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MAYO SCHMIDT, PROGRAM DIRECTOR: Elizabeth Clare Prophet is the spiritual leader and president of Church Universal and Triumphant. She was born and raised in Red Bank, New Jersey, and attended Antioch College and Boston University, where she received her B.A. in political science.
She is the author of more than 50 books, including the best-sellers The Lost Years of Jesus and The Human Aura. Her most recent book, The Astrology of the Four Horsemen, corrects many of the popular misconceptions about her prophecies.
She has lectured in over 30 countries and 150 cities and conducts four conferences a year with seminars in between. She has appeared on "Nightline," "Donahue," "Larry King Live!" and "Sonya Live" and has been the focus of feature stories in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and People magazine.
She is the founder of Montessori International, a school that pioneers early-childhood education. She has four children and six grandchildren. She and her husband, Edward Francis, are the leaders of a spiritual community on the Royal Teton Ranch.
Edward Francis is the vice president and business manager of Church Universal and Triumphant. He was born and raised in Dallas, Texas. He was a history major at Colorado College and attended Whittier College School of Law in Los Angeles. Ed manages the operations and development of the Royal Teton Ranch. He is a member of the Church's board and an ordained minister. He is also a pilot.
To begin with, I'd like to introduce to you Elizabeth Clare Prophet.
Childhood Religious Quest and Church Beliefs
Elizabeth Clare Prophet: Good afternoon, everyone. It's a joy to be in Great Falls and a very special moment for me to be at the Rotary Club.
Last night I was thinking about the first time I attended a Rotary Club meeting. It was in Red Bank, New Jersey, when I was 17. The Red Bank Rotary Club had sent me as their emissary to deliver their plaque and message to the Rotary Club of Schaffhausen, Switzerland, where I would be visiting my great-uncle. My great-uncle had been a general in the Swiss army during World War II. He founded Centilla, an international corporation, and as a businessman was a member of Rotary.
And so, six months after I delivered that plaque to the Rotary Club of Schaffhausen, I returned to Red Bank to deliver their flag and plaque to the Rotary Club of Red Bank, of which my father was a member. He built lifeboats for the U.S. Navy during World War II and later yachts called the Sea Wulf, after his surname, Wulf.
I remember when the luncheon was over at the Molly Pitcher Hotel, the chairman introduced me as the speaker and then everyone moved their chairs back at once with a loud roar. That was the first I knew I was supposed to deliver a speech! I was totally tongue-tied, as I had never spoken before a group before, and so I simply got up and presented them with the flag and plaque.
After sitting down, I realized I could have told them the story of what I had been doing for six months between my junior and senior years in high school while studying French in Neuchâtel. At that moment I resolved that I would never again be without words when called upon to speak.
Today you have given me the opportunity to speak to Rotary of Great Falls and I have come prepared! When I flew home from Switzerland via Paris on a rainy December day in 1956, I brought back a message in my heart that is pertinent to what we're dealing with today on the international scene.
As you well remember, 1956 was the year of the Hungarian uprising, when Hungarians were fighting against Soviet tanks with their bare hands and their bodies and thousands were killed. The nations were outraged, yet the United States, the great defender of freedom, did not come to the Hungarians' aid because to do so would have meant a direct military confrontation with the Soviet Union. So instead of coming to the aid of people fighting for freedom, we stood by and let not only Hungary but later Czechoslovakia be dealt with in this manner.
I remember going to the demonstrations that were taking place in the streets of Neuchâtel. I remember the candlelight vigil for the Hungarian refugees, whom Switzerland, as a neutral nation, was receiving. I remember the support and welcome Switzerland gave to the Hungarian freedom fighters and the demonstrations that occurred simultaneously around the world.
The brutal and cunning destruction of the spirit of a people by the Soviets was burned in my soul. It was an unforgettable moment in my life, one that I believe shaped in part my future and my mission.
Now I would like to tell you a little bit about our Church and its beliefs since that is what we were asked to talk about when we were invited to speak to you today.
