Meanwhile, Back in the Dystopian Universe of Walid Shoebat

 

30 September 2014: It has been some time since I felt the need to address the puerile condescension against brethren Christian eschatologists by the faux former terrorist we know as Walid Shoebat, but, alas, once again the dystopian universe according to Walid begs to be viewed with coherent and corrective lenses. In his latest belabored attempt to write an eschatological treatise in the English-language, Walid makes the gratuitous claim to be able to see clearly what all other Christian eschatologists cannot see due to the acute cataractous nature of our eyes.

Atypically, and as with all of Walid's erroneous exposes and eisegetical works, he ignores the fact that the interpretation of Scripture comes quite often to the believer in a number of ways; most often as gifts of the Holy Spirit. For one believer the way of interpretive understanding might be via the gift known as "a word of knowledge (gnosis)" which is the ability to communicate a spiritual truth through the Spirit-guided investigation of God's word. To another believer it might be via the gift of teaching (didaskalos) which is to take a basic truth conveyed in the Lord's prophetic word and explain it in a manner that makes full comprehension by others of the Bride of Christ as simple a matter as a Sunday School lesson. To Walid the LORD God has not bestowed through His Spirit any of  the rest of the Bride of Christ with such gifts as these and other and instead Walid writes as if the Lord has left us with nothing more than an "infected" eye which intimates the end result that only Walid Shoebat holds the true knowledge of all things of an eschatological nature.

I have no time nor desire at this point to delve into Walid Shoebat's "Islamic Predominance" eisegesis about a mythical islamic antichrist and his mythical global khilafa (caliphate). That particularly bogus paradigm has previously been thoroughly deconstructed many times over by many very astute brethren eschatologists.  However, I included the link above for those who do enjoy a thoroughly mind-bending literary endeavor every now and then as a form of roll-on-the-floor-laughing entertainment. That is all that Walid's nonsensical rubbish is worth, and I am being very generous in my characterization here. 

Now some may ask, "Just how generous is very generous?" 

Well, for a starter, consider the following observation. In the above link you will discover that Walid Shoebat's gross misinterpretation of prophetic Scripture (The Revelation of Jesus Christ, no less!!!) fails to take into account the most eschatologically basic fact that when the 200-million man army of the "kings of the East" marches towards the Middle East during the 70th Week it marches against the beast empire of the Antichrist!! (see: Daniel 11:44; Revelation 9:14-16 and Revelation 16:12). So by just this one example, one and all are clearly capable of understanding that Walid Shoebat is trying to convince the reader to accept that in his thoroughly twisted and convoluted eisegetical paradigm the mythical islamic empire of the Antichrist marches and wages total war against itself. 

Who's got the cataractous eyes?

Global SITREP D6-14: Coalition Airstrikes Against Islamic State in Syria

UPDATE 28 September 2014: The UK Parliament voted recently to sanction RAF airstrikes against Islamic State forces inside the recognized borders of Iraq. Let me repeat the last part of the above: inside the recognized borders of Iraq. This does not include any part of Syria. Just Iraq. Any UK strikes in Syria will require a separate authorization vote by the British MPs. Also, this vote only authorized air strikes and explicitly forbids any of the essential UK ground forces to conventionally engage with and destroy the Islamic State terrorist military machine. Much was made recently in the media that the UK dispatched two GR4 Tornado strike aircraft from Cyprus to join the strikes on Islamic State targets in Iraq. These two British strike aircraft flew into Iraq and flew right back to their RAF Akrotiri base on Cyprus. Thus far into what they have dubbed 'Operation Shader' the RAF mission has been not to bomb anything, but to take reconnaissance pictures. However, RAF bombing runs could occur today if the recon missions have firmly located priority IS targets.

Other foreign, non-Arab governments committing a handful of aircraft to the campaign, or dare I say 'crusade,' against the Islamic State are Australia, France, Belgium, Netherlands and Denmark.

