Are you keeping track of the “point of no return” references made in the media over the past four months? Our regular readers remember that it was during an editorial meeting on July 15 that Gerald Flurry told our writers that the United States, the British peoples and biblical Judah—called “Israel” today—have collectively reached the point of no return.

Regarding the economy, as we noted last month, Ambrose Pritchard-Evans warned of “extreme danger” in the global economy, saying the entire system could disintegrate within days. The world had “tipped over the edge, into the middle of the abyss,” Pritchard-Evans wrote. “We are fast approaching the point of no return.”

London’s Independent chimed in with this on October 9: “Yesterday was a day when the world woke up to the historic nature of the times, and the realization that the downturn will almost certainly now turn into recession, and may even turn into a slump of a kind not seen since the Great Depression.”

Regarding the American elections, as we noted here, Thomas Sowell, a black conservative author and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, said this about the possibility of a radical leftist administration occupying the White House: “There is such a thing as a point of no return. If, in those first two years, Iran gets nuclear weapons, we will be at that point of no return.”

The latest point of no return reference was made by Melanie Phillips on Friday. Writing about the appalling breakdown of family life in Britain, Phillips concluded with this: “The truth is that it is all far, far too late. Britain has simply undone the fabric of civilized life.”

These examples highlight the hopelessness of mankind when it comes to solving the ever-increasing problems and evils of this world. Even the greatest of minds are utterly incapable of providing workable solutions. That’s because all of our problems, as Herbert Armstrong taught, are spiritual in nature.

For real solutions to our past the point of no return problems, study What Science Can’t Discover About the Human Mind.

G-20 Meeting Points Toward Economic New World Order

The international consensus is that the financial contagion that has stricken nations all over the world originated in the United States. The calls, then, for a change in the economic world order—one that diminishes American influence and increases the control of international regulatory bodies—have been ubiquitous and loud.

That was certainly true at the G-20 summit conducted this weekend to address the global economic crisis—though official communiqués were diplomatic in not pointing fingers. It was called by European leaders who convinced the United States to host it. And signs are emerging that Europe is jockeying to replace the U.S. as the world’s economic leader. The Washington Post reports,

The Europeans got “virtually everything” they sought at the summit, French President Nicholas Sarkozy crowed afterward at a news conference. He said it had been difficult to persuade Bush to hold the summit, but the results were worth it. “America is still the No. 1 power in the world,” he noted. “Is it the only one? No, it isn’t.”

Sarkozy’s comment was underscored by the fact that the meeting including 20 nations rather than the usual seven or eight that combine for such discussion.

Traditionally, global economic shocks would be handled by the Group of Seven—the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Japan, Canada, Italy—or the G-7 and Russia, known as the G-8. The G-20 folds the G-8 into a larger group that includes emerging economies—China, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia and South Africa among them.”We are talking about the G-20 because the G-8 doesn’t have anymore reason to exist. In other words, the emerging economies have to be taken into consideration in today’s globalized world,” Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said as he headed to the session.At the meeting, Chinese President Hu Jintao called for “a new international financial order that is fair, just, inclusive and orderly,” according to a translation of his remarks.

The European-style answer to every question is more government. Unsurprisingly, this summit produced a commitment to stronger economic regulations and oversight, and more robust power in the hands of international bodies.

The leaders agreed to set up a new regulatory body, “a college of supervisors,” to examine the books of major financial institutions that operate across national borders, so regulators could begin to have a more complete picture of banks’ operations. They demanded greater scrutiny of hedge funds and the completion of a clearinghouse system to help standardize and limit risk on some of the opaque and exotic financial derivatives that helped bring down Wall Street’s investment banks.Leaders also agreed to submit their countries’ financial systems to regular, vigorous reviews by the International Monetary Fund—assessments that some countries, including the United States, had long resisted.

The U.S., however, recognizes its role in creating the crisis and is in no position to resist this change.

Biblical prophecy is explicit about the emergence of an economic superpower in Europe in our day. Read Who or What Is the Prophetic Beast? to inform yourself about the details of this crucial prophecy we are watching unfold before our eyes.

Russia’s Revival

“The new Russia is no longer a crippled giant” wroteSpiegel on Friday, noting the “re-distribution of the world’s wealth in favor of new leaders.” The idealistic reputation of political democracy has taken a beating in recent years, Spiegel notes, due to the economic success of authoritarian nations. Western nations, by comparison, have seen their economies struggle and their moral and intellectual authority decline.

