HORSEMEN NOW WE HEAR,
A ‘MRSA’ BUG IS NOT HIDING,
HORSE OF DEATH IS ARRIVING!
END TIME SORROWS DO ABOUND,
THE DOLLAR VALUE GOING DOWN,
WORLDWIDE PRICE OF RICE ARISES,
A BLACK HORSE RIDER NOW ASTRIDE,
TO SOON BEGIN A LONG SORROWS RIDE
THE EARTH ENDURES BUT CANNOT HIDE!
April 26, 2008
http://www.tribulation perio
d.com/
Revelation 6:8 – And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.
And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.
The beginning ingredients for two of the signs of the last days are now beginning to fully expose their ugly heads, and two of the four horsemen of Revelation will soon be going at full stride. The fact that my wife was diagnosed with MRSA on April 24 has personally brought home the full reality of what I have taught for more than 30 years about earthquakes, famine, and particularly about pestilence. Pestilence is the Koine Greek word “loimos,” which means “any deadly infections disorder.” It is one of the five signs we are given prophetically to let us know we are in
the last days of the Age of the Gentiles.
The first part of this particular Blog begins with material from our Prophecy Update Archives on pestilence (loimos), followed by articles on interrelated dollar decline and worldwide famine from two different articles.
Begin Excerpt from Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia
Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is a bacterium responsible for difficult-to-treat infections in humans. It may also be referred to as multiple-resistant Staphylococcus aureus or oxacillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (ORSA). The organism is often sub-categorized as Community-Associated MRSA (CA-MRSA) or Hospital-Associated MRSA (HA-MRSA) depending upon the circumstances of acquiring disease, based on current data that these are distinct strains of the bacterial species.
MRSA is a resistant variation of the common bacterium Staphylococcus aureus. It has evolved an ability to survive treatment with beta-lactam antibiotics, including penicillin, methicillin, and cephalosporins. MRSA is especially troublesome in hospital-associated (nosocomial) infections. In hospitals, patients with open wounds, invasive devices, and weakened immune systems are at greater risk for infection than the general public. Hospital staff who do not follow proper sanitary procedures may transfer bacteria from patient to patient.
MRSA/ Multidrug Resistant Staphylococcus aureus was discovered in 1961 in the UK. It is now found worldwide. MRSA is often referred to in the press as a “superbug.”
In the past decade or so the number of MRSA infections in the United States has increased significantly. A 2007 report in Emerging Infectious Diseases, a publication of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), estimated that the number of MRSA infections treated in hospitals doubled nationwide, from approximately 127,000 in 1999 to 278,000 in 2005, while at the same time deaths increased from 11,000 to more than 17,000.[3] Another study led by the CDC and published in the October 17, 2007 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association estimated that MRSA would have been responsible for 94,360 serious infections and associated with 18,650 hospital stay-related deaths in the United States in 2005 These figures suggest that MRSA infections are responsible for more deaths in the U.S. each year than AIDS
ARCHIVE PROPHECY UPDATE NUMBER 19
ISSUED INITIALLY IN LATE 2000
PESTILENCE ARTICLE
Matthew 24:7,8 – For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places. [8] All these are the beginning of sorrows.
The word translated “sorrows” is “odin.” It refers to “sorrow” like that experienced during a woman’s birth pangs. It is the same as the “sorrow” travail of a woman with child identified in I Thessalonians 5:3,4.
I Thessalonians 5:3,4 – For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape.
[4] But ye, brethren, are not in darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief.
But what about Matthew’s “pestilence” – Is it following the pattern of a woman’s birth travail for the first time since Jesus prophesied it would? Absolutely! The basic root meaning of the word “loimos,” translated “pestilence,” is simply “any deadly infectious disorder.” Many plagues have passed through mankind since the fall, but none have generated a massive epidemic that was continuously accelerating over a long period of time.
These “loimos” have never been able to follow the pattern of a woman’s birth pains for very long on a worldwide basis. Cholera, small pox, typhoid, bubonic plague, and so on, have appeared in short spurts like false labor, but none has ever maintained a persistent, ever increasing, epidemic characteristic with seemingly no end. But now, for the first time, we have a “loimos,” a deadly infectious disorder, that has portrayed these characteristics from its inception. The HIV virus is the first to perfectly match the pattern of a woman’s birth pangs, and it will continue to do so until the travail of the woman Israel ends,
and the Son she rejected arrives. HIV is a virus that has swept across the globe like wildfire. HIV cases worldwide increased from a trace in 1980 to more than 5 million in 1985, to more than 10 million in 1990, to more than 20 million in 1995, and to a whopping 35 million in 2000. AIDS, the dreadful blossom of HIV, was first reported in a British sailor, who died in England in 1959. HIV has hardest hit Africa up to this point, but it is poised to spread into Asia and the former Soviet Union as an ever-increasing storm. And, in truth, medical researchers seem no closer to fining a cure than they were twenty years ago.
Are there other “loimos” infections that have also started to demonstrate the patterns of a woman’s birth pangs? Yes! The World Health Organization (WHO) fears that tuberculosis may kill 30 million worldwide during the next decade. The emergence of drug-resistant strains, and the spread of HIV have both hampered efforts by health agencies to slow the renewed spread of the consumptive illness. Another sort of “loimos” is malaria, which is on the rise around the world, and once curative treatments are losing their effect. It is a pestilence of global dimensions, and new strains are evolving that scientists fear will be untreatable.
