China’s Dangerous Move Against America

The world is waking up to what a powerhouse China is becoming. Its economic maneuvers are vaulting it past the United States as the world’s greatest economy. Its military is developing and attaining conquests throughout Asia and beyond. Many nations are realizing how ascendant Beijing is and are favoring it over America as the superpower of the future. This nation has become one of the world’s most aggressive and dangerous powers. Its leaders clearly have the ambition to rule this world! China’s ambition and the danger it poses are multiplied by its remarkably close partnership with Russia.

But the biggest problem China poses to America is being largely overlooked. This is something that American politicians, especially, want to forget. Perhaps even the American people want to forget it because they share the blame for allowing this maneuver to happen. This problem may prove to be the most insidious move by China against America in history. And it will plague the U.S. in the near future!

I’m talking about China’s takeover of the Panama Canal.

An Unachievable Goal

Before the Panama Canal was dug, few human endeavors had ever aimed to transform the basic topography of the planet. Yes, men had accomplished many engineering marvels—transcontinental railways, mammoth dams and bridges, breathtaking royal residences—but none had done anything as foundational as slicing apart the very continents.

The Isthmus of Panama was first eyed by Charles v, Holy Roman emperor and king of Spain. In the 1520s, Charles v grew annoyed with the time required to bring the wealth of Peru and Ecuador to his ports in Spain. He determined to hack that transit time down by digging a canal through what is now Panama, and he ordered his men to conduct feasibility studies for it. But the Spaniards failed even to make a solid plan for a canal.

In the 1690s, Scotland attempted to colonize Panama and dig a canal through it. The unsuccessful efforts plunged Scotland into such serious financial trouble that its people felt compelled to enter a union with Britain to stabilize their economy. Thus Scotland lost its autonomy and has been a part of the United Kingdom ever since.

In the early 1800s, German explorer Alexander von Humboldt set his sights on Panama. He mapped out plans for several different routes through Central America, but those designs came to nothing.

France made the first concerted attempt on the project starting in 1880. Ferdinand de Lesseps, the French entrepreneur who had completed the Suez Canal, was put over the effort. They also enlisted the help of Gustave Eiffel, who had built the famous tower in Paris and had also helped construct the Statue of Liberty. But Panama’s rocky terrain, an abundance of floods and landslides, a shortage of funds, and endless hoards of disease-carrying mosquitoes crushed the French attempt after less than a decade. By that time, the French had spent the modern equivalent of $6 billion and had watched malaria, yellow fever and treacherous working conditions send more than 22,000 laborers to their graves.

After France’s failure, many thought the dream was dead.

Journalist Édouard Drumont wrote at the time that the isthmus had become nothing more than “an immense boneyard.”

Likewise, the October 1889 National Geographic said it was all over: “The French people have seen the scheme fail under Lesseps in whom they had the most unbounded confidence, and … the canal will remain, as it is now, the most gigantic failure of the age.”

It truly was a gigantic failure. And it seemed that the goal of building an interoceanic canal would remain beyond the reach of all nations. But in the early 1900s, another player entered the picture who proved the naysayers spectacularly wrong.

A ‘Great Power’ Is Born

In 1903, U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt convinced Panama to declare independence from Colombia, of which it had been a province, and signed a landmark treaty with the newly independent nation of Panama. America then paid France $40 million for its equipment and excavations and paid the Panamanians an initial payment of $10 million. Then the Americans went down and started digging!

In 1906, Roosevelt personally visited Panama to inspect the progress, marking the first time in history that a sitting U.S. president had made a diplomatic trip abroad. Seeing the sheer scale of work being done by the men there deeply moved Roosevelt. He famously said, “It shall be in future enough to say of any man ‘he was connected with digging the Panama Canal’ to confer the patent of nobility on that man.”

Roosevelt truly believed in this project! He was the first president to really see that America should be a world power. And he governed as if America was a world power, not just a colony of Europe.

