Sunday, July 12th, 2015

Time	Event
2:21a	nemiersss (Comment on this)
2:32a	Diet sodas are low-calorie or no-calorie carbonated beverages made with artificial sweeteners. Millions of Americans drink diet sodas daily and doctors often recommend them to diabetics and people with weight problems. The lack of calories and sugar in diet sodas is advantageous when compared to regular soda pop, but they should not be thought of as healthy. There is a growing body of research that indicates the cons of drinking diet soda may outweigh the pros. Sponsored Link 3 veggies to never eat: If you never eat these 3 veggies, You will burn stomach fat every day beyonddiet.com Diet Sodas Diet soda was introduced in the U.S. during the late 1950s, although it wasn’t until the early 1980s that it became much more mainstream and profitable. Colas were the first sodas to be labeled as diet, and originally marketed to women who wanted to lose weight or keep slim. Now they are also marketed to men and even children as healthier alternatives to regular soda pop. According to the American Council on Science and Health, diet soda consumption by American children increased from 6 percent of kids in 1999 to about 12.5 percent by 2008. About 25 percent of adults drink diet sodas. Pros The main advantage of drinking diet soda instead of regular soda is that you’re consuming far fewer calories, because diet varieties contain no high fructose corn syrup, sucrose or other forms of processed sugar. Consuming lots of refined sugar on a regular basis increases your risk of dental caries, obesity, type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular problems. Artificial sweeteners in diet soda such as aspartame are calorie-free. Diet sodas are also a good source of hydration and many people prefer their taste over plain water, although some might complain that they're not quite as tasty as regular soda. Cons Other than being a source of water, diet sodas offer no nutritional or health benefit. According to recent research conducted at the University of Miami, people who drink diet sodas on a daily basis may be at increased risk of stroke and heart attack. In fact, the researchers discovered that consumption of regular soda pop did not appear to be linked to a higher risk of cardiovascular problems. Other research published in a 2009 edition of the journal “Diabetes Care” found that daily consumption of diet soda was likely associated with significantly greater risks of metabolic syndrome and type-2 diabetes. Even more surprising is that diet soda may actually contribute to weight gain. Purdue University researcher and neuroscientist Susan Swithers discovered that long-term consumption of diet sodas was associated with weight gain -- in addition to other health issues -- and the culprit is likely artificial sweeteners. Swithers theorizes that frequent consumption of high-intensity sweeteners confuses the body's ability to manage calories based on tasting something sweet, so people tend to eat too many sweet foods and gain weight. Suggestions Diet sodas are not as beneficial or even as innocuous as some people have assumed. Hydrating with purified water, high-quality milk and fresh fruit and vegetable juices are the healthiest options for you and your children. If you want a little fizz, add some citrus fruit juice to seltzer or carbonated mineral water. To make it sweeter, consider adding a little honey, agave syrup or some stevia extract -- a natural low-calorie herbal sweetener. Sponsored Links Visit Istanbul Read traveler reviews and find deals on hotels tripadvisor.com AdWords'le Reklamcılık AdWords sayesinde işinizi büyütün Hemen Kaydolun, 100TL Reklam Bizden www.google.com.tr 3 veggies to never eat: If you never eat these 3 veggies, You will burn stomach fat every day beyonddiet.com (Comment on this)
2:47a	Reflecting upon war simply means reflecting on the condition of the human race. Such conditions clearly reveal how the third World War might come about. Developed countries, like America and the likes, have got pivotal features for preparing themselves for this war. Expectation of World War III follows from the globally acceptable definitions of reality. Following these misleading definitions, power houses, the likes of America, make decisions or rather fail to do so; with the masses and the public collectively accepting, and the intellectuals elaborating and justifying their moves. Most World War III causes are justified as very necessary and expecting its coming considered as realism. Businessmen and politicians, journalists and intellectuals, preachers and generals, all fight this war, creating the historical situation where the war is looked at as inevitable (Campbell, M & Campbell, M.J, pg. 321). Realism and necessity, to this group, is being used as a way of hiding their inadequacies of political and moral imagination. Among the two groups, that is, the leaders and the led, insensibility to direct violence is quite evident as the willingness to participate in violence. The drive to go to war is subtle, massive, self directed and very official. War is not viewed as an interference with peace; but peace has become the very uneasy interlude within wars. Peace is often seen as a balance fright and terror, both mutual (Mills, pg. 85). There are various features leading to America's permanent state of war. These features include, but are not limited to, the pivotal decision, war economy that is permanent, and the military metaphysicians. The pivotal decision refers to the 'fail safe' orders that come into operation each time an alarm is raised. Even though the alarm might be false, the American government will always have forces ready to try to manage the situation.  This causes anxiety and fear among the populace the world over, making others also prepare for war. This will always involve the mass production of weapons, largely claimed to be for self defense (Mills, pg. 55 & 56). As far as from the end of the Second World War, many people, in the elite circle, in the U.S. feel that their economic prosperity is more often under-pinned through the permanent war economy. This group thinks that desperate political and economical problems can always arise if there is an existing genuine peace and disarmament program. If there is an alarm that peace talks may occur, leave alone treaties being arranged, stocks will reflect a 'peace scare', by the jitters. When there is increased unemployment and the masses demand for actions to be taken, the government usually justifies themselves by talking about the money to be spent or the money spent in ensuring that the country's borders are safe from terror attacks (Mills, pg. 56). Arms-race decisions are among some of the causes, central to the Third World War.  This is because the elite in the U.S usually accept the military metaphysic. These people, it seems, are quite incapable of making decisions geared towards stopping this thrust towards the Third World War.  The reasons usually vary from the condition and shape of the military, political, and economic institutions, to the conditions into which the intellectuals, masses and the public have been pushed and fallen. Military men and their institutions have instilled fear among the common citizens leading to a state of both political and economic withdrawal (Elwell, slide. 53-58). For the executives, military metaphysic aligns directly with their interests. Under circumstances seen as planned and a stable flow of profit, the corporations executives are have their risks taken care of by money from the public coffers. They usually expect the exploitation for private profit, in the research developments, which are always risky, but paid for by money from the public (Mills, pg.85 & 87). America's never ending clamor for war is as a result of both the national character and its historical developments. War is not a highly rated phenomenon. It originates from a government dominated by a defined elite rooted in a particular system which is socioeconomic. Preparations and the start of war form the basic politics of the power holding class, and reflect the aims and drives of the social structure. Looking at the relationship between economic systems and the war machine, it is realized that the military forces participate least, or not at all, in carrying out capitalistic aims.  The economy, on the other hand, serves the military war machine. Not that military power has now become the major instrument of economic policies; but militarism, to some level, is used as an end and economic policy being a means of it (Murray, pg. 9). Politically, there is a conflict between the determinants, the monopolists and the masses. The monopolists, on their own, tend to defend their privileges, profits and positions at all costs, even if it is through an atomic holocaust. The masses, on the other hand, and the rest of the world, can loose everything, from the nuclear warfare, to the dread of its prospects. This group, however, does not see, directly, the casual connection existing between atomic annihilation threat and capitalism. Whichever side conquers the other, will be the main determinant where peace or war will be lying. Even though the Washington legislatures are accused of acting irresponsibly, the militarists on the other hand, also act irresponsibly towards the American people and to the humanity welfare in general, despite their aggressive protests to the contrary (Walter, pg. 84). To dismantle the permanent war machine, Mills argues that one needs to change the course and minds of men in power, the executive, because it's only such a group that have the means of making history. According to Mills, factors controlling war are usually gotten in the power elite and their mentality, the ultimate cause being the metaphysical fixations of violence obsessing the ruling circles of America and the USSR. World War Three can only be prevented, according to Mills, if only the power elite can stop being inflexible. He believes that the intellectuals can help in curbing World War III. He argues that it is the task of the intellectual, the student, and the scholar to confront complications, sort out issues which are insistent, and open up and table them for reasoning (Mills, pg. 15). Mills defines intellectuals as ministers, scientists, scholars, and even artists. These are people who deal with present time definitions, past recollections, and even possible future images. These people, according to him, form the planned and arranged memory of mankind, the people who the intellect of the human race, and forming part of the discourse of inquiry and reason, and of imagination and sensibility. Thus, when this group joins hands together, they can dismantle the war machines (Mills, pg. 129).  Mills blames intellectuals who have the chance to dismantle the permanent war machines and do not do so simply because they cannot express their views. To quote, he says, "Every time intellectuals have the chance to speak yet do not speak, they join the forces that train men not to be able to think and imagine and feel in morally and politically adequate ways. When they do not demand that the secrecy that makes elite decisions absolute and unchallengeable be removed, they too are part of the passive conspiracy to kill off public scrutiny. When they do not speak, when they do not demand, when they do not think and feel and act as intellectuals--and so as public men--they too contribute to the moral paralysis, the intellectual rigidity, that now grip both leaders and led around the world" (Mills, pg. 134). Claiming that "Utopian action is survival action", Mills says that the US has to abolish and forget about its idea of capitalism which is doctrinaire and adopt his very ideas with no regard to the formed opinions of the elite in power. The peace struggle is that aimed at wrestling out the powers to make war from the hands of rulers who are capitalist. This struggle can only be led by those working in a political movement that is independent. Mills presents eighteen peace guidelines, amongst which we have, calling for a stop to the testing of weapons which are nuclear in nature, abandoning of military bases, aiding underdeveloped countries using some portion of the American military budget, and even immediate unilateral disarmament (Horowitz, L & Horowitz, pg. 305 & 306, Page, pg. 87). Arguing that democracy needs those who bravely bear its consequences, he urges the intellectual to come out and educate the masses on how to dismantle the war machines. He says, "Democracy requires that those who bear the consequences of decisions have enough knowledge to hold decision-makers accountable. If men hope that contemporary America is to be a democratic society, they must look to the intellectual community for knowledge about those decisions that are now shaping human destiny. Men must depend upon knowledge provided by this community, for by their own private experience they can know only a small portion of the social world, only a few of the decisions that now affect them" (Mills, pg. 173). He blames the intellectual circles in America for not coming out to publicly portray the power elite as people holding command of unprecedented power. He says, "Yet leading intellectual circles in America as elsewhere have not provided true images of the elite as men in irresponsible command of unprecedented means of power. Instead, they have invented images of a scatter of reasonable men, overwhelmed by events and doing their best in a difficult situation. by its softening of the political will, the conservative mood of the intellectuals, out of which these images have arisen, enables men to accept public depravity without any private sense of outrage and to give up the central goal of Western humanism, so strongly felt in nineteenth-century American experience: the audacious control by reason of man's fate" (Mills, pg. 173).  Mills is neither a critic of the present nor a prophet of the future because most of his arguments of the causes of World War III are baseless. He thus becomes a status quo victim, and also of his own ideas hampering his imagination sociologically. Mills in his views of the labor movement sees it as he does to the social structure in general, extensively not from its prospects but from the present position. He argues that the trade unions, which are bureaucratized, cannot affect the national policy decisively since they are amalgamated as an unsophisticated interest in the levels middle to the power set up established. He takes for granted the existing conditions of the labor movement, underestimating the great potential of the working class. Mills' lens miniaturizes the powers to be as they magnify the powers that be (Walter, pg. 84). (Comment on this)
2:48a	Reflecting upon war simply means reflecting on the condition of the human race. Such conditions clearly reveal how the third World War might come about. Developed countries, like America and the likes, have got pivotal features for preparing themselves for this war. Expectation of World War III follows from the globally acceptable definitions of reality. Following these misleading definitions, power houses, the likes of America, make decisions or rather fail to do so; with the masses and the public collectively accepting, and the intellectuals elaborating and justifying their moves. Most World War III causes are justified as very necessary and expecting its coming considered as realism. Businessmen and politicians, journalists and intellectuals, preachers and generals, all fight this war, creating the historical situation where the war is looked at as inevitable (Campbell, M & Campbell, M.J, pg. 321). Realism and necessity, to this group, is being used as a way of hiding their inadequacies of political and moral imagination. Among the two groups, that is, the leaders and the led, insensibility to direct violence is quite evident as the willingness to participate in violence. The drive to go to war is subtle, massive, self directed and very official. War is not viewed as an interference with peace; but peace has become the very uneasy interlude within wars. Peace is often seen as a balance fright and terror, both mutual (Mills, pg. 85). There are various features leading to America's permanent state of war. These features include, but are not limited to, the pivotal decision, war economy that is permanent, and the military metaphysicians. The pivotal decision refers to the 'fail safe' orders that come into operation each time an alarm is raised. Even though the alarm might be false, the American government will always have forces ready to try to manage the situation.  This causes anxiety and fear among the populace the world over, making others also prepare for war. This will always involve the mass production of weapons, largely claimed to be for self defense (Mills, pg. 55 & 56). As far as from the end of the Second World War, many people, in the elite circle, in the U.S. feel that their economic prosperity is more often under-pinned through the permanent war economy. This group thinks that desperate political and economical problems can always arise if there is an existing genuine peace and disarmament program. If there is an alarm that peace talks may occur, leave alone treaties being arranged, stocks will reflect a 'peace scare', by the jitters. When there is increased unemployment and the masses demand for actions to be taken, the government usually justifies themselves by talking about the money to be spent or the money spent in ensuring that the country's borders are safe from terror attacks (Mills, pg. 56). Arms-race decisions are among some of the causes, central to the Third World War.  This is because the elite in the U.S usually accept the military metaphysic. These people, it seems, are quite incapable of making decisions geared towards stopping this thrust towards the Third World War.  The reasons usually vary from the condition and shape of the military, political, and economic institutions, to the conditions into which the intellectuals, masses and the public have been pushed and fallen. Military men and their institutions have instilled fear among the common citizens leading to a state of both political and economic withdrawal (Elwell, slide. 53-58). For the executives, military metaphysic aligns directly with their interests. Under circumstances seen as planned and a stable flow of profit, the corporations executives are have their risks taken care of by money from the public coffers. They usually expect the exploitation for private profit, in the research developments, which are always risky, but paid for by money from the public (Mills, pg.85 & 87). America's never ending clamor for war is as a result of both the national character and its historical developments. War is not a highly rated phenomenon. It originates from a government dominated by a defined elite rooted in a particular system which is socioeconomic. Preparations and the start of war form the basic politics of the power holding class, and reflect the aims and drives of the social structure. Looking at the relationship between economic systems and the war machine, it is realized that the military forces participate least, or not at all, in carrying out capitalistic aims.  The economy, on the other hand, serves the military war machine. Not that military power has now become the major instrument of economic policies; but militarism, to some level, is used as an end and economic policy being a means of it (Murray, pg. 9). Politically, there is a conflict between the determinants, the monopolists and the masses. The monopolists, on their own, tend to defend their privileges, profits and positions at all costs, even if it is through an atomic holocaust. The masses, on the other hand, and the rest of the world, can loose everything, from the nuclear warfare, to the dread of its prospects. This group, however, does not see, directly, the casual connection existing between atomic annihilation threat and capitalism. Whichever side conquers the other, will be the main determinant where peace or war will be lying. Even though the Washington legislatures are accused of acting irresponsibly, the militarists on the other hand, also act irresponsibly towards the American people and to the humanity welfare in general, despite their aggressive protests to the contrary (Walter, pg. 84). To dismantle the permanent war machine, Mills argues that one needs to change the course and minds of men in power, the executive, because it's only such a group that have the means of making history. According to Mills, factors controlling war are usually gotten in the power elite and their mentality, the ultimate cause being the metaphysical fixations of violence obsessing the ruling circles of America and the USSR. World War Three can only be prevented, according to Mills, if only the power elite can stop being inflexible. He believes that the intellectuals can help in curbing World War III. He argues that it is the task of the intellectual, the student, and the scholar to confront complications, sort out issues which are insistent, and open up and table them for reasoning (Mills, pg. 15). Mills defines intellectuals as ministers, scientists, scholars, and even artists. These are people who deal with present time definitions, past recollections, and even possible future images. These people, according to him, form the planned and arranged memory of mankind, the people who the intellect of the human race, and forming part of the discourse of inquiry and reason, and of imagination and sensibility. Thus, when this group joins hands together, they can dismantle the war machines (Mills, pg. 129).  Mills blames intellectuals who have the chance to dismantle the permanent war machines and do not do so simply because they cannot express their views. To quote, he says, "Every time intellectuals have the chance to speak yet do not speak, they join the forces that train men not to be able to think and imagine and feel in morally and politically adequate ways. When they do not demand that the secrecy that makes elite decisions absolute and unchallengeable be removed, they too are part of the passive conspiracy to kill off public scrutiny. When they do not speak, when they do not demand, when they do not think and feel and act as intellectuals--and so as public men--they too contribute to the moral paralysis, the intellectual rigidity, that now grip both leaders and led around the world" (Mills, pg. 134). Claiming that "Utopian action is survival action", Mills says that the US has to abolish and forget about its idea of capitalism which is doctrinaire and adopt his very ideas with no regard to the formed opinions of the elite in power. The peace struggle is that aimed at wrestling out the powers to make war from the hands of rulers who are capitalist. This struggle can only be led by those working in a political movement that is independent. Mills presents eighteen peace guidelines, amongst which we have, calling for a stop to the testing of weapons which are nuclear in nature, abandoning of military bases, aiding underdeveloped countries using some portion of the American military budget, and even immediate unilateral disarmament (Horowitz, L & Horowitz, pg. 305 & 306, Page, pg. 87). Arguing that democracy needs those who bravely bear its consequences, he urges the intellectual to come out and educate the masses on how to dismantle the war machines. He says, "Democracy requires that those who bear the consequences of decisions have enough knowledge to hold decision-makers accountable. If men hope that contemporary America is to be a democratic society, they must look to the intellectual community for knowledge about those decisions that are now shaping human destiny. Men must depend upon knowledge provided by this community, for by their own private experience they can know only a small portion of the social world, only a few of the decisions that now affect them" (Mills, pg. 173). He blames the intellectual circles in America for not coming out to publicly portray the power elite as people holding command of unprecedented power. He says, "Yet leading intellectual circles in America as elsewhere have not provided true images of the elite as men in irresponsible command of unprecedented means of power. Instead, they have invented images of a scatter of reasonable men, overwhelmed by events and doing their best in a difficult situation. by its softening of the political will, the conservative mood of the intellectuals, out of which these images have arisen, enables men to accept public depravity without any private sense of outrage and to give up the central goal of Western humanism, so strongly felt in nineteenth-century American experience: the audacious control by reason of man's fate" (Mills, pg. 173).  Mills is neither a critic of the present nor a prophet of the future because most of his arguments of the causes of World War III are baseless. He thus becomes a status quo victim, and also of his own ideas hampering his imagination sociologically. Mills in his views of the labor movement sees it as he does to the social structure in general, extensively not from its prospects but from the present position. He argues that the trade unions, which are bureaucratized, cannot affect the national policy decisively since they are amalgamated as an unsophisticated interest in the levels middle to the power set up established. He takes for granted the existing conditions of the labor movement, underestimating the great potential of the working class. Mills' lens miniaturizes the powers to be as they magnify the powers that be (Walter, pg. 84). Reflecting upon war simply means reflecting on the condition of the human race. Such conditions clearly reveal how the third World War might come about. Developed countries, like America and the likes, have got pivotal features for preparing themselves for this war. Expectation of World War III follows from the globally acceptable definitions of reality. Following these misleading definitions, power houses, the likes of America, make decisions or rather fail to do so; with the masses and the public collectively accepting, and the intellectuals elaborating and justifying their moves. Most World War III causes are justified as very necessary and expecting its coming considered as realism. Businessmen and politicians, journalists and intellectuals, preachers and generals, all fight this war, creating the historical situation where the war is looked at as inevitable (Campbell, M & Campbell, M.J, pg. 321). Realism and necessity, to this group, is being used as a way of hiding their inadequacies of political and moral imagination. Among the two groups, that is, the leaders and the led, insensibility to direct violence is quite evident as the willingness to participate in violence. The drive to go to war is subtle, massive, self directed and very official. War is not viewed as an interference with peace; but peace has become the very uneasy interlude within wars. Peace is often seen as a balance fright and terror, both mutual (Mills, pg. 85). There are various features leading to America's permanent state of war. These features include, but are not limited to, the pivotal decision, war economy that is permanent, and the military metaphysicians. The pivotal decision refers to the 'fail safe' orders that come into operation each time an alarm is raised. Even though the alarm might be false, the American government will always have forces ready to try to manage the situation.  This causes anxiety and fear among the populace the world over, making others also prepare for war. This will always involve the mass production of weapons, largely claimed to be for self defense (Mills, pg. 55 & 56). As far as from the end of the Second World War, many people, in the elite circle, in the U.S. feel that their economic prosperity is more often under-pinned through the permanent war economy. This group thinks that desperate political and economical problems can always arise if there is an existing genuine peace and disarmament program. If there is an alarm that peace talks may occur, leave alone treaties being arranged, stocks will reflect a 'peace scare', by the jitters. When there is increased unemployment and the masses demand for actions to be taken, the government usually justifies themselves by talking about the money to be spent or the money spent in ensuring that the country's borders are safe from terror attacks (Mills, pg. 56). Arms-race decisions are among some of the causes, central to the Third World War.  This is because the elite in the U.S usually accept the military metaphysic. These people, it seems, are quite incapable of making decisions geared towards stopping this thrust towards the Third World War.  The reasons usually vary from the condition and shape of the military, political, and economic institutions, to the conditions into which the intellectuals, masses and the public have been pushed and fallen. Military men and their institutions have instilled fear among the common citizens leading to a state of both political and economic withdrawal (Elwell, slide. 53-58). For the executives, military metaphysic aligns directly with their interests. Under circumstances seen as planned and a stable flow of profit, the corporations executives are have their risks taken care of by money from the public coffers. They usually expect the exploitation for private profit, in the research developments, which are always risky, but paid for by money from the public (Mills, pg.85 & 87). America's never ending clamor for war is as a result of both the national character and its historical developments. War is not a highly rated phenomenon. It originates from a government dominated by a defined elite rooted in a particular system which is socioeconomic. Preparations and the start of war form the basic politics of the power holding class, and reflect the aims and drives of the social structure. Looking at the relationship between economic systems and the war machine, it is realized that the military forces participate least, or not at all, in carrying out capitalistic aims.  The economy, on the other hand, serves the military war machine. Not that military power has now become the major instrument of economic policies; but militarism, to some level, is used as an end and economic policy being a means of it (Murray, pg. 9). Politically, there is a conflict between the determinants, the monopolists and the masses. The monopolists, on their own, tend to defend their privileges, profits and positions at all costs, even if it is through an atomic holocaust. The masses, on the other hand, and the rest of the world, can loose everything, from the nuclear warfare, to the dread of its prospects. This group, however, does not see, directly, the casual connection existing between atomic annihilation threat and capitalism. Whichever side conquers the other, will be the main determinant where peace or war will be lying. Even though the Washington legislatures are accused of acting irresponsibly, the militarists on the other hand, also act irresponsibly towards the American people and to the humanity welfare in general, despite their aggressive protests to the contrary (Walter, pg. 84). To dismantle the permanent war machine, Mills argues that one needs to change the course and minds of men in power, the executive, because it's only such a group that have the means of making history. According to Mills, factors controlling war are usually gotten in the power elite and their mentality, the ultimate cause being the metaphysical fixations of violence obsessing the ruling circles of America and the USSR. World War Three can only be prevented, according to Mills, if only the power elite can stop being inflexible. He believes that the intellectuals can help in curbing World War III. He argues that it is the task of the intellectual, the student, and the scholar to confront complications, sort out issues which are insistent, and open up and table them for reasoning (Mills, pg. 15). Mills defines intellectuals as ministers, scientists, scholars, and even artists. These are people who deal with present time definitions, past recollections, and even possible future images. These people, according to him, form the planned and arranged memory of mankind, the people who the intellect of the human race, and forming part of the discourse of inquiry and reason, and of imagination and sensibility. Thus, when this group joins hands together, they can dismantle the war machines (Mills, pg. 129).  Mills blames intellectuals who have the chance to dismantle the permanent war machines and do not do so simply because they cannot express their views. To quote, he says, "Every time intellectuals have the chance to speak yet do not speak, they join the forces that train men not to be able to think and imagine and feel in morally and politically adequate ways. When they do not demand that the secrecy that makes elite decisions absolute and unchallengeable be removed, they too are part of the passive conspiracy to kill off public scrutiny. When they do not speak, when they do not demand, when they do not think and feel and act as intellectuals--and so as public men--they too contribute to the moral paralysis, the intellectual rigidity, that now grip both leaders and led around the world" (Mills, pg. 134). Claiming that "Utopian action is survival action", Mills says that the US has to abolish and forget about its idea of capitalism which is doctrinaire and adopt his very ideas with no regard to the formed opinions of the elite in power. The peace struggle is that aimed at wrestling out the powers to make war from the hands of rulers who are capitalist. This struggle can only be led by those working in a political movement that is independent. Mills presents eighteen peace guidelines, amongst which we have, calling for a stop to the testing of weapons which are nuclear in nature, abandoning of military bases, aiding underdeveloped countries using some portion of the American military budget, and even immediate unilateral disarmament (Horowitz, L & Horowitz, pg. 305 & 306, Page, pg. 87). Arguing that democracy needs those who bravely bear its consequences, he urges the intellectual to come out and educate the masses on how to dismantle the war machines. He says, "Democracy requires that those who bear the consequences of decisions have enough knowledge to hold decision-makers accountable. If men hope that contemporary America is to be a democratic society, they must look to the intellectual community for knowledge about those decisions that are now shaping human destiny. Men must depend upon knowledge provided by this community, for by their own private experience they can know only a small portion of the social world, only a few of the decisions that now affect them" (Mills, pg. 173). He blames the intellectual circles in America for not coming out to publicly portray the power elite as people holding command of unprecedented power. He says, "Yet leading intellectual circles in America as elsewhere have not provided true images of the elite as men in irresponsible command of unprecedented means of power. Instead, they have invented images of a scatter of reasonable men, overwhelmed by events and doing their best in a difficult situation. by its softening of the political will, the conservative mood of the intellectuals, out of which these images have arisen, enables men to accept public depravity without any private sense of outrage and to give up the central goal of Western humanism, so strongly felt in nineteenth-century American experience: the audacious control by reason of man's fate" (Mills, pg. 173).  Mills is neither a critic of the present nor a prophet of the future because most of his arguments of the causes of World War III are baseless. He thus becomes a status quo victim, and also of his own ideas hampering his imagination sociologically. Mills in his views of the labor movement sees it as he does to the social structure in general, extensively not from its prospects but from the present position. He argues that the trade unions, which are bureaucratized, cannot affect the national policy decisively since they are amalgamated as an unsophisticated interest in the levels middle to the power set up established. He takes for granted the existing conditions of the labor movement, underestimating the great potential of the working class. Mills' lens miniaturizes the powers to be as they magnify the powers that be (Walter, pg. 84). Reflecting upon war simply means reflecting on the condition of the human race. Such conditions clearly reveal how the third World War might come about. Developed countries, like America and the likes, have got pivotal features for preparing themselves for this war. Expectation of World War III follows from the globally acceptable definitions of reality. Following these misleading definitions, power houses, the likes of America, make decisions or rather fail to do so; with the masses and the public collectively accepting, and the intellectuals elaborating and justifying their moves. Most World War III causes are justified as very necessary and expecting its coming considered as realism. Businessmen and politicians, journalists and intellectuals, preachers and generals, all fight this war, creating the historical situation where the war is looked at as inevitable (Campbell, M & Campbell, M.J, pg. 321). Realism and necessity, to this group, is being used as a way of hiding their inadequacies of political and moral imagination. Among the two groups, that is, the leaders and the led, insensibility to direct violence is quite evident as the willingness to participate in violence. The drive to go to war is subtle, massive, self directed and very official. War is not viewed as an interference with peace; but peace has become the very uneasy interlude within wars. Peace is often seen as a balance fright and terror, both mutual (Mills, pg. 85). There are various features leading to America's permanent state of war. These features include, but are not limited to, the pivotal decision, war economy that is permanent, and the military metaphysicians. The pivotal decision refers to the 'fail safe' orders that come into operation each time an alarm is raised. Even though the alarm might be false, the American government will always have forces ready to try to manage the situation.  This causes anxiety and fear among the populace the world over, making others also prepare for war. This will always involve the mass production of weapons, largely claimed to be for self defense (Mills, pg. 55 & 56). As far as from the end of the Second World War, many people, in the elite circle, in the U.S. feel that their economic prosperity is more often under-pinned through the permanent war economy. This group thinks that desperate political and economical problems can always arise if there is an existing genuine peace and disarmament program. If there is an alarm that peace talks may occur, leave alone treaties being arranged, stocks will reflect a 'peace scare', by the jitters. When there is increased unemployment and the masses demand for actions to be taken, the government usually justifies themselves by talking about the money to be spent or the money spent in ensuring that the country's borders are safe from terror attacks (Mills, pg. 56). Arms-race decisions are among some of the causes, central to the Third World War.  This is because the elite in the U.S usually accept the military metaphysic. These people, it seems, are quite incapable of making decisions geared towards stopping this thrust towards the Third World War.  The reasons usually vary from the condition and shape of the military, political, and economic institutions, to the conditions into which the intellectuals, masses and the public have been pushed and fallen. Military men and their institutions have instilled fear among the common citizens leading to a state of both political and economic withdrawal (Elwell, slide. 53-58). For the executives, military metaphysic aligns directly with their interests. Under circumstances seen as planned and a stable flow of profit, the corporations executives are have their risks taken care of by money from the public coffers. They usually expect the exploitation for private profit, in the research developments, which are always risky, but paid for by money from the public (Mills, pg.85 & 87). America's never ending clamor for war is as a result of both the national character and its historical developments. War is not a highly rated phenomenon. It originates from a government dominated by a defined elite rooted in a particular system which is socioeconomic. Preparations and the start of war form the basic politics of the power holding class, and reflect the aims and drives of the social structure. Looking at the relationship between economic systems and the war machine, it is realized that the military forces participate least, or not at all, in carrying out capitalistic aims.  The economy, on the other hand, serves the military war machine. Not that military power has now become the major instrument of economic policies; but militarism, to some level, is used as an end and economic policy being a means of it (Murray, pg. 9). Politically, there is a conflict between the determinants, the monopolists and the masses. The monopolists, on their own, tend to defend their privileges, profits and positions at all costs, even if it is through an atomic holocaust. The masses, on the other hand, and the rest of the world, can loose everything, from the nuclear warfare, to the dread of its prospects. This group, however, does not see, directly, the casual connection existing between atomic annihilation threat and capitalism. Whichever side conquers the other, will be the main determinant where peace or war will be lying. Even though the Washington legislatures are accused of acting irresponsibly, the militarists on the other hand, also act irresponsibly towards the American people and to the humanity welfare in general, despite their aggressive protests to the contrary (Walter, pg. 84). To dismantle the permanent war machine, Mills argues that one needs to change the course and minds of men in power, the executive, because it's only such a group that have the means of making history. According to Mills, factors controlling war are usually gotten in the power elite and their mentality, the ultimate cause being the metaphysical fixations of violence obsessing the ruling circles of America and the USSR. World War Three can only be prevented, according to Mills, if only the power elite can stop being inflexible. He believes that the intellectuals can help in curbing World War III. He argues that it is the task of the intellectual, the student, and the scholar to confront complications, sort out issues which are insistent, and open up and table them for reasoning (Mills, pg. 15). Mills defines intellectuals as ministers, scientists, scholars, and even artists. These are people who deal with present time definitions, past recollections, and even possible future images. These people, according to him, form the planned and arranged memory of mankind, the people who the intellect of the human race, and forming part of the discourse of inquiry and reason, and of imagination and sensibility. Thus, when this group joins hands together, they can dismantle the war machines (Mills, pg. 129).  Mills blames intellectuals who have the chance to dismantle the permanent war machines and do not do so simply because they cannot express their views. To quote, he says, "Every time intellectuals have the chance to speak yet do not speak, they join the forces that train men not to be able to think and imagine and feel in morally and politically adequate ways. When they do not demand that the secrecy that makes elite decisions absolute and unchallengeable be removed, they too are part of the passive conspiracy to kill off public scrutiny. When they do not speak, when they do not demand, when they do not think and feel and act as intellectuals--and so as public men--they too contribute to the moral paralysis, the intellectual rigidity, that now grip both leaders and led around the world" (Mills, pg. 134). Claiming that "Utopian action is survival action", Mills says that the US has to abolish and forget about its idea of capitalism which is doctrinaire and adopt his very ideas with no regard to the formed opinions of the elite in power. The peace struggle is that aimed at wrestling out the powers to make war from the hands of rulers who are capitalist. This struggle can only be led by those working in a political movement that is independent. Mills presents eighteen peace guidelines, amongst which we have, calling for a stop to the testing of weapons which are nuclear in nature, abandoning of military bases, aiding underdeveloped countries using some portion of the American military budget, and even immediate unilateral disarmament (Horowitz, L & Horowitz, pg. 305 & 306, Page, pg. 87). Arguing that democracy needs those who bravely bear its consequences, he urges the intellectual to come out and educate the masses on how to dismantle the war machines. He says, "Democracy requires that those who bear the consequences of decisions have enough knowledge to hold decision-makers accountable. If men hope that contemporary America is to be a democratic society, they must look to the intellectual community for knowledge about those decisions that are now shaping human destiny. Men must depend upon knowledge provided by this community, for by their own private experience they can know only a small portion of the social world, only a few of the decisions that now affect them" (Mills, pg. 173). He blames the intellectual circles in America for not coming out to publicly portray the power elite as people holding command of unprecedented power. He says, "Yet leading intellectual circles in America as elsewhere have not provided true images of the elite as men in irresponsible command of unprecedented means of power. Instead, they have invented images of a scatter of reasonable men, overwhelmed by events and doing their best in a difficult situation. by its softening of the political will, the conservative mood of the intellectuals, out of which these images have arisen, enables men to accept public depravity without any private sense of outrage and to give up the central goal of Western humanism, so strongly felt in nineteenth-century American experience: the audacious control by reason of man's fate" (Mills, pg. 173).  Mills is neither a critic of the present nor a prophet of the future because most of his arguments of the causes of World War III are baseless. He thus becomes a status quo victim, and also of his own ideas hampering his imagination sociologically. Mills in his views of the labor movement sees it as he does to the social structure in general, extensively not from its prospects but from the present position. He argues that the trade unions, which are bureaucratized, cannot affect the national policy decisively since they are amalgamated as an unsophisticated interest in the levels middle to the power set up established. He takes for granted the existing conditions of the labor movement, underestimating the great potential of the working class. Mills' lens miniaturizes the powers to be as they magnify the powers that be (Walter, pg. 84). Reflecting upon war simply means reflecting on the condition of the human race. Such conditions clearly reveal how the third World War might come about. Developed countries, like America and the likes, have got pivotal features for preparing themselves for this war. Expectation of World War III follows from the globally acceptable definitions of reality. Following these misleading definitions, power houses, the likes of America, make decisions or rather fail to do so; with the masses and the public collectively accepting, and the intellectuals elaborating and justifying their moves. Most World War III causes are justified as very necessary and expecting its coming considered as realism. Businessmen and politicians, journalists and intellectuals, preachers and generals, all fight this war, creating the historical situation where the war is looked at as inevitable (Campbell, M & Campbell, M.J, pg. 321). Realism and necessity, to this group, is being used as a way of hiding their inadequacies of political and moral imagination. Among the two groups, that is, the leaders and the led, insensibility to direct violence is quite evident as the willingness to participate in violence. The drive to go to war is subtle, massive, self directed and very official. War is not viewed as an interference with peace; but peace has become the very uneasy interlude within wars. Peace is often seen as a balance fright and terror, both mutual (Mills, pg. 85). There are various features leading to America's permanent state of war. These features include, but are not limited to, the pivotal decision, war economy that is permanent, and the military metaphysicians. The pivotal decision refers to the 'fail safe' orders that come into operation each time an alarm is raised. Even though the alarm might be false, the American government will always have forces ready to try to manage the situation.  This causes anxiety and fear among the populace the world over, making others also prepare for war. This will always involve the mass production of weapons, largely claimed to be for self defense (Mills, pg. 55 & 56). As far as from the end of the Second World War, many people, in the elite circle, in the U.S. feel that their economic prosperity is more often under-pinned through the permanent war economy. This group thinks that desperate political and economical problems can always arise if there is an existing genuine peace and disarmament program. If there is an alarm that peace talks may occur, leave alone treaties being arranged, stocks will reflect a 'peace scare', by the jitters. When there is increased unemployment and the masses demand for actions to be taken, the government usually justifies themselves by talking about the money to be spent or the money spent in ensuring that the country's borders are safe from terror attacks (Mills, pg. 56). Arms-race decisions are among some of the causes, central to the Third World War.  This is because the elite in the U.S usually accept the military metaphysic. These people, it seems, are quite incapable of making decisions geared towards stopping this thrust towards the Third World War.  The reasons usually vary from the condition and shape of the military, political, and economic institutions, to the conditions into which the intellectuals, masses and the public have been pushed and fallen. Military men and their institutions have instilled fear among the common citizens leading to a state of both political and economic withdrawal (Elwell, slide. 53-58). For the executives, military metaphysic aligns directly with their interests. Under circumstances seen as planned and a stable flow of profit, the corporations executives are have their risks taken care of by money from the public coffers. They usually expect the exploitation for private profit, in the research developments, which are always risky, but paid for by money from the public (Mills, pg.85 & 87). America's never ending clamor for war is as a result of both the national character and its historical developments. War is not a highly rated phenomenon. It originates from a government dominated by a defined elite rooted in a particular system which is socioeconomic. Preparations and the start of war form the basic politics of the power holding class, and reflect the aims and drives of the social structure. Looking at the relationship between economic systems and the war machine, it is realized that the military forces participate least, or not at all, in carrying out capitalistic aims.  The economy, on the other hand, serves the military war machine. Not that military power has now become the major instrument of economic policies; but militarism, to some level, is used as an end and economic policy being a means of it (Murray, pg. 9). Politically, there is a conflict between the determinants, the monopolists and the masses. The monopolists, on their own, tend to defend their privileges, profits and positions at all costs, even if it is through an atomic holocaust. The masses, on the other hand, and the rest of the world, can loose everything, from the nuclear warfare, to the dread of its prospects. This group, however, does not see, directly, the casual connection existing between atomic annihilation threat and capitalism. Whichever side conquers the other, will be the main determinant where peace or war will be lying. Even though the Washington legislatures are accused of acting irresponsibly, the militarists on the other hand, also act irresponsibly towards the American people and to the humanity welfare in general, despite their aggressive protests to the contrary (Walter, pg. 84). To dismantle the permanent war machine, Mills argues that one needs to change the course and minds of men in power, the executive, because it's only such a group that have the means of making history. According to Mills, factors controlling war are usually gotten in the power elite and their mentality, the ultimate cause being the metaphysical fixations of violence obsessing the ruling circles of America and the USSR. World War Three can only be prevented, according to Mills, if only the power elite can stop being inflexible. He believes that the intellectuals can help in curbing World War III. He argues that it is the task of the intellectual, the student, and the scholar to confront complications, sort out issues which are insistent, and open up and table them for reasoning (Mills, pg. 15). Mills defines intellectuals as ministers, scientists, scholars, and even artists. These are people who deal with present time definitions, past recollections, and even possible future images. These people, according to him, form the planned and arranged memory of mankind, the people who the intellect of the human race, and forming part of the discourse of inquiry and reason, and of imagination and sensibility. Thus, when this group joins hands together, they can dismantle the war machines (Mills, pg. 129).  Mills blames intellectuals who have the chance to dismantle the permanent war machines and do not do so simply because they cannot express their views. To quote, he says, "Every time intellectuals have the chance to speak yet do not speak, they join the forces that train men not to be able to think and imagine and feel in morally and politically adequate ways. When they do not demand that the secrecy that makes elite decisions absolute and unchallengeable be removed, they too are part of the passive conspiracy to kill off public scrutiny. When they do not speak, when they do not demand, when they do not think and feel and act as intellectuals--and so as public men--they too contribute to the moral paralysis, the intellectual rigidity, that now grip both leaders and led around the world" (Mills, pg. 134). Claiming that "Utopian action is survival action", Mills says that the US has to abolish and forget about its idea of capitalism which is doctrinaire and adopt his very ideas with no regard to the formed opinions of the elite in power. The peace struggle is that aimed at wrestling out the powers to make war from the hands of rulers who are capitalist. This struggle can only be led by those working in a political movement that is independent. Mills presents eighteen peace guidelines, amongst which we have, calling for a stop to the testing of weapons which are nuclear in nature, abandoning of military bases, aiding underdeveloped countries using some portion of the American military budget, and even immediate unilateral disarmament (Horowitz, L & Horowitz, pg. 305 & 306, Page, pg. 87). Arguing that democracy needs those who bravely bear its consequences, he urges the intellectual to come out and educate the masses on how to dismantle the war machines. He says, "Democracy requires that those who bear the consequences of decisions have enough knowledge to hold decision-makers accountable. If men hope that contemporary America is to be a democratic society, they must look to the intellectual community for knowledge about those decisions that are now shaping human destiny. Men must depend upon knowledge provided by this community, for by their own private experience they can know only a small portion of the social world, only a few of the decisions that now affect them" (Mills, pg. 173). He blames the intellectual circles in America for not coming out to publicly portray the power elite as people holding command of unprecedented power. He says, "Yet leading intellectual circles in America as elsewhere have not provided true images of the elite as men in irresponsible command of unprecedented means of power. Instead, they have invented images of a scatter of reasonable men, overwhelmed by events and doing their best in a difficult situation. by its softening of the political will, the conservative mood of the intellectuals, out of which these images have arisen, enables men to accept public depravity without any private sense of outrage and to give up the central goal of Western humanism, so strongly felt in nineteenth-century American experience: the audacious control by reason of man's fate" (Mills, pg. 173).  Mills is neither a critic of the present nor a prophet of the future because most of his arguments of the causes of World War III are baseless. He thus becomes a status quo victim, and also of his own ideas hampering his imagination sociologically. Mills in his views of the labor movement sees it as he does to the social structure in general, extensively not from its prospects but from the present position. He argues that the trade unions, which are bureaucratized, cannot affect the national policy decisively since they are amalgamated as an unsophisticated interest in the levels middle to the power set up established. He takes for granted the existing conditions of the labor movement, underestimating the great potential of the working class. Mills' lens miniaturizes the powers to be as they magnify the powers that be (Walter, pg. 84). (Comment on this)
2:51a	We are just not using nuclear weapons. Resource war, class war, drug war, gang war, terror war, trade war, plus war on all other species is global. Is this the culture you want to say you belong to? Is your lifestyle worth it? When you look at anything from our modern culture, think of war. Car, computer, toaster, light bulb, money, water, food, population, government, media—think of war. The more people, the more competition, the more war. Modern Taker culture is inseparable from war. Our culture was founded on war 10,000 years ago when one group of people in the fertile crescent decided they had a better way to live, population growth supported by totalitarian agriculture-based civilization. It is now almost universally accepted that civilization is unsurpassable and must continue at all costs. Image The dead security guard’s daughter at her school, Iraq The world now wastes over $1 trillion on military spending. When you add in everything the US spends on present defense, debt on past defense spending, off-budget covert operations, death benefits, injured veteran’s benefits, national guard employment opportunity costs, we spend almost half the total federal budget on the military. More importantly though, think about the 175 million people who lost their lives to war in the last century. Several times that many were injured -- mostly civilians. War Did Not Exist Before our Taker Culture Some assert that pre-agricultural revolution or Paleolithic man waged war. However, the archeological evidence does not support this. The work of Marija Gimbutas revealed that Old Europe towns and villages had no military implements or even artwork—there is a difference between hunting and warring implements. Towns and villages were sited for their aesthetics and access to crops not defensibility. Artwork frequently depicted the goddess as a universal religion. There is also some confusion as to time periods, much of the warfare referred to as our prehistory is actually post-agricultural revolution within the last 10,000 years. Archeolreferences to war only start appearing as waring tribes such as the Kurgans started invading from the east. Lastly, there is confusion between war and the Erratic Retaliator strategy that Leaver peoples employed. This strategy allowed you to give it back to your neighbors as good as they gave it to you. If you had not heard from them in a while, you could surprise them so they knew you have not gotten soft. Later you have a powwow to make up and trade. After all, it’s not good to inbreed within your own tribe too much, so maintaining relations with your neighbors was important for more than trade. Yes, some were injured and even died, but this was far short of war. Competition Requires War We are taught since first grade that competition is good, greed is good. Competition most efficiently allocates resources, and enables the best and brightest to rise to the top. Without competition we would not have a man on the moon or this computer. You know, I can live without this computer. I would probably be better off, and the time will come for it to go. At some point I will have written enough and will just be a permaculture farmer and educator. Darwin’s natural selection or survival of the fittest has contributed to a misunderstanding of how the world really works. Ecosystems survive through mutually beneficial cooperation not competition. If nature was based solely on competition, there would only be one survivor at the top of each food chain niche instead of the 30 million species alive today. It is physically impossible to have concentration of resources, material or financial, without war. Competition implies by definition that there will always be a winner and loser, someone at the top and many at the bottom. For the US to consume more in total and per capita than any other national in the world, we must have the largest military in the world. McDonald’s goes where McDonald-Douglas goes (now Boeing). The simplest way to put it is to envision what can be made, grown, and traded just from current local sunlight. If you cannot make it from local sunlight, you have to exploit and concentrate or take from somewhere else. If you cannot make a modern stick-frame home and everything that goes in it just from local sunlight, you need to get it’s components and the energy that it takes to build and maintain it from someplace else. It is simple laws of physics. http://www.culturechange.org/cms/content/view/412/65/ (Comment on this)
2:52a	We are just not using nuclear weapons. Resource war, class war, drug war, gang war, terror war, trade war, plus war on all other species is global. Is this the culture you want to say you belong to? Is your lifestyle worth it? When you look at anything from our modern culture, think of war. Car, computer, toaster, light bulb, money, water, food, population, government, media—think of war. The more people, the more competition, the more war. Modern Taker culture is inseparable from war. Our culture was founded on war 10,000 years ago when one group of people in the fertile crescent decided they had a better way to live, population growth supported by totalitarian agriculture-based civilization. It is now almost universally accepted that civilization is unsurpassable and must continue at all costs. Image The dead security guard’s daughter at her school, Iraq The world now wastes over $1 trillion on military spending. When you add in everything the US spends on present defense, debt on past defense spending, off-budget covert operations, death benefits, injured veteran’s benefits, national guard employment opportunity costs, we spend almost half the total federal budget on the military. More importantly though, think about the 175 million people who lost their lives to war in the last century. Several times that many were injured -- mostly civilians. War Did Not Exist Before our Taker Culture Some assert that pre-agricultural revolution or Paleolithic man waged war. However, the archeological evidence does not support this. The work of Marija Gimbutas revealed that Old Europe towns and villages had no military implements or even artwork—there is a difference between hunting and warring implements. Towns and villages were sited for their aesthetics and access to crops not defensibility. Artwork frequently depicted the goddess as a universal religion. There is also some confusion as to time periods, much of the warfare referred to as our prehistory is actually post-agricultural revolution within the last 10,000 years. Archeolreferences to war only start appearing as waring tribes such as the Kurgans started invading from the east. Lastly, there is confusion between war and the Erratic Retaliator strategy that Leaver peoples employed. This strategy allowed you to give it back to your neighbors as good as they gave it to you. If you had not heard from them in a while, you could surprise them so they knew you have not gotten soft. Later you have a powwow to make up and trade. After all, it’s not good to inbreed within your own tribe too much, so maintaining relations with your neighbors was important for more than trade. Yes, some were injured and even died, but this was far short of war. Competition Requires War We are taught since first grade that competition is good, greed is good. Competition most efficiently allocates resources, and enables the best and brightest to rise to the top. Without competition we would not have a man on the moon or this computer. You know, I can live without this computer. I would probably be better off, and the time will come for it to go. At some point I will have written enough and will just be a permaculture farmer and educator. Darwin’s natural selection or survival of the fittest has contributed to a misunderstanding of how the world really works. Ecosystems survive through mutually beneficial cooperation not competition. If nature was based solely on competition, there would only be one survivor at the top of each food chain niche instead of the 30 million species alive today. It is physically impossible to have concentration of resources, material or financial, without war. Competition implies by definition that there will always be a winner and loser, someone at the top and many at the bottom. For the US to consume more in total and per capita than any other national in the world, we must have the largest military in the world. McDonald’s goes where McDonald-Douglas goes (now Boeing). The simplest way to put it is to envision what can be made, grown, and traded just from current local sunlight. If you cannot make it from local sunlight, you have to exploit and concentrate or take from somewhere else. If you cannot make a modern stick-frame home and everything that goes in it just from local sunlight, you need to get it’s components and the energy that it takes to build and maintain it from someplace else. It is simple laws of physics. http://www.culturechange.org/cms/content/view/412/65/ (Comment on this)
2:52a	We are just not using nuclear weapons. Resource war, class war, drug war, gang war, terror war, trade war, plus war on all other species is global. Is this the culture you want to say you belong to? Is your lifestyle worth it? When you look at anything from our modern culture, think of war. Car, computer, toaster, light bulb, money, water, food, population, government, media—think of war. The more people, the more competition, the more war. Modern Taker culture is inseparable from war. Our culture was founded on war 10,000 years ago when one group of people in the fertile crescent decided they had a better way to live, population growth supported by totalitarian agriculture-based civilization. It is now almost universally accepted that civilization is unsurpassable and must continue at all costs. Image The dead security guard’s daughter at her school, Iraq The world now wastes over $1 trillion on military spending. When you add in everything the US spends on present defense, debt on past defense spending, off-budget covert operations, death benefits, injured veteran’s benefits, national guard employment opportunity costs, we spend almost half the total federal budget on the military. More importantly though, think about the 175 million people who lost their lives to war in the last century. Several times that many were injured -- mostly civilians. War Did Not Exist Before our Taker Culture Some assert that pre-agricultural revolution or Paleolithic man waged war. However, the archeological evidence does not support this. The work of Marija Gimbutas revealed that Old Europe towns and villages had no military implements or even artwork—there is a difference between hunting and warring implements. Towns and villages were sited for their aesthetics and access to crops not defensibility. Artwork frequently depicted the goddess as a universal religion. There is also some confusion as to time periods, much of the warfare referred to as our prehistory is actually post-agricultural revolution within the last 10,000 years. Archeolreferences to war only start appearing as waring tribes such as the Kurgans started invading from the east. Lastly, there is confusion between war and the Erratic Retaliator strategy that Leaver peoples employed. This strategy allowed you to give it back to your neighbors as good as they gave it to you. If you had not heard from them in a while, you could surprise them so they knew you have not gotten soft. Later you have a powwow to make up and trade. After all, it’s not good to inbreed within your own tribe too much, so maintaining relations with your neighbors was important for more than trade. Yes, some were injured and even died, but this was far short of war. Competition Requires War We are taught since first grade that competition is good, greed is good. Competition most efficiently allocates resources, and enables the best and brightest to rise to the top. Without competition we would not have a man on the moon or this computer. You know, I can live without this computer. I would probably be better off, and the time will come for it to go. At some point I will have written enough and will just be a permaculture farmer and educator. Darwin’s natural selection or survival of the fittest has contributed to a misunderstanding of how the world really works. Ecosystems survive through mutually beneficial cooperation not competition. If nature was based solely on competition, there would only be one survivor at the top of each food chain niche instead of the 30 million species alive today. It is physically impossible to have concentration of resources, material or financial, without war. Competition implies by definition that there will always be a winner and loser, someone at the top and many at the bottom. For the US to consume more in total and per capita than any other national in the world, we must have the largest military in the world. McDonald’s goes where McDonald-Douglas goes (now Boeing). The simplest way to put it is to envision what can be made, grown, and traded just from current local sunlight. If you cannot make it from local sunlight, you have to exploit and concentrate or take from somewhere else. If you cannot make a modern stick-frame home and everything that goes in it just from local sunlight, you need to get it’s components and the energy that it takes to build and maintain it from someplace else. It is simple laws of physics. http://www.culturechange.org/cms/content/view/412/65/ We are just not using nuclear weapons. Resource war, class war, drug war, gang war, terror war, trade war, plus war on all other species is global. Is this the culture you want to say you belong to? Is your lifestyle worth it? When you look at anything from our modern culture, think of war. Car, computer, toaster, light bulb, money, water, food, population, government, media—think of war. The more people, the more competition, the more war. Modern Taker culture is inseparable from war. Our culture was founded on war 10,000 years ago when one group of people in the fertile crescent decided they had a better way to live, population growth supported by totalitarian agriculture-based civilization. It is now almost universally accepted that civilization is unsurpassable and must continue at all costs. Image The dead security guard’s daughter at her school, Iraq The world now wastes over $1 trillion on military spending. When you add in everything the US spends on present defense, debt on past defense spending, off-budget covert operations, death benefits, injured veteran’s benefits, national guard employment opportunity costs, we spend almost half the total federal budget on the military. More importantly though, think about the 175 million people who lost their lives to war in the last century. Several times that many were injured -- mostly civilians. War Did Not Exist Before our Taker Culture Some assert that pre-agricultural revolution or Paleolithic man waged war. However, the archeological evidence does not support this. The work of Marija Gimbutas revealed that Old Europe towns and villages had no military implements or even artwork—there is a difference between hunting and warring implements. Towns and villages were sited for their aesthetics and access to crops not defensibility. Artwork frequently depicted the goddess as a universal religion. There is also some confusion as to time periods, much of the warfare referred to as our prehistory is actually post-agricultural revolution within the last 10,000 years. Archeolreferences to war only start appearing as waring tribes such as the Kurgans started invading from the east. Lastly, there is confusion between war and the Erratic Retaliator strategy that Leaver peoples employed. This strategy allowed you to give it back to your neighbors as good as they gave it to you. If you had not heard from them in a while, you could surprise them so they knew you have not gotten soft. Later you have a powwow to make up and trade. After all, it’s not good to inbreed within your own tribe too much, so maintaining relations with your neighbors was important for more than trade. Yes, some were injured and even died, but this was far short of war. Competition Requires War We are taught since first grade that competition is good, greed is good. Competition most efficiently allocates resources, and enables the best and brightest to rise to the top. Without competition we would not have a man on the moon or this computer. You know, I can live without this computer. I would probably be better off, and the time will come for it to go. At some point I will have written enough and will just be a permaculture farmer and educator. Darwin’s natural selection or survival of the fittest has contributed to a misunderstanding of how the world really works. Ecosystems survive through mutually beneficial cooperation not competition. If nature was based solely on competition, there would only be one survivor at the top of each food chain niche instead of the 30 million species alive today. It is physically impossible to have concentration of resources, material or financial, without war. Competition implies by definition that there will always be a winner and loser, someone at the top and many at the bottom. For the US to consume more in total and per capita than any other national in the world, we must have the largest military in the world. McDonald’s goes where McDonald-Douglas goes (now Boeing). The simplest way to put it is to envision what can be made, grown, and traded just from current local sunlight. If you cannot make it from local sunlight, you have to exploit and concentrate or take from somewhere else. If you cannot make a modern stick-frame home and everything that goes in it just from local sunlight, you need to get it’s components and the energy that it takes to build and maintain it from someplace else. It is simple laws of physics. http://www.culturechange.org/cms/content/view/412/65/ We are just not using nuclear weapons. Resource war, class war, drug war, gang war, terror war, trade war, plus war on all other species is global. Is this the culture you want to say you belong to? Is your lifestyle worth it? When you look at anything from our modern culture, think of war. Car, computer, toaster, light bulb, money, water, food, population, government, media—think of war. The more people, the more competition, the more war. Modern Taker culture is inseparable from war. Our culture was founded on war 10,000 years ago when one group of people in the fertile crescent decided they had a better way to live, population growth supported by totalitarian agriculture-based civilization. It is now almost universally accepted that civilization is unsurpassable and must continue at all costs. Image The dead security guard’s daughter at her school, Iraq The world now wastes over $1 trillion on military spending. When you add in everything the US spends on present defense, debt on past defense spending, off-budget covert operations, death benefits, injured veteran’s benefits, national guard employment opportunity costs, we spend almost half the total federal budget on the military. More importantly though, think about the 175 million people who lost their lives to war in the last century. Several times that many were injured -- mostly civilians. War Did Not Exist Before our Taker Culture Some assert that pre-agricultural revolution or Paleolithic man waged war. However, the archeological evidence does not support this. The work of Marija Gimbutas revealed that Old Europe towns and villages had no military implements or even artwork—there is a difference between hunting and warring implements. Towns and villages were sited for their aesthetics and access to crops not defensibility. Artwork frequently depicted the goddess as a universal religion. There is also some confusion as to time periods, much of the warfare referred to as our prehistory is actually post-agricultural revolution within the last 10,000 years. Archeolreferences to war only start appearing as waring tribes such as the Kurgans started invading from the east. Lastly, there is confusion between war and the Erratic Retaliator strategy that Leaver peoples employed. This strategy allowed you to give it back to your neighbors as good as they gave it to you. If you had not heard from them in a while, you could surprise them so they knew you have not gotten soft. Later you have a powwow to make up and trade. After all, it’s not good to inbreed within your own tribe too much, so maintaining relations with your neighbors was important for more than trade. Yes, some were injured and even died, but this was far short of war. Competition Requires War We are taught since first grade that competition is good, greed is good. Competition most efficiently allocates resources, and enables the best and brightest to rise to the top. Without competition we would not have a man on the moon or this computer. You know, I can live without this computer. I would probably be better off, and the time will come for it to go. At some point I will have written enough and will just be a permaculture farmer and educator. Darwin’s natural selection or survival of the fittest has contributed to a misunderstanding of how the world really works. Ecosystems survive through mutually beneficial cooperation not competition. If nature was based solely on competition, there would only be one survivor at the top of each food chain niche instead of the 30 million species alive today. It is physically impossible to have concentration of resources, material or financial, without war. Competition implies by definition that there will always be a winner and loser, someone at the top and many at the bottom. For the US to consume more in total and per capita than any other national in the world, we must have the largest military in the world. McDonald’s goes where McDonald-Douglas goes (now Boeing). The simplest way to put it is to envision what can be made, grown, and traded just from current local sunlight. If you cannot make it from local sunlight, you have to exploit and concentrate or take from somewhere else. If you cannot make a modern stick-frame home and everything that goes in it just from local sunlight, you need to get it’s components and the energy that it takes to build and maintain it from someplace else. It is simple laws of physics. http://www.culturechange.org/cms/content/view/412/65/ We are just not using nuclear weapons. Resource war, class war, drug war, gang war, terror war, trade war, plus war on all other species is global. Is this the culture you want to say you belong to? Is your lifestyle worth it? When you look at anything from our modern culture, think of war. Car, computer, toaster, light bulb, money, water, food, population, government, media—think of war. The more people, the more competition, the more war. Modern Taker culture is inseparable from war. Our culture was founded on war 10,000 years ago when one group of people in the fertile crescent decided they had a better way to live, population growth supported by totalitarian agriculture-based civilization. It is now almost universally accepted that civilization is unsurpassable and must continue at all costs. Image The dead security guard’s daughter at her school, Iraq The world now wastes over $1 trillion on military spending. When you add in everything the US spends on present defense, debt on past defense spending, off-budget covert operations, death benefits, injured veteran’s benefits, national guard employment opportunity costs, we spend almost half the total federal budget on the military. More importantly though, think about the 175 million people who lost their lives to war in the last century. Several times that many were injured -- mostly civilians. War Did Not Exist Before our Taker Culture Some assert that pre-agricultural revolution or Paleolithic man waged war. However, the archeological evidence does not support this. The work of Marija Gimbutas revealed that Old Europe towns and villages had no military implements or even artwork—there is a difference between hunting and warring implements. Towns and villages were sited for their aesthetics and access to crops not defensibility. Artwork frequently depicted the goddess as a universal religion. There is also some confusion as to time periods, much of the warfare referred to as our prehistory is actually post-agricultural revolution within the last 10,000 years. Archeolreferences to war only start appearing as waring tribes such as the Kurgans started invading from the east. Lastly, there is confusion between war and the Erratic Retaliator strategy that Leaver peoples employed. This strategy allowed you to give it back to your neighbors as good as they gave it to you. If you had not heard from them in a while, you could surprise them so they knew you have not gotten soft. Later you have a powwow to make up and trade. After all, it’s not good to inbreed within your own tribe too much, so maintaining relations with your neighbors was important for more than trade. Yes, some were injured and even died, but this was far short of war. Competition Requires War We are taught since first grade that competition is good, greed is good. Competition most efficiently allocates resources, and enables the best and brightest to rise to the top. Without competition we would not have a man on the moon or this computer. You know, I can live without this computer. I would probably be better off, and the time will come for it to go. At some point I will have written enough and will just be a permaculture farmer and educator. Darwin’s natural selection or survival of the fittest has contributed to a misunderstanding of how the world really works. Ecosystems survive through mutually beneficial cooperation not competition. If nature was based solely on competition, there would only be one survivor at the top of each food chain niche instead of the 30 million species alive today. It is physically impossible to have concentration of resources, material or financial, without war. Competition implies by definition that there will always be a winner and loser, someone at the top and many at the bottom. For the US to consume more in total and per capita than any other national in the world, we must have the largest military in the world. McDonald’s goes where McDonald-Douglas goes (now Boeing). The simplest way to put it is to envision what can be made, grown, and traded just from current local sunlight. If you cannot make it from local sunlight, you have to exploit and concentrate or take from somewhere else. If you cannot make a modern stick-frame home and everything that goes in it just from local sunlight, you need to get it’s components and the energy that it takes to build and maintain it from someplace else. It is simple laws of physics. http://www.culturechange.org/cms/content/view/412/65/ (Comment on this)
2:54a	Ready for World War III with China?   With the constant drumbeat that Armageddon is imminent, it is easy to dismiss the geopolitical threats that pose a realpolitik danger. The prospects that definite weapons of mass destruction will engulf the planet in a nuclear winter are upon us once again. After the collapse of the Soviet evil empire, the Reagan - Gorbachev détente provided the world with one of its last hopes for restoring rational international relations. Regretfully, the last superpower used the defeat of the Marxist model of tyranny to impose their Pax American version of a global New World Order. The military machine of NATO, furnished with DARPA technology, would implement the NeoCon policy based upon the interest of the true masters behind the kosher approved empire. Justin Raimondo poses the question: Are We On the Brink of World War III? "The end of the cold war did not lead to a "unipolar world," as Charles Krauthammer and his fellow neocons celebrated it in the early 1990s. Instead of the "benevolent global hegemony" envisioned by Bill Kristol and Robert Kagan in their nineties foreign policy manifesto, we are back to the pre-WWI era of old-fashioned inter-imperialist rivalry. Instead of the "end of history," we stand at the beginning of a new era of nationalism, religious fanaticism, and ideologically-driven violence. Combined with the structural incentives for conflict inherent in our system of alliances and the built-in dangers of a policy of "collective security," this is a recipe for another world war." The compulsion of the Neoconservatives toward belligerent intervention never serves the interests or enhances the security of the American citizenry. So when China Joins Russia, Orders Military To Prepare For World War III, what is really behind the rhetoric? "Hu’s call for war joins Chinese Rear Admiral and prominent military commentator Zhang Zhaozhong who, likewise, warned this past week that: "China will not hesitate to protect Iran even with a Third World War," and Russian General Nikolai Makarov who grimly stated last week: "I do not rule out local and regional armed conflicts developing into a large-scale war, including using nuclear weapons." From the Trenches attempts to answer this question in the article, Is China gearing up to start World War III? "My take on this is that China’s latest foray into international threat-mongering is indicative of two factors: a desire on the part of the Chinese government to be prepared for any eventuality — and that could include war — and a desire to warn the West that they’re willing to be prepared for any eventuality — and that could include war."   With this backdrop in mind, the buzz from the seminal Paul Craig Roberts essay, The Two Faux Democracies Threaten Life On Earth, lays out the hubris that underpins this updated vision in the MAD doctrine of victory. Deterrence be dammed, mutually assured destruction is pointless, when preempted aggression has the war machine of absolute annihilation under your command. Dr. Roberts concludes: "The post World War II wars originate in Washington and Israel. No other country has imperial expansionary ambitions. The Chinese government has not seized Taiwan, which China could do at will. The Russian government has not seized former constituent parts of Russia, such as Georgia, which, provoked by Washington to launch an attack, was instantly overwhelmed by the Russian Army. Putin could have hung Washington’s Georgian puppet and reincorporated Georgia into Russia, where it resided for several centuries and where many believe it belongs. For the past 68 years, most military aggression can be sourced to the US and Israel. Yet, these two originators of wars pretend to be the victims of aggression. It is Israel that has a nuclear arsenal that is illegal, unacknowledged, and unaccountable. It is Washington that has drafted a war plan based on nuclear first strike. The rest of the world is correct to view these two rogue unaccountable governments as direct threats to life on earth."   The YouTube US Now Determined Highest Priority To Nuclear First Strike China, provides details and perspective on a provision in NDAA authorization. This chilling first strike war plan, disclosed in the frightening report - Who Authorized Preparations for War with China? – has to send shivers up the spine of any thinking person. "The United States is preparing for a war with China, a momentous decision that so far has failed to receive a thorough review from elected officials, namely the White House and Congress. This important change in the United States’ posture toward China has largely been driven by the Pentagon." While the author of this paper, Amitai Etzioni, states, "I am not arguing that the U.S. military is seeking out war or intentionally usurping the role of the highest civilian authorities", the intentional preparation for a pre-empt Dr. Strangelove nuke attack is absurd on its face. However, placing the blame for this switch in strategic targeting that have China in the cross hair alignment has a direct connection to the Zhang Zhaozhong comments in defense of Iran. If you take away anything from this assessment heed the reality of Zionist dominance and foremost influence on American foreign policy that Paul Craig Roberts identifies so clearly. China does not want an apocalyptic war with the United States. They are content to wage economic and financial warfare. Notwithstanding the trade dependency that the globalist cabal originated by the Nixon-Kissinger tools with the Red Communists, the authoritarian People's Republic of China, are winning the financial battle. Max Hastings in the MailOnline article, Will World War III be between the U.S. and China?, correctly concludes. "Beyond mere sabre-rattling, China is conducting increasingly sophisticated cyber-warfare penetration of American corporate, military and government computer systems. For now, their purpose seems exploratory rather than destructive. But the next time China and the United States find themselves in confrontation, a cyber-conflict seems highly likely. The potential impact of such action is devastating, in an era when computers control almost everything." If the actual existential national security of the United States is at stake from a Chinese military combat threat, one had better remember the faithful wisdom of General Douglas MacArthur "Never Fight a Land War in Asia". Could the lesson of the failed Iraqi and Afghanistan wars finally be sinking in? Surely, the military-industrial-complex ignored the cogent field marshal’s insight in Viet Nam. Heretofore, the foreign affairs and armed forces geniuses preparing their Sino war plans must be looking to their robot drone battalions for their sneak Amerikan "Pearl Harbor" mission. The dirty little secret is out as Chuck Hagel warns: Troops are ‘close to the breaking point’. "Our people are strong and resilient after 12 years of war, but they are under stress — and so are the institutions that support them." "Strengthening readiness will ultimately demand that we address unsustainable growth in personnel costs, which represent half of the department’s budget and crowds out vital spending on training and modernization," he said. "If trends continue, we could ultimately be left with a much smaller force that is well-compensated but poorly trained and equipped. That would be unacceptable." Logical, is it not? Just push a few buttons and use those Trident missiles, while you have the advantage. How else can a dying empire survive unless by waging war? How outrageous and idiotic this government has become for even having a discussion on starting a nuclear war. Before his railroading and incarceration, Edgar Steele wrote the essay, World War 3. "The world economy is so broken due to plundering by International bankers and other Zionist elite that Depression II is inevitable.  Just like WWII and Depression I, WWIII will be the only way to distract people from their impending economic misery, mask the effects of Depression II and get economies going again. Just like WWII and Depression I, international bankers and other Zionist elite will be the real beneficiaries by loaning and selling to all sides and once again scooping up small businesses, farms and residences for one-tenth their value." Another major war is on the horizon, but whether it will be a global conflagration is yet, proven. Revelations final conflict will come to pass, but the time of its occurrence is not known to man. How ironic and ludicrous those planners are looking to copy a disastrous Yamamoto strategy and have the arrogance to believe that they are omniscient. A useful analogy compares the Daleks, a fictional extraterrestrial race of mutants from the British TV Doctor Who series, with the satanic globalist death merchants that thrive on human suffering and ruin. This tribe of moneychangers, bent on universal conquest and destruction, has brought down countless societies. The Chinese capitalists’ nouveau riche never lost their repressive attitude and undemocratic culture towards their ‘coolie class". That is a trait, which coincides with their globalist gangster partners. Allowing a Hiroshima radiation of Chinese joint venture assets does not advance the final subjugation of the planet, for the fascist corporatists. Ever since Zionism conquered the United States, this country has been ruled under Talmud precepts that only benefit the NWO master plan. (Comment on this)
2:58a	What If the Allies Had Lost World War I? In the spring of 2015, my undergraduate son and I drove the length of the 1914-1918 Western Front, from the British battlefields in Flanders through the French zone in Champagne and Lorraine to the American cemeteries and monuments: Chateau-Thierry, St. Quentin, Belleau Wood, the Argonne. The nearer we approached the American sector, the fewer tourists shared the sites with us. Under the Menin gate at Ypres—a massive memorial to Britain’s lost—we were jostled among half a thousand men and women, boys and girls. In the overwhelming Meuse-Argonne cemetery, the largest American military burying place in all Europe, we stood alone. A Twitter follower offered me a memorable explanation of the weak hold of the First World War upon the American consciousness. “Americans prefer the sequel: better villains, bigger explosions.” There’s something to that. But if this earlier war has faded from national memory, its aftermath shapes American culture. RELATED STORY The Real Story of How America Became an Economic Superpower In the United States, the First World War is a rare example—George W. Bush’s Iraq War is another—of a war that became more unpopular after the fact than while it was being waged. The First World War’s horrific human and economic costs, the disappointment of hopes that the war would somehow reform or redeem society, the failure to achieve an enduring peace, the subsequent Great Depression that indicted the liberal world order for which so many Americans believed they had fought, the ensuing collapse of democracy in so many European countries, the slide toward a second world war—the experience of the two decades after the war systematically made mockery of every ideal and hope and promise for which Americans imagined they had joined the fight in April 1917. Somebody had to carry the blame. But who? That question would dominate the political debate of the interwar years. The response offered by many postwar critics of President Woodrow Wilson’s war leadership would slow the U.S. response to the rise of Adolf Hitler—and cast an influence over foreign-policy debates into our own time. The criticism continues to this day. From 1918 through the Iraq War, “Wilsonian” is the only word in the American foreign-policy lexicon that remains both a proud boast and a cutting insult. In the interwar era, blame for U.S. entry into the now-reviled First World War was sometimes assigned to the sinister wiles of British intelligence, sometimes to the financiers at the Morgan Bank, sometimes to the profit-seeking of the U.S. armaments industry, sometimes to the inherent violence of capitalism itself. Between 1934 and 1936, a congressional committee chaired by Senator Gerald Nye of North Dakota gained headlines by its investigations of banks, munitions makers, and other so-called “merchants of death.” In their greed, these businessmen and bankers (it was alleged) had unscrupulously duped the good and trusting American people into treading “the road to war,” the title of an accusatory bestseller of the same period. The question confronting the U.S. in 1917 was the same question that confronted Americans in 1941, and again after World War II, and now again as China rises: Who will shape world order? The former merchants of death got an image overhaul when President Franklin Roosevelt renamed America’s military industries “the arsenal of democracy.” Yet the conspiratorial way of thinking about the origins of wars remained alive. “He lied us into war,” Clare Boothe Luce bitterly remarked of Roosevelt’s policy in 1939-41, although the people who repeated her accusation often overlooked the second half of her sentence, which acknowledged the war’s necessity “because he did not have the courage to lead us into war.” The conspiratorial account of the First World War was temporarily overwhelmed by the attack on Pearl Harbor. A journalist who lived through both the first and second world wars, Frederick Lewis Allen, marveled that the United States went to war in 1941 “with no enthusiasm and no dissent.” Only cranks now question the necessity to fight and defeat Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. But as the United States settled into the long Cold War against the Soviet Union, the isolationist themes of the interwar era were periodically revived. War and conflict were unnecessary—imposed by self-interested coteries and cliques upon a United States that otherwise had no reason to fight. To understand why the U.S. fought in 1917, begin by considering the outcome if the United States had not fought. Minus U.S. reinforcements on land and sea, it’s difficult to imagine how the Allies could have defeated a Germany that had knocked revolutionary Russia out of the war. A U.S. Army gun crew in 1918, during the Meuse-Argonne Allied offensive in France (AP) By the summer of 1917, the Western Allies had exhausted their credit in U.S. financial markets. Without direct U.S. government-to-government aid, they could not have afforded any more offensives in the West. The exhausted Allies would have had to negotiate some kind of settlement with Central Power forces occupying almost all of what is now Ukraine, Poland, and the Baltic republics in the east; most of Romania and Yugoslavia in Southern Europe, as well as a bit of Italy; and almost all of Belgium and most of northeast France. Even if the Germans had traded concessions in the West to preserve their gains in the East, the kaiser’s Germany would have emerged from such an outcome as the dominant power on the continent of Europe. The United States would have found itself after such a negotiated peace confronting the same outcome as it faced in 1946: a Europe divided between East and West, with the battered West looking to the United States for protection. As in 1946, the East would have been dominated by an authoritarian regime that looked upon the liberal and democratic Anglo-American West not just as a geopolitical antagonist, but as an ideological threat. But unlike in 1946, when the line was drawn on the Elbe and the West included the wealthiest and most developed regions of Europe, this imaginary 1919 line would have been drawn on the Rhine, if not the Scheldt and the Meuse, with the greatest concentration of European industry on the Eastern side. Unlike in 1946, the newly dominant power in Eastern Europe would not have been Europe’s most backward major nation (Russia), but its most scientifically and technologically advanced nation (Germany). In other words, the United States would have gotten an early start on the Cold War, and maybe a second hot war, supported by fewer and weaker allies against a richer and more dangerous opponent—and one quite likely to have developed the atomic bomb and the intercontinental ballistic missile first. Some “euroskeptic” readers might snort: a German-dominated Europe? That’s what exists now. But while that’s funny to say, it’s not quite true—nor is Angela Merkel’s Germany any kind of equivalent of the kaiser’s. Germany leads Europe today by consent, not coercion. It is a reliable member of, and leading partner in, the larger Western alliance, not a rival and competitor against that alliance. It is a status-quo power, not the jumpy, reckless challenger to the status quo that troubled the peace of Europe from the 1860s to the 1940s. Today’s Europe earnestly seeks to fulfill the vision offered by Wilson in his great “peace without victory” speech of January 22, 1917: Only a peace between equals can last. … The equality of nations upon which peace must be founded if it is to last must be an equality of rights; … between big nations and small, between those that are powerful and those that are weak. … And there is a deeper thing involved than even equality of right among organized nations. No peace can last, or ought to last, which does not recognize and accept the principle that governments derive all their just powers from the consent of the governed, and that no right anywhere exists to hand peoples about from sovereignty to sovereignty as if they were property. That was not the kind of peace on offer from the Kaiserreich in 1917 and 1918. Like George Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life, I contemplate these might-have-beens to gain a better appreciation for what actually happened. The question confronting the United States in 1917 was the same question that confronted Americans in 1941, and again after World War II, and now again as China rises: Who will shape world order? The United States and its liberal democratic traditions? Or challengers impelled by aggressive authoritarian ideologies of one kind or another? American popular memory usually draws a sharp distinction between World War II, on the one side, and the First World War and Cold War on the other. Popular memory emphasizes World War II’s moral attributes, not its strategic purposes. But the popular memory is vulnerable to obvious counter-argument. A struggle against totalitarian dictatorship undertaken in alliance with Joseph Stalin? A fight for freedom that left half of Europe under communist rule? A battle against genocide that ended with the indiscriminate atomic bombing of two Japanese cities? What about the Bengal famine? The internment of Japanese Americans? Racial segregation in the U.S. armed forces? World War II is typically morally validated by inscribing at the war’s center the Jewish Holocaust, a horror in which few of the Allied leaders showed much interest at the time. Many might wish now that the United States and Great Britain had fought to stop the Holocaust, but they didn’t. And they would have fought Hitler just as hard if his racial ideology had somehow not fixated on the Jews. Americans are susceptible to the belief that their country is somehow not a state like other states: It is either something purer and higher, or something unforgivably worse. If it’s not fighting “to end war,” in the rash phrase often (mistakenly) attributed to Wilson, then it’s fighting for J.P. Morgan and the munitions makers. Yet there was one of Wilson’s genuine phrases that did aptly describe what the issue was in 1917, and what it has been ever since. In his April 2 speech to Congress asking for a declaration of war on Germany, Wilson insisted that the “world must be made safe for democracy.” The Democracy Report Not “democratic”—“safe for democracy.” Wilson wasn’t promising to impose democracy on Imperial Germany. He was promising to defend democracy from Imperial Germany. The First World War had not begun as a conflict between democracy and authoritarianism. Great Britain was not a democracy in August 1914. Tsarist Russia certainly was not. Ditto Japan, Italy, and Romania—all fought for the Entente, none had governments elected by more than a small fraction of the population. Even in France, the most democratic of the original Allies, elected leaders did not fully control the government (never mind that the Third Republic ruled over a vast colonial empire and denied the vote to women). By the time Wilson delivered his “safe for democracy” war message, however, the war had taken a new form. Britain would emerge from the war as a country in which all adult men voted, and soon adult women too. Russia was racked by a revolution that would overthrow the tsar. The smaller, neutral nations of Europe—notably Denmark, the Netherlands, and Sweden—democratized during and after the First World War. The nations that gained independence as a result of the war—the Baltic republics, Czechoslovakia, Finland, Poland—were organized as democracies at least at the start. The British dominions—Australia, Canada, and New Zealand—already had universal male suffrage; after the war, the dominions gained the full sovereignty that confirmed them as self-ruling governments. Italy and Japan too would experiment—tragically briefly—with liberal democracy in the early 1920s. Newly republican China would declare war on Germany in August 1917. Self-accusation is as American as self-assertion—and as based on illusions. America’s strength sways world politics even when it is not exerted. Meanwhile, the Central Powers receded from democracy during the war. Before 1914, Germany and the Habsburg Empire could display elected national legislatures, but these legislatures exerted little control over the actions of government and during the war years lost what little influence they had. Where the Central Powers organized new governments—notably in Ukraine—they instituted authoritarian or military regimes. Most notoriously, the German authorities subsidized Vladimir Lenin in exile, and then provided him safe conduct to destroy Russia’s brief experiment with democracy in the spring and summer of 1917. Had the Western Allies lost the First World War, European democracy would have failed the test that American democracy surmounted in the Civil War: the test of survival in the competition between nations and regimes. The United States too was a very imperfect democracy in 1917. In particular, black Americans lived under a system of caste oppression and routinized violence not very different from that meted out to German Jews in the first four or five years of Hitler’s rule. Racist ideologies held sway not only in the rural and ill-educated South but on the faculties of prestigious universities, in the upper reaches of the federal civil service, in learned societies. Racist ideas were contested, but it was not foreordained that they would be rejected. Human beings admire winners. In the year 1940, when democracy looked a loser, Anne Morrow Lindbergh hailed German fascism as “the wave of the future.” Had Imperial Germany prevailed in 1918, there would have been many to argue that Otto von Bismarck’s vision of the future—“iron and blood”—had decisively triumphed over Abraham Lincoln’s “government of the people, by the people, for the people.” An Austrian postcard depicts representatives from what would later become the Allied Powers at the mercy of their opposition. (Museum of Hungarian Military History / Wikimedia) The great American hope is that the country can win a final victory over dangerous enemies and then never think about the external world ever again. When that hope is balked, when the Armistice does not deliver eternal peace and self-balancing security, many Americans blame themselves: If the external world is recalcitrant, America must have provoked it. Self-accusation is as American as self-assertion—and as based on illusions. America has acted as it has over the past century not because it is so good or so bad, but because it is so rich, so visible, and so strong. America’s strength sways world politics even when it is not exerted: Any aggressive illiberal power must fear the United States as the ultimate potential check on its aspirations. So it was with Germany in 1917. So it is with Iran today. The kaiser’s generals reckoned that the planet was not big enough both for their ambitions and American power. Americans for a long time hoped otherwise, but their adversaries saw more clearly—and forced the issue. That has happened again and again in the century since. It is happening again now, and will continue to happen so long as the American state holds the power advantage it has held since 1917. Not always fully consciously, not always perfectly presciently—but consciously and presciently enough—the best American minds of a century ago perceived what was at stake in 1917. They imagined a better world—and the hostile world they would confront if they failed. Their efforts went largely wrong in the years after 1918. The ensuing frustration brought odium on the whole project. But those of us alive today have the advantage of knowing more of how the story developed. We should have more sympathy for the difficulties faced by those who had to start the job without guide or precedent, including the guide or precedent of somebody else’s previous errors. At present, too, many worry whether this world is safe for democratic societies challenged by the aggressive and illiberal. Today, too, American motives are mixed, as human motives usually are. A better understanding of history can at least emancipate Americans from the isolationist polemics that caricatured the why and the how of U.S. entry into the First World War. Such understanding will protect Americans from the dangerous illusions that such polemics inculcated in the 1930s, after Vietnam, and now once more again. (Comment on this)
