The BibleSearchers Reflections

February, 2004                           Reflections on the Time of the End

By Robert Mock MD

robertmock@biblesearchers.com

www.BibleSearchers.com

Earth’s Engine at Work

Topics

Signs at the Time of the End – ‘Earthquake Engine in Core of Earth’

 

Global News on Time of the End Events

 

Purim, Amelekites and Justice of the Lord

 

      In the Footsteps of the Master - "Here am I! Send me!”

 

Signs at the Time of the End

“The Earthquake Engine in the Core of the Earth”

 

All through the Tanakh (Old Testament) we read the testimony of the Hebrews and how they lived through many catastrophic events that occurred during their lifetimes.  The world of the patriarchs and the prophets appeared to be a world in which we are totally unfamiliar with today.  Earthquakes appeared to be a recurrent cycle in the days from Noah’s Great Flood and the splitting of the Great Rift Valley at the Vale of Siddim  in the days of Abraham to the future prophetic days of the Moshiach (Messiah) as revealed by the prophets Amos, Obadiah and Hezekiah.    

 

What was recorded was earth changing events that occurred in the lives of the Hebrews and the future earth changing events that the prophets foretold in the era before the restoration of Israel.  Yet how did the Lord of hosts use His universal powers to intervene in the lives of His chosen people.  This is part of the theme of this present article.

 

We know according to the testimony of the prophets in the Tanakh and the B’rit Hadashah (New Testament) that earthquakes, fiery bolides, hail stones and fiery eruptions were and will be a part of these earth-shaking events.  Yet what is the engine in the center of this planet that is the driving force of earthquakes, volcanoes, crustal shifting and tectonic continental plate movements that evoked our spiritual forefathers to recognize these events as ‘Acts of God’.

 

According to Nature Magazine in April 30, 2001, scientist Alessandro Forte of the University of Western Ontario and Jerry Mitrovica of the University of Toronto found that the earth is fueled by a four piston heat engine with two large sinking cold slabs and two equally large rising hot flumes.  These heat engines are the responsible agents for the generation of earthquakes, volcanoes, continental tectonic plate movements and even climate changes. 

This thesis was also affirmed by Professor Sue O’Reilly of the University of Macquarie who suggests that that earth is overlain by a brittle yet cool crust, but underneath is a thick mantel of about 1000 miles thick that continuously mixes with the heat from the molten core of the earth. These viscous blobs of primitive earth material that rise and fall between the mantle and the core, continuously mix and churn under the mantel of the earth. They form the dynamic energy of earthquakes and volcanoes.

 

When we start seeing strange phenomenon occurring in the natural world that includes unusual migrations of birds, mammals and sea animals, then people have to think beyond the conventional scientific thinking and be willing to ask questions.  In July 27, 2002, national attention was received when 12 tons of dead and dying jumbo flying squid were washed ashore at La Jolla Cove.  According to Eric Hochberg, scientist at the Santa Barbara Natural History Museum, “It may have been the largest local mass stranding in nearly 100 years.”  It was reported that the squid made strange noises like a dolphin or a seal as they were dying. One observer states, “The thing that weirds me out about the squid is that they have humanlike eyes.” 

 

Known as Dosidicus gigas, the Jumbo Flying Squid live along the middle to northern eastern Pacific Ocean, yet they are now showing up from Orange County down to Baja.  This phenomenon is believed by scientists to be related to the unusual heating in different areas of the Pacific Ocean by El Nino.

 

More and more scientific study is being done at the core of the earth. This molten core is believed to have an inner iron core about the size of the moon, whose temperatures are more akin to the heat of the sun. Surrounding it is an outer fluid iron core.  If you have ever watched a lava lamp, then you can understand the dynamic inferno in the center of this earth with the magma convection currents rising and sinking to the surface and then back as they cool and then reheat.  The outer core of the earth with its smaller diameter spinning faster causes the rising and falling magma to twist and spiral-like a DNA helical spiral. Understand that this magma surrounds an iron core that is spinning and as such acts like the copper windings around an electric generator.  Massive electric currents, called electromagnetic induction, flow between these positive and negative poles and become the hidden source for the magnetic field that surrounds our earth and continuously regenerates that field. 

 

 A 3-D magnetic field surrounding the earth in the Glatzmaier-Roberts geodynamo model at the Pittsburg Superconducting Center and the Los Alamos Laboratories.

 

While these mega electrical forces are spinning and rotating in the center of our earth, massive solar storms and bursts of radiation race out from the sun at the speed of light, part of which slam against the magnetic shield around the earth  and the rest traveling across the solar system.  At the point in time when the magnetic field is at the maximum on the surface of the sun, it forms a complete polar reversal and the north and the south poles of the sun exchange places.  The high speed coronal mass ejections, called solar flares, spew out the sun ejecta and in route distort the sun’s magnetic field. 

 

As these solar flares travel towards the earth, they slam into the magnetic field of the earth, bending, distorting and reshaping the earth’s field.  When these massive solar flares pass through the earth it powers up the internal thermal dynamo and fuels further the energy currents that rise from the molten core to the surface of the earth.

 

Beneath the bottoms of the oceans, the once cold waters thousands of feet in the depths of the mighty trenches are warming up.  These warm areas, especially in the Pacific Ocean are believed to be causing the weather changes across the American continents known as El Nino and La Nina. Here is the reason believed to be why the flying squid living in the deep trenches of the Pacific Ocean are now coming up to the surface.  The deep trenches in some areas are becoming warmer than the surface of the ocean.

 

Image the earth as a moving planet in our solar system with an iron core and covered with water.  What you see is an ideal electrical conductor.  As the magnetic fields are moved and shifted by the external sun flares, it generates electricity in the center of the earth by electromagnetic induction.

 

How then is heat generated within the earth?  The cause of heat in the infernal core of the earth is compressed by gravity, internal friction, radioactive decay and electrical currents flowing through the earth from the sun.  The first three are stable and ongoing forces that are usually uniform in their conduct.  The most variable are the electrical currents coming from the sun which increases the electrical voltage through the earth. There are times when the sun undergoes increasing cycles of sunspots and for longer duration.  If the sunspots become more pronounced it will affect the inner planetary temperature core. 

 

Double Sunspot Cycle 23

 

As the temperature rises, the spiraling rise of the magma flows will become more intense. This turbulence underneath the tectonic plates of this earth causes earthquakes to form and create vents in the crust of the earth where volcanoes may eventually erupt.

 

The heat radiating under the seas and warming up the oceans is also causing the polar ice caps to melt and warm the continental land masses while the glaciers and ice fields continue to melt.  This phenomenon has been occurring well over a hundred years as attested by pictures of the receding glaciers at Glacier National Park in Alaska over the last century.  This form of global warming is totally directed by the Hand of the Lord.  What is importance is that the workings of man have no part in it.  These are the ‘Acts of God’.

 

Yet the power of man is not impotent.  We do a good job of forsaking the original ‘dominion’ that was given to Adam to preserve and to protect and instead rape and destroy the natural world around us for our own power, greed and control. 

A cry has gone throughout the world as the effects of global warming have predictably been affecting more and more of the world’s population. The waters in the Great Barrier Reed in Australia were the warmest on record in the summer of 2002.  Massive coral bleaching was reported by scientists of the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS).  This institute completed an atlas of sea temperatures of the Great Barrier Reef over the past decade and comparing it with historical data showed that 2002 was the warmest water temperatures off northeast Australia since 1870. 

 

Mass bleaching as reported by AIMS showed that on the world’s largest living organism, the barrier reef, with 133,300 square miles of coral, over 60% of the reef was affected.  “According to Craig Steinberg, AIMS oceanographer, “The outlook isn’t good. If coral can’t adapt then they’re going to bleach and you get mass mortality.  These sea creatures live with one to two degree of their maximum temperature threshold and a tiny increase in temperature will result in mass extinction of the entire barrier reef.

 

Over in American we witnessed the most massive forest fires in Colorado and the western states in the summer of 2002 seen in decades.  A year later, in the summer of 2003, we witnessed the highest temperature in England in 350 years in the summer of 2003 when the worse heat wave also in centuries hit France with an estimated 5,000 to 10,000 heat related deaths that caused the political job of more than one French governmental minister.  That fall, October, 2003, the most devastating cluster of fires hit the southern coastline of California

NASA Goddard Space Flight Photo of the Southern California Fires

 

The hottest summer of 2003 has been getting the attention of scientists.  Professor Philip Jones of the climate research unit in University of East Anglia in the UK and Professor Michael Mann of the University of Virginia in American published a recent study in the Geophysical Research Letters supporting the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change when they concluded that temperatures date for the last 1,000 years affirm that the 20^th century had the warmest climate on record. 

