Countdown 2 Eternity

James Kaddis: Hey guys, listen, we are about to air our first episode of Countdown to Eternity for the year. But before we do, I just want to say something that I think is really important. I want to encourage you to pray for the family of J.D. Farag. We got the terrible news just a few days ago that his precious wife went to go be with the Lord. Not terrible news for her, right? She's more alive now than she ever will be. But we are definitely praying for this loss because we know from what we've seen and what we've heard, especially what J.D.'s told us over the years, Kelly was an amazing woman.

So, a tremendous loss, and I couldn't imagine losing my wife. I know Tom feels the same way. We just wanted to encourage you to pray for that family. And if J.D.'s listening to us—he's probably not—we love you, brother, and we're praying for you. We just ask for God's grace to shine upon you and His blessing, and that God would just give you strength.

Guest (Male): Hello and welcome to Countdown to Eternity, a weekly radio ministry featuring Pastor James Kaddis of Calvary Chapel Signal Hill and Pastor Tom Hughes of Hope for Our Times. Together, they examine current events and connect what's going on in our world to Bible prophecy.

James Kaddis: Well hello, my dear brothers and sisters. I want to welcome you to another episode of Countdown to Eternity. I'm going to tell you this right now: it's going to be a really, really good one because I am with the great Tom Hughes. We've missed you, bro. You've had a lot on your plate.

Tom Hughes: James, it's great to be back. There is a lot; there are so many different things that are going on. What a wild time to be alive. By the way, how's your new book on Revelation going?

James Kaddis: It's doing very well. It has hit a couple of those number one lists, which is kind of cool. But I could use the help. We are releasing paperback here in a couple of days. So I'm pretty excited about that. That's going to be another cool option for people to buy.

A lot of people have been trying to buy on Amazon and they've been saying it won't deliver to their address. It's been because of some technical problem on Amazon. But if you do struggle with that, you could go to jameskaddis.com and you could buy it there. Keep trying. You can also buy the Kindle version and if you can't buy it on hardback, you will soon be able to buy it on softback. But it's on Barnes & Noble and all kinds of other places. There are probably like 20 other retailers that have it. You can go online and get it. So that's cool.

Tom Hughes: That's very cool. Are you going to do an audiobook too? Is it going to be you reading it?

James Kaddis: Audiobook probably in about three to four months. Yes, I will. It's going to be loud. Open up to the book of Revelation! No, they're going to make me read it all calm and everything. Welcome to the book of Revelation.

Tom Hughes: Can James be calm reading the book of Revelation? All the viewers are going to say no. I'm going to say heck no. I'll just put it there. Maybe you'll have to have Darth Vader read it. That would be kind of cool.

I've got a fact for you. So 2025 is behind us. What a wild, wild year 2025 was. Stuff was off the charts. Things moved so fast. But let's admit it, 2026 is starting off at this hypersonic pace, racing towards... we're only a few days into 2026. It is off the charts. I mean, Venezuela, Iran. All I have to say is that. I don't even want to get into Somaliland and what's happening there with Somalia, and everything that's been discovered there in Minnesota, and how that connects to the actual African Horn. I don't even know where to start.

James Kaddis: I meant to say Minnesota. Did I say Michigan?

Tom Hughes: Michigan, you got the Dearborn issue in Michigan. You got obviously Minneapolis and now of course there are people that are claiming that Mossad is behind the Somali stuff in Minneapolis. It's unbelievable the amount of people who just automatically believe that stuff. Sick, evil, mentally ill human beings doing that kind of stuff. Demonically inspired. It's disgusting.

So the stuff that's been discovered in Minnesota, it's not a shock to you and me. It took Nick Shirley, 23 years old. He goes in with his phone and starts uncovering it because, God bless him, no kidding. But it's not a shock. Are we shocked by it? No. Are we surprised by it? No. We're just wondering what it's ever going to come to. And now up in Portland, Oregon or Seattle, Washington, Oregon and Washington actually, both, the exact same things are being found out there. This is way, way bigger. In New York, of course.

