Pastor's Comments July 27 - August 3, 2012

“Then if you walk contrary to Me, and are not willing to obey Me, I will bring SEVEN TIMES MORE PLAGUES (intensifying), according to your sins. I will also send wild beasts among you, which shall rob you of your children, destroy your livestock, and make you few in number, and your HIGHWAYS shall be desolate.” Leviticus 26:21-22.

The fury of nature continues striking at the stomachs of America and Britain with the searing heat, little to no rain, crops wilting in the breadbasket states, tornadoes, fires burning in various states, and worsening!

This appears to be the settling in of the real beginning of the severe Famine as made known by God through Joel.

If this is true, and it is believed to be, the severest effects of the famine will not be felt for one, or possibly two more years!

The cost of food is already spiraling and will become much greater next year, and even worse the year after with little to no food available— possibly severe famine by then!

There are those who say drought has been seen before in earlier years; and they are right! However when we consider where we are now in time with all of the many unresolvable problems facing the House of Joseph, along with the dramatic escalation of sin and the acceptance of it by more than 50 percent of the populace, including the leaders and court systems, should tell us this has come to be a time like no other, and fits fully with end-time Bible prophecies (Isaiah 1:4-10).

Please note from the following news articles what is taking place in the breadbasket states of America from which is received most of the needed staples for the nation’s food supply:

One of the Driest Years on Record

The government has declared one-third of the nation’s counties – more than 1,200 across 29 states – to be federal disaster areas as a result of a drought affecting large areas of the country. . . .

Left and center, Mashid Mohadjerin for The New York Times; Scott Olson/Getty Images

The following News Articles make known the worsening agricultural problems due to the very serious drought:

MINNEAPOLIS -- The record drought gripping half the country will help push food prices up by 3 percent to 4 percent next year, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said Wednesday.

Milk, eggs, beef, poultry and pork prices will all be affected by the drought, which has pushed up prices for feed. Beef prices are expected to see the biggest jump at 4 percent to 5 percent. Dairy product prices are forecast to climb 3.5 percent to 4.5 percent; poultry and egg prices are projected to rise 3 percent to 4 percent; and pork prices are expected to rise 2.5 percent to 3.5 percent in 2013, the agency said.

"In 2013 as a result of this drought we are looking at above-normal food price inflation. ... Consumers are certainly going to feel it," USDA economist Richard Volpe said.

Normal grocery price inflation is about 2.8 percent, he added, so even at the low end of the projected range people will see their grocery expenses rise more than usual next year. The USDA kept its projected food price increase for 2012 steady at 2.5 percent to 3.5 percent.

The figures are the agency's first food price projections to factor in the drought, though farmers and others have been warning that prices will rise. The drought has sent corn, soybean and other commodity prices soaring in recent weeks as fields dry out and crops wither across much of the country's midsection.

Volpe said the drought is not expected to affect prices for fruits and vegetables. Most of those crops are irrigated. The USDA is projecting an overall 2 percent to 3 percent increase for all fruits and vegetables next year, the same as it expects this year.

USDA economists were aware of the drought a month ago when they did their last projections but didn't know how bad it would get, Volpe said.

"This drought was a surprise for everybody," Volpe said. "The USDA was forecasting a record year for the corn crop until this drought materialized. Now we're not going to get that."

Poultry prices will be the first to rise because of the drought because chickens and turkeys need only a few months to grow to market size, he said. Beef and pork take longer, and the agency actually revised its beef price projection for 2012 downward because producers are sending more cattle to the market at the moment as they reduce their herds in response to the drought, he said.

Meat and poultry prices are the most affected because feed prices represent the biggest part of their cost of production. Processed food prices are less affected by changes in commodity prices because ingredients typically make up just a fraction of their production costs.

REUTERS

Drought deepens worries about food supplies, prices

Reuters) - Alarm grew over the unrelenting Midwest drought on Tuesday, as one of the top corporate leaders in agriculture warned that the government must act quickly to reduce the amount of corn going to ethanol to prevent a sharp spike in food prices. . . .

Grain analysts polled by Reuters pointed to a U.S. corn crop of 11.2 billion bushels, the smallest in six years and down 14 percent from USDA's latest forecast of 12.97 billion. Initial forecasts were for a crop of more than 14 billion bushels.

