Saturday, January 29, 2011

Isaiah 19: "I Will Set Egyptians Against Egyptians"

29 January 2011: Bill Salus' yesterday posted a most excellent prophecy exegesis on his PROPHECY NEWS-STAND blog which I urge everyone visiting here to read through this link: "I Will Set Egyptians Against Egyptians."

Indeed, Isaiah has prophecied that civil war will come to Egypt, most probably as a precursor to the events which conclude in the fulfillment of Psalm 83. Without question I believe this is cutting edge exegesis from Bill Salus. And be sure to inform friends, neighbors and fellow members of your church to become informed as well. It will be an amazing experience to be an eyewitness to the prophetic declaration of the Most Holy God per Isaiah 19 as it enters literal fulfillment before our eyes.

Joshua 13:1-7

25 January 2011: Joshua was an old man, the Lord's conquering warrior was nearing the end of his earthly life, yet the Lord informs Joshua that he had much work yet to complete before it would be time to rest. This subject may well have a double relevance in these last days, for the Bride of Christ as well as for the re-established Israel of Ezekiel 37.

"Now Joshua was old, advanced in years. And the LORD said to him: “You are old, advanced in years, and there remains very much land yet to be possessed. This is the land that yet remains: all the territory of the Philistines and all that of the Geshurites, from Sihor, which is east of Egypt, as far as the border of Ekron northward (which is counted as Canaanite); the five lords of the Philistines—the Gazites, the Ashdodites, the Ashkelonites, the Gittites, and the Ekronites; also the Avites; from the south, all the land of the Canaanites, and Mearah that belongs to the Sidonians as far as Aphek, to the border of the Amorites; the land of the Gebalites, and all Lebanon, toward the sunrise, from Baal Gad below Mount Hermon as far as the entrance to Hamath; all the inhabitants of the mountains from Lebanon as far as the Brook Misrephoth Maim, and all the Sidonians—them I will drive out from before the children of Israel; only divide it by lot to Israel as an inheritance, as I have commanded you. Now therefore, divide this land as an inheritance to the nine tribes and half the tribe of Manasseh.”"

We can learn almost all there is to know about Joshua by reading the Book of Numbers. His name was originally Hoshea (Literally meaning salvation) and was changed by Moses to Joshua (Jehoshua and literally meaning Yahweh is salvation). This is the same name that in Greek is Jesus. In Numbers 27:12-22 we learn that Moses was seeking a new leader for Israel, "the congregation," because no flock of sheep of the Lord's can be without a shepherd. And God commanded Moses that Joshua was the man for this task because, as verse 18 tells us, he is a man "in whom is the Spirit." And on a summit of Mount Abarim (Mt. Nebo in Moab) Moses did exactly as God commanded, and Joshua led by the Spirit became the leader of Israel, the entire congregation of Israel in the years circa 1400-06 BC. From this point the conquest of the Promised Land took about 45 years according to Joshua 14:6-14. So the taking of Hebron from the Anakim was the last act in 45 years of war and conquest, and then there was rest from war.

Ezekiel tells us that prior to the attempted invasion of the Gog confederation Israel will be at peace, stable, secure, without fear of any nation - at rest from war. Israel's re-establishment began with war in the period of 1947-49, and then in 1967 Israel was enlarged through the conquest of land to its present size. And from 1967 to the present Israel has maintained its present geographical form. 2012 will mark the 45th year since 1967 and the taking of the whole of Jerusalem. And Psalm 83 is missing one final major action on the battlefield before Israel can become - at rest from war.

Given the destablizing events currently occurring in Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt, there may not be much more time to expire before that period of rest becomes a reality. And in that day the Lord's attention will move from the Bride of Christ to Israel upon whom He has promised to pour out His Spirit. And the Harpazo of the Bride of Christ is more imminent than ever.

Maranatha! Our Lord is Coming!

