Running with the footmen

The Middle East is in flames. Scenes reminiscent of a second Vietnam flicker on the TV screens of the world. Jihadi forces that Israel has been combating for nearly a century are swarming like zombies over the walls and borders of Syria, Iraq and Jordan – colonial boundaries established by Britain and France at the close of World War One (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sykes%E2%80%93Picot_Agreement ).

Sunni jihad warriors, or mujahidin, (the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria or ISIS – a group spiritually connected with al Qa’eda; in Arabic al-Dawlah al-Islāmīyah fī al-ʻIrāq wa-al-Shām or‎ Dāʻish ) have demolished border checkpoints between Syria and Iraq, (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/22/isis-take-border-crossings-iraq-syria-jordan) and are poised at the gateways to Jordan. Their current leader is Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and their clear goal is the establishment of a jihadi Caliphate across the entire Middle East as a prelude to conquering the world under the black jihadi banner of Mohammed (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_State_in_Iraq_and_the_Levant).

Shi’ite mujahidin, guided by their Iranian puppet-masters, are streaming into Iraq from both Iran (Iranian Revolutionary Guards) and Lebanon (Hezbollah). Shi’ite religious leader Sayyid Muqtada al-Sadr in Iraq is once again raising up the Mahdi army (Jaish al-Mahdi or JAM, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahdi_Army). Mahdi is a last days Shi’ite apocalyptic term referring to the Armageddon-like appearance of a Shi’ite messianic conqueror. This army originally spearheaded the first major Shi’ite armed confrontation against U.S.-led forces in Iraq, making use of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) which owed much of their technological sophistication to the Irish Republican Army’s expertise and Iranian production.

A time for war

“There is an appointed time for everything, and there is a time for every event under heaven. A time to kill…a time to throw stones …a time to tear apart…a time to hate…a time for war” (Ecclesiastes 3:1-8). In the Middle East this is a time for war.

This war plays Arab against Arab, Muslim against Muslim, jihadi against jihadi. The murder and violence has spilled over into Africa, where groups like Al-Qa'ida in the Islamic Maghreb (also known as AQIM or Tanẓīm al-Qā‘idah fī Bilād al-Maghrib al-Islāmī; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Qaeda_in_the_Islamic_Maghreb), Boko Haram (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boko_Haram), Al-Shabaab (also known as HSM or Ḥarakat ash-Shabāb al-Mujāhidīn; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Shabaab_(militant_group), and others are involved in mass kidnappings murders, bombing of churches and civilian targets, etc.

The jihadi theology that energizes these attacks is clearly stated in the source documents of Islam – in the Quran and the Hadith (Islamic religious authoritative traditions – see https://davidstent.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/a_perspective_on_islam.pdf). Those same writings call for jihad against the Jewish people and perpetual enmity between faithful Muslims and ‘Jewish unbelievers.’ Though these facts are considered not politically correct and are assiduously avoided by most Western politicians, they are abundantly clear to Middle Easterners, and are referenced by jihadists on a daily basis.

One recent example occurred on May 23, 2014 where the Hizb al-Tahrir terror group held a rally on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem beside the Dome of the Rock, calling for jihad against the Jewish state (https://www.memritv.org/clip_transcript/en/4290.htm; https://www.memritv.org/clip/en/4290.htm).

The fifth column and the sixth pillar

During the Spanish Civil War in 1936, a Nationalist General Emilio Mola said that as his four columns of troops approached Madrid, a ‘fifth column’ of supporters inside the city would support him and undermine the Republican government from within. The term ‘fifth column’ became a byword for sedition and disloyalty. The term was used during the Cold War to describe sleeper cells of Communist spies in the USA or in British counter-intelligence.

Traditional Islam holds to five pillars (www.saudiembassy.net/about/country-information/Islam/five_pillars_of_Islam.aspx), though this classification is based not on the Quran but the Hadith. These essentials include:

shahada (the Islamic profession of faith)
salah (the five prescribed daily prayers)
zakat (almsgiving)
sawm (the Ramadan fast)
hajj (the pilgrimage to Mecca).

Armed jihad is considered an essential obligation in the Quran and the Hadith, based on Mohammed’s original words. https://wikiislam.net/wiki/Jihad_is_Compulsory_(Fard) .

