"I agree....yes most of what you have stated is the same as I understand,....but yet would you clarify a little more the words"But The Lord will not judge them directly in order to purify them".........................benny"
Yes I will. The Lord has born the judgment for the true believer. He went to the cross for this purpose. The believer is not pure and still a sinner while in the body, but one is save by grace through faith in the Lord's finished work. There is no need for a purification process by persecution from the Lord for one who has excepted salvation by grace. Correction maybe in the believer's behavior, but the coming judgment for unbelievers (including those who profess to be believers and are not) is totally different.
There are religious organizations who teach salvation by works/purification, but this is dangerous territory for the unsaved.
Full Version: Isaiah 17;1-latest Update
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QUOTE(benny balerio @ Jul 23 2006, 08:27 PM)
QUOTE(benny balerio @ Jul 23 2006, 08:24 PM)
QUOTE(benny balerio @ Jul 23 2006, 08:17 PM)
QUOTE(Stephen @ Jul 23 2006, 08:09 PM)
"continue.......please.............................................benny"
Scriptures fully support an early departure of the living believers before the 70th week .... the Lord's hour of trial that is coming is for the purpose of judging an unbelieving world of humans, not the Church (true believers, not just professing). Those who seek the truth after this departure will be subjected to the hour of trial because of timing and will most likely be persecuted for their faith .... even beheaded, but the Lord will not judge them directly in order to purify them.
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I agree....yes most of what you have stated is the same as I understand,....but yet would you clarify a little more the words"But The Lord will not judge them directly in order to purify them".........................benny Scriptures fully support an early departure of the living believers before the 70th week .... the Lord's hour of trial that is coming is for the purpose of judging an unbelieving world of humans, not the Church (true believers, not just professing). Those who seek the truth after this departure will be subjected to the hour of trial because of timing and will most likely be persecuted for their faith .... even beheaded, but the Lord will not judge them directly in order to purify them.
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Hezbollah, the group at the heart of the Lebanese conflict, is the spearhead of Iran’s ambitions to be a superpower, says Iranian commentator Amir Taheri
‘You are the sun of Islam, shining on the universe!” This is how Muhammad Khatami, the mullah who was president of Iran until last year, described Hezbollah last week. It would be no exaggeration to describe Hezbollah — the Lebanese Shi’ite militia — as Tehran’s regional trump card. Each time Tehran has played it, it has won. As war rages between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon, Tehran policymakers think that this time, too, they can win.
“I invite the faithful to wait for good news,” Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said last Tuesday. “We shall soon witness the elimination of the Zionist stain of shame.”
What are the links between Hezbollah and Iran? In 1982 Iran had almost no influence in Lebanon. The Lebanese Shi’ite bourgeoisie that had had close ties with Iran when it was ruled by the Shah was horrified by the advent of the clerics who created an Islamic republic.
Seeking a bridgehead in Lebanon, Iran asked its ambassador to Damascus, Ali Akbar Mohtashamipour, a radical mullah, to create one. Mohtashamipour decided to open a branch in Lebanon of the Iranian Hezbollah (the party of God).
After many meetings in Lebanon Mohtashamipour succeeded: in its founding statement it committed itself to the “creation of an Islamic republic in Lebanon”. To this end hundreds of Iranian mullahs, political “educators” and Islamic Revolutionary Guards were dispatched to Beirut.
Within two years several radical Shi’ite groups in Lebanon, including some with Marxist backgrounds, had united under the Hezbollah name and became the main force resisting the Israeli occupation of Lebanon after the expulsion of Yasser Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) in 1983.
Terror has been its principal weapon. Throughout the 1980s Hezbollah kidnapped more than 200 foreign nationals in Lebanon, most of them Americans or western Europeans (including Terry Waite, the Archbishop of Canterbury’s envoy). It organised the hijacking of civilian aircraft and more or less pioneered the idea of suicide bombings against American and French targets, killing almost 1,000 people, including 241 US marines in Beirut and 58 French paratroopers.
The campaign produced results. After Hezbollah’s attacks, France reduced its support for Saddam Hussein. America went further by supplying Iran with TOW anti-tank missiles, shipped via Israel, which helped to tip the Iran-Iraq war in favour of Iran. In exchange Iran ordered Hezbollah to release French and American hostages.
Once the Iran-Iraq war was over, Tehran found other uses for its Lebanese asset. It purged and then reshaped Hezbollah to influence the broader course of regional politics while using it to wage a low-intensity war against Israel.
In 2000, when the Israelis evacuated the strip they controlled in southern Lebanon, Tehran presented the event as the “first victory of Islam over the Zionist crusader camp” and Hezbollah was lauded across the Arab world. Hezbollah taunted the Israelis with billboards on the border reading, “If you return, we return”.
To prop up that myth, Tehran invested in a propaganda campaign that included television “documentaries”, feature films and books and magazine articles. The message was simple: while secular ideologies — from pan-Arabism to Arab socialism — had failed to liberate an inch of Arab territory, Islamism, in its Iranian Khomeinist version working through Hezbollah, had achieved “total victory” over Israel in Lebanon.
Since 1984 Iran has created branches of Hezbollah in more than 20 countries. None has equalled the success of the Lebanese branch, which until recently enjoyed something akin to cult status among Arabs, including non-Muslims, because of the way it stood up to Israel.
It has not even cost Iran very much. Hezbollah was launched with just £13m. After that, according to best estimates, Iran spent £32m to £54m a year on its Lebanese assets. Even if we add the cost of training Hezbollah fighters and equipping them with hardware, Hezbollah (the strongest fighting force in the Middle East after Iran and Israel) has not cost Iran more than £1.3 billion over two decades.
According to Naim Kassem, Hezbollah’s number two, the party has an annual budget of £279m, much of which comes from businesses set up by the movement. These include a bank, a mortgage co-operative, an insurance company, a travel agency specialising in pilgrimages to Muslim holy places, several hotels, a chain of supermarkets and a number of urban bus and taxi companies.
In its power base in southern Lebanon, particularly south Beirut and the Bekaa valley, it is possible for a visitor to spend a whole week without stepping outside a Hezbollah business unit: the hotel he checks into, the restaurant he eats in, the taxi that takes him around, the guide who shows him the sights and the shop where he buys souvenirs all belong to the party.
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The party controls the elected municipal councils and appoints local officials, who in theory should be selected by the central government in Beirut. To complete its status as a virtual state, the party maintains a number of unofficial “embassies”: the one in Tehran is bigger and has a larger number of staff than that of Lebanon itself.
Hezbollah also has its own media including a satellite television channel, Al-Manar (the lighthouse), which is watched all over the Arab world, four radio stations, newspapers and magazines plus a book publishing venture. The party has its own system of justice based on sharia and operates its own police force, courts and prisons. Hezbollah runs youth clubs, several football teams and a number of matrimonial agencies.
Its relationship with the rest of Lebanon is complex; it occupies 14 seats in the 128-seat national assembly and holds two portfolios in the council of ministers. But it still describes itself as “a people-based movement fighting on behalf of the Muslim world”.
The backbone of all that is Hezbollah’s militia, a fighting force of about 8,000 men, trained and armed with the latest weapons by Iran and Syria. Of these about 2,000 men represent an elite force under the direct command of the party’s secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah, a former pupil of the late Ayatollah Khomeini, the man who founded Iran’s Islamic republic. But the party also claims more than 30,000 reservists.
Arab and western experts concur that Hezbollah’s militia is a stronger fighting force than the Lebanese army that is supposed to disarm it under United Nations resolution 1559. Also, most soldiers in the official Lebanese army are Shi’ites who would balk at fighting their own.
Accounts concerning Hezbollah’s arsenal of weapons vary. The militia is said to be armed with Kalashnikov assault rifles and an Iranian rapid-fire gun initially modelled on the Israeli Uzi. The party’s crown jewels, however, are an estimated 14,000 rockets and missiles shipped in from Iran over the past six years. Most of these are modified versions of the Soviet-designed Katyusha. The party also has some Chinese-made Silkworm missiles for special use in naval warfare.
“The Israelis would be foolish to think they are dealing with nothing but a bunch of mad fanatics,” says a former Iranian diplomat now in exile. “Hezbollah in Lebanon is a state in all but name: it has its territory, army, civil service and economic and educational systems.”
A few minutes’ drive south from central Beirut takes you into what appears to be a different country. Beirut itself has European-style architecture, shops, hotels and cafes with men and women mostly wearing western clothes.
Once you enter Hezbollah land, the scene changes. You feel as if you are in Qom, the Iranian holy city, with men sporting bushy beards and women covered by mandatory hijab, milling around in noisy narrow streets fronted by nondescript shops. Billboards that advertise global bands in Beirut are used in Hezbollah land for pasting giant portraits of Khomeini and the Iranian “supreme guide” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Not surprisingly Hezbollah describes its territory as “Dar al-Iman” (House of Faith).
When it took over southern Lebanon, Hezbollah found a territory devastated by years of domination by the Palestinian al-Fatah (the area had once been called Fatahland) and the Israeli invasion of 1982. There were almost no schools, no hospitals, few jobs and certainly no security.
Hezbollah provided all that. At the same time the movement imposed a strict religious code that gave the poor Shi’ites a sense of moral superiority over other Lebanese who aspired after western lifestyles. A generation of Shi’ites in southern Lebanon has grown up in a world shaped by Hezbollah’s radical ideology.
Over the years the Lebanese branch has been woven into Iran’s body politic. Many Hezbollah militants and officials have married into Iranian religious families, often connected to influential ayatollahs. Dozens of Lebanese Shi’ites have worked and continue to work in the Iranian administration, especially in the ministries of security, information and culture. Since the mid-1980s, most of the Lebanese Shi’ite clerics have undertaken training in Iran.
In exchange, thousands of Iranian security officers and members of the Revolutionary Guards have lived and worked in Lebanon. As Ali Yunesi, Iran’s former intelligence minister, said: “Iran is Hezbollah and Hezbollah is Iran.”
Support for Hezbollah cuts across the political divides within the Iranian ruling establishment. Whether “reformist” or “hardliner”, Iran’s ruling mullahs and their political associates look to Hezbollah as a reflection of their own revolutionary youth. Last week parliamentary members of the Islamic Majlis in Tehran set aside their disputes to unite in their demand to go and fight alongside Hezbollah in Lebanon if Sheikh Nasrallah called them.
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The problem is that since the Iranian regime is Shi’ite it would not be easy to sell it to most Arabs, who are Sunni. To overcome that hurdle, it is necessary to persuade the Arabs that only Iran is sincere in its desire and capacity to wipe Israel off the map. Once that claim is sold to the Arabs, so Ahmadinejad hopes, they would rally behind his vision of the Middle East instead of the “American vision”.
That strategy pushed Israel to the top of Tehran’s agenda. This is why, in May, Tehran became the first country to grant the Hamas government in the occupied territories an emergency grant of £27m to cope with a freeze imposed by European Union aid and other international donations. As moderate Arab countries have distanced themselves from Hamas, Iran along with Syria has stepped in.
The pincer war launched by Hamas and Hezbollah against Israel is also related to domestic politics. In the occupied territories, Hamas needs to marginalise Mahmoud Abbas’s PLO and establish itself as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. In Lebanon, Hezbollah wants to prevent the consolidation of power in the hands of a new pro-American coalition government led by Fouad Siniora, the prime minister, and Walid Jumblatt, the Druze leader.
(Shi’ites make up about 40% of the population, Christians 39% and Sunnis, Druze and others the remainder.) If the pincer war against Israel is won, Iran would be able to expand its zone of influence, already taking shape in Iraq and assured in Syria, to take in Lebanon and Gaza. This would be the first time since the 7th century that Persian power has extended so far to the west.
The strategy is high risk. If the Israelis manage to crush Hamas and destroy Hezbollah’s military machine, Iran’s influence will diminish massively. Defeat could revive an internal Hezbollah debate between those who continue to support a total and exclusive alliance with Iran until the infidel, led by America, is driven out of the Middle East and those who want Hezbollah to distance itself from Tehran and emphasise its Lebanese identity. One reason why Hezbollah has found such little support among Arabs in Egypt and Saudi Arabia this time is the perception that it is fighting Israel on behalf of Iran, a Persian Shi’ite power that has been regarded by the majority of Arab Sunnis as an ancestral enemy.
In Lebanon, for the first time in two generations, a consensus is emerging among the country’s different ethnic and religious communities that the only way they can live together in peace is by developing a sense of Lebaneseness.
This means that Arab Sunnis must abandon their pan-Arab aspirations while Christians must stop looking to France as their “original motherland”. In that context Hezbollah’s Iranian ideology cannot but antagonise the Sunnis, the Druze and the Christians, many of whom are angry at the destruction of their country that Hezbollah has brought about by once again antagonising Israel.
