Sunset in the West

The term "Occident" comes from the Latin "occidens," meaning "sunset," 
while "Orient" comes from the Latin "oriens," meaning "sunrise."

The English-language name Anatolia derives from the Greek Ἀνατολή (Anatolḗ) meaning "the East" 
and designating (from a Greek point of view) eastern regions in general. 
The Greek word refers to the direction where the sun rises, coming from ἀνατέλλω anatello '(Ι) rise up,' 
comparable to terms in other languages such as "levant" from Latin levo 'to rise,' "orient" from Latin orior 'to arise, to originate,' 
Hebrew מִזְרָח mizraḥ 'east' from זָרַח zaraḥ 'to rise, to shine,' Aramaic מִדְנָח midnaḥ from דְּנַח denaḥ 'to rise, to shine.'

RUSSIA IS IN THIS WAR TO WIN

written by David Mark 
April 11, 2022 

Many people are viewing the current conflict between Russia and Ukraine through the lens of the Western dominated media outlets they have grown up believing. These outlets are painting a David vs. Goliath picture – but the world is way more complex. 

Russia may have the upper hand against Ukraine, but that doesn’t mean that Russia’s dominance in the region is a foregone conclusion. The fact is, Russia needs strategic depth buttressing its western border lands. Without this, Russia will have to invest even more money into its security.

This is why Russia will not stop with the Eastern part of Ukraine. Putin knows he needs his army all the way up to the Carpathian mountains in order to provide maximum security to prevent any NATO push Eastward. 

While Russia was stalled from going into Kiev, it is regrouping to take the entire Donbass and from there it will prepare to take the entire country and beyond. With nothing stopping it, Russia will able to hold off NATO and add strategic depth to the Russian Federation

We have already seen this from Putin. First Crimea and then the Eastern part of Ukraine. What’s next? After the Donbass – Russia will pause, lick its wounds and then move forward. 

Russian President Vladimir Putin chairs a meeting with members of the Security Council
at the Novo-Ogaryovo state residence outside Moscow, Russia, on April 7, 2022.
(Sputnik/Mikhail Klimentyev/Kremlin via Reuters) RUSSIA-UKRAINE WAR

Putin Breaks Silence, Says Russia Will Triumph in Ukraine

By Jack Phillips
April 12, 2022 

President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday said that Russia would triumph in its conflict with Ukraine, delivering his first remarks in several days about the weeks-long war.

“That Blitzkrieg on which our foes were counting on did not work,” Putin claimed of the West’s crippling sanctions imposed after Putin’s Feb. 24 order to invade the country, according to state-run media outlet TASS. Putin made those comments alongside Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, an ally, at Vostochny cosmodrome in the Amur region.

Russia’s economy is on track to contract by more than 10 percent in 2022, the biggest fall in gross domestic product since the years following the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union, former finance minister Alexei Kudrin said on Tuesday, reported Reuters. Russia is facing soaring inflation and capital flight while grappling with a possible debt default following the sanctions.

Putin, who had been ubiquitous on Russian television in the early days of the war, had largely retreated from public view since Russia’s withdrawal from northern Ukraine this month.

The Russian leader, despite setbacks, claimed that the operation in Ukraine is going according to plan, saying that a collision with Ukraine was inevitable due to nationalist factions operating within the country.

“We will not stop military operations in Ukraine until they succeed,” Putin said, adding that Ukraine has “deviated” from agreements that were made during previous rounds of talks, according to state-run RIA Novosti.

The goals of the conflict are “absolutely clear and noble,” Putin also said, state media reported. “There is no doubt that the goals will be achieved.”

“The main goal is to help the people of Donbass [region in eastern Ukraine], whose independence we recognized. We were forced to do so because the Kyiv authorities, pressed by the West, refused to comply with the Minsk agreements aimed at a peaceful solution of the Donbass-related problems,” Putin continued.

Also Tuesday, Ukrainian officials said they are checking reports of possible chemical weapons usage in Mariupol and other areas. They also urged civilians to flee eastern areas ahead of the anticipated offensive, while the battle for the southern port city of Mariupol was reaching a decisive phase, with Ukrainian marines holed up in the Azovstal industrial district.

“There is a theory that these could be phosphorous munitions,” Ukrainian Deputy Defence Minister Hanna Malyar said in public remarks.

It came hours President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Monday night that Russia could resort to chemical weapons as it massed troops in Donbass for a new assault. He did not say if they actually had been used. The United States and Britain said they were trying to verify the reports.

In 1996, the year that Vladimir Putin moved from St. Petersburg to Moscow to take a post inside Boris Yeltsin’s Kremlin, the government newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta asked its readers a leading question: “Do you agree that we’ve had enough democracy, haven’t adapted to it, and now it’s time to tighten the screws?” The paper set up a hotline and offered the equivalent of two thousand dollars to any caller who could come up with a new “unifying national idea.” The exercise reflected an impoverished country demoralized and adrift.

At around the same time, Yeltsin assembled a committee of scholars and politicians to formulate a new “national idea.” Perhaps the newspaper contest could feed the process. But the efforts went nowhere. Yeltsin had failed to build any momentum behind democratic ideals, and the political optimism of the period between 1989 and 1991 was, for most Russians, now a bitter memory. The Soviet-era social safety net had been shredded. People were tired of looking through shop windows at glittering imports while a coterie of oligarchs were permitted to buy up the country’s most valuable state enterprises for kopecks on the ruble. Yeltsin won reelection, defeating the Communist candidate, Gennady Zyuganov, but only by enlisting those oligarchs who, with self-preservation in mind, bankrolled him and helped cover up his exhaustion and his alcoholism. By the late nineties, democracy, demokratia, was referred to as dermokratia, shit-ocracy. Yeltsin’s support fell to the low single digits.

The same intellectuals who had dreamed of free speech, the rule of law, and a general movement toward liberal democracy now experienced acute feelings of failure. “There is no sense of what this new country, Russia, really is,” a prominent cultural historian, Andrei Zorin, said at the time, contrasting the atmosphere with the Enlightenment ferment that attended the birth of the United States and republican France. “These last four or five years in Russia have produced little besides pure hysteria.”

Putin came to power, in 1999, advertised not as a man of ideology but as a figure of rude health and managerial competence. In truth, he was a man of the K.G.B., trained to view the West, particularly the U.S., as his enemy, and to see conspirators everywhere trying to weaken and humiliate Russia. He did not form any committees to devise a national idea; he set up no hotline. He established, over time, a personalist regime built around his patronage and absolute authority. And the national identity he has helped promulgate––illiberal, imperial, resentful of the West––has played an essential role in his brutal invasion of Ukraine.

To create the trappings of this Russian identity, Putin seized on existing strands of reactionary thought. While most observers paid closer attention to the intellectual and political turn to the West in the late nineteen-eighties and nineties, many Russian thinkers, publications, and institutions drew inspiration from far different sources. Newspapers such as Dyen (The Day) and Zavtra (Tomorrow) published screeds about the pernicious influence of American cultural and political power. Various academics celebrated the virtues of “the strong hand,” exemplified by such repressive tsars as Alexander III and Nicholas I and foreign autocrats such as Augusto Pinochet. A crackpot philosopher named Aleksandr Dugin published neo-fascist apocalyptic tomes about the eternal battle between the “sea power” of the West and the “land power” of Eurasia, and found an audience in Russian political, military, and intelligence circles.

In 2004, when Ukraine was in the midst of its Orange Revolution, Putin not only called on his security services to combat Kyiv’s drift to the West; he turned up the volume on his conception of an imperial ideology. He began to speak approvingly of such conservative émigré thinkers as Nikolai Berdyaev and Ivan Ilyin, who believed in the exalted destiny of Russia and the artificiality of Ukraine. In case anyone missed the message, the Kremlin distributed the appropriate reading material to regional governors and bureaucrats.

