Happy New Year?

Every year about this time we greet eachother with "Merry Christmas" & "Happy New Year" (or in America "Happy Holidays" which is really sad). However, this new year heading into 2009 is different. As I signed off on the Christmas newsletter to our family & friends, I started to actually think about what I was saying. For the first time, the salutation took on an air of gravity.The way things are heading, we have every reason to be unhappy.

Unless you have been under a rock these last few months, you would be aware of the "global economic crisis". It's now got an acronyn... GEC. From what I read in the mainstream press, the severity, especially in the US, is being played down. In the independent news world, the collision bells are ringing loudly. One such bell ringer is Gerald Celente. He is one of the most respected "trend forecasters" who has made a successful career out of foreseeing the future. He predicted this current 2008 Panic, the dot.com bubble, military failure in Iraq and the collapse of the Soviet Union. When Celente and his Trends Research Institute makes a prediction, the business and political world take note.

read successful predictions

Gerald Celente has dire predictions for the US and the world in 2009. He says that by Christmas 2009, Americans will be thankful to get food on the table, forget flat screen TVs and Playstations. The current crisis is only a foretaste. He warns of depression, riots and tax revolt. That's how bad it's going to get. Here are the latest predictions.

see video #1

see video #2

What does this mean for Australia? Think of it as an economic earthquake with the epicentre at Wall Street. We will feel it here as a shock wave of lesser intensity but for the US it will be devastating. Fortunately, we are in a much better shape to absorb the impact. In many ways, the US and Australia are joined at the hip. However, from an economic point of view, our economy is much more resilient and stable than the US because our monetary policies have been far more conservative and our Reserve Bank is not in private hands like the US Federal Reserve. We haven't got the crazy unsustainable and irresponsible subprime mortgage phenomena either. We are also not trying to conquer the globe whilst spending more cents in the dollar on military spending than on food, health and education combined.

This is not all happening by accident. The earth is being shaken. I believe, as Christians, we are being called to stand whilst the world falters. We claim to be building our lives on rock and not on sand. It's time to be put to the test. It would be helpful to read my previous 7 Mountain Prophecy post if you missed that one.

I should also take the opportunity to remind everyone about the strange veiled warnings by Colin Powell & Joe Biden centred around the date of Obama's innauguration around January 20th & 21st.

January Alert

So if I wished you a Happy New Year recently, I really meant it.