Thursday, January 20, 2011

Iran Completes Its Conquest of Lebanon

UPDATE: 20 January 2011: Today's DEBKAfile report, Hezbollah's eleventh-hour pullback from siege of UN sites and troops, might be dismissed by some as being fanciful, but I'm here to inform that there's a whole lot of facts behind it.

On December 6, 2010 the Lebanese newspaper The Daily Star reported that Hezbollah's political ally and world-class Jew hater, Wi'am Wahhab, made the following statement: "If the outside [world] is indifferent toward strife in Lebanon, we can confirm that in the event of strife, UNIFIL troops in Lebanon will not be left in peace." But this really isn't new news, Wahhab's been making the same threat since last July.

Obviously, Hezbollah's current military operational orders, as directed by the Iranian Ayatollah, were planned well in advance. The enhanced Western military presence referred to below indicates that our intelligence and military command authorities took these threats seriously. We'll soon see if Hezbollah is feeling froggy enough to go ahead and jump. It might be the last thing they ever do.



UPDATE 18 January 2011: As of early this morning Hezbollah and AMAL (AMAL is a former rival and secular Lebanese Shi'a militia) soldiers were seen taking up positions on the streets of Beirut. While this might seem to be much-ado-over-nothing in the crazy world of Lebanon, the streets in which these Shi'a soldiers were taking up fighting positions are in Sunni Muslim neighborhoods. The Sunni's are obviously very concerned with this turn of events.

The cause of the Hezbollah/Amal deployment is due to the U.N. STL Prosecutor, Daniel A. Bellemare, CONFIDENTIALLY filing his indictments in the 2005 assassination of PM Rafiq al-Hariri and the murder of 22 others with the Tribunal Registrar yesterday, 17 JAN 11. The Tribunal Registrar will next submit the indictment to the U.N. STL Pre-Trial (international) Judge. Thus, the U.N. STL has entered into the judicial phase of its existence. The (international) Pre-Trial Judge is expected to confirm the indicments and release them publicly. Most observers expect both living and deceased members of Hezbollah's leadership to be named in the indictments, with at least one French report (AFP) publicly indicating that Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamene'i to also be included among those indicted.

Additionally, according to new information from Al-Arabia, the former first President of the Islamic Republic of Iran Abolhasssan Bani Sadr, (now living in exile in France) has confirmed the U.N. STL indictments will name Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamene'i as well as both living and deceased members of Hezbollah as being the persons responsible for the assassination and murders. Bani Sadr reportedly stated that Khamene'i personally ordered the assassination of Rafiq al-Hariri saying, "only someone in my position can understand the necessity of such an action." Bani Sadr went on to state that he expects Ayatollah Khamene'i will now "liquidate" Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, mostly likely due to his extemely poor handling of the U.N. STL situation.

UPDATE 12 January 2011: Today Hezbollah's threatened "Zero Hour" arrived at 4:30 PM Beirut time, 07:30 AM Eastern Standard Time.

The "Zero Hour" arrived with the resignations of all eleven Hezbollah government ministers from their posts. The effect of these resignations was the immediate collapse of Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri's government. The resignations occurred as an effective preemption of Prime Minister al-Hariri's meeting with Obama in Washington later today.

I believe Hezbollah and their militia allies will now move rapidly to fill the lack of a functioning government vacuum their long-planned action was designed to cause. The resignations of Hezbollah's government minister has the effect of being a coup d'etat.

This crisis may also become an impetus for the U.N. STL to immediately issue their long anticipated indictments of Hezbollah for Rafiq al-Hariri's assassination, and possibly for some form of Western military intervention to thwart Iranian military expansion into the Eastern Mediterranean.

The USS Enterprise (CVN-65) Carrier Strike Group (CSG), including Destroyer Squadron-2, the AEGIS cruiser USS Leyte Gulf (CG-55) and destroyers USS Barry (DDG-52), USS Bulkeley (DDG-84), and USS Mason (DDG-87) are enroute to the Mediterranean Sea in an augmentation of the US Navy's 6th Fleet.

