Aug 3
The Struggle for Control of Jerusalem
It is generally regarded as common knowledge amongst prophecy scholars that the foundation of the state of Israel was the beginning of the last days. Some would go as far as to say that the generation that witnessed the birth of Israel would also live to see the return of Jesus Christ.
The Bible actually includes more prophecy about Jerusalem than it does about Israel itself. During the tribulation hour, the focus will be on Jerusalem. God promises calamity for any nation that comes against His Holy City.
"Behold, I will make Jerusalem a cup of trembling unto all the people round about, when they shall be in the siege both against Judah and against Jerusalem. And in that day will I make Jerusalem a burdensome stone for all people: all that burden themselves with it shall be cut in pieces, though all the people of the earth be gathered together against it” (Zechariah 12:2-3).
Anyone with a secular mindset should find it odd that so much attention is being paid to Jerusalem. Jack Kelley rightly pointed out in a recent article that, ”Jerusalem has no natural harbor. It isn't situated astride any major trade route. Nor is it a gateway city. It's not a banking or industrial or commercial or medical or hi-tech center. It has no natural resources. While it's too hilly for an airport, it doesn't command any strategic high ground” (Leave Jerusalem Alone).
Despite its lack of qualities that mankind would regard as important, Jerusalem remains the center of world attention. There have been more UN resolutions about it than about any other city on earth. Several U.S. presidents have based their legacies on resolving issues relating to Jerusalem. President Obama has a special envoy, George Mitchell, who deals with issues related to Jerusalem. A series of Israeli/Arab wars have also been fought over this city.
Lately, Jerusalem has been very active in the headlines. Israeli leaders are under heavy pressure to freeze construction projects in the eastern part of the capital city. President Obama has been very vocal in calling for Israel to halt any new construction.
Obama has quickly earned the loathing of right-wing religious parties in Israel. Rabbi Eliezer Waldman, a former Knesset member, said, “You are a racist! How dare you tell Jews that they can’t live in this place or in that location? We’re finished with such periods in our history!” Waldman then warned, “God Almighty has taken His people out of exile and brought them back home to its land! He has brought them to independence, to settlement, to life in its land that has now come to life once again! This is the ‘change’! And woe unto those who would interfere in this process of change!”
I believe America is in great danger because of its policies regarding Jerusalem. We are messing with the apple of God’s eye, and His wrath is being poured out on our nation. I think one reason America is in such poor economic health is because of past policies toward Israel and Jerusalem. Knowing God is slow in His judgment, I fear we have a huge backlog of vengeance coming our way.
There is no easy solution to the conflict involving Jerusalem. The Palestinian Authority has laid claim to all Jerusalem neighborhoods that were occupied by Jordan between the years of 1948 and 1967. This assertion basically means they want the entire old city. The Jews will never agree to such an arrangement because God has already declared the Jews as being the rightful owners of the Holy City. The Antichrist may come up with a temporary compromise, but in the end, there will be total war for control of Jerusalem.
Terry and I were talking the other day, and we said we were amazed to see Jerusalem so active in the news. If this city now matches the role it will play in the final moments of end-time prophecy, it makes us wonder how close we are to the tribulation hour.
"But the end of all things is at hand: be ye therefore sober, and watch unto prayer" (1 Peter 4:7).
-- Todd
“Braking” News
We have observed and reported since President Obama's election a stunning array of issues and events that look to have prophetic significance. What makes those events even more phenomenal has been the speed of their gush through the daily, even hourly, news headlines. The breaking news of prophetic implications has been trumpeting from the cable television news programs, which are competing with each other for audience numbers that define the winners and losers in the ratings race. I have often likened it to the manifestation in our time of Daniel's last-days flood, and his forewarning of Daniel 12:4: "O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end: many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased."
My opinion hasn't changed; I still think we are in that general time-frame. I'm convinced the end-times book about which the angel spoke to Daniel the prophet has been opened. However, I have often said I believe Bible prophecy teaches that it will be a time of seeming lull that Christ's sudden intervention into man's rage toward tribulation will occur. This belief is based on, for one scriptural example, Jesus' words:
And as it was in the days of Noe, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man. They did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, and the flood came, and destroyed them all. Likewise also as it was in the days of Lot; they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded; But the same day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all. Even thus shall it be in the day when the Son of man is revealed" (Luke 17:26-30).
The rapture must be the coming again Jesus was prophesying here because, certainly, if we look at the horrendous judgments of God's wrath—the seals, trumpets, and vials—the world will not be going about business as usual, as foretold in this account. The carnage from those twenty-one specific judgments will render the earth a smoldering heap, and leave perhaps two-thirds of the world's people dead. When Christ returns with ten thousands of His saints, as depicted in Revelation 19:11, it will not be business as usual on this devastated planet.
Events that have stormed across the news wires, Internet, airwaves, satellites, and every other medium through which we receive information have presented a time seemingly far different from Jesus words: “Therefore be ye also ready: for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh" (Matthew 24:44). Anyone with eyes, ears, and a brain with which to see, hear, and think upon the news with which we've been bombarded should be on high alert that something portentous is going on.
The fact is, however, despite all of these prophetic signals that should tell Christians that we are seeing almost every sign of the end-times mix blatantly displayed in the news of the hour, the attitude among the church is for the most part ho-hum. We are living in both “the time of signs” and “the time of think not,” as the words of Jesus put it.
