Triumph Prophetic Ministries (Church of God)

In 1986 President-elect George Bush announced that his administration was going to make a
major overhaul of the United States Third World debt strategy, and make it a top priority of his
administration. Bush declared, "We've got enormous problems, particularly in our own
hemisphere, on Third World debt"

Of course, Bush was right, with Mexico owing other nations over $100 billion, and Brazil
also owing over $120 billion, with Argentina, Peru, Ecuador, and other nations also on the ropes,
financially.

But Bush's statement brings to mind the greater question -- who will bail out the United
States, currently the world's NUMBER ONE debtor? Presently, the U.S. foreign debt is greater
than that of every other nation in the western hemisphere COMBINED! In actual fact, every year
the United States adds to its towering debt burden the EQUIVALENT of another Mexico and
Brazil combined!

Who's going to bail out Uncle Sam? Whose going to come riding to the rescue on a white
horse to save our country from its fiscal folly and financial FOOLISHNESS?

A television news special, entitled "Losing the Future," painted the picture bleakly. After
reviewing the depressing and alarming decline of US business competitiveness, and the growing
export of high-tech jobs overseas, primarily to Asian countries, the commentator summarized the
entire situation, saying, "We're not in a crisis; we're in a disaster."

The United States has already "lost" its future, but hasn't yet awakened to that fact and what
it signifies!

But the next few years, an increasingly grim situation will present itself as a fair accompli to
the American public. Within a few years, the American dollar will no longer be the world's
currency of exchange. Americans will sense that they are no longer in control over their own
destiny, and more and more of them find themselves working for Asian or European companies
and branch offices within the United States. More and more, they will find themselves losing out
on jobs. More and more will either go on unemployment, or find themselves settling for low
paying service industry jobs, no longer able to afford new cars, televisions, videos, vacations, and
the things they currently take for granted all too often.

America's standard of living, once the pride of the world, is due for a precipitous drop, as the
rest of the world passes us by and leaves us in the dust

Does this picture sound too grim, too ghastly to contemplate? Just what are the facts?

It sounds like a medieval fairytale. A Horatio Alger "rags to riches" story, only in reverse.
The United States has for as long as most of us can remember looked upon itself as the "Envy of
the World," "Number One," the "Strongest Nation on Earth."

But, as a writer in the Los Angeles Times noted, "Now it's transition time, a fleeting period
when harmony rules the land and truth can be told. Even the most cursory look at world statistics
challenges our No. 1 status. The picture is decidedly mixed... "

The writer declares, "We have recently become the world's biggest debtor; our foreign debt is
greater than those of all Third World nations combined"

Meanwhile, business is booming in Japan. Japan's current trade surplus, which amounted to
594 billion in fiscal 1987, has become so large that it destabilizes the world economy! Japan's
exports have resumed double digit growth, while Japanese markets are notoriously closed to
foreign products. Thus the Japanese get richer and richer while rest of the world, especially the
United States, "buys Japanese."

The United States, on the other hand, continues to tun a trade deficit with the rest of the
world on the order of $136 billion in 1988. Although the export picture has improved with the
cheapening of the dollar, the gap between imports and exports is still gargantuan by any standards
of measurement This frustrating picture creates massive ill will between nations, and eventually
will lead to the heating up of that diabolical curse of old -- "Trade War."

The beginning salvos have already been fired, between the growing union of nations in
Europe, and the United States, over Europe's decision not to import American beef which has been
fattened by using chemical growth hormones. United States retaliation has put enormous
surcharges on a broad spectrum of European products coming to this country. Resentment and
frustration are bound to increase, as the two groups square off, each insisting they are in the right.

But in the past few years and today, the U.S.'s biggest problem has been and is posed by
Japan.

In May, 1987, Japanese investors decided they would teach the United States a lesson. To
show the U.S. how much muscle they had gained over American financial markers, Japan's
powerful Ministry of international Trade and Industry declared, "We should let the U.S. know
what would happen if Japan refused to buy U.S. government bonds."

As word was whispered that Japan might stay out of the auction of Treasury bonds to
finance the U.S. deficit, U.S. mortgage rates shot up two full percentage points. In the end, Japan
relented, and bought bonds, but their action was enough to trigger an emergency meeting of
Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker and his policy makers, and it quieted U.S. protectionist
noises, and President Reagan's only trade action for the rest of the year was to rescind the tariffs he
slapped on a few Japanese products in April.

As Douglas Frantz writes in the Los Angeles Times, the Japanese bond action "can be seen
as a clear signal that Japan will not hesitate to use its financial leverage to impose its will on the
United States."

The Japanese influence over the U.S. economy has become a threat to America This truth is
vividly pointed out in Daniel Burstein's eye-opening book Yen! In this astonishing book, Burstein
shows that while the U.S. has become the world's biggest debtor, it is the Japanese who have
picked up the tab and extended credit They have become the lender, while the U.S., hat in hand,
has become the world's biggest borrower.

In the book of Proverbs we read, "The rich ruleth over the poor, and the borrower is servant
to the lender" (22:7). Thus since the end of World War II, when the United States was supreme in
the world, and had the world's strongest economy, it has now become economically devastated by
a history of borrowing, fueled largely by the actions of the Reagan administration during the past
seven years. Never in all history has a nation gone down so far so fast From a positive foreign
investment of over $150 billion in 1982, the U.S. sunk to a negative foreign investment of over half
a trillion dollars by 1989!

Increasingly, it is the Japanese who are the landlords, and the Americans who are the
"tenants" who must pay the rent!

Burstein describes a real meeting which took place in Tokyo where the chairman of Nomura
Securities suggested that Japan would help the U.S. with its trade debt by increasing the yen's
value to 100 to the dollar, thus pricing Japan out of the export market (supposedly). Then a single
currency for both countries would be created, allowing Japanese free investment in the U.S.

In exchange for this gesture of magnanimity? The U.S. would cede to Japan the state of
Hawaii, and California would be administered as a joint U.S.-Japan economic community shared
by both countries!

Few Americans realize it yet, but Japan has suddenly sprung from swaddling clothes and
infancy status to the world's premier economic giant -- a towering financial shogun whose shadow
is seen around the world.

