We know we are at the end of the dispensation of grace for specific reasons. A number of these come to mind.

Evil men and seducers are growing worse, as the Apostle Paul forewarned. The time has come when “they”–meaning religionists who claim to know Christ but do not–will not “endure sound doctrine.”

All of Paul’s “perilous times” prophecies are in view, as we have dissected many times. False accusers, for example, are in our daily headlines, with lies being told for political gain or just to heap hatred upon ideological enemies.

There is a denial that God should be found anywhere in humanistic governance. As stated many times, here, Psalm 2 is in play as never before. The international community, i.e.,  the UN and those within every other such globalist forum, want to “break the bands asunder” that bind the human race to any form of godly mooring.

We know these are the last days because there are scoffers that say in mocking derision: “Where is the promise of his coming, for since the fathers fell asleep all things are as they were from the beginning?”

In addition to all the above, proof that we are in prophesied times of the end occurred Monday, May 14. Israel reached what many Bible prophecy observers view as the span of a generation–70 years since its refounding into modernity. This, many believe, is the gist of the prophecy the Lord gave while expounding on things to come atop the Mount of Olives.

Now learn a parable of the fig tree; When his branch is yet tender, and putteth forth leaves, ye know that summer is nigh: So likewise ye, when ye shall see all these things, know that it is near, even at the doors.Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled. Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away. (Matthew 24:32-35)

Israel is generally considered the prime signal of where we are on God’s prophetic timeline. That strange nation has reached its 70th birthday so far as its modern incarnation is concerned. A generation is defined by God’s Word as 70 years in one specific instance. Therefore, Jesus, who is the Word, giving this Olivet Prophecy about the fig tree–often the symbol for Israel–makes the modern nation’s 70th anniversary living proof to many that the end of the age is upon this generation.

I term Israel ”strange” because of the fact that it is like no other in human history. Having been completely destroyed as a nation, its people dispersed into all the world and its language dissolved, yet it is now back in its God-given land. It has its native language again–Hebrew–and is the center of worldwide attention.

As I often remind, no matter which way the cameras and microphones turn to capture other stories, they always, without fail, turn right back to that one spot on planet earth that is God’s touchstone–to Jerusalem and the Temple Mount, where the Holy of Holies sat and will reside again one prophetic day.

So, Israel is in the headlines again this past week. The hatreds of the world are in full display to prove God’s Word about the rebellion of the globalists found in Psalm 2.

Satan is in a rage because he above all else has wanted to completely destroy Israel and the Jewish people. If he could do so, he would make the Creator a liar, and his own fate in the Lake of Fire could be avoided.

But, God’s Word is truth. Things are unfolding exactly as God foretells, and right on time. Further proof of God’s prophetic truth is reflected in an excerpt  or two from the following news story:

(May 9, 2018 / JNS) In the past 70 years, no single country’s stock has risen faster or farther than the State of Israel. Once a resource-poor, existentially endangered nation-state comprised of refugees from post-Holocaust Europe and Muslim countries throughout the Middle East and North Africa, Israel has emerged into a world economic, military and diplomatic superpower.

In just one week, Israel’s elevated status is being put on full display, in no small part due to the unlikely and oft-polarizing duo of U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu…

It is, of course, fitting that the very date—May 14—of the new embassy’s opening ceremony corresponds both with Yom Yerushalayim (“Jerusalem Day”) on the Hebrew calendar and the 70th anniversary of Israel’s Independence on the secular calendar…

While the Jewish state’s stock is rising, Israel’s enemies are imploding. Though Iran has expanded its reach across the Middle East—wreaking havoc on Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen—severe cracks have been exposed in the dictatorial regime of the Islamic Republic. During the past year, public protests against the regime’s corruption have broken out across the country. And in the past several weeks, the value of Iran’s currency, the rial, has plummeted, throwing Iran into severe economic uncertainty even before the impending onset of the “highest level of economic sanctions” about to be imposed by the United States. (“Jerusalem is rising as Israel’s enemies falter,” Alex Traiman, JNS.org, May 13, 2018)

Proof  of the truth of God’s Word is found throughout Bible prophecy. We are witnessing that proof each and every day as issues and events of our time emerge from the headlines.

Israel, although hated by most of the world leaders, is blossoming. So is the United States of America under this presidential administration.

Iran, arguably Israel’s chief enemy, whose Islamist leaders call Israel the “little Satan,” and America “the big Satan,” are sinking deeper into the curse promised to all who curse God’s chosen people.