James Kaddis: Before you know it, it'll be California.

Tom Hughes: Like there's not billions of dollars going everywhere in California except where they're supposed to be. So you look at this as a tax-paying American. You're going, "So this is where our tax dollars go?" Yes folks, this is your money going to fund these evil things. And these people are evil and their wickedness is not going to slow down. No, it's not. It's way bigger. They're just going to keep uncovering more and more and more. But what's ever going to happen? Is anybody ever going to be prosecuted? What's ever going to happen with all of this stuff?

James Kaddis: With the way that these ridiculous, insane, psychopathic activist judges are going, I don't know how to answer that question.

Tom Hughes: Okay, so you're a legal guy, right? So the way I view it is that midterms are just around the corner. That's going to be a game-changer. And then when it comes to court, you just extend it as long as you possibly can. Next thing you know, you get a new president, a new presidential administration, and voila, it's a disappearing act and nobody goes to jail. Ilhan Omar, they all know it. They all know it. There might be a few token people that'll get thrown in jail for a few weeks, that's about it, just to say this process is moving forward.

I think we're just going to continue picking up whenever Trump is out of office, and especially when the midterms are really going to start to see change. And these people aren't going to be in jail. But praise God, justice is coming, just as you wrote about in your book on the book of Revelation. Justice is coming.

James Kaddis: Oh yeah, 100%. Justice and judgment and redemption. And it's real justice, real judgment, real redemption because God is the one who's going to be dealing it. Bro, should we talk about the massive elephant in the room? I'm not talking about me. Venezuela.

Tom Hughes: Before we even go to Venezuela, let me throw this one out there. So Mamdani, you heard he made a phone call to Trump the other day, voicing his complaint about having Maduro arrested and brought into a New York jail, which I think is great for Mamdani. So Mamdani is the same guy who said how wrong it is, we must obey international law. Yet Mamdani says if Netanyahu comes over to New York, he's going to make sure Netanyahu is arrested and thrown in jail.

He's evil. Now I know you want to talk about the elephant in the room, not James. But Muslim call to prayer is happening in New York City.

James Kaddis: I did not hear this. When is this nonsense going to start?

Tom Hughes: This was a David Harris Jr. post. Apparently it's already begun. I don't know if this is getting blasted out of the mayor's office.

James Kaddis: I'm telling you this, New Yorkers, you better wake up and you better put a stop to this. Because this is going to end up lighting a fire that you're not going to be able to quench. I'm telling you, the last thing you want to be hearing at 5:00 in the morning is "As-salatu khayrun minan-nawm, Allahu Akbar." You don't want to hear that in the morning. You just don't.

Tom Hughes: This is bad. So you look and you go at all of these different things happening. All right, now let's go to the elephant in the room.

James Kaddis: You got me stuck on the whole Mamdani thing. Are you kidding me?

Tom Hughes: People look at New York City alone. What are they thinking? We're just going to do a big group hug and it's all going to be one big happy family? No. Burkas are coming. I'm telling you, they're coming.

James Kaddis: It is ridiculous. Bro, you know what's ridiculous? Let me ask you this question. I'll tell you what's ridiculous and then I'll get off of it and we'll get onto the whole Venezuela revolution discussion. But how disgusting is it when the Mayor of New York, when he decides to get sworn in, does it standing under a tunnel?

And you know why he's standing under a tunnel, right? He's standing under a tunnel that has everything to do with standing in solidarity with you know who, with evil-doers. And then he lays his hand on the Quran. He swears in on the Quran. Now this is what I think is humorous. Let's pretend that my iPad case is a Quran. Imagine this guy puts his hand on the Quran to swear before Allah and before everybody else in New York that he's going to do the things that he's going to do in allegiance to the Constitution, in allegiance to the people, in allegiance to blah, blah, blah. Yet the book that he has his hands on says, "Wamakaru wamakara Allahu wallahu khayru al-makirin." It says that Allah is the chief of deceivers.

