Prayer Warriors Alert...

Sound the Shofar~Alert the Armies of God, and call the Prayer Warriors to Battle...
Israel is in a critical state at this moment. The world, including the United States and its leaders, are closing upon her like a pack of hungry wolves against a lamb stranded away from the flock. While I firmly believe God is in control of every aspect of what's going on in the Middle East, we, as followers of Yeshua/Jesus, can make a difference by standing in the gap for this nation and its people who are blinded and yet, are the very apple of God's Eye. Israel is His Beloved. He is going to personally stand up against her enemies. He promises to destroy those who come against her, and His judgment will be swift and sure. Micah 4:11-13 And as sure as the battles are raging on the ground, they are even more intense in the spiritual realm. We have been given power and authority in Jesus' Name to come against this host of hell. We can wield the power of prayer and speak in the Lord's Name and surround Israel with our prayers. I hope you will join me. Don't ever think we are too few in number, God only needs a few to come against the many. Judges 7:12-25 !!  Shalu Yisroel~Pray for Israel...

Baruch atem b'Shem, Yeshua

Israel Quietly Shuts Down Embassies as Sabers Rattle in the Middle East

By Sarah Wildman
Foreign Policy Correspondent
Politics Daily

As Days of Rage continue across the Middle East, and thoughts are far from the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, the Israeli Foreign Ministry took the unusual step earlier this week of quietly shutting down four embassies and putting others on high alert. That's because as attention has turned to protests in Bahrain, Yemen, Algeria, and Iran, sabers are rattling between Lebanon and Israel. Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak warned that his nation could once again enter Lebanon, and Hezbollah once again promised to avenge its martyrs.

That would be one martyr, in particular. At least this week.

While Israel's embassy in Cairo was already in flux due to the 18-day Egyptian uprising, the decision to shut down four, thus far unnamed, diplomatic missions coincides with the third anniversary of the death of Imad Mughniyeh, a Hezbollah leader, in Lebanon. Mughniyeh was killed in a car bombing in February 2008; Hezbollah blamed Israel. Israel denied culpability.
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Indeed, this week the Israeli Foreign Ministry acknowledged it had received enough credible threats to believe the lives of embassy staffers were at risk. "A number of irregular incidents targeting Israeli destinations were recorded in the last few days," the ministry said in a statement Tuesday. "At this point we estimate that a threat exists against the locations and it is being dealt with. The relevant Israeli authorities are in contact with the relevant authorities in the countries in question."

The countries weren't named, but observers noted that on Friday Israel's Counter Terrorism Bureau declared eight countries were high risks for Israeli and Jewish travelers -- Egypt, Turkey, Georgia, Armenia, the Ivory Coast, Mali, Mauritania and Venezuela. The foreign ministry did not confirm embassy closings in those nations, possibly to throw off any planned attacks.

Closing an embassy is a relatively unusual step. The United States and the United Kingdom, however, temporarily closed embassies in Yemen in early January 2010 due to threats of an al-Qaeda attack there.

Read full story
here



Something big is just around the corner. Israel must go on the offensive soon. The box in which they find themselves today is getting cramped for space, and is very uncomfortable.

Don

Middle East Countries Unrest~Part 2

PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY
The Cabinet headed by prime minister Salam Fayyad submitted its resignation to PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas on Monday, and Fayyad was immediately re-appointed to head the new government. Abbas, whose Fatah organization runs the Judea/Samaria parts of the Palestinian Authority, has called for new elections "by September at the latest" – but Hamas, which controls Gaza, says it will not take part.
Only minor protests have been held, but the Abbas government has been under criticism for the lack of progress in the talks with Israel, for having reportedly made concessions to Israel, and in light of constant Hamas criticism.
Jews, by definition, do not live in the PA-controlled areas. This past December, Abbas said, “We have frankly said, and always will say: If there is an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital, we won’t agree to the presence of one Israeli in it." Months earlier, he even said that he would not agree to a single Jewish soldier in a NATO peacekeeping in the region, but later backtracked.

