The Fickleness of Human Opinion and Why We Are Close-Minded

A pundit on CNBC Business News expressed a couple of days ago his concern that governments throughout the Western world are now experiencing a new threat of populism, comparing it to the rise of tyrannical regimes in former decades. People of low information needs are electing demagogues championing the will of the people through false promises and over-simplification. What he forgot to mention is that it may be flourishing at the moment but it has always been a risk of democratic nations. For example, many Brits feel they were lied to regarding a Brexit promise that their yearly contribution to the EU would be funneled into funding for the National Health Service. Similarly, the promise of Mexico paying for a southern wall across the US is not considered (1) realistic humanly, (2) possible politically on either side of the border, and (3) very effective in the end anyway. But, whatever, the case the simplistic solutions and promises made to the population is effective without a doubt.

In reference to the Chilcot Report, Matthew Syed wrote an article for the BBC Magazine section entitled: Why We Cover Our Ears to the Facts. Of course I respect his opinions here and appreciate them for no other reason that they give me something to write about!  But his observations are woefully naive and inadequate to answer the question he poses.

He states that, despite evidence to the contrary, people always stick to their position on a matter. I agree with him concerning this overall truth but disagree with him on why people do so, especially in the case of the Chilcot Report. 

People stick to their earlier decisions regarding the Western coalition's intervention in Iraq, not because they defied the facts; they supported the intervention because they never heard the facts! Moreover, the false information they received came from the intelligence services of the number one superpower in the world that shared many of their same values, beliefs and language--the United States. By and large, the US has always been a reliably partner in Britain's transatlantic relationship and this trajectory was one that lulled Britain into a national support for US foreign policy (which apparently was really being controlled by President Bush's aides and not himself). The "slam dunk" certainty about Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction came from information delivered to congress that was the result of cherry-picking and the influence of Dick Cheney and other neo-cons. Still the same, Canada was one of the few allies of the US that did not buy the intelligence and this later became a point of pride among Canadians (although they did participate in Afghanistan). 

What provoked the strongest reaction from concerning Syed's article were his statements, "Science has changed the world because it prioritises evidence over conviction. Judgements are subservient to what the data tells us." This is only partially true because science itself is only partly verifiable. The science based on observable evidence that can be repeated at will is certainly evidence upon which decisions and opinions can be made. And so our engineers and other applied scientists do. But historic science is not verifiable and is frequently contradicted though published as fact. 

Science has never answered the biggest questions in life, the questions its own theories are based upon. How did the element of time arise? (It is present in our smallest particle of matter, radioistopes.) How did life arise when no current intelligence can created it (except the parent of every plant, animal and human).? How can the probabilities of millions, billions or even trillions of sequential events have arisen by random chance? Statisticians recognize a virtual impossibility when the smallness of a number is inversely lower than the number of atoms in our universe. 

And it gets even worse: The notion that science can speak to the origins of time, space and life is absurd. It cannot because it is unable. So it attempts to explain its wisdom by, in some cases, publishing meaningless tautologies like "survival of the fittest", "time may have arisen from a singularity (spacetime, Stephen Hawking), or by dating non-radioactive strata by its index fossils and, on other occasions, turning around and dating fossils by the strata they are found in. 

And if Mr. Syed has any confidence in the scientific community and its peer review process, he should research this subject further. Both British and American sources expose the flat-out chicanery of the process and how easily it is circumvented and, therefore, how unreliable it is. An article, The Peer Review Scam, from the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine should dismay him enough: "So we have little evidence on the effectiveness of peer review, but we have considerable evidence on its defects. In addition to being poor at detecting gross defects and almost useless for detecting fraud it is slow, expensive, profligate of academic time, highly subjective, something of a lottery, prone to bias, and easily abused." Then he might move on to another article from Canada's CBC | Technology & Science Q&A webpage by Torah Kachur, 2016 ("Science Community Looks for Ways to Stop Fake Papers", where she submitted her own fake paper and received favourable peer reviews. An article from CBC's radio program, the Current, published an investigation into peer review revealing that most of the papers submitted paid for their reviews while other submissions were reviewed by as little as two contributing editors. Lord Susan Greenfield, a neuroscientist and member of Britain's House of Lords, assured BBC's Stephen Sackur on his program, HardTalk, that scientists were the least able to change because of their deeply entrenched biases. (She said this in response to her being roundly criticized by her academic colleagues for publishing an article raising the question of cell phones' impacts on neurotransmitters, backing up her concerns by citing some 500 papers published by mostly Scandinavian and Australian universities.) Perhaps our confidence in the objective nature of science needs to be reexamined.

