ONE
Anatomy of Disaster!
Where were you the day John F. Kennedy was shot in Dallas, Texas? If you were alive on planet Earth, you know exactly where you were and what you were doing when Walter Cronkite took off his thick black glasses and announced to America, “John F. Kennedy, president of the United States, died at 1:00 p.m. Central Standard Time.”
He paused and looked again at the studio clock. “Some thirty-eight minutes ago.” The seasoned newscaster momentarily lost his composure, winced, and cleared his throat before resuming with the observation that Vice President Lyndon Johnson would take the oath of office to become the thirty-sixth president of the United States.
The heart of America was broken!
We had been swept up in the dream that was Camelot. We wept as a nation when Jackie walked into the Capitol Rotunda with Caroline and kissed the flag-draped coffin of JFK. His cortege of matched, prancing black horses pulled the caisson past the White House and the Capitol for the final time while John-John saluted his father and our president with a final farewell. It was a tragic and heartbreaking moment in history America will never forget! There is no greater agony of the soul than to live in the wonder of what might have been.
Where were you on 9/11?
What did you feel when you watched radical Islamic terrorists fly hijacked commercial airlines as missiles of death into the Twin Towers in New York City?
What did you feel when you saw fellow Americans jumping to their horrific and gruesome deaths from hundreds of feet in the air in a futile attempt to escape the blazing inferno?
Every living soul was someone’s beloved father or mother, someone’s loving husband or wife, someone’s cherished son or daughter that would never come home again. Their families would forever after gather on special days of celebration—Thanksgiving, Christmas, birthdays, and anniversaries—and look with pain and heartache at their pictures with tearful eyes knowing that the nightmare of 9/11 would never end in their lifetime.
What did you feel as you watched the Twin Towers implode, floor after floor, and in a handful of thundering seconds see concrete, steel, and the lives of three thousand fellow Americans crushed together into an eternal monument of pain and suffering.
Brave New York City firefighters dashed into the blazing inferno and gave their lives trying to save the lives of others. “Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends” (John 15:13 NKJV).
They gave their all without hesitation. They died and will forever remain American heroes. We make a living by what we get out of life, but we make a life by what we give. No man was ever honored by what he received. Honor is the reward for what he gave. The New York City firefighters gave their all!
Do you remember American citizens running in terror down the streets of New York City, screaming as a massive mushroom cloud of dust from the Twin Towers filled the air and turned a golden day into darkest night? For the first time since the British burned the White House in 1813, we had been attacked in the continental United States—the land of the free and the home of the brave.
The American illusion of being untouchable by foreign military powers was shattered in a day by the agents of radical Islam. America would never be the same!
It couldn’t happen… but it did happen!
THE PERFECT STORM
On April 12, 1912, the Titanic raced through the icy waters of the Atlantic trying to set a new transatlantic speed record. This mountain of steel and mechanical genius had been pronounced “the unsinkable ship!”
Minutes before the Titanic struck the iceberg, some of the richest and most powerful people in the world danced the night away, unaware that disaster was imminent and that the Angel of Death was aboard. They would have gladly traded their power and their fortunes for a crude lifeboat, but none was available for the more than 1,500 souls who drowned in the frigid waters of the Atlantic on this night of unspeakable disaster.
The demons of denial pushed the agony and horror off the celebrated ship. Even after striking the iceberg and with the ship sinking by the head and taking on tons of water, Mr. J. Bruce Ismay, president of the company that owned the Titanic, pledged to his powerful passengers: “Not to worry, all is well. This ship is unsinkable and it’s clear as far as the eye can see.”
That message was so desired by the masses that twenty-four hours after the Titanic was at the bottom of the ocean, twenty-four hours after 1,522 souls had slipped into eternity the headlines in the New York paper screamed: “All Saved from Titanic After Collision.”
