Sept 17
Israel and Syria 's Next War
Arab nations have long been making sensational claims about Israel attacking them. Syria made such a claim a little over a week ago, and it was eventually confirmed by western intelligence sources that this time Israel did indeed conduct a raid on a Syrian target.
The mission has been the focus of intense speculation. The latest reports now claim the foray into Syrian airspace was an Israeli air strike directly linked to a North Korean shipment of suspected nuclear material that was delivered to Syria three days before the attack.
Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister Faysal Mekdad told a Lebanese newspaper said that he had a meeting with his Russian
counterpart, that growing tension could spark a violent outbreak in the region, and that Syria has the "means to respond in
ways that will preserve its position of power."
In an interview with Newsweek , Syria 's ambassador to Washington , Imad Moustapha, said that Israel would "pay a price" for
violating Syria 's airspace. He said it went against Syria 's national interests not to respond to Israel 's provocation.
He also denied reports in the U.S. media that the IAF had been targeting a nuclear project that Syria was developing in
cooperation with North Korea .
Israel's bold strike on Syria 's nuclear material is solid evidence that an attack on the Iranian nuclear program is just a matter of time. Analysts had speculated that Iran will try to generate trouble in Israel's immediate neighborhood to block such an attack.
The last time Israel and Syria were at war with each other was in 1973 during the Yom Kippur War. The Syrian and Egyptian armies caught Israel completely off-guard, and the Jewish state came very close to losing that war.
Back in 1973, the Jewish state had some nuclear capabilities, but it did not have the type of rapid response that could be quickly deployed at a moment's notice. Many intelligence sources say Israel had made preparations to use Jericho missiles and the nuclear strike F-4s for action against targets that included Damascus .
The next conflict between Israel and Syria will be nothing like any previous war. Both nations have weapons of mass destruction that only require the press of a finger to send them firing at each other's population centers. Israel has around 300 nuclear weapons, and Syria has stockpiles of chemical weapons.
One of the most dangerous factors at work in the Middle East is the idea that a conflict can be contained. Israel launched its attack against Syria with the belief that Damascus would do nothing. Syria has been giving arms to Hezbollah with the belief that any conflict would remain confined between Hezbollah fighters and Israel .
History indicates that this type of thinking always ends in disaster as events eventually spiral out of control. I'm reminded of the Chernobyl power plant accident. The scientists were tinkering around with the reactor. They turned off the cool water to the reactor to bring the power up. Once the fatal error was made, it only took a fraction of a second for the water in the reactor to flash to steam and blow off the top of the building with the force of a ton of TNT.
At some point, Israel and Syria are going to reach their uncontrolled flashpoints. The involvement of key prophecy players like Russia and Iran in this potential conflict leads me to suspect that the progression of Bible prophecy is an equally unstoppable flashpoint.
One Week Later We Have Humberto
In my "Nearing Midnight" commentary last week, I talked about the strange frequency of record tropical events. Seven days later, I have one more to add to the list. Hurricane Humberto is being noted for its rapid development.
Humberto didn't exist until late Wednesday afternoon, and it wasn't even a tropical storm until almost midday, strengthening from a tropical depression with 35 mph winds to a hurricane with 85 mph winds in just 18 hours, senior hurricane specialist James Franklin said at the National Hurricane Center in Miami.
"To put this development in perspective, no tropical cyclone in the historical record has ever reached this intensity at a faster rate near landfall. It would be nice to know, someday, why this happened,'' Franklin said.
Some folks have asked me, "Aren't these records the result of our ability to better track storms?" The answer is no. “Hurricane Hunter” aircraft have been closely monitoring storms for more than 50 years. We’ve had the instruments for measuring them for more than a 100 years. No special tools are needed to record the damage caused by Katrina.
Bible prophecy is the only workable answer I can come up with.
-- Todd
Is the Lull Really a Lull?
Terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 on the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon being fresh on our minds, it is perhaps appropriate to reflect upon where this generation might stand while the prophesied apocalyptic storm approaches.
Todd and I often discuss these days the apparent lull in birth pang-like contractions the world seems to be in at this time. Other than the tsunami of December 2004, the catastrophic hurricanes that hit the Gulf Coast in 2005, and the Israeli/Hezbollah conflict across the territory of Lebanon a while back, major convulsions that might be harbingers of the tribulation have seemed minimally significant. But, upon closer examination, is the supposed lull really a lull?
Scripture verses like the following come to mind, when thinking on end-time activity prophesied, with regard to the “time of sorrows” spoken of by the Lord: “And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity; the sea and the waves
roaring” (Lk. 21:25).
Jesus said world conditions just before His return will be like a woman in travail with child. Geopolitical, geophysical and societal/cultural matters will be in a state of wave-like flare-ups. Yet there seems a dichotomy in His Mount of Olives discourse prophecies. Jesus’ words indicate that the time of His coming will be preceded by, at the same time, a worldwide perception that lulls earth’s inhabitants into a sense of things being as usual. Here is what He said in a couple of prophetic passages:
“Therefore be ye also ready: for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh” (Matt. 24:44).
“And as it was in the days of Noe, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man. They did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, and the flood came, and destroyed them all. Likewise also as it was in the days of Lot; they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded; But the same day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all. Even thus shall it be in the day when the Son of man is revealed” (Lk. 17:26-30).
Perhaps a bit earlier–in the late 20th century-- we were left to wonder why this dichotomy. Why Jesus foretold a time of tremendously increased troubles for the world –that come in birth pang-like fashion—and yet at the same time gave a picture of a day when no one will really see the birth pangs, except those who are truly watching for end-time things that are occurring. How can it be that these painful contractions are going on, while they are, for the most part, not noticed, just before Christ intervenes with catastrophic results?
The answer is, I think, that the contractions are so frequent now that the world has by and large become desensitized to what is happening. The quaking earth, the raging seas–both literally and figuratively (the seas of humanity), the signals of societal collapse, and all the rest assaulting our brains day and night through reports from the ever-present news media simply overload the senses. Thus there is at the same time the birth pang-like convulsions and the ho-hum attitude –even among God’s people—that things are the same as always. So, the perceived lull is really no lull at all. Just this past week:
* There was the 8.4 magnitude earthquake in Indonesia, followed by several of 7.0 or better, then by 5.0 or more.
* Vladimir Putin is apparently preparing to reveal to the world that he plans, despite the Russian constitution’s law requiring him to step down, not to step very far from the reins of power in Russia, the nation we believe will likely head the Gog-Magog war of Ezekiel 38 and 39.
* Israel struck into Syria, apparently, in order to preempt an unacceptable arms buildup, an action that brings the region a step closer to Armageddon.
Yet the world wags on, with America – in spite of rumors of serious economic and social ills that could disrupt not only the U.S., but the world’s economy, continuing to carry on business as usual.
We can definitely begin to understand the two conditions co-existing that seem in such diametric opposition one to the other. We begin to comprehend the paradox --both the great upheaval, and the sense of business as usual.
Obviously Jesus Christ, who is God, foresaw this incrementalism that will dull the perception of most alive on Planet Earth just before He intervenes catastrophically into the affairs of mankind in the end of days. He knew all about the lull that will in actuality not be a lull at all, but a situation not unlike the proverbial frog who does not realize it is being boiled alive because it can’t perceive its precarious, even lethal, circumstance.
That is why Jesus instructed those who are called by His holy name: “And what I say unto you I say unto all, Watch.” (Mk. 13:37).
--Terry
