1. Increase of wars and rumors of war
-Joel 3:9-10; & Matt. 24:6-7
"You will be hearing of wars and
rumors of wars. See that you are not
frightened, for those things must take place,
but that is not yet the end. For nation will
rise against nation, and kingdom against
kingdom, and in various places there will be
famines and earthquakes."
Greek term ethnos, "nations", is
used in Matthew 24. Therefore, many conflicts
between tribes and ethnic groups world-wide
will be experienced during the end times.
Such tragedies have recently occured in
Armenia, Rwanda, Zaire, Burundi, Tanzania,
Sri Lanka, Georgia, Northern Iran, Mexico,
Tibet, Cambodia, and Bosnia.
"Peace, peace, but there is no
peace!" (Jeremiah 6:14). Since the
Berlin Wall came down in November 1989,
global conflicts have doubled according to
the National Defense Council Foundation
headquartered in Washinton, D.C. In year the
wall came down there were 35 conflicts, in
1995 there were 71.
Suitcase Nuclear Bombs… A respected
Russian scientist and former adviser to
President Boris Yeltsin said on October 2,
1997 that Moscow secretly developed nuclear
"suitcase bombs" under KGB orders
in the 1970s specifically for terrorist
purposes. Alexei Yablokov, who served on the
Russian National Security Council,
contradicted statements by Russian officials
denying the existence of the weapons and
buttressed claims that many of them have gone
missing.
Former Russian National Security Adviser
General Alexander Lebed alleged that up to
100 portable bombs, made up to look like
suitcases, were unaccounted for since the
1991 breakup of the Soviet Union. According
to Lebed, who has agreed to testify before
the House committee later this month, the
devices have an explosive capacity of one
kiloton—the equivalent of 1,000 tons of
TNT — can be activated by a single
person and could kill as many as 100,000
people.
2. Extreme
materialism -2 Tim. 3:1-2; & Rev.
3:14-19
3. Lawlessness
- Ps. 78:8; & Prov. 30:11-14; 2 Tim.
3:2-3
Lawlessness and violence
(Matthew 24:12)
"Because
lawlessness is increased, most people's love
will grow cold."
In spite of the fact that fewer than four of
every 10 crimes are reported in America in
the last 30 years there has been a 560%
increase in violent crime in America. In
1992, an estimated 6.6 million Americans were
victims of violent crimes. A murder is
reported to the police every 21 minutes.
More than 70,000 women are sexually assaulted
every year in the United States. Sexual
assault is the fasting growing violent crime
occurring to a women every 45 seconds.
Doctors in the United States perform over 1.5
million abortions per year... that's one for
every two live births. Over 99% of all U.S.
abortions have nothing to do with the life or
health of the women - they are done simply
because of her desire for convenience,
absence of distress, and so-called happiness
of the mother.
Breakdown of Marriage: America has the
highest incidence of divorce in the Western
industrialized nations. Families are
disintegrating: Child abuse is at epidemic
proportions. Youth in trouble: Youth gangs
have for years been a problem in Los Angeles,
where they account for about half of the
city's murders. But gangs are now responsible
for 41 percent of the homicides in Omaha,
Nebraska; drive-by shootings are up 3,000
percent in Wichita, Kansas; and Oklahoma City
is home to 80 separate gangs. Violent street
gangs are now operating in 94 percent of all
medium and large-sized cities.
Drug use among America's teens has doubled
since 1992.
4. Population
explosion - Gen. 6:1
5. Increase in
speed and knowledge -Dan. 12:14
"But as for you, Daniel, conceal
these words and seal up the book until the
end of time; many will go back and forth, and
knowledge will increase."
Knowledge is increasing in quantum leaps
especially in the fields of computers and
physics.
Computers
Computer processors are doubling in speed and
power about every two years just as Gordon
Morre, Intel cofounder predicted in 1965
(Moore's Law). The Intel Corporation's
produced its first microprocessor, the Intel
4004 in 1971. It operated at 108KHz (0.06
MIPS) and contained 23 hundred transitors.
MIP is an acronym for "millions of
instructions per second."
When I started using PC's in 1985, the
processor was an Intel 8088 which ran at
4.77MHz (0.75 MIPS) and contained 29 thousand
transitors. The Intel 80286, better knows as
an AT system operated at 2.66 MIPS. The Intel
80386 released in 1985 operated at 11.4 MIPS.