First of all, our roots are in the Judeo-Christian tradition. My late husband, Mark Prophet, who grew up in Wisconsin, was a Pentecostal. He was devout from childhood, having been so raised by his mother. His father died during the depression, leaving Mark and his mother alone to make their way. And so they were very much church-oriented.
I remember visiting the childhood home of Mark Prophet and being shown the attic room where winter and summer he would kneel before his little altar. God was everything to him, and Jesus was his Lord and Saviour and is today. As a young man he received all nine gifts of the Holy Spirit,1 and he continued his spiritual path through the years when he was in the United States Air Force during World War II.
My childhood was similar. All I wanted to know about when I was a child was God. And when my parents couldn't give me enough, I would ask my friends to take me to their churches. I visited every Protestant church in town and out of town. I would visit St. James, the Catholic church not far from my home, every time I walked by it on the way downtown.
I loved devotion. I loved Jesus. I loved the saints. I loved God. And I thought that all people walked and talked with God and Jesus Christ as I did. But I found out when I was about 20 that a lot of people do not and that they have not had that intimate experience with the Lord.
As early as I could read, I was reading the Bible. And as I would read the Bible alone in my room, I would ask Jesus what certain passages meant. And my Lord would answer me and give me the teachings of the deeper mysteries of God.
And when I would go to church and hear the wonderful pastors preaching their sermons, Jesus would explain to me that they had not been given the full teaching that he had given and that this teaching must be brought forth again in this time, 2,000 years later. I wondered how that would come about and how he would bring that teaching to the world, which the people must have in these critical times.
Jesus, then, has been the center of my life and I can truly tell you that he is the center of the lives of all members of our Church. He is the keystone in the arch of being. As you know, every arch does have a keystone that supports all of the other stones. And the arch, of course, would fall apart without that keystone.
And so, we regard the saints in heaven as those who have graduated from earth's schoolroom, whom God has received. They are the other stones - "lively stones."2 We call them Ascended Masters, whereas Christians call them saints. We do not worship the Ascended Masters but we recognize that they are our elder brothers and sisters and that they can help us on the path of life.
An Ascended Master is someone like you or me who has completed his assignment on earth and returned to God through the resurrection and the ascension of the soul. I believe that we are all on a path of perfecting our souls, of doing good works, of balancing our karma and fulfilling our reason for being.
As you know, I differ with orthodox Christianity in that I teach karma and reincarnation, that the soul is a continuum, that we have lived before from the beginning with God and shall continue by his grace. So I see our divine plan outpicturing itself in succeeding episodes and I see the bodies we wear simply as coats. And when the coat gets worn out, that doesn't necessarily mean that our mission is through.
We believe in the communion of saints, here below as Above. And we believe that this communion comes through the agency of the Holy Spirit and through the Sacred Heart of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and that it is ordained.
In our communion with the saints we do not engage in mere psychicism or clairvoyance or channeling, as is the fad these days. But we believe that through the agency of the Holy Spirit, and only through that agency, it is lawful for us to receive teachings that are not written, which Jesus promised to send us through the Comforter, who would bring to our remembrance all those things that he taught us 2,000 years ago.3
At an early age I knew that I had a calling from God. I knew that I would have a mission but I did not know what it would be. I experienced it as a burning desire to serve God in any capacity in which he would call me. Since I did not know how or when or where he would call me, I knew I must study diligently, I must learn my lessons, I must go to college and I must take the courses that he would lead me to take. This was on my heart and mind all of my life. And I would seek out ministers, priests and spiritual teachers and ask them to tell me everything that they could tell me about religion, about the Bible, and about Jesus and the apostles.
An event happened in my life at the age of seven that was also to shape my future in part. It was in 1946, just after the conclusion of World War II. The memories of the war are very vivid to me. I remember the blackouts and the air-raid sirens and the CARE packages we packed and sent to Europe and the vivid photographs in Life magazine of the holocaust. I remember Armistice Day, when I was six years old.
