A "Fourth Turning" is a deadly event an entire nation goes through…around every 80 years....according to Strauss and Howe, who published a 1990s book by that title. Because America has experienced several of these "fourth turnings," the authors predicted MATHEMATICALLY, a quarter century ago, that America would enter another severe, killer catastrophe right about now...falling deeply into a crisis of crime, amorality, darkness, uncertainty and estrangement from a previous moral high ground.
If we look back 80 years, and keep looking back another 80 years, sure enough, America went through five life-and-death crises in 1623, 1703, 1783, 1863, and 1943. And 80 years later here we are again in 2023... without dependable standards for law, justice, order; without definitions for family and gender; without economic stability; without honest coinage, without international friendships, without an orderly military; without Biblical literacy; and every man is doing what is right in his own eyes. And almost every man is getting it wrong and is hurtling headlong along a downward trajectory.
But didn't America make the turn out of all those other crises? Yes. But those turnings were led by humble and repentant leaders who had developed a reverence for God's ways and God's laws. Unless such men appear on the scene today, and are followed in a new and redemptive direction, America will not make the turn. History is not so cyclical that God is obliged to keep to some mathematical calendar, or numerical pattern. He keeps to his covenant promises. If a nation turns, he helps. If a nation does not, the cycle is broken. Not by God, but by the stiff-necked, lawless citizens who refuse to turn around, and the nation descends further and faster into its own willful extinction.
1. The country is only a minor contributor to America’s drug problem; the necessary violence of war cannot be Biblically justified to protect American citizens
2. Both rural and urban terrain would be a nightmare for modern warfare
3. Venezuela’s forces are built for decades-long guerrilla war, not conventional defense
4. Logistics would be slow, vulnerable, and expensive
5. The out-of-order oil fields are unwinnable battlefields: sinkholes of corruption, sabotage, and ecological collapse.
6. Occupation would lead to political and economic chaos, not stability
7. The loss of young American infantry could easily surpass that of Vietnam
An invasion of Venezuela would be quick to start but impossible to finish. The terrain, the logistics, and the complexity of the country’s politics make it a trap for any foreign army. And far from securing oil or influence, it would likely unleash environmental and humanitarian chaos that no one could control. Venezuela is a fragile state sitting on a volatile resource, not a battlefield the U.S. could ever truly win.
They don't unite truth with faith.
"Christians have been duped into being fearful, timid, and neurotic. We walk around as if we are the most ignorant of all people, unable to cope with basic social stigma, even though we’re the only ones who have the Truth, and the Lord Almighty has our backs against anything that would threaten us. Somehow, we can’t seem to bridge the gap between believing the miracles and promises we read in the Bible and applying it real life; thus making it an empty “religion” rather than an explosive, reality-shattering revelation about how everything truly works."
-- Terry Wolfe