Reaping the Whirlwind: Thanksgetting and Paris Bombings

We are ISIS.

8 Set the trumpet to thy mouth. He shall come as an eagle against the house of the Lord, because they have transgressed my covenant, and trespassed against my law.
…
⁷ For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind: it hath no stalk; the bud shall yield no meal: if so be it yield, the strangers shall swallow it up.
⁸ Israel is swallowed up: now shall they be among the Gentiles as a vessel wherein is no pleasure.
 
~ Hos 8:1,7-8

There is a direct link between the attitude of “Thanksgetting” and Paris bombings, and we must be willing to proclaim it. There is always a tension between the proclamation of the Gospel to the world and yet providing a warning message. Amazingly, many in the Church have neutered themselves so they can do neither! That is because we have infected ourselves with various forms of idolatry and have left love, real love, out of the equation. We must not forget that God even loves those who carried out the terrorist bombings in Paris. We must boldly proclaim that the Paris bombings and other forms of terrorism are the direct result of thanklessness towards God.

Did you know that God loves the world? One of the most quoted Scriptures is, “For God so loved the world…” (Jn 3:16). I think we often forget that God’s love is so unselfish that He loves “the world”, as in the people who populate the planet, so much that He and Jesus Christ sacrificed in order to save it, in spite of God’s hatred for “the world”, the sinful ways and customs of mankind. Even though both are exhibited as “the world”, we cannot and must not get them confused.
And yet, is it wrong to be angered by actions such as 9/11, the Paris bombings and the following actions by terrorists in Mali? No, of course not! However, if we are truly honest, we must examine the entire situation and look in the mirror and admit our national and global sins that led to this!

No More Thanks to God

The more I learn about WWI, the more I understand that the entire world can truly deceive itself and blunder into a world war without even trying. The multiple missteps of WWI and resulting carnage of a horrific war were tragic and yet unavoidable. Still, everyone was swept headlong into the “meat grinder” that the war became in spite of the warnings of a few that could see it come but were dismissed as crackpots. So, now, it will be in the end time as the world plunges again into WWIII.
Some believe we are already there. Glenn Beck believes WWIII began with the person who set himself on fire in the Middle East and prompted the so-called “Arab Spring”, which quickly descended into a winter of war and zealotry. Perhaps he is correct, even if he is mistake about who will actually make up the sides in the war. Islam, or at least the countries that now fall under the umbrella of the religion, and the west will eventually go to war (with some notable exceptions, according to Bible prophecy), but the real battle will first be over who will dominate the west.
And, it won’t be the United States.
That is because the United States has engaged in a prolonged campaign to stamp out any mention of God in public. Biblical values not only can no longer guide our laws and national conscience, but every effort has been made to eradicate any mention of them. We as a nation want to be as secular as the European nations, and we have forgotten Who has given us such tremendous blessings to begin with. And, it is blatant.
The result is reaping the whirlwind.
One of the most disgusting things I saw was a Verizon commercial that literally said, “Happy Thanksgetting”. This is just how far down the slide into the sewer we have come. Forget God, forget thankfulness altogether, and just think of “Me! Me! Me!” We have become so utterly selfish and self-absorbed that we do not even blush at it any longer (Jer 6:15;8:12).

Reaping the Whirlwind

The result is reaping the whirlwind. However, just what does that mean? After all, both are only air and thus harmless, right?
Actually, no. GotQuestions.org? actually has a pretty decent explanation of “What does it mean to sow the wind and reap the whirlwind (Hosea 8:7)?“, and I’m not going to quote the entire thing. Rather, I will paraphrase it, but I encourage you to read it nevertheless.
The wind cannot be seen, cannot be lifted and cannot be held. It essentially is a metaphor for something that is worthless. Naturally, if a farmer plants something worthless, then all that farmer can expect is something worthless in return.
However, what you plant is not exactly what you reap. Rather, fruit is multiplied from its seed. It is bigger, and that really is the point, isn’t it? You want to plant a seed and get someting bigger, something that can feed the entire family. Likewise, if you plant the seed of weeds, they too become bigger. So, the whirlwind is bigger than the wind.
What the Bible calls a whirlwind we might call a tornado or, if small enough, a dust devil. Tornados are destructive, and they can kill or maim. They are not to be played with.
Sometimes, but not always, a whirlwind is a metaphor for God’s anger. Even Satan can produce whirlwinds in his anger and retribution towards God’s people (Job 1:18-19). We can hide from a whirlwind, but we cannot withstand one face to face.

Mali No Accident

When the news of terrorism in Mali hit shortly after the Paris bombings, many probably woke up and asked, “Why Mali?” To Muslims, Mali is a symbol of a strike against the French. The French still maintain a force there, and they intervened in Mali’s civil war. Striking out against Mali is seen as a symbol of striking out against French imperialism.
See “What Mali means to France” for more info.
This should underscore the point that all terrorism is as much about the symbolism as it is about the terror it strikes. Striking against French citizens in cafes is a strike against the entire French way of life. Blowing up one’s self inside a soccer stadium (which did not succeed) would have been a way of striking out against the French idea of entertainment (and most Muslim terrorists despise all western forms of entertainment). Striking out against an American musical group in France is pretty much a two-for-one event that strikes out at two perceived enemies. The shooting close to an Italian cafe might have been sending the same message.
There is always a message, though. Sometimes it is a message of desperation, disaffection and/or zealotry, but there is always a message.

