The other crisis: Locusts imperil millions in Africa

April 28, 2020 — The EU Observer reports: “The idea that a butterfly flapping its wings can cause a hurricane on the other side of the globe is a commonplace of so-called ‘chaos theory’ in physics.

But theory aside, individual consumers making tiny choices in the industrialised north have helped set flapping the wings of hurricanes of locusts in east Africa.

‘The situation is particularly worrisome in Ethiopia, Somalia, and Kenya,’ Cyril Ferrand, a senior UN official based in the region, told EUobserver.

‘About one million individuals in Ethiopia have been affected by the desert locust upsurge and require emergency food assistance,’ he said.

‘Around 20 million people were already experiencing acute food insecurity in the … greater Horn of Africa,’ he added…”  (“And the Lord said unto Moses, Stretch out thine hand over the land of Egypt for the locusts, that they may come up upon the land of Egypt, and eat every herb of the land, even all that the hail hath left.  And Moses stretched forth his rod over the land of Egypt, and the Lord brought an east wind upon the land all that day, and all that night; and when it was morning, the east wind brought the locusts.  And the locust went up over all the land of Egypt, and rested in all the coasts of Egypt: very grievous were they; before them there were no such locusts as they, neither after them shall be such.  For they covered the face of the whole earth, so that the land was darkened; and they did eat every herb of the land, and all the fruit of the trees which the hail had left: and there remained not any green thing in the trees, or in the herbs of the field, through all the land of Egypt” – Exodus 10:12-15.  

According to the UN Food & Agriculture Organization, a one square kilometer swarm of locusts can eat the same amount of food in one day as 35,000 people… CNN reported that one swarm in Kenya was three times the size of New York City.  See the next report.)

“Multiple famines of biblical proportions within a short few months”

April 22, 2020 — Israel National News reports: “David Beasley, UN World Food Programme (WFP) Executive Director, spoke yesterday (Tuesday) in a virtual session of the UN Security Council which was titled ‘Maintenance of International Peace and Security: Protecting Civilians Affected by Conflict-Induced Hunger’.

‘At the same time while dealing with a COVID-19 pandemic’, Beasley said, ‘we are also on the brink of a hunger pandemic’.

Beasly emphasized that speaking with world leaders way before the coronavirus, he said that 2020 would be facing the worst humanitarian crisis since World War II.

‘So today, with COVID-19’, he stressed, ‘we are not only facing a global health pandemic but also a global humanitarian catastrophe. Millions of civilians living in conflict-scarred nations, including many women and children, face being pushed to the brink of starvation, with the spectre of famine a very real and dangerous possibility’.

According to the UN World Food Programme 821 million people go to bed hungry every night all over the world, ‘chronically hungry’ Beasly noted.

According to the new Global Report on Food Crisis published yesterday (Tuesday) 135 million people on earth are marching towards the brink of starvation…”

45,500 corpses incinerated in Wuhan in 2 weeks, say U.S. intel sources

April 29, 2020 — WND.com reports: “The Wuhan coronavirus pandemic has infected more than 3.1 million people worldwide, causing more than 216,000 deaths.

But the true totals probably never will be known, in part because of unreliable information from China, where it originated.

The Chinese Communist Party’s count of about 80,000 infections and 4,000 deaths in the country is not even ‘remotely close,’ according to U.S. officials.

Summit News reported U.S. intelligence has estimated that between March 23 and April 4, at least 45,500 corpses were incinerated in China.

The U.S. believes the total is at least 50 times worst than China admits.

They say up to 60,000 dead bodies per month could have been processed by funeral homes in Wuhan…”  (“But when ye shall hear of wars and commotions, be not terrified: for these things must first come to pass; but the end is not by and by.  Then said he unto them, Nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom:  And great earthquakes shall be in divers places, and famines, and pestilences; and fearful sights and great signs shall there be from heaven” – Luke 21:9-11.  This pandemic that we are facing is a but a foretaste of the pandemics that will be a part of the Tribulation period.  In Revelation 11:6 we are told of the two witnesses who “…have power to shut heaven, that it rain not in the days of their prophecy: and have power over waters to turn them to blood, and to smite the earth with all plagues, as often as they will.”  “And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth” – Revelation 6:8.  We may never know the true toll of this pandemic because of the lies and subterfuge that is coming from China.  See the next four reports.)

