Yes. I hear from our family treasurer—wife Margaret—about the price of groceries. Same about gas at the pump. It’s almost the same economic bad news I was bombarded with by Margaret way back around 1976 as the two hundredth birthday of the nation was in full celebration.

It was thought then that America and the world were on the cusp of going into a 1929-type depression. Some in the Bible prophecy community were warning that it looked like the Tribulation could begin within short order.

Those of the pre-Trib Rapture view were assuring others that this could not, would not happen as long as the Church—all born-again believers—were here on Earth.

Hal Lindsey’s Late, Great Planet Earth book had been out about five or six years, and some came against his pre-Trib Rapture presentation, saying he was about to be proven wrong. The economy was trending not toward the Rapture, but toward the time when life would become hell on Earth.

Jimmy Carter’s economic handling-caused malaise made many feel like they were indeed entering the Revelation Tribulation. But along came the Reagan Revolution, and the economic evidence soon proved it wasn’t the end of the Age of Grace—the Church Age—to those who thought gloom and doom were immediately in the offing.

Many of those who watch issues and events unfold that might have prophetic significance consider evidence whether the same degree of economic malaise today as existed during the days of the Carter administration might mean America and the world are about to slip, alas, into the Tribulation. Doesn’t this mean the pre-Trib Rapture “theory,” as it’s called by detractors, is a false teaching that has duped so many, particularly since the release of Lindsey’s book all those years ago?

One writer believes this to be the case. His writing has demonstrated that he believes the pre-Trib Rapture teaching is not biblical. His book from years ago, The Rapture Verdict, would testify to this belief.

Since that time, he has presented many articles and other writings that propose evidence that things, economically, are getting ever more Tribulation-like. At least that’s how I view his writing regarding how Bible prophecy is unfolding. Christians of this Church Age will, that writer believes, go through, not be kept out of, the time of Daniel’s seventieth week –the Tribulation. Most who believe like this discount there being such a thing as dispensations, as a matter of fact.

His book came out about the same time those years ago as my book, Rapture Ready…Or Not, so I remember well his Verdict—that there will be no pre-Trib Rapture.

His most current appraisal of economic evidence that we’re entering a time of national and global catastrophic downturn confirms that his thought that there will be no pre-Trib Rapture holds firm. We will soon be in the time of Tribulation—that is, all who have trusted Jesus Christ during this Age of Grace have only that seven years of Antichrist rule to which to look forward.

Here is a brief excerpt of his presumed economic evidence of looming catastrophe:

Just over half of Americans say the American Dream is out of reach for most people right now, according to a new CNBC and SurveyMonkey American Dream Pulse Survey…

According to Brownstone Institute President Jeffrey A. Tucker, the purchasing power of the U.S. dollar has fallen by close to 50 percent since the beginning of the COVID lockdowns…

Think about the implications. Isolating from the beginning of the Covid period to the present, Elliott’s data estimates as much as a 40% loss in purchasing power over six years. Or perhaps closer to 50%…

Many U.S. households are now permanently in a state of financial crisis.

When your bank account is constantly near zero, it can be absolutely soul-crushing.

But that is where most of the U.S. population exists today.

As a result, Americans are using buy now, pay later platforms to purchase gas and groceries more than ever before…

Americans have run their credit cards to the limit. Now they’ve turned to buy-now-pay-later plans to buy gas and groceries.

This is yet more evidence that American consumers are broke, stressed, and buried in debt as inflation steals their purchasing power…

Roughly 48% of Americans said their financial situation was worse in May than a year ago, the highest share since January 2023, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Survey of Consumer Expectations.

Consumers are also less optimistic about the future. The share of households expecting their finances to improve over the next year, relative to those expecting them to worsen, fell to its lowest level since October 2022, the New York Fed said.

If you are really struggling because of the rapidly rising cost of living, I want you to know that you are not alone.

There are millions upon millions of others that are in the exact same boat. Decades of very foolish decisions have brought us to this point, and there is no easy fix.

So hold on tight, because all of us are just going to have to do the best that we can to survive in this very difficult economic environment. (“The Purchasing Power of the Dollar Has Collapsed and the Majority of the Population No Longer Believes in the American Dream,” by Michael Snyder, End of the American Dream, Rapture Ready News, June 10, 2026)

Again, the above writer’s purpose, from the standpoint of his belief in there being no pre-Trib Rapture, is to, in my view, give evidence that Christians are about to enter the Tribulation along with all others of America and the world. (And here I want to say Michael is an excellent writer, and one who obviously loves the Lord and the Bible. I respect him as a brother in Christ.)

However, my own view, as written many times, is that Jesus said when He next catastrophically intervenes into the wicked affairs of humanity, the economic environment will be just like it was in Lot’s day in Sodom. There will be buying, selling, building, marrying, and planting—all the things that are “business as usual.” There will be no worldwide depression…no Tribulation as described in the book of Revelation.

