And There Came Out of the Smoke Locusts Upon the Earth...

At the Air Force Research Laboratory near Dayton, Ohio, civilian researchers and military developers have set a 2015 deadline for the first battlefield ready, lethal generation of Micro Air Vehicles (MAVs).

The first armada of tiny flying death machines will be the size of small birds and will be able to operate several days without recharging. On the heels of these lethal mini-drones, bug-sized swarms of GPS-guided soldiers will flitter, slither and creep into enemy war zones to spy, provide real-time intelligence reporting, and, when ordered to do so, kill adversaries.

"It may look like a futuristic arcade game," says Aamer Madhani for the Chicago Tribune, "but it's a scene from an official Air Force animated video: Bad guys of indiscernible origin being shadowed, from a careful distance, by small robotic drones designed to resemble birds and insects.

"When one of the bad guys opens his apartment door, a tiny robo-bug, looking like a garage door opener with wings, sneaks in to spy. In another scene, a bug—the Air Force calls them Micro Air Vehicles, or MAVs—creeps into a sniper's roost and delivers a deadly shot to the back of his head.

"It might sound far-fetched. But top Air Force officials believe that MAVs could be a significant part of the Defense Department's arsenal in the not-so-distant future."

A report by Jim Wilson in Popular Mechanics a while back presented evidence supporting the army's MAV rollout timeline for operational insect sized killer robots. "The future of warfare isn't pressing on the trigger of a laser death ray or button of a doomsday device," he wrote, "It's holding a stubby-winged mechanical bug."

The Pentagon agrees and has been feverishly working with engineers and biologists to create a lethal arsenal of micro-mechanical fighting bugs that combine insect aerodynamics with GPS navigation and molecular electronics.

Micro air vehicles represent one of the most fantastic opportunities for military surveillance and weapons delivery. "When perfected," Wilson points out, "Stainless steel and Mylar robot flies will be able to flap their way into the most secret places on Earth--the bunkers where [terrorists plan their] genocidal campaigns, and where Chinese spymasters plot their raids on America's nuclear weapons laboratories."

Consider these scenarios from the Popular Mechanics report:

• Alan H. Epstein, of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), recently described....GPS-guided MAVs landing on structurally critical points along bridges deep in enemy territory. Each MAV would carry a small piece of shaped-charge plastique. Responding to a command transmitted from half a world away, the MAVs would explode in sequence, bringing down the bridge with only one-hundredth of the amount of explosives required by a pinpoint-accurate smart bomb.
  
• Some military strategists envision swarms of robot flies fluttering onto battlefields. Scout flies, equipped with miniature cameras, would do the work of reconnaissance teams by eavesdropping on tactical communications and sending back real-time videos of enemy positions. Sniper flies would seek out field commanders, recognizing them by the iris patterns of their eyes....Then, they would become the 21st century incarnation of the tribesman's poison dart as they hurled themselves into the carotid arteries of their targets.
  
• Meanwhile, titanium-tipped robot flies too small to register on radar screens would gather in the weeds at the end of enemy runways. Then, rising as a swarm, they would allow themselves to be sucked into jet engine air intakes. The MAVs' titanium bodies would fracture the whirling turbine blades and send a rain of red-hot fragments through thousands of pounds of jet fuel and ammunition.

Instruments of Armageddon?

While MAV development obviously appeals to the highest levels of US military intelligence, theologians may see similarities between such technology and predictions of an end-time spiral by mankind into a cataclysmic war where locust-sized weapons are "given power, as the scorpions of the earth have power" (Rev. 9:3).

Thomas Horn, best selling author of "Nephilim Stargates: The Year 2012 and the Return of the Watchers" says, "When viewed against biblical end times scenarios and interpretation of the Book of Revelation, Micro Air Vehicle development may shed light on a different, much older Biblical subject concerning exotic flying enemies that pursue and torment mankind at the end of the age.

"For instance, when one considers the exponential achievements of modern science and humanity's newfound interest in playing God, the inevitability of soul-free soldier-clones keeping eye on a biometric chip-implanted humanity with the help of GPS controlled micro air vehicles... well, it just kind of takes the fun out of wondering where our once-idyllic world may be headed."

On the other hand, fundamentalists Christians may have been right all along. Perhaps our pretentious sciences are forming for Armageddon.

According to the Bible, an unprecedented war will occur in the future. It will be fought on land and sea, in the heavens above, and in the earth below, in the physical and spiritual worlds. It will include "Michael and his angels [fighting] against the dragon; and the dragon [fighting] and his angels" (Rev. 12:7).

Pagans will join the battle, calling upon "idols of gold, and silver, and brass, and stone, and of wood" (Rev. 9:20) to convene their powers against the Christian God. They will unite with "unclean spirits....to gather them to the battle of that great day....[to] a place called in the Hebrew tongue Armageddon ["Mount Megiddo"]" (Rev. 16:13-14;16).

The fowl of the air will "eat the flesh of the mighty" and hybrid locusts will sting the enemies of God until the omnipotent Christ utterly repels the forces of darkness and destroys the New World Army.

At least that's the way fundamentalist Christians believe it will happen.

When reading about the supernatural war mentioned above, Horn finds particular interest in Revelation 9:1-11 where it speaks of synthesized insectoids and arthropods emerging from the bottomless pit to join the end-time battle.

Down through time myriad preachers have warned of demonic locusts bursting upward from out of the abyss and torturing unfortunate earthlings during a future time of great tribulation. Is that really what the prophet saw?

Some scholars believe 'John the Revelator' actually beheld future technologies, and that he simply referred to them in terms he understood, such as a military helicopter being compared to a giant locust whose wings sounded like "many horses running to battle" (Rev. 9:9).

