Wheeling and Dealing in the Middle East

In 1987 Tony Schwartz (with Donald J. Trump listed as co-author) released a ghost-written book called ‘The Art of the Deal.’ Part business-advice and part memoir, it reached #1 on the New York Times Best Seller list. Trump’s subsequent hit reality television show, The Apprentice, opened with a line based on that book: “I’ve mastered the art of the deal . . . And as the master, I want to pass my knowledge along to somebody else.”

What happens when the ‘master of the American deal’ confronts perhaps the ultimate geopolitical ‘wheeler-dealer’ – modern-day Iran (ancient Persia)? On Sunday June 14, 2026, POTUS Trump announced: “The Deal with the Islamic Republic of Iran is now complete. Congratulations to all!” An Iranian-American ‘Peace Deal’ (MOU, or Memorandum of Understanding) was digitally signed privately on Sunday June 14, and will be publicly signed in Switzerland on Friday June 19, 2026.

History of ages past

One of the first Persian deals recorded in history concerns the Peloponnesian War (431 to 404 BC). It was fought in the Eastern Mediterranean between two Greek armies – the Athens-led Delian League and the Sparta-led Peloponnesian League. Winner takes all: the prize was who would control Greece. Persia’s Achaemenid Empire acted as the ultimate broker between Athens and Sparta. By selectively funding Spartan general Lysander’s navy, Persia effectively depleted the resources of both Greek city-states, ensuring neither army could pose a unified threat to the Persian frontier. By the year 413 BC (with Persian support) Sparta decisively defeated Athens, asserting its hegemony over Greece.

Crossing the Silk Road on the great Persian Land Bridge

Persia’s geographic location made it an indispensable land bridge between Europe and Asia. Persia’s control of vital overland trade routes brought in fat customs charges through the taxation of both Roman buyers and Chinese merchants.

During the Byzantine-Sasanian wars (572-628 AD), Persia tightly regulated the market flow of Chinese silk, forcing the Byzantine Empire situated in today’s Turkey to pay punitive taxes for these luxury items.

The Great Game – Britain, France, Russia and the USA

During the 19th and early 20th centuries, Persia found itself squeezed between two aggressive superpowers: the British Empire and Imperial Russia. Persian shahs skillfully survived by playing one superpower against the other, preventing either one from gaining total control.

Following the 1951 nationalization of Iranian oil, and  up to the end of the 20th-century, Iran continuously leveraged its control over the Strait of Hormuz (a critical global oil chokepoint), pivoting its trade agreements between Western nations, Russia, and China.

Masters of the bluff and masters of the proposition

In ‘Slow Train Comin,’ Bob Dylan wryly comments:

In Persian culture, negotiations are a deeply rooted art. The nation’s bazaars are chock full of veteran merchants haggling with refined skill day in and day out. Iran’s highly effective endurance-based, bazaar-style approach to diplomacy (characterized by deliberate ambiguity, strategic patience, and repetitive bargaining) does not aim for rapid, comprehensive capitulation. Iran has learned how to play geostrategic chess; it does not follow the rules of the Harvard Business School.

Negotiations – Persian-style principles

Here are a handful of ‘bazaar principles’, honed over centuries, which Iran has used over the past decades in negotiating with the USA:

The ‘Bazaar’ or Haggling Method: Start high. Concede slow. Cloak intentions in false ceremonial politeness (Persian/Arabic, taarof). Enter into detailed negotiations even on issues that may not be deliverable, as a way to test the other side and gather information.  Promise vague future rewards to keep talks alive without offering anything concrete. Negotiating is viewed as a marathon where the party that first gets tired and impatient is the one who loses. Iran’s diplomats start with ambitious, maximalist demands and concede only marginally or reluctantly, outlasting their opponents to secure the best possible terms.

Elegant Ambiguity: Iranian diplomats tend to rely on meticulously crafted, vague language in hammering out agreements. This provides for plausible deniability while allowing each party to interpret the text in his own favor. The overarching strategy is to stay far away from clear commitments. This concept of zerangi (cunning, cleverness or street smarts) is highly valued in Iran. The bāzār culture reads a situation, understands what the other party actually wants, and reaches a deal through indirect channels rather than through straightforward transaction. The person who can manipulate such negotiations is called a zerang. However, the person who ‘takes the list price at face value’ is mocked in Iran and is considered a simpleton.  Iranians use manipulation, threats, bluffing, and disinformation as legitimate negotiating tactics. They may even issue exaggerated threats to paralyze tough policymakers. The demonstration of such rhetorical skill and the outmaneuvering of opponents is considered a source of pride and social status in Iran.

Strategic Patience: History has taught Persians and Shi’ites to use the tactic of leveraging time as a primary strategy. By dragging out the diplomatic process, Iran’s leaders shield themselves from external pressure. This weakens the efficacy of enemy sanctions, while Persian potentates simply wait for favorable shifts in global or domestic politics. The Persian proverb “Muddy the waters, and you’ll be able to catch the fish” illustrates a common Iranian negotiation tactic: prolong discussions, obscure intentions, and exhaust the other party’s patience before reaching an agreement. The delaying of action, the offering of superficial gestures to avoid real consequences – these tactics gain the upper hand by wearing opponents down and maximizing concessions. This strategy can also be called ‘running down the clock.’

Good Cop, Bad Cop: Exploit the illusion of political pluralism within your own camp. Create a false tension for your enemy between supposed ‘moderates’ vs. ‘hard-liners’ in order to extract concessions – even though all power ultimately lies with the Shi’ite Supreme Leader.

The Art of ‘Not Breaking’: Tehran goes for agreements that do not box them in. They actively work to prevent adversaries from achieving a clear, visible victory, often offering cosmetic concessions that do not fundamentally alter their long-term ideological or nuclear goals.

Leveraging Coercion and Diplomacy Simultaneously: In our day, Iran expertly weaponizes the negotiation process by maintaining aggressive proxy networks or ramping up nuclear capabilities simultaneously, using these threats as direct leverage to extract concessions while framing the talks as the only alternative to military escalation.

Divide and Conquer: Cause rifts within Western alliances and exploit them – between the U.S. and Europe and between the U.S. and Israel (n.b. VP Vance’s veiled public threats to Israel).

Drowning the devil in his own words

Oded Ailam is former head of Mossad’s Counterterrorism Division and is currently researcher at the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs. He quotes Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, one of the key figures in the nuclear negotiations between Iran and the United States, regarding his modus operandi in these talks: “Like Ayatollah Khomeini once said, ‘Drown the devil in words.’ The goal is never to break off talks completely, but rather to create manageable crises – just as [we] did in 2015.” This Persian perspective is essential for understanding Iran’s gameplan in dealing with American diplomatic and military efforts.

A strong horse with no name

Lt. Col. (res.) Dr. Mordechai Kedar, senior research associate at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, served for 25 years in IDF military intelligence specializing in Syria, Arab political discourse and mass media, Islamic groups and Israeli Arabs. Kedar’s take on Middle Eastern ‘warfare through negotiations’ is worth reading: “Only a powerful, well organized, highly determined and militarily invincible Israel can stand a chance of surviving in its violent and merciless neighborhood.”

This is known as ‘the strong horse’ principle. In mid-November 2001, Osama Bin Laden spoke to a room of his supporters, discussing the September 11th terrorist attacks: “When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature, they will like the strong horse. This is [the] only goal … following the doctrine of Muhammad.” Bin Laden saw Islam as the strong horse, and viewed Christian America as the weak one.

Journalist Lee Smith based the name of his book The Strong Horse: Power, Politics, and the Clash of Arab Civilizations on Osama bin Laden’s above-mentioned quote. In this work, Smith states that strength or “violence is central to the politics, society, and culture of the Arabic-speaking Middle East, and that Arab politics is driven by the ‘strong horse’ principle.” “Bin Ladenism is not drawn from the extremist fringe but represents the political and social norm [of the Arabic-speaking Middle East].”  According to T. Edward Donselm (in the Arab Studies Quarterly), Smith sees a revived modern Islamism as an effort to employ the 1,400-year-old political institution of jihad as a tool to restore Sunni Islam to the supremacism it once enjoyed at Islam’s beginning.

Agreeing with Dr. Kedar’s appraisal, Daniel Pipes (director of the Middle East Forum and Taube distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University) applies Bin Laden’s ‘strong horse’ principle to Israel’s role in the Middle East. Israel serves as ‘a proxy strong horse’ for both the United States and the Saudi-Egyptian bloc in the latter two nations’ Cold War-type rivalry with Iran.

Pipes specifically outlines the policies of non-Arab actors (like Iranians or Israelis) in the Arab world: unless they are forceful and show true staying power, they lose. “Being nice – say, withdrawing unilaterally from southern Lebanon and Gaza – leads to inevitable failure.  More broadly, when the U.S. government flinches, others (e.g., the Iranian leadership) have an opportunity to ‘force their own order on the region.’ Walid Jumblatt, a Lebanese Druze leader, has half-seriously suggested that Washington [should] ‘send car bombs to Damascus’ to get its message across and signal its understanding of Arab ways.”

Trump may have been a master dealer in the real-estate world, but effectively grasping the above-described Middle Eastern ways and mindsets is a totally different kettle of fish. The Iranian dictatorship has been testing the POTUS. If they can get away with missile attacks on Israel, on the Gulf States or on oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz – if they can violate ceasefire with impunity, and they see that Trump is not eager to make a big deal out of it – they will simply up their ante.  The Iran Revolutionary Guards Corps leadership already has ample proof that POTUS Trump cares more about the cost of gasoline at the American pump, about Republicans holding on to Congress in the 2026 midterm elections, and about how ‘ceasefires’ and ‘peace deals’ come across on mass media, than about the blunting of Iran’s jihadi and expansionist goals in the Middle East.

The War’s Three Big Goals

POTUS Trump declared on February 28, 2026 that there were approximately four major war goals. He posted these in an eight-minute video on his Truth Social:

On March 4, 2026 White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt rehearsed this list:

Have these goals been achieved?

A final point in the war goals was originally trumpeted by the American President in his February 28, 2026 video, but the current Memo of Understanding between the USA and Iran does not touch it – the savage oppression of the Iranian people.

The new America-Iran agreement simply sidesteps the IRGC’s mass murder of Iranian civilians. It draws a blank regarding Trump’s offer to back a civilian uprising against the Ayatollahs. This diplomatic avoidance of the issue of jihadi mass-murder leaves a black stain on America’s credibility throughout the entire Middle East. It is similar to how England’s Prime Minister Chamberlain made light of Nazi atrocities prior to WWII. Middle Eastern countries like Afghanistan, Bahrain, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates (as well as the Kurdish and Iranian peoples) are sitting up and taking notice: Who is the weak horse here and who is the strong horse in this equation?

With this in mind, the emerging agreement is a betrayal of the Iranian people. Iranians took to the streets in an effort to overthrow the ayatollahs' regime and gain a measure of freedom. Trump encouraged them to continue their struggle. He promised that help was on the way. They listened. They marched. And tens of thousands were murdered. But now, as a result of this new Iran-America agreement, the future of the Middle East in general and of the Iranian people in particular has never seemed so hopeless. It is no longer clear whether moral values still have any significance in Middle Eastern/international affairs. Iranian citizens have been abandoned, as have the Lebanese. They also had begun to feel that they might finally be freeing themselves from Iranian domination, which, through Hezbollah, has devastated Lebanon over recent decades and driven it into bankruptcy.

A new survey by the Israeli Democracy Institute (IDI) found a sharp decline in the share of Jewish Israelis who believe that POTUS Trump views Israel’s security as a significant consideration. Only 41% of Jewish respondents said Israel’s security is a central consideration for Trump, down from 64% in March. Only 32% said they expect an agreement to eliminate Iran’s ballistic missile threat, while 28% believe it would weaken the regime.

A deal has just been digitally signed. Iran’s Shi’ite dictatorship is standing. America’s enemy, though weakened and still very dangerous, is declaring victory. It is about to receive a financial booster-shot which will revive its jihadi proxies. Iran is turning its own military defeat into diplomatic gains – with America’s help.

