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Former US Congressman from Maryland, Bob Bauman wrote the following:

Fear the Surveillance Police State

Fear, after the 9/11 attacks, produced the hastily adopted so-called Patriot Act. Fear has produced abandonment of our most important civil and personal rights. …

President Donald Trump signed into law, a six-year extension of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).

FISA was not just renewed, it expanded radically the government’s power over us. The 1978 FISA prohibited all domestic surveillance, unless pursuant to warrants signed by federal judges based on probable cause — which is the constitutional guarantee of the Fourth Amendment of the Bill of Rights.

The American Civil Liberties Union best described the 2018 FISA renewal as “a bill to give the Trump administration greater authority to spy on Americans, immigrants, journalists, dissidents and everyone else.”

That means you and me.

Judge Andrew P. Napolitano describes the law as “a hole in the Fourth Amendment” that brings “the country full circle back to the government’s use of general warrants to harass and prosecute — general warrants so odious to our forebears that they took up arms against the king’s soldiers to be rid of them.”

After 9/11, Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama allowed secret expansions of warrantless wiretapping of Americans and mass collections of data from U.S. internet services. …

Resisting the Police State

This is not a partisan issue.

In Congress, political fear influences both parties to support government spying on us. Fear produces bipartisan abolition of the liberties fought for in the American Revolution and enshrined in the Constitution.

Along with Republican majorities in both houses, 65 House Democrats and 21 Senate Democrats voted for final passage of the FISA bill, giving the Trump administration expanded warrantless spying powers.

“Our Founders gave us the Fourth Amendment to prevent a tyrannical government from invading our privacy, and we are fools to relinquish that hard-won right because of fear,” said Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who co-sponsored FISA curb amendments that the Senate rejected. …

for those rightfully worried about privacy and government surveillance, you can adopt NordVPN, a reliable virtual private network service.

A VPN won’t protect users from all means of surveillance, but its strong encryption will keep online communications private and safe from the bulk collection the 2018 FISA law now allows.

John Adams had another message for our day and time: “Posterity! You will never know how much it cost the present generation to preserve your freedom! I hope you will make a good use of it.”

You can honor that wish by resisting the surveillance police state — while you still can. 01/31/18 https://banyanhill.com/police-state/

With changes in laws around the world, combined with private internet companies, and a desire by governments to monitor everything, we are getting closer to what amounts to about a total surveillance police state.

As far as having a VPN goes, that could possibly help some now. But that is not a long-term solution.

Last year, China essentially outlawed VPNs. Notice something else about China:

Imagine a society in which you are rated by the government on your trustworthiness. Your “citizen score” follows you wherever you go. A high score allows you access to faster internet service or a fast-tracked visa to Europe. If you make political posts online without a permit, or question or contradict the government’s official narrative on current events, however, your score decreases. To calculate the score, private companies working with your government constantly trawl through vast amounts of your social media and online shopping data.When you step outside your door, your actions in the physical world are also swept into the dragnet: The government gathers an enormous collection of information through the video cameras placed on your street and all over your city. If you commit a crime—or simply jaywalk—facial recognition algorithms will match video footage of your face to your photo in a national ID database. It won’t be long before the police show up at your door.

This society may seem dystopian, but it isn’t farfetched: It may be China in a few years. The country is racing to become the first to implement a pervasive system of algorithmic surveillance. Harnessing advances in artificial intelligence and data mining and storage to construct detailed profiles on all citizens, China’s communist party-state is developing a “citizen score” to incentivize “good” behavior. A vast accompanying network of surveillance cameras will constantly monitor citizens’ movements, purportedly to reduce crime and terrorism. While the expanding Orwellian eye may improve “public safety,” it poses a chilling new threat to civil liberties in a country that already has one of the most oppressive and controlling governments in the world. …Even more worrying is that the government will be technically capable of considering the behavior of a Chinese citizen’s friends and family in determining his or her score. For example, it is possible that your friend’s anti-government political post could lower your own score. Thus, the scoring system would isolate dissidents from their friends and the rest of society, rendering them complete pariahs. …While Westerners and especially civil liberties groups like the ACLU are horrified by such a prospect—one commentator called the possibility “authoritarianism, gamified”—others argue that because lack of trust is a serious problem in China, many Chinese welcome this potential system. However, a state-run, party-inspired, data-driven monitoring system poses profound questions for the West about the role of private companies in government surveillance. Is it ethical for private companies to assist in massive surveillance and turn over their data to the government? Alibaba (China’s Amazon) and Tencent (owner of the popular messaging platform WeChat) possess sweeping data on each Chinese citizen that the government would have to mine to calculate scores. 02/03/18 https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/02/china-surveillance/552203/

Do not think that places like Europe will not have this type of ability. Europe has already pressured private internet companies like Google and Facebook to take down potentially disturbing content from individuals.

