Yesterday, I was watching lecture 1 of the Teaching Company’s History of Freedom. It was very timely, considering everything that has been going on in the world today.

Obama seems to think of himself almost in god-like terms… or at least he lets others call him the messiah, take photos of him with the appearance of a halo around his head, and sometimes makes speeches surrounded by Greek columns. He doesn’t reprimand the people who treat him with god-like qualities, at least not publicly, so it seems to me like he thinks that it is okay. A Persian King, I think that it was Xerxes, decided that he had some pretty god-like qualities as well. It is said that he whipped the seas of the Hellespont on the way to fight the Greeks because the sea wasn’t obeying him. They have a lot in common, it seems.

It didn’t work out well for the Persians. The Greeks were free people. The Athenians, along with twenty-eight other city-states, fought back with a vengeance. Freedom meant something to them. They won several battles, including the Battles of Marathon, Salamis, Plataea, and Mycale. At one point, the Persians did win for a while, and stationed some troops in Athens, but eventually, they got rid of those too.

The Athenians valued their freedom and were willing to fight for it, but not all of the Greek city-states were. There were hundreds of city-states in Greece, yet only 29 were willing to fight for their freedom. This has happened so many other times throughout history. People are often willing to trade away their freedom for a few goodies. It makes me think of the Middle Ages. Not every common person was a serf. Some were free peasants. When I read that some people actually preferred serfdom to freedom, I was surprised. The serfs did have to provide the ruling classes with food and services, but in return, they were given protection and other goodies. The Persians offered “goodies” to people under its protection, and some of the Greeks were willing to take the bait.

The other thing that struck me was that the people who did value freedom prevailed in this case. Persia was SO much more powerful compared to these Greek city-states, but they didn’t win in the end. Why? Because the Greeks had more to lose, and they knew it. They were able to fight with more heart as a result. The Americans were able to fight against the British in the American Revolution, and prevail, partly for the same reasons. Yes, I know that there were many other factors in the win, like France helping out, but if the Americans didn’t have that heart, they would have given up long before France was able to step in.

A couple of other things stood out to me as well. The Greeks valued morality and history. Even though they didn’t worship the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, they knew that in order to maintain freedom, the people had to be a moral people. They also believed that the gods provided a moral framework. As a side note, I think that I read somewhere that there were Greeks in the “mixed multitude” that went with the Egyptians out of the Exodus. This period of time happened after the Exodus. Is it possible that some of these Greeks could have learned some of their morality from the Judeo-Christian God, and then imbued their gods with some of the knowledge that they learned? Just a theory.

Do we value our freedom like the early Americans, or like the Athenian Greeks? I know that some of us do. If you value your freedom, please try to do your part to preserve freedom. We are under attack from the inside. I’m not sure what your part is, but if you know what your calling is, please do it.

From the video, Farrakhan said “people tomorrow — maybe in a few days — are going to kill their leaders who have been selling them out”. This is not a conditional statement – this is a threat. He says that people ARE going to kill their leaders, maybe in a few days. A few days from the day that he made that statement would be tomorrow…

So why do I say that Obama in particular may be a target? I say that primarily because of these videos right here:

First, Farrakhan was practically worshipping Obama. He called him the Messiah.

Last year, Farrakhan’s love affair with Obama seem to have ended. He called Obama an “assassin” and a “murderer”…

Now, we have Farrakhan threatening to murder black leaders. I noticed that it he said plural leaders, not singular leader. The most obvious target for Farrakhan would be Obama. Obama has disappointed the Nation of Islam leader, no doubt. In the video, he talks about black leaders who want the big house and the big car… he could have also said “takes a million vacations”. Not sure who else the Nation of Islam could be targeting though.

I hope that I’m wrong… but something very strange is going on. If someone wanted to make an assassination attempt on the president’s life, that would be a very difficult thing, wouldn’t you think? Why? Because the Secret Service is always around to protect him. Now normally, they do a great job. Lincoln’s Secret Service agent wasn’t doing such a hot job on April 14, 1865, when he decided to go to the bar next door instead of protect his president while watching a play. What has been happening in the news over the last few days? Members of the Secret Service were being accused of prostitution. Whether they are guilty or not, couldn’t this weaken the Secret Service to some degree? Is Obama’s Secret Service detail as strong today as it was a week ago?

