The Emergence of a New Russia

Transcript

so let's jump right into this and i'll put some scriptural context as we get started but this has been something that i've been investigating and trying to pay attention to for a number of years now so some of the materials been gathered you know at least 10 years ago but i continued to try to update it and of course russia's in the news all the time now for uh for us that are in north america uh russia uh means something that's probably perhaps still skewed towards the soviet union and you know especially for us that grew up most of the time of uh thinking the soviet union and now russia and may not have a lot of understanding of russia's history behind before uh the um the soviet uh empire of communism swept over russia uh back uh was it more than a hundred years ago now uh so it's some interesting things that are going on and and i call this the the emergence of the new russia uh where it's uh pretty interesting the things that are going on there in the association with um uh many different aspects that we should as as as christadelphians should pay attention to potentially and so as we go through this there's quite a bit of material i will will basically summarize the slides

there's a lot more material on the slides you'll see some of them are fairly verbose but i will send these slides the whole deck as is to you there's actually i have a superset deck which actually has another 50 60 slides in it uh i'll mention some points where you know i could go into more detail but uh not we don't have time to do that this evening so as i said i'm going to do some a brief introduction of you know russian prophecy now i look at prophecy is something to give encouragement to those that are following it and when they see something happening they can place it in scripture i don't see it as foretelling the future so to speak i don't see that's the potential potentially the purpose of it so i wouldn't say i'm dogmatic about certain things i do believe there's enough evidence that russia is spelled out in the scriptures which is kind of the traditional crisidelphian view and other christian groups as well but i wouldn't say that that's the only thing uh that could be possible i think if we become personally believe if we become too dogmatic about prophecy we we will tend to miss it when it happens uh then i'll talk about um

it's interesting how someone is drawing on my screen um i'm not sure that's uh nothing i'm doing by the way uh we'll look at the new czar

that being putin and mother russia or the re-emergence of russia uh we'll look at the orthodox church the russian orthodox church and the awakening of it and the association between uh putin the church and other other aspects and then spent some time looking at some again a couple last maybe five to ten years uh with some brand new things as well of relating the the church the russian orthodox church to the middle east uh putin and israel we'll look at that two different ways putin in israel and then putin russian israel at the end but also russia and iran and syria and putin with the pope there's quite a bit of things that are going on that are in many ways coming together and then i have one or two concluding remarks uh so i'm hoping that we'll get this uh done and not spend too much extra time but uh we'll get started with bible prophecy most of us probably are very familiar with ezekiel 38

it talks about the latter days again it talks about gog the title here a hebrew word means roof or hence on the top so politically the word indicates a powerful leader a man of intense political and military stature and geographically it comes from top or the uttermost parts of the earth josephus and others have have also equated it uh to the sis scythians uh and the land of magog incorporates the nations of central europe and incorporating other nations as far as the baltic so again you're in the general area of russia um we hear a lot about baltic right now and and baltic states which were part of the soviet union uh but are attached and of course um we hear a lot about um the ukraine and belarus in recent weeks as well we'll talk a little bit about that as we move forward and then in the opening verse of 38 it says you know note that gaga is not the prince of god but of rush so a little bit more on that uh we see rush uh and there's quite a bit of evidence also that it's really modern-day in russia uh historians have written that rush is the most ancient form under which the history makes mention of russia uh stanley in his book the jewish church stated the name rush the hebrew rose roes

unfortunately translated in an english version the chief first appeared in ezekiel 38 and 39 and is also named a modern nation that appears in the old testament

this gentleman edward gibeon in the decline of fallen roman empire wrote among the greeks the national affiliation was a singular form rush and highly respected jewish uh hebrew scholars also wrote about it uh the northern nation with tubal and meshech undoubtling the russians so again a lot of historians these are not crossdelphians have referred to it and believe that it does relate to that area of the world north of israel uh hebrew word translated prince uh signifies an exalted one or someone who's again lifted up describes some a powerful or authoritative leader uh and in the latter days perhaps a new i would say my comment here a new czar of russia and then the names uh meshech and tubal further establish the verses describing potentially a confederate confederacy of european nations uh and this is something that still you know would say is in process uh there are some that are trying to be closer to russia because of oil or really natural gas and you've heard that just recently uh there's a couple of different pipelines that come from the west from the east excuse me to the west and there's a new one being built which i think if i remember correctly goes actually through the sea uh into into like east northeastern part of germany and that's the one that uh president biden mentioned the other day that he would be stopped of course the uh german

prime minister did not agree it didn't say anything about it so that's always interesting push comes to shove fuel prices by the way gas especially natural gas prices have gone through the roof in europe i have a colleague of mine there our subsidiary we have my company has in the netherlands it basically has doubled uh in the last year and it's supply and demand they need more and they have no supply the us is trying to make up some of that shortfall from eastern europe uh but you know that's a problem and ultimately people will vote with their feet so to speak if that means becoming a politically and or somehow associated with the east um i gotta believe they're gonna do it because it's either that or or dying potentially or being very cold is going to be a problematic for them a tubal it's not difficult to see how that might be uh related to pul tobolsky

