Key Prophecies Boiling

By Terry James

Lest you think the end-times train of prophetic stage-setting has begun rolling too slowly across this current hour's strange geopolitical landscape, I offer several points to the contrary.

The first involves the dividing of God's land. That process targets Israel as the chief hold-up to progress toward peace. The "Roadmap to Peace" seems to have been placed on the back burner of Middle East diplomacy. But the truth is far different.

More troubling is the fact that the United States continues to be at the forefront of prodding along the process. And it is Israel, not the Jewish state's enemy antagonists of the region, who is receiving the brunt of the poking.

Israel must give up land won in the 1967 Six Day War: That is the demand of the American administration.

A top State Department official spelled out on Tuesday that the goal of the United States in its negotiations in the Middle East is to pressure Israel into expelling Jews from Judea and Samaria in order to 'end the occupation that began in 1967.'

William J. Burns, Under Secretary for Political Affairs, said in his address to the Middle East Institute Tuesday that he sees the U.S. mandate as one of 'determined leadership' and that America must be straightforward about its intentions. (Hana Levi, "State Department: U.S. Goal to Expel Jews in 'Occupied' Post-67 Lands," Israel National News, 11/11/09)

Burns said that U.S. goals clearly mandate that Israel and a new Palestinian state "live side by side in peace and security." The declaration even more clearly - from God's point of view - speaks to where this generation surely must stand on God's prophetic timeline. At the very least, the undersecretary has put forth some chillingly familiar propositions, when considering prophetic terminology.

Again we think on Joel's foretelling that has come ever more into view in recent times, due to America's and the international community's arm-twisting to make Israel give up more and more of the tiny parcel of land they secured through war - land that is a mere token of the vast land their God actually deeded to them.

I will also gather all nations, and will bring them down into the valley of Jehoshaphat, and will plead with them there for my people and for my heritage Israel, whom they have scattered among the nations, and parted my land. (Joel 3:2)

The second point of prophetic stage-setting on the front burner of our time, then, is the American undersecretary unwittingly using biblically prophetic jargon when issuing his imperious-sounding pronouncement of peace-making. Israel and the Palestinian state the powers-that-be intend to create, he said, must "live side by side in peace and security." This has an ominous ring to prophetically/spiritually-attuned ears:

"For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape" (1 Thessalonians 5:3).

The Lord of heaven declares that such a "peace and security" arrangement as proposed by those who want to impose humanistic hegemony over Israel will actually be the proverbial straw that breaks the camel's back:

Wherefore hear the word of the LORD, ye scornful men, that rule this people which is in Jerusalem. Because ye have said, We have made a covenant with death, and with hell are we at agreement; when the overflowing scourge shall pass through, it shall not come unto us: for we have made lies our refuge, and under falsehood have we hid ourselves... And your covenant with death shall be disannulled, and your agreement with hell shall not stand; when the overflowing scourge shall pass through, then ye shall be trodden down by it. (Isaiah 28:14-15, 18)

It will be, of course, the covenant of false peace instituted by the "prince that shall come," as outlined in Daniel 9: 26-27, that will set in motion the last seven years of human history. The Tribulation will culminate in the return of Christ at Armageddon (Revelation 19:11).

The third point of stage-setting in the news currently involves yet another demand upon God's chosen nation by one of Israel's chief enemies. This particular news item brings into focus the city that is directly prophesied by Isaiah to be totally destroyed at some point:

"The burden of Damascus. Behold, Damascus is taken away from being a city, and it shall be a ruinous heap" (Isaiah 17:1).

Syrian President Bashar Assad on Monday warned that if Israel does not negotiate away the Golan Heights, his nation may turn to more violent methods of reclaiming the territory it once controlled.

Speaking at an Islamic economic summit in Istanbul, Assad claimed to still want to reach a peace agreement with Israel, but said that if such an agreement is not based on Israels full surrender of the Golan, then 'resistance' is an option he is seriously considering.

It was not the first time Assad has threatened war should Israel not meet his precondition for peace talks by guaranteeing a full Israeli pullout from the Golan. ("Israel Today," Headline News, 11/10/09).

Damascus, the longest-inhabited city in the world, according to many historians, is biblically prophesied to be completely destroyed. This is most interesting because, as I've written many times before, Damascus is headquarters to every major Mideast terrorist organization. Each of those hate-filled terrorist enclaves are vowed to erase Israel from the region - and from the world, for that matter. The anger stems from satanic rage that goes back more than three millennia.

But it is that city currently under the domination of Syrian dictator Bashar Assad that God says will be forever eliminated, while Jerusalem and Israel will remain forever.

The fires of things to come are blazing. God's prophetic clock continues to tick - make no mistake.

Related Links