Thursday, 1 OCT 2015 :: So many things to share today!

The weekend is here again... for me, kind of.   There is always something to do, and when you work at home, it is hard to get away from it.  This makes the Sabbath rest even more challenging.  I keep praying for rooms I can close off, shut their doors, so I can separate work from life...work from rest.

I went online to today to do my regular activities, and I discovered there was a mass shooting in Roseburg this morning.  I always wonder what moves someone, especially a young person, to do these things.  By the weekend there might be a small look into the deeper issues surrounding this terrible event.

Much of my attention was focused on trying to make my first video today.  I opened the little camera I bought, put in the batteries, the disk, and turned it on to film the closest subject... the pet dogs in the house where I live.  Trying to reach the editing stage was a long process because I don't have full access to the computer I use.  I think this limitation has also caused other problems in trying to post my finished video to Facebook and my craft blog.  It is deflating, but I need to figure it out.  I hope it won't take too long to reach the point of posting videos to social media and my blogs more frequently.

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I went away from this post effort to check my video link at Facebook, and decided to create my username finally... then I had to post it at some of my Facebook pages, and then I decided to post it at the ETSY forums along with my new crafts blog announcement... I copied it all for you below...

Facebook is a challenge for me... but I am learning more about it every day (or month, maybe), and trying to get it all organized.  Next, I need to make some more pages for WT and all its programs...  then I still have to figure out how to link those individual pages to the right places.  :-)

Enjoy your weekend...  I may check back in if I find something important to share...  if I don't share some of the things I come across right away, then I forget them completely and move on to the next big issue...  with so many challenges in our world... this is how we are all being desensitized, and becoming uncaring, and losing our heart (compassion)...  I call it emotional overload.

Anyway...  think about the future, plan your life as much as you can... and plan it debt-free, just in case...



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Thursday, 1 OCT 2015
Today is a busy day, I guess...
I finally checked on how to be able to get to your page (and refer others) like a regular webpage. I created my USERNAME !!!
I just checked it, and it actually works! Now I can change all my other links to the simple name. smile emoticon
...
Find me at ::
facebook.com/DeborahMartin.2014
Isn't that fantastic! It is really going to help my linking to Facebook for all my marketing efforts. smile emoticon
(2014 is when I first started a Facebook account... it should be easy to remember.)
I haven't noticed anyone else's... what are yours?

Wednesday, 30 SEP 2015 :: Marijuana

The news this week has been filled with reports about marijuana changing from an illegal (gateway) drug into a legal, free-access, recreational drug available to anyone with the money to buy it.  Tomorrow we increase the speed of our national decline.

The government sees marijuana as a tax source in hard times.  I personally think they are moving rapidly in this legality direction because of the high costs of policing, prosecuting, and imprisoning those who violated the laws about marijuana.  It seems the lowest dealers and users on the totem pole of the black market were the only ones getting caught.

The government won't tell you it is struggling to survive, but I think it is.

One news report I listened to stated the local authorities were still trying to create the legal details for its sales... and planning to treat it like alcohol sales.  The only rebuttal to restricted hours for its sales was a 24-hour shop owner that talked about having to let the graveyard staff of two go, about how more alcohol is sold at night so there would probably be more sales of marijuana at night as well -- because people often use them together, and that 50% of his income would be lost with the planned restrictions. 

No one seems to see the long-term effects, the high costs associated with addictive drugs, the devastation it will bring into our lives as a nation, as states, and as communities.  I think it is safe to say our young people will be ravaged more than any other group, but we still have hippies from the 1960's involved in using marijuana.  Our young people won't even think about the dangers of this drug and the ones it leads to, because we have told them marijuana is no worse than alcohol by making it just another product to buy at the store. 

Will it get rid of the "black market" surrounding illegal things?  Not really.  Minors will still have to buy it illegally.  It will be easier to get, though.  And who will care?  I'm not sure.  It depends on the financial health of our counties, states, and federal policing agencies.

Alcohol is already bad enough as a legal drug.  We tried to take back the legality of alcohol, but it didn't work.  Now marijuana is joining that process.  The last I heard, the marijuana being made today is much more potent than anything from the 1960's, when I was a teen.  The anti-establishment media cry in my youth, which was during the "sexual revolution," was "sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll."  Who started that theology anyway?!  It wasn't a woman.  It was probably someone who was making money off its foolish victims.

Staying away from the fumes will be impossible for recovering addicts. For a society that campaigns against tobacco with so much fervor, it is strange how smoking marijuana isn't getting all that negative attention.  Maybe because the bad effects of marijuana aren't fully known yet... or maybe they are being hidden, overlooked, covered up.

I have been amazed at how quickly this change occurred.  I never thought rational voters would ever legalize something that was being called a medicine but not being manufactured like a medicine.  Now it has gone from medical uses to recreational uses.  In some ways this is part of the unfolding destruction of the US.  When the results of increased addictions, and the mayhem that addictions create, begin to cost more in taxes than the sales bring in, government will begin to feel the weight of their actions... but, of course, there will be a whole new group of legislators in office.  It will be their problem.

I don't know if my life will be affected deeply by this change in perspective... I don't indulge in a lot of recreational drugs, or alcohol... but I don't have to be a user of drugs to have my life devastated by them.  I hope I won't be around for the consequences of this change.


