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2015 Prophecy Seminar Held in Louisville, KY in April at Portland Christian School Campus

by Don McGee

Tuesday Night Topic: “Technology and The Mark Of The Beast”  Speaker:  Don McGee

Date: Tuesday, April 14, 2015


Greetings to you. I greet you in the name of the Lord and I am pleased that you have chosen to spend your Tuesday evening with us here.

We are living in, no doubt, what is the most exciting time in the history of humanity.  I am a history buff and I like visiting antebellum homes and I like visiting ruined castles. I like visiting anything that has any age to it. I like looking at tools and equipment that people used, whether it is 200 years ago or 2000 years ago. My first trip to Israel some years ago was an archeological dig and I was astounded by what you can tell if you are trained, and I’m not, by finding a piece of pottery in an old site in Israel.

You find tools and you find writing devices and all kinds of things. I guess 2000 years ago a piece of pottery was high tech. Today, of course, that is no longer the situation. We live in a time when we can speak to people on the other side of the world with a little piece of metal and plastic we keep on our hips. We can take pictures and transfer them around the world. We can do all kinds of things regarding communication. At the same time, that technology can be used by those who are nefarious in their motives, particularly governments. We have technology that will allow governments to see what is happening in your home. We have technology that allows governments to hear what you say in telephone conversations and to read your emails. I don’t care how private it is. I have a private email with Reagan.com. Guess what! NSA knows anything I put on that thing, so there is no such thing as a real private communication device.  I find that is interesting too, because as we saw the pottery and all of those things from 2000 years ago leading into events that happened later, we can see what is happening now with technology leading into events that are predicted in the Bible. One hundred and fifty years ago some of the things that we see in the Word were absolutely impossible. No one could figure out how this was going to happen. Today it is very easy.  So, I am couching that, this presentation, and those comments because I want you to see that what is happening right now in the area of technology is not happenstance. It is not something that just shows progression of human ingenuity. There is a purpose behind it and the purpose that eventually will be manifested is not necessarily the purpose for which this technology was invented.

We have something in Revelation 16 that I find is very interesting. It is written by the Apostle John and he says he calls us all, Revelation 13, the small and the great, the rich and the poor, and the free men and the slaves to be given a mark on their right hand or on their forehead.  Folks, people have taken that and they have run with it and all kinds of scenarios have been created based upon that verse alone. He provides that no one will be able to buy or to sell except the one who has the mark, either the name of the beast or the number of his name. Here is wisdom. Let him who has understanding calculate the number of the beast for the number is that of a man and his number is 666. It hasn’t been very long ago where such a scenario was absolutely impossible, but that is not the case today. I find it interesting that technology that we have been using in agriculture for decades, is now being channeled in a different direction to be used in humans. As we track Holstein cows, as we know who the dam and the sire was, as we know what their milk production was, as we know all the statistics regarding their output in calves and all of that kind of thing, so too can we say the same thing about human beings today. That fits exactly with what we find in scripture.

The exponential curve of technology, I believe, in my opinion, is kind of like a bait and switch thing because what is being given as the reason for such emphasis on technology today is not necessarily where that effort is going to end up.  What people are saying these things can do and what people aredescribing as their purposes is not necessarily what is going to show up in the end run.

First, lets consider the exponential rate of increase in technology. I believe that if we could define it in layman’s terms, we would simply say that the technology is the use of science in the invention and application of things expediting the solving of problems. I believe that there are two characteristics about technology. We go from this trend from the manual, labor-intensive simple, to the less manual labor-intensive complex. We can do more with less effort that we could previously. That is where this thing is supposed to go.

When I was a little boy, I picked cotton by hand. I hoed cotton by hand. I opened water furrows with a shovel. That is hard work, especially for a kid, but we didn’t have any choice. We didn’t know any different, we thought everybody did that. Later as I grew up, dad had a tractor with a water furrow machine, he built it himself. We hired a friend of ours to pick cotton with a machine, an actual machine that would go down the row and pull cotton out of its boll.  We didn’t hoe it with a hoe anymore, we used other things, including butane burners and then later chemical applications. That is technology.

Those are good things. If you don’t think it’s a good thing, get out there and hoe a row of cotton in August, you’ll see.

