Those of us old enough to remember can still see the smiling faces of U.S. President Jimmy Carter, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat shaking hands on the White House grounds. It was  prelude to the formal peace treaty that was concluded and signed on March 26, 1979. The treaty became effective January 1980.

The two nations–Israel and Egypt–had been in a perpetual state of impending war since Israel became a nation on May 14-15, 1948.

Israel agreed, as part of the accord hammered out in Washington D.C. in 1977, to completely withdraw all military forces from the Sinai Peninsula. Israel had won the territory in the 6-Day War of 1967. Egypt agreed to leave the area demilitarized.

Additionally, the agreement guaranteed Israel free shipping passage through the Suez Canal. Also, it gave recognition of the Strait of Tiran and the Gulf of Aqaba as international waterways.

The treaty effectively made Egypt the first Arab state to officially recognize Israel and the first to make an agreement with the Jewish state.

Anwar Al-Sadat was successor to Gambel Abdul Nasser, the dictator who fiercely waged war against Israel in times leading up to the 1956 war and then in the 1967 war. Sadat was a fierce warrior himself during those wars against the hated Israeli intruders as they saw them. None of the major Arab states recognized Israel as a legitimate nation-state. None today officially do so–except Egypt.

Much of the Muslim world was enraged when Sadat signed the historic treaty. In my estimation, this set in motion a truly satanic rage that has escalated since, bringing us to where things are today.

Most all Muslim states are in agreement with Nasser’s long-ago declaration that Israel must be eliminated–eradicated from the face of the Middle East.

Anwar Sadat led the 1973 Yom Kipper War. He was at the center of its planning and execution.

The Arab forces were overwhelming, and by every metric of military strategic methodology, it was thought that Israel’s days were numbered.

The Yom Kipper assault was indeed a surprise to even the brilliant Israeli generals at the time–among whom was the Israeli strategists, Menachem Begin.

The Arab coalition assault at first made heavy inroads into Israeli territory. But the tide soon–miraculously, some say–turned, and Israel routed the much larger forces and captured large portions of land from its enemies.

I observed all this and especially Anwar Sadat after all these developments. I was then and remain convinced that he came to realize that–like Pharaoh came to realize finally–that Israel’s god…is God.

Sadat, a hardened Muslim-Arab warrior, I determined, changed considerably. He still was a strong leader, but with a much softer eye toward Israel–toward the West, for that matter.

Anwar Sadat paid for his embrace of Israel and the Western world with his life. He was assassinated by Muslim military elements within his own ranks near Cairo on October 6, 1981, while reviewing a parade that memorialized, strangely enough, a part of the battle that had initiated the Yom Kippur War.

Despite the death of Sadat by such violence, his successor, Hosni Mubarak–also severely wounded during the attack–held to the agreement Sadat had made with Israel. The agreement has, in effect, remained to this day, even in spite of the time of Egyptian inner-turmoil when the Obama administration worked to install the Muslim Brotherhood leadership, that organization and others overthrowing Mubarak.

The Egyptian soon became irate with the Muslim Brotherhood tyrant, Mohamed Morsi, who tried to reinstall strict sharia law and other freedom-suppressing actions.

Morsi was put out of office by the peoples’ demand, despite the Obama administration’s attempt to influence the situation. Abdel Fattah el Sisi, a much less restrictive leader along the lines of Sadat, is now president, having overthrown Morsi. He met this week with, in my view, a much less freedom-suppressing United States president than the previous one.

It was Sadat’s first reaching out to a foe who had severely “whupped” him–as Muhammad Ali might have put it–that has made possible a better working relationship in all of this Middle Eastern madness. It is Anwar Sadat’s foundation-laying  that continues to at least  provide Israel some degree of buffering protection against it’s blood-vowed enemies.

His influence is seen within the most recent, unfolding news.

Egyptian and Jordanian leaders both were in Washington,  D.C., to meet with President Donald J. Trump this past week. The meeting was to include talks on Iran, Isis, and the Palestinian-Israeli peace process. It was el Sisi’s first meeting in the White House. He had been treated as persona non grata by President Barack Obama in the view of many.

Apparently, a number of those within the diplomatic community dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian peace process see el Sisi as being a player in working toward bringing the two sides together. While the Bible makes clear that a man-made peace deal between Israel and “the many” will end only in Israel’s having to flee for its national existence, the Lord also said “Blessed are the peacemakers.”

