Note: This commentary—excerpted largely here—was presented in 2019. However, the massive evidence accumulating that God is about to say, “Enough of this wickedness,” convicted me to repost the heads-up to believers in Jesus Christ.

Rumors of war that threaten nuclear conflict in the areas surrounding Israel, and in fact, involving our own nation, are in the hourly news headlines. We’re told that economic collapse of the world’s financial systems is inevitable if global governance by would-be New World Order builders is not forthcoming. Sodom-like wickedness threatens to overthrow every semblance of morality, assaulting even young children in their satanic plans to reset planetary order in a direction opposite of God’s.

Technology that can provide controls by Antichrist is already here, with artificial intelligence beginning to intrude upon every facet of life. The snare of Revelation 4:1 might be triggered at any moment!

The Snare Is Set

Beware and be aware: God is about to disrupt humanity’s present and tragic trajectory.

Hal Lindsey, of The Late, Great, Planet Earth fame, called it “the great snatching up.” The mental picture is of one of those old Jungle Jim films starring Johnny Weissmuller in his post-Tarzan days.

A leopard or other big cat would be stalking through a thick jungle, and suddenly, it would be violently snatched up when it hit a tripping mechanism that caused a thick net to be released. After grabbing the enraged beast, the net would spring upward, keeping it trapped while it flailed mightily above the jungle floor.

Jungle Jim would then have captured a leopard for a zoo or to rid the area of a human eater. It was all very exciting for a boy of ten or so sitting in an air-conditioned movie theater munching popcorn back in those days.

Catching the beast, of course, required much preparation. Jungle Jim would order his assistants—usually natives of the area—to carefully place the net flat in a jungle pathway, then camouflage it. A sapling or thick branch was then bent to provide the tremendous spring the trap would need to capture and hold a 150-pound or more leopard.

With the big cat captured, the people would be safe from its prowling about and possibly attacking the most vulnerable inhabitants of the African countryside.

Hal Lindsey, of course, was talking about “the great snatching-up” in reverse, so to speak. In his biblically prophetic study presented in The Late, Great, Planet Earth, he was talking about the prophecy given by Jesus as recorded by the Apostle Luke:

“And take heed to yourselves, lest at any time your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting, and drunkenness, and cares of this life, and so that day come upon you unawares.

For as a snare shall it come on all them that dwell on the face of the whole earth.

Watch ye therefore, and pray always, that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of man” (Luke 21:34-36).

In this case, the viciousness of the beast world will be left on the earth, and the people to be protected will be snatched into the air to safety. Peter the apostle said this about the one who is even now on the ground surrounding us, looking to attack:

“Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour” (1 Peter 5:8).

The Apostle Paul told in great detail about this snatching up. The prophecy most directly pertinent is the following:

“For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord” (1 Thessalonians 4:16-17).

Harpazo, as many know, is the Greek word used in Paul’s prophecy to express this being caught up. People who live to experience the Rapture and Christians who have died during the Church Age (Age of Grace) will be caught up or snatched up. It will happen in the twinkling of an eye (1 Corinthians 15:52).

This instantaneous event that removes God’s people from deadly conditions on earth, unlike ol’ Jungle Jim’s snare that leaves people on the ground safe from the leopard, takes no preparation by any humans. Jesus finished all preparation on the cross at Calvary when He said, “It is finished.”

All one must do to be removed in that moment is to believe in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, according to Romans 10:9-10.

While no preparation needs to be made beyond simply accepting that call to salvation, the snare is set; it will soon leave those who rebel against God to face the “roaring lion” described above.

In these commentaries over the years, we’ve gone over in depth all the signals Jesus and the prophets said would be in view at the time of this snare-like intervention into the affairs of rebellious earth-dwellers. Those indicators are literally everywhere we look, with Israel, the fig tree in prophetic symbolism, being the key sign.

Spiritually attuned believers can know when that end-times generation will appear at the very end of the age.

Again, we look at Scripture to see that the snare is now set that will catapult Christians to Heaven:

“And when these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh. And he spake to them a parable; Behold the fig tree, and all the trees; When they now shoot forth, ye see and know of your own selves that summer is now nigh at hand. So likewise ye, when ye see these things come to pass, know ye that the kingdom of God is nigh at hand. Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass away, till all be fulfilled. Heaven and earth shall pass away: but my words shall not pass away. And take heed to yourselves, lest at any time your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting, and drunkenness, and cares of this life, and so that day come upon you unawares. For as a snare shall it come on all them that dwell on the face of the whole earth” (Luke 21:28-35).

The 1979 movie The China Syndrome stoked fears of nuclear power plant meltdown. The fear, as expressed—only partly joking—was that the melting of nuclear material would keep going deeper into the earth all the way to China, contaminating groundwater and everything else. A real such disaster came only twelve days after the film’s release when Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania suffered a nuclear power plant meltdown.

The Sino Syndrome, as I call it, in terms of geopolitical-think, is the belief by many today that a deadly danger is coming from the other side of the world toward America at an ever-quickening pace.

Fears are mounting. The Sino threat is growing. The messages I’m receiving amount to being a syndrome, in my view.