another form and then finally again latter days here uh we always again probably traditionally certainly in elvis israel um brother uh thomas wrote in 1848 uh that he said uh quote you know sen uh he quoted here you know send jesus christ whom the heavens must receive until the times of the restitution of all things which god hath spoken by the mouth of his holy prophets because he hath appointed a day in which he will judge the world of righteousness by the man which he hath ordained so that's what we look to come and we know that from scriptures russians aim for world domination uh to a bitter and end in the land of israel again we can see multiple places there as well so again i'm not dogmatic about this position but i do i do agree with it but we have to always watching and see you know what might draw someone into the middle east and cause the the issue that will require jesus to return or all will be all be uh all will perish

so let's talk a little bit about the rise of the new czar so uh quite interesting here you look back now over the last 20 or 20 almost 30 years now since the fall of basically the soviet union uh so the prime minister of president since the founding of the russian federation uh that's when that became to be uh when the soviet union collapsed uh now putin has really really driven a lot of the emergence of mother russia in the hearts and minds of the people and there's various reasons for that one of them i believe is how do you keep people happy and unlikely to revolt and that is to keep them either that dumb and happy or keep them

afraid uh and you you you can build that through control uh controlled through the media is one way he's done that and i'll show you some examples and the other way you do that is the hearts and minds uh can be controlled through the church and historically that's been true through many cultures not just in russia but true there as well and what's interesting about that in soviet under soviet role control the church was not to have any power and that the church was really communism but the church did survive and uh actually there's some talk that actually was quite um involved including with the um secret service and stuff uh uh during that time now under him uh the government has spent hundreds of billions of dollars a lot of talk on that as well because of uh the current issue potential issue uh with um the ukraine uh that you know under you know late soviet union you know late 80s into the early through the mid mid-90s soviet union military was really a lot of scrap uh basically but uh over the last 10 15

20 years he spent a lot of money there they've had money because uh oil there's a lot of oil in russia and that's where a lot of the exports have gone he's also pretty much put all the other billionaires in jail uh i was one of the times i went to russia i was talking to you know educated people have a different view by the way of putin and the most of the vast majority of the population which aren't that educated and i asked him well why why is he putting these people in jail he says well because they have and he what he wants and he wants control and anyone that is against what he wants to do and has money he he finds as a threat and this was someone from a russian who grew up in russia saying this uh he's also been stated that says you know the americans for example live like parasites off the global economy and the monopoly of the dollar um you know he's you know signs all signs point to him as a very much a russian nationalist and imperialist and uh supposedly he is a very wealthy person as well um they they i don't know i can't certainly confirm this but says that he has over a million dollars worth of watches

born in 1952 uh there's a sister arena and i forget her nails name how to pronounce it jennifer kova which i probably butchered she was a member of our collegiate in anar for a time she now lives in the czech republic and she comes into meeting via our our webcast she and her husband actually went to school with putin and remembers him from school she and her husband both went to leningrad state university and graduated either that year around the same time as him and said we didn't like him then we don't like him now especially once he left school and joined uh the communist party and then uh joined the secret service so it's um

he's had a long history of of of that uh you can see here a little bit of history how he came to be so he in his service kgb if you may remember the kgb i forget what they call it now but kgb was under the soviet union so yeltsin uh when he was president there he had appointed putin to the head of what they what they called and probably still call the main control directorate of the president property management department and according their constitution if the president steps down that person becomes next in charge and that's what happened in december of 1999

and they there's definitely a lot of evidence out there that he's worth billions tens of billions of dollars and has accomplished that by any means possible

uh there's lots of again uh

theories out there about where he puts his wealth i can't again confirm that these are his palaces but many people say he has many different buildings that he owns that he has had built um in many different locations and there's been press reports of this this specific palace that he's built where it has 25

28 thousand dollar sofas sofas in the leather sofas in the uh the palace itself so he's definitely is living the life of a czar uh and you know probably no different than the czars uh before him

now he has been connected very significantly to the russian orthodox church uh he has seen with them quite often especially uh when he first came to power lexi ii of moscow uh that was the that's the head of the the russian orthodox church and now krill of moscow and i'll talk a little bit more about him later another important figure um so he took an active part in promoting the act of uh a catalytic uh communion as well in 2077 and other things that we'll see a little bit earlier uh of what he's done now this picture in the lower right is kind of interesting you've seen these nested russian dolls probably there's a joke in russia that you buy one of these with him on it uh you'll pull that out there'll be someone else you pull that out it'll be putin again you pull that i'll be someone else you pull it out it'll be putin again and he's done a great job uh to stay in power in one way or another now for well you know basically 30 years uh which um

