Anti-Russian Sentiment at Danger Levels

U.S.-Russia relations have been in a downward spiral ever since Russia’s 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula. Another catalyst for friction is Russia’s alleged meddling in the U.S. presidential elections in 2016.

The left is so fixated on taking down the Trump Administration that they have built Russia into the source of all evil. Vladimir Putin is a ruthless dictator, but there is reason why we need to pay him some measure of respect—he is the only person on the planet who can destroy the United States at will.

In July, Democrat Operative Paul Begala suggested to a CNN panel that we should retaliate by bombing Russia’s KGB headquarters over the alleged election interference. There were six people at the table, and no one bothered to point out the craziness of bombing a nation with 2,000 nuclear weapons aimed at us.

President Trump and Putin have personally tried to smooth relations, but the Washington establishment has been able to veto any plans for de-escalation. Congress recently voted to put new sanctions on Russia. The bill passed the House by 419-3 and the Senate 98-2; which is a rare bipartisan vote for a Congress that is deadlocked on most issues.

A series of tit for tat diplomatic expulsions began last December when President Obama kicked out 30 Russian diplomats from the U.S. and seized Russian diplomatic compounds in New York and Maryland. The Kremlin waited until late July—in hopes the Trump Administration would reverse the course set by its predecessor. But then it ordered the U.S. to reduce its diplomatic staff in the country by 755 people and seized two U.S. diplomatic properties in Russia.

In response, the U.S. ordered Russia to shut its consulate in San Francisco. Because the Russians were only given a couple days to clear out, they had to frantically burn secret documents. The local media made light of the smoke pouring from the roof.

The latest retaliatory measures had Moscow pulling U.S. diplomats parking privileges.

Several Hollywood celebrities have joined the anti-Russia bandwagon. Director Rob Reiner has helped form a new group called the Committee to Investigate Russia, to highlight what is known about the Russian threat to interfere with American elections and other institutions. Morgan Freeman made a bizarre PSA for this group saying, “We Are at War With Russia.”

The constant attacks against Russia will likely motivate Putin to cause trouble for America. There are already signs that he is working to undermine the sanctions against North Korea. At least eight North Korean ships have left Russia with a cargo of fuel and they are headed for their homeland despite declaring other destinations. U.S. officials say that changing destination mid-voyage is a hallmark of North Korean state tactics to circumvent the international trade sanctions.

There are also signs that Russia is allowing smugglers to sneak goods across the Russian and North Korean border. If there is clear evidence of Moscow’s violation of the sanctions, our relations with Russia will obviously go from bad to worse; if that is even possible at this point.

Another way for Russia to get back at America is to cause trouble for our key ally, Israel. Putin has been allowing Iran to ship weapon’s into Syria. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was so concerned about Iran’s presence in Syria, he flew to Moscow to meet with Putin. They came to an agreement that Russia will play a pivotal role in maintaining “The peace.”

“Putin doesn’t want to lose Iran or Israel,” said Andrey Kortunov, director general of the Russian International Affairs Council.

We know from prophecy that Russia is going to side with the Arabs in an attack on Israel. I don’t know if this rabid hatred of all things Russian will be a direct cause of the Gog-Magog invasion. It certainly creates the environment for Putin to make a daring move that would shock the world.

“And the word of the LORD came unto me, saying, Son of man, set thy face against Gog, the land of Magog, the chief prince of Meshech and Tubal, and prophesy against him, and say, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I am against thee, O Gog, the chief prince of Meshech and Tubal:

And I will turn thee back, and put hooks into thy jaws, and I will bring thee forth, and all thine army, horses and horsemen, all of them clothed with all sorts of armour, even a great company with bucklers and shields, all of them handling swords” (Ezekiel 38:1-4).

–Todd

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Revelation 12 Disappointment or Determination

Saturday, September 23, 2017, has come and gone by the time you get this. I’m writing this on Sunday, September 17, 2017. If you are reading this when it is posted on the evening of September 24, 2017, or later, and you know Christ for salvation, the Rapture hasn’t occurred.

If you aren’t reading this because you are no longer on the planet, or it was never posted because there was no one here to post it, then my commentary is inconsequential. But if you are a believer and you invested heavily in the notion that the date, September 23, and the Revelation chapter 12 Scripture pointed to the Rapture of the Church, you might find the considerations herein worthy of your time.