Lets take a look at some advances in the last 200 years.  Let’s see what happened in the 1800s.  First, we had the telephone, or at one time in the 1800s we had the invention of the telephone, then the escalator. As a kid growing up, I didn’t really see a need for an escalator because I had never seen a building taller than two stories. When I went into the service, I was amazed that they had buildings that would almost touch the clouds up there in the Northeast, Boston and New York, and those areas.

Motion pictures were invented in 1888. Typewriter in 1873. That’s kind of a coming around kind of thing. Most kids today have never seen a typewriter. Vaccines in 1881. Power tools in 1837. Ether anesthesia in 1842. How many of you have been under ether? Boy, that’s a trip, let me tell you! Boy, I’m glad right now what they do is they just kind of shoot a little juice in a vein and you’re gone! Back then it wasn’t like that and the after effects could be quite dramatic. The telegraph in 1844. The repeating rifle in 1860, that’s one I kind of hang onto because I’m kind of into guns and stuff like that, I like that.  All in 100 years, in the 1800s, those things were invented and used.

In the 1900s, we had some other things that came along. Air conditioning in 1902, airplane in 1903, television in 1927, then we had the heart defibrillator, the atomic reaction in 1942, and the atomic bomb in 1945.  Commercial computer in 1951.  The heart-lung machine in 1953.  Moon landing in 1969. Do you remember where you were when Neil Armstrong put his foot on the moon. I remember exactly where I was, just like the day Kennedy was assassinated. I remember exactly where I was and what was going on. By the way, I was in a classroom in school, of course, and our Catholic principal, it wasn’t a Catholic school, but he was Catholic, knocked on the door, I saw our teacher just turn white.

She said everybody on your feet and head to the gym. The whole school walked into that auditorium, a little bitty school, but all 12 grades.  Our principal stool in the middle of the basketball court and he said, “President Kennedy has been assassinated.” Why am I saying all of this…because the very next thing he did is he invited Jackie Beard, our math teacher, to come to the middle of that floor and lead the whole assembly in prayer for our country.  You tell me what would happen if some principal did that today in a public school system.

Well, we had the barcode in 1974, genetic engineering in 1985, and no telling what we are going to develop in the near future. Let’s take a look at some common uses that go beyond technologies original intent. I believe that one of the great things that those of us of my generation can remember are two cartoon characters.  Do you remember these guys?  Boris and Natasha.  They were the proverbial

Russian spies. They were on television and everybody remembers them. The whole idea behind it was that Boris and Natasha were supposed to get all the secrets from America and send them to the Kremlin. Everybody remembers about that. In essence, what has happened is that same Boris and Natasha kind of thing has been transferred into an area that has to do with not just military secrets, but into an area that includes knowing all about you, everything that you do, everything about you, all the time.  It’s no longer cloak and dagger.  When I was in the service, we had some cloak and dagger people working with us in Intelligence. They didn’t dress in black trench coats, but they were clandestine.  Today we don’t need that as much as we used to.  We will see more about that in just a little bit. So, what about this stuff?  Is there something about this growing emphasis on technology that is bad? Should the government be saying no to those things. Are we the unwilling, most of the time, victims of a growing kind of technology. Is there anything that we can do about it?  Can you do anything about the violation of the 4th Amendment at TSA points in airports.  Can you do anything about the reading of your emails by NSA.  The answer is no you can’t!  The reason is because it has legal sanction and support. The alleged purpose is to suppress or stop terrorism.

We have all heard about the war on terror. I don’t mean to be picky, but I’m going to be picky! There is no such thing as a war on terror.  In my war, that’s like saying there was a war against Punji stakes.  It’s ridiculous!

Terrorism is a weapon, it is not an entity that fights us. It is a weapon that is used by our enemies and these uses for technology is allegedly the suppression of terrorism. I have never heard of a commander saying, “I want you guys to go out there and I want you to suppress Punji stakes,” or booby traps, or whatever it might have been, satchel charges. No such thing folks, no such thing. That which has, in some cases, a legitimate purpose is now being used to know all about you, to be able to track you, to know where you are, whom you are with, and what you are doing. That’s where we are in this area of technology. This legal support comes from FISA, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.  People say, since 911, “Well, if that’s what it takes to make us secure, I don’t mind doing it.” Without getting into a discussion or debate on that, I question that kind of thinking. It’s like the frog that is thrown into the cold water and then is boiled to death without even realizing it. Ben Franklin said something in a letter to the Pennsylvania assembly on November 11, 1755, he said, “Those who would give up essential liberty, you purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” I agree with him. There’s a lot I don’t agree with about Benjamin Franklin, but that I believe is worthy of consideration.