To speak plainly: America has failed to defeat the IRGC. The Islamic Republic of Iran has stood up to what it sees as a lame duck US Presidency. Iran has survived the military clash and is now achieving its geostrategic goals – first and foremost of them being the blunting of US supremacy in the Middle East. Iran is now the up-and-coming superpower in the Persian Gulf – not Saudi Arabia and not Israel. The Master of ‘The Art of the Deal’ has been bested at the Persian bazaar.

Israel – God’s sifter of nations and YHVH’s threshing sledge

It’s not easy being the President of the United States. In many ways it is a thankless job. Moses had some wise words for aspiring kings in Deuteronomy 17:15-20; A solid ruler bases his rule on the solid Word of God. He who believes and follows YHVH’s words will see his nation flourish:

A leader, even one who rules over an amazing superpower like the United States, needs to make it his business to know what the God of Jacob thinks about the Jewish people, their calling, their gifts and their restoration as the key to world revival and restoration. Genesis 12:1-3 is major point here, as it deals with the blessing and cursing of all nations and every individual – based on their treatment of and heart-attitude to Israel. Other passages include Isaiah 41:15 and Micah 4:13, where the Jewish people are prophetically described as a threshing sledge that YHVH will use to judge and defeat all nations.

F-bombing one’s way up the pilgrim’s highway to Jerusalem

President Richard Nixon was the darling of many American Evangelicals until the waves of Watergate crashed onto the back desk of the Washington Post. When the tapes Nixon had secretly recorded in the Oval Office became public domain, Bible believers like Billy Graham were shocked, and the former President himself was humiliated, confessing that the public exposure of his “foul words was the worst part of Watergate.”

Times have changed. One example: over the past year POTUS Trump has f-bombed the Israeli Prime Minister repeatedly on live telephone calls, and has proudly admitted these various occasions to the media (here, here, here [“If there wasn’t me, there would be no Israel”] and here). Trump’s intemperate language reveals a carnal heart, and definitely crosses the boundary lines into cursing.

On June 24, 2025 Iran launched missiles into Israeli airspace after a Trump-brokered truce was supposed to have taken effect. Trump’s response was to blame jihadi Iran and Israel equally: “You know what, we basically have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard they don’t know what the f*** they’re doing. Do you understand that?” For the POTUS to draw a moral equivalence between jihadis and those opposing jihad in the same breath, indicates a profound lack of Middle Eastern understanding, and a spiritual dullness to boot.

On June 8, 2026 Trump gave an interview to The Financial Times, expressing anger at Israel’s reprisal response to Iranian strikes: “But they [the missile strikes on Israel] were attacks that did not kick at all. It’s one of those things that’s been going for 3,000 years, or 47 years, depending on how you count.” Trump falsely ascribed the Iran-Israel conflict to 3,000-year-old dynamics. But that is just ‘fake news.’ The facts are rather different here: Iran and Israel had a highly positive relationship between 1967 and 1979, when Ayatollah Khomeini’s jihadi revolution pushed Iran into the spiritual meat-grinder. Trump communicated to AXIOS news site later that day that he was about to call Bibi and order him not to retaliate against Iran, as Washington’s priority was the closing of a deal with the Ayatollahs.

 “Are you f***ing crazy. What are you f***ing doing? You’d be in prison if it weren’t for me. I’m saving your ass. Everybody hates you now. Everybody hates Israel because of this!” Trump acknowledged that Hezbollah had attacked Israel first, but stressed that the jihadi attacks had caused no real damage and that no one had been killed. He then spoke with a reporter, continuing to using foul language: “Why did Bibi have to do a f***ing attack? I was so p**sed off. I let him know. He has no f***ing judgement. I let him know that.” Through that day Trump continued to curse Netanyahu over Israel’s justified reprisals against Hezbollah and IRGC’s jihadi attacks against Israeli civilians. Trump was angry that such justifiable reprisals might nevertheless explode the fragile ‘Peace Deal’ that he was trying to cobble together – even as the jihadi terror groups kept firing at Jewish people living in Israel.

Although Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other senior officials did not publicly comment on the situation at the time, Israel’s Ambassador to the United States, Yehiel Leiter, wrote on 𝕏: “Iran fired 11 ballistic missiles at Israel today. Each one of those missiles can level an entire neighborhood and kill hundreds. No self-respecting country in the world would tolerate such an attack, and neither will Israel.”

On Tuesday June 16, 2026, speaking at the G7 summit in Évian-les-Bains, France, alongside Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, Trump boasted like Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar in Daniel 4:30 and Daniel 5:20: “Without the United States, there would be no Israel. Without me, there would be no Israel, because no other president was willing to do what I did. Israel would have been blown up a long time ago, had I not gotten involved.”

Also at today’s G7 Summit, Trump attacked Israel publicly and with great malice, accusing the Jewish state of genocidal behavior in Lebanon. Trump spoke approvingly of Syria’s former al-Qaeda leader, declaring that Syria is a more reliable partner than Israel.

Simultaneously, on Tuesday June 16, 2026 rumors have been quickly disseminated across media platforms by anonymous State Department sources, broadly hinting that Trump will soon be firing both his Secretary of War Pete Hegseth and his CIA Director John Ratcliffe. Both men have raised doubts (based on concrete NSA and CIA intercepts) that senior Iranian officials are not intending to comply with nuclear commitments, even if a final agreement is signed. Recorded SIGINT discussions between Iranian diplomats reveal strategies inconsistent with Iranian messages being conveyed to US negotiators.

A massive Iranian bazaar-deception operation against POTUS Trump is in motion. Retired four-star Army General Jack Keene (former commander of the 101st Airborne Division) spoke on FOX NEWS on Monday June 15, 2026, stating that America is getting played by a regime that has been lying and killing US citizens, terrorizing its way through the Middle East for decades – and now it looks like America is about to reward the IRGC for it.

According to the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) researcher Beni Sabti, Trump’s foul-mouthed rebuke of PM Netanyahu “sends a message of Iranian victory, both on the battlefield and in terms of perception. The President of the United States is becoming an advocate for the Iranian regime. Iranian hubris is growing and growing. They see that the United States is stopping Israel, rebuking it, and not allowing it to attack. Hezbollah has suddenly recovered, and it turns out they have also created a split between Israel and the United States. This is a kind of enormous Iranian achievement. Israel is paying for the negotiations. There is no doubt that this is not good, but I am only putting things in context: beyond the statements and beyond the big, high rhetoric in Iran, what is happening right now is very heavy pressure.”

Here are three recent statements from the US Presidential team, revealing a quickly developing State Department trend to distance the USA from Israel when it comes to areas of Iranian influence in the Middle East. America is also sending a clear warning to Israel that upcoming American agreements with Iran will quite likely damage Israel’s security:

As anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism wildcat within American society and in Western Europe, it is troubling to see how Iran has succeeded in driving a wedge between the USA and the Jewish state of Israel. And if (as it now seems to be happening) that Trump is truly committed to getting a deal with Iran resembling Obama’s disastrously weak 2015 the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), that divisive wedge may get larger. Iran’s clearly stated purpose is both Israel’s destruction and an endless war on the West. Diplomacy that is based on tolerating or trusting Iran’s leaders to keep their word on nuclear or on any other issues is a trap that wise policymakers should avoid.

Until quite recently, Trump has been the strongest pro-Israel President ever.  If any President should be defending Israel against the growing ‘genocide in Gaza’ slander, it’s Trump. Yet incrementally Trump seems to be quickly approaching the type of ‘blame Israel for defending itself’ rhetoric expected from someone like Rashida Tlaib or the European Union. The sound of a ticking clock is being heard again, but this time it is in Washington D.C.

Some of us hoped that the budding relationship between Netanyahu and Trump would lead to unprecedented coordination – which recently happened on the tactical level. The joint strikes against Iran were a stunning military achievement, but tactical cooperation did not translate into strategic alignment.

Israel has clearly declared it is not a party to the US-Iran deal, yet officials in Jerusalem fear that Trump’s MOU could restrict the IDF’s freedom of action against Hezbollah in Lebanon. Member of Knesset Itamar Ben-Gvir speaks for the majority of Israelis when he says:

“Is there not here another prophet of the Lord of whom we may inquire?”

POTUS Trump, VP JD Vance, and special envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner are all on board the ‘Peace Train,’ and they have announced: “The Deal with the Islamic Republic of Iran is now complete. Congratulations to all!” Yet there are some other voices who express major concerns and doubts about Iran’s reliability and credibility. These include CIA Director John Ratcliffe who told Donald Trump and other senior officials that evidence gathered by U.S. intelligence agencies raises serious doubts about Iran’s willingness to make the nuclear concessions the U.S. is seeking in any final deal. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth both expressed concerns and raised questions about the memorandum of understanding. “The intelligence reflects that the Iranian intentions are not in line with their commitments under the deal,” said a source present at those discussions. “I am somewhat concerned that Iran’s view of the agreement seems different than what the American negotiating team is claiming,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told Axios.

Washington’s overriding priority

Washington’s overriding priority is not the disarmament of Hezbollah, nor the preservation of Israeli deterrence along its northern border. It is not the rolling back of jihadi terror armies like Hamas, Hezbollah, Kata’eb Hezbollah in Iraq, or the Yemenite Houthis. It is not even the liberation of the Lebanese and Iranian civilians from their jihadi slave-masters. America’s dominant priority is the prevention of a scenario where the Hormuz Strait and the Bab al-Mandab Strait are closed by Iran, sending crude oil prices beyond $150 a barrel – especially just before an election or in the middle of a fragile economic recovery. Every other consideration pales in comparison.

In the not-too-distant future, a new administration will be coming to Washington. As former POTUS Obama declared in 2014, “I’ve got a pen, and I’ve got a phone!” Perhaps the sunniest days of the America-Israel alliance are now behind us.

The God of Jacob – the holy Master of the Deal

The Hebrew Bible is well aware of the craftiness of men and women, and how the lure of the market blinds even the best of hearts:

It is impossible to ‘pull a fast one’ on the God of Israel. He sees the plots of the dealers, whether they be businessmen or diplomats, and He always has ‘something up His sleeve’ – especially when it comes to those who intend to cause harm to His Jewish people:

When the Prince of Persia meets the King of Israel

The Scriptures draw back the veil and reveal to us what is going on behind the scenes, especially in the realm of the spirit. Lurking behind the rulers of Iran is an ancient demonic principality – the Prince of Persia. The Angel Gabriel conveys this revelation to Daniel the prophet, explaining that the machinations of Persia/Iran are a strategic part of spiritual warfare on this planet. What is transpiring in Tehran and in Washington is also part of God’s Last Days hook, as Ezekiel tells us:

More than most countries, Iran is ‘notorious’ in biblical prophecy.  As the Cambridge Dictionary explains, ‘notorious’ is the state of being widely known or famous, specifically for a negative reason, such as a scandalous event, immoral behavior, or a notorious crime. ‘Notoriety’ implies a person or thing is famously infamous.

When the prophet Ezekiel describes the famous End of Days battle known as the ‘War of Gog and Magog,’ he names the nations involved which come against Israel in a vain attempt to crush and destroy the Jewish state. Ezekiel 38:5 begins the list with the nation of Persia. Modern Iran holds a priority place on the apocalyptic list of YHVH’s enemies. Handle with care and with prayer!

How shall we then pray?

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

In Messiah Yeshua,

Avner Boskey

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Horsing around with the Persian Godfather

In a scene from Mario Puzo’s The Godfather, mafia Don Vito Corleone declares that he would extend “an offer he can’t refuse” to a corrupt movie producer, in order to get him to cast Corleone’s godson in an upcoming movie. This Hollywood mogul did not agree to the Don’s suggestion.

The producer had recently bought a prize racehorse – a Triple-Crown winner named ‘Khartoum’ – for $600,000, and was quite attached to the animal. So the Godfather sent one of his heavies to decapitate the horse and to delicately place the detached head under the satin sheets of the Hollywood producer’s gold-lamé-covered bed. The bloody horse’s head would serve as ‘an encouragement’ for that mogul to hire the Godfather’s godson. This is an outstanding Hollywood example of what can happen when one horses around with a Godfather.