3:01a	the aftermath of America’s invasion of Iraq, Norman Podhoretz, the neoconservative polemicist and editor of Commentary, wrote a long essay arguing that the battle against Islamist extremism amounted to “World War IV.” Podhoretz had a flair for the apocalyptic coinage, but many commentators on both the right and left understood al Qaeda’s shocking attack on American soil as the opening round of a war between the West and “Islamofascism,” as Christopher Hitchens called it. That mood subsided as the terrorists failed to mount similarly spectacular attacks (at least in the United States) and as the grotesque failure of the war in Iraq cooled the ardor of many armchair combatants for a battle to the death between radical Islam and the West. Suddenly, however, the metaphor of world war does not seem so hyperbolic. The establishment of a self-declared “caliphate” in the heart of the Arab world, as well as the slaughter of a group of cartoonists in the heart of Europe, has made radical Islam look far more effective, more powerful, and more threatening than it had when the movement was led by a handful of men in caves. Even some of the realists who would have laughed off Podhoretz’s call to arms — and would have recoiled at the premise that the Cold War constituted World War III — now fear that the West is in peril. George Friedman, the Kissingerian analyst who runs the global intelligence firm Stratfor, recently wrote that “a war between two worlds” — Islam and Christianity — has dawned. Foreign Policy’s own Aaron David Miller, a reliable skeptic of grandiose adventures abroad, has described the conflict with Islamic extremism as a “generational struggle” and “the long war.” I do not find this language ridiculous. The radical Islamist denial of the primacy of individual choice in a secularized public space, along with the willingness of large numbers of people to kill others and themselves in order to destroy that way of being, poses a fundamental challenge to the West. Yet the metaphor of civilizational struggle misleads us into believing that we can do, and must do, what we cannot do and therefore should not do. What kind of “world war” do we now find ourselves in? The only world war of the 19th century, that between France and Britain in the decades after the French Revolution, was — despite France’s republican pretensions — a classic struggle for mastery between great powers. World War I constituted the last of these geopolitical, rather than ideological, convulsions. Global struggle since that time has been precipitated by totalitarian ideologies that seek to extend themselves across the globe. Both the struggle against fascism and the struggle against communism, though global in their geographical spread, were wars between a liberal and a profoundly anti-liberal conception of how to organize Western society. Islamist extremism presents the exact opposite situation — a war inside a non-Western civilization that has overtaken and consumed the West. This did not at first seem to be the case. Long before al Qaeda, Islamic terrorists targeted U.S. Marines in Lebanon, European and American airlines, and synagogues and Jewish institutions. But the 9/11 attacks, as well as Osama bin Laden’s own rhetoric, gave Podhoretz and many others good reason to believe that radical Islam had declared war on the West. That rhetoric, and those tactics, have continued to this day in the form of the attack on Charlie Hebdo, the plots against the United States that were hatched in Yemen, and the mayhem inflicted by terrorists in London, Madrid, and other cities. Western capitals constitute the citadels of the secular order that jihadis have pledged themselves to destroy, and for those terrorists who live in the West, these cities and their citizens are ready targets of opportunity. But even if we say that we have entered upon a war between Islamist extremism and modernity, the locus of that struggle is shifting from the West to the Islamic world itself. This is the significance of the rise and spread of the Islamic State. The “caliphate” in Iraq and Syria represents a very serious threat to the West, but it is an existential challenge to the Islamic regimes in the region.The “caliphate” in Iraq and Syria represents a very serious threat to the West, but it is an existential challenge to the Islamic regimes in the region. Like al Qaeda, the Islamic State views the nation-state as a Western invention alien to Islam, but unlike al Qaeda, the Islamic State has actually created an alternative model that reflects pre-modern Islamic tradition. The Islamic State “brand” has spread with astonishing speed — to Libya, Nigeria, and Afghanistan. Even if these new groups represent little more than a few terrorists with a black flag, the wish to drape oneself in that flag shows the tremendous power of the idea of setting up a “pure” Islamic state inside an allegedly corrupted Islamic world. The 9/11 attacks thus gave the misleading impression that the rise of Islamist extremism was “about” the West and required the West to fight a war on terror in order to defeat it. But Islamist extremism is about Islam and about the regimes that rule in the name of the faith; it is hard to imagine the extremist narrative losing its appeal unless and until Arab regimes gain real legitimacy in the eyes of their own citizens. Alternatively, the very act of setting up a protostate, as the Islamic State has done, may expose the jihadi ideology to expectations of effectiveness it cannot possibly satisfy, so that the radical vision will collapse of its own contradictions, as communism eventually did. There is a great deal that the West can, must, and will do to defend itself from the terrible consequence of this struggle inside another civilization. Much of that will come under the heading of “homeland defense” — police work, intelligence, border security, and the like. Some will involve rethinking national policies on the treatment of Muslim immigrants. And some, but not much, will involve the use of force abroad. The United States and Europe cannot afford to allow the Islamic State to consolidate its control over territory any more than neighboring states can; it would be absurd to gamble that a Wild West nation of fanatics will not seek to destroy other Islamic regimes and kill all those they deem apostates. The actual fighting, however, will have to be done by Iraqis, Syrians, and other local forces. The West can defend itself, but there’s little it can do to change the terms of that struggle. If in fact we’re facing a civilizational war inside someone else’s civilization, then many of the tools we used during the Cold War will prove unavailing. From the first years of the long struggle against the Soviets, the United States engaged in a vast public diplomacy campaign, covert and overt, designed to demonstrate the superiority of democratic capitalism over communism. President George W. Bush sought to revive this effort immediately after 9/11, appointing Charlotte Beers, a leading Madison Avenue figure, to develop new “messaging” for the Islamic world. Beers’ TV spots touting America’s respectful treatment of Muslims were ridiculed in the Arab world and were soon pulled. She later conceded that America should not expect to win hearts and minds. Her successors did no better. President Barack Obama’s public diplomacy office is now hard at work manning an anti-Islamic State Twitter feed to match the vast, uncoordinated pro-Islamic State one. It’s a futile endeavor — not because the United States isn’t good at public diplomacy, but because so few people in the target audience will be listening. One common criticism of public diplomacy is: It’s deeds that matter, not words. Happy talk about American tolerance means nothing when the United States is torturing Muslim detainees and locking them up in Guantánamo. Obama announced on his first day in office that the United States would forswear torture. He gave a major address in Cairo promising “a new beginning” in relations between the United States and the Arab world based on “mutual interest and mutual respect.” As an experiment in influencing Arab public opinion, this seems to have been little more effective than advertising happy talk. It would be good to perform the additional experiment of closing Guantánamo, another alleged irritant, but I can’t believe it would matter. Forging a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians would constitute the supreme test — one of Beers’s successors, Karen Hughes, admitted to me that she told Bush that she wasn’t likely to get anywhere with Arab public opinion until Washington pushed Israel to make peace — but it probably wouldn’t do much to drain the swamp of jihadism. Of course, a far more fundamental American strategy during the Cold War was delivering military, economic, and diplomatic support to allies threatened by communism. Despite a theme reiterated from President Harry Truman onward that the United States would come to the aid of imperiled democracies, virtually all the beneficiaries were authoritarian states — Iran, Egypt, Pakistan, Chile, Morocco, etc. Only with the waning of the Cold War, during the tenures of Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, was the United States prepared to take the risk of criticizing such autocratic allies as Chile and the Philippines. In the aftermath of 9/11, Bush concluded that supporting authoritarian regimes in the Middle East had become a self-defeating strategy. The United States had learned, as he said in his 2005 inaugural address, that it would remain vulnerable to terrorism “as long as whole regions of the world simmer in resentment and tyranny.” This was the foundation of Bush’s policy of promoting democracy in the Middle East The Freedom Agenda, like public diplomacy, made only a modest dent on its intended targets. Iraq, which Bush saw as an opportunity to prove that democracy could take root in the Arab world, proved notoriously resistant to American efforts to improve governance, much less to establish democratic principles. What’s more, the Bush administration found that it still needed autocratic allies like Egypt and, of course, Saudi Arabia. Obama took his cues from those failures, soft-pedaling the language of democracy and emphasizing a doctrine of “engagement” with autocratic regimes in the hopes of winning their compliance on global goals like nuclear nonproliferation — in effect, restoring the status quo ante. The Arab Spring briefly kindled hopes that Arab publics would demand a voice in their own affairs, leading the president to restate, in a more modest key, Bush’s claim that America had a compelling interest in democratic reform in the Middle East. But the collapse of popular movements everywhere save Tunisia has largely put an end to that rhetoric. Obama’s recent decision to change his plans in order to visit Saudi Arabia immediately after the death of King Abdullah showed just how heavily Washington continues to rely on traditional sources of Arab stability. The Saudis are prepared to join the West in the campaign against the Islamic State, just as Iran under the Shah was prepared to stand firm against communism. Of course, that very analogy demonstrates the brittleness of autocratic stability. I suspect that the time will come when the United States will rue its single-minded support of the Saudi royal family, as it once did with the Shah. Perhaps more so, for in this war the legitimacy of Islamic states is an even more central issue than was the legitimacy of capitalist ones half a century ago. Islamist extremists are motivated by many of the same grievances that moved non-extremists to protest against brutal, corrupt, paralytic regimes. (If you doubt this, just read FP Middle East editor David Kenner’s recent dispatch from Jordan.) The reactionary fantasy of the caliphate, even the sectarian rule embraced by millions of both Sunnis and Shiites, can only be upended by a state that rules in the name of more inclusive principles. In that very central respect, Bush was right, even if he was wrong about the capacity of the United States to address the problem. It’s understandable that the Obama administration goes to endless lengths to soothe ruffled Saudi feathers — every prior administration has done the same. But the immediate benefits that the Saudis provide, in the form of oil and security and emollient rhetoric, is more than offset by the malign influence of the harsh, intolerant Wahhabi faith in whose name Saudi kings rule, and of the brutal repression that makes the implicit claim that Islam is inimical to democracy, human rights, and self-expression. Let’s be clear: Saudi Arabia is more a fountainhead of extremism than a bulwark against it. A far more appealing, and potentially legitimate, form of Islamic rule appears in islands of stability like the United Arab Emirates, where the practice of religion is privatized, as it is in the West — though public morals, in matters of dress and alcohol consumption and the like, comport with mainstream Islamic precepts. As someone who travels regularly to Abu Dhabi (where I teach at NYU Abu Dhabi), I can testify that this system — at least when underwritten by billions of dollars in oil revenue — works very well for the people who live in it, though no one would mistake it for a democracy. Perhaps such a system might even have worked in a relatively prosperous, relatively moderate state like Syria had it been governed more benevolently; we’ll never know. But it will not work in bigger, poorer, more pious places like Egypt. As Shadi Hamid points out in Temptations of Power, his book on political Islam, Egyptians are deeply pious people who do not accept the idea that religion belongs in a privatized space. They want to live under sharia, though they disagree among themselves about what that means. So do hundreds of millions of people in the Arab and Islamic worlds. In a recent conversation, Hamid argued that the only Islamist movement that has seriously tried to accommodate the nation-state is the Muslim Brotherhood, which came into being in the 1920s as the Ottoman caliphate disappeared. The Brotherhood, as Hamid makes clear in his book, is in no sense a liberal organization — but it has largely come to terms with democracy and has even accepted non-Islamic democratic outcomes, as Islamists do in countries like Morocco and Tunisia, which permit the consumption of alcohol and the like. The election of a Brotherhood government in Egypt in 2012 gave the Arab world its greatest chance to demonstrate that Islam and democracy are compatible. But thanks to the incompetence and narrow-mindedness of the government of President Mohamed Morsi, as well as the active conniving of the military and the judiciary, Morsi’s government was overthrown after a year in office — one of the great self-inflicted wounds of the Arab Spring. Egypt is once again, as it long was, a secular autocracy dominated by the military. I wonder how long the Egyptian people will put up with brutal repression and economic stagnation. Whether or not President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s regime endures, though, the events of recent years have demonstrated to Islamists that there is no place for them in the Arab political order. The destruction of the Muslim Brotherhood is now treated as a tremendous success in Egypt and across the Persian Gulf (except in Qatar, a Brotherhood stronghold). Yet it is hard to think of anything that would strengthen the long-term legitimacy of Arab governance more than an embedded, democratic role for moderate Islamists. It is as deeply in the interest of the United States to encourage its Arab allies to find a place for such groups as it is to encourage democracy itself. But it won’t happen. I recently asked a senior administration official whether she thought Washington could nudge regimes to rescind the prohibition of the Brotherhood as a terrorist organization across much of the Middle East. “No,” she said, flatly. At least for the moment, the issue is an existential one: The only acceptable form of political Islam will be that practiced by the regimes themselves. In this war of the civilization next door to our own, there is very little that the West can do to fortify the legitimacy of Arab regimes — even if it seems that those regimes are harming their own long-term prospects.In this war of the civilization next door to our own, there is very little that the West can do to fortify the legitimacy of Arab regimes — even if it seems that those regimes are harming their own long-term prospects. But doing little is not the same as nothing. Anything outside actors can do to fortify the legitimacy of Arab states — in the eyes, that is, of their own citizens — will help tip the scales in the war inside Islam. This includes economic assistance aimed at improving education or public health, or at increasing entrepreneurship, or at providing jobs for young people. It is a simple fact that young men and women with jobs will be less angry than they were without jobs. It includes the kind of training and education programs organized by groups like the National Democratic Institute. And above all it includes the kind of hardball diplomacy that led Iraqis to dispose of the harshly sectarian Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in favor of the far more inclusive Haider al-Abadi. Such things matter; but only just so much. The United States is not about to separate itself from Saudi Arabia; the Obama administration has not even been prepared to punish Bahrain, a minor ally that has repeatedly crushed any hint of political dissent. After all, it wouldn’t do any good: Bahrain is effectively a satellite of Saudi Arabia, which has sent in troops to help throttle the political opposition. The administration has begun to sharply criticize the mass trials through which peaceful protesters in Egypt are given endless prison terms, but Cairo remains a crucial ally in the face of spreading chaos in the region. If the United States and other outside actors can do very little to change the Islamist narrative and improve the legitimacy of Arab states, what is left is the use of force. This, too, will raise a series of fundamental questions. At the outset of the Cold War, many of Truman’s military advisors, along with senior political and policy officials, argued for an all-out mobilization in order to roll back Soviet gains in Eastern Europe. Despite deploying the rhetoric of rollback, both Truman and President Dwight Eisenhower adopted the more measured policy that came to be called containment. The public execution of American hostages gave an exhausted and largely apathetic American public the appetite for Obama’s air war in Iraq and Syria; even a modest attack on American soil could have the public baying for revenge. One of the problems with the rhetoric of civilizational war is that it prepares one for actual, not metaphorical, war. Obama has tried to adjust the dialing-up of hostilities with exquisite care. He agreed to bomb the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria only after Abadi replaced Maliki — only, that is, after Iraq made a serious bid to establish legitimate political authority. I think he has done right there. I can’t quite fathom his policy in Syria, where two to three years ago he passed up the chance to support nationalist, if still broadly Islamist, rebels in the face of the homicidal regime of Bashar al-Assad; now he hopes to train those rebels, currently decimated, to fight against the Islamic State rather than against Assad. Meanwhile, he hopes to contain and degrade the Islamic State in Syria through a separate campaign of bombardment until the rebel force is ready. Or so we’re told. Perhaps, in fact, he expects little to come of his training program; his real policy may be to make peace with Assad in the hope of enlisting him against the extremists. Assad, however, is a cunning realist: He may be prepared to live with the Islamic State so long as it stays within its current borders in northeast Syria. He may believe, in fact, that this is the best of a series of bad options. So, yes, it will be a long war — not between “us” and “them,” but inside the Islamic world. The next U.S. president may prove to be a more bellicose figure than Barack Obama. The nation may tire of appeals to patience in the face of more attacks by al Qaeda, or from an expansionist Islamic State. Containment may begin to look like appeasement. But in this one respect, at least, the Cold War metaphor is right: Americans will have to learn to contain an enemy that they can neither destroy nor convert. And that will be a great national test. (Comment on this)
3:06a	International cooperation is in decline both in the political and financial spheres. The UN has failed to address any of the major conflicts since the end of the cold war; the 2009 Copenhagen Climate Change Conference left a sour aftertaste; the World Trade Organization hasn’t concluded a major trade round since 1994. The International Monetary Fund’s legitimacy is increasingly questioned because of its outdated governance, and the G20, which emerged during the financial crisis of 2008 as a potentially powerful instrument of international cooperation, seems to have lost its way. In all areas, national, sectarian, business, and other special interests take precedence over the common interest. This trend has now reached a point where instead of a global order we have to speak of global disorder. In the political sphere local conflicts fester and multiply. Taken individually these conflicts could possibly be solved but they tend to be interconnected and the losers in one conflict tend to become the spoilers in others.  For instance, the Syrian crisis deteriorated when Putin’s Russia and the Iranian government came to Bashar al-Assad’s rescue, each for its own reasons. Saudi Arabia provided the seed money for ISIS and Iran instigated the Houthi rebellion in Yemen to retaliate against Saudi Arabia. Bibi Netanyahu tried to turn the US Congress against the nuclear treaty the US was negotiating with Iran. There are just too many conflicts for international public opinion to exert a positive influence. In the financial sphere the Bretton Woods institutions—the IMF and the World Bank—have lost their monopoly position. Under Chinese leadership, a parallel set of institutions is emerging. Will they be in conflict or will they find a way to cooperate? Since the financial and the political spheres are also interconnected, the future course of history will greatly depend on how China tackles its economic transition from investment and export-led growth to greater dependence on domestic demand, and how the US reacts to it. A strategic partnership between the US and China could prevent the evolution of two power blocks that may be drawn into military conflict. How did we reach this point of global disorder? During the cold war the world was dominated by two superpowers. Each maintained some degree of control over its allies and satellites, and avoided direct military confrontation with the other because of the danger of Mutually Assured Destruction. It was a MAD system but it worked: it produced a number of local military conflicts but it avoided a world war. When the Soviet empire fell apart the United States had an opportunity to become the sole superpower and the guarantor of peace in the world, but it did not rise to the occasion. The US was founded on the principle of individual freedom and it was not predisposed to become the policeman of the world. Indeed, it did not have a coherent view of the meaning of leadership in international affairs. During the cold war it had a bipartisan foreign policy, on which Democrats and Republicans largely agreed; but after the cold war ended the partnership broke up. Both parties continued to emphasize American sovereignty but they rarely agreed on subordinating it to international obligations. Then in 1997, a group of neoconservatives argued that the US should use its military supremacy to impose its national interests, and established a think tank called the Project for the New American Century, “to promote American global leadership.” But that was a false approach: military force cannot be used to rule the world. After the terrorist attack of September 11, the neocons persuaded President George W. Bush to attack Iraq on dubious grounds that turned out to be false, and the US lost its supremacy. The Project for the New American Century had approximately the same lifespan as Hitler’s Thousand-Year Reich: around ten years. On the financial side, by contrast, there was a clear consensus—the so-called Washington Consensus—on America’s role in the world. It became dominant in the 1980s under the leadership of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. It had strong ideological support from market fundamentalists; it had a supposedly scientific foundation in the Efficient Market Hypothesis and Rational Choice Theory; and it was efficiently administered by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The consensus was a much more subtle compromise between international governance and national self-interest than the neocons’ view that military power is supreme. Indeed, the Washington Consensus had its roots in the original compromise on which the Bretton Woods institutions were founded. John Maynard Keynes proposed a truly international currency, the bancor, but the US insisted on the dollar as the world’s reserve currency and it prevailed. In the memorable words of George Orwell’s Animal Farm, “all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”  The Washington Consensus promoted free trade and the globalization of financial markets. In the late 1990s, market fundamentalists even tried to modify the articles of agreement of the IMF so as to impose capital account convertibility, the free exchange of currencies. That attempt failed, but by allowing financial capital to move around freely the Washington Consensus also allowed capital to escape taxation and regulation. That was a triumph for market fundamentalism. Unfortunately, the scientific foundations of this approach proved to be ill conceived. Unregulated financial markets are inherently unstable: instead of a general equilibrium that assures the optimum allocation of resources, they produce financial crises. This was dramatically demonstrated by the crash of 2008. By coincidence, 2008 marked both the end of America’s political supremacy and the demise of the Washington Consensus. It was also the beginning of a process of financial and political disintegration that first manifested itself in the microcosm of the European Union, but then spread to the world at large. The crash of 2008 had a lasting negative effect on all the economies of the world, with the notable exception of China’s. The Chinese banking system was relatively isolated from the rest of the world and largely government-owned. As a consequence, the Chinese banks could, at the government’s behest, offset the collapse of external demand by flooding the economy with credit. The Chinese economy replaced the American consumer as the motor of the global economy, largely by selling to the American consumer on credit. It has been a rather weak motor, reflecting the relative size of the Chinese and American economies, so that the global economy has grown rather slowly since the emergence of China’s international economic power. The main reason why the world avoided a global depression is that economists have learned some lessons from the experience of the 1930s. The heavy load of debt and lingering political prejudices limited the scale of fiscal stimulus globally (again with the exception of China); but the Federal Reserve under the leadership of its chairman, Ben Bernanke, embarked on unorthodox monetary policies including quantitative easing—large-scale injection of money into the economy through the purchase of bonds by the Federal Reserve. This prevented the reduction in effective demand from deteriorating into a global depression. The crash of 2008 was also indirectly responsible for the euro crisis. The euro was an incomplete currency: it had a common central bank but it did not have a common treasury. The architects of the euro were aware of this defect but believed that when the deficiency became apparent the political will could be summoned to correct it. After all, that is how the European Union was brought into existence—taking one step at a time, knowing full well that it was insufficient but that when the need arose it would lead to further steps. Unfortunately, political conditions changed between 1999, when the euro was adopted, and 2008, when the need arose. Germany under the leadership of Helmut Kohl led the process of European integration in order to facilitate the reunification of Germany. But reunification proved expensive and the German public became unwilling to take on any additional expenses. When, after the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers in 2008, the European finance ministers declared that no systemically important financial institution would be allowed to fail, Chancellor Angela Merkel, as a politician in touch with the prevailing public opinion, insisted that the responsibility should fall on each country separately, not on the European Union collectively. That ruled out the possibility of a common treasury just when it was needed. That was the beginning of the euro crisis. Crises in individual countries like Greece, Italy, or Ireland are essentially variants of the euro crisis. Subsequently, the financial crisis has morphed into a series of political crises. The differences between creditor countries and debtor countries have transformed the European Union from a voluntary association of equals into a relationship between creditors, such as Germany, and debtors, such as Greece, that is neither voluntary nor equal and arouses increasing political tensions. The European Union started out as a valiant attempt at international governance on a regional scale. In the aftermath of 2008, the EU became preoccupied with its internal problems and failed to pull its weight in the international economy. The United States also became inward-looking but by a somewhat different route. The inward turn of the EU and US led to a decline in international cooperation on a global scale. Since the Western powers are the mainstay of the prevailing world order, their declining influence has created a power vacuum in international governance. Aspiring regional powers and nonstate actors, which are willing to use military force, have rushed to fill the vacuum. Armed conflicts have proliferated and spread from the Middle East to other parts of Asia, Africa, and even Europe. By annexing Crimea and establishing separatist enclaves in Ukraine, Putin’s Russia has challenged both the prevailing world order, which depends on the Western powers for support, and the values and principles on which the EU was founded. Neither the European nor the American public is fully aware of the severity of the challenge. President Vladimir Putin wants to destabilize all of Ukraine by precipitating a financial and political collapse for which he can disclaim responsibility, while avoiding occupation of a part of eastern Ukraine, which would then depend on Russia for economic support. He has demonstrated his preference by twice converting an assured military victory into a cease-fire that threatened to destabilize all of Ukraine. Unfortunately, Putin is succeeding, as can be seen by comparing the “Minsk Two” cease-fire with “Minsk One,” even if his success is purely temporary. Putin now seeks to use Ukraine to sow dissension and gain political influence within the European Union. The severity of the Russian threat is directly correlated with the weakness of the European Union. The EU has excelled at muddling through financial and political crises but now it is confronted with not one but five crises: Russia, Ukraine, Greece, immigration, and the coming British referendum on EU membership—and that may be too much. The very survival of the EU is at risk. Vladimir Putin; drawing by John Springs International governance on a global scale is equally fragile. The world may break up into rival camps both financially and politically. China has begun to build a parallel set of financial institutions, including the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB); the Asian Bond Fund Initiative; the New Development Bank (formerly the BRICS Bank); and the Chiang Mai Initiative, which is an Asian regional multilateral arrangement to swap currencies. Whether the two camps will be able to keep their rivalry within bounds will depend on how China manages its economic transition and on how the US reacts to it. The International Monetary Fund could play a positive part in this. It has abandoned its commitment to the Washington Consensus but the controlling shareholders of the Bretton Woods institutions—the US, the UK, France, and Germany among them—are unwilling to relinquish their voting control by increasing the representation of the developing world. This is very shortsighted on their part because it does not recognize changes in the relative weight of various economies and particularly the rise of China. The controlling shareholders are unlikely to abandon their control, however tenuous; but the IMF has an opportunity to build a binding connection between the two camps. The opportunity arises from the fact that the composition of the IMF’s Special Drawing Rights (SDR) basket will be up for its five-yearly review at the end of 2015. The SDR is an international reserve asset, created by the IMF in 1969 to supplement the existing official reserves of member countries. The Chinese renminbi is not fully qualified to be included in the SDR basket, but the qualifications to be included are not as rigorously defined as is generally believed. The Japanese yen was introduced when it was not yet widely traded; the franc entered the basket when the French capital account was heavily controlled; and the Saudi riyal was introduced when it was completely pegged to the US currency. The criteria for inclusion have changed over the years but now call for (1) a large exporter country and (2) a “freely usable” currency. This term is often misconstrued as imposing complete convertibility of capital accounts and flexibility of exchange rates; but that is not the case. Indeed, the basket of Special Drawing Rights formerly included currencies with no or little capital account convertibility. The Chinese leadership has now embarked on a major effort to have the renminbi included in the SDR basket, and the IMF staff is sympathetic. For instance, it has announced that the renminbi is “no longer undervalued,” and it doesn’t seek full and precipitous capital account liberalization, but rather a cautious and gradual pace of reform in order to ensure the smooth functioning of the SDR and the preservation of financial stability in China. Much now depends on the attitude of the US government, which holds veto rights in the IMF—even if the decision regarding the SDR basket requires only a 70 percent majority of the IMF’s board. The US would be making a major concession if it opened the door to allowing the renminbi to become a potential rival to the dollar. It could demand similar concessions from China in return, but that would be the wrong approach. The relationship between two great powers is not a zero-sum game: one party’s gain is not necessarily a loss for the other. China is seeking SDR status for the renminbi not to please or hurt the US but for reasons of its own that are only indirectly connected with China’s ultimate ambition of replacing the US dollar as the dominant currency in the world. China seeks to use financial liberalization as an engine of growth for the Chinese economy. China wants to deepen the government bond market and open it up to international investors in order to enable the central government to clean up the bad debts of insolvent local authorities; it also wants to reduce the excessive leverage in the economy by promoting conversions of debt to equity. Inclusion of the renminbi in the IMF basket would facilitate the process, and success would automatically advance the renminbi’s weight and influence in the world. The US government has little to gain and much to lose by treating the relationship with China as a zero-sum game. In other words it has little bargaining power. It could, of course, obstruct China’s progress, but that would be very dangerous. President Xi Jinping has taken personal responsibility for the economy and national security. If his market-oriented reforms fail, he may foster some external conflicts to keep the country united and maintain himself in power. This could lead China to align itself with Russia not only financially but also politically and militarily. In that case, should the external conflict escalate into a military confrontation with an ally of the United States such as Japan, it is not an exaggeration to say that we would be on the threshold of a third world war. Indeed, military budgets are rapidly increasing both in Russia and in China, and they remain at a very high level in the United States. For China, rearmament would be a surefire way to boost domestic demand. China is already flexing its military muscle in the South China Sea, operating in a unilateral and often quite belligerent manner, which is causing justifiable concern in Washington. Nevertheless, it may take a decade or more until a Russian–Chinese military alliance would be ready to confront the US directly. Until then, we may expect a continuation of hybrid warfare and the proliferation of proxy wars. Both the US and China have a vital interest in reaching an understanding because the alternative is so unpalatable. The benefits of an eventual agreement between China and the US could be equally far-reaching. Recently there has been a real breakthrough on climate policy on a bilateral basis. By taking the nonbinding representations and promises made by the two countries at face value, the agreement has made more credible some recent efforts to bring climate change under control. If this approach could be extended to other aspects of energy policy and to the financial and economic spheres, the threat of a military alignment between China and Russia would be removed and the prospect of a global conflict would be greatly diminished. That is worth trying. On his last state visit to the US in 2013, President Xi spoke of a “new type of great power relationship.” The subject has been widely discussed in China since then. President Obama should outline his own vision by drawing a distinction between Putin’s Russia, which has replaced the rule of law with the rule of force, and today’s China, which does not always abide by the rule of law but respects its treaty obligations. Russian aggression needs to be firmly resisted; by contrast China needs to be encouraged—by offering a more constructive alternative—to avoid the route of military aggression. This kind of offer may elicit a favorable response. Rivalry between the US and China is inevitable but it needs to be kept within bounds that would preclude the use of military force. It does not follow that a far-reaching agreement amounting to a strategic partnership between the US and China would be easy to accomplish. The two countries have fundamentally different political systems. While the US is founded on the principle of individual freedom, China has no significant tradition of such freedom. It has had a hierarchical structure since time immemorial and it has been an empire throughout most of its history. In recent years the US has led the world in the innovative development of social media, while China has led the world in finding means to control it. Since the end of the cold war, China has been much more successful than Russia in creating a successful hierarchical system. This is best seen by looking at the way information is distributed. Since the rise of social media, information increasingly travels along horizontal lines, but China is different: information is distributed vertically. Within the party–state apparatus, the closer one is to the top, the better one is informed and the more latitude one enjoys in expressing an opinion. This means that the party–state apparatus offers not only an opportunity for personal enrichment but also a semblance of individual freedom. No wonder that the apparatus has been able to attract much of China’s best talent. The degree of latitude it allows is, however, strictly circumscribed by red lines. People have to walk within a grid; those who transgress the red lines may fall into the hands of the security apparatus and disappear without a trace. The stranglehold of the security apparatus was gradually diminishing but recently there has been an ominous reversal: under the leadership of President Xi the informal rules defining the rights and status of NGOs, for instance, are now in the process of being significantly tightened.* Comparing President Xi’s “Chinese dream” with the American dream highlights the difference between the two political and social systems. Xi extols China’s success in “rejuvenating the nation” by harnessing the talents and energies of its people in service of the state. By contrast, the American dream extols the success of the rugged individual who achieves upward social mobility and material prosperity by overcoming obstacles posed by social conventions or prejudices or authorities abusing their power, or sheer bad luck. The US would like China to adopt its values but the Chinese leadership considers them subversive. In this respect China has more in common with Russia than with the US. Both Russia and China consider themselves victims of America’s aspiration to world domination. From the US point of view, there is much to disapprove of in China’s behavior. There is no independent judiciary and multinational companies are often mistreated and replaced by domestic favorites. And there are conflicts with the US and other nations in the South China Sea and over cyberwarfare and human rights. These are not matters on which cooperation will be easy to achieve. Fully recognizing these difficulties, the US government should nevertheless make a bona fide attempt at forging a strategic partnership with China. This would involve identifying areas of common interest as well as areas of rivalry. The former would invite cooperation, the latter tit-for-tat bargaining. The US needs to develop a two-pronged strategy that offers incentives for cooperation and deterrents that render tit-for-tat bargaining less attractive. The areas for cooperation may prove to be wider than is obvious at first sight. Cooperating with China in making President Xi’s financial reforms successful is definitely in the common interest. Success would fulfill the aspirations of the ever-increasing Chinese middle class. It may also allow Xi to relax some of the restrictions he has recently introduced and that would, in turn, increase the probability that his reforms will succeed and improve global financial stability. The weak point of his current approach is that both implementing and monitoring the reform process are in the same hands. Opening up the process to criticism by the media and civil society would greatly improve the efficacy of his reforms. This is particularly true of Xi’s anticorruption campaign. And if China followed this path, it would become increasingly attractive to the US as a strategic partner. Negotiations between the US and China could not possibly be completed by October 2015, when the board of the IMF is scheduled to consider the composition of the SDR basket. Realistically it would take until President Xi’s state visit to Washington in September to complete the preparations. But there is much to be gained by extending the SDR deadline to 2016. China will then host the meeting of the G20, and 2016 will also be the last year of the Obama administration. The prospect of a strategic partnership between the US and China would mobilize all political forces in favor of international cooperation on both sides. If a bona fide attempt fails, the US would then be fully justified in developing a strong enough partnership with China’s neighbors that a Chinese–Russian alliance would not dare to challenge it by military force. That would be clearly inferior to a strategic partnership between the US and China. A partnership with China’s neighbors would return us to a cold war, but that would still be preferable to a third world war. The Trans-Pacific and Trans-Atlantic Partnerships, which are currently being negotiated, could offer an excellent opportunity for a two-pronged strategy but the current approach is all wrong. At present China is excluded; indeed the partnerships are conceived as an anti-Chinese alliance under US leadership. The president has asked Congress to give him and his successor authority for up to six years to negotiate trade agreements under fast-track rules that would deprive Congress of its right to introduce amendments. The bill has passed the Senate and at this writing is before the House. If the House approves, President Xi may be presented with an apparent threat on his visit in September. This is an appropriate response to China’s aggressive behavior in the South China Sea and elsewhere, but it leaves little room for an alternative approach. It would, as a result, be difficult for President Obama to make a bona fide offer of strategic partnership. It is to be hoped that the House will not authorize putting the bill on a fast track. Instead of railroading the bill through Congress, it ought to be taken off the fast track. In that case, Congress would have plenty of time to correct the fundamental flaws in the proposed treaties that make them unacceptable as they are currently written. And that would also allow President Obama to make President Xi a genuine offer of a strategic partnership with China when he visits Washington in September. (Comment on this)
3:06a	International cooperation is in decline both in the political and financial spheres. The UN has failed to address any of the major conflicts since the end of the cold war; the 2009 Copenhagen Climate Change Conference left a sour aftertaste; the World Trade Organization hasn’t concluded a major trade round since 1994. The International Monetary Fund’s legitimacy is increasingly questioned because of its outdated governance, and the G20, which emerged during the financial crisis of 2008 as a potentially powerful instrument of international cooperation, seems to have lost its way. In all areas, national, sectarian, business, and other special interests take precedence over the common interest. This trend has now reached a point where instead of a global order we have to speak of global disorder. In the political sphere local conflicts fester and multiply. Taken individually these conflicts could possibly be solved but they tend to be interconnected and the losers in one conflict tend to become the spoilers in others. For instance, the Syrian crisis deteriorated when Putin’s Russia and the Iranian government came to Bashar al-Assad’s rescue, each for its own reasons. Saudi Arabia provided the seed money for ISIS and Iran instigated the Houthi rebellion in Yemen to retaliate against Saudi Arabia. Bibi Netanyahu tried to turn the US Congress against the nuclear treaty the US was negotiating with Iran. There are just too many conflicts for international public opinion to exert a positive influence. In the financial sphere the Bretton Woods institutions—the IMF and the World Bank—have lost their monopoly position. Under Chinese leadership, a parallel set of institutions is emerging. Will they be in conflict or will they find a way to cooperate? Since the financial and the political spheres are also interconnected, the future course of history will greatly depend on how China tackles its economic transition from investment and export-led growth to greater dependence on domestic demand, and how the US reacts to it. A strategic partnership between the US and China could prevent the evolution of two power blocks that may be drawn into military conflict. How did we reach this point of global disorder? During the cold war the world was dominated by two superpowers. Each maintained some degree of control over its allies and satellites, and avoided direct military confrontation with the other because of the danger of Mutually Assured Destruction. It was a MAD system but it worked: it produced a number of local military conflicts but it avoided a world war. When the Soviet empire fell apart the United States had an opportunity to become the sole superpower and the guarantor of peace in the world, but it did not rise to the occasion. The US was founded on the principle of individual freedom and it was not predisposed to become the policeman of the world. Indeed, it did not have a coherent view of the meaning of leadership in international affairs. During the cold war it had a bipartisan foreign policy, on which Democrats and Republicans largely agreed; but after the cold war ended the partnership broke up. Both parties continued to emphasize American sovereignty but they rarely agreed on subordinating it to international obligations. Then in 1997, a group of neoconservatives argued that the US should use its military supremacy to impose its national interests, and established a think tank called the Project for the New American Century, “to promote American global leadership.” But that was a false approach: military force cannot be used to rule the world. After the terrorist attack of September 11, the neocons persuaded President George W. Bush to attack Iraq on dubious grounds that turned out to be false, and the US lost its supremacy. The Project for the New American Century had approximately the same lifespan as Hitler’s Thousand-Year Reich: around ten years. On the financial side, by contrast, there was a clear consensus—the so-called Washington Consensus—on America’s role in the world. It became dominant in the 1980s under the leadership of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. It had strong ideological support from market fundamentalists; it had a supposedly scientific foundation in the Efficient Market Hypothesis and Rational Choice Theory; and it was efficiently administered by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The consensus was a much more subtle compromise between international governance and national self-interest than the neocons’ view that military power is supreme. Indeed, the Washington Consensus had its roots in the original compromise on which the Bretton Woods institutions were founded. John Maynard Keynes proposed a truly international currency, the bancor, but the US insisted on the dollar as the world’s reserve currency and it prevailed. In the memorable words of George Orwell’s Animal Farm, “all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” The Washington Consensus promoted free trade and the globalization of financial markets. In the late 1990s, market fundamentalists even tried to modify the articles of agreement of the IMF so as to impose capital account convertibility, the free exchange of currencies. That attempt failed, but by allowing financial capital to move around freely the Washington Consensus also allowed capital to escape taxation and regulation. That was a triumph for market fundamentalism. Unfortunately, the scientific foundations of this approach proved to be ill conceived. Unregulated financial markets are inherently unstable: instead of a general equilibrium that assures the optimum allocation of resources, they produce financial crises. This was dramatically demonstrated by the crash of 2008. By coincidence, 2008 marked both the end of America’s political supremacy and the demise of the Washington Consensus. It was also the beginning of a process of financial and political disintegration that first manifested itself in the microcosm of the European Union, but then spread to the world at large. The crash of 2008 had a lasting negative effect on all the economies of the world, with the notable exception of China’s. The Chinese banking system was relatively isolated from the rest of the world and largely government-owned. As a consequence, the Chinese banks could, at the government’s behest, offset the collapse of external demand by flooding the economy with credit. The Chinese economy replaced the American consumer as the motor of the global economy, largely by selling to the American consumer on credit. It has been a rather weak motor, reflecting the relative size of the Chinese and American economies, so that the global economy has grown rather slowly since the emergence of China’s international economic power. The main reason why the world avoided a global depression is that economists have learned some lessons from the experience of the 1930s. The heavy load of debt and lingering political prejudices limited the scale of fiscal stimulus globally (again with the exception of China); but the Federal Reserve under the leadership of its chairman, Ben Bernanke, embarked on unorthodox monetary policies including quantitative easing—large-scale injection of money into the economy through the purchase of bonds by the Federal Reserve. This prevented the reduction in effective demand from deteriorating into a global depression. The crash of 2008 was also indirectly responsible for the euro crisis. The euro was an incomplete currency: it had a common central bank but it did not have a common treasury. The architects of the euro were aware of this defect but believed that when the deficiency became apparent the political will could be summoned to correct it. After all, that is how the European Union was brought into existence—taking one step at a time, knowing full well that it was insufficient but that when the need arose it would lead to further steps. Unfortunately, political conditions changed between 1999, when the euro was adopted, and 2008, when the need arose. Germany under the leadership of Helmut Kohl led the process of European integration in order to facilitate the reunification of Germany. But reunification proved expensive and the German public became unwilling to take on any additional expenses. When, after the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers in 2008, the European finance ministers declared that no systemically important financial institution would be allowed to fail, Chancellor Angela Merkel, as a politician in touch with the prevailing public opinion, insisted that the responsibility should fall on each country separately, not on the European Union collectively. That ruled out the possibility of a common treasury just when it was needed. That was the beginning of the euro crisis. Crises in individual countries like Greece, Italy, or Ireland are essentially variants of the euro crisis. Subsequently, the financial crisis has morphed into a series of political crises. The differences between creditor countries and debtor countries have transformed the European Union from a voluntary association of equals into a relationship between creditors, such as Germany, and debtors, such as Greece, that is neither voluntary nor equal and arouses increasing political tensions. The European Union started out as a valiant attempt at international governance on a regional scale. In the aftermath of 2008, the EU became preoccupied with its internal problems and failed to pull its weight in the international economy. The United States also became inward-looking but by a somewhat different route. The inward turn of the EU and US led to a decline in international cooperation on a global scale. Since the Western powers are the mainstay of the prevailing world order, their declining influence has created a power vacuum in international governance. Aspiring regional powers and nonstate actors, which are willing to use military force, have rushed to fill the vacuum. Armed conflicts have proliferated and spread from the Middle East to other parts of Asia, Africa, and even Europe. By annexing Crimea and establishing separatist enclaves in Ukraine, Putin’s Russia has challenged both the prevailing world order, which depends on the Western powers for support, and the values and principles on which the EU was founded. Neither the European nor the American public is fully aware of the severity of the challenge. President Vladimir Putin wants to destabilize all of Ukraine by precipitating a financial and political collapse for which he can disclaim responsibility, while avoiding occupation of a part of eastern Ukraine, which would then depend on Russia for economic support. He has demonstrated his preference by twice converting an assured military victory into a cease-fire that threatened to destabilize all of Ukraine. Unfortunately, Putin is succeeding, as can be seen by comparing the “Minsk Two” cease-fire with “Minsk One,” even if his success is purely temporary. Putin now seeks to use Ukraine to sow dissension and gain political influence within the European Union. The severity of the Russian threat is directly correlated with the weakness of the European Union. The EU has excelled at muddling through financial and political crises but now it is confronted with not one but five crises: Russia, Ukraine, Greece, immigration, and the coming British referendum on EU membership—and that may be too much. The very survival of the EU is at risk. Vladimir Putin; drawing by John Springs International governance on a global scale is equally fragile. The world may break up into rival camps both financially and politically. China has begun to build a parallel set of financial institutions, including the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB); the Asian Bond Fund Initiative; the New Development Bank (formerly the BRICS Bank); and the Chiang Mai Initiative, which is an Asian regional multilateral arrangement to swap currencies. Whether the two camps will be able to keep their rivalry within bounds will depend on how China manages its economic transition and on how the US reacts to it. The International Monetary Fund could play a positive part in this. It has abandoned its commitment to the Washington Consensus but the controlling shareholders of the Bretton Woods institutions—the US, the UK, France, and Germany among them—are unwilling to relinquish their voting control by increasing the representation of the developing world. This is very shortsighted on their part because it does not recognize changes in the relative weight of various economies and particularly the rise of China. The controlling shareholders are unlikely to abandon their control, however tenuous; but the IMF has an opportunity to build a binding connection between the two camps. The opportunity arises from the fact that the composition of the IMF’s Special Drawing Rights (SDR) basket will be up for its five-yearly review at the end of 2015. The SDR is an international reserve asset, created by the IMF in 1969 to supplement the existing official reserves of member countries. The Chinese renminbi is not fully qualified to be included in the SDR basket, but the qualifications to be included are not as rigorously defined as is generally believed. The Japanese yen was introduced when it was not yet widely traded; the franc entered the basket when the French capital account was heavily controlled; and the Saudi riyal was introduced when it was completely pegged to the US currency. The criteria for inclusion have changed over the years but now call for (1) a large exporter country and (2) a “freely usable” currency. This term is often misconstrued as imposing complete convertibility of capital accounts and flexibility of exchange rates; but that is not the case. Indeed, the basket of Special Drawing Rights formerly included currencies with no or little capital account convertibility. The Chinese leadership has now embarked on a major effort to have the renminbi included in the SDR basket, and the IMF staff is sympathetic. For instance, it has announced that the renminbi is “no longer undervalued,” and it doesn’t seek full and precipitous capital account liberalization, but rather a cautious and gradual pace of reform in order to ensure the smooth functioning of the SDR and the preservation of financial stability in China. Much now depends on the attitude of the US government, which holds veto rights in the IMF—even if the decision regarding the SDR basket requires only a 70 percent majority of the IMF’s board. The US would be making a major concession if it opened the door to allowing the renminbi to become a potential rival to the dollar. It could demand similar concessions from China in return, but that would be the wrong approach. The relationship between two great powers is not a zero-sum game: one party’s gain is not necessarily a loss for the other. China is seeking SDR status for the renminbi not to please or hurt the US but for reasons of its own that are only indirectly connected with China’s ultimate ambition of replacing the US dollar as the dominant currency in the world. China seeks to use financial liberalization as an engine of growth for the Chinese economy. China wants to deepen the government bond market and open it up to international investors in order to enable the central government to clean up the bad debts of insolvent local authorities; it also wants to reduce the excessive leverage in the economy by promoting conversions of debt to equity. Inclusion of the renminbi in the IMF basket would facilitate the process, and success would automatically advance the renminbi’s weight and influence in the world. The US government has little to gain and much to lose by treating the relationship with China as a zero-sum game. In other words it has little bargaining power. It could, of course, obstruct China’s progress, but that would be very dangerous. President Xi Jinping has taken personal responsibility for the economy and national security. If his market-oriented reforms fail, he may foster some external conflicts to keep the country united and maintain himself in power. This could lead China to align itself with Russia not only financially but also politically and militarily. In that case, should the external conflict escalate into a military confrontation with an ally of the United States such as Japan, it is not an exaggeration to say that we would be on the threshold of a third world war. Indeed, military budgets are rapidly increasing both in Russia and in China, and they remain at a very high level in the United States. For China, rearmament would be a surefire way to boost domestic demand. China is already flexing its military muscle in the South China Sea, operating in a unilateral and often quite belligerent manner, which is causing justifiable concern in Washington. Nevertheless, it may take a decade or more until a Russian–Chinese military alliance would be ready to confront the US directly. Until then, we may expect a continuation of hybrid warfare and the proliferation of proxy wars. Both the US and China have a vital interest in reaching an understanding because the alternative is so unpalatable. The benefits of an eventual agreement between China and the US could be equally far-reaching. Recently there has been a real breakthrough on climate policy on a bilateral basis. By taking the nonbinding representations and promises made by the two countries at face value, the agreement has made more credible some recent efforts to bring climate change under control. If this approach could be extended to other aspects of energy policy and to the financial and economic spheres, the threat of a military alignment between China and Russia would be removed and the prospect of a global conflict would be greatly diminished. That is worth trying. On his last state visit to the US in 2013, President Xi spoke of a “new type of great power relationship.” The subject has been widely discussed in China since then. President Obama should outline his own vision by drawing a distinction between Putin’s Russia, which has replaced the rule of law with the rule of force, and today’s China, which does not always abide by the rule of law but respects its treaty obligations. Russian aggression needs to be firmly resisted; by contrast China needs to be encouraged—by offering a more constructive alternative—to avoid the route of military aggression. This kind of offer may elicit a favorable response. Rivalry between the US and China is inevitable but it needs to be kept within bounds that would preclude the use of military force. It does not follow that a far-reaching agreement amounting to a strategic partnership between the US and China would be easy to accomplish. The two countries have fundamentally different political systems. While the US is founded on the principle of individual freedom, China has no significant tradition of such freedom. It has had a hierarchical structure since time immemorial and it has been an empire throughout most of its history. In recent years the US has led the world in the innovative development of social media, while China has led the world in finding means to control it. Since the end of the cold war, China has been much more successful than Russia in creating a successful hierarchical system. This is best seen by looking at the way information is distributed. Since the rise of social media, information increasingly travels along horizontal lines, but China is different: information is distributed vertically. Within the party–state apparatus, the closer one is to the top, the better one is informed and the more latitude one enjoys in expressing an opinion. This means that the party–state apparatus offers not only an opportunity for personal enrichment but also a semblance of individual freedom. No wonder that the apparatus has been able to attract much of China’s best talent. The degree of latitude it allows is, however, strictly circumscribed by red lines. People have to walk within a grid; those who transgress the red lines may fall into the hands of the security apparatus and disappear without a trace. The stranglehold of the security apparatus was gradually diminishing but recently there has been an ominous reversal: under the leadership of President Xi the informal rules defining the rights and status of NGOs, for instance, are now in the process of being significantly tightened.* Comparing President Xi’s “Chinese dream” with the American dream highlights the difference between the two political and social systems. Xi extols China’s success in “rejuvenating the nation” by harnessing the talents and energies of its people in service of the state. By contrast, the American dream extols the success of the rugged individual who achieves upward social mobility and material prosperity by overcoming obstacles posed by social conventions or prejudices or authorities abusing their power, or sheer bad luck. The US would like China to adopt its values but the Chinese leadership considers them subversive. In this respect China has more in common with Russia than with the US. Both Russia and China consider themselves victims of America’s aspiration to world domination. From the US point of view, there is much to disapprove of in China’s behavior. There is no independent judiciary and multinational companies are often mistreated and replaced by domestic favorites. And there are conflicts with the US and other nations in the South China Sea and over cyberwarfare and human rights. These are not matters on which cooperation will be easy to achieve. Fully recognizing these difficulties, the US government should nevertheless make a bona fide attempt at forging a strategic partnership with China. This would involve identifying areas of common interest as well as areas of rivalry. The former would invite cooperation, the latter tit-for-tat bargaining. The US needs to develop a two-pronged strategy that offers incentives for cooperation and deterrents that render tit-for-tat bargaining less attractive. The areas for cooperation may prove to be wider than is obvious at first sight. Cooperating with China in making President Xi’s financial reforms successful is definitely in the common interest. Success would fulfill the aspirations of the ever-increasing Chinese middle class. It may also allow Xi to relax some of the restrictions he has recently introduced and that would, in turn, increase the probability that his reforms will succeed and improve global financial stability. The weak point of his current approach is that both implementing and monitoring the reform process are in the same hands. Opening up the process to criticism by the media and civil society would greatly improve the efficacy of his reforms. This is particularly true of Xi’s anticorruption campaign. And if China followed this path, it would become increasingly attractive to the US as a strategic partner. Negotiations between the US and China could not possibly be completed by October 2015, when the board of the IMF is scheduled to consider the composition of the SDR basket. Realistically it would take until President Xi’s state visit to Washington in September to complete the preparations. But there is much to be gained by extending the SDR deadline to 2016. China will then host the meeting of the G20, and 2016 will also be the last year of the Obama administration. The prospect of a strategic partnership between the US and China would mobilize all political forces in favor of international cooperation on both sides. If a bona fide attempt fails, the US would then be fully justified in developing a strong enough partnership with China’s neighbors that a Chinese–Russian alliance would not dare to challenge it by military force. That would be clearly inferior to a strategic partnership between the US and China. A partnership with China’s neighbors would return us to a cold war, but that would still be preferable to a third world war. The Trans-Pacific and Trans-Atlantic Partnerships, which are currently being negotiated, could offer an excellent opportunity for a two-pronged strategy but the current approach is all wrong. At present China is excluded; indeed the partnerships are conceived as an anti-Chinese alliance under US leadership. The president has asked Congress to give him and his successor authority for up to six years to negotiate trade agreements under fast-track rules that would deprive Congress of its right to introduce amendments. The bill has passed the Senate and at this writing is before the House. If the House approves, President Xi may be presented with an apparent threat on his visit in September. This is an appropriate response to China’s aggressive behavior in the South China Sea and elsewhere, but it leaves little room for an alternative approach. It would, as a result, be difficult for President Obama to make a bona fide offer of strategic partnership. It is to be hoped that the House will not authorize putting the bill on a fast track. Instead of railroading the bill through Congress, it ought to be taken off the fast track. In that case, Congress would have plenty of time to correct the fundamental flaws in the proposed treaties that make them unacceptable as they are currently written. And that would also allow President Obama to make President Xi a genuine offer of a strategic partnership with China when he visits Washington in September. (Comment on this)
3:08a	International cooperation is in decline both in the political and financial spheres. The UN has failed to address any of the major conflicts since the end of the cold war; the 2009 Copenhagen Climate Change Conference left a sour aftertaste; the World Trade Organization hasn’t concluded a major trade round since 1994. The International Monetary Fund’s legitimacy is increasingly questioned because of its outdated governance, and the G20, which emerged during the financial crisis of 2008 as a potentially powerful instrument of international cooperation, seems to have lost its way. In all areas, national, sectarian, business, and other special interests take precedence over the common interest. This trend has now reached a point where instead of a global order we have to speak of global disorder. In the political sphere local conflicts fester and multiply. Taken individually these conflicts could possibly be solved but they tend to be interconnected and the losers in one conflict tend to become the spoilers in others. For instance, the Syrian crisis deteriorated when Putin’s Russia and the Iranian government came to Bashar al-Assad’s rescue, each for its own reasons. Saudi Arabia provided the seed money for ISIS and Iran instigated the Houthi rebellion in Yemen to retaliate against Saudi Arabia. Bibi Netanyahu tried to turn the US Congress against the nuclear treaty the US was negotiating with Iran. There are just too many conflicts for international public opinion to exert a positive influence. In the financial sphere the Bretton Woods institutions—the IMF and the World Bank—have lost their monopoly position. Under Chinese leadership, a parallel set of institutions is emerging. Will they be in conflict or will they find a way to cooperate? Since the financial and the political spheres are also interconnected, the future course of history will greatly depend on how China tackles its economic transition from investment and export-led growth to greater dependence on domestic demand, and how the US reacts to it. A strategic partnership between the US and China could prevent the evolution of two power blocks that may be drawn into military conflict. How did we reach this point of global disorder? During the cold war the world was dominated by two superpowers. Each maintained some degree of control over its allies and satellites, and avoided direct military confrontation with the other because of the danger of Mutually Assured Destruction. It was a MAD system but it worked: it produced a number of local military conflicts but it avoided a world war. When the Soviet empire fell apart the United States had an opportunity to become the sole superpower and the guarantor of peace in the world, but it did not rise to the occasion. The US was founded on the principle of individual freedom and it was not predisposed to become the policeman of the world. Indeed, it did not have a coherent view of the meaning of leadership in international affairs. During the cold war it had a bipartisan foreign policy, on which Democrats and Republicans largely agreed; but after the cold war ended the partnership broke up. Both parties continued to emphasize American sovereignty but they rarely agreed on subordinating it to international obligations. Then in 1997, a group of neoconservatives argued that the US should use its military supremacy to impose its national interests, and established a think tank called the Project for the New American Century, “to promote American global leadership.” But that was a false approach: military force cannot be used to rule the world. After the terrorist attack of September 11, the neocons persuaded President George W. Bush to attack Iraq on dubious grounds that turned out to be false, and the US lost its supremacy. The Project for the New American Century had approximately the same lifespan as Hitler’s Thousand-Year Reich: around ten years. On the financial side, by contrast, there was a clear consensus—the so-called Washington Consensus—on America’s role in the world. It became dominant in the 1980s under the leadership of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. It had strong ideological support from market fundamentalists; it had a supposedly scientific foundation in the Efficient Market Hypothesis and Rational Choice Theory; and it was efficiently administered by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The consensus was a much more subtle compromise between international governance and national self-interest than the neocons’ view that military power is supreme. Indeed, the Washington Consensus had its roots in the original compromise on which the Bretton Woods institutions were founded. John Maynard Keynes proposed a truly international currency, the bancor, but the US insisted on the dollar as the world’s reserve currency and it prevailed. In the memorable words of George Orwell’s Animal Farm, “all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” The Washington Consensus promoted free trade and the globalization of financial markets. In the late 1990s, market fundamentalists even tried to modify the articles of agreement of the IMF so as to impose capital account convertibility, the free exchange of currencies. That attempt failed, but by allowing financial capital to move around freely the Washington Consensus also allowed capital to escape taxation and regulation. That was a triumph for market fundamentalism. Unfortunately, the scientific foundations of this approach proved to be ill conceived. Unregulated financial markets are inherently unstable: instead of a general equilibrium that assures the optimum allocation of resources, they produce financial crises. This was dramatically demonstrated by the crash of 2008. By coincidence, 2008 marked both the end of America’s political supremacy and the demise of the Washington Consensus. It was also the beginning of a process of financial and political disintegration that first manifested itself in the microcosm of the European Union, but then spread to the world at large. The crash of 2008 had a lasting negative effect on all the economies of the world, with the notable exception of China’s. The Chinese banking system was relatively isolated from the rest of the world and largely government-owned. As a consequence, the Chinese banks could, at the government’s behest, offset the collapse of external demand by flooding the economy with credit. The Chinese economy replaced the American consumer as the motor of the global economy, largely by selling to the American consumer on credit. It has been a rather weak motor, reflecting the relative size of the Chinese and American economies, so that the global economy has grown rather slowly since the emergence of China’s international economic power. The main reason why the world avoided a global depression is that economists have learned some lessons from the experience of the 1930s. The heavy load of debt and lingering political prejudices limited the scale of fiscal stimulus globally (again with the exception of China); but the Federal Reserve under the leadership of its chairman, Ben Bernanke, embarked on unorthodox monetary policies including quantitative easing—large-scale injection of money into the economy through the purchase of bonds by the Federal Reserve. This prevented the reduction in effective demand from deteriorating into a global depression. The crash of 2008 was also indirectly responsible for the euro crisis. The euro was an incomplete currency: it had a common central bank but it did not have a common treasury. The architects of the euro were aware of this defect but believed that when the deficiency became apparent the political will could be summoned to correct it. After all, that is how the European Union was brought into existence—taking one step at a time, knowing full well that it was insufficient but that when the need arose it would lead to further steps. Unfortunately, political conditions changed between 1999, when the euro was adopted, and 2008, when the need arose. Germany under the leadership of Helmut Kohl led the process of European integration in order to facilitate the reunification of Germany. But reunification proved expensive and the German public became unwilling to take on any additional expenses. When, after the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers in 2008, the European finance ministers declared that no systemically important financial institution would be allowed to fail, Chancellor Angela Merkel, as a politician in touch with the prevailing public opinion, insisted that the responsibility should fall on each country separately, not on the European Union collectively. That ruled out the possibility of a common treasury just when it was needed. That was the beginning of the euro crisis. Crises in individual countries like Greece, Italy, or Ireland are essentially variants of the euro crisis. Subsequently, the financial crisis has morphed into a series of political crises. The differences between creditor countries and debtor countries have transformed the European Union from a voluntary association of equals into a relationship between creditors, such as Germany, and debtors, such as Greece, that is neither voluntary nor equal and arouses increasing political tensions. The European Union started out as a valiant attempt at international governance on a regional scale. In the aftermath of 2008, the EU became preoccupied with its internal problems and failed to pull its weight in the international economy. The United States also became inward-looking but by a somewhat different route. The inward turn of the EU and US led to a decline in international cooperation on a global scale. Since the Western powers are the mainstay of the prevailing world order, their declining influence has created a power vacuum in international governance. Aspiring regional powers and nonstate actors, which are willing to use military force, have rushed to fill the vacuum. Armed conflicts have proliferated and spread from the Middle East to other parts of Asia, Africa, and even Europe. By annexing Crimea and establishing separatist enclaves in Ukraine, Putin’s Russia has challenged both the prevailing world order, which depends on the Western powers for support, and the values and principles on which the EU was founded. Neither the European nor the American public is fully aware of the severity of the challenge. President Vladimir Putin wants to destabilize all of Ukraine by precipitating a financial and political collapse for which he can disclaim responsibility, while avoiding occupation of a part of eastern Ukraine, which would then depend on Russia for economic support. He has demonstrated his preference by twice converting an assured military victory into a cease-fire that threatened to destabilize all of Ukraine. Unfortunately, Putin is succeeding, as can be seen by comparing the “Minsk Two” cease-fire with “Minsk One,” even if his success is purely temporary. Putin now seeks to use Ukraine to sow dissension and gain political influence within the European Union. The severity of the Russian threat is directly correlated with the weakness of the European Union. The EU has excelled at muddling through financial and political crises but now it is confronted with not one but five crises: Russia, Ukraine, Greece, immigration, and the coming British referendum on EU membership—and that may be too much. The very survival of the EU is at risk. Vladimir Putin; drawing by John Springs International governance on a global scale is equally fragile. The world may break up into rival camps both financially and politically. China has begun to build a parallel set of financial institutions, including the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB); the Asian Bond Fund Initiative; the New Development Bank (formerly the BRICS Bank); and the Chiang Mai Initiative, which is an Asian regional multilateral arrangement to swap currencies. Whether the two camps will be able to keep their rivalry within bounds will depend on how China manages its economic transition and on how the US reacts to it. The International Monetary Fund could play a positive part in this. It has abandoned its commitment to the Washington Consensus but the controlling shareholders of the Bretton Woods institutions—the US, the UK, France, and Germany among them—are unwilling to relinquish their voting control by increasing the representation of the developing world. This is very shortsighted on their part because it does not recognize changes in the relative weight of various economies and particularly the rise of China. The controlling shareholders are unlikely to abandon their control, however tenuous; but the IMF has an opportunity to build a binding connection between the two camps. The opportunity arises from the fact that the composition of the IMF’s Special Drawing Rights (SDR) basket will be up for its five-yearly review at the end of 2015. The SDR is an international reserve asset, created by the IMF in 1969 to supplement the existing official reserves of member countries. The Chinese renminbi is not fully qualified to be included in the SDR basket, but the qualifications to be included are not as rigorously defined as is generally believed. The Japanese yen was introduced when it was not yet widely traded; the franc entered the basket when the French capital account was heavily controlled; and the Saudi riyal was introduced when it was completely pegged to the US currency. The criteria for inclusion have changed over the years but now call for (1) a large exporter country and (2) a “freely usable” currency. This term is often misconstrued as imposing complete convertibility of capital accounts and flexibility of exchange rates; but that is not the case. Indeed, the basket of Special Drawing Rights formerly included currencies with no or little capital account convertibility. The Chinese leadership has now embarked on a major effort to have the renminbi included in the SDR basket, and the IMF staff is sympathetic. For instance, it has announced that the renminbi is “no longer undervalued,” and it doesn’t seek full and precipitous capital account liberalization, but rather a cautious and gradual pace of reform in order to ensure the smooth functioning of the SDR and the preservation of financial stability in China. Much now depends on the attitude of the US government, which holds veto rights in the IMF—even if the decision regarding the SDR basket requires only a 70 percent majority of the IMF’s board. The US would be making a major concession if it opened the door to allowing the renminbi to become a potential rival to the dollar. It could demand similar concessions from China in return, but that would be the wrong approach. The relationship between two great powers is not a zero-sum game: one party’s gain is not necessarily a loss for the other. China is seeking SDR status for the renminbi not to please or hurt the US but for reasons of its own that are only indirectly connected with China’s ultimate ambition of replacing the US dollar as the dominant currency in the world. China seeks to use financial liberalization as an engine of growth for the Chinese economy. China wants to deepen the government bond market and open it up to international investors in order to enable the central government to clean up the bad debts of insolvent local authorities; it also wants to reduce the excessive leverage in the economy by promoting conversions of debt to equity. Inclusion of the renminbi in the IMF basket would facilitate the process, and success would automatically advance the renminbi’s weight and influence in the world. The US government has little to gain and much to lose by treating the relationship with China as a zero-sum game. In other words it has little bargaining power. It could, of course, obstruct China’s progress, but that would be very dangerous. President Xi Jinping has taken personal responsibility for the economy and national security. If his market-oriented reforms fail, he may foster some external conflicts to keep the country united and maintain himself in power. This could lead China to align itself with Russia not only financially but also politically and militarily. In that case, should the external conflict escalate into a military confrontation with an ally of the United States such as Japan, it is not an exaggeration to say that we would be on the threshold of a third world war. Indeed, military budgets are rapidly increasing both in Russia and in China, and they remain at a very high level in the United States. For China, rearmament would be a surefire way to boost domestic demand. China is already flexing its military muscle in the South China Sea, operating in a unilateral and often quite belligerent manner, which is causing justifiable concern in Washington. Nevertheless, it may take a decade or more until a Russian–Chinese military alliance would be ready to confront the US directly. Until then, we may expect a continuation of hybrid warfare and the proliferation of proxy wars. Both the US and China have a vital interest in reaching an understanding because the alternative is so unpalatable. The benefits of an eventual agreement between China and the US could be equally far-reaching. Recently there has been a real breakthrough on climate policy on a bilateral basis. By taking the nonbinding representations and promises made by the two countries at face value, the agreement has made more credible some recent efforts to bring climate change under control. If this approach could be extended to other aspects of energy policy and to the financial and economic spheres, the threat of a military alignment between China and Russia would be removed and the prospect of a global conflict would be greatly diminished. That is worth trying. On his last state visit to the US in 2013, President Xi spoke of a “new type of great power relationship.” The subject has been widely discussed in China since then. President Obama should outline his own vision by drawing a distinction between Putin’s Russia, which has replaced the rule of law with the rule of force, and today’s China, which does not always abide by the rule of law but respects its treaty obligations. Russian aggression needs to be firmly resisted; by contrast China needs to be encouraged—by offering a more constructive alternative—to avoid the route of military aggression. This kind of offer may elicit a favorable response. Rivalry between the US and China is inevitable but it needs to be kept within bounds that would preclude the use of military force. It does not follow that a far-reaching agreement amounting to a strategic partnership between the US and China would be easy to accomplish. The two countries have fundamentally different political systems. While the US is founded on the principle of individual freedom, China has no significant tradition of such freedom. It has had a hierarchical structure since time immemorial and it has been an empire throughout most of its history. In recent years the US has led the world in the innovative development of social media, while China has led the world in finding means to control it. Since the end of the cold war, China has been much more successful than Russia in creating a successful hierarchical system. This is best seen by looking at the way information is distributed. Since the rise of social media, information increasingly travels along horizontal lines, but China is different: information is distributed vertically. Within the party–state apparatus, the closer one is to the top, the better one is informed and the more latitude one enjoys in expressing an opinion. This means that the party–state apparatus offers not only an opportunity for personal enrichment but also a semblance of individual freedom. No wonder that the apparatus has been able to attract much of China’s best talent. The degree of latitude it allows is, however, strictly circumscribed by red lines. People have to walk within a grid; those who transgress the red lines may fall into the hands of the security apparatus and disappear without a trace. The stranglehold of the security apparatus was gradually diminishing but recently there has been an ominous reversal: under the leadership of President Xi the informal rules defining the rights and status of NGOs, for instance, are now in the process of being significantly tightened.* Comparing President Xi’s “Chinese dream” with the American dream highlights the difference between the two political and social systems. Xi extols China’s success in “rejuvenating the nation” by harnessing the talents and energies of its people in service of the state. By contrast, the American dream extols the success of the rugged individual who achieves upward social mobility and material prosperity by overcoming obstacles posed by social conventions or prejudices or authorities abusing their power, or sheer bad luck. The US would like China to adopt its values but the Chinese leadership considers them subversive. In this respect China has more in common with Russia than with the US. Both Russia and China consider themselves victims of America’s aspiration to world domination. From the US point of view, there is much to disapprove of in China’s behavior. There is no independent judiciary and multinational companies are often mistreated and replaced by domestic favorites. And there are conflicts with the US and other nations in the South China Sea and over cyberwarfare and human rights. These are not matters on which cooperation will be easy to achieve. Fully recognizing these difficulties, the US government should nevertheless make a bona fide attempt at forging a strategic partnership with China. This would involve identifying areas of common interest as well as areas of rivalry. The former would invite cooperation, the latter tit-for-tat bargaining. The US needs to develop a two-pronged strategy that offers incentives for cooperation and deterrents that render tit-for-tat bargaining less attractive. The areas for cooperation may prove to be wider than is obvious at first sight. Cooperating with China in making President Xi’s financial reforms successful is definitely in the common interest. Success would fulfill the aspirations of the ever-increasing Chinese middle class. It may also allow Xi to relax some of the restrictions he has recently introduced and that would, in turn, increase the probability that his reforms will succeed and improve global financial stability. The weak point of his current approach is that both implementing and monitoring the reform process are in the same hands. Opening up the process to criticism by the media and civil society would greatly improve the efficacy of his reforms. This is particularly true of Xi’s anticorruption campaign. And if China followed this path, it would become increasingly attractive to the US as a strategic partner. Negotiations between the US and China could not possibly be completed by October 2015, when the board of the IMF is scheduled to consider the composition of the SDR basket. Realistically it would take until President Xi’s state visit to Washington in September to complete the preparations. But there is much to be gained by extending the SDR deadline to 2016. China will then host the meeting of the G20, and 2016 will also be the last year of the Obama administration. The prospect of a strategic partnership between the US and China would mobilize all political forces in favor of international cooperation on both sides. If a bona fide attempt fails, the US would then be fully justified in developing a strong enough partnership with China’s neighbors that a Chinese–Russian alliance would not dare to challenge it by military force. That would be clearly inferior to a strategic partnership between the US and China. A partnership with China’s neighbors would return us to a cold war, but that would still be preferable to a third world war. The Trans-Pacific and Trans-Atlantic Partnerships, which are currently being negotiated, could offer an excellent opportunity for a two-pronged strategy but the current approach is all wrong. At present China is excluded; indeed the partnerships are conceived as an anti-Chinese alliance under US leadership. The president has asked Congress to give him and his successor authority for up to six years to negotiate trade agreements under fast-track rules that would deprive Congress of its right to introduce amendments. The bill has passed the Senate and at this writing is before the House. If the House approves, President Xi may be presented with an apparent threat on his visit in September. This is an appropriate response to China’s aggressive behavior in the South China Sea and elsewhere, but it leaves little room for an alternative approach. It would, as a result, be difficult for President Obama to make a bona fide offer of strategic partnership. It is to be hoped that the House will not authorize putting the bill on a fast track. Instead of railroading the bill through Congress, it ought to be taken off the fast track. In that case, Congress would have plenty of time to correct the fundamental flaws in the proposed treaties that make them unacceptable as they are currently written. And that would also allow President Obama to make President Xi a genuine offer of a strategic partnership with China when he visits Washington in September. (Comment on this)
3:10a	[graphic] National Park Service arrowhead and link to NPS.gov [graphic] World War II In the San Francisco Bay Area [graphic] images of San Francisco Bay Area [graphic] Link to World War II Home [graphic] Link to List of Sites [graphic] Link to Maps [graphic] Link to Essays [graphic] Link to Learn More [graphic] Link to Itineraries [graphic] Link to NR Home graphic [Property title] [photo] D-day prayer by shipbuilders in Richmond Photo courtesy of Golden Gate National Recreation Area, Park Archives and Records Center, Presidio Army Museum Collection The San Francisco Bay Area's major contribution to victory during World War II was shipbuilding. Over 30 shipyards, large and small, and scores of machine shops, and metal and wood fabricators joined together to create the world's largest combined shipbuilding complex. Unlike major shipyards on the east coast that were concentrated in compact urban areas, Bay Area shipbuilding consisted of components sprawled across hundreds of square miles, from Napa in the north, Sacramento and Stockton in the east, to San Jose in the south. In the decade prior to 1940, America's shipyards launched only 23 ships. In the five years after 1940, American shipyards launched 4,600 ships. San Francisco Bay Area shipbuilders produced almost 45 percent of all the cargo shipping tonnage and 20 percent of warship tonnage built in the entire country during World War II. The war lasted 1,365 days. In that span of time Bay Area shipyards built 1,400 vessels--a ship a day, on average. One pioneer Bay Area shipyard was Mare Island Naval Yard. It began with a single floating dry dock in 1854 and progressed rapidly as the only Navy yard for the Pacific Squadron and, in fact, the only repair facility on the entire Pacific Coast. In 1859, Mare Island launched its first ship, the paddlewheel wooden steamer USS Saginaw. In the years following, Mare Island Naval Yard built a score of vessels including tugs, colliers, barges, gunboats and, in 1883, the cruiser USS Mohican. Compared to the big shipyards on the East Coast at Philadelphia and New York, San Francisco Bay's shipbuilding industry was minuscule in the early years of the 20th century. How was it possible that from this modest beginning, San Francisco Bay would emerge in World War II as an industrial giant? How was it possible to build so many ships in so little time? First and most vital was a nationwide commitment to win the war. All available resources were dedicated to that end. Industrial leaders and politicians had the good sense to recognize that only through cooperation could total victory be achieved. As a result, World War II shipbuilding was perhaps the greatest combined effort of government and private industry in the Nation's history. The Bay Area was fortunate in one respect; two major local shipyards, Bethlehem Shipbuilding Corporation and Moore Dry Dock Company, had gained valuable experience in large-scale rapid production during World War I, and had on hand core management and labor groups when needed for World War II. Lessons learned during the first wartime shipbuilding program (1917-1922) had demonstrated to management what to do and what not to do. These two yards had long histories in steel shipbuilding and had managed to survive the depression years of the 1930s, a period when American shipbuilding all but ceased. In addition to these yards, Mare Island Naval Shipyard and Hunters Point Dry Docks provided well-established repair and shipbuilding facilities when the need arose. Navy contracts in the 1930s kept Mare Island capable of producing modern warships. [photo] Navy Hospital Ship USS Tryon, built by Moore Dry Dock, September 19, 1942 Photo courtesy of San Francisco Maritime National Historic Park Industrial expansion and population growth after 1900 had given the Bay Area untapped resources at the outset of World War II. One reason the Bay Area was selected as the site of the Kaiser yards and Marinship was availability of workers. Big shipyards along the northeast seaboard of the United States drew on the dense population of that region for workers. By the time America entered the war, those yards were operating at capacity and local skilled labor was fully employed. The Bay Area also had many miles of relatively undeveloped shoreline that contained several excellent shipyard sites. Smaller existing yards and potential sites existed along the deep-water channel in Stockton, accessible to the worker population of the interior region. Proximity to the Pacific war made the Bay Area a logical ship production site. Victory in the Pacific depended on ships; all men and material had to reach the war zone by ship. Aircraft at the time had insufficient range to operate from mainland bases and the only way to get air bases nearer to Japan was to take them by force through amphibious landings. San Francisco's Fort Mason was a well-established port of embarkation and Oakland had large (and expandable) army and navy shipping facilities. Fortunately America's rail network in 1941 was intact. Thanks to direct rail links between the Bay Area and industrial centers in the Midwest and East, a steady flow of steel and other material could sustain massive shipbuilding. These four components--local experienced yards, ready labor supply and building sites, proximity to the Pacific war and established railroads--set the stage for what would become the largest concentrated outpouring of ships in the history of the world. But getting the job done required more than the proper setting. Organization, management and innovation were skills essential to success. In 1940 America had a number of men who epitomized the "can do" spirit prevalent in the early 1900s. In Bay Area shipbuilding, men such as Joseph Moore, Warren Bechtel and Henry Kaiser had that attitude in common, as well as the shared experience of holding things together in the 1930s, during the deepest depression in American history. While Joe Moore was a shipbuilder of long standing, Kaiser and Bechtel were new to maritime construction. But they were builders of big things, up to the task confronting them. Each had a team of experienced and reliable engineers and foremen. Each had the ability to organize and follow through. At the top of the shipbuilding ladder was the U.S. Maritime Commission, five men appointed by President Roosevelt in 1936 and confirmed by the Senate the following year to direct America's shipbuilding program. The Commission's mandate was clear: "Develop and maintain a merchant marine sufficient to carry a substantial portion of the waterborne export and import foreign commerce of the United States on the best equipped, safest and most suitable type of vessels owned, operated and constructed by citizens of the United States, manned with a trained personnel and capable of serving as a naval and military auxiliary in time of war or national emergency." While the threat of war existed in 1936, no one could have foreseen the magnitude of the Commission's responsibility over the next decade. Yet many shipbuilders and many members of Congress who passed the Merchant Marine Act of 1936 could vividly recall the previous wartime emergency just 15 years earlier. America had started too late. Over 80 percent of the tonnage authorized in the shipbuilding program was launched after World War I had ended and, thus, had no impact on the conduct or outcome of the war. [photo] SS War Hawk, a C3 freighter built by Moore Dry Dock, is launched with her rudder and propeller in place with temporary steel stiffeners holding the rudder parallel to the keel during the launch. Photo courtesy of San Francisco Maritime National Historic Park America would not make the same mistake again. The Commission adopted a long-range building program of 50 new ships a year for the next 10 years. America's moribund shipyards, including those in the Bay Area, came to life. Rehabilitation and expansion began immediately. In preparing for global war, the need for naval vessels was parallel to the need for merchant ships. Contracts for both types of vessels were awarded to Bay Area shipyards. After December 7, 1941, the shipbuilding program responded to the shifting strategies and progress of the war. New types of vessels were needed, in particular, convoy escort warships in the early stages of the conflict when allied shipping was most vulnerable to German submarines. As the Allies gained the initiative, landing craft and other assault types became top priority. Managing the shipyards became highly complex. Juggling steel and manpower shortages, procuring needed parts and machinery, and balancing the needs of the Maritime Commission and the Navy provided ample challenge to administrators and planners alike. Bay Area shipbuilders, from the giant Kaiser yards to the small boatyards around the Bay, found innovative ways to cut costs and save time, improve the product and work in cooperation with myriad Federal agencies. Obstacles to production, such as training inexperienced workers and housing and feeding emigrant workers and families, had to be met and overcome. In addition to delivering ships on schedule, shipyard management had to participate in dealing with labor unions and subcontractors, crime in shipyard boomtowns and racial and gender conflicts. Problems naturally arose, breakdowns and accidents occurred, mistakes were made. When negatives are weighed against positives, however, the result is remarkable. The ultimate measure of success is, of course, that decisive victory was achieved. By war's end, the many thousands of men and women who took part in building ships could feel justifiable pride in their accomplishment. A map of San Francisco Bay and the rivers and estuaries surrounding it shows the nexus of land and waterways where shipbuilding took place. The varied shoreline of the Bay, one of the finest natural harbors in the world, provided equally varied shipyard sites. The narrow entrance of the Golden Gate not only protected the shipyards from storms and tidal surges, but from unseen enemies whose only course of attack by sea was through the narrow channel. The major wartime shipyards consisted of three types; established yards such as Mare Island and Bethlehem Steel, smaller specialized yards such as those at Stockton, and emergency yards, such as Marinship and Kaiser, built for specific jobs. [photo] Marinship with tankers on the ways, 1944. Photo courtesy of San Francisco Maritime National Historic Park The major yards received raw materials by rail and pre-assembled components from Bay Area shops. Small parts, nut and bolts, and a thousand other pieces were supplied by large and small manufacturing facilities all across America. The big yards became assembly points where completed vessels were launched into the Bay. The entire network, with railway arteries and workers as lifeblood, became one giant single-purpose organism, highly adaptable and highly successful. Any industrial organism so large can not be laid across the landscape without consequential environmental and sociological impacts. At the time, unavoidable physical degradation of the land and shoreline was an acceptable cost. To accommodate new shipyards, hills and rocks were dynamited, channels dredged, wetlands diked and filled. Ironically, it is some of these hastily-formed features that today are the most recognizable physical remnants of the wartime shipbuilding industry. The myriad buildings, warehouses and shops left derelict by the closing of wartime shipyards were dismantled or put to other uses. Today, the few surviving buildings (and a few of the businesses) are part of San Francisco Bay's historic places, such as Kaiser's Richmond Shipyard No. 3 and Mare Island Naval Shipyard. While all wartime shipyards fell under the control of either the Maritime Commission or the U.S. Navy, they drew their resources and materials from the same pool. Constantly changing situations and needs created an enormously complex distribution system of parts and labor. The various yards competed with one another, but all worked toward a common goal. Keeping priorities for materials straight and avoiding production bottlenecks was largely, due to wartime secrecy, an unsung tale of heroic proportions. Imagine, for example, the challenge presented by hundreds of freight cars daily rolling into the Bay Area from around the Nation loaded with vital parts and material for the around-the-clock shipbuilding program. Railway cars that left Detroit on Monday with parts destined for Kaiser, might have to be diverted on Tuesday to Moore Dry Dock to complete a Naval contract on time. Kaiser, meanwhile, would need to have parts diverted to the Richmond plant from another source so that Kaiser could complete its contracts on time. By the time the railway cars arrived on Wednesday from Detroit, they might have been diverted again to Bethlehem's San Francisco yard. It was a monumental game of musical chairs. As the war progressed, some Bay Area shipyards evolved into repair and conversion facilities, where existing vessels returning from the Pacific underwent battle-damage repairs, received updated radar or weapons, or were converted from one specialized type of vessel to another. Yards that had begun as clear-cut navy yards or Maritime Commission yards (that is, building exclusively warships or cargo ships) found their assignments more diverse as time passed. Marinship in Sausalito, for example, was built specifically to supply fuel-oil tankers for the Merchant Marine. Because the tankers were still being designed when the yard was ready to begin production, a dozen Liberty ships became the first products of the new yard. When the yard shifted to tanker production, some of the tankers, with modified specifications, were built for the navy. Near the end of the war, Marinship built invasion barges for the army. [photo] C4 Transport (AP) General M.M. Patrick, built at Kaiser #3, June 21, 1944. Photo courtesy of San Francisco Maritime National Historic Park Innovation was fundamental to the success of Bay Area shipbuilding during World War II. Shipbuilding prior to the war tended to be bound by long-standing traditions and methods. The transition from wooden ships to iron and then steel was slow. During World War I, steel shipbuilding followed tradition, calling for riveted hulls with each vessel custom built on site, a labor intensive, relatively slow process. In 1917, for example, a typical steel vessel took 12 to 14 months from keel-laying to delivery. At the peak of production in World War II, the work could be accomplished in four to six days. Much credit for the prodigious output of American shipyards during World War II has been given to the assembly line, the notion that ships were built like automobiles. But the analogy is not accurate. Most large-scale shipbuilding did not employ the assembly line as it relates to automobile manufacture. With cars, the chassis was pulled slowly along the line as parts were attached to the chassis until the finished product rolled off the end of the line. Ship hulls, however, were too big and heavy to drag along an assembly line. Instead a steady stream of component parts--pre-assemblies--were brought to the hull and lifted by large shipyard cranes onto the hull. In some cases small vessels, such as landing craft, were assembled much like automobiles. Each yard employed a variety of time and labor-saving methods, whatever it took to speed up the process without jeopardizing the end product. Greatly speeding the shipbuilding process was the widespread use of pre-assemblies, such as deck houses and engines. The technique had been used in World War I, but not nearly as extensively. As the war progressed, the pre-assemblies grew larger and more complete, right down to the doorknobs on cabin doors and cooking utensils in the galleys. Installation of the miles of piping and wiring that go into a large vessel was made far easier by the pre-assembly process. While most parts were pre-assembled in the shipyards, some complex assemblies were made miles from the yard and shipped by rail. Anchor-winch assemblies, for example, might come from as far away as New York. As useful as pre-assembly was in cutting production time, the real key to accelerated shipbuilding, however, was welding. Ships in World War I took longer to build than in World War II primarily because their hulls were riveted rather than welded. Welding had been introduced in American ships prior to 1918, although none had an entirely welded hull. Riveted ships were strong and durable. But riveted hulls had drawbacks. Chief among these was the time needed to align steel plates and drill holes for rivets, and to set and drive home the rivets. To place each rivet (150,000 for a typical hull) took two workers, one on either side of the plates being fastened. But to reach that point required the efforts of at least two other workers. A "driller" had to position each hole in the proper place and drill through the one-inch-thick hull plate. After the plates were aligned on the frames they seldom matched the pre-drilled holes precisely, so a "reamer" had to enlarge the holes to eliminate overlap and allow the rivet to fit. The combined weight of rivets needed to fasten hull and deck plates could add more than 300 tons to a ship's hull and subtract that weight from the vessel's payload. Strong as they were, rivets could pop loose under stress or when hull plates were damaged. Unless the exterior heads of the rivets were flush with the hull, they added drag that could slow the ship at sea. [photo] Gato Class Submarine USS Blenny (built by Electric Boat), 15 of this type were launched at Mare Island, 1943-45 Photo courtesy of San Francisco Maritime National Historic Park The advantages of arc welding--low cost compared to riveting, speed of application and strength-- were apparent. One worker could do the work of two. Properly welded joints and seams were as strong or stronger than the surrounding steel. In spite of these advantages, however, welding was slow to supplant riveting. Not until World War II created demand for rapid ship construction did welding replace riveting as the principal means of joining steel. Automatic seam-welding machines and new alloys and welding methods added even greater speed to the process but also revealed some disadvantages. Welded steel plates tended to buckle and warp more than riveted ones. Uneven heating could result in stress fractures. Use of improperly sized electrodes could produce weak joints. Stories of welded ships breaking apart in heavy seas, or of welded joints failing under even mild stress, were partly justified. A skilled welder can make a good solid seam almost anywhere, horizontal, vertical, overhead, angled. A novice welder, as many of the new shipyard workers were, had neither the skill or experience to match an old hand. Welding seams on flat deck plates with gravity helping the flow was simple enough but overhead welding was much more difficult. One solution was to position seams so that the welder could work in a "down-hand" position, that is, with the electrodes held at waist level or below to avoid fatigue. That often meant bringing the work piece to the worker. Large vertical parts to be welded were turned horizontal. Ceilings and overhead structures were welded inverted then reversed when completed. Scaffolding was built to place the welders in optimum position. Welding became the basic glue of steel shipbuilding, allowing for fabrication of almost any shape in any size. Without high-speed welding, much of the innovative methods applied to World War II shipbuilding would not have been possible. The shortage of trained workers in the shipyards translated into an even more critical problem; rapid training of new workers. All experienced workers in the Bay Area already were fully employed when America entered the war. Tens of thousands of unskilled men and women were recruited to meet demands of new emergency shipyards. Years of training and experience necessary to make a journeyman shipyard worker could not be condensed into a matter of days or weeks, yet the war would wait for no one. The solution was to break the complex job of building a ship into the smallest possible components, train workers to do that specific task and let them gain experience through repetition. Trade unions objected strenuously to this practice, giving rise to deep conflicts between unions and shipyard management that remained unresolved throughout the war. Large and small classrooms sprang up in Bay Area shipyards where welding and other crafts were taught. Galling as this situation was to professional shipbuilders, there was no suitable alternative. A sidelight to the transition from rivets to welds in shipbuilding was "Rosie the Riveter," a public relations creation that has, over the years, become synonymous with the home front effort during World War II. Rosie illustrated how women pitched in willingly to the war effort, and proved their competency at doing a "man's" job. Rosie, however, as illustrated by Norman Rockwell and others, was an aircraft riveter, not a ship riveter. Women workers in aircraft production plants handled all phases of fabrication and assembly, but it was the image of a woman punching small alloy rivets into aluminum aircraft skin that caught the public fancy. In addition to the thousands of women welders in the shipbuilding program, thousands of other women workers participated in almost every facet of shipbuilding. Shipyards invented a parallel to Rosie the Riveter called Wendy the Welder, but she never received the icon status of Rosie. Nonetheless, the essential contribution by women welders during World War II has been recognized. [photo] Richmond Shipyard Number Three at the end of the war Photo courtesy of the Richmond Museum of History CollectionKAISER The name Henry J. Kaiser more than any other stands out in Bay Area shipbuilding. Indeed, Kaiser gained national and worldwide recognition during World War II for his contribution to Allied victory. His maritime achievements are the more remarkable considering that before 1940 he had never built a ship or a shipyard. By 1945 he and his associates had built seven shipyards and delivered 1,490 ships, 747 at the Richmond yards alone. The four Kaiser yards in Richmond comprised the largest shipbuilding operation on the Pacific Coast. Prior to the war, Henry J. Kaiser was known in construction circles as a tough, competitive highway contractor and builder of massive dams. Most notably, Kaiser was a prime force in the Grand Coulee, Bonneville and Hoover Dams. He sensed opportunity when, in 1936, the Maritime Commission was formed. With existing shipyards fully occupied with the revitalized merchant marine, new yards were needed. Kaiser, inexperienced in shipbuilding, knew how to build industrial plants. He teamed with Todd Shipyards, one of the Nation's largest, to secure a contract for five C1 freighters. In 1940, the new company received a contract from the British for 60 emergency cargo vessels, forerunners of the Liberty ships. Thirty were to be built on the east coast by Kaiser in partnership with Bath Iron Works in Maine. The other 30 would be built in a new yard in Richmond, already scouted by Kaiser himself. The City of Richmond before World War II was a small industrial center built around a Ford assembly plant, a Standard Oil refinery, a Pullman railway car shop and a number of other smaller manufacturers. Richmond was selected as the site of a new shipyard by Henry Kaiser and the Maritime Commission because of its available waterfront, nearby industrial capacity and sufficient nearby population from which to draw a work force. As a consequence, Richmond suffered in a microcosm all the trials and tribulations of wartime America and was transformed forever by the experience. As the Kaiser construction crews began cutting and filling for the marine launching ways in Richmond, the rapidly changing war in Europe triggered rapidly shifting national defense priorities. Just two days after the first keel was laid in April 1941, the Maritime Commission directed Kaiser to build a second shipyard in Richmond for Liberty ships for America, and have it operational by September. Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941, changed priorities again; on January 9, 1942, the Maritime Commission and Kaiser began a third shipyard at Richmond to build big troop transports. By this time yards one and two were building the British freighters and Liberty ships, although none had yet been launched. By May 14, 1942, the first keel was laid at yard three. In June 1942, Kaiser got a call to build yet another shipyard, this one for invasion ships, called yard 3-A (later yard 4). This yard was unique among Bay Area shipyards in that it came closest to an auto-type assembly line for big ships. The type of ships to be built there, initially cloaked in secrecy, were LST's. Hundreds of these "Landing Ship Tank" vessels were needed as the mainstay of invasion fleets. Several eastern yards besides Kaiser in Richmond and the Kaiser yard in Vancouver, Washington, were contracted for their construction. In all, 982 were completed including 15 by Kaiser-Richmond, and 30 by Kaiser-Vancouver. More than 100 were completed as or converted to repair ships, casualty evacuation ships, boat tenders and service craft. When the LST contract was completed, Kaiser #4 switched to frigate escort vessels based on the Canadian Corvette. After building 12 of these, the yard turned to another type of coastal supply cargo ship. By war's end, Kaiser #4 had launched 51 ships including 24 coastal cargo carriers. (Comment on this)
