Satellite Photo of reputed outline of the Ark of Noah on Ararat

 

 

The BibleSearchers Reflections

Reflections on the Time of the End

By Robert Mock MD

robertmock@biblesearchers.com

www.BibleSearchers.com

 

Gleanings on Global News at the Time of the End

May-June, 2004 Issue

 

Topics

The Pathway to a One World Order

Israel and the Middle East

America and the World of Terror

A World Peace for a World Religion

Catastrophic Signs at the Time of the End

Knowledge shall be increased; Men shall run to and fro

 

 

From the preparation day of Passover, April 5, (14 Nissan) to the 56^th year celebration of the Nation of Israel (April 20, 2004 29 Nissan 5764), who won their independence on May 14, 1948, the tumultuous events in America and the Middle East give pause to BibleSearchers.  What is the intent of the Divine One who is arranging all the nations in preparation for the coming of the Moshiach (Messiah)?

 

What is now being called the declaration of war by Iran against America, Iraq War II, all the best intentions of the Bush administration to prepare for the transition of government to the Iraqi people on June 30, 2004 appear to be swept away in a tide of violence that is ever escalating.  Under the banner of Sheik Maqtada al-Sadr, who cloaks himself and his warriors with the mantle of the Mahdi, we must ask does he consider himself the future messiah after Mohammed, who would come to this earth at the end of the age?  It is this same Sheik Moqtada al-Sadr, who represents the Iranian cleric, Kadhem al-Husseini al-Haeri who in turn represents the Ayatollah Mohammed Bakir Khakim.  It is their intent to impose Islamic rule over the country of Iraq.  We now can see the region quickly exploding in a “Holy War” of epic proportions not anticipated by military strategists of the United States. 

 

Sheik Moqtada al-Sadr

 

By the end of April, the twin sieges at Falluja and Najaf had brought the worse crisis to the Bush administration since Saddam Hussein was ousted from power. In the interim, President Bush endorsed Ariel Sharon’s Gaza-settlement plan with the words that “the entire world should thank Ariel Sharon”.  This brought down universal condemnation from almost all the nations of this earth.  The Arab world is now boiling in hatred to both the United States and Israel.

 

The United States is quickly being engulfed in the same experience that Israel has faced for years.  Whether force or appeasement, the results will be the same.  The fate of George Bush Jr. and the United States seen as the ‘Great Satan’ and Israel seen as the ‘Little Satan’ will be intrinsically bound together in probably the worse diplomatic rift with the moderate Arab allies in decades.  The rise of hatred towards Bush and Sharon is paralleled with the astronomical rise in admiration for Osama ben Laden. 

If events were not unfolding rapidly enough, the al-Qaeda followers sent quick and forceful messages to their Islamic brethren, ‘separate you quickly from any ties and allegiances with the United States’.  This was followed by a report on April 15 from the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan that they thwarted an al-Qaeda attempt to detonate a large chemical bomb at a Jordanian Military intelligence center, capturing tons of chemical for additional attacks of a possible ‘chemical toxic cloud’ over the U.S. Embassy or the Jordanian prime minister’s office.

On April 21, a car bomb destroyed a security force building in the Saudi Capital and six days later the former headquarters for the United Nation’s Disengagement Observer Force in the diplomatic quarter of Damascus was attacked which set off the worse violence seen in Syria in twenty years.  This came in the midst of the delivery on April 16, of a psy-op tape by bin Laden that offered “a truce with the European countries that do not attack Muslim countries” and do not “interfere in their affairs.” 

Many will observe and suggest a progressive decline into world chaos as ‘wars and rumors of wars’ continue to unfold at the time of the end.  It also suggests that the Lord of hosts is laying out a pathway to a One World Order for all the nations of the earth to follow. 

 

The Pathway to a One World Order

 

The pathway to a One World Order is not only under construction but the mega-pieces are now being laid into place.  Watch very closely and what we are seeing is the rise of the Old Empires of the Bible who had a direct relationship with Israel now reestablishing themselves into the geo-politics of the world at the time of the end. 

 

With the Nation of Israel as the ‘radial axis of the world’ we look to the east of Israel and see the Oriental powers.  The most ancient powers of the orient were Babylon, the golden head of Nebuchadnezzar’s great image and Persia, the silver chest of the same image.   To the west we see the Occidental powers. First came Greece who controlled the world with her democratic ideals as the thighs of bronze and then the most fearful of all, Rome arose as the two legs of iron, the western leg as the Western Roman Empire centered in Rome with the eventual Holy Roman Empire.  The eastern leg arose as the Eastern Roman Empire centered in Constantinople with the eventual Byzantine Roman Empire.

 

How do the prophetic empires look today as they are now on the ascendant rise?  Let us look at some sweeping political changes on our geological landscape.  A long time bastion of prophetic understanding is that the Roman Empire will be resurrected in this latter age in the form of the European Union (EU) the geographic center of the ancient Holy (Western) Roman Empire.  Yet we must also watch closely for the Roman Empire has another iron leg: the Eastern Roman Empire in Constantinople, the land of the ancient Byzantine Empire, whose geographic center was in the land of the former non-Moslem Arab nation of Turkey.  Yet Turkey is now led by a new Moslem leader.  The military alliances with Israel are beginning to fray.  Will the new Moslem Turkey truly enter into a union with the EU, forge on their own or eventually merge with a pan-Arab League with their Islamic brethren on the eastern regions of the Roman Empire and the western reaches of the Islamic Ottoman Empire?  The legacy of Rome’s ancient brutal yet efficient administrative governance can be seen in both the EU and her shadow-type, the religious Holy Roman Empire with the Pope of the Roman Catholic Church.  This same Roman legacy can also be seen in the western (Occidental) leaning Turkey and the former Ottoman Empire that was a blend of her ancient shadow-type types, the Eastern Roman or Byzantine Empire and the Patriarchy of the Eastern Orthodox Church.

 

Let us now look at the ancient empire of Greece? Here the Hellenistic influence swept the then known world with the ideals of democracy.  Here we see the architectural influence of the Acropolis and the Parthenon which along with democracy was planted into the New World and the United States of America arose. If you want to see Hellenism and the architecture of Greece at her finest, don’t go to Athens, Greece but rather visit Washington D.C., the capital of the United States.  If you want to see a nation promoting the highest ideals of the Grecian empire and promoting (albeit forcing) democracy to the rest of the world, come to America!  The War on Terror is a Grecian war for democracy whereas the western Christian Church is not truly just a Roman Church but religio-synthesis of the Roman Catholic Church conquered by Grecian Hellenistic and democratic idealism. 

 

What about the ancient Oriental powers of Daniel? The nation of Iraq came to international prominence in the 80’s and the early 90’s under the rulership of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad, Iraq. A man of intense brutality with a megalomaniac image akin to Nebuchadnezzar of ancient Babylon, Saddam sought to gain world respect (fear) and notoriety by his cruelty to his own inhabitants and his attempt to topple the pro-western (occidental) Islamic states of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Saddam thought himself to be the reincarnation of the ancient Nebuchadnezzar including the restoration of the archeological beauties of ancient Babylon.  Yet, Saddam did not evoke the power and ideology of the Babylonian priesthood.  The priestly hierarchy of Babylon escaped to Pergamum, Turkey.  This was recognized as the “seat of Satan” to the author of Revelation (Revelation 2:13).  When the Second Red Seal of Revelation has run her course the third horse with the Black Seal will come from the northland and the land of the “seat of Satan” will raise her evil head and bring famine and destruction upon this earth.

 

Shiite Holy Mosque, Imam Ali mosque in Najaf

 

Saddam was brought to his knees with the Iraq War I in 2003 with the coalition forces of 91 nations of the world.  Yet, will Saddam Hussein rise again as ancient Nebuchadnezzar did after seven years of insanity?   Will we see Saddam or Saddam II (son?) rise and take control of a new Babylon?  Will Saddam be let out of prison or meet his death as the Nazi leaders did in the Nuremberg Trials after World War II?  Will a new strong man rise out of the east who will become a Pan-Arab Islamic ruler?  Will this new Babylon be one of the centers of the New World Order or the center of the New World Order?

 

What about the Persian Empire?  One prong of the rise of the ancient Persian Empire began in March 2004 and it quickly confronted the United States with a defacto declaration of war by Sheik Maqtada al-Sadr on April 4, 2004.  The Ayatollahs of Iran, who had just gained sweeping new powers by democratic elections, declared war on the forces of the United States in a combined insurgency of the Shiites and the Sunnis.  The power of the rebellion erupted from the powerful and virulent messages of Sheik Maqtada al-Sadr from the holy city of Najaf and the holiest of mosques, the Iman Ali mosque.  Reported to be hiding in the shrine of the Shia saint Iman Ali, al-Sadr is daring the United States to ‘come and get him’ and evoke a holy war against the Shiite people.  Watch carefully because the powers of alliances will quickly come and go and out of this shift one of the ancient recipients of the Oriental powers of the Persian Empire we will see the resurgency of world dominance of the Russian Federation under the now dominant leadership of Vladimir Putin.  The prophetic voices who believe that Russia is a western power are fading and the new prophetic conventional wisdom suggests that Russia will reclaim her oriental roots and reestablish her roots with Iran and Turkey.  Russia has long been recognized as an eastern power until her wooing for entrance into the NATO Alliance and the visible friendship between Bush and Putin.  Look at the architecture of Moscow with her eastern onion dome basilicas and recognize that the ancestral influence is Persia with the architecture of ancient Persapolis, not Greece or Rome.  What is the relationship of Russia with Gog-Magog in the future prophetic Gog-Magog War or the war of the King of the North and the role of the resurgence of Turkey and the Ottoman Empire?  This picture is also still unclear.  Yet this is a pathway we will surely follow.  

 

This prophetic map in part is now being unfolded with the “Quartet”, the EU, US, Russia and the United Nations.  With the EU reflected as the ancient Roman Empire, the US as the ancient Grecian Empire, Russia as the ancient Persian Empire, then what nation or national entity will the United Nations eventually evolve into the last superpower at the time of the end?  Will it be a resurgent Babylon or a powerful leader for the United Islamic States?

 

Once again the Lord of hosts laid out to the prophets of old a shadow-picture of the future world at the time of the end.  The patterns of life; biological, political, sociological and religious are ‘cyclic in time’ or like a wave pattern.  Capture a picture of the exile and restoration of the House of Judah and the soon to come restoration after a much longer exile of the House of Israel.  When the lost tribes of the House of Israel are restored and the “whole house of Israel” is reunited (Ezekiel 37:11) like the resurrection of the ‘dry bones of Ezekiel’ (Ezekiel 37), the stage will be set for all the nations of the world to accept or reject that the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is the God of the Universe.    

 

With these principles of the macro prophetic cycles, let us now look at the microscope and see how it was being portrayed in the last forty five days.  What we thought we saw may not always be what really is.

 

Farewell to the new Europe? – April 20, 2004

Washington Post - Among Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's many contributions to the conduct and character of American security policy was his introduction last year of the term "New Europe."  Unfortunately, Old Europe is poised to have the last laugh. The European Union is about to foist a draft constitution on all its New European members and Great Britain that will virtually ensure that, from now on, the French and Germans will be able, among other things, to enforce a single foreign and defense policy… American judges discovering to their surprise that international tribunals are second-guessing and in some cases overruling their decisions….After all, even without a constitution, the European Union has been hurting U.S. interests….And a new, autonomous European army is taking shape outside of NATO. Inevitably, it will compete for resources and otherwise serve to undermine the Atlantic Alliance. Bad as things may be at the moment, though, the vital interests of the United States will be even worse served by a constitution that authorizes the European Court of Justice to see to it that New Europe, Great Britain and all other member states will "actively and unreservedly support the Union's common foreign and security policy in a spirit of loyalty and mutual solidarity ... [and] ensure that their national policies conform to the positions of the Union."  (read entire article)

China and EU will have world’s biggest trade relationship, predicts Prodi – May 6, 2004

Euobserver/Brussels - The Commission Pres. Romano Prodi has predicted that China and the EU will have the biggest trade relationship in the world…This could signal a shift in geopolitical focus - a move to diversify away from the transatlantic partnership that has traditionally been seen as Europe’s most important trade relationship. During a visit to Brussels by Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, Mr. Prodi said that he "would bet that the EU-China trade relationship will be the single biggest in the world". EU-US ties currently top the world’s bilateral trade league and are worth 240 billion euro each year. (more)

Russia falls at the feet of Tsar Vladimir – May 8, 2004
Telegraph.UK - President Putin has been sworn in at an event more like a coronation than an inauguration. The presidential guard, replete with tall, royal-blue hats redolent of the Napoleonic wars, slow-marched across the spotless Kremlin square. Artillerymen in bottle-green uniforms fired an 18-gun salute across the sunny Moscow skies. In the gilt splendour of the Grand Kremlin Palace, where the tsars' throne once stood, the cream of Russia - politicians, businessmen and pop stars - clapped in time as the diminutive former KGB spy strode alone down the plush, red carpet. With pomp more befitting a coronation than a presidential inauguration, Vladimir Putin, plucked from anonymity five years by the ailing Boris Yeltsin, was sworn in for a second term yesterday.

 

Two months ago Mr. Putin won a new four-year mandate with more than 70 per cent of the vote. He now enjoys tsar-like powers. But while many Russians are hopeful that their president is leading their country back to greatness, others fear that the immense power he has amassed is beginning to go to his head. Mr. Putin has done much to stifle emerging democracy during his first four years. Yesterday's ceremony was proof, if it was needed, that he is now seeking to cast himself in the image of the great autocratic leaders of the past…

 

For the first time since the coronation of Tsar Nicholas II 108 years ago, horses were part of the event. Cavalrymen in the uniforms of the Semenov and Preobrazhensky regiments, which fought in 1812, made up the guard.  Meanwhile the old Soviet anthem - reintroduced by Mr. Putin with new words - was bashed out by a brass band.  Russian state television - the only media allowed access to the proceedings - panned between the ornate candelabras, the Russian double-headed eagle and the president's impassive face.

