Latest Audio - 2026-01-17
The world’s largest oil reserves… vast gold reserves… rare earth elements… mixed with terror finance… narco-terrorism and revolutionary socialism
This is:
Venezuela 2026
USA: The Midnight Raid On Venezuela
“Cocaine trafficking was a transparent excuse for attacking Venezuela. US President Donald Trump ordered the midnight raid and seizure of the country’s president because he sought a bigger prize…” (jpost.com)
But First - Venezuela Country Profile
“A virtual guide to Venezuela, officially, the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, a country in northern South America that borders the Caribbean Sea in the north and the North Atlantic Ocean in the east.
Neighboring countries are Colombia in the west and south west, Brazil in the south and Guyana in the east. The country shares also overlapping maritime borders with Barbados, Dominica, the Dominican Republic, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Trinidad and Tobago, and Puerto Rico.
With an area of 912,000 km² Venezuela is slightly more than 2.5 times the size of Germany or slightly more than twice the size of the US state of California.
Venezuela has a population of 34 million inhabitants (in 2024) of whom 6 million live in the capital and largest city Caracas. The country’s population is concentrated along the Caribbean coast, only 5% of all Venezuelans live south of the course of the Orinoco river. Official language is Spanish. There are also 26 recognized regional languages.
The main religion is Christianity (80%), Roman Catholic 48%, Protestant 32%.” (nationsonline.org)
Poor Economic Management
“Venezuela is one of the most highly-urbanised countries in Latin America. It has some of the world’s largest proven oil deposits as well as huge quantities of coal, iron ore, bauxite and gold. It has been one of the world’s leading exporters of oil but the country experienced poor economic management in the early decades of the 21st Century.
Former president Hugo Chavez, who died in 2013, styled himself a champion of the poor during his 14 years in office, pouring billions of dollars of Venezuela’s oil wealth into social programmes.
The government of his successor, Nicolas Maduro, has had to struggle with plummeting oil prices and an economic and political crisis that has left Venezuela in a state of near-collapse. The country struggles with rampant inflation, goods shortages, unemployment and crime. Seven million Venezuelans have fled abroad to neighbouring states.” (bbc.co.uk)
Why Venezuela? Why Now?
It’s Not About Drugs
“It was never about fentanyl, cocaine, or marijuana, nor was it about democracy. The drugs were just an excuse. It’s really about the oil.
Here’s the proof: Venezuela is not a major drug producer but a minor cocaine transit country, with 90% headed to Europe. The world’s largest cocaine producer is right next door in Colombia, with neighboring Peru and Bolivia running second and third. None have the huge oil reserves that Trump covets.
Venezuela does not produce or apparently traffic in fentanyl, the far more lethal illicit drug in the United States. The major producer is Mexico, and the chemical to produce it is supplied by China.
So why send the Air Force, Navy, Army, Marines, Coast Guard, and squadrons of lawyers to Caracas in the middle of the night?
It’s ‘ALL ABOUT OIL’
It’s about the world’s largest proven oil reserves sitting under Venezuela. It’s ‘our’ oil, Trump declared. ‘We built Venezuela’s oil industry with American talent, drive, and skill, and the socialist regime stole it from us during those previous administrations. And they stole it through force. This constituted one of the largest thefts of American property in the history of our country,’ he thundered as Nicolás Maduro was on his way to a New York jail cell. (jpost.com)
Oil Is Still The Lifeblood Of Prosperity
“Forget fentanyl and cocaine. The substance Donald Trump really wants to stop flowing out of Venezuela is crude oil to China. This is not because America craves the stuff itself. The United States produces more oil than Saudi Arabia and more gas than Russia. No, what really bothers Washington is Beijing’s special deal with Venezuela’s narco-communist thugs: to buy oil on the cheap, reportedly at a $14-per-barrel discount on the price of Brent crude, the world benchmark.
That’s a deal that came to an end with the extraordinary events of the past few days. From now on, sanctions-busting tankers heading out from the Venezuelan coast will be turned back by acting President Delcy Rodriguez, if not by the American navy, to the huge frustration of China’s leaders.
