The numerous live shots of Michael Phelps’s mother during the first week of the Olympics had several commentators wondering about the whereabouts of his father. According to this report, Michael and his father are not on speaking terms. Dad, as it turns out, watched the Olympics from his home in Maryland.

Michael Phelps, we now know, is one of many Olympic athletes who have stay-at-home dads. “Indeed, the number of superior male athletes at the Olympics who look to their mother, as opposed to their father, for inspiration is astonishing,” Shmuley Beteach wrote last week in the Jerusalem Post.

Basketball superstar LeBron James was raised alone by his mother Gloria to whom he remains especially devoted. Jamaican uber-sprinter Usain Bolt ran straight to his mother Jennifer’s arms after breaking the world record in the 100 meter dash and becoming the fastest man alive. America’s best male sprinter, Tyson Gay, is so close to his mother Daisy that he phones her every day and especially an hour before he races to help calm his nerves. The list goes on.

Of course, in an age where the out-of-wedlock birth rate is pushing 40 percent and divorce is epidemic, the increase in fatherless athletes comes as no surprise. Still, watching it play out on such a grand stage painfully reminds us of how men have failed their families and society at large. Beteach continued,

Indeed, few indicators of the falling stature of the American male are as potent as the receding influence of men in their sons’ lives, as they are slowly replaced by mothers of unbreakable devotion. Whereas once this may have been true of areas where women carry special insight, such as in, say, vetting a girlfriend or giving advice about love and relationships, today it is true in the area one where we would least expect it, sports.

Beteach concluded his article with a reference to the Prophet Malachi, who said God would send an end-time prophet to “turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers” (Malachi 4:6).

Few people realize that this process began with the work of Herbert W. Armstrong, who died in 1986 at the age of 93. “The very foundation of any stable civilization is a solid family structure,” Mr. Armstrong wrote in 1979. He applied this same foundational principle to the church God had given him charge of.

The many youth activities Mr. Armstrong established and promoted had a tremendous impact on me personally—particularly my relationship with my father. Some of my most memorable experiences as a teen—while participating in sports tournaments, dances, talent shows and other activities all over the Northwest—were when I would glance into the stands to see where my father was sitting or when he would come down at half time in order to give me a pep talk.

Now 38, I still enjoy a wonderful working relationship with my father—constantly relying on him for leadership and strength as I work, along with my wife, to offer our two children the many blessings and benefits that were afforded to us.

To learn more about the work of Herbert W. Armstrong and what happened to it after his death, orderRaising the Ruins. For more on the God-ordained laws for marriage and family living, request a free copy of Mr. Armstrong’s book The Missing Dimension in Sex.

Britain’s Sickening Family Meltdown

The sickness of Britain’s society is old news. Every week another article details the depths of depravity to which this once proud nation has sunk. This week, though, one of Britain’s best social commentators, Theodore Dalrymple, traces the crisis back to its cause. “Britain is the worst country in the Western world in which to be a child, according to a recent unicef report,” he writes.

Ordinarily, I would not set much store by such a report; but in this case, I think it must be right—not because I know so much about childhood in all the other 20 countries examined but because the childhood that many British parents give to their offspring is so awful that it is hard to conceive of worse, at least on a mass scale. The two poles of contemporary British child rearing are neglect and overindulgence. …British youth are among the Western world’s leaders in such indicators of social pathology as teenage pregnancy, violence, criminality, underage drinking, and consumption of illicit drugs. Britain has the third-highest rate of teenage pregnancy in the industrialized world, according to the unicef report (only the United States and New Zealand are higher) …. British children have the earliest and highest consumption of cocaine of any young people in Europe, are ten times more likely to sniff solvents than are Greek children, and are six to seven times more likely to smoke pot than are Swedish children. Almost a third of British young people aged 11, 13, and 15 say they have been drunk at least twice.

And the cause of this debacle? Liberal newspapers and Britain’s intelligentsia would never point to it. Why? “It would be to entertain the heretical thought that family structure might matter after all, along with such qualities as self-restraint and self-respect; and that welfare dependency is unjust to those who pay for it and disastrous for those who wind up trapped in it,” Dalrymple writes.

