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Standing in support of Israel, Jews, and believers in all the nations, in the name of Jesus (Yeshua). Sharing biblical truth, encouragement, news and prophecy.
Tuesday, December 15, 2015
Israel Photo Trivia ✡ "I Will Remember My Covenant" - ISRAEL365
Born again Christians in Europe - Only 1.5% of the population - William Koening
William Koening - White House correspondent
Author of "Eye To Eye"
The Jim Bakker Show - Dec. 14, 2015
Watch here: World News Update with William Koening
Geert Wilders - "Europe has been lost."
Europe and its rejection of Israel.
Jim Bakker Show 2015 | Show# 2897 | Aired on December 14, 2015
Five Trends That Will Change The World in 2016 - Rick Joyner, MorningStar Prophetic Bulletin #96
Rick Joyner
Five Trends That Will
Change The World in 2016
Published on MorningStar Ministries (https://www.morningstarministries.org)
Five Trends That Will Change The World in 2016
MorningStar Prophetic Bulletin #96 - December 14, 2015
The following are the five major events that will likely define our immediate future and impact world affairs for the foreseeable future. These are listed in the sequence they occurred, not necessarily the sequence of importance or impact:
1) China stock market crashes
2) Falling energy prices
3) Russian military intervention into the Middle East
4) Paris and San Bernardino terrorist attacks
5) The Trump candidacy
We will look at each of these for the message they have, but first we will briefly discuss the most basic change factor in world affairs—initiative. In military operations and world affairs, having the initiative is necessary for success. The one with the initiative can control the battle or geopolitical situation, requiring their opponent(s) to react to them rather than the other way around. Therefore, those with the initiative have a major advantage in the confrontation.
For this reason, the most important factors to look for to discern the nature of events and where they are heading are:
1) Who has the initiative
2) What are their intentions or goals
3) What are their resources and strategies for sustaining the initiative
Now we’ll look at each of the five events having a major impact on the world and their potential consequences.
The China Stock Market Crash
China’s economic growth has been a key factor impacting the world economy this century. Without it, the recovery after 9/11 or the crash of 2008 would have been more difficult, if not impossible. China is now one of the biggest economic forces in the world, rivaling the impact of both the U.S. and Europe.
Factors:
On June 12, 2015 The Shanghai Index lost one third of its value. It rebounded, but this began the most turbulent volatility of a major market possibly in modern times, even eclipsing the 1929 crash. Understanding its cause and impact on the world economy is important for understanding what we can expect the world economy to do in the foreseeable future.
One report estimated that one hundred million Chinese investors were virtually wiped out in a day. Many more than this number was also severely hurt by this crash. The Chinese economy had produced more millionaires and billionaires and created and expanded a middle class faster than any economy in history. It delivered more people out of poverty in a shorter time—a truly remarkable achievement.
China also created a huge number of consumers that drove industry around the world. The June crash, dramatic recovery, and then a worse crash over a few week period unnerved more than the Chinese—it alarmed everyone who understood the interconnection of world economics. This will no doubt majorly impact the rapid growth of the Chinese’s purchasing of the world’s goods, with huge ramifications.
The Western media hardly covered this remarkable event, possibly because only about 1.5% of Chinese stocks are held outside of China. Another reason is China’s control over its media. In the free media, panic can be created and driven by the media. China clamped down on their media, likely preventing a far worse catastrophe. They also quickly shut down trading by major companies and stockholders.
This strategy can work in the short term, but the lack of transparency also breeds suspicion, long-term concern, or fear that can hurt a free market even more. The Chinese leadership is smart enough to know this, but the potential for catastrophe in the short term was so great, they felt they had to take drastic measures.
Chinese authorities blamed the crash on rumors and fear mongering. If true, fear and rumors will be a continuing problem for the Chinese without transparency. Their markets stabilized because of the controls, but when those controls were lifted a little, the markets fell another 40%. They’ve recovered some, but the factors that initiated these shockwaves have not been addressed—the lack of transparent accounting and the true value of their currency, the Yuan, that was arbitrarily set by the government.
Although it’s impressive how well the Chinese government handled the crash without prior experience in anything like this, the IMF’s recent decision to designate the Chinese Yuan a reserve currency seems to be more political than economic. This was likely a move to help stabilize the Yuan, but this too could have a destabilizing affect on other world currencies—we’ll see.
It is no secret that the Chinese would like to see their currency replace the dollar as the world’s top reserve currency. Even with their problems, they are headed that way because of the over-regulation and over-taxation shackling the U.S. economy.
