The season is here. In the northern hemisphere, the days are getting shorter and the evenings cooler. The fall semester of school has begun, and that means something very important has also begun. In case you haven't guessed, it's football season!

For much of the United States, football is a passion. Lives are planned around the big games with all the rituals, like wearing school colors, carrying symbols of the team mascots, and of course, “tailgating” with food and friends. It all comes together to make football “Saturday’s religion” for many.

Last week an 8.1 magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of southern Mexico, killing at least 90 and destroying thousands of homes—filling streets with crowds of mourners (Aljazeera, September 10, 2017; The Guardian, September 8, 2017).

End-time Bible prophecies indicate that a coalition of nations from east and north of Jerusalem (Daniel 11:40-44; Revelation 16:12) will bring a huge army into the Middle East to confront the armed forces of a European beast power (Revelation 9:14-16). Exactly how these prophecies will be fulfilled remains to be seen. However, as world events continue to speed up, we may be witnessing how this group of kings “from the east and the north” (where Russia and China are located) will come together.

“French president Emmanuel Macron has revived the idea of multi-speed Europe, while announcing that he will soon make ten ‘concrete’ proposals to reform the EU after Brexit”—a plan he will reveal after the September German elections (EU Observer, August 30, 2017). Macron recently met with the prime ministers of Luxembourg and Belgium. “The three leaders—who are all under 45, French-speaking and hold liberal views—said that they wanted to create a ‘coalition of the willing’ to reform the EU” (ibid.).