August 19, 2010
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LIVING ON BORROWED TIME - DVD
A morally and spiritually bankrupt society …A worldwide economic meltdown…A planet racked with increasingly intense manmade and natural disasters…Are we the Final Generation?
Watch therefore, for you do not know what hour your Lord is coming. But know this that if the master of the house had known what hour the thief would come, he would have watched and not allowed his house to be broken into. Therefore you also be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect. Matthew 24:42-44
Reviews: The DVD should be seen by small groups and youth ministries far and wide. The clear quoting and referencing of bible verses is especially strong. The collage of dramatic imagery - both in photography and artwork, grabs the viewers' attention and weaves the conclusion that God is about to continue His plan in a major way. The video is so fresh - the oil explosion and spill in the Gulf of Mexico is shown as one example of how this old world is wearing out and is in flames
The video next defends the authorship and reliability of the bible before showing eight unmistakable developments in our world that point toward the soon return of the Lord Jesus Christ. The number one sign given to our generation is the return of the Jewish people to form the nation of Israel. Jesus Christ is now standing at the door waiting to take his beloved bride- His true believers. Like the admonition from the Book of Jude, verse 23, I pray that this DVD will be used by the Holy Spirit to pluck dying people out of the fire before the borrowed time runs out. - John Wicklund - Chair- Olive Tree Ministries Board of Directors - Maple Grove, MN
Great Job! We have watched all your DVD’s and we think this is the best one so far. After someone watches this DVD there is no way they could argue that we are not living in the last days! – Don & Cindy K. – Bakersfield, CA
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God bless you, the new DVD is amazing! I know that if there is anyone out there who doesn't know what the bible holds or has no clue about what is really going on after seeing this DVD they will surely be enlightened about what is truly going on in the world today. - The Taylor's - Bakersfield, CA
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Russia defends Iran nuclear plant ahead of launch – www.news.yahoo.com
SOCHI, Russia (AFP) – Russia on Wednesday defended the nuclear power plant it is building for Iran in the southern city of Bushehr, days ahead of a ceremony to mark the formal launch of the facility.
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov described the controversial power plant as an "anchor" that would keep Iran firmly fixed to peaceful use of nuclear energy.
"It is a most important anchor which keeps Iran within the regime of non-proliferation," he told reporters on the sidelines of a regional summit in the Black Sea resort of Sochi.
"It is fully protected from any proliferation risks whatsoever. This idea is shared by all the leaders of Western countries."
The charging of the first nuclear fuel at the plant Saturday is to be marked at a ceremony in Bushehr, including the head of Russia's state nuclear agency Rosatom, Sergei Kiriyenko.
In somewhat acid remarks typical of the Russian foreign minister's style, Lavrov added: "I would recommend all those who believe this to be a wrong signal to turn to classics, in particular former US president George Bush, who called the Bushehr project an example of cooperation with Iran, in particular in nuclear sphere."
He added: "As far as speculation is concerned, it will always be there regarding any event, even such an event as the opening of the Bushehr which is irreproachable from the point of view of international law and will take place shortly."
Russia has been building the plant in Iran since the mid-1990s but the project has been marred by a series of delays and the issue is hugely delicate amid the standoff over Iran's nuclear program.
Russian officials have emphasized that it would still take some time for the 1,000 megawatt power plant to start significant work, with the facility operating at minimal power of one percent after 3-4 months.
Western countries accuse oil-rich Iran of seeking to acquire a nuclear weapon under the guise of its civilian nuclear program. But Tehran insists the drive is entirely peaceful and it needs nuclear energy for a rapidly expanding population whose fossil fuels will eventually run out.
Iran Denies Bushehr Activation Will Enable Atomic Weapon - by Chana Ya'ar - www.israelnationalnews.com
Iran is denying a doomsday message to the world by former U.S. diplomat John Bolton, warning that activation of a nuclear reactor in the Islamic Republic will end the chance to prevent Tehran from developing an atomic weapon.
Iranian officials denied Wednesday that the Bushehr nuclear power plant will produce enriched uranium, or an atomic weapon, after it is activated Friday. Still, to protect its nuclear investment, Iran has vowed to close the Straits of Hormuz if necessary.
On Friday, August 21, Russia is scheduled to begin loading nuclear fuel rods into the reactor, also built by Moscow.
Iranian MP Hossein Sobhaninia has claimed the fueling of the plant “cannot be linked to Iran's nuclear enrichment program; Iran is well aware of its responsibilities.” His colleague, Iranian MP Mohammad Karim Shahrzad added a warning, however, according to a report broadcast by the country's English-language Press TV news network: “The time frame for enrichment activity is a domestic matter,” he said. “It is an issue in which the United States is not entitled to interfere."
By Friday, Bolton, a former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, has warned it will be too late to attack, because such a move would cause radioactive fallout that could reach as far as the Persian Gulf.
Earlier this week, Bolton said in an interview that he believes Israel may have already “lost the opportunity” to prevent Iran from establishing a functional nuclear reactor.
Iranian Army Brigadier-General Ali Shadermani meanwhile has vowed to close the Straits of Hormuz if it appears that the United States might attack the country. “The country's armed forces... are in the highest state of alert,” he told the Mehr news agency on Wednesday.
Shadermani also threatened to attack American troops stationed in Afghanistan and Iraq. “With the slightest move against Iran, we will paralyze those troops stationed in those bases and won't allow them to make any move,” he warned.
The third element in the plan would be aimed at the Jewish State, he said: The Iranian army would, “disturb peace and tranquility in Israel, which is known as the closest ally of the United States," reported Hamsayeh.net. Shadermani added pointedly, "The U.S. and Israel well know that we can do it.”
Israel and other Western nations believe that Iran is intent on building a nuclear weapon of mass destruction. Spent nuclear fuel rods contain material that can be used to build a nuclear bomb – and even if other nuclear plants in the country are shut down, Bushehr could conceivably be used to continue such a project in future.
At present, Russia's agreement with Iran stipulates that the Islamic Republic will return its spent fuel rods abroad to Moscow. However, there is no guarantee that Tehran will keep its word.
According to Bolton, once nuclear fuel rods are placed inside the core of the Bushehr reactor, any attack on the facility could harm Iranian civilians as well as others across an extremely wide area – hence the former diplomat's warning that time is nearly up.
Tel Aviv would be target in 'any future conflict' - www.worldtribune.com
TEL AVIV — Israel has assessed that its financial center would be the first target in any regional war.
Officials said Iran has been preparing its proxies to fire missile and rocket salvoes toward the Israeli city of Tel Aviv. They cited the area's dense population, military headquarters and financial center.
