The San Francisco Giants won the 2010 World Series. It was the first time the team has won the Series since 1954, when the franchise was playing as the New York Giants in the Polo Grounds. It should have been a reason for happiness, right? –At least, if you were a Giants fan, and weren’t a Texas Rangers fan. Certainly, it should have been a time of celebratory jubilation on the streets of San Francisco, one would think.

The victory was acknowledged by many, with self-congratulations all around. However, the dark side of humanity showed up–as it always seems to do—in demonstration of the malevolent side of humankind.

 Fans took over the streets, there were a number of violent incidents, such as fires being set, fistfights and a mob attack on a vehicle that was driven into a crowd. A local TV station posted helicopter footage of a raging fire that was started at the intersection of major streets. A driver’s attempted to steer into the crowd. A mob stopped the car and smashed the windshield and windows. Its passengers were attacked. Riot police arrived soon after the melee and the crowd began to thin out.

The rioting is, of course, not without precedent. We have witnessed it time after time in large cities whose sports teams have won world championships. We have only to recall Chicago during the time when Michael Jordan ruled the NBA courts with the Chicago Bulls, and the victories of the L.A. Lakers and the rioting aftermath in some areas of Los Angeles. One can but look in open-mouthed wonder upon such obstreperous behavior–all in the name of celebrating something that’s supposed to be fun, and “good.”

The founding fathers of this nation wrote the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution with almost consensus acknowledgement that man’s nature is depraved–fallen from the time of Eden. Peoples around the world have consistently validated that view of the human condition by often exhibiting unseemly comportment. Except in the most tyrannical and oppressive of regimes, people often become unruly if things push them to the limits. Even such fear as those governments can present sometimes can’t assuage the masses.

People will face down tanks and machine guns in some extreme cases, as was witnessed by the Tiananmen Square uprising during the Olympic Games held in China some decades ago. Those Chinese faced down the murderous red military in a righteous cause of seeking liberty by demonstrating through the cameras of the world how brutal were their masters.

So, it is not against these courageous sorts that I write for our purposes here. There is a time for protests–for righteous uprisings. I put much of the civil rights protests of Martin Luther King Jr.’s day in that category to some extent. Although some of it was for the sake of crass political power grabs among certain of the day’s left-wing politicians and community organizers, much of the demonstrations and actions taken were necessary to break the oppressive grip of racial bigotry.

Those who riot simply because they are riotous–unbridled in their “if it feels good do it” hedonism—fit, in my view of things, into the category that is the subject of this commentary. They are of the classification I believe the apostle Paul was writing about, as recorded in his second letter to Timothy: “This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be…incontinent, fierce” (2 Tim. 3:1-3).

Out of sheer, uncontrolled determination to smash their way through life, no matter what they break or who they hurt, those who live riotously prove the founding fathers right. The depravity of man is front-and-center for all to witness. It is an end-times signal that is manifest time after time in this generation.

That brings us to the purpose of our constitution, our laws. No individual or class of individuals has the right to trample on the property or person of others. It is codified; it was put there by Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, and all the rest. They got these precepts from the Word of God–the Bible.

We have recently watched the riots in Greece, Spain, and other places where populaces, being weaned off the spigots of socialistic largesse, have acted as riotously as the mobs that burn down parts of their cities because their teams won. Governments are no longer capable of taxing the income-producing, working people of those nations enough to pay for the welfare and various other social programs politicians voted in time after time in order to gather votes to themselves.

Governments, hopefully, have enough funds to defend against violence in the streets.

Let’s pray that economic conditions in America don’t become so desperate that they eventuate in violence like that seen in other countries. However, the fierce nature of fallen man hasn’t stopped raising its hideous head since the time that the first man rebelled and determined to do what was right in his own eyes, rather than what God chose for him. The ferocity is prophetically scheduled to get infinitely worse, when the Holy Spirit withdraws from governing the consciences of mankind in the way He does at present: “For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way” (2 Thess. 2:7).

The Restrainer–the Holy Spirit—will remove as governor of the unbridled evil of mankind when the Rapture takes place. God will allow the “mystery of iniquity” to strongly influence all who will not come to Christ for salvation during the last seven years of human history leading up to Christ’s Second Advent (Rev. 19:11). The foreshadows of that Luciferian evil are darkening our daily lives as never before. Each person who names the name of Christ must shine truth from God’s Word in order to illuminate the pathway to Jesus in these closing days of the age.

Top entertainers, no matter how personally charismatic and mesmerizing, often prepare their audiences with warm-up acts in order to work their magic more effectively when they finally burst into the spotlight. Many of these started out as warm-up acts themselves before they made the top billing.

Bible prophecy foretells this most charismatic personality of human history basking in the end-times spotlight:

Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition; Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God. (2 Thessalonians 2:3-4)

This supremely arrogant “Beast,” as he is called by God’s Word in Revelation 13, will serve as his own sort of warm-up act immediately following the Rapture of the church. The “prince that shall come,” as Daniel terms him, steps onto the stage of geopolitical diplomacy as a purveyor of peace.