BOTTOM LINE:
This will not likely bode well for the U.S. dollar or economy. The potential effect of the Chinese market turmoil to destabilize the rest of the world is substantial. Again, Chinese economic growth, and the creation of such a huge middle class and consumer base, may be the single biggest factor sustaining the world economy after the 2008 crash. Basic economic indicators point to increasing weakness in the world economy at a time when one of its biggest economic engines, China, will slow down.
A slide into a recession in 2016 looks not only possible, but seems inevitable. The recovery since 2008 would not likely exist with China, and it has still only been a shallow, weak recovery. Now the world cannot count on growing Chinese consumption to bail them out.
The turmoil in China will impact the world economy negatively by slowing its consumer spending. At the same time, China is seizing the initiative to become the world’s reserve currency, giving them increasing leverage over the world economy. This is not the result of strength in their economy as much as Chinese leadership and decisiveness. As Donald Trump accurately pointed out, “Their leaders have been smarter than ours.”
Without a major change in U.S. economic policy, China is in the best position to take and hold the initiative in world economics for the foreseeable future. This is happening in spite of the fragile nature of the Yuan. Chinese equity markets have more to do with the incompetence of U.S. and European economic leadership than brilliance on the part of the Chinese. That China has seized the initiative in the world economy after suffering such dramatic turmoil in its own economy is a clear indication of the kind of jeopardy the world economy is in.
Falling Energy Prices
Along with the growth of Chinese consumerism, falling energy prices have been a major driver of the world’s economy in recent times. The effect has been like having a trillion dollar stimulus infused into the U.S. and E.U. economies each year. Combined with “Quantitative Easing” (QE), the artificial dumping of almost another trillion dollars into the economy each year, the U.S. economy is just barely inching along, indicating how gummed up the works are in our economic engine.
Falling energy prices may have bought us more time to fix serious issues in the economy, but without decisive leadership that will actually fix things, we will inevitably suffer the worst economic disaster in our history. Falling energy prices are mostly the result of falling demand for energy, a sure sign that much the world’s economy is weakening.
Russian Intervention in the Middle East
Russia’s economy has been devastated because it is a petroleum-based economy, and falling energy prices have it near collapse. However, Putin has emerged as the most decisive world leader. He has seized initiative in world affairs and become a major player in world economics.
Putin’s move into the Middle East was not just about propping up the Assad, a man Putin has shown distain for, in Syria. Neither is his alliance with Iran the result of his love for that regime. He has brilliantly positioned Russia to use both of them in a bold move to threaten Saudi Arabia and the other oil producers in the region. This will drive up oil prices, thereby saving the Russian economy.
This is bold and brilliant, and a decisive man like Putin will likely carry it out. The recent shooting down of a Russian plane by Turkey gave him more cards to play. Cutting off Russian tourism to Turkey can devastate that country’s economy. It also has the potential to create major turmoil in NATO, ultimately securing the Russian southern flank by bringing a capitulating Turkey under Russian control. Putin is smart enough to play the cards he’s dealt, and it's not likely the Russian/Turkish crisis will go away until Putin has gained a great deal.
Another factor is that almost all NATO countries are dependent on Middle Eastern oil. If Putin is ambitious (and he seems to be), he could break up NATO and bring many of the nations under Russian influence. This would force the E.U. to stand down and not interfere in his actions against Ukraine or other former Soviet states while freeing him for other adventures.
America alone has the power to counter Putin, but his decisiveness combined with the ineptness of American leadership could not be setting the tables better for him. The U.S. and Canada could now be producing enough energy to support the E.U. so that it does not have to depend on Saudi Arabia or Russian energy sources, strengthening NATO at a time when it is increasingly needed. Policies like killing the Keystone Pipeline could have bad consequences. At the very least, this will likely prove a major missed opportunity strategically.
BOTTOM LINE:
Expect energy prices to rebound in 2016, though they could drop even more before this happens because of the weakening world economy. When they start back up they could return to previous levels faster than they fell. This will be like a reverse of the stimulus at the worst time for Western economies, wreaking economic havoc on the U.S., the E.U., and many other countries.
Russia does not need energy from outside sources, but they do need the price of energy to go up. China is desperate for dependable and cheap energy. They did not join Putin’s Middle East adventure without a purpose. China will likely soon have virtual control over Saudi Arabia as part of this deal.
