Israel, Nuclear War, and CBDCs: What Scripture Says

When you look at your phone in the morning, does it feel like the world is sliding into societal chaos?

You are trying to build a career, raise your kids, and protect your home, but the baseline of society is shifting right under your feet.

In this episode, we tackle the geopolitical signs of the Biblical end times—from the historic re-establishment of Israel to nuclear capability, state-controlled digital currencies, and the massive uptick in natural disasters. We aren't looking at the news to worry; we are looking at Scripture to help us get prepared.
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10 Signs We’re Living in the Biblical End Times (And What Men Should Do About It)

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Equipping Men for the End Times. Be Informed. Be Prepared. Be Faithful.
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#ManhoodTribes #EndTimes #Prophecy #Geopolitics #SpiritualPreparedness

Timestamps
00:00 The world feels like it's sliding into chaos
04:05 Sign 1: The supernatural re-emergence of Israel
07:15 Sign 2: Global violence and the reality of nuclear war
10:30 Sign 3: CBDCs and the infrastructure for global control
15:15 Sign 4: Climate, natural disasters, and birth pangs
17:30 Shifting from panicked watching to spiritual leadership

PS: Feeling like the world is getting crazier by the day, but you’re not sure what it all means? Download our free guide The Final Countdown to explore the biblical end-times signs that help us interpret this season of chaos.