 

Going back to the records in nature, studying trunks of ancient trees, cores drilled in the icecaps of Greenland and Antarctica, and historical records in Netherlands, Switzerland and China, Jones and Mann concluded that the northern half of this planet earth is the warmest since the time of Christ, two thousand years ago.

 

Atmospheric gases trapped in polar ice has suggested that before the Industrial Revolution, the level of carbon dioxide was 280 parts per million.  Modern carbon dioxide readings were first taken in 1958 and in that year the carbon dioxide reading was 315 ppm.  By 2002, the level was over 370 ppm.  While the world temperature levels do not seem to rise totally parallel with the rise in carbon dioxide, it has become an increasing factor along with solar flares, oceanic cycles and volcanic eruptions.  The debate continues on how much the populations of the world are contributing to these temperature rises.  What scientists are not asking, are these changes the result of an Act of God?  If God is intervening, then is He trying also to say something to each of us?

 

Official temperature reading around the world began in 1880.  In order to extrapolate temperatures in the past, scientists have used evidence from tree rings and corals, oxygen bubbles in ice plus cores from soil and sediments below the earth’s surface.  The evidence generally accepted is that the temperature of the earth since the millennial celebration in 1000 CE the temperature on the planet has remained constant or possibly cooled a bit. That evidence has now been refuted.   In the past 150 years, it has heated up by 1 degree.  Why the change and why so fast?  Is this another preparation for the time of the end?  Is this another way of awaking the world’s populations to the future signs in the natural world that the Lord of hosts will be preparing to herald His coming? 

 

For BibleSearchers, global warming, caused in part by the rise in the burning of fossils fuels in the past century, is now rapidly spinning out of proportion to the destruction that humans are causing and can cause on this planet. Once again are we seeing the finger of the Lord working through the natural forces or the Laws of His Creation?

 

Increasingly we are beginning to understand how the internal dynamic relationship of the core of our earth is affected by the turbulence and upheavals on the sun.  The years 2000-2002 saw the apex of one of the most potent of the 11 year solar cycles recorded over the last 120 years.  This cycle also depicted a rare double peak. And then in the fall of 2003 near the bottom of the cycle, a massive third spike caused one of the largest solar flares ever recorded. As the solar flares raced from a resurgent sun and slammed into the magnetic field of this earth, it energized the central iron core causing the magma flows to race up to the surface of the earth where under the mantle of this planet the oceans and the continental land masses were warmed and the continental land masses became disturbed.   

 

Scientists are recording today increased volcanic activity on the floor of the oceans and increased volcanic activity in the middle of the earth between the 30^th parallels.  The areas of Yellowstone National Park in North America and on the continent of Africa especially along the Great Rift area are especially watched as the earth there is bulging on the surface of the earth from the volcanic pressure beneath. Over the last few years the once dormant or quiescent volcanic areas of Hawaii and Italy are showing more activity.  More scientific studies are affirming the increased activity of the plumes erupting in the center of the earth.

 

How does scientific evidence suggest that this increased activity within the core of the earth will potentially affect the surface of the earth?  The closest distance from the surface of the earth to the core of the earth is the huge trenches in the oceans of the world.  With the warming of those once frigid waters in vast oceans of the earth as volcanic forces radiate heat from the erupting plumes from the core, the intensity of the cycles of El Nino and La Nina will become more pronounced.  Projected volcanic upheavals will affect the tectonic plates within the earth and eventual instability of not only the crustal surface of the earth but also increase the instability in the earth’s rotation.  The era of uniformitarian natural laws governing the earth sciences may be about over and a new era of catastrophes may be about to erupt over the entire planetary globe.

 

If the Lord of hosts chooses to extend this present solar cycle and allow the sun to flare with greater intensity, then we will begin to see increased number of earthquakes and volcanic activity.  If not then the peak of the next solar cycle will occur in the year 2010.  Is it of interest that these dates precede the date of the final end of the ancient Mayan Calendar in 2012?  These are the natural forces that under the control of the Hand of the Lord, who broke up the continental plates, displaced the ocean floors and caused the mountain ranges to rise.  It is of any wonder that in that Great Day of the Lord, earthquakes and volcanoes will be witnessed over the whole earth as seismic and tectonic changes will begin to occur as Yeshua the Moshiach (Messiah) will return to claim His own. 

 

Global News on Time of the End Events

The Pathway to a One World Order

 

Pope Wants New International Order to Keep Peace – January 1, 2004

Vatican City (Reuters) -  The 83 year old Pope John Paul, leader of the world’s one billion Catholics, stated in his New Years Address in St. Peter’s Basilica; “The world needs a "new international order" to solve its conflicts and ensure peace,…More than ever we need a new international order which draws on the experience and results of the United Nations (news - web sites),  an order which is capable of finding adequate solutions to today's problems, based on the dignity of human beings, on integrating all society, on solidarity between rich and poor countries, on the sharing of resources and the extraordinary results of scientific and technological progress,"

 

Where does the Pope see the Hand of the Lord?  Has the new international order become his new god?

 

A World Peace for a World Religion

 

New Bishop in Jerusalem is Jewish -  January 23, 2004

Israel Today – For the first time in almost two thousand years, a native Jew has been ordained as a Christian bishop in Jerusalem.  In January, 2004, Benedictine Abbot Jean-Baptiste Gourion was ordained as the new bishop at the Catholic church in Kiryat Ye’arim, above the Israeli Arab village of Abu Ghosh near Jerusalem.   Here he will minister to the Hebrew speaking Catholic community in Israel, many who are Jews.  Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger, the archbishop of Paris who is also a Jew and potential successor of Pope John Paul, described Pope John Paul’s appointment of Bishop Gourion as one of prophetic courage. “After such a long time, Jerusalem finally has a Jewish bishop again!” he said. The bishop’s ordination was attended by the Pope’s personal envoy Cardinal Roger Etchegaray, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem Michel Sabbah and the Apostolic Nuncio Archbishop Pietro Sambi.

 

Born in 1934 to a Jewish family in Oran, Algeria, Jean-Baptiste Gourion was baptized in Paris in 1958 and joined the Benedictine monastery of Bec Hellouin in Normandy. Bishop Gourion is highly respected not only among the Moslems in Abu Ghosh, but also by many Israelis. 

 

Though he will primarily serve Israel’s Hebrew-speaking Catholics in what he called the Christian Israeli Church, Bishop Gourion is highly respected also by the Moslems in Abu Ghosh. As he states, “For me, Christianity and Judaism are the same. I didn’t have to leave Judaism to come to Christianity. The Jew and the Christian form the same body.”

The Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, his Palestinian superior, Michel Sabbah, well known for his anti-Israel stance, opposed Gourion’s appointment; nevertheless, Sabbah had to participate in his ordination. Immediately after the ceremony, Bishop Gourion told Sabbah: “My friend, Cardinal Lustiger and I are two Jewish Christians, and like all Jews in the world, we’re known for fundamental solidarity with Israel, even if we sometimes don’t like the behavior of the Israeli government.” 

 

Life runs in cycles and at the time of the end a restored people will be claimed by Jesus. The Hebrew Nazarene Ecclesia of Jerusalem ( Jerusalem Church) appears to set the model of the congregation of the remnant prior to the coming of the Messiah.  There are various group vying for the privilege of being the Lord’s restored ecclesia/church.  These religious organizations include Messianic Jews, Messianic Christians, plus groups working toward the return of the House of Joseph, the restoration of the Two Houses of Israel, the new Nazarene Ecclesias and more historical churches; the Seventh-day Adventists, the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Mormon Church.  There are many voices crying out that they are carrying the mantle of James the Just, the nasi or high priest of the Hebrew Nazarene Ecclesia of Jerusalem.  Will the remnant ecclesia/church be under the banner of an institutional church?  If so then the Roman Catholic Church is staking its claim, “For the first time since the Apostle James served as bishop of Jerusalem, the Holy City has a Jewish bishop!”  Will the ‘Holy See’ now accept its apostolic succession to James the Just instead of the Apostle Peter?

The Land of Israel

 

Thousands Visit Temple Mount in Five Months – February 1, 2004

Jerusalem (Temple Mount Org) – Over 10,000 Jews have ascended to the Temple Mount for the past five months since it was opened to non-Muslims.  Presently controlled by two opposing Islamic Waqfs, one appointed by Jordan and the other appointed by Yasser Arafat, there has been ongoing Muslim resistance to either Christian or Jewish people to visit the Temple Mount. 

 

There will be an ongoing struggle to control this piece of property in which a majority of the world believes is the site of Solomon’s and Herod’s Temples.

 

Second Temple ‘designed’ boulders found on the Temple Mount during Moslem construction - February 16 , 2004

Haaretz - Uniquely designed boulder remains were found on a Muslim trash heap on the Temple Mount and videoed by Jewish Army Rodio’s Yossi Milshtein, who was dressed as a Palestinian when he participated on an escorted tour in early February, 2004.  The ancient entryway to Solomon’s Stables on this tour also appeared to be on the verge of collapse. Nearby boulders which came from Solomon’s Stables had a unique design work of the Second Temple according to noted Hebrew University archeologist, Eilat Mazar.