In his book Yen! Japan's New Financial Empire and its Threat to America, Daniel Burstein
points out these salient facts of modem life:

1. All ten of the world's ten largest banks are now Japanese.

2. Nomura, Japan's leading securities firm, is 20 times bigger than Merrill Lynch.

3. Nippon Telephone and Telegraph is worth more than IBM, General Motors, AT & T and
General Electric -- combined!

4. Washington now depends on Japanese investors to finance nearly of the U.S. budget
deficit!

5. At least one million Americans will be working for Japanese owned companies in the U.S.
by the early 1990s.

Burnstein's book reveals the staggering story of how eight years of Reaganomics has
hastened the erosion of American economic strength. The decision to strengthen the dollar, during
the first part of Reagan's term in office. led to staggering trade deficits, as U.S. companies found
them- selves increasingly unable to compete in foreign markets due to circumstances beyond their
control. Then, when the Reagan administration halved the value of the dollar, thereby doubling the
value of the Japanese yen, it vastly enriched Japan while providing only short-term relief to
American companies, and meanwhile virtually "put America up for sale --- cheap."

With their new superstrong yen, Japanese have been buying up American real estate,
companies, and building Japanese companies right inside the United States, which will be able to
out-compete native U.S. firms, right on American soil.

Burstein writes, as if viewing the scene from a future standpoint, "How tragically
short-sighted it now seems that the Reagan administration halved the value of the U.S. dollar
in the vain hope of restoring 'competive-ness' to American manufacturing and reducing the massive
trade deficit Didn't they realize how much less competitive American business would become
over time against Japanese rivals whose yen-based financial resources doubled when the dollar
fell? Apparently not. They believed American wealth and power were God-given birthrights"
(p.14).

Burstein continues this theme, "The story of how America became so dependent has its
roots in the 1980s when the Reagan administration turned the United States into the biggest debtor
nation in history. 'Spend, consume and borrow' was the order of the day -- an agenda made
possible by the ready availability of foreign investors. Foremost among America's foreign bankers
were the Japanese, who were then just learning to use their massive capital surplus to sow the
seeds of empire" (p.15).

The present situation has all the makings of a disaster. John Zysman, a Berkeley political
scientist, warns that a U.S.-Japan "divorce" could come in the early 1990s. A Princeton political
economist, Roger Gilpin, believes that world stability cannot rest much longer on
"Japanese-financed American hegemony."

George Packard of The Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies predicts
that if current policies don't change, the U.S.-Japan relationship will descend to protectionism,
retaliation, recrimination, and a search for different partnerships. When the U.S.-Japanese marriage
ends in a bitter, frustrated "divorce," will Japan nun to the growing powerhouse of a United
European market as its alternative partner and suitor?

Burstein points out that if the U.S.-Japanese relationship is severed, and the two sides are
thrown into conflict, "Therein lies the recipe not only for panic, but for global economic
meltdown."

The bad news, he says, is that forces of national self-interest are likely to prove more
powerful determinants of the future than the wishes or intentions of today's policy makers. To
continue present policies, Burstein declares, is to leave the gates open for a "one-sided and highly
destabilizing U.S. on foreigners whose agenda is different from our own" (p. 23). On the other
hand, he says, "Any blanket policy of protectionism is fraught with dangers, not the least of which
is history's well-documented lesson that trade wars have a way of turning rapidly into global
depressions and even shooting wars" (p. 24).

As Paul Kennedy in his book The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers shows, America has
fallen victim of that classic syndrome of "imperial overstretch." Too long we have tried to have our
cake and eat it, too. Politicians talk about "rebuilding America's greatness," but behind the glittery
promises lies the palpable truth that the United States has already lost control over its own future,
many of the central features of its own economy, and has placed itself squarely in the middle of a
dilemma with no easy solutions in sight!

The editors of Business Week in the November 16, 1987 issue, under the above headline,
wrote, "We have spent too much, borrowed too much, and imported too much. We have lived
beyond our means, relying on foreigners to finance our massive budget and trade deficits. The bill
is now coming due."

When America wakes up, will it already be too late? Will it already be "the morning after"?

Burnstein scores the U.S. with this blistering indictment: "No evil cabal in Tokyo planned
things this way. Rather, it is a case of Americans willingly, if not always knowingly, surrendering
our own destiny. It is an epic tale with a theme worthy of the Bible: the American Esau -- a
strong, prideful hunter -- has sold his birthright to the Japanese Jacob -- a quiet, clever strategist --
in return for a mess of consumption and debt" (pps. 25-26).

Burnstein thunders,

"In the care of Japan moreover, it is not just any foreign country
to whom we've sold our birthright. Japan is our mirror image and
our fiercest competitor. Japan is strong precisely where we me weak
... Thus, while the United States has become the world's leading
debtor, Japan has become its leading creditor. While we consume more
than we produce. Japan produces more than it consumes. While our
dollar weakens, Japan's yen strengthens. While we Lust for imports,
Japan's passion it for exports. While we deregulate and fragment our
society, Japan maintains a strong central plan and national cohesion.
.. And while we withdraw from global obligations, Japan begins to
assume them.

"Blinded by wartime victory and our long-standing role as senior partner
in the U.S.-Japan relationship, we ignore the obvious: Japan is becoming
a global superpower in its own right .. But we still shrink from recog-
nizing the essential Rarity. A Japanese empire is being born that will pose
a fundamental challenge to American power in every sphere" (p.26).

One does not have to engage in "Japan-bashing," as some term it to recognize the serious
peril the United States has put itself in. The facts are self-evident. Japan's great wealth has been
accompanied by a dramatic change in the Japanese attitude. They no longer abase themselves as
the abject pupil, the lowly servant, the humble child. Now they behave with the characteristic
swagger of old, the imperial manner, a brutish disdain of those they consider "inferior," a new
nationalism, an ugly arrogance, a lordly pride.

There are signs aplenty that the new Japan, feeling a need to protect itself from America's
folly and illogical madness, will convert its surplus wealth into an economic empire protected by its
own political and military empire.

Burnstein cries out, like a Biblical prophet of old,

"Today's financial world is the razor's edge in this explosive process
of Japanese expansion and American decline. The U.S.-Japan trade war
is fast becoming an issue of the past won for all intents and purposes
by Japan. Now, the financial war is brewing" (p. 27).

As New York Congressman Charles Schumer said, "We lost automobiles to the Japanese,
we lost steel, and now we're losing financial services -- what else is left?"

