Just as suspected, the year 2016 is on track to be a pivotal year in the shaping of biblically prophetic destiny. The sudden loss of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia will produce ramifications far beyond those posed by this sitting president further stacking that court with yet another justice of likemindedness to his own ideological bent.

The ultimate decision involving replacement of the constitutional champion that was Scalia will perhaps, in one way or another, help determine the future course of all of mankind.

American Founding Fathers, whether fully aware in every case that they were listening to the directives of the Almighty, gave Americans yet unborn a republic based upon Judeo-Christian principles. And, indications are overwhelming that almost all of them–even the deists like Franklin and Jefferson–knew that Providence had a divine hand in winning the War of Independence and in composing the liberty-laden document that is the U.S. Constitution.

Moving on from the producing of that founding document, the writings of the founders show they recognized that it was not merely an existential deity that started the national ball rolling then left America to its own devices. It is more than obvious that the one and only God’s mighty hand has been on this most materially blessed nation to ever exist throughout its coming up 240 years of nationhood.

Antonin Scalia was consistently a Supreme Court justice who, with each decision he rendered, demonstrated that he believed that our God-influenced Constitution should be defended and preserved. With his passing, we are faced with the possibility that it is a document in danger of degeneration to ineffectiveness at best and to complete disregard at worst.

The Supreme Court has teeter-tottered on the fulcrum of cultural dichotomy, particularly since 1963, with the decisions to eliminate Bible reading and prayer from public schools. By this, I mean the traditional, God-fearing part of America was on one side and the America that wanted no such constraint on the other. Anti-God, humanistic gravity has consistently been tugging the nation downward with succeeding Supreme Court decisions. We witnessed a dramatic increase in the latest such tugging during the year just past.

And, now we face action by a president who, immediately upon Scalia’s death, announced he will nominate a replacement within the ten plus months left of his presidency. We don’t have to wonder very deeply about the sort of nominee that will eventuate. All that is necessary is to consider Mr. Obama’s ideological forays into jurisprudence at the Supreme Court level over the past seven years.

With decisions of the land’s highest court steadily slanting toward the anti-Constitutional side, and now the loss of perhaps that court’s strongest voice for preservation of the document the Founders gave us, we indeed face perilous times.

America, I put to you, is now moving rapidly downward on the slide into national oblivion. It is agonizing to have to say it. But, the facts are staring us in the nation’s rebellious face.

America’s Supreme Court and its problems are but a reflection of that rebellion. We have sown to the winds disregard for God’s biblical guidelines for upright comportment. We are beginning to reap the whirlwind of reprobate thinking and conduct warned about by the apostle Paul in Romans chapter 1.

Perhaps the final straw for Heaven’s Supreme Court is we the people allowing a wicked leadership to turn America against Israel and take up the cause of those who are vowed to destroy the Jewish state. What are even more compelling as evidence of the nation’s rebellion are the so-called Christian churches of America joining in the cursing of Israel. We hear every day of those churches that have joined in the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanction) movement to punish Israel for “occupying” land that these say doesn’t belong to Israel.

To add insult to injury, these proclaim that they–the church–have replaced Israel as inheritors of the promises God gave Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Israel, they declare, has forfeited the claim to the promises and is no longer God’s chosen people. The Lord is finished with that people.

That is what these would-be usurpers of God’s promises say. But, here is what the Lord God of Israel says in His Holy Word:

This is what the Lord says, “He Who appoints the sun to shine by day, who decrees the moon and stars to shine by night, Who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar–the Lord Almighty is His Name; Only if these ordinances vanish from My sight,” declares the Lord, “will the descendants of Israel ever cease to be a nation before Me.” (Jeremiah 31:35-36)

Just as the above promise is still in effect, so is God’s warning of Genesis 12:3. America, if national repentance is not forthcoming, faces a Supreme Decision far more serious than the replacement of a U.S. Supreme Court justice.

Regarding the title above, I don’t mean to imply light being shed on the Tribulation–although that is part of what I hope will be done. By using the term “Tribulation light,” I mean we are now seeing issues and events occur in this Age of Grace much like, but not actually those prophetically scheduled for, the seven years of worldwide horror leading up to Christ’s Second Advent–i.e., those issues and events are but similar to those much more horrific, apocalyptic events; foreshadows of things to come.

There are several specific prophecies expounded upon by Jesus while giving His Olivet Discourse that I would like to examine as being “Tribulation light” events in our headlines today. 

The Lord gave these as recorded in the following prophecy:

Then said he unto them, Nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: And great earthquakes shall be in divers places, and famines, and pestilences; and fearful sights and great signs shall there be from heaven. (Luke 21: 20-21)

I would like to probe a bit into the less-prominent “Tribulation light” prophetic indicators within the above Scripture before getting into that which I view as most pronounced in these days so near the end of the Church Age.

Jesus was foretelling that these troubles will be unprecedented in their ferocity during the Tribulation era when God’s wrath will fall upon incorrigibly wicked mankind. He exhorted that when those with discernment see these things begin to happen, they are to know that His return is drawing near. Note, the Lord said when these things “begin” to come to pass, those with discernment are to “look up…for your redemption draws near” (Luke 21:28).

Jesus said as recorded in other places that these issues and events will be like birth pangs. They will come upon end-time’s mankind like pains a woman experiences during the incrementally increasing contractions of having a baby. That is, these pains will begin in a milder manner than they will become the nearer the moment of birth.

Earthquakes, Jesus said, will mark the beginning of “sorrows” (birth pangs). Again, these, obviously, staying within the birthing analogy, will be lighter in severity than they will become during the full-blown Tribulation when Christ’s return is about to happen. We are told in Revelation that there will occur the ultimate earthquake as Christ is breaking through the black clouds of that terrible time. Every mountain will fall. That describes a mighty earthquake indeed!

