UPDATE: SIGNS OF THE TIMES - MARCH 2025
WHY DO WE BOTHER TO CONSIDER THE AFFAIRS OF THE WORLD?
[A]. INTRODUCTION
It is not beneficial to be weighed down by the bad things in the world, and some get depressed by such things. Like most aspects of life we need to be balanced and sober. It is very possible for Christians to be unhinged and then thinking gets distorted. It is a danger we must avoid. Note these verses -
{{1 Thessalonians 5:6-8 “so then let us not sleep as others do, but LET US BE ALERT AND SOBER for those who sleep do their sleeping at night, and those who get drunk get drunk at night, but since we are of the day, LET US BE SOBER, having put on the breastplate of faith and love, and as a helmet, the hope of salvation.”}}
However Jesus upbraided some in His time for being asleep and inattentive, and not alert. They knew all about this and that, but were ignorant of the signs of the times when they should have been paying attention. {{Matthew 16:2-3 but He answered and said to them, “When it is evening you say, ‘It will be fair weather for the sky is red,’ and in the morning, ‘There will be a storm today for the sky is red and threatening.’ DO YOU KNOW HOW TO DISCERN THE APPEARANCE OF THE SKY BUT CANNOT DISCERN THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES?”}}
I make no excuse for examining what is happening on the world scene when it has significance for Christians and for the fulfilment of prophecy. The fulfilment of prophecy includes the things not yet fulfilled, but which are falling into place. I wish to draw attention to some of that. Others might do it better but we all see it in different perspectives.
[B]. THE HUGE SIGNIFICANCE OF J D VANCE’S SPEECH IN EUROPE
United States Vice-President J.D. Vance spoke during the 61st Munich Security Conference in Munich, Germany, on 14th February 2025. It is one of the best speeches I have heard in a long while, and there are a couple of things I want to draw attention to. Those who know their bibles will know that in the last days of this Church age, before the Lord comes to rapture His Church, difficult times will come (“perilous times” AV). Christians will face more and more rejection and persecution. The world itself will become more chaotic. If you don’t know this passage check it out – 2 Timothy 3.
I have a series of quotes direct from Vance’s speech:-
[NUMBER 1]. DEMOCRATIC FREEDOMS
[[QUOTE: “Everything from our Ukraine policy to digital censorship is billed as a DEFENSE OF DEMOCRACY, but when we see European courts canceling elections and senior officials threatening to cancel others, we ought to ask whether we’re holding ourselves to an appropriately high standard. And I say “ourselves” because I fundamentally believe that we are on the same team. We must do more than talk about democratic values. WE MUST LIVE THEM.”]]
Christians believe in democratic freedoms and values as many of those were anchored in the Christian teaching in the bible, but these are fast becoming eroded in our western societies, and only in our lifetimes at that. It is particularly pertinent that the loss of freedoms is applying more so to Christian expression, to values and living. Vance touched on those, but we continue.
[NUMBER 2]. HATEFUL CONTENT
[[QUOTE: “I look to Brussels, where EU commissars warn citizens that they intend to shut down social media during times of civil unrest the moment they spot what they’ve judged to be, quote, “HATEFUL CONTENT.” Or to this very country, where police have carried out raids against citizens suspected of posting anti-feminist comments online as part of, quote, “combating misogyny on the internet, a day of action.”]]
This “hateful content” reason/excuse is levelled at Christians for their positions on a number of things so they are silenced. I see it in the matter of homosexuality, abortion, the right to express the gospel in public and so much more. These “anti-feminist” contents include opposition to the biblical fact that a woman can only ever be a woman and not some distorted mess of genders.
