The Things to Come

Let me introduce to you Prime Minister Olmert, Israel’s worst nightmare, and at the worst possible time.

According to the article below, he’s had some sort of “reality check”.
He used to think that Israel should hang on to as much land as possible, you know, for ’safe keeping’ – but he has now changed his mind, saying that Jerusalem should be divided, there should be a Palestinian state, and Syria should take back the Golan. He reasons (and I use that term lightly) that he has to think about what kind of world his grandchildren will inherit. Apparently he is just fine with passing along to them a tiny nation with no defensible space or borders. He is pretty comfortable with appeasing Israel’s enemies and selling his nation’s soul for a temporary solution that can only spell disaster. I don’t know what he is thinking but here is what I think: He will do anything for the Price of Peace. But there will be no peace until the Prince of Peace comes and redeems that land and her people. —Mary

Olmert Calls for the Division of Jerusalem

Israeli PM: Divide Jerusalem, Return Golan Heights to Syria

BY SIMON McGREGOR-WOOD

JERUSALEM, Sept. 29, 2008 —

Ehud Olmert is still the prime minister of Israel. Despite his resignation announcement, he remains the man in charge until a replacement is confirmed.

And as such he has again, on the eve of the Jewish New Year, given the traditional wide-ranging newspaper interview.

It makes for surprising reading.

Most surprising of all is the tone Olmert’s used during a passionate declaration that Israel is reaching a critical moment in its relationship with the Palestinians and with Syria.

“What occupies me is what awaits my children and my grandchildren. In a few years, my grandchildren will ask what their grandfather did, what country we have left them,” he told Yedioth Ahranot, Israel’s leading daily newspaper.

Olmert clearly states his belief that Israel must withdraw from the occupied territories in return for peace.

“We have to reach an agreement with the Palestinians, the meaning of which is that in practice we will withdraw from almost all the territories, if not all the territories,” he said.

Olmert has been leading peace negotiations with the Palestinians led by moderate President Mahmoud Abbas.

The talks were launched last year at a U.S. summit in Annapolis, Md. There, an ambitious target was set — to reach an agreement by the end of President Bush’s term in office.

During his interview Olmert explained his political change of heart. For years he was a member of the right wing Likud Party, devoted to maintaining Israel’s grip on as much land as possible.

But during today’s interview he even called for the division of Jerusalem between Israel and the future state of Palestine, one of the most sensitive issues to be discussed.

“Whoever wants to hold on to all of the city’s territory will have to bring 270,000 Arabs inside the fences of sovereign Israel. It won’t work. A decision has to be made,” he said.

Olmert was mayor of Jerusalem during the 1990s, a period in which he supported the expansion of Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem and was devoted to maintaining full control over the city.

“I am not trying to justify retroactively what I did for 35 years. For a large portion of these years I was unwilling to look at reality in depth.”

Olmert is similarly strident in his calls for Israelis to understand the need to give back the Golan Heights in return for peace with Syria. Under his direction Israel has entered indirect talks with the Syrian government of President Bashar Assad.

“I want to see whether there is one serious person in Israel who believes that peace can be made with the Syrians without ultimately giving up the Golan Heights,” he told the paper.

At the end of 2005 Olmert followed his longtime mentor Ariel Sharon away from the Likud Party to a new one created to continue Israel’s withdrawal from Palestinian territory.

After Sharon suffered a stroke early in 2006, Olmert found himself the unlikely leader of the Kadima Party.

From the evidence of today’s interview, he appears to have also made the same political journey that Sharon made when he decided to evacuate Jewish settlements in Gaza in 2005.

What drove both men is the desire to establish internationally recognized borders for the Jewish state.

“The goal is to try and reach for the first time the delineation of an exact border line between us and the Palestinians, where the whole world — the United States, the U.N., Europe — will say, these are the borders of the state of Israel, we recognize them, we anchor them in the formal resolutions of international institutions,” Olmert said.