There is no illusion here that terrible times are not to soon unfold for the Jewish people. It is prophesied. But the end of it all will be a glorious outcome beyond any ever bestowed upon any nation or people:

I am the Lord, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac; the land on which you lie, I will give it to you and to your descendants. Your descendants shall also be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread out to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south; and in you and in your descendants shall all the families of the earth be blessed. And behold, I am with you, and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you. (Genesis 28:13-15)

Listening to the mainstream news talking heads the day after the elections in Israel in 2014 was self-validating. Like so many who try to use common sense in considering these strange times, I didn’t see any way the people of Israel would throw a strong defender of their nation out in order to install a Neville Chamberlain-like leader in such a critical political position at such a crucial time.

Days leading up to the Tuesday, March 17, 2014 vote by the Israeli people brought from liberal journalists every possible reason why Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should lose and a more conciliatory government be installed.

Until the American presidential election of 2016, I had never heard such announced polling data forecasting a likely win that turned out to be so starkly wrong. Leading up to that Israeli election, the American press predicted a close race with Hertzog, Netanyahu’s opponent for prime minister, to be in the lead right up until the exit polls began on election day. Then it changed to “the election has tightened.”

Benjamin Netanyahu, as it turned out, claimed victory relatively early–so dramatically in his party’s favor had the voting gone. –This, even despite the American president having sent an election advisory team to Israel to help Netanyahu’s political opposition. I must admit that, like I did in the 2016 election of President Trump, I basked in the results of that election. At that time, I  envied the people who had the good sense to re-elect the type leader (through their own brand of party politics) that I hoped we in America would be wise enough to elect again one day, should the world wag on in its precipitous state for a time yet.

While contemplating all of this–how pleased I was with the election results–I was brought back in a moment of epiphany to the deeper reality of what it all might mean in terms of God’s prophetic Word.

Benjamin Netanyahu made one campaign adjustment at the last minute that–my spiritual senses reminded–seemed to make the difference in his momentum toward re-election. He promised that if his government was returned to leadership, he would not allow a two-state solution to the ongoing Palestinian conflict with Israel.

We now get a sense of exactly the import of the prime minister’s speech before Congress on March 3, 2014. He laid out his case for why Israel must be on alert at all times against Iran and all of its enemy neighbors. At the heart of the hatred for Israel, of course, is the very point of the two-state solution much of the world of the diplomatic realm wants to force upon the Jewish state. At the same time, the Iranian antagonists and all other of the Islamist peoples surrounding Israel want only a one-state solution. They have voiced it many, many times since the establishment of Israel in 1948. Nasser, Sadat, and most every leader of Arab nations and of terrorist organizations in the Middle East have declared that they want Israel off the land it “occupies.”

They, in fact, have often, like the Nazis, proclaimed that the Jew is the problem with the lack of “peace” in the region and world. Every Jew should, therefore, be expunged from the earth.

There has been conjecture among those who watch the issues and events of the times, analyzing them in light of Bible prophecy. Many indicated they sensed that if Benjamin Netanyahu had lost the election, thus putting a Hertzog government in power, the results thereof would have increased the speed in dividing  the land, thus bring on Armageddon.

The prophecy by Joel the prophet reads: “I will also gather all nations, and will bring them down into the valley of Jehoshaphat, and will plead with them there for my people and for my heritage Israel, whom they have scattered among the nations, and parted my land” (Joel 3: 2).

I understand where those considering the prophecy might reasonably conclude that dividing the land spoken here speaks to a future time when, for example, Antichrist causes the land to be divided as part of the covenant of Daniel 9: 26. Or, perhaps the dividing of the land might be thought to mean a precursor agreement such as one made by Obama and John Kerry or some others in the Roadmap to Peace process .

However, in the much greater context, God’s land has been divided for centuries by the world of nation-states. The land has been forced by the Babylonian system of successive governments to carve up God’s real estate covenant with Israel. For this, the world is about to pay a terrible price–be brought to the killing field called Armageddon.

The Obama administration simmered over what it called Netanyahu’s “divisive rhetoric” regarding the prime minister saying at the time  that he would not allow two states. If Obama and the rest of the world diplomatic enclave could truly be made to understand the immensely greater danger of their own divisive demands–those demands against God’s chosen nation–they would indeed be trembling instead of continuing in the year 2018 to push for the phony peace that Joel and Isaiah say will destroy much of the world’s population.

We are in the most dangerous times in U.S. history. But, we must also be in the time very near hearing the call from Jesus: “Come up here!”

Observers of these times through the prism of God’s prophetic Word shouldn’t be deceived by the wiles of the devil. Climate change isn’t the primary concern of the globalist minions, neither demonic nor human. The concern of the minions is primarily to seduce as many of earth’s inhabitants as possible into believing that humankind is destroying Mother Earth.

These minions don’t believe it for a second. But, they are determined to convince the world that planet Earth is a delicate organism that must be worshiped because she is the sustainer of life.