In 1946 my grandmother in Switzerland was ready to pass on, and my mother and I flew on a prop plane from New York to London. Then we crossed the channel and took a train to Switzerland.
When we arrived in London I saw a bombed city. This so impressed itself upon me. I saw what war had done and could do to a nation. We walked up and down the streets and I recorded it in my mind as though I had a video camera. I shall never forget it as long as I live.
And as I had that experience of awakening to the hardships of war, which had also come to me in other ways, I knew that whatever Jesus had for me to do in this lifetime, it would be connected with working for world peace and attempting to see to it that such a war would never happen again.
As part of my co-op job program at Antioch College I went to work at the United Nations. And while working there and observing people from all over the world, I recognized, as God showed me in my heart, that the world's problems would not be solved by politics but by a deeper union with God on an individual basis.
God showed me the people and the deeper contact they could have with him - a living contact. And so I turned my attention to serving people and helping them find that connection to God that they would need in the days ahead.
After serving as an assistant to the delegates' private photographer during the Thirteenth General Assembly in 1958, I became discouraged and almost cynical about what could ever come out of the United Nations. I realized that people were there for their egos, for how they looked back home and for politicking, and they really didn't have the power of the Holy Spirit that it would take to bring about world peace. And so I went back to Antioch College, where I was a sophomore, with a heavy heart. I had lost a certain idealism I had had about the UN and world leaders.
That episode, however, was pivotal in pointing me toward my mission. Before I had left home for Antioch at the age of 18, I was visited by Saint Joseph, whom we call Saint Germain, the Ascended Master and the saint. I recognized him immediately. I knew him. I knew that I had known him before, that my soul had known him and that he would lead me to the work that Jesus had for me. I knew that I had to find him in the sense that I had to find out what I had to do for him. And thus my search began.
I could see that, regardless of whether I would be working in religion or in some kind of government service, I had to know what was going on in the world and why. So I majored in political science and international relations but I was always studying religion along with it, always praying, always walking in the woods or up and down the streets of Boston communing with God, asking him questions and praying that he would use me in the way that was best for me to help people.
In search of meaning and purpose, I transferred to Boston University, where I majored in political science with a concentration in Soviet foreign policy. My focus in that area has remained to the present.
Regarding our Church and its beliefs, I would like to simply say that, first of all, the members of my Church accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Saviour and understand the profound meaning of that personal relationship to Jesus. Each one of us believes that if we were the only person on earth or the only sinner on earth, Jesus would have embodied and lived and died for us personally. This is the essence of our faith.
Our people are God-fearing. They are from every race and walk of life, every background. They are Catholics and Protestants, they are Jews and Moslems and Hindus and Buddhists. But they have all come to understand the heart of Jesus through our teachings.
You could sit next to any one of these people and not know that he or she was a member of our Church. They look like everybody else. They are good citizens, dedicated to their fellowman. They're patriotic. They serve in the military. They're kind and charitable.
And those of us who have come to Montana have come because we simply love it here! We want to support this state and contribute to it. And we feel that our greatest charity is our development of true education for children. We have a Literacy Army that is dedicated to a literate America. We actually begin teaching children to read from birth.
I am a prophet, ordained by God to that calling. And as a prophet, I can identify with what Winston Churchill once said about politicians. He said that an essential qualification for a politician is "the ability to foretell what will happen tomorrow, next month and next year - and to explain afterwards why it didn't happen"!
All joking aside, I do have the mantle of the ancient prophets. And if there is one thing I know, it is that truly I of mine own self can do nothing and that the Holy Spirit moves upon me and that these prophecies are given through me by the Spirit of the LORD.
A prophet is someone who speaks for God, hence a messenger. A prophet is not a fortune-teller. According to the apostle Paul, prophecy is edification, exhortation and comfort.4 And it is also warning, the prediction of what personal and planetary karma will bring if we do not listen to that warning.