Olmert admits that giving up land for peace is painful. But says he fears that a determination to hold on to all of the land of Israel poses a greater threat to the Israel’s existence.

For many former right-wingers, drawing the country’s borders and separating Israelis from Palestinians is the only way to preserve a clear Jewish majority.

Today’s interview shows how urgent Olmert believes that task to be.

Copyright © 2008 ABC News Internet Ventures

Some necessary ramblings today on something called, “fear of prophecy”. I won’t give it a clever name because it’s a real condition, and I don’t want to make light of it because I don’t take it lightly. But I do want to offer some gentle suggestions to those who struggle with a very real sense of fear and foreboding at the thought that ‘the end is near’, with it’s accompanying birth pangs and trials as outlined in the Scriptures.

Having been involved in a ministry for many years that stays on the cutting edge of Bible prophecy, I have learned that there are only 2 responses that stir in the heart of a believer when they hear that time is short, and that the human race is headed for certain “unpleasant” global events on our way to redemption and the consummation of all things. Some respond with excitement, joy, and a rush of adrenaline that usually leads to a voracious appetite for “more of that”. If a believer grew up in a denominational tradition that never acknowledged the Bible’s tendency to predict the future with 100% accuracy, these Christians tend to react with the most incredulity that they were kept out of the Revelation loop for so long. I was one of those who was religious but spoon-fed only those things my denomination deemed palatable or necessary for my possible redemption at my last breath. Note, I said, ‘possible’ redemption. They never really knew the way to San Jose after all.

The other reaction I have encountered fairly regularly is one of great discomfort at the mention of certain events on the prophetic horizon. Things like global government and the accompanying dictatorship, famine, pestilences, wars, and financial insecurities or all-out ruin. The natural response to threats such as these would be fear, as we are all hard-wired to survive and give all we have for our lives. The Bible says that those who are on the earth at that season will literally experience their hearts failing out of fear of what is coming on the planet. But the key word here is: natural response. As in, the “natural man”, or unregenerate, or fleshly. To all those Christians who struggle with a fear response to any solid case presented for prophetic fulfillment, you need to know that while your response is natural and understandable, it is not biblical. There are many things in life that scare us out of our wits, and we will feel fear, sometimes daily. But feeling it, and acting on that fear or living by it is not the proper choice for the believer in Jesus Christ, those to whom have been given the keys to the Kingdom – to come. Not this one. This one is passing away, rapidly, and we look forward to the one in which righteousness dwells. But in order for that to happen, God has deemed it necessary that planet earth endure some serious birth pangs as the sin of mankind reaches its fullness, making His judgments righteous and pure, to His praise and glory. Wow, I can get real wound up at the thought. I am so looking forward to the day Christ returns in His glory. But I digress – sort of.

So….say you hear a well thought-out prophecy presentation, one that brings forth ample evidence, based on Scripture, that we are edging closer and closer to that time of which the Bible speaks. Let’s say that there are people that God has actually given the task of sounding the trumpet and letting folks know the hour. But perhaps you are one of those who tends to keep your distance from prophetic topics because it is distressing. But maybe on that day there is someone – perhaps a friend or relative of yours – listening in who sees their lost state and receives Christ before it’s too late. Would you say then that the presentation was meant to terrify, or that God was truly convicting and working? I have no doubt that many over time have gotten saved thanks to a well-timed and well done prophetic Bible study. I know many, as a matter of fact. I am one of them. I literally had the “hell” scared out of me. Thank you faithful pastor.

But if you think prophecy is merely frightening and has no other value that you can see, think about this: what if no one was watching these things, what if no one was warning? What would the church be like? Even as fewer and fewer give heed to the times, we can see a great lukewarmness, and social – gospel ‘purpose’ infiltrating and taking over the body of Christ, to her great peril. But what if no one bothered to address the times in any way? Would you feel more comfortable, or would you at some point be indignant that no one told you which end was up? If you sent a loved one to hear a church service and all they got was a feel-good seeker doughnut instead of a full breakfast of the gospel, wouldn’t you be angry that your loved one was not challenged spiritually and allowed to simmer in their own sin?

