Thursday, November 29, a Day of Reckoning

This Thursday, November 29, 2012, will be a day of reckoning that could shake the foundations of the Middle East and the entire world.  It is the day that Mahmoud Abbas will take his case before the United Nations, asking to have the Palestinian Authority recognized as an observer state.  The key word here is “state.”
 
The effect of his plea and the outcome of the vote could change our world forever.
Mr. Abbas has been on a long journey in his attempt to avoid the negotiating table and peace talks with Israel.  He determined some time ago that his chosen path would be to gain statehood recognition by the United Nations.  So far he has succeeded in gaining a seat at a UN committee – something that is entirely against UN policy, but then who cares about policy where the Palestinian Authority and Israel are concerned?  He has succeeded in getting places like the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem named as a World Heritage Site, not for history’s sake, but for the sake of having the presence of the Palestinian Authority in the Judea and Samaria as evidence that it is a nation-state.

At the moment it appears that Abbas has a chance of succeeding.  We need to pray that the Lord will intervene so that there is no chance of their success.  Their success will render Israel defenseless as a country and it will create exactly the place for more Islamic terrorists to settle and dig in for their ultimate battle to push Israel into the Mediterranean Sea.

Please pray with us for the peace of Jerusalem (Psalm 122:6) and for divine influence on the decision makers at the United Nations.  This is not too hard for our God to do.  As a matter of fact, is anything to hard for our God? (Genesis 18:14)  Be much in prayer for the UN meeting this Thursday.

For background information please see the article in the Jerusalem Post by clicking here.

Israel Monitors Egyptian Rhetoric

The Israeli government and a human rights organization are keeping an eye on new expressions of anti-Semitism coming out of Egypt in light of the Muslim Brotherhood’s rise to power in that nation. There is also anxiety because the Obama administration has yet to speak out about it.

Fueling the latest concern was Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi’s reaction to an Imam’s prayer calling for the destruction of Israel. Last week influential Imam Futouh Abd Al-Nabi Mansour prayed, “Oh Allah ... grant us victory over the infidels. Oh Allah, destroy the Jews and their supporters.” Morsi was seen mouthing the word “Amen” to that prayer.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center points to Morsi’s action as just another example of a disturbing trend since Morsi took over the Egyptian presidency from predecessor Hosni Mubarak. “The rise to power of the Muslim Brotherhood has prompted open expressions of anti-Semitism in ways that were never publicly expressed during the Mubarak period," the center’s Efraim Zuroff  told Fox News, adding that the Obama administration “is treating this far less seriously than it should be.”

With their expressed goal of recapturing Jerusalem and the Al Aqsa (Golden Dome) Mosque, the Brotherhood’s spiritual leader, Mohammed Badie, told his followers, “Every Muslim is obliged to wage Jihad in order to restore it (Jerusalem) to Muslim rule. Allah would free the world of their (Jewish) filth and corruption...Jerusalem will be regained only through Jihad, not through negotiations.”

The Israeli government is also paying attention to the talk coming out of Egypt. “We have no illusions about the Muslim Brotherhood ideology," a senior Israeli diplomat told Fox News. "There is a sense of wariness here and an additional injection of uncertainty.”

The Wiesenthal Center’s Zuroff  says he’s troubled by the Obama administration’s inattention to the Brotherhood’s rhetoric. "They are giving Egypt’s new leadership tremendous latitude when it comes to things like this, despite the fact that these are the type of issues on which they should be held accountable,” Zuroff said.

History is littered with nations and people groups who have aligned themselves against the Jewish people. Such action is predicted in Zechariah 12:3: “

It will come about in that day that I will make Jerusalem a heavy stone for all the peoples; all who lift it will be severely injured. And all the nations of the earth will be gathered against it.” While this verse may look toward a future day of Armageddon, it has certainly seen its fulfillment in the 20^th and 21^st centuries. Pray today for the nation of Israel and their protection from forces that would destroy them.

To read the original Fox News article, click.

Can’t We All Be Friends?

Anyone who has been trying to figure out US foreign policy for the last four years has got to be scratching their heads. About the only obvious thing about our foreign policy is that it has been centered on the Middle East. But when our consistent support of Israel has now turned into “Israel is one of our closest allies in the Middle East” (in our president’s own words); when our president makes an “apology tour” of Muslim-dominated countries, but fails to visit Israel; when our administration keeps supporting the overthrow of governments we have previously supported in order to supplant them with Islamic regimes; when we fail to protect our own embassy staffs and call their assassinations “a bump in the road;” and when our administration employs and deploys people with known direct and indirect ties to Islamic terrorist organizations, about the only thing that we can conclude is that US foreign policy is “Can’t we all be friends?”