The globalists’ goal is to work to bring the earth’s total inhabitants to less than 500,000,000 people. They–the globalists–are to be, of course, the ruling class among this sustainable population of earth dwellers.

The real objective of the would-be rulers of the planet, make no mistake, is to be as gods–the same status Lucifer promised the first man and woman they would attain in the Garden.

Climate change has again raised it’s luciferic head in the never-ending attempt to foist the same old global-warming lie that has been on Satan’s seducing agenda for recent decades. We note that at the beginning of the following report, the appeal is to the female gender in rolling out the lie. Satan is if anything consistent in his maddening methodology.

The United Nations Climate Change Secretariat released its first ever annual report this week, in which it held up its “Gender Action Plan” as a key to increasing the participation of women in responding to global warming.

“Climate Change is the single biggest threat to life, security and prosperity on Earth,” said UN Climate Change Executive Secretary Patricia Espinosa at the roll-out of the report.

“This annual report shows how UN Climate Change is doing everything it can to support, encourage and build on the global response to climate change,” Espinosa said, adding that “UN Climate Change’s mandate is to lead and support the global community in this international response, with the Paris Agreement and the Convention being the long-term vehicles for united global climate action.” (“U.N. Says Climate Change Is ‘Single Biggest Threat to Life, Security and Prosperity on Earth’,” Adrian Dennis/AFP/Getty, by Thomas D. Williams PhD, Rapture Ready News, May 5, 2018, raptureready.com)

UN Secretary-General António Guterres added to the never-ending mantra that climate change is going to destroy us all if action isn’t forthcoming by those who love Mother Earth.

He warned that climate change is the “defining challenge of our time…yet it is still accelerating faster than our efforts to address it. Atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide are higher than they have been for 800,000 years, and they are increasing. So, too, are the catastrophic effects of our warming planet – extreme storms, droughts, fires, floods, melting ice and rising sea levels.”

Makes no difference that every bit of the foregoing has been debunked. It is irrelevant with these Mother Earth protectors, apparently, that remarks that include findings from 800,000 years ago are totally unsearchable. It is the same thing that William James the philosopher first said and Hitler’s propagandist Josef Goebbels seized upon: Tell a lie long enough and loud enough and soon it will become accepted as truth.

One fact about the human creature Lucifer instinctively knew from the beginning of his seduction: People, in their fallen condition, will for the most part, choose to worship anything rather than the God who created them. Like Lucifer himself, they want to view themselves as godlike and do things their own way.

Psalms chapter 2 tells that the globalists wish to break free from the bonds of Heaven–from the governing hand the Supreme Being exerts on their capability to do what is right in their own eyes.

These human minions, spurred on by the demonic minions, work incessantly to convince the rest of us that we must look at the earth as our sustainer of life. We must treat her with great reverence. We must, in effect, worship her.

The lie includes the charge that those who do not follow this ecological-religious ideology–for example, Christians who don’t look at planet Earth as a living organism that must be treated as deity–are sinners of the first order. We won’t be among the elite 500,000,000 who ultimately will be privileged to inhabit the planet in order to make it sustainable.

We who follow God’s Word do have respect for the environment. We do want to do the best possible job of protecting this world that was made for us to live, work, and play upon. But, we don’t consider it a goddess to be worshiped.

The Lord says the following regarding the attempts by the globalist types to construct worship systems other than true worship of the True God:

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness; Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them. For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things. Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves: Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen. (Romans 1:18-25)

Jan Markell and Eric Barger welcome author Terry James as they talk about his new book “Deceivers.” Jesus, Paul, Timothy, and more, warned of last days’ deception. There is a subtle Satanic seduction of society today and we are drowning in deception in the world and church.

You can listen to the interview here:

Drowning in Deception

Indoctrination disguised as education. The religion of climate change enshrined. Witchcraft and the occult made mainstream. Fake news. We live in a world where deception is rampant and true agendas are rarely revealed.

Jesus foretold of this time as He answered His disciples’ question: What will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age? Bible prophecy experts present analysis of today’s issues and events in Deceivers, revealing that Christ’s prophecy is literally unfolding before us today.

A collection of 12 leading experts.

Discover false prophets hiding behind the thin veneer of religious half-truths

Unveil the globalist agenda behind diplomatic, judicial, and political hypocrisy

Go behind misleading headlines and entertainment illusions to discern the truth.

AMAZON

Listening to the mainstream news talking heads the day after the elections in Israel in 2014 was self-validating. Like so many who try to use common sense in considering these strange times, I didn’t see any way the people of Israel would throw a strong defender of their nation out in order to install a Neville Chamberlain-like leader in such a critical political position at such a crucial time.

