On March 8, 1983 U.S. President Ronald Reagan, in a speech to the National Association of evangelicals in Orlando, Florida referred to the Soviet Union for the first time as the “Evil empire.” In his developing “roll back” strategy against the encroachments of communism, Reagan openly called for the West to begin the process of “writing the final pages of the history of the Soviet Union.”

These comments unsettled many in Moscow, and caused abject terror throughout the Soviet military. Yuri Andropov, the ailing Soviet leader, was already by this point utterly convinced that the Unites States of America was planning to launch an imminent and massive preemptive strike on the Soviet Union. The aim of the U.S. strike, so Andropov thought, was to bring the Soviets down to their knees and therefore secure the West’s hegemony in what the West believed was an approaching post-communist new world order.

It was something Andropov was determined, at all costs, to either avoid or react effectively to. He had resolved that when this U.S. first strike did come, the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction would mean that there would be nothing left of America to survive what he saw as such an impetuous attack.

The Soviet military therefore acted accordingly, and began to enshrine a belief in a “U.S. preemptive first strike” as standard and accepted Soviet military thinking of the time. In 1983, the Soviets did not believe it was a question of “if” the U.S. would attack, but “when.”

So, on the morning of September 26, 1983, Lt. Col Stanislav Petrov took his seat as Commander of the top secret Soviet military command center, located just outside of Moscow. It was to be a day he would never forget. Only a small handful of men since the dawn of time can genuinely lay a claim to having affected the course of human history, Lt. Col Stanislav Petrov can certainly make such a claim. Petrov’s cool head single handedly saved the whole world from certain annihilation that late September morning.

At age 44, Petrov’s job was simple—he was to monitor the Soviet Union’s early warning satellites and act accordingly in the event of a hostile United States launch. He was doing just that when his radar screens showed that five Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missiles had been launched by the U.S. and were racing towards the Soviet Union.

All his training and all Red Army protocol demanded that he act in a very defined and specific way – pick up the telephone and order an immediate and full nuclear counter strike against the United States. But he didn’t. Petrov did not order the counter strike because his “gut instinct” told him that the warnings were a hoax, a malfunction of some sort, a glitch. So, for twenty minutes he waited, and sweated. He waited to see if he was correct. Holding out against the most enormous pressure, Petrov refused categorically to initiate the Soviets retaliatory launch protocols and thereby trigger a certain nuclear Armageddon. Twenty-five minutes later, when the bombs did not start to fall, he realized at last, that he was right.

It later emerged that the false alarm was the result of a Soviet satellite mistaking the reflection of the sun’s rays off the tops of clouds for a missile launch. The world had a lucky escape that day; another morning with another man or woman in charge and human history could have been irrevocably different.

This past week at the United Nations, President Donald Trump gave one of the most important speeches of his presidency so far. Using the most unequivocal and direct language, President Trump addressed the burgeoning issue of North Korea head on, and in the clearest language possible threatened to “…totally destroy North Korea.”

Trump is right in making such a public statement. It is necessary to be absolutely unequivocal in a time such as this. At this point it seems obvious that Kim Jong Un wants to acquire nuclear weapons so badly, and achieve the ability to hit the United States with them so much, that sanctions, threats and other types of economic incentives will no longer work.

Pyongyang is not going to abandon its goal of achieving a deliverable nuclear weapons system. As a result, short of direct intervention, North Korea will get deliverable nuclear weapons soon. A North Korean nuke is practically a forgone conclusion at this point. North Korea, Japan, the South Korean’s and the world need to know where Trump and America stand.

Now they do, and it couldn’t be more clear.

Yet huge danger lays just up ahead. This North Korean nuclear device will pose at least three significant problems for the United States and her allies. The most immediate threat is also the most obvious one; that North Korea may try to use this device against the United States of America directly. This is perhaps the most unlikely outcome of the three, at least at this point.

The other two consequences for the West are much more understated and subtle, yet no less dangerous for it. The immediate victim of a viable North Korean weapon will be the alliance system that currently exists in East Asia. The day that sees North Korea get a deliverable nuke, will be the same day that U.S. influence in the region begins to plummet.

South Korea and Japan depend exclusively on the United States for their own security, and currently sit underneath the U.S. nuclear umbrella. This is the reason Japan and North Korea have not, up until this point, sought their own nuclear arsenal. As a North Korean nuclear weapon becomes a present day reality, this will increasingly lead others to question the credibility of the United States’ own commitment to defend Japan and South Korea.

Would the U.S. really launch a full retaliatory nuclear strike against North Korea, risking their own cities and millions of their own citizens lives, to defend Japan or South Korea? Would the United States risk New York in order to save Seoul? Japan and South Korea are not sure, and neither is Kim Jong-un.