“For the first time in history, the winds of luck seem to be blowing into Russian sails,” Spiegel wrote. Other countries, especially in Europe, have become increasingly reliant on Russia for oil. According to Spiegel, “The growing demand for fossil fuels and the ensuing rise of prices has made Russia look like an ‘energy superpower.’”

The article also attributed Russia’s rise to the efforts of Vladimir Putin, under which “the country resurrected itself from that of a nearly failed state.” In July, the New Straits Times also reported on the Russian government’s “objective to return the country to an economic superpower.”

A country largely considered “an international beggar in the 1990s, Russia now has the third largest currency reserves in the world,” Spiegel noted. Russia is now “ready to become a strong actor once again.”

Spiegel’s article warned of a potential future conflict between the rising Russian bear and the West—particularly if nato seeks enlargement or “in the case of an attack against Iran.”

As we wrote this past summer, “With a booming economy that now ranks as the world’s tenth largest, Russia is well on its way to becoming a world superpower—especially when its military might and economic prosperity combine with Asia’s gargantuan population, as Bible prophecy says it will.” We continued,

We have often referred to the coming clash between the Iranian-led king of the south and the European-led king of the north, spoken of in Daniel 11. Prophecy says radical Islam will aggressively “push” at Catholic Europe, resulting in Europe’s furious blitzkrieg attack against Iran and its allies.Not long after this, during the Great Tribulation, notice what Bible prophecy says will happen: “But tidings out of the east [the Orient] and out of the north [Russia] shall trouble him: therefore he shall go forth with great fury to destroy, and utterly to make away many” (verse 44). The European beast will be “troubled” by the awesome might of a great Asian confederacy!

First Germany, Then Europe

For months now, we have closely monitored Germany’s relationship with Russia, particularly in the wake of Moscow’s August 8 invasion of Georgia. Berlin’s reaction to Russia’s assault on Georgia was significant and noteworthy for a number of reasons, one of which, as we explained here and here, was that rather than drive a wedge between Russia and Germany, the event appeared to strengthen the Russo-German relationship.

Interestingly, Germany’s response to Russia’s belligerence was, for the most part, sharply different than how other European states reacted. Instead of condemning, reprimanding and shunning Moscow, as the EU and most European states did to one degree or another, the Germans responded initially with relative silence, and then with calculated gestures of reconciliation and warmth.

“Berlin is now reassessing its allegiances to Washington and nato,” reported Stratfor in late August, “which would keep the country locked into the policies it made as an occupied state. Or Germany could act like its own state and create its own security guarantee with Russia—something that would rip nato apart. … Stratfor sources in Moscow have said that Medvedev has offered Merkel a security pact for their two countries.”

Germany’s decision to pursue a closer relationship with Moscow put the EU and many other European states in an awkward bind. Germany is Europe’s largest and most influential state. Neither the EU nor any other European nation could effectively punish Russia without the correction being undermined by the warmth flowing from Germany. Plus, although Brussels and other European states couldn’t ever publicly admit it, Germany’s reaction to Russia made sense; not only did it make sense strategically not to provoke the newly emboldened Russian state, it was also politically and economically expedient not to provoke its largest energy supplier and a primary trade partner.

With that as background, it now comes as no surprise to read this report from Spiegel on the success of Friday’s EU-Russia summit in Nice, France. “The extent of the harmony seen on Friday was rare,” it said, continuing (emphasis mine throughout):

EU leaders and Russian President Medvedev agreed to new talks in Nice about political and economic partnership between Moscow and Europe. There was even talk of a “pan-European security pact.”

The Germans must be grinning from ear to ear! The report continued,

Suddenly the barriers that had been piling up in recent months between the East and West seemed to be a lot lower. French President Nicolas Sarkozy, whose country currently holds the rotating presidency of the European Union, and his colleague from Moscow, Dmitry Medvedev, cleared the political hurdles at the EU-Russia summit in Nice on Friday with surprising ease—setting a new tone in difficult relations between unequal neighbors.

Among the decisions made Friday, it was agreed that European-Russian negotiations on a new Partnership and Cooperation Agreement, which was suspended after Russia’s invasion of Georgia, will now start again, possibly as early as December 2, and that Russia and Europe, as Russian President Dmitri Medvedev put it, would “speak with a single voice” at Saturday’s world financial summit in Washington.

