Many ministries and other forums send me their newsletters/information during the course of any given day. Some time ago I received such an information piece. Its contents hammered home that a profound disconnect exists in the minds of mankind brought on by the original sin in the Garden of Eden. Sin disrupted understanding between God and man to such an extent that it took God coming to dwell among humanity as a flesh-and-blood Person to restore the relationship that was torn when Adam disobeyed and brought sin and death into the world.

The item in my inbox illustrated the problem of denial of heaven’s plan for restitution of the God-man relationship. The words of an emailer to the information forum demonstrate the disconnect wrought by the disruption in Eden.

Isn’t it time to let that poor guy Jesus alone? He lived, he died and he hasn’t been heard from since. He gave his 33 years and just let him rest in peace. Good grief, why try to rebirth him into this crazy world? He would be overwhelmed. He was a poor, illiterate carpenter for heaven sakes. He never traveled more than 50 miles from his home in the desert. He espoused simple truths that anyone and many have also espoused. He didn’t have the only patent on spiritual truths.

Let’s move toward a new spiritual understanding that humans are responsible for their own actions and that they cannot rely on mythical characters or real characters that have been made into perfect myths. The major religions are all desert religions by some very backward and illiterate tribes. For instance, I am from Sweden . I should bow down to Thor as my god because that’s my tribe. Instead, I think for myself and I stand as a beacon of spiritual energy for my own life. Thor had his time and I’ve got mine.

Now we come to the purpose of this commentary. The title, “History’s Most Important Q & A,” encapsulates the problem and the solution manifested in the above-quoted thoughts about Jesus, the God-Man sent from heaven to be the sacrificial Lamb that takes away the sin of the world. The question, the most important ever asked, and its answer are found in the account of the Lord Jesus Christ and His disciples as they engaged in a Q & A while traveling in ministry.

When Jesus came into the coasts of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, saying, Whom do men say that I the Son of man am? And they said, Some say that thou art John the Baptist: some, Elias; and others, Jeremias, or one of the prophets. He saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am? And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven. And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. (Matthew 16:12-18)

Jesus first asked His immediate followers who people in general said He was. They answered that people had various opinions about who this miracle-working, itinerate preacher might be. Jesus then asked the question of the ages: “Who do you say that I am?”

Peter, the burly fisherman who was always quick to assert his thoughts into any situation, for once spoke up with the most profound answer ever given and won the total approval of the Lord: “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God!”

The big, rough-hewn fisherman had breached the gap that had formed when Adam disobeyed in the Garden of Eden. God, the Father, had himself given Peter that understanding. Jesus is the very Son of the Living God!

It seems that at no time in human history has that disconnect been more front and center than today. Jesus Christ is blatantly misunderstood, and that is bad enough. But it is the fact that His Holy Name is dragged through the muck of this fallen cesspool of a world that stabs most painfully the spiritual heart of the true follower of Christ.

One day I was listening to Glenn Beck as he chatted with his radio partner and his audience. I’ve listened many times to the famous Mormon talk-show host use the name of Jesus to claim his being a Christian. I’ve recently covered the points of difference between what God’s Word says about Jesus and Mormonism’s view of Jesus. In brief, that cult holds Jesus to be the created brother of Lucifer. Yes, the same Lucifer (the serpent) who brought about the disconnect between God and man through seducing Eve and tempting Adam to disobey God.

Mr. Beck was intimating how Jesus had no interest in “rapturing” His “people” from this world; rather, He wants His people to make this world a wonderful place of freedom–a heaven on earth.

That is Mormonism. The Mormon Church will be the final authority in any such new world order, according to its eschatology. Beck, in his usual way, became increasingly sarcastic and chiding while he mocked the Rapture. He talked about how if the rapturists wanted to really make a statement, they should, rather than set dates for the Rapture, simply state that they are leaving, go to some spot, and let their clothes drop to the ground as if they had been taken. Then they should stay out of the picture so the world would perceive they were gone. Thus, Beck implied slyly that those who believe in such nonsense would get out of the way so real religionists–the Mormons—could bring about Utopia.

This, as much as anything, proves two things. First, it shows that Beck has no thought of Jesus being the same Jesus in whom I believe and who I follow. Second, it reaffirms that the Rapture is very close because of Beck and others like him mockingly fulfilling a most relevant prophecy for these troubling yet exciting times. Appropriately, it is the same Peter who gave the following prophecy who gave the most important answer to Christ’s all-important question of history: “Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, And saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation” (2 Peter 3:3-4).

My Jesus is God, who cannot lie. My Jesus says He, not the Mormon Church, will establish a glorious millennial reign. My Jesus keeps His promises, and He promises this: “Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also” (John 14:1-3).

The question that is the most important in all of human history is the one posed by the Lord Jesus, himself. It is asked directly to you who are reading these words. Who is Jesus to you? Who do you say He is?

Glenn Beck, like so many others, believes Jesus is something other than who the Bible says He is. The Bible, through the words of Peter, whom Jesus said gave the God-inspired answer, said Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God.

Jesus is not a created being. He is God, who came to planet earth in the flesh to save you and me from sin that has all of lost mankind headed down the broad way to the lake of fire (Revelation 20:12-15).

Jesus said: “The Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost” (Luke 19:10).

Jesus asks you: “Who do you say that I am?” How you answer this most important question of history will determine whether you go to heaven or to hell for all of eternity. Answer wisely.

Like it does from time to time while lurching toward the end of this troubled age, the world, prophetically speaking, seems to be pausing to catch its breath.

We’ve sometimes called it a “lull” because prophetic progression appears to be on hold. It’s kind of like in the south when a severe springtime storm is about to produce a big tornado. Everything gets eerily still.

What is actually happening, I’m told, is that the big super-cell thunderhead is sucking the surrounding atmosphere into its building vortex. All turns a greenish-yellow color and not a leaf is rustling.