 

Though the Temple Mount is theoretically under Israeli’s control, the Temple Mount was put under the supervision of the Muslim Wakf or the Islamic Trust.  It was only five months ago that the Dome of the Rock and the Al Aqsa mosque were opened for non Islamic tours, yet  Israeli archeologists from the Antiquities Authority have not been allowed to inspect or supervise extensive reconstruction by the Moslems on the mount including a large mosque within Solomon’s temple

Peace News in the Middle East

 

Hamas preparing to seize West Bank, Gaza – January 30, 2004

Worldnetdaily - As Hezbollah has taken over and now controls the Lebanese government, Hamas has its military forces already imbedded in the West Bank and Gaza Strip preparing to take over the Palestinian Authority and the ruling Fatah movement, according to intelligence report by Geostrategy-Direct. According to researcher Jonathan Halevi, Hamas’s Izzedin Kassam already has thousands of operatives including a standing military industry producing mortars, short-range missiles and anti-tank rockets. 

 

Recently gaining recognition by Egypt and other Arab states during a recent session in Cairo, Hamas has now insisted that the EU and the United States remove this Islamic movement from the terrorist organization to that its representative can travel freely around the world as the representative of the Palestinians.  As stated in the report, “Many regard the Palestinian Authority as nothing more than an employment bureau that has gradually lost its authority and legitimacy in the eyes of the Palestinian public.”  Extensively weakened, Arafat’s Fatah has minimal authority over armed militias who now rule in the various principalities such as Jenin, Nablus, Rafiah and some refugee camps in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

 

Touting its links with the Egyptian based Muslim Brotherhood, the improving stature of Hamas is now competing in providing social welfare programs long the bastion of the Palestinian Authority including dressing up like Santa and giving presents to children in Bethlehem on Christmas Eve 2003. 

 

BibleSearchers have been watching closely these events over the past three years.  Who is the king of Gaza in Zechariah 9:5?  Is Yasser Arafat this ‘king’ or is there a ‘king’ left to arise?

 

Critics want Israel to admit and abolish its nuclear program – January 27, 2004

Globalsecurity.org - What is called the world’s worst kept secret, Israel, believed to rank fifth in atomic weapons is estimated to have as many as 200 weapons dwarfing the arsenals of India, Pakistan and North Korea.  The public pressure of intense scrutiny in the international nuclear race is beginning to chip away at the only nation that has brought the Middle East to the brink of a nuclear war in 1973 when Golda Meir considered using nuclear forces while Syria was advancing from the north and Egypt from the south.  Yet at the same time, Israel maintains a policy of ‘deliberate ambiguity’, disarming their own neighbor Iran’s nuclear reactor.  Now many in the world community are beginning to pressure Israel to come clean even to the point of disbanding its nuclear program, a country that has never signed the 1970 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which commits its members to the peaceful use of nuclear energy.

 

"The Israelis were not the first country to get the atomic bomb, but they'll probably be the last ones to give it up," says John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a Washington, D.C., research organization.   There is no doubt that Israel’s nuclear program has been a deterrent factor, when the literal images of a nuclear Armageddon rise over the Middle East, propelled the United States to give Israel conventional weapons to prevent defeat.  At the same time, the nuclear arsenal in Israel is fueling an arms race for other Middle Eastern countries to have their own nuclear arsenal: Iran, Pakistan and now possibly Saudi Arabia. 

 

Yet it was not America that was Israel’s first nuclear partner.  It was France.  For an interesting account of the history of nuclear armament in Israel and read the Global Security report.

 

Saudi Peace Plan’s refugee solution opposed by Palestinian Legislative Council – January 26, 2004

Haaretz - A new Saudi Peace Plan was proposed in mid January by the Saudi’s royal house.  This was the first time any Arab state proposed that a peace solution that would include a partial repatriation of Palestinians back into existing Arabian states.  This repatriation would include 2 millions Palestinians that would be returned to a Palestinian state and over 2 million would be absorbed in other Arab states not to exceed 10% of their nation’s population.  This would also include compensation for their suffering.

 

This Arab peace agreement led by Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah will be presented to the summit of Arab League members in Tunisia in March.  It would not be an agreement between the Israel and the Palestinians but Israel and the rest of the Moslems nations in the Middle East. Israel would not be required to absorb any Palestinians in their country, yet would have to withdraw to the pre-1967 war lines which would include the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Golan Heights and loose control of western Jerusalem, the Temple Mount and the Wailing Wall.

 

Hatam Abdel Khader, a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council, was quoted as saying that while logic dictates that Israel would not allow 5 million Palestinians in its territory, the Palestinians are not willing to give up on the right of return.  

 

Quartet could adopt Geneva Accord according to Palestinian Authority Official – January 21, 2004

Jerusalem (jnewswire.com) – While most predicted a quick demise of the Geneva Accord that was proposed by no government or written by any government official, along comes Yasser Abed-Rabbo senior Palestinian Authority member predicting that the Quartet – the US, UN,. EU and Russia could soon adopt the Geneva Accord.  .

 

It is best to know that the Geneva Accord is a resurrected Oslo Accord with the same two architects: Abed-Rabbo for the Palestinians and Yossi Beilin the self appointed rejected former leader of the Labor Party and non-official representative for Israel. 

 

The French government, with the French Foreign Minister Dominique De Villepin, the most pro-Palestinian country in Europe was pledging to ask the EU to adopt the  accord at its first ministerial level meeting, while UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan stated that he would raise the Geneva issue at the next Quartet meeting.   Within this agreement, Israel would also return to the 1967 borders, give up any rights to its Biblical heartland, the Shomron, the tribal lands of Ephraim, the Gaza Strip, and would include a divided Jerusalem in which the Temple Mount and the Wailing Wall would be surrendered back to the Palestinian State. 

 

Working around the clock, this resurrected land-for-peace initiative that has already had seven years to mature and fail, was the agenda of a secret meeting at the home of Norwegian Ambassador to Israel Mona Juul and her husband Terje Roed-larson, UN special envoy to the Middle East.  Participants included Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia who was ‘smuggled’ in, Israel Labor Party leader, Shimon Peres and close associates Uri Savir and Avi Gil. 

 

Where is the Lord of hosts in these meetings Who claims,

 

Psalms 2:1-6 - Why do the nations rage, and the people plot a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together against the LORD and against His Anointed, saying, "Let us break Their bonds in pieces and cast away Their cords from us!" He who sits in the heavens laughs, the Lord shall hold them in derision. Then He will speak to them in His wrath and distress them in His deep displeasure: "Yet, I have set My King upon My holy hill of Zion.”

 

Iraq riches whisked to Syria – January 20, 2004

Washingtontimes.com – The January, 2004 BibleSearchers Reflection’s gave the revelations of the senior Syrian journalist Nizar Najoef who reported the sites of where Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction were stored in Syria and Lebanon.  Additional revelations were given later that Saddam Hussein stored part of his fortunes in Syria’s Central Bank which held $1.3 billion in a ‘presidency’ account and another $700 million was held in the Medina Bank of Lebanon. 

 

A letter document was sent to Nizar Nayouf, an exiled Syrian human-rights and democracy activist and past winner of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization's World Press Freedom Prize who is living in Paris. In this letter it revealed that Emil Lahoud, son of the pro-Syrian president of Lebanon, Talal Arsilan, a member of the minority Druze ethnic group and Karim Bakr Adouni, head of the al Qata'ib Party served as go-betweens between Syria and Iraq.  Their Syrian security counterparts were three top Syrian security chiefs, Gen. Ghazi Kanaan, Syria's former chief of military intelligence in Lebanon, who has since been put in charge of Syria's political security department, Brigadier Zulhimmah Shalish, who is believed to be the chief of President Bashir Assad's Special Guards, and Gen. Ristom Ghazali, the chief of Syrian intelligence in Lebanon.

It was this team who stashed away the fortune of Saddam Hussein in Syria and Lebanon.  Along with the $1 billion dollars hoisted from the Iraqi Central Bank and intercepted by the American in route to Syria, it now has placed the U.S. in the center of America’s telescope.  As one analyst said, "Assad may feel compelled to admit the Iraqi money is there, if only to reduce American pressure for changing his regime."

 

What if with the falling popularity of President George Bush as he approaches the November, 2004 presidential elections he finds that the citizens of the US are becoming more skeptical that he never did find the WMD?  What if in the face of a more skeptical congress the War in Iraq is not apportioned more money?  Could we see the United States being propelled to open another phase of the War on Terror to recover the WMD reputed to be hidden in Syria and Lebanon, topple the regime of President Assad of Syria, destroy the bastion of the Hizballah and the Hamas and recover the $2 billion stashed in the banks of Syria and Lebanon?  Once again we appeal to a literal time of the end interpretations of the Oracles of Zechariah and restoration of Israel in chapters nine and ten.