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3:21a	Pinpointing the Start of World War 3 by Roy A. Reinhold This article will challenge your understanding of prophecy, do you have the courage to face the truth? One of the most misunderstood facets of prophecy study is the question, "When does world war 3 begin according to the scriptures?" Tons of books have been written proposing that WW3 starts after the rapture and before the beginning of the end-times 7 year period, or proposed that WW3 begins sometime during the first 3.5 years in the Tribulation period, or begins near the end of the 7 year period in a war which ends at Armageddon. All of these "theories" are incorrect and the correct beginning of world war 3 can be shown to begin immediately after the middle of the end-times 7 year period, right after the abomination of desolation takes place. When I say proved conclusively, I mean without a doubt, without any equivocation! I will conclusively prove the point in this article, but let me first lay out what the scenario looks like which will make it easier for you to grasp the points. In the middle of the end-times 7 year period, the antichrist will sit down in the most holy place of the soon to be built Jewish Temple in Jerusalem, and declare falsely that he is God. This is called throughout scriptures, the abomination of desolation. It is also called the beginning of the Great Tribulation period. Almost immediately after the abomination of desolation, Egypt will lead an alliance of Arab nations in attacking Israel to achieve their long-time objective of ridding the Middle East of Jews and creating a Palestinian nation in what is now Israel. In the Arab alliance with Egypt are Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Jordan, all the nations which surround Israel. Actually, the scriptures tell us that Jordan will attempt to remain neutral, but will enter the war as Israelis flee the invading armies and try to cross the Jordan River and also a route south of the Dead Sea. The Jordanians attack the fleeing Jewish refugees. Egypt and her Arab allies are called the King of the South in Daniel 11:40, and they will start the war because they have an ironclad treaty with Russia to join in the war once Egypt starts it. Russia and her allies are called the King of the North. This powerful coalition will have a single purpose in mind, to forever eliminate the Jewish problem. World War 3 will not last a long time in duration, but will be the most deadly conflict ever, with nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons used by both sides. On the side of Israel will be the European Community, the United States, other NATO countries, Japan, and China. Tens of millions will be killed with this unprecedented use of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. Japan and China will enter the war only after the US has been attacked in a surprise all-out nuclear attack from Russia. Unlike the Desert Storm war of 1991, the coalition forces will not stop their attack until all the nations which attacked Israel are completely overrun. Forces from China and Japan will go all the way to the very western borders of Russia. World War 3 ends with total victory at a very high price to the combatants involved. However, scripture shows us that the war will end during the Great Tribulation period, before the time of the 6th Seal events of Revelation 6:12-14. At the time of the 6th Seal events, the rapture of believers takes place and then the wrath of God period begins, called the Day of the Lord. During the Day of the Lord the 7 Trumpet Judgments and 7 Bowl Judgments occur. The Armageddon war starts just before the return of Jesus as conquering Messiah, as the nations revolt against the incredibly strict dictatorship economic control by the antichrist. Now, let me prove conclusively to you, that World War 3 starts immediately after the abomination of desolation in the middle of the end-times 7 year period! In both the Matthew 24 and Mark 13 versions of the Olivet Discourse, Jesus told Peter, James, John, and Andrew the events that would take place just before He returned to take over rule and reign of the whole earth. In that discourse, He revealed that something very important was to take place right after the abomination of desolation. Mark 13:14-20 But when you see the ABOMINATION OF DESOLATION standing where it should not be (let the reader understand), then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. And let him who is on the housetop not go down, or enter in, to get anything out of his house; and let him who is in the field not turn back to get his cloak. But woe to those who are with child and to those who nurse babes in those days! But pray that it may not happen in the winter. For those days will be a time of tribulation such as has not occurred since the beginning of creation which God created, until now, and never shall. And unless the Lord had shortened those days, no life would have been saved; but for the sake of the elect whom He chose, He shortened the days. That same corresponding text is Matthew 24:15-22, where that future period is called the Great Tribulation as opposed to the first half of the 7 year period which is called the Tribulation period. I know, you've read the above text and probably are saying that no world war is mentioned. I've started off with the obscure texts first, but you'll soon see that Jesus was obliquely referring to the coming world war 3 timeframe. The reason that Jesus said for those in Judea (modern Israel) to flee when the abomination of desolation takes place, is that there will quickly be an all-out attack upon Israel with armies many times the size of Israel's entire population. Our next text is in the Luke 21 version of the Olivet Discourse, where a few more details are mentioned. Luke 21:20-24 But when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then recognize that her desolation is at hand. Then let those in Judea flee to the mountains, and let those who are in the midst of the city depart, and let not those who are in the country enter the city; because these are the days of vengeance, in order that all things which are written may be fulfilled. Woe to those who nurse babes in those days; for there will be great distress upon the land, and wrath to this people, and they will fall by the edge of the sword, and will be led captive into all the nations; and Jerusalem will be trampled underfoot by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled. Many have interpreted the Luke passage above as applying to the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 AD, but the truth is that there is a future fulfillment. The disciples had asked two questions of Jesus, (1) when will the Temple be destroyed, and (2) what will be the signs when His return was about to take place? Jesus' answer took in the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD, but the whole context is about events that will take place just before He returns to set up the kingdom of God on the earth. Notice that the same language is used in the Matthew, Mark, and Luke versions, where people in Judea are told to flee for the mountains, and woe to those who are pregnant or nursing babies. No one will argue that the text in Matthew and Mark are exclusively about the end-times 7 year period, but they argue about the text in Luke even though it uses the same language. Perhaps they are arguing to fit the scripture into their pre-conceived notions! Another thought concerns the phrase, "all things which are written may be fulfilled." We know that all prophecy will be fulfilled before the Messiah returns to reign on the earth, but who would apply that understanding to the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD? Obviously no one would reach that conclusion. Now that we've hit the more obscure references, let's go on to the clear unarguable texts which prove the point. In Daniel 11:36-38, we are shown that the antichrist will falsely declare himself to be God, and will not honor any of the gods of the various religions. Then we are shown the attack which commences world war 3, after the text about the abomination of desolation! Daniel 11:40 And at the end time the king of the South will collide with him, and the king of the North will storm against him with chariots, with horsemen, and with many ships; and he will enter countries, overflow them, and pass through. No one will argue that this scripture text is about world war 3, but many argue that Daniel 11:36-38 may not be talking about the abomination of desolation. Take a look at how the angel explained the events to Daniel. Daniel 12:11 And from the time that the regular sacrifice is abolished, and the abomination of desolation is set up, there will be 1290 days. The angel was referring back to the verses in Daniel 11:36-38, where a more explanatory version of the abomination of desolation was given. We know that the antichrist will stop the regular sacrifices in the soon to be built Jewish Temple, and perform the abomination of desolation. Clearly then, the start of world war 3 begins in Daniel 11:40, after the abomination of desolation. The next example is the clearest in scripture, where the entire book of Joel is about the Great Tribulation period and details the invasion of the king of the North into Israel. The identifying texts show that the book of Joel events occur after the sacrifices in the Jewish Temple are stopped (at the time of the abomination of desolation). Joel 1:6 For a nation has invaded my land,.... Joel 1:9 The grain offering and the libation are cut off from the house of the Lord. The priests mourn, the ministers of the Lord. Joel 1:14 Gird yourselves with sackcloth, and lament O priests; wail O ministers of the altar! Come, spend the night in sackcloth, O ministers of my God, for the grain offering and the libation are withheld from the house of your God. Joel 1:15 Alas for the day! For the Day of the Lord is near, and it will come as destruction from the Almighty. Joel 2:1 Blow a trumpet in Zion, and sound an alarm on My holy mountain! Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble, for the Day of the Lord is coming; surely it is near. Joel 2:20 But I will remove the northern army far from you,.... Joel 2:31 The sun will be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and awesome Day of the Lord comes . Joel 3:14-15 ... For the Day of the Lord is near in the valley of decision. The sun and the moon grow dark, and the stars lose their brightness. Instead of splitting apart the concepts, I gave them all to you at once. The texts from Joel state that the time context is after the sacrifices in the Temple have been stopped. We know from other texts such as Daniel 12:11, that the antichrist will stop the sacrifices in the Temple and perform the abomination of desolation. So, the time frame in the book of Joel is after the sacrifices are stopped and before the Day of the Lord begins. Notice in Joel 1:15 above, that the timing is when the Day of the Lord is near, but hasn't come. Joel 2:1, likewise says that the timing is before the Day of the Lord. Another concept from the text above is that an army has invaded the nation of Israel (Joel 1:6), and that army is the northern army (Joel 2:20). The northern army is the king of the North from Daniel 11:40. Therefore, the scriptural texts confirm the scenario outlined at the beginning of this article, that world war 3 begins during the Great Tribulation period, before the Day of the Lord period. Another concept from the texts above is that the Day of the Lord period begins after the 6th Seal signs of Revelation 6:12-14, where the sun becomes black like sackcloth, and the moon became like blood. Notice that Joel 2:31 and Joel 3:14-15 both refer to the sun and moon becoming dark, and are the 6th Seal signs of Revelation 6. What is so significant, is that Joel 2:31 states that the 6th Seal signs occur before the Day of the Lord comes. The text from Joel 3:14-15, also states that when the 6th Seal signs occur, the Day of the Lord is near. Are there other scriptures that say the same thing? Take a look at the book of Matthew. Matthew 24:29 But immediately after the tribulation of those days THE SUN WILL BE DARKENED, AND THE MOON WILL NOT GIVE ITS LIGHT, AND THE STARS WILL FALL from the sky, and the POWERS OF THE HEAVENS will be shaken,.... or, take a look at the book of Mark. Mark 13:24 But in those days, after that tribulation, THE SUN WILL BE DARKENED, AND THE MOON WILL NOT GIVE ITS LIGHT, AND THE STARS WILL BE FALLING from heaven, and the POWERS THAT ARE IN THE HEAVENS will be shaken. How clear do you want it? Without a doubt, the period up to the 6th Seal signs are called the tribulation of those days (made up of the Tribulation and Great Tribulation periods). We have two witnesses that state that immediately after the tribulation of those days the 6th Seal signs take place, and the two texts from the book of Joel that clearly state that the 6th Seal signs take place before the Day of the Lord begins! If you read the book of Joel, you'll clearly see that the invasion of the northern army into Israel is over before the 6th Seal signs and before the Day of the Lord begins. If hardheaded, you might ask, "Roy, are there more scriptures that confirm the same things?" Yeah, sure, take a look at Ezekiel 30, with verses 1-9 about that same time period before the Day of the Lord begins. Ezekiel 30:3-5 For the Day of the Lord is near; it will be a day of clouds, a time of doom for the nations. And a sword will come upon Egypt, and anguish will be in Ethiopia when the slain fall in Egypt, they take away her wealth, and her foundations are torn down. Ethiopia, Put, Lud, all Arabia, Libya, and the people of the land that is in league will fall with them by the sword. God our Father has placed clues like this throughout scripture, where it states that the Day of the Lord is near. That phrase sets the time frame for the prophecy. Notice that it talks of the same nations mentioned in Daniel 11, Ezekiel 38 & 39, and others. Put and Lud above add the names of modern day Sudan and Tunisia, and perhaps Algeria. It takes no great leap of knowledge that calculate that in an all-out attack on Israel to eliminate them once and for all, that all the Arab nations will want to participate. But Roy, are there other texts which point to the same time frame you've mentioned? Take a look at Ezekiel 32, which ties in the 6th Seal signs as occurring after Egypt is destroyed, and also tells us who decimates Egypt. Ezekiel 32:2 Son of man, take up a lamentation over Pharaoh king of Egypt, and say to him,.... Ezekiel 32:7 And when I extinguish you, I will cover the heavens, and darken their stars; I will cover the sun with a cloud, and the moon shall not give its light. Ezekiel 32:11 For thus says the Lord God, "The sword of the king of Babylon shall come upon you." As in the Daniel 11:40 text, the above scripture is about the king of the South, Egypt. The time frame of the chapter is identified by the 6th Seal signs in Ezekiel 32:7, as the sun and the moon become dark. The alliance headed by the antichrist, the king of Babylon, will decimate the land of Egypt for their attack on the nation of Israel. Ezekiel 32 goes on to cite the other nations which are decimated along with Israel. Ezekiel 32:22 Assyria.... (Syria) Ezekiel 32:24 Elam.... (Iraq) Ezekiel 32:26 Meshech and Tubal.... (Russia) Ezekiel 32:29 There also is Edom.... (Jordan) Ezekiel 32:30 There also are the chiefs of the north (Islamic countries of former Soviet Union like Kazakhstan, etc.), all of them, and all the Sidonians.... (Lebanon) Other reference texts concerning our topic of world war 3 occurring in the Great Tribulation period are Isaiah 13, which discusses a war when the Day of the Lord is near. The book of Obadiah is entirely about the war during the Great Tribulation period, when the Day of the Lord is near. Obadiah details the actions which Edom (modern Jordan) takes against the fleeing Israelis, who attempt to cross the Jordan River and south of the Dead Sea route when the Arab and Russian armies overrun Israel. The scriptural references provide overwhelming evidence for the outlined scenario. It takes courage to face the truth that your previous understanding of prophecy is flawed. Do you have the courage to accept the truth and change? God our Father will give you the understanding if you ask Him. (Comment on this)
3:25a	6:12 And I beheld when he had opened the sixth Seal (using his "Key"), and, lo, there was a great "earthquake"; and the "sun" became black as sackcloth of hair, and the "moon" became as blood; (Please see my "The Four Horsemen of The Apocalypse & the Two Witnesses" Booklet for the Bible Prophecy "Code") 6:13 And "the stars of heaven" fell unto the "earth", even as the "fig tree" casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind (Ezekiel 13:13). 9:13 And the sixth angel sounded, and I heard a voice from the four horns of the golden altar which is before God, 9:14 Saying to the sixth angel which had the trumpet, Loose the four angels which are bound (Please see the Book of Enoch in the "King of kings' Bible") in the great River Euphrates. 9:15 And the four angels were loosed, which were prepared for The Hour, and The Day, (the month, and the year) for to slay the third part of men. (2,000,000,000). 9:16 And the number of the army of the horsemen [were] two hundred thousand thousand (200,000,000): and I HEARD the number of them. 9:17 And thus I saw the horses in the vision, and them that sat on them, having breastplates of fire, and of jacinth, and brimstone: and the heads of the horses [were] as the heads of lions; and out of their mouths issued fire and smoke and brimstone (sulphur). 9:18 By these three was the third part of men killed (2,000,000,000), by the fire, and by the smoke, and by the brimstone (sulphur), which issued out of their mouths. 9:19 For their power is in their mouth, and in their tails: for their tails [were] like unto serpents, and had heads, and with them they do hurt. 9:20 And the rest of the men which were not killed by these plagues yet repented not of the works of their hands, that they should not worship devils (liars), and idols of gold, and silver, and brass, and stone, and of wood (materialism): which neither can see, nor hear, nor walk: 9:21 Neither repented they of their murders, nor of their sorceries, nor of their fornication, nor of their thefts. 16:12 And the sixth angel poured out his vial upon the great River Euphrates; and the "water" (Rev. 17:15) thereof was dried up, that the way of the kings of the East (eastern block - the U.S.S.R. and China re-united) might be prepared. 16:13 And I saw three unclean spirits like frogs [come] out of the mouth of the dragon, and out of the mouth of the beast, and out of the mouth of the false prophet. 16:14 For they are the spirits of devils, working miracles, [which] go forth unto the kings of the earth and of the WHOLE WORLD, to gather them to The Battle of that Great Day of God Almighty (Armageddon). 6:14 And the "heaven" departed as a scroll when it is rolled together; and every "mountain" and "island" were moved out of their places. 6:15 And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every free man, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains; 6:16 And said to the "mountains" and "rocks" (Deuteronomy 32:37), Fall on us, and hide us from the face of Him that sitteth on the Throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb: (Please see my "On The Way to Emmaus Again" Booklet) 6:17 For the Great Day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand? 14:1 And I looked, and, lo, a Lamb stood on the mount Sion, and with him an hundred forty [and] four thousand, having his Father's name written in their foreheads. 14:2 And I heard a voice from heaven, as the voice of many "waters", and as the voice of a great thunder: and I heard the voice of harpers harping with their harps: 14:3 And they sung as it were (what seemed like) a "New Song" (Isaiah 42:10) before the Throne, and before the four beasts, and the elders: and no man could learn that "Song" except the hundred [and] forty [and] four thousand, which were redeemed from the Earth. 15:3 And they sing the "Song of Moses" (Old Covenant - Deut. 31) the servant of God, AND the "Song of the Lamb" (New Covenant), saying, Great and marvellous [are] Thy works, Lord God Almighty; just and true [are] Thy Ways, Thou King of the holy people. (Please see my "The New Song" Booklet). 15:4 Who shall not fear Thee, O Lord, and glorify Thy name? for [Thou] ONLY [art] Holy (Matt 19:17): for all nations shall come and worship before Thee; for Thy Judgments are made manifest (Isaiah 42). 16:15 Behold, I come as a thief (the "Night Visitant" - Tariq in Arabic - Gebal Tariq - Gibr-altar - "the Rock of the Night Visitant"). Blessed [is] he that watcheth, and keepeth his garments, lest he walk naked, and they see his shame. 16:16 And he gathered them together into a place called, in Hebrew, Armageddon (Har-Megiddo - the mountains of Megiddo, in Israel near "ENDOR" - please see my "Starwars - Fact NOT Fiction" and "The Invasion of Kuwait in Prophecy" and other Booklets and Books).(the ruler of Kuwait is called "Jabba" - [the Hutt?]) When I see a demand from you for my work, and that you are awake (Daniel 12:2); sitting-up properly and paying attention, I will continue this lesson. If there is no demand, then you are still asleep; not paying attention and there will be no point in my wasting my time preparing this lesson, to warn you and teach you how to use "The Force", so that you can learn what to do to SURVIVE, and find "The Way home or face The Fire." - JAH (Comment on this)
3:26a	6:12 And I beheld when he had opened the sixth Seal (using his "Key"), and, lo, there was a great "earthquake"; and the "sun" became black as sackcloth of hair, and the "moon" became as blood; (Please see my "The Four Horsemen of The Apocalypse & the Two Witnesses" Booklet for the Bible Prophecy "Code") 6:13 And "the stars of heaven" fell unto the "earth", even as the "fig tree" casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind (Ezekiel 13:13). 9:13 And the sixth angel sounded, and I heard a voice from the four horns of the golden altar which is before God, 9:14 Saying to the sixth angel which had the trumpet, Loose the four angels which are bound (Please see the Book of Enoch in the "King of kings' Bible") in the great River Euphrates. 9:15 And the four angels were loosed, which were prepared for The Hour, and The Day, (the month, and the year) for to slay the third part of men. (2,000,000,000). 9:16 And the number of the army of the horsemen [were] two hundred thousand thousand (200,000,000): and I HEARD the number of them. 9:17 And thus I saw the horses in the vision, and them that sat on them, having breastplates of fire, and of jacinth, and brimstone: and the heads of the horses [were] as the heads of lions; and out of their mouths issued fire and smoke and brimstone (sulphur). 9:18 By these three was the third part of men killed (2,000,000,000), by the fire, and by the smoke, and by the brimstone (sulphur), which issued out of their mouths. 9:19 For their power is in their mouth, and in their tails: for their tails [were] like unto serpents, and had heads, and with them they do hurt. 9:20 And the rest of the men which were not killed by these plagues yet repented not of the works of their hands, that they should not worship devils (liars), and idols of gold, and silver, and brass, and stone, and of wood (materialism): which neither can see, nor hear, nor walk: 9:21 Neither repented they of their murders, nor of their sorceries, nor of their fornication, nor of their thefts. 16:12 And the sixth angel poured out his vial upon the great River Euphrates; and the "water" (Rev. 17:15) thereof was dried up, that the way of the kings of the East (eastern block - the U.S.S.R. and China re-united) might be prepared. 16:13 And I saw three unclean spirits like frogs [come] out of the mouth of the dragon, and out of the mouth of the beast, and out of the mouth of the false prophet. 16:14 For they are the spirits of devils, working miracles, [which] go forth unto the kings of the earth and of the WHOLE WORLD, to gather them to The Battle of that Great Day of God Almighty (Armageddon). 6:14 And the "heaven" departed as a scroll when it is rolled together; and every "mountain" and "island" were moved out of their places. 6:15 And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every free man, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains; 6:16 And said to the "mountains" and "rocks" (Deuteronomy 32:37), Fall on us, and hide us from the face of Him that sitteth on the Throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb: (Please see my "On The Way to Emmaus Again" Booklet) 6:17 For the Great Day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand? 14:1 And I looked, and, lo, a Lamb stood on the mount Sion, and with him an hundred forty [and] four thousand, having his Father's name written in their foreheads. 14:2 And I heard a voice from heaven, as the voice of many "waters", and as the voice of a great thunder: and I heard the voice of harpers harping with their harps: 14:3 And they sung as it were (what seemed like) a "New Song" (Isaiah 42:10) before the Throne, and before the four beasts, and the elders: and no man could learn that "Song" except the hundred [and] forty [and] four thousand, which were redeemed from the Earth. 15:3 And they sing the "Song of Moses" (Old Covenant - Deut. 31) the servant of God, AND the "Song of the Lamb" (New Covenant), saying, Great and marvellous [are] Thy works, Lord God Almighty; just and true [are] Thy Ways, Thou King of the holy people. (Please see my "The New Song" Booklet). 15:4 Who shall not fear Thee, O Lord, and glorify Thy name? for [Thou] ONLY [art] Holy (Matt 19:17): for all nations shall come and worship before Thee; for Thy Judgments are made manifest (Isaiah 42). 16:15 Behold, I come as a thief (the "Night Visitant" - Tariq in Arabic - Gebal Tariq - Gibr-altar - "the Rock of the Night Visitant"). Blessed [is] he that watcheth, and keepeth his garments, lest he walk naked, and they see his shame. 16:16 And he gathered them together into a place called, in Hebrew, Armageddon (Har-Megiddo - the mountains of Megiddo, in Israel near "ENDOR" - please see my "Starwars - Fact NOT Fiction" and "The Invasion of Kuwait in Prophecy" and other Booklets and Books).(the ruler of Kuwait is called "Jabba" - [the Hutt?]) When I see a demand from you for my work, and that you are awake (Daniel 12:2); sitting-up properly and paying attention, I will continue this lesson. If there is no demand, then you are still asleep; not paying attention and there will be no point in my wasting my time preparing this lesson, to warn you and teach you how to use "The Force", so that you can learn what to do to SURVIVE, and find "The Way home or face The Fire." - JAH (Comment on this)
3:26a	h (Comment on this)
3:28a	This article is about the scientific concept. For philosophical or ontological theories about relativity, see Relativism. For the silent film, see The Einstein Theory of Relativity. Two-dimensional projection of a three-dimensional analogy of spacetime curvature described in general relativity The theory of relativity, or simply relativity in physics, usually encompasses two theories by Albert Einstein: special relativity and general relativity.[1] Concepts introduced by the theories of relativity include: Measurements of various quantities are relative to the velocities of observers. In particular, space contracts and time dilates. Spacetime: space and time should be considered together and in relation to each other. The speed of light is nonetheless invariant, the same for all observers. The term "theory of relativity" was based on the expression "relative theory" (German: Relativtheorie) used in 1906 by Max Planck, who emphasized how the theory uses the principle of relativity. In the discussion section of the same paper, Alfred Bucherer used for the first time the expression "theory of relativity" (German: Relativitätstheorie).[2][3] (Comment on this)
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3:33a	pluto Little kids just don’t think the way that we do, and we know that this is true (or rather, we have a lot of evidence to support this assertion) because of science. For example, studies have shown that when something travels out of a child’s line of sight, it ceases to exist. Well, it doesn’t technically stop existing—that would be really weird—however, children do forget about objects once they can no longer see them. They vanish. Go way. They are no where in their thoughts. This is something known as “object permanence,” and we can see this in children even up to 24 months. But, since the participants are so small (and rather difficult to communicate with) how are we able to actually measure object permanence? Speaking of object permanence, can we talk about Pluto for a moment? Because, as anyone who knows anything about Pluto will tell you, this little world is anything but permanent. The small rocky body was discovered in 1930 by Clyde W. Tombaugh. The scientific community quickly heralded it as the 9th planet in our solar system. However, because it has such an elliptical orbit, Pluto swings about the solar system wildly, careening in for a moment and then shooting back off into the outer reaches of the solar system. As a result, from 1979 to 1999, Pluto was actually the 8th planet in our solar system.  The in 1999, it once again became the 9th planet, and it was to be the 9th planet for another 200 years (until bout 2199), at which point it would again become the 8th planet…and so on and so on. But of course, things changed, because in 2006 Pluto was reclassified as a dwarf planet (to the dismay of most Earthlings). Why this sudden change? Why isn’t it this little world a fully fledged planet? We are collaborating with scientists from the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) to bring you a weekly podcast hosted by astrophysicist Brian Koberlein (One Universe at a Time). In this week’s episode, Dr. Grant Gutheil, Associate Professor of Psychology at Nazareth College in Rochester NY, and RIT astrophysicist Brian talk about object permanence and what makes a planet a planet (and why Pluto isn’t one). (Comment on this)
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3:40a	one word was conspicuously absent from Barack Obama’s big speech re-declaring war on Islamic terrorists: the word war itself. Of course, if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck. And no forest of technical-sounding euphemisms should divert us from this reality. The Israelis insisted that what they did in Gaza was an “operation”. The US tends to use the word “campaign”. Indeed, despite the fact that the UK has been involved in shooting people somewhere around the world throughout all of my lifetime, the last time we actually declared war on another country was against Siam in 1942. The US, for instance, didn’t even declare war on Vietnam. War feels old-fashioned. Since the second world war, we have got used to conflict being geographically limited and containable. Part of the reason for this reluctance to speak of war is legal and moral: declarations of war require a high degree of political consensus, votes in Congress or parliament and the like. Following Vietnam in 1973, the US Congress passed the War Powers Resolution, limiting the power of the president to commit troops to military conflict for more than 60 days. But this legislation has never been employed to challenge a presidential decision. Likewise, formal declarations of war inevitably invite discussions of the just war tradition. I am generally suspicious of this tradition for the simple reason that I cannot think of a single instance when this tradition has ever actually prevented a war. On the contrary, when it is convenient – ie when it is believed that the just war criteria legitimate war – then it is constantly invoked as justification. In other words, the just war tradition is, in practice, a one-way street. It is no coincidence that the just war tradition was invented around the time that the Emperor Constantine decided to baptise the Roman empire as Christian. The fact that many Christians had often been pacifists was something of an embarrassment to the head of the largest war machine the world had ever known. So just war was itself created to allow the Roman army to keep on fighting. Those theologians who came up with it were no doubt well-minded, but they were little more than the “useful idiots” of the military complex. But despite my considerable reservations, it is still useful to invoke one aspect of the just war tradition and apply it to the current conflict in the Middle East: just wars require not only proportionality but also a reasonable chance of success. And the problem with so much of the west’s military involvement in Iraq, in particular, is that it has precious little conception of what success actually looks like. Bombing Islamic State is no more than a tinkering around the edges of a massive conflagration that is now increasingly being compared in scale to the thirty years war. Advertisement The sectarian conflict between Sunni and Shia, ignited first by the Iranian revolution and then deepened by the ill-advised western invasion of Iraq, is of a much greater order of magnitude than that acknowledged by Obama’s hands-off drone and air-strike approach. We are witnessing a shift in the political tectonic plates throughout the whole of the Middle East and beyond into Africa, and the west’s apparently surgical involvement will probably do little more than generate some short-term satisfaction that we are doing something. It is not that I am morally squeamish about bombing IS fanatics. Rather, I think we ought to recognise that we are little more than bystanders to a war that is so much bigger than we ever imagined, and so much more complicated than the rhetoric of terrorism or limited conflict allows. Since the second world war, we have got used to the idea that big war is a thing of the past. But no more. This is the third world war. And this time we are on its fringes. (Comment on this)
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3:54a	World War 3 OVER 2 BILLION WILL DIE! By Irvin Baxter The question is not, “Is there going to be a World War III?” It is in your Bible. There is not a one tenth of one percent chance that it is not going to happen. Another world war is coming, and it will be the biggest world war ever. According to the Bible, one out of three people on the earth will die in this war of all wars! The prophecy is found in Revelation chapter nine, verse 15: “And the four angels were loosed, which were prepared for an hour, and a day, and a month, and a year, for to slay the third part of men.” The “third part of men” would be over two billion people! Other translations read “one-third of the human race”, “one-third of all the people on earth”, “one-third of humanity”. They all say the same thing. A war is just ahead that will wipe out over two billion human beings! The War of All Wars Prior to the 20th Century, there had never been a war with one million fatalities. Then came World War I in 1914, with 8.2 million dead. They called it “The Great War.” With the founding of the League of Nations, we had hoped that this type of carnage would never happen again. Twenty years later, 52 million people died in World War II. As if something had come unhinged in the human soul, we cried out, “How can we ever stop this?” With the founding of the United Nations we had hoped that the solution to world peace was at hand. I have the dreadful assignment of telling you, it is not fixed. There is another war coming. There will neither be 8 million dead nor 52 million dead. This war that is coming will kill 2.2 billion, forty times World War II. It will be the worst war ever. I can’t tell you exactly when this is going to happen, but the Bible tells us where World War III will originate. The “Sixth Trumpet” prophecy is found in Revelation 9:14-15: Saying to the sixth angel which had the trumpet, Loose the four angels which are bound in the great river Euphrates. And the four angels were loosed, which were prepared for an hour, and a day, and a month, and a year, for to slay the third part of men. These angels were bound in the Euphrates River, which flows through Turkey, Syria, and Iraq, and empties into the Persian Gulf. War has been raging up and down the Euphrates River since 2003 when the U.S. invaded Iraq. When they are loosed, these evil angels will carry out their assignment to kill one-third of mankind. Out of the chaos and destruction, a strong leader will rise to promise peace and security. The Antichrist will step onto the world scene at just the right moment. He will provide firm direction but he will also demand absolute obedience. Four Major Prophecies There are four prophetic developments occurring right now that demonstrate how close we are to the Euphrates River War, otherwise known as World War III. Peace Plan for the Middle East In Genesis 15:18, God entered into a covenant with Abraham, affirming that the Promised Land would be given to his descendants. The Antichrist, according to Daniel 9: 27 will confirm this covenant with many for seven years. A peace agreement which confirms the covenant will establish Israel’s right to exist in the Holy Land and will mark the beginning of the final seven years to Armageddon. U. S. Secretary of State John Kerry has set the goal of April 29, 2014 to reach just such a peace agreement between Palestinians and Israelis. “A viable two-state solution is the only way this conflict can end,” he said, “and there is not much time to achieve it, and there is no other alternative.” Halfway through the final seven years, the Antichrist will order the stopping of animal sacrifices on the Temple Mount, which will have been resumed by then. He will then stand in the temple claiming to be God. Construction of Israel’s Third Temple II Thessalonians 2:3-4 and Revelation 11:1-2 describe a temple standing on the Temple Mount three and one-half years before Armageddon. Israel has been subsidizing nonprofit organizations that advocate the building of the Third Temple atop Jerusalem’s holiest site. The Temple Institute is dedicated to the vision of the Temple’s rebuilding, and has already recreated several items to be used when services are resumed on the Temple Mount. Preparing for the Mark of the Beast Revelation 13:16-17 describes the control system which will be implemented during the reign of the Antichrist. During the Great Tribulation, every person on earth will be coerced into pledging allegiance to the Antichrist. Those who do so will be given a unique identification mark or number permitting them to participate in the world economy. Those who refuse will be denied the “privilege” of buying and selling. The REAL ID Act mandates that Americans produce federally approved identification upon demand. Although it has repeatedly postponed implementation penalties, the Department of Homeland Security has announced a gradual rollout for enforcing the law, beginning in April, 2014. The Affordable Care Act, often referred to as “Obamacare,” implements a national ID system disguised within a “data hub,” and a “unique patient identifier” to verify eligibility. Concurrently making its way through Congress, as part of an immigration reform bill, is “E-Verify,” a mandated universal biometric ID required for federal approval for employment. A War that Originates from the Euphrates River Middle East unrest continues to boil in Libya, Iraq, Egypt and Jordan. Syria is on the brink of expanding to a full-scale war that could involve the major world powers. Analysts believe Syria may soon become a flashpoint that would divide the region along a battle lines drawn between Shia and Sunni Muslims. Iran is one of America’s and Israel’s foremost enemies and the Islamic Republic has become one of the most serious threats to stability in the Middle East. As Iran is rapidly achieving nuclear capability, the region will become far more dangerous as the number of countries engaged in nuclear activities grows. The Deputy Commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard has threatened that Tehran is able to “destroy every spot” in Israel. Germany views Iran as a potential threat not just to Israel, but also to European countries. Entrance Ramp for the Antichrist “WWIII – Entrance Ramp for the Antichrist” details how this war is going to come out of the Euphrates River area, resulting in the killing of one-third of the human race. It is going to happen and it will affect us, our families, our nation, our world, everything. And it looks like it is coming sooner, rather than later. World War 3 OVER 2 BILLION WILL DIE! By Irvin Baxter The question is not, “Is there going to be a World War III?” It is in your Bible. There is not a one tenth of one percent chance that it is not going to happen. Another world war is coming, and it will be the biggest world war ever. According to the Bible, one out of three people on the earth will die in this war of all wars! The prophecy is found in Revelation chapter nine, verse 15: “And the four angels were loosed, which were prepared for an hour, and a day, and a month, and a year, for to slay the third part of men.” The “third part of men” would be over two billion people! Other translations read “one-third of the human race”, “one-third of all the people on earth”, “one-third of humanity”. They all say the same thing. A war is just ahead that will wipe out over two billion human beings! The War of All Wars Prior to the 20th Century, there had never been a war with one million fatalities. Then came World War I in 1914, with 8.2 million dead. They called it “The Great War.” With the founding of the League of Nations, we had hoped that this type of carnage would never happen again. Twenty years later, 52 million people died in World War II. As if something had come unhinged in the human soul, we cried out, “How can we ever stop this?” With the founding of the United Nations we had hoped that the solution to world peace was at hand. I have the dreadful assignment of telling you, it is not fixed. There is another war coming. There will neither be 8 million dead nor 52 million dead. This war that is coming will kill 2.2 billion, forty times World War II. It will be the worst war ever. I can’t tell you exactly when this is going to happen, but the Bible tells us where World War III will originate. The “Sixth Trumpet” prophecy is found in Revelation 9:14-15: Saying to the sixth angel which had the trumpet, Loose the four angels which are bound in the great river Euphrates. And the four angels were loosed, which were prepared for an hour, and a day, and a month, and a year, for to slay the third part of men. These angels were bound in the Euphrates River, which flows through Turkey, Syria, and Iraq, and empties into the Persian Gulf. War has been raging up and down the Euphrates River since 2003 when the U.S. invaded Iraq. When they are loosed, these evil angels will carry out their assignment to kill one-third of mankind. Out of the chaos and destruction, a strong leader will rise to promise peace and security. The Antichrist will step onto the world scene at just the right moment. He will provide firm direction but he will also demand absolute obedience. Four Major Prophecies There are four prophetic developments occurring right now that demonstrate how close we are to the Euphrates River War, otherwise known as World War III. Peace Plan for the Middle East In Genesis 15:18, God entered into a covenant with Abraham, affirming that the Promised Land would be given to his descendants. The Antichrist, according to Daniel 9: 27 will confirm this covenant with many for seven years. A peace agreement which confirms the covenant will establish Israel’s right to exist in the Holy Land and will mark the beginning of the final seven years to Armageddon. U. S. Secretary of State John Kerry has set the goal of April 29, 2014 to reach just such a peace agreement between Palestinians and Israelis. “A viable two-state solution is the only way this conflict can end,” he said, “and there is not much time to achieve it, and there is no other alternative.” Halfway through the final seven years, the Antichrist will order the stopping of animal sacrifices on the Temple Mount, which will have been resumed by then. He will then stand in the temple claiming to be God. Construction of Israel’s Third Temple II Thessalonians 2:3-4 and Revelation 11:1-2 describe a temple standing on the Temple Mount three and one-half years before Armageddon. Israel has been subsidizing nonprofit organizations that advocate the building of the Third Temple atop Jerusalem’s holiest site. The Temple Institute is dedicated to the vision of the Temple’s rebuilding, and has already recreated several items to be used when services are resumed on the Temple Mount. Preparing for the Mark of the Beast Revelation 13:16-17 describes the control system which will be implemented during the reign of the Antichrist. During the Great Tribulation, every person on earth will be coerced into pledging allegiance to the Antichrist. Those who do so will be given a unique identification mark or number permitting them to participate in the world economy. Those who refuse will be denied the “privilege” of buying and selling. The REAL ID Act mandates that Americans produce federally approved identification upon demand. Although it has repeatedly postponed implementation penalties, the Department of Homeland Security has announced a gradual rollout for enforcing the law, beginning in April, 2014. The Affordable Care Act, often referred to as “Obamacare,” implements a national ID system disguised within a “data hub,” and a “unique patient identifier” to verify eligibility. Concurrently making its way through Congress, as part of an immigration reform bill, is “E-Verify,” a mandated universal biometric ID required for federal approval for employment. A War that Originates from the Euphrates River Middle East unrest continues to boil in Libya, Iraq, Egypt and Jordan. Syria is on the brink of expanding to a full-scale war that could involve the major world powers. Analysts believe Syria may soon become a flashpoint that would divide the region along a battle lines drawn between Shia and Sunni Muslims. Iran is one of America’s and Israel’s foremost enemies and the Islamic Republic has become one of the most serious threats to stability in the Middle East. As Iran is rapidly achieving nuclear capability, the region will become far more dangerous as the number of countries engaged in nuclear activities grows. The Deputy Commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard has threatened that Tehran is able to “destroy every spot” in Israel. Germany views Iran as a potential threat not just to Israel, but also to European countries. Entrance Ramp for the Antichrist “WWIII – Entrance Ramp for the Antichrist” details how this war is going to come out of the Euphrates River area, resulting in the killing of one-third of the human race. It is going to happen and it will affect us, our families, our nation, our world, everything. And it looks like it is coming sooner, rather than later. World War 3 OVER 2 BILLION WILL DIE! By Irvin Baxter The question is not, “Is there going to be a World War III?” It is in your Bible. There is not a one tenth of one percent chance that it is not going to happen. Another world war is coming, and it will be the biggest world war ever. According to the Bible, one out of three people on the earth will die in this war of all wars! The prophecy is found in Revelation chapter nine, verse 15: “And the four angels were loosed, which were prepared for an hour, and a day, and a month, and a year, for to slay the third part of men.” The “third part of men” would be over two billion people! Other translations read “one-third of the human race”, “one-third of all the people on earth”, “one-third of humanity”. They all say the same thing. A war is just ahead that will wipe out over two billion human beings! The War of All Wars Prior to the 20th Century, there had never been a war with one million fatalities. Then came World War I in 1914, with 8.2 million dead. They called it “The Great War.” With the founding of the League of Nations, we had hoped that this type of carnage would never happen again. Twenty years later, 52 million people died in World War II. As if something had come unhinged in the human soul, we cried out, “How can we ever stop this?” With the founding of the United Nations we had hoped that the solution to world peace was at hand. I have the dreadful assignment of telling you, it is not fixed. There is another war coming. There will neither be 8 million dead nor 52 million dead. This war that is coming will kill 2.2 billion, forty times World War II. It will be the worst war ever. I can’t tell you exactly when this is going to happen, but the Bible tells us where World War III will originate. The “Sixth Trumpet” prophecy is found in Revelation 9:14-15: Saying to the sixth angel which had the trumpet, Loose the four angels which are bound in the great river Euphrates. And the four angels were loosed, which were prepared for an hour, and a day, and a month, and a year, for to slay the third part of men. These angels were bound in the Euphrates River, which flows through Turkey, Syria, and Iraq, and empties into the Persian Gulf. War has been raging up and down the Euphrates River since 2003 when the U.S. invaded Iraq. When they are loosed, these evil angels will carry out their assignment to kill one-third of mankind. Out of the chaos and destruction, a strong leader will rise to promise peace and security. The Antichrist will step onto the world scene at just the right moment. He will provide firm direction but he will also demand absolute obedience. Four Major Prophecies There are four prophetic developments occurring right now that demonstrate how close we are to the Euphrates River War, otherwise known as World War III. Peace Plan for the Middle East In Genesis 15:18, God entered into a covenant with Abraham, affirming that the Promised Land would be given to his descendants. The Antichrist, according to Daniel 9: 27 will confirm this covenant with many for seven years. A peace agreement which confirms the covenant will establish Israel’s right to exist in the Holy Land and will mark the beginning of the final seven years to Armageddon. U. S. Secretary of State John Kerry has set the goal of April 29, 2014 to reach just such a peace agreement between Palestinians and Israelis. “A viable two-state solution is the only way this conflict can end,” he said, “and there is not much time to achieve it, and there is no other alternative.” Halfway through the final seven years, the Antichrist will order the stopping of animal sacrifices on the Temple Mount, which will have been resumed by then. He will then stand in the temple claiming to be God. Construction of Israel’s Third Temple II Thessalonians 2:3-4 and Revelation 11:1-2 describe a temple standing on the Temple Mount three and one-half years before Armageddon. Israel has been subsidizing nonprofit organizations that advocate the building of the Third Temple atop Jerusalem’s holiest site. The Temple Institute is dedicated to the vision of the Temple’s rebuilding, and has already recreated several items to be used when services are resumed on the Temple Mount. Preparing for the Mark of the Beast Revelation 13:16-17 describes the control system which will be implemented during the reign of the Antichrist. During the Great Tribulation, every person on earth will be coerced into pledging allegiance to the Antichrist. Those who do so will be given a unique identification mark or number permitting them to participate in the world economy. Those who refuse will be denied the “privilege” of buying and selling. The REAL ID Act mandates that Americans produce federally approved identification upon demand. Although it has repeatedly postponed implementation penalties, the Department of Homeland Security has announced a gradual rollout for enforcing the law, beginning in April, 2014. The Affordable Care Act, often referred to as “Obamacare,” implements a national ID system disguised within a “data hub,” and a “unique patient identifier” to verify eligibility. Concurrently making its way through Congress, as part of an immigration reform bill, is “E-Verify,” a mandated universal biometric ID required for federal approval for employment. A War that Originates from the Euphrates River Middle East unrest continues to boil in Libya, Iraq, Egypt and Jordan. Syria is on the brink of expanding to a full-scale war that could involve the major world powers. Analysts believe Syria may soon become a flashpoint that would divide the region along a battle lines drawn between Shia and Sunni Muslims. Iran is one of America’s and Israel’s foremost enemies and the Islamic Republic has become one of the most serious threats to stability in the Middle East. As Iran is rapidly achieving nuclear capability, the region will become far more dangerous as the number of countries engaged in nuclear activities grows. The Deputy Commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard has threatened that Tehran is able to “destroy every spot” in Israel. Germany views Iran as a potential threat not just to Israel, but also to European countries. Entrance Ramp for the Antichrist “WWIII – Entrance Ramp for the Antichrist” details how this war is going to come out of the Euphrates River area, resulting in the killing of one-third of the human race. It is going to happen and it will affect us, our families, our nation, our world, everything. And it looks like it is coming sooner, rather than later. World War 3 OVER 2 BILLION WILL DIE! By Irvin Baxter The question is not, “Is there going to be a World War III?” It is in your Bible. There is not a one tenth of one percent chance that it is not going to happen. Another world war is coming, and it will be the biggest world war ever. According to the Bible, one out of three people on the earth will die in this war of all wars! The prophecy is found in Revelation chapter nine, verse 15: “And the four angels were loosed, which were prepared for an hour, and a day, and a month, and a year, for to slay the third part of men.” The “third part of men” would be over two billion people! Other translations read “one-third of the human race”, “one-third of all the people on earth”, “one-third of humanity”. They all say the same thing. A war is just ahead that will wipe out over two billion human beings! The War of All Wars Prior to the 20th Century, there had never been a war with one million fatalities. Then came World War I in 1914, with 8.2 million dead. They called it “The Great War.” With the founding of the League of Nations, we had hoped that this type of carnage would never happen again. Twenty years later, 52 million people died in World War II. As if something had come unhinged in the human soul, we cried out, “How can we ever stop this?” With the founding of the United Nations we had hoped that the solution to world peace was at hand. I have the dreadful assignment of telling you, it is not fixed. There is another war coming. There will neither be 8 million dead nor 52 million dead. This war that is coming will kill 2.2 billion, forty times World War II. It will be the worst war ever. I can’t tell you exactly when this is going to happen, but the Bible tells us where World War III will originate. The “Sixth Trumpet” prophecy is found in Revelation 9:14-15: Saying to the sixth angel which had the trumpet, Loose the four angels which are bound in the great river Euphrates. And the four angels were loosed, which were prepared for an hour, and a day, and a month, and a year, for to slay the third part of men. These angels were bound in the Euphrates River, which flows through Turkey, Syria, and Iraq, and empties into the Persian Gulf. War has been raging up and down the Euphrates River since 2003 when the U.S. invaded Iraq. When they are loosed, these evil angels will carry out their assignment to kill one-third of mankind. Out of the chaos and destruction, a strong leader will rise to promise peace and security. The Antichrist will step onto the world scene at just the right moment. He will provide firm direction but he will also demand absolute obedience. Four Major Prophecies There are four prophetic developments occurring right now that demonstrate how close we are to the Euphrates River War, otherwise known as World War III. Peace Plan for the Middle East In Genesis 15:18, God entered into a covenant with Abraham, affirming that the Promised Land would be given to his descendants. The Antichrist, according to Daniel 9: 27 will confirm this covenant with many for seven years. A peace agreement which confirms the covenant will establish Israel’s right to exist in the Holy Land and will mark the beginning of the final seven years to Armageddon. U. S. Secretary of State John Kerry has set the goal of April 29, 2014 to reach just such a peace agreement between Palestinians and Israelis. “A viable two-state solution is the only way this conflict can end,” he said, “and there is not much time to achieve it, and there is no other alternative.” Halfway through the final seven years, the Antichrist will order the stopping of animal sacrifices on the Temple Mount, which will have been resumed by then. He will then stand in the temple claiming to be God. Construction of Israel’s Third Temple II Thessalonians 2:3-4 and Revelation 11:1-2 describe a temple standing on the Temple Mount three and one-half years before Armageddon. Israel has been subsidizing nonprofit organizations that advocate the building of the Third Temple atop Jerusalem’s holiest site. The Temple Institute is dedicated to the vision of the Temple’s rebuilding, and has already recreated several items to be used when services are resumed on the Temple Mount. Preparing for the Mark of the Beast Revelation 13:16-17 describes the control system which will be implemented during the reign of the Antichrist. During the Great Tribulation, every person on earth will be coerced into pledging allegiance to the Antichrist. Those who do so will be given a unique identification mark or number permitting them to participate in the world economy. Those who refuse will be denied the “privilege” of buying and selling. The REAL ID Act mandates that Americans produce federally approved identification upon demand. Although it has repeatedly postponed implementation penalties, the Department of Homeland Security has announced a gradual rollout for enforcing the law, beginning in April, 2014. The Affordable Care Act, often referred to as “Obamacare,” implements a national ID system disguised within a “data hub,” and a “unique patient identifier” to verify eligibility. Concurrently making its way through Congress, as part of an immigration reform bill, is “E-Verify,” a mandated universal biometric ID required for federal approval for employment. A War that Originates from the Euphrates River Middle East unrest continues to boil in Libya, Iraq, Egypt and Jordan. Syria is on the brink of expanding to a full-scale war that could involve the major world powers. Analysts believe Syria may soon become a flashpoint that would divide the region along a battle lines drawn between Shia and Sunni Muslims. Iran is one of America’s and Israel’s foremost enemies and the Islamic Republic has become one of the most serious threats to stability in the Middle East. As Iran is rapidly achieving nuclear capability, the region will become far more dangerous as the number of countries engaged in nuclear activities grows. The Deputy Commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard has threatened that Tehran is able to “destroy every spot” in Israel. Germany views Iran as a potential threat not just to Israel, but also to European countries. Entrance Ramp for the Antichrist “WWIII – Entrance Ramp for the Antichrist” details how this war is going to come out of the Euphrates River area, resulting in the killing of one-third of the human race. It is going to happen and it will affect us, our families, our nation, our world, everything. And it looks like it is coming sooner, rather than later. (Comment on this)
3:55a	1968 Prophecy by 90 Year Old Woman in Norway HOME An old woman of 90 from Valdres in Norway had a vision from God in 1968. The evangelist Emanuel Minos had meetings (services) where she lived. He had the opportunity to meet her, and she told him what she had seen. He wrote it down, but thought it to be so unintelligible that he put it in a drawer. Now, almost 30 years later, he understands he has to share the vision with others. The woman from Valdres was a very alert, reliable, awake and credible Christian, with a good reputation among all who knew her. This is what she saw: "I saw the time just before the coming of Jesus and the outbreak of the Third World War. I saw the events with my natural eyes. I saw the world like a kind of a globe and saw Europe, land by land. I saw Scandinavia. I saw Norway. I saw certain things that would take place just before the return of Jesus, and just before the last calamity happens, a calamity the likes of which we have never before experienced. She mentioned four waves: 1. "First before Jesus comes and before the Third World War breaks out there will be a ‘détente’ like we have never had before. There will be peace between the super powers in the east and the west, and there will be a long peace. (Remember, that this was in 1968 when the cold war was at its highest. E. Minos) In this period of peace there will be disarmament in many countries, also in Norway and we are not prepared when it (the war) comes. The Third World War will begin in a way no one would have anticipated - and from an unexpected place. 2. "A lukewarmness without parallel will take hold of the Christians, a falling away from true, living Christianity. Christians will not be open for penetrating preaching. They will not, like in earlier times, want to hear of sin and grace, law and gospel, repentance and restoration. There will come a substitute instead: prosperity (happiness) Christianity. "The important thing will be to have success, to be something; to have material things, things that God never promised us in this way. Churches and prayer houses will be emptier and emptier. Instead of the preaching we have been used to for generations -like, to take your cross up and follow Jesus, - entertainment, art and culture will invade the churches where there should have been gatherings for repentance and revival. This will increase markedly just before the return of Jesus. 3. "There will be a moral disintegration that old Norway has never experienced the likes of. People will live together like married without being married. (I do not believe the concept ‘co-habitor’? existed in 1968 - E. Minos.) Much uncleanness before marriage, and much infidelity in marriage will become the natural (the common), and it will be justified from every angle. It will even enter Christian circles and we pet it - even sin against nature. Just before Jesus return there will be TV- programs like we have never experienced. (TV had just arrived in Norway in 1968. E. Minos) "TV will be filled with such horrible violence that it teaches people to murder and destroy each other, and it will be unsafe in our streets. People will copy what they see. There will not be only one ‘station’ on TV, it will be filled with ‘stations.’ (She did not know the word ‘channel’ which we use today. Therefore she called them stations. E. Minos.) TV will be just like the radio where we have many ‘stations,’ and it will be filled with violence. People will use it for entertainment. We will see terrible scenes of murder and destruction one of the other, and this will spread in society. Sex scenes will also be shown on the screen, the most intimate things that takes place in a marriage." (I protested and said, we have a paragraph that forbids this kind of thing. E. Minos.) There the old woman said: "It will happen, and you will see it. All we have had before will be broken down, and the most indecent things will pass before our eyes." 4. "People from poor countries will stream to Europe. (In 1968 there was no such thing as immigration. E. Minos.) They will also come to Scandinavia - and Norway. There will be so many of them that people will begin to dislike them and become hard with them. They will be treated like the Jews before the Second World War. Then the full measure of our sins will have been reached (I protested at the issue of immigration. I did not understand it at the time. E. Minos.) The tears streamed from the old woman’s eyes down her cheeks. "I will not see it, but you will. Then suddenly, Jesus will come and the Third World War breaks out. It will be a short war." (She saw it in the vision.) "All that I have seen of war before is only child’s play compared to this one, and it will be ended with a nuclear atom bomb. The air will be so polluted that one cannot draw one’s breath. It will cover several continents, America, Japan, Australia and the wealthy nations. The water will be ruined (contaminated?). We can no longer till the soil. The result will be that only a remnant will remain. The remnant in the wealthy countries will try to flee to the poor countries, but they will be as hard on us as we were on them. "I am so glad that I will not see it, but when the time draws near, you must take courage and tell this. I have received it from God, and nothing of it goes against what the Bible tells. "The one who has his sin forgiven and has Jesus as Savior and Lord, is safe." WHEN THE OIL FLOWS An elder in the Pentecostal Church at Moss, Norway, Martin Andersen, heard the following prophecy in 1937, in Moss: ‘When oil comes out of the North Sea and along the Norwegian coast, things will begin to happen, and the return of Jesus is approaching.’ When these words had been proclaimed, people stood up in the congregation and asked the man to sit down and not speak such nonsense. In 1937 it was indeed nonsense to talk about oil being pumped along the Norwegian coast. Today all the world’s big oil companies are pumping oil along the coast of Norway. Norway is the world’s second greatest exporter of oil - after Saudi Arabia. The sum of it all is: Jesus is coming soon (suddenly). Original source editor’s note: The above account was originally transmitted from Israel to friends in the US. It was sent by a Norwegian Christian worker by the name of Ragna Von Porat. Ragna states in a footnote that it was translated from Danish. She further states that Emanuel Minos, the evangelist mentioned in the account, was her friend’s closest neighbor in Oslo. She says, "I heard him in my young days. My parents knew him." Because of my fear of transmitting false prophecy, I have diligently inquired concerning the information in this letter. Publication has been delayed until permission could be secured from Ragna in Israel. In my contact with her, she has assured me that these accounts are true and reliable. In fact, she relates that the first account has already been published in one of Norway’s Christian newspapers. I have found in my own research that the first account was also published by the Christian Information Service in Germany. The website of Dr. Emanuel Minos is active today and can be accessed for verification. Although the language on this site is Norwegian, the very similar story of the woman and her vision is posted there in English. The above accounts are transmitted just as they were received. Ragna took it upon herself to verify as much of the above information as she could. In contacting the Embassy of Norway she learned that Norway has now dropped to the world’s third largest oil exporter. Ragna states, "I certainly have no objection to your going ahead [with publishing]. It must be now-if ever." 1968 Prophecy by 90 Year Old Woman in Norway HOME An old woman of 90 from Valdres in Norway had a vision from God in 1968. The evangelist Emanuel Minos had meetings (services) where she lived. He had the opportunity to meet her, and she told him what she had seen. He wrote it down, but thought it to be so unintelligible that he put it in a drawer. Now, almost 30 years later, he understands he has to share the vision with others. The woman from Valdres was a very alert, reliable, awake and credible Christian, with a good reputation among all who knew her. This is what she saw: "I saw the time just before the coming of Jesus and the outbreak of the Third World War. I saw the events with my natural eyes. I saw the world like a kind of a globe and saw Europe, land by land. I saw Scandinavia. I saw Norway. I saw certain things that would take place just before the return of Jesus, and just before the last calamity happens, a calamity the likes of which we have never before experienced. She mentioned four waves: 1. "First before Jesus comes and before the Third World War breaks out there will be a ‘détente’ like we have never had before. There will be peace between the super powers in the east and the west, and there will be a long peace. (Remember, that this was in 1968 when the cold war was at its highest. E. Minos) In this period of peace there will be disarmament in many countries, also in Norway and we are not prepared when it (the war) comes. The Third World War will begin in a way no one would have anticipated - and from an unexpected place. 2. "A lukewarmness without parallel will take hold of the Christians, a falling away from true, living Christianity. Christians will not be open for penetrating preaching. They will not, like in earlier times, want to hear of sin and grace, law and gospel, repentance and restoration. There will come a substitute instead: prosperity (happiness) Christianity. "The important thing will be to have success, to be something; to have material things, things that God never promised us in this way. Churches and prayer houses will be emptier and emptier. Instead of the preaching we have been used to for generations -like, to take your cross up and follow Jesus, - entertainment, art and culture will invade the churches where there should have been gatherings for repentance and revival. This will increase markedly just before the return of Jesus. 3. "There will be a moral disintegration that old Norway has never experienced the likes of. People will live together like married without being married. (I do not believe the concept ‘co-habitor’? existed in 1968 - E. Minos.) Much uncleanness before marriage, and much infidelity in marriage will become the natural (the common), and it will be justified from every angle. It will even enter Christian circles and we pet it - even sin against nature. Just before Jesus return there will be TV- programs like we have never experienced. (TV had just arrived in Norway in 1968. E. Minos) "TV will be filled with such horrible violence that it teaches people to murder and destroy each other, and it will be unsafe in our streets. People will copy what they see. There will not be only one ‘station’ on TV, it will be filled with ‘stations.’ (She did not know the word ‘channel’ which we use today. Therefore she called them stations. E. Minos.) TV will be just like the radio where we have many ‘stations,’ and it will be filled with violence. People will use it for entertainment. We will see terrible scenes of murder and destruction one of the other, and this will spread in society. Sex scenes will also be shown on the screen, the most intimate things that takes place in a marriage." (I protested and said, we have a paragraph that forbids this kind of thing. E. Minos.) There the old woman said: "It will happen, and you will see it. All we have had before will be broken down, and the most indecent things will pass before our eyes." 4. "People from poor countries will stream to Europe. (In 1968 there was no such thing as immigration. E. Minos.) They will also come to Scandinavia - and Norway. There will be so many of them that people will begin to dislike them and become hard with them. They will be treated like the Jews before the Second World War. Then the full measure of our sins will have been reached (I protested at the issue of immigration. I did not understand it at the time. E. Minos.) The tears streamed from the old woman’s eyes down her cheeks. "I will not see it, but you will. Then suddenly, Jesus will come and the Third World War breaks out. It will be a short war." (She saw it in the vision.) "All that I have seen of war before is only child’s play compared to this one, and it will be ended with a nuclear atom bomb. The air will be so polluted that one cannot draw one’s breath. It will cover several continents, America, Japan, Australia and the wealthy nations. The water will be ruined (contaminated?). We can no longer till the soil. The result will be that only a remnant will remain. The remnant in the wealthy countries will try to flee to the poor countries, but they will be as hard on us as we were on them. "I am so glad that I will not see it, but when the time draws near, you must take courage and tell this. I have received it from God, and nothing of it goes against what the Bible tells. "The one who has his sin forgiven and has Jesus as Savior and Lord, is safe." WHEN THE OIL FLOWS An elder in the Pentecostal Church at Moss, Norway, Martin Andersen, heard the following prophecy in 1937, in Moss: ‘When oil comes out of the North Sea and along the Norwegian coast, things will begin to happen, and the return of Jesus is approaching.’ When these words had been proclaimed, people stood up in the congregation and asked the man to sit down and not speak such nonsense. In 1937 it was indeed nonsense to talk about oil being pumped along the Norwegian coast. Today all the world’s big oil companies are pumping oil along the coast of Norway. Norway is the world’s second greatest exporter of oil - after Saudi Arabia. The sum of it all is: Jesus is coming soon (suddenly). Original source editor’s note: The above account was originally transmitted from Israel to friends in the US. It was sent by a Norwegian Christian worker by the name of Ragna Von Porat. Ragna states in a footnote that it was translated from Danish. She further states that Emanuel Minos, the evangelist mentioned in the account, was her friend’s closest neighbor in Oslo. She says, "I heard him in my young days. My parents knew him." Because of my fear of transmitting false prophecy, I have diligently inquired concerning the information in this letter. Publication has been delayed until permission could be secured from Ragna in Israel. In my contact with her, she has assured me that these accounts are true and reliable. In fact, she relates that the first account has already been published in one of Norway’s Christian newspapers. I have found in my own research that the first account was also published by the Christian Information Service in Germany. The website of Dr. Emanuel Minos is active today and can be accessed for verification. Although the language on this site is Norwegian, the very similar story of the woman and her vision is posted there in English. The above accounts are transmitted just as they were received. Ragna took it upon herself to verify as much of the above information as she could. In contacting the Embassy of Norway she learned that Norway has now dropped to the world’s third largest oil exporter. Ragna states, "I certainly have no objection to your going ahead [with publishing]. It must be now-if ever." 1968 Prophecy by 90 Year Old Woman in Norway HOME An old woman of 90 from Valdres in Norway had a vision from God in 1968. The evangelist Emanuel Minos had meetings (services) where she lived. He had the opportunity to meet her, and she told him what she had seen. He wrote it down, but thought it to be so unintelligible that he put it in a drawer. Now, almost 30 years later, he understands he has to share the vision with others. The woman from Valdres was a very alert, reliable, awake and credible Christian, with a good reputation among all who knew her. This is what she saw: "I saw the time just before the coming of Jesus and the outbreak of the Third World War. I saw the events with my natural eyes. I saw the world like a kind of a globe and saw Europe, land by land. I saw Scandinavia. I saw Norway. I saw certain things that would take place just before the return of Jesus, and just before the last calamity happens, a calamity the likes of which we have never before experienced. She mentioned four waves: 1. "First before Jesus comes and before the Third World War breaks out there will be a ‘détente’ like we have never had before. There will be peace between the super powers in the east and the west, and there will be a long peace. (Remember, that this was in 1968 when the cold war was at its highest. E. Minos) In this period of peace there will be disarmament in many countries, also in Norway and we are not prepared when it (the war) comes. The Third World War will begin in a way no one would have anticipated - and from an unexpected place. 2. "A lukewarmness without parallel will take hold of the Christians, a falling away from true, living Christianity. Christians will not be open for penetrating preaching. They will not, like in earlier times, want to hear of sin and grace, law and gospel, repentance and restoration. There will come a substitute instead: prosperity (happiness) Christianity. "The important thing will be to have success, to be something; to have material things, things that God never promised us in this way. Churches and prayer houses will be emptier and emptier. Instead of the preaching we have been used to for generations -like, to take your cross up and follow Jesus, - entertainment, art and culture will invade the churches where there should have been gatherings for repentance and revival. This will increase markedly just before the return of Jesus. 3. "There will be a moral disintegration that old Norway has never experienced the likes of. People will live together like married without being married. (I do not believe the concept ‘co-habitor’? existed in 1968 - E. Minos.) Much uncleanness before marriage, and much infidelity in marriage will become the natural (the common), and it will be justified from every angle. It will even enter Christian circles and we pet it - even sin against nature. Just before Jesus return there will be TV- programs like we have never experienced. (TV had just arrived in Norway in 1968. E. Minos) "TV will be filled with such horrible violence that it teaches people to murder and destroy each other, and it will be unsafe in our streets. People will copy what they see. There will not be only one ‘station’ on TV, it will be filled with ‘stations.’ (She did not know the word ‘channel’ which we use today. Therefore she called them stations. E. Minos.) TV will be just like the radio where we have many ‘stations,’ and it will be filled with violence. People will use it for entertainment. We will see terrible scenes of murder and destruction one of the other, and this will spread in society. Sex scenes will also be shown on the screen, the most intimate things that takes place in a marriage." (I protested and said, we have a paragraph that forbids this kind of thing. E. Minos.) There the old woman said: "It will happen, and you will see it. All we have had before will be broken down, and the most indecent things will pass before our eyes." 4. "People from poor countries will stream to Europe. (In 1968 there was no such thing as immigration. E. Minos.) They will also come to Scandinavia - and Norway. There will be so many of them that people will begin to dislike them and become hard with them. They will be treated like the Jews before the Second World War. Then the full measure of our sins will have been reached (I protested at the issue of immigration. I did not understand it at the time. E. Minos.) The tears streamed from the old woman’s eyes down her cheeks. "I will not see it, but you will. Then suddenly, Jesus will come and the Third World War breaks out. It will be a short war." (She saw it in the vision.) "All that I have seen of war before is only child’s play compared to this one, and it will be ended with a nuclear atom bomb. The air will be so polluted that one cannot draw one’s breath. It will cover several continents, America, Japan, Australia and the wealthy nations. The water will be ruined (contaminated?). We can no longer till the soil. The result will be that only a remnant will remain. The remnant in the wealthy countries will try to flee to the poor countries, but they will be as hard on us as we were on them. "I am so glad that I will not see it, but when the time draws near, you must take courage and tell this. I have received it from God, and nothing of it goes against what the Bible tells. "The one who has his sin forgiven and has Jesus as Savior and Lord, is safe." WHEN THE OIL FLOWS An elder in the Pentecostal Church at Moss, Norway, Martin Andersen, heard the following prophecy in 1937, in Moss: ‘When oil comes out of the North Sea and along the Norwegian coast, things will begin to happen, and the return of Jesus is approaching.’ When these words had been proclaimed, people stood up in the congregation and asked the man to sit down and not speak such nonsense. In 1937 it was indeed nonsense to talk about oil being pumped along the Norwegian coast. Today all the world’s big oil companies are pumping oil along the coast of Norway. Norway is the world’s second greatest exporter of oil - after Saudi Arabia. The sum of it all is: Jesus is coming soon (suddenly). Original source editor’s note: The above account was originally transmitted from Israel to friends in the US. It was sent by a Norwegian Christian worker by the name of Ragna Von Porat. Ragna states in a footnote that it was translated from Danish. She further states that Emanuel Minos, the evangelist mentioned in the account, was her friend’s closest neighbor in Oslo. She says, "I heard him in my young days. My parents knew him." Because of my fear of transmitting false prophecy, I have diligently inquired concerning the information in this letter. Publication has been delayed until permission could be secured from Ragna in Israel. In my contact with her, she has assured me that these accounts are true and reliable. In fact, she relates that the first account has already been published in one of Norway’s Christian newspapers. I have found in my own research that the first account was also published by the Christian Information Service in Germany. The website of Dr. Emanuel Minos is active today and can be accessed for verification. Although the language on this site is Norwegian, the very similar story of the woman and her vision is posted there in English. The above accounts are transmitted just as they were received. Ragna took it upon herself to verify as much of the above information as she could. In contacting the Embassy of Norway she learned that Norway has now dropped to the world’s third largest oil exporter. Ragna states, "I certainly have no objection to your going ahead [with publishing]. It must be now-if ever." (Comment on this)
3:56a	The coming Third World War The following is a transcript of a message delivered by Jan Willem van der Hoeven in Norway on July 20, 2014. And I hope also that the Lord Jesus, by His Spirit, will show you what to do with the information – because we are living in unbelievably prophetic times. And I have a feeling that soon we will see a war in the Middle East that will lead to the greatest revival that has ever hit the Middle East. And I would not be surprised that this little war with Hamas in Gaza will lead to a war with Damascus and with the Hezbollah in Lebanon. Actually I wrote and warned the [Israeli] Chief of Staff that this would happen; that soon Israel will be attacked by thousands of rockets, not from the south only, but there are a hundred thousand rockets in the hands of Hezbollah, and huge numbers of rockets in the hands of the Muslims in Syria. A woman of God told me one and a half years ago, “The Lord said to me, soon the prophecy of Isaiah 17 will be fulfilled, when Damascus will be turned into a ruinous city and destroyed.” I spoke once to a pilot – an Israeli pilot – I said, “You will not be attacked immediately by Iran, but Iran will make Assad and the Hezbollah do the dirty work for them and attack you.” And then he said to me, “If they will attack us and Tel Aviv, we will flatten Damascus.” And I believe that this is going to lead to the fulfillment of God’s Word. What came by the sword will go by the sword. These are the words of Jesus Himself. Islam came by the sword. The sword preceded the Quran, and Mohammed fought 53 wars, and destroyed much of the apostolic fruits of the churches in the Middle East. And therefore we know it was evil. The most closed country in the world for the Gospel, where no preacher has ever dared to preach, no Billy Graham, no Osborne, is Saudi Arabia. You cannot even take your Bible on the plane back to Saudi Arabia. And that shows us that when that Islamic power came in Mecca and Medina, and spread itself over the whole Middle East, it was an antichrist spirit. For if Allah was the same God as the God of Israel, the door would be open for the Gospel to be preached. How can God, if He is really the only God – and Allah is supposed to be the same God – send His Son to save everyone that repents from his sin; and then, if Allah is the same as God, he says, “o, you cannot preach this in Saudi Arabia?” Everyone who has a little bit of intelligence says, “How can it be? How can Allah fight himself? He killed His Son. He wants us to preach it to the whole world. And if Allah is the same as God he says no-one should preach that word in Saudi Arabia.” Therefore we know that it is from the devil. We know it is the spirit of antichrist. And it has to be bound by the Lord, in the name of Jesus. So God is going to use the next war to get the poison of Islam out of the hearts of multitudes of Arabs. It will enter the Middle East, into the reality of Isaiah 19: 23-25, where it says, “There will be a blessing in the midst of the earth, [God is speaking] when I will bless My people Egypt, and the work of My hands, Assyria, and My inheritance Israel. And there will be a highway from Egypt to Assyria, and it will be a blessing in the midst of the earth.” I announce a short war, with Damascus, with the power of Islam in the Arabs, what came by the sword will fall by the sword of Israel, and it will be a blessing for the Arabs, for in the end they will be free, with their brothers – they are not nephews, they are half-brothers of the Jews, and they are going to be together – Egypt, Israel and Assyria, a blessing in the midst of the earth. I want you to know: the Arabs are not the final enemy of Israel. If you move in the Holy Ghost, as sons and daughters of God, having repented truly of your sins(and we also have, in our dress, to look more holy – I beg you not to dress unless you ask the Lord how to dress), if we are holy, and we stand before the Lord, we have the power to go in front of the army of Israel. In a way we have done this already here during these three days. And I, by God’s grace, will reap the fruits with Israel when I go back. When the praisers went in front of the ark, the Lord moved upon the army of Israel. We do not need to fight with bombs, or with planes. Our weapons are spiritual, mighty for the breaking down of the principalities. And the first one that you have to break as you praise the Lord is the power of Islam. Crush it under your feet. So that the Arabs can kiss at the border, like Esau did Jacob. Not inside the border. The Arabs will live in peace with Israel living within her own God-given borders. For reconciliation will not cost Israel her land. Esau and Jacob, after we break the power of Islam, will be reconciled as Esau and Jacob were – at the border. Oh, it is going to be a wonderful peace. It is the Middle East where God did the greatest things: Abraham lived in Assyria. And he lived in Egypt. And he lived in Israel. And Israel lived in Babylon. And in Egypt. And lived in Israel. And so I said, “Lord, You were in Egypt. And You were in Israel. Were You also in Babylon and Assyria”? And the Lord opened my eyes. “I was the fourth man in the oven at Nebuchadnezzar. I was there too.” That is the Middle East. And God is going to win it back. He will slay and cut off the power of Islam. And the Arabs will become the greatest channel of blessing to the people of Israel. And you know how you know that this is true? Because after that, and this is my second point, we will have Gog and Magog. And Gog and Magog will attack Israel. And the Bible says, when that happens, after the revival – because Ezekiel 37, that I preached about yesterday, is before Ezekiel 38 and 39! So Israel is already in the revival, and the Arabs and the Jews are one! God is going to retrieve first those who live in the Middle East. So the Bible says, when Gog and Magog attack, you will find in the roll of nations that come with Gog and Magog, no more Egypt, no more Assyria, you speak about Togamar – Turkey, Gomer – Ethiopia, or it is more Sudan, Cush – Persia, but no Arabs! And the Bible says Israel will dwell with unfenced borders! At peace! Because they were part of the revival! And the world will say to Gog and Magog, why did you attack Israel? And this will be maybe in seven years only. Because we will first have the war with the Arabs that may happen at anytime. And Damascus destroyed. And revival come in. Because the power of the poison of Islam will be bound over the Arab mind. And then Israel will have no need to have borders anymore. Because Esau and Jacob have kissed one another. And so Gog and Magog will be furious. And the nations will say, “Why have you come to attack?” And Gog and Magog doesn’t say, “Because of the Palestinians.” But, “Have you come to take the spoil?” That’s what the nations ask Gog and Magog. There will be such a flow of oil in the Middle East – and the last three letters of ‘spoil’ is ‘oil.’ God is going to bless His people – and Gog and Magog are going to attack. You know, I would be willing, with God’s help, to go to Putin and anoint him. Remember the story of Elijah – who had to anoint Elisha, Jehu and Hazael? And so, when he went to Hazael – I think it was his replacement, Elisha, who went to Hazael – he saw Hazael, and he began to cry. He said, “Why are you crying?” He said, “Because I know what you are going to do to Israel.” But God told me, “You’re His weapon, you’re His channel for judgment on my nation. And I have to anoint you!” I am willing to go to Putin and to anoint him to attack Europe or to attack America! That’s the parallel! And maybe with tears in our eyes. And God showed me to speak this message because there is going to be a Third World War – Gog and Magog – Ezekiel 38 and 39. And so after the wonderful unity between Believers and Jews and Arabs and Jews – it’s one flock, you are so right, you read that passage – there will be one flock and the devil will hate it. But God will use whatever means to use the leader of Gog to put His judgment over the West. And the Bible says, the people that will be left on the earth will be rarer than fine gold. We have no idea – with all the cheap preaching of “grace, grace, grace” and “revival, revival, revival.” There is a weeping prophet! His name is Jeremiah – who says, “I tell you. Nebuchadnezzar is God’s instrument. He will judge you for your immorality. Repent!” He wept. And they said, “You! You’re not a patriot. You are speaking against Israel.” You are weakening, Norway. “Go in a pit. You are weakening the king of Israel, the army of Israel.” You can pray what you want, as Norwegians, after you have fornicated and run after your alcohol and everything. And God can save us if we repent! But if we go with our immorality, the breaking up of our marriages – you can pray what you want, “O Lord save Norway.” God says, “I’m not going to save Norway. I will send my servant, Putin. You anoint him to do My work.” At least he is an anti-homosexual. He is more a man than most of the politicians in Europe. May God let him hear this word – that he himself may know that he is under the command of God. Where is it all written in the Bible? After the revival that will happen at the Feast of Tabernacles – which includes the Arabs – it will include all the Gentiles that have been grafted into Israel. And give us the double portion that we so long for. And Jesus announced the Holy Spirit at the Feast of Tabernacles! The Lord said, “I used the Feast of Tabernacles, not Pentecost” – so we know it’s going to happen. The former and the latter rain will fall upon us. And you know, we always had evening meetings. And the Lord showed me. You always have evening meetings. Where does it say that in the Bible? When did the Holy Spirit fall? In the evening? Or in the morning? So we, for the first time, have our meetings in the valley of Hinnom in the morning and in the afternoon. Because I want to be ready to receive that revival that will bring the Church and Israel and the Arabs and the Jews in one. One flock. And then we have some years before the Third World War. We go to Ezekiel 38 and 39. And what does it say? “I will cast fire on the coastlands that dwell carelessly.” God is speaking. And I hear many Christians – I hope you can have an open heart about Gog and Magog and Israel. Do you know, God is going to attack Gog and Magog in Israel, that is why He puts a hook. But before they go and get dealt with by God in Israel, He will use – if Putin is still there – the Prince of Rosh – to put His judgments on the coastlands and the West that dwells with carelessness. So all that is said about Gog and Magog attacking Israel is wrong! Gog and Magog will attack the US! And then God will say, “You come now that you’ve done My work on the immorality and the corruption – on Norway, on Europe, on America, on Obama and his team, nowI need Putin after that for Israel.” My God is God. He says, “Now I will deal with you.” And it will take Israel seven months to bury the dead. Gog and Magog will be finished. Not by NATO, but by God on the mountains of Israel. You know, it was from the Lord that my sister spoke about my book. I hope you are all going to read it. Because in it I show that the Arabs are not the final problem for Israel, but that the devil needs a Third World War to bring Rome into the picture. It is an amazing thing when you see it. I was preaching in the church of David Wilkerson, a holy man of God. I was privileged that he allowed me to preach there. And he took me to his flat – his apartment. And I watched the whole city [looking] like a Christmas tree. All the big towers lit up. And when I made a remark, he said, “When I look out over my city, I only see a cemetery.” What happened to the Twin Towers was only the beginning. The city of New York is going to be destroyed. And this holy man of God could not even look at the city. He said, “Where these rich men come into their Chevrolets and their cars with all the money they have – I’m not saying they are all like that – and they look for nice, juicy young men to have sex with…” God has seen everything that is happening – all the pornography, all the immorality – and God is spitting mad! Unless we repent and put ourselves under the blood, judgment will come, and it will begin at the House of God before it goes to the nations. So let us pray to be cleansed, to be cleansed from every sin, from every bondage, and make up with our wives or with our fellow Christians whom we have deeply wounded. There are more Christians today that are deeply wounded by fellow Christians than by people in the world. And God forgive us. The devil is cruel. The Bible calls him the destroyer of nations. “O Lucifer – destroyer of nations” – he needs a Third World War to bring Rome into the picture. I write about it in my book. We have seen two world wars. After the First World War the devil said, “You must be united.” The League of Nations was man’s answer inspired by the devil to go back to Babylon. Because what was the essence of Babylon? If we as mankind (I wish Brother Francis the Pope would hear this!) can unite and be one – the human family as one – we can do it. We can build our towers! We can be the salvation for this world. And God gave each nation its language. So the devil hates your love for your nation. And if you listen to the New Age [proponents] they stress that we are all children of this [global] village earth. And we have to care for it. And we have to be united with everybody. With the socialists. With the homosexuals. We are one, children of God. That is where the world is going. Unity without repentance will lead to Babylon, and not to Jerusalem. The Bible says, they that want to enter the gates of Jerusalem have to cleanse themselves in the blood of the Lamb. But into Babylon you can come with your own dress. That’s why it is not a bride, but a scarlet woman that will sit upon the Beast! Now let me come back: After the First World War, the League of Nations- the beginning of ‘one,’ of ‘oneness.’ Then the devil thought, “I need another world war for they still don’t get the point.” So we had the Second World War. More than 50 million people were killed. I believe in the next world war at least 300 million will be killed. But the devil used the Second World War, when the people saw all the destruction and said, “This is terrible!” so he said, “You must unite.” And so the League of Nations became the United Nations. Some years ago, I got a little booklet into my hands, and it’s called, “The Report of the Club of Rome.” And in that report, the big economic and political people that came together in Rome were discussing the problems of our generation. The lack of energy. The lack of food. Overpopulation. Air pollution. All the big problems. And they said, “We must become one – because we will have no more energy, no more food, we will not know what to do with the economies” – and so they made a report in the club of Rome and divided the world into 10 economic units. American-Canada 1. South America 2. Europe 3. China 4. All the Arabs together 5. All the black African nations 6. So they divided the whole world into 10 units – just as the Bible says. It’s not going to be Europe, it’s going to be the whole world – the 10 toes of Rome! I said, “Lord! They are ready to upgrade the United Nations, after the war of Gog and Magog, into a world presidium of 10 presidents.” And because New York will be destroyed, Rome will be the counter city to Jerusalem that will open the gates to the world church that will sit on the beast of 10 horns. So there will be a world government and a world church. That’s why we should cry for people like Ulf Ekman. For this time! The Lord is on His way to Jerusalem, but the Antichrist is on his way to Babylon – to Rome. But you know something? I have good news. There is a parallel. In 1917 the League of Nations was born – the embryo of what will become the world government. I was amazed where they put Israel – the Club of Rome – because they have put all the Arabs together, the Muslims – so they put Israel with New Zealand and Australia. I go to Australia, and I say, “God can give you the crown.” The Bible says, from the 10 presidents, three will be pushed. None of these presidents will be leader, but the little horn – a super secretary-general, a little horn – he will come up and become the world leader, the false man of peace – [and say], “Let me do it.” A super Henry Kissinger, who not for nothing is also a Jew. But there is good news: 1917 was not just the year of the League of Nations – it was the year of the embryo of Israel. In 1917, a godly man, Arthur Balfour, pushed by his Christian Zionist aunt and other Christians as well, Uncle Arthur blessed Britain by allowing the Jews to immigrate to Israel. So it was the beginning of the restoration for Israel, not just the League of Nations. 1948 the devil said, “Be one!” – United Nations – that has been more unfriendly to Israel than any other country because the devil presides over that house of lies. But 1948 there were Israelis dancing, and the Jews of Tel Aviv – for the State of Israel was born. Each way you look, to Babylon or to Jerusalem, God says, “I will choose Jerusalem!” to heal the world. And all those that will be left in the nations after He judges them, will come up every year to celebrate the feast of Tabernacles in Jerusalem and to worship the King, and to comfort the Jews. Se each way you look – I said, “Let Babylon be one. I go to Jerusalem.” Because the Lord says, “In that day, Jerusalem will be the highest mountain, and the nations will come up to it, and preach war no longer.” My Bible doesn’t say, “New York, New York, if I forget thee…” or “Geneva, Geneva.” “Pray for the peace conference tables there!” Righteousness will not come from the United Nations, peace will not come from Geneva – for the children of God there is only one city. Jesus is not coming to Amsterdam. He is coming with great glory, on the praises of His people, to only one hill – the hill of the Lord. “Here I have desired to dwell forever.” And the nations have imagined a vain thing, as Psalm 2 says. They want to solve the Middle East problem by dividing God’s land. That’s the wisdom of the Norwegian government; that’s the wisdom of America; that’s the wisdom of the nations of the world. But He who sits in the heavens will laugh them to scorn and say, “Yet I will set My king, not in Rome, but on my holy hill in Jerusalem.” After the Second World War, United Nations – 1948. 1948, Israel became a nation after 2000 years. The Prophet Isaiah said, “A nation shall be born in a day.” And we are in front of a short war with the power of Islam, with the Arab nations, because God wants to bring the brothers of the Jews back, and you and me, to Israel – ten out of each nation. But afterwards, maybe seven years, Gog and Magog, who will roll itself up like a snake and say, “I want the spoil, I want the oil.” But before they go up God says, “I need you to put My judgment over the coastlands of the West that dwells carelessly. And I will cast fire upon the coastlands that dwell carelessly. When they have fulfilled God’s word, and I’m prepared to anoint him for it – that’s what Elijah did to Hazael – then God will say, “Now you come, because I remain the Master of this race – the King of kings and the Lord of lords.” And what will happen? The devil is so happy with the Third World War. Three hundred sixty million dead or around that number. You can’t believe it. The Europeans all run after their little self and everything they want ha, ha, ha, ha, ha! Oh Lord this is terrible! We will not believe what God’s judgment will be in Europe and America. If six million Jews died in the Holocaust – who never came to the level of immorality of our generation … most the Jews never agreed with abortion or homosexuality, yet they went into the gas chambers. And as My Bible says, if God has not spared His own people who were less immoral in the 1940s than our generation, then you must be totally blind not to believe that something worse than the Second World War will come upon us. Do you now understand why I am here? I want Norway to be saved from this. That’s why I preach here. I said Lord, I may be an optimist. That’s why I love Kjell so much. I found a man who said, let’s see what we can do with 300 Gideonites to turn Norway under God’s grace; maybe other countries as well. My son says, “Papa, I want Norway to be on the side of Israel before the Third World War.” That’s why this center in Norway now is here in Porsgrunn. I may be an optimist but God says, “It was Norway that pushed my people into the Oslo Accord in the wrong way of peace.” But Terje (pastor from Tonsberg), you led a movement to bring pastors representing a new day for Norway – to say “sorry” to the Israeli Knesset members, to the prime minister. I translated it in Hebrew, and sent it to many of the lawmakers and I said, “God, because of that, is there a hope for Norway?” And that hope God showed me in these three days. You have heard the message. You know you are sons and daughters of God. You hopefully have cleansed yourself completely. And God needs only 300 souls to win Norway back, if we go this way, by God’s grace! If the result of the Third World War is a world government of 10 presidents, none of them is the Antichrist. The Bible says the little horn moves three away and remains as the emperor of Rome in control of the world, and says, “I’m your peacemaker.” There are politicians in Europe who see the terrible situation we are in. America is in debt 17 trillion dollars. America is dying under Obama. Two more years and America will never be the same. If Putin comes in you’re on your own! America will not come to the aid of Europe. And if you don’t know to lay hold of God you are alone. And your army is not going to help you. That’s why I am here. And maybe not for nothing I come from the same city as Jeremiah. I live there. And God told me to live there. And in that way I’m a prophetic voice to the nations. But also of hope to Israel, that God announces to Israel, “I will make a new covenant with you.” And that covenant includes you. So this is the third result. The first was the League of Nations. The second was the United Nations. After the Third World War the devil says, “You have seen enough death” – “yes, yes” – that’s why he loves the New Age movement: “We want so much to be one. We are not Norwegians. We are citizens of this world.” That’s what the world wants. That’s what your new generation wants. They will rather spit on their own Norwegian nationality! But I am here to announce to you: God saw this unholy unity movement in the days of Babylon and it was He who created nationhood. Suddenly everyone began to speak in different languages. God gave you your different language. And the devil hates the love for nationhood and he wants you to be citizens of this earth. Once you accept that you will get your citizen number on your head or on your arm. You are not a Norwegian. First and foremost you’re a citizen of this village earth. And the devil wants everybody to have the same. And if you want to be a homosexual you have to report to the World Health Organisation to make sure you don’t get AIDS. That is the world you are going to get. Something is going to happen again in Jerusalem. In 1917, the first beginnings – the Jews came home as God promised. In 1948, Israel became a state and the Jews danced all over Israel for three days and nights. And they did not need alcohol to celebrate. They were so thankful. After 2000 years they had their state back! And if Israel has to make a choice to be part of a grey, unified world, where the Jews will give up their nationhood, the Jews will be the hardest nut to crack, because they will say, “We have gone through the gas chambers, we have gone through our tribulation, we have been gassed and humiliated because we kept to be Jewish. We will not give up our national homeland to be part of this world.” And we Christian Zionists will come with Israel and we will say, “Yes, we will go with you, we will stand, look up to your salvation, it is coming.” And the unity of this world that will be the result of the Third World War will parallel the unity of God’s children – Jew and Arab, but especially the 10 out of each nation. They will say, “The hope comes from Jerusalem. Jerusalem, Jerusalem.” Ulf Ekman, I have preached in your church from my heart under the anointing of the Lord about these things. And I want you to know: That that Lord that is coming is going to come to Jerusalem. And there is going to be the greatest revival that will bring us not just to the level of the Acts of the Apostles, but beyond. I don’t mind, Ulf, if you preach this in the Catholic Church. Ask me to come to all your cathedrals, and I will preach it because of you. But if you give up on Israel, on Jerusalem, I have a word for you: “Jerusalem, if I forget you, it would be better that my tongue would cease preaching and cleave to my palate.” I am saying under the Holy Ghost: “If you miss Jerusalem you have nothing to say. It’s better that your tongue would stop talking.” Jerusalem, Jerusalem, if I forget thee, it would be better that my tongue would cleave to my palate. All preachers, all priests, all brothers and sisters- Rome will not be the salvation of this world, but it will be the center of the world government and the world church. And Jerusalem is going to be the city where the Lord will put His King on His holy hill. All the nations will come there. Oh I want to end here. The Bible says, “Every knee shall bow for my Lord.” It will be such a glorious day. Daniel says, “I saw the Son of Man with great power and glory.” This time He does not come on a donkey; this time He does not come as a suffering servant. This time He comes to own this world. And His reign will be from coast to coast. He will be King of Kings as Zechariah says: In that day the Lord, your Lord, our Lord, will be king over the whole earth. And the nations will come up. They will find something in the air, when they wake up in Trondheim, in Amsterdam, in Orlando, and they say there is a lightness – and they turn to their televisions – and after Washington DC there are more journalists in Jerusalem than any other country. I like that because the Bible says, “every knee shall bow” – not just Pentecostals, not just Charismatics – every knee when they see this Lord. The glory will come down into that Third Temple that Ezekiel ends with – the Temple of the Lord. Without that Temple He will not come. And as He comes through the East Gate and fills the House with His glory – the One Who died at the cross to make you clean from every sin and made you sons and daughters of His Father – is coming to rule this world. And the glory will be so great that the journalists, for the first time, will have to report this on their knees. “Ladies and gentlemen, this is Television Norge, I see my colleagues all on their faces. Something happened this night. We cannot even look. There is such glory. I am so sorry about what I have said about Israel. And when these Jews built this Temple we journalists all made fun of them. Because I see Somebody has come to take the reins of this earth in the only hands in which the world is safe – the pierced hands of our loving Lord, who will not bypass the broken reed.” You have gone through your problems. You have been sad, as I have, when we have failed the Lord. But if your heart is perfected, you will be a channel to move Israel into this hour. We will breathe upon them, identify with them, like the prophet on the boy, and breathe what God has given us. How does it say? “Gentiles, may you show them mercy – the Jews – through the mercy that God has given you.” Lay yourself out on them. Not a tract at the Wailing Wall but an identification. Not a tract, not a little message. But to come to Israel with that word that was on the heart of Ruth. I look to a sister right now. Will you become that Ruth who said to Naomi, “I am going to go with you.” And she clung to Naomi and said, “Your God is my God.” We as Christians can say this for the God of Israel is our God and Father. Don’t pray to Jesus. Pray to God. It is through Jesus that we can come to His Father. We don’t believe in two gods. We believe in one God. “Our Father, which art in heaven…” “Your God, Naomi, is my God, and your people I embrace as my people.” Have you embraced the Jewish people? When I see the soldiers, when I drive into “Israel proper” through the barricade from Anathot, I say, “Lord I love them,” because they are God’s people. At an hour that God is about to pour out His Spirit. And the Hebrew word, when it says in Ruth [that she] “took hold” of Naomi, that word is the same word as in Zechariah when it says (I feel God’s Spirit says, “tell it to them”) ten gentiles from every nation will take hold, just as Ruth did to Naomi – the same Hebrew word, “take hold,” not just say, “We will pray for you while we wait on the rapture.” [but] “We will go with you; we will be with you, we will put ourselves upon you and see you come to your greatest hour.” So that when He comes we will stand face to face – you will stand face to face when the Lord restores Zion. And we will say, “Come Yeshua. This world is in a mess. We are ready to celebrate Your Feast. A feast for the nations, which the Feast of Tabernacles is.” And so Zechariah ends: And those that will be left of the nations, that survived the Third World War – then they will give Jerusalem its proper place. And we will kneel down beside all these journalists that have reported what has just happened, on this planet earth – and we will all be on our knees. And the nations will send their prime ministers – for when Jesus the King over all prime ministers is in Jerusalem we don’t need to go to the United States – we will go to Him. And He will have the right word for Norway and for all the nations. And you will be His ambassadors. Come quickly and save Norway for this hour. The coming Third World War The following is a transcript of a message delivered by Jan Willem van der Hoeven in Norway on July 20, 2014. And I hope also that the Lord Jesus, by His Spirit, will show you what to do with the information – because we are living in unbelievably prophetic times. And I have a feeling that soon we will see a war in the Middle East that will lead to the greatest revival that has ever hit the Middle East. And I would not be surprised that this little war with Hamas in Gaza will lead to a war with Damascus and with the Hezbollah in Lebanon. Actually I wrote and warned the [Israeli] Chief of Staff that this would happen; that soon Israel will be attacked by thousands of rockets, not from the south only, but there are a hundred thousand rockets in the hands of Hezbollah, and huge numbers of rockets in the hands of the Muslims in Syria. A woman of God told me one and a half years ago, “The Lord said to me, soon the prophecy of Isaiah 17 will be fulfilled, when Damascus will be turned into a ruinous city and destroyed.” I spoke once to a pilot – an Israeli pilot – I said, “You will not be attacked immediately by Iran, but Iran will make Assad and the Hezbollah do the dirty work for them and attack you.” And then he said to me, “If they will attack us and Tel Aviv, we will flatten Damascus.” And I believe that this is going to lead to the fulfillment of God’s Word. What came by the sword will go by the sword. These are the words of Jesus Himself. Islam came by the sword. The sword preceded the Quran, and Mohammed fought 53 wars, and destroyed much of the apostolic fruits of the churches in the Middle East. And therefore we know it was evil. The most closed country in the world for the Gospel, where no preacher has ever dared to preach, no Billy Graham, no Osborne, is Saudi Arabia. You cannot even take your Bible on the plane back to Saudi Arabia. And that shows us that when that Islamic power came in Mecca and Medina, and spread itself over the whole Middle East, it was an antichrist spirit. For if Allah was the same God as the God of Israel, the door would be open for the Gospel to be preached. How can God, if He is really the only God – and Allah is supposed to be the same God – send His Son to save everyone that repents from his sin; and then, if Allah is the same as God, he says, “o, you cannot preach this in Saudi Arabia?” Everyone who has a little bit of intelligence says, “How can it be? How can Allah fight himself? He killed His Son. He wants us to preach it to the whole world. And if Allah is the same as God he says no-one should preach that word in Saudi Arabia.” Therefore we know that it is from the devil. We know it is the spirit of antichrist. And it has to be bound by the Lord, in the name of Jesus. So God is going to use the next war to get the poison of Islam out of the hearts of multitudes of Arabs. It will enter the Middle East, into the reality of Isaiah 19: 23-25, where it says, “There will be a blessing in the midst of the earth, [God is speaking] when I will bless My people Egypt, and the work of My hands, Assyria, and My inheritance Israel. And there will be a highway from Egypt to Assyria, and it will be a blessing in the midst of the earth.” I announce a short war, with Damascus, with the power of Islam in the Arabs, what came by the sword will fall by the sword of Israel, and it will be a blessing for the Arabs, for in the end they will be free, with their brothers – they are not nephews, they are half-brothers of the Jews, and they are going to be together – Egypt, Israel and Assyria, a blessing in the midst of the earth. I want you to know: the Arabs are not the final enemy of Israel. If you move in the Holy Ghost, as sons and daughters of God, having repented truly of your sins(and we also have, in our dress, to look more holy – I beg you not to dress unless you ask the Lord how to dress), if we are holy, and we stand before the Lord, we have the power to go in front of the army of Israel. In a way we have done this already here during these three days. And I, by God’s grace, will reap the fruits with Israel when I go back. When the praisers went in front of the ark, the Lord moved upon the army of Israel. We do not need to fight with bombs, or with planes. Our weapons are spiritual, mighty for the breaking down of the principalities. And the first one that you have to break as you praise the Lord is the power of Islam. Crush it under your feet. So that the Arabs can kiss at the border, like Esau did Jacob. Not inside the border. The Arabs will live in peace with Israel living within her own God-given borders. For reconciliation will not cost Israel her land. Esau and Jacob, after we break the power of Islam, will be reconciled as Esau and Jacob were – at the border. Oh, it is going to be a wonderful peace. It is the Middle East where God did the greatest things: Abraham lived in Assyria. And he lived in Egypt. And he lived in Israel. And Israel lived in Babylon. And in Egypt. And lived in Israel. And so I said, “Lord, You were in Egypt. And You were in Israel. Were You also in Babylon and Assyria”? And the Lord opened my eyes. “I was the fourth man in the oven at Nebuchadnezzar. I was there too.” That is the Middle East. And God is going to win it back. He will slay and cut off the power of Islam. And the Arabs will become the greatest channel of blessing to the people of Israel. And you know how you know that this is true? Because after that, and this is my second point, we will have Gog and Magog. And Gog and Magog will attack Israel. And the Bible says, when that happens, after the revival – because Ezekiel 37, that I preached about yesterday, is before Ezekiel 38 and 39! So Israel is already in the revival, and the Arabs and the Jews are one! God is going to retrieve first those who live in the Middle East. So the Bible says, when Gog and Magog attack, you will find in the roll of nations that come with Gog and Magog, no more Egypt, no more Assyria, you speak about Togamar – Turkey, Gomer – Ethiopia, or it is more Sudan, Cush – Persia, but no Arabs! And the Bible says Israel will dwell with unfenced borders! At peace! Because they were part of the revival! And the world will say to Gog and Magog, why did you attack Israel? And this will be maybe in seven years only. Because we will first have the war with the Arabs that may happen at anytime. And Damascus destroyed. And revival come in. Because the power of the poison of Islam will be bound over the Arab mind. And then Israel will have no need to have borders anymore. Because Esau and Jacob have kissed one another. And so Gog and Magog will be furious. And the nations will say, “Why have you come to attack?” And Gog and Magog doesn’t say, “Because of the Palestinians.” But, “Have you come to take the spoil?” That’s what the nations ask Gog and Magog. There will be such a flow of oil in the Middle East – and the last three letters of ‘spoil’ is ‘oil.’ God is going to bless His people – and Gog and Magog are going to attack. You know, I would be willing, with God’s help, to go to Putin and anoint him. Remember the story of Elijah – who had to anoint Elisha, Jehu and Hazael? And so, when he went to Hazael – I think it was his replacement, Elisha, who went to Hazael – he saw Hazael, and he began to cry. He said, “Why are you crying?” He said, “Because I know what you are going to do to Israel.” But God told me, “You’re His weapon, you’re His channel for judgment on my nation. And I have to anoint you!” I am willing to go to Putin and to anoint him to attack Europe or to attack America! That’s the parallel! And maybe with tears in our eyes. And God showed me to speak this message because there is going to be a Third World War – Gog and Magog – Ezekiel 38 and 39. And so after the wonderful unity between Believers and Jews and Arabs and Jews – it’s one flock, you are so right, you read that passage – there will be one flock and the devil will hate it. But God will use whatever means to use the leader of Gog to put His judgment over the West. And the Bible says, the people that will be left on the earth will be rarer than fine gold. We have no idea – with all the cheap preaching of “grace, grace, grace” and “revival, revival, revival.” There is a weeping prophet! His name is Jeremiah – who says, “I tell you. Nebuchadnezzar is God’s instrument. He will judge you for your immorality. Repent!” He wept. And they said, “You! You’re not a patriot. You are speaking against Israel.” You are weakening, Norway. “Go in a pit. You are weakening the king of Israel, the army of Israel.” You can pray what you want, as Norwegians, after you have fornicated and run after your alcohol and everything. And God can save us if we repent! But if we go with our immorality, the breaking up of our marriages – you can pray what you want, “O Lord save Norway.” God says, “I’m not going to save Norway. I will send my servant, Putin. You anoint him to do My work.” At least he is an anti-homosexual. He is more a man than most of the politicians in Europe. May God let him hear this word – that he himself may know that he is under the command of God. Where is it all written in the Bible? After the revival that will happen at the Feast of Tabernacles – which includes the Arabs – it will include all the Gentiles that have been grafted into Israel. And give us the double portion that we so long for. And Jesus announced the Holy Spirit at the Feast of Tabernacles! The Lord said, “I used the Feast of Tabernacles, not Pentecost” – so we know it’s going to happen. The former and the latter rain will fall upon us. And you know, we always had evening meetings. And the Lord showed me. You always have evening meetings. Where does it say that in the Bible? When did the Holy Spirit fall? In the evening? Or in the morning? So we, for the first time, have our meetings in the valley of Hinnom in the morning and in the afternoon. Because I want to be ready to receive that revival that will bring the Church and Israel and the Arabs and the Jews in one. One flock. And then we have some years before the Third World War. We go to Ezekiel 38 and 39. And what does it say? “I will cast fire on the coastlands that dwell carelessly.” God is speaking. And I hear many Christians – I hope you can have an open heart about Gog and Magog and Israel. Do you know, God is going to attack Gog and Magog in Israel, that is why He puts a hook. But before they go and get dealt with by God in Israel, He will use – if Putin is still there – the Prince of Rosh – to put His judgments on the coastlands and the West that dwells with carelessness. So all that is said about Gog and Magog attacking Israel is wrong! Gog and Magog will attack the US! And then God will say, “You come now that you’ve done My work on the immorality and the corruption – on Norway, on Europe, on America, on Obama and his team, nowI need Putin after that for Israel.” My God is God. He says, “Now I will deal with you.” And it will take Israel seven months to bury the dead. Gog and Magog will be finished. Not by NATO, but by God on the mountains of Israel. You know, it was from the Lord that my sister spoke about my book. I hope you are all going to read it. Because in it I show that the Arabs are not the final problem for Israel, but that the devil needs a Third World War to bring Rome into the picture. It is an amazing thing when you see it. I was preaching in the church of David Wilkerson, a holy man of God. I was privileged that he allowed me to preach there. And he took me to his flat – his apartment. And I watched the whole city [looking] like a Christmas tree. All the big towers lit up. And when I made a remark, he said, “When I look out over my city, I only see a cemetery.” What happened to the Twin Towers was only the beginning. The city of New York is going to be destroyed. And this holy man of God could not even look at the city. He said, “Where these rich men come into their Chevrolets and their cars with all the money they have – I’m not saying they are all like that – and they look for nice, juicy young men to have sex with…” God has seen everything that is happening – all the pornography, all the immorality – and God is spitting mad! Unless we repent and put ourselves under the blood, judgment will come, and it will begin at the House of God before it goes to the nations. So let us pray to be cleansed, to be cleansed from every sin, from every bondage, and make up with our wives or with our fellow Christians whom we have deeply wounded. There are more Christians today that are deeply wounded by fellow Christians than by people in the world. And God forgive us. The devil is cruel. The Bible calls him the destroyer of nations. “O Lucifer – destroyer of nations” – he needs a Third World War to bring Rome into the picture. I write about it in my book. We have seen two world wars. After the First World War the devil said, “You must be united.” The League of Nations was man’s answer inspired by the devil to go back to Babylon. Because what was the essence of Babylon? If we as mankind (I wish Brother Francis the Pope would hear this!) can unite and be one – the human family as one – we can do it. We can build our towers! We can be the salvation for this world. And God gave each nation its language. So the devil hates your love for your nation. And if you listen to the New Age [proponents] they stress that we are all children of this [global] village earth. And we have to care for it. And we have to be united with everybody. With the socialists. With the homosexuals. We are one, children of God. That is where the world is going. Unity without repentance will lead to Babylon, and not to Jerusalem. The Bible says, they that want to enter the gates of Jerusalem have to cleanse themselves in the blood of the Lamb. But into Babylon you can come with your own dress. That’s why it is not a bride, but a scarlet woman that will sit upon the Beast! Now let me come back: After the First World War, the League of Nations- the beginning of ‘one,’ of ‘oneness.’ Then the devil thought, “I need another world war for they still don’t get the point.” So we had the Second World War. More than 50 million people were killed. I believe in the next world war at least 300 million will be killed. But the devil used the Second World War, when the people saw all the destruction and said, “This is terrible!” so he said, “You must unite.” And so the League of Nations became the United Nations. Some years ago, I got a little booklet into my hands, and it’s called, “The Report of the Club of Rome.” And in that report, the big economic and political people that came together in Rome were discussing the problems of our generation. The lack of energy. The lack of food. Overpopulation. Air pollution. All the big problems. And they said, “We must become one – because we will have no more energy, no more food, we will not know what to do with the economies” – and so they made a report in the club of Rome and divided the world into 10 economic units. American-Canada 1. South America 2. Europe 3. China 4. All the Arabs together 5. All the black African nations 6. So they divided the whole world into 10 units – just as the Bible says. It’s not going to be Europe, it’s going to be the whole world – the 10 toes of Rome! I said, “Lord! They are ready to upgrade the United Nations, after the war of Gog and Magog, into a world presidium of 10 presidents.” And because New York will be destroyed, Rome will be the counter city to Jerusalem that will open the gates to the world church that will sit on the beast of 10 horns. So there will be a world government and a world church. That’s why we should cry for people like Ulf Ekman. For this time! The Lord is on His way to Jerusalem, but the Antichrist is on his way to Babylon – to Rome. But you know something? I have good news. There is a parallel. In 1917 the League of Nations was born – the embryo of what will become the world government. I was amazed where they put Israel – the Club of Rome – because they have put all the Arabs together, the Muslims – so they put Israel with New Zealand and Australia. I go to Australia, and I say, “God can give you the crown.” The Bible says, from the 10 presidents, three will be pushed. None of these presidents will be leader, but the little horn – a super secretary-general, a little horn – he will come up and become the world leader, the false man of peace – [and say], “Let me do it.” A super Henry Kissinger, who not for nothing is also a Jew. But there is good news: 1917 was not just the year of the League of Nations – it was the year of the embryo of Israel. In 1917, a godly man, Arthur Balfour, pushed by his Christian Zionist aunt and other Christians as well, Uncle Arthur blessed Britain by allowing the Jews to immigrate to Israel. So it was the beginning of the restoration for Israel, not just the League of Nations. 1948 the devil said, “Be one!” – United Nations – that has been more unfriendly to Israel than any other country because the devil presides over that house of lies. But 1948 there were Israelis dancing, and the Jews of Tel Aviv – for the State of Israel was born. Each way you look, to Babylon or to Jerusalem, God says, “I will choose Jerusalem!” to heal the world. And all those that will be left in the nations after He judges them, will come up every year to celebrate the feast of Tabernacles in Jerusalem and to worship the King, and to comfort the Jews. Se each way you look – I said, “Let Babylon be one. I go to Jerusalem.” Because the Lord says, “In that day, Jerusalem will be the highest mountain, and the nations will come up to it, and preach war no longer.” My Bible doesn’t say, “New York, New York, if I forget thee…” or “Geneva, Geneva.” “Pray for the peace conference tables there!” Righteousness will not come from the United Nations, peace will not come from Geneva – for the children of God there is only one city. Jesus is not coming to Amsterdam. He is coming with great glory, on the praises of His people, to only one hill – the hill of the Lord. “Here I have desired to dwell forever.” And the nations have imagined a vain thing, as Psalm 2 says. They want to solve the Middle East problem by dividing God’s land. That’s the wisdom of the Norwegian government; that’s the wisdom of America; that’s the wisdom of the nations of the world. But He who sits in the heavens will laugh them to scorn and say, “Yet I will set My king, not in Rome, but on my holy hill in Jerusalem.” After the Second World War, United Nations – 1948. 1948, Israel became a nation after 2000 years. The Prophet Isaiah said, “A nation shall be born in a day.” And we are in front of a short war with the power of Islam, with the Arab nations, because God wants to bring the brothers of the Jews back, and you and me, to Israel – ten out of each nation. But afterwards, maybe seven years, Gog and Magog, who will roll itself up like a snake and say, “I want the spoil, I want the oil.” But before they go up God says, “I need you to put My judgment over the coastlands of the West that dwells carelessly. And I will cast fire upon the coastlands that dwell carelessly. When they have fulfilled God’s word, and I’m prepared to anoint him for it – that’s what Elijah did to Hazael – then God will say, “Now you come, because I remain the Master of this race – the King of kings and the Lord of lords.” And what will happen? The devil is so happy with the Third World War. Three hundred sixty million dead or around that number. You can’t believe it. The Europeans all run after their little self and everything they want ha, ha, ha, ha, ha! Oh Lord this is terrible! We will not believe what God’s judgment will be in Europe and America. If six million Jews died in the Holocaust – who never came to the level of immorality of our generation … most the Jews never agreed with abortion or homosexuality, yet they went into the gas chambers. And as My Bible says, if God has not spared His own people who were less immoral in the 1940s than our generation, then you must be totally blind not to believe that something worse than the Second World War will come upon us. Do you now understand why I am here? I want Norway to be saved from this. That’s why I preach here. I said Lord, I may be an optimist. That’s why I love Kjell so much. I found a man who said, let’s see what we can do with 300 Gideonites to turn Norway under God’s grace; maybe other countries as well. My son says, “Papa, I want Norway to be on the side of Israel before the Third World War.” That’s why this center in Norway now is here in Porsgrunn. I may be an optimist but God says, “It was Norway that pushed my people into the Oslo Accord in the wrong way of peace.” But Terje (pastor from Tonsberg), you led a movement to bring pastors representing a new day for Norway – to say “sorry” to the Israeli Knesset members, to the prime minister. I translated it in Hebrew, and sent it to many of the lawmakers and I said, “God, because of that, is there a hope for Norway?” And that hope God showed me in these three days. You have heard the message. You know you are sons and daughters of God. You hopefully have cleansed yourself completely. And God needs only 300 souls to win Norway back, if we go this way, by God’s grace! If the result of the Third World War is a world government of 10 presidents, none of them is the Antichrist. The Bible says the little horn moves three away and remains as the emperor of Rome in control of the world, and says, “I’m your peacemaker.” There are politicians in Europe who see the terrible situation we are in. America is in debt 17 trillion dollars. America is dying under Obama. Two more years and America will never be the same. If Putin comes in you’re on your own! America will not come to the aid of Europe. And if you don’t know to lay hold of God you are alone. And your army is not going to help you. That’s why I am here. And maybe not for nothing I come from the same city as Jeremiah. I live there. And God told me to live there. And in that way I’m a prophetic voice to the nations. But also of hope to Israel, that God announces to Israel, “I will make a new covenant with you.” And that covenant includes you. So this is the third result. The first was the League of Nations. The second was the United Nations. After the Third World War the devil says, “You have seen enough death” – “yes, yes” – that’s why he loves the New Age movement: “We want so much to be one. We are not Norwegians. We are citizens of this world.” That’s what the world wants. That’s what your new generation wants. They will rather spit on their own Norwegian nationality! But I am here to announce to you: God saw this unholy unity movement in the days of Babylon and it was He who created nationhood. Suddenly everyone began to speak in different languages. God gave you your different language. And the devil hates the love for nationhood and he wants you to be citizens of this earth. Once you accept that you will get your citizen number on your head or on your arm. You are not a Norwegian. First and foremost you’re a citizen of this village earth. And the devil wants everybody to have the same. And if you want to be a homosexual you have to report to the World Health Organisation to make sure you don’t get AIDS. That is the world you are going to get. Something is going to happen again in Jerusalem. In 1917, the first beginnings – the Jews came home as God promised. In 1948, Israel became a state and the Jews danced all over Israel for three days and nights. And they did not need alcohol to celebrate. They were so thankful. After 2000 years they had their state back! And if Israel has to make a choice to be part of a grey, unified world, where the Jews will give up their nationhood, the Jews will be the hardest nut to crack, because they will say, “We have gone through the gas chambers, we have gone through our tribulation, we have been gassed and humiliated because we kept to be Jewish. We will not give up our national homeland to be part of this world.” And we Christian Zionists will come with Israel and we will say, “Yes, we will go with you, we will stand, look up to your salvation, it is coming.” And the unity of this world that will be the result of the Third World War will parallel the unity of God’s children – Jew and Arab, but especially the 10 out of each nation. They will say, “The hope comes from Jerusalem. Jerusalem, Jerusalem.” Ulf Ekman, I have preached in your church from my heart under the anointing of the Lord about these things. And I want you to know: That that Lord that is coming is going to come to Jerusalem. And there is going to be the greatest revival that will bring us not just to the level of the Acts of the Apostles, but beyond. I don’t mind, Ulf, if you preach this in the Catholic Church. Ask me to come to all your cathedrals, and I will preach it because of you. But if you give up on Israel, on Jerusalem, I have a word for you: “Jerusalem, if I forget you, it would be better that my tongue would cease preaching and cleave to my palate.” I am saying under the Holy Ghost: “If you miss Jerusalem you have nothing to say. It’s better that your tongue would stop talking.” Jerusalem, Jerusalem, if I forget thee, it would be better that my tongue would cleave to my palate. All preachers, all priests, all brothers and sisters- Rome will not be the salvation of this world, but it will be the center of the world government and the world church. And Jerusalem is going to be the city where the Lord will put His King on His holy hill. All the nations will come there. Oh I want to end here. The Bible says, “Every knee shall bow for my Lord.” It will be such a glorious day. Daniel says, “I saw the Son of Man with great power and glory.” This time He does not come on a donkey; this time He does not come as a suffering servant. This time He comes to own this world. And His reign will be from coast to coast. He will be King of Kings as Zechariah says: In that day the Lord, your Lord, our Lord, will be king over the whole earth. And the nations will come up. They will find something in the air, when they wake up in Trondheim, in Amsterdam, in Orlando, and they say there is a lightness – and they turn to their televisions – and after Washington DC there are more journalists in Jerusalem than any other country. I like that because the Bible says, “every knee shall bow” – not just Pentecostals, not just Charismatics – every knee when they see this Lord. The glory will come down into that Third Temple that Ezekiel ends with – the Temple of the Lord. Without that Temple He will not come. And as He comes through the East Gate and fills the House with His glory – the One Who died at the cross to make you clean from every sin and made you sons and daughters of His Father – is coming to rule this world. And the glory will be so great that the journalists, for the first time, will have to report this on their knees. “Ladies and gentlemen, this is Television Norge, I see my colleagues all on their faces. Something happened this night. We cannot even look. There is such glory. I am so sorry about what I have said about Israel. And when these Jews built this Temple we journalists all made fun of them. Because I see Somebody has come to take the reins of this earth in the only hands in which the world is safe – the pierced hands of our loving Lord, who will not bypass the broken reed.” You have gone through your problems. You have been sad, as I have, when we have failed the Lord. But if your heart is perfected, you will be a channel to move Israel into this hour. We will breathe upon them, identify with them, like the prophet on the boy, and breathe what God has given us. How does it say? “Gentiles, may you show them mercy – the Jews – through the mercy that God has given you.” Lay yourself out on them. Not a tract at the Wailing Wall but an identification. Not a tract, not a little message. But to come to Israel with that word that was on the heart of Ruth. I look to a sister right now. Will you become that Ruth who said to Naomi, “I am going to go with you.” And she clung to Naomi and said, “Your God is my God.” We as Christians can say this for the God of Israel is our God and Father. Don’t pray to Jesus. Pray to God. It is through Jesus that we can come to His Father. We don’t believe in two gods. We believe in one God. “Our Father, which art in heaven…” “Your God, Naomi, is my God, and your people I embrace as my people.” Have you embraced the Jewish people? When I see the soldiers, when I drive into “Israel proper” through the barricade from Anathot, I say, “Lord I love them,” because they are God’s people. At an hour that God is about to pour out His Spirit. And the Hebrew word, when it says in Ruth [that she] “took hold” of Naomi, that word is the same word as in Zechariah when it says (I feel God’s Spirit says, “tell it to them”) ten gentiles from every nation will take hold, just as Ruth did to Naomi – the same Hebrew word, “take hold,” not just say, “We will pray for you while we wait on the rapture.” [but] “We will go with you; we will be with you, we will put ourselves upon you and see you come to your greatest hour.” So that when He comes we will stand face to face – you will stand face to face when the Lord restores Zion. And we will say, “Come Yeshua. This world is in a mess. We are ready to celebrate Your Feast. A feast for the nations, which the Feast of Tabernacles is.” And so Zechariah ends: And those that will be left of the nations, that survived the Third World War – then they will give Jerusalem its proper place. And we will kneel down beside all these journalists that have reported what has just happened, on this planet earth – and we will all be on our knees. And the nations will send their prime ministers – for when Jesus the King over all prime ministers is in Jerusalem we don’t need to go to the United States – we will go to Him. And He will have the right word for Norway and for all the nations. And you will be His ambassadors. Come quickly and save Norway for this hour. (Comment on this)
