Sleepwalking Into an Energy Disaster

For many years the US government warned Germany of the dangers of becoming dependent on Russia for its supply of natural gas. Germany ignored our advice and proceeded to become all the more addicted to Russian natural gas. As of last year, Germany imported 80% of this form of fuel from Russia.

In 2018 President Trump spoke in a UN speech about how dangerous it was for Germany to become dependent on Russia. The German diplomats at the UN openly laughed at Trump. Now that Russia has cut off the supply of natural gas to the German economy, no one in Berlin is laughing. The brutal invasion of Ukraine by Russian troops has forced the European Union to pull away from Moscow.

The EU’s 27 member states agreed to voluntarily cut gas consumption by 15% between August and March 2023. The ultimate plan is to cut all oil and gas imports from Russia. Here are some early steps that nations are taking to break the dependence on Russian natural gas:

In Germany, Cologne’s magnificent cathedral — normally lit throughout the night — now goes dark overnight. Public buildings, museums, and other landmarks — such as the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin — will no longer be illuminated overnight either.

In France, Shopkeepers will now be fined for keeping doors open and air conditioning running, a common practice.

In Spain, Congress agreed to temperature limitations — air conditioning no cooler than 81 degrees Fahrenheit.

In Italy, air conditioning in schools and public buildings has already been limited in what the government labeled “Operation Thermostat.”

Europe is facing an energy crisis, and most people still don’t grasp its full magnitude. Natural gas is very hard to move from one place to the other. You cannot store large quantities of it. Some nations’ operating plan is to buy natural gas from Norway. It will take each one of them a few years to tap into Norwegian gas fields. The question is, what are they going to do this year?

It is very dangerous to become over-dependent on one form of energy. Many areas of China rely heavily on hydropower for the production of electricity. A drought has forced China to close factories because there is not enough water to run turbines. Texas learned about the need for energy diversity when cold weather in 2019 greatly hampered its supply of natural gas for electrical production. I had no idea that cold weather can freeze up gas wells.

It has become very popular to ban the usage of fossil fuels by a given date. The California Air Resources Board just approved regulations that ban the sale of new gas-engine vehicles by 2035, requiring all new cars to run on electricity or hydrogen. Despite the strong demand for electric cars, sales made up only 3% of total car sales last year. The board mandated that by 2025, 40% of all cars should be carbon neutral.

There is no chance we will meet this goal. They might as well vote that all cars should be able to fly by 2030. We do not have the capability of transmitting the power needed to charge that many vehicles. We do not produce enough key metals to build that many cars. Something in the order of about 90% of the lithium that’s used in batteries is processed in China right now, which is not a desirable situation. The Democratic Republic of Congo produces 70% of the world’s supply of cobalt. With an average price of an electric vehicle currently $66,000, most people cannot afford one.

The Paris Agreement on climate change is a key reason why energy prices are so high. As soon as it was adopted by 196 Parties on 12 December 2015, oil companies quit investing in fossil fuels. Seven years later, we are still using these products, and they are at record highs in price.

Some people are waking up and are trying to prepare for the coming energy disaster. In Poland, people have lined up for days to buy coal. A small town in Germany of 60 people has been stockpiling sawdust to power homes and businesses.

There has been one factor that has forced people to face reality. In the past few months, businesses have started receiving shocking gas and electricity bills. One pub owner in Great Britain was told her annual gas bill would go from $30,000 to $60,000 over the next year. Most bills have doubled, but some have gone up as much as 500%. Millions of businesses still weak from the COVID-19 lockdown will be forced to close forever.

I firmly believe that demonic insanity is the only way to explain why world energy policies have become removed from basic common sense. As the world becomes more evil, the devil has greater control over the minds of people.

“But evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived” (2 Timothy 3:13).

–Todd

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Critical Race—Not Theory

If there is one term in today’s upside-down culture that pushes the button that brings division in America, it is the word “race.” But concerning the life of the Christian, that is a word that should trip movement diametrically opposite of division in the spiritual minds of those who claim Christ as Lord.

I’m referring, of course, not to the colors of the skin of humanity, but to the force with which the believer runs his or her course that is assigned by God beginning with the believer’s new birth. Running the race set before us in the right way never brings division, but oneness in the most critical matter in God’s holy eyes.

The race is that of believers in Christ following the course set for each of us individually. But the collective race is for the high calling of our Lord Jesus Christ. That call unifies the Body of Christ. It does not divide one from another in the family of God.

