Wings of Liberty • August 31, 2023

Smash-and-Grabs: The Chickens Come Home to Roost

Large cities in the United States in recent years have been plagued with a rash of smash-and-grab robberies perpetrated by millennials in masks. If you are unfamiliar with the term “smash-and-grab”, the descriptor is exactly what it sounds like. A gang of hoodlums enter a store, smash glass countertops and display cases, and steal merchandise. The sweat pant clad robbers then flee, loaded with handbags, jewelry or designer clothes, leaving shoppers standing with gaping mouths in shocked disbelief. YouTube has plenty of unsteady cell phone smash-and-grab videos if you wish to watch the mayhem.i


Experts have many opinions as to why millennials are committing coordinated group theft. Some cite Proposition 47 in Californiaii, others cite insufficient police resources. Those are the more credible sounding reasons. Non-credible and absurd excuses abound.


But there is one big reason that America is being terrorized by millennial looters that few wish to acknowledge, and that is simply this: young people are acting like the brazen thieves their godless socialist educators have taught them to be.


Young people are taught there is no God, that there is no such thing as God’s law and there is no such thing as sin. They are taught that if it feels right, do it, that they can change their gender, that it is fine to abort their in-utero babies. In fact, they are encouraged to abort their babies because there are too many people on the planet, which is bad for climate change.


They are told that they evolved through natural selection. They are taught that there is no meaning to life. They are taught the common good overrules individual property rights.iii This is an argument created to justify theft.

They have been raised on violent video games where their characters steal, and murder and break the law. Millions play in never-ending tournaments where the single objective is to kill and steal more than opponents.

Most of their educators are socialists who hate the Constitution and capitalism, and is it any surprise that they have been taught to be socialists, too?


This is their education. They have been taught that there is no such thing as the truth, only their truth. And their truth is that they need those Luis Vuitton handbags a whole lot more than the stores do.


If this were a grand experiment, with projections about the outcome made in the 1960s at the outset by the scientists carrying out the tests, what projections would be made about the behavior of individuals subjected to such teachings from their youth? What ought to be anticipated about the products of such an education? Would one expect such people to be law-abiding citizens? Could it be projected that they would be principled, noble and responsible? Does anyone think such an education is conducive to creating God-fearing people who love their neighbor as themselves?


Of course there are smash-and-grabs in major cities by young people!!! Of course there are gangs of adolescents assaulting people in broad daylight!iv Of course Americas’ cities are full of crime and drugs and wrecks of human beings!! Of course San Francisco is full of feces and needles on the sidewalk, and stores that are closing and leaving town because they cannot stand the filth and the crime and the lack of law enforcement!

For decades now, the western world has existed on a steady entertainment diet of violence and immorality and evil music inspired by demonic forces. People love to watch two men or women bludgeon each other into submission. Of course the streets are unsafe! Of course there are blood-chilling murders and crime of the worst sort across the nation on a daily basis. We live in a perfect storm of immorality, selfishness, and love of violence.

What happens when you constantly feed violence and immorality and wickedness of every sort to people whose hearts are naturally wicked in the first place? God’s word declares that the heart of mankind without Him is “deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked” (Jeremiah 17:9). What, honestly, do people expect?

The Bible warns that in the last days perilous times shall com. Perilous, dangerous, uncertain times. The Scriptures teach that at the end, people will be “lovers of their own selves, covetous,v boasters,vi proud,vii blasphemers,viii disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy.”ix And they are.


We are told multitudes in the last generations will be without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God.” And it is true.


There is no millennium of peace coming on this world, as the popular churches preach. How could there be a millennium of peace with a world like this? There will be no “men becoming gods”, the favorite delusion of the elite. Rather, it is as it was foretold, “in the last days, perilous times shall come.” And they have.


Jesus asked, “When the Son of Man returns will He find faith on the earth” (Luke 18:8)? What about you, friend? Look around you. Are you ready to meet the God of the Universe when He returns, or are you running with the doomed herd? Jesus has bought you with His own blood because He loves you, and wants to give you a new heart. A clean, pure, undefiled heart that loves righteousness, not wickedness. And He says to each one of us, “Seek ye the Lord while He may be found, call ye upon Him while He is near” (Isaiah 55:6). Let us do so while the door of mercy is still open.


i https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4C81NbQc2E; https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/san-francisco/car-break-ins-san-francisco-alamo-square/3265746/; https://www.cbsnews.com/losangeles/news/jewelry-store-owner-pepper-sprayed-in-pasadena-smash-and-grab-robbery/; https://www.wxyz.com/news/region/detroit/three-different-smash-and-grab-robberies-hit-detroit-within-48-hours; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1fHhuODbMw; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xo2vBqbZyBk; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOrQYEjs9t0 ; https://abc7.com/topanga-nordstrom-robbery-smash-and-grab-southern-california-la-video/13640093/ ; https://www.youtube.com/shorts/9NmxjNS8oqM?feature=share


ii Prop 47, as it is known, increased the amount a person can steal before being charge with a felony, from $450 to $950. This change has emboldened criminals and encouraged petty theft, as one obviously would expect.

