In a recent “prophecyline” column, I expounded a bit on the all-out assault on national sovereignty. I thought I was through. I’m not. The gist was that this end-times attack can be seen in all its vehemence while the entire mainstream media and even Republican establishment leaders in many cases are waging all-out war on Donald Trump’s presidency.

Trump presents his political case as “America First.” He claims to want to reestablish America’s autonomy in the area of global trade–a thing that has set off a frothing-at-the-mouth rage by the globalist-elites. No matter any other invective they throw at him, Trump’s nationalistic campaigning, wanting to keep America as the leader of the world’s nations, thwarting their globalist agenda, is the real reason for the rage, make no mistake.

There is no longer any pretense of equal coverage of the political parties or their ideologies. Rather than question both on the issues, the mainstream news journalists (no longer an accurate nomenclature for this mob) don’t question potential Democrat candidates for the 2020 presidential run at all and criticize most every word from the mouth of Trump. There ravenous desire is not to find out what his hopes for making America great again is all about, but to take anything he says and either blow it out of all proportion or make up lies about what he says out of whole cloth.

Well…maybe not always exactly out of whole cloth, but certainly to take his audaciousness and turn it, through twisting and fabrication, into what they hope will continue to widen the margins in the polls in favor of their own political ideology and chosen candidate–an ideology that is in complete synchronization with that of the Democrat Party–in my humble estimation.

The mainstream news organization is a global conglomerate as never before. They view America as the hold-up to the utopian dream. If all nations are forced to be more equal in material wealth–all peoples equal in personal wealth–the world will live at peace. It didn’t work with Stalin’s Soviet Union or with Mao’s China. It’s not working anywhere in the world at present–e.g., Venezuela, Cuba, and any other place it’s being tried. But, somehow, if America gives up its wealth in some sort of insane redistribution scheme this time it will work, so the reprobate thinking goes.

Thus, globalism is the ideology, philosophy, and theology all rolled up into one ball of upside-down thinking that will in the minds of the one-world order types bring peace, prosperity, and love for all mankind.

We have witnessed the scheme being implemented to an incremental degree over the past decade plus. Even before the Obama administration, the scheme was underway, as a matter of fact.

The James Bakers of this new world cabal, it must be truthfully noted, are no different in their pursuit of bringing America down than are the George Soros types. They are all simply at the opposite ends of the geopolitical spectrum, and rather than that spectrum being linear, it forms a circle, with the left meeting the right to close what will be a planetary dictatorship at some point.

Put a cross-hair symbolically over that circle, and it is all of us who are at the center of that bull’s eye. We are to be encapsulated within that circle of power.

The circle is quickly closing. It is the Lord of Heaven, with His Restrainer, the Holy Spirit who Indwells all born-again believers –the Church–Who holds back the evil that will one day rule for a time.

Ours is not a political blog or web site. We are about eschatology–the study of end things from the perspective of Bible prophecy. So what I have written here is all examined after prayer and much study about what God’s Word has to say about things to come. We are particularly interested for the moment, of course, in what might be about to come to pass in terms of the immediate future.

We know beyond any doubt within our own prayer and study that what we are seeing is the attempted closing of that one-world circle–the structure that will be the stage setting for the coming king of fierce countenance. We are witnessing the rapid advancement of the neo-Tower of Babel being constructed, the platform from which Antichrist will, for a time, be allowed to subject most of the planet.

I find it rather ironic that the one question I and other speakers often get at forums where we interview or speak is: “What about America? Is it in Bible prophecy?” Or: “Why isn’t America in Bible prophecy?”

I find it ironic because we have no real answer as to why America, the most grandiose and powerful nation-state of all of history, is given no mention, while other smaller places–like Libya–are mentioned. Yet, we, in my opinion, now find ourselves at a moment in history when the American electorate has at its fingertips when entering the voting booths the ability to determine whether, in fact, this circle of global gulag will be sooner rather than later closed.

That global, imprisoning circle will ultimately be closed. There’s no doubt about it. The Lord has long ago reported it’s closing. But, I sense it doesn’t have to be closed just yet. I believe the American electorate might just be able to have an effect on its timing so far as its closing into a lock-down position is concerned–to delay it for a time later rather than sooner.

I view this matter under the rubric of 2 Chronicles 7:14. God’s people hold the key to slowing the onslaught of the Antichrist regime that is reaching out for the throats of the peoples of the world–particularly for the throats of all Christians. The Holy Spirit is still the restrainer of 2 Thessalonians chapter 2. He is resident within each believer, those who constitute the church of Jesus Christ.

We must, as God’s people, humble ourselves and pray, turn from our wicked ways, and seek His face. And, I believe that we must vote in the right way in the 2020 presidential election, perhaps one of the last opportunities we might have to do so.

The rider on the white horse of Revelation chapter 6 is preparing to gallop. Rapture Ready…or not the time is coming when God’s children will be called into Christ’s presence. It is time to be about doing our earthly duty, while looking up.

Do you sense that time is moving faster than ever before? I must tell you that I sense that the rush of everything going on becomes more intensive by the hour.

We all have had the conversation that when we were younger, time for us seemed to move much more slowly. The older we get, the minutes, hours, days, etc., fly by at a much faster rate.

Maybe it’s just that as our age increases, everything slows down within our own physiology–within our capability to match the speed with things whizzing past us. The race of life in which we must participate, possibly, might simply overwhelm us, and we can no longer keep up. The perception, therefore, might be that time itself is moving ever faster, while that’s not really the case.

Some of you physicists could likely make the case that time is actually speeding up or slowing down, or whatsoever theory science postulates these days. But, the clock still moves one second at a time. We live our own given increments of life one tick at a time like every other of our fellow travelers on the planet. So, it is outside the realm of reality to suppose that the movement of time itself is appreciably changed from the time we were youngsters.

It has to be that the increased activities and events crowding in on our given ticks of the clock have colluded to alter our perception–to make it seem that time is moving more swiftly.