What is that calling? It is found in the Great Commission, the commandment with which the Lord left the apostles who stood gawking upward as He ascended (Acts 1: 9-10).

“Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen.” (Matt 28: 19-20)

While obeying this one commandment—the Great Commission—is a critical collective effort that includes every believer of the Church Age (Age of Grace), obeying Christ’s last words (what He said before He ascended) is just as critical to each person who follows Jesus. How we run this race throughout our lives determines our eternal future. We are running it at this very moment. We—you and I—have been in this race since the moment we were born into the family of God.

And no matter our station in life in our jobs, health, society, wealth, class, or any other, we each have a certain course God set for us at our new birth. We are, individually, to run our race with all that is within us, as we let the Lord lead (Proverbs 3:5–6).

The words that frame this race we’re in were indelibly stamped into my spirit on that Good Friday, April 22, 2011—the clinical death I experienced three times within forty-five minutes, according to hospital records. The scriptural application has been with me every day since.

“Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.” (Hebrews 12:1–2).

Those who have read of that experience know of my report of the race I perceived I was a part of, surrounded by young, beautiful, heavenly beings with their arms raised in victory. We were running, I’ve been told in my spiritual understanding, to serve as, in part at least, encouragement to finish this earthly, spiritual race in which we as believers are presently participants. That’s why I continue to share the matters involved with my fellow believers. I am convicted I must.

We’re not running this sometimes very difficult course in vain. Paul said further:

“Know ye not that they which run in a race run all, but one receiveth the prize? So run, that ye may obtain. I therefore so run, not as uncertainly; so fight I, not as one that beateth the air: But I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection: lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway.” (1 Corinthians 9:24–27)

As we observe the prophetic stage-setting that is literally bursting from all our news reports, our eyes should be affixed on Heaven’s finish line. We are already victors through our Savior and Lord and His finished race on the cross at Calvary two millennia ago. All we have to do is carry out His Great Commission collectively and, particularly, individually.

The great apostle, as he faced the moment of his execution, said further:

“I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith: Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day: and not to me only, but unto all them also that love his appearing.” (2 Timothy 4:7–8)

Our Lord could appear at any moment, or we could at any moment appear before Him through the portal of death (a passage into that glorious dimension I look back on as nothing to fear as a Christian.)

So it is a critical race you and I are in at this very moment, and it’s not a “theory,” as the nonbelieving world sadly views Bible truth to be. We want, when our race is finished on this earth, to hear the Lord Jesus Christ say, as I’m sure He must have said to the Apostle Paul the moment Paul had his physical life ended by a Roman sword: “Well done, good, faithful, servant. Enter into your eternal rest as my joint heir.”

But you will never hear those words from the Savior who died to take away your sin that separates you from God and Heaven if you don’t accept Christ’s grace gift of salvation. Here, yet again, is how you can join and finish the critical race toward the high calling of Christ.

“That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.” (Romans 10:9–10)

—Terry

More 1,000-Year Floods

The Dallas-Fort Worth area has been hit by massive flooding. In some areas, the rainfall is a remarkable reversal given the dramatic drought that Dallas had faced for months. Several rainfall gauges had recorded more than 10 inches. A record-breaking 3.01 inches of rainfall were recorded in one hour at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. The previous one-day record for rainfall in Dallas County was set in July 2004.

Authorities conducted water rescues and evacuated residents from areas with ongoing flooding; cars remained abandoned, some parked on the sides of interstates, either flooded or damaged by crashes; numerous highway ramps and lanes were shut down. At the interchange of Interstates 30, 45 and 75, floodings had traffic down to a trickle in one lane.

Last week’s record-setting rainfall in Dallas was called a ‘one-in-a-thousand-years event.’ Something is clearly out of whack because, in less than a month, 5 other rain events have also been classified as 1,000-year floods. Here is a list of them:

Aug 7: The weather monitoring stations run by Denver’s Mile High Flood District east of downtown near the zoo measured Sunday night surged at 1.42 inches in 20 minutes, 1.3 inches in 15 minutes, and 1.76 inches in 26 minutes, National Weather Service meteorologists said.

Aug 5: The driest place in North America bucked its reputation when a 1,000-year rain event dumped water onto Death Valley National Park in California. The deluge damaged miles of roadway and forced park visitors to shelter in place. NASA satellites tracked the flooding from orbit.

