Tag: Current News – Bible Prophecy

sharing the love of God  is also about . . .

Prophecy, because God gave us the message of what is about to happen so that we can spread that message before it’s too late.

And dear brothers and sisters, it’s out of love that we ask you to wake up and study. For more information, please go to our sister site

http://prophecyunfolding.org

When Iran attacked the nation of Israel last night, prophecy bolted forward and there will only be one escalation after another just as the Bible says.

Look through the lens of prophecy as you watch world news.

In Jesus’ name and love, we pray that those who have eyes to see and ears to hear will open hearts to Him who loves us and gave Himself on the cross so that we may live.

THE FUTURE OF BABYLON | World Monuments Fund

THE FUTURE OF BABYLON | World Monuments Fund.

Another interesting website regarding the rebuilding of Babylon. Important information in relation to Prophecy.

Also read the following by Joel C. Rosenberg.

IRAQ REBUILDING ITS MILITARY, EVEN AS THEY REBUILD BABYLON: Prophetic significance?

Posted: April 13, 2012 in Uncategorized

Bible prophecy indicates that in the End Times, the nation we know today as the Republic of Iraq — known variously in Scripture as Babel, Babylon, Babylonia, Mesopotamia and Shinar — will emerge as the global center of wealth, power and terrible evil. Eventually Iraq will pose a direct and existential threat to the State of Israel, particularly during the Tribulation.

Since the fall of Saddam Hussein and his regime in 2003, Iraq has not been a regional threat, much less a danger to Israel. Some have assumed, therefore, that Iraq would no longer play a major role in Middle Eastern or global affairs in the future. But such a conclusion would be a mistake. As I wrote about in my first non-fiction book, Epicenter, those who read, understand and believe Bible prophecy have been watching for Iraq to: 1) begin rebuilding its offensive military capability; 2) begin rebuilding its economy; 3) continue rebuilding the ancient city of Babylon into a major center of commerce and tourism.

Interestingly, all three developments are currently underway.

IRAQ IS REBUILDING ITS MILITARY

Now that the Iraqi government has forced the American military out of their country, they have embarked on a dramatic arms build-up, including the purchase of American weapons systems that could be used for offensive purposes in the future. Examples:

  • The Iraqis are buying 140 state-of-the-art American M1A1 combat tanks. “The Government of Iraq has purchased 140 tanks from the United States, all of which have arrived in Iraq,” reports an Iraqi business website. “131 of those tanks are already in the possession of the Iraqi Army. The nine remaining tanks are in Iraq, but in U.S. possession.”
  • The Iraqis are buying 36 advanced American F-16 fighter jets. “Israel is monitoring Iraq’s rearmament program, particularly Bahgdad’s acquisition of 36 Lockheed Martin F-16s, with some disquiet amid intelligence reports Iran is consolidating its influence in Iraq following the U.S. military withdrawal,” reports UPI. “Baghdad ordered the F-16 Block 52 multi-role Fighting Falcon jets — enough to equip the Iraqi air force’s first two fighter squadrons — in two 18-plane batches in 2011 at an estimated total cost of $7 billion.”
  • In 2010, the Iraqis embarked on a $13 billion weapons spending spree. “Iraq is preparing to buy as much as $13 billion in American arms and military equipment, a huge order of tanks, ships and hardware that U.S. officials say shows Iraqi-U.S. military ties will be tight for years to come,” reported USA Today. “‘It helps to build their capabilities, first and foremost; and second, it builds our strategic relationship for the future,’ said Army Lt. Gen. Michael Barbero, the ranking U.S. officer responsible for training and advising Iraq forces.”

IRAQ IS REBUILDING ITS ECONOMY

Now that the war of liberation is over and most of Iraq has been pacified and stabilized from the terrorist insurgency, Iraq’s economy is not only growing but is poised for hyper-growth. Analysts expect Iraq’s GDP to grow by more than 9% annually for the next few years, and expect Iraq’s oil production to nearly triple by 2017.

  • “Iraq’s gross domestic product is expected to grow by an average rate of at least 9.4 percent annually between 2012 and 2016 as the oil-producing country benefits from larger windfalls in oil revenues, a senior central bank official said [in February],” reports Reuters. ”Iraq, which has the fourth-biggest oil reserves in the world, is currently producing around 2.9 million barrels per day (bpd). Iraq’s oil minister said last year he expected production to reach between 8-8.5 million bpd by 2017.”
  • Some analysts within the Iraqi Planning Ministry believe Iraq could reach a 47% growth rate by 2017, once the oil starts flowing fast and furious.
  • More and more major international companies are signing deals to do business in Iraq — see this intriguing list published by Reuters, published in December 2011.
  • In 2011, ExxonMobil — the world’s largest oil company — signed a major deal to help develop the oil industry in Iraq’s northern region of Kurdistan. Despite the fact being mired in some political controversy, the deal is likely to be fully ratified in the not-too-distant future.
  • Also in 2011, Royal Dutch Shell signed a $17 billion deal to help Iraq develop its enormous lucrative oil industry in its southern regions.
  • In 2010, the Iraqi government ratified four other major oil deals.

IRAQ IS REBUILDING THE CITY OF BABYLON

Largely overlooked by Westerners is the fact that the government of Iraq is moving forward with plans to protect the archaeological remains of the ancient City of Babylon, in preparation for building a modern city of Babylon. As I wrote in 2009, the project — originally started by the late Saddam Hussein — is aimed eventually at attracting scores of “cultural tourists” from all over the world to see the glories of Mesopotamia’s most famous city. What’s more, the Obama Administration has actually helped contribute U.S. taxpayer dollars to “The Future of Babylon Project” through the State Department’s budget. Read more at the World Monuments Fund website for the rebuilding Babylong project.

In 2011, I noted that the New York Times had published an intriguing article on Iraqi efforts to preserve, protect, restore and then rebuild the ancient city of Babylon and make it a draw for tourists, with U.S. taxpayer assistance. The Times reports that a modern Babylon museum will open later this month. Times’ reporter Steven Lee Myers also posted a fascinating four minute video walking through some of the rebuilt ruins of Babylon, and explaining Iraqi efforts to protect and restore numerous Biblical sites.

“The Babylon project is Iraq’s biggest and most ambitious by far, a reflection of the ancient city’s fame and its resonance in Iraq’s modern political and cultural heritage,” the Times reported, noting that “in November, the State Department announced a new $2 million grant to begin work to preserve the site’s most impressive surviving ruins. They include the foundation of the Ishtar Gate, built in the sixth century B.C. by Nebuchadnezzar’s father, Nabopolassar, and adorned with brick reliefs of the Babylonian gods Marduk and Adad.”

“The American reconstruction team has refurbished a modern museum on the site, as well as a model of the Ishtar Gate that for decades served as a visitors’ entrance. Inside the museum is one of the site’s most valuable relics: a glazed brick relief of a lion, one of 120 that once lined the processional way into the city. The museum, with three galleries, is scheduled to open this month, receiving its first visitors since 2003. And with new security installed, talks are under way to return ancient Babylonian artifacts from the National Museum in Baghdad. The fate of Babylon is already being disputed by Iraqi leaders, with antiquities officials clashing with local authorities over when to open it to visitors and how to exploit the site for tourism that, for the most part, remains a goal more than a reality. Even now they are clashing over whether the admission fee should go to the antiquities board or the provincial government.”

(Photo by New York Times: Iraqi women walking through the city of Babylon that is currently being rebuilt.)

Prayer changes things!

A banner on the wall in my home church when I was growing up

kept us reminded of that wonderful personal relationship

we can have with our Lord by just talking to Him.

Prayer Changes Things!

He knows what’s going on.

He just wants us to talk to Him about it.

He wants to talk to us, too.

He wants to know we care enough to stop what we’re doing

and offer up our concern to Him.

YSIC,

Sharon

Time is running out, according to Bible prophecy

THE EVIL ASSAD REGIME MUST BE BROUGHT DOWN AND BROUGHT TO JUSTICE, OR FACE JUDGMENT: Time is running out according to Bible prophecy

By Joel Rosenberg

Posted: February 18, 2012 in Uncategorized

The butchery of the Assad regime is horrifying to behold. More than 6,000 Syrians have been brutally murdered by the thugs in Damascus. The evil Assad government must be brought down and brought to justice, or face judgment.

Bible prophecy tells us in Isaiah 17:1-3 and Jeremiah 49:23-27 that Damascus will be destroyed as a city in the last days. Scripture doesn’t tell us exactly when or how this will happen, but I believe that day is steadily approaching. Indeed, it may not be far off. I’m currently writing a political thriller called The Damascus Countdown about how this could play out.

In the meantime, followers of Jesus Christ around the world must be praying and working for the spiritual and political liberation of the Syrian people. We need to be praying and working to strengthen the persecuted Church in Syria, and to help believers there spread of the Gospel to every person in that precious country. Make no mistake: God loves the people of Syria. The Apostle Paul came to faith in Jesus Christ on the road to Damascus. Believers were first called “Christians” in Antioch, Syria. And our God and Father wants every Syrian to receive Jesus as Savior and Lord. We need to act now and share the good news with Syria before judgment comes. For God is not going to allow this current evil to go unchecked much longer. In Genesis 12:1-3, the Lord told us that those who bless the children of Israel will be blessed, and those who cursed them will be cursed. The Syrian government faces judgment for killing its own citizens, but also for killing so many Jews and Israelis over the years, and cursing the State of Israel on a daily basis.

Meanwhile, since we don’t know when the judgment of Syria’s government will happen, the U.S. government — and our allies — can and must take decisive steps to stand with and for the people of Syria against the Assad regime. This past week, 58 foreign policy experts urged President Obama to take strong, specific action. Among their recommendations:

  • Immediately establish safe zones within Syrian territory, as well as no-go zones for the Assad regime’s military and security forces, around Homs, Idlib, and other threatened areas, in order to protect Syrian civilians.  To the extent possible, the United States should work with like-minded countries like Turkey and members of the Arab League in these efforts.
  • Establish contacts with the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and, in conjunction with allies in the Middle East and Europe, provide a full range of direct assistance, including self-defense aid to the FSA.
  • Improve U.S. coordination with political opposition groups and provide them with secure communications technologies and other assistance that will help to improve their ability to prepare for a post-Assad Syria.
  • Work with Congress to impose crippling U.S. and multilateral sanctions on the Syrian government, especially on Syria’s energy, banking, and shipping sectors.

The experts noted: “For eleven months now, the Syrian people have been dying on a daily basis at the hands of their government as they seek to topple the brutal regime of Bashar al-Assad.  As the recent events in the city of Homs—in which hundreds of Syrians have been killed in a matter of days—have shown, Assad will stop at nothing to maintain his grip on power. Given the United Nations Security Council’s recent failure to act, we believe that the United States cannot continue to defer its strategic and moral responsibilities in Syria to regional actors such as the Arab League, or to wait for consent from the Assad regime’s protectors, Russia and China.  We therefore urge you to take immediate steps to decisively halt the Assad regime’s atrocities against Syrian civilians, and to hasten the emergence of a post-Assad government in Syria. Syria’s future is not purely a humanitarian concern.  The Assad regime poses a grave threat to national security interests of the United States.  The Syrian government, which has been on the State Department’s State Sponsors of Terrorism list since 1979, maintains a strategic partnership with the terror-sponsoring government of Iran, as well as with Hamas and Hezbollah.  For years, it facilitated the entry of foreign fighters into Iraq who killed American troops.  For years, it secretly pursued a nuclear program with North Korea’s assistance.  And for decades, it has closely cooperated with Iran and other agents of violence and instability to menace America’s allies and partners throughout the Middle East….The Syrian people are asking for international assistance.  It is apparent that American leadership is required to ensure the quickest end to the Assad regime’s brutal reign, and to clearly show the Syrian people that, as you said on February 4, 2012, the people of the free world stand with them as they seek to realize their aspirations.”

I agree. Time is running out, according to Bible prophecy. Now is the time for the free world to speak out, and act decisively. Now is also the time for followers of Jesus Christ to do our part.

Does Russia Have A Cogent Middle East Strategy?

 February 9, 2012

Russia’s support for Syrian President Bashar Assad has put it at odds with other countries in the Arab world.

Russia drew a lot of flack from Arab countries and the West when it vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution aimed at pressuring Assad to stop his crackdown on protesters. That has some analysts in Russia doubting whether the Kremlin really has a cogent strategy for the Middle East.

The dilemma for Russia policy in the Arab world can be illustrated by two very different events that took place this week.

On Tuesday, crowds of Assad supporters in Damascus greeted Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and the country’s foreign intelligence chief, Mikhail Fradkov.

Lavrov said Russia was willing to serve as a mediator in the conflict, although Assad’s forces continued their assault on the opposition. Meanwhile, a very different scenario was playing out in New York.

Russia’s U.N. ambassador, Vitaly Churkin, appeared at a hastily called news conference to deny rumors that he had threatened the prime minister of Qatar. The rumors, which were widely circulated in the Arab media, said Churkin had warned the Qatari leader that Russia would “wipe Qatar off the map.”

“There was nothing, not even any hints of any threats, intimidation, rudeness from me or from the prime minister of Qatar, for that matter,” Churkin said.

Russia’s relations with Qatar have been strained since December, when customs officials in Doha allegedly manhandled Russia’s ambassador to that country.

Although Churkin denied using any bullying tactics, he added something that sounded vaguely like a warning.

“Apparently somebody is trying very hard in order to drive a wedge between Russia and the Arab world. If it’s somebody who is really coming from the Arab world, I think there is a very good Russian saying, which they, I think, should keep in mind: ‘Don’t spit into a well. You may well need it for a drink of water,’ ” he said.

At this point, it’s unclear who needs whom.

Analyst Yevgeny Satanovsky, president of the Moscow Institute for Middle Eastern Studies, says Russia doesn’t really need Syria as a trading partner. He says Russia’s support for Syria is part of a pragmatic effort to contain Islamic extremism by balancing opposing factions.

“Russians understand there are no nondictatorship regimes in the Middle East. There is no chance for democracy of the Western style in the Middle East. And we try to make balance,” Satanovsky says.

But other analysts say Russia needs to be careful of its image in the Arab world.

Dmitri Trenin, director of the Carnegie Moscow Center, points out that Russia’s stand on Syria puts it at odds with important members of the Arab League, such as Saudi Arabia.

“Saudi Arabia has enormous leverage on the global oil market. Saudi Arabia has resources that could be used to minimize Russia’s control of parts of its own country,” Trenin says. He means the North Caucasus, the region that includes volatile areas such as Chechnya.

Trenin says that what Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, tried to do in Damascus this week should have been done months ago, when the Arab Spring protests first erupted.

“If Russia wanted to uphold its prestige as an important player, it needed to engage more fully in looking for a peaceful resolution to the Syrian conflict,” he says.

Both analysts say one of Russia’s main concerns is keeping a lid on Islamic radicalism, the kind that is spreading in the Muslim parts of Russia’s own territory.

Satanovsky says Russian policy seeks to play off the Islamic fundamentalist regimes of the Arab world against Iran.

In putting such strong and public support behind the Syrian regime, though, Russia has put itself at a pivot point in the major struggles of the Arab World.

It’s not clear whether it has a strategy to affect the balance there.

Related Articles:

https://sharinhislove.wordpress.com/2011/06/28/20-major-prophetic-events-yet-to-be-fulfilled-compiled-by-dr-tim-lahaye/

Map of Middle East Countries involved in War of Gog and Magog

Syria Revolution: Why Is Russia Supporting Syria? (ibtimes.com)

What is the War of Gog and Magog?


Middle East Burning

 

A riveting and timely survey of things to come!

 

Widespread revolutions in multiple Arab nations. New powers rising to challenge entrenched despots and ruling bodies. Bitter new conflicts further enflaming the many already in place. And a pall of uncertainty over how it will all play out.
Indeed the Middle East is burning.

How can we make sense of it all?

At first glance the many hotspots may seem without a pattern, without rhyme or reason. But Bible prophecy expert Mark Hitchcock takes a look at Scripture and helps paint a clear picture of what’s taking place, giving insight on current events in Egypt, Libya, Sudan, Russia, Turkey, Iran, Syria, and more.

=================================================================================

(Sharon’s note:)  To read an excerpt from this book, click on the link below. I think you will find it very interesting, as we relate it to our study of prophecy.

http://harvesthousepublishers.com/media/epr/excerpts/9780736939966_exc.pdf

 

Related articles

Is Netanyahu’s Patience with Iran Running Out?

Posted: January 24, 2012 in Uncategorized
by Joel C. Rosenberg

Does Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu think the West is taking decisive action to stop Iran from getting the Bomb, or does he think the West is fiddling while Tel Aviv runs the rising risk of burning? That’s the Big Question as tensions continue to mount in the epicenter this week. Iran is making new threats to close the Strait of Hormuz to oil shipments, just days after test-firing missiles over the Strait. The U.S., Britain and France are sending additional naval forces  into the Gulf. The European Union is taking new steps to impose an oil embargo on Iran. The U.S. is taking steps to sanction Iran’s third largest bank, though dragging its feet on actually sanctioning Iran’s Central Bank. Adding to the regional tensions, Russia is lashing out at the EU and selling $550 million worth of arms to one of Iran’s key regional allies. Will such Western moves be enough to stop Iran from building an arsenal of nuclear weapons? Personally, I’m not convinced. Such moves would have been good a few years ago. Now they strike me as too little too late, especially after the Obama White House disastrous decision recently to cancel joint military exercises with Israel for fear of being “too provocative” towards Iran. But it doesn’t matter what I think. What matters is what Netanyahu thinks. If he decides the West isn’t doing enough and Iran is going to get the Bomb, then he is going to hit Iran hard, soon, and without warning.

In that context, it’s worth noting a speech Netanyahu gave Tuesday warning his nation that the world has not internalized the lessons of the Holocaust. ”Speaking at the Knesset just days before  International Holocaust Remembrance Day (January 27), Netanyahu reasoned that the Jewish people must not put their fate in the hands of the  international community,” reported the Jerusalem Post. “Posing a rhetorical question, Netanyahu asked, ‘How does the world react to the calls for genocide against the Jews today? Seventy years after the shoa [Holocaust], Iran is calling for us to be wiped off the map, Hezbollah is calling for our extinction, as are many in Hamas….The Jerusalem Mufti [Sheikh Muhammad Hussein] called on Sunday for Jews to be killed wherever they are…echoing his predecessor Haj Amin Al Husseini, who actively helped Hitler and Eichman,’ he said. ‘I do not hear the international community condemning this. I hear them  condemning buildings in the West Bank. But I don’t hear them condemning  this incitement,’ said Netanyahu.”

Could Netanyahu be signaling that his patience — and that of the Israeli government and military – is running out?

Worth noting: “Two Iranian lawmakers on Monday stepped up threats their country would close the strategic Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world’s crude flows, in retaliation for oil sanctions on Tehran,” reports Haaretz. “The warnings came as EU nations agreed in Brussels on an oil embargo against Iran as part of sanctions over the country’s controversial nuclear program. The measure includes an immediate embargo on new contracts for Iranian crude and petroleum products while existing ones will be allowed to run until July. Iran has repeatedly warned it would choke off the strait if sanctions affect its oil sales, and two lawmakers ratcheted up the rhetoric on Monday….For its part, the United States has enacted, but not yet put into force, sanctions targeting Iran’s central bank and, by extension, the country’s ability to be paid for its oil. Some 80 percent of Iran’s oil revenue comes from exports and any measures or sanctions taken that affect its ability to export oil could hit hard at its economy. With about 4 million barrels per day, Iran is the second largest producer in OPEC.”

Two Mistakes Regarding Iran

by Joel Rosenberg

 

>> Rating the GOP presidential candidates on the Iran issue

The White House has made two new and serious mistakes on Iran in recent days:

  1. The Obama administration has just canceled joint military exercises with the Israelis.
  2. The Obama administration has both denied killing a top-ranking Iranian nuclear scientist and condemned the scientist’s assassination.

Given that U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta says Iran could have the Bomb by the end of 2012, the U.S. should intensifying pressure on the evil regime in Tehran. This would include dramatically escalating covert ops inside Iran, and making preparations for possible air strikes if there are no other alternatives to neutralizing the Iran threat. Instead, the senior team at the White House just blinked — twice — showing weakness instead of resolve. They have also made it more likely, not less, that Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu may conclude this year that he has no other choice but to launch a massive first strike against Iran. Thus: “The United States has stepped up contingency planning in case Israel launches a military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday. According to the report, U.S. defense officials are becoming increasingly concerned that Israel is preparing to carry out such a strike.” At the moment, Army General Martin Dempsey, the new Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is heading to Israel for talks about Iran.

Meanwhile, “Israeli Cabinet Minister Moshe Ya’alon said Sunday he was disappointed that the U.S. has not expanded sanctions to further damage Iran’s central bank and its energy industry. He also suggested that the Obama  administration hasn’t been as forceful as Britain and France in  imposing sanctions. ‘In the United States, the Senate passed a resolution, by a majority of 100-to-1, to impose these sanctions, and in the U.S. administration there is hesitation for fear of  oil prices rising this year, out of election-year considerations,’ Ya’alon told  Israel Radio, according to Haaretz newspaper. ‘In that regard, this is certainly  a disappointment, for now.’”

This is exactly why I’m saying we’d better keep praying for peace, while preparing ourselves for war.

 

CAR BOMB KILLS IRANIAN NUCLEAR SCIENTIST

Posted: January 11, 2012 in Uncategorized
by Joel Rosenberg

>>  Iranian president arrives in Cuba; U.S. warns of ‘dangerous alliance’

UPDATED: Another headline this morning ripped from the pages of my two recent novels, The Twelfth Imam and The Tehran Initiative. This one from the BBC: Iran car explosion kills nuclear scientist in Tehran. Excerpt: “A university lecturer and nuclear scientist has been killed in a car explosion in north Tehran. Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan, an academic who also worked at the Natanz uranium enrichment facility, and the driver of the car were killed in the attack. The blast happened after a motorcyclist stuck an apparent bomb to the car. Several Iranian nuclear scientists have been assassinated in recent years, with Iran blaming Israel and the US. Both countries deny the accusations….” FLASHBACK FROM DEC 2011: COVERT WAR HEATS UP IN IRAN AND MIDEAST: Will it be enough to neutralize nuclear threat, or will Israel launch preemptive strikes in 2012?

Studying Biblical Prophecy

The study of prophecy is not to Scare us,

but to Prepare us.

Studying Biblical Prophecy has been a passion of mine since I was a teenager. My first exposure to the subject was from a book entitled “The Bible and Tomorrow’s News”.

Studying prophecy can bring confusion and fear to a lot of people. I think that is because it is hard to understand.

We are attempting to wade into the study of prophecy a little at a time on our blog. We think it will be interesting for our readers to understand the basics as you follow each day’s news and how they are related.

The study can also be a source of encouragement and inspiration.  As we understand the relationship of knowledge of the scriptures and motivate our call to share the gospel, it will strengthen all of us.

I have included direct links below to the categories on our blog that will help us as we study.

We encourage comments and discussion of this wealth of knowledge that God has given us in His word.

Blessings,

Sharon & Erick

 

Related Articles:

https://sharinhislove.wordpress.com/category/studying-prophecy/

https://sharinhislove.wordpress.com/category/maps-biblical/

https://sharinhislove.wordpress.com/category/current-events-in-light-of-bible-prophecy/

https://sharinhislove.wordpress.com/category/headlines-to-track/

https://sharinhislove.wordpress.com/category/historial-maps/

https://sharinhislove.wordpress.com/category/israel-interesting-information/

https://sharinhislove.wordpress.com/category/maps/

https://sharinhislove.wordpress.com/category/maps-in-light-of-biblical-prophecy/

https://sharinhislove.wordpress.com/category/world-information/

 

 

Jesus and a Palestinian State

Israel Today Magazine

September 25, 2011

The Palestinian statehood bid provided a platform for many views and positions regarding the Middle East, including those of Evangelical Christians who no longer believe in the validity of the promises contained in the Bible.

In the run-up to Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas officially requesting UN membership for the “State of Palestine,” Carl Medearis, a recognized expert on Middle East Christians, suggested on CNN’s Belief Blog that Jesus would support the Palestinian statehood motion.

“So how would Jesus vote this week if he had a seat at the UN?” Medearis asked. “Surely love, compassion, justice and peace-making would top his lists of concerns for all involved. Maybe he would give a new parable – the Parable of the Good Palestinian – offending all who would hear.”

Medearis continued by deriding the Christian Zionist movement and its insistence on a literal reading of the Bible:

“In their minds, the modern Israeli state is not only a fulfillment of biblical prophecy. In a bizarre twist that leaves most outsiders dumbfounded, Christian Zionists say the Bible predicts that Jews and Palestinians will forever be at war until Jesus returns.”

Medearis’ remarks were hotly debated in various publications, but it is not his personal view of the situation that is troubling. Medearis was merely the mouthpiece of a post-modern, humanist-infected strand of Christianity that no longer believes the Bible carries any literal meaning beyond the commandments regarding basic gestures of goodwill and proper moral behavior.

In other words, while it is still important to love one’s neighbor and not to steal, passages like Jeremiah 31:36-38 or Ezekiel 36:24-28 that confirm the eternal nature of Israel’s divine right to the land are, in Medearis’ words, “obscure Old Testament promises.”

In order to cement their position as the “sane Christians,” Medearis and others like him will highlight the often-unsympathetic positions of those perceived “lunatics” who do hold fast to the Bible’s every promise.

It is true that in their zealousness a good many Christian Zionists often spout rhetoric that is hateful toward the Palestinian Arabs. It is also true, as Medearis pointed out, that Yeshua told us to love our enemies, even those seeking Israel’s demise. But this point of supporting Israel (uncritically, Medearis wrongly claims) and opposing Palestinian statehood is not what Christian Zionism is really about, not at its core.

Christian Zionism is the recognition that long-awaited biblical promises and prophecies are being fulfilled in our time. It is about getting behind that fulfillment, and opposing efforts to reverse it. And though God may not actually need our help in preventing that attempted reversal, one day we will be held accountable for the stand we took (or didn’t take). Ultimately it is a question of whether or not God keeps His word and has the sovereignty in our lives to do so.

“Christian Zionists believe the scriptures are true, active and alive today. They believe that by acknowledging the truth that God has given the Land of Israel to the Jewish People as an everlasting inheritance we are acknowledging God’s sovereignty,” wrote local Messianic leader Eliyahu Ben-Chaim in his book Setting the Record Straight.

If God can renege on a promise to Israel that He repeatedly labeled as “everlasting,” surely we should all be concerned that other promises can be annulled or rewritten, like that promise of eternal life for the members of an equally sinful Church.

The truth is that God does not go back on or alter His promises. He made abundantly clear that the most important factor is the glory of His name. The biblical record has shown, even up to the present day with the rebirth of Israel, that when God makes a promise, He keeps it, not for our sake, but for the sake of His good name. To suggest otherwise is to attack not only God’s credibility, but, more detrimentally, the glory of His name.

Middle East Map

 

(Note: This map is significant as we study  the “War of Gog and Magog”, based on the book of Ezekiel,  indicating the countries of present day Russia, Persia (present day Iran), Cush (present day Sudan), Gomer (present day Turkey), Beth Togarmah (present day countries where turkish-speaking people  spread out from Turkey and settled in  Causasus and the areas of Central Asia, and Put (present day Libya and Algeria –those countries are on a different map in the Maps in Light of Biblical Prophecy category).

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FOUR REASONS WHY GOD IS SHAKING AMERICA & THE WORLD: Text of “Wake Up Call” sermon

Posted: September 13, 2011 by joelcrosenberg in Uncategorized


http://flashtrafficblog.wordpress.com/

The following is the text of the sermon I delivered Sunday night, September 11th during the “Wake Up Call.” The video will soon be posted online, and I’ll let you know where and when as soon as possible.

“FOUR REASONS WHY GOD IS SHAKING AMERICA AND THE WORLD”

The Wake Up Call Event

Joel C. Rosenberg

September 11, 2011

Thank you. It is an honor to be here tonight — especially at this critical moment in American history, and in the history of the world.

Thousands of years ago, through the Hebrew Prophet Haggai, God told us what He was going to do — that He was going to shake us.  “For thus says the Lord of hosts, ‘Once more in a little while, I am going to shake the heavens and the earth, the sea also and the dry land. I will shake all the nations…. I am going to shake the heavens and the earth. I will overthrow the thrones of kingdoms and destroy the power of the kingdoms of the nations.’” (Haggai 2:6-7, 21-22)

That’s what Bible prophecy is – an intercept from the mind of the all-knowing, all-seeing God of the universe….a weather report from the future….a storm warning from the future — not so that we will be afraid, but so that we will be awake and ready and faithful and walking close to Jesus when the storms come.

  • Do you remember where you were on September 11th, 2001?
  • Do you remember how you felt when you saw the Pentagon burning, the smoldering wreckage in Pennsylvania, the two towers imploding?
  • Not since Pearl Harbor had so many Americans been killed in a single attack – more than 3,000 that day.

None of us will ever forget that day — nor should we.

God didn’t cause 9/11 to happen….fanatics devoted to the false teachings of Radical Islam caused 9/11 to happen….but the True and Living God — the God of the Bible — let it happen to shake America….to get our attention….to wake us up.

I want to ask you some questions tonight as we reflect on 9/11, as we reflect on the state of our union, and the state of the Church, both here and around the world: On this anniversary of 9/11, are you morally and spiritually better off ten years ago? Is your family? Is your church?

Now is an appropriate time to take a spiritual audit — to assess how you’re doing morally and spiritually, how your family is doing, how your congregation is doing. Ten years ago, God shook us – the question is: Were we listening?

In the Book of Hebrews we read: “See to it that you do not refuse Him who is speaking. For if those did not escape when they refused him who warned them on earth, much less will we escape who turn away from Him who warns from heaven. And His voice shook the earth then, but now He has promised, saying, ‘Yet once more I will shake not only the earth, but also the heaven.” Hebrews 12:25-26)

Our Lord Jesus Christ — sitting with His disciples on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem — also warned in Matthew 24 that we would be shaken in the last days, those days leading up to Jesus’ return. “The sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from the sky, and the power of the heavens will be shaken,” Jesus said. And then, when men least expect it, Jesus said, “the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky with power and great glory. (Matthew 24:29-30)

America was shaken on 9/11. Today, God is shaking us again.

  • Nine of the ten costliest – most expensive – hurricanes in American history have happened since 9/11. The worst was Hurricane Katrina which nearly wiped out an American city and ended up costing $108 billion.[i]
  • Hurricane Irene will likely rank in the top five and has made 2011 the worst year in American history for natural disasters, with ten separate catastrophes costing $1 billion or more.[ii]
  • This year, we’ve seen the worst outbreak of tornadoes in nearly half a century.[iii]
  • The worst fires in the history of Texas – amidst the worst drought in the history of the state.[iv]
  • The biggest earthquake on the East Coast since 1875.[v]
  • The biggest earthquake in Colorado since 1882.

At the same time, our economy is being shaken to its core.