There is not much room for argument that in America today, for many of us, life’s pressures have seemingly compressed our given twenty-four hours. We are indeed racing toward our destinations–our destiny–at ever-increasing speed, it seems.

These columns, of course, are focused as much as possible on Bible prophecy. We place Bible prophecy as a template over the issues and events of this, what we believe to be the end-times, generation. We hope thereby to gauge how near human history is to the Second Coming of Christ.

Progression in stage-setting for fulfillment of prophecy is all-important in this gauging effort. How quickly things look to be taking place that line up with what Jesus and the Old and New Testament prophets foretold give some sense of when the Rapture of the Church might occur–i.e., we know that the Rapture of the Church will happen at least seven years prior to Christ’s Second Advent (Revelation 19:11). Therefore, if we consider that things are swiftly moving toward what the prophets say will happen during the post-Rapture era and Daniel’s seventieth week (the Tribulation), we can say with a degree of certitude that Jesus is on the very brink of calling the Church to Himself (Revelation 4:1).

For example, we have witnessed and analyzed the formation of the Gog-Magog coalition of Ezekiel 38 and 39 taking shape at a phenomenal pace. Russia, Iran (Persia), and a number of other entities that hate Israel are gathering.

There is a building world financial crisis that threatens to collapse the global economy. And, in that regard, the internationalist, new-world-order architects are going full steam ahead in their efforts to do away with national sovereignties and to instead bring the world back to Babel. We see the absolutely blatant all-out assault on the U.S.  president who opposes globalism and calls America back to the founders’ vision for this country.

Mainstream media admitted, through an article by a New York Times former journalist who is now a news media-analyst for the Times that the mainstream news conglomerate is all in for getting Donald Trump out of office. The writer admits their objective is to see that Trump, whom they claim–as does Barack Obama–is unfit for the land’s highest office never gets into the White House. There’s no longer any pretense of fair and balanced coverage of the candidates.

Prophetically, this fits what Daniel the prophet and John the Revelator foretold. There is to be a revived Roman Empire–a final world empire over which a beast called Antichrist will rule. We are, at this present time in history, caught up in a race politically, prophetically, and personally, as believers.

Politically, we witness the fomenting of chaos in our nation by those who want America brought into conformation with the global blueprint. It is a luciferian plan being carried out by Satan’s human minions. The most recent former presidential administration took an active part in creating this chaos, through the Department of Justice (attorney general) actions and in other ways through international diplomacy.

The 2016 presidential race and things that transpired since have brought into focus just how determined the fallen one is to bring all mankind into its prophesied final form.

Prophetically, we are racing toward the time when the Lord will catastrophically intervene into the affairs of rebellious mankind. The Church–all born-again believers in Jesus Christ–will be removed and the most terrible time of all human history will begin.

Personally, we who name the name of Christ should all be engaged fully in the race to complete the Lord’s Great Commission while there is yet time to do His work here on earth. There are those in Heaven watching God’s children. They are cheering for believers who are running the race set before us. If you’ve read my book, Rapture Ready…Or Not, you know that I’m convinced with all that is within me that I met some of these heavenly observers on Good Friday, April 22, 2011.

Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God. (Hebrews 12:1-2)

The title of this week’s commentary is a proper one, I think. The famous fictional detective invented by mystery author Conan Doyle–Sherlock Holmes–often used the term “deduced” in his brilliant dissection of seemingly unsolvable crimes. He would “deduce,” or conclude, that the circumstances surrounding the mystery had led to the inevitable solving of the murder, theft, or whatsoever the crime involved.

There is no greater mystery than the mystery of iniquity mentioned by Paul the apostle: “For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way” (2 Thessalonians 2:7).

We are presently in the midst of iniquitous circumstance and behavior by a world of rebellious earth dwellers–as the KJV terms the anti-God masses of humanity that will one day suffer God’s wrath and judgment. At the heart of the mystery of iniquity that surrounds us is a growing evil spiritual dementia that is setting the stage for the prophecy given through the apostle Paul. The prophecy is from the same section of the second letter to the Thessalonians above: “And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness” (2 Thessalonians 2:11-12).

I think it is patently obvious to any true student of Bible prophecy that we are witnessing a form of spiritual dementia–of upside-down thinking each and every day. This evil darkening of the ability to think sanely, morally, comes from precisely the anti-God rebelliousness the great apostle warned about in his letter to the Romans:

And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient; Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, Without understanding, covenant breakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful: Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them” (Romans 1 28-32)

I believe it is relatively easy to deduce from things taking place all around us today that the delusion Paul forewarns will be full-blown when the Holy Spirit withdraws as restrainer of evil is even now developing. As a matter of fact, my own conclusion is that the satanically inflicted dementia is already rather far advanced. The evidence grows hour by hour that we are in a world going mad with luciferian rage.

Let’s examine that evidence to see if we are on to something, as Sherlock Holmes might say…

Economic Irrationality

As oft is said about insanity, as attributed first to Albert Einstein, the definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over to solve a problem although it fails every time and expecting a different result.

This is exactly where today’s thinking is at this hour of history in America. The government runs the Treasury printing presses over and over to produce trillions of dollars with nothing to back them in order to solve the national economic woes, which only get worse and worse.

Lyndon Johnson’s presidential administration conducted a War on Poverty to produce a Great Society. Since that 1964 all-out effort to solve America’s differences in the plight of the have-nots vs. the haves, the poverty has only increased. More than $22 trillion has been thrown at the problems involved. The nation is now bankrupt for all practical purposes, and the national debt grows exponentially.

It’s the same all over the world. Nations are in dire economic chaos, and the global economic structure–for the most part inextricably linked to the U.S. dollar–is on the brink of collapse. Only the staying hand of Almighty God is keeping global depression beyond any ever experienced from happening.

Yet, the powers that be continue to use the same methodologies time and time again in their insane effort to somehow get a different result.