Therefore we invoke divine intercession. Our members pray daily that the dire prophecies given through me will not come true. And we believe that God has always sent prophets to tell the people that these things can be averted if they act in time.
My prophecies have been distorted in the media - almost to the point of creating hysteria - even though I have always spoken the truth to the press. I want to tell you that I have never predicted the end of the world because I don't believe the world is coming to an end! Nostradamus predicted events far beyond the year 3000. I do see that things are going to get worse, much worse, on the planet before they get better.
In the last two years we've attracted a lot of attention. Our fallout shelters have confused and frightened some Montanans, and this is understandable since to many Americans shelters connote paranoia and extremism. To me they are just common sense and civil defense against the dangers that I think are likely in the next decade.
As I have said, my prophecies come from God through the Holy Spirit. They are often dictated to me by Jesus or the saints - the Ascended Masters. I am not a psychic or a clairvoyant nor do I channel discarnate entities (which are disembodied spirits who have not attained union with God).
My prophecies also come from the words of Jesus Christ as recorded in the Gospels and the Book of Revelation. And they come from the Virgin Mary's messages at Fátima and Medjugorje and the quatrains of Nostradamus.
I corroborate prophecy through what I call God's handwriting in the skies, and that is astrology. In my latest book, The Astrology of the Four Horsemen, I explain why I believe that some Christians are mistaken in thinking that God has forbidden astrology. I hope you'll take the trouble to read chapter 2, which also includes rabbinical commentary on astrology.
I believe God has given us astrology so we can chart our returning karma and do something about it before it's too late - so we can know the future before it overtakes us and beat the Fates. And we do this by prayer and good works.
I would like to say that I teach my members to listen to the Presence of God with them, to walk and talk with Jesus and to take their directions for their lives from their attunement with God's will. They respect me but they do not worship me. They are not brainwashed but very much in tune with God through their own listening hearts.
I'd like to give you the highlights of the prophecies published in The Astrology of the Four Horsemen.
In 1988 there was a conjunction of three major planets in Capricorn: Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. These planets had not come together since the fourteenth century. The fourteenth century was marked by conditions of war, famine, economic hardship and the black plague, which killed a third of the population of Europe.
The decade of the 1990s comes under the influence of this conjunction. Therefore we can expect to see any or all of the above in the 1990s, unless we the people and our leaders act to deter these conditions. The plagues delivered by the pale horseman are cancer and AIDS and other incurable diseases of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
There are peak dates during the decade of the 1990s when there is a greater probability of war. For example, there will be a megaconjunction of seven planets in Capricorn on January 11, 1994. The Sun, the Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Uranus and Neptune will all be between 17 and 26 Capricorn.5
Every configuration has a period in which its effects may be felt. The effects are not necessarily manifest on the day of the conjunction. Since megaconjunctions are rare, we don't know how long the period of this conjunction's influence will be. I believe that since it is such an extraordinary conjunction, its effects will be felt for plus or minus two years from January 11, 1994.
As you can see, astrology is not psychic prediction.
Other peak times for portents of war in this century are between 1988 and 1991, and between 1998 and 2000.
The members of our Church worldwide believe that astrology is given to us so that we can see what to expect and therefore act to deter it. As I explained earlier, we pray daily that these prophecies will fail. And we only feel triumphant when they do fail. We believe in intercessory prayer, and because we can see the handwriting on the wall our prayers become very specific. We believe that God gives us prophecy of what will happen if the people do not obey his commandments and if they are not converted to Jesus Christ.
Three years ago, on February 13, 1988, I said, "There will be massive debt liquidation, ... a crash in the real-estate market is likely, a pessimistic mood will sweep the earth. ... We are likely to see the reform, disruption or dissolution of economic and political systems [and] revolution." All of these prophecies have come to pass.
I warned several times that the eclipse of the moon on August 6, 1990, along with other astrological configurations, showed that we could see war or catastrophe anywhere in the world around August 6. As you know, Iraq invaded Kuwait on August 2.