3:58a	The coming Third World War The following is a transcript of a message delivered by Jan Willem van der Hoeven in Norway on July 20, 2014. And I hope also that the Lord Jesus, by His Spirit, will show you what to do with the information – because we are living in unbelievably prophetic times. And I have a feeling that soon we will see a war in the Middle East that will lead to the greatest revival that has ever hit the Middle East. And I would not be surprised that this little war with Hamas in Gaza will lead to a war with Damascus and with the Hezbollah in Lebanon. Actually I wrote and warned the [Israeli] Chief of Staff that this would happen; that soon Israel will be attacked by thousands of rockets, not from the south only, but there are a hundred thousand rockets in the hands of Hezbollah, and huge numbers of rockets in the hands of the Muslims in Syria. A woman of God told me one and a half years ago, “The Lord said to me, soon the prophecy of Isaiah 17 will be fulfilled, when Damascus will be turned into a ruinous city and destroyed.” I spoke once to a pilot – an Israeli pilot – I said, “You will not be attacked immediately by Iran, but Iran will make Assad and the Hezbollah do the dirty work for them and attack you.” And then he said to me, “If they will attack us and Tel Aviv, we will flatten Damascus.” And I believe that this is going to lead to the fulfillment of God’s Word. What came by the sword will go by the sword. These are the words of Jesus Himself. Islam came by the sword. The sword preceded the Quran, and Mohammed fought 53 wars, and destroyed much of the apostolic fruits of the churches in the Middle East. And therefore we know it was evil. The most closed country in the world for the Gospel, where no preacher has ever dared to preach, no Billy Graham, no Osborne, is Saudi Arabia. You cannot even take your Bible on the plane back to Saudi Arabia. And that shows us that when that Islamic power came in Mecca and Medina, and spread itself over the whole Middle East, it was an antichrist spirit. For if Allah was the same God as the God of Israel, the door would be open for the Gospel to be preached. How can God, if He is really the only God – and Allah is supposed to be the same God – send His Son to save everyone that repents from his sin; and then, if Allah is the same as God, he says, “o, you cannot preach this in Saudi Arabia?” Everyone who has a little bit of intelligence says, “How can it be? How can Allah fight himself? He killed His Son. He wants us to preach it to the whole world. And if Allah is the same as God he says no-one should preach that word in Saudi Arabia.” Therefore we know that it is from the devil. We know it is the spirit of antichrist. And it has to be bound by the Lord, in the name of Jesus. So God is going to use the next war to get the poison of Islam out of the hearts of multitudes of Arabs. It will enter the Middle East, into the reality of Isaiah 19: 23-25, where it says, “There will be a blessing in the midst of the earth, [God is speaking] when I will bless My people Egypt, and the work of My hands, Assyria, and My inheritance Israel. And there will be a highway from Egypt to Assyria, and it will be a blessing in the midst of the earth.” I announce a short war, with Damascus, with the power of Islam in the Arabs, what came by the sword will fall by the sword of Israel, and it will be a blessing for the Arabs, for in the end they will be free, with their brothers – they are not nephews, they are half-brothers of the Jews, and they are going to be together – Egypt, Israel and Assyria, a blessing in the midst of the earth. I want you to know: the Arabs are not the final enemy of Israel. If you move in the Holy Ghost, as sons and daughters of God, having repented truly of your sins(and we also have, in our dress, to look more holy – I beg you not to dress unless you ask the Lord how to dress), if we are holy, and we stand before the Lord, we have the power to go in front of the army of Israel. In a way we have done this already here during these three days. And I, by God’s grace, will reap the fruits with Israel when I go back. When the praisers went in front of the ark, the Lord moved upon the army of Israel. We do not need to fight with bombs, or with planes. Our weapons are spiritual, mighty for the breaking down of the principalities. And the first one that you have to break as you praise the Lord is the power of Islam. Crush it under your feet. So that the Arabs can kiss at the border, like Esau did Jacob. Not inside the border. The Arabs will live in peace with Israel living within her own God-given borders. For reconciliation will not cost Israel her land. Esau and Jacob, after we break the power of Islam, will be reconciled as Esau and Jacob were – at the border. Oh, it is going to be a wonderful peace. It is the Middle East where God did the greatest things: Abraham lived in Assyria. And he lived in Egypt. And he lived in Israel. And Israel lived in Babylon. And in Egypt. And lived in Israel. And so I said, “Lord, You were in Egypt. And You were in Israel. Were You also in Babylon and Assyria”? And the Lord opened my eyes. “I was the fourth man in the oven at Nebuchadnezzar. I was there too.” That is the Middle East. And God is going to win it back. He will slay and cut off the power of Islam. And the Arabs will become the greatest channel of blessing to the people of Israel. And you know how you know that this is true? Because after that, and this is my second point, we will have Gog and Magog. And Gog and Magog will attack Israel. And the Bible says, when that happens, after the revival – because Ezekiel 37, that I preached about yesterday, is before Ezekiel 38 and 39! So Israel is already in the revival, and the Arabs and the Jews are one! God is going to retrieve first those who live in the Middle East. So the Bible says, when Gog and Magog attack, you will find in the roll of nations that come with Gog and Magog, no more Egypt, no more Assyria, you speak about Togamar – Turkey, Gomer – Ethiopia, or it is more Sudan, Cush – Persia, but no Arabs! And the Bible says Israel will dwell with unfenced borders! At peace! Because they were part of the revival! And the world will say to Gog and Magog, why did you attack Israel? And this will be maybe in seven years only. Because we will first have the war with the Arabs that may happen at anytime. And Damascus destroyed. And revival come in. Because the power of the poison of Islam will be bound over the Arab mind. And then Israel will have no need to have borders anymore. Because Esau and Jacob have kissed one another. And so Gog and Magog will be furious. And the nations will say, “Why have you come to attack?” And Gog and Magog doesn’t say, “Because of the Palestinians.” But, “Have you come to take the spoil?” That’s what the nations ask Gog and Magog. There will be such a flow of oil in the Middle East – and the last three letters of ‘spoil’ is ‘oil.’ God is going to bless His people – and Gog and Magog are going to attack. You know, I would be willing, with God’s help, to go to Putin and anoint him. Remember the story of Elijah – who had to anoint Elisha, Jehu and Hazael? And so, when he went to Hazael – I think it was his replacement, Elisha, who went to Hazael – he saw Hazael, and he began to cry. He said, “Why are you crying?” He said, “Because I know what you are going to do to Israel.” But God told me, “You’re His weapon, you’re His channel for judgment on my nation. And I have to anoint you!” I am willing to go to Putin and to anoint him to attack Europe or to attack America! That’s the parallel! And maybe with tears in our eyes. And God showed me to speak this message because there is going to be a Third World War – Gog and Magog – Ezekiel 38 and 39. And so after the wonderful unity between Believers and Jews and Arabs and Jews – it’s one flock, you are so right, you read that passage – there will be one flock and the devil will hate it. But God will use whatever means to use the leader of Gog to put His judgment over the West. And the Bible says, the people that will be left on the earth will be rarer than fine gold. We have no idea – with all the cheap preaching of “grace, grace, grace” and “revival, revival, revival.” There is a weeping prophet! His name is Jeremiah – who says, “I tell you. Nebuchadnezzar is God’s instrument. He will judge you for your immorality. Repent!” He wept. And they said, “You! You’re not a patriot. You are speaking against Israel.” You are weakening, Norway. “Go in a pit. You are weakening the king of Israel, the army of Israel.” You can pray what you want, as Norwegians, after you have fornicated and run after your alcohol and everything. And God can save us if we repent! But if we go with our immorality, the breaking up of our marriages – you can pray what you want, “O Lord save Norway.” God says, “I’m not going to save Norway. I will send my servant, Putin. You anoint him to do My work.” At least he is an anti-homosexual. He is more a man than most of the politicians in Europe. May God let him hear this word – that he himself may know that he is under the command of God. Where is it all written in the Bible? After the revival that will happen at the Feast of Tabernacles – which includes the Arabs – it will include all the Gentiles that have been grafted into Israel. And give us the double portion that we so long for. And Jesus announced the Holy Spirit at the Feast of Tabernacles! The Lord said, “I used the Feast of Tabernacles, not Pentecost” – so we know it’s going to happen. The former and the latter rain will fall upon us. And you know, we always had evening meetings. And the Lord showed me. You always have evening meetings. Where does it say that in the Bible? When did the Holy Spirit fall? In the evening? Or in the morning? So we, for the first time, have our meetings in the valley of Hinnom in the morning and in the afternoon. Because I want to be ready to receive that revival that will bring the Church and Israel and the Arabs and the Jews in one. One flock. And then we have some years before the Third World War. We go to Ezekiel 38 and 39. And what does it say? “I will cast fire on the coastlands that dwell carelessly.” God is speaking. And I hear many Christians – I hope you can have an open heart about Gog and Magog and Israel. Do you know, God is going to attack Gog and Magog in Israel, that is why He puts a hook. But before they go and get dealt with by God in Israel, He will use – if Putin is still there – the Prince of Rosh – to put His judgments on the coastlands and the West that dwells with carelessness. So all that is said about Gog and Magog attacking Israel is wrong! Gog and Magog will attack the US! And then God will say, “You come now that you’ve done My work on the immorality and the corruption – on Norway, on Europe, on America, on Obama and his team, nowI need Putin after that for Israel.” My God is God. He says, “Now I will deal with you.” And it will take Israel seven months to bury the dead. Gog and Magog will be finished. Not by NATO, but by God on the mountains of Israel. You know, it was from the Lord that my sister spoke about my book. I hope you are all going to read it. Because in it I show that the Arabs are not the final problem for Israel, but that the devil needs a Third World War to bring Rome into the picture. It is an amazing thing when you see it. I was preaching in the church of David Wilkerson, a holy man of God. I was privileged that he allowed me to preach there. And he took me to his flat – his apartment. And I watched the whole city [looking] like a Christmas tree. All the big towers lit up. And when I made a remark, he said, “When I look out over my city, I only see a cemetery.” What happened to the Twin Towers was only the beginning. The city of New York is going to be destroyed. And this holy man of God could not even look at the city. He said, “Where these rich men come into their Chevrolets and their cars with all the money they have – I’m not saying they are all like that – and they look for nice, juicy young men to have sex with…” God has seen everything that is happening – all the pornography, all the immorality – and God is spitting mad! Unless we repent and put ourselves under the blood, judgment will come, and it will begin at the House of God before it goes to the nations. So let us pray to be cleansed, to be cleansed from every sin, from every bondage, and make up with our wives or with our fellow Christians whom we have deeply wounded. There are more Christians today that are deeply wounded by fellow Christians than by people in the world. And God forgive us. The devil is cruel. The Bible calls him the destroyer of nations. “O Lucifer – destroyer of nations” – he needs a Third World War to bring Rome into the picture. I write about it in my book. We have seen two world wars. After the First World War the devil said, “You must be united.” The League of Nations was man’s answer inspired by the devil to go back to Babylon. Because what was the essence of Babylon? If we as mankind (I wish Brother Francis the Pope would hear this!) can unite and be one – the human family as one – we can do it. We can build our towers! We can be the salvation for this world. And God gave each nation its language. So the devil hates your love for your nation. And if you listen to the New Age [proponents] they stress that we are all children of this [global] village earth. And we have to care for it. And we have to be united with everybody. With the socialists. With the homosexuals. We are one, children of God. That is where the world is going. Unity without repentance will lead to Babylon, and not to Jerusalem. The Bible says, they that want to enter the gates of Jerusalem have to cleanse themselves in the blood of the Lamb. But into Babylon you can come with your own dress. That’s why it is not a bride, but a scarlet woman that will sit upon the Beast! Now let me come back: After the First World War, the League of Nations- the beginning of ‘one,’ of ‘oneness.’ Then the devil thought, “I need another world war for they still don’t get the point.” So we had the Second World War. More than 50 million people were killed. I believe in the next world war at least 300 million will be killed. But the devil used the Second World War, when the people saw all the destruction and said, “This is terrible!” so he said, “You must unite.” And so the League of Nations became the United Nations. Some years ago, I got a little booklet into my hands, and it’s called, “The Report of the Club of Rome.” And in that report, the big economic and political people that came together in Rome were discussing the problems of our generation. The lack of energy. The lack of food. Overpopulation. Air pollution. All the big problems. And they said, “We must become one – because we will have no more energy, no more food, we will not know what to do with the economies” – and so they made a report in the club of Rome and divided the world into 10 economic units. American-Canada 1. South America 2. Europe 3. China 4. All the Arabs together 5. All the black African nations 6. So they divided the whole world into 10 units – just as the Bible says. It’s not going to be Europe, it’s going to be the whole world – the 10 toes of Rome! I said, “Lord! They are ready to upgrade the United Nations, after the war of Gog and Magog, into a world presidium of 10 presidents.” And because New York will be destroyed, Rome will be the counter city to Jerusalem that will open the gates to the world church that will sit on the beast of 10 horns. So there will be a world government and a world church. That’s why we should cry for people like Ulf Ekman. For this time! The Lord is on His way to Jerusalem, but the Antichrist is on his way to Babylon – to Rome. But you know something? I have good news. There is a parallel. In 1917 the League of Nations was born – the embryo of what will become the world government. I was amazed where they put Israel – the Club of Rome – because they have put all the Arabs together, the Muslims – so they put Israel with New Zealand and Australia. I go to Australia, and I say, “God can give you the crown.” The Bible says, from the 10 presidents, three will be pushed. None of these presidents will be leader, but the little horn – a super secretary-general, a little horn – he will come up and become the world leader, the false man of peace – [and say], “Let me do it.” A super Henry Kissinger, who not for nothing is also a Jew. But there is good news: 1917 was not just the year of the League of Nations – it was the year of the embryo of Israel. In 1917, a godly man, Arthur Balfour, pushed by his Christian Zionist aunt and other Christians as well, Uncle Arthur blessed Britain by allowing the Jews to immigrate to Israel. So it was the beginning of the restoration for Israel, not just the League of Nations. 1948 the devil said, “Be one!” – United Nations – that has been more unfriendly to Israel than any other country because the devil presides over that house of lies. But 1948 there were Israelis dancing, and the Jews of Tel Aviv – for the State of Israel was born. Each way you look, to Babylon or to Jerusalem, God says, “I will choose Jerusalem!” to heal the world. And all those that will be left in the nations after He judges them, will come up every year to celebrate the feast of Tabernacles in Jerusalem and to worship the King, and to comfort the Jews. Se each way you look – I said, “Let Babylon be one. I go to Jerusalem.” Because the Lord says, “In that day, Jerusalem will be the highest mountain, and the nations will come up to it, and preach war no longer.” My Bible doesn’t say, “New York, New York, if I forget thee…” or “Geneva, Geneva.” “Pray for the peace conference tables there!” Righteousness will not come from the United Nations, peace will not come from Geneva – for the children of God there is only one city. Jesus is not coming to Amsterdam. He is coming with great glory, on the praises of His people, to only one hill – the hill of the Lord. “Here I have desired to dwell forever.” And the nations have imagined a vain thing, as Psalm 2 says. They want to solve the Middle East problem by dividing God’s land. That’s the wisdom of the Norwegian government; that’s the wisdom of America; that’s the wisdom of the nations of the world. But He who sits in the heavens will laugh them to scorn and say, “Yet I will set My king, not in Rome, but on my holy hill in Jerusalem.” After the Second World War, United Nations – 1948. 1948, Israel became a nation after 2000 years. The Prophet Isaiah said, “A nation shall be born in a day.” And we are in front of a short war with the power of Islam, with the Arab nations, because God wants to bring the brothers of the Jews back, and you and me, to Israel – ten out of each nation. But afterwards, maybe seven years, Gog and Magog, who will roll itself up like a snake and say, “I want the spoil, I want the oil.” But before they go up God says, “I need you to put My judgment over the coastlands of the West that dwells carelessly. And I will cast fire upon the coastlands that dwell carelessly. When they have fulfilled God’s word, and I’m prepared to anoint him for it – that’s what Elijah did to Hazael – then God will say, “Now you come, because I remain the Master of this race – the King of kings and the Lord of lords.” And what will happen? The devil is so happy with the Third World War. Three hundred sixty million dead or around that number. You can’t believe it. The Europeans all run after their little self and everything they want ha, ha, ha, ha, ha! Oh Lord this is terrible! We will not believe what God’s judgment will be in Europe and America. If six million Jews died in the Holocaust – who never came to the level of immorality of our generation … most the Jews never agreed with abortion or homosexuality, yet they went into the gas chambers. And as My Bible says, if God has not spared His own people who were less immoral in the 1940s than our generation, then you must be totally blind not to believe that something worse than the Second World War will come upon us. Do you now understand why I am here? I want Norway to be saved from this. That’s why I preach here. I said Lord, I may be an optimist. That’s why I love Kjell so much. I found a man who said, let’s see what we can do with 300 Gideonites to turn Norway under God’s grace; maybe other countries as well. My son says, “Papa, I want Norway to be on the side of Israel before the Third World War.” That’s why this center in Norway now is here in Porsgrunn. I may be an optimist but God says, “It was Norway that pushed my people into the Oslo Accord in the wrong way of peace.” But Terje (pastor from Tonsberg), you led a movement to bring pastors representing a new day for Norway – to say “sorry” to the Israeli Knesset members, to the prime minister. I translated it in Hebrew, and sent it to many of the lawmakers and I said, “God, because of that, is there a hope for Norway?” And that hope God showed me in these three days. You have heard the message. You know you are sons and daughters of God. You hopefully have cleansed yourself completely. And God needs only 300 souls to win Norway back, if we go this way, by God’s grace! If the result of the Third World War is a world government of 10 presidents, none of them is the Antichrist. The Bible says the little horn moves three away and remains as the emperor of Rome in control of the world, and says, “I’m your peacemaker.” There are politicians in Europe who see the terrible situation we are in. America is in debt 17 trillion dollars. America is dying under Obama. Two more years and America will never be the same. If Putin comes in you’re on your own! America will not come to the aid of Europe. And if you don’t know to lay hold of God you are alone. And your army is not going to help you. That’s why I am here. And maybe not for nothing I come from the same city as Jeremiah. I live there. And God told me to live there. And in that way I’m a prophetic voice to the nations. But also of hope to Israel, that God announces to Israel, “I will make a new covenant with you.” And that covenant includes you. So this is the third result. The first was the League of Nations. The second was the United Nations. After the Third World War the devil says, “You have seen enough death” – “yes, yes” – that’s why he loves the New Age movement: “We want so much to be one. We are not Norwegians. We are citizens of this world.” That’s what the world wants. That’s what your new generation wants. They will rather spit on their own Norwegian nationality! But I am here to announce to you: God saw this unholy unity movement in the days of Babylon and it was He who created nationhood. Suddenly everyone began to speak in different languages. God gave you your different language. And the devil hates the love for nationhood and he wants you to be citizens of this earth. Once you accept that you will get your citizen number on your head or on your arm. You are not a Norwegian. First and foremost you’re a citizen of this village earth. And the devil wants everybody to have the same. And if you want to be a homosexual you have to report to the World Health Organisation to make sure you don’t get AIDS. That is the world you are going to get. Something is going to happen again in Jerusalem. In 1917, the first beginnings – the Jews came home as God promised. In 1948, Israel became a state and the Jews danced all over Israel for three days and nights. And they did not need alcohol to celebrate. They were so thankful. After 2000 years they had their state back! And if Israel has to make a choice to be part of a grey, unified world, where the Jews will give up their nationhood, the Jews will be the hardest nut to crack, because they will say, “We have gone through the gas chambers, we have gone through our tribulation, we have been gassed and humiliated because we kept to be Jewish. We will not give up our national homeland to be part of this world.” And we Christian Zionists will come with Israel and we will say, “Yes, we will go with you, we will stand, look up to your salvation, it is coming.” And the unity of this world that will be the result of the Third World War will parallel the unity of God’s children – Jew and Arab, but especially the 10 out of each nation. They will say, “The hope comes from Jerusalem. Jerusalem, Jerusalem.” Ulf Ekman, I have preached in your church from my heart under the anointing of the Lord about these things. And I want you to know: That that Lord that is coming is going to come to Jerusalem. And there is going to be the greatest revival that will bring us not just to the level of the Acts of the Apostles, but beyond. I don’t mind, Ulf, if you preach this in the Catholic Church. Ask me to come to all your cathedrals, and I will preach it because of you. But if you give up on Israel, on Jerusalem, I have a word for you: “Jerusalem, if I forget you, it would be better that my tongue would cease preaching and cleave to my palate.” I am saying under the Holy Ghost: “If you miss Jerusalem you have nothing to say. It’s better that your tongue would stop talking.” Jerusalem, Jerusalem, if I forget thee, it would be better that my tongue would cleave to my palate. All preachers, all priests, all brothers and sisters- Rome will not be the salvation of this world, but it will be the center of the world government and the world church. And Jerusalem is going to be the city where the Lord will put His King on His holy hill. All the nations will come there. Oh I want to end here. The Bible says, “Every knee shall bow for my Lord.” It will be such a glorious day. Daniel says, “I saw the Son of Man with great power and glory.” This time He does not come on a donkey; this time He does not come as a suffering servant. This time He comes to own this world. And His reign will be from coast to coast. He will be King of Kings as Zechariah says: In that day the Lord, your Lord, our Lord, will be king over the whole earth. And the nations will come up. They will find something in the air, when they wake up in Trondheim, in Amsterdam, in Orlando, and they say there is a lightness – and they turn to their televisions – and after Washington DC there are more journalists in Jerusalem than any other country. I like that because the Bible says, “every knee shall bow” – not just Pentecostals, not just Charismatics – every knee when they see this Lord. The glory will come down into that Third Temple that Ezekiel ends with – the Temple of the Lord. Without that Temple He will not come. And as He comes through the East Gate and fills the House with His glory – the One Who died at the cross to make you clean from every sin and made you sons and daughters of His Father – is coming to rule this world. And the glory will be so great that the journalists, for the first time, will have to report this on their knees. “Ladies and gentlemen, this is Television Norge, I see my colleagues all on their faces. Something happened this night. We cannot even look. There is such glory. I am so sorry about what I have said about Israel. And when these Jews built this Temple we journalists all made fun of them. Because I see Somebody has come to take the reins of this earth in the only hands in which the world is safe – the pierced hands of our loving Lord, who will not bypass the broken reed.” You have gone through your problems. You have been sad, as I have, when we have failed the Lord. But if your heart is perfected, you will be a channel to move Israel into this hour. We will breathe upon them, identify with them, like the prophet on the boy, and breathe what God has given us. How does it say? “Gentiles, may you show them mercy – the Jews – through the mercy that God has given you.” Lay yourself out on them. Not a tract at the Wailing Wall but an identification. Not a tract, not a little message. But to come to Israel with that word that was on the heart of Ruth. I look to a sister right now. Will you become that Ruth who said to Naomi, “I am going to go with you.” And she clung to Naomi and said, “Your God is my God.” We as Christians can say this for the God of Israel is our God and Father. Don’t pray to Jesus. Pray to God. It is through Jesus that we can come to His Father. We don’t believe in two gods. We believe in one God. “Our Father, which art in heaven…” “Your God, Naomi, is my God, and your people I embrace as my people.” Have you embraced the Jewish people? When I see the soldiers, when I drive into “Israel proper” through the barricade from Anathot, I say, “Lord I love them,” because they are God’s people. At an hour that God is about to pour out His Spirit. And the Hebrew word, when it says in Ruth [that she] “took hold” of Naomi, that word is the same word as in Zechariah when it says (I feel God’s Spirit says, “tell it to them”) ten gentiles from every nation will take hold, just as Ruth did to Naomi – the same Hebrew word, “take hold,” not just say, “We will pray for you while we wait on the rapture.” [but] “We will go with you; we will be with you, we will put ourselves upon you and see you come to your greatest hour.” So that when He comes we will stand face to face – you will stand face to face when the Lord restores Zion. And we will say, “Come Yeshua. This world is in a mess. We are ready to celebrate Your Feast. A feast for the nations, which the Feast of Tabernacles is.” And so Zechariah ends: And those that will be left of the nations, that survived the Third World War – then they will give Jerusalem its proper place. And we will kneel down beside all these journalists that have reported what has just happened, on this planet earth – and we will all be on our knees. And the nations will send their prime ministers – for when Jesus the King over all prime ministers is in Jerusalem we don’t need to go to the United States – we will go to Him. And He will have the right word for Norway and for all the nations. And you will be His ambassadors. Come quickly and save Norway for this hour. The coming Third World War The following is a transcript of a message delivered by Jan Willem van der Hoeven in Norway on July 20, 2014. And I hope also that the Lord Jesus, by His Spirit, will show you what to do with the information – because we are living in unbelievably prophetic times. And I have a feeling that soon we will see a war in the Middle East that will lead to the greatest revival that has ever hit the Middle East. And I would not be surprised that this little war with Hamas in Gaza will lead to a war with Damascus and with the Hezbollah in Lebanon. Actually I wrote and warned the [Israeli] Chief of Staff that this would happen; that soon Israel will be attacked by thousands of rockets, not from the south only, but there are a hundred thousand rockets in the hands of Hezbollah, and huge numbers of rockets in the hands of the Muslims in Syria. A woman of God told me one and a half years ago, “The Lord said to me, soon the prophecy of Isaiah 17 will be fulfilled, when Damascus will be turned into a ruinous city and destroyed.” I spoke once to a pilot – an Israeli pilot – I said, “You will not be attacked immediately by Iran, but Iran will make Assad and the Hezbollah do the dirty work for them and attack you.” And then he said to me, “If they will attack us and Tel Aviv, we will flatten Damascus.” And I believe that this is going to lead to the fulfillment of God’s Word. What came by the sword will go by the sword. These are the words of Jesus Himself. Islam came by the sword. The sword preceded the Quran, and Mohammed fought 53 wars, and destroyed much of the apostolic fruits of the churches in the Middle East. And therefore we know it was evil. The most closed country in the world for the Gospel, where no preacher has ever dared to preach, no Billy Graham, no Osborne, is Saudi Arabia. You cannot even take your Bible on the plane back to Saudi Arabia. And that shows us that when that Islamic power came in Mecca and Medina, and spread itself over the whole Middle East, it was an antichrist spirit. For if Allah was the same God as the God of Israel, the door would be open for the Gospel to be preached. How can God, if He is really the only God – and Allah is supposed to be the same God – send His Son to save everyone that repents from his sin; and then, if Allah is the same as God, he says, “o, you cannot preach this in Saudi Arabia?” Everyone who has a little bit of intelligence says, “How can it be? How can Allah fight himself? He killed His Son. He wants us to preach it to the whole world. And if Allah is the same as God he says no-one should preach that word in Saudi Arabia.” Therefore we know that it is from the devil. We know it is the spirit of antichrist. And it has to be bound by the Lord, in the name of Jesus. So God is going to use the next war to get the poison of Islam out of the hearts of multitudes of Arabs. It will enter the Middle East, into the reality of Isaiah 19: 23-25, where it says, “There will be a blessing in the midst of the earth, [God is speaking] when I will bless My people Egypt, and the work of My hands, Assyria, and My inheritance Israel. And there will be a highway from Egypt to Assyria, and it will be a blessing in the midst of the earth.” I announce a short war, with Damascus, with the power of Islam in the Arabs, what came by the sword will fall by the sword of Israel, and it will be a blessing for the Arabs, for in the end they will be free, with their brothers – they are not nephews, they are half-brothers of the Jews, and they are going to be together – Egypt, Israel and Assyria, a blessing in the midst of the earth. I want you to know: the Arabs are not the final enemy of Israel. If you move in the Holy Ghost, as sons and daughters of God, having repented truly of your sins(and we also have, in our dress, to look more holy – I beg you not to dress unless you ask the Lord how to dress), if we are holy, and we stand before the Lord, we have the power to go in front of the army of Israel. In a way we have done this already here during these three days. And I, by God’s grace, will reap the fruits with Israel when I go back. When the praisers went in front of the ark, the Lord moved upon the army of Israel. We do not need to fight with bombs, or with planes. Our weapons are spiritual, mighty for the breaking down of the principalities. And the first one that you have to break as you praise the Lord is the power of Islam. Crush it under your feet. So that the Arabs can kiss at the border, like Esau did Jacob. Not inside the border. The Arabs will live in peace with Israel living within her own God-given borders. For reconciliation will not cost Israel her land. Esau and Jacob, after we break the power of Islam, will be reconciled as Esau and Jacob were – at the border. Oh, it is going to be a wonderful peace. It is the Middle East where God did the greatest things: Abraham lived in Assyria. And he lived in Egypt. And he lived in Israel. And Israel lived in Babylon. And in Egypt. And lived in Israel. And so I said, “Lord, You were in Egypt. And You were in Israel. Were You also in Babylon and Assyria”? And the Lord opened my eyes. “I was the fourth man in the oven at Nebuchadnezzar. I was there too.” That is the Middle East. And God is going to win it back. He will slay and cut off the power of Islam. And the Arabs will become the greatest channel of blessing to the people of Israel. And you know how you know that this is true? Because after that, and this is my second point, we will have Gog and Magog. And Gog and Magog will attack Israel. And the Bible says, when that happens, after the revival – because Ezekiel 37, that I preached about yesterday, is before Ezekiel 38 and 39! So Israel is already in the revival, and the Arabs and the Jews are one! God is going to retrieve first those who live in the Middle East. So the Bible says, when Gog and Magog attack, you will find in the roll of nations that come with Gog and Magog, no more Egypt, no more Assyria, you speak about Togamar – Turkey, Gomer – Ethiopia, or it is more Sudan, Cush – Persia, but no Arabs! And the Bible says Israel will dwell with unfenced borders! At peace! Because they were part of the revival! And the world will say to Gog and Magog, why did you attack Israel? And this will be maybe in seven years only. Because we will first have the war with the Arabs that may happen at anytime. And Damascus destroyed. And revival come in. Because the power of the poison of Islam will be bound over the Arab mind. And then Israel will have no need to have borders anymore. Because Esau and Jacob have kissed one another. And so Gog and Magog will be furious. And the nations will say, “Why have you come to attack?” And Gog and Magog doesn’t say, “Because of the Palestinians.” But, “Have you come to take the spoil?” That’s what the nations ask Gog and Magog. There will be such a flow of oil in the Middle East – and the last three letters of ‘spoil’ is ‘oil.’ God is going to bless His people – and Gog and Magog are going to attack. You know, I would be willing, with God’s help, to go to Putin and anoint him. Remember the story of Elijah – who had to anoint Elisha, Jehu and Hazael? And so, when he went to Hazael – I think it was his replacement, Elisha, who went to Hazael – he saw Hazael, and he began to cry. He said, “Why are you crying?” He said, “Because I know what you are going to do to Israel.” But God told me, “You’re His weapon, you’re His channel for judgment on my nation. And I have to anoint you!” I am willing to go to Putin and to anoint him to attack Europe or to attack America! That’s the parallel! And maybe with tears in our eyes. And God showed me to speak this message because there is going to be a Third World War – Gog and Magog – Ezekiel 38 and 39. And so after the wonderful unity between Believers and Jews and Arabs and Jews – it’s one flock, you are so right, you read that passage – there will be one flock and the devil will hate it. But God will use whatever means to use the leader of Gog to put His judgment over the West. And the Bible says, the people that will be left on the earth will be rarer than fine gold. We have no idea – with all the cheap preaching of “grace, grace, grace” and “revival, revival, revival.” There is a weeping prophet! His name is Jeremiah – who says, “I tell you. Nebuchadnezzar is God’s instrument. He will judge you for your immorality. Repent!” He wept. And they said, “You! You’re not a patriot. You are speaking against Israel.” You are weakening, Norway. “Go in a pit. You are weakening the king of Israel, the army of Israel.” You can pray what you want, as Norwegians, after you have fornicated and run after your alcohol and everything. And God can save us if we repent! But if we go with our immorality, the breaking up of our marriages – you can pray what you want, “O Lord save Norway.” God says, “I’m not going to save Norway. I will send my servant, Putin. You anoint him to do My work.” At least he is an anti-homosexual. He is more a man than most of the politicians in Europe. May God let him hear this word – that he himself may know that he is under the command of God. Where is it all written in the Bible? After the revival that will happen at the Feast of Tabernacles – which includes the Arabs – it will include all the Gentiles that have been grafted into Israel. And give us the double portion that we so long for. And Jesus announced the Holy Spirit at the Feast of Tabernacles! The Lord said, “I used the Feast of Tabernacles, not Pentecost” – so we know it’s going to happen. The former and the latter rain will fall upon us. And you know, we always had evening meetings. And the Lord showed me. You always have evening meetings. Where does it say that in the Bible? When did the Holy Spirit fall? In the evening? Or in the morning? So we, for the first time, have our meetings in the valley of Hinnom in the morning and in the afternoon. Because I want to be ready to receive that revival that will bring the Church and Israel and the Arabs and the Jews in one. One flock. And then we have some years before the Third World War. We go to Ezekiel 38 and 39. And what does it say? “I will cast fire on the coastlands that dwell carelessly.” God is speaking. And I hear many Christians – I hope you can have an open heart about Gog and Magog and Israel. Do you know, God is going to attack Gog and Magog in Israel, that is why He puts a hook. But before they go and get dealt with by God in Israel, He will use – if Putin is still there – the Prince of Rosh – to put His judgments on the coastlands and the West that dwells with carelessness. So all that is said about Gog and Magog attacking Israel is wrong! Gog and Magog will attack the US! And then God will say, “You come now that you’ve done My work on the immorality and the corruption – on Norway, on Europe, on America, on Obama and his team, nowI need Putin after that for Israel.” My God is God. He says, “Now I will deal with you.” And it will take Israel seven months to bury the dead. Gog and Magog will be finished. Not by NATO, but by God on the mountains of Israel. You know, it was from the Lord that my sister spoke about my book. I hope you are all going to read it. Because in it I show that the Arabs are not the final problem for Israel, but that the devil needs a Third World War to bring Rome into the picture. It is an amazing thing when you see it. I was preaching in the church of David Wilkerson, a holy man of God. I was privileged that he allowed me to preach there. And he took me to his flat – his apartment. And I watched the whole city [looking] like a Christmas tree. All the big towers lit up. And when I made a remark, he said, “When I look out over my city, I only see a cemetery.” What happened to the Twin Towers was only the beginning. The city of New York is going to be destroyed. And this holy man of God could not even look at the city. He said, “Where these rich men come into their Chevrolets and their cars with all the money they have – I’m not saying they are all like that – and they look for nice, juicy young men to have sex with…” God has seen everything that is happening – all the pornography, all the immorality – and God is spitting mad! Unless we repent and put ourselves under the blood, judgment will come, and it will begin at the House of God before it goes to the nations. So let us pray to be cleansed, to be cleansed from every sin, from every bondage, and make up with our wives or with our fellow Christians whom we have deeply wounded. There are more Christians today that are deeply wounded by fellow Christians than by people in the world. And God forgive us. The devil is cruel. The Bible calls him the destroyer of nations. “O Lucifer – destroyer of nations” – he needs a Third World War to bring Rome into the picture. I write about it in my book. We have seen two world wars. After the First World War the devil said, “You must be united.” The League of Nations was man’s answer inspired by the devil to go back to Babylon. Because what was the essence of Babylon? If we as mankind (I wish Brother Francis the Pope would hear this!) can unite and be one – the human family as one – we can do it. We can build our towers! We can be the salvation for this world. And God gave each nation its language. So the devil hates your love for your nation. And if you listen to the New Age [proponents] they stress that we are all children of this [global] village earth. And we have to care for it. And we have to be united with everybody. With the socialists. With the homosexuals. We are one, children of God. That is where the world is going. Unity without repentance will lead to Babylon, and not to Jerusalem. The Bible says, they that want to enter the gates of Jerusalem have to cleanse themselves in the blood of the Lamb. But into Babylon you can come with your own dress. That’s why it is not a bride, but a scarlet woman that will sit upon the Beast! Now let me come back: After the First World War, the League of Nations- the beginning of ‘one,’ of ‘oneness.’ Then the devil thought, “I need another world war for they still don’t get the point.” So we had the Second World War. More than 50 million people were killed. I believe in the next world war at least 300 million will be killed. But the devil used the Second World War, when the people saw all the destruction and said, “This is terrible!” so he said, “You must unite.” And so the League of Nations became the United Nations. Some years ago, I got a little booklet into my hands, and it’s called, “The Report of the Club of Rome.” And in that report, the big economic and political people that came together in Rome were discussing the problems of our generation. The lack of energy. The lack of food. Overpopulation. Air pollution. All the big problems. And they said, “We must become one – because we will have no more energy, no more food, we will not know what to do with the economies” – and so they made a report in the club of Rome and divided the world into 10 economic units. American-Canada 1. South America 2. Europe 3. China 4. All the Arabs together 5. All the black African nations 6. So they divided the whole world into 10 units – just as the Bible says. It’s not going to be Europe, it’s going to be the whole world – the 10 toes of Rome! I said, “Lord! They are ready to upgrade the United Nations, after the war of Gog and Magog, into a world presidium of 10 presidents.” And because New York will be destroyed, Rome will be the counter city to Jerusalem that will open the gates to the world church that will sit on the beast of 10 horns. So there will be a world government and a world church. That’s why we should cry for people like Ulf Ekman. For this time! The Lord is on His way to Jerusalem, but the Antichrist is on his way to Babylon – to Rome. But you know something? I have good news. There is a parallel. In 1917 the League of Nations was born – the embryo of what will become the world government. I was amazed where they put Israel – the Club of Rome – because they have put all the Arabs together, the Muslims – so they put Israel with New Zealand and Australia. I go to Australia, and I say, “God can give you the crown.” The Bible says, from the 10 presidents, three will be pushed. None of these presidents will be leader, but the little horn – a super secretary-general, a little horn – he will come up and become the world leader, the false man of peace – [and say], “Let me do it.” A super Henry Kissinger, who not for nothing is also a Jew. But there is good news: 1917 was not just the year of the League of Nations – it was the year of the embryo of Israel. In 1917, a godly man, Arthur Balfour, pushed by his Christian Zionist aunt and other Christians as well, Uncle Arthur blessed Britain by allowing the Jews to immigrate to Israel. So it was the beginning of the restoration for Israel, not just the League of Nations. 1948 the devil said, “Be one!” – United Nations – that has been more unfriendly to Israel than any other country because the devil presides over that house of lies. But 1948 there were Israelis dancing, and the Jews of Tel Aviv – for the State of Israel was born. Each way you look, to Babylon or to Jerusalem, God says, “I will choose Jerusalem!” to heal the world. And all those that will be left in the nations after He judges them, will come up every year to celebrate the feast of Tabernacles in Jerusalem and to worship the King, and to comfort the Jews. Se each way you look – I said, “Let Babylon be one. I go to Jerusalem.” Because the Lord says, “In that day, Jerusalem will be the highest mountain, and the nations will come up to it, and preach war no longer.” My Bible doesn’t say, “New York, New York, if I forget thee…” or “Geneva, Geneva.” “Pray for the peace conference tables there!” Righteousness will not come from the United Nations, peace will not come from Geneva – for the children of God there is only one city. Jesus is not coming to Amsterdam. He is coming with great glory, on the praises of His people, to only one hill – the hill of the Lord. “Here I have desired to dwell forever.” And the nations have imagined a vain thing, as Psalm 2 says. They want to solve the Middle East problem by dividing God’s land. That’s the wisdom of the Norwegian government; that’s the wisdom of America; that’s the wisdom of the nations of the world. But He who sits in the heavens will laugh them to scorn and say, “Yet I will set My king, not in Rome, but on my holy hill in Jerusalem.” After the Second World War, United Nations – 1948. 1948, Israel became a nation after 2000 years. The Prophet Isaiah said, “A nation shall be born in a day.” And we are in front of a short war with the power of Islam, with the Arab nations, because God wants to bring the brothers of the Jews back, and you and me, to Israel – ten out of each nation. But afterwards, maybe seven years, Gog and Magog, who will roll itself up like a snake and say, “I want the spoil, I want the oil.” But before they go up God says, “I need you to put My judgment over the coastlands of the West that dwells carelessly. And I will cast fire upon the coastlands that dwell carelessly. When they have fulfilled God’s word, and I’m prepared to anoint him for it – that’s what Elijah did to Hazael – then God will say, “Now you come, because I remain the Master of this race – the King of kings and the Lord of lords.” And what will happen? The devil is so happy with the Third World War. Three hundred sixty million dead or around that number. You can’t believe it. The Europeans all run after their little self and everything they want ha, ha, ha, ha, ha! Oh Lord this is terrible! We will not believe what God’s judgment will be in Europe and America. If six million Jews died in the Holocaust – who never came to the level of immorality of our generation … most the Jews never agreed with abortion or homosexuality, yet they went into the gas chambers. And as My Bible says, if God has not spared His own people who were less immoral in the 1940s than our generation, then you must be totally blind not to believe that something worse than the Second World War will come upon us. Do you now understand why I am here? I want Norway to be saved from this. That’s why I preach here. I said Lord, I may be an optimist. That’s why I love Kjell so much. I found a man who said, let’s see what we can do with 300 Gideonites to turn Norway under God’s grace; maybe other countries as well. My son says, “Papa, I want Norway to be on the side of Israel before the Third World War.” That’s why this center in Norway now is here in Porsgrunn. I may be an optimist but God says, “It was Norway that pushed my people into the Oslo Accord in the wrong way of peace.” But Terje (pastor from Tonsberg), you led a movement to bring pastors representing a new day for Norway – to say “sorry” to the Israeli Knesset members, to the prime minister. I translated it in Hebrew, and sent it to many of the lawmakers and I said, “God, because of that, is there a hope for Norway?” And that hope God showed me in these three days. You have heard the message. You know you are sons and daughters of God. You hopefully have cleansed yourself completely. And God needs only 300 souls to win Norway back, if we go this way, by God’s grace! If the result of the Third World War is a world government of 10 presidents, none of them is the Antichrist. The Bible says the little horn moves three away and remains as the emperor of Rome in control of the world, and says, “I’m your peacemaker.” There are politicians in Europe who see the terrible situation we are in. America is in debt 17 trillion dollars. America is dying under Obama. Two more years and America will never be the same. If Putin comes in you’re on your own! America will not come to the aid of Europe. And if you don’t know to lay hold of God you are alone. And your army is not going to help you. That’s why I am here. And maybe not for nothing I come from the same city as Jeremiah. I live there. And God told me to live there. And in that way I’m a prophetic voice to the nations. But also of hope to Israel, that God announces to Israel, “I will make a new covenant with you.” And that covenant includes you. So this is the third result. The first was the League of Nations. The second was the United Nations. After the Third World War the devil says, “You have seen enough death” – “yes, yes” – that’s why he loves the New Age movement: “We want so much to be one. We are not Norwegians. We are citizens of this world.” That’s what the world wants. That’s what your new generation wants. They will rather spit on their own Norwegian nationality! But I am here to announce to you: God saw this unholy unity movement in the days of Babylon and it was He who created nationhood. Suddenly everyone began to speak in different languages. God gave you your different language. And the devil hates the love for nationhood and he wants you to be citizens of this earth. Once you accept that you will get your citizen number on your head or on your arm. You are not a Norwegian. First and foremost you’re a citizen of this village earth. And the devil wants everybody to have the same. And if you want to be a homosexual you have to report to the World Health Organisation to make sure you don’t get AIDS. That is the world you are going to get. Something is going to happen again in Jerusalem. In 1917, the first beginnings – the Jews came home as God promised. In 1948, Israel became a state and the Jews danced all over Israel for three days and nights. And they did not need alcohol to celebrate. They were so thankful. After 2000 years they had their state back! And if Israel has to make a choice to be part of a grey, unified world, where the Jews will give up their nationhood, the Jews will be the hardest nut to crack, because they will say, “We have gone through the gas chambers, we have gone through our tribulation, we have been gassed and humiliated because we kept to be Jewish. We will not give up our national homeland to be part of this world.” And we Christian Zionists will come with Israel and we will say, “Yes, we will go with you, we will stand, look up to your salvation, it is coming.” And the unity of this world that will be the result of the Third World War will parallel the unity of God’s children – Jew and Arab, but especially the 10 out of each nation. They will say, “The hope comes from Jerusalem. Jerusalem, Jerusalem.” Ulf Ekman, I have preached in your church from my heart under the anointing of the Lord about these things. And I want you to know: That that Lord that is coming is going to come to Jerusalem. And there is going to be the greatest revival that will bring us not just to the level of the Acts of the Apostles, but beyond. I don’t mind, Ulf, if you preach this in the Catholic Church. Ask me to come to all your cathedrals, and I will preach it because of you. But if you give up on Israel, on Jerusalem, I have a word for you: “Jerusalem, if I forget you, it would be better that my tongue would cease preaching and cleave to my palate.” I am saying under the Holy Ghost: “If you miss Jerusalem you have nothing to say. It’s better that your tongue would stop talking.” Jerusalem, Jerusalem, if I forget thee, it would be better that my tongue would cleave to my palate. All preachers, all priests, all brothers and sisters- Rome will not be the salvation of this world, but it will be the center of the world government and the world church. And Jerusalem is going to be the city where the Lord will put His King on His holy hill. All the nations will come there. Oh I want to end here. The Bible says, “Every knee shall bow for my Lord.” It will be such a glorious day. Daniel says, “I saw the Son of Man with great power and glory.” This time He does not come on a donkey; this time He does not come as a suffering servant. This time He comes to own this world. And His reign will be from coast to coast. He will be King of Kings as Zechariah says: In that day the Lord, your Lord, our Lord, will be king over the whole earth. And the nations will come up. They will find something in the air, when they wake up in Trondheim, in Amsterdam, in Orlando, and they say there is a lightness – and they turn to their televisions – and after Washington DC there are more journalists in Jerusalem than any other country. I like that because the Bible says, “every knee shall bow” – not just Pentecostals, not just Charismatics – every knee when they see this Lord. The glory will come down into that Third Temple that Ezekiel ends with – the Temple of the Lord. Without that Temple He will not come. And as He comes through the East Gate and fills the House with His glory – the One Who died at the cross to make you clean from every sin and made you sons and daughters of His Father – is coming to rule this world. And the glory will be so great that the journalists, for the first time, will have to report this on their knees. “Ladies and gentlemen, this is Television Norge, I see my colleagues all on their faces. Something happened this night. We cannot even look. There is such glory. I am so sorry about what I have said about Israel. And when these Jews built this Temple we journalists all made fun of them. Because I see Somebody has come to take the reins of this earth in the only hands in which the world is safe – the pierced hands of our loving Lord, who will not bypass the broken reed.” You have gone through your problems. You have been sad, as I have, when we have failed the Lord. But if your heart is perfected, you will be a channel to move Israel into this hour. We will breathe upon them, identify with them, like the prophet on the boy, and breathe what God has given us. How does it say? “Gentiles, may you show them mercy – the Jews – through the mercy that God has given you.” Lay yourself out on them. Not a tract at the Wailing Wall but an identification. Not a tract, not a little message. But to come to Israel with that word that was on the heart of Ruth. I look to a sister right now. Will you become that Ruth who said to Naomi, “I am going to go with you.” And she clung to Naomi and said, “Your God is my God.” We as Christians can say this for the God of Israel is our God and Father. Don’t pray to Jesus. Pray to God. It is through Jesus that we can come to His Father. We don’t believe in two gods. We believe in one God. “Our Father, which art in heaven…” “Your God, Naomi, is my God, and your people I embrace as my people.” Have you embraced the Jewish people? When I see the soldiers, when I drive into “Israel proper” through the barricade from Anathot, I say, “Lord I love them,” because they are God’s people. At an hour that God is about to pour out His Spirit. And the Hebrew word, when it says in Ruth [that she] “took hold” of Naomi, that word is the same word as in Zechariah when it says (I feel God’s Spirit says, “tell it to them”) ten gentiles from every nation will take hold, just as Ruth did to Naomi – the same Hebrew word, “take hold,” not just say, “We will pray for you while we wait on the rapture.” [but] “We will go with you; we will be with you, we will put ourselves upon you and see you come to your greatest hour.” So that when He comes we will stand face to face – you will stand face to face when the Lord restores Zion. And we will say, “Come Yeshua. This world is in a mess. We are ready to celebrate Your Feast. A feast for the nations, which the Feast of Tabernacles is.” And so Zechariah ends: And those that will be left of the nations, that survived the Third World War – then they will give Jerusalem its proper place. And we will kneel down beside all these journalists that have reported what has just happened, on this planet earth – and we will all be on our knees. And the nations will send their prime ministers – for when Jesus the King over all prime ministers is in Jerusalem we don’t need to go to the United States – we will go to Him. And He will have the right word for Norway and for all the nations. And you will be His ambassadors. Come quickly and save Norway for this hour. (Comment on this)
3:58a	The coming Third World War The following is a transcript of a message delivered by Jan Willem van der Hoeven in Norway on July 20, 2014. And I hope also that the Lord Jesus, by His Spirit, will show you what to do with the information – because we are living in unbelievably prophetic times. And I have a feeling that soon we will see a war in the Middle East that will lead to the greatest revival that has ever hit the Middle East. And I would not be surprised that this little war with Hamas in Gaza will lead to a war with Damascus and with the Hezbollah in Lebanon. Actually I wrote and warned the [Israeli] Chief of Staff that this would happen; that soon Israel will be attacked by thousands of rockets, not from the south only, but there are a hundred thousand rockets in the hands of Hezbollah, and huge numbers of rockets in the hands of the Muslims in Syria. A woman of God told me one and a half years ago, “The Lord said to me, soon the prophecy of Isaiah 17 will be fulfilled, when Damascus will be turned into a ruinous city and destroyed.” I spoke once to a pilot – an Israeli pilot – I said, “You will not be attacked immediately by Iran, but Iran will make Assad and the Hezbollah do the dirty work for them and attack you.” And then he said to me, “If they will attack us and Tel Aviv, we will flatten Damascus.” And I believe that this is going to lead to the fulfillment of God’s Word. What came by the sword will go by the sword. These are the words of Jesus Himself. Islam came by the sword. The sword preceded the Quran, and Mohammed fought 53 wars, and destroyed much of the apostolic fruits of the churches in the Middle East. And therefore we know it was evil. The most closed country in the world for the Gospel, where no preacher has ever dared to preach, no Billy Graham, no Osborne, is Saudi Arabia. You cannot even take your Bible on the plane back to Saudi Arabia. And that shows us that when that Islamic power came in Mecca and Medina, and spread itself over the whole Middle East, it was an antichrist spirit. For if Allah was the same God as the God of Israel, the door would be open for the Gospel to be preached. How can God, if He is really the only God – and Allah is supposed to be the same God – send His Son to save everyone that repents from his sin; and then, if Allah is the same as God, he says, “o, you cannot preach this in Saudi Arabia?” Everyone who has a little bit of intelligence says, “How can it be? How can Allah fight himself? He killed His Son. He wants us to preach it to the whole world. And if Allah is the same as God he says no-one should preach that word in Saudi Arabia.” Therefore we know that it is from the devil. We know it is the spirit of antichrist. And it has to be bound by the Lord, in the name of Jesus. So God is going to use the next war to get the poison of Islam out of the hearts of multitudes of Arabs. It will enter the Middle East, into the reality of Isaiah 19: 23-25, where it says, “There will be a blessing in the midst of the earth, [God is speaking] when I will bless My people Egypt, and the work of My hands, Assyria, and My inheritance Israel. And there will be a highway from Egypt to Assyria, and it will be a blessing in the midst of the earth.” I announce a short war, with Damascus, with the power of Islam in the Arabs, what came by the sword will fall by the sword of Israel, and it will be a blessing for the Arabs, for in the end they will be free, with their brothers – they are not nephews, they are half-brothers of the Jews, and they are going to be together – Egypt, Israel and Assyria, a blessing in the midst of the earth. I want you to know: the Arabs are not the final enemy of Israel. If you move in the Holy Ghost, as sons and daughters of God, having repented truly of your sins(and we also have, in our dress, to look more holy – I beg you not to dress unless you ask the Lord how to dress), if we are holy, and we stand before the Lord, we have the power to go in front of the army of Israel. In a way we have done this already here during these three days. And I, by God’s grace, will reap the fruits with Israel when I go back. When the praisers went in front of the ark, the Lord moved upon the army of Israel. We do not need to fight with bombs, or with planes. Our weapons are spiritual, mighty for the breaking down of the principalities. And the first one that you have to break as you praise the Lord is the power of Islam. Crush it under your feet. So that the Arabs can kiss at the border, like Esau did Jacob. Not inside the border. The Arabs will live in peace with Israel living within her own God-given borders. For reconciliation will not cost Israel her land. Esau and Jacob, after we break the power of Islam, will be reconciled as Esau and Jacob were – at the border. Oh, it is going to be a wonderful peace. It is the Middle East where God did the greatest things: Abraham lived in Assyria. And he lived in Egypt. And he lived in Israel. And Israel lived in Babylon. And in Egypt. And lived in Israel. And so I said, “Lord, You were in Egypt. And You were in Israel. Were You also in Babylon and Assyria”? And the Lord opened my eyes. “I was the fourth man in the oven at Nebuchadnezzar. I was there too.” That is the Middle East. And God is going to win it back. He will slay and cut off the power of Islam. And the Arabs will become the greatest channel of blessing to the people of Israel. And you know how you know that this is true? Because after that, and this is my second point, we will have Gog and Magog. And Gog and Magog will attack Israel. And the Bible says, when that happens, after the revival – because Ezekiel 37, that I preached about yesterday, is before Ezekiel 38 and 39! So Israel is already in the revival, and the Arabs and the Jews are one! God is going to retrieve first those who live in the Middle East. So the Bible says, when Gog and Magog attack, you will find in the roll of nations that come with Gog and Magog, no more Egypt, no more Assyria, you speak about Togamar – Turkey, Gomer – Ethiopia, or it is more Sudan, Cush – Persia, but no Arabs! And the Bible says Israel will dwell with unfenced borders! At peace! Because they were part of the revival! And the world will say to Gog and Magog, why did you attack Israel? And this will be maybe in seven years only. Because we will first have the war with the Arabs that may happen at anytime. And Damascus destroyed. And revival come in. Because the power of the poison of Islam will be bound over the Arab mind. And then Israel will have no need to have borders anymore. Because Esau and Jacob have kissed one another. And so Gog and Magog will be furious. And the nations will say, “Why have you come to attack?” And Gog and Magog doesn’t say, “Because of the Palestinians.” But, “Have you come to take the spoil?” That’s what the nations ask Gog and Magog. There will be such a flow of oil in the Middle East – and the last three letters of ‘spoil’ is ‘oil.’ God is going to bless His people – and Gog and Magog are going to attack. You know, I would be willing, with God’s help, to go to Putin and anoint him. Remember the story of Elijah – who had to anoint Elisha, Jehu and Hazael? And so, when he went to Hazael – I think it was his replacement, Elisha, who went to Hazael – he saw Hazael, and he began to cry. He said, “Why are you crying?” He said, “Because I know what you are going to do to Israel.” But God told me, “You’re His weapon, you’re His channel for judgment on my nation. And I have to anoint you!” I am willing to go to Putin and to anoint him to attack Europe or to attack America! That’s the parallel! And maybe with tears in our eyes. And God showed me to speak this message because there is going to be a Third World War – Gog and Magog – Ezekiel 38 and 39. And so after the wonderful unity between Believers and Jews and Arabs and Jews – it’s one flock, you are so right, you read that passage – there will be one flock and the devil will hate it. But God will use whatever means to use the leader of Gog to put His judgment over the West. And the Bible says, the people that will be left on the earth will be rarer than fine gold. We have no idea – with all the cheap preaching of “grace, grace, grace” and “revival, revival, revival.” There is a weeping prophet! His name is Jeremiah – who says, “I tell you. Nebuchadnezzar is God’s instrument. He will judge you for your immorality. Repent!” He wept. And they said, “You! You’re not a patriot. You are speaking against Israel.” You are weakening, Norway. “Go in a pit. You are weakening the king of Israel, the army of Israel.” You can pray what you want, as Norwegians, after you have fornicated and run after your alcohol and everything. And God can save us if we repent! But if we go with our immorality, the breaking up of our marriages – you can pray what you want, “O Lord save Norway.” God says, “I’m not going to save Norway. I will send my servant, Putin. You anoint him to do My work.” At least he is an anti-homosexual. He is more a man than most of the politicians in Europe. May God let him hear this word – that he himself may know that he is under the command of God. Where is it all written in the Bible? After the revival that will happen at the Feast of Tabernacles – which includes the Arabs – it will include all the Gentiles that have been grafted into Israel. And give us the double portion that we so long for. And Jesus announced the Holy Spirit at the Feast of Tabernacles! The Lord said, “I used the Feast of Tabernacles, not Pentecost” – so we know it’s going to happen. The former and the latter rain will fall upon us. And you know, we always had evening meetings. And the Lord showed me. You always have evening meetings. Where does it say that in the Bible? When did the Holy Spirit fall? In the evening? Or in the morning? So we, for the first time, have our meetings in the valley of Hinnom in the morning and in the afternoon. Because I want to be ready to receive that revival that will bring the Church and Israel and the Arabs and the Jews in one. One flock. And then we have some years before the Third World War. We go to Ezekiel 38 and 39. And what does it say? “I will cast fire on the coastlands that dwell carelessly.” God is speaking. And I hear many Christians – I hope you can have an open heart about Gog and Magog and Israel. Do you know, God is going to attack Gog and Magog in Israel, that is why He puts a hook. But before they go and get dealt with by God in Israel, He will use – if Putin is still there – the Prince of Rosh – to put His judgments on the coastlands and the West that dwells with carelessness. So all that is said about Gog and Magog attacking Israel is wrong! Gog and Magog will attack the US! And then God will say, “You come now that you’ve done My work on the immorality and the corruption – on Norway, on Europe, on America, on Obama and his team, nowI need Putin after that for Israel.” My God is God. He says, “Now I will deal with you.” And it will take Israel seven months to bury the dead. Gog and Magog will be finished. Not by NATO, but by God on the mountains of Israel. You know, it was from the Lord that my sister spoke about my book. I hope you are all going to read it. Because in it I show that the Arabs are not the final problem for Israel, but that the devil needs a Third World War to bring Rome into the picture. It is an amazing thing when you see it. I was preaching in the church of David Wilkerson, a holy man of God. I was privileged that he allowed me to preach there. And he took me to his flat – his apartment. And I watched the whole city [looking] like a Christmas tree. All the big towers lit up. And when I made a remark, he said, “When I look out over my city, I only see a cemetery.” What happened to the Twin Towers was only the beginning. The city of New York is going to be destroyed. And this holy man of God could not even look at the city. He said, “Where these rich men come into their Chevrolets and their cars with all the money they have – I’m not saying they are all like that – and they look for nice, juicy young men to have sex with…” God has seen everything that is happening – all the pornography, all the immorality – and God is spitting mad! Unless we repent and put ourselves under the blood, judgment will come, and it will begin at the House of God before it goes to the nations. So let us pray to be cleansed, to be cleansed from every sin, from every bondage, and make up with our wives or with our fellow Christians whom we have deeply wounded. There are more Christians today that are deeply wounded by fellow Christians than by people in the world. And God forgive us. The devil is cruel. The Bible calls him the destroyer of nations. “O Lucifer – destroyer of nations” – he needs a Third World War to bring Rome into the picture. I write about it in my book. We have seen two world wars. After the First World War the devil said, “You must be united.” The League of Nations was man’s answer inspired by the devil to go back to Babylon. Because what was the essence of Babylon? If we as mankind (I wish Brother Francis the Pope would hear this!) can unite and be one – the human family as one – we can do it. We can build our towers! We can be the salvation for this world. And God gave each nation its language. So the devil hates your love for your nation. And if you listen to the New Age [proponents] they stress that we are all children of this [global] village earth. And we have to care for it. And we have to be united with everybody. With the socialists. With the homosexuals. We are one, children of God. That is where the world is going. Unity without repentance will lead to Babylon, and not to Jerusalem. The Bible says, they that want to enter the gates of Jerusalem have to cleanse themselves in the blood of the Lamb. But into Babylon you can come with your own dress. That’s why it is not a bride, but a scarlet woman that will sit upon the Beast! Now let me come back: After the First World War, the League of Nations- the beginning of ‘one,’ of ‘oneness.’ Then the devil thought, “I need another world war for they still don’t get the point.” So we had the Second World War. More than 50 million people were killed. I believe in the next world war at least 300 million will be killed. But the devil used the Second World War, when the people saw all the destruction and said, “This is terrible!” so he said, “You must unite.” And so the League of Nations became the United Nations. Some years ago, I got a little booklet into my hands, and it’s called, “The Report of the Club of Rome.” And in that report, the big economic and political people that came together in Rome were discussing the problems of our generation. The lack of energy. The lack of food. Overpopulation. Air pollution. All the big problems. And they said, “We must become one – because we will have no more energy, no more food, we will not know what to do with the economies” – and so they made a report in the club of Rome and divided the world into 10 economic units. American-Canada 1. South America 2. Europe 3. China 4. All the Arabs together 5. All the black African nations 6. So they divided the whole world into 10 units – just as the Bible says. It’s not going to be Europe, it’s going to be the whole world – the 10 toes of Rome! I said, “Lord! They are ready to upgrade the United Nations, after the war of Gog and Magog, into a world presidium of 10 presidents.” And because New York will be destroyed, Rome will be the counter city to Jerusalem that will open the gates to the world church that will sit on the beast of 10 horns. So there will be a world government and a world church. That’s why we should cry for people like Ulf Ekman. For this time! The Lord is on His way to Jerusalem, but the Antichrist is on his way to Babylon – to Rome. But you know something? I have good news. There is a parallel. In 1917 the League of Nations was born – the embryo of what will become the world government. I was amazed where they put Israel – the Club of Rome – because they have put all the Arabs together, the Muslims – so they put Israel with New Zealand and Australia. I go to Australia, and I say, “God can give you the crown.” The Bible says, from the 10 presidents, three will be pushed. None of these presidents will be leader, but the little horn – a super secretary-general, a little horn – he will come up and become the world leader, the false man of peace – [and say], “Let me do it.” A super Henry Kissinger, who not for nothing is also a Jew. But there is good news: 1917 was not just the year of the League of Nations – it was the year of the embryo of Israel. In 1917, a godly man, Arthur Balfour, pushed by his Christian Zionist aunt and other Christians as well, Uncle Arthur blessed Britain by allowing the Jews to immigrate to Israel. So it was the beginning of the restoration for Israel, not just the League of Nations. 1948 the devil said, “Be one!” – United Nations – that has been more unfriendly to Israel than any other country because the devil presides over that house of lies. But 1948 there were Israelis dancing, and the Jews of Tel Aviv – for the State of Israel was born. Each way you look, to Babylon or to Jerusalem, God says, “I will choose Jerusalem!” to heal the world. And all those that will be left in the nations after He judges them, will come up every year to celebrate the feast of Tabernacles in Jerusalem and to worship the King, and to comfort the Jews. Se each way you look – I said, “Let Babylon be one. I go to Jerusalem.” Because the Lord says, “In that day, Jerusalem will be the highest mountain, and the nations will come up to it, and preach war no longer.” My Bible doesn’t say, “New York, New York, if I forget thee…” or “Geneva, Geneva.” “Pray for the peace conference tables there!” Righteousness will not come from the United Nations, peace will not come from Geneva – for the children of God there is only one city. Jesus is not coming to Amsterdam. He is coming with great glory, on the praises of His people, to only one hill – the hill of the Lord. “Here I have desired to dwell forever.” And the nations have imagined a vain thing, as Psalm 2 says. They want to solve the Middle East problem by dividing God’s land. That’s the wisdom of the Norwegian government; that’s the wisdom of America; that’s the wisdom of the nations of the world. But He who sits in the heavens will laugh them to scorn and say, “Yet I will set My king, not in Rome, but on my holy hill in Jerusalem.” After the Second World War, United Nations – 1948. 1948, Israel became a nation after 2000 years. The Prophet Isaiah said, “A nation shall be born in a day.” And we are in front of a short war with the power of Islam, with the Arab nations, because God wants to bring the brothers of the Jews back, and you and me, to Israel – ten out of each nation. But afterwards, maybe seven years, Gog and Magog, who will roll itself up like a snake and say, “I want the spoil, I want the oil.” But before they go up God says, “I need you to put My judgment over the coastlands of the West that dwells carelessly. And I will cast fire upon the coastlands that dwell carelessly. When they have fulfilled God’s word, and I’m prepared to anoint him for it – that’s what Elijah did to Hazael – then God will say, “Now you come, because I remain the Master of this race – the King of kings and the Lord of lords.” And what will happen? The devil is so happy with the Third World War. Three hundred sixty million dead or around that number. You can’t believe it. The Europeans all run after their little self and everything they want ha, ha, ha, ha, ha! Oh Lord this is terrible! We will not believe what God’s judgment will be in Europe and America. If six million Jews died in the Holocaust – who never came to the level of immorality of our generation … most the Jews never agreed with abortion or homosexuality, yet they went into the gas chambers. And as My Bible says, if God has not spared His own people who were less immoral in the 1940s than our generation, then you must be totally blind not to believe that something worse than the Second World War will come upon us. Do you now understand why I am here? I want Norway to be saved from this. That’s why I preach here. I said Lord, I may be an optimist. That’s why I love Kjell so much. I found a man who said, let’s see what we can do with 300 Gideonites to turn Norway under God’s grace; maybe other countries as well. My son says, “Papa, I want Norway to be on the side of Israel before the Third World War.” That’s why this center in Norway now is here in Porsgrunn. I may be an optimist but God says, “It was Norway that pushed my people into the Oslo Accord in the wrong way of peace.” But Terje (pastor from Tonsberg), you led a movement to bring pastors representing a new day for Norway – to say “sorry” to the Israeli Knesset members, to the prime minister. I translated it in Hebrew, and sent it to many of the lawmakers and I said, “God, because of that, is there a hope for Norway?” And that hope God showed me in these three days. You have heard the message. You know you are sons and daughters of God. You hopefully have cleansed yourself completely. And God needs only 300 souls to win Norway back, if we go this way, by God’s grace! If the result of the Third World War is a world government of 10 presidents, none of them is the Antichrist. The Bible says the little horn moves three away and remains as the emperor of Rome in control of the world, and says, “I’m your peacemaker.” There are politicians in Europe who see the terrible situation we are in. America is in debt 17 trillion dollars. America is dying under Obama. Two more years and America will never be the same. If Putin comes in you’re on your own! America will not come to the aid of Europe. And if you don’t know to lay hold of God you are alone. And your army is not going to help you. That’s why I am here. And maybe not for nothing I come from the same city as Jeremiah. I live there. And God told me to live there. And in that way I’m a prophetic voice to the nations. But also of hope to Israel, that God announces to Israel, “I will make a new covenant with you.” And that covenant includes you. So this is the third result. The first was the League of Nations. The second was the United Nations. After the Third World War the devil says, “You have seen enough death” – “yes, yes” – that’s why he loves the New Age movement: “We want so much to be one. We are not Norwegians. We are citizens of this world.” That’s what the world wants. That’s what your new generation wants. They will rather spit on their own Norwegian nationality! But I am here to announce to you: God saw this unholy unity movement in the days of Babylon and it was He who created nationhood. Suddenly everyone began to speak in different languages. God gave you your different language. And the devil hates the love for nationhood and he wants you to be citizens of this earth. Once you accept that you will get your citizen number on your head or on your arm. You are not a Norwegian. First and foremost you’re a citizen of this village earth. And the devil wants everybody to have the same. And if you want to be a homosexual you have to report to the World Health Organisation to make sure you don’t get AIDS. That is the world you are going to get. Something is going to happen again in Jerusalem. In 1917, the first beginnings – the Jews came home as God promised. In 1948, Israel became a state and the Jews danced all over Israel for three days and nights. And they did not need alcohol to celebrate. They were so thankful. After 2000 years they had their state back! And if Israel has to make a choice to be part of a grey, unified world, where the Jews will give up their nationhood, the Jews will be the hardest nut to crack, because they will say, “We have gone through the gas chambers, we have gone through our tribulation, we have been gassed and humiliated because we kept to be Jewish. We will not give up our national homeland to be part of this world.” And we Christian Zionists will come with Israel and we will say, “Yes, we will go with you, we will stand, look up to your salvation, it is coming.” And the unity of this world that will be the result of the Third World War will parallel the unity of God’s children – Jew and Arab, but especially the 10 out of each nation. They will say, “The hope comes from Jerusalem. Jerusalem, Jerusalem.” Ulf Ekman, I have preached in your church from my heart under the anointing of the Lord about these things. And I want you to know: That that Lord that is coming is going to come to Jerusalem. And there is going to be the greatest revival that will bring us not just to the level of the Acts of the Apostles, but beyond. I don’t mind, Ulf, if you preach this in the Catholic Church. Ask me to come to all your cathedrals, and I will preach it because of you. But if you give up on Israel, on Jerusalem, I have a word for you: “Jerusalem, if I forget you, it would be better that my tongue would cease preaching and cleave to my palate.” I am saying under the Holy Ghost: “If you miss Jerusalem you have nothing to say. It’s better that your tongue would stop talking.” Jerusalem, Jerusalem, if I forget thee, it would be better that my tongue would cleave to my palate. All preachers, all priests, all brothers and sisters- Rome will not be the salvation of this world, but it will be the center of the world government and the world church. And Jerusalem is going to be the city where the Lord will put His King on His holy hill. All the nations will come there. Oh I want to end here. The Bible says, “Every knee shall bow for my Lord.” It will be such a glorious day. Daniel says, “I saw the Son of Man with great power and glory.” This time He does not come on a donkey; this time He does not come as a suffering servant. This time He comes to own this world. And His reign will be from coast to coast. He will be King of Kings as Zechariah says: In that day the Lord, your Lord, our Lord, will be king over the whole earth. And the nations will come up. They will find something in the air, when they wake up in Trondheim, in Amsterdam, in Orlando, and they say there is a lightness – and they turn to their televisions – and after Washington DC there are more journalists in Jerusalem than any other country. I like that because the Bible says, “every knee shall bow” – not just Pentecostals, not just Charismatics – every knee when they see this Lord. The glory will come down into that Third Temple that Ezekiel ends with – the Temple of the Lord. Without that Temple He will not come. And as He comes through the East Gate and fills the House with His glory – the One Who died at the cross to make you clean from every sin and made you sons and daughters of His Father – is coming to rule this world. And the glory will be so great that the journalists, for the first time, will have to report this on their knees. “Ladies and gentlemen, this is Television Norge, I see my colleagues all on their faces. Something happened this night. We cannot even look. There is such glory. I am so sorry about what I have said about Israel. And when these Jews built this Temple we journalists all made fun of them. Because I see Somebody has come to take the reins of this earth in the only hands in which the world is safe – the pierced hands of our loving Lord, who will not bypass the broken reed.” You have gone through your problems. You have been sad, as I have, when we have failed the Lord. But if your heart is perfected, you will be a channel to move Israel into this hour. We will breathe upon them, identify with them, like the prophet on the boy, and breathe what God has given us. How does it say? “Gentiles, may you show them mercy – the Jews – through the mercy that God has given you.” Lay yourself out on them. Not a tract at the Wailing Wall but an identification. Not a tract, not a little message. But to come to Israel with that word that was on the heart of Ruth. I look to a sister right now. Will you become that Ruth who said to Naomi, “I am going to go with you.” And she clung to Naomi and said, “Your God is my God.” We as Christians can say this for the God of Israel is our God and Father. Don’t pray to Jesus. Pray to God. It is through Jesus that we can come to His Father. We don’t believe in two gods. We believe in one God. “Our Father, which art in heaven…” “Your God, Naomi, is my God, and your people I embrace as my people.” Have you embraced the Jewish people? When I see the soldiers, when I drive into “Israel proper” through the barricade from Anathot, I say, “Lord I love them,” because they are God’s people. At an hour that God is about to pour out His Spirit. And the Hebrew word, when it says in Ruth [that she] “took hold” of Naomi, that word is the same word as in Zechariah when it says (I feel God’s Spirit says, “tell it to them”) ten gentiles from every nation will take hold, just as Ruth did to Naomi – the same Hebrew word, “take hold,” not just say, “We will pray for you while we wait on the rapture.” [but] “We will go with you; we will be with you, we will put ourselves upon you and see you come to your greatest hour.” So that when He comes we will stand face to face – you will stand face to face when the Lord restores Zion. And we will say, “Come Yeshua. This world is in a mess. We are ready to celebrate Your Feast. A feast for the nations, which the Feast of Tabernacles is.” And so Zechariah ends: And those that will be left of the nations, that survived the Third World War – then they will give Jerusalem its proper place. And we will kneel down beside all these journalists that have reported what has just happened, on this planet earth – and we will all be on our knees. And the nations will send their prime ministers – for when Jesus the King over all prime ministers is in Jerusalem we don’t need to go to the United States – we will go to Him. And He will have the right word for Norway and for all the nations. And you will be His ambassadors. Come quickly and save Norway for this hour. The coming Third World War The following is a transcript of a message delivered by Jan Willem van der Hoeven in Norway on July 20, 2014. And I hope also that the Lord Jesus, by His Spirit, will show you what to do with the information – because we are living in unbelievably prophetic times. And I have a feeling that soon we will see a war in the Middle East that will lead to the greatest revival that has ever hit the Middle East. And I would not be surprised that this little war with Hamas in Gaza will lead to a war with Damascus and with the Hezbollah in Lebanon. Actually I wrote and warned the [Israeli] Chief of Staff that this would happen; that soon Israel will be attacked by thousands of rockets, not from the south only, but there are a hundred thousand rockets in the hands of Hezbollah, and huge numbers of rockets in the hands of the Muslims in Syria. A woman of God told me one and a half years ago, “The Lord said to me, soon the prophecy of Isaiah 17 will be fulfilled, when Damascus will be turned into a ruinous city and destroyed.” I spoke once to a pilot – an Israeli pilot – I said, “You will not be attacked immediately by Iran, but Iran will make Assad and the Hezbollah do the dirty work for them and attack you.” And then he said to me, “If they will attack us and Tel Aviv, we will flatten Damascus.” And I believe that this is going to lead to the fulfillment of God’s Word. What came by the sword will go by the sword. These are the words of Jesus Himself. Islam came by the sword. The sword preceded the Quran, and Mohammed fought 53 wars, and destroyed much of the apostolic fruits of the churches in the Middle East. And therefore we know it was evil. The most closed country in the world for the Gospel, where no preacher has ever dared to preach, no Billy Graham, no Osborne, is Saudi Arabia. You cannot even take your Bible on the plane back to Saudi Arabia. And that shows us that when that Islamic power came in Mecca and Medina, and spread itself over the whole Middle East, it was an antichrist spirit. For if Allah was the same God as the God of Israel, the door would be open for the Gospel to be preached. How can God, if He is really the only God – and Allah is supposed to be the same God – send His Son to save everyone that repents from his sin; and then, if Allah is the same as God, he says, “o, you cannot preach this in Saudi Arabia?” Everyone who has a little bit of intelligence says, “How can it be? How can Allah fight himself? He killed His Son. He wants us to preach it to the whole world. And if Allah is the same as God he says no-one should preach that word in Saudi Arabia.” Therefore we know that it is from the devil. We know it is the spirit of antichrist. And it has to be bound by the Lord, in the name of Jesus. So God is going to use the next war to get the poison of Islam out of the hearts of multitudes of Arabs. It will enter the Middle East, into the reality of Isaiah 19: 23-25, where it says, “There will be a blessing in the midst of the earth, [God is speaking] when I will bless My people Egypt, and the work of My hands, Assyria, and My inheritance Israel. And there will be a highway from Egypt to Assyria, and it will be a blessing in the midst of the earth.” I announce a short war, with Damascus, with the power of Islam in the Arabs, what came by the sword will fall by the sword of Israel, and it will be a blessing for the Arabs, for in the end they will be free, with their brothers – they are not nephews, they are half-brothers of the Jews, and they are going to be together – Egypt, Israel and Assyria, a blessing in the midst of the earth. I want you to know: the Arabs are not the final enemy of Israel. If you move in the Holy Ghost, as sons and daughters of God, having repented truly of your sins(and we also have, in our dress, to look more holy – I beg you not to dress unless you ask the Lord how to dress), if we are holy, and we stand before the Lord, we have the power to go in front of the army of Israel. In a way we have done this already here during these three days. And I, by God’s grace, will reap the fruits with Israel when I go back. When the praisers went in front of the ark, the Lord moved upon the army of Israel. We do not need to fight with bombs, or with planes. Our weapons are spiritual, mighty for the breaking down of the principalities. And the first one that you have to break as you praise the Lord is the power of Islam. Crush it under your feet. So that the Arabs can kiss at the border, like Esau did Jacob. Not inside the border. The Arabs will live in peace with Israel living within her own God-given borders. For reconciliation will not cost Israel her land. Esau and Jacob, after we break the power of Islam, will be reconciled as Esau and Jacob were – at the border. Oh, it is going to be a wonderful peace. It is the Middle East where God did the greatest things: Abraham lived in Assyria. And he lived in Egypt. And he lived in Israel. And Israel lived in Babylon. And in Egypt. And lived in Israel. And so I said, “Lord, You were in Egypt. And You were in Israel. Were You also in Babylon and Assyria”? And the Lord opened my eyes. “I was the fourth man in the oven at Nebuchadnezzar. I was there too.” That is the Middle East. And God is going to win it back. He will slay and cut off the power of Islam. And the Arabs will become the greatest channel of blessing to the people of Israel. And you know how you know that this is true? Because after that, and this is my second point, we will have Gog and Magog. And Gog and Magog will attack Israel. And the Bible says, when that happens, after the revival – because Ezekiel 37, that I preached about yesterday, is before Ezekiel 38 and 39! So Israel is already in the revival, and the Arabs and the Jews are one! God is going to retrieve first those who live in the Middle East. So the Bible says, when Gog and Magog attack, you will find in the roll of nations that come with Gog and Magog, no more Egypt, no more Assyria, you speak about Togamar – Turkey, Gomer – Ethiopia, or it is more Sudan, Cush – Persia, but no Arabs! And the Bible says Israel will dwell with unfenced borders! At peace! Because they were part of the revival! And the world will say to Gog and Magog, why did you attack Israel? And this will be maybe in seven years only. Because we will first have the war with the Arabs that may happen at anytime. And Damascus destroyed. And revival come in. Because the power of the poison of Islam will be bound over the Arab mind. And then Israel will have no need to have borders anymore. Because Esau and Jacob have kissed one another. And so Gog and Magog will be furious. And the nations will say, “Why have you come to attack?” And Gog and Magog doesn’t say, “Because of the Palestinians.” But, “Have you come to take the spoil?” That’s what the nations ask Gog and Magog. There will be such a flow of oil in the Middle East – and the last three letters of ‘spoil’ is ‘oil.’ God is going to bless His people – and Gog and Magog are going to attack. You know, I would be willing, with God’s help, to go to Putin and anoint him. Remember the story of Elijah – who had to anoint Elisha, Jehu and Hazael? And so, when he went to Hazael – I think it was his replacement, Elisha, who went to Hazael – he saw Hazael, and he began to cry. He said, “Why are you crying?” He said, “Because I know what you are going to do to Israel.” But God told me, “You’re His weapon, you’re His channel for judgment on my nation. And I have to anoint you!” I am willing to go to Putin and to anoint him to attack Europe or to attack America! That’s the parallel! And maybe with tears in our eyes. And God showed me to speak this message because there is going to be a Third World War – Gog and Magog – Ezekiel 38 and 39. And so after the wonderful unity between Believers and Jews and Arabs and Jews – it’s one flock, you are so right, you read that passage – there will be one flock and the devil will hate it. But God will use whatever means to use the leader of Gog to put His judgment over the West. And the Bible says, the people that will be left on the earth will be rarer than fine gold. We have no idea – with all the cheap preaching of “grace, grace, grace” and “revival, revival, revival.” There is a weeping prophet! His name is Jeremiah – who says, “I tell you. Nebuchadnezzar is God’s instrument. He will judge you for your immorality. Repent!” He wept. And they said, “You! You’re not a patriot. You are speaking against Israel.” You are weakening, Norway. “Go in a pit. You are weakening the king of Israel, the army of Israel.” You can pray what you want, as Norwegians, after you have fornicated and run after your alcohol and everything. And God can save us if we repent! But if we go with our immorality, the breaking up of our marriages – you can pray what you want, “O Lord save Norway.” God says, “I’m not going to save Norway. I will send my servant, Putin. You anoint him to do My work.” At least he is an anti-homosexual. He is more a man than most of the politicians in Europe. May God let him hear this word – that he himself may know that he is under the command of God. Where is it all written in the Bible? After the revival that will happen at the Feast of Tabernacles – which includes the Arabs – it will include all the Gentiles that have been grafted into Israel. And give us the double portion that we so long for. And Jesus announced the Holy Spirit at the Feast of Tabernacles! The Lord said, “I used the Feast of Tabernacles, not Pentecost” – so we know it’s going to happen. The former and the latter rain will fall upon us. And you know, we always had evening meetings. And the Lord showed me. You always have evening meetings. Where does it say that in the Bible? When did the Holy Spirit fall? In the evening? Or in the morning? So we, for the first time, have our meetings in the valley of Hinnom in the morning and in the afternoon. Because I want to be ready to receive that revival that will bring the Church and Israel and the Arabs and the Jews in one. One flock. And then we have some years before the Third World War. We go to Ezekiel 38 and 39. And what does it say? “I will cast fire on the coastlands that dwell carelessly.” God is speaking. And I hear many Christians – I hope you can have an open heart about Gog and Magog and Israel. Do you know, God is going to attack Gog and Magog in Israel, that is why He puts a hook. But before they go and get dealt with by God in Israel, He will use – if Putin is still there – the Prince of Rosh – to put His judgments on the coastlands and the West that dwells with carelessness. So all that is said about Gog and Magog attacking Israel is wrong! Gog and Magog will attack the US! And then God will say, “You come now that you’ve done My work on the immorality and the corruption – on Norway, on Europe, on America, on Obama and his team, nowI need Putin after that for Israel.” My God is God. He says, “Now I will deal with you.” And it will take Israel seven months to bury the dead. Gog and Magog will be finished. Not by NATO, but by God on the mountains of Israel. You know, it was from the Lord that my sister spoke about my book. I hope you are all going to read it. Because in it I show that the Arabs are not the final problem for Israel, but that the devil needs a Third World War to bring Rome into the picture. It is an amazing thing when you see it. I was preaching in the church of David Wilkerson, a holy man of God. I was privileged that he allowed me to preach there. And he took me to his flat – his apartment. And I watched the whole city [looking] like a Christmas tree. All the big towers lit up. And when I made a remark, he said, “When I look out over my city, I only see a cemetery.” What happened to the Twin Towers was only the beginning. The city of New York is going to be destroyed. And this holy man of God could not even look at the city. He said, “Where these rich men come into their Chevrolets and their cars with all the money they have – I’m not saying they are all like that – and they look for nice, juicy young men to have sex with…” God has seen everything that is happening – all the pornography, all the immorality – and God is spitting mad! Unless we repent and put ourselves under the blood, judgment will come, and it will begin at the House of God before it goes to the nations. So let us pray to be cleansed, to be cleansed from every sin, from every bondage, and make up with our wives or with our fellow Christians whom we have deeply wounded. There are more Christians today that are deeply wounded by fellow Christians than by people in the world. And God forgive us. The devil is cruel. The Bible calls him the destroyer of nations. “O Lucifer – destroyer of nations” – he needs a Third World War to bring Rome into the picture. I write about it in my book. We have seen two world wars. After the First World War the devil said, “You must be united.” The League of Nations was man’s answer inspired by the devil to go back to Babylon. Because what was the essence of Babylon? If we as mankind (I wish Brother Francis the Pope would hear this!) can unite and be one – the human family as one – we can do it. We can build our towers! We can be the salvation for this world. And God gave each nation its language. So the devil hates your love for your nation. And if you listen to the New Age [proponents] they stress that we are all children of this [global] village earth. And we have to care for it. And we have to be united with everybody. With the socialists. With the homosexuals. We are one, children of God. That is where the world is going. Unity without repentance will lead to Babylon, and not to Jerusalem. The Bible says, they that want to enter the gates of Jerusalem have to cleanse themselves in the blood of the Lamb. But into Babylon you can come with your own dress. That’s why it is not a bride, but a scarlet woman that will sit upon the Beast! Now let me come back: After the First World War, the League of Nations- the beginning of ‘one,’ of ‘oneness.’ Then the devil thought, “I need another world war for they still don’t get the point.” So we had the Second World War. More than 50 million people were killed. I believe in the next world war at least 300 million will be killed. But the devil used the Second World War, when the people saw all the destruction and said, “This is terrible!” so he said, “You must unite.” And so the League of Nations became the United Nations. Some years ago, I got a little booklet into my hands, and it’s called, “The Report of the Club of Rome.” And in that report, the big economic and political people that came together in Rome were discussing the problems of our generation. The lack of energy. The lack of food. Overpopulation. Air pollution. All the big problems. And they said, “We must become one – because we will have no more energy, no more food, we will not know what to do with the economies” – and so they made a report in the club of Rome and divided the world into 10 economic units. American-Canada 1. South America 2. Europe 3. China 4. All the Arabs together 5. All the black African nations 6. So they divided the whole world into 10 units – just as the Bible says. It’s not going to be Europe, it’s going to be the whole world – the 10 toes of Rome! I said, “Lord! They are ready to upgrade the United Nations, after the war of Gog and Magog, into a world presidium of 10 presidents.” And because New York will be destroyed, Rome will be the counter city to Jerusalem that will open the gates to the world church that will sit on the beast of 10 horns. So there will be a world government and a world church. That’s why we should cry for people like Ulf Ekman. For this time! The Lord is on His way to Jerusalem, but the Antichrist is on his way to Babylon – to Rome. But you know something? I have good news. There is a parallel. In 1917 the League of Nations was born – the embryo of what will become the world government. I was amazed where they put Israel – the Club of Rome – because they have put all the Arabs together, the Muslims – so they put Israel with New Zealand and Australia. I go to Australia, and I say, “God can give you the crown.” The Bible says, from the 10 presidents, three will be pushed. None of these presidents will be leader, but the little horn – a super secretary-general, a little horn – he will come up and become the world leader, the false man of peace – [and say], “Let me do it.” A super Henry Kissinger, who not for nothing is also a Jew. But there is good news: 1917 was not just the year of the League of Nations – it was the year of the embryo of Israel. In 1917, a godly man, Arthur Balfour, pushed by his Christian Zionist aunt and other Christians as well, Uncle Arthur blessed Britain by allowing the Jews to immigrate to Israel. So it was the beginning of the restoration for Israel, not just the League of Nations. 1948 the devil said, “Be one!” – United Nations – that has been more unfriendly to Israel than any other country because the devil presides over that house of lies. But 1948 there were Israelis dancing, and the Jews of Tel Aviv – for the State of Israel was born. Each way you look, to Babylon or to Jerusalem, God says, “I will choose Jerusalem!” to heal the world. And all those that will be left in the nations after He judges them, will come up every year to celebrate the feast of Tabernacles in Jerusalem and to worship the King, and to comfort the Jews. Se each way you look – I said, “Let Babylon be one. I go to Jerusalem.” Because the Lord says, “In that day, Jerusalem will be the highest mountain, and the nations will come up to it, and preach war no longer.” My Bible doesn’t say, “New York, New York, if I forget thee…” or “Geneva, Geneva.” “Pray for the peace conference tables there!” Righteousness will not come from the United Nations, peace will not come from Geneva – for the children of God there is only one city. Jesus is not coming to Amsterdam. He is coming with great glory, on the praises of His people, to only one hill – the hill of the Lord. “Here I have desired to dwell forever.” And the nations have imagined a vain thing, as Psalm 2 says. They want to solve the Middle East problem by dividing God’s land. That’s the wisdom of the Norwegian government; that’s the wisdom of America; that’s the wisdom of the nations of the world. But He who sits in the heavens will laugh them to scorn and say, “Yet I will set My king, not in Rome, but on my holy hill in Jerusalem.” After the Second World War, United Nations – 1948. 1948, Israel became a nation after 2000 years. The Prophet Isaiah said, “A nation shall be born in a day.” And we are in front of a short war with the power of Islam, with the Arab nations, because God wants to bring the brothers of the Jews back, and you and me, to Israel – ten out of each nation. But afterwards, maybe seven years, Gog and Magog, who will roll itself up like a snake and say, “I want the spoil, I want the oil.” But before they go up God says, “I need you to put My judgment over the coastlands of the West that dwells carelessly. And I will cast fire upon the coastlands that dwell carelessly. When they have fulfilled God’s word, and I’m prepared to anoint him for it – that’s what Elijah did to Hazael – then God will say, “Now you come, because I remain the Master of this race – the King of kings and the Lord of lords.” And what will happen? The devil is so happy with the Third World War. Three hundred sixty million dead or around that number. You can’t believe it. The Europeans all run after their little self and everything they want ha, ha, ha, ha, ha! Oh Lord this is terrible! We will not believe what God’s judgment will be in Europe and America. If six million Jews died in the Holocaust – who never came to the level of immorality of our generation … most the Jews never agreed with abortion or homosexuality, yet they went into the gas chambers. And as My Bible says, if God has not spared His own people who were less immoral in the 1940s than our generation, then you must be totally blind not to believe that something worse than the Second World War will come upon us. Do you now understand why I am here? I want Norway to be saved from this. That’s why I preach here. I said Lord, I may be an optimist. That’s why I love Kjell so much. I found a man who said, let’s see what we can do with 300 Gideonites to turn Norway under God’s grace; maybe other countries as well. My son says, “Papa, I want Norway to be on the side of Israel before the Third World War.” That’s why this center in Norway now is here in Porsgrunn. I may be an optimist but God says, “It was Norway that pushed my people into the Oslo Accord in the wrong way of peace.” But Terje (pastor from Tonsberg), you led a movement to bring pastors representing a new day for Norway – to say “sorry” to the Israeli Knesset members, to the prime minister. I translated it in Hebrew, and sent it to many of the lawmakers and I said, “God, because of that, is there a hope for Norway?” And that hope God showed me in these three days. You have heard the message. You know you are sons and daughters of God. You hopefully have cleansed yourself completely. And God needs only 300 souls to win Norway back, if we go this way, by God’s grace! If the result of the Third World War is a world government of 10 presidents, none of them is the Antichrist. The Bible says the little horn moves three away and remains as the emperor of Rome in control of the world, and says, “I’m your peacemaker.” There are politicians in Europe who see the terrible situation we are in. America is in debt 17 trillion dollars. America is dying under Obama. Two more years and America will never be the same. If Putin comes in you’re on your own! America will not come to the aid of Europe. And if you don’t know to lay hold of God you are alone. And your army is not going to help you. That’s why I am here. And maybe not for nothing I come from the same city as Jeremiah. I live there. And God told me to live there. And in that way I’m a prophetic voice to the nations. But also of hope to Israel, that God announces to Israel, “I will make a new covenant with you.” And that covenant includes you. So this is the third result. The first was the League of Nations. The second was the United Nations. After the Third World War the devil says, “You have seen enough death” – “yes, yes” – that’s why he loves the New Age movement: “We want so much to be one. We are not Norwegians. We are citizens of this world.” That’s what the world wants. That’s what your new generation wants. They will rather spit on their own Norwegian nationality! But I am here to announce to you: God saw this unholy unity movement in the days of Babylon and it was He who created nationhood. Suddenly everyone began to speak in different languages. God gave you your different language. And the devil hates the love for nationhood and he wants you to be citizens of this earth. Once you accept that you will get your citizen number on your head or on your arm. You are not a Norwegian. First and foremost you’re a citizen of this village earth. And the devil wants everybody to have the same. And if you want to be a homosexual you have to report to the World Health Organisation to make sure you don’t get AIDS. That is the world you are going to get. Something is going to happen again in Jerusalem. In 1917, the first beginnings – the Jews came home as God promised. In 1948, Israel became a state and the Jews danced all over Israel for three days and nights. And they did not need alcohol to celebrate. They were so thankful. After 2000 years they had their state back! And if Israel has to make a choice to be part of a grey, unified world, where the Jews will give up their nationhood, the Jews will be the hardest nut to crack, because they will say, “We have gone through the gas chambers, we have gone through our tribulation, we have been gassed and humiliated because we kept to be Jewish. We will not give up our national homeland to be part of this world.” And we Christian Zionists will come with Israel and we will say, “Yes, we will go with you, we will stand, look up to your salvation, it is coming.” And the unity of this world that will be the result of the Third World War will parallel the unity of God’s children – Jew and Arab, but especially the 10 out of each nation. They will say, “The hope comes from Jerusalem. Jerusalem, Jerusalem.” Ulf Ekman, I have preached in your church from my heart under the anointing of the Lord about these things. And I want you to know: That that Lord that is coming is going to come to Jerusalem. And there is going to be the greatest revival that will bring us not just to the level of the Acts of the Apostles, but beyond. I don’t mind, Ulf, if you preach this in the Catholic Church. Ask me to come to all your cathedrals, and I will preach it because of you. But if you give up on Israel, on Jerusalem, I have a word for you: “Jerusalem, if I forget you, it would be better that my tongue would cease preaching and cleave to my palate.” I am saying under the Holy Ghost: “If you miss Jerusalem you have nothing to say. It’s better that your tongue would stop talking.” Jerusalem, Jerusalem, if I forget thee, it would be better that my tongue would cleave to my palate. All preachers, all priests, all brothers and sisters- Rome will not be the salvation of this world, but it will be the center of the world government and the world church. And Jerusalem is going to be the city where the Lord will put His King on His holy hill. All the nations will come there. Oh I want to end here. The Bible says, “Every knee shall bow for my Lord.” It will be such a glorious day. Daniel says, “I saw the Son of Man with great power and glory.” This time He does not come on a donkey; this time He does not come as a suffering servant. This time He comes to own this world. And His reign will be from coast to coast. He will be King of Kings as Zechariah says: In that day the Lord, your Lord, our Lord, will be king over the whole earth. And the nations will come up. They will find something in the air, when they wake up in Trondheim, in Amsterdam, in Orlando, and they say there is a lightness – and they turn to their televisions – and after Washington DC there are more journalists in Jerusalem than any other country. I like that because the Bible says, “every knee shall bow” – not just Pentecostals, not just Charismatics – every knee when they see this Lord. The glory will come down into that Third Temple that Ezekiel ends with – the Temple of the Lord. Without that Temple He will not come. And as He comes through the East Gate and fills the House with His glory – the One Who died at the cross to make you clean from every sin and made you sons and daughters of His Father – is coming to rule this world. And the glory will be so great that the journalists, for the first time, will have to report this on their knees. “Ladies and gentlemen, this is Television Norge, I see my colleagues all on their faces. Something happened this night. We cannot even look. There is such glory. I am so sorry about what I have said about Israel. And when these Jews built this Temple we journalists all made fun of them. Because I see Somebody has come to take the reins of this earth in the only hands in which the world is safe – the pierced hands of our loving Lord, who will not bypass the broken reed.” You have gone through your problems. You have been sad, as I have, when we have failed the Lord. But if your heart is perfected, you will be a channel to move Israel into this hour. We will breathe upon them, identify with them, like the prophet on the boy, and breathe what God has given us. How does it say? “Gentiles, may you show them mercy – the Jews – through the mercy that God has given you.” Lay yourself out on them. Not a tract at the Wailing Wall but an identification. Not a tract, not a little message. But to come to Israel with that word that was on the heart of Ruth. I look to a sister right now. Will you become that Ruth who said to Naomi, “I am going to go with you.” And she clung to Naomi and said, “Your God is my God.” We as Christians can say this for the God of Israel is our God and Father. Don’t pray to Jesus. Pray to God. It is through Jesus that we can come to His Father. We don’t believe in two gods. We believe in one God. “Our Father, which art in heaven…” “Your God, Naomi, is my God, and your people I embrace as my people.” Have you embraced the Jewish people? When I see the soldiers, when I drive into “Israel proper” through the barricade from Anathot, I say, “Lord I love them,” because they are God’s people. At an hour that God is about to pour out His Spirit. And the Hebrew word, when it says in Ruth [that she] “took hold” of Naomi, that word is the same word as in Zechariah when it says (I feel God’s Spirit says, “tell it to them”) ten gentiles from every nation will take hold, just as Ruth did to Naomi – the same Hebrew word, “take hold,” not just say, “We will pray for you while we wait on the rapture.” [but] “We will go with you; we will be with you, we will put ourselves upon you and see you come to your greatest hour.” So that when He comes we will stand face to face – you will stand face to face when the Lord restores Zion. And we will say, “Come Yeshua. This world is in a mess. We are ready to celebrate Your Feast. A feast for the nations, which the Feast of Tabernacles is.” And so Zechariah ends: And those that will be left of the nations, that survived the Third World War – then they will give Jerusalem its proper place. And we will kneel down beside all these journalists that have reported what has just happened, on this planet earth – and we will all be on our knees. And the nations will send their prime ministers – for when Jesus the King over all prime ministers is in Jerusalem we don’t need to go to the United States – we will go to Him. And He will have the right word for Norway and for all the nations. And you will be His ambassadors. Come quickly and save Norway for this hour. (Comment on this)
