Biden HHS Rescinds Protections

The Biden administration has issued a new proposal seeking to amend conscience protections for healthcare workers and institutions that wish to refrain from performing abortions and other procedures that violate their religious beliefs, drawing concerns from pro-life activists. In a final rule slated for publication in the Federal Register, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced its intention to partially rescind a rule implemented by the Trump administration in 2019. The rule, due to take effect 60 days later, amends the 2019 rule and returns federal policy to “the framework created by the February 23, 2011, final rule entitled, ‘Regulation for the Enforcement of Federal Health Care Provider Conscience Protection Laws.’”

The 2019 rule, titled “Protecting Statutory Conscience Rights in Health Care; Delegations of Authority,” contained several provisions outlining explicit protections enabling “individuals, entities, and health care entities to refuse to perform, assist in the performance of, or undergo certain health care services or research activities to which they may object for religious, moral, ethical, or other reasons.” The rule was blocked by federal courts and was never able to go into effect.

The Biden administration’s proposal eliminates several provisions outlining protections for individuals and healthcare facilities that receive federal grants, contracts or loans. Specific declarations include protections stating that federal law shall not require individuals “to perform or assist in the performance of any sterilization procedure or abortion if his performance or assistance in the performance of such procedure or abortion would be contrary to his religious beliefs or moral convictions.”

Protections also prohibit mandating that recipients of federal funds make their “facilities available for the performance of any sterilization procedure or abortion if the performance of such procedure or abortion in such facilities is prohibited by the recipient on the basis of religious beliefs or moral convictions” and “provide personnel” for the provisions of said procedures. The 2019 rule also forbids discrimination in employment against people who refuse to participate in abortions or sterilizations.

Part of the rule remains in place, including a section proclaiming that certain federal statutes “protect the rights of individuals, entities, and health care entities to refuse to perform, assist in the performance of, or undergo certain health care services or research activities to which they may object for religious, moral, ethical, or other reasons.” The provision also maintains that “such laws also protect patients from being subjected to certain health care or services over their conscientious objection.”

The department’s proposal comes a year after it attempted to amend the 2019 rule in a proposed rule titled “Safeguarding the Rights of Conscience as Protected by Statutes.” As noted by the pro-life advocacy group CatholicVote, the proposal would have had the effect of returning federal policy to the way it was in 2011. More than 9,600 people submitted letters to the Biden administration against the proposal in response to a campaign started by CatholicVote warning that changes to the 2019 rule would revoke the moral exemption for employers who did not want to pay for abortifacients in their employer-sponsored healthcare plans. The proposed rule did not go into effect.

Carol Tobias, president of the National Right to Life Committee, addressed the new rule in a statement. “President Biden is once again showing his allegiance to pro-abortion groups and their demands,” she said. “His administration is willing to trample on the rights of millions of healthcare workers by changing a rule designed to protect them from having to perform abortions against their religious or ethical convictions,” Tobias added. She said, “This administration has been more than willing to comply with the demands of pro-abortion groups and their allies.”

Biblical Connection: A nation that does not accept the sanctity of life is a nation that puts itself in the crosshairs of God’s judgments.

PRAY: Pray these regulations that force believers and businesses to assist with or perform abortions will be stopped and the unborn will be protected.

Over 100 Harvard Faculty Say Accusing Israel of Genocide is not Anti-Semitism

Over 100 Harvard faculty members signed a letter to the university president declaring that labeling Israel an “apartheid state” and accusing the country of committing genocide against Palestinians should not automatically be considered anti-Semitism. The letter accused Harvard University President Claudine Gay of enforcing a “one-sided” debate about Israel by preventing students and faculty from criticizing the Jewish state. “As Harvard faculty, we have been astonished by the pressure from donors, alumni, and even some on this campus to silence faculty, students, and staff critical of the actions of the State of Israel,” the document stated. “It is important to acknowledge the patronizing tone and format of much of the criticism you have received as well as the outright racism contained in some of it.”

The faculty members wrote the letter in response to Gay's Nov. 9 directive, titled “Combating Antisemitism,” which announced the plan to implement a program intended to educate Harvard students and staff about anti-Semitism. In the directive, Gay condemned the phrase “from the river to the sea,” noting that the phrase calls for the eradication of Jews and Israel and is harmful to the Jewish community. In their letter, the faculty members expressed understanding that Gay would want to highlight the importance of language following Hamas’ Oct. 7 assault against civilians in Israel that killed over 1,200 people. The terrorist group has called for the murder of the Jewish people, and Hamas members have bragged about the Jews they killed on Oct. 7.

While the faculty agreed that certain language merits condemnation, they argued that it is not anti-Semitic to criticize the Israeli government or to compare it to “ethno-nationalist” governments, like dictator Robert Mugabe’s government in Zimbabwe. “Nor can arguments that characterize Israel as an ‘apartheid’ state or its recent actions as ‘ethnic cleansing’ or even ‘genocide’ be considered automatically antisemitic, regardless of whether one concurs with such arguments,” the letter stated. The letter asserts that the phrase “from the river to the sea, Palestine must be free” is a matter of debate, stating that the history behind the slogan is “complicated.” “Its interpretation deserves, and is receiving, sustained and ongoing inquiry and debate,” the letter reads.

The faculty also cited numbers from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry to imply that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians. According to the Gaza Health Ministry, over 11,000 people have been killed in Gaza since Israel launched retaliatory airstrikes and a ground invasion seeking to eradicate Hamas, a terrorist group that has controlled the Gaza Strip since 2007.

Days before beginning its ground invasion, Israel urged the over 1 million civilians in northern Gaza to flee to the south. Israel maintains it has the right to defend its citizens from the threat of Hamas and is doing all it can to prevent civilian casualties. Israel has accused Hamas of using civilians as human shields. The letter concluded with a list of steps for the Harvard president to support “intellectual freedom” at the university, including the creation of “an advisory group on Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian and anti-Arab racism.”

The faculty members requested Gay resist calls to suspend the Palestine Solidarity Committee for releasing a statement holding Israel responsible for the violence committed against it. Several student groups that signed onto the letter — including Amnesty International at Harvard, Harvard College Act on a Dream and the Harvard Undergraduate Nepali Student Association — later withdrew their signatures. A spokesperson for Act on a Dream claimed at the time that its board members were unaware that the organization had signed the letter, which does not reflect AOD's views on the situation in Israel.

Biblical Connections: The Israeli people have been hated throughout their history in both the Old and New Testaments and throughout much of world history. It should not surprise us that Satan has continued to attack the Jews in our modern time.

PRAY: Pray that this movement of hatred against the Jewish people will be stopped and that God would continue to protect them.

Abortion a Leading Election Issue

Pro-life organizations are criticizing a new advertisement released by President Joe Biden’s re-election campaign targeting his potential Republican rivals’ positions on abortion. The ad, published on YouTube and titled “These Guys,” is part of a 16-week, $25 million advertising campaign targeting swing states like Arizona, Michigan, Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The campaign ads will air on broadcast and cable television programming, including NFL games and the World Series.

The advertisement opens with a narrator declaring, “Reproductive health care decisions are among the most personal a woman will ever make,” adding, “They are choices that you and your doctor should make.” The video then airs several of the statements made by the Republican contenders on the abortion issue, including former President Donald Trump, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott. The narrator asserts: “The last people who should be involved [in making decisions about abortion] are these guys.”

Pro-life groups reacted to the ad’s premise that Republicans have an “extreme” position on abortion by calling the Democratic Party’s position on the issue extreme. In a statement, Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America President Marjorie Dannenfelser lamented, “President Biden is spending millions of dollars on campaign ads attacking his GOP opponents on abortion. Tellingly, Biden’s ad never states a single limit he would support — not even to protect babies from brutal late-term abortions after they can feel pain, a standard over 70% of Americans including many rank-and-file Democrats favor,” she added.

