HOMESTRANGE DAYS
Chronicles of the End of the AgeSTRANGE DAYS
July 25, 2006
Since its Declaration of Statehood in 1948, Israel has been attacked or in pre-emptive war several times at the hands of its neighbors and notably in:
- 1948 War of Independence - just 24 hours after the Declaration of Statehood
- 1956 Sinai Campaign
- 1967 Six-Day War
- 1973 Yom Kippur War
It is totally awe-inspiring and incredibly amazing how such a little country has not only faced its enemies, but how it turned those events into great victories. In 1948, when Egypt, Trans-Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq invaded the newly created State of Israel, the numerically inferior and poorly equipped Israeli army was able to resist and send back those menacing enemies who would not tolerate their presence in the area.
The Israeli government understood from the very beginning that their very survival was dependant on a strong military force and since then, their country has been at the forefront of research, development and deployment of defense and attack weapon systems. The not-too-secret whisper that Israel had the atomic bomb was reluctantly admitted by the authorities, and whatever armaments they cannot build, they buy from other countries. Armed and ready has been their motto. And nobody, except fools and enemies can blame them.
I believe, of course, that their victories were not due to their heroics on the battlefield. Someone was/is watching over them and it is so very damnable that they themselves don't even start to realize it. But more on this later.
2006 will be another date which must be appended to the others above and called the War on Hezbollah.
I would not call it a War on Lebanon, since Israel had made very clear that it understands the politics and divisions of Lebanon and is not making war to the country as a whole but that they are limiting their attacks to the areas where the Hezbollah exercise their dominion.
Not long ago Lebanon was a great and prosperous country and Beirut, its capital, was called the "Paris of the Mediterranean." Today, after the long civil war (1975-1990) and the interventions of Syria and Israel (for different reasons and purposes) Lebanon is showing signs of promise. But whatever progress we are talking here is irrelevant given the base situation of the country. The Hezbollah (party of god), supported by Syria and possibly Iran, have a stranglehold on Lebanon. While they inhabit the southern part of the country which borders Israel, they manipulate the whole country and politics, at times so clumsily that their actions end up as the total opposite of what they intended to accomplish, a revealing example being the Rafik Hariri assassination of february 14, 2005, which resulted in large anti-Syran protests which obliged Syria to remove its stationed troops from Lebanon in a hurry and at a very high loss of prestige. Syria went, but its supporters and militia (Hezbollah) remained and this takes us up to the present.
The Middle Eastern mind set is an alien thing to our western culture and that is why, often we find events and responses inexplicable to us but very concrete and real to them. They have an exaggerated sense of honor system where losing face is a fate worse than death. Moreover, they have a very long memory and especially in this case their beef goes back a few millennia, to the time of Abraham, to be sure.
No need to list the daily bombings and rocketing, and no need to list all the diplomacy at work or the not-so-veiled manipulations. Such is the nature of the game and one can read about it in the various media outlets, each according to which side they belong to. None of them, however, will be able to tell the final outcome of this epochal conflict. At this point I must re-state a few fundamentals:
1) Israel will be victorious over all its enemies
2) Israel will possess all the land from the Nile to the Euphrates
3) Israel will be the outmost nation on earth during the Millennium
And that's just for starters. Of course, the problem, if we can call it such, is getting there, which, by any stretch of the imagination, will be altogether incredibly painful to the point of hopeless desperation. But make no mistake about it, Israel will prevail and triumphantly so. Why am I so certain about these last few sentences? It's very simple: IT IS WRITTEN, and it shall happen.
Many are asking what is going to happen next and where are we in the prophetic timeline. Whenever momentous events happen in Israel there is always a race of speculators telling us we have entered into the Tribulation, that the Antichrist is such and such person and let's head for the mountains to escape the Beast and its Mark. We have not played with speculations, either consciously or for effect and and we are not about to start now. However, I must confess that in my spirit I pick up a different mood. Something has shifted and this time there is a sense of foreboding quite different.
In the prophetic timeline we have several events which have not yet taken place. For example the destruction of Damascus, Syria (Isaiah 17:1), and the attack against Israel described in Ezekiel 38 and 39.