As we do get closer, more and more signs will be in place and more and more evidence will present itself that the Bible is the pure word of truth. This is a guarantee. It is not made to make us feel good, however. So what should our response be as children of the One who has all things in His grasp?

The Bible warns us of these things so we can know what to expect. We are told that when we see these things BEGIN to take place, (implying we will be watching all along if we are believers) we are to look up, lift up our heads (not bow them down in fear) and rejoice because our redemption is nigh. We are told to comfort one another with the blessed hope of the rapture. Fear indicates we do not trust our Lord with the events coming upon the earth, that He should come up with a different method or plan as this one does not suit us or keep our comfort zone in tact. It could also indicate a closer connection to this life than we ought to have, a love for our lives that could indicate that the things of heaven are farther from our thinking than they should be. Lukewarmness? Maybe. Only the fearful know that in their hearts, I am not their Holy Spirit. But if you are one of those who reacts with fear instead of excitement or joy, I would encourage you to set your affections above, and count all things loss for the sake of Christ. This life is but a vapor, eternity is, well, forever. And only keeping our eyes on Jesus hour by hour can we avoid the carnality of reacting with fear at the thought of His soon return.

Rev 19:10b – “Worship God! For the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.”

2Timothy 1:7 – “For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.”

Please read the following from the EU Observer (www.euobserver.com)
And then someone – perhaps a prophecy scoffer – please tell me how our assessment last week that everything that is happening to the global financial markets is leading up to a global money system as is found in Revelation 13 isn’t “right on the money”. Gary Kah was with us yesterday and confirmed it all yet again. Bank being swallowed up by bank, creating a monster of a system, a genuine “Bankenstein”.

It is so obvious to the prophecy student that all this consolidation and reworking of the markets is planned, purposeful, and prophetic! The god of this world is working his plan and the God of heaven is fulfilling His Word as we watch, amazed and hopeful.

Maranatha!
Mary

GERMANY AND UK WANT GLOBAL FINANCIAL REGULATOR

LEIGH PHILLIPS

Today @ 09:29 CET

The UK and Germany believe that a new international system regulating the financial sector must be constructed to prevent a repeat of global banking crisis in the future.

Peter Steinbrueck, Germany’s Social-Democrat finance minister, raised on Sunday (21 September) the idea of “an international authority that will make the traffic rules for financial markets,” while speaking to German radio, Reuters reports.

Meanwhile, UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown is to outline proposals for just such a body, run under the authority of the International Monetary fund, in a speech to the Labour Party conference on Monday, as well as domestic plans to crack down on “irresponsible” bonuses handed out in the City, London’s financial quarter.

“I think what people haven’t appreciated is we’ve now got global financial systems but we’ve only got national regulators to cover them,” Mr Brown told the BBC ahead of the speech, adding that he had been trying to convince his international counterparts for years of the need for “a global system of financial regulation.”

His finance minister, Alistair Darling, according to the country’s Guardian newspaper, is also set to tell his fellow Labour Party members: “Just as one government alone cannot combat global terrorism, just as one government alone cannot combat climate change, so one government alone cannot deal with the consequences of globalisation.”

Mr Brown will be pressing world leaders to sign up to such a plan when he visits New York on Thursday for a meeting of the UN General Assembly.

Meanwhile, Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel, has publicly chastised the US and UK for historical opposition to stronger financial regulation.

Speaking to an election rally in Austria over the weekend, Ms Merkel said: “Today we have come further because now America and Great Britain are also saying ‘Yes, we need more transparency, we need better standards for rating agencies’.”

The chancellor was referring to US and UK opposition to Berlin plans for greater oversight of hedge funds proposed last June at a G8 meeting.