 

Mr. Putin rose to the occasion with a tub-thumping speech.  He said: "We are the heirs of 1,000 years of Russian history and the Motherland's outstanding daughters and sons, workers, warriors and creators. They've bequeathed us a huge and great country.

"This greatness should be reinforced by new deeds. Only then will future generations be proud of the pages we have written in the biography of our great country, Russia."  His words were greeted with huge applause. (Red the entire article on the rise of the new “Red” Russia)

 

Russia vows to punish Chechen rebels, Blast in stadium kills republic's pro-Moscow leader, and five others – May 10, 2004

Moscow (Globe and Mail) - Russian President Vladimir Putin vowed a tough crackdown on rebels in the volatile southern republic of Chechnya after his hand-picked regional president was assassinated yesterday during holiday celebrations in the capital of Grozny.  "There can be no doubt that retribution is unavoidable for those we are fighting. It will be unavoidable for terrorists," Mr. Putin said in a televised address. Chechen president Akhmad Kadyrov and at least five others were killed and more than 50 wounded when a bomb buried in the concrete of a soccer stadium went off yesterday during a Victory Day military parade.

The devastating blast killed the chairman of Chechnya's state council, injured the republic's Interior Minister and critically wounded General Valery Baranov, who heads Russia's military forces in Chechnya -- leaving a critical dearth of leadership in the region and delivering a serious blow to the Kremlin's claims that Chechnya is on the road to peace. (more)

 

As a former KGB spy, Russian President Vladimir Putin will not rest until the prestige and honor of Russia can regain its former glory and international respect (or fear).  Russia has a long history of alliances with the Islamic nations.  Originally it was with President Nasser of Egypt when he nationalized the Suez Canal in 1956.  Since the 1970s, Russia was a key ally of the Iraqi Baath party, one of Saddam’s main arms suppliers and Russia economic assistance to develop the vast oil reserves in Iraq.  Today the Russians are currently involved the Ayatollahs of Iran in the Iran Nuclear Project.  As part of the countries whose symbolic allegiance is ‘Red’ along with Islam and China, we see that the Oriental and the Middle East influences with the ‘motherland of Russia’ run long. 

 

Is the U.S Entering a New Cold War With Russia? – May 6, 2004

Washington (Fox News) - The tenor of Russian-American relations has gone from elation to guarded optimism, and most recently, to wariness and doubt that high expectations for democracy and friendship can ever be fulfilled, sources on both sides are suggesting. Several Russians and Americans, who were among the dozens of policy experts attending this year's World Russia Forum, sponsored in part by the Russia House in Washington, D.C., said they noticed a lack of the usual optimism that usually accompanies the annual event.

 

"We're fighting a kind of new Cold War," said Nikolai Zlobin of the Center for Defense Information. The two nations have shared many ongoing partnerships, from education to military endeavors over the last decade, but the relationship has foundered of late, observers have noted. Critics from each side have differed on whether Russia or the United States is responsible for the recent chill. On one hand, Americans are disappointed with what they say are dashed hopes for Russian democracy following the fall of the communist Soviet Union in 1991. Those upset by Russian policies have blamed rampant corruption and crime for the poor standard of living and shaky democratic process. They also cited Russian President Vladimir Putin’s recent crackdown on free speech and a consolidation of state power reminiscent of past authoritarian regimes…

 

Aleksander Grigoryev, an editor for Washington ProFile, a non-profit international wire service that pumps American news into the hands of Russian-speaking subscribers, said the misunderstanding between the two cultures is at an all-time high. He said a lethal combination of the war in Iraq, the Russian view of American foreign policy and culture, along with a state-run media that thrives on anti-U.S. bias, has led to a growing “hatred” for the American way of life among the Russian people. “Right now, state-run Russian media is a huge engine of anti-American propaganda,” said Grigoryev, who added that the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, which Russia did not support, took these feelings over the top. “This problem is extremely serious.”  "Iraq broke down relations completely," said Zlobin, adding that the Russian people turned quickly on Americans when the United States led a coalition to invade Iraq despite its failure to get a U.N. resolution, which Russia opposed. "It's become a state policy to hate Americans." (see full article)

 

One of the pleasures of my life is to talk with my patients about their lives. Many are involved in the oil industry and travel the world for the biggest of international corporations.  Today, the drill bit industry is virtually incapable of keeping up with demand of the oil drilling industry, not because oil drilling is so hot, but because they cannot get industrial grade steel.  The Chinese have locked in all steel production for the next year or two due to the ‘torrid’ economy that has been booming there.  Also the building boom in America is about to come to a screeching halt because our house building is dependent upon the imports of concrete from China with do not exist. 

 

The goodness of times has also given a nation a sense of euphoria.  To the leaders of China with increased international pride they are beginning to flex their international wings and to reclaim a people that they call their own, the island of Taiwan.  Who is there to stop them?  The rest of the world is stumbling and retreating over the threats of international terrorism. Out of this euphoria the desire for a Greater Communist China with luring Taiwan back into the Chinese fold is becoming more intense. 

 

BibleSearchers were watching carefully over 2002-2003 as the war rhetoric of China was heating while America was preparing to invade the country of Iraq.  During this time, China was getting restless and making moves to launch an attack against the island of Taiwan.  With America’s military might absorbed in moving troops to the Middle East, it appeared that the flames of war might hit China and Taiwan first.  That is until the finger of the Lord became involved and sent an ‘act of God’ against mainland China.  Suddenly a little known virus called SARS exploded into an epidemic and the communist government imploded with its political hands full as the entire country underwent biological isolation.  The war rhetoric against Taiwan collapsed.

 

What is all the fuss? It was 1927-28, when Chiang Kai-shek and the Nationalistic party (Kuomintang or KMT) destroyed the power of the regional warlords and unified the land of China.  In 1945, after fifty years of colonial rule by Japan, China reclaimed Taiwan from the remains of Japan’s imperial collapse only to have the rising Communist Party in China put the mainland into a civil war. 

 

On February 28, 1947, the Chinese forces of Chiang Kai-shek invaded the island of Taiwan and to this day, this event has became etched in the Taiwanese minds as a ‘Holocaust’ like the Jewish people in Nazi Germany.  To the independent minded Taiwanese, this event cost thousands of lives and instituted forty years of repressive martial law by Chiang’s oppressive forces of the Kuomintang (Chinese Nationalistic Party).  They severed their relationship with China when Chiang Kai-shek, now a Christian nationalist fled to Taiwan when he was driven out of power in China.  Here in Taiwan, he established the KMT as the official government of Taiwan and a government in exile from China. 

 

The Chinese president, now turned Christian, was exploiting the islanders of Taiwan, and the Nationalistic party, the KMT were killing thousands who protested to the harsh dictatorial rule.  Chiang Kai-shek lost the will and adoration of the Taiwanese. After the death of Chiang Kai-shek, Taiwan soon ended its state of war with China in 1991 and infuriated the Chinese communistic leaders further when Taiwan held its first election in 1992 and elected its first president in 1996.  By the year 2000, the KMT lost its political power on the island after fifty (50) years of dictatorial rule.

 

What will happen now?  Will there be war and the whole Far East in flames as China invades Taiwan and possibly Japan and North Korea invades South Korea.  Will this evolve into a regional war or an international human inferno?  Does the Revelation picture of a 200 million man army moving towards the Euphrates River actually depict the armies of China (army of the east) moving towards the Middle East and Jerusalem?  Revelation 9:16-18) Does this give us a hint of an ascendant eastern empire moving west to conquer or a devastated land with billions of inhabitants looking for a new homeland as political, economic and now physical catastrophes hit their proud and mighty country?   Will this invading horde from the east bring the economic and physical collapse of the ‘harlot of Babylon?’

 

Alarm bells ringing on bankrupt China - U.S. too distracted to notice collision course with reality – May 15, 2004
WorldNewsDaily - Financial and political analysts have been predicting the demise of China's economic miracle for months now, but the latest policy shift by the Federal Reserve toward a more restrictive interest-rate posture has caused the alarm bells to ring from Hong Kong to Wall Street.  The rebound of the dollar that began in February has taken the pressure off other central banks, particularly the Bank of Japan, to sop up the fiat greenbacks printed by the Fed, thus placing added upward pressure on U.S. interest rates. By no accident, April was the worst month for emerging market debt in years.

More expensive dollar credit means the end of speculative booms in markets such as China, whose economy has grown to account for 10 percent of global trade. …Like Alan Greenspan at the Fed, China's communist bureaucrats have used excessive credit and investment to boost short-term economic activity, but at a dire cost in terms of future inflation…

For example, China's National Bureau of Statistics reports annualized growth of 9.7 percent for the first quarter of 2004 …China claims to have expanded its economy at a brisk pace; 9.1 percent growth for all of 2003 and a 9.7 percent annualized growth rate for first quarter of 2004. …but the bad news is that these levels cannot be maintained...

China's statistics agency reports that investments in fixed assets in the first quarter ran 43 percent ahead of the previous year's levels. … but observers in Hong Kong tell Insight that the actual rate of inflation in the major Chinese cities is running at 20 to 30 percent above annual rates….

"We expect a shock from Asia, but we do not know how, when and why," he said. Molano warns that the Chinese economy is badly overheated and that the rise in the inflation rate well into double digits is creating factors that will decelerate the pace of Chinese economic growth….

The torrid growth rates observed in China during the last several years have been a bonanza for investors and exporters,… but there are indications that the vast speculative boom in China is nearing an end….Commodities, currencies, H shares on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and even every equity bear's safe haven - gold - are tumbling, while the U.S. dollar has experienced a sudden rejuvenation. Meanwhile, there is growing evidence that the economic constraints felt by millions of Chinese…are causing social instability, the dark menace that has followed China's history.

Keith Bradsher of the New York Times describes how a flotilla of Chinese warships sailed slowly down the length of Victoria Harbor in early May "in a rare show of force that comes as democracy advocates here say they face growing intimidation by Beijing." … "Two guided-missile destroyers, four guided-missile frigates and two submarines displayed China's military strength for the first time since the territory was handed over by Britain in 1997…So far, the Bush administration has been too distracted by the Iraq mess to notice that the world's largest nation is on a collision course with the wall of financial reality. (see entire article)

 

Israel and the Middle East

 

Something is happening to Israel.  With the years of slavishly looking for partners in peace and walking carefully with the United States and especially with the George Bush administration, the Nation of Israel is coming of age.  By every appearance she is flexing her wings to go it alone.  In the last four years, the Labor Party not only lost her rite at the party of governance, but was later squeezed out as a coalition party with the governing Likud party and eventually they even lost their own party leader.  During this same time, the Settlement Movement and their Yesha Council stopped Arial Sharon in his tracks from unilaterally imposing a withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. The Tel Aviv crowd of left of center political Zionists and secular Israelites made a diminishing show of strength on the Gaza Initiative.

 

Faced with the inability to walk away from Gaza, the Sharon Government quickly went to Plan B and decided to close off the porous underground tunnel systems between Egypt and Gaza by widening the Philadelphi Route and creating anti-tunnel obstacles between the Rafah district in Egypt and the Rafah district in Gaza.

 

The Philadelphi Route is a four mile route from the border of Israel to the Mediterranean, which is only a military road which Israel controls.  It passes between hostile Palestinian settlements in Gaza and Egypt and was given to Israel in its peace agreement with Egypt and the Oslo Accords with the Palestinians.  Understand that the Oslo Accord had a premature death at the beginning of the Intifada at Rosh Hashanah, 2000 and recently Egypt abrogated its peace agreement with Israel. 

 

Underneath the Philadelphi Route dozens of underground tunnels have been made to smuggle weapons into the Palestinian hands from Egypt.  Both sides of the border, Egypt and Gaza, are vast settlements of Palestinians with the Philadelphi Route transecting down the middle.  The goal was to widen this road so that it could have greater security along a fortified zone about a ½ mile in width that can be defended from both sides.  One consideration in the future is for Israel to dig a fortified ditch down to sea level which would make land and tunneling passage impossible. 

 

Southern Gaza and the tunnel systems are controlled by Yasser Arafat and the suicide arm of Arafat’s Fatah, the al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades while Hamas and the Jihad Islami control the northern areas of Gaza Strip.  DEBKAfile’s counter-terror sources report that “Arafat in person receives a substantial rake-off on income from the contraband entering the Gaza Strip through these tunnels – whether arms, drugs, illegal entrants, or women – earning an important cash infusion for financing his campaign of terror.”

 

This informative article below outlines the strategic military mission of Israel to close the vast underground tunneling system that carried weapons to the Palestinians in the Gaza area and the terrorist units that man these tunnels and prey on the population at large. To date more than ninety tunnels have been destroyed with many Israeli and Palestinian lives lost.  The strategic importance is critical to Israel is that that the ancient influence of Amalek with its genetic hatred for the Israel and its unceasing goal for the total annihilation of all Jews and Israelites in their desire to “drive all the Jews out to the sea” is at work today in that all political and military arms of the Palestinians are controlled by fundamental Islamic terrorist organizations. 

 

The ancient feud between the House of Isaac and the House of Ishmael appear to control the regional bloodbath between Israel and the Islamic nations while the ancient feud between the House of Jacob and the House of Esau connect the political divisions between Saudi Arabia or the land of Edom and Roman Europe which the ancient Jewish people saw to be Edomites.  We must not forget that the feud between the Palestinians and the Nation of Israel is a resurrection of the unresolved battles between the Philistines and the emerging United Kingdom of Israel under the leadership of King David. To understand the real political-religious issues erupting today in the Middle East we must be able to hear the ‘whisper’ and the ‘whistle’ of the Lord of hosts reminding his chosen people, ‘You did not obey my voice and resolve these issues in the days of your forefathers.  I will resurrect these issues again at the time of the end.  In the Day of the Lord, I will help you to resolve these divisions in the House of Abraham (Isaac vs Ishmael and Jacob vs. Esau) and because of your refusal to fully take control Gaza and the land of the Philistines that I gave you in the days of the judges and King David, the Oracles of the Lord of host, will take repossession of these lands.” (Zechariah 9)  The ancient feud between the Lord of hosts and the gentile nations will be at Armageddon. At that Day, Yahshua (Jesus), the Moshiach of Israel will return to honor His Father’s holy Name.