Understanding the power of the Russian/Chinese alliance combined with weak American resolve has much of the world looking to Russia and China for leadership. The end result could be the worst economic disaster in history for the U.S. and the E.U. At the same time, Russia can get back on its feet economically and China will be the most powerful economic force in the world as the stable source of cheap energy (for them).
Together, Russia and China are systematically and effectively seizing the initiative in the world economy, and by that world affairs. No other leadership in sight can counter it. This is the extraordinary geopolitical shift now taking place. Its implications are as far reaching as the fall of the Iron Curtain, but this time to the advantage of the former communist states. This leads us to the fourth factor to have a major impact on the trajectory of world affairs.
The Paris and San Bernardino Terrorist Attacks
How could such evil deeds by as few as ten people have such an impact on world affairs? Because there is a vacuum of leadership. When President Obama used the extraordinary platform of a prime-time Oval Office address to virtually say nothing except what we shouldn’t do, this increased American jitters, and rightly so. It seems every move the Administration makes to calm people is counterproductive. This is because most people are smart enough to understand the politicians try to come up with politically correct and expedient solutions instead of a real strategy.
Even so, the Paris and San Bernardino attacks did a lot to wake up the people. This awakening is helping to throw off the delusions of unrealistic idealism and political correctness. This is crucial for sustainable war that will defeat ISIS and other groups whose primary strategy is terrorism.
Although French and British leadership are waking up some, it is an awakening among the people that is creating a sharp turn to the right in Europe. Putin has chastised Europe for its attempt at multiculturalism, what he called “cultural suicide.” More Europeans are agreeing with him. Now not only Europeans but also the American people see Putin as the leader most capable of defeating ISIS and other terrorist organizations.
BOTTOM LINE:
As the saying goes, “If you do not change your direction you will end up where you are headed.” This is where the world is now headed—a major economic slide in the West along with a corresponding decline in leverage in world affairs. This has the potential to destabilize populations because of the government’s failure to provide security and defense—its most basic responsibility.
The U.S. still has the most powerful economic engine in the world, but as previously stated, overregulation and over-taxation has gummed it up. Without leadership that changes both of these, America will continue its economic decline with the increasing probability of the European Union fracturing and likely NATO disintegrating. It will take the most extraordinary leadership in our history to seize the initiative from the powerful Russia/China partnership.
This leads to the fifth major factor impacting the pivotal year of 2016.
The Candidacy of Donald Trump
It is probable that you either really like Donald Trump or really don’t, but his candidacy helps us understand the times like few things can. Like him or dislike him, his candidacy is a revelation of the times we neglect to our peril.
We hear the media pundits say almost nightly, “the American people want this (or that)” when it’s obvious they are out of touch with the American people. This is likely because they are trying to project onto them what they want. It may be their job to understand current events, but the people with real jobs don’t have the time to want much depth. They often want the bottom line and to trust their leaders to know and take care of the details. This is why simple messages like “hope” and “change” worked so effectively.
What almost everyone does seem to know is that we’re like a ship without a rudder when it comes to the most important and threatening issues. In times of confusion and chaos, people gravitate to strong, decisive leadership. Like him or not, Trump is the kind of person people turn to in such times.
It was recently reported that in one day there were about 2,500 mentions of all of the candidates combined, excluding Trump. On that same day, Trump was mentioned almost 65,000 times. That was media dominance by a candidate never before seen. Even though a lot of this coverage was negative, it got Trump’s message out. He was almost totally controlling the conversation.
Like what Trump says and stands for or not, he projects decisiveness unlike the other candidates. In times of peace, likability is often considered a better quality for a candidate. In times of war or crisis, strength and decisiveness will almost always win. That’s why the U.K. so despised the pugnacious Winston Churchill during times of peace, but almost all turned to him when war became inevitable.
One more terrorist attack on American soil like the one in San Bernardino and Trump could be a shoo-in for the Republican nomination. With the way events are trending for 2016, he could be our next President.
Depending on your perspective, this scenario presents either the greatest opportunity for the U.S. to retake the initiative in world affairs and economy, or it presents the greatest danger. Coming events will clarify which it is, but conditions are careening toward the time when strong, decisive leadership that can seize the initiative will dominate our future.
There are other factors also affecting current events and trends. Many of them could arise to become a major one, but at present, this is a brief evaluation of major trends from the natural perspective. In the nextBulletin, we will cover the spiritual.