“We played ball, we adopted a nice EU directive into national law, we had to cope with a lot of complaints from medium sized enterprises, and at the end of the day, the Americans said: we won’t,” the chancellor said.

In related news, the European Commission is to propose stricter conditions for banks offering credit to other financial institutions, according to draft documents first seen by the Financial Times Deutschland. Banks would now have to say if they maintain part of the risk in their own accounts when offering credit, according to proposals set to be approved by the commission on Wednesday.

Elsewhere, European banks have been lobbying hard to win support under the framework of the $700 billion bail-out of Wall Street announced on Friday by US treasury secretary Henry Paulson.

Banks such as UBS and Credit Suisse, which have significant operations in the US are likely to be eligible for part of the US Treasury’s planned buy-out of bad debt held by American financial institutions.

“It’s a distinction without a difference whether it’s a foreign or a US one,” Mr Paulson told the Fox News channel.

However, to participate in the scheme, he suggested that European taxpayers would also have to take part in bankrolling the biggest bail-out of private firms in world history: “Our system’s a global one, and I also am going to be pressing colleagues around the world to design similar systems for their banks,” he said.

“We are talking very aggressively with other countries around the world, and encouraging them to do similar things, and I believe a number of them will,” Mr Paulson said.

© 2008 EUobserver.com. All rights reserved. Printed on 22.09.2008.

by Mary Danielsen

September 15, 2008, will go down as an historic day.

Bloomberg says this: “In the biggest reshaping of the financial industry since the Great Depression, two of Wall Street’s most storied firms, Merrill Lynch & Co. And Lehman Brothers Holdings, Inc., headed toward extinction….the tectonic plates beneath the world financial system are shifting, and there is going to be a new financial world order that will be born out of this…it’s an ugly and painful process.” Indeed. But this process has to take place. Let’s look at why.

Monday morning, the world woke up to the news that both Lehman Brothers Holdings and Merrill Lynch were officially going under, never to appear on the US economic scene again. Lehman, a 158 year old financial institution, had its start when the Lehman brothers, immigrants from Germany, began to trade in cotton during the years leading up to the Civil War. Lehman went on to underwrite many of the benchmark corporations that Americans would be familiar with even today, including F.W. Woolworth, Gimbel Brothers, R.H. Macy, B.F. Goodrich, and Studebaker. They not only survived the Civil War, the Depression, 2 World Wars and the World Trade Center attacks (they occupied 3 floors of the WTC), but during America’s growth spurt following the world wars, they contributed greatly to the health of companies such as RCA and the growing oil industry (Halliburton, no less). Lehman Brothers has been a part of the American economic landscape through her most economic formative years, largely during the industrial age and the post-war rebuilding era.

Merrill Lynch, also an investment bank specializing in wealth and asset management, opened its doors on Wall Street in 1914. Charles Merrill and Edmund Lynch made several successful investments early on, including RKO Pictures, a major Hollywood motion picture company, and Safeway, the country’s third largest grocery chain of the day, back in the ‘30s.

Enter Bank of America, who made history today by entering into a marriage of convenience (some are saying shotgun wedding) with Merrill Lynch by purchasing that firm. Bank of America was begun as Bank of Italy in San Francisco in 1904, and was based on catering to immigrants. It merged with the LA-based Bank of America and developed the first advanced bank branch system. Not long after they had added insurance services to their banking business, a law was passed in 1956, prohibiting banks from owning non-banking subsidiaries such as, insurance companies. So, Transamerica was formed to handle the insurance business, leaving Bank of America to concentrate it’s efforts on expanding consumer banking outside of California, as regulatory controls had recently eased in the interstate banking area. In 1958, they issued one of the very first credit cards in America, the BankAmerica card – later renamed “Visa”. Not long after that, a competing consortium of California banks issued the “Master Charge” card – later renamed “MasterCard” – to compete with Visa. This brings us up to today, and the resulting massive credit addiction of both Americans and their government. The combined Bank of America Securities-Merrill Lynch Corp. will become the biggest U.S. investment bank by revenue, vaulting past J.P. Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs Group and Citigroup. Merrill-Bank of America Securities also will become No. 1 in both global stock and debt underwriting, Today, Bank of America is the #1 bank in the United States, and #4 in the entire world, thanks largely to those credit services and the resulting “buy now and pay later” approach to life that a previous generation would have railed against. And oh how we are paying. Cheap credit and surging property values have been slammed into reverse gear after a wild joy ride, and those proverbial chickens have come home to roost.