And he shall confirm the covenant with many for one week: and in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease, and for the overspreading of abominations he shall make it desolate, even until the consummation, and that determined shall be poured upon the desolate. (Daniel 9:27) The Antichrist, empowered by Satan, will pave his own road for reaching his destiny as the object of forced worship by earth’s inhabitants. This warm-up act–a roadmap for peace, of sort–that he will perform himself, with the assistance of another “beast” (the false prophet)—will consist of impressive, if nefarious, accomplishments.

And his power shall be mighty, but not by his own power: and he shall destroy wonderfully, and shall prosper, and practise, and shall destroy the mighty and the holy people. And through his policy also he shall cause craft to prosper in his hand; and he shall magnify himself in his heart, and by peace shall destroy many. (Daniel 8:24-25a)

Actually, the Man of Sin, as Antichrist is also called, has already had a number of warm-up acts. These have been put upon the world humanistic stage by Lucifer, the master orchestrator of evil. Theologians and even philosophers and soothsayers through the ages have thought some of these warm-up acts to be Antichrist fulfilling his prophesied role.

Perhaps even Satan himself has believed some of these evil characters that seemed like the predicted first Beast of Revelation to be the foretold man whose number equals 666. Such lesser beasts as Nero, Hitler, Stalin, and others come to mind. Even U.S. presidents like Kennedy, Reagan, and Franklin D. Roosevelt before them have been thought as possible candidates for earth’s final and most terrible tyrant.

Concerning Antichrist’s eventual emergence, most all of today’s end-times stage props form the setting for the final act of human history: The Gog-Magog forces are coming together in a swiftly coalescing cabal determined to move against Israel when the time is right. The kings of the East, which will trouble the Beast as they will be a threat to his plans from the North and East, already can produce a two-hundred-million-troop military force. The European Union is almost certainly the reviving Roman Empire, out of which the dark “prince” will come.

Antichrist’s geopolitical “warm-up act” has been preparing the way for his prime-time prophetic performance for decades. The past several years have brought dynamic rearrangements in preparation for his appearance. One thing within the eschatological mix is often overlooked when thinking about how near Antichrist’s appearance might be. Again, this ingredient is found in the Apostle Paul’s second letter to the Thessalonians. The ingredient itself is difficult to identify because it involves deception from the father of all lies, which Satan will perpetrate upon those who reject God’s righteousness.

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 2:10-12)

Satan’s present-day warm-up act, designed to mesmerize people of planet earth, has at its heart great deception that will delude most who are left behind following the Rapture. The Holy Spirit resident within the church (each Church-Age saint) will remove from acting on the consciences of mankind as He has been doing during this present Age of Grace.

Following the removal of the church, it will apparently be impossible for those who deliberately rejected the Holy Spirit’s call to salvation before the Rapture to have any chance for redemption. The Lord will not let those people escape the delusion Satan’s man, Antichrist, will produce. They will be doomed to believe a specific lie, Paul’s prophecy indicates.

Some prophecy watchers observe Satan’s preparations for bringing to the world’s attention the man who will be his most infamous protégé. These–and I include myself–consider decades of fascination with extraterrestrial sightings to possibly be key to the old serpent’s concocting the “lie” of 2 Thessalonians 2:11.

Documentaries continue to fill cable TV networks, raising questions about whether we are alone in the cosmos. Reports of UFO sightings titillate the imaginations of brains already prepped by fictional accounts of invaders from far-flung places in space, such as in TV shows like that titled V from some years earlier.

Another such silver-screen fiction about intruders from space was the film Skyline. Its story line is most fascinating, as the Star Trek Enterprise’s first officer, Mr. Spock, might say.

One official synopsis of that movie about visitors from space states the following.

After a late-night party, a group of friends are awoken in the dead of the night by an eerie light beaming through the window. Like moths to a flame, the light source is drawing people outside before they suddenly vanish into the air. They soon discover an otherworldly force is swallowing the entire human population off the face of the earth. Now our band of survivors must fight for their lives as the world unravels around them. (http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/skyline_2010/).

Sounds eerily familiar to something from the Bible we address frequently, doesn’t it? But God’s Word is nonfiction–absolute truth. Such a scenario is prophetically scheduled to actually happen. Revelation 12 foretells that Satan and his fallen angelic horde will be cast to earth for the final time. John was told to write “Woe to the inhabiters of the earth” when that happens.

The second Beast–the False Prophet—will call fire down from heaven (Revelation 13:13) in the sight of men. Many students of Bible prophecy who observe these strange times in which we live think these things will likely be part of the lie of 2 Thessalonians 2:11, which earth dwellers will believe–i.e., the major part of the lie will be that those who have disappeared from earth have been taken for reasons held by the “extraterrestrial” entities.

Today, we are being “entertained” by Antichrist’s warm-up act. But, it will be the Lord of Heaven –Jesus Christ—who will bring down the final curtain on Satan’s great imposter.

