Mention has been made many times through opinion that goes something like this: Trump isn’t a godly person, yet neither was Nebuchadnezzar and other kings and leaders the Lord chose down through the centuries to do great things–to serve great purposes. So, God can use Donald Trump to accomplish what the Lord wants accomplished.

Considering the 180-degree course change this nation has embarked upon in this presidential election, it is, I believe, an understatement to say that God must be up to something big with the election of Donald J. Trump–that is, to something profound.

The abrupt turning away from advocating for the homosexual agenda and other forms of aberrant behavior, and toward championing protection of moral values and Judeo-Christian principles upon which the nation was founded, is amazing to say the least. No one would have imagined strongly, during the early days of the just past election season, that the Christian faith would so soon come under the protective hand of a presidential administration. Especially this was unthinkable because the previous administration adamantly embraced the Muslim faith in ways that baffled those not a part of the extreme political left.

That political left just mentioned has been completely driven to acting in maniacal ways by the Donald Trump victory. It is astounding that the fever-pitch of the enragement continues to build with each succeeding day Trump is in office.

Psychiatrists and psychologists who study mass hysteria conclude for the most part that such a level of rage is impossible to maintain over an extensive period of time. Yet we daily observe the opposite. The absolute furious, even lunatic, behavior continues and even grows over anything and everything that involves President Donald Trump.

Anyone who demonstrates the slightest support for this president has the political hounds of the netherworld descend upon their lives. It is astounding to witness. And, as often as not, it is somewhat amusing, so long as the insane rants are kept to the verbal and not the physical level such as the violence that took place in Berkley and surrounding other universities. The corporate world is infected and affected by the lunacy. CEOs, such as that of Starbucks, for example, climb eagerly onto the anti-Trump hate-wagon at the risk of alienating half their customer base or clientele. Amidst all the silliness, clothing designers refuse to design the new first lady’s clothing. The fashions produced by the president’s daughter are ripped from the fashion lines of clothiers.

In the halls of government, we have the likes of Democrat Senator Charles Schumer weeping on the Senate floor. He tells sobbingly how it breaks his heart that the few people are detained at the airports because of President Trump’s temporary ban of people coming in from the seven nations Schumer’s own Democrat President Obama put on the banned list several years ago. The senator, himself, wholeheartedly backed the banning of such entrants into America under Obama’s executive order.

We watch the Democrat committee members throw temper tantrums, refusing to attend the cabinet committee hearings and undertake other childish actions to hold up proceedings.

We listened to the attempted grilling of New England Patriot quarterback Tom Brady about why he was friend to President Trump. They ignored relevant football questions in anticipation of the upcoming Super Bowl and went for the jugular in order to, hopefully, score hate-filled political points, in my view.

But, all this theater, both entertaining and troubling to the process of our representative democracy–our republic– pales in comparison to the intrigues to be analyzed on the international level.

The new president’s breathtaking movement toward fulfilling campaign promises makes clear in my own thinking that the Lord of Heaven put Trump in place for developments that are going to stagger the world. Prophetic fulfillment –rather, preparation for the fulfillment of Bible prophecy– is, of course, much more significant than the just mentioned fulfillment of campaign promises.

We can, if attuned to God’s Word on the wind-up of the age, see things developing that, as I said, will stagger the world.

One example is the fact that the enemies of Israel who had curried favor with the Obama administration are dumbfounded that their position relative to having the favorable attention of the U.S. president has drastically and abruptly changed.

Speaking to Newsweek last week, Saeb Erekat, go-between for PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas in dealing with both Israel and the U.S. found a totally different relationship is now in effect.

Indicating the PLO is almost in panic, he said, “I don’t know any of them [Trump’s advisers]. We have sent them letters, written messages. They don’t even bother to respond to us.”

Trump is at the same time apparently considering movement of the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem –a thing that many say will cause an immediate Islamist uprising. The president, additionally, has installed a thoroughly pro-Israel ambassador within the U.N. and has reached out warmly to Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Third only to the change in attitude toward Christianity and return to constitutional sanity and the 180 degree turn around on treatment of Israel, are the actions President Trump is undertaking toward restoring America as leader of the free world.

Trump’s geopolitical and fiscal aggressiveness thus far shown is affecting global alliances militarily. The new president’s actions are having profound effects on the world economy.

My own thinking on all of this causes wonder over whether we might be seeing a specific stage-setting given by Jesus, Himself.  Again, that prophecy is found in Matthew 24: 36-42 and Luke 17: 26-30. The question: Are we on the verge of witnessing an economic boom, in the midst of which the Rapture of the Church will occur?

Something big is up. One can sense it in one’s spiritual bones. God has Trump here and at this time for some great purpose.

Six days into the presidency of Donald J. Trump, the humanistic gurus of the community known as the” Atomic Scientists” raised a ruckus. They lamented that we are within two and a half minutes of nuclear midnight. This is supposed to mean that global catastrophe is closer, perhaps, than it has ever been.

The atomic scientists’ perception as the unthinking–bumbling, or perhaps deliberate evil–of the new president make the doomsday clock time-setters nervous indeed.

Their joint declaration states, “Both his statements and his actions as president-elect have broken with historical precedent in unsettling ways. He has made ill-considered comments about expanding the U.S. nuclear arsenal. He has shown a troubling propensity to discount or outright reject expert advice related to international security, including the conclusions of intelligence experts. And his nominees to head the Energy Department and the Environmental Protection Agency dispute the basics of climate science.”