"In any future conflict, missiles will fall in the center of the country," Israeli Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai said.
In remarks on Aug. 10, Vilnai said Israel has not yet completed its defense against all enemy missiles. He said civil defense preparations and facilities would be key to reducing casualties from attacks from the Gaza Strip, Lebanon and Syria.
"The sooner we prepare in advance, the more lives we will save," Vilnai said.
Officials said the Defense Ministry was seeking to enhance civil defense facilities in the Tel Aviv area. They said the ministry has been upgrading emergency sites while seeking to complete a missile defense network.
Hamas and Hizbullah have developed capabilities to fire missile and rocket salvoes in the Tel Aviv area, officials said. They cited the acquisition of Iranian-origin Fajr-3 and Fajr-5 rockets, with ranges of up to 100 kilometers.
The Defense Ministry has also overseen a study to help coordinate air and missile defense operations during any future war. The ministry has been working with the Israel Air Force to determine regulations and areas where manned aircraft could not be accidentally shot down by missile defense assets.
"A radar could accidentally mistake a fighter-jet for a missile and that could be tragic," an official said. "We have to make sure that this doesn't happen."
Israel's 'Judgment Day' shelters- Ofer Petersburg – www.ynet.news.com
Jerusalem railway station, Haifa's Carmel Tunnels and Habima parking lot in Tel Aviv among places slated to protect thousands from chemical or biological attack
The new railway station being built at the entrance to Jerusalem will turn in times of emergency into an underground bomb shelter which would be able to protest 5,000 people against a chemical or biological attack.
"The State of Israel is preparing to build additional large underground spaces which would be able to absorb tens of thousands of people and protect them from non-conventional weapons for a long period of time," Major-General Ronny Seri, head of the Home Front Command's fortification department told Yedioth Ahronoth on Tuesday.
The Israel Defense Forces is currently engaged in mapping additional underground spaces for the installment of filters in order to protest thousands of people for long periods of time.
The Home Front Command's flagship project will undoubtedly be the railway station in Jerusalem which will serve the fast train from Tel Aviv to the capital. The station's lower level will be 80 meters deep (262 feet) and will be able to absorb 5,000 people in times of emergency.
The place will be protected through a branched filter system and will include doctors' corners and a special room for the shelter commander. The room will also have systems for communication with the outside world.
Construction sped up
An elevator and escalator system will lead the people quickly from the station's top floors to the bottom platform. The station's construction was sped up recently at the request of Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz. The top platform has already been completed, while the shafts and underground tunnels are in different building stages.
The Home Front Command is still searching for additional places which could be used as shelters against non-conventional weapons. In Tel Aviv, for example, the shelter of the renovated Habima Theater is slated to absorb thousands of people in times of emergency.
The 10 planned light rail stations in Bnei Brak, Ramat Gan and Tel Aviv will also include huge underground halls which will be able to take in tens of thousands of people.
The contractors of an underground parking lot being built in Holon have received instructions from the Home Front Command recently on how to prepare it for a shelter against a non-conventional attack in times of emergency. Haifa's Carmel Tunnels are expected to be used for this purpose as well.
Arabs terrorists preparing for war with Israel - Roee Nahmias – www.ynetnews.com
Hezbollah reportedly builds tunnel system 'more impressive than Paris underground' to counter IDF strikes; Yemenite Qaeda leader tells followers to prepare for Israel-Iran war, urges pilots to replicate 9/11 attacks in Israel
Hezbollah built an elaborate network of tunnels that will allow its members to fight a future war against Israel without being exposed to Air Force bombardments and IDF surveillance, a Kuwaiti newspaper says.
According to a report published by the al-Rai newspaper, the tunnel network "is more impressive than the Paris underground," and is meant to prevent the IDF from gravely hurting Hezbollah by aerial or ground attacks.
The report also claimed Hezbollah created an underground system of weapon caches, and that additional warehouses were dispersed in different locations above ground, so they are not damaged by IDF attacks, as was the case during the Second Lebanon War.
Al-Qaeda wants 9/11 in Israel
Meanwhile, al-Qaeda is preparing its fighters in the Arabian peninsula for the possibility of an Iran-Israel warn, urging Arab pilots to crash into targets in Israel.
A terror leader in Yemen urged Jihad supporters to exploit a future war between the Jewish State and the Ayatollah regime in order to advance al-Qaeda's causes, the Daily Beast website reported.
The deputy chief of al-Qaeda's arm in Yemen, Saeed al-Shehri, told supporters via an audio message that a war is expected to break out after Israel will strike Tehran's nuclear facilities, prompting a chain reaction that would lead to an all-out regional war.
Sheri then calls on Arab Air Force pilots who endorse the cause of Jihad to fly their planes into Israeli targets, replicating the September 11 attacks. He also urged followers with access to top Arab leaders to assassinate them, similarly to the killing of "tyrant Anwar Sadat," the Egyptian president murdered by Islamic radicals.
Survey: 'The whole world is against us' – Yoni Cohen – www.jpost.com
TAU Peace Index finds that 54% of Jews say Israel is isolated.
Fifty-six percent of Jewish Israelis believe that "the whole world is against us," according to a recent Peace Index survey published on Thursday.
The Peace Index project is conducted under the auspices of the Evens Program for Conflict Resolution at Tel Aviv University and the Israel Democracy Institute.
Many Israeli Jews believe that the world will continue to be critical of Israel with 77% saying that it does not make difference what Israel does and how far it will go on the Palestinian issue.
In contrast to the Jewish population, a large majority (75%) of the Arab public disagrees with the maxim that the whole world is against Israel.
A small majority (54%) of the Jewish public believe that Israel is completely or moderately isolated; this is compared with 46% who believe that Israel is not alone. Opinion among the Arab public is similar, but in reverse, with 48% saying that Israel is isolated and 51% believe that Israel does not find itself isolated in the world.
The majority of the Jewish public believes that the government has not handled Israel's foreign relations, with 62% giving the government a failing grade.
Only 34% believe that the government's functioning in this realm as moderately or very satisfactory.
When asked the same question, the Arab public gave a much more positive response with 47% giving the government a good or very good grade.
When asked why young Jews in the Diaspora become distanced from Israel, 49% attributed a strong influence to the general weakening of Jewish identity among young people in the Diaspora. Israel's policy on the Palestinian issue was considered the least influential factor with only 22% of respondents saying that it had an influence.
Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman did not fair too well in the survey with 55% of Jewish respondents saying that he is moderately or greatly damaging Israel's status in the international community.
Not surprisingly opinion among the Arab population is similar but more extreme with 81% believing that Lieberman is damaging Israel.
