Global SITREP C5-24: All Eyes on Isaiah and Jeremiah

Syria

UPDATED 17 December 2024: The above map is a good baseline for the various entities controlling Syrian territory at present. It is from this position that Eschatology Today interprets the prophecies of Isaiah 17 and Jeremiah 49: 23-27 will come to their fulfillment.

As of this morning the "rumors of war" that emerged yesterday concerning a Turkish invasion of northern Syria may have become once again a real shooting war. Islamist Turkiyeh has been assessed by most observers to be taking advantage of the sudden collapse of the former regime last week. A noticeable buildup of forces along the northern border in recent days and drone swarm attacks against Kurdish-SDF forces resulted in a lightning Turkish takeover of the border city of Manbij. Those forces have since advanced towards an adjacent border city at Kobani. The Kurdish-SDF has approximately 900 U.S. troops embedded within it. ((Pentagon belatedly admitted there were 2,000 U.S. troops embedded with the SDF.)) The Kurds refer to this northern region as Rojava. The Kurds of northern Syria fear a genocide of their population at the hands of the Turks and their allies.

Jeremiah 49:23-27 provides the best overview for the events which will overtake the whole of Syria, as does Isaiah 17 for the inevitable conflagration between HTS-controlled Syria and Israel. We've seen this prophetic narrative coming for a very long time, but did not fully understand how it would transpire. We did not see how the HTS onslaught against the former Assad regime would cause Russia to evacuate its forces from across Syria. 

Previously both the Russian and American military presence in northern and northeastern Syria prevented a large-scale Turkish military invasion, but now with the absence of Russian forces only the U.S., as a NATO ally of Turkey, would conceivably stand in the way. A rumored American withdrawal from Syria, as noted in recent public statements by President-elect Trump, may be the impetus for the Turkish land grab in northern Syria. A unilateral U.S. withdrawal would leave the Kurdish SDF alone to withstand a resurgent ISIS in the Syrian heartland, and the Islamist HTS group of forces seeking to expand their control to as far as the Iraqi border.

To the south Israel is transferring a good portion of its major land warfare power from southern Lebanon back into Gaza where all indications are that HAMAS and the PIJ are in the process of re-grouping their forces for continued warfare. This would belie the talk about an imminent hostage release-ceasefire agreement as just so much deception, notwithstanding President-elect Trump's promise of dire consequences to HAMAS should hostages remain captive on 20 January 2025. The next 34 days will have to run their course, because as our Lord spoke, "these things must take place."

UPDATE 18 December 2024: Eschatology Today believes in the uniformity of the LORD's inerrant prophetic word in Scripture. Even though our eyes are on Isaiah and Jeremiah the current junction is also where the follow-on prophecy of Ezekiel 38/39 as well as the Angel Gabriel's prophecy to Daniel (Ch. 11:40-45) both seamlessly fold in. Ezekiel 38/39 has been covered extensively, so the focus here will now be on the secondary aspects of these prophecies.

Wagner PMC is now Russia's 'Africa Legion'

The Russian's Are Not Coming, They're Already Here

Russian forces have begun their withdrawal from their two 49-year leased bases on the Eastern Mediterranean Levant in the Tartus and Latakia governorates of Syria. They have hooks embedded, but the LORD has not yet pulled on them! 

Some of the evacuated Russian personnel and war materiel has moved north, back to Russia for the war in Ukraine, as has about 12,000 North Korean combat troops (kings of the East) but that's another story. The rest of Russia's forces are re-deploying to Libya and several nations in the sub-Saharan Sahel region of Africa (i.e. Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, Chad, Central African Republic and Sudan), a/k/a "the king of the South." Until a year ago the Russian PMC Wagner Group was deployed to the Sahel countries, but with the demise of Wagner Russia has re-branded those troops as its 'Africa Legion.'

Give this next sentence the attention it deserves. Ezekiel 38/39 tells of the massive Magog military confederation which invades Israel being utterly destroyed by the LORD on the mountains of Israel. But it does not say that the Magog confederation nations are completely destroyed as well. Has any other prophecy-centric website put forward this clear distinction? These nations appear again during the 70th Week of Years in Gabriel's Daniel 11:40-45 prophecy moving against the Antichrist (the 'he' in that prophecy and his military presence in Greater Israel (the Glorious Land).