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. (2 Thessalonians 2:8)

My book from a few years ago, The Departure: God’s Next Catastrophic Intervention into Earth’s History, is a book written by a number of authors. I was one of the authors and general editor. I selected to join in this effort some of the most knowledgeable authorities in Bible prophecy who wrote chapters on the most relevant topics of our day.

 We looked at all issues and events involving what we consider to have prophetic import through the supernatural prism of God’s Word, the Bible. I consider it “our” book, not just mine.

More than that, I believe each of us who wrote for it considers it to be a volume devoted to the Lord Jesus Christ for these troubling although exciting times. We trust that it continues to be a tool to help edify those who are in God’s family by pointing to the very real evidence that proves the coming of “the blessed hope” of Titus 2:13 is likely very near. To that extent, that’s another reason I call it “our” book. It’s written for all believers alive today, with the prayerful hope God’s family will awaken to Christ’s imminent coming.

With the book now in the hands of many thousands, I thought it good to use the commentary this week to look at exactly who I believe will go in the Departure–the Rapture, when Christ gives the command: “Come up here” (Rev. 4:1).

There might be some among the authors who would disagree on a couple of my views about specifically who will go to be with Jesus at the time of the Rapture. However, I will let them answer for themselves in their own forums and in their own ways. My own feeling on the differences we might have is like that of the late Dr. J. Vernon McGee, who more than once said that you can believe the way you want to believe. But, if you want to be right, you’ll want to come along with me on this…

Dr. McGee said that with a chuckle, and I hope you can hear the chuckle in my written expression, regarding my borrowing from that grand old Christian man’s humor.

First, I will state that God’s Word says, without equivocation, just who will go in the Rapture–the Departure: “Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed” (1 Cor. 15:51-52).

So, it is plain that Paul the apostle was saying two major things about one classification of people. He was writing to the believers at Corinth. But, he was also writing to each and every believer who would come along during the Church Age. Every believer at Corinth during Paul’s day is long since dead. So he had to be addressing those who would be living at the time when Christ would call for them, as well as those alive at the time this letter was written.

The context of the letter is that of informing those Christians about a mystery regarding a stunning event in their future. His words were to put to rest some of their worries about what would happen to those Christians among them who had died. What would happen to them in terms of their going to heaven?

Paul was saying that: 1) Not all believers would die; some would not have to die, but would be alive at the time of a stupendous event; and 2) All believers, however, would be changed. They would be changed in one single moment of time. The dead would be made alive and put into supernatural bodies. Those alive at the time of the event would be changed into supernatural bodies while living.

The “mystery” Paul was revealing–I am convinced–was the one wrapped up in Jesus’ words as recorded by John the apostle:

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)

Paul further expanded on this “mystery” in his letter to the Thessalonians:

For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord. (1 Thess. 4:16-17)

So, the thing to consider is that believers of the Church Age (Age of Grace)–and Paul was talking to believers of this dispensation—will ALL go to be with Jesus when He calls them in that “twinkling of an eye” (atomos of time) moment–the Rapture. ALL believers of this dispensation will go to be with the Lord! Not a single individual who has accepted Christ for salvation will be left behind.

This truth includes every individual who never reached the intellectual ability–through brain incapacity or because of being too young—to understand that he or she must accept Christ for salvation. These are all under the blood of Christ for redemption and reconciliation to God, the Father. All will go to be with Jesus at the Rapture.

Some believe and teach that only those believers who are living in the will of God will go to be with Christ at the Rapture. Those living “carnal” lives, they believe, will be left behind to go through a time of God’s judgment and wrath, along with the unbelieving earth dwellers. But God’s Word doesn’t teach that some will go and some will stay. ALL believers, Paul plainly writes, will go to be with the Lord at the Departure. Paul writes further to the Thessalonians: “For God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ, Who died for us, that, whether we wake or sleep, we should live together with him” (1 Thess. 5:9-10).

It is true that we are told by the Lord as recorded in Luke 21:36 that we are to watch and pray always that we may be accounted worthy to escape all of the things of the Tribulation. But “worthy” in this sense means that we should be living in such a way that we will not be ashamed when we stand before Him at the Judgment Seat–the bema. We should desire to hear our Lord say, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

This might not seem fair to those who disagree with me on this–those who believe they are living their own lives within God’s prescription for Christian deportment. But, it’s not what we think is or is not fair that matters. It’s what the Word of God says that matters in any question of spiritual truth. God’s truth–His Holy Word—says plainly that ALL believers who have died or are living during this present dispensation will go to be with the Bridegroom, the Lord Jesus Christ, when He makes that shout heard around the world to His bride: “Come up here!”

My “In Box” and the news from Bible prophecy circles bulge with talk of America’s almost certain immediate judgment for selling Israel down the river by making the nuclear deal with Iran, assuring that beastly regime a weapon to carry out its declared destruction of the Jewish state. Many believe this means an almost-certain attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. The scuttlebutt on all of this has been coming hard and fast since 2007 or even earlier. Each summer was going to bring an assault by Israel, and all out Mid-East war was sure to ensue.