Therefore, it isn't just that people are intransigent when it comes to defying the evidence before them. It is also a matter of believing that the evidence is really true after all. CNN announced some two years ago that 15% of all article published in all medical journals were retracted. Some 5% were actually falsified! 

Mr. Syed must also acknowledge that Prime Minister Blair and some senior members of the British military have denied the truth of some of Mr. Chilcot's conclusions. I guess it all depends on where you get your information from!

A perfect example of the population being dazzled by insufficient evidence is a new book coming out by Canadian-American writer, Malcolm Gladwell, entitled David and Goliath. He has already been on several major US programs promoting the novel and convincing idea that people breaking new ground traditionally are often rejected later on because of a moral license people adopt. His example were powerful to be sure. America had its first Catholic President with John Kennedy but never another one since. How many US cities had one black mayor only to never have another one? By this metric, President Obama may be the last president the US may ever have. And, as a warning to Secretary Hilary Clinton, he mentioned the same trend with regard to women political leaders. (While in Toronto, he cited the case of Kim Campbell and her lone status as Canada's only woman prime minister.) 

If we listen only to Mr. Gladwell's evidence, we might think he has fallen upon some novel truth. But, while speaking in Toronto, he was thoughtfully opposed by a Norwegian lady in the audience who cited the fact the Norway has had several female prime ministers to which Gladwell could not speak to. Likewise, someone from the same audience brought up the integration of African-Americans into the sports world (e.g. Jackie Robinson), paving the way for many African-Americans to come. All of a sudden the new truth he has stumbled upon may not be so universal after all. (He also forgot to mention Britain's several queens.) 

It is true that humans are resistant to change but, as it turns, out this makes them very typical and very average. And the empiricism of science doesn't alter this. "A man convinced against his will of of the same opinion still," goes the old rhyme. 

Would scientists dare to believe that something can come from nothing and then explode? They do. Would scientists believe in this day in spontaneous generation? That life can come from non-life? Despite the law of abiogenesis, they do. Would scientists embrace a molecules-to-man evolution contrary to the class law of cell theory, that no new genetic information can ever be added to a daughter cell? They do. And if the chance that all 52 cards of a deck could be drawn sequentially be 1/(52^52), would scientists believe that millions of sequential developments could bring about our orderly universe and our earth? They do. 

People universally are close-minded it turns out. Very few have been given the gift of an open mind that judges all the evidence critically and arrives at the most logical conclusion. Without this gift, I am afraid our world will continue to teeter-totter back and forth politically and socially until the most harm is done to the most people.

Philistine Cemetery Found...and What to Make of It

BBC News and almost every international news organization has reported on the recent discovery of a Philistine cemetery at the location they believe was ancient Gath, the ancient hometown of the ancient giant, Goliath.

The fact that proof of an ancient Philistine civilization should be of no surprise to anyone because of their mention in our Bible. Archaeologists have known little about ancient Philistia because they have buried their heads in the sand and dismissed written history in favour of buried remains and the interpretations they can generate. 

The red-and-black pottery has now led them to believe they were a Mycenaean Greek peoples of the sea. The Australian ABC Online news amazingly reported that "Goliath's people not giants after all". This is amazing because the Bible, itself, does not claim that the Philistines were all giants. Rather, Goliath was their champion against the Israelites expressly because of his unusual height (some 12 feet by today's estimation). The Bible does speak of giants, though, and even mentions that the Anakim settled in various places, including Gath: "None of the Anakim were left in the land of the children of Israel; they remained only in Gaza, in Gath, and in Ashdod." (Jos 11:22 NKJV) Goliath was the Philistine champion but actually a Gittite which means he could have come by his giantism through an Anakim ancestry. If so, Goliath's ancestors came from the Kiriath-Arba (Hebron) where the Anakim dsecended from their father, Arba (Num 13:22). The Anakim were the giants that the Israelites drove out, the same ones that made them look as small as grasshoppers so tall were they. 