On July 2, 1990, I said the United States could see an intensification "of problems related to chemical and petroleum products - from oil spills to difficulties with chemical or toxic wastes - and the danger of chemical and biological warfare."
On July 7 I discussed an astrological configuration in George Bush's chart that indicated that the United States could be involved in a sudden use of force for three months after July 4. I said the United States could become involved in a confrontation that could "inaugurate a cycle of events leading to major military conflict."
United States military forces began arriving in Saudi Arabia on August 8. These forces prevented Iraq from invading Saudi Arabia and set the stage for future conflict. "Major military conflict" began on January 16, when a U.S. stealth fighter dropped a bomb on the AT & T building in Baghdad.
In October of 1987 I said that Saudi Arabia and Israel were among several nations that would face life-and-death challenges between 1988 and 1992.
On February 13, 1988, I also said that in the next 12 years we would face the possibility of war between the superpowers, economic depression and major earth changes. It is still possible that these portents will come to pass - if we the people do not act in time - specifically a war between the United States and the Soviet Union. When I ask myself how World War III could come about, I have to examine the forces that are arrayed against each other.
I am truly a prophet by heart, by nature and by calling. The presence of the LORD God and of Jesus Christ in my heart is a burning and an all-consuming fire. I could no more not speak to you about this subject than I could not breathe.
I recognize that most prophets in history have been unpopular. I was asked on a talk show in Los Angeles this past week, "Why do you prophets always bring bad news?" And I said, "It's very simple. Because God doesn't need prophets unless people get deluded into a euphoria of peace and do not see those things that may be coming upon them."
So that is why I am speaking about this subject today, because I feel that our fate and the fate of generations to come depend on a realism that I think Americans are just starting to have as a result of the war in the Middle East.
That war in Iraq is six weeks old. All of us can see that the side with superior forces will win the war. The United States will defeat Iraq because it has superior technology, better communication and intelligence and better-trained troops. We have a greater number of aircraft and more top-of-the-line tanks than Iraq. Iraq was simply not ready for our stealth fighters and cruise missiles.
The reason we are winning today in Iraq is because we have superior forces. The reason we will lose tomorrow in a conflict with the Soviet Union is because they have superior forces.
In my book The Astrology of the Four Horsemen I said that the war in the Gulf could be a fuse for a U.S.-Soviet conflict. There is ample evidence that the Soviets are playing a double game in Iraq. Even though Iraq is losing, the war is in the Soviets' interests. I will tell you why in a minute, but first here is the evidence:
Publicly, the Soviets condemned Iraq's aggression. They supported the UN resolutions on Iraq and said they would comply with the international arms embargo. Privately, they violated the arms embargo and shipped military supplies to Iraq by air, land and sea.
Iraq has been a Soviet client state since 1963. The Soviets trained Iraq's army. The Iraqis use Soviet tactics.
Although many countries, including the U.S., have sold Iraq weapons and military technology, almost 90 percent of its military equipment comes from the Soviet Union. Saddam Hussein's Scuds, SA-16s, MiGs, T-72 tanks, FROGS (which are ground-to-ground missiles that can carry chemical weapons), and AK-47s are all Soviet weapons. And Soviet weapons always come with strings attached.
Intelligence sources say that from August 20, 1988, to August 2, 1990 - the period between the end of the Iran-Iraq war and Iraq's invasion of Kuwait - the Soviets sold Iraq $2 billion worth of aircraft, $3 billion worth of artillery and $4 billion worth of ammunition - all on credit!6 So that's what they do with the money that they get from the West.
I don't think the Soviets are directing Saddam Hussein's every move. But the Soviets made it possible for him to invade Kuwait. They helped him plan the invasion and they've advised him ever since.
On February 12, when it looked like Iraq was on the ropes, the Soviets launched a diplomatic effort to forestall a ground war and deprive us of our victory. The Soviet peace plan would have enabled Saddam Hussein to stay in power and keep his military equipment that was not destroyed.