After 10 years of innovation and backbreaking toil, after U.S. taxpayers had provided hundreds of millions of dollars, after losing over 5,600 lives, and after removing enough dirt to bury all of Manhattan to a depth of 12 feet, the Americans succeeded where so many others had failed. They realized the 400-year-old dream that others had thought impossible. They sliced North America and South America apart, mingling the waters from the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

Ships no longer had to take the long, dangerous route around South America. The 51-mile-long Panama Canal—designated one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World—cut some 8,000 miles off that trip. It slashed the time required to ship goods between the Pacific and Atlantic, or from one U.S. coast to another, to less than half. But the canal didn’t just serve America. It slashed shipping costs and opened up free trade and all kinds of services and blessings to the whole world!

“The creation of the Panama Canal was far more than a vast, unprecedented feat of engineering,” historian David McCullough writes in The Path Between the Seas. “The 50 miles between the oceans were among the hardest ever won by human effort and ingenuity, and no statistics on tonnage or tolls can begin to convey the grandeur of what was accomplished. … It was a profoundly important historic event and a sweeping human drama not unlike that of war.”

In Time magazine, December 27, 1999, one of the greatest foreign-policy experts, the late Charles Krauthammer, said building the “strategic jewel” that was the Panama Canal launched America “to the rank of great power.”

That’s an astounding statement. The canal was a major part of making America great! It was a grand blessing to the U.S. and to other nations and peoples. That’s clear by the 340 million tons of cargo that transit the canal each year. And America was looked on favorably for opening that huge time and money saver. It was an unparalleled spectacle—a wonderful creation and a great victory in American history.

I believe building the Panama Canal may have been America’s greatest-ever foreign-policy success.

Military Importance

Beyond economics, the Panama Canal was also of immense military value for the United States.

To understand, consider this history: In 1898—years before the canal was built—the United States Battleship Maine exploded off the coast of Cuba, killing 260 American officers and other men and igniting the Spanish-American War. After the explosion, U.S. authorities wanted to get one of the country’s few true battleships on the scene as fast as possible. They sent America’s newest and most advanced warship, the u.s.s. Oregon.

But the Oregon was anchored in San Francisco Bay. To make its way to Cuba, the ship traveled down the coast of California, then continued south past Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Chile. Near the southern tip of South America, it crossed through the Strait of Magellan and crossed over to the Atlantic Ocean. It then began the journey up the continent’s eastern side, passing Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, French Guiana, Suriname, Guyana and Venezuela, and making several time-consuming and perilous refueling stops on the way. Finally it entered into the Caribbean Sea and made its way to Cuba.

The trip was 12,000 miles long and required 4,100 tons of coal. And though the Oregon maintained remarkable speeds of up to 14 knots for most of the trip, it still took 68 days to reach its destination where it helped America win the Battle of Santiago de Cuba. Had a canal across the Isthmus of Panama existed at that time, the journey would have been only 4,000 miles and perhaps taken as little as three weeks.

This event showed the U.S. how militarily important it was to dig a canal through Central America. And it was a big factor in motivating the U.S. to get down there and accomplish what so many nations had failed to do. “As a demonstration of the military importance of the canal,” McCullough wrote, the race of the Oregon had been “made to order.”

Historian A.B. Feuer agrees with this view. He wrote: “The trip itself advertised to the public as well as to the military, as nothing else could have, the strategic necessity for building a canal across the Central American isthmus.”

It’s no wonder then that once Roosevelt green-lighted the canal project, the U.S. military supplied much of the labor, engineers and security during construction. And as they dug the canal, they simultaneously constructed military bases alongside it. The first Atlantic military fort became operational in 1914, the same year the canal officially opened. The first U.S. military base on the Pacific side opened two years later. And the fortifying didn’t stop there.

By the time America entered World War ii, it had nine operational military forts at each end of the canal—and several inland installations along its path. These included bases for the Army, Air Force and Navy. There were ports, airstrips, artillery corps forts, submarine hubs, naval air stations, tank farms, long-range radar posts, medical facilities, communications stations and much more.