I have written in these commentaries for many months that the globalists’ key rallying point for trying to bring about the new world order they seek has been global warming. It is now called climate change. The luciferian rant is ratcheting up in every aspect of geopolitical atmospherics. However, we can expect, I have absolutely no doubt, an even more massive uptick in the assault. Climate change will be the spear tip of the campaign against God’s order of things as we move deeper into this administration.

The scientists in question collectively issued the accusation–highly disturbing in their view- that Trump, during the presidential campaign, talked about the need to increase and upgrade nuclear weapons capability. At the same time, they ranted that he spoke against their and the general, scientific community’s overwhelming consensus that climate change poses a threat beyond any other to the well-being of the planet.

All the while they’ve said nothing of former President Obama’s trying to anger Russia’s Vladimir Putin in the last months of the Obama administration–a thing that gave Putin fodder to proclaim the need to further increase the Russian nuclear arsenal.

Like in every other instance of hypocritical treatment by media and by the humanistic, scientific community, Obama gets a pass, while their collective ire descends full force on the one who defeated them in the American electoral process.

They ignored that international relations have deteriorated dangerously during the Obama years, rather noted fawningly that the former president in 2010 called for a nuclear-free world.

At the same time, they pointed out angrily their convoluted and quasi-accurate assessment that Trump suggested South Korea and Japan might consider developing nuclear weapons since North Korea and even China represent growing threats. They berated Trump and his six-day-old administration for having no “firm plans” to extend the controversial “Iran nuclear deal.”

The doomsdayers further castigated Trump and laid out their great fear his winning the American presidency has wrought.

“The political situation in the United States is of particular concern. The Trump transition team has put forward candidates for cabinet-level positions (especially at the Environmental Protection Agency and Energy Department) who foreshadow the possibility that the new administration will be openly hostile to progress toward even the most modest efforts to avert catastrophic climate disruption.”

Please believe me. This is not the last we will hear of the climate change madness.

Those of the “million woman march” and the “if- it-feels-good-do-it” crowd lost their “political fast-track to succeeding” they were previously on. These, as we have witnessed, are furious to the point of displaying mental instability. But, the globalists elite of this world, working to bring in Antichrist’s regime–even if unknowingly–are exceedingly more angry and determined that this president will be removed by hook or crook.

We already hear the volume increase on talk of impeaching him. There are more than mere hints that a coup d’état are in the wishful thinking of the angriest of the nation’s power brokers.

It does not, nor should it, surprise, that this level of rebellion is raising its ugly, serpent-like head. We only have to go to the great book of Revelation to understand the extremes to which fallen man will go when they don’t get their way.

There will be a rebellion of the most horrific magnitude ever at the end of the Millennium–the thousand-year reign of Jesus Christ. This uprising will occur, we are told through prophecy, after the rule of the only perfect Ruler in all of human history.

And, this gets us back to the Doomsday Clock scientists’ forewarning of Trump causing the destruction of the earth because of his declaring as lunacy their climate change mantra. Well, maybe it’s I–not Trump–who call it lunacy, but he adamantly opposes it–and them nonetheless.

The fact that Revelation 20:7-9 tells us there will be this last, satanically led rebellion in an attempt to dethrone the Creator of all things lets us know that there will still be a planet earth, despite President Donald Trump, and even seven years of Tribulation.

Also, it proves, in my estimation, the lunacy of the doomsdayers’ diatribe.

Questions pour in these days from those who have consistently read these commentaries over the years. Although the questions are all phrased differently to one extent or the other, the tone and thrust are the same. Those who are serious students of Bible prophecy –particularly from the pre-Trib perspective– view geopolitical matters taking place at present as profoundly significant. They see the red, flashing lights of alert.

“What do you think this means?” The queries most all ask this in one form or another. Developments last week in Paris, France stirs intensive interest among those who observe the times in light of Bible prophecy. Israel being at the heart of the matters involved generates the inquiries I receive almost hourly.

I am in complete agreement with those who email me. Things transpiring at the moment is like seeing the flashing, red lights at train-tracks you might be about to cross. Imminent danger exists. –Time to pay close attention!

Seventy-two nations –most overtly antagonistic to Israel– gathered during the past, inaugural week, ostensibly to determine the Jewish nation’s fate. Their intent, in the opinion of many who are observant Bible prophecy students, was to force Israel into giving up all claims to the land upon which the nation resides.

Intervention by the incoming Trump Administration seems to have preempted full implementation of the anti-Israel agenda. Great Britain also added its conference-dampening input.

Israel, with its constant vigilance against ever-present attempts to destroy the nation reportedly has managed to thwart much of its U.N. enemy efforts in the Paris conference matter.

United Nations globalists’ agenda, under the Resolution 2334 rubric they want to establish, is to declare Israel an occupier –the oppressor of the Palestinians who –the Israel antagonists say– have legitimate claim to the land.

