May 2010 Meditation
                                       
                                                                                Final Conflict

The Revelation of John tells us much about this last great enemy of the seed of Abraham.  In chapter thirteen the Revelator describes a beast with seven heads and ten horns.  Attention is immediately drawn to one specific horn which had been wounded to death and miraculously restored to life.  The world followed after the whole beast as a result of the horn's spectacular recovery.  It was through one individual that the whole Antichrist system was worshiped.  This individual and his system swelled in power for three and a half years and then made an act of aggression against God by opening his mouth to blaspheme His name.  The prophetic word here exactly parallels the description of Daniel's seventieth week which is punctuated at mid-point by a breech of a covenant with Israel.  Apparently, the Antichrist--who will probably be the leader of the European Economic Community--having risen above all the other European leaders and even having squelched some of them, will bring Israel into league with his mega-government.  It is not unlikely that such an alliance would be sought considering Israel's economic leadership in many areas including diamonds, agriculture, and military equipment.  After a three-and-a-half-year period of prosperity, the world leader will become hungry for more and more acclaim. 

 

Spurred on by his religious assistant, called the false prophet in the Bible but known in the modern realm as a guru or spokesman for some New-Age-type super-ecumenical mega-conglomerate of world religions, he will proclaim himself to be God and desire to move his headquarters to the magnificent new temple which will have been reconstructed on the Temple Mount of Jerusalem.  This act will precipitate the next three-and-a-half year holocaust in which the terror of all previous persecutions and atrocities will be multiplied beyond measure.  Eventually, an evil spirit speaking through the mouth of this Antichrist world leader will call all the nations of the earth together in one great battle against none other than God Himself. (Revelation 16:16)  Since the battle is called together on Israeli soil (Revelation 16:17), we can assume only that his physical target will be the people of Israel who have refused to worship the beast as God.  Just as with every other enemy who has stood up to touch the people of God, God will fight against the Antichrist.  Yet this time, it will be Jesus who will physically appear to lay low his enemy, and cast him into the eternal flames of the lake of fire.

 

And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and he that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he doth judge and make war.  His eyes were as a flame of fire, and on his head were many crowns; and he had a name written, that no man knew, but he himself.  And he was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood:  and his name is called The Word of God.  And the armies which were in heaven followed him upon white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean.  And out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it he could smite the nations:  and he shall rule them with a rod of iron:  and he treadeth the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God.  And he hath on his vesture and on his thigh a name written, KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS.  And I saw an angel standing in the sun; and he cried with a loud voice, saying to all the fowls that fly in the midst of heaven, Come and gather yourselves together unto the supper of the great God; That ye may eat the flesh of kings, and the flesh of captains, and the flesh of mighty men, and the flesh of horses, and of them that sit on them, and the flesh of all men, both free and bond, both small and great.  And I saw the beast, and the kings of the earth, and their armies, gathered together to make war against him that sat on the horse, and against his army.  And the beast was taken, and with him the false prophet that wrought miracles before him, with which he deceived them that had received the mark of the beast, and them that worshipped his image.  These both were cast alive into a lake of fire burning with brimstone.  And the remnant were slain with the sword of him that sat upon the horse, which sword proceeded out of his mouth:  and all the fowls were filled with their flesh.    (Revelation 19:11-21)

 

Hopefully, the big picture of human history has begun to develop by now.  There are two forces at work in the affairs of man.  One is God; the other, Satan.  Satan hates God and all that God loves. Since God has established a special relationship with Israel and intends to use that nation to draw the rest of the world to Himself, Satan wants to destroy those peculiar people of the Abrahamic covenant.  As an added benefit, Satan knows that he can bring curses on anyone who will curse the sons of Israel; therefore, he drives every great world empire to hate the Jews.  By doing this, he not only attempts to hurt Israel, but also brings the gentiles under God's wrath.  In other words, the world is caught in a great cosmic battle and the key playing pieces on the field are the people, the land, and the nation of Israel.  This is why our whole world is engulfed in the spirit of Jihad and the trap of anti-Semitism.

 

The anti-Israel sentiment of the world can be readily illustrated in the way that the nations have attempted to take back the land that they granted to her.  The  1917 Balfour Declaration originally appointed all the land from the Mediterranean to the Euphrates to Israel.  This almost-forty-three-thousand-square-mile territory even included the oil-rich region of Iraq.  In 1922, the White Papers cut out seventy-six percent (more than thirty-two thousand square miles) and gave it to the Arabs as the territory of Transjordan.  When the United Nations took over the apportioning of the land in 1947, they cut the remaining ten thousand square miles into two parts, giving just a little more than half of it to the Jews and assigning the rest to the Arabs.  When Israel took portions of the territory back in the various wars and conflicts that haved marked her history from the moment of her birth, the nations of the world have almost universally aligned themselves against her and demanded that she return the land even though it was originally designated to be hers.