  • 42,000 American factories have shut down since 9/11.[vi]
  • Fourteen million Americans have lost their jobs just in the past few years.
  • Millions of families have lost their homes.
  • Washington is running up the national credit card to jump start our economy, but it’s not working.
  • Our federal debt is now more than $14 trillion – that’s trillion with a “t.” It’s hard to imagine so much money. But put it this way: if we were to pay one dollar per second every hour of every day of every month to pay down our national debt, it would take us more than 32,000 years just to pay off $1 trillion – but we have more than $14 trillion of debt.[vii]
  • No wonder nearly eight-in-ten say America is on the “wrong track.”[viii]
  • No wonder nearly half of all Americans fear we’re heading for another Great Depression.[ix]

People are beginning to wonder if we can turn this thing around, or whether we’re heading towards an economic collapse, an economic implosion. Sometimes, it feels like we’re out on the middle of a frozen lake and suddenly we begin to hear the ice cracking under our feet. We haven’t plunged down into the icy waters yet, but we’re not sure where to step, or whether we can get back to the safety of the shore.

That’s the economy.  But what of the state of our culture?

  • Since 1973, more than 53 million abortions. More than 53 million children murdered, and there is no end in sight.[x]
  • Pornography revenues today exceed the revenues of ABC, CBS and NBC – combined.[xi]
  • Today the pornography industry is larger than the revenues of Microsoft, Google, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo!, Apple, Netflix and EarthLink – combined.[xii]

Where are the Christians? What difference are we making? The answer is painful too hear. Too many people who say they are Christians are asleep, or distracted, or intoxicated by the world. Like the old country and western song, “Looking for love in all the wrong places,” too many people who say they are Christians have been looking love and meaning and purpose outside of Christ and His love.

George Barna, the Christian pollster and researcher, has just released a fascinating but sobering book entitled, Futurecast, Which I commend to your attention. In it, he devotes consider time to analyzing the state of Christianity in America today, and it is revealing:

  • 85 percent of Americans identify themselves as Christians.[xiii]
  • “84 percent consider it a holy or sacred book” and “the typical American household owns four Bibles” [xiv]
  • Yet only 56 percent believe that “the Bible is accurate and without error.”[xv]

Clearly, there’s a disconnect between who we say we are, and what we say we believe, and how we’re living. Barna offers many examples. Let me share just two.

  • First, there is no statistical difference between the percentage of non-Christians who get divorced (33 percent) and the percentage of “born-again Christians” who get divorced (32 percent).[xvi]
  • Second, only half of all born again Christians say they even try to share the Gospel with even one unsaved person one time – one time – a year.[xvii]

How is this possible? How can we be salt and light to the lost world around us if we are no different than that lost world? How can possibly hope for a spiritual revival or a Third Great Awakening in this land if we are barely all sharing our faith in Jesus Christ with one person a year? Jesus said in Luke 6:46, “Why do you call Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I say?” This is an important question for us tonight.

Yet God isn’t merely shaking America — the Lord said through the prophet Haggai, “I will shake all the nations.”

  • Japan is suffering what her Prime Minister calls the worst disaster since World War II – a devastating earthquake, the resulting tsunami, and multiple nuclear meltdowns all at once.[xviii]
  • Australians have faced devastating flooding this year – one headline read: “Australia Faces Biblical Floods”[xix]
  • God is shaking the Arab world through revolutions and uprisings. The prophet Haggai said, “I will overthrow the thrones of kingdoms and destroy the power of the kingdoms of the nations.” And sure enough we have see rulers and regimes overthrown and destroyed in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, and Libya – and more may be coming.
  • Russia is suffering the worst drought in 100 years.[xx]
  • China is currently suffering its worst drought in 200 years.[xxi]
  • The earthquake in Christchurch last year was the worst in the history of New Zealand and left 1/3 of the city’s buildings facing demolition.[xxii]
  • Last year, God shook Haiti – the deadliest earthquake in nearly 500 years, and the second deadliest in all of human history.[xxiii]

The question is: Why is God shaking us?

The Bible teaches us that at this stage in history, God is shaking us not to punish us — though judgment will come.

There are, however, four reasons, I believe.

First, God is shaking us because He loves us and He wants us to repent – What is repentance? Some people think of it as a very heavy religious word. But my wife, Lynn, and I have tried to teach our four sons what repentance means in a very simple way. Our youngest is Noah, and so I’ll bring Noah over to my side and say, “Noah, start running away from me, out of the family room, through the kitchen and to the dinning room. Ready? Go!” So Noah starts running. Then suddenly I say, “Stop, Noah!” And he stops. And I say, “Repent, Noah.” And he turns around. And I say, “Come back to daddy!” And he comes running to me and jumps up in my arms and I hug him and kiss him. That’s repentance. God is telling to stop, because we’re running in the opposite direction, away from Him. He tells us to repent – to turn around – and to come running back to Him so that He can forgive us and dust us off and restore us. And that’s why He shakes us. He is trying to get us to let go of anything and everything we are holding – every form of ideology, or philosophy, or religious beliefs, or political beliefs, or material possessions – whatever we’re holding onto that we think will give us hope and peace and security other than Jesus Christ, His only begotten Son.

Second, God is shaking us because He wants us to realize there is no One else who can satisfy us or give us true peace and security except Jesus Christ – no other water that will quench our spiritual and emotional thirst except His living water, and He wants us to discover Him and draw near to Him and drink the water only Jesus Christ gives us.

Third, God is shaking us because He has a mission for His Church, a mission for each follower of His – good works that He prepared before the world began that we should walk in them – and He doesn’t want us to miss the blessing of serving Him and seeing Him bear fruit through our lives of obedience.

I’ve had the opportunity to travel into Iraq four times in recent years. Last year, we were invited to bring a team of pastors and staff from The Joshua Fund to do a pastors conference in northern Iraq, near the province of Ninevah. We have a son named Jonah, and he really wanted to go with me so he could see Ninevah. Lynn and I weren’t so sure about that, but we prayed, and felt God’s peace, so Jonah came with me. But as we were flying in, a big storm came up and prevented our flight from landing in northern Iraq. We were diverted back to Amman, Jordan. There, I texted Lynn and told her what happened and said Jonah and I were disappointed and weren’t sure what was going to happen next. She texted back to say, “Don’t worry. This would be the first time in history that a Jonah wanted to go to Ninevah and God prevented him from going. But I think God is going to actually let you and Jonah get to Ninevah after all.” And she was right.

Now, in the Bible, the Lord gave the Hebrew prophet Jonah a mission — to take a warning of judgment and the urgency of repentance to the people of Ninevah in modern day northern Iraq, but Jonah refused to listen to the word of the Lord, and tried to run away from the Lord by boarding a ship that was heading for Tarshish, which is modern day southern Spain.

What happened? God began to shake Jonah’s world. We pick up the story in Jonah 1:4-6. “The Lord hurled a great wind on the sea and there was a great storm on the sea so that the ship was about to break up. Then the sailors became afraid and every man cried to his god, and they threw the cargo which was in the ship into the sea to lighten it for them. But Jonah had gone below into the hold of the ship, lain down and fallen sound asleep. So the captain approached him and said, ‘How is it that you are sleeping? Get up, call on your god. Perhaps your god will be concerned about us so that we will not perish.’”

Jonah — a man of God, a prophet of God, a teacher of God’s Word — was on the run from God, and asleep to His voice.

How convicting is this: that a pagan ship captain had to shake a teacher of God’s word, and wake him up, and beg him to pray for his salvation?

What about you? What mission has God given you? Are you obeying, or are you on the run from the Lord and asleep to His voice?

There is a fourth reason, too — the Lord is shaking us because Jesus Christ is coming back soon, and the time to get right with the Lord is running out.

How do we know Christ is coming back? Because He said so.

Revelation 22:12 – Jesus said, “Behold, I am coming quickly, and My reward is with Me, to render to every man according to what he has done.”

John 14:1-6 – Jesus said, “‘Do not let your heart be troubled; believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father’s house are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you. If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself, that where I am, there you may be also. And you know the way where I am going.’ Thomas said to Him, ‘Lord, we do not know where You are going, how do we know the way?’ Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.’”

When is Jesus coming back? We don’t know exactly, because He didn’t tell us. “But of that day and hour no one knows,” Christ said, “not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone.” (Matthew 24:36)

But our Lord Jesus did give us signs to watch for that would tell us when His return was near.

In Matthew 24, and Luke 21, and Mark 13, and throughout the Scriptures we find lists of signs:

  • wars and rumors of wars
  • uprisings and revolutions
  • earthquakes
  • natural disasters
  • lawlessness
  • false prophets
  • false teachers
  • false messiahs
  • the rise of evil in our cultures previously unimaginable
  • persecution of the believers
  • betrayal
  • apostasy
  • …..to name just a few.

Jesus said we will experience “birth pangs.” Are we not experiencing all these today?

But you say, Joel, when in history have we not had wars and revolutions and earthquakes and apostasy? What makes this period of time different from all others?

The answer is Israel. Bible prophecy makes it crystal clear that in the last days before the Second Coming, the world would witness the miraculous, prophetic rebirth of the State of Israel, Jews coming back to the Holy Land after centuries of exile, Jews rebuilding the ancient ruins, Israel becoming the epicenter of international attention, and growing international hostility and isolation — and we have seen all this happen in our lifetime.

The prophetic rebirth of Israel on May 14, 1948 — together with the reunification of Jerusalem under Jewish control in June 1967 — is what Bible scholars call the “super sign,” the definitive sign that we are truly in what the Bible calls the “last day” before the return of Christ. Throughout the Old Testament, Israel is symbolized as a “fig tree.” Jesus told us the “parable from the fig tree” in Matthew 24. Jesus said, “Now learn the parable from the fig tree; when its branch has already become tender and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near; so, you too, when you see all these things, recognize that He is near, right at the door.” (Matthew 24:32-33)

  • We are seeing the signs that will precede Christ’s return.
  • We are experiencing the birth pangs that will come before Christ’s return.
  • We are being shaken, as prophecy warned, because Jesus wants to wake us up.

We don’t know the day or the hour, but Jesus said we would know the season, and we should be living as though His hand is on the door, ready to come back.

Matthew 24:42 — “Therefore be on the alert, for you do not know which day your Lord is coming.”

Matthew 24:43 – Be “on the alert.”

Matthew 24:44 – “For this reason you also must be ready; for the Son of Man is coming at an hour when you do not think He will.”

Are you ready to see Jesus face to face? Have you given your life to Jesus Christ? Are you absolutely sure that if you were to die tonight that you would go to heaven? Tonight, you can be certain.

Maybe you are already believer — maybe you have given your life to the Lord….but in your heart you know you’re not walking faithfully with Him….you’re drifting….or far away….tonight, God is calling you back to Him….He’s calling you to repent, turn around, come running back into His arms, asking for His forgiveness – for a fresh start, for a righteous and willing spirit. And the Scriptures tell us, “if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” (I John 1:9)

But to start, we need to wake up.

The Hebrew Prophet Joel wrote: “Wake up and weep, you drunkards!” Why? “For the Day of the Lord is coming; surely it is near.” (Joel 1:5, 2:1)

The Lord Jesus said in the Book of Revelation to the Church in Sardis: “I know your deeds, that you have a name that you are alive, but you are dead. Wake up, and strengthen the things that remain, which were about to die; for I have not found your deeds completed in the sight of My God. So remember what you have received and heard; and keep it, and repent. Therefore if you do not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what hour I will come to you.” (Revelation 3:1-3)

Is that you tonight? Is that your family? Is that your church?  Perhaps you have a reputation that you’re spiritually alive — but maybe that’s not how Jesus sees you. Maybe He sees you as dead inside. Maybe you’re not obeying Him. Maybe you’re not worshipping Him — not really — not with your heart. Maybe you’re not sharing the gospel with family or friends. Maybe you’re not making any disciples. Maybe you’ve never made a single disciple. Maybe you don’t know what it means to make a disciple, even though Jesus commanded, “Go and make disciples of all nations.”

Where are you tonight? Are you awake, or asleep? Are you running with Jesus, or are you running from Him, and from the mission He has for your life — like Jonah?

Ten years ago, Americans got a wake up call. The 9/11 attacks stunned us, and they drove us back to church by the millions. But did it last? George Barna’s research shows that “after the 9/11 attacks, religious activity surged, but within two months, virtually every spiritual indicator available suggested that things were back to pre-attack levels.”[xxiv] In other words, the wake up call came and people jumped out of bed — but before long, they went back to sleep, back to business as usual.

But look at the list of signs that the Bible says we will see in the last days. Then look at what is happening in our world. Wouldn’t you say the list is being checked off, one by one? I would. Which is why I would this: if you consider yourself a follower of Jesus Christ and you’re planning any major sins in your life right now, can I urge you to postpone those plans, or better yet, cancel them outright. This is not a good time to be goofing around. This is not a good time to be doing something, watching something, listening to something, reading something, spending time with someone or something for which you would be ashamed when Jesus comes back.

The Apostle John put it this way: “Now, little children, abide in Him, so that when He appears, we may have confidence and not shrink away from Him in shame at His coming.” (1 John 2:28)

Let’s be clear: the Bible tells us that these shakings are going to continue, and get worse, like birth pangs, increasing in frequency and intensity — contraction and release, contraction and release. Our Father is trying to wake us up before it is too late. Our Lord Jesus Christ is giving us time…..

  • to rekindle our first love with Him
  • to embrace Him
  • to eat of the Bread of Life
  • to drink of the living water
  • to follow Him no matter what the journey
  • to serve Him no matter how high the cost
  • to discover His mercies afresh every morning
  • to discover that when the world is being shaken, you don’t have to be – not in your heart, not in your soul – because your hope and trust is fully in Him.

Hebrews 12:28 — When we give our lives to Christ, the Scriptures say we will “receive a kingdom which cannot be shaken”

The Psalmist wrote: “I have set the Lord continually before me; because He is at my right hand, I will not be shaken.” (Psalm 16:8)

And, “Cast your burden upon the Lord and He will sustain you; He will never allow the righteous to be shaken.” (Psalm 55:22).

Where are you tonight? Are you ready to meet Jesus face to face?

– End –

[i] Eric Blake, et al, “The Deadliest, Costliest, and Most Intense United States Tropical Cyclones From 1851 to 2010,” NOAA Technical Memorandum NWS NHC-6, National Weather Service/National Hurricane Center, August 2011, p. 9, http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/pdf/nws-nhc-6.pdf

[ii] “2011 Record Year For Weather Disasters,” UPI, August 19, 2011, http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2011/08/19/2011-record-year-for-weather-disasters/UPI-57581313783153/

[iii] Marty Roney and Carolyn Pesce, “Dozens of Tornadoes Kill At Least 297 People In South,” USA Today, April 29, 2011, http://www.usatoday.com/weather/storms/tornadoes/2011-04-28-deadly-tornado-south_n.htm?loc=interstitialskip.

[iv] See “Worst Fires On Record Ravage Texas,” Voice of America, http://www.voanews.com/english/news/usa/Worst-Fires-on-Record-Ravage-Texas-129366213.html; see also, “Worst Drought In Texas History Ravages Crops, Livestock,” PBS NewsHour, August 31, 2011, http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/weather/july-dec11/texasdrought_08-31.html,

[v] Katharine Q. Seeyle, “Above All, Eastern Quake Rattles Nerves,” New York Times, August 23, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/24/us/24quake.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all.

[vi] Richard McCormack, “The Plight of American Manufacturing,” American Prospect, December 29, 2009, http://prospect.org/cs/articles?article=the_plight_of_american_manufacturing.

[vii] 1 trillion seconds is 31,688 years; see http://www.defeatthedebt.com/understanding-the-national-debt/millions-billions-trillions/

[viii] A Reuters/Ipsos poll taken in August 2011 found 73 percent of Americans believing the country was on the “wrong track.” See Steve Holland, “Most Americans say U.S. on wrong track: poll,” Reuters, August 10, 2011.

[ix] Specifically, some 48 percent of Americans believe a Great Depression is coming, CNN poll released June 8, 2011.

[x] National Right To Life fact sheet, January 27, 2011, http://www.nrlc.org/Factsheets/FS03_AbortionInTheUS.pdf.

[xi] Jerry Ropelato, “Internet Pornography Statistics,” Internet Filter Software Reviews, http://internet-filter-review.toptenreviews.com/internet-pornography-statistics-pg2.html.

[xii] Ibid.

[xiii] George Barna, Futurecast (Carol Stream, IL: Barna/Tyndale House Publishers, 2011), p. 124.

[xiv] Barna, p. 132-134.

[xv] Barna, p. 132-134.

[xvi] Barna, p. 35.

[xvii] Barna, p. 172.

[xviii] “Japan Quake Worst Crisis Since WWII, Says PM,” BBC, March 13, 2011.

[xix] Nick Meo, “Australia Faces Biblical Floods,” U.K. Telegraph, January 1, 2011, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/australiaandthepacific/australia/8235159/Australia-faces-biblical-floods.html.

[xx] “Russia Struck By Worst Drought In 100 Years,” Voice of Russia, July 18, 2010, http://english.ruvr.ru/2010/07/18/12667465.html.

[xxi] “East China wheat basket braces for worst drought in 200 years,” Xinhua news service, February 8, 2011.

[xxii] “Christchurch earthquake leaves third of city buildings facing demolition: New Zealand’s PM says quake is country’s worst-ever disaster as death toll climbs to 145 and much of business district in ruins,” The (U.K.) Guardian, February 26, 2011.

[xxiii] The deadliest quake in all of human history occurred in 1556 A.D. in China. See “Earthquakes With 50,000 Or More Deaths,” U.S. Geological Survey, http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/world/most_destructive.php, accessed September 2, 2011.

[xxiv] George Barna, “The Year’s Most Intriguing Findings, From Barna Research Studies,” Barna Update, December 17, 2011, http://www.barna.org/barna-update/article/5-barna-update/64-the-years-most-intriguing-findings-from-barna-research-studies.

Israel Sends Warships to Egyptian Border as Iran Dispatches Fleet to Red Sea

Fox News – August 31, 2011

Israel sent two more warships to the Red Sea border with Egypt, the military said Tuesday, part of a military reinforcement there following warnings that militants are planning another attack on southern Israel from Egyptian soil. This comes as Iran’s Press TV reports that Tehran has decided to send the 15th fleet to the Red Sea, ynetnews.com reports.

Iran’s Navy Commander Rear Admiral Habibollah Sayyari told Iranian TV that the objective is to patrol the high seas and to thwart pirate attacks.

 

Aug. 19: Israeli soldiers secure the area near roads leading to the sites of several attacks in the Arava desert, near the southern Israeli resort town of Eilat.

“The presence of Iran’s army in the high seas will convey the message of peace and friendship to all countries,” he said, according to the website.

Earlier this week, Israel’s military ordered more troops to the border area following intelligence reports of an impending attack, days after militants crossed into Israel through the Egyptian border and killed eight Israelis in a brazen attack that touched off a wave of violence between Israel and militants in the Gaza Strip.

Relative calm has returned, but Israel has remained on alert since the deadly Aug. 18 raid, closing roads near the border and warning citizens against traveling to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, a popular vacation destination for Israelis.

Israel’s Home Front Minister Matan Vilnai said Tuesday that militants from the Gaza-based Islamic Jihad were in Sinai, waiting to strike.

“The Palestinian Islamic Jihad wants to carry out a terror attack along the Egyptian border,” Vilnai told reporters. “The Egyptian border is absolutely porous. We have known this for many years.”

The attack this month sparked calls to increase security on both sides of the frontier and created new tensions between Israel and Egypt, which have maintained cool relations since signing a 1979 peace treaty. The violence shattered the usual sense of calm that has held for decades along the border, though there have been sporadic attacks in Sinai.

Beyond announcing that two more warships were patrolling the border area, the military would give no further details.

Israel has a permanent naval presence with a base in Eilat, at the northern tip of the Red Sea on the Egyptian border. The Israeli military would not disclose the number of warships usually positioned on its maritime border with Egypt or from where the two extra ships were sent.

Access for ships to the Eilat naval base from the rest of Israel is possible only through Egypt’s Suez Canal. Egyptian officials there were not immediately available for comment.

No changes in security alignments have been observed on the Egyptian side of the border in the last two weeks. Earlier this month, the Egyptian government dispatched thousands of additional troops to Sinai as part of a major operation against al-Qaida inspired militants who have been increasingly active since longtime Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak was toppled in February.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Iran Threat Rising

 

By Joel C. Rosenberg
(Washington, D.C, August 24, 2011) — “While the U.S. is entering into a catastrophic financial and economic phase,” Iranian Brigadier-General Masoud Jazayeri recently said in a speech to the Revolutionary Guards Corps ground forces, “Iran can, with a serious offensive, emerge economically and financially.”

You probably didn’t hear that on any of the networks’ evening newscasts. What about these headlines:

* Iranian persecution of Christians grows

* Reza Kahlili: Iranians: Time ripe for ‘Great Satan’ to be removed: Military leader says crises will bring America to its knees

* Ahmadinejad says Iran can cripple enemies on their ground, Tehran shows off new cruise missile

The Iranian threat to Israel and the West is rising. What’s more, next month Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is expected to return to New York City to speak to the opening session of the United Nations General Assembly. Will he again pray for Allah to hasten the coming of the Twelfth Imam? Will he go further?

To Shake us, to Wake us, to Get our Attention

RARE EARTHQUAKES SHAKE AMERICAN EAST COAST, ROCKY MOUNTAIN STATES

Is the Lord trying to get our attention? “The Gathering Storm” simulcast set for Oct. 22, will focus on rising threats to America, Israel and the Church.

By Joel C. Rosenberg
(Washington, D.C, August 23, 2011) — Two rare earthquakes have hit the U.S. in two days — a 5.9 magnitude tremor epicentered in southern Virginia on Tuesday shook the White House, Capitol and Pentagon and was felt up and down the Eastern seaboard; and the largest earthquake in Colorado and New Mexico four decades occurred on Monday. Until now, I’d never experienced an earthquake before. While the one here in the D.C. area was relatively mild (compared to the one in Japan, for example), it made me think of the column I wrote last month, entitled, “The Lord is shaking the nations physically, spiritually, financially: Why, and how should we respond?” A few excerpts might be worth reconsidering today:

* “Americans, too, are being shaken. We face arguably the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Nearly half of all Americans believe we are heading towards another Great Depression. Unemployment is over 9%. Housing foreclosures are skyhigh. People have lost enormous sums of money due to depressed housing prices and stock market volatility. The federal government is trying to spend our way to prosperity but is making things worse. Our annual federal budget deficit topped $1.3 trillion last year. This year, it looks like the feds will spend more than $1.5 trillion beyond what they are taking in in revenue. Our debt is skyrocketing. The U.S. is now on the verge of financial default, and hampered further by political ineptitude in Washington that threatens to comp0und an already precarious situation.”

* “What if these events are not all random? What if the God of the Bible is allowing these to happen to shake us, to wake us, to get our attention, that we might turn to Him and ask Him to have mercy on us and help us?”

* “The Lord said through the ancient Hebrew Prophet Haggai that the nations would be shaken in the future. “For thus says the Lord of hosts, ‘Once more in a little while, I am going to shake the heavens and the earth, the sea also and the dry land. I will shake all the nations….I am going to shake the heavens and the earth. I will overthrow the thrones of kingdoms and destroy the power of the kingdoms of the nations.” (Haggai 2:6, 7, 21, 22)

Now would be a good time to rededicate ourselves to praying and fasting for America and Israel at this critical time and turning our hearts to spending more time in the Scriptures.

THE LORD IS SHAKING THE NATIONS PHYSICALLY, SPIRITUALLY, FINANCIALLY: Why, and how should we respond?

Posted: July 27, 2011 by joelcrosenberg in Uncategorized

(Jerusalem, Israel) The nations are being shaken – physically, spiritually, emotionally, financially, politically and in so many other ways.

The people of Norway have been shaken this week by seeing sheer evil unleashed against precious, innocent children.

Japan has been shaken this year by the enormous earthquake, the resulting tsunami, and the horrific nuclear meltdown.

The people of Egypt, Syria, Tunisia and Yemen have been shaken this year by dramatic and largely unexpected revolutions underway there and throughout the Arab world.

Iran has been shaken by the enormous pro-democracy movement that took to the streets but was then nearly crushed by the tyrannical government in Tehran.

The people of Israel are being shaken by fears that Iran is rapidly closing in on building nuclear weapons and the world is not doing nearly enough to stop them in time.

Greece has been shaken by its unprecedented debt crisis and resultant riots and social unrest.

Americans, too, are being shaken. We face arguably the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Nearly half of all Americans believe we are heading towards another Great Depression. Unemployment is over 9%. Housing foreclosures are sky high. People have lost enormous sums of money due to depressed housing prices and stock market volatility. The federal government is trying to spend our way to prosperity but is making things worse. Our annual federal budget deficit topped $1.3 trillion last year. This year, it looks like the feds will spend more than $1.5 trillion beyond what they are taking in revenue. Our debt is skyrocketing. The U.S. is now on the verge of financial default, and hampered further by political ineptitude in Washington that threatens to comp0und an already precarious situation.

What if these events are not all random? What if the God of the Bible is allowing these to happen to shake us, to wake us, to get our attention, that we might turn to Him and ask Him to have mercy on us and help us?

The Lord said through the ancient Hebrew Prophet Haggai that the nations would be shaken in the future. “For thus says the Lord of hosts, ‘Once more in a little while, I am going to shake the heavens and the earth, the sea also and the dry land. I will shake all the nations….I am going to shake the heavens and the earth. I will overthrow the thrones of kingdoms and destroy the power of the kingdoms of the nations.” (Haggai 2:6, 7, 21, 22)

In the New Testament, the Lord reinforced that theme. “See to it that you do not refuse Him who is speaking. For if those did not escape when they refused him who warned them on earth, much less will we escape who turn away from Him who warns from heaven. And His voice shook the earth then, but now He has promised, saying, ‘Yet once more I will shake not only the earth, but also the heaven’….Therefore, since we receive a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us show gratitude, by which we may offer to God an acceptable service with reverence and awe; for our God is a consuming fire.” (Hebrews 12:25-29)

Bible prophecy is clear: the Lord shakes individuals and nations that we might let go of all the flawed political, philosophical, intellectual and religions notions that we cling to that won’t give us true peace, that don’t give us real hope, that can’t bring us any security, that can’t provide forgiveness from our sins much less eternal life for our souls. The God of the Bible wants to shake us loose of such things that we might turn to Him, and to the life He offers through faith in His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. The Lord isn’t letting us be shaken because He hates us. He’s letting us be shaken precisely because He loves us and wants us to repent and turn to Him and call out to Him, as individuals, as families, and as nations. Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me will live even if he dies, and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die. Do you believe this?” (John 11:25-26)

IS A PALESTINIAN STATE INEVITABLE?

Posted: July 22, 2011 by joelcrosenberg in Uncategorized

(Jerusalem, Israel) — While traveling through Israel this month, I’ve been asked by many people if a Palestinian state inevitable, and will it happen this fall? It’s a controversial topic, to be sure, and an increasingly relevant one given the upcoming vote in the U.N. General Assembly this fall. Here’s what I’ve been sharing with people here:

  1. The Bible doesn’t speak specifically to the issue of whether a sovereign Palestinian state will be created or not.
  2. That said, I tend to believe the geopolitical and prophetic evidence suggests there will probably be a Palestinian state in the not-too-distant future.
  3. International pressure on Israel to cut a deal, divide the Land, and create a Palestinian state is overwhelming, relentless, and intensifying.
  4. Currently, the Palestinian leadership refuses to negotiate directly with Israel. Rather, they hope to unilaterally declare a state by getting the vast majority of countries at the U.N. to vote for the creation of state at the General Assembly session in New York in September.
  5. The Palestinians have more than enough votes to pass such a U.N. resolution in the General Assembly (though the U.S. has suggested it would veto a unilateral declaration if it came to the Security Council).
  6. The most intense international pressure for a Palestinian state is coming from Western Europe, which has grown anti-Israel and increasingly anti-Semitic.
  7. A majority of Israelis have become exhausted with the Arab-Israeli conflict and now would support a Palestinian state under certain conditions.
  8. Even Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — the leader of the center-right Likud Party (which has historically opposed creating a Palestinian state) — has offered to divide the Land and help create one, so long as it is demilitarized and doesn’t divide Jerusalem.
  9. However, the Bible strongly warns the nations not to divide the Land of Israel and states that all nations who do so will face God’s judgment. The Lord said to the Hebrew Prophet Joel, “And I will gather all the nations and bring them down to the valley of Jehoshaphat. Then I will enter into judgment with them there on behalf of My people and My inheritance, Israel, whom they have scattered among the nations; and they have divided up My land.” (Joel 3:2) 
  10. Despite this warning, the nations have repeatedly divided the Land of Israel over the centuries.
  11. Bible prophecy suggests the Land will be divided again in the last days. The Hebrew prophet wrote in Daniel 9:26-27 that in the last days “the prince who is to come” (the Antichrist) “will make a firm covenant” (a peace treaty) “with the many” (neighbors of Israel) for seven years, but will then break that treaty after  three and a half years. This strongly — though not definitively — suggests a state will be created or reaffirmed through this treaty.
  12. Eventually, after breaking the peace treaty, the Antichrist will invade and conquer Israel and rule the world with great evil and tyranny from the “Beautiful Land.” The Prophet Daniel wrote, “He will also enter the Beautiful Land, and many countries will fall….and he will go forth with great wrath to destroy and annihilate many. He will pitch the tents of his royal pavilion between the seas and the beautiful Holy Mountain [Jerusalem]” before being destroyed and judged by the Lord Himself. (Daniel 11:41, 44, 45)
  13. On the basis of these and other Scriptures, I suspect a sovereign Palestinian state will be created, though it would likely be temporary in duration. The outlines of a geopolitical deal are already done. Israeli and Palestinian officials have been negotiating on and off for decades. 
  14. So we should expect European pressure to continue to build and eventually a European leader to take the lead and get a deal done — to many, it will look like a wonderful peace deal, at first, but the Bible makes clear it will turn disastrous for Israel, and the Palestinians, and the world.
  15. I do not support the creation of a sovereign Palestinian state because I believe this would violate the Biblical admonition not to divide to the Land. I do support Palestinian autonomy, the right of Palestinians to run their daily lives and their local governments. I believe Israel should always work on doing a better job of treating Arabs with love, compassion and justice. What’s more, I believe the Church should do a much better job loving and caring for Israeli Arabs and Palestinian Arabs, and sharing with them the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ that they might find forgiveness for their sins, peace in their hearts, hope for their future, and salvation for their souls (John 3:16)
  16. The Scriptures are crystal clear: the Lord loves the Palestinian people as much as He loves the Jewish people, and He told Moses to tell the children of Israel to care for non-Jews in the Land and bless them and treat them honestly and fairly and with justice and compassion. (See Deuteronomy 14:29, 23:7, 24:14-15, 24:19-22, 26:12-13)
  17. Jesus modeled love for the Jewish people (Matthew 15:32, Mark 6:34, Mark 8:1-3, Luke 10:3-9, Luke 23:34), and their neighbors (Matthew 19:19, Luke 10:27-37), and their enemies (Matthew 5:43-44) and told His followers to do the same.
  18. Let us continue to pray for the Prince of Peace — Jesus the Messiah — to draw more and more people in the epicenter to Himself. This is the only true and lasting hope for peace.

