The Word, Rightly Divided

The Word, Rightly Divided
Vol: 47 Issue: 31 Wednesday, August 31, 2005

“Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the Word of truth.” (2nd Timothy 2:15)

The Scriptures are not merely the historical record of the nation of Israel or the history of the life and times of Jesus Christ.

The Bible is the record of God’s systematic revelation of Himself to mankind, an unfolding system of revelation, given to man piecemeal, “at sundry times and in diverse manners,” according to Hebrews 1:1.

Of itself, the Bible says, “For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.” (2nd Peter 1:21)

Holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Spirit during a period of 1604 years, extending from B. C. 1492 to A. D. 100. The Bible consists of 66 separate books; 39 in the Old Testament, and 27 in the New. These books were written by about 40 different authors.

By kings, such as David and Solomon; statesmen, as Daniel and Nehemiah; priests, as Ezra; men learned in the wisdom of Egypt as Moses; men learned in Jewish law, as Paul.

By a herdsman, Amos; a tax-gatherer, Matthew; fishermen, as Peter, James and John, who were “unlearned and ignorant” men; a physician, Luke; and such mighty “seers” as Isaiah, Ezekiel and Zechariah.

It was written in the wilderness of Sinai, the cliffs of Arabia, the hills and towns of Israel, the courts of the Temple, the schools of the prophets at Bethel and Jericho, in the palace of Shushan in Persia, on the banks of the river Chebar in Babylonia, in the dungeons of Rome, and on the lonely Isle of Patmos in the Aegean Sea.

Although it was composed over a period of roughly 40 generations, the Bible is much more than a compilation of historical eyewitness accounts. It is a progressive account of unfolding Divine revelation.

The judges knew more than the Patriarchs, the Prophets than the judges, the Apostles than the Prophets. The Old and New Testaments cannot be separated. You cannot understand Leviticus without Hebrews, or Daniel without Revelation.

The language of Scripture can be categorized into three distinct styles; figurative, symbolic and literal. The figurative style is explained by the context. The symbolic is either explained by context or by cross references to other passages of Scripture.

Anything that doesn’t fall into one of those two categories should be taken literally.

The Scriptures, while written FOR all men, is not written specifically TO all men. Part of it is addressed to the Jews, part to the Gentiles, and the remainder to the Church. These represent three of four ‘classes’ of spiritual creation, with the fourth being the creation of the angelic hosts.

Paul identified the three classes of human creation, saying, “Give none offence, neither to the Jews, nor to the Gentiles, nor to the church of God:” (1st Corinthians 10:32)

It then logically follows that, while the Bible was written for the instruction of the Church, it isn’t all written about the Church. The Old Testament is mostly taken up with the history of one nation, that of Israel.

When we take the Old Testament promises and apply them to the Church we rob the Jew of that which is exclusively his, by Divine decree.

The Old Testament is mostly taken up with the history of one nation, that of Israel. When we take the Old Testament promises and apply them to the Church we rob the Jew of that which is exclusively his.

The Book of Isaiah, for example, is largely applied to the Church, although Isaiah opens by specifically addressing ‘Judah and Jerusalem’ (Isaiah 1:1)

And some of the New Testament is addressed, not to the Church, but to the Jews, as in the Letter to the Hebrews or the Book of James, which is addressed to the twelve tribes scattered abroad. (James 1:1)

One can identify seven separate dispensations in Scripture. The best definition I can come up with for ‘dispensation’ in layman’s terms would be ‘a period of time in which God dealt with specific persons or groups in specific ways’.

The Dispensations are;

1) The Edenic Age, in which God walked with Adam in the cool of the evening.

2) The Ante-diluvian Age, also called the Age of Conscience, during which time God allowed fallen man to govern according to his own conscience.

During this Dispensation, the human bloodline was corrupted by fallen angels, as part of a Satanic effort to break God’s prophecy that the Messiah would come from Eve’s bloodline.

“And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise His heel.”

The Ante-Diluvian age ended with the Flood, and Noah and his family were spared to preserve and restore the human bloodline. “Noah was a just man and PERFECT IN HIS GENERATIONS. . .” (Genesis 6:9)

3) The Post-Diluvian Age, during which time God spoke directly with Noah and effected the repopulation of the earth.

4) The Age of the Patriarchs, beginning with Abraham, during which time God dealt directly with Abraham and his descendants through Issac.

5) The Age of the Law, when God revealed the Law of Moses and set up the system of Temple worship and sacrifice for the Jews.

6) The Age of Grace, or the Church Age. This is that parenthetical dispensation that occurs between the sixty-ninth and seventieth week of Daniel. The purpose of this Dispensation is to gather out a “People for His Name,” called the ‘Church’ (ekklesia — the ‘called out’ or ‘assembled’ ones). We are currently living the final hours of this present dispensation.

7) The Messianic Age, or the Millennial Kingdom Age. There is to be a period of 1000 years during which Satan shall be bound and Christ shall reign over the earth, as clearly revealed in the New Testament. This period is mentioned six times in the Book of Revelation.

There is a widely-held heresy within the Church that stems from wrongly dividing the Word of Truth and viewing the Church Age as a continuation of the Age of the Law.

In this view, the Church is the inheritor of the promises of Abraham, the new ‘chosen people’ to whom the Abrahamic Covenant was transferred. The modern Jew, in this view, is no longer part of the eternal plan of God.

Since the Old Testament promises of riches and glory have been transferred from the Jew to the Church, Israel is just another country.

Which is why so many mainstream Protestant churches are taking actions like divestiture to punish Israel for its treatment of the Palestinians without worrying they may be interfering with God’s Plan for the Ages.

God has no eternal plan that presently includes the Jews, they believe.

Called ‘New Covenant’ or ‘Replacement Theology’, this view postulates that all prophecy was concluded with the destruction of the Temple in AD 70, that the Emperor Nero was the antichrist, and that the role of the Church is to bring about the Kingdom of Heaven here on earth before Christ can return at His second Coming.

Replacement Theology is the well spring of antisemitic thought within much of mainstream Protestant theology. It has four major premises:

1.The Jewish people are now no longer a “chosen people.” In fact, they are no different from any other group, such as the English, Spanish, or Africans.

2. Apart from repentance, the new birth, and incorporation into the Church, the Jewish people have no future, no hope, and no calling in the plan of God. The same is true for every other nation and group.

3. Since Pentecost of Acts 2, the term “Israel,” as found in the Bible, now refers to the Church.

4. The promises, covenants and blessings ascribed to Israel in the Bible have been taken away from the Jews and given to the Church, which has superseded them. However, the Jews are subject to the curses found in the Bible, as a result of their rejection of Christ.

Assessment:

Without an understanding of Dispensational truth, confusion reigns supreme and the Bible becomes a mass of contradictions. Which is correct?

“And thine eye shall not pity; but life shall go for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.” (Deuteronomy 19:21).

Or. . . “Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.” (Matthew 5:38-39)

What about. . . “Ye are of God, little children, and have overcome them: because greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world.” (1st John 4:4) and, “And it was given unto him to make war with the saints, and to overcome them:” (Revelation 13:7)

How does one rightly divide two conflicting verses? Is it an eye for an eye, or turn the other cheek. Do we overcome because of the indwelling Holy Spirit, or does the antichrist overcome the Holy Spirit when he makes war with the Tribulation saints and overcomes them?

Clearly, both cannot simultaneously be true, which them means at least one of them in each of these cases is untrue.

If replacement theology is correct, half the Bible needs to be tossed out. To get around this difficulty, they teach that Revelation is filled with symbolism and none of it is intended to be taken literally.

Replacement Theology has other difficulties, as well.

James, written ‘to the twelve tribes scattered throughout the earth’ discusses the application of works, (valid under the Judaic system) whereas Paul, writing to the Gentiles, says “salvation is a gift of grace and not works, lest any man should boast.”

The Apostle John writes of both the permanent indwelling of the Comforter who cannot be overcome by ‘he that is in the world’ and of the overcoming of the Tribulation saints by ‘he that is in the world’ during the Tribulation.

‘Dispensational truth’ is so called because it is true. Church history reveals that the early fathers believed in different administrations and economies within the Scriptures and that belief in them does not have a late date.

Justin Martyr, who died in AD 165, believed in four phases of human history in God’s program. The first was from Adam to Abraham; the second was from Abraham to Moses; the third was from Moses to Christ; and the fourth was from Christ to the eternal state.

Irenaeus, who died in AD 202, also identified four distinct dispensations that he identified as; 1. From the Creation to the Flood. 2. From the Flood to the Law. 3. From the Law to the Gospel. 4. From the Gospel to the Eternal State.

The teaching of dispensations does not lead to the conclusion that other parts of the Bible are unimportant or uninspired.

It teaches that the Word of God, rightly divided, is “sharper than any two edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.” (Hebrews 4:12)

The Bible is true, and we are currently living in the last generation of the Age of Grace. At its conclusion, (which all the signs indicate point to this generation to the exclusion of all others), the Apostle Paul writes;

“For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.”

“Wherefore comfort one another with these words.” (1st Thessalonians 4:15-18

The Hand of God

The Hand of God
Vol: 47 Issue: 30 Tuesday, August 30, 2005

Hurricane Katrina roared in with all the destructive power she will billed to deliver, but she stopped short of utterly destroying New Orleans as predicted.