 

All the major world powers, especially “The Quartet” (the United States, the European Union,  Russia, and the United Nations), have grappled with the question of Israel since the rebirth of the Jewish state in the middle of the Muslim world.  In 1978 President Carter used the American presidential retreat to host thirteen days of talks with Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. The talks yielded the Camp David Accords, which in turn led to the Egyptian-Israeli Peace Treaty of 1979.  It was the first time Israel signed a treaty with any of its Arab neighbors.  In 1991, the Madrid Conference was convened by the in­ternational community to jump-start Israe­li-Palestinian peace talks after the Persian Gulf War.  Spain hosted the meeting, which was co-sponsored by the United States and the Soviet Union.  The three-day conference was the first time Israel negotiated directly with Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and the Pales­tinians over disputed lands which much of the international powers think should become a separate Palestinian state.  The Oslo Accords of 1993 marked the first direct agreement between the Israelis and Pales­tinians, creating the Palestinian Au­thority which, in turn, agreed to recognize Israel’s right to exist. The accords called for further talks on existing disputes, such as precise borders, the status of Jerusalem and the right of Palestinian refugees to return to Israeli land--all issues which are still unsettled.  In fact, much of the current political world is trying to force Israel to concede land to the Palestinians and recognize their independent state without acknowledging any of the provisions which were to favor Israel.  With the 1994 Israel-Jordan treaty, Jor­dan became the second Arab country to normalize relations with Israel.  In 1998, President Clinton hosted a summit with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Neta­nyahu and Palestinian leader Yasser Ara­fat at the Wye River Plantation in Maryland.  At this summit, they signed an agreement intended to clarify the responsibilities of the parties for transferring land from Israel to the Palestinians and improving security; however, the talks collapsed and the results fell far short of any hopes for resolving the issues.  At a second Camp David Summit in 2000, President Clinton sought to reach a final status agreement between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Arafat; however, the talks broke down as each side accused the other of not cooperating.  Rather than establishing peace, a new round of violence between Israelis and Palestinians broke out after the attempt.  A 2002 peace plan presented by Saudis called for Israel’s withdrawal from all occupied territories seized in the 1967 Six-Day War in return for secure borders and recogni­tion of Israel’s right to exist.  In his 2003 “road map” to peace in the Middle East, President Bush proposed a separate Palestinian state and called for Israel to dismantle settlements in Gaza and the West Bank and for the Palestinian Authority to develop democratic institutions and crack down on terrorism.  It could be said that the road map took the nations through a construction zone full of potholes in that none of the provisions are yet to materialize.  Beginning in 2005, Israel pulled out from the Gaza Strip after thirty-eight years of occupation.  The withdrawal from the area gave rise to the power of Hamas, a radical Islamic group which has waged border conflict with Israel.  President Bush convened another Mideast peace conference in Annapolis, Maryland, in 2007 with hopes of negotiating  a two-state peace deal by the time he left office.  Again, no workable solution was reached.  

 

It happens that we know of one of the next moves in this age-old contest.  It has to do with the nation of Russia and her attempt against Israel.  Ezekiel chapter thirty-eight describes the conflict in a play-by-play action report.  Gog of the land of Magog--the chief prince of Mesheck and Tubal--will align himself with Persia, Ethiopia, Libya, Gomer, Togarrmah, and many other people to attack a land brought back from the sword.  Bible scholars concur that this refers to Russia in alliance with Iran, Iraq, Moslem Africa, and Germany.  An interesting term is used in verse four where God says, "I will put hooks in your jaws."  I don't consider myself a great angler, but I do know one thing from the few fish I have managed to get on a line:  the hook is a means of bringing an unwilling subject to an undesired location!  God is declaring here that He will pull Russia against her will into a conflict in Israel.  We all know the unquenchable anti-Israel hostilities harbored by the Arab and Muslim nations of the Middle East and North Africa.  Even a casual follower of the current news is also aware of an increasing spirit of anti-Semitism and neo-Nazism in Germany, with nearly forty thousand members in the various extremist groups which are responsible for sixteen hundred acts of violence annually.  The political environment is ripe in Germany and the Middle East for an attack against Israel. 