New York Senator Patrick Moynihan observed that the Reagan administration, rather than
address the serious problems of the economy, just "borrowed a trillion dollars from the Japanese
and threw a party."

What is it like to be a nation head over heels in debt? What is it like to owe foreigners over
half a trillion dollars, already? Can your mind conceive of just what a trillion dollars is? It is a
thousand billion; or a million million; a 1 followed by 12 zeroes. It is 10 million $100,000 homes.

If a trillion dollars were lined up end to end, the line would stretch 100,000,000 miles -- all the
way from the earth to the sun, with another 10,000,000 miles left over! The line of greenbacks
would stretch around the world 4,000 times, or pave a roadway around the equator about 700 feet
in width. This ocean of greenbacks is scarcely conceivable to the human brain. Yet this is the
staggering amount the United States will owe foreign creditors within another two-three years!

Obviously, unless a miracle happens, the world is headed rapidly for a global economic
"meltdown" of gargantuan proportions. Confrontations will heat up; national rivalries will
intensify; jealousies and enmities will grow; hostilities and hatred will thicken like bees buzzing
around their own protected hive.

Burnstein entitles one of his chapters, "Avoiding the Apocalypse," but in truth I see no way
human beings and nations will avoid the utmost catastrophe. An economic Armageddon is coming
-- it is only a few years off. The repercussions will be cataclysmic to all nations on the face of the
globe.

The prophet Jeremiah wrote, "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked:
who can know (understand, fathom, comprehend) it?" (Jer. l7:9). The heart of man simply is
greedy and selfish. Unless there is sudden spiritual enlightenment of nations and leaders around
the world, present trends will exacerbate world frictions, and nations will ravine like howling,
competing hyenas fighting over the spoils of a kill.

Speaking of normal people, the broad majority of humanity, the apostle Paul writes, "As it is
written, There is none righteous, no, not one: There is none that understandeth, there is none that
seeketh after God. They are all (Jew and Gentile) gone out of the way, they are together become
unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no. not one... . Their feet are swift to shed blood:
Destruction and misery are in their ways: And the way of peace have they not known: There is no
fear of God before their eyes" (Rom. 3:l0-l8).

Unregenerate, carnal human nature, which is enmity against the laws of God (Rom.8:7), will
not find a solution to the world's trade problems, Third World debt or America's burgeoning
deficit and trade imbalance. Great suffering lies ahead, as each nation tries to protect itself from the
fall-out of growing trade war, friction, and eventual financial calamity.

For years I have been writing that America's economy, and that of the whole world, are
headed for a colossal collapse. For years I have been predicting the decline and fall of the United
States, and the economic system. For years I have been predicting a global Depression which will
make the Great Depression of the 1930s look like kindergarten stuff by comparison.

In the coming years, Americans are going to have a lot to ponder, and think back about.
They will lament and cry, and rue the day they allowed the Japanese and other foreign nations to
dominate their economy. Many of them will feel like exploited "third world labor" -- virtual
economic slaves -- right inside their own country.

The total value of U.S. stocks today is $2.5 trillion, a smaller share of the world's total ($7.9
trillion), than the Japanese stock market ($3.3 trillion).

Today, Japanese savings finance the bulk of American budget and trade deficits. This fact
does not make the Japanese particularly happy; they have better things to do with their wealth than
to prop up "Uncle Pauper." Japan and other foreign investors have already threatened to alter or
pull out their investments, if the U.S. doesn't correct its economic policies, and do something about
the deficit!

Masaru Yoshitomi, an official in Japan's Economic Planning Agency, said angrily, "Japan's
capital movements are now in a position to influence the value of the dollar and hence interest rates
and stock prices in Wall Street" What he meant is that the Japanese now virtually have the United
States by the economic jugular vein. They have the power to depress the U.S. economy and shoot
up interest rates overnight And there is nothing the U.S. can do about it, because of its insane
addiction to Japanese capital. Like any dope addict, the U.S. worries only about its next "shot" or
"infusion" of capital from abroad, to keep from feeling the pain and anguish. But each new
injection accomplishes less and less good; and every year, large injections are needed merely to
maintain the status quo.

The United States has become the world's number one "capital addict" a fate just as bad as
cocaine, heroin, or "crack."

When will we wake up, and take heed?

In the November 7, 1988, Los Angeles Times, Daniel Burstein wrote,

"The world is moving off the dollar standard.

"Americans are blithely unaware of what life would be like in a world
without the dollar standard. Over the next few years the United States
could be forced to surrender its ability to finance foreign debt in its
own currency and to import oil at dollar-based prices, as well as other
fruits of world financial leadership. The result would be a significant
reduction in American living standards."

Burstein warns, "While Washington engages in the backward-looking policy of trying to use
its weak dollar to regain marginal competitiveness in heavy industries, Tokyo is using its strong
yen to diversify, expand abroad and invest in future-oriented technologies, services and global
businesses." Says Burstein, "Indeed, a financial war could supersede today's trade war. Early
warnings are already visible..."

America's downfall began over twenty years ago when the U.S. consumer electronic industry
moved offshore, primarily to the Pacific Rim nations, including Japan. This was the beginning of
"America's technological apostasy," as Rep. George E. Brown, Jr., a member of the House
Science, Space and Technology Committee, put it.

Since that time America has almost totally lost this very basic industry. America is presently
losing the race to develop high-definition TV, and the resulting change in technological leadership
will negatively impact not only America's standard of living, but its political and economic
leadership as well.

Since the end of World War II, the United States has allowed the Japanese and others to
destroy its steel industry, devastate the automobile industry, annihilate the machine tools industry,
monopolize the television and video industry, and in recent years seriously undermine the semi-
conductor industry which makes computer chips.

The United States, squealing over the lack of Japanese support for its own national defense,
is meanwhile encouraging the Japanese to increase their own defense spending, invited the
Japanese to participate in the "Star Wars" defense research and development and is now prepared
to assist the Japanese to develop their own multibillion dollar high-tech, state-of-the-art jet fighter
plane.

One can only wonder where and how and against whom these new fighter planes will
eventually be used!

Meanwhile, the Japanese continue buying up American real estate wholesale. In the first
eight months of 1988 Japanese investors bought $9 billion worth of U.S. real estate. California led
the nation in sales to the Japanese ($2.48 billion), with New York second, Illinois third, and
Hawaii trailing in fourth place. Most of this investment went for office buildings. In 1987
Japanese investors bought over $12 billion in U.S. real estate.