Tuesday, 29 SEP 2015 :: Saving Christians

I have been adding a lot of comments to my social media posts about the need to prepare for the hard times the Bible tells us are coming...  it is becoming a daily effort, and I wonder if anyone is listening.  The Bible doesn't say we will be kept from the trials ahead, that we won't suffer, that the End will be easy...
 
the one verse I remember most is...  "...endure unto the end..."

With all the new technology becoming part of our daily existence, including the improvement of weapons for war and conquest, it isn't hard to see that technology will become part of our suffering one day.  It is ONE of the things in life that is scary... more frightening than being put in a prison cell.  How do we fight against things we cannot see, or touch, or stop?  There are already children who think it is funny to attack innocent human beings through their medical equipment... what will happen in ten years?  fifteen years?  twenty-five years?  (which is the amount some estimate is the time it will take for technology to completely take over our lives...)

3-D printing is taking over the manufacturing of many products... which means those industries will go away.  People engaged in the process of 3-D printing are already talking about 4-D and 5-D, of being able to create working models of phones and other products.  3-D printers are in the $10K range, as far as I have seen, and will become less expensive (just like computers did, just like cell phones did, just like everything does...) as time goes by.  The innovations of the 3-D printer are expected to take approximately 10 years...  ONLY ten years... and that is only a guess because no one knows how fast technology will increase itself (increase its knowledge base).

October 1st begins the change to chips in our credit cards (and debit cards, etc.)...  which is another "safety" issue.  I have said before, and will say it again now, most of the things we will adopt leading up to the Mark of the Beast will be touted as "safety" issues... including government controls, military controls, and local police controls. 
We can't stop the process,
but we can think of how
we are going to deal
with the changes.

As I have been thinking about saving Christians through the change process, I have discovered it can take ten years to grow a food tree, ten years to change national laws, ten years to disrupt commerce, and maybe ten years for a lot of other survival needs.  Large construction can take that long... building a community would take at least that long.  I hate to think of so many Christians becoming homeless, suffering, struggling, having nowhere to turn to.

We know that many of our Christian organizations, and churches, are struggling financially. The worse the economy gets, the more they are going to struggle, and the less they will be able to help anyone.  Churches, Christian organizations, even Christian businesses, are focused on their programs and products and profits.  Wages are high, income is getting lower and lower.  There is NOTHING being built to address these needs, at any level.
  • I am preparing for my DECEMBER Membership Drive... something I had hoped to do every year, and had hoped to start many years ago. 
  • I am preparing to build an email contact list to keep interested people informed of Working Together's efforts to intervene in the End Time process. 
  • I am preparing to update my booklet, What If There Is NO Rapture?, as part of these two financial and outreach efforts. 

Pray for me... the battle has always been hard, and I don't believe I have much time left.  I have never qualified for traditional financing... I need to sell products to develop Working Together as a Christian support business/ministry. 

Pray that GOD will bless this effort.
Thank you.

Monday, 28 SEP 2015 :: Prayer and answers

Prayer... 

I made a comment on Facebook today about whose prayers GOD hears.  I felt the post was saying that GOD doesn't hear, or answer, the prayers of people who are not yet saved.

I really don't think that is true....


In recent years, I have heard a few sermons saying that GOD isn't listening to the unsaved.  I don't know where that thought began.  It was never talked about all the years I was growing up from childhood, or the years I searched the Bible.

GOD draws us to his heart, to our salvation, over our lifetime.  No one is saved in an instant.  We discover the Truth about GOD, and Jesus, over the long years of our life.  Some of us find this Truth early, some of us later in life, and some never discover it.

When we are in the middle of problems we can't find the answers to on our own, we begin to look for someone who can help us.  When we can't find people to help us, we reach out for something we can't see, for GOD.  It seems foolish, to me, to think that GOD would ignore someone searching for answers, for help, for guidance, just because they aren't officially saved yet.

I have tried to understand where this teaching came from, but I don't have an answer yet.  When we are saved, our relationship with GOD is renewed.  The forgiveness that was obtained through the sacrifice of cattle and other animals is found in our belief in Christ.  Christ becomes the sacrifice that GOD requires -- for all of us. 

The idea that sin separates us from GOD has something to do with this idea that GOD doesn't hear our prayers when we aren't saved.  I'm not sure that perspective is very clear.  After Adam and Eve sinned, GOD still spoke to them, still cared for them, still loved them.  If I remember right, they had to be banished from the Garden of Eden to keep them from eating the fruit from the Tree of Life. 

We don't really know how prayer works, but we see that GOD hears us when our prayers are answered.

I would like the answers to our prayers to be a bit faster...
  • ... if I need a car, why don't I get it today? 
  • ... if I need food, why isn't there someone leaving a bag of groceries on my porch? 
  • ... if I pray for a better place to live, for a job, for my health to be fixed, why isn't it provided for me by the end of the week? 
Because prayer just doesn't work that way.  GOD is the one who decides the meaning of our lives, and decides if our prayers are part of that plan.  GOD can say yes, or no, or maybe, or wait.  The Truth is :: GOD decides, not me.  He can answer anyone's prayers that He wants, whether they are saved or not saved.  This is why we sometimes pray for things all of our lives...  and why our prayers sometimes don't get answered until we are gone from this earth.

I am really too tired to continue this talk about GOD and prayer and answers, but I want you to know there are different opinions about what the Bible teaches on some things, like whose prayers GOD hears. 

I will continue to pray no matter what anyone says... I am talking to GOD, not to men.  And I will continue to believe GOD hears the prayers of anyone that talks to Him.