It is this “de-coupling” of the U.S. alliance system, and the decline of US influence in East Asia, that would be the first significant victim of a viable North Korean nuclear weapon. It was this exact same fear that led Britain and France during the Cold War to seek their own independent nuclear arsenals, rather than to rely exclusively on the U.S. nuclear umbrella and the promise of future U.S. retaliation should the Soviet Union invade or attack western Europe.

It is likely, therefore, that a North Korean nuclear weapon would also see the beginnings of a general and widespread East Asian nuclear arms race. This nuclear arms race, in turn, leads us into the third significant danger posed by a North Korean weapon.

There is a significant danger that at some point in the future, because relations are so poor and distrust is so prevalent, that Japan, South Korea or the United States through human error or by design, might become locked into a cycle of mutual military escalation that would inevitably end in a nuclear exchange. This is perhaps the greatest danger the world will face in the event of fully nuclear North Korea.

It is highly likely that once North Korea has a viable weapon that they will act much more recklessly towards South Korea or Japan, with non-nuclear conventional weaponry. In North Korean minds it would be unlikely that the United States would intervene in a regional conflict between themselves and Japan or South Korea, as they would at that point have the ability to counter the United States at a nuclear level.

Consider any one the most recent provocative actions by North Korea against the South or against Japan, including firing ICMB’s over the sovereign territory of another independent nation, any of which could spark a rapid escalation. This escalation cycle would be very hard, or even impossible to stop or escape from.

The most pertinent question now is exactly how will nuclear weapons affect the behavior of North Korea on the international stage? Nobody knows for sure, but the unspoken fear is that a nuclear weapon would lead North Korea to act more provocatively, especially towards their most immediate neighbors and empower them to take bigger risks. It is how we handle just such lower-level provocations that will shape the future of East Asia and even the world.

Currently, the United States and the West lack any type of real understanding with North Korea in the way we had with the Soviet Union during the Cold War. The doors, on both sides, are firmly shut and they are locked. There is no communication or last lines of communication to be used in a crisis. There is, therefore, no margin at all for error.

On its current course, North Korea will acquire a viable and deliverable nuclear weapon soon. Equally, at some point in the near future it is almost certain that North Korea will probe and provoke Japan, South Korea or the United States again, especially when emboldened by a nuclear status they genuinely believe will give them parity with the United States of America.

When that provocation does come, one hopes there will be men and women with cool heads and sound minds, like that demonstrated by Lt Col Stanislav Petrov in 1983, men and women who will pull us all back from the brink. My gut reaction though tells me that this will probably not be the case. East Asia and the world, are about to become much more dangerous places.

“For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places. All these are the beginning of sorrows” (Matthew 24:7-8).

wardmatt1977@gmail.com

 

Emmanuel Macron is a remarkable man. Beyond this simple statement, there is little else we can know for sure about him. This is because a complete enigma has won the French presidency and is now taking Europe by storm. Macron is such a new, unknown entity that until very recently there was not even a visible record of his political commitments.

A little over a year ago, running for office was just a dream for Macron, yet now he sits enthroned in the Elysian Palace as king over all he surveys and the sheer speed of the process has left France, and the rest of Europe—rather dizzied by it. He has come from nowhere.

One year ago, Emmanuel Macron’s political party, “La Republique En Marche” did not even exist. Now, after recent Parliamentary elections, it holds an unbelievable 449 of the 577 districts available. Macron’s fledgling political party are going to dominate the more powerful French Lower House, the National Assembly. So knew and fresh faced are many of these 449 En Marche representatives that they are actually going to need training on how to do their jobs.

Macron’s rise has been nothing short of meteoric. It is in fact unprecedented. He is the youngest President France has ever had and not since 1958 and Charles de Gaulle has a French President ever won such a powerful majority.

More than any French president of recent times, Emmanuel Macron can rely on the personal loyalty of each and every one of his Parliamentary representatives, as they all uniquely owe their new found positions of power and influence to Macron personally. Their loyalty is not to the party, but to the man who created the party to fulfil his presidential ambitions.

Hugely powerful domestically, Macron has also become highly influential on a wider European level and is now arguably the most important political leader in Europe today, aside from Angela Merkel. Macron is the total antithesis of the Brexit mentality that has so powerfully swept Europe recently. Emmanuel Macron is the darling of globalism, he is its very embodiment.

A sizeable majority of the French electorate love him too, as do many in Europe. Many, in light of his dramatic electoral victories, have declared Macron to be nothing less than “the new Louis XIV.” [1]

Some, again in reference to Louis XIV’s nickname, have even gone so far as to refer to him as the “Sun King” reborn.  In open reference to this, Macrons own nickname in France now is “Jupiter.” This is a reference to the Roman god of the sky and thunder, and interestingly, the king of all the gods in ancient roman religions. Macron seems to adore the attention, even (jestingly?) allowing people to draw attention to the origin of his own name “Emmanuel,” which of course means in Hebrew “God is with us.”

