One major signal just leaped to the top of God’s prophetic timeline. Israel and her traditional enemies, the Arabs, have agreed to full normalization of relations.

While the agreement, to be soon formalized at a White House signing, isn’t an agreement of peace in terms of a full peace treaty between Israel and all its Arab neighbors, it is the first time in twenty-five years that such an agreement has been reached. The first was between Israel and Egypt, when Jimmy Carter, Israel Prime Minister Menachem Began, and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat came together in 1978. The second was in 1994 when Israel and Jordan signed a similar agreement. Both treaties have held relatively firm since their signings.

This agreement is between the UAE (United Arab Emirates)—a Gulf state—and Israel. Israel agreed to suspend its planned extension of sovereignty over parts of Judea and Samaria to facilitate relations with the UAE and potentially other Arab and Muslim countries. The action has, as might be expected, brought praise and condemnation from various parties involved in international relations.

Among prophecy watchers, it has stirred much punditry, as does any activity involving Israel and the peace process. The big question some are asking: Is this peace signing the one that will eventually bring about the covenant made with death and hell as foretold in Daniel 9:26–27 and Isaiah 28:15, 18?

According to the Jerusalem Post:

The agreement will include establishing embassies and exchanging ambassadors, investments into the Israeli economy, trade, direct flights between Tel Aviv and Abu Dhabi, an investment in Israeli efforts to develop a corona virus vaccine – as first reported in The Jerusalem Post last month – and cooperation in matters of energy and water. An important element of the deal for the UAE is the expectation that its citizens would be able to visit the Al-Aksa mosque in Jerusalem. (Lahav Harkov, “Third-ever Peace Treaty between Israel and an Arab State Includes Embassies, Direct Flights; Agreement “Suspends” Annexation, but Netanyahu Says: ‘I will never give up on our right to our land,’” Jerusalem Post, Omri Nahmias, 8/14/2020)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared the deal “full, formal peace” with “one of the strongest countries in the world.”

“Together we can bring a wonderful future. It is an incomparably exciting moment,” he said. “I have the great privilege to make the third peace treaty between Israel and an Arab country, the UAE.”

In a post to his Twitter account, President Donald Trump said: “Opening direct ties between two of the Middle East’s most dynamic societies and advanced economies will transform the region by spurring economic growth, enhancing technological innovation, and forging closer people-to-people relations.”

Speaking further in the Oval Office, Trump indicated he anticipated “many more countries” in the region normalizing ties with Israel and “some very exciting things including, ultimately, with the Palestinians.”

The Israeli prime minister said he has “reason to be very optimistic that the announcement with the UAE will be joined by more countries in this expanding circle of peace.”

Palestinian leadership and Iranian leadership are among those not happy with the peace-making effort. But others of the Arab world believe it to be in their best interest to see stability in the region that such an arrangement will bring.

Most Arab leaders who see the advantages are pleased that Israel has put on hold the annexation of much of the Jordanian territory they had been seeking to implement.  Netanyahu made it plain that the agreement in no way is giving up Israel land for a peace arrangement. In this regard, making the agreement, which includes no giving up of Israeli territory, breaks tradition of other efforts at peace, in which the Jewish state had to agree to give away parcels of land to get Arab agreement.

The agreement “ushers in a new era of peace between Israel and the Arab world,” Netanyahu said.

Many Bible prophecy students who observe developments see this as a major event in bringing about the wrap-up of the age. Considering all the other issues and events that seem to be converging at such a torrid pace, it is more than understandable that Israel making such an agreement brings sharp observation and commentary.

One such pundit believes that French President Emmanuel Macron is the number-one candidate to be Antichrist. According to many, Macron exhibits many of the characteristics of that future man of sin.

Macron immediately asserted his strong support and intention to get involved in the new peace agreement in several statements. The French president’s comments brought some strong opinions including from the aforementioned writer, who writes the following:

Emmanuel Macron has now officially inserted himself into not only the Middle East on multiple levels, he has also just given himself a seat in the “Abraham Accord” announced by President Trump and Jared Kushner yesterday…

This is the beginning of the Daniel 9:27 covenant with “death and Hell.” This is it, and Emmanuel Macron is the man of sin.

While I’m not prepared to make bold declarations such as naming Antichrist, nor even to declare this to be the beginning of that apocalyptic false peace, I can certainly join in the exuberance in pointing to where this generation almost certainly stands on God’s prophetic timeline.

This commentary will, I anticipate, meet with considerable eye-rolls and head-shaking.

What a fuddy-duddy, I can imagine the thinking will be behind the eye rolls and the head shakes. (The very fact that I use the term “fuddy-duddy” makes me a candidate for the very dementia to which I, at least cursorily, link their beloved devices.)

By the term “dementia,” I refer to a spiritual condition rather than a physical-mental one. Although medical studies put forth that total absorption in the cyberspace of the devices that are everywhere we look can cause organic disturbances, the spiritual damage might be, in my view, incalculable.

Smartphones and the many other devices that demand all but total allegiance to their human automatons are used by the powers and principalities in high places in their wicked endeavors. That is, the observably, highly addictive instruments turn the already-fallen minds of people, young and old, to directions other than toward God, who created humankind to fellowship with Him and to be His family for eternity.