The mini war that is taking place between Israel and Hezbollah is, in fact, a proxy war in which Iran’s vision for the Middle East clashes with the administration in Washington. What is at stake is not the exchange of kidnapped Israeli soldiers with Arab prisoners in Israel. Such exchanges have happened routinely over five decades. The real issue is who will set the agenda for the Middle East: Iran or America?
.........................................................................benny
DEBKAfile Special Report
July 23, 2006, 6:22 PM (GMT+02:00)
US officials are not yet saying so out loud, but in private and “on condition of anonymity,” White House circles are signaling disappointment.
It arises from the expectation that the Israeli Defense Forces, the most effective Middle East army, would dispose of Hassan Nasrallah and his Hizballah in a few days, presenting the Bush administration and Sunni Muslim Arab rulers with a dearly hoped-for smash victory against Islamic fundamentalist terrorists. Now, after 12 days of Israeli air, sea and ground assaults, it is beginning to look as though it will take a long, sustained effort to break Hizballah.
Therefore, US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice is coming to the Middle East Monday, July 24, brandishing a whip in the form of an implied deadline. She will assess the situation at close hand, talk to allies in Rome Wednesday and go back to Washington after setting a date to return in the week beginning July 30.
A really quick, crushing victory over the Hizballah could be achieved by the landing of American forces in northern Lebanon – at the invitation of the Beirut government. Nasrallah’s forces could then be strangled between US forces and the Israeli army coming up from the south.
But this is not on the cards for the simple reason that America is willing to fight in Lebanon to the last Israeli soldier, just as Iran is ready to fight to the last Hizballah combatant. Israel must beware of being hustled into taking imprudent steps by the proxy contest between the Washington and Tehran. Israel and its armed forces must pursue their own national agenda which is to cripple the Hizballah and inflict a defeat on Tehran, both of whom are sworn to destroy the Jewish state. It is necessary for Israeli commanders to proceed cautiously and set a pace that is commensurate with their military capabilities. Their best fighting men must not be place needlessly in harm’s way and Lebanese civilian casualties have to be avoided as far as possible in a situation in which Hizballah stores its men and weapons in domestic cellars, kitchens and banana groves. Above all, Israel must beware of being drawn into tailoring its arduous and dangerous campaign to the pressures of Washington’s disappointment. After four years in Iraq, US forces know the score and understand the challenges besetting Israel.
On Day Twelve of the war, Israel faces two major tactical difficulties:
1. The enemy the IDF is pursuing is not a regular army which moves divisions around, but a small militia of 4,000 hardened, highly trained jihadist guerrillas, who have reduced their offensive against Israel to two simple tactics: shooting rockets at population centers and lying in wait for a chance to take Israeli troops unawares.
It therefore behooves Israeli forces, which Saturday, July 22, launched a large-scale offensive to sanitize South Lebanon, to beat Hizballah at the game of catching the opposition unawares. There is no doubt that the Israeli army is badly in need of a success – and not only to impress the Americans. Israel’s home front, though solidly behind its servicemen, needs to be assured that the war is on course and will be fought “until the job is finished.” This is the mantra heard up and down Israel, most insistently from the one-third of the population taking the punishment of lives lost or disrupted and homes destroyed by daily rocket attacks, with very little complaint.
This assurance is beginning to wear thin as the Hizballah rocket blitz intensifies day by day. Saturday, they shot a record 160 rockets at dozens of towns and communities. Sunday, July 23, the ball bearings packed in the Katyusha warheads punched hundreds of holes in a car and a workshop, killing two men on the spot. Sirens were heard for the first time in Binyamina, Zichron Yaacov and Kfar Ada, 70 km from the Lebanese border and the deepest south yet. The buildings of Israel’s third largest city, Haifa, and many other towns of northern Israel, are severely battered and bear the scars of blasts which scatter the metal balls designed to maximize human injuries.
The week’s grace that Rice appears to be granting the Israeli government and armed forces for bringing the war to a successful conclusion is also a boon for Tehran, Syria and Hizballlah. It gives them time to engineer a nasty surprise to greet the US secretary’s second visit, hitting Israel at the very moment that the diplomats weigh in to start the process for ending hostilities. Israel will then be told to hold back on reprisals. This dead-end maneuver will be painfully familiar to the many peacemakers who tried their luck with the Palestinians, notably Condoleezza Rice’s predecessor, Colon Powell.
While Syrian officials angle for direct talks with the United States and call for a ceasefire, Damascus is preparing to step into the war. Damascus is preparing to step into the war. Syrian information minister Mohsein Bilal warned Sunday, July 23, that Syria will join the conflict if Israeli ground forces in Lebanon approach the Syrian border. But Bashar Assad also prefers to hide behind the back of a proxy. The ruling Syrian Baath suddenly “discovered” Sunday a new organization called the “Front for the Liberation of Golan,” claiming it launched its first attack last Thursday, July 20, on an Israeli army post. It was said to have killed 8 Israeli soldiers and taken two hostages to be held in Syria against the release of Golan Druzes in Israeli jails. The tale is made of whole cloth, but it is a straw that shows which way the wind is blowing in Damascus.
Neither Damascus nor Tehran – and certainly not the Hizballah - have any intention of leaving the diplomatic initiative in the hands of the US secretary of state. They will do their utmost to stay one step ahead of any American-led steps and keep Israeli forces from running away with a victory. The way events are going now, both the Americans and Israelis will soon be confronted with the necessity to cut both Syria and Iran down to size.
July 23, 2006, 6:22 PM (GMT+02:00)
US officials are not yet saying so out loud, but in private and “on condition of anonymity,” White House circles are signaling disappointment.
It arises from the expectation that the Israeli Defense Forces, the most effective Middle East army, would dispose of Hassan Nasrallah and his Hizballah in a few days, presenting the Bush administration and Sunni Muslim Arab rulers with a dearly hoped-for smash victory against Islamic fundamentalist terrorists. Now, after 12 days of Israeli air, sea and ground assaults, it is beginning to look as though it will take a long, sustained effort to break Hizballah.
Therefore, US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice is coming to the Middle East Monday, July 24, brandishing a whip in the form of an implied deadline. She will assess the situation at close hand, talk to allies in Rome Wednesday and go back to Washington after setting a date to return in the week beginning July 30.
A really quick, crushing victory over the Hizballah could be achieved by the landing of American forces in northern Lebanon – at the invitation of the Beirut government. Nasrallah’s forces could then be strangled between US forces and the Israeli army coming up from the south.
But this is not on the cards for the simple reason that America is willing to fight in Lebanon to the last Israeli soldier, just as Iran is ready to fight to the last Hizballah combatant. Israel must beware of being hustled into taking imprudent steps by the proxy contest between the Washington and Tehran. Israel and its armed forces must pursue their own national agenda which is to cripple the Hizballah and inflict a defeat on Tehran, both of whom are sworn to destroy the Jewish state. It is necessary for Israeli commanders to proceed cautiously and set a pace that is commensurate with their military capabilities. Their best fighting men must not be place needlessly in harm’s way and Lebanese civilian casualties have to be avoided as far as possible in a situation in which Hizballah stores its men and weapons in domestic cellars, kitchens and banana groves. Above all, Israel must beware of being drawn into tailoring its arduous and dangerous campaign to the pressures of Washington’s disappointment. After four years in Iraq, US forces know the score and understand the challenges besetting Israel.
On Day Twelve of the war, Israel faces two major tactical difficulties:
1. The enemy the IDF is pursuing is not a regular army which moves divisions around, but a small militia of 4,000 hardened, highly trained jihadist guerrillas, who have reduced their offensive against Israel to two simple tactics: shooting rockets at population centers and lying in wait for a chance to take Israeli troops unawares.
It therefore behooves Israeli forces, which Saturday, July 22, launched a large-scale offensive to sanitize South Lebanon, to beat Hizballah at the game of catching the opposition unawares. There is no doubt that the Israeli army is badly in need of a success – and not only to impress the Americans. Israel’s home front, though solidly behind its servicemen, needs to be assured that the war is on course and will be fought “until the job is finished.” This is the mantra heard up and down Israel, most insistently from the one-third of the population taking the punishment of lives lost or disrupted and homes destroyed by daily rocket attacks, with very little complaint.
This assurance is beginning to wear thin as the Hizballah rocket blitz intensifies day by day. Saturday, they shot a record 160 rockets at dozens of towns and communities. Sunday, July 23, the ball bearings packed in the Katyusha warheads punched hundreds of holes in a car and a workshop, killing two men on the spot. Sirens were heard for the first time in Binyamina, Zichron Yaacov and Kfar Ada, 70 km from the Lebanese border and the deepest south yet. The buildings of Israel’s third largest city, Haifa, and many other towns of northern Israel, are severely battered and bear the scars of blasts which scatter the metal balls designed to maximize human injuries.
The week’s grace that Rice appears to be granting the Israeli government and armed forces for bringing the war to a successful conclusion is also a boon for Tehran, Syria and Hizballlah. It gives them time to engineer a nasty surprise to greet the US secretary’s second visit, hitting Israel at the very moment that the diplomats weigh in to start the process for ending hostilities. Israel will then be told to hold back on reprisals. This dead-end maneuver will be painfully familiar to the many peacemakers who tried their luck with the Palestinians, notably Condoleezza Rice’s predecessor, Colon Powell.
While Syrian officials angle for direct talks with the United States and call for a ceasefire, Damascus is preparing to step into the war. Damascus is preparing to step into the war. Syrian information minister Mohsein Bilal warned Sunday, July 23, that Syria will join the conflict if Israeli ground forces in Lebanon approach the Syrian border. But Bashar Assad also prefers to hide behind the back of a proxy. The ruling Syrian Baath suddenly “discovered” Sunday a new organization called the “Front for the Liberation of Golan,” claiming it launched its first attack last Thursday, July 20, on an Israeli army post. It was said to have killed 8 Israeli soldiers and taken two hostages to be held in Syria against the release of Golan Druzes in Israeli jails. The tale is made of whole cloth, but it is a straw that shows which way the wind is blowing in Damascus.
Neither Damascus nor Tehran – and certainly not the Hizballah - have any intention of leaving the diplomatic initiative in the hands of the US secretary of state. They will do their utmost to stay one step ahead of any American-led steps and keep Israeli forces from running away with a victory. The way events are going now, both the Americans and Israelis will soon be confronted with the necessity to cut both Syria and Iran down to size.
QUOTE(benny balerio @ Jul 23 2006, 08:30 PM)
QUOTE(benny balerio @ Jul 23 2006, 08:27 PM)
QUOTE(benny balerio @ Jul 23 2006, 08:24 PM)
QUOTE(benny balerio @ Jul 23 2006, 08:17 PM)
QUOTE(Stephen @ Jul 23 2006, 08:09 PM)
"continue.......please.............................................benny"
Scriptures fully support an early departure of the living believers before the 70th week .... the Lord's hour of trial that is coming is for the purpose of judging an unbelieving world of humans, not the Church (true believers, not just professing). Those who seek the truth after this departure will be subjected to the hour of trial because of timing and will most likely be persecuted for their faith .... even beheaded, but the Lord will not judge them directly in order to purify them.
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I agree....yes most of what you have stated is the same as I understand,....but yet would you clarify a little more the words"But The Lord will not judge them directly in order to purify them".........................benny Scriptures fully support an early departure of the living believers before the 70th week .... the Lord's hour of trial that is coming is for the purpose of judging an unbelieving world of humans, not the Church (true believers, not just professing). Those who seek the truth after this departure will be subjected to the hour of trial because of timing and will most likely be persecuted for their faith .... even beheaded, but the Lord will not judge them directly in order to purify them.
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Hezbollah, the group at the heart of the Lebanese conflict, is the spearhead of Iran’s ambitions to be a superpower, says Iranian commentator Amir Taheri
‘You are the sun of Islam, shining on the universe!” This is how Muhammad Khatami, the mullah who was president of Iran until last year, described Hezbollah last week. It would be no exaggeration to describe Hezbollah — the Lebanese Shi’ite militia — as Tehran’s regional trump card. Each time Tehran has played it, it has won. As war rages between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon, Tehran policymakers think that this time, too, they can win.
“I invite the faithful to wait for good news,” Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said last Tuesday. “We shall soon witness the elimination of the Zionist stain of shame.”
What are the links between Hezbollah and Iran? In 1982 Iran had almost no influence in Lebanon. The Lebanese Shi’ite bourgeoisie that had had close ties with Iran when it was ruled by the Shah was horrified by the advent of the clerics who created an Islamic republic.
Seeking a bridgehead in Lebanon, Iran asked its ambassador to Damascus, Ali Akbar Mohtashamipour, a radical mullah, to create one. Mohtashamipour decided to open a branch in Lebanon of the Iranian Hezbollah (the party of God).
After many meetings in Lebanon Mohtashamipour succeeded: in its founding statement it committed itself to the “creation of an Islamic republic in Lebanon”. To this end hundreds of Iranian mullahs, political “educators” and Islamic Revolutionary Guards were dispatched to Beirut.