Aug 2: Southern Illinois was drenched by 8 to 12 inches of rain in 12 hours. An area just south of Newton, Ill., recorded 14 inches of rainfall in just 12 hours, according to the National Weather Service.

July 28: Rural areas of eastern Kentucky were flooded after receiving up to 14 inches of rainfall. Entire communities were wiped out. The death toll stands at around 40 people.

July 26: Record-breaking rainfall caused flash flooding in the St. Louis area, trapping cars, closing roads, and causing at least one death.

In the past few years, we’ve had flood events that would seem to be on a 1-in-10,000-year scale. I didn’t observe the 2018 Maryland flood that much, but I was closely watching the 2019 and 2017 floods. The Harvey floods were so bad, I asked myself how is this possible:

In 2019, flooding caused devastation across the Midwest. Several states battled some of the worst floods they have ever had to experience in a lifetime. In Nebraska, every major river system in that state had record-level floods. This historic flooding was so intense that over 10 states had to seek federal disaster funds in order to recover from the damage it caused.

2018: The Maryland flood came just two years after a historic and deadly flash flood struck the region, another heavy rain brought around 8 inches in two hours to Ellicott City, Maryland, resulting in a disaster that was assessed to be much worse than the previous one. This was the second “1,000-year flood” event in two years.

2017: Hurricane Harvey affected 13 million people from Texas through Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Kentucky. By October 13, 2017, at least 88 people had died from the storm. Harvey made landfall three times in six days. At its peak on September 1, 2017, one-third of Houston was underwater. Harvey caused $125 billion in damage.

The term “1,000-year flood” should be considered antiquated by now because it doesn’t apply to reality. If it was true, it would warn of a rainfall event that is expected once in every 1,000 years, meaning it has just a 0.1% chance of happening in any given year. When the city of Houston said it had the third “500-year” flood in the past three years with Hurricane Harvey, something was clearly not right.

I would never ever live in a flood zone. To have your house flooded is one of the most devastating experiences a person can endure. People who live near a river and are fed this 1,000-year flood nonsense will be very confused to see their yard turn into a lake.

If all these floods are directly related to climate change, someone will eventually win a Nobel prize. I don’t think there is a scientific answer for the increase in floods. At best, climate change should only drop the 1,000-year floods down to 600-year events. Any meteorological factor that can explain why we are having so many devastating floods would probably predict Noah-type floods by 2050.

I have always maintained that they are part of the birth pangs that Jesus warned of his return. If you are a dedicated student of Bible prophecy, you can claim to have a Ph.D. in biblical common sense.

“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).

–Todd

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America—Sheep or Goat?

Will the United States of America be a sheep nation or a goat nation? That is perhaps a Shakespearian question in the vein of “To be or not to be?”

The question, of course, is rooted in context of the Millennium, at the beginning of which Jesus Christ will judge which will be, symbolically, a sheep nation or a goat nation—based upon how these entities dealt with God’s chosen nation, Israel. Believers in Christ who survive the horrendous Tribulation will inhabit the sheep nations. All who survive the Tribulation but who have not accepted Christ will be placed in the goat nations, then be cast into what is described as “outer darkness,” and will remain in that state until the white throne judgment at the end of the one-thousand-year reign of King Jesus upon the millennial earth.

Our quest here is to wonder just a bit on whether America is destined to be a sheep nation. You can guess without much speculation what I, personally, hope is the answer.

One thing that comes to mind in these contemporary times regarding the United States is its magnetic attraction to peoples around the world. This nation might be likened to the planet Jupiter. It is huge in most of the ways human beings see as alluring, giving it the greatest gravity—materially speaking—of any nation-state to grace earth’s surface. God has indeed blessed America “from sea to shining sea.”

While all other nations orbit this one, realization about the liberty that is synonymous with the US to worship, move about, work, play, or even just be slovenly doesn’t escape even those kept from knowing much about things going on around the rest of the planet. Indeed, America’s gravity dynamically has drawn all peoples toward its irresistible opulence. With the exception of very few, no one makes noises about leaving this nation to live elsewhere.

Billions look in America’s direction as the “shining light on the hill,” as President Ronald Reagan once called it.

Even the defectors who sought to dodge the draft during the Vietnam era have since done all they could to come back to the nation they deserted. The Hollywood types—like Barbra Streisand, for example—who periodically threaten to leave America because they don’t get their way politically, decide to stay when it comes down to the moment of leaving or staying. In southern parlance, they know on which side their bread is buttered.

