America’s Contribution to Armageddon
I caught the tail-end of a former general saying on FOX News, I paraphrase, “This administration is complicit in prepping the way for World War Three…”
Such a statement from a top military commander who is recently retired grabs one’s attention as few others pontificating on geopolitics can. The retired officer—perhaps one forced from service by this president, I can’t say because I don’t know the circumstance of his leaving the U.S. military— went on to talk about the upheaval in most all of the Middle East caused by American withdrawal in so many key areas of the region. The vacuum created, the general was saying, is setting up the world for a war of unimaginable scope.
Particularly, he was commenting on the growing threats and actions between Saudi Arabia and Iran, which has flared following Saudi’s execution of a high profile Shiite cleric and a number of others.
Iran’s response was the takeover of the Saudi embassy building and the looting and ransacking of its contents. The reaction on both sides continues to escalate, dividing Islamic nation from Islamic nation along Shiite/Sunni religious lines, and threatening a war that could spread into a global conflagration, according to the general and other pundits.
President Obama has come under consistent criticism from military officers who have either resigned because of differences with the administration’s way of handling military involvement around the world, or who have been forced out because of conflict with advice offered the president on military matters.
Those retired or resigned officers who continue to criticize Obama’s use of military, and his dealings with America’s and Israel’s destruction-vowed enemies, point to the danger to the nation—and the world—in the administration’s actions, paving the road for Iran to build a nuclear force.
This, they say, is insanity –giving the very Islamists who want to bring on their version of Armageddon the capability to do so through acquiescence to Iran’s demands on nuclear development and their demand that sanctions be lifted, and access given to $150 billion as part of the lifting of those sanctions.
The protest of America’s military experts seems to make no difference whatsoever, any more than did the advice the generals gave in warning the president against first telegraphing the removal of American forces from Iraq, then in actually removing those forces. Such action was all but unprecedented in modern, American, military strategy. The result has been, and continues to be—as predicted by the generals—a power vacuum that is in the process of igniting the whole region in a conflict that is almost certainly unstoppable.
As written about before in this column, Israel remains strangely silent as all of the Arab and Iranian states around the tiny Jewish state begin to burn like a grass fire surrounding a log cabin. But Israel is no such inanimate, ordinary spectator. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the IDF know that Israel is the actual target when these wild men—as the Bible terms them—finally zero in on their most hated enemy. Israel’s trigger finger is on the ultimate weapon and will pull that trigger to defend itself.
Thus there is a cry for peace and safety by the likes of American Secretary of State John Kerry. It is really, however, a demand that Israel be disarmed and marginalized. This is so Kerry’s new friends, the Iranian Mullahs, can have their way, bringing, he and the rest of the world’s diplomatic fools believe, peace at last.
It is arguable to contend that the whole Middle East region would have been far better off if America had never gotten involved there. This is something that is said time and time again by those who want to blame George W. Bush and his father for committing troops to the region in two military actions. This is, at least in part, a mistaken contention, however. The Lord, Himself—it is obvious to students of history, when combined with study of Bible prophecy—determined that the United States would be a major part in the founding of modern Israel and a major physical agent of Israel’s protection.
The current American president and his ideological, leftist bedfellows display the reprobate thinking that comes from anti-God rebellion as forewarned in chapter one of Romans. A prime example of this upside-down lunacy is on display when thinking on the situation in the president’s dealings with both the nation of Iran and with the American people.
In the matter of Iran, Mr. Obama and his ilk indicate they think it is just fine to arm the Armageddon-planning Mullahs with nukes. This, despite the fact these madmen have stated time after time they plan to destroy the great Satan, and the little Satan (America and Israel). At the same time, the president and his leftist, political associates indicate they think it will make America safe by disarming American citizens by the threatened executive action on so-called “gun control.” The Iranian Mullahs can be trusted with nuclear weapons and their delivery systems that can destroy the world, but the American gun-owner can’t be trusted to have a Second Amendment-guaranteed right to own and bear arms.
Such insanity almost certainly is in the process of making our nation culpable in helping bring on man’s final war.
Thankfully, all of this means, as always, that Christ is about to call His church—all born-again believers—to the safe-shelter of their Heavenly home.
It is imperative, therefore, that all who belong to Jesus Christ determine to lift that name that is above every other. Thus, so that many who are lost will be drawn to the Lord. He is the only hope for those who are heading into the worst time in all of human history.
Prophetic Tech Part 2 – By Ed Wood
Daniel {12:4} But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, [even] to the time of the end: many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.
“Many shall run to and fro.”
As we saw in the last article, the speed at which information can travel from one place to another has grown exponentially from Daniel’s time until now. The time it takes to physically get from one place to another has also greatly decreased, however it is still not as fast as the speed at which data can be transmitted (the Star Trek Transporter is still science fiction, after all) but it is still a huge leap above that which was possible to Daniel and his contemporaries. Back then, traveling to the next village might take the better part of a day, maybe more. Crossing continents or seas took months, or even years. One can now fly across the U.S. in five hours, a journey that took six months to the westward-bound settlers of the early 1800’s. The International Space Station circles the entire planet in an hour and a half! We’ve come a long way particularly in the past two centuries, running “to and fro,” faster than anyone could possibly imagined two and a half thousand years ago when Daniel wrote the prophetic book that bears his name.
“Knowledge will be increased.”
I think it’s safe to say the Twentieth Century was the largest age of discovery the human race has ever known in almost every field of knowledge. Einstein gave us a look at the universe, energy, and matter in a whole new way. Edwin Hubble discovered that our Milky Way Galaxy was not the only one, but merely one of billions of “island universes” spread out across billions of light years of space. The biological sciences have delved into the genetic instruction sets which control how life operates and has begun manipulating it to alter its characteristics. Medical science, despite its continuing inability to cure the major and persistent life-threatening diseases such as cancer, Alzheimer’s Disease, and ALS, still has come up with amazing surgical procedures which have restored sight, repaired damaged hearts, and reattached severed limbs.
In about a century, the field of electronics has expanded from the era of vacuum tubes to semiconductors, a technology which has made possible not only the reach of humanity into space, but also moved into our driveways and homes residing in devices and machinery we now take totally for granted.
Computing technology has advanced almost beyond belief. Gordon E. Moore, the co-founder of Intel and Fairchild Semiconductor, described a doubling every year in the number of components per integrated circuit back in 1965, and then revised this estimate to every two years. That’s still very impressive. This has become commonly known as “Moore’s Law.”