She recalled how “Biden used to embrace commonsense limits on abortion based on science” before expressing disgust that “he and his party are fully in lock step with the radical abortion lobby position of abortion on demand at any time for any reason, paid for by the taxpayer.”

Dannenfelser stated that “Americans deserve to know where all candidates stand” on abortion, saying that the ad skirted around the Biden administration’s authentic position on the issue. “Everyone should be asking where the Democrats draw the line — is it 38, 39 weeks?” she asked. Dannenfelser took issue with the absence of “any mention of how the country can come together to support mother and child” from the video. “Women want to hear the president’s plan to ensure they can access tangible resources, including financial help, so they never feel forced into unwanted abortions,” she asserted. “Will Democrats support critical relief for moms like the Providing for Life Act? Or will they continue to demonize pregnancy centers and other life-affirming nonprofits while pushing pills and surgery as a cure-all instead? This callous ‘solution’ of killing the child fails to address many of the core problems experienced by pregnant women.”

The Biden campaign’s ad targeted to voters in swing states comes as Republicans and Democrats have embraced divergent federal policy proposals following the Dobbs decision. While the Democrat-controlled U.S. House of Representatives passed the Women’s Health Protection Act last year, it failed in the Democrat-controlled U.S. Senate. The bill has not been brought up in the U.S. House in the 118th Congress now that it is controlled by Republicans. While Democrats tout the measure as a codification of Roe, Dannenfelser characterizes it as “an extreme bill forcing abortion on demand up until birth on all 50 states, even painful late-term abortions.”

Biblical Connections: The Bible clearly argues for the preservation of life from the moment of conception. A nation that refuses to allow for the continuation of human life is a nation that has largely turned away from a Biblical worldview. That much of the West has allowed for abortion on demand shows that many nations that were once anchors of Christianity have instead abandoned God.

PRAY: Pray for the elections next week and for godly, pro-life candidates to be elected. Pray that the right to life will be a right that everyone once again acknowledges and that the senseless slaughter of the unborn will finally be stopped.

Archaeologist’s Research Support Bible’s Claims about King David

While some scholars have argued that the Bible’s description of King David ruling over a great kingdom is exaggerated, new research suggests that the land overseen by the Old Testament king was more well-developed than some critical experts believe. Prof. Yosef Garfinkel of the Institute of Archaeology at Hebrew University theorized in a paper published in the peer-reviewed Jerusalem Journal of Archaeology that King David ruled over an urban network of fortified cities, which supports the Bible’s description of his kingdom. Garfinkel outlined five different sites in his study — Khirbet Qeiyafa, Beth Shemesh, Lachish and Tell en-Naṣbeh and a country hill — finding that these locations had a fairly similar layout. Three of the sites had what’s known as a casemate wall, a double wall that typically protects a city or fortress. Some sites also contained Canaanite inscriptions, which the study suggested showed an “increasing demand for communication and a marker of centralized authority.”

As The Times of Israel reported, those who believe King David ruled over a few thousand Bedouin shepherds near Jerusalem fall into the “minimalist school” of archeological thought. The other school of thought aligns with the Bible’s description of King David ruling a vast kingdom. While Garfinkel’s paper appears to support the Bible’s account of King David’s kingdom, the professor said proving the Bible’s accuracy was not the purpose of the study. The scholar acknowledged that there are differing opinions on the usefulness of the Bible, but he argued, “that’s not science; that’s theology.”

“I hate to use the term ‘trying to prove the Bible’ because I’m not trying to prove anything,” Garfinkel told the outlet. “There are biblical traditions, and we can see if these have historical memories or not. … It doesn’t mean that everything, 100 percent, is historical memories. Sometimes there are mistakes. Sometimes there is wishful thinking. Sometimes there is ideology.”

Prof. Aren Maeir of Bar Ilan University believes that Garfinkel’s research is an “oversimplification,” referring to what he described as the paper’s “generalizations” as “problematic.” One of the issues is the controversy about whether Khirbet Qeiyafa was a Judahite or Canaanite city, according to Maeir. While the Bar Illan University professor agrees that historically, King David existed, he does not see enough evidence to determine the size of his kingdom.

“It’s like when a fisherman tells you about the type of fish he caught, and with each story, his arms get wider and wider,” Maeir told TOI. “Is it a sardine, a mackerel, or a blue whale? If you read the biblical text and take it literally, then it’s a blue whale. I think that probably there was a small kingdom in Jerusalem, but we don’t know the influence that this kingdom had.” Maeir, clearly in the minimalist camp, will find any out that he can to deny the data found in the Biblical text.

While archaeology will always be limited it what it can definitively “prove”, these types of archaeological finds are very important in the area of apologetics to show that the Bible’s history is not some made up myth or legend but is based on facts. Minimalists will always try to downplay these discoveries because they are unwilling to accept the historicity of the Bible. But as more discoveries are made, the historicity of the Bible gains stronger credibility.

Biblical Connections: The Bible clearly describes King David as being a king over a large empire. If the Bible is inspired by God, then these archaeological finds help to establish this with extra-biblical support.

PRAY: Pray that more and more discoveries will continue to be unearthed and that as they are found, it will lead unbelievers to the truth and validity of God’s Word.

New Digital ID System Attempts to Create a Global ID System

After three years in development, digital ID platform Worldcoin has officially launched. Worldcoin aims to provide its users with a verified digital identity, plus a cryptocurrency token named Worldcoin (WLD)—and a crypto wallet app. According to Worldcoin, advances in artificial intelligence have made it increasingly difficult to tell whether online activity, written text, digital artwork or really anything that exists on the internet came from real humans or AI. The company proposes to help resolve this confusion by deploying a sort of digital passport, based on what it calls “proof of personhood.”

Worldcoin’s platform verifies a user’s identity by scanning their iris to create personal, secure identification codes. The codes are saved on a decentralized blockchain, and the company claims they cannot be duplicated or spoofed to create false identities or engage in fraud. The company says that it signed up more than 2 million users in the beta testing stage. It now plans to roll out scanning operations in dozens of cities in 20 countries worldwide.

Much like fingerprints, every person’s iris pattern is different. The Orb scans a user’s iris and uses its structure to create a unique identification code called an IrisCode. The code is not associated with a user’s personal information—it exists solely to prevent people from acquiring more than one World ID. Worldcoin Orbs are available in Hong Kong, Tokyo, Singapore, Seoul, Paris, Lisbon, Mexico City, São Paulo, Nairobi, New York, San Francisco and approximately 25 other cities around the world.

The World App is the repository for your World ID. Worldcoin claims that the app preserves users’ privacy while also providing access to a growing roster of decentralized finance applications. The app functions as a crypto wallet, but its primary purpose is to store user credentials so that users can verify themselves on any third-party application. Besides your World ID, the app can hold Bitcoin, Ethereum and USDC, and the company says more cryptos will be supported in the future.

The project has already received a fair amount of criticism for its lofty goals and dubious methods. After launching, Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin expressed his concerns about Worldcoin in a blog post. He argued the platform’s iris scans could be harvesting more information than the company is letting on, or that someone could potentially scan someone else’s iris in order to determine whether they had a World ID. Worldcoin has also been criticized for widely promoting the platform in the developing world. A significant portion of new users are in Asia and Africa, raising concerns about exploitation.