Being the Hezbollah directly tied to Syria and being Damascus, its capital, the headquarter of just about every anti-Israel group and association, it is not hard to connect the dots. I believe (and I am not the only one) that after some tragic terrorist event by the hand of Hezbollah or other similar group which will cause enormous loss of life, Israel will react by nuking Damascus. Surely then as now, most countries will say that Israel is using "excessive, disproportionate force" while I think that Israel is using the only force that its neighbors understand. Thus will Isaiah's prophecy find its fulfillment.
(to be concluded next week)
June 5, 2006
Ok, first of all a quick answer for those who asked why we have not commented on the "Da Vinci Code" movie. I think there has been plenty of debate on all the media. I have not seen the movie and neither plan to. Why should I (or any Christian) spend money and time on such a devilish piece of trash? I think there will be a special place in hell for author Dan Brown and all those who in any way, participated to this blasphemous Sony Entertainment(?) project. In there they will find those degenerates like themselves who have taken pleasure in defaming the Lord Jesus Christ through the "arts" in recent years. As I have said in another occasion, these kind of people will experience in due time the true meaning of terror and no hope will be available to them. They will find out that the fire they are playing with is inextinguishable.
What I want to talk about instead, are the words Pope Benedict pronounced upon his visit to the Auschwitz death camp:
"In such a place, no words are possible, just stupefied silence which makes one ask God: why? Why did You not say anything? How was He able to tolerate such destruction? I pray to God not to allow a similar thing to ever happen again."
Such a statement, coming from the head of the Catholic Church, leaves one bewildered and for a variety of good reasons. First of all, such words should have never been uttered from someone who is expected to have a deeper knowledge into the nature of God. Why didn't God say anything? God had plenty to say, the problem though, was that very few were listening and certainly not the Catholic Church of those days.
What a big disappointment Pope Benedict is turning out to be.
Given his intelligence and knowledge of Scriptures, I was expecting that he would have lead the Catholic Church closer to the truth of the Gospel, but sadly I must admit this is not the case. And nonetheless I am distressed in hearing him making theatrical gestures devoid of understanding which a voracious media spreads in every corner of the world.
Let's get one thing straight in all this: blaming God remains the favorite pastime of mankind, from Adam ( The woman whom thou gavest [to be] with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat.) to Benedict (Why did you not say (or do) anything?). It's always God' fault, either because He does something or because He does not. Isn't it incredibly amazing how man will turn and twist any situation in order to avoid responsibility for his doings?
God has given us the precious freedom to do as we please, naturally gathering the fruits thereof and this is the part we do not like at all. Should God intervene in judgment every single time atrocities are committed no one would be alive today, and that's a no brainer. Someone may say, well it's something if a single person gets raped or killed and another altogether when an entire people or race is involved in the process. But, is it really so? Is one life worth more than another to God Who says that He wants ALL MEN to be saved? He would have sent His Son Jesus Christ to die on the cross for the salvation of a single sinner, if that had been the case, because that's how He is. It's our little understanding and perception of Him which creates implausible and ultimately foolish scenarios. Read the following extract which very simply and eloquently explains:
"Where was God in those days?" asked the pope. How could a just and loving Creator have allowed trainload after trainload of human beings to be murdered at Auschwitz? But why ask such a question only in Auschwitz? Where, after all, was God in the Gulag? Where was God when the Khmer Rouge slaughtered 1.7 million Cambodians? Where was God during the Armenian holocaust? Where was God in Rwanda? Where is God in Darfur?For that matter, where is God when even one innocent victim is being murdered or raped or abused?
The answer, though the pope didn't say so clearly, is that a world in which God always intervened to prevent cruelty and violence would be a world without freedom -- and life without freedom would be meaningless. God endows human beings with the power to choose between good and evil. Some choose to help their neighbor; others choose to hurt him. There were those in Nazi Europe who herded Jews into gas chambers. And there were those who risked their lives to hide Jews from the Gestapo.
The God "who spoke on Sinai" was not addressing himself to angels or robots who could do no wrong even if they wanted to. He was speaking to real people with real choices to make, and real consequences that flow from those choices. Auschwitz wasn't God's fault. He didn't build the place. And only by changing those who did build it from free moral agents into puppets could he have stopped them from committing their horrific crimes.
It was not God who failed during the Holocaust or in the Gulag, or on 9/11, or in Bosnia. It is not God who fails when human beings do barbaric things to other human beings. Auschwitz is not what happens when the God who says "Thou shalt not murder" and "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself" is silent. It is what happens when men and women refuse to listen.
