On Monday night, a “mystery missile” streaked across the sky just off the Southern California coast, and at this point the U.S. military still has no official explanation for it.  The “mystery missile” was caught on video by a local television station’s helicopter camera, and the images are absolutely stunning.  The trail left behind by the missile was visible from the city of Los Angeles, and the helicopter crew that took the video estimated that the missile’s location was approximately 35 miles out to sea north of Catalina Island.  So where in the world did this mystery missile off the Southern California coast come from?

At this point, nobody seems to know.  The Pentagon says that the U.S. military did not have any missile tests planned and that they do not know who fired the missile at this point.  Some are speculating that it could be the work of an amateur.  Others are claiming that it could just be an optical illusion.

Still others think that it might have been the work of a foreign nation.  For example, Robert Ellsworth, a former deputy secretary of defense and ambassador to NATO, is speculating that perhaps an Asian power is responsible….

“It could be a test firing of an intercontinental ballistic missile from a submarine to demonstrate, mainly to Asia, that we can do that.”

A video news report about this mystery missile is posted below….

Eventually, the U.S. military will either tell us what this mystery missile over Southern California really was or they will make up a really good cover story.

In any event, all of this is rather unsettling.

The truth is that many believe that this is exactly the type of attack that is going to take down the United States in the last days.

Many, many, many people have had visions of Russian subs just off the coast striking U.S. cities with nuclear missiles in the future.

So is such a thing possible?

Yes, very much so.

Once Russia and/or China decide that war with the United States is inevitable, they will want to get in as devastating a first strike as possible before we can respond.

The very best way to do this is with submarines.

The reality is that Russia’s next generation subs are so incredibly quiet that they can creep all the way up to U.S. coastlines without even being detected most of the time.

For example, the U.S. military was very surprised a while back to learn that two Russian nuclear submarines had been patrolling off the east coast of the United States.  According to news reports, two Akula class nuclear-powered submarines were lurking in international waters just 200 miles of the U.S. coast.

So did a sub from a foreign power test how close it could get to the coast of California and fire off a missile without being detected?

Maybe.

Maybe not.

In any event, this is something that a lot of people are convinced is coming in the future.

If Russian subs did sneak up to 30 miles off the California coast, they could literally be raining down nuclear missiles on U.S. cities in as little as five minutes.

That would not leave us a whole lot of time to respond at all.

So what do you think about this “mystery missile” off the California coast?

Do you think that this type of thing is a real danger?

Do you think that someday submarines could pop up off the coast and rain down nukes on all of us?

Please feel free to leave a comment with your opinion….

The Scriptures tell us that in the last days there will be wars and rumors of wars, and that is certainly true of the times that we are living in today.  Iran’s nuclear program continues to advance, and world leaders around the globe are becoming increasingly alarmed.  In fact, even Russian President Dmitry Medvedev is now warning that Iran is close to having the potential to build a nuclear weapon.  For years, Russia has been one of Iran’s most vigorous defenders on the world scene, but now even the Russian government is expressing reservations about what is going on in that country.  That should set off alarm bells for all of us.

Not only that, but now even Arab nations are expressing concern about Iran’s nuclear program.  For example, the United Arab Emirates ambassador to the United States recently said that it would be extremely difficult for his nation to coexist with a nuclear Iran and that it would support any actions the U.S. took to prevent such a possibility.

The UAE would support a U.S. military strike on Iran?

Yes, you read that correctly.

It is even being reported that both Egypt and Jordan are growing increasingly concerned with Iran’s nuclear program.

It looks like Iran is running out of friends.

But Iran continues to recklessly push forward with their nuclear ambitions.

Just this past week, Iran announced that the Bushehr nuclear power plant would be ready for operation in just two months.

But does being able to produce nuclear power mean that Iran is also planning to develop nuclear weapons?

The truth is that we all know the answer to that question.

In fact, a former of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard who relayed its secret operations to the CIA for 10 years says that Iran will commit the “most horrendous suicide bombing in human history” if it is not stopped from developing nuclear weapons.

So who is going to stop them?

The United States?

That seems quite likely as long as Barack Obama is running things.

Israel?

Perhaps.

For now, Israel has been trying to talk peace with the Palestinians, but they are also preparing for war.

The world has certainly been trying to push Israel and the Palestinians to the negotiating table, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has expressed interest in sitting down with them.  Netanyahu says that he believes that direct talks with the Palestinians will begin very soon and he recently predicted that they will be “very, very tough”.