Days leading up to the Tuesday, March 17, 2014 vote by the Israeli people brought from liberal journalists every possible reason why Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should lose and a more conciliatory government be installed.

Until the American presidential election of 2016, I had never heard such announced polling data forecasting a likely win that turned out to be so starkly wrong. Leading up to that Israeli election, the American press predicted a close race with Hertzog, Netanyahu’s opponent for prime minister, to be in the lead right up until the exit polls began on election day. Then it changed to “the election has tightened.”

Benjamin Netanyahu, as it turned out, claimed victory relatively early–so dramatically in his party’s favor had the voting gone. –This, even despite the American president having sent an election advisory team to Israel to help Netanyahu’s political opposition. I must admit that, like I did in the 2016 election of President Trump, I basked in the results of that election. At that time, I  envied the people who had the good sense to re-elect the type leader (through their own brand of party politics) that I hoped we in America would be wise enough to elect again one day, should the world wag on in its precipitous state for a time yet.

While contemplating all of this–how pleased I was with the election results–I was brought back in a moment of epiphany to the deeper reality of what it all might mean in terms of God’s prophetic Word.

Benjamin Netanyahu made one campaign adjustment at the last minute that–my spiritual senses reminded–seemed to make the difference in his momentum toward re-election. He promised that if his government was returned to leadership, he would not allow a two-state solution to the ongoing Palestinian conflict with Israel.

We now get a sense of exactly the import of the prime minister’s speech before Congress on March 3, 2014. He laid out his case for why Israel must be on alert at all times against Iran and all of its enemy neighbors. At the heart of the hatred for Israel, of course, is the very point of the two-state solution much of the world of the diplomatic realm wants to force upon the Jewish state. At the same time, the Iranian antagonists and all other of the Islamist peoples surrounding Israel want only a one-state solution. They have voiced it many, many times since the establishment of Israel in 1948. Nasser, Sadat, and most every leader of Arab nations and of terrorist organizations in the Middle East have declared that they want Israel off the land it “occupies.”

They, in fact, have often, like the Nazis, proclaimed that the Jew is the problem with the lack of “peace” in the region and world. Every Jew should, therefore, be expunged from the earth.

There has been conjecture among those who watch the issues and events of the times, analyzing them in light of Bible prophecy. Many indicated they sensed that if Benjamin Netanyahu had lost the election, thus putting a Hertzog government in power, the results thereof would have increased the speed in dividing  the land, thus bring on Armageddon.

The prophecy by Joel the prophet reads: “I will also gather all nations, and will bring them down into the valley of Jehoshaphat, and will plead with them there for my people and for my heritage Israel, whom they have scattered among the nations, and parted my land” (Joel 3: 2).

I understand where those considering the prophecy might reasonably conclude that dividing the land spoken here speaks to a future time when, for example, Antichrist causes the land to be divided as part of the covenant of Daniel 9: 26. Or, perhaps the dividing of the land might be thought to mean a precursor agreement such as one made by Obama and John Kerry or some others in the Roadmap to Peace process .

However, in the much greater context, God’s land has been divided for centuries by the world of nation-states. The land has been forced by the Babylonian system of successive governments to carve up God’s real estate covenant with Israel. For this, the world is about to pay a terrible price–be brought to the killing field called Armageddon.

The Obama administration simmered over what it called Netanyahu’s “divisive rhetoric” regarding the prime minister saying at the time  that he would not allow two states. If Obama and the rest of the world diplomatic enclave could truly be made to understand the immensely greater danger of their own divisive demands–those demands against God’s chosen nation–they would indeed be trembling instead of continuing in the year 2018 to push for the phony peace that Joel and Isaiah say will destroy much of the world’s population.

We are in the most dangerous times in U.S. history. But, we must also be in the time very near hearing the call from Jesus: “Come up here!”

Declarations about Bible prophecy’s most evil (likely human) character are slashing through this time of end-of-the-age stage-setting. I say “likely human” because there is a looming question mark within my own cogitations about whether Antichrist will indeed be strictly human. Those who continue to hold to the beast of Revelation chapter 13 as eventually emerging out of the revived Roman Empire are increasingly being viewed as in error. Many prophecy watchers now see that evil entity as a Muslim in waiting somewhere in the foreboding future. The deadly violence that is growing by the day, with ISIS (or ISIL) at the core of militant Islam’s rage across the region that beastly horde infects, is proof that it will be an Islamist Antichrist who will one day soon be the man of sin of 2 Thessalonians 2: 3 –the Muslim Antichrist chroniclers declare.