Whether we like it or not, the rest of the world’s obsession with climate change is fading – and with it fades any realistic prospect of artificially pricing fossil fuels out of the energy market through carbon taxes.
The race to dominate the artificial intelligence industry, with its massive demands for electricity, is being fuelled not by windmills but by gas in America and coal in China.
Instead, thanks to the exorbitant cost of wind and solar energy, our industrial electricity prices are four times those of America.
As Venezuela reminds us, the world economy relies on fossil fuels now, and probably well into the future. It’s a lesson we can’t afford to ignore.” (dailymail.co.uk)
Ties With Terror
“This is where Iran and Hezbollah enter the picture – not as slogans, but as logistics. For Iran, Venezuela offered something rare: a friendly regime with weak oversight, access to ports and airstrips, financial opacity, and ideological alignment against the United States and its allies. It was a permissive environment in the Western Hemisphere – far from Middle Eastern scrutiny and uncomfortably close to American shores.
For Hezbollah, Latin America has long served as a fundraising and facilitation zone. Illicit trade corridors, shell companies, and criminal schemes that exploit diaspora networks were not incidental. They were infrastructure, and Venezuela provided state cover. When narcotics money intersects with terror finance, the threat is no longer theoretical. It is operational. What was dismantled was not merely a government, but an ecosystem.
Venezuela was never just Venezuela – it was the moment when narco-terrorism, revolutionary socialism, antisemitic scapegoating, and global paralysis finally collided, and the world was forced to choose between preserving a broken system and confronting what it had spent years refusing to name.” (jpost.com)
Venezuela’s Greatest Crime
Lost in the din of spurious explanations for President Trump’s assault on Venezuela is THE REAL CRIME. It wasn’t about drugs, it wasn’t about the oil itself, it was about MONEY, DOLLARS, as the following article explains:
“The official explanations for the destruction of Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi, and the prolonged asphyxiation of Nicolás Maduro’s Venezuela vary in detail but converge in tone.
Each was framed as a moral intervention: weapons of mass destruction, protection of civilians, restoration of democracy, the war on drugs.
Each was accompanied by an avalanche of humanitarian rhetoric, legal justifications stretched to breaking point, and an obedient media chorus.
Yet history has a way of stripping power of its disguises. When the dust settles, a far less noble pattern becomes visible. These leaders did not merely defy US foreign policy preferences; they committed a far graver transgression.
They challenged THE MONETARY ARCHITECTURE OF AMERICAN POWER by daring to sell oil outside the dollar system. That, more than any human rights concern, marked them for punishment.
At the heart of US global dominance lies not simply military might, but monetary hegemony. The dollar’s status as the world’s default reserve and trading currency is the invisible scaffolding that sustains American imperial reach. It allows the United States to run chronic trade deficits without consequence, finance wars without domestic sacrifice, and weaponise sanctions with devastating effect.
De-dollarisation is therefore not a technical adjustment; it is a political heresy. States that flirt with it are not treated as economic innovators but as existential threats. Saddam Hussein, Gaddafi, and Maduro learned this lesson at catastrophic cost.
The modern architecture of dollar supremacy took shape after the collapse of the Bretton Woods system in 1971. When the United States abandoned the gold standard, it faced a problem: how to sustain global demand for an unbacked currency. The solution was geopolitical rather than economic. Through strategic arrangements with Saudi Arabia and other Gulf monarchies, oil — the most critical commodity of industrial civilisation — was priced exclusively in dollars. In return, the US provided military protection and political support.
Thus emerged the petrodollar system. Any country needing oil needed dollars; any country holding dollars funded US deficits; any country clearing transactions passed through US banks.
Monetary power was fused with military power, and global finance became a tributary of American sovereignty. This system transformed the dollar into a tool of empire. Against this backdrop, attempts to trade oil in non-dollar currencies were not mere economic experiments. They were challenges to the central nervous system of US power.
The US response was predictable: intensified sanctions, attempted coups, recognition of parallel governments, threats of arrest, and now increasingly reckless rhetoric about military action. The charges — drug trafficking, authoritarianism, democratic failure — are interchangeable props. THE REAL OFFENCE IS MONETARY DISOBEDIENCE.De-dollarisation, in short, threatens not American prosperity alone BUT AMERICAN IMPERIAL BEHAVIOUR.