The “brains” or CPU’s of computers, their memories, and their assorted peripherals have made full use of these advances allowing devices that you can easily carry around with you perform wonders whole rooms full of machinery couldn’t have approached only a few decades ago. For example, my first PC didn’t even have a hard drive, running only on 1.44 megabyte floppies. A couple years later I upgraded it with a “huge” 20 megabyte hard drive which set me back over $100. New PC’s have hard drives capable of storing multiple terabytes of information. (1 terabyte = 1000 gigabytes = 1,000,000 megabytes!) As we further explore “Prophetic Tech,” we’ll be seeing just how this all figures in making the Bible prophecies of the comprehensive control that the Antichrist will have over Earth’s population literally achievable.
In the realm of the physics, scientists have come to understand much about the nature of matter and energy, this knowledge in a very real sense becoming a double-edged sword. It’s safe to say that our technological grasp has far exceeded our wisdom to use it consistently to better ourselves. We can, for example, use the atom to produce electrical power to make our lives easier or use it to construct bombs capable of sending our civilization back to the Stone Age . . . or worse!
Certainly one can find many more examples of ways our knowledge has increased besides these few examples, but there is one main underlying principle for this to be possible – the ability to both store and transmit this knowledge. We looked at this somewhat in the previous article, but a review at this time seems appropriate.
We do not know how long the human race has had language, but I think it’s safe to say it’s been a very long time. By it one person could communicate his or her ideas to another individual or group. Probably the first kinds of information shared were such topics as where the edible plants and animals were and how to get them. Language also allowed humans to work together in teams to do these things and was the means of passing on their experiences to their kids.
Along with this was the sharing of new technology. Now we might not think a rock or a stick is very sophisticated, but when it comes to the multiplying the ability over just using one’s hands and feet alone to dispatch an animal and bring it back to the camp cooking fire (another early huge milestone of technology), it became a very big deal! The human with the rock or the stick will be a lot more successful than one that lacks either. It probably didn’t take very long to figure out how to modify these first tools to make them more effective. A simple stick became a spear. A rock was modified to give it sharp edges, and, no doubt in flashes of Paleolithic genius, came the idea to combine these inventions to make spears with stone points and to create cutting tools with handles. These skills could be easily passed on via language to the next generations, who in time would add their own knowledge to the verbal archive.
The problem with this type of information transmission, though, is that it required direct contact from person to person, or person to group. There was also the problem of “data fade.” It was not a big problem with making tools and weapons because the verbal information was supplemented by a practical demonstration. The artifacts themselves became their own “hard copies!”
But when it came to accounts such as the history of the tribe or group, the oral accounts, despite the best efforts to maintain their fidelity, they could change over the years. The events and even the names of the participants could within relatively few generations become unrecognizable.
Enter into the picture a way to record things in a permanent manner and a revolutionary new way to store and transmit knowledge began. Starting with basic drawings and paintings on cave walls or the faces of stone outcrops, someone finally figured out ways to do it quicker with the development of writing. The Egyptians created hieroglyphs, a combination of images and symbols. The Sumerians developed cuneiform, true writing where specific symbols represented a spoken language, numbers, pretty much any information one wanted to preserve. As a testament to the effectiveness and lasting power of these technologies, archeologists are still collecting and reading these ancient messages to this very day. The development of papyrus and parchment scrolls, culminating in codex form (bound, multi-leaf books with which we are familiar) made the records more readily portable and easier to distribute over wide areas. The printing press was a giant leap toward this end and until the advent of electrical forms of data transmission back in the early 1800’s, the printed word was the fastest and most reliable game in town.
So enter the telegraph. With this device, messages could for the first time be sent at virtually the speed of light to any place its wires were run. They still had to be deciphered and recorded by hand by a human, but for the first time the speed of communication was no longer dependent on how fast a person could walk, or how quickly his or her animal could gallop, or how long it took a ship or train go from Point A to Point B. In a relatively short time, the range of electrical communications would extend not only across a continent, but across oceans.
Our unique time and place in history.
If one looks back across the course of human history, can anyone point to a time remotely similar to ours? True, there have been great civilizations of antiquity whose secrets still elude us, but none of them have reached the level of knowledge, nor the ease of widely disseminating it that we currently possess. A very long time ago, King Solomon wrote:
Ecclesiastes {1:9} The thing that hath been, it [is that] which shall be; and that which is done [is] that which shall be done: and [there is] no new [thing] under the sun.
I think the wise old monarch might change his mind if he could see the things that exist today. If this is indeed the unique time and place that I think it is another passage from the Bible comes to mind as to what might be just up ahead. This time the speaker is Jesus Christ himself:
Matthew {24:21-22} For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be. And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect’s sake those days shall be shortened.
This you might recognize as coming from Jesus’ last address in public to his disciples a few days before his arrest. We are talking about what has come to be known as the Olivet Discourse, so named because the Mount of Olives was the place he gave it. He spoke of a time so dire and terrible that if allowed to continue, the human race would not survive it, not even the elect. Over the course of history we have seen numerous tragic and terrible events hard to imagine, but they will all pale when compared to the time Jesus told his followers would surely come at the end of this age, something revealed in stark detail in the Book of Revelation. The question now is just how close might we be to this time right now.
The Modern Media
One of the capabilities our current level of technology gives us is something mentioned in the last article – the ability to experience in real time events in audio and video that are happening half a world away. Shortly before starting this article a disgusting and cowardly attack in Paris by Muslim extremists purportedly working for ISIS resulted in the deaths of over 120 innocent people hit the airwaves here in America on the evening news. Just days ago, two Muslim extremists fired on people at a Christmas party in San Bernardino, California. Who can forget that on September 11, 2001, the world watched the twin trade towers collapse into smoking rubble as the result once again of Muslim hatred directed at a free nation? We saw it all on our television sets within minutes. The reach and power of the modern communications systems is unprecedented.
If it were used only to provide unbiased news coverage, that would be impressive enough, but we have also seen it manipulated to sway the masses more often than once. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini used it to seize power in Iran in 1979 and to preach hate against the western democracies, the U.S. in particular, holding our diplomats hostage for over a year. Before and after him have been others, but the greatest manipulator of them all was Adolf Hitler.
Even today as one watches films of his speeches and the mesmerizing affect this man had on the German people is chilling. It is difficult not to believe that this power flowed from Satan himself. I have always believed that as powerful as the devil is, he does not have the ability to look into the future or else he would have already seen that his plan to become displace God was doomed to failure from the very start. Because of this limitation, I believe he has throughout history always had someone “waiting in the wings,” a latent antichrist, prepared to step into the role of the final Antichrist. Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Khomeini, and all the despots we have seen in our history books and have encountered in the news certainly qualify as would-be antichrists. One of these days, you can be sure that someone will rise from obscurity and fulfill the role of the last ruler who will bring the human race to the very edge of extinction. I would not be surprised if the “man of sin” is alive right now. If the hour is as late as all the signs indicate, he is already an adult being groomed for the job.