But what about all the microbes generating all this pestilence, this “loimos,” these deadly infectious disorders, what are they doing, how are they behaving
? Are they doing something that will make the pestilences continue to act like a woman’s birth pangs through the tribulation period? Yes! A leading national magazine cover, back in the last century, carried the bold print title: “REVENGE OF THE KILLER MICROBES – ARE WE LOSING THE WAR AGAINST INFECTIOUS DISEASES?” Tuft’s Levy answered the question in Newsweek Magazine by stating: “The rise of drug-resistant germs is unparalleled in recorded biologic history.” Because of this contributing factor, pestilence will become more and more widespread in its acceleration until the second advent
of Christ.
Begin Xinhua Excerpt Via InfoWars.Net
China’s yuan hits new high against US dollar
Xinhua
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
China’s currency, the yuan, was set to trade at 6.9837 yuan against the US dollar on Wednesday, a new high since the government unpegged it from the dollar in 2005.
The yuan has risen almost 4.6 percent against the dollar so far this year.
Market analysts attributed the rise to the continuing weakening of the dollar, led by a fall in confidence in the US currency and sell-off activity.
China ended the currency’s peg to the dollar in July 2005, and since then the yuan’s reference rate has been set against a currency basket that also includes the euro, yen, won and British pound.
The value of the Chinese currency stayed above eight to the dollar for many years before the 2005 regime reform. The yuan broke the 8-yuan threshold on May 15, 2006, and the 7-yuan mark on April 10 this year.
Begin International Herald Tribune
Bowring: The price of rice will rise
By Philip Bowring
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
HONG KONG: Rice prices may have moved in the same trajectory as other grain prices, but the equation of production, consumption and trade of Asia’s leading staple is actually quite different from other grains.
Its characteristics suggest that rice’s relative value will increase, forcing many poorer consumers with no choice but to rely on alternatives like wheat, corn, sorghum, cassava or potatoes.
Some of the immediate causes of the price spike for rice are similar to that of other crops. The cost of fertilizer, closely related to energy, is the most obvious. Futures speculation by financial intermediaries may also have played a part – though rice futures trading is small compared with other major crops.
But biofuels cannot be blamed because rice is not used for them. Nor has there been any major harvest setback among the top Asian producers. Inste ad, we
are now seeing the impact of a series of longer term trends, some of which probably cannot be reversed. In no particular order these are:
Almost zero growth in land suitable for rice production. Soybeans, corn and wheat acreage can expand in South America or in North America and Europe. Rice – which ideally requires flat land, lots of water and a warm climate – has no equivalent.
Indeed, rice bowl areas of China, South Asia and Southeast Asia are losing land to urbanization and in some cases to salination caused by dams built for hydroelectric purposes and other reasons.
Rising sea levels would compound this problem for countries like Bangladesh and Vietnam. Australia’s water shortages are likely to permanently end its role as a significant exporter.
Consumption subsidies by governments
Subsidies in countries as diverse as India and Malaysia divert money from agricultural investment while discouraging consumption of alternative foods. The assumption that cheap rice is a necessity everywhere has led to rice becoming the norm in areas, like eastern Indonesia, where other crops more suited to the conditions were once the staple. This problem may now be compounded by governments subsidizing rice production at the expense of more suitable crops.
The narrow base of world trade in rice. The world trade in rice is less than 10 percent of global production. For only two countries, Thailand and Vietnam, is rice export a key business. China and India have small export surpluses but policy in both countries is focused on self-sufficiency.
Although in theory both countries could produce bigger surpluses, they, like consumers, are likely to be reminded by the current situation of the importance of keeping large stocks and avoiding domestic price spikes.
Production subsidies by the United States, and to a lesser extent the European Union, for long helped depress international prices. Meanwhile consumer-country complacency led to a 50 percent fall in global stocks over just four years.
Rapid growth of demand in countries with big oil revenues and huge rice production deficits – Iran, Saudi Arabia etc. – which can afford rice at almost any price. At the same time, rice has become widely consumed in countries in Africa like Ghana which were lulled by years of low rice prices and U.S. subsidized exports to become import dependent, or which saw a consumption shift from traditional local crops to easy-to-prepare rice.
Low growth in productivity, now running at around 1 percent. This has a variety of causes ranging from inadequate investment in irrigation (for example in India) to insufficient attention to new varieties. Productivity growth in rice has long lagged that of wheat and soybeans. The Green Revolution is now a distant memory. High fertilizer prices are exacerbating the problem.
The high labor content in rice production – a seldom acknowledged factor. The back-breaking work of rice production is a disincentive in countries like China where new urban job opportunities are opening up or there is a market for higher value-added farm products like vegetables and poultry. Advanced Asian countries like Japan and Korea can achieve high yields with mechanized systems and huge inputs of fertilizer and pesticide. But the cost is enormous and requires huge subsidies to producers and import restraints which have discouraged competitive exporters.
The situation is not all gloomy. Per capita rice consumption tends to fall as societies get richer and diets more diverse. High prices will stimulate production.
One day Myanmar will reemerge as a major exporter. But the current hand-wringing by international agencies and grandstanding by politicians is worthless without a better understanding of the factors behind the rice situation and the anti-market forces that have held back production and enhanced consumption.
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