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Apocalypse Now

Apocalypse Now
By: Pete Garcia

I spent the last few nights watching “Apocalypse: World War I” by National Geographic. It is very surreal, to watch what had been originally been in black and white footage, be brought back to life in color. A hundred years ago this month, Europe cheerfully, unknowingly, and unwittingly entered into something they fully didn’t understand, nor appreciated…The Great War.

The Great War began not because of the death of Archduke Ferdinand, but because of the simmering tensions that had been left uncheck for decades. Franz Ferdinand’s death was simply the excuse the Austro-Hungarian Empire needed, to hammer out their unfinished business with Serbia. But Serbia was under the protector-ship of Russia, which made the Germans who already had an uneasy relationship with the Russians, uneasy. The Germans had intentions on taking over France, which drew in the British, Turkish, etc. and so on.

When it was all said and done, nearly 20M men, women, and children died in that war, which would generationally speaking, forever change the face of Europe. And that wasn’t even the worst part, because less than twenty years later, Europe would be back at war with the unfinished business from World War I.

What fascinated me, was that all the experts, the military generals, and political leaders then, could not see what lay ahead. They could not see that they would get dragged into this war-machine which grinded down civilization, and churned out unspeakable misery. In fact, most of the leading military leaders then from each of their own respective countries, thought that their part in the war, would be short-lived and successful.

They took the weapons of their day (which was cutting edge then), their fancifully-dressed armies, and marched out to conquer their foes. They expected to be back home in weeks with victory in tow, but how could they have known? The film captured the faces of those men who had for decades, been inspired by wars past. They were smiling and dancing all the way to the frontlines not knowing what lie ahead. This was contrasted to the faces of those same men, who having peered into the horrible darkness of war, were a mere shadow of their former selves.

Apocalypse Now?

Eerily enough, we are at again, at that stage where decades of relative peace and stability across the global stage has numbed the minds of men. Now, the world is not ever really known peace, at least not in the 20th-21st centuries, but the wars that have been since World War II, were contained to ‘hotspots’. The world at large has not been at war, like it was back in World Wars I and II, but the conditions have become ripe again for the ‘grapes of wrath’ to be trampled once more.

John Haller, who does a weekly Bible Prophecy Update touched on something this past week that really resonated with something I have been thinking about for years now. That the world is again at that point of convergence, where so many things are all really at their tipping points of potentially becoming globally catastrophic:

The sinking US and global economies
Political distress
Global pandemics
Societal unrest
Military buildups
Natural disasters of ‘biblical proportions’
Societal collapse
Religious Apostasy

Assessment

The United States, for all its faults, has been the one constant in keeping the balance globally in all the above areas. Since WWII, if there was a natural disaster, the US sent aid, expertise, and equipment. If there was a nation in need, the US could come to their rescue, and if not the government, then the deep pockets of the American people through Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs). If there was a threat, America faced it.

As the ‘greatest Christian’ nation on the planet, the US sent missionaries, money, Bibles, preachers, and support to churches around the world. The world’s economies depended on the ‘almighty American dollar’, as the constant standard for financial transactions.

Now, the sun is setting on America, and our allies are pretty sure they can’t trust us. They aren’t sure if they can rely on our dollar because of all the debt we’ve accumulated. They can’t depend on us militarily, because we’ve gotten in bed with too many people, and we’re afraid of upsetting the geo-political apple cart. Our churches are transitioning from the Gospel of Grace, to ‘another gospel’…of prosperity, social justice, or the ecumenical. We’ve become a nation with eroding borders and eroding values.

The world often moves more in unpredictable ways than predictable, so how can we know what is coming? I recently read the National Intelligence Council’s assessment on the state of affairs for the US in 2030. I read about a number of geo-political scenarios that they see playing out technologically, militarily, and economically.

Interestingly, the NIC assessment sees the US in an inevitable decline on the world’s stage by 2030. What they are hoping for though, is a ‘soft-landing’ rather than a ‘crash and burn’ scenario in which the US still survives, but a little more worse for wear than Old Glory is used too. But what they are hoping for, and what actually happens are going to be two very different things, given their dismal track record of predictions in their 2010 assessment.

And not only where they wrong in their geo-political assessments for 2010, they were wildly inaccurate. How could they have known box cutters and airplanes would be used to bring down four different flights and plunge the world’s greatest superpower, into 13 years of war? Something like a 9/11 is known as a “Black Swan Event”, in which a wildcard scenario actually plays out. But the truth is, we don’t know what we don’t know. But that also is not true, because former President Clinton, could have ended the man who really was the mastermind (or face) of this new form of terror, but chose not to for other reasons.