One of the mistakes we who observe things on a global scale with regard to Bible prophecy make is to view things too much from our American perspective, I think. Things seem to be whirling around us, but the larger picture presents a different view.

You hear the rumbling and see the lightning flashing on the black horizon, but all is perfectly still, as if the complexion of the earth has taken on a sickly pallor. It seems that this humanistic system is holding its collective breath in somewhat of a perceived pause in these scary moments.

Presidential politics right now in the U.S., on the other hand, are anything but eerily calm. For example, the campaign rhetoric and vitriol are raw rough and tumble. Americans who see things through a strictly political prism believe this is a storm we are in–one that will determine where our world will be torn apart, depending upon who wins the presidency. The atmosphere is turbulent. We are in the midst of a terrible, national storm with the nation’s future at stake.

That might all be true, but on a global basis, thinking in terms of Bible prophecy, there seems to this eschatological weather observer to be an environment surrounding us with an ominous pallor that harbors far greater lethality. There portends within the building storm clouds far greater dangers than those given off by the political winds that are whipping us all into a frenzy here in America.

Internationally, the powers and principalities of Ephesians 6: 12 are working quietly behind the scenes. They are striving as hard as ever before to bring about that great, end-times tornado the Lord terms Tribulation.

One can sense, if spiritually attuned to the pre-storm goings-on, the very corruptive atmosphere of fallen man being drawn into the coming Tribulation vortex. Yet there seems to be for the moment an eerie calm, despite evidence everywhere one looks of brewing trouble.

The president of the United States is reportedly working with the United Nations to bring about a  two-state solution to the “Palestinian-Israeli problem” before he leaves office. Israel, itself, remains basically in a lull, while looking in every direction at a storm that is gathering against it. Russia and its headstrong president are making strange, unanticipated withdrawal gestures and movements in and around Syria and other entrant points to the Middle East. North Korea blusters ahead with nuclear and missile tests, actions intended to threaten it’s immediate neighbor, South Korea, and the rest of us as well. China builds islands in international waters then claims them as their territory, while building military bases upon the newly formed land to threaten anyone who dares question its intentions.

Iran continues to silently work on a nuclear program that it no doubt thinks will one day be used against the Great Satan and the little Satan–the U.S. and Israel.

The world’s building economic disaster expands by the hour like an embolism within the human brain. The silent bubble could erupt explosively at any time, bringing the global, financial catastrophe many fear.

Agents of the Father of Lies work feverishly and incessantly to implant within the fallen minds of mankind that Christianity is a viper’s nest of hatred. Just to our northern border, Canada’s supreme judicial body has ruled in a number of cases that biblical text can be construed as hate speech that must not and will not be tolerated. One pastor spent 10 years and more than $200,000 to finally get a reversal of such a charge against him. Americans would be foolish to assume that such a devilish invasion of evil jurisprudence isn’t in Satan’s plans for this nation. As a matter of fact, we’ve already  experienced such evil at some level. The cases involving the homosexual agenda and bakeries and flower shops that refuse to provide services for same-sex marriages come to mind.

All of the above and much more give evidence of the very atmosphere of liberty we have enjoyed since the country’s founding being sucked into the building thunderhead that will produce the greatest storm in human history.

While the world catches its breath, the  power of the storm continues to build. Satan seems as if he will have his way against all of humanity in this great destructive era that now rumbles upon earth’s angry horizon.

But, Jesus said:

These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world. (John 16:33)

The Lord promised the believer who is alive at the time this end-times storm threatens:

Because thou hast kept the word of my patience, I also will keep thee from the hour of temptation, which shall come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth. (Revelation 3:10)

It is altogether fitting and appropriate to echo the words of John the revelator: “Even so, come Lord Jesus” (Rev. 22:20b).

A science fiction film of 1956 called Invasion of the Body Snatchers riveted me as a kid of fourteen or so. Sinister, unseen—even unknowable—diabolical entities were taking over the personhood, bodies and all, of earthlings. The protagonist, a physician, was frightened and frustrated as to how to deal with the situation, and was unable for most of the movie to convince those around him that something disastrous was being set up to destroy humanity.

Almost the whole town was replaced by the invaders before…well, you will have to see the movie—I don’t want to spoil it for you.

The storyline was a grand scheme of delusion and deception. You wanted to shout at the big screen for the people to recognize what was going on. You are being set up for falling victim to the body snatchers! But, the course of the storyline could not be changed. It was inevitable that the other-worldly beings would soon take over, as they say, lock, stock, and barrel.

I find the movie and what is happening today in real life to be analogous in several troubling respects. I’ve given this commentary the title “Invasion of the Mind Snatchers” because it has become evident that the thought processes of people of this generation are being set up for the most profound deception ever perpetrated—well, that is, except for the original deception, when the serpent beguiled Eve in the Garden of Eden.

Jesus had told His followers He would be going away from them, but would return. He answered His disciples’ questions about when things He was prophesying would come to pass. They wanted to know when the end of the age would be, and when He would return.

He began His lengthy and in-depth answer with the words: “Take heed that no man deceive you. For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many” (Matthew 24:4–5).

So began what has become known as the Olivet Discourse. This section of Scripture is considered perhaps the most important of all prophecies in the Bible because it is from the mouth of God in the flesh. And, the very first thing Jesus told those disciples—and by way of His recorded words to them that day told us—was that deceivers would mark the very end of the age. Great deception would characterize the time just before He comes back. Jesus forewarned that His disciples must be on high alert for this particular societal condition.

The invasion by the mind snatchers is here. No matter which way we who observe the prophetic picture look, we see the delusion settling upon the thinking processes of men, women, and children. It has completely changed the character of our nation.