Anyone who reads the news as presented in our Rapture Ready News section knows of the reports of tremblers from around the world. There seems no geographical region of the planet that isn’t experiencing seismic activity on an increasing scale. All of these quakes are light in severity when compared to the Revelation description of the final quake that will bring every tall structure on earth crashing down. However, the cumulative effects have prophetic evidentiary significance, it becomes ever more obvious.

Just within the past days, we have the following posts:

• 5.7-magnitude earthquake felt in New Zealand capital
  New Zealand’s capital city Wellington was rocked by 5.7-magnitude earthquake on Tuesday (Feb  9), according to the country’s earthquake monitoring service.
• Massive earthquake hits near Papua New Guinea island of Bougainville
  A 6.3 magnitude earthquake hit near the Papua New Guinea island of Bougainville early on Tuesday morning. The undersea quake struck at 3.19am local time…
• Taiwan Quake Kills at Least 18 as Search for Missing Continues
  A strong earthquake rocked a region of Taiwan that’s a hub for chipmaking suppliers to the likes of Apple Inc. and Qualcomm Inc., killing at least 18 people
• 5.2 Magnitude Earthquake Hits Nepal, Tremors Felt In Bihar
• Earthquake shakes Tokyo, no tsunami risk
  An earthquake has struck close to Tokyo, shaking much of the metropolitan region. There were no immediate reports of injuries or damage, and no tsunami
• Chile earthquake: Strong tremor strikes near Tongoy and La Serena
  A strong earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 6.4 has struck off the coast of central Chile, centered off Tongoy and La Serena, seismologists say.
• Strong earthquake hits Solomon Islands
  A magnitude 6.4 earthquakes hit the Solomon Islands at 12.19am today, according to the Malaysian Meteorological Department.

Such reports continue in a never-ending cyberspace headlines crawl. The tremors are coming with increasing frequency and intensity.

The second “Tribulation light” indicator I pluck from the Luke 21:20-21 Olivet prophecy Jesus gave is the matter of “pestilence.”

To be brief, I bring to your attention the things we have seen develop most recently in this regard. Remember the Ebola scare of a few months ago. Think of the HIV natter that was on the front pages and growing, seemingly, uncontrollably. And now it is the Zika virus that is apparently spread by mosquitoes and which has no medical defense to combat it.

There is growing concern among the medical research community that many of the pestilences are in the process of mutating–developing resistance to antibiotics and other forms of combating disease.

The Tribulation era will see these diseases become full-blown. The toll in human life will be beyond comprehension.

All of these above-mentioned developments are but sidebars to the real story regarding signals that show how near this generation is to the Tribulation era.    

“Nation against nation and kingdom against kingdom”: This is the real scriptural crux of proof in thinking on where we stand on God’s prophetic timeline.

“Nation” in the Greek language, as used here, is “ethnos” or “ethnic” in English. Jesus was predicting that the very end of the age would produce great ethnic upheaval. People will be raging against each other for reasons of race. Likewise, the Lord said that “kingdom against kingdom” will mark the era leading up to His Second Advent.

Is there any doubt whatsoever that these indicators are in our headlines today? In the very streets of America, there is ethnic rage that sometimes boils to the uncontrollable level. The rioting in places like Ferguson, Missouri, and Baltimore, Maryland, leap instantly to mind. Such rage is at the heart of problems around the world. Religious fervor, inciting ethnic hatreds, mark this generation as the one Jesus must have had in His omniscient mind when giving this prophecy.

We are experiencing today “Tribulation light” prophetic birth pangs on a moment-by-moment basis. It will be fascinating, as watchers on the wall, to see what 2016 will bring. We, as born-again believers, hope it brings the shout of the Lord Jesus: “Come up here!” (Revelation 4:1)

One recent day’s headlines combine to produce a picture that brings the lateness of the prophetic hour into focus:

• China’s Xi calls for creation of Palestinian state
• Tunisia declares nationwide curfew as violent protests against unemployment and poverty spread
• Syria conflict: “US expanding air strip” in Kurdish north
• Saudi-Iranian proxy war over Syria spreads to World Economic Forum meeting
• French Prime Minister warns Europe will be “totally destabilized” if it takes all refugees
• This is what the death of a nation looks like: Venezuela prepares for 720% hyperinflation
• Haiti postpones Sunday’s presidential election as violence erupts

Nations are in distress with perplexity. The seas and waves of peoples around the world are roaring. All signals point to the soon coming Tribulation outlined in the greatest of all prophetic books —The Revelation. All the while, it is pretty much business as usual within the confines of the United States while  the country prepares for  another presidential election.

The global financial powers that be are in disarray equal to that of the national leaders around the world who are in the aforementioned distress with perplexity. The international stock exchanges appear to be set for massive collapse, yet the trigger point for that Humpty-Dumpty fall seems held up by some unseen hand of fate. All appears to be in configuration precisely as Jesus foretold it will be at the time of His next, catastrophic intervention into the affairs of mankind. –Not the Second Advent of Revelation 19:11-14, but the Rapture as given by Paul as recorded in 1 Thessalonians 4:13-15 and 1 Corinthians 15:52-55, and even by Jesus Himself in John 14:1-3.

Surrounding all of these stage-props for the final act of the age, the handwriting is appearing on the walls of human history, perhaps beginning to clarify how the Ezekiel 38-39 scenario will play out. The nation Israel, as the student of Bible prophecy might expect, is in the middle of these most interesting developments.

News reports have informed for some months the many intrigues of the oil industry while cost  per barrel has been tumbling since Saudi reduced its prices. It is believed by many “experts” that that oil-rich nation’s royal family, in concert with the United States presidential administration, cut prices to undercut Russia’s upsurging involvement in oil production and sales around the world.

