'99 - YEAR OF ERUPTION?

We are rapidly approaching a new millennium. What can mankind expect in the days ahead?

Certainly those familiar with the words of the prophets realize that we are living in the last days. The Bible predicts that shortly before Messiah returns to planet earth that the Middle East will become the focal point of world politics and that Jerusalem will become the powder keg.

"Behold, I will make Jerusalem a cup of trembling unto all the people round about.. And in that day will I make Jerusalem a burdensome stone for all people" (Zech. 12.2,3).

Most are familiar with my book, Revelation of the Beast. I discuss why Israel is destined to become an international headache for the world's military and economic powers. In spite of the heroic effort to bring peace to this troubled region, man's good intentions will fall short. The Middle East will eventually erupt into war - bloody, chaotic, brutal, all-out war!

It was the Psalmist who predicted that Israel's neighbors would literally seek to annihilate the tiny Jewish nation in the last days.

"For lo, thine enemies make a tumult: and they that hate thee have lifted up the head ... They have said, Come, and let us cut them off from, being a nation: that the name of Israel may be no more in remembrance" (Psalm 83:2-4).

Philistia. (the land located along the Gaza Strip and presently populated by the Palestinians) will certainly play a key role in the future oppressive confederacy against Israel (Psalm 83:7).

This particular region, though currently a part of Israel, is destined to be allied against the Jewish state in the last days. It will act in cohort with the Muslim confederacy. The following is from the Hickory Daily Record - Nov. 16, 1998.

JERUSALEM (AP) - Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat on Sunday hinted at armed conflict with Israel, warning darkly that "our rifle is ready," and repeating that he will declare statehood next year". Arafat's proposed date - May 4, 1991

MID-EAST WAR '99?

If the following prestigious intelligence briefing proves correct, '99 may be the most prophetically significant year since the rebirth of Israel in 1948 and the recapture of Jerusalem in 1967. Indeed, the next Middle East war could very well be the kicker for the "Great Tribulation." The following article is from Intelligence Digest, Lanham, Md., and was written by Joe De Courcy. I quote:

Intelligence reports received in recent weeks indicate that a horrific Arab-Israeli War within the next 12 months is now almost certain. Why should you care? After all, the Arabs and Israelis have bee fighting for decades.

Here's one reason: The last Arab-Israeli War in October '73 sent the world into the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression. On October 5, the day before the war broke out, the Dow stood at 947; a year later, the Dow had lost 40% of its value, falling to 587.

It took more than a decade for the world's stock markets to recover fully. But even more important, during that time there was massive unemployment ... double-digit inflation ... and a decline in economic growth worldwide. The Arab Oil Boycott, which was directly a result of the war, led to gasoline and heating oil shortages throughout the U.S. and Europe.

And now a far, far worse war is coming!

For four years, our secret intelligence sources in the Middle East have been saying "Don't believe the peace talk; the Arabs are preparing for war." And sometimes even Arab leaders themselves, in unguarded moments, have let slip the truth.

In February 1996, Palestinian Authority leader Yasser Arafat told Arab diplomats in Stockholm:

"We Palestinians will take over everything, including all of Jerusalem...We plan to eliminate the State of Israel and establish a Palestinian state." In August 1997, Syrian president Hafez al-Assad told the Arab military newspaper al-Jundi al-Arabi: "The liberation of Arab land is a sacred duty which we will not shirk from performing and making sacrifices to fulfill." And even Egyptian President Hosni Murbarak has now stated openly that Egypt will not stand idly by in the event of a Syrian-Israeli war.

But our intelligence sources have also been telling us for four years that the Arabs will not go to war until they have, first completed five. key preparations. To our horror, those preparations are now nearly complete. They are:

1. Win as many territorial and military concessions from Israel as possible before a war. Through the Madrid Peace Process, the Palestinians have regained control over the major Arab population centers of the West Bank and Gaza Strip and they've been able to build a small army in these territories. (When war does come, the Israelis will now face 40,000 Palestinians armed with guns, not stone throwing children as in the past.) But the election of hard-liner Benjamin Netanyahu as Israeli Prime Minister has convinced key Arab strategists that little more can now be gained through negotiation. One down, four to go!

2. Rebuild the Arab armed forces. Again and again the Arabs have been humiliated by tiny Israel - in five major wars. This time there must be a massive new arms build-up. Egypt recently bought 600 MIA1 tanks, frigates and submarines, six dozen F-16 fighters, and more. Syria is spending $2 billion in Saudi money to buy weapons from Russia, including 400 T-72 tanks and 300 SP artillery pieces. And even Saudi Arabia's vast US supplied armory could be turned on Israel once King Fahd is replaced by the anti-western Crown Prince Abdullah. Two down, three to go!

3. Neutralize Israel's nuclear deterrent. The Arabs 3could not risk another war until they had an answer to Israel's nuclear deterrent. Now they have. The latest intelligence from Damascus shows that Syria has so many missiles armed with chemical and biological weapons that no Israeli first strike could ever destroy them all. If Israel were ever to use its nuclear weapons, Tel Aviv would cease to exist, destroyed in a storm of nerve gas. Three down, two to go!