4:02a	***THE TRUTH*** (By J. Adams) October, 1994 "And you shall know the truth, and the truth will set you free." (John; Ch.8, v.32) The global war described in my papers is a painful upset of man's expectations stemming from a catastrophic error in dominant beliefs and behavior. It involves the total collapse of man's self-confidence, i.e., his ego, as the world realizes the reigning "secular" worldview is irrational and false- a dangerous popular delusion. -The Truth- While the apocalyptic war I'm anticipating embodies a total upset of dominant secular beliefs and expectations, it involves the fulfillment of religious beliefs and expectations- i.e., the fulfillment of religious prophecy. In this sense, the secular worldview is being falsified while the truth, realism, and rationality of religion is established. So you understand exactly how this is the case, a brief overview of biblical prophecy is in order. In discussing my views concerning a future surprise world war involving a nuclear holocaust triggered by conflict in the Middle East, I have noticed that many people respond by saying I'm predicting the "end of the world". I then point out that I did not mention biblical prophecy. Yet, most people are quick to draw parallels between Christian predictions of an Apocalypse and world war three (of course, Jewish, Moslem, and most other world religions have their own prophetic versions of the Apocalypse). This is important because I personally do believe that the global conflict I expect is, indeed, that which is predicted in the Bible. In fact, while trying to determine what could cause the epic crash that now appears to be imminent, I, along with friends, went through what can only be logically classified as a private revelation that clued me into just how "The Crash" would most likely occur. Specifically, the revelation I went through had to do with the seventh seal prophecy from the eighth chapter of the Book of Revelation. This prophecy is the key to the revelation of "The Truth" in the context of the Apocalypse (the word apocalypse literally means "revelation"). After the seventh and final seal is broken in the Book of Revelation, the Apocalypse is unleashed and "The Truth" is revealed. Thus, the meaning behind the seventh seal prophecy is of the utmost prophetic importance... When the Lamb opened the seventh seal, (1) there was silence in heaven for about half an hour. Then I saw the seven angels who stand before God, and seven trumpets were given to them. And another angel came and stood at the alter with a golden censer; and he was given much incense to mingle with the prayers of all the saints upon the golden altar before the throne; and the smoke of the incense rose with the prayers of the saints from the hand of the angel before God. Then the angel took the censer and filled it with fire from the altar and threw it on the earth; and (2) there were peals of thunder, loud noises, flashes of lightening, and an earthquake. Now the seven angels who had the seven trumpets made ready to blow them. The first angel blew his trumpet, and (3) there followed hail and fire, mixed with blood, which fell on the earth; and a third of the earth was burnt up, and a third of the trees were burnt up, and all green grass was burnt up. The second angel blew his trumpet, and (4) something like a great mountain, burning with fire, was thrown into the sea; and a third of the sea became blood, a third of the living creatures in the sea died, and a third of the ships destroyed. The third angel blew his trumpet, and (5) a great star fell from heaven, blazing like a torch, and it fell on a third of the rivers and on the fountains of water. The name of the star is Wormwood. A third of the waters became wormwood, and many men died of the water, because it was made bitter. The fourth angel blew his trumpet, and (6) a third of the sun was struck, and a third of the moon, and a third of the stars, so that a third of their light was darkened; a third of the day was kept from shining, and likewise a third of the night. Then I looked, and I heard an eagle crying with a loud voice, as it flew in midheaven, "Woe, woe, woe to those who dwell on the earth, at the blasts of the other trumpets which the three angels are about to blow!" I have long believed that this prophecy is a depiction of a future nuclear war. Even though it was written some 2000 years ago, it accurately describes each major phase of a global nuclear holocaust: 1. The half hour of "silence in heaven" during which ICBM's would traverse their orbits before striking targets after being launched. 2. The thunderous reports, bright flashes, and earthquake associated with nuclear detonations. 3. The nuclear blasts of "hail and fire, mixed with blood" followed by raging fires that would consume much of the earth. 4. The nuclear explosions, "like a great mountain, burning with fire", all over the world's seas as ports, ships, and submarines are attacked. 5. The lethal contamination of water supplies by radioactive fallout ("Wormwood") for weeks after a nuclear war. 6. The blanketing of the sky by vast dust clouds after a nuclear war such that sunlight, moonlight, and starlight is obscured thereby causing a "nuclear winter". Over the years my conviction has grown that this prophecy predicts a future nuclear war. First off, the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in the Ukraine helped reveal the truth behind the prophecy. This is because, as I later found out, the Ukrainian word for the bitter herb "wormwood", which poisons water in the seventh seal prophecy, is "Chernobyl" (easily referenced- see, for instance: 'Chernobyl' (1987), by Andrey Illesh). If this were not enough, in February of 1991, in the middle of the Gulf War, a couple of friends and I had some rather remarkable experiences that I believe confirmed the meaning of the prophecy as well as indicated its imminent fulfillment. First off, on February 6th, I saw a special report of a chemical SCUD attack on Haifa Israel that did not exist (believe me, I checked it out fully; the report was never aired). Then, about a week later, I was with a friend of mine who had just become interested in Nostradamus and prophecies that might be connected with the Gulf War. After showing him some books I had on Nostradamus, I began reading him the seventh seal prophecy above. Just as I began reading it, we heard an air- raid siren followed by the bellowed percussion of a nuclear explosion. The authenticity of the experience led me to rush with my friend to a deep basement in a nearby building. From there I contacted the local fire department to see if any sirens had been sounded; however, none had. After returning to our original location, my friend and I began checking with others to see if anyone else had heard anything. No one else had. However, another friend of mine, who is very trustworthy, said that he had heard no air-raid siren that evening- he had heard one that afternoon. When I asked him whether or not it could have been a fire alarm, he responded: "No, it was distinctly an air-raid siren off in the distance". Needless to say, these extraordinary experiences led me to conclude that the conflict in the Persian Gulf might somehow be linked to a future global nuclear war- an event that would fit the ultimate crash I have been anticipating. Thus, I began to critically reexamine the events that had been taking place in the Gulf, and I quickly realized there was something seriously amiss. In fact, all the inconsistencies and contradictions pointed to one logical explanation: the Soviets and Iraq were engaging in large-scale strategic deception (see my paper, "The Persian Gulf Deception"). The reason they would be doing this was clarified after examining the rather frightening conclusion of our national security analysts during the late-1970s and early-1980's: the Soviets were preparing to fight and win a nuclear war (see: Richard Pipes' "Why the Soviet Union Thinks it could Fight and Win a Nuclear War" in 'Commentary' (July, 1977), Dr. William Van Cleave's "Soviet Strategic Nuclear Forces and Goals: Deception and Surprise" in 'Mesmerized By The Bear' (1987), and/or 'Soviet Strategy for Nuclear War' (1979), authored by Joseph Douglas). Of course, with remarkable fear-induced irrationality, Western society has completely ignored the possibility that Gorbachev's "New Thinking" may have been the introduction of a total lie rooted in the unthinkable "Russian Idea" (see Alexander Yanov's 'The Russian Challenge and the Year 2000' (1987)). There is, however, sufficient reason to believe this is the case. If you are wondering how it is that Western civilization and the world as whole could be so utterly deceived, I have a sensible explanation for you. After Jesus was crucified some 2,000 years ago, his message was spread across the world by way of the church. After a thousand years, Christianity became the dominant paradigm of society- an historical thesis. Then came the rise of Western civilization and rapid technological development. In the context of matter/spirit duality, this epoch of materialism necessarily involved a reaction against spirituality. Thus, over the past 1,000 years the "secular" worldview of science developed in opposition to the church and religion. The opposing worldview that has emerged, what I refer to as the "secular paradigm", is the historical antithesis of Christianity. According to it, ours is a godless universe that started with a "Big Bang" and is flowing towards ever greater disorder and meaninglessness. This contradicts the idea that, since the moment of creation, God has carried out purposeful work to create ever greater organization and meaning. According to the secular paradigm, life is the result of a process of elimination involving "random mutation" and "natural selection". Contrariwise, Christians believe that life comes from a purposeful, orderly process of creation and divine selection. With regard to society, the secular worldview holds that, with the guidance of some imaginal "invisible hand", selfishness and competition give rise to "general equilibrium". This contradicts the Christian view that unselfish cooperation and the guidance of God bring forth social harmony. All in all, the secular worldview that dominates today's world is the antithesis of Christ's worldview. Whereas Christ saw a harmonious universe created by God in which people must seek to cooperate and care for each other, modern man sees a chaotic, godless universe in which men create order by competing with each other and caring only about themselves. The problem is: What if Jesus told "The Truth"? Then man's current opposing worldview, the secular paradigm, is the opposite of truth, i.e., it is lies, false beliefs- popular, antichristian delusions. In this case, man, living according to a perspective that goes against reality, is doomed to commit systematic errors. Instead of bringing order to the world, he'll end up causing worse and worse disorder. Eventually his erroneous ways could end in self-destruction. Once science figured out how to split the atom, man had the ultimate means to such an irrational, suicidal End. Assuming that Jesus did know "The Truth", he correctly anticipated what man would end up doing to the world. His "rational expectations" are what Christian prophecy is all about. Thus, the fulfillment of biblical prophecy, i.e., the outbreak of the Apocalypse, verifies what Christ taught the world some 2,000 years ago. We should accept our interdependence and love each other as Jesus loved us, lest we end up destroying ourselves. The lesson of love Christ demonstrated to the world by life example was not a suggestion for us to heed or ignore as we please. He fully understood a vital universal law, the Golden Rule, that must be obeyed so that human civilization can avoid self-destructive consequences. Rejecting the beliefs, values and way of life taught by Jesus makes about as much sense as ignoring the the law of gravity and walking off a cliff. Yet, it is just such senselessness that man is currently suffering from, thus leading to the most catastrophic error in human history: The Apocalypse. Hopefully, this time man will learn from his mistake... ***THE TRUTH*** (By J. Adams) October, 1994 "And you shall know the truth, and the truth will set you free." (John; Ch.8, v.32) The global war described in my papers is a painful upset of man's expectations stemming from a catastrophic error in dominant beliefs and behavior. It involves the total collapse of man's self-confidence, i.e., his ego, as the world realizes the reigning "secular" worldview is irrational and false- a dangerous popular delusion. -The Truth- While the apocalyptic war I'm anticipating embodies a total upset of dominant secular beliefs and expectations, it involves the fulfillment of religious beliefs and expectations- i.e., the fulfillment of religious prophecy. In this sense, the secular worldview is being falsified while the truth, realism, and rationality of religion is established. So you understand exactly how this is the case, a brief overview of biblical prophecy is in order. In discussing my views concerning a future surprise world war involving a nuclear holocaust triggered by conflict in the Middle East, I have noticed that many people respond by saying I'm predicting the "end of the world". I then point out that I did not mention biblical prophecy. Yet, most people are quick to draw parallels between Christian predictions of an Apocalypse and world war three (of course, Jewish, Moslem, and most other world religions have their own prophetic versions of the Apocalypse). This is important because I personally do believe that the global conflict I expect is, indeed, that which is predicted in the Bible. In fact, while trying to determine what could cause the epic crash that now appears to be imminent, I, along with friends, went through what can only be logically classified as a private revelation that clued me into just how "The Crash" would most likely occur. Specifically, the revelation I went through had to do with the seventh seal prophecy from the eighth chapter of the Book of Revelation. This prophecy is the key to the revelation of "The Truth" in the context of the Apocalypse (the word apocalypse literally means "revelation"). After the seventh and final seal is broken in the Book of Revelation, the Apocalypse is unleashed and "The Truth" is revealed. Thus, the meaning behind the seventh seal prophecy is of the utmost prophetic importance... When the Lamb opened the seventh seal, (1) there was silence in heaven for about half an hour. Then I saw the seven angels who stand before God, and seven trumpets were given to them. And another angel came and stood at the alter with a golden censer; and he was given much incense to mingle with the prayers of all the saints upon the golden altar before the throne; and the smoke of the incense rose with the prayers of the saints from the hand of the angel before God. Then the angel took the censer and filled it with fire from the altar and threw it on the earth; and (2) there were peals of thunder, loud noises, flashes of lightening, and an earthquake. Now the seven angels who had the seven trumpets made ready to blow them. The first angel blew his trumpet, and (3) there followed hail and fire, mixed with blood, which fell on the earth; and a third of the earth was burnt up, and a third of the trees were burnt up, and all green grass was burnt up. The second angel blew his trumpet, and (4) something like a great mountain, burning with fire, was thrown into the sea; and a third of the sea became blood, a third of the living creatures in the sea died, and a third of the ships destroyed. The third angel blew his trumpet, and (5) a great star fell from heaven, blazing like a torch, and it fell on a third of the rivers and on the fountains of water. The name of the star is Wormwood. A third of the waters became wormwood, and many men died of the water, because it was made bitter. The fourth angel blew his trumpet, and (6) a third of the sun was struck, and a third of the moon, and a third of the stars, so that a third of their light was darkened; a third of the day was kept from shining, and likewise a third of the night. Then I looked, and I heard an eagle crying with a loud voice, as it flew in midheaven, "Woe, woe, woe to those who dwell on the earth, at the blasts of the other trumpets which the three angels are about to blow!" I have long believed that this prophecy is a depiction of a future nuclear war. Even though it was written some 2000 years ago, it accurately describes each major phase of a global nuclear holocaust: 1. The half hour of "silence in heaven" during which ICBM's would traverse their orbits before striking targets after being launched. 2. The thunderous reports, bright flashes, and earthquake associated with nuclear detonations. 3. The nuclear blasts of "hail and fire, mixed with blood" followed by raging fires that would consume much of the earth. 4. The nuclear explosions, "like a great mountain, burning with fire", all over the world's seas as ports, ships, and submarines are attacked. 5. The lethal contamination of water supplies by radioactive fallout ("Wormwood") for weeks after a nuclear war. 6. The blanketing of the sky by vast dust clouds after a nuclear war such that sunlight, moonlight, and starlight is obscured thereby causing a "nuclear winter". Over the years my conviction has grown that this prophecy predicts a future nuclear war. First off, the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in the Ukraine helped reveal the truth behind the prophecy. This is because, as I later found out, the Ukrainian word for the bitter herb "wormwood", which poisons water in the seventh seal prophecy, is "Chernobyl" (easily referenced- see, for instance: 'Chernobyl' (1987), by Andrey Illesh). If this were not enough, in February of 1991, in the middle of the Gulf War, a couple of friends and I had some rather remarkable experiences that I believe confirmed the meaning of the prophecy as well as indicated its imminent fulfillment. First off, on February 6th, I saw a special report of a chemical SCUD attack on Haifa Israel that did not exist (believe me, I checked it out fully; the report was never aired). Then, about a week later, I was with a friend of mine who had just become interested in Nostradamus and prophecies that might be connected with the Gulf War. After showing him some books I had on Nostradamus, I began reading him the seventh seal prophecy above. Just as I began reading it, we heard an air- raid siren followed by the bellowed percussion of a nuclear explosion. The authenticity of the experience led me to rush with my friend to a deep basement in a nearby building. From there I contacted the local fire department to see if any sirens had been sounded; however, none had. After returning to our original location, my friend and I began checking with others to see if anyone else had heard anything. No one else had. However, another friend of mine, who is very trustworthy, said that he had heard no air-raid siren that evening- he had heard one that afternoon. When I asked him whether or not it could have been a fire alarm, he responded: "No, it was distinctly an air-raid siren off in the distance". Needless to say, these extraordinary experiences led me to conclude that the conflict in the Persian Gulf might somehow be linked to a future global nuclear war- an event that would fit the ultimate crash I have been anticipating. Thus, I began to critically reexamine the events that had been taking place in the Gulf, and I quickly realized there was something seriously amiss. In fact, all the inconsistencies and contradictions pointed to one logical explanation: the Soviets and Iraq were engaging in large-scale strategic deception (see my paper, "The Persian Gulf Deception"). The reason they would be doing this was clarified after examining the rather frightening conclusion of our national security analysts during the late-1970s and early-1980's: the Soviets were preparing to fight and win a nuclear war (see: Richard Pipes' "Why the Soviet Union Thinks it could Fight and Win a Nuclear War" in 'Commentary' (July, 1977), Dr. William Van Cleave's "Soviet Strategic Nuclear Forces and Goals: Deception and Surprise" in 'Mesmerized By The Bear' (1987), and/or 'Soviet Strategy for Nuclear War' (1979), authored by Joseph Douglas). Of course, with remarkable fear-induced irrationality, Western society has completely ignored the possibility that Gorbachev's "New Thinking" may have been the introduction of a total lie rooted in the unthinkable "Russian Idea" (see Alexander Yanov's 'The Russian Challenge and the Year 2000' (1987)). There is, however, sufficient reason to believe this is the case. If you are wondering how it is that Western civilization and the world as whole could be so utterly deceived, I have a sensible explanation for you. After Jesus was crucified some 2,000 years ago, his message was spread across the world by way of the church. After a thousand years, Christianity became the dominant paradigm of society- an historical thesis. Then came the rise of Western civilization and rapid technological development. In the context of matter/spirit duality, this epoch of materialism necessarily involved a reaction against spirituality. Thus, over the past 1,000 years the "secular" worldview of science developed in opposition to the church and religion. The opposing worldview that has emerged, what I refer to as the "secular paradigm", is the historical antithesis of Christianity. According to it, ours is a godless universe that started with a "Big Bang" and is flowing towards ever greater disorder and meaninglessness. This contradicts the idea that, since the moment of creation, God has carried out purposeful work to create ever greater organization and meaning. According to the secular paradigm, life is the result of a process of elimination involving "random mutation" and "natural selection". Contrariwise, Christians believe that life comes from a purposeful, orderly process of creation and divine selection. With regard to society, the secular worldview holds that, with the guidance of some imaginal "invisible hand", selfishness and competition give rise to "general equilibrium". This contradicts the Christian view that unselfish cooperation and the guidance of God bring forth social harmony. All in all, the secular worldview that dominates today's world is the antithesis of Christ's worldview. Whereas Christ saw a harmonious universe created by God in which people must seek to cooperate and care for each other, modern man sees a chaotic, godless universe in which men create order by competing with each other and caring only about themselves. The problem is: What if Jesus told "The Truth"? Then man's current opposing worldview, the secular paradigm, is the opposite of truth, i.e., it is lies, false beliefs- popular, antichristian delusions. In this case, man, living according to a perspective that goes against reality, is doomed to commit systematic errors. Instead of bringing order to the world, he'll end up causing worse and worse disorder. Eventually his erroneous ways could end in self-destruction. Once science figured out how to split the atom, man had the ultimate means to such an irrational, suicidal End. Assuming that Jesus did know "The Truth", he correctly anticipated what man would end up doing to the world. His "rational expectations" are what Christian prophecy is all about. Thus, the fulfillment of biblical prophecy, i.e., the outbreak of the Apocalypse, verifies what Christ taught the world some 2,000 years ago. We should accept our interdependence and love each other as Jesus loved us, lest we end up destroying ourselves. The lesson of love Christ demonstrated to the world by life example was not a suggestion for us to heed or ignore as we please. He fully understood a vital universal law, the Golden Rule, that must be obeyed so that human civilization can avoid self-destructive consequences. Rejecting the beliefs, values and way of life taught by Jesus makes about as much sense as ignoring the the law of gravity and walking off a cliff. Yet, it is just such senselessness that man is currently suffering from, thus leading to the most catastrophic error in human history: The Apocalypse. Hopefully, this time man will learn from his mistake... (Comment on this)
4:02a	***THE TRUTH*** (By J. Adams) October, 1994 "And you shall know the truth, and the truth will set you free." (John; Ch.8, v.32) The global war described in my papers is a painful upset of man's expectations stemming from a catastrophic error in dominant beliefs and behavior. It involves the total collapse of man's self-confidence, i.e., his ego, as the world realizes the reigning "secular" worldview is irrational and false- a dangerous popular delusion. -The Truth- While the apocalyptic war I'm anticipating embodies a total upset of dominant secular beliefs and expectations, it involves the fulfillment of religious beliefs and expectations- i.e., the fulfillment of religious prophecy. In this sense, the secular worldview is being falsified while the truth, realism, and rationality of religion is established. So you understand exactly how this is the case, a brief overview of biblical prophecy is in order. In discussing my views concerning a future surprise world war involving a nuclear holocaust triggered by conflict in the Middle East, I have noticed that many people respond by saying I'm predicting the "end of the world". I then point out that I did not mention biblical prophecy. Yet, most people are quick to draw parallels between Christian predictions of an Apocalypse and world war three (of course, Jewish, Moslem, and most other world religions have their own prophetic versions of the Apocalypse). This is important because I personally do believe that the global conflict I expect is, indeed, that which is predicted in the Bible. In fact, while trying to determine what could cause the epic crash that now appears to be imminent, I, along with friends, went through what can only be logically classified as a private revelation that clued me into just how "The Crash" would most likely occur. Specifically, the revelation I went through had to do with the seventh seal prophecy from the eighth chapter of the Book of Revelation. This prophecy is the key to the revelation of "The Truth" in the context of the Apocalypse (the word apocalypse literally means "revelation"). After the seventh and final seal is broken in the Book of Revelation, the Apocalypse is unleashed and "The Truth" is revealed. Thus, the meaning behind the seventh seal prophecy is of the utmost prophetic importance... When the Lamb opened the seventh seal, (1) there was silence in heaven for about half an hour. Then I saw the seven angels who stand before God, and seven trumpets were given to them. And another angel came and stood at the alter with a golden censer; and he was given much incense to mingle with the prayers of all the saints upon the golden altar before the throne; and the smoke of the incense rose with the prayers of the saints from the hand of the angel before God. Then the angel took the censer and filled it with fire from the altar and threw it on the earth; and (2) there were peals of thunder, loud noises, flashes of lightening, and an earthquake. Now the seven angels who had the seven trumpets made ready to blow them. The first angel blew his trumpet, and (3) there followed hail and fire, mixed with blood, which fell on the earth; and a third of the earth was burnt up, and a third of the trees were burnt up, and all green grass was burnt up. The second angel blew his trumpet, and (4) something like a great mountain, burning with fire, was thrown into the sea; and a third of the sea became blood, a third of the living creatures in the sea died, and a third of the ships destroyed. The third angel blew his trumpet, and (5) a great star fell from heaven, blazing like a torch, and it fell on a third of the rivers and on the fountains of water. The name of the star is Wormwood. A third of the waters became wormwood, and many men died of the water, because it was made bitter. The fourth angel blew his trumpet, and (6) a third of the sun was struck, and a third of the moon, and a third of the stars, so that a third of their light was darkened; a third of the day was kept from shining, and likewise a third of the night. Then I looked, and I heard an eagle crying with a loud voice, as it flew in midheaven, "Woe, woe, woe to those who dwell on the earth, at the blasts of the other trumpets which the three angels are about to blow!" I have long believed that this prophecy is a depiction of a future nuclear war. Even though it was written some 2000 years ago, it accurately describes each major phase of a global nuclear holocaust: 1. The half hour of "silence in heaven" during which ICBM's would traverse their orbits before striking targets after being launched. 2. The thunderous reports, bright flashes, and earthquake associated with nuclear detonations. 3. The nuclear blasts of "hail and fire, mixed with blood" followed by raging fires that would consume much of the earth. 4. The nuclear explosions, "like a great mountain, burning with fire", all over the world's seas as ports, ships, and submarines are attacked. 5. The lethal contamination of water supplies by radioactive fallout ("Wormwood") for weeks after a nuclear war. 6. The blanketing of the sky by vast dust clouds after a nuclear war such that sunlight, moonlight, and starlight is obscured thereby causing a "nuclear winter". Over the years my conviction has grown that this prophecy predicts a future nuclear war. First off, the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in the Ukraine helped reveal the truth behind the prophecy. This is because, as I later found out, the Ukrainian word for the bitter herb "wormwood", which poisons water in the seventh seal prophecy, is "Chernobyl" (easily referenced- see, for instance: 'Chernobyl' (1987), by Andrey Illesh). If this were not enough, in February of 1991, in the middle of the Gulf War, a couple of friends and I had some rather remarkable experiences that I believe confirmed the meaning of the prophecy as well as indicated its imminent fulfillment. First off, on February 6th, I saw a special report of a chemical SCUD attack on Haifa Israel that did not exist (believe me, I checked it out fully; the report was never aired). Then, about a week later, I was with a friend of mine who had just become interested in Nostradamus and prophecies that might be connected with the Gulf War. After showing him some books I had on Nostradamus, I began reading him the seventh seal prophecy above. Just as I began reading it, we heard an air- raid siren followed by the bellowed percussion of a nuclear explosion. The authenticity of the experience led me to rush with my friend to a deep basement in a nearby building. From there I contacted the local fire department to see if any sirens had been sounded; however, none had. After returning to our original location, my friend and I began checking with others to see if anyone else had heard anything. No one else had. However, another friend of mine, who is very trustworthy, said that he had heard no air-raid siren that evening- he had heard one that afternoon. When I asked him whether or not it could have been a fire alarm, he responded: "No, it was distinctly an air-raid siren off in the distance". Needless to say, these extraordinary experiences led me to conclude that the conflict in the Persian Gulf might somehow be linked to a future global nuclear war- an event that would fit the ultimate crash I have been anticipating. Thus, I began to critically reexamine the events that had been taking place in the Gulf, and I quickly realized there was something seriously amiss. In fact, all the inconsistencies and contradictions pointed to one logical explanation: the Soviets and Iraq were engaging in large-scale strategic deception (see my paper, "The Persian Gulf Deception"). The reason they would be doing this was clarified after examining the rather frightening conclusion of our national security analysts during the late-1970s and early-1980's: the Soviets were preparing to fight and win a nuclear war (see: Richard Pipes' "Why the Soviet Union Thinks it could Fight and Win a Nuclear War" in 'Commentary' (July, 1977), Dr. William Van Cleave's "Soviet Strategic Nuclear Forces and Goals: Deception and Surprise" in 'Mesmerized By The Bear' (1987), and/or 'Soviet Strategy for Nuclear War' (1979), authored by Joseph Douglas). Of course, with remarkable fear-induced irrationality, Western society has completely ignored the possibility that Gorbachev's "New Thinking" may have been the introduction of a total lie rooted in the unthinkable "Russian Idea" (see Alexander Yanov's 'The Russian Challenge and the Year 2000' (1987)). There is, however, sufficient reason to believe this is the case. If you are wondering how it is that Western civilization and the world as whole could be so utterly deceived, I have a sensible explanation for you. After Jesus was crucified some 2,000 years ago, his message was spread across the world by way of the church. After a thousand years, Christianity became the dominant paradigm of society- an historical thesis. Then came the rise of Western civilization and rapid technological development. In the context of matter/spirit duality, this epoch of materialism necessarily involved a reaction against spirituality. Thus, over the past 1,000 years the "secular" worldview of science developed in opposition to the church and religion. The opposing worldview that has emerged, what I refer to as the "secular paradigm", is the historical antithesis of Christianity. According to it, ours is a godless universe that started with a "Big Bang" and is flowing towards ever greater disorder and meaninglessness. This contradicts the idea that, since the moment of creation, God has carried out purposeful work to create ever greater organization and meaning. According to the secular paradigm, life is the result of a process of elimination involving "random mutation" and "natural selection". Contrariwise, Christians believe that life comes from a purposeful, orderly process of creation and divine selection. With regard to society, the secular worldview holds that, with the guidance of some imaginal "invisible hand", selfishness and competition give rise to "general equilibrium". This contradicts the Christian view that unselfish cooperation and the guidance of God bring forth social harmony. All in all, the secular worldview that dominates today's world is the antithesis of Christ's worldview. Whereas Christ saw a harmonious universe created by God in which people must seek to cooperate and care for each other, modern man sees a chaotic, godless universe in which men create order by competing with each other and caring only about themselves. The problem is: What if Jesus told "The Truth"? Then man's current opposing worldview, the secular paradigm, is the opposite of truth, i.e., it is lies, false beliefs- popular, antichristian delusions. In this case, man, living according to a perspective that goes against reality, is doomed to commit systematic errors. Instead of bringing order to the world, he'll end up causing worse and worse disorder. Eventually his erroneous ways could end in self-destruction. Once science figured out how to split the atom, man had the ultimate means to such an irrational, suicidal End. Assuming that Jesus did know "The Truth", he correctly anticipated what man would end up doing to the world. His "rational expectations" are what Christian prophecy is all about. Thus, the fulfillment of biblical prophecy, i.e., the outbreak of the Apocalypse, verifies what Christ taught the world some 2,000 years ago. We should accept our interdependence and love each other as Jesus loved us, lest we end up destroying ourselves. The lesson of love Christ demonstrated to the world by life example was not a suggestion for us to heed or ignore as we please. He fully understood a vital universal law, the Golden Rule, that must be obeyed so that human civilization can avoid self-destructive consequences. Rejecting the beliefs, values and way of life taught by Jesus makes about as much sense as ignoring the the law of gravity and walking off a cliff. Yet, it is just such senselessness that man is currently suffering from, thus leading to the most catastrophic error in human history: The Apocalypse. Hopefully, this time man will learn from his mistake... ***THE TRUTH*** (By J. Adams) October, 1994 "And you shall know the truth, and the truth will set you free." (John; Ch.8, v.32) The global war described in my papers is a painful upset of man's expectations stemming from a catastrophic error in dominant beliefs and behavior. It involves the total collapse of man's self-confidence, i.e., his ego, as the world realizes the reigning "secular" worldview is irrational and false- a dangerous popular delusion. -The Truth- While the apocalyptic war I'm anticipating embodies a total upset of dominant secular beliefs and expectations, it involves the fulfillment of religious beliefs and expectations- i.e., the fulfillment of religious prophecy. In this sense, the secular worldview is being falsified while the truth, realism, and rationality of religion is established. So you understand exactly how this is the case, a brief overview of biblical prophecy is in order. In discussing my views concerning a future surprise world war involving a nuclear holocaust triggered by conflict in the Middle East, I have noticed that many people respond by saying I'm predicting the "end of the world". I then point out that I did not mention biblical prophecy. Yet, most people are quick to draw parallels between Christian predictions of an Apocalypse and world war three (of course, Jewish, Moslem, and most other world religions have their own prophetic versions of the Apocalypse). This is important because I personally do believe that the global conflict I expect is, indeed, that which is predicted in the Bible. In fact, while trying to determine what could cause the epic crash that now appears to be imminent, I, along with friends, went through what can only be logically classified as a private revelation that clued me into just how "The Crash" would most likely occur. Specifically, the revelation I went through had to do with the seventh seal prophecy from the eighth chapter of the Book of Revelation. This prophecy is the key to the revelation of "The Truth" in the context of the Apocalypse (the word apocalypse literally means "revelation"). After the seventh and final seal is broken in the Book of Revelation, the Apocalypse is unleashed and "The Truth" is revealed. Thus, the meaning behind the seventh seal prophecy is of the utmost prophetic importance... When the Lamb opened the seventh seal, (1) there was silence in heaven for about half an hour. Then I saw the seven angels who stand before God, and seven trumpets were given to them. And another angel came and stood at the alter with a golden censer; and he was given much incense to mingle with the prayers of all the saints upon the golden altar before the throne; and the smoke of the incense rose with the prayers of the saints from the hand of the angel before God. Then the angel took the censer and filled it with fire from the altar and threw it on the earth; and (2) there were peals of thunder, loud noises, flashes of lightening, and an earthquake. Now the seven angels who had the seven trumpets made ready to blow them. The first angel blew his trumpet, and (3) there followed hail and fire, mixed with blood, which fell on the earth; and a third of the earth was burnt up, and a third of the trees were burnt up, and all green grass was burnt up. The second angel blew his trumpet, and (4) something like a great mountain, burning with fire, was thrown into the sea; and a third of the sea became blood, a third of the living creatures in the sea died, and a third of the ships destroyed. The third angel blew his trumpet, and (5) a great star fell from heaven, blazing like a torch, and it fell on a third of the rivers and on the fountains of water. The name of the star is Wormwood. A third of the waters became wormwood, and many men died of the water, because it was made bitter. The fourth angel blew his trumpet, and (6) a third of the sun was struck, and a third of the moon, and a third of the stars, so that a third of their light was darkened; a third of the day was kept from shining, and likewise a third of the night. Then I looked, and I heard an eagle crying with a loud voice, as it flew in midheaven, "Woe, woe, woe to those who dwell on the earth, at the blasts of the other trumpets which the three angels are about to blow!" I have long believed that this prophecy is a depiction of a future nuclear war. Even though it was written some 2000 years ago, it accurately describes each major phase of a global nuclear holocaust: 1. The half hour of "silence in heaven" during which ICBM's would traverse their orbits before striking targets after being launched. 2. The thunderous reports, bright flashes, and earthquake associated with nuclear detonations. 3. The nuclear blasts of "hail and fire, mixed with blood" followed by raging fires that would consume much of the earth. 4. The nuclear explosions, "like a great mountain, burning with fire", all over the world's seas as ports, ships, and submarines are attacked. 5. The lethal contamination of water supplies by radioactive fallout ("Wormwood") for weeks after a nuclear war. 6. The blanketing of the sky by vast dust clouds after a nuclear war such that sunlight, moonlight, and starlight is obscured thereby causing a "nuclear winter". Over the years my conviction has grown that this prophecy predicts a future nuclear war. First off, the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in the Ukraine helped reveal the truth behind the prophecy. This is because, as I later found out, the Ukrainian word for the bitter herb "wormwood", which poisons water in the seventh seal prophecy, is "Chernobyl" (easily referenced- see, for instance: 'Chernobyl' (1987), by Andrey Illesh). If this were not enough, in February of 1991, in the middle of the Gulf War, a couple of friends and I had some rather remarkable experiences that I believe confirmed the meaning of the prophecy as well as indicated its imminent fulfillment. First off, on February 6th, I saw a special report of a chemical SCUD attack on Haifa Israel that did not exist (believe me, I checked it out fully; the report was never aired). Then, about a week later, I was with a friend of mine who had just become interested in Nostradamus and prophecies that might be connected with the Gulf War. After showing him some books I had on Nostradamus, I began reading him the seventh seal prophecy above. Just as I began reading it, we heard an air- raid siren followed by the bellowed percussion of a nuclear explosion. The authenticity of the experience led me to rush with my friend to a deep basement in a nearby building. From there I contacted the local fire department to see if any sirens had been sounded; however, none had. After returning to our original location, my friend and I began checking with others to see if anyone else had heard anything. No one else had. However, another friend of mine, who is very trustworthy, said that he had heard no air-raid siren that evening- he had heard one that afternoon. When I asked him whether or not it could have been a fire alarm, he responded: "No, it was distinctly an air-raid siren off in the distance". Needless to say, these extraordinary experiences led me to conclude that the conflict in the Persian Gulf might somehow be linked to a future global nuclear war- an event that would fit the ultimate crash I have been anticipating. Thus, I began to critically reexamine the events that had been taking place in the Gulf, and I quickly realized there was something seriously amiss. In fact, all the inconsistencies and contradictions pointed to one logical explanation: the Soviets and Iraq were engaging in large-scale strategic deception (see my paper, "The Persian Gulf Deception"). The reason they would be doing this was clarified after examining the rather frightening conclusion of our national security analysts during the late-1970s and early-1980's: the Soviets were preparing to fight and win a nuclear war (see: Richard Pipes' "Why the Soviet Union Thinks it could Fight and Win a Nuclear War" in 'Commentary' (July, 1977), Dr. William Van Cleave's "Soviet Strategic Nuclear Forces and Goals: Deception and Surprise" in 'Mesmerized By The Bear' (1987), and/or 'Soviet Strategy for Nuclear War' (1979), authored by Joseph Douglas). Of course, with remarkable fear-induced irrationality, Western society has completely ignored the possibility that Gorbachev's "New Thinking" may have been the introduction of a total lie rooted in the unthinkable "Russian Idea" (see Alexander Yanov's 'The Russian Challenge and the Year 2000' (1987)). There is, however, sufficient reason to believe this is the case. If you are wondering how it is that Western civilization and the world as whole could be so utterly deceived, I have a sensible explanation for you. After Jesus was crucified some 2,000 years ago, his message was spread across the world by way of the church. After a thousand years, Christianity became the dominant paradigm of society- an historical thesis. Then came the rise of Western civilization and rapid technological development. In the context of matter/spirit duality, this epoch of materialism necessarily involved a reaction against spirituality. Thus, over the past 1,000 years the "secular" worldview of science developed in opposition to the church and religion. The opposing worldview that has emerged, what I refer to as the "secular paradigm", is the historical antithesis of Christianity. According to it, ours is a godless universe that started with a "Big Bang" and is flowing towards ever greater disorder and meaninglessness. This contradicts the idea that, since the moment of creation, God has carried out purposeful work to create ever greater organization and meaning. According to the secular paradigm, life is the result of a process of elimination involving "random mutation" and "natural selection". Contrariwise, Christians believe that life comes from a purposeful, orderly process of creation and divine selection. With regard to society, the secular worldview holds that, with the guidance of some imaginal "invisible hand", selfishness and competition give rise to "general equilibrium". This contradicts the Christian view that unselfish cooperation and the guidance of God bring forth social harmony. All in all, the secular worldview that dominates today's world is the antithesis of Christ's worldview. Whereas Christ saw a harmonious universe created by God in which people must seek to cooperate and care for each other, modern man sees a chaotic, godless universe in which men create order by competing with each other and caring only about themselves. The problem is: What if Jesus told "The Truth"? Then man's current opposing worldview, the secular paradigm, is the opposite of truth, i.e., it is lies, false beliefs- popular, antichristian delusions. In this case, man, living according to a perspective that goes against reality, is doomed to commit systematic errors. Instead of bringing order to the world, he'll end up causing worse and worse disorder. Eventually his erroneous ways could end in self-destruction. Once science figured out how to split the atom, man had the ultimate means to such an irrational, suicidal End. Assuming that Jesus did know "The Truth", he correctly anticipated what man would end up doing to the world. His "rational expectations" are what Christian prophecy is all about. Thus, the fulfillment of biblical prophecy, i.e., the outbreak of the Apocalypse, verifies what Christ taught the world some 2,000 years ago. We should accept our interdependence and love each other as Jesus loved us, lest we end up destroying ourselves. The lesson of love Christ demonstrated to the world by life example was not a suggestion for us to heed or ignore as we please. He fully understood a vital universal law, the Golden Rule, that must be obeyed so that human civilization can avoid self-destructive consequences. Rejecting the beliefs, values and way of life taught by Jesus makes about as much sense as ignoring the the law of gravity and walking off a cliff. Yet, it is just such senselessness that man is currently suffering from, thus leading to the most catastrophic error in human history: The Apocalypse. Hopefully, this time man will learn from his mistake... (Comment on this)
4:02a	***THE TRUTH*** (By J. Adams) October, 1994 "And you shall know the truth, and the truth will set you free." (John; Ch.8, v.32) The global war described in my papers is a painful upset of man's expectations stemming from a catastrophic error in dominant beliefs and behavior. It involves the total collapse of man's self-confidence, i.e., his ego, as the world realizes the reigning "secular" worldview is irrational and false- a dangerous popular delusion. -The Truth- While the apocalyptic war I'm anticipating embodies a total upset of dominant secular beliefs and expectations, it involves the fulfillment of religious beliefs and expectations- i.e., the fulfillment of religious prophecy. In this sense, the secular worldview is being falsified while the truth, realism, and rationality of religion is established. So you understand exactly how this is the case, a brief overview of biblical prophecy is in order. In discussing my views concerning a future surprise world war involving a nuclear holocaust triggered by conflict in the Middle East, I have noticed that many people respond by saying I'm predicting the "end of the world". I then point out that I did not mention biblical prophecy. Yet, most people are quick to draw parallels between Christian predictions of an Apocalypse and world war three (of course, Jewish, Moslem, and most other world religions have their own prophetic versions of the Apocalypse). This is important because I personally do believe that the global conflict I expect is, indeed, that which is predicted in the Bible. In fact, while trying to determine what could cause the epic crash that now appears to be imminent, I, along with friends, went through what can only be logically classified as a private revelation that clued me into just how "The Crash" would most likely occur. Specifically, the revelation I went through had to do with the seventh seal prophecy from the eighth chapter of the Book of Revelation. This prophecy is the key to the revelation of "The Truth" in the context of the Apocalypse (the word apocalypse literally means "revelation"). After the seventh and final seal is broken in the Book of Revelation, the Apocalypse is unleashed and "The Truth" is revealed. Thus, the meaning behind the seventh seal prophecy is of the utmost prophetic importance... When the Lamb opened the seventh seal, (1) there was silence in heaven for about half an hour. Then I saw the seven angels who stand before God, and seven trumpets were given to them. And another angel came and stood at the alter with a golden censer; and he was given much incense to mingle with the prayers of all the saints upon the golden altar before the throne; and the smoke of the incense rose with the prayers of the saints from the hand of the angel before God. Then the angel took the censer and filled it with fire from the altar and threw it on the earth; and (2) there were peals of thunder, loud noises, flashes of lightening, and an earthquake. Now the seven angels who had the seven trumpets made ready to blow them. The first angel blew his trumpet, and (3) there followed hail and fire, mixed with blood, which fell on the earth; and a third of the earth was burnt up, and a third of the trees were burnt up, and all green grass was burnt up. The second angel blew his trumpet, and (4) something like a great mountain, burning with fire, was thrown into the sea; and a third of the sea became blood, a third of the living creatures in the sea died, and a third of the ships destroyed. The third angel blew his trumpet, and (5) a great star fell from heaven, blazing like a torch, and it fell on a third of the rivers and on the fountains of water. The name of the star is Wormwood. A third of the waters became wormwood, and many men died of the water, because it was made bitter. The fourth angel blew his trumpet, and (6) a third of the sun was struck, and a third of the moon, and a third of the stars, so that a third of their light was darkened; a third of the day was kept from shining, and likewise a third of the night. Then I looked, and I heard an eagle crying with a loud voice, as it flew in midheaven, "Woe, woe, woe to those who dwell on the earth, at the blasts of the other trumpets which the three angels are about to blow!" I have long believed that this prophecy is a depiction of a future nuclear war. Even though it was written some 2000 years ago, it accurately describes each major phase of a global nuclear holocaust: 1. The half hour of "silence in heaven" during which ICBM's would traverse their orbits before striking targets after being launched. 2. The thunderous reports, bright flashes, and earthquake associated with nuclear detonations. 3. The nuclear blasts of "hail and fire, mixed with blood" followed by raging fires that would consume much of the earth. 4. The nuclear explosions, "like a great mountain, burning with fire", all over the world's seas as ports, ships, and submarines are attacked. 5. The lethal contamination of water supplies by radioactive fallout ("Wormwood") for weeks after a nuclear war. 6. The blanketing of the sky by vast dust clouds after a nuclear war such that sunlight, moonlight, and starlight is obscured thereby causing a "nuclear winter". Over the years my conviction has grown that this prophecy predicts a future nuclear war. First off, the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in the Ukraine helped reveal the truth behind the prophecy. This is because, as I later found out, the Ukrainian word for the bitter herb "wormwood", which poisons water in the seventh seal prophecy, is "Chernobyl" (easily referenced- see, for instance: 'Chernobyl' (1987), by Andrey Illesh). If this were not enough, in February of 1991, in the middle of the Gulf War, a couple of friends and I had some rather remarkable experiences that I believe confirmed the meaning of the prophecy as well as indicated its imminent fulfillment. First off, on February 6th, I saw a special report of a chemical SCUD attack on Haifa Israel that did not exist (believe me, I checked it out fully; the report was never aired). Then, about a week later, I was with a friend of mine who had just become interested in Nostradamus and prophecies that might be connected with the Gulf War. After showing him some books I had on Nostradamus, I began reading him the seventh seal prophecy above. Just as I began reading it, we heard an air- raid siren followed by the bellowed percussion of a nuclear explosion. The authenticity of the experience led me to rush with my friend to a deep basement in a nearby building. From there I contacted the local fire department to see if any sirens had been sounded; however, none had. After returning to our original location, my friend and I began checking with others to see if anyone else had heard anything. No one else had. However, another friend of mine, who is very trustworthy, said that he had heard no air-raid siren that evening- he had heard one that afternoon. When I asked him whether or not it could have been a fire alarm, he responded: "No, it was distinctly an air-raid siren off in the distance". Needless to say, these extraordinary experiences led me to conclude that the conflict in the Persian Gulf might somehow be linked to a future global nuclear war- an event that would fit the ultimate crash I have been anticipating. Thus, I began to critically reexamine the events that had been taking place in the Gulf, and I quickly realized there was something seriously amiss. In fact, all the inconsistencies and contradictions pointed to one logical explanation: the Soviets and Iraq were engaging in large-scale strategic deception (see my paper, "The Persian Gulf Deception"). The reason they would be doing this was clarified after examining the rather frightening conclusion of our national security analysts during the late-1970s and early-1980's: the Soviets were preparing to fight and win a nuclear war (see: Richard Pipes' "Why the Soviet Union Thinks it could Fight and Win a Nuclear War" in 'Commentary' (July, 1977), Dr. William Van Cleave's "Soviet Strategic Nuclear Forces and Goals: Deception and Surprise" in 'Mesmerized By The Bear' (1987), and/or 'Soviet Strategy for Nuclear War' (1979), authored by Joseph Douglas). Of course, with remarkable fear-induced irrationality, Western society has completely ignored the possibility that Gorbachev's "New Thinking" may have been the introduction of a total lie rooted in the unthinkable "Russian Idea" (see Alexander Yanov's 'The Russian Challenge and the Year 2000' (1987)). There is, however, sufficient reason to believe this is the case. If you are wondering how it is that Western civilization and the world as whole could be so utterly deceived, I have a sensible explanation for you. After Jesus was crucified some 2,000 years ago, his message was spread across the world by way of the church. After a thousand years, Christianity became the dominant paradigm of society- an historical thesis. Then came the rise of Western civilization and rapid technological development. In the context of matter/spirit duality, this epoch of materialism necessarily involved a reaction against spirituality. Thus, over the past 1,000 years the "secular" worldview of science developed in opposition to the church and religion. The opposing worldview that has emerged, what I refer to as the "secular paradigm", is the historical antithesis of Christianity. According to it, ours is a godless universe that started with a "Big Bang" and is flowing towards ever greater disorder and meaninglessness. This contradicts the idea that, since the moment of creation, God has carried out purposeful work to create ever greater organization and meaning. According to the secular paradigm, life is the result of a process of elimination involving "random mutation" and "natural selection". Contrariwise, Christians believe that life comes from a purposeful, orderly process of creation and divine selection. With regard to society, the secular worldview holds that, with the guidance of some imaginal "invisible hand", selfishness and competition give rise to "general equilibrium". This contradicts the Christian view that unselfish cooperation and the guidance of God bring forth social harmony. All in all, the secular worldview that dominates today's world is the antithesis of Christ's worldview. Whereas Christ saw a harmonious universe created by God in which people must seek to cooperate and care for each other, modern man sees a chaotic, godless universe in which men create order by competing with each other and caring only about themselves. The problem is: What if Jesus told "The Truth"? Then man's current opposing worldview, the secular paradigm, is the opposite of truth, i.e., it is lies, false beliefs- popular, antichristian delusions. In this case, man, living according to a perspective that goes against reality, is doomed to commit systematic errors. Instead of bringing order to the world, he'll end up causing worse and worse disorder. Eventually his erroneous ways could end in self-destruction. Once science figured out how to split the atom, man had the ultimate means to such an irrational, suicidal End. Assuming that Jesus did know "The Truth", he correctly anticipated what man would end up doing to the world. His "rational expectations" are what Christian prophecy is all about. Thus, the fulfillment of biblical prophecy, i.e., the outbreak of the Apocalypse, verifies what Christ taught the world some 2,000 years ago. We should accept our interdependence and love each other as Jesus loved us, lest we end up destroying ourselves. The lesson of love Christ demonstrated to the world by life example was not a suggestion for us to heed or ignore as we please. He fully understood a vital universal law, the Golden Rule, that must be obeyed so that human civilization can avoid self-destructive consequences. Rejecting the beliefs, values and way of life taught by Jesus makes about as much sense as ignoring the the law of gravity and walking off a cliff. Yet, it is just such senselessness that man is currently suffering from, thus leading to the most catastrophic error in human history: The Apocalypse. Hopefully, this time man will learn from his mistake... ***THE TRUTH*** (By J. Adams) October, 1994 "And you shall know the truth, and the truth will set you free." (John; Ch.8, v.32) The global war described in my papers is a painful upset of man's expectations stemming from a catastrophic error in dominant beliefs and behavior. It involves the total collapse of man's self-confidence, i.e., his ego, as the world realizes the reigning "secular" worldview is irrational and false- a dangerous popular delusion. -The Truth- While the apocalyptic war I'm anticipating embodies a total upset of dominant secular beliefs and expectations, it involves the fulfillment of religious beliefs and expectations- i.e., the fulfillment of religious prophecy. In this sense, the secular worldview is being falsified while the truth, realism, and rationality of religion is established. So you understand exactly how this is the case, a brief overview of biblical prophecy is in order. In discussing my views concerning a future surprise world war involving a nuclear holocaust triggered by conflict in the Middle East, I have noticed that many people respond by saying I'm predicting the "end of the world". I then point out that I did not mention biblical prophecy. Yet, most people are quick to draw parallels between Christian predictions of an Apocalypse and world war three (of course, Jewish, Moslem, and most other world religions have their own prophetic versions of the Apocalypse). This is important because I personally do believe that the global conflict I expect is, indeed, that which is predicted in the Bible. In fact, while trying to determine what could cause the epic crash that now appears to be imminent, I, along with friends, went through what can only be logically classified as a private revelation that clued me into just how "The Crash" would most likely occur. Specifically, the revelation I went through had to do with the seventh seal prophecy from the eighth chapter of the Book of Revelation. This prophecy is the key to the revelation of "The Truth" in the context of the Apocalypse (the word apocalypse literally means "revelation"). After the seventh and final seal is broken in the Book of Revelation, the Apocalypse is unleashed and "The Truth" is revealed. Thus, the meaning behind the seventh seal prophecy is of the utmost prophetic importance... When the Lamb opened the seventh seal, (1) there was silence in heaven for about half an hour. Then I saw the seven angels who stand before God, and seven trumpets were given to them. And another angel came and stood at the alter with a golden censer; and he was given much incense to mingle with the prayers of all the saints upon the golden altar before the throne; and the smoke of the incense rose with the prayers of the saints from the hand of the angel before God. Then the angel took the censer and filled it with fire from the altar and threw it on the earth; and (2) there were peals of thunder, loud noises, flashes of lightening, and an earthquake. Now the seven angels who had the seven trumpets made ready to blow them. The first angel blew his trumpet, and (3) there followed hail and fire, mixed with blood, which fell on the earth; and a third of the earth was burnt up, and a third of the trees were burnt up, and all green grass was burnt up. The second angel blew his trumpet, and (4) something like a great mountain, burning with fire, was thrown into the sea; and a third of the sea became blood, a third of the living creatures in the sea died, and a third of the ships destroyed. The third angel blew his trumpet, and (5) a great star fell from heaven, blazing like a torch, and it fell on a third of the rivers and on the fountains of water. The name of the star is Wormwood. A third of the waters became wormwood, and many men died of the water, because it was made bitter. The fourth angel blew his trumpet, and (6) a third of the sun was struck, and a third of the moon, and a third of the stars, so that a third of their light was darkened; a third of the day was kept from shining, and likewise a third of the night. Then I looked, and I heard an eagle crying with a loud voice, as it flew in midheaven, "Woe, woe, woe to those who dwell on the earth, at the blasts of the other trumpets which the three angels are about to blow!" I have long believed that this prophecy is a depiction of a future nuclear war. Even though it was written some 2000 years ago, it accurately describes each major phase of a global nuclear holocaust: 1. The half hour of "silence in heaven" during which ICBM's would traverse their orbits before striking targets after being launched. 2. The thunderous reports, bright flashes, and earthquake associated with nuclear detonations. 3. The nuclear blasts of "hail and fire, mixed with blood" followed by raging fires that would consume much of the earth. 4. The nuclear explosions, "like a great mountain, burning with fire", all over the world's seas as ports, ships, and submarines are attacked. 5. The lethal contamination of water supplies by radioactive fallout ("Wormwood") for weeks after a nuclear war. 6. The blanketing of the sky by vast dust clouds after a nuclear war such that sunlight, moonlight, and starlight is obscured thereby causing a "nuclear winter". Over the years my conviction has grown that this prophecy predicts a future nuclear war. First off, the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in the Ukraine helped reveal the truth behind the prophecy. This is because, as I later found out, the Ukrainian word for the bitter herb "wormwood", which poisons water in the seventh seal prophecy, is "Chernobyl" (easily referenced- see, for instance: 'Chernobyl' (1987), by Andrey Illesh). If this were not enough, in February of 1991, in the middle of the Gulf War, a couple of friends and I had some rather remarkable experiences that I believe confirmed the meaning of the prophecy as well as indicated its imminent fulfillment. First off, on February 6th, I saw a special report of a chemical SCUD attack on Haifa Israel that did not exist (believe me, I checked it out fully; the report was never aired). Then, about a week later, I was with a friend of mine who had just become interested in Nostradamus and prophecies that might be connected with the Gulf War. After showing him some books I had on Nostradamus, I began reading him the seventh seal prophecy above. Just as I began reading it, we heard an air- raid siren followed by the bellowed percussion of a nuclear explosion. The authenticity of the experience led me to rush with my friend to a deep basement in a nearby building. From there I contacted the local fire department to see if any sirens had been sounded; however, none had. After returning to our original location, my friend and I began checking with others to see if anyone else had heard anything. No one else had. However, another friend of mine, who is very trustworthy, said that he had heard no air-raid siren that evening- he had heard one that afternoon. When I asked him whether or not it could have been a fire alarm, he responded: "No, it was distinctly an air-raid siren off in the distance". Needless to say, these extraordinary experiences led me to conclude that the conflict in the Persian Gulf might somehow be linked to a future global nuclear war- an event that would fit the ultimate crash I have been anticipating. Thus, I began to critically reexamine the events that had been taking place in the Gulf, and I quickly realized there was something seriously amiss. In fact, all the inconsistencies and contradictions pointed to one logical explanation: the Soviets and Iraq were engaging in large-scale strategic deception (see my paper, "The Persian Gulf Deception"). The reason they would be doing this was clarified after examining the rather frightening conclusion of our national security analysts during the late-1970s and early-1980's: the Soviets were preparing to fight and win a nuclear war (see: Richard Pipes' "Why the Soviet Union Thinks it could Fight and Win a Nuclear War" in 'Commentary' (July, 1977), Dr. William Van Cleave's "Soviet Strategic Nuclear Forces and Goals: Deception and Surprise" in 'Mesmerized By The Bear' (1987), and/or 'Soviet Strategy for Nuclear War' (1979), authored by Joseph Douglas). Of course, with remarkable fear-induced irrationality, Western society has completely ignored the possibility that Gorbachev's "New Thinking" may have been the introduction of a total lie rooted in the unthinkable "Russian Idea" (see Alexander Yanov's 'The Russian Challenge and the Year 2000' (1987)). There is, however, sufficient reason to believe this is the case. If you are wondering how it is that Western civilization and the world as whole could be so utterly deceived, I have a sensible explanation for you. After Jesus was crucified some 2,000 years ago, his message was spread across the world by way of the church. After a thousand years, Christianity became the dominant paradigm of society- an historical thesis. Then came the rise of Western civilization and rapid technological development. In the context of matter/spirit duality, this epoch of materialism necessarily involved a reaction against spirituality. Thus, over the past 1,000 years the "secular" worldview of science developed in opposition to the church and religion. The opposing worldview that has emerged, what I refer to as the "secular paradigm", is the historical antithesis of Christianity. According to it, ours is a godless universe that started with a "Big Bang" and is flowing towards ever greater disorder and meaninglessness. This contradicts the idea that, since the moment of creation, God has carried out purposeful work to create ever greater organization and meaning. According to the secular paradigm, life is the result of a process of elimination involving "random mutation" and "natural selection". Contrariwise, Christians believe that life comes from a purposeful, orderly process of creation and divine selection. With regard to society, the secular worldview holds that, with the guidance of some imaginal "invisible hand", selfishness and competition give rise to "general equilibrium". This contradicts the Christian view that unselfish cooperation and the guidance of God bring forth social harmony. All in all, the secular worldview that dominates today's world is the antithesis of Christ's worldview. Whereas Christ saw a harmonious universe created by God in which people must seek to cooperate and care for each other, modern man sees a chaotic, godless universe in which men create order by competing with each other and caring only about themselves. The problem is: What if Jesus told "The Truth"? Then man's current opposing worldview, the secular paradigm, is the opposite of truth, i.e., it is lies, false beliefs- popular, antichristian delusions. In this case, man, living according to a perspective that goes against reality, is doomed to commit systematic errors. Instead of bringing order to the world, he'll end up causing worse and worse disorder. Eventually his erroneous ways could end in self-destruction. Once science figured out how to split the atom, man had the ultimate means to such an irrational, suicidal End. Assuming that Jesus did know "The Truth", he correctly anticipated what man would end up doing to the world. His "rational expectations" are what Christian prophecy is all about. Thus, the fulfillment of biblical prophecy, i.e., the outbreak of the Apocalypse, verifies what Christ taught the world some 2,000 years ago. We should accept our interdependence and love each other as Jesus loved us, lest we end up destroying ourselves. The lesson of love Christ demonstrated to the world by life example was not a suggestion for us to heed or ignore as we please. He fully understood a vital universal law, the Golden Rule, that must be obeyed so that human civilization can avoid self-destructive consequences. Rejecting the beliefs, values and way of life taught by Jesus makes about as much sense as ignoring the the law of gravity and walking off a cliff. Yet, it is just such senselessness that man is currently suffering from, thus leading to the most catastrophic error in human history: The Apocalypse. Hopefully, this time man will learn from his mistake... (Comment on this)
4:02a	***THE TRUTH*** (By J. Adams) October, 1994 "And you shall know the truth, and the truth will set you free." (John; Ch.8, v.32) The global war described in my papers is a painful upset of man's expectations stemming from a catastrophic error in dominant beliefs and behavior. It involves the total collapse of man's self-confidence, i.e., his ego, as the world realizes the reigning "secular" worldview is irrational and false- a dangerous popular delusion. -The Truth- While the apocalyptic war I'm anticipating embodies a total upset of dominant secular beliefs and expectations, it involves the fulfillment of religious beliefs and expectations- i.e., the fulfillment of religious prophecy. In this sense, the secular worldview is being falsified while the truth, realism, and rationality of religion is established. So you understand exactly how this is the case, a brief overview of biblical prophecy is in order. In discussing my views concerning a future surprise world war involving a nuclear holocaust triggered by conflict in the Middle East, I have noticed that many people respond by saying I'm predicting the "end of the world". I then point out that I did not mention biblical prophecy. Yet, most people are quick to draw parallels between Christian predictions of an Apocalypse and world war three (of course, Jewish, Moslem, and most other world religions have their own prophetic versions of the Apocalypse). This is important because I personally do believe that the global conflict I expect is, indeed, that which is predicted in the Bible. In fact, while trying to determine what could cause the epic crash that now appears to be imminent, I, along with friends, went through what can only be logically classified as a private revelation that clued me into just how "The Crash" would most likely occur. Specifically, the revelation I went through had to do with the seventh seal prophecy from the eighth chapter of the Book of Revelation. This prophecy is the key to the revelation of "The Truth" in the context of the Apocalypse (the word apocalypse literally means "revelation"). After the seventh and final seal is broken in the Book of Revelation, the Apocalypse is unleashed and "The Truth" is revealed. Thus, the meaning behind the seventh seal prophecy is of the utmost prophetic importance... When the Lamb opened the seventh seal, (1) there was silence in heaven for about half an hour. Then I saw the seven angels who stand before God, and seven trumpets were given to them. And another angel came and stood at the alter with a golden censer; and he was given much incense to mingle with the prayers of all the saints upon the golden altar before the throne; and the smoke of the incense rose with the prayers of the saints from the hand of the angel before God. Then the angel took the censer and filled it with fire from the altar and threw it on the earth; and (2) there were peals of thunder, loud noises, flashes of lightening, and an earthquake. Now the seven angels who had the seven trumpets made ready to blow them. The first angel blew his trumpet, and (3) there followed hail and fire, mixed with blood, which fell on the earth; and a third of the earth was burnt up, and a third of the trees were burnt up, and all green grass was burnt up. The second angel blew his trumpet, and (4) something like a great mountain, burning with fire, was thrown into the sea; and a third of the sea became blood, a third of the living creatures in the sea died, and a third of the ships destroyed. The third angel blew his trumpet, and (5) a great star fell from heaven, blazing like a torch, and it fell on a third of the rivers and on the fountains of water. The name of the star is Wormwood. A third of the waters became wormwood, and many men died of the water, because it was made bitter. The fourth angel blew his trumpet, and (6) a third of the sun was struck, and a third of the moon, and a third of the stars, so that a third of their light was darkened; a third of the day was kept from shining, and likewise a third of the night. Then I looked, and I heard an eagle crying with a loud voice, as it flew in midheaven, "Woe, woe, woe to those who dwell on the earth, at the blasts of the other trumpets which the three angels are about to blow!" I have long believed that this prophecy is a depiction of a future nuclear war. Even though it was written some 2000 years ago, it accurately describes each major phase of a global nuclear holocaust: 1. The half hour of "silence in heaven" during which ICBM's would traverse their orbits before striking targets after being launched. 2. The thunderous reports, bright flashes, and earthquake associated with nuclear detonations. 3. The nuclear blasts of "hail and fire, mixed with blood" followed by raging fires that would consume much of the earth. 4. The nuclear explosions, "like a great mountain, burning with fire", all over the world's seas as ports, ships, and submarines are attacked. 5. The lethal contamination of water supplies by radioactive fallout ("Wormwood") for weeks after a nuclear war. 6. The blanketing of the sky by vast dust clouds after a nuclear war such that sunlight, moonlight, and starlight is obscured thereby causing a "nuclear winter". Over the years my conviction has grown that this prophecy predicts a future nuclear war. First off, the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in the Ukraine helped reveal the truth behind the prophecy. This is because, as I later found out, the Ukrainian word for the bitter herb "wormwood", which poisons water in the seventh seal prophecy, is "Chernobyl" (easily referenced- see, for instance: 'Chernobyl' (1987), by Andrey Illesh). If this were not enough, in February of 1991, in the middle of the Gulf War, a couple of friends and I had some rather remarkable experiences that I believe confirmed the meaning of the prophecy as well as indicated its imminent fulfillment. First off, on February 6th, I saw a special report of a chemical SCUD attack on Haifa Israel that did not exist (believe me, I checked it out fully; the report was never aired). Then, about a week later, I was with a friend of mine who had just become interested in Nostradamus and prophecies that might be connected with the Gulf War. After showing him some books I had on Nostradamus, I began reading him the seventh seal prophecy above. Just as I began reading it, we heard an air- raid siren followed by the bellowed percussion of a nuclear explosion. The authenticity of the experience led me to rush with my friend to a deep basement in a nearby building. From there I contacted the local fire department to see if any sirens had been sounded; however, none had. After returning to our original location, my friend and I began checking with others to see if anyone else had heard anything. No one else had. However, another friend of mine, who is very trustworthy, said that he had heard no air-raid siren that evening- he had heard one that afternoon. When I asked him whether or not it could have been a fire alarm, he responded: "No, it was distinctly an air-raid siren off in the distance". Needless to say, these extraordinary experiences led me to conclude that the conflict in the Persian Gulf might somehow be linked to a future global nuclear war- an event that would fit the ultimate crash I have been anticipating. Thus, I began to critically reexamine the events that had been taking place in the Gulf, and I quickly realized there was something seriously amiss. In fact, all the inconsistencies and contradictions pointed to one logical explanation: the Soviets and Iraq were engaging in large-scale strategic deception (see my paper, "The Persian Gulf Deception"). The reason they would be doing this was clarified after examining the rather frightening conclusion of our national security analysts during the late-1970s and early-1980's: the Soviets were preparing to fight and win a nuclear war (see: Richard Pipes' "Why the Soviet Union Thinks it could Fight and Win a Nuclear War" in 'Commentary' (July, 1977), Dr. William Van Cleave's "Soviet Strategic Nuclear Forces and Goals: Deception and Surprise" in 'Mesmerized By The Bear' (1987), and/or 'Soviet Strategy for Nuclear War' (1979), authored by Joseph Douglas). Of course, with remarkable fear-induced irrationality, Western society has completely ignored the possibility that Gorbachev's "New Thinking" may have been the introduction of a total lie rooted in the unthinkable "Russian Idea" (see Alexander Yanov's 'The Russian Challenge and the Year 2000' (1987)). There is, however, sufficient reason to believe this is the case. If you are wondering how it is that Western civilization and the world as whole could be so utterly deceived, I have a sensible explanation for you. After Jesus was crucified some 2,000 years ago, his message was spread across the world by way of the church. After a thousand years, Christianity became the dominant paradigm of society- an historical thesis. Then came the rise of Western civilization and rapid technological development. In the context of matter/spirit duality, this epoch of materialism necessarily involved a reaction against spirituality. Thus, over the past 1,000 years the "secular" worldview of science developed in opposition to the church and religion. The opposing worldview that has emerged, what I refer to as the "secular paradigm", is the historical antithesis of Christianity. According to it, ours is a godless universe that started with a "Big Bang" and is flowing towards ever greater disorder and meaninglessness. This contradicts the idea that, since the moment of creation, God has carried out purposeful work to create ever greater organization and meaning. According to the secular paradigm, life is the result of a process of elimination involving "random mutation" and "natural selection". Contrariwise, Christians believe that life comes from a purposeful, orderly process of creation and divine selection. With regard to society, the secular worldview holds that, with the guidance of some imaginal "invisible hand", selfishness and competition give rise to "general equilibrium". This contradicts the Christian view that unselfish cooperation and the guidance of God bring forth social harmony. All in all, the secular worldview that dominates today's world is the antithesis of Christ's worldview. Whereas Christ saw a harmonious universe created by God in which people must seek to cooperate and care for each other, modern man sees a chaotic, godless universe in which men create order by competing with each other and caring only about themselves. The problem is: What if Jesus told "The Truth"? Then man's current opposing worldview, the secular paradigm, is the opposite of truth, i.e., it is lies, false beliefs- popular, antichristian delusions. In this case, man, living according to a perspective that goes against reality, is doomed to commit systematic errors. Instead of bringing order to the world, he'll end up causing worse and worse disorder. Eventually his erroneous ways could end in self-destruction. Once science figured out how to split the atom, man had the ultimate means to such an irrational, suicidal End. Assuming that Jesus did know "The Truth", he correctly anticipated what man would end up doing to the world. His "rational expectations" are what Christian prophecy is all about. Thus, the fulfillment of biblical prophecy, i.e., the outbreak of the Apocalypse, verifies what Christ taught the world some 2,000 years ago. We should accept our interdependence and love each other as Jesus loved us, lest we end up destroying ourselves. The lesson of love Christ demonstrated to the world by life example was not a suggestion for us to heed or ignore as we please. He fully understood a vital universal law, the Golden Rule, that must be obeyed so that human civilization can avoid self-destructive consequences. Rejecting the beliefs, values and way of life taught by Jesus makes about as much sense as ignoring the the law of gravity and walking off a cliff. Yet, it is just such senselessness that man is currently suffering from, thus leading to the most catastrophic error in human history: The Apocalypse. Hopefully, this time man will learn from his mistake... ***THE TRUTH*** (By J. Adams) October, 1994 "And you shall know the truth, and the truth will set you free." (John; Ch.8, v.32) The global war described in my papers is a painful upset of man's expectations stemming from a catastrophic error in dominant beliefs and behavior. It involves the total collapse of man's self-confidence, i.e., his ego, as the world realizes the reigning "secular" worldview is irrational and false- a dangerous popular delusion. -The Truth- While the apocalyptic war I'm anticipating embodies a total upset of dominant secular beliefs and expectations, it involves the fulfillment of religious beliefs and expectations- i.e., the fulfillment of religious prophecy. In this sense, the secular worldview is being falsified while the truth, realism, and rationality of religion is established. So you understand exactly how this is the case, a brief overview of biblical prophecy is in order. In discussing my views concerning a future surprise world war involving a nuclear holocaust triggered by conflict in the Middle East, I have noticed that many people respond by saying I'm predicting the "end of the world". I then point out that I did not mention biblical prophecy. Yet, most people are quick to draw parallels between Christian predictions of an Apocalypse and world war three (of course, Jewish, Moslem, and most other world religions have their own prophetic versions of the Apocalypse). This is important because I personally do believe that the global conflict I expect is, indeed, that which is predicted in the Bible. In fact, while trying to determine what could cause the epic crash that now appears to be imminent, I, along with friends, went through what can only be logically classified as a private revelation that clued me into just how "The Crash" would most likely occur. Specifically, the revelation I went through had to do with the seventh seal prophecy from the eighth chapter of the Book of Revelation. This prophecy is the key to the revelation of "The Truth" in the context of the Apocalypse (the word apocalypse literally means "revelation"). After the seventh and final seal is broken in the Book of Revelation, the Apocalypse is unleashed and "The Truth" is revealed. Thus, the meaning behind the seventh seal prophecy is of the utmost prophetic importance... When the Lamb opened the seventh seal, (1) there was silence in heaven for about half an hour. Then I saw the seven angels who stand before God, and seven trumpets were given to them. And another angel came and stood at the alter with a golden censer; and he was given much incense to mingle with the prayers of all the saints upon the golden altar before the throne; and the smoke of the incense rose with the prayers of the saints from the hand of the angel before God. Then the angel took the censer and filled it with fire from the altar and threw it on the earth; and (2) there were peals of thunder, loud noises, flashes of lightening, and an earthquake. Now the seven angels who had the seven trumpets made ready to blow them. The first angel blew his trumpet, and (3) there followed hail and fire, mixed with blood, which fell on the earth; and a third of the earth was burnt up, and a third of the trees were burnt up, and all green grass was burnt up. The second angel blew his trumpet, and (4) something like a great mountain, burning with fire, was thrown into the sea; and a third of the sea became blood, a third of the living creatures in the sea died, and a third of the ships destroyed. The third angel blew his trumpet, and (5) a great star fell from heaven, blazing like a torch, and it fell on a third of the rivers and on the fountains of water. The name of the star is Wormwood. A third of the waters became wormwood, and many men died of the water, because it was made bitter. The fourth angel blew his trumpet, and (6) a third of the sun was struck, and a third of the moon, and a third of the stars, so that a third of their light was darkened; a third of the day was kept from shining, and likewise a third of the night. Then I looked, and I heard an eagle crying with a loud voice, as it flew in midheaven, "Woe, woe, woe to those who dwell on the earth, at the blasts of the other trumpets which the three angels are about to blow!" I have long believed that this prophecy is a depiction of a future nuclear war. Even though it was written some 2000 years ago, it accurately describes each major phase of a global nuclear holocaust: 1. The half hour of "silence in heaven" during which ICBM's would traverse their orbits before striking targets after being launched. 2. The thunderous reports, bright flashes, and earthquake associated with nuclear detonations. 3. The nuclear blasts of "hail and fire, mixed with blood" followed by raging fires that would consume much of the earth. 4. The nuclear explosions, "like a great mountain, burning with fire", all over the world's seas as ports, ships, and submarines are attacked. 5. The lethal contamination of water supplies by radioactive fallout ("Wormwood") for weeks after a nuclear war. 6. The blanketing of the sky by vast dust clouds after a nuclear war such that sunlight, moonlight, and starlight is obscured thereby causing a "nuclear winter". Over the years my conviction has grown that this prophecy predicts a future nuclear war. First off, the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in the Ukraine helped reveal the truth behind the prophecy. This is because, as I later found out, the Ukrainian word for the bitter herb "wormwood", which poisons water in the seventh seal prophecy, is "Chernobyl" (easily referenced- see, for instance: 'Chernobyl' (1987), by Andrey Illesh). If this were not enough, in February of 1991, in the middle of the Gulf War, a couple of friends and I had some rather remarkable experiences that I believe confirmed the meaning of the prophecy as well as indicated its imminent fulfillment. First off, on February 6th, I saw a special report of a chemical SCUD attack on Haifa Israel that did not exist (believe me, I checked it out fully; the report was never aired). Then, about a week later, I was with a friend of mine who had just become interested in Nostradamus and prophecies that might be connected with the Gulf War. After showing him some books I had on Nostradamus, I began reading him the seventh seal prophecy above. Just as I began reading it, we heard an air- raid siren followed by the bellowed percussion of a nuclear explosion. The authenticity of the experience led me to rush with my friend to a deep basement in a nearby building. From there I contacted the local fire department to see if any sirens had been sounded; however, none had. After returning to our original location, my friend and I began checking with others to see if anyone else had heard anything. No one else had. However, another friend of mine, who is very trustworthy, said that he had heard no air-raid siren that evening- he had heard one that afternoon. When I asked him whether or not it could have been a fire alarm, he responded: "No, it was distinctly an air-raid siren off in the distance". Needless to say, these extraordinary experiences led me to conclude that the conflict in the Persian Gulf might somehow be linked to a future global nuclear war- an event that would fit the ultimate crash I have been anticipating. Thus, I began to critically reexamine the events that had been taking place in the Gulf, and I quickly realized there was something seriously amiss. In fact, all the inconsistencies and contradictions pointed to one logical explanation: the Soviets and Iraq were engaging in large-scale strategic deception (see my paper, "The Persian Gulf Deception"). The reason they would be doing this was clarified after examining the rather frightening conclusion of our national security analysts during the late-1970s and early-1980's: the Soviets were preparing to fight and win a nuclear war (see: Richard Pipes' "Why the Soviet Union Thinks it could Fight and Win a Nuclear War" in 'Commentary' (July, 1977), Dr. William Van Cleave's "Soviet Strategic Nuclear Forces and Goals: Deception and Surprise" in 'Mesmerized By The Bear' (1987), and/or 'Soviet Strategy for Nuclear War' (1979), authored by Joseph Douglas). Of course, with remarkable fear-induced irrationality, Western society has completely ignored the possibility that Gorbachev's "New Thinking" may have been the introduction of a total lie rooted in the unthinkable "Russian Idea" (see Alexander Yanov's 'The Russian Challenge and the Year 2000' (1987)). There is, however, sufficient reason to believe this is the case. If you are wondering how it is that Western civilization and the world as whole could be so utterly deceived, I have a sensible explanation for you. After Jesus was crucified some 2,000 years ago, his message was spread across the world by way of the church. After a thousand years, Christianity became the dominant paradigm of society- an historical thesis. Then came the rise of Western civilization and rapid technological development. In the context of matter/spirit duality, this epoch of materialism necessarily involved a reaction against spirituality. Thus, over the past 1,000 years the "secular" worldview of science developed in opposition to the church and religion. The opposing worldview that has emerged, what I refer to as the "secular paradigm", is the historical antithesis of Christianity. According to it, ours is a godless universe that started with a "Big Bang" and is flowing towards ever greater disorder and meaninglessness. This contradicts the idea that, since the moment of creation, God has carried out purposeful work to create ever greater organization and meaning. According to the secular paradigm, life is the result of a process of elimination involving "random mutation" and "natural selection". Contrariwise, Christians believe that life comes from a purposeful, orderly process of creation and divine selection. With regard to society, the secular worldview holds that, with the guidance of some imaginal "invisible hand", selfishness and competition give rise to "general equilibrium". This contradicts the Christian view that unselfish cooperation and the guidance of God bring forth social harmony. All in all, the secular worldview that dominates today's world is the antithesis of Christ's worldview. Whereas Christ saw a harmonious universe created by God in which people must seek to cooperate and care for each other, modern man sees a chaotic, godless universe in which men create order by competing with each other and caring only about themselves. The problem is: What if Jesus told "The Truth"? Then man's current opposing worldview, the secular paradigm, is the opposite of truth, i.e., it is lies, false beliefs- popular, antichristian delusions. In this case, man, living according to a perspective that goes against reality, is doomed to commit systematic errors. Instead of bringing order to the world, he'll end up causing worse and worse disorder. Eventually his erroneous ways could end in self-destruction. Once science figured out how to split the atom, man had the ultimate means to such an irrational, suicidal End. Assuming that Jesus did know "The Truth", he correctly anticipated what man would end up doing to the world. His "rational expectations" are what Christian prophecy is all about. Thus, the fulfillment of biblical prophecy, i.e., the outbreak of the Apocalypse, verifies what Christ taught the world some 2,000 years ago. We should accept our interdependence and love each other as Jesus loved us, lest we end up destroying ourselves. The lesson of love Christ demonstrated to the world by life example was not a suggestion for us to heed or ignore as we please. He fully understood a vital universal law, the Golden Rule, that must be obeyed so that human civilization can avoid self-destructive consequences. Rejecting the beliefs, values and way of life taught by Jesus makes about as much sense as ignoring the the law of gravity and walking off a cliff. Yet, it is just such senselessness that man is currently suffering from, thus leading to the most catastrophic error in human history: The Apocalypse. Hopefully, this time man will learn from his mistake... (Comment on this)