‘Don Corleone’ of the Persian Gulf

On May 17, 1900, Ruhollah (Arabic for ‘Spirit of allah’) Mostafavi Musavi Khomeini was born in Khomeyn, part of the ethnically Persian Markazi province, into a family of merchants, small land owners and clerics. Prior to 1921 his family patronymic was ‘Hindi’ (‘from India’), because his ancestors had migrated to Kintoor, Uttar Pradesh province, India in the late 1700’s. Ruhollah’s grandfather returned to Persia/Iran in 1839.

Ruhollah trained at the Shi’ite seminaries of Arak and Qom, becoming a leading scholar and lecturer at Qom and Najaf (considered perhaps the holiest city in Shi’ite Islam). After a prolonged exile in Turkey and France, Khomeini returned to Iran in 1979, becoming Leader of the Revolution on February 4 of that year, and then First Supreme Leader (rahbar-e mo’azzam) of Iran on December 3, 1979,

Here is some of the historical heritage of ‘Don Khomeini’: He supported the taking of American hostages in November 1979. He issued a February 14, 1989 Islamic fatwa calling for the murder of Indian-born British novelist Salman Rushdie. He labeled the United States as the ‘Great Satan‘, the Soviet Union as the ‘Lesser Satan‘ and Israel as the ‘Little Satan‘.

On September 22, 1980, the Iran-Iraq War broke out, catalyzed by a snap Iraqi invasion of Iranian territory. Over 500,000 deaths were caused  in total, making it the deadliest conventional war ever fought between regular armies of developing countries.

The Iraqi government – led by President Saddam Hussein – had various goals in mind here: to prevent Ruhollah Khomeini from exporting his Shi’ite anti-Sunni revolution to Iraq, which might conceivably have caused its Shia majority to rebel against ‘the Butcher of Baghdad.’ Iraq also wanted to dislodge Iran from becoming the most powerful leader of the Arab-Islamic world as well as the main military power in the Persian Gulf. Saddam Hussein also wanted to seize and occupy Iran’s adjacent oil-rich province of Khuzestan.

After 18 months of fighting, Iran had managed to regain all territory lost to Iraq up to that point. Khomeini then refused an Iraqi offer of a truce, and demanded both Iraqi reparations and the toppling of Saddam Hussein. By March 1984 two million of Iran’s most educated citizens had left the country. The collateral damage of the war which ended on August 20, 1988, was (for Iran) nearly 250,000 Iranian casualties and a cost of over US $300 billion.

At the close of that war, Khomeini insisted that Iran’s clash with Iraq had not been a mistake. In his ‘Letter to Clergy’ radio broadcast of July 20, 1988, he wrote that “we do not repent, nor are we sorry for even a single moment for our performance during the war. Have we forgotten that we fought to fulfill our religious duty and that the result is a marginal issue?”

Behind Khomeini’s words lay a strong jihadi world view: He believed that Shi’ite Iran needed to conquer Sunni-controlled Iraq and annex its Shi’ite majority. Iran’s Supreme Leader saw this as a critical first step in the fulfilment of Shi’ite eschatological expectations. Khomeini believed that it is Shi’ite destiny first to conquer Sunni Islam and cleanse Mecca; then to destroy Israel; and after that to bring the entire world under the domination of a Shi’ite dictatorship. Both of his successors, Ayatollah Ali Hosseini Khamenei and the present Ayatollah Mojtaba Hosseini Khamenei, also subscribed to this Shi’ite End of Days eschatology.

Death of a Don

Khomeini’s iron rule over Iran was infamous for its blood-drenched Shi’ite ‘revival’; for its anti-Western policies and murderous anti-Semitism; for its crushing anti-democratic suppressions, and for its massive human rights violations. These included the Iranian Cultural Revolution purges; the 1981–1982 Iran massacres; the 1988 mass executions of Iranian political prisoners; and for using suicide child soldiers extensively during the Iran–Iraq War in human wave attacks. In May 1979 ‘Don’ Khomeini established what is today the world’s largest terrorist organization – The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), also known as the Pasdaran.

Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini died on June 3, 1989 from stomach cancer, after suffering five consecutive heart attacks in ten days. At his initial and interrupted funeral, at least 10 mourners were trampled to death, over 400 were badly hurt, and several thousand were treated for riot-caused injuries.

At his second funeral, the gathered crowds pushed past makeshift barriers on the way to the cemetery, and at that point the authorities lost control of the event. According to journalist John Kifner of The New York Times, here is a graphic description of the burial of Iran’s Godfather:

Horses’ heads and Persian strategies

Subsequent to the outbreak of hostilities between Iran, the US and Israel on February 28, 2026, the world’s media have been catching up on battlefield results and on decoding Iranian strategies. Here is some background updated information:

Back in 2014, IRGC Qods Force Chief Qassem Suleimani had outlined an Iranian revolutionary strategy of toppling Sunni Arab governments, through Shi’ite military movements funded and controlled by by Iran. Suleimani stated that Iran’s goal was to occupy “80 percent of the world’s oil.”:

The wise writer of Proverbs counsels generals: “Prepare plans by consultation, and make war by wise guidance” (Proverbs 20:18).

Since February 28, 2026 the UAE has been hit by 537 ballistic missiles, 26 cruise missiles and 2,256 drones. Jordan was hit by 204 missiles and drones during that season. Qatar was stuck by 203 missiles and 87 drones, while Bahrain was hit by 132 missiles and 234 drones. The Kingdom of  Saudi Arabia was struck by 38 ballistic missiles, 26 cruise missiles and 435 drones.

From February 28 to April 8, 2026, Israel was the recipient of 650 missile and over 1,000 drone attacks from Iran, the majority of which carried cluster munitions. About 16 of the missiles that made it past Israeli missile defenses carried conventional warheads, while 50 had cluster munitions. The attacks killed a total of 24 people, all of them civilians, and resulted in approximately 7,000 injuries. Of the 24 civilians killed, 14 were struck by warheads with conventional explosive warheads and 10 were victims of cluster submunitions; two of the deaths were inside a sheltered space, with the other 22 fatalities being people in unprotected areas.

Godfather tactics indeed!

Some battle losses caused by Iran

Iran was able to destroy some significant American ground assets during the first week of the war (February-March 2026). These included at least 47 USAF fighter jets, UAV drones, refueling tankers and surveillance planes. To be more specific, these included four F-15E Strike Eagle fighter jets, one F-35A Lightning II stealth fighter, an A-10 Thunderbolt II ‘warthog’ attack aircraft, seven KC-135 Stratotanker refueling planes, an E-3 Sentry AWACS surveillance aircraft, two MC-130J Commando II special operations aircraft, a HH-60W Jolly Green II rescue helicopter, 24 MQ-9 Reaper drones and an MQ-4C Triton high-altitude surveillance drone.

As well, 20 major US radar facilities were taken out by Iranian missile and drone attacks:

Twenty-one ISRAEL UAV drones were destroyed by Iran in this 40-day war. Two UAVs from the United Arab Emirates were destroyed, as well as three Italian drones, one Saudi and one Qatari UAV. A geo-strategic aspect of this battle connects to Russia, which supplied intelligence information to Iran in real time, detailing locations of US fighter jets, warships and radar installations.

Wake up and smell the hummus

Iran’s new strategic ‘Godfather’ thrust in this past round of hostilities has involved major attacks on its Arab Sunni neighbors. This new targeting resurrects old specters of Sunni-Shia clashes, events which go back to the dawn of Islam. The Sunni-led countries of Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, Saudi Arabia, UAE and Azerbaijan were all targeted by Iranian missiles and UAVs. The Gulf States, known up until now for being awash in petrodollars and gold-plated Lamborghinis, discovered that none of their gleaming skyscrapers and palaces have bomb shelters – no-one thought there was any need for such trifles. Their citizens were left defenseless in the face of incoming Iranian Shi’ite missiles.

The Saudis never expected that their core energy infrastructure would become a missile target in this conflict. But the Saudi Ras Tanura refinery was hit on March 2, 2026 and again on March 19, 2026, while on the night of April 7-8 (shortly after the announcement of a ceasefire between the US and Iran) the following petroleum facilities were hit by Iranian attacks: ARAMCO’s East-West pipeline, its Manifa oil field, and its refineries in SATORP (jointly operated with TotalEnergies), Yanbu/SAMREF (ExxonMobil and ARAMCO) and Riyadh, as well as its Juaymah facility (a massive Saudi Aramco hydrocarbon processing and export hub for processing and shipping Liquefied Petroleum Gas [LPG] and Natural Gas Liquids [NGL]). This has contributed to a staggering $33.5 billion first-quarter deficit in Saudi Arabia, married to financially destabilizing oil tanker backups in the Strait of Hormuz.

Another strategic Iranian ‘Godfather’ goal is to throttle and threaten Western economies by blocking shipping lanes for oil exporters. The mining and closing of the Strait of Hormuz by Iran’s navy (fast attack and missile boats), combined with its Houthi proxy closing off the Bab al-Mandab (Arabic for ‘Gate of Grief’), has the potential of shutting off 20% of the world’s petroleum supply and 25% of the global seaborne oil trade – approximately 20 million barrels per day, as well as most commercial activity coming out of the Gulf States. The Bab al-Mandab is a critical maritime chokepoint situated between Yemen (on the Arabian Peninsula) and Djibouti and Eritrea (on the Horn of Africa). It serves as the southern gateway to the Red Sea, connecting the Indian Ocean and Gulf of Aden to the Mediterranean Sea via the Suez Canal.

The current tactics of the Persian Godfather – the Iranian Hitler – involve stalling American and Israeli attempts to crush its plans for Middle East domination and worldwide Islamist take-over. This includes getting POTUS Trump to defer all unresolved issues to the foggy future; to flip the entire sequencing of ‘peace talks’ by refusing to make any nuclear-related commitments or concessions regarding stockpiling at this stage; to demand immediate economic rewards from the US, including the unfreezing of blocked assets (which would then be immediately used to bolster the terrorist armies of Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and Iraq’s Kata’eb Hezbollah); and to condition the entire agreement on an ‘all fronts ceasefire’ that would effectively force Washington to strip Israel of its freedom of action against Hezbollah in Lebanon.

US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee posted June 8, 2026 on Twitter, a statement that sums up the Iranian Godfather’s goals and recent activities: “Iran and its proxy agents of evil want to incinerate America & Israel. Mothership of Satan is in Tehran.”

 

How shall we then pray?

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

In Messiah Yeshua,

Avner Boskey

Donations can be sent to:

FINAL FRONTIER MINISTRIES

BOX 121971 NASHVILLE TN 37212-1971 USA

To donate online visit: http://www.davidstent.org/give

   

Making the crooked plain in the Middle East

During the fog of war, a clear grasp of battlefield realities is more precious than gold. How can we make sense of the torrent of media information streaming at us non-stop regarding fast-paced Middle East events? The next few newsletters will offer some helpful guidelines.

The Iranian Revolutionary Guards – Hitler’s spiritual descendants

On January 29, 2002 POTUS George W. Bush trumpeted a warning about the Iranian ‘axis of evil’:

Three years later, in 2005, President George W. Bush popularized another term, ‘Islamo-fascism.’ When one blends these two concepts together regarding Iran – ‘axis of evil’ and ‘Islamo-fascism’ (think ‘Hitler with nukes’) – this may help us to better comprehend the nature of the menace facing both the Western world and Israel. Imagine, if you would, Nazi documents charting out a Middle Eastern ‘Final Solution’ for Jacob’s sons and daughters – but written in flowery Arabic calligraphy. Iran’s jihadi dream is such a dictatorship, one with Hitlerian proportions.