Another common denominator which all historical dictators exploited were conditions of public unrest and turmoil. Hitler exploited the ravaged economy of post- World War 2 Germany, Khomeini the misery caused by Shah Reza Pahlavi’s personal excesses while he oppressed and impoverished his people. If you look across history, you’ll find this often to be the case.
But as bad as these situations were, they were limited in scope. Though admittedly, a large amount of territory can be involved, the tyrants of the past and present have never taken over the entire planet. In the Twentieth Century, the fascists of Europe and imperialists of Japan had free nations to oppose and finally defeat them militarily. The Soviet Union was essentially bankrupted in the late 1980’s. Now imagine a world in which there are no such countering forces. This is precisely what the Bible tells us the case will be near the end of this age:
Daniel {7:23} Thus he* said, The fourth beast shall be the fourth kingdom upon earth, which shall be diverse from all kingdoms, and shall devour the whole earth, and shall tread it down, and break it in pieces. * A heavenly messenger, the exact nature of whom is not known.
There are many details in both the Old and New Testament concerning about the ruler of this global dictatorship. Here are just a few:
Daniel {7:24-25} And the ten horns out of this kingdom [are] ten kings [that] shall arise: and another shall rise after them; and he shall be diverse from the first, and he shall subdue three kings. And he shall speak [great] words against the most High, and shall wear out the saints of the most High, and think to change times and laws: and they shall be given into his hand until a time and times and the dividing of time.
2 Thessalonians {2:3-4} 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; {2:4} 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.
Revelation {13:1-2} And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy. And the beast which I saw was like unto a leopard, and his feet were as [the feet] of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion: and the dragon gave him his power, and his seat, and great authority.
Revelation {6:2} And I saw, and behold a white horse: and he that sat on him had a bow; and a crown was given unto him: and he went forth conquering, and to conquer.
Many who study Bible Prophecy believe the reference in the last passage to the man who sits on the white horse with the bow, but lacking arrows, suggests that this ruler will not achieve his initial prominence militarily. A much earlier passage from Daniel appears to support this supposition:
Daniel {11:32} And such as do wickedly against the covenant shall he corrupt by flatteries: but the people that do know their God shall be strong, and do [exploits. ]
We learn that this man will be a great orator, but those few people who do come to believe in Jesus post-Rapture will not be taken in by his “flatteries.” Most of the world certainly will. Even now in the secular world people no longer have a problem with politicians who habitually lie. Even worse, people have no qualms about attending any number of church denominations where the doctrine of “political correctness” and “anything goes” has overwhelmingly been accepted in the place of what the Bible teaches regarding God’s intent on such things as human sexuality to be within a committed heterosexual relationship only, Jesus as the only means of salvation, and the reality that there will be a day of judgment and that hell is a very real destination for those who have rejected God – and specifically for those of the church age, those who have refused Jesus’ offer of himself for their sins. Paul said as much would be the case almost 2000 years ago:
2 Timothy {4:3 – 4} For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; And they shall turn away [their] ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.
This makes a situation already ripe today for the ultimate deceiver known as Satan to put his man in place by completely peaceful means. But once that happens and the Antichrist’s grip on power becomes established, any and all means, including force, will be applied to maintain it. It will ultimately lead to the worse war in human history at Armageddon, a conflict so terrible that it will require divine intervention to stop it in the bodily return of Jesus Christ to Earth, accompanied by all the saints (believers) who have ever lived.
Revelation {19:19-21} And I saw the beast, and the kings of the earth, and their armies, gathered together to make war against him that sat on the horse, and against his army. And the beast was taken, and with him the false prophet that wrought miracles before him, with which he deceived them that had received the mark of the beast, and them that worshipped his image. These both were cast alive into a lake of fire burning with brimstone. And the remnant were slain with the sword of him that sat upon the horse, which [sword] proceeded out of his* mouth: and all the fowls were filled with their flesh. *Jesus (See Revelation 19:11-16)
But we are getting somewhat ahead of ourselves. We have to look further at how humanity will get to this terrible state. Next time, we’ll look at more ways this future world despot might exploit the technology of our “knowledge will be increased” age to bring the world to its knees before him.
*Public Domain Source of Bible Quotations *
All Bible references are from http://www.davince.com/bible and are copied intact from that
source.
Piercing the Perils of 2016
Never in my own memory has a new year appeared at its beginning to be more prophetically interesting. Never–in my thinking, at least–has one portended more perilous times, as the Apostle Paul would have it. Yet I wouldn’t trade my time on this darkening planet with anyone of any other generation.
The fact that the Lord of Heaven has put me here at this strange, ominous, yet immensely fascinating time in history makes it all the more intriguing–even riveting, in terms of wanting to know what happens next. He has put you here, too, at this time when the final curtain is about to fall. He has trusted you to be an actor in at least part of the final scenes of this great, cosmic play called human history. No illustrious personages of the past–not Julius Caesar, not Napoleon Bonaparte, not Alexander the Great, not even Winston Churchill, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, or Ronald Reagan were so privileged. We are about to serve as active members of a most especially commissioned cast who populates the end-times stage.
There is about to occur a schism–a separation–of cataclysmic proportion. It will rend one part of humanity from the other. It will not be a natural catastrophe that will inflict the humanity-dividing rift. It won’t be great political upheaval in America and around the world that will cause the tearing apart of life upon the troubled planet. Those things will certainly happen. But it won’t be acts of nature or of man that will bring about the very last scene of the age.
That last act will be orchestrated by the Master Director of all Creation–by the Lord God of Heaven who is the final judge of good and evil.
The excitement presaging that grand climax of the age is building. Momentous events, written on the pages of Holy Scripture, are about to come alive. The final curtain will rise when Jesus steps out on the clouds of glory and calls all believers–His Bride, the Church, to Himself. If you are a believer in Christ alone for salvation, you will catch the grand finale as you watch from the luxuriant balconies of Heaven.
We see the drama building all around us for the tumultuous scenes set to play out during the times just ahead. The year 2016 is cloaked in the fog of malevolence this world continues to wrap itself in–an increasingly anti-God, anti-Christ vesture that embraces humanism forewarned about by the psalmist.
Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing?The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD, and against his anointed, saying,Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us. (Psalms 2: 1-3)
A quick scan of the news just the past week exposes, I believe, the arrogance of those the Scriptures call “earth-dwellers” who incessantly strive to break asunder the governance God rightfully placed upon His creation called man. The reports are laden with prophetic indicators.