Within two years several radical Shi’ite groups in Lebanon, including some with Marxist backgrounds, had united under the Hezbollah name and became the main force resisting the Israeli occupation of Lebanon after the expulsion of Yasser Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) in 1983.
Terror has been its principal weapon. Throughout the 1980s Hezbollah kidnapped more than 200 foreign nationals in Lebanon, most of them Americans or western Europeans (including Terry Waite, the Archbishop of Canterbury’s envoy). It organised the hijacking of civilian aircraft and more or less pioneered the idea of suicide bombings against American and French targets, killing almost 1,000 people, including 241 US marines in Beirut and 58 French paratroopers.
The campaign produced results. After Hezbollah’s attacks, France reduced its support for Saddam Hussein. America went further by supplying Iran with TOW anti-tank missiles, shipped via Israel, which helped to tip the Iran-Iraq war in favour of Iran. In exchange Iran ordered Hezbollah to release French and American hostages.
Once the Iran-Iraq war was over, Tehran found other uses for its Lebanese asset. It purged and then reshaped Hezbollah to influence the broader course of regional politics while using it to wage a low-intensity war against Israel.
In 2000, when the Israelis evacuated the strip they controlled in southern Lebanon, Tehran presented the event as the “first victory of Islam over the Zionist crusader camp” and Hezbollah was lauded across the Arab world. Hezbollah taunted the Israelis with billboards on the border reading, “If you return, we return”.
To prop up that myth, Tehran invested in a propaganda campaign that included television “documentaries”, feature films and books and magazine articles. The message was simple: while secular ideologies — from pan-Arabism to Arab socialism — had failed to liberate an inch of Arab territory, Islamism, in its Iranian Khomeinist version working through Hezbollah, had achieved “total victory” over Israel in Lebanon.
Since 1984 Iran has created branches of Hezbollah in more than 20 countries. None has equalled the success of the Lebanese branch, which until recently enjoyed something akin to cult status among Arabs, including non-Muslims, because of the way it stood up to Israel.
It has not even cost Iran very much. Hezbollah was launched with just £13m. After that, according to best estimates, Iran spent £32m to £54m a year on its Lebanese assets. Even if we add the cost of training Hezbollah fighters and equipping them with hardware, Hezbollah (the strongest fighting force in the Middle East after Iran and Israel) has not cost Iran more than £1.3 billion over two decades.
According to Naim Kassem, Hezbollah’s number two, the party has an annual budget of £279m, much of which comes from businesses set up by the movement. These include a bank, a mortgage co-operative, an insurance company, a travel agency specialising in pilgrimages to Muslim holy places, several hotels, a chain of supermarkets and a number of urban bus and taxi companies.
In its power base in southern Lebanon, particularly south Beirut and the Bekaa valley, it is possible for a visitor to spend a whole week without stepping outside a Hezbollah business unit: the hotel he checks into, the restaurant he eats in, the taxi that takes him around, the guide who shows him the sights and the shop where he buys souvenirs all belong to the party.
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The party controls the elected municipal councils and appoints local officials, who in theory should be selected by the central government in Beirut. To complete its status as a virtual state, the party maintains a number of unofficial “embassies”: the one in Tehran is bigger and has a larger number of staff than that of Lebanon itself.
Hezbollah also has its own media including a satellite television channel, Al-Manar (the lighthouse), which is watched all over the Arab world, four radio stations, newspapers and magazines plus a book publishing venture. The party has its own system of justice based on sharia and operates its own police force, courts and prisons. Hezbollah runs youth clubs, several football teams and a number of matrimonial agencies.
Its relationship with the rest of Lebanon is complex; it occupies 14 seats in the 128-seat national assembly and holds two portfolios in the council of ministers. But it still describes itself as “a people-based movement fighting on behalf of the Muslim world”.
The backbone of all that is Hezbollah’s militia, a fighting force of about 8,000 men, trained and armed with the latest weapons by Iran and Syria. Of these about 2,000 men represent an elite force under the direct command of the party’s secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah, a former pupil of the late Ayatollah Khomeini, the man who founded Iran’s Islamic republic. But the party also claims more than 30,000 reservists.
Arab and western experts concur that Hezbollah’s militia is a stronger fighting force than the Lebanese army that is supposed to disarm it under United Nations resolution 1559. Also, most soldiers in the official Lebanese army are Shi’ites who would balk at fighting their own.
Accounts concerning Hezbollah’s arsenal of weapons vary. The militia is said to be armed with Kalashnikov assault rifles and an Iranian rapid-fire gun initially modelled on the Israeli Uzi. The party’s crown jewels, however, are an estimated 14,000 rockets and missiles shipped in from Iran over the past six years. Most of these are modified versions of the Soviet-designed Katyusha. The party also has some Chinese-made Silkworm missiles for special use in naval warfare.
“The Israelis would be foolish to think they are dealing with nothing but a bunch of mad fanatics,” says a former Iranian diplomat now in exile. “Hezbollah in Lebanon is a state in all but name: it has its territory, army, civil service and economic and educational systems.”
A few minutes’ drive south from central Beirut takes you into what appears to be a different country. Beirut itself has European-style architecture, shops, hotels and cafes with men and women mostly wearing western clothes.
Once you enter Hezbollah land, the scene changes. You feel as if you are in Qom, the Iranian holy city, with men sporting bushy beards and women covered by mandatory hijab, milling around in noisy narrow streets fronted by nondescript shops. Billboards that advertise global bands in Beirut are used in Hezbollah land for pasting giant portraits of Khomeini and the Iranian “supreme guide” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Not surprisingly Hezbollah describes its territory as “Dar al-Iman” (House of Faith).
When it took over southern Lebanon, Hezbollah found a territory devastated by years of domination by the Palestinian al-Fatah (the area had once been called Fatahland) and the Israeli invasion of 1982. There were almost no schools, no hospitals, few jobs and certainly no security.
Hezbollah provided all that. At the same time the movement imposed a strict religious code that gave the poor Shi’ites a sense of moral superiority over other Lebanese who aspired after western lifestyles. A generation of Shi’ites in southern Lebanon has grown up in a world shaped by Hezbollah’s radical ideology.
Over the years the Lebanese branch has been woven into Iran’s body politic. Many Hezbollah militants and officials have married into Iranian religious families, often connected to influential ayatollahs. Dozens of Lebanese Shi’ites have worked and continue to work in the Iranian administration, especially in the ministries of security, information and culture. Since the mid-1980s, most of the Lebanese Shi’ite clerics have undertaken training in Iran.
In exchange, thousands of Iranian security officers and members of the Revolutionary Guards have lived and worked in Lebanon. As Ali Yunesi, Iran’s former intelligence minister, said: “Iran is Hezbollah and Hezbollah is Iran.”
Support for Hezbollah cuts across the political divides within the Iranian ruling establishment. Whether “reformist” or “hardliner”, Iran’s ruling mullahs and their political associates look to Hezbollah as a reflection of their own revolutionary youth. Last week parliamentary members of the Islamic Majlis in Tehran set aside their disputes to unite in their demand to go and fight alongside Hezbollah in Lebanon if Sheikh Nasrallah called them.
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more to come........................................................benny
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The problem is that since the Iranian regime is Shi’ite it would not be easy to sell it to most Arabs, who are Sunni. To overcome that hurdle, it is necessary to persuade the Arabs that only Iran is sincere in its desire and capacity to wipe Israel off the map. Once that claim is sold to the Arabs, so Ahmadinejad hopes, they would rally behind his vision of the Middle East instead of the “American vision”.
That strategy pushed Israel to the top of Tehran’s agenda. This is why, in May, Tehran became the first country to grant the Hamas government in the occupied territories an emergency grant of £27m to cope with a freeze imposed by European Union aid and other international donations. As moderate Arab countries have distanced themselves from Hamas, Iran along with Syria has stepped in.
The pincer war launched by Hamas and Hezbollah against Israel is also related to domestic politics. In the occupied territories, Hamas needs to marginalise Mahmoud Abbas’s PLO and establish itself as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. In Lebanon, Hezbollah wants to prevent the consolidation of power in the hands of a new pro-American coalition government led by Fouad Siniora, the prime minister, and Walid Jumblatt, the Druze leader.
(Shi’ites make up about 40% of the population, Christians 39% and Sunnis, Druze and others the remainder.) If the pincer war against Israel is won, Iran would be able to expand its zone of influence, already taking shape in Iraq and assured in Syria, to take in Lebanon and Gaza. This would be the first time since the 7th century that Persian power has extended so far to the west.
The strategy is high risk. If the Israelis manage to crush Hamas and destroy Hezbollah’s military machine, Iran’s influence will diminish massively. Defeat could revive an internal Hezbollah debate between those who continue to support a total and exclusive alliance with Iran until the infidel, led by America, is driven out of the Middle East and those who want Hezbollah to distance itself from Tehran and emphasise its Lebanese identity. One reason why Hezbollah has found such little support among Arabs in Egypt and Saudi Arabia this time is the perception that it is fighting Israel on behalf of Iran, a Persian Shi’ite power that has been regarded by the majority of Arab Sunnis as an ancestral enemy.
In Lebanon, for the first time in two generations, a consensus is emerging among the country’s different ethnic and religious communities that the only way they can live together in peace is by developing a sense of Lebaneseness.
This means that Arab Sunnis must abandon their pan-Arab aspirations while Christians must stop looking to France as their “original motherland”. In that context Hezbollah’s Iranian ideology cannot but antagonise the Sunnis, the Druze and the Christians, many of whom are angry at the destruction of their country that Hezbollah has brought about by once again antagonising Israel.
The mini war that is taking place between Israel and Hezbollah is, in fact, a proxy war in which Iran’s vision for the Middle East clashes with the administration in Washington. What is at stake is not the exchange of kidnapped Israeli soldiers with Arab prisoners in Israel. Such exchanges have happened routinely over five decades. The real issue is who will set the agenda for the Middle East: Iran or America?
.........................................................................benny
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Article published Saturday, July 22, 2006
Mideast conflict studied for links to Bible
Scott
Zoom | Photo Reprints
By DAVID YONKE
BLADE RELIGION EDITOR
People who seek to align today’s headlines with ancient Scriptures have been working overtime lately, monitoring the daily developments in the Middle East.
Words spoken by Old Testament prophets such as Isaiah, Amos, and Ezekiel are undergoing a new round of scrutiny as Israel battles the Muslim guerrilla group Hezbollah in neighboring Lebanon.
How — or whether — the 10-day-old conflict ties in with Bible prophecy is a matter of debate in Toledo and around the globe.
“We’re getting comments from around the world,” said Todd Strandberg of Omaha, who runs the Web site RaptureReady.com. “Most of them are from the United States, but for some reason, Australia is a big one.”
PREDICTING THE END
Although the Bible states in Matthew 25:13: “For ye know neither the day nor the hour wherein the Son of man cometh,” it has not stopped people from predicting the Second Coming of Jesus Christ and the End of the World. Here are a few selections from “The Date Setters Diary” compiled by Todd Strandberg. The full list is online at www.RaptureReady.com/rr-date-setters.html:
• 53 A.D.: Thessalonians panic when they hear a rumor that the day of the Lord was at hand, fearing they missed the Rapture.
• 500 A.D.: A Roman priest living in the second century predicts Christ would return in 500 A.D., based on the dimensions of Noah’s Ark.
• 1000 A.D.: The new millennium leads to hysteria, based solely on the number 1,000; buildings are left unrepaired, farmers opt not to plant crops, and prisoners are let out of jail because people believed the end of the world was at hand.
• 1186: “The Letter of Toledo” warns everyone to hide in caves and mountains because the world is going to be destroyed when the planets align.
• 1809: Mary Bateman, fortune teller, has a magic chicken that lays eggs with end-time messages on them, including one that said Christ was coming. She later is hanged for poisoning a wealthy client.
• 1910: The revisit of Halley’s comet is seen as an indication of the Lord’s return. One enterprising man sells comet pills to protect people from comet gases.
• 1988: The book 88 Reasons Why the Rapture Is in 1988, by Edgar Whisenant, creates a stir among churches. When the Rapture does not occur, Whiesnant says he miscalculated by a year. His sequel, 89 Reasons Why the Rapture Is in 1989, sells just a fraction of the numbers that the original version tallied.
• 1991: Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan predicts the Gulf War would be “The War of Armageddon ... the Final War.”
• 1998: Since 666 times three equals 1998, some see this as a prophetically significant year.
• 2011-2018: For the past several decades, Jack Van Impe has hinted at nearly every year as being the time for the Rapture. His new match uses 51 years as the length of a generation. If you add 51 years to 1967, the year Israel recaptured Jerusalem, you get 2018. Once you subtract the seven-year tribulation period, you arrive at 2011.