In America, it is relatively easy to look back and see that the entertainment industry has been a tool used by the master deceiver to pollute the common sensibility of the people. Hollywood has caused the suspension of disbelief to such an extent that the lines between fiction and fact have been catastrophically blurred. Morality guided by biblical principles has gone by the wayside in our society and culture.

The film industry, for example, has propagandized us to accept that it is okay to sleep around with other than one’s legally sanctioned spouse. As a matter of fact, the very term “sleeping with” is an entertainment industry-spawned term invented to help avoid the stigma attached to the sinful activity of having sex outside the God-ordained union of wedlock.

Deception is the progenitor of delusion—a mental illness that robs one of the ability to discern what is moral and what is not. Values clarification and situational ethics, through incessant inculcation, especially by the political, judicial, and educational progressives (liberals) since the 1960s, have declared that there are no moral absolutes (the Bible is irrelevant). The supreme evidence of how this has deleteriously affected life in the United States is seen in our political process and the results the lack of discernment has produced.

Socioeconomically, geopolitically, and every other way, deception has invaded and taken the minds of humanity farther and farther from God, thus from sanity. No element of this deceptive assault has been more deadly than has the false teachers and preachers of this Laodicean age. Strange winds of doctrine have joined forces with the humanist agenda to blow away every semblance of true spiritual discernment. These satanic psycho-babble concepts have constituted the ingredients for deception that has brought much of society to the point that it is now ready for suffering the great delusion of Bible prophecy yet future.

That prophesied delusion is outlined, of course, in 2 Thessalonians, as the apostle Paul writes:

For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way. And then shall that wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming: Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders, And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. 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 2:7–11)

Like disease that causes dementia to progress within the human brain, the deceptive tendrils of willful godlessness are pushing this generation toward the strong delusion prophesied for the Tribulation hour.

With nine months to go for President Barack Obama’s presidency, the wait for it to be over is agonizing. There are many reasons, but the chief is the damage this lame duck can do to the one nation on earth America had better never abandon.

Polls continue to show the world that by a wide margin, we the people of the United States believe Israel is not the problem in the Middle East, or anywhere else. By large percentage margins, we have made it known that we want America to continue to embrace the Jewish state as a close friend and ally –the only true ally we have in that violent part of the world. Yet, lame duck, Mr. Obama, and those he sends as interlocutors in that one-sided, so-called peace process consistently lock arms with Israel’s blood-vowed enemies to try to bully that nation to give in to demands that will never end as long as Israel exists.

Israel’s enemies, who encircle the nation except on the Mediterranean side –and that list includes most every Arab state– want Israel destroyed. the God of Israel has promised that will never happen.

This presidential administration has time after time touched the apple of the Almighty’s eye, and continues to do so as Mr. Obama will dispatch his vice president to insinuate his will upon the Netanyahu government in the so-called peace-making process.

A Wall Street Journal report has it that Obama will make a last-ditch effort during his last year as president to revive Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations. This pressure is likely to include a UN Security Council resolution which would set a framework for a viable deal.

Any observer with an ounce of understanding must conclude that Vice President Joe Biden’s Israel trip at this time is an integral part of Obama’s lame-duck effort to force Israel’s compliance with the presidents and the U.N.’s demands.

Biden is going for the first time in 6 years to Israel. His main objective for the visit is working to convince Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to sign a new Memorandum of Understanding between Israel and the United States, which will ensure Washington’s continued security aid to Jerusalem for the next 10 years. Again, any observer of the way this administration has dealt with Israel’s prime minister and the Jewish state over the past 7 plus years cannot not but conclude that the Biden trip will bring with it threats for non-compliance in the administration/U.N. initiatives.

This president is again going to directly dare the God of heaven to do anything about his (Obama’s) obdurate stance against Him. The quaking in the nation’s capital is a mild forewarning of what is to come, if his actions, and lack of action, continue on the course he has chosen with regard to Israel.

We are not currently witnessing God’s wrathful judgment in this nation, in my opinion. When His wrath–His judgment–does descend, it will be, Jesus foretold, a time more horrendous than any that has preceded it. (Matthew 24:21). However, God is letting it be known yet again, I’m convinced, that dealing treacherously with Israel is a deadly serious matter within His interacting with mankind. The closer the time of Christ’s return, the more intense will become His forewarnings.

America has been Israel’s ally and protector, thus has been blessed more than any nation in history. God has given our nation material wealth and godly moorings of Christianity from our very founding to the present. But, the tide is turning, as anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear can discern.

Economic cataclysm looms on the national horizon to such a degree that this great nation’s fall when it happens will literally bring the entire world down. And, it’s not a matter of if that will happen, but when. We have been experiencing an economic earthquake for months–even years–and the shaking is getting worse. Now the quaking is shaking the very foundation of Washington, D.C. in one of the most turbulent political seasons in U.S. history.

But, the tremblers are mild–very mild, my spirit tells me—compared to the shaking that is coming upon this country and world. Much of the quaking–socioeconomic and geophysical–is a direct result of the way America and the world are dealing with the nation that the God of heaven has, in His absolute authority, determined cannot be destroyed. Satanic forces are ratcheting up everything possible to keep God’s promises to Israel from being fulfilled. There is bound to be such titanic shaking as we are presently experiencing while the biblically prophesied battle between what secularists call good and evil takes place. Be assured–the outcome of that battle is already determined.

Mr. lame duck President, please do all within your power to see to it that America comes down on the victorious side –not on the side destined for the dustbin of history.

Those of us who look at world conditions through the lens of the pre-millennial, pre-tribulation scope of things to come believe ours is the correct view of Bible prophecy. We reach that understanding, in part, when considering that 1) Israel must be at the center of world controversy at the very end of the age; and 2) Antichrist can’t be revealed as the man of sin until believers of the Church Age are removed from planet earth.

