Good morning,

I received a heartfelt e-mail from a French subscriber. He was responding to my letter about “the sickening scale of online child predation.” I’ll share some of it with you in a moment.

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A new unicef report underscores the crisis. It says 1 in 5 children who go online will be targeted for sexual abuse or exploitation this year.

• In a massive survey of 21 countries, researchers estimate that more than 15 million children ages 12 to 17 in those countries were exposed to unwanted sexual content last year, 9 million were pressured into sexual conversations or images, and 4 million had intimate images of themselves distributed without consent.
• These children were four times likelier to report suicidal thoughts, self-harm or severe anxiety than their peers.
• Yet fewer than 1 percent of cases were ever reported to authorities, and more than 40 percent were never disclosed to anyone (except the researchers, in the confidential survey). Most of these children simply didn’t know who to tell. Heartbreaking.

“God is deeply angered by the abuse and exploitation of children!” I wrote in that previous letter. “He expects parents and other authorities to protect the most defenseless among us.”

This subscriber in France pushed back on that statement, writing (in French):

I, too, am angry and disappointed. How can God ask the authorities to protect the most vulnerable when He Himself is absent to protect us from evil on this Earth? It is high time all this stopped. God must return, now, to mete out His justice. Because evil is everywhere, and I can’t bear to see it any longer.

Evil reigns, the devil shows himself without shame, and people are completely blind and mad.

So is God angry? … Where is He? Why doesn’t He show Himself as Satan does? He is all-powerful; He can stop the carnage at any moment, because He is God.

I’m at the end of my tether, and my greatest wish is to see His power against evil. I want billions of people to see that He is indeed here to rid us of Satan. It’s time for His wrath to be made real. It’s all very well writing and reading about it. But this has gone on long enough.

I’m still praying, but that’s no longer enough.

This angry plea has echoed through millenniums in this unjust world. In fact, it is recorded repeatedly in Scripture itself.

• “Lord, how long shall the wicked, how long shall the wicked triumph?” (Psalm 94:3).
• “… Wherefore doth the way of the wicked prosper? wherefore are all they happy that deal very treacherously?” (Jeremiah 12:1).
• “… How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?” (Revelation 6:10).

This is not an easy answer for those enduring the suffering—but it is God’s, repeatedly, and it is true: Don’t lose hope. I am coming.

• After Habakkuk cried, “O Lord, how long shall I cry … of violence, and thou wilt not save?” (Habakkuk 1:2), God replies: “This vision is for a future time. It describes the end, and it will be fulfilled. If it seems slow in coming, wait patiently, for it will surely take place. It will not be delayed” (Habakkuk 2:3; New Living Translation).
• 2 Peter 3:9 assures us, “The Lord does not delay [as though He were unable to act] and is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is [extraordinarily] patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance” (Amplified Bible).

God’s indignation at wickedness and oppression is unmistakable—and He wants us to think as He does.

• He praises righteous Lot, living in Sodom, for being tormented by the sin around him (2 Peter 2:6-8).
• He promises to protect “the men that sigh and that cry for all the abominations” in His city (Ezekiel 9:4).

We must vigilantly protect ourselves and our loved ones, and actively seek God’s protection from the world’s dangers. But these problems will not be solved until God Himself intervenes. That is all the more reason why we must pray earnestly, daily, “Thy Kingdom come.”

Will the AfD Refuse to Govern?

Saxony-Anhalt is in a predicament. The Alternative für Deutschland won Sunday’s elections in the German state by a large margin and will control 39 seats in its 83-seat legislature. Since it falls three seats short of a majority, the options for governing are between bad and worse.

The AfD can’t govern on its own. Neither can the Christian Democrats, the Left, the Greens, nor the Social Democrats, who, combined, won the same number of seats.

• A coalition government is nearly impossible. Saxony-Anhalt’s own domestic intelligence agency classifies the AfD as “confirmed far-right extremist,” and all parties in the state have thus far ruled out a coalition.

The only party potentially willing to form a coalition with the AfD is the recently founded far-left Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht party. Thus, a governing coalition would either mean:

• Alternative für Deutschland + Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht
• Christian Democratic Union + the Left + the Greens + Social Democratic Party + Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht
• Either coalition would mean a union of opposites with a razor-thin majority of just two seats. However, the cdu has ruled out governing with the Left as well.

Another way to power: The AfD could attempt to attract dissenters from the conservative cdu to meet the 42-seat mark. Or if the election of a state premier fails twice due to the lack of a majority, anyone who gains a simple plurality of the vote can be sworn in. But power attained that way would be extremely fragile. Will the AfD take the risk?

• Last Thursday, AfD lead candidate Ulrich Siegmund said he would only govern with “a stable majority” provided by his own party and that even a one-seat majority of all-AfD legislators would not be enough. If he fears dissent within his own party, how much less can he trust others?
• “We extend a hand to every political actor in Saxony-Anhalt,” Siegmund said after the election, but added: “We will not compromise our principles.”

A strategy that avoids responsibility? The AfD has so far only been a protest party, and it is easier to gain popularity that way than to govern.

Germany’s future: Voters gave the AfD unprecedented support only to receive more uncertainty in return. As election results like these threaten to further paralyze German politics, Bible prophecy reveals that Germany will choose authoritarian rule to rise out of the abyss.

Israel Company to Help Germany Turn Plowshares into Swords

Volkswagen agreed yesterday to sell one of its factories in Germany to Israel’s Aurelius Capital, which will repurpose it to manufacture missile defense systems.

“The deal offers a potential blueprint for other Volkswagen sites facing an uncertain future as Europe’s largest carmaker embarks on ​its biggest ever restructuring,” writes Reuters.

• The deal saves 1,400 of 1,800 jobs at the complex.
• Aurelius will become the majority owner of the site, with the state government of Lower Saxony taking a stake.
• Aurelius will cooperate with Israel’s Rafael Advanced Defense Systems to build the air defense systems. These will be sold to Germany and other European governments.
• The arrangement may also later include retooling VW pickup truck assembly lines for production of military vehicles.

These Israeli firms are stepping in to help preserve German manufacturing and to sell and share core components of their advanced weapons systems to Germany.

Yet the Israelis are making a grave mistake in helping Germany militarize. Bible prophecy shows that Germany will double-cross them. Our article “Arrow 3: Israel Arms Germany” shows how.

IN OTHER NEWS

Japan’s new warships likely to be world’s most powerful surface combatants: Japan is building a pair of vessels equipped with the Aegis Combat System; the Telegraph said today they are likely to be the most powerful warships on the planet. At 620-feet-long and displacing 14,000 to 16,000 tons, these super-destroyers, which some say will be classified as cruisers, will be substantially larger than the United States Navy’s Arleigh Burke Flight iii guided missile destroyer and have nearly twice the displacement of Britain’s Type-45 destroyers. The Japanese vessels will have 128 missile launch cells, armed with SM-3 Block iias and SM-6s, some of the world’s most advanced and lethal missiles. “That combination of exo-atmospheric defense, advanced air defense, maritime and deep strike in one hull is as good as it gets,” the Telegraph stated. These powerful warships are only the latest example of decades of military restraint in Japan giving way to rapid and advanced militarization.

UK turning on Israel: British Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband announced sanctions on Israel today, including a ban on imports from Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Israel and the United States have threatened repercussions on the United Kingdom because of this. These unprecedented sanctions show Miliband’s boss, Prime Minister Andy Burnham, has made punishing Israel a foreign-policy priority. Bible prophecy shows that Britain and Israel, along with the United States, are brother nations—and that this brotherhood will break.