 

Israel Readies Military Solution for Rafah Terror and Tunnels – May 16, 2004

DEBKAfile Special Report - The gap between Israeli politics and security was never so strikingly articulated as Saturday night, May 15, after Israel lost 13 servicemen in action between Tuesday and Friday. While an estimated 100,000-150,000 (depending on who is asked) rallied in Tel Aviv in favor of quitting the Gaza Strip, a full IDF armored division supplemented by artillery battalions were making last preparations to go into the Gaza Strip to clean out the Palestinian terrorist strongholds daily harassing the Israeli-controlled Gaza-Israel-Egyptian border sector.

 

Click to enlarge Debka map

 

This border splits Rafah’s urban area down the middle between Palestinian and Egyptian controlled areas. The border itself is controlled by Israel under its peace agreement with Egypt and its 1993 Oslo Accords with the Palestinians. …Rather than pulling up stakes in the Gaza Strip, Israel forces were thus preparing to take back 18 percent of the territory that was turned over to Palestinian control in 1994. Yaalon and Mofaz, in their reports to the cabinet Sunday, May 16, pointed out that Egypt does very little to hamper illegal traffic through Palestinian tunnels. Failing IDF action, they warned, the smuggled weapons will be used against Israelis everywhere, whether or not Israel abandons the Gaza Strip. (read rest of informative article)

 

Holy Land Hell: Arafat takes pages out of Saddam's playbook - May 20, 2004

World Tribune - Yasser Arafat has turned his Western-financed security forces into tools of oppression that call to mind the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein. Arafat has taken a page from Saddam's book and instead of paying decent salaries, implicitly encourages security officers to rob, pillage, rape and even kills ordinary Palestinians who get in their way. New evidence of the methods and abuses of the Palestinian security agencies is presented in a new report by the Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group, perhaps the only Palestinian group that has actually monitored Palestinian human rights abuses. The report, "Intrafada, the Chaos of the Weapons," documents official Palestinian abuse of their own people and the transformation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip into a wasteland of violence. ..

One of Fatah's favored and most feared tactics is the accusation of collaboration with Israel, a charge that can carry a sentence of death without trial. The PA or the terror gangs often swoop in to detain torture and even kill a Palestinian accused of collaboration. No one bothers to investigate, even if Arafat orders a probe. Collaboration also provides an option to punish women. The accusation by a husband that his wife is a collaborator has a chilling affect on the family. Women who don't listen to their fathers have been accused of collaboration to ensure that they are killed. Fatah terrorists often rape and then kill women who refuse to marry them and later charge the victims with being collaborators…

Arafat operates more than 12 security and police agencies. They include the civilian police, civil defense, and national force, Preventive Security Apparatus, coastal police, civilian intelligence, military intelligence and the presidential guard. There are also secret intelligence and security cells that conduct operations so dirty that the PA doesn't want to be formally connected…

The rivalries between the security forces make them ineffective at best and dangerous at worst. The report cited an absence of a command structure in the dozen or more PA security agencies, including the police, Preventive Security Apparatus, intelligence services, coastal force and presidential guard. (serious and insightful article)

 

Sharon No Longer Bound by Pledge Not to Harm Arafat – April 23, 2004

Jerusalem (Reuters) - Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said on Friday he was no longer bound by a pledge he gave President Bush not to harm Palestinian President Yasser Arafat. "I said during in our first meeting about three years ago that I accepted his request not to harm Arafat physically," Sharon told Israel's Channel 2. "But I am released from this commitment. I release myself from this commitment regarding Arafat." Sharon said he told this to Bush last week during a meeting with him at the White House, where he received U.S. approval for his plan to unilaterally evacuate all settlements from the Gaza Strip and some in the West Bank. (More)

 

Arafat Fortifies HQ Fearing Israeli Invasion – May 6, 2004

RAMALLAH, West Bank (FoxNews) - Fearing Israel will seize him, Yasser Arafat fortified his West Bank headquarters with hundreds of concrete-filled barrels and wrecked cars Thursday, saying he's determined to go down fighting. Israel, which has repeatedly threatened the Palestinian leader, said it has no immediate plan to go after Arafat. One senior Israeli official said Arafat and his aides are being "hysterical" — although Prime Minister Ariel Sharon warned only last month he is no longer bound by a promise to the United States not to harm Arafat. Palestinian officials said the obstacles in the courtyard are meant to slow tanks and prevent helicopters from landing nearby, but he acknowledged that heaps of scrap metal would not hold back the Middle East's mightiest army for long. Israel has confined the 74-year-old Arafat to his Ramallah offices for more than two years. In September, Israel's Cabinet decided Arafat should be "removed" and has repeatedly threatened him since then, but never taken any action.

Arafat's aides would not say what spooked the Palestinian leader. (continue)

 

It is hard to understand the relationship between the United States and Israel.  It is not clear who need whom.  Ariel Sharon has been following lockstep in the footsteps of George Bush ever since the beginning of the War on Terror in October, 2001. On the other hand, the State Department of the United States with Colin Powell has been trying to keep Sharon and Israel corralled and hedged into the State Department’s vision of what they want and the “Quartet” wants in the Middle East.  The Nation of Israel to date has not grown spiritually to the place where they will, like the prophets of old, evoke an answer from their God, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, “What must we do as your chosen people?”  They are still controlled by secular Zionists but that day will come, when the House of Judah will call upon the Name of their Lord.

 

Even so, the strongest and the mightiest nation of the world has shown its timid feet.  The rhetoric of America is bellicose at times but when the time comes, it appears that America will sit back and let the Nation of Israel take out the nuclear facilities in Iran.  Why?  The little known secret is that the warriors of Israel are the most effective and fiercest warriors in the world.  Let us review text and commentary found in the series, Oracles of Zechariah 10 and its implication on why the United States Air Force has such immense respect for the IDF Air Force>

 

Zechariah 10:5 – “They shall be like mighty men, who tread down their enemies in the mire of the streets in the battle. They shall fight because the Lord is with them, and the riders on horses shall be put to shame.”

 

BibleSearchers, The Oracles of Zechariah – “Recent historical analysis on a logistic basis depict that the IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) have over and over been outnumbered, outgunned and fully surrounded by enemies when attacked with the intention of their adversaries to destroy and obliterate their whole country.  At the end of each conflict, Israel has been the decided victor with the possession of more land than prior, able to win conflicts with 1/10^th the armor of their opponents, maintained air superiority with fewer aircraft, and maintained an unprecedented kill-ratio. 

 

After the 1967 six-day war, the IAF (Israeli Air Force) had destroyed over 400 planes of the combined forces of Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Iraq.  In 1982, the IAF destroyed over 100 Syrian planes with no losses of their own. 

 

A military exercise, in the fall, 1999, between the United States Navy Sixth Fleet and IAF, Israeli Air Force, in the Negev showed the Israeli completely trouncing the U.S. Navy pilots, according to report on the Air Force Monthly.  This exercise involved engagements between IAF F-16’s and US Navy F-14 and F-18’s.  According to the sources, the exercise ended in a score of 40:1 in favor of the IAF pilots.  According to the report, IAF pilots downed 220 U.S. aircraft to a loss of only 20 of its own.  It was stated that the report was not published to ‘save the reputation of the US Navy pilots.”  Yes, the American horse riders (pilots) were put to shame.”

 

Israel urged to attack Iran nuke plant - Strategic report calls for second-strike capability – May 15, 2004
WorldNetDaily - A report submitted to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon calls for the Jewish state to plan pre-emptive strikes against Iran’s nuclear plant and nuclear second-strike capability as a deterrent against its hostile neighbors in the Middle East.

The report, "Israel's Strategic Future," says Israel must prevent its enemies from developing weapons of mass destruction through strikes against vital facilities.

Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin first reported Israel has already begun drawing up plans for a strike at Iran’s nuclear facilities that could come before the end of the summer. The report says Israel has been threatened by a biological or nuclear first-strike that seeks to exploit Israel's small space and high population density.

"To meet its ultimate deterrence objectives -- that is, to deter the most overwhelmingly destructive enemy first-strikes -- Israel must seek and achieve a visible second-strike capability to target approximately 15 enemy cities," the report says. "Ranges would be to cities in Libya and Iran, and recognizable nuclear bomb yields would be at a level sufficient to fully compromise the aggressor's viability as a functioning state. All enemy targets should be selected with the view that their destruction would promptly force the enemy to cease all nuclear/biological/chemical exchanges with Israel." The report also called on Israel to develop a multi-layered ballistic missile defense system.

 

Iran last month announced plans to begin building a heavy-water reactor that can produce weapons-grade plutonium; Israel began drawing up plans to demolish it – much as it destroyed an Iraqi nuclear facility more than a decade ago. While Tehran insists the facility is purely for research, the decision heightens concern about Iran's ability to produce nuclear aims. The 40-megawatt reactor could produce enough plutonium for a nuclear weapon each year, according to sources. While construction is set to begin in June, Iran already had previously announced plans to build such a reactor last year to the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency. The reactor site is at Arak, next to an already built heavy-water production plant. It is to replace a reactor using non-weapons grade enriched uranium that the Iranians mothballed because they said it was outmoded and lacked fuel. Because enrichment can be used both to generate power and make nuclear warheads, Iran has said it has suspended all enrichment activities to prove its peaceful intentions. It also cannot buy enriched fuel on legal markets because of international suspicions about its intentions.

Observers wonder out loud why Iran, a nation with vast oil reserves, is so intent on producing nuclear power. (entire article)

 

Quietly, U.S. Prepared for Israeli Strike on Iran – MidEast News Online

 

Eastern Temple wall in danger of immediate collapse – May 19, 2004

 

The eastern wall of Jerusalem's Temple Mount is in danger of immediate collapse, which could cause a 'domino effect' and bring down other sections of ancient compound, the head of the Israel Antiquities Authority Shuka Dorfman said Tuesday….Dorfman's first public comments on the issue Tuesday followed a classified report issued by the Israel Antiquities Authority earlier this year, which stated that the 2,000- year-old wall was in danger of immediate collapse as a result of a February earthquake that rattled the region. The report says that the February 11 earthquake damaged the eastern wall of the Temple Mount to such an extent that sections of the wall are liable to cave in on the underground architectural support of the mount, known as Solomon's Stables…

The six-person team who conducted a survey last month, which included four Egyptian engineers and geologists and two architects from Jordan, was summoned to Jerusalem at the behest of the Jordanian government…The Jordanians, who have been charged with the ongoing repair of a bulge on the southern wall over the last year, have become increasingly involved in Temple Mount issues after nearly a decade when they were sidelined at the site by the Palestinian Authority….

Israeli archaeologists from the Antiquities Authority have not been carrying out routine supervision at the site for more than three years, despite the reopening of the ancient compound to non-Muslims last year, due to concern over renewed Palestinian violence at the site…                                                                                                    

At the Knesset meeting Tuesday, committee head Yuri Shtern (National Union) called on the prime minister to have an authorized Israeli team carry out the needed repair work at the mount's eastern wall, as opposed to the foreign team at work on the southern wall. (read entire article)

 

Islamic website shows beheading of American , Philadelphia man forced to read statement, body found on Iraqi overpass last weekend – May 11, 2004
WorldNet Daily  - An Islamic website has posted a video of an American man being beheaded by al-Qaida-affiliated terrorists, apparently in revenge for abuse of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. forces. The man, dressed in an orange jumpsuit, identifies himself on the video as Nick Berg, 26, a U.S. contractor whose body was found on a highway overpass in Baghdad on Saturday, the Associated Press reported. "My name is Nick Berg, my father's name is Michael, my mother's name is Susan," the man said on the video. "I have a brother and sister, David and Sarah. I live in ... Philadelphia."

 

Standing behind the man are five terrorists wearing black ski masks. The men read a statement before using a large knife to decapitate Berg. As they killed him, they shouted, "Allahu Akbar!" or "God is great." The terrorists then held the head out to be seen by the camera. "For the mothers and wives of American soldiers, we tell you that we offered the U.S. administration to exchange this hostage with some of the detainees in Abu Ghraib [prison] and they refused. So we tell you that the dignity of the Muslim men and women in Abu Ghraib and others is not redeemed except by blood and souls. You will not receive anything from us but coffins after coffins ... slaughtered in this way."

 

Reuters reports the statement also included: "Nation of Islam, is there any excuse left to sit idly by? And how can free Muslims sleep soundly as they see Islam being slaughtered, honor bleeding, photographs of shame and reports of Satanic degradation of the people of Islam, men and women, in Abu Ghraib prison?"

 

The video – shown on the Muntada al-Ansar Islamist website, which known as a clearinghouse for Muslim extremists – had the title "Abu Musab al-Zarqawi shown slaughtering an American." It was unclear whether al-Zarqawi, a lieutenant of Osama bin Laden, was shown in the video, or was claiming responsibility for ordering the execution, the news service reported. (more)

 

The Murder of Nick Berg, trying to make sense of the savagery – May 16, 2004

By Rabbi Baruch (Aish) - Are there any words to describe the diabolical evil of Islamic terrorists beheading Nick Berg?

Can one possibly fathom the savage barbarism of slaughtering a human being at the neck like an animal? Can one comprehend humans acting like monstrous beasts, holding the severed head aloft as if it were a trophy?  Or the way they proudly posted the videotape online for the entire world to see?  And even more, all the while claiming to act in the name of God.