While angry losers in America’s presidential election continue to sniffle and sob, and in some cases rage, that Donald J. Trump is illegitimate occupier of Obama’s White House, the U.N. Israel haters go through their own sort of whining and moaning. We have been witness to a constant diatribe of last days antics, orchestrated by Satan himself, I’m convinced, in order to try to rearrange the geopolitical and socio-economic landscape. Pope Francis, in meeting with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, intruding into the Israeli-Palestinian land for peace thrust by the U.N., also, I believe, made observable Satan’s hand being inserted into the religious arena in his attempt to set the international stage for Antichrist’s eventual rule.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the Paris peace conference, devised by the Palestinian Authority and hosted by France, a “fraud.” He said the conference was “anti-Israel.” He warned the phony summit “will further lead to the adoption of anti-Israel positions.” Critics of the so-called Paris summit for peace between Israel and the Palestinians say that the conference and U.N. R2334 constituted an effort to lock Israel into the borders as they were in 1949. A document produced as a result of the meetings might, it was feared, have meant that Israel would have no claim to the Temple Mount, Mount Olivet, and all other of the sites revered as holy by Jews and Christians. Such a document would, it was thought, be designed to give the territory to the new Palestinian state if the so-called two-state solution comes to fruition. Representatives of Israel weren’t part of the conference. Netanyahu has vowed to ignore anything coming out of the “summit.” It remains to be seen what will be the ramifications of this attempted globalist grab in Middle East power politics.

Immediately upon release of information about R2334, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry made his now infamous, obviously anti-Israel statement as part of his speech. Kerry said that Israel could be either Jewish or Democratic, it cannot be both.

The Trump Administration will undoubtedly have much to say in changing America’s course as stated by Kerry. However, the secretary of state’s utterly audacious declaration thus laid out for the world to see the fact that the Obama Administration views Israel as an oppressive regime intent upon treating Palestinians cruelly if the Jewish state doesn’t go along with allowing the Palestinians all they want and deserve.

Ignoring all the atrocities and terrorism spawned on a daily basis by enemies who are vowed that they will destroy Israel, Kerry went on to imply America would recommend punitive repercussions for Israel’s refusal to make peace under terms of the Paris meetings. Even though the conference in France seems to have been neutralized in large part, such statements by America’s (now former) top representative on the world diplomatic stage raises red flags –and sets those red lights flashing to be sure. The thoughts of students of Bible prophecy immediately go to Genesis chapter 12 about those who bless Israel and those who curse Israel. The cogitations carom around within the spiritually-attuned gray matter. Zechariah chapter 12 and 14 and Joel 3:2 and many other prophetic passages involving God’s pronouncements about Israel at the end of the age leap at us. The red lights flash brightly. There are no more powerful signals to be found in Scripture on the nearness of Christ’s return at Armageddon following the seven-year Tribulation period.

We know, according to God’s Word, too, that Christ will call all believers into Heaven at least seven years before His Second Advent at the time of Armageddon.

Israel, the false peace process –all nations turned against God’s chosen nation –these are flashing, red lights to be sure.

However, my sense is that like the Lord’s obvious Intervention into so much of the globalist agenda, for the moment, God’s mighty hand has again intervened in this matter of the deck being stacked in favor of the Palestinians against God’s chosen people.

Russian/American relations are front and center in the news at the moment of this new year’s dawning. Conflicting approaches to these relations are also very much in the headlines.

The outgoing Obama administration, it is offered for public consumption, wants Russia punished for hacking into the presidential election process. The incoming Trump administration, mainstream news purveyors put forth, wants to cozy up to Russia and its President Vladimir Putin, because Mr. Trump is–they claim–Mr. Putin’s pal. The perception they want to create is that Trump doesn’t trust U.S. intelligence sources who, according to the mainstreamers, all agree that Russia hacked into the Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails, etc.–thus in order to help Donald Trump get elected.

Fact is, however, all the U.S. intelligence services aren’t in complete agreement. They neither are of consensus opinion that Russia did the cyber-hacking, nor that Putin’s intention was to help Trump’s election effort. But, as we all know, the facts have little to do with mainstream reporting within today’s reality. The president-elect has embraced many of President Ronald Reagan’s thoughts, particularly with regard to Russia–in Mr. Reagan’s case, the Soviet Union. “Trust but verify” was perhaps the most famous statement/position stated by Reagan that best frames his position in dealing with the Soviets.

Reagan signed the Intermediate range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev on December 8, 1987. He used the phrase “trust but verify” to explain the in-depth procedures that would be in place to make certain the treaty stayed on the up and up.

The statement was from the Russian proverb Doveryai, no proveryai, taught him by a Russian translator in preparation for the meetings with Gorbachev. This requirement for dealing with the Russians will be highly necessary when Trump takes the oath on January 20. It is a precautionary thought that hasn’t been followed by Barack Obama for the last eight years and the present state of disarray with regard to the cyber-hacking hubbub proves the statement’s worth. Besides Israel, there is no more relevant nation than Russia in view for Bible prophecy yet to unfold. Let’s pray that some within the new president’s close circle of advisers can add prophetic understanding in Mr. Trump’s dealing with the Russians.

With that trust-but-verify relationship between America and Russia as a foundational premise for the further thoughts I hope to present, I would like to get into the reasons the title of this commentary has Mr. Reagan’s statement reversed–“verify but trust.”

I wish to try to apply this reversal to the personal relationship each of us–you and I–has with our Lord.

If you might indulge me for a brief time, I will, in order to hopefully make the point I wish to convey, reveal a small bit of relational goings-on in my own life at present. Realization of what all is involved in those goings-on completely escaped me until I began thinking on and praying about this commentary. The Holy Spirit was clear and to the point in whispering to my own, more often than not dull-of-hearing spiritual ears.

When the epiphany struck, it was so obvious that its simplicity sort of stunned me. My uncomfortable relationship of the moment with the uncertainties of life wasn’t mere chance. It involved the things I have believed–have taught and written about most all of my Christian life.

