News and Prophecy Staff

When America pulled out of Afghanistan four months ago, it left a power vacuum that the Taliban quickly filled. Over the decades, the Taliban have shown themselves to be far more interested in their own agenda than in serving the people they rule. Since the departure of the U.S. and other coalition nations, Afghanistan has plunged further into chaos and poverty.

In a November 2021 interview, Iranian Armed Forces spokesman General Abolfazl Shekarchi set forth his and Iran’s government’s ideological view of the West (MEMRI.org, December 22, 2021).

In the last couple weeks there have been mass riots in several cities in Kazakhstan, a Central Asian nation the size of Western Europe (BBC, January 6, 2022). Rioters have looted, burned down buildings, and caused additional destruction, and some have been shot by the state military.

For more than a hundred years, scientists have been looking for alternatives to the biblical account of the universe being created by an all-knowing, all-powerful God. This idea is threatening for secular scientists and others because it suggests that the Bible, with all its moral imperatives, would also be valid—and many do not want to be told that there is only one right way to live!

Tensions between Poland and the EU have been high for months. But Poland’s deputy prime minister, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, may have raised tensions even higher when he “accused Germany’s new government of wanting to turn the European Union into a federal ‘German Fourth Reich’” (Deutsche Welle, December 24, 2021).