Currently out of the top 5 investment banking firms in the U.S., Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns, amazingly, only two will remain in business going into the fall of 2008. While there is a combination of financial factors that make this ‘the perfect storm’, the overriding issue is the sub-prime mortgage crisis and the devaluing of the real estate market (which was over-inflated to begin with). Back in 2006, the American housing bubble burst as default rates on sub-prime and adjustable-rate mortgages rose dramatically. (Lynch wrote down $8 billion in mortgage-related losses.) Many believe that these investment bankers should have seen this coming and are only getting what they deserve.

Problem is, while these newly unemployed investment execs sail off into the sunset with millions of dollars in parting gifts (“How the Masters of the Universe Ran Amok and Cost Us the Earth” http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/latestnews/-How-the-Masters-of.4494032.jp)the rest of us are left to pick up the pieces in lost jobs, tax increases (to bail out Bear Stearns and Freddie and Fannie) and perhaps a host of unseen ripples yet to come. The calorically-challenged lady has yet to sing.

On the international scene, things are apparently shaky as well. Oil prices are dropping rapidly, and down to around $90 per barrel as citizens have cut back on their energy consumption (wasn’t that the idea?); Housing prices in China are collapsing; Russia has a major capital crisis; and inflation rates in Japan and India all point to a global recession. American International Group, Inc. (AIG), once the world’s largest insurer, will be the next to go, as their credit number has been downgraded to the point where they will be unlikely to raise the capital needed to stay in business, as happened to Lehman and Lynch. This will send another round of shock waves through the global markets. The dollar continues to slide against global currencies, and today, the European Central Bank (ECB) pumped $61 billion into the market, and the Bank of England offered $30 billion, to buffer the global economy from any more shocks.

In the article referenced above, “How the Masters of the Universe Ran Amok and Cost us the Earth”, which ran today in The Scotsman newspaper, we get a glimpse of just how interconnected the world markets are. And anyone who is familiar with Bible prophecy will be reminded that these things should not surprise any of us as we gallop toward a global money system and pave the way for a financial saviour in the person of the Antichrist. They document the following fascinating series of events:

“The collapse effectively began at 6pm last Friday. The place: the offices of the New York Federal Reserve. The occasion: an emergency meeting of the most powerful figures in American banking and finance aimed at staving off a massive bank collapse.

Those who stepped from their limousines to be present included Richard Fuld, the chairman and chief executive of Lehman Brothers; John Mack, the head of Morgan Stanley; Jamie Dimon, of JP Morgan Chase; Vikram Pandit, of Citigroup; Lloyd Blankfein, of Goldman Sachs; Bob Diamond, the head of Barclays Capital; and senior representatives from Mellon Bank and Royal Bank of Scotland.

“We are the biggest overseas bank in America”, explained an RBS spokeswoman. “There was an ‘all points bulletin’ from the Fed and they called us in”.

Awaiting them along one side of the boardroom table was the United States Federal Reserve chairman, Ben Bernanke – nicknamed Helicopter Ben for having slashed interest rates and showered Wall Street with money earlier this year to avoid the very disaster that was about to unfold.Flanking him was Hank Paulson, the US treasury secretary, and Tom Geithner, chairman of the New York Fed. It was Geithner who opened the meeting – and presented Wall Street’s finest with the fright of their lives.