JORDAN
Though no acute danger faces King Abdullah's regime, he is experiencing popular protests, and his wife, Queen Rania, has been accused of corruption. A letter signed by 36 leading Bedouin representatives says that Rania must return land and farms expropriated by her family. The letter endorses several demands expressed by the Islamist opposition, and warns that Jordan "will sooner or later face the flood of Tunisia and Egypt, due to the suppression of freedoms and looting of public funds."
At the same time, Islamist voices are coming to the fore in Jordan; the country's new Justice Minister has praised the murderer of seven Israeli girls and called for his release from prison. The lethal attack occurred on the Israeli-Jordanian border in 1997.

Abdullah has formed a new government in response to the protests, and U.S. Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, visited Jordan over the weekend to discuss current events with the leadership.
Jewish history in what is now Jordan goes back to Biblical times, when Moses granted permission to two and a half tribes to live there after taking part in the war for the Land of Israel. Over the centuries, the Jewish population dwindled to nothing. In the 1930's, leading residents of what was then Transjordan requested that Jews move in to help revive the economy – but the British, who ruled the area, did not want more Jewish-Arab problems, and passed legislation banning Jews from living there.
After the Kingdom of Jordan was created, it ratified this law in 1954, declaring that any person may become a citizen unless he is a Jew (or if a special council approves his request and he has fulfilled other conditions).  Jordan has no Jewish community at present.

LIBYA
Underground opposition groups reportedly tried to organize Day of Rage protests on Monday, and have now rescheduled them for this Thursday. Moammar Gadhafi, who has ruled the country since 1969, met last month with political activists and journalists, warned that they would be held responsible if they took part "in any way in disturbing the peace or creating chaos in Libya."
In 1931, 21,000 Jews lived in Libya - 4% of the total population  - under generally good conditions. In the late 1930s, the Fascist Italian regime began passing anti-Semitic laws, and in 1942 – when 44 synagogues were operative in Tripoli - German troops occupied the Jewish quarter of Benghazi and deported more than 2,000 Jews to labor camps across the desert, where more than a fifth of them perished.
After World War II, anti-Jewish violence and murderous pogroms caused many Jews to leave the country, principally for Israel, and under Gaddafi's rule, the situation deteriorated so badly that only 20 Jews remained by 1974. In 2003, the last Jew of Libya, 80-year-old Rina Debach, left the country.

MOROCCO
A video has been distributed calling for a protest to be held on Feb. 20 to demand "equality, social justice, employment, housing, study grants and higher salaries," as well as "change, political reforms, the resignation of the Government and the dissolution of Parliament." Analysts do not expect the campaign to succeed. Some have said that the Moroccan government may face unrest in the west, thanks to Algerian instigators.
Before the founding of Israel in 1948, there were over 250,000 Jews in the country, but only 3,000 - 7,000 remain today, mostly in Casablanca.  In June 1948, 44 Jews were killed in anti-Semitic riots, and large-scale emigration to Israel began. Between 1961 and 1964, more than 80,000 Moroccan Jews emigrated to Israel; by 1967, only 60,000 Jews remained, and four years later, this number was 35,000. Today, the State of Israel is home to nearly 1,000,000 Jews of Moroccan descent, around 15% of the nation's total population.

SYRIA
In an attempt to head off protests, the Assad government withdrew a plan to remove some subsidies. President Bashar Assad gave a rare interview to the Wall Street Journal in which he said he to hold local elections, pass a new media law, and give more power to private organizations. A planned "Day of Rage" that was organized via Facebook for February 5 failed to materialize.
Large Jewish communities existed in Aleppo, Damascus, and Qamishli for centuries. About 100 years ago, a large percentage of Syrian Jews emigrated to the U.S., Central and South America and Israel. Anti-Jewish feeling reached a climax in the late 1930s and early 1940s, and some 5,000 Jews left in the 1940's for what became Israel. The Aleppo pogrom of December 1947, a pogrom in Aleppo – the third in 100 years - left many dead, hundreds wounded, and the community devastated. Another pogrom in Damascus in 1949 left 12 Jews dead. In 1992, the few thousand remaining Jews were permitted to leave Syria, as long as they did not head for Israel. The few remaining Jews in Syria live in Damascus.