Soybeans, which were planted later and until now escaped the drought's pressure, are now also being hurt. Analysts predict a 2.834 billion bushel harvest, the smallest in four years, and down from USDA's latest estimate of 3.05 billion bushels. . . .”

REUTERS

Emergency drought aid expands as Midwest bakes

“. . . Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack took more steps to provide drought-hit farmers with relief, naming another 218 counties in 12 states as disaster areas due to the drought and making farmers eligible for low-interest loans and other aid.

The USDA has now designated 1,584 counties in 32 states -- more than half of all counties in the United States -- as disaster areas, 1,452 due to drought. . . .”

The news is not good in the United Kingdom as well:

Bloomberg News

U.K. Wheat Survey Finds 97% Shows Fungal Blight Signs

U.K. winter-wheat tests found 97 percent of samples showed signs of fusarium head blight, a fungal disease encouraged by wet weather that can reduce yields and produce grain-spoiling toxins.

Most of the symptoms in the surveyed samples were caused by fungal species that don’t produce toxins, CropMonitor wrote in a report on its website. The toxin risk for the U.K. was rated moderate to high, it said.

The U.K. is the European Union’s third-largest wheat grower. The country’s harvest will be as much as 10 days delayed this year after wet weather and a lack of sunshine slowed plant development this year, the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board reported last week.

“Despite being wet in June, the weather was also very cool, which appears to have favored fusarium species that don’t go on to produce mycotoxins just before harvest,” the U.K.’s National Farmers Union wrote in an online statement today.

The U.K. received more rain in the first two weeks of July than it normally gets in all of the month, according to the Met Office. That followed the country’s wettest June since records began in 1910, and the coolest temperatures since 1991.

Fusarium head blight can be caused by the fungus fusarium graminearum, which produces a mycotoxin called deoxynivalenol, also known as vomitoxin. Pigs may refuse to eat grain with the toxin, and humans eating flour made from contaminated wheat may experience fever, headaches and vomiting, according to the American Phytopathological Society.

Fungal head blight can cause “severe” crop losses, and is estimated to have cost U.S. wheat and barley farmers more than $3 billion since 1990, according to the society.

Toxin-Producing Species

CropMonitor said 90 percent of wheat samples collected from five sites across England have been assessed, with the specific pathogens causing the head blight symptoms identified for 37 percent of the samples.

Fusarium graminearum was found in 19 percent of the samples, while fusarium culmorum, another toxin-producing species, was present in 7 percent of wheat surveyed.

“To date, the South West appears to have the highest risk of mycotoxin contamination,” CropMonitor wrote. “The level of rainfall between now and harvest will determine the level and type of mycotoxin contamination in grain.”

In the South West region, 29 percent of samples were contaminated with fusarium graminearum, similar to infection levels in 2007 and 2008 of 33 percent and 24 percent, respectively, CropMonitor wrote.

CropMonitor is a service run by the Food and Environment Research Agency, and partners include the Home-Grown Cereals Authority, the Association of Independent Crop Consultants and Bayer AG (BAYN)’s crop-chemical and seeds unit. . . .”

The fury of Nature is also creating preliminary problems for the nation’s roadways that over time will worsen. This can be a lead-in to the roadways becoming desolate though there will be other problems that will combine with them to fulfill the prophecy in Leviticus 26:22.

By MATTHEW L. WALD and JOHN SCHWARTZ

Published: July 25, 2012

WASHINGTON — From highways in Texas to nuclear power plants in Illinois, the concrete, steel and sophisticated engineering that undergird the nation’s infrastructure are being taxed to worrisome degrees by heat, drought and vicious storms.

On a single day this month here, a US Airways regional jet became stuck in asphalt that had softened in 100-degree temperatures, and a subway train derailed after the heat stretched the track so far that it kinked — inserting a sharp angle into a stretch that was supposed to be straight. In East Texas, heat and drought have had a startling effect on the clay-rich soils under highways, which “just shrink like crazy,” leading to “horrendous cracking,” said Tom Scullion, senior research engineer with the Texas Transportation Institute at Texas A&M University. In Northeastern and Midwestern states, he said, unusually high heat is causing highway sections to expand beyond their design limits, press against each other and “pop up,” creating jarring and even hazardous speed bumps.

