Satan Will Win for a Short Time

One of the most common complaints I hear from friends and family is their frustration over evil people always coming out on top. Years ago, some friends predicted that Hillary Clinton would eventually go to jail. I told them it will never happen because she is protected by Satan.

A good example of how powerful the devil is in his ability to protect humans can be found in the waning days of World War II. As Germany was losing the war, many Germans realized Adolf Hitler was a madman who needed to be stopped by any means. At least 42 attempts were made to take his life, and all failed in preposterously inconvenient ways.

Once you read some examples of these attempts, you would have to conclude that some unseen agent was protecting Hitler from harm:

An Iron Cross recipient at Nuremberg was going to stab Hitler in front of 1,000 soldiers at an assembly. Hitler had a cold that day and decided to go home early.

A bomb that was intended to blow up the Nazi leader in mid-flight failed to go off because cold weather hindered the reaction of the chemicals in the bomb.

An infantry captain made plans to explode a bomb while he demonstrated a new army winter overcoat to the German leader. The day before the bombing was to take place, a British air raid destroyed the uniforms. One general tried to kill Hitler with a concealed bomb that was to be detonated by acid. Unfortunately, Hitler left the building before the acid could act.

A bomb finally did go off next to Hitler. The Fuehrer was spared by a heavy desk that shielded him from the blast.

Another way that Satan wins is by being able to attack his enemies. I wince at the idea that Donald Trump is on the side of good. I can’t stand his arrogance and childlike behavior in political matters. I voted for him in two key elections because he was the far lesser of two evils. The best thing I can say about Trump is that Satan is clearly out to destroy him. The Don has had a special prosecutor investigating him for two years, he was impeached by Congress twice, the Jan 6th investigation is all about the former president, and now several state DAs are trying to dream up crimes that might apply to Trump.

Nearly every one of major status connected to Trump has had their lives turned upside down. His National Security Advisor, personal lawyer, several support lawyers, business manager, his friend Roger Stone, and campaign manager were all taken down when the FBI applied its vast resources against them. This situation is so ridiculous, I don’t think there has ever been more criminal investigation against one man in world history.

The left has turned over every legal stone, and they have failed to find any major crime on Trump’s part. There is a strong possibility that God is mocking the left by blinding them from finding anything that could convict Trump.

It’s not just Trump that gets special treatment. The IRS paid a ‘chilling’ visit to Matt Taibbi’s home during House testimony. Matt is a rare reporter that is known for giving truthful coverage of a news story. The IRS sent some of its goons to intimidate him. It is disgusting to have a branch of government think that it can scare people by just paying them a personal visit. Taibbi should ask if they were there to hand him his refund check.

The rivalry between God and Satan is often seen as a battle between two equally skilled chess masters, playing against one another to see whose plan will be victorious. This vision is totally fictitious. There never was a real contest between God and Satan, and there never will be.

God is in charge of everything that happens. His level of control is so absolute, He sets the stage for everything that will happen in the universe. How can Satan compete against a Being who knows every move he is going to make ahead of time? God does more than just rule the chessboard. He controls both the white and the black pieces.

The devil is so hopelessly outwitted, God published in the Bible many of Satan’s fatal mistakes far ahead of the time he made them. There are still some blunders yet to come. The Holy Word predicts that the devil will attempt to destroy the Jews and that he will make a stand against Jesus at the Battle of Armageddon. Both will end in total failure.

There are scary days ahead when Satan will be granted a lot more power than he has now. Luckily, the Church will escape the worst of these days. Tribulation saints will suffer greatly, but they are encouraged by the fact that Satan will completely lose in the end.

“And the Devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and sulfur, where are also the beast and the false prophet; and they shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever” (Revelation 20:10).

— Todd

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Scanning a Fearful Future XI

“Scanning a Fearful Future Part X” (the conclusion of the series) was completed early in 2011. We’ve revisited that series of articles on two additional occasions, I believe.

Likewise, we posted this article—a follow-up to that series—in September of 2022. I am convicted so strongly of the relevance of thoughts it contains that I must again put it before our readers. Again, I’m convinced that now, in April 2023, it’s time again to look ahead—”scan”— the ever-deepening march of humanity toward the consummation of this Genesis 6-like age.

Many prophecy watchers won’t agree with my take on the matters I present here because it’s not scripturally provable. But I don’t claim it is; admittedly, the thoughts I put forward are conjecture rather than necessarily Holy Spirit-prompted.

I do believe, however, that my thinking is legitimately evidence-based, considering my long-time Bible-centered observation and dissection of these wicked times.