The American military presence covered almost 90,000 acres and included more than 5,420 buildings worth an estimated $4 billion. At the height of World War ii, 65,000 U.S. troops were stationed throughout Panama. And it all gave the U.S. an invaluable strategic ability to move warships, materiel and troops quickly from one ocean to another so it could project power and respond more agilely to threats around the globe.

GlobalSecurity.org discusses how vital the canal was to America during World War ii: “When the United States found itself enmeshed in a two-ocean war, the Panama Canal suddenly became the most strategic point on the globe.”

Wow. The single “most strategic point” for America!

Since it was central to military strategy, the U.S. implemented several measures during the war to safeguard the canal: Systems were installed in the lock chambers to detect underwater mines, commercial traffic was limited to one side of the dual locks, and all ships underwent rigorous inspection before transiting. The U.S. also brokered deals with neighboring nations to let the military build or enlarge naval installations in order to form a protective ring around the canal.

America didn’t want to take any chances with this “strategic jewel”! And the efforts paid off: The Axis powers never risked an attack on the vigilantly guarded canal.

During the Cold War, the Panama Canal was again a crucial strategic gateway. The U.S. Southern Command kept its headquarters there and oversaw components of the Navy, Air Force, Army and Marine Corps. This presence was vital in America’s efforts to promote freedom and democracy in the Western Hemisphere and to counter the spread of communism.

When you look at the way building the canal launched America to the rank of great power, and at the global economic blessings and U.S. military advantage that resulted from it, the truth is undeniable: No maritime gate on Earth was as important to the U.S. as the Panama Canal. Not even close!

But, tragically, America’s control over this “strategic jewel” did not last.

Going, Going, Gone

Though the people of Panama benefitted immensely from the canal and the surrounding U.S.-controlled Canal Zone, some became resentful toward America’s presence in their nation. The Globalist wrote in 2014: “[R]ich Panamanians complained of not being able to sell enough to the Zone, while poor Panamanians complained of everything else. Demands intensified after the Cuban Revolution of 1959 ….”

In that bloody revolution, Communists led by Fidel Castro seized control of Cuba. By 1964, some Marxist-Leninist influence had spilled over from Castro’s Cuba into Panama. The Communists inflamed the resentment that some Panamanians felt toward America. Soon Panamanian students, and what were almost certainly Communist instigators, started rioting in the Canal Zone and more than 20 people were killed.

Panama’s government temporarily broke off ties with the U.S., and the administration of American President Lyndon B. Johnson felt pressure to hand over the canal.

During a 1964 speech about the Panama Canal and clashes in the country, Johnson said: “[C]ircumstances change” and “history shapes new attitudes and expectations.” He promised that America would draw up a “long-range plan” of “major changes” for the canal.

Those plans culminated in a terrible deal signed in 1977. That is when Panama’s dictator, Omar Torrijos (one of the few Latin American leaders who visited Castro in Cuba), signed new treaties with U.S. President Jimmy Carter that replaced the 1903 Roosevelt treaty. Under the new terms, Carter agreed to transfer the canal to a small group of political thugs in Panama. In other words, Carter just gave away this “strategic jewel”! These thugs running that little country threatened to keep rioting and causing problems that would disrupt trade through the canal, so Carter surrendered it altogether!

The final phase of the Torrijos-Carter Treaties took effect during the Clinton administration on December 31, 1999, when the U.S. relinquished its last control. But there is a lot more to this story than the world—and especially America—understand.

America wasn’t relinquishing control just to Panama.

Enter China

Even before the final phase of the handover, an event happened that should have shaken America—but it was barely noticed! On March 1, 1997, the giant Chinese corporation Hutchison Whampoa took control of the American-constructed ports at each end of the Panama Canal.