[NUMBER 3]. RELIGIOUS FREEDOM
[[QUOTE: “I look to Sweden, where, two weeks ago, the government CONVICTED A CHRISTIAN ACTIVIST for participating in Quran burnings that resulted in his friend’s murder. And as the judge in his case chillingly noted, Sweden’s laws to supposedly protect free expression do not, in fact, grant - and I’m quoting - “A FREE PASS TO DO OR SAY ANYTHING WITHOUT RISKING OFFENDING THE GROUP THAT HOLDS THAT BELIEF.”]]
(Me – However that does not seem to apply when Christians are attacked or offended. I am utterly offended at the world’s largest perverted Madi Gras in Sydney, through Sydney streets, yet I am silenced if I protest that I am offended.)
The university close to me has, in its driveway entrance, a speed hump, and on either side of that speed hump, across the road, is painted all the colours of the rainbow relating to homosexuality. It is painted brightly and I find it very offensive that I have to pass over that each time I use that entrance. I find it offensive but I don’t count because I am a Christian. That is the James Cook University. These are days of so-called “inclusivity/inclusion” and that means including everyone (except Christians of course, because they don’t count).
J D VANCE CONTINUES – [[And perhaps most concerningly, I look to our very dear friends, the United Kingdom, where the backslide away from conscience rights has placed the basic liberties of religious Britons, in particular, in the crosshairs.
A little over two years ago, the British government charged ADAM SMITH-CONNOR, a 51-year-old physiotherapist and an army veteran, with the heinous crime OF STANDING 50 METERS FROM AN ABORTION CLINIC AND SILENTLY PRAYING FOR THREE MINUTES—not obstructing anyone, not interacting with anyone, just silently praying on his own.
And after British law enforcement spotted him and demanded to know what he was praying for, Adam replied, simply, it was on behalf of the unborn son he and his former girlfriend had aborted years before.
Now, the officers were not moved. ADAM WAS FOUND GUILTY of breaking the government’s new “buffer zones” law, WHICH CRIMINALIZES SILENT PRAYER and other actions that could “influence” a person’s decision within 200 meters of an abortion facility. He was sentenced to pay thousands of pounds in legal costs to the prosecution.
Now, I wish I could say that this was a fluke - a one-off, crazy example of a badly written law being enacted against a single person. But, no, this last October, just a few months ago, THE SCOTTISH GOVERNMENT began distributing letters to citizens whose houses lay within so-called “safe access zones,” warning them that EVEN PRIVATE PRAYER WITHIN THEIR OWN HOMES may amount to breaking the law.
Naturally, the government urged readers TO REPORT ANY FELLOW CITIZENS SUSPECTED GUILTY OF THOUGHT CRIME. In Britain, and across Europe, free speech, I fear, is in retreat.]] END OF QUOTE
Vance is correct. Some of this is in Australia as well. In western societies Christians and Jews are despised. The Australian Prime Minister despises both, but what can we expect from an apparent radical (Marxist/communist who hates the USA but loves China). Starmer, Macron and Trudeau are all tarred with the same brush. “Thought crime” is on their agenda.
What Vance had to say was hard-hitting, and he could say that in public where you and I could not as we’d be either arrested or face State discrimination. Scotland has gone really bad against Christians from reports I have heard verbally with harassment in churches. And to think that John Knox delivered the gospel message there in former days.
[NUMBER 4]. VANCE’S REMARKS NOT CONFINED TO EUROPE
[[QUOTE: “And in the interest of comity, my friends, but also in the interest of truth, I will admit that sometimes the loudest voices for censorship have come not from within Europe but from within my own country, where the prior administration threatened and bullied social media companies to censor so-called misinformation - misinformation like, for example, the idea that coronavirus had likely leaked from a laboratory in China. Our own government encouraged private companies to silence people who dared to utter what turned out to be an obvious truth.”]] END OF QUOTE.
In this censoring, a number of Christian web sites were/have been/are shut down or cancelled by Google (and YouTube which Google owns). We know that in the Tribulation (Christians won’t be here for that); the Tribulation saints who get converted will face enormous troubles through censorship, being reported and dobbed in, and, by their refusing the mark of the beast - they will have their very existence threatened. This repressive and demonic silencing of people is a long known strategy of the left; the way they operate. We saw it evilly operating in Russia and China.