4. Neutralize Turkey. Syria's greatest enemy after 41srael is Turkey, and in 1996 Israel and Turkey signed a military cooperation pact that makes Syria very nervous. Syria now knows it cannot attack Israel to the south until it has neutralized the threat from Turkey to the north. That's why the recent hostility between Russia and Turkey, over Russia's plan to sell missiles to Cyprus, is an ominous development. If Turkey becomes involved in a military stand off with Russia she will be effectively removed as a military player in an Arab-Israeli war. Four down, one to go!

5. Neutralize the American military threat. The lessons of the 1991 war with Saddam Hussein are still fresh in Arab minds. They watched in horror as the Arabs' most "battle-hardened" army was annihilated in a matter of days by America's overwhelming military superiority. How can the Arabs attack Israel with America ready to spring to its defense? There is only one way: By convincing U.S. leaders that American intervention will result in a horrific terrorist nuclear attack on major U.S. cities. And that is the real story behind former Russian security chief General Alexander Lebed's recent revelation that 84 of the KGBs 132 suitcase-sized nuclear terror bombs have gone missing. No U.S. president can be sure now if Arab terrorists threatening to strike with nuclear weapons are bluffing .. or actually have the KGB bombs already been hidden in New York...or San Francisco...or Miami. Five down, time for war! (End Quote)

'99 CRASH?

The picture is taken from the cover-page of Newsweek Magazine, Oct. 12, '98. The following news brief is from the same. Domino Effect.

It all started with some little noticed financial rumblings in a distant corner of the globe. Then the economic turbulence spread. Now it's shaking the U.S. financial system, and may take the economy down.

Consider how the dominoes have toppled:

The first was Thailand. It devalued the baht on July 2, 1997. Few Americans noticed. After all, Thailand absorbed only 1 percent of U.S. exports. But other Asian countries (South Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines) soon followed suit. Foreign investment capital that had poured into these countries as bank loam, direct investment and stock purchases - began to flee, because the money was badly spent. Blame fell on "crony capitalism" (funneling investment hinds to favored friends or industries). Still, American economists minimized the impact; together, theme countries buy only 8 percent of U.S. exports.

Then Japan was hurt, because roughly 40 percent of its trade is with the rest of Asia. The loss of exports pushed its already weak economy which had never fully recovered from the speculative "bubble economy* of the late 1980s into its worst postwar recession. The problems of its banks, burdened with more than $500 billion in bad loans, deepened. All the Asian recessions fed on each other; Japan wasn't healthy enough to help other Asian nations revive by buying more of their exports.

Capital flight next hit Latin America and Russia in early summer. To stop investors from converting local currencies into dollars (or yen or German marks), countries raised interest rates. In July, short-term interest rates in Russia shot to 100 percent. But high rates meant slower economic growth or a crash; a currency collapse if capital flight continued - posed the same dangers. Now the "Asian crisis" extended well beyond a few small countries, including Japan, Latin America and the former Soviet bloc, almost half the world economy was affected.

The stock market and major institutional investors hedge funds, investment banks and commercial banks are the latest dominoes to teeter. The slump in U.S. stock prices reflects a growing recognition that corporate profits will suffer from weaker exports and lower earnings of multinational companies in foreign markets. Hedge funds and others face huge losses from wild swings in markets and bad surprises: for example, Russia's default on its government debt.

This is a formula for recession, even though most economists aren't yet predicting one. The U.S. trade deficit is ballooning, as exports drop and other countries try to recover by selling more to the United States. The International Monetary Fund projects that the current account deficit (for broadly defined trade) will hit $290 billion in 1999, almost double the $155 billion in 1997. Since March, manufacturing jobs have fallen by 152,000.

In its latest forecast, the IMF has already sharply reduced projections of world economic growth. And the IMF added a somber qualification to its forecast. The risks, it said, "are predominantly on the downside" and "a significantly worse outcome is clearly possible." Put plainly, this means: "We don't know what will happen - and we're scared.* (End quote)

COMPUTER CALAMITY '99?

The daily news is no longer hesitant concerning the upcoming Y2K (Year 2000) computer problem.

The following are a few select comments from Probe Magazine, Kempton, III - Winter Edition, 1998/99.

President Clinton's new Y2K czar, John Koskinen, estimates the number of embedded chips to be 5 billion. Worldwide that number could be five or six times as many.

In the last year or so several major corporations have been testing what would happen to their embedded chips when we rolled over to 2000 A.D. In 1997 General Motors admitted that every one of their plants would shut down if not fixed in time. Now every manufacturing plant in the country has started learning the same cold fact.

Embedded chips present one of the worst problems to correcting the computer dilemma. The scope of this problem includes chips in systems that are part of the controls for: oil rigs, factory controllers, satellites, weapons systems, consumer electronics, power plants and airlines. General Motors has 60,000 robots on the assembly line with embedded chips and according to the GartnerGroup, "there are more than 50-million embedded system devices that will exhibit 2000 date anomalies in 1999." One of the greatest difficulties with embedded chips is their accessibility, there are 10,000 embedded systems in the North Sea and it will cost about $75,000 to check each chip under the seabed.