In 2007, the year that Putin delivered a famous diatribe against the West, in Munich, he visited a writer and thinker who had once been considered the greatest enemy of the Soviet state: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Like Putin, Solzhenitsyn believed that Russia and Ukraine were inextricably linked, and Putin tried to exploit Solzhenitsyn’s moral standing to underscore his own disdain for Ukrainian independence. What he conveniently ignored was Solzhenitsyn’s insistence, in 1991, that if Ukrainians chose to go their own way––as they did by a ninety-per-cent vote––he would “warmly congratulate” them. (“We will always be neighbors. Let’s be good neighbors.”)

By the time Putin returned to the Presidency, in 2012, his attention to distinctly conservative values had deepened. He cracked down on dissenters, vilifying them as “traitors,” an American-backed “fifth column.” He occupied Crimea and invaded eastern Ukraine. His vision of Moscow as a center of anti-liberal ideas and Eurasian power intensified. During the pandemic, he rarely met in person with his advisers, yet, according to the political analyst Mikhail Zygar, he spoke for days at his dacha with Yury Kovalchuk, a media baron and the largest shareholder in Rossiya Bank, who shares his messianic vision and sybaritic life style. In recent years, Putin has even succeeded in exporting his particular brand of illiberalism to, among others, the National Front, in France; the British National Party; the Jobbik movement, in Hungary; Golden Dawn, in Greece; and the right wing of the Republican Party. As Donald Trump’s ideologist, Steve Bannon, put it recently, “Ukraine’s not even a country.”

The devastation of Mariupol and other Ukrainian cities suggests that there is little mercy or modesty in Putin’s faith. Early in his reign, according to the journalist Catherine Belton, he went with his confidant, banker, and eventual antagonist Sergei Pugachev to an Orthodox service on Forgiveness Sunday, which is celebrated just before Lent. Pugachev, a believer, told Putin that he should prostrate himself before the priest, as an act of contrition. “Why should I?” Putin is said to have replied. “I am the President of the Russian Federation. Why should I ask for forgiveness?” 

Published in the print edition of the New Yorker April 4, 2022, issue, with the headline “Putin and Putinism.”

David Remnick has been editor of The New Yorker since 1998 and a staff writer since 1992.

MAOZ ISRAEL REPORT MARCH 2022

Ukraine: The War & The Church

Taunton explains: “[Russian] rulers were always struggling between two impulses: one is westernizing, one is moving back toward dictatorship. And—for eons—they were always going back and forth between the two—that struggle between freedom and progress, versus hardline dictatorship and terrorizing the old Russian Slavic way. This pattern has continued to this very moment.

By Shira Sorko-Ram

English
Stories from Ukraine
Alona

Ukraine: The War & The Church

We are Here for Them

To understand the complexity of the current Russia-Ukraine conflict, a quick bit of history will help:

In the year 1054, an event took place in Christendom that would forever impact the future of the entire world. The greatest schism in church history occurred between the Church of Rome and the Church of Constantinople. In short, the Patriarch of Constantinople and the envoys of the Pope excommunicated each other. It had been a long time coming, as church fathers wrangled over such dogmas as proper ways to fast, differences in their veneration of Mary, and whether the Holy Spirit proceeded from the Father only, or also from Yeshua.

Though the Catholic Church has a brutal history of faults and failures, there were periods of revival which birthed new vibrant communities and a return to the Word of God. On the other hand, the Eastern Church consistently took many steps away from Biblical truths without the accompanying seasons of renewal and re-grounding in God’s Word.

Russia fell into the Eastern Orthodox sphere. Then, what was left of Eastern Christianity eventually mingled with the local Slavic pagan culture. Award-winning author and student of Russian history Larry Alex Taunton 1 points out: “Consider the fact that Russia never experienced a Renaissance, Reformation, Enlightenment, Scientific Revolution, or Industrial Revolution. These epochs define the West as we know it and define Western thinking, but not Russia, not Ukraine.” 

The Russian Empire was often isolated from the West culturally, spiritually and linguistically during centuries of the influence of Oriental tyranny. As a result, Russia and Ukraine entered the 20th century with a Middle Ages despotic mentality. 

Beginning in the late 15th century when the Mongols’ 250-year reign of terror finally ended, a strange split-personality behavior evolved. There were a few powerful rulers and czars who saw Russia’s social deficiency and tried to liberalize the nation by giving rights to citizens, improving the state of peasants, and encouraging education and individual enterprise. However, there were also many evil tyrants who ravaged the land, starved and mass-murdered their people and devastated their cities over and over. 

Taunton explains: “[Russian] rulers were always struggling between two impulses: one is westernizing, one is moving back toward dictatorship. And—for eons—they were always going back and forth between the two. Catherine the Great was a westernizer. Her son wasn’t. Alexander I was a westernizer followed by Nicolas I who wasn’t, followed by Alexander II who was a westernizer, followed by Alexander III who wasn’t.” So it went back and forth—that struggle between freedom and progress, versus hardline dictatorship and terrorizing the old Russian Slavic way. This pattern has continued to this very moment. 

It is important to note these extreme political swings continued during the Communist takeover—hellish tyranny in the form of Soviet Marxism lasting from 1917 to 1991. It ended because liberalizers Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin opened the country to capitalism, and ultimately to freedom. During this period, fifteen sovereign states emerged, independent of the former Soviet Union, including Ukraine! 

Schism of 1054
Separation of Western and Eastern Christianity
Centers of the spread of Christianity

Freedom! Real Freedom!

This period of freedom and liberty created an extravagant opening for Christians around the world to bring the Gospel to these nations whose citizens had been “forced atheists.” 

After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia welcomed Western influences of many stripes, whether they were economists, capitalists, Christians, Evangelicals—whoever they were—they were allowed in! 

There was kind of a naivete that characterized the Soviets. They embraced everyone with enthusiasm. Missionaries from large organizations and small churches flooded Russia with the Gospel. Literally hundreds of thousands of Russians came to faith. Churches and Bible schools sprang up across Russia and the new independent states. Among the Jewish population, Messianic Jewish congregations were birthed in many of these countries.

Jonathan Bernis of Jewish Voice, and a board member of Maoz,crisscrossed Russia and Ukraine for 12 years, hosting Messianic Jewish concerts, preaching the Gospel and seeing thousands and thousands of Jews and Gentiles come to faith. In 1994, Ari and I had the opportunity to teach for a week in St. Petersburg at his Messianic Bible school. Just months before, this group of young Jews and non-Jews didn’t know God existed! Now they came with a deep passion to learn everything we could teach them. It was a unique window of time that, thanks be to God, was not wasted by the people of God! 

Many new Russian Jewish believers made aliyah to Israel and quickly doubled the number of Messianic Jews in Israel. Today some are pastors, musicians, business people and artists, all working for the Kingdom of God. Several talented members of our Maoz team came from Russia and Ukraine. 

The Most Recent Pendulum Swing

Then Vladimir Putin became president in the year 2000. By 2012 Russia was already moving to impede foreign missionaries and three years later, their law said all religious meeting places needed to be registered. By 2020, Russian Christians were being persecuted, whether Roman Catholics or Pentecostals, while the Russian Orthodox Church’s status was elevated.

Sadly, there is also a tragic element which the West must acknowledge. The West was given a rare opportunity to influence a culture. But besides those who brought the Gospel came a flood of pornography, sexuality, and every kind of corruption and depravity, notes Taunton. Russians didn’t have the historical experience or savvy to figure out what was what. They simply slammed the brakes on everything.

The Wars 

Returning to the present crisis: Although Ukraine and Russia have been tied to the same historical heritage, the Ukrainian people have had a deep longing to enjoy their own country, language and culture; they have long been attracted to the self-determination and prosperity of the West. So when the last Romanov czar was suddenly ousted in 1917, Ukraine boldly declared its freedom as a sovereign state and fought against the Bolshevik Red army. They had three years of freedom, until Lenin’s Marxist Bolshevik forces swallowed Ukraine back into their Russian empire. 