The undercutting worked. The ruble  fell precipitously, and although the  Russian currency unit is now up to around 85 cents against the U.S. dollar, Vladimir Putin’s budding Russian empire continues to suffer. And, while he and his country suffers, he remains resolute in presenting the image of being able to project power in the manner of the Soviet regime at the apex of its being able to threaten the world.

Despite great concerns that Putin indeed has the military resources and other assets to  truly threaten his neighbors–and the rest of the world–experts with first-hand knowledge of Russia’s capability provide interesting perspective to somewhat the contrary.

Bill Browder, chief executive officer of Hermitage Capital, and a former champion advocating for Vladimir Putin, now believes the Russian president leads a nation in such great peril of likely collapse that the situation portends danger for the world.

Browder’s ire against Putin was generated as the result of two of his colleagues who opposed Putin’s rule being killed–Browder supposes–by Putin’s henchmen. Browder, himself, was expelled from Russia in 2005 after criticizing alleged endemic corruption in the country.

Browder told CNBC that Russia is in severe recession and could very soon descend into chaos if money in Russia “runs out.”

“I don’t think you can underestimate how bad the situation in Russia is right now, you’ve got oil below any measure where the budget can survive and you’ve got sanctions from the West. Russia is in what I’d call a real serious economic crisis,” he said on Thursday [Jan 21]…

He told CNBC while attending the World Economic Forum (WEF) that Russia’s Central Bank is “running out of money.” He added: “Eventually they’re going to run out of that money and when they do, that’s when the real trouble begins.”(Rapture Ready News 1/22/16)

So, perhaps the Gog “evil thought” of Ezekiel 38-39 begins to become increasingly understandable to the diligent student of Bible prophecy.

Russia’s movement into the Middle East is itself an astounding development. Astonishing oil and gas discoveries off the coast of the Jewish state and within the Golan Heights area truly add prophetic intrigue in the minds of those who observe. These things, combined with such reports of Russia’s dire economic straits give food for thought, indeed. Does it all add up to being the incentive that will put hooks in the jaws of that prophesied leader termed “Gog”? Stay tuned, as they say…

While those who truly grasp the lateness of the hour and what the issues and events of these strange, troubled times mean, there is the overwhelming majority that hasn’t a clue. This is neither surprising nor unexpected, because the vast part of the world’s population is in spiritual darkness–without Christ, therefore without the Holy Spirit to guide thinking and comportment.

There are millions upon millions of others who are within Christendom–that is, who claim to be under the umbrella of Christianity. Most of these, statistics bear out, would not qualify as “Christian” under the definition of being “born again.” That is, they haven’t truly “believed” as given in Romans 10:9-10:

“That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.”

It is not my place–nor the place of any other person to say who is and isn’t “saved” on an individual basis. However, we are to definitely hold to what the Bible tells us are the qualifications for becoming a child of God who will spend eternity with Him in Heaven. In the sense of discernment, we can say that those who hold to those biblical qualifications are “saved” and those who do not hold to those qualifications are not.   

We will deal in this essay with those who fit within the category defined by the above prescription for being born again. I would like to get even more specific.

Among those who are truly born again, there are many views of how things will play out, prophetically speaking. At the same time, there are also many who don’t know and many who don’t care about prophecy–what God has foretold about their future. They are too busy living out their increments of life one heartbeat and breath at a time.

Sadly, the latter by far constitute the majority. That is, most don’t know about Bible prophecy, and most don’t care. They are aided and abetted in their willful ignorance by the pastors and Bible teachers within their church bodies in this disregard for the prophetic portion of God’s Word. That prophetic Word is almost one-third of the Scripture the Lord has given us through His Love Letter to mankind.

Even more specifically, I want to concentrate for the moment on the doctrine of the Rapture of the Church–that twinkling of an eye moment Paul wrote about as recorded in 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 and 1 Corinthians 15:52-55.

Of those who have truly been born again, there are few in number who know about the Rapture in concrete terms or who grasp that there will come that moment of being called into Heaven by their Lord. In America, even those who do understand that the Rapture is an event prophetically scheduled according to the Bible resist embracing the promise intrinsic within the doctrine of that imminent call from Christ. That is, rather than desire to hear Christ’s call, “Come up here,” (Revelation 4: 1) these want to first live life on earth and fulfill all of the anticipated pleasures it offers. It is primarily this group of believers to whom I address the thoughts that follow.

Notice, please, that I wrote as a qualifier, “in America.. It is in America that this attitude of not embracing the Rapture among Christians is most pronounced. Proof of that statement  is made clear through the thousands upon thousands of sermons that are preached each week. The number of prophetic messages amongst those thousands of sermons are infinitesimal. People don’t want to hear that Christ’s call is imminent. The pastors–in overwhelming numbers–demonstrate that they don’t want to delve into that portion of Bible truth–even if, indeed, they in fact believe that the Rapture is an imminent event.

Not desiring the Rapture is, for American believers, as natural as breathing. Life in the United States is not bad, and for the most part, pretty comfortable. Compared to living as a Christian in, say, the Middle East, Africa, or other parts of the world, being a Christian requires that no heavy price be paid. That is what I mean when I say it is as natural as breathing.

Christians in America, unlike their counterparts in less blessed, heavily oppressed, persecuted parts of the world, rather than worrying about whether they will be able to provide food for themselves and their children for the day, look forward to their upcoming marriages, vacations, or new purchases that will satisfy their latest comfortable lifestyle aspirations. These physical and psychological wants and needs are the natural outflow from abundance. Longing for the Rapture is a spiritual–supernatural–exercise that requires, for most, effort that seems to offer no tangible, immediate gratification. Such effort is just too taxing for most of America’s Christians and their pastors. It takes them out of their comfort zone, much as does prayer and Bible reading.