Telegrams were received reading, “All Titanic Passengers Are Safe!” Another telegram read, “The Virginian Is Towing Titanic into Halifax.” There was a total and complete denial of reality.
It couldn’t happen… but it did happen!
The unthinkable horror became reality.
The unbelievable nightmare was a fact!
How did it happen?
Why did it happen?
It happened because a perfect storm of human error driven by the winds of complacency and overconfidence birthed an unspeakable disaster.
First, the well-known fact that there were not enough lifeboats—because the Titanic was said to be “unsinkable,” which proved to be absolutely false—led to the deaths of many souls.
Second, there was no one to receive the distress signal from the Titanic as it was sinking because all ships closed their telegraph systems at midnight. This maritime law was promptly changed after the Titanic disaster so that all ships at sea would have an operator on duty twenty-four hours a day.
Third, had there been a ship nearby, the Titanic had no red flares that were the international maritime signal for “emergency” or “need help.” The Titanic had only white phosphorus flares used for many things, but never danger.
Think of it!
If they had had but one red flare, the ship California, which was less than ten miles away, might have seen it. It could have come quickly to the rescue and not one life would have been lost. One red flare could have saved 1,522 lives!
Fourth, there were no binoculars available to the watchmen in the crow’s nest staring into the frigid and clear night looking for any sign of danger. When the watchmen spotted the massive iceberg by natural sight, it was too late.
With one pair of binoculars, they could have seen the iceberg in plenty of time to turn the ship away from danger and the certain death lurking beneath the icy water. One set of binoculars could have saved 1,522 lives.
Last, it was customary for all ships to measure the water temperature when in this part of the ocean. Water in the 30-degree range meant icebergs were near. They read water temperature by dropping a canvas bag overboard by rope and reading the seawater with a thermometer. The temperature of the seawater was then entered into the logbook for the captain of the ship to read.
In Senate hearings, it was discovered that the rope that let the canvas bag overboard was too short to reach the water in the ocean. It was too short because this was the largest ship in the world. The crew made a small but deadly miscalculation.
The seaman in charge of taking the temperature of the seawater filled the canvas bag with drinking water taken from the ship. When the captain read the temperature report in the log, there was absolutely no concern of danger.
Think of it!
Fifteen hundred and twenty-two of the most powerful people on the earth could have been saved if the rope had been long enough.
Why do I belabor this point?
Because America, believed to be the most powerful and “unsinkable” nation on the face of the earth, is now racing across the stage of history in a similar perfect storm—this one driven by the winds of political correctness, economic meltdowns leading to the death of the dollar, the rejection of Israel, the maniacal nuclear ambitions of the theocratic dictatorship in Iran, the ten prophetic signs that we are the terminal generation now being fulfilled in Bible prophecy for the first time in world history, and the very real fact that in the near future planet Earth is going to experience, on a specific day, global ecological disaster in which one-third of humanity will die.
Could this specific day be 12/12/12? Before you throw this book into the fire, read the final chapter. The concepts are not mine, but those of St. John on the Isle of Patmos in the book of Revelation.
So the four angels, who had been prepared for the hour and day and month and year, were released to kill a third of mankind.
—Revelation 9:15 NKJV
Think it can’t happen?
Think again!
St. John the Revelator confirms to his readers in all generations that follow him until the end of days …
These words are faithful and true … Blessed is he who keeps the words of the prophecy of this book.
—Revelation 22:6-7 NKJV
America and Western civilization have made and are making a series of serious blunders that are now pushing America in the twenty-first century toward the edge of the abyss. It is far more than a banking crisis!
It is far more than just a credit crunch!
It is a perfect storm that has been brewing for centuries that is about to explode in all its fury affecting the lives of every person on planet Earth.
IN THE THROES OF DEATH AND BIRTH
In America, we are watching the death of capitalism and the birth of European socialism; because of our titanic debt, we are watching the death of the dollar. The birth of nuclear warfare in the Middle East with a nuclear Iran will...
