We are in the midst of the explosion of knowledge. These are amazing times in which to be alive! The world is progressing—more rapidly than any of us could have expected—towards the “Brave New World” of the Antichrist.

One of the most irrefutable signs that we are living in the Last Days is recorded in the Bible, when God told Daniel: “But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end: many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased” (Daniel 12:4).

The exponential increase of knowledge is a phenomenon that is particularly unique to this generation alone. The explosion of knowledge that has accompanied the advent of the computer age is unparalleled in all of history! From the time of Christ until 1950, the sum of human knowledge had only increased by a factor of ten—that over a period of nearly 2,000 years. But since 1980, the grand total of human knowledge has increased over a thousand-fold! There has never been another generation in the history of the world that has seen such an explosion of knowledge!

We have been watching how that explosion of knowledge is working out in our world in the area of human genetic research. As recently as a month ago, it was believed that the mapping of the human genome would be complete as early as the end of this year. But in April came the surprise announcement from Celera Genomics, that it had entirely completed the mapping of the human genetic sequence for the first time. This is well ahead of even the earliest predictions and thrusts the world into an area of moral and scientific turmoil.

Will the mapping of the human genome finally lead to the cure for cancer, Alzheimer’s, aging, and the like? Will it lead to the end of personal medical privacy as doctors begin searching the genes of their patients to see if they may have genetic tendencies towards disease? And if this happens, will insurance companies be allowed to deny coverage to people who may be deemed “at risk” for certain diseases?

The off-shoot of it all could be the insistence of the government, sometime in the future, that people submit to genetic manipulation to “re-engineer” their genetic structure to avoid disease or risk being locked out of the hospital when a medical emergency does arise. We could well be entering the “Brave New World” of the Antichrist very, very soon!

Islam is on the rise throughout the world, using the wealth of Islamic oil producing nations to fund research and purchases of technology that could be used by terrorists to further the Islamic cause. Despite the peaceful overtures of the Pope, Islam remains the desperate enemy of Christianity and Judaism. And just as we Christians will not rest until we have told the world about our wonderful Savior, Islam will not rest until it has wiped Christianity and the Jews from the face of Planet Earth.

The possibility of terrorist attack—and even nuclear blackmail—continues to increase. It may well be that before this page arrives at your door, there will be yet another bloody incident of Islamic terrorism perpetrated upon an innocent and unsuspecting populace to draw attention to the Islamic cause. Islam remains the fastest growing religion in the world and you and I would do well to keep “our eyes open, our heads low, and our powder dry” as we move towards the terrors of the End-Time wars.

One of the great players in the end-times wars will be the nation of Russia. The Book of Ezekiel describes Russia’s prophesied invasion of Israel in chapters 38-39. In the days of Boris Yeltsin, many of us could not imagine a scenario that would draw Russia into battle in the Middle East. But now that Vladimir Putin has been elected president of Russia on his own, we must look to see what kind of man he really is to get a picture of the things which are to come.

Putin was trained in the Soviet KGB, rising to a position high within their ranks. When “democracy” came to Russia and the Soviet Union fell apart, the KGB was reorganized as the FSB. But a change in name does not a new service make. And as head of the FSB, Vladimir Putin established himself as a spy among spies—a secret service man of immense cunning and cold calculation.

It will take a man like Putin to pull Russia together. The fledgling Russian economy has been held hostage by one of the most powerful underworld organizations in the history of mankind. The modern “oligarches” act as feudal lords, robbing the nation of its economic profit to line their own pockets, while the general population struggles to live on a subsistence income.