Here is the first lesson of the murder of Nick Berg: Left to their own devices, people can come to justify anything. As the late Rabbi Yaakov Weinberg said: "Relative ethics are meaningless. They create an opportunity in which one does what he feels like doing, and then creates the justification for it... Hitler demonstrated that there is no action which a human being cannot justify, to himself and even to others." For those accustomed to a philosophy of "who is one person to say what's right for another?” the Islamic terrorists have a good argument. "We believe that God wants us to behead Americans on videotape. If you believe otherwise, it's one person's word against another."

But Judaism subscribes to the principle of absolute truth. And the Torah, for the person committed to thoughtful study, teaches the guidelines of true good and evil. (read the entire thoughtful and provoking article of a Jewish young man in a hostile world)

 

The words of President George W. Bush on May 12, 2004 best express the opinion of freedom loving people.

 

George W. Bush - “The actions of the terrorists who executed this man remind us the nature of a few people who want to stop the advance of democracy. Their intention is to shake our will. Yet by their action, they remind us of how desperately parts of the world need free societies…We will complete our mission, we will complete our mission.”

 

What the world needs though is not democracy but a realization that freedom comes from belief, acceptance and honor of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.  The will of the Eternal One recognizes that man truly has the right to rebel and in his own arrogance go on alone without the divine protection of the Almighty.  Remove the protective hand of the Eternal One and the powers of destruction will quickly engulf the entire earth.  Freedom loving people are not free unless the Lord of hosts is protecting and honoring their freedom. The powers of darkness are always about ready to suppress and destroy man’s freedom even if this suppression is done in the name of the Lord or the name of Allah.

 

As if the Nation of Israel does not have enough enemies, now some rabbis are calling for a retreat with any involvement with some evangelical organizations who have been the most vocal supporters of the Nation of Israel. One of the main tenants of the Torah and the God of Israel is the preservation of the freedom of the will and the integrity of the humanness of man created in the image of God.  For BibleSearchers, anyone, even those with a biblical text on their lips who try to force a person to accept an ideology against their own will is party to the agencies of power, greed and control.  The Lord of hosts needs those who can testify of our relationship with the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob or Yahshua His Son.  Once we have planted the seed of our testimony, the forces of the divine with the angelic hosts that do the watering, the nurturing and the harvesting. 

 

Rabbis criticize evangelical support for Israel – May 11, 2004

Jerusalem Post (AP) - Prominent Israeli rabbis are for the first time speaking out against Israel's profitable alliance with evangelical Christians in the United States, who have funneled tens of millions of dollars to the Jewish state. The rabbis fear the Christians' real intent is to convert Jews, their aides said Monday. Others are concerned about the evangelicals' support for Israel's extreme right wing, opposing any compromise with the Palestinians. The dispute touches on an increasingly sensitive issue in Israel: the country's dependence, both economically and politically, on conservative American Christians. Besides contributing tidy sums to projects in Israel, some evangelical Christians have lobbied in support of the Israeli government in Washington.

 

Troubling to Israelis is the fact that one evangelical group believes in a final, apocalyptic battle between good and evil in which Jesus returns and Jews either accept him or perish, a vision that causes obvious discomfort among Jews. "I'm worried as a Jew," said Mina Fenton, a Jerusalem city council member from an Orthodox Jewish party, who has led opposition to the evangelical groups. "I don't want my people to be assassinated, sacrificed, killed or slaughtered because of their beliefs."

 

Concern has been bubbling under the surface for some time. Anti-missionary activists have warned that though the evangelicals appear pro-Israel, they have their own religious agenda. Dovish politicians oppose the political leanings of the evangelicals, dictating a course of action to Israel that would, in the view of the doves, lead to unending conflict. However, leading rabbis have stayed in the background. An article in Monday's Haaretz newspaper brought their criticism into the public arena.

 

The local focus of their criticism has been the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, a Chicago-based group that has raised tens of millions of dollars from Christian supporters of Israel. Two former chief rabbis of Israel, Avraham Shapira and Mordechai Eliahu, recently approved a religious ruling urging followers not to accept money from the group. (more)

 

The missionary and anti-missionary rift between the Jews and Christians is a two-way street and has become a hot-political and religious topic today on both Jewish and Christian sides.  If your church or synagogue is not involved, it will be soon.  This has affected the Evangelical Christians, the Messianic communities, the Two House Congregations of the House of Joseph and the newly formed Nazarene congregation on the Christian spectrum and the Messianic Jews on the Judaism spectrum.  Many missionaries that have been sent to Israel have been converted to Judaism with the loss of their faith in Yahshua (Jesus).  The fact remains that the Lord of hosts will divide all people, religions, political parties, social organizations, and nationalistic organizations until the day comes when those that call upon the “Name of the Lord” will recognize the God of Israel or His son, Yahshua.  There will be One God, but two paths and the divine pathway to salvation will be the same.  Yet many today find that to call upon the “Name of the Lord” within Christian Messianics is such a divisive issue among the believers of the “Sacred Name Theology”, the ‘Jewish Roots’ and ‘speak only Hebrew’ communities that an atmosphere of ‘growing in grace of our love for our Adonai Yahshua haMoshiach (Lord Jesus the Messiah)’ is an atmosphere of immense tension rather than allowing faith to grow and be nurtured in a loving community of faith.   

 

What becomes strongly apparent in the ministry of Jesus was that His mission and the mission of His followers in Jerusalem were to search for the Lost Sheep of the House of Israel.  Understandably that they already were Torah believing, halachah observing, temple worshipping, kashrut (clean meats) observing Jews who believed in the messiahship of Yahshua ben Yosef (Jesus son of Joseph) as their Lord and Savior Jesus. 

 

The restoration of the House of Israel (Joseph or Ephraim) and the redemption of the House of Judah will become the catalyst for the redemption of all mankind that believe in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and willingly call upon the Name of the Lord.  Whether they call upon the Name of the Lord in Hebrew with its proper syntax and enunciations or call upon the Name of the Lord in one of the seventy languages of the Gentile nations is part of that mystery that only the Lord of hosts understands.  I can only believe the Lord will know the true intent of the heart. 

 

It was a Pharisaic Jew who never left his Jewish roots, yet became the Apostle to the Gentiles who did state the following in his Book to the Roman Church.  Let us listen to the Apostle Paul. 

 

Romans 11:25-27 - “I do not want you to be ignorant of this mystery, brothers, so that you may not be  conceited: Israel has experienced a hardening in part (partial blindness) until the full number of Gentiles has come in.  And so all Israel (House of Israel and the House of Judah) will be saved, as it is written; ‘The delivered will come from Zion; He will turn godlessness away from Jacob.  And this is my covenant with them when I take away their sins.’

There will come a day when we will recognize that the Lord of hosts has given a covenant through Torah for the Jewish people and a reNewed covenant through Yahshua (Jesus) for the Gentiles. Neither one of these pathways are complete until we unite the pathway of the Hebrew Nazarenes who were ‘Torah observant with Yahshua’ as the messiah for all people, Jew and Gentile.  Did the Apostle Paul also not write?

 

Romans 11:7-8 - “What then? What Israel sought so earnestly it did not obtain, but the elect did.  The others were hardened, as it is written: ‘God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes so that they could not see and ears so that they could not hear, to this very day.”

 

When orthodox Roman Christianity left her Jewish roots, led by the first Christian Roman emperor, Constantine the Great at the Council of Nicea in 325 CE, the Christian Church along with her Gentile following (including displaced Israelites) paved a pathway to become the eventual spiritual harlot of Revelation.  The call of the Great Awakening in the 1820’s to the 1840’s in the United States to ‘Come our of her My people’ was a call to all Christian denominations to return to the Jewish roots of the mother ecclesia of the Christians, the Hebrew Nazarene Ecclesia of Israel whose first leader was the brother of Jesus, James the Just.  The 1840’s was also a call to the Jewish people to return to their Jewish roots, leave their adopted homes and to reclaim their own homeland so that the final events, before the Messiah comes, could be fulfilled.

 

In the context of the covenant of the Hebrews (Jews) with the God of Abraham and the context of the reNewed covenant of the Nazarenes with Yahshua (Jesus) suggested that the kingdom of God lived, portrayed and displayed in the temple during the Passion week by Yahshua as the Son of God was also lived out in the followers of “The Way”. It was James the Just, the brother of Jesus, who did struggle with the merging of the Gentiles believers and the Jews into a family community of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. It was James the Just who brought the Nazarene Ecclesia to be the most powerful sect of Judaism up to the arrival of the Roman outside the gates of Jerusalem prior to 70 CE.

 

Will Christianity become divided? Yes!  Will modern day Judaism become divided?  Yes!  Will there someday be a remnant that will merge the two together?  The prophets of Israel and Judah and the prophet of the Nazarenes in Revelation all suggest that in the Moshiach (Messiah) they will unite with their God, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.  

 

In Sharon’s defeat, birth of new settler revolution?  - May 15, 2004

Haaretz – A powerful revolution appears to be emerging in the heart of Israel.  For ten and one-half years, the political center of Israel has sought a peace with those that claim to be their mortal enemies where ‘land for peace’ became the mantra for a future state for the Palestinians.  Yet within the Land a new revolution was emerging; their roots in a homeland that they believe in and will defend with their whole national consciousness and a return to the roots of their Hebraic faith.  Ariel Sharon who fathered and nurtured both revolutions, in recent years became convinced that the future and security of Israel lay in slavishly tying the future of Israel’s land with the Bush’s image of a new Middle East; free people living in a world of an emerging democracy.  Yet this was not in agreement with the words of their prophets and the words of their Torah. 

 

With the Bush Middle East faltering, it was Sharon that came running to the rescue to provide a land for the Palestinians by the total evacuation of all Israeli settlements in the Gaza Strip.  The children that he fathered turned to provide a devastating defeat when they reversed a pro-withdrawal poll a few weeks earlier to a final 59.5 percent rejection of the Gaza Plan by the Likud Party.   

 

Out of the ashes of the Gaza withdrawal plan, a new and powerful reality has set in.  The settlement movements in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem have become a major political force.  The dream of a Greater Israel is now taking on a religio-messianic fervor that is fueled by the (non-Haredi) modern Orthodox believers in Israel.  Will the Settlement Movement and their umbrella organization, Yesha Council, in alliance the marginal far-right Likud Jewish Leadership faction fuel a new drive to take over the Likud Party by a ‘revolution of beliefs’?  If so the world may be seeing revolutionary swing in Jewish thought from secular Zionism to religious Zionism. This might bring to their national leadership and the office of the Prime Minister, the Torah roots leader of the far-right Jewish Leadership faction of the Likud, Moshe Feiglin.  Their platform goals include a synagogue and a study hall for the Sanhedrin on the Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, and the Jewish Road Map , their ‘alternative peace plan’ in which “transfer (expulsion) is a just solution, and it is likely that sometime in the future it will be foisted upon us, whether we like it or not.”  Will there be a day when a future leader of Israel begins to consult the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob concerning the future of their national state? That day will come when Israel alone will reject democracy and become a theocratic nation under their God.   (Read entire article)

 

Oil, Oil, it’s all about oil.  The engines of success for all the nations of the earth are powered by the liquid gold that is imbedded beneath the sands of the Middle Eastern deserts.  To date, the Nation of Israel has virtually been an oil poor nation. That is until……

 

Oil Valued at $6 billion was discovered east of Kfar Sava – May 4, 2004

Israel (Haaretz) - There could be reservoirs of 980 million barrels of oil at the Meged-4 well east of Kfar Sava, exploration company Givot Olam said Tuesday in announcing the findings of geological studies. In September, the company announced that it had found traces of oil at the site, but thought that there were only 100 million barrels. The value of the find at today's prices is some 46 billion.

Givot said the analysis indicated reservoirs of oil at depths of 4,800 meters in rocks dating to the Lower Cretaceous Period (50 million years ago), and the oil-bearing layer could be 20 meters thick. According to the announcement, however, just 20 percent of the reserve is extricable. (read entire article about the potential of Israel becoming an oil exporting nation)

 

Some insiders in Israel have suggested that one of the real reasons for Ariel Sharon’s Gaza Initiative was to abandon Gaza as a token gesture for a Palestinian homeland in Gaza so Israel could lay increasing claim to the West Bank and the oil reserves that lay beneath this land which the Lord of hosts claims belongs to the tribe of Ephraim.   

 

Israeli Rally on Saturday Evokes '82, but Tables Have Turned – May 15, 2004

JERUSALEM, (New York Times) - In 1982, hundreds of thousands of Israelis turned out in Tel Aviv to demonstrate against the conduct of Israel's war in Lebanon by the defense minister at the time, Ariel Sharon. On Saturday night, leftists hope to produce a comparable throng, this time at least partly in support, if not of Mr. Sharon, now the prime minister, then of his goal: to pull out of the Gaza Strip, which Israelis increasingly see as a quagmire like Lebanon.

 

This may be evidence that history, and Mr. Sharon himself, can work in surprising ways. It is certainly a sign of new turbulence in Israeli politics, as once sharp Israeli classifications of doves and hawks blur under the pressure of a conflict with the Palestinians that has defied diplomatic or military solution…

 

In a referendum of its membership on May 2, Mr. Sharon's rightist Likud Party rejected his plan for "unilateral disengagement." Only a minority of Likud members cast ballots, and in the end the plan was beaten decisively, but with a total of only 60,000 votes - less than 1 percent of Israel's population. For the left, that vote has crystallized an argument that a tiny, pro-settler minority is subverting the majority's will. “This small minority has taken this decision, and solders are getting killed for it," said Galia Golan, a political scientist who is a leader of the Israeli group Peace Now and an organizer of the demonstration. "Everyone who's killed, everyone who falls, is a double tragedy, because there is simply no need to be there." 