My wife, Margaret, had just had a car accident. It was one in which only she was involved, but it was a bad one, so far as the damage done to the car was concerned. Thankfully, Margaret had only her heel badly fractured as a result of the big sedan rolling over and ending right side up.

The state police officer who worked the wreck said it could have easily been a deadly accident. The car was totaled. So, needless to say, we are grateful to the Lord for His protection–and to the car manufacturer for the sixteen air bags that deployed during the violent rollover.

However, I’ve nevertheless been lamenting ever since that accident that happened on the Monday leading up to Christmas. Poor me. I’ve been so inconvenienced by it all. Christmas this year was, in my commercially minded self-centeredness, a disaster. Plus, I’ve been called into service as caregiver for Miss Margaret–and me a poor, old, blind guy.

The epiphany, that hit just this morning, is that this was no accident in the purest sense. This was a faith- and character-tester–to my own life, at least. It was a test to see how I would react to an occurrence allowed, not caused, by the Lord. His only involvement in the accident itself was that of protecting Margaret’s life. What part Satan and his minions had in it, I have no way of assessing. I failed the test miserably, dwelling only on how deleteriously it affected my daily routine–which I do not under any circumstance want to be disrupted.

Well, that routine is continuing to be disrupted. I still don’t like it, but the Lord has most assuredly spoken to me and let me know that it is sinful indulgence to expect the world to revolve around one’s self.

I would hope that from this point forward, for however much time I’m allowed in this life, I would–after this lesson–at the very outset of life’s such disruptions, understand the spiritual implications. I hope that I will immediately verify in my spiritual understanding that nothing happens in the believer’s life in which our Lord is not intimately interested. We do not believe in and serve an existential God. Then, I would hope that I would always apply this primary “trust” Scripture to my life: “Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths” (Proverbs 3:5-6).

Verify but trust. That’s my prayerful New Year’s wish for you as well when you face life’s sometimes unpleasant surprises.

One can sense prophetic movement afoot within this presidential election cycle. The globalist agenda, as mentioned a number of times in these commentaries, seems to have been put on hold, or at least slowed.

That is not to say that the forces wanting to set the stage for Antichrist’s rise to power–unwittingly no doubt in most cases–have by any means given up on their agenda. But, in America, for the moment, the people’s decision to put this particular man in the most powerful office on earth appears to have erected a wall of opposition.

It is God, Himself, who in actuality has put Trump in the office of U.S. president, just as He allows any potentate, prince, or president to come to power.

With this in mind, it is most interesting to consider developments as offshoots of this particular election–thus in light of the coalescing of prophetic indicators the issues and events of these times have wrought.

One such indicator I’ve written about previously that has potential prophetic overtones in my estimation is the possibility of a coming economic boom. This is the trend in every direction one looks in consideration of the financial markets of late. Most every indicator leading up to this election year pointed to dire outcomes in America and the world regarding economic prospects. Europe and much of the rest of the world continue to be steeped in dire such predictions. The United States prospects, however, are looking brighter and brighter as the inauguration of Donald J. Trump approaches.

I’m not deluded–nor should you be–that all is well. It isn’t. But, a boom, I believe, was prophesied by the Lord Jesus Himself. It will be a time of buying, selling, building, marrying, planting, and doing all the things that say good times are here again.

Jesus said as recorded in Matthew 24:36-42 and Luke 17:26-30 that times will be booming economically at the time judgment will fall. Anytime the Lord prophesied–such as in His Olivet Discourse foretelling–the things He foretold announced an especially accelerated or more pronounced state than normal circumstance would indicate. When He said people will be buying, selling, building, etc., “like in the days of Lot,” He was, I’m convinced, predicting a boom in wealth, etc.–i.e., economic circumstance well beyond business as usual.

We see, at this present hour, a movement into economic boom times for this nation. Trump is an acknowledged business whiz, and the financial markets almost without exception give indication they have confidence he will “make America great again”–at least economically speaking.

This optimism of the money changers of Wall Street and other echelons of fiscal power inspired me to meander a bit through the Revelation chapter 18 prophecy in which the entity known as Babylon the Great is described. The ruminating in my mind raises the question, despite the longstanding seminary declaration that this entity will rise from the geographical area of ancient Babylon. Is it possible the prophecy might involve the United States of America?

I’m not saying it will be thus–just that it is legitimate to raise the question. I’m aware that great theologically prophetic minds–some belonging to dear friends–say there is no such possibility.

Another such prophetic indicator flowing from this presidential election–the subject of this essay–is the matter of the president-elect’s promise to move the American embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Actually, candidate Trump long ago made this declaration during many stump speeches. It is more than noteworthy, therefore, that his selection to be ambassador to Israel has at the center of his thinking the move of the American embassy from where it now sits in Tel Aviv to–you guessed it–Jerusalem.

Trump’s choice, David Friedman, an orthodox Jew, has stated that he looks forward to serving as ambassador to Israel at “the US embassy in Israel’s eternal capital, Jerusalem.”

Former Republican National Committee chairman and now President-Elect Donald Trump’s chief of staff, Reince Priebus, was told in an interview on the December 18, 2016 FOX News Sunday program by Chris Wallace, the show’s host, that Freidman has said he is against the two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. This, Wallace indicated, is against the international community’s determination to make such a “solution” part of a peace deal. The upshot of Wallace’s thought was that this is going to be a highly controversial stand by Friedman and Trump. This, it was implied, will prevent the peace from eventuating, which the globalists want to impose upon Israel and the region.