fortunately in this country that was kind of hard to do even though the last president you could say probably tried to do that in a way putin has been able to do that now of course russia the main difference between russia and most western powers is we have a history of of inheritance or handover to the next you know prime minister president or whatever it might be but in russia the soviet union was run by dictators basically that were elected by a closed party uh and then before that was the czars which are basically kings so they don't really have a history of any kind of public rule even though supposedly they have elections today uh they tend not to be as most people think um very open so one is the connection to church so you want to make your way known and want to control the hearts and minds you start with the church and then as i mentioned earlier you can also then deal with the media and as a strong man he's done a lot with media this is an example from 2013 and continues to do that today to you know basically focus the media down to what uh he wants it to say or what the his his ruling party wants it to say which is really basically him so you control the the people through the hearts and minds um and other other countries do very similar things uh i spend a lot of time of one of the things i do with my work which i haven't done the last couple years but travel quite heavily globally one of the places i've been to quite a bit is china and if you're again intelligent in china and know where to look you can look outside of china it's not easy but it's easier than it used to be

the government there i think has seen a way to control the people but they've chosen a little bit different path than putin has china they've chosen to uh allow the people to have what they want in it but in a controlled manner so they have a very big middle class and middle class historically is uh for foreign civilization for that matter is created stability uh but they still control a lot including religion you know chris delphians for example that i've visited with there you can't openly preach there you have to be very careful about it in that you're not registered and if you're not registered uh can be a it could be pr a problem now russia used to be pretty open about preaching as well uh talking and meeting with christodolphians in russia at one time especially under yeltsin it was quite open but today it's very problematic to preach

because you know preaching other ideas than what the government wants you to understand can mean that you're preaching something that's against the government

so the hearts and minds that people are definitely being driven that way so a little bit about rebuilding russia

russia may or may not know that they have federal cities two federal cities kind of similar to what china has in like beijing and shanghai they're run by the federal government as opposed to the provincial area so st petersburg uh is one of them and moscow is one of them these are very populated cities uh that are are built up so position i think everyone knows where russia is but i've highlighted some other things here of course russia borders uh the us uh to the to the east here or to the west depending on where you're looking at it got israel right in the middle here and then

saudi arabia here another interesting place i've visited but reason why i highlighted this is they're a counter to iran and iran is aligning quite nicely with russia where saudi arabia has been aligned pretty consistently with the west especially the u.s and then this other kind of yellow area here that's syria which is still problematic and then this green area is the ukraine uh you've also heard recently belarus belarus is just north of the ukraine before you get to the baltic states

so um here's oh i'm sorry i missed i forgot to move this picture anyway i meant to circle moscow

and st petersburg both are our european cities their ural mountains which are approximately here separate europe from asia uh that's where a lot of the population is actually is in western uh russia

so here's saint petersburg uh and there's um some interesting things here again the mother russia going back to the tsars i'll show you some pictures of some of the things there one of us in peter goff which was the um basically summer palace for the czar and then there's the winter palace that's in st petersburg the hematosh which is now a museum you may have heard of so this is the summer palace the grandeur has been you know brought back to it again i would have thought a lot of this was taken apart during soviet times well while it was to some extent a lot of it was left and then um brought back to life uh this was a um a site of a g7 meeting and it was uh really showing off uh the grandeur and a g20 meeting as mentioned here in 2013 uh the grandeur of mother russia

the churches all are are quite significant in many different places again under soviet rule you weren't really supposed to go to church but they still existed uh and they were there uh here's the uh the winter palace in saint petersburg it was just the uh the current museum there this is just a fraction of that building again you can see this is not just that it still exists but it's very ornate and and has been you know basically brought back to its grandeur

uh this is a uh just out this isn't peter gough um basically kind of across the street and down a couple blocks basically from the summer palace uh these the czars were very associated with uh the russian religion the ruth orthodox church and there was often churches either directly attached to their palaces or pretty close by and i'm going to show you some you may not realize but there's a number of churches actually on the grounds of the kremlin which i'll go to in a couple minutes so here's moscow you'll see moscow is a set of ring roads uh moscow has horrible traffic

if you think boston's bad boston is a cake walk probably compared to what i've seen i've never driven in moscow but it's horrible um and then there's another ring road another ring road and then actually the inner ring road inner inner ring road is really uh the center of all this is the kremlin

so here's here's the kremlin right here actually it is a little hard to kind of see this

but the kremlin let me let me bring up a

pen here

and so basically this is the kremlin right here so usually the photos that we see are from a bridge that's down the river down down around over here and looking this way into the kremlin kremlin this is red square here basil's the famous church which has actually not been a church for some time and then back here is the boy boshoy ballet which you probably heard of actually is right over here but this is right downtown