If we value a written record over the meager information we can glean from a spade, the Bible further instructs us as to where the Philistines originated: "Pathrusim, and Casluhim (from whom came the Philistines and Caphtorim)" (Gen 10:14 NKJV; see also 1 Chr. 1:12) The Pathrusim were the people of Pathros in Upper Egypt. (Pathros was the Hebrew name for Upper Egypt just as Mizraim was their name for Egypt itself.) The Philistines, therefore, were descended from the line of Ham. This indicates nothing about their physical likeness for the Amorites descended from Ham, too, and left records of themselves as having blue eyes and blonde hair (one and same as the Amurri according to Dr. Archibald Sayce, Assyriologist, Oxford University), and the Phoenicians, also descended from Ham, were famous for their red hair (from whom the Fenians of Ireland claim part descent). Of course, the genetic pool for the women in Noah's times was still vast being only 10 generations removed from Adam and Eve. 

This is not to exclude the possibility that the Philistines did not have a link to the sea peoples in the region. It is thought that the tribe, the Pelethites (2 Sam. 8:18; 15:18), mentioned in the Bible were also Philistines and that the Cherethites (Ezek. 25:16) mentioned along with them were originally inhabitants of the island of Crete. 

In one sense, the recent discovery of the Philistine cemetery is somewhat old hat. In 2008, the newspapers mentioned the discovery of a shard dating from the very period referencing a shepherd boy (David) killing Goliath.(see left picture, although, amazingly again, Dr. Aaron Mayer has confused the Bible's narrative about Goliath with another account of Goliath's son being slain by one of Daivd's later warriors). Similarly a coin was found substantiating the tale of Samson killing the lion. 

The notion that there were giants in ancient times is one I will not go into right now except to say that all the ancients wrote of giants in antiquity, In fact, many misinterpret Genesis 6 in thinking that giants resulted from the intermarriage of the sons of God with the daughters of men. These sons of God were not angels because Jesus taught that angels cannot marry, let alone give birth to offspring. Moreover God would not have punished humankind with a Great Flood on account of this seeing as no compliance is necessary (and therefore no sin) if an invisible angel was actually able to breed with humans! Many have gotten this wrong, including the infamous Flavius Josephus. Though perhaps a fraud, the most credible version of the Book of Jasher corrects this and sees the sons of God as direct lineal descendants of Adam and Eve and their sons (Adam was called a son of God) marrying frequently and promiscuously with the daughters of men (thus explaining what Jesus meant when He said that the days of Noah would be recreated at the end time, people marrying and giving in marriage).

It is true that objective science is not always objective and definitely deficient in the knowledge that comes from simply studying the Bible as a historical basis for truth. Thus, we shouldn't be surprised that, when Microsoft brought out their first computer game, Age of Civilizations, they introduced the battles with the Assyrians by stating that "nothing was ever known about Assyria except for the Bible's account." This should be a clue that maybe a fuller understanding of ancient Palestine (Philistia) might begin there too!

Russia the Prime Target of Largest NATO Exercises in Poland

A headline screams, "Huge NATO Exercise Is a Rehearsal for a Russian Invasion". Largely unrecognized by North Americans, Russian aggression is now seen as the major threat facing the world. Anakonda is the largest joint NATO exercises since the end of the Cold War going on right now in Poland. President Obama is currently there being briefed on the latest developments. 

While Ruissia has been invited to attend and monitor the exercises, there is no doubt who the message is meant for: President Putin.  31 thousand troops are taking part from 24 NATO countries. These exercises are a response to Russian military exercises in March that were clearly targeted at NATO.

The importance of NATO's recent exercises is to affirm its continuing strength partly because of the recent departure of the UK from the EU. Observers are concerned that the unity of NATO may well be threatened by the brush off the Brexit has caused among France, Germany and the other EU-NATO allies. Russia is hoping that the Brexit will weaken the NATO alliance and allow it to pursue its expansionist aims.