My only reluctance in dealing with these matters stems from the frequently expressed realization that my thinking—like that of many of my colleagues—is too often—Amero-centric. That is, we too often consider our nation to be at the center of everything when we look at prophetic progression.

With all that as a preface, I nonetheless must once again say I see America as perhaps key to the wrap-up of the Church Age (Age of Grace).

Is America in Bible prophecy? That, of course, is among the questions often asked. Always, my answer is: No—not by name.

Is America the Babylon prophesied in Revelation chapter 18? My answer to that has evolved over much study to be “perhaps.” But, again, it can’t be proved to be that condemned city/system of evil that has afflicted all the world with sin. However, America is, almost undoubtedly, a part of that commercial and cultural system.

My belief that America fits within the final system of wickedness is confirmed with each news report. As stated on several occasions, considering the use and abuse of the most vulnerable among humanity is evidence of how far from the heart of God humankind has “progressed.”

The fact that such upside-down thinking and conduct are said to be “progressive” proves how culture in America has the “reprobate mind” of Romans 1:28. Those who claim to be “progressive” are, in fact, moving in the direction opposite of Heaven’s command to the human race. This mindset is inflicting on the very young the evil that can be churned only through minds attuned to the god of this world.

As stated before, history attests that every major civilization on record has come to its inglorious end while engaging in child sacrifice and unspeakable abuses by the adult generations during those times of collapse and demise.

Time and time again, we’ve looked at abortion in America today and have concluded that murder in the mothers’ wombs is, in the majority of cases, used as contraception to cover for sexual misconduct and/or irresponsibility. The practice can be likened to sacrifice upon the altar of convenience—like the pagans, and even Israel, once sacrificed infants upon the white-hot, stone hands of Moloch.

And now parents are dressing children as young as age four as transvestites and parading them in honor of LBTQ… etc., etc., rainbow, Genesis 6-like activities.

We have reports of all that went on with the Jeffrey Epstein island evil involving under-aged girls, and even of pedophilia among younger children who were abused in horrendous ways by well-known people. Yet the national media has swept all such reports under the proverbial rug of forgetfulness. And America has been at the direct center of all this anti-God activity. The most blessed nation in history—in terms of material blessings and perhaps second (only to Israel) in spiritual blessings—has become perhaps the most debauched, lascivious, licentious nation ever.

This brings me to the crux of this subject.

As some know, I believe Jesus prophesied the time of the Rapture. I don’t mean, of course, that He told us the day or hour, as He Himself said only the Father knows that. But I’m more convinced than ever that He gave conditions precisely as they’ll be when He calls believers into His presence.

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

And here is where I know I’ll receive some degree of resistance regarding my Amero-centric perspective on Jesus’ words of Luke 17:29–30.

“Likewise also as it was in the days of Lot; they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded; But the same day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all. Even thus shall it be in the day when the Son of man is revealed” (Luke 17:28-30).

Here Jesus likened the time He will next intervene into the affairs of humankind to the days when Lot lived and worked in Sodom. The very day Lot went out of that wicked city (out of which the angels led Lot and his family), judgment from God fell and totally destroyed both Sodom and its sister city, Gomorrah.

In this Luke passage, Jesus was referring to that moment–the Rapture. As we’ve looked at many times, He couldn’t be referring to the very end of the Tribulation, when as many as three-fourths of the earth’s population will have died during the seven years of God’s judgment and wrath. At that time—the time of His Second Coming (Revelation 19: 11)—it won’t be business as usual, as given in this prophecy. The few rebels left on the planet will be hiding in caves from God’s King who is coming through the scrolled-back blackness on the bright clouds of glory.

Now, to bring it down to our present closing hours of this age, I propose that the Lord might have had in mind a particular people and nation as He described how things will be at the moment of the Rapture.

Here goes my Amero-centrism again.

America today is the greatest nation in all of recorded world history in terms of spectacular advancements and achievements. It is the apex nation in this regard. No other has come close—that we know of…

We hear constantly that all the world is about to collapse in financial catastrophe, and even perhaps explode in nuclear war. These predictions have been around for years. Yet the world is buying, selling, marrying, planting, building—all the things Jesus prophesied for the time when, like in Lot’s time, God’s people will be removed from the earth.

While Europe is quickly dissolving in energy-crisis mode and the financial systems of the world seem about to collapse, Americans are still, like the folks of Sodom, living in ways Jesus described: we’re buying, selling, building, etc.

I maintain the Lord might well have had in mind this very nation we call America as the model for the future time of the removal of God’s people.

