In the Bible, it is filled with idioms or symbolism. Daniel 7 is a chapter of the Book of Daniel that outlined some of the greatest symbolism of the Bible. These images are beasts to represent the world kingdoms that would exist ruling Israeli lands under the Kingdom of God comes about on Earth. Daniel 7 described four beasts coming out of the sea. The first beast is a lion with the wings of an eagle, the second one is a bear, the third one is a winged leopard with four heads, and the fourth beast has ten horns (and a further one appeared which uprooted three of the ten). Daniel said that the Ancient of Days (what Christians called the Messiah Jesus Christ) takes his seat on the throne of heaven and sits in judgement in the midst of heavenly court. Later, the fourth and worst beast is put to death and the Kingdom of God rules forever and ever. The lion is in reference to Babylon. This kingdom was headed by Nebuchadnezzar. The plucked wings reflect the loss of power and the transformation to a human state. The bear is the Medo-Persian Empire. The Medo-Persians defeated the Babylonians to form their empire spreading from India to Central Asia. The leopard is in reference to Greek empire with the 4 heads representing the 4 generals ruling the empire after Alexander the Great died. The iron toothed beast is in reference to the Roman Empire (and a future Empire with 10 horns and the one horn is in reference to the Antichrist according to Christian prophetic researchers). In our generation, we in the time of what Daniel described as a world filled with iron and clay. That means that this generation has a mixture of democracies and authoritarian regimes ruling the world politically including economically. There is always that link between the book of Daniel and the book of Revelation. Revelation 17:10-12 mentioned that 5 kings have fallen, one is, and other is year to come. The first five kings or world power in the Middle East are Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Medo-Persia, and ancient Rome (which is the 5th as the Book of Revelation was crated during the Roman Empire). The 7th kingdom is the future world empire with the 8th being the Antichrist. In our time, when you see compromising, people losing their faith, and these events coming about, there is nothing new about this. The New Age movement (which is funded by the corporate establishment for the corporate establishment) has been promoted by many elitists for decades. The New Age and occult movements want to promote what the pagans did in public view in order to diminish the influence of believers in the Most High God. Alice Bailey (a spokesperson of the Theosophical Society and member of Co-Masonry. Her husband is a Mason named Foster Bailey) said the following words: "...The Masonic Movement is the custodian of the Law, the holder of the Mysteries, and the seat of initiation. .a far more occult organization than can be realized...intended to be the training school for coming advanced occultists." .Minimizing moral absolutes while deifying experiences is not the way to go. You have to use logic, reason, and moral principles in developing your life. Isn't it common to witness certain extremists bash every women, bash every man, bash believers in God, and harbor a hatred of free speech that doesn't confirm to what the establishment wants us to believe. That is why we should be courageous in our convictions to stand up for our rights and our free speech rights. Part of our free speech rights is to reject baptizing infants and not believing in venerating statues. The Gospel is clear in John 3:16: "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life."