It is an interesting footnote to the current times that, while Western powers are facing disunity and increasing political polarization, Russia is rising above it and pushing at the seams to accomplish its imperial aims and capture more territory in an effort to restore its old Soviet borders and satellite influence. The crisis the West is facing currently is a crisis within: Overcoming the decay of the social fabric of its societies and dealing with immigration, tolerance and assimilation issues. British voters were recently interviewed by BBC recently and many declared that their country was no longer theirs as they knew it any longer. Ironically, Scotland is now realizing this fear with the very real threat of a new independence referendum. America is facing a hot day in July at the moment and the perpetural problem of poisonous race relations; so much so, that a law enforcement officai and former policeman from Minnesota thinks America may be revisiting the race wars of the 60's and 70's. The political cultures of both English-speaking powers are dramatically degenerating into factions and bitter infighting.

Make no mistake about it. Russia is the end-time king of the north predicted in Daniel 11. Putin is its leader and has already emerged as the strongest leader in the world's eyes recently. Russia will rise as never before and succeed in uniting Eurasia in a resurrected Holy Roman Empire. It will also make further forays into the Middle East. As the end-time beast superpower the book of Revelation speaks of, it is important to know that, on account of its refusal to relent in the last days coming soon upon us, the Seven Last Plagues will be unfurled upon it by the omniscient, ominipotent God. These Seven Last Plagues (Rev. 16) come at the end of THIS AGE. The sixth one sees the Euphrates River dried up to make way for the kings of the east. These kings, most certainly the Islamic countries, would certainly benefit from unfettered land access to the Middle East. A final battle in the Middle East is coming soon. So the West will continue to dissemble and divide while Russia will continues to rise and annex adjoining territories. 

Don't be distracted by the short-term trends. The long-term picture foresees a time of trouble this world has never known before in its history. Pray you and your loved ones will escape these remarkable times that lie ahead.

Unexpected Connection Between Senseless Killing of Dallas Policemen and Noah's Ark

The worst killing of policemen since 9/11 the media has reported. The worst direct attack on the police in 60 years another headline declared. An attack on 11 policemen in Dallas with 5 killed so far. Why? It was a protest march following the senseless death of two blacks in Louisiana and Minnesota. The issue causing the protest? Racism among the police. 

Of course, the majority of our police are helpful to the public and no guilty of racism. It is interesting to note that, while the officers were being shot at by the snipers in Dallas, other officers were protecting the public and herding them away from the dangerous area. Both black and white protesters were being protected by the police who were overseeing a protest against their own kind!

Yet there is little doubt that racism is a major factor in the American fabric of society. Few would deny that blacks and other minorities get a raw deal when it comes to American justice. Profiling may not be approved by many police departments, but public opinion and testimony undeniably attests to its pervasive reality.

I am convinced that our ignorance about the reality of Noah's Ark and the survival of humankind is not unrelated by any means to the above tragedy in today's America. Why?  Because Noah's Ark had only eight people aboard, including the wives. All of our so-called races descended from these eight. How could this be?

We must remember that Noah's family were only 10 generations removed from Adam and Eve. Recent anthropological studies indicate that the existence of an original prototypical Eve is even an accepted fact in scientific circles. So how could all our races come from Eve?

Let us clarify the matter a little first. The notion of race as we understand it today was purely an invention of the late 19th century when scientists began an obsession with speciating everything. In actual fact, there was only one human race because everyone could marry and beget children from those marriages. What few realize is that mother Eve was created with a vast genetic pool capable of begetting children of every possible phenotype we know of today. In Eve's womb lay the capacity to bear a child of every skin colour, nose shape, hair type and other characteristics.  And the Bible itself declares that Adam and Eve bore far more children than just Cain, Abel and Seth: "After he begot Seth, the days of Adam were eight hundred years; and he had sons and daughters." (Gen 5:4 NKJV)  Thus, there was no problem with Adam and Eve's sons marrying their daughters because, as of yet, there were no harmful mutations to weaken the line and therefore no need for any consanguinity laws.

