Rapture and End Times

The Watchman

Jerusalem,
I have appointed watchmen on your walls;
they will never be silent, day or night. (Isaiah 62:6)

The word of the Lord came to me: “Son of man, speak to your people and tell them: Suppose I bring the sword against a land, and the people of that land select a man from among them, appointing him as their watchman, and he sees the sword coming against the land and blows his trumpet to warn the people. Then, if anyone hears the sound of the trumpet but ignores the warning, and the sword comes and takes him away, his blood will be on his own head. (Ezekiel 33:1-4)

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Denver becoming overwhelmed after 40,000 spike in migrant population Fox News, January 30, 2024

Denver, Colorado’s capital with over 700,000 residents, has become the latest city inundated with over 40,000 migrants as a result of the ongoing border crisis.

The sanctuary city has been struggling to stretch its limited resources to support the growing number of migrants in the city. Texas has transported thousands of migrants to sanctuary cities like Denver, to showcase the problems border states face when migrants flood their cities.

With overcrowded shelters and overrun hospitals, Denver state officials have begun enforcing a limit on the amount of time that migrants can stay in state-provided rooms to accommodate the daily influx of individuals, according to a report from NBC News.

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Chilling Letter Warns of 10/7-Style Attack by Illegal Immigrants Inside the United States Townhall, January 25, 2024

There’s nothing surprising about the all-out invasion taking place at the U.S.-Mexico border — Biden’s policies since day one in office guaranteed this result. But, in addition to the record-setting number of illegal immigrants turning themselves over to border agents after unlawfully entering the U.S., there has also been a similar and potentially more alarming surge in both the number of apprehended illegal immigrants on American terror watchlists and the number of known “got-aways” slipping into the U.S.

In a chilling letter to congressional leaders dated January 17, former federal law enforcement and national security officials spell out the danger of Biden’s open border that “arises from the nature of the threat itself.”

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BORDER SHOWDOWN: Republican Governors Across U.S. Stand with Texas Against Feds Breitbart, January 25, 2024

A growing list of Republican governors announced they stand with Texas Governor Greg Abbott in the State’s showdown against the Biden administration over the seized border park in Eagle Pass, Texas. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson also stated his support.

A who’s who of Republican governors announced their support for the State of Texas and Governor Abbott’s fight against the Biden administration’s open border policies. The list includes Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, Montana Governor Greg Gianforte, Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt, South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, Virginia Governor Glen Youngkin, and West Virginia Governor Jim Justice.

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So he said to the people of Judah, “Let’s build these cities and surround them with walls and towers, with doors and bars. The land is still ours because we sought the Lord our God. We sought Him and He gave us rest on every side.” So they built and succeeded. (2 Chronicles 14:7)

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The Wall

The Mexico–United States barrier, also known as the border wall, is a series of vertical barriers along the Mexico–United States border intended to reduce illegal immigration to the United States from Mexico. The barrier is not a continuous structure, but a series of obstructions variously classified as “fences” or “walls”.

Between the physical barriers, security is provided by a “virtual fence” of sensors, cameras, and other surveillance equipment used to dispatch United States Border Patrol agents to suspected migrant crossings. In May 2011, the Department of Homeland Security stated that it had 649 miles (1,044 km) of barriers in place. The total length of the continental border is 1,954 miles (3,145 km).

Nations have built walls to keep others out for thousands of years

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Building walls may have allowed civilization to flourish / National Geographic, October 5, 2018

The ancient human need for security is one of the fundamentals of life and has to be achieved before we can achieve other things. It was walls that gave people the security to sit and think. It’s hard to imagine a novel being written in a world in which every man is a warrior. Until a society achieves security, it can’t think about anything except the dangers all around it. As a consequence its culture will be limited.

The ancient walls were built primarily for defensive purposes. Nowadays, they are built more to prevent immigration, terrorism, or the flow of illegal drugs.

The first walls were city walls and they originated with the very first cities, like Jericho, the city of the Bible, which was first constructed sometime in the tenth millennium B.C., as many as 12,000 years ago. It was a walled city and, subsequently, nearly all cities in the ancient world were walled.