Excessive warmth and dryness are threatening other parts of the grid as well. In the Chicago area, a twin-unit nuclear plant had to get special permission to keep operating this month because the pond it uses for cooling water rose to 102 degrees; its license to operate allows it to go only to 100. According to the Midwest Independent System Operator, the grid operator for the region, a different power plant had had to shut because the body of water from which it draws its cooling water had dropped so low that the intake pipe became high and dry; another had to cut back generation because cooling water was too warm.

The frequency of extreme weather is up over the past few years, and people who deal with infrastructure expect that to continue. Leading climate models suggest that weather-sensitive parts of the infrastructure will be seeing many more extreme episodes, along with shifts in weather patterns and rising maximum (and minimum) temperatures.

“We’ve got the ‘storm of the century’ every year now,” said Bill Gausman, a senior vice president and a 38-year veteran at the Potomac Electric Power Company, which took eight days to recover from the June 29 “derecho” storm that raced from the Midwest to the Eastern Seaboard and knocked out power for 4.3 million people in 10 states and the District of Columbia.

In general, nobody in charge of anything made of steel and concrete can plan based on past trends, said Vicki Arroyo, who heads the Georgetown Climate Center at Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, a clearinghouse on climate-change adaptation strategies.

Highways, Mr. Scullion noted, are designed for the local climate, taking into account things like temperature and rainfall. “When you get outside of those things, man, all bets are off.” As weather patterns shift, he said, “we could have some very dramatic failures of highway systems.”

Adaptation efforts are taking place nationwide. Some are as huge as the multibillion-dollar effort to increase the height of levees and flood walls in New Orleans because of projections of rising sea levels and stronger storms to come; others as mundane as resizing drainage culverts in Vermont, where Hurricane Irene damaged about 2,000 culverts. “They just got blown out,” said Sue Minter, the Irene recovery officer for the state.

In Washington, the subway system, which opened in 1976, has revised its operating procedures. Authorities will now watch the rail temperature and order trains to slow down if it gets too hot. When railroads install tracks in cold weather, they heat the metal to a “neutral” temperature so it reaches a moderate length, and will withstand the shrinkage and growth typical for that climate. But if the heat historically seen in the South becomes normal farther north, the rails will be too long for that weather, and will have an increased tendency to kink. So railroad officials say they will begin to undertake much more frequent inspection.

Some utilities are re-examining long-held views on the economics of protecting against the weather. Pepco, the utility serving the area around Washington, has repeatedly studied the idea of burying more power lines, and the company and its regulators have always decided that the cost outweighed the benefit. But the company has had five storms in the last two and a half years for which recovery took at least five days, and after the derecho last month, the consensus has changed. Both the District of Columbia and Montgomery County, Md., have held hearings to discuss the option — though in the District alone, the cost would be $1.1 billion to $5.8 billion, depending on how many of the power lines were put underground.

Even without storms, heat waves are changing the pattern of electricity use, raising peak demand higher than ever. That implies the need for new investment in generating stations, transmission lines and local distribution lines that will be used at full capacity for only a few hundred hours a year. “We build the system for the 10 percent of the time we need it,” said Mark Gabriel, a senior vice president of Black & Veatch, an engineering firm. And that 10 percent is “getting more extreme.”

Even as the effects of weather extremes become more evident, precisely how to react is still largely an open question, said David Behar, the climate program director for the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission. “We’re living in an era of assessment, not yet in an area of adaptation,” he said.

He says that violent storms and forest fires can be expected to affect water quality and water use: runoff from major storms and falling ash could temporarily shut down reservoirs. Deciding how to address such issues is the work of groups like the Water Utility Climate Alliance, of which he is a member. “In some ways, the science is still catching up with the need of water managers for high-quality projection,” he said.

Some needs are already known. San Francisco will spend as much as $40 million to modify discharge pipes for treated wastewater to prevent bay water from flowing back into the system.

Even when state and local officials know what they want to do, they say they do not always get the cooperation they would like from the federal government. Many agencies have officially expressed a commitment to plan for climate change, but sometimes the results on the ground can be frustrating, said Ms. Minter of Vermont. For instance, she said, Vermont officials want to replace the old culverts with bigger ones. “We think it’s an opportunity to build back in a more robust way,” she said. But the Federal Emergency Management Agency wants to reuse the old culverts that washed out, or replace them with similar ones, she said.