As I write this, the predictions are not quite at fever pitch as in the recent past, but, many emails continue to proclaim that this is it. The region is going to go up in flames, with Russia now insinuating itself heavily into the region by establishing a massive base in Syria. This is but precursor preparations for the Ezekiel 38 attack. They are there to protect Iran as much as to protect the regime of Bashar Al-Assad, in whom they are invested heavily in several ways.

Russian military will now be in harm’s way, in case of an Israeli strike, and Moscow—from which Gog of Magog prophetic infamy will come–will not abide such an insult. The thought frequently conjectured: Could this be the beginning of Ezekiel 38-39—the Gog-Magog attack?

Israel cannot afford, the argument goes, to allow the Iranian facility to come on line. This, because the spent fuel rods will provide plutonium and other by-products to give Iran the materials from which they can produce nuclear weapons. That’s a simplification of the matters involved, but should suffice, I hope, for purposes of making the point of this commentary.

This attack by Israel will be, the emailers apparently believe, prophecy being fulfilled. This preemptive attack by the Jewish state upon the land of ancient Persia surely will, the messages exclaim, instigate a chain reaction of events. These events will bring the Gog-Magog attack, and perhaps Isaiah 17:1 (Damascus’ destruction) will also be fulfilled. Some even believe it will provoke the long-pondered-over Psalm 83 war supposed by many to be in the offing.

I don’t believe this is the time for the Gog-Magog War, or for the proposed Psalm 83 conflict, should it be an actual prophecy. Exigencies just aren’t ripe for producing the horrific results such conflicts as the Gog-Magog, or even the supposed Psalm 83, conflagrations would inflict. At least, that’s my view from my present perspective.

More than that, I believe that’s the way it is presented from the perspective of Bible prophecy. One thing I do think is an almost 100-percent certainty is that Israel isn’t going anywhere. The Iranian supreme leader’s promises to erase Israel from the face of the Middle East and the world are empty threats. It will never happen—not even with the help of the Gog nation, Russia.

Why do I say “an almost 100-percent certainty”?

This goes to the argument of those who say that it is possible that Israel could be removed from its land yet again. Then, all would have to again rearrange in order to get the prophetic indicators into place like they are now. God might allow Israel’s enemies to again take the Jews from the Promised Land because of their unbelief.

Zola Levitt and I were once discussing the hatred of the Arab nations for Israel. I mentioned that the late Dr. J. Vernon McGee didn’t think that the Jews being back in the land was necessarily a major signal of the nearness to Christ’s return. My friend Zola, a very passionate man when it came to Israel, got pretty exercised, as I recall. He said that he and Dr. McGee “got into it”—as the southernism goes—over this subject.

Zola said Dr. McGee said it could be that Israel might yet be removed from the land of promise. Zola didn’t like that at all, so they had a rather lively discussion on the matter, on camera. I said, “Well, Dr. McGee [who went to be with the Lord in 1988 at age 84] knows now, that’s for sure.” That seemed to calm Zola a bit.

Dr. McGee would no doubt agree that Israel is back in the land to stay, if he could have watched developments of the years since his leaving the planet. Israel being: the center of most all controversy so far as issues of war and peace are concerned; pressured by the international community to give up God’s land; at the center of a forced, phony peace process, with Iran (ancient Persia) threatening from the north. How could he or anyone being privy to such facts say otherwise?

Israel isn’t going anywhere. So, I’ll change my “almost” to an absolute 100-percent certainty.

Although Israel—and the world—are in for some terrible times ahead, I am of the firm belief that we have the very Word of God about the current and future disposition of His chosen nation. Israel is here to stay.

“And I will bring again the captivity of my people of Israel, and they shall build the waste cities, and inhabit them; and they shall plant vineyards, and drink the wine thereof; they shall also make gardens, and eat the fruit of them. And I will plant them upon their land, and they shall no more be pulled up out of their land which I have given them, saith the LORD thy God.” (Amos 9:14-15)

Think with me for a moment—back to the time on September 11, 2001, when you first learned of the World Trade Center tower being hit by the commercial jet. All eyes quickly went to television screens everywhere in America. Then the second tower was hit, and we were awestruck at the ensuing carnage that took the lives of nearly three thousand people who couldn’t escape the horror.

Remember when the huge monoliths collapsed to rubble with billowing clouds of smoke and dust—a holocaust of flaming fuel and the blood of crushed, burning humanity.

Those of us who look through the prism of God’s prophetic Word couldn’t at that stunning moment help but consider that we were witnessing an event that punctuated the fact that the very end of the age was upon us. The United States of America was somehow, in the collapsing of those giant towers, brought front and center into God’s focus for judgment and wrath about to be unleashed upon a world that has rejected Him.