Understanding Jihad 101

The Western world is for the most part deaf, dumb and blind when it comes to comprehending Islam’s Last Days jihadi vision. The yawning gap here between Middle Eastern jihadi values and Western ‘just war’ principles is immense. Islamic standards are based not on the writings of Cicero, Augustine of Hippo or Thomas Aquinas. Neither are they anchored in the US Constitution or the Bill of Rights. Islamic laws of war are firmly grounded on Mohammad’s example in prosecuting Muslim wars of conquest – a zealous jihadi foundation indeed.

Islam’s military triumph over all other religions is classic End of Days Muslim belief. When wars have broken out throughout history between Islamic warriors and the Christian West (or in our day with the Israeli army), the Muslim operating definition of what constitutes victory or success is totally different from what Westerners envision.

The Islamic perspective sees it this way: if military clashes end, and any Islamic warriors physically survive, this is seen as divine proof that ultimate jihadi victory is assured. Why is this, you may ask? Muslim theologians would answer: This is because the path of allah is of course the only right path, and allah will ultimately grant triumph to Jaish-e-Muhammad (the armies of Muhammad). From this viewpoint, what counts in the end is simply the Last Battle and Islam’s final victory.

It doesn’t matter, in the meantime, if there are temporary setbacks – if unbelievers conquer Islamic territory, destroy Islamic infrastructure or houses, take Muslims prisoner, or successfully assassinate high-level jihadi targets. According to classical Islamic principles, these actions do not signal defeat for the jihadi warrior and his leaders. Those mujahidin (jihad warriors) who survive such battles – they (or their children) will live to fight another day. When that day comes, they will ultimately crush the skulls of the infidel and vanquish the armies of the sheitan (Satan). In this final Islamist reckoning, what matters is the final Muslim conquest and the ultimate Islamic caliph, the Amir al-Mu’minin (the Commander of the Faithful) – the one who will subdue and humble all the unbelieving nations.

Strategic deception as a weapon of war

After the Western world makes war, it makes peace (known as Jus post bellum, in Catholic theology). Countries formerly at war sign peace treaties and non-belligerency pacts, and even disarm. But these concepts are Western inventions; they are not realties which blossom on Middle Eastern soil.  Islamist theology teaches something very different, a concept called ‘taqiyya’ – where the weaker party will agree to a treaty as a strategic deception, in order to survive, knowing that the time will come when he will break the treaty and conquer his now-weaker enemy. For a fuller discussion, see ‘How Taqiyya Alters Islam’s Rules of War’ by Raymond Ibrahim, Middle East Quarterly, Winter 2010).

The 48th sura (chapter) of the Quran (Al-Fatḥ), describes in detail something called ‘the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah,’ a ten-year pact established in March 628 AD between Mohammad and the Arabian tribe of Quraysh. Mohammad broke that treaty two years later, in January 630 AD, when his jihadi forces – having re-armed and grown strong during the interim – subjugated the Quraysh tribe, and then moved on to conquer Mecca.

PLO leader Yasir Arafat cited this Islamic precedent a number of times when signing the Oslo Accords with the Jewish state. It was his justification for ‘supposedly recognizing’ Israel and ‘supposedly renouncing’ terrorist activities. The following quote from the Arabic-language newspaper al-Quds, published in Jerusalem on May 10, 1998, illustrates Arafat’s strategy:

Helpful background on Arafat’s deception of the US State Department can be seen here in our November 9, 2023 newsletter.

Kamikaze in the Persian Gulf

The importance of avoiding battlefield casualties – whether military or civilian – is a Western military value. But the Islamic Middle East sees the matter differently. Muslim theology teaches that it is the final triumph of jihad which is the ultimate value, no matter what the cost it takes to get there in soldiers’ or civilians’ lives.

The practice of strategic taqiyya deception can be clearly seen in the way Hamas has brazenly used Gazan civilians as human shields while shooting its jihadi rockets at Israeli civilians located in kibbutzim, villages and cities. Hamas is quite willing to destroy their own people if, by doing this, they can also destroy the Jewish state.

Iran’s use of taqiyya deception is also patently clear in the IRGC’s repeated declarations that they are not seeking nuclear weapons – while secretly moving full speed ahead to do just that.

On October 25, 1944 the first 24 kamikaze (‘divine wind’) volunteer suicide bombers of the Japanese 201st Navy Air Group attacked American naval vessels, killing 100 Americans and taking down 34 ships. This willingness to die in pursuit of military aims is also very much a part of the jihadi mentality, as Mohammed taught on numerous occasions in the Hadith:

Westerners find it hard to understand the dogmatic nature of this murderous hatred. They find it difficult to grasp that Muslims who accept the literal words of the Quran believe in a ‘jihad without end’ – a process that must continue until all non-Muslims either bow, are put to death or are enslaved. Many in the West respond in shock, saying “Surely there must be some other way to change Islamic minds and to modernize their world-view!”

How should we then pray?

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

In Messiah Yeshua,

Avner Boskey

Donations can be sent to:

FINAL FRONTIER MINISTRIES

BOX 121971 NASHVILLE TN 37212-1971 USA

To donate online visit: http://www.davidstent.org/give

   

IT'S TIME FOR E37

Dear Friends,

We are so excited!  At long last our Ezekiel 37 Institute is being launched this month, starting today, on social media platforms!

For the full story of E37, see our beautiful E37 page on our brand-new website:

https://davidstent.org/e37/

Starting today -- and during the month of June -- we are introducing E37 through a series of static posts, videos and shorts.

These will be uploaded to all of our media channels -- including the Promo (June 7), the Trailer (June 17), and the Introduction to the E37 series (June 28).  Throughout the next year, from June 2026 to late 2027, full-length video lessons will be regularly platformed on our media channels.

On our E37 page you can find:

"What is the Ezekiel 37 Institute?" -- the story and explanation
"Seasons Overview" -- each season described
"Testimonials" -- what are people saying about E37
"Featuring" -- who are the teachers
"Behind the Scenes" -- fun shots from the filming process
"Check Out More Resources" -- links to other messages online

To go deeper, we invite you to enroll for free in the E37 Institute, an on-line Bible school.

You can receive lesson outlines, ask questions, leave comments, hear from us and receive updates about new videos.

See the 'ENROLL FOR FREE' button on our E37 page.  Here is a screenshot of what you will find when you ENROLL:

Why did we establish the E37 Institute?

We know that the Lord is bringing the Jewish people to a face-to-face encounter with Him (Zechariah 12:10).

Many prophecies in the Word of God tell us that Israel and the Jewish people encounter increasingly troubled times at the approaching return of Messiah Yeshua.  But that's not the whole story, by far!

We who cling to the God of Israel and to His beloved people, are being challenged to hold on tight to His prophecies and promises for the Jewish people until "all Israel will be saved" (Romans 11:26).

Furthermore:  "So I prophesied as He commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived and stood on their feet, an exceedingly great army” Ezekiel 37:10

In our E37 Institute Series we discuss the "Who, What, Where, When and How" of this promise, as well as learning about hundreds of other Scriptures dealing with Israel, the history and culture of the Jewish people, related theological and spiritual issues, prophecy and the end times, and what part we have in these unprecedented times.

Our decades-long desire is to partner with the Lord and His people as He moves powerfully in the final chapters of history.

The E37 Institute has been carefully and lovingly crafted to help believers and to encourage people to be aware and ready.

You can receive helpful updates by following any or all of our media channels:

Please visit our home page to see more of what we are doing:  https://davidstent.org/

We are so encouraged to be at this moment, at this day and this time after 3-1/2 years of investing our energies and lives in this project.
We are forever thankful for you dear friends, for your love, care, friendship, support and prayers.
Your prayers and support hold up our arms in the work the Lord has called us to do.
Shalom and love in Messiah Yeshua,

Rachel Boskey, for Avner, Daniel, David and the E37 team

Donations can be sent to:

FINAL FRONTIER MINISTRIES

BOX 121971 NASHVILLE TN 37212-1971 USA

To donate online visit: http://www.davidstent.org/give

Israel the Key to World Revival in New Translations

It is our privilege to make our book ISRAEL THE KEY TO WORLD REVIVAL available as a free digital download in the following six languages: Spanish, Italian, Polish, Russian, German and Greek versions at https://davidstent.org/product/israel-the-key-to-world-revival/.

We want the biblical and foundational teachings of this book to get into many hands –  believers in Yeshua and those who are not yet there  – so that many people’s understanding about God’s heart and strategies for the Jewish people will be transformed. This is all the more important as Israel and the Jewish people are moving into center-place in the minds and hearts of the nations – though the focus is usually poisonous and anti-Semitic.

These translations were brought to fruition through the prayers and gifts of many. They are being made available for free on our website. Please feel free to send the above link to friends who speak and read these languages.

We also hope to have this book translated and made available in Hebrew and French as God grants favor and ability. If you would like to help make either of these projects a reality, feel free to help through prayer and giving.

Blessings to you as the days get darker and the Light gets brighter!

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

In Messiah Yeshua,

Avner Boskey

Donations can be sent to:

     FINAL FRONTIER MINISTRIES

     BOX 121971 NASHVILLE TN 37212-1971 USA

To donate online visit: http://www.davidstent.org/give

Jewish traditions, kosher traditions and Messianic traditions

Gentiles have traditions and, as Tevye of ‘Fiddler on the Roof’ says, Jews also have ‘Tradition!’ Jewish traditions reflect our wanderings through Eastern Europe, Spain, Morocco and Babylon. Some traditions reflect biblical emphases, but others are more tinsel-like in nature. Let’s look at Shavuot (in Greek, Pentecost) for some helpful perspective at this season.

The harvest festivals

The first agricultural harvest of the biblical New Year (which occurs at Passover time, according to Exodus 12:1-2) is the barley and flax harvest (see Exodus 9:31). The Book of Ruth takes place during the season of Passover, during the barley harvest (ktzir se’orim’; Ruth 1:22)

 The second harvest comes approximately fifty days later, and it is the wheat harvest (‘bikurei ktzir hittim’; see Exodus 34:22; Leviticus 23:15-21;  Deuteronomy 16:9-12). The Feast of Shavuot/Pentecost celebrates the wheat harvest. In the Hebrew Scriptures fifty days separate between the barley and the wheat harvests. Shavuot is also called the ‘Feast of the Reaping’ (‘hag hakatzir’) in Exodus 23:16. There the Jewish people are told to celebrate “the reaping of the first fruits of your labors which you have sown in the field” (also seeNumbers 28:2, 26, where the feast is called ‘hag habikurim’ – First fruits Festival).

The third and last harvest (Exodus 23:16) is called ‘Hag ha-Sukkot’ (Tabernacles or Booths), the final harvest of the threshing floor and the wine vat –  “all your produce and all the work of your hands” (Deuteronomy 16:13-15).

What happens at Shavuot?

In the Books of Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy, God communicates to Moses His threefold focus on the Feast of Shavuot:

Moses adds another event here: all Jewish men needed to come up to Jerusalem three times a year, to appear before YHVH’s presence with offerings (Exodus 23:14-17; 34:23; Deuteronomy 16:16).  Shavuot was thus considered one of the shalosh regalim (sholesh regolim in Yiddish) – the three pilgrim feasts.

On this day, fifty days after Pesach/Passover (Leviticus 23:16), the counting of the ‘omer’ (a peck measurement and first-fruits prophetic promise of a coming full harvest) was completed with the entire nation of Jewish farmers gathered on the Temple Mount, declaring their thanksgiving to the God of their fathers as enscripturated in Deuteronomy 16:1-11.

How did the Apostles celebrate Shavuot?

When I studied Second Temple Jewish History at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University, my professor Dr. Menahem Stern (the top world scholar of that discipline) pointed out how Acts 2:5-11 was an accurate description of the extent of the Jewish Diaspora in those days – the countries to which Israel had been exiled and still remained in Exile:

At Shavuot, Jews from all over the world would come up to Jerusalem to honor the commandment. It is true that a few proselytes (Gentile converts to Judaism) also came up, but the ethnic component was 99% Jewish – Jews from Arabia to Asia, and from Egypt to Elam –all got together for a national Thanksgiving Day celebration in Jerusalem. This Feast occurred every year – Jewish people celebrating a Jewish feast in a Jewish city. Even the Jewish Paul the Apostle had this Feast marked down on his personal calendar, reminding himself to come up to Jerusalem to celebrate the Day of Shavuot/Pentecost (Acts 20:16). Paul’s national identity and his apostolic faith were recognizably Jewish and remained so – from birth to death (Acts 21:24; 28:17).