Townhall.com | 05/05/06 | Jeff Jacoby
May 6, 2006
In these last few years we have been witnessing a progressive and global effort to eradicate Christianity in the midst of Western societies and culture. Of course there have always been anti christian movements or personalities which in their relative isolation have fought their "war" against God but it would be totally reckless and stupid not to realize that the Christian-bashing game has been gathering strength and power in recent times to the point of placing Christians on a diminishing defensive corner. Methinks we have reached a critical point of no-return in this battle.
Of course, the battle belongs to God, and we do know the final outcome, however it is disconcerting not to be able to justify our faith or worse, quote a Bible verse: somebody will get upset. What a strange "free society" we have become! And it will be getting worse before it gets better, and many Christians are ill prepared to deal with this worsening tide.
Our Lord Jesus Christ warned repeatedly that deception and apostasy were to be two very powerful and distinguishing Signs of the End Times and only comatose or lukewarm Christians do not seem to understand what is happening in Christendom. The world, emboldened by its inroads into weakening and distorting the faith of many are launching an unparalleled attack on the faith once delivered to the saints. With much fanfare we have been presented in the last few weeks with the infamous "Gospel of Judas", a pagan rehash and none too original reworking of the Judas (as in traitor) figure. Apparently Judas is not the evil thief and betrayer depicted in the Word of God, but according to this "gospel" he was the greatest disciple and that all the story about his betrayal is untrue since Jesus Christ Himself plotted with him His own arrest by the hand of the Romans, making so possible His death on the Cross for the salvation of repentant humanity.
How gross and blasphemous this would-be plot is I cannot even start to imagine, but many Christians are listening and to them it all adds up: the Bible is NOT the only depository of revealed truth and truth can indeed be found in other places. Once doubt is sown in the Word, it becomes opportunely easy to ignore it especially in those parts which are not too accommodating to the human carnal desires and sentiments. This is an excellent way to destroy the faith of those who are not grounded in the Word and a determinant step unto Apostasy. Many thanks to The National Geographic Society which has been part of an international effort, in collaboration with other pagans, to present to the world "the only known surviving copy of the "Gospel of Judas." And a demonic one, may I add.
Contrary to the so-called "Gospel of Judas" the Word of God has much to say about Judas' betrayal and about the sorry end of this man. There is nothing to re-evaluate, nothing to redeem him: until the very end Jesus tried to dissuade him from carrying forth his evil plan but again, He could not force him, as God does NOT force anybody to do anything. Some may say that indeed Judas was necessary to the plan of God. To them I answer that it is not so at all and while indeed Jesus would have gone to the Cross, since that was the only motive for His coming into this world, circumstances could have been very different Jesus was already on the hit list of the religious leaders of Israel and more than once He had escaped their homicidal fury, because His time had not yet arrived and He had still work to do. Nothing would have impeded His arrest at the Temple or in the very streets of Jerusalem since He was not hiding Himself and was very easy to identify as well since there was always a commotion about Him. No, Judas remains the obscure betrayer and fraudulent man he was, an icon of hypocrisy and evil.
Mat 26:24
The Son of man goeth as it is written of him: but woe unto that man by whom the Son of man is betrayed! it had been good for that man if he had not been born.
April 13, 2006
Our last article on the Red Cross new symbol drew quite a bit of mail. Many were criticizing us in stating that our explanation of the symbol change was not correct.
Oberon writes:
How great to shoot upon the Red Cross since it cannot defend itself.
1) The Red Cross has not changed symbol, it just added a new one to those which are already in use: the red cross, the red crescent, the red lion and sun, this last one not being used any longer.
2) national orgs may continue to use any of the 4 accepted symbols.
In truth, our comments may appear biased. We do not apologize for standing up for morality and for courage. We repeat, that notwithstanding the various official and semi-official explanations the fact remains a blatant example of politically correct nonsense. In other words, the explanations seemingly justify the pragmatic approach being taken, but do not justify the change of the symbol itself. Would any country change its flag because someone or some other country may find it offensive? Of course not. Only because we are dealing with the "cross" and that is a scandal to many. People do not take well tampering with its symbols as the recent Mohamed cartoons attest. But "Christians" are the stepping stones of the world. Anything connected with Christianity is fair game. We were only trying to show this disconnect .
Please note that we are changing a few things on the web site. First of all this column will be updated very often and in true-blog fashion, we will introduce readers comments to our articles. (ed - "Suspended")
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