This powerful self-belief and utter conviction in his own purpose is demonstrated in Macrons first official state portrait as head of state. In this first presidential portrait, Macron can be seen pictured in his office in the Élysée Palace, perched on his desk in front of an open window, framed on either side by two flags. One is the mandatory French Tricolour and the other the EU flag. Both share equal status, both share equal importance. The message is clear. Macron is a pro-EU politician who is a globalist to the core.

On the desk behind Macron are three books, one laying open. The first is André Gide’s The Fruits of the Earth, published in 1897. The second is a book of Charles De Gaulle’s memoirs, a powerful account of the French leaders World War II exploits, a man who truly did lead France into a “new era.”

The final book is Stendhal’s The Red and the Black, a 19th-century novel that deals with an ambitious but provincial young man during a time of great political tension. In the book, this political tension and the young male protagonist, ultimately are witness to a revolution in the country in the 1830’s. [2]

Even more telling, yet subtle, is the presence on the desk of one other item lying next to the books. It is a clock. This has high symbolism for Macron as it reflects his previously spoken desire for him to become the “Master of Clock.” Macron has expressed a clear desire to change the rules of the game; he intends to set his own agenda, his own schedule and even his own times for doing things, especially against convention and traditional wisdom.

This boundary breaking attitude has been very much evident in his personal life from the beginning. Meeting his future wife as a school child of 15 years of age, he determined then that he was going to marry his drama teacher, Brigitte Trogneux.

Despite bucking the convention of the time, despite her initial rejection of him, despite the fact that she was already a married mother, and despite the very best efforts of his family to prevent the union, Macron did as he pleased and began an affair with Trogneux as a teenage boy nevertheless.

Even his parents exiling him to Paris as a seventeen year old, desperate to put an end to the affair, could not stop him. Emmanuel Macron and Brigitte Trogneux married in 2007.

It is exactly that attitude that has concerned many. Macron’s consistently scornful approach to the normal rules and boundaries of life has led leading European psychiatrist Adriano Sagatori, who has studied Macron extensively, to declare him as a potential psychopath. Sagatori states, “Like all psychopaths, he believes in his higher purpose. Macron does not love France and will not fight for the French people.” [3]

Sagatori continued, “Macron loves only himself…” The leading European psychiatrist and psychotherapist continues by explaining why he now believes Macron to be something other than merely another outwardly charismatic politician, and believes it is all linked back to his childhood experiences with his former teacher, Brigitte Trogneux. Sagatori has further stated:

Young Emmanuel Macron experienced at age 15 a serious sexual aggression via his teacher, Brigitte, who at the time was 39… the development of Emmanuel Macron was blocked prematurely in his adolescence because of an act of seduction that was both psychic and physical. What happened was that both a taboo and a limit were transgressed, the very limit that the taboo sets.

So the first transgression was the conviction that anything is permissible. Once the limits of the taboo were transgressed, the idea of omnipotence common to all children was then encouraged. Until he went beyond a proper grasp of reality, and strengthened by his intellectual gifts, he extrapolated his personal limitations.

The paradox is that he appears normal, but we have a case of full-blown narcissism. Since his youth Macron has nurtured an ambition that is beyond normal. He needs the attention and admiration of others to compensate for his inferiority complex.  [4]

Sagatori concludes, ominously, by summing up who he believes Macron really is clinically, in view of his psycho-social profile: “So we are confronted with three paradigms that define a certain type of personality; 1) the idea that there exist no limits; 2) a feeling of omnipotence from childhood, but even more so in adulthood; 3) a narcissism that can accurately be defined as malevolent.”

One could easily conclude that this is perhaps just the opinion of a single mental health professional, and that it therefore really means nothing. However, this impression of Macron is one that seems to be echoed by other people, especially those close to him. It seems to be echoed by those who have worked with Macron, observed Macron up close and personal, and who have even been friends with him.

The Financial Times, quoting a source who has known Macron well for years, detailed how, “…he seduces everyone. And then he kills.” [5]

This friend describes how the new French president is a “grand séducteur,” a man who uses his prodigious gifts to get whatever he wants. Macron, he explains, is a polymath, a person who is able to acquire significant expertise in a variety of different subjects to quickly become an expert in them, and that he uses this ability to ingratiate himself with others. Many around Macron firmly believe that he is a genius.