Almost immediately, Russia’s Communist leaders demanded that Ukrainian farmers collectivize their farms. Ukrainians rebelled and were horrifically punished by the Soviets with genocide and a forced famine in the 1930’s. The manmade Great Famine claimed the lives of some 3.9 million people. The hardest hit area was Ukraine. 

When Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, there were Ukrainians who did cooperate with the Nazis, not because they agreed with Germany’s ideology, but because they thought they had a better chance of rebirthing their sovereign state under Germany than under Communist Russia. Still, they are not without blame as they actively participated in hunting down Jews and mass shootings.   

Manipulating that history, Putin’s propaganda today explains he must attack Ukraine to destroy their “Nazi leadership”—despite the fact that Ukraine has come a long way in it’s ideology as both the president and the prime minister of Ukraine are Jewish. During the 74 years of Communist Russia’s tyranny they managed to obliterate 100 million people from the earth—that bit of history Putin leaves out. 

Evangelicals Elected to Ukrainian Government

Of Ukraine’s 43 million citizens, 67% of the total population still adheres to Orthodox Christianity. About 2.2% of Ukrainians are Evangelicals (mostly Baptists and Pentecostals) with about 3,000 churches. 

Interestingly, the most trusted entities in Ukraine are the Church, trusted by 63%, and the military at 65%.2 A year ago, a poll showed over two-thirds of Ukrainians distrusted state officials and politicians. President Volodimir Zelensky won because he ran on a platform to wipe out corruption. 

For a small minority of 2.2%, there is an unusually large number of Evangelicals present in Ukraine’s government. The shortage of good leaders in Ukraine was so intense, political parties started to recruit candidates from Evangelical churches! In 2020, more than 500 Evangelicals were elected to all levels of government! 

After the elections, Nikolay Kuleba, Zelensky’s Ombudsman for Children, gathered all the winning Evangelical politicians and asked them to ask God: “What is your purpose for me here?”

Kuleba was the only high-level official from the former administration that Zelensky didn’t fire when he came to power. “Believers need to be in the government,” he said.

Recognizing this recent cultural shift towards the Gospel, the coordinator of Ukraine’s National Prayer Breakfast, Pavel Unguryan, said, “Ukraine has become the epicenter of a global spiritual battle… Introducing people to the teachings of Jesus will change the country and region much faster than the activities of a party.” One can see why the Enemy would like to have Ukraine once again under communist control.

The Church at Work

This war has changed everything. At the very least it has inspired a movement to bring together Baptists, Pentecostals and other newer groups into an informal union so that practically all Ukrainian Evangelicals can now speak with one voice.

Reports of the heroic efforts of Evangelical churches in Ukraine in this war are getting widespread coverage. Church leaders are occupied full time with the refugee chaos. In most cases, pastors send the women and children westward on buses, while they and a small team remain to help more refugees make it to the borders.

One pastor, Ivan Rusyn, stated: “This war has completely redefined my understanding of mission and holistic ministry. You cannot show compassion from a distance.” He and his seven remaining colleagues coordinate relief from the offices of the Ukrainian Bible Society, where he sleeps on the floor at night.

His joy, he says, comes from seeing the smiles on the faces of Ukrainian soldiers who know that the pastors and priests are praying. He plans to stay in Kyiv as long as President Zelensky does. 

Rusyn said, “For 70 years the nation was under the bondage of Soviet Communism. But the Ukrainian church used well the 30 years of freedom that we have had. Wherever the Russians are, they restrict born-again believers and institutions, attempting to shut down the robust religious tolerance of Ukraine. Christian leaders that remain in Kyiv and other cities are the incarnated witness of Jesus Christ.”

The Gospel has indeed been expanding across Ukraine, including to the Jewish people. In Kyiv, Boris Grysenko pastors the largest Messianic Congregation in all of Europe with over a thousand members, Jonathan Bernis says. “Conservatively I would estimate there are some 80-100 Messianic Congregations in Ukraine (while in Russia there are only estimated to be 10-20 such congregations).” 

Where Does Israel Stand?

In the midst of this horrific war, Israel has found herself in a precarious position. While literally all the civilized world is horrified at the war crimes happening on their screens, our citizens are doubly so, because many Israelis have close relatives and friends caught in this carnage. Yet Israel’s Prime Minister is preoccupied with the reality that Russia has placed troops on our northern border since the war in Syria began during the Obama administration. Russia’s excuse for this is that they are protecting Syria. 

Nevertheless, there has been an agreement between Israel and Russia permitting Israel to have open skies over Syria to bomb Iranian shipments of weapons on their way to Hezbollah. It is imperative that those skies remain open for Israel’s security. 

So P.M. Naftali Bennett may be the only Western leader who has tried to maintain some sort of neutral position. Believe me, he has received plenty of criticism for it. Volodimir Zelensky has not been happy with Bennett. At the same time, Israel is the only country mentioned in the news when it comes to mediating between the two countries. If there is any positive movement towards mediation through Bennett, it is because Israel has solid relations with both sides. 

Yet as we Israelis say, it is complicated. Around 400,000 Jews are citizens of Ukraine and are living there now. Israel is ready to bring them all “home” to the Promised Land. At least 100,000 new Jewish immigrants and their families are expected in the next few months. And as always, Israel is sending tons of humanitarian aid to this war-torn nation.

On the other hand, the Israeli government is also concerned for the well-being of 165,000 Jews who are citizens of Russia, and is ready to help them also immigrate to Israel, even though, it is reported the backlog of applications will take nine months to process!

As one commentator said, “It takes a large number of coordinated and committed people to make peace; it takes only one madman to make war.”

An ominous reality in the Bible is the complete absence of any references the United States as a nation playing a significant role in the events marking the close of the present age, including World War Three. One keen and informed observer on the scene until his death in 2018 was Chuck Missler of Koinonia House, Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. Several of his important articles are reproduced below. The last is the most important. It's about the threat of an attack on the United States by a foreign power (China, Russia, North Korea?) by means of an Electromagnetic Pulse weapon. 

Old Testament history centers around Israel and her neighbors in the Mediterranean. Nations far away are sometimes referred to as the coastlands. See Tyre and Sidon. Jerusalem is always refereed to as the "world navel." The events of greatest importance at the end of the age center around the old Roman Empire (East and West).

After World War 2, only the United States and Russia had nuclear weapons for a season. There followed a tense season known as the "Cold War." As more and more nations acquired nuclear weapons, the real threat was from rogue states with less than rational dictators running things. A nuclear war with Russia would have assured the destruction of both the United States and Russia. Yet possibility of M .A.D. (Mutually Assured Destruction) was taken very seriously by both superpowers for several years.

One problem with this conjecture is that Russia is a major player at the end of the current age, according to Bible prophecy. But the United States, apparently, is not. The possibility of our nation's demise by an EMP attack is nowadays seen as credible. Chuck Missler's 2005 paper (below) on an EMP war is well informed.

An EMP attack would probably not kill many people at first but "merely" take down electric power grids, much of the Internet, public utilities, and most motor vehicles. 

40+ years ago (1959-1965) the popular TV series “The Twilight Zone” provided frightening scenarios for doomsday and the end of the world. The possible end of American civilization (as we know it) by EMP is more terrible than any SciFi creators imagine.  “Without the constant emotional feedback loop of social media and the entertainment industry this generation would LITERALLY go insane and turn on each other violently. Shut down TV and their devices mayhem would break out within hours.” (TS) 

Electric supply would quickly shrink to zero. Utility companies would stop supplying gas and water as well. Most cars and buses would stop en route. The Internet could well crash. Houses would turn dark and be cold. A few battery powered devices would run for only a day or two. Expect rioting in the streets and looting. Any foreign armies properly equipped could easily swoop in and take over. The foreign power who planned and caused the EM attack in the first place would surely be fully prepared to take over what was left, killing the survivors bringing their own settlers with them. Expect martial law by the new regime. Expect total redistribution of property and assets.  

