Victor Kubik, January 14, 2024
Editor’s Note: Victor Kubik has been a keen observer of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union for 50 years. Mr. Kubik is past President of United Church of God, an International Association, and is a Board member of that organization’s Council of Elders.
My heightened interest in the probability of World War III comes from my background. My parents lived in Ukraine and were victims of the German Blitzkrieg of 1941. They were teenagers. The Nazis took them to Germany to work in factories as slave laborers. They lived through a foreign invasion in which tens of millions of people around them perished. My mother, at age eight, lived through the Holodomor, which was the artificial famine imposed on Ukrainians by Stalin in which six million starved to death. My mother recalled how people who died around them were placed outside their homes for the trash wagons to pick up the bodies. Then, in Germany, my parents endured night after night of Allied bombing as the war was coming to an end.
After the war, they married and lived in a United Nations refugee camp for four years. That’s where I was born. They dared not return to Ukraine since the Soviets considered them enemy collaborators even though they had no choice but to work in Germany. This backdrop of my parents’ stories of war, permanent separation from family, and the Cold War with its nuclear doomsday apocalyptic implications was imprinted on me as I was growing up. I hated hearing these stories as my parents would talk and cry with fellow former refugees reminiscing about the war.
Today, in my non-profit humanitarian work, I partner with organizations in Ukraine who are working in war conditions and bombardment from Russia. My organization, LifeNets (www.lifenets.org) provides relief through various outlets and partners. The war blog on the site gives a running account of our work.
Because of my almost weekly contact with our friends in Ukraine, people want to know if I have any special insight. How is the war in Ukraine going to turn out? Will Ukraine win? Will Russia prevail? The Russians threaten to use nuclear weapons, but will they? Could this war in Ukraine lead to World War III?
A week ago, in early January, one of our partner relief organizations in Kyiv held an online meeting about our humanitarian work for the upcoming months. Their leader is Roman Grynyshyn, director of World Rebuilding Rural Ukraine (www.wrru.org). He and his family have been wearied by the war but explained how a Ukrainian defeat could lead to a world engulfed in fire. He said the Ukrainian armed forces can handle Russia’s attacks, but they need aid from the US and Europe to succeed. If that aid dries up, Ukraine will not be able to withstand the Russians as they have up to now.
He painted a picture showing that if Ukraine falls, Putin will only be emboldened to proceed to take back the Baltic Republics, NATO notwithstanding. The three republics, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, are mere morsels for Putin, having relatively small populations and a great shoreline on the Baltic Sea, which Russia wants badly. Russia, for its size, has never been blessed with gateways and coastlands. Poland would naturally be next as Russia aims to regain its glory from the hegemony of the former U.S.S.R.
Meanwhile, in the East, China, seeing the trouble in Europe, may say that it is time to make its move on Taiwan. Then, too, Iran, probably with nuclear weapons by then and its 90 million predominantly Shiites allied with Houthis, will vent its wrath on Israel. And don’t forget rogue nuclear North Korea, who will join the fray. The noose is tightening as the Doomsday Clock is ticking down.
The Prospect of Nuclear Holocaust
This convergence of events that are now already in various stages of motion could spark the release of nuclear weapons. Don’t be fooled that “tactical” nuclear weapons are “only” rated one to ten kilotons of TNT. They are nuclear and can have a radius of 300 yards to a third of a mile. The Hiroshima blast ending World War II was equivalent to 15 Kilotons of TNT. The tactical weapons are approaching that figure now. Their effect would be devasting, especially if more than one is used and there are hundreds, thousands of them to use. We all know that the world is armed to the teeth and can destroy itself many times over.
Both World War I and II both started in tense conditions as nations of one mind allied against another alliance. World War II was sparked by Germany attacking Poland. That set off an automatic declaration of war by Great Britain. And it escalated from there. This could very well happen again. This time it will be with nuclear weapons. Scenarios of nuclear first strikes predict 50-80 million people (about twice the population of California) dying on the European continent. Life on the entire planet will be disrupted.
It’s been almost 80 years since the dropping of the only nuclear bombs in war. The results were so appalling that no one dared to do it again, knowing full well that any such action would be suicidal. This attack and retaliation have been the deterrent that has kept this world at “peace” since 1945. Conventional wars, however, have claimed more lives than World War II did. but when it’s extended out over time, the world has seemed relatively peaceful.
After coming to the United States, my father commented how people in this country of plenty were totally unprepared for any kind of enemy attack and then survival afterward.
My mother’s town of Pervomaysk was destroyed. It changed hands between the Germans and Soviets six times during the war. But the people survived for the most part. People had gardens, root cellars, and water wells. They eked out survival all the way to the end of the war. In contrast, the New York City food system holds roughly four to five days of regular consumption of food stock on average.
Today, some of the world’s Billionaires, as previously reported in WNPR (The De-Population Bomb) think they can build their own refuge in secret hideaways. Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook/Meta has bought 1000 acres of Hawaii property for a top-secret compound to survive an apocalypse. What does he know that we don’t?
Other survivalists are buying property in New Zealand or in mountain hideaways to wait out World War III.
In the event of a total breakdown of all utilities in your town, how long could you survive? If power and water are disrupted, most everything would be, too. No food, no heat, no Internet, no telecommunications. Darkness, hunger, and cold await. It won’t be like in WWII Ukraine, where neighbors helped one another. It will be chaos and animalistic behavior. If you have stored any food and others know about it, they will kill you for it.
Everyone should probably make some preparation for extra food, water and other emergency supplies for short term crisis. But the point is — no one can survive the time mentioned in the Olivet Prophecy as “great tribulation” by physical preparation! (Matthew 24:21)
You Can Survive!
The Bible, however, is a survivalist guide for the rest of us and points out that God will come to put a stop to the madness before man destroys himself: “And unless those days were shortened, no flesh would be saved; but for the elect’s sake those days will be shortened.” (Matthew 24:22) The context for this is revealed earlier in verse 3: “What will be the sign of Your coming, and of the end of the age?” (emphasis added).
A very important word is “elect’s.” There are people on this earth who have prepared spiritually for a transition to safety. God sees them, and hopefully, you who have prepared set your spiritual affairs for not only what is coming but for life beyond. Forever.
The end game for humanity is featured in the Word of God, with the Book of Revelation showing a world at peace beyond death. No more tears and no more death. (Revelation 21:4)
What are you doing to prepare?
The events of today are certainly a partial fulfillment of the signs that precede Jesus’ second coming. “Wars and rumors of wars,” disease epidemics and famine have arrived in various places around the globe and will continue to worsen! (Matthew 24:6-7)
Eventually, though, nations won’t be gathering to wipe each other out; rather, there will be a convergence of nations opposing God’s Kingdom coming to this earth, replacing what we have now. (Psalm 2, Revelation 19) Man is unable to make this world work and a new one needs to replace it.
Don’t be in denial. It’s easy to be in denial because the possible horror is so unimaginable. We must wake up in the time we have left to ensure being the elect for whom God will say, “I’m going to end man’s rule and replace it with mine.”
World News and Prophecy Report
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