Greetings from Tyler,
We’ve just returned from a very well-attended and successful Feast of Tabernacles. But one major tragedy occurred in Galveston, TX where Minister and Area Coordinator Frank Scherich was struck and killed by an automobile as he tried to save his beloved dog, Buddy out of traffic. Buddy survived with only a broken leg. Frank was a dear friend, beloved by many, survived by three sons, three daughters, seventeen grandchildren and six great grandchildren. He was one of two professional pilots who flew the Falcon business jet with my Dad, Garner Ted Armstrong. His funeral is scheduled for Sunday, October 11, at 12:30 PM , planned through Eeds Funeral Home (512) 398-2343 to be held at the Angel Springs Event Center, Georgetown, Texas.
Since we left for the Feast, a mere two weeks ago, several noteworthy events have transpired. The pope visited the United States, and was virtually worshiped by several news networks whose anchors and reporters didn’t hesitate to refer to him blasphemously as “holy father” or “his holiness.” The messages contained in his halting speeches never invoked God or His Laws. He warned against the dangers of “polarization,” meaning a discrepancy of opinion or argument.
Isn’t that interesting? We live in an environment where our foundational values are being torn down and trampled, and the pope advises us not to disagree! We’ve been conditioned to be run over by “modern” sentiments, to include the sanctity of homosexuality, “global warming,” socialist seizure and redistribution of things earned, and compassion for supposed “refugees.” Consequently, the United States of America is being OVERRUN by each and every one of these. The pope lectured us to get on board with each of these philosophies, with the possible exception of queer marriage.
The damage done to the United States over just the approximate two week period that we were observing God’s commanded Feast is staggering. Forty years of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East was delivered a fatal blow by standing aside and allowing Russia to establish a military airbase in Syria. Initially, the move was welcomed under the belief that Putin would help stamp out ISIS. Instead, his warplanes were directed at CIA trained and supplied militias fighting the Assad regime. Further, a Russian diplomat appeared at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad to demand that U.S. aircraft steer clear so as to avoid contact with Russian fighter jets. So John Kerry, our Secretary of State pads around mouthing this unknown word, “deconfliction,” hoping there won’t be an incident between U.S. and Russian fighter jets. What an embarrassment!
Russia has achieved something never allowed under any previous U.S. president. A firmly planted military footprint in the Middle East. Putin has allied himself with Assad of Syria, and Assad is allied with Iran. The American president, through the State Department just made every imaginable concession to Iran and its nuclear program, and despite all kinds of criticism and rhetoric about stopping the “deal” from the House of Representatives and Senate, it appears, once again that nobody will have the guts to stand up for the protection of the State of Israel or the United States.
Encouraged by the pope’s insistence that we be compassionate toward third-world refugees, we’ve seen our Department of State say that we’ll be accepting 10,000, then 100,000, now 200,000 Syrian refugees. Except 80% of the refugees flooding Europe are not Syrian. They’re from all over the Muslim Middle East. And most probably are not even refugees. They are opportunists taking advantage of the crisis in Syria and responding to the ill-advised statements of Angela Merkel of Germany that they would be welcomed.
If they’re refugees, where are the old men and women and children? They’ve obviously been left behind to fend for themselves in whatever cursed lands these potential jihadists came from. Oh, but we must take them in, find them a place and support them.
That goes for the drug cartels, the human smugglers, the gang members of El Salvador, Guatemala and Mexico as well.
Since, in all his anti-American wisdom, the president saw fit to make buddies with the Castros of Cuba, we now have a massive influx of Cubans into the United States as well. And we learn that there are some forty or fifty new “sanctuary cities” within our borders over the past three months. The feds refuse to prosecute the crimes of illegal aliens. Cities refuse to incarcerate them at local expense. They’re being let out after they’re caught committing crimes that would send a citizen away for years. But illegals? They’re back on the street to take advantage of American citizens as easy prey.
What we’re seeing at every level is the desecration of all that we hold dear. According to the philosophy that has taken hold at the very top of U.S. government, God’s Laws and His blessings to the descendants of Biblical Israel have been unfair to the heathen nations. And Obama’s on the job to straighten the whole thing out. He’s letting thousands of drug dealers out of prison in the next month or so, and plans to let another fifty thousand out sometime next year! They’re “non-violent” offenders, and their prison sentences were unfair.
So, here they come. The Syrians, the Afghanis, the Iraqis, the Yemenis, the Somalis, the Cubans, the El Salvadorans, the Guatemalans, the Mexicans, the prison gangs, and they can do no wrong. If they commit crimes, they’re back on the street. They are this president’s and his party’s constituents. Upon the pope’s departure from the U.S., the president was speaking before the green marble wall at the United Nations. I heard him say, “I will not hesitate to protect the American people,” just before finding the red button on the remote. Say what? It’s a little late to be making a statement like that. American citizens have been punished severely, and will continue to be punished, regulated, abused and overrun by heathens from all over the world who know nothing of our customs, our values or our laws.
Some say the country had it coming, for having turned its back on God, and that may be right. But it’s not over yet. It’s already ugly, and the next year and a half may well see civility, if not civilization itself break apart. Right now the president is in Oregon to exploit the massacre of helpless students trapped in a gun-free zone by a well-armed madman. He says he can’t wait for duly passed laws to make their way through our Constitutional system. He apparently wants us all defenseless against the crime-wave he’s unleashing upon us.
It is a desecration of our heritage that a heathen of Obama’s extraction should ever have had the chance to demean the Office of the Presidency as he has persistently done. But no one in the House or Senate will do their constitutionally ordained job. Maybe they’re all compromised in some way, it’s sure is starting to seem that way. Divine intervention may be our only hope, but if it comes in the way of the end-time scenario, it’s going to be very painful for all concerned. May God’s will be done.
Mark Armstrong