I wonder how many people will read that. And then you've got all kinds of black folk that are watching it going, "Allahu Akbar, my brother." And they have no idea that the original slave traders were all of these Muslim Arabs. Okay, I'm sorry. I'll get off the issue.

Tom Hughes: I'm not going to let you get off the issue for a couple more minutes and then we'll get to the elephant in the room. Because I look at this: listen, if you're swearing in on a Quran, you can forget the Constitution or anything else that he said that he is going to uphold. Because he's not going to. His allegiance is going to be to Allah and to Islam.

So all right, so I know you already know this regarding Mamdani reversing the antisemitism order defining anti-Zionism as hate, right? We already know this stuff is happening. So what's very disappointing, and unfortunately there's going to be a lot of Jews who are going to wake up to the reality one day of what they've done by voting for him. This is what is just not understood.

It was just like this, James, as we know with Nazi Germany. Some of the Jews were alert and they fled. They said, "Hey, this dude's bad. This guy that's rising up, Hitler, he's bad. Hey, if he gets in power, we're in trouble." But others stayed and just wanted to get along and said, "It's going to be okay because we're on his side, he's going to respect us, and it'll be good for us." The same mindset has happened in New York and there's a lot of Jews in New York that have voted for Mamdani. This guy is an antisemite. He's a Jew hater and you can see this.

When it comes to antisemitism, they don't care what kind of Jew you are. They don't care if you're an Orthodox Jew, they don't care if you're a secular Jew, they don't care if you're Haredi, they don't care if you're an atheist, they don't care if you're a Jew who believes in Jesus. They don't care about that. You have Jewish blood and that's it. And I look at this in New York and I go, "This is not good."

But in this one thing alone, we are watching the downfall of the United States of America because we're watching what's happening culturally and biblically. The shift happened biblically because it happened biblically where people stopped admitting or stopped believing that the Bible was true, pastors stopped teaching that it was true. Because that shift took place, that opened up or created a vacuum that brings in all these different thoughts, all these different cultures, all these different dynamics, and people are being deceived. There's a delusion that's taking place and they're believing that this is going to be good for them.

It was Pete Buttigieg—and I know you've seen some of these things—who said in 2020 what an evil man Maduro was and he needs to be eliminated. Well here we are, six years later. What do you say now, Petey, or the rest of them? So you look at this and go, "No, all of a sudden when it comes to Mamdani... I've shifted over to Maduro for a second. Sorry."

James Kaddis: No, but I understand what you're saying. This problem is something that's deeply spiritual. There's no other way to explain it. I mean, it's so clear. It's so black and white. How in the world can nobody see it?

And then you appropriately mentioned Maduro because now you have these people running the streets like a bunch of savages trying to defend a man as evil as him. I mean, what in the world? And now there's a lot of people talking about the legality of it all. They're having a conversation. This is the thing that's hilarious to me. Correct me if I'm wrong, but how is it that when stuff like this comes up, almost instantly everybody online becomes a subject matter expert in the issue?

Tom Hughes: No kidding. You look at this and you go, "Unbelievable." If somebody has enough personality, they can be a total liar, a total thief, a total crook. But if they have the ability to lie and deceive and make the false accusations—I mean we can look at certain very popular people on social media right now that sway millions of people and they're constantly throwing lies out there.

So when we look at the whole situation with Maduro, what's happening? People in Venezuela are rejoicing over that, just like people in Iran are rejoicing. They're going against... finally! Yet people in America who have no connection to Venezuela or South America or Central America or anything, are sitting here saying how evil this is, Maduro was a good man, what could Trump possibly be doing with this? A total disconnect.

These are the same people who protest against Israel, who stand with Hamas. And now they won't even stand with the people of Venezuela. They won't stand with the people of Iran either. Check this out, James. Here's a couple of things. So Zelensky is now urging the US to take down Putin after the capture of Maduro. And you're going to like this one: Colombia President, furious over Maduro, says, "Come get me. I'm waiting," in his talk to Trump.

James Kaddis: He wants to find out, doesn't he?

Tom Hughes: Marco Rubio says, "Hey, guess what Cuba? Guess what's coming?" And you're looking at this going, "Man, do we live in interesting times right now."