Ms. Arroyo of Georgetown said the federal government must do more. “They are not acknowledging that the future will look different from the past,” she said, “and so we keep putting people and infrastructure in harm’s way.”

Reminiscent of the blackouts during World War II, they can be expected again before much longer as the following news article makes known:

Will Drought Cause the Next Blackout?

By MICHAEL E. WEBBER

Published: July 23, 2012

WE’RE now in the midst of the nation’s most widespread drought in 60 years, stretching across 29 states and threatening farmers, their crops and livestock. But there is another risk as water becomes more scarce. Power plants may be forced to shut down, and oil and gas production may be threatened.

Our energy system depends on water. About half of the nation’s water withdrawals every day are just for cooling power plants. In addition, the oil and gas industries use tens of millions of gallons a day, injecting water into aging oil fields to improve production, and to free natural gas in shale formations through hydraulic fracturing. Those numbers are not large from a national perspective, but they can be significant locally.

All told, we withdraw more water for the energy sector than for agriculture. Unfortunately, this relationship means that water problems become energy problems that are serious enough to warrant high-level attention.

During the 2008 drought in the Southeast, power plants were within days or weeks of shutting down because of limited water supplies. In Texas today, some cities are forbidding the use of municipal water for hydraulic fracturing. The multiyear drought in the West has lowered the snowpack and water levels behind dams, reducing their power output. The United States Energy Information Administration recently issued an alert that the drought was likely to exacerbate challenges to California’s electric power market this summer, with higher risks of reliability problems and scarcity-driven price increases.

And in the Midwest, power plants are competing for water that farmers want for their devastated corn crops.

Unfortunately, trends suggest that this water vulnerability will become more important with time. . . .

Because rivers and aquifers can span many states (or countries), because there is no alternative to water, and because water represents a critical vulnerability for our energy system, governments at all levels have a stake in working with industry to find solutions. The downsides of doing nothing — more blackouts — are too serious to ignore.”

Bible prophecy also makes known the water shortage will in short time to come also affect adversely our sewage system. This will be due to a lack of water to treat and carry the sewage away:

“. . . I made the stench of your camps come up into your nostrils; yet you have not returned to Me,” says the LORD (Amos 4:10).

Holy Scripture gives the answer as to why the curse from God is now having an impact on the House of Joseph.

People ask themselves, and others, why all of these many problems with nothing going right? The answers are before their very eyes, but they refuse to look them squarely in the face with the courage to deal with the problems in a positive manner.

They will not admit and stand up for the truth of what they do know for fear of the loss of recognition by those in powerful offices; political correctness rules:

It is as said by Jesus Christ in the following Scripture about the Pharisees and equally applies to the leadership of today:

“They were more concerned to have the approval (praise) of men than to have the approval of God” (John 12:43, Phillips Translation).

This is due to the lust for power and authority with freedom from obedience to any of God’s laws! Political correctness rules to satisfy a god-defying world!

The Liberal Justices in the court system, from the highest to the lowest, are bowing to political pressures amid a society of ungodliness!

It was said by a Supreme Court Judge of the United States that changes are needed to match the changes in society. Another Judge of the same Court said the Supreme Court has become political. By so doing the Judges are putting behind them the Constitution of the United States.

The filth and violence being spewed forth by the film makers in the movie industry in Hollywood have the approval of the Supreme Court of the United States in the guise of freedom of speech.

The use of filthy speech (4-letter words), violence and murders seen in those films match what is evident in Society:

“Make (wield, forge) a chain, for the land is full with crimes of blood, and the city (as the former capital represents all the nations of Israel) is full of violence” (Ezekiel 7:6-9).

“Plundering and violence is before me; there is strife and contention arises, Therefore the law is powerless and justice never goes forth for the wicked surround the righteous; therefore perverse justice proceeds” (Habakkuk 1:3-4).

The quote from the following Newspaper could very well be duplicated all across America’s cities for all of them are struggling to bring violence and murder under control while making no real progress; it is only getting worse, and the citizenry is scared.

STOCKTON – Brazen criminals acts and constant gang activity are causing concern across San Joaquin County, and law enforcement officials are scrambling to stem the tide. . . .”