Diplomatic Dementia

The international community of diplomat’s views Israel as the hold-up to peace. This, even though Israel is a thin sliver of a nation that threatens no other nation, but provides vast goods and inventive services to the whole world.

Israel’s enemies, on the other hand–the Arab nations that surround the Jewish state–threaten to annihilate the tiny nation on a daily basis. Israel offers to sit down and come to peace with those who hate them, but the Arab states won’t even recognize Israel as a country. Yet the United Nations as a whole blames Israel for not being willing to give their enemies the land they want. The land Israel’s antagonists want, of course, is the very buffer territory that gives Israel a degree of protection from their enemies, who have attacked them in three major wars.

The diplomats cannot understand or refuse to recognize the true problem in the region. It is a satanically spawned dementia that dominates their thinking.

Societal insanity

Can there be much argument that we are faced with a culture seemingly gone mad, considering things we see transpiring as of late?

What were just a few short years ago designated mental/psychological disorders are now proclaimed to be normal human behavior. As a matter-of-fact, there now are laws that demand we assign things like homosexuality, trans-gender identification and other conditions formerly considered aberrant or abnormalities special status, warranting privileged treatment –or else.

The absolute insanity of making us agree, through legal stipulation, that men, if they feel like a woman on any given hour or day, must be allowed to go into women’s restrooms, should speak for the far advanced state of reprobate thinking in which we find ourselves. The evidence makes it a no-brainer to deduce that there is already considerable delusion in society and culture today.

I’m sure you can think of dozens of things going on in society and culture that are even more bizarre.

Religious Reprobate Reasoning

Religious delusion at this time of the end of the age is running wild. God’s Word, Jesus Himself, says that the Son of God is the only Way to God the Father–to Heaven.

Even some “evangelical” ministries are now wanting to make nice with apostate religionists within Christianity. Even more deludedly, they are reaching out to embrace other religions that will have nothing to do with Jesus Christ as a spiritual factor, much less as Deity who offers the only Way to their perverse version of Heaven.

Crislam, the combining of Christianity and Islam, is one such effort sponsored by some well-known supposed Christian leaders. Recently, Pope Francis was interviewed on a flight returning to the Vatican. He was recorded saying over and over that Islam is a religion of peace and that it presents only love, not danger, to mankind.

Following the murder of a Catholic priest in northern France by those who claimed the act was done for Allah, the pope opined the following:

I think it is not right to identify Islam with violence…This is not right, and it is not true…I don’t like to talk about Islamic violence because each day when I read the paper I see violence here in Italy…Terrorism is born of worshipping money in a capitalist society. I know it dangerous to say this, but terrorism grows when there is no other option and when money is made a god, and it, instead of the person, is put at the center of the world economy…That is the first form of terrorism. That is a basic terrorism against all of humanity.

Pope Francis has said on occasion that Christianity and Islam are both religions of conquest, and he has blamed Western thinking and interference in the Middle East as responsible for the rise of Islamic extremism. ^“Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!” (Isaiah 5:20).

It doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes to deduce that the end times delusion Paul prophesied for the Tribulation period as recorded in 2 Thessalonians chapter 2 has truly already infected this pre-Tribulation era.

Satan is often portrayed, or at least thought of, as ruling over a Dante’s Inferno–like domain. He is in his red union suit, his barbed tail wagging as his tight grin of evil is framed between his goatee and horns that protrude angrily above devilish eyebrows and red, glowing eyes.

Hades smolders around him as he relishes the next human victims he can entice into his hot, sulfurous kingdom. His intention is to see all of God’s creation called man forever suffer in this eternally hot abode.

Truth is that only the last part of that portrayal has Biblical validity. The devil does want every human being to suffer eternity apart from their Creator. The abyss (Tartarus) and eventually the lake of fire will be the final destination for lost humanity. Lucifer the fallen one —the devil— however, will not rule over the place called hell. He will be the one being there who suffers most, according to God’s truth about the matters involved.

The old serpent, however, is at present dealing with issues of heating things up and trying to lure people on board. Tragically, many are falling for his siren call to jump aboard the global warming (now changed to climate change) bandwagon.

I have written about it in Rapture Ready…Or Not: 15 Reasons This Is the Generation That Will Be Left Behind, and in many articles. The lie that global warming (climate change) will make earth uninhabitable, is the rallying cry for the push for one-world order. It indeed is at the heart of the blueprint the globalist elitists are using to construct Antichrist’s hell on earth.

America, as I have also written many times, must be brought down from its super power status. The U.S. must be made to conform with the misery the globalists have helped much of the world achieve in order to make all on the planet look to them for solutions.

John Kerry, Al Gore, and others of their ilk unknowingly are doing their dead-level best to do the devil’s work, in my humble view. That group of would-be Bable builders want to warm us up considerably in order to somehow attain the utopia they and the globalists want to construct.

Science proves almost on an hourly basis the lie that is global warming-climate change, about which Kerry and the others are wringing their hands as they fear-monger. They, with the help of national and international media, none-the-less, move forward at foolhardy, breakneck speed.

Like all of the other reprobate (upside-down) unreasonableness they foist, they believe that making us warmer by taking away the comfort of our air-conditioners is part of the answer. Despite the great heat they say is about to make planet earth like Venus or some other hellish planetary orb, they want to do away with the very thing that can make us comfortably cool. —Thus although, again, the science continues to prove in every instance that the earth isn’t heating up, but, actually, is cooling.

All one must do to understand the truth of the matter is to remember the global warmists that got caught in a growing field of solid ice a few years ago. They had to be rescued by ice-breaker ships as they moved toward the Arctic Circle in an attempt to gather evidence that the earth is warming.

