Edge of Apocalypse Today

Washington, D.C.   We have repeatedly pointed out (see posts below) our politically incorrect opinion that Russia, rather than being a new “partner” with America, is still our enemy: and that it is saving its friendship for nations like Iran, which has a nuclear program thanks to Russia’s technological help. Of course Iran is a declared enemy of Israel. The newest evidence of Russia’s alliance with Iran came last week, when Russia demanded a NATO investigation into a computer virus called Stuxnet that infiltrated the computers that ran Iran’s nuclear program and disabled them in 2010. Russia is yelling foul by saying that a repeat of Stuxnet could wreak havoc in computers in nuclear facilities and create another Chernobyl. But there is a back-story here: Russia’s complaint is really a slap in the face of the United States and Israel, which comes just weeks after the Obama Administration had orchestrated the START nuclear treaty with Russia and after revelations about American/Israeli involvement in Stuxnet.  This month articles in both the New York Times and the Jerusalem Post broke the story that hi-tech computer bug Stuxnet was actually designed in a joint project by the governments of the U.S. and Israel, developed specifically so it could be aimed at Iran’s nuclear computers so as to delay it’s mad race to build nuclear bombs. President George W. Bush reportedly green-lighted the secret project, and the testing was done at Israel’s Nuclear Research Center in the Negev desert, near Dimona. Once again, Russia shows itself to be defending Iran and criticizing the United States and Israel. These kinds of events remind us constantly of the prophetic importance of both Iran and Russia which will in the future mount an attempted invasion of Israel, according to the prophecies in the book of Ezekiel. In Thunder of Heaven, our second novel in our futuristic series, soon to be released, the Russia & Iran vs. U.S. & Israel scenario is explored in the light of Scripture. This entire issue of the deployment of the Stuxnet master computer virus has been ignored by much of the mainstream press. The Christian Science Monitor called it the most over-looked story for the year 2010. Which proves that things in plain sight can be often dangerously overlooked. The promises and warnings of the Bible sometimes fall into that category. America is awash with Bibles, but many are left unread. Have you read it? Do you know what God has promised about the future of the world, and what He expects from you? If not, why not pick up a New Testament and start reading the Gospel of John. If you do, we think you will find out that God has a plan for your future, and that it can be secured when you trust by faith in Jesus Christ as God’s Son. The “virus” of sin and death is no match for the grace of God. It was defeated at the cross of Calvary for every believer in Christ.

 © 2011 Tim LaHaye and Craig Parshall

All Rights Reserved.

Washington D.C.  Is there a private clandestine layer of former U.S. spies who are operating on their own to help provide national security intelligence information to our government? Mark Mazzetti of the New York Times has been writing a series on that issue. Not surprisingly, his take on this issue is cynical. In a Times article over the weekend he wrote about Duane “Dewey” Clarridge, a former C.I.A. official who reportedly runs a private spy ring around the world and tries to “back channel” his information to Defense Department officials. Mazzetti writes that he runs a “C.I.A. in miniature,” that this is “a startling demonstration how private citizens can exploit … rivalries inside the American government to carry out their own agenda.” Such activities, he writes, spawn “legally murky clandestine operations.” The U.S. Government officially denies using the information from Clarridge’s group. Which brings into focus the premise of our novel, Edge of Apocalypse. There we give a futuristic portrayal of a disintegrating U.S. government, a corrupt White House bent on making bad deals with the nations of the world, and an unpatriotic Congress. Former spy plane USAF hero Joshua Jordan is now a defense contractor who has devised a powerful anti-missile system, but doesn’t want the design to get out for fear that our enemies will use it against us. It’s hard for him to tell the government good-guys from the patriotic bad guys, so he forms an underground group, The Roundtable, to help get America back on track. But they need help. They soon team up with The Patriots, a group of former C.I.A. spies and government intelligence experts who have the same mission. (Here is where our book, released in spring of 2010 has some surprising parallels to the real-life debate going on right now involving groups like Mr. Clarridge’s). In the novel, the White House and a powerful Senator push back to destroy Joshua. With the help of his brilliant lawyer wife, a plan is hatched to keep both America and Joshua safe. But in our next novel in the series, Thunder of Heaven, soon to be released, this struggle intensifies ten-fold. Currently, the U.S. government is denying reports about the real-life practice of using private spy contractors. But it may be a while before the public can decipher the real “bottom line” on that issue because of a legal power the government possesses, exemplified by a case heard by the Supreme Court last week, involving the “state secrets” doctrine: the rule that says that our government can keep plenty of secrets and can roadblock lawsuits and inquiries when to do otherwise would jeopardize national security. Let’s just hope and pray and our nation continues to exercise the right of self-defense in a world that seems increasingly bent on attacking us.