23/24 September 2014: Unconstitutional American airstrikes (meaning these airstrikes were not authorized by the U.S. Congress) on Syrian territory against Islamic State military facilities began last evening at about 2030 hours Eastern Daylight Time and included both manned strike aircraft and Tomahawk cruise missiles. There is no confirmation as yet, but the airstrikes also reportedly included aircraft from some of the GCC nations as well as aircraft from the Royal Jordanian Air Force. Prophetically, this military action in Syria elicits the Sheba/Dedan/merchants of Tarshish alliance referred to in Ezekiel 38:13.

It also appears as if the vast majority of the targets which were struck were in the vicinity of Raqqa, Syria, the proclaimed capital of the Islamic State, and were executed without the express request or permission of Bashar al-Assad's government in Damascus. These strikes appear to have been minimal as the battle damage assessment images show the target structures were still basically intact. Other targets just west of Aleppo, Syria where the newly emergent Al Qaeda franchise known as "Khorasan" were also allegedly struck due to claimed  intelligence reports had them directly involved in the final stages of a planned attack against the US homeland or European allies.  No European or NATO aircraft participated in these strikes.

CInC Obama and his coffee cup salute to US Marines

This specific type of intelligence directly invokes the notion that the US intelligence had gained HUMINT derived knowledge of the inner workings of the Al Qaeda-linked terrorist "Khorasan" cell which was publicly identified for the first time just days ago by US government sources.  I'm not sure I fully buy into this explanation as it appears to be far too convenient and politically expedient of an excuse for the American coffee cup saluting Commander-In-Chief (see image above) to issue and have immediately executed an illegal (U.S. Constitution and standing International Law) order to US military forces. There is something else to this that is unmistakable.

DO NOT be deceived! This "Khorasan" group is Al Qaeda by yet another made-up name. Al Qaeda in Syria, a/k/a al-Nusra, and Al Qaeda in Iraq, a/k/a Islamic State, according to the Obama Administration were defeated, destroyed and the Global War on Terror was declared over, especially in Iraq. So Obama brought the troops home. This is no war being started just weeks prior to an important election in the United States, this is just one of the promised "overseas contingency operations." The "Khorasan" group has long worked hand-in-hand with other Al Qaeda branch offices in Yemen (AQAP) and Pakistan (Al Qaeda Prime).

The total absence of left-of-center activists and political demonstrations in the United States against an overt act of war in a foreign nation is both deeply disturbing and highly instructive at the same time. These are the "optics" I am paying attention to at the present time, the rest appears to be window dressing for some other agenda. We may see that agenda on full display today at the United Nations Headquarters in New York City. Will Obama complete his circumvention of U.S. Constitutional Law by seeking carte blanche U.N. authorization for his Syrian adventure?

25 September 2014: The answer to the above question is in the affirmative. However, it was presented to the General Assembly of the United Nations in the most pompous, narcissistic manner and was laced with totally discredited marxist invective and demonstrated an unprecedented level of naivete. In short, an American president made a complete fool of himself and, by extension, all of us. Obama invoked a worldview which has no basis in reality because it exists nowhere but within his own ideological mindset. His speech was incoherent and non-cohesive. Obama's General Assembly speech was a nonstarter which guaranteed that the U.N. Security Council, chaired by many heads of state, would adore it and adopt it in a further enhancement of global disaster which we all know is coming like a flood upon this world. A truly global war on a non-defined enemy, but anyone the "State" deems to be a threat, has just been declared by the United Nations Security Council.

Global SITREP D5-14: A Critical Point in Time Has Arrived

Update 18 September 2014: Detail for the explanation of why I chose this image. In this image the Earth appears to be wearing its death mask. This image reminded me of Revelation 6:8 the first time I laid my eyes upon it.  We are living in the critical moment in time just prior to when Revelation 6:8 becomes reality, when Earth will literally become "The Late, Great Planet Earth." and there is not a sign present today which does not point direct at that future reality,

"And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth."