I have no doubt that many of you were praying for New Orleans, as was I, and I am confident that it was the power of prayer that turned Katrina at the last minute from making landfall directly over New Orleans.

It wasn’t that New Orleans was ‘spared’ in the conventional sense. The storm was massive, and the damage was extensive. The body count has not yet been tallied, and the full extent of the death and destruction may never be completely known.

At the time of this writing, at many as sixty-five persons are being reported as dead by the media, but the toll is expected to go much higher as rescue and recovery efforts continue.

Forecasters predicted that, had Katrina’s eye passed directly over New Orleans, the city would have literally been destroyed. Had Katrina not shifted, waters could have spilled over levees and swamped the saucer-shaped city in a toxic soup of chemicals, sewage and human bodies.

It was expected that the water levels throughout the New Orleans metropolitan area would be under thirty feet of water this morning.

In nearby coastal St. Bernard Parish, the storm surge swamped an estimated 40,000 homes.

In a particularly low-lying neighborhood on the south shore of Lake Pontchartrain, a levee on a canal gave way and forced dozens of residents to flee or scramble to the roofs as water rose to their gutters.

But at the last moment, as if turned by the Hand of God, Katrina suddenly weakened slightly, and shifted direction slightly to the east, leaving New Orleans on its western, slightly weaker side.

Damage was severe to catastrophic in much of Louisiana and Mississippi, including the latter’s coastal tourist havens of Biloxi and Gulfport, and one of the levees protecting New Orleans, which sits below sea level, was breached.

But New Orleans itself was ‘spared’ in the sense the city itself survived. There were an estimated 100,000 New Orleans residents who were unable or unwilling to evacuate.

Had Katrina made landfall slightly further west, as predicted, the death toll could have been numbered in the tens of thousands, and New Orleans itself could have been wiped off the map and replaced with a giant, toxic lake.

The situation is incredibly grim; residents are being cautioned not to return ‘for a month or more’ say New Orleans officials; levees have been breached and water levels in the city are rising, but the city will survive, as will most of its residents.

Assessment:

Katrina was one of the most costly storms in American history, but had it not shifted at the last minute, the costs would have been much, much higher.

“And whatsoever ye shall ask in MY Name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If ye shall ask any thing in My Name, I will do it.” John 14:13-14)

As I was praying for the city, I didn’t know what to pray for. After all, praying that the storm would miss New Orleans meant that it would hit somewhere else.

“Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.” (Romans 8:26)

As it happened, Katrina’s eye made landfall over Grand Island, which had been almost completely evacuated. Only seven people remained on the island, and they have not been heard from since.

It seems odd, when one considers how devastating Katrina was, to characterize the destruction as an answer to prayer, but had the storm made landfall where forecast, that toll could have had several zeroes after it.

Scripture says we don’t really know what to pray for, but the Spirit of God does, and He intercedes for us so our prayers are answered according to His will. Despite the death and destruction wrought by Katrina, things could have been so much worse.

I will continue to pray for the millions affected by Katrina, as I am certain you will. But we have the confidence of knowing that our God is a prayer-answering God. Even when we don’t like the answer, we can know that God has a plan and He will do His will.

“And this is the confidence that we have in Him, that, if we ask any thing according to His will, He heareth us: And if we know that He hear us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of Him.” (1st John 5:14-15)

Millions of Christians prayed that Katrina’s power would be minimized. At the last moment, just before it was too late, Katrina made that critical shift.

As I said, it seems odd to consider the unprecedented death and destruction wrought by Katrina to be an answer to prayer. But it was.

“In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.” (1st Thessalonians 5:18)

May God bless those affected by Katrina, and their families. You remain in our prayers.

ANOTHER ‘Once in a Lifetime Event’

ANOTHER ‘Once in a Lifetime Event’
Vol: 47 Issue: 29 Monday, August 29, 2005

At the moment, there isn’t much else more deserving of comment than the monster Hurricane Katrina as it continues to slam ashore as one of the four most powerful hurricanes in recorded history.

Some computer simulations predicted New Orleans’s near-total inundation and the destruction of up to 90 percent of its homes. Some scientists warned that by tomorrow up to 1 million people in the metropolitan area will have nowhere to return and the area will be uninhabitable for weeks.

“We’re talking about in essence having — in the continental United States — having a refugee camp of a million people,” Ivor van Heerden, deputy director of the Louisiana State University Hurricane Center, said yesterday afternoon.

Should the storm surge be higher than the levees or, in the worst case, the levees break, the water would spill over into the city’s bowl and potentially turn New Orleans into a 30-foot-deep toxic lake filled with chemicals and petroleum from refineries, and waste from ruined septic systems.

Worst-case scenarios have estimates of tens of thousands of deaths from flooding. “We are facing a storm that most of us have long feared,” Mayor C. Ray Nagin said. “This is a once-in-a-lifetime event.”

National Hurricane Center Director Max Mayfield, noting that Katrina might prove more powerful than 1992’s Hurricane Andrew, commented, “The conditions have to be absolutely perfect to have a hurricane become this strong.”

There are as many as 100,000 people who either could not or would not evacuate the city. Between twenty and thirty thousand people took shelter in the New Orleans’ famed Superdome, and a news update just announced the Superdome’s roof sustained storm damage.

Katrina’s impact will reach far beyond the Gulf Coast. As she roared in, she shut down about 25% of the nation’s oil refineries and economists are predicting a huge jump in fuel prices as a result.

Assessment:

This is the fourth hottest summer on record. The three previous records were set since 2000.

In 2003, solar flares erupted more than nine times in two weeks. Scientists have been monitoring the solar cycles since 1755.

An 11-year cycle of sunspot activity emerges from the detailed records of the 21 sunspot cycles observed since 1755. The solar flares caught scientists by surprise, because they occurred in the middle of the 11 year solar minimum cycle.

In 2003, Dr Richard Willson of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Columbia University’s Earth Institute, New York, published a study on global warming that says global warming is real. But it isn’t the result of man-made greenhouse gases. The sun is getting hotter and brighter.

“Historical records of solar activity indicate that solar radiation has been increasing since the late 19th century. If a trend, comparable to the one found in this study, persisted throughout the 20th century, it would have provided a significant component of the global warming the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports to have occurred over the past 100 years,” according to Willson.

According to NASA, the polar ice cap is now melting at the alarming rate of nine percent per decade. Arctic ice thickness has decreased 40 percent since the 1960s. The current pace of sea-level rise is three times the historical rate and appears to be accelerating.

Global sea level has already risen by four to eight inches in the past century. Scientists’ best estimate is that sea level will rise by an additional 19 inches by 2100, and perhaps by as much as 37 inches.

And according to a report in the ‘Science’ section of the New York Times, the Earth is perhaps 150 years into the collapse of the Earth’s magnetic field.

“The field’s strength has waned 10 to 15 percent, and the deterioration has accelerated of late, increasing debate over whether it portends a reversal of the lines of magnetic force that normally envelop the Earth. “

During a reversal, the main field weakens, almost vanishes, and then reappears with opposite polarity. The report says rapid decline in the magnetic field is already damaging satellites.

The fact that it’s dropping so rapidly gives you pause,” said Dr. John A. Tarduno, a professor of geophysics at the University of Rochester. “It looks like things we see in computer models of a reversal.”

The Earth’s magnetic field helps shield the Earth from solar winds and storms of deadly particles. The magnetosphere extends out 37,000 miles from Earth’s sunlit side and much farther behind the planet, forming a comet like tail.

A weak field could let solar storms pummel the atmosphere with enough radiation to destroy significant amounts of the ozone that protects the Earth from harmful ultraviolet light.

Ultraviolet radiation, the short, invisible rays from the sun, can harm some life forms, depress crop yields and raise cancer rates, causing skin cancer and cataracts in humans.

The current collapse drew wide scientific attention on April 11, 2002, when Nature, the British journal, published a major paper that detailed its growing weakness. Dr. Hulot and colleagues at the Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris, where he works, as well as the Danish Space Research Institute, called the large drop ‘remarkable’.

That brings us full circle to Katrina, one of the most powerful storms on record, making landfall during one of the most active hurricane seasons on record. NOAA’s Atlantic hurricane outlook reflects an expected continuation of above-average activity that began in 1995.

Since that time all but two Atlantic hurricane seasons have been above-normal.

When climatologists are not warning of impending ecological disaster, astronomers take the podium to warn of the threat of a catastrophic asteroid strike upon the earth.

A major asteroid strike somewhere in the earth’s oceans, they warn, would cause a tsunami that would make last’s year’s Asian tsunami look like a minor ocean ripple in comparison.

“And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring; Men’s hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth: for the powers of heaven shall be shaken. ” (Luke 21:25-26)

The process has already begun. Whether one ascribes it to global warming, natural climatic cycles, the unprecedented sunspot activity, or just bad luck, one can’t get around the fact that it is taking place exactly as foretold by Scripture, in pretty much the exact order, and at pretty much the exact period the Bible said it would.

“And when these things BEGIN to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh.” (Luke 21:28)

“A Man After God’s Own Heart”

“A Man After God’s Own Heart”
Vol: 47 Issue: 27 Saturday, August 27, 2005

In Paul’s sermon at Antioch, in which he briefly recounts the history of Israel, he refers to the statement made by God concerning David: “I have found David the son of Jesse, a man after My own Heart, who will do all My will.” – (Acts 13:22 [cf. 1 Samuel 13:13-14])

It is especially interesting, given the fact that David is among the patriarchs with the most checkered past. The portrait of King David painted by Scripture is hardly the picture of what one might consider ‘a man after God’s own heart’.