Consider now some clandestine operations in the United States. I found this to be very interesting. USA Today on January 19, 2015, this year, there was an article about in-home radar that is now being used by police agencies.  This is what the article said. “At least 50 US law enforcement agencies have secretly equipped their officers with radar devices that allow them to effectively peer through the walls of houses to see whether anyone is inside, a practice raising new concerns about the extent of government surveillance.”

Those agencies, now there are 50 of them, including the FBI and the US Marshall service, began deploying the radar systems more than 2 years ago, that was in 2013 they began using these things. I didn’t know that in 2013, did you? With little notice to the courts and no public disclosure of when or how they would be used. The technology raises legal and privacy issues because the United States Supreme Court has said officers generally cannot use high-tech sensors to tell them about the inside of a person’s house without first obtaining a search warrant. A search warrant is based upon probable cause. A police officer can stop you based upon reasonable suspicion. An arrest cannot be made without probable cause. They are going far beyond a stop and search and there is no warrant in the process. I think that is something that not only should we be concerned about, but something that points to a mindset, a world view that is on the near horizon.  That is relative to what we see in

Revelation 13.

Some technology companies have some devices that they claim are drone compatible. What that means is this: They can hook one of these in-home radar surveillance devices onto a drone and lower that sucker right there by your bedroom window or wall and know exactly what is going on, or the dining room, anywhere in your home.

Yeh, but Don, I mean we are talking these unmanned aerial vehicles. We’re talking stuff that, you know, these drones, they drop bombs and they shoot missiles and everything.

That’s true, but the context of this statement has nothing to do with what they are using in Iraq or in Afghanistan to deliver weaponry. It has to do with things that look sort of like that.  It kind of works like a helicopter and they put a little camera right here. They can put that thing anywhere they want. If you think that’s intrusive, take a look at this sucker!  That’s a man’s palm with a device in the palm of his hand that looks like some kind of bird. They make them even smaller now, the size of large insects. They can let that thing hover around your home, or your office, or anywhere they want, and they will know exactly what is going on inside.

There is another aspect of this technology that is being used in a rather clandestine way and it’s called facial recognition. Facial recognition is simply your picture put into a computer and it is scanned at super-high speed. If your picture is already in a storage device, they will match your picture with what is in that storage device. Now, if you have a US Passport, guess what! The State Department has your picture in it’s database. In fact, the United States State Department has one of the world’s largest face recognition systems with over 75 million photographs. I find it interesting that the Tampa Bay Police Department used facial recognition for Super Bowl XXXV several years ago to search for potential criminals and terrorists. Out of all that searching, in those tens of thousands of attendees at the Super Bowl, 19 people were potentially identified and every one of them with minor criminal records.

How do you justify that? In essence, it doesn’t really have to be justified. I find that interesting, to say the least. There are other uses for facial recognition software, ATM security, unlocking of software on mobile devices, backup for finger-printing systems and things of that nature. All of it is quickly, very rapidly being refined for smaller cameras in higher fidelity. Think about this. If you own a technology company and you can convince the Senate Armed Services Committee, especially the chairman, along with some brass in the Pentagon, that you’ve got the smallest camera with the greatest fidelity that has ever been created, you are a multimillionaire overnight because they are going to buy it. If they buy it, they are going to deploy it.  There is a reason for this upsurge, this exponential curve in technology.  It is lucrative! I’ve got nothing against people making money, that’s why I’m in the ministry. Check with my Board, go to my website, they’ll tell you how much I make. There’s nothing wrong with making money. The problem is that people are buying this stuff, namely the government is buying these things to use them in ways that may violate our own United States Constitution.

One more clandestine use of technology and it has to do with communication monitoring. I am very familiar with this because of my time in service. The equipment that we used 40-something years ago, it’s antiquated, it’s like an old dinosaur.  Our R-390 receivers were that big, that deep, and that thick, and weighed about 100 pounds. You can do more with a smart phone than we could do with that R-390 receiver.

Most of us use these devices. We have different ways, different reasons for using them. Sometimes it’s for keeping up with business, sometimes it’s for keeping up with grandchildren, but we all use them.

Social media, cell phones, email, web browsing, the bottom line is this…where you go and what you do and what you look like are no longer private information.  Whether we like it or not or whether we think that we can hire a good attorney and fight it…it doesn’t matter, those are the facts. That means something for us as American citizens. We can run off in tangents on this and I’m not going to do that.