"Foreign money is changing the face of America, the lives of Americans and the nature of
our political processes," write Martin and Susan Tolchin. Foreign corporations are now buying
up the U.S. are bargain basement prices, since the devaluation of the dollar. As of the end of 1987,
foreign investment in the United States totaled $1.534 trillion, according to the Commerce
Department.

Foreigners are buying American factories, land, office buildings, and other businesses as
never before. According to Mergersand Acquisitions Magazine, foreign companies spent $41.9
billion in acquiring U.S. firms in 1987, up from $25.2 billion in 1986, and $2.2 billion in 1985. The
Japanese have increased their stale in America sixfold since 1980. Japan in 1988 had $28 billion in
industrial investment in the U.S., in third place behind the British and Dutch.

Five of the ten top banks in California are now Japanese owned. Sixteen of the 25 biggest
banks in the world are now Japanese. In fact, several of Japan's largest banks would be able to
buy one of California's "big four" banks, such as Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Security Pacific
or First Interstate. The only reason they haven't done so is fear of an anti-Japanese backlash.

Robert Kuttner, economics correspondent for the New Republic, wrote in the Los Angeles
Times, "I don't mean to be an alarmist but I get the feeling that America is history."

In his article he pointed out that seven years ago the New York Stock Exchange was worth
nearly four times its Tokyo equivalent; but today stocks listed on the Tokyo stock exchange are
worth $1.2 trillion more than those on the New York Exchange.

"Japan," he wrote, "has half the population, but greater total capital than the United States.,
which means that on a per capita basis Japan is now nearly three times as wealthy as the United
States."

According to Kuttner, three aspects of the Japanese new prosperity are alarming -- the
imbalance, the rate of change, and the trend. He asserted, "The flow of capital from Japan to the
United States is increasingly a one-way street. The rate at which Japan is displacing the United
States as the world's financial behemoth is UNPRECEDENTED in its abruptness. And by every
indication, Japan is widening its industrial and financial lead."

Kuttner points out that it was Japanese investors pulling out of the New York Stock Market
in 1987 which indirectly triggered the massive stock market crash in October of that year. As long
as the dollar-yen relationship is stable, he says, Japanese officials are confident they can continue
recycling dollars back to the U.S. to buy up bonds, stocks, and real estate. Says Kuttner, "We can
become a client nation, and hardly feel the sting."

Oddly, Kuttner adds, one finds that Japanese electronic products sold in Tokyo are 50%
more expensive than in New York.

Although Japan is now rich enough to buy up much of the world, it still operates as if it were
a small, struggling nation. On the other hand, the United States seems to behave as if it were still
the worlds premier economy. Says Kuttner, "The United States still has the illusion that it is the
cock-of-the-walk, is still consuming its way to oblivion and shouldering the burden of an alliance it
no longer dominates."

As Clyde Restowitz writes in his new book Trading Places, "This is surely the first time in
history that a territory in the process of being colonized has actually paid for the right to defend the
colonizer. "

Increasingly, as Japan begins to realize its economic weight and super strength, it will begin to
dictate to other nations, including the United States. As Scripture says, "The rich rule over the
poor," and Japanese investors are already beginning to rule over American employees. Further,
since "the borrower is servant to the lender," it follows that the United States, which has borrowed
its way into the international poor house, will wind up serving the interests of the Japanese!

Truly, the United States has like Esau of old, sold its birthright for a bowl of pottage --
consumer goods! Once again the Japanese are beginning to strut, and swagger, and insolently
throw their weight around the world stage. In 1988 a member of the Japanese cabinet remarked that
Japan was not the aggressor in World War II, but was fighting Asian colonization by the "white
race." Although his comments embarrassed the Japanese government, there was never any
retraction of his words or apology. He was pressured to resign his office, however.

In September, 1986, another Japanese official, Masayuki Fujio, minister of education, was
forced to resign after saying that Korea had willingly accepted colonization by Japan in 1910 and for
claiming that the 1937 "Rape of Nanking" in which Japanese troops slaughtered thousands of
Chinese civilians was just "a part of war."

Seisuke Okuno, serving as land agency chief in Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita's cabinet,
declared, "There was no intention of aggression. The white race had made Asia in to a colony, but
only Japan has been blamed. Who was the aggressor country? It was the white race. I don't see
why Japanese are called militarists and aggressors."

His comments infuriated officials in mainland China. But they went largely unnoticed in the
United States, which along with the French and British was really being accused of starting World
War II.

Strange, isn't it? If some German official today said some equivalent remark, the Western
world would have been up in arms. The outcry would have been furious. As it was, however, Okuno's remarks have stirred up no real flap, and the whole issue seems to be ignored by
Americans. It seems almost as if American officials are thinking, "We mustn't annoy the ones who
feed us -- we mustn't upset the Japanese in any way, since they are footing the bills for our deficit!"

Strange, also, it is how the world so quickly forgets the lessons of history. How soon we
forget that it was Japan's setting out to establish a "Greater Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere" with its
military forces in the years that led up to World War II that finally led to the outbreak of the war.

In 1988 Tsutomo Kawara, the director general of the Japan Defense Agency, stopped off to
visit Jakarta, Indonesia. At the time the Indonesian press noted that it was the first time in 45
years since a Japanese defense official had visited Jakarta. The last visit, actually, was by Japanese
Prime Minister Tojo during World War II.

The visit was significant. It was a reflection on the fact that increasingly the United States
finds itself relying on Japan to buttress the American role in Asia and is pressuring Japan to share
the mantle of defense for the area. This causes much concern, however, among those nations which
were victims of Japanese tyranny and aggression during the Second World War. To many Asian
countries, which still vividly remember the suffering of World War II, the prospect of a re-armed
and ever more powerful Japan is as unsettling as ever.

Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping last year told the Dutch Prime Minister that it was all right for
Japan to become an economic power, but not a military or political one. The Dutch Prime Minister
replied that historically it was unrealistic to hope a nation's aspirations for power would stop at
matters of finance.