We can only hope that the Secret Service still is strong, that I’m wrong about who the NOI is threatening, and that I’m wrong that they’re making a threat at all. The facts don’t seem very encouraging to me. If you’re going to choose a day to pray for your country, the next couple of days would be a good time.

I spent most of the day away from the news today. I had school to teach, then I made dinner, went to church, and was asked to visit a friend. When I did sit down to catch up on the day’s events, I found out that Barack Obama announced that he believes that Israel should go back to their pre-1967 borders. These borders would exclude places like the Garden of Gethsemene, Jesus’s tomb, and other sites that are important to Christianity – not to mention that it would leave Israel virtually indefensible.

I need to be clear here: I know that some nutjob says that the rapture is going to occur in two days, but he’s wrong: the Bible says that no man will know the day nor the hour of the rapture, and if it was on that day, that would make God a liar (I have a longer article on May 21 at Associated Content); however, the events described in the book of Revelation are near. I have a video that I need to review in the next day or so – it’s amazing, I’ve been a student of the end times for 15 years or so, but I still need to review the specifics every now and then. The events described in the Bible are being set up today.

The other thing that I think that it is important to point out is that God will not abandon Israel. Obama may think that he’s stamping out colonialism, but he’s really spitting in the face of God. God will not let the Jews be wiped out. In the book of Esther, the king signed a decree allowing people to wipe out the Jews on a certain day. Mordecai, Esther’s cousin, asked Esther to speak to the king, her husband, on behalf of her people. Esther was afraid to approach the king, because doing so uninvited could result in her death. Mordecai’s response was that she needed to speak up; if she didn’t tell anybody that she was a Jew, she would not escape unharmed. He added “For if you remain completely silent at this time, relief and deliverance will arise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father’s house will perish.” (Esther 4:14)

Those words ring true today. We cannot remain silent. I’m certainly no Esther. God has not called me to be a princess; I’m not famous or powerful. The only thing that I do have is this small voice. I will what little I can. I will warn the few people that will hear. God will deliver the Jewish people. The Arabs may look like they have the upper hand, but anybody that opposed God is a fool. Just like God delivered the Jews in Esther’s day, he will deliver the Jews in our time. We can either be for them, and God might spare us, or we can be against them — if you are against them, and you do not feel the repercussions in this life, be sure that you will receive them in the eternity to come. Even if you are saved and on your way to Heaven, you are not off the hook. Even Christians will gain or lose rewards based on what they do in this life.

I stand with Israel. I trust that God will protect them, even if he has to rain down a miracle to do so. I expect to have more on this in the future, after I look more into the subject. It may be in the form of an article; but I’ll post a link here.

It seems as if the United States is trying to do the exact opposite. Michelle Obama mentioned it herself as she was on the campaign trail:

History is history. We might see it in a new light as time marches on (as I did by rereading this portion of the book), but it doesn’t change.

There’s a lot of kids, teenagers, and young adults that don’t understand history. For some, it’s a subject that people learn in school for the test and forget about it. I personally think that it’s important though. If we remember history, we can see patterns. We can see how history repeats itself. On a personal level, it can help you make decisions to help your family survive, or at least do a little better. It can also help you decide who to vote for.

I don’t want my history changed. I want to read about both the good and the bad parts.

While I was going through my storage shed the other day, I ran into some old books from 1900, including two of the volumes from America’s Story for America’s Children. They must have been my great-grandmother’s or something. I’m pretty excited to have found those books again. The books are interesting reading, and they haven’t been through any of the revisionism that some historians have participated in in the last few decades.

We can’t let history be taken away from us or from our children. That is one of the steps that the Soviet Union took when they took their citizen’s liberty. That is one of the steps that would be taken as our liberty dies.

This post really disturbed me: disturbing video. This post was awful in so many ways. It is awful what these people did. It is awful that only one old lady tried to help. The comments that people made about this incident are also disturbing.

So many people responded with racist comments. Many people responded with comments saying that all black people are like animals. Their posts really disturbed me. I know a lot of nice black people that don’t act like that. I know tons of Christian, conservative, Tea Party supporting black people who aren’t into the “black” culture. Yet when I responded in defense of my husband, kids, in-laws, Alan West, Herman Cain, and the like, I was called a disgusting individual.

It seems as if people like the Black Panthers and white supremacists want a race war. I’m sorry, but I am not going to go for that. Both the black sides and the white sides would want to kill me.