uh so there's the picture of the bosho ballet which is very famous and again that brought back now uh this day there was going to be a military exercise so again growing up uh we probably all remember seeing these military exercises in the red square here where the you know brezhnev would sit here what would happen actually this is kind of weird because when you look at this space you think that this is a huge area and it's really not but basically they were lining up those trucks were here parked right here they come here in sequential pass through here and then make a hard left along the river it's actually a pretty short distance here but that's what i remember growing up red square about by the way the name red square goes back hundreds and hundreds of years it's not a russian reference by the way so here's some pictures uh in the kremlin grounds this is the palace this is where putin usually holds court my guess is this is where he was when he met with the french um

i forget what was he called president i always forget what the french lead is called um the other day he was probably here but i i'm guessing here this is all in kremlin grounds there's a bunch of different buildings most of these buildings date back again to this era of the czars or uh quite old and you know some of them are very ornate um things this is back uh this this

basically uh

entryway this tower it's built in 1736

and there's a lot of influence from the from the west uh especially italian design as well they say this is out on red square so again basically the military parades go this way and so the backdrop that you usually see is this building this building has you know for under soviet time was it's the gum which was the department store run by the soviet union nowadays it's a high-end department store which here's almost no one in it because most people can't afford what they have which is kind of interesting people there that i've known for years say that under bo yeltsin

uh you had money but you couldn't buy anything now you can buy stuff but you had no money you have no money so uh they're they're gonna they have issues there as well so again we're kind of focusing now on a little bit bigger circle so here's um

there's the kremlin there and you just go out to the one ring road there's a couple things to point out here uh so again the kremlin saint bezel's church and other things as i made mention already and then just looking the other way so here is stalin's mausoleum and this is where the you know the leaders would sit and they still do i mean putin has done those parades and again the movement is this way but all this has been modernized it's been you know cleaned up i mean there's a lot of effort that has gone on to go back to the glory days of of mother russia uh now the church actually still not actually a church most of the churches are churches nowadays but this isn't this is still it was taken over the beginning of the soviet union and the communism but it's still actually uh not used as a church it's still owned by the the government but is maintained uh in its original grandeur so you can see it was confiscated um you know in the uh as the soviet union had an anti-atheist campaign and it's been a museum since 1928

uh and it's it's uh a lot of it goes back to that that period

so again this is what happens you know again the trucks come down here and then turn left so again this may be a more interesting view here but again there's another bridge you can see down over here that's where we get most of our pictures anyway that i've seen of the kremlin and so kremlin means fortress just if you didn't know that and then up there there's quite a number of churches which again you would have thought because they purged the church which they kind of did but kind of didn't that they would get rid of all the churches that are on the kremlin grounds while they didn't so on the kremlin grounds most of these are older buildings that are this these were being redone when this i didn't not take this picture this is probably from google earth or something um this is a pretty ugly looking

soviet era

square boring block building basically and there's this is again the palace

and then there's actually five churches that are all up there um on the top of the uh the kremlin area the number of them are attached right to the uh the palace uh these are the churches again i'll send you this deck so i wasn't intending to go through these slides but you'll have information about them uh you can also look in wikipedia and other places there's more information about it but they date back for a long time so my understanding is what happened soviet union what they did is instead of uh they dismantled some of it you know took the crosses off they may have painted over the gold uh but they didn't destroy them uh there is one church they did destroy which is i'll show you in a minute uh but the church has always been there it's always underlying the culture this is another thing i think in the west we don't really understand is russians

you know russia and the church are for many people one in the same you know we because the u.s especially and even canada something you know to the same extent was formed without religion intentionally now of course it was geo or jail christian you know fundamentals but we weren't formed to be a christian you know uh or or or jewish or anything else but russia has always been russian orthodox or well since the great divide or whatever and in two ten thou ten thousand i forget the date exactly i have it a little bit later but when it's split um and you really basically got the eastern orthodox and the roman catholic or latin church from there so you can't really separate the russian people even though communism tried to do that it had it didn't work uh to separate the um the church from state just never really happened again there's just other pictures of these churches so they're pretty ornate and again they all have been refurbished uh since the fall of the soviet union

again some additional evidence of the rebuilding of russia uh back to where the czars were in control and there's others now before i showed you a picture that looked from basil which is way down over here looking up this way and then just to the right of that so this is the gum here on the left again there's churches all over the place that you can find

throughout the city

all right so again this the center area here uh the other thing i want to mention um some other things are quite interesting again here here is the kremlin kremlin and then next to it is the alexander garden there was actually a bunch of statues there there was actually a ceremony one of the times i was there where krill had the russian orthodox church was there to dedicate a statue to a martyr