Zechariah’s prophecy might here come into play as we look forward to the coming months of the Trump presidency. The establishment of America’s embassy in Jerusalem, thus making recognition of that most controversial city on earth as Israel’s capital ironclad, will almost certainly both drive the Arab-Islamists of the region into a frenzy and cause massive diplomatic headaches for the globalist, international community sort.

The burden of the word of the LORD for Israel, saith the LORD, which stretcheth forth the heavens, and layeth the foundation of the earth, and formeth the spirit of man within him. Behold, I will make Jerusalem a cup of trembling unto all the people round about, when they shall be in the siege both against Judah and against Jerusalem.

And in that day will I make Jerusalem a burdensome stone for all people: all that burden themselves with it shall be cut in pieces, though all the people of the earth be gathered together against it. (Zechariah 12:1-3)

Like in the prophecy involving Jesus’ days of Noah, days of Lot foretelling, Zechariah’s prophecy regarding Jerusalem looks to be forming. Stay tuned…

My practice each week before beginning to think seriously on the next week’s commentary for this column is to pray for guidance from on high. This week’s essay, I sensed, would require especially intensive beseeching in order to receive direction toward the commentary leading up to Christmas Day. Just the opposite turned out to be the case.

An idea of what the topic should be came almost instantly upon my beginning to think on the matter. Next, within less than an hour into the process, came a message through email that validated beyond any doubt that the topic was chosen from above.

The email was from a regular family member of our website, raptureready.com. Her words were verification that the thought for the Christmas message to be delivered wasn’t mine, but from the One who sent that first Christmas message two millennia ago. I quickly dashed off an email-note thanking her.

I again thank her here and will include some of her words from her most timely cyber message to me.

As many who read these commentaries will know, my articles of late have involved the lead-up to and reporting of presidential election 2016. I view that election, I think I made clear, as being intervention by the Lord–and this for several reasons.

His intervention was to, I believe, answer the prayers of His people who are called by His name, in accordance with 2 Chronicles 7: 14. His response was to begin to turn around the quick slide into the abyss of total moral decay. His action was to stop this nation’s almost certain march to globalism, which, I’m convinced, the losing candidate would have put on an even faster track than America was on, should she have been elected president.

I likened the intervention in the matter of globalism to God’s erecting a wall even more profound than the wall the president-elect has promised to put along America’s southern border. For now, at least, America, apparently, will have a wall of sorts–a return to the constitutional concept of sovereignty and nationhood intended by the founding fathers.

That constitutional concept was formed by Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Franklin, and all the rest, based upon their strong belief in adherence to Judeo-Christian principles found in the Bible. This, the new world order architects cannot abide. Religion, they rant, is the bane of progressive thought and action. These most often champion the Utopian dream fostered by Karl Marx, who wrote: “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.”

The globalists elite who hate religion and despise Christianity in particular see Communism as the route to Utopia. If only they could have their blueprint for their version of socialism put fully into production, they would create heaven on earth. These have come to embrace fanatically their own version of religion. It is called “environmentalism.”

They were, until recently, calling it global warming. The scientific sophistry behind their claim came to light through exposure to the facts, so they changed the core of their religion to “climate change.”

These are of the save-the-earth cult which holds that man is destroying Mother Earth. Therefore, the globalists elite–the high priests of their religion–must see to it that all nations, all peoples, must be brought under their regulation–else we will all drown beneath the overflowing oceans because of icecap melting, etc. Greenhouse gases and carbon emissions and all of that are produced by evil Western mankind in particular and must be governed. They–the global elitists–of course, are the only ones who can thus save the world.

Pope Francis and some within the Catholic Church have wholeheartedly joined this save-the-earth cult to add their version of religious input. The following excerpted article explains:

Catholic Online reports that new priests will be expected to be familiar with and promote efforts to reduce carbon emissions…

The Church has a responsibility to care for people, and the environment. And care for one is also care for the other…

The new guidelines suggest that in the future, priests will also have a good grasp of the global climate change problem and will share this with their congregation…

It must be said that some committed and prayerful Christians, with the excuse of realism and pragmatism, tend to ridicule expressions of concern for the environment. Others are passive; they choose not to change their habits and thus become inconsistent. So what they all need is an ‘ecological conversion’, whereby the effects of their encounter with Jesus Christ become evidence in their relationship with the world around them. Living our vocation to be protectors of God’s handiwork is essential to a life of virtue; it is not an optional or a secondary aspect of our Christian experience. Therefore, it will be necessary for future priests to be highly sensitive to this theme and, through the requisite Magisterial and theological guidance, helped to “acknowledge the appeal, immensity and urgency of the challenge we face. (Source: Catholic Church: New Priests Will be Expected to Preach Global Warming, Guest essay by Eric Worrall, http://www.clerus.va/content/dam/clerus/Ratio%20Fundamentalis/The%20Gift%20of%20the%20Priestly%20Vocation.pdf)

There has been little reaching out by this pope since he replaced Pope Benedict to proclaim that conversion must be made to belief in Jesus Christ in order to save the souls of people of earth. But the cry at present goes out in every direction that conversion to the dogma of ecological sophistry must be instituted and enforced to save all people everywhere.

With regard to the Luciferian religion called climate change, the words of my emailer say it plainly.

