Steven Collins
December 12, 2007
The London Telegraph reported on December 2, 2007 that the once-proud British Navy is now incapable of fighting a major war. An internal report on the state of the British Navy concluded that due to “years of underfunding and cutbacks,” the British navy now mostly consists of “ageing and operationally defective ships,” that it is “thinly stretched,” and that it could become a “tinpot navy” unless something is done soon to arrest the steady decline of the fleet. The British fleet has shrunk from 136 ships to a mere 75 ships just in the last twenty years.
The British Navy used to “rule the seas” with many hundreds of warships in the days of the British Empire. Although it shrunk greatly after World War II, it was still capable in the early 1980s of waging and winning a war against Argentina over the Falklands Islands. Today, the report concluded that the British navy is incapable of a single large naval operation and that it is barely capable of a medium one. A spokesman for the rival Tory party, Liam Fox, observed that “…the Royal Navy now finds itself in the most degenerated state in which it has ever been.”
Great Britain is hardly alone in neglecting its military forces. NATO and the entire western world disarmed their respective national militaries to a large degree after the fall of the Soviet Union. NATO leaders thought there would never again be a military threat from Russia and its eastern allies. They have been proven wrong. Under the new Russian strongman, Vladimir Putin, Russia is awash in energy money, newly-bellicose and is rebuilding its military power. It has renewed its Cold War policy of sending its bombers close to the borders of NATO nations and its renunciation of a Cold War treaty again permits Russia to target western cities with nuclear missiles and move its ground forces right up to NATO’s borders. Russia’s strategic ally, communist China, is rapidly expanding all aspects of its military forces and recently demonstrated a capacity to destroy American satellites in outer space. NATO nations now face a growing military threat from Russia, China, Iran and their anti-American allies. All the NATO nations need to rebuild their military strength, but they seem to lack the will to do so. Indeed, the western nations are in a state of denial about the obviously-renewed military threat posed by Russia and China. The USA has particularly weakened the power and size of its military forces in recent years and it has all but exhausted its ground forces in unending wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Ezekiel 38’s prophecy warns that Russia, China, Iran and their allies are destined to attack the modern nations of the western world which have descended from the ten tribes of Israel. It also prophesies that the targeted nations will have let down their defenses at the time this attack occurs during the latter days of our age. Ezekiel 38:11 predicts the nations attacked by the Russian-led alliance will be “…without walls and having neither bars nor gates.” In ancient times, strong city walls and gates were everyone’s principle defensive weaponry. Applying this terminology to modern nations, it predicts that the modern nations of the ten tribes of Israel will have “let down their defenses” at the end of this age. Abundant historical evidence exists that many of the nations of NATO are the modern descendants of the ten tribes of Israel. The “brother” Anglo-Saxon nations of Great Britain and the USA are the dominant “brother” tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh which were to become, respectively, a group (or to use a modern term, a “commonwealth”) of nations and a single great nation. Biblical prophecies about the latter days of our age are coming to pass with incredible accuracy in our modern times, confirming that the Creator God who inspired the Bible is fulfilling his prophecies whether mankind is willing to acknowledge this fact or not!. If you wish to learn more about what the Bible reveals concerning future world events, you are invited to read my articles on prophetic subjects (available for free at this website’s “Articles” link).
The dramatic disarmament of the NATO nations after the “end of the Cold War” has fulfilled Ezekiel 38:13 right before our very eyes. The ongoing collapse of British naval power is one major aspect of this fulfillment.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/12/02/navy102.xml&CMP=ILC-mostviewedbox