But, it does mean something to us, those of us who believe in the United States Constitution. More important than that is that this kind of thing is going to be used to do something that is unprecedented. Not even Goebbels and Hitler could come up with what they are coming up with now in technology, technology that is going to be used to identify and track people.

Let’s look at some specific applications of technology to prophecy. I have two of those, one is the two witnesses in Revelation chapter 11. Technology is not associated at all with their ability to do miracles. When people go against them, when the antichrist’s agents go against them to kill them, fire comes out of their mouths and they destroy them. That has nothing to do with technology. It has everything to do with the fact that it’s from God, which means that they are impervious to antichrist’s attacks, until God allows their deaths. Technology is associated with the world’s response to them. Scriptures tell us that the entire world will be able to see them and will be able to hear what they are saying. The entire world will see them when they die. The entire world will see their dead, bloating bodies lie on the streets of Jerusalem for 3-1/2 days as the world celebrates their deaths. Then the entire world will see them as they are caught up into heaven.       Until July 1962 with the launch of Telstar I satellite, that was absolutely impossible.  Not any more.

The second thing I want to bring to your attention regarding technology and prophecy is the mark of the beast in Revelation 13:16. Almost every conference I am a part of, we have a Q and A session, usually lasting about 45 minutes, afterward at the end of the day. Invariably we get questions about the mark of the beast. I have had people write letters and send me emails about the mark of the beast, they have it figured out.  They know exactly who the beast is going to be.  If you do a startpage search on the beast, you are going to come up with everything from Barack Obama to Bill Gates to Bill Clinton, to Adolf Hitler and it goes on and on and on. They come up with this numerology thing, you know, Adolf Hitler has so many letters in his name and you equate the Hebrews numbers for them. All that cockamamie ….  no wonder they call prophecy the playground of fanatics.  It makes us look like we are idiots because those people receive attention. Harold Camping predicted three times the day that Jesus was coming back. Guess what, he was wrong. Don’t worry about the mark of the beast. I don’t know what it means. I don’t know what 666 means. I don’t mean what the alternative reading 616 means. My uncle said that women are vain and then there is not going to be any mark here, they are going to take it on their hand. He’s with the Lord now, I think. I don’t know what the mark is going to look like. I don’t know if it’s going to be a barcode, an RFID under the skin, I don’t know and firstly folks, I don’t give a rip! We are not going to be here for it! If somebody is here to see the mark of the beast, they’re in deep kimchi! I’ve had people actually ask me, “Don, what do I do, I’ve got 666 in my account at the drug store.” My druggist is a good friend of mine. I never use the account, I guess he assigned it the first time I went there 20-some years ago. He came to me one day and he said, “Don, you know I’m just going to let you know about this, but your account number here at the store is 666.” I said, “That sounds rather apocalyptic, doesn’t it.” He said, “Yes it does! Would you like for me to change that?” I said, “No, I don’t care which number you assign to my account, it doesn’t matter.” If your house address is 666 Apocalyptic Lane, it doesn’t mean anything.

We know it has to do with technology and we know that what we are doing today is going to in some kind of way play into it, don’t worry about that stuff. My goodness! People living, dying, and going to hell around us every day and we are worried about what 666 means?  No.  No, we should have better use of our time.

The point, though, is that prior to the issuing of RFIDs and other personal digital data devices, this too was impossible. Not only will the world be able to see the death and resurrection of the two witnesses and not only will the world be subject to the mark of the beast, but the fact of the matter is that we are living in the shadow of that right now! We are going to talk about that later when we look at “In The Shadow Of The Four Horsemen.”

Let’s look now at some technology that is in use today that I believe will most certainly by used during the tribulation period. Tracking technology, how does that work? We’ve mentioned it several times so far.  Well, cell phones can be tracked because they ping off certain towers and if you have certain buttons pushed in that thing, certain settings there, then everybody who wants to know can know where you are. Today we have personal anti-theft tracking programs such as Prey, that can follow lost telephones from any computer.  Cell providers, including my own, know exactly where you are all of the time. What about vehicles? I remember a day whenever we were so concerned about the state of Alabama because they used a certain kind of rosebud screw in their VIN plates on the dash that could be easily removed, replaced with a new VIN and you would never know it. The Auto Theft Division of Louisiana State Police was concerned about that 40-some years ago. That’s nothing anymore. Vehicles can be tracked with OnStar.