I've spent some time studying this verse, and as with most of the words within the Bible, there's more to these words than their plain text meaning in English.  Take the word 'pale' in the above. Did you know that in the original Greek text the word is chlōros and is directly related  to the color green. This is proven by referring to Mark 6:39 for it is the exact same word as in this verse of Revelation. This word chlōros is used twice more in Revelation 8:7 and Revelation 9:4 where in both instances its meaning is without question to something which is green in color. So what color is the horse in Revelation 6:8? It is a green horse.

And the rider of this horse is a proper name because it is capitalized: Death. In the original Greek text: Thanatos, and Thanatos is synonymous with pestilence. And another proper name follows with this male rider, Hadēs which is a direct reference to a dark, infernal region; an uncomfortable and dismal place where the souls of the sinful dead go once 'Thanatos' has separated them from the body that had just been alive on the Earth. To put this in another perspective, go back to Mark 6 and read verse 11. This is the fate of those on the Earth who have refused the Word of God, the saving Grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. But we're not just talking, with respect to Revelation 6:8, about a few individuals or even a couple of cities, we're talking about one-fourth of all humanity alive on the earth at this time, or in real numbers as of right now, just a shade under 2 Billion people. A critical point in time has arrived. On which side do you stand? The rest of this Eschatology Today post will now, hopefully, make more sense.

29 August 2014: Not being a huge fan of rhetorical questions, I am still feeling compelled to ask: Was there ever a time when multiple and very specific 'last days' eschatological themes were resonating simultaneously or glowing white hot as they are today? I do not recall any such time within this parameter as the present time.  

I vividly remember as a teenager the "Six Day War" of June 1967 and its effect upon the Bride of Christ in the very Christian town I grew up in. In my opinion the 'Six Day War' was a wake-up call that was the impetus for a major believing Christian revival which resulted in an extremely explosive growth in the sheer numbers of "born again" Christians in the United States. The 'Six Day War' war was the impetus for most of what occurred during the 1970s "Jesus freak" phenomenon as the psychedelic, long hair and bell-bottom pants-wearing secular world of that era referred to burgeoning mass of new believing Christians.  Most importantly, in that war Israel regained, through deliberate and focused military action, the whole of Jerusalem, including the Temple Mount.  Hindsight being 20/20, the 'Six Day War' was a stepping stone to the reality that exists at this very moment, a full 47 years later. 

The same is true for the Yom Kippur War of October 1973, which at the time appeared to be developing specific circumstances which evoked the Ezekiel 38/39 prophecy with the very real prospect of a Russian military invasion and intervention in the Yom Kippur War because Israel's military was poised to over-run both Damascus, Syria and Cairo, Egypt had the order been given to do so. There was nothing other than the prospect of a military intervention by the Soviet Union, or a nuclear confrontation between the United States and Russia, which held the IDF back from taking both Damascus and Cairo and essentially brought that war to an end. Close to a multiple prophetic fulfillment reality, but no cigar, primarily because Iran (Persia) at that time was a military ally of both Israel and the United States.

So here we are in 2014, and within the passage of the preceding 47 years we have seen Israel essentially end its territorial expansion in the Holy Land through wars with the pan-Arab/Islamic enemy nations, and even begin to give significant or discuss giving significant portions of the land gained back to the existential enemy. And at this time, if one is looking critically at a plethora of Bible prophecies, one will see several that appear to be on the very precipice of present-day fulfillment. This is a very unique time in world history.

I believe this impending prophetic situation was vividly described by the angel Gabriel to the prophet Daniel (Daniel 9:26)  as a world convulsing in unprecedented military conflict as though it were the ultimate in natural or man-made disasters. According to Gabriel, there is an indisputable gap of time following the terminus of the 69th Week when Jesus Messiah and His ministry was "cut off" and the point immediately thereafter when "the people of the prince that shall come" would destroy Jerusalem and the Temple, unto the very end of the prophecy for which Gabriel most importantly and metaphorically revealed the end-game: "... and the end thereof shall be with a flood..."  The key word in this passage is the Hebrew word sheteph [pronounced: shay-tef] meaning an effusion, a torrent, a downpour, the pouring forth of overflowing waters.