If black and white people did want to fight, obviously there is nothing I could do about it. I would be the enemy of both sides.

I was right about race relations deteriorating if Obama stunk. I hope I am not also right about my prediction that if I am not raptured, I will be killed, and I won’t die of natural causes. I had thought that I would be murdered for my Christian beliefs, but perhaps racists would want to kill me too.

It almost seems like we just started this nightmare of a presidency, when it’s time to start electing a new one. I suppose Obama won’t be spending as much time playing golf over the next couple of years at least. If you asked me about the candidates a couple of months ago, it would have seemed to me like more of the same (although perhaps not quite as bad), but that was before I first learned of Herman Cain.

Herman Cain knows how to get things done. He’s spent time running companies. He’s turned failing companies around. I doubt that he would be trying to impose requirements on small businesses to send out W-2s when they spent more than $600 at a particular business (fortunately that was struck down… it would have been pretty annoying to have to write W-2s to the grocery store, being a sole proprietor… unless that requirement only was for business-related expenses, of which I have almost none). I heard him speak on a local radio station around here. He has a lot to offer. According to Wikipedia, he helped bring down the Clinton Health Care Plan in the 1990s. The more I learn about him, the more I like him.

I know that people are talking about Donald Trump running, but the idea isn’t really all that exciting to me. I suppose I’d probably vote for him if he was running against Obama, but I’m not jumping for joy. Cain seems more likeable to me.

There has been a lot of talk lately about the Mahdi returning. He is also known as the 12th Imam. The Mahdi was an Imam that hid in a well around 874 AD. The hadith says that he will return at some point in the future, in a time where chaos reigned on the earth. The leader of Iran says that he has communicated with him, and evidently, Farrakhan thinks that his return is soon too.

In 2008 (also at the Savior’s day conference, I notice), Farrakhan proclaimed Obama to be the Messiah, or so it seemed. At the time, I mentioned that it is quite dangerous for Obama to let others call him the Messiah, as God has a way of dealing with people who allow others to think of them as God.

Last year, I discovered something very interesting: Barack Obama’s name is in the Bible. The Hebrew Bible uses the term Barack Bamah (okay, there’s no O there, but they also use the name Elias to talk about Elijah too, and Bamah is closer to Obama than Elias is to Elijah) in Luke 10:18. The term literally means “lightning high place”, which I interpret as “lightning from a high place.” In the verse, Jesus says “I beheld Satan as lightning fall from Heaven”. The term Barack Bamah is in the Hebrew version of the Bible; back in Bible days, Jesus actually used his name.

Is Barack Obama the Antichrist? Who knows? Judas Iscariot would be a good candidate for the Antichrist as well. We won’t know when we get there, but the way that the Moslems are talking about the arrival of the 12th Imam, and because the Mahdi has many characteristics that match those of the Antichrist of the Bible, it looks like his appearance may not be that far off.

Considering the political climate of the time, and that the name “Barack Bamah” is listed in the Bible in Luke 10:18, then it wouldn’t surprise me if Soros’s men try to take Obama out, Obama gets a wound to the head and nearly dies, or does die, but then he comes back and makes a full recovery. Imagine how many people would see him as the Messiah then!

Now, I hope that nothing happens to him, but if Soros is against you, that is very bad indeed.

When the debate was raging with regard to the health care bill, Sarah Palin remarked that she feared that nationalized health care could lead to death panels. Obama said that was crazy talk. Never mind that other countries that have nationalized care routinely deny drugs that are too expensive… or that the Netherlands actually encourages the euthanization of certain kinds of infants who would live a severely handicapped life.

Recently, an FDA Advisory panel voted against recommending the drug Avastin for use with breast cancer. They cited “effectiveness” as the reason, but many believe that the real reason is “cost effectiveness”. The drug costs $8,000 a month. A couple of recent studies claim that the drug will extend life for about one month; previous studies concluded that the drug would extend life by five months or more.

Some fear that this could be the start of “death panels” in the United States. Will other recommendations like this follow? Perhaps we will see more cases, like what happened to a woman in Oregon a year or so ago, where a $50 suicide pill was recommended because the state health system refused to pay for the $4000/month treatment that would keep her alive.

Of course, right now, if you have the $8000 a month to pay for the drug, paying for it yourself would be an option, even if the insurance company refuses to pay for it any more. I’m sure that in the future, that will be perceived as unfair. After all, why should the rich have access to life-saving care when nobody else does? Eventually, that option will probably be taken away from the rich (you can’t let them have an unfair advantage, after all).