“No matter how much humans try to ‘improve’ on God’s plans, He has the last say. He allows us to experiment but then, rightly shows us that His way is the best way. No matter how much humans try to wreck Planet Earth, God always has the upper (and healing) hand.

The world belongs to God. His Creation. Wonderfully and perfectly made. There is no way He is going to allow some spiritually backward, egocentric lunatic, [to] ruin what He set up. For the RC [Roman Catholic] church to actually believe that they will influence or make a difference to what is happening to planet earth is spiritual ignorance of the highest order. They are implying that action from man can fix stuff. That they (the RC church) are running things. Astonishing!”

Let me be clear in saying that I’m fully aware and agree that we are expected, as Christians, to be good stewards of the earth. However, we are not to worship the earth and make that worship the means of our salvation.

It is the reverse of the true Christmas story that we are witnessing as Christmas approaches. Globalism preaches that it is up to man to save himself by saving the planet.

Like Lucifer told Eve, we are destined to become our own gods. We are to save the world, totally apart from any deity, except, of course, for the gods–he elite–of the globalist agenda.

But the truth of the Christmas story simply, powerfully and wonderfully tells all who will listen–and believe.

“For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved” (John 3:17).

Everyone who has access to any news outlet these days is familiar with the wall mentioned hundreds of times by Donald Trump throughout the presidential campaign season. Now president-elect Trump continues to proclaim that he will build a wall on America’s southern border.  

That highly controversial proposed wall involves Mr. Trump’s promise to keep illegal would-be immigrants from entering the United States. Those who support building of such a wall obviously believe this will prevent potential terrorists from entering the country en masse, as they fear is happening presently.

A physical structure of the nature described by some will be a massive and expensive undertaking to be sure, as I perceive the project as proposed. It is to be constructed in order to keep American citizens safe.

There is a wall of another sort I would like to think on for a bit. This is a structure that also involves keeping America safe. However, it is a wall not of physical materials as in the case of the one proposed to stand between America and Mexico. I’m referring to the barrier that has suddenly appeared with this presidential election. Again, it is not a physical wall, but one that is made of much sterner stuff–as Shakespeare’s Mark Antony might put it.

Globalism’s growing invasion into the American way of life has been marching all but unchecked for at least two decades. Its force of movement into all strata of life has increased dramatically during the administration of Barack Obama over these past eight years.

Globalism’s threat is greater than just the hordes of illegals from the south–those illegals being but one ingredient within the globalist elite’s plans of action: to bring America into configuration with new world order as they envision it. The danger implied stretches across the broad spectrum of culture and society of our nation.

The inculcation has been a long time in process. The youth of America in particular have been dumbed-down to the point that they know little of truth about the country’s founding principles.

The churches of America have not, since the days of the Moral Majority efforts, resisted the globalist drive to take the nation as far away from God’s influence as possible. The godless teaching of the corrupted and corruptive educational system from K through the doctorate programs has convinced many that there must be a separation of church and state. That demand has come down, finally, to governmental dictate–approved by the Supreme Court–that opposition to social matters perceived as anti-biblical must be confined to the sanctuaries.

Just as the president-elect plans to put up that wall to stem the physical flow of illegals in to America, there has suddenly been erected an even more spectacular wall.

It is a spiritual wall, as I view it. God, Himself, has put it up for His own good purposes. It is, almost certainly in part, a wall to stop the globalist invaders from continuing to move the United States farther along the pathway toward the new world order being prepared for Antichrist and his regime of horror. I wrote the following in my commentary that immediately preceded the November 8 presidential election.

Although the nucleus of God’s people who hold fast to the Heavenly Father’s precepts and promises might be a dwindling number, we are still here in the hundreds of thousands, if not millions. We are engaged in this prayer war for a restoration of sanity in America’s government, society and culture.

We are praying specifically that the evil forces that are raging to make this nation into a state totally apart from all godliness will be, at least on an interim basis, kept from their Luciferian goal.

I say “on an interim basis,” because Bible prophecy plainly foretells that the satanic, globalist forces will for a time one day achieve establishment of a one-world order as Antichrist’s platform of power. It will happen. It’s just a matter of time.

Meantime, however, while the church of Jesus Christ is here, thus the Restrainer (the Holy Spirit) resident within that body holding back evil, it is right and proper–and I believe expected–that God’s people, called by His name, are to pray the prayer of 2 Chronicles 7:14.

God has erected this wall in answer to the prayers of His people. Yet, only He knows the purposes in full. One reason, I sense, is to give the true church (all born-again believers) time and room to carry out the Great Commission. At the same time, as I’ve written previously, this wall seems to offer hope of a brighter economic future. The free enterprise forces seem to be saying this with their optimism.

But, this, if it does eventuate, makes these days just ahead precisely like the time predicted when Christ will next catastrophically intervene into the affairs of mankind.

Jesus indicated, as recorded in Matthew 24:36-42 and Luke 17:26-30 that business will be good–even perhaps booming–at the time He next intervenes. This will be the Rapture of the church.

There is one more wall I wish to touch on in this essay–the wall that separates lost mankind from God and Heaven in eternity. The wall is made of the awful, soul-killing matter called sin. Man himself constructed this wall with his disobedience in the Garden of Eden. This wall keeps all of the lost of mankind from entering into God’s Kingdom. They are aliens who cannot go through that great barrier.

But, God has provided a Gate in that great wall of separation. It is a narrow gate that leads to salvation, the Scripture tells us.

Jesus put it this way: “I am the door: if by me any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture” (John 10:9).