 

Then there is Mr. Sharon, who planned the placement of the settlements in the Gaza Strip to help control the Palestinian population, which now numbers 1.3 million there. Gaza, which is 7 miles wide and 25 miles long, is bracketed against the Mediterranean by Israeli fences and patrols…His advisers say he has also recognized two political realities: that Israelis are demanding change after more than three years of conflict and stalemate, and that most of them do not want Gaza…

 

In 1982, Israelis poured into the Tel Aviv streets in protest after Lebanese Christian Phalangists, who were backed by Israel, massacred Palestinians in two Beirut refugee camps, Sabra and Shatila. A commission of inquiry, generated in part by the Tel Aviv demonstration, later found Mr. Sharon indirectly responsible, and he was forced to resign as defense minister.

Unprompted, a close adviser to Mr. Sharon drew a parallel on Friday between the political effects of Sabra and Shatila and the deaths of the soldiers this week. Calling them both accidents of history, he said, "These tragic accidents set in motion political pressure that wouldn't have been there." He predicted a huge crowd in Tel Aviv on Saturday.

(more)

 

Missile-protected El Al planes may be banned from U.S. airports – April 23, 2004

Israelinsider - The "Flight Guard" electronic counter-measure system to protect civilian aircraft against shoulder-fired surface to air missiles will be installed on El Al planes in June, as part of an Israel Civil Aviation Administration (ICAA) test…The U.S. Federal Aviation Authority (FAA), however, refuses to allow civilian planes to be equipped with the flare-based system due to the safety risks.

The ministry allocated 6 million shekels ($1.3 million) in September to the adaptation of the anti-missile system, currently employed on IAF military aircraft, to civilian planes. Additional funds have since been allocated to develop the program. The government decided to allocate the funds after two Strella anti-aircraft missiles were fired at and just missed an Arkia airliner taking off from Mombassa airport in Kenya in November 2002.

Costing between $750,000 and $1 million per unit, the Flight Guard system's radar-connected sensors respond automatically to an approaching heat-seeking missile, firing thermal decoys to divert the missile from the aircraft. (Continue)

 

America and the World of Terror

 

The highly symbolic sanctions were placed in mid May against the country of Syria because the Bush administration has been unsuccessful to bring the regime of President Bashar Assad into the support camp of the Iraq War.  International terrorist experts admit that the bid to crack down on the terrorists groups starts in Damascus where most of their headquarters are based.  In December, George Bush signed the Syria Accountability Act but refused any further censure.  Even though Bush has been highly critical of the Assad presidency in Syria, this legislation was felt to hold the reigns of multiple diplomatic options.  Even so the signing of the bill quietly done without any fanfare suggesting little enthusiasm for its effect. The U.S. trade between Syria is minimal at about $300 million a year. 

 

Yet with the same breath, the hunt for Saddam Hussein’s WMD has now opened a new leaf with the elusive and persistent revelations that most of the WMD were buried in the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon and now the chase to find Saddam’s WMD may now begin.

 

U.S. imposes sanctions on Syria – May 12, 2004

Washington (Haaretz) - President George W. Bush on Tuesday imposed a number of sanctions on Syria due to its continued support for terror organizations and failure to block the movement of anti-American militants from Syria into Iraq, according to two congressional offices briefed by the administration on the measures. (more)

 

 Where are Iraq's WMD? New intelligence points west via Syria - May 22, 2004

World Tribune - The U.S. intelligence community has new information that could shed light on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction arsenal…Over the last few months, the intelligence community has received new evidence that a sizable amount of Iraqi WMD systems, components and platforms were transferred to Syria in the weeks leading up to the U.S.-led war in Iraq in March 2003. The convoys were spotted by U.S. satellites in early 2003, but the contents of the WMD convoys from Iraq to Syria were not confirmed. Confirmation later came from Iraqi scientists and technicians questioned by a U.S. team that was searching for Saddam's conventional weapons. But all they knew was that the convoys were heading west to Syria.

But over the last few months, U.S. intelligence managed to track the Iraqi WMD convoy to Lebanon's Bekaa Valley. Through the use of satellites, electronic monitoring and human intelligence, the intelligence community has determined that much, if not all, of Iraq's biological and chemical weapons assets are being protected by Syria, with Iranian help, in the Bekaa Valley…The Syrians received word from Saddam Hussein in late 2002 that the Iraqi WMD would be arriving and Syrian army engineering units began digging huge trenches in the Bekaa Valley. Saddam paid more than $30 million in cash for Syria to build the pits, acquire the Iraqi WMD and conceal them.

At first, U.S. intelligence thought Iraqi WMD was stored in northern Syria. But in February 2003 a Syrian defector told U.S. intelligence that the WMD was buried in or around three Syrian Air Force installations. But intelligence sources said the Syrians kept dual-use nuclear components for themselves while transferring the more incriminating material to Lebanon. (read entire article)

 

Biblesearchers were alerted to the place where Saddam’s WMD were hidden back in January and February, 2004 in Biblesearcher Reflections.  This story continues to unfold and is central to the soon to be fulfilled prophecy of ‘The Oracle of Zechariah’ in Zechariah 9.  

 

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.  (read entire article)

 

Iran with its WMD and Shi'ite subterfuge is new Mideast bully  - May 25, 2004

ABU DHABI (World Tribune) - Kuwait has exchanged Iraq for Iran as the leading military threat to the Persian Gulf region. Kuwaiti officials said the sheikdom's leadership has become alarmed over what they term the increasing aggressiveness of Iran's military programs and efforts to stir religious unrest among Gulf Cooperation Council states. The officials said Iran has emerged as the most powerful state in the Gulf region following the U.S.-led war that toppled the Saddam Hussein in Iraq…Officials said Iran does not face any regional threats that would justify the acceleration of such programs.

Several GCC states have tried to reconcile with Iran and its emerging regional status. Kuwait and Saudi Arabia signed military and security cooperation agreements with Iran in 2001 and 2002. The United Arab Emirates has agreed to increase diplomatic and trade links in an effort to reduce tension connected to the Iranian capture of three Persian Gulf islands claimed by Abu Dhabi.

But both analysts and officials agreed that this has not stopped Iran's ambitions to dominate the Gulf region. They said that Iran has also used the sizable Shi'ite communities in several GCC countries to stir unrest…

"Iran's nuclear activities threaten the Gulf and the world," Patrick Clawson, deputy director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told the symposium. The biggest threat posed by Iran, officials said, is its ability to infiltrate Shi'ite communities in such countries as Bahrain, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia…Shi'ites constitute more than 40 percent of Kuwait's population.

In April, a representative of Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei and a leading Shi'ite group held a series of meetings to discuss a united Shi'ite leadership loyal to Teheran, officials said. The Shi'ite group was identified as the National Islamic Alliance, dubbed by Kuwaiti media as "the Kuwaiti Hizbullah." (more)

 

A land mine imbedded in the concrete of a soccer stadium killed Chechen president Akhmad Kadyrov, Russian President’s Vladimir Putin’s handpicked regional president.  This bomb was buried in concrete while the stadium was actually built.  According to private security sources, planting a bomb beneath one of the Olympic stadiums is one of the biggest risks facing the upcoming 2004 Olympics in Greece this summer. Until only in the past few weeks, none of the contractor entrances to the main stadiums had been secured.  Any of the massive stadium structures built in Greece to accommodate the international athletes and the millions of visitors are at risk for explosions with imbedded bombs.  These bombs cannot be detected by conventional bomb sweepers since their sensors are turned off only to be activated by a flick of a cellular handset.

 

With the nation of Greece failing to comprehend the serious nature of anti-terrorist security at the Olympics, this international event is at high risk for a terrorist attack, even while, according to the following news article, warnings abound in the face of official denial.  A lot of the security efforts will be made to protect the corporate sponsors and Olympic players but the general public will be the most risk.  Anything now, according to some security experts is too little, too late.

 

U.S. steps up security assistance to Greece before Olympics – May 13, 2004

ATHENS (World Tribune) – Greece has launched another major exercise to ensure security at the Olympic Games. The exercise, termed "Olympic Guardian-2," takes place on Thursday. The four-day exercise marks the eighth time that Greece's military and security forces will train and engage in drills in an effort to protect the Olympic Games…Officials said Olympic Guardian-2 was organized by the Olympic Games Security Division, which comprises a seven-national panel that includes Britain, France, Israel and the United States. The exercise will operate under a range of scenarios that will test the capabilities and response of Greece's military and security forces.

 

The scenario calls for a terrorist attack on the Olympic village or a nearby area. Greek authorities, with the help of its allies, will then be required to manage the crisis in a simulated Olympic Games environment. (more)

 

Officials play down Olympic Games threat – May 14, 2004
Athens, Greece (Sun-Sentinel) - ATHENS, Greece · Greek security officials said there are no terrorist groups or cells within the country's borders that pose a threat to the Olympic Games in August, despite a claim made by a Greek militant group Wednesday that it had dynamited a police station here last week to protest the coming influx of tourists, business executives and diplomats… Government officials also stated repeatedly that last week's attack was not tied to the Olympics, even though it occurred precisely 100 days before the opening ceremonies are scheduled to take place in Athens…George Voulgarakis, the Greek minister for public order and the country's top security official, called the bombing "an isolated incident, in no way connected to the Olympics." Asked how he could be sure, given that authorities have not arrested anyone or named any suspects, he said, "I have my sources. It was not connected."

On Thursday, the weekly newspaper To Pontiki reported that a group called Revolutionary Struggle took responsibility. The group's statement said it carried out the May 5 attack to show the "vulnerability" of Greece's security preparations. The group denounced Western visitors and businesses planning to attend the Olympics as "undesirable."  Even so, Greek authorities, other Western officials and security experts said they remained far less worried about such domestic groups than the possibility that Islamic radicals sympathetic to the al-Qaida terror network would try to slip into the country and stage an attack on the Games, scheduled for Aug. 13-29. (more)

America was aghast and Islam enraged when the revelation of sexual and physical abuse of Iraqi prisoners taken by covert cameras from the gangway of Tier 1 Bravo in Saddam Hussein’s former Abu Ghraid torture and execution prison was publicly aired over international TV and internet sites. Under the military command of Brigadier General Janis Karpinski and the 800^th Brigade out of Uniondale, New York, graphic photographs of Iraqi men in contorted poses now leave six soldiers and the general under court martial, sentencing and/or investigation.  According to public sources, interrogations at the military prison were under private mercenary contractors hired by the Pentagon in November and December, 2003. With the light of transparency, some segments of the interrogation and intelligence gathering community appear to by trying to bypass the Geneva Convention protocols by hiring non-military interrogators to do the types of interrogation banned by international law.  Within the investigation are two US contractors, CACI International Inc and the Titan Corporation for their potential violations of international law in the Abu Ghraib prison. 

 

The Wall Street Journal, May 14, 2004 picked up this story that ‘military intelligence officers and civilian interrogators were barking orders at the prison, and low-ranking military police were simply following them.”  The Journal goes on to suggest “that the Bush administration’s plan to win quick conviction may be wishful thinking.”  By all accounts future revelations of rape and murder now seen by the Senatorial and Congressional leaders will only escalate the anti-American sentiment sweeping the Islamic world. 

 

US military in torture scandal  - May 1, 2004

The Guardian – Graphic photographs showing the torture and sexual abuse of Iraqi prisoners in a US-run prison outside Baghdad emerged yesterday from a military inquiry which has left six soldiers facing a possible court martial and a general under investigation. The scandal has also brought to light the growing and largely unregulated role of private contractors in the interrogation of detainees. According to lawyers for some of the soldiers, they claimed to be acting in part under the instruction of mercenary interrogators hired by the Pentagon. (more)

 

Fake rape photos infuriate Arab world - Iraq prisoner abuse scandal compounded by dissemination of graphic porn images – May 9, 2004
WorldNetDaily.com - The effects of the international scandal over Iraqi prisoner abuse continue to be compounded in the Arab and Muslim worlds by fake images of rape, torture and sadomasochism taken from pornography sites and distributed on pro-Islamist websites – including even news sites – as first revealed in WorldNetDaily.  Though many of the pornographic images are being presented to Middle East news media and websites as actual photos of U.S. war crimes, at least one of the porn sites that propagated the images has already shut down after being exposed by WND.  

 

Well-known Iraqi novelist Buthaina Al-Nasiri told WND the pornographic photos are still circulating widely through the Arab world – causing confusion between genuine abuse and fantasy… She added: "These photos were on the net a long time ago, but there was not much rage over them. Perhaps [the] audience had not believed them either, or they were not taken seriously for one reason or another." The photos are now evoking a visceral reaction ever since genuine photos of abuse at Abu Ghraib prison have surfaced.

"You cannot imagine the kind of angry messages I receive every day from young Arab men vowing to avenge the Iraqi girls," Al-Nasiri told WND. "It is no use to argue with them that these are fake pictures, because we know, every one knows what is going on, or at least we have been expecting these kinds of crimes. Now the Arabs say: if they did this to the men, imagine what they should have done to the women detainees. They are right of course: there were reports about rapes going on there. So, in reality, these fake photos support the doubts." The novelist also underlined the cultural mores, which, she said, explain the particular type of impact that the genuine photos of abuse at Abu Ghraib are producing in the Arab world.  "Finally, I would like you to know that to Arabs, raping men is more, much more vile than raping girls," Al-Nasiri said, "In our social awareness, if a boy is raped his whole future is blackened. He is as good as dead, so you can imagine what this will do to grown-up men.”  (Read entire article)

 

U.S. calls for Arab retractions - Embassy confirms fake abuse images came from porn sites – May 9, 2004

WorldNetDaily.com - The day after a WorldNetDaily report revealed that photos circulating in the Middle East that depict GI's raping Iraqi women were fake and had originated from pornography sites, the U.S. Embassy in Cairo issued a statement calling on Arab news outlets to publish retractions. The embassy statement read, "We have done a thorough investigation of the origin of these photos and have conclusive evidence that they originated on a pornographic web site. They are clearly staged photos, done by actors, as the site itself states."