Biblical Connections: During the Tribulation period, the kingdom of the Antichrist will attempt to control the economy of the entire world (Revelation 13:17). People for centuries have wondered how this could be possible? How could the Antichrist and the False Prophet truly control the entire global population and economy? It seemed impossible for so many centuries of Biblical interpretation. Systems like this Worldcoin will be needed in order to control the global economy. A system that could register the entire world could easily be used by the Antichrist and the False Prophet to control and dominate. If you combine a system like this identity system with another system that controls a global currency, then you could easily see how the events described in Revelation 13 could be accomplished. While Worldcoin itself is not some kind of evil corporation, systems like this could show that we are getting closer and closer to the time of the Tribulation.

PRAY: Pray that if we are getting closer to the day of Tribulation and the return of Christ in the Rapture that evangelism will continue and as many people as possible will be saved.

Iran Develops New Weapons to Threaten Israel and US

When many think of Iran, they immediately think of their nuclear missile program, which is itself a dangerous endeavor. However, Iran also has been working on building up other areas in their military arsenal. They are already known as a major player in drone technology and recently have unleashed some new weapons and technology.

First, Iran recently announced a new generation of Ghadir midget submarines and Fateh submarines will be made for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ navy. The Iranian navy is historically quite small, but Iran does operate several submarines, including several Russian submarines it has used since the 1990sas well as these newly constructed midget submarines. While it is unlikely that Iran would be able to meet the West on the open seas soon, a submarine force could cause trouble in the region.

Second, Iran continues to advance their drone technology to rival the United States and Israel. Recently, Iran unveiled a new armed drone that resembled the American MQ-9 Reaper drone, claiming that the drone even has the ability to reach Israel from its launch sites in Iran. The drone can fly non-stop for 24 hours with an operational range of around 1,200 miles and is capable of carrying a bomb payload of up to 660 pounds, according to the state-run IRNA News Agency. It also can reach a maximum speed of 130 mph and is "equipped with electronic warfare and intelligence-gathering systems," a report from IRNA added.

"Today, we can firmly introduce Iran as an advanced and technologic nation to the world," Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi said. Iran has in the past captured U.S. drones or pieces of them, but there's no evidence that it has taken a General Atomics' Reaper, which is flown by the U.S. Air Force and allied American nations as a "hunter-killer" drone that can operate at high altitudes for long hours and follow a target before attacking. North Korea in July showed off drones mirroring the Reaper, possibly designed from publicly available information about the aircraft.

This is not the first time that Iran has attempted to copy American drone technology. In December 2011, Iran seized an RQ-170 Sentinel flown by the CIA to monitor Iranian nuclear sites after it entered Iranian airspace from neighboring Afghanistan. Iran later reverse-engineered the drone to create their own variants. In 2019, Iran shot down a U.S. Navy RQ-4A Global Hawk in the Strait of Hormuz amid high tensions over its collapsed nuclear deal with world powers. Some experts are also concerned that Iran will get their hands on some of the military equipment that was left over from the US withdrawal from Iraq and try to reverse engineer more military technology wherever possible.

Perhaps these new technological advancements have also boosted Iran’s confidence in a potential conflict with the West. At the event marking the creation of the new subs, Iran officials stated “The presence of the US military and the military in Syrian territory is completely illegal. The Syrian government has not invited the American military, and the official request of the Syrian government is the withdrawal of the American military forces from the territory of this country as soon as possible.” Tehran’s comments appear to be a warning to the US that Iran could encourage proxy groups to continue to target Americans in Syria. The Iranian Foreign Ministry says the US is the “source” of instability in Syria. “We consider the US presence in the region to be contrary to regional peace,” Iran said. “This presence has always disturbed peace.”

Biblical Connection: Iran is one of the nations mentioned in Ezekiel 38-39 in the war of Gog and Magog against the nation of Israel. Their continued military buildup, along with their strong ties to Russia, continue to possibly lay the groundwork for this future war.

PRAY: Pray that Iran’s military aggression will be limited and will not lead to a war in the region in the immediate future.

How Does Russian Chaos Impact Prophecy?

The recent Russian attempted coup by Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin has created some chaos in Russia. Prigozhin was furious at the leaders of Russia’s Ministry of Defense, whom he repeatedly accused of sending tens of thousands of Russian soldiers to certain death through their corruption, incompetence, and cowardice. Over 20,000 of his own fighters were killed in the bloody battle for Bakhmut – a town of only 70,000 inhabitants before the war. He publicly blamed Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov for Russia’s casualties and battlefield struggles. This led him to try to a mild coup, which ultimately failed and led to his exile to Belarus. While the coup did little to impact Russia today, it did show that the nation is in serious chaos with the war in Ukraine.

This was by far the most serious threat to Putin’s 23-year rule. On the one hand, you’re not supposed to be able to defy Putin in Russia this way and get away with it. Yet the men who shot down and killed an estimated 13 Russian pilots on their way to Moscow were pardoned. And the man who openly defied Putin’s orders, discredited his rationale for the war in Ukraine, and whom Putin declared a traitor on public television, is still alive (at least for now). Putin has jailed and killed people for a lot less, so this makes him look weak before the Russian public and the elites.

On the other hand, Putin’s regime was tested over the weekend, and the regime ultimately held together. Yes, there were a lot of people who didn’t fire to stop Wagner troops from advancing, but there were virtually no defections inside the Russian government, the military, or among elites. The government is still functioning normally, and the war in Ukraine is going the way it did before the mutiny. Putin is more vulnerable on the back of it, but that’s more a long-term than an immediate issue. The likelihood of regime change in Russia remains near zero … until it happens. But these events show that the risks are more than initially thought.

How does this coup impact the war in Ukraine? The incident is a problem for Putin’s credibility with elites and the Russian public, and this political vulnerability could make him more sensitive to major battlefield losses in the coming months. If we get to a point later in the summer or fall where Ukraine starts to threaten Crimea or the land bridge, the risk of a major Russian escalation (such as blowing up the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant or using a tactical nuclear weapon) in response would go up.

Biblical Connection: How does this chaos impact Russia in prophecy? When the Ukraine war began, many students of Biblical prophecy saw this aggression as a sign that Russia could be moving toward the Gog-Magog prophecy of Ezekiel 38-39. However, with the weakness of the Russian forces in Ukraine, it is clear that Russia is not as strong military as many thought. If Putin feels threatened or feels desperate, then he really only has two options. First, he may try to sue for peace and turn his resources to reestablishing his strength in his own nation. This would seem to point away from more Russian aggression in the near future. However, if Putin feels pressure to continue to show Russia is strong on the world stage, it could lead to more Russian aggression, which could lead to something like the Gog-Magog situation, especially if Putin turns to Iran to help its military exploits across the globe.

PRAY: Pray that the situation in Ukraine would end peacefully and that Russian aggression would be limited and halted.

Are Technological Advances Moving toward Mark of the Beast?

The Elon Musk-founded Neuralink, the medical device company developing implantable brain-computer interface microchips, has received U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval to start human clinical trials as early as this summer. The company announced what it calls “an important first step” and expects to share more information on recruitment for the clinical trial in the near future. “We are excited to share that we have received the FDA’s approval to launch our first-in-human clinical study!” the company tweeted. “This is the result of incredible work by the Neuralink team in close collaboration with the FDA and represents an important first step that will one day allow our technology to help many people. Recruitment is not yet open for our clinical trial. We’ll announce more information on this soon!”

While details are still scant, the trial is expected to focus on Neuralink’s brain-computer interface (BCI), a Class III medical device that connects the brain to an external computer using a Bluetooth signal. With this connection, the device — a coin-sized chip called the “Link” — allows for continuous communication and is designed to not only “read” neural activity but “write” signals into the brain. Musk has said Neuralink could potentially restore eyesight and motor function for disabled patients and offer the ability to control electronic devices mentally. Neuralink does not currently have any clinical trials available for enrollment but has created a patient registry for those interested in participating in future trials.

