Shabbat shalom, welcome back again to our 'regular' sabbath cycle. The fine weather we enjoyed during the spring moedim (appointments) has given way to dull and cold so we must look for our cheer elsewhere. We have said adieu to old friends who have returned to their missions and ministries and look forward to seeing new faces this summer. As spring gets underway for us here in the northern hemisphere winter is doing the same in the southern.

Our own thoughts are particularly with brethren and friends around the world who struggle with persecution (as in Pakistan) and ill health and we want to especially remember a friend of ours in Malaysia in our prayers who is trying to be reunited with his family who are experiencing much persecution. May Yahweh bless them all. I find it distressing to learn practically every week of people we know going down serious health issues like cancer or suffering the after effects of both disease and its alleged cure. They seem to be getting younger and younger. My prayer now, more than ever, is that Yahweh restores the gift of healing among His people as at first for we most desperately need it now. At this casualty rate there won't be many of us left and we have a Kingdom to build! There are days I cannot function so those who have requested answers to questions must bear patiently with me. We are doing our best.

With Chag haMatzah or the Feast of Unleavened Bread and the Passover season over for another year we are nonetheless to resume following the admonition of Paul to Timothy to continue to "pursue righteousness, godliness, emunah (faith), ahavah (love), endurance [and] gentleness". He urges us to "fight the good fight of the faith; take hold of the eternal life, to which you were called and for which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses" (1 Tim.6:11b-12, NRSV). As soldiers at war, we cannot quit until the war is over.

Which brings me today to a literal war between nations with all the uncertainty that that brings to our social and political climate. In the years to come we will look back and it will be said that the Ukraine was the anvil on which the back of the arrogant Western élites was broken. I want you to especially know that the writing is well and truly on the wall. These people are arrogant when things go well but craven when defeated. Some of them are already scurrying for the lifeboats. When ships go down, the rats come out of the bowls of the hold.

A few days ago I was in a small country shop and in a box were dozens of free stickers of Ukrainian flags which customers were invited to help themselves to and put them on their vehicles. I have a largish Ukrainian flag at home made by, and given to me, by dear friends in L'viv (Lwów, Lemberg, L'vov) when I was a missionary, a time I remember with great fondness. Their kindness and hospitality will always be engraved on my heart. I've brought it along to show you today, not in response to what the élite-controlled and -compliant govenments of the West want me to do, not to virtue-signal to my neighbours that I am kow-towing to our cravenly submissive government that has such scant regard for their own people, but with genuine affection and appreciation for the people I met back in 1992. You'll have noticed, by the way, that the shade of blue has changed in their national flag. The blue was a lot paler back then. Now the national colours are the same as Sweden's.

Ukraine had only been independent of the Soviet Union a few months when I went there and was given this flag. That was 31 years ago. I remember the hopes of the people in this newly freed country had back then, coming as they had done fresh out of communist totalitarianism. I saw its vestiges in the attitudes of the bureaucrats, the massive amounts of red-tape, the old Soviet uniforms of the police who still behaved as they had done in the USSR stopping and interrogating people and demanding their papers, and looking thoroughly disillusioned. They still chased around in their Ladas which could not keep up with the freshly imported German cars that were preferred by the crooks. The Lada I was being driven around in by Baptist friends even burned out as my hosts tried to get me to the airport in Ivano-Frankivsk (Stanislawów, Stanislau) on time and we had to thumb a lift on the last leg. I only made it to my rickety Russian plane to Warsaw by a couple of minutes. I still don't know how they got home as they were extremely poor. I gave them all the cash I had.