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Transcript

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Men, if you're waking up in the morning and looking at your phone, and it feels like the world is sliding into chaos, you are not alone in feeling that way. And yet all the while you're just trying to build a career, raise your kids, protect your home, but it feels like the baseline of what works in society is shifting out from underneath your feet. Your local church likely isn't talking about it, and the news media is only talking about it in a way that's trying to drive you to more chaos, more anxiety, and frankly, more clicks on their behalf. But today, we aren't looking at the news to worry. We are looking at the script to help us get prepared. My name's Don. I'm the host here at the Manhood Tribes channel, and I wanna welcome you to the show and to invite you into something that we're gonna do over the next few months that's gonna be a little different. If you have been a part of Manhood Tribes for a little while, you have seen our, our content, uh, and our episodes that focus a lot on manhood. We're gonna continue that focus, but we're gonna look at it through a little bit of a different lens. For the next few months, we are going to be taking a look at the biblical end times and the global news that's going on around us, and trying to evaluate, are we actually living in the end times? Is, is this season the season that we are told to be prepared for as men of faith? And if so, and this is the most important part, what should we do about it? If this is actually the end of the world or the end of the age in some sense, what is it that we as men of faith should be doing to either prepare for it or to be aware of what's coming? Now, I have a few things that I wanna make you aware of today as we're gonna get started with this first episode to let you know some things that are available to you. The first thing is that I have a free resource that some of this episode is gonna be based off of. Called The Final Countdown. It is 10 signs to help us evaluate if we are living in the Biblical end times. We're gonna talk through a few of those signs today, but you can go and download that now if you want to at manhoodtribes.com/countdown. It's free. Uh, it'll help you understand a little bit more of all of what we're talking about, help you hold your smartphone in one hand and the Bible in the other, and figure out what is actually going on today. Okay? The other is that there is a place for men who might be interested in this topic to be able to get more information and to figure out how to handle things better in the context of a community of men who are dealing with it as well. Not to just get more informed, but to also get prepared and to be faithful in the way that we live before Christ here at the end of the age. Okay? That is called the Manhood Tribes Community. It is available for you to check out now at manhoodtribes.com/community, and I'm gonna tell you more about that here as we get along in the episode. So what I want to do today, though, is just to begin looking at those 10 signs that I mentioned in that final countdown document. We're gonna look at four of them today just to kinda begin along the roads of what are these signs. Now, these things are all things that are mentioned in Scripture. They are signs that we are given as men of faith to help us evaluate what kind of season we are actually living in. Faithful men of Christ in pretty much every age have thought that their age was the time that Jesus was coming back, okay? And there's good reasons for that, and honestly, if we look at the Scriptures, I think there's a level of preparedness and readiness that is supposed to be expected of us as men of faith no matter what age we're living in. But Jesus also seemed to be clear that when it is actually the season of his return, we should be able to look at the signs and know what's going on. So can we do that? Can we look at the signs of our age and be able to determine if this is the time that Jesus might be returning? He's clear that we can't know the day and the hour, but I do think we might be able to discern the season, and these signs are gonna help us be able to do that. Can we look at these things and reliably say that our season might be the season? Okay? So in today's episode, we are gonna cover what I'll call the geopolitical signs. We are looking at some things going on in the world, and in the arena of politics, and in nations, and in wars, and all of those kinds of things to help us determine is this the era that Jesus might be returning. The first sign has to do with the fact that we have here in our world today the nation of Israel Now, I know there's a lot of things that can and could be said about Israel. As you open up your news feed, Israel is all over the news in some ways that are good, in some ways that are bad. You probably have very strong opinions about what you think about supporting or not supporting Israel. That's totally understandable. I'm not necessarily gonna argue for any of that today. What I do want to point you to is the reality of what is true just simply based on the fact that there is a nation of Israel that exists in our world today. In Matthew chapter four, uh, 24, Jesus says this to us when he's giving us some indication of what the end of the age will kind of look like. He says, "Now learn this lesson from the fig tree." And anytime we see a fig tree in the Bible, uh, a fig tree can be a representation of the nation or the people of Israel. "Learn this lesson from the fig tree. As soon as its twigs get tender and its leaves come out, you know that summer is near. Even so, when you see all these things, you know that it is near, right at the door." Now, there's a metaphorical layer to this prophecy which just simply, you know, helps us understand the idea that if you're a farmer or you know anything about agriculture, you know that when the fig is beginning to blossom, that its fruit is close at hand, okay? That's true of just about any tree. But the fact that Jesus specifically names the fig tree probably means that this teaching has some reference in particular to the nation of Israel. For 1,900 years, the Jewish people were scattered without a homeland. And then in 1948, really against all historical odds, this has never happened with another nation or people group in the history of the world, Israel became a nation again in just a single day. Now, we don't have time to