Think then of what happened just the past week to Islam’s most holy place, as many gathered in Mecca.  Another God-rendered exclamation mark seems to have punctuated the handwriting on the wall that began the final sentence of human history.

At least 107 Muslims worshiping at the mosque considered the most holy by Islam died when a gigantic crane crashed from above and crushed the building. Many more were injured.

It seems beyond ironic that this happened on September 11, just this past week.

America and the world have long been holding a debauched banquet to which the God of heaven was not invited. America disinvited Him in 1963 by the judicial act of doing away with prayer and Bible reading in public schools.

The True Deity and His prescription for living life, given through His love letter to humanity—the Bible—has been evicted from all public places, for the most part. Thus with this exclamation point of supernatural irony—Islam’s achieving its mocking tribute to its symbolic conquest of America and the subsequent exclamation Point of anger that looks to have been put on Islam’s fraudulent worship system by the Hand of God—the finger of God might be writing upon the wall the world has erected to keep him out of human affairs. This nation’s and the world’s prophetic fate might thereby be in the heavenly process of being sealed.

Tragically, the message might indeed be one not unlike that Nebuchadnezzar’s grandson, Belshazzar, saw being written across the wall of the Babylonian banquet hall that housed the party during his last day on earth.

And this is the writing that was written, MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN. This is the interpretation of the thing: MENE; God hath numbered thy kingdom, and finished it. TEKEL; Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting. PERES; Thy kingdom is divided, and given to the Medes and Persians. (Dan. 5:25-28)

Every indicator that God is about to bring human history for this dispensation to a close is on the prophetic horizon.

The Tribulation hour approaches, as can be witnessed hourly on the minute by minute news flashes from around the world.

Time to do what we can for the cause of Christ might be very short. The time to do the Lord’s business is fleeting swiftly. Whatever contributions we have to put into heavenly bank accounts must be done now. “I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work” (John 9:4).

Some years ago, a film crew from South Korea’s public broadcasting system came to my home to interview me on things to do with Bible prophecy. I remember them as quiet and very polite. We interviewed for about three hours, and I recall that most of my thoughts during that time were along the lines of: “How can these be the same basic people as their brothers and sisters of North Korea?”

The incongruity of these smiling, gentle journalists and film crew as juxtaposed against my perception of Kim Jong-il, his successor and son, Kim Jong-Un, and the people of the “Axis of Evil” couldn’t have been more dramatic. The North Korean dictator was saber-rattling then, as his dictator-son continues to do periodically today. His antics are mixed with the occasional hands-in-the-air, palms-out-in-professional-wrestler-fashion claim to the referee he planned nothing dastardly. These from South Korea were just the opposite—good guys, who even left for my wife a beautifully crafted porcelain dish as their appreciation for our hospitality.

The peoples of both north and south of the 38th parallel on the Korean peninsula being so close racially and in geographic proximity, why, the thought continues to ruminate, does one people move freely and peaceably about the world, even visiting my home, while the other people harbor thoughts of igniting nuclear war for the sake of enabling a tin-horn tyrant?

Bible prophecy leaps to the forefront of the thoughts. The north is under the influence, indeed, of the evil one. George W. Bush had it right, whether it was the term inspired by the president’s own brain or those of his speech writers. The leaders of the North Korean regime have demonstrated consistently that it is under luciferian influence, as are other diabolists with whom they are in league.

Enter the chief diabolist state of the Asiatic evil empire that Bible prophecy foretells will one day rage into the occidental world:

Saying to the sixth angel which had the trumpet, “Loose the four angels which are bound in the great river Euphrates.” And the four angels were loosed, which were prepared for an hour, and a day, and a month, and a year, for to slay the third part of men. And the number of the army of the horsemen were two hundred thousand thousand: and I heard the number of them. (Rev 9: 14-16)

China is touted today as the merging industrial entity that will eventually overtake the U.S. as the economic superpower of the world. The woolly-minded predict in some quarters that China’s newfound economic clout will ultimately make it a responsible world citizen. However, God’s Word almost certainly refers to the great Chinese behemoth when foretelling a massive force that could be spawned by no other nation-state.

China is asserting itself not only in building islands and claiming territorial waters through aggressive expansion of its bases in the South China Sea and other waters close to its territory. It now is moving into territorial waters in regions much more concerning to American defense planners.

Five Chinese naval ships are currently positioned in the Bering Sea off the coast of Alaska, US officials confirm.

It is believed to be the first time Chinese military vessels have been seen operating in the area. Officials say they have been monitoring the ships’ activities, but said they were operating in international waters. In recent years Beijing has taken a more assertive stance on maritime territorial disputes with Japan and South East Asian nations. (Five Chinese ships seen off Alaskan coast, Pentagon says, BBC News, September 3, 2015)

There is coming a time when the huge forces of the Orient will become deadly in their aggression.