Now, the details of developments on the geopolitical last-days’ landscape grow ultra-fascinating. We have shown that Israel has become the center of controversy, exactly like Zechariah the prophet foretold that nation will be at the end of the age. We have looked at how this prophetic stage-setting has eventuated, with America’s alliance with and influence upon Israel bringing the Jewish state to the center of the end-times spotlight.

At the same time, we’ve delved into how the United States of America has gone into decline like the deteriorating visage of a terminally ill cancer patient. Why is the U.S. not mentioned in Bible prophecy? Perhaps we are learning why, as previously dissected, with America’s wealth currently being siphoned by the geopolitical power that will one day have a military force that will kill one-third of all peoples on earth at the time China and others of East Asia rampage into the Occidental world across the dried-up Euphrates River.

American tax dollars are paying for the equipping of that future juggernaut, it appears. America’s decline seems related to the country’s movement away from friendship with and close support of God’s chosen nation. Again, America looks to be key to developing prophetic stage-setting when thinking on what’s going on with the area of the world out of which history’s final and most despotic tyrant will emerge. Antichrist’s launching pad will be Europe–the area of ancient Rome, the prophet Daniel foretells (Dan. 9: 26-27).

Europe spawned World Wars I and II, and was in near total shambles following the Allied victory over Germany, Japan, and Italy. The Marshall Plan, conceived, implemented, and paid for by the United States, rebuilt that prophetically destined continent.

The European Common Market came into being in 1957, engendered by the Treaty of Rome. This followed a number of European nations agreeing to form the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) in 1951, which was implemented in 1952. Other agreements moved European nations closer, like the treaties establishing the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom). The formation of the European Economic Community (EEC) brought Europe to the point of coming into the prophetic picture as what will one day form the revived Roman Empire. Point is, none of these developments would have happened as they did if not for U.S. rescue of Europe from the ravages of WW II. This isn’t meant to give America undue accolades. The U.S. would, itself, never have existed if not for the God of heaven’s divinely appointed purpose for the American republic in end-times development.

The intricate linkages with the U.S. economy have kept Europe–and the western world, for that matter—at an elevated economic level never attained in history. The interlinkages of America and its dollar with all of these nations mentioned in Bible prophecy are nothing short of miraculous, when one truly studies the details involved. America’s loss of economic power is presently having a deleterious impact on most every nation on the planet–except, perhaps, China, which, again, looks to be the entity assigned by destiny to be the chief agent for siphoning wealth and power from the most materially blessed nation to ever exist.

The ominous bubble of economic catastrophe is building hourly for America and all nations of planet earth. There is almost certainly no human way to prevent it from eventually bursting. It becomes more obvious by the day to those who see prophetic developments from a premillennial, pre-Tribulation viewpoint that it is only God’s staying hand that prevents the explosion that will collapse the global economy.

I believe–again, based on what I know to be the pre-mil, pre-trib view God’s Word presents regarding prophecy yet future–that it will be the Rapture of the church (all born-again believers in Jesus Christ) that will burst that explosive bubble.

All stage-setting factors are in place–in detail—for the coming to power of Antichrist and his regime of murderous tyranny. It will be an economically driven dictatorship of absolute control over buying and selling, as Revelation 13:16-18 clearly presents.

That “prince that shall come” (Dan. 9:26) can’t appear on the world stage (2 Thess. 2:3) until the church is removed to heaven when Jesus Christ calls all believers to be with Him (John 14:1-3; 1 Thess. 4:16-17; Rev. 4:1). It is upon the Rapture that this world’s immense bubble of false security based upon Satan’s lies will burst and the humanistic structures of false hope will come crashing to dust.

The singular, most fascinating detail out of all of prophecy to remember is the following: “And it shall come to pass, that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved” (Acts 2:21).

His name is Jesus!

Every examination of prophecy about the very end of the Church Age that deals with the nations and their individual and collective fates/destinies must begin and end with Israel. Therefore, we continue looking at details of modern Israel as juxtaposed against all nations–thus to determine how the minute elements of ongoing developments in geopolitics are setting the prophetic stage for Christ’s return.

Previously, we looked at how Israel and Jerusalem are at ground zero for the diplomatic world. The international community correctly sees this as the place on earth most likely to be the ignition point for World War III. It is intriguing to dissect with the scalpel of Bible prophecy each and every layer of development in the geopolitical issues and events of our time that involve the modern Jewish state. Iran is a most fascinating case in point.

Persia, as we have looked at many times, is listed as a key player that assaults Israel in the Ezekiel 38-39 Gog-Magog prophecy. Modern Iran is at the center of what was ancient Persia, as we know.

With Iranian Shah Mohammed Rezā Pahlavi being in power through most of the 1970s, Israel didn’t have to be overly concerned about neighbors to that section of its north. One reason was because America’s military, particularly the U.S. Air Force, worked closely with the Shah’s air force in training and maintenance missions. I can report this from more-or-less personal secondhand information, because my own father-in-law was in charge of all aircraft maintenance for American-made military aircraft in Iran’s arsenal through 1976. The shah was America’s friend, even if sometimes being beastly in treatment of his own people, and looking down his nose at Israel to his south.

Point is, Bible prophecy students were hard pressed to see how the Gog-Magog force could ever be formed, with this arrangement in place. We know what happened, as we think on how quickly things have fallen in place one event after the other since the shah’s fall in 1979.

America, under the Carter administration, was run out of town, literally, with the coming of the Iranian Revolution, as the Islamists came to power under the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Iran became increasingly bellicose against the West, and, of course, became blood-lust determined to erase Israel and every Jew off the map.

Russia and the present Iranian regime have become working partners at many levels, the most troubling at the nuclear level. The Gog-Magog nucleus has formed between Russia, Iran (Persia), and Turkey (Togarmah) within less than two years.

