Volume 43 Issue Eight August 2024
Last Trumpet Ministries · PO Box 806 · Beaver Dam, WI 53916
Phone: 920-887-2626 Internet: http://www.lasttrumpetministries.org
“For if the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to the battle?” I Cor. 14:8
Chaos“For we ourselves also were sometimes foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving divers lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, and hating one another. But after that the kindness and love of God our Saviour toward man appeared, Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost; Which he shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Saviour; That being justified by his grace, we should be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life.”
Titus 3:3-7
What a month! As we finally say goodbye to July 2024, many frazzled Americans might be asking themselves, “What just happened?” From start to finish, the month was a whirlwind that brought us one chaotic event after another. We are living in a time that stands apart from any other time that we’ve known before.
We began the month with record-breaking Hurricane Beryl, which was the earliest Category-4 and Category-5 hurricane ever recorded during a hurricane season since records have been kept. On July 1, 2024, this monster storm made landfall on Grenada’s Carriacou Island and promptly flattened hundreds of buildings (1) before strengthening to a Category-5 hurricane with sustained wind speeds of more than 160 miles per hour. (2) The storm also made unwelcome visits to Jamaica and southern Mexico before slamming the American state of Texas as a Category-1 hurricane on July 8, 2024. More than two million people were without power in Texas the morning after the storm’s arrival. (3) The hurricane’s remnants then went on to spawn sixty-five tornados between July 8-10 in the states of Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Kentucky, Indiana, and New York. (4) Hurricane Beryl served as a salient metaphor for the stormy month that was about to unfold.
A Disastrous Debate
Politicians, celebrities, journalists, and pundits are telling us that the 2024 presidential election is the most important election this country will ever have. It has been presented as an existential fight for democracy that will ultimately decide the fate of the United States of America. Of course, they said the exact same thing about the 2020 election. Nevertheless, as a result of this frenetic and desperate election cycle, panic has already ensued, which spawned drastic and unprecedented events.
On June 27, 2024, CNN broadcasted what was supposed to be the first of two debates between former President Donald Trump and current President of the United States Joe Biden. While the debate went on, Democrats watched with stunned disbelief as their candidate, Joe Biden, delivered a performance so poor that it led to immediate calls from his own political party for him to drop out of the race.
As I watched the panic unfold, I couldn’t help but wonder: “Hasn’t anyone been paying attention?” The debate went exactly as I expected it to as Joe Biden's cognitive decline had been evident for years. In fact, I wrote about this problem in the February 2023 issue of the Last Trumpet. One of the things I noted in that issue is that Biden had referred to his Vice President Kamala Harris as President on multiple occasions, even going as far as to call her a “great president” on October 24, 2022. (5) Perhaps he was just jumping the gun a bit?
Throughout his presidency, Biden’s appearances have been carefully planned and controlled. Press conferences have been rare, and it was decided in advance which reporters, if any, would be called on by the President. When he was interviewed on radio or television appearances, Biden’s team would give the questions to the interviewer in advance. Despite all of these efforts to carefully prepare the President and control his environment, he still made one mistake after another throughout his presidency. For example, at a recent NATO summit, President Biden introduced Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as “President Putin.” (6) (Vladimir Putin is the President of Russia.) At a campaign stop in Las Vegas, Nevada, Biden seemingly forgot the name of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and called him “the black man” instead. (7) In perhaps the most bizarre gaffe of his career, on July 5, 2024, he referred to himself as a black woman. “By the way, I’m proud to be, as I said, the first vice president, first black woman, to serve with a black president.” (8)
Given his history, why were people so surprised by his debate performance? Perhaps one of the reasons that liberal Americans were caught off guard is because left-leaning media outlets made a concerted effort to hide Biden’s diminished mental acuity. In a piece published by CNN on July 2, 2024, an anonymous member of the White House Press Corp was quoted as saying, “The right-wing media was calling him senile from day one, and that wasn’t true. Then whenever you report on the age you were in some ways solidifying, giving credence to some people that were actually of bad faith.” (9) In other words, reporters weren’t doing their jobs and reporting the truth because it would have made the President look bad.
Alex Thompson, a White House reporter for Axios, blamed the White House for the cover-up. “The White House’s response every single time it has come up for three-and-a-half years has been to deflect, to gaslight, to not tell the truth – not just to reporters, not just to other Democrats, but even at times to themselves about the president’s limitations at his age,” Thompson said. (10) Famous sports broadcaster Bob Costas also accused the Democrats of deception. In reference to Biden’s poor showing at the debate, Costas said, “That one atrocious night was simply writ-large what could be seen for years and years, that he is in serious decline.” He then added that it “makes you wonder whether we’ve been gaslit by the Democrats.” (11) For those unfamiliar with the term, “gaslight” means “to cause (a person) to doubt their judgment, memory, or sanity through the use of psychological manipulation” or “to deceive (a person or group of people) through repetition of a constructed false narrative.” (12)
