This is 5 and 10 from Skywatch TV for January 2nd, 2018.
Happy New Year and welcome.
Today we'll do something a little different as we look backward and look forward, taking
a look at the five biggest topics of the year of 2017, combined a couple of news stories
in order to get this list down to five, and used rather loose criteria.
Of course, the ruling of the judge here is totally subjective, biased, and final.
But looking for stories that had the most impact, but also had the most potential for
continued impact on our lives in 2018.
So something more significant in that regard than, say, disasters like the California wildfires,
which are certainly significant, hurricanes Irma, Harvey, Maria, which caused billions
of dollars of damage and still affecting the lives of the people who were impacted by those
hurricanes even today, terror attacks like the bombing in Manchester, England during
the Ariana Grande concert, weaponized vehicles in London, Westminster Bridge, the London
Bridge, sexual misconduct allegations, which proved to be a huge story this year, dozens
of powerful men in politics and entertainment having their careers ended by these allegations.
The Great American Eclipse in September, again, a significant day or date, or August rather
it was, a significant event, but the continuing impact in 2018, not really there.
So that's kind of what we're looking for as we look at the five top stories, if you will,
or topics for 2017 to start off the new year.
Fact number five, North Korea, this obviously a problem that is ongoing and to borrow a phrase
from our friend Ellie Marzulli, real burgeoning and not going away, rising tensions between
the U.S. and the hermit state of North Korea as North Korea continues to develop nuclear
weapons and the missiles to deliver those weapons to the other side of the planet, specifically
the United States.
Kim Jong-un recently quoted as saying he's always got the nuclear button on his desk.
To celebrate the new year, the government of North Korea displayed ice sculptures of
missiles that it claims can reach the United States.
Ice sculptures of intercontinental missiles to celebrate the new year.
I don't know much about art, but I know what I don't like.
Kim has tested more missiles than his father and grandfather combined.
Our friend, Lieutenant Colonel Bob McGinnis says this is a difficult situation and any
path forward to use his word is grim.
Topic number four, the shifting sands in the Middle East.
This was a year of change, a transition in the Middle East.
It marked the year in which the Islamic State pretty much lost what it had hoped to set
up as its permanent physical caliphate, Eastern Syria and Western Iraq.
It is all but history in those places.
It lost Mosul this year.
It lost its de facto capital city of Raqqa, its last stronghold in Deir ez-Zor taken just
within the last few weeks.
Now we can say that perhaps it's coincidence, if you're a coincidence theorist, that the
Islamic State rose to power in 2014, two years after the defense intelligence agency warned
the Obama administration to stop arming Syrian rebels because we would create a Salafist Islamic
State in Syria and Iraq and destabilize both those countries.
And of course the Obama administration ignored that advice and that's exactly what happened.
And now also coincidentally within a year of taking office, Donald Trump, the United
States, working together with partners in Russia and elsewhere have more or less ended
the influence of the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.
It still has pockets there.
It will still wield influence.
It has resurfaced of course in Libya, another failed American foreign policy experiment
of the Obama administration.
And there is a pocket right on the border with the Israel in the Golan Heights.
So it's not completely out of the picture, but that isn't the totality of what took place
in 2017 in the Middle East.
The reason I put this map up here with the red states indicating majority Sunni nations
and the green showing majority Shia nations, mainly Iraq, Iran and Lebanon, is that is
at the heart of what's going on in the Middle East.
It is a Sunni-Shia proxy war by extension, a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran.
Two main powers of those two sects within Islam.
And that conflict will continue.
Israel has picked a side in that conflict.
They want Iran reigned in at all costs, even if it means having to partner with Saudi Arabia.
Now Israel would actually like to be recognized by Saudi Arabia.
And with the rise of Mohammed bin Salman as the crown prince in Saudi Arabia, that may
actually happen.
There are back channel negotiations taking place and 2018 will continue to be an interesting...well,
will continue to see interesting developments in the Middle East as this dynamic continues
to drive the political changes there.