By the time of Noah, the genetic pool was still vast for the wives. It is entirely possible that Shem, Ham and Japheth looked very different from each other yet still produced offspring of no consistent racial features. Secular history teaches us that the offspring of Ham were sometimes black as with the Cushites yet sometimes blonde-haired and blue-eyed as with the Amorites (the Amurri according to Assyriologist, Archibald Sayce of Oxford U.). The Phoenicians were also descended from Ham and it is quite likely red hair was a common feature among them. And so, all of the physical types of human beings we have today in our world descended from Noah's sons and their wives and every possible physical trait was part of the diversity that ensued. Few people realize therefore, the silliness of racial theories and how they have no justification in separating peoples from each other.

Before the 19th century, race was equated with nationhood. Historians spoke of the American race when they knew full well Americans were descended from just about every ethnicity. So while there are clans and tribes and ethnicities that do bear unique physical traits and characteristics, there are no races in the world except the human race.

This is not to say that cultures do not divide. They certainly do. And sometimes, the major part of culture is religion and religions most certainly do divide. Yet there is even a bit of hypocrisy here, too. While many Westerners are annoyed by special dress worn by Muslims and Sikhs that share their communities, apparently it was always acceptable for Catholic nuns to go about wearing their habits and standing out! Of course, a society becomes entrenched in its own traditions and closes the door to the latecomers.

Therefore, the historical existence of Noah's Ark might actually have contained something far more than just the basic animal types of our planet: It may have contained the answer to our modern racism problems! We all belong to the same human race. It is the evolutionary theory that promotes races and speciation. The late J. Philippe Rushton was a Canadian evolutionist whose book, Race, Evolution and  Behavior,  attracted considerable controversy when he was alive because of its thesis that different ethnicities were either progressed or regressed from an evolutionary standpoint. While admittedly opposed by other scientists during his life, Darwin himself never saw the black man as the equal of the white nor, for that matter, the female human equal to the male. Remember, one of the original titles for Darwin's  classic book was The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life.

If only the larger lesson of Noah's Ark were known widely and accepted by our world today. What a difference it might make!

Noah's Ark Found...in Northern Kentucky!

Today is a special day for The Answer in Genesis group headed up by its founder, Ken Ham: The organization has finally finished building a replica of Noah's Ark. Although I have not heard of it referred to as Ham's Folly, I'm sure Ken Ham has!

As a public interface for the Answer in Genesis apologetics ministry, Noah's Ark is very much an interactive spectacle that first and foremost convinces the public that Noah's Ark of the Bible truly did exist and truly could have been used to saved all of the land animals at the time of the Great Flood!

The group has absorbed considerable criticism from various religious groups and even misrepresentation from the state. Yet, today, around the world, news anchors have been reporting on the grand opening of Noah's Ark and the entertainment value such a spectacle can provide for the American public. Contrary to published reports, the venture did not cost taxpayers anything although it did mean employment for the state and additional revenues for the region. Of course, many science organizations were critical of the venture because of what they perceive as a very unscientific exhibit conflicting with their evolutionary view of ancient history.

There is a huge amount of hypocrisy with any criticism of the ark and even more ignorance about earth history and our origins. See if you agree.

To begin with, if a science centre, zoo, or Disney World had chosen to locate in Northern Kentucky, it would seem to me that no one would dare criticize it. It is the fine distinction that this particular theme park is based around a biblical event, the Great Flood, and a popular biblical icon surrounding that momentous event, an Ark whose construction and measurements were specifically laid out in the Old Testament scriptures by the God of traditional Judeo-Christianity.

But Noah's Ark also stands out as an important link to larger questions regarding (1) the historicity of the Bible, (2) an alternative geological concept of our earth's history, (3) the most recently recorded survival of humankind, and (4) the ultimate question of humankind's beginnings and a momentous close to an ancient world that is no longer widely acknowledged. You may feel secure in thinking modern science has all the answers. You would be very mistaken I think.