Preventing illness is going to become more important than ever. I recommend Underground Wellness.com as a resource for learning how to live a healthier life.

As early as January 2008, I was talking about hyperinflation. I don’t know much about the Weimar Republic… I’ve been looking at books, but I’m not sure which would have the information I’m looking for. Many of the books focus on Hitler’s rise, but I’m more interested in how people lived. I once read a web site where gold was going for a trillion marks or more an ounce, but I can’t find that site any more.

The word of the day, however, is deflation. I’ve been hearing the word for about a month or two as I drive to church on Sunday mornings. I know that the government has been printing way too much money, so I’ve been preparing for hyperinflation. The truth is, we should be preparing for both.

So how do you prepare for both? You need to be in the best financial shape that you can be. Now, don’t tell me that you can’t… I’ve written before about my finances. I do realize that there are people in worse financial shape than me… homeless people, many illegal immigrants, many drug addicts, many alcoholics, and a few hard-working families that are down on their luck. My friends lived in a place for a while where people with income lower than ours lived; many of my friends’ neighbors were in those situations. We’re in a difficult situation because my husband, the breadwinner, is in college.

First comes deflation. This is where your loans are going to be super expensive. Stop using credit cards! Let’s say you bought a 16GB iPad today for $599 with your credit card. Credit cards are generally a ripoff anyway, in the best circumstances you’re going to pay way too much in interest for it, even with a slight bit of inflation. When deflation hits, that credit card bill will be harder to pay for. First, the iPad’s value will sink like a rock. Let’s say it halves in value, so it’s worth $300. Secondly, deflation causes your wages to fall. I’ve experienced that before: I once had an income which would amount to maybe $100k a year (I had free housing and utilities so it’s a little difficult to guage), and overnight our family started making about $30k. Bills that were once no sweat kept me up at night wondering how they were going to get paid. That $300 iPad that you still owe $550 on, with half your salary, won’t have easy payments any more.

Same thing comes for cars. Now, we do have a car payment at my house; I wish that we didn’t. We have one car that we bought about four years ago for $1400 cash; the door is falling apart, but it runs and it’s paid for. Our other car we have payments on. Fortunately, it’s 2/3 paid for, but if you ran out and bought a car on credit right now (let’s say you got that great new Chevy Volt), you might pay $35k after tax credits. Deflation kicks in, your car is eventually worth $20k; you still owe $34k on it, and suddenly you’re making half of what you used to (because you have to take a pay cut at your job). Not a pretty picture.

So to prepare for deflation, try to get out of debt. If you don’t have the money to buy something, don’t. Cash is worth a lot more during deflation, so saving is good, if you can manage it. If you have a car that runs, save your money until you can pay cash for one. The same goes true for buying a house. You might not be able to pay cash for one, but if you’re going to buy one, put a sizable down payment down.

But then inflation kicks in. The rules are a little bit different. If you knew how to time the bottom, you could get rich. Unfortunately, that’s very risky to do.

I once remember reading a story about a man who borrowed money to buy a herd of cattle in the period of the Weimar Republic. He paid off his debt with one of the cows after inflation set in. You could do this with gold if you could time it right. Unfortunately, most people who tried this would get killed by deflation.

However, if you can buy gold, silver, or junk silver, that’s one way to prepare for hyperinflation. While the dollar will lose value during hyperinflation, the actual value of gold will stay fairly constant. If you can buy a hamburger with the value of a junk silver coin today, you’ll be able to buy a hamburger with the value of a junk silver coin five years from now. Theoretically, the value of silver and gold should fall during deflation; however, there are plenty of people that know that hyperinflation is next, so I’m not sure if the value will go down. I cashed out my kids’ savings bonds a year ago and bought silver with the money; they’ve made about 25% profit in the last year. Gold has gone up about $50 an ounce since earlier this year as well. When hyperinflation kicks in, coins with actual value will still be worth something… that is, unless Obama outlaws the private ownership of gold. Then things like food will be worth something. You might want to stock up on food just in case.

No matter where you are financially, it’s time to get prepared. You don’t have to be George Soros to get in a better financial position. Pay off your debts, try to save a little, and don’t buy anything that you can’t afford unless it’s an absolute necessity.