When YHVH speaks, He does not stutter

The God of Jacob gave to Moses specific days on which the sons of Isaac were celebrate His feasts (see Leviticus 23:2). Here are some of those festive dates:

But when it comes to the exact date when the Mosaic Covenant was given, the biblical text is totally silent. The God of Israel does not even command the Jewish people to celebrate that day as a Feast. Why is this?

In search of the lost date

The Scriptures do not give an exact date for when the Mosaic Covenant was given to Moses. That event happened somewhere within a two-month period, but the Bible does not specify when. It’s a little like the date of Christmas. December 24/25 was chosen not because of a specific date given in the Gospel accounts; it was based on pre-existing pagan Roman traditions. But people have a tendency to focus on dates and, when the Bible is silent about such things, folks tend to choose dates anyway.

Here is the timeline given in the Bible of the events which transpired between the first Passover in Egypt and the Giving of the Decalogue in the Sinai Desert:

This biblical timeline reveals that it’s impossible to state with certainty when the Giving of the Tablets happened. So why is it that Orthodox Jews are taught that Shavuot is the date of Matan Torah (the Giving of the Sinai Covenant)? Good question! Let’s first look at how the Greek loan-word ‘Pentecost’ got involved in the whole mix.

Pentecost – it’s all Greek to me!

Over one hundred years before the birth of Yeshua, Jewish scribes in Egypt translated the Bible from Hebrew into Greek. This translation, known as the ‘Septuagint’ (or ‘the Seventy’, referring to the traditional seventy translator-scribes) made use of the word  Pentēkostē (πεντηκοστὸν)  in Leviticus 25:10, to refer to ‘the fiftieth’ – in this case the 50th year of Jubilee. In Yeshua’s day Hebrew-speaking Jews would call the Feast of Reaping ‘Shavuot’ in Hebrew, while Greek-speaking Jews would call the same Feast Pentēkostē (‘Pentecost’ in modern English).

The 50-day reckoning is based on Leviticus 23:

The most dynamic Jewish harvest-feast ever in Jerusalem

In Acts 1:3 Luke recounts that Messiah Yeshua ascended to heaven 40 days after the crucifixion:

Ten days later, after Messiah Yeshua’s ascension on the 40th day after Passover (making it 50 days total), “when the Day of Shavuot/Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place” (Acts 2:1). The Ruach Hakodesh (Holy Spirit) came upon these gathered Messianic Jews all of a sudden and with great power:

Flaming tongues of fire danced on these believers’ heads, and they all began to speak in unlearned languages – the languages of the countries of the Jewish Exile (Acts 2:6-8). The good news of Messiah Yeshua and His resurrection were being proclaimed in the very heart of Jerusalem. The result of this supernatural visitation let to a huge Messianic harvest of salvation – the ingathering of over 3,000 Jewish men into the Body of Messiah. Shimon Kaipha’s message was bold and evangelistic and spoken to all the Jewish men gathered for the Feast of Shavuot:

These 3,000 men were all followers of the Mosaic covenant, as were all Jews in those days.  Jerusalem’s Messianic leaders reflected this reality when they later told Paul: “You see, brother, how many thousands there are among the Jews of those who have believed, and they are all zealous for the Teaching” (ed. of the Mosaic covenant; see the context of Acts 21:20).

These men had just been inaugurated into what Messiah Yeshua called ‘the New Covenant’ in Luke 22:20. In the words of Jeremiah, this New Covenant was different from the Mosaic covenant:  it would not be “like the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them, says YHVH” (Jeremiah 31:32).

Peter said that these amazing manifestations peered into the future, to the time prophesied by Joel. He declared that at the very End of Days, earthquakes, world-shaking signs and the outpouring of the Ruach Hakodesh would occur. Peter spoke by the Holy Spirit, declaring that this pouring out of the Holy Spirit in Acts 2 was a down payment, a promise that Joel’s prophesied events would one day come to pass, and in that day the entire Jewish nation would be filled with the Spirit of YHVH.

But not all Jews believed in Yeshua on Shavuot

Even though 3,000 Jewish men boldly accepted the atonement of Messiah Yeshua on Shavuot/Pentecost, the majority of Israel’s spiritual leaders continued to spurn Yeshua and the ‘quiet waters of the Shiloah spring’ (see Isaiah 8:6). They despised and rejected David’s Messianic Son. Our nation followed our leaders, turning our faces from Him and not esteeming Him, as Isaiah had prophesied (Isaiah 53:3).  Abandoning the Fountain of living waters, we hewed for ourselves “cisterns, broken cisterns that can hold no water” (Jeremiah 2:13). These ‘broken cisterns’ are synonymous with the rabbinic system which calls for obedience to its own interpretations of the Mosaic covenant, while rejecting the Messianic New Covenant of which Moses and Yeshua spoke.

Ruth’s Rabbi

My dear friend, Dr. Louis Goldberg (former Professor of Jewish Studies at Moody Bible Institute) often taught that the rabbis connected Shavuot/Pentecost to the giving of the Mosaic covenant on Mount Sinai – not based on biblical information, but on their desire to shift focus away from the amazing events of Acts 2 – especially regarding the New Covenant, the Messiahship of Yeshua, and the offer of salvation to non-Jews.

Acts 2 clearly connects Shavuot/Pentecost with the inauguration of the New Covenant. This New Covenant would eventually spread into Europe and Asia, proclaiming that Gentiles could also be included into the Jewish Body of Messiah (called ‘the commonwealth of Israel’ in Ephesians 2:12 ESV)  through faith in Yeshua alone.

This business of allowing Gentiles to have access to Jewish blessings (see Romans 15:27) and to have equal fellowship with the God of Israel alongside of Jews – this was shocking to many Pharisees of that time. Most Jewish religious leaders feared that this new upstart Messianic movement, by allowing Gentiles in, would overwhelm rabbinic Judaism’s role as ‘watchman on the Mosaic walls.’

The glorious and flame-tongued New Covenant was rejected by the rabbis and, in its place, a multi-faceted rabbinic interpretation of the Mosaic covenant was substituted. Instead of the gospel offer of salvation to Jews and Gentiles, the rabbis stressed that Yeshua was a false Messiah and that Gentiles seeking God’s would be better served by converting to the Covenant of Moses and by submitting to rabbinic authority. The ‘poster girl’ for this conversion process became Ruth the Moabite – even though the Bible describes no conversion process for Gentiles, and the Book of Ruth itself continues to the very end of the book to refer to Ruth as a Moabite (see Ruth 4:10).

Rabbinic Judaism had performed plastic surgery on the humble Moabitess. Her story (which had occurred at the time of the Passover barley harvest story) would now be morphed into a Shavuot wheat-harvest narrative. Some rabbis even stated that three kosher rabbis actually were witnesses officiating at Ruth’s (fictional) conversion to rabbinic Judaism on the threshing floor – even though the office of ‘rabbi’ only appeared on the scene 1,500 years after Ruth’s day.

Ruth herself was made to do double duty: She would now be presented as a convert to the rabbinic stream of Mosaic Judaism, and Shavuot would be highlighted as the day of the Giving of the Mosaic covenant.

In light of all of the above-cited biblical and historical information, it needs to be clearly stated: the rabbinic emphasis tying Shavuot/Pentecost to the Mosaic Covenant is actually a distraction from what the Bible teaches. It is undercutting what the God of Jacob communicates throughout the Holy Scriptures. Its focus de-emphasizes precisely what YHVH wants us to understand.

“There is no New Covenant – it’s simply a refurbished Mosaic Covenant!”

The rabbis who had fellowshipped with Saul prior to his Damascus Road roller-coaster experience had even more serious objections to the new apostolic Messianic teaching. Though Paul’s lifestyle was Mosaic in practice (see Acts 28:17) as was the pattern of all Messianic Jews at that time (see Acts 22:3; 23:6; 26:1-7), Paul taught that one of the main purposes of the Mosaic covenant teachings (Torah in Hebrew means ‘teaching’) was to lead the Jewish people to Messiah Yeshua.

Paul teaches that when the Jewish people come to Messiah Yeshua, they are no longer under the guardianship of the Mosaic covenant. Paul describes the Mosaic Covenant using the Greek term paidagogos (παιδαγωγὸς) – a bodyguard who would take the child from his home through the rough Greek streets to school, protecting him and bringing him safely to the Greek school, and then home again (παιδαγωγὸς; Galatians 3:24; translated as ‘a bodyguard’). The Mosaic Covenant was God’s appointed bodyguard who would lead Israel safely to Messiah and to Yeshua’s New Covenant:

The Pharisees of Paul’s day understood that the Apostle was interpreting the Hebrew of Jeremiah 31:31-34 literally – exegetically – to mean that the New Covenant was ‘not like’ the Mosaic covenant. And they wanted to close down any open Jewish discussion of Jeremiah 31, by insisting that Jeremiah could have only meant ‘a renewed covenant.’

But this rabbinic perspective violates the peshat, the clear exegetical meaning of Jeremiah 31:32, which states: “not like the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the Land of Egypt.” Jeremiah was clearly prophesying that this New Covenant is also a Jewish covenant, and that this New Covenant is in some ways not like the Mosaic covenant.

Without scriptural warrant, authority or proof, rabbinic leaders tweaked the biblical emphasis of Shavuot from thankful celebration for the wheat harvest to a Mosaic-rabbinic focus. It is as if they said, “Let’s make sure to leave out the New Covenant, leave out Messiah Yeshua, and let’s make sure that there are no Gentiles sneaking in the back door into a Jewish kingdom!”

Many Jews and Gentiles, unaware of the Biblical and historical facts here, have embraced this rabbinic ‘fake news’. It is also not unusual to see many dear believing brothers and sisters unknowingly swallowing this less-than-biblical propaganda.

Not everything Messianic is kosher

In today’s Messianic movement, we need to be aware that sometimes our theological formulations are more tentative and less accurate that we might think. Some Messianic leaders and teachers have been taught by their own Messianic leaders and teachers that the rabbinic perspectives regarding the Mosaic covenant’s supposed connection to Shavuot are kosher. I have dear Messianic friends and leaders who deny that the New Covenant is actually a New Covenant. Instead, they teach that it is simply a new and improved Mosaic Covenant. I have dear Messianic friends who also believe that Ruth is the poster child for philosemitic Gentiles, who would be making a wise choice to convert to rabbinic Judaism.

It is my conviction that these dear friends err (see Matthew 22:29) not knowing what the Scriptures say. They may be unaware of both Jewish and rabbinic history – and probably also unaware of the early clashes between Messianic apostolic teaching and that of the rabbis on these points.

The heart of Ruth

Though the story of Ruth is connected to the Passover barley harvest and not to the wheat-harvest time of Shavuot, there is a wonderfully encouraging message for us in the Book of Ruth – one which can strengthen our hearts regarding the relationship between Jews and Gentiles.

Ruth was a descendent of Lot’s incestuous union with his daughters after the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 19:36-37). In Deuteronomy 23:3 the God of Jacob forbids male Moabites (the ‘seed’) from entering even the outer courtyards of the House of YHVH. This proscription was to last for ten full generations after intermarriage. Ruth was not a Moabite male, and as such was not under this scriptural ban. But the social reality was that few Jewish men would have wanted to take a Moabite woman as a bride.

What was so special about Ruth? What caused her to stand in God’s spotlight and to be joyously included into the destiny of the Jewish people – without hiding her Moabite origins?

  1. She had a heart of faith. She recognized God’s heart for Israel and His covenant connections with the Jewish people. She understood that the calling of Israel was a ‘done deal’ – and that to follow the God of the Jews meant to be forever linked with the Jewish people.
  2. She had the heart of a servant. She poured out her life and strength to bless her Jewish mother-in-law Naomi, and willingly bound her destiny to that of Judah’s descendant Boaz. Her reward included being the great-grandmother of King David as well as being found in the precious lineage of Messiah Yeshua!

