Israel is one major step closer to launching a strike against Iran 's nuclear facilities. Last week, the New York Times quoted a U.S. official who said a major military exercise was carried out by Israel earlier this month. It had all the signs of a practice run for a potential strike against Iran.
"More than 100 Israeli F-16 and F-15 fighter jets took part in maneuvers over the eastern Mediterranean and Greece in the first week of June to gear the military for long-range strikes," said the New York Times.
"The exercise also included helicopters, which could be used in rescuing downed pilots, with the helicopters and refueling tankers flying over 900 miles (1,440 kilometers), roughly the same distance between Israel and Iran's uranium enrichment plant at Natanz," the Times website reported.
What makes this exercise such an important milestone is Israel ʼs ability to demonstrate that it is capable of carrying out an air attack at the distance needed to reach Iran. Beforehand, many analysts thought the Jewish state would need American military assistance for this type of task.
There is no doubt in my mind that Israel has the willpower to take on Iran. It was just last September that Israeli jets bombed a site in the Syrian desert that the global intelligence community believed housed a partly constructed nuclear reactor.
The $50,000 question now is: "When might this happen?" There are three factors at work that might force Israel to launch an air campaign:
Iran is acquiring Russian-produced SA-20 surface-to-air missiles, which puts pressure on Israel to act before the missiles are fielded.
It's always possible that Iran will make the first move. Southern Lebanon might as well be called Eastern Iran, with thousands of missiles being manned by a terrorist group trained and funded by Tehran. The Iranian leaders may try to block an attack by ordering Hezbollah to launch its missile at northern Israel.
An Israeli strike on Iran 's nuclear facilities will certainly have major consequences for the world. When that day comes, prophecy watchers will have to completely redraw the end-time map.
The price of crude could be profoundly affected. We've already seen the market jump on news of a move by Israel. Three weeks ago, Shaul Mofaz, Israeli Transport Minister, became the first senior figure to suggest publicly that Israel might launch its own strike on Iran. His remarks were blamed for causing a record single-day rise of $11 a barrel. Last Friday, news of the military exercise caused oil to leap three dollars.
Right now, oil demand and supply are so tight, the loss of a couple hundred thousand barrels of production can send the spot price soaring. Fighting in the Persian Gulf could reduce the flow by millions of barrels. The Iranians might try to blockade the Straits of Hormuz and cut the world off from Middle Eastern oil. One commodity analyst said the price of oil could reach $200 to $300 per barrel if such a scenario played out.
The attack could spark a regional war. Syria might see this as a perfect opportunity to take the Golan Heights by force. It has already threatened war if Israel doesn't surrender the Golan. Iraq and Afghanistan could flame up as Iranian-backed militants turn on American forces. Iran now has the ability to retaliate with long-range missiles. One can only guess what would happen if Iran used biological and chemical weapons against Israel .
I am particularly interested in how Russia has been reacting to all this news. In the past, Russia never has been directly involved with Israel. It has always chosen to use the Arabs as a surrogate. This time around, Russia has been very vocal on every development that comes out of the region. On Friday, Russia 's foreign minister warned against the use of force against Iran. Bible prophecy tells us that Mother Russia will someday join forces with Iran and other Arab nations in an attack on Israel.
"Thou shalt ascend and come like a storm, thou shalt be like a cloud to cover the land, thou, and all thy bands, and many people with thee. Thus saith the Lord GOD; It shall also come to pass, [that] at the same time shall things come into thy mind, and thou shalt think an evil thought: And thou shalt say, I will go up to the land of unwalled villages; I will go to them that are at rest, that dwell safely, all of them dwelling without walls, and having neither bars nor gates, To take a spoil, and to take a prey; to turn thine hand upon the desolate places [that are now] inhabited, and upon the people [that are] gathered out of the nations, which have gotten cattle and goods, that dwell in the midst of the land. Sheba , and Dedan, and the merchants of Tarshish, with all the young lions thereof, shall say unto thee, Art thou come to take a spoil? hast thou gathered thy company to take a prey? to carry away silver and gold, to take away cattle and goods, to take a great spoil?" (Ezek. 38:9-13).
-- Todd
Heart Trouble
A question that keeps popping up in our email is along the lines of [assuming it is God’s doing] "Why are Iowa and that region getting all the flooding, having the problems, since the nation seems more sinful in other states and regions than does Iowa and surrounding areas?”
The queries come from people inside and outside of media. The evidence is building that these record-breaking, weather-related events harbor portentous meaning beyond being merely cyclical or random occurrences. The fact isn’t lost on many who have begun to pay attention. Although offered sometimes as tongue-in-cheek questions, the consistent nature of the questions belies visceral and widespread concern among Christians and non-Christians alike.
So, what is the answer? Why, if these weather-caused calamities–the floods, tornadoes, etc.--are of God, do they not strike the places like Massachusetts, where gay marriage has been officially sanctioned by government as equal to heterosexual marriage? Why not Las Vegas, where there is debauched activity of every sort? Why not California, where gay marriage has just been legitimized–where the homosexual populations come together in greatest numbers? Why are the “good” people of the heartland chosen out for punitive actions by the Lord? Why aren’t these things visited upon the more–in the view of many—nefarious regions of the nation?