I believe the reason God has constructed this wall against globalism is primarily to provide time and opportunity to get out this message that Jesus is the only way to salvation. Let us who are called by His Holy Name do our utmost for His Highest in honoring Him for allowing this reprieve.

We are moving into stranger and stranger times, I sense from consideration of recent developments. Chief among those developments is the most obvious–the election of the candidate thought to have no chance at all just a few months previous. Yet here he is, poised to Make America Great Again–as his presidential campaign slogan would have it.

This being the case, I would ask that you indulge me just a bit, as I would like to construct a scenario or two based as much in biblically prophetic truth as in fictional cogitation. 

That America has been forced toward movement into the globalist mold over the past several decades is without question in my view. This has especially been the case during the past eight years of the Obama administration. The nation’s sovereignty has been in process of usurpation by the new world order builders through a series of quasi-legitimate executive orders.

It is more than obvious, to me at least, that the United States was moving along an seemingly unalterable course dictated by the globalists’ agenda. This presidential election didn’t just slow that movement; it halted it in its tracks. The president-elect is an avowed antiglobalist. He views America not as the hegemonic superpower that must be brought down to third-world status, its wealth redistributed in order to create some insanely conceived socialistic Utopia, but as beneficent leader of a world of autonomous nations.

My idea isn’t to sing the praises of the future president. He is merely a man who has been thrust into the end-times picture for God’s own great purpose. My thinking here is to explore and examine a bit the possibilities that purpose might include.

Thus we come to the title of this commentary: “The A B C Questions.”

I watch with great interest the uptick in the world’s fiscal markets as  the wizards of finance contemplate changes taking place in our country. The records being set in the stock markets, etc., move in synchronization with the strangeness of this election. The whole matter, to my way of thinking, generates questions involving Bible prophecy potentiality.

My questions and ruminations follow.

Question A

AMERICA–Is this nation, rather than being on the brink of imploding economically as most prophecy students thought before this election, now about to enter a time of, perhaps, unprecedented financial boom?

Most who have been responsible for making profit within the private sector know and lament that regulations coming out of the current presidential administration have been deadly to business development. Mr. Obama, himself, has boasted that he has “a pen and a phone”–meaning that he could and would bypass Congress to accomplish what he wanted done. This he has done prolifically. His use of his pen and phone have been particularly ruinous to the free enterprise system in this nation.

Increased taxation, added to the regulatory edicts, have resulted in horrendous job losses because of business down-sizings and closings. The nation seemed poised to go much deeper into the economic abyss. The election of Donald J. Trump, a highly successful business mogul, seems to have suddenly turned things around with promises to roll back taxes and regulations and to introduce a plethora of innovations.

The financial markets are apparently buying the promises, and the uptick in the stratospheric of economic anticipation shows it.

All of this just doesn’t fit the thinking of observers of Bible prophecy. Most seem to look for America to succumb to the forces of globalism. And, as stated before, the nation was certainly headed in that direction prior to this election.

So, it is reasonable to ask whether the United States of America might be headed into another great economic boom instead of descending into depression as feared just weeks ago. This conjecture brings forth another most interesting question.

Question B

BABYLON–Could we now be witness to the beginnings of the creation of the prophetic entity termed “Babylon the Great”?

Revelation chapter 18 presents a stunning portrait of the greatest human commercial entity of all of history. This nation and city is prophesied to dominate all the earth with its commerce and debaucheries. Here’s what is said of this city-state called “Babylon the Great”:

For all nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies. (Revelation 18:3)

This Babylonian system will be destroyed in one hour, God’s Word tells us. It will be a much-deserved judgment. All the world will mourn this destruction.

And the kings of the earth, who have committed fornication and lived deliciously with her, shall bewail her, and lament for her, when they shall see the smoke of her burning, Standing afar off for the fear of her torment, saying, Alas, alas, that great city Babylon, that mighty city! for in one hour is thy judgment come. And the merchants of the earth shall weep and mourn over her; for no man buyeth their merchandise any more. (Revelation 18:9-11)

Here you will, I hope, indulge my postulations a bit. If this generation is at the very end of he Age of Grace (Church Age) as most who are well-versed in Bible prophecy from the pre-Trib view believe, there is but one entity on the stage of history that could possibly be seen as doing business in such a mighty way as described in this prophecy.

For there to develop from the ground up such a commercial power, it would take decades, not just seven, or even twenty years. America, if there was a massive jinning up of enterprise, could possibly reach such heights of interaction with the rest of the world in a matter of a year or two. There is simply no nation on the planet that has ever been so materially blessed as the USA. There is no other city on planet earth that has the commercial outreach and influence as New York City.

Seeing as how the timeline seems to be a major factor in this prophecy–this destruction of Babylon the Great taking place within the seven-year Tribulation–we can legitimately ask, I think: Is America to develop into that judgment-bound entity?

Perhaps we might get a clue if the optimistic outlook of the current stock market elites plays out as they, at least at this moment, anticipate.

Question C

CHRISTIANITY —Is Christianity about to experience a Great Awakening like in times past?

I have been hearing for years now preachers and others saying that there will be a great revival before the Rapture. Some of those who don’t hold that there is a Rapture coming also say there will be another Great Awakening, as in times past.

I’ve never held that belief, I must say. However, the strange turn of events–with the anti-God forces of the left and the globalists’ ravenous desire to gobble up the United States being suddenly halted–or so it seems–one has to question” why?”.

