(Mat 24:5 NKJV) "For many will come in My name, saying, 'I am the Christ,' and will deceive many.

(Mat 24:6 NKJV) "And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not troubled; for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet.

Pastor Yoong of Cornerstone Community recently posted "the beginning of birth pangs" in an attempt to explain the Japanese Earthquake and Tsunami and the turmoil in the Middle East as evidence of the beginning of birth pangs. Quoting from Mat 24, where Jesus spoke of wars, famines, earth quakes and widespread deception before the coming of the end, the birth pangs is the "last days", the end of the World.

 Pastor Yoong also referred extensively to a Carl Worline, who said in his article "Something big is about to happen", talks about rapture, followed by tribulation, and the coming of Jesus Christ. Worline sees the unrest in the Middle East from the relative peace as signs of war against Israel, the uprisings he said being attributed to the supernatural.

The reasoning by Pastor Yoong and Pastor Worline is a denial of of church history. The birth pangs happened no more than 40 years after Jesus died and rose again (and not 2,000 years later) when Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans to quell an uprising resulting in the diaspora of the Jews. Millions died in this unrest in AD70.

A void was also left in Jerusalem and Judea when the Jews were expelled causing friction in the middle East two thousand years later when the Jews sought to reclaim the land of their inheritance.  It's not a human rights issue as claimed by some Christians, for the ownership of the land by Israel cannot be denied.

The diaspora to Europe also planted the seed of anti-semitism in Europe which raised its head after World War I where Jews were blamed for the suffering of the Germans. In World War II, Adolf Hitler, a good catholic, leveraged on the nation's search for a scapegoat to send six million Jews and thousands of gays to be killed in the concentration camps.

Carl Worline also alleged that "muslims" are determined to kill every Christian in the Middle East. History tells us that the Catholic Churches' attempts to re-take Jerusalem a thousand years earlier in the Crusades ended with millions dying. The recent US invasion of Iraq and Afganistan brought back memories of ancient hostilities. Therefore, Carl Worline's assertions that Christians were the innocent party is highly mis-leading.

Christians are particularly tribulation centric seeing themselves as the innocent being persecuted. However, when Jesus talked about tribulation in Mat 24, He was referring to the tribulation of His beloved people, the Jewish nation who suffered so greatly under the Western/Roman nations, and not any coming tribulation of Christians in the 21st century.  The Jews suffered tribulation because of their faith and insistence to be true to God's laws.

The Christian Faith of the 1st century bears little resemblance to the 21st century Christianity. The largest denomination, the Catholic Faith have long proclaimed and worshipped "other Christ" in Mary, the Pope, and the Saints, and have deceived many as prophesised by Jesus in Mat 24:5. They have joined themselves with the carnal system of the world when they sided with Constantine in the 313AD. It was obviously better to be in power rather than suffer tribulation. The imorality is not homosexuality as alleged but being in bed with the power of this world.

Pastor Yoong also quotes Amos 3:6 which talks of calamity in the city as judgement from God, and Christians should be hopeful of the coming of Jesus Christ instead of being gloomy. Is Pastor Yoong implying indirectly that the calamity in Japan was the judgement from God?

When Amos 3:6 talks about the calamity brought about by our own undoing, it was mis-quoted by Pastor Yoong, for Israel had a covenant of the Law with God that when they chose to worship the demonic deities, the hand of God, the hand of protection will be lifted, and they we subjected to torment from their enemies.

 There is much relevance of Amos 3:6, for often much calamity such as the Financial crisis is due to our faults. We bring it upon ourselves. For example, the rise to power of the Christian Right in America coincided with a plunged into debt, lower taxes, the widening gap between the poor and the rich. With the ascendent of the "Prosperity Gospel", the Financials are deregulated allowing the rich to get richer whilst the poor is denied.

Worline's claim that the Gold prices are rising because people are losing faith in the US dollar is misleading. The US  have been printing money and getting away with it as the US dollar is the reserve currency and is not tied to Gold. They been living a luxurious life whilst in deep debt. Christians are preaching on prosperity theology when their prosperity is based on trillions in debt, with the rich is prospering. The Wall Street who made billions are bailed out, the rich given tax breaks and millions in bonus, whilst the poor are asked to carry the burdens of the budget cuts.

Justice is flowing down like river like never before and the stream is getting larger and the volume of water stronger. There is a Spiritual Tsunami of the waters of deliverance for the oppressed. Pastor Yoong and Worline talks of Gay prides being the ultimate immorality, when the immorality is the church departing from Christ, and succumbing to power, and wealth until the way to Jesus is through the sacraments, the Pope, and Mary rather than by a direct communion.

Something is happening. God is declaring the year of Jubilee for the oppressed. The Pastor Yoong/ Worline denies the sufferings and oppression of the poor and outcasts in the Middle East under cruel dictators for decades because it doesn't fit their theology. The unrests is God's doing, not the sign of Satanic activity as claimed, but God moving to release the people from the harsh oppression. Even China is afraid, as the wrongs of the past in the cultural revolution and the Tianmen Square are not easily forgotten.

Justice against the oppressors are coming. God is using and releasing the gay captives free from the bondage of the Catholic Church and the Christian Right. They are coming out of Egypt and they are moving across the Red Sea. God is exposing and shaking the church of their immorality and unrighteousness against the gay community. The Gay community will shake the church to its very core and roots, for God will use the weak to humble the proud.

Jesus is coming back but not before the Gospel of love and freedom for the poor and the outcasts is preached throughout the world. This is a season of Jubilee, the time of deliverance. God is raising a banner against those who has oppressed the weak and the outcasts. Surely tribulation is coming for those who had it so good for so long at the expense of the weak and the outcasts, but justice cannot be denied.

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1. The Beginning of Birth Pangs PDF

2. Something is about to happen PDF