 

The Al Wafd newspaper published four photographs on the top of its front page that were alleged to show American soldiers sexually abusing female prisoners in Iraq. Al Osboa and Al Mussawer published two of the same photos. The U.S. Embassy called the publication of these pornographic photos, with headlines alleging the involvement of U.S. soldiers, a "fundamental violation of journalistic integrity," and stated that their publication needlessly inflamed an already heated atmosphere. "All Americans were appalled and shocked by the incidents of abuse that took place at Abu Ghraib prison," the statement read, "President Bush said he was disgusted by what took place there, and National Security Advisor Rice offered America's apologies to the Iraqi people. Just as the United States government itself undertook a thorough investigation of these incidents, so will our government bring those found guilty to justice. There is no excuse for the kind of abuse perpetrated by a small minority of people at Abu Ghraib. However, neither do such abuses justify exacerbating the situation by publishing fake photos and claims designed to raise the emotional temperature even further." (more)

 

Hackworth: Military brass in cover-up - Army 'mafia' more concerned about protecting general's image – May 11, 2004
WorldNetDaily - Ret. Col. David Hackworth, who helped expose the Iraqi prisoner abuse, believes military leaders bear responsibility for the widening scandal. "The evidence clearly shows that the Department of the Army mafia was more concerned about protecting the image of the brigade commanding general, Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, than holding her and her officers accountable for the terrible situation, which they allowed to fester for months," said Hackworth, one of the most decorated living U.S. soldiers and a WorldNetDaily columnist. (see entire article)

 

The Lord of hosts gave specific instructions to His people what was expected of them, “Administer true justice, show mercy and compassion to one another. Do not oppress the widow or the fatherless, the alien or the poor.  In your hearts do not think evil of each other.” (Zechariah 7:9-10)  It is not sufficient to suggest that the morality of our people will change when we are at war.  The Lord of hosts asks us to be moral people no matter what the political climate is in our lives. 

 

Supporting brutal regimes when they ‘feed’ our national interests is not what God calls ‘administering true justice’.  Taking down a brutal regime because America wants access to control their natural resources also does not constitute ‘administering true justice’. 

 

So today, the amoral behavior of a few soldiers and commanding officers depict not only a flagrant disregard for any international code of decency but a failure to recognize that the Lord of the universe demands an even higher accountability in our dealings with all mankind.  The blatant lack of integrity of a few has now officially stained the reputation of an entire nation.  “No man is an island”.  Thousands of additional deaths of U.S. soldiers may be caused by this thoughtless and reckless action.  

 

Every child of God not only seeks to preserve their reputation but the God they serve.  My professional conduct as a physician affects the reputation of all physicians, and it also affects the reputation of my extended family, my spiritual family, and my God.  The lives we live are a testimony of the God we serve.  If we are truly serious that this is the ‘time of the end’ then the amoral and demonic revelations we see escalating in the world around us only depict in our three dimensional world a more powerful struggle that is occurring in the spiritual realms. The Lord of hosts is in its final conflict with the dark forces of the universe.  Will things get better?  Don’t count on it.  We are on a one way street to Armageddon.  It may take a few years but with the juxtaposition of all the prophecies of the ancient prophets and the progressive catastrophic events that are occurring on our planet, there will soon be only two choices left on this planet; prayerfully serve and await the coming of the Messiah or live a life of power, greed and control and seek to destroy all moral goodness and righteousness of earth.

 

As our lives are becoming more transparent, one reality that is becoming more transparent, what you read and hear is not always the truth.  The inhuman behavior committed to many Islamic prisoners done in covert secrecy was revealed with the images of modern digital technology.  At the same time, actor and actresses were simulating similar activities by acting “GI Joes” and Islamic appearing actors and actresses.  Don’t ask the moderate Islamic citizens to try to tell the difference.  Their confidence in the United States is rapidly eroding or has been destroyed.  Will America become an oppressor like Babylon?  Prophecy appears to agree that the “Lamb like Beast” of Revelation will soon begin to “speak like a dragon”. (Revelation 13:11)

 

Bin Laden allegedly offers bounties for officials - Large gold rewards for deaths of Bremer, Annan and others – May 6, 2004

Cairo, Egypt (AP) - A statement attributed to Osama bin Laden offered rewards in gold Thursday for the killings of top U.S. and U.N. officials in Iraq.  The 20-minute recording, dated Thursday, appeared on two Web sites known for militant Islamic messages. The voice sounded like that of bin Laden, and the words were laden with Quranic verse, but a senior U.S. intelligence official told NBC News that the authenticity of the recording could not immediately be verified.

 

Bin Laden has never before been known to offer rewards for missions he has described as the religious duty of followers to carry out. “You know that America promised big rewards for those who kill mujahedeen,” or holy warriors, the transcript read. “We in the al-Qaida organization will guarantee, God willing, 10,000 grams of gold to whoever kills the occupier Bremer or the American chief commander or his deputy in Iraq.”  The reference was to L. Paul Bremer, the chief U.S. administrator in Iraq, and top military officials.  With gold selling Thursday on London exchanges for $387.60 an ounce, 10,000 grams — about 22 pounds — of gold was valued at $135,660. (entire article)

U.S. Military said to have lost Iraq – May 5, 2004

Washington (MENL) - The United States was deemed as unable to win the insurgency war in Iraq. A report by the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies asserted that the United States no longer has a military solution for Iraq. Authored by Anthony Cordesman, the report said any U.S. military solution would result in massive civilian casualties and collateral damage and fail to end the Shi'ite or Sunni insurgency.

 

"The U.S. can of course defeat the Iraqis," the report said. "However, any military solution is now likely to be the kind of 'victory' that creates a new firestorm over excessive force, civilian casualties, and collateral damage. At the same time, the U.S. cannot hope to kill or arrest all of the Sunni and foreign insurgents that exist now and is almost certain to create far more than it destroys."

The report discussed Iranian-backed cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, head of the Mahdi Army, and warned against any U.S. attempt to assassinate him. The killing of al-Sadr, the report said, would create a martyr that would push Shi'ites into an alliance with the Sunnis in a development that would ensure nationwide resistance. (see article)

Terrorism dropped 45% since 2001 – May 1, 2004
WorldNetDaily - The number of terrorist acts internationally has dropped 45 percent from the level in 2001, according to an annual report by the State Department. There were 346 attacks in 2001, compared to 198 in 2002 and 190 in 2003. The figure in 2003 represents the lowest annual total of international terrorist attacks since 1969, the State Department office said. Terrorist attacks are defined as attacks against civilians and military personnel who at the time of the incident were unarmed and/or not on duty. (more)

 

Threat of 'Dirty Bomb' Growing – May 9, 2004

Vienna (LA Times) Concerns are growing that Al Qaeda or a related group could detonate a "dirty bomb" that would spew radioactive fallout across an American or European city, according to intelligence analysts, diplomats and independent nuclear experts. Although safeguards protecting nuclear weapons and their components have improved, experts said the radioactive materials that wrap around conventional explosives to create a contaminating bomb remained available worldwide — and were often stored in non-secure locations. Detonating a dirty bomb would not cause the death and devastation wrought by a nuclear weapon, but officials and counter-terrorism experts predicted that it would result in some fatalities, radiation sickness, mass panic and enormous economic damage. (extensive article highly relevant to risks of human made catastrophes)

 

Al Qaida attacks Saudi Oil Plant – May 5, 2004
Abu Dhabi (World Tribune) – Al Qaida has expanded its insurgency campaign to target oil assets in Saudi Arabia. At least four Al Qaida gunmen infiltrated an oil refinery and petrochemical complex in the Saudi city of Yanbu and killed at least five Westerners. The attackers opened fire from M-16 and AK-47 assault rifles and also injured 20 others in the complex on Saturday morning. This was the first time Al Qaida targeted a Saudi energy facility. Western intelligence sources said that over the last six months Al Qaida was planning to attack the kingdom's oil facilities as part of an effort to endanger the royal family….

 

Three of the four attackers were employees at the refinery and petrochemical complex. "Workers at a petrochemical site used their passes to access the complex and carry out the attack,"… Two of the casualties in the Al Qaida attack were U.S. nationals. Two British nationals and an Australian, all of whom were identified as engineers, were also killed in the shooting…The Yanbu refinery, located 350 kilometers north of Jedda, is owned by ExxonMobil and the Saudi company SABIC. The kingdom-owned Saudi Aramco – responsible for Saudi oil production – issued a pledge to protect its facilities from attack.

 

The attackers, described as teenagers, were said to have stripped naked one of the Westerners in the refinery and tied him to a get-away vehicle. The man was dragged along the road for about three kilometers as police and security forces gave chase…(continue for entire article)

 

Americans Urged to Leave Saudi Arabia – May 3, 2004

Yanbu, Saudi Arabia (FoxNews) - The U.S. ambassador traveled to this Saudi oil-industry city Monday with a simple message for the gathered Americans: Go home. We cannot protect you. Huddled in a meeting room in a Holiday Inn still pocked with bullet holes after the latest in a string of attacks on Westerners killed two Americans and four others, many said they would heed his words.

 

The first to go were among the 90 foreign employees of ABB Lummus Global Inc., a Houston-based oil contractor whose offices were attacked Saturday by four gunmen trying to encourage Saudis to join the resistance against the U.S. occupation of Iraq. The Saudi interior minister said early Tuesday that the attack appeared to have been carried out by Al Qaeda.  Arriving in Kuwait City for a meeting of the Gulf Cooperation Council, Prince Nayef was asked whether Usama bin Laden's terrorist network was responsible. "Yes, but we need time to confirm this," he said. (continue)

 

U.S. Ambassador James Oberwetter’s simple message for Americans to leave Saudi Arabia comes in the face of progressively increased incursions of the al-Qaeda against foreign interests in Saudi.  Many oil executives that I know in the Houston area believe that al-Qaeda is intent on driving all Westerners out of the country.  They feel that the militants are seeking to cripple the Saudi oil industry which is active today in raising oil quotas to decrease the cost of oil on the international market wavering at $40-42 per barrel.  The advice of the U.S. Ambassador Oberwetter insiders say will lead to an exodus of about 35,000 Americans and many related companies, which include about 3,000 Americans in the oil industry and also about 3,000 in the Saudi defense industry.  This will leave the Saudi oil industry without many of its leading energy consultants.  

 

In spite of the international terrorists desire to destroy the Middle East oil industry and wreck havoc to the economy of the world, the major international oil industry is awash with record profits not from the instability of the crude oil market but from refinery manipulation.  The number of refineries in the United States have dropped from about 450 to only about 150 today.  Albeit the total refining capacity in the U.S. has remained about the same, most of the smaller refineries have been driven out of the market and an oil refining cartel is now in place. 

 

According to Koenig News Report, ChevronTexaco Corp posted record profits of $2.56 billion dollars in the first quarter of 2004, a 33 percent increase from a year ago.  At the same time, ExxonMobil Corp netted a gushing profit record of $5.4 billion in the same quarter. 

 

In the recent study by the Foundation for Taxpayers and Consumer Rights (FTCR) investigated the oil company profit report and gasoline prices over the last two years.  The conclusion: five companies, Shell, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, ChevronTexaco and British Petroleum refined over 90 percent of California’s gasoline.  As such they also control the majority of the state’s gas stations.  In the year 2003, an “average of 35 percent increase in gas prices increased the average industry profits nearly tenfold, a whopping 926 percent.

 

Al-Qaida financing plan with blue-chip securities: Bin Laden, Chinese Secret Intelligence Service said to launder drug cash through stock market – May 2, 2004
WorldNetDaily - Al-Qaida is financing its worldwide terror operations by investing in blue-chip Australian stocks with the assistance of Beijing's powerful Secret Intelligence Service (SIS). Citing information from Britain's MI6 and European intelligence services, Gordon Thomas, security correspondent for the London Sunday Express, writes that the bin Laden organization's investment strategy includes "leading technology and defense corporations in Australia, Singapore and other Pacific Rim countries." Billions, earned through illegal drug dealings with China's SIS, are being laundered into the stock market through banks in Australia, Japan, Germany and Ireland. (more)

 

FBI's Mueller: China Faces Al Qaeda Threat  – April 21, 2004

Homeland Security - China will soon be at high risk for terror attacks, like many nations of the world from operatives of al Qaeda.  Many of these Muslim separatist terrorists are known to be in the northwestern region of Xinjian.  The most notable of these groups is the Turkestand Islamic Movement which earlier trained alongside al Qaeda militants. (file this article as more information unfolds about the “Red Seal”)

 

New evidence of Saddam link to 9-11 - Czech records indicate Atta meeting with Iraqi official in Prague – May 7, 2004
Geostrategy-Direct (WorldNetDaily) - New evidence about a meeting in Prague between September 11 plot leader Mohamed Atta and Iraqi intelligence officer Ahmad Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani has been uncovered. Investigative journalist Edward J. Epstein has uncovered Czech government visa records indicating al-Ani was posted to the Iraqi embassy in Prague between March 1999 and April 21, 2001, and was involved in handling Iraqi agents. A search of the Iraq Embassy in Prague after the fall of Baghdad to coalition forces revealed al-Ani had scheduled a meeting for April 8, 2001, with a Hamburg student, according to an appointment calendar obtained by Czech intelligence. Al-Ani then was placed under surveillance as he met with a young Arab-speaking man in Prague April 8. After seeing Atta's photograph after Sept. 11, the Czech counterintelligence watcher identified the man he had seen meeting al-Ani as Atta. Al-Ani was expelled from Prague within two weeks…

 

According to Epstein, Spanish intelligence has uncovered information indicating Algerians Khaled Madani and Moussa Laouar supplied Atta and another al-Qaida member, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, with false passports. Epstein's information supports other journalists who have uncovered a connection between Iraq and al-Qaida, including Jayna Davis, author of "The Third Terrorist: The Middle Eastern Connection to the Oklahoma City Bombing." In her book, Davis suggests the September 11 attacks possibly could have been prevented if evidence of an Iraqi and al-Qaida link to the OKC bombing had been pursued. (more)

 

Bin Ladins to build world's tallest building?  Saudi contractors on short list for skyscraper project – May 9, 2004
WorldNetDaily - Osama bin Laden's family business is on the short list of contractors bidding to build the world's tallest skyscraper.