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[1]Courageous Israeli Arabs Honor Slain American Christian - Israel Today Staff
Courageous Israeli Arabs
Honor Slain American Christian
Tuesday, December 15, 2015 | Israel Today Staff
Three courageous and outspoken Israeli Arab young men were on hand this week to help honor Kristine Luken, an American Christian tourist who was brutally murdered by Palestinian terrorists in 2010.
Luken had been visiting her Israeli friend, Kay Wilson, and the two were hiking south of Jerusalem when they were set upon by the knife-wielding terrorists.
Wilson, who miraculously survived the attack despite being stabbed 17 times, has recounted the harrowing ordeal on numerous occasions.
Every year, Wilson has paid tender tribute to her slain friend, but this year was extra special for the reason she describes in the Facebook post below.
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Uncovering Proof of the Bible - Dr. Avshalom Kapach
Uncovering Proof of the Bible
Tuesday, December 15, 2015 | Dr. Avshalom Kapach
Such finds authenticate the history of the nation of Israel as described in the Bible and undermine those who seek to rewrite history.
Tuesday, December 15, 2015 | Dr. Avshalom Kapach
Such finds authenticate the history of the nation of Israel as described in the Bible and undermine those who seek to rewrite history.
The full article appears in the December 2015 issue of Israel Today Magazine.
CLICK HERE to read it all
CLICK HERE to read it all
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New Form of Terrorism? Arabs Snare Jewish Girls Through Seduction then Trap them in Arab Villages - BREAKING ISRAEL NEWS
(Photo: YouTube Screenshot)
New Form of Terrorism? Arabs Snare Jewish Girls Through Seduction then Trap them in Arab Villages - BREAKING ISRAEL NEWS
“When Shechem the son of Hamor the Hivite, the prince of the land, saw her, he took her and lay with her by force. He was deeply attracted to Dinah the daughter of Jacob” (Genesis 34:2-3)
In recent weeks, Israel’s home front has become its front-line. The war on Israelis has another consequence: the mistreatment of Jewish girls trapped in Arab villages.
For many years, Learn and Return, a non-profit organization, has tracked the phenomenon of Arab men seducing very young, vulnerable Jewish girls with gifts and compliments, until the girls willingly go into their Arab village. Once in an Arab village, the girl becomes the object of abuse and servitude to her Arab beau and his family, and her chances for escape are virtually nil.
“In the Arab world, it is considered an honor of the highest order to get a Jewish girl to convert to Islam,” explains Patty Kupfer, founder of Learn and Return to Breaking Israel News. “There are many stories where Arab men pretended to be Jewish until the girl ‘fell in love’ and then found out that the man was an Arab. By then, it can often be too late.”
“This situation is not at all like intermarriage in the US,” she adds. “This goes way beyond prevention of assimilation or intermarriage. It is literally about saving the lives of young girls.”
Every year, hundreds of girls trapped in Arab villages call Israeli hotlines, begging to be rescued. Whenever there is an Arab uprising or increase in terrorism, the number of calls skyrockets.
“The men are furious with Israel, and that fury is taken out on their Jewish wives,” Kupfer told Breaking Israel News. “At these times, the girls are beaten mercilessly. After a recent stabbing attack in Jerusalem, an Arab man came home and struck his Jewish wife in the face with an ax. She was bleeding and no one from her husband’s family came to help her. While Israelis are targets in the streets, Jewish girls are defenseless targets in the Arab villages.”
Learn and Return invests most of its efforts in prevention, reaching out to Jewish girls who have become involved with Arab men by providing them whatever was missing in their lives . Many of these girls come from dysfunctional, abusive or poverty-stricken homes and crave warmth, attention and affection. Some are living on the streets, where drug and alcohol abuse have destroyed their self-esteem.
Learn and Return has a shelter and provides rescue counseling, vocational placement, food, clothing and a safe-house, along with a lot of love and emotional support, to get the girls back on track. The cost to save and rehabilitate a girl can range from $500-$5,000.
The organization has saved close to 1,000 girls in its first three years of operation, but its work is far from finished. With hundreds, if not thousands, of Jewish girls involved in abusive relationships with Arab men, Learn and Return seeks much-needed funding from generous and caring donors. “Supporting Learn and Return truly fulfills the Bible’s command to preserve life,” Kupfer emotionally shares with Breaking Israel News. “Biblically, saving a life overrides virtually any other considerations.”