Netanyahu: Boycott law reflects democracy in Israel

In a heated Knesset debate, prime minister defends controversial law which bans calls for boycotts on Israel; opposition head Livni: You are leading the country into an abyss.

By Jonathan Lis  Haaretz.com

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu defended Wednesday the boycott law, which was passed in the Knesset Monday night. The law, which penalizes people or organizations who call for a boycott on Israel or the settlements, provoked sharp criticism from opposition MKs and leftist organizations in Israel.

Netanyahu said the law does not taint Israeli democracy. “What stains (Israel’s) image are those savage and irresponsible attacks on a democracy’s attempt to draw a line between what is acceptable and what is not,” he said.

Don’t get confused,” Netanyahu continued. “I approved the law, and if I hadn’t approved it it wouldn’t have passed. I am against boycotts targeting Israel.” Netanyahu spoke of the settler families who might be affected by boycotts. “We have brothers living eleven minutes away from here, in Ma’ale Adumim. You want to get rid of Ariel and Gush Etzion? Go to the Knesset and form a government that will act that way. But hurting families and children in Ariel? I find that illegitimate .”

Netanyahu also mentioned the political freedom enjoyed by Sheikh Raad Saleh of the Islamic Movement and MK Hanin Zuabi (Balad). “Do you know Sheikh Raad Saleh? He is walking freely and speaks everywhere. And he wasn’t allowed into Britain.” Referring to Zuabi, Netanyahu said “an MK who spoke here took part of a the provocation flotilla that was trying to break a security naval blockade.”

Kadima chairwoman MK Tzipi Livni took the podium after Netanyahu and blamed him for using others’ weaknesses to gain more power. “You are leading Israel into an abyss,” she said.

On Tuesday, Israeli leftist organizations launched a series of protests against the boycott law passed in the Knesset the night before.

The Gush Shalom movement took its campaign to the legal level and filed a petition to the Supreme Court claiming the boycott law is unconstitutional and anti-democratic.

According to the law, a person or an organization calling for the boycott of Israel, including the settlements, can be sued by the boycott’s targets without having to prove that they sustained damage. The court will then decide how much compensation is to be paid. The second part of the law says a person or a company that declare a boycott of Israel or the settlements will not be able to bid in government tenders.

Israel-Lebanon tensions rise over natural gas rights

Israel Today Magazine

Monday, July 11, 2011 | Ryan Jones

Israel and Lebanon have become embroiled in a legal and diplomatic battle over rights to undersea natural gas fields that could potentially turn violent.

Dispute over natural resources has long been a catalyst for war, and few would be surprised if Lebanon’s dominant Hizballah terrorist militia used this latest quarrel as justification for a fresh attack on the Jewish state.

“Lebanon has warned that it insists on protecting its borders and resources,” a spokesman for Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri told Bloomberg.

Berri and the Lebanese government were responding to an Israeli cabinet vote that defined the nation’s maritime borders. Israel was keen to take that step after Lebanon began laying claim to offshore territories that encompass huge natural gas reserves discovered by Israel in recent years.

Last year, Lebanon submitted maps demarcating new maritime borders to the UN. But the lines differ greatly from those decided upon by Israel, and even from those Lebanon itself agreed to years ago.

“The line that Lebanon submitted to the UN is significantly south of the Israeli line,” said Netanyahu. “It contradicts the line Israel has agreed upon with Cyprus, and what is more significant to me is that it contradicts the line that Lebanon itself concluded with Cyprus in 2007.”

Israel will submit its own maps to the UN later this week.

The natural gas reserves discovered in the eastern Mediterranean in recent years are estimated to be the largest in the world, and could drastically alter Israel’s economic and energy situation.

But the new maritime border insisted upon by Lebanon would mean a loss of billion of dollars worth of gas rights to Israel.

Israeli firms working the Tamar and Leviathan undersea gas fields announced last year that in addition to the enormous amount of natural gas, there may also be rich oil reserves in the area.

Hizballah, which effectively controls Lebanon’s government, responded by accusing Israel of “stealing” Lebanon’s natural resources, and threatening war.

Hizballah has attacked and started war with Israel for less in the past.

Israel recognizes, welcomes South Sudan

 

Sunday, July 10, 2011 | Ryan Jones

 Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday officially recognized the new Republic of South Sudan, and welcomed it into the global family of nations.

“Yesterday, a new state was born, South Sudan. I hereby announce that Israel recognizes the Republic of South Sudan,” Netanyahu said at Sunday’s cabinet meeting. “We wish it success. This is a peace-seeking country and we would be pleased to cooperate with it in order to ensure its development and its prosperity.”

South Sudan’s first president, Salva Kiir, hinted months ago that the new nation would establish diplomatic ties with Israel.

The Arab-dominated northern Sudan has a long history of hostility toward the Jewish state. But the black African residents of the south are by and large not Muslim, and therefore do not harbor the same enmity for Israel.

Some Israeli politicians also hope the new Republic of South Sudan will provide a solution to the Sudanese refugee situation in Israel.

Thousands of Sudanese refugees today reside in Israel after fleeing conflicts in Darfur and other parts of Sudan over the past decade. Israel is ill-equipped to handle and assimilate this foreign community given its own demographic problems, but has largely felt a moral obligation to not turn them away.

Gaza rocket fire resumes

Israel Today Magazine

Sunday, July 10, 2011 | Ryan Jones

 Palestinian terrorists operating out of the Gaza Strip fired three rockets into southern Israel Saturday night.

Two rockets hit open fields near communities in southern Israel, causing no injuries or damage. The third landed inside Gaza.

Last week, an Israeli soldier was lightly wounded when a bomb planted by Palestinian terrorists along the Gaza security fence exploded near his tank.

Some Israelis fear the Palestinians could begin ratcheting up the level of violence ahead of a Palestinian bid to unilaterally declare statehood at the UN in September.

While that strategy would seem counterproductive, the international community had demonstrated time and again that its chosen method of dealing with Palestinian violence is appeasement.

UN vote on Palestine will lead to war

Wednesday, June 29, 2011 | Ryan Jones

The result of the Palestinian Authority’s bid to win international recognition for a Palestinian state at the UN in September is likely to be war with Israel.

That according to a survey of Palestinian Arabs conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Opinion this week.

While most Palestinians do not believe the motion on an independent Palestinian state will pass in both the General Assembly and the Security Council, if it does, they have very specific and violent ideas about what should happen next.

If the UN recognizes Palestine, 76 percent of Palestinian Arabs said their security forces must immediately exert control over all of Judea, Samaria and the eastern half of Jerusalem, even at the risk of open warfare with the Israeli army.

They also want Palestinian forces to seize control of the Allenby Bridge crossing into neighboring Jordan.

Report: Israel threatens to assassinate Syria’s Assad

Wednesday, June 29, 2011 | Ryan Jones

Israel has threatened to assassinate Syrian leader Bashar Assad if he instigates or sanctions any kind of attack on the Jewish state, the Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Jarida reported on Tuesday.

The threat was reportedly conveyed to Assad via Turkey.

According to the newspaper, Israeli intelligence has become concerned over unusual troop and missile deployments in Syria, movements that could signal an imminent attack on the Jewish state.

Israeli experts have speculated that Assad could attack Israel in order to divert attention from his security forces’ brutal and bloody crackdown on pro-democracy activsts in Syria. Or, Assad could turn to his Hizballah allies in Lebanon to do his dirty work.

Either way, Israel will hold Assad personally responsible.

There is also concern that if Assad sees his regime falling, he could launch one final assault on Israel to secure a lasting legacy for himself.

Court: Why the First Amendment protects violent video games

New King James Version (NKJV)

2 Timothy 3

Perilous Times and Perilous Men

 1 But know this, that in the last days perilous times will come: 2 For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, 3 unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, 4 traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, 5 having a form of godliness but denying its power. And from such people turn away! 6 For of this sort are those who creep into households and make captives of gullible women loaded down with sins, led away by various lusts, 7 always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.

Can’t ban violent video sales to kids, court says

AP

Leland Yee AP – Calif. State Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, holds up three video games after a news conference in …
By JESSE J. HOLLAND, Associated Press – 43 mins ago

WASHINGTON – States cannot ban the sale or rental of ultraviolent video games to children, the Supreme Court ruled Monday, rejecting such limits as a violation of young people’s First Amendment rights and leaving it up to parents and the multibillion-dollar gaming industry to decide what kids can buy.

The high court, on a 7-2 vote, threw out California’s 2005 law covering games sold or rented to those under 18, calling it an unconstitutional violation of free-speech rights. Writing for the majority, Justice Antonin Scalia, said, “Even where the protection of children is the object, the constitutional limits on governmental action apply.”

Scalia, who pointed out the violence in a number of children’s fairy tales, said that while states have legitimate power to protect children from harm, “that does not include a free-floating power to restrict the ideas to which children may be exposed.”

Justices Stephen Breyer and Clarence Thomas dissented from the decision, with Breyer saying it makes no sense to legally block children’s access to pornography yet allow them to buy or rent brutally violent video games.

“What sense does it make to forbid selling to a 13-year-old boy a magazine with an image of a nude woman, while protecting the sale to that 13-year-old of an interactive video game in which he actively, but virtually, binds and gags the woman, then tortures and kills her?” Breyer said.

Video games, said Scalia’s majority opinion, fall into the same category as books, plays and movies as entertainment that “communicates ideas — and even social messages” deserving of First Amendment free-speech protection. And non-obscene speech “cannot be suppressed solely to protect the young from ideas or images that a legislative body thinks unsuitable for them,” he said.

This decision follows the court’s recent movement on First Amendment cases, with the justices throwing out attempts to ban animal cruelty videos, protests at military funerals and political speech by businesses.

The court will test those limits again next session when it takes up a new case involving government’s effort to protect children from what they might see and hear. The justices agreed to review appeals court rulings that threw out Federal Communications Commission rules against the isolated use of expletives as well as fines against broadcasters who showed a woman’s nude buttocks on a 2003 episode of ABC’s “NYPD Blue.”

The decision to hear the FCC case was one of the last the full court made this session. Before leaving on their annual summer break on Monday, the justices also:

• Voted 5-4 to strike down a provision of a campaign financing system in Arizona that gives extra cash to publicly funded candidates who face privately funded rivals and independent groups.

• Agreed to hear arguments in the fall or winter on whether police need a warrant before using a global positioning system device to track a suspect’s movements.

• Refused to hear an appeal from former detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq who wanted to sue defense contractors over claims of abuse.

More than 46 million American households have at least one video-game system, with the industry bringing in at least $18 billion in 2010. The industry has set up its own rating system to warn parents which video games are appropriate for which ages, with the rating “M” placed on games that are considered to be especially violent and only for mature adults.

That system is voluntary, however. California’s 2005 law would have prohibited anyone under 18 from buying or renting games that give players the option of “killing, maiming, dismembering, or sexually assaulting an image of a human being.” Parents would have been able to buy the games for their children, but retailers who sold directly to minors would have faced fines of up to $1,000 for each game sold.

That means that children would have needed an adult to get games like “Postal 2,” the first-person shooter by developer Running With Scissors that includes the ability to light unarmed bystanders on fire. It would also apply to the popular “Grand Theft Auto” games, from Rockstar Games, that allow gamers to portray carjacking, gun-toting gangsters.

The California law never took effect. Lower courts have said that the law violated minors’ constitutional rights, and that California lacked enough evidence to prove that violent games cause physical and psychological harm to minors. Courts in six other states, including Michigan and Illinois, reached similar conclusions, striking down similar bans.

Video game makers and sellers celebrated their victory, saying Monday’s decision puts them on the same legal footing as other forms of entertainment. “There now can be no argument whether video games are entitled to the same protection as books, movies, music and other expressive entertainment,” said Bo Andersen, president and CEO of the Entertainment Merchants Association.

But the battle may not be over. Leland Yee, a child psychologist and California state senator who wrote the video game ban, told The Associated Press Monday that he was reading the dissents in hopes of finding a way to reintroduce the law in a way that would be constitutional.

“It’s disappointing the court didn’t understand just how violent these games are,” Yee told the AP.

Thomas argued in his separate dissent that the nation’s founders never intended for free speech rights to “include a right to speak to minors (or a right of minors to access speech) without going through the minors’ parents or guardians.”

And at least two justices, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, indicated they would be willing to reconsider their votes under certain circumstances. “I would not squelch legislative efforts to deal with what is perceived by some to be a significant and developing social problem,” Alito said, suggesting that a narrower state law might be upheld.

States can legally ban children from getting pornography. But Scalia said in his ruling that, unlike depictions of sexual conduct, there is no tradition in the United States of restricting children’s access to depictions of violence. He noted the violence in the original depictions of many popular children’s fairy tales such as Hansel and Gretel, Cinderella and Snow White.

Hansel and Gretel kill their captor by baking her in an oven, Cinderella’s evil stepsisters have their eyes pecked out by doves and the evil queen in Snow White is forced to wear red hot slippers and dance until she is dead, Scalia said.

“Certainly the books we give children to read — or read to them when they are younger — contain no shortage of gore,” he said.

And there is no proof that violent video games cause harm to children, or any more harm than another other form of entertainment, he said.

One doctor “admits that the same effects have been found when children watch cartoons starring Bugs Bunny or the Road Runner or when they play video games like Sonic the Hedgehog that are rated `E’ or even when they `view a picture of a gun,” Scalia said.

Tim Winter, president of the Parents Television Council, said the decision created a constitutionally authorized “end-run on parental authority.”

“I wonder what other First Amendment right does a child have against their parents’ wishes?” he said. “Does a child now have a constitutional right to bear arms if their parent doesn’t want them to buy a gun? How far does this extend? It’s certainly concerning to us that something as simple as requiring a parental oversight to purchase an adult product has been undermined by the court.”

The case is Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association, 08-1448.

___

Associated Press writers Paul Elias and Derrik J. Lang contributed to this story from California.

Court: Why the First Amendment protects violent video games

By Yahoo! News – Mon Jun 27, 1:11 pm ET

By Ken Paulson
President, First Amendment Center

The U.S. Supreme Court today ruled that states cannot restrict the sale or rental of video games to minors, a decision that reinforces  both the First Amendment protection for interactive games and the free expression rights of children.

The courts struck down a California law restricting preventing the sale to minors of games involving “killing, maiming, dismembering or sexually assaulting an image of a human being.”

The Supreme Court acknowledged California’s legitimate concern in protecting children, but said the First Amendment sets limits.

Protecting children “does not include a free-floating power to restrict the ideas to which children may be exposed,” Justice Antonin Scalia wrote.

In reaching this decision, the Court reaffirmed core First Amendment principles, noting that the government cannot limit messages, ideas or content. There are narrow exceptions to freedom of speech involving obscenity or words that incite violence,  but new restrictions must have a historical basis and can’t simply be imposed on emerging media.

The key points in today’s decision:

  • Entertainment is protected by the First Amendment:  The Court notes that although video games are primarily intended for entertainment, “we have long recognized that it is difficult to distinguish politics from entertainment, and dangerous to try.”
  • Sexual and violent content are viewed differently:  America has a long tradition of limiting depictions of sexual acts, the Court notes, but has never been as restrictive about violence.  “Certainly the books we give children to read — or read to them when they are younger — contain no shortage of gore,” Scalia wrote.  “Grimm’s Fairy Tales, for example, are grim indeed.”
  • States can’t target emerging media:  As new technologies are invented, states cannot target them for restriction because of concern about the potential influence on children.  In this case, for example, the Court concluded that the interactive nature of video games did not warrant government action any more than a compelling book would.
  • The science doesn’t support censorship: The Supreme Court dismisses research that violence poses a threat to children, saying that it doesn’t prove that violent video games cause children to act aggressively.
  • Disgust alone can’t justify limits: Justice Samuel Alito did some of his own research into video games and shared his findings with his colleagues.  “Justice Alito recounts all of these disgusting video games in order to disgust us — but disgust is not a valid basis for restricting expression,” Scalia wrote.

Overall, the Supreme Court’s ruling is a vibrant application of 219- year- old Constitutional principles to cutting edge technology. It asserts that any new forms of communication or media to come will be protected by the First Amendment to the same extent as newspapers, films and other more traditional predecessors.

“New categories of unprotected speech may not be added to the list (of free speech exceptions) by a legislature that concludes certain speech is too harmful to be tolerated,” Scalia wrote.

(To learn more about the First Amendment, visit www.firstamendmentcenter.org.)

‘Arabs must seek peace for the sake of peace’

Thursday, June 23, 2011 | Ryan Jones

 Leaders of the Europe-based Friends of Israel Initiative on Wednesday released a statement calling on the Palestinians and the Arab world to seek peace with Israel for the sake of peace alone, and not in order to recover lost land.

The organization lamented that the Middle East peace process has reached a point where only Israel is subjected to major demands, and that the failure of the peace process is always blamed on Israel for insisting on reciprocity.

“If it is only one side that gives in, then there will be no solution, ever,” read the statement. “If it is only Israel that is subjected to demands, the peace process will go nowhere.”

The Friends of Israel Initiative insisted that “peace between Israelis and Palestinians is not dependent upon a question of territory: it is a matter of unequivocally accepting the other side’s right to exist.”

The primary demand of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the peace process has been that Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas recognize Israel’s right to exist as the Jewish state. Abbas has refused, and has instead maintained the position that the only question is how much land the Palestinians will receive.

The Friends of Israel Initiative believes Abbas is barking up the wrong tree.

“Israel’s experience with the view that peace can only be achieved by making territorial concessions has not been good,” the group pointed out. “Its successive withdrawals from territories that neighbour Israel have only brought about more violence and the need to fight once again to ensure its security.”

The Friends of Israel Initiative is headed by former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, and includes many distinguished members like former First Minister of Northern Ireland David Trimble and former US Ambassador to the UN John Bolton.

Cutting U.S. Forces in Afghanistan a Serious Mistake?

PRESIDENT OBAMA’S PRECIPITOUS MOVE TO CUT U.S. FORCES IN AFGHANISTAN A SERIOUS MISTAKE, WILL EMBOLDEN ENEMIES

Israel launches new drills to prepare for major regional war.

By Joel C. Rosenberg
(Washington, D.C., June 23, 2011) — President Obama’s plan to precipitously start drawing down U.S. military forces from Afghanistan before the war against Radical Islamic jihadists has truly been won — and doing so against the advice of some of his field commanders — is a serious mistake, misguided and dangerous. The move is a sign of White House fatigue. It will be perceived by our enemies as weakness. It will embolden the enemy and put more Americans, Israelis and other Mideast allies of ours at greater risk. We should be letting Gen. Petraeus and his team finish the job and only then bring the troops home.

Iran’s political and religious leaders are not getting tired of preparing for their genocidal, apocalyptic war against the Judeo-Christian West. They continue talking about the End of Days and the coming of the Twelfth Imam. They are also accelerating the enrichment of uranium and development of ballistic missiles. In this context, increasingly unsure if they can depend on their American allies, Israeli leaders this week “launched a major five-day home front defence exercise intended to prepare its population and emergency services to respond to massive missile attacks,” Agence France Presse reports. “Named ‘Turning Point 5,’ the exercise involves testing nationwide siren systems and the cellular network, distributing emergency kits, improving coordination and practising evacuation and shelter procedures….Among the scenarios being prepared for are sustained rocket attacks on the Tel Aviv region, the electrical grid or a geriatric hospital, local media reported….For the first time, lawmakers will also be called on to participate in response to a simulated attack on the parliament building in Jerusalem.”

Such preparations are critically important. But much more is needed. Israeli leaders are not calling the nation to prayer, fasting and repentance, despite the Biblical admonition to do so. Indeed, few world leaders are calling their nations to their hearts to the Lord, including our own. Yet this is precisely the right moment. In a time when economic, religious and geopolitical threats are rising….a time when so much of the world is turning against God…a time when so many have forgotten God in their daily lives…a time when so many think the Church is irrelevant and/or hypocritical…and a time when many have turned against Israel and God’s Chosen People, what we need are leaders at every level of society who are serious about crying out to the Lord for mercy and redemption. I’m not talking about a bunch of religious hot air — slogans, bumper stickers or platitudes. What we desperately need is a bold and sincere and solid and revolutionary faith that moves us to action, that moves us to know God more deeply and serve Him more faithfully before the Day of the Lord arrives. As we read in the New Testament Book of James, “faith, if it has no works, is dead” and “faith without works is useless” (James 2:17 and 20).

This one of the reasons I love the Old Testament Book of Joel and why I’m grateful we studied it together at the 2011 Epicenter Conference — because it is a powerful call to action. This week, I posted on my blog Part Four of my personal study notes on the Book of Joel, plus links to the latest headlines from the epicenter. I hope you’ll find them helpful as you seek a faith that changes your life and moves you to serve the Lord with more passion and conviction than ever before.

Air raid sirens send Israelis to bomb shelters

Israel Today Magazine

Wednesday, June 22, 2011 | Ryan Jones

Air raid sirens send Israelis to bomb shelters

Air raid sirens sent Israelis across the country scurrying into their bomb shelters Wednesday morning. Even members of Knesset had to seek shelter, while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet met in a secret underground bunker.

The siren was part of a nation-wide civil defense exercise dubbed “Turning Point 5.” The week-long exercise, which began on Sunday, simulated critical damage to Israel’s national infrastructure as the result of a ballistic missile attack.

Israel remains concerned that Islamic forces in Lebanon, Syria and Iran could soon use their extensive arsenals to launch a devastating coordinated assault on the Jewish state.

The danger has escalated of late with Syria in the throws of a national uprising that is expected to end with the downfall of dictator Bashar Assad. Many Israelis fear that if Assad sees no way out, he may try to secure a legacy for himself by launching one final attack against Israel.

If Syria’s flailing regime were to attack Israel, it is almost certain that Lebanon’s ruling Hizballah militia would do the same, and that Iran would use Israel’s retaliatory actions to jutsify its own assault.

On top of that, the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip is still believed to be in possession of thousands of short- and medium-ranged missiles.

Israeli military officials estimate that in the next war, the tiny Jewish state will be bombarded by up to 800 missiles every day.

From Israel, Yuli Edelstein in letter to Steve Jobs asking Apple to remove App called the “3rd intifada”

Jerusalem Post

By HERB KEINON 
06/21/2011 18:38

Yuli Edelstein in letter to Steve Jobs: “Application calls for uprising against Israel, iPad apps should not be instrument for incitement to violence.”

 Public Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs Minister Yuli Edelstein sent a letter Tuesday to Apple CEO Steve Jobs requesting that the computer giant remove an application called the “3rd intifada” that gives information about protest activities, some of them violent, planned against Israel.

The same organization, Edelstein wrote, opened a Facebook page three months ago “calling for an uprising against the State of Israel by use of lethal force, while using hateful material based on wild and groundless accusations.”

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Edelstein said that Facebook removed the page after it became convinced of the page’s “harmful nature” and its potential of leading to the loss of life.

“I believe Apple, as a pioneering and progressive company, places the values of liberty, freedom of expression and creativity as a guiding light,” Edelstein wrote. “Also, as a leader in its area, I am convinced that you are aware of this type of application’s ability to unite many toward an objective that could be disastrous.”

 Edelstein called on the company to remove the application and continue in its tradition of applications “dedicated to purely entertainment and informative purposes and not serve as a instrument for incitement to violence.”

Is Your Next Credit Card Your Cell Phone?

(Note: Another article showing a reference point for my opinion.)

VIDEO: The latest way to pay at the stores relies on smart phone app technology.
(ABCNEWS.com)
Jan. 26, 2011

Get ready to retire that worn leather wallet. If some of the country’s biggest tech companies have their way, all the plastic cards crammed into your billfold will soon find their way into your phone.

Apple is planning to introduce a service that would let consumers use their iPhones and iPads to purchase products, essentially turning a user’s cell phone into a credit or debit card, according to a Bloomberg report.

Citing Richard Doherty of consulting firm Envisioneering Group, the report said Apple plans to embed NFC (near field communication) chips into its next generation iPhones and iPads that can beam and receive information within a distance of up to 4 inches.

Instead of swiping plastic to pay at the register, a user could just take out a cell phone and wave it near an NFC-enabled reader. The purchase amount would be deducted instantaneously.

When reached by ABCNews.com, Apple spokeswoman Natalie Harrison said the company does not comment on rumor and speculation. But the report has industry watchers buzzing about the potentially game-changing technology that could eventually transform cell phones into so-called digital wallets.

Although Apple hasn’t yet publicly declared its support for NFC technology, other major stakeholders, such as Google, Samsung, Nokia, Research in Motion (RIM) and cell phone carriers AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile, have already started lining up behind it.

Google’s latest Nexus S smarphone from Nexus is NFC-enabled, and Nokia and BlackBerry’s RIM have said that they intend to offer more NFC phones in the near future.

Gwenn Bezard, co-founder and research director at technology research firm Aite Group, said that regardless of whether the Apple NFC plans are true, the technology is poised to take the mobile industry by storm.

“It’s not a matter of if Apple is going to come up with something, it’s a matter of when,” he said. “Whether it’s going to be this year or next or the year after, I think there’s a very high chance that Apple and other companies will push NFC payments.“

The pay-by-phone market is expected to make up $22 billion in transactions by 2015, according to Aite Group. That’s “still a drop in the ocean” compared to the total amount consumers spend in the U.S., Bezard said, but considering that the pay-by-phone market is about nil right now, Aite’s research still shows that the market is accelerating.

How Secure Are NFC-Enabled Cell Phones?

Bezard said big companies are getting behind the new technology because it significantly boosts the level of interactivity between consumers and merchants by integrating payment, marketing and promotion at the point of purchase.

At a CVS checkout counter, for example, a user wouldn’t need to pull out a credit card, loyalty card and coupon to score a deal on toothpaste. She or he could just use a cell phone payment system that rolls all those streams of information into one.

For consumers, pay-by-phone services mean more convenience and a potentially easier way to manage and save money. For corporations, it increases the potential for targeted mobile advertising and data collection.

Just this month, Starbucks introduced a nationwide mobile payment system that lets users pay for coffee with an application loaded on their smartphones.

More complex versions of the service are still in the early stages, but Bezard said mainstream adoption NFC-supported payment services could be upon us in 10 years.

“Hopefully, everyone gets a better deal out of it,” said Bezard. “Money is already digital in many respects, but it would be great, all the way to the finish line, to have the payment disappear into the device.”

NFC-Enabled Phones Pose New Class of Threats, Security Expert Says

Experts warn that before consumers and corporations jump on board the new technology, security concerns need to be addressed. With credit card account information tied so closely to users’ mobile phone, identity theft could become a rising concern.

“It’s probably a new enough technology that concerns over the security are healthy,” said Jonathan Giffin, a Georgia Tech College of Computing professor who specializes in system and software security. “Until this technology is analyzed in a public way by experts in security and wireless protocols, I think we don’t know how secure this is yet.”

Similar to RFID (radio frequency identification) technology, NFC technology is a kind of radio communication that works only a very short range. But Giffin said security experts have shown that RFID cards are vulnerable to attacks.

“People have demonstrated that you can walk behind someone and scan their RFID card without their knowledge,” he said.

And NFC-enabled cell phones potentially pose an even greater security threat than RFID cards: Not only would these phones store a user’s financial credentials, they would be connected to the Internet, he said.

PHOTO CELL PHONE COMPONENTS PAYMENT
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Mobile Commerce Firm: Digital Wallet Is Coming

Attackers could try to access that valuable data across the Web or through nearby NFC readers.

“There’s a whole different class of threats that designers need to be concerned about,” he said.

Still, Francesca Nisco, a spokeswoman for Isis, a mobile payment network backed by AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile, said that, in trials, consumers say that they’re ready to embrace a digital wallet despite security concerns.

“Many people have had trials for a long time, but I think there’s a recent surge of action in the marketplace because there’s been an increased understanding of how much consumers are excited about this technology,” she said.

The carrier-backed network was officially launched in November and in the next 12 to 18 months will roll out its mobile commerce service nationwide, Nisco said.

Forget carrying credit cards, cash, debit cards, loyalty cards, gas cards, coupons, transit passes and all the other cumbersome contents of your wallet. The new service puts it all in your cell phone.

Nisco said the company is still working out the details of its payment process, but said a hardware-based, passcode-protected and encrypted system will safeguard consumers’ information.

If a user loses an Isis-connected cell phone, he or she can erase all the financial data stored on it with a single phone and then restore the information instantly with another call, if the phone is found..

The initial Isis roll-out will focus on mobile commerce, Nisco said, but mobile phones that store insurance cards, driver’s licenses and other kinds of wallet-worthy information are expected to follow close behind.

“We believe that the mobile wallet is certainly coming,” said Nisco. “It will certainly be some time before it is mainstream, but we certainly believe that there will come a day when everything you carry in your wallet will be on your mobile device.”

Smartphones as credit cards: Possibly dangerous, definitely inevitable

Regular smartphone users will need to take security precautions on par with enterprise users

By Brad Reed, Network World
August 05, 2010 02:54 PM ET
(Note: This was written almost a year ago.)

Now that AT&T and Verizon have decided to turn smartphones into credit cards, you may be asking yourself, “Is this really a good idea?”

After all, it’s not hard to imagine some wily thief picking up the BlackBerry you left at a restaurant and going on a major shopping spree. How, exactly, do the carriers and device manufacturers plan to make smartphones safe to be used on a mass-market level for financial transactions?

AT&T, Verizon want to replace your credit card

The answer is that consumers will have to start adopting practices and applications that have traditionally been used by corporate users. While credit card transactions will undoubtedly be encrypted before being sent over networks, that won’t prevent someone from taking your phone and using it as his own credit card, or from hacking into your phone using malicious applications. In other words, the phone itself will have to be just as secure as the software used to complete credit card transactions.

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“The integrity of a transaction is only as good as the device itself,” says Dan Hoffman, the CTO of SMobile. “You have to look at mobile devices in the same way you look at PCs.”

For starters, smartphone credit card users are going to have to install some form of remote-wipe application that will let them erase any and all data on their smartphone if they ever lose it. Although remote-wipe capabilities have been staples of Research in Motion’s BlackBerry devices for years, they’ve only recently come to more popular consumer devices such as the Apple iPhone and devices based on Google’s open source Android operating system. In addition to remote wipe, users should subscribe to some sort of mobile backup service so they can retrieve their data to a new device after wiping out data from their old device.

But remote wipe and data backup capabilities are only part of the story. In an era where users can unwittingly download applications riddled with malware and viruses on their smartphones, they will have to be much more active in protecting themselves from malicious apps.

“With the proliferation of applications out there right now it’s difficult to sort out what apps are safe,” says McAfee CTO George Kurtz. “Among other things, we’re concerned about malicious apps that will be downloaded onto smartphone platforms that can sniff out credit card information and use those credentials to commit fraud.”

To prevent this, users need to not only take care in the types of apps they download onto their phones but to also install antivirus, antimalware and firewall programs onto their devices. Khoi Nguyen, the group product manager for the Mobile Security Group at Symantec, says that companies that run and manage application stores might also have to step up their games to ensure they aren’t inadvertently selling applications that will spread malware to their users. So while he says he admires the success of Google’s user-policed Android Market application store, he thinks Google might have to start taking more of a direct role in ensuring that applications on the store are safe, particularly in an era when more people will be using Android-based devices as personal credit cards.

“I think it’s a potential issue for Google going forward since anyone can publish an application on the Google market, and then only after the fact people may discover that it’s a malicious app,” he says. “At the same time, Google is trying to keep everything open and spur innovation so there has to be a balance there.”
Kurtz says that if carriers, device makers and users take all the proper precautions — from remote wipe capabilities to complex password policies to preinstalled firewalls on smartphones — then there’s no reason that using smartphones as credit cards won’t become both popular and safe for users. After all, he reasons, the practice of using smartphones for payments is already common in both Europe and Asia.

“The U.S. is actually pretty late to the game,” he says. “You’re not going to be able to hold back having people use their smartphones for payments.”

Read more about wireless & mobile in Network World’s Wireless & Mobile section.

Is your Smartphone your next credit card?

(Note: The reason I am posting this article is to keep us aware of progressive strides in technology that, at this point, look harmless. It will become more and more logical to have an easier method to buy and sell. In Revelation we are told that the Anti-Christ will require all people to have his mark on their forehead or on their right hand to be able to buy and sell. My opinion is that technology such as credit cards, phone apps, medical information which is now in chips in animals and some alzheimer’s patients, will become not only more widely used, but eventually required. Just keep our eyes open to these possibilities.)

Is Your Phone Your Next Credit Card?

You may soon find yourself reaching for your smartphone instead of your wallet to pay for purchases. Cell phone manufacturers are getting serious about integrating Near Field Communication (NFC) technology into smartphone applications for retail transactions.

How does it work? NFC technology enables smartphones and other devices to communicate when close together. Just wave your smartphone in front of a retailer’s terminal and your purchase will be automatically deducted from your credit card.

The technology isn’t big yet in the United States, but in Tokyo passengers are buying train tickets with their contactless payment systems. And a Swedish company is testing NFC-enabled cell phones as hotel keys. The NFC Forum was formed in 2004 to help advance the technology, and more and more U.S. cell phone manufacturers today are developing phones equipped with NFC.

What else can it do? NFC technology has the potential to be used in thousands of interactive applications. In addition to transmitting information from your smartphone, you can also use your phone to read NFC tags. These tags, placed on posters, books, bus stop signs and other sites, allow the smartphone user to gain information from the tagged source. For example, diners can pass their phone over a menu to gain information about a restaurant’s nightly specials, and doctors and nurses can use an NFC tag to learn information about patients and track their visits.

Is it safe? Because NFC transmissions are extremely short range, the technology is relatively secure, and many cell phone manufacturers are deeming it safer than a plastic credit card. An NFC-enabled device keeps your account information encrypted and password-protected, rather than printed outright on your card. As with most payment devices, NFC technology has some transmission risks, but many of these bugs are being worked out before the retail apps are introduced en masse.

As cool as NFC sounds, it will not eliminate concerns about identity theft.

Analysis: Making Israel the source of all trouble, again

Jerusalem Post

By YAAKOV KATZ 
06/15/2011 01:45

Instability in Egypt? Not the new gov’t’s fault. It is Israel. Bloody crackdown in Syria? Not the work of the ruthless Bashar Assad. It is all Israel.

  Ilan Grapel might not be the most responsible person by traveling to post-revolution Egypt and raising suspicions with inquisitive questions and visits to various tense locations – but that does not automatically make him a spy for the Mossad.

His Facebook page makes this quite clear.

Besides having writing in Hebrew, it has pictures from his service in the IDF Paratroopers Brigade, including a graphic photo of a hole in his shoulder from the Hezbollah bullet that hit him during the Second Lebanon War in 2006.

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The questions are, then: Why would Egypt decide to turn the American-Israeli Emory University law student into a spy? What could the current Egyptian government gain?

The concern in Israel is that Grapel’s arrest is indicative of the negative trend that has taken control of Cairo and has led to a deterioration in ties with Israel, but also a warming in ties between Egypt and Iran, as well as with Hamas – as demonstrated by the recent decision to open the Rafah Crossing and host senior Hamas officials in Cairo.

The understanding in Israel is that the current Egyptian government is trying to blame Israel for the ongoing instability in the country and the violence that left demonstrators dead and injured. The articles that appeared on the front pages of Egypt’s newspapers made this clear.

The government in Egypt is also threatened by the Muslim Brotherhood, which is considered a strong political opponent in the elections that are scheduled to be held by the end of the year.

By arresting an Israeli “spy,” the government is showing that it, too, is distancing itself from Israel and aligning itself with the more radical Islamic elements.

This is likely the same reason that it has warmed-up its ties with Iran, allowing its warships to cross recently through the Suez Canal for the first time since the Islamic revolution of 1979.

This does not mean Egypt will immediately annul the peace treaty with Israel – which was beneficial for Cairo in establishing ties with the Unites States – but in the long-term, Israel needs to be concerned.

The more immediate problem is how to get Grapel released.

The problem is that Egypt’s security and intelligence agencies have concocted such a story that it will be difficult to justify his sudden release. If he is released quickly, the Egyptian public will legitimately question the arrest altogether, and it will put the intelligence services – already hated due to their history under Hosni Mubarak – under even greater suspicion.

 This is not the first time Egypt has fabricated stories about the Mossad for political purposes. Most memorable was the story of the shark that Mossad had “sent” to the Sinai coast to attack tourists and ruin the tourist season.

Other cases have included Azzam Azzam and Ouda Tarabin, a Bedouin who has been sitting in an Egyptian jail for over a decade.

The “Israel card” is commonly used throughout the Arab world as a way to shift blame and attention away from domestic troubles.

The instability in Egypt? Not the new government’s fault. It is Israel. The violent and bloody crackdown in Syria? Not the work of the ruthless Bashar Assad. It is all Israel.

Without knowing, Ilan Grapel walked right into the middle of it all.

He is an innocent tourist, but the question of how he will be released is not a simple one. In the meantime, Grapel’s luck is that he entered Egypt using his US passport, and that the State Department, and not the Israeli Foreign Ministry, is leading efforts to secure his release.

Peres warns: Israel in danger of ceasing to exist as Jewish state

  • Published 03:01 17.06.11
  • Latest update 03:01 17.06.11

President says that Israel ‘doomed’ unless negotiations with the Palestinians leading to a peace agreement begin in the immediate future.

By Yossi Verter

President Shimon Peres is concerned that Israel might become a binational state, in which case, he warned, it would cease to exist as a Jewish state.

“I’m concerned about the continued freeze [in the peace talks],” Peres said to people who visited him this week. “I’m concerned that Israel will become a binational state. What is happening now is total foot-dragging. We’re about to crash into the wall. We’re galloping at full speed toward a situation where Israel will cease to exist as a Jewish state.”

peres - Tomer Appelbaum - June 17 2011 President Shimon Peres. “We’re about to crash into the wall,” he warned this week.
Photo by: Tomer Appelbaum

Peres celebrated four years as president this week. He has three years to go until he decides on his next career move. But people who met him this week found the president’s mood far from festive. He prophesied that Israel would be doomed unless negotiations with the Palestinians leading to a peace agreement began in the immediate future.

“Whoever accepts the basic principle of the 1967 lines will receive international support from the world,” Peres said. “Whoever rejects it will lose the world.” He was referring to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s vehement objection to starting peace talks on the basis of the 1967 lines, which he called “indefensible” in both the Knesset and the U.S. Congress.

But Peres continues to reject the advice of friends and various political figures that he come out openly against Netanyahu’s positions. “I’m not the head of the opposition, I’m the state president,” he repeatedly tells them.

Peres also voiced fear that Israel might be subjected to economic boycotts and sanctions. There’s no need for boycotts,” he said. “It would suffice for ports in Europe or Canada to stop unloading Israeli merchandise. It’s already beginning.

“September is only a date,” he added, referring to Palestinian plans to seek UN recognition as a state then. “The question is what will happen before and after.”

RUSSIAN AND IRANIAN LEADERS MEET FOR SUMMIT IN CENTRAL ASIA: Echoes of Ezekiel 38-39 coalition

by Joel Rosenberg, June 15, 2011

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev met Wednesday with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and other Central Asian and Far East Asian leaders at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit held in the Kazakhstan capital of Astana. The SCO, formed in 2001, is widely seen a rival to NATO. There, Ahmadinejad delivered a blistering speech against the “slavers and  colonizers” of the West, called for a new world order, including the building of an anti-Western military and political alliance.

“I believe together we can reform the way the world is managed,” Ahmadinejad declared, according to a report by Agence France Presse. “We can restore the tranquillity of the world.”  He reportedly then addressed the leaders of Russia and Asia, asking: ”Have any of us used an atomic bomb against the defenceless citizens of any other country? Have any of our countries played a part in the creation of 9/11 under whose pretext Afghanistan and Iraq were invaded and more than one million people have been killed or wounded?”

An Associated Press report quotes Ahmadinejad as calling on Russia, China and Central Asian countries “to form a united front against the West.” He also asked, “Which one of our countries (has played a role) in the black era of slavery, or in the destruction of hundreds of millions of human beings?”

Ahmadinejad did not attend the SCO’s summit in 2010. But he did attend the 2009 summit in Moscow. As I noted at the time: “Currently, Iran has ‘observer’ status in the SCO, but has requested full member status. The SCO alliance is evocative of the eastern-portion of the biblical alliance foretold in Ezekiel 38-39 that will come against Israel and seek to destroy the Jewish people in what the Bible calls the “last days” of history. When one considers how closely Russia and Iran are currently growing to the western portion of the prophetic alliance — Sudan, Libya and Algeria, for example — it’s not hard to envision these prophecies coming true in our lifetime, or even in the next few years. That said, I believe it is currently too soon to draw any conclusions. There are many intriguing trends and developments, but it remains far from clear that we’re seeing Bible prophecy come to pass. That said, we cannot rule out the possibility. Events in the region are both unprecedented and riveting. All the more reason for followers of Jesus Christ to ‘get ready and be prepared’ for whatever lies ahead.”

Are many Palestinians really Jews?

Israel Today

Thursday, June 16, 2011 | Aviel Schneider

Are many Palestinians really Jews?

In the shadow of the conflict over the Promised Land more and more Palestinians are disclosing the truth: Entire families are considering conversion to Judaism. They claim that their ancestors were forced to choose between religion (Judaism) and remaining on the Land, and hence, they were compelled to convert to Islam.

On our forays into the biblical heartland of Judea and Samaria we have met many Palestinians who have told us about their Jewish ancestry. For their own protection, we cannot publish everything that we were told.

These Palestinians are part of the seed of Israel and could be called “Palestinian Marranos” – like the “secret Jews” of Spain in the 15th century who were forced to convert to Christianity, but covertly remained observant Jews. By returning to the Jewish religion and nation, they foresee a peaceful resolution of the conflict.

“My great great-grandparents immigrated to Israel from Yemen about 300 years ago,” Mohammed Sir told Israel Today. “My grandfather and my father told me that we are actually Jews. As Jews they would have been forced to pay protection money in order to live here under Islamic rule.”

Could Assad vent his wrath on Israel?

Jerusalem Post

By YAAKOV KATZ
06/10/2011 17:43

Security and Defense: In event of foreign military intervention in Syria, IDF is concerned Syrian president might decide to attack the Jewish state.

  Some nations may be able to turn a blind eye to atrocities in other countries. The United States of America is different. And as president, I refused to wait for the images of slaughter and mass graves before taking action.”

President Barack Obama made this statement on March 28 in an address to the National Defense University, during which he explained America’s rationale for approving a military campaign to stop Libyan leader Col. Muammar Gaddafi’s violent crackdown on protesters.

The war in Libya is almost three months old and seems to be continuing, but one question that remains unanswered is why the above policy of not turning a blind eye to atrocities doesn’t apply to other countries in the Middle East – like Syria, for example.

By Thursday, the death toll in Syria was believed to have already reached over 1,500 people, but the international community, led by the US, could not even find itself in agreement over the language of a resolution censuring Syria that some countries in Europe wanted to push through the Security Council.

So why the difference? In a word: Israel.

Israel does not share a border with Libya, but it does share one with Syria, and there are fears in the IDF that in the event of foreign military intervention there, Israel would feel the brunt of Bashar Assad’s retaliation.

While Assad is already believed to be trying to divert attention from his lethal crackdown on protesters by encouraging Palestinians to raid the Israeli border, as occurred this past Sunday, this is just the tip of the iceberg of what Syria can do.

One intelligence assessment speaks of the possibility that, under extreme pressure – caused politically or militarily – Assad might decide to attack Israel with more than just angry Palestinians from the Yarmouk refugee camp near Damascus.

Instead, he would have available the thousands of ballistic missiles Syria has manufactured over the years, as well as an extensive chemical arsenal, bolstered as a replacement for the nuclear reactor Israel destroyed in 2007.

For this reason, Jerusalem is quietly warning about the potential consequences of Western military action aimed at toppling Assad. This does not mean, of course, that Israel wants Assad to remain in power; in reality, the opposite is true. But the concern cannot be ignored; what will happen the day after Assad falls, and into whose hands will the ballistic missiles and chemical weapons fall?

At the same time, senior IDF officers believe that there is no turning back for Assad and that after killing some 1,500 of his own people, he will not be able to rule again as he once did. What this means practically is still unclear, but the hope is that it will ultimately lead to a larger break in the Iranian axis that connects Tehran, Damascus and Beirut, and will further isolate Iran and cut off supplies to Hezbollah.

Syria’s close allies – Hezbollah and Iran – are also extremely concerned with the ongoing demonstrations in Syria and the potential impact on them.

Western intelligence agencies have raised the possibility that Hezbollah is trying to transfer advanced weaponry it reportedly maintains on Syrian soil to Lebanon due to the ongoing turmoil in the country.

The group is believed to have stored advanced arms in Syria – including longrange Scud missiles- as part of its logistical deployment along Israel’s northern border.

Iran is also not waiting for Assad, and just this week – in the midst of the ongoing upheaval in the Middle East – announced that it was implementing plans to triple its production of uranium. It also said that the secret nuclear facility it was caught covertly building near the city of Qom in 2009 would no longer remain empty and would be equipped with advanced centrifuges for the enrichment of higher-grade uranium.

The Iranian announcement came just two days after International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director-General Yukiya Amano said the nuclear watchdog had obtained information that “seems to point to the existence” of possible military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear program.

Amano’s announcement came just a few weeks after the IAEA released its latest report on Iran’s nuclear program, pointing to a significant increase in the enrichment of uranium – up from 133 kilograms per month to 156 kg. – with a total of just over 4 tons of low-enriched uranium (LEU), enough for at least two nuclear weapons if enriched again to higher military-grade levels.

While Iran is still encountering some technological difficulties, overall it seems to have overcome the setback caused last year by Stuxnet, the virus that attacked its uranium enrichment plant at Natanz and is believed to have destroyed over 1,000 centrifuges.

In simpler terms, Iran is taking advantage of the current shift in the world’s focus from its illicit nuclear activities to the ongoing upheaval in the Middle East, and is moving forward with enriching uranium. The decision on Tuesday to send submarines to the Red Sea is another indication of Iran’s growing confidence and its belief that it will not pay a price for any of these provocations.

There are a number of reasons for the confidence. While the current sanctions in place against Iran have had some effect, they are overshadowed and undermined by the increase in the price of oil. In addition, while other tyrants in the Middle East are battling for survival, in Iran the protests have waned and almost disappeared.

According to Israeli intelligence assessments, Iran wants to wait until it has enough fissionable material to produce an arsenal of nuclear weapons, which means it will need several more tons of low-enriched uranium. From the stage when it decides to break out and begin enriching uranium at military levels, until the point that it has a testable nuclear device, it will likely be a year.

Iran’s confidence also appears to have received a boost from the recent media mayhem in Israel over former Mossad chief Meir Dagan’s comments about Jerusalem’s military option vis-à-vis the Iranian nuclear issue. Dagan said it was a “stupid idea” to attack Iran, and pointed out the “impossible” regional challenge Israel would face following such an attack.

For Tehran, these comments fell on welcoming ears. For years, the Iranians have questioned Israel’s military capabilities. Now here comes Dagan – their archnemesis – and gives them a reason to. Dagan’s justification for doing this – his concern with Israel’s current political leadership – might be genuine, even though it was done with the awareness that it would eat away at the deterrence Jerusalem has tried for years to create in the face of the Iranian threat.

Strategic Affairs Minister Moshe “Bogie” Ya’alon has long spoken about the importance of creating a “credible military option” for Iran’s nuclear program. According to Ya’alon, it is not enough to speak about the option; it is also necessary to show the Iranians that it is real, viable and effective.

“They need to fear that the military option is real and can be used,” Ya’alon has said in the past.

To back up this argument, Ya’alon has referred to Tehran’s 2003 decision to suspend its enrichment of uranium and weapons program. That move was based on fear that after the US invasion of Iraq, it was next in line. President George W. Bush had already listed Iran has part of the “Axis of Evil” mentioned in his 2002 State of the Union address.

Judging by its recent decisions, Iran no longer feels threatened. As it continues to provoke the world without paying a price, there is unfortunately no reason it should.

Israeli police storm Temple Mount

Israel Today

Sunday, June 12, 2011 | Ryan Jones

Israeli security forces stormed Jerusalem’s Temple Mount on Friday after Muslims there began hurling stones at Jews praying at the Western Wall below.

Non-lethal crowd control methods were used to disperse the dozens of Muslim rioters, and three young Arabs were arrested for taking a leading role in the violence.

No Jews were injured by the dozens of stones that were thrown down from the top of the Temple Mount.

Most weeks, Israel restricts access to Friday prayers atop the Temple Mount to Muslims over the age of 50 in order to avoid precisely this kind of violence. But, because the site had been quiet for many weeks, the police decided to lift the restriction last week. They likely won’t make that mistake again any time soon.

In related news, a Muslim mob raided and razed a small Jewish community in the Jordan Valley following Friday prayers at a local mosque.

Apparently whipped into a frenzy by an anti-Jewish sermon (which are all too common in Palestinian mosques), an estimated 200 Palestinian Arabs arrived at the Gaon Hayarden outpost armed with clubs and metal chains.

The few Jewish youth who were at the outpost (one of many set up without government approval and in defiance of international pressure) resisted briefly before escaping with their lives.

The Muslim mob burned several tents and small structures, including one used for prayer and containing numerous Jewish holy books.

One of the Muslim leaders told Israel’s Ynet news portal that the Jews of Judea and Samaria could expect more such raids in the future.

Syria massacres ‘rebels,’ Israel fears violence will cross border

Israel Today

Sunday, June 12, 2011 | Ryan Jones

Syrian forces brutally attacked a town in the north of the country on Sunday, accusing local residents of being “rebels” after they joined nationwide demonstrations demanding democratic freedoms.

Tens of thousands of residents of Jisr al-Shughour fled into neighboring Turkey after an estimated 150 tanks and several helicopter gunships invaded the town and began firing indiscriminately.

It is believed that at least 30 civilians have been killed in the fighting. The refugees in Turkey also described being beaten and raped at the hands of the government soldiers.

The fighting in Jisr al-Shaghour is only the latest in a string of atrocities that have marked the Syrian movement for open democracy, which was sparked by Egypt’s own democratic revolution earlier this year.

While Western governments have expressed muted condemnation, many Israelis are left wondering why the international community is not reacting more strongly. After all, when Israel responds to Palestinian terror in a far more restrained manner, it is a matter for UN Security Council resolutions and widespread criticism.

The response to the Syrian massacres has paled in comparison to the responses to Israel’s 2006 war in Lebanon, the 2009 incursion into Gaza and the 2010 interception of a flotilla trying to break the Gaza maritime blockade.

Meanwhile, there is growing concern in Israel that as the situation in Syria intensifies, and international pressure slowly ramps up on Damascus, the ruling regime of dictator Bashar Assad could lash out at Israel as a last resort.

If Assad feels he is going down and has nothing left to lose, he may want to secure a legacy for himself by launching one final massive attack on Israel, according to some intelligence assessments.

Syria has an arsenal of tens of thousands of ballistic missiles that can reach every corner of Israel. It also has an extensive supply of chemical warheads to fit on those missiles.

Congress further opposes Obama Mideast peace plan

Yea to those who are willing to make a stand. It will be interesting to watch this story and see how many other congressmen and women are willing to continue to befriend Israel and work for their good.

Israel Today

Friday, June 10, 2011 | Ryan Jones

Congress further opposes Obama Mideast peace plan

Prominent US Senators on Thursday threw another wrench in the Middle East peace plans of President Barack Obama when they proposed a new resolution opposing an Israeli withdrawal to its pre-1967 borders.

The draft resolution presented by senators Orrin Hatch and Joe Lieberman states that “it is contrary to United States policy and national security to have the borders of Israel return to the armistice lines that existed on June 4, 1967.”

Echoing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the senators insisted that the 1967 borders were indefensible, and invited Arab attacks on the narrow Jewish state.

The resolution is supported by at least 30 other senators, and possibly many more.

The resolution comes just weeks after a joint session of Congress made the extraordinary move of providing a foreign leader – Netanyahu – with a platform to oppose the policies of the US president. Congress was unhappy that just days prior to Netanyahu’s address Obama had publically called for Israel to return to its pre-1967 borders for the sake of peace.

Analysts noted that Obama’s statements had for the first time turned Arab demands that peace be based on a full and complete Israeli withdrawal the official policy of the White House.

Gas Field Confirmed Off Coast of Israel-December 30, 2010

December 30, 2010

JERUSALEM — Exploratory drilling off Israel’s northern coast this week has confirmed the existence of a major natural gas field — one of the world’s largest offshore gas finds of the past decade — leading the country’s infrastructure minister to call it “the most important energy news since the founding of the state.”

Houston-based Noble Energy, which is working with several Israeli partner companies, said that the field, named Leviathan, whose existence was suspected months ago, has at least 16 trillion cubic feet of gas at a likely market value of tens of billions of dollars and should turn Israel into an energy exporter.

“If it acts correctly, levelheadedly and responsibly, Israel can enjoy not only the benefit of using the gas, but it can also turn into a gas supplier in the Mediterranean region,” the infrastructure minister, Uzi Landau, said in a statement. “The large reserves of natural gas will enable Israel’s citizens to enjoy the benefit of clean and inexpensive electricity, as well as the expected profits for the state.”

The find means that Israel, with a long history of dependence on foreign energy, and hostility and boycotts from many of the biggest energy powers, could find itself in a much more advantageous position in the coming decade.

But the find has been accompanied by a heated debate over how much in taxes and royalties Israel will charge. A state-appointed committee headed by an economist at Hebrew University, Eytan Sheshinski, is planning to recommend substantially increased profit taxes, opposed by the companies and some on the political right.

Gideon Tadmor, the chief executive of Delek Energy and Avner Oil Exploration, partners in this venture with Noble, said the taxes could make the project prohibitively expensive. “The gas may stay in the ground because we will not succeed in obtaining from banks around the world the tens of billions of shekels for developing the reservoir,” he said in an interview.

He said that this new find could impel neighboring countries, including Cyprus, Lebanon and Syria, to explore and possibly develop their potential gas fields, and warned that Israel needed to move quickly to be the first to export its gas. Delek estimates that if it moves aggressively, it could begin producing gas from Leviathan in five to six years.

This year, the United States Geological Survey estimated that more than 120 trillion cubic feet of recoverable gas reserves, equivalent to 20 billion barrels of oil, lay beneath the waters of the Eastern Mediterranean. That would put it in the same league as the Alaskan North Slope (about 22 billion barrels) but far short of Saudi Arabia, which has proven reserves of 262 billion barrels.

In reaction to the Israeli announcement, Lebanese politicians said they would move more quickly in exploring their country’s gas potential.

Professor Sheshinski said that Israel had among the very lowest energy tax rates anywhere and that it was time to update that.

“We have proposed a profit tax to be imposed after the firms earn an adequate return on their investment,” Professor Sheshinski said in an interview. “We have checked with the banks and we will be well within world averages. Anyone who knows the numbers can be assured of a proper return.”

Professor Sheshinski said that his report, due out on Monday, had already been endorsed by the governor of the Bank of Israel, Stanley Fischer; the International Monetary Fund; and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which Israel recently joined. He said that the profit tax rate recommended by his committee would be 55 to 60 percent and that the O.E.C.D. average was 62 percent.

The committee’s recommendations require government and parliamentary approval.

Sever Plocker, an economic columnist for the newspaper Yediot Aharonot, said in a commentary on Thursday that it was far from clear that the new discovery could be developed profitably. Gas prices could fall, the techniques needed to extract the gas were likely to be complicated and expensive to develop, and exporting natural gas required enormous investment for pipelines or the means of transforming the gas into liquid to be moved on tankers, he said.

“Creative thinking is our great natural resource, not gas,” he wrote. “It is our obligation to guard it with utmost care.”

WHAT IS THE “WAR OF GOG AND MAGOG”?

”Current Events In Light of Bible Prophecy”

WHAT IS THE “WAR OF GOG AND MAGOG”?
Part One
May 9, 2011
by Joel C. Rosenberg

[Tuesday, May 10 update: Today Israel celebrates her 63rd Independence Day. May the Lord bless and protect all Israelis and draw them close to His heart. May the Lord also bless and protect the Palestinian people and give His mercy and grace to both sides of this painful conflict. Jesus said, “Love your neighbor” and “Love your enemy.” Not easy, but the only way forward.]

Let’s start by defining

  •  who “Gog” and “Magog” are,
  •  when this prophecy will take place, and
  •  what countries will be participating in the coalition against Israel:

The Hebrew Prophet Ezekiel lived in Babylon (Iraq) more than 2,500 years ago and the Lord gave him a vision of events that would take place in the future.

Ezekiel 38:16 specifically tells us these events will take place in the “last days” — that is in the End Times before the Messiah comes to set up His kingdom on earth.

Ezekiel chapters 36 and 37 set the stage for the “War of Gog and Magog” by describing that:

  •  Israel will be reborn as a country in the last days,
  •  the Jewish people will come back to the Holy Land from exile all over the world,
  •  the Jewish people will rebuild the ancient ruins and make the deserts bloom again.

These things have all happened, and this suggests we are getting closer to the fulfillment of the next set of prophecies.

Ezekiel 38:2 tells us that the war will be led be someone known as “Gog.” This is not a personal name. We’re not looking for someone named David Gog. Or Ahmed Gog. Or Dmitri Gog. Rather, “Gog” is a title, like a “Pharoah” or a “Czar.” Through the prophecy, this Gog is described as a military leader, a political leader, and a coalition builder. In Ezekiel 38:10 he is described as developing an “evil plan,” we know this is an evil man, a tyrant.

The Hebrew prophet gives us more clues. This “Gog” is going to be from the “land of Magog.” One has to do some historical detective work to determine what Magog is, but it is possible. Flavius Josephus, the first century Roman historian, wrote in his famous book, The Antiquities of the Jews, that the people of Magog are the people whom the Greeks called “Scythians.” This is a critical clue because we know from history that the Scythians were a people group that migrated from the Middle East northward and settled north of the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea in the region we know today as Russia and the former Soviet Republics.
There are other interesting clues, as well. Ezekiel 38:15 says that Gog “will come from your place out of the remote parts of the north.” Ezekiel 39:2 says Gog will come “from the remotest parts of the north” and come “against the mountains of Israel.” The country that is farthest to the north in relation to Israel is Russia.

Thus, we can determine that a Russian dictator will build a diplomatic and military coalition to surround and attack the State of Israel in the End Times.

The question then is what other countries will be part of the coalition?

In Ezekiel 38:5, we learn that the first ally Russia will have is “Persia.” Until 1935, of course, Persia was the legal name of the country we know today as Iran. So we know that Russia and Iran will build an alliance in the last days to attack Israel.

Ezekiel tells us that another country in the alliance will be what many English Bibles translate as “Ethiopia.” The Hebrew word, however, is “Cush” and Cush is the upper Nile region that we now know as Sudan. While the current state of Ethiopia may also be involved in the war, the focus is really Sudan, which today, of course, is a radical Islamic Sunni state closely allied with Iran and Russia and deeply anti-Semitic and anti-Israel.

Next, Ezekiel says a nation called “Put” will be part of the alliance. Josephus identifies “Put” as “ancient Lybios” — the territory that today we call Libya and Algeria. Interestingly, both countries today are deeply hostile to Israel and closely allied with Russia.

The next country mentioned is “Gomer.” When one does the historical detective work, one learns that Gomer is what we now call Turkey. For much of the past 80 years, it didn’t make sense that Turkey would turn against Israel. Why? Because Turkey was a NATO ally, and a friend of Israel, the U.S. and the European Union. But in the last few years, the Turkish government has swung dramatically away from the West, towards Russia and Iran, and become deeply hostile towards the State of Israel.

The next country Ezekiel mentions is “Beth Togarmah.” This is the Turkish-speaking peoples that spread out from Turkey across the Caucasus, and across Central Asia. We can’t be certain precisely which modern nation states from this area will join the anti-Israel alliance, because these are almost all Muslim countries with close links to Russia and Iran.

Interestingly, Egypt is not mentioned by Ezekiel as part of the Russian-Iranian alliance against Israel. This is interesting because Egypt has been such an historic enemy of Israel and the Jewish people. That said, perhaps Egypt’s non-involvement in the War of Gog and Magog could be explained by the peace treaty Egypt signed with Israel in 1979. This treaty is now in danger of unraveling, but at least for the near term Egypt is still unlikely to be in a position to strategically threaten Israel.
Iraq — whether under its biblical names of Babel, Babylon, Babylonia, Shinar, or Mesopotamia — isn’t mentioned in the prophecy either, yet it, too, is an historic enemy of Israel. Still, given the liberation of Iraq in 2003, the subsequent violence, and the rebuilding now going on, Iraq is not likely to be a threat to Israel in the near term.

Syria and Lebanon are not mentioned by name in the prophecy either. However, Ezekiel tells us repeatedly that the main military force that will be coming against Israel will be coming from the north, which means they will be coming through Lebanon and Syria.

WHAT IS THE WAR OF GOG AND MAGOG?
Part Two
May 11, 2011

(NOTE: As we honor Israel’s 63rd modern Day of Independence, are there signs this prophetic war is close at hand?

The subject is timely. As nearly eight million Israelis are celebrating this week the 63rd birthday of the modern State of Israel, there are real questions in the region about how much longer the Jewish State can and will survive. A growing number of Radical Islamic leaders are declaring that Israel will soon be “wiped off the map,” and are vowing to assist in that effort. Iran is feverishly trying to build nuclear weapons and the ballistic missiles to deliver them. Hezbollah in Lebanon has built up a force of more than 40,000 rockets aimed at Israel. The bloodthirsty regime in Syria is slaughtering opponents of the regime while buying weapons systems aimed at Israel. Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood is rapidly rising in power and the current presidential candidate front-runners in Egypt are speaking with growing hostility towards the Jewish State. Fatah has chosen to make peace with the Hamas terrorist organization rather than with Israel. Meanwhile, a growing number of Orthodox rabbis in Israel believe recent events are indicators that the “War of Gog and Magog” is coming soon. A growing number of Christians around the world think the “War of Gog and Magog” is coming soon, as well. Are they right?)

Let’s look at what the Bible teaches.

The Hebrew Prophet Ezekiel describes a Russian dictator (Gog) who will form a military coalition with Iran, Sudan, Libya, Algeria, Turkey and a group of other North African, Middle Eastern and Central Asian countries in “the last days” (Ezekiel 38:16). In the days of Ezekiel, of course, there was no Islam. Today we know that most of the nations Ezekiel mentions are majority Muslim countries, and Russia is about 20% Muslim and increasingly allied with Radicalized Islamic countries.

The Bible explains very clearly that the target of this military coalition in the End Times will be Israel.

Ezekiel 38:8 says “in the latter years, you [Gog and his coalition] will come into the land that is restored from the sword, whose inhabitants have been gathered from many nations to the mountains of Israel which had been a continual waste; but its people were brought out from the nations and they are living securely, all of them.”

Ezekiel 38:16 says that the coalition “will come up against My people Israel” and that “it shall come about in the last days that I will bring you [Gog] against My land.”

Ezekiel 39:2 says that Gog will come “from the remotest parts of the north…against the mountains of Israel.”

Clearly, then, the main pre-requisite for this prophecy regarding the “War of Gog and Magog” to come true is that the State of Israel has to be prophetically reborn in the last days. Indeed, this is what the prophecies of Ezekiel chapters 36 and 37 describe in detail.

The Lord showed Ezekiel that Jews would be living in exile, scattered throughout the world because of sin and disobedience to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (Ezekiel 36:16-21).

But solely because of His grace and mercy, the Lord promised to re-gather the Jewish people to the land of Israel.

The Lord promised that “I will cause men — My people Israel — to walk on you and possess you” (Ezekiel 36:12).

The Lord said that the Jewish people would rebuild the ancient ruins and the ”waste places” (Ezekiel 36:10).

The Lord said that the land and “mountains of Israel” at that time would “put forth [their] branches” and bear fruit for “My people Israel.” (Ezekiel 36:8)

The Lord said that first the physical restoration of Israel and the Jewish return to the Land would be set into motion (Ezekiel 37:4-8)

After the physical restoration of the State of Israel began, then the spiritual restoration of the Jewish people would be set into motion (Ezekiel 37:9-14).
Then, once Israel was reestablished as a State, and the Jewish people were being re-gathered to the Land, and the Lord was drawing the Jewish people back into a relationship with Him, and Israel was living securely in the Land (Ezekiel 38:8) with a degree of prosperity even (Ezekiel 38:12), then — and only then — would the Russian-Iranian coalition be set into motion to rob, kill and destroy Israel and the Jewish people.

It should be noted that Ezekiel does not describe Israel having “peace.” Rather, twice Israel is described as “living securely” (Ezekiel 38:8 and 38:11).

I recognize that these verses can be difficult for some Palestinian Arabs and some Israeli Arabs to read, whether they are born again Christians or nominal Christians (raised in churches but without a personal relationship with Jesus Christ), and especially if they are Muslims. The Bible indicates that Jews will be a sinful people when they are brought back into the Land. Only after they return, the Bible teaches, will the Holy Spirit be poured out upon the Jewish people in an increasingly significant way (Ezekiel 39:29 and Joel 2:28-32 — or Joel chapter 3 in Hebrew Bibles). Then, a growing number of Jewish people will repent and return to a personal relationship with the Lord. Meanwhile, Jesus said in Matthew 24 and Luke 21 that there would be “wars and rumors of wars” and “revolutions” and “lawlessness” in the last days. Certainly, the rebirth of Israel — while prophetic and God-ordained — has come with wars, rumors of war, revolutions, sins, and even crimes committed by some Arabs as well as some Jews. The Bible doesn’t teach this period of the last days will be easy, and the Bible is right.

That said, we would not be honest to the Word of God if we were to ignore, deny or try to explain away the plain meaning of these verses. The Bible told us well in advance that Israel would be reborn and the Jews would come back to the Land, and this has come to pass. Genesis 12:1-3 tells us that the Lord will bless those who bless the children of Abraham, and He will curse those who curse the children of Abraham. Those who have cursed Israel have, sadly, found themselves facing great pain and suffering. Sometimes Bible truths are difficult to accept, but they are true nonetheless and we must accept them by faith.

But while the Bible clearly explains that the Lord will bring the Jewish people back to the Land of Israel and allow them to reclaim their God-given ownership of the Land, nowhere in the Bible are Jews (or any group of people) given a license to commit injustice. To the contrary, the Bible teaches Israel to love her neighbors (Leviticus 19:18 and Matthew 19:19). The Bible also teaches Israel to love her neighbors and pray for those who persecute them (Matthew 5:44). The Jews do have rights to the ownership of the Land, but they also have responsibilities to govern justly and compassionately, in accordance with the Scriptures. In Leviticus 19:33-34, for example, the Lord says: “When a stranger [non-Jew] resides with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong. The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt; I am the Lord your God.”
Those of us who are followers of Jesus Christ need to teach sound Bible doctrine regarding Israel and the Palestinians. We need to love both, bless both, pray for both. Moreover, we need to stand with and encourage our brothers and sisters in the Messiah whether they are Jewish or Arab. The Bible gives us no freedom to ignore, deny, or oppose our brothers and sisters on either side. Rather, Jesus said, “blessed are the peacemakers” (Matthew 5:9). We need to be pro-actively building relationships with Israelis and Palestinians and being ambassadors of Christ and agents of reconciliation whenever and wherever possible.

We do not have to agree with everything that our brothers and sisters believe — especially if those beliefs are unscriptural — but we are commanded to love them unconditionally and sacrificially. After all, Jesus said, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.” (John 13:34-35)

Now, back to the prophecy and its analysis:
It could be reasonably argued that Israel is living more securely today than at any other time in its 63 years. The Israeli Defense Forces are widely considered the strongest and most effective ground fighting force in the Middle East. The Israeli Air Force is widely considered dominant in the skies. Israel has peace treaties with two major neighbors, Egypt and Jordan (though the future of the treaty with Egypt is increasingly in question). Yasser Arafat is gone. Saddam Hussein is gone. Osama bin Laden is gone. Palestinian suicide bombings are not a daily part of Israeli life since 2004. Rockets are occasionally fired from Gaza at Israeli civilians living in the south, but this is not nearly as bad as it was prior to Operation Cast Lead in January 2009. Moreover, Israel has just deployed a short-range rocket defense system called “Iron Dome” that is very effective. Meanwhile, Israel has submarines, ballistic missiles, and first rate intelligence services in her defense. Israel has also enjoyed decades of a close strategic partnership with the United States, has a strong and vibrant economy, and is widely believed to have defensive nuclear weapons, though the government maintains a policy of “strategic ambiguity” on the subject, neither confirming nor denying the existence of those weapons.

Could Israel currently be secure enough to fulfill this prophetic prerequisite? Honestly, I am not sure. Perhaps events soon will lead Israelis to being and feeling even more secure. But there is no question that even with emerging new threats on the horizon, Israelis feel more secure today than ever before its modern State’s existence.

Given the fact that the major End Times prophecies of Ezekiel 36 and 37 have essentially come true in our lifetime, does this mean that we will see Ezekiel 38 and 39 come true in our lifetime as well? To me, it is too soon to say so definitively. Certainly we are seeing geopolitical events unfold in recent decades and in recent years that are strikingly consistent with what the Bible describes as preparations essential for the “War of Gog and Magog.” So we should be ready. We should be prepared — not caught off guard — if events accelerate in the near future. But we must also remember that the Lord in His sovereignty could also decide to delay events for quite some time for His own purposes.

That said, it should be noted that when the Russian dictator finishes building his military coalition in Israel and begins to move his forces to surround Israel in the “last days,” Ezekiel gives us no indication that any country will come to Israel’s defense. There are not indications that the United Nations, or the European Union, or NATO will defend Israel. Nor is there any indication that the United States will defend Israel. Rather, Israel will be — and will feel — all alone in the world.

WHAT IS THE WAR OF GOG AND MAGOG?
Part Three
The Good News
May 12, 2011

As the forces of the Russian dictator (Gog) and his military coalition — including Iran, Libya, Algeria, Sudan, Turkey and other key Islamic nations — converges against the State of Israel in the last days, the Hebrew Prophet Ezekiel tells us that at the last moment, when there seems to be no hope for Israeli Jews, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is going to supernaturally intervene.

Ezekiel 38:18-19 — “‘It will come about on that day, when Gog comes against the land of Israel,” declares the Lord God, ‘that My fury will mount up in My anger. In My zeal and in My blazing wrath I declare that on that day there will surely be a great earthquake in the land of Israel.”

Ezekiel tells us that this earthquake will shake the entire globe and “all the men who are on the face of the earth will shake at My presence” (38:20).

The enemy forces will become so frightened and disoriented that they will turn and start fighting each other (38:21).

Terrible diseases (pestilence) will start to spread through the enemy forces (38:21).

As God judges these enemies of Israel, the text says He “will rain on him [Gog] and on his troops, and on the many peoples who are with him, a torrential rain, with hailstones, fire, and brimstone.” (38:22)

The Lord also says “I will send fire upon Magog and those who inhabit the coast lands in safety.” (39:6) In other words, parts of Russia and other enemy countries will be devastated by fire from heaven.

The Bible does not tell us exactly how this will happen, but it clearly describes a supernatural judgment. This is not a war started by the Israeli Defense Forces. These are not missiles from the Israeli Air Force. There is no evidence in the text of Israelis defending themselves. Perhaps they are engaging in diplomacy. Perhaps they are hoping for the U.S. or the U.N. or other nations to intervene. Whatever the case, the God of Israel steps in and defends Israel Himself, raining fire and brimstone down on the enemy forces and utterly destroying them.

Why does the Lord act? The Lord tells us directly in 38:23, “I will magnify Myself, sanctify Myself, and make Myself known in the sight of many nations; and they will know that I am the Lord.” The nations have forgotten that God does love the Jewish people. He does love the nation of Israel. They are not perfect, but He loves them and has made promises to them, and He intends to keep those promises. And He wants the rest of the world to know there is a God in Israel.

The devastation is so horrific that chapter 39 tells us it takes the Israelis seven months to bury all the bodies of the enemy forces (39:12-16).

Ezekiel tells us it would probably take longer than seven months but the birds of the air and the beasts of the field eat many of the bodies (39:17-20)

Sin has consequences. God said in Genesis 12:1-3 that those who bless the children of Abraham will be blessed, but those who curse them will be cursed. God is patient. He is slow to anger. But when pushed too far, He will act against those who hate the Jewish people and seek to rob, kill and destroy them. Let the nations be warned.

There is more to the story, however. Not only will the “War of Gog and Magog” be a day of great judgment; it will also be a day of great mercy. The Bible says that the militaries of these enemies will be destroyed. There are hints here and in other texts (Jeremiah 49, for example) that the governments of these countries will be judged, as well. But God is not going to wipe out all the people of these enemy countries. To the contrary, He wants them to see His glory and His mercy.

Ezekiel 39:21 — “I will set My glory among the nations; and all the nations will see My judgment which I have executed and My hand which I have laid on them.”

Did you catch that? “All” the nations will “see” God’s glory and judgment. Today, we are living in the first generation in human history where because of the miracle of global satellite television technology people in every country on the planet will be able to watch the prophecies of the Bible come true before their very eyes.

As a result, I believe Ezekiel 38-39 describes the end of Radical Islam — and effectively the end of all of Islam — as we have known it. When the God of Israel destroys the forces of Radical Islam supernaturally while Muslims watch on Al Jazeera, how will they wake up the day after and believe that the Quran is true and that Muhammad is a true prophet? The vast majority of Muslims will abandon Islam. Many will turn to faith in Jesus Christ. Not all, of course, but many will because they will have seen the Word of God come true right in front of them. And the Word was God and the Word is God and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us and His name is Jesus the Messiah. (John chapter 1)

Israelis will feel very afraid and very much alone right up until the Lord shows His mighty hand. But then even those who are secular will know there is a God in heaven.

Ezekiel 39:22 — “And the house of Israel will know that I am the Lord their God from that day onward.”

Ezekiel 39:25-26,28 — “Therefore, thus says the Lord God, ‘Now I will restore the fortunes of Jacob and have mercy on the whole house of Israel; and I will be jealous for My holy name. They will forget their treachery which they perpetrated against Me, when they live securely on their own land with no one to make them afraid….Then they will know that I am the Lord their God because I made them go into exile among the nations, and then gathered them again to their own land and I will leave none of them there any longer.’”

On top of all this, the Lord says He will no longer hide His face from the Jewish people and, in fact, will pour out His Holy Spirit upon them. “I will not hide My face from them any longer, for I will have poured out My Spirit on the house of Israel, declares the Lord.” (39:29)

As a result, many Jews will come to faith in Jesus as Messiah, for that is the role of the Holy Spirit–to reveal the true identity of Jesus to people. Jesus said in John 14:26, ”The Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you.” Not all Jews will come to faith in Jesus at that time, but many will because the Father will pour out His Holy Spirit on the house of Israel.

While we know these events will all happen in the “last days” (38:16), we cannot determine whether the “War of Gog and Magog” will happen before the Rapture (when the Lord suddenly snatches born again believers in Jesus off of the earth, prior to the Tribulation) or not, because the text does not tell us one way or the other.

That said, I believe it is very possible — not certain, but very possible – that these events will unfold within this generation, and possibly quite soon. We are certainly seeing geopolitical events unfolding in a way consistent with Ezekiel 38-39.

Therefore, the most important question we must ask is this: Since the Lord in Ezekiel 38:7 told Gog, the enemy of Israel, to “get ready, be prepared,” then what should Israelis themselves and friends of Israel be doing?

Shouldn’t we, too, get ready and be prepared — spiritually, emotionally, physically, financially, and in every other possible way?

These prophecies are some of the most interesting and important descriptions of End Times events in all of the Bible. Unfortunately, too few people in the world are aware of them, or have read them, much less studied them carefully.

May the Lord bless you and reveal Himself and His heart to you as you get yourself ready for the prophecies coming.

VIOLENCE ERUPTS IN THE EPICENTER AS RADICAL ARABS MARK “AL-NAKBA” DAY

Posted: May 15, 2011 by joelcrosenberg in Uncategorized

(Jerusalem, Israel) — As The Joshua Fund held the first of two days of our 2011 Epicenter Conference teaching through the Book of Joel and how to live in light of the fact that “the Day of the Lord is coming,” violence erupted in and around Israel. The reason: Radical Arabs were marking “Al-Nakba” day, or “the catastrophe”, as they see it, of Israel’s prophetic rebirth in May 1948. Just before lunch time I got a report that an Arab Israeli had just driven a truck into a crowd of Jewish Israelis in Tel Aviv, killing one man and wounding 17 others. My colleagues and I immediately prayed for God’s mercy on all those involved and for healing for the injured and for the Israeli security forces to be able to effectively defend the country’s borders and streets. As the day progressed, we learned from a Reuters reports that “violence erupted on Israel’s borders with Syria, Lebanon and Gaza on Sunday, leaving at least eight dead and dozens wounded.” Thousands of Radical Muslims tried to penetrate Israel’s borders, but eventually were repulsed by IDF forces. Please keep praying for peace, and for the Lord’s grace and favor on the conference as we try to put current events in the context of the Bible.

HAMAS LEADER CALLS FOR PRAYER FOR AN END TO ISRAEL

Posted: May 16, 2011 by joelcrosenberg in Uncategorized

(Jerusalem, Israel) — “Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh spoke to Muslim worshipers on Sunday morning, telling them to pray for an end to Israel,” reports the Jerusalem Post. “‘Palestinians mark the Nakba with great hope of bringing to an end the Zionist project in Palestine,’ Haniyeh told 10,000 people at Gaza City’s al-Omari mosque, AP reported. ‘To achieve our goals in the liberation of our occupied land, we should have one leadership,’ he reportedly said, praising the recent unity accord between Hamas and Fatah. Haniyeh added that Hamas would not recognize Israel.”

In that context, the Day 2 of the 2011 Epicenter Conference has just begun with the blowing of the shofar and Jewish and Arab believers leading the conference participants in worship to our Lord Jesus. In a moment, I will lead the conference in prayer for the Lord to protect Israel and bring great blessings to the people of this precious Land. Then we’ll begin a discussion on “Assessing the Threat of Radical Islam in the Epicenter.”

Please watch the messages at www.epicenterconference.com.

WARNING TO THE NATIONS: DON’T DIVIDE THE LAND OF ISRAEL

Posted: May 19, 2011 by joelcrosenberg in Uncategorized

UPDATE: The President made an enormous mistake this week in calling for the Land of Israel to be divided and Jerusalem to be divided along pre-1967 borders. This is in direct defiance of the Bible. It won’t work, and it will bring judgment to the U.S., according to Joel chapter 3. Please pray that the President changes his heart and changes course very soon.

ANALYSIS: NETANYAHU GOES TO WASHINGTON TO DISCUSS “EPIC BATTLE” IN THE EPICENTER

Posted: May 25, 2011 by joelcrosenberg in Uncategorized

(Jerusalem, Israel) — Will it work?

That’s the key question as Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu finishes his high-profile trip to Washington, meeting with President Obama, addressing 10,000-plus pro-Israel activists at the AIPAC Policy Conference, addressing a Joint Session of Congress, and doing a flurry of major media interviews. Will his passionate case that Israel is America’s best friend, the only solid and secure democracy in the Middle East, endangered by Iranian nukes, and in need of unwavering American friendship and support in tumultuous times fully convince the President, the Congress and the American people to stand with Israel through the darkest of times that are steadily approaching?

I would like to believe this will be the case, but Bible prophecy says otherwise.

The Hebrew Prophets such as Ezekiel, Daniel, Isaiah, Jeremiah and Joel tell us again and again that Israel will be all alone in the last days of history. All the nations will eventually turn against her. All the nations will work to divide the Land of Israel. Jerusalem, too, will be divided. The New Testament reconfirms this. Indeed, the Scriptures indicate that the only hope for Israel is for her to turn fully and completely to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. As the “time of Jacob’s troubles” approaches — as the Day of the Lord approaches — the Bible tells us that the nations will betray the Jewish people. Only the Lord will be faithful. The question is, when the dark times come will Israelis turn their hearts to the Lord?

The Hebrew Prophet Joel warned us that the Lord is going to judge “all the nations” because “they have divided up My Land.” (Joel 3:2) Yet Joel doesn’t call Israel to political activism, to international diplomacy, to military adventurism, or any other human endeavor. The Lord says through the Prophet Joel, “‘Yet even now, return to Me with all your heart, and with fasting, weeping and mourning; and rend your heart and not your garments’…Now, return to the Lord your God for He is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in lovingkindness and relenting of evil.” (Joel 2:12-13) And if Israel does this, Joel tells us: “Then the Lord will be zealous for His land and will have pity on His people.” (Joel 2:18, 27)

The Prime Minister’s speech to Congress was excellent in many ways. He rightly described the “epic battle” underway in the epicenter. He described a great shaking going on in the Middle East. He rightly warned that Iran and her nuclear program is the greatest threat, that Hamas is the new al Qaeda, and that in all of the Arab world, only Israeli Arabs have true safety, security, and fully protected human and civil rights. I’ve included some important excerpts from the speech below. However, it should be noted that Netanyahu never cited the Bible, never called on the name of the Lord, and never called the Jewish people to trust fully and completely in the God of Israel, but rather promised to divide the land of Israel as a concession to the Palestinians, even while promising never to divide Jerusalem. These were mistakes. He wasn’t the first Israeli Prime Minister to make them. But he is making them nonetheless. He was right to thank the U.S. for all our help and support of Israel over the years, and he was right to seek continued help and support from the American people and government. But neither he nor Israel should become dependent upon American help because the Bible tells us it won’t be there for long.

The Bible is clear: only the Lord will save Israel. It is time for Israelis to consider this very carefully. For time is short. “The Day of the Lord is coming; surely it is near.” (Joel 2:1)

Excerpts of PM’s speech to Congress:

  • “An epic battle is now unfolding in the Middle East, between tyranny and freedom. A great convulsion is shaking the earth from the Khyber Pass to the Straits of Gibraltar. The tremors have shattered states and toppled governments. And we can all see that the ground is still shifting….”
  • “These extraordinary scenes in Tunis and Cairo, evoke those of Berlin and Prague in 1989. Yet as we share their hopes, we also must remember that those hopes could be snuffed out as they were in Tehran in 1979. You remember what happened then. The brief democratic spring in Iran was cut short by a ferocious and unforgiving tyranny. This same tyranny smothered Lebanon’s democratic Cedar Revolution, and inflicted on that long-suffering country, the medieval rule of Hezbollah. So today, the Middle East stands at a fateful crossroads…”
  • “Courageous Arab protesters, are now struggling to secure these very same rights for their peoples, for their societies. We’re proud that over one million Arab citizens of Israel (Note: Israel’s total population as of 2011 is approximately 7.7 million) have been enjoying these rights for decades. Of the 300 million Arabs in the Middle East and North Africa, only Israel’s Arab citizens enjoy real democratic rights. I want you to stop for a second and think about that. Of those 300 million Arabs, less than one-half of one-percent are truly free, and they’re all citizens of Israel! This startling fact reveals a basic truth: Israel is not what is wrong about the Middle East. Israel is what is right about the Middle East….”
  • “When I last stood here, I spoke of the dire consequences of Iran developing nuclear weapons. Now time is running out, and the hinge of history may soon turn. For the greatest danger facing humanity could soon be upon us: A militant Islamic regime armed with nuclear weapons. Militant Islam threatens the world. It threatens Islam. I have no doubt that it will ultimately be defeated. It will eventually succumb to the forces of freedom and progress. But like other fanatacisms that were doomed to fail, militant Islam could exact a horrific price from all of us before its inevitable demise. A nuclear-armed Iran would ignite a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. It would give terrorists a nuclear umbrella. It would make the nightmare of nuclear terrorism a clear and present danger throughout the world. I want you to understand what this means. They could put the bomb anywhere. They could put it on a missile. It could be on a container ship in a port, or in a suitcase on a subway….”
  • “Now the threat to my country cannot be overstated. Those who dismiss it are sticking their heads in the sand. Less than seven decades after six million Jews were murdered, Iran’s leaders deny the Holocaust of the Jewish people, while calling for the annihilation of the Jewish state….”
  • “The Ayatollah regime briefly suspended its nuclear program only once, in 2003, when it feared the possibility of military action. That same year, Muammar Qadaffi gave up his nuclear weapons program, and for the same reason. The more Iran believes that all options are on the table, the less the chance of confrontation. This is why I ask you to continue to send an unequivocal message: That America will never permit Iran to develop nuclear weapons. As for Israel, if history has taught the Jewish people anything, it is that we must take calls for our destruction seriously. We are a nation that rose from the ashes of the Holocaust. When we say never again, we mean never again. Israel always reserves the right to defend itself….”
  • “Two years ago, I publicly committed to a solution of two states for two peoples: A Palestinian state alongside the Jewish state. I am willing to make painful compromises to achieve this historic peace. As the leader of Israel, it is my responsibility to lead my people to peace. This is not easy for me. I recognize that in a genuine peace, we will be required to give up parts of the Jewish homeland. In Judea and Samaria, the Jewish people are not foreign occupiers. We are not the British in India. We are not the Belgians in the Congo. This is the land of our forefathers, the Land of Israel, to which Abraham brought the idea of one God, where David set out to confront Goliath, and where Isaiah saw a vision of eternal peace. No distortion of history can deny the four thousand year old bond, between the Jewish people and the Jewish land….”
  • “So now here is the question. You have to ask it. If the benefits of peace with the Palestinians are so clear, why has peace eluded us?   Because all six Israeli Prime Ministers since the signing of Oslo accords agreed to establish a Palestinian state. Myself included. So why has peace not been achieved?  Because so far, the Palestinians have been unwilling to accept a Palestinian state, if it meant accepting a Jewish state alongside it. You see, our conflict has never been about the establishment of a Palestinian state. It has always been about the existence of the Jewish state. This is what this conflict is about. In 1947, the United Nations voted to partition the land into a Jewish state and an Arab state. The Jews said yes. The Palestinians said no. In recent years, the Palestinians twice refused generous offers by Israeli Prime Ministers, to establish a Palestinian state on virtually all the territory won by Israel in the Six Day War. They were simply unwilling to end the conflict. And I regret to say this: They continue to educate their children to hate. They continue to name public squares after terrorists. And worst of all, they continue to perpetuate the fantasy that Israel will one day be flooded by the descendants of Palestinian refugees….”
  • “My friends, this must come to an end. President Abbas must do what I have done. I stood before my people, and I told you it wasn’t easy for me, and I said: ‘I will accept a Palestinian state.’ It is time for President Abbas to stand before his people and say: ‘I will accept a Jewish state.’….”
  • “As for Jerusalem, only a democratic Israel has protected freedom of worship for all faiths in the city. Jerusalem must never again be divided. Jerusalem must remain the united capital of Israel. I know that this is a difficult issue for Palestinians. But I believe with creativity and goodwill a solution can be found….”
  • “Hamas is not a partner for peace. Hamas remains committed to Israel’s destruction and to terrorism. They have a charter. That charter not only calls for the obliteration of Israel, but says ‘kill the Jews wherever you find them’. Hamas’ leader condemned the killing of Osama bin Laden and praised him as a holy warrior. Now again I want to make this clear. Israel is prepared to sit down today and negotiate peace with the Palestinian Authority. I believe we can fashion a brilliant future of peace for our children. But Israel will not negotiate with a Palestinian government backed by the Palestinian version of Al Qaeda. So I say to President Abbas: Tear up your pact with Hamas! Sit down and negotiate! Make peace with the Jewish state! And if you do, I promise you this. Israel will not be the last country to welcome a Palestinian state as a new member of the United Nations. It will be the first to do so….”

Headlines to Track

ISRAEL, PROPHECY AND THE “DAY OF THE LORD”: Understanding the Book of Joel

(Note:  I prefer to post the scripture that we are studying so that you can read and have the Holy Spirit interpret it for you.)
Joel 1
(New King James Version)

 1 The word of the LORD that came to Joel the son of Pethuel.
The Land Laid Waste

    2 Hear this, you elders,
      And give ear, all you inhabitants of the land!
      Has anything like this happened in your days,
      Or even in the days of your fathers?
       3 Tell your children about it,
      Let your children tell their children,
      And their children another generation.
       4 What the chewing locust[a] left, the swarming locust has eaten;
      What the swarming locust left, the crawling locust has eaten;
      And what the crawling locust left, the consuming locust has eaten.
       5 Awake, you drunkards, and weep;
      And wail, all you drinkers of wine,
      Because of the new wine,
      For it has been cut off from your mouth.
       6 For a nation has come up against My land,
      Strong, and without number;
      His teeth are the teeth of a lion,
      And he has the fangs of a fierce lion.
       7 He has laid waste My vine,
      And ruined My fig tree;
      He has stripped it bare and thrown it away;
      Its branches are made white.
       8 Lament like a virgin girded with sackcloth
      For the husband of her youth.
       9 The grain offering and the drink offering
      Have been cut off from the house of the LORD;
      The priests mourn, who minister to the LORD.
       10 The field is wasted,
      The land mourns;
      For the grain is ruined,
      The new wine is dried up,
      The oil fails.
       11 Be ashamed, you farmers,
      Wail, you vinedressers,
      For the wheat and the barley;
      Because the harvest of the field has perished.
       12 The vine has dried up,
      And the fig tree has withered;
      The pomegranate tree,
      The palm tree also,
      And the apple tree—
      All the trees of the field are withered;
      Surely joy has withered away from the sons of men.

Mourning for the Land

    13 Gird yourselves and lament, you priests;
      Wail, you who minister before the altar;
      Come, lie all night in sackcloth,
      You who minister to my God;
      For the grain offering and the drink offering
      Are withheld from the house of your God.
       14 Consecrate a fast,
      Call a sacred assembly;
      Gather the elders
      And all the inhabitants of the land
      Into the house of the LORD your God,
      And cry out to the LORD.
       15 Alas for the day!
      For the day of the LORD is at hand;
      It shall come as destruction from the Almighty.
       16 Is not the food cut off before our eyes,
      Joy and gladness from the house of our God?
       17 The seed shrivels under the clods,
      Storehouses are in shambles;
      Barns are broken down,
      For the grain has withered.
       18 How the animals groan!
      The herds of cattle are restless,
      Because they have no pasture;
      Even the flocks of sheep suffer punishment.[b]
       19 O LORD, to You I cry out;
      For fire has devoured the open pastures,
      And a flame has burned all the trees of the field.
       20 The beasts of the field also cry out to You,
      For the water brooks are dried up,
      And fire has devoured the open pastures.
Footnotes:    Joel 1:4 Exact identity of these locusts is unknown.
    Joel 1:18 Septuagint and Vulgate read are made desolate.

Joel 2
The Day of the LORD

 1 Blow the trumpet in Zion,
      And sound an alarm in My holy mountain!
      Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble;
      For the day of the LORD is coming,
      For it is at hand:
       2 A day of darkness and gloominess,
      A day of clouds and thick darkness,
      Like the morning clouds spread over the mountains.
      A people come, great and strong,
      The like of whom has never been;
      Nor will there ever be any such after them,
      Even for many successive generations.
       3 A fire devours before them,
      And behind them a flame burns;
      The land is like the Garden of Eden before them,
      And behind them a desolate wilderness;
      Surely nothing shall escape them.
       4 Their appearance is like the appearance of horses;
      And like swift steeds, so they run.
       5 With a noise like chariots
      Over mountaintops they leap,
      Like the noise of a flaming fire that devours the stubble,
      Like a strong people set in battle array.
       6 Before them the people writhe in pain;
      All faces are drained of color.[a]
       7 They run like mighty men,
      They climb the wall like men of war;
      Every one marches in formation,
      And they do not break ranks.
       8 They do not push one another;
      Every one marches in his own column.[b]
      Though they lunge between the weapons,
      They are not cut down.[c]
       9 They run to and fro in the city,
      They run on the wall;
      They climb into the houses,
      They enter at the windows like a thief.
       10 The earth quakes before them,
      The heavens tremble;
      The sun and moon grow dark,
      And the stars diminish their brightness.
       11 The LORD gives voice before His army,
      For His camp is very great;
      For strong is the One who executes His word.
      For the day of the LORD is great and very terrible;
      Who can endure it?
A Call to Repentance
    12 “ Now, therefore,” says the LORD,      “ Turn to Me with all your heart,
      With fasting, with weeping, and with mourning.”
       13 So rend your heart, and not your garments;
      Return to the LORD your God,
      For He is gracious and merciful,
      Slow to anger, and of great kindness;
      And He relents from doing harm.
       14 Who knows if He will turn and relent,
      And leave a blessing behind Him—
      A grain offering and a drink offering
      For the LORD your God?
       15 Blow the trumpet in Zion,
      Consecrate a fast,
      Call a sacred assembly;
       16 Gather the people,
      Sanctify the congregation,
      Assemble the elders,
      Gather the children and nursing babes;
      Let the bridegroom go out from his chamber,
      And the bride from her dressing room.
       17 Let the priests, who minister to the LORD,
      Weep between the porch and the altar;
      Let them say, “Spare Your people, O LORD,
      And do not give Your heritage to reproach,
      That the nations should rule over them.
      Why should they say among the peoples,      ‘ Where is their God?’”
The Land Refreshed
    18 Then the LORD will be zealous for His land,
      And pity His people.
       19 The LORD will answer and say to His people,      “ Behold, I will send you grain and new wine and oil,
      And you will be satisfied by them;
      I will no longer make you a reproach among the nations.
       20 “ But I will remove far from you the northern army,
      And will drive him away into a barren and desolate land,
      With his face toward the eastern sea
      And his back toward the western sea;
      His stench will come up,
      And his foul odor will rise,
      Because he has done monstrous things.”
       21 Fear not, O land;
      Be glad and rejoice,
      For the LORD has done marvelous things!
       22 Do not be afraid, you beasts of the field;
      For the open pastures are springing up,
      And the tree bears its fruit;
      The fig tree and the vine yield their strength.
       23 Be glad then, you children of Zion,
      And rejoice in the LORD your God;
      For He has given you the former rain faithfully,[d]
      And He will cause the rain to come down for you—
      The former rain,
      And the latter rain in the first month.
       24 The threshing floors shall be full of wheat,
      And the vats shall overflow with new wine and oil.
       25 “ So I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten,
      The crawling locust,
      The consuming locust,
      And the chewing locust,[e]
      My great army which I sent among you.
       26 You shall eat in plenty and be satisfied,
      And praise the name of the LORD your God,
      Who has dealt wondrously with you;
      And My people shall never be put to shame.
       27 Then you shall know that I am in the midst of Israel:
      I am the LORD your God
      And there is no other.
      My people shall never be put to shame.
God’s Spirit Poured Out
    28 “ And it shall come to pass afterward
      That I will pour out My Spirit on all flesh;
      Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
      Your old men shall dream dreams,
      Your young men shall see visions.
       29 And also on My menservants and on My maidservants
      I will pour out My Spirit in those days.
       30 “ And I will show wonders in the heavens and in the earth:
      Blood and fire and pillars of smoke.
       31 The sun shall be turned into darkness,
      And the moon into blood,
      Before the coming of the great and awesome day of the LORD.
       32 And it shall come to pass
      That whoever calls on the name of the LORD
      Shall be saved.
      For in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem there shall be deliverance,
      As the LORD has said,
      Among the remnant whom the LORD calls.Footnotes:    Joel 2:6 Septuagint, Targum, and Vulgate read gather blackness.
    Joel 2:8 Literally his own highway
    Joel 2:8 That is, they are not halted by losses
    Joel 2:23 Or the teacher of righteousness
    Joel 2:25 Compare 1:4

Joel 3
God Judges the Nations

 1 “For behold, in those days and at that time,
      When I bring back the captives of Judah and Jerusalem,
       2 I will also gather all nations,
      And bring them down to the Valley of Jehoshaphat;
      And I will enter into judgment with them there
      On account of My people, My heritage Israel,
      Whom they have scattered among the nations;
      They have also divided up My land.
       3 They have cast lots for My people,
      Have given a boy as payment for a harlot,
      And sold a girl for wine, that they may drink.
       4 “ Indeed, what have you to do with Me,
      O Tyre and Sidon, and all the coasts of Philistia?
      Will you retaliate against Me?
      But if you retaliate against Me,
      Swiftly and speedily I will return your retaliation upon your own head;
       5 Because you have taken My silver and My gold,
      And have carried into your temples My prized possessions.
       6 Also the people of Judah and the people of Jerusalem
      You have sold to the Greeks,
      That you may remove them far from their borders.
       7 “ Behold, I will raise them
      Out of the place to which you have sold them,
      And will return your retaliation upon your own head.
       8 I will sell your sons and your daughters
      Into the hand of the people of Judah,
      And they will sell them to the Sabeans,[a]
      To a people far off;
      For the LORD has spoken.”
       9 Proclaim this among the nations:      “ Prepare for war!
      Wake up the mighty men,
      Let all the men of war draw near,
      Let them come up.
       10 Beat your plowshares into swords
      And your pruning hooks into spears;
      Let the weak say, ‘I am strong.’”
       11 Assemble and come, all you nations,
      And gather together all around.
      Cause Your mighty ones to go down there, O LORD.
       12 “ Let the nations be wakened, and come up to the Valley of Jehoshaphat;
      For there I will sit to judge all the surrounding nations.
       13 Put in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe.
      Come, go down;
      For the winepress is full,
      The vats overflow—
      For their wickedness is great.”
       14 Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision!
      For the day of the LORD is near in the valley of decision.
       15 The sun and moon will grow dark,
      And the stars will diminish their brightness.
       16 The LORD also will roar from Zion,
      And utter His voice from Jerusalem;
      The heavens and earth will shake;
      But the LORD will be a shelter for His people,
      And the strength of the children of Israel.
       17 “ So you shall know that I am the LORD your God,
      Dwelling in Zion My holy mountain.
      Then Jerusalem shall be holy,
      And no aliens shall ever pass through her again.”
God Blesses His People
    18 And it will come to pass in that day
      That the mountains shall drip with new wine,
      The hills shall flow with milk,
      And all the brooks of Judah shall be flooded with water;
      A fountain shall flow from the house of the LORD
      And water the Valley of Acacias.
       19 “ Egypt shall be a desolation,
      And Edom a desolate wilderness,
      Because of violence against the people of Judah,
      For they have shed innocent blood in their land.
       20 But Judah shall abide forever,
      And Jerusalem from generation to generation.
       21 For I will acquit them of the guilt of bloodshed, whom I had not acquitted;
      For the LORD dwells in Zion.”Footnotes:    Joel 3:8 Literally Shebaites (compare Isaiah 60:6 and Ezekiel 27:22)
———————————————————————
June 7, 2011 by joelcrosenberg

This week marks the 44th anniversary of the Six Day War, the historic reunification of Jerusalem under Jewish control, and the dramatic retaking of the Biblical heartland known as Judea and Samaria by the prophetically reborn Jewish State. It is a week of celebration for Israeli Jews, but a week of mourning and violent protests for Israel’s Arab neighbors. As I write this, Iranian leaders says the End of Days has come and the Twelfth Imam will emerge from occultation very soon. They are calling for the annihilation of Israel, sending an Iranian submarine to the Red Sea, and a new report says Iran could build nuclear weapons in just two months. Meanwhile, violence is spiking on the Syrian-Israeli border and the Egyptians have just legalized the Muslim Brotherhood as a political party.

A growing number of Muslims, Jews and Christians believe we are living in the last days of human history as we have known it. Are they right? Are the tumultuous events and trends underway in the Middle East and around the world signs that the Messiah is coming to Earth soon to judge and to rule and reign from Jerusalem? What is the “Day of the Lord”? What are the “last days”? What does Bible prophecy teach about such things? And how should we live in light of such prophecies?

Answering these questions was the focus of the 2011 Epicenter Conference, which took place in Jerusalem on May 15-16. One Day One, a group of internationally renowned Bible teachers and I taught through the Old Testament “Book of Joel” verse by verse, chapter by chapter. We then had a panel discussion on lessons for Israel and the Church drawn from the Book of Joel. One Day Two, we had a series of panels where highly-regarded Israeli, Palestinian, American, Iranian and Indian pastors and Bible teachers explored the implications of these Bible prophecies for Israel and the Church in more depth in light of current events.

I believe God wants all of Israel and all of the Church to turn our attention to the Book of Joel in the weeks and months ahead. There is a critically important message there that is on the Lord’s heart and it is deeply relevant for our time. Over the next few days, I’m going to share with you my own personal study and message notes from the Book of Joel. I hope you will find them helpful as you study the writings of this important minor prophet and teach them to others.

Let’s begin today with an overview. What follows are the notes I used to deliver the first message of the 2011 Epicenter Conference.

THE DAY OF THE LORD IS COMING: An overview of the Book of Joel

  1. The focus of this year’s Epicenter Conference is the Book of Joel. Today, we will go through the Book of Joel verse by verse, chapter by chapter. We’ll observe, interpret and begin to apply. What does this fascinating ancient text say? What does it mean? And what does it mean to you and I today whether we live in Israel or anywhere else around the world?
  2. Tomorrow, we will take the next step. We’ll explore a range of threats facing Israel and her neighbors and consider these threats – and how to respond to them – in light of what we learn from the Book of Joel and the rest of the Holy Scriptures.
  3. The question that might reasonably be asked is, “Why?” Joel is not a particularly popular book of the Bible. Some pastors refer to it. Some teach through it. But most don’t. Why, then, should we? It’s a good question and one I’d like to address before we dive in with our blessed line up of internationally renowned Bible teachers.
  4. Let me start by saying it’s not because it’s my favorite book of the Bible, though it is and it has been since I was in high school — and yet I have never taught the Book of Joel before today or ever attended a church or conference where I heard it taught cover to cover.
  5. And it’s not because my life verse comes from the Book of Joel, though it does, again since high school – Joel 2:11….“The Lord thunders at the head of His army; unlimited are His forces, and mighty are those who obey His command. The Day of the Lord is great and dreadful. Who can endure it?”
  6. And it’s not because my friend, Pastor Ray Bentley, called me one day a few years ago and said we really need to have an Epicenter Conference that teaches through the Book of Joel, though he did, and I thought He was right, and have been praying about it ever since.
  7. All these are contributing factors. But the reason is more simple and far more profound: the Lord told us to proclaim in 2011 in the message He proclaimed through the Prophet Joel thousands of years ago, and we are being obedient to that heavenly command. There is a message here that is relevant for our time. There are warnings here that we dare not ignore. There is a sense of urgency in the heavenlies we need to share. This is a book that is near and dear to the heart of the Father…there is a fallen world that is not listening…and a Church that by and large is not proclaiming. May we purpose in our hearts today to change course while we still can.

Basic Background

  1. WHO: The author is the Hebrew Prophet Joel (1:1)
    • “Joel” means “Jehovah is God” or the “Lord is God”
    • Joel was the “son of Pethuel” (1:1), which means: “vision of God”
    • We don’t learn much about the life and ministry of the Prophet Joel in this book or anywhere else in the Bible. Why? Because the Book of Joel isn’t about Joel – it’s about the coming of the Day of the Lord and God’s call on Israel and all men and women everywhere to repent, turn away from their sins, and get ready to meet the Lord face to face, before it is too late.
  2. WHAT: This small book of the Bible (three chapters in English; four chapters in Hebrew) is a book of End Times prophecy.
    • The Lord speaks to Israel, to the Church, and to all the nations through the Hebrew Prophet Joel, telling us details about the future and sharing His heart that all men and women everywhere would choose to turn to the Lord and let Him change and restore our lives.
    • The Book of Joel is referred or alluded to numerous times in the New Testament. A few notable examples:
      • The Apostle Peter quotes “the prophet Joel” directly in Acts 2:16-21
      • The Lord Jesus refers to Joel 2:10, “the sun and the moon [will] grow dark and the stars lose their brightness” before the Day of the Lord, when He describes the signs of the last days in Matthew 24:29
      • The Apostle Paul cites Joel 2:32, “Whoever will call on the name of the Lord will be saved,” in Romans 10:13
      • The Apostle John alludes to Joel 2:10 when he describes events of the Tribulation in Revelation 8:12
      • The Apostle John alludes to the Book of Joel and language of the locust invasion in Revelation chapter 9
  3. WHEN: Unlike many other books in the Bible, the Book of Joel provides us with no clear, definitive time references regarding when it was written.
    • Some scholars say around in the 9th century B.C.
    • Some say 6th or 7th century B.C.
    • Some say in the 5th century, B.C.
    • The fact is, we simply don’t know for certain
    • Why doesn’t the Lord want us to know precisely when the book was written? Because the Book of Joel wasn’t written to get us focused on the past. It was written to get us focused on the future and the coming of the “Day of the Lord” and to get our hearts ready for that Day
  4. WHERE: The events described in these prophecies take place in Israel, Jerusalem, Judah and Zion
    • Israel is mentioned 3 times in the book
      • 2:27
      • 3:2
      • 3:16
    • Jerusalem is mentioned 4 times in the book
      • 3:1
      • 3:6
      • 3:17
      • 3:20
    • Judah is mentioned 6 times in the book
      • 3:1
      • 3:6
      • 3:8
      • 3:18
      • 3:19
      • 3:20
    • Zion is mentioned 7 times in the book
      • 2:1
      • 2:15
      • 2:23
      • 2:32
      • 3:16
      • 3:17
      • 3:21
    • The “fig trees” of Israel are referred to 3 times in the book. [NOTE: Figs and fig trees are often used throughout the Bible as symbols of the nation or state of Israel. In Matthew 24:32-33, the Lord Jesus referred to the “parable of the fig tree” to tell us that the State of Israel would be prophetically reborn in the last days and that in the last days the Jewish people would prophetically return to the Holy Land after centuries of exile. Other examples of Israel connected to fig trees can be found in Jeremiah 24….1 Kings 4:21-26 (“So Judah and Israel lived in safety, every man under his vine and his fig tree, from Dan even to Beersheba, all the days of Solomon”)….and in Habakkuk 3:16-17, to name a few.]
      • 1:7
      • 1:12
      • 2:22
  5. WHY: The Book of Joel was written for several reasons. Among them:
    1. To serve as a “wake up call” to the people of Israel, Judah and Jerusalem to prepare for and repent ahead of the coming “Day of the Lord,” judgments that would be similar to but far worse than the devastating plague of locusts Israel once experienced.
    2. To serve as a “trumpet call” to all those who love the Lord and His Word and profess to be the Lord’s followers to prepare for and repent ahead of the coming “Day of the Lord.”
    3. To serve as a warning to the nations that in the Day of the Lord they will face judgment for sins they have committed against Israel and the Jewish people.
    4. To highlight the importance of the “Day of the Lord.” Joel mentions the “Day of the Lord” in each chapter and five times in total (1:15, 2:1, 2:11, 2:30, 3:14). The “Day of the Lord” – and similar/related Biblical references such as “the day” and “that day” and others – are mentioned more than 70 times in the New American Standard translation of the Bible.
    • What is the “Day of the Lord” and is it different from the “last days”? 
    • The “last days” is the Biblical term describing the period of time filled with prophetic events of signs and wonders that lead up to the Rapture of the Church, the period between the Rapture and the Tribulation, and the Tribulation itself, all of which build towards the Second Coming.
    • The last days – characterized by:
    •  wars, rumors of wars,
    • revolutions,
    • natural disasters,
    • the rise of false messiahs/prophets/teachers,
    • apostasy,
    • lawlessness,
    • persecution of the believers,
    • the spread of the gospel to all nations,
    • the rebirth of Israel,
    • and similar signs described in the Bible – are a time of great trauma for the world as well as God’s mercy, for the Bible indicates that many will come to faith in Jesus Christ during the last days.
    • The “Day of the Lord” is the Biblical term describing the culmination of the last days of world history as we have known it — specifically, it refers to the actual, physical, literal Second Coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. This is the time when Jesus Christ wins the Battle of Armageddon and the Battle of Jerusalem and then His feet literally touch down on the Mount of Olives, splitting the mountain into two, as foretold by the Prophet Zechariah. The Day of the Lord is described throughout the Scriptures as a day of darkness, gloom, distress and judgment for the nations. The Day of the Lord sets into motion the setting up of the Millennial Kingdom in which Jesus Christ will reign from a new Temple in Jerusalem for a literal 1,000 year period, as described in the Book of Revelation.
  1. “The Day of the Lord is coming; surely it is near” – “Blow a trumpet in Zion, and sound an alarm on My holy mountain! Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble, for the Day of the Lord is coming; surely it is near.” (Joel 2:1) As we studied the biblical Book of Joel from the Old Testament verse by verse, chapter by chapter, each of the keynote speakers noted that “the Day of the Lord” is a the major theme. The Hebrew Prophet Joel mentions the phrase five times and explains some of the details of the coming series of divine judgments that are coming and the gravity of the apocalyptic future that is rushing towards us. In my introduction to and overview of the Book of Joel (which is the first 15 minutes of  the on-line video on Joel chapter 1 with Anne Graham Lotz), I noted that the biblical phrase of the “last days” refers to the signs and wonders and events that lead up to throughout the Rapture and the seven-year Tribulation, also known from the Prophet Jeremiah as the “time of Jacob’s distress.” The biblical term “Day of the Lord” refers to the culmination of the “last days.” It is a time of judgment for those who reject the Lord and refuse to follow Him, and also the time of the actual, physical, literal return of Jesus Christ to the Earth when He will win the Battle of Armageddon, win the Battle of Jerusalem, His feet will touch down on the Mount of Olives (splitting the mountain in two), and Jesus will set up His literal 1,000 year reign over all the Earth from the throne of David in Jerusalem during the Millennial Kingdom.
  2. “Return to Me,” says the Lord — “‘Yet even now,’ declares the Lord, ‘return to Me with all your heart, and with fasting, weeping and mourning; and rend your heart and not your garments.’ Now return to the Lord your God for He is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in lovingkindness and relenting of evil.” (Joel 2:12-13) Given that the Day of the Lord is coming soon, the Lord says through the Prophet Joel to anyone who will listen to repent and implore God for mercy and forgiveness of their sins before the judgments begin and the Lord comes back. Each of the conference speakers discuss the urgency of turning our hearts away from sin and back to the Lord, and several spoke about the process of repentance in very personal terms.
  3. Do not divide the Land of Israel — In my message about the final chapter of the Book of Joel, I explained the warning to the nations that the Lord gives. I focused in particular on Joel 3:2 (which is 4:2 in the Hebrew Bible) in which the Lord says, “I will gather all the nations and bring them down to the valley of Jehoshaphat. Then I will enter into judgment with them there on behalf of My people and My inheritance, Israel, whom they have scattered among the nations; and they have divided up My land.” The Bible is very clear: the Lord is going to judge all the nations for dividing up the Land of Israel. Let the United Nations and the United States and the European Union and the Palestinian Authority and the Israeli government itself be warned. What appears like wisdom to the world — carving up the State of Israel like a Thanksgiving turkey — is direct disobedience to the Word of God and will trigger the most severe divine judgment. This is a hard truth for many to hear and to hold, particularly for Palestinian Arabs and others in the epicenter. But we do Israel’s Arab friends and enemies no favors by denying, obfuscating or trying to explain away the clear teaching of the Lord found in the Scriptures. We must teach the truth. We must do so gently and lovingly, but we must also be clear and firm.

On this last point, we had a special guest on Day 2 of the Epicenter Conference. I interviewed Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon and we discussed the Iran threat, the latest violence in the region by Palestinian Arabs, and the future of the peace process. During our conversation, I drew his attention to these Scriptures and urged him not to divide the Land, and to share these verses with the Prime Minister and the Cabinet.

>> Anti-Israel leader and his party win elections in Turkey

Record breaking natural disasters keep happening around the world. The global economy remains in serious trouble. Millions are sinking into poverty. Islam is spreading around the world. Rumors of new wars in the Middle East are mounting. New threats to Israel are metastasizing. Yet as the world is being shaken and serious new threats and challenges are rising, so much of the world seems to be asleep. Alarm bells are going off, yet so much of the Church seems to be asleep as well, intoxicated by the pleasures of the world and unable or unwilling to respond to the call of God to pray, fast, and repent despite the fact that, as the Hebrew Prophet Joel wrote in the Bible, ”the day of the Lord is coming; surely it is near.”

“It is time to wake up.” 

As we read in Joel 1:14-15,“Consecrate a fast, proclaim a solemn assembly; gather the elders and all the inhabitants of the land to the house of the LORD your God, and cry out to the LORD. Alas for the day! For the day of the LORD is near.”

 I hope you will find these notes helpful as you study the writings of this important minor prophet and teach them to others.

Joel Chapter One: “A Wake Up Call”

  1. The first 13 verses of chapter one reference an actual, historic disaster, a literal plague of locusts that has just so devastated the “inhabitants of the land” of Israel that it will be remembered for generations to come. (1:2)
  2. The Hebrew Prophet Joel does not begin by describing a prophetic or metaphoric event. He is referring to an actual historic event. The Lord is saying to all the current inhabitants of the land of Israel, “Has anything (else) like this happened in your days or in your fathers’ days?” (1:2)
  3. The Lord is saying through Joel that the devastation that has been wrought foreshadows a future apocalyptic disaster coming to Israel in the End Times.
  4. Locust plagues are classic forms of God’s judgment in Scripture, both in times past and in End Times prophecies yet to be fulfilled.
  5. The Lord used Moses and Aaron to bring a plague of locusts as the 8th plague against the Pharoah and the Egyptian people during the events of the Exodus (Exodus 10:1-20)
  6. The Lord used Moses to warn the children of Israel to obey Him fully when they enter the Promised Land or one of the judgments they will suffer will be plagues of locusts who will consume their fields (Deuteronomy 28:15,25,38)
  7. King Solomon prayed to the Lord, asking if a plague of locusts ever came upon the children of Israel as a judgment and they should repent and pray and come back to the house of the Lord – the Temple that they were dedicating that day — that the Lord would hear from heaven and forgive them and heal their land (1 Kings 8:37-40)
  8. The Lord responded to Solomon’s prayer and said that if there were a plague of locusts due to judgment and the children of Israel repented of their sins and turned back to the Lord and truly prayed and sought His face that He would hear from heaven and forgive their sins and heal their land (2 Chronicles 7:13-14)
  9. The Lord used the Apostle John in the Book of Revelation to warn Israel and the world that during the terrible events of the “Great Tribulation” when the 5th of 7 trumpets of judgment sounds, He will unleash a plague of demonic locusts and bring about a terrible devastation. (Revelation 9:1-12)
  10. In the Book of Joel, chapter one, the Lord speaks through the prophet to various groups of people in Israel who have been devastated by the actual, historic locust plagues:  “Elders,” who are supposed to hear God’s Word (1:2); ”All inhabitants” of Israel, who are supposed to listen to God’s Word (1:2); ”Drunkards,” who are supposed to wake up (1:5); ”Wine drinkers,” who are supposed to wail (1:5); ”Virgins,” who are supposed to wail (1:8);  ”Bridegrooms,” who are supposed to wail (1:8); ”Priests,” who are supposed to mourn/wail/lament (1:9, 13); ”Ministers of the Lord,” who are supposed to mourn/wail (1:9, 13); ”Farmers,” who are supposed to “be ashamed” (1:11); and “Vinedressers,” who are supposed to wail (1:11)
  11. Interesting are some of those not mentioned: No mention of a king (the words king/kings/kingdom/etc are used 2,597 times in the New American Standard Bible, but not here);  No mention of government leaders of any kind; No mention of prophets (the word prophet is used 461 times in the NASB, but not here)
  12. Perhaps the most important verse of chapter one is verse 5 is “Awake!”
  13. This chapter is a wake up call for Israel, who should know better than to live in such sin because they have been given the Holy Scriptures and the prophets….and for the Church — people who say they are followers of the Lord Jesus Christ – who should know better than to live in such sin because they have the Holy Scriptures to teach and guide them
  14. The question is: Will we wake up?
  15. Do we see how far we are from the God who made us and loves us and is jealous for our love and affection?
  16. Do we realize how drunk we are — with alcohol, with illegal drugs, with legal drugs, with entertainment, with the “things of this world”?
  17. Do we realize how blind, deaf and dumb we are to what the Lord is trying to say to us through His Word?
  18. Do we realize that if we don’t turn around quickly, the Lord is going to come and rock our world, shake our world, devastate our world, until we choose to curse Him, or until we choose to fall at His feet and give Him the worship He so richly deserves?
  19. The good news is that the Lord tells the people through the Hebrew prophet what to do:
  20. First, we must wake up from our drunken, intoxicated stupor (1:5)
  21. Second, we are to consecrate a fast (1:14)
  22. Third, we are to proclaim a solemn assembly (1:14)
  23. Fourth, we are to gather the elders (1:14)
  24. Fifth, we are to gather all the inhabitants of the land (1:14)
  25. Sixth, we are to cry out to the Lord (1:14)
  26. What should we say when we cry out to the Lord? The rest of the Bible teaches us to cry out in repentance and ask the Lord Jesus Christ to forgive us, to help us, to heal us, to save us, to cleanse us, to adopt us into His family, to fill us with His Holy Spirit, and to teach us to walk in His ways. In John 1:12, we read, “But as many as received Him [Jesus, the Messiah], to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name.” In John 3:16, Jesus said, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life.”
  27. The Hebrew Prophet describes the urgency of getting right with the Lord — because the “Day of the Lord” is coming (1:15)
  28. It is near and will come as destruction from the Almighty
  29. There will be a horrific famine (1:17)
  30. There will be a horrific fire (1:19-20)
  31. Animals will suffer (1:18)
  32. People will suffer (1:19)
  33. Therefore, we should turn to the Lord now, before all these End Times judgments are unleashed.

Both the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament teach that in the “last days,” severe military threats will mount against the State of Israel, yet the Jewish state will become more and more isolated internationally. Ultimately, the Bible indicates that no country will come to the defense of the Jewish people when the major prophetic battles unfold and Israel’s enemies attack. Rather, Israel will find herself all alone in the world. This makes recent headlines all the more troubling, for international pressure against — and isolation of — the modern State of Israel seems to be intensifying this year. Consider the latest key stories from the epicenter from just the past few days and weeks:

In light of such disturbing trends, I am posting some of my notes covering chapter two of the “Book of Joel.” In his second chapter, the Hebrew prophet gives us so much vital information about the future of Israel and how to live in the last days that I won’t be able to cover it all in one posting. But I hope you will find these notes helpful as you study the writings of this important minor prophet and teach them to others. I would also encourage you to watch the message delivered at The Joshua Fund’s 2011 Epicenter Conference by Pastor Ray Bentley, who taught on Joel 2:1-17. In a few days, Lord willing, I will post my notes covering the rest of chapter two.

Chapter Two: “A Trumpet Call for Israel and the Church”

  1. As the “Day of the Lord” approaches in the last days, those who know the Lord, follow the Lord, listen to the Lord, study the Word of the Lord, and teach the Word of the Lord are supposed to do a series of things:
  2. Understand that danger is coming and thus  ”blow a trumpet in Zion” and ”sound an alarm” on God’s holy mountain — that is, call people to action (2:1)
  3. We are to alert “all” the inhabitants of the land of Israel that the “Day of the Lord is coming; surely it is near” (2:1)
  4. We are to let Israel know that the “Day of the Lord” will be a day of judgment, “a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness”
  5. We are to let Israel know that that the Day of the Lord will be historic….”there has never been anything like it” – even the previous apocalyptic plagues of locusts described in Joel chapter one – “nor will there ever be again after it” (2:2)
  6. We are to explain that the Day of the Lord will come with devastating fire that consumes everything in its path (2:3)
  7. We are to explain that the run up to the Day of the Lord will be traumatic — the land of Israel will suffer an invasion unlike anything in its history….the text indicates that the land of Israel will be completely overrun and will suffer serious devastation, far beyond the locust invasion that described in chapter one.
  8. What’s interesting is that in the first 24 verses of chapter two, the word “locust” is never mentioned. Rather, we have images that are similar to a classic locust invasion, but far more devastating.
  9. The appearance of the invaders is “like” the appearance of horses (2:4)
  10. And “like” war horses (2:4)
  11. They run “like” mighty men (2:5)
  12. They climb the wall “like” soldiers (2:7)
  13. So the invaders aren’t exactly locusts – they’re “like” locusts
  14. The invaders aren’t human soldiers – they’re “like” human soldiers
  15. Over the years, some Bible expositors have suggested that what we are seeing play out in the Book of Joel is the “War of Gog and Magog,” as prophesied in Ezekiel 38 and 39. There are several reasons for teachers to suggest this:
  16. The Hebrew Prophet Joel describes events that will happen in the last days, as does Ezekiel
  17. Joel seems to describe a land of Israel that is fertile and fruitful, like a Garden of Eden (Joel 2:3), and Ezekiel describes a land that has essentially recovered from devastating wars and is secure and prosperous (Ezekiel 38:8, 12)
  18. Joel describes a threat to Israel that is unprecedented in her history, as does Ezekiel
  19. Joel describes the Lord saying, “I will remove the northern army far from you” (Joel 2:20), and Ezekiel 38-39 describes the main threat to Israel coming from the north but destroyed by the Lord
  20. Joel describes the Lord pouring out His Spirit after defeat of the enemy (Joel 2:28-29), as does Ezekiel (Ezekiel 39:29)
  21. I certainly believe that the”War of Gog and Magog” described in Ezekiel 38-39 is real, serious, and coming sooner that many people think. That said, despite some similarities, I do not see the primary prophetic events described in the Book of Joel as being focused on Ezekiel’s ”War of Gog and Magog.” I say this for several reasons:
  22. The Hebrew Prophet Joel describes Israel as being fully invaded and completely overrun by enemy forces, like a locust invasion; this is not, however, what is described in Ezekiel 38-39 where the enemy comes against the mountains of Israel but is then supernaturally destroyed, unable to completely invade and overrun the land.
  23. Joel describes the land of Israel being devastated by fire (from the enemies), whereas Ezekiel describes the enemies of Israel being devastated by fire (from heaven)
  24. Joel describes the judgment of “all the nations” (3:2) occurring after the enemy is defeated, whereas Ezekiel describes a limited coalition of nations being judged during their defeat.
  25. Joel singles out Egypt for such severe judgment that the text says “Egypt will become a waste” (3:19), whereas mention of Egypt is noticeably absent from Ezekiel 38-39.
  26. Joel also singles out Edom (See note below) for such severe judgment that the text says “Edom will become a desolate wilderness because of the violence done to the sons of Judah in whose land they have shed innocent blood” (3:19), whereas mention of Edom is noticeably absent from Ezekiel 38-39.
  27. To understand the End Times events that the Hebrew Prophet Joel is foretelling, we need to study the prophecies of Revelation 9:1-12 and the events that occur after the 5th of 7 trumpets are blown during the Great Tribulation. Consider the following points:
  28. In the Book of Revelation,we read that out of Hell (“a bottomless pit filled with the smoke of a great furnace”) “came locusts upon the earth” (9:2)
  29. But the Bible indicates that these are not ordinary locusts — they have power like scorpions to injure with their tails (9:2, 5,6,10)
  30. These creatures are “told not to hurt the grass of the earth, nor any green thing, nor any tree” (9:4)
  31. These creatures are designed to attack mankind “who do not have the seal of God on their foreheads,” that is, those who are not born again followers of the Lord Jesus Christ (9:4)
  32. These creatures cannot kill but rather torment men for five months (9:5)
  33. Their appearance is “like” horses (9:7)
  34. They have faces “like” men (9:7)
  35. They have hair “like” the hair of women (9:8)
  36. They have teeth “like” the teeth of lions (9:8)
  37. They have armor “like” soldiers who have breastplates of iron (9:9)
  38. They sound “like” many horses rushing to battle (9:9)
  39. They have a king over them, “the angel of the abyss” whose name in Hebrew is “Abaddon,” and in Greek is “Apollyon”
  40. These are not really locusts, or human soldiers, though they are like both – these are demonic creatures ruled by a Satanic king
  41. They will come “upon the earth” with “power” (9:3)
  42. The Book of Revelation does not say these creatures will exclusively attack those in Israel – their attack will be global
  43. But the Book of Joel does indicate that such creatures will specifically invade Israel and bring great trauma and devastation — as Joel 2:11 says: “the Day of the Lord is indeed great and very terrible; who can endure it?”

(Note: What is Edom’s name today?

The country of Edom was founded by Jacob’s brother Esau. He picked up the nickname “Edom” or “Red” when he sold half of his massive inheritance for a simple bowl of red bean stew.

Edom was located in the region to the southeast of Israel. Mount Seir was a notable landmark in this region.

Edom and Israel, the people who descended from Jacob, never got along with each other. Skirmishes between the people happened often. Edom never got over its hatred of Israel. “Remember, O LORD, against the sons of Edom the day of Jerusalem, who said, “Raze it, raze it, to its very foundation!”” (Psalm 137:7). In other words, Edom was cheering the Babylonians on. When Israel fell because of their sins, Edom rejoiced at its fall and took the opportunity to raid the country. They even helped the Babylonians collect the stragglers left from the war (Obadiah 10-15).

God made several prophecies against Edom (Isaiah 35; 63:1-6; Jeremiah 49:7-22; Amos 1:11; Obadiah; Ezekiel 25:12-14; 35). However, the one that tells us what happened to Edom is found in Ezekiel 35.

In delivering punishments to various nations, we learn that God often turns the sin against the sinner. Edom rejoiced at the emptying of Israel and five years later, Nebuchadnezzar swept through again, destroying several nations and emptying their lands — including Edom. Here is what God promised Edom:

“Thus says the Lord GOD: “Behold, O Mount Seir, I am against you; I will stretch out My hand against you, And make you most desolate; I shall lay your cities waste, And you shall be desolate. Then you shall know that I am the LORD. Because you have had an ancient hatred, and have shed the blood of the children of Israel by the power of the sword at the time of their calamity, when their iniquity came to an end, therefore, as I live,” says the Lord GOD, “I will prepare you for blood, and blood shall pursue you; since you have not hated blood, therefore blood shall pursue you. Thus I will make Mount Seir most desolate, and cut off from it the one who leaves and the one who returns. And I will fill its mountains with the slain; on your hills and in your valleys and in all your ravines those who are slain by the sword shall fall. I will make you perpetually desolate, and your cities shall be uninhabited; then you shall know that I am the LORD” (Ezekiel 35:3-9).

God promised that travelers would no longer pass that way; the country would be so litter with slain that people would avoid the stench. But most importantly, God states that the country would never be rebuilt. Just as Edom had perpetual hatred for Israel, their country would remain perpetually empty.

The country of Edom would remain perpetually desolate.

That has remained basically true. Various countries have controlled the territory that was once Edom, but Edom as a nation disappeared. When the edict was made allowing people to return to the homelands, Israel and many other countries rebuilt, but Edom never did. During the time of the Greeks and Romans, the region was known as Idumea, which is the Greek transliteration of Edom. The territory is currently controlled by Jordan.”He who mocks the poor reproaches his Maker; he who is glad at calamity will not go unpunished” (Proverbs 17:5).    See: http://www.lavistachurchofchrist.org/LVanswers/2005/09-24.htm)

Talk is cheap. In a time when economic, religious and geopolitical threats are rising….a time when so much of the world is turning against God…a time when so many have forgotten God in their daily lives….a time when so many think the Church is irrelevant and/or hypocritical….and a time when many have turned against Israel and God’s Chosen People, what we need are leaders at every level of society who are serious about crying out to the Lord for mercy and redemption. I’m not talking about a bunch of religious hot air  — slogans, bumper stickers or platitudes. What we desperately need is a bold and sincere and solid and revolutionary faith that moves us to action, that moves us to know God more deeply and serve Him more faithfully before the Day of the Lord arrives.

As we read in the New Testament Book of James, “faith, if it has no works, is dead” and “faith without works is useless” (James 2:17 and 20).

This is one of the reasons I love the Old Testament Book of Joel and why I’m grateful we studied it together at the 2011 Epicenter Conference — because it is a powerful call to action. Skip Heitzig, a dear friend and senior pastor of a wonderful Bible-teaching congregation of some 14,000 people in New Mexico, taught at the conference on Joel 2:18-32 (Joel 2:28-32 in English is actually divided as Joel chapter 3 in the Hebrew Bible) and did a powerful job. I would encourage you watching his message — and the other messages — for free on-line. Today, I’m posting Part Four of my personal study notes on the Book of Joel. I hope you’ll find them helpful as you seek a faith that changes your life and moves you to serve the Lord with more passion and conviction than ever before.

PART FOUR:

The Hebrew Prophet Joel indicates a day of severe and unprecendented judgment is coming upon the world. The question is: How should mankind in general – and the people of Israel in particular – prepare for such judgments before they come? Beginning in Joel 2:12, the Lord is very clear and specific. His people are to:

  • Blow a trumpet in Zion and sound an alarm on His holy mountain in Jerusalem
  • Consecrate a fast
  • Proclaim a solemn assembly
  • Gather the people
  • Sanctify the congregation
  • Assemble the elders
  • Gather the children and the nursing infants
  • Gather brides and bridegrooms
  • Urge the priests, the Lord’s ministers, to weep and ask the Lord to spare His people and not let them be a byword among the nations
  • Return to the Lord with all our heart
  • Return to the Lord with fasting
  • Return to the Lord with weeping
  • Return to the Lord with mourning
  • Rend our hearts and not our garments
  • Return to the Lord because we believe He is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, abounding in lovingkindness and relenting of evil
  • This is not just a call to a generic, run-of-the-mill prayer meeting — this is a call to get on our faces and beg and plead with the Lord to have mercy on us as individuals, as families and as nations

Two observations:

  • It’s interesting to me that the specific sins of the people are not enumerated — the Lord is concerned about all sin, not just a few certain types
  • It’s also intriguing to say that nowhere in the text is there a call to take up arms and fight against the enemy invaders — this isn’t to say Israel or America or other countries shouldn’t defend themselves against enemy nations or terrorist organizations; but when it comes to sin and judgment, there is no political or military solution; our only hope is to turn away from our sins and seek the Lord’s forgiveness; He will save us when we ask with humble, repentant hearts, and He’s the only One who can

Clearly, chapter two of the Book of Joel is a trumpet call — a call to action

  • To Israel – a national call to turn back to the Lord
  • To the Church – a global call to turn back to the Lord
  • To all of mankind — a personal call to repent, to get right with the Lord, before it’s too late, before judgment comes

The bad news: the Scriptures are clear that a terrible time of judgment and devastation is coming, worse than at any other time in human history.

The good news: The Scriptures are also clear that when individuals repent and return to the Lord – and by God’s grace when the nation of Israel repents and turns back to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob – then…..

  • “the Lord will be zealous for His land” (2:18)
  •  The Lord “will have pity on His people” (2:18)
  • The Lord will send His people “grain, new wine, and oil” (2:19)
  • The Lord will defeat the enemies of Israel, notably attacks from the North (2:20)
  • The Lord will do “great things” (2:21)
  • Israel will turn green again (2:22)
  • The fig tree and the vine will yield its fruit again in full (2:22)
  • The Lord will send “the teacher of righteousness” (the Hebrew translation in 2:23)
  • The Lord will make up to those who have repented for the years the locusts have eaten (2:25)
  • Those who have repented (“My people”) “will never be put to shame” and they will know that the Lord is in the midst ofIsrael, that “I am the Lord your God, and there is no other” (2:26)
  • The Lord will pour out His Holy Spirit “on all mankind,” Jews and Gentiles alike (2:28)
  • Sons and daughters will prophesy
  • Old men will dream dreams
  • Young men will see visions
  • Men and women of all classes and stations will be able to receive the Holy Spirit
  • “And it will come about that whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be delivered” (2:32) – Jew or Gentile.
  • NOTE: this is another critical point in the text: in the last days (beginning with Pentecost/Acts 2 but accelerating as we get closer to the Day of the Lord), we’ll see the Holy Spirit moving more powerfully and publicly and personally and persistently than ever before in human history…..this requires us to develop a much better, deeper, richer Biblical understanding of the Holy Spirit’s role, how He works, how to be filled with the Spirit, how to walk in the Spirit, how to be careful not to grieve the Spirit, how to be more discerning of spiritual deception, etc.
  • The Lord will display wonders in the sky and on the earth (2:30)
  • The sun will turn to darkness (2:30)
  • The moon will turn to blood (2:31)
  • All these things will happen “before” the “great and terrible Day of the Lord comes” – that is, before the final judgments of the Great Tribulation (2:31)
  • This judgment is sure and certain – it is coming, it cannot be stopped, and many will suffer horrifically if they are not followers of Jesus Christ with the seal of the Lord on their foreheads

That said, the Lord will use these terrible judgments to shake people all over the world – and particularly in Israel – and cause Jews and Gentiles to deeply reconsider what they believe and what they are following.

This is how God works at key moments in history – He literally and figuratively shakes the world

  • Haggai 2:6-7 – “….in a little while I am going to shake the heavens and the earth, the sea also and the dry land. I will shake all the nations….”
  • See also Haggai 2:21-22 – “….I am going to shake the heavens and the earth. I will overthrow the thrones of kingdoms and destroy the power of the kingdoms of the nations….”
  • Many will come to faith in Jesus during these times. Whoever will repent, whoever will return to the Lord, whoever will call on the name of the Lord will be saved.
  • Why not make that decision today, before these traumas come?
  • Yes, Jews are the Chosen People. But according to the Scriptures, it is not enough that the Lord chose the Jews — Jews must also choose the Lord.
  • Yes, God loves the Gentiles. But according to the Scriptures, it is not enough that the Lord loves Gentiles — Gentiles must also love the Lord with all their heart, soul, mind and strength, and love their neighbors as themselves.
  • The Lord said through Moses in Deuteronomy 30:19, “I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. So choose life in order that you may live, you and your descendants.”
  • Jesus said in John 14:6, “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life, and no one comes to the Father but through Me.”
  • Now is the time to call on the name of the Lord and be saved.

The Bible is crystal clear: the Lord Almighty will judge all nations who divide the Land of Israel.

In Joel 3:2, the Lord says: “I will gather all the nations and bring them down to the valley of Jehoshaphat. Then I will enter into judgment with them there on behalf of My people and My inheritance, Israel, whom they have scattered among the nations; and they have divided up My land.” (3:2)

A MESSAGE OF WARNING TO THE NATIONS: Book of Joel, Chapter Three

The Book of Joel is a wake up call and a trumpet call to Israel and the Church. It is also a message of warning to the nations – and a very sobering message at that.

Joel 3:1 – “in those days and at that time” – what time?

  • The last of the last days
  • The time of the physical, literal, actual Second Coming of the Lord Jesus Christ
  • The end of human history as we have known it and the dawn of the Millennial Kingdom, the 1,000 year reign of Christ on the throne of David in Jerusalem
  • The time when God is going to fully and completely and graciously “restore the fortunes of Judah and Jerusalem”
  • The time of the end of the nations crushing Israel and the Jewish people

Joel 3:2 – the Lord is going to gather all the nations – not some of the nations….not a few of the nations….the text says “all” of the nations….true, the Lord singles out a few specific nations with whom He is angry…..among them:

  1. Tyre and Sidon (Lebanon)  Joel 3:4
  2. Philistia (Gaza) 3:4
  3. Greece 3:6
  4. Egypt  3:19
  5. Edom  3:19

But let there be no doubt – He is going to judge “all” the nations…He will gather them to the Valley of Jehoshaphat….the valley of judgment…what we know today as the Kidron Valley right here in Jerusalem….“Then I will enter into judgment with them there on behalf of My people and My inheritance Israel whom they have scattered among the nations; and they have divided up My land.” (3:2) 

 The Lord is going to judge the nations for at least six reasons:

  1.  For scattering Israel and the Jewish people among the nations (Joel 3:2)
  2. For dividing up the land of Israel, which the Lord describes as “My land” (3:2)
  3. For selling the Jewish people into slavery (3:3,5)
  4. For engaging in sex trafficking (3:3)
  5. For stealing treasures from the Lord (perhaps from the Temple), and from Israel (3:5)
  6. For murdering Jews and shedding Jewish blood (3:19, 21)

Some of these are atrocities that various nations and empires have committed against Israel and the Jewish people over the centuries. Yet some of these are atrocities that will be committed against Israel and the Jewish people during the “time of Jacob’s troubles” (30:7), also known as the Tribulation.

  • The Bible teaches us, for example, from the Book of Daniel that the Antichrist will invade the Beautiful Land and set up his reign of power here in Israel. (Daniel 11:41-45)
  • The Hebrew Prophet Zechariah tells us that under the reign of the Antichrist and his global, one-world, tyrannical government that two-thirds of the Jewish people will be murdered. (Zechariah 12:8-9)
  • As horrifying as this is, Jews will not be the only ones to suffer terribly during under the Antichrist’s global reign of terror. Anyone who resists the Antichrist will suffer. Many will perish. Indeed, the Bible reveals that this includes people who have become followers of Jesus Christ during the Tribulation and refuse to bow to the Antichrist. They will be beheaded. They will be martyred. En masse. [Read Revelation 6:9-11 – how long, O Lord, until you avenge….]

The good news is that Joel tells us a day of reckoning is coming….the Day of the Lord is coming….surely it is near.

  • “I will avenge their blood which I have not avenged, for the Lord dwells in Zion.” (Joel 3:21)
  • Psalm 9:11-12 – “Sing praises to the Lord, who dwells in Zion; declare among the peoples His deeds. For He who requires (or avenges) blood remembers them; He does not forget the cry of the afflicted.”

 Amen.

And then comes more good news – the Millennial Kingdom….during this time:

  1. The Lord will make Jerusalem holy and pure…..there will be no “strangers” there, Joel tells us in 3:17….only those who have been born again and made righteous by the blood of Jesus, shed on the cross for the remission of sins….only those who have been adopted into His family by receiving Jesus as the Messiah
  2. The mountains of Israel will drip with sweet wine (3:18)
  3. The mountains of Israel will nourish cattle who flow with milk (3:18)
  4. The land of Judah will always flow with springs of water (3:18)
  5. A spring will actually burst forth underneath the Temple and flow into a river down to the Dead Sea, which will be resurrected (3:18 – see also Ezekiel 47)
  6. Israel/Judah/Jerusalem will be inhabited forever (3:20)
  7. The Lord Jesus Christ Himself will dwell in Zion (3:21)

The Hebrew Prophet Joel gives us a great hope…that God is sovereign and He will reign from this city and make all things new and beautiful by His grace and power.

There is so much richness to each and every verse of chapter three. I’ve taken most of the last year to study it and I’m still finding treasures I didn’t see before. But given the moment that we are in I want to focus on verse two.

“I will gather all the nations and bring them down to the valley of Jehoshaphat. Then I will enter into judgment with them there on behalf of My people and My inheritance, Israel, whom they have scattered among the nations; and they have divided up My land.” (3:2)

Consider these words carefully and completely….and let the United Nations be warned….let the United States be warned….let the European Union be warned….let the Arab League be warned….let the Palestinian Authority be warned….let Hamas be warned….let the Government of Israel, too, be warned.

It may look like a brilliant idea to divide the City of Jerusalem….to divide Judea and Samaria – a.k.a., the West Bank – away from the State of Israel….to give away the Golan Heights….as it seemed brilliant to some to give away the Gaza Strip in 2005….but let there be no mistake: the Word of God warns us in no uncertain terms that judgment is coming for all who divide Israel….and divide Jerusalem….and scatter, oppress and mistreat the Jewish people.

As I say this, the United Nations is preparing to hold a vote in the next few months to divide Jerusalem and the rest of Jerusalem and unilaterally declare a sovereign Palestinian state. For many, this seems wise and fair and just…..but willfully disobeying the Word of God is never wise….never fair….never just….and it comes with consequences.

I recognize that these Scriptures can be difficult for many Palestinian Arabs and many Israeli Arabs to read and accept, especially if they are Muslims and nominal Christians without a personal relationship with Christ….but even if they are born again brothers and sisters in the Lord. Most Palestinians long for a sovereign state of their own…many have been deeply hurt during the rebirth of the State of Israel and throughout the past 63 years….I am sympathetic with this pain and this longing.

The Bible indicates that Jews would be a sinful people when they return to the Land in the last days. Only after they return, the Bible teaches, will the Holy Spirit be poured out upon the Jewish people in an increasingly significant way (Ezekiel 39:29 and Joel 2:28-32 — or Joel chapter 3 in Hebrew Bibles). Only then will a growing number of Jewish people will repent and return to a personal relationship with the Lord. Jesus said in Matthew 24 and Luke 21 that there would be “wars and rumors of wars” and “revolutions” and “lawlessness” in the last days. Certainly, the rebirth of Israel — while prophetic and God-ordained — has come with wars, rumors of war, revolutions, sins, and even crimes committed by some Arabs as well as some Jews.

The Bible doesn’t teach this period of the last days will be easy, and the Bible is right…..that said, while these are painful facts, they are facts nonetheless…..and each one of us must be true to the revealed Word of God….we do not please the Lord — or do our Arab brothers any favors, or do the nations any favors — if we ignore, deny or try to explain away the plain meaning of these verses, that Israel would be prophetically reborn and the Jews would come back to the Land that the Lord promised Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and their descendents. 

Genesis 12:1-3 tells us that the Lord will bless those who bless the children of Abraham, and He will curse those who curse the children of Abraham. Those who have cursed Israel have, sadly, found themselves facing great pain and suffering. Those who have tried to divide the Land again and again have found themselves both causing but also experiencing great pain and suffering.

For many, these are not easy truths to hear or to hold…..but God in His love and fairness puts us on notice that there are consequences to rejecting these truths. 

At the same time, we who accept by faith what the Bible teaches about God’s divine love, plan, purpose and Land for Israel and the Jewish people must remind ourselves and each other of two other truths:

  1. First, how we communicate Biblical truth – how we say what we say in light of the Word of God – matters to God.
  2. Second, how we live out Biblical truth – how we do what we do in light of the Word of God – also matters to God.

What do I mean? Allow me to explain. 

First, our communication – consider John 12:49 (NIV), where Jesus said, “the Father commands Me what to say and how to say it.” What we say matters to God….but so does how we say it. It’s not enough just to communicate what is Biblically true….we must also examine how we communicate it….are we speaking the truth in love?….are we being gentle?….are we being humble?

  • Proverbs 12:18 – “There is one who speaks rashly like the thrusts of a sword, but the tongue of the wise brings healing.”
  • Proverbs 15:1 – “A gentle turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.”
  • Proverbs 15:28 – “The heart of the righteous ponders how to answer”
  • Proverbs 21:23 – “He who guards his mouth and his tongue guards his soul from troubles.”
  • Proverbs 25:11 – “Like apples of gold in settings of silver is a word spoken in right circumstances.”

Yes, the Day of the Lord is coming….Yes, God is going to bless and save the nation of Israel….Yes, the nations are going to be judged for dividing the Land and shedding Jewish blood and for committing atrocities against the Jewish people….These are truths….they are from the Lord….they are just and true….But we must be careful in how we communicate these truths because they are so difficult for so many to hear…..especially our Arab brothers and sisters….Let us be wise and humble and respectful in how we teach what we teach lest we inadvertently sin with our callousness or insensitivity….lest we cause additional pain or even create a new stumbling block to our listeners being able to hear and truly receive the truth.

Second, our actions — Are we living out the fullness of the implications of Biblical truth, especially when it comes to the Book of Joel? Today, those of us who believe in the Abrahamic Covenant that God gave the Land of Israel to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and their descendants as an “everlasting possession” and who agree with the Apostle Paul that “the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable” (Romans 11:29) are at risk.

At risk of what?

At risk of being outflanked on the justice issue….at risk of being – and/or being perceived around the world as being – insensitive to the charges that we are blind to or callous towards injustice suffered by the Palestinian people….“Justice” can be a politically loaded word…..and it can be wielded for unscriptural ends. But it is a Biblical word….it is an important word….and we must embrace it and passionately pursue its true Biblical meaning.

As the Hebrew Prophet Micah taught us, “He has told you, O man, what is good and what the Lord requires of you, but to do justice and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God” (Micah 6:8) 

You and I are passionate advocates of justice for Israel because of what the Bible teaches. We must also be passionate advocates of justice from Israel because of what the Bible teaches. This does not mean Israel should divide the Land. This does not mean Israel should ignore her real and serious security needs. But too often, Christians who love Israel are not aware of — or sufficiently concerned about and responsive to — the plight of the Palestinian people, and particularly the struggles of the Palestinian believers.

  • Are some of the political, moral and historical charges of the Palestinians against Israel overblown? Yes. 
  • Is some of the rhetoric of the Palestinians against Israel, Jews and Christians who love Israel hyperbolic and unfair? Yes.
  • But are the Palestinian people struggling in real and very painful ways? Yes – the truth is they are. And we should care because Jesus cared.
  • Much of this struggle has been caused by the unwise and ungodly choices of their leaders….and their Arab and Islamic allies in the region….and by the terror groups in their midst.
  • But is some of this pain sometime caused by – or exacerbated by — Israeli mistakes….excesses….and even sins?  Unfortunately, the answer is yes.

Again, this does not mean the Land should be divided…That does not mean a sovereign Palestinian state should be created….It does mean that followers of Jesus Christ should care about justice and mercy – for the Jews and for the Palestinians, and for all of Israel’s neighbors who are suffering in this fallen world….After all, while the Bible clearly explains that the Lord will bring the Jewish people back to the Land of Israel and allow them to reclaim their God-given ownership of the Land, nowhere in the Bible are Jews (or any group of people) given a license to commit injustice.

  • To the contrary, the Bible teaches Israel to love her neighbors (Leviticus 19:18 and Matthew 19:19).
  • The Bible also teaches Israel to love her neighbors and pray for those who persecute them (Matthew 5:44).

The Jewish people do have rights to the ownership of the Land, but they also have responsibilities to govern justly and compassionately, in accordance with the Scriptures.

  •  In Leviticus 19:13, for example, the Lord says: “You shall not oppress your neighbor, nor rob him, so as to profane the name of your God; I am the Lord.”
  • Leviticus 19:15 — “You shall do no injustice in judgment; you shall not be partial to the poor nor defer to the great, but you are to judge your neighbor fairly.”
  • Leviticus 19:33-34 — “When a stranger [non-Jew] resides with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong. The stranger who resides with you shall be to  you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt; I am the Lord your God.”
  • Exodus 22:21-24 – “You shall not wrong a stranger or oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. You shall not afflict any widow or orphan. If you afflict him at all, and if he does cry out to Me, I will surely hear his cry and My anger will be kindled….”

Those of us who are followers of Jesus Christ need to not just preach but also to practice sound Bible doctrine regarding Israel and the Palestinians….We need to love both….bless both….pray for both….We need to stand with and encourage our brothers and sisters in the Messiah whether they are Jewish or Arab….The Bible gives us no freedom to ignore, deny, or oppose our brothers and sisters on either side….Jesus said “blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called sons of God” (Matthew 5:9).

We need to be pro-actively building relationships with Israelis and Palestinians….we need to be faithful ambassadors of Christ….we need to be true agents of reconciliation whenever and wherever possible….We do not have to agree with everything that our brothers and sisters believe — especially if those beliefs are unscriptural — but we are commanded to love them unconditionally and sacrificially….We are commanded to see struggle and suffering and respond in love and compassion, whether it’s a Jewish person in pain or an Arab.

Jesus said, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.” (John 13:34-35) 

Jesus loves the Jews….Jesus loves the Arabs….Jesus loves the Iranians….Jesus loves the Druze, the Bedouins, and all who live in the epicenter….Jesus died for all….Jesus rose again for all….Jesus is coming back again to this city for all…The Day of the Lord is coming….surely it is near….Joel teaches us that the Day of the Lord is a day of great sadness and judgment for those who reject the Lord and disobey His Word….But Joel also teaches us that “whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved”

Which leads me to my final point.

In addition to praying for Jews and for the Palestinians….

In addition to seeking real and practical ways to bless Israel and her neighbors in the name of Jesus….

In addition to providing food, clothing, medical supplies and other humanitarian relief to the poor and needy on both sides of the security fence….of caring for widows and orphans….of caring for Holocaust Survivors and victims of war and terrorism….We need to make sure everyone from Tel Aviv to Tehran hears the good news of God’s amazing love and grace as revealed through Jesus Christ.

Let those of us who love Israel also love Israel’s neighbors and enemies enough to make sure they hear the gospel….to strengthen the Church in the Arab and Iranian world….to help them train pastors and plant churches and fulfill the Great Commission.

Precisely because the Day of the Lord is coming….surely it is near.

As the Apostle Peter taught us, “the Day of the Lord will come like a thief” and “the Lord is not slow about keeping His promise , as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish, but for all to come to repentance.” (2 Peter 3:10,9)

Microprocessors

Note: I found this information back in 2008. Think about all the technological advances that have been made since then. Share your thoughts, please.

Because the Bible tells us the Antichrist will someday achieve total control over the global economy, technological advancements are a necessary factor in his rise to power. The development of the microprocessor is one of the most amazing timelines you can observe. I’ve compiled a list of the significant milestones Intel Corporation, the world’s largest producer of microprocessors, achieved from 1972 to the present day. If you’re like me, you may not understand what difference between the speed of a Megahertz (MHz) and a Gigahertz (GHz) represents. All you really need to know is speed comparison. Basic math will tell you 200 MHz is ten times the speed of 20 MHz, and 1 GHz is simply equally to 1000 MHz.


April 1972
Name of Processor: 8008
Clock speed: 200 kilohertz
Number of transistors: 3,500

December 1974
Name of Processor: 8080
Clock speed: 2 MHz
Number of transistors: 6,000

August 1976
Name of Processor: 8085
Clock speed: 5 MHz
Number of transistors: 6,500

September 1978
Name of Processor: 8086
Clock speed: 10 MHz
Number of transistors: 29,000

February 1982
Name of Processor: 286
Clock speed: 12 MHz
Number of transistors: 134,000

October 1985
Name of Processor: 386
Clock speed: 16 MHz
Number of transistors: 275,000

February 1987
Name of Processor: 386
Clock speed: 20 MHz
Number of transistors: 275,000

April 1989
Name of Processor: 486
Clock speed: 25 MHz
Number of transistors: 1,200,000

June 1991
Name of Processor: 486
Clock speed: 50 MHz
Number of transistors: 1,200,000

March 1993
Name of Processor: Pentium
Clock speed: 60 MHz
Number of transistors: 3.1 million

March 1994
Name of Processor: Pentium
Clock speed: 75 MHz
Number of transistors: 3.2 million

March 1995
Name of Processor: Pentium
Clock speed: 120 MHz
Number of transistors: 3.2 million

June 1995
Name of Processor: Pentium
Clock speed: 133 MHz
Number of transistors: 3.3 million

January 1996
Name of Processor: Pentium
Clock speed: 166 MHz
Number of transistors: 3.3 million

June 1996
Name of Processor: Pentium
Clock speed: 200 MHz
Number of transistors: 3.3 million

May 1997
Name of Processor: Pentium II
Clock speed: 300 MHz
Number of transistors: 3.3 million

April 1998
Name of Processor: Pentium II
Clock speed: 400 MHz
Number of transistors: 7.5 million

August 1998
Name of Processor: Pentium II
Clock speed: 450 MHz
Number of transistors: 7.5 million

August 1999
Name of Processor: Pentium III
Clock speed: 600 MHz
Number of transistors: 9.5 million

October 1999
Name of Processor: Pentium III
Clock speed: 733 MHz
Number of transistors: 28 million

January 2000
Name of Processor: Pentium III
Clock speed: 800 MHz
Number of transistors: 28 million

March 2000
Name of Processor: Pentium III
Clock speed: 1.0 GHz
Number of transistors: 28 million

November 2000
Name of Processor: Pentium 4
Clock speed: 1.5 GHz
Number of transistors: 42 million

April 2001
Name of Processor: Pentium 4
Clock speed: 1.7 GHz
Number of transistors: 42 million

Aug 2001
Name of Processor: Pentium 4
Clock speed: 2 GHz
Number of transistors: 42 million

Jan 2002
Name of Processor: Pentium 4
Clock speed: 2.2 GHz
Number of transistors: 42 million

Jun 2002
Name of Processor: Pentium 4
Clock speed: 2.53 GHz
Number of transistors: 55 million

Aug 2002
Name of Processor: Pentium 4
Clock speed: 2.8 GHz
Number of transistors: 55 million

Nov 2002
Name of Processor: Pentium 4
Clock speed: 3.0 GHz
Number of transistors: 55 million

Jun 2003
Name of Processor: Pentium 4
Clock speed: 3.2 GHz
Number of transistors: 55 million

Feb 2004
Name of Processor: Pentium 4
Clock speed: 3.4 GHz
Number of transistors: 55 million

July 2006
Name of Processor: Core 2 Duo
Level 2 cache 4 MB
Number of transistors: 253 million

Nov 2006
Name of Processor: Core 2 Extreme QX6700
Level 2 cache 8 MB
Number of transistors: 582 million

Iran and Ezekiel

Iran and Ezekiel – See how this ties into prophecy!
This article is from the Left Behind Newsletter on April 26, 2006.  You will definitely want to read it.  It will cause chills, I assure you.                                                                                                                                                                                             Iran and Ezekiel
Israel’s nemesis foreseen by Ezekiel
by Mark Hitchcock

 

Iran’s new President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, continues to spew out his venomous hatred for the Jewish people and the United States at the same time he is in hot pursuit of nuclear weapons. This is a highly combustible combination. The Iran crisis continues to escalate with no peaceful resolution in sight.

Iran removed the seals from its nuclear plant at Natanz on January 9, 2006 and then officially announced on April 9 that it had begun enriching uranium. Some believe that Iran may possess P-2 centrifuges, which quadruple the capacity for enrichment over the older P-1 centrifuges. If this is true, the process for producing a nuclear weapon will be greatly accelerated.

While all this is transpiring, on the eve of Holocaust Memorial Day, Ahmadinejad said, “60 years have passed since the end of World War II. Why do the Germans and Palestinians need to pay for a war that the present generation was not involved in?” He also said that Israel’s “fake regime” won’t survive.

At a meeting in support of the Palestinians, the Iranian President made some incredible comments that point toward the fulfillment of Ezekiel 38-39. He said that Palestine “will soon be freed.” He called Israel a “constant threat” and “permanent threat to the Middle East” and said the Middle East will “soon be liberated.”

Did you notice the repeated use of the word “soon”? He also said that Israel is “heading towards annihilation.” He has said that he believes the end of the world will come in his lifetime, probably in the next few years. And he is willing to do everything in his power to hasten its coming. When he says “soon” he really means it. 

In one of his most shocking statements, the Iranian President said, “The Zionist regime is a rotten, dried tree that will be eliminated by one storm.” This sounds like an open threat of a nuclear attack against Israel. What other single storm could eliminate the entire nation of Israel? Is there any doubt what this fiend would do with nuclear weapons if he’s allowed to produce them?

Interestingly, Ahmadinejad’s statements are especially chilling in light of Ezekiel 38:9 which describes the future invasion of Israel by Iran, Russia, and other Islamic allies with these words. “And you will go up, you will come like a storm, you will be like a cloud covering the land, you and all your troops, and many peoples with you.” (italics added)

Ezekiel 38:16 says, “and you will come up against My people Israel like a cloud to cover the land. It will come about in the last days.” (italics added) Ahmadinejad is using language referring to a “storm” that comes straight from Ezekiel 38 to describe his evil intentions toward Israel.

The current headlines from Iran are significant. It’s clear that we are seeing the key end time players move into place on the stage for their future roles in the coming tribulation. But before the curtain rises on the final act, all true believers will rise into the air at the rapture to meet the Lord.

Make sure you’re ready for that meeting in the sky.

Dr. Mark Hitchcock is contributing editor of the Left Behind Prophecy Club newsletter. He is pastor of Faith Bible Church in Edmonds, Oklahoma and a nationally recognized prophecy author and speaker. Mark’s newest book, to be released in July, is Iran the Coming Crisis: Radical Islam, Oil and the Nuclear Threat (Multnomah). Watch for excerpts here in the Left Behind Prophecy Club newsletter.

Syrian civilians paid to assault Israel border

Israel Today – Monday, June 06, 2011 | Ryan Jones

The mass Arab march on Israel’s borders scheduled for Sunday was largley a dud, but nearly two dozens Syrians were reportedly killed while trying to infiltrate the Golan Heights, reported Syrian media.

It was apparently more difficult than expected to convince the Arab masses to gather and assault Israel’s borders. So, according to the Syrian opposition, the regime in Damascus paid poor farmers $1,000 to cross into Israeli territory and harass the Israeli army. Any who were killed in the stunt were promised $25,000 to their families.

The Reform Party of Syria wrote on its official website that Syrian farmers make less than $200 a month, so many were tempted by the offer. And, if Syrian government media is to be believed, at least 23 paid with their lives for accepting the bribe.

Israeli army officials noted that very few of the Syrian demonstrators were actually injured or killed by Israeli gunfire, and most were the victims of minefields stretching along the border region. The minefields are clearly marked.

The Reform Party of Syria was furious with the regime of dictator Bashar Assad for sending the poor farmers to their deaths, and accused the government of trying to create a diversion to take international focus off of the bloody pro-democracy uprising taking place in Syria. Thousands of Syrians demanding democratic freedoms have been massacred by government forces.

The largest march on Israel’s borders marking the anniversary of the start of the Six Day War in 1967 – which the Arabs refer to as “the Setback” – was to come from Lebanon. But it didn’t materialize.

Early estimates were that upwards of 100,000 Lebanese would try to cross into northern Israel. But the Lebanese army prevented most from reaching the border region.

The Palestinians were only slightly more enthusiastic. Palestinians clashed with Israeli soldiers north of Jerusalem, carrying signs that read “A million martyrs are marching on Jerusalem.” They seem to have miscounted, as in reality the numbers were far fewer.

Some 40 Palestinians were wounded when Israeli security forces used non-lethal crowd control methods to defend themselves against the rioters.

At least four Israeli Arab Knesset members took part in the violent anti-Israel demonstrations, once again prompting calls that they be stripped of their parliamentary immunity.

Arabs prepare to march on Israel’s borders

Saturday, June 04, 2011 | Ryan Jones

Arabs prepare to march on Israel's borders

The Israeli army this week was busy readying itself for the next pan-Arab assault on Israel’s borders, scheduled for Sunday.

Two weeks ago, Arabs from Lebanon, Syria and Gaza marched on Israel’s borders in an effort to infiltrate the Jewish state en masse. They were marking Nakba Day – the Day of Catastrophe when Israel was reborn as a nation-state.

The Nakba Day demonstrations saw at least 100 Syrians cross into the Golan Heights, where many clashed with Israeli soldiers.

The upcoming demonstration will mark “Naksa Day” – the Day of the Setback, the anniversary of the start of the Six Day War in 1967. Demonstrations are planned for Sunday and Tuesday. Sunday, which is the actual anniversary of the war, is expected to see the largest confrontations.

Israeli forces are determined that there will be no border breaches this time, but that the Arabs will also not score a public relations victory by baiting the IDF into killing demonstrators.

Israeli soldiers have been ordered to first shout for the demonstrators to halt if they approach the border. If the demonstrators continue to advance, the Israelis will fire warning shots in the air. If that doesn’t work, the soldiers are authorized to direct non-lethal fire at the demonstrators’ lower extremities.

Reports out of Lebanon suggest that some 100,000 may participate in Sunday’s march. But the Lebanese army has also suggested it will not allow any of them to reach the border.

Transcript: Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s address to Congress

Note: I have taken the liberty of bolding text that seems a good overall emphasis of this speech.

In a muscular and well-received address to a joint session of Congress Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made the case for why his nation should not return to its pre-1967 borders as part of a future peace agreement with Palestinians — a question over which he has jousted with President Barack Obama in the past week.

Published: May 24

ISRAELI PRIME MINISTER BINYAMIN NETANYAHU DELIVERS REMARKS

TO A JOINT SESSION OF CONGRESS

MAY 24, 2011

SPEAKER: ISRAELI PRIME MINISTER BENJAMIN NETANYAHU

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you.

Vice President Biden, Speaker Boehner, distinguished senators, members of the House, honored guests, I’m deeply moved by this warm welcome. And I’m deeply honored that you’ve given me the opportunity to address Congress a second time.

Mr. Vice President, do you remember the time that we were the new kids in town?

And I do see a lot of old friends here, and I see a lot of new friends of Israel here, as well — Democrats and Republicans alike.

Israel has no better friend than America, and America has no better friend than Israel.

We stand together to defend democracy. We stand together to advance peace. We stand together to fight terrorism.

Congratulations, America. Congratulations, Mr. President. You got bin Laden. Good riddance.

In an unstable Middle East, Israel is the one anchor of stability. In a region of shifting alliances, Israel is America’s unwavering ally. Israel has always been pro-American. Israel will always be pro-American.

My friends, you don’t have to — you don’t need to do nation- building in Israel. We’re already built.

You don’t need to export democracy to Israel. We’ve already got it.

And you don’t need to send American troops to Israel. We defend ourselves.

NETANYAHU: You’ve been very generous in giving us tools to do the job of defending Israel on our own. Thank you all, and thank you, President Obama, for your steadfast commitment to Israel’s security.

I know economic times are tough. I deeply appreciate this.

Some of you have been telling me that your belief has been reaffirmed in recent months that support for Israel’s security is a wise investment in our common future, for an epic battle is now under way in the Middle East between tyranny and freedom. A great convulsion is shaking the earth from the Khyber Pass to the Straits of Gibraltar. The tremors have shattered states. They’ve toppled governments. And we can all see that the ground is still shifting.

Now, this historic moment holds the promise of a new dawn of freedom and opportunity. There are millions of young people out there who are determined to change their future. We all look at them. They muster courage. They risk their lives.

They demand dignity. They desire liberty. These extraordinary scenes in Tunis and Cairo evoke those of Berlin and Prague in 1989. Yet, as we share their hopes…

(A protester)

You know, I take it as a badge of honor, and so should you, that in our free societies you can have protests. You can’t have these protests in the farcical parliaments in Tehran or in Tripoli. This is real democracy.

Thank you.

So as we share the hopes of these young people throughout the Middle East and Iran that they’ll be able to do what that young woman just did — I think she’s young; I couldn’t see quite that far…

… we must also remember that those hopes could be snuffed out, as they were in Tehran in 1979.

You remember what happened there. The brief democratic spring in Tehran was cut short by a ferocious and unforgiving tyranny. And it’s this same tyranny that smothered Lebanon’s democratic Cedar Revolution and inflicted on that long-suffering country the Medieval rule of Hezbollah.

So today the Middle East stands at a fateful crossroads. And like all of you, I pray that the peoples of the region choose the path less traveled, the path of liberty.

No one knows what this path consists of better than you. Nobody.

This path of liberty is not paved by elections alone. It’s paved when governments permit protests in town squares, when limits are placed on the powers of rulers, when judges are beholden to laws and not men, and when human rights cannot be crushed by tribal loyalties or mob rule.

Israel has always embraced this path in a Middle East that has long rejected it. In a region where women are stoned, gays are hanged, Christians are persecuted, Israel stands out. It is different.

And this was seen…

There was a great English writer in the 19th century, George Eliot. It’s a she. That was a pseudonym in those days.

George Eliot predicted over a century ago that once established the Jewish state — here’s what she said, “The Jewish state will shine like a bright star of freedom amid the despotisms of the East.”

Well, she was right. We have a free press, independent courts, an open economy, rambunctious parliamentary debates.

Now, don’t laugh.

Ah, you see, you think you’re tough on another — on one another here in Congress? Come spend a day in the Knesset. Be my guest.

Courageous Arab protesters are now struggling to secure these very same rights for their peoples, for their societies.

We’re proud in Israel that over 1 million Arab citizens of Israel have been enjoying these rights for decades.

Of the 300 million Arabs in the Middle East and North Africa, only Israel’s Arab citizens enjoy real democratic rights.

Now, I want you to stop for a second and think about that. Of those 300 million Arabs, less than one-half of 1 percent are truly free and they’re all citizens of Israel.

This startling fact reveals a basic truth: Israel is not what is wrong with about the Middle East; Israel is what is right about the Middle East.

Israel fully supports the desire of Arab peoples in our region to live freely. We long for the day when Israel will be one of many real democracies in the region — in the Middle East.

Fifteen years ago, I stood at this very podium. By the way, it hasn’t changed.

I stood here and I said that democracy must start to take root in the Arab world. Well, it’s begun to take root. And this beginning holds the promise of a brilliant future of peace and prosperity. Because I believe that a Middle East that is genuinely democratic will be a Middle East truly at peace.

But while we hope for the best and while we work for the best, we must also recognize that powerful forces oppose this future.

They oppose modernity. They oppose democracy. They oppose peace.

Foremost among these forces is Iran. The tyranny in Tehran brutalizes its own people. It supports attacks against American troops in Afghanistan and in Iraq. It subjugates Lebanon and Gaza. It sponsors terror worldwide.

When I last stood here, I spoke of the consequences of Iran developing nuclear weapons. Now time is running out, the hinge of history may soon turn, for the greatest danger of all could soon be upon us: a militant Islamic regime armed with nuclear weapons.

Militant Islam threatens the world. It threatens Islam.

Now, I have no doubt, I’m absolutely convinced that it will ultimately be defeated. I believe it will eventually succumb to the forces of freedom and progress. It depends on cloistering young minds for a given amount of years, and the process of opening up information will ultimately defeat this movement.

But like other fanaticisms that were doomed to fail, militant Islam could exact an horrific price from all of us before its eventual demise. A nuclear armed Iran would ignite a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. It would give terrorists a nuclear umbrella. It would make the nightmare of nuclear terrorism a clear and present danger throughout the world.

I want you to understand what this means, because if we don’t stop it, it’s coming.

They could put a bomb anywhere. They could put it in a missile. They’re working on missiles that could reach this city.

They could put it on a — on a ship, inside a container. It could reach every port.

They could eventually put it in a suitcase or in a subway.

Now, the threat to my country cannot be overstated. Those who dismiss it are sticking their heads in the sand. Less than seven decades after 6 million Jews were murdered, Iran’s leaders deny the Holocaust of the Jewish people, while calling for the annihilation of the Jewish state.

Leaders who spew such venom should be banned from every respectable forum on the planet.

Now, there’s something that makes the outrage even greater. And you know what that is? It’s the lack of outrage. Because in much of the international community the calls for our destruction are met with utter silence.

It’s even worse, because there are many who rush to condemn Israel for defending itself against Iran’s terror proxies.

Not you. Not America.

You’ve acted differently. You’ve condemned the Iranian regime for its genocidal aims. You’ve passed tough sanctions against Iran.

History will salute you, America.

President Obama has said that the United States is determined to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

The president successfully led the Security Council at the U.N. to adopt sanctions against Iran. You in Congress passed even tougher sanctions.

Now, these words, and these, are vitally important. Yet the ayatollah regime briefly suspended its nuclear weapons program only once, in 2003, when it feared the possibility of military action. In that same year, Moammar Gadhafi gave up his nuclear weapons program and for the same reason.

The more Iran believes that all options are on the table, the less the chance of confrontation.

And this is why I ask you to continue to send an unequivocal message that America will never permit Iran to develop nuclear weapons.

Now, as for Israel, if history has taught the Jewish people anything, it is that we must take calls for our destruction seriously.

We are a nation that rose from the ashes of the Holocaust. When we say “Never again,” we mean never again.

Israel always reserves — Israel always reserves the right to defend itself.

My friends, while Israel will be ever-vigilant in its defense, we’ll never give up our quest for peace. I guess we’ll give it up when we achieve it.

Because we want peace. Because we need peace.

Now, we’ve achieved historic peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan, and these have held up for decades.

I remember what it was like before we had peace. I was nearly killed in a firefight inside the Suez Canal — I mean that literally — inside the Suez Canal. I was going down to the bottom with a 40- pound pack — ammunition pack on my back, and somebody reached out to grab me. And they’re still looking for the guy who did such a stupid thing.

I was nearly killed there.

And I remember battling terrorists along both banks of the Jordan.

Too many Israelis have lost loved ones, and I know their grief.

I lost my brother. So no one in Israel wants to return to those terrible days.

The peace with Egypt and Jordan has long served as an anchor of stability and peace in the heart of the Middle East. And this peace…

This peace should be bolstered by economic and political support to all those who remain committed to peace.

The peace agreements between Israel and Egypt and Israel and Jordan are vital, but they’re not enough. We must also find a way to forge a lasting peace with the Palestinians.

Two years ago, I publicly committed to a solution of two states for two peoples: a Palestinian state alongside a Jewish state.

I’m willing to make painful compromises to achieve this historic peace. As the leader of Israel it’s my responsibility to lead my people to peace.

Now, this is not easy for me. It’s not easy…

… because I recognize that in a genuine peace, we’ll be required to give up parts of the ancestral Jewish homeland. And you have to understand this: In Judea and Samaria, the Jewish people are not foreign occupiers.

We’re not the British in India. We’re not the Belgians in the Congo. This is the land of our forefathers, the land of Israel, to which Abraham brought the idea of one God, where David set out to confront Goliath, and where Isaiah saw a vision of eternal peace.

No distortion of history — and boy, am I reading a lot of distortions of history lately, old and new — no distortion of history could deny the 4,000-year-old bond between the Jewish people and the Jewish land.

But there is another truth: The Palestinians share this small land with us. We seek a peace…

… in which they’ll be neither Israel’s subjects nor its citizens. They should enjoy a national life of dignity as a free, viable and independent people living in their own state.

They should enjoy a prosperous economy where their creativity and initiative can flourish.

Now, we’ve already seen the beginnings of what is possible. In the last two years, the Palestinians have begun to build a better life for themselves.

By the way, Prime Minister Fayyad has led this effort on their part and I — I wish him a speedy recovery from his recent operation.

We’ve helped, on our side, we’ve helped the Palestinian economic growth by removing hundreds of barriers and roadblocks to the free flow of goods and people, and the results have been nothing short of remarkable. The Palestinian economy is booming. It’s growing by more than 10 percent a year. And Palestinian cities — they look very different today than what they looked just few — a few years ago. They have shopping malls, movie theaters, restaurants, banks. They even have e-businesses, but you can’t see that when you visit them.

That’s what they have.

It’s a great change.

And all of this is happening without peace. So imagine what could happen with peace.

Peace would herald a new day for both our peoples, and it could also make the dream of a broader Arab-Israeli peace a realistic possibility.

So now here’s the question — you’ve got to ask it — If the benefits of peace with the Palestinians are so clear, why has peace eluded us?

Because all six Israeli prime ministers since the signing of the Oslo accords agreed to establish a Palestinian state, myself included. So why has peace not been achieved?

Because so far the Palestinians have been unwilling to accept a Palestinian state if it meant accepting a Jewish state alongside it.

You see, our conflict has never been about the establishment of a Palestinian state. It’s always been about the existence of the Jewish state. This is what this conflict is about.

In 1947 the U.N. voted to partition the land into a Jewish state and an Arab state. The Jews said “Yes.” The Palestinians said “No.”

In recent years, the Palestinians twice refused generous offers by Israeli prime ministers to establish a Palestinian state on virtually all the territory won by Israel in the Six-Day War.

They were simply unwilling to end the conflict.

And I regret to say this: They continue to educate their children to hate. They continue to name public squares after terrorists. And, worst of all, they continue to perpetuate the fantasy the Israel will one day be flooded by the descendants of Palestinian refugees.

My friends, this must come to an end.

President Abbas must do what I have done. I stood before my people — and I told you it wasn’t easy for me. I stood before my people, and I said, “I will accept a Palestinian state.”

It’s time for President Abbas to stand before his people and say, “I will accept a Jewish state.”

Those six words will change history. They’ll make it clear to the Palestinians that this conflict must come to an end, that they’re not building a Palestinian state to continue the conflict with Israel, but to end it.

And those six words will convince the people of Israel that they have a true partner for peace.

With such a partner, the Palestinians — or, rather, the Israeli people will be prepared to make a far-reaching compromise; I will be prepared to make a far-reaching compromise.

This compromise must reflect the dramatic demographic changes that have occurred since 1967.

The vast majority of the 650,000 Israelis who live beyond the 1967 lines reside in neighborhoods and suburbs of Jerusalem and greater Tel Aviv.

Now, these areas are densely populated, but they’re geographically quite small. And under any realistic peace agreement these areas, as well as other places of critical strategic and national importance, will be (ph) incorporated into the final borders of Israel.

The status of the settlements will be decided only in negotiations. But we must also be honest. So I’m saying today something that should be said publicly by all those who are serious about peace: In any real peace agreement, in any peace agreement that ends the conflict, some settlements will end up beyond Israel’s borders.

Now, the precise delineation of those borders must be negotiated. We’ll be generous about the size of the future Palestinian state. But as President Obama said, the border will be different than the one that existed on June 4th, 1967. Israel will not return to the indefensible boundaries of 1967.

So I want to be very clear on this point: Israel will be generous on the size of a Palestinian state, but we’ll be very firm on where we put the border with it.

This is an important principle; shouldn’t be lost.

We recognize that a Palestinian state must be big enough to be viable, to be independent, to be prosperous.

All of you, and the president, too, have referred to Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people, just as you’ve been talking about a future Palestinian state as the homeland of the Palestinian people.

Well, Jews from around the world have a right to immigrate to the one and only Jewish state.

And Palestinians from around the world should have a right to immigrate, if they so choose, to a Palestinian state.

And here’s what this means: It means that the Palestinian refugee problem will be resolved outside the borders of Israel.

You know, everybody knows this. It’s time to say it. It’s important. And as for Jerusalem, only a democratic Israel has protected the freedom of worship for all faiths in the city.

Throughout the millennial history of the Jewish capital, the only time that Jews, Christians and Muslims could worship freely, could have unfettered access to their holy sites, has been during Israel’s sovereignty over Jerusalem.

Jerusalem must never again be divided. Jerusalem must remain the united capital of Israel.

I know this is a difficult issue for Palestinians, but I believe that with creativity and with goodwill, a solution can be found. So this is the peace I plan to forge with a Palestinian partner committed to peace. But you know very well that in the Middle East the only peace that will hold is a peace you can defend. So peace must be anchored in security.

In recent years, Israel withdrew from South Lebanon and from Gaza. We thought we’d get peace. That’s not what we got.

We got 12,000 rockets fired from those areas on our cities, on our children, by Hezbollah and Hamas.

The U.N. peacekeepers in Lebanon, they failed to prevent the smuggling of this weaponry. The European observers in Gaza, they evaporated overnight.

So if Israel simply walked out of the territories, the flow of weapons into a future Palestinian state would be unchecked. And missiles fired from it could reach virtually every home in Israel in less than a minute.

I want you to think about that, too. Imagine there’s a siren going on now, and we have less than 60 seconds to find shelter from an incoming rocket.

Would you live that way? Do you think anybody can live that way?

Well, we’re not going to live that way, either.

The truth is that Israel needs unique security arrangements, because of its unique size. It’s one of the smallest countries in the world.

Mr. Vice President, I’ll grant you this: It’s bigger than Delaware.

It’s even bigger than Rhode Island. But that’s about it.

Israel on the 1967 lines would be half the width of the Washington Beltway.

Now, here’s a bit of nostalgia. I came to Washington 30 years ago, as a young diplomat. It took me a while, but I finally figured it out: There is an America beyond the Beltway.

But Israel on the 1967 lines would be only nine miles wide. So much for strategic depth.

So it’s therefore vital, absolutely vital, that a Palestinian state be fully demilitarized.

And it’s vital, absolutely vital, that Israel maintain a long-term military presence along the Jordan River.

Solid security arrangements on the ground are necessary not only to protect the peace, they’re necessary to protect Israel in case the peace unravels. Because in our unstable region, no one can guarantee that our peace partners today will be there tomorrow.

And, my friends, when I say “Tomorrow,” I don’t mean some distant time in the future. I mean tomorrow.

Peace can only be achieved around the negotiating table. The Palestinian attempt to impose a settlement through the United Nations will not bring peace.

It should be forcefully opposed by all those who want to see this conflict end.

I appreciate the president’s clear position on this issue. Peace cannot be imposed. It must be negotiated.

But peace can only be negotiated with partners committed to peace, and Hamas is not a partner for peace.

Hamas — Hamas remains committed to Israel’s destruction and to terrorism.

They have a charter. That charter not only calls for the obliteration of Israel, it says kill the Jews everywhere you find them.

Hamas’ leader condemned the killing of Osama bin Laden and praised him as a holy warrior.

Now, again, I want to make this clear: Israel is prepared to sit down today and negotiate peace with the Palestinian Authority.

I believe we can fashion a brilliant future for our children.

But Israel will not negotiate with a Palestinian government backed by the Palestinian version of Al Qaida. That we will not do.

So I say to President Abbas, “Tear up your pact with Hamas, sit down and negotiate, make peace with the Jewish state. And if you do, I promise you this: Israel will not be the last country to welcome a Palestinian state as the new member of the United Nations. It will be the first to do so.”

My friends, the momentous trials of the last century and the unfolding events of this century attest to the decisive role of the United States in defending peace and advancing freedom. Providence entrusted the United States to be the guardian of liberty. All people who cherish freedom owe a profound debt of gratitude to your great nation.

Among the most grateful nations is my nation, the people of Israel, who have fought for their liberty and survival against impossible odds in ancient and modern times alike.

I speak on behalf of the Jewish people and the Jewish state when I say to you, representatives of America, thank you.

Thank you. Thank you for your unwavering support for Israel. Thank you for ensuring that the flame of freedom burns bright throughout the world.

May God bless all of you, and may God forever bless the United States of America.

Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you.

24 arrested, 3 wounded in Jerusalem Day skirmish

By MELANIE LIDMAN
06/01/2011 21:53

40,000 join flag parade marking anniversary of Six Day War; despite controversial route through Sheikh Jarrah, protesters face off near Old City.

Over 40,000 people marched through the streets of Jerusalem on Wednesday afternoon in a show of patriotism honoring the 44th anniversary of the Six Day War.

Dozens were arrested during the annual Flag Day parade, which marched through the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah in a departure from the route through the city center used in previous years.

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Despite the more controversial route, police said the biggest problems were in the area of the Damascus Gate and Rehov Hanevi’im, which are part of the permanent route used in previous years.

A total of 24 people were arrested for disturbing the peace, the majority of them Jewish, the police reported.

Three people were wounded from rocks thrown on Rehov Hanevi’im next to the Damascus Gate and Sultan Suleiman Street, one of whom was taken to the hospital with a head injury.

“In previous years we have also had problems and violence between the Arabs and the Jews, but in our opinion the number of arrests [this year] was not small, it was quite large,” Jerusalem police spokesman Shmuel Ben-Ruby said.

“Things were completely under control and different units responded in the way that’s appropriate, considering there were 40,000 people taking part. The streets in the Old City are very narrow, and tensions were high,” added Micky Rosenfeld, National Police spokesman.

The police had increased patrols of policemen, border police, undercover police and mounted patrols starting Tuesday morning.

The main route of the parade began in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood near the Shepherd Hotel. Thousands of participants thronged down Highway 1, waving flags and chanting “Am Yisrael Chai.”

Some participants chose to march into the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood on a parade route determined in cooperation with the police.

“This is what it needs to be,” City Councilor David Hadari (NRP-National Union) said of the decision to hold the main march inside Sheikh Jarrah.

“We need to celebrate and live and settle in every part of Jerusalem.

“I’m happy all the youth came here to celebrate our sovereignty in this area,” Hadari said, adding that he was working to expand the Jewish presence in Sheikh Jarrah.

Hadari said he was working with organizations who had already secured ownership of dozens of properties around the Shimon Hatzadik tomb, and that Jewish families would move into the neighborhood in as little as two years.

Even within Sheikh Jarrah, most of the march was peaceful, with ecstatic groups of young people cheering, singing and breaking into spontaneous dance.

Arab residents watched warily from the sides. “This year is much worse than other years,” said 37-year-old Sheikh Jarrah resident Samir, who watched the parade from his friend’s flower shop. “It sends a clear message.

Look at them, they’re celebrating…it’s a provocation. Why are they doing it in an Arab neighborhood?” he asked as a truck went by with a band of yeshiva students playing “Zeh Hamakom Sheli” (This is my place).

Samir said that in previous years, there had been small groups of young people who had marched around the neighborhood, but that this year was larger than any he could remember.

He added that Sheikh Jarrah residents did not know that the parade would be held inside their neighborhood until they saw police setting up barricades in the morning.

“There will be more problems, there will never be peace,” Samir said.

“They just came to make trouble, they scream ‘death to Arabs!’ and ‘Arabs are trash!’” The highest point of tension inside Sheikh Jarrah was at the tomb of Shimon Hatzadik, where 50 left-wing protesters, who demonstrated without a permit, faced off against 50 right-wing protesters while Jewish music blared from the speakers of the yeshiva next to the tomb. Police tried to separate the two groups.

Dozens of right-wing teenagers surrounded an Arab house after they said one of the children spat on them, and started hitting left-wing protesters who stood in front of the house with flag poles.

MK Michael Ben-Ari (National Union), denounced the left-wing protesters as “racist anarchists.”

“These racist Jews are fighting against Jews, and they should go home,” he told The Jerusalem Post.

Ben-Ari accused the left-wing activists of inciting the Arab residents and slammed the police for being too lenient with them.

In a separate incident, a marcher entered a mosque in Sheikh Jarrah with an Israeli flag and was arrested by police forces. The marcher was taken into custody for interrogation along with three others.

After the incident, Arab children climbed on top of the roof of a tall building next to the mosque and raised five Palestinian flags, prompting raucous boos from the thousands of demonstrators below.

Five marchers were arrested near the Damascus Gate for allegedly attempting to assault Arabs while calling out nationalistic slogans. A woman was also arrested in the area for yelling anti-Semitic epithets at marchers passing by.

Border police arrested seven people for throwing stones at police forces in the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan on Wednesday, as well. The suspects were taken into custody for interrogation.

Increased patrols of police, border police and volunteers were put in place in the capital until the conclusion of events on Wednesday.

The Flag March has taken place annually since 1976, as traditionally thousands of people marched from the city center down Rehov Yaffo to the Kotel.

This year, the municipality refused to halt the light rail tests for the parade, forcing Am K’Lavia (Nation Like a Lion), the parade organizers, to take the case to the Supreme Court. Ultimately, the parade was rerouted to begin in Sheikh Jarrah and end at the Kotel.

“This is not about the march making a controversial statement,” Meir Indor, an activist with Am K’Lavia and one of the parade organizers, told the Post before the parade. He said the route was decided as a “technical issue” due to the light rail, but that the parade organizers laughed when they saw how the parade would be rerouted.

“After all the protests from the anarchists, it’s time to show for once who this city really belongs to,” he said, referring to the weekly protests in the area by the Sheikh Jarrah Solidarity Movement.

“[The route] just shows how much Jerusalem is so tiny and so close to one another, if a big crowd wants to march, this is the place they choose. It shows how much the city is small and can never be divided,” Indor said.

He added that part of the route through Sheikh Jarrah would be following the path that the paratroopers took in 1967 on their way to Ammunition Hill.

Ben-Ruby said he did not know if the parade would use the same route in the coming year. He added that police would assess the security situation on Thursday to determine the additional patrols needed for Friday prayers and Sunday’s “Naksa Day,” when Arabs mark the “setback” anniversary of the Six Day War.

Jerusalem Post staff contributed to this report.

Largest underground water source discovered in J’lem

By OREN KESSLER
06/02/2011 03:32

The source was discovered 75 meters underground while workers were laying groundwork for the high-speed Tel Aviv-Jerusalem railway.

An underground water source discovered recently near the Jerusalem International Convention Center is, experts say, the largest subsurface water resource ever discovered in Israel.

The source was discovered 75 meters underground while workers were laying groundwork for the high-speed Tel Aviv-Jerusalem railway.

The cave appears to have developed after water seeped in from the surface and dissolved the underlying limestone.

“The cave is the largest and most impressive underground water channel ever discovered in Israel,” Prof. Amos Frumkin of the Hebrew University told Channel 2 News.

Frumkin said the water channel can be preserved without compromising infrastructure projects for the railway route.

Netanyahu on Jerusalem Day: This city is ours!

                 Israel Today  – 6-1-11

As Israel marked the 44th anniversary of the reunification of Jerusalem on Wednesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insisted that Israel would never allow the city to be again divided.

“Forty-four years ago, IDF soldiers realized the prophets’ vision and returned Jerusalem to its proper place,” Netanyahu said, referring to the liberation of the eastern half of Jerusalem during the 1967 Six Day War.

Speaking at Jerusalem’s Merkaz Harav Yeshiva, which has long been at the forefront of religious Zionism, Netanyahu continued:

“Jerusalem will never be divided. There’s nothing more holy to us than Jerusalem, we’ll protect Jerusalem, it’s unity, and we’ll build and develop it.”

US President Barack Obama and other Western leaders have been pushing hard to restart Israeli-Palestinian peace talks based on Arab demands that Israel return to its pre-1967 borders.

For its part, the Palestinian leadership insists it will never sign a peace deal with Israel that does not include the full surrender of the eastern half of Jerusalem, including the Temple Mount.

But a Jerusalem Day poll revealed that a strong majority of Israelis remain firmly behind Netanyahu’s policies, and do not agree to divide Jerusalem even as part of a comprehensive peace agreement.

Conducted by the Geocartography Knowledge Group on behalf of Israel’s Channel One News, the survey showed that 66 percent of Israelis oppose handing over any part of Jerusalem to the Palestinian Authority.

A 23 percent minority said they would be willing to surrender Jerusalem’s Arab neighborhoods, a compromise the Palestinian Authority has already rejected.

An even larger 73 percent majority opposed placing Jerusalem’s holy sites under international control, a proposal that first came up during former US President Bill Clinton’s oversight of the peace process.

Rather than talk about how to divide Jerusalem, 67 percent of Israelis want to simply get on with building up and developing the city as the capital of Israel.