At various times during his lifetime, he was deceitful and corrupt, a widely despised tyrant who lacked for justice, and a murderer.

From the slaughter of seven sons of Saul to the murder of one of his most loyal lieutenants, whose wife he seduced, David was no paragon of virtue.

What was there about David that caused God to extend such a sweeping compliment as to pronounce him a man after His own Heart? David understood his relationship with God like few others in Biblical history. After committing adultery with Bathsheba and then having her husband, Uriah killed, the prophet Nathan stood before King David and accused him before God.

“And the LORD sent Nathan unto David. And he came unto him, and said unto him, There were two men in one city; the one rich, and the other poor.

The rich man had exceeding many flocks and herds: But the poor man had nothing, save one little ewe lamb, which he had bought and nourished up: and it grew up together with him, and with his children; it did eat of his own meat, and drank of his own cup, and lay in his bosom, and was unto him as a daughter.

And there came a traveler unto the rich man, and he spared to take of his own flock and of his own herd, to dress for the wayfaring man that was come unto him; but took the poor man’s lamb, and dressed it for the man that was come to him.

And David’s anger was greatly kindled against the man; and he said to Nathan, As the LORD liveth, the man that hath done this thing shall surely die: And he shall restore the lamb fourfold, because he did this thing, and because he had no pity.

And Nathan said to David, Thou art the man.” (2nd Samuel 12:1-7)

Note that Samuel carefully records that “the Lord sent Nathan unto David” to convict him of his sin. In his prayer of contrition in Psalm 51, David reveals much of what it was that caused God to pronounce him a ‘man after His own heart.’

“Have mercy upon me, O God, according to Thy lovingkindness: according unto the multitude of Thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions.” (Psalms 51:1)

David understood that his relationship with God was ‘according to His lovingkindness’ and not according to David’s definition of what God should do. He also understood that his sin, as horrendous as it was, could be blotted out, not by some act of David’s, but solely due to the ‘multitude of God’s tender mercies’.

David appeals; “Wash me throughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. For I acknowledge my transgressions: and my sin is ever before me.” (v.2.3)

David knew that God knew what his sins were, but the important point was that DAVID knew what his sins were, and the importance of honest confession before God.

David understood also that his sin was against God, that it was deliberate, and that the reason his sin haunted him was because of its offense before God. David understood that, since it was a sin against God, only an act of God could blot it out. Nothing David could do to make restitution would ever be sufficient.

“Against Thee, Thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in Thy sight: that Thou mightest be justified when Thou speakest, and be clear when Thou judgest.” (v.4)

David understood that there was no ‘wiggle room’ before the Lord and that God’s justice is as absolute as His mercy.

But David was also a realist; “Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me.”

David understood the dual nature of fallen humanity, that which caused the Apostle Paul to cry out, “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” (Romans 7:24)

Paul explained, “For we know that the law is spiritual: but I am carnal, sold under sin. For that which I do I allow not: for what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I.” (Romans 7:14-15)

Having expressed his frustration with his own struggle with his dual nature, Paul summarized that which David understood, saying, “So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin.” (Romans 7:25)

David prayed, “Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward parts: and in the hidden part thou shalt make me to know wisdom.”

God’s truth is that nothing we can do by our own effort will ever make restitution for our past sins. Each of us shares the same conflict between the carnal nature and the spirit.

Paul’s equation of the sin nature to ‘the body of this death’ refers to a particularly brutal form of execution sometimes practice under the Romans. The condemned would be chained to a corpse, and food and water withheld until the condemned either died or resorted to cannibalism.

That is how Paul viewed the cohabitation of the spirit with the sin nature of the flesh.

David trusted God to lead him, even when he was out of fellowship, having faith that ‘in the hidden part’ — in his spirit, God would ‘make him to know wisdom’.

David’s understanding of the grace of God as expressed in his prayer in large part, fits with God’s description of him as being a man after His own Heart.

It was this understanding of unmerited grace that formed the centerpiece of the ministry of Jesus. One of the Lord’s earthly titles is the “Son of David.”

David expresses his understanding of how the process of forgiveness operates in God’s economy.

“Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean: wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Make me to hear joy and gladness; that the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice. Hide thy face from my sins, and blot out all mine iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me.” (v. 7-10)

Note the role David plays in his redemption. Admit, confess, repent and trust. To ‘repent’ means to change one’s mind about sin. David saw himself as King of Israel, and therefore, whatever he did was above reproach.

David sat on his throne, and passed judgment on the wicked rich man of whom Nathan spoke. Until he realized Nathan was speaking about HIM, at which point he changed his mind about his sin and laid himself bare before the Lord.

All the rest of the redemptive process David placed in the Hands of God. ‘Purge me, wash me, forgive me, bless me and renew me.’

Even his sense of conviction came through a direct message from God through Nathan, just as we are directly convicted by God through His indwelling Holy Spirit.

David’s only role in his redemption was to trust in God to make the changes that David knew he could not effect himself.

David accepted the earthly consequences of his sin, such as the death of his son, but with the clear understanding that the spiritual consequences of his sin were forgiven.

“While the child was yet alive, I fasted and wept: for I said, Who can tell whether GOD will be gracious to me, that the child may live? But now he is dead, wherefore should I fast? can I bring him back again? I SHALL GO TO HIM, but he shall not return to me.” (2nd Samuel 12:22-23)

What made David a man after God’s own heart was his understanding of the consequences of being out of fellowship with God, and how to get back into right fellowship with God.

Ask Him.

“Restore unto me the joy of Thy salvation; and uphold me with Thy free spirit.” It is the joy of knowing one is saved and in fellowship with the Lord that shines through and attracts the lost.

Having been spiritually restored, notes David; “THEN will I teach transgressors Thy ways; and sinners shall be converted unto Thee.”(v.11-12)

Often, I read in the forums of members lamenting their ineffectiveness for Christ and wondering what it is they are doing wrong. Spend a few minutes meditating on these two verses with me.

GOD restores our joy, GOD then subsequently upholds us with His Spirit. THEN we find ourselves effective witnesses, teaching people His ways, and leading the lost to Christ.

It is deceptively simple. Trust God. Be joyful. Allow Him to lead you and not the other way around.

David makes it clear that the redemptive process is in God’s Hands, understanding grace so well that he could see past the Temple rituals of the Mosaic Law and peer into God’s Heart, saying,

“For thou desirest not sacrifice; else would I give it: thou delightest not in burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.” (v. 51-16-17)

One of the most debilitating emotions to one’s Christian witness is the weight of the guilt we heap on ourselves for being what we KNOW we are in our own ‘inward parts’.

David understood, in his spirit, that God’s forgiveness is total and absolute, and leaves no spiritual residue of guilt. At the Cross, the Son of David cried out in a loud voice, ‘Tetelestai!’ which means, ‘paid in full’.

Jesus promised, “Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For My yoke is easy, and My burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28-30)

UN Makes its Move

UN Makes its Move
Vol: 47 Issue: 26 Friday, August 26, 2005

Undaunted by a litany of failures, scandals that would make Bill Clinton blush, its utter ineffectiveness at containing global problems like Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, the Sudanese genocide or even a definition for the word ‘terror’, the UN has decided this is the perfect time to make a grab at the reins of global power.

While the Democrats in the Senate fought to block John Bolton from the US Ambassador’s seat, the globalists on Turtle Bay were preparing a special summit to ambush the United States in September.

An ambush that could have been at least partially blunted in advance, had Bolton already been on the job.

The UN has prepared a forty-page paper it hopes to get Bush’s signature on, under the working title, “Draft Outcome Document of the High-level Plenary Meeting of the General Assembly of September 2005.”

The document envisions a series of ‘reforms’ that won’t reform the UN, but will instead reform the world to accept the idea of a UN global government. Not just a debating society, but a real government, with real governmental authority.

The document begins from the flawed premise that the UN has a critical role to play in global affairs, and that it is up to the task. The UN hopes that, by presenting the document for Bush’s signature during a global special summit, he will be forced to sign on in order to rebut the global view of the US as a unilateralist loose cannon.

The Draft Outcome Document of the High-level Plenary Meeting of the General Assembly of September 2005 is a wish list that offers nothing in the terms of actual reform within the United Nations.

From the perspective of the draft, it is a case of “I’m ok, but you’re a pathetic mess.”

The draft would commit the United States to “meeting all commitments and obligations under the Kyoto Protocol.” The Kyoto Protocol is so flawed that, by 2001, not a single other nation in the world had ratified it.

The United States Senate rejected ratification 97-3. But when George Bush announced the United States would never ratify Kyoto, other nations started signing on.

On February 16, 2005, enough nations had ratified the Kyoto Protocols to put it into force without US ratification.

The UN hopes to shame the United States into signing on to the Kyoto Protocols, which aim to clean up the environment by suppressing energy use in the developed world and granting exemptions to ‘underdeveloped’ nations like China and Russia. This means that, even with Kyoto, global emissions of greenhouse gases will continue to increase.

So the Kyoto Protocol will do virtually nothing to halt any possible global temperature increase the temperature that would have been reached in 2100 will be reached in 2106.

Yet independent analyses of the annual cost to the world of complying with Kyoto put it at between $150 billion and $350 billion a year — most of which will be borne by the United States.