Regardless of what the policy is called, it is a disaster in the making. And it is getting worse. News services are now reporting that a series of covert meetings between US and Iranian representatives, initiated by the US, were held shortly after the current administration took office. The purpose of those meetings was to re-establish full diplomatic ties between the US and Iran

. One can only imagine the public outrage had we been aware of those meetings at the time. Now, the news is being leaked at a time when it will hardly be noticed.

What’s perhaps worse is that the US administration is currently attempting again to establish one-on-one talks with the Iranians under the pretense of “a last ditch effort to avert a military strike on Iran.” The good news is that the overtures in 2009 and the current ones in 2012 have been rebuffed by Iranian officials. At least we know where Iran stands.<

Iran rejected the 2009 propositions to avoid handing “a prize” to the new administration, which they have regarded as weak. Iran refused the current proposal to meet bilaterally on the basis that it did not know whom it would be dealing with after the November presidential election.

If we can’t figure out what the US foreign policy is, how do you think Israel feels? Foreign Minister Avrigdor Liberman said that he hoped the reports were not true. Michael Oren, the Israeli ambassador to the US said, “We do not think Iran should be rewarded with direct talks, rather that sanctions and all other possible pressures on Iran must be increased.” It’s quite obvious that Israel is wary of a US policy of “Can’t we all be friends,” especially when that policy is dealing with the devil (or at least the people who call Israel the little Satan and the US the big Satan) and putting Israel at serious risk.

Not only is our foreign policy weakening our own country and playing right into the hands of the Muslims plans to take over our government, it is leaving Israel in a very uncomfortable position when she is surrounded by the very nations Mr. Obama has been cozying up to – the very nations who have declared that they will “wipe Israel off the map.”

Behold, your enemies make an uproar; those who hate you have raised their heads.< They lay crafty plans against your people; they consult together against your treasured ones. They say, “Come, let us wipe them out as a nation; let the name of Israel be remembered no more!" (Psalm 83:2-4 ESV) The psalm becomes an imprecatory prayer as the writer asks the Lord to “Fill their faces with shame, that they may seek your name, O Lord. Let them be put to shame and dismayed forever; let them perish in disgrace, that they may know you alone, whose name is the Lord, are the Most High over all the earth.” (Psalm 83:16-18 ESV)

It is vital that we pray for Israel and that the Lord will intervene to save her from the hand of her enemies. It is just as vital that we pray for the United States, so that we do not go down that slippery slope of “Can’t we all be friends?” to becoming numbered among her enemies. Please, please, pray for the peace of Jerusalem. (Psalm 122:6)

For more information on this topic, please see the following articles in RedState , the Times of Israel , the NewYork Times , and Maariv.

The Amazing Number Seven

“The words of the Lord are pure words: as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times.” —PSALM 12:6 (KJV)

The number seven plays a key role throughout the Bible. There are more than 850 references to seven and multiples of seven found in the Scriptures. It is particularly important and featured in the study of prophecy and end time events.

From the beginning of the Scriptures, the number seven plays a prominent role. Seven represents completion, and is the Divine number. God created the world in seven days, and seven was the most sacred number for the Hebrew people. The seventh day was set aside and consecrated by God as the sabbath day. Noah took the clean animals into the ark by sevens, and it was seven days after he entered the ark that the Flood began.

The consecration of Aaron to be high priest of Israel lasted seven days. Each year on Yom Kippur—the Day of Atonement—the high priest sprinkled the blood on the mercy seat seven times. God ordained seven Feasts for the Israelites to observe. The children of Israel marched around the walls of Jericho for seven days and on the seventh day they marched around the walls seven times before the walls fell down. The list goes on and on. Solomon spent seven years building the Temple. Naaman washed in the Jordan River seven times to be cleansed of leprosy. And the number seven is very closely connected with prophecy as well. In the dreams that Joseph interpreted for Pharaoh, there were seven fat cows and seven lean cows, and seven good ears of corn and seven thin ears of corn. These signified what was about to happen—seven years of plenty followed by seven years of famine.

In the book of Daniel, the prophet was given a vision of seventy weeks, each one of which represented a period of seven years in Israel’s future. In Revelation the number seven occurs repeatedly. There are seven churches, seven spirits, seven starts, seven seals, seven trumpets, seven vials, seven thunders, seven dooms and seven new things.

Understanding the importance of the number seven in God’s prophetic plan, we were stunned and thrilled to find that our payments for the Jerusalem World Center would be $777,777 per month! This is no coincidence—it is just one more sign to us that God is at work to build this great beacon of hope and love for His Chosen People in the Holy City. By being part of this effort, each Jerusalem Prayer Team member is becoming part of God’s prophetic plan for our generation.

