April 17
Words Have Meaning
During the past week, Iran has been pressing hard on the rhetoric accelerator. It first shocked the world by proclaiming it had enriched a small amount of uranium. It followed this announcement with a series of threats against Israel and nations that would get in its way - including America.
The leaders of Iran have been so busy making bombastic statement for Western consumption, I don’t see where they find the time to manage domestic affairs. An advocate for military action against Iran must feel like a game show contestant inside one of those glass wind booths filled with money. There are so many malicious statements up for grabs, it would be difficult to reference them all. Here are a few quotes that struck me as the most noteworthy.
Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called Israel a "rotten, dried tree" that will be destroyed by "one storm." "Like it or not, the Zionist regime is heading toward annihilation," said Ahmadinejad at a conference supporting the Palestinians.
Unfazed by his critics, he repeated his previous line on the Holocaust, saying: "If such a disaster is true, why should the people of this region pay the price? Why does the Palestinian nation have to be suppressed and have its land occupied?"
Ahmadinejad sees Israel as the main foe: "The existence of this (Israeli) regime is a permanent threat" to the Middle East. "Its existence has harmed the dignity of Islamic nations." He concludes by saying, "that Palestine will be freed soon."
Not to be outdone by his political leaders, the head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards has joined the fray. General Yahya Rahim Safavi said Iran could defeat any American military action over its controversial nuclear program. "You can start a war but it won't be you who finishes it," said the general.
"The Americans know better than anyone that their troops in the region and in Iraq are vulnerable. I would advise them not to commit such a strategic error," he told reporters at a conference in Tehran.
"I would advise them to first get out of their quagmire in Iraq before getting into an even bigger one," General Safavi said with a grin.
"We have American forces in the region under total surveillance. For the past two years, we have been ready for any scenario, whether sanctions or an attack."
I get the growing sense that Western leaders regard Iran’s tough talk as being intended to remain as empty threats. This group seems to believe that Iran will, at the last minute, give into a diplomatic solution.
Adolf Hitler made very similar threats against the Jews in Europe. Nobody believed his menacing speeches until it was too late. I don’t think we have the same level of public denial as we saw during Hitler’s reign, but because the stakes are so much higher, the failure to act can result in far deadlier consequences.
What the folks at the UN, the State Department and various other think tanks fail to realize is the destruction of Israel is part of Satan’s master plan. The devil would gladly sacrifice Iran for the chance of being able to annihilate the Jewish state.
Even someone who is not a student of Bible prophecy needs to realize that words have meaning. Evil actions begin with evil thoughts. As long as Iran continues to spout evil thoughts, the evil deeds will soon follow.
-- Todd
Prophetic Ethnic Conflict
This generation has witnessed stage setting for the last days, as predicted by Jesus and the Old and New Testament prophets. None is more relevant than the prophetic stage-setting we are watching in this crucial hour of last-time human history.
The prophecy of relevance has been in the stage-setting process for decades, even centuries. But, the 20th and 21st centuries have moved ahead preparation for this particular foretelling as perhaps no other era. The process is part of dynamic rearrangements that will eventuate in configuring the world for man’s most horrific military conflict –the war called Armageddon.
Jesus himself gave the prophecy as part of the Olivet Discourse while sitting with His disciples overlooking the Temple Mount: “And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. For nation shall rise against nation…” (Matt. 24:6-7).
The prophecy we need to look at in this most fascinating time in history is the prophecy Jesus gave that foretells that nation will rise against nation in an unprecedented way just before He returns to set up His Millennial Kingdom on Planet Earth. When giving only a cursory glance at these words, we think that yes, that’s certainly true. Many a nation has risen against another nation just during the past several decades. There have been many wars, and other wars are looming. But, is this the kind of “nation against nation” reference Jesus specifically gave in His discourse upon the Mount of Olives?
To answer this, we must look at the Greek language –the language from which the New Testament was translated into English.
Jesus was in actuality saying that these uprisings would be unusual, in that they would be based in ethnos –the Greek word, here, for “nation.” They would be ethnic in origin. They would pit ethnic, or racial group, against racial group.
It is equally true that ethnic factors have been the cause of many wars throughout the centuries. The Arabs and Jews –as a matter of fact, many ethnic peoples against the Jews-- marked the conflicts of Old Testament times. Almost without exception, those early wars were “ethnic” in origin.
Things have not changed. Arabs and Jews still have the ethnos factor at the heart of their differences. And, never in history has the conflict been more virulent –in rhetoric, if not in fact. The Islamic nations –mostly Arab—are blood-vowed to push the Jews into the Mediterranean Sea and to wipe the Jewish race from the planet. Some Arab leaders of the past and other leaders –e.g., the Iranian—continue to want all Jews expunged from the region, and even off the planet. They have made it their national policy, through their oratorical invectives.
There have been conflicts in the century just passed involving peoples of the Caucuses, the Balkans, etc., and horrific slaughters in Africa, and other places –all based upon ethnic differences.
Now, this hemisphere is experiencing the early effects of ethnic struggle. The latest is more and more pitting those of Mexican descent against, particularly, Caucasian types, while the protests over immigration laws escalate. These uprisings aren’t spontaneous, but are fomented, obviously, by those who have ulterior motives –other than to see that illegal immigrants get a chance to start new lives in the most materially blessed nation in human history.
I have my personal thoughts on the politics of all of this, which I will keep to myself, except to say that some political entities are showing a total disregard for their national well-being by wanting to just ignore the laws on these important immigration matters, and extend unlimited amnesty to those who have entered America illegally.
Point is, Jesus said that a great, swelling uprising involving ethnic strife would grow to be a major crisis during the Tribulation era –that last seven years just before He returns to put an end to all of the conflicts at Armageddon (Rev. 19: 11).
This ethnic disturbance we are witnessing each day in our headlines is, in my view, something to watch closely, so far as being observant for prophetic signals is concerned. The unrest constitutes yet another indicator of where this generation might stand on God’s prophetic timeline.
We can say with a degree of certainty based upon study of God’s Word, and belief in the Pre-Trib Rapture of Christ’s Church, that because of the burgeoning ethnic unrest, in conjunction with all of the other indicators we see interjecting themselves with growing intensity and frequency, Jesus’ shout, “Come up here!” can’t be far distant. Even so, come, Lord Jesus.
--Terry