When American Christians in this category do think of the Rapture–which, again, they in fact believe is a thing that will happen, but somewhere in the hazy years of the future–they fear it will take them away from the pleasures of this earthly life. That event will, they think, snatch them from their comfortable American lifestyle. It will present a completely changed paradigm–one that will cause them to lose homes, family closeness, friendships, other relationships, and their “stuff”–all of which  provides familiarity and pleasure.

This is especially true among the younger people. Their disinterest in prophecy in general and in the Rapture of the church in particular is more than obvious in the make-up of prophecy conferences. I can’t see any longer, due to a retinal disease, but am told that the conferences are almost without exception attended nearly exclusively by those with gray hair.

Now, I’ve been perhaps too harsh on Christians in America. However, we are approaching the very end of this Church Age. The perhaps overly stern exhortation is to focus attention on the reality that we might within months, weeks, days, or even hours, look our Lord in His holy, omniscient eyes. He said He was going to prepare a place for us and would come again and take us there with Him (John 14:1-3). That “place” is something we can’t even begin to fathom in its wonders and luxuriant surroundings.

All of the relationships in this life we thought we might lose in the Rapture will be magnified in their joy and intimacy a million times over. We are going to find that all earthly treasures we so valued are as refuse compared to things the Lord has prepared for those that love Him.

I sense that the newlywed couple who belong to Christ will find their relationship with each other dazzlingly more intimate than anything planet earth could have nurtured. The “stuff” left behind will be instantly forgotten when we behold the heavenly treasury that holds us spellbound. The best days of our lives in this earthly confinement will seem as a time of terrible, debilitating paralysis. The Rapture will instantaneously bring life unencumbered by gravity and all laws of what we know as physics.

The Lord put us here to enjoy the many good things He provides. There’s nothing wrong in living life to its absolute fullest. But, this is not our home. We are but travelers in a foreign land. We are here for, at best, 70, 80, 90, or 100 years, then we slip these surly bonds.

We, as God’s children, should not resist the doctrine of Rapture, but anticipate that glorious instant when the whole purpose of our being born into this universe reaches fruition. We will at that incomprehensible moment understand what it means to be joint heirs with Christ.

Even so, Come, Lord Jesus!

Academia, it is becoming more apparent each day, is serving as the devil’s workshop. Specifically, for example, Yale University is being sought out to serve as the devil’s operating room for carrying out an excision of truth in an area that is most troubling to him in restricting his end of days stratagem.

A report I received the past week from a friend and fellow watchman on the wall immediately impressed scriptural implication upon my spiritual senses.

This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be… Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof… (2 Tim 3: 1-2a, 5: 1a)

My friend’s email provided two letters to the editor that were recently sent to his local newspaper. He lives in Connecticut, near Yale University, the curriculum of which is the target of the letter writer’s proposals.

The letters to the editor, I’m of the opinion, encapsulated a stratagem of the old serpent I have for some time been observing. He seeks desperately to destroy the true, unvarnished witness of the veracity of God’s word. Key to his strategy seems to be the mixing in of biblical truth with the false religions of the world. On some levels it appears that he is having success.

Lucifer has “enlightened” (seduced) the world’s religionists to a large extent to his seductive whispers proclaiming God is love. Anyone who denies that God is love must be put within the theologically and politically correct detention camp—the gulag—where haters must be dealt with appropriately. Anyone who claims that God condemns is a hater, a bigot, a person filled with an inhuman phobia of one sort or the other.

All within humanity are on the heavenly highway to salvation, no matter their sin—which, in fact, Satan whispers, doesn’t exist. That is, all are on that salvation highway except those who insist there is but one way to redemption—to Heaven. Such are haters, who preach that God is judgmental—that He is vindictive and vengeful.

The Bible and other “holy books” show—Satan whispers to the theologically and politically correct—that God is only love. The parts that indicate that the Christian Bible’s God judges humanity for sin other than the sin of failing to take care of the physical needs of fellow man is to be disregarded—to be spiritualized as meaning something other than what the hate-filled bigots who hold to the fundamental, evangelical view say it means.

This is the surgery Satan is attempting to perform—cleaving the love portion of religiosity from the judgmental. And, this brings us to the letters to the editor concerning that prestigious academic institution, Yale University.

The writer, from Vermont, is, he informs, a former student of Yale’s School of Theology. He points to apocalyptic prophecy as the primary reason for all of mankind’s problems today. That a loving God would condemn anyone to suffer eternal punishment…well…let’s let his own words explain…

Yale shouldn’t simply change the name of Calhoun College to that of an alumnus who is not a white supremacist. It should re-examine the mission of the Divinity School (where I received a Master of Divinity degree in 1980) which treats eschatology like a benign academic theological category, instead of the dangerous and incendiary belief-system that it is, in whatever religion it appears.

It is not Christianity or Islam which is responsible for many of the mass killings we have seen in my lifetime. It is the unchallenged belief in eschatology (end time; final judgment; apocalypse) which has produced Jim Jones, David Koresh, the Tsarnaev brothers, Army psychiatrist Nidal Hasan, and the San Bernardino husband and wife shooters, all in the last half-century.

It is time for President Peter Salovey’s challenge for Yale to engage in soul searching to be expanded to include the Divinity School on a topic equally as poisonous as institutional racism: the belief that God will punish mankind for not obeying his sacred word, by imposing a final judgment in an end-time of hellfire and torment or of eternal bliss. (Source: Letter to the Editor: Yale needs deeper ‘soul searching’ www.nhregister.com)

The letter to the editor writer later replied to a response given his charge by the dean of Yale’s School of Divinity. The dean explained how Yale and other such institutions were working with the U.N. to “remove all religion as a rationale/cause of extreme violence.” The dean said he wasn’t certain eschatology was the cause of the violence.