Mr. Strandberg, who is in the Air Force, said he works about eight hours a day, seven days a week, compiling information about the End Times — the days leading up to Earth’s final battle, Armageddon — for his Web site, which has been in operation for 20 years, since the era of dial-up online bulletin boards.
“I try to be practical with everything. My main goal is not to be spectacular or push the conspiracy thing,” Mr. Strandberg said. “But God says he is coming back, so sometime he is coming back.”
The latest round of fighting in the Middle East is being closely watched for any signs of Syrian involvement — a step that some feel will lead to the destruction of its capital city, Damascus, as described by two Bible prophets.
Isaiah 17:1 states: “Damascus is taken away from being a city, and it shall be a ruinous heap,” while Amos 1:3 says, “Thus saith the Lord; For three transgressions of Damascus, and for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof.” (King James Version).
“Cumulatively, Damascus will be eliminated as a city and there will be nothing there,” said the Rev. Tony Scott, pastor of Cathedral of Praise in Monclova. “Whether this is the war leading up to it or not, that is what’s going to happen eventually.”
The Bible says Armageddon will start after Israel is invaded by armies from the north, so any time military conflict strikes the Middle East it is a something to pay attention to, Mr. Scott said.
“I think the story is this: This is the region from which the battle of all battles is going to originate — in these cities, in these countries. I don’t know if this is the war leading up to it or not, but I think it should make people think about it, to realize that the Bible is real.”
Al Adams, an author of books on the End Times and host of a weekly television show in Lafayette, La., also believes the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict provides an opportunity to get people to open their Bibles.
“My main goal is to create awareness,” Mr. Adams said. “I’m sitting back and watching this, and this really has potential to fulfill a couple of prophecies that have not been done.
“Usually, seeing Bible prophecy fulfilled before your eyes is a good chance to show people that the Bible is real and every word in it is the living Word of God.
“If Russia gets involved, oh boy, this isn’t good,” Mr. Adams said, because it could be the start of Armageddon — with Russia the “gog and magog” that the Bible says will invade Israel.
Not all Bible scholars believe that the words of ancient prophets apply to today’s citizens.
Zoom | Photo Reprints
The Rev. Kenneth Mormon, a Toledo Catholic priest teaching at Mount St. Mary Seminary in Cincinnati, said according to Catholic doctrine, the messages of Isaiah, Amos, and other prophets were intended for the people of their own time.
“Usually when we’re talking about Bible prophecy, we’re talking about apocalyptic works. But the messages are directed to their own contemporaries,” Father Mormon said.
“When God inspires an author to write for his people, he chooses a form — a letter, a parable, a drama, a short story, whatever it is. Apocalyptic writing is a kind of literature. If a prophet uses apocalyptic writing, he phrases the message in terms of a vision, a seer, with the symbolism explained to him by a heavenly messenger,” he said.
But although the message was intended for people living thousands of years ago, the Bible is always relevant and modern readers will still get something out of it, only in a different way than the prophet’s contemporaries, Father Mormon said.
Gary DeMar, an Atlanta-based author who has written several books on the End Times, also believes that many people are taking the prophets’ writings out of context.
“People who claim to interpret the Bible literally are very selective in terms of what they interpret,” Mr. DeMar said in an interview. “In Ezekiel 38 and 39, it obviously is about an ancient battle, the people are on horseback, they have shields, the loot they want is cattle, and this really has nothing to do with our time.”
Mr. DeMar, author of Last Days Madness, said it doesn’t make sense that prophecy watchers are always looking to verses in the Old Testament, while the New Testament is rarely cited.
“The New Testament is kind of an update of the Old Testament. It’s the new covenant. Yet they have to continue to go back to the Old Testament,” he said.
Neil Little, a Toledoan who has programs on WGGN-FM (97.7) in Sandusky, said he is concerned that the networks reporting on the Middle East fighting are not making any references to Bible prophecy.
“Nobody is bringing up that this is what was prophesied in Jeremiah and Isaiah — that Israel would be bombarded,” Mr. Little said. “I understand what the geopolitical issues are all about, but I believe the coming of Christ is just around the corner. I preach it. I don’t want to scare people, but Christians should know what’s going on.”
The Rev. Todd Hostetler of Toledo said Christians should always keep an eye on the Middle East situation, but he does not believe the latest conflict is a sign that doomsday is at hand.
“In Ezekiel 38:11 and 14, it says Israel is dwelling in safety,” Mr. Hostetler said. “Israel will have no gates or walls, so they are secure with their neighbors, indicating that in the End Times there will be peace.”
Armageddon cannot come until Israel experiences a time of peace, he said.
“There’s no reason to panic, but the events in the Middle East should stir in us a desire to spread the Gospel. The clock is marching forward. Step by step the Bible is being fulfilled.”
.............................................................benny
DEBKAfile Exclusive: In response to Iranian re-supplies to Hizballah, a US arms airlift began running to Israel Saturday, July 22
July 23, 2006, 3:32 PM (GMT+02:00)
America is carrying fresh stock of bombs, missiles and spare parts for Israeli Air Force aircraft and helicopters. Giant Galaxy C141 transports have been landing, unloading and taking off at short intervals.
DEBKAfile adds: The American airlift to Israel follows the air corridor Iran opened to replenish Hizballah’s stocks on Wednesday, July 19, landing supplies at Syria’s Abu Ad Duhur military airfield north of Homs. The deliveries for Hizballah include large quantities of new missiles, including the long-range Zelzal and Fajr 3 and Fajr 5 missiles, Katyusha rockets, anti-tank and anti-air missiles sent out from the RG HQ in Bandar Abbas on the Persian Gulf. Some of these missiles can reach Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
Thursday, July 21, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards commander Brig.-Gen Yahya Rahim Safavi (picture) assumed command of the Lebanon war from Hizballah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah. RG forward command posts are operating out of Iranian embassies in Beirut and Damascus. Syria has placed its army, Scud missiles and air force in a state of preparedness.
July 23, 2006, 3:32 PM (GMT+02:00)
America is carrying fresh stock of bombs, missiles and spare parts for Israeli Air Force aircraft and helicopters. Giant Galaxy C141 transports have been landing, unloading and taking off at short intervals.
DEBKAfile adds: The American airlift to Israel follows the air corridor Iran opened to replenish Hizballah’s stocks on Wednesday, July 19, landing supplies at Syria’s Abu Ad Duhur military airfield north of Homs. The deliveries for Hizballah include large quantities of new missiles, including the long-range Zelzal and Fajr 3 and Fajr 5 missiles, Katyusha rockets, anti-tank and anti-air missiles sent out from the RG HQ in Bandar Abbas on the Persian Gulf. Some of these missiles can reach Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
Thursday, July 21, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards commander Brig.-Gen Yahya Rahim Safavi (picture) assumed command of the Lebanon war from Hizballah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah. RG forward command posts are operating out of Iranian embassies in Beirut and Damascus. Syria has placed its army, Scud missiles and air force in a state of preparedness.
QUOTE(Stephen @ Jul 23 2006, 09:49 PM)
DEBKAfile Exclusive: In response to Iranian re-supplies to Hizballah, a US arms airlift began running to Israel Saturday, July 22
July 23, 2006, 3:32 PM (GMT+02:00)
America is carrying fresh stock of bombs, missiles and spare parts for Israeli Air Force aircraft and helicopters. Giant Galaxy C141 transports have been landing, unloading and taking off at short intervals.
DEBKAfile adds: The American airlift to Israel follows the air corridor Iran opened to replenish Hizballah’s stocks on Wednesday, July 19, landing supplies at Syria’s Abu Ad Duhur military airfield north of Homs. The deliveries for Hizballah include large quantities of new missiles, including the long-range Zelzal and Fajr 3 and Fajr 5 missiles, Katyusha rockets, anti-tank and anti-air missiles sent out from the RG HQ in Bandar Abbas on the Persian Gulf. Some of these missiles can reach Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
Thursday, July 21, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards commander Brig.-Gen Yahya Rahim Safavi (picture) assumed command of the Lebanon war from Hizballah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah. RG forward command posts are operating out of Iranian embassies in Beirut and Damascus. Syria has placed its army, Scud
missiles and air force in a state of preparedness
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Philippines: Saved By JesusJuly 23, 2006, 3:32 PM (GMT+02:00)
America is carrying fresh stock of bombs, missiles and spare parts for Israeli Air Force aircraft and helicopters. Giant Galaxy C141 transports have been landing, unloading and taking off at short intervals.
DEBKAfile adds: The American airlift to Israel follows the air corridor Iran opened to replenish Hizballah’s stocks on Wednesday, July 19, landing supplies at Syria’s Abu Ad Duhur military airfield north of Homs. The deliveries for Hizballah include large quantities of new missiles, including the long-range Zelzal and Fajr 3 and Fajr 5 missiles, Katyusha rockets, anti-tank and anti-air missiles sent out from the RG HQ in Bandar Abbas on the Persian Gulf. Some of these missiles can reach Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
Thursday, July 21, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards commander Brig.-Gen Yahya Rahim Safavi (picture) assumed command of the Lebanon war from Hizballah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah. RG forward command posts are operating out of Iranian embassies in Beirut and Damascus. Syria has placed its army, Scud
missiles and air force in a state of preparedness
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Updated:2006-07-23 09:00:00 MYT
MANILA: A 10 year old boy from Luzon in the Philippines miraculously came back to life 17 hours after being declared dead. He told his family that Jesus woke him up.
The Manila Times reported on Thursday (the 20th) that the boy, named Kadi, was pronounced dead at the Philippines General Hospital on the 21st of June. His family brought his "remains" back to his hometown, which was 300 km away. The very next day, Kadi came back to life during the vigil and asked for food and water.
Kadi described how he had fallen into a terrible darkness after he had lost consciousness. However, not long after that, he saw a beautiful church with angels singing inside. A man with golden hair and a beard appeared suddenly and asked him to wake up, and when he opened his eyes and saw his family, he could also see the same man above them slowly fading away.
The report said that after the miracle happened, Kadi was brought to a church for spiritual guidance and that was where Kadi related his experience. The clergy there and other church members believe the man Kadi saw was Jesus. (Sin Chew Daily)
Sinchew-i 2006/07/23
.................................................................benny
QUOTE(Stephen @ Jul 23 2006, 09:49 PM)
DEBKAfile Exclusive: In response to Iranian re-supplies to Hizballah, a US arms airlift began running to Israel Saturday, July 22
July 23, 2006, 3:32 PM (GMT+02:00)
America is carrying fresh stock of bombs, missiles and spare parts for Israeli Air Force aircraft and helicopters. Giant Galaxy C141 transports have been landing, unloading and taking off at short intervals.
DEBKAfile adds: The American airlift to Israel follows the air corridor Iran opened to replenish Hizballah’s stocks on Wednesday, July 19, landing supplies at Syria’s Abu Ad Duhur military airfield north of Homs. The deliveries for Hizballah include large quantities of new missiles, including the long-range Zelzal and Fajr 3 and Fajr 5 missiles, Katyusha rockets, anti-tank and anti-air missiles sent out from the RG HQ in Bandar Abbas on the Persian Gulf. Some of these missiles can reach Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
Thursday, July 21, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards commander Brig.-Gen Yahya Rahim Safavi (picture) assumed command of the Lebanon war from Hizballah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah. RG forward command posts are operating out of Iranian embassies in Beirut and Damascus. Syria has placed its army, Scud missiles and air force in a state of preparedness.
[right][snapback]74685[/snapback][/right]
July 23, 2006, 3:32 PM (GMT+02:00)
America is carrying fresh stock of bombs, missiles and spare parts for Israeli Air Force aircraft and helicopters. Giant Galaxy C141 transports have been landing, unloading and taking off at short intervals.
DEBKAfile adds: The American airlift to Israel follows the air corridor Iran opened to replenish Hizballah’s stocks on Wednesday, July 19, landing supplies at Syria’s Abu Ad Duhur military airfield north of Homs. The deliveries for Hizballah include large quantities of new missiles, including the long-range Zelzal and Fajr 3 and Fajr 5 missiles, Katyusha rockets, anti-tank and anti-air missiles sent out from the RG HQ in Bandar Abbas on the Persian Gulf. Some of these missiles can reach Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
Thursday, July 21, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards commander Brig.-Gen Yahya Rahim Safavi (picture) assumed command of the Lebanon war from Hizballah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah. RG forward command posts are operating out of Iranian embassies in Beirut and Damascus. Syria has placed its army, Scud missiles and air force in a state of preparedness.
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Thursday, July 21, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards commander Brig.-Gen Yahya Rahim Safavi (picture) assumed command of the Lebanon war from Hizballah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah. WHAT?