1968 was the turning point in American and world history. It changed everyday, and it remains one of the most revolutionary years of human history. 1968 started as it began, with controversy. The Tet Offensive lasted from January 30, 1968 to June 8, 1968. It was about a North Vietnamese surprise attack against American and South Vietnamese forces. The North Vietnam wanted this attack during Vietnamese holiday celebrations as a cover. They hid their weapons in many locations. By this time, the anti-war movement was strong, but a pro-Vietnam War movement was very powerful too. The attack caught American forces off guard. Many of them had to struggle to fight back. In Saigon, firefight battles were common. American journalists hid for cover in the amount of gunfire that transpired. One South Vietnamese police officer shot and killed a man on live TV without a trial or due process. Many locations in South Vietnam were attacked. After months of warfare including the destruction of the city of Hue by U.S. forces, the Americans and the South Vietnamese forces defeated the North Vietnam military. The result of the conflict was that it eliminated many folks' naivete about the war. The false narrative about the war is about the U.S. wants democracy for South Vietnam, but that war was about U.S. colonial domination of the Vietnamese peninsula. Walter Cronkite said that the Vietnam War was bound for a stalemate and American withdrawal. More people saw the war as ultimately unwinnable because of many factors. Mauritius was an independent state under the UK under Commonwealth status by March 12, 1968. On March 30, 1968, President Lyndon Baines Johnson stopped bombings over North Vietnam and he announced he is not running for reelection. That announcement sent shock waves across America, because people expected him to run for President in 1968. By this time, Joseph McCarthy was the anti-war candidate. Then, Robert Kennedy decided to run for President. On the Republican side, the center right candidate was Richard Nixon, the moderate candidate was Nelson Rockefeller, and the conservative candidate was Ronald Reagan in 1968. They all ran for President. The segregationist George Wallace ran for President in 1968 as an Independent with rhetoric similar to Donald Trump's rhetoric now. Both talked about law and order (when law must be bounded under justice and love not authoritarian order), both scapegoated progressives, both used overtly racist rhetoric, both were protested against, and both wanted America to be made into their image instead of the image of equality and inclusion. Eartha Kitt confronted LBJ about the Vietnam War and the youth. She said that people aren't protesting in the streets for no reason, and the war must ended. For that, the FBI and the CIA illegally monitored her and blackballed her for years. Latino American students on March 1968 walked out of LA school in demanding better education. Black Americans protesters in Memphis, Tennessee in favor of workers' rights involving sanitation workers in 1968 after 2 black workers were accidentally crushed to death by a garbage truck machine. These workers had little pay, little benefits, and racism. The Memphis mayor Henry Loeb refused to support unionization of the workers, so protests continued. Rev. James Lawson, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Baxter Leach, T.O. Jones, Helen Turner, Tarlease Matthews, and other heroic human beings were active in the Memphis sanitation workers' movement. While this was going on, Dr. King promoted his Poor People's Campaign. This movement wanted billions of dollars from the federal government to end poverty, invest in housing developments, and restructure society as a whole. This movement had a multiracial coalition of America's suffering, and Dr. King was inspired by Mary Edelman to promote the plan. The liberal establishment and the far right opposed the Poor People's Campaign. Both groups opposed Dr. King's anti-Vietnam war views. One march in Memphis turned violent by agent provocateurs, and Dr. King wanted another march to prove that nonviolent protest could cause real change in America. Before that would occur, he was assassinated by a gunman on April 4, 1968 after he gave his I Have Been to the Mountaintop speech. He was only 39 years old after meeting Dorothy Cotton, lawyers, his brother, Georgia Davis, Jesse Jackson, Andrew Young, and other people. Immediately after Dr. King's unjust assassination, rebellions existed in over 100 cities nationwide in America. The Housing Bill was signed into law, but the world would never be the same again. The Black Panthers and the Black Power movement in general started to reach its peak. Robert Kennedy won many states, but lost the Oregon primary because of RFK's gun control stance. Oregon back then was a much more conservative state. RFK's supporters and Eugene McCarthy's supporters fought for votes. When RFK won California, it was a clear conclusion that Robert Kennedy had a legitimate chance to win the nomination. LBJ didn't want RFK to win the nomination, The reasons are clear. LBJ and RFK hated each other. Also, Robert Kennedy opposed the conduct of the Vietnam War and wanted a resolution to end the war, but LBJ supported the Vietnam War until the day that he died. Hubert Humphrey was in the race. RFK was assassinated on June 1968, and then Humphrey won the Democratic nomination. The Democratic National Convention took place at Chicago. Many protesters as diverse as SDS, Yippies, etc. were there. The protests were large, and the police enacted a riot to harm even peaceful protesters with batons. Many people were arrested. The campaigns in Chicago were filled with debate over an anti-war proposal. When Congressman Ribicoff condemned the Gestapo tactics of the Chicago police at the Chicago Convention center, Mayor Daley yelled at Ribicoff. The Miami Convention for the Republicans elected Nixon as the candidate. Protests were in Miami, but it was nothing compared to the chaos in Chicago which was agitated by