The article paints a horrifying picture of a British underclass, where having more than one child with the same partner is becoming a rarity. And even those children who are brought up within a traditional family often miss out on the real joy of family living because of parental neglect and other factors like unrestricted and excessive television viewing. Dalrymple writes,

If children are not taught self-control, they do not learn it. … About a quarter of British teachers have been assaulted by their students over the last year.The British, never fond of children, have lost all knowledge or intuition about how to raise them; as a consequence, they now fear them, perhaps the most terrible augury possible for a society. The signs of this fear are unmistakable on the faces of the elderly in public places.

This assault on the family, especially the father, is bringing down the United States as well. For more information, read our free booklet Conspiracy Against Fatherhood.

“Additional Security Measures” = Russian Occupation

The EU brokered a cease-fire with Russia in order to stop the bleeding in Georgia. The problem is, the agreement leaves Russia in control, permitting it to “implement additional security measures”—which aren’t spelled out. The Weekly Standard explains how the “additional security measures” mean Russia will effectively remain occupier of Georgia.

To understand the significance of this, one has to visualize the geography of Georgia. Its populated area consists overwhelmingly of two fertile valleys running from west to east that nearly touch. Imagine the Shenadoah Valley in Virginia, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania or the central valley of California, but disposed horizontally. North and south of these valleys two rows of high mountains soar, the northern one being higher than any range in the United States or Europe. This topography, with little population or transportation above 1,500 feet of elevation, funnels the population, economic activity, and vital roads and railroads into a narrow corridor, easily cut. The new Russian checkpoints around Gori will cut that corridor close to the middle. Senaki is a central transportation hub in the western valley. So the proposed Russian positions essentially cut Georgia into three pieces. Georgia will be indefensible, at the mercy of an occupying army.These “additional security measures” claimed by Russia ideally situate the Russian army to strangle Georgia’s economy at will or to provoke domestic disturbances. These military positions call into question the continued viability of Georgia as an independent state.

Thus, the fecklessness of Western action against Russian militarism stands exposed. The Standard offers this additional analysis:

The United States lost much of its influence in the Caucasus in five days, with all that implies for the security of Caspian oil and for strategic access to Central Asia and Afghanistan. Russia understood the war as a proxy war, like the Korean War, and believes it routed us. From sudden success comes arrogance, which will make all cooperation on issues like Iran less likely, the price much higher.

Brookings Institution foreign-policy expert Daniel Benjamin is quoted in today’s Sunday Times as saying, “The events of the past two weeks have been a disaster for U.S. foreign policy. Russia’s invasion of its neighbor is a clear demonstration that the U.S.-led effort to integrate post-Soviet Russia into the West has failed.”

Putin Energizes Russians

According to recent polls, a majority of Russians back the Putin-Medvedev government and are excited about the return of Russia as superpower. Seventy percent of Russians say they are “in full and complete agreement” with the statement that the Russian leadership had “done everything it could to prevent an escalation of the conflict [with Georgia] and to prevent bloodshed.” Only 4 percent of Russians believe Moscow precipitated the crisis in Georgia.

The perspective of the Russian people on the war contrasts sharply with that of the West, which, for the most part, believes Moscow started the war.

Vladimir Putin might be getting a lot of death stares from international leaders, but at home, he’s greeted with smiling faces and pats on the back. “Many Russians are hoping the pair [Putin-Medvedev] will continue leading the country back towards super-power status,” reported Germany’s Der Spiegel on Friday, “and that they will pursue that aim more energetically.”

Indeed, it appears the conflict in Georgia and the wedge it’s driven between Russia and the West has done nothing but augment the peoples’ trust and solidarity with their leaders, especially Mr. Putin. Der Spiegel continued:

The powerful Putin is still held in higher esteem than his successor in the Kremlin. According to a recent survey by the Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VTsIOM), which is closely aligned with the government, 58 percent of Russians put their faith in Prime Minister Putin. Only 40 percent say they prefer President Dimitry Medvedev.When asked who they think has the upper hand in Russian politics, only 14 percent agreed that it was Medvedev, according to the Levada Center poll, with 26 saying it was Putin. But the majority said they believed the two are sharing power equally. In the minds of some Russians, Medvedev didn’t go far enough in the conflict. Listener Anotoli from Tver, calling into Echo [a radio station] of Moscow, said: “Medvedev is a weakling. We should have trampled on Georgia and, while we were at it, taken over the Crimea again.”

While it’s true that media polls in the Putin-controlled Russian media ought to be taken with a grain of salt, there are other factors suggesting the polls might be accurate in this case. Russia’s economic upswing under Putin has come with many benefits for the Russian people, for example.