This Fortune 500 company claimed to be privately owned, but evidence shows it is an ideological clone of the Chinese Communist Party (ccp) that rules China. Like most large Chinese companies, Hutchison Whampoa is nestled deeply in the ccp’s pocket and is entirely beholden to the party. In 2015, it merged with another Chinese firm and became CK Hutchison Holdings. But it remains a tool of the ccp, and it remains in position to control who can enter and exit the Panama Canal.

Any student of military strategy should see the startling possibilities that this terrible Chinese deal opened up. An enterprise of China—the nation possessing the world’s largest army, which is aggressively expanding its navy and air force—took control of the major sea-transit gateway between East and West. If China were to suddenly sink a large ship in the canal or otherwise sabotage it, the nation could deny the U.S. Navy access through this strategic choke point. The wartime implications of that are alarming!

And now that China has a solid commercial foothold at the canal, what would stop it from opening military bases there and moving its troops, submarines, warships and fighter jets in? It is true that the Torrijos-Carter Treaties include a clause demanding “permanent neutrality and operation” of the canal, and make clear that anyone trying to attack the seaway or build a military presence there would face an immediate military response from America.

But if the ccp timed such a move prudently—waiting until the U.S. is suffering serious internal disorder or until China’s partners are antagonizing America elsewhere—then how strongly would the U.S. military be able to respond?

Christopher R. O’Dea, an adjunct fellow at Hudson Institute, wrote in 2018 that we should expect China to militarize its commercial ports! “Chinese state-owned shipping and construction companies have assembled a global network of commercial ports that can be readily converted to military bases,” he wrote.

O’Dea called particular attention to the Panama Canal as a place where this could quickly happen, and said: “China clearly intends to militarize commercial facilities.”

If we look at what China accomplished in the African nation of Djibouti, we should see that O’Dea is exactly right. There, China originally said its presence was strictly to resupply Chinese ships participating in antipiracy patrols in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. But after a few years, China announced that its site was a permanent naval base and deployed soldiers and warships to man it. Now the base in Djibouti is a pillar of China’s global naval strategy.

Around Panama, the Chinese Navy is making port visits. In recent years, warships sailing under the red, five-star Chinese flag have anchored off of Cuba and Venezuela. The U.S. Naval Institute wrote about these kinds of port calls in June of 2019 and said the Chinese “will leverage their Latin American presence when they feel it necessary.”

The trail is already blazed! Now China is just waiting for the time when it feels it is “necessary.” When the circumstances are right, China can move its military into Panama. Then it will be able to not only deny America transit through the canal, but also use its presence there as a staging ground to attack the U.S. underbelly!

With warships, submarines and bombers only 900 miles from Miami, China would be well positioned for such attacks. After moving its Chengdu J-20 or J-10 fighter jets into Panama—supposedly to promote canal “security”—much of the U.S. mainland would be well within striking distance. The potential threat to U.S. and world security posed by Panama’s decision to let China run the canal is difficult to fathom!

Do you think this won’t plague America in the future? Where is our vision? America is so wrapped up in itself that it doesn’t often even see what is happening.

Not to Be Trusted

If you think China won’t behave that way, look at what the ccp has already done in recent years. Look at its illegal trade practices, including systematic theft of intellectual property and government-subsidized distortion of competition. Look at its illegal takeover of the South China Sea and Hong Kong. Look at the way it is pushing at the Indians and trying to take more land along their border. Look at its aggression against Taiwan. Look at the predatory lending to small countries, using debt as a weapon to make them into pawns in the grand Chinese game.

The Communist Party that runs China is not to be trusted. You can see that by its fruits. This Communist, atheist regime is ambitious in a very evil way.

And this is the power that can control the gateway that controls much of the flow of goods by sea from the Eastern to the Western Hemisphere and from the West to the East. The Chinese have authority over who can access this vital passage between the world’s two greatest oceans! This all happened through a deal struck by a money-grasping Panamanian government.

And America stood by and let it all happen.

Theodore Roosevelt once famously said: “If we stand idly by … if we shrink from the hard contests where men must win at hazard of their lives, and at the risk of all they hold dear, then the bolder and stronger peoples will pass us by and will win for themselves the domination of the world.”