As more countries quietly seek alternatives to the dollar, the question is no longer whether the system will fracture, but how violently the guardian of that system will react. Empire rarely retreats gracefully. It punishes first — and explains later.” (frontline.thehindu.com)
The Almighty Dollar IS Under Threat
“The American obsession with de-dollarisation cannot be understood without grasping how deeply the dollar underwrites the US economy. Dollar dominance allows the United States to import more than it exports, consume more than it produces, and borrow without fear of currency collapse. It allows Wall Street to siphon global savings, the Pentagon to operate hundreds of overseas bases, and Washington to impose unilateral sanctions with extraterritorial reach.
If countries begin trading oil and strategic commodities in non-dollar currencies at scale, this privilege erodes. Demand for dollars falls, borrowing costs rise, inflation becomes domestic rather than exported, and military adventurism becomes fiscally constrained. DE-DOLLARISATION, IN SHORT, THREATENS NOT AMERICAN PROSPERITY ALONE BUT AMERICAN IMPERIAL BEHAVIOUR.” (frontline.thehindu.com)
Fact Or Fiction?
So much has been written about the American banking system, especially around the time of the Civil War. During the Civil War (1861-1865), President Lincoln needed money to finance the War from the North. Some sources claim that the Bankers were going to charge him 24% to 36% interest. So that is where greenbacks came into play.
Greenbacks were emergency paper currency issued by the United States during the American Civil War that were printed in green on the back.
Was Lincoln assassinated because he went against the banks? The banks wanted to charge people interest, and Lincoln knew it was wrong to do that. With greenbacks, NO ONE WOULD BE CHARGED INTEREST, just what they owed.
“He reportedly said, ‘I have two great enemies, the Southern Army in front of me and the financial institutions in the rear. Of the two, the one at my rear is my greatest foe.’” (azquotes.com)
President John F Kennedy vs Federal Reserve
Many claim that President John F Kennedy was assassinated because he wanted to destroy the Federal Reserve bank.
“On June 4, 1963, a virtually unknown Presidential decree, Executive Order 11110, was signed by President John Fitzgerald Kennedy with the intention to strip the Federal Reserve Bank of its power to loan money to the United States Federal Government AT INTEREST. With the stroke of a pen, President Kennedy declared that the privately owned Federal Reserve Bank would soon be out of business.
This matter has been exhaustively researched by the Christian Common Law Institute through the Federal Register and Library of Congress, and the Institute has concluded that President Kennedy’s Executive Order has never been repealed, amended, or superseded by any subsequent Executive Order. In simple terms, it is still valid.
President Kennedy’s Executive Order 11110 gave the Treasury Department the explicit authority: ‘to issue silver certificates against any silver bullion, silver, or standard silver dollars in the Treasury’. This means that for every ounce of silver in the US Treasury’s vault, the government could introduce new money into circulation based on the silver bullion physically held therein.
As a result, more than $4 billion in United States Notes were brought into circulation in $2 and $5 denominations. Although $10 and $20 United States Notes were never circulated, they were being printed by the Treasury Department when Kennedy was assassinated. Following President Kennedy’s assassination on November 22, 1963, the United States Notes he had issued were immediately taken out of circulation, and Federal Reserve Notes continued to serve as the ‘legal currency’ of the nation.
Kennedy knew that if the silver-backed United States Notes were widely circulated, they would eliminate the demand for Federal Reserve Notes. This is a simple matter of economics. USNs were backed by silver and FRNs were (still are) backed by nothing of intrinsic value. As a result of Executive Order 11110, the national debt would have been prevented from reaching its current level (almost all of the $9 trillion in federal debt has been created since 1963).
Executive Order 11110 also granted the US Government the power to repay past debt without further borrowing from the privately owned Federal Reserve which charged both principle and interest and all new ‘money’ it ‘created’. Finally, Executive Order 11110 gave the USA the ability to create its own money backed by silver, again giving money real value.” (foundationfortruthinlaw.org)
Follow The Money
As the article points out, the national debt would have been prevented from reaching its current level - $38 trillion - with over $1 trillion in interest payments in 2025 - and increasing - year on year!
