Wednesday, May 09, 2007

Dark Visions

I have previously posted commentary by a Romanian relief worker and visionary, Michael Boldea, Jr., who, like his late grandfather, seems to have unique and curious insights concerning the future, especially as it relates to coming judgments for the United States and the West. I am posting his latest vision, which had special impact when, shortly after reading it, I came across a secular expert's predictions, which I reproduce below the Boldea comments. – GJM



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A New War Is Coming
By Michael Boldea Jr.
Hand of Help Ministries

Jeremiah 50:22, “A sound of battle is in the land, and of great destruction.”

James 5:8, “You also be patient. Establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is at hand.”

One of the most important lessons I learned as a young man traveling with my grandfather, as being his interpreter, is that one must always prepare for battle, before he is faced with it. Just as a soldier must know the weapons of his warfare, train with them, and be comfortable with them, so must a servant of God know his weapons and prepare himself before he ventures out into enemy territory. It was so ingrained in me that a servant of God must be prayed up and fasted up before he goes out to minister that, before every tour I begin, I take a couple weeks to simply fast and pray and draw close to God and see what He would have me share at the upcoming meetings.

I was still in Romania the first few days of February, about halfway through a two-week fast, when after having spent some time in prayer, I went to bed and fell into a restful sleep. Sometime during the night, I began to dream. I dreamt I was hearing what were at first faint hoof beats, but the closer they got, the louder they grew, until it was a thundering roar of not one or two horses but what seemed like hundreds. I felt as though the ground beneath me was shaking from the onrushing horses, and the sound of them became so loud that I suddenly awoke in my bed. As I blinked a few times, adjusting to the darkness in my room, I noticed a shadow at the foot of my bed. I blinked again, and there stood the same man I have seen on previous occasions, dressed in battle armor, his hands resting atop each other before him on the hilt of his sword.

“What is the meaning of what I just dreamt?” I asked, somehow knowing he had come to give me the interpretation.

“What you heard,” he began, “were the chariots of war, and they are swiftly approaching. A new war is coming, but it will be unlike this present one (emphasis added). Speak as you have spoken, pray as you have prayed, and walk as you have walked for dark days will soon come upon the land to which you are returning. Even now their enemies plot, even now their enemies unite under one banner, and soon they will make their intentions known to the world. There is no refuge but in the Father, and He will guide and protect those who know His voice.”

I blinked again, and the man was gone, and I was left to ponder the words I had heard. I struggled with whether I should make this dream public, for I know the reaction that some will have to it, and the last thing I desire is to stir fear in the heart of any man. After much prayer, I felt I was supposed to publish the dream, and though some may receive it as a reason to fear, the true children of God will receive it for what it was, the forewarning of a loving Father, preparing His children for what is to come. God’s desire for us is not ignorance, but rather knowledge, that we may prepare our hearts, in prayer and fasting, that we may draw closer to Him, that we make Him our place of refuge long before hardship forces us to seek one. The wise man prepares, while the foolhardy is caught unaware.

As always my prayers continue to be with you and yours, and with a grateful heart I thank you for all that you do on behalf of those less fortunate.

Jeremiah 19:15, “Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: ‘Behold, I will bring on this city and on all her towns all the doom that I have pronounced against it, because they have stiffened their necks that they might not hear My words.”

(April 6, 2007)



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Tuesday, May 1, 2007



An expert who helped prepare a 1994 report that uncannily predicted the threat terrorists would pose – including key aspects of the 9/11 attacks – now warns of even more ominous attacks.

"Muslim extremists will acquire nuclear weapons within the next 10 years, if they do not possess them already," writes Forecasting International founder and president Marvin Cetron in the new issue of The Futurist magazine.

Cetron played a key role in the 1994 report titled "Terror 2000: the Future Face of Terrorism."

The report was part of a Pentagon sponsored conference that took input from several experts, including Paul Bremer, formerly ambassador-at-large for counterterrorism and administrator of Iraq; Brian Jenkins, now senior vice president at the RAND Corp.; and others.

At the time, the common wisdom was that terrorism was becoming obsolete, for no state would be likely to sponsor future terrorist acts for fear of crippling reprisals.

The authors of the "Terror 2000" report saw it differently. Terrorism, they predicted, would be sponsored not by states but by Muslim extremists motivated by hatred of the West.

Among the particulars, the compilers of the report foresaw a new, more successful attack on the World Trade Center towers, the crash of an airplane into the Pentagon, and the threat of simultaneous assaults on widely separated targets.

Among the particulars, the compilers of the report foresaw a new, more successful attack on the World Trade Center towers, the crash of an airplane into the Pentagon, and the threat of simultaneous assaults on widely separated targets.

The accuracy of that report lends considerable credence to Cetron and his organization, and their new predictions.

"Rather than obtaining nuclear weapons from a sympathetic government, al-Qaida or its spin-offs will likely become the government in any of perhaps a dozen countries," Cetron writes.