In addition, signatories to the special summit ‘reform’ document would agree to “maintain a moratorium on nuclear test explosions pending the entry into force of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty and call upon all States to sign and ratify” that treaty.

(The Senate has already rejected such a treaty, declaring it inconsistent with America’s national security interests.)

UN ‘reforms’ call for the “authorization, without delay, of negotiations on . . . effective measures for the prevention of an arms race in outer space.” That is so obviously contrary to US national security interests as to require no further comment.

The UN ‘reforms’ would also call for the establishment of a permanent United Nations military force, drawn from the military forces of member states.

Those forces would be under United Nations command and control and their first allegiance would be to the United Nations, not their home countries.

And finally, the UN’s special summit ‘reform’ document would give it the authority to levy ‘globotaxes’ on international commerce in addition to the taxes it already collects in the form of member state ‘contributions’.

The UN (which has been caught stealing billions from Iraq under the cloak of the UN’s Oil for Food program) wants the US to authorize it to develop, “innovative and additional sources of financing for development on a public, private, domestic or external basis;” and things like, “solidarity contributions on plane tickets to finance development projects;” and “other solidarity contributions that would be nationally applied and internationally coordinated.”

“Solidarity” is such a nice, warm, friendly-sounding word!

The UN gets more than a quarter of its budget from the US Treasury, which gives the Congress a pretty powerful sword to use when it really needs it.

Congress has authority to cut US contributions to the UN, and has used that authority in the past. The authority to levy ‘globotaxes’ would blunt that sword considerably.

Assessment:

Enter John Bolton. According to an angry Reuters press release disguised as a news article, UN diplomats are upset the United States is trying to “return to square one and launch line-by-line negotiations on the document.”

No wonder the Far Left was trying to keep him off the job! Return to Square One with the UN? Go over the UN’s wish list line-by-line?

(I thought negotiations among diplomats was the UN’s raison d’etre?)

And why would Bolton not trust the UN? Just because it is hopelessly corrupt, incompetent, biased and totally opposed to all things American? Is that a good reason?

Not to the Marxist philosophy embraced by the American Left. The reason they opposed John Bolton is, in a nutshell, because he is ‘too blunt and undiplomatic’ and ‘too supportive of the Bush administration’. (That is like a bar owner complaining that his bouncers are too big and mean-looking.)

It is not likely that the UN’s ‘wish list’ will bear the president’s signature as written, but the UN’s global power grab has considerable support outside the United States.

Much of the world sees a need for a global system of government to keep the United States in check and to ensure they get what they believe is a fair share of the global pie.

The UN’s 2005 ‘Report on the World Social Situation’ concluded that much of the world is trapped in what the report called an “inequality predicament” that is claims is the root cause of terrorism and war.

“It is dangerous for both national and international peace and security to allow economic and political inequality to deepen. Such inequalities, especially struggles over political power, land and other assets can create social disintegration and exclusion and lead to conflict and violence. Manifestations of such violence discussed in the Report include war, the use of child soldiers, and domestic and sexual violence.”

It is classic Marxism; the rich are evil exploiters of the poor. The best way to rectify the situation is to redistribute the wealth until there aren’t any more poor people. It doesn’t work, it never has, and it never will, but that is what makes Marxism so appealing.

If somebody COULD make it work, the world would be SUCH a wonderful place. No crime, no poverty, no private ownership . . . the world would be one big happy family.

This is the generation in which the concept of a global government has found a home. It’s been talked about ever since the collapse of the old Roman Empire.

Various conquerors, from Charlemagne to Napoleon to Hitler, all pictured themselves at the reins of global power and attempted to bring it about by force.

This generation has come the closest in history to realizing the globalist dreams of the conquerors, but the developing global empires are coming together under the banner of peace, rather than war. The European Union, the dreamchild of Charlemagne and Napoleon, could never have been united by war, as most recently proved by Hitler’s Third Reich sixty years ago.

But following the Nazi madness, six European countries met under the banner of peace and, in 1948, entered into the Benelux Treaty that eventually grew to become the single European entity that eluded military efforts for centuries.

The United Nations, created for the express purpose of uniting the world against war, has grown into the global government-in-waiting that it is today. All in the name of peace and prosperity.

Consider this for a second. All of the efforts to create a global government by force in the last two thousand years have failed — and not for the lack of trying, as history makes abundantly clear.

But in just one generation, the world has not only seen the need for global government, it has embraced the concept as the only sure method of maintaining global peace.

Twenty five centuries ago, before the rise of the Medo-Persian Empire, before Alexander the Great’s Greek Empire, before the rise and fall of the Roman Empire, the prophet Daniel predicted the rise of the antichrist in the last days, saying;

“And through his policy also he shall cause craft to prosper in his hand; and he shall magnify himself in his heart, and BY PEACE shall destroy many.”

The Apostle John recorded his vision of ‘the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse’ — the first four of the Seven Seal Judgments of Revelation Six. John pictures the first horseman — or first Seal Judgment — this way.

“And I saw when the Lamb opened one of the seals, and I heard, as it were the noise of thunder, one of the four beasts saying, Come and see. And I saw, and behold a white horse: and he that sat on him had a bow; and a crown was given unto him: and he went forth conquering, and to conquer.” (Revelation 6:1-2)

The rider on the white horse is the antichrist. Note that he carries a bow — but no arrows. Note that a crown is ‘given’ him — he doesn’t seize it by force. Note also that, without weapons, he ‘went forth conquering’.

The first seal judgment is a false peace advanced by a global leader who conquers without weapons. The second seal, the rider on the red horse, comes to “to take peace from the earth.”

Weapons are introduced to maintain order, but the new world order itself comes together by peaceful means.

All this in a single generation. This generation was born in the aftermath of the last effort at global conquest by force.

From that beginning, we’ve progressed to the point where most of the world is prepared to surrender to a global government without a shot being fired — all in the name of peace.

Yet throughout the UN’s existence, one is hard-pressed to find an example of the UN actually having prevented a single war. There is no reason to believe that it will do any better in the future than it has in the past.

But the idea of global government in the pursuit of peace is an idea whose time has come. Finally. For the first time in all recorded human history. In this generation.

“Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass away, till ALL be fulfilled.” (Luke 21:32)

Respinning September 11th

Respinning September 11th
Vol: 47 Issue: 25 Thursday, August 25, 2005

Nearly five years after both political parties solemnly swore never to politicize the deaths of nearly 3,000 victims of 9/11, politicians on both sides of the aisle are doing little else.

The political furor over new stories involving alleged 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta and US-bin Laden go-between Tarik Hamdi has fired up political spinmasters eager to find some way to blame the attacks on each other.

While the spin has dwelled exclusively around “anti-terrorism” the actual evidence trail seems to be purposely ignored. Probably because the trail leads directly to high-level US government officials and US intelligence agencies themselves.

According to newly unsealed court papers, Tarik A. Hamdi, an Iraqi-born American citizen and a former resident of Herndon, Virginia AND a direct and key American contact for Osama bin Laden, is now a member of the Iraqi Foreign Ministry in Ankara, Turkey.

According to the affidavit from Customs Agent David Kane, and facts confirmed by US authorities (including the FBI), Hamdi supplied a satellite telephone battery to bin Laden, who was in Afghanistan in 1998.

Hamdi worked as a double-agent for former CIA counter-terror chief Vince Cannistaro, who met Hamdi when Cannistaro worked for ABC News. Cannistaro met Hamdi through an ABCNews stringer named Rahimullah Yusufszai. It was Yusufszai who arranged for ABCNews reporter John Miller to get a TV interview with Osama bin-Laden in 1998.

Cannistaro was the other ABC News analyst who was escorted with John Miller to his bin Laden interview. Later, Cannistaro provided running news commentary in the days immediately following 9/11.

Cannistaro the news analyst, as a former CIA counterterrorism chief, provided covert aid to the Afghani mujahadeen in the late 80s, as well as supervising CIA operations with the contras. His ties with bin-Laden run deep.

Even more interesting is the fact that Hamdi had a close working relationship with the late Peter Jennings, who used Hamdi on his broadcasts as a Middle East ‘expert’. (That helps to explain why none of this information is running on ABC World News Tonight.)

Over the past decade, Hamdi has also served Anglo-American intelligence interests. He has gone from being a key bin Laden go-between, to becoming an official in the new Iraqi government, right under the nose of the authorities of several nations, including the CIA, the FBI, US law enforcement, and the US State Department.

Nobody is sure how Hamdi got his Iraqi government post. But Cannistaro remains in contact with Hamdi, and reportedly believes that Hamdi is being unfairly harassed by the Feds.

While ABC tries to spin away charges of collaboration with Osama (like CNN spun away the charges of collaboration with Saddam), the 9/11 Commission is spinning away its failure to consider the Able Danger report, running the gamut from “Able Who?” to “Yeah, we heard of it, but it wasn’t ‘historically important’.”

Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, and Congressman Curt Weldon (R-Pa) claim the 9/11 Commission ignored evidence that Shaffer claims he tried but failed to persuade the Defense Department and the Tampa, Florida-based Special Operations Command to share the information — information they say might have stopped 9/11.

In a statement, Commission chairman Thomas Kean and vice chairman Lee Hamilton stated that Able Danger program was not “historically significant, set against the larger context of US policy and intelligence efforts”.

Hmmm. Able Danger was created specifically to target al-Qaeda. Who is kidding whom, here?