The people I met had so many questions, and so very different from the kinds of questions asked by folks here! Most of all they just wanted to know if there was a spiritual dimension, whether they themselves had spirits, what I thought of psychic phenomena, and things like that, because for over 70 years they had been force-fed materialism and as a society had travelled a very different trajectory to the West. Aside from the Gospel itself, which I was there to preach, I warned them most sternly not to assume that everything from the West was good and to not, therefore, uncritically embrace everything from it. You can read my original sermon at the Town Hall of L'viv if you're interested. I told them to continue looking East and to hold on tight to the good of their own traditions and to cautiously embrace the West because not all we were exporting was good. In short, I knew that they would become a kind of melting-pot as the city of L'viv once had been when it had been in Poland and Austria.

It seems that as a nation they did not listen, and certainly L'viv didn't even though my sermon was broadcast on their local TV station. I understand that L'viv has been struck by some missilies in the current conflict. Instead, they wholeheardedly went for the West, urged by the wicked élites of the West who always have ulterior motives to 'helping' anyone, alienated their Russian kin in the East and then tried to impose the West on the East as a whole. And now the country finds itself at war. I wish I had read Paul to Timothy back then to them for he goes on to tell the evangelist:

"As for those who in the present age are rich, command them not to be haughty, or to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but rather on Elohim (God) who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. They are to do good, to be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share, thus storing up for themselves the treasure of a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of the life that really is life" (1 Tim.6:17-19, NRSV).

Eight years ago the West, the East and indeed the whole world was warned with Nine Mishpatim or Judgments, beginning with The Judgment of the Nations in which Ukraine featured heavily. This was followed by an Halakah on Ukraine and Moldova and a solution to the globalist-provoked tensions there. The goal was to save Ukraine so that they did not sell themselves out to the war-mongering globalists. A peaceful, federalist solution could have been Ukraine's happy future, and is what I proposed, given that Ukraine was not, and is not, an homogenous ethnic society and lived within artificially constructed borders designed, in the main, by Stalin. Instead, the political class got greedy, nationalistic and hostile to their substantial ethnic minorities on whom they tried to impose a language they did not want to speak. And now they have by one reckoning the seventh most currupt country in the world, led by a super-rich ex-drag artist and comedian who when he isn't drunk is high on recreational drugs who has no real power but is a puppet of the élites and the maffia-like oligarchs who run most of the business there. If you want to understand the extent of corruption you only have to look into the case of the current U.S. President's son.

When I was in the western Ukraine in the early 1990's I remember seeing some men dressed in black uniforms and carrying red-and-black horizontal tricolour flags. At the time I was curious and took a picture of them. Later on I discovered they were Ukrainian nazis and that I had actually taken quite a risk to my physical well-being in photographing them so I am glad my host first asked their permission even though he tried to dissuade me from making contact with them. They are still there, mostly in the West Ukraine in the former Polish eastern territories (which, incidentally, the Poles, who are a part of NATO, are talking of reoccupying), and they have multiplied. Without getting into politics, which I am not here to do, I want to make a sobering statement as a kind of conclusion to the Mishpatim Yahweh made between 2014 and 2016 so that you will be in no doubt that Elohim (God) is real and that authentic prophecy is still on the earth.

Listen well. This is a contest between two Empires, a dying one and one trying to revive itself. Russia will win this war, the Western élites will be defeated (since they're the ones waging it using Ukrainians as proxy canon fodder), and the Ukraine will be partitioned, which it need not have been had its rulers been wise and courageous. Instead of being the nation chosen by Yahweh to be a bridge between the West and Russia, which Yahweh never intended to become a puppet of the Western élites as it was becoming under Boris Yeltsin who kow-towed to President (Emperor) Bill Clinton, it will be fractured along a new West-East border with a kind of Neutral Zone in the middle.

The West will collapse financially and drag the whole world with it. Those few countries who wisely retained or returned to a gold standard (like Russia and China) will fare better than those which did not. And who knows how much gold is still in Fort Knox in the USA, assuming there's still any there. Those nations which sought to divide and conquer in the name of Mammon will themselves be divided and conquered. The current 'Empire' will fall ignominiously. The UK virtually gave all their gold away under the idiotic Labour Chancellor Gordon Brown. The Norwegian government, trying to be 'modern', rashly sold all its gold some years ago no doubt under orders from the élites!