James Kaddis: Well, and the funny thing about the whole legality of what Trump did is just absolutely obscene. I mean, look, there are so many aspects of this that very few people will ever understand or know. They don't realize what the law says concerning this. Many of these people that talk about this stuff wouldn't be able to recognize Article 2 if it slapped them in the face, which by the way is where a majority of these arguments are coming from, these Article 2 arguments. These arguments about the legality issue, that's where so much of this is coming from.

But most people don't even understand what that means. They don't recognize what the effect of that is. They don't understand even the War Powers Act. They don't understand what that obligates people to do in the Executive. And the problem is, let me just put it this way, bro: when I was in law school, I had a law professor that actually said in constitutional law, he said, "Look, there's going to be arguments about Article 2 forever. You're going to hear them being spoken of again and again and again because the most highly debatable issue is always going to go back to the power of the Executive. It's going to happen."

But the problem is the overwhelming majority of people that end up arguing the legality issue have no idea what it means. They don't even understand what it was designed to do and what the thoughts of the Founding Fathers were concerning the issue. And that's the problem. That's the main issue that we're dealing with right now and it's extremely frustrating watching these people making these wild assertions about what they consider to be correct or legal when they don't even understand what it affords. They don't recognize how it can affect virtually anything.

Let me just make this very, very clear. The President is the Commander-in-Chief. He has the constitutional authority to conduct short-duration, time-sensitive military actions to protect national security. It is in his purview to do it. The War Powers Resolution, oftentimes referred to as the Act of 1973, makes it very clear that he is free to act militaristically speaking when immediate action is required. By the way, when he does act, it only requires notification to Congress within 48 hours, and the 60-day clock only applies if US forces remain engaged in hostilities.

I don't understand where people are going with this. A single-night raid or some short-term enforcement action assisting the DEA, tell me this: how in the world can you say that's outside of presidential authority? It's completely ridiculous and the arguments that they make are absolutely insane. The raid itself, by definition, fits within established presidential authority. I don't know any other way to say it. Any long-term presence, of course, is going to require congressional involvement. But we're not there.

Maybe I should be a little bit more aggressive about it. How long did it take Bush to get rid of Saddam? 10 years, 400,000 troops, 4,000 lives lost. That's how long it took him. That's what it amounted to. President Trump did it in four hours. No lives, no casualties, a couple of bullet holes in a helicopter. No American lives, no American casualties. Although there was a whole grip of Venezuelan lives and casualties taken, I guarantee. But come on, how much more ridiculous is it going to end up being?

And should we even just talk about the national security issue?

Tom Hughes: That's what I wanted to ask you about. I'm glad you mentioned that. So let's talk about, James, what is really going on here. Because let's face it, we saw this coming with Venezuela for quite some time now. We started reading the writing on the wall, you could hear the conversations, we knew it was coming. I interviewed Avi Lipkin when I was in Jerusalem in October. He said war is coming. He gave reasons why and he said it talked about Venezuela, what the issue is, and he said absolutely Trump needs to do this. "I fully support Trump." That was in October he tells me that.

Here we are, it's happened, and we have all these talking heads that are saying all these different reasons for it. Trump's just going to get personally rich off this or whatever the other lame excuses are. But what is really going on? Because Marco Rubio, he said Cuba, after Maduro capture, they're in a lot of trouble. So Cuba's in trouble. The guy from Colombia said, "Come and get me." What in the world's really going on? And we have a national security issue when our borders have been completely blown open for the previous four years of the other administration.

James Kaddis: Can I give you some ideas of the real numbers and what could actually happen? Let's just assume right now that all we're doing, the only conversation we are going to have, is what happens if Venezuela attacks. The distance from Caracas to Miami is believed to be approximately 1370 miles as the bird flies. To Washington D.C., it's 2060 miles. To Dallas, it's 2300 miles.