Roosevelt had boldness and strength! He took risks! He did not fear those who wanted to destroy America. But he did fear God! He wrote a famous book titled Fear God and Take Your Own Part. Even the title says so much: Fear God and trust God, and do your own part with courage! Good advice!

What would Roosevelt have thought of his successors in the presidency who outright surrendered the strategic jewel that he and so many others hazarded so much to build? What would he think of them surrendering it to “bolder and stronger peoples” in China interested in “domination of the world”? He would be devastated!

A big part of the reason America surrendered the canal was fear of China or other potential aggressors. U.S. leaders calculated that a serious military threat would inevitably happen in Panama. They said America couldn’t respond to such an attack from the air as we did in the Persian Gulf and Kosovo. So we would have to risk the lives of American soldiers. Our politicians have shown the world that we fear such bloodshed.

The truth is we surrendered the canal because of that fear! We wanted to withdraw forces from Panama rather than hazard a clash that our leaders felt would inevitably come. Then we acted like the canal was unimportant. Yet we still fantasize like children that we are a superpower. No real superpower acts that way!

Few Americans are concerned about the canal today. And this is another sign that we have lost our world vision and are bogged down in the present. The overall picture makes clear that what happened with Panama is very dangerous. And in the next few years, the world will see just how dangerous it was.

Panama is already a massive victory for the Chinese Communist Party and a great loss for the security of America and the world. It is also proof of the true prophecies of your Bible!

Possessing the ‘Gates’

Let’s look at some foundational prophecies the Trumpet has talked about since our earliest issues. These are prophecies the late Herbert W. Armstrong made abundantly clear, especially in his book The United States and Britain in Prophecy, which we are happy to send you a free copy of.

Genesis 35:11 records a promise God made to Abraham’s grandson Jacob, whose name was changed to Israel: “And God said unto him, I am God Almighty: be fruitful and multiply; a nation and a company of nations shall be of thee, and kings shall come out of thy loins.”

Notice: God Himself is saying this! It is not hard to prove that the “great nation” mentioned here is the United States. The “company of nations” is the British Empire.

Thomas Paine read the Bible and believed it—but then he couldn’t find anywhere where these prophecies made to Jacob were fulfilled, so he decided not to believe the Bible. He thought you couldn’t trust it. But the truth is you can trust the Bible, and the fact that God fulfilled this promise to Jacob by blessing the U.S. and Great Britain can be proved in several ways! You can read about it and prove it to yourself by ordering a free copy of The United States and Britain in Prophecy. Let this masterful book guide your Bible study, and you will see that God fulfilled this prophecy mightily through Jacob’s son Joseph and his descendants who ultimately became the Americans and the British.

Deuteronomy 28:52 shows that one specific way God would bless these two powers was by giving them control over “gates.” These “gates” are the maritime ports and passages that world trade flows through, and even land gates in a few cases.

It is astounding to see just how complete America’s and Britain’s hold on these global gates was. In his book, Mr. Armstrong wrote: “[T]hese descendants of Joseph” became “numerous” and “encircled the globe” and came to “possess the ‘gates’ of enemy nations. … Britain and America came into possession of every such major ‘gate’ in this world!”

History shows that this is true. At the height of Britain’s and America’s power in the 19th and 20th centuries, they possessed an astounding number of these locations. When Britain truly “ruled the waves,” its naval forces controlled the Suez Canal, Gibraltar, Malta, the Dardanelles, the English Channel, the Gulf of Aden, the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Zanzibar, Cape Town, Ceylon (Sri Lanka), the Strait of Malacca, Singapore, Hong Kong and the Falkland Islands.

America controlled the great Pacific sea lanes by possessing the Aleutians, the Hawaiian Isles, Midway, Guam, Wake Island, the Philippines—and the Panama Canal. And the British and American navies kept sea lanes open through many other choke points around the globe.

Britain and the U.S. didn’t gain all these strategic gates because we are somehow better than other nations. God gave these awesome gifts to us! He gave them so we could virtually rule the world—but in a far more benevolent way than powers like China ever would.

The fact that Britain and America acquired all these strategic oceanic locations itself proves that these nations are the descendants of Abraham’s family. The control we had over all of them proves that “we must be modern Israel,” Mr. Armstrong wrote.

One of these gates was strategically far more important to America than all others. It is discussed specifically in your Bible in ways you will be astounded to see.

‘The Gate’

In Genesis 22:17, God says to Abraham: “That in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea shore ….” This shows just how immense the family of Abraham would become, largely through his grandson Israel.

God continues: “[A]nd thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies.”

Deuteronomy 28 specifies “gates,” plural, an accurate translation of the Hebrew word seareka. But here in Genesis 22, it is from the singular construct of the word: “the gate.”

It’s just one. Which gate could this be? Which one is God singling out as the main fulfillment of this blessing from God?

I don’t believe any sea gate could be called “the gate” except the Panama Canal.

Estimates published in 1934 calculated that the maximum traffic the Panama Canal could handle would be around 80 million tons of shipping per year. But by 2015, traffic was more than 340 million tons of shipping each year—quadruple the original maximum estimate.

In 2010, the one millionth ship crossed the Panama Canal. One million ships in less than 100 years! Think of the time and money saved by these ships that didn’t have to circumnavigate South America. That adds up to billions of dollars’ worth of savings. All that savings is passed on to anyone who buys products shipped through the Panama Canal, which is almost all of us.

And it goes beyond economics. As covered above, the Panama Canal helped guarantee the security of the world, especially the Western world. It positioned the U.S. to better police the globe and to keep powerful aggressor nations from running roughshod over weak countries.

This canal has served the world for decades. It was a great gift given by God through America and through His outstanding leader, Theodore Roosevelt, because he feared God! Clearly, the Panama Canal is “the gate” God speaks of in Genesis 22:17.

Losing the ‘Gates’

In Deuteronomy 28:52, God says that if the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob refused to turn to Him, He would cause their enemies to take control of all of the very same gates He had previously blessed them with. “And he shall besiege thee in all thy gates, until thy high and fenced walls come down, wherein thou trustedst, throughout all thy land: and he shall besiege thee in all thy gates throughout all thy land, which the Lord thy God hath given thee.”

Notice that this is about the end time—the time we now live in. Genesis 49:1 talks about what would happen to the sons of Jacob (or Israel) in the “last days,” and this passage in Deuteronomy, about the nations of Israel losing the gates, is largely about that same time frame.

This is also in the context of America losing pride in its power. God tells those same descendants of Israel in Leviticus 26:19: “And I will break the pride of your power ….” That is a prophecy too. If we don’t look to the God who has given us all these gifts and birthright blessings, and who made great powers of Britain and America, then He will reverse those blessings. They have already been fading away, especially for Britain. Does anybody ever ask why? God doesn’t give blessings like this and just take them away unless there’s a great reason. Do you know what it is?

A big part of the answer is ingratitude toward God and turning away from Him. Our sins have made us a weak spectacle before the world. The Bible makes clear that God will continue to break the pride of our power if we don’t heed Him and be thankful for all of those blessings He gave. What a terrible thing to turn away from the great God who gives us so much.

Throughout his many years of writing and teaching, Mr. Armstrong witnessed Britain lose control over the Suez Canal, Singapore, Cyprus, the Cape of Good Hope and many other gates. Based on these scriptures, he prophesied that the trend would accelerate. In 1980, he wrote, “As the ‘pride of our power’ continues to be broken, as the British continue to lose their foreign sea gates and possessions around the Earth, as America signs away ownership of the Panama Canal … this focal prophecy alone represents giant proof as to where the modern ‘remnant’ of the peoples of Israel resides today!” (ibid).

When Mr. Armstrong died in 1986, the U.S. still controlled “the gate,” the Panama Canal. But he was right that America’s days of controlling this unparalleled jewel were numbered. Some 14 years after his death, America surrendered it, proving Mr. Armstrong right.