CIA forms new center to combat nukes, WMDs – Kimberly Dozier – www.news.yahoo.com
WASHINGTON – The CIA is opening a counterproliferation center to combat the spread of dangerous weapons and technology, a move that comes as Iran is on the verge of fueling up a new nuclear power plant.
CIA Director Leon Panetta said Wednesday that the new unit would place CIA operators side by side with the agency's analysts to brainstorm plans to "confront the threat of weapons of mass destruction — nuclear, chemical and biological."
The center would formalize the collaboration between the agency's analysts and operators, a close working relationship that CIA spokesman George Little said already has yielded intelligence successes.
Little cited their work in last year's revelation of the "discovery of the Syrian covert nuclear reactor and Iran's undeclared uranium enrichment facility near Qom." That Iranian city is the ideological center of Iran's Shiite rulers.
Paul Brannan, a senior analyst at the Institute for Science and International Security, said another CIA success was the slowing down of Iran's nuclear centrifuge operations at Natanz. The agency, he said, sneaked "faulty parts into Iran's nuclear supply chain."
That operation, Brannan said, "is an example of where you'd need both analysts to tell you what type of parts would Iran need that you could inject, and the operations side to work with trading companies to try to get the parts in there."
The CIA's new center goes into effect just as Iran's Bushehr power plant gets stocked with fuel rods provided by Russia. Uranium fuel will be loaded into the Bushehr reactor on Saturday, beginning a process that will last about a month and end with the reactor sending electricity to Iranian cities, Russian and Iranian officials said.
Brannan said the Bushehr site is not a proliferation threat since Iran does not have the ability to reprocess the spent fuel into nuclear weapons-grade material.
But that site will be watched closely not only by the CIA but by other elements of the intelligence community. The overall effort is led by the National Counterproliferation Center, which is under the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
One senior intelligence official said that when the Bushehr plant goes operational, analysts at all the agencies will examine data such as radar and satellite images of the site separately, and then may share their observations over secure top-secret systems. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive issue of overlapping intelligence responsibilities.
They'll be watching for things like a heat signature on radar images, Brannan said. They will also be tracking, as much as they can from imagery, vapor leaving the cooling towers, which would indicate Bushehr is "hot," the intelligence official said, or whether the Iranians "are trying to siphon anything off" the reactor to any of their other facilities.
The Iranians have been known to go to elaborate lengths to obscure their actions from view. The commercial satellite company GeoEye tracked Iran's Natanz nuclear facility over several years, which showed how the Iranians first built two large 550-by-550-foot chambers at ground level, and then buried the vast site.
A second set of buildings, complete with landscaping, was then constructed nearby, apparently to look like the real facility, while the original construction is now underground and completely invisible from the sky.
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Skip the lectures on Israel's ‘risks for peace’ - By George Will
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | JERUSALEM ---In the intifada that began in 2000, Palestinian terrorism killed more than 1,000 Israelis. As a portion of U.S. population, that would be 42,000, approaching the toll of America's eight years in Vietnam. During the onslaught, which began 10 Septembers ago, Israeli parents sending two children to a school would put them on separate buses to decrease the chance that neither would return for dinner. Surely most Americans can imagine, even if their tone-deaf leaders cannot, how grating it is when those leaders lecture Israel on the need to take "risks for peace."
During Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's July visit to Washington, Barack Obama praised him as "willing to take risks for peace." There was a time when that meant swapping "land for peace" -- Israel sacrificing something tangible and irrecoverable, strategic depth, in exchange for something intangible and perishable, promises of diplomatic normality.
Strategic depth matters in a nation where almost everyone is or has been a soldier, so society cannot function for long with the nation fully mobilized. Also, before the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel within the borders established by the 1949 armistice was in one place just nine miles wide, a fact that moved George W. Bush to say: In Texas we have driveways that long. Israel exchanged a lot of land to achieve a chilly peace with Egypt, yielding the Sinai, which is almost three times larger than Israel and was 89 percent of the land captured in the process of repelling the 1967 aggression.
The intifada was launched by the late Yasser Arafat -- terrorist and Nobel Peace Prize winner -- after the July 2000 Camp David meeting, during which then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered to cede control of all of Gaza and more than 90 percent of the West Bank, with small swaps of land to accommodate the growth of Jerusalem suburbs just across the 1949 armistice line.
Israelis are famously fractious, but the intifada produced among them a consensus that the most any government of theirs could offer without forfeiting domestic support is less than any Palestinian interlocutor would demand. Furthermore, the intifada was part of a pattern. As in 1936 and 1947, talk about partition prompted Arab violence.
In 1936, when the British administered Palestine, the Peel Commission concluded that there was "an irrepressible conflict" -- a phrase coined by an American historian to describe the U.S. Civil War -- "between two national communities within the narrow bounds of one small country." And: "Neither of the two national ideals permits" a combination "in the service of a single state." The commission recommended "a surgical operation" -- partition. What followed was the Arab Revolt of 1936 to 1939.
On Nov. 29, 1947, the United Nations recommended a partition plan. Israel accepted the recommendation. On Nov. 30, Israel was attacked.
Palestine has a seemingly limitless capacity for eliciting nonsense from afar, as it did recently when British Prime Minister David Cameron referred to Gaza as a "prison camp." In a sense it is, but not in the sense Cameron intended. His implication was that Israel is the cruel imprisoner. Gaza's actual misfortune is to be under the iron fist of Hamas, a terrorist organization.
In May, a flotilla launched from Turkey approached Gaza in order to provoke a confrontation with Israel, which, like Egypt, administers a blockade to prevent arms from reaching Hamas. The flotilla's pretense was humanitarian relief for Gaza -- where the infant mortality rate is lower and life expectancy is higher than in Turkey.
Israelis younger than 50 have no memory of their nation within the 1967 borders set by the 1949 armistice that ended the War of Independence. The rest of the world seems to have no memory at all concerning the intersecting histories of Palestine and the Jewish people.
The creation of Israel did not involve the destruction of a Palestinian state, there having been no such state since the Romans arrived. And if the Jewish percentage of the world's population were today what it was when the Romans ruled Palestine, there would be 200 million Jews. After a uniquely hazardous passage through two millennia without a homeland, there are 13 million Jews.
In the 62 years since this homeland was founded on one-sixth of 1 percent of the land of what is carelessly and inaccurately called "the Arab world," Israelis have never known an hour of real peace. Patronizing American lectures on the reality of risks and the desirableness of peace, which once were merely fatuous, are now obscene.