We would be much better served to feel confident about a true science which is supposed to be observable science. Our confidence in historic science should be very reserved for historic science becomes more inaccurate the further back we project it. Radiometric measurements do not agree with each other and must be suspiciously tweaked to appear to agree. The two major factors they assume is no parent element and a constant rate of decay, both of which have been disproved since the 1950's. For example, a sample of magma dome from Mount St. Helen's that erupted in 1980 was taken to a radiometric lab and dated at 350 thousand years old with some of its elements dating back to 2.8 million years! (The magma dome had formed in the aftermath of the eruption and settled in 1986.) Ice cores showing Greenland's ice shield to be 180 thousand years old have been observably contradicted by six American P38 airplanes crashed in 1942 and excavated in 1988 to be found under 270 feet of ice. Such a rate of accumulation would make Greenland's thickest glacier (est. 5000 feet) to have been absent only 1000 years ago! There are at least some 68 age-determinants that make the earth far younger than 6 billion years and some 14 of these indicated an age of only a few thousand. Helium diffusion rates from zircons containing radioisotopes produce, as a by-product, helium indicating an age for these oldest rocks as being only 6000 years +/- 2000 years. Even the universe bears the sign of youth: Of only some 225 super nova remnants and an explosion rate of one every 25-50 years, the number of super novas indicate a universe, too, that is only thousands of years old and not billions. The Faint Sun Paradox is another proof of a young universe. And there are many others. The recent discovery of soft T.Rex tissue is already making many doubt the vast ages and deep time treated as fact by mainstream science. Besides, the very origin of time has never been answered by science. Although Stephen Hawking admitted there had to have been a beginning, he only offered a meaningless tautology as a solution: That time perhaps originated with a singularity. And what did he mean by a singularity? Space-time. This is like saying that rain came from water falling down from the sky! The possibility that random chance produced our anthropic planet and our perfectly designed universe is even more unbelievable. The probabilities that such a sequence of developments occurring in just the right order by the millions (or billions? trillions?) would be unfathomably small.

The Ark also stands as a mute testimony that a true understanding of earth history is not a timeless gradual one but rather a history marked by dramatic geological upheavals, not the least of which, is a huge universal flood still not recognized today because of its immensity. A true in-depth look at such an ancient world would reveal a time of animal and human giantism with remarkable longevity because of a water vapour barrier surrounding the earth's atmosphere and delaying growth and aging. It even allows for a super continent to have existed only to have been separated into our continents because of deep "fountains of the deep" opening up the earth's mantle through massive tectonic shifts and thrusts. It would also explain the strange phenomenon of finding fossils on the top of the highest mountains inhabiting the earth today.

I am not convinced that Noah's Ark in Kentucky will ever sway the orthodoxy of science. Scientists are always the last to adopt the truth and the history of science itself has shown this. Look into the opposition faced by our fathers of science and try to imagine it no longer exists in our day and age, too.

I do not believe that the religious beliefs of the Answers in Genesis group is total agreement with the Bible, either. I notice that they are willing to accept the literal six days of creation without embracing its literal seventh-day creation--the Saturday Sabbath! They are, admittedly, an evangelical, baptist group that has only a few correct hobby horses they rock back and forth on, the primary truth being a young earth creation. Given their understanding though, why shouldn't they spend their money influencing a world today so devoid of values and skeptical of the Bible's inerrancy? Maybe they have alerted us to something greater than the Ark itself, that the Bible is true after all!

The Zeitgeist Factor in Global Developments

On the heels of the Brexit vote and the disappointment of many Brits came the Chilcot Report. Whatever political instability the Brexit caused was only exceeded by the devastating effects on Prime Minister's Blair already dwindling popularity and the decision he and his government made in supporting the U.S. war on Iraq. What many pundits thought was missing from the report was the outright condemnation of the bad intelligence Britain was given in supporting its Atlantic partner. The bitter aftertaste the public felt was a further distaste and distrust of its politicians. 

Yet the report somehow seem to have missed something that few historians notice but is as real as water vapour:  The role of the zeitgeist in world affairs and making our history. The spirit of the times is as mysterious factor know one can really explain but is major thread that must be recognized historically.

So while the Chilcot Report said that the final efforts of a peaceful resolution had not been taken, it also ignored the fact that Saddam Hussein had ignored 17 UN resolutions and flaunted its lawlessness upon the world stage. What it also ignored was the anger felt by many in those year immediately after the 911 tragedy. Tony Blair was immensely popular at that time and, in a way, so was President Bush for having steered the country through the aftermath of 911. Therefore, it should be no surprise that the US chose war against Iraq. What I didn't realize before was that Mr. Bush himself was very hesitant to go to war and that it was certain members of his cabinet and military that urged the conflict. The wrong intelligence was certainly known beforehand because Canada under its prime minister, Mr. Chretien, chose to ignore it.  But it really seemed the right thing to do. In other words, the zeitgeist of those years made the decision inevitable. I do remember, too, that the Bush administration brought with it a certain bluster in the wake of 911 and the determination someone would pay. There was a sense of desperation and a yearning for America to make good on its military preeminence in the world. 