Our broken pride in our power is why our people are not stirred by what happened with the Panama surrender. Something is terribly wrong with us! We have been afraid to use the power God gave us. Our immediate future is very bleak unless we turn to our great God.

But we can turn to Him. We can change and have God’s power on our side!

How long must God curse us before we awaken? That is the big question each of us must answer. The decision is in our hands—nationally and individually.

If the nation won’t heed the warning, you can do so as an individual, and God will bless and protect you. But you can’t be weak, cowardly and ungrateful. God wants us to be strong, physically and spiritually.

The whole world is watching. Unless we repent before God, they will see our tragic collapse. And the Bible’s prophecies show that China’s grip on the Panama Canal could play a major role in that tragic collapse.

‘Mart of Nations’

Some 2,700 years ago, God inspired the Prophet Isaiah to sound the alarm about a massive trade bloc that would form in the end time. Isaiah 23:3 describes it as a “mart of nations.”

Verse 1 shows that a lead nation in this trade bloc will be “Chittim.” In my booklet Isaiah’s End-Time Vision, free upon request, I prove that Chittim, or Kittim, is an ancient name for China. Another leading power in the trade bloc is “Tyre,” a name representing the commercial center of modern Europe. A related passage in Ezekiel 27 mentions ancient names for modern Russia and Japan showing that they too will join this “mart.”

This is an astounding prophecy! It connects closely to the warning in Deuteronomy 28:52 about America and Britain being besieged by their enemies. The “mart of nations” prophecy makes clear who exactly those enemies of the U.S. and UK are who do the besieging!

The Bible contains many prophecies of an end-time European power attacking America and Britain (request our free book The Holy Roman Empire in Prophecy). When those prophecies are placed alongside the “mart of nations” prophecies and other Bible passages, it is clear that the early phases of that attack will consist of an economic siege! And it is clear that Europe will carry that part of the attack out with help from China, Russia, Japan and other nations.

Isaiah’s End-Time Vision states: “Should Europe, the resurrected Holy Roman Empire, find a way to take advantage—even for a moment—of key resources and strategic holdings of China, Russia and Japan, it would have more than enough power to besiege the Anglo-Saxon nations and enslave them. This is why Isaiah’s prophecy of an end-time ‘mart of nations’ that includes both European and Asian powers is so intriguing.”

This is also a big part of why we expect the partnership between Europe and Latin America, and between China and Latin America, to grow extremely strong in the months and years ahead.

With the common religion, culture and languages, Europe already wields considerable influence in Latin America. And as we see in Panama—as well as in Venezuela, Cuba and elsewhere—China and Russia are also amassing great influence in Latin America. This makes the prophecies about the besiegement of the Anglo-Saxon nations come alive in the pages of our Bibles! This deepening influence will literally put the Asians and Europeans in place to besiege America in its gates!

These chilling prophecies point to some horribly bleak days ahead for America and some of its allies. But Bible prophecy shows that the mart of nations and the terrible conflict it will unleash will actually be used by God as loving correction—followed immediately by the most hope-filled era in man’s history.

As I explain in Isaiah’s End-Time Vision: “Two great trading blocs are positioning themselves to control the world. … But that trading partnership won’t last long. Soon they will clash, just before Jesus Christ returns and destroys both of them.”

Christ will bring a swift end to all of mankind’s self-destruction. He will usher in an era of peace and prosperity for the peoples of Panama, China, the U.S. and all of the world. We should thank God daily that beyond that bad news is the best news we could possibly hear!

God will allow America and other nations descended from Israel to suffer at the hands of bold and brutal peoples. He will then punish those sinning peoples as well with further warfare and finally put an end to treacherous, bloody, corrupt human governments worldwide with the return of His Son, Jesus Christ, to govern all nations! Finally men will learn a lesson far more valuable than all the sea gates in the world: what it truly means to “fear God and take your own part.”