I continue to contend that, even though my Margaret and many of you are griping about the prices in the grocery stores and at the gas stations, it is still business as usual—just as it was in Sodom those thousands of years ago.

Here is an excerpt of that fact:

Last week’s blockbuster jobs report, with more than 265,000 jobs added when including upward employment revisions, was very welcome news to almost all Americans. The exception would be the economists of the left who, throughout Donald Trump’s now-five-and-a-half years in the White House, keep getting the economy dead wrong…

Meanwhile, there is a construction boom going on in America driven by new spending on plants, factory equipment, road building and data center construction.

Manufacturing is roaring back. The Institute for Supply Management’s manufacturing index, which tracks factory activity across America, has registered the sector’s fourth straight month of expansion — the best numbers in four years. In sum: America is MAKING things again…

Yes, prices remain stubbornly high, and we are all feeling the pain at the pump and the grocery checkout counter. Consumers and voters are still in a cranky mood.

But the rapid rise in investment spending by businesses and the America-led AI and tech boom are likely to drive productivity up and prices down.

If history is any judge, it’s wise to bet on the Trump economy and against his critics — who have a perfect record of being wrong.

So on the eve of our 250th birthday, America is once again the world’s alpha male economy. The rest of the world looks at the U.S. economy with envy. (“Trump’s Critics Dead Wrong [Again] on the Economy,” posted on Tuesday, June 9, 2026, by Stephen Moore, AMAC)

And a later advisory of economic uptick reports the following:

According to Department of Labor data highlighted by Breitbart News, the average weekly paycheck for a nonsupervisory durable goods manufacturing worker is up 7.4 percent from a year ago. Hourly pay has increased 5.3 percent, and workers are putting in more hours as demand for labor grows. Even after accounting for inflation, real weekly pay is up approximately 3.5 percent while real hourly pay has risen about 1.5 percent. Those gains are significant because they represent something factory workers have rarely seen over the past several decades: meaningful increases in purchasing power. (“Blue-Collar Boom: Factory Workers See Their Best Gains in Generations,” https://trump2028.news/blue-collar-boom-factory-workers-see-their-best-gains-in-generations/?lctg=%%$lisubscriberid%% )

So, because it is “business as usual,” like in the days of Lot in Sodom, I see this time as more dangerous than does the writer of The Rapture Verdict. It is a more dangerous time for those who will be left behind to face the most terrible time in all of human history, according to the Lord Jesus (Matthew 24: 21). The pre-Trib Rapture will remove the righteous, and Antichrist will soon become history’s most evil and deadly tyrant during those seven years of Tribulation.

The evidence points to this being a time like the days when Lot in Sodom faced a wicked and evil generation of anti-God, reprobate thinkers. Like in Sodom, the economy was at the same time on a very high economic scale.

We are told by Paul the apostle, as given in 1 Thessalonians 4:18, that we are to “comfort one another” with the truth of the pre-Trib Rapture he had just prophesied.

Even so, come, Lord Jesus!

Diatribes, as of this writing, have become prolific. President Trump, so the tirade goes, is changing his mind regarding demands he’s made that the Iranian terrorist regime give up its stockpile of enriched uranium that they were building to produce a nuclear weapons capability.

Also, there is talk, particularly in mainstream news sources, that Trump is giving in to Iranian demands that the regime will open the Strait of Hormuz for petroleum and other commercial traffic if the president will pay reparations for the war-making that destroyed the regime’s own war-making ability.

I don’t believe a word of it. Having studied this president for many years and his dealings in the commercial world and now the international community, it is clear that he is patiently, deeply into the art of the deal-making for which he is famous.

But all of this is miniscule in considering its importance to the things truly involved in biblical prophecy. The only thing that really matters in this regard is: What does it mean insofar as it is helping set the stage for the wind-up of this age (Age of Grace/Church Age)?

In that regard, I’d like to look at the matter most concerning to this president and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a matter that’s also at the center of Bible prophecy: the nation now named Iran. By that, I mean what’s in the future for America, Israel, and the rest of the world so far as the possibility of Iran ever having nuclear weaponry? It is interesting to ponder, as we know the God of Heaven has His omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent hand upon all that is transpiring.

First, let’s look at what’s being discussed and bandied about that frames the nuclear Iran question.

When researching reporting on all of this, I found so much specious material—indeed, pure sophistry—in mainstream news sources that I mention it here only to demonstrate how deception, particularly surrounding such a clearly prophetic matter as Iran’s hatred of Israel, is rampant.

The deceptive reports include the supposed documentation that the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei issued a fatwa (legal ruling under Islamic law) against Iran’s development of nuclear weapons, but that American and Israeli threats against Iran caused the supreme leader to think again. The reports from mainstream sources go on to say that successors to the late Khamenei are thinking about doing away with his fatwa, and might now pursue atomic weaponry if, for instance, Israel continues to attack their proxy forces in Lebanon.