the police. The police initiated a police riot where cops chased innocent people into buildings to beat them up. Humphrey was a liberal on every issue except on foreign policy. He went along with the Johnson administration on the Vietnam despite his private skepticism about the war. It would be only at the end of 1968 when Humphrey wanted to cease bombings and called for a peaceful resolution and end to the war. By this time, his poll numbers went up and he nearly won the 1968 election. Also, Humphrey refused to reveal in public that Nixon was trying to cut a secret peace negotiation among North and South Vietnam (via Nixon fund-raiser Anna Chennault, the Chinese-born widow of a World War II hero). LBJ called this act treason, but Humphrey didn't reveal it to the public. Humphrey regretted this decision. Lyndon Baines Johnson secretly didn't trust Hubert Humphrey, because he knew that if Humphrey was President, he would have prematurely end U.S. involvement in the war. That is why LBJ secretly wanted Nelson Rockefeller, who was a moderate Republican, to be on the GOP ticket according to Joseph Califano (an aide to LBJ). Later, LBJ wanted Humphrey to win the election. Hubert Humphrey almost won the election by saying that advocating a bombing halt in the closing days of the campaign. By November 1968, Nixon won the election. America would witness the right wing counterrevolution.
The Second Malayan Emergency started on June 17, 1968. The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) is opened for signature on July 1, 1968. By July 17, 1968, Abdul Rahman Arif, the President of Iraq at that time was overthrown by a coup staged by Iraq Ba'athist Party. The revolution eventually lead to the installation of the Ba'athist government in Iraq. On August 20, 1968, Prague Spring Reforms in Communist Czechoslovakia result in Warsaw Pact for Soviet Red Army to crush Czechoslovakian revolt. The Prague situation proved once again that Stalinism doesn't work to enact social justice or economic justice at all. The problem with Stalinism was that it devolved into a nationalist program of the Stalinist bureaucracy (increasingly produced economic crises, food shortages, and discontent among the working class not being related to true socialism at all). Swaziland becomes independent from the UK on September of 1968, and Equatorial Guinea becomes independent from Spain on October 1968. By December 23, 1968, the captain and crew of the USS Pueblo were released by North Korea.
Richard Nixon's 1968 Presidential campaign and Presidency were part of the counterevolution. This counterrevolution existed long before 1968, but it has grown since the 1964 Goldwater movement. Goldwater wanted to end federal civil rights laws and a more active federal government to promote the general welfare of society. By 1966, Republicans gained the majority of the Congress and new Great Society programs were never passed in a great deal as during the time of 1961-1966. Richard Nixon believed that the Silent Majority (as he termed it outlining silent Americans among the South, the Midwest, and other places of America who wanted the status quo) supported his agenda. Nixon promoted himself as more moderate during his 1968 campaign, but he was still a reactionary extremist. Nixon lost the 1962 California governor's race to the progressive Pat Brown. Nixon politically opposed the moderate Republicans like Nelson Rockefeller and George Romney (or Mitt Romney's father). Richard Nixon wanted no debates, used campaign commercials. Also, he issued propaganda in gaining support among Southern people, conservative people, and others in winning the election. He was inaugurated by January of 1969. Soon, the people saw the real Nixon who was anti-civil rights, pro-imperialism, and anti-liberation. Nixon claimed to desire "peace with honor." He promoted Vietnamziation or using South Vietnamese forces being invested, and once those forces are fully funded then they could defeat North Vietnamese forces plus end the Vietnam War. Nixon promoted the Southern Strategy by gaining former Southern Democrats who became Republicans in order to increase the power of the Republican Party. Nixon passed the EPA, the Clean Air Act, OSHA, promoted detente, and advanced the earned income tax credit. These are progressive policies that I have no problem with. Yet, Nixon, behind the scenes, allowed the FBI to illegally monitor and harm the Black Panther Party. The Chicago police in 1969 murdered Fred Hampton and Mark Clark with the help of the informant O'Neal. He supported the coup against progressive leader Allende in Chile. Nixon opposed extending the 1965 Voting Rights Act, and he lobbied Congress to end the fair housing enforcement programs. He once wanted to allow the segregationist G. Harold Carswell of Florida to be on the Supreme Court. Nixon failed. His vice President first was Spiro Agnew who was caught being involved in financial corrupt despite his hypocritical lectures on morality to liberals. Nixon carried out an invasion of Cambodia which was against international law. Nixon claimed that the bombing would cut off resources from the Ho Chi Minh trial. People protested in America and the Kent State Massacre plus the massacre at Jackson State University existed in 1971. Henry Kissinger supported Vietnamization. Operation Linebacker was on May 9, 1972 when Nixon bombed Haiphong and other targets in North Vietnam. In 1972, George McGovern faced Richard Nixon in the Presidential case. McGovern was an old school progressive who wanted to end the war, wanted economic justice, and social changes in general. Back in those days, the Democratic Party establishment was in conflict. McGovern lost the election to Nixon. Today, McGovern would be very much a progressive Democrat like Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders. After McGovern's defeat, the Democratic establishment would be more conservative along with the rise of the DLC. Nixon was renewed in 1972. Yet, by that time, rumbles dealing with Watergate grew.