 © 2011 Tim LaHaye and Craig Parshall

All Rights Reserved

Washington, D.C.   What is the fastest growing, most politically powerful new world religion? We think it may well be radical “global warming” ideology and extreme environmentalism. In fact, in our soon-to-be released novel Thunder of Heaven, the second in our futuristic End fiction series, among other “near future” current trends we see, we will also give you a peak into the spiritual, prophetic, and political aspects of radical environmentalism.  But liberals are working hard to fight back against criticisms against their untested theory that the earth is growing dangerously hotter because of human-created carbon emissions in the air. It has happened again, this time in a blog published earlier this month by Americans United for Separation of Church and State which tears into conservative Christians who dare to question the “sacred cow” of global warming. The article by Joseph Conn berates Bible-believing Evangelicals who have noticed that the radical environmentalists are creating, not a form of reliable science, but rather a religious world-view. But here is the fact that is rarely mentioned: it is not just conservative Christians who see radical global warming alarmism as a religion; that conclusion has also been reached by reputable scientists with no stated religious position.  Take Micheal Crichton as an example. Most people know him as an award-winning science fiction writer, creator of the TV medical series E.R. and the book that lead to the movie Jurassic Park. Yet Crichton also was a scientist who received his M.D. from Harvard Medical School, was a postdoctoral fellow at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies and taught anthropology at Cambridge University. His novel State of Fear challenged the extreme scenarios promoted by global warming activists. In a talk covered by C-Span in 2006, Crichton had the courage to state that radical environmentalism had evolved into a “religion,” offering an alternative to “Judeo-Christian beliefs” on such issues as sin, salvation, and man’s relationship to the planet. Keep your eye out for Thunder of Heaven which will be released by Zondervan Publishing this spring. The novel will illustrate how the planet earth’s “environment” will indeed be tied into the events of the End Times, but in ways that may surprise you.

© 2011 Tim LaHaye and Craig Parshall

All rights Reserved

Washington D.C.   The new year is beginning with a bang. Two news items have just surfaced, bringing into sharp focus more of the themes in our futuristic novel, Edge of Apocalypse, the first book in The End series. Here they are:

NORTH KOREAN THREAT:  Our novel, which is set in the “not too distant future”  begins with the threat of nuclear attack on the United States from North Korea. How likely is that scenario? In the past some observers have not viewed the Korean Communist regime as a threat to the U.S., but only to South Korea. All that has now changed. Yesterday, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates finally admitted that North Korea is now within no more than five years from being able to send nuclear warheads into American shores. Considering how the so-called “experts” have been wrong before in discounting and underestimating the military and nuclear capability of sinister nations like Iran, we may surmise that North Korea could be in a position to send missiles into the air toward the continental United States in a year or two. We also need to remember that North Korea has another significance: it is a member of a dangerous triangle with Iran and Russia. See our November 29th post below.

GOVERNMENT CONTROL OF COMMUNICATIONS AND PERSONAL IDENTITIES:  In the Edge of Apocalypse, we projected a future control over all media and communications by a collaboration between the government and a handful of international corporations. All media, we said in our fiction book, will have settled onto the Internet as the single platform for delivery of information.  Recent surveys have shown that while the number of Americans who get their news from TV, radio or newspapers has been declining, there is a sharp and steady increase in those who get it from the Internet. Telecommunications experts foresee the Internet becoming the single way for all media, information and communications to do their business. Up to now the web has been primarily a private communications platform made up of services provided by private companies and private citizens who use those services (web sites, email, social networking etc.), which accounts for its innovational success. But last December, the three Democrat members of the Federal Communications Commission voted for the federal government to begin seizing control of the Internet. Earlier in 2010 the Administration had promised the U.N. and the European nations more of a hand in controlling the Internet, making it a communications toy of the governments of the world. Are these isolated issues? Hardly. This week the story broke from a British publication that the Obama Administration is planning to launch a system of national identification for every American citizen, to be used in order to log onto the Internet. Why? U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke has confirmed the story and this federal scheme.  He says this new system (the “National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace”) is so that all Americans can “feel more secure than they do today when they go online.” However, it strikes us that this plan is just one more example of a shocking federal power grab over the lives of Americans. Most shocking of all is the fact that this control would extend over the electronic means by which citizens communicate with each other. And as for the issue of a government-issued national identification for every American, our upcoming (Spring, 2011) second novel in our series, Thunder of Heaven, will explain how political tactics could cause this to happen.

Those who study Scripture can recognize the prophetic importance of this tidal wave of events. Revelation chapters 13, 17 & 18 give us a chilling picture of the global control that will ultimately be wielded in the religious, economic and political realm by the Evil One who will have total access to world-wide communications. In Matthew chapter 24 Jesus gave his disciples an overview of the cataclysmic events that will proceed His Second Coming to the earth. Then at verse 42 He urged them: “Therefore be on the alert, for you do not know which day your Lord is coming.” Are you ready for Jesus Christ when He comes? The Apostle Paul gave assurance to born-again Christians, that believers who are on earth will be taken up (raptured) by Jesus, joining those Christians who have already died, preceding the awful days of the coming tribulation, writing: “For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again” then we have the assurance that if the beginning of the End Times comes while we are on the earth then we will be taken up by Christ and joined with the generations of Christians who have come before. I Thessalonians 4:14-15.

(c) 2011 Tim LaHaye and Craig Parshall

All Rights Reserved