TWO MORE GOOD ARTICLES BY TODD STRANDBERG AND TERRY JAMES OF "NEARING MIDNIGHT" AND ALSO FROM "RAPTURE READY"!!

China’s Armageddon HighwayOne of the most amazing developments of the past quarter century has been the economic boom in China. For decades that nation has had a GDP growth well above ten percent. China has now become so large in size that it is starting to challenge the U.S. for the status of world superpower.
China already outranks America in many key areas: The world’s fastest train, the largest building by volume, and the city with busiest container port traffic are all in China. The Asian giant can also boast of the largest auto market. General Motors sells more cars in China than it does in its home market—the United States.
What makes the industrialization of China all the more stunning is that it occurred in a nation with 1.35 billion people. There are over 160 cities in China with a population over one million, and most of these cities look like the skyline of New York or Chicago. I’m sure most you have never heard of Chongqing and Chengdu. Both of these cities have populations greater than 7 million.
All these urban centers require a huge amount of energy and raw materials to maintain themselves. Because China is resource poor, each day it must import more than five million barrels of oil. China is the largest consumer of many minerals like aluminum (1/3 of world’s total), iron ore (1/2), copper, zinc, tin and even gold.
Because China’s natural resource needs are so large in scale it has been compelled to create supply chains like no other nation on earth. While America will buy most goods on the open market, China has established binding relationships with its key suppliers. The nation of Tanzania is good example. Chinese companies have invested billions into this African nation’s infrastructure to ensure access to its natural resources. Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Tanzania in March, saying his country would continue to offer financial assistance to Tanzania with, “No political strings attached,” which is obviously not true.
The area that has to be high on China’s resource list is the Middle East. Without Arab oil, China’s economy would grind to a halt. The keen awareness of this fact is the reason why there is heavy diplomatic traffic between Beijing and the capitals of the oil rich states. China’s mastery of diplomacy has already proven itself in a major way. Even though America liberated Iraq from Saddam Hussein, it is Chinese firms that are now pumping oil out of the ground and sending it back home.
The importance of ties to the Middle East has to be a key reason why China has recently said it is seeking to develop an “international highway” that will connect China’s Yunnan province with the eastern Indian city of Kolkata. The foreign ministers of China and India have met four times this year to hammer out the details of this plan.
There has long been a barrier between China and the subcontinent. The Himalayan mountain range provides a natural obstruction, but the political impasse has actually been the great hurdle. The border region has long been a source of territorial disputes. It was just a few months ago that India blamed China for infringing on its territory. The establishment of a major trade agreement would help to diminish these disputes.
The construction of an “international highway” would be a huge boon for Bible prophecy. The book of Revelation predicts and army of 200 million soldiers will someday invade the Middle East. If China starts building a highway to Armageddon, you can be sure the Tribulation hour is very near.
“And the sixth angel sounded, and I heard a voice from the four horns of the golden altar which is before God, Saying to the sixth angel which had the trumpet, Loose the four angels which are bound in the great river Euphrates. And the four angels were loosed, which were prepared for an hour, and a day, and a month, and a year, for to slay the third part of men. And the number of the army of the horsemen were two hundred thousand thousand: and I heard the number of them” (Revelation 9:13-16).
“And the sixth angel poured his vial upon the great river Euphrates; and the water thereof was dried up, that the way of the kings of the east might be prepared” (Revelation 16:12).
--Todd

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          Persian Prince and Pawns

Persia is credited with inventing perhaps the world’s most recognized intellectual game: chess, having appropriated its primitive form from India, by way of ancient Afghanistan. The Persian ability to anticipate and formulate strategic moves seems to have successfully spanned the centuries to inhabit the brain trust of Iran’s Israel-haters. In the battle of mind games on the diplomatic front, their negotiators certainly appear to be using the U.S. presidential administration like pawns to try to–pardon the pun—rook Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the deadly game of Islam against Israel.