Musk has said his inspiration behind the company in the first place was to be a “risk mitigation for digital super-intelligence.” “The reason I created Neuralink long-term as a risk mitigation for digital super-intelligence, in that if we are able to effectively achieve symbiosis with digital intelligence, then … the collective human will is better able to steer things in the direction that we’d like, or even with benign AI, at least go along for the ride,” he said in a 2021 interview. Among other goals, Musk said he’s confident Neuralink will ultimately allow paraplegic or even tetraplegic to operate a phone “faster than someone who has … working hands.”

Dr. Travis Losey, the vice-chair of the department of neurology and co-director of the Comprehensive Epilepsy Center at Loma Linda University in southern California, said in a 2021 interview that when it comes to the use of brain interface technology, the purpose should be to heal something that was harmed by disease or a disorder. “The core ethical issue with the brain-computer interface is similar to issues with medication,” he offered. “I think it’s only ethical to use medications when they are being used to restore function that has been lost or affected by a disease. The same principles would apply to brain-computer interfaces.”

Biblical Connections: While the technology that Mr. Musk and others are creating could be a great benefit in the medical field, it could also be possible that this type of technology or something close to it could be used in the future to create the Mark of the Beast, written about in Revelation 13. If one combines the idea of a completely digital currency with the combination of neurochips like this technology, then one could easily see how a Mark of the Beast could be pushed through in the times of the Antichrist that cannot be faked, that could be taken everywhere and that would allow for access to the global markets. While we should not reject technology meaninglessly, we also should recognize that the advancements could be getting us closer to the Rapture and the Tribulation.

PRAY: Pray that these types of technological advancements will be used worldwide for good and to truly help people.

North Korea Sentences 2-year-old after Parents Caught with Bible

If Christians in North Korea are found possessing a Bible, they face the death penalty, and family members, including children, are sentenced to life imprisonment, reveals a report by the U.S. State Department. This report includes an incident where a 2-year-old child was sentenced to life in a prison camp after his parents were caught with a Bible.

An estimated 70,000 Christians are incarcerated in North Korea. Prisoners face harsh conditions and physical mistreatment, says the State Department’s recently released 2022 International Religious Freedom Report.

The report attributes 90% of documented human rights abuses against both Christians and adherents of Shamanism to that country’s Ministry of State Security. It cites Korea Future, a nonprofit organization working on human rights in North Korea, as saying that the North Korean government engages in severe persecution of individuals who practice religious rituals, own religious items, or associate with religious individuals, with punishments ranging from arrest and detention to torture, forced labor, deportation and denial of the right to life.

Educational materials in North Korea are anti-religion according to people who have escaped from the country. They recount textbooks containing sections on Christian missionaries, characterizing them as committing “evil deeds,” such as rape, organ harvesting and murder. While North Korea’s constitution officially guarantees religious freedom — the communist dictatorship points to churches it has constructed in Pyongyang as proof — the State Department report contends these churches function merely as “showpieces for foreigners.”

One victim was quoted, “Officials worked us hard without feeding us properly … I suffered from malnutrition and was sure I would not survive. I kept having diarrhea, even when I only drank water, and I weighed just 77 pounds. Today I weigh 132 pounds, so I was like a skeleton back then.” Others described or showed signs of being beaten, ingesting contaminated food, being forced into uncomfortable positions for long periods of time, and verbal abuse.

For Christians, the report points out, the sentences are significantly more severe than for other religious beliefs, ranging from 15 years to life in prison. One case involved the 2009 arrest of a family based on their religious practices and possession of a Bible. The entire family, including a 2-year-old child, were given life sentences in political prison camps.

In December, the United States co-sponsored a United Nations resolution deploring North Korea’s “systematic, widespread, and gross violations of human rights.” The resolution expressed significant concern about abuses, including summary executions of individuals exercising their freedom of religion or belief.

In its 2021 report, “Organized Persecution – Documenting Religious Freedom Violations in North Korea,” the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom said the violations it documented in 2020 were “seemingly designed to remove all traces of Christianity.” “The campaign to exterminate all Christian adherents and institutions in North Korea has been brutally effective, and continues through the work of the Ministry of State Security, networks of informants that stretch into China, the presence of ‘no-exit’ political prison camps, executions, and an educational and organizational system that deters adherence through schools, workplaces, and neighborhoods,” said the report, which was based on interviews of survivors, witnesses and perpetrators of religious freedom violations.

For years, North Korea has ranked as the worst country globally when it comes to Christian persecution on Open Doors USA’s World Watch List. “Being discovered as a Christian is a death sentence in North Korea,” says Open Doors USA, adding, “If you aren’t killed instantly, you will be taken to a labor camp as a political criminal.”

Biblical Connections: It is sometimes easy to forget that there are Christians around the globe who place their lives on the line every day for the cause of Christ. One day in the future, this type of persecution will become global during the reign of the Antichrist.

PRAY: Pray for the believers in North Korea that God will protect them and their families. Pray for the persecuted church around the globe.

Digital Currency Continues to Create Controversy

Florida has become the first state in the nation to ban the use of any federally adopted central bank digital currency (CBDC) by excluding it from the definition of money within Florida’s Uniform Commercial Code. Under Senate Bill 7054, which Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law, both domestic and foreign-issued CBDCs are prohibited in order to “protect consumers against globalist efforts to adopt a worldwide digital currency.” “The government and large credit card companies should not have the power to shut off access to your hard-earned money because they disagree with your politics,” DeSantis said in a statement.

The signing of SB7054 comes just over a year after President Joe Biden signed an executive order last March to explore the creation of a U.S. version of a CBDC, which is a digital form of a country’s sovereign currency. Part of the reason for SB7054, said DeSantis, was that any CBDC “aims to increase government control over people’s finances, and we will not allow it.”

In a statement, DeSantis warned that any federally sanctioned CBDC, as proposed by the Biden administration, would “diminish the role of community banks and credit unions in our financial system as CBDC currency would be a direct liability of the federal government, rather than of a chartered financial institution, shrinking market lending power. “In Florida, we value personal freedom and won’t allow self-interested elites to chip away at our liberty,” he added.

While any Federal Reserve-backed digital currency won’t be used in Florida anytime soon, Texas is also taking steps that would allow the state to issue its own digital currency backed not by the U.S. dollar but by gold. Senate Bill 2334 would grant authority to the Texas comptroller to establish a digital currency backed by gold and to mint coins so that each unit of the digital currency would represent a particular fraction of a troy ounce of gold, the traditional unit of gold weight, according to the bill’s text.

If passed, SB2334 would also authorize the state comptroller to contract with a private vendor to establish the digital currency, as well as “a means to ensure that a person who holds the digital currency may readily transfer or assign the digital currency to any other person by electronic means” for everyday use. Those with digital currency accounts would see their balances fluctuate based on gold prices, which are currently around $2,000 per ounce.

While gold has been a trusted storage of wealth for millennia, it’s usually considered as either insurance or an investment rather than for everyday commerce. However, with central banks across the world increasing their gold reserves sharply in 2022 — up as much as 18% from the previous year — last year, the Federal Reserve of New York, along with other major banks, launched a pilot program for a digital dollar that will test the use of such tokens in the U.S. banking system.