Yet John Kerry, on behalf of the Obama lame-duck administration, did all possible to bring America’s sovereignty down so the global order could proceed uninhibited. He, like Mr. Obama, gave this insanely wrong matter —global warming— greater priority than the true threat we faced then and continue to face now —Islamist terrorism. The following news item excerpts from those years as the Obama Administraion came to a close frames the madness:

“Secretary of State John Kerry said in Vienna on Friday that air conditioners and refrigerators are as big of a threat to life as the threat of terrorism posed by groups like the Islamic State.

“The Washington Examiner reported that Kerry was in Vienna to amend the 1987 Montreal Protocol that would phase out hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs, from basic household and commercial appliances like air conditioners, refrigerators, and inhalers.

““As we were working together on the challenge of [ISIS] and terrorism,” Kerry said. “It’s hard for some people to grasp it, but what we–you–are doing here right now is of equal importance because it has the ability to literally save life on the planet itself.”…

“Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy was also present at the negotiations and is serving as lead negotiator for the United States. McCarthy has said that her goal is to enact the HFC agreement by the end of the year.

“The EPA rules along with the global deal would ban HFC in the United States and would push for alternative chemicals for use in appliances.

“The negotiations are part of President Obama’s climate agenda to combat global climate change.” (Source: Kerry: Air conditioners as big a threat as ISIS by Alyssa Canobbio, Published July 23, 2016, Washington Free Beacon).

That old serpent, Satan, wants to warm us all, apparently, even before the lost, wretched souls among humanity reach that final, ultimately, fiery-hot destination. The globalist would-be masters, wittingly or unwittingly, are carrying out Lucifer’s blueprint for constructing his Antichrist’s world disorder.

God’s Word —the Bible— has forewarned of this present state of last days danger. The Lord is in control, but he has given us the good sensibility, and the marvelous privilege in this still free nation to vote for liberty rather than for tyranny.

Prayer and exercising the vote our forefathers built into the Constitution is still our right. Doing so, in sufficient numbers, will perhaps assure that we as believers continue to have the right to also carry out our Lord’s Great Commission beyond the upcoming presidential, political season.

Meantime let us also do—and with increased faith and vigor— as Jesus instructed as recorded in Luke 21: 28, and as Paul wrote as given in Titus 2: 13.

I wrote some years ago for one of my books a chapter I titled “Globalism’s Siren Song.” The chapter began as follows:

Come, young citizens of the world, we are one, we are one.

Come, young citizens of the world, we are one, we are one.

We have one hope, we have one dream, and with one voice we sing:

Peace, prosperity, and love for all mankind.

The lyrics are set to an enchanting, rhythmic melody and are sung by a chorus of sweet-voiced children. Soon you are humming, then singing along. What could possibly be wrong with those sentiments so innocently expressed? Peace, prosperity, and love for all mankind-are these not among the most noble of objectives?

Powerful humanistic allurements beckon seductively, promising a golden future if all of earth’s people will come together as one. Such a glorious world order, long dreamed about and even fervently pursued, seems at last achievable. Those who hold the worldview that national boundaries must fall and sovereignties must diminish because we are all citizens of planet earth passionately embrace the earth shrinking technologies that science continues to produce. For example, the Internet. Yes, the Utopian dream at last seems achievable. However, while the sirens of globalism – like the twin sisters who lured unwary sailors to their deaths in Homer’s The Odyssey -sing their lovely, mesmerizing songs of New World Order, the words pronounced by the Ancient of Days reverberate through the corridors of antiquity and leap at this generation from the pages of God’s Holy Word:

Behold, the people are one and they have all one language, and this they begin to do; and now nothing will be restrained from them which they have imagined to do (Genesis 11:6).

One World Order was at the time of that chapter’s writing a strong factor to consider in looking at where the world stood on God’s prophetic timeline. Like for most of the latter part of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first, the drive to return to Babel was in the news in one form or the other at least on a weekly basis.

The Soviet Union had dissolved after President Reagan’s demand: “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” There seemed great optimism then that the building of that new Tower of Babel could begin in earnest.

The many developing conflicts, however, as the Middle East lit up with increased Islamist fanaticism and terrorism, required that the globalists go from singing their siren song in a joyful, Kumbaya fashion to one sung with somewhat dampened enthusiasm. The “We Are the World” and all such anthems seemed to lessen into a holding-pattern hum while the new-world-order-builders were kept busy putting out fires that might ignite wars almost as dangerous as those that could have erupted in days of the Cold War.

For a time, there was a more or less disjointed effort on behalf of what might be considered the civilized nations to deal with the Middle Eastern madness. But, with the coming of the felling of the World Trade Towers on September 11, 2001, there was an almost instantaneous coalescence of the global powers, with a number of lesser powers. Operation Iraqi Freedom, you will remember, was the result.

While there appeared to be a new, powerful drive toward the new world order the first President Bush talked about so much, America was the hold-up. The U.S. was so overwhelmingly powerful in dealing with the Desert Storm campaign and later with the following war by President Bush 43 to oust Saddam Hussein from Iraq that the globalists dream of a one-world power was impossible to form.

Sovereignty and autonomy of nations were the order of the day. God’s hand moved upon the world of geopolitics to prevent the singing of the one-world anthems with increased vigor.

We come to the present hour. To the observer of the world scene today–and I’m not talking about the vast number of Americans or citizens of other nations, but the experts who watch for political rearrangement–the major roadblock to achieving global order was being dismantled as quickly as the former presidential regime could manage–i.e., America was having its foundation chipped away as Barack Obama and all in cahoots with him around the world strove diligently to fundamentally transform America from being a constitutional republic to becoming a borderless, possession of the U.N.

America was to be brought down so the new Babylonian order can be built. Mr. Obama was in high gear at every turn, using the presidency of earth’s most prominent nation to make the “hope and change” he promised before his election–a promise the true nature of which few in this country comprehended. The change, that transformation, was to be the removal of America as a hindrance to the larger order–that within which the powers that be can rule and reign as a central governing authority.

Thankfully, the Lord preempted those vile plans and –for now– has the movement into one world order on hold.