And the sixth angel poured out his vial upon the great river Euphrates; and the water thereof was dried up, that the way of the kings of the east might be prepared. And I saw three unclean spirits like frogs come out of the mouth of the dragon, and out of the mouth of the beast, and out of the mouth of the false prophet. For they are the spirits of devils, working miracles, which go forth unto the kings of the earth and of the whole world, to gather them to the battle of that great day of God Almighty. (Rev. 16: 12-14)

It is more than ironic that China, put forward by some “progressives” as a budding good neighbor because of its need to foster good will within the global economic community, has for eons been depicted as a dragon. Shakespeare wrote, “A rose by any other name would still smell as sweet.” Call this brutal regime—like that of North Korea, over whom it exerts hegemony—a good neighbor, budding industrial giant or whatever…Bible prophecy seems to be forewarning that a dragon by any other name smells just as dangerous.

Marxism, communism, Nazism, fascism–these evoke thoughts of tyrants and dictatorships. Well, Marxism and communism might be wishful utopianism to some within political ideology circles in these days of movement toward socialism. But for the most part, thoughts of these isms generate study-related memories of the likes of Stalin, Mao, Hitler, Mussolini, and other such humanity-destroying beasts.

The matters involved within the recollection include revolution, war, torture, gulag, genocide–any and all systems of governing that should be avoided at all costs. Fear and apprehension over dictatorships were the very reason the United States Constitution was written. Specifically, the Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to that Constitution, spells out the rights of each citizen that government cannot usurp. These rights are, the shapers of the Constitution meticulously wrote, “inalienable.” That is, these are rights given by God, thus cannot be taken away by men–and/or women–in government.

Another ism has developed that threatens the inalienable rights of man. Its ominous construction continues at a torrid pace and will ultimately be worse than any of the aforementioned isms. As a matter of fact, it will be all of those tyrannical nightmares rolled up into one system of utter decimation. George Orwell and Aldous Huxley, authors of well-known novels, played upon fear of such governments in their futuristic books, 1984 and Brave New World. The swiftness of movement of the developments of late makes their works of fiction look ever more prophetic.

Orwell used London and Britain in 1984 as the genesis of a world of ruthless control. “Big Brother is watching you” is a phrase the author used with portentous effect. It continues to be used by those who warn of the exponentially-encroaching surveillance technologies. Again, Orwell’s vision was almost prophetic in the biblical sense.

A friend who is a well-known journalist in Great Britain recently e-mailed me with the following troubling, though fascinating, information:

I was putting together some slides for one of my presentations yesterday and discovered that Britain has 1.5 times as many surveillance cameras as China! We now have cameras that talk to people, bossing them around in the streets! They are being installed in twenty cities. They are also getting listening devices. Some places also have face-monitoring systems so they can scan for people the authorities are interested in.

The average Briton is now filmed about three hundred times per day! We also have camera cars patrolling the streets, filming whatever takes their fancy and harassing motorists.

We are years ahead of America in plans to put GPS systems in cars, etc. They also want even more speed cameras, speed-averaging cameras–you name it. All of them are being linked into one enormous grid. The records of journeys are logged and kept. As you drive down the main highways, your number plates are scanned every few miles. Our son and I spent a day in the control room where all this information is monitored–an astonishing operation, with screens showing all the main roads. The EU is now planning to store all e-mails, log every web page visited, every phone call, etc., which Britain has done for years.

My friend has told me–has told the world–that cameras train on his home from right across the street, atop a telephone-type pole. It is just a matter of time until all of England is under a surveillance system much more sophisticated and intrusive than our 1940s author, George Orwell, could have imagined. All of Europe is sure to follow suit, and we can see more than cursory evidence that America is coming into Big Brotherism’s orbit of control.

The whole world is on track for super-sophisticated tracking. And a familiar name pops through the inky blackness of cyberspace to make this a readily observable fact. The familiar name is google.com.

Who in the world knows as much about you and your private thoughts as Google? That’s the question Katherine Albrecht, radio talk-show host and spokeswoman for Startpage, a search engine that protects user privacy, posed some years ago to American Internet surfers.

“It would blow people’s minds if they knew how much information the big search engines have on the American public,” she told WND. “In fact, their dossiers are so detailed they would probably be the envy of the KGB.” (Chelsea Schilling, “Life with Big Brother: Killer Way to Slay the Google Beast!” WorldNetDaily, 1/27/2010)

Albrecht detailed how Google and other search engines gather and maintain dossiers on everyone who uses the service. The information is released to governments–to, for example, America’s Homeland Security Agency–when such information is requested. It seems the Bill of Rights is cast aside, without a constitutional amendment of any sort even being considered. Such ability to collect data on their victims was merely the dreams of such people as those in Stalin’s secret service and Hitler’s Gestapo.

Albrecht said Americans unwittingly share their most private thoughts with search engines, serving up snippets of deeply personal information about their lives, habits, troubles, health concerns, preferences and political leanings.

“We’re essentially telling them our entire life stories–stuff you wouldn’t even tell your mother–because you are in a private room with a computer,” she said. (ibid.)