It may seem tragically ironic that the name most closely associated with the destruction of New York's World Trade Center may soon be associated with the construction of the world's tallest building…The skyscraper will be nearly half a mile and about one-third taller than the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur. It will include a hotel wing, apartments, offices, entertainment centers and restaurants. (continue)

 

A World Peace for a World Religion

 

Group Wants U.N. to Take Over in Iraq – May 11, 2004

Washington (ABC) - A national religious group representing 36 Protestant and Orthodox denominations said Tuesday that U.S. foreign policy is "dangerous" and urged President Bush to turn over authority in Iraq to the United Nations. The National Council of Churches, which has been highly critical of the war, acknowledged that Christians disagree on the issue, but said that giving control to the U.N. was the only way to create "lasting peace." "Many people see our policy as one based on protection of our country's economic interests narrowly defined, rather than on principles of human rights and justice that would serve our nation's interests," read the letter, which the council hopes will be read in churches nationwide. "We are convinced that current policy is dangerous for America and the world and will only lead to further violence."…

 

The 8.3 million-member denomination, which counts President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney as members, is the third-largest in the nation. "The cycle of violence in which the United States is engaged has created a context for the denigration of human dignity and gross violations of human rights of Iraqi prisoners of war," the bishops said in their resolution. They also demanded a greater U.N. role in rebuilding Iraq… Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, the public policy arm of the Reform Jewish movement, called the prisoner mistreatment "a disgrace to the international rule of law, the ideals for which our country stands and the values we are trying to inculcate in a new Iraq." The Reform movement is the largest branch of American Judaism, with about 920 synagogues, and its leaders were divided over the war. "Jewish law taught 3,000 years ago that in times of war no less than in times of peace, maintaining that dignity of all people, which flows from being created in God's image, is incumbent upon each of us," said Saperstein, who commended Bush for his apology for prisoner mistreatment. (more)

 

Passion of the Christ raises questions among Buddhist audiences – May 12, 2004

Bangkok, Thailand (AsiaNews/Ucan) – The Passion of the Christ has left viewers stunned and questioning the religious meaning of Christ’s violent death since the blockbuster film directed by Mel Gibson was released April 29th in the overwhelmingly Buddhist country. More than 90 percent of Thailand’s population is Buddhist. Very few have read the Bible. The long episodes of violence and beatings in the Passion caused not a few in the audience to scratch their heads.

 

Visit Thiepaitoon, a medical doctor, stated he had to turn away from the graphic scenes of Christ beaten by the Roman soldiers, “I have not read the Bible, but I could not imagine it happening this way.”  He said he wondered why such “long scenes of cruelty”, which could be “too much for people” were included in the film. Others, like Thanoong, a young lecturer at a business school, said he got “goose bumps” watching the film, but did not understand it, especially the ending. Lek, a student who had not been previously exposed to the story of Christ, said she felt something “changed” in her because of the film, but she also felt “depressed”…(finish article)

 

Film critic Kong Rithdee offered an insight into the audiences’ reaction. “Buddhists, as most citizens in this country are, carry a different baggage walking into the theater. People adhering to the religion founded on peace and meditation may wonder, judging from this film, why a more popular faith like Christianity had such a bloody, painful origin,” he wrote in “Bangkok Post” an English-language daily newspaper…Christians constitute less than 1 percent of Thailand’s 63 million people.

 

For a people whose fundamental beliefs are ones of pacifism and peace, most Christians tend to ignore as though they do no fit into our equation of ‘saints or sinners’.  The Hebrew message of Torah observation and the Christian/Nazarene message of identity with the Messiah have had minimal penetration these lands. Hebrews being a blend of Oriental and Occidental as they have lived in the cultural crossroads of the world will no doubt have a greater impact on the Oriental mind than the Westerner.  Yet in God’s own way, the Three Angel’s Message will penetrate these lands.

 

Revelation 14:6 – “Then I saw another angel flying in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach to those who dwell on the earth – to every nation, tribe, tongue, and people – saying with a loud voice, ‘Fear God and give glory to Him, for the hour of His judgment has come; and worship Him who made heaven and earth, the sea and the springs of water.’”

 

We may worry about the duty and responsibility to spread the message of salvation.  The Lord of hosts is assuring us that He will finish the work.  The final thrust of the ‘everlasting gospel’ will be done by the angelic hosts.

 

Abortion rights march draws 1.1 million in US: organizers – April 26, 2004
WASHINGTON (ChannelNewsAsia) - More than 1.1 million people from across the United States and dozens of other countries took part in what organizers said was the largest ever women's rights protest on abortion, aimed at influencing politicians ahead of the November 2 presidential vote.

Older women in their Sunday best mingled with college students in T-shirts in a massive demonstration sparked largely by what they see as President George W. Bush's efforts to chip away at a women's right to an abortion. Organizers put the turnout at 1,150,000, saying the count was done in designated grids on the National Mall, which are designed to hold a predetermined number of people, and verified by 2,500 volunteers at key entry points to the march area. Police did not issue any crowd estimate.

Abortion is one of the most volatile issues in US politics, but polls show a majority of Americans support the right for women to choose to terminate a pregnancy. A Gallup poll released Friday found 48 percent of respondents consider themselves "pro-choice," while 45 percent identify as "pro-life" – i.e. anti-abortion. Asked if current abortion laws should be made more strict, less strict, or left alone, only 37 percent wanted stricter laws. More people, or 40 percent, wanted the laws left unchanged while 20 percent thought they should be more liberal.

 

Take a close look at these statistics.  This appears to be the drawing line in many dividing issues that affect national and human interests.  In a democracy when the public is equally divided 50-50, who tips the equation to right or wrong? Does God’s vote count?  In an era of relativity and without reaching up to a Higher Morality than our own personal interests and feelings, humanity’s beacon for righteousness, equality and the sanctity of life will be built around the lowest common denominator. 

 

The Lord of hosts has made definite claims as to the sanctity of all human life. The question that continues to haunt this explosive issue is, when does human life begin?  Does life begin when the fertilized ovum splits into its first cellular division? 

 

Consider the fact that the 25^th day of December is claimed by orthodox Roman Christianity to be the birth of Jesus, yet Roman Gregorian calendar did not exist in 1^st century Judea.  The closest date in Judaism to the 25^th of December would have been the 25^th date of Kislev, the Jewish month equivalent to December.  This was also the first day of the eight day of Hanukkah called the Festival of Lights.  Read, according to the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, how the 25^th of Kislev was actually the conception of Jesus.  If Judea would have been a pro-choice nation, could Mary have snuffed out and aborted the incarnation of Yahshua, the Son of God? 

Kerry Takes Communion After Vatican Edict – April 25, 2004

Boston (AP) - Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry received communion from a Catholic priest Saturday, one day after a top Vatican cardinal said politicians who support abortion rights should be denied the Eucharist. Kerry took communion during the 6 p.m. mass at Boston's Paulist Center, where the candidate regularly worships. The church is close to the Beacon Hill home Kerry shares with his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry. The Paulist Center attracts Catholics uncomfortable with some of the Vatican's orthodox teachings or who otherwise feel alienated from the Roman Catholic Church.

 

The congregation includes gay couples, whose adopted children are baptized there, unlike in some other Boston parishes. The Archdiocese of Boston "does not hold to the practice of publicly refusing Communion to anyone," said archdiocese spokesman Rev. Christopher Coyne. He said it was up to the individual to decide whether to receive Communion. In the days before Kerry attended Easter Mass at the Paulist Center, staff members received threatening phone calls and e-mails from Catholics who believed the senator should be denied Communion. The chapel celebrates Mass and can conduct every sacrament except marriage.

 

The Paulist Center began a support group for divorced Catholics that has since been replicated in churches across the country. The center also hosts a group for bisexual, gay and lesbian Catholics, as well as a program for lapsed Catholics who are considering a return to the flock.

The center helped launch the Walk for Hunger, a now annual fund-raiser for soup kitchens across the region, and has held funeral Masses for homeless people who die without family or loved ones.

 

The prayers of every American approaching this November election, as we potentially face the final years of this earth’s history, should be, “Lord, show us the way.”  John Kerry, as the potential United States’ presidential candidate for the presidency is a wild-card on the morality issues facing our nation.  Anti-war does not mean pro-life, neither does it reflect the sanctity of the deep Hebraic roots in the justice and legal system of ‘equality and justice for all’.  Kerry was born and raised as an Irish Catholic who could not find his roots only to find that he is a full blooded Jew who does not know his roots.  It opens up the potential that John Kerry is on the learning curve and open to be an ‘anointed one’ and a ruler in defense of the Almighty or an ‘empty house’ that can be the future habitation of the ‘dark forces’.  It also leads us to soberly ponder the implications of this potential future ruler for this nation.

 

Catastrophic Signs at the Time of the End

Famine, Pestilence and Disease

Earth gets wetter to fight global warming – May 11, 2004

Australian News - The earth may be more resilient in the face of global warming than originally thought, according to scientists who believe the world is getting wetter as it warms, enhancing the biosphere's ability to soak up carbon dioxide. Research from Australian scientists released during the annual science meeting of the Co-operative Research Centre for Greenhouse Accounting, supports the notion that the earth is self-regulating. The centre's communique suggests that, contrary to popular perceptions, the earth is getting wetter - not necessarily through greater rainfall but through a reduction in evaporation caused by cloudier days that prompt more efficient photosynthesis. Research centre chief Chris Mitchell said such conditions could favour long-lived woody plants such as trees, which were capable of storing greater amounts of atmospheric carbon than shorter-lived plants such as grass. In Australia that trend could already be seen in the tropical north, where grasslands were being replaced by woodlands, although scientists had still to determine whether that was caused by warmer temperatures or by factors including changes in grazing and fire regimes.

 

Scientists expect that trend will continue. "The CRC's work suggests the global biosphere is more resilient than we first thought,"…Earlier this year a comprehensive study published in Nature found that climate change could drive up to 40 per cent of all land animals and plants into extinction within 50 years. (article)

 

The Biblesearchers have seriously looked at this phenomenon. In January we looked at the effects on this earth of the Resurgent Sun, in February, we analyzed the Earthquake Engine in the Core of the Earth. The most intense solar flares in recorded history last fall have affected the interior of the Earth.  The core of the earth is superheating due to the induction of increasing amounts of electrical energy within the core. The increasing core temperature of the this planet at the interior is radiating outward and racing upward through the crust, warming the oceans and melting the glacial and polar ice from below. As the melting glaciers evaporate and the seas become warmer, it will lead to greater humidity and moisture content in the atmosphere.  Our days will become cloudier and grayer. The cloudier days will decrease the evaporative rays of the Sun, and the planetary atmosphere will become wetter. The Lord of hosts did make this earth to be a self-regulating and living planet and called it ‘good’. 

 

In the future, as the internal temperature of the earth continues to rise, the volcanic forces beneath the crust of the earth will be awakened. A new era of planetary catastrophes is in our future.  The prophets of old have predicted it and our scientific knowledge is beginning to confirm it.  With increased volcanism, will be increased stresses on the tectonic plates in the crust of this earth.  Is it any wonder that ‘signs’ of the time of the end by the prophet of Revelation are centered on a series of ‘Great Earthquakes’?  Will the earth experience a pole shift?  No doubt!  Scientific evidence does show that one may be in the process at this very time.

 

Climate Change Out of the Blue – May 11, 2004

Wired News - Those wispy streams of vapor that follow jetliners across the sky may not be as innocuous as they appear. A new NASA study claims man-made cirrus clouds formed by commercial jet engine exhaust may be responsible for the increased surface temperatures detected in the United States between 1975 and 1994. Climate data shows there has been a 1 percent per decade increase in cirrus cloud cover over the United States, which the NASA paper says is likely due to commercial air traffic. Cirrus clouds, whether natural or artificial, play an important climatological role because they trap heat in the atmosphere by reflecting infrared radiation emitted from the Earth's surface. The study, which appeared in the April 15 issue of the Journal of Climate, estimates that cirrus clouds from jet engine condensation trails, or contrails, increased the temperature of the lower atmosphere by anywhere from 0.36 to 0.54 degrees Fahrenheit per decade. These findings tend to agree with National Weather Service data that shows temperatures at the surface and lower atmosphere rising by almost 0.5 degrees per decade between 1975 and 1994. (read entire article)

 

Drought Intensifies in Southeast, West – NOAA – April 4, 2004

WASHINGTON (Forests Org) Record dryness in the U.S. Southeast has caused drought conditions to intensify this week from Mississippi to Florida, government weather experts said on Thursday. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said unusually warm and dry weather was also seen this week in the U.S. West, prompting Idaho to declare drought emergencies in two counties. "For months, many people have been focused on the drought situation in the West and the Plains, but last month was the driest March in more than 100 years for the Southeast," said Douglas LeComte, NOAA's drought expert. NOAA said the Southeast drought extends from southeastern Mississippi eastward into southern Alabama and northwestern Florida and on into central and northeastern Georgia. This has caused near-record low stream flows and rapidly depleted soil moisture, LeComte said. NOAA does not predict any improvement in the Southeast until late in the summer. In the West, NOAA said Clark and Butte counties in Idaho were experiencing an "exceptional drought" -- the most severe type of drought. Drought also worsened this week in central Montana and Wyoming. "All states in the West are gearing up for a potentially early and long fire season as a result of the drought and early snowmelt combination," NOAA said in its weekly drought monitor. Forecasters predicted little relief for the West for the rest of the month.

 

France braces for new crisis as temperatures rise – April 27, 2004

PARIS (Reuters) - President Jacques Chirac on Tuesday urged French authorities to brace for another heat wave, as a leading doctor said hospitals were ill-prepared to cope with a repeat of last summer's searing heat. The 2003 heat wave killed 15,000 people, most of them elderly and suffering dehydration, as temperatures passed 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit). France's death toll far exceeded those of neighboring countries with similar weather.