Your standard of living will continue to fall, a reason I have been counselling you to voluntarily, and in advance, lower your own standard of living so as to be prepared because your nations will soon cease to be First World countries. You have been giving a prepping website, with many links to others, to help you make a smooth transition into this new world that will emerge on the other side of the current crisis. But if you haven't listened until now, the ride will be bumpier and for some, potentially lethal.

If you want to know what's coming, go and watch a documentary about life in Venezuela today. I was watching one the other day on how doctors and ordinary people are coping without medicine and how dangerous the hospitals have become as carriers of disease. Nevertheless, it is better to be partially prepared than not prepared at all. To delay making preparations further would be folly in the extreme. You don't have much time!

For the record, I want it to be known that I am not 'anti-Ukrainian' and 'pro-Russian'. I don't even think in those terms, those categories. That's for people who are programmed by the élites to think in worldly terms. I love both the Ukrainians and the Russians, and indeed all peoples and I will not personally be dragged into a propagandistic 'hate campaign' by the fascists in Washington, London, Brussels and the western Ukraine promoting it. I have friends from both nations. This conflict isn't even about your oridinary Ukrainian or Russian. Yahweh loves them both. It's about unseen principalities and powers, as we talked about on the last day of Chag haMatzah, and about human greed and misguided 'knowledge'.

Indeed, Paul warned Timothy to "guard what has been entrusted to you. Avoid the profane chatter and contradictions of what is falsely called 'knowledge'; by professing it some have missed the mark (sinned) as regards the emunah (faith)" (1 Tim.6:20-21, NRSV). Then, as now, people turned to gnosticism - presumed salvation through acquiring occult 'knowledge' from the fallen 'principalities and powers' themselves, either directly through forbidden 'spirituality' or viâ their teachers. A régime that calls upon 'witches and satanists' to 'curse the Russians' while the Russians are calling upon Christians and Buddhists to pray for a resolution to the conflict really ought to tell you everything you need to know about the relative merits and demerits of the respective government powers.

Do not forget that Vladimir Putin is Yahweh's choice for a latter-day Cyrus, who brought down old empires and established a new one...for a while. This does not mean Putin is an angel, for he is not, but of all the strongmen around (including those pretending to be liberal democrats) he is probably one of the most pro-family and pro-Christian. Yet his days are numbered too as he, like his Western counterparts, is trying to set up a similar Babylonian system of control. And as I have said before, we are moving into a brief age of strongmen and dictators which the West was supposed to guard against but which it did not, but became corrupted itself. And now we have some terrible dictatorships in China and Afghanistan, to name two of the worst of very many.

Europe, the United States and the Anglosphere are going to be in turmoil for a while. The key to recovery in Europe is Germany and if their people are wise - and I am praying they will rise to the occasion - they will vote out their corrupt leadership along with the heavy boulder on their backs which is the €uro and return to the Deutsch Mark and/or a new currency consisting only of the northern EU lands. I cannot say exactly what this will look like because I haven't been shown. And if Britain is to arise out of the thick fog of globalism, it must vote out its élites who are pretending to be populists too. I am not optimistic but I live in hope. In either event, my eyes are on Yah'shua (Jesus) and my prayer is that He will return sooner rather than later.

So much for the world. Let us turn to ourselves to conclude. And as I said in Chag haMatzah this year, we have been called to set a very high standard...not just a little bit higher than that of the world, but so much higher that we appear to the world to be 'peculiar'. As David Lvingston always maintained, a man or a woman is only an authentic Christian or Messianic when he or she produces the relevant fruits of righteousness and has maintained them after several years [1]. We are not called to be flashes-in-the pan, here today and gone tomorrow, for the measure of our success or failure is to be found in either constancy or inconsistency. People who have known us for a long time ought to be able to testify that we are as righteous as we were when we first started - like Messiah, in fact, who is described as being "the same yesterday and today and forever" (Heb.13:8, NIV). It doesn't matter how intellectually savvy or doctrinally correct you may be if you are not flying the same flag of righteousness every day of your life - not merely the theoretical or jurisdictional one, but for real, in your conduct and behaviour. For that is what the Bride is like: she has consistent character.