 

Protest in the Reform Movement in Iran – January 18 to February 20, 2004

Tehran, Iran (AP) The Guardian Council, who happens to be an unelected body of hard-liners disqualified over a third of the 8,200 candidates running for political offices on February 20, 2004.  Spokesman Ebrahim Azizi told a press conference, "Lawmakers whose speech or behavior suggests that they have had no loyalty to Islam or the constitution will remain disqualified."

 

A power struggle was under way between Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei who ordered the Guardian Council to reconsider the disqualification, Ebrahim Azizi spokesperson for the Guardian Council and Deputy Interior Ministry Morteza Moballegh warning that he would prevent the elections from occurring unless there was a compromise.   Add to this President Mohammad Khatami condemning the disqualification warned that he might resign.  Overall 80 reformist lawmakers, 27 provincial judges, 24 ministers and six vice-presidents have resigned. 

 

Most of Iran’s VPs and Ministers Quit.- January 21, 2004

Customwire - Though many people do not know this, the 1979 Islamic revolution was based on an Islamic theocratic democracy built on the theocracy of Allah and yet according to Vice-President Mohammad Ali Abtahi, “such methods (disqualification of candidates) damage our Islamic democracy and turn elections into sham elections."  Interior Minister Abdolvahed Mousavi Lari claims, “the hard-liners want to secure at least 180 seats in the 290-seat parliament.  Independent sources have affirmed that many reformists publicly stated that they did not affirm Islamic ideals and so the Guardian Council disqualified them.

 

83 reformist planned to boycott the ‘illegal Iranian election – February 8, 2004  Independent New UK - Despite pressure from Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, less than 1,500 candidates had been reinstated.  As Mullah Hossein Ansari-Raad, a dissident mullah stated, "Khatami cannot hold illegal elections. He has no right to. The elections cannot be held as [conservatives] wish. The result will be a defamation of the Islamic system. Without the republican aspect, the Islamic aspect has to go."

 

At issue is a bitter battle over the constitutional heart of Iran and the legacy of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the father of the Islamic Republic. Reformists claim they are the true heirs to Khomeini, who they say never meant the Guardian Council to have such an important role.

 

Iran’s conservatives gain control of Iran’s parliament – February 20, 2004

Yahoo News – With only 15 percent popular vote in Iran the Guardian Council claimed a solid majority in the parliament with barely 50% voter turnout.  At this junction a majority of Iranians are being disaffected by the political process of their country. Within four years will there be a popular backlash against a theocratic democracy?

 

For those prophetic students envisioning a theocratic government in Israel during the millennium, it might be good to reference your political ideology on what type of government will Yahshua govern.  According to the prophets, “He (the Messiah) shall rule them with a rod of iron” (Revelation 2:26)  and “You (My Son) shall break them with a rod of iron.”  (Psalms 2:6)  While billions of Jews, Christians and Muslims await the coming of a Messiah, are any of them prepared for a government of rule based sole upon God’s or a theocratic rule? 

 

Iranian intelligence officer implicates 9-11 as a ‘joint venture between Tehran and Al-Qaida – January 23, 2004

World Net Daily - As if the political turmoil was not enough, Hamid Reza Zakeri, an Iranian intelligence officer testifying at the trial of a 31 year old Moroccan student, Abdelghani Mzoud, claimed the Moroccan student had two meetings between senior Iranian and al-Qaida.  The 9-11 strike on the New York City twin towers was actually ordered by the Iranian intelligence chief, Hojjatoleslam Ali Akbar Nateq-Nouri, in May 2001 who wanted to strike at this country's "economic structure, their reputation and their internal peace and security,"

 

Did the United States in retaliation for 9-11, open the War against Terror and invade the wrong country? Was it actually Iran and the Al-Qaida who committed the atrocities of 9-11?  Have we seen the beginning of the First Seal of Revelation which states,

 

Revelation 6:2 – “And I looked, and behold, a white horse, he who sat on it had a bow; and a crown was given to him and he went out conquering and to conquer.

 

Is the United States the ‘White Horse and Rider of the First Seal’ who comes from the west (Zechariah 6:3), claiming to carry the banner of righteousness indignation under the mantle of the Jesus and the Christian world?  Is it any wonder that this same rider on the white horse may also represent the Council of Foreign Relations whose seal on the front of any portfolio and on the front of its official publication, Foreign Affairs, is a white horse and rider?

 

World of Terror

 

White Slaughter in South Africa?  February 9, 2004

Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin published the plans for a mass genocide of the South Africa white population immediately upon the death of former South African President Nelson Mandela who is now 85 years old.  This operation will be carried out under various code names: "Operation Vula," "Night of the Long Knives," "Operation White Clean-up," "Operation Iron Eagle", "Red October campaign" and Operation “Our Rainy Day.”   According to G2, the communist party plans to transport within one hour of Mandela’s death, 70,000 armed black men to the center of Johannesburg by taxi cab. 

 

The initial goal is to take military possession of all fuel points and begin a nation-wide massacre of the white citizens. According to communist leaders, the purpose is to generate a military coup of President Thabo Mbeki and replace him with Cyril Ramaphosa, former general secretary of ANC.  The resultant process will include massive ethnic cleansing of whites in South Africa. 

 

“Al-Qaida has nukes.”  February 8, 2004

World Net Daily - According to “ Global Jihad” the reality of nuclear terrorism ‘just got a lot scarier’.  The Arabic newspaper al-Hayat, has publicly announced that Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida terrorist network bought suitcase nukes from Ukrainian scientists in Kandahar, Afghanistan in 1998 for 30 millions dollars.  This announcement was first published though by WorldNetDaily in October , 2002.  These 20 ‘suitcase nukes’ were sold by the Chechen Mafia and former KGB agents for 30 million in cash and Afghanistan heroin with a street value of $700 million. 

 

The Al Qaeda has secreted these suitcase weapons only for use inside the United States or if the group faces a  “crushing blow” which threatened its existence.  These ‘nukes’ were part of 1900 nuclear warheads inherited by the Ukraine when the former Soviet Union broke up in 1991.  Though these were reputedly sent back to the Soviets in 1994 then Ukraine signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferaiton Treaty, according to former Russian National Security Advise, Alexander Lebed, up to 100 portable ‘dirty nukes’ were not accounted for.  Each one has the equivalence of 1,000 tons of TNT which can kill up to 100,000 people in an American city.  All of this is revealed as the United States and Pakistan are in preparation for a massive campaign this spring to find bin Laden in the desolate mountains regions between Pakistan and Afghanistan. 

 

Is Sharon giving Israel its third terrorist enclave?  – February 21, 2004

Jerusalem (Jnewswire) – According to Jan Willem van der Hoeven, the plan of Sharon evacuate 7,500 Jewish settlers out of the Gaza Strip will establish a third terrorist mini-state on the mountainous ridge overlooking the coastal plain if Israel.  This is the home to over 80% of Israel’s population, industry and the Ben Gurion Airport, Israel’s lifeline to the world.  With now Arafat and “Fatah-land” planted in the center of the Land of Israel in the Shomron (West Bank), will the void in the Gaza Strip create a Hamas-land with a Fatah-Tanzim terrorist’s state?

 

According to the author, the mini-state of Fatah-land set up by Yasser Arafat in Lebanon in southern Lebanon was driven out by Sharon in 1982, yet in turn was given gratis as “Hizballah-land” to the Iranian back, Syrian supported Hizballah terrorist organization, when Israel uni-laterally pulled out in May, 2000.  Galilee now faces a shield of 12,000 missiles.  With a Gaza pullout, 80% of the entire population of Israel will be within reach of shoulder-launched missiles. 

 

Catastrophic Signs at the Time of the End

 

Famine, Pestilence and Disease

Bird Flu twice as deadly as last outbreak  February 8, 2004

Hanoi (Reuters) – The latest medical report shows that up to 70 percent of the people who have contracted bird flu in the latest Asian outbreak have died from the virus, making it twice as deadly as the last outbreak in 1997.  Reported in 11 countries, eighteen have died so far from the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu, 13 in Vietnam and five in Thailand.  This mortality rate is up from 30 percent in the last epidemic in 1997. 

 

So far in spite of the marked increase in mortality rate and transference rate (how fast it can move from country to country), the infectivity rate (how easy for a human to catch the bird flu) appears to be quite low.  All of Viet Nam’s 64 provinces and 13 of 31 provinces of China have reported the avian influenza virus in chicken flocks yet no humans in China have contracted the virus. Hong Kong in 1997 had a similar H5N1 strain of avian influenza which killed six human and the 1.5 million chickens in three days.  Ten of millions of poultry in Asia have been killed or culled so far. 