One such report is seen in the prideful claims by a U.S. State Department spokesman, as the boast involves the increasing call for “peace and safety,” While the situation in Syria grows intensely worse by the hour, with the Syrian people torn violently between the forces of Syrian dictator Basher Al-Assad and the hordes of ISIS murderers, Secretary of State John Kerry is lauded as bringing about a peace that just isn’t happening and will never come to pass.
State Department spokesman John Kirby wrote under the headline, “Bringing peace and security to Syria”: “Under Secretary of State John Kerry’s stewardship the United Nations passed a U.S. sponsored resolution to create a road map for Syria.” Again, the problem is that like in all of the humanistic efforts at bringing true peace, the only “peacemaker” is kept out of the peacemaking. Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace, is denied at every turn by the president of the very country that speciously purports to be making the peace. (President Obama, remember, upon his very first week in office, proclaimed that the United States is not a Christian nation.)
The president of the United States of America, in effect, proclaimed regarding the governance of the God of Heaven: “Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us.”
We can believe what that omniscient, omnipotent, governing authority has to say about such arrogance and willfulness. The message is chilling for the planet’s inhabitants who will be left behind when the great schism aforementioned takes place.
He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision.Then shall he speak unto them in his wrath, and vex them in his sore displeasure.Yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion. (Psalms 2: 4-6)
Details of what is about to take place in 2016, of course, lurks in the murkiness of an ever-increasing pall of trepidation. But, for those who are secure within the unshakable, impenetrable shelter of their Lord and Savior, there is no reason to fear. Piercing that black uncertainty is an effulgence that lights the path to the brightest of all possible futures. It is that Blessed Hope of Titus 2: 13!
Restraining Evil
When looking at the black-and-white films the Allies shot within the Nazi death camps following victory over Hitler’s Germany in World War II, it is difficult to comprehend that evil had the tethers of restraint during the time of that horrendous regime. The images of walking skeletons that were the Jewish “survivors” of those camps remain etched in the memory of anyone who has seen those videos.
The same level of pictorial record doesn’t exist for the genocidal rampages inflicted on their own people by Josef Stalin, Mao Tse Tung, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, and the murderers of the other despotic regimes in modern times. However, eyewitness accounts and some photographic evidence make it hard to fathom that those beastly tyrants were restrained in their butchery.
The Bible nonetheless bears witness that God the Holy Spirit governs the consciences of human beings. In biblically prophetic terms, this truth is most evident in Paul’s second epistle to the Thessalonians: “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” (2 Thessalonians 2:7-8).
Paul the apostle was saying in this prophecy that evil was at work in a big way even at the time he was writing the letter. Still, the Holy Spirit would continue to restrain that evil until He removes His Intervening Action as restrainer of evil. Then all hell will break loose as the Antichrist is revealed. The spirit of Antichrist is already present in the world–and was manifest even during John’s day (read 1 John 4:1-3). The mystery of iniquity about which Paul prophesied and this spirit of Antichrist are intertwined and interlinked in the ancient web of lawlessness we call evil.
Jesus foretold what will happen once the restrainer (the Holy Spirit) removes from governing the wickedness that is in the hearts and minds of people of the post-Rapture world: “For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be” (Matthew 24:21).
The Lord prophesied just how bad things would become: “And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect’s sake those days shall be shortened” (Matthew 24:22).
God will shorten the days of that time of great Tribulation, because if He let things go on to their ultimate conclusion, without the return of Christ, every being of flesh and blood on the planet would be destroyed. Such is the mystery of iniquity that exists today, and will become exponentially worse once the restraint on evil is no longer in place. Then, the ultimately evolved man–as evolution would have it—will step to the forefront of fallen human history. Antichrist will inflict horrors on the people of earth in ways Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and the rest of history’s madmen could not have even imagined. His regime will be the most bloodthirsty of all time.
Lawlessness is everywhere we look today. Whether considering the Middle East madness, the union thugs of Greece who not too long ago threatened to destroy all civility because of the austerity measures voted, or thinking on America and the on-going, unbridled so-called protesters organized by thugs in places like Ferguson, Missouri, Baltimore, Maryland and Chicago, the evil the Bible deems the mystery of iniquity is swelling like a great caldera that is about to explode across the world.
The youth, particularly within the inner cities, have been taught by cultural inculcation that they have been held down by the affluent, so their actions are justified. It is no more than simply–the inference is–Robin Hood robbing the evil sheriff of Nottingham.
Can there be much doubt that if they will commit such bold acts now, when the Holy Spirit is no longer restraining such evil thinking and actions, America will quickly become a hellish existence in which anything goes? There are growing concerns that a breakdown of society within the U.S. is inevitable. Such concerns were once voiced by –of all sources— a Russian diplomat. Imagine! The Russians are worried about America becoming a tyrant state because of the signs of coming anarchy.
With the demonstrated ineptitude –or intentional actions– of this president that is swiftly taking the United States down the path to who knows where, it seems the Restrainer’s Hand might already be in process of removing God’s Protection. That removal will be total and complete when Christ Calls the Church Home in the Rapture (Rev. 4: 1).
Antichrist Chain of Control
While we peer into the year 2016 and beyond, using, as always, God’s prophetic Word as a template to place over issues and events of the times, there is on the horizon the growing spectre of global gulag. That is, those who would see to it that the rest of us come under a worldwide system of control are on the rise as at no time since the time of the Tower of Babel recorded in Genesis, chapter 11. The nucleus of the emerging system is one-world economy.
The foundation for that economic engine is and has been in place for some time. The only holdup to its full implementation is the determination of national entities to hold on to sovereignty and autonomy. The United States of America is the chief holdup, as has been pointed out many times. This nation must be brought down as it presently consists into a changed order of monumental proportion so that the other nations will follow suit.
This mandate for change, I’m convinced with all that is within me, continues to be the assignment given this president by the powers and principalities of global governance–the New World Order builders. He has done a stellar job in effecting that change. And, the change continues. The year 2016 is on track to be the most profound era of change ever, if there is no push-back against his all-out effort in the remaining year of this administration.
It appears unlikely that there will be push-back from the likes of the inside-the-Beltway opposition political party. There seems to be a kindred spirit between the parties on giving away America’s sovereignty and autonomy. We offer as evidence the latest global trade deal that passed with relative ease during 2015.
That there is powerful spiritual warfare going on for the heart and soul of this once great nation there is little doubt. We have watched the dismantling of the moral strength of American culture and the infusion of every form of anti-God comportment, made legal through executive action and Supreme Court edict. Congress has rolled over at every point, inexplicably unable and/or unwilling to oppose the transformation this president has achieved, seemingly with great ease.