Today, with the connivance of the United States, Japan is planning its most assertive role
since World War II in political and diplomatic affairs. A senior state department official who
traveled with Secretary of State Shultz to Asia in 1988 said Japan had recently been undertaking
"things you wouldn't have expected before." Examples cited were Japan's willingness to provide
money to protect shipping in the Persian Gulf; its support for multinational forces in the Sinai; its
pledge to Iraq and Iran of financial aid if they stopped their war; its willingness to provide aid for
Jordan. Declared one Asian diplomat, "What we've seen in the last couple of years is a tremendous
psychological change on the part of the Japanese. It's in the way they look at the world. The
inhibitions, the timidity, have gone."

One Asian official based in Tokyo argued that both the Soviet Union and the United States
have entered a period of "relative decline." He added, "There is some relative decline for the
United States, but most people in Asia are concerned about the pace of that decline and about what
will take America's place as its role diminishes."

A wise Tokyo professor recently warned of the danger of leaping "from self-pity to
arrogance" on the part of Japanese. Many Asian countries are rightly concerned, especially when
they see America calling on Japan to shoulder a greater military spending burden.

The London Times quoted Professor Takeshi Sasaki of Tokyo University. "We're very
concerned about our identity. We can't find a direction in which to lead our people. In this
situation, it's easy to understand that people want to go back to the old style."

Just what is this "old style"? Is there any reason the world should be afraid of a new
Japanese militarism?

Japan has always been a nation that worshipped the warrior spirit -- the spirit of its famed
samurai.

During General MacArthur's occupation of Japan after World War II, one of the most
intriguing changes he made was the banning of the great Kabuki play Chushingura. Known in
English as "The Tale of the 47 Ronin," this play is adapted from an 18th century history in which a
Lord Asano plotted the death of a rival nobleman, Lord Kira. When Asano's attack an Kira failed,
the Shogun ruling Japan ordered Asano to commit seppuku,or ritual suicide.

Asano's suicide meant his loyal samurai soldiers became wanderers without a master for
many years, or "ronin." As the years went by, they plotted their revenge. Finally, in a bold
mission they broke into Lord Kira's house on a snowy wintry night, and murdered him.

Impressed by the Ronin's unswerving loyalty and fealty to their master Asano, even long
after his death, the Shogun allowed them the honor of also committing seppuku.

The Ronin became instant folk heroes, and were immortalized in Japanese myth and drama.
The play was banned by MacArthur because the Allies did not want the Japanese to be entertaining
ideas of vengeance for their total defeat in World War II. But today, the occupation is over; and the
play Chushingura is back. It is celebrated in puppet theaters, comic books, movies and ballets. It
has captured the imagination of an entire nation.

Chushingura is a story about the virtue of finishing a master's interrupted mission, regardless
of how ignoble the mission itself might have been. Says Daniel Burstein, "It is, in short, about the
GLORY TO BE OBTAINED IN SEEKING AND OBTAINING REVENGE. "

Burstein continues: "In a country where Chushingura is the quintessential cultural work, the
idea of Japan's imperial destiny cannot be assumed to have vanished simply because the war was
lost. A great and proud society that endured not only the humiliation of military defeat and foreign
occupation four decades ago, but continues in 1988 to be forced to listen to American
admonishments as if the United States still occupied Japan, will not go on practicing the alien
method of 'turning the other cheek' forever" ( Yen!, p.271).

Will the Japanese and others be so reluctant to fill the vacuum left by the retreating
Americans, as the United States begins to pull its soldiers out of nations around the world in order
to reduce its expenditures? Burstein notes, "Perhaps even more important, superpower
disarmament lowers the threshold Japan will need to match to become a major military power
itself" (p. 273).

Yes, even as the United States and Soviet Union begin to disarm, the way opens up for other
nations -- such as Germany and Japan, the two richest countries on the face of the earth, today - to
begin to become major military powers once again.

The wheel turns; what goes around comes around. History repeats itself. We are witnessing
history in the making! And we will be a part of it!

Today the Japanese people are being inundated with the concept of kokusaika
(internationalization). Says Burstein, "In the West, it is assumed that this talk is a healthy trend,
making the Japanese more open-minded, open-hearted, and open-marketed. In reality it is a
double-edged sword. By breaking down the last vestiges of the postwar Yoshida Doctrine, under
which Japan deliberately shunned global polities and deliberately forswore ambitions beyond its
borders, the climate for revival of an IMPERIAL THRUST is fostered" (p .273).

Burstein concludes, "To assume that because Japan doesn't yet articulate or manifest a clear
vision of global empire implies such a trend won't emerge in the future would be a DANGEROUS
MISCALCULATION! Today, the Ronin are still wandering. Their moment is yet to come"
(p. 274).

Japan is already more militarized than most Americans think. Lee Kuan Yew, the Prime
Minister of Singapore, says that his number one fear for Asia is of Japanese rearmament. Asserts
Yew, "The most terrifying thought for me is a fundamental shift in the belief of the Japanese that
the world that they have known since 1945 is at an end and that they have to either depend on
themselves or come to some understanding with China or the Soviet Union"

There is a widespread fear among Asian leaders that the United States is about to abdicate its
world policeman role, and will turn it over to the Japanese. Japan's military arm today numbers
300,000 troops, with some of the world's best tanks, state-of-the-art fighter aircraft and
antisubmarine equipment. Although Japan spends only one percent of its GNP on rearmament,
considering the fact they have the world's second largest GNP, that amounts to $30 billion per year
-- making Japan the world's third largest military spender after the United States and Soviet Union.

With $30 billion this year Japan has bought 14 new naval vessels, including destroyers,
submarines, and minesweepers; surface-to-air missiles; 108 new aircraft including fighters, antitank
and anti-submarine helicopters, and tanks, howitzers, armored personnel carriers, and anti-chemical
weapons vehicles.

According to Burstein, a high-tech shoulder-fired antiaircraft missile developed by Japan's
Defense Agency is reportedly more accurate than the U.S. made Stinger.

All these things should be cause for the world to worry. As Burstein writes, "As Japan
moves toward a trillion dollars' worth of external assets in the next decade, the arguments in favor
of developing a basic projection-of-power mechanism will grow more fervent. The generation
with painful memories of how militarism nearly destroyed the nation is moving aside. Many of
those coming into power have lived in a world characterized by Japanese success, pride, and even
arrogance" (p. 288).

