John H. Ogwyn (1949–2005)

Do you realize that America has an exploding criminal class? The incarceration rate in the United States remained basically the same from about 1925 to 1973. There was an average of a little over 100 people behind bars for every 100,000 residents of this country. By the year 2000 that rate had quadrupled, with almost 500 people incarcerated for every 100,000 residents. America has overtaken Russia as the world's most aggressive jailor. Approximately two million Americans are currently behind bars, with about four and a half million on parole or on probation. Another three million Americans are ex-convicts.

Did you know that the fall of Constantinople in 1453 played a major part in exposing one of history's greatest hoaxes? The particular hoax to which I am referring is the so-called "Donation of Constantine." This was a document that was used throughout the medieval period to explain and to justify the claims of the papacy in Rome to rule a temporal territory, and to have jurisdiction over churches scattered all over—from Alexandria, to Antioch, to Jerusalem, to Constantinople—and that gave them oversight of the lands in Judea, Greece, Asia, Thrice, Africa, Italy and the various islands. This "Donation of Constantine" was a document purportedly written by the Emperor Constantine the Great.

Not only does God talk about Jerusalem in the Bible, but many of the other cities and nations of the ancient world—their future—is described right in the pages of your own Bible. Now back in the same general time period when Jerusalem and Judah were reduced to captive parts of the Babylonian Empire, there was another great city state right on the Mediterranean. It was the city of Tyre. This was a city-state that had existed for centuries; it was a major commercial center. Tyre was part of a major commercial empire that included the entire Mediterranean world. The city of Carthage in North Africa had been founded as its colony.