The first border walls aren’t found until the late 2000s B.C., in Mesopotamia. Security is why they were built. There were two different lifestyles developing: a lifestyle of the people I call wallers, who are workers who build things and identify themselves by their civilian occupations. They sought to secure themselves by building structures that would protect them even when they were sleeping at night. Outside the walls, you have a very different sort of society, people inured to the dangers of living in an un-walled world. Non-wallers were peoples we generally refer to historically as barbarians, like the Huns, the Goths, or the Mongols. They were viewed with fear by the wall-builders. And that’s what inspired the construction of the early walls.

The first border walls ever constructed were fortifications against invading Syrians. Today, we’re seeing the same thing in Turkey, Hungary, Bulgaria, and across southern Europe, because of mass emigration and fear of terrorism. We’re even seeing walls in Saudi Arabia, India, Tunisia, Libya, Jordan, and Ecuador. All around the world countries are building walls. In all, over 70 different countries have fortified their borders.

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Among a few truths in international relations is that you cannot expect sustainable economic development and reconstruction in an unstable or conflictual environment. The first order of business is always security. Building border walls represent a minimum—the simplest, lowest-cost solution to a problem people want solved.

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Who could be against such a simple solution?

What is wrong with open borders?

Open borders create a ‘race to the bottom’ in terms of social benefits and a social safety net. Imagine that borders are completely open and it’s near costless to immigrate from one country to the other. Then the country with the best social services and benefits, (especially health benefits and unemployment benefits) will draw the World’s poorest people, creating a strong Adverse Selection effect. That country will quickly lose its ability to fund those services and they will be significantly downscaled. This will continue until all developed countries will offer relatively low levels (compared to today) of benefits. Obviously in reality there is friction on immigration so this process wouldn’t be immediate, but the dynamics described will still be a powerful force acting against meaningful social benefits.

Open borders severely limits the ability of a country to chose its cultural identity. If you’re strong believer in multiculturalism this may not seem like a drawback, but if you do believe some cultures are better than others, then this is a huge minus for open borders.

Open borders cause wars and catastrophes that create global ripple effects that are hard to control. You can already see some of this with the current refugee crisis in Syria. While in the past if a refugee crisis wasn’t at a World War scale it would typically mostly affect the countries directly involved in conflict and their neighbors. Open borders will cause a population affected by war or catastrophe to be willing to immigrate earlier and further, since the cost of migrating is lower and the benefits are higher. This makes prospering countries more vulnerable (in terms of the strength of the population they need to support).

Why do left and right signal different ends of the political spectrum on something as basic as border security?

The fundamental differences between left-wing socialism and right-wing conservatism ideologies center around their beliefs. The political right generally believe that Christian doctrine, such as the 10 Commandments, should play a role in government. According to them, the government should abide by the Bible when it comes to social issues like abortion and gay marriage.

A significant portion on the left identify themselves as atheist or agnostic. People on the left strongly believe in a secular government and the separation of church and state.

This core difference between Christian and atheist directly effects what they are for and against:

Because socialism is a fight against basic human nature, it requires brute force in the attempt to reach its goals

People on the right believe that the best outcome for society is achieved when individual rights and civil liberties are paramount and the role — and especially the power — of the government is minimized.

The best warning about socialism comes from Aesop, who said, “Those who voluntarily put power into the hands of a tyrant … must not wonder if it be at last turned against themselves.”

Stalin’s campaign didn’t mention that he would enact policies that would lead to the slaughter of 62 million people in the Soviet Union between 1917 to 1987.

Mao Zedong didn’t mention that his People’s Republic of China would engage in brutal acts that would lead to the loss of 76 million lives at the hands of the government from 1949 to 1987.

When a society turns against the Lord and toward Utopian socialist fantasies, that nation is doomed. Their destruction is only a matter of time. Like Sodom and Gomorrah, the United States is reaching that critical point now.

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The Warning

I searched for a man among them who would repair the wall and stand in the gap before Me on behalf of the land so that I might not destroy it, but I found no one. (Ezekiel 22:30)