Speciousness and sophistry all…

The following somewhat corrals the issue of fear of a nuclear Iran, I believe. A former CIA intelligence analyst recently raised supposed inside information about the true nuclear threat posed by the Iranian regime. According to writer Michael Snyder, whose article, “The Nuclear Rumors About Iran Are Getting Louder,” appears in the June 3 edition of Rapture Ready News, there is reason to count the story as valid, even though he, Snyder, can’t verify the former CIA analyst’s charge.

The analyst, Larry C. Johnson, was interviewed by Newsmax TV program host Judge Andrew Napolitano a short time ago. During that interview, Johnson claimed Iran is prepared to conduct “a demonstration with a nuclear weapon.” The following is an excerpt of information revealed in the interview that Johnson released on his blog. Again, this seems to me to be a biased report from a former CIA analyst who could be somewhat at odds—disgruntled—with his former agency and this president for whatever reasons. The “report” is thus somewhat suspect to me. Nonetheless, it offers an interesting perspective on possible prophetic developments:

Pepe Escobar and I received the following intelligence report last Thursday, which was produced by a knowledgeable source with access. I am not reproducing the entire report, but I want to highlight the issue of whether or not Iran now has, or soon will have, a nuke. Let me emphasize that I firmly support past US intel community assessments that Iran, until now, had no interest in obtaining a nuke.

However, it appears that the surprise attack on 28 February, which followed the aborted color revolution attempted in late December 2025, played a decisive role in changing Iran’s view on this matter…

[Johnson’s analysis:]

Following Trump’s maximalist public response, the Supreme National Security Council deployed its ultimate deterrent. Through Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif—currently the only trusted back-channel between Washington and Tehran—Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian communicated a formally structured, three-step strategic ultimatum if US strikes continued:

1. Immediate Withdrawal from the ongoing nuclear peace talks.
   2. Total Abandonment of the prospective Nuclear Treaty framework.
   3. The Detonation of a Nuclear Device on Iranian soil—executed not as a weapon of war, but as an undeniable demonstration of sovereign capability and ultimate control over the escalation ladder.

Transmitted by Pakistani FM Ishaq Dar to US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, this was not rhetoric; it was a binary geopolitical shock warning. Rubio recognized the gravity, immediately moving to suppress the White House’s escalatory posturing. The Council directed President Pezeshkian to deliver a message to Pakistan’s Prime Minister, Shebas Sharif. Pezeshkian’s message was simple and direct. Prime Minister Sharif then directed his Foreign Minister, Mr. Ishaq Dar, to deliver the message to US Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Let me emphasize that the source of this information was involved in the decision-making process that culminated in the warning delivered to Rubio.

The key phrase — If US Strikes Continued — was delivered to Rubio on Thursday. Based on Iran’s announcement today (Monday) that it was withdrawing from further talks with the US until the Israeli attacks on Lebanon and the Palestinians end, I believe this intelligence report to be credible.

The ball is now in the hands of Donald Trump and Bibi Netanyahu… If Israel persists in bombing Lebanon — Beirut in particular — then we should expect Iran to announce that it is withdrawing from the NPT. Once free of the NPT obligations, Iran will be free to carry out item 3, i.e., Detonating a Nuclear Device on Iranian Soil. This will be a demonstration intended to warn Israel and the US that further attacks on Iran would carry catastrophic consequences.

Pepe and I received clarification on how Iran has obtained a functioning nuke… The information regarding the construction of this device (or devices) was provided by a third country that does have proven capabilities in this area. Iran’s objective is, with the backing of Pakistan, China and Russia, to raise the risk to Israel of engaging in future attacks on Iran. (“Does Iran Have a Nuke? Well Placed Source Says, ‘Yes’,” 2 June 2026, Larry C. Johnson, SONAR21)

The report included the possibility of Iran being able to produce an atomic device akin to the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945. It would be a “dirty type” bomb that might produce the effects described in the Jeremiah 49 prophecy we’ve considered in previous articles. Such an explosion could cause the scattering of populations in every direction, as indicated in that prophecy about Elam.

One can imagine this evil regime doing such a thing if they believe their rulership is about to be destroyed.

Whether the current Iranian fanatics have at least one such nuclear device, or whether their nuclear weapons ambition is totally removed through diplomatic and/or military action, Ezekiel’s Gog-Magog prophecy apparently indicates that Persia (Iran) won’t use nuclear weapons in its coalition involvement within the attack on God’s chosen nation. In other words, Persia won’t possess nuclear weapons; otherwise, it would almost certainly use them, at least under the present Iranian regime. It is believed to be a land-force assault.

There is mention, of course, of “fire” that falls at that time upon the “coastlands.” However, that seems to be fire sent by God Himself as punishment upon all those who want Israel destroyed.

Stay tuned, as they say. Rather, stay prophetically attuned!

Wtjames1@swbell.net