through what Jesus says in just Matt 24 alone not including all the other scriptures pointing to what is in store for Christians before His return ..... rather than the inaccurate portayal of scriptures saying "everything will be okay, we've got a free ticket to heaven before all the bad stuff happens". The Old Testament prophets who were stoned to death for being false had usually one message to their listeners "Don't worry everything is going to be fine"...

Do we really know how the end of the Age is to come and are we really ready?

Pride and Humility

2007-09-30T14:39:00.000-07:00

I have pride. Lots and lots of it.

Upon revisiting Andrew Murrary's book called humility, I am layed open to the naked truth of pride and my/our desperate need for humility as humans and followers of Jesus.

"It is pride that made redemption necessary; it is from our pride that we need, above everything else, to be redeemed. And our insight into the need of redemption will largely depend upon our knowledge of the terrible nature of the power of pride that has entered our being." (pg24)

In Alan Hood's class on the Excellencies of Christ, looking and study the event of the cross I am reminded of the terrible wrath and justice of God. Sin demands atonement, and God is just to follow through with His Judgments. BUT swallowing this truth only leads me to realize all that the human heart is capable of... As Alan puts it, with the right set of circumstances we as humans are able to commite the most atrocious acts of evil. What is the root of all these potentially harmful choices called sin?

PRIDE...

As Murrary puts it since the beginning of Eve's deception "Satan's pride" has entered our race.
"All the wretchedness of which this world has been the scene, all its wars and bloodshed among the nations, all its selfishness and suffering, all its vain ambitions and jealousies, all its broken hearts and embittereed lives, with all its daily unhappiness, have their origin in what this cursed pride - our own or that of others - has brought upon us. "(pg23)

Pride is satanic in origin.

Pride is lack of love, indifference to the needs and feelings of others, sharp comments, and hasty judgements.... arising in tempers, touchiness, irritation, bitterness, and estrangement...

Pride is an inflated perspective of self and a deflated perspective of God. Pride is an exalted self, indepedent spirit, rebellion, self serving and one who tries to survive. Pride is one who denies their sinful nature and lives as if perfect, a class act.

Adam, through his failure, has given us the opportunity to know the power of sin within us.
BUT through the 2nd Adam and Jesus' power, we can know that we can receive and live a life of humility. If Jesus had a banner of Him declaring His message it would say, of course, "Love My Father and one another" but it would equally say "Humble yourself".

Jesus' entire life was breathing the heart beat of God in humility. His entire life was oozing humility: His birth, life, death, and resurrection. Jesus was completely resigned to the will of God, refusing glory, credit, and earthly kingship. "For I have come down from heaven not to do my will" (John 6:38) "I am not seeking glory for myself" (John 8:50)

In laying himself all the way to the cross, Christ's humility, I find to be one of the most important attributes to be sought after...second to love. So much hinges on humility...especially it being the biggest cup of cold water on ones pride, the counter attribute of pride.

Andrew Murry states it well... "Until humility that rests in nothing less than the end and death of self, and which gives up all honor of men as Jesus did to seek the honor that comes from God alone that God may be all, that the Lord alone may be exalted - until such a humility is what we seek in Christ above our chief joy and welcome at any price, there is very little hope of a faith that will conquer the world." (26)

I have personally made it a priority in my prayer life to ask for humility.... having done so I am being confronted with some of the most painful conflicts I have ever encountered. Yah, its a dangerous prayer to pray... be fore warned but I strongly encourage you to! The conflicts are revealing all my pride arising from anger, bitterness, the such... Arent's emotions so good! Painful, of course, in the momment but reaping a reward of revelation if one is self-aware to how God answers certain prayers... I am finding that:

Getting the gold of life requires the pain, sweat, and tears of ripping into the hard rock of life.

More to come on Humility...

The pre-existence of Christ

2007-09-17T19:36:00.000-07:00

In my Excellencies of Christ class, I am messed up by the revelation of Jesus who was before time.

Your father Abraham rejoiced to see My day, and he saw it and was glad.” Then the Jews said to Him, “You are not yet fifty years old, and have You seen Abraham?” Jesus said to them, “Most assuredly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I AM.” John 8:56-59

In chapter 8 of the book of John, Jesus encounters the Pharisees in an intense building argument where He eventually drops the ultimate truth. He kept saying you don't know,
you don't want to understand, your father is the devil... and so He finally drops the bomb.
I AM.... and was at the beginning of the foundation of the world with My Father.

I AM.... was mentioned when Moses approach the burning bush.
“And when forty years had passed, an Angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame
of fire in a bush, in the wilderness of Mount Sinai." Acts 7:30 and Genesis 3:14
So the Angel of the Lord is Jesus. Wow! To consider that is intense.

So can you consider with me the magnitude of Jesus' appearances all throughout the Old Testament. Like when Joshua confronted (Jesus) the Commander of the army of the Lord
right before they circled Jericho (Joshua 5:14). Or when Jacob wrestled with Jesus all night
(Gensis 32:24) There's tons more...

All things are summed up in Jesus.... the Father will gather in one all things in Christ,
both which are in heaven and which are on earth (Eph 1:10)

Jesus reigns forever!

Faith and Leadership (Excerpt of letter to a friend)

2007-08-06T08:47:00.000-07:00

Josh, I am learning that stepping out in faith does
not always make sense nor is everyone in agreement
with it. Stepping out is not about having clarity first
or even having the answers for those around you.
I am finding it brings the best and the worst out
in people. It singes your flesh and those around you.
It's a scary wild mysterious thing we call faith... and
I am slowly learning that its a verb, and it can be a
lonely place.

Josh as you step up in leadership, you will be given
the opportunity to multiple yourself in others... Let your
life awake the wildness in others and .....
then you'll be given the opportunity to replace yourself.
We who seek and know our gift in leadership should
always be sensitive to the vaccuum we fill and always
mindful to allow those more hesistant to fill it instead.

Jesus' style of education and discipling

2007-07-24T13:24:00.000-07:00

More and more in my spirit I feel a growing concern of the current method of training in the present church. I feel a dred creeping in my soul realizing the intense situation of the West idolizing education especially the church. This societal sin has crept into the church when they choose not to live.... Matthew 10.

This text describes the way of a lover before God.... a believer cannot live from the "mind" or head ....living outside of the Spirit and in the manner described by Jesus in Matthew 10. He is one who lives from his "heart". He operates in such fluidity and with such passion...

I am convicted how the Gospel is so simple yet the West has complicated our religious life so much that simplicity is no more common than unpastuerized milk. It's actually illegal. Would the truest expression of Matthew 10 become illegal among the Church?

My stomach is soured and my spirit perplexed by the need to address the true representation of Jesus' words....

We must come back!