It's Not Just About Israel - Six more reasons why we can't let Iran get nukes - By Christopher Hitchens – www.slate.com
With Russia's ever-helpful policy of assisting Iran to accelerate its reactor program, allied to the millimetrical progress of sanctions on the Ahmadinejad regime and the increasingly hopeless state of negotiations with the Palestinians, there is likely to be no let-up in the speculation about an Israeli "first strike" on Iran's covert but ever-more-flagrant nuclear weapons installations. I have lost count of the number of essays and columns on the subject that were published this month alone. The most significant and detailed such contribution, though, came from my friend and colleague Jeffrey Goldberg in a cover story in the Atlantic. From any close reading of this piece, it was possible to be sure of at least one thing: The government of Benjamin Netanyahu wants it to be understood that, in the absence of an American decision to do so, Israel can and will mount such an attack in the not-too-distant future. The keyword of the current anguished argument—the word existential—is thought by a strategic majority of Israel's political and military leadership to apply in its fullest meaning. To them, an Iranian bomb is incompatible with the long-term survival of the Israeli state and even of the Jewish people.
It would be a real pity if the argument went on being conducted in these relatively narrow terms. A sentence from Goldberg's report will illustrate what I mean:
Israel, Netanyahu told me, is worried about an entire complex of problems, not only that Iran, or one of its proxies, would destroy Tel Aviv.
Why Tel Aviv? It is admittedly the most Jewish of Israel's centers of population, and it was built only in the course of the last century. It is also the most secular and modern and sexually licentious of Israel's cities, which might also qualify it for the apocalyptic wrath of the mullahs. But it is also home to many Arabs and Muslims, as are the coastal towns adjacent to it. And, as I never tire of pointing out, there is no weapon of mass destruction yet devised that can discriminate on the basis of religion or ethnicity.
So why did Netanyahu not say Jerusalem, which he and his party regard as Israel's true capital? Surely because this would immediately raise the question of whether the Iranian theocracy seriously intends to immolate the Dome of the Rock and the other Islamic holy places along with the poisonous "Zionist entity." And that's to say nothing of the number of Palestinians who would be slaughtered in any such assault. There is something sectarian, almost racist, in the way this aspect of the issue is always overlooked.
I tried to raise the same question in print when Menachem Begin ordered the bombing of Iraq's Osirak reactor in 1981. On that occasion, the worst he could find to say about Saddam Hussein's genocidal ambitions was that they, too, constituted a threat to Jewish survival. Yet every knowledgeable person understands that if Saddam Hussein had come into possession of a bomb, he would have used it in the first instance on what his propaganda always defined as "the Persian racists." (This is why the Iranian air force had tried and failed to hit the very same reactor a short time before.) When speaking of the Zionist foe, incidentally, Saddam's most aggressive public speech promised only that with his chemical and other weapons, he would "burn up half of Israel." The late megalomaniac was not notorious for speaking of half-measures. It's possible that even in some part of his reptilian brain he understood that Palestine is not populated only by Jews.
The whole emphasis on Israel's salience in this matter, and of the related idea of subcontracting a strike to the Israeli Defense Forces, is an evasion, somewhat ethnically tinged, of what is an international responsibility. If the Iranian dictatorship succeeds in "breaking out" and becoming a nuclear power, the following things will have happened:
1) International law and the stewardship of the United Nations will have been irretrievably ruined. The mullahs will have broken every solemn undertaking that they ever gave: to the International Atomic Energy Agency; to the European Union, which has been their main negotiating interlocutor up until now; and to the United Nations. (Tehran specifically rejects the right of the U.N. Security Council to have any say in this question.) Those who usually fetishize the role of the United Nations and of the international nuclear inspectors have a special responsibility to notice this appalling outcome.
2) The "Revolutionary Guards," who last year shot and raped their way to near-absolute power in Iran, are also the guardians of the underground weapons program. A successful consummation of that program would be an immeasurable enhancement of the most aggressive faction of the current dictatorship.
3) The power of the guards to project violence outside Iran's borders would likewise be increased. Any Hezbollah subversion of Lebanese democracy or missile attack on Israel; any Iranian collusion with the Taliban or with nihilist forces in Iraq would be harder to counter in that it would involve a confrontation with a nuclear godfather.
4) The same powerful strategic ambiguity would apply in the case of any Iranian move on a neighboring Sunni Arab Gulf state, such as Bahrain. The more extreme of Iran's theocratic newspapers already gloat at such a prospect, which is why so many Arab regimes hope—sometimes publicly—that this "existential" threat to them also be removed.
5) There will never be a settlement of the Israel-Palestine dispute, because the rejectionist Palestinians will be even more a proxy of a regime that calls for Israel's elimination, and the rejectionist Jews will be vindicated in their belief that concessions are a waste of time, if not worse.
6) The concept of "nonproliferation," so dear to the heart of the right-thinking, will go straight into the history books along with the League of Nations.
These, then, are some of the prices to be paid for not disarming Iran. Is it not obvious that the international interest in facing this question squarely, and in considering it as "existential" for civilization, is far stronger than any political calculation to be made in Netanyahu's office?
Iran To Start Up First Nuclear Plant In Days – www.khouse.org
"You don’t want a messianic apocalyptic cult controlling atomic bombs," Benjamin Netanyahu told Jeffrey Goldberg shortly before Netanyahu was sworn in as Israel's Prime Minister. "When the wide-eyed believer gets hold of the reins of power and the weapons of mass death, then the world should start worrying, and that’s what is happening in Iran."
Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton announced on Tuesday that Iran will go nuclear within eight days unless somebody does something about it - and fast. Fox News' headline certainly grabs one's attention: "Israel Has Until Week's End to Strike Iran Nuclear Facility, Bolton Says."
In other words, Israel strikes Iran, or we face the end of the world. That's how it sounds.
The situation is this: Iran has been working to build nuclear facilities on its own for awhile, and it has faced its share of struggles. Jeffrey Goldberg quoted National Security Council official Gary Samore in the September issue of The Atlantic as saying, "They are running into some technical difficulties, partly because of the work we’ve done to deny them access to foreign components. When they make the parts themselves, they are making parts that don’t have quality control."
It was expected that Iran could cross the "nuclear threshhold" within a year, despite these problems. Policy makers have therefore long been struggling to decide how to handle Iran as sanctions fail to halt Iran's nuclear program altogether.
A year is not a great amount of time, but there is a buffer there. How did we get from a year buffer to suddenly facing the point of no return on Saturday? Russia.
Russia has been working to build the Bushehr facility for Iran since 1995, but has faced a variety of setbacks. Those have apparently been overcome. Russia announced on Friday that a company will begin loading nuclear fuel at Iran's Bushehr plant on Saturday, August 21st. If Israel were to strike the plant, they would have to do so before those fuel rods are loaded. Once they are in place, a strike on the nuclear facility could send radiation into the air and water, including the Persian Gulf.