Prophetically significant?
Maybe not, but anytime you're dealing with politics in the Middle East there is the possibility
that you're seeing something prophetic unfolding.
Act number three for 2017, official disclosure, put those words inside air quotes.
This may be not as earth shaking in a political sense as potential nuclear war or the oil
producing Middle East in flames, but news that the Pentagon was running a secret program
to investigate UFOs between 2007 and 2012 was published by the New York Times in December.
This is being hailed by the UFO community as official disclosure of the existence of
extraterrestrial intelligences.
Now I think there's a more mundane explanation at work here, actually a couple.
The fact that the program existed at all has a lot to do with the fact that Senator Harry
Reed, the retired Senator from Nevada, a powerful member of the United States Senate, was able
to include funding for this program in the defense allocation budget, mainly as a way
to benefit a friend of his, the owner of Skinwalker Ranch, who has a business that benefited
from the money spent by the Department of Defense to chase down information on these
unidentified flying objects.
So there was a little bit of political patronage taking place there, but also the fact that
the information was released to the press has a mundane explanation.
Luis Elizondo, who was the Defense Intelligence official or agent who ran the program for
five years, is now a member of a for-profit company called To The Stars Academy of Arts
and Sciences, which has raised a couple of million dollars in public funding to produce
content to promote the idea that ET exists, both entertainment and education.
A number of the men involved in this program, other than the CEO, former lead singer of
Blink 182, Tom DeLonge, come right out of the intelligence community.
So it could be that these guys are just cashing in on their life's work and making a few bucks
from their experience in the defense or intelligence communities.
On the other hand, this could be an intelligence op to promote this idea in order to keep China
and Russia from figuring out what sort of secret aircraft we're actually working on,
which is okay with me.
The reason we address this as Christians, the reason that Josh Peck and I wrote this
book, The Day the Earth Stands Still, the reason that Gary Bates, CEO of Creation Ministries
International, produced the film Alien Intrusion, we'll talk more about that in a few minutes,
is because the UFO community is, whether it recognizes it or admits it or not, a new religion
because they're looking at these mysterious things in the sky for answers to the questions
that are in the Bible.
Where did we come from?
Why are we here and what happens when we die?
That's why this story, number three on our list of significant stories, most important
stories for 2017.
Number two, the deep state versus Donald Trump.
Donald Trump sworn in as the 45th president of the United States on January 20th, 2017
and the response by the deep state, the entrenched political elite here in the United States
and around the world has been unlike anything that we have seen in my lifetime and that's
more than half a century.
The mainstream press is so opposed to Donald Trump that it has taken to running stories
that they've had to retract time after time because they don't vet the stories.
We want this to be true and so we will publish it.
Oh, sorry, just kidding.
For example, just recently, Donald Trump Jr. was given advance information by WikiLeaks
before that information was made public.
Fake news.
Donald Trump ordered Lieutenant General Michael Flynn to contact the Russian government during
the presidential campaign.
Oops.
Fake news.
Donald Trump removed a bust of Martin Luther King Jr. from the Oval Office.
Oops.
Fake news.
It has happened so often that the progressives, the liberals in media who invented the term
fake news are now choking on the words because Donald Trump has reversed it on them because
they've been guilty of publishing fake news so often.
This is unprecedented.
The media didn't like George W. Bush much, but they didn't go this far in trying to
turn public opinion against the president.
It is backfired on them out here in flyover country.
I can tell you the average folk that we deal with every single day are so disgusted by the
major media that we tend to disbelieve most of what we read or see, especially when it
concerns President Trump.
This will continue in 2018 because the president's policies, foreign policy, economic policies,
so forth, threaten the livelihood and the hegemony, if you will, of political elites
and international bankers.
Putting America first strengthens America's middle class, which reverses a trend that
we've been seeing here in the United States over the last 40 years back toward feudalism.
A landed gentry, nobility, if you will, and then the rest of us just a bunch of serfs
tasked with working on their land.
