Savor this Time

I can’t help it. I grow more irritated with those that feel Bible prophecy teaching is about “new, previously hidden” Bible passages that promise some mind-blowing new revelation. Or fitting every single geopolitical moment into Ezekiel.

This irritates some, I’m sure. There is something in the human spirit that enjoys being titillated.

I will never understand why we can’t just stand in stunned reverence by Scripture itself. Shameless plug here, but like this.

It’s self-evident that nothing is as amazing as God Himself. His Word is the beginning and ending of revelation. One of the elements He chose to reveal to us is glimpses into the future. He alone knows the end from the beginning (Isaiah 46).

So it is that I saw yet another example of “previously unknown” (my phrase) insight from the Bible. Another guy that’s unlocked a message from God that the previous generations didn’t see over 2,000 years.

Nope.

I am focusing on revelation already given to us, then looking at the modern world.

This week was yet another calling to mind of God’s numerous biblical promises to the Jewish people, to preserve them forever. Against astonishing odds.

Therefore say to the Israelites, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: It is not for your sake, people of Israel, that I am going to do these things, but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations where you have gone. I will show the holiness of my great name, which has been profaned among the nations, the name you have profaned among them. Then the nations will know that I am the Lord, declares the Sovereign Lord, when I am proved holy through you before their eyes. Ezekiel 36:22-23

But for the sake of my name, I brought them out of Egypt. I did it to keep my name from being profaned in the eyes of the nations among whom they lived and in whose sight I had revealed myself to the Israelites. Ezekiel 20:9

So You led Your people, to make Yourself a glorious name. Isaiah 63:14

Nevertheless He saved them for His name’s sake, that He might make His mighty power known. Psalm 106:8

Morever, God promises in His Word to specifically save them body and soul in the last days of human history. We’ve seen some amazing stuff in the modern era, such as the Six Day War.

Now we are witnessing it again.

Israel’s intelligence community has made it possible for the IDF to find demonic enemies in ways that stun anyone paying attention. Days ago, Israel assassinated Sheik Nasrallah, the Hezbollah terror chief with oceans of blood on his hands. Then they killed his replacement!

Israel’s targeted killings have terrified Iran. One clue is, the goofier and more dramatic the mullahs’ rhetoric, the better Israel is performing. One report stated:

“Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian met on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York with Lebanese interim Prime Minister Najib Mikati. Pezeshkian said that if Muslim countries maintaining relations with Israel were to sever their economic ties with it, Israel would not be able to continue its ‘crimes.’ The Iranian president also criticized the political, economic, and military support of the United States for Israel, which he said enabled Israel to carry out its ‘criminal actions.’ Pezeshkian stressed that Iran is ready to provide any assistance to Lebanon.”

One can hear the desperation in Iran’s collective voice.

Then, in another example that we are heading toward apocalyptic times, Iran attacked Israel directly again (the first time in April) with a missile attack. This one upped the ante, as they sent over 200 (this time ballistic) missiles.

None had any impact! One killed a…Palestinian man in Jericho. Five Iranians died at a launch site when the thing blew up. No Israeli casualties.

Iran spent about $200 million for an utter failure.

So a vigorous missile attack is slapped down like a gnat. And then we have the planning for the Nasrallah killing to marvel at, as well.

As September 27 approached, Netanyahu met with his advisors and planned the attack on the man responsible for 241 dead American Marines in Beirut in 1983. Then the Israelis hatched what seems like a movie plot. Keeping up-to-the-minute with intelligence in Lebanon, Netanyahu then flew to the United States where he was to address the UN. On the plane, he continued to plan. Then in his hotel room he continued to plan! Just before entering the stage at the UN, he gave the greenlight to kill Nasrallah. A wave of IAF jets, each with bunker-busting bombs, rolled into Beirut.

You see, Nasrallah had been lured to his death. He felt that with Bibi out of the country and “preoccupied,” he’d be relatively safe enough to conduct a rare meeting of the Hezbollah chiefs.

Wrong.

In one fell swoop, Israel killed not only Nasrallah, but also the entire “brain”trust of the terror group. They’re all gone.

These recent events are as miraculous as anything Israel’s done since statehood. And you’re alive to see it.

Yes, we are living in strange and disturbing times. But we are also witnessing what many of us have longed for: a manifestation of the great end-times prophecies that will usher-in eternity.

What a great gift from God!

That’s why we don’t need the over-the-top research of people that feel we need some code broken or signs in the heavens to experience God’s moving in our world. We can just read Scripture as it is and pay attention to Israel.

Savor every day from here on out.

Jimfletcher761@gmail.com

Jim1fletcher@yahoo.com

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(An Israeli friend sent this to me, and I was so impressed, I’d like to feature it here as a guest column this week. JF)

Israel’s Bravery

18 September 2024

By Allister Heath, The Telegaph

Robbed of its moral bearings, bereft of any sense of right and wrong, incapable of distinguishing heroes from villains, the West can no longer celebrate when good triumphs over evil.

Israel’s brilliantly audacious booby-trapping of thousands of Hezbollah pagers, followed by the blowing up of the terror group’s walkie-talkies, is a stunning fillip for the forces of civilisation worldwide.