If I may make our nation, the most materially and spiritually blessed (in the sense of ties to Christianity) somewhat analogous to the human body–we are sick. Sin-sick, and getting progressively sicker.
We have heart trouble. The geophysical problems in the heartland of America certainly seem to confirm the diagnosis concerning the proposed disease. Like in the human body when sick, society/culture exhibits symptoms of the worsening illness. Presently, the malady is manifesting the illness in the American stomach–which we often term the nation’s “bread basket”. Just as the body emits signals of systemic troubles, a collective people suffers pains of things going wrong. Again, America’s trouble is one of its heart. The symptoms are those of swollen rivers, of dead and dying crops under the flood waters that cover the fields of the bread basket that feeds not only the American people, but millions of people in nations around the world.
You might say that it is quite a stretch to compare the geophysical to the physiological–comparing weather disturbances assaulting cornfields and wheatfields to a disease attacking a human body. Perhaps so, but it certainly seems to some of us who observe God’s methodologies of dealing with sin down through the corridors of time that making the comparison is a valid exercise in addressing the question: Why do the “good people” of heartland America suffer these things–if they are God’s judgments—while the sinful people of the hedonistic regions seem to be free of the geophysical assaults?
King David, who almost certainly wrote many of the Psalms, seems to have made similar laments, saying, for example: “I have seen the wicked in great power, and spreading himself like a green bay tree” (Psalms 37:35).
That the anti-God bastions of this world seem almost insulated against ramifications of their evil works is the lamentation even today. Why do those hard-working, salt-of-the-earth folks of the Midwest suffer such loss while the evil goes unpunished?
The problem is one of lack of understanding the Creator in His most basic methodology in dealing with man. The question projects the lack of apprehension. The question presupposes that God looks at the troubles in our national heartland in the same way the one doing the questioning views what is going on. The Great Physician knows, intimately, the nature of sin. He knows how deeply sin affects the nation. He knows how to deal with the infection. The questioners, whether derisive and mocking skeptics or believers who seek answers about why the “good people” suffer while the wicked apparently prosper, fail to understand and/or acknowledge that the flooding and the winds are allowed by the Creator not as punishment, but as symptomatic forewarnings.
Iowans and Californians are in the same proverbial boat. One state is not “good” and the other “evil”. The American national body –indeed the world of humanity—is suffering a terminal infection. The wages of that sin is death. This has always been the plight of civilizations since the time of the fall in the Garden. Heart trouble…the human heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked, God’s Word tells us. Scriptures tell us further: “For there is not a just man upon earth, that doeth good, and sinneth not” (Ecclesiastes 7:20).
The Lord of Heaven deals individually with His children–those who are born again into His family through Jesus Christ (John 3:3). But, in the context of His dealings with mankind, all, both saved and lost, live under His corrective regime, until the time His cup of divine wrath will be full.
”…for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust” (Matt. 5:45b).
All suffer sin’s debilitating effects while in this life of fallen flesh. I chose a poem attributed to Judge Roy Moore, the Alabama judge removed from his court for his stance for God’s prescription for righteousness–The Ten Commandments, a prescription fulfilled by the Lord Jesus Christ.
The poem portrays vividly, I think, the truth of our sin problem in this much-blessed nation.
America the beautiful,
or so you used to be.
Land of the Pilgrims' pride;
I'm glad they'll never see.
Babies piled in dumpsters,
Abortion on demand,
Oh, sweet land of liberty;
your house is on the sand.
Our children wander aimlessly
poisoned by cocaine
choosing to indulge their lusts,
when God has said abstain.
From sea to shining sea,
our Nation turns away
From the teaching of God's love
and a need to always pray.
We've kept God in our
temples, how callous we have grown.
When earth is but His footstool,
and Heaven is His throne.
We've voted in a government
that's rotting at the core,
Appointing Godless Judges;
who throw reason out the door,
Too soft to place a killer
in a well deserved tomb,
But brave enough to kill a baby
before he leaves the womb.
You think that God's not
angry, that our land's a moral slum?
How much longer will He wait
before His judgment comes?
How are we to face our God,
from Whom we cannot hide?
What then is left for us to do,
but stem this evil tide?
If we who are His children,
will humbly turn and pray;
Seek His holy face
and mend our evil way:
Then God will hear from Heaven;
and forgive us of our sins,
He'll heal our sickly land
and those who live within.
But, America the Beautiful,
If you don't - then you will see,
A sad but Holy God
withdraw His hand from Thee.
~~Judge Roy Moore~~
The wickedness of the human heart is the heart trouble within America today that also afflicts all of humanity. Soon God’s corrective forewarnings will become His wrath unleashed. For those who ask why the wicked seemingly get away with their wickedness, the preacher of God’s great wisdom says the following: “Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil. Though a sinner do evil an hundred times, and his days be prolonged, yet surely I know that it shall be well with them that fear God, which fear before him: But it shall not be well with the wicked, neither shall he prolong his days, which are as a shadow; because he feareth not before God” (Ecclesiastes 8:11-13).
--Terry