This is not to point fingers of shame at those who were invested in the September 23 date as tied to Revelation 12. There were many chronological and astronomical/astrological statistics and postulations to support a case that the date and the signs in the heavens meant something of prophetic significance was afoot.

Many–including some colleagues and friends of mine–believe that the sign in the stars that converged on September 23 didn’t necessarily point to the Rapture. They believe these strange comings-together of astral bodies is a confirmation from the Lord that the end times are here and Christ coming to put an end to man’s rebellion is imminent. These same colleagues and friends, thus believe–and I agree–that they haven’t violated the “doctrine of imminence” regarding the unknown time of the Rapture of the Church.

I won’t attempt to defend those who did dogmatically predict that September 23, 2017, was definitely when the Rapture would happen. There is no pinpointing the exact day and hour of Christ’s coming for the Church. Jesus said so.

To make such predictions is to enter into the folly that so many down through the years have entered. The result is the same. The Rapture did not occur on September 23. What else can be said?

Their disappointment, if they were totally invested in the proposition of Rapture on September 23, is no doubt profound. I, myself, wish it would have happened on that date. As a matter of fact, I prefer that the Rapture happen right now while I’m writing this on September 17.

Now, what do we do from this point forward? I believe we go from disappointment to determination.

We don’t have to look at perceived astronomical, astrological, and other anomalous signs to know that Christ’s return is imminent. We don’t have to look longingly each year for the Jewish holy days–the feasts, etc.–in thinking on the Rapture of the Church.

There are signals of the prophetic stage-setting sort that make it crystal clear concerning the time and season in which this generation finds itself.

The Gog-Magog coalition is practically 100 percent formed. Russia (Rosh), Iran (Persia), Turkey (Torgomah), and all the Arab world of the Middle East are gathering north of and surrounding Israel.

China and the kings of the east are growing in strength and leering westward.

The globalists elite and their minions are in a rage to bring in the Antichrist regime, even though they perceive their quest as attempting to establish Utopia.

The nations of the world are in economic and civil chaos. They are in perplexity with great distress at the center of their troubles.

There is a developing religious universalism in which the pope and many so-called Protestant pastors are proclaiming many ways to God and salvation.

Nature seems to be spinning up as part of the great end-times storm that is most certainly on its way.

Rather than suffer in the throes of disappointment because dates and prophetic events don’t work out to fit human calculus, let us be determined to serve our individual and corporate–heavenly–purpose. Let us lift the Name of Jesus during the time between now and when He comes for us who are called by His Holy Name.

We are not left without understanding of the lateness of these last days.

Ye are all the children of light, and the children of the day:
we are not of the night, nor of darkness. (1 Thessalonians 5:5)

Even so, come, Lord Jesus.

–Terry

The Yellowstone Area Continues to Rumble

The greatest natural disaster threat to America is the Yellowstone caldera. We could be hit be 1000 category 5 hurricanes and still be nowhere near the danger of this super volcano in Northwest Wyoming. It  only explodes once in a distant blue moon but when it does, the volume of ash is stunning. During its last eruption 100 cubic miles of ash were deposited over half of the continental U.S.

A Yellowstone eruption would simply mean the end of the United States as we know it. The population of several states would drop to zero. The breadbasket of the Midwest would be decimated. The eruption event could go on for over many decades.

The federal government has been eternally optimistic about the Yellowstone earthquakes. When they began in June of this year the U.S. Geological Survey said they would only last a few days.

Yellowstone is now the site of the longest earthquake swarm ever recorded with 2,357 quakes registered since June. There was a swarm in 1985 that recorded 3,000 earthquakes, but it ended after three months. Yellowstone shows no sign of going back to sleep.

The ticking time bomb of Yellowstone became all the more concerning when another swarm of earthquakes began just down the road in Southeast Idaho. The earthquakes began shortly before 6 p.m. on September 2nd. On that day, Soda Springs registered a magnitude 5.3 earthquake. This is the largest event since 1983, when Idaho’s biggest earthquake, a 6.9 temblor rocked for about a minute at the Lost River Fault beneath Borah Peak (Idaho’s tallest mountain).

Since the September 2nd, 10 quakes in the 4 magnitude have occurred. Bannock County Sheriff Lorin Nielsen said he’s been a law enforcement officer in Southeast Idaho for over 40 years, and during that time there’s never previously been so many earthquakes occurring in such a short time frame.

