My religious faith summarized

• Christian beliefs
• Christian objectives
• The end is near
• Rapture?
• Conclusion
• Suggested media list
  • Books, non-fiction
  • Books, fiction
  • Other print media
  • TV specials
  • TV movies
  • Other movies
• Return to main page

I believe every human being has sin, the inherent and practically unavoidable inability to please and obey God 100%

I believe every human being has sinned at least once

I believe, without the salvation of Jesus Christ that sin must be paid for, by death

• Sin has to be paid for.
• God cannot tolerate sin.
• He has to put sin away from Himself forever.
• That place just happens to be very hot, for some reason, I don't know.

This is a terrible thing to say, but I believe it. It means that relatively good but non-Christian human beings like my liberal non-Christian friends, my mother, and my brother are sentenced to spiritual death in Hell... unless they accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour at some point in their lives.

I believe that faith in Jesus Christ, who had no sin but paid for our sin, is sufficient to save one from the penalty of sin

• Jesus never had any sin.
• He did not have to be crucified for sins He never had.
• But He realized his mission was to pay for the sins of people so they would not pay for sin with their souls
• If Jesus "did not do crosses", every human being, or at least every human being after 33 AD, would have no rescue from sin or the penalty for sin: eternity in Hell.
• When God looks at an unsaved person, He is sad, because without salvation, that person must be put away from God because s/he has sin.
• When God looks at a Christian, He sees no sin, because Jesus paid for it already.
• God can have Christians, but not non-Christians, around quite close to Him.
• Salvation is not an excuse to knowingly sin.
• Faith will create not only salvation, but visible changes in a Christian's behavior over time, which will be evident to those who have known a Christian before and after. The behavior changes will be motivated by a change of heart that the Holy Spirit causes.

• First and foremost, speak out about Heaven, Hell, sin, Jesus, and salvation by faith, and encourage non-Christians to join God's plan to commute death sentences for sin to joyful life sentences in Jesus, knowing what is coming.
• Alleviate, and try to prevent, human pain, illness, injustice, and poverty.
• I am personally not comfortable with combining church and state, but in any case, with or without politics, to provide an example for non-Christians to follow, but always reminding them, and ourselves, that we are not perfect.
• To comfort and strengthen other Christians who are getting beaten, often on a daily basis, because we live in an unjust and often hurtful world. (I have sometimes grumbled that I am serving a life sentence, as my death sentence has been commuted.) We can find happiness, even some joy, even in this world.
• Never to hate any person for any reason, and trying very hard to stress that we hate actions, never actors, even if it means we must condemn hateful speech or actions by other Christians.

Why do I feel the Holy Spirit is urging me, when I watch some programs or read some books, to struggle to help unsaved people find Jesus now? Because I can sense that time is running out for an imperfect world!

• An asteroid or comet impact has sufficient heat and blast force to level mountains and seas as described by apostle John in Revelations. Incidentally, what is the fiery king of the sky Nostradamus predicted for July 1999?
• Diseases, both natural (Ebola, haunta, Lassa) and artifical (hybrids of smallpox and other viruses, smallpox virus or plague bacteria used as a military or terrorist weapon, ABC News) can strike large crowded countries without warning, especially with worldwide air travel. Even diseases we thought we had controlled (tuberculosis, malaria) are now evading our medical defenses. In the former Soviet Union, influenza, tuberculosis, and diphtheria are major public health problems (CNN Perspectives). Disease was also predicted by apostle John. (I believe the best response to terrorism is to live my life as normal, die if I must, but if I live, never surrender the values of America to any foreign or domestic blackmail. Hitler tried to frighten London into surrender. Churchill did not surrender. Many died, but the survivors did not surrender.)
• The computer and electronic technology already exists to identify each human being by a computer chip implant, and aside from storing employment, educational, and criminal records, could also be used as a bank account ID in much the same way I use Direct Deposit and my ATM card for point-of-sale purchases. If you do not believe that the technology could work in humans, note that some domestic pets have implanted chips for identification purposes.
• Sometimes I wonder if topsoil erosion or drought caused by La Nina/El Nino could cause the famines John predicted.
• Note: Recently, since September 11, 2001, terrorism has attacked my country. I do not want to even give the appearance of being on the enemy side. I am afraid, however, what if this is a sign that Jesus is coming soon?

I have been reading Joe Crews' The Secret Rapture?. The only questions I can think of is Revelations 2 "all the nations of the earth will mourn". Will those include Christians too?

I can't reconcile the theories of Tim LaHaye or Hal Lindsey. One should read The Secret Rapture? with the Bible present. I think we could learn something.

