Leaders of the G20 nations meet in London next week to draw up a blueprint for a new global economy. Russia is calling for a new world currency. China is proposing replacing the US dollar with a new global system. Iran, Libya and Kazakhstan have called in recent weeks for a new single currency.Prime Minister Gordon Brown is calling for "the biggest fiscal stimulus the world has ever seen," and the Bank of England is telling Gordon Brown that the UK cannot afford a new stimulus plan.
It is interesting that Bible prophecy speaks of a time when there will be one world economy (Rev 13:15 - 17). There will also be one world government (Dan 2:40 - 44; Dan 7:7, 8, 19 - 25; Rev 13:1 - 10) and a one-world religion (Rev 13:11 - 17). This will be a time when followers of Jesus will be martyred (Rev 17:5, 6), a time when the Jews will suffer as they have never suffered before, including the time of the Holocaust. The Bible calls it "the time of Jacob's trouble" (Jer 30:7).
All these things are not going to happen next week. Nevertheless, it is quite remarkable how quickly things are happening in these days. We are living in tremendous times. Times when Christians need to be living close to their Lord; times when they need to be busy in the Lord's service.
Speaking of how quickly things are happening, Khaled abu Toameh, the Palestinian Jerusalem Post journalist, writes just this week:
During a recent visit to several university campuses in the US, I discovered that there is more sympathy for Hamas there than there is in Ramallah.
Listening to some students and professors on these campuses, for a moment I thought I was sitting opposite a Hamas spokesman or a would-be suicide bomber.
I was told, for instance, that Israel has no right to exist, that Israel’s “apartheid system” is worse than the one that existed in South Africa and that Operation Cast Lead was launched only because Hamas was beginning to show signs that it was interested in making peace and not because of the rockets that the Islamic movement was launching at Israeli communities. . .
Furthermore, I was told that all the talk about financial corruption in the Palestinian Authority was “Zionist propaganda”. . . these groups of hard-line activists/thugs are trying to intimidate anyone who dares to say something that they don’t like to hear.
When the self-designated “pro-Palestinian” lobbyists are unable to challenge the facts presented by a speaker, they resort to verbal abuse.
On one campus, for example, I was condemned as an “idiot” because I said that a majority of Palestinians voted for Hamas in the January 2006 election because they were fed up with financial corruption in the Palestinian Authority.
On another campus, I was dubbed as a “mouthpiece for the Zionists” because I said that Israel has a free media. . . And then there was the campus (in Chicago) where I was “greeted” with swastikas that were painted over posters promoting my talk. . .
What struck me more than anything else was the fact that many of the people I met on the campuses supported Hamas and believed that it had the right to “resist the occupation” even if that meant blowing up children and women on a bus in downtown Jerusalem. . .
The so-called pro-Palestinian “junta” on the campuses has nothing to offer other than hatred and de-legitimisation of Israel. . . What is happening on the US campuses is not about supporting the Palestinians as much as it is about promoting hatred for the Jewish state. It is not really about ending the “occupation” as much as it is about ending the existence of Israel. . .
What is happening on these campuses is not in the frame of freedom of speech. Instead, it is the freedom to disseminate hatred and violence.
I have mentioned before that the Bible speaks of a day when all the nations will gather together to attack Israel. That day may not be too far away.
