Like it does from time to time while lurching toward the end of this troubled age, the world, prophetically speaking, seems to be pausing to catch its breath.

We’ve sometimes called it a “lull” because prophetic progression appears to be on hold. It’s kind of like in the south when a severe springtime storm is about to produce a big tornado. Everything gets eerily still.

What is actually happening, I’m told, is that the big super-cell thunderhead is sucking the surrounding atmosphere into its building vortex. All turns a greenish-yellow color and not a leaf is rustling.

One of the mistakes we who observe things on a global scale with regard to Bible prophecy make is to view things too much from our American perspective, I think. Things seem to be whirling around us, but the larger picture presents a different view.

You hear the rumbling and see the lightning flashing on the black horizon, but all is perfectly still, as if the complexion of the earth has taken on a sickly pallor. It seems that this humanistic system is holding its collective breath in somewhat of a perceived pause in these scary moments.

Presidential politics right now in the U.S., on the other hand, are anything but eerily calm. For example, the campaign rhetoric and vitriol are raw rough and tumble. Americans who see things through a strictly political prism believe this is a storm we are in–one that will determine where our world will be torn apart, depending upon who wins the presidency. The atmosphere is turbulent. We are in the midst of a terrible, national storm with the nation’s future at stake.

That might all be true, but on a global basis, thinking in terms of Bible prophecy, there seems to this eschatological weather observer to be an environment surrounding us with an ominous pallor that harbors far greater lethality. There portends within the building storm clouds far greater dangers than those given off by the political winds that are whipping us all into a frenzy here in America.

Internationally, the powers and principalities of Ephesians 6: 12 are working quietly behind the scenes. They are striving as hard as ever before to bring about that great, end-times tornado the Lord terms Tribulation.

One can sense, if spiritually attuned to the pre-storm goings-on, the very corruptive atmosphere of fallen man being drawn into the coming Tribulation vortex. Yet there seems to be for the moment an eerie calm, despite evidence everywhere one looks of brewing trouble.

The president of the United States is reportedly working with the United Nations to bring about a  two-state solution to the “Palestinian-Israeli problem” before he leaves office. Israel, itself, remains basically in a lull, while looking in every direction at a storm that is gathering against it. Russia and its headstrong president are making strange, unanticipated withdrawal gestures and movements in and around Syria and other entrant points to the Middle East. North Korea blusters ahead with nuclear and missile tests, actions intended to threaten it’s immediate neighbor, South Korea, and the rest of us as well. China builds islands in international waters then claims them as their territory, while building military bases upon the newly formed land to threaten anyone who dares question its intentions.

Iran continues to silently work on a nuclear program that it no doubt thinks will one day be used against the Great Satan and the little Satan–the U.S. and Israel.

The world’s building economic disaster expands by the hour like an embolism within the human brain. The silent bubble could erupt explosively at any time, bringing the global, financial catastrophe many fear.

Agents of the Father of Lies work feverishly and incessantly to implant within the fallen minds of mankind that Christianity is a viper’s nest of hatred. Just to our northern border, Canada’s supreme judicial body has ruled in a number of cases that biblical text can be construed as hate speech that must not and will not be tolerated. One pastor spent 10 years and more than $200,000 to finally get a reversal of such a charge against him. Americans would be foolish to assume that such a devilish invasion of evil jurisprudence isn’t in Satan’s plans for this nation. As a matter of fact, we’ve already  experienced such evil at some level. The cases involving the homosexual agenda and bakeries and flower shops that refuse to provide services for same-sex marriages come to mind.

All of the above and much more give evidence of the very atmosphere of liberty we have enjoyed since the country’s founding being sucked into the building thunderhead that will produce the greatest storm in human history.

While the world catches its breath, the  power of the storm continues to build. Satan seems as if he will have his way against all of humanity in this great destructive era that now rumbles upon earth’s angry horizon.

But, Jesus said:

These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world. (John 16:33)

The Lord promised the believer who is alive at the time this end-times storm threatens:

Because thou hast kept the word of my patience, I also will keep thee from the hour of temptation, which shall come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth. (Revelation 3:10)

It is altogether fitting and appropriate to echo the words of John the revelator: “Even so, come Lord Jesus” (Rev. 22:20b).