According to Henry Scott Stokes, a veteran Tokyo correspondent, the younger Japanese
regard the world as their blank tablet on which they will write a large design "That design is the
Japanese flag." He adds, "They say, 'Hurray, the world is ours!"' Says Stokes, these young
Japanese are very international in their thinking, but they are also very nationalistic.

Burstein concludes, "A Japan decoupled from the U.S. military umbrella implies a Japan free
to redesign its own relationships with the Soviet Union, China, and Europe in a way that suits its
own interests first. Since those interests are increasingly divergent from American interests, a
redrawing of the world's alliances and power relationships is a likely concomitant of Japan's
remilitarization " (p. 292).

Daniel Burstein adds this sobering. fateful warning:

"Considering the way the conflict of U.S. and Japanese interests
in the world was once pushed over the brink to actual war, and
considering the ferocity of recent economic antagonisms, it is
not out of the realm of possibility that the process of Japanese
remilitarization could begin within the context of American
global strategy, gradually diverge... separate completely (based
on a reconfiguration of Japan's alliances), and END UP WITH
AMERICAN AND JAPANESE MISSILES POINTED AT
EACH OTHER.

"It is not a prospect Americans ought to take lightly. The remili-
tarization of Japan has all the hallmarks of becoming an issue like
others, where, for shortsighted reasons, Washington takes policy
initiatives whose long-term consequences enhance Japan's strength
and speed America's decline."

Says Burstein, "The world is unstable enough. It surely does not need yet another military
superpower. The United States, which has lost virtually every competitive conflict with Japan in
recent years, certainly does not need to set in motion the twenty-first century possibility of an
ULTIMATE, FINAL SHOWDOWN WITH JAPAN" (p. 292).

Such a nightmarish future is a very real possibility. Has America rearmed its former
enemies, Germany and Japan, only to sow the seeds for its own future destruction in a renewed
round for world domination?

At this point, world observers leave off, and speculate what may or may not happen.

However, we have a "sure word of prophecy" which tells us precisely what is going to occur
during the very next decade, and beyond!

Few realize it, but as I explain in my book LAST DAYS OF PLANET EARTH, the
Anglo-Saxon peoples are descended from ancient Jacob, the grandson of Abraham, through his
son Joseph. They are the inheritors of the Biblical "birthright" promises (I Chron.5:3). They were
prophesied in the "time of the end" to become a great UNION of states -- the United States -- and
a great single nation -- Great Britain (Gen.48:16-22). The younger brother -- Ephraim -- of the two
sons of Joseph, the son of Jacob, was the be the greater, compared to me older brother Manasseh
-- modern Great Britain! Our combined great wealth and power were prophesied in the Holy
Scriptures (see Gen.49:22- 26; Deut33:15-17). For more information on this amazing subject,
write for my booklet, The United States in Prophecy!

However, our nations have forgotten God. We have kicked Him out of our public schools;
we have trampled all over His holy law and commandments; we have forsaken His way.
Therefore, God says, great national curses are soon to befall us -- the curses of Leviticus 26 and
Deuteronomy 28.

Notice! God says to the modern descendants of Joseph and Israel, "And I will set my face
against you, and ye shall be SLAIN before your enemies: they that HATE you shall reign over
you; and ye shall FLEE when none pursueth you" (Lev.26:17).

God continues, "And I will BREAK THE PRIDE OF YOUR POWER; and I will make
your heaven as iron, and your earth as brass" (v.19).

If we would not repent of our sins, God says, "And I will SCATTER YOU among the
heathen, and will draw out a sword after you: and your land shall be desolate, and your cities
waste" (Lev.26:33).

This dire prediction of national calamity is beginning to be fulfilled. In the book of
Deuteronomy, God is even more specific in His punishments for our disobedience and
waywardness. He declares: "The Lord shall send upon thee cursing, vexation, and rebuke, in all
that thou settest thine hand unto for to do, until thou be DESTROYED, and until thou PERISH
QUICKLY; because of the wickedness of thy doings, whereby thou hast forsaken me. . .

"The Lord shall cause thee to be smitten before thine enemies: thou shalt go out one way
against them, and flee seven ways before them: and shalt be removed into all the kingdoms of the
earth" (Deut.28:20, 25).

One of the strange curses which God would bring upon us is foreigners lording it over us in
our own land. Notice! God said, "The stranger that is within thee shall get up above thee very
high; and thou shalt come down very low. He shall lend to thee, and thou shalt not lend to him: he
shall be the head, and thou shalt be the tail" (Deut.28:43).

Why will God bring our nation, the proud United States of America, and the British nations,
into the dust, and punish our peoples?

Look about you. Look at the sin, the lawlessness, the covetousness and greed, the colossal
self-indulgence, the massive indebtedness, the lust for pleasure and the "good things" of life,
so-called.

God says, "Moreover, all these curses shall come upon thee, and shall pursue thee, and
overtake thee, till thou be DESTROYED" -- till our nations are utterly ruined, and prostrate before
our enemies - "BECAUSE THOU HEARKENEDST NOT unto the voice of the Lord thy God,
to KEEP HIS COMMANDMENTS and his statutes which he commanded thee ... BECAUSE
THOU SERVEDST NOT the Lord thy God with JOYFULNESS, and with gladness of heart, for
the abundance of all things; therefore shalt thou serve thine enemies which the Lord shall send
against thee, in hunger, and in thirst, and in nakedness, and in want of all things: and he shall put a
yoke of iron upon thy neck, until he have destroyed thee.

"The Lord shall bring a nation against thee FROM FAR, FROM THE END OF THE
EARTH, as swift as the eagle flieth; a nation whose tongue thou shalt not understand; a nation of
fierce countenance, which shall not regard the person of the old, nor shew favor to the young"
(Deut.28:45-50).

What nation is this?

Japan is surely at the "end of the earth" from the United Stares. Its language very few
Americans understand. It is a fierce, warrior-like, samurai people. During World War II most
Japanese soldiers chose death rather than surrender. To them surrender was dishonorable. They
had the spirit of the kamikaze -- the spirit of suicidal death in attacking the enemy.

The Japanese were infamous for their cruelty, inhuman treatment of prisoners, just as the
Germans were. They, like the Germans, performed horrible medical experiments on prisoners of
war. They forced thousands of Americans to endure the brutality of the Bataan Death March.