Wuhan Residents: China’s Claims of Zero Coronavirus Patients ‘Fake’, a ‘Cover-Up’

April 29, 2020 — Breitbart.com reports: “Residents of the city of Wuhan, source of the worldwide coronavirus pandemic, expressed doubts about the Chinese government’s claim on Monday that absolutely no one is currently hospitalized with Chinese coronavirus.

People in Wuhan anonymously told foreign media they believed the claim of zero patients is a political stunt.

‘Given the problem of information asymmetry we face, my gut feeling tells me that this zero-patient report is merely a political show after the authorities announced earlier that no treatment was necessary for recovered patients testing positive,’ a Wuhanite told Voice of America News (VOA) on Monday, using the pseudonym ‘Yang’ to avoid retaliation from the oppressive Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

‘The harm from shutting down the factories has caused a worse impact on the ruling regime than that from the virus itself,’ Yang said, explaining the CCP’s need to put on such a show…”

Chinese Media Admits Coronavirus Still Raging: ‘Prevention Will Become a Protracted War’

April 23, 2020 — Breitbart.com reports: “Chinese Communist Party (CCP) propaganda claims the country suffered a relative handful of infections during the coronavirus pandemic compared to other countries around the world and has all but eradicated the virus across most of China, but state media this week tacitly admitted the disease is still raging and told readers to prepare for preventive measures remaining necessary far into the future.

The Global Times on Tuesday wrote an editorial quoting the World Health Organization (W.H.O.) warning that ‘the worst is yet ahead of us.’ The primary thrust of the editorial was to chastise American and European officials who want to lift coronavirus lockdowns as soon as possible, since keeping those lockdowns in place on adversaries while China ramps up its own industrial production appears to be a major CCP objective.

In the course of playing the victim and rejecting criticism of how the CCP handled the coronavirus, the Global Times admitted it still has a much bigger problem than the numbers it feeds to W.H.O. would suggest…”

Report: China’s Coronavirus Data Off by Millions of Cases

April 10, 2020 — Breitbart.com reports: “A report published by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) this week denounced China’s official coronavirus statistics as mathematically improbable and estimated the true number of infections from the epidemic in China was about 2.9 million, over a hundred times the total of 81,907 infections claimed by Beijing as of Friday.

‘Population size makes it almost certain that China’s disinformation about what happened outside the original outbreak city of Wuhan is worse than the disinformation about what happened inside,’ the AEI report contended.

The report quoted figures from Chinese state media in January to demonstrate that the number of people who left the outbreak city of Wuhan and its surrounding Hubei province before the city and province were locked down – a wave of travelers consistent with the Lunar New Year season in previous years – would have infected far more people than the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) claims.

Even assuming those figures from Chinese state media were on the high side, possibly because Wuhan officials were eager at the time to demonstrate the enigmatic illness they were passing off as a minor annoyance was not interfering with daily life or the holiday season, the lowest estimates have over a million people leaving the hot zone before travel was restricted – many of them probably carrying the highly infectious coronavirus, which can lurk inside people who do not appear sick, each of whom could be capable of infecting five or six other people…”

China’s failure to warn of likely pandemic for 6 key days may have been critical

April 15, 2020 — The Times of Israel reports: “In the six days after top Chinese officials secretly determined they likely were facing a pandemic from a new coronavirus, the city of Wuhan at the epicenter of the disease hosted a mass banquet for tens of thousands of people; millions began traveling through for Lunar New Year celebrations.

President Xi Jinping warned the public on the seventh day, January 20. But by then, more than 3,000 people had been infected during almost a week of public silence, according to internal documents obtained by The Associated Press and estimates based on retrospective infection data.

