"Behind every great fortune there lies a great crime."
- Honore de Balzac

INTRODUCTION: SOMETHING IS
"AFOOT" IN THE CAUCASUS

There are strange things happening in the Caucasus Mountains, that area of the world that 2,500 years ago filled the extreme northern horizon of the Hebrews (Ezek xxxviii. 15, xxxix. 2) and where some say Eden was located - where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers originate, in Armenia somewhere, perhaps on the shores of the Araxes [the river that certain people say is the biblical river Gihon (Genesis ii. 13)]). It's an area dominated by craggy mountains and deep gorges - a wild and untamed place that has about it a disturbing feeling of "long-ago" - as if it had suddenly appeared straight out of the Old Testament. Ancient Assyrian inscriptions refer to the territory as Mushku and Tabal [Gk. - Moschoi and Tibarenoi (the Bible: "Mescheck" and "Tubal")][4]. The Bible says that the Caucasus is the dwelling place of "Gog"[5] - that great and foreboding angelic prince the Scriptures say will initiate the momentous events of the "End of Days." [Please see Ezekiel 38; we also refer you to chapter 6 of the Antipas Papers, "The Gog / Magog War;" also, please see Dwight Pentecost, Things To Come, and Robert Duncan Culver, Daniel and the Latter Days.]

It is here, in this remote and half-forgotten part of the earth that a new and extremely dangerous struggle has begun that is pitting the West [essentially, the United States and her NATO allies (particularly Turkey)] against the Russian Federation and Iran, a struggle that very few Americans are aware of, and one which - except insofar as what's happening in Chechnya - has been carefully hidden from them by the corporate media. What's America up to there? What business does the United States and her NATO allies have in insinuating themselves into this area, thereby precipitating the clash? And what are they doing sponsoring a new military alliance in the region involving five former republics of the now defunct Soviet Union? Americans may have stumbled into more than they had bargained for here, for there are spiritual forces at work in this part of the world beyond the imagining of most mortals and against which flesh and blood cannot prevail.

WORLD-RULERS OF DARKNESS

I am, of course, more than aware that such statements - predicated as they are on a belief in spiritual powers greater than man - cannot help but elicit scornful notice and contemptuous sneers from secularists and non-believers - people who refuse to concede reality to powers that are greater than man. But the effort by secularists and non-believers to discount these powers is so absurd that it borders on the moronic. At best, it's innocence masquerading as sophistication; at worst it's folly pretending to be wisdom (Romans 1:22). The fact of the matter is, however, powers far greater than man control his destiny - and though unseen and little suspected by the rulers of earth, there are "principalities," "powers," and "world-rulers of darkness" who are really in charge of this world and who direct the affairs of man - and with whom, as the Apostle Paul tells us, we have to wage a fearful warfare:

"For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high (i.e., heavenly) places." (Eph. 6:12)

Secularists - who fail to recognize this fact, but who - nonetheless - fancy themselves to be exposers of the "flesh and blood" wickedness in others - wield little more than wooden swords against what are really only shadows. Secularists can speak only of "good" and "evil," but not of the dragons beyond those comfortable conceits. They battle against phantoms they cannot by any means see, and expose nothing more than the secondhand sins of their flesh and blood adversaries, while never coming to grips with the real powers which stand behind that flesh and blood.

But we as Christians should not be so deluded. Ignorance in such matters is not a virtue insofar as the Bible is concerned. The Apostle Paul warns:

"But you, brethren, are not in darkness, so that ... (these things) should overtake you as a thief.
"You are all sons of light and sons of the day. We are not of the night nor of darkness.
"Therefore let us not sleep, as others do, but let us watch and be sober." (I Thess 5:4-6)

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