These eastern-leg Antichrist adherents hold that the Bible prophecy students and scholars who have for centuries interpreted Daniel 9:26-27 as indicating the prince that shall come is to be of Roman geographic origin have been and now are demonstrably wrong. The horrific events of today’s Islamist, genocidal rampage as proof, is implicit within their railing against the long-held Roman Antichrist view. These give as their scriptural proof the fact that the world’s final, evil dictator is referred to as “the Assyrian.” And, there is absolutely no denying it. God’s Word does indeed call this coming tyrant “the Assyrian.”

One such adherent to the Muslim Antichrist view gave the following Scriptures as proof the view is the correct one.

Isaiah 10:24-25 – Therefore thus says the Lord GOD of hosts: “O My people, who dwell in Zion, do not be afraid of the Assyrian. He shall strike you with a rod and lift up his staff against you, in the manner of Egypt. For yet a very little while and the indignation will cease, as will My anger in their destruction.”

Isaiah 14:25-26 – That I will break the Assyrian in My land, And on My mountains tread him underfoot. Then his yoke shall be removed from them, And his burden removed from their shoulders. This is the purpose that is purposed against the whole earth, And this is the hand that is stretched out over all the nations.

Micah 5:3-6 – Therefore He shall give them up, Until the time that she who is in labor has given birth; Then the remnant of His brethren Shall return to the children of Israel. And He shall stand and feed His flock In the strength of the LORD, In the majesty of the name of the LORD His God; And they shall abide, For now He shall be great To the ends of the earth; And this One shall be peace. When the Assyrian comes into our land, And when he treads in our palaces, Then we will raise against him Seven shepherds and eight princely men. They shall waste with the sword the land of Assyria, And the land of Nimrod at its entrances; Thus He shall deliver us from the Assyrian, When he comes into our land And when he treads within our borders.

The modern territories that encompass those geographic areas out of which the Assyrian (Muslim) Antichrist will come conquering like in ancient times–according to the adherents’ view–include the following: Israel, parts of Iraq and Iran, Armenia, sections of Egypt and Turkey, Syria, and Jordan.

“The beast” will, they proclaim, emerge from the Middle East, not Europe. Scripture and current geopolitical, religious, and military trends are in agreement, they declare. Antichrist will be Muslim –or at least will initially hold to the religion of Mohammed and Allah as long as doing so is to his advantage while he acquires power.

Yet, his ancestry, it has been determined through research, is from that region with which Antichrist is associated according to the prophets Isaiah and Micah.

That future fuehrer must have a resume compatible with Bible prophecy regarding the prince that shall come.

I concluded quite some time ago, after studying the son of perdition’s genealogy –admittedly only in a cursory way–that Antichrist will be a Roman by geographical birth/ residence. At the same time, I’ve believed he will come from the Middle East–be an Assyrian–by ethnic extraction.

It is altogether  appropriate to propose that Antichrist will be of Middle Eastern ethnic origin. It is always wrong to name anyone as definitely the coming Antichrist, no matter his geopolitical, religious or ethnic resume. I would never make such an assumption, as we as believers of the Church Age have no basis upon which to make such a claim. We are to look for our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, not the beast of Revelation 13. We will be kept out of that time when Antichrist wreaks havoc on a judgment-deserving world.

We are, however, commanded by the Lord Himself to “watch.”

We will keep doing just that while the road to Antichrist’s regime continues to be paved by current issues and events.

Inevitably the questions came. They came in various derivations of: “Do you think this bombing of Damascus is leading to Isaiah 17: 1?”

President Trump’s decision to keep his promise to Bashar al Assad that if he used chemical weapons again, there would be a price to pay. It was a promise kept to Russian President Vladimir Putin as well. He told the Russian leader that the missiles were coming. They would be “shiny” and “smart.”

Trump’s actions were a far cry from his predecessor’s drawing “red lines” in the Middle-Eastern sand. Time after time, the tyrants of the region crossed Mr. Obama’s lines with no consequences forthcoming.

It quickly became obvious that at least one leader believed he was dealing with a different sort of president. Putin wasted little time removing eleven of his ships from harm’s way–from the warm-water port in Syria he had connived to secure for his navy. This achievement–a warm-water port for Russia’s navy–of course, had been one long desired by the Soviets and by Russia, once the USSR fell during Gorbachev’s Glasnost and Perestroika time as Soviet leader.

So, Damascus, Syria, has long been in the thinking of the geopoliticians of all stripes. The Assads, both Hafez and his son Bashar, ruled with iron fists, just as Saddam Hussein ruled Iraq. They ruled with more or less autonomy until, in my opinion, the rush of prophetic times overtook them.

And, who among any watchman on the wall, observing stage-setting in the Middle East (and around the world, for that matter) can deny that the crush of issues and events on a global scale has destroyed normal geopolitical equilibrium, opening the end-times door to prophetic fulfillment?

