Category: gas

I read the news and when I spot a pattern, I think about why a pattern of something has emerged. One news items is just a news item. Two on the same subject is a coincidence. Three, now that makes a pattern. When the pattern relates to prophecy, then I write about it.

The pattern is secession. There are three secession movements in the works, one of the three is not a threat but completed. Would you have thought that secession of Venice from Italy, the Lakota Nation from America and Catalonia from Spain are related to the California refinery problems and also to prophecy?

Here is the secession news.

The Lakota Sioux have been seeking independence from the Union since 2007 when they declared independence. This week (again) they announced secession.

“We are no longer citizens of the United States of America and all those who live in the five-state area that encompasses our country are free to join us,” long-time Native American radical leader Russell Means said. The move potentially impacts the states of Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana and Wyoming. … This time, [Activist Russell] Means detailed reasons for the secession including a long list of problems facing the Lakota, such as unemployment, healthcare and life expectancy as well use of natural resources. In a rambling video, he also added a massive number of reasons for why his new nation would be both strong and lawful – talking about everything from credit card companies to global warming as problems they aim to escape.”

The UK Telegraph is reporting today that Venice Italy is holding a mass rally to push for secession from Italy. Italy actually only became a nation in 1861. “Italy, officially the Italian Republic, is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north, it borders France, Switzerland, Austria, and Slovenia along the Alps. To the south, it consists of the entirety of the Italian Peninsula, Sicily, Sardinia–the two largest islands in the Mediterranean Sea–and many other smaller islands. The independent nation-states of San Marino and the Vatican City are fully sovereign enclaved microstates within Italy, while Campione d’Italia is an Italian exclave in Switzerland.” [source]

Mass rally in Venice to call for independence from Italy
“Inspired by the nationalist aspirations of Scotland and Catalonia, pro-independence campaigners will hold a mass rally in the heart of the lagoon city on Saturday, calling for an urgent referendum to be held on the issue. Indipendenza Veneta, a newly-founded pro-independence movement, says it expects several thousand people to turn up for the rally. They will be ferried across the Grand Canal in gondolas to deliver a “declaration of independence” to the headquarters of the Veneto regional government. It may sound fanciful, and it will be fiercely resisted by Rome, but activists want to carve out a new country in north-eastern Italy which would comprise Venice, the surrounding region of Veneto and parts of Lombardy, Trentino and Friuli-Venezia Giulia. The “Repubblica Veneta”, as it would be known, would encompass about five million people.”

The Venetians were inspired by Catalonia, so here is the story of Catalonia, Spain’s secession issue. “Catalonia is an autonomous community of Spain, with the official status of a “nationality”.” (source). The map below shows the territory of Catalonia in red. The manila colored section to the west is Portugal. Spain is bordered to the north by France.

Spain: Catalonia increases push to secede
“Spain’s economic powerhouse Catalonia took its first step toward independence – and threatened to proceed unilaterally if necessary – in a serious challenge to Madrid’s already besieged central government, which is struggling with social turmoil and economic uncertainty. Catalonia’s conservative regional leader Artur Mas moved up local elections to Nov. 25 in an effort to secure the political mandate he needs to press the central government to authorize a referendum on independence. But he said that Catalonia could proceed with a referendum even if Madrid didn’t authorize one.”

The key reminder here regarding prophecy is that man’s boundaries fail. They look solid on a map, but they are fluid. If you know history you know that Europe changed dramatically after WWI. It changed dramatically again after WWII. In the 1990s it seemed that there was a new country every day, with the breakup of the Soviet Republic, the Czech states, Yugoslavia, and Bosnia.

The main idea is fragility. Man’s infrastructure of boundaries, nations, and governments are just that, man’s. When man sets boundaries, they eventually change or fail. Do not get too attached to the idea of “America” or the world continuing on as it always has been, or the idea of a unified Europe. It is shocking when things change fast, but if you are attached to Jesus you know He is permanent. Everything else dissolves away. Have compassion on those who are clinging to that which dissolves. They are disoriented and upset.

The secession movements we read about here may or may not come to something, but I’ll tell you one fact: eventually, and soon, all the nations will be carved up and re-knit together into a new world order of ten kingdoms, and then one final kingdom. Things are going to shift dramatically. (Revelation 13:1; Daniel 7:16-24; Daniel 2:41-42). That change has begun and is even well underway.

Now what does all this have to do with the price of gas in California? It is still about man’s infrastructure and its resultant fragility.

Refinery problems keep gas prices surging in California
“California gas prices continued surging Friday, adding another 17 cents per gallon on average, and the increases are expected to continue for at least several more days, ensuring long lines and short tempers at pumps around the state. A week of soaring costs has led some stations to close and others to charge record prices … Among the recent disruptions, an Aug. 6 fire at a Chevron Corp. refinery in Richmond left one of the region’s largest refineries producing at a reduced capacity, and a Chevron pipeline that moves crude oil to Northern California also was shut down.”

So two refineries were shot down and the nation’s largest economy and the world’s 8th largest economy overall is in total disarray. Hmmm. Man’s infrastructure is soooo fragile.

What is going on in CA is a micro-picture of what is going to happen when war breaks out in the Middle East. We know that war does break out eventually, because the bible clearly shows us that in the last days Syria, Egypt, Israel, Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Russia, Iran, etc go to war. Oil prices will skyrocket, if it is available at all. Just as the CA troubles show us, gas prices skyrocketed within days, where it is even available. And that is with just two refineries impacting the oil delivery system. When the oil is choked off at the source, the world will go bananas, and daily life as we know it will change instantly.

One example is in the article I linked to above. “Rebecca Olson, 43, of Irvine, drove to a Costco in Tustin hoping to find lower prices than the $4.65 in her neighborhood, but the pumps were closed. The part-time preschool teacher said her husband already spends $500 a month on gas, in part because he commutes nearly 100 miles a day to a new sales job after being unemployed for a year. They’ve already parked their GMC Yukon SUV indefinitely. If gas prices keep rising, Olson said they’ll sell her husband’s Infiniti G35 that requires premium fuel and buy a more efficient car, while making their children ride their bikes to their activities.”

You’ll see mules, donkeys, bikes, golf carts, mopeds and horses on the road again. Cars will be jettisoned to the side like dying dinosaurs.

Man has put an overlay of civilization down on the earth through artificial national boundaries, and criss-crossed it with electrical wires, roads, and pipelines, and then dotted the skies with satellites. All this will be wiped out. The coming earthquakes & tsunamis will take care of the pipelines and wires. Electro-magnetic pulses and sun-storms will zap the satellites and computer chips (which are in cars, too). Civil unrest will re-arrange the colorful swathes on the maps with names like America and Italy, and Canada like so many jigsaw puzzle pieces.

The new word for the era is “fragile”. And there is nothing we can do about the coming changes.

Except to repent and have faith in Christ! Trust Christ and you will have security of your soul forever, and you will become a citizen of the New Jerusalem in the New Earth. (Revelation 21:1-4). HIS boundary lines will never fail! HIS Light will never go out! (Rev 21:23). Become a Christian and get a new perspective about the coming changes, and you will not fear but rejoice.