Where would God be in such a terrible time? He desires that no one perish. Jesus in fact said, “Do not fear him who has the power to kill the body and after than can do nothing. Rather fear him who after he has killed has the power to throw body and soul into Hades.” (Matthew 10:28) 

“Do not say in your heart, ‘Who will ascend into heaven?’ ” (that is, to bring Christ down from above) or, “ ‘Who will descend into the abyss?’ ” (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead). But what does it say? “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart” (that is, the word of faith which we preach): that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. 

For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.  

For the Scripture says, “Whoever believes on Him will not be put to shame.”

For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek, for the same Lord over all is rich to all who call upon Him.  

For “whoever calls on the name of the LORD shall be saved.” (Romans 10:6-13)

As the centroid of geopolitical power on the Planet Earth continues its shift westward, you can also see a cloud of spiritual darkness emerging on our eastern horizon.

We continue to see corruption everywhere: throughout the highest levels of government, in our entertainments, in our schools, and even in many of our churches. Many of those in the corridors of power should be incarcerated for treason—legislators that sign bills they haven’t read; executives who are allowed to ignore the laws; judges who reverse juries, amend laws, and indulge in social engineering; and, leaders who fail to exhibit the most elementary ethical conduct.

The entertainment industry celebrates every imaginable evil and attacks all the family values which God has established for our welfare. And the educational establishment deliberately dumbs down and corrupts our youth.

There was a day when you could rely on the fiduciary posture of your advisors, counselors, and professionals. Today that would be naive and hazardous.

Every day the litany of unconstitutional abuses continues unabated. Every day self-destructive polices extend their reach. Every day it grows darker. Every day the debts grow larger; they are already beyond any semblance of reality.

Global Crises Escalating

As the centroid of geopolitical power on the Planet Earth continues its shift westward (abandoning the U.S.), you can also see a cloud of spiritual darkness emerging on our eastern horizon. Europe, mired in the grip of socialism, is now also discovering the sinister agenda—and deadly demographics—of Islam. The Middle East continues to boil, and an Islamic Caliphate is threatening lives and freedoms everywhere. A growing barrage of crises continue to escalate while the entire global financial system is increasingly ready to implode.

(The following six points were excerpted from Don McAlvany’s excellent publication, The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor, September 2014.)

1) The Southern U.S. Border

This is a well-planned situation wherein millions of illegals (including children and terrorists) are being allowed across the U.S. border—with huge potential for economic and social destabilization of the country—and of course, eventually millions of Democrat votes. This invasion was created by someone (or some group) who wants to destabilize and destroy the U.S. There will ultimately be 5–8 million new illegals in America via this current influx.

2) Israeli/Hamas War In Gaza

The present war began when Hamas began firing thousands of rockets from Gaza into Israel. Israel did what any country would do to protect itself—it launched a counterattack into Gaza to stop the Hamas missiles. In its offensive against Hamas, the IDF (Israeli Defense Force) found dozens of infiltration tunnels into Israeli from Gaza—some of them dug to Israeli elementary schools—where Hamas planned to kidnap hundreds of Israeli children and hold them as hostages.

3) ISIS’ Violent Onslaught In Iraq

ISIS has captured numerous Iraqi military bases and massive quantities of sophisticated U.S. weapons with which we equipped the Iraqi military over the past ten years. These include hundreds of ground-to-air missiles that can ultimately be used to shoot down civilian airliners all over the world.

ISIS briefly captured the largest dam in Iraq, which temporarily put it in a position to cut off all water supplies to Baghdad. ISIS is now threatening to overthrow the very weak and ineffective Iraqi government installed by America after the ill-advised 2003 invasion of Iraq. If successful, Syria and Jordon are likely to fall next, and even Saudi Arabia (where help for ISIS has come from) may be in danger. The British SAS is being flown in to help rescue 30,000 fleeing Iraqi Christians and other minorities who are trapped in Northern Iraq.

4) The Russian/Ukrainian Crisis

This crisis was precipitated when the U.S. government under Obama helped to overthrow the pro-Russian government in the Ukraine and install a pro-U.S., anti-Russian regime in Kiev.

America is the driving force behind moving NATO forces and missiles near the Russian border, and behind the sanctions against Russia—with Europe reluctantly going along with the U.S. until the shooting down of the MH17 airliner.

Who was really behind the shooting down of that airliner? Certainly the Ukrainian government and the U.S. had the most to gain, and Putin and the rebels had the most to lose. Maybe Russia’s abandoning the U.S. dollar may be impacting America’s current belligerent policies toward Russia (like Saddam Hussein and Muammar Khadafy were trying to do before we overthrew them and had them killed).

Russia has a much larger arsenal of nuclear weapons than America. If America picks a fight with Russia, it could end very badly for the U.S. (Ezekiel 39:6?)

What about an EMP attack? (It’s easily deniable since it could be executed by “rogue groups” with the resources.)

5) Racial Conflict In America

The political left in America (via the Obama regime and the controlled liberal media) are working overtime to stir up hatred and division between the black and white races. Massive race riots in major American cities, as millions of unemployed young blacks roam the streets and the political left keeps stirring the racial pot, are a growing potential. Overnight, martial law and a state of national emergency could be declared.

6) The Global Financial System

Is there an epic financial meltdown on the near horizon? We have a very shaky $1.5 quadrillion derivatives pyramid, and countries all over Europe, Africa and Latin America are on the verge of bankruptcy. Socialist financial controls (including exchange and capital controls) are being implemented all over the world. There is a growing exodus from the U.S. dollar and the concurrent printing of trillions of dollars by the Fed to offset that dollar dumping. The confiscation of financial assets (i.e., bank accounts, pension funds, even cash) is being implemented by desperate governments looking for funds anywhere they can find, tax, or steal them…

Insurmountable Debt

The U.S. debt was $222 trillion at last count, and growing: $17.5 trillion current, national debt; plus unfunded liabilities for Social Security, Medicaid, and other entitlement programs (growing at $2.2 billion per day.) This amounts to almost $500,000 for every man, woman, and child. The U.S. government borrows four out of every ten dollars it spends.

McKinsey Global Institute calculates that the total wealth of the world is estimated at $200 trillion. The U.S. fiscal gap is 11% larger than all the accumulated wealth existing in the world today!

The Encroaching Darkness

The cancer of an entitlement mentality has even infected the middle class. The growing dependence on government handouts ignores the reality that the only assets the government has are yours. To fulfill the growing collective expectations they will increasingly confiscate your assets to fulfill their ambitions.

The problem with socialism is that you soon run out of other people’s money.—Margaret Thatcher

Food stamp assistance grew from 17.2 million recipients in 2000 to 47.7 million in 2013 (one in seven Americans)! Where’s the “recovery”? Eleven million U.S. citizens today receive disability payments, 57.6 million receive Social Security (and growing rapidly), and 82 million households are on Medicaid.

It’s not our job to predict the future (divination is prohibited in the Torah). It is our responsibility to prepare for coming storms. Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it. America likewise has now become the victim of a leadership committed to everything we once abhorred. Every time I pass a military cemetery I’m reminded that it is filled with the bodies of patriots who gave their lives fighting everything that our current leadership is now committed to.

Our founders worked very hard to avoid the instabilities of a “democracy”: it was liberty and freedom that garnered their sacrifices. It was a constitutional republic they gave us—but our complacency and apathy has allowed it to get trampled into the dust of myopic expediencies. It is debatable whether it can ever be reestablished.

National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA)

One of the most extraordinary documents in human history—the Bill of Rights—has come to an end under President Barack Obama. Derived from sacred principles of natural law, the Bill of Rights came to a sudden and catastrophic end when the President signed the National Defense Authorization Act (2012 NDAA Sec. 1021), which grants the U.S. military the “legal” right to conduct secret kidnappings of U.S. citizens, followed by indefinite detention, interrogation, torture and even murder.