The Intel 80486, released in 1989 operated at
41.0 MIPS. The 80586 trademark named
"Pentium" released in 1993 operates
at 219 MIPS. The Pentium Pro released in
1996, operated at 150MHz (now 200MHz) and
contained 5.5 million transitors, and
operates at 400 MIPS). On May 7, 1997 the
same Corporation released the Pentium II MMX
processor with 7.5 million transistors ran at
300MHz and an astounding 750 MIPS. The latest
Pentium II processor to be released in the
first quarter of 1999 runs at 500MHz.
In 1998 IBM will release microprocessor chips
that use copper instead of aluminum for
tracings. These new chips will run at a
whopping 1GHz. Intel reportedly will release
new chips using copper for PC beginning in
the year 2002.
Intel Corp., Advanced Micro Devices Inc. and
Motorola Corp. are investing $250 million
over the next five years in new technology.
They have hired scientists in three federal
research laboratories to develop chips for
making computers 100 times faster with
features like 3-D graphics in affordable
machines. The new technique under development
employs ultra-violet light to etch lines
smaller than one-thousandth the width of a
strand of human hair - that's 60% smaller
than the patterns in the most sophisticated
chips now available.
The aim is to be able to cram 1 billion
transistors onto each thumbnail-size chip by
2011, a goal of Intel chairman Andrew Grove.
Astrophysicist Mike Warren needed a super
computer but couldn't get the computation
time he needed on the machines at Los Alamos
National Laboratory so he built his own! His
"home-made" super-computer with
off-the-shelf components. The total price for
this super computer which is ranked 100th
fastest computer in the world is a dirt-cheap
$313,000. His system is composed of 140
533MHz Alpha 21164A processors using Linux as
the operating system, and connected with
ordinary Ethernet equipment and 35.8 GB of
memory can perform an astounding 48.5 billion
calculations a second!
Powerful systems are also becoming more and
more compact. IBM is now working on a human
networking system that would use a person's
body as the network media. You can exchange
information by simply shaking hands with
another person.
Stanford University and the Air Force are
currently testing a system that links
electrical signals from the human brain to
computers. This will make it possible for
users to interact with computer systems
merely by thinking.
Physics
In the TV series and movies, Star Trek, the
propulsion system of the U.S.S. Enterprise
was matter-antimatter. Physicists at the
European Laboratory for Particle Physics,
near Geneva, have created the first complete
atoms of antimatter ever seen in nature by
man. In antimatter, the electrical charges of
all component particles are reversed. If an
antimatter atom comes into contact with an
ordinary matter atom, the two atoms destroy
each other in a violent flash of energy.
But as for you,
Daniel, conceal these words and seal up the
book until the end of time; many will go back
and forth, and knowledge will increase."
Many will go back and
forth both literally and virtually. Literally
using airplanes and virtually using global
computer networks.
Literal
movement… at MACH 2.04
Since the British and French aircraft
Concorde entered scheduled service in 1976,
over 3 million passengers have traveled
across the Atlantic Ocean at MACH 2.04 or
1,350 mph.
Virtual movement… at the
Speed of Light!
The rise of the Internet for commercial and
personal use is unprecedented (21% of adults
or 40 million people in 1997, up from 21.5
million in 1996). So many people have signed
up for online services that telephone systems
have been unable in areas to provide
emergency services.
Bill Gates & Craig McCraw have created
the Teledesic Corporation. The goal of this
company, beginning in 2000, is to launch 3000
Volkswagen-sized low-altitude satellites to
provide high speed, fiber-optic quality
communications to 99% of the globe. The
network supposedly will allow anyone on earth
the ability to connect to the Internet and
revolutionize telecommunications technology.
Bill Gates announced on October 11, 1997 that
Teledisc has made an agreement with the
Russian government to use converted SS20
rockets, originally designed to deliver
nuclear warheads, to launch the low earth
orbit satellites.
On Sunday October 30, 1998, the
Washington-based company, Iridium Technology,
launched communication satellites. When
complete its 66-satellite global
communications network will allow
individuals, corportations, and the United
States military services to talk using
special Motorola cell phones to anyone in the
world from anywhere in the world at any time.
The special phones are priced at $3,000 each
and connection times are charged at a rate of
$6 per minute.
6. Departure from
the Christian faith - 2 Thess. 2:3; 1
Tim. 4:1, 3-4; 2 Tim. 3:5; 4:3-4; 2 Pet.