Russian 'Africa Legion' Countries

The Iranian and the Turkish Problems

No need to rehash what we've already covered about the catastrophe coming to Syria, except to say that a great deal of what has come upon and is still to come upon Syria, is due to the imperial machinations of Turkey's Islamist leader, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Just as Vladimir Putin wants to recover the former Soviet Union so too does Erdogan want to recover the Ottoman Empire. In this objective the Kurdish people of Turkey, Syria and northern Iraq are an obstacle and a genocide against them looks to be Erdogan's version of a 'final solution.' Erdogan recently stated that had the victorious Allied Powers (UK and France) after World War I not divvied up the Ottoman Empire the way they did Aleppo, Damascus and the rest of Syria would today be an integral part of Turkey. It would seem that Turkish and Russian designs on the Levant and Israel align nicely, hence their Magogian alliance in Ezekiel 38/39.

Iran is pushing full speed ahead with nuclear enrichment for its weapons program, and which has the full attention of Israel and the incoming Trump Administration as well as the UK, France and Germany, among other Euro and Middle Eastern nations. Iran has virtually achieved 90% purity, and thus nuclear weapons capability to the tune of a dozen or more warheads of various yields. Iran, in an alignment with Turkey, is also threatening the new Sunni Islamist government in Syria, effectively saying that its youth will bring Syria back into the Iranian orbit. Eschatology Today has always held the view that Iran will be militarily minimized based upon Ezekiel's listing of the country with second tier powers Kuwsh and Put. The drive for nuclear weapons capability is quite likely to terminate in the very short-term with subsequent airstrikes by a coalition of nations now that its air defense systems are virtually non-existent, thanks to Israel. Still, Iran survives enough to play its prophetic role with Russia and Turkey in Ezekiel 38/39.

UPDATE 27 December 2024: In wrestling for several days about how to close out this final SITREP of 2024 Eschatology Today determined that an essential issue requires addressing. 

As of Monday, 30 December 2024, the State of Israel will have been at war for a continuous 500 days. This war has been expected as a literal fulfillment of prophetic Scriptures for as long as this blog has existed. This seven-front, existential war for Israel is exactly that, albeit an ongoing process of literal fulfillment of the prophetic Scriptures. 

Despite the claims of the Israeli coalition government of having defeated HAMAS and the several terrorist groups in Gaza, and of having defeated the Shi'a terrorist Hezbollah and its "Palestinian" terrorist allies in southern Lebanon and Syria, nothing of the sort has actually been realized. Not yet anyway.

On a daily basis IDF troops are killed in combat operations throughout Gaza through firefights or IED roadside bombs. HAMAS and its allies have lost nearly 4,000 fighters, a significant number of their leadership, and have wholly devastated infrastructure both above and below ground, yet these Islamic jihadists have not surrendered, have not been defeated and still hold an unknown number of hostages of various nationalities. Hezbollah and allies are actively recovering and regrouping their forces which likely number in multiple thousands. The government of Israel cannot claim a victory when a clear-cut victory has not been achieved, much less the oft stated and/or re-stated goals of the war. Nearly the same can be said of Hezbollah in Lebanon even though the agreed "hudna" is violated with airstrikes and firefights on a daily basis. Hezbollah is re-grouping and re-arming itself with all of the war materiel Israel has not been able to locate and destroy in either central and northern Lebanon or Syria. Many war materiel smuggling routes remain unlocated. A nation like Israel cannot militarily defeat in a little over 16 months a group of enemies that have prepared for war over the past 16 years. It's easy math, but apparently not so easy for Israel at this time.

So, what's the problem? Have the 12 tribes of Israel done what the LORD יהוה God has told them is necessary for them to do? Before his death Moses wrote the necessities for Israel in the Book of Deuteronomy, chief among them is the exclusive Covenant of loyalty Israel owes to God. Read Deuteronomy 4, and when reading hold on verse 30 which says: "...when you are in distress because all of these things have befallen you, and in the end, return to and obey your God יהוה. The remainder of the chapter is clear as a bell for Israel. Finally in Deuteronomy 26:16-19 we find a summary of what God commands of Israel:

"This day the Lord your God commands you to observe these statutes and judgments; therefore you shall be careful to observe them with all your heart and with all your soul. Today you have proclaimed the Lord to be your God, and that you will walk in His ways and keep His statutes, His commandments, and His judgments, and that you will obey His voice. Also today the Lord has proclaimed you to be His special people, just as He promised you, that you should keep all His commandments, and that He will set you high above all nations which He has made, in praise, in name, and in honor, and that you may be a holy [consecrated] people to the Lord your God, just as He has spoken."

This is also our prayer to the LORD for Israel, that when He decides the Bride of Christ is to be Caught Up the fulfillment of Romans 11 and Ezekiel 39:29 are to be realized as well. Perhaps today.

Marana'tha!