The letter writer wrote:

Isn’t Dean Sterling missing the forest for the trees? All religions which include Armageddon belief-systems, throw gasoline on the inflamed minds of wannabe martyrs, terrified of eternal torment and hungry for eternal bliss, from Jim Jones in Jonestown, Guyana, and David Koresh in Waco, Texas, to the Tsarnaev brothers in Boston, Army psychiatrist Nidal Hasan in Fort Hood, [Texas], and the husband and wife mass murderers in San Bernardino, California.

Armageddon should be banished from the religious canon as a paranoid delusion, not taught as benign theological embroidery. That would assist “the UN to try to remove religion as a rationale/cause for extreme violence,” as Dean Sterling puts it.

At the least, scholars at Yale’s distinguished divinity school should pursue the truth wherever it leads, without fear. (Source: Letter to the Editor – New Haven Register, January 8, 2016. Eschatology fuels ‘inflamed minds’.)

Lucifer’s attempted surgery is focused in laser-like fashion upon those who present end times matters to the world. The old serpent has a volcanic rage against prophecy from the Bible because such prophecy tolls his soon-coming doom, and because that truth might resonate with anyone who looks around them and sees how world conditions align perfectly with Biblical eschatology. The world today demonstrates the absolute veracity of God’s holy word. Satan has decided on the brilliantly evil tactic of lumping all who preach and teach that truth with the likes of the murderous Mullahs and Jihadists who have as part of their madness to bring on their version of Armageddon so their prophesied Mahdi can rule the caliphate they seek to establish.

Anyone who thus puts forth that there is coming a tribulation and an Antichrist—and God’s judgment for rebellion and sin—are wicked and no different from those raping, murdering and beheading people by the thousands.

It is a stratagem that is working—within academia and even within the pseudo-Christianity held by many of today’s liberal theologians.

God’s love, however, cannot be cleaved from His judgment. It is all part of the same divine plan for the ages. Sin must be dealt with in final judgment so that pure, unadulterated love can reign throughout eternity.

That love is a person, and His is a name like no other name. Jesus Christ is coming to make all things new and righteous. The first phase of that return—the rapture—is on the very brink of taking place. We must not and will not be silent regarding prophetic truth.

I caught the tail-end of a former general saying on FOX News, I paraphrase, “This administration is complicit in prepping the way for World War Three…”

Such a statement from a top military commander who is recently retired grabs one’s attention as few others pontificating on geopolitics can. The retired officer—perhaps one forced from service by this president, I can’t say because I don’t know the circumstance of his leaving the U.S. military— went on to talk about the upheaval in most all of the Middle East caused by American withdrawal in so many key areas of the region. The vacuum created, the general was saying, is setting up the world for a war of unimaginable scope.

Particularly, he was commenting on the growing threats and actions between Saudi Arabia and Iran, which has flared following Saudi’s execution of a high profile Shiite cleric and a number of others.

Iran’s response was the takeover of the Saudi embassy building and the looting and ransacking of its contents. The reaction on both sides continues to escalate, dividing Islamic nation from Islamic nation along Shiite/Sunni religious lines, and threatening a war that could spread into a global conflagration, according to the general and other pundits.

President Obama has come under consistent criticism from military officers who have either resigned because of differences with the administration’s way of handling military involvement around the world, or who have been forced out because of conflict with advice offered the president on military matters.

Those retired or resigned officers who continue to criticize Obama’s use of military, and his dealings with America’s and Israel’s destruction-vowed enemies, point to the danger to the nation—and the world—in the administration’s actions, paving the road for Iran to build a nuclear force.

This, they say, is insanity –giving the very Islamists who want to bring on their version of Armageddon the capability to do so through acquiescence to Iran’s demands on nuclear development and their demand that sanctions be lifted, and access given to $150 billion as part of the lifting of those sanctions.

The protest of America’s military experts seems to make no difference whatsoever, any more than did the advice the generals gave in warning the president against first telegraphing the removal of American forces from Iraq, then in actually removing those forces. Such action was all but unprecedented in modern, American, military strategy. The result has been, and continues to be—as predicted by the generals—a power vacuum that is in the process of igniting the whole region in a conflict that is almost certainly unstoppable.

As written about before in this column, Israel remains strangely silent as all of the Arab and Iranian states around the tiny Jewish state begin to burn like a grass fire surrounding a log cabin. But Israel is no such inanimate, ordinary spectator. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the IDF know that Israel is the actual target when these wild men—as the Bible terms them—finally zero in on their most hated enemy. Israel’s trigger finger is on the ultimate weapon and will pull that trigger to defend itself.

Thus there is a cry for peace and safety by the likes of American Secretary of State John Kerry. It is really, however, a demand that Israel be disarmed and marginalized. This is so Kerry’s new friends, the Iranian Mullahs, can have their way, bringing, he and the rest of the world’s diplomatic fools believe, peace at last.

It is arguable to contend that the whole Middle East region would have been far better off if America had never gotten involved there. This is something that is said time and time again by those who want to blame George W. Bush and his father for committing troops to the region in two military actions. This is, at least in part, a mistaken contention, however. The Lord, Himself—it is obvious to students of history, when combined with study of Bible prophecy—determined that the United States would be a major part in the founding of modern Israel and a major physical agent of Israel’s protection.

The current American president and his ideological, leftist bedfellows display the reprobate thinking that comes from anti-God rebellion as forewarned in chapter one of Romans. A prime example of this upside-down lunacy is on display when thinking on the situation in the president’s dealings with both the nation of Iran and with the American people.