Since Able Danger allegedly identified 9/11 ringleader Mohammed Atta in 1999, and Atta subsequently flew a hijacked airliner into the World Trade Center, (which was the focus of the investigation) how can Able Danger NOT be ‘historically important’?

According to Rep. Weldon in his book, Countdown to Terror, US intelligence knew about Atta since the early Clinton administration.

In 1998, Atta was living in a Hamburg apartment (later found to be an Al Qaeda cell) and under surveillance by German intelligence. The Germans were passing along what they knew to the CIA.

There is also growing evidence that Atta may have been known to U.S. intelligence as far back as 1993 and, according to the German press, the CIA itself had other people in the apartment under surveillance.

Writes Weldon, “Given the intelligence community’s poor track record and the political corruption of the intelligence process during the Clinton administration, the intelligence community’s failure to detect and stop the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington seems inevitable.”

Assessment:

It now appears that some members were briefed on Able Danger on two separate occasions, but declined to look into it further, because what they were told didn’t work with the 9/11 timeline they’d already decided upon.

Former commission spokesman Al Felzenberg said, The information that he provided us did not mesh with other conclusions that we were drawing.

That certainly seems to define the Commission’s methods; decide the outcome, then ignore any facts that contradict it.

The 9/11 Commission, formally known as the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, was put together to answer two questions: how did this happen, and how can we prevent it from happening again?

What it did instead was look for ways to blame the Bush administration, only eight months after his inauguration, and look for ways to exonerate the Clinton administration for ignoring the growing threat of al-Qaeda for eight years prior to 9/11.

The 9/11 Commission was set up as a bi-partisan committee, five Democrats and five Republicans. So people on all sides of the political spectrum were surprised when they issued a final report, which, if boiled down to a single sentence, would say, everyone and no one was to blame.

The 9/11 Commission ignored the fact that the Sudan offered bin-Laden to the Clinton administration in 1996 and Clinton refused the offer. That story has been spun and counterspun until it has taken on the texture of an urban legend.

But Clinton admitted himself in February, 2002, during a speech in Woodbury, New York. He said then:

At the time, 1996, [bin Laden] had committed no crime against America so I did not bring him here because we had no basis on which to hold him, though we knew he wanted to commit crimes against America. So I pleaded with the Saudis to take him, cause they could have. But they thought it was a hot potato and they didn’t and that s how he wound up in Afghanistan.

The Commission was headed by Jamie Gorelick. During her time as deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration, was responsible for creating the wall of separation that prevented law enforcement agencies from sharing information about investigations.

The commission determined that the lack of inter-agency cooperation, now mostly removed by the PATRIOT Act, was in part responsible for the failure to prevent 9/11.

Coordination and cooperation are essential in preventing terror attacks. It was the Gorelick wall that prevented the Pentagon from directly contacting the FBI with Able Danger s information about Mohammed Atta and other 9/11 hijackers.

If the 9/11 Commission had actually been looking for answers instead of seeking facts to fit preconceived conclusions, then Gorelick would have been a witness BEFORE the Commission, instead of being its chair.

So why the Clinton whitewash? Why the effort to hide any evidence that the government had any concrete intelligence prior to the Bush administration, or the effort to exaggerate the intelligence available to the Bush administration during its first eight months in office?

By the way, does anybody remember the situation when Bush came to office in 2001? His transition period was cut in half, when he assumed control of the White House, all the computers had been sabotaged, the White House had been trashed, and anything that might have been helpful to the transition team shredded. It was only eight months later that Osama struck.

From the outset, the Bush administration has gone to great lengths to cover up for the previous administration, from downplaying the GAO assessments of all the damage done to the White House and Air Force One by the departing Clintons, to making excuses for the muliple foreign policy failures they left behind.

The Bush administration endorsed the 9/11 Commission Report before it had even been released, and declared the matter closed.

But it isn’t closed, and the administration’s eagerness to bury the report’s shortcomings is puzzling.

It appears that everybody knows more than they are telling. Including at least a good part of the Bush administration.

It reminds me of that famous line from the movie, “A Few Good Men.” Jack Nicholson plays a Marine major being cross examined by Navy lawyer Tom Cruise, who angrily demands that the Major “tell the truth.” Nicholson, as the major, snarls, “You want the truth? You can’t handle the truth!”

It gives one pause to wonder if the 9/11 Commission was really a case of life imitating art. And it raises the question; COULD America handle the truth, if it knew what it was?

If the political operatives on both sides of the aisle have their way, America may never have the chance to find out.

US BioFuel Breakthrough Headed to Europe

US BioFuel Breakthrough Headed to Europe
Vol: 47 Issue: 24 Wednesday, August 24, 2005

TV Evangelist Pat Robertson’s boneheaded statement that the United States should assassinate Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is getting far more press than it deserves.

The reason isn’t because the death of Hugo Chavez would cause many in the US to shed a tear (or even many in Venezuela), but because it was a well-known Christian evangelist advocating political assassination.

Hugo Chavez is a brute, a friend to dictators, a coddler of terrorists, and more than a little nuts (he is known among other South American leaders as ‘El Loco’) but there is something wrong with a Christian leader advocating his murder, even among hawkish Christians such as myself.

The Apostle Paul, writing during the reign of Emperor Nero, the most brutal persecutors of Christians among all the Roman emperors, admonished the Church;

“Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God.” (Romans 13:1)

If the powers that be are ordained of God, then that means God is using those powers according to His own purposes. As Christians, we don’t know what those purposes are, but we trust that they are His and that is enough.

That doesn’t mean I believe Christians should stand meekly for the slaughter; I fully believe in the right of nations to make war. And I see no conflict with Christians serving in wartime.

But I trust God, and I am confident that if He wants Hugo Chavez overthrown, He is fully capable of doing it without Pat Robertson’s advice and consent.

Advocating the assassination of a national leader with whom America is not at war is advocating murder under the banner of Christianity. Legally, it is difficult to draw a distinction between that and advocating murder under the banner of Islam. Morally, it is not the role of the Church to advocate an action that would legally be a crime.

It was this kind of boneheaded statement that gives Christianity a bad name.

Having said that, I said that God ordains the ‘higher powers’ in government according to His purposes. How does Venezuela fit into the Big Picture?

Hugo Chavez DOES represent a significant threat to US strategic interests, if for no other reason than the fact that Venezuela is the fourth largest source of American oil imports in the world, after Canada, Mexico, and Saudi Arabia. In terms of importance, Venezuela supplies more oil to the US than both Iraq and Kuwait combined.

The United States was energy self-sufficient until 1948 when it’s domestic needs skyrocketed, forcing the importation of Venezuelan oil to augment US supplies, and beginning America’s dependence on foreign oil suppliers.

US oil imports, which accounted about one-third of total US petroleum needs in 1973, jumped to 60% of US oil needs in 2002. Those of us who remember the OPEC oil crisis, take notice.

Remember when gasoline jumped 400% in price — and only if you waited in line for it? We were one-third dependent in 1973 and look what OPEC cuts accomplished: oil shortages, gas lines, runaway inflation. . . by the end of the decade, mortgage interest rates were over 20% in some places. We are TWO-THIRDS dependent today.

Every day, America consumes over 20 billion barrels of oil. If lined up in 1-gallon cans, they would encircle the earth at the equator almost 6 times (about 147,000 miles of cans) every day. U.S. gasoline consumption of 320,500,000 gallons per day (March 2005) works out to about 3700 gallons per second.

Here’s another image: EVERY DAY, the US consumes enough oil to cover a football field with a column of oil 2500 feet tall.

That’s 121 million cubic feet. 55-60% of US consumption is imported at a cost of $50 billion+ per year, amounting to the largest single element of our trade deficit.

US demand for natural gas is increasing, and production in many long-time prime producing areas (e.g. the Gulf Coast) is diminishing to the point of near-total depletion. Without significant increases in drilling (well beyond anticipated levels), demand is predicted to significantly exceed supply soon.

Assessment:

It is clear that oil is not just a strategic interest to US foreign policy — it is THE strategic interest, dwarfing all others.

As such, Washington has no choice but to coddle dictators like Hugo Chavez, despotic regimes like the House of Saud, or turn a blind eye to immigration problems on both the northern and southern borders.

(Canada is America’s Number One supplier of oil, and Mexico is Number Two. Saudi Arabia and Venezuela are usually tied between Numbers Three and Four.)

But we continue to coddle the dictators that we depend on for the lifeblood of our economy while simultaneously giving away the formula for energy dependence to the Europeans.

A couple of years ago, we discussed a new technology being developed by Changing World Technologies that would turn just about any carbon-based garbage into sweet, crude oil.

Changing World Technologies uses water, pressure, and heat to convert organic material into clean fuel gas, absorbent carbon (like that used in water filters), minerals for fertilizer, and a crude oil that is chemically similar to a mixture of diesel fuel and gasoline; this oil can be sold to refineries and converted into fuel.

The system produces no polluting emissions, and the only by-product is potable water. It sounds too good to be true!

But, unlike most things that sound too good to be true, thermo-depolymerization actually works. Not only does it work, but, according to CWT’s CEO Brian Appell, the process can produce oil for about $18 per barrel.

It has been operating a small conversion refinery outside a Butterball plant in Carthage, Mo. since 2003, turning turkey guts into sweet crude oil plus the other valuable raw materials that emerge as byproducts.