This is all conducted completely outside the protection of law, with no jury, no trial, no legal representation and not even any requirement that the government produce evidence against the accused. It is a system of outright government tyranny against the American people, and it effectively nullifies the Bill of Rights.

This is an evaporation of the very foundation of the U.S. Constitution: Separation of Powers; Rule of Law; Habeas Corpus; Posse Comitatus; Trial by Jury; Common Law (vs. Civil Law).

The light of freedom is quickly dimming, and you too are now heading into the age of deceit, the tyranny of a police state, and the slavery of debt. “The first victim in any war is the truth.”

Both Washington and Wall Street are desperately trying to create the impression of a recovery. They insist on measuring progress on consumption (CPI) rather than production. The difference—the deficit—is debt.

America is now the world’s largest debtor, frantically printing currency expecting that the foreign banks are foolish enough to overlook its eroding value: it’s the “greater fool theory” on steroids.

A Painful Assessment

There was a time when God clearly blessed America. However, we then outlawed Him from our schools and public places. We allowed our kids to be taught that the Creation itself was some kind of cosmic accident. We shredded the fundamentals of life: marriage, fidelity, and the sanctity of commitments—in our marriages and other relationships.

Now we wonder why our kids have no sense of destiny. They can’t even find a job! Cities and states are going bankrupt; law enforcement is unpaid; crime will increase. Critical requirements will be harder to come by. Martial law can be expected. 

One of the most frequent questions I get asked as I travel is, where is America in Bible prophecy? In the minds of many, it appears conspicuous in its absence of mention in the end-time scenario. There seems to be a clear depiction of Russia (Magog) and its allies, the Kings of the South (Egypt), the Kings of the East, and, of course, Israel, in the events leading up to Armageddon, etc. But the role of America, a superpower, seems noticeably absent. (This is not a burning issue among audiences in Europe, incidentally!)

Many conjectures spring from this ostensible omission. Some suspect that the United States may be allied with one of the more Biblically visible parties. As one explores each alternative speculation, it appears rather difficult to justify.

Others suspect that America may not be as dominant-for any of several reasons-by the time of the final climaxes. Some observers point to the possibility of a major economic decline, and others suggest a military or terrorist setback.

The Military Jeopardy

The apparent absence of the U.S. in Biblical prophecy might be due to a strategic military setback from either a nuclear exchange, an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack, or terrorist attacks. The U.S. might be collateral damage for involving itself in the Magog Invasion; it might be our missiles that fall on Magog and its allies, and we sustain retaliatory strikes in return.

Alternatively, Iran is currently practicing EMP procedures by launching Sahab-3 missiles from container ships in the Caspian Sea and detonating them at altitude. They appear committed to this path “for the good of Islam.” Just one nuclear bomb, at the right altitude, could return the United States to the nineteenth century-rather permanently. Perhaps an even more immediate threat comes from al-Qaeda. Some experts believe that a number of nukes are already in place. The potential upheavals are unimaginable and would seem to defy any effective preparations.

The Economic Plight

It is difficult--but essential--to gain a perspective on the financial predicament facing the United States. We need to understand the precariousness of the dollar, the impossible debt burden we collectively face, and the emergent storm clouds on our financial horizon. First, the mountain of debt we are facing.

President Bush and the 109th Congress together authorized and borrowed more money from foreign governments, banks, companies, and citizens than all the previous forty-two U.S. administrations combined. From 1776 to 2000, the first 224 years of U.S. history, forty-two U.S. presidents borrowed a combined $1.01 trillion from foreign governments and financial institutions. In comparison, the Bush administration borrowed $1.05 trillion.

The federal debt continues to increase through the largess and irresponsibility-and lack of accountability-of each administration that prostitutes its stewardship for political power. They disenfranchise the taxpayers by taxes and inflation. The government’s $7.9 trillion debt is rising by about $600 billion a year.

Without major budget cuts or tax increases, it could reach $11.2 trillion by 2010, and the interest alone would cost about $560 billion-the same as our current defense budget. Including future Social Security outlays, Medicare and Medicaid payments, the U.S. government is on the hook for an additional $44 trillion over the next twenty years.

This works as long as there are people who will continue to purchase the debt. Yet there is more. The trade deficits-the imbalances between our exports and imports-also continue to grow to alarming proportions; at an annualized rate of more than $800 billion per year. China solves its unemployment problems by selling us its subsidized goods and by lending us the money to buy them. We buy their goods by the carload; they buy our Treasury Bills by the carload.

The twin deficits of continued excessive federal spending and continued (and mushrooming) trade deficits are looming as very serious clouds on our economic horizon. We continue to enjoy our ostensible prosperity by borrowing from others.

If you combine America’s current annual $800 billion trade deficit with the government’s current account deficit of $300 billion, it becomes clear that we live on the rest of the world’s ability to lend us more than $1 trillion a year. The Treasury now depends on finding lenders that will supply us with about $3 billion per day. If they stop loaning us their money, our house of cards may have the gliding attitude of a brick.

The hope is that the mounting debts will be repaid by cheaper dollars (and other chicanery), preferably hidden from the rank and file taxpayer. The Federal Reserve (which is neither “federal” nor a “reserve”) is currently printing money as fast as it can to inject liquidity into our economic system. The M3 money supply topped $10 trillion for the first time in 2005, and has been growing in excess of a $2 trillion annual rate.

During Alan Greenspan’s tenure, the expanded use of debt-generated currency cut the value of the dollar in half. Ben Bernanke is regarded by critics as an advocate of expanding this inflationary strategy. (July 2007)

The Lord prophesied that before His return a Fourth Kingdom would arise, often referred to as ''the revived Roman Empire,'' that would crush and rule over all the other kingdoms of the earth (Daniel 7:23). In more common terms, this implies a global, one-world government will someday exercise total sovereignty over virtually all of the people and nations of the earth. This suggests that America will eventually surrender its own national sovereignty and submit to the power, authority, and dominion of the coming Fourth Kingdom. Furthermore, there are many who ask, ''Why hasn't God judged America?''

Billy Graham's memorable quip several decades ago pointed out, ''If God doesn't judge America, He will have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah!''

Thomas Jefferson expressed the same idea in 1781 when he opined, ''I tremble for my country when I recall that God is just, and His justice will not sleep forever.''

There are, at present, at least four emerging challenges to America: 1) Ezekiel 39:6, which hints at a nuclear exchange; 2) Al Qaeda, with its ''American Hiroshima''; 3) Iran, and its EMP threat; and 4) The collapse of the U.S. economy. It is this last one that is not widely understood.

Bretton Woods and Its Betrayal

The U.S. had positioned itself with this in mind before the war because it was known that America would end up supplying its allies with provisions, weapons, and thousands of other items during WW II, with the only acceptable form of payment being gold. Thus, the U.S. had accumulated a significant portion of the worlds gold by the conclusion of the war.

The Bretton Woods agreement worked well until the guns-and-butter policy of the 1960s was instituted and the money supply was expanded as never before to finance the Vietnam War and Lyndon Johnson's ''Great Society'' programs.

Crisis and Repudiation

A dollar crisis erupted in 1970-1971 when foreign central banks, who had been flooded with dollars funding U.S. deficits, began to demand payment for their dollars in gold according to the Bretton Woods agreement. The U.S. had printed so many dollars and borrowed so much money from foreign banks that U.S. gold reserves were rendered insufficient (by a ratio of over five to one!), making full payment in gold impossible. The crisis required an immediate solution to save America from default and bankruptcy.

The U.S. resorted to immediately severing the link between the dollar and gold, making it abundantly clear to all its creditors that America would never repay any of the billions of dollars it had borrowed with physical gold, so the depreciating paper dollars were then backed by nothing but the ''reputation'' of the U.S. Government.

The act of severing this link was functionally equivalent to an act of bankruptcy by the U.S. Government. However, because of its economic, political, and military power, no government on earth could oppose this action as they had no viable alternative. They were literally forced to continue accepting depreciating dollars in payment for their goods and services sold to America.