explore all the World War II history and dynamics and the post-World War II, uh, treaties and agreements and all of that that actually was involved in creating Israel as a nation, but the point is, is that it happened. We now have a nation of Israel, and for most of history since Jesus Christ was around, there has not been one. And when the nation of Israel came back into play, you can think of that as sort of like starting the countdown clock. This was really the sign that began the era of saying, "All right. We really are getting close to the return of Christ." And there are some other things that have to happen within the context of a nation of Israel that will indicate we are actually in the end-time season. We haven't gotten to some of those things yet, and we'll talk about those signs on another episode, but the point is this sign does lay the foundation for, yeah, there are some things that are gonna happen within a nation of Israel, and those things were made possible by the fact that we actually have a nation of Israel today Okay? Sign number two. Let's just be honest about the biggest elephant in the room, which is just global violence and the emergence of wars nearly everywhere. Jesus again says in Matthew chapter 24, "For then there will be great distress, unequaled from the beginning of the world until now, and never to be equaled again. If those days had not been cut short, no one would survive, survive. But for the sake of the elect, those days will be shortened." All right. Now, you've probably heard the, uh, a similar verse talking about the idea of there will be wars and rumors of wars. All right, here's the thing. This, this is one of the signs that pretty much every generation of Christians has looked to and said, "Maybe it's our generation," because war has been pretty much a staple of humanity all throughout the history of civilization. What's different and perhaps unique about our era that does draw attention to this sign maybe being more relevant than it used to be in the past is the amount of global conflict that really has increased. If you plot out what global conflicts have looked like, uh, over the course of history, we are experiencing them more frequently and more intensely now than has pretty much happened at any era in human history. Maybe at the beginning of the 20th century we saw that with the World Wars. Um, but then with the threat of nuclear weapons, global peace really shifted. Yes, we had some significant skirmishes here and there, but not to the scale that we're beginning to see here in the 21st century. And even though ironically it was the threat of nuclear war that has served as a deterrent to global war for most of the past century, nuclear war is now actually the thing that may allow for the fulfillment of some of the prophecies in the Book of Revelation that talks about the elimination of human population at large scales. Maybe even a third of the human population being eliminated, uh, or killed in some kind of global conflict. That's not something that's really ever r- ever been possible before up until our age. And now we have it very simply with just the press of a few buttons from some global leaders, and all of a sudden nuclear warfare might just wipe out a significant portion of the world's population So these things are not meant to scare us. They are meant to draw us to the attention that, yes, those kinds of things are possible, and because they are possible, they might indicate that we are living in the era where Jesus could return. This is the kind of thing that would point to His actual return and this being the end of the age. So this is not a warning for us to be able to simply, uh, increase our cortisol levels, right? This is not about getting stressed. It's also not about looking for an escape hatch or a bunker to just simply, like, get prepared and hide. This is meant to be a call to get ready and to be able to stand firm to the end. Are we developing the kind of resources relationally and spiritually that will help us maintain our allegiance to Jesus all the way through the end? Okay, now let's talk about sign number three in the geopolitical arena, which is the infrastructure for global control. In Revelation chapter 13, we read this about the end times age. It says, "It also forced all people, great and small, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hands or on their foreheads," this is what you've probably heard referred to as the mark of the beast, "so that they could not buy or sell unless they had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of its name." Now, what is this about, and what does it have to do with our current age? Well, it clearly is some kind of an indication that there will be a governmental control on commerce, that we will not have access to buying and selling goods unless we have the mark of the beast. The beast is what is opposed to Christ. So in the end times, we're going to see really that everything comes down to black and white choices. You are either with Christ or you are against Him. Or what it's gonna feel more like in the world is you are either with the global leadership or you are against them, and to be with the global leadership is to be against Christ. So if you're going to try to follow Jesus, it's going to require standing firm against the direction that the global leadership is going in. This is gonna be really hard to do, and one of the ways that they're going to make it really hard to do that is by blocking people out of commerce and not allowing us to be able to get access to the things that we need just for sheer survivability. One of the ways that we see this beginning to happen already is through the emergence of what are called CBDCs, central bank digital currencies. Now, what is that? CBDCs are just basically a way for governments to be able to turn their printed money into a digital currency and to essentially move people into using the central state-controlled bank as their actual bank. So instead of using Chase or Capital One or Bank of America or whatever bank you use as the place that you hold your money, which is a privately held bank, instead of it being privately held, they're gonna have us move all of our funds into a centrally or state-held fund. And in order to do that, that's going to help solve a couple problems for governments around the world. One is something like the type of financial fallout crisis that we saw in the late 2000s. By having our money in government-backed banks, that becomes