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Jesus famously warned that prior to His Second Coming, “nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom” (Matthew 24:1–7).  Centuries earlier, God warned through Isaiah that at the end of the age, “As for My people, children are their oppressors…” (Isaiah 3:12).  These two prophecies are profoundly related.  Furthermore, there is a sobering connection between these two warnings and the “flash mob” violence that has raged from London to Philadelphia!

Four days of mindless violence and anarchy swept across England in early August, taking five lives and engulfing 121 locations. Why? These were not, as some insinuated, “race riots”—even though the initial spark came from the police shooting of a well-known London gang member. Nor were they due to social deprivation, police brutality, political discontent, or government cuts to balance the budget. Neither were they directly related to joblessness or economic despair or poverty. After all, many places did not riot!  So, what is the explanation?

On August 17, 1961—exactly 50 years ago, this Wednesday—East German laborers laid the first concrete blocks of what would soon be called the "Berlin Wall" The wall, cutting West Berlin off from surrounding East Germany, came to be seen as a symbol of Communist tyranny, and for more than a generation the German people grew used to its troubling presence, separating them from old friends and family and marking a moral and philosophical divide as well as a physical one.

On September 12, 1962, President John F. Kennedy stated, "We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too."

"Some strategic thinkers in Germany have long had dreams of dominating Europe in a controversial plan called Mitteleuropa, but in military implementation it has always failed. The word Mitteleuropa is used as both a place and an idea. Geographically, it is the Germans’ general area of central Europe, and conceptually, it was a plan first presented around 1915 for German domination of the region.