QUOTE(~veronique~ @ Jul 23 2006, 10:51 PM)
QUOTE(Stephen @ Jul 23 2006, 09:49 PM)
DEBKAfile Exclusive: In response to Iranian re-supplies to Hizballah, a US arms airlift began running to Israel Saturday, July 22
July 23, 2006, 3:32 PM (GMT+02:00)
America is carrying fresh stock of bombs, missiles and spare parts for Israeli Air Force aircraft and helicopters. Giant Galaxy C141 transports have been landing, unloading and taking off at short intervals.
DEBKAfile adds: The American airlift to Israel follows the air corridor Iran opened to replenish Hizballah’s stocks on Wednesday, July 19, landing supplies at Syria’s Abu Ad Duhur military airfield north of Homs. The deliveries for Hizballah include large quantities of new missiles, including the long-range Zelzal and Fajr 3 and Fajr 5 missiles, Katyusha rockets, anti-tank and anti-air missiles sent out from the RG HQ in Bandar Abbas on the Persian Gulf. Some of these missiles can reach Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
Thursday, July 21, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards commander Brig.-Gen Yahya Rahim Safavi (picture) assumed command of the Lebanon war from Hizballah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah. RG forward command posts are operating out of Iranian embassies in Beirut and Damascus. Syria has placed its army, Scud missiles and air force in a state of preparedness.
[right][snapback]74685[/snapback][/right]
July 23, 2006, 3:32 PM (GMT+02:00)
America is carrying fresh stock of bombs, missiles and spare parts for Israeli Air Force aircraft and helicopters. Giant Galaxy C141 transports have been landing, unloading and taking off at short intervals.
DEBKAfile adds: The American airlift to Israel follows the air corridor Iran opened to replenish Hizballah’s stocks on Wednesday, July 19, landing supplies at Syria’s Abu Ad Duhur military airfield north of Homs. The deliveries for Hizballah include large quantities of new missiles, including the long-range Zelzal and Fajr 3 and Fajr 5 missiles, Katyusha rockets, anti-tank and anti-air missiles sent out from the RG HQ in Bandar Abbas on the Persian Gulf. Some of these missiles can reach Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
Thursday, July 21, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards commander Brig.-Gen Yahya Rahim Safavi (picture) assumed command of the Lebanon war from Hizballah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah. RG forward command posts are operating out of Iranian embassies in Beirut and Damascus. Syria has placed its army, Scud missiles and air force in a state of preparedness.
[right][snapback]74685[/snapback][/right]
Thursday, July 21, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards commander Brig.-Gen Yahya Rahim Safavi (picture) assumed command of the Lebanon war from Hizballah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah. WHAT?
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http://www.memritv.org/Transcript.asp?P1=929
From MemriTV
10/28/2005 Clip No. 929
General Commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, General Yahya Rahim-Safavi: The Islamic People Will Throw the Zionists into the Sea
Following are excerpts from an interview with General Yahya Rahim-Safavi, general commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, aired by Jaam-e Jam3 TV on October 28, 2005.
General Yahya Rahim-Safavi: The Americans and Israelis should know that the future belongs to Islam. The future depends on the liberation of Palestine and the occupied territories of Afghanistan and Iraq. The Muslim Peoples in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Palestine will eventually cut off the legs of the American, Zionist, and English occupiers from the Islamic lands. The Iraqi people will achieve freedom, and so will the Afghan people.
As for the Zionists... After 57 years of terrorism, of bloodthirstiness, and of committing crimes... Many oppressed women and children in Palestine get martyred every day. The Islamic peoples' hand of wrath will burst forth from its sleeve one of these days, and cast the Zionist criminals into the sea.
QUOTE(~veronique~ @ Jul 23 2006, 10:59 PM)
QUOTE(~veronique~ @ Jul 23 2006, 10:51 PM)
QUOTE(Stephen @ Jul 23 2006, 09:49 PM)
DEBKAfile Exclusive: In response to Iranian re-supplies to Hizballah, a US arms airlift began running to Israel Saturday, July 22
July 23, 2006, 3:32 PM (GMT+02:00)
America is carrying fresh stock of bombs, missiles and spare parts for Israeli Air Force aircraft and helicopters. Giant Galaxy C141 transports have been landing, unloading and taking off at short intervals.
DEBKAfile adds: The American airlift to Israel follows the air corridor Iran opened to replenish Hizballah’s stocks on Wednesday, July 19, landing supplies at Syria’s Abu Ad Duhur military airfield north of Homs. The deliveries for Hizballah include large quantities of new missiles, including the long-range Zelzal and Fajr 3 and Fajr 5 missiles, Katyusha rockets, anti-tank and anti-air missiles sent out from the RG HQ in Bandar Abbas on the Persian Gulf. Some of these missiles can reach Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
Thursday, July 21, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards commander Brig.-Gen Yahya Rahim Safavi (picture) assumed command of the Lebanon war from Hizballah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah. RG forward command posts are operating out of Iranian embassies in Beirut and Damascus. Syria has placed its army, Scud missiles and air force in a state of preparedness.
[right][snapback]74685[/snapback][/right]
July 23, 2006, 3:32 PM (GMT+02:00)
America is carrying fresh stock of bombs, missiles and spare parts for Israeli Air Force aircraft and helicopters. Giant Galaxy C141 transports have been landing, unloading and taking off at short intervals.
DEBKAfile adds: The American airlift to Israel follows the air corridor Iran opened to replenish Hizballah’s stocks on Wednesday, July 19, landing supplies at Syria’s Abu Ad Duhur military airfield north of Homs. The deliveries for Hizballah include large quantities of new missiles, including the long-range Zelzal and Fajr 3 and Fajr 5 missiles, Katyusha rockets, anti-tank and anti-air missiles sent out from the RG HQ in Bandar Abbas on the Persian Gulf. Some of these missiles can reach Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
Thursday, July 21, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards commander Brig.-Gen Yahya Rahim Safavi (picture) assumed command of the Lebanon war from Hizballah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah. RG forward command posts are operating out of Iranian embassies in Beirut and Damascus. Syria has placed its army, Scud missiles and air force in a state of preparedness.
[right][snapback]74685[/snapback][/right]
Thursday, July 21, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards commander Brig.-Gen Yahya Rahim Safavi (picture) assumed command of the Lebanon war from Hizballah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah. WHAT?
[right][snapback]74692[/snapback][/right]
http://www.memritv.org/Transcript.asp?P1=929
From MemriTV
10/28/2005 Clip No. 929
General Commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, General Yahya Rahim-Safavi: The Islamic People Will Throw the Zionists into the Sea
Following are excerpts from an interview with General Yahya Rahim-Safavi, general commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, aired by Jaam-e Jam3 TV on October 28, 2005.
General Yahya Rahim-Safavi: The Americans and Israelis should know that the future belongs to Islam. The future depends on the liberation of Palestine and the occupied territories of Afghanistan and Iraq. The Muslim Peoples in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Palestine will eventually cut off the legs of the American, Zionist, and English occupiers from the Islamic lands. The Iraqi people will achieve freedom, and so will the Afghan people.
As for the Zionists... After 57 years of terrorism, of bloodthirstiness, and of committing crimes... Many oppressed women and children in Palestine get martyred every day. The Islamic peoples' hand of wrath will burst forth from its sleeve one of these days, and cast the Zionist criminals into the sea.
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Urgent Intelligence Update
UNCOVERED: RUSSIAN-SYRIAN-IRANIAN AXIS
For students of Bible prophecy, even the title of this communiqué should set off alarm sirens. I just received some electrifying intelligence data. First, from the Debka-Net-Weekly’s briefing. And second, from some personal intelligence sources (I carefully guard) that confirm Debka’s report.
Russia, Iran and Syria have entered a defense pact that is in the process of altered the balance of power in the entire Middle East. Russia’s part in the pact has been kept relatively secret for a long time. But the facts reveal a long steady Russian commitment to the Iranian nuclear program and arms supply to Syria.
A Mossad General shared with me in confidence that he had personally traced the hiring and importation to Iran 283 of the defunct Soviet Union’s top nuclear and missile scientists. This was in took place in February of 1991.
I shared this information with no one until nine months later when it was first made public (although strangely not followed up by the mainstream media). All Russian leaders continued and expanded this agreement to this day, especially our supposed friend, Vladimir Putin.
Russia has helped the Iranian nuclear program from its inception. Hundreds of Russian scientists with their families live around the some twenty scattered nuclear related facilities. Russian ‘Spetznaz soldiers’ (special forces) guard all the key nuclear facilities.
Iran has had some help on missile development from the North Koreans. But even their missiles are based upon Russian designs. The unmistakable culprit in China, North Korea and Iran’s nuclear development has been the Soviet Union and continued by Russia.
The Soviet Union’s motivation for helping China and North Korea was primarily ideological. Russia’s primary reason is hard cash, although now, it is taking on a strategic importance as well.
So here are the disturbing hard facts about what is taking place in what can only be viewed as a dangerous anti-western strategy in the form of a Russian-Syrian-Iranian Axis.
The first part of this strategy was, as I said above, Russia enabling Iran to produce deliverable nuclear warheads.
The second part was the forming of the recent mutual defense pact between Iran and Syria. The foreign ministers of Iran and Syria, Mostafa Najjar and Hassan Turkmani, signed the pact in Tehran on June 15th, 2006.
Debka’s intelligence sources unveiled a disturbing clause in the agreement that was reported to President Bush by US Intelligence. This report disclosed:
“The clause speaks of more than one battery of upgraded SHEHAB-3 surface-to-surface missiles to be deployed on the 13,000-foot Jabal Ash Shanin ridges towering over central Syria.
“The latest Syrian-Iranian exchanges are reported by DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s intelligence sources as auguring the early dispatch from Tehran of a deputation of officers to take up position at al Qadnus, east of the Syrian port of Tartus, and along the road linking the port to Jabal Ash Shanin.
“This team will act as the vanguard of the Iranian missile force to operate the missiles station, will check out the ground and fix its precise location.
“Senior intelligence officials warned the US President that this deployment would not just throw the entire Middle East balance of strength out of kilter, but directly menace American bases as far as West and East Europe and the Central Asian republics, including those located on the shores of the oil-rich Caspian Sea.”
This puts virtually all of Europe within range of the soon-coming nuclear tipped Iranian missiles — and at the whim of Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Remember him? He is the one who believes Allah has chosen him to fulfill an “end time” Muslim prophecy by starting a world apocalypse in which the long-awaited ‘Mahdi’ (Muslim Messiah) will appear and subject all survivors to Allah.
As if this isn’t bad enough news, there is something even more alarming developing within this new axis of evil.
Russia is now making moves to protect Syria and its Shehab-3 missile base. This is what DEBKA-News-Weekly reported:
“Our sources have observed the Russians dredging the port of TARTUS, Syria’s second most important Mediterranean port, with a view to expanding their logistical supply point there to a fully-equipped naval base, possibly to serve the Black Sea Fleet warships when they are redeployed from the Ukrainian port of Sevastopol. It is designed to be built up into the permanent base for the fleet led by the RFS Moskva (TG Flag) missile cruiser and the RFS Azov landing ship within the next three years.
“February 27, 2006, DEBKAfile’s exclusive sources found the MOSKVA and AZOV heading into the Mediterranean on Feb. 5, escorted by a Russian military tug, to take part in the a NATO marine exercise Operation Active Endeavor, which was to practice counter-measures against nuclear and other WMD smugglers. NATO chiefs, and American generals in particular, attached great importance to Russia’s participation in the exercise. NATO secretary Jaap de Hoop Scheffer had intended to make the gesture of being the North Atlantic Organization chief to visit a Russian flagship.
“The visit was cancelled when it was discovered that the three Russian fleet vessels would be paying an official call at the Syrian port of Latakia.
“The arrival of the Russian task force in TARTUS in March marked the opening of the Russian base. Our military experts note that the Missile Cruiser MOSKVA is armed with the weapons, radar and electronic gear of an [aircraft] carrier hunter.
“The American intelligence briefing for the US President further disclosed that sophisticated Russian air defense systems are to be installed for the dual purpose of protecting the TARTUS NAVAL BASE and the SHEHAB-3 missile emplacements. DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s military sources identify the system as the S-300PMU-2. It will be operated by Russian military crews and not put in Syrian hands.
“This air defense system is comparable to the American Patriot, but is more effective.
“The version to be deployed in Syria is geared to intercept ballistic missiles. It has the great advantage of being ready to fire five minutes after receiving orders …”
This explains why Iran has blatantly defied the world and continued developing nuclear warheads, which are closer to becoming operational than we dare believe.
Second, it explains the reason why the Iranian and Syrian defense ministers signed a mutual defense pact last June 15th.
Third, it gives the reason for Hezbollah launching a war with Israel when they did. It was to divert the G-8 leaders from seriously debating action about the Iranian nuclear threat. And Vladimir Putin played a masterful game of concealing what his forces are doing.