Sadat tried to make peace, and it remains a resilient peace under the governing hand of el Sisi. Some who study the prophetic picture see Egypt as a nation that will be immensely blessed and will embrace Israel as a friend.

The nations are scheduled to be split during that judgment into the sheep and goat division, according to Matthew chapter 25 The Bible indicates that Egypt is a nation on the scene during millennial times. It will be Israel’s friend. So, Egypt obviously will make it into the “sheep” nations during that division.

Perhaps Anwar el Sadat put that  blessing into motion when he met Menachem Begin with a smiling handshake on the White House lawn all those years ago.

Senator John McCain (R-Arizona) was quick to get behind mainstream media microphones and cameras. He did so immediately following President Trump pulling the bill to repeal and replace the Affordable Healthcare Act (Obamacare) from consideration of the House of Representatives.

The former presidential candidate, acknowledged as a severe critic and opponent of the new president, presumed to instruct Mr. Trump on how he might approach Democrats in order to improve the soon-to-implode health system President Obama ramrodded through Congress. McCain then launched into his thoughts on how Trump and himself are totally on the opposite ends of the ideological spectrum with regard to America’s rightful place so far as world leadership is concerned.

The senator talked about how he believes the United States should come closer to the European Union (EU) and totally embrace NATO as part of a new world order. He implied that Trump foolishly rejects this approach, wanting America more or less to be isolationist in its approach to dealings with the world around our nation.

McCain said “The new world order is under tremendous strain.” While speaking at the Brussels Forum, he went on to say  that the world “cries out for American and European leadership” through the EU and NATO, and said that the EU and the US needed to develop “more cooperation, more connectivity.”

McCain, chairman of the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee, said, “I trust the EU.” He said further that the EU was “one of the most important alliances” for the U.S. and that the EU and NATO were the ” [most effective organizations] in history”–in maintaining the peace for the last seventy years.

McCain’s strong implication was that Trump’s idea of moving away from the so-called new world order was opposite of the direction America should move. The nation must, he implied, embrace this alliance in order to save the world in keeping peace and security in view.

I am reminded of Psalms chapter 2 about the end-times powers that be that will have no deity to rule over them, but declare that humanist effort will prevail. I believe the tremendous upheaval we have seen, particularly since Trump’s election, is minion-driven enragement. The insane statements and movements are centered in the fact that God has intervened, for whatever reason, into Satan’s plans to install world government.

It is just a postponement–a temporary setback–for the new world order builders, but it has driven them into manifesting the insanity that reprobate minds come to, as indicated in Romans chapter 1.

All of this involves two of the end-times characteristics the apostle Paul prophesied in his 2 Timothy chapter 3 foretelling.

I wrote about this in-depth in my latest book Rapture Ready…Or Not: 15 Reasons Why This Is the Generation That Will Be Left Behind. I include a portion of that presentation here.

Heady/High-Minded

The powerful and elite, would-be new world order builders fit well within this perilous times category. They sell out their nations and even their families for the sake of building the new world they desire —apart from any governance by God. Psalms, chapter 2, calls out these earth-dwellers as the KJV of the Bible defines them. They are driven by the powers and principalities outlined in Ephesians, chapter 6.

This self-uplifting, while ascending on the misfortune of others, is symptomatic of headiness or high-mindedness. Satan was and is the highest-minded of all. He sought and still has the audacity to believe he can lift himself to a position above the one, true, eternal God. Those who reject the truth of Jesus Christ are, through omission, heirs to the fallen ones – Lucifer’s great high-mindedness.

All who seek, through their great intellect, their desire, or their superiority in the realm of power-brokerage, to put themselves upon the pinnacle of god-likeness in the world they have chosen to conquer are inheritors of Satan’s pridefulness. They are exhilarated by the cut-throat struggle to vanquish all obstacles, all foes.

The high-minded intellectuals of academia, of the sciences, or of the liberal clergy seek more than at any time in history to erase all mention of God the Almighty, even at the temporary expedient of tolerating many religions and allowing those religions their many various ways to godhood.

With the intellectual exercise of plotting the planet’s physical and social salvation, they are sacrificing their eternal souls on the altar of “Evolutional Theory.” God’s Word tells that the last generation will be as was the generation that perished in the flood of Noah’s day. Of that people God says:

Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things (Rom. 1:21-23).