Bolton doubts that Israel will be able to do anything in such a short amount of time. Barring additional problems, Iran will likely have its first power plant started up by next week. If the power plant is only used to produce power, that's one thing. However, spent fuel rods can be use to derive weapons-grade plutonium – which presents a major problem. As Bolton noted, "What this does is give Iran a second route to nuclear weapons in addition to enriched uranium. It's a very, very huge victory for Iran."
There are some small comforts in all of this: Russia did make Iran agree – cross-their hearts – to return all spent fuel rods to Russia. Also, Israel has been quite aware of the nuclear plant problem for some time now and has certainly worked out various plans for ways to deal with it. The US can still factor into this predicament as well. The Obama Administration has repeatedly said that all options are on the table and Obama has made it clear he recognizes the serious danger posed by a nuclear Iran. Obama knows that if Iran goes nuclear, all non-proliferation hopes wisk out the door.
Yet, Iran may not stick by its agreement with Russia, and Israel and the United States may just stand by with their mouths open. That is quite possible too.
Policy makers around the world know that Iran's nuclear prowess is definitely the biggest international security issue facing the conscious world today. Iran's potential future possession of nuclear weapons will affect us all. The big question has always been, so, what is the best way to deal with this problem?
Israel could possibly strike Iran. The Israelis have successfully destroyed the nuclear power plants of two of their enemies in the past, and they got away with it. Syria and Iraq never fully recovered their nuclear programs after those strikes. Israel could hardly lose respect on the world stage for making the attacks. In fact, a number of countries would be secretly grateful for the destruction of Iran's nuclear plants, including Western-allied Arab states in the Middle East who would be forced to align with Iran if it possessed nuclear weapons. Besides, the world has come to expect preemptive strikes from Israel.
Taking out Iran's nuclear sites would not be a simple feat, however. Not only would Israeli planes have to get through Saudi or Iraqi air space (with or without tacit permission), and destroy all the centrifuges and missile plants on the first try, but they would have to find some way to guarantee that they did indeed annihilate all the bad stuff. Israel would also be exposing her people to immediate harm. Iran has warned that "Israel's existence" would be in danger if it made the strike, meaning that Iran would retaliate, and Israel would have to contend with attacks both from Hezbollah and Iran. The threat of regional war looms. Israel has to consider the possibility that its relations with the current US Administration might also be sacrificed in an Iran strike. The whole thing could get wildly out of hand.
On the other hand, as Benjamin Netanyahu has joked, "Let me tell you a secret. The American military is bigger than Israel’s." As some Israeli officials have noted, the United States could make a strike on Iran's nuclear plants with much greater ease than could Israel. Netanyahu also has made the point very clear over the years that a nuclear Iran is not only a danger to Israel, but to the entire world. The United States has a deep interest in keeping Iran nuke-free, and the United States has the power to make strategic strikes in a way that Israel never could. Of course, while George W. Bush repeatedly said he would not attack Iran's nuclear plants, few people believed him – and while the Obama Administration has repeatedly said that all options are on the table, nobody really thinks Obama will order strikes on Iran, especially not right now, this week.
A nuclear Iran would present a great threat to Israel. The current Persian regime has made its severe anti-Semitism excruciatingly clear. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad denies the Holocaust and openly excoriates Israel, but he's not alone. Former Iranian president Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani said nine years ago, "The use of an atomic bomb against Israel would destroy Israel completely while [a nuclear attack] against the Islamic countries would only cause damages."
The Persians aren't apparently fazed by the doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction.
Ezekiel Chapters 38 and 39 describe the occasion in which God Himself intervenes to quell the ill-fated invasion of Israel by Magog and its allies (Persia, Cush, Phut, Libya, Gomer, Togarmah, Meshech, and Tubal). Hesiod, ''the father of Greek didactic poetry,'' identified Magog with the Scythians and southern Russia in the 7th century B.C. - before Ezekiel was born. This passage also appears to anticipate the use of nuclear weapons.
One nation notably absent from Ezekiel's list of invaders is Syria. In Isaiah 17:1, 4, the prophet warns that that one day Damascus would become a heap of ruins; perhaps its destruction occurs before the events of Ezekiel 38 and 39.
For now, Iran and Syria both strain to see what Israel does while Iran's first nuclear plant prepares to go live. The whole world is on watch. Not all the players are in place for the events of Ezekiel 38 and 39, not quite yet, but these developments are certainly worth paying attention to.
Ground Zero Mosque: A Prophetic fulfillment of Pauline Letter – Bill Wilson – www.dailyjot.com
In an interview on KCBS Radio, Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called for an investigation into those who oppose the building of a mosque and Islamic center near Ground Zero of the 911 attacks by Muslim terrorists. Pelosi said, "There is no question there is a concerted effort to make this a political issue by some. And I join those who have called for looking into how is this opposition to the mosque being funded." So now all those who are expressing their disgust over this proposed Islamic monument to its 911 terrorist attacks should be investigated as to how they are getting their money. Some 68% of Americans oppose the mosque. That's a lot of government investigation proposed by Pelosi.
Instead, it might be wiser to investigate where the Muslims are getting their money to build the mosque and Islamic center, and whether the effort is being funded by those who support terrorism or the destruction of the United States. Let's start with Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, founder of the American Society for Muslim Advancement and the organizer of the Ground Zero mosque initiative. Rauf has been billed as a "moderate" Muslim Imam who seeks to build the Ground Zero mosque to foster "peaceful Muslim-Western relations." Rauf refuses to say where the $100 million is coming from to build the mosque. He has told American media its being funded by donations from American Muslims.
Rauf, however, in an interview with the Saudi-owned Arab newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat, says funding of the mosque will come from the US as well as from Muslims overseas. Rauf's American Society for Muslim Advancement is partially funded by the Saudis. Interesting that the State Department is sending Rauf on a goodwill mission to the Middle East--a mission Fox News says will take him to United Arab Emirates, Abu Dhabi, and Saudi Arabia. State Department spokesman PJ Crowley says, "we have informed him about our prohibition against fundraising while on a speaking tour. We do not expect him to fundraise. " Yes, but what prevents him from fundraising on his own personal time during the trip? Probably nothing.
Meanwhile, the Ground Zero mosque issue is becoming such a political liability to the Democrats that Democratic New York Governor David Paterson plans to offer "state owned" land to Rauf's group in order to get them to move the project. Separation of church and state apparently only applies to Christians in America. Pelosi wants an investigation into Americans who might be funding the mosque opposition, yet no investigation into whether terrorist money is being used to build it. The Democrats now want to provide state-owned property to build a Muslim mosque and community center. 2 Timothy 3:13 says, "Evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse deceiving and being deceived." And so it is today.