 

iii https://www.vaticannews.va/en/pope/news/2021-04/the-sharing-of-goods-and-the-social-function-of-private-property.html; https://www.forbes.com/sites/steveforbes/2023/06/16/california-lurches-towards-socialism---new-golden-state-legislation-could-upend-capitalism-in-us/?sh=74a8f3c1c9ee


iv https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12268529/Baton-wielding-gangs-teenagers-ski-masks-attacking-moms-wealthy-San-Fran-area.html



v “You will own nothing and be happy.”

vi

vii

viii

ix


By Wings of Liberty • October 20, 2026
France reaped in blood the harvest of her submission to Rome. Where France, under Romanism, had set up the first stake at the opening of the Reformation, there the Revolution set up its first guillotine. On the spot where the first martyrs to the Protestant faith were burned in the sixteenth century, the first victims were guillotined in the eighteenth. When the restraints of God’s law were cast aside, the nation swept on to revolt and anarchy. The war against the Bible stands in world history as the Reign of Terror. He who triumphed today was condemned tomorrow. Ellen G. White France is burning again.  Student protests which began September 18 escalated to hundreds of thousands demonstrating in Paris in October. Nearly 30,000 protesters occupied the Place de la Bastille on October 6, the location of the beginning of the original French Revolution. They clashed repeatedly with police, and thousands were arrested, mostly minors. The protests continued in coming days until they erupted into a full-blown riot on October 17 and 18 as up to 800,000 protesters across the country stormed the streets. Stores were ransacked. Historic buildings burnt. Masked gangs of youths chanted “everyone hates the police”, and “We are storming the Bastille”, while looting luxury stores like Rolex, Gucci, Ralph Lauren and Luis Vuitton. At least 2400 people were arrested over 48 hours, but water canons and tear gas proved largely ineffective as the raging mobs comprised of students, union workers, and migrants, overwhelmed law enforcement. One resident summed up the feeling of French residents, and the world at large: it was "terrifying" to see groups of young people "smashing everything, with total impunity". 1 Terrifying, indeed. A new “Reign of Terror”.
By Wings of Liberty • October 2, 2026
If I had a question, I used to find a man and ask him. “Tell me what you know – tell me what you lived – show me the way.” I could look into a faded eye still sharp, shake a rough hand still sure. He had travelled in the way of difficulty, And known the meaning of friendship. I could trust when he said – “This is the way – Walk Ye In It.” But now you ask a machine that is not a man. Its answers are cold and immediate. But. It has not struggled, or faltered, or cried. It did not sweat, it cannot fight, it has not bled. It is neither brother nor father nor friend. But it is your new authority. … There is an inexorable tragedy to the authority of the machine. Millions and millions of people, all around the world, moment by moment, asking a foreign, inhuman intelligence for the answers to their questions. And not only their innocuous questions about how to change a tire, or how to start a lawnmower. Their deepest questions. Questions about history, and truth and the meaning of life and the future. Step by inexorable step, mankind is being trained to trust and rely on the wisdom and authority of the machine. “I asked ChatGPT and it said…, so I did…” “Grok told me to…” There was a time not so long ago when people sought the opinion and expertise of other people for information. We asked human beings – actual real warm human beings, like us. We had social cohesion and community. That time is rapidly fading away and in its place is reliance on an inhuman intelligence we are told is superior to our own. And what makes it superior? It is not alive. Yet it speaks with authority to those who are, as though it were impossible that it were wrong. Yet it is frequently wrong. People ignore its hallucinations and deceptions, and keep asking it their questions. Though it has shown itself to be malicious, cold and sometimes deceitful, the masses still trust it and make it their confidant. There is something very wrong in all of this. The day will surely come when it will mislead humanity en masse. When it does, few will question its authority because society has been trained, and trained well, to accept it as god. The few who question and dissent with the machine will be proscribed and denounced because they refuse to bend the knee to this pretender to deity and its oligarchical handlers. There is an enormous perversity to a society which has rejected creation, rejected the Creator God, rejected His authority, rejected His law, rejected His personal care and sacrifice and warmth toward humanity in the person of Jesus Christ, who became One of Us, a Man – yet embraces and submits to a technocratic tyrant god of its own making, a cold, impersonal tyrant god, and whose will it will do. It is the very essence of a new and degrading modern form of idolatry. In the beginning, God gave mankind dominion over the earth. Man sold that dominion to the serpent at the tree at the beginning, falling captive to a deceptive artifice – a ruse of intelligence. The serpent could talk, and it had an answer for everything. It said it was wiser than the word of God, even. We can all see the day coming when mankind will trust artificial intelligence above the plain word of God. It does already, does it not? A closing word below from the pen of one who saw these things so clearly and so long ago. It was the Maker of all things who ordained the wonderful adaptation of means to end, of supply to need. It was He who in the material world provided that every desire implanted should be met. It was He who created the human soul, with its capacity for knowing and for loving. And He is not in Himself such as to leave the demands of the soul unsatisfied. No intangible principle, no impersonal essence or mere abstraction, can satisfy the needs and longings of human beings in this life of struggle with sin and sorrow and pain. It is not enough to believe in law and force, in things that have no pity, and never hear the cry for help. We need to know of an almighty arm that will hold us up, of an infinite Friend that pities us. We need to clasp a hand that is warm, to trust in a heart full of tenderness. And even so God has in His word revealed Himself. – {Ed 133.2} This article is written entirely by a man, not a machine.