The Bible - a book repeatedly proven to possess astoundingly accurate predictions - states that Jesus Christ will return at a future time and will defeat a well-equipped Antichrist army made of soldiers that kill without conscience. Could these be the genetically modified super-soldiers such as DARPA has shown interest in developing?

The Bible also depicts flying locust-weapons. Are these micro air vehicles developed by the military?

The 'MAVs' of Revelation 9 torment those who receive the Mark of the Beast. Are we looking at GPS enabled biometric chip implants?

In the end, while the locust hoards of Revelation 9 are presided over by Abaddon and may have been created in human laboratories, the flying weapons of the Apocalypse do whatever Jesus commands, as every member of humanity ultimately will, says Horn.

© 2008 RaidersNewsNetwork

The Economic Meltdown

Message from Dr. David R. Reagan
Did you notice that the stock market collapse on September 29, 2008, totaled 777 points and occurred on the eve of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year? From my viewpoint, it appears to be a judgment on our nation that has the fingerprints of God all over it.

Keep in mind that President George W. Bush was the first president to propose the establishment of a Palestinian state, and for the past month he has had his Secretary of State in the Middle East trying to force the Israelis to give up their heartland.

The Word of God warns that nations who try to divide Israel in the end times will pay a terrible price. In Joel 3:2 the Lord says that He will "enter into judgment" against those nations that "have divided up My land."

We have sold out Israel for Arab oil, and we are paying the price.

But our treatment of Israel is not the only reason for this remedial judgment. Our worship of money is the other reason.

In my book "America the Beautiful? The United States in Bible Prophecy" published in 2003, I presented several scenarios that could explain the absence of the United States in end time Bible prophecy. They included such things as an internal nuclear attack by terrorists, an external nuclear attack from another nation, and a societal collapse due to internal moral rot. The only positive scenario I could conceive was the destruction of our nation due to the Rapture of the Church.

The very first scenario I offered was an economic one. I put it first because it was the one I felt was most probable. Here's what I wrote:The first thing that comes to mind is an economic catastrophe that will result from our out of control debt situation. The official outstanding debt of the U.S. government is currently 6.2 trillion dollars. That amounts to $21,540 per person. This debt is increasing at the rate of 1.1 billion per day! Private debt is even more horrendous. At the beginning of the 21st Century, there was a staggering $25.6 trillion of credit market debt outstanding in the U.S. That total represents a doubling of the debt burden since 1990. America's total debt, public and private (including state and local government) stands at around $32 trillion dollars! That's $115,322 per man, woman, and child. Amazingly, 52% of this debt was accumulated in the 1990s, a decade driven primarily by debt instead of productivity.

There is no way to escape the conclusion that America has become a debt junkie. We are living on money we do not have and will never have, and sooner or later the weight of this debt is going to collapse our economy. One irony is that we have killed 50 million babies who could have been in the work force today contributing to our economic health by producing goods and services and paying taxes.

I believe an unprecedented economic collapse is highly likely because money is the real god of America, and the true God of this universe is a jealous One who does not tolerate idolatry. God, by His very nature, is going to be compelled to destroy our false god.

We are a nation driven by greed. The mortgage debacle which has caused the current crisis is due first of all to greedy people wanting to live in houses they could not afford. They were serviced by greedy banks who were willing to grant loans they knew the people could not pay because the banks intended to flip the loans quickly, making a fast profit. And all the while, greedy politicians were willing to look the other way while their campaigns received money from the greedy lenders who they were supposed to be regulating.

Republicans have run for office for years as fiscal conservatives, vowing to take good care of taxpayer's money. Yet, when they gained control of Congress, they fed at the money trough like ravenous hogs, and President Bush looked the other way, refusing to exercise his veto power. The result is that our national debt continued to skyrocket.

Greed motivates big business, big labor, big sports, and big religion. Every aspect of our society is infected with it. Relentless advertising encourages people to live beyond their means by relying on credit cards.

One sobering result of the current economic debacle is that it has made it almost impossible for John McCain to be elected, meaning that our nation is most likely going to receive the kind of leaders we deserve. We could well end up with the most liberal president in our history, one intent on expanding abortion to include infanticide, determined to retreat internationally from the threat and challenge of Islamic terrorism, and committed to packing our Supreme Court with ultra-liberals who will hold our Constitution in contempt.

The Bible teaches that when a nation rebels against God, He will first raise up prophetic voices to call the nation to repentance. The Lord did that years ago here in America when he began to call for national repentance through voices like Dave Wilkerson who also warned us in graphic language of the consequences if we refused to repent.

When prophetic voices are ignored, God always resorts next to remedial judgments, which increase in ferocity over time. We have experienced a whole series of such judgments, beginning with our loss of the Vietnam War. Other judgments have included such things as natural disasters, epidemics, crop failures, political corruption, crime, and immorality. According to Romans 1, what God does in times of national rebellion is lower the hedge of protection around the nation and allow evil to multiply.

The biggest wake-up call occurred with the attacks on 9/11. But like a sleepy person, we just rolled over, hit the snooze alarm, and went back to sleep.

The most disturbing thing about all this is that the Bible teaches that when a nation refuses to repent in response to prophetic voices and remedial judgments, a point will ultimately come when God will deliver the nation from judgment to destruction. Our nation currently appears to be on that threshold.

Let us pray for our nation as we have never prayed before. Let each of us pray prayers like the one Daniel prayed in Daniel chapter 9, where he took the sins of the nation upon himself and asked for forgiveness. After all, all of us are responsible to one degree or another for the sins of our nation, either due to our participation in them or our unwillingness to speak out against them. Let us pray for God to show us grace by not giving us the kind of leaders we deserve. And let's pray for a national revival that will sweep many people into the Lord's kingdom before it is too late.