Let me show you something about OnStar that I didn’t know. Of course, I don’t have OnStar, don’t want OnStar and all that kind of thing. This is what it can do. Global positioning system vehicle trackers are invaluable for monitoring either a single car. You might want to key in on this on your daughter’s boyfriend.  On a single car, or an entire fleet of vehicles, a real-time car tracking device gives you up-to-the minute speed and location updates including text or email alerts based on parameters that you set in advance. If you are wondering if your driver, or your daughter’s boyfriend, has gone off course, shame on him, or if your teen has been speeding, these vehicle tracking devices give you the answers you need. Detailed reports tell you exactly where a vehicle has been, not where it is, has been.  Boy, I would have been in trouble if my dad would have had one of those.

Where a vehicle has been, where it’s headed and how fast it’s going. That’s death and destruction to a teenager, but they can do it and they are doing it. Everybody who travels uses passports.  Every time you leave a country or enter a country, a date and time stamp is placed on your passport and it is swiped. Nowadays, they have added a biometric chip to them. My passport has no chip in it. I just got my first chip last week on a credit card. I had a card that expired, they sent me a new one and it has a biometric chip in it.  First time I had seen one.  This is what these things can do.  This is the old passport, this is the new passport and this little gizmo down here is that biometric chip. Any of y’all have credit cards with the chip in it.  Yes, some of you do.  That’s the coming thing.

Let me tell you what they can put in those chips, especially passports. Biometric identifiers are the distinctive measurable characteristics used to label and describe, not dairy cows, but human beings. Biometric identifiers are often categorized as physiological versus behavioral characteristics.

Physiological characteristics that are found in some of these chips are related to the shape of the body. Examples include, but are not limited to, fingerprint, palm veins, face recognition, DNA, palm print, hand geometry, iris recognition, retina, and odor and scent data, what you smell like! Can you believe that? Behavioral characteristics are related to the pattern of behavior or a person including, but not limited to, typing rhythm. Let me stop there. How do you think that it can determine what is your typing rhythm? Facebook is one way. There is another way too.  If you are online and you are using your computer, it is possible for NSA to monitor exactly what you are doing and how you type. Typing rhythm, your gait. How would someone measure, identify, and plug your gait into this biometric chip? The same way they use facial recognition hardware. Cameras everywhere. And your voice. I will say more about your voice in a minute.  Some researchers have coined the term, behavioral metrics to

describe the latter class of biometrics.

Let’s look at this speech recognition thing. Speech recognition is a process where spoken words are translated into written text. We use that all the time on our computers. I’ve got a good friend of mine who is a book editor and he is blind, stone cold blind.  When I shoot him an email or transcript, it comes up with software that gives voice to the words. Amazing.  Voice recognition, however, is different than speech recognition. Whereas speech recognition, may I say it again, is a process where spoken words are translated into written text, voice recognition or speaker recognition, identifies the speaker rather than what they are saying.  Do you understand the significance of that powerful tool? Let me give you an illustration. In Vietnam and in Europe we did tactical missions in Vietnam and we did strategic missions in Europe. In both places, we had equipment to identify radio transmitters. We would take what is called an RFP, and this is old, ancient, dinosaur technology. What would happen is when that guy would come up on key, we would zero in to his frequency, hit a button, and that sucker, in about a second, would spit out about 10 feet of EKG paper, about that wide, with all kind of little lines and stuff on it. I said it looked like an oscilloscope on a piece of paper.  We would take that piece of paper and we would log it and catalog it and we would identify that transmitter. Now, why was that important? It’s just a radio. The reason it is important is because wherever that transmitter was located and identified, we also located and identified the military element to which it was attached. Do you see the significance of that. If the Third Chinese Field Army moved to the borders of North Vietnam, we would know it simply by identifying a piece of equipment.  Folks, that’s a long time ago, no telling what they can do now. Being in that business I wondered, where are we now. I cannot imagine where we are regarding this kind of thing.  That is old technology, but it has a new spin today.