Satan has raised up many enemies to oppress the people of God. There were Pharoah, Haman, Roman Emperors, Herod, Stalin – there are multitudes.
[NUMBER 5]. MISINFORMATION” AND DISINFORMATION
[[QUOTE:- “Now, to many of us on the other side of the Atlantic, it looks more and more like old, entrenched interests hiding behind ugly, Soviet-era words like “misinformation” and “disinformation,” who simply don’t like the idea that somebody with an alternative viewpoint might express a different opinion, or, God forbid, vote a different way, or, even worse, win an election.”
“You cannot win a democratic mandate by censoring your opponents or putting them in jail -whether that’s the leader of the opposition, a humble Christian praying in her own home, or a journalist trying to report the news. Nor can you win one by disregarding your basic electorate on questions like who gets to be a part of our shared society.”]] END QUOTE
I don’t belong to social media but I understand the opposition to expressed Christian thought and opinion can be very savage. The world hates Christians and the tolerance of past years has gone, replaced with a fanatic hostility. This also applies to Israel and Jews.
I will close off J D Vance with one last quote and leave him there – [[[“But what German democracy - what no democracy, American, German, or European - will survive, is telling millions of voters that their thoughts and concerns, their aspirations, their pleas for relief are invalid or unworthy of even being considered. Democracy rests on the sacred principle that the voice of the people matters. There is no room for firewalls. You either uphold the principle or you don’t.”]]]
[C]. THE VERY GREAT SIGNIFICANCE OF VANCE’S SPEECH
This speech is extremely important in how this world is shaping up. President Trump has also drawn the lines with Europe, and Europe does not like it. I will share two quotes with you now that was Europe's response to Vance’s speech, but there are so many.
European Union diplomacy, Kaja Kallas, said that she had the feeling that the United States was trying to pick a fight with us.
German Minister of Defense, Boris Pistorius, said that comparison of parts of Europe to authoritarian regimes was not acceptable.
[D]. WHY IS THIS FRACTURING OF US/EUROPE RELATIONS SO IMPORTANT?
To answer that we go to prophecy. Daniel interpreted a dream Nebuchadnezzar had about a great image and that represented the 4 great empires of the world. Here Daniel recounts that dream in part -
{{Daniel 2:32-35 “The head of that statue was made of fine gold, its breast and its arms of silver, its belly and its thighs of bronze, its legs of iron, ITS FEET PARTLY OF IRON AND PARTLY OF CLAY. You continued looking until a stone was cut out without hands and it struck the statue on its feet of iron and clay and crushed them. Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver and the gold were crushed all at the same time and became like chaff from the summer threshing floors, and the wind carried them away so that not a trace of them was found, but THE STONE THAT STRUCK THE STATUE BECAME A GREAT MOUNTAIN AND FILLED THE WHOLE EARTH.”}}
The 10 toes of that image represent the 10 nations that will make up the revived Roman Empire of the future, derived from Western Europe. {{Revelation 13:1 “He stood on the sand of the seashore, and I saw a beast coming up out of the sea, HAVING TEN HORNS and seven heads, and on his horns were ten diadems, and on his heads were blasphemous names.”}} There the 10 horns are power, 10 kingdoms/nations.
The legs and feet with the toes represent the 4th Empire, the Roman one. The others were Babylon (head); Medes/Persians (breast and arms); Greece (belly and thighs). The Roman Empire did not actually end but absorbed itself into the whole of western culture in so many ways. The stone that struck Nebuchadnezzar’s image struck the feet on the image and that is important.