Let me give you an idea of what that looks like. I have these memorized because I've been talking about it for the last several days. This is not a difficult thing to be able to calculate. If you're dealing with a subsonic cruise missile, that means it's going 500 to 600 miles an hour, it's riding at Mach .7. It would take two hours and 30 minutes to hit Miami, three hours and 45 minutes to hit Washington, and somewhere around four hours and 40 minutes to hit Dallas.

But what if we made it not a supersonic, let's make it a hypersonic missile? If it's a hypersonic missile running at 5,000 miles per hour, which is a reasonable speed at a hypersonic missile, it's 16 minutes to Miami, 25 minutes to Washington, and roughly 32 minutes to Dallas.

Now let's take it a step further. Let's say it's a ballistic missile, which we know Venezuela has access to those. Give me a break. Venezuela has access to Vipers if they wanted to. They could probably get some from Russia, which is way faster than the speed I'm about to tell you. At 8,000 miles an hour, that missile can end up hitting Miami in 10 minutes. It hits Washington in 15 to 16 minutes and guess what, it hits Dallas in about 22 minutes.

So even if Venezuela doesn't... let's assume they're not even able to field any of these systems today. The proximity that exists that I just explained to you, coupled with foreign partnerships, means everything. Geography doesn't change. Physics doesn't change. None of that stuff changes. And don't get me started on the geopolitics related to the oil issue because this is definitely an oil play. I don't know, this stuff irritates me. I do not know why this stuff is not as obvious as it darn well should be.

Tom Hughes: So Venezuela has the largest oil reserves retractable by common methods in the world right now. And you look at this and we know there's a major connection between Iran and terrorism, Hezbollah and even Hamas with money that comes from Venezuela's oil. That's just one of the things and it's a huge factor.

So you start looking at this, the evil axis, and you start putting these other pieces together with these rogue nations like Venezuela, and you realize China's involved in this. There's a lot going on here. And you do have an east versus west that is taking place that nobody's really talking about and people are just saying how wrong it is to arrest Maduro.

James Kaddis: Do you know how smart President Trump is for running this? Just if you deal with Middle Eastern geopolitics alone, what Trump is doing is risky. It's a risky game. But what he's doing alone is going to affect all kinds of fiscal policy. It's going to change energy policy out the rear. I mean, think about just the Arabian Peninsula alone and how they end up dealing with their fiscal policy as it relates to oil.

OPEC I guarantee has already readjusted oil prices. BRICS is beginning to change direction as in what they're doing. And guess what, for the first time, really, truly for the first time, Putin is about to be incentivized like nobody's business because he's about to have his own way back into the European market so long as he ends this war under the terms that he probably wanted in the first place. Quite frankly, it's not only going to put Israel in a good position, which ushers us into the world of Ezekiel 38 because of the peace that it could create, but it's also going to dramatically change the way that tariffs begin to affect other countries in which we are trying to modify fiscal policy as it relates to trade. Because the one area of leverage that those countries have always had is to be able to manipulate energy in a way that's conducive to being able to offset some of the problems created by tariffs. And the President eliminated all of that in one fell swoop.

Tom Hughes: It is absolutely fascinating to watch all of these different dynamics play out. Let me ask you about Ezekiel chapter 38. So, and you've said this for a long time, I've been saying it for a long time, and I think we need to again push back on it. Ezekiel 38 is not going to happen tomorrow. How long have we been saying that? Because all these people keep predicting, they keep saying up until a few days ago they were saying Ezekiel 38's going to happen tomorrow. Well now they've shifted gears in the way they promote it but they still see Ezekiel 38's going to happen tomorrow. And I just want to say stop saying that. It's not going to.

James Kaddis: They're liars.

Tom Hughes: There's different things that have to take place before we get there. But you can see the hand of God moving the nations and Trump is a key factor in the world at this time, in the days that we live in. Everything from bringing together his technocrats from both sides of the political aisle, the right and the left, working on different projects for digital purposes and AI things. But we do see things are shaping up. And what we see going on with these rumors of wars, wars and rumors of wars, is only going to continue to move forward. But the geopolitical situation has to be shaped in order to bring about end-time events. And this is part of the shaping. But we're not in Ezekiel... we haven't arrived there yet.