much less likely of a scenario. But the other thing that it really, uh, helps governments do is to bypass the threat of cryptocurrencies. Cryptocurrencies right now are not controlled by any state. They are decentralized entirely. And so that means that if people en masse were to begin to shift their funds into things like cryptocurrencies, it could bankrupt governments all over the world and totally disrupt and destroy our existing financial systems. Now, that really could create chaos and panic. Governments are aware of that, and so they're trying to come up with ways to keep the financial system based on state-run currencies, and these CBDCs are one of the ways that they are coming up with doing that. But by having all of our money in a digital fund that is state-run, we also assume the risk that at some point the state could just decide to turn off our access to our own funds, that that money no longer becomes ours. It is now controlled by the state. And if there becomes a global state, meaning it is run by one figure or one governmental agency like we might see foretold in the Book of Revelation through the man of lawlessness or what some people call the Antichrist, if that really does become a possibility and we all have our money in these digital currencies, then they have the ability to say, "Hey, you're not gonna have access to your money unless you take this mark." Now, that is frightening. That's really scary. But we are seeing the rise of that possibility already. Multiple nations around the world have CBDCs, and many more are beta testing them at the moment, including the United States and most Western countries. So this is becoming a real possibility of something that could happen in our lifetime, again, foretelling the possibility that this really is the end of the age. Now, last sign, sign number four that we're gonna talk about today And this one is a little different because it's not specifically geopolitical, although it is related to something that nation states are very interested in, which is climate and natural disasters. Really, we are seeing a massive uptick in the amount of natural disasters that are happening in our world. It's not just you who thinks there are more reports of hurricanes and tsunamis and earthquakes and all of those kinds of things going on around the world. It actually is happening. Here's what we hear about in Luke chapter twenty-one. "There will be great earthquakes, famines and pestilences in various places, and fearful events and great signs from heaven. These will all be foretellers of the end age." But you might say, "Haven't there always been those things?" Right? What, what's different about the way that our world is going right now? Well, the way that Jesus portrays it is that we would experience those things as birth pangs or birth pains. In other words, that just in the way that a woman experiences contractions as she's ready-- r- getting ready to give birth, they increase in intensity and in frequency, and that is exactly what we're seeing. Since the 1970s, the frequency of great disasters has increased significantly, and just like that woman in labor, we are beginning to experience those birth pains. The Earth itself is getting ready for the end. The increase of intensity and frequency of natural disasters is actually a sign that we should be paying attention to to help us know that the end is actually near. Now, here's the thing. You can hear all of these things and go, "Okay. Well, sure, like, those things are interesting and, hey, maybe that does mean that the end is near, uh, but what am I supposed to do about it? What can I do about global currencies or the increase in earthquakes around the world?" And the truth is you can't do a thing about that. For the most part, none of us can. There's a select few people around the world who might be involved in things related specifically to that kind of stuff that could get their hands dirty in trying to help prevent or change the course of human history as it relates to that kind of stuff. For ninety-nine percent of us, that is not the case. We can't do a dang thing about any of it. Jesus, fortunately, is not asking us to do a dang thing about any of that. He's not saying we need to try to prevent that. He's also not saying that we need to worry about it. It's not something that should cause us anxiety or panic, but what it should do is cause us to be ready, to get prepared for this season of his return. Hearing about these signs, men, shouldn't make you want to look for an escape hatch, to just try to get away from it all and assume Jesus is coming back, I guess I'll be fine, but in the meantime, I'm not going to worry about all this mess. That's not at all how Jesus is calling us to be ready for the season. You cannot lead your family through a global chaos storm if you are isolated in some digital echo chamber of doom scrolling. Isolation is a tactical liability in the season that is coming before us. Instead, it's time to shift from panicked end times watching to prepared spiritual leadership. And that's exactly what we are doing inside the Manhood Tribes community. I mentioned it to you at the beginning of the episode, and I want to invite you to consider being a part of it. Within this community, we don't just talk about headlines. This isn't just about scratching the itch of curiosity and getting more informed about the timeline of the end times and what all is coming. Instead, we are focusing on practical preparedness and being ready for this season. We have an intel room where we analyze current events and what's going on in light of a biblical lens that helps us understand what's happening. We have an end times academy where we read through books that are helping us to be able to make sense of the context around us. And we also create for ourselves manhood challenges that help us to develop the preparedness and the spiritual readiness to stand firm to the end and to maintain our allegiance to Jesus. I want to invite you to check out our community and to be a part of it. You can sign up at manhoodtribes.com slash community. You can use the code 10 signs to be able to get your first month for free and come check out all that we're doing. Men, I want to help you to move to a place of hope and peace because that's what Jesus promises us. But the only way to do that is in the context of a community of others who are trying to do the same thing. So come join us at the Manhood Tribes community. I look forward to seeing you there.