Watergate is the scandal when Nixon supporters broke into the Watergate building in trying to find dirt on Democrats. The problem was that this was illegal, and Nixon was caught being involved in obstruction of justice, violating civil liberties, and using a network in promoting political corruption. Nixon wasn't the first President to do these evils, but he was caught so badly, that Nixon was in a desperate situation. James McCord was one Watergate burglar who said that Nixon administration officials were involved in the break in. More information came out as a result of the 1973 Congressional trial. McCord was part of CREEP or the Committee to Re-Elect the President. G. Gordon Libby was part of the group. They wanted to use intelligence surveillance in order to find dirt on Democratic candidates. Woodward and Bernstein reported on the events and mentioned one source named Deep Throat (which we know now was a FBI agent). By November 1973, Richard Nixon said that, "I am not a crook." Richard Nixon was of course a liar. As time went onward, most Americans didn't trust Nixon. Former White House official John Dean testified that Nixon organized corruption around the Presidency and that he had secret tapes to confirm his testimony. People wanted the tape. Congress wanted them. Nixon fought all the way to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court said that Nixon had to release the tapes to the public. Nixon couldn't use the executive privilege excuse. The tapes confirmed what Dean said. On those tapes, Nixon wanted to use money to help the burglars, he used racist and anti-Semitic language, and he showed a vicious, callous side. Nixon fired many people like Archibald Cox who wouldn't go along with him (via the Saturday Night Massacre). More Nixon officials were indicted by March of 1974. By August 1974, people heard of the Nixon cover up of the break in. Nixon lied in once saying that he had no knowledge of the break in at Watergate. He was forced to resign by August 9, 1974. He was in risk of impeachment and prison time. That is why President Gerald Ford pardoned him. That pardon was controversial at the time, because much of the public wanted Nixon to have a serious punishment for his criminal actions. Americans were shocked about how not only Nixon, but elements of the CIA and FBI monitored reporters and social activists illegally, used the federal government to harass folks, and organize illegal invasions of sovereign nations like in Cambodia. That is why new laws restricted the powers of the CIA and FBI during the aftermath of Watergate.