I don’t know if 9/11 was supposed to be our ‘fourth turning point’, or if that event is still on the horizon, but life certainly has changed for the worse since 9/11. But here we stand for the better part of seventy years, watching the world unravel, one disaster at a time, and now are watching a crescendo of crisis threatening to tsunami us into oblivion, if something, anything, isn’t done to stop it…

Now I saw when the Lamb opened one of the seals; and I heard one of the four living creatures saying with a voice like thunder, “Come and see.” And I looked, and behold, a white horse. He who sat on it had a bow; and a crown was given to him, and he went out conquering and to conquer. Rev. 6:1-2

Rahm Emmanuel once stated, that you should ‘never let a good crisis go to waste’. And the world today, is in full crisis mode. Now the crisis we have, whether it be ‘global warming’, or ISIS in the Middle East. Whether it’s the ‘race-baiting’ politics of the left, or the declining US dollar. We can’t even be 100% sure that our weather is not being manipulated, because of groups like HAARP who use weather as a gigantic science experiment. For as much as I have come to not trust in this life, there are only two axioms that I do trust are:

We are always getting ready to fight the last war…and the only constant, is change.

But if these crises are by design (and they are), then who or what is behind these dastardly deeds? You can call them the Rockefellers, the Rothschilds, or Bilderbergers, or Council on Foreign Relations…but regardless of the title, these all work for the same person…or being rather. The Bible states that Satan, goes about like a ‘roaring lion’, seeking whom he may devour. (1 Peter 5:8)

He is enraged at the victory wrought by the cross, and is doing everything in his power, to attempt to thwart God’s plan, which is to bring in the full number of Gentiles (Romans 11:25) and then turn His attention back to the nation of Israel. (Rom. 11:26-32).

Satan, the deceiver and father of lies, seeks to whip the world up into such a state of frenzy, chaos, misery, and lunacy that the people demand a man come rule over them to fix all those problem. But not just any man. This man, will be Satan’s man, and he will have the solutions to the problems that plague this current world. And because Satan is the ‘god of this age’, and can manipulate all these issues at will, this man will conquer the world without firing a single shot…at least not at first. (What follows the Rider on the White Horse?)

But this man can’t claim his short-lived throne just yet, because there sits in his way, the Church. The Church is to the Antichrist, as the US Constitution is to the New World Order.

Think about it this way…the US is currently the most dominant and powerful singular nation on earth. Even in our declining status, the US commands attention simply due to her power and authority in both economic matters, and military prowess. What has kept the global elites from signing the world up under a new world order, has been the US Constitution, which forbids the US from entering into treaty with any nation that a) takes away the authority to coin and print money from the US Congress, and b) causes us to become subservient to any other nation or group. This is in part, why the Constitution has been chipped away for the last 200 years.

Likewise, Satan is kept at bay, or on a leash rather, as to the extent that he can spread this spirit of antichrist across the planet, because of the unique role the Church plays in God’s overarching plan. We aren’t just a bunch of Sunday school going, nimbly-bimbly bible thumpers. The Christian has the God of the universe dwelling inside each of us in the form of the Person of the Holy Spirit. (Eph. 1:13-14) And last time I checked, Satan is no match for God. But according to the Scriptures, (John 14:1-3; 1 Thess. 4:13-18; 1 Cor. 15:51-56) the Lord Himself will return for His Church one day, to take us to be where He is. And once we are removed, we in essence, remove the restraint that has been keeping Satan in check for these last two thousand years.

The ultimate crisis (the removal of millions of people immediately from earth at the Rapture) will be followed by a man who will not let this crisis go to waste. Satan will empower him to unite the world under his rule, by peace (economic, diplomatic, and political means) so much so, that people will wonder…”who is like the beast”? But then God unleashes His judgments upon the world, and in these catastrophic events (of biblical proportions), even he will not be able to manage the fallout, and the nations will rebel. Then his velvet glove reveals (apocalypse) the iron fist. But…

Let no one deceive you by any means; for that Day will not come unless the falling away comes first, and the man of sin is revealed, the son of perdition, who opposes and exalts himself above all that is called God or that is worshiped, so that he sits as God in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God. Do you not remember that when I was still with you I told you these things? And now you know what is restraining, that he may be revealed in his own time. For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work; only He who now restrains will do so until He is taken out of the way. And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord will consume with the breath of His mouth and destroy with the brightness of His coming. 2 Thess. 2:3-8

Even So, Maranatha!

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