 

Simmering NZ Crater Lake More Scary Than Mt. Doom – May 3, 2004

Whakapapa Village, New Zealand (Reuters) - New Zealand's Mount Ngauruhoe starred as fiery Mount Doom in Peter Jackson's epic film trilogy Lord of the Rings, but neighboring Mount Ruapehu is the volcano scientists fear most. A trio of active volcanoes in the center of New Zealand's North Island -- Ngauruhoe, Ruapehu and Tongariro -- form the southern tip of the "Rim of Fire," an arc of active volcanoes circling the Pacific Ocean.

 

Mount Ruapehu's last major eruption was in June 1996. The crater lake erupted into billowing clouds of ash and steam with little warning -- less than 30 minutes after ski lifts had closed and less than 10 minutes after skiers left the crater lake's lip.

Located over the vent of the volcano and partially surrounded by permanent snow and ice, the Ruapehu's crater lake erupts every one to three years and was emptied in major eruptions in 1945 and 1995. Both times bridges were destroyed.

 

Snow-capped Ruapehu is inside the Tongariro National Park, about 186 miles north of the capital, Wellington. Ruapehu, the North Island's highest peak, measures 9,173 feet. Its crater lake, with a temperature of about 86 degrees Fahrenheit despite its snow-capped rim, is close to the summit and contains about nine million cubic yards of water. When the level of the lake, now about 95 percent full, rises another 16 feet it may break free, releasing a fast-moving wave with the consistency of wet cement.

 

New Zealand straddles a zone where the Indian-Australian and Pacific tectonic plates meet, causing the upper part of the North Island to slide away from the lower part of the South Island at a rate of about 13 feet every century…As the Pacific plate slides underneath the Indian-Australian plate, a hot spot of volcanic and thermal activity is created in the central North Island. The plateau that dominates the island is home to a line of volcanoes and a deep crater now called Lake Taupo, a hole in the North Island as big as Singapore carved out by massive eruptions thousands of years ago. (read this fascinating article)

 

The interest in this story except for the majesty of nature always on the brink of a catastrophe is that this area is the most earthquake active area in the entire globe.  This area is called the KTT or the Kermadec Tonga Trench which is a pressure pointer towards the Caribbean Plate which in itself points to the continuous expansion joint in the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.  It is this area that Biblesearchers interested in natural catastrophic signs at the time of the end will keep a close watch.  It is the early warning area of seismo-tectonic activity for the entire planet earth.

 

Knowledge shall be increased; Men shall run to and fro

 

Expedition to search for Noah's Ark – April 26, 2004

Washington (AP) - An expedition is being planned for this summer to the upper reaches of Turkey's Mount Ararat where organizers hope to prove an object nestled amid the snow and ice is Noah's Ark.  A joint U.S.-Turkish team of 10 explorers plans to make the arduous trek up Turkey's tallest mountain, at 17,820 feet, from July 15 to August 15, subject to the approval of the Turkish government, said Daniel P. McGivern, president of Shamrock- The Trinity Corporation of Honolulu, Hawaii.  The goal: to enter what they believe to be a mammoth structure some 45 feet high, 75 feet wide and up to 450 feet long that was exposed in part by last summer's heat wave in Europe.

"We are not excavating it. We are not taking any artifacts. We're going to photograph it and, God willing, you're all going to see it," McGivern said.  Explorers have long searched for an ark on the high slopes of Mount Ararat, where the biblical account of the Great Flood places it.  In 1957, Turkish air force pilots spotted a boat-shaped formation in Agri province. The government did not pursue the sighting, however. The entire area, including Mount Ararat, was off limits to foreigners because of Soviet complaints that explorers were U.S. spies.

 

That ban was lifted in 1982, and since then teams of explorers have visited the area but have been unable to substantiate any claim of an ark.  McGivern and Ahmet Ali Arslan, a Turkish mountain climber who grew up in a town near Mount Ararat, say satellite photos have helped them pinpoint a more exact location. Arslan will be leading the expedition.  The biblical account in the Book of Genesis says that after the great deluge, the ark came to rest on the mountain with Noah's family and a cargo of male and female pairs of every kind of animal.  Geologists say even though there is evidence of a flood in Mesopotamia in Sumerian times, it is not possible for a ship to make landfall at an altitude as high as Mount Ararat.

Satellite photos spark Noah's Ark trek - Explorers believe ship spotted in images taken amid record heat – April 27, 2004
WorldNetDaily - A team of scientists, archaeologists and forensic experts plan to climb Turkey's Mt. Ararat this summer in quest of evidence that will prove they have discovered Noah's Ark. Satellite photos taken last year at the height of a record-warm summer, give Daniel P. McGivern confidence he has discovered the biblical icon. "These new photos unequivocally show a man made object," McGivern told reporters at the National Press Club in Washington. "I am convinced that the excavation of the object and the results of tests run on any collected samples will prove that it is Noah’s Ark," said McGivern, president of Shamrock - The Trinity Corporation of Honolulu, Hawaii.

 

Satellite Photo of reputed Ark outline on Ararat

 

McGivren said his field manager for the excavation will be Dr. Ahmet Ali Arslan, a native of Turkey who has traveled up Mount Ararat 50 times in 40 years. Arslan, who formerly worked in the Turkish prime minister's office, plans to discuss details of the excavation with the prime minister next week, according to Space.com. The U.S. Air Force took the first photographs of the Mt. Ararat site in 1949, Space.com said. The images allegedly revealed what seemed to be a structure covered by ice, but were held for year in a confidential file labeled "Ararat Anomaly."  The government released several of the images in 1997, but experts say they are inconclusive.

 

McGivern's expedition follows an attempt in 2002 by Porcher Taylor, a senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. Taylor used satellite imagery of the area, but photos taken in 2003 by DigitalGlobe’s Quick Bird satellite provide a unique view because last summer was Europe's hottest since 1500.  The journey up Ararat, 17,820 feet, is planned for July 15 to Aug. 15.  The team's goal is to enter the alleged structure, believed to be about 45 feet high, 75 feet wide and as long as 450 feet. "We are not excavating it. We are not taking any artifacts. We're going to photograph it and, God willing, you're all going to see it," McGivern told reporters.

 

As WorldNetDaily has previously reported, there are many who believe Noah's Ark has already been found on a site several kilometers from Mt. Ararat, and say it's faithful to the Bible account which states in Genesis 8:4 the ark rested "upon the mountains of Ararat," not mountain. The Turkish government has proclaimed it to be Noah's Ark, and a visitor's center is open there. (full article)

 

Related stories with World Net Daily:

CIA releases new 'Noah's Ark' documents

Noah's Ark? Or elaborate fraud?

Raiders of the lost Ark

In search of Noah's Ark

Pharaoh's chariots found in Red Sea?

Real-life raiders hunt Ark of the Covenant

Sunday, holy Sunday?

 

 

Intel Israel's breakthrough revolutionizes chip development – April 25, 2004
Israel/21C - Israeli researchers at Intel have achieved a breakthrough in chip development that will enable computers to operate at 10 times the current speed. In a development that promises to change the world of computing and telecommunications within five to 10 years, the electro-optic chips developed during the past year and a half at Intel's Jerusalem facility will replace the standard electronic chips used for communications between computer components. This will allow this communication to be conducted at the speed of light - 10 times the current speed. Intel, the world's largest chip maker, has been operating in Israel since 1974, and has 5,200 employees at its four main development centers in Jerusalem, Haifa, Kiryat Gat and Petah Tikva.

According to a report in Ha'aretz, the Israeli team for the first time succeeded in developing electro-optical chipsets based on silicon wafers capable of converting electronic signals to optic signals within the chip. They have the potential to be mass-produced at the same cost as standard electronic chips. Currently, the manufacturing cost of an optical chip which is not made from silicon runs into hundreds or even thousands of dollars. The ability to build a fast photonic (fiber optic) modulator from standard silicon could lead to very low-cost, high-bandwidth fiber optic connections among PCs, servers and other electronic devices, and eventually inside computers as well.

"Researchers split a beam of light into two separate beams as it passed through silicon, and then used a novel transistor-like device to hit one beam with an electric charge, inducing a `phase shift.' When the two beams of light are recombined, the phase shift induced between the two arms makes the light exiting the chip go on and off at over one gigahertz (one billion bits of data per second), 50 times faster than previously produced on silicon. This on and off pattern of light can be translated into the 1's and 0's needed to transmit data."

"Just as Superman's X-ray vision allows him to see through walls, if you had infrared vision you could see through silicon," said Mario Paniccia, director of silicon photonics research at Intel. "This makes it possible to route infrared light in silicon, which is the same wavelength typically used for optical communications. The way electrical charges move around in a transistor when voltage is applied can be used to change the behavior of light as it passes through these charges. This led us to explore manipulating the properties of light, such as phase and amplitude, to produce silicon-based optical devices." (more)

New Israeli electro-optic processor- fast as a super-computer – October 19, 2003

Israel/21 - A small Israel company called Lenslet has developed a revolutionary electro-optic processor which operates at the unprecedented speed of 8 tera (8,000 billion) calculation operations per second - one thousand times faster than any known Digital Signal Processor.

The new processor, called the EnLight, will be used for intelligence, for the analysis of intelligence, weather forecasting, airport security, and for multimedia, cellular and video compression purposes. Experts predict that its capabilities have the potential to change the face of the military, intelligence and homeland security industries.

Despite its amazing processing speed, the EnLight is no larger than a regular electronic card, but its capability is equal to a network of large and powerful super-computers. (continue)

 

Israeli team programs DNA nano-computer to identify and fight cancer cells – May 2, 2004
Israel/21 - In the 1960s science fiction film Fantastic Voyage, a vessel is shrunk by military researchers and dispatched to destroy a blood clot threatening the life of a key scientist. It sounded unbelievable then. But now, proving that science fact is quickly resembling science fiction, the world's smallest computer - which was developed last year by Israeli scientists - has been successfully programmed to fight cancer.

 

Members of the Weizmann Institute team clockwise from top left: Binyamin Gil, Prof Ehud Shapiro, Uri Ben-Dor, Yaakov Benenson and Rivka Adar.

The computer identifies changes in molecules that indicate the presence of certain cancers, diagnoses the type of cancer, and then produces a drug molecule to fight the cancer. Researchers from Israel's Weizmann Institute have developed the prototype biological computer that identifies and diagnoses cancerous cells and then releases medication to destroy them. The results of the team's research has been published in Nature and were presented last week by team leader Prof. Ehud Shapira at a Brussels symposium 'Life, a Nobel Story,' in which Nobel Laureates and others addressed the future of the life sciences…

The original version of the biomolecular computer (also created in a test tube), capable of performing simple mathematical calculations, was introduced by Shapiro and colleagues in November 2001. An improved system, which uses its input DNA molecule as its sole source of energy, was patented, reported in 2003, and listed in the 2004 Guinness Book of World Records as the smallest biological computing device (approximately a trillion of these devices can fit in a drop of water) (read on about this scientific breakthrough)

America moves another step to robotic remote-control warfighting

AP - A prototype of the Boeing Co.’s X-45 took off from the desert base, opened its bomb bay doors, dropped a 250-pound (114-kilogram) Small Smart Bomb and then landed.  Moments later the inert bomb struck within a few feet of the truck that it was aiming at.  The X-45A was preprogrammed with the target coordinates and used the satellite-based Global Positioning System to adjust its course.  Boeing praised the test as a “huge step forward for us. It shows the capability of an unmanned airplane to carry weapons.”   

 

The operator of the robotic plane was land based 80 miles and by remote control, gave the authorization signal to release the bomb at 35,000 feet while the plane was flying 442 mph overt he Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Range in China Lake, California. 

 

Plastic Debris Found in Oceans  - Bits of Refuse on Beaches and Ocean Floor – May 7, 2004
Washington Post - Plastic debris dumped in the ocean over decades is breaking into microscopic particles that are cropping up everywhere from beaches to deep ocean sediment, according to a study being published today by a group of British scientists...The researchers collected sediment from beaches and from estuarine and subtidal sediments around Plymouth, England. They then examined an additional 17 beaches and looked at plankton samples collected regularly since the 1960s off British shores. Plastic turned up in small fragments and granules, according to the researchers. Even "biodegradable" plastics leave behind plastic fragments, the scientists discovered, and some cleaning agents contain abrasive plastic bits. "We found plastic archived among the plankton to samples back to the 1960s, but with a significant increase in abundance over time," the authors wrote in today's issue of Science magazine…

 

Jean-Michel Cousteau, son of legendary sea explorer Jacques Cousteau, said his nonprofit Ocean Futures Society seeks to educate the public about the ramifications of tossing refuse into the ocean and other environmental issues. "Our standard of living is completely dependent on how we treat the environment," Cousteau said. "We have to look at nature as capital. You either manage it properly and you live off the interest from the capital. The minute you go beyond the interest to the capital you're heading toward bankruptcy." (more)

 

If BibleSearchers truly believe the vision of the future of a millennial kingdom where all the nations of the earth can learn how to live the life of Torah (walking with our Lord) then it will also be a time when ‘saved’ and the ‘redeemed’ will also participate in the restoration of this planet from the ravages of evil men intent on using power, greed and control to destroy all of God’s creation.  Let us applauded the work of the environmentalists and the conservationists who diligently are finding new technology to discover and reverse man’s catastrophic destruction of God’s creation and the environment in which we live.  We will need them in the future.  Did not the prophet Isaiah state:

 

Isaiah 2:2-4 – “Now it shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established on the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow to it. 

 

Many people shall come and say, “Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; He will teach us His ways (Torah), and we shall walk in His paths (Halachah).”  For out of Zion shall go forth the Law and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.  He shall judge between the nations, and rebuke many people; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.

 

O house of Jacob, come and let us walk in the light of the Lord.”

 

Return to May-June, BibleSearcher Reflections

 

FAIR USE NOTICE

This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted