An Historic Summit and a Changing World Order

Of course the major news story dominating the airwaves this week has been the summit between President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jung Un in Singapore.  This was the very first meeting between a sitting United States President and the leader of The People's Republic of North Korea, technically a nation with which we are still at war.  Of course the pundits and naysayers within the mainstream media shouted their disdain for this summit and ridiculed every aspect of it, and they are quick to state that nothing good came out of the summit.  Many within the mainstream media have compared this summit to that between British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and German Chancellor Adolph Hitler in Munich in 1938, which resulted in the handing over of the Sudetenland to Hitler.  But, as history has shown, that appeasement of Hitler did not stop his maniacal ambitions.  Did President Trump merely appease Kim Jung Un?  From what I have read of the final document, the term appeasement could not be used of that accord.  Also, President Trump has said that he desires Congress to ratify this accord, hardly what a President would do if all that was accomplished was appeasement.


This was an historic meeting between two nations that fought a bitter war in the early 1950's, a war that ended with only an armistice being signed.  History will be the final judge of what occurred these past two days in Singapore, but perhaps they will rank with President Nixon's visit to China which opened the doors to China becoming part of the world of nations, or to President Reagan's summit with Soviet Leader Gorbachev in Iceland which eventually led to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the wall of the Iron Curtain. 


Can you imagine what a unified Korean Peninsula would be like?  I could see the Korean Church sending leaders into the North where the Gospel has been rarely heard - even as there was in Eastern Europe and Russia when the Iron Curtain collapsed.  Instead of the North Korean leadership spending hundreds of millions of dollars on nuclear research and weapons manufacture, just think how the people of North Korea would benefit if those monies were used to improve their lot in life.  Friends, this is something that I will be watching closely.


Speaking of our changing world, I recently read a fascinating article written by Victor Davis Hanson and published in the National Review.  It is titled, "The Post-War Order Is Over."  I strongly recommend this article.  It can be found at the National Review website.  Allow me to just quote a few portions of this amazing and thought-provoking article.  "The post-war order is over.  And not because Trump wrecked it.  The 75-year-old post-war order crafted by the United States after World War II is falling apart.  Almost every major foreign-policy initiative of the last 16 years seems to have gone haywire.  Donald Trump's presidency was a reflection, not a catalyst, of the demise of the foreign-policy status quo.  Much of the world now already operates on premises that have little to do with official post-war institutions, customs, and traditions, which, however once successful, belong now to a bygone age.


"There is also nothing sacred about the European Union.  It certainly is not the blueprint for any continental-wide democratic civilization - any more than Bonaparte's rigged 'continental system' (to which the EU is on occasion strangely and favorably compared to by its proponents).  The often-crude imposition of a democratic socialism, pacifism, and multiculturalism, under the auspices of anti-democratic elites, from the Atlantic to the Russian border, is spreading, not curbing, chaos.  The EU utopian mindset has altered European demography, immigration policy, energy production, and defense.  The result is that there are already four sorts of antithetical EUs: a renegade and departing United Kingdom, an estranged Eastern European bloc worried over open borders, an insolvent South bitter over front-line illegal immigration and fiscal austerity, and the old core of Western Europe (a euphemism now for German hegemony)."


I found his assessment of the Middle East to be fascinating.  Dr. Hanson writes, "The Palestinian issue of the last 75 years is ossified.  If the millions of persons displaced in Europe and the Middle East between 1946 and 1950 - at about the same time as Palestinians left present-day Israel - were not considered 'refugees' for decades, then Palestinians can hardly be singular sufferers.  Perpetual victimhood is not a basis for a national agenda, much less a blank check for endless, virtue-signaling Western aid.  Moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem was simply an iconic recognition of what has been true for nearly a decade.  The West Bank's rich Arab patrons now fear Iran more than they do Israel.  The next Middle East war will be between Israel and Iran, not the Palestinians and their Arab sponsors and Tel Aviv - and the Sunni Arab world will be rooting for Israel to defeat Islamic Iran."


Finally, I want to share an article from the Patriot Post, published on June 9, 2018.  You can find this article at www.partriotpost.us/articles/56457-settled-science-on-evolution-and-history.  "Newly released research that analyzed millions of DNA barcodes has come to a surprising conclusion that effectively turns the theory of evolution on its head.  The massive study, which spanned a decade of work from hundreds of scientists, found that 9 out of 10 animal species on the planet came into being around the same time as humans, 100,000 to 200,000 years ago.  Senior research associate at the Program for the Human Environment at Rockefeller University Mark Stoeckle and University of Basel geneticist David Thaler found that 90% of all animal life on earth appeared at approximately the same time.  Thaler said, 'This conclusion is very surprising, and I fought against it as hard as I could.'


"Another study coming out of Cornell University has found significant inaccuracies in one of the key methods archaeologists use to determine the age of objects made from organic material - radiocarbon dating.  Stuart Manning, professor of archaeology at Cornell University, recently published his study, 'Fluctuating Radiocarbon Offsets Observed in the Southern Levant and Implications for Archaeological Chronology Debates.'  Manning states, "We went looking to test the assumptions behind the whole field of radiocarbon dating.  We know from atmospheric measurements over the last 50 years that radiocarbon levels vary through the year, and we also know that plants typically grow at different times in different parts of the Northern Hemisphere.  So we wondered whether the radiocarbon levels relevant to dating organic material might also vary for different areas and whether this might affect archaeological dating.'"


The article concludes by stating that Professor Manning and his team found that the calibrations using radiocarbon dating for artifacts discovered in Israel and Jordan and identified with the early Bronze Age and Biblical chronology were off by an average of 19 years.  "Manning concluded, 'Our work should prompt a round of revisions and rethinking for the timeline of the archaeology and early history of the southern Levant through the early Biblical period."


This is one of those studies in science and archaeology that will tend to get lost, but it is one that Bible scholars and evangelical believers should applaud.  It really is affirming of the Genesis record.


Friends, God is in control.  These are exciting days.  What opportunities God is giving to us to be His ambassadors to proclaim His truth into the lives of those around us.  Will the trumpet soon be sounding?  Every day we get one day closer.  And to that truth we proclaim a strong "Amen!"