The churches of America–with the exception of a very few–have offered no push-back against the destruction of America. The days when the likes of the Moral Majority–as hated as it was by the media and the political left–acted as a guardian of the nation’s moral fiber, are long gone. To be frank, it is literally true to say that about the only hope we have is a prayer in the matter of saving our nation.
I believe we are witnessing the most significant movement into the prophesied Antichrist governmental model through the swift changes within international monetary dynamics taking place. One such movement is making its presence felt as private industry melds with world trade rearrangements we have seen take place this year.
I am the first to admit that I am basically ignorant in the matters of global finance as they are conducted within the highest echelons. But even the neophyte can see developments that portend a tremendous transformation that will be deleterious to sovereign nations. The following news excerpt gives some idea of the changes afoot.
Several major companies from across both the technology and financial industries—including IBM, Intel, and Cisco as well as the London Stock Exchange Group and big-name banks JP Morgan, Wells Fargo, and State Street—have joined forces to create an alternative to the blockchain, the global online ledger that underpins the bitcoin digital currency…
Blockchain is essentially a database that runs across a worldwide network of independent machines—a database that’s controlled by no single entity but can still reliably track the exchange of assets, thanks to some nifty mathematics…
The promise of blockchain technology is that it can provide a more secure, more reliable, more transparent, and more automatic way of exchanging money, securities, and other assets. It lets you trade assets as easily as you trade emails today—and you can trade them without putting your trust in any one person or organization. This could eliminate many of the slower technologies and expensive middlemen that clog up today’s markets, says Marley Gray, who oversees blockchain work at Microsoft. (Cade Metz, “Tech and Banking Giants Ditch Bitcoin for Their Own Blockchain,” WIRED, December 17, 2015)
All of this “private” interlinkage seems so benign and geared for progress in making life better for everyone on the planet, does it not? However when one considers the grasp of most every government on earth to nationalize or place private industry under government controls, the spectre grows ominous.
America’s own grasp in this regard was on display with the federal governmental bankruptcy interventions of such corporate giants as AIG, General Motors, and General Electric. The Obama administration, ostensibly to keep major financial institutions backing these corporations from failure, in effect purchased the assets of the failing companies.
The above news item becomes dangerously relevant in prophetic terms when considering this line from that financial news story: “A database that runs across a worldwide network of independent machines—a database that’s controlled by no single entity.” With governments demonstrably proving that they want to control private industry–even to the point of owning those industries, the drive to destroy sovereignty and autonomy of America, the apex nation of the world, is quite telling.
Antichrist is an “entity” who will one day cause all buying and selling to be done through him–under his number and name (Revelation 13:16-18). Call it blockchain or whatsoever, control by history’s most terrible tyrant is on the way.
Take heart. Jesus Christ is also on His way. He will put an end to the tyrannical control. He will first call all believers to meet Him in the air in one, glorious millisecond. Realizing all of the developments in the drive for global order going on, we can conclude that that moment must be very near indeed.
Celebrating Christ’s Coming
Christmas 2015, to me, seems strangely removed from Christmases of the past. By that I mean the culture has changed in America to the point that Jesus is now truly marginalized. He has been, it seems to me, moved by opposition forces to the periphery for the first time in the nation’s history of celebrating His birth. The ambience of the season feels different this time.
News reports tell almost daily of public schools that have changed the name of the season’s celebration to something other than Christmas. Calling it Christmas is forbidden within a growing number of corporate entities and organizations. We must now refer to the season as Happy Holidays rather than as Christmas. People are more and more offended by anything associated with the name of Jesus Christ, or so it seems according to the politically correct–the minority that has been allowed to rule American society over the past number of years.
Christians watched and protested mildly while witnessing Christmas go from a celebration of Christ’s birth to becoming more and more commercialized. The desensitizing messages of the entertainment industry and of the advertising world paved the way to acceptance of the fear of offending spiritual infection we suffer today. Christianity, thus Christmas, represents a narrow-minded, bigoted, homophobic restrictiveness that the post-Christian, “liberated” American need not endure.
Celebration of Christ’s birth was until very recent times an inseparable part of America’s rich heritage. But, as the American home began to come apart at the seams, the Christmas celebration so much a part of family life suffered a schizophrenia of sorts.
The first coming of Christ as a babe to Bethlehem is now seen by fewer and fewer numbers of U.S. population as something to look back on with reason to celebrate. With the advent of this presidential administration, which began with the new president declaring that we are no longer a Christian nation, the unraveling of America’s moral fabric –already underway–began in earnest. The reweaving of that fabric has been taking place ever since.
Everything Christian is frowned upon, and morality has been redefined. Tolerance is the mantra of the day. Things the Word of God says are wrong, those in control of the reins of governance declare to be good. The shedding of the blood of the innocent is legally stipulated to be a good thing for the sake of giving women the right to choose. God’s definition of marriage is considered narrow-minded and evil because it restricts the right to “love” as one chooses. Man with man and woman with woman in the sexual union, and in marriage, is lauded and applauded by the neo-pagan culture as proof that we are becoming an enlightened people.
While God’s Son and Christianity are pushed out of society and culture, a false religion, whose worshippers behead and commit other atrocities upon those who won’t bow the knee to their false deity, is given governmental protection at every turn by this president.
Those who continue to make strides to diminish the influence of true Christianity on the culture have celebrated a number of victories through Supreme Court decisions the past seven years. Despite these apparent losses believers in Jesus Christ have suffered in the culture war, the Christian is not defeated. A future celebration is scheduled even more wonderful than is celebration of Christ’s birth two thousand years ago.
The infant who came to earth, sent as the Lamb of God to take away the sins of the world, escaped the infanticide of that day. Herod, Israel’s chief murderer of babies, couldn’t defeat that tiny baby and His mission to provide the only way to redemption. Neither will the abortionists and anti-God forces of today defeat the baby of Bethlehem who is now fully in authority over all of creation and is about to bring God’s kingdom to planet earth.
We who name the Name of Jesus–who are redeemed by the crucified and resurrected Christ–will one day –perhaps very soon–be called into His presence (Revelation 4:1). He will take us to the Father’s house, where He has prepared mansions in which we will dwell forever (John 14:1-3). That will indeed be a time of eternal celebration!
Osama’s and Jihad John’s Deaths
Many Americans broke out in celebration when Al Qaeda mastermind Osama Bin Laden’s death was announced Sunday night, May 1, 2011. The demonstrations of glee weren’t nearly as wild as the scenes from almost every Muslim nation the day the twin towers in New York fell. There was no firing of AK-47 weaponry into the air, but it was ebullient demonstration nonetheless.
