Last week, when I was at the dining room table sharing an afternoon cup of decaf coffee with one of my housemates, 83-year-old Alfred, we got on the topic of human evil and how history always repeats itself.

Without even knowing I was hatching a piece for my website on cannibalism’s comeback under Bible end-times prophecy, Al mentioned how Joseph Stalin, in the 1930s, induced the barbaric practice of humans eating humans by making widespread famine the official state policy of the Soviet government.

Since I had long-forgotten this information from my high-school world history class, I looked on the internet for more details and found a very telling piece posted to FrontPageMagazine.com. describing the horrors under the Stalin regime.

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In an article by John Perazzo, author of the book “The Myths That Divide Us: How Lies Have Poisoned American Race Relations,” he writes: “The famine engineered by Stalin caused artificially induced death in peacetime on a scale unsurpassed in the recorded history of mankind. Mortality rates (affecting 40 million people) reached their apex in the summer of 1933, when the effects of the famine were compounded by deadly outbreaks of typhus. It was common for towns with populations of several thousand to be reduced to a mere two-dozen survivors or fewer.

“Many starving wretches resorted to cannibalism in desperate attempts to delay their inevitable demise for just another day or even a few hours. One eyewitness observer in Kharkiv wrote: ‘Every night the bodies of more than 250 people who have died from hunger or typhus are collected. Many of these bodies have had the liver removed, through a large slit in the abdomen. The police finally picked up some of these mysterious 'amputators' who confessed that they were using the meat as a filling for the meat pies that they were selling in the market.’

“ . . . In general, the areas that were the richest agriculturally suffered most from the famine - quite simply because it was not a natural disaster but rather a calamity carefully engineered by Stalin himself.”

Perazzo reports that while “thousands were succumbing to starvation each day, the Soviet government continued to export huge quantities of grain abroad ‘in the interests of industrialization’—taking the official position that all was well in the USSR. When foreign dignitaries visited the country, the GPU led them exclusively to areas where the appalling stench of death did not fill the air, and where all signs of the human misery that permeated the land had been hidden from view.”

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What really killed me to read—especially as a journalist fully aware of how potent the media is in deceiving a populace by cleverly propagating lies and bias and conveniently leaving out or disregarding facts—was this passage in the article:

“Apart from those who were deceived, there were also many willing accomplices - particularly in the press - who were willing to ignore, or even to falsify their accounts of, the horrors they saw firsthand throughout Stalin's empire. Most notable was Walter Duranty, the New York Times Moscow correspondent in the 1930s, who concealed his knowledge of the great famine and Stalin's mass murders. In 1933, for instance, when the famine was at its height, Duranty wrote that ‘village markets [were] flowing with eggs, fruit, poultry, vegetables, milk and butter. . . . A child can see this is not famine but abundance.’

“Duranty's various dispatches during this period included also the following: ‘There is no famine or actual starvation, nor is there likely to be’ (New York Times, Nov. 15, 1931); ‘Any report of a famine in Russia is today an exaggeration or malignant propaganda’ (New York Times, August 23, 1933); ‘There is no actual starvation or deaths from starvation, but there is widespread mortality from diseases due to malnutrition’ (New York Times, March 31, 1933).

“Duranty's reports were not founded in ignorance; he knew very well that they were utterly false. He was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting.”

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As a succinct overall assessment of Stalin’s lasting influence, Perazzo adeptly summarizes, “The great famine had an enormous effect on Soviet society and the character of the Soviet people. It fostered a proliferation of tyrants and local despots who, eager to please their superiors and ultimately Stalin himself, were prepared to resort to any measures to strip the starving peasants of every last morsel of food. It also led to the desperate abandonment of countless children and the rise of cannibalism.

“Coupled with these developments were the establishment of death camps and the unpredictable atrocities of Stalin's secret police. Barbarism and corruption became the defining characteristics of Soviet life. But Stalin and his henchmen cast a positive light upon this period, viewing its horrors as essential building blocks for an indomitable national character. As Politburo member Sergo Ordzhonikidze remarked in January 1934, ‘Our [party] members who saw the situation of 1932-33 and who stood up to it are now tempered like steel. I think with people like that, we can build a state such as history has never seen.’ ”

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In Israel’s “national anthem,” written in song by Moses in Deuteronomy 32, the last verse takes the reader over to the Book of Revelation with its prophetic context being about the Second Coming of Christ, when He comes to ‘avenge the blood of his servants.’

Jordan explains, “The ending (of the national anthem) brings up a strangely fascinating issue in Rev. 17:9. John’s going to identify for you what the woman represents—who she is and what she’s doing. The seven heads are the seven mountains upon which the woman sitteth. Notice in verse 16 that issue about eating her flesh. Those ten kings that reign with the Antichrist are demonic kings who are cannibals.”

The passage reads: “And he saith unto me, The waters which thou sawest, where the whore sitteth, are peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues.
[16] And the ten horns which thou sawest upon the beast, these shall hate the whore, and shall make her desolate and naked, and shall eat her flesh, and burn her with fire.
[17] For God hath put in their hearts to fulfil his will, and to agree, and give their kingdom unto the beast, until the words of God shall be fulfilled.
[18] And the woman which thou sawest is that great city, which reigneth over the kings of the earth.”

Jordan says, “What we’re talking about here is the Antichrist. He’s going to be in the land of Palestine. By the way, the Antichrist doesn’t come out of Europe, China, Germany, the U.S.—all these places people are looking for him. He doesn’t comes out of Rome. He’s going to be raised up ‘in the land.’ That’s where he comes from. This is an issue that takes place in the Middle East. It takes place ‘in the land’ God’s interested in reclaiming.”

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In Psalm 53, a psalm associated with the ‘last days’ and the tribulation and with the Antichrist, verse 4 says, “Have the workers of iniquity no knowledge? who eat up my people as they eat bread: they have not called upon God.”

Jordan explains, “It’s like they’re eating the bread, but when they’re eating the bread, they’re eating ‘my people.’ It’s like the bread turns into his people!”

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Deuteronomy 28 and 29, the chapters leading up to Israel’s national anthem, rehearse the Five Courses of Judgment Israel goes under. Verse 53 reads, “And thou shalt eat the fruit of thine own body, the flesh of thy sons and of thy daughters, which the LORD thy God hath given thee, in the siege, and in the straitness, wherewith thine enemies shall distress thee:thou shalt eat the flesh of thy own body.”

Jordan says, “What he’s talking about here is in that 5^th course of judgment things are going to be so bad in Israel that ‘thou shalt eat the fruit of thy own body.’ Somebody says, ‘Well, Brother Rick, nobody’s ever going to do that!’ But if you go to II Kings 6 you’ll see records of people doing it! Starvation being that bad!

“Lamentations says that a mother will ‘eat her baby a span long.’ A span is 18 inches. Things are going to be so bad that parents, even mothers, will wind up eating their own children in order to survive!

Specifically, Lamentations 2:20 reads, “Behold, O LORD, and consider to whom thou hast done this. Shall the women eat their fruit, and children of a span long? shall the priest and the prophet be slain in the sanctuary of the Lord?”

Jordan explains, “When the siege came up, Nebuchadnezzar carried them away; he didn’t just come up. I mean, you read that and say, ‘Did things ever get THAT bad?!’ ”

(Editor’s Note: To be continued . . . )