According to intelligence sources quoted in Navy News & Undersea Technology, the Soviets began an airlift to Baghdad on August 9. Twelve flights of Soviet transport planes arrived daily at a military air base near Baghdad. The final flight on January 15, 1991, was a load of SA-16s, which are among the Soviets' most advanced surface-to-air missiles.7
Navy News says Gorbachev admitted to Bush that the airlift was going on. His explanation: the Soviets need cash!8
In mid-January the CIA spotted 400 Soviet trucks, believed to be carrying military supplies, traveling from the Soviet Union through Iran to Iraq.
On February 18, U.S. News & World Report quoted White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater as saying that Jordanian trucks on the road between Amman and Baghdad were carrying "cargoes of military significance." U.S. News reported: "Intelligence sources say that [those] cargoes came from the Soviet Union."9
And that's not the total picture of Soviet military assistance to Iraq. The Soviets had about 8,000 military, intelligence and technical advisers in Iraq when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. Many were integrated into the Iraqi army. Many stayed in Iraq after the invasion to fulfill "contractual" agreements.
On December 17, 1990, the Soviets bought out the contracts. The following day Tass reported that 1,000 Soviet "specialists" had "chosen" to stay in Iraq on their own.10
U.S. intelligence has intercepted Russian being spoken between tank battalions and regiments on Iraq's military radio. This was confirmed by a February 12 report in the leftist French newspaper Liberacion based on information provided by military and diplomatic sources in Saudi Arabia.11
U.S. intelligence also reports that Soviet support for the Iraqi military includes "operating air defense batteries, providing intelligence and servicing advanced MiG-29 jets."12
You might think the Bush administration would be hopping mad over Soviet double-dealing. The Bush administration knows the Soviets are giving Iraq military supplies and intelligence information. They know that Soviet military advisers are still in Iraq. But have you heard George Bush complaining on TV? No! According to one intelligence source, the Bush administration is suppressing the information.
Why should an American president cover up the misdeeds of a Soviet dictator? You tell me why. One reason I would put forth is that Bush's popularity is vested in his foreign policy. His foreign policy takes our attention off of the terrible state of the economy. Furthermore, George Bush does not want to admit that glasnost is over.
The truth is, whether Saddam Hussein wins or loses, the Soviets will emerge a winner. Here is how the war serves Soviet interests:
1. It is a strategic trap designed to get the United States to remove some of its forces from Europe.
2. It gives the Soviets an unparalleled opportunity to collect intelligence on U.S. weapons, tactics and capabilities.
3. It gets the United States involved in a costly foreign war that uses up its munitions stockpiles.
4. It fuels Arab hatred for the United States and improves the Soviet diplomatic position in the Middle East.
5. It raises the price of oil. And the Soviets are the world's largest energy exporters.
We have moved one-third to one-half of our troops and a lot of tanks and other military equipment out of Western Europe. At the same time, the Soviets have become more militant and reactionary. Because of projected cuts in the defense budget, few of the forces that were sent to the Gulf will be returned to Europe. This makes Europe vulnerable to a Soviet invasion.
While we are reducing our forces in Europe, the Soviets are not reducing theirs to the levels they have committed to. In fact, the Soviets are cheating on the Conventional Armed Forces in Europe Treaty, which was signed on November 19, 1990. They are believed to have transferred east of the Urals 60,000 weapons, including 16,400 top-of-the-line tanks, rather than destroying them as they agreed to. Instead of removing the number of army divisions from Europe that they agreed to, the Soviets renamed three of them "naval infantry units." Navy units are not covered by the treaty.
Remember, the Soviets follow the strategy of Sun Tzu, who said, "All warfare is based on deception."13 They also use the strategy of Clausewitz, who said, "War is ... a continuation of political activity by other means."14
The Soviets used Clausewitz's strategy to develop a doctrine of perpetual warfare against the West. As the Sixth World Congress of the Communist International declared in 1928, "Revolutionary war of the proletarian dictatorship is but a continuation of revolutionary peace policy 'by other means."'15
Soviet duplicity in the Gulf and in Europe should make us question their motives worldwide. It shows that despite the rhetoric, we still can't trust the Soviets.