I am saying point-blank to any who would listen that we are witnesses to that critical point in time where "the end thereof shall be with a flood" is staring planet earth and its billions of inhabitants squarely in the face. In the original version of Hal Lindsey's "The Late, Great Planet Earth" he forecast this 'end times' would come to pass with a fair amount of eschatological detail.  Now, I am echoing Hal and saying that time he spoke of  has arrived. The many 'last days' prophecies whose fulfillment the watchmen of the Bride of Christ have been alerting this body of believers to, especially within the past 6 or 7 years, will now suddenly come upon this earth as if they were a flood - a flood of sequential, appointed time fulfillments. To use a metaphor to describe Gabriel's metaphor, I believe there is a rather small window of time, a very few precious years, remaining between the here and now of late 2014 and the advent of the 70th Week. The flood of prophetic fulfillments I am talking about will all occur within that window!

Is the Lord Jesus Christ your Lord and Savior? Are you a 21st century version of a 1970's "Jesus freak?" If not, now is a very good time to become one because Gabriel's prophetic 70th Week lies dead ahead. A flood warning has been given.

courtesy Wall Street Journal and Getty Images

Update 31 August 2014: In the opening of this SITREP I deferred from being redundant by citing specific examples of the many prophecies mentioned above that will constitute the sheteph of fulfillments which will reconfigure planet earth specifically for the advent of the angel Gabriel's prophetic 70th Week. They have been discussed here numerous times in the past six and three-quarter years; all are available in the Eschatology Today blog archive found in the right-hand margin of the main page.

What I am interested in now are the real-world tangibles that provide a prima facie case which underlies all of those impending fulfillments. First and foremost among them is the near total absence of presence of overwhelming American military power, or even the threat of American military power which has defined and maintained the status quo of relative global political stability since the end of World War II and the birth of the modern State of Israel.  This power still exists, albeit currently downsized, yet the residual combat military power of the U.S. and its military allies still far surpasses any combination of potential enemies.  So why is the world in such disarray and teetering on the brink of another world war? 

This is almost singularly due to the election and re-election of the current commander-in-chief of the armed forces of the United States. As we have seen amply demonstrated in recent years, this CInC has placed the overwhelming power of U.S. forces in stand-down mode. This I find to be the principle reason behind Russian military aggression against its neighbors; Red Chinese military expansionism; an Iran on the verge of an indigenous nuclear weapons capability with intercontinental delivery systems; the rise of the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, and the placing of Israel's urgent military needs on a back-burner during wartime. These are the enemies which will shortly become the greatest threats to both world peace and security and to the State of Israel. Funny how both world peace and security comes to a nexus with that of the State of Israel. But it is no surprise because Bible prophecy speaks precisely to this in no uncertain terms.

The Rubic's Cube rendition of the planet Earth above is from an essay published this past Friday by the Wall Street Journal. The title of the essay, "Henry Kissinger on the Assembly of a New World Order," just about says it all, and particularly for those with a keen interest in Bible prophecy.  In this essay Henry Kissinger explains why the established concept of "world order" has entered into unprecedented crisis. He makes clear as a bell that the concept of "world order" is unique and exclusive in its origin among Western nations. These are independent nations of the West which after two world wars determined that since they controlled most of the world's territory and its economic well-being they would endeavor to establish this order among nations. And it worked, the desired world order existed, and as stated above, it was made possible and defended primarily by U.S. military power. 

Interestingly, HenryKissinger cites the years 1948 to the present as "a brief moment in human history when one could speak of an incipient global world order composed of an amalgam of American idealism and traditional European concepts of statehood and balance of power." Kissinger also declines to identify the current U.S. administration and its lack of a foreign policy doctrine back by military muscle as the root cause for the sudden rise of these threats to the established world order. To paraphrase him, the U.S. no longer walks tall and carries a big stick, but under Obama's dictate it slouches and slumps and has all but dropped the stick. In summation, Kissinger then makes clear that a restoration of world order depends upon two themes which are the antithesis of the current Obama administration: 1) the U.S. re-instituting and sustaining the concept of American exceptionalism, and 2) along with America's European allies the adoption of a coherent and "comprehensive geopolitical strategy."

In the meantime, war wages rampant in eastern Europe and in the Middle East, the kings of the East are securing their empire while stabilizing American military power is stood down by a president who has switched sides and, according to a former-CIA clandestine operator, is actively playing for the other team. I have known these specifics and others for many months, and think the time has come that others know them as well.  Praise the Lord that He is in full control and He is calling us up hither soon!

Global SITREP D7-14: THE NEXT WAR

9 September 2014: The map above depicts my geographic estimation of what the 1,600 square kilometers of land Egypt has offered to the Palestinian Authority in the Sinai 10 days ago would look like on a map. Egypt offered this land to Mahmoud Abbas as more than adequate compensation for whatever land in Judea and Samaria the PA would of necessity relinquish in a comprehensive peace deal, and within which a fully sovereign State of Palestine would be created. 

This proposed State of Palestine would have defensible borders controlled by Palestinians. It would have a Palestinian Army. A Navy and an Air Force. It would have airports and seaports, a national currency, as well as mineral and other resources rights under the land and sea. It would have had a seat in the United Nations as a full-fledged member of that world body and all other world bodies that it so would choose to belong to. 

Of course, as expected, the Palestinians once again, and this time through PA President Mahmoud Abbas, immediately rejected the offer straight away. They don't want this land for their state; they want all of Israel as we have known all along for these past 66 years. Besides, if they took this land then the tunnels under the Egyptian border would lead to... nowhere except into the territorially expanded Gaza. What a monumental waste of HAMAS and PIJ manpower and resources that would make for!

Therefore and as so many other things have evidenced over the years the end result of this will be, as foretold in Bible prophecy, that the resolution of this 66-year old conflict will be through a great final war. And the result of that war will be that no State of Palestine will ever exist, nor will any group of people known as "Palestinians" ever exist after the war is concluded. Palestine had it's chance at statehood and threw it all away.

It may not look like it at this very moment in time, but rejection of the Egyptian offer evidences something else. It evidences that Mahmoud Abbas is absolutely not serious, and never has been, about making a state that "Palestinians" can call home, and that he is very much in lock-step with what Ayatollah Khamenei and the Shi'a Mullahs of the Islamic Republic of Iran want to accomplish - the destruction of the State of Israel. Mahmoud Abbas is their kind of jihadist and that is why Iran has been covertly delivering weapons to the PA in Judea and Samaria for use in the coming war.

Preparations for the Next War

In addition to the Iranian weapons coming into Judea and Samaria, preparations for the next war are well underway in Gaza and Lebanon.

GAZA
In Gaza they began the moment the most recent ceasefire took effect. Here are some facts I have compiled since the end of Operation Protective Edge (OPE).

1.) HAMAS still has thousands and thousands of rockets; they're building new ones as we speak. At least 1/3rd probably more of the arsenal HAMAS had in July at the start of the war remains in their arsenal. HAMAS capability to build new rockets is estimated to be roughly 40% of what it was prior to OPE.
2.) HAMAS is hastily reconstructing critical tunnel infrastructure into Israel and Egypt with North Korean and Iranian assistance. They are driving medium-sized trucks through the largest tunnels between Sinai and Gaza loaded with rocket parts, ordnance and other munitions.
3.) Israel's military forces did not degrade HAMAS nearly as much as PM Netanyahu thinks they did. The political echelon led by Netanyahu did not cry havoc and cut loose their dogs of war (IDF) as should have been the case. As a result Israel very much lost this round of the war in Gaza because of politics. When the war resumes it will not only be Gaza but also a wide expanse of Sinai that Israel will have to deal with on the southern front.

According to a PIJ/Al-Quds terrorist, the coming war against Israel was described to Al-Jazeera. Here is his statement as translated from the Arabic language video broadcast by Al-Jazeera a week ago:

"We are now in one of the tunnels of the Al-Quds Brigades [within] which work began as soon as the war on Gaza ended, and the ceasefire was declared. We have begun work and we are continuing it regardless of the threats by the Zionist enemy. We will not be hindered by the threats of the enemy, or by the ban on importing cement and other building materials. We are getting these tunnels ready for the next battle in order to launch attacks and fire mortars and artillery. These tunnels will also have other uses which we will not disclose."

From the eschatological perspective, Israel will have to endure and ultimately recover from (per Ezekiel 38/39) existential warfare on three fronts, the northern, central and southern. Israel will also have to deal with a 3rd dimensional aspect of missile fire over the front lines of ground combat. Iron Dome, Arrow and the US PAC-3 Improved Patriot ABM systems cannot and will not be able to stop all incoming rockets; widespread destruction will occur in many cities.

LEBANON and the GOLAN

According to Colonel Dan Goldfus, commander of the  IDF's 769th Hiram Infantry Brigade stationed on the Golan who was speaking to the inevitable assault upon Israel by Hezbollah in Lebanon:

"Israel’s Iron Dome rocket defense system would not be able to cope with that kind of challenge, and thus the IDF would have to “maneuver fast” and act forcefully to prevail decisively in the conflict."

Add to this a barrage of other heavyweight MRBM/LRBMs coming upon Israel from Syria and/or Iran.  Iron Dome, Arrow and the U.S. PAC-3 Patriot batteries based in Israel will be hard pressed.  Israel might be forced to call upon US/NATO Aegis-capable ABM cruisers for assistance in order to contain the conflict from going into the WMD threshold.

If we look at Isaiah 17 and Jeremiah 49 literally, this may be exactly what happens in the coming war, and which stands a very good chance of becoming a literal flood of prophetic fulfillment prior to Ezekiel 38/39. As most of you already know, this is precisely what I have been forecasting in my recent blog postings.

The IDF will maneuver fast and with extraordinary lethality in the coming war, especially in Lebanon where the IDF will completely over-run the whole of the country in subduing Hezbollah and IS/Sunni jihadists. (Joshua 13).

UPDATE 14 September 2014: Three hours ago DEBKAfile reported as Breaking News today's IDF briefing which contained a specific warning on the potential for Hezbollah incursions into northern Israel. These incursions could occur at virtually any moment from tunnels Hezbollah has constructed under the border with the same Iranian/North Korean expertise as seen in the Gaza tunnels, but which are also even more sophisticated that those in Gaza. The IDF has yet to discover even one of the tunnels Hezbollah is assessed to have constructed into northern Israel. Here's the Breaking news report:

"IDF Northern Command warns Hizballah plans invasion in next clash

DEBKAfile September 14, 2014, 9:57 PM (IDT)

A senior IDF officer disclosed in a briefing Sunday that there is concern that Hizballah may provoke a clash with Israel and use it to seize territory – part of an Israeli town, a mountain ridge or an IDF outpost. There is no concrete warning that Hizballah is preparing to launch a surprise attack, said the officer, but the possibility cannot be discounted that a single event with casualties could spark a series of incidents leading to a conflagration. The officer said that the IDF has prepared contingency plans to evacuate border populations at risk."

To those who would decry this news because it comes from DEBKAfile, I would caution that this IDF briefing did occur and has also been reported by The Times of Israel and the Jerusalem Post in virtually identical terminology, but in far more extensive reports, some of the details of which have already been reported in the original posting of this SITREP five days ago.

Global SITREP D6-14: NATO Gears Up For War

6 September 2014: The nuclear-armed Western military alliance (NATO) which in 1948 was created by the original 7 member nations known collectively as the Council of the Western European Union (not so coincidentally the same year as the re-birth of the modern State of Israel), and which expanded in 1954 into 10 member nations (alphabetically: Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and the United Kingdom), and which has continuously expanded to include new member nations ever since, this week approved the most significant expansion of its military operations in its 66-year history.

This week at the summit in southern Wales the 28-strong member nations of NATO agreed to the establishment of a full capability Rapid Response Force to be based in its new acquired eastern region (i.e. the former enemy Warsaw Pact nations) as a "spearhead" for countering any Russian aggression against any of them. As if this announcement was not enough, the 28-member nations of NATO have also agreed to supply "security assistance" to the republic of Ukraine thereby ensuring its independence, territorial sovereignty and self-defense capabilities against renewed Russian expansionism. On the surface, would this appear to be a good reason for Russia to look southwards in its expansionism?

Additionally, and possibly even more importantly, the NATO allies agreed, without invoking either Article 4 or 5 of the establishing NATO charter, to regard the newly declared "Islamic State," as it currently exists in territory taken from the Middle Eastern nations of Syria and Iraq, as enough of a threat to its own 28 member nations to wage an undeclared war against it, and to militarily align NATO with so-called "moderate" Sunni jihadist rebels in Syria.

In looking at these two brand new developments, can one begin to eschatologically envision what a post-Psalm 83, post-Ezekiel 38-39 "covenant among many"  paradigm in the Middle East might look like?  Let us consider this proposition with respect to the impending flood of Bible prophecy fulfillments for just a little while before continuing: NATO is positioning itself to do battle with Russia and its CSTO allies at the same time as it declares war against a major Islamic State threat in the heart of the Middle East.

7 September 2014: At this critical moment in world history, and as an integral part of NATO gearing up for war, the 28 member nations have pledged to halt and reverse the ill-advised military spending cuts of recent years in order to create a very powerful rapid reaction military force for both of the aforementioned reasons: to militarily oppose Russia in southeastern Europe and the Islamic State in the Middle East with airborne, seaborne and combat boots on the ground within 48 hours. Even absent some of the logistical details for this new action plan, this is an unprecedented first in the 67-year history of NATO.

Update 8 September 2014: The prophetic alliance between the Arab League and NATO (Ezekiel 38:13) is coming into full exposure as Islamic State represents a dire threat to both groups of nations. As discussed on American prime time Sunday morning political talk shows, and again tomorrow when Obama addresses the US Congress, this alliance will be in full view. The nations of the Arab League are the regional allies to whom Obama is directly referring. For its part, the Arab League will be 'excommunicating' the Islamic State, i.e. declaring them to be apostates from Islam, and for the moment at least, declaring the Islamic State to be the Arab League's proverbial 'public enemy Number One.' The Sunni Islamic State is an imminent, short-term existential threat to every Sunni Arab government within the Arab League. That this coincides with the 13th anniversary of the 9/11 islamic attacks on the United States is no coincidence; it is no accident, and the very real potential for new attacks this week will only serve to hammer home the apparent necessity of this alliance. The fallacious difference between "moderate Islam" and "radical Islam" will be a benchmark of end times deception also in full view in the coming days.

Update Number 2: Is the Islamic State's Caliph Ibrahim Dead? 

In the first image above we see the Islamic State's self-proclaimed Caliph Ibrahim, a/k/a Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. This image of Caliph Ibrahim was taken from a recent speech in the IS capital city of Raqqa. In the image directly below we see what is purportedly the image of an even more recently deceased Ibrahim Caliph, the victim of an American F-16 strike in Iraq against an Islamic State fighting position in Mosul which also killed his aide Abu Hajar Al-Sufi and a couple of other senior leaders. 

So far there has been no authoritative confirmation of the death of Caliph Ibrahim, yet the facial resemblance is striking to say the least. If it turns out that the Caliph is not deceased, then this image may merely show a Caliph attempting to recover from severe wounds. Truth is always the first victim in any war; it is defended by a bodyguard of lies.

Update: According to Kurdish (BasNews) and Iraqi (Al-Sabah) sources, Caliph Ibrahim is not dead, but was very severely injured in the same attack that killed his aides. While that is possible, according to Pentagon spokesperson Col Steve Warren, any IS leaders who may have been at the targeted troop formation site were "likely to [have been] killed." So, we'll wait and see what the facts are.