Our nation fits as the super-achieving, productive society and culture of Christ’s analogy. And certainly, at the same time, our society and culture align with the wickedness of Lot’s day.

Scanning a fearful future, to the Christian, is really to be scanning a fantastic future! All of this points to the blessed hope of Titus 2:13: Believers are on the very cusp of coming into the joint heirship with the Son of God we are promised.

“But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him” (1 Corinthians 2:9).

Even so, come, Lord Jesus!

—Terry

The Biggest Bank Bailout in History

Over the past few weeks, several large banks have failed or needed emergency loans to survive. The press and the Biden administration have done everything possible to avoid explaining what has caused the collapse. They have given the impression this the losses were generated by pure panic that fed on itself. If depositors had just trusted the government to fix things, all would be well.

The banking system is not sound. Most banks sit on losses that amount to at least $1 trillion. In trying to fight inflation, the Federal Reserve began increasing rates last March in what has become the sharpest rise in interest rates in banking history. As rates go up, the value of bonds goes down. A 10-year government bond that was worth $140 a year ago is now valued at $100.

The bank that has been given the most media coverage is Silicon Valley Bank. At its peak, SVB’s stock sold for $597.16 per share, with a market cap of $40 billion. When it was taken into receivership, the whole bank was sold for a single dollar. As it became clear that SVB was in trouble, people began withdrawing their money, forcing the bank to sell its bond portfolio at a huge loss. Within just a couple of days, the whole bank reached a negative value.

The management of SVB is blamed for not using proper risk management. The bank didn’t have insurance to protect itself against rapidly rising rates. When you have bonds trading at around 1%, it would be very expensive to find someone to bet that rates will remain low for several years. If SVB could buy insurance, it would be immediately applied against the bank’s balance sheet, hurting earnings.

What makes it dangerous to have your money in a bank is that they are not required to use mark-to-market accounting. This is a method of measuring the fair value of accounts that can fluctuate over time, such as assets and liabilities. Mark-to-market aims to provide a realistic appraisal of an institution’s or company’s current financial situation based on current market conditions.

A very important date is 12 Mar 2023. After taxpayers funded the bailout of the big banks in the Great Financial crisis, regulators said that any future rescues of banks would be done by bail-ins. The bank would be sold, money raised would cover the debts, and any money left over would go to depositors. People with $250,000 would be covered by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and get all their funds back. When the feds realized that as many as 500 tech firms could wipe out by this plan, regulators decided to go back to a full bailout. On that Sunday night, the taxpayers picked up $14 trillion in new obligations.

A complete bailout of all depositors creates a huge moral risk. The banks are being paid the full value of their bonds. If they lost billions on bad trades, the fed will make them whole. If Uncle Sam is going to make up any loss, the bank should just move its operations to Las Vegas.

JP Morgan strategist Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou believes that the Fed may inject $2 trillion of funds into the U.S. banking system to ease the liquidity crunch. These injection numbers are always low. It could easily balloon to $20 trillion when even foreign banks come for a handout.

The most troublesome thing about this crisis is how fast it has occurred. When Bear Stearn went bankrupt in Mar 2008, the next shoe to drop in the Great Financial Crisis didn’t occur until 5 months later. This time around, the first to go down was Silvergate; a week later, Silicon Valley Bank collapsed; Signature Bank was a couple of days later; 72 hours later, Credit Suisse Group needed a $50 billion loan; and as I’m writing, 11 big U.S. banks swooped in to rescue First Republic Bank with a flood of cash totaling $30 billion.

You can’t have a true banking crisis without the Treasury Secretary assuring us that all is well. I think Janet Yellen got the job done: “I can reassure the members of the committee that our banking system remains sound and that Americans can feel confident that their deposits will be there when they need them,” she said. “This week’s action demonstrates our resolute commitment to ensure that depositors’ savings remain safe.”

Fed chief Jerome Powell clearly has no idea of what he is doing. Two weeks before the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, he warned Congress that more rate increases were needed to get Inflation under control. Once SVB imploded, he instantly abandoned the belt-tightening and poured $2 trillion in more funds into the banking system. The Fed’s balance sheet has already gone up by $300 billion, which wipes out 8 months of quantitative tightening.

I’ve frequently pointed out that the hand of God is the only reason why the economy holds together. Since 2008, we’ve had around a dozen events that could cause a 1929-style crash, so it’s a divine miracle that we’ve survived each crisis. The people running the show become more corrupt with each passing

–Todd

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God’s Prophetic Microscope

Convergence of all indicators signal that this generation almost certainly is the one that will experience Daniel’s seventieth week—the seven-year Tribulation. We look at the signals every week in these commentaries, usually in considerable depth.