and again so it's it's right there right on the grounds right well right outside the grounds because there's the wall that's right here then there's this cathedral this uh christ of the savior which actually was destroyed it was built up as a very large church it was built up uh and then destroyed by the soviet union and then made into a swimming pool community swimming pool and then the the head of moscow um had it rebuilt after the fall of the soviet union

so what about this russian the russian orthodox church uh so the patriarch the head of the is cruel at the still is of uh and he's the crew is patriarch krill of moscow of all rush russia that's the name of the head he's the pope you can consider him the pope of the church uh and this is the thing he was dedicating actually the other thing was kind of interesting too which i'm not sure uh if that's still true but um

i think it's here but there's a mall here which has places like subarrows and others at least and mcdonald's and stuff uh overlooking this area

so here's here's the gentleman it's a pretty recent picture of him uh he became the patriarch of moscow and all rush uh and the primate of the russian orthodox church in february of 2009.

uh he talked about he has talked and been quoted back in 2012 that the putin era was a miracle of god uh there's those that will have accused him that he was actually worked for the kgb

that the way the kgb took um monitored people was through um the church which is quite possible he's been very active not just religiously but politically for a long time there's plenty of pictures of him with putin so again you can't really separate separate the two uh putin has been has said that the orthodox church should be given more say over family life education and armed forces in russia again i mentioned about faith runs very deep uh in the in uh the country he also has ties to mixed spirituality his own brand of patriotism this is speaking of putin

again you have many many different pictures there's a long history of the church i'm not including any of those slides but there's there's quite a bit of history over the years that go back uh to the uh separation from the roman catholic there's some newer stuff that's been published

that uh putin has often invoked the church in his public speeches giving the church a much more prominent place in political life there in russia hapuna set himself as a defender a morality for instance by opposing homosexuality penalizing divorce and supporting traditional the traditional family uh putin's use of traditional christianity has calculated political effort this is a

heritage organization believes this it's quite possible he definitely wants to stay in power that's no doubt about it and he's done a lot to do that and american and european observers would do the do well to see through the charade or charade um and then russians putin wants traditional marriage this is back in march 2020

again there's lots of different references these are just some examples of how he's used the church or the church maybe as an excuse to have more control

so bringing the churches together is a lot written on this as well i'm only going to go through a little bit of this um so there's been very interesting actions between the eastern orthodox church and the roman catholic church in recent years

the they never met actually the patriarch of the eastern orthodox church uh and the pope actually prior to 2015

never met since the separation uh the relationship has improved quite a bit and putin has visited the vatican quite often as well i'll show a couple of those as well now there's also another gentleman that i think is worth watching um this um metropolitan hillary on of and i'm not going to bother trying to pronounce that i apologize i will murder it um i think he will take be the net will replace kroll he's been very active uh very behind the scenes in a lot of things uh very vocal as well uh and also they believe he has connections and with back to the kgb uh he's a younger guy he's in his mid 50s

so i wouldn't be surprised if crowell passes away or when he passes away that it'll happen so the the churches there's been a lot a lot of warming between the churches some of that supposedly uh has been putin's doing or encouragement by the great uh uh schism so yeah 10 54 that's when the split between the eastern orthodox and the latin based church or the catholic church took place uh and there's been um a meeting also even in in moscow at that time it was a visit uh with a influential catholic bishop archbishop bishop and you can see what reporting here is we live in a epic epoch when many of our historic differences should stop playing the critical role they played in relationships between our churches and that's kroll mentioning it to the archbishop of milan

and then the the first time they met was in february pope current pope and krill met was in february of 2015 they actually met at the airport in cuba so i'm not sure how that's halfway between the two i my guess is that um as probably the pope was traveling in a in south america or america at the time or something

and they actually put something out together they talked about when they met they said uh that they were brothers and the two met for about two hours and they signed a a unity and christian unity message about the family and they said that we regret other forms of cohabitation has been in place in some level as this union while the concept consecrated in the biblical tradition uh and basically against any kind of cohabitation outside of the the traditional family that i'm sure we would agree to as well but that's what they chose as being their first position together

and then there are again some other things this goes back this is 2018 about about that visit between the pope open that new phase of the relationship according to them leading to a loan of relics seen by two million people in moscow and st petersburg as the first visit vatican's secretary to russia uh since uh 1999.