President Obama was said to have turned to an aid and remarked: “We got him!”
There was the same sort of reaction recently when the terrorist known as Jihad John was said to be killed in a pinpoint bombing. The terrorists was infamous for beheading people, including Americans, on camera and putting the murders on YouTube.
How did you react when you heard the news? My only reaction was to think that now Osama and Jihad John face not the seventy-two virgins promised to all Muslim men faithful to Allah once they assume room temperature, but that they confront something far different. Their deaths gave no pleasure, no sense of retribution or vengeance–but neither did I then or now have any regrets that they are gone from this world.
Had I lost a family member or dear friend in the World Trade Towers, the Pentagon, or the crash of the airplane in Pennsylvania that day, or if one of the people beheaded were personal relatives or friends, perhaps I would be satisfied to the point of elation at the news of their deaths. But, I don’t think so.
The satisfaction I receive is that of knowing that they can no longer add their demented thought processes to those of their fellow Islamist madmen. To me, there is no joy in the demise of anyone, except in knowing that, in each of these cases, they won’t be in on planning future murders in the name of Allah. This is indeed a significant volley in the war declared on terror by George W. Bush following September 11, 2001. Killing Osama Bin Laden and Jihad John, however, can’t change the fact that they and their henchmen murdered thousands of people. It can’t alter the fact that thousands of U.S. service men and women have died or been wounded in pursuit of dealing with the evil these men and others perpetrated and their fellow terrorists continue to carry out.
These terrorists’ deaths don’t stop the trillions of dollars and counting cost of the military action against radical Islam the U.S. has and is footing. In this, the two now dead terrorists have been successful–helping achieve their vow to bring the great Satan to its knees, economically speaking. So, their being killed isn’t reason to declare victory, even though it is obviously a cause for celebration by those who are so inclined.
There are thousands, even millions, to take their place. There is little time to spend reveling in these two, demonically driven men’s deaths. Their assassinations are that sort of violence on which the jihadists feed. Violence feeds Islamist war-makers like the warm Gulf waters feed a hurricane.
Am I saying that Osama Bin Laden and the one termed Jihad John should not have been dispatched? Of course not. I am saying that to vigorously celebrate their being killed should not be allowed to become, either individually or collectively within the American psyche, a visceral bloodlust to render evil for evil. Especially, this should not be the mindset of the Christian, in my view. Such action should be taken only in order to try to make civilized society safe from such beastly activity as carried out by these murderers and their ilk. The Bible condones such action by duly authorized governments because this is a sinful, murderous world, and such killers must be stopped to promote the general safety of peace-loving people.
Hypocrisy and worse is front and center in all of this taking down of these terrorists, while the mainstream media takes no notice. The present American president operates within a political philosophy that disdains capital punishment, no matter the crime–primarily, I believe, because he thus wins the hearts, minds, and votes of minorities who view themselves as victims of injustice. Yet he and his political associates see nothing wrong with the taking out of the two terrorists in question, because it was the politically expedient thing to do. Executing a man–within the American judicial system, for murdering a person–is something the liberal mindset considers barbarism. They slap each other’s backs, however, for the good fortune–or well-executed plan—in sending Osama Bin Laden and Jihad John on their eternal journey. Their poll numbers might benefit from the action taken.
Such duality of thought shows a trend toward the same sort of madness carried on by the fanatic Islamists. Fanatic Muslims see nothing wrong with killing, when it serves the best interest of their cause and is sanctioned by their “holy book,” the Koran. It is justice of a grossly perverted sort by which that self-indulgent mindset operates.
So, those who name the name of Christ should not find carnal enjoyment in the deaths of Osama Bin Laden, the one called Jihad John, or anyone else. They are gone, and I am glad. They presented danger to those I love, as well as to everyone who might fall under their unalloyed evil plotting. But, I take no pleasure in their deaths–only a degree of solace. The Lord of heaven Himself has set the example for what should be the Christian’s attitude in such matters: “’As I live,’ says the Lord GOD, ‘I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live. Turn, turn from your evil ways!’” (Ezekiel 33:11).
Sovereignty and Climate Change
One priority heads the list that the principalities and powers in high places of Ephesians 6:12 must achieve in order to build the neo-Babel tower of world control. There can be no doubt of what that geopolitical goal is if one truly considers the things going on within the COP (Conference of the Parties) held in Paris November 30 through December 11. That was the twenty-first get-together of the globalist organization whose membership now numbers more than 190 nations.
There declared intention is to establish global agreement on what to do about so-called climate change. The aim is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions brought about by human activity. Their proclamation of such danger to the environment through continuing sophistry that includes falsifying data on supposed global warming has been debunked over recent years.
These “de-growth” environmentalist nonetheless continue to shout through their world-wide media accomplices that green house emission-caused global warming will be the thing that will bring an end to planet earth. Thus even though they’ve had to alter their fear-mongering rant to call it “climate change” because of scientific proof to the contrary.
The most recognizable religious figure on the planet is all in, too. Pope Frances, flying on the papal plane when leaving Africa, weighed in when asked to comment on whether anything constructive might come of the COP gathering.
“I’m not sure, but I can say that it is now or never,” he said.
The pope went on to say: “We are on the edge of suicide…but I am sure that just about everybody meeting in Paris is aware of this and wants to do something.”
He concluded:
“The other day I read that in Greenland the glaciers have lost billions of tons… In the Pacific there is a country that is buying another country in order to move, because in 20 years it’s going to disappear. I believe in these people, [the COP leadership] that they will do something. I hope so, and I pray for it.” (Source: “POPE: CLIMATE CHANGE AGREEMENT ‘NOW OR NEVER,’ HUMANITY ON THE ‘EDGE OF SUICIDE’,” Thomas D. Williams, DECEMBER 1, 2015, http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2015/12/01/pope-climate-change-agreement-now-never-humanity-edge-suicide/).
The climate change/environmental save-the-planet social engineers intend to change human consumption patterns in every possible way. They intend to reduce private land ownership to the point that all will be forced to live in restricted communal areas. This is what is meant, in part, by the “de-growth” term mentioned above. The ultimate outgrowth of the de-growther plan is to reduce the population of earth to 500 million or less.
Talk show host Mark Levin, in chapter 7 of his recent book Plunder and Deceit, mentions America’s own neo-Babel de-growther in addressing the environmentalist movement:
Much of the so-called environmental movement today has transmuted into an aggressively nefarious and primitive faction. In the last fifteen years, many of the tenets of utopian statism have coalesced around something called the “de-growth” movement. Originating in Europe but now taking a firm hold in the United States, the “degrowthers,” as I shall characterize them, include in their ranks none other than President Barack Obama. On January 17, 2008, Obama made clear his hostility toward, of all things, electricity generated from coal and coal-powered plants. He told the San Francisco Chronicle, “You know, when I was asked earlier about the issue of coal . . . under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.”