Fourth, it explains why Syria and Iran are unafraid to openly support Hezbollah in their war with Israel and support terrorist who target US troops in Iraq. Russia is in the background guaranteeing their protection.
Debka reports that they found data indicating that Russia helped persuade Syrian President Bashir Assad to accept the placement of Iranian missiles on their soil by hinting that “it is part of their own deepening strategic plans Syria.
What is most important is that all this is setting up Ezekiel’s 2600-year-old prophecy in Ezekiel chapter 38. Persia, or modern Iran, is listed a chief among the Muslim nations Russia will lead into an all-out assault against Israel. This is predicted to be the first battle of the war of Armageddon.
The one nation that does not seem to be listed is Syria. I believe this is because as a result of actions it is now taking against Israel, Isaiah’s prophecy about Damascus in the last days is going to be soon fulfilled.
Seven hundred and fifty years ago, Isaiah warned, “An oracle concerning Damascus: "See, Damascus will no longer be a city but will become a heap of ruins … In that day the glory of Jacob will fade; the fat of his body will waste away.” (Isaiah 17:1, 4 NIV)
To establish the time of this event, look at these factors. First, Damascus is one of the oldest continuously populated cities on earth. It has never been totally destroyed – yet. Second, it is in a context of events that lead up to the catastrophes that precede the Lord Jesus’ Second Coming. Third, it is far enough away from that event that Jacob (Israel) is enduring terrible circumstances. Fourth, Syria and the tribal name of its forefathers are not mentioned in the Russian led Muslim Confederacy that launches Armageddon in the middle of the Tribulation.
All of this leads me to believe that Damascus will be destroyed before the Tribulation begins. I believe that Damascus is about to so threaten Israel’s existence by either launching or furnishing bio-chemical weapons or radioactive dirty bombs, that Israel will nuke them. Israel has sworn that it will implement the Samson-Option against any nation that attacks them with any form of weapons of mass destruction. That means a thermonuclear strike. This may soon happen to Syria.
This in turn will so terrify the world, that it will be ripe to embrace the antichrist when he is unveiled. And that could be very, very soon.
Thank God that you have received the gift of pardon that Jesus purchased by dying in your place under the judgment for your sins. You will be miraculously snatched up to heaven to meet Him before the antichrist is revealed.
But if you haven’t received this free gift of pardon and accepted Jesus into your life, now is the time. Don’t put it off. It is like playing Russian roulette with eternity. Pray right now and receive your forgiveness. Ask Jesus Christ to come into your life and make it what He wants it to be. He will give you new desires, new joy and purpose for living. Do it now.
If you haven’t.
...................................................................................benny
QUOTE(benny balerio @ Jul 23 2006, 06:23 PM)
QUOTE(Humble Bob @ Jul 23 2006, 07:00 PM)
...tick tock tick tock...
Battle Beneath the Planet of the Apes. © 1967 - 1999 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation.
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Syria says it will press for cease-fire
By ASSOCIATED PRESS
DAMASCUS, Syria
Syria, one of Hizbullah's main backers, said Sunday that it will press for a cease-fire and was willing to engage in direct talks with the United States to help end the fighting between Israel and the Islamic group in Lebanon.
But Syrian officials said Damascus would only cooperate within the framework of a broader Middle East peace initiative that would include a return of the Golan Heights, captured by Israel in 1967, and warned they will not stand by if the Israelis step up their offensive.
"Syria and Spain are working to achieve a cease-fire, a prisoners' swap and to start a peace process as one package," Syrian Information Minister Mohsen Bilal was quoted as saying by the Spanish daily newspaper ABC. "Syria is working on achieving real, comprehensive, fair peace based on the withdrawal from all the occupied territories, including the Golan."
........................................................................benny
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Wow..Spain is stepping in....I never hear anything from Spain in regards to conflicts...ya kinda almost forget they are there
Peace Agreement ?
These are the Scriptures in Ezekiel that can be used to support the idea that the covenant confirmed by the prince that shall come is a peace agreement with Israel. It is possible that some sort of temporary peace may be acheived between Israel and the nation's Middle Eastern enemies before Israel is invaded and occupied by the prince that shall come noted in Daniel 9:27.
Eze 38:8
After many days thou shalt be visited: in the latter years thou shalt come into the land [that is] brought back from the sword, [and is] gathered out of many people, against the mountains of Israel, which have been always waste: but it is brought forth out of the nations, and they shall dwell safely all of them.
Eze 38:10
Thus saith the Lord GOD; It shall also come to pass, [that] at the same time shall things come into thy mind, and thou shalt think an evil thought:
Eze 38:11
And thou shalt say, I will go up to the land of unwalled villages; I will go to them that are at rest, that dwell safely, all of them dwelling without walls, and having neither bars nor gates,
Dwelling at rest and in safety can mean established (in place) and under the Lord's protection in order to prevent expulsion prior to the invasion of Israel by the nation's enemies .... the prince and followers (the people of the prince).
Authorized Version (KJV) Translation Count — Total: 42
AV - safely 17, safety 9, carelessly 3, careless 2, safe 2, securely 2, assurance 1, boldly 1, care 1, confidence 1, hope 1, secure 1, surely 1; 42
Authorized Version (KJV) Translation Count — Total: 41
AV - rest 16, quiet 16, quietness 4, still 2, appeaseth 1, idleness 1,
settled 1; 41
Jer 32:37 Behold, I will gather them out 06908 of all countries 0776, whither I have driven 05080 them in mine anger 0639, and in my fury 02534, and in great 01419 wrath 07110; and I will bring them again 07725 unto this place 04725, and I will cause them to dwell 03427 safely 0983:
Dan 9:27
And he shall confirm the covenant with many for one week: and in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease, and for the overspreading of abominations he shall make [it] desolate, even until the consummation, and that determined shall be poured upon the desolate.
It is also possible that the covenant is not a peace agreement and I would suggest that this current war and further escalation and extension into a worldwide crisis may come without any formal pause created by the establishment of peace between Israel and Islam. In fact, it may be that the covenant has already been confirmed covertly by a leader and other fundamental Islamic insurgents operating in the Middle East as a shadow government in the region. It could be a plan for world domination based upon fundamental Islamic principles, namely that the Abrahamic promises granted to Israel actually belong to the adherants of Islam.
I am saying this in order to alert believers to be aware of this possibility and to not necessarily expect a break of any significance in the flow of current events. If the covenant has been confirmed then the 70th week could be in process and leading to the midpoint of the period. If true, this compresses the time frame for the events of the hour of trial that need to transpire before midweek. The significant one for believers is the Lord's "harpazo" calling them out before He allows these other judgment events to take place.
I have no first hand evidence that the covenant has been confirmed which will run its course for 7 years and include the 42 month rule of the prince that shall come beginning at the midpoint of the period. We will know more as things progress.
These are the Scriptures in Ezekiel that can be used to support the idea that the covenant confirmed by the prince that shall come is a peace agreement with Israel. It is possible that some sort of temporary peace may be acheived between Israel and the nation's Middle Eastern enemies before Israel is invaded and occupied by the prince that shall come noted in Daniel 9:27.
Eze 38:8
After many days thou shalt be visited: in the latter years thou shalt come into the land [that is] brought back from the sword, [and is] gathered out of many people, against the mountains of Israel, which have been always waste: but it is brought forth out of the nations, and they shall dwell safely all of them.
Eze 38:10
Thus saith the Lord GOD; It shall also come to pass, [that] at the same time shall things come into thy mind, and thou shalt think an evil thought:
Eze 38:11
And thou shalt say, I will go up to the land of unwalled villages; I will go to them that are at rest, that dwell safely, all of them dwelling without walls, and having neither bars nor gates,
Dwelling at rest and in safety can mean established (in place) and under the Lord's protection in order to prevent expulsion prior to the invasion of Israel by the nation's enemies .... the prince and followers (the people of the prince).
Authorized Version (KJV) Translation Count — Total: 42
AV - safely 17, safety 9, carelessly 3, careless 2, safe 2, securely 2, assurance 1, boldly 1, care 1, confidence 1, hope 1, secure 1, surely 1; 42
Authorized Version (KJV) Translation Count — Total: 41
AV - rest 16, quiet 16, quietness 4, still 2, appeaseth 1, idleness 1,
settled 1; 41
Jer 32:37 Behold, I will gather them out 06908 of all countries 0776, whither I have driven 05080 them in mine anger 0639, and in my fury 02534, and in great 01419 wrath 07110; and I will bring them again 07725 unto this place 04725, and I will cause them to dwell 03427 safely 0983:
Dan 9:27
And he shall confirm the covenant with many for one week: and in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease, and for the overspreading of abominations he shall make [it] desolate, even until the consummation, and that determined shall be poured upon the desolate.
It is also possible that the covenant is not a peace agreement and I would suggest that this current war and further escalation and extension into a worldwide crisis may come without any formal pause created by the establishment of peace between Israel and Islam. In fact, it may be that the covenant has already been confirmed covertly by a leader and other fundamental Islamic insurgents operating in the Middle East as a shadow government in the region. It could be a plan for world domination based upon fundamental Islamic principles, namely that the Abrahamic promises granted to Israel actually belong to the adherants of Islam.
I am saying this in order to alert believers to be aware of this possibility and to not necessarily expect a break of any significance in the flow of current events. If the covenant has been confirmed then the 70th week could be in process and leading to the midpoint of the period. If true, this compresses the time frame for the events of the hour of trial that need to transpire before midweek. The significant one for believers is the Lord's "harpazo" calling them out before He allows these other judgment events to take place.
I have no first hand evidence that the covenant has been confirmed which will run its course for 7 years and include the 42 month rule of the prince that shall come beginning at the midpoint of the period. We will know more as things progress.
QUOTE(Stephen @ Jul 24 2006, 01:40 AM)
"Jerusalem is never called Sodom and Egypt"
Jeremiah 23.14 "I have seen also in the prophets of Jerusalem an horrible thing: they commit adultery, and walk in lies: they strengthen also the hands of evildoers, that none doth return from his wickedness: they are all of them unto me as Sodom, and the inhabitants thereof as Gomorrah.The bondage of Jerusalem is related the Jewish legalisms of the law. This bondage is compared symbolically to the 400 year Israelite bondage in Egypt numerous times in Scripture.
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Jeremiah 23.14 "I have seen also in the prophets of Jerusalem an horrible thing: they commit adultery, and walk in lies: they strengthen also the hands of evildoers, that none doth return from his wickedness: they are all of them unto me as Sodom, and the inhabitants thereof as Gomorrah.The bondage of Jerusalem is related the Jewish legalisms of the law. This bondage is compared symbolically to the 400 year Israelite bondage in Egypt numerous times in Scripture.
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8And their dead bodies will lie in the street of the great city which mystically is called Sodom and Egypt, where also their Lord was crucified.
Jeremiah 23.14 "I have seen also in the prophets of Jerusalem an horrible thing: they commit adultery, and walk in lies: they strengthen also the hands of evildoers, that none doth return from his wickedness: they are all of them unto me as Sodom, and the inhabitants thereof as Gomorrah.
Here the PROPHETS are related to Sodom. We all know what Sodom and Gomorrah did, so the Prophets are in adultery …with each other spiritually.
In Rev 11 8And their dead bodies will lie in the street of the great city which mystically is called Sodom and Egypt, where also their Lord was crucified. (note that the Lord was crucified OUTSIDE the city, so this is not Jerusalem, but everywhere “outside Jerusalem……= world = Babylon=great city)
So here we see that the “great city” is not the one related in Jeremiah 23:14 (Sodom and Gomorrah) but this great city is : Sodom and EGYPT.
For those who have read the story where Israel left Egypt (a symbol of the world) will understand this.
Jerusalem is called “the holy city” and the world is called Babylon, or the “great city”
Sodom in this reference to Babylon , if you link Jeremiah 23:14, you will see some of the so called Church is part of the world (Egypt) here. The Sodomite (Christian prophets who whore after their own kind in their doctrine. They are not eunuchs, for eunuchs cannot sow their own “seed of the Word eunuchs are trusted by the KING )
love C
QUOTE(Miki @ Jul 24 2006, 07:41 AM)
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Destroying U.S. goal of Tehran
By Orde Kittrie
Arizona State University
Jul. 23, 2006 12:00 AM
The big winner thus far in the clash between Hezbollah and Israel is Iran. Through attacks by its proxy, Hezbollah, Iran is deftly succeeding in distracting the world from the rapidly progressing Iranian nuclear weapons program.
Iran's success brings it one step closer to one of its ultimate goals. That goal is America's destruction. As Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has starkly put it: "God willing, with the force of God behind it, we shall soon experience a world without the United States. . . . This goal is attainable, and surely can be achieved."
Why does Iran want to destroy the United States? advertisement
Because the United States is the foremost purveyor of Western culture. Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, wants to root out Western culture because it is contrary to Islam and in his view directs "everyone toward materialism while money, gluttony and carnal desires are made the greatest aspiration." As Khamenei put it in an interview in May 2004: "The source of all human torment and suffering is the 'liberal democracy' promoted by the West."