Let us rejoice in the great Harvest Feast of Shavuot/Pentecost, as we thank God for His rains coming down on the face of the earth, and the outpouring rain of His Holy Spirit coming down on our hearts! And let’s look forward to the soon-coming prophesied mighty harvest – when Israel will bring much greater riches to the nations and life from the dead to the entire world! (Romans 11:12, 15)

How should we then pray?

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

In Messiah Yeshua,

Avner Boskey

Donations can be sent to:

FINAL FRONTIER MINISTRIES

BOX 121971 NASHVILLE TN 37212-1971 USA

To donate online visit: http://www.davidstent.org/give

Boskey personal update on the Ezekiel 37 Institute

Dear friends! 

Thank you for your kindness, support, prayers and faithful friendship. Thank you for helping us to keep on doing what the Lord is calling us to do!

Today it is time for us to give you an update on our Ezekiel 37 Institute.  We are happy, excited, encouraged and expectant!

Today, like many days, Avner and Daniel and I had a ‘put our heads together’ meeting on the status, progress, needs and plans for E37.  As always, we prayed together.  We are happy to report good news!

We are a few weeks away from the release of E37 on multiple media platforms.  Today it really struck me that we are birthing something that could be described as a full-fledged and unique media company.  We are about to launch a huge amount of top-notch teaching on multiple media platforms – about Israel, the end times, the Bible, Jewish history past and present, prophecy and more.  These will be full-length videos, short-form videos, graphics, texts, links and other updates.

We have actually created an on-line Bible school – for those with ears to hear, eyes to see, hearts to learn and spirits willing to appropriate foundational truths for the challenges ahead.  

Enroll for free

We’ve just about got all our ‘ducks in a row’ as we launch E37.  

For the last nine months we have been working with a media team, a US-based website developer company, ’Emery Marketing.’  The Emery team has completely recreated our davidstent.org website. The gifted members of this team have had the foresight and wisdom to help us establish a user-friendly platform on our website for learning and interaction with us.  Users will be able to enroll for free in the E37 program in order to receive lesson outlines, ask questions and receive updates. 

We are about to unveil the ‘E37’ page on our website.  It is hidden at this moment, but it will shortly be a live page.  This E37 page will be the major focus of our website.  The E37 page will be one primary platform where the E37 content can be viewed.  

Here are some more facts on the ground

In addition to the team at Emery, we have also invited two Israeli believers to help Daniel with content curation – the gathering of materials and images which are being incorporated into the lessons.  We are very thankful that these two believers have the exact skill sets needed to help us shape the E37 content and we are delighted by their valuable help!

We are now close to ending a two-week period in which a pilot group has been testing the E37 page, the ‘enroll for free’ function and all other related pages.

Daniel has been able, by the grace of God, over the last three years, to be the ‘chief cook and bottle washer,’ the ‘little red hen,’ doing 95% of the many tasks involved in building Ezekiel 37 Institute.  He is extremely gifted as an artist and super-savvy in using the many tools needed to create the videos.  I have worked alongside him with encouragement, feedback and some content curation – but he has done virtually all the work himself.  And that work is actually too much for one person.  So the Lord has directed us to add other team members, because the scope of this vision requires more helpers. This is not a job for a ‘mom-and-pop-and-sons’ company anymore.  This vision is expanding and we are delighted that this is happening.   

At this very time, we are also dialoguing with a well-established and capable local Israeli social media management team.  Lord-willing, this team will be overseeing the uploading of our content onto multiple media platforms.  Social media management is a major part of how the E37 content will be uploaded and managed on multiple platforms.  The task is too big for us to do it only by ourselves – we need additional team members.  

Both the scope of our team and the reach we believe we will have, are increasing.  We are trusting the Lord for expanding resources so that the message can go out to many.

I am thoroughly delighted to see our sons carrying the vision we have been given.  Daniel is the videographer, designer, producer and overall media manager.  David Boskey is one of the main teachers in this series, teaching 13 lessons.  Avner teaches 19 lessons, and Daniel will be teaching two lessons.  

So, our team is now four people in the US and more than eight people in Israel: Daniel, Avner, David, Rachel, J, M, O, A, S and Lord-willing a group of individuals working with the Israeli social media management team.

I see that the Lord Himself is expanding what we are doing  

We want to clearly make our needs known to you.  Our operating costs have increased by $8,000 to $10,000 per month.  We are moving forward in full confidence that the Lord is the One who is leading us.  We are looking to Him and to His provision as we step out into uncharted territory.  

It’s clear that the coming days are dark.  Messiah Yeshua’s return is not far off.  The onslaught of evil and the precipitous increase of hatred toward the Jewish people and toward Israel are clear signs of the end times.  

“When the foundations are being destroyed, what can the righteous do?”  Psalm 11:3

“And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold.”  Matthew 24:12

We believe that the Lord has ordained that we step into the fray, into the gap, and lift up the standard of His unfailing Word regarding Israel, His covenants and promises for the Jewish people, the affections of His heart for Jacob’s children and His plan for salvation for them.  

Your prayers for the Ezekiel 37 Institute are much appreciated:

Here’s a short clip of Daniel speaking about E37 during our April journey in North America:

https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1BmAd2TgUT/

Many people have told us they eagerly anticipate learning from the E37 course.  Here are some testimonies from a number of friends who have seen some of the E37 content:

“I am very excited about this; it is precisely the right timing. I strongly sense that things are about to change in the coming months and believers must be equipped to face the shift that is going to occur. The household of faith must be adequately equipped to face the last days.  I believe the Ezekiel 37 Institute will be an important and effective equipping instrument in the hands of the Lord.  More than two decades ago, I felt the Lord gave me a scripture concerning Avner from Isaiah 58:11-12 ... ‘And your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt, you shall raise up the foundations of many generations, you shall be called repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to dwell in.’” 

“We’re so excited about the Ezekiel 37 Institute and we’re watching it this morning!  I’ve done the first two lessons and wow wow wow! The topics are so well organized and thorough and complete!  Love how Avner and David teach/share in a way that the listener can grasp and apply.  This is a gift beyond words for this hour.  We said just this morning how incredible it is that you all finished this in the midst of war. We are praying that the same anointing impacts the root of the hearts of our children and grandchildren, the legacy you’re bringing forth to the Messianic and Gentile Body of the one New Man.  Only the Lord knows all y’all have gone through to produce such a quality product!”

“I’m crying listening to Avner offer the intro to E37.  The clarity and simplicity of the presentation will make the course appealing to many, I pray.” 

“E37 has the same high level of Biblical excellence but a higher quality of graphics and music and a deeper, more complete understanding of God’s heart for Israel, His Jewish People and how to prepare ourselves personally and share with others.”

“The E37 Institute is an answer to our hearts cry to hear Avner’s in-depth teachings on God’s heart for Israel in English to grow deeper ourselves in His Word and to share it with others. The graphics are just incredible with vivid color, and love the background music! Avner and David do an amazing job presenting the material in a clear and concise manner for the listener to absorb and apply.”

“I strongly believe you’re being led by the Holy Spirit to spread all these truths to many people out here.”  

“We are so very grateful and indebted to you for the way you pour yourselves out for those who have ears to hear and hearts that tremble at His word.  Thank you for the time and labor of love you spend to educate and inspire the many.  Many will be taking hold of your teachings.  Looking forward to the wisdom and revelation to come.  May He richly bless you and your family.”

“Please do keep us informed when you launch!  Just watching the trailer recently gave me such an amazing witness!! We need this institute!!!! Thank you for all you are doing.” 

“The format and length were good. I remained engaged, and the content was relevant and helpful. I have taken a number of online courses over the years, and I would place this among the most thoughtful and professionally executed that I have experienced. What stood out to me was not only the quality of the production and organization of the material but also the clarity, depth, and spiritual maturity of the teaching itself. The content felt both academically solid and deeply pastoral, which is a rare combination.”

“The content was concise, well structured, and easy to follow. The video was very interactive, illustrated sermon points without being invasive, and beautiful from a visual standpoint. I really appreciated the sermon outline, and used it to keep up with the teaching. Very personal compared to other courses. I felt like the teaching was prepared for me intentionally, almost like it was a live zoom call, instead of an afterthought like a sermon posted online.”

THANK YOU!

Dear friends, we thank you for your partnership of many years, through your prayer, giving and faithful encouragement.  

We are now making our needs known for increased support so that we can do the work the Lord has given us.

In addition we would be greatly encouraged if you would follow or subscribe to our newly created channels where the E37 Institute will be platformed shortly:

As I mentioned above, our website ‘E37’ page is the primary platform for people who desire to go deeper in learning from the E37 Institute series.  Very shortly we will write to you again, letting you know when the E37 page is open to the public.  You will be able to enroll for free, and receive lesson outlines, interact with us and get updates through our E37 page.

To sum it all up:

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

In Messiah Yeshua,

Rachel Boskey, for Avner, Daniel, David and the E37 team

Donations can be sent to:

FINAL FRONTIER MINISTRIES

BOX 121971 NASHVILLE TN 37212-1971 USA

To donate online visit: http://www.davidstent.org/give

   

Standing in a divided nation with an undivided heart

David’s prayer – the gift of an undivided heart

David calls out to YHVH in his distress, asking for a divine work to be done in his own heart: “Give me an undivided heart that I may fear Your name!” (Psalm 86:11 NIV). The greatest commandment in the Scriptures involves serving the God of Jacob with an undivided heart (see Matthew 22:35-38), the SHMA: “And now, Israel, what does YHVH your God require of you, but to fear YHVH your God, to walk in all His ways and love Him, and to serve YHVH your God with all your heart and with all your soul” (Deuteronomy 10:12).

King David’s commandos – brave warriors with an undivided heart

Some of King David’s top soldiers came from the tribe of Issachar – warriors who had a clear prophetic “understanding of the times, with knowledge of what Israel should do” (1 Chronicles 12:32). Right after them are mentioned the magnificent special forces of Zebulun – men who could handle all types of weapons, and who followed David with an undivided heart: “From Zebulun, there were fifty thousand who went out in the army, who could draw up in battle formation with all kinds of weapons of war and helped David with an undivided heart” (1 Chronicles 12:33). ‘Semper fi,’ as the US Marines would say.

 Israel’s prophetic future – an entire nation with an undivided heart

The God of Jacob promises that a day is coming when He will pour out His Spirit on the entire nation of Israel – after He gathers them back from their planet-wide Exile. At that time He will do spiritual heart-surgery on the Jewish people, giving them an undivided heart:

God’s true saints long for this hour to come! Join us in earnest prayer, that the God of Isaac will accomplish this prophetic promise for His people Israel – speedily and in our day!

The world has a divided heart toward the Jewish people and their God

The Bible waxes eloquent about how the nations hate both Zion (the Jewish people) and their God:

 A divided heart sees the Jewish people’s existence as a thorn to be uprooted

The Great Powers of the early 20th Century for the most part spoke with one voice regarding the hopes of Jacob’s children to re-establish a Jewish state and homeland. To paraphrase Gandalf’s iconic dictum when confronting the Balrog on the Bridge of Khazad-dûm: “You shall not pass!”

This newsletter limits the following comments to a brief sketch of American State Department officials’ declarations on the subject – their support for what can be described as ‘The Arab Lobby.’ See also my October 16, 2024 newsletter – ‘Military Witchcraft.’ The quotes below reveal not only a divided heart estranged from the Bible’s prophetic promises to Israel, but also no small dose of anti-Semitism as well.

In US POTUS Truman’s personal memoirs (Volume Two: Years of Trial and Hope; 1956), he noted: “The Department of State’s specialists on Near East were almost without exception unfriendly to the idea of a Jewish State. Like most of the British diplomats, some thought the Arabs on account of their number  and because of the fact that they control such immense oil  resources should be appeased. I am sorry to say that there were some among them who were also inclined to be anti-Semitic.”