Israel is in headlines every hour. Russia, Iran, and Turkey, the Gog-Magog force leaders, according to Ezekiel 38-39, are coalescing due north of the Jewish state the prophecy says these diabolists will attack. China is already the king of the kings of the East and growing more powerful and hegemonic with each passing news cycle.

And now, Damascus is on the front pages of newspapers, Internet headlines and every other news venue, with smoke still rising from the damage the 100-plus cruise missiles inflicted.

The question, or derivatives thereof: “Do you think this bombing of Damascus is leading to Isaiah 17: 1?” is relevant.

The reason for the question, of course, is the prophecy that is one yet future, scheduled for the time near Christ’s Second Advent:

“The burden of Damascus. Behold, Damascus is taken away from being a city, and it shall be a ruinous heap” (Isaiah 17:1). It is a prophecy, considering the aforementioned prophetic stage-setting realities, that rightfully makes the student of eschatology take notice–and, take notice they have–since even before the attack of April 13.

So, I’ll address the question of whether the attack by the America, Britain, France coalition is leading to the Isaiah 17 prophetic fulfillment.

I am of the conviction that everything going on in and around that whole region, and Damascus in particular, has prophetic significance. There can just be no doubt about it. I, however, like anyone, can’t say specifically at what stage of the stage-setting for the Damascus Isaiah 17 destruction we are in at present.

My own thinking always gets back to Jesus’ words about the days of Noah and days of Lot (Matthew 24:36-42 and Luke 17:26-30). I believe there will be no world-rending prophetic fulfillment–such as the Gog-Magog attack, such as the total destruction of Damascus–before the Rapture of the Church.

Jesus tells us in the prophecy that things will be going along as usual–particularly with emphasis on a good-performing economy– at the time He catastrophically intervenes into the affairs of mankind.

He said that the cataclysm will fall the very day He intervenes. I believe it is just after the Rapture that these specific, horrendous prophecies are fulfilled.

Keep observing and asking the questions. This is incumbent upon the true Bible prophecy student. But, keep looking up at the same time (Luke 21:28). That’s the prophecy we truly wish to see fulfilled!

Crisis is building while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu forewarns of the dangers of a nuclear weapons-possessing Iran. The world of diplomats and geopoliticians–who are proclaimed as earth’s smartest people–see Mr. Netanyahu as the instigator of the crisis, not the Iranian Islamist mullahs, ayatollahs, and war planners who have as their stated intention wiping Israel from the map. It is as if complete Chamberlain-like naivete has metastasized in the brains of those who are supposed to know how to best govern –and protect–the rest of us.

The Iranian nuclear weapons development has been allowed to continue while the likes of former U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry proudly blusterd that he has assured that Iran’s nuclear weapons achievement had been postponed for ten years. This, he says, was “guaranteed” through the signatures of Iran’s Muslim leaders. These are the same leaders whose “holy” book, the Koran, tells believers in Allah that they may lie, cheat, or do anything that is necessary if it puts forward Mohammed’s directive that every person on planet earth must be made to bow the knee to Allah or else die.

According to those in the know, all of this deal-making has been done without the significant input of Israel, who is first in line to receive the terrifying products of the Iranian nuclear program, should it reach fruition. Likewise, it is relatively common knowledge among those possessing the wherewithal to know that verification of the ten-year pact of non-nuclear weapons production has at best a verification process that makes the many broken deals made with Russia and China over the years of the cold war look like unassailable agreements made with the saints of Heaven.

The Obama Administration had no comparable philosophy within its strategic planning that I’ve been able to detect like that of President Ronald Reagan when making deals with those who want to do away with you –“Trust but verify.”

Mr. Reagan was reportedly a Bible reader and a believer that Bible prophecy is truth from the Creator of all things. He surely had at the center of his thinking in this regard the following admonitions/exhortations: Mark 3:2: No man can enter into a strong man’s house, and spoil his goods, except he will first bind the strong man; and then he will spoil his house.

Luke 11:21-22: When a strong man armed keepeth his palace, his goods are in peace: But when a stronger than he shall come upon him, and overcome him, he taketh from him all his armour wherein he trusted, and divideth his spoils.

Benjamin Netanyahu is a practicing Jew, thus bases his beliefs on Old Testament teachings. However, he is said to conduct Bible studies within his home, and includes thoughts from New Testament teachings. Doubtless, he has perused the above Scripture, which, after all, is based upon Old Testament truth. He knows beyond any doubt that you cannot “trust” unless you “verify,” as Ronald Reagan put it. The very fact that Netanyahu came to the U.S. Congress as early as 2015 to lay out the critical nature of dealing with Iran shows (me at least) that the Israeli government is very close to a devastating, preemptive attack on Iranian nuclear production facilities.