27 November 2010: The Islamic Republic of Iran's long-term conquest of the Republic of Lebanon is a fait accompli. Once again the agenda of the Islamic Republic has not only trumped that of the inept and feckless Western Powers but it is in fact a de facto usurpation of the imminent, and so-called "inviolable" United Nations Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) indictments in the case of the 2005 assassination of Prime Minister Rafiq HARIRI.


This chessboard-like achievement was made evident as Western leaders slept early this morning with the arrival in Tehran of the current Lebanese Prime Minister Saad HARIRI. The Lebanese Prime Minister's trip to Iran ahead of the official releasing the the STL's indictments on the assassination of Saad's father belies Hezbollah's threatened "Zero Day" coup d'etat.


A report by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) published on Sunday 21 November, and aired globally on Monday 22 November, revealed that the U.N. STL's indictments provided irrefutable proof in the form of a loyal Lebanese officer's intelligence operation which identified senior members of Hezbollah as Rafiq Hariri's assassins.


According to documentation in the U.S. Library of Congress, Hezbollah has from its inception in 1982 has been a forward deployed element of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) when a small contingent of Pasdaran, a/k/a the "Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution," a/k/a the Islamic Revolutionary Guards, arrived and set up shop at Baalbek in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley in 1982.


Therefore, Lebanese Prime Minister Saad-eddine Rafiq al-Hariri is this morning, and tomorrow the esteemed quest and the newest sock-puppet of the Iranian Ayatollah's regime, a regime who ultimately ordered the assassination of his father.


The word treason is probably in the forefront the minds of those few liberty loving Lebanese citizens who brought about the short-lived "Cedar Revolution" and now watch as their nation has been taken from them with nary a word or deed from the so-called democratic West. Never have I entertained the thought that the treachery of Neville Chamberlain would be eclipsed. Today I stand quietly corrected.

Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Gog is Alive and Well and Living in Russia


5 January 2010: It's long been something to ponder since the collapse of the Soviet Union how Ezekiel 38/39's God-breathed "Prophecy Against Gog" had Orthodox Russia as the origin of the leader (Gog) and his nation (Magog) of a vast military confederation of Muslim Caucasian and Central Asian nations from within the former Soviet Union, in addition to the solidly Muslim nations of Turkey, Iran, Libya and the Sudan who will soon attempt to invade and plunder the greater State of Israel in these latter years.

Yes, the Word of God is inerrant. Period. And I've always believed by faith that Ezekiel 38/39 would occur exactly as the literal words of the text say it will occur. As a baby boomer and one who began his military service in the final phase of the Cold War, I had always assumed the godless Russian communists of the former USSR had natural allies in the Islamic world because they both hated Israel. So, Ezekiel 38/39 made logical sense to me.

Then came the collapse of the Soviet Union and suddenly Ezekiel's Israel invading confederation became more of a curiosity to me, a "known unknown" as a former U.S. Secretary of Defense was fond of saying, particularly since post-Yeltsin Orthodox Russia, ruled by a mafiosa-like cabal of KGB officers, was really quite adept at killing Muslims by the tens of thousands in their north Caucasus republic of Chechnya, in not just one war but two wars that continue to this day as an Islamic insurgency.

However, now I believe I know how this prophecy will achieve a fulfillment that is exactly as literal as the text of Ezekiel states. What follows below is an article I received today which provides a great explanation of why and how the Orthodox Russian Federation will become an Islamic Russian Federation by the time Ezekiel 38/39 comes to fulfillment. It is also quite probable that the man who Ezekiel names as "Gog" is alive and well and living in Russia right now. But his name is not Vladimir Putin. His name may well be that of 51-year old Ravil Ismagilovich Gaynutdinov, or as he's popularly known, Ravil Gaynutdin, the Grand Mufti of Russia since 1996.

- - -

Russian Army To Be Muslim Majority In Few Decades

http://bigpeace.com/






When discussing the Islamization of the West, France is usually cited as being the worst-off of the Western democracies. It has an estimated Muslim population of 10%, perhaps as high as 15%, and the demographics of the situation — a very low birthrate among the native French, and a baby boom among the Muslim immigrants — do not bode well for the future of France.