What is this, if not a description of modern intellectual man and his attempts to rationalize away all vestiges of the true God? It perfectly describes the writings of Charles Darwin and those who have reworked, reformulated and totally fallen for, in one form or another, the evolution lie These, like the antediluvians, “changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator.” (Rom. 1:25). These foolish, soul-darkened “intellects” join forces with those they would once have termed superstitious idiots, the occultists, and New Age adherents, to deify Mother Earth for the sake of ecological purity.

Headiness and high-mindedness are encapsulated within the climate change, radical environmentalism that is being used to destroy national sovereignty and autonomy, thus to bring all within one-world rule. The Antichrist regime will be the penultimate outgrowth of that drive toward global order.

The headiness and high-mindedness of the new world order builders–and the rage we are witnessing, I believe, are prime reasons why believers in Christ should be more than ever looking up–as we are exhorted in Luke 21: 28.

There continues to be anxiety over the political chasm now dividing this nation. And the schism involves much more than politics. There has developed a separation of worldview unlike any yet known in this nation.

We have all heard, particularly as of late, Lincoln’s words reflecting off Jesus’ declaration that “a house divided cannot stand.” Yet these United States, clearly a house not so united, as this presidential election showed, continues to not only stand, but seemingly is on the brink of entering boom-times, economically speaking at least.

For a number of years leading up to the 2016 presidential election, America appeared to be a nation more and more moving toward unification. From our perspective on the Christian right, however, that coming together looked to be leading to disaster for religious freedom. Not only was religious liberty being cast aside, we thought, but all vestiges of morality and constitutional principles were being trashed at every turn. The libertines were having their way and hope to ever regain our national sanity seemed all but lost.

Those who prefer America detached from moorings the founding fathers provided, like most of those of us who love this nation as founded, thought the political left had won the presidency–that is, they thought they had won right up until late that night when poll results proved the opposite. The rage–the insanity–hasn’t stopped since that moment of epiphany.

The progressives were certain they had won the day and that now Bob Dylan’s lyrics, taken from the poetry of his self-chosen namesake, Dylan Thomas, were proving prophetic.

Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don’t criticize
What you can’t understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is
Rapidly agin’.
Please get out of the new one
If you can’t lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin’.

The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is
Rapidly fadin’.
And the first one now
Will later be last
For the times they are a-changin’.

The oft-quoted mantra during the Woodstock era was about to find its declaration chiseled upon the marbled, governmental walls of earth’s only superpower. “Do not go gentle into that sweet good night. Rage, rage, for the times they are a-changin’.”

The “rage,” as I said, is still raging. The losers of the election–the principals, Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama–are reportedly leading the charge from the shadows with their opposition community organization efforts, in collusion with the so-called deep state. The manufactured, paid-for, rage is manifest in Republican town hall meetings across the nation.

I continue to maintain that it is the satanically engendered, globalist agenda that is driving the rage. George Soros funding is unabashedly admitted by the liberal side to be adding inspirational fire to the vitriol and anger. America must be brought under control of the one-world minions. The Trump victory jolted the new world architects’ incessant drive to knock America off its constitutional foundation.

The new president, with each mention of rolling back regulations, of reformulating tax structures to make things more friendly to the business world and to middle class taxpayers, inspires the financial markets to record heights. Rather than America and the world collapsing into the deepest depression in history like many experts were predicting, the economic indicators are soaring in the opposite direction.

We are now heading into fiscal territory that is like that prophesied by Jesus. The Lord said the buying, selling, building, etc., would be going along quite nicely at the time he next catastrophically intervenes into the wicked affairs of mankind. I’m convinced that those times of buying, selling, building, etc., were referring not to just “business as usual,” but to a coming boom that is unprecedented.

So, we have all of the major elements in view that Jesus predicted when foretelling what the times of His next intervention into human affairs would involve.

He said the nations would be “in distress with perplexity.” The “seas and waves” (people of the nations) would be “roaring.” He said that people will, at the same time, be buying, selling, building, planting, and marrying. It will be a “think not” generation at the time of Christ’s sudden intervention, according to Matthew 24:44.

World conditions will be just like in the days of Noah and the days of Lot. It will be in the midst of this time of both anxiety and apparent affluence that He will suddenly and catastrophically break in on an unsuspecting world.