So, the Obama administration almost single-handedly –so the globalists elite must surely have thought– began the process of dismantling the roadblock to their taking the world back to Babel. This, of course, was all preparation for Antichrist, the globalist of all globalists, to step onto the stage of human history for the final curtain call. But it did not happen and will not happen until it is Providentially Allowed.

The God of Heaven says that will not happen until the church of Jesus Christ is removed. For it is in actuality the Holy Spirit indwelling the Church–not America–that is governing the globalists’ efforts to establish one world order.

In writing the chapter I mentioned in the opening of this commentary, I closed that chapter with the following, as I will do with this article.

The Lull Before the Storm

Thankfully, even though God’s judgment upon sin is sure, He is also slow to anger and His mercy is great. It is my opinion that we are currently in a lull that God has graciously granted just before the prophesied end-of-time storm that will devastate a wrath-deserving generation. Even so, a brisk wind is already snapping the flag of warning that apocalypse approaches.

God the Holy Spirit earnestly and tenderly beckons all who will heed His call to take shelter within the only harbor where protection from the deadly whirlwind to come can be found. That safe harbor is Jesus Christ. Those who refuse to accept the haven or safety offered by Christ will perish beneath the raging, crashing surge as surely as did the antediluvians during the judgment of Noah’s day.

Antichrist, the coming beast of Revelation chapter 13, will be the most attractive, charismatic personality ever to step foot on the planet. He will have a following that defies imagination. His magnetic personality and, no doubt, striking appearance, will be the antithesis of Jesus Christ in every way when he “magnifies” himself, as the prophet Daniel foretold.

Jesus was meek. He came as a lamb. The Bible tells us that He had no outstanding physical features or characteristics that would set Him apart from the rest of humanity. The exceptions were when He was on the Mount of Transfiguration when He was said to shine like the sun, and when He was said to be the most “marred” of all men at the time of His crucifixion.

Antichrist, that man of sin, will have, literally, a worldwide, totally devoted following.

I’m a “back number,” as Dr. Vernon McGee used to say, referring to his own naïveté when it came to keeping up with the pop culture of his time. But it was brought to my attention the meteoric career of a singer who started out as Katy Hudson and now entertains under the stage name Katy Perry.

She went from singing as a Christian recording artist to becoming a secular, recording/entertaining phenomenon. Her Christian album under Katy Hudson sold only 2000 copies or so. She switched to secular recording and soared to the top of the charts. According to Wikipedia: She became the first artist with multiple videos to reach 1 billion views on Vevo with the videos for the songs “Roar” and “Dark Horse.”

Her following on Twitter and other social media forums indicates that she has at least 90 million fans.

Those numbers are stratospheric. Neither ol’ Elvis nor the Beatles ever reached those heights–although they had their share of groupies, to be sure.

Antichrist, according to Revelation chapter 13, will be literally worshiped by the whole world. Those who don’t worship him will have their heads lopped off and worse. His numbers of followers will put Miss Katy’s numbers in the category of the infinitesimal by comparison.

We know of the Democrat Party’s incessant coming under pressure to remove any reference to God from their party platform. When the convention began for the 2012 presidential nominating process, we remember that the no’s were much louder than the yeas when the question was put up for keeping God’s name being used in official language of the party’s doings.

Not to long ago, there was a report of an entertainer demanding that the song “God Bless America” be no longer sung at half times or at the beginnings of sporting events. He wanted that offensive anthem, as he characterized it, forever discarded. Even in the Congress of the United States, there is a constant drumbeat from some of the “progressive” quarters to do away with prayer to open sessions and to remove “In God we trust” from coinage and other governmental officialdom. There has been much progress, as they would have it, in getting vestiges of God, such as the Ten Commandments, removed from public places. Prayer and Bible reading have long since been forbidden in public schools and other public places, as we know.

The perverting of human sexuality at every level and the slaughter of countless millions of babies assault our senses daily.

There is an ongoing effort to rewrite America’s founding history. The champions of godlessness revisionists insist that the founding fathers wanted a totally secular nation–one devoid of any moralistic governance. When confronted with the facts of those founders’ own words in this regard, they, in effect, put the palms of their hands over their ears, close their eyes, and start humming one or the other of this debauched culture’s musical atrocities.

While engaged in research for my book, Rapture Ready…Or Not: 15 Reasons This Is the Generation That Will Be Left Behind, I looked into what the founders of America spoke and wrote on the matter of God’s influence in their nation-creating efforts. I included many of their quotes in the book and could have put in hundreds more. Here are a few.

John Adams, second president of the United States, said:

“The general principles on which the fathers achieved independence were the general principles of Christianity. I will avow that I then believed, and now believe, that those general principles of Christianity are as eternal and immutable as the existence and attributes of God.”

“I have examined all religions, and the result is that the Bible is the best book in the world.”

John Quincy Adams, 6th president of the United States, said:

“In the chain of human events, the birthday of the nation is indissolubly linked with the birthday of the Savior. The Declaration of Independence laid the cornerstone of human government upon the first precepts of Christianity.”

Samuel Adams, Governor of Massachusetts, Signer of the Declaration of Independence, Ratifier of the U.S. Constitution, said:

“I conceive we cannot better express ourselves than by humbly supplicating the Supreme Ruler of the world . . . that the confusions that are and have been among the nations may be overruled by the promoting and speedily bringing in the holy and happy period when the kingdoms of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ may be everywhere established, and the people willingly bow to the scepter of Him who is the Prince of Peace.”

Benjamin Franklin, Signer of the Declaration of Independence, Diplomat, printer, scientist, said:

“As to Jesus of Nazareth, my opinion of whom you particularly desire, I think the system of morals and His religion as He left them to us, the best the world ever saw, or is likely to see.”