 

Yet at the present Russia is showing no reason for an invasion into the covenant land.  The answer to how the present political situation and Bible prophecy coincide lies in the idea of the hook in Russia's jaw.  Is there anything happening in the world today that could possibly become a hook which could draw Russia into aggressive attack against Israel?  Perhaps it can be seen in Russia’s connection with Iran.  In the past few years, Russia--the world’s leading arms dealer--has increased its military shipments to Iran.  In fact, the value of the arms transfer agreements between Iran and Russia ballooned from three hundred million dollars between 1998 and 2001 to one and three-quarters billion dollars between 2002 and 2005.  It is suspected that many of these weapons eventually wound up the hands of radical groups such as the  Hezbollah and the Hamas.  Since 1992, Russia has sold Iran hundreds of major weapons systems, including tanks, air-to-air missiles, and combat aircraft.  They have also agreed to sell Iran a surface-to-air missile defense system along with air-defense missile systems to defend its soon-to-be-completed Russian-built nuclear reactor.  There are also plans to upgrade Tehran’s military with Russian anti-aircraft missiles which can intercept enemy aircraft from ninety to one hundred eighty miles away.  Iran is also building up its naval presence with Russian-made high-speed torpedoes capable of destroying large warships or submarines. 

These weapons are going to a nation whose leaders believe that it is their divine destiny to usher in the return of the Islamic Messiah by destroying Israel (the Small Satan) and the United States (the Great Satan).  Iran, which was still known by the biblical name of Persia well into the twentieth century, became a radical Islamic state with the fall of the pro-Western shah and the rise to power of Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979.  On April 1 of that year, he presented the world with the greatest April Fools’ joke of all time when he announced the establish­ment of the Islamic Republic of Iran and proclaimed that day to be the “first day of God’s government.”  He then established himself as the Grand Ayatollah and awarded himself the title of “Imam,” the highest religious rank in Shia Islam.  The events following that proclamation have had a lasting effect not only on Iran but on the entire Middle East and the world.  Khomeini’s rise to power was seen as the beginning of the messianic age for Islam which would culminate with the return of the Twelfth Imam who disappeared as a child in AD 941.  Shiites believe that this messianic figure, also called Mahdi or the Hidden Imam, will return and establish a one-world system and judge all non-Muslims.  Ayatollah Khomeini taught that Shiites must not passively await Mahdi’s return but should aggressively prepare the way--including the use of nuclear power as part of this preparation.  Although no one other than Allah himself is supposed to know the hour of the Mahdi’s return, the present Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said at his inauguration that he expected him to appear within two years.  This proclamation established the messianic doctrine as the official political philosophy of Iran and in the central place of all policies.  In 2006, President Ahmadinejad  wished Christians a merry Christmas and proclaimed that he expected to soon see Jesus return at the side of the Twelfth Imam.  He followed this proclamation in 2007 with the declaration that his mission was to turn Iran into a country for the Hidden Imam. 

 

Iran’s feverish attempts to build, buy, or steal nuclear weapons in her attempt to trigger the End of Days continue to push them deeper and deeper into an alliance with Russia.  All the while, Israel is making no secret of her concern over Iran’s development of nuclear weaponry.  Many of Israel’s leaders feel that the international community is looking to them--and even expecting them--to launch a strike against Iran to stop their progress toward nuclear armament.  Efraim Inbar of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv’s Bar-han University analyzed the present situation, “They will be very happy if we do their dirty work for them.  The world is moving into ‘What can we do about it?’ mode.  There is a strong in­stinct here to do it on our own.”  To many in Israel, the situ­ation is reminiscent of 1981 when the Jewish state acted on its own in bombing the Osirak reactor in Iraq and of 2007 when Israel launched a unilateral strike on a sus­pected nuclear site in Syria.  Many in Israel see a narrow window in which to act.  “Time is running very, very short right now,” said Ephraim Asculai, a longtime veteran of the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission.  If Israel does act, Russia will no doubt be pulled as if with a hook in her jaw into retaliation. 

 

Ezekiel gives a dramatic description of the decimation of the Russian horde.

 