This week also saw the emergence of an H7 avian flu in two Delaware and one New Jersey farm.

 

According to Richard V. Lee M.D. professor of medicine at he UB School o Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, if a person infected with avian influenza happened to also have a very virulent case of the human influenza virus, then this season we have a “perfect set-up for something weird and dangerous” to happen on the world scene…If that happens, we easily have a pandemic flu on our hands.

 

Earthquakes in Israel

 

Earth Quake rocks Israel and Shakes up Middle East – February 11, 2004

Jerusalem (Haaretz) – A 10:20 am an earthquake with a magnitude of 5.0 shook up the land of Israel causing the MPs in the Israeli parliament to rush out of meeting meetings into the corridors thinking that a large bomb had exploded.  Felt from Amman, the capital of Jordan to the Lebanese capital of Beirut, the epicenter of this quake centered on the Jordan Valley at the northern tip of the Dead Sea. 

 

This region is part of the Great Rift Valley founded in the days of Abraham which runs for 4,800 km between Syria, through the Dead Sea to Mozambique, Africa.   This fault line was caused by the separation of the African and the Eurasian tectonic plates.

 

There is also a second fault line 55 km to the north of Jerusalem cutting the land of Israel from Haifa on the Mediterranean Sea to the West Bank towns of Jenin and Nablus to the Jordan, the heartland of Israel and particularly the Biblical possession of the tribe of Ephraim.  This quake followed a smaller quake on December 31, 2003 of about 3.7 magnitude.

Epicenter of the February 11, 2004 Israel earthquake

 

According the Infrastructure Minister Yossi Paritsky, there was no infrastructure damage and the only physical structural damage reportedly done in the city of Jerusalem were cracks in the walls of the office of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, a crack in the decorative ceiling directly above the table when the cabinet members sit in  the Knesset building which is on lease to Israel from  the Greek Orthodox Church and damage to a ramp providing access to the Temple Mount. 

 

At the epicenter Shmuel Ba’agon of Kibbutz Kalia states, "The feeling was as though the earth had opened up its mouth and we were sliding into the Dead Sea."  Isaiah and the other Biblical prophets prophesied of a day when cataclysmic earthquakes would herald the return of the Messiah.  The Hebrew prophet Zechariah predicted that the Jerusalem’s Mount of Olives would be split in two may a massive quake when the Messiah returns and a fountain will erupt from the side of the Temple and flow into a tectonic ravine from the Mediterranean to the Dead Sea. 

 

Israeli quake centered near the burial site for the army of Gog – February 22, 2003

Maggid ben Josef Report - The epicenter of the February 11, 2004  (22 Shevat) earthquake measuring 5.0 on the Richter scale that rocked Jerusalem, has been placed just to the north of the Dead Sea in the biblical Gei-Hamon-Gog, the valley of the multitudes of Gog also known as the Valley of the Passengers.  This valley is mentioned in Ezekiel 39 as the burial place for the vast hordes of the army of Gog, which will invade Israel from the "Togormah of the north parts" (the region of modern Turkey), allied with Meshech, Tubal and the bands of Gomer (all regions of modern Turkey), Persia (modern Iran), Cush and Put, (possibly satellite Islamic states carved out of the former Soviet Union).  It also conceals the burial of Moshe and according to 2 Maccabees 2 conceals the place where Jeremiah hid the Ark of the Covenant, the staff of Aaron, the altar of incense and the Tabernacle. Jeremiah did this at the order of King Josiah in advance of Babylon's invasion of Jerusalem and destruction of the Temple. 

 

No doubt archeologists will be combing the ravines of the wadis near the Valley of the Passengers to determine if the quake uncovered any archeological sites hidden in these desolate ravines.  Many of the storage sites for the articles of Solomon’s Temple are believed to be hidden in area according to the Emeq HaMelekh. 

 

Women’s Wall Collapses at Women’s Area of Temple Mount – February 16, 2004

 

The Lekerev Report - A section of the Western Wall on the pathway leading up to the adjacent Jugrabi Gate caved in during a snowstorm in Jerusalem.  Huge stones came crashing down onto the women's prayer section of the Western Wall plaza but caused no injuries among the approximately 150 women praying there at the time.

 

Collapsed Wall in the Women’s Prayer Sector

 

The Mugrabi Gate is the "green door" just to the right of the women's prayer section, used by police and non- Muslim visitors to enter the Temple Mount. According to the Jerusalem police, all non-Muslim visits to the Temple Mount are suspended.  For a temporary time, the Western Wall allotted for men’s prayer will be divided in two for the women to worship.  Archeologists are calling again for an urgent archeological inspection of the Muslim excavation within the Temple Mount.

 

The Temple Mount is recognized by most archeologists as being unstable and in the presence of the recent earthquakes near Jerusalem a major collapse of a mosque in the interior of the Mount could trigger a religious catastrophe of seismic proportions. According to Dr. Eilat Mazal, member of the committee for the prevention of the destruction of the antiques on the Temple Mount made this statement: "the occurrence of another much bigger collapse is only a question of time and it will cause a major disaster."

 

Historical Rainfall in the Nation of Israel

 

Is the Latter Rain literally falling on Israel? – January 27, 2004

Jerusalem (Haaretz) - A miracle is happening over Israel, yet is anyone noticing?  For over a decade Israel has been experiencing a severe drought.  One year ago, the rains began to fall.  The level of the Sea of Galilee (Lake Kinneret) was over five meters below its maximum mark.  By November of 2003, the level of the Sea of Galilee was only two meters below the maximum level.  On January 27, 2004 an additional 13 cm of water was added to the lake in one day and was now only at 1.28 meters from maximum with heavy snowing on Mount Hermon up to two meters on the slopes.  For the year 2003, 3.5 meters of water was added to the Sea of Galilee. 

 

Mekorot experts were preparing to open the Degania Dam at Lake Kinneret to prevent flooding in the region according to director-general, Amos Epstein.  When the water levels reach 85 centimeters of the lake maximum level of 208.90 meter then the dam will be open. 

 

Mount Hermon seen from Northern Galilee

 

The last time the dam was opened was the winter of 1991-1992, twelve years ago when the Mekorot released 220 million cubit meters of water from the lake.  During the winter of 1968-1969, 880 million cubit meters of water was sent down the Jordan River to the Dead Sea.  This was the year that recorded the highest recorded rainfall between 1950-2000.  Opening the dam at the southern end of the natural reservoir will send fresh water into the southern portion of the Jordan River which will help to clean it out, and also to replenish the shrinking Dead Sea below Jerusalem. 

 

On February 2, 2004, Leah Rafaeli reported on The Lekarov Report that the “weather statistics announced that for the month of January, Israel had more rainfall than in any other January for the past 50 years!!!  A full meter of rain fell throughout the country.  The Kinneret is overflowing and we are rejoicing at the heavenly gift of rain.  Seems to me there is something very prophetic about the return of heavy rains, too!!!!  Think about it....” 

 

This reminded me of Zechariah 10:1 - Ask the Lord for rain in the time of the latter rain.  The Lord will make flashing clouds; He will give them showers of rain, grass in the field for everyone.

 

The Israelites almost more than any other nation are identified with their land.  When the fields of the land begin to bring in harvests of abundance beyond any natural expectations, the forests begin to grow with virgin beauty of a New Earth, when the nations of the world continue to witness progressive famines, pestilence and natural catastrophe yet the Land of Israel is miraculously being preserved, will it not be reasonable to assume that all the nations of the earth will begin to covet the land of Israel and seek to possess her?

 

Knowledge shall be increased; Men shall run to and fro

 

U.S. Eyes Space as Possible Battleground – January 18, 2004

Washington (Reuters) - President Bush's plan to expand the exploration of space appears to be partners with the U.S. efforts to control the heavens for military, economic and strategic gain.  Former President Bill Clinton signed a 1996 space policy that stated that the United States is committed to the exploration and use of outer space "by all nations for peaceful purposes for the benefit of all humanity…Peaceful purposes allow defense and intelligence-related activities in pursuit of national security and other goals,”…..and, "Consistent with treaty obligations, the United States will develop, operate and maintain space control capabilities to ensure freedom of action in space, and if directed, deny such freedom of action to adversaries."

 

It is a given fact that no country depends on space and satellites as its eyes and ears more than the United States.  This nation  was responsible for 95 percent of global military space spending in 1999, according to the French space agency CNES. Outlining his election-year vision for space exploration last week, Bush called for a permanent base on the moon by 2020 as a launch pad for piloted missions to Mars and beyond.   This also appears to be a coincidence that a two months earlier, China launched its first piloted spaceflight and plans to go to the moon.  "I think the new initiative is driven by a desire to beat the Chinese to the moon," said John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a defense and space policy research group.