It’s also prophetically amazing to watch a most-asked question among prophecy students in process of being answered by the flood of developing issues and events. Why is America not mentioned in Bible prophecy? It is the most powerful nation ever to exist… Again, it is intriguing to consider that America was instrumental in all of these developments–as one would expect the most powerful nation ever to exist to be, I suppose.

America “defeated” the Soviet Union” through tactics involving cold war attrition–and the heart of that antagonist became again “Russia.” This territorial rearrangement aligns almost precisely with the ancient geographical area called “Rosh,” the leader of which the prophet Ezekiel foretold will be “Gog” of the Gog-Magog war against Israel.

The United States has slipped from its ultimate superpower status since that time of the Reagan-led peaceful defeat of the Soviet Union. Under the Obama Administration, America’s economic standing, thus its fiscal hegemony over the other nations of the world, has declined, some say precipitously. Prophecy students of the premillennial, pretrib perspective can point with a certain amount of credibility to the fact that America’s slippage coincides closely with this nation’s bringing pressure on the Israeli government to give in to demands that they give up land for peace with their Islamist neighbors.

At the same time, China, which most students of the premill, pretrib viewpoint of Bible prophecy believe is the chief nation that will make up the “kings-of-the-east” force that will one day kill one-third of the world’s population, is draining U.S. economic power while buying up American assets. America is, in effect, funding the development of the awesome military force predicted in Revelation 9:16 This would have been flabbergasting to even consider during those Reagan years, and that hasn’t been that many years ago. China! Of all nations on earth–China has answered the question: Why is America not mentioned in Bible prophecy? The United States can also be seen as instrumental in the details of developing Bible prophecy regarding the region that is foretold to spawn the world’s most despicable dictator.

Daniel the prophet said that this “prince that shall come” will emerge from the people that “destroy the city and sanctuary.” Most premill, pretrib students of Bible prophecy view this to mean that Antichrist will come from the area of Rome–from Europe, in general—as the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and the Jewish Temple in A.D. 70. Again, the viewpoint is important to recognize, because the premill, pretrib view–in almost every instance of examination of prophecy yet future–provides logical placement, thus explanation, of what we have watched develop in world headlines–especially since Israel became a nation again May 14, 1948.

America’s influence has been absolutely profound in bringing the modern Jewish state into prominence. My book, The American Apocalypse: Is the United States in Bible Prophecy?, details the intricacies of America’s part in that rebirth. The United States’ influence in bringing modern Europe into prophetic configuration is only slightly less profound. Next time, Lord willing, we will continue looking at the many facets of those and other developments toward fulfillment of the final prophecies leading up to Christ’s Second Advent.

We have been observing prophetic developments in these commentaries for years. So, why present an article on prophetic matters in an over-all sense as if it was covering something new?

I hope, in this multi-part essay, to do something significantly different. Rather than look in a broad, general way at the major issues we cover so often, I want to take a look at the fascinating, specific way these prophecies have been brought into focus at a time I believe is the very end of this dispensation, the Age of Grace (Church Age)–i.e., I want to look at some of the more intricate details of the dynamics and circumstances that have shaped each of the major prophecies for this very hour.

Geopolitical Details

Modern Israel, as we consistently say, is the number-one signal of where this generation stands on God’s prophetic timeline. That nation is, therefore, the best example in the geopolitical arena to use for focusing on details of issues and events shaping the stage-setting for Bible prophecy fulfillment. The student who watches Bible prophecy develop from the premillennial, pretrib viewpoint has, with clarity others can’t see, I think, seen Israel come back into its own land, with its ancient national language restored. It did so following a miraculous rebirth into modernity on a single day, just as prophesied (Isa. 66: 6-9). The intricate details of the amazing rebirth are there to be gleaned by the hundreds, if not thousands.

Pressured in AD 135 through genocidal action by Roman Emperor Hadrian to leave their homeland given them by God, the Jews scattered into many nations of the world. God’s chosen people never truly found peace; rather, they mostly encountered persecution and death during the intervening centuries leading to coming back in large numbers following the Balfour Declaration of 1917.

Hitler’s perpetration of genocide upon the Jews during the time leading up to and through World War II, culminating in the Holocaust, shamed the world into allowing a Jewish state to be reborn. What Satan meant for evil in trying to thwart God’s promise to Israel being fulfilled, God turned into good. However, demonic rage by the false religion of Islam continued to fester, breaking into all-out warfare against Israel on numerous occasions. God Gave Israel the victory in every instance that nation was attacked.

Now, to look at the clearly observable, detailed kinds of prophetic movement wrought by recent events involving the modern Jewish state. Zechariah the prophet declared the whole world will turn against Israel and Jerusalem, in particular, at the end of human history. Israel’s refusal to give in to demands by the Palestinian Authority (PA)–merely the proxy entity for all of Israel’s Islamist Arab and Iranian antagonists– has brought condemnation of practically every nation on earth.

We’ve all watched the anger spew from the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, and from the leadership of practically every nation represented in the UN General Assembly. They threaten to grant the PA its request for nationhood, using much of Israel’s land, including East Jerusalem, in which to establish the new country’s capital. The U.S. presidential administration has thus far, in my estimation, shown little more than token interest in opposing this assault on Israel’s sovereignty.

Israel’s only true friends left on the planet consist mostly of evangelical Christians, particularly those who see with the clarity mentioned above through the premillennial, pretrib prism. When the Church–the Body of Christ—is called out of this fallen planet, Israel will be alone, or so it will seem.

But, not so.

At that moment when all seems lost, Michael the archangel will stand for that chosen people (Daniel 12: 1). God Himself will deal with and for His chosen people and the city He equates to the “apple” of His eye. All is shaping into the prophetic picture, with details filling in moment by moment the matters involved in getting to the total fulfillment of every jot and tittle that is foretold. The intricacies of the peace process provide details that fascinate the student of Bible prophecy, for example.