In order to ensure that the world had an economic reason to continue holding dollars, America made an agreement with Saudi Arabia wherein the Saudis would accept only U.S. dollars as payment for their oil. With this move the dollar suddenly became backed by the one commodity every nation had to have to survive: OIL! In order to buy oil one would have to own dollars to pay for it. Even though the dollar could no longer be exchanged for gold, it was now exchangeable for Black Gold: oil.

In exchange for accepting only U.S. dollars, America agreed to support the power and position of the House of Saud and to protect them if they were ever attacked by one of their neighbors. This guarantee was fulfilled when Saddam attacked Kuwait and threatened to attack Saudi Arabia in 1991. In the ensuing years world demand for oil continued to increase, and so did the demand for dollars, forcing foreign governments all over the world to accumulate increasing amounts of dollars in order to purchase their oil. Over time, world markets evolved to the point where other commodities such as wheat, corn, soybeans, natural gas, gold, silver, and many others were all traded in dollars. Thus, the position of the U.S. dollar as the worlds reserve currency was firmly established, as was the requirement of foreign central banks to accumulate dollars to pay for all these commodities purchased on the world market.

With this system firmly in place the U.S. could then print and borrow as much money as was needed without regard to any budget discipline whatsoever. As long as the dollar was the only acceptable means of payment for oil, its dominant position as the worlds reserve currency was assured, and America could borrow and spend whatever it wanted without fear of flooding the globe with excess dollars. The supremacy of the U.S. dollar as the worlds reserve currency ensured that America could dominate the world economically and politically, and could raise the necessary amount of cash through borrowings to fund (among other things) the military, making it the most formidable military power on earth.

U.S. fiscal discipline during the 80s and 90s was lax, but it was nothing compared to what was to take place under the current administration, which has embarked on the largest borrowing spree in the nations history. America began to experience larger and larger current account deficits as it spent billions more every month on goods and services than it sold abroad. During 2005, the current trade deficit increased to an annualized $800 billion! Total U.S. outstanding debt now exceeds a staggering $8 trillion dollars, of which a large majority is owed to foreigners.

This staggering mountain of debt poses one of the greatest threats to the economic survival of the United States if circumstances were to arise wherein the dollar was not the only currency that nations could use to pay for their oil. If nations suddenly had a choice as to whether to pay for oil in euros rather than dollars, the supremacy of the American dollar would be seriously threatened, along with its economic viability.

The primary risk for America, should this option become available, would manifest itself in reduced demand for dollars on the global foreign exchange markets, as nations would require fewer and fewer dollars to pay for their oil. Reduced demand for any item implies a lower price down the road, and this dynamic would doubtless result in a depreciating dollar relative to other global currencies. Foreign central banks, needing more euros to buy oil, would seek to denominate ever increasing amounts of their foreign currency reserves in non-dollar currencies.

This in turn would mean that America would find it increasingly more difficult to borrow the $3 billion dollars a day it must have to keep the U.S. economy afloat, pay the interest on $8 trillion dollars in debt, as well as continue to fund its enormous continuing deficit.

Why Did America Really Invade Iraq?

The stated reason by the Bush Administration for invading Iraq was that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction and was prepared to use them against Israel, Iraq's other neighbors, and possibly America. There are some that believe that the real reasons why America invaded Iraq are found in events and policy development that happened before the invasion but which were never revealed to the American public. There are two such reasons suggested:

First, to ensure that the dollar remained unchallenged as the worlds reserve currency, so that the U.S. could continue to fund its massive deficits and sustain its economy and its political and military supremacy. What does the dollar have to do with all of this and how does the invasion of Iraq fit into the picture?

It seems that Saddam sealed his fate in September 2000, when he demanded that all Iraqi oil sold under the U.N. Oil for Food Program must be paid for in euros rather than dollars. Saddam's actions were a direct threat to the supremacy of the U.S. dollar as the worlds reserve currency and the ability of the U.S. to continue to fund its massive deficits. This is born out by the fact that two months after the U.S. invaded Iraq, the Oil for Food program was terminated and all of the Iraqi euro accounts were switched back to dollars. No longer did the world have the option of buying oil from Iraq and paying for it in euros.

Forcing the Iraqi accounts to convert from euros to dollars cost the Iraqis a great deal of money because the dollar had fallen in value relative to the Euro by some 13%! Not surprisingly, this detail has never been prominently mentioned by the five U.S. major media conglomerates who control 90% of information flow in the U.S., but confirmation of this vital fact provides insight into one of the crucial -- yet overlooked -- rationales for the 2003 Iraq war.

The second possible reason for the Iraq war is hinted at in a 1999 speech given by Dick Cheney while he was still CEO of Halliburton:

By some estimates, there will be an average of two-percent annual growth in global oil demand over the years ahead, along with, conservatively, a three-percent natural decline in production from existing reserves. That means by 2010 we will need on the order of an additional 50 million barrels a day.

If the Vice President of the United States truly believed, as he stated before becoming Vice President, that world oil production was about to peak and go into decline, would this be sufficient motivation for the U.S. to ensure its economic survival by sending its military to Iraq in order to secure control over the second-largest oil and gas reserves on earth?

Who Opposed the War and Why?

The nations who vehemently opposed the war in Iraq were Russia, Germany, France, and China. The real underlying reason was never spoken of by the press or by the Administration. The reason all these nations opposed the war was because they all had contracts to purchase and develop Iraq's vast oil and gas reserves. American and British oil giants were excluded by Saddam and left out in the cold. It is significant that, after the U.S. conquered Iraq, most of these contracts and agreements with France, Germany, Russia, and China were canceled and given to U.S. and British Oil companies. To the victor go the spoils.

Saddam had begun the process of excluding American and British oil and gas corporations from acquiring stakes in Iraq's bountiful hydrocarbons in the spring of 1997. Relief to Iraqis and restored confidence in the durability of the Saddam regime by the international community had already begun to occur after the UN's Oil for Food scheme was introduced the previous December.

A consortium of Russian companies, led by the state-owned Luckily, took a 75 percent share (with the state-owned Iraq National Oil Company taking 25 percent) in a joint corporation to develop the West Qurna oil field in southern Iraq. This oil field holds 11 billion barrels of oil - a third of the total U.S. oil reserves. Then, China National Petroleum Corporation entered the scene and entered into an agreement to develop the Adhab oil field.

Chinas lead was followed by Total Societe Anonyme of France (now TotalFinaElf), which agreed to develop Nahr Omar oil field in the south - almost as bountiful a field as the West Qurna. Then Ranger Oil of Canada secured a $250 million contract for field development and exploration in the Western Desert, followed by India's Oil & Natural Gas Corporation and Reliance Petroleums signing of a deal to develop the Tuba oil field.

Without exception, almost all of the above contracts to develop, transport, and purchase Iraq's oil were canceled and declared null and void by the Bush Administration after the war was over. These same contracts were then awarded to British and American oil giants. It is readily apparent that securing control over the development, sale, transportation, and distribution of these oil and gas reserves for America and Britain was undoubtedly one of the primary reasons for the war in Iraq. This was undoubtedly grounded in the recognition that world oil production would peak sometime between 2006 and 2010.

In July 2003, two major oil companies agreed to buy 10 million barrels of Iraqi oil under the first long-term contracts to be offered by Iraq since the end of the war. BP, PLC and Royal Dutch/Shell Group of Cos. each had announced that they expected to ship two million barrels of Basra Light crude per month, starting in August and ending in December. They would load the oil on tankers at Iraq's Persian Gulf export terminal of Mina al-Bakr. This was a reward for British participation in the invasion and conquering of Iraq.

U.S. Executive Order #13303

The veracity of these actions appear confirmed by executive order. In May 2003, President George Bush issued Executive Order #13303, which stated:

...Any attachment, judgment, decree, lien, execution, garnishment, or other judicial process is prohibited, and shall be deemed null and void with respect to... all Iraqi petroleum and petroleum products and interests therein....