Recently we have learned they are determined to eventually do away with air-conditioning and other comfort/convenience technologies. We in the West must be brought down to the same level of the Third World societies and cultures. Equality will then be achieved and Utopia established. They will have created their version of heaven on earth.
The real story behind all of this, of course, is the matter of sovereignty.
The plan of the builders of the end-times Tower of Babel know that to begin to achieve their goal of de-growth, the apex nation of the world, America, must be stripped of her sovereignty. The U.S. is the holdup. Europe, the one-time bastion of civilization, has all but given its sovereignty over to the socialistic globalist would-be masters. Now, we are seeing America being channeled into that European model. Sovereignty must be and is being stripped. Barack Hussein Obama has been chosen to be primarily instrumental in the stripping process.
That’s what this climate change mantra and drive is all about. It’s what the incessant call to get the guns out of the hands of average Americans is all about. Sovereignty can be maintained only when it is defended by force. Armed Americans stand in the way. That is what the open borders and invitation to a massive invasion from our south and from the Middle East is all about. No more borders–i.e., no more sovereignty.
But of course all this is but the tip of the proverbial iceberg of impending destruction.
The real sovereignty issue is that of the True Sovereign–the Creator of the universe and of all things. The master of the would-be one-world engineers–the neo-Tower builders- wants, as he did from the time of the war in Heaven- to overthrow the sovereignty of God.
Lucifer the fallen has brought today’s globalists to the point of the psalmist’s predicted end-of-the -age arrangement.
Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD, and against his anointed, saying, Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us. He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision. Then shall he speak unto them in his wrath, and vex them in his sore displeasure. Yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion. (Psalms 2:1-6)
Even so, come Lord Jesus.
Been Dying to Write This…
Note: I was re-reading my recounting of the clinical death I suffered on Good Friday of 2011. This prompted me to want to again share the Testimony that I believe is in that strange though wonderful trip into that realm, which I believe with all that is within me was a Heavenly one.
The experience still affects my every waking moment. It continues to be as real to me as the moment my heart stopped on those 3 occasions.
–Terry
Please bear with me in reading this week’s commentary. I don’t like to get “up close and personal,” as ABC sportscasters used to say in announcing an interview with one athlete or the other. It’s just not professional, in my view, for purposes of communicating in forums such as ours. But, personal I am going to get for this one. Hope you don’t mind.
Staying with the ABC sports analogy, I was doing my three- or four-times-per-week workout on Good Friday just past. I had done the warm-ups for the usual fifteen minutes or so, and the barbells (UGH!). Done were the push-ups–seventy of them, except very cheap ones (fooling myself, mostly, that I was doing them right). Then were accomplished the knee-lifts while lying on my back for five minutes. Doing the Body by Jake sit-up machine next had completed that part of the workout.
Then it was time for aerobics. I have this rowing machine with one hundred pounds on the back of it that is an excellent leg-press device, which is also used to do some upper-body stuff. I did all this in the usual fashion, the workout now flowing toward its one-hour and twenty-minute conclusion. I decided to skip the treadmill and go straight for the recumbent bike–to just sort of chill out, or cool off, or however one chooses to term one’s winding-down regimen.
A burning pressure began, then, just behind my sixty-eight-year old sternum. It was a pain I had felt slightly three days earlier while just sitting around working on something on the computer. At that time it had been mild, and I had thought of it as a case of a little more than usual heartburn–indigestion. I think I even popped a Tums or something.
This time, the pain worsened by the second, until it was a severe pressure gnawing at my chest, as if something wanted out of there.
I walked around, just knowing it would shortly ease. But it didn’t.
“Think you better call 911,” I said to my wife. She took one look at me, knowing that that was the very last thing I would ever do–want an ambulance. It almost was…
The medics arrived ten minutes later, I was told. I was conscious and answered their questions, even as in pain and as out of breath as I was. This, even though they tried feverishly to find a pulse.
“Can’t find one,” one of the guys said to the other, who joined him in frantically searching.
Meantime, I’m thinking, “No pulse…What does that mean? One is dead when there is no pulse…”.
They strapped yours truly to the gurney and we were off, the pain in my chest becoming excruciating. One of the rescuers put some nitroglycerin beneath my tongue, while saying to the dispatcher, “Think we have a coronary going…”.
The ride was rough. Ambulances of that sort aren’t built for the patient’s comfort; they just want to get you there. I felt every bump in the brief ride of ten minutes at most. I felt us stop, heard the door open, felt them jerking the gurney forward. I heard a high-pitched noise that sounded like a transition from one function to another within some sort of computerized system. Sort of like bprrrript.
I saw them, then. I was with them, and they were all beautiful young people in their twenties, it seems in retrospect. They were smiling brightly. Their faces glowed effulgently–not like something ghostly, but with the fresh glow of youth of those in perfect health. They beckoned me to join them.
I wanted to just be with them–to talk, and to enjoy that ambience, I remember. I had no thought of what had gone on before–the pain, the ride. This was real. It was real, and I loved it, and I could feel the love of these young people as we faced each other.
Then I remember thinking, “wait,” and there was something going on. I was in a nightmare. I was being transported with chest pains. I felt my bare chest with my fingertips, thinking, “Oh, no. I am on this gurney. I’m not in that beautiful–real place.” I was back in this nightmare–only this was reality.
People were working at high speed. They said I came back talking. I don’t remember what I said; neither did they.
One guy said, “We hit him with the paddles.” (Can’t remember if that’s what he called them.) I questioned that remark. “Paddles?” I asked.
“Yes your heart stopped,” he said.
The pressure again began building, agonizing–a fire thrusting to get out from behind the sternum.
Suddenly there was again the computer-like prompt. I was with the beautiful, young people, whose smiles were brighter than any ever displayed in toothpaste commercials.
Again there was regret, as I found myself on the table where they prepared the angiogram to find out the position of the blockage.
Then, I was with those youngsters again, only this time the memory becomes fuzzy, but I do know I was among them, talking with them in a serenely joyful place.
Back to the ER and the flurry to save my life. I had been hit with the defibrillator for the third time. My heart had completely stopped on three occasions, but now I sensed they had things under control.
A doctor, one of the most highly regarded interventionist cardiologists in the state, just happened to be down from the Arkansas Heart Hospital, which is twenty minutes away in Little Rock. He was only one room away, and was on my case and finished with the procedure within forty-five minutes.