According to Chuck Bentley, CEO of Crown Financial Ministries, since roughly one-third of all retail transactions in the U.S. are still conducted in cash, the implementation of a cashless economy is still likely a ways off. “It is not likely that this will go away as quickly as we may think for a couple of reasons: retailers want to retain the customers who use cash, and policymakers want to be sure that the ‘unbanked’ are not discriminated against,” he said. Still, the movement away from traditional forms of currency and to digital currency that could easily be controlled through a central governmental force could be a sign we are getting closer to the type of economy needed for the rise of the Antichrist.

Biblical Connection: Revelation 13:17 states “and that no one may buy or sell except one who has the mark or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.”

PRAY: Pray that as we are moving toward the end, that God will spare more time for unbelievers to come to salvation.

Secularists try to Keep Morals without God

Adults in more than a dozen countries say it’s not necessary to believe in God to lead moral lives or have good values, according to a recent study. The research was based on responses to the Pew Research Center’s Global Attitudes Survey conducted in the spring of 2022. When asked if it was “necessary or not necessary to believe in God in order to be moral and have good values,” majorities of respondents based in the secular Western European countries of Sweden (90%), France (77%), the United Kingdom (76%), the Netherlands (76%), Spain (74%), Belgium (69%), Italy (68%), Germany (62%) and Greece (60%) said it wasn’t necessary.

Most respondents in other countries located outside Western Europe but still considered to be part of Western civilization, including Australia (85%), Canada (73%) and the United States (65%), also maintained that a belief in God is not necessary to “be moral and have good values.” Majorities of respondents in the Eastern European nations of Poland (67%) and Hungary (63%), which have governments sympathetic to traditional values and religion, said the same. People in Israel and Singapore were more evenly divided on the question, with 50% and 54% of those surveyed, respectively, saying that a belief in God was a prerequisite for morality and having good values. Malaysia was the only country where the overwhelming majority of participants (78%) saw belief in God as necessary for leading a moral life with good values.

In the U.S., those who believe religion is not important (92%) and the religiously unaffiliated (88%) were most likely to view a belief in God as unnecessary for living a moral life and having good values. Majorities of all subgroups based on partisan identification, education level, gender and age group indicated that a belief in God was not necessary to live a moral life. Even among those who described religion as “important” to them, a narrow majority (51%) suggested that a moral life is possible in the absence of a belief in God.

The issue that arises with these types of beliefs is what is the moral standard that is being used and where is it coming from if it is not coming from God? If you eliminate God as the Giver of the moral standard for society, then the moral standard is simply created by either whoever is currently in power or by a simple majority of a given population. Thus, the standard can constantly change throughout history based on the whims of the current society. We can see how this works with the changing sexual revolution in western culture. Things that were considered taboo barely ten years ago are now being accepted as morally allowable. It also allows for different standards across the world. What is acceptable in America may be different than Denmark, China or Kenya. Therefore, there is no universal moral standard that applies for all humanity in this worldview.

Biblical Connection: Two passages come to mind when thinking about rejecting God’s moral standards. In the Book of Judges, Israel ended up in chaos because they continuously rejected the things of God. Several times in the book its states, “In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes.” In 2 Timothy 4:3-4, Paul writes that in the last days “For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers; and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables.” Turning away from the moral standards that God has established can only lead to chaos and destruction.

PRAY: Pray that the forces that are trying to destroy biblical morality in our society will be stopped and we will return to the standards that God has established.

Is the Foundation for Revelation 13 Being Laid?

The White House and the Federal Reserve have started to lay the groundwork for a programmable, trackable digital currency. The Biden administration released a sweeping executive order that directed numerous federal agencies to crack down on digital assets, including on popular cryptocurrencies, as well as to study the potential development of a central bank digital currency (CBDC). A CBDC would not be a digital version of the existing paper-based dollar, but rather an entirely new currency that would exist exclusively in a digital (meaning an electronic, non-physical) form.

In September 2022, the White House announced the completion of the CBDC reports. Although the administration did not officially propose a CBDC following the release of the reports, it did announce that it had developed “policy objectives” for a U.S. CBDC system. Biden also directed the leadership of the National Economic Council, National Security Council, Office of Science and Technology Policy and the Treasury Department to “meet regularly” with the Federal Reserve to further design a potential CBDC. Since September, the administration has worked tirelessly to advance the creation of a CBDC, through various working groups, speeches and coordinated efforts with non-government groups.

Under the various CBDC proposals floated by the Biden administration and the Federal Reserve, a U.S. CBDC would be programmable and traceable. Unlike with decentralized cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin, every transaction made using a CBDC could be easily traced to individual users by financial institutions, government agents and/or the Federal Reserve, depending on the details of the final design. Additionally, because a CBDC would be digital and programmable, rules could be imposed that limit spending on approved activities. So, if the federal government or Federal Reserve were to determine that Americans are buying too much gasoline, for example, it could stop people from using CBDCs at gas stations with a few clicks on a computer.

Perhaps most disturbing of all, however, is that under most of the CBDC designs discussed by the Biden administration and Federal Reserve, nearly all forms of ownership of CBDC money would also be strictly limited. Only large institutions such as banks, the federal government, and/or the Federal Reserve would actually have ownership of CBDCs. Everyone else would be prevented from having absolute control over their digital money. That means in this possible future, you will not own CBDC money, and you’ll have no privacy either.

Currently, when you go to the bank and deposit money into a checking or savings account, you immediately cease to own the money. The cash becomes the property of the bank. In most situations, the bank is required to return the money you provided to it at your request, but the cash ultimately belongs to the bank until you remove the money from your deposit account.

Under the current system, there is a way to regain control of your money, by withdrawing cash from a deposit account, and privacy laws prevent banks in many situations from giving away details about your financial accounts to third parties, including the government. But because CBDCs would only exist in digital form in a deposit account, and because they would be programmed to possibly feed data to the government, there would be no way for you to physically take CBDCs out of a depository account, store them privately, own them directly, or use them without being surveilled by a large institution.

Regardless of where your CBDCs are held, it’s likely the federal government would have access to data about your purchases and other information – a design choice CBDC supporters say is necessary so that officials can limit criminal activity. The only significant privacy questions that remain in the minds of those who support CBDCs are about the extent of the data collection.

Biblical Connection: For centuries people have wondered how it would be possible for the events of Revelation 13:16-17 to occur, where the Antichrist and False Prophet would be able to stop people from purchasing. Perhaps the groundwork for this type of system is not too far off.

PRAY: Pray that the forces of evil will not be able to use this type of technology to impact the world before the time of the Tribulation.

Living in the Last Days

A large number of Americans across various religious backgrounds believe we are living in the last days of humanity, a recent study showed. Nearly two in five Americans, including both Christians and the religiously unaffiliated, responded affirmatively when asked if they believe “we are living in the end times,” according to a Pew research study. The study addressed Americans’ views regarding the earth, environmentalism and climate change, but a specific portion addressed views about the end of the world.

 Even though a majority of respondents at 58% did not believe we are living in the end times, four in 10, or 39% said they believe we are. The majority of those who believe the end is near were self-professed Christians, 47% of whom believe we are living in the last days. The study further broke down the statistics to determine that 14% of such Christians believe that the end of the world will culminate with the return of Jesus Christ and that the conditions of the world will worsen until then.

 Black Protestants (76%) and evangelicals (63%) were the most likely to believe we are living in the end times. Mainline Protestants (31%) and Roman Catholics (27%) were less likely to assert they are living in the last days. These views are also divided along political lines with 45% of Republicans saying we are currently at the end of times as compared to 33% of Democrats. Geography also had an influence with 48% of adults in Southern states saying that we are at the end of times as compared to 37% in the Midwest, 34% in the Northeast, and 31% in the West.