When we strip away all the biased accounts of events, and throw out the conspiracy theories, what are we left with?
What Actually Happened?
- Both President Lincoln and President J F Kennedy defied the banks and printed government currency.
- The other factor which it’s vital to note, loans carried no interest, or usury, in Bible terms.
- Both men were assassinated.
- Their successors quickly removed the new currencies and went back to the old system.
As always - it’s not what they say - it’s what they do.
Perhaps President Trump Should Take Note…
Trump’s Attempt To Take Charge Of The Fed
“President Trump’s attempt to fire Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook is the most dramatic step yet in his effort to take control of the independent central bank and its vast authority over interest rates. Trump has for months demanded that the Fed lower rates to boost the economy, make housing more affordable, and lower the cost of servicing the national debt. He has castigated Fed Chair Jerome Powell for not moving sooner to cut them. By replacing Cook, he could add enough voices to the seven-member board of governors to potentially outvote Powell and move interest rates in his preferred direction.” (wsj.com)
Fed Chair Powell Says He’s Under Criminal Investigation
“Fed Chair Powell says he’s under criminal investigation, won’t bow to Trump intimidation. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell is under federal criminal investigation related to the $2.5 billion renovation of the central bank’s headquarters and his congressional testimony about that, Powell said. Powell said the probe was the result of the Fed ‘setting interest rates based on our best assessment of what will serve the public, rather than following the preferences of President Donald Trump.’” (cnbc.com)
Venezuela 2026
The lesson we can learn from the latest event is that you attack the US banking system and their currency at your peril.
The Petrodollar System
- “Monetary power was fused with military power…
- Global finance became a tributary of American sovereignty.
- This system transformed the dollar into a tool of empire.
- The almighty dollar MUST be protected against all threats…
- The real offence is monetary disobedience.
- De-dollarisation threatens not American prosperity alone but American imperial behaviour.”
Basic Principle
“…the borrower is servant to the lender.” (Proverbs 22:7)
America is a mega borrower.
America’s 2025 interest payments were over $1 Trillion - and continue rising into 2026.
America is drowning in debt - to the tune of $38,602,386,910,588. That’s $38.6 trillion dollars (at the time of writing).
American power is tied to the ‘almighty dollar’.
Prior to 1971, the US dollar was backed by gold.
But today the American dollar is an unbacked currency.
To answer the question:
Why Venezuela? Why Now?
Both President Lincoln and President J F Kennedy defied the banks… both men were assassinated.
Venezuela was challenging American Power - the Power of the almighty Dollar.
“It is the one transgression that cannot be forgiven, negotiated, or reformed away.
Those who commit it are not corrected;
THEY ARE DESTROYED.
The lesson is written in the ruins of Baghdad, the chaos of Libya, and the suffering of Venezuela.”
(frontline.thehindu.com)
American power currently relies on the almighty dollar. But Bible prophecy reveals that God will break the pride in US power. More information on this vital subject can be found in The United States and Britain in Prophecy.
40 - A Biblical Watershed
"My frame was not hidden from You, When I was made in secret... Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed. And in Your book they all were written, The days fashioned for me, When as yet there were none of them." (Psalm 139:15,16 NKJV)
This particular Pastor's Report has been prompted by two events due to take place this month -- a birth and a memorial of a death -- and both are destined to be "watershed moments"... "A critical point marking a change in course or development... a landmark, defining moment, and event or period marking a turning point in a situation", and both are intimately related to the number forty.
The first event I will deal with concerns one of our granddaughters who is due to give birth any day now. In the past 18 months, her life has changed from being a young fiancée, to being a wife ... and now the life-changing event of becoming a mother. A watershed moment if ever there was one -- for both her and her husband as they become parents. They will never look at life -- and the future -- the same way, ever again.
The Watershed of Birth
But as well as the birth being a "defining moment" for the mother, so too for the child, because for every single one of us it also was a Watershed moment, with a capital "W"! The number 40 is used in the Bible to illustrate just such a critical period of time, and brings the concept of completion of a particular phase in life and although the phrase "forty weeks" cannot be found in the Bible, it surely can't be a coincidence that the gestation period of a human being -- a potential GOD-being -- is just that! At our conception forty weeks earlier we were incredibly minuscule, no larger than the full stop (period) at the end of this sentence before our birth.