Either there was a Wall Street rescue for Lehman, or the investment bank would have to face the consequences. An eerie silence ensued.

An analyst at RBS Greenwich in New York summed up the most dramatic meeting of America’s top bankers thus: “I thought last weekend was crazy, but this one was even more chaotic.”Everyone expected to hear by early Sunday evening that the Fed/Treasury had managed to arrange a shotgun wedding for Lehman with someone – Bank of America, Barclays, private equity. A funny thing happened on the way to a deal.The New York Fed called in all of the head honchos and said that they had a great deal for them. One lucky participant would get to buy Lehman’s business and their ‘good’ assets for a bargain price.

“The others would get a consolation prize: a chance to contribute their own precious capital to fund a bank of Lehman’s ‘bad’ assets. The Fed and Treasury were said to be ‘adamant’ that public money would not be involved in any bail-out. “No government money? OK, no deal.”

The meeting set the tone for the weekend. By Saturday morning, more than 100 bankers were involved. Paulson refused to budge on pleas for government underpinning of the Lehman “bad bank” proposal: $41.8 billion of property and up to a further $40 billion of “toxic” assets that had been infected by subprime mortgage loans or derivatives.

Cookies and coffee arrived. Then ghoulish crowds began to gather, reminiscent of those that had assembled in Wall Street 80 years ago as the stock market crashed. The last of the meetings broke up late on Sunday, by which time there were no fewer than three separate frenzied huddles of investment bankers. One comprised credit traders trying to agree an orderly unwinding of Lehman’s default swaps to avoid utter mayhem yesterday morning.

Another room was full of regulators trying to put a floor under AIG, the world’s biggest insurer, whose shares had crashed the previous week. The third was putting together a massive $50 billion rescue takeover by Bank of America of Merrill Lynch – the investment bank to broking giant that is famous for its ‘raging bull’ logo.” (end of quote.)

Now, remember this one thing, and do your homework on this: the Federal Reserve is not a government institution. It is a private bank, set up by the very people who represented the richest men in American in the latter 19th century and is today our all-powerful central bank. These money men gathered on Jekyll Island between 1890 – 1945 to map out the next 100 years of the American economy, their meetings culminating in the Federal Reserve Act of 1914. This illegal piece of legislation was passed while Congress’ back was turned. Or was it? (For a detailed treatment of this momentous period in American History, one that really brought us to this point, read “The Creature from Jekyll Island’ by Edward Griffiths.)

The bottom line: the consolidating of global finances continues, and must continue. The “Merchants of Menace” will see to it that economic power will end up in the hands of the few most powerful bankers and institutions in the world. This is a necessary chain of events to bring about a world where “No man may buy or sell save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.” (Rev. 13:17). This system will bring us a world where a loaf of bread will cost a day’s wage, and famine will be a part of every day life in this world (Rev. 6).This system must be the end result of each of these quakes and aftershocks in the market, as more and more signs of the times indicate that Jesus’ coming is quite near. As Christians we must not be alarmed about any of these developments, but continue to trust that the Lord has all things in control, no matter how disturbing. While men’s hearts will “fail them for fear for looking after those things which are coming on the earth” (Luke 21:26), our response to these birth pangs can only be to look up, for our redemption is drawing nigh! Maranatha!

Well, mark your calendars for next year: Lord willing, we will host the 10th Annual Great Lakes Prophecy Conference, September 11-13, 2009. This last weekend, we not only had a full house, but 1000 tuned in to the live stream. So, that tells me that in spite of some high-profile pastors comments that the Lord’s return should be way down on our list of things to do after we solve all the world’s problems, there are many who believe that studying “the things to come” is well worth their time and gas money. I think many were encouraged and refreshed and are renewing their priority to watch and wait for His soon coming. If you didn’t make it, and you want some CD or DVD sets, email our duplicating department at audiodept@ccappleton.org. They can send you the details. AND – keep on watching and waiting! Maranatha!