If we expand the definition of “the West” a bit, it becomes necessary to add India and Russia to the list of Most Islamized Western Nations. India has the largest, oldest, and most intractable “Islam problem” of any Western democracy. The Muslim minority in India is over 150 million (13+% of the population) and is growing relative to the Hindu population. India lives under the constant threat of terror attack. Its citizens experience deadly bombings and other forms of violent jihad with mind-numbing regularity.

Russia is a special case. Its Muslim population is estimated at 10% to 12%, and its demographic situation is worse than that of France, so that Russian Islam is expected to grow rapidly. If present trends continue, Muslims will comprise a majority of the Russian military within a couple of decades.

However, as analysts often point out, Islam in Russia is different from virtually anywhere else. The most fanatical Osama-loving terrorists and their sympathizers are confined mainly to Chechnya, Dagestan, and other small republics in the southern Caucasus. To the extent that these ethnicities have migrated to Moscow and other parts of Russia proper, the problem of Islamic terror has spread, but its practitioners are still mainly from those Caucasian ethnic groups.

A large part of the Muslim population in Russia is Tatar. The Tatars are a Mongolian ethnicity, and have been in Russia for almost eight hundred years, since the they first conquered the Eastern Slavs. When Ivan the Great threw off the Tatar yoke two and a half centuries later, the Tatar Muslims became subordinate to the Orthodox Christians of Holy Russia, and have retained that status ever since, except for a brief atheist interregnum between 1917 and 1991.

Western analysts have generally regarded the Tatar brand of Islam as mild and innocuous, especially compared with the virulent versions found in Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and Somalia. Since the Tatars are estimated to number between seven and eight million, or around half of Russia’s Muslim population, this cuts the percentage of “problem” Muslims in half, making the scope of the issue roughly the same as it is in the Netherlands.

Except in the case of the Caucasus, the Legacy Media have consistently downplayed the danger of radical Islam in Russia. An article from April 2007 in The Economist is a case in point. It calls the increase of Russian Islam “a benign growth”, and describes it in glowing terms such as only the MSM can provide. The subhead tells us:

Russia’s fastest-growing religious group is its Muslims. But they are not much like their counterparts in other countries

Below are some further excerpts from the article. I’ve bolded certain names, for reasons that will become apparent later on:

…Russia has more Muslims than any other European state (bar Turkey); and the Muslim share of the population is rising fast. The 2002 census found that Russia’s Muslims numbered 14.5m, 10% of its total of 145m. In 2005 the foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, put the number of Muslims at 20m. Ravil Gaynutdin, head of Russia’s Council of Muftis, talks of 23m, including Azeri and Central Asian migrants.

Already you notice the standard Islamic tactic of inflating for propaganda purposes the number of Muslims within a given country. Because “Islam is the world’s fastest-growing religion” (everybody knows this, and the media keep repeating it, but how do we know it’s true? Statistics can always be traced back to the OIC or CAIR or MPAC or similar organizations), the number of Muslims has to be revised continually upwards.

Moreover, the Muslim population of Russia is rising even as the country’s overall population falls. Many Muslim communities long predate Russian rule. Shamil Alyautdinov, the imam of the newest and most dynamic of Moscow’s four mosques, insists that the very word “minority” should not apply to a faith “which emerged on Russia’s territory far earlier than Christianity did”.

Aside from the Caucasus, there are now two concentrations of Muslims in Russia. One is in Moscow, swollen by labour migration, where they may number 2m. The other is in the faith’s old bastions: Bashkortostan and, above all, Tatarstan, where a revival of the faith has been overseen successfully by a wily regional president, Mintimer Shaimiev. In several parts of the Caucasus, old-style compacts between local rulers and “tame” clerics have alienated young people; but in Tatarstan they still seem to work quite well.