John Bolton, former U.N. ambassador and current senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, said recently that Iran’s new president, Hassan Rouhani, is telling President Obama things he wants to hear, all the while buying time to move Iran’s nuclear program toward Iran’s objective, development of nuclear weaponry. The biblical Prince of Persia, it seems, is alive and well, and working his mischief, just as when he hindered the angel in delivering God’s message to the prophet Daniel. --Still making his own devilish brand of chess moves in Satan’s incessant battle for the souls of mankind.
Bolton wrote in a Sunday Wall Street Journal op-ed: "Just as Vladimir Putin had played him for a fool over Syria, Mr. Obama was initially snubbed by Iranian President Hasan Rouhani despite frantic White House efforts to produce a handshake."
Bolton said in the piece that this isn’t the first time Rouhani has played the West like a master chess player. Bolton wrote in effect that the Iranian worked his same sleight-of-hand wizardry when he was Iran's chief nuclear negotiator from 2003 to 2005, when he successfully followed the same playbook.
The former ambassador listed what he considers the president’s failures on the diplomatic front that he thinks leads the Iranians to believe he can be had, in the sense of one’s being conned.
"Mr. Obama failed in his stated objective to oust Syria's Assad regime from power; failed to impress Assad that his 'red line' against using chemical weapons was serious; failed to exact retribution when that red line was crossed; failed to rally anything but small minorities in either house of Congress to support his position; and failed to grasp that agreements with the likes of Syria and Russia prolong, rather than solve, the chemical-weapons problem."
Bolton said further that the Iranian ayatollahs know that the "all-options-on-the-table" threat have no teeth. They are without weight. As for the other player on this most crucial chessboard of end-times matters, Netanyahu is observing the board’s configuration and the lessening of distance between the American president and the Iranian regime.
Netanyahu doesn’t seem to mind standing alone and speaking up in terms of resisting the cozying up to the Iranian diabolists. What worries the international community’s diplomatic complex, and thus, the State Department in particular, is the Israeli prime minister’s potential for acting alone in opposing Iran’s getting an atomic bomb. This, he has declared on numerous occasions, will not be allowed during his time as head of the Jewish state.
Addressing the subject of the Iranian Charm offensive designed to rook Obama, Netanyahu recently told a group of reporters while flying on the Boeing 767 aircraft bringing him to the United States, “I will tell the truth in the face of the sweet talk and the onslaught of smiles. One must talk facts and one must tell the truth.”
He has laid out four areas he insists his Persian chess opponent-antagonists must agree to in order to begin truly moving toward resolving the ever-increasing buildup toward likely Mideast war.
Halt uranium enrichment
Remove already enriched material
Close the Fordo nuclear facility
Discontinue the plutonium track in Arak.
As for the Persian mindset in this most dangerous game, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif accused the Israeli prime minister of “lies and actions to deceive.” The Iranian said further, "international public opinion will not let these lies go unanswered…For 22 years, the Zionist regime has been lying by repeating endlessly that Iran will have the atomic bomb in six months. After all these years, the world must understand the reality of these lies and not allow them to be repeated.”
With the Prince of Persia whispering in the ear of the Iranians, who are in turn whispering in the ear of Mr. Obama, trying to convince him and the West that their intentions are to simply develop nuclear power for peaceful purposes, Mr. Netanyahu’s response was to offer his own assessment to the president, according to the following account: "In his Oval Office meeting with Obama on Monday, Netanyahu urged the US president to tighten sanctions on Iran and said that Israel reserves the right to wage a unilateral military campaign against Iran’s nuclear facilities should the words of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani not quickly be followed by constructive action" ("Iranian FM: We have seen nothing but lies from Netanyahu," | JPost | Israel News, 10/1/13).
There’s another Prince who will stand with Israel, when all others abandon God’s chosen nation: "And at that time shall Michael stand up, the great prince which standeth for the children of thy people: and there shall be a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time: and at that time thy people shall be delivered, every one that shall be found written in the book” (Daniel 12:1).
--Terry