The Church of Jesus Christ

Below is a news article that highlights that foolishness of basing your Foreign Policy on the fictional (and highly erroneous) Left Behind series of books. Granted, the idea that Israel must be protected against everything – against all common sense – even sacrificing the security of the United States.

Now that America has lurched to the left by electing a president with the most “openly radical background” of “any significant American political figure,” which is how Rolling Stone described Barack Obama in 2007, the little nation of Israel appears to be placing its faith in a future prime minister coming from the opposite end of the political spectrum—the hawkish Benjamin Netanyahu.

Still promising the end of the world Israel because of Barak Obama, it is a ploy to the right.Yet, nothing is said about Israel seemingly on the path to re-elect a war monger like Benjamin Netanyahu.

Numerous commentators (Tim LeHaye and John Hagee does not count. The fact is, they and other commentators see any scenerio in which the U.S. actually asking for justice for the Palestinians, and which we attempt to force Israel to work on a real peace plan is asking for a collision course.) have already weighed in on the likelihood of an oncoming U.S.-Israeli collision with respect to foreign policy. “Persuading Netanyahu to follow a new American president’s fresh leadership in the Middle East will not be easy if for no other reason than that Jerusalem and Washington’s interests simply do not run on parallel tracks,” wrote the Christian Science Monitor last week. Columnist Barry Rubin says that a Netanyahu administration in Israel would certainly make for potential “friction between him and Obama.” Dick Morris and Eileen McGann add that if Netanyahu wins, “he will bring with him a determination to stop Iranian nuclear weapons no matter what and a refusal to concede more territory in the name of the peace process. But Obama will be focusing on pushing Israel in just the opposite direction”.

What, then, is the significance of these two starkly divergent paths? There are at least three prophecies, in particular, whose fulfillment we need to watch closely:

This is the problem with this cults – interpretating the bible in the way that they see fit. Let’s see if they get anything right.

1) Hosea 5:13: “When Ephraim saw his sickness, and Judah [modern Israel] saw his wound, then went Ephraim to the Assyrian, and sent to king Jareb: yet could he not heal you, nor cure you of your wound.”

That wound, as theTrumpet.com has so often explained, is the misnomered “peace” process.

Since kicking off its land-for-peace strategy in Oslo in 1993, Israel has pulled out of Southern Lebanon and the Gaza Strip, only to be replaced by Iran’s most lethal proxies—Hezbollah and Gaza, both sworn enemies of Israel’s right to exist. At least 1,500 Israeli citizens have been murdered by terrorists during the Oslo process. And with Hezbollah and Hamas furiously amassing a much deadlier arsenal, the body count will inevitably rise.

Yet, despite these realities on the ground, as Caroline Glick recently noted, “President-elect Barack Obama will move quickly to place massive pressure on the next Israeli government to withdraw from Judea, Samaria, Jerusalem and the Golan Heights in the interests of advancing a ‘peace process’ with the Palestinians and the Syrians.” In another column, Glick wrote,

By pressuring Israel to cede land to Syria and the Palestinians, Obama’s apparent foreign policy will provide Iran with still more territory from which to attack Israel both through its terror proxies and with its expanding ballistic missile arsenal.

It’s an incurable wound that will soon result in Israel’s desperate turn to the German-led European Union for help—a move that will trigger the beginning of the Great Tribulation (Matthew 24:21-22).

But before that, half of Jerusalem will be taken by force.

This is not a prophecy for the far future, but one of the near future. Judah, under Ahaz, applied to Tiglath-pileser for aid against Syria and Israel (2Kings 16:7-8; 2Chronicles 28:16-21); the Assyrian “distressed him, but strengthened him not,” fulfilling the prophecy here, “he could not heal you, nor cure you of your wound (JFB). This was fulfilled. The wound is not the peace process, but their political standing due to the forsaking of the God of their Fathers.

Further, there is nothing in Matthew to indicate that the Great Tribulation will be started by Israel’s reliance upon Germany – Instead, Matthew 24.15 indicates that the Great Tribulation will start mid-week through that final week, when the Abomination of Desolation will be clearly seen.

“Therefore when you see the “abomination of desolation,’ spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place” (whoever reads, let him understand), (Matthew 24:15 NKJV)

I will not get into the preterist viewpoint at the moment, trying to show them that by their standards of the future they are liars.

2) Zechariah 14:2: “For I will gather all nations against Jerusalem to battle; and the city shall be taken, and the houses rifled, and the women ravished; and half of the city shall go forth into captivity, and the residue of the people shall not be cut off from the city.”

According to this prophecy, a Hamas-dominated Palestinian insurgence, backed by Iran, will take half of Jerusalem by force shortly before the Messiah sets foot on the Mount of Olives (verse 4). This makes the U.S.-Israeli collision course especially significant because while President-elect Obama will pressure Israel to give away what little land it has left, a growing consensus of Israelis are losing faith in the land-for-peace strategy.