Hamas and the sixth pillar of Islam

The jihadi group Hamas (Harakat al-Muqawima al-Islamiyya, or ‘The Islamic Resistance Movement’; see https://davidstent.com/hurtling-through-the-fog-of-war-a-messianic-perspective-on-the-new-hamastan/) is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood (Jama’at al-Ikhwan al-Muslimin). Its covenantal constitution calls for the following jihad against Israel:

“The Platform of The Islamic Resistance Movement (ed., Hamas): Israel will rise and will remain erect until Islam eliminates it as it had eliminated its predecessors” (Introduction).
“The Islamic Resistance Movement…join(s) its hands with those of all Jihad fighters for the purpose of liberating Palestine … Our struggle against the Jews is extremely wide-ranging and grave…until the enemies are defeated and Allah’s victory prevails” (Introduction).
“The Islamic Resistance Movement…has raised the banner of Jihad in the face of the oppressors in order to extricate the country and the people from the (oppressors’) desecration, filth and evil” (Article #3).
“The Islamic Resistance Movement…strives to raise the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine” (Article #6).
“Hamas has been looking forward to implement Allah’s promise whatever time it might take. The prophet, prayer and peace be upon him, said: ‘The time will not come until Muslims will fight the Jews (and kill them); until the Jews hide behind rocks and trees, which will cry: O Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me, come on and kill him! This will not apply to the Gharqad, which is a Jewish tree’ (cited by Bukhari and Muslim)” (Article #7).
“Allah is its goal, the Prophet its model, the Qur’an its Constitution, Jihad its path and death for the case of Allah its most sublime belief (ed. this is also the slogan of the Muslim Brotherhood)” (Article #8 – The Slogan of the Hamas).
“Nothing is loftier or deeper in nationalism than waging Jihad against the enemy and confronting him when he sets foot on the land of the Muslims. And this becomes an individual duty binding on every Muslim man and woman” (Article #12).
“In order to face the usurpation of Palestine by the Jews, we have no escape from raising the banner of Jihad … We must imprint on the minds of generations of Muslims that the Palestinian problem is a religious one, to be dealt with on this premise. ‘I swear by that who holds in His Hands the Soul of Muhammad! I indeed wish to go to war for the sake of Allah! I will assault and kill, assault and kill, assault and kill’ (told by Bukhari and Muslim)” (Article #15).

The marriage of Hamas and the PLO

The leadership of the PLO (Yasser Arafat’s terror group, now re-formed as the Palestinian Authority and al-Fatah, originally called Ḥarakat al-Taḥrīr al-Waṭanī al-Filasṭīnī) has joined with Hamas to create a new Palestinian unity government. Since Al-Fatah has continued to be involved in terrorism through its military wing al-Tanzim (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanzim; www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/para/fatah-tanzim.htm), both partners in this unholy matrimony are in fact committed to terrorism. The only difference is that Hamas is more forthright and truthful in its declarations.

“Do two men walk together unless they have made an appointment? Does a lion roar in the forest when he has no prey? Does a young lion growl from his den unless he has captured something? Does a bird fall into a trap on the ground when there is no bait in it? Does a trap spring up from the earth when it captures nothing at all?” (Amos 3:3-5).

Using the fig-leaf of the Palestinian Authority’s ‘peace partner’ reputation, Hamas is trying to leverage its new status to free itself from the chains of its pariah status as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (https://www.state.gov/j/ct/rls/other/des/123085.htm).

“Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots? Then you also can do good who are accustomed to doing evil” (Jeremiah 13:23).

Matchmaker, matchmaker make me a match

Political leaders in the West immediately jumped over themselves in enthusiasm to recognize the hybrid hydra called the Palestinian unity government. Rather than seeing the subterfuge and calling it by name, they exerted pressure on Israel to “give peace a chance.” The words of the prophet Ezekiel come to mind:

“It is definitely because they have misled My people by saying, ‘Peace!’ when there is no peace. And when anyone builds a wall, behold, they plaster it over with whitewash; so tell those who plaster it over with whitewash, that it will fall. A flooding rain will come, and you, O hailstones, will fall; and a violent wind will break out. Behold, when the wall has fallen, will you not be asked, ‘Where is the plaster with which you plastered it?” Thus I will spend My wrath on the wall and on those who have plastered it over with whitewash; and I will say to you, ‘The wall is gone and its plasterers are gone, along with the prophets …who prophesy to Jerusalem, and who see visions of peace for her when there is no peace,’ declares YHVH God” (Ezekiel 13:10-12, 16)

A time to prepare for war

In the days of the prophet Jeremiah, God issued a warning and a rebuke to the political leaders of his day. “If you have run with footmen and they have tired you out, then how can you compete with horses?” (Jeremiah 12:5). Jeremiah basically was saying that warfare and spiritual pressure were about to increase in the Middle East, and that Israel’s leadership needed to realize this and prepare. Now is not the time for counterfeit peace processes or for compromising with jihadi murderers.