The U.S. Geological Survey says that the Idaho quake is not directly related to the Yellowstone caldera. Since Soda Springs sits in an active volcanic region, it has some connection to the plumbing of the underground magma chamber.

The people who think the government is hiding information from us have all the more reason to wonder when NASA offered a solution to the problem of a Yellowstone eruption; the space agency has hatched a plan to prevent it from happening by drilling into the volcano and pumping in cooling water.

The Department of Energy and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology already assessed what it would take to tap the caldera. An MIT model assumed that we could withdraw 20 gigawatts of power. That’s approximately the power generation of 10 coal-fired Power Plants.

The model calls for 160 injection wells that would need to drill down to around 4 miles underground. Individually, the wells would be spaced about every 0.9 miles along Yellowstone’s boundary and use directional drilling techniques to bore into the magma chamber.

Water would be pumped through the boreholes into the hot rock and then return to the surface at a temperature of more than 600 degrees Fahrenheit. This would then be used to drive turbines and generate electric power.

Nations like Iceland have made use of volcanic steam that comes to the surface of the earth. There is no country that has drilled into a lava chamber to tap its energy. The key reason is that the technology does not exist. The extreme heat would make this type of deep drilling impossible.

Even if we had the right technology, it would take hundreds of years to cool down the Caldera. The magma chamber under Yellowstone is enormous in size, measuring 30 miles by 45 miles and hundreds of miles deep. The volume of water needed to cool such a large magma body would be enormous. We would need to pump the volume of a great lake into the magma system to even make a dent.

I suppose it is unlikely that Yellowstone will blow up and kill us all. If it doesn’t go back to sleep, it seems questionable that the government would ever raise the danger level. The world is in the grip of such a profound state of spiritual blindness that the most reasonable attempt to curtail risk is beyond reach.

“The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel that displays the glory of Christ, who is the image of God” (2 Corinthians 4:4).

–Todd

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Seduction in the Storm

We are currently writing a book called Deceivers: Exposing Evil Seducers and Their Last-Days Deception.” I say “we” are writing it, because it is to be one of my books that presents a compilation of chapters by some of the most recognizable names. These include Todd Strandberg, Jan Markell, Dr. Dave Reagan, Gary Stearman, Dr. Gary Frazier, and others.

Jesus, while sitting on the Mount of Olives with His disciples nearly two millennia ago, gave as His first forewarning that, in the last days, deceivers will be in abundance. Certainly, there is deception at every level at this present time in human history.

Ruminating over the book we are in process of writing, the thought came that we have on the front burner of headline news a storm-like combination of signals harboring seduction and deception that begs exposure.

The primary foretellings I would like to look at that Jesus gave while answering His disciples’ question—“What will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?”—include the following:

1) There will be distress of nations with perplexity.

2) There will be wars and rumors of wars.

3) There will be earthquakes in various places.

4) The seas and waves will be roaring.

5) Nation will rise against nation.

During all of this last-days storminess, Jesus said, there will be deceivers and great deception. Again, this is the subject of our upcoming book. But, I would like to consider for our purposes here a peculiar seduction within the end-of-days storm that is assaulting this generation:

1)There will be distress of nations with perplexity.

We have only to consider recent news to validate this Olivet prophecy by the Lord.

The national and world economic distresses are phenomenal. America’s own national debt is right at $20 trillion. The unfunded liabilities for the nation exceeds $200 trillion. The world at large has economic circumstances that are maybe not so large, but just as perplexing to those trying to deal with the problem.

2) There will be wars and rumors of wars.

There exists at present, one of the most troubling confrontations since the Cuban missile crisis of 1962.

The North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un threatens to launch hydrogen bomb tipped ICBMs at the U.S. and our possessions and allies. Whether he has this capability is a matter of conjecture. But, the threat is there.

Other rumors of potential wars can be found without effort simply by thinking on Israel and those blood-vowed to remove the Jewish state from the planet.

The cold war might again become reality in the near future. This, with Russia and China building massive military forces even at the expense of Russia’s already-dire economic circumstances on the one hand and China’s desire to, for its own benefit, interact commercially with other nations on the other.

Rumors of war are everywhere one looks on the geopolitical horizon.

3) There will be earthquakes in various places.

Most recently, while hurricanes Harvey and Irma devastated portions of the U.S. mainland, an 8.2 earthquake struck Mexico.