A tiny nation of just 9.3 million, of which 7.2 million are Jewish, living in a country the size of Wales, reeling from the worst anti-Semitic pogroms since the Holocaust, Israel is leading the war against barbarism, its young conscripts doing a job that would once have required intervention by a Western coalition acting as global policeman.

The fact that so many in Britain, Europe and America, especially the young, no longer take Israel’s side in this existential combat exemplifies our cultural, intellectual and ethical degeneration.

The Biden administration is obsessed with preventing “escalation”, even though that is what is required if Iran is to be stopped from gaining the means to wage a nuclear World War III. All too predictably, America, seemingly determined to ensure the survival of every regional terror group, appeared upset at the successful attack on Hezbollah. David Lammy, our foreign secretary, is delivering speeches claiming climate change is a worse threat than terrorism; in a rational world, Lammy would be privately congratulating his Israeli counterparts for the most successful surgical operation ever conducted against a terrorist organisation, with few civilian casualties, and pledging Britain’s help.

Instead, Keir Starmer has turned against Israel, banning the sales of some weapons – a policy that Germany appears intent on following – and refusing to oppose lawsuits against the Jewish state, in an unforgivable moral inversion.

Labour has placed Britain on the side of those nihilists masquerading as human rights lawyers who negate the essential distinction between victims and aggressors, between rule-bound, democracies desperate to minimise civilian casualties, and bloodthirsty dictatorships for whom their people are pawns to be sacrificed.

Hezbollah is funded and controlled by the Iranian regime, an obscurantist, fascistic, millenarian tyranny that persecutes minorities, women and dissidents. Violating human rights and plotting war crimes is Hezbollah’s raison d’être: its 150,000 missiles point towards civilian centres and, like Hamas and Iran itself, it seeks Israel’s liquidation, guaranteeing the massacre, expulsion or subjugation of Jews. Hezbollah has forced some 63,473 Israelis to flee their homes since October 7. This is unsustainable and explains why a major Israeli response is looming; obscenely, this will trigger widespread condemnation of the Jewish state.

Western foreign policy is a mishmash of cowardice, delusion and contradictions. Iran is a threat to the world; its alliance with Russia is deepening. Turkey, led by the despot Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has threatened Israel with invasion, yet remains part of Nato. Qatar, which puts up senior Hamas terrorists in luxury hotels, is a major non-Nato ally of the US, home to a crucial Western military base and a major investor in London. Egypt, a recipient of US aid, has tolerated myriad tunnels to southern Gaza, refused to let in any Palestinians and, bizarrely, is not held responsible for supplying Gaza with provisions, that task falling to Israel. None of the three latter regimes face sanctions: global ire is reserved for Israel.

One reason Western elites have become so Israelophobic is that, infected by wokery, they increasingly loathe Europe’s and America’s history and traditions, and view the Jewish state as a standout example of a Western model they reject.

Winston Churchill would be convicted for crimes against humanity today, as would Franklin D Roosevelt and Harry Truman. D-Day would be ruled illegitimate because so many French civilians died during the Battle of Normandy.

Democracies might as well not bother with nuclear weapons, for detonating one, even in retaliation for an unprovoked attack, would be deemed a war crime. I’m in favour of much stricter rules than those governing World War II, of doing everything possible to protect civilians, but this is madness.

The Just War is a foundational principle. States have the right to defend themselves. Every civilian life lost as collateral damage is a tragedy, but pacifism is a deluded utopia that fails to grasp the reality of the human condition. It is madness to criminalise all warfare, and despicable to focus on that conducted by democracies and ignore that advanced by our enemies.

It is equally stupid to entrust so much power to legal activists. Much historic anti-Semitism has been ratified by kangaroo courts, including during the 1930s. The Trial of the Talmud took place in France in 1240, with rabbis forced to defend religious texts against trumped-up accusations of blasphemy and obscenity.

Other bigot-fests masquerading as ordinary trials include the Disputations of Barcelona and Tortosa, the Damascus Affair, the Dreyfus affair that prompted Emile Zola’s seminal J’accuse, and the trial of Mendel Beilis in Ukraine in 1913. It is a well-established model that hasn’t gone out of fashion in far-Left quarters. They no longer explicitly single out religious beliefs or individuals but leverage lawfare to delegitimise what just happens to be the only Jewish state.

The fact that the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice have the trappings of a legitimate legal setting does not mean they necessarily embody justice. The fact that their rulings are deemed legitimate by Left-wing elites doesn’t automatically make them such. The fact that today’s blood libels take on the language of “human rights” doesn’t make them less monstrous. The fact that it is possible for a country as unjustly governed as South Africa to lead a genocide case against Israel proves that the entire system is rotten. The case is backed by Iran, Brazil’s far-Left president, Ireland and Egypt: we must have been transported into an alternative, Kafkaesque universe.

Israel is the supreme embodiment of law-bound national, democratic sovereignty, of peoplehood, of matching a nation to a state, of post-imperialism, of capitalism and technology, and of the continued relevance of the monotheistic religions. If you tear down Israel, you destroy the very ideas that underpin the West, the international order implodes and the autocracies triumph.

The stakes are thus unbelievably high. We must support Israel, and allow it to finish the job of annihilating Hamas and defeating Hezbollah.