 Among those who adhere to a non-Christian religion, nearly three in 10 (29%) said they think the world is wrapping up. A quarter of U.S. adults overall said they believe they we are living at the end of the world but do not hold such specific views about how it will take place, according to the study. The study also found that “most U.S. adults – including a solid majority of Christians and large numbers of people who identify with other religious traditions – consider the Earth sacred and believe God gave humans a duty to care for it,” the researchers said. The survey cited an article in The Journal of Religion and Health which noted a rise in both secular and religious “apocalypticism” attributed to the COVID-19 pandemic.

 One of the great challenges we have in this area is because of the nature of the imminent return of Christ — meaning Jesus could return at any time — essentially every generation from the time of Paul until now has thought it was in the last generation before the return of Christ. Paul wrote 1-2 Thessalonians to believers who were concerned they had missed the return of Christ. Many of the reformers believed  the return of Christ would occur during their lifetime. Jonathan Edwards in the early 1700s believed the Great Awakening would lead into the return of Christ. Thus, it is not unique for a large segment of the population to believe  Christ could return soon.

 However, there are important signs that have occurred in the last 100 years that seem to hint the return of Christ could be on the horizon. First, Israel, erased from the map for thousands of years, has been reestablished as a nation. This is critical as so many of the prophecies of the end times require a national Israel. Second, technology has allowed for the world to “grow smaller”, both in terms of communications and travel, which would allow for the Antichrist to control the world much easier. Finally, the existence of weapons of mass destruction both resemble some of the events in the book of Revelation as well as put a limit on how long the earth will exist in its current format before a nuclear apocalypse could occur. These events lend credence that we may be rapidly approaching the return of Christ. 

 Biblical Connections: Matthew 24:36 - “But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, but My Father only.”

 PRAY: Pray that if the coming of Christ is soon and the Rapture is on the horizon that we will be faithful to witness to as many people as possible in the time that remains.

Doomsday Clock Moved to Closest Setting Since the End of World War 2

The world is closer to annihilation than it has ever been since the first nuclear bombs were released at the close of World War II, The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists said recently. The time on the Doomsday Clock moved forward from 100 seconds to midnight to 90 seconds to midnight. It’s a reset of what has come to be known as the Doomsday Clock, a decades long project of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists featuring a clock face where midnight represents Armageddon.

Between Russia's nuclear brinkmanship in its war on Ukraine, the real threats of climate change becoming increasingly dire and ongoing concerns about more possible pandemics caused by humans encroaching on formerly wild areas, the Bulletin chose to set the clock the closest to midnight yet. The world is facing a gathering storm of extinction-level consequences, exacerbated by the illegal invasion of Ukraine by Russia. This explains the latest advance of the clock, said Mary Robinson, former president of Ireland and former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. "The threats are even more acute, and the failures of leadership even more damning. We live today in a world of interlocking crises, each illustrating the unwillingness of leaders to act in the true long-term interests of their people," she said.

The Bulletin was founded in 1945 by Albert Einstein and University of Chicago scientists who helped develop the first atomic weapons at the Manhattan Project. Two years later they launched the clock as a way to warn humanity just how close to nuclear apocalypse the world was. "It's a way to remind people of issues that are so big they pose a threat to civilization as a whole," said Steve Fetter, a professor of public policy at the University of Maryland and member of the Bulletin's Science and Security Board, which sets the clock each year.

The clock has ticked minutes or seconds toward or away from catastrophe over the years. Wars bring it closer, treaties and cooperation further away. For the past two years, it has been at 100 seconds to midnight. The movement of the clock to just 90 seconds to midnight sends a message that the world's situation is urgent, with possible broad consequences and long-standing effects, said the Bulletin's president, Rachel Bronson. "What we're conveying with this clock move is things are not going in the right direction, and they haven't been going in the right direction. Those who are listening say 'The world doesn't feel safer today,' – they're not alone," she said.

Their hope is that this year's announcement will focus on world awareness and push people toward action and away from a business-as-usual mindset. Scientists are unequivocal, said Robinson. "Leaders, wake up! This is your responsibility. This is on your watch," she said. The clock ticked forward largely, though not exclusively, because of the nuclear dangers posed by the war in Ukraine, the Bulletin said in its statement. "Russia’s thinly veiled threats to use nuclear weapons remind the world that escalation of the conflict – by accident, intention, or miscalculation – is a terrible risk. The possibility that the conflict could spin out of anyone’s control remains high," the statement read.

Biblical Connection: Matthew 24:36 states, “But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, but My Father only.” While no one knows the time of Jesus’ Return, the dramatic events of the last few years certainly seem to portray a dark future. How much longer the world can continue to move forward before all-out nuclear war seems to lessen every year.

PRAY: Pray that as many people as possible will hear the Gospel and be saved before the time finally comes for Jesus to return for His bride.

Does Belief in the Rapture lead to “Religious Trauma”?

Could teaching what’s described in the Bible as a “blessed hope” actually be a source of anxiety and trauma? An article published by CNN with the headline, “For some Christians, ‘rapture anxiety’ can take a lifetime to heal,” depicts the eschatological doctrine of the imminent return of Jesus Christ for His Church as a “chronic problem.” The article also describes the teaching as “recognized by some faith experts and mental health professionals as a type of religious trauma.”

Featuring a stock photo with the caption, “Some Christians develop fears related to teachings of the rapture,” the article profiles two women who have battled so-called rapture anxiety, including April Ajoy, who recalled waking up to a quiet home as a 13-year-old girl and fearing she had missed the prophetic End Times event. The article reads: “Ajoy’s mind began churning, trying to remember, trying to make plans. When was the last time she had sinned? Should she refuse the mark of the beast? At least, she thought, if she was put to the guillotine during the time of tribulation, it would be a quick death.”

Describing the event as when “righteous Christians ascend into heaven, while the rest are left behind to suffer,” CNN adds, “However it happens, it is something to be both feared and welcomed, to be prayed about and prepared for every moment of a believer’s life.” Another woman, Georgia resident Chelsea Wilson, told the cable news outlet that she grew up in the Evangelical “community” and believed the End Times teaching was akin to a “scary campfire story.” CNN points to social media chatter from “exvangelicals” — former Evangelical Christians who have since turned to unbelief — who were subjected to “violent rapture-themed films” or spent their childhood years “crying themselves to sleep thinking about people and pets that would be left behind when the end finally came.”

For analysis of the doctrine and its impact on believers, CNN reached out to Darren Slade, president and CEO of the Global Center for Religious Research, a “non-religiously affiliated academic society and publishing house.” Slade, whose website states “certain religious contexts have also been responsible for a number of traumatic experiences for people all around the globe,” told CNN that “rapture anxiety” is a “real thing” and a “chronic problem.” “This is a new area of study, but in general, our research has revealed that religious trauma leads to an increase of anxiety, depression, paranoia and even some OCD-like behaviors: ‘I need to say this prayer of salvation so many times,’ ‘I need to confess my sins so often,’” he was quoted as saying. But on Slade’s own website, he acknowledges that “the academic study of religious trauma remains in its infancy when compared to other studies in mental health.”

While belief in the Rapture has always been attacked by other Christian groups who hold other eschatological positions, this is perhaps the first time a major news network has attempted to attack the belief for causing “trauma”. This is simply a lie. Millions of Christians throughout the world hold to the belief in the Rapture and are not suffering from “trauma”. In fact, they find peace from knowing that one day Christ will return for His Bride. While it can be true that someone may misunderstand the position or have been taught bad theology, to characterize a belief positively held by millions as a cause of trauma because of a few claims is not realistic and could even be viewed as a dishonest attack on a biblical belief.

Biblical Connection: 1 Thessalonians teaches about the Rapture when Jesus will call His Bride home to heaven.

