Things are grim when one of the world’s quality periodicals seeks to “put this depressing year into perspective by focusing on some cheerful, abstruse yet fascinating aspects of life.” Economist editor in chief clarifies “the cheerful, abstruse and fascinating” subjects covered in the magazine’s year-end issue as being “Why we love music; the rise of the Chinese birdwatcher; explaining Tintin to baffled non-Europeans; how chilies are heating up the world’s food.”

Perhaps a lot more abstruse than this baffling list of the sublime is the notion that serious-minded people would be really interested in such subjects at a time when the world faces an even more depressing year in 2009 than that which we have just endured over the past 12 months.

How Chinese birdwatching and hot tamales are going to prepare our minds for that which 2009 portends is anyone’s guess, unless the Economist is encouraging its audience to do a Timothy Leary—“tune in” to the cheerful and abstruse and “drop out” of 2009!

But the reality is that in a matter of days we shall all face a year during which one seen by many—even outside of the United States—as a messiah taking over at the helm of America—one whose promises engendered “hope” through “change”—will be brought to account. Either those grand hopes for “change” must be realized by the upcoming Obama administration—and in the present dismal climate, realized quickly—or the new president will soon feel the dogs barking at his heels.

President-elect Obama has been elected to the leadership of a nation that is clearly descending into extreme financial, economic and social chaos. It is a nation in increasing and accelerating crisis.

At the time of Britain’s greatest crisis, Sir Winston Churchill did not promise the British people any groundless “hope,” or any empty promises of “change.” He promised them nothing more and nothing less than “blood, toil, tears and sweat.” And the British responded with set jaw and stiff upper lip. For two whole years under Churchill’s leadership, Britain held the tyrant at bay until America, as President Roosevelt said, was literally bombed into the Second World War.

Seventy years later there are no Churchills, no Roosevelts. But there are plenty of terrorizing petty tyrants baring their fangs and baying for British, American and Jewish blood!

To the realist, the scene that is set for the opening of 2009 could be pretty depressing. It will be a year during which we shall continue to reap the consequences of our past sins—a past of consumerist profligacy, of endemic fraud in politics, business, banking and commerce, of the continuing societal fallout from decades of experiments by our social engineers, of the overstretching of our military forces, of decline in morals, of the consequent lowering of national morale, and of the politically correct drumbeat that has led us all up the garden path to inevitable national decline.

Together with this ongoing mountain of woes, the U.S. will face tremendous pressure for foreign-policy trade-offs as a penalty for its past blindness, neglect and plain orneriness in the conduct of its international relations. For those with eyes to see, the signs are glaringly apparent which indicate that the year 2009 will simply advance the steady tread of those whom the Prophet Isaiah foresaw as “the alien” who is destined to “rise higher and higher above you; and thou shall come down lower and lower. He shall lend to you, but thou shall not lend to him: he shall be the head, and thou shall be the tail” (Deuteronomy 28:43-44; New King James Version).

Yet America and the world have been warned that today’s gloomy scenario would one day become a reality.

For a period approaching 75 years’ duration, there has been a specially commissioned ministry preaching the original true gospel of the coming Kingdom of God to this world (Mark 1:14). It is the same original message that Jesus Christ preached, declaring the prophecies of the Eternal God for the times (Matthew 24) and tracking their steady fulfillment through a regular and close monitoring of world events (Mark 13:33) heading toward the time of His return (John 14:3).

For half a century that message was preached and published by Herbert W. Armstrong with increasing power, from early beginnings on a small, low-wattage local radio station on the West Coast of the United States until the World Tomorrow program became the most significant televised religious broadcast worldwide.

His magazine, the Plain Truth, grew from a “grain of mustard seed” beginning as a small, hand-mimeographed periodical of minimal distribution to a magazine of world class, with a subscription list of over 8 million by the time of his death.

By the end of his life on Jan. 16, 1986, many world leaders had met with Mr. Armstrong, some even regarding him as a true friend, a genuine ambassador for world peace.

Today, our editor in chief, Gerald Flurry, carries on that same ministry of preaching the gospel of the coming Kingdom of God, yet with a more powerful edge. That message today contains a powerful warning (Ezekiel 3:17). It is a warning that God prophesied must go especially to His Church and to the Anglo-Saxon nations. A warning of the dangerously disruptive times in which we live and of what they portend for the future. With the Worldwide Web at our disposal, this message now reaches into all corners of the Earth.

The weeks and months ahead are going to be replete with Bible prophecies for these dark days leaping into perspective in timely fulfillment of the events that God forecast through His prophets of old and embedded in the scriptures of your Bible millennia ago. If a world-class magazine can reflect on 2008 as being a depressing year, wait till we look back on 2009 and reach for words to describe a year that goes beyond the depressing to the downright dangerously disruptive!

Forewarned is to be forearmed, as they say. Our job is to proclaim the warning in the hope that you will be stirred to be forearmed with the provable truth, so that you may understand the prophesied relevance of world events as they happen. The truth that not only explains the meaning of today’s world news in the light of Bible prophecy, but which shows you the only real hope for real and lastingchange in the governing of the affairs of man, destined to bring real and lasting peace and genuine goodwill to all men!

It’s the only true gospel message! A message of ETERNAL hope!

Read our book Mystery of the Ages for a clear explanation of the genuinely real gospel of Jesus Christ—the gospel of the coming Kingdom of God!