"Wherever secular government is weak, it might easily be replaced by a much stronger and more virulently anti-American theocracy with leaders drawn straight from the terrorist movement."

He cites Syria, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sudan, Iraq and the predominantly Muslim nations of the former Soviet Union.

"However," Cetron notes, "our own choice for ‘most likely to undergo a religious revolution' is Saudi Arabia, where the royal family has supported the extremist Wahhabi sect for some 200 years."

Interestingly, Cetron's report was published before Saudi officials arrested last week 172 militants it claimed were planning massive and coordinated terror attacks at installations, including numerous refineries, across the kingdom.

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EDITOR'S NOTE: The first article above is one in a long series of prophetic warnings written by Mr. Boldea and his grandfather, Dumitru Duduman, founder of Hand of Help, a small charitable ministry working with the poorest of the poor in Romania. Both men, over the years, have related a host of dreams and visions in which serious warnngs and calls to repentance have been revealed.



Monday, May 07, 2007

S3 Comes on a Web and a Prayer

By Graham H. Moes
Graybrook Film Critic

I caught the eleventh-hour press screening of Spider-Man 3 last night, almost literally at the eleventh hour. Spidey geeks camped out for the midnight showing, in fact, glanced up from their trading cards and Game Boys just long enough to give us "VIPs" dirty looks of Venom-like proportions for cutting to the head of the line. Didn't look much happier as we threw them a friendly wave on the way out either.

But on to the movie.

The short version: S3 is somewhere on the upper end of good and the lower end of great. Alright, much lower than great.

Part three of any trilogy is make-or-break time. You either end on a high note (Revenge of the Sith) or drag down the whole shebang (X-Men 3).

Personally, I tend to favor origins stories. Fellowship of the Ring is still tops with me despite Return of the King's superior firepower as spectacle. That's largely how I feel about S3. The effects are better, the story has greater depth, and the themes are deeper. It's just hard to beat the emotional impact and story arc of the "genesis" installment for me.

That, and S3's too-many sources of villainy -- presented sympathetically and connected in loose ways that tend to dissipate much of the tension -- are the biggest negatives. The Sandman looks phenomenal, but it's hard to hate a guy motivated by the love of his daughter the way we could hate the demonic fury of Willem Dafoe in Spider-Man.

But fans of director Sam Raimi's earlier, darker, quirkier career will still appreciate a return to style at times here. A completely random sequence showing the "evil" Peter Parker strutting his sexy stuff on the streets of New York is some of the funniest stuff in the film. A lot of people are hating that exact bit, but it's old school Raimi to the core. (Remember the Three Stooges-esque eye pokes Ash endured in the graveyard during Army of Darkness? Feels a little like that.)

The great and mighty Bruce Campbell makes his usual cameo for Raimi as well, this time as a hilariously over-the-top maƮtre de at a French restaurant. Clearly a better choice for the recent Pink Panther remake, had a remake not been pure blasphemy in the first place.

Oh, did I mention Bryce Dallas Howard? Turns out the daughter of Opie Cunningham is uh...one fine, foxy lady, despite what The Village or Lady in the Water may have led us to believe.

Conservatives too should give this a thumbs up. While hardly a political movie and has no obvious subplot involving, say, a mechanical, multi-tentacled Osama bin Laden, the film never strays from its earnest Red State roots.

Which basically means it doesn't take much to please conservatives anymore.

It's manna from heaven these days when Christianity isn't maligned, when gratuitous jabs at George Bush don't materialize, when the everyman (and everywoman) characters don't shack up, and when the hero somehow manages to speak without a sniff of irony about things like the power of forgiveness and making moral choices in life.

Sure it's a little corny at times, but I like corn.

Superman Returns, you may recall, drew fire for avoiding the Man of Steele's American hero status. (I hear it from my own manager all the time: "It won't play well overseas!") In stark contrast, S3 has Spidey swing into battle framed by a giant American flag.

Happily, that one shot is already irking Eurotrash critics like Leo Lewis at the Times Online, who ends his review with:

"Also disappointing is the inability of the director, Sam Raimi, to end the romp without a fleeting shot of the American flag. The Stars and Stripes just happens to be fluttering behind Spidey as he makes his triumphal return to honour, probity and good honest fist-fighting."

The filmmakers say they weren't trying to say anything with that flag. Could be. Could be they're just smart enough to realize films that do well overseas often don't do well here, where the money actually is.

Still..."I'm a patriotic guy. I do believe it's absolutely true this country strives to do the right thing," said director Sam Raimi during a recent interview with World magazine.

S3 also contains a "conversion" scene of sorts taking place at the foot of a massive cathedral cross. I'll leave it at that.

The film will be a runaway hit regardless of critics' opinions, which are also running strong in S3's favor.And when it is, look for talk of Raimi's involvement in New Line's Hobbit project to heat up too.