No one today seems to know the origins of the Japanese people. Their origins have been
traced back no further than the Korean peninsula. However, just as there is an eastern Cush (India)
and a western Cush (Africa); I believe there is an eastern and a western branch of the ancient
Assyrian Empire. I would not be the least surprised to learn, someday, that the Japanese with their
fierce war-like spirit are actually related, anciently, to the ancestors of the Prussians, the war-like
Germans! The national similarities and characteristics are virtually identical. Both peoples are
probably descended from the ancient Assyrians of history, who were a notoriously bloody and
cruel and oppressive tribe.

Regardless of their national identity, however, God's Word is plain that He will bring a nation
"FROM AFAR," from the ends of the earth, to punish His erring, straying people!

What could be more appropriate? What could be more just? The enemies we defeated in
World War II, whom we built up to be our allies during the Cold War, come back to haunt us and
wreak their vengeance on us in World War III!

Japan is a pagan nation. The national religion of most Japanese is Shintoism, in which the
emperor is deified and worshipped as "god." In addition to the emperor, the Japanese have eight
million "kami" or demon gods.

When Emperor Hirohito died, his son Akihito went through a secret ancient ritual called Dai jo sai. He retreated behind a screen, where the spirit of the sun goddess was to invite him to enter
her womb. According to Shinto belief, when he emerged he was no longer human, but the
living embodiment of the god of the ripened rice plant -- the newly deified emperor of Japan.

Japanese militarism revolves around the cult of the emperor-god. With a new emperor-god,
Japan will begin matching in a new direction; it will be the dawning of a "New Age" in Japan.

Will it be an age of militaristic adventurism? Since the break-up of the Soviet Union, the
world has become an ever-increasingly frightful and dangerous place. The threat of a nuclear arms
race between North Korea and Japan remains a very powerful and distinct possibility. The
government of Japan plans to import hundreds of tons of re-processed plutonium from Europe --
and has already begun. Only 7 kilos (14 pounds) of plutonium are needed to manufacture a
nuclear bomb as powerful as the one which destroyed Hiroshima in 1945!

Could Trade War between Japan and the United States, which feels direly threatened by
Japanese imports already, lead to a new surprise, "sneak attack" upon America in the future, similar
to the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941?

Could Japan become tempted to "strike again"? Could they be tempted, by a sinister satanic
influence, to once again launch an attack on the United States, this time with nuclear-tipped
missiles?

Let's face it. America's enormous international DEBT, now approaching a TRILLION
DOLLARS, is not just bad for the economy, and bad business -- it is SIN in God's sight --
lawlessness (I John 3:4). It is irresponsible covetousness. God's Word says, "Owe no man
anything" (Rom.13:8), and, "Thou shalt not covet" (Exo.20:17). According to the principles of
God's Word, a nation as well as a person should "pay as it goes" and avoid contracting
irresponsible debt obligations which it may find itself UNABLE TO REPAY!

What would Japan do if the United States someday decides to "welch" on its enormous debt?

The Japanese are hard-nosed businessmen. They do not take kindly to cheats, defrauders,
chislers, and swindlers! Those nations who go head over heels into debt will wake up one day
having to pay the piper. Inflicting the pain of having to work harder to pay off debts on
Americans, says Burstein, "is already a conscious goal of an increasingly influential section of the
Japanese business community" (Yen!, p.57). Says Takashi Hosomi, former chairman of the
Japanese Overseas Economic Cooperation Fund, "The basic rule for debtor nations is to pay back
their borrowings in real terms and feel the PAIN of accumulating debts irresponsibly" (ibid.).

Says Burstein,

"In that dangerous debtor's prison of tomorrow, an emboldened
Japan will hold America's feet to the fire to get paid what it is
owed and to reap the rewards of its investments."

As prosperity has come to Japan with a vengeance, the attitude of the Japanese has begun to
undergo a profound change. Their mind-set has changed to one of swashbuckling self-confidence,
and swaggering internationalism. Humility has turned into arrogance, almost overnight.

Japanese capital now threatens to flood the world, like a dam burst. A popular game show
on Japanese television is titled HOW MUCH FOR THE WHOLE WORLD? In New York,
where Japanese are the most numerous tourist groups, bus tours take them to see Manhattan
skyscrapers now owned by the Japanese. "Welcome to the next Japanese city," the tour guide says
as he begins the tour. Meanwhile, Tokyo tour operators promote tours of the beaches of Australia
and New Zealand as "the Japanese Coast. "

Los Angeles is now known as the "24th ward" of Tokyo. One Japanese advisor to Nakasone
suggested buying Hawaii from the U.S. in order to balance the American trade deficits. Another
Japanese businessman seriously boasted on television how Japan would turn Australia into its
mining concession and the United Stares into its grain silo in the next century.

Meanwhile, Japanese intellectuals no longer conceal their contempt for the United States, and
the number of Japanese who said they felt "friendly" toward the U.S. sank to a postwar low,
according to opinion polls. Blatant "America-bashing" has become commonplace in Japan, and the
Japanese commentators condemn the U.S. for always blaming Japan for its trade troubles.

The Japanese are a people of extremes. After World War II they were extremely subservient
in their attitude. But with their newfound wealth and power, they are beginning to feel superior
and cocky, with a return of their historic arrogance and pride. The "ugly Japanese" is replacing the
"ugly American" around the world A disquieting joke which made the rounds of Tokyo bars
went like this:

Question: "How will Japan win the next war?"

Answer: "We'll get together with the Germans again, but
this time we'll leave the Italians out of it"

Like the German "Aryan racial supremacy" theory of Hitlerite Germany, the Japanese have
always been a very ethnocentric people. A best-seller in Japan was titled The Japanese Brain.
Another best-seller there helped create a wave of anti-Semitism. It was titled The Secret of Jewish Power to Control the World. In 1986-87 nearly one hundred titles of books about Jews inundated Japanese bookstores, all of than negative and accusatory.

The Japanese, as they are overwhelmed by their success, become believers that they are a
"Master Race" of supermen, and boast of their "monoracial" society.

With this in mind, the Japanese have already begun to play "hardball" in the U.S. economic
markets. At one 1986 auction the Japanese bought 80 percent of Washington's Treasury bond
issue. They had become America's lead banker. Says Burstein, "To put it in street language,
Washington had grown addicted to foreign capital. America had become a desperate junkie, and
Japan was its pusher" (p .78).

