"Birth pangs of a new order"

Fires, earthquakes and tsunamis, I don't mean to scare ya -
Wasn't this written somewhere? - Public Enemy

Here we are again, waiting for the end of the world. If only all they would do was wait, it might not come so soon.

CNN gave fundamentalist cleric Pat Robertson time over the weekend to suggest, with relish, that the greater frequency and intensity of natural disasters we are witnessing are the "birth pangs of a new order": the divine reformatting of the world. Naturally he put a gleeful spin on the Last Days, because he doesn't expect them to be his last. It signals, rather, the "blessed hope" of a "wonderful" new era. "Robertson neglected to mention that the Bible also says that in the End Times, "many false prophets will arise, and will mislead many."

If we should no expect better from Robertson, how about from a senior physicist of the Stanford Research Institute? Some thoughts from Dr Lambert Dolphin on the "coming cosmic shakedown":

Our generation has seen movies and television specials depicting a nuclear war, showing collisions by an asteroid or comet from outer space, or a threat to the world by an escaped dealy virus. We are accustomed to fictional accounts of alien invasions, and most of us are intrigued by the X-Files. Military experts believe a great third world war in the Middle East is now unavoidable. World population is soaring out of control and violence is on the increase everywhere.

The Biblical record allows for all of these possibilities--and worse. Anyone who has been through a major earthquake will testify that it is a terrifying experience to have the ground beneath one's feet give way leaving no place to stand and no way to stand. What will it be like on That Day, "The Great and Terrible Day of the Lord" when the sky will also fall on men's heads, so to speak, when invisible kingdoms in the unseen world around us come crashing down at the same time the cities of the world are reduced to rubble? This will not be just a horrendous "natural" disaster--behind it all will be an angry God who will at long last settle accounts and set all things right on earth. (Note 2)

Jerusalem was, is now and always will be the capital city of Israel designated by God from long ages ago. It will also be the world capital from which Jesus Christ will rule all the nations.

Dolphin led two of SRI's expeditions to the Giza plateau in the mid-70s, the primary purpose of which was to search for hidden chambers beneath the Sphinx.

He left SRI in 1987 after 31 years to devote his energies to "Bible teaching," but also to expedite the rebuilding of the Third Temple in Jerusalem, which by any account should hasten the end of the world. In "Geophysics and the Temple Mount" he describes his initiation into the work, and isn't shy about voicing his antipathy towards Arabs and Muslims:

On a trip to Israel in 1982 to meet Stanley [Goldfoot of the Jerusalem Temple Foundation] and [physicist Dr.] Asher [Kaufman] in person, I ran into writer and Bible teacher Don Stewart. I saw that Don's experience in Israel and his knowledge of the Bible would be an immediate asset in planning a research expedition to Israel. Don also introduced me to Pastor Chuck Smith of Calvary Chapel and Costa Mesa, and to Chuck Missler, a well-known captain-of-industry living in Southern California. These godly men along with Carl Gallivan, a close friend and Silicon valley entrepreneur, soon agreed to provide financial assistance so my SRI team could investigate the usefulness of our newly developed geophysical methods in Israel. We especially wanted to "look into" the Temple Mount with our new state-of-the-art high-tech instruments.

...

Our work around the country for nearly six weeks caused us to be fairly visible to the archaeological community, to the government - and to the Arabs.... Even though the rabbinical tunnel is entirely on Jewish land under Jewish control and we had been officially invited by Rabbi Getz to perform a legitimate scientific study, because the Moslems objected we had been discretely blocked in our efforts. But, we had learned another practical lesson about life in modern Israel: the Moslems seemingly have veto power over what goes on in the tunnel as well as the Temple Mount.

Diagnosing Dolphin's millennial fever - "Earth's long-awaited golden age may be a mere seven years away from us" - it's easy to forget who he is and what he represents. During this controversial expedition, The Jerusalem Post accurately described him as head of a "key section of the world's most massive research conglomerate, the Stanford Research Institute, a $200-million-a-year concern whose main clients are the U.S. government and corporations like Bechtel."

It's not just the fundamentalists and their hollowed-out fellow travellers who have the thirst for blood up to the bridle. It's also the globalists, the shepherding wolves of the "new order" which won't bring Jesus, but a rough-hewn facsimile to mollify the surviving sheep. Maitreya, the Nine, the "space brothers" - it's in beta testing for the post-apocalyptic product launch.

Henry Kissinger's notorious National Security Study Memorandum 200 on the "Implications of Worldwide Population Growth for U.S. Security and Overseas Interests" suggests massive population reduction has been close to the heart of US strategic concerns for more than 30 years. That the policy is in accordance with the broad strokes of the Book of Revelations makes happy sympatico for the conspiracrats, who mean to play God in this final act and turn every calamity to their advantage.

The sense that time is getting short has spread far beyond those inclined to watch for signs. Even secular non-Christians, for whom the term should be nonsense, are asking whether George Bush is the Antichrist. Even Al Gore describes America as having entered "an alternate universe" of strange discourse. For those who would cull the herd, the stranger the better, because strangeness is often mistaken for acts of God.