YEMEN
Tuesday marks four straight days of clashes between pro- and anti-government protesters in Yemen's capital, Sanaa. At least three people were injured on Tuesday as 3,000 activists attempted to march on the presidential palace. They are demanding  the resignation of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who has been in power for 32 years. Protests have become increasingly violent. Besides poverty and unemployment, the Saleh government is grappling a secessionist movement in the south, rebellion in the north, and a regrouping of Al Qaeda on its soil.
Between June 1949 and September 1950, 49,000 Yemenite Jews - the overwhelming majority of the country's Jewish population - was transported to Israel in Operation Magic Carpet. Only a few dozen mostly elderly Jews remain in Yemen.
Amidst the Arab demands for the restitution of Arab refugees from the 1948 war, it is largely forgotten that around that time, more than 870,000 Jews lived in the various Arab countries. In many cases, they were persecuted politically and physically, and their property was confiscated; some 600,000 Jews found refuge in the State of Israel. Their material claims for their lost assets have never been seriously considered.
By Hillel Fendel
IsraelNationalNews.com

Baruch atem b'Shem, Yeshua

Why This Summer Could Change the World

by Jan Markell
www.olivetreeviews.org
May 20, 2010

There is always Middle East conflict and war is frequently breaking out in that region. Why could a forthcoming war change the world? A little too sensational, you say? When the "epicenter" is involved, always pay attention. While the situation in the Middle East is generally unstable, it could move to the disaster zone this summer or fall.

Major General Paul Vallely is a wise military man. He has been a guest on my radio program, "Understanding the Times." He is now making a media circuit warning anyone who will listen that dark storm clouds are on the horizon in the Middle East. He has gotten information, it would seem, from Israel because what he is sharing is detailed. He surely hasn't gotten it from the Obama administration who is a part of the legions of nations deceived that if only Israel would go away, there would be world peace.

We're back to the term an "axis of evil." This axis is scheming to wipe out Israel and the nations include Iran, Syria, Russia, and the biggest player, Hezbollah which operates in south Lebanon. Israel went to war with Hezbollah in 2006. It was half-hearted even though the destruction on both sides was major. According to Vallely's sources, the Iranians are working with Syria and Hezbollah and are planning a pre-emptive strike soon to stop Israel's expected pre-emptive move against Iran. What a chess board! This operation is coming down to the wire. Sources say the chaos will begin in a few weeks to a few months. It is all based on the fact that Iran is now set to go with her nukes and most of them are pointed at Israel.

Here is the startling news: Just weeks ago a Soviet sub docked in Beirut, Lebanon. It was flying the Iranian flag. Workers on the sub were seen to be wearing masks suggesting that they were unloading something chemical. And it was likely a weapon or weapons of mass destruction.

But Hezbollah has extensive plans that go beyond this. The potential Hezbollah offensive includes chemically armed SCUD missiles with a 450 km range, preemptive strikes on Israeli air fields, and a wave of tunnel attacks that cross from Lebanon into Israel. There are some 60,000 rockets and missiles in south Lebanon hiding in houses, orchards, and miscellaneous buildings. Some of these are advanced scuds which have the capability to hit every city in Israel. The intention is to rein terror on Israel with maximum damage. Israel has been giving out gas masks -- a procedure that has become all too frequent.
General Vallely states that Israel's jets and airstrips are in the sites of the enemy. Hezbollah and other participants in this forthcoming battle want to make it impossible for Israel to strike anyone by air. Vallely has highlighted possible chemical weapons of mass destruction, thousands of scud missiles, tunnels, and neutralizing Israel's fighter jets. It seems all the bases have been covered. And don't forget the "martyrs." The enemy is stocking up on young men and women who will joyfully place themselves in positions where they can self-detonate with maximum damage. They will likely use the tunnels as well.