Thomas Jefferson, Signer of the Declaration of Independence; Diplomat, Governor of Virginia; Secretary of State; third President of the United States, said:

“The practice of morality being necessary for the well being of society, He [God] has taken care to impress its precepts so indelibly on our hearts that they shall not be effaced by the subtleties of our brain. We all agree in the obligation of the moral principles of Jesus and nowhere will they be found delivered in greater purity than in His discourses.”

George Washington, Judge: Member of the Continental Congress; Commander-In-Chief of the Continental Army; President of the Constitutional Convention; First President of the United States; “Father of his Country,” said:

“While we are zealously performing the duties of good citizens and soldiers, we certainly ought not to be inattentive to the higher duties of religion. To the distinguished character of Patriot, it should be our highest glory to add the more distinguished character of Christian.”

“I now make it my earnest prayer that God would… most graciously be pleased to dispose us all to do justice, to love mercy, and to demean ourselves with that charity, humility, and pacific temper of the mind which were the characteristics of the Divine Author of our blessed religion.”

(Source: WallBuilders – Issues and Articles – The Founding Fathers on Jesus, Christianity and the Bible, David Barton, www.wallbuilders.com)

How far we as a people have strayed by allowing the groupies of godlessness to determine that Jesus Christ is anathema, but that the gods of entertainment in this world are to be glorified and followed into the abyss of national destruction. There is time to turn things around if the people who truly name the name of Christ will follow the godly directive of 2 Chronicles 7:14. Sad to say—to put it in terms the groupies of godlessness will understand–the trending is in the opposite direction.

Let’s continue to do our Christian duty in carrying out the Great Commission. Let us also vote the right way to the best of our ability. But, at the same time, let’s keep looking for the glorious appearing of our “blessed hope” (Titus 2:13).

Jesus’ Olivet Discourse prophecies continue to come alive while today’s news flashes in lightning-like fashion across our television and computer monitor screens.

We most often consider the terrorism and pyrotechnics of Middle Eastern madness. We talk about Russia and Iran (Persia) preparing to fulfill the Gog-Magog prophecies as given in Ezekiel chapters 38 and 39.

Our efforts are often spent concentrating on what is happening with regard to the building one-world order in the areas of finance, religion and the many other ways such movement is manifesting.

We think in terms of the proliferating things happening within Europe –about the upheaval that seems to be rearranging for the prophesied revived Roman Empire. We look at monetary economic dynamics that are driving the world toward a global fiscal order that will eventuate in the 666 marks and numbers system of Revelation 13: 16-18.

Sometimes the natural order seems so disturbed that geophysical activity, such as earthquakes occurring simultaneously, floods raging and other phenomena erupting across the planet draws the attention of prophecy watchers. But, it is the creation called man that at present seems on the front-burner of prophetic progression –at least to this observer.

The Lord gave, during His prophecies of things to come as the time of His return in the Second Advent nears, a quite interesting description of the human condition at the very end of the age. The description seems to have a dual reference or application.

The particular prophecy of which I write is a foretelling by the Lord I believe we see developing at this very moment in time. It is building hourly in its virulence –in its evil, end times impact upon cultures and societies around the world. Here is Christ’s prophecy.

“And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring.” (Lk 21: 25)

It is parts b and c of this prophecy that I wish us to examine. Jesus foretold that there will be “nations in distress with perplexity.” The “sea and waves” will be “roaring.”

We have looked a number of times in these commentaries at the fact that nations across the world are in distress with perplexity. The financial upheaval going on has Europe to the point of near-dissolution. The “Brexit” is one such manifestation. The great turmoil in Greece and now France as well as other EU countries make it clear that the western world is suffering a nervous breakdown of sorts. Our own nation is hard on the heels of the schizophrenia developing over there.

The next part of Jesus’ prophecy foretells that the “sea and waves roaring” will be a prime marker of the last of the last days. By the time the Tribulation is full-blown the disturbances will bring planet earth to the point of total destruction. Only Christ’s return will quell the “roaring.”

“Sea and waves” can indicate the geophysical disturbances forecast for that era. But, it is the symbolic application that is much more the meaning in this case, I’m convinced.

“Sea and waves” in this case are symbolic of the peoples of earth. Jesus was saying they will, as a result of the“distress and perplexity” be “roaring.”

Jesus indicated as given in Luke 21:28 that He will return (in the Rapture) when this indicator –and the others He gave as signals for His Second Coming at Armageddon– “begin to come to pass.”

John the revelator gave in the very first verse of the thirteenth chapter of Revelation the view of the Antichrist beast regime arising out of the “sea” of people that would be in tumult. It is the observation of a growing number of seasoned prophetic observers that the United States is now showing signs of being a part of this tumultuous“sea” of unrest that might soon bring history’s most ferocious tyrant to power.

The “Black Lives Matter” protests did much to ratchet up civil unrest within the nation. The nucleus of that disruptive organization, many say, is made up of rabble rousers who are career thugs, paid by the likes of George Soros, who has openly said he favors upsetting the order of things that communist-style socialism might be brought forth in America.

We have only to look at the turmoil going on south of our border and the havoc it is wreaking internally to see that our country is in distress with perplexity.

Many more than just the “conspiracy nuts” are wondering increasingly whether the current unrest being fomented might be the prelude to this president calling for martial law.

The many distresses involving Turkey punctuates Jesus’ prophecy. That part of the world in particular is in great tumult, rearranging for fulfillment of things to come. The terrors of illegal alien evil perpetrators invading from the south is  but the tip of the iceberg of the coming anarchy and chaos in our own nation as the end times play out.

Whatsoever is the outcome of this up heaving sea of human unrest we see heating up toward the boiling point, we can see Jesus’ prophecy for the end of days percolating in these troubled times. I believe that this means Christ’s Call “Come up here!” is very near indeed.

Europe and the world continue to reel economically from the fallout of Brexit–the British pulling out of the European Union. Fear of financial free-fall into the abyss of global depression is igniting fires of protests that something must be done. One such protest at the outset of the chaos came from the very heart of Europe–the area of the world most associated with Bible prophecy and the reviving Roman Empire.