The development of the atomic bomb (an invention of Jewish scientists, incidentally) and the hydrogen bomb, for that matter, has caused a worldwide furor stemming from the Middle East. Israel is at the center of the controversy, of course. Israel has nuclear weaponry and is threatened with extinction–as the Jews always are. They have vowed, “Never again!” Never again will they be subjected to genocide without fighting to the death with those who want every Jew on the planet dead.

Israel is, as of a year ago or so, completely surrounded on all but the Mediterranean side by those whose avowed intention is just that–to eradicate the Jews, thus the nation of Israel.

The world knows that the end of the human race through nuclear war could easily begin at Jerusalem. Thus, that city is ground zero for the entire world’s attention, just as Zechariah and other prophets foretold. Isaiah prophesied that a peace covenant will be made over this very city. It will be a covenant that will, in fact, be made with “death and hell.” It will bring the wrath of God down on the whole world for forcing such an agreement upon His chosen people and upon His most beloved city. (Read Isaiah 28: 15, 18.)

America is at the heart of just such a covenant-producing process. The “Roadmap to Peace” has been a part of world diplomatic jargon for more than a decade now. Jerusalem, with the strong-arming of the diplomatic world to make Israel stop building in that city and with the PA (the Islamist world) demanding that Jerusalem be given over to them, is at the epicenter of the coming earthquake of wrath as foretold by God Almighty through His prophet, Zechariah.

“And this shall be the plague wherewith the LORD will smite all the people that have fought against Jerusalem; Their flesh shall consume away while they stand upon their feet, and their eyes shall consume away in their holes, and their tongue shall consume away in their mouth” (Zechariah 14:12).

God willing, we will continue to look next time at the fascinating details that are filling in more and more of the end-of-the-age prophetic puzzle.

Mr. President, tear down this wall…What wall? The wall your administration has erected between the American people and the nation Israel.

The Gallup Poll told within the recent past that by a wide margin, we the people of the United States believe Israel is not the problem in the Middle East, or anywhere else. By a margin of more than 60%, we have made it known that we want America to continue to embrace the Jewish state as a close friend and ally –the only true ally we have in that violent part of the world. Yet, you, Mr. President, and those you send as interlocutors in that one-sided, so-called peace process consistently lock arms with Israel’s blood-vowed enemies to try to bully that nation to give in to demands that will never end as long as Israel exists.

Israel’s enemies–and that list includes every Arab state to one degree or another—want Israel eradicated.

The massive snow and ice your White House and D.C. received the other day is a not-so-gentle reminder that the God of Israel will never let that happen.

You have touched the apple of the Almighty’s eye, and continue to do so by your joining the nation of Boycott, Divestment and Sanction (BDS) movement that seeks to marginalize Israel.

You directly dare the God of heaven to do anything about your obdurate stance against Him. The current shaking your fist in the face of the Almighty is but the latest of such defiance.

Almost at the same moment you took step towards joining the European Union in an boycott of Israel, D.C. was blasted with near-record blizzard conditions.

The U.S. is now requiring goods originating from the West Bank (also known as Judea and Samaria) to be labeled separately from products from the rest of Israel, following the European Union’s crackdown on products from the disputed territories.

Such weather and “natural phenomena” have manifested after many egregious actions against Israel, as has been documented by John McTernan and Bill Koenig. The snow storm came as a departure from normal winter weather in the area of the nation’s capital. To be sure, it was a mild forewarning of what is to come, Mr. President, if your actions, and lack of action, continue on the course you have chosen with regard to Israel.

We are not currently witnessing God’s judgment and wrath with this snow event, or with other such “acts of God.” When His wrath–His judgment–does fall, it will be, Jesus prophesied, a time more terrible than any that has ever existed on planet earth (Matthew 24:21). But, God is warning yet again, I’m convinced, that dealing with Israel is a deadly serious matter in His interaction with mankind. The closer the time of Christ’s return, the more intense will become His forewarnings.

America has been Israel’s friend, her protector, in human terms. America has, therefore, been blessed of God beyond any nation in history, with material wealth and godly moorings of Christianity at our very foundation. But, the tide is turning, as anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear can discern.

Economic catastrophe looms on the national horizon to such a degree that this great nation’s fall will literally bring the entire world down, when it crashes. And, it’s not a matter of if that will happen, but when. We have been experiencing an economic earthquake for months–even years–and the shaking is getting worse. But, the shaking is mild–very mild, my spirit tells me—compared to the shaking that is coming upon this country and world. Much of the quaking–socioeconomic and geophysical–is a direct result of the way America and the world are dealing with the nation that the God of heaven has, in His absolute authority, determined cannot be destroyed. Satanic forces are ratcheting up everything possible to keep God’s promises to Israel from being fulfilled. There is bound to be such titanic shaking as we are presently experiencing while the biblically prophesied battle between what secularists call good and evil takes place. Be assured–the outcome of that battle is already determined.

Knowing that this request isn’t likely to produce the desired answer, ultimately, I still must make the plea as one given the commission to forewarn during these prophetic times. Mr. President, please do all within your power to see to it that America comes down on the winning side. Regardless, Israel will be the winner. We have the Word of the Creator of all that is who has made the following promise: “This is what the Lord says, ‘He who appoints the sun to shine by day, Who decrees the moon and stars to shine by night, Who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar — the Lord Almighty is His Name; Only if these ordinances vanish from My sight,’ declares the Lord, ‘will the descendants of Israel ever cease to be a nation before Me.'” (Jeremiah 31:35-36)

A perhaps not-so-shocking, but certainly attention-getting, news item points to the ugly head of anti-Israel action arising. The stark growth of Israel and Jew-hating is front and center in the heart of Europe, where Adolf Hitler did his worst to eliminate all of God’s chosen –where Antichrist will arise to try to finish the job the Nazis began.