So what does Washington think of Hezbollah? John Brennan, assistant to US President Barack Obama for homeland security and counterterrorism, told a Washington conference on Tuesday that Lebanese terrorist militia Hezbollah has evolved significantly over the years, and cannot today be defined as a purely hostile and evil entity.
Reuters quoted Brennan as telling conference participants that Hezbollah is a "very interesting organization" that has evolved from a "purely terrorist organization" into a movement that now boasts members of parliament and even cabinet ministers. Brennan states, "I'm glad to see that Hezbollah is renouncing terrorism and violence..."

Oh, really? Is this deception, delusion, or bold-face lies?

The kind of an attack outlined in this article will force Israel to strike back with ferocity. If chemical weapons are dumped on her, she will have to use her own weapons of mass destruction. We have the makings of a disaster in the Middle East and the fall-out will be felt around the world. A Jew will not be safe anywhere. A friend of Israel may not be either. Don't expect any help or comfort from the White House or State Department. Israel is their sacrificial lamb.

So she is on her own -- except for God. This is good! He won't let her down. God has a covenant with Israel that is repeated throughout the Bible. A prominent passage is Genesis 17:6-8. God is not just a covenant maker -- He is a covenant keeper! Take that to heart, Christian. With God on our side, that is a majority!

The Jews were irresponsible with their slow reaction to the warnings of the 1930s and 1940s and the results were catastrophic. Over one-third of European Jewry was annihilated. They made a second mistake in 1973 when Israel was caught off guard in the Yom Kippur War. On a smaller scale, Israel has made mistakes in lesser wars such as with Hezbollah in 2006. She was forced to fight with one arm tied behind her back and few ground troops. When she doesn't finish the job, her enemies return and everything is more deadly. Had she finished the job properly with Hezbollah in 2006, we might not have the scenario building that is outlined here.

The Western world is myopic. At best they give a gigantic yawn as it concerns issues that are far away from home. Besides, people are struggling with their own problems and they feel they cannot take on more catastrophes. But a major Middle East war will shake up the world so come out from under your denial blanket if that's where you are. At the very least, pray about this volatile issue. Inform others. Ask your pastor to give a message on the importance of Israel. At the same time, show compassion to the Arab world who is steeped in a religion that encourages their followers to die for Allah. Many disillusioned Muslims are coming to faith in Jesus Christ.

The biggest weapon being used by Satan is ignorance. Most people have not a clue as to the historical issues surrounding Middle East conflicts. Most Christians do not know that the term "Palestinian" was never used before the mid-1960s when Yasser Arafat coined theterm. There is so much historical revisionism that has taken place it is a wonder anyone can figure out the complexities of the Middle East. I encourage you to take a look at a DVD I made two years ago entitled Myths and Facts About the Middle East. This explains some of misconceptions.

You can hear General Vallely's entire remarks here.

We have additional videos for education and inspiration in our new Web category, To Make You Think. We have an entire Web category on all things Israel here.

The speed with which end-time related events are breaking is staggering. You were born for such a time as this and you are an intricate part of God's plan for this generation. See these trying times as a gift from God to you: He trusts you to serve Him at this time.



Jan Markell's Olive Tree Ministries has a terrific website here and a radio broadcast each week. They are filled with cutting edge news and issues that we as believers and watchmen must be aware of in these last days. I've personally talked with Jan, and am blessed by her ministry.

Don

Psalm 83 Conflict on The Horizon?

Prophecy News Watch

Story link here

Major Mideast wars are coming according to the Bible prophecies in Psalm 83 and Ezekiel 38-39. It would be prudent for people to prepare now, in 2010, for their soon and sequential arrivals.