And the system handles not only turkey offal; but tires, plastics, sludge, municipal waste, paper, and livestock remains.

Barring nuclear waste, anything can yield these goods, according to proponents of the process: 100 pounds of tires, for instance, yields 44 pounds of oil (along with the other byproducts); a similar quantity of medical waste would result in 65 pounds of oil.

According to an article in Fortune Magazine, “Last year the Carthage plant began selling its output to a Midwestern manufacturer, which buys it for roughly $40 a barrel (25% less than conventional fuel) and uses it to run its plant. The Carthage factory now produces 400 barrels a day.”

One would expect that CWT would be a household name and Brian Appell courted by the US government as if he were Saudi royalty. Instead, CWT has been hamstrung by red tape and government regulations.

Outfits like Butterball usually sell their offal to feed manufacturers for about $40 per ton. CWT was counting on the government to ban the feeding of animal parts to livestock, since the practice has been linked to mad-cow disease. That would have supplied them with endless supplies of free turkey waste.

But feeding animals to animals remains standard practice in the U.S., despite a modest tightening in the regulations last year. So instead of being free, turkey leftovers cost $30 to $40 a ton, a hefty expense considering that one ton of turkey yields just two barrels of oil.

The feds also excluded ‘turkey fuel’ from biofuel tax breaks. In October, Congress passed a bill that gave biodiesel, which is also derived from biological material, such as soybean oil and animal fat, but has a different chemical composition, a tax incentive that translates into a $1-a-gallon break on production costs.

Instead of being classified as a biofuel developer, CWT was classified as a manufacturer.

As a result of those two setbacks, CWT’s production costs have doubled, to nearly $80 a barrel, a crippling blow given that conventional diesel sells for about $50 a barrel. CWT is staying afloat, thanks to a $10 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy.

But that grant money is about to run out, and so is Changing World Technologies. It is negotiating with the Europeans, where food processors will pay CWT to dispose of animal offal and where CWT has been offered tax incentives as a biofuel developer.

Appell is negotiating to license CWT’s technology to Irish Food Processors, one of Europe’s largest, which plans to build a biofuel facility by the end of 2006.

Europe gets fuel made from turkey guts for $11 a barrel. America gets to keep Hugo Chavez, King Abdullah and Vincente Fox.

Not to mention Pat Robertson.

Foolishness and Political Correctness

Foolishness and Political Correctness
Vol: 47 Issue: 23 Tuesday, August 23, 2005

For most of the last five years, the mantra has remained the same: “Islam is a religion of peace and love that was hijacked by the terrorists.” If there is any single place where the Bush administration has truly dropped the ball, it’s there.

This fundamental misunderstanding of Islam’s core teachings is at the heart of whatever military miscalculations have been made since September 11. Indeed, it was this misunderstanding that made September 11 possible in the first place.

Americans, by nature, want to be fair with other religionists and other religions, even those they don’t understand. Since most Americans grew up in a mainly Christian culture, their assumption is that other religions preach the same basic message of peace, love and the hope of redemption that they are familiar with.

And, since Islam presents itself as one of the world’s three great monotheistic religions, the default assumption is that Islam worships the same God as Christians and Jews, albeit differently and by a different Name.

That isn’t so broad an assumption. God is worshipped by many Names, Jehovah, Adonai, G-d, Jesus, El Shaddai, etc. But the nature and character of God, by any Name, is the same. At least, it is within the Judeo-Christian cultural understanding of ‘God’.

To a person raised in a Christian culture, there are essentially three understandings of Deity. There are religions who worship the same God by many Names, there are atheists, and there are pagan religions that have many gods.

Each is understood as distinctly different, but when one adds Islam as ‘one of the world’s three great monotheistic religions’ — Allah tends to be viewed less as a pagan god and more as the God worshipped by many Names.

Culturally, it is a social taboo akin to racism to suggest Allah is NOT the same Deity worshipped by Christians and Jews.

I am often amused by the strict separationists within US culture who insist religion should play no role in US public life while simultaneously advancing theological interpretations on the validity of Islam.

The ACLU has fought pitched battles for decades to eliminate any vestiges of Christianity from the public school system, but it defended the mandatory study of Islam in the California school system, for example.

It isn’t because the ACLU favors Islamic teachings. Islam gets preferential treatment because it is politically correct to advance the causes of minorities and politically incorrect to speak ill of minorities, which, according to the Marxist principle of political correctness, is the equivalent to ‘oppression’.

Islam enjoys political influence far beyond its numbers because of political correctness. Islam might be the world’s fastest growing religion, but in America, its numbers lag behind the number of Americans who believe they’ve been abducted by UFO’s. (Twenty million Americans believe they’ve been abducted by UFO’s, compared to the US Islamic population of seven million)

In the past five years, Islamic terrorism has dominated US foreign policy. Thousands of Americans, both military and civilian, have died at the hands of Islamic terrorists.

The television airwaves have been saturated with warnings, releases, fatwas and declarations of ‘Death to America’ by Islamic terrorists. Islamic cultural centers have been used as terror recruitment outposts throughout the Western world.

During those five years, ‘moderate’ Islam (the alleged majority of the Islamic world) was nowhere to be found.

A few half-hearted condemnations of terror by minor Islamic organizations, like the recent fatwa issued by the “Muslim American Society” are lost in the din of fatwas from so-called ‘radical’ Muslim groups world-wide.

Political correctness demands that the cacaphony of radical statements MUST represent the tiny minority of Islam, and the anti-terrorism fatwa issued by the largely unknown “Muslim American Society” — coming FIVE YEARS after September 11 — MUST represent the majority view of Islam toward terrorism.

The fatwa condemning terror was the FIRST one ever issued by a North American Muslim group, and it wasn’t issued until July 28. Even then, the American fatwa was in response to two bombings in Great Britain, not the September 11 attacks that killed nearly 3,000 Americans. Or the terrorist attacks in Iraq and Afghanistan that are claiming American forces on an almost daily basis.

I referred to ‘radical Muslims’ as ‘so-called’ for a reason. If the majority of Islam approves of jihad, (as polls taken in the Islamic world indicate) then it is ‘moderate’ Islam that is actually the ‘radical’ branch.

The jihadists are the ones that represent ‘mainstream’ Islam.

Assessment:

A radio talk-show host for ABC made the mistake of making similar observations about Islam on the air.

The Council on Islamic American Relations complained, and he was fired for his comments. It didn’t matter that what Michael Graham said was true. It was politically incorrect.

Graham lost his job for making the following observation:

“Because of the mix of Islamic theology that rightly or wrongly is interpreted to promote violence, added to an organizational structure that allows violent radicals to operate openly in Islam s name with impunity, Islam has, sadly, become a terrorist organization. It pains me to say it. But the good news is it doesn t have to stay this way, if the vast majority of Muslims who don t support terror will step forward and re-claim their religion.”

As I noted, it doesn’t matter if what Graham said was true. CAIR, the organization that lobbied for Graham’s head, has had ample opportunity to prove Islam is really a religion of peace and love. But instead, three of its top leaders have been convicted of terrorist activities since September 11.

As far as CAIR’s ‘condemnation of terrorism’ in November 1999, CAIR President Omar Ahmad addressed a youth session at the IAP annual convention in Chicago, where he praised suicide bombers who kill themselves for Islam :

Fighting for freedom, fighting for Islam that is not suicide. They kill themselves for Islam.

Not only did the Left fail to call for CAIR President Omar Ahmad’s head when he advocated suicide bombing as an Islamic duty, it roundly supported his right to do so.

On the other hand, CAIR was profoundly offended by an analogy offered by Graham between Islam and the Boy Scouts. And so was ABC, since the fired Graham for saying it on the air:

“If the Boy Scouts of America had 1,000 scout troops, and 10 of them practiced suicide bombings, then the BSA would be considered a terrorist organization,” he said.

That sounds reasonable enough. Especially if the Scouts as an organization defended it, as Graham’s analogy postulated.

“If the BSA refused to kick out those 10 troops, that would make the case even stronger. If people defending terror repeatedly turned to the Boy Scout handbook and found language that justified and defended murder and the scoutmasters in charge simply said ‘Could be’ the Boy Scouts would have driven out of America long ago.”

Let’s compare the two statements. One from CAIR, an allegedly moderate Muslim group, advocating suicide bombing as an Islamic duty, and the other an analogy that perfectly captures the allegedly ‘moderate’ Islamic attitude toward terror — as expressed by the leader of the allegedly ‘moderate’ group being offended.

Let’s break it down further. Taking the politically correct view, statements from Muslims favoring Islamic terror don’t disqualify them from being ‘moderate’ but saying moderate Islam favors Islamic terror is ‘racist Islamophobia’.

Political correctness is an object lesson in the principle that spiritual blindess causes spiritual insanity. The world cannot accept the concept that one of the ‘world’s three great monotheistic religions’ is at its core, a bloodthirsty, xenophobic religion dedicated to spreading Islam at the point of a sword, if necessary.

If one denies the existence of a good God, one cannot accept the existence of an ‘evil god’ — and therefore, Islam is no greater a threat than Christianity or Judaism. Less, even, since it shares the world’s irrational hatred of both Christians and Jews.

We are engaged in both a material and spiritual conflict, with the emphasis on the latter. It is a war between the forces of the Bible and the forces of the Prince of Persia. But recognizing the threat means recognizing the spiritual element behind it. That is too great a hurdle for the world to overcome.