the other thing then is what's the the uh orthodox russian orthodox church been trying to position especially in the middle east again there's a number of slides here i'm just going to point a couple of things out more detail that you can review um is that again you can't really separate the church from the state

the the church is very much wants to be a supporter of christians in the middle east and sees the russia being responsible to support that and a couple of things here now just to make a comment here the russian banner here is this two-headed eagle which actually does i'm told here does represent the church and the state

so that's uh interesting to know uh the most important uh most important was russian's decision to effectively act as the protector of christians in the levant so this is the middle eastern region including syria as a defender and legal representative a number of the conversations that putin has had with the pope has been about that as well saying that we need to support now at the same time putin has become friends with israel which i'll show you that in a minute so principles and interests of russian federations are predicted on the survival of levantine christians in their countries and their peaceful coexistence with muslim compatriots now the russian republic has issues with muslims in a similar way that china does is they feel that that that or they could over be overwhelmed by the religion which again even in muslim and conservative muslims it's hard to separate sometimes the religion uh from more of a political bent uh so that that may be problematic as well

and position that moscow's put out about to the christians in the middle east you know we will not forsake you you're not alone and moscow again as a church and state uh this russian re reassurance on the world stage has full-fledged decision-making partner uh to to look after the um the christians uh this was a comment that they made about syria and uh this would be deemed necessary and vital by russia in its quest to complement political reassurance as well in the middle east uh i think putin is very smart in order to counterbalance uh the west he has to take on some of the things that the west has either forgotten about or he wants to make sure he's in the middle of uh and you go back to obama's administration obama pretty much left a lot of hands off in the middle east where there was a little bit more hands-on especially by um our past president's uh son-in-law uh this president not quite sure where it's gonna lay but the the west has been more hands-off in recent years than if you go back and and the at least fewest history has been pretty proactive now it's i don't know it's not really reactive or proactive at this point it seems like

uh reconciliation then between moscow and the vatican might be the first opportunity again to be have a coalition uh a religious coalition which is also backed by a physical political coalition uh so there's there's also um maybe a third aspect saying it it seems that this religious component has merely replaced communism and i think that's really really important to understand culturally so when the communism was spreading through russia what the russian government did or the soviet government did is they would put these um i forget what they're called but they're basically consulates in every single little town throughout the whole empire uh throughout all the public republics and so on and it was to profess communism and profess the way of life and how it should be there's also uh there's very historic murals all over the place about you know the image that the soviet union was probably trying to portray to everyone it was was under its control and of course as as you know there's all the stands kazakhstan and ubekistan stan and a couple other ones that i'm missing that are were part of the soviet union that now are separate countries uh there's also the the baltic states like latvia and others and then um

sorry belarus ukraine and i know i'm missing a couple other ones there's quite a numbers that are have separated out of russia but to control uh very different people different languages uh you had a you know basically spread your tentacles out into all the countries while the church provides them that capability now uh the soviet union and the communist party doesn't do that as much anymore uh but the the church can do that uh there's been occasions where they've done stuff in israel uh this is holy fire in jerusalem where the president putin attended actually five thousand worshipers and uh she also the russian orthodox church uh patriarch cruel was cruel was there as well that was 2015 in 2020

um you know the church role in the russian national identity at the uh ideology and polity politics excuse me has grown immensely over the decades as reported uh the moscow's diplomatic military enterprise in syria has evolved over time and they've had a lot of troops there one point they don't seem to right now but they're still it's uh and now they put all the troops in belarus and on the edge of uh

the ukraine and then the roman

russian orthodox church has contributed to russian foreign and security policy on earlier occasions but the syria case has been a culmination of this bond so there's definitely a strong tie there

and then first uh it's delivered in a sonic messianic uh ransom and their tear uh reason to raise in debt sorry uh for the leaders um contemplating the campaign second ecclesiastical contribution was a legitimization of kremlin's policy at home and abroad and third the roman catholic excuse me the russian orthodox church uh worked to sustain a necessary level of domestic support so again controlling the media controlling the church allow you to put your message out a brother uh one of the times visiting south africa brother there who grew up afrikaan and was brought into cristela uh later in life he said in church we were told uh that the black population was a human group that's the church told us that that's what we were taught when we were young uh and it wasn't until i became chris delphian or got in contact with christophians that all people all humans are the same and and god loves everyone so churches and go back there's plenty of history you can go back and look at stuff even the roman catholic church even the roman catholic church lots of churches use the pulpit uh to prove to give what they think is the is what they want their members to believe from a political stance

so a few additional things here we'll start wrapping up here now uh around putin uh he has actually visited uh israel a number of times here's him in 2012. he had a very quick trip uh and visited that this is uh there's in front of to the right of the wailing wall or the western wall there's quite a bit of excavation i believe that's where he is in uh in that picture uh he's met with the you know netanyahu this is with before netanyahu

i was meeting at him as residents and having a dinner um then netanyahu january 2020 uh netanyahu uh is quoted i want to welcome our great friend russian president vladimir putin sarah and i are pleased to host you again at our home here in jerusalem and thank you for the brave link between russia and israel which serves our people and our power policy as well as peace and stability in the region welcome jerusalem now that that's a pretty powerful comment there uh that i was really shocked when i read that and you can see some other references and scriptures about peace and safety and other things which are quite interesting and then putin responded all right in the same thing quoted mr prime minister i honor and honored colleague i would like to thank you for the invitation to come we are working regularly with the prime minister we conclude some time ago to come here and to visit israel i am certain this will aid in advancing our bilateral relations and of course today we recall the victims of the holocaust i would like to again to thank the prime minister and his wife and the invitation to visit israel thank you very much