Iranian President Ahmadinejad claims he was divinely given the presidency for a single task: provoking a “clash of civilizations” wherein the Muslim world, led by Iran, defeats the “infidel” West, led by the United States, and thereby hastens the return of the “Hidden Imam,” a messiah-like figure. According to Hassan Abbassi, chief strategist for the Iranian Revolutionary Guards: “We have a strategy drawn up for the destruction of Anglo-Saxon civilization . . . There are 29 sensitive sites in the U.S. and in the West . . . We know how we are going to attack them . . . Anything that can be done to terrorize and create fright in the infidel camp is our privilege and honor. . . We have to uproot liberal democracy from the face of the world."
What is Iran's connection to Hezbollah?
Iran founded Hezbollah, arms it, trains it, and provides it with $20 million to $40 million per month. At Iran's direction, Hezbollah had, prior to Sept. 11, 2001, killed more Americans around the world than any other terrorist organization.
How is Iran using Hezbollah's recent attacks on Israel to advance Iran's nuclear weapons program?
This is a textbook example of how a terrorism-supporting state, Iran, like a master magician can use its left hand, Hezbollah, to distract the world from the more significant action it is undertaking with its right hand, the development of a nuclear arsenal capable of threatening the United States.
This has been a crucial month for Iran's work to acquire both components of such an arsenal: nuclear warheads and the missiles capable of carrying those warheads to the United States. On July 4, Iranian officials participated in North Korea's test launch of a missile which, when perfected, would be capable of hitting Alaska, Hawaii, California, and as far inland as Arizona. The United States, Europe, Japan and others began to discuss how to punish North Korea for this test and dissuade it from future such tests.
On July 11, Ali Larijani, Iran's national security adviser, met with Javier Solana, the European Union diplomat who represents Europe and the United States in negotiations to convince Iran to give up its nuclear weapons program. Solana had in early June presented a very generous offer to Iran of various incentives in exchange for Iran ceasing its nuclear weapons program. Solana wanted a response to the generous offer.
Larijani's response at the July 11 meeting made it clear that Iran is simply dragging out the negotiations to buy time to advance its nuclear weapons program. "The Iranians have given no indication at all that they are ready to engage seriously on the substance of our proposals," announced the French foreign minister on behalf of the United States, France, Britain, Russia, China, Germany and the European Union. "In this context," he declared, "we have no choice but to return to the United Nations Security Council" for a resolution ordering Iran to suspend its nuclear weapons program.
The world seemed to be turning against Iran, and Iran was in a bind. Larijani flew directly from his meeting with Solana to meetings in Damascus with Syrian President Bashar Assad and senior Hezbollah and Hamas leaders. The next day, Hezbollah fired dozens of Iranian and Syrian made missiles at Israel and dispatched its guerillas across the international border to kidnap Israelis. In the days since, Hezbollah has launched 1,000 more rockets at Israeli cities.
Iran's gambit succeeded. At the G-8 summit, the focus was on the televised fighting between Hezbollah and Israel rather than on Iran's quiet nuclear weapons program. Russia announced it would not agree to impose sanctions on Iran. The plan for a Security Council resolution ordering Iran to suspend that program is on hold. And the world has lost interest in seriously pressuring North Korea over the missile tests it conducted in partnership with Iran.
In this era of CNN and the Internet, it is easy to be distracted by news stories with vivid images. Yet every day, far from the news cameras, Iran is pushing forward with its nuclear weapons program, and continuing to work with North Korea to develop missiles capable of delivering those nuclear weapons to the United States.
If the West does not refocus and do whatever it takes to stop Iran's nuclear weapons program, Israel's current difficulties fending off Iranian-made conventional rockets could turn out to be a mere pale preview of U.S. difficulties fending off Iranian-made nuclear-armed missiles. And we will risk someday finding ourselves staring at bombed-out U.S. cities and wishing we had kept our eye on Iran's right hand and taken a stand while we still could.
Orde Kittrie is a professor of international law at Arizona State University. He served in the U.S. State Department for 11 years, including as senior attorney for nuclear affairs, and negotiated five nuclear non-proliferation agreements between the U.S. and Russia.
.................................................................................benny
QUOTE(benny balerio @ Jul 24 2006, 08:34 AM)
QUOTE(Miki @ Jul 24 2006, 07:41 AM)
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Destroying U.S. goal of Tehran
By Orde Kittrie
Arizona State University
Jul. 23, 2006 12:00 AM
The big winner thus far in the clash between Hezbollah and Israel is Iran. Through attacks by its proxy, Hezbollah, Iran is deftly succeeding in distracting the world from the rapidly progressing Iranian nuclear weapons program.
Iran's success brings it one step closer to one of its ultimate goals. That goal is America's destruction. As Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has starkly put it: "God willing, with the force of God behind it, we shall soon experience a world without the United States. . . . This goal is attainable, and surely can be achieved."
Why does Iran want to destroy the United States? advertisement
Because the United States is the foremost purveyor of Western culture. Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, wants to root out Western culture because it is contrary to Islam and in his view directs "everyone toward materialism while money, gluttony and carnal desires are made the greatest aspiration." As Khamenei put it in an interview in May 2004: "The source of all human torment and suffering is the 'liberal democracy' promoted by the West."
Iranian President Ahmadinejad claims he was divinely given the presidency for a single task: provoking a “clash of civilizations” wherein the Muslim world, led by Iran, defeats the “infidel” West, led by the United States, and thereby hastens the return of the “Hidden Imam,” a messiah-like figure. According to Hassan Abbassi, chief strategist for the Iranian Revolutionary Guards: “We have a strategy drawn up for the destruction of Anglo-Saxon civilization . . . There are 29 sensitive sites in the U.S. and in the West . . . We know how we are going to attack them . . . Anything that can be done to terrorize and create fright in the infidel camp is our privilege and honor. . . We have to uproot liberal democracy from the face of the world."
What is Iran's connection to Hezbollah?
Iran founded Hezbollah, arms it, trains it, and provides it with $20 million to $40 million per month. At Iran's direction, Hezbollah had, prior to Sept. 11, 2001, killed more Americans around the world than any other terrorist organization.
How is Iran using Hezbollah's recent attacks on Israel to advance Iran's nuclear weapons program?
This is a textbook example of how a terrorism-supporting state, Iran, like a master magician can use its left hand, Hezbollah, to distract the world from the more significant action it is undertaking with its right hand, the development of a nuclear arsenal capable of threatening the United States.
This has been a crucial month for Iran's work to acquire both components of such an arsenal: nuclear warheads and the missiles capable of carrying those warheads to the United States. On July 4, Iranian officials participated in North Korea's test launch of a missile which, when perfected, would be capable of hitting Alaska, Hawaii, California, and as far inland as Arizona. The United States, Europe, Japan and others began to discuss how to punish North Korea for this test and dissuade it from future such tests.
On July 11, Ali Larijani, Iran's national security adviser, met with Javier Solana, the European Union diplomat who represents Europe and the United States in negotiations to convince Iran to give up its nuclear weapons program. Solana had in early June presented a very generous offer to Iran of various incentives in exchange for Iran ceasing its nuclear weapons program. Solana wanted a response to the generous offer.
Larijani's response at the July 11 meeting made it clear that Iran is simply dragging out the negotiations to buy time to advance its nuclear weapons program. "The Iranians have given no indication at all that they are ready to engage seriously on the substance of our proposals," announced the French foreign minister on behalf of the United States, France, Britain, Russia, China, Germany and the European Union. "In this context," he declared, "we have no choice but to return to the United Nations Security Council" for a resolution ordering Iran to suspend its nuclear weapons program.
The world seemed to be turning against Iran, and Iran was in a bind. Larijani flew directly from his meeting with Solana to meetings in Damascus with Syrian President Bashar Assad and senior Hezbollah and Hamas leaders. The next day, Hezbollah fired dozens of Iranian and Syrian made missiles at Israel and dispatched its guerillas across the international border to kidnap Israelis. In the days since, Hezbollah has launched 1,000 more rockets at Israeli cities.
Iran's gambit succeeded. At the G-8 summit, the focus was on the televised fighting between Hezbollah and Israel rather than on Iran's quiet nuclear weapons program. Russia announced it would not agree to impose sanctions on Iran. The plan for a Security Council resolution ordering Iran to suspend that program is on hold. And the world has lost interest in seriously pressuring North Korea over the missile tests it conducted in partnership with Iran.
In this era of CNN and the Internet, it is easy to be distracted by news stories with vivid images. Yet every day, far from the news cameras, Iran is pushing forward with its nuclear weapons program, and continuing to work with North Korea to develop missiles capable of delivering those nuclear weapons to the United States.
If the West does not refocus and do whatever it takes to stop Iran's nuclear weapons program, Israel's current difficulties fending off Iranian-made conventional rockets could turn out to be a mere pale preview of U.S. difficulties fending off Iranian-made nuclear-armed missiles. And we will risk someday finding ourselves staring at bombed-out U.S. cities and wishing we had kept our eye on Iran's right hand and taken a stand while we still could.
Orde Kittrie is a professor of international law at Arizona State University. He served in the U.S. State Department for 11 years, including as senior attorney for nuclear affairs, and negotiated five nuclear non-proliferation agreements between the U.S. and Russia.
.................................................................................benny
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Hizbullah Iran envoy: "No place" safe for Israelis
By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Hizbullah's representative in Iran said Monday that his group planned to widen its attacks on Israel.
"We are going to make Israel not safe for Israelis. There will be no place they are safe," Hossein Safiadeen told a conference that included the Tehran-based representative of Hamas and ambassadors from Lebanon, Syria and the Palestinian Authority.
"You will see a new Middle East in the way of Hezbollah and Islam, not in the way of Rice and Israel," Safiadeen said.
.............................................................benny
Note: 
Having a wild time/fun helping friends in Michigan; but also tracting, street evangelism, setting churches on fire for Jesus! Oops...it's all about Jesus!
. . . . . .
Manipulated by the Press about Israel
Russellfapuk@aol.com
Jul 24 2006 06:52AM
Dear Readers,
I just wanted to take this opportunity to exhort the ministry and its leaders, that this war in Israel is not about the lack or warmongering nature, or the lack of negotiation. The first fact is that Hezbollah and Hamas are VOWING THE EXTINCTION OF ISRAEL. This makes us, the Church, opponents, for the simple fact that Israel is COUNTED IN THE ETERNAL PLAN OF GOD. Anyone who cares to dispute this with me, can to their exhaustion, I will give comprehensive scripture to prove this point. This means we must pray against the rising tendency of people who see children, blood on the streets of Beirut, we must see that this is manipulation of sentiment. This war has been brewing for 6 years. Israel pulled out of Lebanon, and look what happened! Rockets from Hezbollah, and they pulled out of Gaza last year. Look what happened, Gallit, captured, inumerous bombs, suicide bombings...
Self righteous nations who condemn war, do not understand what led up to this. I exhort the prayer leaders and intercessors to intensify their prayers, so that we see an unmasking of the true perpetrators of this war...i.e Syria and Iran.
Russell A.Durose {F.A.P International}
www.apostlesandprophets.net
http://fapinternational.org
http://groups.msn.com/apostlesandprophets
Paypal ref. fapeurope@msn.com
. . . . .
A separation from all that distracts. This is necessary in order to have purity in your life.
Many people are afraid of what coming on the earth. This was predicted in the Word of God regarding the end times.
They are not to be afraid as those who have no hope. They are distracted by the current events that they see and hear on the news.
Instead of putting their faith and trust in God, they have listened to others. It is time for God's people to turn to, or return to, Him fully.
Having a wild time/fun helping friends in Michigan; but also tracting, street evangelism, setting churches on fire for Jesus! Oops...it's all about Jesus!. . . . . .
Manipulated by the Press about Israel
Russellfapuk@aol.com
Jul 24 2006 06:52AM
Dear Readers,
I just wanted to take this opportunity to exhort the ministry and its leaders, that this war in Israel is not about the lack or warmongering nature, or the lack of negotiation. The first fact is that Hezbollah and Hamas are VOWING THE EXTINCTION OF ISRAEL. This makes us, the Church, opponents, for the simple fact that Israel is COUNTED IN THE ETERNAL PLAN OF GOD. Anyone who cares to dispute this with me, can to their exhaustion, I will give comprehensive scripture to prove this point. This means we must pray against the rising tendency of people who see children, blood on the streets of Beirut, we must see that this is manipulation of sentiment. This war has been brewing for 6 years. Israel pulled out of Lebanon, and look what happened! Rockets from Hezbollah, and they pulled out of Gaza last year. Look what happened, Gallit, captured, inumerous bombs, suicide bombings...