And it shall come to pass at the same time when Gog shall come against the land of Israel, saith the Lord God, that my fury shall come up in my face.  For in my jealousy and in the fire of my wrath have I spoken, Surely in that day there shall be a great shaking in the land of Israel; So that the fishes of the sea, and the fowls of the heaven, and the beasts of the field, and all creeping things that are upon the face of the earth, shall shake at my presence, and the mountains shall be thrown down, and the steep places shall fall, and every wall shall fall to the ground.  And I will call for a sword against him throughout all my mountains, saith the Lord God:  every man's sword shall be against his brother.  And I will plead against him with pestilence and with blood; and I will rain upon him, and upon his bands, and upon the many people that are with him, an overflowing rain, and great hailstones, fire, and brimstone. Thus will I magnify myself, and sanctify myself; and I will be known in the eyes of many nations, and they shall know that I am the Lord.  Therefore, thou son of man, prophesy against Gog, and say, Thus saith the Lord God; Behold, I am against thee, O Gog, the chief prince of Mesheck and Tubal: And I will turn thee back, and leave but the sixth part of thee, and will cause thee to come up from the north parts, and will bring thee upon the mountains of Israel: And I will smite thy bow out of thy left hand, and will cause thine arrows to fall out of thy right hand.  Thou shalt fall upon the mountains of Israel, thou, and all thy bands, and the people that is with thee:  I will give thee unto the ravenous birds of every sort, and to the beasts of the field to be devoured.  Thou shalt fall upon the open field:  for I have spoken it, saith the Lord God.  And I will send a fire on Magog and among them that dwell carelessly in the isles:  and they shall know that I am the Lord.  So will I make my holy name known in the midst of my people Israel; and I will not let them pollute my holy name any more:  and the heathen shall know that I am the Lord, the Holy One of Israel.  Behold, it is come, and it is done, saith the Lord God; this is the day whereof I have spoken.  And they that dwell in the cities of Israel shall go forth, and shall set on fire and burn the weapons, both the shields and the bucklers, the bows and the arrows, and the handstaves, and the spears, and they shall burn them with fire seven years: So that they shall take no wood out of the field, neither cut down any out of the forests; for they shall burn the weapons with fire:  and they shall spoil those that spoiled them, saith the Lord God.  And it shall come to pass in that day, that I will give unto Gog a place there of graves in Israel, the valley of the passengers on the east of the sea:  and it shall stop the noses of the passengers:  and there shall they bury Gog and all his multitude:  and they shall call it The valley of Hamon-gog.  And seven months shall the house of Israel be burying of them, that they may cleanse the land.  (Ezekiel 38:18-39:12)

 

Perhaps this destruction of the invasion forces will be the crippling blow that will allow Israel to extend her boundaries to the prophesied limits of the Euphrates River since the forces marching with Russia include the nations now occupying that territory.  The book of Revelation twice suggests that the river Euphrates will be the boundary line of the Israeli territory by the time the Antichrist makes his move against the covenant land and people. (Revelation 9:14, 16:12)

 

Many people question how the United States will figure into the upcoming scenario, especially considering the active role that American presidents have taken in the array of peace negotiations that have been attempted over the years.  The only biblical insight we have is in Ezekiel 38:13, “Sheba, and Dedan, and the merchants of Tarshish, with all the young lions thereof, shall say unto thee, Art thou come to take a spoil? hast thou gathered thy company to take a prey?  to carry away silver and gold, to take away cattle and goods, to take a great spoil?”  Although it is inconclusive, there is some suggestion that the term “Tarshish” may refer to Great Britain since Tarshish was a land associated with seafaring and it was located at the far west of the then-known world at the time the Bible was written.  Remember that this was Jonah’s destination when he determined to flee from the Lord’s directive for him to go eastward to Nineveh.  The national symbol of Great Britain is a lion, leading to the conclusion that her young lions would be the nations that have been birthed from her empire--including the United States, which actually used the lion as a national emblem in her early history.  If, indeed, this passage does speak of the United States, what does it say?  The suggestion is that the young lion nations will stand on the sideline and do nothing as the Russian bear and the Muslim nations she is associated with attack the Holy Land.  The verse simply says that the observing nations question the motivation of the aggression, but it does not indicate that they take any action either to deter the invasion or to help defend the assaulted Israel.    

 

The present conditions in American politics seem to be paving the way for just such a response when the aggression against Israel begins to be played out.  In a survey taken among US lawmakers in 2000, the question was asked, “With regard to the Middle East, how do you feel the next president should relate to the region?”  The shocking response was that only twenty-two percent of the Republicans in Congress and only seven percent of Democrats in the legislature said that they felt that he should be pro-Israel!  Inside sources within the present administration have reported that our current policies will leave Israel to face her enemies alone.  Reporter Melanie Phillips summed up the current situation this way, “Obama is attempting to throw Israel under the Islamic bus.”  She cited a report in which President Obama’s national security adviser told a European foreign minister that he (the President) will be “force­ful” with Israel and that he, along with the European Union and moderate Arab states, plans to impose “a satisfactory endgame solution” upon Israel.  She also noted that American Jews are reacting “with a total absence of spine” in that almost eighty percent of them voted for Mr. Obama despite the clear and present danger he posed to Israel.  She feels that they did so because “their liberal self-image was and is more important to them than the Jewish state whose exis­tence and security cannot be allowed to jeopardize their stand­ing with America’s elite.”  She concluded that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu must therefore take Israel’s message to the ordinary American peo­ple, “He must tell the American people the terrible truth: that America is now run by a man who is intent on sacrificing Israel for a reckless and amoral polit­ical strategy which will put America and the rest of the free world at risk.”  Her sentiments were echoed by Caroline Glick who, writing in the Jerusalem Post, stated, “The Obama administration is ratcheting up its anti-Israel rhetoric and working feverishly to force Israel into a corner.”

 

This article is an excerpt form Delron's latest book, Israel, the Key to Human Destiny.  To obtain your copy, please make an online donation today.