Today’s news highlights the reasons I garden, grow fruit trees, bought a ranch to build a house on, and spend my little spare time learning prepping skills. No one believes in an actual zombie apocalypse, but every terrorist organization in the world (and several nuclear-capable countries) repeatedly state their objective as “death to America”.
I think they mean it. No matter how much we ignore them, they are at war with us. “Death to America” is not just rhetoric to appease their constituency.
In case you missed the news from the last six years, Al Qaeda, ISIS, and Boko Haram are the three most notorious terrorist organizations in the world. Yes, Hamas, the PLO, and the Muslim Brotherhood, and various drug cartels are bad, but these other three trump them currently. Al Qaeda, ISIS, and Boko Haram are all training together in Mauritania, and probably working together in other ways. They are an evil triumvirate that swear to destroy (they state this publicly!) all first-world nations, and especially the United States of America.
Today, Saudi Arabia launched airstrikes against the new Al Qaeda based government of Yemen. Egypt already is launching airstrikes against ISIS and Al Qaeda in Libya, Jordan is actively flying airstrikes against the Caliphate run by ISIS. Pretty much every country in the Middle East is actively at war with terrorists, controlled by terrorists, or sponsoring terrorists.
In Central Africa, Boko Haram continues to grow with little effective opposition. In the Middle East whole countries are falling to ISIS and Al Qaeda. And, ISIS has created its own country it calls the Caliphate from parts of Syria and Iraq. World War III has already begun, and the stated goal of the enemy is “death to America”. Worse yet, so far, they are winning!
These organizations finance themselves through criminal activities such as selling women and children as sex slaves and international drug trafficking. They secrete themselves among civilized communities, and use both public and secret means to find, recruit and test followers. These terrorist organizations (along with other organized crime syndicates) are clumped under the term secret combinations.
These terrorist organizations, or secret combinations, seek very openly the complete destruction of every first-world nation. The news may not report it, but they’ve said it, and they are very serious.
The secret combinations / terrorists of our day have grown so powerful that they have declared their own nation, … the Caliphate. To us, this is a new experience. Organized criminals and terrorist groups have never grown so powerful, in our lifetimes, as to create their own countries. This has never happened since the founding of the USA.
However, this is not the first time a civilization consisting of multiple nations has had it’s existence threatened by secret combinations. In March, 1830, Joseph Smith published an account of an ancient people of Central America called the Book of Mormon. In it, a scenario eerily like our modern predicament is described.
Secret combinations and organized crime began among the more wicked parts of a people calling themselves the Nephites. In time, the secret combinations spread to another civilization called the Lamanites. Eventually, they became so numerous and powerful that they set up their own country in the neighboring mountains, and stated that their goal was to destroy all neighboring civilized countries.
A massive regional war ensued. It culminated with members of the civilized countries gathering themselves to a giant heavily fortified refugee camp. The country founded by the members of the secret combinations laid siege to the refugee camp for several years. It looked like ever member of civilized society would be killed. However, they trusted God, believed in Christ, and were saved. The country founded by terrorists was eventually destroyed and their leaders killed.
The scale of our current conflict is global, but the threat to civilization itself is real. The stated goal of our enemy is our death—not our surrender, but our death. We are really only near the beginning of this conflict. We don’t know how many years or decades the current World War against terrorists and secret combinations will last. However, being prepared and trusting God give us a chance to survive the current conflicts.
Hopefully, those screaming “Death to America” will not succeed. I hope everyone I know grows old, happily living in the country I love. However, prudence says to prepare for the worst and pray for the best of outcomes.