Dec 31
Iran's Nuclear Program Is Still A Hot Issue
A few weeks ago, the most recent National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) declassified its
key findings and made a surprise announcement that Iran had halted its nuclear weapons
program back in 2003. If the history of these types of reports is any guide, we have
plenty of reasons to worry.
We spend billions of dollars gathering intelligence and yet our findings are repeatedly wrong. Nicholas Guariglia put it best in his latest column: "We must remember these are the same
maladjusted maharishis who underestimated the Iraqi nuclear program in 1981 and in 1991,
and who overestimated Iraq's WMD capabilities in 2002-2003. This is the same gang who
didn't see the Pakistani, Indian, Libyan, and North Korean nuclear programs, and who
missed the train on al Qaeda. This is the same agency which didn't see the fostering
Khomeinist revolution of 1979, which misjudged the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, and which
has had at least two of its covert networks exposed and rounded up in Iran."
I have a sure-fire way of confirming whether Iran is seeking nuclear weapons, one that doesn’t require spy satellites or on-the-ground secret agents. All we need to do is consider the fact that there is absolutely no logical reason for Iran to have nuclear reactors. Because that nation has a 100-year supply of cheap oil, it is ridiculous for Tehran to claim it needs nuclear power to generate electricity.
The lunacy even goes a step further. Russia has been supplying Iran with the fuel for its first reactor, which voids the need for Tehran to have a nuclear enrichment program. Iran said it will continue to enrich uranium because it plans to build 11 more nuclear plants.
Israel has all the reason in the world to worry about a nuclear-armed Iran. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has frequently spoken about his desire to destroy Israel. In one of his most shocking remarks, Ahmadinejad said he would likely "sacrifice half of Iran for the sake of eliminating Israel."
Ahmadinejad strongly believes that "Israel 's demise is essential to the restoration of
Muslim glory, that the Zionist thorn in the heart of the Islamic nations must be removed.
And he will pay almost any price to right the perceived historic wrong. If he becomes the
supreme leader and has a nuclear capability, that's a real threat."
The NIE report makes an Israeli military strike almost certain. Beforehand, there was growing pressure on Ahmadinejad from within Iran to avoid a costly conflict. Now that the Western media is portraying him as a man who has been unjustly blamed by the evil George Bush, Ahmadinejad has a free hand to continue building his nuclear pet project.
Israel is certainly not swayed by the report. Bruce Riedel, a former career CIA official and senior adviser to three US presidents--including George W. Bush, has recently come back from a trip to Israel fully convinced that Israel will soon attack Iran. Citing conversations he had with Mossad and defense officials, he said, "Israel is not going to allow its nuclear monopoly to be threatened."
Israel has already ended the nuclear ambitions of Iraq in 1981 and of Syria just this year. A strike against Iran would just be on a more grander scale.
Some ominous preparations have been going on in Israel. A bomb shelter is being installed in the residence of the Prime Minister; the Israeli military has been on a continuous state of alert; and Israel 's Home Front Command is preparing the public for possible war scenarios.
Two issues may force Israel to take action: news of a sudden advancement of Iran's atomic work, or the projected deployment of a new missile system in Iran to guard non-existent nuclear sites.
-- Todd
Follow The Money In 2008
Projecting what a new year holds in store at the end of the year just past is a popular practice for news and entertainment media. Jeanne Dixon, the one-time media’s darling of soothsaying, is long gone from the prognosticating scene. Old Nostradamus just wrote in quatrain circles too nebulous for predicting things for any given year. His words are too mysterious for the audiences of most print and electronic venues today.
Many who seek out fortune tellers, of course, can pick up tips on things to come in the new year from tabloids or other on-the-rise predictors of what of significance will happen during the next 12 months. The track records of each and of all are consistently dismal, although some among the seers will again, like they do every year, bend, mold, and otherwise squeeze and force any important event of 2008 to fit their foretelling.
Disturbingly, the same can be said for some within Christian circles. These insist on foisting upon us their “words of knowledge” about what the Lord has told them privately and commanded them to share with the rest of us who are without the gift. Those ministers –usually of the TV sort—are the ones who get the most press from secular journalists and their media outlets. The more outlandish the prediction, the more the journalists pay attention. It provides good fodder for fun-poking and/or outright ridicule when, as always happens, the outlandish foretelling fails to take place.
Boy! With all that as groundwork upon which to build this commentary, you had better believe I’m going to frame my thoughts and form my words carefully. That is because I’m about to ruminate a bit upon what I think will be an important developing process toward fulfillment of Bible prophecy during 2008.
The title of the article encapsulates the thought: “Follow the Money in 2008.” World monetary matters constitute the Number 2 most significant signal of where this generation stands on God’s prophetic timeline, in my view. Economy, as a matter of fact, is a thematic chord running throughout all of Bible prophecy yet future. At the same time, economic factors at this very moment poise to force the world into a new paradigm. Movement in that direction is accelerating at a phenomenal pace. Yet, I believe the complete change could happen sooner than even the forces presently exerting pressures for the change can accomplish--i.e., I believe the present acceleration of all economic movement toward a time when all will be forced to accept Antichrist’s mark in their hands or in their foreheads, although indeed swift, will, in retrospect, have seemed a slow-motion process when the prophesied beast system of Revelation chapter 13 sudden rise to authority takes place.
I’m talking about the rapture and it’s almost certain, instantaneous ramifications. But, until that sudden, cataclysmic shift, it is wise to follow the money as it shapes the course of this upcoming year and beyond, as the Lord allows.
There can be little doubt about God’s view of fallen mankind’s deadly love affair with filthy lucre. He speaks to the matter through the Apostle Paul: “For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows” (1Tim. 6:10).
Notice that God’s Word speaks specifically to those of “faith”. The love of money is at the heart of all that is evil in the world, and that errant love takes even believers down the path away from the Lord when they get caught up in following the love-of-money trail. Judgment begins with His own –believers—when this happens. The end of such evil is desperation and sorrow, Paul forewarns.
We have only to look at things going on within the body of Christ today to know that many are following the money. There is a prosperity message in this present hour that robs God of His rightful place in the hearts and minds of His children. The message proclaims, in effect, that God is a sugar daddy and owes His people the very best. They shout this 24 hours a day on their nationwide broadcasts, rather
than preaching and teaching that we owe our very salvation to Him, and that it is our duty to warn people that hell awaits, without their coming to Christ in repentance.
Just like the world, many in the body of Christ today are reprobate in their thinking–they have turned God’s Word upside-down. Good has become evil, and evil good, sadly, even with great numbers of those who are in Christ.
So what does this acceleration of the love of money in every aspect of human life seem to portend for the new year that lies before us? Again, God’s Word tells us that evil men and seducers will grow worse and worse (2 Tim. 3:13). What is at the foundation of the evil in man? That’s right, the love of money. The love of money is the root of all evil!
Antichrist will be the most evil of men who have lived on Planet Earth. Money–economic power—will be at the heart of the beast’s system of absolute control. (Read Revelation 13:16-18).
There should be no question in the minds of those who truly study God’s prophetic Word from a literalist viewpoint. This world is headed toward the most heinous draconian system of enslavement in history. Its power to put all in bondage will be economy that is wedded to a religious system that demands all worship Satan’s man of the tribulation hour, the Antichrist.
The year that is now closing has seen tremendous momentum in forcing all nation-states toward a global economic order. Talk of a new currency, the amero, and of the North American union daily brings the reality of these more into view as changing the United States from a sovereign economic unit into a new world trading bloc along the lines of the European Union.
Technologies that link all of us together; monetary institutional mergers that now have you and me in America dealing with someone in India or some other foreign place when we need to check our banking transactions; oil making debtors of us all to creditors we can’t even identify, much less reach to influence in our own best interest–all point to the thought that the one-world monetary beast of Revelation 17:
12-13 must be very near as we enter 2008.
Israel and the pseudo peace-making agenda constitute the Number 1 most important signal of where this generation sits atop the Bible timeline of prophecy. Almost as crucial to understand, however, is that it is monetary imperialism that is the one-world engine, fueled by Mid-East black gold, driving all nations toward Armageddon.
While 2008 unfolds, keep your eyes and ears on Israel and the all-important global economic monster that is almost upon us.
--Terry