The spirit of the times is difficult to explain. We look at the peaceful Scandinavian peoples today and wonder how they behaved as ruthless Vikings pillaging, plundering and terrorizing much of Europe in the middle ages. 

We ponder the start of World War One knowing full well that the mere assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand and the alliance system was not the ultimate reason for the launch of this terrible era in our past. One documentary I saw explained the real cause of the First World War as a corrupted form of Social Darwinism gone astray. The bluster between Germany and its European neighbours, especially the UK, is a major factor leading up to the conflict. But how unfathomable yet real was the spirit of the times that produced this global development. 

I remember the mid-1970's when pet rocks became a fad--a replacement for real pets apparently! Today we look back and wonder what on earth got into us to make this fad so popular. But the spirit of the times allowed it to catch on. Was it a reaction to something that came before or just something new that tickled our fancy? Whatever it was, no one can deny it was a phenomenon. 

For that matter, what got into our male ancestors to wear fur coats in the 30's, swallow goldfish, and say, "Twenty-three skiddoo, small change"? Bizarre. The zeitgeist I suppose.

And when we think of the centre of European culture, refinement and academic brilliance being Germany during the twentieth century, how did it evolve into the most horrendous massacre of peoples in recent history? Zeitgeist. For that matter, what got into Stalin to possibly put to death some 20 million of his own citizens in the Soviet Union? 

The zeitgeist of history should never be underestimated. The zeitgeist of the times are spirits let loose that may be harmless but may also be a terror.

Although I may be shortsighted for the moment, I somehow feel the zeitgeist of our world is in the middle of transformation right now. Watch out for it! 

The Uncoupling of the West

The fiscal stability of recent times was questionable enough with the burden of international debt and excessive borrowing, but now the times are suddenly taking on a new political instability.

I first noticed it with the excessive political extremes of the American scene. It turns out that a new historical record has been broken. No candidates running before have suffered such low public popularity leading up to a national election. Currently Mrs. Clinton has a 42% popularity rating against Mr. Trump's 40%. Surely this is a sign of a declining political culture. It is also a sign that Americans are frustrated with their politicians and the "business-as-usual" approach to pandering, getting elected, and then breaking your promises like pie crusts.

This new zeitgeist is spreading like wildfire around the world. 

The Brexit has caused the dethronement of many political figures and continuing to threaten others. Prime Minister Cameron was the first, followed by Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage. And no one would bet Jeremy Corbyn will be able to stick it out with such a loss of support recently, including a vote of confidence from his own party. It has been rumoured to be the worst crisis for the Labour party in its 116-year-old history. 

The entire fallout of the Brexit is coming in waves, both financially and politically. So Mark Carney announced recently in an interview. Politically, Hungary is now opting for a referendum, too, to leave the European Union and many are concerned that its far-right Jobbik party will opt for closer ties with Putin's Russia.

Russia, as it turns out, is doing quite well and, besides losing a certain market share of its exports going to Britain through its EU membership, is succeeding in Putin's ultimate goal of breaking up the EU and the influence of NATO. While South Ossetia, Georgia, Moldova, and east Ukraine are now well established under Russian hegemony, there is little doubt that Lithuania, Poland and other eastern European countries are coming under pressure to re-join the former Warsaw Pact arrangement.

The Unseen Hand of history is playing out predictions made 2500 years ago. As the King of the North, a Russian leadership is seeking to unite Eurasia with its heritage religious traditions and resurrect a d latter-day United States of Eurasia, a neo-Holy Roman Empire. Putin is the clever man who will accomplish this. Keep your eyes on the news. The developments are progressing almost every week in the news. Yet all of this must occur to fulfill the providential hand of prophecy! It is the decline of the West and its political and financial preeminence that will allow Russia to ascend and fulfill its destiny as an end-time world power that is heartless yet mighty.