We’re seeing the results of Satan having brought about the Twitterverse—a generation of social media-transfixed people who now have or are rapidly moving toward thinking in any direction other than God.

Of course I’m not referring to everyone in social media. Not every user of Facebook, Twitter, or other social media venues engage within the arenas of anti-God thinking. Many ministries use these as tools to put forward teachings from the Bible and the saving gospel message (that is, if their posts or tweets or whatever aren’t banned or taken down).

However, the vast majority of device users are held in what seems to be inescapable gravity. Those caught in the grip of cyberspace, by and large, think and communicate in terms that encompass anything but things of God and the Bible. The result is fulfillment of Bible truth. When people get away from principles of how to live God’s way, upside-down or reprobate thinking becomes the norm.

The devices have evolved from instruments for entertainment to those designed to evoke and cultivate a collective mindset that more and more embraces anti-biblical actions and activities. I believe it explains, at least in part, the insanity we are witnessing in every direction we look.

Again, here are the apostle Paul’s words that frame the matter. It’s an all-encompassing and powerful indictment from on high, to be sure.

And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient; Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, Without understanding, covenant breakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful. (Romans 1: 28-31)

Just like in the case of any human invention, the devices are not in themselves evil. In my teenage years, I heard all the warnings that TV would be the ruination of the nation with entertainment from the devil-influenced minds in Hollywood.

Well, I’m not so certain that those warnings weren’t well placed. I sure didn’t think so at that time. Neither, I’m sure, will the youth or even the more mature device users of today agree with my thoughts here.

But to anyone who looks around and is honest, this world suffers from a dementia that grows progressively worse. It has brought about a divide, a schizophrenia, within the culture in America.

I maintain that it is the electronic device instrumentalities that have at least exacerbated, if not engendered, the cultural and societal divide I propose it is the all-pervasive electronic devices that are culpable in the matter of the reprobate mindset that has developed in this time so near the end of the age.

I was recently sent an article that, in my estimation, helps explain how Satan and his minions, both human and demonic, have been able to induce anti-God thinking through the ubiquitous electronic devices of our time.

The article was by a person who worked within mental institutions of earlier times.

What is happening today in the West increasingly reminds me of what I saw in that long-stay mental hospital many decades ago, but is less humane.  Today, when a person displays signs of deviating from political correctness, the cultural overseers leap into action and denounce the behavior and the culprit, whose guilt is incontestable.  If confession, contrition, and penance are not instantly forthcoming, the only sentence is to be declared a “far-right bigot,” with the likely result that the mainstream news media will then pick up the story and try to ruin what is left of the pitiful target’s life.  Only the most courageous and resourceful will stand fast to their values and principles and defy the modern Maoist cultural revolutionaries of the radical progressive liberal-Left.  The task of enforcement by the latter is, however, made considerably easier by the almost ubiquitous Smartphone, which makes social conditioning extremely easy.

The Smartphone functions as a virtual Skinner box.  The original Skinner box was constructed of clear Perspex inside which a hungry pigeon pecked at a lever.  A reward of grain was delivered only for the desired behavior.  Today the box is virtual, as humans tap the keys of their smartphones.  Usage of social media from these smartphones appears to be highly addictive, and can turn even previously well-adjusted people into obsessive narcissists who crave ‘likes’ and will leap onto any bandwagon in an attempt to increase their virtual popularity.

Combine this with the credulousness and gullibility of willingly impressionable youth and one has the ideal material for social conditioning.  Hence the smartphone as a virtual Skinner box.  The radical progressive liberal-Left have—with great enthusiasm—seized upon this opportunity to socially-condition the young and anyone else with high suggestibility, and are intent on turning tens of millions of people into compliant instruments of their political will.

The astonishing feature of all this is that the involuntary but mostly compliant subjects of this vast experiment in social engineering appear to lack any insight into what is being done to them.  They have surrendered their critical faculties to invisible minders who program them to feel emotions, think thoughts, deliver utterances, and commit acts at the behest of hidden controllers who can avoid taking any responsibility for what ensues.  And, perhaps most alarming of all, these cultural automatons are voluntarily giving up their cultural history, allowing it to be replaced by political propaganda which misrepresents the past.  The result is that such people live in a present that is created and controlled by someone else, as is their future.  Their lives are no longer their own, yet they are oblivious of this. (“The West is One Vast Social Engineering Experiment,” Len Wryte, American Thinker, https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/08/the_west_is_one_vast_social_)

Although there is more than enough anti-God thinking and behavior to go around—in both major political parties in America—one, in particular, is manifesting dementia that can’t be missed. Even the person chosen to be its presumptive candidate in the upcoming presidential election is front and center in exhibiting the reprobate thinking. And I don’t mean to be cruel with my assessment.

The proposals and rhetoric of this particular political party go against practically every former rationale in the political process for appealing to Americans who love and want the best for their nation. This proves, I’m convinced, the degree of reprobate thinking that now infects their ranks.

That party’s leadership apparently insanely believes that a majority of Americans now want to tear down the nation’s founding and rebuild with ideology and structure of a socialist/Marxist sort.

I don’t think it to be taken out of context to use the following in the matter of devices and dementia. Neither do I mean it to be taken as a pun or tongue-in-cheek. God’s Word is truth.

Lest Satan should get an advantage of us: for we are not ignorant of his devices. (2 Corinthians 2: 11)