A CLIMATE FOR PEACE AMIDST A TIME FOR WAR
IT’S ATIME FOR FALSE PEACE WHEN A TRUE PEACE
IN MIDDLE EAST IS NOT A PROPHETIC POSSIBLILITY!
September 7, 2010
http://www.tribulationperiod.com/
A Line by Line Exposition of Ezekiel 38 – Part 7
March 22, 2009
http://www.tribulationperiod.com/
We concluded Prophecy Update Number 6 expositing on Ezekiel 38:13, which we have done continuously from Ezekiel 38:1 for some time. We will continue this exposition, beginning with Ezekiel 38:14.
Ezekiel 38:14 – Therefore, son of man, prophesy and
say unto Gog, Thus saith the Lord God; In that day when my people of Israel dwelleth safely, shalt thou not know it
?
The question of verse 14 is directed personally by God to Gog . It is a question to which both know the answer, as attested by “shalt thou not know it?” Gog will be well aware of it, because he will have made an interim peace agreement allowing the Israelis to have a peace with security. This will be one of the reasons Antichrist’s counterattack will be so successful. Its efficiency will catch Israel by surprise.
Ezekiel 38:15 – And thou shalt come from thy place out of the north parts, thou, and many people with thee, all of them riding upon horses, a great company, and a mighty army:
Verse 15 reveals some very important new information when it states: “And thou shalt come from thy place out of the north parts.” When Ezekiel wrote his prophecies, the expression “the north parts,” to those who read it in those days, meant the area we call Syria and Lebanon today.
I am certain that the Antichrist will arise to power as the head of some country which satisfies the requirements of being from “the north parts” as they were identified in Ezekiel’s day. Antichrist may arise in southern Turkey or northwestern Iraq, but in Ezekiel’s day “the north parts” encompassed the area occupied by Lebanon and Syria today. His army will be composed of troops from ten Arab nations. The initial attack will be conducted primarily by Syria, Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq, and Iran, but others will participate in various ways. When the Scripture says: “all of them riding upon horses,” it is picturing to the readers of Ezekiel’s day what would be a “fully equipped” army. His army will be equipped with all of today’s modern weapons to meet this requirement.
Ezekiel 38:16 – And thou shalt come up against my people of Israel, as a cloud to cover the land; it shall be in the latter days, and I will bring thee against my land, that the heathen may know me, when I shall be sanctified in thee, O Gog, before their eyes.
We are advised that the character of the attack will be like a lightning blitzkrieg strike. His armies shall move south across the land like a fast moving thunderstorm cloud races across an area, leaving havoc in its wake. It is to occur in “the latter days” of this Gentile age.
We are advised that God, not Gog, will determine when the attack occurs. When the conflict is finished God will be set-apart (sanctified) in the eyes of all nations as having used Gog for the setting apart of Israel in the Negev to await God’s deliverance some 1260 days later. God is in charge! He will determ ine the time of the attack by putt
ing it in the minds of the attackers. These 10 Arab nations will surrender their power to Gog, but after Israel has suffered in the Negev for some 3 and ½ years, Christ will then return with the saints to end the Battle of Armageddon, and God will the sanctified (set-apart) in Christ as the all powerful King of kings.
Revelation 17:12-14 – And the ten horns which thou sawest are ten kings, which have received no kingdom as yet; but receive power as kings one hour with the beast. [13] These have one mind, and shall give their power and strength unto
the beast. [14] These shall make war with the Lamb, and the Lamb shall overcome them: for he is Lord of lords, and King of kings: and they that are with him
are called, and chosen, and faithful.
It will be highly advisable to watch the efforts of Syria, Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Lebanon to reconcile their political and military differences during the coming years. They, along with most terrorist groups, after continuing attacks by the terrorist groups they control, will come to realize that in order to come up with a plan to meet their common objective, the end of the Jewish State, they must fully cooperate and coordinate with one another.
They all want to get Israel out of the land from Dan to Beersheba. The continuation of terrorist attacks, no matter how numerous or violent they become, will never accomplish their objective. If they will stop the terrorist attacks, and settle for whatever they can get in concessions for the Golan Heights and the West Bank, Israel can be led into a false sense of security after a brief time of what seems to be a genuine truce. Then Israel can be driven into the Negev by a blitzkrieg counterattack from “the north parts.”
There can never be a true and lasting peace in the Land of the Bible until Jesus returns to reign on this planet.