We are, I firmly believe, swiftly entering into just such a time. The Rapture of the Church will be, I’m convinced, the catalyst for cataclysm for those left behind.

Paul the apostle clearly laid out prophecy concerning the Rapture of the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ. That is, it is clear to me and a multitude of believers. Paul’s words could not be more precise in letting us know that all who have believed in Christ for salvation will be lifted in one majestic moment of time to be with Christ in the air. This will happen before the Day of the Lord (Tribulation) begins.

However–as human minds often think in contrarian ways–this great truth of the pre-Tribulation Rapture has thereby been muddled. Therefore, in addition to the Pre-Trib Rapture, we have the mid-Trib, post-Trib, partial, and other derivatives of this matter of Rapture–including no Rapture at all.

In consideration of the Rapture, which I and other pre-Trib proponents believe is truth as expressed by Paul, timing is key to understanding how near we might be to that great event. We are, for the most part, convinced the apostle gave a most significant prophetic clue as to world conditions that will be prevalent.

Paul, in his first epistle to the Thessalonians, gave the Rapture prophecy. He, with the next line, wrote the following:

“But of the times and the seasons, brethren, ye have no need that I write unto you. For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night. For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape.” (1 Thessalonians 5:1-3)

We are told through this epistle, then, that there will be a specific lament by the world in general at the time of the event–the Rapture–Paul had just prophesied. “For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape.” The “they” here refers to the lost or unsaved of the generation who are crying “peace and safety.”

We have examined many times in these commentaries the long-running attempts at peace making in the Middle East. The “Roadmap to Peace” is the diplomatic document that has been at the center of this attempt to bring about peace–for the region and for the world.

Throughout the entire process over the years, Israel’s prime ministers, whether Begin, Rabin, Netanyahu, or whomever,  have included in their speeches the desire to assure peace and security for their people. Paul’s prophecy in this 2 Thessalonians account includes Israel and the whole world. All will be calling for peace and safety.

In the case of Israel, anxiety over peace and security has come to a head with the insertion of President Donald Trump into the Jewish state’s dilemma. The dilemma, of course, involves the pressure being exerted on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to agree to a two-state solution. That is, the world diplomatic community demands that the Palestinians be given part of Israel’s land to form a Palestinian state.

Netanyahu is feeling equal and opposite pressure from within his own government. The opposition members of the Knesset insist that such a two-state situation will compromise Israel’s peace and security to  an unacceptable degree.

The Israeli prime minister and the new American president met in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday to talk over, among other things, the possible pathway to peace for Israel. Netanyahu endorsed a Palestinian state in a speech in 2009 at Bar-State University.

Bayit Yehudi leader Naftali Bennett and Likud activists urged Netanyahu to give up his support for a Palestinian state, in advance of the meeting with Trump. Bennett declared, “The earth will shake”  if Netanyahu and Trump discuss a Palestinian state.

With Trump now the United States president, leaders on the right within the Israeli government are hopeful the prime minister will give up talk of a Palestinian state as part of securing the peace and safety of Israel. Bennett promised in a Facebook post titled “The Test of Netanyahu’s Life” that the Right will support the prime minister if he tells Trump he no longer is in favor of a two-state solution. However, Bennett said it would bring “national nightmare” if Netanyahu continues to support a Palestinian state.

He wrote: “The earth will shake. International pressure, boycotts, reports against Israel, missiles, freezes, tying the hands of our soldiers in the fight against terrorism – all this will continue and intensify.”

He went on to say that he and others of the right in the Israeli political milieu consider the election of Donald Trump an historical opportunity that cannot be missed.

Netanyahu, in the press conference held last Wednesday, in fact, indicated strongly that Israel will accept no Palestinian state. This, he indicated, is because the Palestinian Authority refuses to even officially acknowledge Israel’s existence. Plus, he said with strong emphasis, he will never accept the Palestinian declaration that Israel must be forever removed from the land.

The Israeli prime minister also brought up the terms peace and security a number of times during the press conference held upon his arrival at the White House.

Israel’s call for peace and security and the international community’s cry for peace will be front and center as never before the deeper we move into the Middle Eastern tempest. This is perhaps the most dramatic signal of just how close is the Rapture of the Church.

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…