PRAY: Pray that those who have been wrongly taught that belief in the Rapture is harmful will experience the truth!

Signs of Apostasy on the Rise?

At least a third of senior pastors in the United States believe one can earn a place in Heaven by simply being a good person, according to a nationwide survey. The findings were among several surprising responses as part of a survey conducted earlier this year by the Cultural Research Center at Arizona Christian University. The American Worldview Inventory 2022 examined more than three dozen beliefs held by pastors.

Researchers found that in addition to believing that people can merit salvation based solely on their good works, one-third or more of senior pastors surveyed also believe the Holy Spirit is not a person but rather “a symbol of God’s power.” Others said that moral truth is subjective; sexual relations between two unmarried people who love each other is “morally acceptable” and biblical teaching on abortion is “ambiguous.” At least a third of those surveyed also said they believe “socialism is preferable to capitalism and that allowing property ownership facilitates economic injustice,” which researchers say could point to the “increase of cultural and political influence into the church.”

After data reported earlier this year found just 37% of Christian pastors have a biblical worldview, the latest CRC report analyzed that research across all major U.S. denominations. They found that a “loss of biblical belief is prevalent among pastors in all denominational groupings.”

 The current report focuses on roughly half of those beliefs, revealing that a shockingly large percentage reject biblical teaching on some of the most basic Christian beliefs. Among Evangelical pastors, for example, around 43% said they do not believe that the personal accumulation of wealth is provided by God for the individual to manage those resources for God’s purposes.

 Another 39% of Evangelical pastors surveyed said there is no absolute moral truth and that “each individual must determine their own truth.” Roughly the same percentage (38%) didn’t answer in the affirmative when asked if “human life is sacred,” while 37% said having faith, in general, is more important than in what — or more specifically, Whom — one has faith. Perhaps most startlingly, three in 10 Evangelical pastors (30%) didn’t answer in the affirmative if their salvation is based on having confessed their sins and accepting Jesus Christ as their savior.

George Barna, CRC’s director of research, said the results could be linked to another trend he observed in the data. “While studying the spiritual behavioral patterns of pastors, it became evident that a large share of them do not have a regular spiritual routine,” Barna said. “There was a correlation between possessing biblical beliefs and a consistent regimen of Bible reading, prayer, worship and confession. In some of the denominational groupings, a majority of pastors do not engage in those foundational spiritual practices on a regular basis,” he added. “Yet, among the pastors who have the most consistently biblical beliefs, there is also a daily routine that incorporates all of those disciplines.”

 Biblical Connections: 2 Thessalonians 2:3 talks about a falling away or apostasy (Greek, apostasia) that will occur before the Tribulation and the rise of the Antichrist. While there has always been a segment of Christianity that has dealt with false teachers and falling away, it seems that increased secularization in the West has dramatically increased this push away from Biblical truth that has been accepted for centuries to the point that even many pastors have now fallen into this deceptive trap. These are not interpretive challenges that good people can disagree on but are instead the very core of the Christian faith. Perhaps we are seeing the beginnings of this falling away. Only time will tell.

 PRAY: Pray for the pastors that have turned away from the truth of God’s Word. Pray for a return to the faith that has stood for over 2,000 years.

Russia and China Use Ukraine to Pressure Biden’s Foreign Policy

As Russian tanks amassed along the frozen marshes of the Belarus border with Ukraine on January 25, President Joe Biden put 8,500 U.S. troops on high alert for possible deployment. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) moved additional fighter jets and naval ships toward Eastern Europe. “I have made it clear early on to President Putin that if he were to move into Ukraine, that there’d be severe consequences,” Biden said.

However, the opposite has happened: Putin’s gamesmanship has exacted damaging consequences on the U.S. and the Biden Administration. Putin wants to assert Russia’s relevance on the world stage, embarrass Biden, and test the unity of NATO countries. He’s already well on his way to achieving those ends. Putin has dragged Biden into responding to a frustrating series of escalations, complicating the U.S. response to Russia’s actions, distracting from other diplomatic priorities, and upping the political stakes for Biden. His approval ratings sagged after a turbulent withdrawal from Afghanistan last summer led the Taliban to take control of the country. Ukraine is Biden’s second major foreign policy test as President.

Putin’s gamble is paying off—at least in the short term. “He’s back in the center of attention,” says Charles Kupchan, a professor of international affairs at Georgetown University and former director of European affairs on President Bill Clinton’s National Security Council. “Putin craves being at the table and profoundly laments the Soviet Union’s dismantlement and Russia’s fall from grace.”

Putin now has the world’s attention, forcing the U.S. and NATO to hand formal written responses to Russia’s list of demands that Western forces withdraw from Eastern Europe and disallow any other former Soviet-bloc nations, like Ukraine, from joining the alliance. Secretary of State Antony Blinken cautioned NATO would not close its “open-door” policy to new members but said there was room for negotiation in other areas. “Whether they choose the path of diplomacy and dialogue, whether they decide to renew aggression against Ukraine,” he said, “we’re prepared either way.”

The standoff is proving a major challenge for Biden. So far Putin has played his hand to his advantage. Putin has “shown that he is still very relevant in geopolitical terms,” says Matt Pottinger, who was President Donald Trump’s deputy national security advisor. “He’s amassed leverage to extract concessions that Russians have wanted since soon after the close of the Cold War 30 years ago.”

Biden’s aides spent days cleaning up his confusing responses during a January 19 White House press conference. He said if Putin launches a “minor incursion” the U.S. and allies will “end up having a fight about what to do and not do.” The next day, Biden tried to clarify that “any assembled Russian units” moving across the Ukrainian border would be considered “an invasion” and there would be a “severe and coordinated economic response.”

Putin’s show of force comes at a time when Biden’s foreign policy apparatus wants to focus on countering China’s growing influence in the Pacific. While much of the world’s attention was on the crisis in Ukraine, China flew a large formation of warplanes toward Taiwan. “The White House, they want to focus on China, because they correctly see that as the big strategic challenge for the next three or four decades, and they were sort of hoping that Russia would remain quiet. Well, Russia didn’t accommodate,” says Steven Pifer, U.S. ambassador to Ukraine from 1998 to 2000.

Ryan Crocker, a retired diplomat who served as ambassador in Lebanon, Kuwait, Syria, Pakistan, Iraq and Afghanistan over his 37-year career, believes Biden’s mishandling of the withdrawal from Afghanistan caught the attention Russia and China. Following his decision to abruptly pull out of America’s longest war, Biden failed to closely consult and coordinate with Western partners, essentially leaving them to scamper for the exits, Crocker said. “The whole world saw what happened,” Crocker says. “He’s got to show that he can do a whole lot better on another major international issue than he did on Afghanistan.”

PRAY: Pray for wisdom for President Biden and his foreign policy advisors and for opportunities to deescalate rising tensions.

Can We Still Believe in the Rapture?

The Rapture Changes Everything

“The Lord himself will come down from heaven … and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.”

1 Thessalonians 4:16-17

 One of the most exciting and compelling prophetic events described in the Bible is the rapture of the church. It will occur instantaneously and without warning. Suddenly, millions of people will be missing—caught up to heaven to meet the Savior in the air. While this prophetic promise is of great comfort and assurance to believers, it will have a shocking impact on those who are left behind.

 At the moment of the rapture, the bodies of all believers who have died with faith in Christ since the day of Pentecost will suddenly be transformed into new, living, immortal, resurrected bodies. Even those whose bodies have long since decayed or whose ashes have been scattered across the oceans will receive a new body. This new body will be joined together with the person’s spirit, which Jesus brings with Him from heaven. Then the bodies of those who are alive on earth and have accepted Christ as their Savior will also be instantly translated into new, immortal bodies.