Although the rise in anti-Israeli sentiment might seem subtle with it coming from the halls of European academia, the world-wide Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against the Jewish state is growing more incendiary. The academic community urges that all join the BDS movement.

The Italian academics and researchers, who belong to seven separate universities across Italy, claimed in their petition that the Technion engages in military research and develops weapons that the IDF uses to “repress the Palestinian people.”

The petition continues: “We, the undersigned scholars and researchers at Italian universities are deeply troubled by the collaboration between the Israel Institute of Technology “Technion” and Italian universities.

“Israeli universities collaborate on military research and development of weapons used by the Israeli army against the Palestinian population, providing undeniable support to the military occupation and colonization of Palestine.”…

The committee of university heads in Israel responded: “Israeli universities are under attack from the BDS movement as well as other parties, who are distributing deceitful and inciting material against Israel and its higher academic institutions.

“The committee of university heads is acting with everything it has against this ugly phenomenon. But it’s not quite enough. We request the involvement of the state to act via all possible means to stop this dangerous process.” (http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4759523,00.html)

Current issues and events that look to be harbingers of the biblically prophesied apocalypse bombard this generation of earth’s inhabitants. Jesus’ Olivet Discourse prophecies, foretelling things to come in the time of “great tribulation,” seem to leap from news reports that are becoming so routine that they no longer shock. No signal is more prophetically significant than present circumstances involving the state of Israel and city where Jesus was crucified nearly twenty centuries ago.

Jerusalem is at the center of satanic rage, and the rage is bursting forth at the center of supposedly civilized Europe, where Islam is in the process of taking over. This is as the Old and New Testament prophets said it will be just before Christ returns to a planet that is home to a world of rebels against God. That rebellion is scheduled, the prophets forewarn, to culminate in history’s final and most destructive war. Armageddon will be triggered because of both Satan and fallen mankind’s determination to install themselves upon the single spot on earth dearest to the heart of God.

Mount Moriah sits at the southern end of the ancient city, crested by a golden dome that represents 1.5 billion people whose religion demands of its adherents blood-vowed opposition to God’s chosen nation, Israel. This is the place God picked to have His temple on earth constructed. It is the precise location where the Third Temple will sit–the Temple that will be desecrated by Antichrist, earth’s last and most beastly tyrant.

Even more importantly, the Temple Mount will be the home of Christ’s Millennial Temple. Moriah, then to be known as Zion, will be supernaturally elevated by the tremendous topographical changes caused when the Lord’s foot touches the Mount of Olives at His return.

Diplomats of the world have, for the past four decades, engaged in effort after effort to bring stability to the region, at whose heart the city of Jerusalem sits. We remember the many settings to and from Washington D.C., Jerusalem, and other capitals of the Mideast. From Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski, James Baker, Madeleine Albright, Colin Powell, and Condoleezza Rice to, now, John Kerry and even Barack Obama–America’s secretaries of state and a most strangely assertive president have burned mega-gallons of jet fuel in trying to find the formula for peace that would defuse the Armageddon bomb.

All of that diplomatic shuffling is mere prelude to the fretting that is about to take place over this, the most important, thus most volatile, nation and city on planet earth. Zechariah the prophet foretold the end-time anxiety that we believe is, observably, now on the precipice of gripping the international community.

The burden of the word of the LORD for Israel, saith the LORD, which stretcheth forth the heavens, and layeth the foundation of the earth, and formeth The spirit of man within him. Behold, I will make Jerusalem a cup of trembling unto all the people round about, when they shall be in the siege both against Judah and against Jerusalem. And in that day will I make Jerusalem a burdensome stone for all people: all that burden themselves with it shall be cut in pieces, though all the people of the earth be gathered together against it. (Zechariah 12:1-3)

There is good reason for the building anxiety. Israel’s terrorist-sponsoring neighbors to the north strive mightily to develop nuclear bombs and missiles that will deliver them. No one doubts in which direction these missiles will be pointed should Iran be successful in producing such weapons of mass destruction. Israel’s one, common declaration amidst all of the political infighting remains the core of its defense. “Never again!”

The following summary of atrocities to the Jewish race presents compelling evidence why “Never Again!” must be their passionate declaration, backed by nuclear strength.

Due to [Israel’s] disobedience the Jews have suffered terribly.

They were ruled by Rome in Christ’s day but rebelled in A.D. 70 and 250,000 were killed. They rebelled again in A.D. 135 and again Rome smashed them, killing even more and scattering them throughout the empire. Since then they have been bitterly persecuted. Forcibly expelled from England in 1290 and from France 1306. In 1298 more than 100,000 were killed in Europe. From 1648 to 1658 some 400,000 were massacred. From 1939-45 Hitler’s Nazis killed more than 4 million… In its history Egyptian pharaohs, Assyrian kings, Babylonian rulers, Persian satraps, Greek Hellenists, Roman Caesars, Holy Roman emperors, Roman Catholic pontiffs, Medieval monarchs, Christian crusaders, Spanish inquisitors, Nazi dictators, Communist commissars, Arab sheiks and United Nation delegates have all turned against the Jew yet they still survive. (Charles L. Monk, “A Look at Bible Covenants and Their Meanings,” posted 2/22/03, Sugar Land Bible Church, Category: Bible Study, COVENANTS – 1987)

The Jewish people of Israel collectively declare they will never again let themselves be enslaved within regimes that want them erased from the earth. Never again will they allow the genocide they have suffered through the centuries. Their national vow is backed by the ominous “Samson Option.” This last-ditch military imperative is not lost on the leaders of the international community, which is headed by the G-8 nations.

These leaders of this enlightened age might not believe the Bible is the word of God, but, they know the story of Samson and what happened when he was finally put in a predicament in which he could no longer be free. The world’s diplomats–at least those of the western world—have no doubt that the Israeli Defense Force will bring the house down around them, if it comes to that as Israel’s only viable option. The international community –once termed “the new world order”– has developed a systemic neurosis involving the bleak outlook for the future of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The “Roadmap to Peace” seems to be the nerves-soothing therapeutic course of action upon which the powers-that-be have chosen to eliminate the possibility of nuclear conflict being triggered over earth’s most coveted city.