Big Brotherism, of course–in my view–is another way of defining the ideology that is heading up the drive toward establishment of the regime of Antichrist, found in Revelation 13:16-18. With government’s groping for control in ways that totally disregard the wishes of U.S. citizenry, more often than not throwing constitutional safeguards to the winds of political expediency, the ideology becomes ever more manifest through our daily headlines.

All of this shows how very near this generation must be to the Tribulation hour–thus, that much closer to Christ calling His Church to be with Him (John 14:1-3; 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17).

A news item of a few years ago about certain polling data grasped my attention. I’m sure many who peruse the news had their curiosity piqued and read it as well at that time.

After looking into the matters reported, I found the poll wasn’t as thorough as I would have liked–but it was fascinating nonetheless. Also, it was too one-sided in ethnic make-up. However, I give it enough credence to examine it here because I believe it revolves around a concern the Lord Jesus Christ expressed while teaching about conditions that will prevail at the end of the age.

A new survey finds that Americans are divided over whether they believe Jesus Christ will return by the year 2050.

Among respondents to the survey by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press and Smithsonian Magazine, 41 percent said they expect Jesus’ Second Coming in the next forty years, while 46 percent said it probably or definitely won’t happen.

The poll suggests that 58 percent of white evangelicals believe Jesus will return by 2050, compared to only 32 percent of Catholics, and respondents with no college education were three times as likely as those with college degrees to expect Christ’s Second Coming in the next forty years. (“Many Americans Expect Jesus’ Return by 2050,” Associated Press/Israel News, 6/23/10).

To be honest, I was quite surprised that 58 percent of white evangelicals believe Christ will return by 2050. This disconnect in my mind comes from the fact that in looking for interest in Bible prophecy with in the church today (by this I mean, of course, born-again believers–see John 3:3), my colleagues and I find no evidence to support that percentage.

Perhaps I should speak just for myself, but if my colleagues are honest, based upon conversations we’ve had among ourselves, they will confess that the interest just isn’t there in those kinds of numbers.

So, a few cynical (I suppose) thoughts regarding the poll come to mind:

1) The poll was a complete “guesstimate”–even a prefabrication.
2) The poll was skewed because it was taken from among a limited group of believers thoroughly educated in Bible prophecy.
3) The poll reflects a flippancy that will agree that Christ could return within the next forty years because the possibility is far enough in the future that the respondents need not worry about changing their personal conduct.
4) My colleagues and I are wrong and the church–“white evangelicals,” in this case–is expecting the Lord’s return in majority numbers.

If the last point is true, then the fact that so many are looking for Christ is well hidden. I’m a blind guy, as many know, so I can’t see things all that well. But interest in Christ’s return–and in Bible prophecy in general, according to everything I hear–is confined to an extremely small number of folks in relationship to the tremendous number of people who claim the name of Christ.

Clicking through Christian TV networks (yes, we blind guys “watch” TV), I rarely come across a prophetic message. The majority of the viewing fare consists of the prosperity gospel or entertainment that is for the most part a rather poor knockoff of secular entertainment. The preachers who do present a sound gospel message and sound doctrine seldom-to-rarely speak on Bible prophecy. And they certainly don’t touch upon the pre-trib return of Christ in the Rapture.

When I’ve personally asked some of the preachers and teachers why they avoid presenting prophecy, they have said things like: “The people just don’t understand Revelation”; “The subject is just too scary to most people”; or ” We just concentrate on getting people the gospel so they will be saved.”

The honest such preachers and teachers say: “I just don’t know anything about prophecy. I’ve not studied it enough to preach on it.”

What a tragedy, a travesty, this is! There is a singular hope (Titus 2:13) that God’s people have in this swiftly degenerating age. Yet, their shepherds–the preachers and teachers, their suppliers of spiritual food–use every conceivable excuse for not telling Christians about their returning Lord.

Some accuse those of us whose mission we believe it is to concentrate on Bible prophecy in these times of doing so to the point that we ignore Christ’s love and the Bible’s life lessons for His people.

We in no way believe that prophecy should be taught exclusively. However, prophecy constitutes almost 30 percent of the whole Word of God, so the Heavenly Father obviously means for prophecy to be a generous part of the mix for His children’s spiritual sustenance. This is especially true in these days when the signals of Christ’s coming again are every direction in which one looks.

Bible prophecy is being marginalized by those who are supposed to shepherd their flocks, but who don’t want to study it and/or don’t want to risk scaring people out of the pews. This is because it is the feel-good and do-good, entertainment-oriented sermonettes that tickle itching ears and build many of the elaborate end-times edifices.

Understand that I recognize there are huge churches that hold to doctrinal truth and include God’s prophetic Word as part of feeding their attending flocks. This is not to castigate these wonderful pastors, teachers, and staffs. God bless them! But these are in the minority. The dearth of interest in Christ’s coming back in the Rapture, then in the Second Advent, demonstrates the lack of faith resident within Christ’s body at this crucial hour.