 

What is more meaningful is that the moon is a source of potentially unlimited energy in the form of the helium 3 isotope -- a near perfect fuel source: potent, nonpolluting and causing virtually no radioactive byproduct in a fusion reactor. Having a monopoly on that energy source would keep America’s as the economic wonder of the world. 

 

Yet it was Gerald Kulcinski of the Fusion Technology Institute at the University of Wisconsin at Madison who estimated that the moon's helium 3 would have a cash value of perhaps $4 billion a ton in terms of its energy equivalent in oil. With a estimated reservoir of about 1 million tons of helium 3 on the moon, it would provide enough to power the earth for thousands of years. The equivalent of a single space shuttle load or roughly 30 tons could meet all U.S. electric power needs for a year.

 

Are we seeing a dramatic militarization of space?  Bush's schedule for a U.S.’s return to the moon matches what experts say may be a dramatic militarization of space over the next two decades, even if the current ban on weapons holds. Among other things, the Pentagon expects to spend at least $50 billion over the next five years to develop and field a multi-layered shield against incoming missiles that could deliver nuclear, biological or chemical weapons. Ultimately, this shield -- first proposed by President Ronald Reagan and dubbed "Star Wars" by critics -- may include space-based interceptors, the first weapons in space, as opposed to sensors that guide weapons.

Purim, the Amelekites and the Justice of the Lord

 

On the fourteenth day of Adar in late winter (early March), is celebrated the Feast of Esther, called Purim.  Here is the story of a young Jewish heroine called Hadassah meaning ‘myrtle and who became the Queen of the Persia because of an intra-court intrigue and in order to hide her Jewish identity was given a new Persian name, Esther meaning ‘star’

 

The Megillat Esther (the scroll of Esther) is read every year as a reminder of how the Lord of hosts works through whatever political condition His chosen people have gotten themselves into. And it also portrays how important it is to understand the wisdom of the Lord of hosts, the One who knows the beginning from the end.  An act of obedience on the part of King Saul of Israel could have changed the history of the Jewish, much less the Nation of Israel.  Because the king of Israel thought that his wisdom was greater than the wisdom of the God he served, it almost cost the complete annihilation of the Jewish people, the remnant of the House of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. 

 

The heroine of the story was a young orphaned Jewess who was cared for by her uncle, Mordecai a minor courtier in the palace of Ahasuerus (Xerses).  She became Esther the Queen of Persia with a hidden ancestry.  The villain of the story is Haman the Agagite, who ascended to the position as the Prime Minister of Persia by greed and by bribing the Persian emperor is also a story of a race or tribe of people who developed a genetic hatred towards God’s chosen people.  These were the ancestors of Haman, the Amelekites.

 

For a historical view of the life of Esther, Mordecai, Haman and King Ahasuerus open up the link to The Festival of Purim, the story of Queen Esther.  The implications of the act of obedience of this brave Jewess resulted in the preservation of the chosen people of God. Without Esther we would not have had King Artaxerses I who gave freedom to the Jews to return to their own land.  Without Esther’s brave obedience, we also would not have had the scribe Ezra who gave us the Old Testament (Tanakh), Nehemiah the governor, Zechariah and Haggai the prophets and Zerubabbel who built the temple of the Lord and the ancestor of Jesus, the future messiah of all mankind.  All of these would have potentially been killed in the Haman’s pogrom of genocide in Persia.  Without Esther, the Jews may have never returned to their land and the New Testament would never have been written.

 

Haman, descendant of Agag, King of the Amalekites

 

Who was Haman the descendant of Agag?  And what are the spiritual effects that the Hamans have upon the children of Israel and the Land of Israel today. Our introduction to Haman comes in the Book of Esther,

 

Esther 3:1 – “After these things King Ahasuerus promoted Haman, the son of Hammedatha the Agagite, and advance him and set his seat above all the princes who were with him.”

 

From all appearances, Haman took the seat as the Prime Minister of Persia that the prophet Daniel once held.  Our first pursuit as a BibleSearcher will be to understand who was Agag and why was this genealogy important to the story?

 

Agag enters the Biblical story in the days of King Saul, the Benjamite ruler over the United Monarchy of Israel and Judah.  The Lord of hosts had a mission for the newly anointed Saul, a mission that has perplexed and plagued the sensitive minds of God’s people since that day.  The words of the Lord did not come directly to Saul. The Lord did not want His message to be mistaken, so he sent the message through Samuel the prophet, the one who informed Saul that he was the selected prince of Israel for the throne and the prophet who anointed Saul as the new king.  If there was one man in Israel that Saul should have had respect for, it was the prophet Samuel.  Samuel was the messenger of the Lord.

 

After the anointing and coronation of Saul, the first call for the leader of the united tribes of Israel was a plea from the elders of the town of Jabesh-gilead.  Their town was surrounded by the Ammonites who were still smarting over their defeat many years earlier by Judge Jephthah after ruling over the tribes of Israel for eighteen years.  The elders of Jabesh-gilead offered a league of covenant with the Ammonites but the conditions given to them by the Ammorites were to be: cut out the right eye of all the males in the city.  Saul, recently anointed, was still plowing his field until a kingly duty would be given to him.  When he received the emissaries of Jabesh-gilead, the bible states:

 

1 Samuel 11:5 – “Then the Spirit of the Lord came upon Saul when he heard this news, and his anger was greatly aroused.” 

 

Invoked by the ‘Spirit’, Saul gathered all the tribes together for the first time since the days of Joshua, and with 300,000 of the children of Israel and 30,000 of the tribe of Judah, and in a forced march across the Jordan, they surprised the Ammonites at the morning watch and as scriptures states, “those who survived were scattered so that no two of them were left together.”  (1 Samuel 11:11)  Here with the first mission of Saul and with the ‘Spirit of the Lord’ he sealed his rulership over all the tribes of Israel and Judah.     

 

Saul was ruler for two years and his second test came.  The Philistines were a major power in the valleys around the mountain sites where the Hebrews lived.  Along the coastline, they had built up a major civilization and had an advance military armament unknown to many other nations; iron.  The Egyptians were still in the Bronze Age and so were the Israelites.  Saul along with his son Jonathan were to advance against the Philistines but were first told to wait seven days for the prophet Samuel who would bring instructions from the Lord.  Seven days were over and there was no prophet. Saul, now confident as the new king, decided to go ahead and offer a sacrifice to their God.  Then along came the prophet with this message:

 

1 Samuel 13:13 – “You have done foolishly. You have not kept the commandment of the Lord your God, which He commanded you. For now the Lord would have establish your kingdom over Israel forever.  But now your kingdom shall not continue.  The Lord has sought for Himself a man after His own heart, and the Lord has commanded him to be commander over His people because you have not kept what the Lord commanded you.”

 

It was such a simple test.  Wait for seven days for the prophet.  There were two parts to this command: wait for seven days and wait for the prophet.  This time King Saul chose what he wanted to obey and in essence usurped the role of the prophet and seeks the word of the Lord directly.  Even as the King of Israel, he failed to obey.

King Saul and the Amalekites

 

Then the Lord of hosts brought a third test to King Saul.  The Prophet Samuel once again came to the king and said,

 

1 Samuel 15:1-3 – “The Lord sent me to anoint you king over His people, over Israel. Now therefore, heed the voice of the words of the Lord.  Thus says the Lord of hosts: ‘I will punish Amalek for what he did to Israel, how he ambushed him on the way when he came up from Egypt. Now go and attack Amalek and utterly destroy all that they have and do not spare them but kill both man and woman, infant and nursing child, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.” 

 

So King Saul again set out to do the work of the Lord. He gathered 200,000 foot soldiers and 10,000 men of Judah and marched to the city of the Amalekites.  What is important is that we do not really know the where the land of the Amalekites was except it was near the land of the Kenites, known as the cliff dwellers.  Many scholars believe this was in the land of Petra with the famous dwellings carved in the steep mountain canyons.   The city of Petra was a city in the land of the Edomites on the Jordanian side east of the southern end of the Dead Sea. Secret dispatches were sent to the Kenites to flee and the army of Saul pursued the Amalekites from Havilah to the approach to Shur which faces Egypt.    

 

When the battle was over, the empathy of the Israelite soldiers implored the king to spare King Agag, a custom typical throughout all the Middle East.  The command of the Lord was fulfilled only in part; save King Agag and with a few personal modifications to the Lord’s command, they decided what was good and kept them and what was ‘despised and worthless’, they threw away.  Oh yes, a God who knows the end from the beginning, a God who understands the future effect of our actions today, was a God to King Saul whose commands he felt could be modified.

                                                   

I Samuel 15:9 - “Saul also took Agag king of the Amalekites alive, and utterly destroyed all the people with the edge of the sword.  But Saul and the people spared Agag and the best of the sheep, the oxen, the fatlings, the lambs, and all that was good, and were unwilling to utterly destroy them. But everything despised and worthless, that they utterly destroyed.”