In the matter of Iran, Mr. Obama and his ilk indicate they think it is just fine to arm the Armageddon-planning Mullahs with nukes. This, despite the fact these madmen have stated time after time they plan to destroy the great Satan, and the little Satan (America and Israel). At the same time, the president and his leftist, political associates indicate they think it will make America safe by disarming American citizens by the threatened executive action on so-called “gun control.” The Iranian Mullahs can be trusted with nuclear weapons and their delivery systems that can destroy the world, but the American gun-owner can’t be trusted to have a Second Amendment-guaranteed right to own and bear arms.

Such insanity almost certainly is in the process of making our nation culpable in helping bring on man’s final war.

Thankfully, all of this means, as always, that Christ is about to call His church—all born-again believers—to the safe-shelter of their Heavenly home.

It is imperative, therefore, that all who belong to Jesus Christ determine to lift that name that is above every other. Thus, so that many who are lost will be drawn to the Lord. He is the only hope for those who are heading into the worst time in all of human history.

Never in my own memory has a new year appeared at its beginning to be more prophetically interesting. Never–in my thinking, at least–has one portended more perilous times, as the Apostle Paul would have it. Yet I wouldn’t trade my time on this darkening planet with anyone of any other generation.

The fact that the Lord of Heaven has put me here at this strange, ominous, yet immensely fascinating time in history makes it all the more intriguing–even riveting, in terms of wanting to know what happens next. He has put you here, too, at this time when the final curtain  is about to fall. He has trusted you to be an actor in at least part of the final scenes of this great, cosmic play called human history. No illustrious personages of the past–not Julius Caesar, not Napoleon Bonaparte, not Alexander the Great, not even Winston Churchill, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, or Ronald Reagan were so privileged. We are about to serve as active members of a most especially commissioned cast who populates the end-times stage.

There is about to occur a schism–a separation–of cataclysmic proportion. It will rend one part of humanity from the other. It will not be a natural catastrophe that will inflict the humanity-dividing rift. It won’t be great political upheaval in America and around the world that will cause the tearing apart of life upon the troubled planet. Those things will certainly happen. But it won’t be acts of nature or of man that will bring about the very last scene of the age.

That last act will be orchestrated by the Master Director of all Creation–by the Lord God of Heaven who is the final judge of good and evil.

The excitement presaging that grand climax of the age is building. Momentous events, written on the pages of Holy Scripture, are about to come alive.  The final curtain will rise when Jesus steps out on the clouds of glory and calls all believers–His Bride, the Church, to Himself. If you are a believer in Christ alone for salvation, you will catch the grand finale as you watch from the luxuriant balconies of Heaven.

We see the drama building all around us for the tumultuous scenes set to play out during the times just ahead. The year 2016 is cloaked in the fog of malevolence this world continues to wrap itself in–an increasingly anti-God, anti-Christ vesture that embraces humanism forewarned about by the psalmist.

Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing?The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD, and against his anointed, saying,Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us. (Psalms 2: 1-3)

A quick scan of the news just the past week exposes, I believe, the arrogance of those the Scriptures call “earth-dwellers” who incessantly strive  to break asunder the governance God rightfully placed upon His creation called man. The reports are laden with prophetic indicators.

One such report is seen in the prideful claims by a U.S. State Department spokesman, as the boast involves the increasing call for “peace and safety,” While the situation in Syria grows intensely worse by the hour, with the Syrian people torn violently between the forces of Syrian dictator Basher Al-Assad and the hordes of ISIS murderers, Secretary of State John Kerry is lauded as bringing about a peace that just isn’t happening and will never come to pass.

State Department spokesman John Kirby wrote under the headline, “Bringing peace and security to Syria”: “Under Secretary of State John Kerry’s stewardship the United Nations passed a U.S. sponsored resolution to create a road map for Syria.” Again, the problem is that like in all of the humanistic efforts at bringing true peace, the only “peacemaker” is kept out of the peacemaking. Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace, is denied at every turn by the president of the very country that speciously purports to be making the peace. (President Obama, remember, upon his very first week in office, proclaimed that the United States is not a Christian nation.)

The president of the United States of America, in effect, proclaimed regarding the governance of the God of Heaven:   “Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us.”

We can believe what that omniscient, omnipotent, governing authority has to say about such arrogance and willfulness. The message is chilling for the planet’s inhabitants who will be left behind when the great schism aforementioned takes place.

He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision.Then shall he speak unto them in his wrath, and vex them in his sore displeasure.Yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion. (Psalms 2: 4-6)

Details of what is about to take place in 2016, of course, lurks in the murkiness of an ever-increasing pall of trepidation. But, for those who are secure within the unshakable, impenetrable shelter of their Lord and Savior, there is no reason to fear. Piercing that black uncertainty is an effulgence that lights the path to the brightest of all possible futures. It is that Blessed Hope of Titus 2: 13!

While we peer into the year 2016 and beyond, using, as always, God’s prophetic Word as a template to place over issues and events of the times, there is on the horizon the growing spectre of global gulag. That is, those who would see to it that the rest of us come under a worldwide system of control are on the rise as at no time since the time of the Tower of Babel recorded in Genesis, chapter 11. The nucleus of the emerging system is one-world economy.

The foundation for that economic engine is and has been in place for some time. The only holdup to its full implementation is the determination of national entities to hold on to sovereignty and autonomy. The United States of America is the chief holdup, as has been pointed out many times. This nation must be brought down as it presently consists into a changed order of monumental proportion so that the other nations will follow suit.

This mandate for change, I’m convinced with all that is within me, continues to be the assignment given this president by the powers and principalities of global governance–the New World Order builders. He has done a stellar job in effecting that change. And, the change continues. The year 2016 is on track to be the most profound era of change ever, if there is no push-back against his all-out effort in the remaining year of this administration.