For the eons of time, people have learned about the Knights Templar. In our time, we know more to separate fact from fiction about their existence. A long time ago, Europe was dominated by the Roman Catholic Church religiously, economically, and politically. That is why the kings of Europe had to submit their authorities under the Popes. In the Holy Land, many Muslims ruled lands. The Europeans leaders wanted to not only control areas of the Holy Land. They wanted to allow pilgrimages to occur among Christians. The Crusades existed as a product of a disagreements and conflicts over ruling areas in the Middle East. The Crusades lasted for a long time, over one centuries. At first, the Europeans had many victories. As time went onward, the Muslims regrouped to have the ultimate victory in control the Middle East completely. At this time, the Knights Templar existed. They were originally a religious group of Catholic warrior priests who wanted to protect Christian pilgrims in the Holy Land. They fought in multiple Crusades. They once ruled Jerusalem where Solomon's Temple was located at, and they formed an international banking system that grew into massive influence globally. This reality caused jealousy and envy. One French king accused the Knights Templar of many things from occultism, sexual rituals, and blasphemy against the Lord Jesus Christ. Most Templar members deny this allegations after torture. One leader, Jacques DeMolay, was burned to death after denying the charges. This was during the 1300's. The many Kings of Europe were either Merovingians or were influenced by Merovingians. The Knights Templar after the 1300's ended, some came into other orders, and others traveled into other places. There are always rumors that Freemasonry existed from the Knights Templar, but recent research shows that Masonry came from independent guilds of Europe not by the Knights Templar directly. What is true is that many Masonic orders like the York Rite copied many of the concepts from the Knights Templar and used them in their organizations as rituals, titles, etc. In our time, more people know the truth. The existence of the Knights Templar make us aware that searching for the truth is important. After almost 40 years of me living on this Earth, I never lost my core convictions. Some people have sold out, betrayed our people, and compromised. Yet, I am still here believing in religious freedom, loving environmental protection, and honoring the Civil Rights Movement. In any time, there is always that remnant who not only respects mercy but legitimate principles of honor, integrity, and fidelity to true wisdom. Also, during this pandemic of the coronavirus, we won't stop fighting for justice. The suffering today deserves not scapegoating but profound compassion including human dignity. `
The end of the Vietnam War existed in processes. It didn't end in one full event. It was a product of a series of events. Both sides committed torture and war crimes against each other from the Hanoi Hilton torture center where Americans were brutalized to Operation Phoenix where the CIA allowed soldiers to brutalize and murder Vietnamese people. The Christmas bombings of 1972 or Operation Linebacker II was harsh and brutal. The U.S. dropped 36,000 bombs on factories, railroad yards, bus stations, etc. Hanoi's largest hospital was bombed and the residential neighborhood of Khem Thiem. These Christmas bombings were condemned by activists, the media, politicians, the Pope, and other world leaders. Le Duc Tho of North Vietnam and Henry Kissinger met at Paris on January 23, 1973 to talk peace talks. For this meeting, both men won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1973. The Paris Peace Accords was on January 23, 1973. Le Duc Tho was the North Vietnamese Foreign Minister, and we know Henry Kissinger as the Secretary of State. South Vietnamese President Thieu was skeptical of the Accords , but he went along with it. There was a cease fire and the North Vietnamese were allow to replace spending materiel in the South. Saigon had U.S. aid. The communists waited until they would execute their plans to take over Saigon. Nixon said that if North Vietnam violated the ceasefire, then he would militarily intervene. The Case Church Amendment prohibit U.S. military intervention. That was in 1973 when the oil crisis came after the Yom Kippur war (when Egypt preemptively attacked Israel unjustly. Even the most strongest anti-Zionist admitted that the Yom Kippur attack on Israel was unjustified). Resources weren't readily sent to South Vietnam because of the oil crisis. By January of 1974, the Viet Cong conquered more territory. Nixon was gone from office at August 1974. Gerald Ford was the new President. Ford dealt with a heavily Democratic Congress. Congress withhold financial aid to South Vietnam. The new mostly Democratic Congress wanted no military aid to South Vietnam in 1976. By 1975, North Vietnamese forces ruled more lands and started to travel into Saigon. Hue fell to North Vietnam on March 25, 1975. President Thieu of South Vietnam resigned and said that America betrayed South Vietnam. North Vietnam forces conquered all of Saigon by April 30, 1975. U.S. forces including the Marines, Vietnamese people who wanted to leave Vietnam, and other people were evacuated via Operation Frequent Wind. President Doung Van Minh surrendered. The Vietnamese flag was raised on the gates of the Independence Palace in Saigon. The Vietnam War was over. Ironically, America and Vietnam would be on good trading terms by the 21st century.
By Timothy