Implicit within his many speeches, has been the intimation that he does not trust the U.S. State Department’s internationalist version of how to “verify,” in the matter of dealing with those who want more than anything to completely destroy every Jew on planet earth.

It is just a matter of time, he has forewarned, until not only Israel but all of the west, including the United States, will be in the Iranian nuclear crosshairs. This should be a prognostication that is unnecessary to even verbalize. However, the fact of such a bleak future didn’t seem to register with even now dismissed Secrretary of State Rex Tillerson –although  when plainly stated by the Israeli prime minister. This is primarily, apparently, the prime reason Tillerson was fired by President Donald Trump. He continued to make back-room efforts to maintain the same dangerous policy as involved in Kerry’s  dealing with the Iranians. with

The Israeli prime minister came down adamantly against the Obama-Kerry deal with the Iranians. He gave clear, unequivocal reasons why he is so opposed to this “bad” deal, as he put it on several occasions during the speech.

The Obama Administration’s intention to lift restrictions after a ludicrous ten-year period of the Iranian’s agreeing to hold off on producing nuclear weaponry was met by Netanyahu’s following response–each point given tremendous applause by most in the U.S. congressional chamber during his powerful address a few years ago.

The Israeli leader said that before lifting those restrictions, the world should demand that Iran do three things. First, stop its aggression against its neighbors in the Middle East. Second, stop supporting terrorism around the world. And third, stop threatening to annihilate my country, Israel, the one and only Jewish state.

There was left little doubt after that speech–directed at the Islamist hordes more than at those in Congress or President Obama at that time– hat Israel’s security is his all-consuming intent. As Iran, with 119 nuclear centrifuges in action, is on the brink of producing weapons that could indeed accomplish their vicious leaders’ goal of destroying the Jewish state, Netanyahu made his own determination unmistakably clear in his warning.

I can guarantee you this, the days when the Jewish people remained passive in the face of genocidal enemies, those days are over.

We are no longer scattered among the nations, powerless to defend ourselves. We restored our sovereignty in our ancient home. And the soldiers who defend our home have boundless courage. For the first time in 100 generations, we, the Jewish people, can defend ourselves.

This is why–this is why, as a prime minister of Israel, I can promise you one more thing: Even if Israel has to stand alone, Israel will stand.

Again, we notice with great interest that the prophet Ezekiel foretells that Persia (Iran) will come with the forces of Magog (Russia and others) in an all-out assault on Israel. They do so with conventional forces, not nuclear. They obviously have not nuked Israel by the time they launch this attack. I conclude that somewhere along the line Persia (Iran) has either failed to develop nuclear weapons, or that capability has been neutralized in some way. If they get those weapons they will almost certainly use them, and their first target will almost just as certainly be Israel.

Whether the Israeli Defense Force takes them out–an action that would almost assure Israel would instantly reach Zechariah 12: 1-3 status–or it is an act of God, it appears from Bible prophecy that Iran and their grand plans to use atomic weapons against the Jewish state will never happen.

America is at a crossroad in its dealing with God’s chosen nation. There is no such God-guaranteed prophetic protection given any other nation than Israel.

Our Congress–at least a great portion of that body– responded for the most part with tremendous approval of the things Bibi spoke Tuesday March 3, 2015. I’m encouraged by that response.

The second book of the Dream Doors Adventures series—Noah’s Navy—by Terry James and Douglas Hirt has been released!

We remind you grandparents, in particular, that this is a series of exciting stories for your grandchildren.

The setting is the Millennium–that 1,000-year reign of King Jesus upon planet earth.

The stories are fantasy adventures enjoyed by children living in the Millennial age. But your grandchildren will be swept along in the excitement and joy right along with that future generation that will be thrilled by everything the Lord has planned for those who love Him.

Dream Doors Adventures

Noah’s Navy

The Millennial Kingdom is a wondrous time and place to be born. The world is at peace and has become like the Garden of Eden: beautiful, exciting, and ruled by the Great King Himself, who sits on His throne in the golden street city of Glorania.

In such a perfect place, who would expect thieves to prowl at night?

It’s those two fumblers again, Lester Mudd and Castor Grout.

This time, the troublemakers intend to steal a special gift entrusted to Adam Beam by the Great King. Luckily, Adam is startled awake during the burglary. Lester and Castor panic and escape through a carelessly drawn Dream Door, accidentally landing on Noah’s Ark at the time of the Great Flood. It doesn’t take Adam long to figure out where the thieves have gone. At once Adam, his sister Zonia, and their pet Siberian tiger Toby are in hot pursuit to recover the stolen treasure, only to learn that the gift has fallen into the raging flood waters and is permanently lost.

Well, maybe not permanently.