Then miraculously we started to develop, and during our time of being "skillfully wrought" in the womb, we lived in an environment of comfort, warmth and security. Apparently we could hear our mother's heartbeat and muffled voices and sounds and some light filtered in, but overall it was a very alien world into which eventually we were thrust! Previously we had no use for our lungs, as all the necessary factors to support life -- oxygen and nutrition -- came from the placenta through the umbilical chord. But that changed dramatically during the actual birth itself in order to allow us to be a totally independent human being. Most certainly the completion of a particular phase in the life of each one of us.
Biblical Numbers
Many scholars have devoted years to the study of numerology in the Bible, and there is a plethora of material on the subject, some of it being quite illuminating -- as long as it's not made into a religion by itself. Some of it is quite valid, and "on track", as taught by Mr. Armstrong: From his Autobiography, Volume 2, and chapter 50:
I have remarked before how certain numbers have significant meaning in God’s plan. Six is the number of MAN and materialism. Seven is GOD’S number of perfection and completion. God made the material creation in six days. MAN was created the sixth day. But God completed the first week, and perfected it by creation of His Sabbath, on the seventh day. That seventh day typified the completed and perfect SPIRITUAL creation...
...But twelve is God’s number of spiritual organizational BEGINNINGS. God’s promises pertain to Abraham’s children. His children began with the twelve sons of Jacob. God began His organized nation on earth with TWELVE tribes. Christ BEGAN His Church with TWELVE apostles
...But TWELVE is the number of organizational beginnings, not first beginnings..... The actual first beginning of the Church of God was the ONE man, Jesus Christ. But the organizational beginning was through the collective Body of Christ, empowered by the same Spirit, starting with the TWELVE. (The Autobiography - Chapter 50)
Mr. Armstrong also elaborated at length on the significance of 19 and 100 year time cycles in chapter 24 of his autobiography, but in this Pastor's Report, I want to concentrate on the number 40, and show you how it so often is used as the classic time of testing and trial but also -- please note -- preparation before a new phase begins, i.e. a WATERSHED event. This is not just an arbitrary number, but I believe it may have a great significance to us at this end time.
The Watershed of 40 Days
The phrase "forty days/nights" is used multiple times in both the Old and New Testaments. These are just a few of those recorded, the very first being the account of the Noachian flood:
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For yet seven days, and I will cause it to rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights; and every living substance that I have made will I destroy from off the face of the earth....
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... And the flood was forty days upon the earth; and the waters increased, and bare up the ark, and it was lift up above the earth. (Genesis 7:4,17)
Moses was with Christ - the God of the Old Testament - for two periods of 40 days and nights when he was given the 10 Commandments. Initially recorded in Exodus 24:18 and again in chapter 34, because "his anger waxed hot" and he broke the first two. (Exodus 32:19)
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And he was there with the LORD forty days and forty nights; he did neither eat bread, nor drink water. And he wrote upon the tables the words of the covenant, the ten commandments. (Exodus 34:28)
In the book of Jonah, God gives Nineveh His warning -- and 40 days in which to repent:
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And Jonah began to enter into the city a day’s journey, and he cried, and said, Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown. (Jonah 3:4)
And one of the ultimate 40 day periods we recognise is when Christ fasted before His head-on contest with Satan, which would determine the eternal future of the human race:
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Being forty days tempted of the devil. And in those days he did eat nothing: and when they were ended, he afterward hungered. (Luke 4:2)
And after His resurrection, there was another vital 40 day period before Christ returned to heaven -- for the next 2,000 years.
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To whom also he shewed himself alive after his passion by many infallible proofs, being seen of them forty days, and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God: (Acts 1:3)
The Watershed of 40 Years
It's evident that 40 years in particular can be a time of trial and testing and also maturing, or training, as Moses found out when keeping sheep in the desert:
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And when he was full forty years old, it came into his heart to visit his brethren the children of Israel....