Swarms of earthquakes up to 5.3 on the Richter Scale continue to shake the infamous Yellowstone caldera region, causing alarm even among seasoned, professional seismologists.

Earthquakes make much of the Middle East quiver on a regular basis. They are occurring in “various places” at most every hour of every day.

4) The seas and waves will be roaring.

There’s no question that the literal seas and waves have been roaring as of late. Again, Harvey and Irma were given 24/7 coverage on practically every news channel over recent days.

But, I believe the Lord was prophesying mainly about figurative seas and waves roaring in this particular foretelling while atop Mt. Olivet.

The peoples of the world are indeed in tumult. Europe is rioting because of economic turbulence. The Arab world is often in tumult against the hated Israel and against each other. America boils with clashes fomented in many cases by thugs paid to stir trouble in our city streets.

The seas and waves, both figurative and literal, are roaring.

5) Nation will rise against nation.

We have looked many times at the term “nation” in this prophecy Jesus gave.

The root of the word for “nation,” here, is the Greek word ethnos. This means that in the days just before Christ’s Second Advent (Revelaton 19: 1) there will be great strife of one racial group against another.

Certainly, these kinds of conflicts exist at this very moment everywhere across the planet –including within our own borders. All we must do to understand this is to look at the groups known as the white supremacists and Black Lives Matter to see the reality of this prophecy taking place in our own time. –And we are at least seven years away from Christ’s Second Advent when Armageddon will be raging.

So, we can conclude that we are in the beginning of the great, end-times storm about which Jesus forewarned. Now, to look at the peculiar seduction that I believe is taking place as part of Satan’s deception that is, perhaps, at the eye of this prophetic storm.

The following news story, I hope, will help make the point I wish to make.

Sure, the US has a National Flood Insurance Program, but who’s covered by it? Besides, the Program was already $24 billion in debt by 2014 largely due to hurricanes Katrina and Sandy. With total costs of Harvey estimated at $200 billion or more, and Irma threatening to cause far more damage than that, where’s the money going to come from?

It took an actual fight just to push the first few billion dollars in emergency aid for Houston through Congress, with four Texan senators voting against of all people. Who then will vote for half a trillion or so in aid? And even if they do, where would it come from?…

Trump’s plans for an infrastructure fund were never going to be an easy sell in Washington, and every single penny he might have gotten for it would now have to go towards repairing existing roads and bridges, not updating them -necessary as that may be-, let alone new construction.

Towns, cities, states, they’re all maxed out as things are, with hugely underfunded pension obligations and crumbling infrastructure of their own. They’re going to come calling on the feds, but Washington is hitting its debt ceiling. All the numbers are stacked against any serious efforts at rebuilding whatever Harvey and Irma have blown to pieces or drowned. (“After the Storms Are Over: America Can’t Afford to Rebuild, Zero Hedge,”By Tyler Durden, September 10, 2017)

The author paints the direst portrait of the results the storms will bring to America. (You must read the complete piece to get the full impact.) And, I would agree completely with his assessment of the situation–that is, if I didn’t know “the rest of the story,” as Paul Harvey used to say.

The world’s economies, as I have written many times, are intricately, inextricably linked to that of America. That’s why I build my thoughts on things that are likely to happen–prophetically speaking–upon the American model. If this nation implodes—comes crashing down–the whole world will be sucked into the vortex caused by the collapse.

Jesus tells us that, like in the days of Noah and of Lot, people at the time of his next catastrophic intervention into history will be buying, selling, planting, and marrying–doing all the normal activities of life. I believe, because it is Jesus who predicts the buying, selling, etc.,– that it will be far more than normal in its reality. I believe we are about to see an economic boom.

Somehow, some way–I don’t presume to know how–all of the destruction taking place now because of the hurricane damage might well turn out to be catalyst for the prophesied building, buying, and selling Jesus foretold that day atop the Mount of Olives.

The “seduction” I believe wrapped up in all of this might well reside within the good economic times that could result from the rebuilding—i.e., the economic boom that might be on its way might take people’s thoughts even farther from God. The seduction just might produce the think-not generation that Jesus prophesied will be doing anything but giving consideration to God and eternity:

Therefore be ye also ready: for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh. (Matthew 24:44)

Donald Trump is a builder perhaps unparalleled in history. Could it be that he is president of the United States for just this moment in regard to Jesus’ days of Noah, days of Lot prophecy?

–Terry