Have a Blessed and Powerful Day!
Bill Wilson
Word of Life Ministry
The prophetic abyss and rising out of it – Bill Wilson – www.dailyjot.com
The Democratic Party has made a mess of things. Both from an economic perspective and a moral perspective. The man who occupies the Oval Office has opened the floodgates to support Islam over Israel; has done his best to establish socialism in this country with the government takeover of the health care, auto, mortgage and financial industries; has supported with taxpayer money a new constitution in Kenya that supports abortion; has taken strident measures to advance the homosexual agenda by appointing the first openly lesbian jurist to the Supreme Court; has overseen record bankruptcies, record deficits, record debt and the highest unemployment in decades.
The Republican Party has made a mess of things. The Republican brand driven by fiscal responsibility and social conservatism is a GOP afterthought. Republicans have offered no effective resistance or alternative to soaring debt, socialistic economic restructuring or the undermining of God and country. In fact, enough have joined the Democratic bandwagon to make Americans question if there is any difference in the parties. An example is Indiana governor Mitch Daniels, calling for a "truce" on the "social issues," suggesting homosexual marriage is not an "existential" issue. Radio commentator Glenn Beck and conservative leader Ann Coulter have also caved on the homosexual issue.
The Church has made a mess of things. Yes, if the political parties have degraded the nation to a hedonistic pulp, the Church has done little, if nothing, to uphold the standards of Christ. The Church has intermixed with the strange fire of other religions. The Church has endorsed homosexuality. The Church has embraced political social justice--code words for communism. The Church has abdicated its role of true religion to the government. The Church has focused its affections on self indulgent, extra biblical man-made doctrines that make a lot of people feel good about themselves, but do nothing for the edification of the body of Christ or the advancement of the Kingdom of God here on earth--as Christ charged it to do.
This country is slipping deeper and deeper into the prophetic abyss. There is no sound leadership. There are only fragments and remnants of God fearing folks. We as a people must turn from our wicked ways and repent, and call on the name of the LORD that He might have mercy and restore us. Our condition as a nation and as a people calls to my attention John 11:35, "Jesus wept." For I know that Jesus loves America and its people, but only He can raise her. And Christ chooses to work through His people. We cannot depend on men, political parties or organized religion. We must become a Mark 10:27 people as Jesus said: "With men it is impossible, but not with God: for with God all things are possible."
Have a Blessed and Powerful Day!
Bill Wilson
Word of Life Ministry
The Nonbeliever's Favorite Verse – Greg Laurie – www.harvest.org
For the time has come for judgment, and it must begin with God's household. And if judgment begins with us, what terrible fate awaits those who have never obeyed God's Good News?
— 1 Peter 4:17
Do you know what the nonbeliever's favorite verse is? It is Matthew 7:1: "Do not judge others, and you will not be judged." This verse is usually quoted after we say something like, "Well you know what? I don't think that is right."
This verse, however, is not telling us that we should not make judgments, because in other passages we read that as believers, we are indeed to make evaluations, to be discerning, and yes— to even make judgments. In fact, the Bible asks, "Don't you realize that someday we believers will judge the world? And since you are going to judge the world, can't you decide even these little things among yourselves?" (1 Corinthians 6:2). We are also told in Scripture that "judgment must begin with God's household" (1 Peter 4:17).
We are to judge, but we are not to condemn. In fact, a better translation of Matthew 7:1 would be: "Do not condemn others, and you will not be condemned." I am in no position to condemn a person. But I am in a position to make judgments about things, situations, viewpoints, and even about people to some degree.
"Don't judge!" is said by people who don't like it when we dare to have a Christian worldview. In fact, I have found that the most narrow-minded people are those who claim to be the most broad-minded. Those who claim to be the most accepting are often the least accepting. Because when a Christian has an opinion, a nonbeliever will say, "How dare you say that! Who are you to judge?"
There is a living God, and He has revealed himself in the pages of Scripture. Therefore, as believers, we accept the fact that we have absolute truth from God. And we develop our worldview from what the Bible teaches.
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Bible Code Predictions - by Britt Gillette - www.raptureready.com
Do bible code predictions have any credibility?
While this is an old issue in most Christian circles, some people are just now learning about “the bible code.”
History Channel creations such as Bible Code: Predicting Armageddon (2003) and Bible Code II: Apocalypse and Beyond (2004) as well as references to the bible codes in numerous other television series help foster the impression that existence of a “bible code” is established fact.
It’s been more than two decades since the so-called “bible codes” were first introduced in the public forum, and the sensational claims of some of its proponents can at best be described as statistically insignificant.
Yet, The History Channel continues to run its “documentaries” on the bible code, which in turn, prompts people to personally investigate the codes only to find dead ends, disappointment, or hours of wasted time.
So why should we care?
Well, if some people are promoting the bible code and bible code predictions as proof of God’s divine authorship of the Bible, then non-believers who investigate the claim could potentially be turned away from Christianity when they discover the facts about the bible code.
In case you aren’t familiar with it, here’s some background on the bible code phenomenon…
The Bible Code
In 1994, Doron Witztum, Eliyahu Rips, and Yoav Rosenberg published the paper, "Equidistant Letter Sequences in the Book of Genesis", in the scientific journal Statistical Science.
In their paper, the authors set out to prove that the names of famous rabbis could be found with the Book of Genesis in close proximity to the dates of their births and deaths in such a way that chance alone could not explain.
The process relied upon “Equidistant Letter Sequencing (ELS),” whereby researchers take a single letter, skip ahead a certain number of spaces to a second letter, and then repeat the process using the same numeric interval.
For instance, let’s say you have the following line of text:
A Q J W D E B L S J N U I O S T R
By itself, this line of letters looks like gibberish, but if you bold every third letter, you get this:
A Q J W D E B L S J N U I O S T R
Looking at every third letter, spells out “Jesus.”
Now, while a line of text from the Book of Genesis is not gibberish, code researchers place lines of its text into randomly chosen “matrices” creating an almost inconceivable number of possible random lines of text to choose from.
Two years after the publication of “Equidistant Letter Sequences in the Book of Genesis,” journalist Michael Drosnin injected “the bible code” into pop culture with the publication of his book The Bible Code (1997).
In his book, Drosnin claimed not only the existence of hundreds of messages encoded in the Torah, but also the existence of what he believed were bible code predictions.