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...And when forty years were expired, [having fled from Pharaoh] there appeared to him in the wilderness of mount Sina an angel of the Lord in a flame of fire in a bush. (Acts 7:23,30)
One of the most familiar periods of time we are familiar with is the 40 years of wandering in the desert, after the spies came back from searching out the land for 40 days, and 10 of the 12 gave their evil report:
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And your children shall wander in the wilderness forty years, and bear your whoredoms, until your carcases be wasted in the wilderness.
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After the number of the days in which ye searched the land, even forty days, each day for a year, shall ye bear your iniquities, even forty years, and ye shall know my breach of promise. (Numbers 14:33,34)
The Watershed of 1946
From our perspective now, we can see how the Work developed in the years prior to Mr. Armstrong's death in 1986, and how 40 years earlier, in 1946, it certainly appears to have been a watershed year. In Volume 2 of his autobiography, Mr. Armstrong entitles chapter 50 "A Momentous Year":
AS THE years sped along, each seemed to usher in more important developments than any preceding year in God’s work. 1945 was a momentous year! – but, for the work, 1946 was even more important. Actually, 1946 was the year of BEGINNINGS, as an organized major national and worldwide work. This was the year in which our own printing department was started. This was the first year in which the full impact was felt of three superpower radio stations, blanketing the entire United States and reaching even Canada and Alaska.
The was the first year in which we had the impact of six-nights-a-week broadcasting, at an early prime listening hour, coast to coast. This was the year in which the first baptizing tour was taken. It covered the four corners of the United States, and much of the middle sections of the country besides.
And this was the year in which the founding of Ambassador College was conceived, planned, and the first block of property for the new campus acquired in Pasadena. This college was to be the means of training of the growing personnel for the fast-expanding organized work. Now notice the startling significance in the fact this all happened in this particular year!
But 1946 was not only a watershed year for the Work, but significantly for the world's attempts to ensure international peace and security as well. A little further on in the same chapter:
The first meeting of the Security Council of the new United Nations was scheduled to begin on March 25, 1946, at Hunter College in New York. And that marked the beginning of the END of man’s efforts to rule the world. The General Assembly of the United Nations was merely a debating body – a sounding board for rival propaganda. Only the Security Council was supposed to have the real power. If ever men were to be able to bring about PEACE on earth, this Security Council was their sole and last hope. I decided to cover this first session of the Security Council in person for The Plain Truth and the World Tomorrow radio program. It was my first coast-to-coast night...
...The very START of the United Nations is summarized in the special dispatch I filed in the press room, sent by wire to Eugene, Oregon, and published on page 7 of the March-April Plain Truth of that year. It was short, so I reproduced it here:
“UNO Security Council, New York. Special: As Secretary of State Byrnes said in opening the first meeting of the Security Council of the United Nations Organization today: ‘This is a moment of great importance in the history of the world. With this meeting the Security Council of the UNO begins to function permanently and continuously.’... But what is being said in these opening speeches; and what is being sent out from here to be read in newspapers throughout the world is not of itself important. What is important is what is going on in the mind of Joseph Stalin, over in Moscow, Russia! What is important is what is still in the minds of multiple millions of Germans poisoned by Goebbels’ propaganda, and for which poison our occupation forces have no cure!
The world’s LAST HOPE of preventing atomic annihilation lies IN HARMONY! in this vital Security Council of the UNO. BUT THERE IS NO REAL HARMONY!... The Security Council will continue to function for the present. But that does not mean the kind of harmonious unity between the Big Three IMPERATIVE FOR PREVENTION OF ATOMIC WAR! In the minds and hearts of the principals here, and in Moscow, London and Washington, there is not that kind of unity. THERE CAN NEVER BE PERMANENT WORLD PEACE UNTIL NATIONS AND THEIR LEADERS LEARN THE WAY TO PEACE. THAT WAY THEY DO NOT KNOW AND WILL NOT CONSIDER!... The WAY to permanent peace I DO NOT FIND HERE! But what I do find here is the way men and nations will insist upon following until the entire Babylonish world order finally topples to a self-imposed oblivion. AND THAT DAY IS NOT FAR OFF! IT’S LATER THAN WE THINK!” (The Autobiography - Chapter 50)
1986's Watershed
The second event - the memorial of a death - and closely connected to the number 40 is that of the death of Mr. Herbert Armstrong, January 16th 1986. By reckoning with the Hebrew calendar, this year that date will be January 24th, a Sabbath.