4:04a	***THE TRUTH*** (By J. Adams) October, 1994 "And you shall know the truth, and the truth will set you free." (John; Ch.8, v.32) The global war described in my papers is a painful upset of man's expectations stemming from a catastrophic error in dominant beliefs and behavior. It involves the total collapse of man's self-confidence, i.e., his ego, as the world realizes the reigning "secular" worldview is irrational and false- a dangerous popular delusion. -The Truth- While the apocalyptic war I'm anticipating embodies a total upset of dominant secular beliefs and expectations, it involves the fulfillment of religious beliefs and expectations- i.e., the fulfillment of religious prophecy. In this sense, the secular worldview is being falsified while the truth, realism, and rationality of religion is established. So you understand exactly how this is the case, a brief overview of biblical prophecy is in order. In discussing my views concerning a future surprise world war involving a nuclear holocaust triggered by conflict in the Middle East, I have noticed that many people respond by saying I'm predicting the "end of the world". I then point out that I did not mention biblical prophecy. Yet, most people are quick to draw parallels between Christian predictions of an Apocalypse and world war three (of course, Jewish, Moslem, and most other world religions have their own prophetic versions of the Apocalypse). This is important because I personally do believe that the global conflict I expect is, indeed, that which is predicted in the Bible. In fact, while trying to determine what could cause the epic crash that now appears to be imminent, I, along with friends, went through what can only be logically classified as a private revelation that clued me into just how "The Crash" would most likely occur. Specifically, the revelation I went through had to do with the seventh seal prophecy from the eighth chapter of the Book of Revelation. This prophecy is the key to the revelation of "The Truth" in the context of the Apocalypse (the word apocalypse literally means "revelation"). After the seventh and final seal is broken in the Book of Revelation, the Apocalypse is unleashed and "The Truth" is revealed. Thus, the meaning behind the seventh seal prophecy is of the utmost prophetic importance... When the Lamb opened the seventh seal, (1) there was silence in heaven for about half an hour. Then I saw the seven angels who stand before God, and seven trumpets were given to them. And another angel came and stood at the alter with a golden censer; and he was given much incense to mingle with the prayers of all the saints upon the golden altar before the throne; and the smoke of the incense rose with the prayers of the saints from the hand of the angel before God. Then the angel took the censer and filled it with fire from the altar and threw it on the earth; and (2) there were peals of thunder, loud noises, flashes of lightening, and an earthquake. Now the seven angels who had the seven trumpets made ready to blow them. The first angel blew his trumpet, and (3) there followed hail and fire, mixed with blood, which fell on the earth; and a third of the earth was burnt up, and a third of the trees were burnt up, and all green grass was burnt up. The second angel blew his trumpet, and (4) something like a great mountain, burning with fire, was thrown into the sea; and a third of the sea became blood, a third of the living creatures in the sea died, and a third of the ships destroyed. The third angel blew his trumpet, and (5) a great star fell from heaven, blazing like a torch, and it fell on a third of the rivers and on the fountains of water. The name of the star is Wormwood. A third of the waters became wormwood, and many men died of the water, because it was made bitter. The fourth angel blew his trumpet, and (6) a third of the sun was struck, and a third of the moon, and a third of the stars, so that a third of their light was darkened; a third of the day was kept from shining, and likewise a third of the night. Then I looked, and I heard an eagle crying with a loud voice, as it flew in midheaven, "Woe, woe, woe to those who dwell on the earth, at the blasts of the other trumpets which the three angels are about to blow!" I have long believed that this prophecy is a depiction of a future nuclear war. Even though it was written some 2000 years ago, it accurately describes each major phase of a global nuclear holocaust: 1. The half hour of "silence in heaven" during which ICBM's would traverse their orbits before striking targets after being launched. 2. The thunderous reports, bright flashes, and earthquake associated with nuclear detonations. 3. The nuclear blasts of "hail and fire, mixed with blood" followed by raging fires that would consume much of the earth. 4. The nuclear explosions, "like a great mountain, burning with fire", all over the world's seas as ports, ships, and submarines are attacked. 5. The lethal contamination of water supplies by radioactive fallout ("Wormwood") for weeks after a nuclear war. 6. The blanketing of the sky by vast dust clouds after a nuclear war such that sunlight, moonlight, and starlight is obscured thereby causing a "nuclear winter". Over the years my conviction has grown that this prophecy predicts a future nuclear war. First off, the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in the Ukraine helped reveal the truth behind the prophecy. This is because, as I later found out, the Ukrainian word for the bitter herb "wormwood", which poisons water in the seventh seal prophecy, is "Chernobyl" (easily referenced- see, for instance: 'Chernobyl' (1987), by Andrey Illesh). If this were not enough, in February of 1991, in the middle of the Gulf War, a couple of friends and I had some rather remarkable experiences that I believe confirmed the meaning of the prophecy as well as indicated its imminent fulfillment. First off, on February 6th, I saw a special report of a chemical SCUD attack on Haifa Israel that did not exist (believe me, I checked it out fully; the report was never aired). Then, about a week later, I was with a friend of mine who had just become interested in Nostradamus and prophecies that might be connected with the Gulf War. After showing him some books I had on Nostradamus, I began reading him the seventh seal prophecy above. Just as I began reading it, we heard an air- raid siren followed by the bellowed percussion of a nuclear explosion. The authenticity of the experience led me to rush with my friend to a deep basement in a nearby building. From there I contacted the local fire department to see if any sirens had been sounded; however, none had. After returning to our original location, my friend and I began checking with others to see if anyone else had heard anything. No one else had. However, another friend of mine, who is very trustworthy, said that he had heard no air-raid siren that evening- he had heard one that afternoon. When I asked him whether or not it could have been a fire alarm, he responded: "No, it was distinctly an air-raid siren off in the distance". Needless to say, these extraordinary experiences led me to conclude that the conflict in the Persian Gulf might somehow be linked to a future global nuclear war- an event that would fit the ultimate crash I have been anticipating. Thus, I began to critically reexamine the events that had been taking place in the Gulf, and I quickly realized there was something seriously amiss. In fact, all the inconsistencies and contradictions pointed to one logical explanation: the Soviets and Iraq were engaging in large-scale strategic deception (see my paper, "The Persian Gulf Deception"). The reason they would be doing this was clarified after examining the rather frightening conclusion of our national security analysts during the late-1970s and early-1980's: the Soviets were preparing to fight and win a nuclear war (see: Richard Pipes' "Why the Soviet Union Thinks it could Fight and Win a Nuclear War" in 'Commentary' (July, 1977), Dr. William Van Cleave's "Soviet Strategic Nuclear Forces and Goals: Deception and Surprise" in 'Mesmerized By The Bear' (1987), and/or 'Soviet Strategy for Nuclear War' (1979), authored by Joseph Douglas). Of course, with remarkable fear-induced irrationality, Western society has completely ignored the possibility that Gorbachev's "New Thinking" may have been the introduction of a total lie rooted in the unthinkable "Russian Idea" (see Alexander Yanov's 'The Russian Challenge and the Year 2000' (1987)). There is, however, sufficient reason to believe this is the case. If you are wondering how it is that Western civilization and the world as whole could be so utterly deceived, I have a sensible explanation for you. After Jesus was crucified some 2,000 years ago, his message was spread across the world by way of the church. After a thousand years, Christianity became the dominant paradigm of society- an historical thesis. Then came the rise of Western civilization and rapid technological development. In the context of matter/spirit duality, this epoch of materialism necessarily involved a reaction against spirituality. Thus, over the past 1,000 years the "secular" worldview of science developed in opposition to the church and religion. The opposing worldview that has emerged, what I refer to as the "secular paradigm", is the historical antithesis of Christianity. According to it, ours is a godless universe that started with a "Big Bang" and is flowing towards ever greater disorder and meaninglessness. This contradicts the idea that, since the moment of creation, God has carried out purposeful work to create ever greater organization and meaning. According to the secular paradigm, life is the result of a process of elimination involving "random mutation" and "natural selection". Contrariwise, Christians believe that life comes from a purposeful, orderly process of creation and divine selection. With regard to society, the secular worldview holds that, with the guidance of some imaginal "invisible hand", selfishness and competition give rise to "general equilibrium". This contradicts the Christian view that unselfish cooperation and the guidance of God bring forth social harmony. All in all, the secular worldview that dominates today's world is the antithesis of Christ's worldview. Whereas Christ saw a harmonious universe created by God in which people must seek to cooperate and care for each other, modern man sees a chaotic, godless universe in which men create order by competing with each other and caring only about themselves. The problem is: What if Jesus told "The Truth"? Then man's current opposing worldview, the secular paradigm, is the opposite of truth, i.e., it is lies, false beliefs- popular, antichristian delusions. In this case, man, living according to a perspective that goes against reality, is doomed to commit systematic errors. Instead of bringing order to the world, he'll end up causing worse and worse disorder. Eventually his erroneous ways could end in self-destruction. Once science figured out how to split the atom, man had the ultimate means to such an irrational, suicidal End. Assuming that Jesus did know "The Truth", he correctly anticipated what man would end up doing to the world. His "rational expectations" are what Christian prophecy is all about. Thus, the fulfillment of biblical prophecy, i.e., the outbreak of the Apocalypse, verifies what Christ taught the world some 2,000 years ago. We should accept our interdependence and love each other as Jesus loved us, lest we end up destroying ourselves. The lesson of love Christ demonstrated to the world by life example was not a suggestion for us to heed or ignore as we please. He fully understood a vital universal law, the Golden Rule, that must be obeyed so that human civilization can avoid self-destructive consequences. Rejecting the beliefs, values and way of life taught by Jesus makes about as much sense as ignoring the the law of gravity and walking off a cliff. Yet, it is just such senselessness that man is currently suffering from, thus leading to the most catastrophic error in human history: The Apocalypse. Hopefully, this time man will learn from his mistake... ***THE TRUTH*** (By J. Adams) October, 1994 "And you shall know the truth, and the truth will set you free." (John; Ch.8, v.32) The global war described in my papers is a painful upset of man's expectations stemming from a catastrophic error in dominant beliefs and behavior. It involves the total collapse of man's self-confidence, i.e., his ego, as the world realizes the reigning "secular" worldview is irrational and false- a dangerous popular delusion. -The Truth- While the apocalyptic war I'm anticipating embodies a total upset of dominant secular beliefs and expectations, it involves the fulfillment of religious beliefs and expectations- i.e., the fulfillment of religious prophecy. In this sense, the secular worldview is being falsified while the truth, realism, and rationality of religion is established. So you understand exactly how this is the case, a brief overview of biblical prophecy is in order. In discussing my views concerning a future surprise world war involving a nuclear holocaust triggered by conflict in the Middle East, I have noticed that many people respond by saying I'm predicting the "end of the world". I then point out that I did not mention biblical prophecy. Yet, most people are quick to draw parallels between Christian predictions of an Apocalypse and world war three (of course, Jewish, Moslem, and most other world religions have their own prophetic versions of the Apocalypse). This is important because I personally do believe that the global conflict I expect is, indeed, that which is predicted in the Bible. In fact, while trying to determine what could cause the epic crash that now appears to be imminent, I, along with friends, went through what can only be logically classified as a private revelation that clued me into just how "The Crash" would most likely occur. Specifically, the revelation I went through had to do with the seventh seal prophecy from the eighth chapter of the Book of Revelation. This prophecy is the key to the revelation of "The Truth" in the context of the Apocalypse (the word apocalypse literally means "revelation"). After the seventh and final seal is broken in the Book of Revelation, the Apocalypse is unleashed and "The Truth" is revealed. Thus, the meaning behind the seventh seal prophecy is of the utmost prophetic importance... When the Lamb opened the seventh seal, (1) there was silence in heaven for about half an hour. Then I saw the seven angels who stand before God, and seven trumpets were given to them. And another angel came and stood at the alter with a golden censer; and he was given much incense to mingle with the prayers of all the saints upon the golden altar before the throne; and the smoke of the incense rose with the prayers of the saints from the hand of the angel before God. Then the angel took the censer and filled it with fire from the altar and threw it on the earth; and (2) there were peals of thunder, loud noises, flashes of lightening, and an earthquake. Now the seven angels who had the seven trumpets made ready to blow them. The first angel blew his trumpet, and (3) there followed hail and fire, mixed with blood, which fell on the earth; and a third of the earth was burnt up, and a third of the trees were burnt up, and all green grass was burnt up. The second angel blew his trumpet, and (4) something like a great mountain, burning with fire, was thrown into the sea; and a third of the sea became blood, a third of the living creatures in the sea died, and a third of the ships destroyed. The third angel blew his trumpet, and (5) a great star fell from heaven, blazing like a torch, and it fell on a third of the rivers and on the fountains of water. The name of the star is Wormwood. A third of the waters became wormwood, and many men died of the water, because it was made bitter. The fourth angel blew his trumpet, and (6) a third of the sun was struck, and a third of the moon, and a third of the stars, so that a third of their light was darkened; a third of the day was kept from shining, and likewise a third of the night. Then I looked, and I heard an eagle crying with a loud voice, as it flew in midheaven, "Woe, woe, woe to those who dwell on the earth, at the blasts of the other trumpets which the three angels are about to blow!" I have long believed that this prophecy is a depiction of a future nuclear war. Even though it was written some 2000 years ago, it accurately describes each major phase of a global nuclear holocaust: 1. The half hour of "silence in heaven" during which ICBM's would traverse their orbits before striking targets after being launched. 2. The thunderous reports, bright flashes, and earthquake associated with nuclear detonations. 3. The nuclear blasts of "hail and fire, mixed with blood" followed by raging fires that would consume much of the earth. 4. The nuclear explosions, "like a great mountain, burning with fire", all over the world's seas as ports, ships, and submarines are attacked. 5. The lethal contamination of water supplies by radioactive fallout ("Wormwood") for weeks after a nuclear war. 6. The blanketing of the sky by vast dust clouds after a nuclear war such that sunlight, moonlight, and starlight is obscured thereby causing a "nuclear winter". Over the years my conviction has grown that this prophecy predicts a future nuclear war. First off, the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in the Ukraine helped reveal the truth behind the prophecy. This is because, as I later found out, the Ukrainian word for the bitter herb "wormwood", which poisons water in the seventh seal prophecy, is "Chernobyl" (easily referenced- see, for instance: 'Chernobyl' (1987), by Andrey Illesh). If this were not enough, in February of 1991, in the middle of the Gulf War, a couple of friends and I had some rather remarkable experiences that I believe confirmed the meaning of the prophecy as well as indicated its imminent fulfillment. First off, on February 6th, I saw a special report of a chemical SCUD attack on Haifa Israel that did not exist (believe me, I checked it out fully; the report was never aired). Then, about a week later, I was with a friend of mine who had just become interested in Nostradamus and prophecies that might be connected with the Gulf War. After showing him some books I had on Nostradamus, I began reading him the seventh seal prophecy above. Just as I began reading it, we heard an air- raid siren followed by the bellowed percussion of a nuclear explosion. The authenticity of the experience led me to rush with my friend to a deep basement in a nearby building. From there I contacted the local fire department to see if any sirens had been sounded; however, none had. After returning to our original location, my friend and I began checking with others to see if anyone else had heard anything. No one else had. However, another friend of mine, who is very trustworthy, said that he had heard no air-raid siren that evening- he had heard one that afternoon. When I asked him whether or not it could have been a fire alarm, he responded: "No, it was distinctly an air-raid siren off in the distance". Needless to say, these extraordinary experiences led me to conclude that the conflict in the Persian Gulf might somehow be linked to a future global nuclear war- an event that would fit the ultimate crash I have been anticipating. Thus, I began to critically reexamine the events that had been taking place in the Gulf, and I quickly realized there was something seriously amiss. In fact, all the inconsistencies and contradictions pointed to one logical explanation: the Soviets and Iraq were engaging in large-scale strategic deception (see my paper, "The Persian Gulf Deception"). The reason they would be doing this was clarified after examining the rather frightening conclusion of our national security analysts during the late-1970s and early-1980's: the Soviets were preparing to fight and win a nuclear war (see: Richard Pipes' "Why the Soviet Union Thinks it could Fight and Win a Nuclear War" in 'Commentary' (July, 1977), Dr. William Van Cleave's "Soviet Strategic Nuclear Forces and Goals: Deception and Surprise" in 'Mesmerized By The Bear' (1987), and/or 'Soviet Strategy for Nuclear War' (1979), authored by Joseph Douglas). Of course, with remarkable fear-induced irrationality, Western society has completely ignored the possibility that Gorbachev's "New Thinking" may have been the introduction of a total lie rooted in the unthinkable "Russian Idea" (see Alexander Yanov's 'The Russian Challenge and the Year 2000' (1987)). There is, however, sufficient reason to believe this is the case. If you are wondering how it is that Western civilization and the world as whole could be so utterly deceived, I have a sensible explanation for you. After Jesus was crucified some 2,000 years ago, his message was spread across the world by way of the church. After a thousand years, Christianity became the dominant paradigm of society- an historical thesis. Then came the rise of Western civilization and rapid technological development. In the context of matter/spirit duality, this epoch of materialism necessarily involved a reaction against spirituality. Thus, over the past 1,000 years the "secular" worldview of science developed in opposition to the church and religion. The opposing worldview that has emerged, what I refer to as the "secular paradigm", is the historical antithesis of Christianity. According to it, ours is a godless universe that started with a "Big Bang" and is flowing towards ever greater disorder and meaninglessness. This contradicts the idea that, since the moment of creation, God has carried out purposeful work to create ever greater organization and meaning. According to the secular paradigm, life is the result of a process of elimination involving "random mutation" and "natural selection". Contrariwise, Christians believe that life comes from a purposeful, orderly process of creation and divine selection. With regard to society, the secular worldview holds that, with the guidance of some imaginal "invisible hand", selfishness and competition give rise to "general equilibrium". This contradicts the Christian view that unselfish cooperation and the guidance of God bring forth social harmony. All in all, the secular worldview that dominates today's world is the antithesis of Christ's worldview. Whereas Christ saw a harmonious universe created by God in which people must seek to cooperate and care for each other, modern man sees a chaotic, godless universe in which men create order by competing with each other and caring only about themselves. The problem is: What if Jesus told "The Truth"? Then man's current opposing worldview, the secular paradigm, is the opposite of truth, i.e., it is lies, false beliefs- popular, antichristian delusions. In this case, man, living according to a perspective that goes against reality, is doomed to commit systematic errors. Instead of bringing order to the world, he'll end up causing worse and worse disorder. Eventually his erroneous ways could end in self-destruction. Once science figured out how to split the atom, man had the ultimate means to such an irrational, suicidal End. Assuming that Jesus did know "The Truth", he correctly anticipated what man would end up doing to the world. His "rational expectations" are what Christian prophecy is all about. Thus, the fulfillment of biblical prophecy, i.e., the outbreak of the Apocalypse, verifies what Christ taught the world some 2,000 years ago. We should accept our interdependence and love each other as Jesus loved us, lest we end up destroying ourselves. The lesson of love Christ demonstrated to the world by life example was not a suggestion for us to heed or ignore as we please. He fully understood a vital universal law, the Golden Rule, that must be obeyed so that human civilization can avoid self-destructive consequences. Rejecting the beliefs, values and way of life taught by Jesus makes about as much sense as ignoring the the law of gravity and walking off a cliff. Yet, it is just such senselessness that man is currently suffering from, thus leading to the most catastrophic error in human history: The Apocalypse. Hopefully, this time man will learn from his mistake... (Comment on this)
4:04a	***THE TRUTH*** (By J. Adams) October, 1994 "And you shall know the truth, and the truth will set you free." (John; Ch.8, v.32) The global war described in my papers is a painful upset of man's expectations stemming from a catastrophic error in dominant beliefs and behavior. It involves the total collapse of man's self-confidence, i.e., his ego, as the world realizes the reigning "secular" worldview is irrational and false- a dangerous popular delusion. -The Truth- While the apocalyptic war I'm anticipating embodies a total upset of dominant secular beliefs and expectations, it involves the fulfillment of religious beliefs and expectations- i.e., the fulfillment of religious prophecy. In this sense, the secular worldview is being falsified while the truth, realism, and rationality of religion is established. So you understand exactly how this is the case, a brief overview of biblical prophecy is in order. In discussing my views concerning a future surprise world war involving a nuclear holocaust triggered by conflict in the Middle East, I have noticed that many people respond by saying I'm predicting the "end of the world". I then point out that I did not mention biblical prophecy. Yet, most people are quick to draw parallels between Christian predictions of an Apocalypse and world war three (of course, Jewish, Moslem, and most other world religions have their own prophetic versions of the Apocalypse). This is important because I personally do believe that the global conflict I expect is, indeed, that which is predicted in the Bible. In fact, while trying to determine what could cause the epic crash that now appears to be imminent, I, along with friends, went through what can only be logically classified as a private revelation that clued me into just how "The Crash" would most likely occur. Specifically, the revelation I went through had to do with the seventh seal prophecy from the eighth chapter of the Book of Revelation. This prophecy is the key to the revelation of "The Truth" in the context of the Apocalypse (the word apocalypse literally means "revelation"). After the seventh and final seal is broken in the Book of Revelation, the Apocalypse is unleashed and "The Truth" is revealed. Thus, the meaning behind the seventh seal prophecy is of the utmost prophetic importance... When the Lamb opened the seventh seal, (1) there was silence in heaven for about half an hour. Then I saw the seven angels who stand before God, and seven trumpets were given to them. And another angel came and stood at the alter with a golden censer; and he was given much incense to mingle with the prayers of all the saints upon the golden altar before the throne; and the smoke of the incense rose with the prayers of the saints from the hand of the angel before God. Then the angel took the censer and filled it with fire from the altar and threw it on the earth; and (2) there were peals of thunder, loud noises, flashes of lightening, and an earthquake. Now the seven angels who had the seven trumpets made ready to blow them. The first angel blew his trumpet, and (3) there followed hail and fire, mixed with blood, which fell on the earth; and a third of the earth was burnt up, and a third of the trees were burnt up, and all green grass was burnt up. The second angel blew his trumpet, and (4) something like a great mountain, burning with fire, was thrown into the sea; and a third of the sea became blood, a third of the living creatures in the sea died, and a third of the ships destroyed. The third angel blew his trumpet, and (5) a great star fell from heaven, blazing like a torch, and it fell on a third of the rivers and on the fountains of water. The name of the star is Wormwood. A third of the waters became wormwood, and many men died of the water, because it was made bitter. The fourth angel blew his trumpet, and (6) a third of the sun was struck, and a third of the moon, and a third of the stars, so that a third of their light was darkened; a third of the day was kept from shining, and likewise a third of the night. Then I looked, and I heard an eagle crying with a loud voice, as it flew in midheaven, "Woe, woe, woe to those who dwell on the earth, at the blasts of the other trumpets which the three angels are about to blow!" I have long believed that this prophecy is a depiction of a future nuclear war. Even though it was written some 2000 years ago, it accurately describes each major phase of a global nuclear holocaust: 1. The half hour of "silence in heaven" during which ICBM's would traverse their orbits before striking targets after being launched. 2. The thunderous reports, bright flashes, and earthquake associated with nuclear detonations. 3. The nuclear blasts of "hail and fire, mixed with blood" followed by raging fires that would consume much of the earth. 4. The nuclear explosions, "like a great mountain, burning with fire", all over the world's seas as ports, ships, and submarines are attacked. 5. The lethal contamination of water supplies by radioactive fallout ("Wormwood") for weeks after a nuclear war. 6. The blanketing of the sky by vast dust clouds after a nuclear war such that sunlight, moonlight, and starlight is obscured thereby causing a "nuclear winter". Over the years my conviction has grown that this prophecy predicts a future nuclear war. First off, the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in the Ukraine helped reveal the truth behind the prophecy. This is because, as I later found out, the Ukrainian word for the bitter herb "wormwood", which poisons water in the seventh seal prophecy, is "Chernobyl" (easily referenced- see, for instance: 'Chernobyl' (1987), by Andrey Illesh). If this were not enough, in February of 1991, in the middle of the Gulf War, a couple of friends and I had some rather remarkable experiences that I believe confirmed the meaning of the prophecy as well as indicated its imminent fulfillment. First off, on February 6th, I saw a special report of a chemical SCUD attack on Haifa Israel that did not exist (believe me, I checked it out fully; the report was never aired). Then, about a week later, I was with a friend of mine who had just become interested in Nostradamus and prophecies that might be connected with the Gulf War. After showing him some books I had on Nostradamus, I began reading him the seventh seal prophecy above. Just as I began reading it, we heard an air- raid siren followed by the bellowed percussion of a nuclear explosion. The authenticity of the experience led me to rush with my friend to a deep basement in a nearby building. From there I contacted the local fire department to see if any sirens had been sounded; however, none had. After returning to our original location, my friend and I began checking with others to see if anyone else had heard anything. No one else had. However, another friend of mine, who is very trustworthy, said that he had heard no air-raid siren that evening- he had heard one that afternoon. When I asked him whether or not it could have been a fire alarm, he responded: "No, it was distinctly an air-raid siren off in the distance". Needless to say, these extraordinary experiences led me to conclude that the conflict in the Persian Gulf might somehow be linked to a future global nuclear war- an event that would fit the ultimate crash I have been anticipating. Thus, I began to critically reexamine the events that had been taking place in the Gulf, and I quickly realized there was something seriously amiss. In fact, all the inconsistencies and contradictions pointed to one logical explanation: the Soviets and Iraq were engaging in large-scale strategic deception (see my paper, "The Persian Gulf Deception"). The reason they would be doing this was clarified after examining the rather frightening conclusion of our national security analysts during the late-1970s and early-1980's: the Soviets were preparing to fight and win a nuclear war (see: Richard Pipes' "Why the Soviet Union Thinks it could Fight and Win a Nuclear War" in 'Commentary' (July, 1977), Dr. William Van Cleave's "Soviet Strategic Nuclear Forces and Goals: Deception and Surprise" in 'Mesmerized By The Bear' (1987), and/or 'Soviet Strategy for Nuclear War' (1979), authored by Joseph Douglas). Of course, with remarkable fear-induced irrationality, Western society has completely ignored the possibility that Gorbachev's "New Thinking" may have been the introduction of a total lie rooted in the unthinkable "Russian Idea" (see Alexander Yanov's 'The Russian Challenge and the Year 2000' (1987)). There is, however, sufficient reason to believe this is the case. If you are wondering how it is that Western civilization and the world as whole could be so utterly deceived, I have a sensible explanation for you. After Jesus was crucified some 2,000 years ago, his message was spread across the world by way of the church. After a thousand years, Christianity became the dominant paradigm of society- an historical thesis. Then came the rise of Western civilization and rapid technological development. In the context of matter/spirit duality, this epoch of materialism necessarily involved a reaction against spirituality. Thus, over the past 1,000 years the "secular" worldview of science developed in opposition to the church and religion. The opposing worldview that has emerged, what I refer to as the "secular paradigm", is the historical antithesis of Christianity. According to it, ours is a godless universe that started with a "Big Bang" and is flowing towards ever greater disorder and meaninglessness. This contradicts the idea that, since the moment of creation, God has carried out purposeful work to create ever greater organization and meaning. According to the secular paradigm, life is the result of a process of elimination involving "random mutation" and "natural selection". Contrariwise, Christians believe that life comes from a purposeful, orderly process of creation and divine selection. With regard to society, the secular worldview holds that, with the guidance of some imaginal "invisible hand", selfishness and competition give rise to "general equilibrium". This contradicts the Christian view that unselfish cooperation and the guidance of God bring forth social harmony. All in all, the secular worldview that dominates today's world is the antithesis of Christ's worldview. Whereas Christ saw a harmonious universe created by God in which people must seek to cooperate and care for each other, modern man sees a chaotic, godless universe in which men create order by competing with each other and caring only about themselves. The problem is: What if Jesus told "The Truth"? Then man's current opposing worldview, the secular paradigm, is the opposite of truth, i.e., it is lies, false beliefs- popular, antichristian delusions. In this case, man, living according to a perspective that goes against reality, is doomed to commit systematic errors. Instead of bringing order to the world, he'll end up causing worse and worse disorder. Eventually his erroneous ways could end in self-destruction. Once science figured out how to split the atom, man had the ultimate means to such an irrational, suicidal End. Assuming that Jesus did know "The Truth", he correctly anticipated what man would end up doing to the world. His "rational expectations" are what Christian prophecy is all about. Thus, the fulfillment of biblical prophecy, i.e., the outbreak of the Apocalypse, verifies what Christ taught the world some 2,000 years ago. We should accept our interdependence and love each other as Jesus loved us, lest we end up destroying ourselves. The lesson of love Christ demonstrated to the world by life example was not a suggestion for us to heed or ignore as we please. He fully understood a vital universal law, the Golden Rule, that must be obeyed so that human civilization can avoid self-destructive consequences. Rejecting the beliefs, values and way of life taught by Jesus makes about as much sense as ignoring the the law of gravity and walking off a cliff. Yet, it is just such senselessness that man is currently suffering from, thus leading to the most catastrophic error in human history: The Apocalypse. Hopefully, this time man will learn from his mistake... ***THE TRUTH*** (By J. Adams) October, 1994 "And you shall know the truth, and the truth will set you free." (John; Ch.8, v.32) The global war described in my papers is a painful upset of man's expectations stemming from a catastrophic error in dominant beliefs and behavior. It involves the total collapse of man's self-confidence, i.e., his ego, as the world realizes the reigning "secular" worldview is irrational and false- a dangerous popular delusion. -The Truth- While the apocalyptic war I'm anticipating embodies a total upset of dominant secular beliefs and expectations, it involves the fulfillment of religious beliefs and expectations- i.e., the fulfillment of religious prophecy. In this sense, the secular worldview is being falsified while the truth, realism, and rationality of religion is established. So you understand exactly how this is the case, a brief overview of biblical prophecy is in order. In discussing my views concerning a future surprise world war involving a nuclear holocaust triggered by conflict in the Middle East, I have noticed that many people respond by saying I'm predicting the "end of the world". I then point out that I did not mention biblical prophecy. Yet, most people are quick to draw parallels between Christian predictions of an Apocalypse and world war three (of course, Jewish, Moslem, and most other world religions have their own prophetic versions of the Apocalypse). This is important because I personally do believe that the global conflict I expect is, indeed, that which is predicted in the Bible. In fact, while trying to determine what could cause the epic crash that now appears to be imminent, I, along with friends, went through what can only be logically classified as a private revelation that clued me into just how "The Crash" would most likely occur. Specifically, the revelation I went through had to do with the seventh seal prophecy from the eighth chapter of the Book of Revelation. This prophecy is the key to the revelation of "The Truth" in the context of the Apocalypse (the word apocalypse literally means "revelation"). After the seventh and final seal is broken in the Book of Revelation, the Apocalypse is unleashed and "The Truth" is revealed. Thus, the meaning behind the seventh seal prophecy is of the utmost prophetic importance... When the Lamb opened the seventh seal, (1) there was silence in heaven for about half an hour. Then I saw the seven angels who stand before God, and seven trumpets were given to them. And another angel came and stood at the alter with a golden censer; and he was given much incense to mingle with the prayers of all the saints upon the golden altar before the throne; and the smoke of the incense rose with the prayers of the saints from the hand of the angel before God. Then the angel took the censer and filled it with fire from the altar and threw it on the earth; and (2) there were peals of thunder, loud noises, flashes of lightening, and an earthquake. Now the seven angels who had the seven trumpets made ready to blow them. The first angel blew his trumpet, and (3) there followed hail and fire, mixed with blood, which fell on the earth; and a third of the earth was burnt up, and a third of the trees were burnt up, and all green grass was burnt up. The second angel blew his trumpet, and (4) something like a great mountain, burning with fire, was thrown into the sea; and a third of the sea became blood, a third of the living creatures in the sea died, and a third of the ships destroyed. The third angel blew his trumpet, and (5) a great star fell from heaven, blazing like a torch, and it fell on a third of the rivers and on the fountains of water. The name of the star is Wormwood. A third of the waters became wormwood, and many men died of the water, because it was made bitter. The fourth angel blew his trumpet, and (6) a third of the sun was struck, and a third of the moon, and a third of the stars, so that a third of their light was darkened; a third of the day was kept from shining, and likewise a third of the night. Then I looked, and I heard an eagle crying with a loud voice, as it flew in midheaven, "Woe, woe, woe to those who dwell on the earth, at the blasts of the other trumpets which the three angels are about to blow!" I have long believed that this prophecy is a depiction of a future nuclear war. Even though it was written some 2000 years ago, it accurately describes each major phase of a global nuclear holocaust: 1. The half hour of "silence in heaven" during which ICBM's would traverse their orbits before striking targets after being launched. 2. The thunderous reports, bright flashes, and earthquake associated with nuclear detonations. 3. The nuclear blasts of "hail and fire, mixed with blood" followed by raging fires that would consume much of the earth. 4. The nuclear explosions, "like a great mountain, burning with fire", all over the world's seas as ports, ships, and submarines are attacked. 5. The lethal contamination of water supplies by radioactive fallout ("Wormwood") for weeks after a nuclear war. 6. The blanketing of the sky by vast dust clouds after a nuclear war such that sunlight, moonlight, and starlight is obscured thereby causing a "nuclear winter". Over the years my conviction has grown that this prophecy predicts a future nuclear war. First off, the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in the Ukraine helped reveal the truth behind the prophecy. This is because, as I later found out, the Ukrainian word for the bitter herb "wormwood", which poisons water in the seventh seal prophecy, is "Chernobyl" (easily referenced- see, for instance: 'Chernobyl' (1987), by Andrey Illesh). If this were not enough, in February of 1991, in the middle of the Gulf War, a couple of friends and I had some rather remarkable experiences that I believe confirmed the meaning of the prophecy as well as indicated its imminent fulfillment. First off, on February 6th, I saw a special report of a chemical SCUD attack on Haifa Israel that did not exist (believe me, I checked it out fully; the report was never aired). Then, about a week later, I was with a friend of mine who had just become interested in Nostradamus and prophecies that might be connected with the Gulf War. After showing him some books I had on Nostradamus, I began reading him the seventh seal prophecy above. Just as I began reading it, we heard an air- raid siren followed by the bellowed percussion of a nuclear explosion. The authenticity of the experience led me to rush with my friend to a deep basement in a nearby building. From there I contacted the local fire department to see if any sirens had been sounded; however, none had. After returning to our original location, my friend and I began checking with others to see if anyone else had heard anything. No one else had. However, another friend of mine, who is very trustworthy, said that he had heard no air-raid siren that evening- he had heard one that afternoon. When I asked him whether or not it could have been a fire alarm, he responded: "No, it was distinctly an air-raid siren off in the distance". Needless to say, these extraordinary experiences led me to conclude that the conflict in the Persian Gulf might somehow be linked to a future global nuclear war- an event that would fit the ultimate crash I have been anticipating. Thus, I began to critically reexamine the events that had been taking place in the Gulf, and I quickly realized there was something seriously amiss. In fact, all the inconsistencies and contradictions pointed to one logical explanation: the Soviets and Iraq were engaging in large-scale strategic deception (see my paper, "The Persian Gulf Deception"). The reason they would be doing this was clarified after examining the rather frightening conclusion of our national security analysts during the late-1970s and early-1980's: the Soviets were preparing to fight and win a nuclear war (see: Richard Pipes' "Why the Soviet Union Thinks it could Fight and Win a Nuclear War" in 'Commentary' (July, 1977), Dr. William Van Cleave's "Soviet Strategic Nuclear Forces and Goals: Deception and Surprise" in 'Mesmerized By The Bear' (1987), and/or 'Soviet Strategy for Nuclear War' (1979), authored by Joseph Douglas). Of course, with remarkable fear-induced irrationality, Western society has completely ignored the possibility that Gorbachev's "New Thinking" may have been the introduction of a total lie rooted in the unthinkable "Russian Idea" (see Alexander Yanov's 'The Russian Challenge and the Year 2000' (1987)). There is, however, sufficient reason to believe this is the case. If you are wondering how it is that Western civilization and the world as whole could be so utterly deceived, I have a sensible explanation for you. After Jesus was crucified some 2,000 years ago, his message was spread across the world by way of the church. After a thousand years, Christianity became the dominant paradigm of society- an historical thesis. Then came the rise of Western civilization and rapid technological development. In the context of matter/spirit duality, this epoch of materialism necessarily involved a reaction against spirituality. Thus, over the past 1,000 years the "secular" worldview of science developed in opposition to the church and religion. The opposing worldview that has emerged, what I refer to as the "secular paradigm", is the historical antithesis of Christianity. According to it, ours is a godless universe that started with a "Big Bang" and is flowing towards ever greater disorder and meaninglessness. This contradicts the idea that, since the moment of creation, God has carried out purposeful work to create ever greater organization and meaning. According to the secular paradigm, life is the result of a process of elimination involving "random mutation" and "natural selection". Contrariwise, Christians believe that life comes from a purposeful, orderly process of creation and divine selection. With regard to society, the secular worldview holds that, with the guidance of some imaginal "invisible hand", selfishness and competition give rise to "general equilibrium". This contradicts the Christian view that unselfish cooperation and the guidance of God bring forth social harmony. All in all, the secular worldview that dominates today's world is the antithesis of Christ's worldview. Whereas Christ saw a harmonious universe created by God in which people must seek to cooperate and care for each other, modern man sees a chaotic, godless universe in which men create order by competing with each other and caring only about themselves. The problem is: What if Jesus told "The Truth"? Then man's current opposing worldview, the secular paradigm, is the opposite of truth, i.e., it is lies, false beliefs- popular, antichristian delusions. In this case, man, living according to a perspective that goes against reality, is doomed to commit systematic errors. Instead of bringing order to the world, he'll end up causing worse and worse disorder. Eventually his erroneous ways could end in self-destruction. Once science figured out how to split the atom, man had the ultimate means to such an irrational, suicidal End. Assuming that Jesus did know "The Truth", he correctly anticipated what man would end up doing to the world. His "rational expectations" are what Christian prophecy is all about. Thus, the fulfillment of biblical prophecy, i.e., the outbreak of the Apocalypse, verifies what Christ taught the world some 2,000 years ago. We should accept our interdependence and love each other as Jesus loved us, lest we end up destroying ourselves. The lesson of love Christ demonstrated to the world by life example was not a suggestion for us to heed or ignore as we please. He fully understood a vital universal law, the Golden Rule, that must be obeyed so that human civilization can avoid self-destructive consequences. Rejecting the beliefs, values and way of life taught by Jesus makes about as much sense as ignoring the the law of gravity and walking off a cliff. Yet, it is just such senselessness that man is currently suffering from, thus leading to the most catastrophic error in human history: The Apocalypse. Hopefully, this time man will learn from his mistake... (Comment on this)
4:04a	***THE TRUTH*** (By J. Adams) October, 1994 "And you shall know the truth, and the truth will set you free." (John; Ch.8, v.32) The global war described in my papers is a painful upset of man's expectations stemming from a catastrophic error in dominant beliefs and behavior. It involves the total collapse of man's self-confidence, i.e., his ego, as the world realizes the reigning "secular" worldview is irrational and false- a dangerous popular delusion. -The Truth- While the apocalyptic war I'm anticipating embodies a total upset of dominant secular beliefs and expectations, it involves the fulfillment of religious beliefs and expectations- i.e., the fulfillment of religious prophecy. In this sense, the secular worldview is being falsified while the truth, realism, and rationality of religion is established. So you understand exactly how this is the case, a brief overview of biblical prophecy is in order. In discussing my views concerning a future surprise world war involving a nuclear holocaust triggered by conflict in the Middle East, I have noticed that many people respond by saying I'm predicting the "end of the world". I then point out that I did not mention biblical prophecy. Yet, most people are quick to draw parallels between Christian predictions of an Apocalypse and world war three (of course, Jewish, Moslem, and most other world religions have their own prophetic versions of the Apocalypse). This is important because I personally do believe that the global conflict I expect is, indeed, that which is predicted in the Bible. In fact, while trying to determine what could cause the epic crash that now appears to be imminent, I, along with friends, went through what can only be logically classified as a private revelation that clued me into just how "The Crash" would most likely occur. Specifically, the revelation I went through had to do with the seventh seal prophecy from the eighth chapter of the Book of Revelation. This prophecy is the key to the revelation of "The Truth" in the context of the Apocalypse (the word apocalypse literally means "revelation"). After the seventh and final seal is broken in the Book of Revelation, the Apocalypse is unleashed and "The Truth" is revealed. Thus, the meaning behind the seventh seal prophecy is of the utmost prophetic importance... When the Lamb opened the seventh seal, (1) there was silence in heaven for about half an hour. Then I saw the seven angels who stand before God, and seven trumpets were given to them. And another angel came and stood at the alter with a golden censer; and he was given much incense to mingle with the prayers of all the saints upon the golden altar before the throne; and the smoke of the incense rose with the prayers of the saints from the hand of the angel before God. Then the angel took the censer and filled it with fire from the altar and threw it on the earth; and (2) there were peals of thunder, loud noises, flashes of lightening, and an earthquake. Now the seven angels who had the seven trumpets made ready to blow them. The first angel blew his trumpet, and (3) there followed hail and fire, mixed with blood, which fell on the earth; and a third of the earth was burnt up, and a third of the trees were burnt up, and all green grass was burnt up. The second angel blew his trumpet, and (4) something like a great mountain, burning with fire, was thrown into the sea; and a third of the sea became blood, a third of the living creatures in the sea died, and a third of the ships destroyed. The third angel blew his trumpet, and (5) a great star fell from heaven, blazing like a torch, and it fell on a third of the rivers and on the fountains of water. The name of the star is Wormwood. A third of the waters became wormwood, and many men died of the water, because it was made bitter. The fourth angel blew his trumpet, and (6) a third of the sun was struck, and a third of the moon, and a third of the stars, so that a third of their light was darkened; a third of the day was kept from shining, and likewise a third of the night. Then I looked, and I heard an eagle crying with a loud voice, as it flew in midheaven, "Woe, woe, woe to those who dwell on the earth, at the blasts of the other trumpets which the three angels are about to blow!" I have long believed that this prophecy is a depiction of a future nuclear war. Even though it was written some 2000 years ago, it accurately describes each major phase of a global nuclear holocaust: 1. The half hour of "silence in heaven" during which ICBM's would traverse their orbits before striking targets after being launched. 2. The thunderous reports, bright flashes, and earthquake associated with nuclear detonations. 3. The nuclear blasts of "hail and fire, mixed with blood" followed by raging fires that would consume much of the earth. 4. The nuclear explosions, "like a great mountain, burning with fire", all over the world's seas as ports, ships, and submarines are attacked. 5. The lethal contamination of water supplies by radioactive fallout ("Wormwood") for weeks after a nuclear war. 6. The blanketing of the sky by vast dust clouds after a nuclear war such that sunlight, moonlight, and starlight is obscured thereby causing a "nuclear winter". Over the years my conviction has grown that this prophecy predicts a future nuclear war. First off, the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in the Ukraine helped reveal the truth behind the prophecy. This is because, as I later found out, the Ukrainian word for the bitter herb "wormwood", which poisons water in the seventh seal prophecy, is "Chernobyl" (easily referenced- see, for instance: 'Chernobyl' (1987), by Andrey Illesh). If this were not enough, in February of 1991, in the middle of the Gulf War, a couple of friends and I had some rather remarkable experiences that I believe confirmed the meaning of the prophecy as well as indicated its imminent fulfillment. First off, on February 6th, I saw a special report of a chemical SCUD attack on Haifa Israel that did not exist (believe me, I checked it out fully; the report was never aired). Then, about a week later, I was with a friend of mine who had just become interested in Nostradamus and prophecies that might be connected with the Gulf War. After showing him some books I had on Nostradamus, I began reading him the seventh seal prophecy above. Just as I began reading it, we heard an air- raid siren followed by the bellowed percussion of a nuclear explosion. The authenticity of the experience led me to rush with my friend to a deep basement in a nearby building. From there I contacted the local fire department to see if any sirens had been sounded; however, none had. After returning to our original location, my friend and I began checking with others to see if anyone else had heard anything. No one else had. However, another friend of mine, who is very trustworthy, said that he had heard no air-raid siren that evening- he had heard one that afternoon. When I asked him whether or not it could have been a fire alarm, he responded: "No, it was distinctly an air-raid siren off in the distance". Needless to say, these extraordinary experiences led me to conclude that the conflict in the Persian Gulf might somehow be linked to a future global nuclear war- an event that would fit the ultimate crash I have been anticipating. Thus, I began to critically reexamine the events that had been taking place in the Gulf, and I quickly realized there was something seriously amiss. In fact, all the inconsistencies and contradictions pointed to one logical explanation: the Soviets and Iraq were engaging in large-scale strategic deception (see my paper, "The Persian Gulf Deception"). The reason they would be doing this was clarified after examining the rather frightening conclusion of our national security analysts during the late-1970s and early-1980's: the Soviets were preparing to fight and win a nuclear war (see: Richard Pipes' "Why the Soviet Union Thinks it could Fight and Win a Nuclear War" in 'Commentary' (July, 1977), Dr. William Van Cleave's "Soviet Strategic Nuclear Forces and Goals: Deception and Surprise" in 'Mesmerized By The Bear' (1987), and/or 'Soviet Strategy for Nuclear War' (1979), authored by Joseph Douglas). Of course, with remarkable fear-induced irrationality, Western society has completely ignored the possibility that Gorbachev's "New Thinking" may have been the introduction of a total lie rooted in the unthinkable "Russian Idea" (see Alexander Yanov's 'The Russian Challenge and the Year 2000' (1987)). There is, however, sufficient reason to believe this is the case. If you are wondering how it is that Western civilization and the world as whole could be so utterly deceived, I have a sensible explanation for you. After Jesus was crucified some 2,000 years ago, his message was spread across the world by way of the church. After a thousand years, Christianity became the dominant paradigm of society- an historical thesis. Then came the rise of Western civilization and rapid technological development. In the context of matter/spirit duality, this epoch of materialism necessarily involved a reaction against spirituality. Thus, over the past 1,000 years the "secular" worldview of science developed in opposition to the church and religion. The opposing worldview that has emerged, what I refer to as the "secular paradigm", is the historical antithesis of Christianity. According to it, ours is a godless universe that started with a "Big Bang" and is flowing towards ever greater disorder and meaninglessness. This contradicts the idea that, since the moment of creation, God has carried out purposeful work to create ever greater organization and meaning. According to the secular paradigm, life is the result of a process of elimination involving "random mutation" and "natural selection". Contrariwise, Christians believe that life comes from a purposeful, orderly process of creation and divine selection. With regard to society, the secular worldview holds that, with the guidance of some imaginal "invisible hand", selfishness and competition give rise to "general equilibrium". This contradicts the Christian view that unselfish cooperation and the guidance of God bring forth social harmony. All in all, the secular worldview that dominates today's world is the antithesis of Christ's worldview. Whereas Christ saw a harmonious universe created by God in which people must seek to cooperate and care for each other, modern man sees a chaotic, godless universe in which men create order by competing with each other and caring only about themselves. The problem is: What if Jesus told "The Truth"? Then man's current opposing worldview, the secular paradigm, is the opposite of truth, i.e., it is lies, false beliefs- popular, antichristian delusions. In this case, man, living according to a perspective that goes against reality, is doomed to commit systematic errors. Instead of bringing order to the world, he'll end up causing worse and worse disorder. Eventually his erroneous ways could end in self-destruction. Once science figured out how to split the atom, man had the ultimate means to such an irrational, suicidal End. Assuming that Jesus did know "The Truth", he correctly anticipated what man would end up doing to the world. His "rational expectations" are what Christian prophecy is all about. Thus, the fulfillment of biblical prophecy, i.e., the outbreak of the Apocalypse, verifies what Christ taught the world some 2,000 years ago. We should accept our interdependence and love each other as Jesus loved us, lest we end up destroying ourselves. The lesson of love Christ demonstrated to the world by life example was not a suggestion for us to heed or ignore as we please. He fully understood a vital universal law, the Golden Rule, that must be obeyed so that human civilization can avoid self-destructive consequences. Rejecting the beliefs, values and way of life taught by Jesus makes about as much sense as ignoring the the law of gravity and walking off a cliff. Yet, it is just such senselessness that man is currently suffering from, thus leading to the most catastrophic error in human history: The Apocalypse. Hopefully, this time man will learn from his mistake... ***THE TRUTH*** (By J. Adams) October, 1994 "And you shall know the truth, and the truth will set you free." (John; Ch.8, v.32) The global war described in my papers is a painful upset of man's expectations stemming from a catastrophic error in dominant beliefs and behavior. It involves the total collapse of man's self-confidence, i.e., his ego, as the world realizes the reigning "secular" worldview is irrational and false- a dangerous popular delusion. -The Truth- While the apocalyptic war I'm anticipating embodies a total upset of dominant secular beliefs and expectations, it involves the fulfillment of religious beliefs and expectations- i.e., the fulfillment of religious prophecy. In this sense, the secular worldview is being falsified while the truth, realism, and rationality of religion is established. So you understand exactly how this is the case, a brief overview of biblical prophecy is in order. In discussing my views concerning a future surprise world war involving a nuclear holocaust triggered by conflict in the Middle East, I have noticed that many people respond by saying I'm predicting the "end of the world". I then point out that I did not mention biblical prophecy. Yet, most people are quick to draw parallels between Christian predictions of an Apocalypse and world war three (of course, Jewish, Moslem, and most other world religions have their own prophetic versions of the Apocalypse). This is important because I personally do believe that the global conflict I expect is, indeed, that which is predicted in the Bible. In fact, while trying to determine what could cause the epic crash that now appears to be imminent, I, along with friends, went through what can only be logically classified as a private revelation that clued me into just how "The Crash" would most likely occur. Specifically, the revelation I went through had to do with the seventh seal prophecy from the eighth chapter of the Book of Revelation. This prophecy is the key to the revelation of "The Truth" in the context of the Apocalypse (the word apocalypse literally means "revelation"). After the seventh and final seal is broken in the Book of Revelation, the Apocalypse is unleashed and "The Truth" is revealed. Thus, the meaning behind the seventh seal prophecy is of the utmost prophetic importance... When the Lamb opened the seventh seal, (1) there was silence in heaven for about half an hour. Then I saw the seven angels who stand before God, and seven trumpets were given to them. And another angel came and stood at the alter with a golden censer; and he was given much incense to mingle with the prayers of all the saints upon the golden altar before the throne; and the smoke of the incense rose with the prayers of the saints from the hand of the angel before God. Then the angel took the censer and filled it with fire from the altar and threw it on the earth; and (2) there were peals of thunder, loud noises, flashes of lightening, and an earthquake. Now the seven angels who had the seven trumpets made ready to blow them. The first angel blew his trumpet, and (3) there followed hail and fire, mixed with blood, which fell on the earth; and a third of the earth was burnt up, and a third of the trees were burnt up, and all green grass was burnt up. The second angel blew his trumpet, and (4) something like a great mountain, burning with fire, was thrown into the sea; and a third of the sea became blood, a third of the living creatures in the sea died, and a third of the ships destroyed. The third angel blew his trumpet, and (5) a great star fell from heaven, blazing like a torch, and it fell on a third of the rivers and on the fountains of water. The name of the star is Wormwood. A third of the waters became wormwood, and many men died of the water, because it was made bitter. The fourth angel blew his trumpet, and (6) a third of the sun was struck, and a third of the moon, and a third of the stars, so that a third of their light was darkened; a third of the day was kept from shining, and likewise a third of the night. Then I looked, and I heard an eagle crying with a loud voice, as it flew in midheaven, "Woe, woe, woe to those who dwell on the earth, at the blasts of the other trumpets which the three angels are about to blow!" I have long believed that this prophecy is a depiction of a future nuclear war. Even though it was written some 2000 years ago, it accurately describes each major phase of a global nuclear holocaust: 1. The half hour of "silence in heaven" during which ICBM's would traverse their orbits before striking targets after being launched. 2. The thunderous reports, bright flashes, and earthquake associated with nuclear detonations. 3. The nuclear blasts of "hail and fire, mixed with blood" followed by raging fires that would consume much of the earth. 4. The nuclear explosions, "like a great mountain, burning with fire", all over the world's seas as ports, ships, and submarines are attacked. 5. The lethal contamination of water supplies by radioactive fallout ("Wormwood") for weeks after a nuclear war. 6. The blanketing of the sky by vast dust clouds after a nuclear war such that sunlight, moonlight, and starlight is obscured thereby causing a "nuclear winter". Over the years my conviction has grown that this prophecy predicts a future nuclear war. First off, the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in the Ukraine helped reveal the truth behind the prophecy. This is because, as I later found out, the Ukrainian word for the bitter herb "wormwood", which poisons water in the seventh seal prophecy, is "Chernobyl" (easily referenced- see, for instance: 'Chernobyl' (1987), by Andrey Illesh). If this were not enough, in February of 1991, in the middle of the Gulf War, a couple of friends and I had some rather remarkable experiences that I believe confirmed the meaning of the prophecy as well as indicated its imminent fulfillment. First off, on February 6th, I saw a special report of a chemical SCUD attack on Haifa Israel that did not exist (believe me, I checked it out fully; the report was never aired). Then, about a week later, I was with a friend of mine who had just become interested in Nostradamus and prophecies that might be connected with the Gulf War. After showing him some books I had on Nostradamus, I began reading him the seventh seal prophecy above. Just as I began reading it, we heard an air- raid siren followed by the bellowed percussion of a nuclear explosion. The authenticity of the experience led me to rush with my friend to a deep basement in a nearby building. From there I contacted the local fire department to see if any sirens had been sounded; however, none had. After returning to our original location, my friend and I began checking with others to see if anyone else had heard anything. No one else had. However, another friend of mine, who is very trustworthy, said that he had heard no air-raid siren that evening- he had heard one that afternoon. When I asked him whether or not it could have been a fire alarm, he responded: "No, it was distinctly an air-raid siren off in the distance". Needless to say, these extraordinary experiences led me to conclude that the conflict in the Persian Gulf might somehow be linked to a future global nuclear war- an event that would fit the ultimate crash I have been anticipating. Thus, I began to critically reexamine the events that had been taking place in the Gulf, and I quickly realized there was something seriously amiss. In fact, all the inconsistencies and contradictions pointed to one logical explanation: the Soviets and Iraq were engaging in large-scale strategic deception (see my paper, "The Persian Gulf Deception"). The reason they would be doing this was clarified after examining the rather frightening conclusion of our national security analysts during the late-1970s and early-1980's: the Soviets were preparing to fight and win a nuclear war (see: Richard Pipes' "Why the Soviet Union Thinks it could Fight and Win a Nuclear War" in 'Commentary' (July, 1977), Dr. William Van Cleave's "Soviet Strategic Nuclear Forces and Goals: Deception and Surprise" in 'Mesmerized By The Bear' (1987), and/or 'Soviet Strategy for Nuclear War' (1979), authored by Joseph Douglas). Of course, with remarkable fear-induced irrationality, Western society has completely ignored the possibility that Gorbachev's "New Thinking" may have been the introduction of a total lie rooted in the unthinkable "Russian Idea" (see Alexander Yanov's 'The Russian Challenge and the Year 2000' (1987)). There is, however, sufficient reason to believe this is the case. If you are wondering how it is that Western civilization and the world as whole could be so utterly deceived, I have a sensible explanation for you. After Jesus was crucified some 2,000 years ago, his message was spread across the world by way of the church. After a thousand years, Christianity became the dominant paradigm of society- an historical thesis. Then came the rise of Western civilization and rapid technological development. In the context of matter/spirit duality, this epoch of materialism necessarily involved a reaction against spirituality. Thus, over the past 1,000 years the "secular" worldview of science developed in opposition to the church and religion. The opposing worldview that has emerged, what I refer to as the "secular paradigm", is the historical antithesis of Christianity. According to it, ours is a godless universe that started with a "Big Bang" and is flowing towards ever greater disorder and meaninglessness. This contradicts the idea that, since the moment of creation, God has carried out purposeful work to create ever greater organization and meaning. According to the secular paradigm, life is the result of a process of elimination involving "random mutation" and "natural selection". Contrariwise, Christians believe that life comes from a purposeful, orderly process of creation and divine selection. With regard to society, the secular worldview holds that, with the guidance of some imaginal "invisible hand", selfishness and competition give rise to "general equilibrium". This contradicts the Christian view that unselfish cooperation and the guidance of God bring forth social harmony. All in all, the secular worldview that dominates today's world is the antithesis of Christ's worldview. Whereas Christ saw a harmonious universe created by God in which people must seek to cooperate and care for each other, modern man sees a chaotic, godless universe in which men create order by competing with each other and caring only about themselves. The problem is: What if Jesus told "The Truth"? Then man's current opposing worldview, the secular paradigm, is the opposite of truth, i.e., it is lies, false beliefs- popular, antichristian delusions. In this case, man, living according to a perspective that goes against reality, is doomed to commit systematic errors. Instead of bringing order to the world, he'll end up causing worse and worse disorder. Eventually his erroneous ways could end in self-destruction. Once science figured out how to split the atom, man had the ultimate means to such an irrational, suicidal End. Assuming that Jesus did know "The Truth", he correctly anticipated what man would end up doing to the world. His "rational expectations" are what Christian prophecy is all about. Thus, the fulfillment of biblical prophecy, i.e., the outbreak of the Apocalypse, verifies what Christ taught the world some 2,000 years ago. We should accept our interdependence and love each other as Jesus loved us, lest we end up destroying ourselves. The lesson of love Christ demonstrated to the world by life example was not a suggestion for us to heed or ignore as we please. He fully understood a vital universal law, the Golden Rule, that must be obeyed so that human civilization can avoid self-destructive consequences. Rejecting the beliefs, values and way of life taught by Jesus makes about as much sense as ignoring the the law of gravity and walking off a cliff. Yet, it is just such senselessness that man is currently suffering from, thus leading to the most catastrophic error in human history: The Apocalypse. Hopefully, this time man will learn from his mistake... (Comment on this)
4:06a	Pinpointing the Start of World War 3 by Roy A. Reinhold This article will challenge your understanding of prophecy, do you have the courage to face the truth? One of the most misunderstood facets of prophecy study is the question, "When does world war 3 begin according to the scriptures?" Tons of books have been written proposing that WW3 starts after the rapture and before the beginning of the end-times 7 year period, or proposed that WW3 begins sometime during the first 3.5 years in the Tribulation period, or begins near the end of the 7 year period in a war which ends at Armageddon. All of these "theories" are incorrect and the correct beginning of world war 3 can be shown to begin immediately after the middle of the end-times 7 year period, right after the abomination of desolation takes place. When I say proved conclusively, I mean without a doubt, without any equivocation! I will conclusively prove the point in this article, but let me first lay out what the scenario looks like which will make it easier for you to grasp the points. In the middle of the end-times 7 year period, the antichrist will sit down in the most holy place of the soon to be built Jewish Temple in Jerusalem, and declare falsely that he is God. This is called throughout scriptures, the abomination of desolation. It is also called the beginning of the Great Tribulation period. Almost immediately after the abomination of desolation, Egypt will lead an alliance of Arab nations in attacking Israel to achieve their long-time objective of ridding the Middle East of Jews and creating a Palestinian nation in what is now Israel. In the Arab alliance with Egypt are Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Jordan, all the nations which surround Israel. Actually, the scriptures tell us that Jordan will attempt to remain neutral, but will enter the war as Israelis flee the invading armies and try to cross the Jordan River and also a route south of the Dead Sea. The Jordanians attack the fleeing Jewish refugees. Egypt and her Arab allies are called the King of the South in Daniel 11:40, and they will start the war because they have an ironclad treaty with Russia to join in the war once Egypt starts it. Russia and her allies are called the King of the North. This powerful coalition will have a single purpose in mind, to forever eliminate the Jewish problem. World War 3 will not last a long time in duration, but will be the most deadly conflict ever, with nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons used by both sides. On the side of Israel will be the European Community, the United States, other NATO countries, Japan, and China. Tens of millions will be killed with this unprecedented use of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. Japan and China will enter the war only after the US has been attacked in a surprise all-out nuclear attack from Russia. Unlike the Desert Storm war of 1991, the coalition forces will not stop their attack until all the nations which attacked Israel are completely overrun. Forces from China and Japan will go all the way to the very western borders of Russia. World War 3 ends with total victory at a very high price to the combatants involved. However, scripture shows us that the war will end during the Great Tribulation period, before the time of the 6th Seal events of Revelation 6:12-14. At the time of the 6th Seal events, the rapture of believers takes place and then the wrath of God period begins, called the Day of the Lord. During the Day of the Lord the 7 Trumpet Judgments and 7 Bowl Judgments occur. The Armageddon war starts just before the return of Jesus as conquering Messiah, as the nations revolt against the incredibly strict dictatorship economic control by the antichrist. Now, let me prove conclusively to you, that World War 3 starts immediately after the abomination of desolation in the middle of the end-times 7 year period! In both the Matthew 24 and Mark 13 versions of the Olivet Discourse, Jesus told Peter, James, John, and Andrew the events that would take place just before He returned to take over rule and reign of the whole earth. In that discourse, He revealed that something very important was to take place right after the abomination of desolation. Mark 13:14-20 But when you see the ABOMINATION OF DESOLATION standing where it should not be (let the reader understand), then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. And let him who is on the housetop not go down, or enter in, to get anything out of his house; and let him who is in the field not turn back to get his cloak. But woe to those who are with child and to those who nurse babes in those days! But pray that it may not happen in the winter. For those days will be a time of tribulation such as has not occurred since the beginning of creation which God created, until now, and never shall. And unless the Lord had shortened those days, no life would have been saved; but for the sake of the elect whom He chose, He shortened the days. That same corresponding text is Matthew 24:15-22, where that future period is called the Great Tribulation as opposed to the first half of the 7 year period which is called the Tribulation period. I know, you've read the above text and probably are saying that no world war is mentioned. I've started off with the obscure texts first, but you'll soon see that Jesus was obliquely referring to the coming world war 3 timeframe. The reason that Jesus said for those in Judea (modern Israel) to flee when the abomination of desolation takes place, is that there will quickly be an all-out attack upon Israel with armies many times the size of Israel's entire population. Our next text is in the Luke 21 version of the Olivet Discourse, where a few more details are mentioned. Luke 21:20-24 But when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then recognize that her desolation is at hand. Then let those in Judea flee to the mountains, and let those who are in the midst of the city depart, and let not those who are in the country enter the city; because these are the days of vengeance, in order that all things which are written may be fulfilled. Woe to those who nurse babes in those days; for there will be great distress upon the land, and wrath to this people, and they will fall by the edge of the sword, and will be led captive into all the nations; and Jerusalem will be trampled underfoot by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled. Many have interpreted the Luke passage above as applying to the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 AD, but the truth is that there is a future fulfillment. The disciples had asked two questions of Jesus, (1) when will the Temple be destroyed, and (2) what will be the signs when His return was about to take place? Jesus' answer took in the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD, but the whole context is about events that will take place just before He returns to set up the kingdom of God on the earth. Notice that the same language is used in the Matthew, Mark, and Luke versions, where people in Judea are told to flee for the mountains, and woe to those who are pregnant or nursing babies. No one will argue that the text in Matthew and Mark are exclusively about the end-times 7 year period, but they argue about the text in Luke even though it uses the same language. Perhaps they are arguing to fit the scripture into their pre-conceived notions! Another thought concerns the phrase, "all things which are written may be fulfilled." We know that all prophecy will be fulfilled before the Messiah returns to reign on the earth, but who would apply that understanding to the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD? Obviously no one would reach that conclusion. Now that we've hit the more obscure references, let's go on to the clear unarguable texts which prove the point. In Daniel 11:36-38, we are shown that the antichrist will falsely declare himself to be God, and will not honor any of the gods of the various religions. Then we are shown the attack which commences world war 3, after the text about the abomination of desolation! Daniel 11:40 And at the end time the king of the South will collide with him, and the king of the North will storm against him with chariots, with horsemen, and with many ships; and he will enter countries, overflow them, and pass through. No one will argue that this scripture text is about world war 3, but many argue that Daniel 11:36-38 may not be talking about the abomination of desolation. Take a look at how the angel explained the events to Daniel. Daniel 12:11 And from the time that the regular sacrifice is abolished, and the abomination of desolation is set up, there will be 1290 days. The angel was referring back to the verses in Daniel 11:36-38, where a more explanatory version of the abomination of desolation was given. We know that the antichrist will stop the regular sacrifices in the soon to be built Jewish Temple, and perform the abomination of desolation. Clearly then, the start of world war 3 begins in Daniel 11:40, after the abomination of desolation. The next example is the clearest in scripture, where the entire book of Joel is about the Great Tribulation period and details the invasion of the king of the North into Israel. The identifying texts show that the book of Joel events occur after the sacrifices in the Jewish Temple are stopped (at the time of the abomination of desolation). Joel 1:6 For a nation has invaded my land,.... Joel 1:9 The grain offering and the libation are cut off from the house of the Lord. The priests mourn, the ministers of the Lord. Joel 1:14 Gird yourselves with sackcloth, and lament O priests; wail O ministers of the altar! Come, spend the night in sackcloth, O ministers of my God, for the grain offering and the libation are withheld from the house of your God. Joel 1:15 Alas for the day! For the Day of the Lord is near, and it will come as destruction from the Almighty. Joel 2:1 Blow a trumpet in Zion, and sound an alarm on My holy mountain! Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble, for the Day of the Lord is coming; surely it is near. Joel 2:20 But I will remove the northern army far from you,.... Joel 2:31 The sun will be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and awesome Day of the Lord comes . Joel 3:14-15 ... For the Day of the Lord is near in the valley of decision. The sun and the moon grow dark, and the stars lose their brightness. Instead of splitting apart the concepts, I gave them all to you at once. The texts from Joel state that the time context is after the sacrifices in the Temple have been stopped. We know from other texts such as Daniel 12:11, that the antichrist will stop the sacrifices in the Temple and perform the abomination of desolation. So, the time frame in the book of Joel is after the sacrifices are stopped and before the Day of the Lord begins. Notice in Joel 1:15 above, that the timing is when the Day of the Lord is near, but hasn't come. Joel 2:1, likewise says that the timing is before the Day of the Lord. Another concept from the text above is that an army has invaded the nation of Israel (Joel 1:6), and that army is the northern army (Joel 2:20). The northern army is the king of the North from Daniel 11:40. Therefore, the scriptural texts confirm the scenario outlined at the beginning of this article, that world war 3 begins during the Great Tribulation period, before the Day of the Lord period. Another concept from the texts above is that the Day of the Lord period begins after the 6th Seal signs of Revelation 6:12-14, where the sun becomes black like sackcloth, and the moon became like blood. Notice that Joel 2:31 and Joel 3:14-15 both refer to the sun and moon becoming dark, and are the 6th Seal signs of Revelation 6. What is so significant, is that Joel 2:31 states that the 6th Seal signs occur before the Day of the Lord comes. The text from Joel 3:14-15, also states that when the 6th Seal signs occur, the Day of the Lord is near. Are there other scriptures that say the same thing? Take a look at the book of Matthew. Matthew 24:29 But immediately after the tribulation of those days THE SUN WILL BE DARKENED, AND THE MOON WILL NOT GIVE ITS LIGHT, AND THE STARS WILL FALL from the sky, and the POWERS OF THE HEAVENS will be shaken,.... or, take a look at the book of Mark. Mark 13:24 But in those days, after that tribulation, THE SUN WILL BE DARKENED, AND THE MOON WILL NOT GIVE ITS LIGHT, AND THE STARS WILL BE FALLING from heaven, and the POWERS THAT ARE IN THE HEAVENS will be shaken. How clear do you want it? Without a doubt, the period up to the 6th Seal signs are called the tribulation of those days (made up of the Tribulation and Great Tribulation periods). We have two witnesses that state that immediately after the tribulation of those days the 6th Seal signs take place, and the two texts from the book of Joel that clearly state that the 6th Seal signs take place before the Day of the Lord begins! If you read the book of Joel, you'll clearly see that the invasion of the northern army into Israel is over before the 6th Seal signs and before the Day of the Lord begins. If hardheaded, you might ask, "Roy, are there more scriptures that confirm the same things?" Yeah, sure, take a look at Ezekiel 30, with verses 1-9 about that same time period before the Day of the Lord begins. Ezekiel 30:3-5 For the Day of the Lord is near; it will be a day of clouds, a time of doom for the nations. And a sword will come upon Egypt, and anguish will be in Ethiopia when the slain fall in Egypt, they take away her wealth, and her foundations are torn down. Ethiopia, Put, Lud, all Arabia, Libya, and the people of the land that is in league will fall with them by the sword. God our Father has placed clues like this throughout scripture, where it states that the Day of the Lord is near. That phrase sets the time frame for the prophecy. Notice that it talks of the same nations mentioned in Daniel 11, Ezekiel 38 & 39, and others. Put and Lud above add the names of modern day Sudan and Tunisia, and perhaps Algeria. It takes no great leap of knowledge that calculate that in an all-out attack on Israel to eliminate them once and for all, that all the Arab nations will want to participate. But Roy, are there other texts which point to the same time frame you've mentioned? Take a look at Ezekiel 32, which ties in the 6th Seal signs as occurring after Egypt is destroyed, and also tells us who decimates Egypt. Ezekiel 32:2 Son of man, take up a lamentation over Pharaoh king of Egypt, and say to him,.... Ezekiel 32:7 And when I extinguish you, I will cover the heavens, and darken their stars; I will cover the sun with a cloud, and the moon shall not give its light. Ezekiel 32:11 For thus says the Lord God, "The sword of the king of Babylon shall come upon you." As in the Daniel 11:40 text, the above scripture is about the king of the South, Egypt. The time frame of the chapter is identified by the 6th Seal signs in Ezekiel 32:7, as the sun and the moon become dark. The alliance headed by the antichrist, the king of Babylon, will decimate the land of Egypt for their attack on the nation of Israel. Ezekiel 32 goes on to cite the other nations which are decimated along with Israel. Ezekiel 32:22 Assyria.... (Syria) Ezekiel 32:24 Elam.... (Iraq) Ezekiel 32:26 Meshech and Tubal.... (Russia) Ezekiel 32:29 There also is Edom.... (Jordan) Ezekiel 32:30 There also are the chiefs of the north (Islamic countries of former Soviet Union like Kazakhstan, etc.), all of them, and all the Sidonians.... (Lebanon) Other reference texts concerning our topic of world war 3 occurring in the Great Tribulation period are Isaiah 13, which discusses a war when the Day of the Lord is near. The book of Obadiah is entirely about the war during the Great Tribulation period, when the Day of the Lord is near. Obadiah details the actions which Edom (modern Jordan) takes against the fleeing Israelis, who attempt to cross the Jordan River and south of the Dead Sea route when the Arab and Russian armies overrun Israel. The scriptural references provide overwhelming evidence for the outlined scenario. It takes courage to face the truth that your previous understanding of prophecy is flawed. Do you have the courage to accept the truth and change? God our Father will give you the understanding if you ask Him. (Comment on this)
4:06a	Pinpointing the Start of World War 3 by Roy A. Reinhold This article will challenge your understanding of prophecy, do you have the courage to face the truth? One of the most misunderstood facets of prophecy study is the question, "When does world war 3 begin according to the scriptures?" Tons of books have been written proposing that WW3 starts after the rapture and before the beginning of the end-times 7 year period, or proposed that WW3 begins sometime during the first 3.5 years in the Tribulation period, or begins near the end of the 7 year period in a war which ends at Armageddon. All of these "theories" are incorrect and the correct beginning of world war 3 can be shown to begin immediately after the middle of the end-times 7 year period, right after the abomination of desolation takes place. When I say proved conclusively, I mean without a doubt, without any equivocation! I will conclusively prove the point in this article, but let me first lay out what the scenario looks like which will make it easier for you to grasp the points. In the middle of the end-times 7 year period, the antichrist will sit down in the most holy place of the soon to be built Jewish Temple in Jerusalem, and declare falsely that he is God. This is called throughout scriptures, the abomination of desolation. It is also called the beginning of the Great Tribulation period. Almost immediately after the abomination of desolation, Egypt will lead an alliance of Arab nations in attacking Israel to achieve their long-time objective of ridding the Middle East of Jews and creating a Palestinian nation in what is now Israel. In the Arab alliance with Egypt are Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Jordan, all the nations which surround Israel. Actually, the scriptures tell us that Jordan will attempt to remain neutral, but will enter the war as Israelis flee the invading armies and try to cross the Jordan River and also a route south of the Dead Sea. The Jordanians attack the fleeing Jewish refugees. Egypt and her Arab allies are called the King of the South in Daniel 11:40, and they will start the war because they have an ironclad treaty with Russia to join in the war once Egypt starts it. Russia and her allies are called the King of the North. This powerful coalition will have a single purpose in mind, to forever eliminate the Jewish problem. World War 3 will not last a long time in duration, but will be the most deadly conflict ever, with nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons used by both sides. On the side of Israel will be the European Community, the United States, other NATO countries, Japan, and China. Tens of millions will be killed with this unprecedented use of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. Japan and China will enter the war only after the US has been attacked in a surprise all-out nuclear attack from Russia. Unlike the Desert Storm war of 1991, the coalition forces will not stop their attack until all the nations which attacked Israel are completely overrun. Forces from China and Japan will go all the way to the very western borders of Russia. World War 3 ends with total victory at a very high price to the combatants involved. However, scripture shows us that the war will end during the Great Tribulation period, before the time of the 6th Seal events of Revelation 6:12-14. At the time of the 6th Seal events, the rapture of believers takes place and then the wrath of God period begins, called the Day of the Lord. During the Day of the Lord the 7 Trumpet Judgments and 7 Bowl Judgments occur. The Armageddon war starts just before the return of Jesus as conquering Messiah, as the nations revolt against the incredibly strict dictatorship economic control by the antichrist. Now, let me prove conclusively to you, that World War 3 starts immediately after the abomination of desolation in the middle of the end-times 7 year period! In both the Matthew 24 and Mark 13 versions of the Olivet Discourse, Jesus told Peter, James, John, and Andrew the events that would take place just before He returned to take over rule and reign of the whole earth. In that discourse, He revealed that something very important was to take place right after the abomination of desolation. Mark 13:14-20 But when you see the ABOMINATION OF DESOLATION standing where it should not be (let the reader understand), then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. And let him who is on the housetop not go down, or enter in, to get anything out of his house; and let him who is in the field not turn back to get his cloak. But woe to those who are with child and to those who nurse babes in those days! But pray that it may not happen in the winter. For those days will be a time of tribulation such as has not occurred since the beginning of creation which God created, until now, and never shall. And unless the Lord had shortened those days, no life would have been saved; but for the sake of the elect whom He chose, He shortened the days. That same corresponding text is Matthew 24:15-22, where that future period is called the Great Tribulation as opposed to the first half of the 7 year period which is called the Tribulation period. I know, you've read the above text and probably are saying that no world war is mentioned. I've started off with the obscure texts first, but you'll soon see that Jesus was obliquely referring to the coming world war 3 timeframe. The reason that Jesus said for those in Judea (modern Israel) to flee when the abomination of desolation takes place, is that there will quickly be an all-out attack upon Israel with armies many times the size of Israel's entire population. Our next text is in the Luke 21 version of the Olivet Discourse, where a few more details are mentioned. Luke 21:20-24 But when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then recognize that her desolation is at hand. Then let those in Judea flee to the mountains, and let those who are in the midst of the city depart, and let not those who are in the country enter the city; because these are the days of vengeance, in order that all things which are written may be fulfilled. Woe to those who nurse babes in those days; for there will be great distress upon the land, and wrath to this people, and they will fall by the edge of the sword, and will be led captive into all the nations; and Jerusalem will be trampled underfoot by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled. Many have interpreted the Luke passage above as applying to the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 AD, but the truth is that there is a future fulfillment. The disciples had asked two questions of Jesus, (1) when will the Temple be destroyed, and (2) what will be the signs when His return was about to take place? Jesus' answer took in the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD, but the whole context is about events that will take place just before He returns to set up the kingdom of God on the earth. Notice that the same language is used in the Matthew, Mark, and Luke versions, where people in Judea are told to flee for the mountains, and woe to those who are pregnant or nursing babies. No one will argue that the text in Matthew and Mark are exclusively about the end-times 7 year period, but they argue about the text in Luke even though it uses the same language. Perhaps they are arguing to fit the scripture into their pre-conceived notions! Another thought concerns the phrase, "all things which are written may be fulfilled." We know that all prophecy will be fulfilled before the Messiah returns to reign on the earth, but who would apply that understanding to the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD? Obviously no one would reach that conclusion. Now that we've hit the more obscure references, let's go on to the clear unarguable texts which prove the point. In Daniel 11:36-38, we are shown that the antichrist will falsely declare himself to be God, and will not honor any of the gods of the various religions. Then we are shown the attack which commences world war 3, after the text about the abomination of desolation! Daniel 11:40 And at the end time the king of the South will collide with him, and the king of the North will storm against him with chariots, with horsemen, and with many ships; and he will enter countries, overflow them, and pass through. No one will argue that this scripture text is about world war 3, but many argue that Daniel 11:36-38 may not be talking about the abomination of desolation. Take a look at how the angel explained the events to Daniel. Daniel 12:11 And from the time that the regular sacrifice is abolished, and the abomination of desolation is set up, there will be 1290 days. The angel was referring back to the verses in Daniel 11:36-38, where a more explanatory version of the abomination of desolation was given. We know that the antichrist will stop the regular sacrifices in the soon to be built Jewish Temple, and perform the abomination of desolation. Clearly then, the start of world war 3 begins in Daniel 11:40, after the abomination of desolation. The next example is the clearest in scripture, where the entire book of Joel is about the Great Tribulation period and details the invasion of the king of the North into Israel. The identifying texts show that the book of Joel events occur after the sacrifices in the Jewish Temple are stopped (at the time of the abomination of desolation). Joel 1:6 For a nation has invaded my land,.... Joel 1:9 The grain offering and the libation are cut off from the house of the Lord. The priests mourn, the ministers of the Lord. Joel 1:14 Gird yourselves with sackcloth, and lament O priests; wail O ministers of the altar! Come, spend the night in sackcloth, O ministers of my God, for the grain offering and the libation are withheld from the house of your God. Joel 1:15 Alas for the day! For the Day of the Lord is near, and it will come as destruction from the Almighty. Joel 2:1 Blow a trumpet in Zion, and sound an alarm on My holy mountain! Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble, for the Day of the Lord is coming; surely it is near. Joel 2:20 But I will remove the northern army far from you,.... Joel 2:31 The sun will be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and awesome Day of the Lord comes . Joel 3:14-15 ... For the Day of the Lord is near in the valley of decision. The sun and the moon grow dark, and the stars lose their brightness. Instead of splitting apart the concepts, I gave them all to you at once. The texts from Joel state that the time context is after the sacrifices in the Temple have been stopped. We know from other texts such as Daniel 12:11, that the antichrist will stop the sacrifices in the Temple and perform the abomination of desolation. So, the time frame in the book of Joel is after the sacrifices are stopped and before the Day of the Lord begins. Notice in Joel 1:15 above, that the timing is when the Day of the Lord is near, but hasn't come. Joel 2:1, likewise says that the timing is before the Day of the Lord. Another concept from the text above is that an army has invaded the nation of Israel (Joel 1:6), and that army is the northern army (Joel 2:20). The northern army is the king of the North from Daniel 11:40. Therefore, the scriptural texts confirm the scenario outlined at the beginning of this article, that world war 3 begins during the Great Tribulation period, before the Day of the Lord period. Another concept from the texts above is that the Day of the Lord period begins after the 6th Seal signs of Revelation 6:12-14, where the sun becomes black like sackcloth, and the moon became like blood. Notice that Joel 2:31 and Joel 3:14-15 both refer to the sun and moon becoming dark, and are the 6th Seal signs of Revelation 6. What is so significant, is that Joel 2:31 states that the 6th Seal signs occur before the Day of the Lord comes. The text from Joel 3:14-15, also states that when the 6th Seal signs occur, the Day of the Lord is near. Are there other scriptures that say the same thing? Take a look at the book of Matthew. Matthew 24:29 But immediately after the tribulation of those days THE SUN WILL BE DARKENED, AND THE MOON WILL NOT GIVE ITS LIGHT, AND THE STARS WILL FALL from the sky, and the POWERS OF THE HEAVENS will be shaken,.... or, take a look at the book of Mark. Mark 13:24 But in those days, after that tribulation, THE SUN WILL BE DARKENED, AND THE MOON WILL NOT GIVE ITS LIGHT, AND THE STARS WILL BE FALLING from heaven, and the POWERS THAT ARE IN THE HEAVENS will be shaken. How clear do you want it? Without a doubt, the period up to the 6th Seal signs are called the tribulation of those days (made up of the Tribulation and Great Tribulation periods). We have two witnesses that state that immediately after the tribulation of those days the 6th Seal signs take place, and the two texts from the book of Joel that clearly state that the 6th Seal signs take place before the Day of the Lord begins! If you read the book of Joel, you'll clearly see that the invasion of the northern army into Israel is over before the 6th Seal signs and before the Day of the Lord begins. If hardheaded, you might ask, "Roy, are there more scriptures that confirm the same things?" Yeah, sure, take a look at Ezekiel 30, with verses 1-9 about that same time period before the Day of the Lord begins. Ezekiel 30:3-5 For the Day of the Lord is near; it will be a day of clouds, a time of doom for the nations. And a sword will come upon Egypt, and anguish will be in Ethiopia when the slain fall in Egypt, they take away her wealth, and her foundations are torn down. Ethiopia, Put, Lud, all Arabia, Libya, and the people of the land that is in league will fall with them by the sword. God our Father has placed clues like this throughout scripture, where it states that the Day of the Lord is near. That phrase sets the time frame for the prophecy. Notice that it talks of the same nations mentioned in Daniel 11, Ezekiel 38 & 39, and others. Put and Lud above add the names of modern day Sudan and Tunisia, and perhaps Algeria. It takes no great leap of knowledge that calculate that in an all-out attack on Israel to eliminate them once and for all, that all the Arab nations will want to participate. But Roy, are there other texts which point to the same time frame you've mentioned? Take a look at Ezekiel 32, which ties in the 6th Seal signs as occurring after Egypt is destroyed, and also tells us who decimates Egypt. Ezekiel 32:2 Son of man, take up a lamentation over Pharaoh king of Egypt, and say to him,.... Ezekiel 32:7 And when I extinguish you, I will cover the heavens, and darken their stars; I will cover the sun with a cloud, and the moon shall not give its light. Ezekiel 32:11 For thus says the Lord God, "The sword of the king of Babylon shall come upon you." As in the Daniel 11:40 text, the above scripture is about the king of the South, Egypt. The time frame of the chapter is identified by the 6th Seal signs in Ezekiel 32:7, as the sun and the moon become dark. The alliance headed by the antichrist, the king of Babylon, will decimate the land of Egypt for their attack on the nation of Israel. Ezekiel 32 goes on to cite the other nations which are decimated along with Israel. Ezekiel 32:22 Assyria.... (Syria) Ezekiel 32:24 Elam.... (Iraq) Ezekiel 32:26 Meshech and Tubal.... (Russia) Ezekiel 32:29 There also is Edom.... (Jordan) Ezekiel 32:30 There also are the chiefs of the north (Islamic countries of former Soviet Union like Kazakhstan, etc.), all of them, and all the Sidonians.... (Lebanon) Other reference texts concerning our topic of world war 3 occurring in the Great Tribulation period are Isaiah 13, which discusses a war when the Day of the Lord is near. The book of Obadiah is entirely about the war during the Great Tribulation period, when the Day of the Lord is near. Obadiah details the actions which Edom (modern Jordan) takes against the fleeing Israelis, who attempt to cross the Jordan River and south of the Dead Sea route when the Arab and Russian armies overrun Israel. The scriptural references provide overwhelming evidence for the outlined scenario. It takes courage to face the truth that your previous understanding of prophecy is flawed. Do you have the courage to accept the truth and change? God our Father will give you the understanding if you ask Him. (Comment on this)
4:06a	Pinpointing the Start of World War 3 by Roy A. Reinhold This article will challenge your understanding of prophecy, do you have the courage to face the truth? One of the most misunderstood facets of prophecy study is the question, "When does world war 3 begin according to the scriptures?" Tons of books have been written proposing that WW3 starts after the rapture and before the beginning of the end-times 7 year period, or proposed that WW3 begins sometime during the first 3.5 years in the Tribulation period, or begins near the end of the 7 year period in a war which ends at Armageddon. All of these "theories" are incorrect and the correct beginning of world war 3 can be shown to begin immediately after the middle of the end-times 7 year period, right after the abomination of desolation takes place. When I say proved conclusively, I mean without a doubt, without any equivocation! I will conclusively prove the point in this article, but let me first lay out what the scenario looks like which will make it easier for you to grasp the points. In the middle of the end-times 7 year period, the antichrist will sit down in the most holy place of the soon to be built Jewish Temple in Jerusalem, and declare falsely that he is God. This is called throughout scriptures, the abomination of desolation. It is also called the beginning of the Great Tribulation period. Almost immediately after the abomination of desolation, Egypt will lead an alliance of Arab nations in attacking Israel to achieve their long-time objective of ridding the Middle East of Jews and creating a Palestinian nation in what is now Israel. In the Arab alliance with Egypt are Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Jordan, all the nations which surround Israel. Actually, the scriptures tell us that Jordan will attempt to remain neutral, but will enter the war as Israelis flee the invading armies and try to cross the Jordan River and also a route south of the Dead Sea. The Jordanians attack the fleeing Jewish refugees. Egypt and her Arab allies are called the King of the South in Daniel 11:40, and they will start the war because they have an ironclad treaty with Russia to join in the war once Egypt starts it. Russia and her allies are called the King of the North. This powerful coalition will have a single purpose in mind, to forever eliminate the Jewish problem. World War 3 will not last a long time in duration, but will be the most deadly conflict ever, with nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons used by both sides. On the side of Israel will be the European Community, the United States, other NATO countries, Japan, and China. Tens of millions will be killed with this unprecedented use of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. Japan and China will enter the war only after the US has been attacked in a surprise all-out nuclear attack from Russia. Unlike the Desert Storm war of 1991, the coalition forces will not stop their attack until all the nations which attacked Israel are completely overrun. Forces from China and Japan will go all the way to the very western borders of Russia. World War 3 ends with total victory at a very high price to the combatants involved. However, scripture shows us that the war will end during the Great Tribulation period, before the time of the 6th Seal events of Revelation 6:12-14. At the time of the 6th Seal events, the rapture of believers takes place and then the wrath of God period begins, called the Day of the Lord. During the Day of the Lord the 7 Trumpet Judgments and 7 Bowl Judgments occur. The Armageddon war starts just before the return of Jesus as conquering Messiah, as the nations revolt against the incredibly strict dictatorship economic control by the antichrist. Now, let me prove conclusively to you, that World War 3 starts immediately after the abomination of desolation in the middle of the end-times 7 year period! In both the Matthew 24 and Mark 13 versions of the Olivet Discourse, Jesus told Peter, James, John, and Andrew the events that would take place just before He returned to take over rule and reign of the whole earth. In that discourse, He revealed that something very important was to take place right after the abomination of desolation. Mark 13:14-20 But when you see the ABOMINATION OF DESOLATION standing where it should not be (let the reader understand), then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. And let him who is on the housetop not go down, or enter in, to get anything out of his house; and let him who is in the field not turn back to get his cloak. But woe to those who are with child and to those who nurse babes in those days! But pray that it may not happen in the winter. For those days will be a time of tribulation such as has not occurred since the beginning of creation which God created, until now, and never shall. And unless the Lord had shortened those days, no life would have been saved; but for the sake of the elect whom He chose, He shortened the days. That same corresponding text is Matthew 24:15-22, where that future period is called the Great Tribulation as opposed to the first half of the 7 year period which is called the Tribulation period. I know, you've read the above text and probably are saying that no world war is mentioned. I've started off with the obscure texts first, but you'll soon see that Jesus was obliquely referring to the coming world war 3 timeframe. The reason that Jesus said for those in Judea (modern Israel) to flee when the abomination of desolation takes place, is that there will quickly be an all-out attack upon Israel with armies many times the size of Israel's entire population. Our next text is in the Luke 21 version of the Olivet Discourse, where a few more details are mentioned. Luke 21:20-24 But when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then recognize that her desolation is at hand. Then let those in Judea flee to the mountains, and let those who are in the midst of the city depart, and let not those who are in the country enter the city; because these are the days of vengeance, in order that all things which are written may be fulfilled. Woe to those who nurse babes in those days; for there will be great distress upon the land, and wrath to this people, and they will fall by the edge of the sword, and will be led captive into all the nations; and Jerusalem will be trampled underfoot by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled. Many have interpreted the Luke passage above as applying to the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 AD, but the truth is that there is a future fulfillment. The disciples had asked two questions of Jesus, (1) when will the Temple be destroyed, and (2) what will be the signs when His return was about to take place? Jesus' answer took in the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD, but the whole context is about events that will take place just before He returns to set up the kingdom of God on the earth. Notice that the same language is used in the Matthew, Mark, and Luke versions, where people in Judea are told to flee for the mountains, and woe to those who are pregnant or nursing babies. No one will argue that the text in Matthew and Mark are exclusively about the end-times 7 year period, but they argue about the text in Luke even though it uses the same language. Perhaps they are arguing to fit the scripture into their pre-conceived notions! Another thought concerns the phrase, "all things which are written may be fulfilled." We know that all prophecy will be fulfilled before the Messiah returns to reign on the earth, but who would apply that understanding to the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD? Obviously no one would reach that conclusion. Now that we've hit the more obscure references, let's go on to the clear unarguable texts which prove the point. In Daniel 11:36-38, we are shown that the antichrist will falsely declare himself to be God, and will not honor any of the gods of the various religions. Then we are shown the attack which commences world war 3, after the text about the abomination of desolation! Daniel 11:40 And at the end time the king of the South will collide with him, and the king of the North will storm against him with chariots, with horsemen, and with many ships; and he will enter countries, overflow them, and pass through. No one will argue that this scripture text is about world war 3, but many argue that Daniel 11:36-38 may not be talking about the abomination of desolation. Take a look at how the angel explained the events to Daniel. Daniel 12:11 And from the time that the regular sacrifice is abolished, and the abomination of desolation is set up, there will be 1290 days. The angel was referring back to the verses in Daniel 11:36-38, where a more explanatory version of the abomination of desolation was given. We know that the antichrist will stop the regular sacrifices in the soon to be built Jewish Temple, and perform the abomination of desolation. Clearly then, the start of world war 3 begins in Daniel 11:40, after the abomination of desolation. The next example is the clearest in scripture, where the entire book of Joel is about the Great Tribulation period and details the invasion of the king of the North into Israel. The identifying texts show that the book of Joel events occur after the sacrifices in the Jewish Temple are stopped (at the time of the abomination of desolation). Joel 1:6 For a nation has invaded my land,.... Joel 1:9 The grain offering and the libation are cut off from the house of the Lord. The priests mourn, the ministers of the Lord. Joel 1:14 Gird yourselves with sackcloth, and lament O priests; wail O ministers of the altar! Come, spend the night in sackcloth, O ministers of my God, for the grain offering and the libation are withheld from the house of your God. Joel 1:15 Alas for the day! For the Day of the Lord is near, and it will come as destruction from the Almighty. Joel 2:1 Blow a trumpet in Zion, and sound an alarm on My holy mountain! Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble, for the Day of the Lord is coming; surely it is near. Joel 2:20 But I will remove the northern army far from you,.... Joel 2:31 The sun will be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and awesome Day of the Lord comes . Joel 3:14-15 ... For the Day of the Lord is near in the valley of decision. The sun and the moon grow dark, and the stars lose their brightness. Instead of splitting apart the concepts, I gave them all to you at once. The texts from Joel state that the time context is after the sacrifices in the Temple have been stopped. We know from other texts such as Daniel 12:11, that the antichrist will stop the sacrifices in the Temple and perform the abomination of desolation. So, the time frame in the book of Joel is after the sacrifices are stopped and before the Day of the Lord begins. Notice in Joel 1:15 above, that the timing is when the Day of the Lord is near, but hasn't come. Joel 2:1, likewise says that the timing is before the Day of the Lord. Another concept from the text above is that an army has invaded the nation of Israel (Joel 1:6), and that army is the northern army (Joel 2:20). The northern army is the king of the North from Daniel 11:40. Therefore, the scriptural texts confirm the scenario outlined at the beginning of this article, that world war 3 begins during the Great Tribulation period, before the Day of the Lord period. Another concept from the texts above is that the Day of the Lord period begins after the 6th Seal signs of Revelation 6:12-14, where the sun becomes black like sackcloth, and the moon became like blood. Notice that Joel 2:31 and Joel 3:14-15 both refer to the sun and moon becoming dark, and are the 6th Seal signs of Revelation 6. What is so significant, is that Joel 2:31 states that the 6th Seal signs occur before the Day of the Lord comes. The text from Joel 3:14-15, also states that when the 6th Seal signs occur, the Day of the Lord is near. Are there other scriptures that say the same thing? Take a look at the book of Matthew. Matthew 24:29 But immediately after the tribulation of those days THE SUN WILL BE DARKENED, AND THE MOON WILL NOT GIVE ITS LIGHT, AND THE STARS WILL FALL from the sky, and the POWERS OF THE HEAVENS will be shaken,.... or, take a look at the book of Mark. Mark 13:24 But in those days, after that tribulation, THE SUN WILL BE DARKENED, AND THE MOON WILL NOT GIVE ITS LIGHT, AND THE STARS WILL BE FALLING from heaven, and the POWERS THAT ARE IN THE HEAVENS will be shaken. How clear do you want it? Without a doubt, the period up to the 6th Seal signs are called the tribulation of those days (made up of the Tribulation and Great Tribulation periods). We have two witnesses that state that immediately after the tribulation of those days the 6th Seal signs take place, and the two texts from the book of Joel that clearly state that the 6th Seal signs take place before the Day of the Lord begins! If you read the book of Joel, you'll clearly see that the invasion of the northern army into Israel is over before the 6th Seal signs and before the Day of the Lord begins. If hardheaded, you might ask, "Roy, are there more scriptures that confirm the same things?" Yeah, sure, take a look at Ezekiel 30, with verses 1-9 about that same time period before the Day of the Lord begins. Ezekiel 30:3-5 For the Day of the Lord is near; it will be a day of clouds, a time of doom for the nations. And a sword will come upon Egypt, and anguish will be in Ethiopia when the slain fall in Egypt, they take away her wealth, and her foundations are torn down. Ethiopia, Put, Lud, all Arabia, Libya, and the people of the land that is in league will fall with them by the sword. God our Father has placed clues like this throughout scripture, where it states that the Day of the Lord is near. That phrase sets the time frame for the prophecy. Notice that it talks of the same nations mentioned in Daniel 11, Ezekiel 38 & 39, and others. Put and Lud above add the names of modern day Sudan and Tunisia, and perhaps Algeria. It takes no great leap of knowledge that calculate that in an all-out attack on Israel to eliminate them once and for all, that all the Arab nations will want to participate. But Roy, are there other texts which point to the same time frame you've mentioned? Take a look at Ezekiel 32, which ties in the 6th Seal signs as occurring after Egypt is destroyed, and also tells us who decimates Egypt. Ezekiel 32:2 Son of man, take up a lamentation over Pharaoh king of Egypt, and say to him,.... Ezekiel 32:7 And when I extinguish you, I will cover the heavens, and darken their stars; I will cover the sun with a cloud, and the moon shall not give its light. Ezekiel 32:11 For thus says the Lord God, "The sword of the king of Babylon shall come upon you." As in the Daniel 11:40 text, the above scripture is about the king of the South, Egypt. The time frame of the chapter is identified by the 6th Seal signs in Ezekiel 32:7, as the sun and the moon become dark. The alliance headed by the antichrist, the king of Babylon, will decimate the land of Egypt for their attack on the nation of Israel. Ezekiel 32 goes on to cite the other nations which are decimated along with Israel. Ezekiel 32:22 Assyria.... (Syria) Ezekiel 32:24 Elam.... (Iraq) Ezekiel 32:26 Meshech and Tubal.... (Russia) Ezekiel 32:29 There also is Edom.... (Jordan) Ezekiel 32:30 There also are the chiefs of the north (Islamic countries of former Soviet Union like Kazakhstan, etc.), all of them, and all the Sidonians.... (Lebanon) Other reference texts concerning our topic of world war 3 occurring in the Great Tribulation period are Isaiah 13, which discusses a war when the Day of the Lord is near. The book of Obadiah is entirely about the war during the Great Tribulation period, when the Day of the Lord is near. Obadiah details the actions which Edom (modern Jordan) takes against the fleeing Israelis, who attempt to cross the Jordan River and south of the Dead Sea route when the Arab and Russian armies overrun Israel. The scriptural references provide overwhelming evidence for the outlined scenario. It takes courage to face the truth that your previous understanding of prophecy is flawed. Do you have the courage to accept the truth and change? God our Father will give you the understanding if you ask Him. (Comment on this)