It is public knowledge that as of December 2009 Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, and Hamas became allied together by bonafide war pacts against Israel. Iran is a member of Ezekiel 38-39 and Syria, Hezbollah, and Hamas appear to be identified in Psalm 83. These war pacts reportedly commit them to fight alongside each other should any of them come under attack by Israel. Had these war pacts been in place during the 22 day conflict between Israel and Hamas that ended in January 2009, the outcome could have been dramatically different.

Back then the Israeli Defense Forces (I.D.F.) seemingly ambushed Hamas with their retaliatory show of force and caught these others off guard. None of them were able to lift a finger to rescue Hamas from the pounding inflicted by the I.D.F. Iran’s nuclear program was incomplete, Hezbollah was in the process of restocking their rocket arsenals, and Syrian war scars from 1948, 1967, and 1973 made them reluctant to join alongside Hamas. Thus, these vowed enemies of Israel were reduced to sideline saber-rattling at the time.

However, matters have deteriorated and are quite different today. A brief review of Mideast events occurring since the Israel – Hamas war suggests the Fertile Crescent is presently a ticking end time’s bomb set to explode. In addition to the war pacts described above, here are a few more troublesome interim occurrences:

1. Israelis are being fitted for gas masks.
2. Israelis are preparing for a multi-front chemical war with Iran, Hezbollah, Syria, and Hamas.
3. Israel is constructing new and renovating thousands of old bomb shelters.
4. Israel is threatening a pre-emptive strike against Iran’s nuclear sites.
5. Iran could have a nuclear bomb within eighteen months.
6. Syria is now thought to have the most powerful scud missiles in the world.
7. Syria has reportedly shipped scud missiles to Hezbollah.
8. Syria has threatened to attack major Israeli cities in the event of war.
9. Hezbollah has declared that it can wipe out one-half of Israel’s army.
10. Hezbollah has been training for hand to hand combat inside Israeli cities.
11. Hezbollah and Syria reportedly have chemical weapons.
12. Hezbollah has stockpiled over 50,000 rockets.
13. Jerusalem and Tel Aviv are within rocket reach of Israel’s enemies.
14. Hamas reportedly has rockets that can reach Israel’s nuclear reactor in Dimona.

These are just a few of the numerous events that point toward war soon in the Middle East. The Israel – Hamas war created a heightened degree of animosity amongst Israel’s Arab and Persian enemies against Israel. As a result of the conflict, Turkey restricted relations with Israel and the Arab League voted unanimously again not to normalize relations with Israel.

Warranting additional concerns, King Abdullah of Jordan recently voiced serious dissatisfaction about his country's fragile peace treaty with Israel. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, he warned that "Jerusalem could blow up into another war" and declared "Jordan was better off economically before it made peace with Israel in 1994." Jordan and Egypt are the only Arab States presently at peace with Israel making Abdullah's statements extremely disconcerting.

Odds are strong that war is about to break out soon in the Middle East. Diplomatic solutions to resolve the conflict have continually failed. Relations between Iran and Israel, the Arab League and Israel, and even America and Israel are desperately tense and in a seeming state of disrepair.

At no time in Israel’s history has it ever faced an existential threat of the magnitude it faces presently. Israel’s ancient enemies possessed bows and arrows, but today the Jewish State faces arsenals that can wipe it off the map.

Humanity ought to now heed the war prophecies of the Bible and prepare for war rather than peace in the Middle East! These prophecies are scheduled to occur soon and sequentially each building upon the other. According to scripture the aftermath of these wars will lead to a one world order, construction of a third Jewish Temple, and the arrival of Antichrist.

Time is of the essence evidenced by events stage setting in the Holy Land. Christians, not knowing if they will experience these prophetic wars or be Raptured prior, should consider living each day on earth as though it were their last. In so doing, they will improve their Christian witness. These are the days when Evangelists and Eschatologists should work together in order to bring more people to Christ.