On the other hand, I believe that a dependence on Saturday worship as a requisite for salvation is dangerous. Galations 3:10, dependence on the Law means one must not fail even once. It is better to trust in Jesus and not on the Sabbath: indeed, even Jesus worked on the Saturday Sabbath.

I also think the mark of the beast will probably be a literal bar code. That is, if the Apostle John actually saw things he had no words for, such as possibly describing an Apache helicopter gunship as a ferocious insect.

But if the Soviet Union had invaded Israel during or shortly after the 1973 Yom Kippur War, when President Nixon ordered the worldwide U.S. military alert, would it describe Ezekiel's writings (chapter 38)? Read Ezekiel in the Old Testament (also refer to Doomsday On The Brink part 2 (see reference list if you can)). TOC

Conclusion

This is a crazy mixed-up world, and I believe God is going to destroy it and the countries we have built, without God, on this world. I believe there is no Christian country, other than the Vatican, on Earth. America is NOT a Christian country if, for example, it is dominated by the love of money (the love of money is not only the root of all kinds of evil, it is also the tree trunk of capitalism, and inevitably, people come second to profits- the recent GM strike in Michigan was motivated by job security issues). There are too few Christians in America, or at least too few Christians talking and walking. In any case, the American culture is not acceptable to God. Our system, although based on justice, law and order, democracy, and constitutionality, is used every day in ways God hates: for example, God calls on people to forgive their debtors, but there seem to be no shortage of people wishing to use the courts to sue their debtors.

God is merciful. He is allowing our system to continue, because maybe you will be saved right now. God didn't start the Rapture in 1992 so I could be saved in 1993. But mercy has limits, and then comes judgment.

Before I was a Christian, I was a liberal humanist, and I believed people could save the world, without God.

Now I am a Christian, and I believe the world, and America, cannot be saved. What is made by human beings is imperfect to God. God will roll up and throw away what humans have made in their arrogance without God. (Humanity is a 6, God is a perfect 7.) Your close friends and family might not even be saved. Mine might not be. You can only save yourself- with Jesus! I have! Do it today if you haven't done it already!

Don't wait until you are dead to save your soul.

And if you are saved, get busy spreading the word to others!

I have read most of these. TOC

Non-fiction books

• The Bible

• Satan Is Alive and Well on Planet Earth, Hal Lindsey, (1972), Zondervan
• There's A New World Coming, Hal Lindsey, (1973-1977), Bantam/Vision House Publishers
• The Late Great Planet Earth, Hal Lindsey with C.C. Carlson, (1970, 1977), Harper
• Planet Earth, 2000 A.D., Hal Lindsey, (1994, 1996), Western Front Publishers
• Doomsday, 2000 AD, Charles Berlitz (1982), Doubleday
• Doomsday: The Science of Catastrophe, Fred Warshofsky, (1977), Reader's Digest Press
• The Specialist and The War Against The Terrorists: How To Win It by Gayle Rivers, a professional counterterrorist from New Zealand. Rivers' solution, in part, is to kill, disrupt, and gather intelligence on terrorists rather than to capture them for trial: he has exercised this methodology in person.

• The Fifth Horseman, Larry Collins and Dominique LaPierre (1980), Simon and Schuster (very well-researched fiction about a Libyan thermonuclear threat against New York City, authors indicate book might even be prophetic one day
• The Orion Conspiracy, Ken Wade, (1994), Pacific Press: An alternative Christian perspective of end times fiction (no secret rapture, no literal mark of the beast, Saturday worship illegal in America)
• Left Behind, Tribulation Force, Nicolae, Soul Harvest, Apollyon, The Assassins, and Indwelling by Jerry B. Jenkins and Tim LaHaye, Tyndale, (1995-1999): conventional Christian end times genre (secret rapture, literal mark of the beast, etc.)
• Apocalypse, Peter and Paul Lalonde, (1998), "This Week In Bible Prophecy" (publisher) (also conventional genre)
• Down To A Sunless Sea, David Graham, (1981), Fawcett Crest: America has nearly exhausted its domestic oil reserves and cannot buy foreign oil with its shattered currency. Electricity is available only some of the time. Worse, transportation difficulties make it difficult for farmers to grow food and difficult for food to reach hungry, even starving Americans. Americans are desperate to flee the country at airports, which are occupied by U.S. military troops who have orders to shoot to kill. The world political and military situation is chaotic without American dominance. Chaotic also is American urban life, as criminals survive by plundering the law-abiding. And that is before the surprise nuclear attack against a vulnerable America! [Two planeloads, one British, one Soviet, of American, British, and Russian survivors fly to an American research station in Antartica to avoid the worldwide radiation.] This book is also well-researched.
• Plague Ship, Frank Slaughter (1976), Doubleday and Company
• Pandora's Clock by John Nance (1997?)- differs markedly from NBC movie or vice-versia
• Op Center by Tom Clancy
• The Hunt For Red October, Tom Clancy
• The Cobra Event, Richard Preston, (1997), Random House. His story utilizes Metro Center Metro station as the site to release a bio-weapon. Also read The Hot Zone by the same author: I would sure like to.