Adam has an idea about how to find the precious gift, but it will take some clever Dream Doodling, the help of Noah and his family, a navy of friendly sea creatures, and…a submarine Dream Doodled from the far future. Naturally, the evil Evols intend do all within their power to stop Adam from completing his mission.

Doug has grandchildren and I have “honorary” grandchildren (although they are a bit older at this stage of my life). We are living these stories ourselves through what we perceive as spiritually attuned senses that create imaginary adventures. We want each Dream Doors adventure to influence youngsters–yours and ours–in God’s most wonderful ways.

Dream Doors series can be ordered here: Noah’s Navy at Amazon

Some observers of these troubled times say World War III has already begun. I’m not so sure I disagree with the premise. Dynamics for the roots of war are more prolific and far more volatile at present than those that generated both World War I and World War II.

Times preceding World War I constituted basically a tranquil era, relatively speaking, when compared to those leading to World War II. Nonetheless, the seeds of war were there. Political events, spawned by nationalist movements and burgeoning industrialization, finally disrupted the tranquility of the late 1800s. This resulted in growing, bitter rivalries for coveted areas of expansion, both geographic and economic. The assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand is most often given as the cause for the beginning of World War I. But, it was only the sparking point.

Decades leading up to this infamous incident were fraught with extreme nationalism–people within the various nations of Europe being taught the superiority of their own countries. Also, the people were inculcated with paranoia that the competitor nations presented dangers that, if not defended against, would be harmful to the homeland.

Ferdinand’s murder was but the lighting of the fuse leading to the economic-based powder keg.

World War II began building from the moment hostilities stopped in World War I. The harsh reparations imposed–particularly upon the defeated, humiliated Germans–and the depression that forced Europe and the entire world into an economic abyss brought to the world earth’s most infamous despot to this point in history–at least in my opinion.

Adolf Hitler eventually defied most every war requirement slapped on Germany, building the world’s most powerful military by the late 1930s. He came to full power promising to rebirth respect for the Fatherland, restore monetary stability, and create prosperity.

The point is, both of the world wars had at their genesis severe economic conditions.

Some observers of such things, as I say, therefore proclaim that World War III has already begun. They see as the genesis of this conflict such things as the building economic bubble of world debt that must be constantly manipulated and massaged. To ignore the problems would bring catastrophe in short order, say most economists who will admit truth about the conditions faced by the world at this critical hour.

The fuse for igniting man’s final conflict, so the thinking goes, could be something like what is happening with Russia versus the money powers that be at this moment.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is faced with personal loss of power if Russia’s economic woes continue to spiral downward. Sanctions against Russia for their hostile actions in Ukraine and in other areas under their self-perceived sphere of influence might present reason for the bear to act like…well…a bear.

Adolf Hitler, remember, used military buildup and action to get on the road to starting World War II. This is most often the way of tyrants when faced with backing down, thus losing, their dictatorial position. Remember, also, Saddam Hussein, when his regime was squeezed by the Middle East petroleum powers? He thrust his supposedly elite Republican Guard military force into Kuwait, and when forced to withdraw, began setting the oil wells on fire.

Mr. Putin faces similar such squeezing by Saudi and the Western powers. He could be set to do something quite extraordinary, many observers conjecture.

The thing I hear over and over–particularly from economists in the know (and these are secular economists)–is that it will be one incident or the other that will likely be the catalyst for World War III. The incident in question will pop this building bubble that is unsustainable by all measures of economic sensibility. The cascade of collateral things involved will spark seen and unforeseen calamities, including the next world war, is their dire prediction.

One who understands Bible prophecy to any extent–from the dispensational, premillennial, pretribulation perspective–cannot help but agree with the basic tenets of these economists’ postulations in this instance. Although the secular experts who make the predictions apparently have no biblically prophetic discernment in the matter of predictions for end-times conditions and outcomes, they assuredly have it right in general terms.

There is indeed coming one, specific, incident that can–and I’m still convinced will–bring on catastrophe, as enumerated in Holy Scripture. When Christ shouts “Come up hither!” (Revelation 4:1), the cascade of calamity will begin. It is clearly delineated in the following apocalyptic passage:

And I saw, and behold a white horse: and he that sat on him had a bow; and a crown was given unto him: and he went forth conquering, and to conquer. And when he had opened the second seal, I heard the second beast say, Come and see. And there went out another horse that was red: and power was given to him that sat thereon to take peace from the earth, and that they should kill one another: and there was given unto him a great sword. And when he had opened the third seal, I heard the third beast say, Come and see. And I beheld, and lo a black horse; and he that sat on him had a pair of balances in his hand. And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts say, A measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny; and see thou hurt not the oil and the wine. And when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth beast say, Come and see. And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth. (Revelation 6: 2-8)