That stone became a great mountain that filled the earth and will smash Antichrist’s kingdom at the Second Coming. A mountain in prophecy is a kingdom, and this will be Messiah’s Millennial kingdom. It is important to note that the ten toes represent 10 nations in a revived Roman Empire. Some decades ago prophecy students expected the European Common Market would be this revived empire, but it wasn’t, and when the number reached 10, they were all excited. Now the EU has more than 10 members. BUT it will work out.
This revived Roman Empire will occupy the geographic territory of the old Roman Empire. Just this last week there has been talk about some nations uneasy about membership of this current EU. Poland and Romania and Hungary for example.
What President Trump has done is sever the United States from Europe because it does not belong to Europe. I get irate at people who try to link the USA into bible prophecy. It has no part whatever in prophecy. It was not a biblical nation. They are in the Middle East. It is important that that separation from Europe comes so that Europe fashions itself into 10 nations which will be the headquarters and power base for Antichrist and the False Prophet (I think with headquarters in Brussels). For decades the USA has propped up Europe with so much money going into NATO and support in other ways and nearly all the European nations sat back saying, “Thank you. Keep it coming.” Now Europe must look to its own defence, and already some nations are reducing social services to spend extra on defence. That too is very important.
Europe is dictated to by Brussels. That is the real powerhouse of Europe, the headquarters. Belguim is one of the smallest nations in Europe yet that is where the dictates come from. The other two powerful influences are France and the UK. Since the American election, some very nasty things have been said by socialist European leaders against Trump. Now the penny drops. They are on their own. Certain nations in the EU are opposed to a number of its aims such as wanting to send troops to the Ukraine.
The UN and WEF and the International Criminal Court and so many more are seated there.
These nations, interestingly enough are ones like Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, and possibly Poland. Strategically though, these eastern Europeans were NEVER within the borders of the old Roman Empire.
I think the USA is very corrupt. I don’t mean all the people, more the underlying structure. Can you believe the crooked role the FBI has been playing in recent years, and the actions of some of the Blue State Governors and Mayors? It is all on the internet if you want to follow, and the underhand corruption is now coming out. The investigations by Musk and others is mind-blowing. Check out Devory, Trish Regan, Rogan, Fox News, Sky News, and many more on YouTube to learn of some of it. The corruption being revealed from some Democrat States is monstrous – New York and California as prime examples.
Yet the hand of God in judgment is being withheld at this point, and I believe it will be withheld because of one reason. The United States has been the best friend and greatest supporter Israel has had (barring the enemy terms of Obama and Biden), and the new administration will be the best supporter ever. {{Genesis 12:3 “I will bless those who bless you and the one who curses you I will curse. In you all the families of the earth shall be blessed,”}} will always be true.
Am I correct on all these things? No, I am not, and as time progresses we will see things becoming more defined. We can only examine what we currently see in our time. Maybe you know something about time! The significance of time is very significant and in the passage of time the significance becomes more significant because the passage of time makes the significance more significant to understand time . . . . Yeah, you understand what I am saying if you followed the elections!! ?
I greatly try to avoid vain speculation. I mean stupid things like a third world war, and Psalm 83 being a prophetic psalm about a war to happen (It is NOT a prophetic Psalm). The unfolding of events and how they will mould what is to come, is at best, still darkly seen. I will give an example.
In the 1980s I began to realise the impact of the account of the two witnesses in Revelation, especially this part – {{Revelation 11:9 “Those from the PEOPLES AND TRIBES AND TONGUES AND NATIONS will look at their dead bodies for three and a half days, and will not permit their dead bodies to be laid in a tomb.”}} From that we knew the whole world would see the unfolding of the events in Jerusalem in real time. That must have been a real mystery for those a hundred and more years back.
Well at that time I said, “It is because of computers.” There was no other reasonable solution, BUT now we know it is mobile/cell phones that are currently in every part of the world. (Ask the Hezbollah terrorists about that). I have seen phones in remote parts of the Pacific islands.
This is a huge subject when looking at signs of the times and the words written here are just scratching the surface. God bless you all.