World leaders are obsessed with Jerusalem. They consider Jerusalem the trigger to Armageddon; they will do whatever it takes to diffuse that trigger.

A country song from way back in the 1960s and 1970s, during the Vietnam War era, plays through my mind these days.

The chorus goes as follows:

God bless America again.

You must know the trouble that she’s in.

Wash her pretty face, dry her eyes and then,…

God bless America again.

The war was raging while Walter Cronkite read the mainstream view of the news to us at dinnertime. Film of bloodied American GIs and corpses of black-pajamaed Viet Cong projected from our TV screens while we downed our evening meals.

B-52s dropped hundreds of thousands of tons of explosives, carpet-bombing an unseen enemy many thousands of feet below. Rolling Thunder, as it was called, churned up killing fields of earth mixed with flesh and blood night after night–day after day.

More than fifty thousand American soldiers and airmen went through the horrific,  grinding process of becoming casualties of war their country’s leaders, it turned out, never intended to bring to total victory–giving their last measure of devotion for America the beautiful. At the same time, the ugliness of political warfare was being uncovered and displayed in a news media orgy of, in my view, pro-Communist gleefulness.

A U.S. president of the United States was turned out of office  in disgrace–and, rightfully so. Watergate became forever an ingrained term within the American-English lexicon.

Would America ever recover? Would the curse that had descended since the time of Korea, with America’s young men and women dying in a “police action” purposely fought to stalemate rather than to complete victory, ever lift from our nation?

There have been moments of seemingly possible national egress from the plunge into the abyss of political corrosiveness. It looked like the nation might pull away from the cultural rot begun in earnest during the sexual revolution of the 1960s and the legitimization of murdering babies in their mother’s wombs.

The Moral Majority appeared for a brief, shining, moment to be making headway in engendering movement toward moral sanity. Somehow, however, a national, cultural darkness began descending following the Reagan years. An almost tangible veil separating America’s formerly flawed but Judeo- Christian-governed morality from a new immoral malignity fell with the Clinton years, the White House intern’s stained, blue dress and all the rest.

Jeremiah Wright, Barack Hussein Obama’s black-liberation theology “pastor,” from his Chicago pulpit, spewed a venomous rant that America’s chickens had come home to roost and implied that the Lord of Heaven should damn America–using God’s name in vain with the invective. Wright was, I infer, talking about the Islamist attacks on the Trade Towers in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C.

As much as I detest “Reverend” Wright’s hate speech against the United States, I must admit that indeed, America’s chickens appeared to have come home to roost, suffering on that September 11, 2001, Tuesday at least some degree of God’s judgment. In my view, the past seven-plus years of Wright’s best-known parishioner’s time in the Oval Office has brought an intensification of that judgment.

The year 2016, I sense strongly, is going to be a truly pivotal year for this nation and the world. It is proper, I believe, to wonder whether God’s judgment is now on track to preclude that of the corrective sort, such as in the past. I’m thinking of times like the Great Depression of the 1930s, following the debauched era of the Roaring Twenties, as it was called.

Is God’s judgment now entering a destructive rather than another corrective  phase? Is it entering a time such as when Sodom and Gomorrah came to their end–i.e., is it possible that God will ever bless America again?

Like that country song tells throughout its lyrics, I, too, love America and don’t want to ever let it fall because of my not doing my part in helping keep it upright in every sense.

All of this said, spiritually enlightened Bible students know that neither the leaders of this nation nor of any other will rectify the rapidly mounting problems. Only Jesus Christ will solve the otherwise unsolvable, sinister evil that is at humanity’s core.

There are, within the community of Bible prophecy observers, those who wonder whether America is the most likely candidate for being the Babylon of the eighteenth chapter of Revelation–according to the Bible, the country that will be the most materially accomplished of all nations of earth’s history. I am one of those who ponder this possibility more seriously with each passing news headline involving America’s president and State Department dealing with Israel.

God, it is abundantly clear, has through His dealing with America more than lived up to His promise to bless those who bless the progeny that would come from Abraham through Isaac. America, acting as midwife in the rebirth of the Jewish state into modernity in 1948, has been the recipient of bountiful material blessings beyond measure. God has truly blessed America.

Conversely, God has promised to curse those who curse His chosen nation, Israel. The cultural war is observably causing the loss of America’s former striving to promote Judeo-Christian values the Founding Fathers infused into the Constitution. Just as troubling is the obvious disdain this president and those around him have for Israel, even choosing to champion Israel’s enemies at every diplomatic opportunity, it seems to me.

Such continued folly will not perhaps, but will certainly, bring national disaster the likes of which our previously blessed nation has never experienced. If indeed forgiveness of our national sins  is possible, given the lateness of the prophetic hour, let us who name the matchless name that is above every name implore God to bless America again. This must be done, however, not with vain repetition in the idle words “God bless America” often used by presidents and politicians when ending their meaningless speeches.

There is but one heavenly Rx for obtaining an answer to such a prayer:

If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land. (2 Chronicles 7:14)

God does not change. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. That call to repentance to His people is still in effect–and it is for Church Age saints, just as it was for His chosen people of ancient Israel. But, time is swiftly fleeting.

“We will make America great again!” is a current presidential politics proclamation. No, “we” won’t. We have proven, through our actions and lack thereof, that as a people, we want to take America in the other direction. “We” didn’t make America great in the first place, and we certainly can’t make it great in the future.

“God bless America again,” when offered in genuine spiritual, obedient humility–not in politically-prideful demand–before the throne of Almighty God, is the only petition that has a prayer of a chance to save our nation.