4:06a	Pinpointing the Start of World War 3 by Roy A. Reinhold This article will challenge your understanding of prophecy, do you have the courage to face the truth? One of the most misunderstood facets of prophecy study is the question, "When does world war 3 begin according to the scriptures?" Tons of books have been written proposing that WW3 starts after the rapture and before the beginning of the end-times 7 year period, or proposed that WW3 begins sometime during the first 3.5 years in the Tribulation period, or begins near the end of the 7 year period in a war which ends at Armageddon. All of these "theories" are incorrect and the correct beginning of world war 3 can be shown to begin immediately after the middle of the end-times 7 year period, right after the abomination of desolation takes place. When I say proved conclusively, I mean without a doubt, without any equivocation! I will conclusively prove the point in this article, but let me first lay out what the scenario looks like which will make it easier for you to grasp the points. In the middle of the end-times 7 year period, the antichrist will sit down in the most holy place of the soon to be built Jewish Temple in Jerusalem, and declare falsely that he is God. This is called throughout scriptures, the abomination of desolation. It is also called the beginning of the Great Tribulation period. Almost immediately after the abomination of desolation, Egypt will lead an alliance of Arab nations in attacking Israel to achieve their long-time objective of ridding the Middle East of Jews and creating a Palestinian nation in what is now Israel. In the Arab alliance with Egypt are Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Jordan, all the nations which surround Israel. Actually, the scriptures tell us that Jordan will attempt to remain neutral, but will enter the war as Israelis flee the invading armies and try to cross the Jordan River and also a route south of the Dead Sea. The Jordanians attack the fleeing Jewish refugees. Egypt and her Arab allies are called the King of the South in Daniel 11:40, and they will start the war because they have an ironclad treaty with Russia to join in the war once Egypt starts it. Russia and her allies are called the King of the North. This powerful coalition will have a single purpose in mind, to forever eliminate the Jewish problem. World War 3 will not last a long time in duration, but will be the most deadly conflict ever, with nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons used by both sides. On the side of Israel will be the European Community, the United States, other NATO countries, Japan, and China. Tens of millions will be killed with this unprecedented use of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. Japan and China will enter the war only after the US has been attacked in a surprise all-out nuclear attack from Russia. Unlike the Desert Storm war of 1991, the coalition forces will not stop their attack until all the nations which attacked Israel are completely overrun. Forces from China and Japan will go all the way to the very western borders of Russia. World War 3 ends with total victory at a very high price to the combatants involved. However, scripture shows us that the war will end during the Great Tribulation period, before the time of the 6th Seal events of Revelation 6:12-14. At the time of the 6th Seal events, the rapture of believers takes place and then the wrath of God period begins, called the Day of the Lord. During the Day of the Lord the 7 Trumpet Judgments and 7 Bowl Judgments occur. The Armageddon war starts just before the return of Jesus as conquering Messiah, as the nations revolt against the incredibly strict dictatorship economic control by the antichrist. Now, let me prove conclusively to you, that World War 3 starts immediately after the abomination of desolation in the middle of the end-times 7 year period! In both the Matthew 24 and Mark 13 versions of the Olivet Discourse, Jesus told Peter, James, John, and Andrew the events that would take place just before He returned to take over rule and reign of the whole earth. In that discourse, He revealed that something very important was to take place right after the abomination of desolation. Mark 13:14-20 But when you see the ABOMINATION OF DESOLATION standing where it should not be (let the reader understand), then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. And let him who is on the housetop not go down, or enter in, to get anything out of his house; and let him who is in the field not turn back to get his cloak. But woe to those who are with child and to those who nurse babes in those days! But pray that it may not happen in the winter. For those days will be a time of tribulation such as has not occurred since the beginning of creation which God created, until now, and never shall. And unless the Lord had shortened those days, no life would have been saved; but for the sake of the elect whom He chose, He shortened the days. That same corresponding text is Matthew 24:15-22, where that future period is called the Great Tribulation as opposed to the first half of the 7 year period which is called the Tribulation period. I know, you've read the above text and probably are saying that no world war is mentioned. I've started off with the obscure texts first, but you'll soon see that Jesus was obliquely referring to the coming world war 3 timeframe. The reason that Jesus said for those in Judea (modern Israel) to flee when the abomination of desolation takes place, is that there will quickly be an all-out attack upon Israel with armies many times the size of Israel's entire population. Our next text is in the Luke 21 version of the Olivet Discourse, where a few more details are mentioned. Luke 21:20-24 But when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then recognize that her desolation is at hand. Then let those in Judea flee to the mountains, and let those who are in the midst of the city depart, and let not those who are in the country enter the city; because these are the days of vengeance, in order that all things which are written may be fulfilled. Woe to those who nurse babes in those days; for there will be great distress upon the land, and wrath to this people, and they will fall by the edge of the sword, and will be led captive into all the nations; and Jerusalem will be trampled underfoot by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled. Many have interpreted the Luke passage above as applying to the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 AD, but the truth is that there is a future fulfillment. The disciples had asked two questions of Jesus, (1) when will the Temple be destroyed, and (2) what will be the signs when His return was about to take place? Jesus' answer took in the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD, but the whole context is about events that will take place just before He returns to set up the kingdom of God on the earth. Notice that the same language is used in the Matthew, Mark, and Luke versions, where people in Judea are told to flee for the mountains, and woe to those who are pregnant or nursing babies. No one will argue that the text in Matthew and Mark are exclusively about the end-times 7 year period, but they argue about the text in Luke even though it uses the same language. Perhaps they are arguing to fit the scripture into their pre-conceived notions! Another thought concerns the phrase, "all things which are written may be fulfilled." We know that all prophecy will be fulfilled before the Messiah returns to reign on the earth, but who would apply that understanding to the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD? Obviously no one would reach that conclusion. Now that we've hit the more obscure references, let's go on to the clear unarguable texts which prove the point. In Daniel 11:36-38, we are shown that the antichrist will falsely declare himself to be God, and will not honor any of the gods of the various religions. Then we are shown the attack which commences world war 3, after the text about the abomination of desolation! Daniel 11:40 And at the end time the king of the South will collide with him, and the king of the North will storm against him with chariots, with horsemen, and with many ships; and he will enter countries, overflow them, and pass through. No one will argue that this scripture text is about world war 3, but many argue that Daniel 11:36-38 may not be talking about the abomination of desolation. Take a look at how the angel explained the events to Daniel. Daniel 12:11 And from the time that the regular sacrifice is abolished, and the abomination of desolation is set up, there will be 1290 days. The angel was referring back to the verses in Daniel 11:36-38, where a more explanatory version of the abomination of desolation was given. We know that the antichrist will stop the regular sacrifices in the soon to be built Jewish Temple, and perform the abomination of desolation. Clearly then, the start of world war 3 begins in Daniel 11:40, after the abomination of desolation. The next example is the clearest in scripture, where the entire book of Joel is about the Great Tribulation period and details the invasion of the king of the North into Israel. The identifying texts show that the book of Joel events occur after the sacrifices in the Jewish Temple are stopped (at the time of the abomination of desolation). Joel 1:6 For a nation has invaded my land,.... Joel 1:9 The grain offering and the libation are cut off from the house of the Lord. The priests mourn, the ministers of the Lord. Joel 1:14 Gird yourselves with sackcloth, and lament O priests; wail O ministers of the altar! Come, spend the night in sackcloth, O ministers of my God, for the grain offering and the libation are withheld from the house of your God. Joel 1:15 Alas for the day! For the Day of the Lord is near, and it will come as destruction from the Almighty. Joel 2:1 Blow a trumpet in Zion, and sound an alarm on My holy mountain! Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble, for the Day of the Lord is coming; surely it is near. Joel 2:20 But I will remove the northern army far from you,.... Joel 2:31 The sun will be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and awesome Day of the Lord comes . Joel 3:14-15 ... For the Day of the Lord is near in the valley of decision. The sun and the moon grow dark, and the stars lose their brightness. Instead of splitting apart the concepts, I gave them all to you at once. The texts from Joel state that the time context is after the sacrifices in the Temple have been stopped. We know from other texts such as Daniel 12:11, that the antichrist will stop the sacrifices in the Temple and perform the abomination of desolation. So, the time frame in the book of Joel is after the sacrifices are stopped and before the Day of the Lord begins. Notice in Joel 1:15 above, that the timing is when the Day of the Lord is near, but hasn't come. Joel 2:1, likewise says that the timing is before the Day of the Lord. Another concept from the text above is that an army has invaded the nation of Israel (Joel 1:6), and that army is the northern army (Joel 2:20). The northern army is the king of the North from Daniel 11:40. Therefore, the scriptural texts confirm the scenario outlined at the beginning of this article, that world war 3 begins during the Great Tribulation period, before the Day of the Lord period. Another concept from the texts above is that the Day of the Lord period begins after the 6th Seal signs of Revelation 6:12-14, where the sun becomes black like sackcloth, and the moon became like blood. Notice that Joel 2:31 and Joel 3:14-15 both refer to the sun and moon becoming dark, and are the 6th Seal signs of Revelation 6. What is so significant, is that Joel 2:31 states that the 6th Seal signs occur before the Day of the Lord comes. The text from Joel 3:14-15, also states that when the 6th Seal signs occur, the Day of the Lord is near. Are there other scriptures that say the same thing? Take a look at the book of Matthew. Matthew 24:29 But immediately after the tribulation of those days THE SUN WILL BE DARKENED, AND THE MOON WILL NOT GIVE ITS LIGHT, AND THE STARS WILL FALL from the sky, and the POWERS OF THE HEAVENS will be shaken,.... or, take a look at the book of Mark. Mark 13:24 But in those days, after that tribulation, THE SUN WILL BE DARKENED, AND THE MOON WILL NOT GIVE ITS LIGHT, AND THE STARS WILL BE FALLING from heaven, and the POWERS THAT ARE IN THE HEAVENS will be shaken. How clear do you want it? Without a doubt, the period up to the 6th Seal signs are called the tribulation of those days (made up of the Tribulation and Great Tribulation periods). We have two witnesses that state that immediately after the tribulation of those days the 6th Seal signs take place, and the two texts from the book of Joel that clearly state that the 6th Seal signs take place before the Day of the Lord begins! If you read the book of Joel, you'll clearly see that the invasion of the northern army into Israel is over before the 6th Seal signs and before the Day of the Lord begins. If hardheaded, you might ask, "Roy, are there more scriptures that confirm the same things?" Yeah, sure, take a look at Ezekiel 30, with verses 1-9 about that same time period before the Day of the Lord begins. Ezekiel 30:3-5 For the Day of the Lord is near; it will be a day of clouds, a time of doom for the nations. And a sword will come upon Egypt, and anguish will be in Ethiopia when the slain fall in Egypt, they take away her wealth, and her foundations are torn down. Ethiopia, Put, Lud, all Arabia, Libya, and the people of the land that is in league will fall with them by the sword. God our Father has placed clues like this throughout scripture, where it states that the Day of the Lord is near. That phrase sets the time frame for the prophecy. Notice that it talks of the same nations mentioned in Daniel 11, Ezekiel 38 & 39, and others. Put and Lud above add the names of modern day Sudan and Tunisia, and perhaps Algeria. It takes no great leap of knowledge that calculate that in an all-out attack on Israel to eliminate them once and for all, that all the Arab nations will want to participate. But Roy, are there other texts which point to the same time frame you've mentioned? Take a look at Ezekiel 32, which ties in the 6th Seal signs as occurring after Egypt is destroyed, and also tells us who decimates Egypt. Ezekiel 32:2 Son of man, take up a lamentation over Pharaoh king of Egypt, and say to him,.... Ezekiel 32:7 And when I extinguish you, I will cover the heavens, and darken their stars; I will cover the sun with a cloud, and the moon shall not give its light. Ezekiel 32:11 For thus says the Lord God, "The sword of the king of Babylon shall come upon you." As in the Daniel 11:40 text, the above scripture is about the king of the South, Egypt. The time frame of the chapter is identified by the 6th Seal signs in Ezekiel 32:7, as the sun and the moon become dark. The alliance headed by the antichrist, the king of Babylon, will decimate the land of Egypt for their attack on the nation of Israel. Ezekiel 32 goes on to cite the other nations which are decimated along with Israel. Ezekiel 32:22 Assyria.... (Syria) Ezekiel 32:24 Elam.... (Iraq) Ezekiel 32:26 Meshech and Tubal.... (Russia) Ezekiel 32:29 There also is Edom.... (Jordan) Ezekiel 32:30 There also are the chiefs of the north (Islamic countries of former Soviet Union like Kazakhstan, etc.), all of them, and all the Sidonians.... (Lebanon) Other reference texts concerning our topic of world war 3 occurring in the Great Tribulation period are Isaiah 13, which discusses a war when the Day of the Lord is near. The book of Obadiah is entirely about the war during the Great Tribulation period, when the Day of the Lord is near. Obadiah details the actions which Edom (modern Jordan) takes against the fleeing Israelis, who attempt to cross the Jordan River and south of the Dead Sea route when the Arab and Russian armies overrun Israel. The scriptural references provide overwhelming evidence for the outlined scenario. It takes courage to face the truth that your previous understanding of prophecy is flawed. Do you have the courage to accept the truth and change? God our Father will give you the understanding if you ask Him. (Comment on this)
4:08a	Pinpointing the Start of World War 3 by Roy A. Reinhold This article will challenge your understanding of prophecy, do you have the courage to face the truth? One of the most misunderstood facets of prophecy study is the question, "When does world war 3 begin according to the scriptures?" Tons of books have been written proposing that WW3 starts after the rapture and before the beginning of the end-times 7 year period, or proposed that WW3 begins sometime during the first 3.5 years in the Tribulation period, or begins near the end of the 7 year period in a war which ends at Armageddon. All of these "theories" are incorrect and the correct beginning of world war 3 can be shown to begin immediately after the middle of the end-times 7 year period, right after the abomination of desolation takes place. When I say proved conclusively, I mean without a doubt, without any equivocation! I will conclusively prove the point in this article, but let me first lay out what the scenario looks like which will make it easier for you to grasp the points. In the middle of the end-times 7 year period, the antichrist will sit down in the most holy place of the soon to be built Jewish Temple in Jerusalem, and declare falsely that he is God. This is called throughout scriptures, the abomination of desolation. It is also called the beginning of the Great Tribulation period. Almost immediately after the abomination of desolation, Egypt will lead an alliance of Arab nations in attacking Israel to achieve their long-time objective of ridding the Middle East of Jews and creating a Palestinian nation in what is now Israel. In the Arab alliance with Egypt are Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Jordan, all the nations which surround Israel. Actually, the scriptures tell us that Jordan will attempt to remain neutral, but will enter the war as Israelis flee the invading armies and try to cross the Jordan River and also a route south of the Dead Sea. The Jordanians attack the fleeing Jewish refugees. Egypt and her Arab allies are called the King of the South in Daniel 11:40, and they will start the war because they have an ironclad treaty with Russia to join in the war once Egypt starts it. Russia and her allies are called the King of the North. This powerful coalition will have a single purpose in mind, to forever eliminate the Jewish problem. World War 3 will not last a long time in duration, but will be the most deadly conflict ever, with nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons used by both sides. On the side of Israel will be the European Community, the United States, other NATO countries, Japan, and China. Tens of millions will be killed with this unprecedented use of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. Japan and China will enter the war only after the US has been attacked in a surprise all-out nuclear attack from Russia. Unlike the Desert Storm war of 1991, the coalition forces will not stop their attack until all the nations which attacked Israel are completely overrun. Forces from China and Japan will go all the way to the very western borders of Russia. World War 3 ends with total victory at a very high price to the combatants involved. However, scripture shows us that the war will end during the Great Tribulation period, before the time of the 6th Seal events of Revelation 6:12-14. At the time of the 6th Seal events, the rapture of believers takes place and then the wrath of God period begins, called the Day of the Lord. During the Day of the Lord the 7 Trumpet Judgments and 7 Bowl Judgments occur. The Armageddon war starts just before the return of Jesus as conquering Messiah, as the nations revolt against the incredibly strict dictatorship economic control by the antichrist. Now, let me prove conclusively to you, that World War 3 starts immediately after the abomination of desolation in the middle of the end-times 7 year period! In both the Matthew 24 and Mark 13 versions of the Olivet Discourse, Jesus told Peter, James, John, and Andrew the events that would take place just before He returned to take over rule and reign of the whole earth. In that discourse, He revealed that something very important was to take place right after the abomination of desolation. Mark 13:14-20 But when you see the ABOMINATION OF DESOLATION standing where it should not be (let the reader understand), then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. And let him who is on the housetop not go down, or enter in, to get anything out of his house; and let him who is in the field not turn back to get his cloak. But woe to those who are with child and to those who nurse babes in those days! But pray that it may not happen in the winter. For those days will be a time of tribulation such as has not occurred since the beginning of creation which God created, until now, and never shall. And unless the Lord had shortened those days, no life would have been saved; but for the sake of the elect whom He chose, He shortened the days. That same corresponding text is Matthew 24:15-22, where that future period is called the Great Tribulation as opposed to the first half of the 7 year period which is called the Tribulation period. I know, you've read the above text and probably are saying that no world war is mentioned. I've started off with the obscure texts first, but you'll soon see that Jesus was obliquely referring to the coming world war 3 timeframe. The reason that Jesus said for those in Judea (modern Israel) to flee when the abomination of desolation takes place, is that there will quickly be an all-out attack upon Israel with armies many times the size of Israel's entire population. Our next text is in the Luke 21 version of the Olivet Discourse, where a few more details are mentioned. Luke 21:20-24 But when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then recognize that her desolation is at hand. Then let those in Judea flee to the mountains, and let those who are in the midst of the city depart, and let not those who are in the country enter the city; because these are the days of vengeance, in order that all things which are written may be fulfilled. Woe to those who nurse babes in those days; for there will be great distress upon the land, and wrath to this people, and they will fall by the edge of the sword, and will be led captive into all the nations; and Jerusalem will be trampled underfoot by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled. Many have interpreted the Luke passage above as applying to the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 AD, but the truth is that there is a future fulfillment. The disciples had asked two questions of Jesus, (1) when will the Temple be destroyed, and (2) what will be the signs when His return was about to take place? Jesus' answer took in the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD, but the whole context is about events that will take place just before He returns to set up the kingdom of God on the earth. Notice that the same language is used in the Matthew, Mark, and Luke versions, where people in Judea are told to flee for the mountains, and woe to those who are pregnant or nursing babies. No one will argue that the text in Matthew and Mark are exclusively about the end-times 7 year period, but they argue about the text in Luke even though it uses the same language. Perhaps they are arguing to fit the scripture into their pre-conceived notions! Another thought concerns the phrase, "all things which are written may be fulfilled." We know that all prophecy will be fulfilled before the Messiah returns to reign on the earth, but who would apply that understanding to the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD? Obviously no one would reach that conclusion. Now that we've hit the more obscure references, let's go on to the clear unarguable texts which prove the point. In Daniel 11:36-38, we are shown that the antichrist will falsely declare himself to be God, and will not honor any of the gods of the various religions. Then we are shown the attack which commences world war 3, after the text about the abomination of desolation! Daniel 11:40 And at the end time the king of the South will collide with him, and the king of the North will storm against him with chariots, with horsemen, and with many ships; and he will enter countries, overflow them, and pass through. No one will argue that this scripture text is about world war 3, but many argue that Daniel 11:36-38 may not be talking about the abomination of desolation. Take a look at how the angel explained the events to Daniel. Daniel 12:11 And from the time that the regular sacrifice is abolished, and the abomination of desolation is set up, there will be 1290 days. The angel was referring back to the verses in Daniel 11:36-38, where a more explanatory version of the abomination of desolation was given. We know that the antichrist will stop the regular sacrifices in the soon to be built Jewish Temple, and perform the abomination of desolation. Clearly then, the start of world war 3 begins in Daniel 11:40, after the abomination of desolation. The next example is the clearest in scripture, where the entire book of Joel is about the Great Tribulation period and details the invasion of the king of the North into Israel. The identifying texts show that the book of Joel events occur after the sacrifices in the Jewish Temple are stopped (at the time of the abomination of desolation). Joel 1:6 For a nation has invaded my land,.... Joel 1:9 The grain offering and the libation are cut off from the house of the Lord. The priests mourn, the ministers of the Lord. Joel 1:14 Gird yourselves with sackcloth, and lament O priests; wail O ministers of the altar! Come, spend the night in sackcloth, O ministers of my God, for the grain offering and the libation are withheld from the house of your God. Joel 1:15 Alas for the day! For the Day of the Lord is near, and it will come as destruction from the Almighty. Joel 2:1 Blow a trumpet in Zion, and sound an alarm on My holy mountain! Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble, for the Day of the Lord is coming; surely it is near. Joel 2:20 But I will remove the northern army far from you,.... Joel 2:31 The sun will be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and awesome Day of the Lord comes . Joel 3:14-15 ... For the Day of the Lord is near in the valley of decision. The sun and the moon grow dark, and the stars lose their brightness. Instead of splitting apart the concepts, I gave them all to you at once. The texts from Joel state that the time context is after the sacrifices in the Temple have been stopped. We know from other texts such as Daniel 12:11, that the antichrist will stop the sacrifices in the Temple and perform the abomination of desolation. So, the time frame in the book of Joel is after the sacrifices are stopped and before the Day of the Lord begins. Notice in Joel 1:15 above, that the timing is when the Day of the Lord is near, but hasn't come. Joel 2:1, likewise says that the timing is before the Day of the Lord. Another concept from the text above is that an army has invaded the nation of Israel (Joel 1:6), and that army is the northern army (Joel 2:20). The northern army is the king of the North from Daniel 11:40. Therefore, the scriptural texts confirm the scenario outlined at the beginning of this article, that world war 3 begins during the Great Tribulation period, before the Day of the Lord period. Another concept from the texts above is that the Day of the Lord period begins after the 6th Seal signs of Revelation 6:12-14, where the sun becomes black like sackcloth, and the moon became like blood. Notice that Joel 2:31 and Joel 3:14-15 both refer to the sun and moon becoming dark, and are the 6th Seal signs of Revelation 6. What is so significant, is that Joel 2:31 states that the 6th Seal signs occur before the Day of the Lord comes. The text from Joel 3:14-15, also states that when the 6th Seal signs occur, the Day of the Lord is near. Are there other scriptures that say the same thing? Take a look at the book of Matthew. Matthew 24:29 But immediately after the tribulation of those days THE SUN WILL BE DARKENED, AND THE MOON WILL NOT GIVE ITS LIGHT, AND THE STARS WILL FALL from the sky, and the POWERS OF THE HEAVENS will be shaken,.... or, take a look at the book of Mark. Mark 13:24 But in those days, after that tribulation, THE SUN WILL BE DARKENED, AND THE MOON WILL NOT GIVE ITS LIGHT, AND THE STARS WILL BE FALLING from heaven, and the POWERS THAT ARE IN THE HEAVENS will be shaken. How clear do you want it? Without a doubt, the period up to the 6th Seal signs are called the tribulation of those days (made up of the Tribulation and Great Tribulation periods). We have two witnesses that state that immediately after the tribulation of those days the 6th Seal signs take place, and the two texts from the book of Joel that clearly state that the 6th Seal signs take place before the Day of the Lord begins! If you read the book of Joel, you'll clearly see that the invasion of the northern army into Israel is over before the 6th Seal signs and before the Day of the Lord begins. If hardheaded, you might ask, "Roy, are there more scriptures that confirm the same things?" Yeah, sure, take a look at Ezekiel 30, with verses 1-9 about that same time period before the Day of the Lord begins. Ezekiel 30:3-5 For the Day of the Lord is near; it will be a day of clouds, a time of doom for the nations. And a sword will come upon Egypt, and anguish will be in Ethiopia when the slain fall in Egypt, they take away her wealth, and her foundations are torn down. Ethiopia, Put, Lud, all Arabia, Libya, and the people of the land that is in league will fall with them by the sword. God our Father has placed clues like this throughout scripture, where it states that the Day of the Lord is near. That phrase sets the time frame for the prophecy. Notice that it talks of the same nations mentioned in Daniel 11, Ezekiel 38 & 39, and others. Put and Lud above add the names of modern day Sudan and Tunisia, and perhaps Algeria. It takes no great leap of knowledge that calculate that in an all-out attack on Israel to eliminate them once and for all, that all the Arab nations will want to participate. But Roy, are there other texts which point to the same time frame you've mentioned? Take a look at Ezekiel 32, which ties in the 6th Seal signs as occurring after Egypt is destroyed, and also tells us who decimates Egypt. Ezekiel 32:2 Son of man, take up a lamentation over Pharaoh king of Egypt, and say to him,.... Ezekiel 32:7 And when I extinguish you, I will cover the heavens, and darken their stars; I will cover the sun with a cloud, and the moon shall not give its light. Ezekiel 32:11 For thus says the Lord God, "The sword of the king of Babylon shall come upon you." As in the Daniel 11:40 text, the above scripture is about the king of the South, Egypt. The time frame of the chapter is identified by the 6th Seal signs in Ezekiel 32:7, as the sun and the moon become dark. The alliance headed by the antichrist, the king of Babylon, will decimate the land of Egypt for their attack on the nation of Israel. Ezekiel 32 goes on to cite the other nations which are decimated along with Israel. Ezekiel 32:22 Assyria.... (Syria) Ezekiel 32:24 Elam.... (Iraq) Ezekiel 32:26 Meshech and Tubal.... (Russia) Ezekiel 32:29 There also is Edom.... (Jordan) Ezekiel 32:30 There also are the chiefs of the north (Islamic countries of former Soviet Union like Kazakhstan, etc.), all of them, and all the Sidonians.... (Lebanon) Other reference texts concerning our topic of world war 3 occurring in the Great Tribulation period are Isaiah 13, which discusses a war when the Day of the Lord is near. The book of Obadiah is entirely about the war during the Great Tribulation period, when the Day of the Lord is near. Obadiah details the actions which Edom (modern Jordan) takes against the fleeing Israelis, who attempt to cross the Jordan River and south of the Dead Sea route when the Arab and Russian armies overrun Israel. The scriptural references provide overwhelming evidence for the outlined scenario. It takes courage to face the truth that your previous understanding of prophecy is flawed. Do you have the courage to accept the truth and change? God our Father will give you the understanding if you ask Him. (Comment on this)
4:09a	Although Drosnin says that the bible code "is not a crystal ball and that his book is a report on the facts, that does not keep him from making catastrophic predictions for the future. A large portion of his book is devoted to the possibilities of Armageddon, and the Apocalypse. But few, if any, of the code's important advocates agree with Drosnin's ideas. Drosnin believes that the Bible code has revealed when and where the Apocalypse may begin. He says that only two years, the year 2000 and 2006, were clearly encoded with "World War." They were also encoded with the words "atomic holocaust." There is no way to know which year the code means that the war would occur in. The year 2000 is seen twice within the code, but the year 2006 is mathematically the best match. So if the Bible code is right a third World War within the next ten years. It would be a war fought with weapons of mass destruction that would cause a literal Armageddon. This prediction came from the Isaiah scroll. Isaiah describes a terrible Apocalypse, and also says: "For you this whole vision is nothing but words sealed in a book." This sealed book is of course the Bible code, which tells not only about the Apocalypse but when and where it might begin. Drosnin also looks to the Mezuzah scroll for answers about the real Armageddon. In its 170 words the years 2000 and 2006 are encoded. The only time that "World War" and "atomic holocaust" are encoded in the Bible they appear here, in the same two versus with the same two years. Also where these years are encoded, the code reveals the phrases "it will bombard your country, terror, devastation, it is being launched." This same code also predicted "in 5700 the cremator came." This is a clear prediction of the Holocaust, and if it predicted the First World War then why not the last? Jerusalem is the only world capital encoded with "atomic holocaust" or "World War." It is located near "your city to be destroyed by an act of terrorism" crossed by "atomic holocaust." It is encoded in a section of the Book of Isaiah that describes the Apocalypse. It is a description that sounds undeniably like that of an atomic explosion, and a nuclear war. The Bible code seems to confirm the Biblical prophecy of Armageddon. "Terrorism" is also encoded with "World War." This could mean that terrorists with nuclear weapons could bring on the total destruction of the world. And Drosnin's theory is that today, due to the collapse of the Soviet Union, nuclear weapons are more available to terrorists than ever before, so this is a definite possibility. Drosnin concludes that Armageddon will begin with nuclear terrorism in the Middle East, because Armageddon is a real place. It is the Greek name for the city of Megiddo in Israel. The ancient city is in ruins today, and does not seem like it would be the sight of major battle. But not to far north of it is located one of Israel's most important Air Force bases. The base faces Syria, which according to the code will have a major role in the final world war. "Armageddon is encoded with the name Hafez Asad, Syria's current leader, in a sequence that includes the word "holocaust." Russia, China and the USA also appear with the words World War, but since they are super powers it is to be expected. Syria on the other hand is the odd one. In a prophecy told in Ezekiel in the plain text of the bible, it says that Israel will be invaded from the North. Syria is also encoded in Ezekiel, with the names of its allies: "Persia" and "Phut." These countries are the present day nations of Iran and Libya. The text of the bible, and the code within in seem to work together predicting a huge destructive battle (World War III) that will begin with a battle between Israel and the surrounding Arab nations. This battle will most likely be fought with atomic weapons. This war will perhaps occur in the years 2000 or 2006 This is not Drosnin's only idea of end times. He also predicts a massive earthquake to bring on the Apocalypse. The destruction of the world by earthquake is frequently foretold in the plain text of the Bible. And the last thing encoded in the bible is what sounds like a prophecy of the Apocalypse. "To annihilate, totally destroy, he hurled a violent force, and for everyone the great terror: fire, earthquake." The code seems to predict a series of "great earthquakes" in the years 2000, 2014, and 2113. The U.S., China, Japan, and Israel all have great "earthquakes" predicted in the near future. But Los Angeles is mathematically the best match, near which is encoded the year 2010. Japan is the country most clearly encoded with a great earthquake. It and Israel are repeatedly stated to be in great danger. They appear together with "End of Days" and "Japan" is encoded with "holocaust of Israel." The two countries names are also encoded together crossing "year of the plague" and "Final Battle." An immense disaster seems to threaten both nations. In Israel the threatened disaster is nuclear war, and in Japan it is a great earthquake. Both would affect the entire world. But it is possible that the disaster that strikes Japan that affects the world is actually an "economic collapse" which is also encoded with "earthquake struck Japan." This would make sense because Japan is so central to the world economy today. Time is not predetermined. People have freedom o f choice. There are simply a number of possible futures, and not one definite one. But each of them can be found within the Bible code. This means that the times of events, even of the apocalypse can be delayed, or changed. The code can be thought of more as a warning than a simple prediction of what will happen. The word delay is frequently encoded in the bible with important events. It can be found with many of those mentioned above, such as "year of the plague" in Israel and Japan, "World War" encoded with the years 2000 and 2006, and even with "end of days." Whenever "end of days" appears in the text of the Bible, the word delay is encoded. Every tension or skirmish in the Middle East could be the beginning of Armageddon according to Drosnin. But until each comes to an end we cannot tell. The bible has many Middle Eastern leaders' names, event over event, and year over year encoded, so it is impossible to know which battle or exactly when a battle will become the final battle. The above is a summary of the Apocalyptic conclusions that Drosnin made in his book from his study of the code. When Eliyahu Rips learned of these predictions that Drosnin had made from the bible code he tried to distance himself from it, making it known that they had done no joint research. He felt that Drosnin's book made unfounded claims, and that he distorted the research. Above all Rips denounced Drosnin's predictions of the End of the World. In a press conference Rips said "All attempts to extract messages from Torah Codes or to make predictions based on them are futile and of no value. The only conclusion that can be drawn from the scientific research regarding the torah codes is that they exist and that they are not mere coincidence. It is scientifically impossible to make predictions with codes." Disagreement Rips is only one of many scientists who disagree with Drosnin. Harold Gans, a retired National Security Agency cryptologist studied and verified Rips, Witztum, and Rosenburg's research. He found Drosnin's research to be statistically, and scientifically shaky. Dave Thomas, a mathematician and physicist programmed his computer to use Drosnin's approach, and found some interesting results. In Genesis he found "The Code is Bogus" and in War and Peace he found "Guilty Lee Oswald shot Kennedy." Both Died." Brendan McKay found equally "astonishing" references in Moby Dick. Drosnin responded "That Brendan Mckay has counterfeited 'codes' in Moby Dick does not prove that the Bible code is not real," adding "Thomas appears not to understand the Bible Code at all." It is questionable however if Drosnin understands the code himself. His book is essentially a sensationalist piece, and receives no respect from any of the codes' top proponents. He draws considerable catastrophic conclusions from the Bible Code that scientifically cannot be made. In trying to defend his book, Drosnin himself said, "I am not saying that the Bible Code is a crystal ball. You cannot say 'Bible, please tell me the future' and find out anything. You have to know what you are looking for to find anything at all." With this statement he inadvertently admits that in order to find the specific predictions and accounts of events that he found within the code, he had to specifically look for these things. His approach was less than scientific to say the least. (Comment on this)
4:11a	We are currently living in the Last Days The Antichrist have already been here, the Second Advent of Christ has arrived and all the signs & prophecies have been fulfilled The fire and flood in Japan and other parts of the world exactly correspond to what's being foretold by prophets centuries ago. The Korean Prophecies of a thousand years ago predict accurately these events. In these prophecies the crisis and the floods are described as a part of one cathartic, purifying process that should make mankind to wake up for the coming new era of spiritual enlightenment, peace and prosperity. According to all predicted, now we live in the time of the Second Coming. This immediately raises the question, "Why according to all predictions, before the birth of the Messiah the Antichrist will appear?" In the Last Days, just before God is to establish his ideal, Satan will establish pseudo-ideal centered on materialism and atheism. This Antichrist is described in the Bible as the "Red Dragon". From our history it's known as materialist dialectics of Marx - ideology which gave rise to the existence of a Totalitarian "machine of death" and took the lives of 150 million. In the 20 century we have witnessed this process. The "Red Dragon", the "Antichrist", rose and seized a third of the earth, just as foretold in the Biblical Revelations. After World War II red communism took over one third of humanity and threatened to conquer the world. Yes, Communism was the Antichrist and he denied God, just as it was predicted. Communism persecuted believers exactly as described in Revelations; burned them alive in common graves, just as the prophet John describes in chapter 12 and 13 of Revelation. The Three World Wars and the Number 666 Nostradamus spoke of three antichrists. Even Jesus mentions three major wars - these were the three World Wars. When we see them we must know that the Messiah has come, says Jesus. Number 6 symbolizes that Satan has taken the six days of God's creation. Thus, "666" is a number indicating the future occurrence of three antichrists who will lead the Three World Wars, centered on their atheistic, satanic philosophy. Indeed - the 20 th century saw three major atheistic wars that killed millions. These were the First World War, the Second World War and the Cold World War. World War I was led by the 1-st Antichrist, corresponding to Adam on the satanic side. The second Antichrist, Hitler, led World War II. He was a Satanic image of Jesus. So Hitler as Jesus never married and his body was not found after his death. The third antichrist, Stalin started World War III - the Cold War. It was the worst and took the most casualties - 150 million. 70 million were killed in the USSR, 70 million in China and over 10 million in other Communist, Totalitarian and godless regimes. The Second Coming of Christ has already come According to God's principles of restoration, the successful destruction of the First Antichrist opens the way for the birth of the Messiah. After the World War I a perfect man can be born. The victory in the World War II over the fascist coalition opens the way for the emergence of the first ever perfect family - separated from the satanic fallen lineage. After the victory of God's side in the third (Cold) World War, the building of the perfect world will start under the guidance of this Messianic figure. Of course, the First World War ended with victory on God's side in 1918. And the Bible predicts that the Second Coming will be born in the East immediately after the emergence of "Red Dragon" - the Red (Communist) revolution of 1917. This Peacemaker will unite all religions Therefore, Nostradamus predicted that the Messiah will come under the name "moon" and will be much persecution, misunderstanding, false accused a (Comment on this)
4:13a	(Comment on this)
4:14a	A growing list of commentators, politicians and religious leaders appear to sense something big, something ominous, is hiding around the corner. Is this just foolish speculation, or are they onto something? Carl Gallups, a longtime Baptist pastor and radio host, has taken a serious look at the issue in his new book, “Final Warning: Understanding the Trumpet Days of Revelation.” The book is getting lots of play on Amazon, cracking its top 100 bestseller list, which may say something about the amount of interest in this topic. image: http://www.wnd.com/files/2015/03/final_warning_bkcover.jpg final_warning_bkcoverGallups posits that the first five trumpet blasts of Revelation may have already occurred. If that is the case, the sixth trumpet, a world war that kills millions, could be knocking at the door. Gallups said he did not write the book to scare people, nor does he claim any inside knowledge of God’s prophetic timetable. Rather, his intent was to stimulate discussion and awaken the sleeping Christian church to the possibility that the return of Jesus Christ may be near. Because if it is, there are myriad scriptures that warn the brethren to be prepared, not to let the oil in their lamps run low like the parable Jesus told about the “foolish virgins.” “Millions of people, including theologians and preachers, around the world see the same things I believe I am seeing,” Gallups told WND. “Current geopolitical events appear to be in the process of lining up with specific biblical prophecies, and especially those prophecies that contain key word definitions.” Gallups explained what he meant by “key words.” The sixth trumpet prophecy of Revelation Chapter 9 has long been viewed by many as a description of a massive war involving 200 million people occurring in the vicinity of the Euphrates River. The war brings mass carnage, death and destruction to an area that Revelation 2:13 indicates is the seat of Satan’s earthly throne. “The Euphrates River begins in Turkey and runs through Syria and Iraq. Those nations are major players in the Middle East upheaval of today and the main stomping grounds of ISIS,” Gallups said. “There are nearly 400 million Muslims living in the Middle East now. If a multinational war broke out in that area involving Iran, Russia, the U.S., Israel, North African nations, and possibly China – it is not hard to imagine at least 200 million people fighting a bloody war in the Middle East.” Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2015/04/is-world-war-iii-coming-soon/#zqBD2HmyWRdiymP2.99 A growing list of commentators, politicians and religious leaders appear to sense something big, something ominous, is hiding around the corner. Is this just foolish speculation, or are they onto something? Carl Gallups, a longtime Baptist pastor and radio host, has taken a serious look at the issue in his new book, “Final Warning: Understanding the Trumpet Days of Revelation.” The book is getting lots of play on Amazon, cracking its top 100 bestseller list, which may say something about the amount of interest in this topic. image: http://www.wnd.com/files/2015/03/final_warning_bkcover.jpg final_warning_bkcoverGallups posits that the first five trumpet blasts of Revelation may have already occurred. If that is the case, the sixth trumpet, a world war that kills millions, could be knocking at the door. Gallups said he did not write the book to scare people, nor does he claim any inside knowledge of God’s prophetic timetable. Rather, his intent was to stimulate discussion and awaken the sleeping Christian church to the possibility that the return of Jesus Christ may be near. Because if it is, there are myriad scriptures that warn the brethren to be prepared, not to let the oil in their lamps run low like the parable Jesus told about the “foolish virgins.” “Millions of people, including theologians and preachers, around the world see the same things I believe I am seeing,” Gallups told WND. “Current geopolitical events appear to be in the process of lining up with specific biblical prophecies, and especially those prophecies that contain key word definitions.” Gallups explained what he meant by “key words.” The sixth trumpet prophecy of Revelation Chapter 9 has long been viewed by many as a description of a massive war involving 200 million people occurring in the vicinity of the Euphrates River. The war brings mass carnage, death and destruction to an area that Revelation 2:13 indicates is the seat of Satan’s earthly throne. “The Euphrates River begins in Turkey and runs through Syria and Iraq. Those nations are major players in the Middle East upheaval of today and the main stomping grounds of ISIS,” Gallups said. “There are nearly 400 million Muslims living in the Middle East now. If a multinational war broke out in that area involving Iran, Russia, the U.S., Israel, North African nations, and possibly China – it is not hard to imagine at least 200 million people fighting a bloody war in the Middle East.” Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2015/04/is-world-war-iii-coming-soon/#zqBD2HmyWRdiymP2.99 (Comment on this)
4:15a	(Comment on this)
4:18a	(Comment on this)
4:20a	Stephen Hawking once noted that Earth is a “fragile planet,” and if humanity does not find an alternative place to live — somewhere in space — we could be doomed. It is less of a rapture prediction than a reminder that resources are finite, there are greater forces than ourselves in the universe, and that we as a civilization trend on the self-destructive side of things. Just this week specific studies about climate change, solar flares and the dinosaurs have been published. The common thread? Past, nearly missed, or future earthly destruction. Each one holds a lesson about Earth’s fragility. The following list is not intended as a scare-tactic lecture, but rather a look at how both we and the universe could shape humanity — and its potential end. 1) Climate change A new study published by Nature Climate Change has concluded that due to pollution, a shift to resource-intensive Western diets, and anthropogenic climate change, the Earth will need 50 percent more food by 2050 to feed the population. The problem? Our supply may not be able to meet the demand. As CBS explains, ”as our need for food rises, our ability to produce that food may be lowered by climate and air quality changes.” The researchers found that global warming could reduce food production by 10 percent. Crop yields won’t just be affected by global warming but also by the ozone layer. MIT associate professor and the study’s author, Colette Heald, told CBS that crop production is “very sensitive to ozone pollution.” Using a model that examined four major crops and air-quality projections, the researchers found that malnutrition in developing countries could rise to 27 percent, up from the current 18 percent. Climate change could, of course, have other dire effects on our food production, including flooding and other extreme weather, like the current drought in California. “Overall, climate change could make it more difficult to grow crops, raise animals and catch fish in the same ways and same places as we have done in the past,” the EPA explains. “The effects of climate change also need to be considered along with other evolving factors that affect agricultural production, such as changes in farming practices and technology.” Climate change might not fully eradicate humanity, but crunch the numbers and the seriousness of the threat comes into view: Take a massive food shortage and combine that with unpredictable and violent weather patterns, mix in some geopolitical conflict (read: the possibility of all-out war) and you have an all-too-real recipe for global disaster of unprecedented proportions. 2) Pandemic The most catastrophic pandemic on record was 1918′s Spanish influenza. The virus, which at the time could only travel by ship or land, still killed 50 million people. Since then the global population has been hit with a series of contagions that have spread faster than ever before. The most recent was the H1N1 swine flu outbreak of 2009, and while it wasn’t the pandemic to end all pandemics that some predicted, it was a wake-up call nonetheless. Just this year, MERS has killed hundreds in Saudi Arabia, and Ebola has infected thousands across Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea, and killed more than 600, including top Ebola doctors. How and why do diseases, particularly viruses, spread? The Guardian reported last year: Viruses and other pathogens continually flow between species, often with no effects, sometimes mutating, once in a while causing illness. This mixing is known as ‘viral chatter’ and the more different species come into regular close contact, the higher the chances of a spillover event occurring. ‘This is how viruses have always worked, the big change is us,’ says Mark Woolhouse, a professor of infectious disease epidemiology at the University of Edinburgh. ‘The big change happened probably several thousands of years ago when we became a crowd species and that gave these viruses new opportunities which they hadn’t had before in humans. Ever since then, from time to time a new virus has come along to take advantage of this new, very densely populated, crowded species – humans – that it can now spread between much more easily. That process is still happening; the viruses are still discovering us. We like to think we discover viruses, but it’s also the viruses discovering us.” 3) Nuclear war The days of Cold War-era “mutually assured destruction” might be long gone, but nuclear weapons still pose a grave threat to civilization. In 2012 the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War and Physicians for Social Responsibility, who won a Nobel Peace Prize, released a study stating that famine caused by nuclear disaster could kill more than 1 billion people. The group subsequently updated this study a year later, because it underestimated the damage it would unleash on China. “A billion people dead in the developing world is obviously a catastrophe unparalleled in human history,” Ira Helfand, the report’s author, told the Telegraph. “But then if you add to that the possibility of another 1.3 billion people in China being at risk, we are entering something that is clearly the end of civilization.” The above study focused mainly on nuclear war between Pakistan and India, where conflict, tension and nuclear weapons abound. However, Helfand tells the Telegraph that the result could be similar in any nuclear conflict. For example, nuclear war between the U.S. and Russia, he says, “we are talking about the possible — not certain, but possible — extinction of the human race.” The study found that particles kicked into the atmosphere from the weapons would reduce China’s output of rice (10 percent over six years) and wheat (50 percent in the first year), and the U.S. output of corn and soybeans (10 percent in the first decade). 4) Solar flares It was recently revealed that in 2012, humanity may have had a close brush with doom, all due to solar flares. On July 23, 2012, the sun belched one of the most massive plasma clouds ever detected with a speed of 3,000 km per second, according to the Guardian. That is four times as fast as a typical solar flare. The flare could have caused a massive blackout of satellite communications, power grids and electronic devices. And if the solar storm had occurred a week earlier it would have. “If it had hit, we would still be picking up the pieces,” University of Colorado’s Daniel Baker told the Guardian. Baker is part of the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics. “I have come away from our recent studies more convinced than ever that Earth and its inhabitants were incredibly fortunate that the 2012 eruption happened when it did,” he continued. “If the eruption had occurred only one week earlier, Earth would have been in the line of fire.” 5) The “Deep Impact” scenario According to the American Museum of Natural History, there are around 1 million “near-Earth” asteroids that could do serious damage to the planet if they hit. (Just ask the dinosaurs.) You can read about the threat of space debris in depth at NASA’s Asteroid Watch. 6) The robots take over At first glance the words “robot apocalypse” seem far more rooted in sci-fi than reality. However, as technology lurches forward, and artificial intelligence becomes more sophisticated — to the point of actually becoming self-aware and surpassing humans in terms of raw intelligence — who knows what could happen. The robot apocalypse might not look like a scene from “Terminator,” according to experts interviewed for a recent Business Insider. But they did caution that artificial intelligence was possible, and that we ought to have a plan in place for when it does. As Northwestern University professor John O. McGinnis stated: Even a non-anthropomorphic human intelligence still could pose threats to mankind, but they are probably manageable threats. The greatest problem is that such artificial intelligence may be indifferent to human welfare. Thus, for instance, unless otherwise programmed, it could solve problems in ways that could lead to harm against humans. But indifference, rather than innate malevolence, is much more easily cured. Artificial intelligence can be programmed to weigh human values in its decision making. The key will be to assure such programming. 7) The “false vacuum” theory Now we’re really getting into wacky territory. Imagine a chunk of space that is totally empty, hence a vacuum. There are absolutely no particles, no matter, nothing at all occupying this particular piece of extraterrestrial real estate. You might reasonably assume that it is therefore at what physicists call a “ground state” (because there is no energy to disturb it) and that this space is totally stable as a result. Well, according to one interpretation of quantum theory, this vacuum isn’t at a ground state at all. It just seems like it is. Therefore, it is a “false vacuum.” And the fear is that someday we might find that out the hard way — with grave repercussions for our universe. As the website Ask a Mathematician explains: The “danger” of living in a false vacuum is that, under the proper circumstances the false vacuum can drop into the true vacuum … If the difference in energy between the false vacuum and true vacuum is large enough, then the surrounding space can likewise be tipped into the lower state. In theory, a “false vacuum collapse” would expand at light speed (or about light speed) from the originating event, and destroy the heck out of everything in the affected, and ever-expanding, region. Or, to put it another way, imagine you’re living inside a bubble (like, a really big bubble) that seems like it’s basically in a stable, ground state — except the air pressure on the outside of the bubble (which you can’t see or detect; the bubble is all that you know) is actually much lower than the air pressure within. If the bubble were to pop, you’d quickly find that the new physical conditions you now experience are dramatically different from the ones you had enjoyed within the bubble. Apply that same idea to our universe, and imagine how much it would change if something as fundamental as energy now acted completely different. Life, the universe and everything might just suddenly cease to be. (It bears mentioning, as Ask a Mathematician does, that “the idea of a false vacuum is wild speculation and that there is no indication, not even a little, that the vacuum of the universe is a false vacuum and not the true ground state.”) 8) The “gray goo” theory This theory is so supremely loopy — it involves tiny, malevolent robots that assimilate everything in their path. 9) The laws of physics play out exactly as planned The fact of the matter is this: Someday our sun will burn out and take the Earth with it, effectively ending life as we now know it. Even if we’ve managed to keep ourselves alive long enough to achieve interstellar travel, and find a new home in the safety of some other solar system, that hypothetical star will also eventually burn out — as will every other star in our universe. If prevailing theories are correct, then the cosmos has in store for them a long, protracted demise — known as “the heat death of the universe” – in which the natural, overwhelming tendency of energy and matter toward greater entropy (i.e., disorder) proceeds to the point where even the atoms that make up matter will eventually break down into basically nothing. The good news is that this (super-depressing) outcome won’t transpire for something like 10100 years. (That’s 10 with 100 zeroes behind it, in case you were wondering, and it’s an impossibly long stretch of time.) Plus, if we look even further into the future — what would feel like actual infinity if there were anyone around at that point to feel anything anymore — it remains possible that an entirely new universe could still spontaneously pop into existence. Stephen Hawking once noted that Earth is a “fragile planet,” and if humanity does not find an alternative place to live — somewhere in space — we could be doomed. It is less of a rapture prediction than a reminder that resources are finite, there are greater forces than ourselves in the universe, and that we as a civilization trend on the self-destructive side of things. Just this week specific studies about climate change, solar flares and the dinosaurs have been published. The common thread? Past, nearly missed, or future earthly destruction. Each one holds a lesson about Earth’s fragility. The following list is not intended as a scare-tactic lecture, but rather a look at how both we and the universe could shape humanity — and its potential end. 1) Climate change A new study published by Nature Climate Change has concluded that due to pollution, a shift to resource-intensive Western diets, and anthropogenic climate change, the Earth will need 50 percent more food by 2050 to feed the population. The problem? Our supply may not be able to meet the demand. As CBS explains, ”as our need for food rises, our ability to produce that food may be lowered by climate and air quality changes.” The researchers found that global warming could reduce food production by 10 percent. Crop yields won’t just be affected by global warming but also by the ozone layer. MIT associate professor and the study’s author, Colette Heald, told CBS that crop production is “very sensitive to ozone pollution.” Using a model that examined four major crops and air-quality projections, the researchers found that malnutrition in developing countries could rise to 27 percent, up from the current 18 percent. Climate change could, of course, have other dire effects on our food production, including flooding and other extreme weather, like the current drought in California. “Overall, climate change could make it more difficult to grow crops, raise animals and catch fish in the same ways and same places as we have done in the past,” the EPA explains. “The effects of climate change also need to be considered along with other evolving factors that affect agricultural production, such as changes in farming practices and technology.” Climate change might not fully eradicate humanity, but crunch the numbers and the seriousness of the threat comes into view: Take a massive food shortage and combine that with unpredictable and violent weather patterns, mix in some geopolitical conflict (read: the possibility of all-out war) and you have an all-too-real recipe for global disaster of unprecedented proportions. 2) Pandemic The most catastrophic pandemic on record was 1918′s Spanish influenza. The virus, which at the time could only travel by ship or land, still killed 50 million people. Since then the global population has been hit with a series of contagions that have spread faster than ever before. The most recent was the H1N1 swine flu outbreak of 2009, and while it wasn’t the pandemic to end all pandemics that some predicted, it was a wake-up call nonetheless. Just this year, MERS has killed hundreds in Saudi Arabia, and Ebola has infected thousands across Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea, and killed more than 600, including top Ebola doctors. How and why do diseases, particularly viruses, spread? The Guardian reported last year: Viruses and other pathogens continually flow between species, often with no effects, sometimes mutating, once in a while causing illness. This mixing is known as ‘viral chatter’ and the more different species come into regular close contact, the higher the chances of a spillover event occurring. ‘This is how viruses have always worked, the big change is us,’ says Mark Woolhouse, a professor of infectious disease epidemiology at the University of Edinburgh. ‘The big change happened probably several thousands of years ago when we became a crowd species and that gave these viruses new opportunities which they hadn’t had before in humans. Ever since then, from time to time a new virus has come along to take advantage of this new, very densely populated, crowded species – humans – that it can now spread between much more easily. That process is still happening; the viruses are still discovering us. We like to think we discover viruses, but it’s also the viruses discovering us.” 3) Nuclear war The days of Cold War-era “mutually assured destruction” might be long gone, but nuclear weapons still pose a grave threat to civilization. In 2012 the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War and Physicians for Social Responsibility, who won a Nobel Peace Prize, released a study stating that famine caused by nuclear disaster could kill more than 1 billion people. The group subsequently updated this study a year later, because it underestimated the damage it would unleash on China. “A billion people dead in the developing world is obviously a catastrophe unparalleled in human history,” Ira Helfand, the report’s author, told the Telegraph. “But then if you add to that the possibility of another 1.3 billion people in China being at risk, we are entering something that is clearly the end of civilization.” The above study focused mainly on nuclear war between Pakistan and India, where conflict, tension and nuclear weapons abound. However, Helfand tells the Telegraph that the result could be similar in any nuclear conflict. For example, nuclear war between the U.S. and Russia, he says, “we are talking about the possible — not certain, but possible — extinction of the human race.” The study found that particles kicked into the atmosphere from the weapons would reduce China’s output of rice (10 percent over six years) and wheat (50 percent in the first year), and the U.S. output of corn and soybeans (10 percent in the first decade). 4) Solar flares It was recently revealed that in 2012, humanity may have had a close brush with doom, all due to solar flares. On July 23, 2012, the sun belched one of the most massive plasma clouds ever detected with a speed of 3,000 km per second, according to the Guardian. That is four times as fast as a typical solar flare. The flare could have caused a massive blackout of satellite communications, power grids and electronic devices. And if the solar storm had occurred a week earlier it would have. “If it had hit, we would still be picking up the pieces,” University of Colorado’s Daniel Baker told the Guardian. Baker is part of the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics. “I have come away from our recent studies more convinced than ever that Earth and its inhabitants were incredibly fortunate that the 2012 eruption happened when it did,” he continued. “If the eruption had occurred only one week earlier, Earth would have been in the line of fire.” 5) The “Deep Impact” scenario According to the American Museum of Natural History, there are around 1 million “near-Earth” asteroids that could do serious damage to the planet if they hit. (Just ask the dinosaurs.) You can read about the threat of space debris in depth at NASA’s Asteroid Watch. 6) The robots take over At first glance the words “robot apocalypse” seem far more rooted in sci-fi than reality. However, as technology lurches forward, and artificial intelligence becomes more sophisticated — to the point of actually becoming self-aware and surpassing humans in terms of raw intelligence — who knows what could happen. The robot apocalypse might not look like a scene from “Terminator,” according to experts interviewed for a recent Business Insider. But they did caution that artificial intelligence was possible, and that we ought to have a plan in place for when it does. As Northwestern University professor John O. McGinnis stated: Even a non-anthropomorphic human intelligence still could pose threats to mankind, but they are probably manageable threats. The greatest problem is that such artificial intelligence may be indifferent to human welfare. Thus, for instance, unless otherwise programmed, it could solve problems in ways that could lead to harm against humans. But indifference, rather than innate malevolence, is much more easily cured. Artificial intelligence can be programmed to weigh human values in its decision making. The key will be to assure such programming. 7) The “false vacuum” theory Now we’re really getting into wacky territory. Imagine a chunk of space that is totally empty, hence a vacuum. There are absolutely no particles, no matter, nothing at all occupying this particular piece of extraterrestrial real estate. You might reasonably assume that it is therefore at what physicists call a “ground state” (because there is no energy to disturb it) and that this space is totally stable as a result. Well, according to one interpretation of quantum theory, this vacuum isn’t at a ground state at all. It just seems like it is. Therefore, it is a “false vacuum.” And the fear is that someday we might find that out the hard way — with grave repercussions for our universe. As the website Ask a Mathematician explains: The “danger” of living in a false vacuum is that, under the proper circumstances the false vacuum can drop into the true vacuum … If the difference in energy between the false vacuum and true vacuum is large enough, then the surrounding space can likewise be tipped into the lower state. In theory, a “false vacuum collapse” would expand at light speed (or about light speed) from the originating event, and destroy the heck out of everything in the affected, and ever-expanding, region. Or, to put it another way, imagine you’re living inside a bubble (like, a really big bubble) that seems like it’s basically in a stable, ground state — except the air pressure on the outside of the bubble (which you can’t see or detect; the bubble is all that you know) is actually much lower than the air pressure within. If the bubble were to pop, you’d quickly find that the new physical conditions you now experience are dramatically different from the ones you had enjoyed within the bubble. Apply that same idea to our universe, and imagine how much it would change if something as fundamental as energy now acted completely different. Life, the universe and everything might just suddenly cease to be. (It bears mentioning, as Ask a Mathematician does, that “the idea of a false vacuum is wild speculation and that there is no indication, not even a little, that the vacuum of the universe is a false vacuum and not the true ground state.”) 8) The “gray goo” theory This theory is so supremely loopy — it involves tiny, malevolent robots that assimilate everything in their path. 9) The laws of physics play out exactly as planned The fact of the matter is this: Someday our sun will burn out and take the Earth with it, effectively ending life as we now know it. Even if we’ve managed to keep ourselves alive long enough to achieve interstellar travel, and find a new home in the safety of some other solar system, that hypothetical star will also eventually burn out — as will every other star in our universe. If prevailing theories are correct, then the cosmos has in store for them a long, protracted demise — known as “the heat death of the universe” – in which the natural, overwhelming tendency of energy and matter toward greater entropy (i.e., disorder) proceeds to the point where even the atoms that make up matter will eventually break down into basically nothing. The good news is that this (super-depressing) outcome won’t transpire for something like 10100 years. (That’s 10 with 100 zeroes behind it, in case you were wondering, and it’s an impossibly long stretch of time.) Plus, if we look even further into the future — what would feel like actual infinity if there were anyone around at that point to feel anything anymore — it remains possible that an entirely new universe could still spontaneously pop into existence. (Comment on this)
4:21a	Stephen Hawking once noted that Earth is a “fragile planet,” and if humanity does not find an alternative place to live — somewhere in space — we could be doomed. It is less of a rapture prediction than a reminder that resources are finite, there are greater forces than ourselves in the universe, and that we as a civilization trend on the self-destructive side of things. Just this week specific studies about climate change, solar flares and the dinosaurs have been published. The common thread? Past, nearly missed, or future earthly destruction. Each one holds a lesson about Earth’s fragility. The following list is not intended as a scare-tactic lecture, but rather a look at how both we and the universe could shape humanity — and its potential end. 1) Climate change A new study published by Nature Climate Change has concluded that due to pollution, a shift to resource-intensive Western diets, and anthropogenic climate change, the Earth will need 50 percent more food by 2050 to feed the population. The problem? Our supply may not be able to meet the demand. As CBS explains, ”as our need for food rises, our ability to produce that food may be lowered by climate and air quality changes.” The researchers found that global warming could reduce food production by 10 percent. Crop yields won’t just be affected by global warming but also by the ozone layer. MIT associate professor and the study’s author, Colette Heald, told CBS that crop production is “very sensitive to ozone pollution.” Using a model that examined four major crops and air-quality projections, the researchers found that malnutrition in developing countries could rise to 27 percent, up from the current 18 percent. Climate change could, of course, have other dire effects on our food production, including flooding and other extreme weather, like the current drought in California. “Overall, climate change could make it more difficult to grow crops, raise animals and catch fish in the same ways and same places as we have done in the past,” the EPA explains. “The effects of climate change also need to be considered along with other evolving factors that affect agricultural production, such as changes in farming practices and technology.” Climate change might not fully eradicate humanity, but crunch the numbers and the seriousness of the threat comes into view: Take a massive food shortage and combine that with unpredictable and violent weather patterns, mix in some geopolitical conflict (read: the possibility of all-out war) and you have an all-too-real recipe for global disaster of unprecedented proportions. 2) Pandemic The most catastrophic pandemic on record was 1918′s Spanish influenza. The virus, which at the time could only travel by ship or land, still killed 50 million people. Since then the global population has been hit with a series of contagions that have spread faster than ever before. The most recent was the H1N1 swine flu outbreak of 2009, and while it wasn’t the pandemic to end all pandemics that some predicted, it was a wake-up call nonetheless. Just this year, MERS has killed hundreds in Saudi Arabia, and Ebola has infected thousands across Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea, and killed more than 600, including top Ebola doctors. How and why do diseases, particularly viruses, spread? The Guardian reported last year: Viruses and other pathogens continually flow between species, often with no effects, sometimes mutating, once in a while causing illness. This mixing is known as ‘viral chatter’ and the more different species come into regular close contact, the higher the chances of a spillover event occurring. ‘This is how viruses have always worked, the big change is us,’ says Mark Woolhouse, a professor of infectious disease epidemiology at the University of Edinburgh. ‘The big change happened probably several thousands of years ago when we became a crowd species and that gave these viruses new opportunities which they hadn’t had before in humans. Ever since then, from time to time a new virus has come along to take advantage of this new, very densely populated, crowded species – humans – that it can now spread between much more easily. That process is still happening; the viruses are still discovering us. We like to think we discover viruses, but it’s also the viruses discovering us.” 3) Nuclear war The days of Cold War-era “mutually assured destruction” might be long gone, but nuclear weapons still pose a grave threat to civilization. In 2012 the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War and Physicians for Social Responsibility, who won a Nobel Peace Prize, released a study stating that famine caused by nuclear disaster could kill more than 1 billion people. The group subsequently updated this study a year later, because it underestimated the damage it would unleash on China. “A billion people dead in the developing world is obviously a catastrophe unparalleled in human history,” Ira Helfand, the report’s author, told the Telegraph. “But then if you add to that the possibility of another 1.3 billion people in China being at risk, we are entering something that is clearly the end of civilization.” The above study focused mainly on nuclear war between Pakistan and India, where conflict, tension and nuclear weapons abound. However, Helfand tells the Telegraph that the result could be similar in any nuclear conflict. For example, nuclear war between the U.S. and Russia, he says, “we are talking about the possible — not certain, but possible — extinction of the human race.” The study found that particles kicked into the atmosphere from the weapons would reduce China’s output of rice (10 percent over six years) and wheat (50 percent in the first year), and the U.S. output of corn and soybeans (10 percent in the first decade). 4) Solar flares It was recently revealed that in 2012, humanity may have had a close brush with doom, all due to solar flares. On July 23, 2012, the sun belched one of the most massive plasma clouds ever detected with a speed of 3,000 km per second, according to the Guardian. That is four times as fast as a typical solar flare. The flare could have caused a massive blackout of satellite communications, power grids and electronic devices. And if the solar storm had occurred a week earlier it would have. “If it had hit, we would still be picking up the pieces,” University of Colorado’s Daniel Baker told the Guardian. Baker is part of the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics. “I have come away from our recent studies more convinced than ever that Earth and its inhabitants were incredibly fortunate that the 2012 eruption happened when it did,” he continued. “If the eruption had occurred only one week earlier, Earth would have been in the line of fire.” 5) The “Deep Impact” scenario According to the American Museum of Natural History, there are around 1 million “near-Earth” asteroids that could do serious damage to the planet if they hit. (Just ask the dinosaurs.) You can read about the threat of space debris in depth at NASA’s Asteroid Watch. 6) The robots take over At first glance the words “robot apocalypse” seem far more rooted in sci-fi than reality. However, as technology lurches forward, and artificial intelligence becomes more sophisticated — to the point of actually becoming self-aware and surpassing humans in terms of raw intelligence — who knows what could happen. The robot apocalypse might not look like a scene from “Terminator,” according to experts interviewed for a recent Business Insider. But they did caution that artificial intelligence was possible, and that we ought to have a plan in place for when it does. As Northwestern University professor John O. McGinnis stated: Even a non-anthropomorphic human intelligence still could pose threats to mankind, but they are probably manageable threats. The greatest problem is that such artificial intelligence may be indifferent to human welfare. Thus, for instance, unless otherwise programmed, it could solve problems in ways that could lead to harm against humans. But indifference, rather than innate malevolence, is much more easily cured. Artificial intelligence can be programmed to weigh human values in its decision making. The key will be to assure such programming. 7) The “false vacuum” theory Now we’re really getting into wacky territory. Imagine a chunk of space that is totally empty, hence a vacuum. There are absolutely no particles, no matter, nothing at all occupying this particular piece of extraterrestrial real estate. You might reasonably assume that it is therefore at what physicists call a “ground state” (because there is no energy to disturb it) and that this space is totally stable as a result. Well, according to one interpretation of quantum theory, this vacuum isn’t at a ground state at all. It just seems like it is. Therefore, it is a “false vacuum.” And the fear is that someday we might find that out the hard way — with grave repercussions for our universe. As the website Ask a Mathematician explains: The “danger” of living in a false vacuum is that, under the proper circumstances the false vacuum can drop into the true vacuum … If the difference in energy between the false vacuum and true vacuum is large enough, then the surrounding space can likewise be tipped into the lower state. In theory, a “false vacuum collapse” would expand at light speed (or about light speed) from the originating event, and destroy the heck out of everything in the affected, and ever-expanding, region. Or, to put it another way, imagine you’re living inside a bubble (like, a really big bubble) that seems like it’s basically in a stable, ground state — except the air pressure on the outside of the bubble (which you can’t see or detect; the bubble is all that you know) is actually much lower than the air pressure within. If the bubble were to pop, you’d quickly find that the new physical conditions you now experience are dramatically different from the ones you had enjoyed within the bubble. Apply that same idea to our universe, and imagine how much it would change if something as fundamental as energy now acted completely different. Life, the universe and everything might just suddenly cease to be. (It bears mentioning, as Ask a Mathematician does, that “the idea of a false vacuum is wild speculation and that there is no indication, not even a little, that the vacuum of the universe is a false vacuum and not the true ground state.”) 8) The “gray goo” theory This theory is so supremely loopy — it involves tiny, malevolent robots that assimilate everything in their path. 9) The laws of physics play out exactly as planned The fact of the matter is this: Someday our sun will burn out and take the Earth with it, effectively ending life as we now know it. Even if we’ve managed to keep ourselves alive long enough to achieve interstellar travel, and find a new home in the safety of some other solar system, that hypothetical star will also eventually burn out — as will every other star in our universe. If prevailing theories are correct, then the cosmos has in store for them a long, protracted demise — known as “the heat death of the universe” – in which the natural, overwhelming tendency of energy and matter toward greater entropy (i.e., disorder) proceeds to the point where even the atoms that make up matter will eventually break down into basically nothing. The good news is that this (super-depressing) outcome won’t transpire for something like 10100 years. (That’s 10 with 100 zeroes behind it, in case you were wondering, and it’s an impossibly long stretch of time.) Plus, if we look even further into the future — what would feel like actual infinity if there were anyone around at that point to feel anything anymore — it remains possible that an entirely new universe could still spontaneously pop into existence. (Comment on this)
4:23a	March 25, 2011 History Channel – The Mayan Prophecy By judge2012 The prophecies of the end of the world always have a special attraction. Very attractive are also the stories about hidden knowledge held by ancient civilizations. It has the purpose of the documentary made by the History Channel about the Mayan Prophecy, which is already on sale to the public (as well as several books on the same subject). The documentary seemed quite interesting and appealing. Basically the idea is that the Mayans, who had a calendar more precise, more complex and more holistic than ours, provided for several events that have now passed, as the arrival of the white man – Hernan Cortez – the November 8, 1519. The Mayan calendar predicts that something very serious will happen at the Winter Solstice, December 21, 2012. So serious is the fact, that the world as we know it will disappear. This does not mean that the world will end, simply means that a great event will transform the world. Now, we know now that on this date during the Solstice the Earth is aligned with the Sun and the center of our galaxy, the Milky Way. It is known that the center of the galaxy there is a supermassive black hole. Based on Einstein and some astronomical information, some say this alignment with the supermassive black hole will lead to a change in the Earth’s magnetic field, which happens periodically. This will lead to tsunamis, volcanoes, earthquakes, etc.. Other prophecies In the documentary was curious that they relate to other prophecies. For example, the very ancient I Ching is a Chinese book about world views and philosophies of life, which contains some predictions if we use the theory of “Time Wave Zero.” Using this technique it is seen that the Chinese book predicts that the world will end on 21 December 2012. They called also Merlin the magician of the court of King Arthur. Apparently these medieval prophets (there were several Merlin), predicted Napoleon, Hitler, the name of the first colony in America, etc.. Also predicted that this century will be a nuclear terror attack in the UK that will kill hundreds of thousands of people, that global warming is too obvious and that … will be a change of the geomagnetic field that will lead to a global disaster. Another person mentioned was Sibyl, a prophet / oracle in Rome – such as Delphi in Greece. She also correctly predicted several events, including the end of the world more or less the same date as the previous ones. They also discussed a project called webbot making predictions from what is appearing on the web. Supposedly predicted the events of September 11 in June 2001. This project provides a global event for 2012. All of this gives pause for thought that many predictions are coincident, and the Maya the most relevant. March 25, 2011 History Channel – The Mayan Prophecy By judge2012 The prophecies of the end of the world always have a special attraction. Very attractive are also the stories about hidden knowledge held by ancient civilizations. It has the purpose of the documentary made by the History Channel about the Mayan Prophecy, which is already on sale to the public (as well as several books on the same subject). The documentary seemed quite interesting and appealing. Basically the idea is that the Mayans, who had a calendar more precise, more complex and more holistic than ours, provided for several events that have now passed, as the arrival of the white man – Hernan Cortez – the November 8, 1519. The Mayan calendar predicts that something very serious will happen at the Winter Solstice, December 21, 2012. So serious is the fact, that the world as we know it will disappear. This does not mean that the world will end, simply means that a great event will transform the world. Now, we know now that on this date during the Solstice the Earth is aligned with the Sun and the center of our galaxy, the Milky Way. It is known that the center of the galaxy there is a supermassive black hole. Based on Einstein and some astronomical information, some say this alignment with the supermassive black hole will lead to a change in the Earth’s magnetic field, which happens periodically. This will lead to tsunamis, volcanoes, earthquakes, etc.. Other prophecies In the documentary was curious that they relate to other prophecies. For example, the very ancient I Ching is a Chinese book about world views and philosophies of life, which contains some predictions if we use the theory of “Time Wave Zero.” Using this technique it is seen that the Chinese book predicts that the world will end on 21 December 2012. They called also Merlin the magician of the court of King Arthur. Apparently these medieval prophets (there were several Merlin), predicted Napoleon, Hitler, the name of the first colony in America, etc.. Also predicted that this century will be a nuclear terror attack in the UK that will kill hundreds of thousands of people, that global warming is too obvious and that … will be a change of the geomagnetic field that will lead to a global disaster. Another person mentioned was Sibyl, a prophet / oracle in Rome – such as Delphi in Greece. She also correctly predicted several events, including the end of the world more or less the same date as the previous ones. They also discussed a project called webbot making predictions from what is appearing on the web. Supposedly predicted the events of September 11 in June 2001. This project provides a global event for 2012. All of this gives pause for thought that many predictions are coincident, and the Maya the most relevant. (Comment on this)
4:23a	Bible By judge2012 The theory of the end of the world according to the Protestant, comes in two forms: Codes of the Bible and the Third Secret of N. Senhora de Fátima. They were discovered in the Protestant, several codes, and up to a book it was created for that. A theologian caught to Protestant Hebrew and went out joining several characters of each page of the life. In the joining of these characters, he was finding words, which were giving a notion of a sentence. There were found several sentences that would be prophecies that would happen. It was found up to codes with words: Great Explosion / high towers / flying box / smoke / death / despair. It would have these words to do with the attack of 11 of September. But it had been that, it was thought also words that would give sense for the theory of the end of the world, of 2012. I eat words: 2012 / end of the world / I will finish, they were thought in these codes. Already in accordance with the third secret of Fátima, it is one more theory inside the theory of the Bible. The third secret of Fátima talks on the apparition of same to three children, and she was speaking that you link it three secrets. This third secret, the most important thing, was revealed at a little time, since the catholic church was guarding this secret. The secret was saying that after the death of the tenth one according to porridge and after the death of the last child, which had written there it would happen. The Tenth second Pope that he was John Paul II, and the third child, who was old, died in 11 of February of 2005. Then, in accordance with that, that will happen. In this secret she reports as it will be the end of the world. Detaching her words saying that the world would be in three days of darkness, an earthquake that would shake everyone and that would change the axle of the land in 8º. And during these three days of total darkness, the persons would prefer die being lively in the Land, so the chaos would be enormous. Already entering in the science, observe that: ” Greg Baden is touring constantly the United States and is marking presence in the media demonstrating with scientific proofs that the Land is passing over the Belt of Photons and that exist a slowing down in the rotation of the planet. At the same time, an increase takes place in the resonant frequency of the Land (the called Resonance of Schumann). When the Land loses completely his rotation and the resonant frequency to reach the rate of 13 cycles, we will be in what Braden calls a Point Zero of the magnetic field. The Land will be stopped and, after two or three days, will recommence revolving only than in the opposite direction. This will produce a total reversion in the magnetic land fields. ” Will it be that these three days refer to that, also? It fits believing you in that. More theories will be posted, and you will see the relation with that. Bible By judge2012 The theory of the end of the world according to the Protestant, comes in two forms: Codes of the Bible and the Third Secret of N. Senhora de Fátima. They were discovered in the Protestant, several codes, and up to a book it was created for that. A theologian caught to Protestant Hebrew and went out joining several characters of each page of the life. In the joining of these characters, he was finding words, which were giving a notion of a sentence. There were found several sentences that would be prophecies that would happen. It was found up to codes with words: Great Explosion / high towers / flying box / smoke / death / despair. It would have these words to do with the attack of 11 of September. But it had been that, it was thought also words that would give sense for the theory of the end of the world, of 2012. I eat words: 2012 / end of the world / I will finish, they were thought in these codes. Already in accordance with the third secret of Fátima, it is one more theory inside the theory of the Bible. The third secret of Fátima talks on the apparition of same to three children, and she was speaking that you link it three secrets. This third secret, the most important thing, was revealed at a little time, since the catholic church was guarding this secret. The secret was saying that after the death of the tenth one according to porridge and after the death of the last child, which had written there it would happen. The Tenth second Pope that he was John Paul II, and the third child, who was old, died in 11 of February of 2005. Then, in accordance with that, that will happen. In this secret she reports as it will be the end of the world. Detaching her words saying that the world would be in three days of darkness, an earthquake that would shake everyone and that would change the axle of the land in 8º. And during these three days of total darkness, the persons would prefer die being lively in the Land, so the chaos would be enormous. Already entering in the science, observe that: ” Greg Baden is touring constantly the United States and is marking presence in the media demonstrating with scientific proofs that the Land is passing over the Belt of Photons and that exist a slowing down in the rotation of the planet. At the same time, an increase takes place in the resonant frequency of the Land (the called Resonance of Schumann). When the Land loses completely his rotation and the resonant frequency to reach the rate of 13 cycles, we will be in what Braden calls a Point Zero of the magnetic field. The Land will be stopped and, after two or three days, will recommence revolving only than in the opposite direction. This will produce a total reversion in the magnetic land fields. ” Will it be that these three days refer to that, also? It fits believing you in that. More theories will be posted, and you will see the relation with that. (Comment on this)
4:25a	(Comment on this)
4:28a	2012 phenomenon From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Part of a series on Eschatology Buddhist[show] Christian[show] Hindu[show] Islamic[show] Jewish[show] Taoist[show] Zoroastrian[show] Inter-religious[show] v t e an inscription in Mayan characters A date inscription in the Mayan Long Count on the east side of Stela C from Quirigua showing the date for the last Creation. It is read as 13.0.0.0.0 4 Ajaw 8 Cumku and is usually correlated as 11 or 13 August, 3114 BC on the Gregorian calendar. The date of 13.0.0.0.0 4 Ajaw 3 K'ank'in is usually correlated as 21 or 23 December 2012. "21 December 2012" and "2012 December 21" redirect here. For general information on this day, see December 21. The 2012 phenomenon was a range of eschatological beliefs that cataclysmic or otherwise transformative events would occur on or around 21 December 2012.[1][2][3][4][5][6] This date was regarded as the end-date of a 5,126-year-long cycle in the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar,[7] and as such, festivities to commemorate the date took place on 21 December 2012 in the countries that were part of the Mayan civilization (Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador), with main events at Chichén Itzá in Mexico, and Tikal in Guatemala.[8][9][10] Various astronomical alignments and numerological formulae were proposed as pertaining to this date. A New Age interpretation held that the date marked the start of a period during which Earth and its inhabitants would undergo a positive physical or spiritual transformation, and that 21 December 2012 would mark the beginning of a new era.[11] Others suggested that the date marked the end of the world or a similar catastrophe. Scenarios suggested for the end of the world included the arrival of the next solar maximum, an interaction between Earth and the black hole at the center of the galaxy,[12] or Earth's collision with a planet called Nibiru. Scholars from various disciplines quickly dismissed predictions of concomitant cataclysmic events as they arose. Professional Mayanist scholars stated that no extant classic Maya accounts forecast impending doom, and that the idea that the Long Count calendar ends in 2012 misrepresented Maya history and culture,[3][13][14] while astronomers rejected the various proposed doomsday scenarios as pseudoscience,[15][16] easily refuted by elementary astronomical observations.[17] (Comment on this)
4:29a	Mesoamerican Long Count calendar[edit] Main article: Mesoamerican Long Count calendar December 2012 marked the conclusion of a b'ak'tun—a time period in the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar, used in Central America prior to the arrival of Europeans. Although the Long Count was most likely invented by the Olmec,[18] it has become closely associated with the Maya civilization, whose classic period lasted from 250 to 900 AD.[19] The writing system of the classic Maya has been substantially deciphered,[20] meaning that a corpus of their written and inscribed material has survived from before the European conquest. Unlike the 260-day tzolk'in still used today among the Maya, the Long Count was linear rather than cyclical, and kept time roughly in units of 20: 20 days made a uinal, 18 uinals (360 days) made a tun, 20 tuns made a k'atun, and 20 k'atuns (144,000 days or roughly 394 years) made up a b'ak'tun. Thus, the Mayan date of 8.3.2.10.15 represents 8 b'ak'tuns, 3 k'atuns, 2 tuns, 10 uinals and 15 days.[21][22] Apocalypse[edit] an ancient manuscript page. The oldest surviving manuscript of the Popol Vuh, dated to 1701 There is a strong tradition of "world ages" in Mayan literature, but the record has been distorted, leaving several possibilities open to interpretation.[23] According to the Popol Vuh, a compilation of the creation accounts of the K'iche' Maya of the Colonial-era highlands, we are living in the fourth world.[24] The Popol Vuh describes the gods first creating three failed worlds, followed by a successful fourth world in which humanity was placed. In the Maya Long Count, the previous world ended after 13 b'ak'tuns, or roughly 5,125 years.[25][Note a] The Long Count's "zero date"[Note b][Note c] was set at a point in the past marking the end of the third world and the beginning of the current one, which corresponds to 11 August 3114 BC in the proleptic Gregorian calendar.[26][7] This means that the fourth world reached the end of its 13th b'ak'tun, or Mayan date 13.0.0.0.0, on 21 December 2012. In 1957, Mayanist and astronomer Maud Worcester Makemson wrote that "the completion of a Great Period of 13 b'ak'tuns would have been of the utmost significance to the Maya".[27] In 1966, Michael D. Coe wrote in The Maya that "there is a suggestion ... that Armageddon would overtake the degenerate peoples of the world and all creation on the final day of the 13th [b'ak'tun]. Thus ... our present universe [would] be annihilated [in December 2012][Note e] when the Great Cycle of the Long Count reaches completion."[28] Objections[edit] Coe's interpretation was repeated by other scholars through the early 1990s.[29] In contrast, later researchers said that, while the end of the 13th b'ak'tun would perhaps be a cause for celebration,[3] it did not mark the end of the calendar.[30] "There is nothing in the Maya or Aztec or ancient Mesoamerican prophecy to suggest that they prophesied a sudden or major change of any sort in 2012", said Mayanist scholar Mark Van Stone. "The notion of a 'Great Cycle' coming to an end is completely a modern invention."[31] In 1990, Mayanist scholars Linda Schele and David Freidel argued that the Maya "did not conceive this to be the end of creation, as many have suggested".[32] Susan Milbrath, curator of Latin American Art and Archaeology at the Florida Museum of Natural History, stated that, "We have no record or knowledge that [the Maya] would think the world would come to an end" in 2012.[3] Sandra Noble, executive director of the Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies, said, "For the ancient Maya, it was a huge celebration to make it to the end of a whole cycle", and, "The 2012 phenomenon is a complete fabrication and a chance for a lot of people to cash in".[3] "There will be another cycle", said E. Wyllys Andrews V, director of the Tulane University Middle American Research Institute. "We know the Maya thought there was one before this, and that implies they were comfortable with the idea of another one after this."[33] Commenting on the new calendar found at Xultún, one archaeologist said "The ancient Maya predicted the world would continue – that 7,000 years from now, things would be exactly like this. We keep looking for endings. The Maya were looking for a guarantee that nothing would change. It's an entirely different mindset."[34] Several prominent individuals representing Maya of Guatemala decried the suggestion that the world would end with the 13th b'ak'tun. Ricardo Cajas, president of the Colectivo de Organizaciones Indígenas de Guatemala, said the date did not represent an end of humanity but that the new cycle "supposes changes in human consciousness". Martín Sacalxot, of the office of the Procurador de los Derechos Humanos (Guatemala's Human Rights Ombudsman, PDH), said that the end of the calendar has nothing to do with the end of the world or the year 2012.[35] Prior associations[edit] The European association of the Maya with eschatology dates back to the time of Christopher Columbus, who was compiling a work called Libro de las profecias during the voyage in 1502 when he first heard about the "Maia" on Guanaja, an island off the north coast of Honduras.[36] Influenced by the writings of Bishop Pierre d'Ailly, Columbus believed that his discovery of "most distant" lands (and, by extension, the Maya themselves) was prophesied and would bring about the Apocalypse. End-times fears were widespread during the early years of the Spanish Conquest as the result of popular astrological predictions in Europe of a second Great Flood for the year 1524.[36] In the early 1900s, German scholar Ernst Förstemann interpreted the last page of the Dresden Codex as a representation of the end of the world in a cataclysmic flood. He made reference to the destruction of the world and an apocalypse, though he made no reference to the 13th b'ak'tun or 2012 and it was not clear that he was referring to a future event.[37] His ideas were repeated by archaeologist Sylvanus Morley,[38] who directly paraphrased Förstemann and added his own embellishments, writing, "Finally, on the last page of the manuscript, is depicted the Destruction of the World ... Here, indeed, is portrayed with a graphic touch the final all-engulfing cataclysm" in the form of a Great Flood. These comments were later repeated in Morley's book, The Ancient Maya, the first edition of which was published in 1946.[36] Mayan references to b'ak'tun 13[edit] It is not certain what significance the classic Maya gave to the 13th b'ak'tun.[39] Most classic Maya inscriptions are strictly historical and do not make any prophetic declarations.[39] Two items in the Mayan classical corpus, however, do mention the end of the 13th b'ak'tun: Tortuguero Monument 6 and La Corona Hieroglyphic Stairway 12. Tortuguero[edit] The Tortuguero site, which lies in southernmost Tabasco, Mexico, dates from the 7th century AD and consists of a series of inscriptions mostly in honor of the contemporary ruler Bahlam Ajaw. One inscription, known as Tortuguero Monument 6, is the only inscription known to refer to b'ak'tun 13 in any detail. It has been partially defaced; Sven Gronemeyer and Barbara MacLeod have given this translation: tzuhtzjo:m uy-u:xlaju:n pik chan ajaw u:x uni:w uhto:m il[?] ye'ni/ye:n bolon yokte' ta chak joyaj It will be completed the 13th b'ak'tun. It is 4 Ajaw 3 K'ank'in and it will happen a 'seeing'[?]. It is the display of B'olon-Yokte' in a great "investiture".[40] Vase illustration in which the god Bolon Yukte is seen in profile, kneeling with his head back and his mouth open. He wears an elaborate feather headdress. The Tortuguero monument connects the end of the 13th b'ak'tun with the appearance of B'olon Yokte' K'uh, shown here on the Vase of Seven Gods. Very little is known about the god B'olon Yokte'. According to an article by Mayanists Markus Eberl and Christian Prager in British Anthropological Reports, his name is composed of the elements "nine", 'OK-te' (the meaning of which is unknown), and "god". Confusion in classical period inscriptions suggests that the name was already ancient and unfamiliar to contemporary scribes.[41] He also appears in inscriptions from Palenque, Usumacinta, and La Mar as a god of war, conflict, and the underworld. In one stele he is portrayed with a rope tied around his neck, and in another with an incense bag, together signifying a sacrifice to end a cycle of years.[42] Based on observations of modern Mayan rituals, Gronemeyer and MacLeod claim that the stela refers to a celebration in which a person portraying Bolon Yokte' K'uh was wrapped in ceremonial garments and paraded around the site.[43][44] They note that the association of Bolon Yokte' K'uh with b'ak'tun 13 appears to be so important on this inscription that it supersedes more typical celebrations such as "erection of stelae, scattering of incense" and so forth. Furthermore, they assert that this event was indeed planned for 2012 and not the 7th century.[45] Mayanist scholar Stephen Houston contests this view by arguing that future dates on Mayan inscriptions were simply meant to draw parallels with contemporary events, and that the words on the stela describe a contemporary rather than a future scene.[46] La Corona[edit] In April–May 2012, a team of archaeologists unearthed a previously unknown inscription on a stairway at the La Corona site in Guatemala. The inscription, on what is known as Hieroglyphic Stairway 12, describes the establishment of a royal court in Calakmul in 635 AD, and compares the then-recent completion of 13 k'atuns with the future completion of the 13th b'ak'tun. It contains no speculation or prophecy as to what the scribes believed would happen at that time.[47] Dates beyond b'ak'tun 13[edit] Mayan inscriptions occasionally mention predicted future events or commemorations that would occur on dates far beyond the completion of the 13th b'ak'tun. Most of these are in the form of "distance dates"; Long Count dates together with an additional number, known as a Distance Number, which when added to them makes a future date. On the west panel at the Temple of Inscriptions in Palenque, a section of text projects forward to the 80th 52-year Calendar Round from the coronation of the ruler K'inich Janaab' Pakal. Pakal's accession occurred on 9.9.2.4.8, equivalent to 27 July 615 AD in the proleptic Gregorian calendar. The inscription begins with Pakal's birthdate of 9.8.9.13.0 (24 March, 603 AD Gregorian) and then adds the Distance Number 10.11.10.5.8 to it,[48] arriving at a date of 21 October 4772 AD, more than 4,000 years after Pakal's time.[31][48][49] Another example is Stela 1 at Coba which marks the date of creation as 13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.0.0.0.0, or nineteen units above the b'ak'tun. According to Linda Schele, these 13s represent "the starting point of a huge odometer of time", with each acting as a zero and resetting to 1 as the numbers increase.[32][Note c] Thus this inscription anticipates the current universe lasting at least 2021×13×360 days,[50] or roughly 2.687×1028 years; a time span equal to 2 quintillion times the age of the universe as determined by cosmologists. Others have suggested, however, that this date marks creation as having occurred after that time span.[50][51] In 2012, researchers announced the discovery of a series of Mayan astronomical tables in Xultún, Guatemala which plot the movements of the Moon and other astronomical bodies over the course of 17 b'ak'tuns.[34][52][53] New Age beliefs[edit] Many assertions about the year 2012 form part of Mayanism, a non-codified collection of New Age beliefs about ancient Maya wisdom and spirituality.[4][54][55][56][57][58] The term is distinct from "Mayanist", used to refer to an academic scholar of the Maya.[55][59] Archaeoastronomer Anthony Aveni says that while the idea of "balancing the cosmos" was prominent in ancient Maya literature, the 2012 phenomenon does not draw from those traditions. Instead, it is bound up with American concepts such as the New Age movement, millenarianism, and the belief in secret knowledge from distant times and places.[60] Established themes found in 2012 literature include "suspicion towards mainstream Western culture", the idea of spiritual evolution, and the possibility of leading the world into the New Age by individual example or by a group's joined consciousness. The general intent of this literature is not to warn of impending doom but "to foster counter-cultural sympathies and eventually socio-political and 'spiritual' activism".[2] Aveni, who has studied New Age and search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) communities, describes 2012 narratives as the product of a "disconnected" society: "Unable to find spiritual answers to life's big questions within ourselves, we turn outward to imagined entities that lie far off in space or time—entities that just might be in possession of superior knowledge".[61] Origins[edit] In 1975, the ending of b'ak'tun 13 became the subject of speculation by several New Age authors, who asserted it would correspond with a global "transformation of consciousness". In Mexico Mystique: The Coming Sixth Age of Consciousness, Frank Waters tied Coe's original date of 24 December 2011[Note e] to astrology and the prophecies of the Hopi,[62] while both José Argüelles (in The Transformative Vision)[63] and Terence McKenna (in The Invisible Landscape)[64][65] discussed the significance of the year 2012 without mentioning a specific day. In 1983, with the publication of Robert J. Sharer's revised table of date correlations in the 4th edition of Morley's The Ancient Maya,[Note e] each became convinced that 21 December 2012 had significant meaning. By 1987, the year in which he organized the Harmonic Convergence event, Arguelles was using the date 21 December 2012 in The Mayan Factor: Path Beyond Technology.[66][67] He claimed that on 13 August 3113 BC the Earth began a passage through a "galactic synchronization beam" that emanated from the center of our galaxy, that it would pass through this beam during a period of 5200 tuns (Maya cycles of 360 days each), and that this beam would result in "total synchronization" and "galactic entrainment" of individuals "plugged into the Earth's electromagnetic battery" by 13.0.0.0.0 (21 December 2012). He believed that the Maya aligned their calendar to correspond to this phenomenon.[68] Anthony Aveni has dismissed all of these ideas.[69] In 2006, author Daniel Pinchbeck popularized New Age concepts about this date in his book 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl, linking b'ak'tun 13 to beliefs in crop circles, alien abduction, and personal revelations based on the use of hallucinogenic drugs and mediumship.[70][71] Pinchbeck claims to discern a "growing realization that materialism and the rational, empirical worldview that comes with it has reached its expiration date ... [w]e're on the verge of transitioning to a dispensation of consciousness that's more intuitive, mystical and shamanic".[11] Galactic alignment[edit] There is no significant astronomical event tied to the Long Count's start date.[72] However, its supposed end date has been tied to astronomical phenomena by esoteric, fringe, and New Age literature that places great significance on astrology, especially astrological interpretations associated with the phenomenon of axial precession.[54][56] Chief among these ideas is the astrological concept of a "galactic alignment". Precession[edit] In the Solar System, the planets and the Sun lie roughly within the same flat plane, known as the plane of the ecliptic. From our perspective on Earth, the ecliptic is the path taken by the Sun across the sky over the course of the year. The twelve constellations that line the ecliptic are known as the zodiacal constellations and, annually, the Sun passes through all of them in turn. Additionally, over time, the Sun's annual cycle appears to recede very slowly backward by one degree every 72 years, or by one constellation approximately every 2,160 years. This backward movement, called "precession", is due to a slight wobble in the Earth's axis as it spins, and can be compared to the way a spinning top wobbles as it slows down.[73] Over the course of 25,800 years, a period often called a Great Year, the Sun's path completes a full, 360-degree backward rotation through the zodiac.[73] In Western astrological traditions, precession is measured from the March equinox, one of the two annual points at which the Sun is exactly halfway between its lowest and highest points in the sky. Presently, the Sun's March equinox position is in the constellation Pisces and is moving back into Aquarius. This signals the end of one astrological age (the Age of Pisces) and the beginning of another (the Age of Aquarius).[74] Similarly, the Sun's December solstice position (in the northern hemisphere, the lowest point on its annual path; in the southern hemisphere, the highest) is currently in the constellation of Sagittarius, one of two constellations in which the zodiac intersects with the Milky Way.[75] Every year, on the December solstice, the Sun and the Milky Way, from the surface of the Earth, appear to come into alignment, and every year, precession causes a slight shift in the Sun's position in the Milky Way. Given that the Milky Way is between 10° and 20° wide, it takes between 700 and 1,400 years for the Sun's December solstice position to precess through it.[76] It is currently about halfway through the Milky Way, crossing the galactic equator.[77] In 2012, the Sun's December solstice fell on 21 December.[78] Mysticism[edit] a photograph of the Milky Way, rotated 90 degrees The Milky Way near Cygnus showing the lane of the Dark Rift, which the Maya called the Xibalba be or "Black Road" Mystical speculations about the precession of the equinoxes and the Sun's proximity to the center of the Milky Way appeared in Hamlet's Mill (1969) by Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Deschend. These were quoted and expanded upon by Terence and Dennis McKenna in The Invisible Landscape (1975). The significance of a future "galactic alignment" was noted in 1991 by astrologer Raymond Mardyks, who asserted that the winter solstice would align with the galactic plane in 1998/1999. He wrote that this event "only occurs once each 26,000-year cycle and would be most definitely of utmost significance to the top flight ancient astrologers".[79] Astrologer Bruce Scofield notes, "The Milky Way crossing of the winter solstice is something that has been neglected by Western astrologers, with a few exceptions. Charles Jayne made a very early reference to it, and in the 1970s Rob Hand mentioned it in his talks on precession but didn't elaborate on it. Ray Mardyks later made a point of it, and after that John [Major] Jenkins, myself, and Daniel Giamario began to talk about it."[80] Adherents to the idea, following a theory first proposed by Munro Edmonson,[81] allege that the Maya based their calendar on observations of the Great Rift or Dark Rift, a band of dark dust clouds in the Milky Way, which, according to some scholars, the Maya called the Xibalba be or "Black Road".[82] John Major Jenkins claims that the Maya were aware of where the ecliptic intersected the Black Road and gave this position in the sky a special significance in their cosmology.[83] Jenkins said that precession would align the Sun precisely with the galactic equator at the 2012 winter solstice.[83] Jenkins claimed that the classical Maya anticipated this conjunction and celebrated it as the harbinger of a profound spiritual transition for mankind.[84] New Age proponents of the galactic alignment hypothesis argue that, just as astrology uses the positions of stars and planets to make claims of future events, the Maya plotted their calendars with the objective of preparing for significant world events.[85] Jenkins attributes the insights of ancient Maya shamans about the galactic center to their use of psilocybin mushrooms, psychoactive toads, and other psychedelics.[86] Jenkins also associates the Xibalba be with a "world tree", drawing on studies of contemporary (not ancient) Maya cosmology.[87] Criticism[edit] Astronomers such as David Morrison argue that the galactic equator is an entirely arbitrary line and can never be precisely drawn, because it is impossible to determine the Milky Way's exact boundaries, which vary depending on clarity of view. Jenkins claims he drew his conclusions about the location of the galactic equator from observations taken at above 11,000 feet (3,400 m), an altitude that gives a clearer image of the Milky Way than Maya had access to.[68] Furthermore, since the Sun is half a degree wide, its solstice position takes 36 years to precess its full width. Jenkins himself notes that even given his determined location for the line of the galactic equator, its most precise convergence with the center of the Sun already occurred in 1998, and so asserts that, rather than 2012, the galactic alignment instead focuses on a multi-year period centred on 1998.[88][89][90] There is no clear evidence that the classic Maya were aware of precession. Some Maya scholars, such as Barbara MacLeod,[44] Michael Grofe,[91] Eva Hunt, Gordon Brotherston, and Anthony Aveni,[92] have suggested that some Mayan holy dates were timed to precessional cycles, but scholarly opinion on the subject remains divided.[31] There is also little evidence, archaeological or historical, that the Maya placed any importance on solstices or equinoxes.[31][93] It is possible that only the earliest among Mesoamericans observed solstices,[94] but this is also a disputed issue among Mayanists.[31][93] There is also no evidence that the classic Maya attached any importance to the Milky Way; there is no glyph in their writing system to represent it, and no astronomical or chronological table tied to it.[95] Timewave zero and the I Ching[edit] Main article: Terence McKenna § Novelty theory and Timewave Zero a greyscale graph with multiple, jagged peaks and troughs and an overall descending pattern, set amidst complex virtual instrumentation A screenshot of the "Timewave Zero" software "Timewave zero" is a numerological formula that purports to calculate the ebb and flow of "novelty", defined as increase over time in the universe's interconnectedness, or organized complexity.[96] According to Terence McKenna, the universe has a teleological attractor at the end of time that increases interconnectedness, which would eventually reach a singularity of infinite complexity in 2012, at which point anything and everything imaginable would occur simultaneously. He conceived this idea over several years in the early to mid-1970s whilst using psilocybin mushrooms and DMT.[96][97] The scientific community considers novelty theory to be pseudoscience.[98][99] McKenna expressed "novelty" in a computer program which produces a waveform known as "timewave zero" or the "timewave". Based on McKenna's interpretation of the King Wen sequence of the I Ching, an ancient Chinese book on divination,[64] the graph purports to show great periods of novelty corresponding with major shifts in humanity's biological and sociocultural evolution. He believed that the events of any given time are resonantly related to the events of other times, and chose the atomic bombing of Hiroshima as the basis for calculating his end date of November 2012.[100] When he later discovered this date's proximity to the end of the 13th b'ak'tun of the Maya calendar, he revised his hypothesis so that the two dates matched.[2] The 1975 first edition of The Invisible Landscape refers to 2012 (but no specific day during the year) only twice. In the 1993 second edition, McKenna employed Sharer's date[Note e] of 21 December 2012 throughout.[2][97] Novelty theory has been criticized for "rejecting countless ideas presumed as factual by the scientific community", depending "solely on numerous controversial deductions that contradict empirical logic", and encompassing "no suitable indication of truth", with the conclusion that novelty theory is a pseudoscience.[101] Doomsday theories[edit] A white, glowing, cloudlike feature lies surrounded by bright blue stars in a brownish, golden nebula Sagittarius A*, taken by the Chandra X-Ray Observatory The idea that the year 2012 presaged a world cataclysm, described the end of the world, or of human civilization, on that date became a subject of popular media speculation as the date of 21 December 2012 approached. This idea was promulgated by many hoax pages on the Internet, particularly on YouTube.[102] The Discovery Channel was criticized for its "quasi-documentaries" about the subject that "sacrifice[d] accuracy for entertainment".[103] Other alignments[edit] Some people interpreted the galactic alignment apocalyptically, claiming that its occurrence would somehow create a combined gravitational effect between the Sun and the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy (known as Sagittarius A*), creating havoc on Earth.