Could we be about to experience a final outpouring of God’s great mercy in the form of the true church carrying out the Great Commission in a Holy Spirit directed outburst of supernatural witness?

Listening to the “experts” thinking aloud on what this election means is exercise in frustration, if not futility. The talking heads across the cable and broadcast spectrum attribute Donald Trump’s win to everything from the late FBI turn of events to news media’s biased poll-taking and misreading of exit polling. These throw in that those in charge of the losing campaign just didn’t understand the people of middle America. They didn’t see the people’s pent-up rage against the Washington establishment–the D.C. insiders.

All of these elements no doubt contributed to this election–as many of the pundits put it–eventuating in a totally unexpected outcome. But, it is the never-mentioned aspect of this election dynamic that is frustrating to me as a Christian. It is this that produces a sense of futility.

No one in media is talking about the 81% – 84% (depending upon the figure you accept) of “evangelicals” who turned out in this election. Christian participation just isn’t figured in at the highest levels of broadcast and cable punditry.

This means, to me, that the experts believe this election had nothing to do with our being fed up with the social debauchery and degradation that has been taking place, particularly over the past almost eight years. The homosexual, transsexual, same-sex marriage agenda, with mandated same-sex, multiple-occupancy public restrooms, had no influence on the voting this election year, the experts are saying with their silence. We, the voters–who are Christians and came out in numbers that have not been seen in many elections–apparently weren’t (according to the pundits) making a statement that we are fed up with our White House being bathed in rainbow colors emblematic of the homosexual lobby. We aren’t sick and tired of having the homosexual rainbow flag flown atop that same American presidential edifice, is the message of the pundits’ silence.

This electoral landslide against the candidate and party that have crammed down America’s throat all of this hellishness–mostly through presidential, executive order-fiat–had nothing to do with the social issues, I guess we are to take away from this silence.

That we are disgusted with small bakery owners being publicly humiliated and fined for refusing to bake same-sex wedding cakes obviously isn’t considered worth mentioning in the analysis of this election results. The absolute horrors and atrocities that we learned about involving Planned Parenthood and the selling of human baby body parts didn’t, in the thinking of the post-election, political analysts, figure in our collective voting statement.

It was all about terrorism, wallet issues, and building back America’s defense, while determining to “drain the swamp.”

These were all important issues in my own thinking, as in the thinking of many other Christians, while election day approached. But, in addition to stopping a further tearing down of America’s founding structure, I wanted–and continue to want–a government that will stop the anti-godliness, down the road of which the administration of the last eight years has deliberately moved this nation.

As expressed previously in these commentaries, it was God’s people praying the prayer of 2 Chronicles 7:14 that turned this election so dramatically. This is the answer the pundits are seeking when they ask incessantly about what happened that the news media types missed. How could this election have turned out so differently than expected right up until 9 p.m. EST Tuesday, November 8?

The fact is that the throne room of Heaven was deluged day and night with God’s people imploring Him for mercy–asking that He hear from Heaven and answer our prayers. This, of course required repentance–not of America’s population, but of God’s people. It is more than obvious that He did hear and answered in a spectacular way. God cannot lie, and He promised He would answer such prayer–uttered under biblically prerequisite conditions.

Now, the question is: Will we who are called by His name continue to pray and to follow up on those prerequisite conditions? How we respond will determine how our nation–and our lives–fare over the coming days, months, and, perhaps, years.

We have proof that our Lord answers prayers in a spectacular way. The pundits will never see it, but we who did and are doing the praying certainly understand.

We can further understand God’s influence in this election by the truly Christian people He has placed among the soon-incoming power elite.

So, in this pre-Tribulation time, we have a window of opportunity to honor our Lord’s merciful answer in giving us a leadership that promises a return to founding principles. Along with that merciful action, it is also obvious that we have been given a course-correction, a return to the moral pathway–out of the depravity foisted on us in recent years.

We don’t have to wonder about how to honor His mercy and kindness in having answered our prayers. His number-one priority has always been and will always be the salvation of souls. We are expected to honor His decision to give America a reprieve–I have no doubt–in order to, first and foremost, lift Jesus Christ so that the Holy Spirit draws all to Christ for salvation.

Just beneath that all-important mission for God’s people in America is to let the pastors of our churches know that the true, Christ-believing bodies of worship should be devoted to teaching and preaching truth. That is, we are now, more than ever, to be the Philadelphian church and not the Laodicean church (read Revelation chapter 3).

There is no doubt that we see this gracious, merciful, moving of God’s hand in America. However, there are also signals that are growing stronger by the day that we are in times at the very end of the age.

Jesus forewarned in the Olivet Discourse that there would be great ethnic strife. We have been seeing it manifested in American cities. The seas and waves of humanity are “roaring” in America and in Europe. This election has intensified that roaring, I believe.

People who refuse to accept the election results are exemplifying the apostle Paul’s perilous times characteristic “incontinent”–or, “out of control.” Jesus said societal conditions will be exactly like now when He intervenes catastrophically into the affairs of mankind. That will happen with the Rapture.

With the United States now seeming to be headed back toward the America we once knew and loved, with the promises of the new administration, we can enjoy our moment of gratefulness this Thanksgiving season.

However, this time of national renewal is also likely to be a time like described by Jesus–a time that will bring His next catastrophic intervention into the affairs of mankind. That time might just be upon us.

“Therefore be ye also ready: for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh.” (Matthew 24: 44)