Speculations on Biblical End Times Rise Anew Amid Nuclear War Fears, Natural Disasters - By Jay Gotera -
http://www.christianpost.com/news/speculations-on-biblical-end-times-rise-anew-amid-nuclear-war-fears-natural-disasters-182687/
With the likelihood of a major military conflict-if not a nuclear World War 3-involving North Korea and the United States looming larger by the day, speculations about the biblical end times appear to be mounting once again.
Further stoking the fire, the U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly voted Thursday to impose new sanctions on North Korea amid heightened tensions over that pariah nation's nuclear and ballistic missile programs, according to Fox News.
The same news outlet reported that Pentagon officials are seeing more evidence of a North Korean military connection with Iran, another country that poses a security challenge to the U.S.
Early this week, PRRI, a well-known public polling firm, circulated a press release underscoring some of its past findings on Americans' end times views, Faithwire reported.
Although the findings were gathered more than four years ago, PRRI's Research Director Dan Cox told the news outlet this week that those views haven't changed all that much.
In its December 2012 survey, PRRI found out that nearly half of the American people, 49 percent to be exact, believe that severe natural disasters are another evidence of the biblical end times.
The most recent natural disasters in the U.S. were the flooding and tornadoes that killed at least 20 people in Missouri, Arkansas, Texas last weekend, according to Weather.com.
One of the largest tornado outbreaks in the U.S. also struck the Southeast on Jan. 21-23, 2017. The storms killed at least 20 people, most of them in Georgia.
According to Billy Hallowell, author of "The Armageddon Code," the end times concept is deeply embedded in Christian theology.
"In fact, many contemporary theologians and pastors believe they're observing numerous signs in the current culture that mirror the supposedly prophetic contents of scriptures in Old and New Testament books like Ezekiel, Daniel and Revelation," he said in an article he wrote for Faithwire last February.
He said he interviewed 20 of these eschatology experts, many of whom cited the "sweeping moral decay, biblical disconnectedness and ongoing violence in the Middle East" as the very signs that were foretold thousands of years ago in both the Old and New Testaments.
Hallowell said Jesus himself foretold of his future Second Coming in Matthew 24:6-8: "You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed ... Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these are the beginning of birth pains."
But then in Matthew 24:36 Jesus also said that "no one knows" the day or the hour of his return.
Russian Plan for Syria Places Iranian Military In the Golan - By Adam Eliyahu Berkowitz -
https://www.breakingisraelnews.com/87772/russian-plan-syria-places-iranian-military-golan/#KIO2RlPVI2sz1ozC.97
"Son of man, set your face toward Gog of the land of Magog, the prince of Rosh, Meshech and Tubal, and prophesy against him and say, 'Thus says the Lord GOD, "Behold, I am against you, O Gog, prince of Rosh, Meshech and Tubal".' " Ezekiel 38:2 (The Israel Bible�)
Russian President Vladmir Putin's plan to set up Iranian Army officers as observers on the Israel-Syria border is even more audacious than first reported. If implemented, Putin's plan will establish the Golan as part of Syria, supervised by the Iranians, and it will become a no-fly zone for the Israeli Air Force (IAF) protected by advanced Russian anti-aircraft systems.
Last week, Debka Files, an Israeli military intelligence website, reported that President Putin suggested to President Donald Trump that a solution for the Syrian crisis would be to establish "de-escalation zones" manned by Russian, Turkish, and Iranian military personnel. These would replace similar zones currently manned by US military personnel.
Israel immediately responded by informing both the Russian and US government that "the Israeli government will on no account countenance an Iran military presence along its border".
It became clear this week that the Russian plan is even worse than previously thought. The plan would, in fact, put Iranian military personnel inside the borders of Israel, ceding parts of the Golan to Syria. Debka Files reported the details:
"A map released by the Russian foreign ministry Saturday of the four "safe zones" in Syria covers not only southern Syria but Quneitra and the Israeli Golan. The ceasefire in those zones is to be monitored by Russian, Iranian and Turkish army officers. They will also be no-fly zones, meaning that the Israeli air force will be barred from flying over its Golan enclave, should the Russian plan ever take off."
The exact boundaries of these zones will be determined by the observation groups one month after setting up their observation posts.
President Putin discussed the plan with President Trump last Tuesday, though it is unclear whether Trump gave his assent.
The plan has a hidden aspect which is even more disturbing. General Qassem Suleiman, commander of Iranian forces in Syria and Iraq, recently reorganized the military structure of the troops in Syria. Under the new arrangement, the 8,000 Hezbollah troops currently fighting for Syrian President Bashar al Assad are now under Iranian command. If Putin's plan takes effect, Hezbollah troops could simply put on an Iranian uniform and act as ceasefire monitors in the "safe zones".
Iran threatens to leave 'only Mecca and Medina' untouched if Saudi Arabia does something 'ignorant' -
Comes after Saudi prince made unusually blunt comments in a nationally-televised interview
Iran will hit back at most of Saudi Arabia with the exception of Islam's holiest places if the kingdom does anything "ignorant", Tehran's defense minister was quoted as saying on Sunday after a Saudi prince threatened to move the "battle" to Iran.