 Notice the similarity between the descriptions of the Rapture in 1 Corinthians 15:51-53 and 2 Thessalonians 4:15-18. When Christ comes to take His church (all believers) to heaven in fulfillment of His promise in John 14:1-3, He will include all New Testament believers, both the living and the dead.

 Together, all believers will be instantly transported into heaven to meet their loved ones “in the clouds” and then to meet the Lord in the air. Those who have rejected the gift of salvation through Jesus Christ and remain on earth will witness a miraculous event of astonishing proportions—the sudden mass disappearance of millions upon millions of Christians from the face of the earth.

 Scripture calls the Rapture “the blessed hope” (Titus 2:13) because this event provides comfort not only to those believers who are concerned about the coming tribulations of the last days, but also to those who long to be reunited with their departed loved ones who shared faith in Christ.

 The Second Coming, which encompasses both the Rapture and the glorious appearing, is one of the most significant events mentioned in the entire Bible. The New Testament alone has 321 references to this awesome event, making it the second-most prominent doctrine presented in Scripture after the doctrine of salvation. The concept of the Second Coming is clearly taught in both the Old and New Testaments. It is also affirmed in the doctrinal statement of every major Christian denomination.

 On average, the New Testament mentions the Second Coming in one out of every 30 verses, and it is mentioned in every chapter of 1 and 2 Thessalonians, the first books written for the early church. Moreover, all nine New Testament authors mention the Second Coming, and 23 of the 27 New Testament books reference it.

 While various views exist as to when the Rapture will occur (before, during, or after the Tribulation), all must acknowledge that there will be a rapture. The only real question is, when will it occur? The chief characteristic of the Rapture is that it will be sudden and will catch people by surprise.

 “Of that day and hour no one knows” (Matthew 24:36), which is why we should live so as to “be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour when you do not expect” (Matthew 24:44). Indeed, throughout the ages, the Rapture has appeared imminent to Christians of every generation. And one day He will! The trumpet will sound, the archangel will shout, and we will all go home to be with Jesus.

God intended His church to be motivated to holy living, fervent evangelism, and missionary concern by the study of the second coming of Christ. If Jesus is indeed coming again, then we who are Christians need to let the world know it!

Are We Nearing the Rapture?

One of the signs of the end times and return of Christ, mentioned in 2 Thessalonians 2:3, is a falling away or a great apostasy (Greek, apostasia). Many have wondered when this type of falling away from the faith would occur and it is possible that we may be seeing the beginning of this event. The major areas that are contributing to this quick decline in belief in the Western world are the decline of faith in Europe, the decline of faith in the United States and the impact of the coronavirus.

First, Christianity is on major life support in Europe. Once a dominant Christian stronghold that sent missionaries all around the globe, Europe no longer has any strong Christian presence. For example, a recent Guardian report showed that 59 percent of young people aged 18-29 never attend religious services and 70 percent identify as non-religious. Secularism has destroyed Christianity throughout most of Europe and entire generations are no being raised in completely secular environments. The bastion of Christendom for so many centuries is now devoid of Christ.

Second, the United States, while not as secular as Europe, is quickly as it way to following in its footsteps. Secularism is on the rise and Christianity is suffering greatly. Even basic Christian beliefs are being thrown aside by the culture at large and even many who claim the Christian faith. In a recent State of Theology survey produced by Lifeway, 52 percent of Americans believe that Jesus was simply a great teacher, but not God. Even more troubling, 30 percent of self-identified Evangelicals also agreed that Jesus was a great teacher but not God. This is not a highly contested or debated theological concept but is a foundational theological belief in order to consider oneself a Christian. These types of surveys show that American Christianity is rapidly on a similar trajectory to that of Europe.

Finally, the coronavirus may also help to contribute to this rise in apostasy. Many church attenders have not been able to attend church for many months. Some have been able to watch digitally but many do not have access to the technology that allows for easy streaming. Churches are also struggling to survive during this pandemic. A recent Barna study showed that twenty percent of churches in America could be in danger of closing within the next 18 months, both because of financial struggles and because many churchgoers who attended prior to the coronavirus have not returned when the churches have been able to reopen. It is possible a decline in the coronavirus could help with these numbers, but it is still a significant blow to churches in a time when churches are needed to stem the tide in secularism. These trends could change and a great apostasy away from Christianity can be avoided.

Perhaps while Europe and America decline, other regions of the world will drive Christianity forward. However, it is also very possible that the stage is being set for the return of Christ and this rapid turn away from Christianity is another step in this direction. We need to be in prayer for our nation, for our churches, for our pastors and we need to be prepared to reach a world that is no longer accepting of basic Christian beliefs and morality. While we anxiously anticipate the return of Christ with an eye to the sky, we also need to work as diligently as possible to reach as many as we can with the Gospel of Jesus.

Pray our nation will experience a great revival and turn away from the roots of secularism that have taken hold in so many through our nation and the world.

Could the Coronavirus be setting the stage for the Rise of the Antichrist?

And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark,

or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.

Revelation 13:17

One of the questions that many Christians are asking is how the coronavirus could be impacting prophecy and the end times. While the virus itself is not a prophetic event, it could be setting the stage for the antichrist in three main areas: stronger government regulations (especially with regards to religious services), a push for a one world government and a possible move to both a cashless and global economy.

First, the coronavirus has created stronger government regulations throughout much of the world, even in most of the democratic nations that tend to be the most free. While some government regulations are necessary, continually increasing power and control in the hands of a few politicians and allowing them to make decisions on when people can leave their houses, which stores are allowed to be open and even when or if people are allowed to attend religious services. While it is true that many of these regulations may be lessoned if the virus lessens, it is also establishing a framework that would allow very few people massive control throughout the world. Perhaps the antichrist will one day be able to use this same type of structure to control and regulate the world, especially if people assume that the Rapture is some type of pandemic event.

Second, many, such as Al Gore, have taken the pandemic as an opportunity to push for a stronger one world government. When you combine this push for a single power in control with the stronger regulations that have occurred, it becomes very easy to see how someone like the antichrist could easily gain control of enough power to take control of the major nations of the world. Some have always wondered how the antichrist could possibly gain so much power and make so many changes so quickly during the time of the Tribulation. Perhaps this pandemic has shown us a blueprint of how something like this could occur. We would never have dreamed that so much of our daily life could be changed as quickly as it did in March. The Rapture, perhaps seen by the world as some type of pandemic, could very well be a catalyst that then allows the antichrist to rise to power in a similar manner.

Finally, the coronavirus has caused and will continue to cause dramatic changes to not only the economy of the United States, but also the entire world. Many have already been pushing for a cashless society for years and the pandemic has even heightened these calls.

A recent New York Times article was published entitled “Our Cash-Free Future Is Getting Closer: The pandemic is propelling a shift toward a cashless society in ways that no other single event has.” Liz Alderman writes, “Cash was already being edged out in many countries as urban consumers paid increasingly with apps and cards for even the smallest purchases. But the coronavirus is accelerating a shift toward a cashless future, raising new calculations for merchants and enriching the digital payments industry.”

Why would this be important? For centuries people have wondered how the antichrist could use the mark of the beast to control buying and selling of goods (Rev. 13:17). All of the different currencies and cash would make that a very difficult proposition. However, a cashless society makes this much easier, as the government could simply block off someone’s account and cards and completely cut off their ability to purchase goods. While it is not definitive that the coronavirus is setting the stage for the antichrist’s rise, these events do offer a blueprint on how his rise to power could occur in the future.