this is uh one of his trips visiting uh the church of the holy sepulchre which is in jerusalem i don't know if you know this uh this church is the supposed place i put that in quotes where they lay jesus to rest and where the tomb was this place that you see these lanterns here uh these are another picture this is a better picture uh there's a whole set of lanterns i believe there's eight of them they represent uh those that are responsible for the church there's actually these eight groups that have different areas of the church that they're responsible for and somehow all of them ate um have to be responsible for the whole church but that hasn't worked out really well so they are very divided this is not only main this is mainstream christianity i guess you could say um they can't agree to certain things in the church even but that that place uh those lanterns are over supposedly again the bed that christ's body was prepared before he went into this a stone into

the

tomb itself and depending on which light is lit they're responsible to clean it that day is my understanding uh i don't believe this ladder is still here

this is outside the church there's a whole history about the latter and the only reason i bring this up is a history of uh not getting along uh it was put there to fix something and then no one could agree to remove it and no one wanted to agree to remove it so it wasn't removed for a long time i think it was finally removed by the um the jewish um

you know jerusalem mayor had it removed because the the christian churches that own were responsible for this church building couldn't agree to go move it actually and then uh inside there this is again supposedly the site where christ's tomb was uh and that's that the tomb in there it's a small little room it's uh well it's pretty ornate everything around it but um who knows there's a lot of people that come there all the time that supposedly go see where christ was buried but uh there's also um

quite a bit in the news around russia and iran as i mentioned before iran in saudi arabia or at our odds i always remember i always forget who's who but there's shiite and sunni uh muslims and one is in one country and one is in the other country uh iran as some of you might remember uh prior to the the fall of the shah in 79 it was a basically a protective of the us the us and then before that britain um the u.s even sold it uh aircraft that 14 fighters were there their main fighters which i supposedly still have some of them but after the fall um they you know us which already had been friends with saudi arabia and still is very good friends with saudi arabia uh that it that divide has has taken place more and more but russia has definitely snuggled up against iran now there is i forget which stand is between them and russia but they're not that far apart of course uh the relationships part of it has been due to the nuclear program again in the in the news in recent years uh there was an agreement around that and then

our last president pulled out of it and then there's still discussion about if they're going to the u.s and will go back into some agreement a nuclear proliferation or not

and then they're also in a way iran is was push more chose to go more towards russia but also china as well uh is is becoming a world power as well to try to figure out what sides they want to be on just the time check peter we're at 8 23.

all right thank you very much

and we're we're not doing too bad we will run over a little bit um

let's see so joint cooperation there's quite a bit of different things that have been done there as well uh they've sold them a set of missiles you might remember this was in the news

was it two years ago now where the they shot down one of their 737s after it took off or was coming into tehran airport that was on these missile batteries that the russians had sold them to protect them against the us who has had a huge force for a long time in iraq but they ended up shooting their own plane down unfortunately

and then again the the nuclear agreement here

now netanyahu and israel has been always very afraid of it

because they feel that it didn't have enough teeth and to really confirm that they were not producing

enriched and uranium to be able to build nuclear weapons uh they've had some interesting things that were done there was the one supposedly done by the mossad uh the the israeli intelligent organization that actually corrupted the centrifuges and the controllers that were actually siemens by understanding siemens controllers which siemens is a german company very large company kind of like a ge if you don't know siemens and then again you know that trump pulled out of it and then more most recently uh february of last year you know talks again of you know we're going to go back in or not into that agreement or produce a better agreement potentially which is still up in the air

and then also you have again more uh coordination with china and russia and iran

china needs fuel as well and needs oil so the middle east is important has become important to china you know 15 20

years ago it wasn't uh now it is there are stories that in china right now because of the pandemic and because of some of the decisions they've made to stop shipping uh coal or taking coal from some countries like australia that they're running out of they do quite a bit of coal

is produced in in china but they're a net importer of it to run power plants so there's still a pretty big portion of their power plants run on coal and that they're shutting down certain areas of the country or certain power grids because they don't have enough coal uh so um resources are very important um the chinese have bought up a lot of resources in uh and now in central um africa as well so everyone's converging kind of all around israel

and you can see some other things that russia preparing to sell satellites to them that's uh june of last year so again a lot of a lot of movement closer and closer together and then they were going to run some mutual joint golf military uh drills i couldn't i pulled this out a couple of months ago and i could not find if they actually did that yet or not i couldn't find anything so i have a feeling it's still going to be early this year

uh so a little bit more about um russia and syria uh putin you know playing the israeli card he's trying to do that against obama uh russia's you know dragging the israeli nuclear issue into the middle east as well i made comments that well syria had their nuclear their chemical weapons because israel had their nuclear stockpile which has never been uh quite um