[104] Apart from the "galactic alignment" already having happened in 1998, the Sun's apparent path through the zodiac as seen from Earth does not take it near the true galactic center, but rather several degrees above it.[77] Even if this were not the case, Sagittarius A* is 30,000 light years from Earth; it would have to be more than 6 million times closer to cause any gravitational disruption to Earth's Solar System.[105][106] This reading of the alignment was included on the History Channel documentary, Decoding the Past. John Major Jenkins complained that a science fiction writer co-authored the documentary, and he went on to characterize it as "45 minutes of unabashed doomsday hype and the worst kind of inane sensationalism".[107] Some believers in a 2012 doomsday used the term "galactic alignment" to describe a different phenomenon proposed by some scientists to explain a pattern in mass extinctions supposedly observed in the fossil record.[108] According to this hypothesis, mass extinctions are not random, but recur every 26 million years. To account for this, it suggests that vertical oscillations made by the Sun on its 250-million-year orbit of the galactic center cause it to regularly pass through the galactic plane. When the Sun's orbit takes it outside the galactic plane which bisects the galactic disc, the influence of the galactic tide is weaker. However, when re-entering the galactic disc—as it does every 20–25 million years—it comes under the influence of the far stronger "disc tides", which, according to mathematical models, increase the flux of Oort cloud comets into the inner Solar System by a factor of 4, thus leading to a massive increase in the likelihood of a devastating comet impact.[109] However, this "alignment" takes place over tens of millions of years, and could never be timed to an exact date.[110] Evidence shows that the Sun passed through the plane bisecting the galactic disc only three million years ago and is now moving farther above it.[111] A third suggested alignment was some sort of planetary conjunction occurring on 21 December 2012; however, there was no conjunction on that date.[112] Multi-planet alignments did occur in both 2000 and 2010, each with no ill result for the Earth.[113] Jupiter is the largest planet in the Solar System; larger than all other planets combined. When Jupiter is near opposition, the difference in gravitational force that the Earth experiences is less than 1% of the force that the Earth feels daily from the Moon.[114] Geomagnetic reversal[edit] Another idea tied to 2012 involved a geomagnetic reversal (often incorrectly referred to as a pole shift by proponents), possibly triggered by a massive solar flare, that would release an energy equal to 100 billion atomic bombs.[115] This belief was supposedly supported by observations that the Earth's magnetic field is weakening,[116] which could precede a reversal of the north and south magnetic poles, and the arrival of the next solar maximum, which was expected sometime around 2012.[117] Most scientific estimates, however, say that geomagnetic reversals take between 1,000 and 10,000 years to complete,[118] and do not start on any particular date.[119] Furthermore, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicted that the solar maximum would peak in late 2013 or 2014, and that it would be fairly weak, with a below-average number of sunspots.[120] In any case, there is no scientific evidence linking a solar maximum to a geomagnetic reversal, which is driven by forces entirely within the Earth.[121] Instead, a solar maximum would be mostly notable for its effects on satellite and cellular phone communications.[122] David Morrison attributes the rise of the solar storm idea to physicist and science popularizer Michio Kaku, who claimed in an interview with Fox News that a solar peak in 2012 could be disastrous for orbiting satellites, and to NASA's headlining a 2006 webpage as "Solar Storm Warning", a term later repeated on several doomsday pages.[102] Planet X/Nibiru[edit] Main article: Nibiru cataclysm Some believers in doomsday in 2012 claimed that a planet called Planet X, or Nibiru, would collide with or pass by Earth. This idea, which appeared in various forms since 1995, initially predicted Doomsday in May 2003, but proponents abandoned that date after it passed without incident.[123] The idea originated from claims of channeling of alien beings and is widely ridiculed.[123][124] Astronomers calculated that such an object so close to Earth would be visible to anyone looking up at the night sky.[123] Other catastrophes[edit] The Pleiades star cluster The Pleiades, a star cluster with supposed influence sometimes tied to the 2012 event Author Graham Hancock, in his book Fingerprints of the Gods, interpreted Coe's remarks in Breaking the Maya Code[125] as evidence for the prophecy of a global cataclysm.[126] Filmmaker Roland Emmerich later credited the book with inspiring his 2009 disaster film 2012.[127] Other speculations regarding doomsday in 2012 included predictions by the Web Bot project, a computer program that purports to predict the future using Internet chatter. However, commentators have rejected the programmers' claims to have successfully predicted natural disasters, which web chatter could never predict, as opposed to human-caused disasters like stock market crashes.[128] Also, the 2012 date has been loosely tied to the long-running concept of the Photon Belt, which predicts a form of interaction between Earth and Alcyone, the largest star of the Pleiades cluster.[129] Critics have argued that photons cannot form belts, that the Pleiades, located more than 400 light years away, could have no effect on Earth, and that the Solar System, rather than getting closer to the Pleiades, is in fact moving farther away from them.[130] Some media outlets tied the fact that the red supergiant star Betelgeuse will undergo a supernova at some point in the future to the 2012 phenomenon.[131] However, while Betelgeuse is certainly in the final stages of its life, and will die as a supernova, there is no way to predict the timing of the event to within 100,000 years.[132] To be a threat to Earth, a supernova would need to be no further than 25 light years from the Solar System. Betelgeuse is roughly 600 light years away, and so its supernova will not affect Earth.[133] In December 2011, NASA's Francis Reddy issued a press release debunking the possibility of a supernova occurring in 2012.[134] Another claim involved alien invasion. In December 2010, an article, first published in examiner.com and later referenced in the English-language edition of Pravda[135] claimed, citing a Second Digitized Sky Survey photograph as evidence, that SETI had detected three large spacecraft due to arrive at Earth in 2012.[136] Astronomer and debunker Phil Plait noted that by using the small-angle formula, one could determine that if the object in the photo were as large as claimed, it would have had to be closer to Earth than the Moon, which would mean it would already have arrived.[136] In January 2011, Seth Shostak, chief astronomer of SETI, issued a press release debunking the claims.[135] Public reaction[edit] The phenomenon spread widely after coming to public notice, particularly on the Internet. Hundreds of thousands of websites were posted on the subject.[102] "Ask an Astrobiologist", a NASA public outreach website, received over 5,000 questions from the public on the subject from 2007,[129] some asking whether they should kill themselves, their children or their pets.[102] In May 2012, an Ipsos poll of 16,000 adults in 21 countries found that 8 percent had experienced fear or anxiety over the possibility of the world ending in December 2012, while an average of 10 percent agreed with the statement "the Mayan calendar, which some say 'ends' in 2012, marks the end of the world", with responses as high as 20 percent in China, 13 percent in Russia, Turkey, Japan and Korea, and 12 percent in the United States.[137] At least one suicide was directly linked to fear of a 2012 apocalypse,[138] with others anecdotally reported.[139] A panel of scientists questioned on the topic at a plenary session at the Astronomical Society of the Pacific contended that the Internet played a substantial role in allowing this doomsday date to gain more traction than previous similar panics.[139] Europe[edit] A small village in a green field stands before a low, blue mountain peak Pic de Bugarach, Camps-sur-l'Agly, France; a target of "esoterics" who believed that some great transition would occur in 2012 a small village of blue houses, next to a mountain Şirince, İzmir Province, Turkey, a village of around 560 inhabitants, has a positive energy according to the doomsday cultists, who say that it is close to an area where Roman Catholics believe the Virgin Mary ascended to heaven. Beginning in 2000, the small French village of Bugarach, population 189, began receiving visits from "esoterics"—mystic believers who had concluded that the local mountain, Pic de Bugarach, was the ideal location to weather the transformative events of 2012. In 2011, the local mayor, Jean-Pierre Delord, began voicing fears to the international press that the small town would be overwhelmed by an influx of thousands of visitors in 2012, even suggesting he might call in the army.[140][141] "We've seen a huge rise in visitors", Delord told The Independent in March 2012. "Already this year more than 20,000 people have climbed right to the top, and last year we had 10,000 hikers, which was a significant rise on the previous 12 months. They think Pic de Bugarach is 'un garage à ovnis' [a garage for UFOs]. The villagers are exasperated: the exaggerated importance of something which they see as completely removed from reality is bewildering. After 21 December, this will surely return to normal."[142] In December 2012, the French government placed 100 police and firefighters around both Bugarach and Pic de Bugarach, limiting access to potential visitors.[143] Ultimately, only about 1,000 visitors appeared at the height of the "event". Two raves were foiled, 12 people had to be turned away from the peak, and 5 people were arrested for carrying weapons.[144] Jean-Pierre Delord was criticised by members of the community for failing to take advantage of the media attention and promote the region.[145] The Turkish village of Şirince, near Ephesus, expected to receive over 60,000 visitors on 21 December 2012, as New Age mystics believed its "positive energy" would aid in weathering the catastrophe.[146] In the event, only a fraction of that number actually arrived, with a substantial component being police and journalists, and the expected windfall failed to materialise.[147] Similarly, the pyramid-like mountain of Rtanj, in the Serbian Carpathians, attracted much apocalyptic attention, as many believe an artificial pyramid structure is buried within it that would have emitted a powerful force shield on the day, protecting those within it. Hotels around the base received up to 500 bookings apiece for rooms.[148] In Russia, inmates of a women's prison apparently experienced "a collective mass psychosis" in the weeks leading up to the supposed doomsday, while residents of a factory town near Moscow reportedly emptied a supermarket of matches, candles, food and other supplies. The Minister of Emergency Situations declared in response that according to "methods of monitoring what is occurring on the planet Earth," there would be no apocalypse in December.[149] When asked when the world would end in a press conference, Russian President Vladimir Putin said, "In about 4.5 billion years."[150] In December 2012, Vatican astronomer Rev José Funes wrote in the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano that apocalyptic theories around 2012 were "not even worth discussing".[151] Asia[edit] In China, up to one thousand members of the Christian cult Almighty God were arrested, after claiming that the end of b'ak'tun 13 marked the end of the world, and that it was time to overthrow Communism.[152] Shoppers were reported to be hoarding supplies of candles in anticipation of coming darkness, while online retailer Taobao sold tickets to board Noah's Ark to customers.[153] Bookings for wedding ceremonies on 21 December 2012 were saturated in several cities.[153] On 14 December 2012, a man in Henan province attacked and wounded twenty-three children with a knife. Authorities suspected the man had been "influenced" by the prediction of the upcoming apocalypse.[154] Academics in China attributed the widespread belief in the 2012 doomsday in their country to a lack of scientific literacy and a mistrust of the government-controlled media.[154] On 6 December 2012, Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard delivered a hoax speech for the radio station triple J in which she declared "My dear remaining fellow Australians; the end of the world is coming. Whether the final blow comes from flesh-eating zombies, demonic hell-beasts or from the total triumph of K-Pop, if you know one thing about me it is this - I will always fight for you to the very end."[155] Radio announcer Neil Mitchell described the hoax as "immature" and pondered whether it demeaned her office.[156] Mexico and Central America[edit] Those Mesoamerican countries that once formed part of the Mayan civilization, Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, all organized festivities to commemorate the end of b'ak'tun 13 at the largest Mayan sites. On 21 December 2011, the Maya town of Tapachula in Chiapas activated an eight-foot digital clock counting down the days until the end of b'ak'tun 13.[157] On 21 December 2012, major events took place at Chichén Itzá in Mexico and Tikal in Guatemala.[8][9][10] In El Salvador, the largest event was held at Tazumal, and in Honduras, at Copán. In all of these archaeological sites, Mayan rituals were held at dawn led by shamans and Mayan priests.[158][159][160] The Mayan fire ceremony held at dawn in Tikal on 21 December 2012, took place in the main plaza in front of the Temple of the Great Jaguar. On the final day of b'ak'tun 13, residents of Yucatán and other regions formerly dominated by the ancient Maya celebrated what they saw as the dawn of a new, better era.[161] According with official figures from Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH), about 50,000 people visited Mexican archaeological sites on 21 December 2012, of which, 10,000 visited Chichén Itzá in Yucatán, 9,900 visited Tulum in Quintana Roo, and 8,000 visited Palenque in Chiapas. An additional 10,000 people visited Teotihuacan near Mexico City, which is not a Maya site.[162] The main ceremony in Chichén Itzá was held at dawn in the plaza of the Temple of Kukulkán, one of the principal symbols of Mayan culture. The archaeological site was opened two hours early to receive thousands of tourists, mostly foreigners who came to participate in events scheduled for the end of b'ak'tun 13.[8][162] The fire ceremony at Tikal was held at dawn in the main plaza of the Temple of the Great Jaguar. The ceremony was led by Guatemalan and foreign priests. The President of Guatemala, Otto Pérez, and of Costa Rica, Laura Chinchilla, participated in the event as special guests. During the ceremony the priests asked for unity, peace and the end of discrimination and racism, with the hope that the start of a new cycle will be a "new dawn". About 3,000 people participated in the event.[158][163] Most of these events were organized by agencies of the Mexican and Central American governments, and their respective tourism industries expected to attract thousands of visitors.[9][158] While Mexico is visited by about 22 million foreigners a year, the national tourism agency expected to attract 52 million visitors in 2012 just to the regions of Chiapas, Yucatán, Quintana Roo, Tabasco and Campeche.[157] A Mayan activist group in Guatemala, Oxlaljuj Ajpop, objected to the commercialization of the date. A spokesman from the Conference of Mayan Ministers commented that for them the Tikal ceremony is not a show for tourists but something spiritual and personal. The secretary of the Great Council of Ancestral Authorities commented that living Maya felt they were excluded from the activities in Tikal. This group held a parallel ceremony, and complained that the date has been used for commercial gain. In addition, before the main Tikal ceremony, about 200 Maya protested the celebration because they felt excluded. Most modern Maya were indifferent to the ceremonies, and the small number of people still practising ancient rites held solemn, more private ceremonies.[9][158] Osvaldo Gomez, a technical advisor to the Tikal site, complained that many visitors during the celebration had illegally climbed the stairs of the Temple of the Masks, causing "irreparable" damage.[164] South America[edit] In Brazil, Décio Colla, the Mayor of the City of São Francisco de Paula, Rio Grande do Sul, mobilized the population to prepare for the end of the world by stocking up on food and supplies.[165][166] In the city of Corguinho, in the Mato Grosso do Sul, a colony was built for survivors of the expected tragedy.[167] In Alto Paraíso de Goiás, the hotels also made specific reservations for prophetic dates.[168] On 11 October 2012, in the Brazilian city of Teresina, police interrupted what was believed to have been an attempted mass suicide by up to one hundred members of a cult headed by self-proclaimed prophet Luis Pereira dos Santos, who predicted the end of the world on the feast day of Our Lady of Aparecida. Santos was subsequently arrested.[169] In Bolivia, President Evo Morales participated in the quechuan and aymaran rituals, this year organized with government support, to commemorate the Southern solstice that took place in Isla del Sol, in the southern part of Lake Titicaca. During the event, Morales proclaimed this day as the beginning of "Pachakuti", meaning the world's wake up to a culture of life and the beginning of the end to wild capitalism, and he proposed to dismantle the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.[10][158][170] On 21 December 2012, the Uritorco in Córdoba, Argentina was closed, as a mass suicide had been proposed on Facebook to take place there.[171] North America[edit] In the United States, sales of private underground blast shelters increased noticeably after 2009, with many construction companies' advertisements calling attention to the 2012 apocalypse.[172] In Michigan, schools were closed for the Christmas holidays two days early, in part because rumours of the 2012 apocalypse were raising fears of repeat of a shooting similar to that at Sandy Hook.[173] American reality TV stars Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt revealed that they had spent most of their $10 million of accumulated earnings by 2010 because they believed the world would end in 2012.[174] Cultural influence[edit] See also: Works of fiction set in 2012 The 2012 phenomenon was discussed or referenced in several media. Several TV documentaries, as well as some contemporary fictional references to the year 2012, refer to 21 December as the day of a cataclysmic event. The UFO conspiracy TV series The X-Files cites 22 December 2012 as the date for an alien colonization of the Earth and mentions the Mayan calendar "stopping" on this date.[2] The History Channel aired a handful of special series on doomsday that include analysis of 2012 theories, such as Decoding the Past (2005–2007), 2012, End of Days (2006), Last Days on Earth (2006), Seven Signs of the Apocalypse (2007), and Nostradamus 2012 (2008).[175] The Discovery Channel also aired 2012 Apocalypse in 2009, suggesting that massive solar storms, magnetic pole reversal, earthquakes, supervolcanoes, and other drastic natural events may occur in 2012.[176] In 2012, the National Geographic Channel launched a show called Doomsday Preppers, a documentary series about survivalists preparing for various cataclysms, including the 2012 doomsday.[177] Hundreds of books were published on the topic.[102] The bestselling book of 2009,[178] Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol, featured a coded mock email number (2456282.5) that decodes to the Julian date for 21 December 2012.[179] In cinema the 2009 disaster film 2012 was inspired by the phenomenon, and advance promotion prior to its release included a stealth marketing campaign in which TV spots and websites from the fictional "Institute for Human Continuity" called on people to prepare for the end of the world. As these promotions did not mention the film itself, many viewers believed them to be real and contacted astronomers in panic.[180][181] Although the campaign was heavily criticized,[102] the film became one of the most successful of its year, grossing nearly $770 million worldwide.[182] An article in The Daily Telegraph attributed the widespread fear of the 2012 phenomenon in China to the film, which was a smash hit in that country because it depicts the Chinese building the "survival arks".[183] Lars von Trier's 2011 film Melancholia features a plot in which a planet emerges from behind the Sun onto a collision course with Earth.[184] Announcing his company's purchase of the film, the head of Magnolia Pictures said in a press release, "As the 2012 apocalypse is upon us, it is time to prepare for a cinematic last supper".[185] The phenomenon also inspired several rock and pop music hits. As early as 1997, "A Certain Shade of Green" by Incubus referred to the mystical belief that a shift in perception would arrive in 2012 ("Are you gonna stand around till 2012 A.D.? / What are you waiting for, a certain shade of green?"). More recent hits include "2012 (It Ain't the End)" (2010) performed by Jay Sean and "Till the World Ends" (2011) performed by Britney Spears. Towards mid-December 2012, an internet hoax related to South Korean singer PSY being one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse was widely circulated around social media platforms. The hoax purported that once PSY's "Gangnam Style" YouTube video amassed a billion views, the world would end.[186] Indian composer A. R. Rahman, known for Slumdog Millionaire, released his single "Infinite Love" to "instill faith and optimism in people" prior to the predicted doomsday.[187] A number of brands ran commercials tied to the 2012 apocalypse in the months and days leading to the date. In February 2012, American automotive company GM aired an advertisement during the annual Super Bowl football game in which a group of friends drive Chevrolet Silverados through the ruins of human civilization following the 2012 apocalypse, while on 17 December 2012, Jell-O ran an ad saying that offering Jell-O to the Mayan gods would appease them into sparing the world. John Verret, Professor of Advertising at Boston University, questioned the utility of tying large sums of money to such a unique and short-term event.[188] (Comment on this)
4:30a	Mesoamerican Long Count calendar[edit] Main article: Mesoamerican Long Count calendar December 2012 marked the conclusion of a b'ak'tun—a time period in the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar, used in Central America prior to the arrival of Europeans. Although the Long Count was most likely invented by the Olmec,[18] it has become closely associated with the Maya civilization, whose classic period lasted from 250 to 900 AD.[19] The writing system of the classic Maya has been substantially deciphered,[20] meaning that a corpus of their written and inscribed material has survived from before the European conquest. Unlike the 260-day tzolk'in still used today among the Maya, the Long Count was linear rather than cyclical, and kept time roughly in units of 20: 20 days made a uinal, 18 uinals (360 days) made a tun, 20 tuns made a k'atun, and 20 k'atuns (144,000 days or roughly 394 years) made up a b'ak'tun. Thus, the Mayan date of 8.3.2.10.15 represents 8 b'ak'tuns, 3 k'atuns, 2 tuns, 10 uinals and 15 days.[21][22] Apocalypse[edit] an ancient manuscript page. The oldest surviving manuscript of the Popol Vuh, dated to 1701 There is a strong tradition of "world ages" in Mayan literature, but the record has been distorted, leaving several possibilities open to interpretation.[23] According to the Popol Vuh, a compilation of the creation accounts of the K'iche' Maya of the Colonial-era highlands, we are living in the fourth world.[24] The Popol Vuh describes the gods first creating three failed worlds, followed by a successful fourth world in which humanity was placed. In the Maya Long Count, the previous world ended after 13 b'ak'tuns, or roughly 5,125 years.[25][Note a] The Long Count's "zero date"[Note b][Note c] was set at a point in the past marking the end of the third world and the beginning of the current one, which corresponds to 11 August 3114 BC in the proleptic Gregorian calendar.[26][7] This means that the fourth world reached the end of its 13th b'ak'tun, or Mayan date 13.0.0.0.0, on 21 December 2012. In 1957, Mayanist and astronomer Maud Worcester Makemson wrote that "the completion of a Great Period of 13 b'ak'tuns would have been of the utmost significance to the Maya".[27] In 1966, Michael D. Coe wrote in The Maya that "there is a suggestion ... that Armageddon would overtake the degenerate peoples of the world and all creation on the final day of the 13th [b'ak'tun]. Thus ... our present universe [would] be annihilated [in December 2012][Note e] when the Great Cycle of the Long Count reaches completion."[28] Objections[edit] Coe's interpretation was repeated by other scholars through the early 1990s.[29] In contrast, later researchers said that, while the end of the 13th b'ak'tun would perhaps be a cause for celebration,[3] it did not mark the end of the calendar.[30] "There is nothing in the Maya or Aztec or ancient Mesoamerican prophecy to suggest that they prophesied a sudden or major change of any sort in 2012", said Mayanist scholar Mark Van Stone. "The notion of a 'Great Cycle' coming to an end is completely a modern invention."[31] In 1990, Mayanist scholars Linda Schele and David Freidel argued that the Maya "did not conceive this to be the end of creation, as many have suggested".[32] Susan Milbrath, curator of Latin American Art and Archaeology at the Florida Museum of Natural History, stated that, "We have no record or knowledge that [the Maya] would think the world would come to an end" in 2012.[3] Sandra Noble, executive director of the Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies, said, "For the ancient Maya, it was a huge celebration to make it to the end of a whole cycle", and, "The 2012 phenomenon is a complete fabrication and a chance for a lot of people to cash in".[3] "There will be another cycle", said E. Wyllys Andrews V, director of the Tulane University Middle American Research Institute. "We know the Maya thought there was one before this, and that implies they were comfortable with the idea of another one after this."[33] Commenting on the new calendar found at Xultún, one archaeologist said "The ancient Maya predicted the world would continue – that 7,000 years from now, things would be exactly like this. We keep looking for endings. The Maya were looking for a guarantee that nothing would change. It's an entirely different mindset."[34] Several prominent individuals representing Maya of Guatemala decried the suggestion that the world would end with the 13th b'ak'tun. Ricardo Cajas, president of the Colectivo de Organizaciones Indígenas de Guatemala, said the date did not represent an end of humanity but that the new cycle "supposes changes in human consciousness". Martín Sacalxot, of the office of the Procurador de los Derechos Humanos (Guatemala's Human Rights Ombudsman, PDH), said that the end of the calendar has nothing to do with the end of the world or the year 2012.[35] Prior associations[edit] The European association of the Maya with eschatology dates back to the time of Christopher Columbus, who was compiling a work called Libro de las profecias during the voyage in 1502 when he first heard about the "Maia" on Guanaja, an island off the north coast of Honduras.[36] Influenced by the writings of Bishop Pierre d'Ailly, Columbus believed that his discovery of "most distant" lands (and, by extension, the Maya themselves) was prophesied and would bring about the Apocalypse. End-times fears were widespread during the early years of the Spanish Conquest as the result of popular astrological predictions in Europe of a second Great Flood for the year 1524.[36] In the early 1900s, German scholar Ernst Förstemann interpreted the last page of the Dresden Codex as a representation of the end of the world in a cataclysmic flood. He made reference to the destruction of the world and an apocalypse, though he made no reference to the 13th b'ak'tun or 2012 and it was not clear that he was referring to a future event.[37] His ideas were repeated by archaeologist Sylvanus Morley,[38] who directly paraphrased Förstemann and added his own embellishments, writing, "Finally, on the last page of the manuscript, is depicted the Destruction of the World ... Here, indeed, is portrayed with a graphic touch the final all-engulfing cataclysm" in the form of a Great Flood. These comments were later repeated in Morley's book, The Ancient Maya, the first edition of which was published in 1946.[36] Mayan references to b'ak'tun 13[edit] It is not certain what significance the classic Maya gave to the 13th b'ak'tun.[39] Most classic Maya inscriptions are strictly historical and do not make any prophetic declarations.[39] Two items in the Mayan classical corpus, however, do mention the end of the 13th b'ak'tun: Tortuguero Monument 6 and La Corona Hieroglyphic Stairway 12. Tortuguero[edit] The Tortuguero site, which lies in southernmost Tabasco, Mexico, dates from the 7th century AD and consists of a series of inscriptions mostly in honor of the contemporary ruler Bahlam Ajaw. One inscription, known as Tortuguero Monument 6, is the only inscription known to refer to b'ak'tun 13 in any detail. It has been partially defaced; Sven Gronemeyer and Barbara MacLeod have given this translation: tzuhtzjo:m uy-u:xlaju:n pik chan ajaw u:x uni:w uhto:m il[?] ye'ni/ye:n bolon yokte' ta chak joyaj It will be completed the 13th b'ak'tun. It is 4 Ajaw 3 K'ank'in and it will happen a 'seeing'[?]. It is the display of B'olon-Yokte' in a great "investiture".[40] Vase illustration in which the god Bolon Yukte is seen in profile, kneeling with his head back and his mouth open. He wears an elaborate feather headdress. The Tortuguero monument connects the end of the 13th b'ak'tun with the appearance of B'olon Yokte' K'uh, shown here on the Vase of Seven Gods. Very little is known about the god B'olon Yokte'. According to an article by Mayanists Markus Eberl and Christian Prager in British Anthropological Reports, his name is composed of the elements "nine", 'OK-te' (the meaning of which is unknown), and "god". Confusion in classical period inscriptions suggests that the name was already ancient and unfamiliar to contemporary scribes.[41] He also appears in inscriptions from Palenque, Usumacinta, and La Mar as a god of war, conflict, and the underworld. In one stele he is portrayed with a rope tied around his neck, and in another with an incense bag, together signifying a sacrifice to end a cycle of years.[42] Based on observations of modern Mayan rituals, Gronemeyer and MacLeod claim that the stela refers to a celebration in which a person portraying Bolon Yokte' K'uh was wrapped in ceremonial garments and paraded around the site.[43][44] They note that the association of Bolon Yokte' K'uh with b'ak'tun 13 appears to be so important on this inscription that it supersedes more typical celebrations such as "erection of stelae, scattering of incense" and so forth. Furthermore, they assert that this event was indeed planned for 2012 and not the 7th century.[45] Mayanist scholar Stephen Houston contests this view by arguing that future dates on Mayan inscriptions were simply meant to draw parallels with contemporary events, and that the words on the stela describe a contemporary rather than a future scene.[46] La Corona[edit] In April–May 2012, a team of archaeologists unearthed a previously unknown inscription on a stairway at the La Corona site in Guatemala. The inscription, on what is known as Hieroglyphic Stairway 12, describes the establishment of a royal court in Calakmul in 635 AD, and compares the then-recent completion of 13 k'atuns with the future completion of the 13th b'ak'tun. It contains no speculation or prophecy as to what the scribes believed would happen at that time.[47] Dates beyond b'ak'tun 13[edit] Mayan inscriptions occasionally mention predicted future events or commemorations that would occur on dates far beyond the completion of the 13th b'ak'tun. Most of these are in the form of "distance dates"; Long Count dates together with an additional number, known as a Distance Number, which when added to them makes a future date. On the west panel at the Temple of Inscriptions in Palenque, a section of text projects forward to the 80th 52-year Calendar Round from the coronation of the ruler K'inich Janaab' Pakal. Pakal's accession occurred on 9.9.2.4.8, equivalent to 27 July 615 AD in the proleptic Gregorian calendar. The inscription begins with Pakal's birthdate of 9.8.9.13.0 (24 March, 603 AD Gregorian) and then adds the Distance Number 10.11.10.5.8 to it,[48] arriving at a date of 21 October 4772 AD, more than 4,000 years after Pakal's time.[31][48][49] Another example is Stela 1 at Coba which marks the date of creation as 13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.0.0.0.0, or nineteen units above the b'ak'tun. According to Linda Schele, these 13s represent "the starting point of a huge odometer of time", with each acting as a zero and resetting to 1 as the numbers increase.[32][Note c] Thus this inscription anticipates the current universe lasting at least 2021×13×360 days,[50] or roughly 2.687×1028 years; a time span equal to 2 quintillion times the age of the universe as determined by cosmologists. Others have suggested, however, that this date marks creation as having occurred after that time span.[50][51] In 2012, researchers announced the discovery of a series of Mayan astronomical tables in Xultún, Guatemala which plot the movements of the Moon and other astronomical bodies over the course of 17 b'ak'tuns.[34][52][53] New Age beliefs[edit] Many assertions about the year 2012 form part of Mayanism, a non-codified collection of New Age beliefs about ancient Maya wisdom and spirituality.[4][54][55][56][57][58] The term is distinct from "Mayanist", used to refer to an academic scholar of the Maya.[55][59] Archaeoastronomer Anthony Aveni says that while the idea of "balancing the cosmos" was prominent in ancient Maya literature, the 2012 phenomenon does not draw from those traditions. Instead, it is bound up with American concepts such as the New Age movement, millenarianism, and the belief in secret knowledge from distant times and places.[60] Established themes found in 2012 literature include "suspicion towards mainstream Western culture", the idea of spiritual evolution, and the possibility of leading the world into the New Age by individual example or by a group's joined consciousness. The general intent of this literature is not to warn of impending doom but "to foster counter-cultural sympathies and eventually socio-political and 'spiritual' activism".[2] Aveni, who has studied New Age and search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) communities, describes 2012 narratives as the product of a "disconnected" society: "Unable to find spiritual answers to life's big questions within ourselves, we turn outward to imagined entities that lie far off in space or time—entities that just might be in possession of superior knowledge".[61] Origins[edit] In 1975, the ending of b'ak'tun 13 became the subject of speculation by several New Age authors, who asserted it would correspond with a global "transformation of consciousness". In Mexico Mystique: The Coming Sixth Age of Consciousness, Frank Waters tied Coe's original date of 24 December 2011[Note e] to astrology and the prophecies of the Hopi,[62] while both José Argüelles (in The Transformative Vision)[63] and Terence McKenna (in The Invisible Landscape)[64][65] discussed the significance of the year 2012 without mentioning a specific day. In 1983, with the publication of Robert J. Sharer's revised table of date correlations in the 4th edition of Morley's The Ancient Maya,[Note e] each became convinced that 21 December 2012 had significant meaning. By 1987, the year in which he organized the Harmonic Convergence event, Arguelles was using the date 21 December 2012 in The Mayan Factor: Path Beyond Technology.[66][67] He claimed that on 13 August 3113 BC the Earth began a passage through a "galactic synchronization beam" that emanated from the center of our galaxy, that it would pass through this beam during a period of 5200 tuns (Maya cycles of 360 days each), and that this beam would result in "total synchronization" and "galactic entrainment" of individuals "plugged into the Earth's electromagnetic battery" by 13.0.0.0.0 (21 December 2012). He believed that the Maya aligned their calendar to correspond to this phenomenon.[68] Anthony Aveni has dismissed all of these ideas.[69] In 2006, author Daniel Pinchbeck popularized New Age concepts about this date in his book 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl, linking b'ak'tun 13 to beliefs in crop circles, alien abduction, and personal revelations based on the use of hallucinogenic drugs and mediumship.[70][71] Pinchbeck claims to discern a "growing realization that materialism and the rational, empirical worldview that comes with it has reached its expiration date ... [w]e're on the verge of transitioning to a dispensation of consciousness that's more intuitive, mystical and shamanic".[11] Galactic alignment[edit] There is no significant astronomical event tied to the Long Count's start date.[72] However, its supposed end date has been tied to astronomical phenomena by esoteric, fringe, and New Age literature that places great significance on astrology, especially astrological interpretations associated with the phenomenon of axial precession.[54][56] Chief among these ideas is the astrological concept of a "galactic alignment". Precession[edit] In the Solar System, the planets and the Sun lie roughly within the same flat plane, known as the plane of the ecliptic. From our perspective on Earth, the ecliptic is the path taken by the Sun across the sky over the course of the year. The twelve constellations that line the ecliptic are known as the zodiacal constellations and, annually, the Sun passes through all of them in turn. Additionally, over time, the Sun's annual cycle appears to recede very slowly backward by one degree every 72 years, or by one constellation approximately every 2,160 years. This backward movement, called "precession", is due to a slight wobble in the Earth's axis as it spins, and can be compared to the way a spinning top wobbles as it slows down.[73] Over the course of 25,800 years, a period often called a Great Year, the Sun's path completes a full, 360-degree backward rotation through the zodiac.[73] In Western astrological traditions, precession is measured from the March equinox, one of the two annual points at which the Sun is exactly halfway between its lowest and highest points in the sky. Presently, the Sun's March equinox position is in the constellation Pisces and is moving back into Aquarius. This signals the end of one astrological age (the Age of Pisces) and the beginning of another (the Age of Aquarius).[74] Similarly, the Sun's December solstice position (in the northern hemisphere, the lowest point on its annual path; in the southern hemisphere, the highest) is currently in the constellation of Sagittarius, one of two constellations in which the zodiac intersects with the Milky Way.[75] Every year, on the December solstice, the Sun and the Milky Way, from the surface of the Earth, appear to come into alignment, and every year, precession causes a slight shift in the Sun's position in the Milky Way. Given that the Milky Way is between 10° and 20° wide, it takes between 700 and 1,400 years for the Sun's December solstice position to precess through it.[76] It is currently about halfway through the Milky Way, crossing the galactic equator.[77] In 2012, the Sun's December solstice fell on 21 December.[78] Mysticism[edit] a photograph of the Milky Way, rotated 90 degrees The Milky Way near Cygnus showing the lane of the Dark Rift, which the Maya called the Xibalba be or "Black Road" Mystical speculations about the precession of the equinoxes and the Sun's proximity to the center of the Milky Way appeared in Hamlet's Mill (1969) by Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Deschend. These were quoted and expanded upon by Terence and Dennis McKenna in The Invisible Landscape (1975). The significance of a future "galactic alignment" was noted in 1991 by astrologer Raymond Mardyks, who asserted that the winter solstice would align with the galactic plane in 1998/1999. He wrote that this event "only occurs once each 26,000-year cycle and would be most definitely of utmost significance to the top flight ancient astrologers".[79] Astrologer Bruce Scofield notes, "The Milky Way crossing of the winter solstice is something that has been neglected by Western astrologers, with a few exceptions. Charles Jayne made a very early reference to it, and in the 1970s Rob Hand mentioned it in his talks on precession but didn't elaborate on it. Ray Mardyks later made a point of it, and after that John [Major] Jenkins, myself, and Daniel Giamario began to talk about it."[80] Adherents to the idea, following a theory first proposed by Munro Edmonson,[81] allege that the Maya based their calendar on observations of the Great Rift or Dark Rift, a band of dark dust clouds in the Milky Way, which, according to some scholars, the Maya called the Xibalba be or "Black Road".[82] John Major Jenkins claims that the Maya were aware of where the ecliptic intersected the Black Road and gave this position in the sky a special significance in their cosmology.[83] Jenkins said that precession would align the Sun precisely with the galactic equator at the 2012 winter solstice.[83] Jenkins claimed that the classical Maya anticipated this conjunction and celebrated it as the harbinger of a profound spiritual transition for mankind.[84] New Age proponents of the galactic alignment hypothesis argue that, just as astrology uses the positions of stars and planets to make claims of future events, the Maya plotted their calendars with the objective of preparing for significant world events.[85] Jenkins attributes the insights of ancient Maya shamans about the galactic center to their use of psilocybin mushrooms, psychoactive toads, and other psychedelics.[86] Jenkins also associates the Xibalba be with a "world tree", drawing on studies of contemporary (not ancient) Maya cosmology.[87] Criticism[edit] Astronomers such as David Morrison argue that the galactic equator is an entirely arbitrary line and can never be precisely drawn, because it is impossible to determine the Milky Way's exact boundaries, which vary depending on clarity of view. Jenkins claims he drew his conclusions about the location of the galactic equator from observations taken at above 11,000 feet (3,400 m), an altitude that gives a clearer image of the Milky Way than Maya had access to.[68] Furthermore, since the Sun is half a degree wide, its solstice position takes 36 years to precess its full width. Jenkins himself notes that even given his determined location for the line of the galactic equator, its most precise convergence with the center of the Sun already occurred in 1998, and so asserts that, rather than 2012, the galactic alignment instead focuses on a multi-year period centred on 1998.[88][89][90] There is no clear evidence that the classic Maya were aware of precession. Some Maya scholars, such as Barbara MacLeod,[44] Michael Grofe,[91] Eva Hunt, Gordon Brotherston, and Anthony Aveni,[92] have suggested that some Mayan holy dates were timed to precessional cycles, but scholarly opinion on the subject remains divided.[31] There is also little evidence, archaeological or historical, that the Maya placed any importance on solstices or equinoxes.[31][93] It is possible that only the earliest among Mesoamericans observed solstices,[94] but this is also a disputed issue among Mayanists.[31][93] There is also no evidence that the classic Maya attached any importance to the Milky Way; there is no glyph in their writing system to represent it, and no astronomical or chronological table tied to it.[95] Timewave zero and the I Ching[edit] Main article: Terence McKenna § Novelty theory and Timewave Zero a greyscale graph with multiple, jagged peaks and troughs and an overall descending pattern, set amidst complex virtual instrumentation A screenshot of the "Timewave Zero" software "Timewave zero" is a numerological formula that purports to calculate the ebb and flow of "novelty", defined as increase over time in the universe's interconnectedness, or organized complexity.[96] According to Terence McKenna, the universe has a teleological attractor at the end of time that increases interconnectedness, which would eventually reach a singularity of infinite complexity in 2012, at which point anything and everything imaginable would occur simultaneously. He conceived this idea over several years in the early to mid-1970s whilst using psilocybin mushrooms and DMT.[96][97] The scientific community considers novelty theory to be pseudoscience.[98][99] McKenna expressed "novelty" in a computer program which produces a waveform known as "timewave zero" or the "timewave". Based on McKenna's interpretation of the King Wen sequence of the I Ching, an ancient Chinese book on divination,[64] the graph purports to show great periods of novelty corresponding with major shifts in humanity's biological and sociocultural evolution. He believed that the events of any given time are resonantly related to the events of other times, and chose the atomic bombing of Hiroshima as the basis for calculating his end date of November 2012.[100] When he later discovered this date's proximity to the end of the 13th b'ak'tun of the Maya calendar, he revised his hypothesis so that the two dates matched.[2] The 1975 first edition of The Invisible Landscape refers to 2012 (but no specific day during the year) only twice. In the 1993 second edition, McKenna employed Sharer's date[Note e] of 21 December 2012 throughout.[2][97] Novelty theory has been criticized for "rejecting countless ideas presumed as factual by the scientific community", depending "solely on numerous controversial deductions that contradict empirical logic", and encompassing "no suitable indication of truth", with the conclusion that novelty theory is a pseudoscience.[101] Doomsday theories[edit] A white, glowing, cloudlike feature lies surrounded by bright blue stars in a brownish, golden nebula Sagittarius A*, taken by the Chandra X-Ray Observatory The idea that the year 2012 presaged a world cataclysm, described the end of the world, or of human civilization, on that date became a subject of popular media speculation as the date of 21 December 2012 approached. This idea was promulgated by many hoax pages on the Internet, particularly on YouTube.[102] The Discovery Channel was criticized for its "quasi-documentaries" about the subject that "sacrifice[d] accuracy for entertainment".[103] Other alignments[edit] Some people interpreted the galactic alignment apocalyptically, claiming that its occurrence would somehow create a combined gravitational effect between the Sun and the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy (known as Sagittarius A*), creating havoc on Earth.[104] Apart from the "galactic alignment" already having happened in 1998, the Sun's apparent path through the zodiac as seen from Earth does not take it near the true galactic center, but rather several degrees above it.[77] Even if this were not the case, Sagittarius A* is 30,000 light years from Earth; it would have to be more than 6 million times closer to cause any gravitational disruption to Earth's Solar System.[105][106] This reading of the alignment was included on the History Channel documentary, Decoding the Past. John Major Jenkins complained that a science fiction writer co-authored the documentary, and he went on to characterize it as "45 minutes of unabashed doomsday hype and the worst kind of inane sensationalism".[107] Some believers in a 2012 doomsday used the term "galactic alignment" to describe a different phenomenon proposed by some scientists to explain a pattern in mass extinctions supposedly observed in the fossil record.[108] According to this hypothesis, mass extinctions are not random, but recur every 26 million years. To account for this, it suggests that vertical oscillations made by the Sun on its 250-million-year orbit of the galactic center cause it to regularly pass through the galactic plane. When the Sun's orbit takes it outside the galactic plane which bisects the galactic disc, the influence of the galactic tide is weaker. However, when re-entering the galactic disc—as it does every 20–25 million years—it comes under the influence of the far stronger "disc tides", which, according to mathematical models, increase the flux of Oort cloud comets into the inner Solar System by a factor of 4, thus leading to a massive increase in the likelihood of a devastating comet impact.[109] However, this "alignment" takes place over tens of millions of years, and could never be timed to an exact date.[110] Evidence shows that the Sun passed through the plane bisecting the galactic disc only three million years ago and is now moving farther above it.[111] A third suggested alignment was some sort of planetary conjunction occurring on 21 December 2012; however, there was no conjunction on that date.[112] Multi-planet alignments did occur in both 2000 and 2010, each with no ill result for the Earth.[113] Jupiter is the largest planet in the Solar System; larger than all other planets combined. When Jupiter is near opposition, the difference in gravitational force that the Earth experiences is less than 1% of the force that the Earth feels daily from the Moon.[114] Geomagnetic reversal[edit] Another idea tied to 2012 involved a geomagnetic reversal (often incorrectly referred to as a pole shift by proponents), possibly triggered by a massive solar flare, that would release an energy equal to 100 billion atomic bombs.[115] This belief was supposedly supported by observations that the Earth's magnetic field is weakening,[116] which could precede a reversal of the north and south magnetic poles, and the arrival of the next solar maximum, which was expected sometime around 2012.[117] Most scientific estimates, however, say that geomagnetic reversals take between 1,000 and 10,000 years to complete,[118] and do not start on any particular date.[119] Furthermore, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicted that the solar maximum would peak in late 2013 or 2014, and that it would be fairly weak, with a below-average number of sunspots.[120] In any case, there is no scientific evidence linking a solar maximum to a geomagnetic reversal, which is driven by forces entirely within the Earth.[121] Instead, a solar maximum would be mostly notable for its effects on satellite and cellular phone communications.[122] David Morrison attributes the rise of the solar storm idea to physicist and science popularizer Michio Kaku, who claimed in an interview with Fox News that a solar peak in 2012 could be disastrous for orbiting satellites, and to NASA's headlining a 2006 webpage as "Solar Storm Warning", a term later repeated on several doomsday pages.[102] Planet X/Nibiru[edit] Main article: Nibiru cataclysm Some believers in doomsday in 2012 claimed that a planet called Planet X, or Nibiru, would collide with or pass by Earth. This idea, which appeared in various forms since 1995, initially predicted Doomsday in May 2003, but proponents abandoned that date after it passed without incident.[123] The idea originated from claims of channeling of alien beings and is widely ridiculed.[123][124] Astronomers calculated that such an object so close to Earth would be visible to anyone looking up at the night sky.[123] Other catastrophes[edit] The Pleiades star cluster The Pleiades, a star cluster with supposed influence sometimes tied to the 2012 event Author Graham Hancock, in his book Fingerprints of the Gods, interpreted Coe's remarks in Breaking the Maya Code[125] as evidence for the prophecy of a global cataclysm.[126] Filmmaker Roland Emmerich later credited the book with inspiring his 2009 disaster film 2012.[127] Other speculations regarding doomsday in 2012 included predictions by the Web Bot project, a computer program that purports to predict the future using Internet chatter. However, commentators have rejected the programmers' claims to have successfully predicted natural disasters, which web chatter could never predict, as opposed to human-caused disasters like stock market crashes.[128] Also, the 2012 date has been loosely tied to the long-running concept of the Photon Belt, which predicts a form of interaction between Earth and Alcyone, the largest star of the Pleiades cluster.[129] Critics have argued that photons cannot form belts, that the Pleiades, located more than 400 light years away, could have no effect on Earth, and that the Solar System, rather than getting closer to the Pleiades, is in fact moving farther away from them.[130] Some media outlets tied the fact that the red supergiant star Betelgeuse will undergo a supernova at some point in the future to the 2012 phenomenon.[131] However, while Betelgeuse is certainly in the final stages of its life, and will die as a supernova, there is no way to predict the timing of the event to within 100,000 years.[132] To be a threat to Earth, a supernova would need to be no further than 25 light years from the Solar System. Betelgeuse is roughly 600 light years away, and so its supernova will not affect Earth.[133] In December 2011, NASA's Francis Reddy issued a press release debunking the possibility of a supernova occurring in 2012.[134] Another claim involved alien invasion. In December 2010, an article, first published in examiner.com and later referenced in the English-language edition of Pravda[135] claimed, citing a Second Digitized Sky Survey photograph as evidence, that SETI had detected three large spacecraft due to arrive at Earth in 2012.[136] Astronomer and debunker Phil Plait noted that by using the small-angle formula, one could determine that if the object in the photo were as large as claimed, it would have had to be closer to Earth than the Moon, which would mean it would already have arrived.[136] In January 2011, Seth Shostak, chief astronomer of SETI, issued a press release debunking the claims.[135] Public reaction[edit] The phenomenon spread widely after coming to public notice, particularly on the Internet. Hundreds of thousands of websites were posted on the subject.[102] "Ask an Astrobiologist", a NASA public outreach website, received over 5,000 questions from the public on the subject from 2007,[129] some asking whether they should kill themselves, their children or their pets.[102] In May 2012, an Ipsos poll of 16,000 adults in 21 countries found that 8 percent had experienced fear or anxiety over the possibility of the world ending in December 2012, while an average of 10 percent agreed with the statement "the Mayan calendar, which some say 'ends' in 2012, marks the end of the world", with responses as high as 20 percent in China, 13 percent in Russia, Turkey, Japan and Korea, and 12 percent in the United States.[137] At least one suicide was directly linked to fear of a 2012 apocalypse,[138] with others anecdotally reported.[139] A panel of scientists questioned on the topic at a plenary session at the Astronomical Society of the Pacific contended that the Internet played a substantial role in allowing this doomsday date to gain more traction than previous similar panics.[139] Europe[edit] A small village in a green field stands before a low, blue mountain peak Pic de Bugarach, Camps-sur-l'Agly, France; a target of "esoterics" who believed that some great transition would occur in 2012 a small village of blue houses, next to a mountain Şirince, İzmir Province, Turkey, a village of around 560 inhabitants, has a positive energy according to the doomsday cultists, who say that it is close to an area where Roman Catholics believe the Virgin Mary ascended to heaven. Beginning in 2000, the small French village of Bugarach, population 189, began receiving visits from "esoterics"—mystic believers who had concluded that the local mountain, Pic de Bugarach, was the ideal location to weather the transformative events of 2012. In 2011, the local mayor, Jean-Pierre Delord, began voicing fears to the international press that the small town would be overwhelmed by an influx of thousands of visitors in 2012, even suggesting he might call in the army.[140][141] "We've seen a huge rise in visitors", Delord told The Independent in March 2012. "Already this year more than 20,000 people have climbed right to the top, and last year we had 10,000 hikers, which was a significant rise on the previous 12 months. They think Pic de Bugarach is 'un garage à ovnis' [a garage for UFOs]. The villagers are exasperated: the exaggerated importance of something which they see as completely removed from reality is bewildering. After 21 December, this will surely return to normal."[142] In December 2012, the French government placed 100 police and firefighters around both Bugarach and Pic de Bugarach, limiting access to potential visitors.[143] Ultimately, only about 1,000 visitors appeared at the height of the "event". Two raves were foiled, 12 people had to be turned away from the peak, and 5 people were arrested for carrying weapons.[144] Jean-Pierre Delord was criticised by members of the community for failing to take advantage of the media attention and promote the region.[145] The Turkish village of Şirince, near Ephesus, expected to receive over 60,000 visitors on 21 December 2012, as New Age mystics believed its "positive energy" would aid in weathering the catastrophe.[146] In the event, only a fraction of that number actually arrived, with a substantial component being police and journalists, and the expected windfall failed to materialise.[147] Similarly, the pyramid-like mountain of Rtanj, in the Serbian Carpathians, attracted much apocalyptic attention, as many believe an artificial pyramid structure is buried within it that would have emitted a powerful force shield on the day, protecting those within it. Hotels around the base received up to 500 bookings apiece for rooms.[148] In Russia, inmates of a women's prison apparently experienced "a collective mass psychosis" in the weeks leading up to the supposed doomsday, while residents of a factory town near Moscow reportedly emptied a supermarket of matches, candles, food and other supplies. The Minister of Emergency Situations declared in response that according to "methods of monitoring what is occurring on the planet Earth," there would be no apocalypse in December.[149] When asked when the world would end in a press conference, Russian President Vladimir Putin said, "In about 4.5 billion years."[150] In December 2012, Vatican astronomer Rev José Funes wrote in the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano that apocalyptic theories around 2012 were "not even worth discussing".[151] Asia[edit] In China, up to one thousand members of the Christian cult Almighty God were arrested, after claiming that the end of b'ak'tun 13 marked the end of the world, and that it was time to overthrow Communism.[152] Shoppers were reported to be hoarding supplies of candles in anticipation of coming darkness, while online retailer Taobao sold tickets to board Noah's Ark to customers.[153] Bookings for wedding ceremonies on 21 December 2012 were saturated in several cities.[153] On 14 December 2012, a man in Henan province attacked and wounded twenty-three children with a knife. Authorities suspected the man had been "influenced" by the prediction of the upcoming apocalypse.[154] Academics in China attributed the widespread belief in the 2012 doomsday in their country to a lack of scientific literacy and a mistrust of the government-controlled media.[154] On 6 December 2012, Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard delivered a hoax speech for the radio station triple J in which she declared "My dear remaining fellow Australians; the end of the world is coming. Whether the final blow comes from flesh-eating zombies, demonic hell-beasts or from the total triumph of K-Pop, if you know one thing about me it is this - I will always fight for you to the very end."[155] Radio announcer Neil Mitchell described the hoax as "immature" and pondered whether it demeaned her office.[156] Mexico and Central America[edit] Those Mesoamerican countries that once formed part of the Mayan civilization, Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, all organized festivities to commemorate the end of b'ak'tun 13 at the largest Mayan sites. On 21 December 2011, the Maya town of Tapachula in Chiapas activated an eight-foot digital clock counting down the days until the end of b'ak'tun 13.[157] On 21 December 2012, major events took place at Chichén Itzá in Mexico and Tikal in Guatemala.[8][9][10] In El Salvador, the largest event was held at Tazumal, and in Honduras, at Copán. In all of these archaeological sites, Mayan rituals were held at dawn led by shamans and Mayan priests.[158][159][160] The Mayan fire ceremony held at dawn in Tikal on 21 December 2012, took place in the main plaza in front of the Temple of the Great Jaguar. On the final day of b'ak'tun 13, residents of Yucatán and other regions formerly dominated by the ancient Maya celebrated what they saw as the dawn of a new, better era.[161] According with official figures from Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH), about 50,000 people visited Mexican archaeological sites on 21 December 2012, of which, 10,000 visited Chichén Itzá in Yucatán, 9,900 visited Tulum in Quintana Roo, and 8,000 visited Palenque in Chiapas. An additional 10,000 people visited Teotihuacan near Mexico City, which is not a Maya site.[162] The main ceremony in Chichén Itzá was held at dawn in the plaza of the Temple of Kukulkán, one of the principal symbols of Mayan culture. The archaeological site was opened two hours early to receive thousands of tourists, mostly foreigners who came to participate in events scheduled for the end of b'ak'tun 13.[8][162] The fire ceremony at Tikal was held at dawn in the main plaza of the Temple of the Great Jaguar. The ceremony was led by Guatemalan and foreign priests. The President of Guatemala, Otto Pérez, and of Costa Rica, Laura Chinchilla, participated in the event as special guests. During the ceremony the priests asked for unity, peace and the end of discrimination and racism, with the hope that the start of a new cycle will be a "new dawn". About 3,000 people participated in the event.[158][163] Most of these events were organized by agencies of the Mexican and Central American governments, and their respective tourism industries expected to attract thousands of visitors.[9][158] While Mexico is visited by about 22 million foreigners a year, the national tourism agency expected to attract 52 million visitors in 2012 just to the regions of Chiapas, Yucatán, Quintana Roo, Tabasco and Campeche.[157] A Mayan activist group in Guatemala, Oxlaljuj Ajpop, objected to the commercialization of the date. A spokesman from the Conference of Mayan Ministers commented that for them the Tikal ceremony is not a show for tourists but something spiritual and personal. The secretary of the Great Council of Ancestral Authorities commented that living Maya felt they were excluded from the activities in Tikal. This group held a parallel ceremony, and complained that the date has been used for commercial gain. In addition, before the main Tikal ceremony, about 200 Maya protested the celebration because they felt excluded. Most modern Maya were indifferent to the ceremonies, and the small number of people still practising ancient rites held solemn, more private ceremonies.[9][158] Osvaldo Gomez, a technical advisor to the Tikal site, complained that many visitors during the celebration had illegally climbed the stairs of the Temple of the Masks, causing "irreparable" damage.[164] South America[edit] In Brazil, Décio Colla, the Mayor of the City of São Francisco de Paula, Rio Grande do Sul, mobilized the population to prepare for the end of the world by stocking up on food and supplies.[165][166] In the city of Corguinho, in the Mato Grosso do Sul, a colony was built for survivors of the expected tragedy.[167] In Alto Paraíso de Goiás, the hotels also made specific reservations for prophetic dates.[168] On 11 October 2012, in the Brazilian city of Teresina, police interrupted what was believed to have been an attempted mass suicide by up to one hundred members of a cult headed by self-proclaimed prophet Luis Pereira dos Santos, who predicted the end of the world on the feast day of Our Lady of Aparecida. Santos was subsequently arrested.[169] In Bolivia, President Evo Morales participated in the quechuan and aymaran rituals, this year organized with government support, to commemorate the Southern solstice that took place in Isla del Sol, in the southern part of Lake Titicaca. During the event, Morales proclaimed this day as the beginning of "Pachakuti", meaning the world's wake up to a culture of life and the beginning of the end to wild capitalism, and he proposed to dismantle the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.[10][158][170] On 21 December 2012, the Uritorco in Córdoba, Argentina was closed, as a mass suicide had been proposed on Facebook to take place there.[171] North America[edit] In the United States, sales of private underground blast shelters increased noticeably after 2009, with many construction companies' advertisements calling attention to the 2012 apocalypse.[172] In Michigan, schools were closed for the Christmas holidays two days early, in part because rumours of the 2012 apocalypse were raising fears of repeat of a shooting similar to that at Sandy Hook.[173] American reality TV stars Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt revealed that they had spent most of their $10 million of accumulated earnings by 2010 because they believed the world would end in 2012.[174] Cultural influence[edit] See also: Works of fiction set in 2012 The 2012 phenomenon was discussed or referenced in several media. Several TV documentaries, as well as some contemporary fictional references to the year 2012, refer to 21 December as the day of a cataclysmic event. The UFO conspiracy TV series The X-Files cites 22 December 2012 as the date for an alien colonization of the Earth and mentions the Mayan calendar "stopping" on this date.[2] The History Channel aired a handful of special series on doomsday that include analysis of 2012 theories, such as Decoding the Past (2005–2007), 2012, End of Days (2006), Last Days on Earth (2006), Seven Signs of the Apocalypse (2007), and Nostradamus 2012 (2008).[175] The Discovery Channel also aired 2012 Apocalypse in 2009, suggesting that massive solar storms, magnetic pole reversal, earthquakes, supervolcanoes, and other drastic natural events may occur in 2012.[176] In 2012, the National Geographic Channel launched a show called Doomsday Preppers, a documentary series about survivalists preparing for various cataclysms, including the 2012 doomsday.[177] Hundreds of books were published on the topic.[102] The bestselling book of 2009,[178] Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol, featured a coded mock email number (2456282.5) that decodes to the Julian date for 21 December 2012.[179] In cinema the 2009 disaster film 2012 was inspired by the phenomenon, and advance promotion prior to its release included a stealth marketing campaign in which TV spots and websites from the fictional "Institute for Human Continuity" called on people to prepare for the end of the world. As these promotions did not mention the film itself, many viewers believed them to be real and contacted astronomers in panic.[180][181] Although the campaign was heavily criticized,[102] the film became one of the most successful of its year, grossing nearly $770 million worldwide.[182] An article in The Daily Telegraph attributed the widespread fear of the 2012 phenomenon in China to the film, which was a smash hit in that country because it depicts the Chinese building the "survival arks".[183] Lars von Trier's 2011 film Melancholia features a plot in which a planet emerges from behind the Sun onto a collision course with Earth.[184] Announcing his company's purchase of the film, the head of Magnolia Pictures said in a press release, "As the 2012 apocalypse is upon us, it is time to prepare for a cinematic last supper".[185] The phenomenon also inspired several rock and pop music hits. As early as 1997, "A Certain Shade of Green" by Incubus referred to the mystical belief that a shift in perception would arrive in 2012 ("Are you gonna stand around till 2012 A.D.? / What are you waiting for, a certain shade of green?"). More recent hits include "2012 (It Ain't the End)" (2010) performed by Jay Sean and "Till the World Ends" (2011) performed by Britney Spears. Towards mid-December 2012, an internet hoax related to South Korean singer PSY being one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse was widely circulated around social media platforms. The hoax purported that once PSY's "Gangnam Style" YouTube video amassed a billion views, the world would end.[186] Indian composer A. R. Rahman, known for Slumdog Millionaire, released his single "Infinite Love" to "instill faith and optimism in people" prior to the predicted doomsday.[187] A number of brands ran commercials tied to the 2012 apocalypse in the months and days leading to the date. In February 2012, American automotive company GM aired an advertisement during the annual Super Bowl football game in which a group of friends drive Chevrolet Silverados through the ruins of human civilization following the 2012 apocalypse, while on 17 December 2012, Jell-O ran an ad saying that offering Jell-O to the Mayan gods would appease them into sparing the world. John Verret, Professor of Advertising at Boston University, questioned the utility of tying large sums of money to such a unique and short-term event.[188] See also[edit] (Comment on this)
4:32a	When Will the World End? New Theory Emerges Jan. 22 By Lee Dye The Earth has probably already peaked as a haven for plants and animals and begun its long descent into oblivion, according to scientists at the University of Washington who have plotted out the future of our planet. These are not prophets of doom who have mounted the podium to warn us that we are killing ourselves through bad stewardship. They are scientists who say all good things must come to an end sometime, and at best we've got no more than half a billion years left. After that, the planet will return to its ancient past, inhabited only by bacteria and single-celled organisms, just as it was in its earliest years. But in time even those will vanish as the Earth is reduced to a lifeless chunk of rock, or swallowed entirely by an expanding Sun. And if you believe astrophysicist Donald Brownlee and paleontologist Peter Ward, there's not a whole lot we can do about it. They have laid out the grim facts in a new book, The Life and Death of Planet Earth, published by Times Books. Time Is Ticking Here are the essential nuggets in their findings: Like any star, the Sun won't last forever. There's a short window of about 1 billion years when it' When Will the World End? New Theory Emerges Jan. 22 By Lee Dye The Earth has probably already peaked as a haven for plants and animals and begun its long descent into oblivion, according to scientists at the University of Washington who have plotted out the future of our planet. These are not prophets of doom who have mounted the podium to warn us that we are killing ourselves through bad stewardship. They are scientists who say all good things must come to an end sometime, and at best we've got no more than half a billion years left. After that, the planet will return to its ancient past, inhabited only by bacteria and single-celled organisms, just as it was in its earliest years. But in time even those will vanish as the Earth is reduced to a lifeless chunk of rock, or swallowed entirely by an expanding Sun. And if you believe astrophysicist Donald Brownlee and paleontologist Peter Ward, there's not a whole lot we can do about it. They have laid out the grim facts in a new book, The Life and Death of Planet Earth, published by Times Books. Time Is Ticking Here are the essential nuggets in their findings: Like any star, the Sun won't last forever. There's a short window of about 1 billion years when it' When Will the World End? New Theory Emerges Jan. 22 By Lee Dye The Earth has probably already peaked as a haven for plants and animals and begun its long descent into oblivion, according to scientists at the University of Washington who have plotted out the future of our planet. These are not prophets of doom who have mounted the podium to warn us that we are killing ourselves through bad stewardship. They are scientists who say all good things must come to an end sometime, and at best we've got no more than half a billion years left. After that, the planet will return to its ancient past, inhabited only by bacteria and single-celled organisms, just as it was in its earliest years. But in time even those will vanish as the Earth is reduced to a lifeless chunk of rock, or swallowed entirely by an expanding Sun. And if you believe astrophysicist Donald Brownlee and paleontologist Peter Ward, there's not a whole lot we can do about it. They have laid out the grim facts in a new book, The Life and Death of Planet Earth, published by Times Books. Time Is Ticking Here are the essential nuggets in their findings: Like any star, the Sun won't last forever. There's a short window of about 1 billion years when it' (Comment on this)
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4:47a	Enthusiastic theorists have once again predicted that the world is going to end, this time in September 2015, sometime between the 22-28th. The cause of demolition this time? An enormous asteroid striking the Earth. Fortunately, some of the world's finest stargazers at NASA had the forethought to look for this killer asteroid. In fact, monitoring the paths of asteroids is quite high up on their agenda. If an asteroid threatens to collide with Earth, they're quite invested in stopping it. A NASA spokesman said: “NASA knows of no asteroid or comet currently on a collision course with Earth, so the probability of a major collision is quite small. In fact, as best as we can tell, no large object is likely to strike the Earth any time in the next several hundred years.” If you're still concerned that NASA is hiding the truth, then there's an easy way to find out whether there really is an asteroid heading towards Earth. Hop over to your nearest observatory for a peek at the skies or buy your own telescope. There are astronomers aplenty all over the world, professional and amateur alike. If a killer asteroid was heading towards Earth, there would be pictures all over the internet, press conferences and diversion initiatives at a minimum. Telescope sales would skyrocket, we could probably get countries to stop warring for a second in order to blast the asteroid out of the sky, and every country would be elbowing each other for the opportunity to gain global glory for saving the planet. If these reasons aren't enough to convince you, then this will: Were NASA to spot an asteroid and stop it from destroying Earth, their governmental budget would increase a hundred-fold. Armageddon sick of all these end of the world conspiracies. Enthusiastic theorists have once again predicted that the world is going to end, this time in September 2015, sometime between the 22-28th. The cause of demolition this time? An enormous asteroid striking the Earth. Fortunately, some of the world's finest stargazers at NASA had the forethought to look for this killer asteroid. In fact, monitoring the paths of asteroids is quite high up on their agenda. If an asteroid threatens to collide with Earth, they're quite invested in stopping it. A NASA spokesman said: “NASA knows of no asteroid or comet currently on a collision course with Earth, so the probability of a major collision is quite small. In fact, as best as we can tell, no large object is likely to strike the Earth any time in the next several hundred years.” If you're still concerned that NASA is hiding the truth, then there's an easy way to find out whether there really is an asteroid heading towards Earth. Hop over to your nearest observatory for a peek at the skies or buy your own telescope. There are astronomers aplenty all over the world, professional and amateur alike. If a killer asteroid was heading towards Earth, there would be pictures all over the internet, press conferences and diversion initiatives at a minimum. Telescope sales would skyrocket, we could probably get countries to stop warring for a second in order to blast the asteroid out of the sky, and every country would be elbowing each other for the opportunity to gain global glory for saving the planet. If these reasons aren't enough to convince you, then this will: Were NASA to spot an asteroid and stop it from destroying Earth, their governmental budget would increase a hundred-fold. Armageddon sick of all these end of the world conspiracies. (Comment on this)
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9:20a	A couple of months ago, the city of San Mateo, Calif., finished a small experiment. Planning to renovate the playground at one of its most popular community parks, it put a set of proposed designs online for a month and invited public comments. Some 130 people from around the city batted ideas back and forth, remarked on what they liked and didn’t like in the designs, and made suggestions. The playground needed shade, they agreed, and water fountains reachable by little kids. The city’s Parks and Recreation Department was thrilled. Before trying the online approach, it had convened a public meeting to solicit feedback. Eight people had bothered to show up. RELATED Was the Shutdown Bad Advertising for Working in Government? Ideas for Coping with Brain Drain in the Public Sector Student Interest in Public-Sector Careers Grows Millennials Face Hurdles Entering Public Sector Public Sector Has Some of Oldest U.S. Workers What stood out most in the online forum was who the participants turned out to be. Almost 60 percent of them were between the ages of 35 and 45. The average age was just shy of 42 -- noticeably younger than the demographic typically drawn by public hearings in San Mateo. “This was the target audience we’d been trying to get but were not getting” through conventional hearings, says Abby Veeser, a senior management analyst in the parks department. In other words, Generation X was checking in. And not just in San Mateo. In Phoenix, the city’s Planning and Development Department has logged thousands of responses to its online request for citizens to contribute their thoughts to a new master plan. The average age of respondents? Again, 42. Read the May issue of Governing magazine. Meanwhile, for nearly a year the city of Palo Alto, Calif., has been making its trove of data available online. It began with budget and financial data, expanded to salaries and benefits for all city employees, and is pushing on to specific program data. The idea is to make information that was always public -- but for which residents had to ask -- much more easily available. The initiative has been pushed by a cohort of younger managers who consider transparency vital to citizen engagement. “Nothing against the [baby] boomers,” says Assistant City Manager Pamela Antil, “but I think Gen Xers are way more comfortable with transparency and open data initiatives. We’re learning in government that people are interested in this information and that they’re willing to put it into a meaningful, useful format that benefits other people in the community.” Local governments are in the midst of a sea change when it comes to public participation and citizen engagement. Forced by the recession and recovery of the last five years to make dramatic cuts to their budgets, they’ve reached out to try to understand better what their residents value most. Presented with a new and ever-evolving array of technological tools -- Facebook, Twitter, text messaging and public-participation sites like MindMixer, Peak Democracy and Nextdoor -- they’re using them to publicize their own concerns and, increasingly, to draw out public sentiment. They’ve discovered the “civic technology” movement, with its groups like Code for America and events like next month’s National Day of Civic Hacking, which encourage citizens with tech skills to use government data to build apps useful to residents, neighborhoods and cities. What may be most interesting about all this, however, is that it’s occurring precisely as another momentous shift is taking place: As they go through their 30s and 40s, members of Generation X are moving into more active roles as citizens and into upper management ranks in local government. While it’s too much to say that this generational change is the force driving local governments’ more expansive view of public engagement, the blending of the two trends is no coincidence. It shouldn’t be surprising that this generation, which long ago shook off its disengaged-slacker stereotype to become known for its entrepreneurialism, DIY ethic, skepticism about bureaucracy and comfort with collaborating over far-flung networks, would now be pressing local government to think in new ways about the work of democracy. “A lot of people in their 30s and 40s now are focused on families and schools and parks and public amenities,” says Matt Bronson, San Mateo’s assistant city manager, who at 38 falls squarely into the demographic. “They want to play a role and not just a one-time listening role. As a generation, they want to have a chance to provide ongoing feedback, and when the time and opportunity are right, to help make collaborative decisions on the direction of their communities.” For the last two-and-a-half years, ever since the first baby boomers started to hit 65 -- which they will continue to do at a rate of 10,000 a day for another 16 years or so -- media attention on generational change has tended to focus either on them or on the socially tolerant, liberal-leaning politics of 20-somethings, or millennials. Generation X has been an afterthought. Which pretty much figures, given how its members have always viewed their inattentive treatment by society at large. Yet it is members of Generation X who are coming into full maturity and thus leaving their stamp on community life. Just who makes up Generation X is open to some debate. The typical starting point, based on the commonly agreed-upon end of the baby boom, is 1965. But using cultural markers, renowned generational thinkers Neil Howe and William Strauss put the start date at 1961; so does the Longitudinal Study of American Youth at the University of Michigan, which for more than two decades has been studying a cohort of Gen Xers. Ending points vary, too, from 1978 to 1982. There is little disagreement, however, on the forces that helped shape members of the generation. The short version, says Howe, is that the “first wave” of Xers spent their childhoods watching the country fall apart and their adolescence and early adulthood in the “Morning in America” glow of the Reagan years. “They have no memory of anything before everything started going crazy: long, hot summers and riots and peace movements and the family going to hell and the Me Decade,” he says. “At the same time, they were there at the ground zero of the deregulation, tax-cut, free-agent rebellion against the system, only for them it was in the economy as opposed to the culture. That economic liberation was defining for first-wave Xers.” So, too, were a variety of social trends. They watched their parents’ marriages struggle and sometimes fall apart -- the divorce rate hit its high in 1981. Their mothers joined the workforce in unprecedented numbers, which meant that many of them had no one waiting at home when they returned from school. “They were latchkey kids, and institutions were crumbling as they came of age,” says Rebecca Ryan, a generational consultant who often works with local governments. “They had to be fighters and learn to speak for themselves.” And they developed an overwhelming skepticism about large institutions. They sat in the back seat while their parents waited in long gas lines, watched the Challenger shuttle explode and followed the American hostage crisis in Iran. They hit the schools as public education began to fall apart, a fact confirmed for them, as Howe points out, by the 1983 “A Nation At Risk” report and its memorably scorching preamble: “If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.” In the private sector, the savings and loan crisis began in 1985, just as Gen Xers would have been turning to banks as young adults. The recession of the early 1990s, the dot-com bust, the stuttering engine of lower- and middle-class advancement, the Great Recession -- all have left their mark. A 2007 study by the Economic Mobility Project, spearheaded by the Pew Charitable Trusts, found that people in their 30s in 2004 had a median income on average 12 percent lower than their fathers’ three decades before. “This suggests the up escalator that has historically ensured that each generation would do better than the last may not be working very well,” the report commented. The Census Bureau, measuring the effects of the recession on householders, found that the largest decrease in median net worth between 2005 and 2010 belonged to those 35 to 44. Their net worth dropped by 59 percent, compared to 37 percent for those under 35 and 13 percent for those 65 and older. So it’s probably no surprise that there is a widespread sense within Generation X that the government structures that worked for earlier generations do not work for them. As with any generational description, it is easy to oversimplify. But it’s notable that some of the most nationally prominent members of the generation -- U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, who is 43, and Govs. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, 41, Scott Walker of Wisconsin, 45, Nikki Haley of South Carolina, 41, and, if you use Howe’s definition of who’s in Gen X, 50-year-old Chris Christie of New Jersey -- are Republicans who have built their careers on pledges to rewrite how government works. “There is a Reaganite bent to this generation, the idea that government and its rules are often a problem,” Howe says. In truth, Xers as a whole are divided politically. Exit polls showed those in their 30s going decidedly for President Obama in the 2012 elections, while those born before 1973 leaned toward Republican challenger Mitt Romney. A 2011 Pew Center study found that about 47 percent of Gen Xers favored smaller government, while 45 percent preferred a bigger government. Meanwhile, a study by Florida State University sociologist Elwood Carlson for the Population Reference Bureau found a healthy plurality of Gen Xers -- 43 percent -- identifying as independents, more than any generation before them. Want more management news? Click here. The streak of self-reliance that marks many Xers has been amplified by a key belief that government won’t always be there to help. “One thing that was really hammered into our heads, going back to the late ’80s and on into today, is that the celebrated, major government programs like Social Security and Medicare would not be around for us,” says Pete Peterson, who runs the Davenport Institute for Public Engagement and Civic Leadership at Pepperdine University. “So there’s a feeling that you’d better get this done on your own, that you’re going to have to take care of this yourself.” That go-it-alone attitude may help explain why Xers have for so long been characterized as disengaged from and cynical about public life. But that is ending, Peterson argues, as they build families and settle into neighborhoods. “If you’ve never believed that government was that important,” he says, “when you have kids is the time you reconnect -- and as you sink in roots and pay taxes and care about things that happen on a more local basis, you become more civically aware.” But the same forces that have pushed Generation X toward self-reliance and questioning the institutions around them, he says, will also produce a younger citizenry filled with “people who believe, ‘I don’t have to put up with this bureaucracy. There’s got to be a better way to do this.’” In particular, localities have come to understand that if they hope to reflect the concerns and priorities of the public they claim to represent, they have to rethink their entire approach to public participation, says Karen Thoreson, president of the Alliance for Innovation, a joint project of the International City/County Management Association and Arizona State University. “Folks have finally admitted out loud that the ways local governments have traditionally engaged the public don’t work, are broken and are unpleasant for everybody.” Or as Anne Ambrose, the 43-year-old director of public safety and community relations for Palmdale, Calif., puts it, “The expectation that public life occurs in front of the council dais is a dying concept.” To get a sense of what might replace it, it’s worth remembering that the hyperconnected, technologically adept, just-do-it world that moves at lightning speed to meet consumers’ needs took shape as Generation Xers were growing up. It has molded their expectations not just of the private sector, but of government, both in their roles as citizens and among those who’ve become government officials. In a society in which you can amass Twitter followers and run your own blog and opine on Facebook and become a YouTube sensation overnight, it stands to reason that Gen Xers don’t have much patience for showing up to a public meeting on a Thursday night where they might get two minutes during a perfunctory “public comments” period -- and that Gen X city officials would be sympathetic. But as the online experience of cities like San Mateo and Phoenix has shown, they’re ready to participate if they’re offered a meaningful way to do so. “It’s part of how Generation X is wired,” Bronson says. “We’re focused on practicing collaborative decision-making.” So the frontiers of public participation are expanding as Gen Xers move into management roles in government. “There have been some real breakthroughs by managers of all ages, including boomers who said, ‘Let’s try something different,’” says Thoreson. “But the whole electronic side of it, and being able to engage the public through forums or crowdsourcing or whatever, has been led inside local government by 30- and 40-year-olds, been picked up by citizens in that age group and now is being picked up by citizens of all age groups.” There are about as many different iterations as there are communities interested in exploring new forms of participation. Nadia Rubaii, an associate professor of public administration at Binghamton University in New York, believes that localities are feeling their way through the transition, as younger boomers and older Gen Xers within government find a way to bridge the old and new worlds. “There’s an affinity for Generation X, but also an appreciation for how things get done through structure and bureaucracy,” she says. “So what governments are doing and people in this ‘bridge’ stage are helping facilitate is adding layers to civic engagement, but not necessarily scrapping entirely the older ways of participation, as later members of Gen X might prefer.” For instance, in Edina, Minn., 49-year-old city manager Scott Neal has for the last decade been writing a blog about his experiences and about the issues the Minneapolis suburb faces. He makes sure his department heads all do the same. “In my own small way I’m trying to build some trust and empathy for government again,” he says. The city still relies mostly on traditional public meetings and hearings, but the blog gives citizens another point of entry. “I’ve had a hundred instances over the years,” he says, “where people have approached me out of nowhere and said, ‘Hey, I read what you wrote about manhole covers and I’d never thought about that.’ It allows people an oblique way to approach someone they might not ordinarily approach.” In Phoenix, the MindMixer site on the general development plan took shape after the city’s 43-year-old mayor, Greg Stanton, wondered what it would take to get residents to participate in a calm citywide conversation about its future, rather than proposing to put a freeway down the middle of a neighborhood, as he put it, just to get them to turn out. For all its success, though, “it’s just one piece of the puzzle as far as outreach,” says Joshua Bednarek, a city planner who helped create it. “For some people, the site just isn’t the best way to engage them -- so we might be better off having a cup of coffee at a senior center to get feedback.” Meanwhile, Philadelphia planners have been using a program called Textizen to elicit public comment. Designed with the help of Code for America volunteers, the department uses advertisements on bus shelters and inside public transit to pose questions on which it wants feedback, like how to improve transit, say, or how people use recreation centers, or whether they shop in their own neighborhoods or go elsewhere. Residents then text the department their responses. “We felt that in a city like Philly, where there is wide usage of cellphones but more inconsistent access to the Internet, text messaging would be more equitable and universally understood,” says Clint Randall, the 29-year-old city planner who helped develop the project. For all the growing interest in finding new ways to engage citizens, there’s still a long way to go. It probably won’t truly take off until there’s a generational change in the top ranks of cities around the country -- which may be a while. Not only are boomers delaying retirement, but their numbers remain overwhelming. In 1971, points out Rob Carty, the International City/County Management Association’s director of career services and next generation initiatives, 71 percent of city managers were 40 or younger. By 2009, 87 percent were older than 40. There’s also the question of what local governments will do with what they learn from their citizens. “This could go really well if, say, someone shows up with a new app and government says, ‘Wow! Thank you for helping!’” says generational consultant Rebecca Ryan. “But it could go really badly if government pats them on the head and says, ‘That’s very nice, but we know better.’” To avoid that, local governments have to develop ways of managing citizen input and incorporating it into their own internal processes, says San Mateo’s Bronson. “We’re just feeling our way now.” Finally, as online engagement takes off, Binghamton University’s Rubaii argues, communities will face a technical challenge. “Given the potential to generate so much more rapid-fire participation,” she says, “they will need to have computer-based ways of sorting through it. Someone will have to come up with how to analyze and interpret all the various [participatory] feeds.” Millennials, are you listening? (Comment on this)
9:23a	(Comment on this)
9:41a	Earlier this week, a colonist candidate for the one-way mission to Mars broke his silence and spoke out against the Mars One project, calling the selection process dangerously flawed. After filling out an application (mostly out of curiosity), former NASA researcher Joseph Roche, now of Trinity College, became one of 100 finalists to live in permanent settlement on Mars. In his interview with Elmo Keep for Medium, Roche expressed many concerns, ranging from inaccurate media coverage (there were only 2,761 applicants, not 200,000) to Mars One’s psychological or psychometric testing (or lack thereof) to how leading contenders earned their spot (he says they paid for it). “When you join the ‘Mars One Community,’ which happens automatically if you applied as a candidate, they start giving you points,” Roche explains. “You get points for getting through each round of the selection process (but just an arbitrary number of points, not anything to do with ranking), and then the only way to get more points is to buy merchandise from Mars One or to donate money to them.” And if media outlets offer payment for an interview, the organization would like to see 75 percent of the profit. As a result the most high-profile hopefuls, he says, are those who brought about the most money. So far, he’s completed a questionnaire, uploaded a video, got a medical exam, took a quick quiz over Skype, and… not too much else, it seems. Despite making the final 100, Roche has never met anyone from Mars One in person. A planned multiday, regional interview seems to have been cancelled. There are other bad signs for Mars One. The organization’s contract with production company Endemol is no longer in place; Mars One was hoping to generate $6 billion from a reality show. And a former adviser to the project, theoretical physicist Gerard Hooft, said a realistic launch date isn’t 10 years from now -- it’s 100 years. Now, Mars One CEO Bas Lansdorp has responded in a video [transcript], where he says a lot of the bad press is untrue. “There are a lot of current round three candidates that did not make any donations to Mars One and there are also lot of people that did not make it to the third round that contributed a lot to Mars One,” he says. “The two things are not related at all and to say that they are is simply a lie.” Lansdorp maintains that there were indeed 200,000 applications, and that criticism by the organization’s advisers is valued because it helps improve their mission. Their next step, he says, is to find out which of the candidates “have what it takes” through more thorough selection processes, team and individual challenges, and longer interviews. They’re also in talks with another production company. And as far as the delays are concerned, he says, “is it really a failure if we land our first crew two, four, six, or even eight years late?” (Comment on this)
9:43a	meklē mani šodien pie jūras kura šobrīd krāc un šalc meklē mani šodien pie jūras kura manu dvēseli sauc kad dvēseli nelāgas domas jauc mani kājas ness pie jūras jo jūras spēks tad smaidīt sauc varu bēdas izkliegt pie jūras cik pelēks man šodien drūmais vaigs tik pat pelēka šobrīd ir jūra sejā triecas jūras vējiņš svaigs visas dusmas izkliedē jūra rūgtās asaras uzsūcas liedagā baltā kaijas aiznes kliedzienus jūrā cenšas dvēseli mierināt jūra saltā viļņi bēdas aizskalo jūrā (Comment on this)
9:45a	Renatus Es sveicinu tevi, Tu siltais spožums, Tu baltā dienas gaisma! Es sveicinu tevi, ak saule, saule! Ne mākoņi tevi Man skaudīgi aizsedza, Ne rudens slapjās miglās Dzisa tavs mirdzums,- Tā bija nāve, Kas savu melnzilo segu Starp tevi un mani Vilkuse tika, Tā bija nāves vara, Kas manu muti Saistīja stingumā mēmā. Nu dzīvoju atkal! Un pukstošu sirdi! Lūkojos nākotnes Rožainās tālēs. Cerība, cerība, Kā tu man krūtis Dari tik vieglas, Kā tu man kājas Vilini staigāt Pa gaišiem oļu ceļiem, Kas, apšu birzēm Un ozolu milžiem Iedami garām, Noved pie tīkami Uzkoptām sētām. Kā es tad atkal Elpošu kāri Ziedošu rudzu Saldnējo smaržu, Kā es tad spirgšu Pļavu rītrasas Vēsumā skaidrā. Spēki man ronas, Zudušie spēki! Pa visām dzīslām Samanu briestam Straujo dzīvību, Un līdz ar viņu Aug mūžīgā griba uz dzīvi. Dieva pasaule, Cik skaista tu esi! Raibā dzīve, Cik tu man mīļa! Kā tava liesma Kvēlo iekš manis, Kā viņas versme Tiecas augšup Uz neapzināmiem augstumiem! Gluži aizgrābta Ir mana dvēsele, Līdz malai pildīta Svētlaimības Kā kristāla trauks Ar mirdzošu dzeltanu vīnu. Skaistā dzīve, Es sajūtu tevi Divkārt iekš sevis Un iz šī pilnuma pārmēra Paceļu gavilēs roku Un zvēru: Šķīstā uguns, Kas deg bez dūmiem Spulgi un karsti, Kā tā tur augšā, Būs manas cenšanās Vienīgais paraugs! Es sveicinu tevi, Tu baltā dienas gaisma, Es piegriežu tev savu vaigu, Tumsības mācēja, Svētības nesēja saule! (Comment on this)
9:45a	Pērkons Smagi, tumši padebeši Saules zeltam priekšā klājas. Lietus piles mirgā reši, Putnu dzīru troksnis stājas. Klusums...Pēkšņi milzu roka Padebešus pušu dala, Uguns jostu viņa loka, Acis nesaredz tai gala. Pērkons dārd, tam atbalss rodas. Tūkstoškārtām viņa graujas. Bērniņš mātei klēpī dodas, Sabijies pie krūts tai kļaujas. Manu sirdi jūsmas pilda, Redzot, kā pa dabas ēku Iet, kas mūžam tīk un cilda: Daiļums savienots ar spēku. (Comment on this)
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10:13a	'and the walls came crashing down..........'   A knock at the door, who can it be?   Probably Sarah coming for tea. S he usually calls on her way back from work to share some time with me.   A look in the mirror, I 'tut' at my face: Why do people always call when there's junk around the place?  I open the door - a man is standing there.  I wish I'd worn some make up I wish I'd done my hair.  It's then I spot the uniform: the buttons made of brass; the stripes that grace the khaki sleeves; the boots that crunch amongst the leaves.  I question with my eyes? It comes as no surprise to hear him ask can he come in, and would I like to sit?'   He has some rather grievous news - - I dread to hear it. I know what he is going to say.   It's all a dream. Please go away.   I'm not in to truth today I scream inside my head......   I know what he just said to me, but I didn't hear a word.   His lips spoke out in silence, and me, I never heard.   He's 'so sorry'. He gets up to go and heads towards the door.   I try to rise to follow him but my legs will move no more; for they have turned to jelly and my head is going to burst.   It's funny, when you're a soldier's wife, you always fear the worst,   But it's only when you hear the knock, the knock upon the door, and see the face you've never seen: the shining boots, the uniform; the mouth that speaks the silent words the apologies and platitudes; 'killed in action in the war"   The widow thoughts ring clear. (Comment on this)
10:22a	You’ll wanna forget, but I’ll sell your kisses for a bag and a rig. You’ll wanna forget, but I’ll sell your kisses for a bag and a rig. You’ll wanna forget, but I’ll sell your kisses for a bag and a rig. You’ll wanna forget, but I’ll sell your kisses for a bag and a rig. You’ll wanna forget, but I’ll sell your kisses for a bag and a rig. You’ll wanna forget, but I’ll sell your kisses for a bag and a rig. You’ll wanna forget, but I’ll sell your kisses for a bag and a rig. You’ll wanna forget, but I’ll sell your kisses for a bag and a rig. You’ll wanna forget, but I’ll sell your kisses for a bag and a rig. You’ll wanna forget, but I’ll sell your kisses for a bag and a rig. You’ll wanna forget, but I’ll sell your kisses for a bag and a rig. You’ll wanna forget, but I’ll sell your kisses for a bag and a rig. You’ll wanna forget, but I’ll sell your kisses for a bag and a rig. You’ll wanna forget, but I’ll sell your kisses for a bag and a rig. You’ll wanna forget, but I’ll sell your kisses for a bag and a rig. You’ll wanna forget, but I’ll sell your kisses for a bag and a rig. You’ll wanna forget, but I’ll sell your kisses for a bag and a rig. You’ll wanna forget, but I’ll sell your kisses for a bag and a rig. You’ll wanna forget, but I’ll sell your kisses for a bag and a rig. You’ll wanna forget, but I’ll sell your kisses for a bag and a rig. You’ll wanna forget, but I’ll sell your kisses for a bag and a rig. You’ll wanna forget, but I’ll sell your kisses for a bag and a rig. You’ll wanna forget, but I’ll sell your kisses for a bag and a rig. You’ll wanna forget, but I’ll sell your kisses for a bag and a rig. You’ll wanna forget, but I’ll sell your kisses for a bag and a rig. You’ll wanna forget, but I’ll sell your kisses for a bag and a rig. You’ll wanna forget, but I’ll sell your kisses for a bag and a rig. You’ll wanna forget, but I’ll sell your kisses for a bag and a rig. You’ll wanna forget, but I’ll sell your kisses for a bag and a rig. You’ll wanna forget, but I’ll sell your kisses for a bag and a rig. You’ll wanna forget, but I’ll sell your kisses for a bag and a rig. You’ll wanna forget, but I’ll sell your kisses for a bag and a rig. You’ll wanna forget, but I’ll sell your kisses for a bag and a rig. You’ll wanna forget, but I’ll sell your kisses for a bag and a rig. You’ll wanna forget, but I’ll sell your kisses for a bag and a rig. You’ll wanna forget, but I’ll sell your kisses for a bag and a rig. You’ll wanna forget, but I’ll sell your kisses for a bag and a rig. You’ll wanna forget, but I’ll sell your kisses for a bag and a rig. You’ll wanna forget, but I’ll sell your kisses for a bag and a rig. You’ll wanna forget, but I’ll sell your kisses for a bag and a rig. You’ll wanna forget, but I’ll sell your kisses for a bag and a rig. You’ll wanna forget, but I’ll sell your kisses for a bag and a rig. You’ll wanna forget, but I’ll sell your kisses for a bag and a rig. (Comment on this)
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3:54p	How a supernova obtains its shape Researchers of the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Garching managed for the first time to reproduce the asymmetries and fast-moving iron clumps of observed supernovae by complex computer simulations in all three dimensions. To this end they successfully followed the outburst in their models consistently from milliseconds after the onset of the blast to the demise of the star several hours later. (Astrophysical Journal, 10 May 2010) Fig. 1: Three-dimensional explosion simulation about 0.5 seconds after core bounce. The bluish, nearly transparent surface is the shock front with an average radius of 1900 km. Copyright: Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics Fig. 2: These snap-shots show the outward mixing of certain elements in the supernova explosion from two different viewing directions, 350 seconds after core bounce in the upper two panels and after 9000 seconds in the lower two panels, when the shock has broken out of the stellar surface. The surfaces denote the radially outermost locations of carbon (green), oxygen (red), and nickel (blue) with a constant mass fraction. Copyright: Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics Massive stars end their lives in gigantic explosions, so called supernovae, and can become — for a short time — brighter than a whole galaxy, which is made up of billions of stars. Although supernovae have been studied theoretically by computer models for several decades, the physical processes happening during these blasts are so complex that astrophysicists until now can simulate only parts of the process and so far only in one or two dimensions. Researches at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Garching have now carried out the first fully three-dimensional computer simulations of a core collapse supernova over a timescale of hours after the initiation of the blast. They thus could answer the question how initial asymmetries, which emerge deep in the dense core during the very early stages of the explosion, fold themselves into inhomogeneities observable during the supernova blast. While the great energy of the outburst makes these stellar explosions visible far out into the Universe, they are relatively rare. In a galaxy of the size of our Milky Way, on average only one supernova will occur in 50 years. About twenty years ago, a supernova could be seen even with the naked eye: SN 1987A in the Tarantula Nebula in the Large Magellanic Cloud, our neighbouring galaxy. This relative closeness — ”only“ about 170 000 light years away — allowed many detailed observations in different wavelength bands over weeks and even months. SN 1987A turned out to be a core-collapse supernova, a so-called Type II event. It occurs when a massive star, which is at least nine times heavier than the sun, has burned almost all its fuel. The fusion engine in the centre of the star begins to stutter, triggering an internal collapse and thus a violent explosion of the entire star. In the case of SN 1987A the star had about 20 solar masses at its birth. SN 1987A is probably the best studied supernova and it is still a great challenge to develop and refine models of what was happening inside the dying star to produce its emission of radiation. One of the astonishing and unexpected discoveries in SN 1987A and many subsequent supernovae was the fact that nickel and iron — heavy elements that are formed near the centre of the explosion — are mixed outward in big clumps into the hydrogen shell of the disrupted star. Nickel bullets were observed to propagate at velocities of thousands of kilometres per second, much faster than the surrounding hydrogen and much faster than predicted by simple hydrodynamic calculations in one dimension (1D), i.e., only studying the radial profile from the centre outwards. In fact, it turned out that the brightness evolution (the so-called light curve) of SN 1987A and of similar core-collapse supernovae can only be understood if large amounts of heavy core material (in particular radioactive nickel) are mixed outwards into the stellar envelope, and light elements (hydrogen and helium from the envelope) are carried inwards to the core. The details of supernova explosions are very difficult to simulate, not only because of the complexity of the physical processes involved but also because of the duration and range of scales — from hundreds of metres near the centre to tens of millions of kilometres near the stellar surface — that need to be resolved in ultimately three- dimensional (3D) computer models. Previously conducted simulations in two dimensions (2D, i.e., with the assumption of axial symmetry) indeed showed that the spherical shell structure of the progenitor star is destroyed during the supernova blast and large-scale mixing takes place. But the real world is three-dimensional and not all observational aspects can be reproduced by 2D models. The new computer models of the team at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics now simulate for the first time the complete burst in all three dimensions, from the first milliseconds after the explosion is triggered in the core to a time three hours later, when the shock breaks out of the progenitor star. ”We found substantial deviations in our 3D models compared to previous work in 2D,“ says Nicolay Hammer, the lead author of the paper, ”especially the growth of instabilities and the propagation of clumps differ. These are not just minor variations; this effect determines the long-time evolution and ultimately the extent of mixing and observable appearance of core- collapse supernovae.“ In the 3D-simulations, metal-rich clumps have much higher velocities than in the 2D case. These ”bullets“ expand much more rapidly, overtaking material from the outer layers. ”With a simple analytic model we could demonstrate that the different geometry of the bullets, toroidal versus quasi-spherical, can explain the differences observed in our simulations,“ explains co-author Thomas Janka. ”While we think that the differences between the 2D- and 3D-models that we found are probably generic, many features will depend strongly on the structure of the progenitor star, the overall energy and the initial asymmetry of the blast.“ ”We hope that our models, in comparison to observations, will help us to understand how stellar explosions start and what causes them“, adds Ewald Müller, the third author of the paper. Investigating a wider variety of progenitor stars and initial conditions will therefore be the focus of future simulation work. In particular, a detailed model that reproduces all observational features of SN 1987A still remains a challenge. (Comment on this)
3:54p	How a supernova obtains its shape Researchers of the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Garching managed for the first time to reproduce the asymmetries and fast-moving iron clumps of observed supernovae by complex computer simulations in all three dimensions. To this end they successfully followed the outburst in their models consistently from milliseconds after the onset of the blast to the demise of the star several hours later. (Astrophysical Journal, 10 May 2010) Fig. 1: Three-dimensional explosion simulation about 0.5 seconds after core bounce. The bluish, nearly transparent surface is the shock front with an average radius of 1900 km. Copyright: Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics Fig. 2: These snap-shots show the outward mixing of certain elements in the supernova explosion from two different viewing directions, 350 seconds after core bounce in the upper two panels and after 9000 seconds in the lower two panels, when the shock has broken out of the stellar surface. The surfaces denote the radially outermost locations of carbon (green), oxygen (red), and nickel (blue) with a constant mass fraction. Copyright: Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics Fig. 3: The Cassiopeia A nebula is the gaseous remnant of a supernova explosion whose light reached the Earth around the year 1680. The asymmetries and filamentary structure of this expanding cloud of stellar debris are a consequence of the clumping and mixing processes that also played a role in Supernova 1987A and that were simulated for the first time in all three dimensions by the team at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics. Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO; Optical: NASA/STScI; Infrared: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Steward/O.Krause et al. Massive stars end their lives in gigantic explosions, so called supernovae, and can become — for a short time — brighter than a whole galaxy, which is made up of billions of stars. Although supernovae have been studied theoretically by computer models for several decades, the physical processes happening during these blasts are so complex that astrophysicists until now can simulate only parts of the process and so far only in one or two dimensions. Researches at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Garching have now carried out the first fully three-dimensional computer simulations of a core collapse supernova over a timescale of hours after the initiation of the blast. They thus could answer the question how initial asymmetries, which emerge deep in the dense core during the very early stages of the explosion, fold themselves into inhomogeneities observable during the supernova blast. While the great energy of the outburst makes these stellar explosions visible far out into the Universe, they are relatively rare. In a galaxy of the size of our Milky Way, on average only one supernova will occur in 50 years. About twenty years ago, a supernova could be seen even with the naked eye: SN 1987A in the Tarantula Nebula in the Large Magellanic Cloud, our neighbouring galaxy. This relative closeness — ”only“ about 170 000 light years away — allowed many detailed observations in different wavelength bands over weeks and even months. SN 1987A turned out to be a core-collapse supernova, a so-called Type II event. It occurs when a massive star, which is at least nine times heavier than the sun, has burned almost all its fuel. The fusion engine in the centre of the star begins to stutter, triggering an internal collapse and thus a violent explosion of the entire star. In the case of SN 1987A the star had about 20 solar masses at its birth. SN 1987A is probably the best studied supernova and it is still a great challenge to develop and refine models of what was happening inside the dying star to produce its emission of radiation. One of the astonishing and unexpected discoveries in SN 1987A and many subsequent supernovae was the fact that nickel and iron — heavy elements that are formed near the centre of the explosion — are mixed outward in big clumps into the hydrogen shell of the disrupted star. Nickel bullets were observed to propagate at velocities of thousands of kilometres per second, much faster than the surrounding hydrogen and much faster than predicted by simple hydrodynamic calculations in one dimension (1D), i.e., only studying the radial profile from the centre outwards. In fact, it turned out that the brightness evolution (the so-called light curve) of SN 1987A and of similar core-collapse supernovae can only be understood if large amounts of heavy core material (in particular radioactive nickel) are mixed outwards into the stellar envelope, and light elements (hydrogen and helium from the envelope) are carried inwards to the core. The details of supernova explosions are very difficult to simulate, not only because of the complexity of the physical processes involved but also because of the duration and range of scales — from hundreds of metres near the centre to tens of millions of kilometres near the stellar surface — that need to be resolved in ultimately three- dimensional (3D) computer models. Previously conducted simulations in two dimensions (2D, i.e., with the assumption of axial symmetry) indeed showed that the spherical shell structure of the progenitor star is destroyed during the supernova blast and large-scale mixing takes place. But the real world is three-dimensional and not all observational aspects can be reproduced by 2D models. The new computer models of the team at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics now simulate for the first time the complete burst in all three dimensions, from the first milliseconds after the explosion is triggered in the core to a time three hours later, when the shock breaks out of the progenitor star. ”We found substantial deviations in our 3D models compared to previous work in 2D,“ says Nicolay Hammer, the lead author of the paper, ”especially the growth of instabilities and the propagation of clumps differ. These are not just minor variations; this effect determines the long-time evolution and ultimately the extent of mixing and observable appearance of core- collapse supernovae.“ In the 3D-simulations, metal-rich clumps have much higher velocities than in the 2D case. These ”bullets“ expand much more rapidly, overtaking material from the outer layers. ”With a simple analytic model we could demonstrate that the different geometry of the bullets, toroidal versus quasi-spherical, can explain the differences observed in our simulations,“ explains co-author Thomas Janka. ”While we think that the differences between the 2D- and 3D-models that we found are probably generic, many features will depend strongly on the structure of the progenitor star, the overall energy and the initial asymmetry of the blast.“ ”We hope that our models, in comparison to observations, will help us to understand how stellar explosions start and what causes them“, adds Ewald Müller, the third author of the paper. Investigating a wider variety of progenitor stars and initial conditions will therefore be the focus of future simulation work. In particular, a detailed model that reproduces all observational features of SN 1987A still remains a challenge. (Comment on this)
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