But in general Islam’s resurgence in Tatarstan’s capital, Kazan, has been peaceful. For the first time since Ivan the Terrible conquered the place in 1552, the city’s Kremlin houses a mosque, its minarets vying with nearby Orthodox Christian onion domes. Ramil Yunusov, its Saudi-trained imam, gets on fine with the local Orthodox clergy. Just 25 years ago, says Gusman Iskhakov, the mufti who heads the Muslim Spiritual Board of Tatarstan, the region had some 20 mosques. Now there are around 1,300.

This is the MSM’s story, and they’re sticking to it: Everything is fine; Islam in Russia is cool and hip and friendly and modern, just as Yuri Andropov was. OK, so there’s a bit of radicalism here and there, but nothing the FSB can’t handle.

And, yes, the number of mosques in Tatarstan has increased from 20 to 1,300 in just a quarter of a century. That’s a 6400% increase — more than 18% per year — but we’re not supposed to worry about it. After all, since the Orthodox Christians have been building all those churches for centuries, it’s only fair — right? Now it’s Islam’s turn.

Rafael Khakimov, an adviser to Mr Shaimiev, uses the term “Euro-Islam” to describe the faith that has evolved in what was for long the world’s northernmost Muslim outpost. Wherever he turns, Mr Shaimiev likes to present a benign image. Accompanying Mr Putin round the Middle East, the Tatar leader shows Russia’s pious Muslim face, a tactic that underpins the Kremlin’s Middle East diplomacy. In February the Saudis gave Mr Shaimiev an award for services to the faith. But when they are talking to west Europeans, the Tatar authorities like to present themselves as more open-minded than most other regions of Russia.

This is what everybody has been hoping for — “Euro-Islam”. It’s what Tariq Ramadan has been peddling in the swanky European salons of the academe and the media for the last decade or so. The cultural elite have resigned themselves to Islamization, so the benign version of Islam is supposed to make the process easier to accept. Just take your Percocet and slather on the Vaseline — and then lie back, close your eyes, and think of Euro-Islam.

Many people in Arab countries, says Mr Shaimiev, have never lived on equal terms with other cultures, and their teaching doesn’t suit the needs of the Tatars, who have. His government has opened its own religious schools and universities, to propagate its preferred form of Islam.

So the madrassas of Tatar Islam — Euro-Islam — are different from those of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. This, too is supposed to reassure us. We’re meant to believe that their students are being taught Sharia Lite.

Among the politically active Muslims of Moscow who lobbied for Imam Stepanenko, the mood is different. For one thing, there is a row between two contestants for official favour: the cautious Mr Gaynutdin, and Talgat Tadjuddin, a feisty chief mufti who in 2003 proclaimed a jihad against America.

Notice that a Muslim who declares a jihad is described as “feisty” — evoking the image of a lovably cantankerous old rogue, who maybe makes a spot of trouble now and then, but is quite all right, really. I mean, he only declared a jihad against America, after all, and not — whew! — Europe.

If we fast-forward nearly four years to the end of 2010, we hear a slightly different tune coming out of Russia. Among the ululating voices are those of Ravil Gaynutdin and Talgat Tadjuddin. The “cautious” and “feisty” imams are still front and center, although the variant transliterations of their names makes them a bit harder to identify.

Here’s what Asia News has to say:

Russian Islamic Leaders Against the Kremlin

The chief mufti attacks the State guilty of hindering the unification of the Muslims of the Federation and condemn those religious leaders who are working as puppets to quell the community’s presence in the country.

Moscow (AsiaNews) — The leaders of the Russian Muslim community have launched a strong attack against the authorities in the country. The head of the Council of muftis of Russia, Ravil Gainutdin, accuses the state of wanting to obstruct the unification of Muslims and attempting to “suppress Islam” in the Federation. He has also described as “puppets” and “squalid people,” those mufti who work in government institutions.

This is a somewhat more confrontational — dare we say “extremist”? — message. Three and a half years later, and Mr. Gainutdin is now on the attack. Does this mean he has graduated to the status of “feisty”, like his esteemed colleague?