Shevat (Hebrew: שְׁבָט, Standard: Šəvaṭ, Tiberian: Šeḇāṭ; from Akkadian: Šabātu) is the fifth month of the civil year starting in Tishre (or Tishri) and the eleventh month of the ecclesiastical year on the Hebrew calendar starting in Nisan. It is a month of 30 days. Shevat usually occurs in January–February on the Gregorian calendar. (wikipedia.org)
Initially the Work went from strength to strength the first year after his death. Mr. Tkach Snr assured the brethren that he would continue faithfully in Mr. Armstrong's footsteps, as he wrote in the last two chapters of Mr. Armstrong's autobiography. But in hindsight, we can see there was definitely a very different agenda in place, which was to take God's church back to the Babylon of worldly Christianity.
Since assuming his responsibilities in 1995, Tkach [Jnr] oversaw a period of radical change within the denomination that began during the administration of his father, Joseph W. Tkach. Once a strict seventh-day Sabbatarian organization that denied the Trinity, required observance of Old Testament law and adhered to Anglo-Israelism, the church has abandoned those and other teachings in favor of a doctrine of salvation by grace through faith. (wikipedia.org)
And since the death of Mr. Armstrong we too have been wandering in a wilderness, albeit a spiritual one, so there is a good chance God has given us this space of time to know what is of most importance to us - what is in OUR heart -- as He did with our forefathers in the wilderness (Deuteronomy 8:2). Of the hundreds of splinter groups that have formed since the apostasy took hold, many of them do not acknowledge him as the end-time apostle and the Elijah-to-come, and some even deny an apostasy has taken place! And so a 40th anniversary of his death is unlikely to mean anything to them ... possibly at their peril:
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Blessed is that servant, whom his lord when he cometh shall find so doing.
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Verily I say unto you, That he shall make him ruler over all his goods.
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But and if that evil servant shall say in his heart, My lord delayeth his coming;
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And shall begin to smite his fellowservants, and to eat and drink with the drunken;
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The lord of that servant shall come in a day when he looketh not for him, and in an hour that he is not aware of,
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And shall cut him asunder, and appoint him his portion with the hypocrites: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
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Then shall the kingdom of heaven be likened unto ten virgins, which took their lamps, and went forth to meet the bridegroom.
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And five of them were wise, and five were foolish... (Matthew 24:46-51, 25:1,2)
Note: "THEN shall the kingdom of heaven", etc etc. Christ gives us this warning to be ready, using the Holy Spirit to change us from an "unfertilized egg" to a fully grown child of God, prepared to take on our role in the Government of God. For us, the ultimate watershed moment, when "born again" into the very Family of God... IF ready!
As the physical fetus must grow physically large enough to be born, so the begotten Christian must grow in grace, and in the knowledge of Christ (II Pet. 3:18) – must overcome, must develop in spiritual CHARACTER during this life, in order to be BORN into the Kingdom of GOD! And as the physical fetus gradually, one by one, develops the physical organs, features and characteristics, even so the begotten Christian must gradually, continually, develop the SPIRITUAL CHARACTER – LOVE, FAITH, PATIENCE, GENTLENESS, TEMPERANCE. HE MUST LIVE BY, AND BE A DOER of the Word of God. He must develop the divine CHARACTER! (Missing Dimension in Sex, chapter 4)
2026 -- A Watershed Year?
2026 may or may not be a critical time prophetically, but it would seem foolhardy to ignore the possibility -- like a pregnant woman past her due date, deciding she can't be pregnant after all ... and we've known that to happen! So could forty years since Mr. Armstrong's death have any significance for us? Well, "forty years" can also signify bringing a time period to its conclusion:
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David was thirty years old when he began to reign, and he reigned forty years. (II Samuel 5:4)
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And the time that Solomon reigned in Jerusalem over all Israel was forty years. (I Kings 11:42)
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No foot of man shall pass through it, nor foot of beast shall pass through it, neither shall it be inhabited forty years...
