Jesus had performed seven specific signs to manifest the glory of God in the earth, yet only a few truly believed in Him. So John quotes Isaiah 53:1, which leads into the important Old Testament messianic passage about “The Suffering Servant.” Though it was prophesied more than 700 years ago that the Messiah would be beaten and would die as the Lamb of God, no one could comprehend such a Messiah since the prophecy was first given.

The twelfth chapter of John completes Jesus’ public ministry insofar as teaching is concerned. The stage was thereby set for the religious leaders to crucify Him and for Judas to betray Him into their hands. When evening came, Jesus met with the disciples for the “Last Supper.”

Peter was unaware of the prophetic significance of Jesus’ actions, though obviously Jesus knew precisely what He was doing. No doubt Peter saw Jesus’ action as the work of a maidservant, an act of humility. In a time and place where men walked on hot, dusty roads, it was common courtesy to wash the feet of an arriving guest.

A probing force pressed tightly against the dark side of the Ahriman Gate as demons, large and small, gargoylian and beautiful, drew swords and held them aloft. Strange, ancient machines, designed for supernatural warfare, floated behind the wicked troops inside the timeless cavity. With unified depravity unknown to men, the abysmal life forms inched the dreadful mechanisms forward. Their determination was as deep and as immutable as the well that had spawned them.

Having stepped through the gigantic steel gates into the access tunnel, then carefully to one side of the railway, Stark paused, troubled by the appearance of the horizontal shaft extending before him. Though the corridor had been fashioned to match the outer hall, darkness as thick and as black as nurtured coal ebbed around him. This was unexpected.

Turning, he glanced at the ceiling. A maintenance bulb hung sideways on a conduit fastened to a cracked and tar-coated timber. The crooked light dangling from it painted the gang’s silhouette against the floor and up one wall as fish-eyed and angry, like uninvited ghouls standing bent and impatient for the group to move along. Halfway between it and the darkness, a tiny waterfall dripped lazily from a new crack in the wall. A murky pool formed beneath it on the uneven floor, from which a cluster of rocks emerged in a long crooked line, like the bony finger of a lost adventurer beckoning them forward into the cursed unknown.

Quetzalcoatl’s army slithered from beneath the surface of Mars, along the War Planet’s canals into the ancient City Center. Imprisoned since the great conflict with Michael the archangel, the spirits were anxious for freedom and hungry for human blood.

Millions of miles beneath them, the demons at the edge of Kosmos were likewise growing impatient. Along the mouth of the Ahriman Gate, they pried, challenged, searched for weaknesses in the angelic barrier, while behind them, saucer-shaped objects with hieroglyphic markings along their rims formed a massive armada, pushing against Earth’s atmosphere to get to the human race.

Yet for now the heavenly host held them—galvanized by the intercessory group at Mt. Hood Evangelical Seminary and by the other “suddenly burdened” prayer warriors on their knees around the globe.

Out of the many incredible artifacts that have been recovered from sites in Iraq where flourishing Sumerian cities once stood, few have been more intriguing than the Sumerian King List. An ancient manuscript originally recorded in the Sumerian language, the Sumerian King List is a register of the kings of Sumer (ancient southern Iraq) from Sumerian and neighboring dynasties. The list is of immense value because it reflects very old traditions while at the same time providing an important chronological framework relating to the different periods of kingship in Sumeria. It even demonstrates remarkable parallels to accounts in Genesis. The Sumerian King List begins with the very origin of kingship, which is seen as a divine institution: “the kingship had descended from heaven.” The rulers in the earliest dynasties are represented as reigning fantastically long periods. Some of the rulers mentioned in the early list, such as Etana, Lugal-banda and Gilgamesh, are legendary figures whose heroic feats are subjects of a series of Sumerian and Babylonian narrative compositions. The early list names eight kings with a total of 241,200 years from the time when kingship “descended from heaven” to the time when “the Flood” swept over the land and once more “the kingship was lowered from heaven” after the Flood…

Soaring food, energy, and shelter inflation have led to what could be a new era of civil unrest worldwide. Pockets of unrest have been observed in Sri Lanka, Peru, Kenya, Ecuador, Iran, and Europe. New research forecasts a broader wave of discontent is just ahead.

Earlier this year, Rockefeller Foundation President Rajiv warned that a “massive, immediate food crisis” is nearing. The UN said this summer that the world is “marching towards starvation” with an increased likelihood of civil unrest and political violence.

Making sense of the impending global turmoil is Verisk Maplecroft, a UK-based risk consulting and intelligence firm. They have just published an updated version of the Civil Unrest Index (CUI), covering seven years of data, showing the last quarter saw the most countries ever since the index was created move higher in civil unrest risks (101 of the 198 countries tracked by the firm saw increased risks of civil unrest).