3:3-4
7. Intense demonic
activity - Gen. 6:1-4: 1 Tim. 4:1-3
8. Unification of
the world's religious, political, and
economic systems
Rev. 13:4-8, 16-17; 17:1-18; 18:1-24
Preparations for the
"Mark of the Beast" (Revelation
13:16-18)
"And he causes all, the small and the
great, and the rich and the poor, and the
free men and the slaves, to be given a mark
on their right hand or on their forehead, and
he provides that no one will be able to buy
or to sell, except the one who has the mark,
either the name of the beast or the number of
his name. Here is wisdom. Let him who has
understanding calculate the number of the
beast, for the number is that of a man; and
his number is six hundred and
sixty-six."
Studies reveal that less than 5% of the total
money in our society exists as paper currency
or coins. In other words, America is
presently 95% cashless! Various credit card
companies are testing smart cards for
financial transactions. The embedded computer
chip, the size of a dime, can contain as much
information as 30 complete sets of the
Encyclopedia Britannica, including your
finger, hand, voice, retinal, or vein prints.
According to the May 19, 1997 edition of
Business Week, a United States patient was
issued to Interval Research Corporation,
stated by a group that includes Microsoft
Corporation co-founder Paul Allen. The
patient was issued for a device that is a
small liquid-crystal display implanted
beneath a layer of skin on the wrist close
enough to the surface to be visible. The
device would contain a control chip and small
battery charged by holding the wrist near an
external charger.
Racom Systems, Inc., a company headquartered
in Denver, Colorado, a pioneer in the
development of contactless smart card
technology announced on September 22, 1997
the availability of the first of a new
generation of affordable smart card systems
that offer secure transactions in both
contact and contactless operation.
For a contactless transaction, the card is
powered remotely and communicates via a radio
signal from the RXR-1500 contactless
controller. The entire transaction including
mutual authentication, encryption/ decryption
of transmitted messages and purse or file
update is accomplished in less than 100
milliseconds (1/10 of a second) resulting in
true "walk and wave" operation.
National ID Card Now Federal
Law
The Immigration Reform and Immigrant
Responsibility Act of 1996, Section 656
states, "After October 1, 2000, Federal
agencies may only accept as proof of identify
driver's licenses that conform to standards
developed by the Secretary of
Transportation." A national registry
will be established that will include
information on every human in the United
States of America. The database will contain
an individual's Social Security Number,
credit cards issued, date of birth, eye and
hair color, distinguishing character-istics,
addresses, licenses, organizations, titled
properties, taxes, income… you name it!
George Orwell's, 1984, is no longer fiction.
The Health Insurance Portability and
Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) outlines a
process to achieve uniform national health
data standards and health information privacy
in the United States. Enacted with the
widespread support of the industry and
bipartisan support in the Congress, the law
requires that the Secretary of Health and
Human Services (HHS) adopt standards to
support the electronic exchange of a variety
of administrative and financial health care
transactions. All health plans, health care
clearinghouses, and those health care
providers who elect to conduct the specified
transactions electronically are required to
comply with the standards within 2 years of
their adoption, except that small health
plans are required to comply within 3 years.
Among these standards are:1. Certain uniform
transactions and data elements for health
claims and equivalent encounter information,
claims attachments, health care payment and
remittance advice, health plan enrollment and
disenrollment, health plan eligibility,
health plan premium payments, first report of
injury, health claim status, referral
certification and authorization, and for
coordination of benefits. 2. Unique
identifiers for individuals, employers,
health plans, and health care providers for
use in the health care system. 3. Code sets
and classification systems for the data
elements of the transactions identified.4.
Security standards for health information. 5.
Standards for procedures for the electronic
transmission and authentication of signatures
with respect to the transactions identified.
Privacy and confidentiality protections for
health information play a prominent role in
the law as well. The Secretary is required to
adopt security standards to safeguard health
information, during transmission and while
stored in health information systems, to
ensure the integrity of the information, and
to protect against unauthorized uses and
disclosures. Further, the law requires the
Secretary to make detailed recommendations to
the Congress for protection of individually
identifiable health information.
These recommendations were delivered to the
Congress on September 11, 1997. If the
Congress does not enact legislation for
health record privacy by August 21, 1999, the
law requires the Secretary to issue
regulations to protect the privacy of
individually identifiable health information
transmitted in standard transactions. These
regulations must be finalized by February 21,
2000. The law also specifies steep penalties
for misuse of a health identifier and for
wrongfully obtaining or disclosing
individually identifiable health information.