James Kaddis: Look, bro, this one is a big deal. This one is not small. This isn't something that you just sort of pass by and ignore and go, "Oh well, let's just wait and see, la-la-la-la-la, let's watch what happens." No, this one is substantial. And the reason why it's substantial is because everything that it points to is going to bring things into peace.

Let's just examine one aspect of this Venezuela thing and let's talk about the woman who got the Nobel Peace Prize. Most people don't know this. I made a video on this maybe a month ago. But the woman who got the Nobel Peace Prize, pretty brilliant woman because she got the Peace Prize and almost immediately said, "I would give my prize to the President all day every day because he truly deserves it."

Now why did she say that? She said that because the reason why she got a Nobel Peace Prize was because she, in essence, took proof—legitimate, righteous proof—that Maduro cheated into the United States in case something were to happen where he would be defeated, in order for them to be able to do something. She effectively forced the eyes of the President of the United States to be more focused on Venezuela than ever. Because what's the President going to do naturally? The President naturally is going to look back and he's going to say, "What did this woman do that was such a big deal?"

I don't think people are thinking about these types of connections and they're remarkable connections. The President, in my opinion, was brilliant to put into effect what he did. Now I don't know if it was him that directed the DOJ to issue a request to the military for help with this law enforcement action. I don't know. But what I do know, it was done in a way that was pretty brilliant, that gave the President of the United States the kind of authority that he needed in order to put an end to this nonsense.

Tom Hughes: I've got to ask you this, but let's save it for next time: what's going to happen to the oil?

James Kaddis: Bro, I've got so much to say about that. And Iran has a lot to do with that, too.

Tom Hughes: I know. So can we come back next week, James, and pick up right there? Because it does involve Iran and we've got to go there.

James Kaddis: 100%. We'll do it.

Tom Hughes: James, good talking to you. Congratulations on your book again, the final book with another final book coming later.

James Kaddis: The Last Book. The Last Book is what we called it. But I know what you're saying, you're making fun of me.

Tom Hughes: No I'm not, I would never do such a thing as that. All of our viewers know.

James Kaddis: I still have to send you your book, bro. Your copy. I have a signed copy waiting for you.

Tom Hughes: I would love that. Stop making fun of you.

James Kaddis: All right. Guys, it has... I got to tell you, I don't know if you've noticed this, but it's all Tommy's fault for making me get loud. Because it's been so long since we've done anything together. It's his fault.

Tom Hughes: Wait till next week, boys and girls, wait till next week.

James Kaddis: All right. Well with that said, guys, we love you. We sincerely hope that you enjoyed listening to this as much as we've enjoyed making it. This has been our very first episode of 2026 of Countdown to Eternity. And we love you guys for joining us. May God richly bless you. Seek Him, put Him first. Let me say this with great confidence: Christ could come at any moment. Jesus is definitely coming soon. God bless you guys.

Guest (Male): You're listening to Countdown to Eternity with Pastors James Kaddis and Tom Hughes. To learn more about our ministry, visit countdowntoeternity.com. That's also the place to turn for a replay of today's radio show. Again, countdowntoeternity.com.

As you heard them talking about, Pastor James has a new book, The Last Book. It'll give you what you need to know about Revelation, the Rapture, and the End Times. Revelation isn't a book of fear; it's a book of hope. So learn what the Bible says about the days we're in and what God's promise is for believers in The Last Book by James Kaddis. Available now at countdowntoeternity.com.

Pastor Tom Hughes also has a few books available to you at hopeforourtimes.com. Again, many more resources available for you at hopeforourtimes.com. We'd also appreciate your financial support of Countdown to Eternity. It helps us do what we do each week. So thank you very much for standing with us at this critical time in human history. To make a donation today, visit countdowntoeternity.com.

That'll do it for this week, but come back next time when Pastors James Kaddis and Tom Hughes continue their discussion about Venezuela, oil, and the Last Days. That's right here on Countdown to Eternity, a presentation of Calvary Chapel Signal Hill.