“But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.” (1st Corinthians 2:14)

The world prefers its version of ‘moderate’ Islam despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary because it is blinded by the god of this world. “For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written, He taketh the wise in their own craftiness.” (1st Corinthians 3:19)

Conventional wisdom looks more like the results of mass hysterical hypnosis than it does the results of sober, thoughtful, contemplative examination of the evidence.

“And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie:” (2nd Thessalonians 2:11)

This is another reason why I believe the Bible indicates a pre-Tribulation Rapture. The indwelt Church isn’t under that delusion. The Apostle Paul noted; “For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God.” (1st Corinthians 1:18)

Special Report: Gaza: Israeli Defeat? Or Strategic Victory?

Special Report: Gaza: Israeli Defeat? Or Strategic Victory?
Vol: 47 Issue: 22 Monday, August 22, 2005

The Palestinian Authority is planning a ‘Victory Carnival’ in Gaza to celebrate the Israeli withdrawal as soon as the last settlement has been evacuated.

The ‘Victory Carnival’ is the brainchild of Fatah Youth Organization leader Abd al-Hakim Awad, who envisions a celebration complete with folklore shows, fireworks and parades through the settlements of their hated former neighbors.

Palestinian authorities plan to operate a shuttle service that will bus hundreds of thousands of curious Palestinians into the settlements — to tour the “liberated Palestinian territory.”

Despite the fact the average citizen of Gaza lives on less than three dollars a day, the Palestinian Authority plans to spend $2 million (mostly US tax dollars) to pay for the party, including passing out 350,000 t-shirts with the words, “Victory and Liberation” emblazoned over an image of Yasser Arafat.

The Palestinian Authority is hoping Gaza terror groups will join in its efforts to make the “historic day,” as Fatah leader Awad calls it, a show of national unity, all under the motto: “One flag, one people, one country.”

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is already urging Israel to make further concessions. “Everyone has compassion for what the Israelis are going through right now, but it can’t stop with the Gaza Strip,” Rice said, commenting on the withdrawal of Jewish settlers.

Palestinians in the West Bank would certainly agree with Rice’s assessment. So would the terrorists among them.

Hamas has already pledged to resume terrorist attacks against Israel as soon as the Gaza withdrawal is complete. Together with Islamic Jihad, the two terror groups already outnumber official Palestinian security forces and are both better armed and better trained.

To demonstrate their power, they held a parade of uniformed recruits to their supposedly 40,000-strong “People’s Army,” armed with Kalashnikovs and grenade launchers, in the stadium of the Jabaliya refugee camp last week.

The high point of the military show was the simulated storming of a Jewish settlement.

The terrorists promise the next battlefield will be the West Bank, where 250,000 Jewish settlers remain. But they also are promising to resume their attacks against Israelis on Israeli soil.

For Hamas, the goal is not the takeover of the former Jordanian territory in the West Bank, but the ethnic cleansing of Jews from the Jordan River to the Meditterranean Sea.

Assessment:

We’ve already discussed the various agreements made and then abrogated by the Palestinians since 1993. And we’ve looked in detail at what the Road Map for Peace demands as Phase 1 of the plan — the dismantling of Palestinian terror groups.

It is clear that the PA not only won’t dismantle and disarm Hamas and Islamic Jihad, they couldn’t if they DID want to. If Mahmoud Abbas tried, it would spark a civil war that he is too weak to win.

It is equally clear that Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza won’t end the terror, and it is no less clear to Ariel Sharon than it is to me. So, why bother?

The Gaza withdrawal has deeply divided Israel, although a slim majority of Israelis support it, together with the majority of the Knesset who approved it.

If there is nothing to be gained, either politically or in terms of security, why put the country through the trauma?

Every Israeli is aware the PA has never amended its Charter to acknowledge Israel’s right to exist. Every Israeli is aware of Hamas’ open and oft-repeated existential goal of the destruction of Israel and its subsequent ethnic cleansing of Jews.

The Knesset is as aware of the combined military strength of the Islamic terror groups joined to Hamas, and know that Abbas can never hope to fulfill the PA’s obligations under Phase 1, yet they chose to withdraw, anyway.

Sharon and his cabinet knew that the withdrawal would provide a huge propaganda victory to the terrorists, not to mention a substantial territorial victory together with freshly ‘liberated Palestinian lands’ to stage their ‘victory carnival’. Yet the withdrawal went ahead as planned.

The United States has put considerable pressure on Israel to effect this withdrawal — too much pressure, from where I sit, yet the Israelis don’t seem to be putting up much of a counter-struggle with Washington. In conducting this withdrawal under these circumstances, Israel has been too meek by half.

But, putting it all together, there is a context that makes it all make some sense. To begin with, few Israelis, including the Israeli leadership, ever wanted Gaza in the first place.

Israel captured the territory from Egypt and kept it as part of a buffer zone between itself and Egypt, not because it wanted the territory itself.

Even many religious Jews don’t see Gaza as part of Eretz Yisrael. Although it was part of the Abrahamic land grant, it was not part of David’s Israel, it was the Land of the Phillistines. If the Phillistines want it, let the Phillistines have it.

Politically, Gaza is a low-priority territory that was never worth the cost. But the withdrawal provided an opportunity to do some strategic repositioning, plus providing Israel with some leverage with the international community.

The Israelis watched the Palestinian Authority’s administration of Gaza for the last eleven years. Gaza’s residents know how incompetent, corrupt and ineffective that administration has been.

Israel’s withdrawal means the PA will have to deal with Gaza’s 1.2 million citizens without being able to blame Israel for their plight. Israel is over there — on the other side of a fence.

Israel appears prepared to hunker down behind its security fence and let the Palestinians wear themselves out. A few more years of terrorism won’t force Israel to withdraw any further or surrender east Jerusalem. But it will paralyze Palestinian development, erode international support, and demoralize the Palestinians.

Abbas’ only political card is already on the table, in the form of the new slogan-of-the-month entry: “Today Gaza, tomorrow, Jerusalem and the West Bank.”

It will work for awhile, but eventually, Gazans are going to realize nobody is going to do anything to improve their lives in Gaza.

The claim that terrorism brought results–endorsed by Abbas and his group– legitimized both Hamas and its methods. Hamas will now govern large areas of the Gaza Strip.

Governing is not something terrorists do well.

Abbas also has challengers within his own ranks. Hardline Fatah leaders, who represent the majority of Fatah, are consolidating around Fatah leader Faruq Qaddumi. Qaddumi, who is very popular in the Fatah ranks, opposed the Oslo accords and openly calls for Israel’s destruction. There are rumors he is planning to set up his own army to oppose Abbas and expell the Palestinian Authority. An explosion in Gaza is inevitable, and it means years more war for Israel.

Now we return to the question of how this works into Israel’s strategic interests.

Israel knows that years of continued war will damage the Palestinians much more than it will the Israelis behind the security fence. There will be casualties, but Israel will be no worse off than it is now. The Palestinian Authority will either have to govern Gaza, or allow it to descend into anarchy.

Israel is betting that the world is not prepared to create a Palestinian state while it is either in the midst of an internal civil war or one with a power-sharing arrangement with terrorists openly plotting the destruction of Israel as part of a national strategy.

The Gaza withdrawal looks like a surrender to terror. In reality, it is a case of using terrorists as a weapon against themselves. Abbas won’t be able to consolidate an effective government in Gaza in the midst of either a civil war or a stepped-up war against Israel.

Without an effective government, there can be no further advance toward Palestinian statehood. No credible voice to demand the handover of east Jerusalem or further concessions on the West Bank. A stalemate, but one in which Israel regains some of the strategic high ground lost by years of fruitless negotiation.

It isn’t a good plan, but it is better than national suicide. It isn’t perfect, but it will work until someone comes along with a workable plan.

Daniel says that someone will be the leader of the revived Roman Empire, and his plan will signal the kickoff for the ‘time of Jacob’s Trouble.’

Maybe not tomorrow, or next month. But soon.

Peace, Peace, But There is No Peace

Peace, Peace, But There is No Peace
Vol: 47 Issue: 20 Saturday, August 20, 2005

Even as the gut-wrenching scenes of families being uprooted from homes they have lived in for a generation played out on TV, Palestinian terror groups, including the Palestinian Authority, are already demanding more.

The Gaza evacuation isn’t completed yet — there remain several communities awaiting expulsion by Israeli security forces.

The purpose of the evacuation — at least, in the fondest fantasies of most Israelis, is to put an end to the bloody five-year Oslo War, even at the expense of capitulation to terror.

Hamas held a news conference in Gaza City (where else on earth could terrorists call a news conference?) where a masked spokesman for the group told reporters, “Gaza is not Palestine. As or Jerusalem and the West Bank, we will seek to liberate them by resistance just as the Gaza Strip was liberated,” he said, while surrounded by other masked gunmen posing with rocket launchers.

The Israeli withdrawal from Gaza is one of the conditions imposed on the Jewish state by the Quartet’s ‘Road Map to Peace’ — a condition that Israel is meeting unilaterally.

Under the terms of the Road Map, the Israelis don’t actually have to do anything at all — the agreements as signed require the Palestinians to end terror and disarm terrorist groups (particularly Hamas and Islamic Jihad) BEFORE Israel hands over any more territory to the Palestinian Authority.