Despite the importance of each of these indicators, a couple of specific ones have emerged that we should focus on intensively. That’s why I liken “focus” in these particular prophesies to being under “God’s microscope.”

These two indicators are becoming more sharply defined by the day while we watch things unfold in hourly news feeds. Hopefully, shining biblical light directly on these matters will present an unmistakable image that leaps into our spiritual sensors.

Wars and Rumors of Wars

The first prophetic indicator most terrifying. That is, it used to be the most terrifying, as we’ve looked at before in these articles.

And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. (Matthew 24:6)

This prophecy of Jesus, I thought, seemingly was being fulfilled when I was a teenager many years ago.  

This, as I say, used to be the most terrifying matter. I remember in 1958, as a high school student, being quite troubled while reading a headline during study hall in the school library. The headline at the time of the Cold War warned of nuclear weaponry that had, in testing, dissolved entire islands in the Pacific. If America went to war with the Soviet Union, there would be little to no chance of survival—that was the dire prognosis. 

Back then, there were fears and rumors going around amongst us teenagers that America and the USSR were going to war and the world would come to an end.

This seems so strange now, in light of that all has transpired over the decades. Teens today (and a few adults), as far as I can discern, harbor little such fear. I can’t see a teenager today looking at newspaper articles to find out if nuclear war is about to break out. Of course, that whole concept of newspapers among kids today is perhaps a non sequitur; the logic doesn’t follow. Newspapers aren’t really part of communications these days. Neither, however, are students looking on their devices for news of impending nuclear war between Russia and America.

Some might be concerned with climate change, but most are just concerned about conducting their lives through social media, without anxiety over wars and rumors of war.

Yet the Lord Jesus Christ gave this prophecy as a primary signal to look for when the age is on the cusp of His return. Thus, believers should be looking for a profound increase in war and rumors of war.

In my thinking, there is now the greatest likelihood of nuclear war occurring to this point in modernity. That is, if we consider that the Western alliance, led by the present US presidential administration, NATO, and the globalists elite within the World Economic Forum and other nongovernmental organizations seem to be poking that bear. There is an obvious effort to try to get Vladimir Putin to go nuclear, at least in the tactical sense.

But God’s restraining hand is preventing such a catastrophic conflict that would almost certainly take place should the New World Order builders be able to provoke the Russians into using nuclear weapons in the Ukrainian war.

The fact is, we are precisely where Jesus prophesied the end-times generation would be in terms of wars and rumors of wars. This is, therefore, one of today’s two most significant matters to observe intensively under God’s prophetic microscope.

The second to look at—and even more significant, in my opinion—is the matter of the paradox we observe in America in particular. I go back again, maybe for some to the point of ad nauseam, to the prophecy of the Lord Jesus as recorded in Luke 17:28–30.

The Economy and Business and Usual

The love of money, the Bible tells us, is the root of all kinds of evil. We’ve been shown throughout the years of suffering modern wars and rumors of wars that the military-industrial complex President Dwight Eisenhower warned us about has fed the flesh and blood of the young into the war-machine grinder. Great wealth continues to be derived from the production and sales of this machine of horror. For the Russian and the Ukrainian people, this is fully in effect at the moment. And it’s not difficult to discern that the entire globalist New World Order cabal is pushing to bring America and Europe’s youth into that war-machine grinder.

The economy, then, is predicted by Jesus Himself to be prevalent and even in more pronounced ways at the very moment leading to His next catastrophic intervention into the evil affairs of humankind.

The paradox is found in that, at the same time, business is going on as usual—quite vigorously. Wickedness is flowing like a raging river just beneath the seeming normalcy of the time. Money is being made hand over fist at the same time the most wicked, debauched things imaginable are going on in the dark, sinful places of society and culture…all just like in the days of Lot.

Here again is Jesus’ prophecy that places our time, societies, and cultures—particularly here in the apex nation, America—as they were in the days when Lot was removed and God’s judgment began to fall on Sodom and Gomorrah.

Likewise also as it was in the days of Lot; they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded; But the same day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all. Even thus shall it be in the day when the Son of man is revealed. (Luke 17:28–30)

This is, in my opinion, the most critical prophecy to view through the prism of God’s microscope at this moment. This condition in America and the world today puts this generation right at the very end of the Age of Grace (Church Age) and at the point of entering the Tribulation.

The rumors of nuclear war will, shortly after the Rapture, quickly begin to roar within the judgments of Revelation. It’s time to realize the signals God is allowing those who are His own as a heavenly heads-up.

“And when these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh.” (Luke 21:28)  

—Terry