For the past two weeks the nation of Israel has been on lockdown. Three young teenagers who studied at Orthodox Jewish Bible schools were kidnapped by a Hamas gang working out of the Hebron area. Their names are Naftali Fraenkel (age 16, an American citizen), Gilad Sha’er (also 16) and Eyal Yifrach (19). They were seized while waiting at a bus stop where people often hitchhike, near Tekoa, the hometown of the prophet Amos.

Senior Hamas official Ismail al-Ashkar declared in an official statement to the Hamas weekly al-Risala (regarding the kidnapping of the three teenagers), “The kidnapping is a great honor we can neither confirm nor deny” (www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4533168,00.html).

Yet Hamas has made no secret about their previous kidnappings of Israelis:

Over the past two weeks 3,000 Israeli soldiers have put a cordon sanitaire around the Greater Hebron area, going house to house, basement to basement and well to well, literally leaving no stone unturned in their search for the three teenagers and the terror gang holding them hostage. There are dark concerns regarding the lives of these three kids. As well, radical elements within the Arab communities are inciting Molotov cocktail attacks and rioting against patrols of IDF soldiers.

As the enemy rages and as terror raises its ugly head again in Israel,

Pray for protection for innocents
Pray for wisdom and revelation for the leaders of all these nations
Pray for the blunting of evil purposes in each theater of operations
Pray for boldness and the power of God through witnesses He will raise up
Pray for the protection and release of the three Israeli teenagers
Pray for the salvation of Israel

“For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent, and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not keep quiet, until her righteousness goes forth like brightness, and her salvation like a torch that is burning…On your walls, O Jerusalem, I have appointed watchmen. All day and all night they will never keep silent. You who remind the Lord, take no rest for yourselves, until He establishes and makes Jerusalem a praise in the earth” (Isaiah 62:1,6-7).

Your prayers and support hold up our arms and are the enablement of God to us in the work He has called us to do!

In Messiah Yeshua,

Avner Boskey

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Rumble in Nineveh

This past week has seen the collapse of central U.S. strategies in the Middle East. Ayatollah Khomeini’s fateful plane ride from Paris to Tehran in 1979 generated a spiritual earthquake in the region. Current events in Iraq are a similar major shock.

The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS – a group spiritually connected with al Qa’eda) have taken over Iraq’s second largest city Mosul, as well as Tiqrit, Saddam Hussein’s ancestral town. They have stampeded over a half million mostly Muslim refugees who have fled from before the black flags of jihad, The jihadi convoys of captured American Humvees leave bloody trails of decapitated opponents in their wake. Nineveh, once ancient Assyria’s proud capitol city, has witnessed Christians fleeing for their lives and shari’a law being imposed with much savagery (https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/iraq-isis-crisis-medieval-sharia-law-imposed-millions-nineveh-province-1452401).

The ISIS now controls vast swaths of territory in both Syria and Iraq. Its goal is to establish a jihadi caliphate in both countries and then to spread al Qa’eda influence further across the entire Middle East.

The U.S. invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan had different original goals originally – the establishment of a threefold cord – Western democracy, a solid economy and a pro-Western military power. This week all three of those pillars have shattered.

Rather than Iraq turning to Americans for military support, they have invited Iran’s top Shi’ite Major General Qassem Suleimani (the head of the Quds Force arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards) who touched down in Baghdad this week. His job – to help oversee the defense of Iraq’s Shi’ite government from the Sunni jihad forces of ISIS (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/14/iran-iraq-isis-fight-militants-nouri-maliki).

