Peculiar it is — of potential prophetic import — how peoples who once roamed certain areas of the world centuries or millennia ago seem intent on returning.

Take North America.

“As the last continents to be settled by humans, the question of how and when people first came to the Americas has long intrigued scientists,” noted a recent article on Yahoo. “A new genetics study published Tuesday in Cell Reports finds that some of the first arrivals came from China during two distinct migrations: the first during the last ice age, and the second shortly after.”

Parts of America were once in the hands of Chinese?

Said Yu-Chun Li, an author of the report, “Our findings indicate that besides the previously indicated ancestral sources of Native Americans in Siberia, the northern coastal China also served as a genetic reservoir contributing to the gene pool.”

This is fascinating in that Chinese immigrants have been pouring into the U.S. during recent years, at the same time that Mexicans are swamping the southern border (into territories they once controlled) and Native Americans have been on a campaign to restore ancestral land and are demanding removal of monuments commemorating those they view as historic enemies.

Doubly interesting is how certain self-claimed prophets or folks who say they had visions during near-death experiences long have been warning of Chinese and Russians invading the U.S. in the not-so-distant future.

Reports the History Channel: “In the strange 1913 work, the Ancient Chinese Account of the Grand Canyon, or Course of the Colorado, Alexander McAllan argues that the Classic of Mountains and Seas contains descriptions of the North American continent and the Grand Canyon. This ‘account’ is purported to be from a much earlier time than the composition of the text – to around 2250 BC.

“According to McAllan, the ‘Ancient Mexicans’ called North America a ‘Mulberry Tree’, and Chinese ‘sages’ spoke of North America as the distant land or tree of ‘Fu-Sang’, meaning ‘Helpful Mulberry’.

“In the Classic of Mountains and Seas, this ‘Mulberry’ tree or land is said to be found ten thousand miles away from China across ‘the eastern sea’. It says that this tree or land is three thousand miles wide and has a ‘trunk’ about a hundred miles thick [perhaps the Yucatan Pensinsula].”

Maria Esperanza said that the time was near when the “yellow races will rise up.”

Are they not, in our time — joining forces with Russia?

Fox News last week: “Japan is warning that China and Russia have increased military cooperation in a bid to disrupt the current world order in Asia and beyond.”

James Wilburn Chauncey, now deceased, of Fayetteville, Georgia, who had a profound near-death experience as a child, wrote of his alleged visions, “I could smell smoke and heard booming noises and it was like I was seeing over the Northeast toward Europe and I could see these armies moving from Russia over Syria and continuing southwest and southeast, bypassing Israel. They conquered all of Africa and Asia except for China, then they started across the rest of Europe and across to England. The English fought very hard. After England was decimated I saw missiles lobbed from boats at New York, Washington, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, Jacksonville, and Atlanta and some other place but at this point they weren’t nuclear.”

Siberia — home to those first Native Americans — is of course part of: Russia.

According to Ned Dougherty, a former nightclub owner who “died” of a coronary on July 2, 1984, in the Hamptons, on Long Island, a “Lady of Light” showed him events that the greatest threat would come from China and a “two hundred million army” (see Revelation 9:16; [as depicted above in the London Star]). “The Lady of Light specifically told me, ‘Pray for the conversion of China,’” claimed Dougherty. “‘The conversion of China to God is necessary for the salvation of the world.’”

At Lipa in the Philippines, a seer supposedly had a secret from the Virgin Mary that had to do with China.

For a long while, many who claim near-death experiences have proffered prophecies of invasions of the United States by both of these growing powers. With all its fortifications, an invasion of the U.S. by any foreign army remains all but impossible.

Yet recent turn of events cause a stiver of wonderment, for suddenly China and the U.S. are engaged in an incipient trade war — or at least a war of words (most recently,  China calling America “arrogant,” and slapping on billions in tariffs in response to new announced U.S. tariffs) — and Russia has expelled U.S. and U.K. diplomats in response to U.S. and British expulsions of Russians (in the wake of suspicious poison or radioactive attacks on ex-Russian spies and journalists now residing in places such as England). There is also Russia’s nefarious support for Syria.

Meanwhile, that crisis at America’s southern border: Mexicans are not just settling in border towns but nearly taking back swathes of Texas, Arizona, California, and New Mexico that they once controlled. Mexicans are dear people (and often the most devout of Catholics), in need of our aid.

In this landscape only one thing is certain: the future (without God, and unity) is unpredictable.

[resources: Michael Brown-led pilgrimage-retreat, Italy]