This is one reason why I support strategic defense - which is defense against long-range nuclear weapons.
A second reason why I support it is that the Soviets are not the only threat. Even if the Soviet Union does not attack the United States, another nation could.
Seven nations currently have nuclear weapons: the United
States, the Soviet Union, China, Great Britain, France, India and Israel. Twenty other nations could have nuclear weapons in the next decade. These include Pakistan, Libya, North Korea, Cuba and Argentina.
Few Americans doubt that Saddam Hussein would attack American cities with nuclear weapons today if he could. If this war had not happened, Saddam Hussein would have had within two to five years nuclear warheads and missiles capable of reaching the United States. And that is with the assistance of the Soviet Union.
But the Soviets are the most serious threat. The Soviets have a big edge over the United States in long-range nuclear missiles, mobile missiles, antisatellite weapons, aircraft, tanks and artillery. Some of the military technology that they have deployed is inferior to ours; some is the same as ours; and some is superior.
On February 21, Secretary Cheney remarked, almost as an aside, that the Soviets have huge long-range nuclear forces that "can still destroy the United States in one hour."16
On Thanksgiving Day 1986, the Ascended Master Saint Germain warned in a dictation through me: "You have every reason to believe, to be concerned, and to be prepared for a first strike by the Soviet Union [on] these United States. ... Therefore, secure the underground shelters, preserve the food, and prepare to survive. And if it be an exercise proven unneeded, then bless God that it did not go unheeded."17 Saint Germain's philosophy is that a prepared America will not be attacked.
In addition, Czechoslovakian General Jan Sejna, the highest-ranking member of the Soviet military apparatus ever to defect, says that a nuclear first strike on the United States and a simultaneous invasion of Europe remain the cornerstone of Soviet strategy.
War may be the only way out for the Soviets. The Soviet Union is drifting towards chaos. Where will it end up? No one knows. But as I discuss in my book, former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski sees three possible futures for the Soviet Union: (1) a military crackdown, (2) the breakup of the Soviet Union, or (3) an anti-Communist revolution.
All three scenarios mean violence and chaos in a land that has more nuclear weapons than any other on earth. The question remains: Who will control the Soviet nuclear arsenal when things get out of hand?
We wouldn't need to be concerned about this if we had a strategic defense. We have developed systems that can shoot down Soviet ICBMs. We just haven't deployed them!
Ladies and gentlemen, the fact is, we do not have a single antiballistic missile (ABM) or surface-to-air missile (SAM) deployed in America today! We cannot shoot down an ICBM coming over the pole at this moment. We can intercept Soviet Scuds in Saudi Arabia with our Patriot missiles but we cannot stop an ICBM coming over the pole. What if we had not had the Patriots in Saudi Arabia to take down those Scuds? Apply the principle to America and you can see that we are woefully unarmed.
Yes, our leaders (and we have allowed them to do this) have left America wide open to a first strike by the Soviet military establishment.
The Soviets have a nationwide civil defense system as well as a strategic defense. The Soviet strategic defense includes 100 ABMs around Moscow, at least 2,400 SA-10 surface-to-air missiles that can function as ABMs, and a radar network to direct them. (The Pentagon says that the SA-10s have an ABM capability, although this is a point of controversy.)
According to some reports, the Soviets have mass-produced and stockpiled SH-08 ABMs and mobile radars. Gorbachev says they are working on lasers and other exotic systems. There is a lot of debate about the capability of the Soviet system and whether it is fully operational. Soviet strategic defense is technologically inferior to ours. But the bottom line is, theirs is deployed and ours is not.
If war ever breaks out, the Soviet offensive systems and strategic and civil defense will give them the edge. That is why America must deploy the strategic defense systems it has developed.