On August 28, 1919, Charles Crane (later US Ambassador to China) headed up the King-Crane Commission, having been appointed by POTUS Woodrow Wilson. That official US Report concluded:

US Secretary of the Navy (1944) and Secretary of Defense (1947) James V. Forrestal reveals in his The Forrestal Diaries (1951) his opposition to American support for a Jewish state. He states: ‘No group in this country should be permitted to influence our policy to the point where it could endanger our national security’. A number of oil companies were suspending investments in the Middle East, he claimed, ‘because of the disturbed condition in Palestine.’

On August 24, 1945, Loy W. Henderson, Director of the State Department’s Office of Near Eastern and African Affairs, wrote a memo to US Secretary of State James F. Byrnes warning: “The active support by the Government of the United States of a policy favoring the setting up of a Jewish State in Palestine would be contrary to the wishes of a large majority of the local inhabitants with respect to their form of government. Furthermore, it would have a strongly adverse effect upon American interests throughout the Near and Middle East” Henderson added in a letter of March 20, 1976: “I did, however, oppose the United States playing a leading role in the establishing of a Zionist State in Palestine by force against the will of the inhabitants.”

On May 12, 1948 US Secretary of State George C. Marshall, the renowned World War II General and author of the Marshall Plan, attacked a move to recognize the Jewish state: “ The transparent dodge to win a few votes would not in fact achieve this purpose. The great dignity of the office of the President would be seriously diminished … based on domestic political considerations, while the problem which confronted us was international. I said bluntly that if the President were to follow Mr. Clifford’s advice and if in the elections I were to vote, I would vote against the President.”

Kermit ‘Kim’ Roosevelt Jr. was Teddy Roosevelt’s nephew and the first head of CIA covert action in the Middle East. He also played a leading role in the CIA’s overthrow of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh. On November 24, 1948 Roosevelt  gave a lecture at the National War College in Washington, DC, while serving a Secretary of the anti-Israeli and anti-Zionist Committee for Peace and Justice in the Holy Land.  Here is a quote from that lecture:

William A. Stoltzfus Jr, a 27-year veteran of the US Foreign Service and US Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Kuwait and United Arab Emirates, stated in a private interview to Robert D. Kaplan (author of ‘The Arabists: The Romance of an American Elite’, 1993), that the establishment of a Jewish homeland goes against American values and interests: “And it’s pretty clear to me that the powerful, vested interest of a certain group of people, concentrated in the big cities in big states, determines our Middle East policy. If you’re looking for some kind of a plot, that’s where to look.”

On April 18, 1989 Marshall W. Wiley, former US Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary (Oman), was interviewed by the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training: Foreign Affairs Oral History Project. Here is one question asked and Wiley’s answer:

These above-quoted poisonous and twisted spiritual roots, rabidly anti-Jewish and anti-Israeli, have lately been sprouting again – like mushrooms after the rain – on the podcasts of American media pundits like Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens and Megyn Kelly. The heart of America’s diplomats is divided. This is a matter for prayer!

When a nation has a divided heart

An April 7, 2026 survey published by  Pew Research Center reveals that 60% of US adults have an unfavorable view of Israel, up from 53% last year.   In both political parties, majorities of adults under 50 rated Israel negatively, while 28% of all adults polled rated Israel very unfavorably. On the Democratic side of the aisle, 80% of all Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents polled expressed an unfavorable view of Israel, as opposed to 69% in 2022. Democrats under 50 expressed a very unfavorable view of Israel (47%).

It is time to discern the times, as did the men of Issachar ” (1 Chronicles 12:32). What is the spread of anti-Semitism pointing to? What are we facing? The spirit of the dragon, Satan himself, is flexing his muscles and preparing for the final showdown – à la  Revelation 12. When Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods in Brooklyn are attacked by Islamist marches shouting genocidal Islamist chants, and when Jewish houses of worship like Park East Synagogue on 67th Street in Manhattan  are attacked by terrorist mobs attempting to storm police barricades, the divided heart of America is on global view in all its violence,

 Where there is no prophetic vision the people mourn (Proverbs 29:18)

The Scriptures tell us that, without a biblical foundation, a nation’s leaders will always make the wrong choices. They could be diplomats, politicians or intelligence agents. They could be capitalists or oligarchs. All of these will always make the wrong choices regarding the Middle East and Israel – unless they are guided by the Bible, God’s touchstone of national and individual blessing and protection.

As Senator Ted Cruz attempted to communicate to Tucker Carlson in a recent interview, Genesis 12:3 is the touchstone: those who bless the Jewish people and their nation will be blessed, but the one who dismisses, dishonors, mocks or scorns Israel and her calling will be directly cursed by the God of Jacob. This is how the God of the Bible deals with nations – whether obedient ones or rebellious ones.

Israel – God’s touchstone which reveals the heart

Michael T. Benson is an American historian and the 27th president of West Virginia University. He is the author of ‘Harry S. Truman and the Founding of Israel,’ where he notes: ‘Truman’s support for the Zionist cause…was due to attitudes Truman developed as a young man in Missouri as a result of an upbringing heavily influenced by the Bible’ – a matter of relevance, perhaps, at an underlying level of psychic predisposition, as with Balfour and Lloyd George before him.”

US Under Secretary of State Dean Acheson once made reference to those same biblical truths which touched President Truman’s heart, though Acheson simultaneously scorned and belittled their eternal value:

Four solid legs on which to stand

Here are four biblical principles which can guide us to respond to these challenges, according to God’s heart, with an undivided heart:

How shall we then pray?

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

In Messiah Yeshua,

Avner Boskey

Donations can be sent to:

FINAL FRONTIER MINISTRIES

BOX 121971 NASHVILLE TN 37212-1971 USA

To donate online visit: http://www.davidstent.org/give

Agent Smith and Amalek

“My name is Legion, for we are many”

In the days of Yeshua, a Roman legion was composed of nine cohorts of 480 foot-soldiers each, and the tenth cohort (called ‘the first’) was composed of another 800 men. Approximately 120 auxiliary troops were also added to this main group of 5,280 warriors. The lead unclean spirit who possessed that demonized Gerasene/Gadarene (see Matthew 8:28), was in charge of a company of thousands of lesser demons – according to the text, about 2,000 in total. Both he and his demonic legion were expelled by Messiah Yeshua. They violently entered into 2,000 pigs, whom they then drowned in the waters of the Lake of Galilee. It’s worth noting that the Gadarene inhabitants were not Jewish, since being a hog farmer was not a typical Israeli occupation in those days.

The flowers of evil

In his phantasy of a protest song ‘Ballad of a Thin Man,’ Bob Dylan said: “Something is happening but ya’ don’t know what it is – do you, Mister Jones?” Spiritual blindness is not uncommon – it raises its fuzzy head in every generation. Sometimes it manifests itself through materialism, at other times through narcissism. In our day it has chosen the red-black-and-green banner of anti-Semitism which is sweeping its way across international borders.

Hatred of the Jewish people and their homeland are poisonous weeds which are sprouting up all across the planet. The spiritual forces which led to the rise of the Third Reich have come back ‘from the dead’ and are spreading like the plague across the Western world.

If you had the opportunity in 1936 to take out Adolf Hitler – as Lieutenant Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg and others (including Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer) attempted to do in Operation Valkyrie on July 20, 1944 – would you have joined the conspiracy? Was it acceptable to take down a messenger of the anti-Messiah in that day?  Is it acceptable to do something similar in our day, when murderously anti-Jewish jihad aims its missiles and drones at Jewish civilians in the Jewish state of Israel? And what happens when the movie character similar to ‘Agent Smith’ of ‘Matrix’ fame takes over bodies and minds like the Gadarene demoniac – and then morphs into anti-Semites who proudly label themselves ‘Christians’ and ‘American patriots.’ Jew-haters are popping up on the right and on the left, like mushrooms after the rain.

‘Imagine’ everlasting hatred

When I was a young Jewish man, I learned that some famous Church Fathers hated the Jewish people and called for their persecution and destruction. Names like Justin Martyr, Origen, Augustine, Chrysostom, Torquemada the Grand Inquisitor, the Crusaders, Martin Luther – even the arch-terrorist George Habash (a Greek Orthodox Arab from Lod) who participated in the PLO’s Black September terror attacks at the 1972 Munich Olympics – to me these people represented an anti-Semitic core within Christianity. After I came to faith, I realized that there are other Christians who love the Jewish people – and I was (and am) deeply thankful for these brothers and sisters.

Yet, as anti-Semitic and anti-Israel voices rise in the West, dripping their acrid and deceitful insinuations on myriads of gullible people through internet propaganda, I have been forced to take a step backward, and to realize that the ghosts of anti-Semitic Church Fathers and leaders are unfortunately ‘still alive and well.’ Their malevolent messages surface hundreds of times a day on my computer screen and cell-phone, and millions are getting poisoned,. As it happened in the days of Adolf, so it is happening today.

John Lennon’s hippie idealism in his 1971 peace-anthem ‘Imagine’ is not the message of the moment on Planet Earth. Instead of Ringo Starr’s two-fingered peace sign, the world (especially jihadis in the Middle East) is shaking a one-finger sign at the Jewish people. Ezekiel prophesies that everlasting hatred from enemy nations toward Israel is actually the current and Last Days dynamic. It will be vanquished only by force of arms (see Psalm 149 and Psalm 139:21-22) and by the return of Messiah Yeshua:

A counterfeit river brings a real reward

The pro-jihad, pro-Hamas, pro-Hezbollah and pro-Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) violent anti-Jewish and anti-American demonstrations shout their hate-chants “Free, free Palestine!” and “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free!” Their championing of jihadi slaughter of the Jewish people has been taken up by leftists and rightists, in a horseshoe dynamic where anti-Semitic evil joins to anti-Semitic evil, even when the demonstrators come from the opposite sides of the political spectrum.

Genesis 12:3 speaks out a prophetic promise to the nations at the very beginning of the Biblical narrative: the one who who dismisses, disregards or dishonors the Jewish people will be cursed directly by YHVH the God of Israel. That is the meaning of the Hebrew verb ‘meqalelecha’ italicized above. As anti-Semitism rises and sits at the head table of the public sphere, its very permitted presence catalyzes a curse on the nation which permits it to survive and flourish. There is a ‘reward’ for cursing the Chosen People: a curse falls on that country, coming straight from the hand of God of Jacob.

Jean Améry, Austrian writer and Holocaust survivor, has stated that “anti-Zionism contains anti-Semitism like a cloud contains a storm.” He warned of the coming of “a revived anti-Semitism, often under the cover of anti-Zionism.” Amery called anti-Zionism “the respectable anti-Semitism.” This anti-Semitism is seemingly not directed against the Jews but “only against Zionists,” as it were. A day would come, said Améry, when anti-Semitism would no longer hide itself covertly in the shadows, but would once again rise to become a threatening presence in the public sphere.

Do you believe in the God of Joshua?

David was a poet and a warrior. The women of all the cities of Israel came out to welcome him when he arrived at Gibeah (see 1 Samuel 22:6) bearing Goliath’s sword and skull (see 1 Samuel 17:51-54; 1 Samuel 21:9). 1 Samuel 18:6-7 tells us that the women were “singing and dancing, to meet King Saul, with tambourines, with joy and with other musical instruments. The women sang as they played, and said, ‘Saul has slain his thousands, and David his ten thousands.’”

Many modern followers of Yeshua have great difficulty rejoicing in victory over one’s mortal enemies. Anti-Semitic talking heads like Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens call such military joy 'anti-Christian' and opposed to the New Testament. These pundits reject that the God of Joshua is the same as the God of Jacob.

Back to the Bible

Carlson continues to speak in highly negative terms against the Jewish people, the State of Israel, the IDF and Prime Minister Netanyahu when positive reference is made to the Biblical teaching about God’s eternal war against Amalek:

The above Scripture passages are direct quotes from YHVH the God of Israel (see Psalm 119:160 and Proverbs 30:5), from Moses, described by Joshua as greatest prophet in Israel in his day (Deuteronomy 34:10), and from Samuel the Prophet (1 Samuel 3:19). According to Carlson, the Gospel does away with these words of YHVH. But this theological perspective is called ‘Marcionism’ – a heresy (according to church leaders is the Second Century AD. To call the words of the God of Israel ‘anti-Christian’ is to follow in the same steps as this anti-Semitic Church Father.