It appears unlikely that there will be push-back from the likes of the inside-the-Beltway opposition political party. There seems to be a kindred spirit between the parties on giving away America’s sovereignty and autonomy. We offer as evidence the latest global trade deal that passed with relative ease during 2015.

That there is powerful spiritual warfare going on for the heart and soul of this once great nation there is little doubt. We have watched the dismantling of the moral strength of American culture and the infusion of every form of anti-God comportment, made legal through executive action and Supreme Court edict. Congress has rolled over at every point, inexplicably unable and/or unwilling to oppose the transformation this president has achieved, seemingly with great ease.

The churches of America–with the exception of a very few–have offered no push-back against the destruction of America. The days when the likes of the Moral Majority–as hated as it was by the media and the political left–acted as a guardian of the nation’s moral fiber, are long gone. To be frank, it is literally true to say that about the only hope we have is a prayer in the matter of saving our nation.

I believe we are witnessing the most significant movement into the prophesied Antichrist governmental model through the swift changes within international  monetary dynamics taking place. One such movement is making its presence felt as private industry melds with world trade rearrangements we have seen take place this year.

I am the first to admit that I  am basically ignorant in the matters of global finance as they are conducted within the highest echelons. But even the neophyte can see developments that portend a tremendous transformation that will be deleterious to sovereign nations. The following news excerpt gives some idea of the changes afoot.

Several major companies from across both the technology and financial industries—including IBM, Intel, and Cisco as well as the London Stock Exchange Group and big-name banks JP Morgan, Wells Fargo, and State Street—have joined forces to create an alternative to the blockchain, the global online ledger that underpins the bitcoin digital currency…

Blockchain is essentially a database that runs across a worldwide network of independent machines—a database that’s controlled by no single entity but can still reliably track the exchange of assets, thanks to some nifty mathematics…

The promise of blockchain technology is that it can provide a more secure, more reliable, more transparent, and more automatic way of exchanging money, securities, and other assets. It lets you trade assets as easily as you trade emails today—and you can trade them without putting your trust in any one person or organization. This could eliminate many of the slower technologies and expensive middlemen that clog up today’s markets, says Marley Gray, who oversees blockchain work at Microsoft. (Cade Metz, “Tech and Banking Giants Ditch Bitcoin for Their Own Blockchain,” WIRED, December 17, 2015)

All of this “private” interlinkage seems so benign and geared for progress in making life better for everyone on the planet, does it not? However when one considers the grasp of most every government on earth to nationalize or place private industry under government controls, the spectre grows ominous.

America’s own grasp in this regard was on display with the federal governmental bankruptcy interventions of such corporate giants as AIG, General Motors, and General Electric. The Obama administration, ostensibly to keep major financial institutions backing these corporations from failure, in effect purchased the assets of the failing companies.

The above news item becomes dangerously relevant in prophetic terms when considering this line from that financial news story: “A database that runs across a worldwide network of independent machines—a database that’s controlled by no single entity.” With governments demonstrably proving that they want to control private industry–even to the point of owning those industries, the drive to destroy sovereignty and autonomy of America, the apex nation of the world, is quite telling.

Antichrist is an “entity” who will one day cause all buying and selling to be done through him–under his number and name (Revelation 13:16-18). Call it blockchain or whatsoever, control by history’s most terrible tyrant is on the way.

Take heart. Jesus Christ is also on His way. He will put an end to the tyrannical control. He will first call all believers to meet Him in the air in one, glorious millisecond. Realizing all of the  developments in the drive for global order going on, we can conclude that that moment must be very near indeed.

Christmas 2015, to me, seems strangely removed from Christmases of the past. By that I mean the culture has changed in America to the point that Jesus is now truly marginalized. He has been, it seems to me, moved by opposition forces to the periphery for the first time in the nation’s history of celebrating His birth. The ambience of the season feels different this time.

News reports tell almost daily of public schools that have changed the name of the season’s celebration to something other than Christmas. Calling it Christmas is forbidden within a growing number of corporate entities and organizations. We must now refer to the season as Happy Holidays rather than as Christmas. People are more and more offended by anything associated with the name of Jesus Christ, or so it seems according to the politically correct–the minority that has been allowed to rule American society over the past number of years.

Christians watched and protested mildly while witnessing Christmas go from a celebration of Christ’s birth to becoming more and more commercialized. The desensitizing messages of the entertainment industry and of the advertising world paved the way to acceptance of the fear of offending spiritual infection we suffer today. Christianity, thus Christmas, represents a narrow-minded, bigoted, homophobic restrictiveness that the post-Christian, “liberated” American need not endure.

Celebration of Christ’s birth was until very recent times an inseparable part of America’s rich heritage. But, as the American home began to  come apart at the seams, the Christmas celebration so much a part of family life suffered a schizophrenia of sorts.

The first coming of  Christ as a babe to  Bethlehem  is now seen by fewer and fewer numbers of U.S. population as something to look back on with reason to celebrate. With the advent of this presidential administration, which began with the new president declaring that we are no longer a Christian nation, the unraveling of America’s moral fabric –already underway–began in earnest. The reweaving of that fabric has been taking place ever since.

Everything Christian is frowned upon, and morality has been redefined. Tolerance is the mantra of the day. Things the Word of God says are wrong, those in control of the reins of  governance declare to be good. The shedding of the blood of the innocent is legally stipulated to be a good thing for the sake of giving women the right to choose. God’s definition of marriage is considered narrow-minded and evil because it restricts the right to “love” as one chooses. Man with man and woman with woman in the sexual union, and in marriage, is lauded and applauded by the neo-pagan culture as proof that we are becoming an enlightened people.