In The Astrology of the Four Horsemen, I name U.S. systems currently available that can shoot down ballistic missiles. HEDI and ERIS are two antiballistic missiles. Together they could defend much of North America against ICBMs. They are nearly ready to deploy.
"Brilliant Pebbles" is a space-based system that would consist of thousands of small nonnuclear missiles orbiting the earth. These could stop ICBMs as they travel through space. The ICBMs would disintegrate as they reentered the atmosphere, harming no one. I am talking about defense right now, not offense. We don't need any more offensive weapons. But we do need a proper defense.
A system of 4,000 Brilliant Pebbles and 300 ERIS interceptors, along with radars and a command, control and communications network, would cost about $55 billion. HEDI would cost us about $18 billion. The $75 billion or $80 billion it would take to deploy strategic defense is a lot of money. But it's cheaper than losing a single American city in a nuclear attack or an accidental launch by any nation that gets its hands on the bomb.
Strategic defense could decrease the need to continue to deploy expensive offensive systems. Ultimately we could cut the defense budget. Such a defense would be likely to deter any nation from launching a ballistic missile against the United States or any nation.
We are going to have to do something, because the Soviets continue to build offensive nuclear weapons. In 1988 alone, they deployed 1,700 new ICBM warheads!
The Soviets are increasing their defense budget rather than decreasing it, as I spell out in great detail in my book. Let me give you an example.
The SS-18 Mod 4 ICBM is the deadliest weapons system in the world. This huge missile carries 10 powerful, accurate warheads. The Soviet fleet of 308 Mod 4s can target all U.S. silo-based ICBMs and strategic submarine bases. Yet, at enormous expense, the Soviets are replacing the Mod 4 with the SS-18 Mod 5, which is bigger, more accurate and deadlier.
Why? We should be asking ourselves why every day and every night as we pray, as we're on our knees before our God to solve the problems of war and peace on this planet. Why are they doing this?
The Soviets are broke. Why are they spending a fortune on an offensive weapons system? Who is threatening them? Why are they building 1,500 new tanks this year? Who is their enemy? The United States? Israel? Western Europe? Japan? Tell me!
People used to ask me, "Haven't you heard, the Cold War is over?" Although I have been saying since 1988 that glasnost is a sham, it is not one bit gratifying to me to hear TV commentators now say that Soviet behavior in the Baltics is strangely reminiscent of the Cold War.
Gorbachev - or his successor - can restore order in the Soviet Union only by military force. If he continues to use force, the West will cut down or cut off economic aid. The Soviet Union is becoming ever more dependent on Western aid.
In order to stay in power, Gorbachev (or whoever is really in control) may have no other choice but to take what he needs from Western Europe. An invasion of Europe would most likely be combined with a first-strike attack on U.S. military targets.
Montana's Minuteman missile silos would be targeted by the Soviets in a surprise first strike. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) says that most Montanans would die in a nuclear attack.
We don't have to die! But we do have to have bomb shelters. We are some of the best people on the face of the earth. And we have a right to live!
I want you to know the world is not going to be destroyed by a nuclear war. It is not the end of the world. We can survive it. We can pick up the pieces and we can live. The Russians believe they will survive. They have bomb shelters. Americans believe it's no use to have bomb shelters or defense because nobody would live through a nuclear war anyway and even if they did, the living would supposedly envy the dead. I don't buy that. I know we can survive.
That's why I have urged all Americans to build fallout shelters. With fallout shelters, a large percentage of Americans could survive a nuclear war. We have no other insurance, except prayer, that will protect us in nuclear war, because our government has not provided civil defense for us. Whether it's the Soviets, a Hussein, a Kaddafi or a Chernobyl, the threat is there and it's real.
God forbid we should ever have to use those shelters.
This Pearl is a compilation of the addresses, edited for print, given by Elizabeth Clare Prophet to the Great Falls Rotary Club on January 22, 1991, and to the Livingston Rotary and Kiwanis Clubs on February 25, 1991.