His meteoric rise to power reflects this. After concluding his university education by writing a Master’s thesis, on Machiavelli of all people, the father of modern political science who is known most widely for his infamous seminal work of political scheming and manipulation, the prince, Macron went into the world of banking.

In banking, Macron then became very rich, very quickly. His understanding of economics by this point had become so developed and sophisticated that he was subsequently named as a government economics minister. And from there to president of the French Republic.

Macron, so the FT source says, is always charming, especially with enemies and those hostile to him. During the election, for example, Macron took particular pleasure in always trying to meet his opponents, even the most hostile, face to face. He did this, so the source says, because he was and is so confident of his own charm, and in his ability to “win people over.”

A famous example of this is when he travelled to meet an entire factory of men and women who were ardent supporters of his opponent, Marine Le Pen. By the end of the forum, though not all were won over to vote for him, almost all accepted that they actually liked him and could see themselves perhaps voting for him in the future.

He is also renowned for his relentless energy, being the only person in the room, for example, to retain his good humour at 5 a.m. when a sequence of all-night economics negotiations drew to a close during his time as economics minister.

Yet, all is potentially not quite as it seems. If one looks closely, there are clear undertones of something more sinister lurking just under the surface with Macron. There seems to be a distinct chill behind Macron’s “charm.” He is clearly politically ruthless and deeply cunning, as all politicians are, but Macron seems to be particularly adept.

President Francois Hollande made Macron a government minister, until Macron abandoned Hollande and ultimately took his job. French Prime Minister, Manuel Valls, pulls no punches at all regarding Macron.  After realizing that the new president had abandoned him, Prime Minister Valls said, “Hollande is mean, but within a framework…Macron is mean, but he has no codes and therefore no limits.” [6]

Macron’s leadership style is beginning to emerge, and it is ruthless.

Having purged three well-established and senior ministers in the first few days of his administration, Macron has wasted no time in also lecturing, and greatly offending eastern and central European leaders on what he perceives as their collective failure to accept adequate amounts of refugees from the Middle East into their nations.

Viktor Orban, Hungary’s prime minister, called the president a “new boy” in European politics and urged him not “to aim a kick at central European nations” in response.

So at this point, what do we really know about Emmanuel Macron? Not very much is the concise answer. He is an almost complete unknown—as is therefore, the direction he will lead France and possibly Europe in the future. He is an enigma.

As this article nears its conclusion, I should perhaps be honest about why I am writing this piece on Emmanuel Macron; specifically about whether or not I am suggesting or hinting that Emmanuel Macron is the biblically prophesied Antichrist.

I am not, because quite frankly, I have absolutely no idea who that man will be. I believe that the Bible clearly teaches that we Christians, the bride of Christ, will be raptured to heaven before the man of sin will be firmly identified by signing the covenant with Israel. I do not think any person alive today can say with any degree of reasonable certainty that any man is the Antichrist.

However, what I do know is this: We are definitely in the general season of the Lord’s return, and have been for quite some time. As Jesus taught in the gospels, the prophetic birth pangs that are so evident all around us right now, in so many different prophetic spheres, are becoming more pronounced and stronger with each passing day. This is the season of the Lords return.

It would make sense to me, as we approach the end, for all the prophetic pieces to begin falling into their biblically ordained end-time places and this is exactly what we are witness to in all other areas of biblical end-time prophecy.

Would it not also, therefore, make sense for the biblical man of sin, if these are in fact the last days of the end times, to also be positioned prominently in preparation for the end? Satan does not know “the day or the hour,” but he does know the “times and the seasons,” just as we do.

Right now, as the time of the end approaches, in Europe a very powerful, dynamic, charismatic and many say genius of a man—has risen to power. He has come from nowhere and has revolutionised French politics. He is a boundary breaker in every sense of the word, immensely powerful and influential. And he is going to have a significant long term impact not just on French politics, but on European and world wide politics over the next few years.

The question is whether Emmanuel Macron’s conquest is now complete? As to if Emmanuel Macron is the Antichrist? I have no idea, but he certainly is a remarkable man.

Endnotes

[1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/06/25/emmanuel-macron-channels-louis-xiv-plans-address-parliament/

[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/06/29/the-subtle-messages-in-emmanuel-macrons-official-portrait/?utm_term=.abd4c794d21e

[3] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/russian-media-emmanuel-macron-french-president-general-election-2017-gay-psychopath-hates-france-a7723531.html

[4] http://yournewswire.com/macron-psychopath-psychiatrist/

[5]https://www.ft.com/content/464df34e-3a48-11e7-ac89-b01cc67cfeec?mhq5j=e3 

[6]https://www.ft.com/content/464df34e-3a48-11e7-ac89-b01cc67cfeec?mhq5j=e1

 

wardmatt1977@gmail.com