From time to time I get accused of being 'too negative'. In fact, that accusation was levelled against me the other day by someone online. My reply was that in a time of judgment this is not a time for partying but straight-talking, realistic assessment-making, stock-taking and preparedness, and I cited the nevi'im (prophets) as examples, and in particular Isaiah and Jeremiah. Both the ruling aristocrats and the ordinary people wanted the nevi'im (prophets) to tell them good news, not bad, irrespective of whether it was true or not. That's typical of the fleshy nature, I'm afraid, and the Judeans weren't the first to behave in this way. And amazingly, they demanded this even after the countryside all around them had already been devastated by invading Assyrian and Babylonian armies who had already carried off large numbers of captives! Jerusalem before its fall was exactly like that, ignoring all the warnings and evidence around them, and carrying on as before as though nothing was going to change. Such is the delusion Yahweh sends to a people who don't want to know the truth (2 Thess.2:11). They will know it soon enough in the form a dagger up against their throat.

Please spend the spring and summer months full-out preparing. But before anything else, find shalom or peace in Christ if that still eludes you, for whatever reason. David Livingston found his by means of a resolution which reads like this:

"In the glow of love that Christianity inspired I resolved to devote my life to the aleviation of human misery'"

That was his calling, sharing the gospel in Africa and fighting against the slave trade. Your resolution may be different in some respects. Mine was that I would seek for the whole truth and not rest until I had found it - I made that promise to Yahweh in St.Mary's Anglican Church, Oxford, where three Anglican Bishops - Hugh Latimer, Nicholas Ridley and Thomas Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury, were tried for heresy in 1555 by the Catholic Power and burned at the stake just a hundred yards away from that Church, the very place that I stood with a placard in the one of only two demonstrations I ever particiapted in in my life, on this particular occasion denouncing abortion. My first resolution, made some time before the St.Mary's one, was that I would find the Master and serve Him all the days of my life. I think I have pretty much been true to both promises most of my life. And the journey continues. If your resolution, vow, or covenant is according to scriptural principles, then your life will have a reliable, stable and constant spiritual foundation that will define you, as mine has defined me. If it is an imperfect resolution, you may need to revise it as you go along, but first of all find a constant principle and never waiver from it. Always begin by seeking for, and choosing, Yah'shua the Messiah (Jesus Christ). Without Him, maintaining a steady course will be very hard, and the road unnecessarily bumpy, the seas unmercifully harsh and rough.

The one last piece of advice I would like to leave with you from David Livingstone is this: "Acts of self-denial, very hard to practice under the iron-law of conscience, become a willing service under the glow of divine love" [2]. To live by your conscience is good, but to live under the glow of the love of Christ is a thousand times better.

Have a blessed week, think on these things, formulate a clear spiritual goal and then make a resolution, vow, covenant or promise to make that your life-long guiding star. Ask Yahweh to guide you to that, make notes as you get responses from Him to your prayers. Keep it, as far as you can, simple and concise. For me, when I am in a difficult situation requiring a moral decision, two words from my own covenant are always before me: TRUTH and its extension, REALITY IN CHRIST. If it isn't real, if it isn't true, I'm basically not interested. I have no time for fantasy. That's how simple the foundation of my life is. Yahweh bless you in Him until we meet again tomorrow for Rosh Chodesh. Amen.

Endnotes

[1] Rob Mackenzie, David Livingston: The Truth Behind the Legend (Fig Tree Publications, Chonhoyi, Zimbabwe: 1993), p.17
[2] Ibid., pp.28-29