Taqiyah – Lying to Infidels is Permissible

When dealing with the Iranians, the Taqiyah comes into play. The word translates loosely into, “lying to an infidel is permitted under any circumstances, and the Iranians have become masterful at deceit and fabrication. Director of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, Fereydoon Abbasi, told me, “Sometimes the Iranians present certain weaknesses that they don’t have, and sometimes, they present certain strengths that they don’t have.”My old friend Former Israeli ambassador to the United States, Dore Gold, believes, “By admitting that their diplomacy has been based on a series of lies, the Iranians put into doubt whether any of their statements can be relied upon.”

• The enrichment of uranium: While reaching the 90 percent necessary to have an actual weapons grade product, much damage can still be done with the lower-level 20 percent uranium. Reaching the 20 percent mark of enrichment is the most difficult first step. From there, the difficulty in reaching the 90 percent mark decreases exponentially.  The Wall Street Journal has reported that according to various experts, Iran is merely a few months from reaching the 90 percentile level of enrichment. And, nuclear facilities in Isfahan, Natanz, Fordow (near Qum), and Busheir are working at capacity to reach Iran President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s goal.

• President Obama also seems convinced that while the centrifuges are rapidly spinning, Iranian leaders have been wringing their hands because uranium would soon be available, but they had no way to deliver the detestable product. Not! The Iranians have been working diligently to produce a missile capable of reaching designated targets. Missile drills have become a matter of course. There is, too, the danger of having nuclear materials delivered by more mundane methods such as a suitcase bomb. In an interview with James Woolsey, former director of the CIA, for my #1 New York Times bestselling book, The Final Move beyond Iraq, he stated:

The amount of nuclear material you need for a bomb is twenty-five to thirty-five pounds—about the size of volleyball or maybe a basketball. But getting an Iranian set of fissionable material–and then assembling a bomb once you’ve got it into the country—could well be done once they have that kind of material.

• When talking about sending mixed signals, one must include the current administration. To Iran, the signal is that the US is weak and indecisive—a ready target. To the Israelis, the signal is, “Under the current president, you stand alone in the crosshairs of a hostile enemy.” So blatant is the Obama administration’s disregard for Israel’s safety, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey has stated that he had no “wish to be complicit” in any decision to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities.

• Ahmadinejad’s whom I have met with face to face and arranged the Fox news network only interview aim is a Shi’a Muslim caliphate worldwide he boldly told me so.. His targets would include not only Christians and Jews, but those Muslims that did not embrace his brand of Islam—such as the Sunnis in Saudi Arabia. Once Iran possesses nuclear capabilities, a race to acquire the same ability would rapidly spread across the Middle East.

• The truth lies in a statement by the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini during the Iran Revolution in 1979: Israel is the “Little Satan” and the United States is the “Great Satan.” Since the seizure of the American Embassy in Tehran and the ensuing hostage situation that lasted 444 days, the United States has been in an undeclared war with Iran. Shot after shot has been fired across the bow of this great Ship of State—the attack on the Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, that left 241 troops dead; improvised explosive devices exported to Iraq which were responsible for the deaths and mutilation of numerous US troops; facilitators in the attacks on September 11, 2001; and thwarted attacks on US soil, i.e., The targeting of a Saudi Arabian diplomat.

Iran’s lack of capability to achieve nuclear weapons status in the near future: Taqiyah

Sleeping with the Enemy?

Shortly after his inauguration, President Barack Obama apparently began a courtship with Iranian leaders. The strategy was to ultimately reopen embassies with a full-fledged ambassadorial staff in both Washington and Tehran as a prelude to full diplomatic status. Flights between the United States and Tehran would be available, and Iranians would be allowed visas to enter the US. That was designed to lead to talks regarding Iran’s nuclear intentions. The hand was extended; the mad dog responded accordingly—it bit the hand.

I am outraged and you should be, too. Iran has spent eight years killing thousands of US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan with the use of improvised explosive devises. The most lethal IEDs were manufactured in Iran for the implicit purpose of killing US troops. Or how about the thousands of soldiers wounded, with missing limbs, or burned beyond recognition compliments of Iran? We did nothing.

Iranian leaders have been responsible for the murders of more than 1,000 innocent Jews in Israel through terrorist proxies, Hezbollah, Hamas, and the PLO, all of which are armed and funded by Iran. Neither can we fail to mention the 17 US citizens murdered at the US Embassy in Beirut in April 1983, or the 241 servicemen killed by Islamic Jihad at the Marine barracks in Beirut on October 23, 1983. I know of this firsthand as I had slept on the beachhead rather than in the barracks the night before the attack. Also on the list is Master Chief Robert Dean Stethem who was beaten to death in June 1985 by a Hezbollah terrorist onboard TWA Flight 847. That same month William Francis Buckley, the CIA station chief in Beirut was tortured to death by Hezbollah.