 

Why did Saul choose to modify the command of the Lord?  Did he not believe the Lord?  Maybe he felt that his wisdom knowing the circumstances at the time of the battle were better than the Lords.  In the meantime, back in Israel, after Saul with the prisoner King Agag had returned into the Land of Israel, Samuel was revealed by the Lord of hosts that Saul had deliberately disobeyed his commands.  The aging prophet Samuel knew that the long term implications would be disastrous and he cried all night. 

 

What is important is that the most bitterest enemy of Israel, the Amalekites, who were the first of the nations to seek to destroy the children of Israel in the Sinai wilderness at their greatest moment of weakness were destroyed except for King Agag.  If King Agag had been killed by King Saul in the land of the cliff dwellers, Haman the Agagite would never have lived and the story of Esther may not have been written.  The actions of one king of Israel may have cost the annihilation of the Jewish race, except that it was not God’s will.

 

The military forces of Saul returned back to the Land of Israel and traversed from the southern reaches of the Dead Sea up to Gilgal. After crossing the Jordan River, Saul took King Agag to Shechem.  Think carefully.  The Lord of hosts gave the king of Israel, Saul, a direct command to go into the land of Edom and destroy an entire tribe of people whose whole history since the exodus had been spent in seeking to destroy the children of Israel.  Now King Saul was bringing that enemy king, who was known by the title of Agag, back into the land of Israel to live.

 

Most of us are revolted by the thought that the Lord of hosts commanded Saul to exterminate the entire nation of the Amalekites.  In our eyes all men are created equal but in God’s eyes all men are not born equal.  It is the Lord of hosts who knows the hearts of mankind and some men, women and children are born with evil continuously in their own lives and body.  Genetic evil was so permanently engrained in the ancestry of the Amalekites that the Lord of hosts could not reach in and save any of them.  For the Lord of hosts who knows the beginning from the end and also knows the outcome of our actions, made a command that appears heinous to our moral sensitivity yet the reason He did so was to protect His chosen people in the future.  How so?

 

In the oral traditions of the Jews, the rabbis claim that the Amalekite king, Agag, was treated with royal courtesy and was given the choicest of the concubines of King Saul in a manner befitting a king.  Not only was King Agag living in the land of Israel, which that alone was an abomination to the Lord, but the progeny that were conceived by this union of Israelite maidens to the Amalekite king in the Land of Israel became the ancestry of Haman the Agagite and future ‘Amalekites’, all who will genetically retain a hatred toward the chosen people of God.  The strongholds of these ‘Amalekite-Israeli’ descendants were raised in the region of Shechem.  Is it any wonder that one of the bitterest and implacable enemies of Israel today is terrorist organization called Hamas.  Is it any wonder that one of the major stronghold of suicide bombers in the Land of Israel come from the city of Shechem.  Is it any wonder that like the Amelekites of old, the modern day Hamas especially target the woman, children and the weak and infirmed.  This reminds us again of what the Torah said:

 

Deuteronomy 25:17-19 – “Remember what Amalek did to you on the way as you were coming out of Egypt, how he met you on the way and attacked your rear rank, all the stragglers at your rear, when all you were tired and weary: and he did not fear God.

 

Therefore it shall be (a future era), when the Lord your God has given you rest from your enemies all around, (a future day when Israel’s enemies will be conquered) in the land which the Lord your God is giving you to possess as an inheritance (the Land of Israel) that you will blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven. You shall not forget.”

 

Because King Saul did not obey the word of the Lord, the descendants of the children of Israel will have to revisit their enemies again, the descendants of the children of Amalek. 

 

Who was Amalek?

 

Who was Amalek?  The first mention of a person called Amalek in the Bible was in the genealogies of Esau the brother to Jacob. (Genesis 36:4)  Understandably there was no love lost with Esau to his brother, Jacob who legitimately bought the ‘Birthright’ of Esau the eldest, but stole the ‘Blessing’ of his father Isaac.  After the death of Abraham, Esau took his family and migrated to the southeast region beyond the Dead Sea, former the beautiful Vail of Siddom, to a land dominated by Mount Seir.  Here what is known as Edom, the home of Herod the Great the Idumean, the Jewish people also recognized as the ancestors of the Romans also known as Edomites. 

 

The genealogies are confusing in the family ancestry of Amalek, who was born to Eliphaz, a son of Esau by his concubine Timna.  Rightfully so, for according to the sages of Israel, Amalek was born and raised in a family with significant immorality and incest that affected the lineages of not only Eliphaz, the father of Amalek, but also Adah (Basemath) of the Hittites of the Family of Ishmael.  Out of lineage of a family that rejected the God of Abraham and Isaac, we also find throughout history the literal descendants or the typology of the people who have developed a inbred genetic hatred for the children of Israel that has not changed over the millenniums of time.  

 

What did God say of Amalek?  “He did not fear God”.  What did God say will happen to the descendants of Amalek?  “You will blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven. You shall not forget.”

 

Amalek had to be dealt with again and again by the descendants of Israel. Here was a tribe of people that lived in the region of Arabia Petraea, descendants of Amalek ben Eliphaz, whose ancestors lived with the Ishmaelites in Arabia and the descendants of Esau, the Edomites or the Seirites, near Mount Seir in the land of Moab in southern Jordan today.  They lived next to the cliff dwellers, the Kenites in the land from Havilah to Shur (Number 13:29, 1 Samuel 15:7) in the valleys were the nomadic or Bedouin herdsmen lives.  Their kings appeared to have a hereditary name called Agag (Numbers 13:29, 1 Samuel 15:7) and they were the earliest of all the peoples of the Middle East to attack, seeking to destroy the children of Israel. (Exodus 17:8-13, Deuteronomy 25:17-18, 1 Samuel 15:2)  They later attacked the Israelites at Hormah (Numbers 14:45) and allied themselves with the Moabites (Judges 3:13), the Midianites (Judges 6:3) until Saul was given the command by the Lord of hosts to eliminate them entirely, which he refused in part. (1 Samuel 14:48, 15:3)   It was King David who did seek to eliminate them (1 Samuel 30:18-20.)  Modern scholars suggest that they were called the ‘Sute’ in the Babylonian inscription, the ‘Sittiu’ in the Egyptian hieroglyphic accounts and the ‘Khabbati’ meaning plunders in the Amarna tablets.

 

The images of Amalek and the incessant hatred against Israel made an impression on the mindset of the Jewish people.  In the days of Deborah and Barak, they understood that their enemy was also within their own people in what was called an ‘Amalek type’. 

 

Judges 5:14 – “From Ephraim were those whose roots were in Amalek.” 

 

The attitude of the descendants of Amalek was now spreading to other tribes, clans and people and could even be found within their own people.  It was Amalek that represented all the arch-enemies of Israel and those who faith is on the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.  This ‘spirit of Amalek” is the frontal assault against the Almighty God and it was Moses who proclaimed,

 

Exodus 17:16 – “God has sworn by His throne; God is at war with Amalek for all generations.” 

 

The war against Amalek did not stop at the cross of Yahshua.  The chosen ones of Israel did not switch from literal to spiritual. The actors of the Drama along with the supporting staff are now being selected from the gentiles.  The ‘spiritual Israelites’ are rediscovering the roots of their faith and that home to them is with the ‘literal Israelites’ as modeled in the Hebrew Nazarene Ecclesia of Jerusalem under the leadership of James the Just, the brother of Jesus. 

 

We have seen the insistence the Lord of hosts had against the people of the Amalekites. Every letter of the command of the Lord was to be fulfilled.  That King Saul chose to retain the best of the flocks plus the king to him seemed reasonable to him.  Yet the Lord of hosts had said, “You will blot out the remembrance of Amalek.”  If your prized bull or lamb came from the flocks of the Amalekites, then the “name of Amalek” would be remembered.  It was not just the people, it was the memory and the attitude of the people of the Amalekites that had to be destroyed.  Amalek was a spirit of defiance and disobedience to the Almighty One. If it was not routed out of the land and the entire region, Israel would someday have to revisit the trials she failed to overcome in her youth.

 

David even before he was king had his wife and child kidnapped by the Amalekites from Ziglak and he zealously tracked and traced every Amalekite down and killed them all.  He knew that this was now a spiritual war that was moving beyond tribal conflicts and territorial claims.  In the Psalms of Asaph, the “spirit of Amalek” had now affected an entire region.  In a prophetic utterance that moved across the millenniums to the time of the end, it proclaims:

 

Psalms 83:1-8 - Do not keep silent, O God!  Do not hold Your peace and do not be still, O God! For behold, Your enemies make a tumult; and those who hate You have lifted up their head. They have taken crafty counsel against Your people, and consulted together against your sheltered ones.