In the April 22, 1998 Wall Street Journal (WSI), the new IRS head, Charles Rossotti said of the year 2000 computer glitch, "The IRS struggles to modernize its computers and avoid year 2000 chaos. There's no point in sugarcoating the problem, if we don't fix the century-date problem, we will have a situation scarier than the average disaster movie you might see on a Sunday night. Twenty-one months from now, there could be 90 million taxpayers who won't get their refunds." Rossoti also admitted to planning to spend about a billion dollars of taxpayer money on Y2K.

Economist and managing director of Deutsche Moregan Grenfell, Edward Yardeni admits to being what is now called a Y2K alarmist. Yardeni also believes that there would be a 40% chance of a recession in the wake of Y2K. In a May, 1998 article in the WSJ, Yardeni says, "The recession odds are now up to 60% in my estimation, and there is even a possibility of a depression."

Social Security's team of 400 programmers began repairs on 30 million lines of computer code in 1991. They not only have not become Y2K compliant but also have discovered another 33 million lines of code to sort through. Currently, estimates put Social Security 92% compliant after 7 years of working on the problem.

There are around 500,000 mainframe computer programmers in the U.S. At least another 500,000 will be needed in 1999 to fix the glitch. England may need another 300,000. Add up what is needed in other countries and you're into the millions.

The typical large mainframe computer system has several other arcane languages besides the more familiar COBOL (Common Business Oriented Language) embedded in it in some systems, 70 or more. Sadly, hardly anyone still understands them.

BANKS * UTILITIES

Without reliable power supplies there is no electricity, and without these essentials industry and commerce is like a hot car without wheels.

Andrew Pegalis, head of Next Millennium Consulting said on MSNBC (6/12/98), "When you consider the number of chips that need changing, power outages are almost a certainty. Embedded systems require a monumental effort. They first must be located, they must then be tested, and some of the manufacturers of these chips have gone out of business, which means you often don't know how they were programmed."

A computer specialist Robert Martin was quoted in the Boston Globe, "When the Chrysler Corporation conducted a test of its Y2K solutions at an assembly plant last year (1997) the time clocks malfunctioned, causing the security system to shut down, making it impossible for anyone to leave the building."

When Phillips Petroleum Company ran a simulation onboard an oil vessel in the North Sea, a safety system designed to detect a deadly gas, hydrogen sulfide, shut down. (Hydrogen sulfide is used in gas chambers to execute criminals and is also a by-product of CS gas when it is heated.)

A survey released in March of 1998 by the Information Technology Association of America states that 44% of responding companies have reported Y2K related failures under operation conditions and 67% say their systems fail when under test conditions. You can expect these percentages to shrink as we get closer to the finish line; the problem is that they won't shrink to zero.

There were 38 million People who received Medicare in 1997. In the year 2000 it is estimated that the total expenditures for claims will reach 288 billion dollars.

The reality is that Medicare claims are not administered by Medicare but 70 private agencies. These agencies have already been informed their contracts will not be renewed in the year 2000.

In spite of discharging these companies in the year 2000, Medicare is asking these companies to make the computers Y2K compliant before they leave. Even the GAO (Government Accounting Office) wonders where in the world the for them to meet this goal.

Only 63% of the 7,850 federal systems deemed 'mission critical' - that is vital to protecting U.S. national security, health, safety, education, transportation and financial management will be ready on 1, January 2000. (John Koskinen, Presidents Council on the Year 2000 conversion from a meeting May the Center for Security Policy.)

In 1993 NORAD in Cheyenne Colorado ran their computer dates up 2000. The result, everything froze.

If you think your insurance will cover losses resulting from Y2K, think again. Currently 46 states already exclude claims millennium bug. (End quote).

Many computers around the start to exhibit problems related change. The "99" can also signal shut down for some systems. The introduction of the new Euro currency will create problems in the banking/financial sectors.

April 1, 1999 - Starts fiscal the state of New York countries of Japan, Canada and others. May be an indicator for what to expect when other government fiscal years turn over a few months down the road. Some corporations start turning their fiscal years on this date also.

July 1, 1999 - Starts fiscal year 2000 for a large number of state governments with the potential for the start of many date related computer problems.

August 22, 1999 - This is an important day because the Global System (GPS) satellites turn over their dates. Most people don't realize how important these satellites are to so many aspects of modern life today. Most navigation for aircraft, ships, and various military applications including missile guidance dependent on the GPS system.

September 9, 1999 - Years ago many programmers used this number to signal a computer to shut down. This probably won't be near the problem that other aspects of Y2K will be, but could lead to some glitches.

October 1, 1999 - This date begins the U.S. federal government's fiscal year 2000. Many problems May become evident on this date, long before January 1, 2000.

January 1, 2000 - Y2K "D" day. One of the most anticipated dates in recent human history on a number of fronts. (End quote)

Saints, how much of the preceding will occur as stated is pure speculation. Yet, it behooves us to watch closely! Ask Jesus what he would have you to do to Prepare for the days ahead.