Longtime readers of Tomorrow’s World have read and become familiar with these “Personals” from Editor in Chief, Dr. Roderick C. Meredith. Sadly, Dr. Meredith, who is nearly 87 years old, has been diagnosed with an advanced stage of cancer, and his days appear to be very limited. It grieves me to inform you of this, as I have known Dr. Meredith since I first took his Freshman Bible class at Ambassador College in 1965. He has asked me, his designated successor to his office, to write this issue’s Personal and relieve him of that task.

Why have nations of the West dominated the globe for the last five hundred years, when for centuries they lagged behind great civilizations in India, China and the Moslem world? Why were a few small countries on the western fringe of the great Eurasian continent able to spread their culture all around the world when other cultures did not? Why did a group of daring navigators from Western Europe—Columbus in 1492, Vasco de Gama in 1499, Ferdinand Magellan in the 1520s and others—launch the Age of Discovery with globe-girdling voyages in tiny ships, instead of men such as the great Chinese Admiral Zheng He, who sailed thousands of miles across the Indian Ocean in huge treasure ships nearly a century earlier?

Jesus Christ warns those of us living in these end times that we should expect to hear of “wars and rumors of wars” and that “nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom” (Matthew 24:6–7). And, it seems, there are many kinds of war! Hot war, cold war, guerrilla war, cyber war… even holy war. Mankind invents many ways to engage in conflict, and Bible prophecy assures us that powerful wars between nations are, indeed, ahead of us. One type of warfare you will be hearing about more and more in the coming months is trade war. Trade wars have been around for centuries, and one may be coming soon to an economy near you!

On June 23, 2016, the UK voted in a referendum on the stark question, “Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union, or leave the European Union?” The shocking result, by 52 percent to 48 percent, was in favor of leaving. So began an unprecedented national convulsion of historic (and even “hysteric”) proportions, as a protracted and tortuous process of disentanglement began.

The fads that determine our schools’ educational approaches are often ideologically driven—and do more harm than good to our children!