Not entirely. It seems that the two muftis have been singing from the same hymnal all along, and were just playing good cop/bad cop with the gullible media droids. That feisty-versus-reasonable shtick was just for the rubes:

The project of unification of the Russian followers of Muhammad dates back to 2009. Then, Gainutdin said in an interview with Radio Liberty, “the mufti Talgat Tadzhuddin had proposed to merge the three central organizations of the Muslims of Russia.” “After studying the idea — continued the religious leader — I together with the leader of the Caucasus Muslims, Berdiyev, met him. We created a working group to structure this unification. But the government did not approve of our decision. They claimed Talgat Tadzhuddin’s idea was not in line with government policy”.

The new goal is a single, unified Islam throughout the Russian Federation. Chechens, Tatars, Uzbeks, Kazakhs, and all the others, in it together for the good of the Ummah.

Mr. Gainutdin is clear: any clerics who resist his call for Islamic unity are “puppets” of the Islamophobes:

Gainutdin’s charges against the State are also motivated by the recent creation of the fourth muftiyat (Islamic Council), the “Russian Association of Islamic agreement” designed precisely to prevent any process of unification. “The new ‘pocket muftis’, who oppose the growth of Islam are mere puppets” says Gainutdin. “These puppets, like those who work in government, for example, the Islamophobic Grishin (the director of the Presidential Administration in charge of relations with Islamic organizations, ed), will not hesitate to suppress Islam in Russia … which is already taking place,” he added.

This charge of disloyalty aimed at the “pocket muftis” is a serious one. Under sharia law, it is very close to a declaration of takfir against them, which is a form of apostasy, and carries the death sentence. This is serious business.

The last paragraph provides a hint as to what might be causing all this newfound “feistiness”:

Commenting on the recent clashes between Nationalist hooligans and mostly Muslim immigrants from the Caucasus, Gainutdin emphasized the existence of tensions in the capital home to more than two million Muslims. He also pointed out the need to build new mosques in Moscow, where the faithful are forced to pray, for lack of space, “in the streets, on tram lines, and even in the courtyards of churches.” “This humiliation, this discriminatory policy against civil rights continues, before the eyes of Muslims around the world.”

Mr. Gainutdin is reminding the oligarchs who rule Russia that he has two million troops under his command in Russia’s capital city. This is a warning to Vladimir Putin to shorten the chain on his nationalist “hooligans”, or face the consequences. Judging by the roundup of young nationalists over the past week or so — the last I heard, a couple of thousand of them were in preventive detention — Mr. Putin has gotten the message.

It seems that Islam in Russia is not the mild and relatively harmless institution that we all thought it was. Russian Muslims are flexing their muscles and pushing for unity.

For some reason, they seem to think that tomorrow belongs to them.



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Saturday, January 1, 2011

A "Palestinian" state in 2011? Don't count on it.

01 January 2011: So, here we are on the first day of 2011, and the odds makers and the secular power elite are banking on the unilateral declaration of statehood for "Palestine" in just a few short months.

I'm thinking such a "Palestinian" state will never come into existence.

Why?

Because of Ezekiel 38/39.

Let's say, just for giggles and grins sake, that a "Palestinian" state did exist and was located within the borders of Judea and Samaria (the West Bank). What the heck, thow in the whole of Gaza as well. That's the new "Palestine."

So riddle me this...

If Israel was nothing more than the tiny geographical size of the State of New Jersey (less than 9,000 square miles in area)...



what would be the necessity for the overwhelmingly massive military forces of 9 much larger nations as described by Ezekiel to come against her?

At that tiny area; it's like comparing the size of an apple with a grape.

Such a scenario makes zero military tactical, practical or logical sense at whatsoever. Zippo, nada, none.

Such a scenario as described by Ezekiel only makes sense if "Palestine" does not exist and Israel's geographical size at that time is at least 20 times larger than the above map indicates. Ezekiel 38/39 makes sense if Israel were at that time to encompass the land area of a nation the size of Iraq.

An Israel that's approximately this large...



Now that's an invasion force versus size comparison which is apples to apples.