Self righteous nations who condemn war, do not understand what led up to this. I exhort the prayer leaders and intercessors to intensify their prayers, so that we see an unmasking of the true perpetrators of this war...i.e Syria and Iran.
Russell A.Durose {F.A.P International}
www.apostlesandprophets.net
http://fapinternational.org
http://groups.msn.com/apostlesandprophets
Paypal ref. fapeurope@msn.com
. . . . .
A separation from all that distracts. This is necessary in order to have purity in your life.
Many people are afraid of what coming on the earth. This was predicted in the Word of God regarding the end times.
They are not to be afraid as those who have no hope. They are distracted by the current events that they see and hear on the news.
Instead of putting their faith and trust in God, they have listened to others. It is time for God's people to turn to, or return to, Him fully.
QUOTE(chrio39 @ Jul 22 2006, 11:15 PM)
Welcome to the forum budster. Care to share what you found code-wise about Lebanon?
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[right][snapback]74454[/snapback][/right]
I did find these this morning:
Nasrallah and Hamas
The Enemy is Nasrallah, the wire.
Knowledge, renew, you shall know in 2006, the father-in-law was knocked down. - Suddenly, from them, for us; time of emergency!
I am totally destroying Jerusalem.
QUOTE(Budster @ Jul 24 2006, 01:25 PM)
QUOTE(chrio39 @ Jul 22 2006, 11:15 PM)
Welcome to the forum budster. Care to share what you found code-wise about Lebanon?
[right][snapback]74454[/snapback][/right]
[right][snapback]74454[/snapback][/right]
I did find these this morning:
Nasrallah and Hamas
The Enemy is Nasrallah, the wire.
Knowledge, renew, you shall know in 2006, the father-in-law was knocked down. - Suddenly, from them, for us; time of emergency!
I am totally destroying Jerusalem.
[right][snapback]74835[/snapback][/right]
Whether he knew it or not, I believe the current Middle East crisis may be the event that the EU's High Representative has been preparing for since taking Office back in November of 1999.
All along I thought Solana's peace/keeping peace/making forces would someday be deployed between the Palestinian territories and the Jewish State. I never thought they might end up being deployed in neighboring Lebanon. But, according to the latest news, it looks like that's what may happen Read about it here I Here.
As you may have heard, Israel was first rejecting the idea of international forces. Soon Israel changed their position and began asking for NATO to deploy forces. NATO's response was reluctant because NATO was already involved in the Balkans, Iraq, Africa and Afghanistan. If NATO were to deployed forces to the Middle East region, it would be at the expense of other equally urgent commitments.
In the meantime, French President Jacques Chirac sent a letter to EU President Matti Vanhanen requesting that the EU officially back Javier Solana's peace mission to the Middle East. And as we already noted, Solana is already positioning himself to comply.
As I though about these moves, it all started making sense. France has a long history with Lebanon. In fact, the former Lebanese Prime Minister who allegedly was assassinated by top Syrian officials was Chirac's personal friend. And, as you may know, France is an important member of Solana's 10-nation military alliance -- the Western European Union (WEU). So, when Chirac requested that Solana's peace mission be supported, Chirac was saying he was willing to send French forces into Lebanon provided they were part of a WEU deployment.
As I scanned the news I noticed an interesting article from Turkey. Many believe if anyone knows what's really going on in the region, it's Turkey. And, according to this Turkish writer, the Middle East is at the "threshold of a momentous change" Read about it here.
Friends, the current Middle East crisis may not only be what the EU's High Representative has been waiting for, it may also be what we students of Bible prophecy have been waiting for.
Stay tuned!
............................................................benny
QUOTE(benny balerio @ Jul 24 2006, 03:23 PM)
QUOTE(Budster @ Jul 24 2006, 01:25 PM)
QUOTE(chrio39 @ Jul 22 2006, 11:15 PM)
Welcome to the forum budster. Care to share what you found code-wise about Lebanon?
[right][snapback]74454[/snapback][/right]
[right][snapback]74454[/snapback][/right]
I did find these this morning:
Nasrallah and Hamas
The Enemy is Nasrallah, the wire.
Knowledge, renew, you shall know in 2006, the father-in-law was knocked down. - Suddenly, from them, for us; time of emergency!
I am totally destroying Jerusalem.
[right][snapback]74835[/snapback][/right]
Whether he knew it or not, I believe the current Middle East crisis may be the event that the EU's High Representative has been preparing for since taking Office back in November of 1999.
All along I thought Solana's peace/keeping peace/making forces would someday be deployed between the Palestinian territories and the Jewish State. I never thought they might end up being deployed in neighboring Lebanon. But, according to the latest news, it looks like that's what may happen Read about it here I Here.
As you may have heard, Israel was first rejecting the idea of international forces. Soon Israel changed their position and began asking for NATO to deploy forces. NATO's response was reluctant because NATO was already involved in the Balkans, Iraq, Africa and Afghanistan. If NATO were to deployed forces to the Middle East region, it would be at the expense of other equally urgent commitments.
In the meantime, French President Jacques Chirac sent a letter to EU President Matti Vanhanen requesting that the EU officially back Javier Solana's peace mission to the Middle East. And as we already noted, Solana is already positioning himself to comply.
As I though about these moves, it all started making sense. France has a long history with Lebanon. In fact, the former Lebanese Prime Minister who allegedly was assassinated by top Syrian officials was Chirac's personal friend. And, as you may know, France is an important member of Solana's 10-nation military alliance -- the Western European Union (WEU). So, when Chirac requested that Solana's peace mission be supported, Chirac was saying he was willing to send French forces into Lebanon provided they were part of a WEU deployment.
As I scanned the news I noticed an interesting article from Turkey. Many believe if anyone knows what's really going on in the region, it's Turkey. And, according to this Turkish writer, the Middle East is at the "threshold of a momentous change" Read about it here.
Friends, the current Middle East crisis may not only be what the EU's High Representative has been waiting for, it may also be what we students of Bible prophecy have been waiting for.
Stay tuned!
............................................................benny
[right][snapback]74858[/snapback][/right]
As her helicopter made its way from Cyprus for a surprise first-stop in the capital of Lebanon, images of the horrifying injuries inflicted on babies and small children in that country, reportedly by Israeli bombs, were being beamed around the world, further fanning the flames of fury at Israel.
Where there is fire there is usually smoke. Poisonous and pungent, clouds of it is already billowing up from the camps of public opinion being formed and shaped by the biased position held by the majority of foreign journalists operating in the region.
These reporters-come-policy-influencers appear to share a singular mind about where all this should be going. Despite the fact that the current hostilities between Israel and the Hizb’allah were triggered by an act of unprovoked belligerence on the part of the latter, Israel is to be painted as the bad boy (yet again).
As such it is Israel that will ultimately be expected to pay the big political price and “give something in exchange for” a ceasefire. Suggestions by these reporters include an Israeli willingness to return to talks with the Palestinian Arabs and, if Damascus is to get involved, perhaps an Israeli offer to resume negotiations on giving the Golan Heights to Syria.
(On this second item it was instructive to hear a guest interviewee on CNN, former US assistant Secretary of State Richard Murphy, trying to pull the Golan Heights into the picture at almost precisely the same time a Sky News anchor asking an Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman why Israel had not complied [sic] with United Nations resolutions and given the Heights “back” to Syria. The Evil One sometimes shows his hand.)
Millions of Jews and Christians desperately concerned for the safety and survival of Israel saw the eruption in the north as a final and vivid demonstration of proof that pulling out of land in the hope of receiving peace is a militarily and politically bankrupt approach to bringing peace to the Middle East.
It couldn’t be clearer, after all.
In 1993, following the signing of the Oslo Accords, Israel pulled out of chunks of the Gaza Strip, Samaria and Judea, leaving those areas in Arab hands, only to have terrorist violence in and from those areas head for levels unseen before.
In 2000 Israel offered to pull out of 98 percent of Gaza, Judea and Samaria, including half of Jerusalem, in response to which “Palestinian” terrorist violence went off the scale.
Also in 2000 Israel unilaterally pulled out of the security zone in southern Lebanon, retreating to its internationally recognized border with its northern neighbor. Israel thereby gave Lebanon and the international community the opportunity to oversee the stabilization of that country and its transition into a prosperous democracy. Instead, Lebanon and the world looked on impotently as Hizb’allah moved in, deploying 13,000 missiles in that vacated space and waiting for the opportunity to rain them down on Israel.
In 2005 Israel unilaterally and completely withdrew from Gaza, creating the opportunity for the Palestinian Arabs in the Strip together with their worldwide supporters to begin building a peaceful and prosperous Palestinian state. Instead those “Palestinians” started raining rockets down on Jewish population centers inside “Israel proper” and elected a new Palestinian Authority dedicated to the mass murder of Israel’s Jews and the destruction of their homeland.
It is a measure of the stubbornness and pride of man that what is glaringly obvious for any honest person to see is rejected simply because to agree to it is to acknowledge that you have been wrong all along.
Make no mistake, instead of slamming the brakes on the land-for-peace process, the Israel-Hizb’allah clash is getting set to jet-propel the Road Map back to center-stage.
US President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair have this in common with leaders in the rest of the western world, as Blair spelled out at a press conference in No. 10 Downing Street Monday:
“Long term there is only one solution to this [ongoing violence in the Middle East] and that is to sort out the underlying reasons why this has come about. … We need to find the conditions whereby we can get back into the ‘Road Map’” to a two-state solution, he insisted.
As world attention on the conflict is shaped and molded by journalists and diplomats, it is imperative that we cut through this smoke and mirrors and not allow them to render our thinking smoggy and confused.
What is happening here?
First and foremost: There is the ongoing, more than century-old spiritually-orchestrated effort aimed at preventing or reversing the restoration of Israel; ultimately destroying the Jewish state.
The purpose is simple: To prevent the biblically-foretold coming of Messiah to Jerusalem, capital of the Land of Israel.
In the outworking of that aim, a concerted and ongoing international effort persists to try and divide the Land of Israel between the Jewish people and the Palestinian Arabs.
The rationale? To bring an end to the Arab-Israeli conflict.
When it comes to implementing this plan, the world – simply put – is in two camps:
Those nations with a Judeo-Christian past want Israel to “take risks for peace” and acquiesce to this two state solution, relinquishing control over the most treasured and meaningful parts of the Jewish people’s ancient homeland so that a Muslim Arab state can be established on them.
Those nations with an Islamic makeup believe the Jews have no right to a homeland anywhere in the Middle East and see the negotiating process steered by the west as preparing the ground for the ultimate destruction of Israel.
Terrorism – suicide bombings and Kassam/Katyusha rocket attacks on Jewish population centers – helps nicely to move this process along. For the Arabs have the world on their side as far as wresting at least half of the land away from the Jews is concerned. They know that terrorism not only takes Jewish lives, “Allah be praised.” It actually serves to spur the West, including the United States, to increase the pressure on Israel to make these concessions for peace.
As we watch Israel kicking the business out of Hizb’allah, we want to cheer, even as our hearts are seared for the children and those adults who are genuinely innocent of supporting hatred and destruction against Israel.
The longer this war continues, the more Hizb’allah is degraded and the more chance Israelis living in the north of the country have of being able to live in quiet for at least a few months or years.
Lebanon too – a nation that historically has had a good and mutually profitable relationship with Israel – can only benefit from the smashing of Hizb’allah IF THEY HAVE THE COURAGE TO ADMIT that the terrorist organization only spells danger and destruction for their country. Sadly but unsurprisingly, those interviewed on television lash out at Israel and eulogize Hizb’allah. It will only be to their further detriment and pain.
People – the adults among them at least – have got to take responsibility for their choices. If Lebanese civilians support Hizb’allah (whether out of fear or out of genuine agreement with the terror group) then they cease to be innocent victims when Israel’s response to Hizb’allah’s actions touches them too.
Innocence is also not something the western nations can claim as they continue to corral Israel and push her towards the edge of the cliff. The profusion of evidence over decades that the route these nations want Israel to go threatens the lives of countless Jews and the very existence of their homeland, should sound an extremely serious warning.
They know what they are asking Israel to do, and God will not hold them guiltless for their actions.
...............................................................benny
excellent post, Benny ! 
Solana is looking more like the 'son of perdition'? If he takes on his emergency powers as High Representative 666, under resolution 666, look up!
Solana is looking more like the 'son of perdition'? If he takes on his emergency powers as High Representative 666, under resolution 666, look up!
QUOTE(flyingsquirrel @ Jul 24 2006, 03:52 PM)
excellent post, Benny !
Solana is looking more like the 'son of perdition'? If he takes on his emergency powers as High Representative 666, under resolution 666, look up!
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lol.......I am already looking up!............................................benny Solana is looking more like the 'son of perdition'? If he takes on his emergency powers as High Representative 666, under resolution 666, look up!
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QUOTE(benny balerio @ Jul 24 2006, 03:56 PM)
QUOTE(flyingsquirrel