"If the Saudis do anything ignorant, we will leave no area untouched except Mecca and Medina," Iranian Defense Minister Hossein Dehghan was quoted by the semi-official Tasnim news agency as saying.
"They think they can do something because they have an air force," he added in an apparent reference to Yemen, where Saudi warplanes regularly attack Iran-aligned Houthi forces in control of the capital Sanaa.
Dehghan, speaking to Arabic-language Al-Manar TV, was commenting on remarks by Saudi Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who said on Tuesday any contest for influence between the Sunni Muslim kingdom and the revolutionary Shi'ite theocracy ought to take place "inside Iran, not in Saudi Arabia".
Saudi Arabia and Iran compete for influence in the Middle East and support rival groups in Syria's civil war. Iran denies Saudi accusations that it sends financial and sometimes armed support to groups hostile to Riyadh around the Arab world.
In unusually blunt comments in a nationally-televised interview on Tuesday, Prince Mohammed ruled out any dialogue with Iran and pledged to protect his conservative kingdom from what he called Tehran's efforts to dominate the Muslim world.
"We know that we are a main goal for the Iranian regime," he said. "We will not wait until the battle becomes in Saudi Arabia but we will work to have the battle in Iran rather than in Saudi Arabia."
New ISIS mobile tactics against US in Syria, Iraq -
It is important to get the spate of reported successes by US-backed forces fighting the Islamic State in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan in proper proportion - in particular, the impression that ISIS is falling back from its strongholds in Mosul and Raqqa and that its certain defeat is just around the corner.
On Monday, May 8, it was disclosed that Sheikh Abdul Hasib, Islamic State commander in the Afghan province of Khorasan was killed in a raid on April 27 by US and Afghan special operations forces, in which two US Army Rangers lost their lives.
All these reports are accurate as far as they go, but they don't take into account the upbeat sense prevailing in the ISIS command. The Islamic organization's strategists, former officers of Iraq's Saddam Hussein regime and Baath party, are confident they have found a convincing tactical answer to the American push for crushing them in Mosul. They don't believe they are close to defeat or that Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi's caliphate is anywhere near collapse.
debkafile's intelligence and counterterrorism sources offer six reasons for the jihadists' confidence, which the Mosul battle has if anything solidified:
1. The numbers of ISIS fighters still fighting in the Old City of Mosul is seriously underestimated as 300-400 by American and Iraqi military sources. The true figure is ten times larger - 3,000-4,000.
2. The American and the Iraqi commands have not worked out how to counter the ISIS forces' device of connecting tunnels running under buildings, which are accessed through holes blown through the walls of attached buildings. The jihadists can therefore move around between battles unobserved.
3. The only force able to combat ISIS tactics is the Iraqi Gold Division, the one elite force available to the US-Iraqi command. It is not however large enough to fight in more than one arena at once and is, moreover, too slow-moving to overwhelm the swift, invisible ISIS fighters. Most other Iraqi army units have been withdrawn from the Mosul front after being decimated.
4. ISIS has given up the strategy of defending large urban areas, pursued early in its campaign of conquest in such places as Ramadi, Tikrit and Fallujah - and the start of its defense of Mosul. Instead, their commanders have split them up into small detachments of no more than 10-15 fighters each for commando and suicide raids against their adversaries. These detachments are supported by a large group well behind the front lines which is running assembly lines of booby-trapped cars for delivery to the commando detachments.
Each is provided with more than a dozen explosive cars for release against Iraqi and US troops for maximum losses, as well plenty of exposive vests for multiple suicide attacks.
5. The effect of this tactic has been disastrous. Capable of penetrating as far as 10 km inside Iraqi lines, the deadly vehicles and suiciders have managed to slow the US-Iraqi advance and, in some places, brought it to a halt. The method has won the title of "crust mobile defense" from American commanders in Syria and Iraq
In short, the Mosul offensive, estimated to last a couple of months, is going into its eighth month with no end in sight.
A live example of this method was seen in Iraq Sunday, May 7, when at least five ISIS suicide bombers detonated their explosives vests against Kurdish Peshmerga forces outside the K1 base near the northern oil city of Kirkuk where US instructors are deployed. At least two Kurdish servicemen were killed.
6. High on the success of their tactics in Iraq, ISIS chiefs are duplicating it at the Raqqa battlefield in Syria. They have begun relocating their northern Syrian command centers to the eastern Deir ez-Zor region and Euphrates Valley, which straddles the Syrian-Iraqi border. The terrorist organization has selected the small desert town of Al-Mayadin east of Deir ez-Zor as the next seat for its central command, mainly because of its isolation. Only five roads access the town, most of them not fit for vehicular traffic and so any approaching enemy is quickly exposed.
ISIS is now planning to post its "crust mobile defense system" squads along the 170km of road linking Al Mayadin to Raqqa.
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