Marine Colonel William Higgins was taken hostage by Hezbollah in 1988 while serving with UN peacekeepers in Lebanon and hanged sometime later. Nineteen US Air Force personnel were murdered in June 1996 when the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia were bombed. Several members of the Saudi branch of Hezbollah were later indicted in US federal court. The most recent plot on US soil included the attempted assassination of the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the US, Adel Al-Judeir, and the subsequent plan to bomb the Saudi and Israeli embassies in Washington, DC. These are all the Iranian plots which have been uncovered.

According to an Israeli newspaper, Maariv, Iran’s leaders “opposed any sign of normalization with the US, and refused to grant a ‘prize’ to the Americans.” Our ally, Israel, would have been strongly opposed to such a move by the Obama White House given the threats of total annihilation that have issued forth  from Tehran’s Holocaust-denying government.

In early October, reports leaked from “unknown sources” that in Geneva in 2009, the US and Iran had agreed to discuss the formulation of a plan to discuss Iran’s rogue nuclear program. The accounts were dismissed as false both by the White House and Tehran. However, according toMaariv, US Deputy Secretary of State William Burns had met with the Iranian nuclear envoy.  The meeting supposedly was held during the time that Tehran officials were meeting with five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council and Germany (known as the P5+1.)

If verifiable, it would reinforce what seems to be President Obama’s desire to snuggle up to Middle Eastern potentates and mullahs. It could directly affect sanctions imposed on Iran in an attempt to halt its nuclear program. Since the 1979 overthrow of the Shah of Iran, the US and Iran have had no diplomatic interaction except through a third country.

Apparently, in their refusal to open talks with Obama, Ahmadinejad and Supreme Ayatollah Khamenei are concerned that normalizing relations with the US would lessen the hold of the fanatical Shi’a Muslim regime.

It appears that Tehran may have had a change of heart, but that report has again been denied by US officials. In recent weeks, the New York Times and NBC reported that Ahmadinejad may be open to discussions, but only after the election on November 6.  Obviously, he wants to know with whom he would be negotiating.  The Obama administration denied the story, but seems always ready to bargain with the terrorist state.

My good friend, Israeli Minister of Strategic Affairs Moshe Ya’alon said he was aware of the meetings. Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman with whom I recently had dinner was hopeful that Obama’s denial of contact with Iran was correct. A nuclear weapon in the hands of Iran’s Shi’a Muslim majority would be an outright threat to any hopes of peace in the Middle East. Israel continues to consider the possibility of a military attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Sanctions designed to influence Iran’s leaders to abandon the program have been in place for some time,yet Ahmadinejad remains defiant and determined.

Laser Technology Stirs Nuke Fears

A new method of creating nuclear fuel with lasers could make it easier for Iran and other rogue nations to build atomic weapons. Scientists say lasers can help refine fuel-grade uranium into possible weapons grade in fewer steps than utilizing centrifuge technology. That could make laser enrichment a viable and attractive option for any country wanting to secretly develop nuclear weapon capability, something the West accuses Iran of doing with its centrifuge-based program.

Tehran’s building of underground centrifuge plants and the Islamic Republic’s history of hiding nuclear work from UN inspectors has fueled Western suspicions of a covert Iranian atom bomb program. That threat has also prompted Israeli threats to attack Iranian nuclear sites.

The Islamic Republic claims it already has laser technology but won’t use it; however nuclear experts doubt Iran has yet mastered the technology. Olli Heinonen, a former United Nations chief nuclear inspector, says "Iran had its own laser program, and they have got a good understanding about the process," adding that laser technology is more difficult to master than centrifuge know-how. He says the equipment used in Iran's research was dismantled and placed in storage under International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) monitoring.

A 2011 report from the International Institute for Strategic Studies think tank concluded that based on the IAEA assessment, “it appears unlikely that Iran's laser enrichment program represents a serious proliferation threat."

Throughout all of history mankind has built weapons of war and God commanded the ancient Jews to fight their enemies (Deut. 1:41). While ancient swords and catapults could capture a city, today’s weapons are capable of destroying the entire planet. Pray that nuclear weapons won’t fall into the hands of terror nations and that Israel will be able to defend itself against those who would seek its destruction.  Pray for peace in Jerusalem.

To read the original Jerusalem Post article, click here.