I LOVE THIS U.S. GUESSTIMATE!
December 3, 2007
http://www.tribulationperiod.com/
Luke 21:24 – And they shall fall by the edge of the sword, and shall be led away captive into all nations: and Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled.
Romans 11:25 – For I would not, brethren, th at
ye should be ignorant of this mystery, lest ye should be wise in your own conceits; that blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in.
The Luke prophecy Christ uttered concerning the fall of Jerusalem to the Gentiles by the edge of the sword, at which time her temple was to be leveled and her city destroyed, began to be fulfilled in A.D. 70, some 40 years after he stated it. Jerusalem was prophesied to be trodden down by Gentiles after the Temple was leveled for a considerable period of time, and it was under non-Jewish control from A.D.70 to June, 1967.
The spiritual blindness of Israel as a nation (in refusing to accept Jesus Christ as their Messiah) was to continue until His Second Advent, when the fullness of the great Age of the Gentiles would close at Armageddon. As the fullness “of the Gentiles be come in” at Armageddon, Israel was prophesied to finally accept Jesus as a nation as being the Messiah, the living Son of God.
Israel was advised 40 years before it happened, while she still possessed the Temple, that not one stone of it would be left standing above the founda
tion walls of Herod, and it happened as prophesied. I have long believed, ever since Israel recovered it in 1967, that significant prophetic events would begin to line up in a predictable sequence 40 years later. And, at the end of the sequence of those events, the “fullness of the Gentiles” would “be come in.”
Ever since 1967, while I was still active in the National Security Agency, I believed that the end of the 40 year period following the capture of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem would be a significant prophetic event. I believed everything would start falling into sequence for the last three and one years of the times of the Gentiles after the 40 years ended in 2007. I can assure you they are doing just that at the present time. For a long time on these blogs, which we issue on our Web Site one or two times a day, I repeatedly made a guesstimate as to the most likely time for Israel to be attacked by the forces of Islam.
I guesstimated it would be at a point in time somewhere between 2008 and 2012. But when the 40 years expired in June of 2007, as I continued to watch events unfurl in the Middle East, I changed my guesstimate in late September
of this year. It was because, as I stated in numerous blogs since September, I don’t believe Iran will have sufficient numbers of deliverable nuclear warheads in stock to use against Israel before 2010, and she may not have them until the end of 2014. So, in late September of this year, I changed my guesstimate for the last three and one-half years of the Tribulation Period to begin at some point in time between 2010 and the end of 2014. It seems to me that the best chance during that period would be between 2012 and the end of 2014.
Begin Jerusalem Post Article
US estimate: Iran froze nuclear weapons program in 2003
Associated Press, THE JERUSALEM POST
December 3, 2007
Iran halted its nuclear weapons development program in the fall of 2003 under international pressure but is continuing to enrich uranium, which means it may still be able to develop a weapon between 2010 and 2015, senior US intelligence officials said Monday.
That finding, in a new National Intelligence Estimate on Iran, is a change from two years ago, when US intelligence agencies believed Teheran was determined to develop a nuclear capability and was continuing its weapons development program. It suggests that Iran is susceptible to diplomatic pressure, an official said.
“Teheran’s decision to halt its nuclear weapons program suggests it is less determined to develop nuclear weapons than we have been judging since 2005,” states an unclassified summary of the secret report released Monday.
Officials said the new findings suggest that diplomacy has been effective in containing Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
“This is good news in that the US policy coupled with the policies and actions of those who have been our partners appear to have had some success. Iran seems to have been pressured,” one of the officials said.
“Given that good news, we don’t want to relax. We want to keep those pressures up.”
The finding comes at a time of escalating tensions between the United States and Iran, which President George W. Bush has labeled part of an “axis of evil,” along with Iraq and North Korea.
The halt to active weapons development is one of the key judgments of the latest intelligence estimate on Iran’s nuclear program. National Intelligence Estimates represent the most authoritative written judgments of all 16 US spy agencies.
Despite the suspension of its weapons program, Teheran may ultimately be difficult to dissuade from developing a nuclear bomb because Iran believes such a weapon would give it leverage to achieve its national security and foreign policy goals, the assessment concluded.
Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell decided last month that the key judgments of NIEs should as a rule not be declassified and released.
The intelligence officials said an exception was made in this case because the last assessment of Iran’s nuclear program in 2005 has been influential in public debate about US policy toward Iran and needed to be updated to reflect the latest findings.
To develop a nuclear weapon Iran needs a warhead design, a certain amount of fissile material, and a delivery vehicle such as a missile. The intelligence agencies now believe Iran halted design work four years ago and as of mid-2007 had not restarted it.
But Iran is continuing enrich uranium for its civilian nuclear reactors.
That leaves open the possibility the fissile material could be diverted to covert nuclear sites to make enough highly enriched uranium to make a bomb.
The amount of fissile material Iran has is closely linked to when it can produce a weapon.
Even if the country went all out with present enrichment capability, it is unlikely to have enough until 2010 at the earliest, the officials said.
The State Department’s Intelligence and Research office believes the earliest likely time it would have enough highly enriched uranium would be 2013. But all agencies concede Iran may not have sufficient enriched uranium until after 2015.
Iran would not be capable of technically producing and reprocessing enough plutonium for a weapon before about 2015, the report states. But ultimately it has the technical and industrial capacity to build a bomb, “if it decides to do so,” the intelligence agencies found.
This national intelligence estimate was originally due in the spring of 2007 but was delayed because the agencies wanted more confidence their findings were accurate, given the problems with a 2002 intelligence estimate of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction program. They also got a late influx of new data that caused changes in their findings.
“There was a very rigorous scrub using all the tradecraft available, using the lessons of 2002,” a senior official said.
At the White House, National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley said the findings confirm that the risk of Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon remains “a serious problem.”
“The estimate offers grounds for hope that the problem can be solved diplomatically without the use of force as the Administration has been trying to do,” Hadley said. “And it suggests that the president has the right strategy: intensified international pressure along with a willingness to negotiate a solution that serves Iranian interests, while ensuring that the world will never have to face a nuclear armed Iran.”
Hadley added: “The bottom line is this: for that strategy to succeed, the international community has to turn up the pressure on Iran with diplomatic isolation, United Nations sanctions, and with other financial pressure and Iran has to decide it wants to negotiate a solution.”
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