With this executive order the President granted American oil companies, or individuals who are involved in the production, transportation, or distribution of Iraqi oil, a lifetime exemption from any kind of legal action against them in the United States.

''In other words, if Exxon-Mobil or Chevron-Texaco touch Iraqi oil, anything they or anyone else does with it is immune from legal proceedings in the U.S.,'' explained Jim Vallette, an analyst with the Sustainable Energy & Economy Network of the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington D.C.

This action made it impossible for any of the nations who had their contracts nullified by the President to sue to reinstate them because the oil companies to whom they were given are immune from any judicial proceeding against them in the United States! ''Effectively, Bush has unilaterally declared Iraqi oil to be the unassailable province of U.S. and British oil corporations,'' Vallette added.

We can more often judge the true motives of nations and leaders not by what they say, but by what they do. Their actions reveal their true motives, not what they say for public consumption.

The Lifeblood of the American Economy

Oil is the lifeblood of the American economy. The U.S. has approximately 5% of the worlds population but consumes over 20% or more of the worlds daily oil production. What will be the consequences if we are rapidly approaching the time when world oil production peaks and the price of oil continues to skyrocket, choking off economic activity and creating massive unemployment?

With nations like China and India growing exponentially, the demand for oil cannot go anywhere but up. Where will the oil production come from to meet the demand of two nations that possess 2.4 billion people, as they seek to purchase new cars, trucks, tractors, and all of the other products that are petroleum based? Continuously increasing oil prices could at some point cause the U.S. economy to shrink to unimaginable levels. Almost everything we use today in our modern life has petroleum as its base: from plastics to fertilizer to gas for your car - they all utilize petroleum as their base. Food production is almost totally dependent upon fuel and fertilizers that are petroleum based.

Is the world really approaching a time when the price of oil will force the price of food to levels unknown in modern history? 

And I heard something like a voice in the center of the four living creatures saying, ''A quart of wheat for a denarius (a days wages), and three quarts of barley for a denarius; and do not damage the oil and the wine.'' -- Revelation 6:6

The IOB (Iranian Oil Bourse) could accelerate the already existent global trend of shifting foreign currency reserves from dollars to euros. ''Countries could begin the process of switching to euro reserves from dollar reserves and this could bring down the value of the U.S. currency. Imports would start to cost Americans a lot more. As countries and businesses convert their dollar assets into euro assets, the U.S. property bubble would, without doubt, burst.''4

If oil trades in euros, it is only a matter of time before wheat, soybeans, natural gas, gold, silver, copper, and all of the other major commodities will come to be traded in euros as well. Nations want to protect their own interests, and no nation wants to have its reserves denominated in a currency that is depreciating, but rather in one that is appreciating, or is at least stable.

As nations begin to choose the euro over the dollar, the U.S. Treasury's ability to finance the U.S. deficit and pay the interest expense on $8 trillion dollars will become increasingly more difficult. We will be forced to make some very hard choices in order to preserve our economy. Among the possibilities are: substantially raising taxes, making major cuts in spending in all areas (including the military), raising interest rates to whatever levels it takes to enable the U.S. Treasury to continue to fund the deficit, or simply by just printing money to fund the deficit, leading to sustained and possible hyperinflation.

These coming events could portend horrific economic consequences for the U.S. economy and for the lifestyle we have come to know and expect.

If this scenario begins to unfold, individuals who have excessive mortgage and credit card debt, or who have loans - personal or business - that float with the prime rate, will have to pay ever increasing interest rates, which at some point leads to massive defaults and bankruptcies. It appears that there could be substantial economic dislocations in America, probably leading to unemployment levels unknown in modern times, which would undoubtedly bring on severe financial distress for millions of Americans. The lifestyle we have enjoyed and have become accustomed to could change dramatically in the coming years.

The Missing Report Card

There is a new Chairman of the Federal Reserve System - regarded by many as the most powerful non-elected official in the world: Ben Benanke. (Under Greenspan's 18-year tenure, the U.S. dollars value was cut in half.) It will be important to watch how he deals with the forthcoming debt dilemmas.

Until 1971 the Federal Reserve System, also known as ''the Fed,'' defined the money supply as equal to the sum of currency in circulation (excluding bank vault cash) and demand deposits (checking accounts). This definition of the money supply ignored saving accounts and time deposits (accounts that earned interest but could not be withdrawn without penalty until they matured). Monetary authorities and economists became concerned that estimates of monetary growth could be misleading if those estimates ignored savings accounts and time deposits.

In 1971 the Federal Reserve began publishing measures of broader monetary supplies. The monetary aggregates were given the names M1, M2, and M3. M1 was comparable to the original money supply measure - that is, currency in circulation and demand deposits. M2 equaled M1 plus accounts such as savings accounts and small time deposits. M3 was an even broader measure, adding in larger time deposits. M3 is, in effect, a primary report card on the Fed and the control of inflation.

However, effective March 23, 2006, the M3 will now no longer be reported!

It is also significant to note that turnover has been continuing at the top posts of the Federal Reserve: Fed Vice Chairman, Roger Ferguson unexpectedly announced he was stepping down. This on the heels of the resignation of the Philadelphia Fed Regional Bank President Anthony Santomero, which followed resignations of two of the seven Fed Governor spots and six of the twelve Fed Regional Bank President posts over the preceding two years.

What do they see coming?

One World Currency

How could America, and the nations of the world, lose their sovereignty without a shot being fired? Can you imagine the panic that will take place in the markets of the world if the dollar crashes? With 70% of the worlds reserves held in dollars, nations may watch helplessly as their currency reserves evaporate as the value of the dollar plummets. Realize that the U.S. is now the worlds largest debtor. And the Bible cautions us, ''The borrower is servant to the lender.''

One solution to the forthcoming ''dollar crisis'' could be the creation of a ''one world currency,'' prophesied in the Bible. The leaders of the world will seek to establish a one-world currency. (Already we hear talk, in the hallways of the Bank of International Settlements, of an ''Amero,'' a unified currency for North America.)

To move toward a one-world currency, the world leaders would create and empower a world governing body that would have control over the creation, supply, and distribution of money worldwide. When a nation gives up its control over the printing of its money to someone else, it gives up its sovereignty (e.g., to the Fourth Kingdom described in the book of Daniel?).

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. -- Daniel 7:23

An electromagnetic pulse (EMP), triggered by a high-altitude detonation of a nuclear weapon, poses a considerable threat to our national security and is one of a small number of weapons that could be used to bring the whole of America to its knees. An EMP attack would strike what has become the United States' Achilles heel - its relatively unprotected, yet vital, technological infrastructure. 

An electromagnetic pulse is generated when a nuclear weapon is detonated above the earth's surface (at altitudes between 40-400 km). In such instances, the nuclear blast would interact with the Earth's atmosphere, ionosphere, and magnetic field to produce an EMP. In addition to the direct effects of the blast, the EMP would impact electrical systems across a wide geographical area. The amount of damage depends primarily on the altitude of the blast and the size of the nuclear warhead. 

Our growing dependence upon computers and other electrical systems has made us especially vulnerable to an electromagnetic pulse attack. 

An EMP could cripple the U.S. by knocking out electrical power, telecommunications and transportation, along with banking and financial networks. The loss of power would also limit our access to fuel and emergency services, as well as food and water supplies. Systems could be down for weeks, months, or even years. It would be as if the United States slipped back into the 19th century - before the advent of cell phones, computers, microwaves and many of the other modern conveniences on which we now depend. 

It has been nearly a year since the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse Attack released its findings. Its assessment was largely overshadowed by the report of the 9/11 commission, and thus did not garner much attention from the mainstream media. Dr. Lowell L. Wood, acting chairman of the commission, described the nature of an EMP attack: 

"...electromagnetic pulses propagate from the burst point of the nuclear weapon to the line of sight on the Earth's horizon, potentially covering a vast geographic region...simultaneously, at the speed of light. For example, a nuclear weapon detonated at an altitude of 400 kilometers over the central United States would cover, with its primary electromagnetic pulse, the entire continent of the United States and parts of Canada and Mexico." 

Senator Jon Kyl, who chairs the Senate Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology, and Homeland Security, wrote the following about the EMP threat in the April 15 edition of the Washington Post: 

An electromagnetic pulse attack on the American homeland is one of only a few ways that the United States could be defeated by its enemies - terrorist or otherwise. And it is probably the easiest. A single Scud missile, carrying a single nuclear weapon, detonated at the appropriate altitude, would interact with the Earth's atmosphere, producing an electromagnetic pulse radiating down to the surface at the speed of light. Depending on the location and size of the blast, the effect would be to knock out already stressed power grids and other electrical systems across much or even all of the continental United States, for months if not years. 

Few if any people would die right away. But the loss of power would have a cascading effect on all aspects of U.S. society. Communication would be largely impossible. Lack of refrigeration would leave food rotting in warehouses, exacerbated by a lack of transportation as those vehicles still working simply ran out of gas (which is pumped with electricity). The inability to sanitize and distribute water would quickly threaten public health, not to mention the safety of anyone in the path of the inevitable fires, which would rage unchecked. And as we have seen in areas of natural and other disasters, such circumstances often result in a fairly rapid breakdown of social order.

Starfish Prime

The existence of the electromagnetic pulse has been known since the 1940s, when nuclear weapons were being developed and tested.  However, because of a lack of data, the effects of an EMP were not fully known until 1962. At this time, the United States was conducting a series of high-altitude atmospheric tests, code named "Operation Fishbowl," in the Pacific Proving Ground. On July 9, 1962, a test known as "Starfish Prime" was conducted near Johnston Island at an altitude of about 400 kilometers. This 1.4 megaton bomb caused an EMP that disrupted radio stations, destroyed street lights, shut down automobiles and wreaked havoc on electrical equipment throughout the Hawaiian Islands, some 1,400 kilometers away from the site of the blast! 

The explosion even disrupted radio equipment as far away as Australia (the cause of the malfunctions was kept quiet). Consequently, in 1963, the United States and the Soviet Union signed the Atmospheric Test Ban Treaty to counter the considerable threat posed by EMPs. 

Researchers concluded that the electrical disturbances caused by Starfish Prime were the result of something known as the Compton Effect, theorized by physicist Arthur Compton in 1925. (Compton's assertion was that photons of electromagnetic energy could knock loose electrons from atoms with low atomic numbers.) 

Photons from the nuclear blast's intense gamma radiation knocked a large number of electrons free from oxygen and nitrogen atoms in the atmosphere. This flood of electrons interacted with the Earth's magnetic field to create a fluctuating electric current, which induced a powerful magnetic field. The resulting electromagnetic pulse induced intense electrical currents in conductive materials over a wide area. 

I recently had a discussion with Dr. William Graham, who is regarded as one of the most senior analysts within the "strategic community." He highlighted that an EMP device over the Midwest could disable the electric and electronic services to over 70% of the population.

It is important to note that an EMP of a lesser magnitude can be generated without the use of a nuclear weapon. The United States most likely has various non-nuclear EMP weapons or "e-bombs" in its arsenal, but it is not clear in what form. If they do indeed exist, they are still classified. However, we do know that much of the United States' EMP research is conducted at a laboratory at Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico and involves high-power microwaves. According to a study done for the Australian Air Force, the most likely way of creating weaponized high-powered microwaves is through a device known as a vircator. 

Because the source of the energy is a compact explosive, a vircator could fit inside bombs or cruise missiles. Deployed, they could disrupt a variety of enemy systems, from missile targeting and launch electronics to command-and-control systems. It is possible that they could penetrate hundreds of meters below the ground and reach underground bunkers. Larger, reusable weapons are also being developed for use on ships to disable incoming missiles such as China's Silkworm. 

An Imminent Threat

Both China and Russia are capable of executing an EMP attack. Furthermore, we know that both nations have considered the use of an EMP as part of a strategy to defeat the United States in battle. Russia in particular has a sophisticated understanding of EMP. During the test era, the Soviet Union did high-altitude atmospheric tests over its own territory, impacting civilian infrastructures. In May 1999, during the NATO bombing of the former Yugoslavia, high-ranking members of the Russian Duma alluded to a Russian EMP attack that could paralyze the United States. 

However, according to some experts, the more imminent threat to the U.S. is not Russia or China, but rogue states such as Iran and North Korea - and their terrorist allies. CIA Director Porter Goss recently testified before Congress about nuclear material missing from storage sites in Russia that may have found its way into terrorist hands, and FBI Director Robert Mueller has confirmed intelligence that suggests al Qaida is trying to acquire and use weapons of mass destruction. An EMP would have adverse effects on a larger geographical area and could be more easily orchestrated than a targeted nuclear attack on an American city. For this and other reasons, terrorists and rogue nations that possess relatively unsophisticated missiles armed with nuclear weapons may find an EMP to be the most effective means of assault. 

Terrorists planning to launch a nuclear weapon over American soil may sound like the plot of a Hollywood movie, but this isn't science fiction. The threat of an EMP attack is very real. 

Thomas C. Schelling, an economist and professor of foreign affairs, national security, nuclear strategy and arms control at the University of Maryland School of Public Policy, once wrote that we have "a tendency in our planning to confuse the unfamiliar with the improbable. The contingency we have not considered looks strange; what looks strange is therefore improbable; what seems improbable need not be considered seriously." 

Those words were written in regards to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. In that instance, American forces were taken by surprise and the result was catastrophic. Have we learned from our mistake or is history destined to repeat itself? Will we once again be taken by surprise by our adversaries? To some, an electromagnetic pulse may seem strange or even improbable, but we would be foolish not to take it seriously. (June 2005)

From Hal Lindsey, January 30, 2022: 

References

The Two Nimrods

East is East / West is West

Working Papers on Babylon

The Table of Nations

The Gog/Magog War

The 144 Thousand

A Song in the Night

EMP, HANE and NEMP Information from Wikipedia

Death of a Nation (Ray Stedman)

The Rising Again of Babylon

East is East and West is West

World War 3

The Antichrist: The Last World Leader

The Worthless Shepherd

The Assyrian  

Israel My Glory

Behold the Messiah

The Gog Magog Invasion of Israel 

Nations on the World Stage

Connecting the Dots: A Handbook of Bible Prophecy (November 2010)     
Online Book 

 

There is no Other Way (Blue Grass)

Let Praise Arise (Jewish)

1 I must needs go home by the way of the cross, 
There's no other way but this; 
I shall ne'er get sight of the gates of light, 
If the way of the cross I miss. 

Chorus:

The way of the cross leads home, (leads home,) 
The way of the cross leads home; (leads home;) 
It is sweet to know as I onward go, 
The way of cross leads home.

2 I must needs go on in the blood sprinkled way, 
The path that the Savior trod, 
If I ever climb to the heights sublime, 
Where the soul is at home with God. [Chorus] 

3 Then I bid farewell to the way of the world, 
To walk in it nevermore;
For the Lord says, "Come," and I seek my home 
Where He waits at the open door. [Chorus] 

Source: Baptist Hymnal 2008 #606

Author: Jessie Brown Pounds

Jessie Brown Pounds was born in Hiram, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland on 31 August 1861. She was not in good health when she was a child so she was taught at home. She began to write verses for the Cleveland newspapers and religious weeklies when she was fifteen. After an editor of a collection of her verses noted that some of them would be well suited for church or Sunday School hymns, J. H. Fillmore wrote to her asking her to write some hymns for a book he was publishing. She then regularly wrote hymns for Fillmore Brothers. She worked as an editor with Standard Publishing Company in Cincinnati from 1885 to 1896, when she married Rev. John E. Pounds, who at that time was a pastor of the Central Christian Church in Indianapolis.

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April 12, 2022. Updated: April 14, 2022