In May of 1986, however, the Japanese hoarded their bonds, causing a big squeeze in the
market, and much of Wall Street was caught in an economic vise. Stormed one trader, "The
Japanese did to us on the long bond what they did to us at Pearl Harbor." Although the Japanese finally relented, and saved the day by making $500 million of their hoarded bonds available, their "power play" was intended to teach Americans a lesson, that they were too powerful to be denied their rightful place as primary dealers.

Says Burstein of this scary panic, "An evil-intentioned Tokyo trying a carry out a 'Pearl
Harbor'-style attack on American markets presents a straightforward, alarming challenge. An
investment community that doesn't yet understand the degree in which America's finances are now
subject to foreign controls -- and therefore continues to rely one-sidedly on American thinking -- is
capable of SLEEPING THROUGH THE APOCALYPSE and waking only after it's TOO LATE" ( Yen!, p.82).

In the Scriptures, God Almighty characterizes His people of these last days as a "wanton
whore" dishing out her services and assets to her international "lovers," Gentile countries around
the world. He compares modern "Israel," the United States and British Commonwealth, as well as
the Jews, as a profligate prostitute.

God says, "Son of man, there were two women, the daughters of one mother: And they
committed whoredom in Egypt; they committed whoredoms in their youth .. . And the names of
them were Aholah the elder, and Aholibah her sister and they were mine, and they bare me sons
and daughters . . . And Aholah played the harlot when she was mine; and she DOTED ON HER
LOVERS, on the Assyrians her neighbors . . . Thus she committed whoredom with them, with all
them that were the chosen men of Assyria, and with all on whom she doted: with all their idols
(televisions, videos, Toyotas, etc.) she defiled herself. . . Wherefore I have delivered ha into the
hand of her lovers, into the hand of the Assyrians. upon whom she doted

"These discovered her nakedness: they took her sons and her daughters, and slew her with the
sword: and she became famous among women; for they had executed judgment upon her"
(Ezek. 23:1-10).

This is a parable for the United States today! God does not change! We, like ancient Israel,
have been playing the international prostitute!

A day of punishment and judgment is coming soon upon our nations! The modern Aholah and
Aholibah will be judged, and punished by the modern "Assyrians," and all our international
"lovers"!

God says, "For thus saith the LORD; We have heard a voice of trembling, of fear, and not of
peace. Ask ye now, and see whether a man doth travail with child? wherefore do I see every man
with his hands on his loins, as a woman in travail, and all faces are tuned into paleness? Alas! for
that day is great, so that none is like it: it is even the time of JACOB'S TROUBLE; but he shall be
saved out of it" (Jer.30:5-7).

Yes, great suffering -- Tribulation -- lies ahead for our modern nations. Jesus Christ Himself
said, foretelling this very same time of calamity and catastrophe internationally, "For then shall be
GREAT TRIBULATION, SUCH AS WAS NOT SINCE THE BEGINNING OF THE
WORLD, TO THIS TIME, no, nor ever shall be. And except those days should be shortened,
there should NO FLESH be saved [alive, Moffatt translation]: but for the elect's sake those days
shall be shortened" (Matt. 24:21-22).

After going through horrendous suffering, after we finally learn our lessons, and after we
finally repent as a nation, those left alive will be saved by the intervention of Almighty God, and
the return of Jesus Christ the Messiah, Himself!

The time has come to shout the warning, to urge our peoples to repent, and to return to their
God, before they perish, and suffer all the calamities written in the prophesied punishments of
God's Word.

God Almighty THUNDERS to this generation, "REPENT, AND TURN YOURSELVES
from all your transgressions; so iniquity shall not be your ruin.

"CAST AWAY from you all your transgressions, whereby ye have transgressed; and make
you a new heart, and a new spirit: for WHY WILL YE DIE, O HOUSE OF ISRAEL?"
(Ezek.18:30-31).

What about you? Will you ignore Gods warning? Will you insist an dying? Will you reject
the loving warning of your Holy Creator, the Almighty God?

God says, "Son of man, I have made thee a WATCHMAN to the house of Israel: therefore
hear the word at my mouth, and GIVE THEM WARNING FROM ME" (Ezek.3:17).

Ezekiel, who was a TYPE of God's latter-day "watchmen" of this present generation, was
told: "When I say unto the wicked, Thou shalt surely die; and thou givest him not warning, nor
speakest to warn the wicked from his wicked way, to save his life; the same wicked man shall die
in his iniquity; but his blood will I require at thine hand. Yet IF THOU WARN THE WICKED,
and he turn not from his wicked way, he shall die in his iniquity; but thou hast delivered thy soul.

"Again, when a righteous man doth turn from his righteousness, and commit iniquity, and I
lay a stumbling block before him, he shall DIE: because thou hast not given him warning, he shall
die in his sin, and his righteousness which he hath done shall not be remembered; but his blood
will I require at thine hand. Nevertheless if thou WARN the righteous man, that the righteous sin
not, and he doth not sin, he shall surely LIVE, because he is WARNED; also thou hast delivered
thy soul" (Ezek.3:18-21).

God thunders, in the book of Amos the prophet, "Shall a trumpet be blown in the city, and
the people not be afraid? shall there be EVIL in the city, and the LORD hath not done it?
SURELY THE LORD GOD WILL DO NOTHING, but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets" (Amos 3:6-7).

Says the New International Version, here: "Surely the Sovereign LORD does nothing
WITHOUT REVEALING HIS PLAN to his servants the prophets" (Amos 3:7).

The prophet Amos was inspired to give this message from God, saying: "I have overthrown
some of you, as God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah, and ye were as a firebrand plucked out of
the burning: yet have ye not returned unto me, saith the Lord. Therefore thus will I do unto thee, O
Israel: and because I will do this unto thee, PREPARE TO MEET THY GOD, O ISRAEL "
(Amos 4:11-12).

Time is running out. Turn to God now, with all your heart and soul and might, that He may
even yet save you from the horrible holocaust and destruction to come shortly. As Paul said to the
Athenians of his day: "And the times of this ignorance God winked at; BUT NOW
COMMANDETH ALL MEN EVERYWHERE TO REPENT: Because he hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness. . . " (Acts 17:30-31).

The Japanese are coming! God's End-Time Judgments are coming!

What are you going to do about it?