I was told by this doctor that 50 percent of all who have the sort of heart attack I had die before getting to the emergency room. Most that do get to the hospital don’t make it. The attack was in an artery that is the most crucial. They call the blockage the “widow maker.”
Now, what do we make of this? What do we do with it?
Well, the Lord will bring you to Himself when He chooses is one lesson reconfirmed within my own faith. He wants something else to be done through me. Certainly, I believe writing this commentary is one of those things.
Was I in heaven? I don’t know. To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord, Paul the apostle tells us. I didn’t see Jesus, and He is my Lord.
But, we are all one in Christ, the Lord Himself tells us in John chapter 17. So, in one sense, I could have been with the Lord by being with those people who appeared to be in the full bloom of youth. And, I sensed the absolute peace and joy their demeanor–collectively—projected. Christ is within us and we are one.
But, there’s another side to this reality that seemed more real than the earthly nightmare to which I returned three times. The Lord didn’t show me that other side (the hellish side), but the thought pulses strongly within my spirit as I write this. Just as heaven is a place to be longed for with great anticipation, hell is just as real, and a place to be shunned at all cost. (Read Jesus’ own words on the subject in Mark 9:43-48.)
The choice of whether to accept Jesus Christ as Savior is your choice. The time of death is not yours to make. Even if by suicide, the death will not have taken God by surprise. Believe in Him today with every fiber of your being. Heaven is real. So is hell. Only accepting God’s love gift of His Son’s shed blood on Calvary can cleanse you or me from sin–the soul-destroying thing God cannot permit to come into His holy, majestic presence.
Jesus is the only way to heaven (John 14: 6). You and I must come to Him to ever be a heavenly citizen. The alternative is the nightmare world about which Jesus forewarned.
Here’s the only formula for going to heaven when you die, or at the Rapture of the church:
“That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.” (Romans 10:9)
Jerusalem Intrigue
Today, things taking place around the world are thought by many observers to indicate we are at the very end of the age. I am one of those observers.
The Middle East is overheating, with the Russians coming together with Iran to exert strong-arm influence over that prophetic region. All of the activity seems almost certainly to be stage setting for things to come—rearrangement for the great Gog-Magog war predicted by the prophet Ezekiel.
Powerful dynamics within the world’s economy, religion, and geopolitics are at boiling temperature. Potent monetary forces are coalescing to create a central economic system of electronic currency control. The specious theme of climate change is apparently the rallying point around which these one-world fiscal masters intend to concentrate power.
Islam is raging and invading the West, upsetting societies and cultures from Africa to the United States. Fear is building from the ravages of unbridled terrorism running amok. At the same time, Pope Francis is moving throughout the world with his own unique message of encouraging Christendom to amalgamate with all religions for the cause of peace and love.
Geopolitically, Europe is in flux, buffeted about by destructive societal and economic winds generated by years of embracing socialistic humanism. Greece, the cradle of Western civilization, as the historians would have it, is at the heart of Europe’s suffering.
It seems more than coincidental, to this observer at least, that an especially intriguing leader from that very philosophical heart of where Western civilization sprung forth has stepped on the stage of history.
We have looked at him before in this column. I have mentioned that he seems to me an archetype of the one who will be Antichrist. I believe that his rise to power serves as example of how the beast of Revelation chapter 13 might emerge from a reviving Roman Empire.
Alexis Tzipras, member of the left wing pro-Palestinian Syriza party, when elected prime minister of Greece, was thought to be a leader who would all but destroy relations between his nation and Israel. One of the most stunning surprises to come from the new Greek leader’s time in power has been his desire to embrace Israel as a future partner in mutually beneficial economic interaction.
The following news item excerpt frames Tzipras’ friendly foray into Jerusalem.
Meeting with the Israeli leadership, opening a two day tour in Jerusalem and Ramallah, Tzipras praised the importance of the relations between Israel and Greece and showed that the partnership has survived the political change.
While in Jerusalem for a meeting with Israeli President Reuven Rivlin, Tsipras took an opportunity to sign the President’s guestbook, writing, ” With great honor to be in your historic capital and to meet your excellencies.”
(Source: In unprecedented move Greek PM calls Jerusalem Israel’s ‘historical capital’, By Tal Shalev, Shalev/ i24news, Published: 11/26/2015)
This reaching out to Israel with such profound inscription upon the guest book shocked the world of diplomacy and Israeli leadership, I think. No other national entity of any degree of stature within the international community dares call Jerusalem the capital of Israel. Tzipras has no such qualms. His signing the guest book as he did is a flattery that gripped even the heart of the always wary Benjamin Netanyahu.
Following meetings with Tzipras Wednesday, November 25, during which the leaders discussed how to cooperate in making deals on getting gas from the newly discovered underwater natural gas fields in Israeli and Cypriot waters, Netanyahu commented on the meeting:
We have a growing and enduring partnership between Greece and Israel.
We are two countries with ancient roots…– Although we are ancient peoples, we embrace the future, we embrace modernity… We’re the two democracies in the eastern Mediterranean and we are obviously aware that we have a world of opportunities – of technology, of development, of progress – to seize and we can seize it better through cooperation.
The Israeli prime minister turned to a smiling Tzipras then, and said, “There is, as you said, a natural affinity between the Israelis and the Greeks. It’s very obvious when you go to either country.”
Tzipras expressed the need for all to work together to rid the region and world of terrorism and to deal with ISIS in particular. He was scheduled to meet with Palestinian Authority leaders in an effort to bring understanding between the Israelis and Palestinians.
What’s wrong with the Greek prime minister doing these peace-oriented things? Absolutely nothing–so far as it goes. All that this commentary is meant to do is to point to the unusual nature of this “unprecedented move” by a European leader, as one Israeli official called it.
In this time of ultra-political correctness, when Israel is seen as the roadblock to the Roadmap to Peace, because of their opposition to being forced to give in to giving up land, to have one leader, with words flattering to the Jewish state, break from the pack of anti-Israeli diplomatic wolves and call Jerusalem its capital is possibly of prophetic significance. That that leader is one of unusual charismatic personality and from the very heart of the reviving Roman Empire, makes things even more intriguing.
Daniel the prophet was given a prophecy to share with those who would be on scene at the very end of the world governmental system. It is most interesting to consider as we enter uncharted geopolitical, socioeconomic, and religious waters.
And in his estate shall stand up a vile person, to whom they shall not give the honour of the kingdom: but he shall come in peaceably, and obtain the kingdom by flatteries. And with the arms of a flood shall they be overflown from before him, and shall be broken; yea, also the prince of the covenant. (Daniel 11:21-22)
Terry James Prophecy Line 