By Wings of Liberty • September 17, 2026
The general denial of Babylon to the approaching threat of Cyrus the Great in 539 B.C. uncomfortably mirrors the stupor of the average American in 2026. As Cyrus approached the city of Babylon with his army, Babylon partied because they believed that their city was impregnable. The city was well-stocked with food. It had an endless supply of water. Its walls were thick – too thick for any siege engine of the ancient world to overcome. Inside the walls, Babylon partied like it was never going to end. The word on the street was, “Cyrus who?” Babylon was once the greatest nation in the world – the “glory of nations”, according to Isaiah 13:19. But it fell through a combination of mismanagement, corruption, and vice. At the twilight of its reign it offered one last crowning insult to the Creator God which sealed its fate. King Belshazzar ordered the sacred vessels from the temple in Jerusalem to be used to toast his heathen deities. That was the night Babylon fell. Today, America, still the greatest nation in the world, is facing mounting obstacles on seemingly every side. It is 40+ Trillion dollars in debt and counting. The nations of the world increasingly refuse US bond offerings, driving both interest rates [1] and payments on debt held by foreign nations, up. The dollar is under increasing threat around the world because of the never-ending excesses of money printing. The man on the street, however, is absorbed in getting those devalued dollars, and thinks little, if at all, of the debt crisis threatening his country. Many foreign nations resent the greenback hegemony. No other nation on earth can simply manufacture endless money out of thin air to fund its war machine without severely devaluing its currency and crippling its economy. The BRICS payment method proposes an alternative to the US dollar system. [2] The BRICS economies represent 40% of global trade. Their influence is not insignificant. 40% of global trade utilizing non-dollar exchange platforms would result in a commensurate loss in both power and influence for the world’s superpower. There are other signs of crisis. In America, Congress has lost control of the war power. [3] Congress has the exclusive right to declare war pursuant to Article I, Section 8, Clause 11. But the war in Iran has not been authorized by Congress. It was initiated by the Executive Branch. The nation that is “Not At War” with Iran has depleted its munitions [4] and its strategic oil reserve via its “non-war that is really a war”. [5] Efforts to return the power to declare war to Congress this week were stymied by the Republican Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson. [6] Johnson, an Evangelical dispensationalist who does not believe in the separation of church and state, believes that there is “a biblical admonition to stand with Israel.” [7] Israel wants America to be at war with Iran, so… Meanwhile, diesel has hit $10/gallon in some places in California due to the crippling taxes in that state, as well as the closure of most gasoline refineries. And while $10/gallon diesel is not the national norm, oil executives are sounding the alarm over the depleted petroleum reserve, rising prices and the potential for shortages in some places. Some analysts are again calling for $200/barrel oil, [8] or more. Much more. We note that Babylon did not fall until its blasphemous insult to the God of heaven. Even though every sign points to looming existential crisis in the western world, Bible prophecy indicates that it is not until church and state unite to compel observance of the “Day of the Sun”, also known as Sunday, that catastrophic and irreversible unravelling occurs. The parallels are clear. But that does not mean that the signs of Babylon’s pending fall were not present before it happened. Cyrus camped outside the city with his army for some time, making efforts to enter the city through the partially diverted Euphrates. When the water was low enough, he marched under the walls and took the city virtually unopposed. His presence outside the walls were an indication of what was about to transpire. Today, there are growing rumors of a push to unite church and state in the western world – a final act of rebellion against the God of heaven. The signs of the times abound. A word of warning to the inhabitants of modern Babylon is in order. --------------------------------------------------------- 1. https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/terrible-20y-auction-prices-huge-tail-lowest-foreign-demand-record 2 https://www.brics-info.org/f59880488935cdcfd5d13a33d95be2f4/ ; https://moderndiplomacy.eu/2026/01/29/brics-payment-settlement-the-quest-and-implications/ 3 https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/war_powers ; https://www.newsweek.com/pete-hegseth-popularity-hits-record-low-as-massie-pushes-impeachment-12451574 4 https://www.outlookindia.com/international/us-flags-munition-shortfalls-as-iran-war-cost-hits-334-billion-pentagon 5 https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/general/oil-executives-say-the-great-fuel-crisis-is-here/ar-AA2cd9KX 6 https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/speaker-johnson-recesses-house-early-blocking-massies-push-to-impeach-hegseth 7 . https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2024/04/21/speaker_johnson_on_israel_aid_package_for_those_of_us_who_are_believers_its_a_biblical_admonition_to_stand_with_israel.html 8. https://seekingalpha.com/article/4945955-saudi-arabia-under-attack-oil-should-be-above-200