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Yet thus saith the Lord GOD; At the end of forty years will I gather the Egyptians from the people. (Ezekiel 29:11,13)
It should be obvious to us that this world's stability is on a knife edge, and during the time of Jacob's Trouble up to nine tenths of the world's population may perish. Going back to the example of the spies... there were two who were not perturbed at all at the apparent difficulties up ahead, and it would be wise to take a leaf out of their book and note where their confidence lay:
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And they [Joshua and Caleb] spake unto all the company of the children of Israel, saying, The land, which we passed through to search it, is an exceeding good land.
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If the LORD delight in us, then he will bring us into this land, and give it us; a land which floweth with milk and honey.
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Only rebel not ye against the LORD, neither fear ye the people of the land; for they are bread for us: their defence is departed from them, and the LORD is with us: fear them not. (Numbers 14:7-9)
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But my servant Caleb, because he had another spirit with him, and hath followed me fully, him will I bring into the land whereinto he went; and his seed shall possess it. (Numbers 14:24)
We're warned that "Therefore this iniquity shall be to you as a breach ready to fall, swelling out in a high wall, whose breaking cometh suddenly at an instant ." (Isaiah 30:13). Mr. Armstrong gave the same warning -- even more pertinent to us today! -- in his Plain Truth Personal of August 1980:
RECENTLY I HAVE been writing for our millions of readers in a far more serious manner. World events, seen through the eyes of biblical prophecy, strongly imply we are much nearer the END of this evil world than people realize.
Jesus said, THAT WHEN WE SEE THESE EVENTS BEGIN TO COME TO PASS, WE MAY KNOW THAT THE TIME IS NEAR – EVEN AT OUR VERY DOOR! Also He said the end of this world shall come, SUDDENLY, catching those not watching like a rat caught in a trap. The trap springs suddenly before the rat knows what happened to him.
But the good news is the very Gospel message that Jesus taught: the KINGDOM OF GOD IS AT HAND. The Second Coming of Christ, in supreme POWER and GLORY, as KING of kings to rule all nations. That very time is now almost upon us!...
...Speaking of the present “Philadelphia” era, it says in Revelation 3:10, that because we have kept God’s Word faithfully, not liberalizing nor watering down, God will keep us from the “hour of temptation, which shall come upon all them that dwell on the earth” to try and test them. The original Greek words indicate this is speaking of THE GREAT TRIBULATION. The Faucett Critical and Experimental Commentary says, “the hour of temptation: the appointed season of affliction; the sore temptation coming on; the GREAT TRIBULATION before Christ’s second coming.”
This same time of trouble, greater than any on earth before or after, is mentioned in Daniel 12:1, as being just prior to Christ’s return. It is mentioned in Jeremiah 30 as a trouble especially on the United States and the British nations. All signs in world events imply strongly we are now on the very eve of these events to shake the world as NEVER BEFORE, just prior to Christ’s return, and the coming of the HAPPY PEACEFUL WORLD TOMORROW!
Jesus taught us to pray, “THY kingdom come.” We should now want God to delay no longer what MUST SHORTLY COME! (The Plain Truth – August 1980)
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But of the times and the seasons, brethren, ye have no need that I write unto you.
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For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night.
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For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape.
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But ye, brethren, are not in darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief.
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Ye are all the children of light, and the children of the day: we are not of the night, nor of darkness.
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Therefore let us not sleep, as do others; but let us watch [Strongs GK1127; "be awake, be vigilant"] and be sober.
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For they that sleep sleep in the night; and they that be drunken are drunken in the night.
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But let us, who are of the day, be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love; and for an helmet, the hope of salvation.
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For God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ,
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Who died for us, that, whether we wake or sleep, we should live together with him.
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Wherefore comfort yourselves together, and edify [GK - build up, embolden] one another, even as also ye do. (I Thessalonians 5:1-11)
“Just what is an APOSTLE?”
Today we find the Church of God in a “wilderness of religious confusion!”
The confusion is not merely around the Church – within the religions of the world outside – but WITHIN the very heart of The True Church itself!
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