Let’s look at some of the things that are coming in the future. Specifically, what is coming with this technology thing? This year virtual reality is supposed to make a big comeback. I didn’t know it had ever gone, but I’m not a technician, I don’t know. Next year, 2016, we will see the birth of the first 3- person baby. Reminds me of Victor Frankenstein.  The United Kingdom gave the go-ahead for this just a couple of months ago, February of 2015. What they do is they take genetic material from one cell, they isolate it, they take genetic material from a second cell, isolate it, then they take the two and inject it into a third cell in vitro and you have a child that is born later. That’s where we are. That’s what humanity is doing with this kind of technology. I find it somewhat revolting and very amazing.  In 2017, future time line says this: Traditional newspapers will start to become obsolete. Word and Work, you are on the cutting edge!  Wireless implantable devices will monitor health conditions in real time. In 2018, polio will have been eradicated. I had polio when I was a little boy. That’s a good thing. I would like to see that.  At the same time, they are going to have a drug that will prevent obesity so if you are from south Louisiana, you can eat a foot tub full of boudin and not have to worry about it.

Many complex surgeries will be performed by robots. They’ve been doing prostate surgery for years with robots, but other complex surgeries will be performed by robots. In 2019, vehicles will have connected vehicle technology. That simply means that your vehicle will be able to communicate with other vehicles on the road and not just other vehicles, but other objects along the road. Have you ever seen a barcode on the side of a trailer truck? Guess what that is? Connected vehicle technology, although that is antiquated. They also say that in 2019, they will begin to assemble the first manned outpost that is on some object in space beyond the moon.

How do you think this stuff is going to be used? Where do you think this is going to go? What is the culmination of this kind of thing?  Well, in my opinion, I believe it’s going to be easier to control people. I believe it is going to be easier to deal with those who rebel against the government. I believe it is going to be easier to consolidate power.  I believe that it is going to be easier to enhance the

adoration of the antichrist as we see in Revelation 13:15. In some instances, that adoration will be willful. I believe that in some instances it will be under duress, as most people in North Korea are forced to adore their leaders in the Kim family.

What this means for people like me. I am talking about men who think like I think and who would like to make plans to deal with these kinds of things. It makes it increasingly difficult to be off the grid. If you will look at that picture, you will see that off the grid means the dark areas. Greenland, northern Canada, places in Alaska, northern South America, Africa, Australia, China, northern parts of Siberia, those are places where you can probably exist off grid and the government can’t find you. Look at the United States conus, continental United States, you are not getting off the grid. Now you could probably get off a grid if you were up in the mountains somewhere or out in a desert somewhere and you didn’t use anything. You didn’t use a cell phone, you didn’t go into town, you didn’t buy anything, you didn’t do anything!  You didn’t go see a physician, you didn’t buy any medicine, you could probably be off grid, but if you did any one of those several things, you would be on the grid.  Now, they might not know where you were going when you left the drug store, but they would know that you exist. It is impossible here folks. Essentially, practically impossible to be completely off the grid.  I don’t like that.  Not a whole lot I can do about it.  That’s the way life is in the 21st century.

Do you see how the events in Revelation 13 might start to pan out? I want to compare that with Nazi Germany. I mentioned last night I am an amateur historian when it comes to Naziism. When I was there years ago, I visited lots of places, including Dachau. I visited, I guess you would call them antique shops where they sold SS paraphernalia, though it wasn’t really real, because you are not supposed to sell it. When I got into Austria and I saw some of that was real and I was unable to buy it because I was not going to be there the next day and he was closed that day.

What fascinates me about Naziism is not the fact that they killed all those people. What fascinates me is how they did it. How did the National Socialist Workers Party track, control, isolate, and annihilate select groups of people.  How did they do that?

Well, let’s start at the beginning. This systematic consolidation of power that we see in Germany with the Nazi party began with what Adolf Hitler, actually Joseph Goebbels described as a national emergency. Does that term ring a bell with you? It began with a national emergency. It occurred four weeks after Adolf Hitler became chancellor. At 10:15 on the night of February 27, 1933, the German Reichstag, which is the Parliament, was set ablaze intentionally. I have read everything I can get my hands on as to who did it. The bottom line is nobody knows. Nobody can prove who did it. Of course, Adolf Hitler blamed the communists and they found communists there behind the building. You probably know the story of his arrest and that kind of thing, but really, nobody knows. If I were a betting man, I’d bet that the Nazis set the fire because a national emergency had to be created in order for the Nazi party to do what Adolf Hitler wanted to do. He couldn’t do it without the national emergency.

