World news, truth, prophecy and the Christian response

Please bear with me if you are familiar with my views, like those expressed in my blogs, and also if you aren’t. I’m going to try and steer a middle course, trying to minimize repeating myself, yet giving short explanations of my thoughts, starting with my recent “Great Reset, Great Awakening and Great Deception” blog.

One of my regular daily routines is to check out significant (imo) world news, but because I mistrust mainstream media for reasons given in my recent “The Unholy Trinity: Media, Politicians, Elites” blog, I go to a variety of sources in an attempt to reach a balanced view. Truth is my mantra, and I do something that few others, I suspect, do, and that is to check out what the prophets have to say, whether they be Hebrew prophets, as discussed in my Prophets of the Bible book, or modern day prophets who I categorise as political, brought to my attention by the likes of Richards Watch, mindful back in Bible times prophecies often were not fulfilled right away and some still have to be. Often, I am challenged by alternative perspectives (a good thing) including two examples I am going to critique here. As I often say, we must pursue truth, question everything and test and weigh the whole shebang.

My first example is an article by local, evangelical Anglican vicar (retired), Tony Higton, who back in the day I respected as a spiritual man who was doctrinally sound and had thought through his faith. He wrote an article “Fake news, conspiracy theories and the End Times” which begins “We Christians need to be doubly on the alert, carefully checking the main news but also carefully approaching criticisms of the main news, including claims of prophetic revelations about fake news and claims of prophetic discernment of sinister conspiracies. DECEPTION, INCLUDING OF BELIEVERS, IS A SIGN OF THE END TIMES”. He made a number of good points, not least regarding the prevailing spirit of deception that beguiles people, including Christian believers, part of the strategy Satan and the Antichrist use to further their agenda. Sadly, he lost me when dismissing Trump and others for saying the US election was stolen, because IT WAS. While taking Biden to task for his views on abortion and questioning Trump’s qualities as US President, he fails to see what I see regarding the evil cabal controlling this world and seems to have been taken in by Fake News himself. I can only guess his views on prophets that feature in Richard’s Watch and who the mature Christians are, we need to go to when deciding whether or not a prophet / prophecy is genuine.  

My second example is a video titled “A Message for The Truth Movement – Brothers and Sisters”. The presenter (Jeff the Watchman) makes the point, for a long time he followed various well known propagators of an alternative take on the news, some like Alex Jones and David Icke I sometimes check out myself as short cuts to my trying to find out what is really going on in the world, but WITHOUT feeling the need to subscribe to their world view when, as it often is, at odds with the orthodox Christian one that I hold. As for the various nefarious agencies Jeff used to look into, I do too, because more often than not it helps me understand what is going on. Jeff makes the point he was once so committed to spreading the message of the “Truth Movement” that it was to the point of obsession. But then he discovered God and the Bible, and it radically changed his life, and it is this that is now his focus. Like brother Tony, brother Jeff is also concerned with the deception that is so evident in our culture and can (and does) so easily take over the priorities of some believers and that some of the people he followed before he saw the true light are instruments of Satan’s false light.

But how should we respond? Firstly, we all have to decide what is best, guided by God’s Word, and accept it when brethren see things differently to us. The only movement we should be beholden to is that which is instigated by God. While there is much we don’t know and never will know this side of the grave, we should be seekers after and practitioners of the truth. We need to be realistic – much as we may want to know what is really going on around us, as Jeff points out, most people aren’t interested. I suspect they will be interested when they see us live as children of the light, and while having some understanding of world events and knowing how to respond may be a good thing, living lives pleasing to God should ever be our priority.