The following article has been written in view of the recent massacre that took place in Aurora, Colorado, while viewing the recent first showing of the violent Batman movie that was to begin showing at the midnight hour to heighten the anticipation of viewing it:

Violence on the Rise

On July 20, The Drudge Report linked to an article of The Telegraph, dated 26 July 2008, dealing with the previous Batman movie, The Dark Knight:

"Our attitude to violence is beyond a joke as [the] new Batman film, The Dark Knight, shows. The new Batman film reaches new levels of brutality, so why are we letting children watch it? Jenny McCartney looks at a society seduced by sadism.

"If I were 10 years old, would I be badgering my parents to take me to see the new Batman film, The Dark Knight? You bet I would. If I were the parent who relented and took a 10-year-old child to see The Dark Knight, would I be sorry? Once again, you bet I would.

"The Dark Knight. has been rated 12A by the British Board of Film Classification, which means that although the BBFC believes it is best suited to children aged 12 and over, any under-12 can see it provided he or she is accompanied by an adult. Cinemas are even holding parent-and-baby screenings.

"In 2002, the BBFC took a stand on Spider-Man, a hugely hyped Hollywood release: it decided that it contained unsuitable levels of violence for under-12s, and therefore awarded it a '12' certificate, meaning that under-12s should not be allowed into cinemas to see it. A public storm erupted; children and many parents were furious; and a number of councils announced their intention to defy the ban. Spider-Man now looks like Bambi when set next to The Dark Knight. Even since 2002, the public's willingness to expose children to previously unthinkable levels of screen violence has soared.

"Britain appears to be gulping down entertainment values wholesale from a Hollywood intent upon mining the profit margin from barbarism. America, for all its manifold strengths, is still a country in which the population can [view] the sight of a bound man being torched to death as all-round family entertainment. Just as notable as the violence in popular entertainment itself, however, is the rage directed at anyone who dares to question it.

"Is there a link between screen violence and actual violence? Fans of violent films will tell you - frequently in the most aggressive terms - that there is not. Yet we know that children are, to greater and lesser degrees, highly imitative of what they see. And we know that entertainment aimed at young people is becoming markedly more violent. My generation was terrified by the Child Catcher in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang; the current one is diverted with torture and agonising death.

"The poet WB Yeats once wrote, 'In dreams begins responsibility', yet Hollywood will never take responsibility for its most brutal dreams so long as the paying public still flocks to the theatre of cruelty."

In view of the brutality, violence, murders now being committed on an almost everyday occurrence that is affecting all of society, parents and friends of the murdered victims along with a grieving public continue to ask themselves—Why? Why? Why?

Though the article above does spell out the problems and why to a degree, but does not get to the bottom line of the real cause of the many unresolvable problems that are taking this country! There seems to be no question, short of a miracle, the House of Joseph is headed for possible anarchy; and later the demise of the nation, and then slavery.

We Have a Sin Problem

"Mike Huckabee, speaking on his Fox News show, said America doesn't have a gun problem or crime problem but a 'sin problem' and that while the Aurora movie massacre was a horrible incident that deserves the media coverage it's getting, other daily American tragedies such as mass abortion, suicides, and other murders should receive more attention.

"The former Arkansas governor and presidential candidate said. that the shooting 'is impossible to understand except that we live in a world where there is evil. We simply don't know why any person would reach deep enough into the forces of darkness to decide to kill innocent people simply watching a movie.' Huckabee said killing a dozen people in a movie theater gets attention because it doesn't happen every day 'but one million innocent and unborn babies die in their mother's wombs each year by elective abortions and we pay scant attention to that.'.

"'Ultimately,' Huckabee concluded, 'we don't have a crime problem or a gun problem - or even a violence problem. What we have is a sin problem. And since we ordered God out of our schools and communities, the military and public conversations, you know, we really shouldn't act so surprised when all hell breaks loose.'" [My emphasis]

Though Governor Huckabee touched on the bottom line as being SIN, he never defined it from Scripture. Scripture reveals SIN is due to the rejection of God and His holy righteous laws. This he did NOT mention in this quote.

Sadly, the younger generation has no real knowledge of God nor His laws for they were mostly never taught as has been the older generation to some degree. Nevertheless this will not prevent them from incurring the wrath of God due to SIN.