The next day, Hitler intimated the aging president, Paul von Hindenburg into issuing what is called the Reichstag Fire Decree declaring a national emergency. That emergency that was declared did several things. It suspended civil liberties temporarily, of course. It set up the concentration camp at Dachau. Those words that you see on the gate there were found on the gates of any number of camps. It simply means work makes you free. Uh huh. It freed those people who were sent there alright. They died there. Arbeit Macht Frei, work makes you free. It barred Jews from working in government and in schools.  It banished trade unions.  It banned all books “deemed” offensive to the Nazi belief system. In essence, Germans went to sleep a free people on the night of February 27, 1933, and they got up the


next morning an enslaved people, specifically on February 28, 1933.  Overnight it happened.

What do you think could cause a national emergency in our country whereby some of these systems and some of these plans might be put into motion. Well, the very first one that comes to my mind is the taking out of the church. I like that one! Now, people don’t always agree on what happens when the church is taken out and afterward, but one thing that we all agree on, all brethren believe in, is that Jesus is going to take this church out of here.  That is our hope.

In my opinion, when the church is removed, there will be vacuums presented in various fields. Business, public safety agencies, military, government, civilian and military chains of command will be made useless with these vacuums that will be created.

The second thing I believe that could cause a national emergency is a financial collapse similar to 1929. If you think that the Securities and Exchange Commission has built-in safeguards that will prevent a collapse of this economy, then instead of sending your money to Wall Street, send it to me. Many financial planners are warning about risk capital investments. I don’t anything about investments, but one of the CSM’s board members does. He is an attorney who specializes in investments and I thank God that he is on our board. He has told us, at our last three biannual meetings that we need to be very, very careful with the investment of money. He operates as our agent and we use part of our building fund money in investments.  Low-risk investments.  Let me be very emphatic about that.  He says, I take my personal money, a whole lot more than CSM has, and he invests his money in all kinds of things. He said, but I’m telling you by daylight tomorrow morning, it could all be in the toilet. What happens in Europe and Asia is indeed reflected on Wall Street.

Another things, another horrific Islamic attack. Whether it’s a dirty bomb in a major metropolitan area or electromagnetic pulse bomb, or contamination of a major water supply system, or this and I have given a lot of thought to this in the last five years, the destruction of a river-controlled structure.  Let me explain that. This is a not-to-scale graft of what is called the control locks of the Mississippi River in Louisiana. Seventy percent of the water that is drained by the Mississippi basin goes down this channel.  Thirty percent, when it gets to this area, is deviated and goes down to the Atchafalaya River. It is not deviated by man, it is deviated by nature. This control structure has been placed here and this auxiliary structure here to keep all this water that is going down the Mississippi, from going down into the Atchafalaya River. If that happens, several things are going to result.  Baton Rouge and New Orleans will see cargo ships high and dry. The Mississippi River will be in a different channel. This is the Mississippi River, it culminates at the mouth of the Mississippi below New Orleans. This is that controlled structure, this is where the Atchafalaya River leaves the Mississippi River and if this thing is opened, this basin, the levees on this basin here, these yellow lines, will not be able to control the water that will go down that river.  Hundreds of thousands of acres of pristine alluvial plain, agricultural areas, will be lost. There is no way to estimate the loss in capital, whether it is houses, cattle, businesses, it is just almost impossible to be able to predict what the loss would be.

Now what would it take to compromise these controlled structures. I’ve seen them and probably you have too…a plane crash with a bomb on it. What would happen is that it would be the proverbial crack in the dam. Everybody knows with that much water pressure, all you need is a crack and very soon it is going to expand. Very soon that crack is going to be compromised. It is going to compromise the dam and then the water will rush without stopping through that channel.

I wondered about that and I talked to a friend of mine that I used to work with in the State Police years ago. He had talked to the chief engineer in the Army Corps of Engineers at that time in New Orleans. The reason they did not open those locks three years ago when we had those heavy, heavy floods is because they were not sure they could close them. That is not public knowledge.  Do you know what that means? All it takes is a couple of guys willing to die, a couple of planes with some high explosives and voila!