There are many today who see the Hebrew Scriptures as somewhat less than the word of God, and who cannot relate to YHVH as Lord of the battle or as Warrior God (see Deuteronomy 20:10-13; 1 Samuel 18:17;  25:28; Psalm 24:8; Psalm 144:1). And they do not believe that God fights for Israel and publicly identifies with her. Since the Word of God must be our foundation on these issues, it is telling to see that Carlson describes his own Christian upbringing and knowledge of the Bible as shallow and bereft of theological foundation (watch his address at the 50th Anniversary celebration of the Heritage Foundation, at 00:50-01:01).

Sheep and goat Christians

Messiah Yeshua speaks here of judging the nations at His return. Joel 3:1-2 explains more about this event. The nations of the world will be judged in a face-to-face encounter with Israel’s God. They will render accountability for their anti-Semitic words, thoughts and deeds. It seems that some of the people facing that judgment will be called ‘Christians’ yet their hearts are dismissive of Jacob’s people. They disregard and dishonor the nation of Israel. The separation between ‘sheep’ and ‘goat’ Christians will have reference to such individuals as well.

As we consider these coming events, and as we survey the poisonous rise of anti-Semitism across the globe, it is worth asking ourselves: How do we respond to this Satanic flowering of evil? Are our hearts connected to God’s heart, as it says in Isaiah 63:9: “In all [the Jewish people’s] afflictions He [YHVH] was afflicted!” As we examine the prophetic chessboard that the Bible lays out for us, could it be that have we constructed a chessboard that has no place for God’s tears – and for our intercessory tears?

 How shall we then pray?

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

In Messiah Yeshua,

Avner Boskey

Donations can be sent to:

FINAL FRONTIER MINISTRIES

BOX 121971 NASHVILLE TN 37212-1971 USA

To donate online visit: http://www.davidstent.org/give

The Bear, the Lion and the Eagle

Over 2,500 years ago Daniel received a stunning prophetic vision (Daniel 7:5) spotlighting four empires in his time, which God symbolized by four beasts. The second beast in this prophetic vision was a raging and carnivorous bear, which symbolized the Persian Empire. That region is today called ‘Iran’).

War has broken out in the Middle East, and the limelight is shining again on the Persian Bear. Two of the main protagonists are modern Iran (on the one hand)  and the regathered state of Israel (on the other).

Let’s leave the specific context of Daniel 7, and look for an animal which could symbolize  the Jewish people. Since the King of Israel is Messiah Yeshua, and since He is described in Revelation 5:5 as the overcoming Lion of the tribe of Judah, one could perhaps poetically say that the battle now occurring in the Arabian Gulf has the Persian Bear facing off against the the Jewish people –the Israeli Lion. And this time, the world’s premier super-power – the United States of America – has joined the fight against the Iranian Bear. Since America is often symbolized by a bald-headed Eagle, could it be said that the Persian Bear is on one side of the battlefield, while the Hebrew Lion and the American Eagle are hunkering down on the other side.

Counting the cost

Messiah Yeshua spoke a parable many years ago, one which applies both to true discipleship and to kings setting out to battle:

A house divided

Classical jihadi Islam has a Last Days vision. It can be summed up by the Arabic battle-cry: “Khaybar, Khaybar, ya yahud! Jaish Muhammad soufa yaʿoud!” (Arabic: خيبر خيبر يا يهود جيش محمد سوف يعود, lit. ’Khaybar, Khaybar, oh Jews! The army of Muhammad will return!’). This chant refers to the Battle of Khaybar of 628 CE, when Muhammad marched with a large Muslim army to besiege and slaughter the Jewish community of Khaybar, an oasis in present-day Saudi Arabia.

This murderous battle-cry is chanted at anti-Israel demonstrations and during Islamist terrorist attacks as well. Muhammad in his lifetime led 27 jihadi campaigns, and deputized 59 other jihadi battles. The original Islam was a religion of jihadi conquest, and today those who follow Muhmmad’s pattern are described by the non-Muslim world as terrorists.

A foundational sectarian division broke the Islamic Ummah (Arabic for ‘community’) into two adversarial camps at the very beginning, in 632 AD. The clash between these two main wings of Islam – the Shia and the Sunni – revolves around who was to succeed Muhammad as the leader of Islam’s burgeoning world-wide dictatorship or caliphate.

The Shia (or Shi’at Ali – ‘the Party of Ali’) believed that Muhammad had named his cousin/son-in-law Ali ibn Abi Talib, to be his successor and Islam’s leader. Shi’ites believe that Ali’s right of succession was usurped by a power-group of Muhammad’s followers, who instead chose Muhammad’s closest companion Abu Bakr (632–634) to succeed him as the caliph of Islam. 

The Sunni camp is called ‘ahl as-sunna’ in Arabic – meaning ‘the people of the habit’ or ‘the people of the [correct Islamic Muhammaden] usage which is sanctioned by tradition.’ Sunni Islam is approximately 80-85% of Islam’s adherents, while Shi’ite Islam is followed by between 10-15% of the Muslim world. The divide between the two streams of Shia and Sunna has led to over 1,400 years of battle, and is the religious clash lying behind much of Islam’s sectarian violence.  Political ambitions and regional rivalries have added to the explosive mix.

Today Iran heads up the Shi’ite minority, while Saudi Arabia champions the Sunni majority, As Ira Stoll comments in March 4, 2026’s The Washington Free Beacon, “The Sunni-Shiite split is frequently a stronger explanatory dynamic in the Middle East than settler-colonialism or U.S. imperialism or oil or whatever other favored explanation the press or academia are pushing.” Former Pentagon specialist on the Middle East Harold Rhode comments: “Shiites call the Sunnis ‘Sunni dogs’ – ‘Sag-e Sunni.’ They don’t see them as real Muslims, they see them as heretics.”

Armageddon Shi’ite style

Iran’s strikingly warlike aggression is connected to three root issues:

The jihadi leaders and generals of the Islamic Republic of Iran are going for broke on this one. They are prepared to pull the world into a Shi’ite Armageddon in pursuit of their Last Days dysphoric vision – think ‘Iranian kamikaze pilots with nuclear backpacks.’

When Shi’ite Iran attacks the Sunnis Arab world

Over the past week, Shi’ite Iran has attacked twelve Sunni Islamic countries, as well as two countries whose populations are basically either Christian or Jewish. Iran has also attacked a UK NATO-related base and an American NATO-connected base in Turkey (an Islamic country). Here is the current list of these fourteen countries, along with links specifying the locations and nature of attacks:

  1. Cyprus – Larnaca, Limassol
  2. Cyprus – UK/EU/NATO Akrotiri and Dhelkelia Air Force Bases
  3. Turkey – (Incirlik AFB  US/ NATO/ nuclear bombs are stored here by the USAF)
  4. Israel – over 500 missiles and 2,000 drones
  5. Jordan
  6. Syria
  7. Iraq – here and here
  8. Kuwait – here, here and here
  9. UAE – here, here, here and here

According to data from Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies, by Thursday March 5, Iran had launched 941 drones, 189 ballistic missiles and eight cruise missiles toward the UAE. 57 drones struck UAE territory. 755 drones and 172 missiles intercepted

  1. Qatar – here, here, here, here, here, here and here
  2. Bahrain – here and here
  3. Saudi Arabia – here, here, here, here and here
  4. Oman – here
  5. Azerbaijan – here

These unprecedented Iranian Shi’ite attacks on Sunni neighbors over the past ten days (and not only on the Jewish state of Israel) are staggering. This new and dangerous pattern in the Middle East has the potential to spread like a wildfire into a Muslim-versus-Muslim religious war, echoing the earliest decades of Muhammad’s jihadi endeavors.

‘Collateral damage’

For the past ten days Iranian missiles and drones have intensively targeted civilians in Israel. They have also targeted oil refineries, oil rigs and oil tankers in the Gulf States and in the Arabian Gulf. Iranian missiles and drones have destroyed water desalinization plants in various Gulf countries. Iran has hit shopping malls, hotels and airports; CIA bases, US Embassies and US air force bases. Iran has struck Oman, the country which until just recently labored as a mediator between Iran and the USA.

Iran’s current military behavior is reminiscent of how the Scriptures describe those who breath out arrogant threats and blasphemies:

A senior Gulf official recently described Iran’s strikes on its neighbors — particularly on its arch-rival Saudi Arabia — as a “miscalculation” and stated that Tehran had “lost all goodwill from Islamic and Arab states.”

Who makes a man unable to see? (Exodus 4:11)

The combined airforces of Israel (the IAF) and America (the USAF) have achieved amazing results in a very short time. The Supreme Leader of Iran, Khamenei, has been removed from the living, along with more than 40 of his top brass. Nuclear weapons laboratories and drone warehouse have been annihilated. The Iranian Navy has been obliterated, as well as the top GHQ of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Basij terror-police. At this rate, within 2-4 weeks it will be highly unlikely for this jihad juggernaut to ever recover and threaten Israel, America, Europe or the Middle East.

At the same time, OSINT (open-source intelligence sources) reveal that Iran has managed to strike some significant blows against America’s radar assets, causing billions of dollars in damage:

The largest American radar in the Gulf is the AN/FPS-132 Upgraded Early Warning Radar, valued at $1.1 billion. It is a fixed radar system designed to detect drones, jet fighters and missiles. Located at al Udeid Air Base, Umm Dahal in Qatar, it was hit with a Iranian missile on Saturday, February 28, 2026 and was irretrievably damaged.

Raytheon’s AN/TPY-2 transportable x-band radar is the radar component of America’s THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense) Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) system. On Sunday March 1 or Monday March 2, Iran hit this x-band radar which was deployed at al-Ruwais Industrial City in the United Arab Emirates. The destroyed radar component is estimated to be worth $500 million. N.R. Jenzen-Jones, a munitions specialist and director of the research company Armament Research Services (ARES), told CNN the radar cannot be easily replaced and called it a significant loss. “The AN-TPY/2 radar is essentially the heart of the THAAD battery, enabling the launch of interceptor missiles and contributing to a networked air defense picture. It also happens to be an incredibly expensive piece of kit. The loss of even a single radar of this type would be an operationally significant event. ”

Two other THAAD AN/TPY-2 x-band radar systems were also hit by Iran – one at Prince Sultan AFB al-Kharj in Saudi Arabia, and one in Jordan and the Muwaffaq Salti Air Base.

These losses are grievous, but they are also a regular part of war. The loss of these ‘eyes’ shortens the warning time for Israelis and Gulf nations – time to send up interceptor anti-missiles, and time to allow civilians to make it to the safety of their own personal shelters. But these losses also reveal a more sinister development lurking beneath the geopolitical surface: Russia has been supplying intelligence information to Iran, detailing locations of US fighter jets, warships and radar installations.

 On target

Israeli and American forces have been targeting and eliminating the highest of high-value targets. The IDF’s SIGINT 8200 and VISINT 9900 obtained practicable intelligence which was then used by 50 IAF planes to drop 100 bombs on Iranian Supreme Leader Khamenei, removing both his presence and 48 of his High Command from the battlefield.

The combined forces of the USAF and the US Navy have so far destroyed over 42 Iranian Navy battleships, corvettes, frigates, cutters and drone-carriers, as well as the lion’s share of Iran’s ageing air force – (which have been comprised of 250 to 350 aging combat-capable aircraft – older F-4, F-5, F-14, MiG-29, and Su-24 jets).

Other significant targets hit and greatly degraded include Tehran’s Mehrabad Airport, the Min Zadai nuclear bomb development labs, the underground complex of factories and storehouses for missiles and nuclear weapons at Parchin.

How shall we then pray?

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

In Messiah Yeshua,

Avner Boskey

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BOX 121971 NASHVILLE TN 37212-1971 USA

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