Perhaps to get right to the heart of what has made America the center of the universe of nations, and to try to determine its status so far as involvement in Bible prophecy might be concerned, I would like to consider a well-known historical observation by a man outside this country—a Frenchman, no less.

French social philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville, while touring the United States in the 1800s, said about America: “America is great because America is good. If she ever ceases to be good, she will cease to be great.” De Tocqueville no doubt was speaking of how he viewed cultural and societal good. But, upon observing the nation’s Christian church foundation he encountered, he must have based his conclusion on the fact that America’s goodness in the societal sense was a result of Christianity running throughout the country’s cultural fiber. What he likely didn’t understand was what that “goodness” really means in God’s economy.

God’s Word speaks of this “good”: “And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God” (Mark 10:18).

Jesus was not saying to the man who fell on his knees before the Lord that He, Jesus, was not “good,” but the Lord was acclaiming that God, alone, is the only good. Jesus was—and is—the only “good” flesh-and-blood person to ever walk the earth’s surface following the Fall of Man in the Garden of Eden. That is because Jesus IS God.

De Tocqueville now looks from the past at America’s once pretty face, and his words of warning are reverberating: “If America ever ceases to be good, she will cease to be great.”

America, A Golden Cup

Again, is the name “America” given anywhere in Scripture? Of course not. But the influence this nation has exerted since coming to its full bloom as earth’s greatest superpower in history makes it a prophetic nation. The Creator of all things continues to use America in His mighty hand to accomplish two very distinctive, supernatural purposes. As a matter of fact, the United States, in my view, has an overwhelming presence in Bible prophecy. Its place is at the very heart of the end-times things that we see developing—matters unfolding in daily, even hourly, news reports. In this sense, I am of the conviction that God is speaking of America—in type, if not by name, when His Word tells us the following:

“Babylon [hath been] a golden cup in the LORD’S hand, that made all the earth drunken: the nations have drunken of her wine; therefore the nations are mad” (Jeremiah 51:7).

Certainly, the United States of America has been a “golden cup” in the Lord’s hand. No other nation of modern vintage can come close to claiming that achievement.

Some nations of Europe were formative in bringing forth Christianity into the world, thus shedding a degree of gospel light into a world of sin-darkness.

But it is America that, despite its great shortcomings and more recent degeneration, has been a shining beacon, reflecting from that golden cup in God’s hand.

Being the first nation in spreading to the whole world the gospel message—that Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross makes possible the only way to redemption for lost mankind—is a feat no other country can claim. This, ultimately, has been done not by the offices or under the auspices of American ingenuity, but by the omniscience and the omnipotence of the One holding the “golden cup.” It is God’s grace and mercy that have put America as a beacon of God’s light upon that mountain of gospel dissemination. God’s providence gave this nation the industrial and technological genius—a fact that is denied, or that is so taken for granted today.

All of the grace God has shed upon America from sea to shining sea, it must now be noted here, means nothing in addressing the question we are seeking to answer: Will America be a sheep nation or a goat nation?

The United States has been extremely generous with its wealth at every turn. Whether rebuilding war-torn nations far away, such as through the Marshall Plan, or providing billions of dollars whenever there are tragedies to be funded, our country has seemed to be the good Samaritan. But our largesse as a people also will not determine whether America is destined for sheep-nation status.

Again, according to the prophetic Word, it seems national status in this regard is to be based on how other nations have dealt with God’s chosen nation, Israel.

It is based upon this factor—US/Israeli relationship—that I have great hope in trying to answer our question.

America was chosen by God, Himself, I have absolutely no doubt, to act as national midwife in Israel’s rebirth into modernity. Any true reading of history will attest to this reality. The revisionists, the Marxists, the evil from the mind of Satan cannot change this fact. America has, despite its egregious acts of late against the God of Heaven, has been friend and protector of the fledgling Jewish state as it entered again as a nation in the mid-twentieth century.

Will America face God’s judgment? Again, there can be no doubt. We have allowed the murder of more than sixty million children in their mothers’ wombs, just as a start on listing the absolute wickedness we have seen recently. God will judge this nation.

But there will be a glorious rebirth for America, I’m believing, once its sins are purged and the Lord again counts our nation as “good.”

—Terry