After nearly 15 years of retreat and appeasement, Israel appears to be ready to finally draw a clear line in the sand. Earlier this week, Benjamin Netanyahu said he would stop absorbing the repeated blows from Hamas and instead go on the offensive to topple the terror group’s leadership. The popularity of his hard-line stance in Israel is even forcing his more dovish opponent, Tzipi Livni, to campaign on a stronger position against Hamas. You can feel it building toward a clash.

This prophesied conflict over Jerusalem is why, for three years now, we have been preparing our readers for a more hawkish rightward swing in Israeli politics. As my father stated in March 2006,

[B]ased on the conflict Zechariah describes between the Palestinians and the Israeli government … Benjamin Netanyahu’s conservative Likud party could bounce back and win the Israeli elections ….

From a prophetic standpoint, the stage is being set perfectly for a violent clash over Jerusalem. (For much more about this prophesied clash, study our booklet Jerusalem in Prophecy.) But before that, we will first witness the sad demise of a long-standing alliance that is rooted in the very first book of the Old Testament—the broken brotherhood of the United States and Israel.

Does any one see how they get all of that from that one little verse? If they would actually read more than one verse and more than their oown commentaries (which seems to be soley based on the Left Behind books), they they might come to a better understanding.

What I am about to propose is nothing solid and should not be taken as an official stance of this blog, but if we turn to Zechariah 12, we read,

The burden of the word of the LORD against Israel. Thus says the LORD, who stretches out the heavens, lays the foundation of the earth, and forms the spirit of man within him: “Behold, I will make Jerusalem a cup of drunkenness to all the surrounding peoples, when they lay siege against Judah and Jerusalem. And it shall happen in that day that I will make Jerusalem a very heavy stone for all peoples; all who would heave it away will surely be cut in pieces, though all nations of the earth are gathered against it. In that day,” says the LORD, “I will strike every horse with confusion, and its rider with madness; I will open My eyes on the house of Judah, and will strike every horse of the peoples with blindness. And the governors of Judah shall say in their heart, “The inhabitants of Jerusalem are my strength in the LORD of hosts, their God.’ In that day I will make the governors of Judah like a firepan in the woodpile, and like a fiery torch in the sheaves; they shall devour all the surrounding peoples on the right hand and on the left, but Jerusalem shall be inhabited again in her own place–Jerusalem. (Zechariah 12:1-6 NKJV)

Verse 2 is a difficult one for many to agree on. The general idea – the older idea – involves Judah actually helping in the siege of Jerusalem (Judaism besieging Christianity). While this may not be clear in vs 2, vs 5 has Judah on the outside of the city, becoming aware that it is the residents of Jerusalem (the Church) which has the Lord’s Strength. After the rampage of Judah against those that surround the Church, both are gathered together in Jerusalem.

Returning to 14.2, Jerusalem – the Church united – is attacked but the remnant of the people are unhurt. We can go into detail concerning the idea that the remnant in Paul’s eschatology, but it is not needed.

The interpretation that I offered is a lot more viable alternative than connecting the entire Middle East into one verse. It is merely an exercise. Nothing to base foreign policy on.

3) Zechariah 11:14: “Then I cut asunder mine other staff, even Bands, that I might break the brotherhood between Judah and Israel.”

Because of this prophecy, we have been repeatedly preparing our readers for an eventual split in the U.S.-Israeli relationship. We wrote about it here in 2004 and here in 2005. Last year, even though President Bush has been widely regarded as a staunch supporter of Israel, we warned about the “dangerous erosion of U.S. support for Israel.”

With many of Barack Obama’s advisers now advocating for U.S. abandonment of Israel, and with the anticipated rightward swing in Israel’s upcoming election, what little carryover is left to the U.S.-Israeli alliance is about to disappear.

Back in July, on the heels of Barack Obama’s much ballyhooed visit to Israel, Caroline Glick told National Review that while Obama would simply roll over a left-leaning Israeli government,

if a Likud-led government is installed during his tenure and tries to extricate Israel from the failed “land-for-peace” policy paradigm while gearing up to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities, he will treat the government with hostility and strengthen the position of Israel’s enemies in his administration.

This is now happening! Even as the new U.S. administration pressures Israel into land giveaways, a majority of Israelis want badly to abandon the failed land-for-peace policy. It’s building to the inevitable end of what Winston Churchill called the “special relationship” between two historic brothers.

Once Israel’s enemies realize they have extracted all the land they can get through negotiation, the next prophesied step is for them to ramp up demands by violence—resulting in the division Jerusalem.

Abandoned by its American ally, Israel will then turn to Germany for protection.

All of this is prophesied—and all of it is happening. To learn more about the prophesied events that soon impact every life on Earth, study The United States and Britain in Prophecy.

Israel and the United States are not Brothers. This verse, according to an older school of thought, concerns the Church and the supercessionism. It may be as Calvin said, ‘the extreme vengeance of God in scattering his people, so that there would be no longer any union between the children of Abraham.‘

Your thoughts?

The U.S.-Israeli Collision Course Is Near | theTrumpet.com.

Tags: barack obama, Benjamin Netanyahu, bible, christian zionism, eschatology, foreign policy, God, israel, left behind, peace plan, politics, Prophecy, religion