• Parade newspaper insert, February 8, 1998: "The Virus Hunters", Lyric Wallwork Winik, pp. 6-9
• The Washington Post, August 12, 1998, "Comets, Asteroids and Earth: Movie Myths vs. Scientific Reality", Stephen P. Maran, pp. H1, H6
• Parade newspaper insert, August 23, 1998: "When Will We Run Out Of Water?", Paul Simon, pp. 4-6
• The Washington Post Magazine, April 19, 1998, "The Next Big Thing: Incoming", Joel Achenbach, pp 10-15, 23-25

• PBS Nova/Frontline, What's Up With The Weather?
• ABC Earth Day 2000
• ABC Nightline, October 1999, simulated anthrax release in Metrorail system
• CNN Perspectives, The Coming Plague: A World Out Of Balance
• CNN Perspectives, Revenge of the Microbes, August 9, 1998
• CNN Perspectives: AIDS: The Chasm in Treatment Techniques Between the First and Third Worlds, August 23, 1998
• ABC News Primetime, February 25, 1998: "Germ Warfare: Weapons of Terror"
• Fire From The Sky, WTBS- depicts live annihilation of East Coast news crew
• CNN Perspectives: Fire From The Sky, June 28, 1998
• Three Minutes To Impact, Discovery channel
• Solar Empire: Impact, The Learning Channel
• PBS, Secrets of the Dead: Did Krakotoa's eruption about 538 A.D. cause a literal "dark age"? And if so, what does this have to do with the Seventh Day Adventist view that the Roman Catholic Church assumed political power for 1260 years between 538 and 1798 A.D.?
• NOVA (public television): "The Doomsday Asteroid", (click here for transcript of the episode)
• NOVA (WGBH PBS-TV Boston): "Chasing El Nino" raises question of are we causing more El Ninos to happen with global warming?
• NOVA (WGBH Boston): "The Day The Earth Shook"
• Frontline (WGBH PBS-TV Boston): "Plague War" (10/13/98 broadcast)
• Ancient Prophecies series 1-4, Greystone, on NBC and The Learning Channel, and related specials on FOX (Prophecies of the Millenium)
• Doomsday: On The Brink, The Learning Channel (two part series of how the United States and the Soviet Union, and even the United States and Russia almost came to nuclear war on repeated occasions. It is suggested that countries like India and Pakistan may not avoid accidental uses of nuclear weapons as America and Russia have, because of differences in things like command-and-control and civilian or military control of the armed forces.
• CNN Perspectives: Castro In His Own Words, September 13, 1998
• Futurewar, Discovery channel- depicts not just future warfare dependent on information, but a military or terrorist attack on the Internet computer system, rendering useless traffic controls, air control, rail travel, electricity, communications, and electronic money transfers for commerce.

• The Peacemaker, ABC
• Atomic Train, NBC
• River of Death, UPN Washington DC 20
• Broken Arrow, ABC
• The Fire Next Time, NBC: the dangers of runaway global warming
• Executive Decision, ABC
• Carriers, CBS
• Flood: Who Will Save Our Children? plus movies on Hurricane Andrew and California wildfires on Lifetime
• Hunt For Red October, ABC (could an Iranian Russian-made sub visit our shores too?)
• Op Center, NBC
• Pandora's Clock, NBC
• Asteroid, NBC
• Doomsday Gun, movie of Gerald Bull, late Canadian scientist working for Iraq
• Doomsday Rock, Family channel
• Meteor, ABC, "it's five miles wide and it's going to hit us!", similiar movie as above, but from my childhood
• Plague (1978, set in Canada and London), Sci-Fi channel Midnight Matinee
• Outbreak, NBC
• Fail Safe, early 1960's, A&E Network
• The Heroes of Desert Storm, ABC
• WarGames, WTBS
• Flight of Black Angel, TNT. This is a thrilling movie about a U.S. Air Force top gun pilot, his Mirage jet, his top gun instructor, a hijacked nuclear weapon, a family of three on vacation, and Las Vegas, leading to a thrilling surprise ending over the Nevada test range.

• Apocalypse (Peter and Paul Lalonde)
• Twelve Monkeys
• Armageddon, Touchstone
• Deep Impact, Dreamworks/Paramount/Amblin

Last updated: October 8, 2001 Return to main page