As far as loss of liberty goes, an article titled ENTERING THE AGE OF TERROR in the old Plain Truth magazine in June 1977 said that as a response to terrorism we may see “that the inevitable result would be a repressive, authoritarian police state and the loss of civil liberties.” This has been occurring.

The anti-constitutional Patriot Act and other laws have essentially taken away privacy rights any time the government feels like it.

As far as a ‘police state’ goes, this is something that Church of God writers have expected for some time.

Before getting to a few scriptures. notice the following:

Numerous world-famous scientists and economists see a stern picture of the future.  … they see, and tell us humanity’s one great problem, now, is the QUESTION OF SURVIVAL. …

Many scientists and world leaders …  say the solution now demands a WORLD GOVERNMENT. There is one thing wrong with this solution. That world supergovernment would have to be given the power of a world police force to enforce its laws, and it would have to maintain the ONLY military force in the world—all nations would have to surrender their armies, navies and air forces to this one SUPERSTATE. In a word, every nation would have to surrender its national sovereignty absolutely. And WHAT MAN could be accepted by all as WORLD RULER? It would, mind you, be a world POLICE STATE. (Armstrong HW. What Is Now Prophesied! Plain Truth, March 1980)

World government … totalitarian state of the worst magnitude. As the Wall Street Journal put it some years ago: “It follows that for a world government to be effective, it would have to possess powers of compulsion undreamed-of in history’s worst nightmares …. No matter who were the magistrates of the world-state, they would have to trample on so many national and individual aspirations and attitudes, would have to deploy such an army of enforcers, that the most probable upshot would be a police-state on a colossal scale …” (Wall Street Journal editorials, November 14, 1963 and September 14, 1965).

Obviously man’s approach to the question of peace leaves much to be desired. Nothing in his limited repertoire of feeble solutions has even come close to addressing the fundamental causes of the world’s continuous wars. Millennia ago, the prophets of Israel saw the same failing in the people of their day. Jeremiah wrote: “They have healed also the hurt of the daughter of my people slightly, saying, Peace, peace; when there is no peace” (Jer. 6:14). Isaiah was even more emphatic: “The way of peace they know not” (Isa. 59:8). (4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse – The Red Horse – War. WCG booklet, 1975)

Some items of possibly related interest may include:

Preparing for the ‘Short Work’ and The Famine of the Word What is the ‘short work’ of Romans 9:28? Who is preparing for it? Here is a link to a related video sermon titled: The Short Work.
Persecutions by Church and State This article documents some that have occurred against those associated with the COGs and some prophesied to occur. Will those with the cross be the persecutors or the persecuted–this article has the shocking answer. There is also a YouTube video sermon you can watch: The Coming Persecution of the Church. Here is information in the Spanish language: Persecuciones de la Iglesia y el Estado.
The Gospel of the Kingdom of God This free online pdf booklet has answers many questions people have about the Gospel of the Kingdom of God and explains why it is the solution to the issues the world is facing. Here are links to three related sermons: The Mark of Antichrist What is the mark of Antichrist? What have various ones claimed? Here is a link to a related sermon What is the ‘Mark of Antichrist’?
Mark of the Beast What is the mark of the Beast? Who is the Beast? What have various ones claimed the mark is? What is the ‘Mark of the Beast’?
Europa, the Beast, and Revelation Where did Europe get its name? What might Europe have to do with the Book of Revelation? What about “the Beast”? Is an emerging European power “the daughter of Babylon”? What is ahead for Europe? Here is a link to a video titled: Can You Prove that the Beast to Come is European?
European Technology and the Beast of Revelation Will the coming European Beast power would use and develop technology that will result in the taking over of the USA and its Anglo-Saxon allies? Is this possible? What does the Bible teach? Here is a related YouTube video: Military Technology and the Beast of Revelation.
Two Horned Beast of Revelation and 666 Who is 666? This article explains how the COG views this, and compares this to Ellen White. Here is a link to a prophetic video Six Financial Steps Leading to 666?
Anglo – America in Prophecy & the Lost Tribes of Israel Are the Americans, Canadians, English, Scottish, Welsh, Australians, Anglo-Saxon (non-Dutch) Southern Africans, and New Zealanders descendants of Joseph? Where are the lost ten-tribes of Israel? Who are the lost tribes of Israel? What will happen to Jerusalem and the Jews in Israel? Will God punish the U.S.A., Canada, United Kingdom, and other Anglo-Saxon nations? Why might God allow them to be punished first? Here is a link to the Spanish version of this article: Anglo-América & las Tribus Perdidas de Israel. A video of possible interest may be Will Will USA Spying Help the Beast Power?
Leading the Final Phase of the Work Matthew 24:14 teaches “And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come ” will be fulfilled and RCG is not the group doing this. Who is leading the final phase of the work? What did Herbert Armstrong and the old WCG teach about that and about prophets? Does Bob Thiel meet the criteria that the Bible and the old WCG set? What is the proof? What has the Continuing Church of God been doing? This is a sermonette length video.
Who is the King of the North? Is there one? Do biblical and Roman Catholic prophecies for the Great Monarch point to the same leader? Should he be followed? Who will be the King of the North discussed in Daniel 11? Is a nuclear attack prophesied to happen to the English-speaking peoples of the United States, Great Britain, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand? When do the 1335 days, 1290 days, and 1260 days (the time, times, and half a time) of Daniel 12 begin? When does the Bible show that economic collapse will affect the United States? In the Spanish language check out ¿Quién es el Rey del Norte? Here is a link to a video titled: The Future King of the North.
Internet Control, Famine of the Word, and 666 On October 1, 2016, the USA officially relinquished control over the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), despite objections from certain political leaders and former military officials. Might this lead to more censorship, imposition on non-biblical ‘community standards,’ and loss of first amendment rights? Could this transfer of control have any prophetic ramifications? Will the internet be a factor in the ‘short work’ of Romans 9:28 and the coming ‘famine of the word’ that the Prophet Amos warned about? Will internet control be something that the 666 power will have? Dr. Thiel addresses these matters and more in this video.
USA in Prophecy: The Strongest Fortresses Can you point to scriptures, like Daniel 11:39, that point to the USA in the 21st century? This article does. A related sermon is titled: Do these 7 prophesies point to the end of the USA?
Who is the King of the West? Why is there no Final End-Time King of the West in Bible Prophecy past Daniel 11:39? Is the United States the King of the West? Here is a version in the Spanish language: ¿Quién es el Rey del Occidente? ¿Por qué no hay un Rey del Occidente en la profecía del tiempo del fin?
The Final Phase of the Work What is the final phase of the work? Who will lead it? Do you have the courage to support it? Here is a related YouTube video titled The Final Phase of the Work. The written article has been translated into Spanish La Fase Final de la Obra.
Donald Trump in Prophecy Prophecy, Donald Trump? Are there prophecies that Donald Trump may fulfill?  Are there any prophecies that he has already helped fulfill?  Is a Donald Trump presidency proving to be apocalyptic?  Two related videos are available: Donald: ‘Trump of God’ or Apocalyptic? and Donald Trump’s Prophetic Presidency.
Trump Presidency Magic 8 Ball or Bible Prophecy? BBC reported that one might as well use a ‘Magic Eight-Ball’ to try to predict what will happen in the remaining time of Donald Trump’s presidency. What is a ‘Magic Eight-Ball’? Dr. Thiel not only explains that, but also briefly goes over 10 biblically-based warnings he wrote would happen if Donald Trump were elected that have already began to come to pass. He also goes over something he wrote back in 2008 that the Trump presidency is also helping lead to fulfillment. Should you trust Bible prophecy or not? Dr. Thiel says that Bible prophecy can be trusted, despite the view of skeptics and others that either overlook or despise the Bible. This is a video.
Donald Trump and America’s Apocalypse This 188 page book is for people truly interested in prophecies related to Donald Trump and the United States, including learning about several that have already been fulfilled and those that will be fulfilled in the future. The physical book can be purchased at Amazon for $12.99 from the following link: Donald Trump and America’s Apocalypse.
Donald Trump and America’s Apocalypse-Kindle Edition This electronic version of the 188 page print edition is available for only US$3.99. And you do not need an actual Kindle device to read it. Why? Amazon will allow you to download it to almost any device: Please click HERE to download one of Amazon s Free Reader Apps. After you go to for your free Kindle reader and then go to Donald Trump and America’s Apocalypse-Kindle Edition.

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This entry was posted on Monday, February 5th, 2018 at 3:30 pm and is filed under Prophecy.

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