That isn’t the way the news media is portraying the situation. According, for example, to Reuters, “Israel has said there can be no talks before the dismantling of groups like Hamas, the biggest faction behind suicide bombings, shootings and rocket attacks during the uprising.”

And THAT is the way most people understand the situation. Israel is the obstacle to peace, even if they aren’t sure why.

The fact is, it was the ‘Road Map to Peace’ agreement that stipulates there can be no talks until Hamas is dismantled — Israel is merely quoting existing Palestinian promises — the media calls it ‘commitments’ — but a ‘commitment’ means a ‘promise’ and to terrorists, promises are weapons, just like guns and knives.

Terrorists attack ‘soft targets’ like buses, markets and neighborhoods, preferring innocents like mothers and children because of the maximum shock value. Then they promise that if their demands are met, they will stop attacking.

But there has never been a case in the history of modern terrorism where the terrorists have kept their promises, even after achieving their early goals. Success breeds more demands, which results in more terror.

While Abbas promised to dismantle terror groups in order to get Israeli concessions, once the concessions are granted, the promises are forgotten. At the Gaza news conference, the Hamas spokesman addressed the issue of disarmament saying,

Our arms removed the Zionist enemy and therefore we will not abandon our weapons and we will not hand the over to anybody.” He also said the issue “was not up for discussion.”

It WAS up for discussion — when there was a potential payoff. Now that the payoff demands are beginning to be met, the promises are abandoned and replaced by additional demands.

Abbas has not only done nothing about disarming and dismantling Palestinian terror groups, he has actually embraced them as his ‘comrades in arms’ attended terror rallies during which he ‘promised’ to break his promise to Israel [and the Quartet] and has even offered to bring the terrorists into his government.

He can do little else. Abbas is a terrorist. The Palestinian Authority is a terrorist organization with oceans of blood on its hands, and his goal [inexplicably shared with the rest of the world] is the creation of the world’s first terrorist state.

Oh, there have been other terror states, like Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran and so on, but the proposed PA state is being created by global acclamation without any illusions.

There cannot possibly be a global leader anywhere on the planet who does not recognize the fact that the Palestinian Authority is a terrorist entity, by definition.

There isn’t a global leader anywhere on the planet who could argue credibly that the Palestinian side has met a single commitment [or promise] it has made since the signing of the Oslo Agreement in 1993.

The PLO was born as a terrorist organization. It was founded by terrorists, led by terrorists, and for a quarter-century, painted the region with the blood of innocents until 1993. It’s foundational goal, its reason for being, is the destruction of the Jewish state of Israel. Remove that goal from the PLO Charter, and the PLO has no reason to exist.

In 1993, Yasser Arafat promised to amend the PLO Charter to include a recognition of Israel’s right to exist, and, on the strength of that promise, the PLO was magically transformed into a legitimate governmental entity called the Palestinian Authority, and Yasser Arafat was magically transformed from the world’s most dangerous terrorist into the world’s most celebrated ‘statesman’.

Twelve years later, the PLO Charter has never been amended. Thousands of Israelis have been killed or maimed by terrorist attacks launched from within the Palestinian Authority.

For twelve years, the only issue ‘negotiated’ was a promise to end the terror, but always, there was just one more thing they demanded of Israel, first.

Not one promise made by the Palestinian Authority since 1993 has been honored. Not one. In exchange for transparently empty promises, Israel has already surrendered most of its holdings in the West Bank and all of the Gaza Strip.

In exchange for transparently empty promises, the global community has insisted that Israel create a terrorist state on its own borders.

It would be the equivalent of the United Nations promising al-Qaeda its own state — by forcibly evacuating California and turning it over to Osama bin-Laden.

Assessment:

According to the State Department’s official website, the Road Map to Peace is “a performance-based and goal-driven roadmap, with clear phases, timelines, target dates, and benchmarks aiming at progress through reciprocal steps by the two parties in the political, security, economic, humanitarian, and institution-building fields, under the auspices of the Quartet [the United States, European Union, United Nations, and Russia].

A two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will only be achieved through an end to violence and terrorism, when the Palestinian people have a leadership acting decisively against terror and willing and able to build a practicing democracy based on tolerance and liberty, and through Israel s readiness to do what is necessary for a democratic Palestinian state to be established, and a clear, unambiguous acceptance by both parties of the goal of a negotiated settlement as described below.”

The official State Department document then outlines the Road Map to Peace in phases.

Phase 1 is entitled, ‘Ending Terror and Violence.’ At the OUTSET of Phase 1, says the document, “Palestinian leadership issues unequivocal statement reiterating Israel s right to exist in peace and security and calling for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire to end armed activity and all acts of violence against Israelis anywhere. All official Palestinian institutions end incitement against Israel.”

That, my friends, is the OUTSET of Phase 1. The first requirement. It is the catalyst that sets the stage for a ‘two-state solution’ to the Israeli-Arab conflict. An unconditional ceasefire and an end to acts of violence against Israel.

Phase II — called ‘Transition’ was scheduled to be completed by December 2003. That was to be followed by Phase III, which was optimistically titled, “Permanent Status Agreement and End of Israeli-Palestinian Conflict”.

During the time frame in which the two sides were supposed to be implementing Phase III, six hundred and forty-six Israelis were killed by Palestinian terrorists that were supposed to be disarmed and disbanded by the conclusion of Phase 1.

The Road Map to Peace is a ‘performance based and goal-driven road map’, based on the cessation of violence against Israel as Phase 1, according to its sponsors. But on August 11, 2005, President Bush expressed his ‘confidence’ in Palestinian terror leader Mahmoud Abbas, saying;

“He knows that a democracy can’t exist so long as you’ve got armed groups willing to take law in their own hands. And he’s committed to a democratic state.” Right. But the ‘democratic state’ Abbas is committed to is occupied by Israel at the moment.

Regarding the Palestinians’ obligation to fight terrorism, Bush noted that dismantling terrorist organizations is a process that cannot simply be achieved by disarming and isolating terrorists. (If that were true, we might as well withdraw all our own troops from the field and surrender to al-Qaeda)

Bush then said it is necessary to provide hope to the Palestinians and the Israelis that a peaceful, democratic state can emerge.

Let that sink in for a second. President Bush knows what the Road Map to peace demands from both sides. He knows that Phase 1 demanded the immediate dismantling of terror groups and an end to Palestinian terror as its starting point. Bush knows that none of the groups have been disarmed, indeed, he HAS to know that Abbas has embraced them as his ‘partners’.

Bush must be aware of the hundreds of innocent Israelis that have been killed by terrorists who were deliberately targeting innocents in the intervening months since the Road Map was agreed to by both sides.

So exactly what kind of ‘hope’ is he offering Israelis that a peaceful, democratic Palestinian state can emerge?

He’s put all his bets on Mahmoud Abbas, co-founder of the PLO, right hand man to Yasser Arafat since 1964, mastermind of countless terrorist attacks in his own right, under whose administration Palestinian terrorist groups have achieved such respectability that Hamas can call a press conference in Gaza in which it promises to continue to the terror until ‘all Hamas’ goals have been met.”

Hamas has only one goal. The destruction of Israel. Hamas doesn’t even care about Palestinian statehood. All it wants is the destruction of Israel. Period. End of story. When Israel ceases to exist, Hamas will have achieved its goal, and not before.

The modern Gaza Strip was, in Biblical times, the Land of the Philistines. The territory of the West Bank, when Joshua led the Israelites back to the Promised Land, was the Land of the Canaanites.

When God led them back into the land He gave by covenant to Abraham and his descendants, God told them not to enter into any treaty with its inhabitants, but to utterly drive them out. Instead, they disobeyed God.

“And the angel of the LORD came up from Gilgal to Bochim, and said, I made you to go up out of Egypt, and have brought you unto the land which I swore unto your fathers; and I said, I will never break My covenant with you. And you shall make no covenant with the inhabitants of this land; you shall throw down their altars: but you have not obeyed My voice: why have you done this?” (Judges 2:1-2)

“Therefore I also said, I will not drive them out from before you; but they shall be as thorns in your sides, and their gods shall be a snare unto you.” (Judges 2:3)

Roughly four thousand years later, Israel is still fighting the Philistines and Canaanites over the same piece of ground they disobeyed God by failing to overthrow back then.

Apart from Scripture, there can be no explanation for the Arab-Israel conflict. The Arab claim is based on historical revisions, supported by lies and false promises, and is writ large in Jewish blood. But it has the full support of the global community, despite the fact they KNOW all this.

Israel’s claim is based on the land grant of Scripture, but it is also based on the same principle that dictates the existence of every other nation on earth.

Possession. Remove Scripture from the equation and it is no different than Mexico demanding the return of California, New Mexico and Texas.

Yet the global community is universally committed to the Palestinian cause, knowing that its realization means the end of the Jewish state of Israel.

But before that happens, say the same Scriptures that foretold the Arab-Israeli conflict four thousand years in advance;

“I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the Spirit of grace and of supplications: and they shall look upon Me Whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for Him, as one mourns for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for him, as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn.”(Zechariah 12:10)

It is hard to imagine Israel surviving intact for much longer, given the odds against them. Which means the fulfillment of Zechariah’s prophecy must come soon, or there will be nobody left to mourn.

“So likewise ye, when ye see these things come to pass, know ye that the kingdom of God is nigh at hand. Verily I say unto you, THIS GENERATION SHALL NOT PASS AWAY, TILL ALL BE FULFILLED” (Luke 21:31-32)