The delay from January 14 to January 20 was neither the first mistake made by Chinese officials at all levels in confronting the outbreak, nor the longest lag, as governments around the world have dragged their feet for weeks and even months in addressing the virus.

But the delay by the first country to face the new coronavirus came at a critical time — the beginning of the outbreak. China’s attempt to walk a line between alerting the public and avoiding panic set the stage for a pandemic that has infected almost 2 million people and taken more than 126,000 lives.

‘This is tremendous,’ said Zuo-Feng Zhang, an epidemiologist at the University of California, Los Angeles. ‘If they took action six days earlier, there would have been much fewer patients and medical facilities would have been sufficient.’…” 

Expert: India Treating Christian Health Workers as ‘Expendable’ Fodder in Coronavirus Response

April 10, 2020 — Breitbart.com reports: “David Curry, the leader of the Christian aid organization Open Doors, told Breitbart News on Wednesday that the group has received reports of Indian government officials sending Christian nurses to tend to the most contagious Chinese coronavirus patients because ‘they are considered dispensable.’

Curry emphasized that many nations on the organization’s World Watch List – the countries where freedom of religion is most restricted – have become even more dangerous for Christians in light of the current pandemic, among them nations like China, India, Iran, and North Korea. In some cases, Christians are struggling to receive proper medical care; in others, Christians are already among the nation’s poorest and must now contend with shut down economies.

In India, Curry told Breitbart News, Open Doors is receiving alarming evidence of Christian health workers being placed in dangerous situations with little support or care because of their faith…”    (“If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you.  If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you.  Remember the word that I said unto you, The servant is not greater than his lord. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you; if they have kept my saying, they will keep yours also.  But all these things will they do unto you for my name’s sake, because they know not him that sent me.  If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin: but now they have no cloak for their sin.  He that hateth me hateth my Father also.  If I had not done among them the works which none other man did, they had not had sin: but now have they both seen and hated both me and my Father” – John 15:18-24.  See the next report.)

Christians yet again denied food aid, coronavirus relief distribution for Muslims only

April 16, 2020 — Israel National News reports: “International Christian Concern (ICC) reports Pakistani Christians were denied food aid amid the COVID-19 crisis in the fourth incident ICC has documented since Pakistan was placed on lockdown by authorities seeking to combat the pandemic.

According to a video post on Facebook, Christians were denied food aid on April 2 in a village situated on the Raiwind road, near Lahore. A local pastor confirmed the incident to ICC.

In the Facebook video, a young Christian man claims that a local mosque committee distributed food on April 2, however, village Christians were told to leave the mosque compound because the food aid was meant for only Muslims…”

Coronavirus Searches Lead Millions to Hear About Jesus

April 13, 2020 — ChristianityToday.com reports: “Millions of worried people who have turned to Google with their anxiety over COVID-19 have ended up connecting with Christian evangelists in their search results—leading to a spike in online conversions in March.

In the Philippines, a woman named Grace found herself on a website about coronavirus fear hosted by the internet evangelism organization Global Media Outreach (GMO). “Please help me not to worry about everything,” she wrote in a chat with a volunteer counselor. “What’s happening now is very confusing.” The counselor explained that only Jesus can bring lasting peace, and Grace received Jesus as her Savior.

Back in the US, a volunteer at the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA) chatted online with a young mother named Brittany who worried that COVID-19 would take her life and her children’s lives. The volunteer offered hope and peace, and Brittany too accepted Christ.

Three of the largest online evangelism ministries—GMO, BGEA, and Cru—account cumulatively for at least 200 million gospel presentations on the internet each year. All three say the number of people seeking online information about knowing Jesus has increased since the COVID-19 outbreak was declared a pandemic in early March…”  (I want to repeat what I said in the April 2020 edition of The Van Impe Intelligence Briefing: Should the Lord tarry, death is certain for all of us.  But with the focus on the lethality of this disease what should our response be?  “But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts: and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear:” – I Peter 3:15.  As people are coming face to face with their mortality we need to be sharing the Gospel with them and give them peace and hope.)