That Europe is now on friendly terms with Russia is deeply significant. More significant, however, is that Europe simply followed Germany’s lead in embracing Moscow.

He Set the Bar High

With so many people to please, President-elect Obama will have his work cut out for him. We have already said that the next U.S. president will be in over his head because of mounting problems facing America and the world. Added to that, as the International Herald Tribunepoints out today, Obama didn’t do himself any favors by setting expectations unbelievably high. “His advertising during the primaries urged Democrats to vote for him because he would do nothing less than ‘save the planet,’ which as campaign promises go certainly beats a chicken in every pot.”

America is being set up for disappointment and disenchantment on a mammoth scale.

“Socialism”? It’s Already Here

That is the title of George Will’s excellent column from today. He begins,

Conservatism’s current intellectual chaos reverberated in the Republican ticket’s end-of-campaign crescendo of surreal warnings that big government—verily, “socialism”—would impend were Democrats elected. John McCain and Sarah Palin experienced this epiphany when Barack Obama told a Toledo plumber that he would “spread the wealth around.”

Of course, the government is replete with examples of spreading the wealth around—from prescription drug entitlements to agricultural subsidies. “[T]he supreme law of the land is the principle of concentrated benefits and dispersed costs,” Will writes. The most recent example, of course, is the enormous government bailouts for private companies.

The distribution of a trillion dollars by a political institution—the federal government—will be nonpolitical? How could it be? Either markets allocate resources, or government—meaning politics—allocates them. Now that distrust of markets is high, Americans are supposed to believe that the institution they trust least—Congress—will pony up $1 trillion and then passively recede, never putting its 10 thumbs, like a manic Jack Horner, into the pie? Surely Congress will direct the executive branch to show compassion for this, that and the other industry. And it will mandate “socially responsible” spending—an infinitely elastic term—by the favored companies.Detroit has not yet started spending the $25 billion that Congress has approved but already is, like Oliver Twist, holding out its porridge bowl and saying, “Please, sir, I want some more.” …Conservatives rightly think, or once did, that much, indeed most, government spreading of wealth is economically destructive and morally dubious—destructive because, by directing capital to suboptimum uses, it slows wealth creation; morally dubious because the wealth being spread belongs to those who created it, not government. But if conservatives call all such spreading by government “socialism,” that becomes a classification that no longer classifies: It includes almost everything, including the refundable tax credit on which McCain’s health-care plan depended.

It is the nature of government to expand. In a representative system, people grow accustomed, and addicted, to government benefits, and vote in those leaders who make the most grandiose promises to provide for them.

These federal social programs have broken the United States. Soon, despite political promises to the contrary, the government will no longer have the means to provide these entitlements.

Elsewhere on the Web

Jerusalem elected a new mayor last week. Nir Barkat, a self-made, hi-tech millionaire, defeated the religious candidate, Meir Porush, by a 52-to-43 percent margin. Barkat strongly opposes the division of Jerusalem. “There is room in Jerusalem for everyone,” he said after winning the race on Tuesday.

As Germany enters into its worst recession in 12 years, many people are growing desperate. Strikes and protests have flared up across the nation as incidents of neo-Nazi violence skyrocket. Just last month, German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble issued this warning: “We learned from the worldwide economic crisis of the 1920s that an economic crisis can result in an incredible threat for all of society. The consequences of that depression were Adolf Hitler and, indirectly, World War ii and Auschwitz.”

A new British report debunks the government’s argument that mass immigration supposedly helps the British economy. Its authors are predictably being accused of racism.

And Finally …

“Across the world there were reports of unseasonal snow and plummeting temperatures last month,” the Daily Telegraph reports, “from the American Great Plains to China, and from the Alps to New Zealand. China’s official news agency reported that Tibet had suffered its ‘worst snowstorm ever.’ In the U.S., the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration registered 63 local snowfall records and 115 lowest-ever temperatures for the month, and ranked it as only the 70th-warmest October in 114 years.”

Over at Daily Tech, we find that “in sharp contrast to the rapid melting seen last year, the amount of global sea ice has rebounded sharply and is now growing rapidly. The total amount of ice, which set a record low value last year, grew in October at the fastest pace since record-keeping began in 1979.”

Despite these cold, harsh realities, the global warming movement remains as hot as ever! Last week, nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, headed by Al Gore’s pal, Dr. James Hansen, announced that October 2008 was the hottest October on record.

The data nasa relied on for its report was quickly discredited by a blogger.