For example, Drosnin claimed to have found a bible code prediction of Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination prior to the event’s actual occurrence. He even claims to have warned Israeli leaders of what “the bible code” foreshadowed in the imminent future.
But is any of this true?
Does the Book of Genesis, or any book in the Bible, really contain coded messages or predictions from God?
Bible Code Hoax?
While it’s probably not accurate to label the bible code as a complete hoax, it is accurate to say the claims of its significance have been highly exaggerated.
We have no reason to believe the result of Witztum, Rips, and Rosenberg’s paper was premeditated and intentionally misleading. But it is likely that they wanted to believe in the code’s existence in order to prove the Bible’s divine authorship to an unbelieving world.
As a result, a more thorough and rigorous examination of the code’s statistical significance did not take place until later.
This is certainly understandable.
When the bible code and bible code predictions first came to light, many Christians and Jews jumped on the bandwagon, viewing the existence of “secret codes” as irrefutable evidence of a higher intelligence who intricately crafted every letter of the Bible.
I’ll admit that when I first heard of the bible codes, I was excited. Like everyone else, I wanted further “evidence” and “proof” which would illustrate to an unbelieving world that the Bible was the undisputed Word of God.
Unfortunately, a thorough examination of the bible code and bible code predictions just does not hold up to scrutiny.
Why?
Well, in the years since the initial publication of the bible code phenomenon, the public at large has had ample opportunity to test the bible code, recreate the initial experiments, and test alternative texts.
In 1999, this led to the publication of a peer-reviewed criticism in the same journal Statistical Science. Among some of the notable conclusions of the authors:
· A similar experiment conducted with the text of Tolstoy’s War and Peace achieved similarly statistically significant results.
· Alternative selection of rabbinical names and dates conducted by an independent expert failed to achieve the original statistically significant results.
· The text of Genesis used by the authors in the original experiment is substantially different from the original.
These are just a few of the criticisms leveled at the bible code and its proponents.
For instance, while some amazing and relevant ELS word patterns appear throughout the Torah (such as the repetition of the name “Yeshua”), other words and phrases crop up as well – including outright lies such as “Jehovah is a liar,” “There is no God,” and “Satan is Jehovah.”
If we attribute great significance to ELS codes in the Bible which assert Jesus is the Messiah, then how can we then ignore similar codes which blatantly depict false statements which contradict the Bible?
More importantly, if God is truly behind “the bible code,” we should be able to pull up unfulfilled bible code prophecies and await their fulfillment.
As the Lord says:
“‘Present the case for your idols,’ says the Lord. ‘Let them show what they can do,’ says the King of Israel. ‘Let them try to tell us what happened long ago so that we may consider the evidence. Or let them tell us what the future holds, so we can know what’s going to happen. Yes, tell us what will occur in the days ahead. Then we will know you are gods.’” Isaiah 41:21-23 (NLT)
Is the bible code really from God, or is it a modern day idol?
If it is from God, the Lord says to prove it by telling us “what will occur in the days ahead.”
The Predictive Power of the Bible Code
If ELS codes are the handiwork of God, where are the bible code predictions?
In The Bible Code (1997), Michael Drosnin cites several “messages” extracted from ELS codes in the Torah which he states portend future events.
Here’s one example:
On page 179 of his book, Drosnin states the bible code “also seems to state that the Apocalypse starts now, that within a decade, we may face the real Armageddon, a nuclear World War.” He later associates the words “atomic holocaust” with the years 2000 and 2006.
In another part of his book, Drosnin associates the Jewish year 5757 (which ended in October 1997) with a “holocaust.”
In his follow up book The Bible Code II (2002), Drosnin ends the introduction with this:
“This book begins a search for the key that may unlock the code completely, reveal our forgotten past, and our entire future. And now the search has become urgent. Because the bible code warns that we may have only three years to survive.”
Notice that he writes “may have only three years to survive.”
Proponents of the bible code tend to ignore its false predictions by stating such things are “possible futures,” rather than failed prophecies that never came to pass.
If this is the case, then it essentially confirms what we already know to be true – that “the bible codes” are a series of random man-created messages, some true and some untrue.
If a proponent makes 100 bible code predictions and, by chance, one comes true – then they’ll hold up that one example as “proof” of the bible code’s legitimacy, like Drosnin did with his Yitzhak Rabin assassination prediction. In the meantime, they’ll conveniently ignore the 99 additional failed predictions.
Even one false prediction out of one hundred is evidence that God isn’t behind the predictions to begin with.
As the Lord states:
“You may wonder, ‘How will we know whether the prophecy is from the Lord or not?’ If the prophet predicts something in the Lord’s name and it does not happen, the Lord did not give the message. That prophet has spoken on his own and need not be feared.”
Deuteronomy 18:21-22 (NLT)
The Bottom Line
In the end, we need to ask the question…
Why do we need bible code predictions?
Is it to prove divine authorship of the bible?
Jesus Christ, fulfilled bible prophecy, the holy spirit, and mountains of additional evidence already attest to the divine authority of the bible.
We don’t need the bible code to verify the Bible as God’s Word.
Do we need bible code predictions in order to know what’s going to happen in the future?
Nope.
The bible already tells us in plain language what’s going to happen in the future.
In fact, if you just read the plain text of the Bible, you don’t need elaborate software programs or computer scientists to “decode” bible prophecy. It’s right there in plain daylight for anyone who wants to read it.
This is the truly remarkable design of God’s Word – not hidden codes.
God Himself insists His Word is not beyond our understanding:
“This command I am giving you today is not too difficult for you to understand, and it is not beyond your reach. It is not kept in heaven, so distant that you must ask, ‘Who will go up to heaven and bring it down so we can hear it and obey?’ It is not kept beyond the sea, so far away that you must ask, ‘Who will cross the sea to bring it to us so we can hear it and obey?’ No, the message is very close at hand; it is on your lips and in your heart so that you can obey it.” Deuteronomy 30:11-14 (NLT)
Bible Code Predictions That Have Come True
That said, here are just a few examples of “bible code predictions” that have come true, and not one of them requires special software or a masters degree in mathematics in order to decipher.
In fact, they aren’t “bible codes” at all. They’re just the plain text of scripture:
Bible Prophecy: The Messiah will be born of a virgin.
Old Testament Prophecy: “All right then, the Lord himself will choose the sign. Look! The virgin will conceive a child! She will give birth to a son and will call him Immanuel – ‘God is with us.’” Isaiah 7:14 (NLT)
New Testament Fulfillment: “But while she was still a virgin, she became pregnant by the Holy Spirit. Joseph, her fiancé, being a just man, decided to break the engagement quietly, so as not to disgrace her publicly. As he considered this, he fell asleep, and an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream. ‘Joseph, son of David,’ the angel said, ‘do not be afraid to go ahead with your marriage to Mary. For the child within her has been conceived by the Holy Spirit. And she will have a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.’” Matthew 1:18-21 (NLT)
Bible Prophecy: The Messiah will bring light to Galilee.