 

They have said, “Come, and let us cut them off from being a nation, that the name of Israel may be remembered no more.” For they have consulted together with one consent.  They form a confederacy against You; The tents of Edom and the Ismaelites, Moab and the Hagrites; Gebel, Ammon, and Amalek; Philistia with the inhabitants of Tyre; Assyria also has joined with them; they have helped the children of Lot.  Selah.

 

Israel had not even been voted by the United Nations in 1948 when they were attacked by a confederation of five Moslem nations that surrounded them and wanted to ‘cut them off from being a nation.’  The motto of Hamas, Hezbollah and the Palestinian Authority is one in purpose and intent, “Let us cut them off…that the name of Israel may be remembered no more.” 

 

This month some of the most serious negotiations are going on between the America, the EU, Russia, United Nations, Israel and the Confederation of Islamic States that have ever been seen.  We are moving rapidly between the Intifada, the Road Map, the Barcelona Accord, the Geneva Agreement, the unilateral withdrawal of Gaza by Sharon, the International Court in Brussels and ‘the Fence”, the Saudi Peace Plan.  Note in the text above, Assyria (Syria and Iran) is joining them but Libya, Iraq and Egypt are strangely absent.  The Ishmaelites are in Saudi Arabia and the Philistia is in the Palestinian territories of Gaza and the Shomron (West Bank).  Tyre is the ancestor of Lebanon and the descendants of Esau and Lot (Edom, Amalek, Moab, and Ammon) in the present countries of Syria and Jordan.  All are represented in the geo-politics that is riveting the nations of the world today. 

 

The holiday of Purim with its festive atmosphere combines raucous shouting and noise making plus stomping the name of Haman written on the souls of their shoes while the name of Haman is mentioned in the Story of Esther.  This they do in blotting out the name and memory of Amalek. 

 

Yet it is a vivid reminder when the Hebrews were crossing the Sinai peninsula about 1450 BCE when they met a people who throughout all generations would hate them and do anything to secure their destruction.  That their first king failed to obey the word of the Lord only meant that time and time again they would have to meet Amalek until the time of the end when the memory of Amalek will be destroyed forever. 

 

All those who seek to obliterate the Name of the Holy One of Israel and to obliterate literally or spiritually the chosen ones of Israel will have their destiny and names eradicated from memory of man. 

 

For those looking for the coming of the Lord, today is the day when our eyes should be open.  For those looking for a glorified restoration of the Adamic condition of man must also be willing to look up vertically and witness the finger of the Almighty One who is mixing up the nations of the world and bring them kicking and screaming into the final culmination of the Great Controversy between Christ and Satan.  Did not the Psalmist proclaim,

 

Psalms 2:4-9 – “He who sits in the heavens shall laugh; the Lord shall hold them in derision.  Then He shall speak to them in His wrath, and distress them in His deep displeasure:  ‘Yet I have set My King on My holy hill of Zion.

 

I will declare the degree:  The Lord has said to Me, ‘You are My Son, today I have begotten You.  Ask of Me, and I will give You the nations for Your inheritance, and the ends of the earth for Your possession.   You shall break them with a rod of iron; You shall dash them to pieces like a potter’s vessel.’”

 

It was Jesus who proclaimed, “Watch and be ready” for those who awaited His return. Never since the prophets of old spoke to the Nations of Israel and Judah has the alignment of nations of the world been so accurately resurrected to fulfill the ancient prophecies that were left unfulfilled.  This is why BibleSearchers have a firm belief that the Models on the Restoration of God’s People and the prophecies of the time of the end should be inclusive rather than be exclusive.  God’s Plan of Salvation was a progressive revelation of the Almighty and one that will not be fully revealed or understood until the coming of the Lord.

 

All the prophecies given to all of God’s chosen ones, from Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, the Prophets of the Tanakh (Old Testament) plus the Revelator of the B’rit Hadashah (New Testament) will be fulfilled and compressed into the final events of this era before the coming of the Moshiach (Messiah).  From every appearance the Lord of hosts will revisit every mini-drama of redemption shown to the children of Israel and every prophecy ever uttered in the Holy Script.  At the culmination of the Grand Finale of the Drama of the Ages, Yahshua will re-proclaim as was proclaimed upon the crucifixion stake, “It is finished.” 

 

In the Footsteps of the Master - "Here am I! Send me!”

 

Isaiah 6:8 – “Here am I! Send me!”

 

The prophet Isaiah while in prayer and meditation was taken in vision and saw the Lord in Majesty sitting on the Throne of God.   As Isaiah sat in rapture and awe watching the seraphims saying, “Holy, Holy, Holy, he heard the voice of the Lord say, “Whom shall I send and who will go for Us?” 

 

God was not speaking to Isaiah.  He was speaking for anyone.  Isaiah just happened to be listening.  Anyone in Israel could have answered but no one was listening.  Would the Lord of hosts not be delighted if a whole nation responded?  Yet there was one.

 

Many of us think that God investigates, selects and chooses when He calls or appoints a servant for Him.  Yet all God asks, “Are you listening? Will you respond?”  Moses was a royal outcast hunted for murder and he was ‘slow at speech”.  Joseph was a spoiled son of a rich man who had an ‘evil and malicious tongue’. David was a shepherd who became a mercenary for the Philistines with blood of many men on his hands.  Isaiah was a man of “unclean lips”.  Yet when the Lord called, they accepted. 

 

Jesus understood this ‘calling’ very well when in His parable of the “King preparing a Wedding Feast” he stated, “For many are called but few are chosen.” (Matthew 22:14)  Whether I hear, much less respond to God’s call depends not upon God calling but upon my spiritual ears and spiritual hearing.  Am I listening?  Am I in tune with God?  Is my relationship with God such that I can hear His call?  Am I willing to select the ‘Divine Frequency’ on my mental radio?  Am I willing to sort through all the noise and chatter in my life to hear the ‘still small voice” of God?

 

The fact that few are chosen either confirms that few are listening or few prove to want to be the ‘chosen one’.  It is best to reconsider the idea that God is going to come to you, plead with you or force you to join His cause.  Neither did He use His majesty and presence to overwhelm Isaiah’s senses and say, “You, Isaiah, Go!” Isaiah chose to be in the presence of the Lord, he heard the Lord speaking in the heavenly court and in complete freedom with no violation of his free will said, “Here am I! Send Me!” 

 

When Jesus in His quiet and irresistible manner said, “Follow Me”, He was speaking to men whose hearts were already open to Him.  He knew their hearts.  He read their minds.  Did He not say to Nathaniel that He knew already what was in His heart when He said, “Behold an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!” (John 1:47) 

 

How does God call us!  So many things are demanding our attention.  Our minds are deluged with news reports, emails, cell phone calls, appointments, computer data churning at us and the nightly barrage of sit-coms.  Where can we hear the ‘still small voice of God’ in all this clutter?  Do you tune in to the “Divine Frequency” and listen? 

 

The calling of God is an expression of the nature of the One who is divine.  Yet this is not our nature.  Yet we can only recognize the call of God if we already are in tune with that divine nature.  God in His providential will moves the circumstances of our lives so we can be in touch with Him.  The fact that He wants to live within our hearts suggests that our heart is the ‘receiver’ of the ‘Divine Frequency” and that God helps us to listen to Him calling.  He does all the work, we only have to listen and respond. 

 

What do you do as you drive off to work every day?  Is your mind full of anxiety over the events that you feel are ordained for you to bear or are you meditating and listening to God?  If you dwell on your own self, your traits and qualities, you will never be able to reach out and touch Someone.  It is the weaving of God’s voice throughout our lives that gives us that mystical feel that we are being led.  Yet do we notice?  It is this intimate relationship with God that defines our purpose in life and also our calling.  When God brings us into a right relationship with Him we know that God lives within our hearts and penetrates our soul.  He doesn’t thunder from atop a mountain top, He calls within our souls. 

 

Yet most of us are so absorbed about ourselves and overwhelmed about all the chatter around us that in the chaos of our lives we cannot tune into or refuse to tune into God.  Yet when you hear the call of the Lord, your life will be profoundly changed. 

 

Robert Mock MD

robertmock@biblesearchers.com

www.BibleSearchers.com

 

The Ministry of BibleSearchers Reflection

BibleSearchers Reflections is a spiritual ministry of Robert D. Mock MD and the ‘BibleSearchers’ as we build ministries with all who are seeking the return of the Messiah or Moshiach of Israel.  We seek to speak with all the children of Abraham, whether Jew, Christian or Muslim.  The Restoration of Israel and Redemption of the Saints are all part of the message of the prophets.  We are but BibleSearchers searching for literal clues to that unfolding Drama of the Ages that is upon us at what we feel is the ‘time of the end’. 

 

We hope you will let us share our Biblical research ministry with you.  If what we are sharing is valuable to you and your life and you wish your friends, relatives or pastors to participate, you may give us their email addresses and we will invite them to join, BibleSearchers Reflections.