Italian Finance Minister Pier Carlo Padoan warned that “The unthinkable is happening… A double reaction to Brexit is under way, one financial, one political. The financial one, at least until now, is limited. I am more worried about the political one…There is a cocktail of factors that can lead to various outcomes, including a further push towards disintegration.”

Padoan lectured that those in authority in Europe must begin to listen to the people and their worries over out-of-control immigration, unemployment, and increasing inequality. Austerity measures, he said, exacerbate the problems, and something has to be done to change those budget rules Rome considers to be fueling the crisis.

He said, “Inequality is growing in Europe because growth is weak.”

He said further, “We have had proposals on the table for months that say employment, growth, well-being and equality have to be the priorities… the situation we are in now is exceptional. We have to change.”

There is a sense that Mr. Padoan’s call for new leadership during those early times created by Britain’s announced pull-out is rising among the common people not only of Europe, but of the whole of the Western world. The message, it is equally observable, is being missed by those who hold the financial reins at the highest echelons of power. There seems to be rebellion building amongst the common folk against the elite who display a wanton disregard for the rest of us. For example, the current protests in France that forced President Emmanuel Macron to drop the carbon tax that dramatically raised fuel prices.

When thinking on what Bible prophecy has to say about the ultimate outcome of all of the machinations going on in the arena of international power politics these days, the prophet Daniel comes immediately to mind. He was given some very specific things to pass along to us by the messenger sent from the throne room of God. The message had at its heart a most directly pertinent point regarding world economic conditions that will produce history’s most all-controlling leader.

Here’s what the great prophet tells us about this prophetic message that seems to be particularly relevant to the days into which our world is swiftly moving. Daniel was given a profile of the one who will be Antichrist. That beast of Revelation chapter 13, Daniel was told, will be a king of fierce countenance who will prosper greatly.

“And through his policy also he shall cause craft to prosper in his hand; and he shall magnify himself in his heart, and by peace shall destroy many: he shall also stand up against the Prince of princes; but he shall be broken without hand” (Daniel 8:25).

It is the first part of the prophecy that is most notable for our purposes. This last and most powerful political/military leader will “cause craft to prosper.” He will apparently take a terrible economic situation that exists on a worldwide scale and turn it around. The economy will be caused, through his manipulations, to turn around in a mighty way.

Adolf Hitler did exactly this, students of recent history will recall. The German economy was in free-fall–actually had hit the bottom. Hitler turned it around.

But, we remember how he did it! All-out war-making–exactly how the angelic messenger told Daniel the final fuehrer–Antichrist–will accomplish the economic turn-around.”Through peace he will destroy many.” The red horse of war, you will remember, follows immediately the rider on the white horse (Revelation chapter 6).

We again remember the perhaps overly used words of Henri Spaak, Secretary General of NATO 1957-1960: “What we want is a man of sufficient stature to hold the alliances of all people and to lift us out of the economic morass into which we are sinking. Send us such a man, and be he god or devil, we will receive him.”

The world–particularly the stress-torn EU–certainly appears to be in an economic morass. A central figure from the exact center of Rome is calling for leadership to again cause craft to prosper. According to all other signals that are everywhere the prophecy student looks today, that man–who really is a devil, must be awaiting in the shadows to step into the spotlight of history when the call comes.

That call will come just after another call resounds across the earth’s atmosphere. That call will be Christ’s shout, “Come up here!” (Revelation 4:1).

This one will likely land me in trouble. The commentary might be pointing the bony finger of condemnation in a direction many will possibly insist it has no right to be poked.

However, we are at the very end of the Age of Grace (Church Age). Every signal for the soon return of the Lord Jesus Christ is becoming more visible by the hour. We are, when we see these things begin to come to pass, to look up and lift up our heads, because our redemption is drawing near. These words of the Lord Jesus, as recorded in Luke 21:28, are further affirmed in Mark 37:13 where we see His command: “What I say to one, I say unto all; watch.”

Therefore, in the spirit of “watching,” we must look at what God’s prophets tell us to watch for as the end of the age comes more and more into view. The apostle Paul, in that regard, gave some quite specific things that will mark the end of the age. He did so particularly as recorded in 2 Timothy, chapter 3.

I often refer to these many prophetic indicators as the characteristics of end-times man. Paul, in describing these signals, puts them within a time-frame he calls “perilous times.” He describes many of these characteristics in this prophetic segment of his second letter to Timothy. It is the very first of these characteristics of end-times man I will touch upon here. As I said, it will be more than enough to get me in some trouble, most likely.

The reason I say that is that I believe the most popular thing in all of our culture in America today is involved directly in this condemning characteristic. The younger generation–the Millennials-–are the most into exhibiting this characteristic, but they are by no means the only segment of the culture that is involved. The former president of the United States, for example, engaged in this end-times characteristic on a number of occasions as gleefully reported by his fawning press–and by that I mean most all of the mainstream news and entertainment media.

I’m talking about the phenomenon known as the selfie.

The selfie is but the tip of the proverbial iceberg in pointing out this end-times characteristic. The bulk of that iceberg is made up of the vast social networking services such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. The selfie, if I really need to define it, is a self-photograph taken by one’s cellphone or other device–usually from above one’s head so that it presents what, I presume, the selfie-taker believes to be the most flattering angle.

The selfie then is disseminated through the above-mentioned social network services–thus to enhance whatsoever the total self-image and desired celebrity the individual wants to present to his or her, hopefully, geometrically progressing, cyberspace world.

See, I told you I would be in trouble–probably with you the reader.

I know that my view of this is just reaching for application of the apostle Paul’s perilous-times condemnation, in the opinion of many. I still believe this is a primary indicator of where we are on God’s prophetic timeline. People are becoming increasingly “lovers of their own selves,” as Paul prophesied. It might seem like an innocuous charge–even a silly one. But, I think it is relevant much more than any of us can imagine.