Old Testament Prophecy: “Nevertheless, that time of darkness and despair will not go on forever. The land of Zebulun and Naphtali will soon be humbled, but there will be a time in the future when Galilee of the Gentiless, which lies along the road that runs between the Jordan and the sea, will be filled with glory. The people who walk in darkness will see a great light – a light that will shine on all who live in the land where death casts its shadow.” Isaiah 9:1-2 (NLT)
New Testament Fulfillment: “When Jesus heard that John had been arrested, he left Judea and returned to Galilee. But instead of going to Nazareth, he went to Capernaum, beside the Sea of Galilee, in the region of Zebulun and Naphtali.” Matthew 4:12-16 (NLT)
Bible Prophecy: The Messiah will be betrayed for 30 pieces of silver.
Old Testament Prophecy: “And I said to them, ‘If you like, give me my wages, whatever I am worth; but only if you want to.’ So they counted out for my wages thirty pieces of silver.” Zechariah 11:12 (NLT)
New Testament Fulfillment: “Then Judas Iscariot, one of the twelve disciples, went to the leading priests and asked, ‘How much will you pay me to betray Jesus to you?’ And they gave him thirty pieces of silver.” Matthew 26:14-15 (NLT)
Bible Prophecy: The 30 pieces of silver will be thrown in the potter’s field.
Old Testament Prophecy: “And the Lord said to me, ‘Throw it to the potters’ – this magnificent sum at which they valued me! So I took the thirty coins and threw them to the potters in the Temple of the Lord.” Zechariah 11:13 (NLT)
New Testament Fulfillment: “When Judas, who had betrayed him, realized that Jesus had been condemned to die, he was filled with remorse. So he took the thirty pieces of silver back to the leading priests and other leaders. ‘I have sinned,’ he declared, ‘for I have betrayed an innocent man.’ ‘What do we care?’ they retorted. ‘That’s your problem.’ Then Judas threw the money onto the floor of the Temple and went out and hanged himself. The leading priests picked up the money. ‘We can’t put it in the Temple treasury,’ they said, ‘since it’s against the law to accept money paid for murder.’ After some discussion they finally decided to buy the potter’s field, and they made it into a cemetery for foreigners. That is why the field is still called the Field of Blood.” Matthew 27:3-8 (NLT)
All of these prophecies were known by the Jewish scholars of His day, yet most failed to recognize Christ’s coming.
This is why Jesus accused them of failing to recognize the “signs of the times”:
“One day the Pharisees and Sadducees came to test Jesus’ claims by asking him to show them a miraculous sign from heaven. He replied, ‘You know the saying, ‘Red sky at night means fair weather tomorrow, red sky in the morning means foul weather all day.’ You are good at reading the weather signs in the sky, but you can’t read the obvious signs of the times!’” Matthew 16:1-3 (NLT)
Just like the Pharisees and Sadducees, our generation ignores the obvious signs of the times while demanding a miraculous sign in order to believe God’s Word.
In the eyes of the world, an imbedded code unable to be deciphered until the age of computers and then only understood by mathematicians and cryptographers who can “verify” and “authenticate” said code is a “miraculous sign” – something the world can finally believe in.
But would the world really believe, even in the presence of a miraculous sign?
The Bible itself, as it’s written in plain language anyone can read and understand, already constitutes a miraculous sign!
We don’t need hidden codes to verify the authenticity of God’s Word.
Instead of wasting precious hours, days, or years of life scouring through “bible codes,” why not spend that time actually reading the Bible itself?
In it, you’ll find that God reveals a number of things, such as…
"For the wisdom of this world is foolishness to God. As the Scriptures say, 'He traps the wise in the snare of their own cleverness.' And again, 'The Lord knows the thoughts of the wise; he knows they are worthless.'" 1 Corinthians 3:19-20 (NLT)
Witnessing to Others
One of the reasons some people are quick to buy into the bible code is because of its perceived power as a tool for witnessing to others.
But we don’t need the bible code to witness to others. Given the past scrutiny and the immense evidence of the bible code’s illegitimacy, it’s doubtful it would have any impact anyway.
Just because the perceived wise men of this world take a position which aligns with ours (such as “the Bible is divinely authored”), it doesn’t mean we should endorse the same methods they use to draw a conclusion. For those who are labeled “wise” by this world are often foolish in the eyes of God:
“I expose the false prophets as liars and make fools of fortune-tellers. I cause the wise to give bad advice, thus proving them to be fools.” Isaiah 44:25 (NLT)
Using the bible code to witness to non-believers is potentially disastrous. If they associate true believers in Christ with believers in the bible code, and then find out the bible code is false, then they might summarily assume that a belief in Jesus Christ is also false.
This is the ultimate danger in following any teaching which strays from the plain truth of the Bible.
Because of this, the bible code harbors some potentially negative consequences, especially when touted as “real” on networks like The History Channel, which most people perceive as a trusted arbiter of “fact.”
So what about those who already believe?
If a real bible code does exist, can it help them?
Probably not. After all, believers already believe.
Our faith is strengthened by the Holy Spirit and mountains of additional evidence. So why do believers need a “bible code”?
In light of this evidence, it’s difficult to see what good the bible code and bible code predictions can do in spreading the Gospel of Jesus Christ or strengthening the faith of current believers.
One of the best tools for witnessing to others and strengthening the faith of believers is bible prophecy itself.
Take the following example:
"Therefore, give the exiles this message from the Sovereign Lord: Although I have scattered you in the countries of the world, I will be a sanctuary to you during your time in exile. I, the Sovereign Lord, will gather you back from the nations where you were scattered, and I will give you the land of Israel once again." Ezekiel 11:16-17 (NLT)
God’s promise to gather His people back into the nation of Israel – a clearly fulfilled prophecy in our day and age – dwarfs any perceived claims of so-called bible code predictions.
We should look to the bible for guidance, not mankind’s rearrangement of it into “codes.”
As Paul says:
“All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives. It corrects us when we are wrong and teaches us to do what is right. God uses it to prepare and equip his people to do every good work.” 2 Timothy 3:16-17 (NLT)
Rely on the Bible as it is, and you won’t be disappointed.
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Maranatha!
(Lord Come Quickly)
"On Christ the Solid Rock I Stand, All other ground is sinking sand."
"Let Us make the short time we have left count for all eternity!"
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