But on another occasion recently, Netanyahu said that he does not envision actually reaching a negotiated Middle East peace settlement within the next two years, despite his Palestinian counterpart’s declared intentions to set up infrastructure for a state by 2011.

So it looks like Netanyahu expects peace talks with the Palestinians to begin soon, but he is not anticipating that they will bear any fruit in the foreseeable future.

Not that any of the other “peace agreements” with the Palestinians have ever worked out.

In the end, war always ends up breaking out again.

And war tensions are certainly on the rise in the region once again.

Debka is reporting that 20,000 Hezbollah troops have advanced and are dug into 160 new positions in South Lebanon.  Israel is believed to be “preparing something” for Lebanon and Hezbollah is on high alert to prevent it, unnamed sources in the group were quoted by London-based newspaper Al-Sharq Al-Awsat as saying recently.

In addition, according to the Palestinian Authority daily newspaper Al-Hayat al-Jadida, Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas recently told Arab leaders that the PA is ready to wage war on Israel if the rest of the Arab world does.  The following is what Abbas reportedly told them….

“If you want war, and if all of you will fight Israel, we are in favor.  But the Palestinians will not fight alone because they don’t have the ability to do it.”

To the world media, Abbas talks about peace, peace, peace, but to his fellow Arab leaders he says that the Palestinian Authority is ready for war with Israel.

What a hypocrite.

The truth is that even if a “peace agreement” is reached, and even if a “Palestinian state” is created, more wars in the Middle East are inevitable.

These are the last days, and wars are going to continue until the end.  The only time that there is going to be true peace is after the King of Kings, the Messiah, returns to this earth and sets up His kingdom in Jerusalem.

If you asked most people on the street which nation produces the most oil most of them would say that the answer is Saudi Arabia of course.  But they would be dead wrong.  The truth is that Russia is the number one oil producer in the world.  Not only that, but Russia is also the number one natural gas exporter in the world.

So what does that mean?

It means that Russia is the top energy superpower on the globe. 

Russia pumped more than 10 million barrels of oil per day during November, and now they have done something which will give them even more power over energy.

Russia has just finished a new oil pipeline and port complex that enables them to export more oil than Saudi Arabia.  On December 28th, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was on hand to celebrate the opening of Russia’s first modern Pacific-based oil export facilities.  The Pacific port of Kozmino is a project that Putin is extremely proud of, and it promises to literally change the world.

So what makes this port so significant?

The new Kozmino complex promises to be a gate through which Russia’s vast East Siberian oilfields will supply oil for Asia’s energy-hungry economies.

Notice that the Middle East and the West are not part of that equation.

According to Reuters, the first oil transport will load at Kozmino on January 15th.  Hong Kong is scheduled to receive that first shipment.

But this is just the latest sign that Russia has more than recovered from their past economic woes.

In fact, the Russian Bear is back.

Not only is Russia the number one energy superpower in the world, but their economy has been rocking over the past decade.  Russia ended 2008 with GDP growth of 6.0%, and that followed 10 straight years of growth averaging 7% annually.

Moscow is now one of the most expensive cities in the world in which to live.  The economic turmoil of the 90s is a long-forgotten memory.

Russia has been using this new economic power to modernize and strengthen both its conventional military forces and its strategic military assets.

The truth is that Russia is not as strong as they were at the end of the Cold War.

They are now far stronger.

In early 2010, Russia is now a greater strategic threat to the United States than it ever has been before, but the U.S. is still treating Russia as though the Cold War just ended and Russia was the loser.

In fact, Barack Obama is pushing for a plan which would reduce the size of the U.S. strategic nuclear arsenal to about 10 percent of what it was during the Cold War.

Fortunately, some in the Pentagon are quite upset about Barack Obama’s plan to start phasing out America’s nuclear weapons.

But the vast majority of the American people seem unconcerned.

But they should be.

The number of threats and the number of potential targets is multiplying at a time when Obama wants to dramatically reduce our nuclear capability.

Back during the Cold War, the Soviet Union was basically the only “real” nuclear threat out there.  Today the situation has fundamentally changed.

But Obama believes that in order for the U.S. to have the right preach to other nations that they should not have nuclear weapons, we need to start getting rid of our own. 

So he is dismantling the protective nuclear deterrent that has protected the United States for generations.

With the Russian Bear back and stronger than ever, someday Americans will realize what a massive mistake that was.