In my 2016 book, Rapture Ready…Or Not: 15 Reasons This Is the Generation That Will Be Left Behind, I point to the serious ramifications such self-love has produced and will likely further produce to a greater degree as Christ’s call to His Church in the Rapture nears. Here is an excerpt from that part of the book:

Psychologists and sociologists have for years planted in the minds of Americans that self-esteem is something that is important to making a successful life. These point to the fact that at the center of most every problem of the human condition resides the feelings of inadequacy and self-loathing.

We are told that the radical Islamists who attacked on September 11, 2001 did so because they felt inferior due to U.S. treatment that looked down upon them. The whole matter involving the attacks that took the lives of more than three thousand that day, therefore, convinced those in charge of the U.S. State Department to employ a study group designed to help determine how to make those who hate us, particularly in the Middle East, no longer hate us.

So ingrained is self-love in our nation that we in delusion covet the admiration of those who hate us with satanic rage born out of our support for Israel, not out of envy and low self-esteem on the terrorists’ part.

The terrorists, murderers, gang members, rapists, and all other of those who commit crimes these days are analyzed by the woolly-minded psychologists and sociologists based upon the premise that the perpetrators hate themselves, thus all others who they see as deserving of their victimization.

God’s Word says, “For no man ever yet hated his own flesh” (Ephesians 5:29a). In other words, self-loathing is not part of our DNA. Quite the opposite is true. The Bible says that those who have not the Holy Spirit are of their father, the Devil. Satan is the ultimate example of self-love.

The social engineers tell us the secret to ultimately producing a healthy cultural environment is high self-esteem. A sense of self- worth will make man live up to his own great expectations.

Rather than love of self, however, God’s Word tells us to love others, to esteem others more than ourselves, to humble ourselves before God. This generation is obviously doing none of these.

That we are in perilous times can’t be denied, except by the most willfully uncomprehending. I’m afraid that many of this selfie-immersed generation fits within that universe of those destined to be left behind when Christ calls the Church in the Rapture.

We are very near that time. The prophetic evidence is flashing in every direction one looks today. We must lift Christ at every opportunity so many will come to Jesus for salvation when the Holy Spirit draws them to the Savior.

Something sinister lurks just ahead within this world of darkening uncertainty. The forewarning thought simmers beneath daily life that change is coming—transformational change that will make these present hours seem like the good old days for the inhabitants of future earth.

Princes and presidents, potentates and populations at large sense gnawing dread spawned by the seemingly unstoppable spread of murderous, racial/religious hatreds. Proliferation of nuclear weaponry among the most violence-prone among us appears on the brink of unleashing man’s final war.

The term “Armageddon” is regularly used to describe man’s greatest fear during hourly newscasts. To quote Shakespeare, it is becoming clear that “something wicked this way comes.”

For the believer in Jesus Christ, however, the near horizon that is a harbinger of the worst of times in man’s history presents just beyond that apocalyptic storm front a magnificent future beyond imagination.

Indeed, glorious change is coming. It will happen in a stunning moment of absolutely dazzling transformation and transport for the born-again believer. It will be a catastrophic intervention by the one and only Creator-God of heaven—so long seemingly silent to rebellious mankind.

This author’s commission is to proclaim to this generation—at this moment—that the very end of the age is at hand. Heaven is trumpeting the final siren of appeal for all to come within the shelter offered by the Savior who died and resurrected so that all who trust Him for salvation will be spared the horrors about to occur.

“Don’t spend eternity apart from the Heavenly Father” is the profoundly important message that must be disseminated and accepted. He desires above all else that everyone comes into the safe harbor of His family through His Only Begotten Son—the Lord Jesus Christ.

Whether one is Rapture Ready . . . Or Not, the disappearance of all true believers is about to occur. The thrilling time of that long-ago prophesied call of Christians to join with Christ will happen at any moment!

That, of course, is the tenet of my book Rapture Ready…Or Not. I believe with all that is within me that I was prompted to relay the urgent message that the door to the Age of Grace (the Church Age) is on the very brink of closing to a Christ-rejecting generation.

This presents no pleasure to the author. Neither, of course, does it give pleasure to the God of Heaven who must, following the closing of that door, unleash His wrath and judgment upon planet earth. Jesus shed His last drop of blood on the cross at Calvary so that no person need spend one moment in that hellish time on earth we call the Tribulation or spend eternity in the place prepared for the devil and his fallen angelic horde.

Being Rapture ready is 1) knowing Christ for Salvation through following this admonition:

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. (Romans 10:9-10)

Once a person complies with this way (the only way) to salvation, that person becomes 2) Rapture Ready through living life according to direction given in God’s Word, the Bible.

I think one of the best verses to summarize this Rapture Readiness is found in the following.

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)

In this way we will hear our Lord say, “Well done, good, faithful Servant,” when we see Him face to face at the moment of Rapture. To avoid any questions about whether I am saying one has to live above sin in order to go in the Rapture, I will be absolutely clear.

Every person who truly accepts Christ is going to leave the planet at the time Jesus calls the Church (Revelation 4:1). Not a single believer, whether walking “worthily” or not, will be left behind at Rapture. But, to be truly Rapture Ready in the sense of being “worthy” (in order to receive each and every reward the Lord wants to give us at the bema–the Judgment Seat of Christ), each Christian must be walking according to God’s precepts as taught in His Holy Word.

In that glorious, twinkling-of-an-eye moment of translation–from mortal to immortal, from corruption to incorruption–we will each realize the magnificence that is our Lord and Savior: Bridegroom. We will know Him in the same way He knows each of us. We will, in that eternal moment, want to have lived righteously for Him.

The change that is coming is spectacular beyond all that our imaginations can conjure, the apostle Paul has informed us:

But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. (1 Corinthians 2:9)

Let us do all we can in Christ’s service while opportunity is ours. Let us do all within our power to be truly Rapture Ready!