“For as many as have sinned WITHOUT (the knowledge of the) law WILL also PERISH without (the knowledge of the) law . . .” (Romans 2:12).

Even the Apostle Paul wrote he would have been ignorant of SIN without God’s law revealing it to him:

“I would not have known SIN except through the law. For I would not have known covetousness unless the law had said you shall not covet” (Romans 7:7; Exodus 20:17).

“Whosoever commits sin also commits lawlessness, and sin is lawlessness” (I John 3:4).

Sin is the transgression or violation of God’s holy and righteous laws. The Scriptural study of the laws of God is like a spiritual looking glass, a mirror, for it reveals what SIN really is:

“. . . for by the law is the knowledge of sin” (Romans 3:20).

The churches claim they know Jesus Christ, yet Scripture makes known otherwise in the following writings of God through the Apostle John:

“He who says, ‘I know Him,’ and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him” (I John 2:4).

The churches response is Christ is a God of love; and they are right; but Jesus Christ also tells us:

A lawyer asked Him (Jesus Christ) a question, testing Him and saying, “Teacher which is the great commandment of the law?” Jesus said to him, ‘You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ “This is the first and great commandment.

And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ “On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets” (Matthew 22:37-40).

Here Jesus Christ summarized the 10 commandments that forms the basis of all His laws.

“But the cowardly (those who refuse to stand up for God’s TRUTH), UNBELIEVING, abominable, murderers, sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in lake which BURNS with FIRE AND BRIMSTONE, which is the second death” (Revelation 21:8; 20:14-15; Malachi 4:1-3).

“For the WRATH OF GOD is revealed from heaven AGAINST ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who SUPPRESS THE TRUTH in unrighteousness (holds back what is known by them, won’t admit and won’t teach it; even so the evidence of God and His laws are to be seen everywhere in His creation), . . . for since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are WITHOUT EXCUSE . . . professing to be wise they became fools . . . who exchanged the TRUTH OF GOD for the LIE . . . for this reason God gave them up to VILE PASSIONS . . . and even as they did NOT like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them OVER to a debased mind, to do those things which are not fitting . . . who KNOWING the righteous JUDGMENT, that those who PRACTICE such things are WORTHY OF DEATH, not only doing the same but also APPROVE of those who PRACTICE them” (Romans 1:18, 20, 22, 28, 32).

The nations of Israel and their churches have turned their backs on the laws of God they refuse to observe as revealed in Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5.

As the result we are now seeing the curse of God now coming down hard and intensifying; unless there is repentance, the CURSE will soon lead into the “Third Seven Times”.

By this point in the summer, corn stalks are supposed to be as high as a farmer’s head, not his knees. But this is no normal summer in the agricultural heartland of the United States. The stunted plants, bending over cracked and dusty fields, are a product of the worst drought to hit the United States in more than 50 years.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has already forecast a 3 to 4 percent rise in domestic food prices next year and more than 1,000 counties across the country have been declared disaster areas. Data released on July 26 by the U.S. Drought Monitor found that the situation is only worsening, with almost two-thirds of the United States affected.

Farmer Marion Kujawa looks over a pond he usually uses to water the cattle on his farm in Ashley, Illinois. According to the Illinois Farm Bureau, the state is experiencing the sixth-driest year on record.

Farmers and consumers in America, however, aren't the only ones hoping for rain.

Experts say the destructive dry spell is helping to drive food prices up beyond U.S. borders and could potentially trigger a global food crisis.

"This is a once- or twice-a-century drought, and it's more severe than anybody has been preparing for," says Robert Thompson, former director of agriculture and rural development at the World Bank and currently a visiting scholar at Washington's Johns Hopkins University. "It's huge with respect to the world market for maize and soybeans."

Maize, or corn, has been hit hardest by the soaring temperatures and lack of rain, with some 78 percent of the U.S. crop feeling the effects. More than 11 percent of the national soybean crop has also been hit.

The United States is the world's biggest producer of both, which means the repercussions will be felt beyond the United States. Around the world, corn is used in a wide range of products, from processed foods to biofuels. Soy is used mainly in food products. Both are also used as animal feed, which means the price of meat could also be impacted.

The higher corn and soy prices also drive up demand for wheat. As a result, the cost of that grain looks set to rise, as well.