The penalties, which increase by type of
offense, can be as much as $250,000 and 10
years in prison. More serious offenses are
defined as those committed under false
pretenses or those committed with intent to
sell, transfer, or use individually
identifiable health information for
commercial advantage, personal gain, or
malicious harm. HHS formed five
implementation teams to identify and analyze
options and propose policies to implement the
statutory requirements. Through the
publication of several proposed rules in the
Federal Register, HHS will propose standards
for each item required in the legislation.
There has been considerable consensus on most
of the standards that HHS is to adopt.
However, opinion on the unique identifier for
individuals is deeply divided. Given the
level of controversy surrounding the
individual identifier, HHS made the decision
to proceed cautiously in fulfilling its
statutory responsibility to adopt a unique
health identifier for individuals for use in
the health care system.
9. The absence of
gifted leadership among the nations, thus
making it
easy for he Antichrist to take
over
10. Universal drug
usage (The word "sorceries" here
can also refer to drugs.)
Rev. 9:21
11. Abnormal
sexual activity - Rom. 1:17-32; 2 Pet.
2:10, 14; 3:3; Jude 18
12. Mass slaughter
of innocents by unconcerned mothers
(abortion)
Rom. 1:31; 2 Tim. 3:3
13. Widespread
violence - Gen. 6:11, 13; Rev. 9:21
14. Rejection of
Gods's Word - 2 Tim. 4:3-4; 2 Pet. 3:3-4,
16
15. Rejection of
God himself - Ps. 2:1-3
16. Blasphemy
- 2 Tim. 3:2; 2 Pet. 3:3, Jude 18
17. Self-seeking
and pleasure seeking - 2 Tim. 3:2, 4
18. Men minus a
conscience - 1 Tim. 4:2-3
"Now the Spirit
speaketh expressly, that in the latter times
some shall depart from the faith, giving heed
to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils;
2 Speaking
lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience
seared with a hot iron;"
19. Religious
hucksters - 2 Pet. 2:1-3
False prophets and teachers (2
Peter 2:1-3)
"But false
prophets also arose among the people, just as
there will also be false teachers among you,
who will secretly introduce destructive
heresies, even denying the Master who bought
them, bringing swift destruction upon
themselves. And many will follow their
sensuality and because of them the way of the
truth will be maligned; and in their greed
they will exploit you with false words; their
judgment from long ago is not idle, and their
destruction is not asleep."
Who teach destructive heresies, deny the
deity of Christ, encourage sensual/immoral
living, are greedy for money, promote
rebellious living- Psychic phone lines.
20. Outright devil
worshipers - Rev. 9:20, 13:11-14
21. Rise of false
prophets and Antichrists - Matt. 24:5,
11; 2 Pet. 2:1-2
"For many will come in My name,
saying, 'I am the Christ,' and will mislead
many."
Rev. Jim Jones, The People's Temple,
Jamestown, Guyana (11/18/76) [900+ died]
David Koresh, Branch Dividian, Waco, Texas
(4/19/93) [70+ died]
"Do", Marshall Applewhite, Heaven's
Gate, Rancho Sante Fe, California (3/27/97)
[39 died]
A number of Buddhist nomads and religious
leaders in a province of China are saying
they believe Bill Clinton is the
reincarnation of a revered Tibetan religious
leader - the Gamyat Shepa, who died almost 50
years ago. Just before he died in 1947, he
reportedly asked his followers, "If I am
reborn as a Western political leader, will
you recognize me?" A Buddhist monk in
China said nomads regularly ask him about
"Clinton's ethereal status."
22. False claims
of peace - 1 Thess. 5:1-3
23. Rapid advances
in technology - Gen. 4:22
24. Great
political and religious upheavals in the Holy
Land - Matt. 24:32-34
25. Scoffers
mocking the second coming of Christ - 2
Peter 3:3, 4
"Know this
first of all, that in the last days mockers
will come with their mocking, following after
their own lusts, and saying, 'Where is the
promise of His coming? For every since the
fathers fell asleep, all continue just as it
was from the beginning of creation."
Modern religions; the popular New Age
Movement; religion classes at colleges and
universities scoff at the second coming of
Jesus Christ. Won't they be surprised!
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