More importantly, Bible prophecy forecasts the dramatic rise to power of Russia and China in these latter days. This is the surest indicator that Vladimir Putin enjoys a majority of support from his 140 million constituents and that the emerging Russian empire is not likely to slow down any time soon. For more on the prophetic implications of this development, read Russia and China in Prophecy.

New Generation of Leaders

“Is the world drifting towards a new global war?” Times columnist Simon Jenkins asks in response to Russia’s invasion and occupation of Georgia. He also raises a second, even more sobering concern: “The world is now run by a generation of leaders who have never known global war. Has this dulled their senses?”

The past few generations have been brought up believing that wars between great powers are a thing of the past. Even a month ago, a headline with “world war looms” would have seemed absurd. Yet, for the first time in the lives of most politicians and commentators, the threat of world war is now legitimate and real.

“The world is showing alarming parallels with the 1930s,” Jenkins writes. “Lights are turning to red as the world again approaches depression. The credit crunch and the collapse of world trade talks are making nations introverted. Meanwhile, the defeated power of the last war, Russia, is flexing its muscles and finding them in good working order.”

More and more people are waking to the fact that the world has entered a dangerous new era, where the evils of human nature are the same as always, but with nuclear weapons now added to the mix.

Hurts Both Ways

The International Herald Tribunesays that the world may be about to learn that globalization works both ways—meaning it can help spread economic pain as well as economic growth.

Only a few months ago, some economists still offered hope that robust expansion could continue in much of the world even as the United States slowed. Foreign investment was expected to keep replenishing American banks still bleeding from their disastrous bets on real estate and to provide money for companies looking to expand. Overseas demand for American goods and services was supposed to continue compensating for waning demand in the States.Now, high energy prices, financial systems crippled by fear, and the decline of trading partners have combined to choke growth in many major economies. The International Monetary Fund expects global growth to slow significantly through the end of this year. …”The global economy is in a tough spot, caught between sharply slowing demand in many advanced economies and rising inflation everywhere,” the imf declared last month in its official World Economic Outlook.

As the United States and many other large economies head toward recession, the reality of just how intertwined the world’s markets are is setting in. “[J]ust as globalization spreads prosperity—linking cotton farmers in Texas to textile mills in China—the same forces spread hurt when times go bad.”

The economic slowdown in the U.S. seems to be dragging much of the world with it.

Although the severity of the current economic crisis might come as a shock to some, it comes as no surprise to long-term readers of the Trumpet and its predecessor, the Plain Truth. Herbert Armstrong warned that Bible prophecy indicates a massive crisis in America’s economy would pull the international economy into chaos and disorder.

Elsewhere on the Web

“Game over” for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac says billionaire investor Warren Buffett, despite the U.S. government’s recent attempt to prop up the two failing mortgage originators by essentially giving them blank checks.

In last week’s Weekend Web, we highlighted the sad fact of biblical Israel exporting drunkenness and debauchery all over the world. Yesterday’s New York Times had a similar report, saying Britain owns the reputation of being “the largest exporter of inebriated hooligans in Europe.”

According to a Stratfor report, “A statement released Aug. 23 by the military wing of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad encouraged groups to kidnap Israeli soldiers saying that prisoner swaps, like the one that took place between Israel and Hezbollah in July 2006, were effective.”

Iranian madman Mahmoud Ahmadinejad renewed his vitriolic tirades against Israel yesterday, saying, “About 2,000 organised Zionists and 7,000 to 8,000 agents of Zionism have dragged the world into turmoil.” If the West does not restrain Zionism, he said, “the powerful hand of the nations will clean these sources of corruption from the face of the earth.”

The British government warns that computer networks controlling key infrastructure including electricity, telecommunications and banking are being targeted by hackers thousands of times a day. You can read yesterday’s reports by the Times here and here. An analyst with an Internet traffic monitoring company said, “We’re building this house of cards at the moment—connecting elements of our financial systems, as well as the systems which control nuclear power or water distribution, to the internet, and it’s a very open environment. I can launch an attack on you from anywhere.”

And Finally …

Two years ago, a fact-checker on our staff, Lisa Godeaux, moved to Indiana to marry and start a family. Now Lisa Jacques, she works as a staff writer for the Shelbyville News. On Thursday she published this article about a Georgian immigrant living in Shelbyville. He gives an interesting personal account of Russia’s invasion of Georgia that is well worth a read. Nice job, Lisa!