This threatens the power of the global elite, our globalist overlords, and looking at this
through a prophetic lens.
That's what they want.
They want to bring us back to a one-world government, back to babble, and this president's
policies are a threat to that.
So this trend will continue in 2018.
They don't take this lightly, pray for the president and his security team.
And topic number one as we head into 2018, recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
This didn't make the end of the year list on many media sites when looking back at the
major stories of the year.
But in my view, the president's announcement on December 6th that the United States would
formally recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and move its embassy to Jerusalem
is the most significant story of the year.
Jerusalem prophesied to be a cup of trembling to the nations.
The response of the nations, the United Nations in particular, kind of proving that statement
to be true.
Now what the president did simply recognizes the facts on the ground.
The Israeli government since 1948 has always been centered in Jerusalem.
The Knesset meets there, the prime minister lives there, the president lives there.
All the government offices are there except for the government offices of other nations
which are in generally Tel Aviv.
Well, that may change Guatemala recently announced.
It's going to move its embassy to Jerusalem as well.
This is prophetic.
Maybe we don't know.
It can be dangerous to try to read prophetic fulfillment into every headline and we try
not to do that at Skywatch TV.
But as I said earlier, any time you're dealing with the Middle East in general or Israel
in particular, significant political events can have prophetic consequences, prophetic
fulfillments even.
Jerusalem, the site of the Temple Mount will someday, could be soon, could be thousands
of years in the future, we don't know.
Will someday be the site of Armageddon, the ultimate struggle, war, battle between good
and evil because the fight is for the Mount of Assembly, the Temple Mount, Mount Zion.
And this political move by the United States may provoke some responses that lead to that
conflict sooner rather than later.
Again, we don't date set and we try not to read prophecy into every single headline.
But when it comes to Jerusalem and the most powerful nation in the world running contrary
to the wishes of the rest of the world in recognizing Jerusalem as the capital and undivided
Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, that has to be the most significant story of 2017.
As we get into the new year, make sure you're taking us with you wherever you are so that
we can update you whenever anything breaks.
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iOS, Android, Windows Phone or Amazon Kindle Fire Tablet, we've got apps for that.
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You'll also find instructions there on how to add the Skywatch TV channel to your Roku
or Apple TV.
Of course, we're also available on YouTube and you'll find links there as well.
Coming up in March, now that we're into 2018, we've got to tell you about this because it's
less than three months away.
Time to start making plans.
Hear the Watchmen.
The conference returns to Dallas March 22 through 25th.
I will be there.
Sharon will be there along with some new friends, old friends.
Bill Salas will join us this time around.
L.A. Marzulli, Pastor Carl Gallops, Pastor Paul Begley, Mark Taylor, co-author of the
Trump prophecies will be there.
Josh Peck, Rabbi Zev Pirat, Pastor Paul Begley, many others will be there and we can save
you 20 bucks on the registration.
Use the promo code Gilbert20 at hearthewatchmen.com, that's hearthewatchmen.com and join us in
Dallas for the Hear the Watchmen conference, March 22 through 25th.
We hope to see you there.
You'll find us online at skywatchtv.com.
You'll find me online, including a brand new interview with Gary Bates, CEO of Creation
Ministries International and featured in the forthcoming film Alien Intrusion, which opens
Thursday, January 11th.
It deconstructs the scientific rationale behind the UFO phenomenon, shows it for what it is.
It is a metaphysical belief system, in other words, a false religion and you definitely
want to see this and tell people about it.
You can find out where to see Alien Intrusion at the website alienintrusion.com, that's
alienintrusion.com.
Josh Peck and I have had the opportunity to see it here, an advanced copy and it is highly
recommended, features interviews with people that you will know and respect.
Finally, an intelligent Christian response to the UFO community, one that uses high production
values in video form to get the message across.
The UFO community is a new religion, whether they recognize it or not.
Thank you for watching As We Keep Watching, I'm Derek Gilbert and this is Skywatch TV.
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