China, which I believe without doubt will be the “kings of the east” leading force—that is, the King of the kings of the east—has many worrying that invasion is near. This apprehension includes that of some of my friends, one of whom I will let express his thoughts in brief here.

He says the following in one of his several emails to me:

I’ve seen several other Internet reports also revealing that our government is openly allowing communist China to infiltrate America in many ways. Buying up land, possibly near our military bases!  Additional proof that our own pro-communist leaders, Obama and Biden, are friendly to Red China and probably not opposed to a Chinese takeover of America. And soon!

I find it quite likely that Barack Obama, wanting to eliminate our free Republic and communize our nation, could simply allow the Chinese communists to help him in that endeavor.

Think about it.  Is it not very likely that by now many communist Chinese agents have entered our nation through Obama’s open border and are positioned all across our nation?

I don’t know about you, but I find this news very concerning. You wonder how much longer God will delay the Rapture. Will it not occur until America falls to the Chinese?

There’s been a lot of talk about China invading Taiwan. But nothing is being said by anybody about how China is rapidly infiltrating our nation, by permission of our leaders. Perhaps as punishment for turning from Him, God may allow us to soon fall to the communist Chinese. Just as He allowed both Judah and Israel to be overrun by their enemies for rebelling against Him.

My friend’s worry is expressed many times over by others who aren’t necessarily close acquaintances. The concern has indeed moved into the arena of near paranoia in a number of cases.

Their fears aren’t without basis. I, too, don’t take lightly matters coming out of that troubling area. But my concern is greatly tempered because it’s undertaken with the absolute knowledge of truth found in God’s Word—which I hope to go into a bit later.

First, a look into some of the things feared to be going on with regard to America’s number-one enemy so far as national entities are concerned:

• Some fear that Taiwan is China’s Ukraine—that the Chinese are about to invade that island. Biden and his administration, they say, are sending American assets to Taiwan just as they are to Ukraine.
• China has developed advanced weapons with nuclear capability, while America’s military is being diminished purposefully by the Marxists in power.
• China is mounting a space force that can destroy satellites, thus debilitating America’s defensive capabilities.
• China has been sending high atmospheric spy balloons to map and plan for assault on America.
• China is, like in the case of the so-called Chinese virus, preparing to create more such biological attacks.
• Chinese are crossing America’s open southern borders, with more than 14 million now in the US.
• China has purchased vast land swaths within the United States, usually near American military bases and key defense areas.
• China is destroying America economically through every nefarious pathway available, including electronic hacking and interference.
• The Biden administration and the globalist cabal include China and possible war with that nation and Russia as part of plans to fundamentally change America, like Barack Obama said he intended before he was elected president in 2008.
• China, along with Russia, is planning full military invasions of America by having forces on both northern and southern borders.

When thinking on this entire range of assaults, all one can say is: “Whew!”

If all this threat from China—and from its ally Russia—comes to fruition, we will, as my friend fears, soon be under the thumb of the most despotic, torturous regime to exist on the planet. Americans will be facing the darkest of times, almost rivaling the conditions prophesied under Antichrist’s regime in Revelation.

But, as always, I stick to my absolute confidence that this just isn’t going to happen. While it is a possibility–even a likelihood—that this nation and others of the West will suffer even military attacks following the Rapture of the Church, I’m of the studied opinion that neither China nor Russia will conquer the United States—or any major nation-state of the Western hemisphere, for that matter. This is even though the Marxists and communist types have made great inroads into this part of the world.

The reasons I am so confident of what I write here are found in God’s Word. I have written the following consistently.

Ezekiel chapters 38 and 39 say that Russia and its forces will meet their doom on the mountains of Israel as they attack. All the while, the other areas of the world–the Western world—will be observing Gog’s defeat and only issuing diplomatic notes of protest (this being evidence that China and Russia have not conquered the West).

China, on the other hand–the King of the kings of the east—will be held back until the late Tribulation era by a God-ordained and stipulated barrier that separates the Occidental and Oriental worlds.

This barrier is the Euphrates River of the Middle East.

That holding back of the great invading force until near the time of Armageddon is found in Revelation, chapters 9 and 16.

This, my take on the matter, I realize, will make little difference to most who view developments in China, Russia, and the Middle East because most don’t take into account God’s Word on matters involved. The Sino Syndrome is building. Troubles coming out of those areas of this ever-darkening world are likely to appear much more ominous in the very near future.

I can only urge those so fearful of things they believe are coming to consider studying God’s prophetic Word–to overlay all of the portentous things they fear with the template of the Bible.

I’m speaking to Christians, of course. The lost mind can be brilliant in IQ but totally oblivious to truth. The Christian, however, has every promise of the ability to find truth in all matters—including those concerning their future so far as war and peace are concerned.

And the only peace to be found is in the Prince of Peace. He has promised to keep us from that hour of Tribulation (Revelation 3:10).

If you haven’t yet come to Him for the “peace that passes all understanding,” here is how to instantaneously embrace the only way God has provided to be saved from the troubles coming upon this fallen world of rebels:

“That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation” (Romans 10:9-10).