Jesus asked the following profoundly troubling question in that prophetic context: “Nevertheless when the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?” (Luke 18:8b). The Lord had a somber message for God’s people who will be alive at His sudden, unannounced coming. I once wrote the following as part of a chapter for one of my books that I believe gets across the gist of this commentary:

The indifference so prevalent within the church is, itself, an end-times signal, it seems. The Lord obviously spoke to the fact that God’s own children will in large part be indifferent to the prophetic signals. They will not be living as they should at the time of His coming for them, as He promised in John 14:1-3. As a matter of fact, He forewarned: “And take heed to yourselves, lest at any time your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting, and drunkenness, and cares of this life, and so that day come upon you unawares. For as a snare shall it come on all them that dwell on the face of the whole earth. Watch ye therefore, and pray always, that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of man.” (Luke 21:34-36)

I pray more born-again pastors, Bible teachers, and God’s children of this nation and the world will awaken en masse to the staggering implications of Christ’s Second Coming.

Is the European Union (EU) on its way to dissolution? Do the developing economic cracks that seem all but impossible to repair mean that it’s over for the EU?

More to the point of our concern here—if the EU were to fail, does it mean that we who believe we are seeing the Roman Empire reviving in the EU are wrong? Thus, will the area out of which Antichrist is foretold to emerge not be western Europe, rather, from somewhere else?

Are those correct who as of late proclaim the “prince that shall come” of Daniel 9:27 will emerge from the eastern leg rather than the western leg of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream-vision (Daniel chapter 2)?

These questions cross my email quite frequently these days. Europe’s economic problems are worse than those of the United States, it is generally agreed by monetary experts. Could it be that Humpty-Dumpty, who fell apart with the decline and fall of the ancient Roman Empire, who was then patched together in the 1950s and has been coming back together in a major way since, is now on its way to taking another great fall?

I defer in matters of high finance to the experts, such as my friend Wilfred Hahn, when it comes to precisely laying out the case for what is likely to happen in Europe’s, America’s and the world’s precarious economic positions. But there are some important matters within what I believe we see happening, from biblically prophetic standpoint that should be interjected.

Hahn writes:

The Bible tells us that a group of ten ally together out of common self-interest. They have one purpose and will give their power and authority to the Beast (Revelation 17:13). The large multinational nation groups of today simply have too many conflicts of interest to be any effective consequence in today’s geopolitical environment. Developments in Asia today also, we believe, play a decisive role in these last-day machinations of ten kings. (Wilfred Hahn, “European Union: Is the Revived Roman Empire Finished?)

It makes perfect sense that the many turf fiefdoms held by the powers large and small across the planet will never—under anything approaching normal circumstances—give in to a central authority. Such acquiescence will have to be wrested from their grip in a painful manner.

One thing is sure: The beast system of Antichrist (Rev. 13: 16-18) will manage, ultimately, to get all governmental entities to give him their power and authority (Rev. 17: 12-13). That power and authority will consist, at its base, of economic control. Hahn correctly surmises, because he relies upon Bible prophecy, that ten entities (called “kings”) will ally out of common self-interest. Seven of the ten will willingly give up their power and authority, and three will have it ripped from their grip by the most powerful tyrant ever to draw breath (Dan 7: 24).

Whether the power is taken by willing acquiescence of the seven heads of the entities involved or it is taken by force, as seems to be the case of the three kings having their power and authority stripped from them by the beast in Daniel 7:24, the deed will be done.

It is no surprise. Recent crushing fiscal issues and events point to the inescapable reality that something is going to have to happen soon, or world economic implosion will result. Again, Wilfred Hahn writes:

Recent events are therefore of no surprise. What is always unpredictable in crisis situations, is the specific catalyst that prompts a reappraisal of risk…the sudden awakening to reality. (Ibid.)

I believe that catalyst—the crisis that will cause all sovereign leaderships to realize they must come together to give up their desperately held-onto turf kingdoms—will be the Rapture. The ensuing chaos will cause most everyone left behind to re-think their worldviews. The prince that shall come will have the answers they seek—at least, they will believe him to have the answers.

As expressed before in this column, I’m convinced that a completely changed economic order, based upon Special Drawing Rights (SDR) or a system of electronic funds transfer (computer units, not hard currency of any sort) will be acceptable to most leaderships around the world. The ten kings of Revelation 17:12-13 that correspond to the entities of Daniel 7: 24 will perhaps be, in my scenario, ten pan-continental trading blocs modeled on the Eurozone prototype. Thus, Daniel’s prophecy of the ten-toes final humanistic system of government that Christ’s return will smash to pieces will be fulfilled.

I agree with Wilfred Hahn that the current apparent crumbling of Europe in no way means the EU is finished as the prime candidate for the Reviving Roman Empire. The crisis that will bring everything into perfect prophetic alignment, in regard to the 666 beast government, will, I’m more and more convinced, be the shout from heaven: “Come up here!” (Rev. 4: 1)