This Is What A Financial Crisis Looks Like - MICHAEL SNYDER THE ECONOMIC COLLAPSE BLOG
This Is What A Financial Crisis Looks Like |
Posted: 14 Dec 2015 MICHAEL SNYDER THE ECONOMIC COLLAPSE BLOG
 Just within the past few days, three major high yield funds have completely imploded, and panic is spreading rapidly on Wall Street. Funds run by Third Avenue Management and Stone Lion Capital Partners have suspended payments to investors, and a fund run by Lucidus Capital Partners has liquidated its entire portfolio. We are witnessing a race for the exits unlike anything that we have seen since the great financial crash of 2008, and many of those that choose to hesitate are going to end up getting totally wiped out. In case you are wondering, this is what a financial crisis looks like. In 2008, other global stock markets started to tumble, then junk bonds began to crash, and finally U.S. stocks followed. The exact same pattern is playing out again, and the carnage that we have seen so far is just the tip of the iceberg. Since the end of 2009, a high yield bond ETF that I watch very closely known as JNK has been trading in a range between 36 and 42. I have been waiting all this time for it to dip below 35, because I knew that would be a sign that the next major financial crisis was imminent. In September, it closed as low as 35.33 at one point, but that was not the signal that I was looking for. Finally, early last week JNK broke below 35 for the very first time since the last financial crisis, and since then it has just kept on falling. As I write this, JNK has plummeted all the way to 33.42, and Bloomberg is reporting that many bond managers “are predicting more carnage for high-yield investors”… Top bond managers are predicting more carnage for high-yield investors amid a market rout that forced at least three credit funds in the past week to wind down.When it says that those firms “have stopped returning cash to investors”, what that means is that many of those investors will be lucky to get pennies on the dollar when it is all said and done. Like I said, now that the crisis has started, the ones that are going to lose the most are those that hesitate. And just check out some of the very big names that are “warning of more high-yield trouble ahead”… Scott Minerd, global chief investment officer at Guggenheim Partners, predicts 10 percent to 15 percent of junk bond funds may face high withdrawals as more investors worry about getting their money back. He joins money managers Jeffrey Gundlach, Carl Icahn, Bill Gross and Wilbur Ross in warning of more high-yield trouble ahead.In this type of environment, the Federal Reserve would have to be completely insane to raise interest rates. Unfortunately, that appears to be exactly what is going to happen. If the Fed raises rates, that is going to make corporate debt defaults even more likely and will almost certainly drive high-yield bonds down even further… Higher rates could make corporate bond defaults more likely and investors are already bailing out of the sector, pulling $3.8 billion out of high-yield funds in the week ended December 9, the biggest move in 15 weeks. The effective yield on U.S. junk bonds is now 17 percent, the highest level in five years, according to Bank of America Merrill Lynch data.A whole host of prominent names are warning that the Fed is about to make a tragic mistake. One of them is James Rickards… “The Fed should have raised interest rates in 2010 and 2011 and if they did that they would actually be in a position to cut them today,” said James Rickards, a central bank critic and chief global strategist at West Shore Funds. “The Fed is on the brink of committing a historic blunder that may rank with the mistakes it made in 1927 and 1929. By raising into weakness, they will likely cause a recession.”In 2015, we have already seen stocks crash all over the globe. Coming into December, more than half of the 93 largest stock market indexes in the world were down more than 10 percent year to date, and some of them were down by as much as 30 or 40 percent. At this point, conditions are absolutely perfect for a frightening collapse of U.S. markets, and the Federal Reserve is about to pour gasoline on to the fire. Anyone that says that “nothing is happening” is either completely misinformed or is totally crazy. I like how James Howard Kunstler summarized what we are currently facing… Equities barfed nearly four percent just last week, credit is crumbling (nobody wants to lend), junk bonds are tanking (as defaults loom), currencies all around the world are crashing, hedge funds can’t give investors their money back, “liquidity” is AWOL (no buyers for janky securities), commodities are in freefall, oil is going so deep into the sub-basement of value that the industry may never recover, international trade is evaporating, the president is doing everything possible in Syria to start World War Three, and the monster called globalism is lying in its coffin with a stake pointed over its heart.The financial markets held together far longer than many people thought that they would, but now they are finally coming apart at the seams. Moving forward, the “winners” are going to be the people that pull their money out the fastest. This is especially true for high risk funds like the three that just imploded. If you hesitate, you could end up losing everything. And as this rush for the exits accelerates, sellers are going to greatly outnumber buyers, and this is going to push prices down at a very rapid pace. We are going to hear a lot about a “lack of liquidity” in the days ahead, but the truth is that what we will really be looking at is a good old-fashioned panic. |
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