Number four would be a major earthquake. Whether it’s the West Coast, San Andreas, or the New Madrid fault in Missouri.  Every time I come up here, except the other day, I came up 40 to 65, I’ll never do that again! I hadn’t done it in years but, I don’t know, I got a wild hair or something, I don’t know, but every time I come up 55 from Arkansas into Missouri and cut across to Dyersburg, Tennessee, I go by New Madrid, Missouri. Guess what I think about, especially when I get on that 155 bridge going into Tennessee? I think, Lord, don’t let it happen now. Air and land transportation systems will be severely damaged. The water and sewer systems will be damaged. The power grid will be damaged. For those of you who live in subdivisions, apartment complexes, condominiums, any place where you are dependent upon municipal power grids, municipal water systems, municipal sewer systems, let me explain something to you.  I don’t mean to scare you, but you need to know this.  You are going to be in trouble. You think about this.  One major earthquake that buckles airport runways, gas, water, and sewer pipelines, especially those under pressure like gas, and power lines will mean that you have one flush on your toilet, that’s it, one flush. It will mean that when you go to your faucet, whether it is in your bathroom or your kitchen and you turn them on…nothing! It will also mean that you are going to have about 12 hours to use the food that is in your refrigerator. You might have about 24 hours, depending upon the heat around your freeze, to use the food that has been frozen in your freezer. Now, after that 24-hour period, don’t think about going down to the grocery store for two reasons.

  1. You might not be able to get to the grocery
  2. If you do get there, the shelves are going to be

Don’t depend upon truck lines to deliver food to your grocery store. In Katrina, after Katrina was over, people were on interstate overpasses and the only way (and that was a flood, that wasn’t an earthquake) that bottled water was able to be brought in was by US Army Blackhawk helicopter, that’s it! They couldn’t leave, most of them couldn’t swim, the children certainly couldn’t. Alligators and water moccasins as thick as the hair on a dog’s back.  They were there and that was it folks, that was it.

Can you imagine the kind of national emergency this thing could produce. Of course, then there is the major storm that hits the golden triangle area of Houston. Of course, you know how many oil refineries that there are. And then, of course, there the major outbreak of a major disease. Purposeful attack by an enemy.

What did the Nazis do in this national emergency. In four weeks, Hitler brought Germany to the point of major change. In 24 hours he enslaved it’s citizens. All movement was monitored and required government approval. Ethnic backgrounds and family histories were investigated. He controlled and exploited the masses.  How did they do it?

This is how they did it. (1)  Emotional and psychological paralysis through terror.  Never knowing when a confidence would be betrayed, false accusations by friends and family for reward, not knowing if the Gestapo would show up in the middle of the night. A forced anonymity was made upon the population by issuing numbers. Why was that done? Two reasons.  (1) It was easier to track people with a number than people with a name. (2) When the Einsatzgruppen went out to kill people, it was easier to shoot something with a number on it than something with a name attached to it. After arrest

came interrogation and incarceration. The goal of the Nazis was to strip people of all dignity and purpose. The reason for stripping people of their dignity and their purpose was to numb their thinking and inhibit their will to resist. One more thing they did. It is called the assumed omnipresence of the law, or in this case, their ruthless authority.

The point is this, the Nazis did all this and a whole lot more with paper, 3×5 cards, typewriters, and filing cabinets. What do you think a 21st century government could do with facial recognition software, widespread use of public cameras, drones, credit card tracking, cash monitoring, cell phone tracking, bank account monitoring, satellite surveillance, computer IP address tracking, radio frequency identification devices and who knows what else is out there.

One other thing the Nazis did is they used a low-tech commodity, people willing to do the killing. Christopher Browning in his book, Ordinary Men, Reserve Police Battalion 010 and the Final Solution, found out that the commander of this battalion gave the option to his men of not serving in the death squads. Of the 500 men in that battalion, 15 opted out, the rest of them didn’t mind.  The interesting thing that Browning found out was that these were not Nazi fanatics, they were ordinary working class middle-aged men from Hamburg.

Browning concluded that ordinary people in a coherent group will likely follow orders, even questionable orders if issued by an authority. That was the guy that did it, right there. I have two newsletters in our archives that you might want to look at regarding these things. One of them is, “Building the Tribulation Gestapo.” That was CSM newsletter of May 2012. The second was / is, “Surveillance, Technology, and the Coming Police State.” That is the CSM newsletter for June 2013. You can go to our website, go to the archives and you can read those if you desire.

Conclusion. Don’t be troubled. These things must happen. This is the place, this is the role that technology is using in our society today. Once the church has been removed, there is no end to what this stuff is going to be used for. The tribulation, I believe, will see a combination of two complementary systems: Exponentially growing technology and profoundly evil hearts in a world that profoundly hates God. Their exponential development in application, I believe, points to the eminent return of Jesus.


Don McGee is founder of Crown and Sickle Ministries based in Amite, LA.

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John 16:33