uh well agreed to but it is pretty well known that it probably is there uh it's also probably true that the israelis actually sold the technology of the south african apartheid government as well and did a test or a test of their own south of uh south africa at some point but now never been fully confirmed uh then also again some other other things that have been written about russia protecting uh the christians in syria

and then you know about foreign troops you know syria is pretty close now why does putin not like um ukraine becoming a nato power i would say probably the same reason why the us didn't like cuba having russian missiles uh it was right next door it borders them so now he hasn't come out and say that but it's i'm sure that's the major major concern that they have but i also feel that he he really wants to become the soviet union again and absorb these areas in part crimea crimea which was part of ukraine he's he has taken over so

let's see here um

and then i mentioned a little bit earlier about putin in the pope he's met him a number of different times he was meeting with him in november 2013

uh met with him again and according to um you know the the issue about bringing the two churches together that krill was the issue but that seemed to soften up as well with krill as i showed you before meeting with the pope in recent years

and then often when putin is in that the vatican he talks about politics and the middle east christians in the middle east the current pope is very open to talk about many different topics he's probably refreshing in many ways as he's been very open about a lot of topics uh but he's you know certainly politic political in a way uh much more than we would we would think that someone of that caliber should be

again uh they also touched on the life of catholic community in russia so what happened um the beginning of the russian revolution and when they were cleansing everything in the 1920s is they basically um you know took a lot of the catholic churches away catholic church was in russia but um so was the russian orthodox church

so putin uh has repeatedly said that he is a man of faith his administration has consistently sought closer ties with the church his policies have brought religion to the forefront and triggered positive change in the relationships between uh this church and state but also between russia and the vatican that's another interesting movement a pope has been adamant that the russian intervention is only the way to temper the

bloodbath in syria if uh francis was elected the patriarch of russian orthodox sent the pontiff a letter inviting him uh and then said that just about seven there's about 100 700 000

catholics in russia so that's very sizable i don't know unfortunately the size of the russian rome uh sorry the eastern orthodox church or the russian orthodox church

i met with him again on the 15 on june 11 2015

again had a private meeting 15 and but we uh lasted 50 minutes with him talked in that time talked about the ukraine uh so ukraine has been on the top of his mind for some years uh and then they met a third time in 2000 and 2019 july 2019 again talking about the ukraine so ukraine has been in the media for for some years now and then that july meeting they also talked about syria again and venezuela which should perk the years for most americans but the unstability instability in venezuela who actually is opec nation one only one's out of the middle east i guess

and then uh just kind of final things and we'll wrap up uh putin i said in october 2014 i support the struggle of israel i closely i follow closely what's going on in israel i support the struggle israel as it attempts to protect its citizens

i talk about the alliance it's necessary that putin's uh russia enjoys a strategic partnership with israel development of a mutually uh advantageous and constructive relationship with israel in the political economic

humanitarian and other fields was and will remain a priority of the russian foreign policy that was in july of 2014

2020

uh january israel's netanyahu meets with putin as uh

with a free tourist there was some other thing that went on there won't go into uh and that re reflected the ever growing and warming uh ties between the countries

netanyahu friendship with putin benefits israel but has its limits uh this is uh the l monitor which is basically saying be careful um with what you try to deal with and what's the expression about you know playing with fire

and then the last last thing here i don't know if you see these that come out of the uk i forget the brother's name now uh but he puts out uh weekly things about um what's going on in the world and how that might relate to um prophecy uh this this was back in july of this past year and talked about ukraine again so and even at that time in april of last year russia amassed over 100 000 troops on the eastern border what i find quite interesting in the way the u.s media handles it is they make it sound like they've just massed 100 000

troops on ukraine's eastern border they've been there for probably a year or more so sometimes i wonder you know who's controlling who even even in the west um now he pointed out the brother pointed out that maybe the beijing olympics would be a good excuse because um they've used some major sporting events uh to go do that uh suddenly fifa world cup for example winter olympics in 2014 soji has used that to be a way to kind of blur the lines and go do something so we'll have to still wait the olympics are still going on and uh let's see you can go look at daniel 8 and verse 25 for some of this

and last picture i'll leave you with is this um good news is that we don't trust either of them but you know keeping our eyes open to be prepared for the the end times it's the main thing is always important is just be prepared um you know when things will happen no matter we're prepared or not but if we're not prepared and they happen we can be in a lot of trouble obviously we want our lamps to be filled with oil and so when the bright room comes we're ready for that and you know these events should just strengthen us as believers in the scriptures the scriptures are telling us the truth and our ways for others to come to understand as well what we've been blessed with

so that should be the last thing it is so i know there's a lot there i will send the slides on um so you can take a look at some of the more detail but again a lot of things going on