Iraq is shuddering in the gory throes of a religious and civil war, one which pits jihadi (Iran’s Shi’ites) against jihadi (al Qa’eda’s Sunnis). Western dreams of peace, prosperity and economic windfall have vanished like a desert scirocco. The 2003 military defeat of Saddam Hussein has fatefully led to this writhing Middle Eastern can of worms – one that threatens to engulf the entire region is flames.

Asleep at the wheel

Yet on Wednesday on this same week, just hours before this news broke, U.S. President Obama spoke to David Karp, CEO of Tumbler at a White House interview:

“And if there’s one message I want to deliver to young people like a Tumblr audience is, don’t get cynical. Guard against cynicism. I mean, the truth of the matter is that for all the challenges we face, all the problems that we have, if you had to be – if you had to choose any moment to be born in human history, not knowing what your position was going to be, who you were going to be, you’d choose this time. The world is less violent than it has ever been. It is healthier than it has ever been. It is more tolerant than it has ever been. It is better fed then it’s ever been. It is more educated than it’s ever been” (www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2014/06/11/obama_the_world_is_less_violent_than_it_has_ever_been.html).

One is reminded of the quiet observation of William Ralph Inge, former Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, “It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions in favor of vegetarianism, while the wolf remains of a different opinion.”

The Scriptures are full of references to being asleep while on duty. Jonah slept during the storm (Jonah 1:5), while the shepherds of Assyria (to whom Jonah was sent) were also lost in slumber (Nahum 3:18).

Israel’s leaders were sometimes caught snoring in the middle of crisis: “For the Lord has poured over you a spirit of deep sleep, He has shut your eyes, the prophets; And He has covered your heads, the seers” (Isaiah 29:10). “His watchmen are blind, all of them know nothing. All of them are mute dogs unable to bark, dreamers lying down, who love to slumber” (Isaiah 56:10).

Nahum and Nineveh

Though Assyria was once the world’s greatest superpower, a God’s-eye view shows that this mighty nation was being weighed in the balances and found wanting. The prophet Nahum pronounced judgment upon Nineveh and Assyria for ignoring Israel, and for weakening and harming His chosen Jewish people. In God’s foreign policy department dissing the Jews is a big no-no.

Nahum described Nineveh’s heart as prideful and boastful, and declared that even its military prowess would not protect Assyria when it violated God’s prophetic ways. The judgment of YHVH, the Day of the Lord, was on its way.

Today the nations of the world still “mock the words of God, despise His words and scoff at the prophetic message” (Jeremiah 28:8). This is especially true concerning scriptural teaching concerning the chosenness of the Jewish people, their restoration to their Promised land, and their salvation. God informs us that His prophetic word still has supreme relevance. The words of God are not only targeted at those who congregate within ‘holy buildings.’ They are also aimed at the hearts of the world’s political and religious leaders.

God’s prophetic perspectives on world events have been around for a long time – “from ancient times…(prophetic words have been directed) against many lands and against great kingdoms, regarding war and of calamity and of pestilence” (Jeremiah 28:8).

The Bible has great relevance to us in these challenging days. It offers us clarity, perspective and strategy – for individuals and governments. It is very important to wake up and take hold of what the word of God is saying about current events and those soon-coming down the turnpike.

When you gonna wake up?

Bob Dylan once said, “When you gonna wake up and strengthen the things that remain?” These words remind us of two scriptures:

“Wake up, and strengthen the things that remain, which were about to die; for I have not found your deeds completed in the sight of My God” (Revelation 3:2).

“But all things become visible when they are exposed by the light, for everything that becomes visible is light. For this reason it says, ‘Awake, sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Messiah will shine on you.’ Therefore be careful how you walk, not as unwise men but as wise, making the most of your time, because the days are evil. So then do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is” (Ephesians 5:13-17).

Yeshua said to His disciples “Why are you sleeping? Get up and pray that you may not enter into temptation” (Luke 22:46).

As the enemy rages in Iraq, Syria and Iran, and as terror raises its ugly head again in Israel,

we need to fight off spiritual slumber (Mark 13:36)
we need to be on the alert (1 Thessalonians 5:6)
we need to devote ourselves to prayer (Colossians 4:2) with thanksgiving in our hearts.

“On your walls, O Jerusalem, I have appointed watchmen. All day and all night they will never keep silent. You who remind the Lord, take no rest for yourselves, until He establishes and makes Jerusalem a praise in the earth” (Isaiah 62:6).