Why Anonymous?

Anonymous is a global “hacktivist” group. They use hacking and cracking methods to infiltrate networks or take them down according to a moral code that is sometimes ambiguous and not always unanimous. However, the group is apparently large enough to do and have done damage to several of their targets.
What is really interesting is that Anonymous stepped in to do what several national and international law enforcement groups seemingly cannot do: Shut down the very avenues of communications and recruitment that ISIS/ISIL/Daesh tend to use.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VoUnmAiFjvA
And, they seem to be succeeding.

Perhaps that best thing I can say about Anonymous is that they essentially are a loosely organized group of cyber vigilantes. Having said that, when do vigilantes normally arise? They arise when the so-called legitimate law enforcement officials are either unwilling or unable to stem the tide of crime.
That’s because our so-called security officials are all part of the same corrupt governments that created the mess of ISIS/ISIL/Daesh to begin with. They are once again using diversion tactics to try to undermine privacy and security while giving lip service to both. They are targeting even PS2 game machines as a “possible” means of communication, in spite of the fact there is absolutely zero evidence that game machines or encryption was ever used. They are using these as a diversion against their failure to detect what was going on in Paris.
What were the terrorists using? SMS text messages! The very thing that most data plans give out an unlimited amount of, are sent in the plain and are not even all that technologically advanced. This is egg in the face of security officials worldwide. Unfortunately, the only people who will suffer if they get their way are not the terrorists but the poor people who can no longer rely on encryption to do their banking transactions, can no longer peacefully protest in a tyrannical country and/or can no longer keep business or even state secrets restricted to those for whom it is intended.
We already have seen people get hacked because of past law enforcement that restricted the export of certain types of encryption in web browsers. With today’s technology, 30 minutes is a very long time to crack the web traffic between a target and the websites they are visiting and then gain access to their online accounts.
And, if a law is passed restricting encryption, do we really think the criminals and terrorists are going to fall into line?

“We are ISIS”

The worst part is that we, that is the United States of America, created ISIS!
We have a long history of covert, that is unethical, interference with other countries, often too small to retaliate or resist.
Some have forgotten the “other 9/11”, aka the “Chilean 9/11”, that took place years before our own.

It was the same date, September 11, in 1973 that the Chilean president, Salvador Allende, was overthrown by an army general, Augusto Pinochet, with the presidential palace bombarded on Pinochet’s orders. Allende died resisting Pinochet’s men and Chile, along with five other South American states, entered into a phase of tyranny and oppression.
During his rule, Pinochet ordered strict measures against dissidents, especially Marxists. He was responsible for the murder of more than 3,000 Chileans, whereas his alliance with South American dictatorships such as those in Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Paraguay and Uruguay — Operation Condor — resulted in the deaths of more than 60,000 people. The major purpose of this alliance was to root out socialist and communist influence from the region and suppress any potential opposition. The US was again the chief supporter of this alliance, providing the countries with important intelligence and technological support.
 
~ “The Chilean 9/11: a forgotten tale“

Of course, that was not the first or last time we interfered with the affairs of others. Bay of Pigs, anyone? What business did we have in Vietnam? What was the cost of that?
And, we continued on until we invaded Iraq and made a mess of things. Saddam Hussein provided the balancing power to Iran, which was taken over by extremist mullahs because the government we illegally propped up was toppled by a popular uprising. So, we continued the insanity by destabilizing the region even more in a war waged without justification.
We then continued to help destabilizing the region by cheering on rebels to “strong men” who were in power. The real sad truth was that we were cheering on nations descending into anarchy. We forgot about history and artificial borders and ethnic and religious tensions that go back thousands of years.
Oh, and we supplied weapons and Toyota trucks to “moderate” rebels, which basically meant mercenaries that went to whichever side was paying the most rather than driven by ideology. Of course, when faced with opposition, those “moderate” rebels either surrendered and fled, leaving the trucks and guns and ammo behind, or they joined up with those they were fighting! How many Al–Qaeda strongholds were there before Saddam Hussein was overthrown? How many afterwards, and in how many countries? How many ISIS fighters were there (none)? Is there more peace now in the Middle East than before we started intervening in a hornet’s nest?

And, of course, it gets worse. RT posted an article that was about a segment cut out of Putin’s speech at the G20 about “Putin: ISIS financed from 40 countries, including G20 members“, a story that our own news media seemed to gleefully ignore from what I could tell.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1qHORKKLls
So, you see, ISIS was our creation. ISIS was funded by us and our “friends” in Saudi Arabia.
So, in reality, we are ISIS.
You see, once you start forgetting God and then even actively pushing Him out of the public scene, you lose the moral high ground and default to selfish motives rather than righteous ones.
Now, we are reaping the whirlwind.