However, out of this ungodly act of infamy by Gog, there will eventually come a brief period of calm, and many will believe it will be genuine and lasting. But the terrorist groups will only hold off their activities for a short period of time, and they will do this only as a ruse to lead Israel, and the rest of the free world, into a false sense of security. But this brief period of calm will be broken by a blitzkrieg attack from the north of Israel.
Editorial: A climate for peace
By JPOST EDITORIAL
09/05/2010 04:32
De-legitimizing and de-glorifying terror, indeed, is a prerequisite for coexistence – a necessary step en route to actually fighting terror, as peace partners must.
The latest drive-by shootings in Judea and Samaria are no bolt from the blue. They were eminently predictable. Making an effort to restart a peace process in our region – its actual prospects for success notwithstanding – is akin to stirring a mega-hornets’ nest.
Conventional wisdom depicts Mahmoud Abbas’s Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority as beset by extremist elements spearheaded foremost by the Gazabased Hamas.
This postulate resonated consistently in reactions by US President Barack Obama, his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and even Abbas himself to the slaying last week of four Israelis (as well as a nearly full-term unborn baby). They all subscribed to the theory that this was part of a design to derail the peace process.
Abb as, consequently, is viewed almost
as much as the victim of the purported extremists as the Israeli civilians who were executed cold-bloodedly at close range.
But is this an accurate picture? It is true that the noholds- barred struggle between Abbas’s Fatah faction and its Hamas rival continues unresolved. Were it not for the Israeli forces deployed in the West Bank, indeed, it is likely that Fatah would have long ago lost its last foothold. The PA security forces, trained under US supervision, have brought a rare sense of law and order to the Palestinian cities, but only the IDF’s presence – as Abbas knows full well – deters Hamas from attempting to replicate, in the West Bank, its violent 2007 takeover of Gaza.
Unfortunately, the complex reality doesn’t end there.
In a climate in which Israel is routinely delegitimized and demonized, any new Hamas offensive, bitter experience suggests, tends to “oblige” Fatah’s own Al-Aksa Brigades and their like to prove that they can spill no less Jewish blood. The concern now is that competition will be renewed for the “glory” of who can inflict more pain on Israel.
ABBAS, WHO on Wednesday at the White House spoke hearteningly of his desire to prevent any more blood being spilled on either side of our conflict, may be far better intentioned than his malevolent predecessor Yasser Arafat.
But he, too, has failed to stem the tide of anti- Israel incitement, and he, too, continues to preside over Fatah gatherings where unchanging opposition to the very fact of Israel’s existence is the central theme.
And thus, the simplistic depiction of Abbas and his Fatah stalwarts trying to stand firm in a bid to stem the terrorist tide is unfortunately inaccurate. So too the notion that terrorist acts are perpetrated by fanatics far outside the PA consensus and devoid of even minimal support within the Palestinian public.
This misrepresentation unhelpfully belittles the complexities of peacemaking, and creates a skewed image of terrorists who are as out-of-sync with average Palestinians as isolated Jewish extremists are out-of-sync with average Israelis. Mainstream Israeli society sincerely rejects extremist violence, which is consequently relatively rare. Palestinian terrorists are not similarly ostracized – and Abbas is at least partly responsible for that.
Whether he has been disinclined to counter the phenomenon, or felt himself too weak to do so, terrorists past and present are revered and feted under his aegis.
Examples abound. The Ramallah street that houses the new presidential compound was named for arch-terrorist Yihye Ayash, who gained notoriety in the mid-1990s as the “engineer.”
His professional specialty was rigging explosives designed to take as many lives as possible.
Primarily, Ayash was an anti-Oslo saboteur, a fact that makes it doubly troubling that the PA, born of the Oslo Accords, would even consider commemorating Ayash in what constitutes an affront to the very notion of coexistence and a gross violation of the Oslo premise.
The glorification of “heroic” terrorists, “martyred” in the cause of murdering Israelis, is manifest in the streets named after them, the honors bestowed upon them, the school hours devoted to them, the television broadcasts that laud them, and the agitation to release even the convicted mass-murderers among them. Any and all of this inherently contradict the aims of a peace process.
Delegitimizing and de-glorifying terror, indeed, is a prerequisite for coexistence – a necessary step en route to actually fighting terror, as peace partners must.
The ostensibly shared objective of Abbas and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, for our two peoples to live “as neighbors and partners forever,” to quote Abbas, is simply irreconcilable with a climate in which Palestinians are taught, from the cradle,
to venerate the slaughter of Israelis. Change that climate, and our yearned-for peace becomes a realistic prospect.
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