Coming to the proposition I would like to suggest, I have observed throughout years of considering current issues and events in light of Bible prophecy that the Lord allows things to sometimes move quite quickly in stage-setting for the tribulation. It is then as if He puts His great hand of control on the world and the stage-setting slows. It seems, to me at least, that after all of the swift movement of the past seven or eight months, exigencies of most recent days have created logjams of sorts that show that God has somewhat applied the brakes to the swift movement.
I sense this in considering almost every prophetic front, but particularly when examining the “Roadmap to Peace” process and the proposal to divide Jerusalem. Israel, too—and its on-again, off-again maneuverings with regard to the Iranian nuclear weapons program—has become encumberingly convoluted and complex, with all of the world's diplomats intervening at every juncture. It is as if a supernaturally created bottleneck is slowing the rush of final end-times developments at present.
It is at least interesting to wonder if heavenly “braking” influences on the news flowing from around the world are creating the lull Jesus prophesied would be like the days of Noah and of Lot.
--Terry
American President, International Community in Dangerous End-Times Game
Barack Hussein Obama, along with other leaders of the international community, is pushing and pulling Israel toward decisions by Israeli leaders that will assure the eventuation of the time God's prophetic Word calls "Jacob's trouble" (Jeremiah 30:7). It is an effort guaranteed to cause all nations involved to be "cut to pieces," according to Zechariah, the Old Testament prophet: "And in that day will I make Jerusalem a burdensome stone for all people: all that burden themselves with it shall be cut in pieces, though all the people of the earth be gathered together against it" (Zechariah 12:3).
Any observer of the headlines today, with God's prophetic Word as a prism through which to look in discerning the times, can understand how quickly things are setting up for the Tribulation. No leader is more observably at the helm in steering the world toward the seventieth week of Daniel (Daniel 9:26–27) than the American president. His administration is on the fastest track possible in attempting to force the U.S. into the new world order configuration so long dreamed of by the humanists-elite.
In the seven months since his inauguration, Mr. Obama has moved the country from its envy-of-the-world free-market system; he has gathered under his socialistic wing of control America's banking industry and automobile industry; and he has his eyes set on putting the nation's entire health industry under his absolute authority. Additionally, he is aiming toward as quickly as possible binding America's citizenry under global environmental controls that will forever put Americans under energy prices that will make it impossible to maintain a lifestyle anything like Americans have been used to living. His projected multi-trillion dollar deficits would mortgage the financial futures of American's progeny forever.
Yet, in terms of the dangers presented by these changes this president plans for the U.S., his and the other world leaders' dealings with Israel at present far exceed the insane actions just mentioned.
France demands that Israel stop the building of homes for Jewish citizens in East Jerusalem. French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, in letting France's demand be known, said Tuesday, July 21, "The Israeli ambassador in Washington was summoned and the ambassador in Paris has now been summoned to the Foreign Ministry..."
The Obama administration is leading the way for other world leaders to follow in forcing Israeli citizens to give up property in Jerusalem, which God calls the "apple of His eye."
France’s bold move, coupled with increasingly harsh criticism of Israel by Russia, have strengthened U.S. President Barack Obama’s determination to enforce his demands that Israel stop construction for Jews. American officials said that the building activity is a negative factor on negotiations with the Palestinian Authority. Neither the State Department nor the White House has commented whether its demands extend to construction for Arabs...
The apparent restriction on Jews in effect would remove from negotiations the status of eastern Jerusalem, which was restored to the Jewish State in the Six-Day War forty-two years ago. Hundreds of buildings in the area are owned by Jews who were forced to leave their homes under the British Mandate and during the War of Independence in 1948... (Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu, “Worldwide Coalition: Media Putting Israel in Corner,” Israel National News, July 22, 2009).
President Obama calls the Jewish settlements illegitimate and demands that the Jews be cleared from East Jerusalem so the Palestinians can be settled there. The approximately three hundred thousand Jewish people living there are the hold-up to getting agreements necessary to move forward with the "Roadmap to Peace" effort. Moving these people will, he avers, make it possible to move forward for a peace he intends to hammer out with the same dazzling speed with which he has tried to bring America into new-world-order compliance.
There is an explosive dynamic building in the matter of America and the rest of the world powers-that-be making demands on Israel.
[Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin] Netanyahu told the Cabinet this week that Israel has complete sovereignty over all of Jerusalem and decides issues such as building permits. Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon declared on Tuesday, “Israel will continue to operate in accordance with its vital national interests... Our right to rule and develop Jerusalem is irrefutable" (Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu, “US Policy: Jews in Eastern Jerusalem are Unwanted ‘Settlers,’” Israel National News, July 22, 2009).
The opposition to U.S. and international comunity leaders wanting to bully Israel doesn't end there. Even liberal Likud members like Intelligence Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Dan Meridor, who is one of the most dovish members of the Knesset—having been in favor of giving up the Golan Heights for peace—was irate over the demands.
Meridor proclaims that former President George Bush's informal commitment not to uproot the Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem should be honored. But, Mr. Obama has declared that the agreement was never a formal one, thus does not have to be fulfilled.
In my view, this bit of subterfuge displayed by the Obama administration is but a foreshadowing of things the Jewish leadership—who will ultimately sign the covenant made with death and hell of Isaiah Chapter 28—can expect. For America and all nations of the world, such luciferically spawned dealings with God's chosen people, in my opinion, constitute a dangerous game of brinkmanship beyond calculation. The result will be Armageddon (Joel 3:2).
--Terry