According to the World Bank, global prices for corn and wheat have risen by more than 45 and 50 percent, respectively, since mid-June. Soybean prices are up nearly 30 percent since June 1.

Driving those increases, the bank said, are a number of factors: What it called the "exceptional" U.S. drought; a dearth of rain for Russian, Ukrainian, and Kazakh wheat crops; too much rain throughout much of Europe; and assorted other adverse environmental conditions.

The World Bank has pledged to help governments mitigate the impact through fast-track financing and other programs. Developing nations, including in Central America and sub-Saharan Africa, are expected to be hit hardest.

According to Thompson, countries could also increase pressure on food prices by stockpiling grains, as they did during the 2008 food crisis. Then, India shut down exports of rice and Russia and Ukraine severely limited wheat shipments.

The current scare is also bringing back memories of 2011, when soaring food prices helped spur popular revolutions across the Arab world.

"Nothing will bring down a government faster than hungry people, so it's not difficult to panic consumers, as well as governments," Thompson said.

Price hikes and potential food shortages are alarming aid organizations, too.
Rene McGuffin, a spokesperson for the UN World Food Program (WFP), the world's largest humanitarian aid agency focused on combating hunger, says the drought could have serious consequences for the organization's goal of feeding millions of people, in countries from Afghanistan to Ethiopia and Iraq to Kyrgyzstan.

"High and volatile food prices affect WFP and our ability to feed the world's hungriest poor in two ways," McGuffin says. "We have to spend more to purchase food for the hungry -- and we estimate that every 10 percent increase in the price of the food that we distribute means an additional $200 million a year is required to buy that same amount of food. At the same time, the volatile food prices drive up the number of people needing food assistance."

The full effect of the U.S. drought on global food prices will take months to fully emerge. But according to experts, it isn't too early to see the current concerns as part of a disturbing pattern: Food security crises appear to be occurring with increasing frequency.

"As a result of climate change," Thompson says, "we are seeing more frequent occurrence of extreme climatic events -- extreme droughts, extreme floods. We had the flooding in Pakistan a couple of years ago. We had severe droughts in the last five years in Russia, as well as Australia. This is having an impact, increasing the volatility, and increasing the risk in global agriculture markets."

Short of tackling climate change, countries will have to adjust their agricultural policies accordingly, Thompson says, and invest in research to produce more flood and drought-resistant varieties of crops.”

Jesus Christ makes known that His true and faithful people are to be observing the warning signs that speak of the fulfillment of end-time prophecies and His coming back to this earth while praying always for the blessing of His protective care from the horrors closing in on Israel and the world (Luke 21:29-36).

In the interim, Jesus Christ has given His Church a Work to do in taking the Gospel to the world along with the Ezekiel warning message.

“I am the true vine and My Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in Me (the vine) that does NOT bear fruit He takes away; and every branch that BEARS FRUIT He prunes, that it may bear more fruit (correction as well as through trials that test us) . . . You did NOT choose Me but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit (involving self in His work), and that your fruit should remain, that whatever you ask the Father in My Name He may give you” (John 15:1-2, 16).

With little time left to do the Work of God we must be doing our individual part as Christ makes possible, and continue right up to the time Christ chooses to close the door to His work (Matthew 24:14; Ezekiel 33:1-9; Revelation 3:7-8) — His work that is yet going forth from the Church of God, Faithful Flock, via of our 14 websites.

To each of His Elect, Jesus Christ gives an example of what His people should be doing right up to the time of the closing of the door of His work.

“Who then is a faithful servant and wise servant whom his master made ruler over his household to give them food in due season? Blessed is that servant whom his master, when he comes, will find so doing” (Matthew 24:45-46).

Because of obeying Christ’s command to preserve, He has promised protection from the horrors of the Great Tribulation that is coming soon on the whole world; hiding His people in the place He will have prepared for His faithful and true Elect (Revelation 7:10; 12:14).

And shortly thereafter, somewhat like a relay race, the Two Witnesses will then begin their mission that will be concluded just before the coming of Jesus Christ (Revelation 11:3-19).

Brethren, please pray for more laborers for the harvest and for the needed finances which have been running low recently.

Later, I will plan on writing about the wild beasts coming among us which is part of the Seven Times prophecy in Leviticus 26 which will begin attacking and killing children and people because of severe hunger.

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