While God’s Son and Christianity are pushed out of society and culture, a false religion, whose worshippers behead and commit other atrocities upon those who won’t bow the knee to their false deity, is given governmental protection at every turn by this president.

Those who continue to make strides to diminish the influence of true Christianity on the culture have celebrated a number of victories through Supreme Court decisions the past seven years. Despite these apparent losses believers in Jesus Christ have suffered in the culture war, the Christian is not defeated. A future celebration is scheduled even more wonderful than is celebration of Christ’s birth two thousand years ago.

The infant who came to earth, sent as the Lamb of God to take away the sins of the world, escaped the infanticide of that day. Herod, Israel’s chief murderer of babies, couldn’t defeat that tiny baby and His mission to provide the only way to redemption. Neither will the abortionists and anti-God forces of today defeat the baby of Bethlehem who is now fully in authority over all of creation and is about to bring God’s kingdom to planet earth.

We who name the Name of Jesus–who are  redeemed by the crucified and resurrected Christ–will one day –perhaps very soon–be called into His presence (Revelation 4:1). He will take us to the Father’s house, where He has prepared mansions in which we will dwell forever (John 14:1-3). That will indeed be a time of eternal celebration!

One priority heads the list that the principalities and powers in high places of Ephesians 6:12 must achieve in order to build the neo-Babel tower of world control. There can be no doubt of what that geopolitical goal is if one truly considers the things going on within the COP (Conference of the Parties) held in Paris November 30 through December 11. That was the twenty-first get-together of the globalist organization whose membership now numbers more than 190 nations.

There declared intention is to establish global agreement on what to do about so-called climate change. The aim is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions brought about by human activity. Their proclamation of such danger to the environment through continuing sophistry that includes falsifying data on supposed global warming has been debunked over recent years.

These “de-growth” environmentalist nonetheless continue to shout through their world-wide media accomplices that green house emission-caused global warming will be the thing that will bring an end to planet earth. Thus even though they’ve had to alter their fear-mongering rant to call it “climate change” because of scientific proof to the contrary.

The most recognizable religious figure on the planet is all in, too. Pope Frances, flying on the papal plane when leaving Africa, weighed in when asked to comment on whether anything constructive might come of the COP gathering.

“I’m not sure, but I can say that it is now or never,” he said.

The pope went on to say: “We are on the edge of suicide…but I am sure that just about everybody meeting in Paris is aware of this and wants to do something.”

He concluded:

“The other day I read that in Greenland the glaciers have lost billions of tons… In the Pacific there is a country that is buying another country in order to move, because in 20 years it’s going to disappear. I believe in these people, [the COP leadership] that they will do something. I hope so, and I pray for it.” (Source: “POPE: CLIMATE CHANGE AGREEMENT ‘NOW OR NEVER,’ HUMANITY ON THE ‘EDGE OF SUICIDE’,” Thomas D. Williams, DECEMBER 1, 2015, http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2015/12/01/pope-climate-change-agreement-now-never-humanity-edge-suicide/). 

The climate change/environmental save-the-planet social engineers intend to change human consumption patterns in every possible way. They intend to reduce private land ownership to the point that all will be forced to live in restricted communal areas. This is what is meant, in part, by the “de-growth” term mentioned above. The ultimate outgrowth of the de-growther plan is to reduce the population of earth to 500 million or less.

Talk show host Mark Levin, in chapter 7 of his recent book Plunder and Deceit, mentions America’s own neo-Babel de-growther in addressing the environmentalist movement:

Much of the so-called environmental movement today has transmuted into an aggressively nefarious and primitive faction. In the last fifteen years, many of the tenets of uto­pian statism have coalesced around something called the “de-growth” movement. Originating in Europe but now taking a firm hold in the United States, the “degrowthers,” as I shall characterize them, include in their ranks none other than President Barack Obama. On January 17, 2008, Obama made clear his hostility toward, of all things, electricity generated from coal and coal-powered plants. He told the San Francisco Chronicle, “You know, when I was asked earlier about the issue of coal . . . under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.”

Recently we have learned they are determined to eventually do away with air-conditioning and other comfort/convenience technologies. We in the West must be brought down to the same level of the Third World societies and cultures. Equality will then be achieved and Utopia established. They will have created their version of heaven on earth.

The real story behind all of this, of course, is the matter of sovereignty.

The plan of the builders of the end-times Tower of Babel know that to begin to achieve their goal of de-growth, the apex nation of the world, America, must be stripped of her sovereignty. The U.S. is the holdup. Europe, the one-time bastion of civilization, has all but given its sovereignty over to the socialistic globalist would-be masters. Now, we are seeing America being channeled into that European model. Sovereignty must be and is being stripped. Barack Hussein Obama has been chosen to be primarily instrumental in the stripping process.

That’s what this climate change mantra and drive is all about. It’s what the incessant call to get the guns out of the hands of average Americans is all about. Sovereignty can be maintained only when it is defended by force. Armed Americans stand in the way. That is what the open borders and invitation to a massive invasion from our south and from the Middle East is all about. No more borders–i.e., no more sovereignty.

But of course all this is but the tip of the proverbial iceberg of impending destruction.

The real sovereignty issue is that of the True Sovereign–the Creator of the universe and of all things. The master of the would-be one-world engineers–the neo-Tower builders- wants, as he did from the time of the war in Heaven- to overthrow the sovereignty of God.

Lucifer the fallen has brought today’s globalists to the  point of the psalmist’s predicted end-of-the -age arrangement.

Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD, and against his anointed, saying, Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us. He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision. Then shall he speak unto them in his wrath, and vex them in his sore displeasure. Yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion. (Psalms 2:1-6)

Even so, come Lord Jesus.