Russia’s propaganda wars: Neo-Nazism and Ukraine - Part One: The Jonah paradigm

The word of YHVH came to Jonah, commissioning him to, “arise, [and] go to Nineveh, the great city, and cry out against it, because their wickedness has come up before Me.” But instead Jonah got up to flee to Tarshish from the presence of YHVH” (Jonah 1:1-3).

Jonah was a bona fide prophet who had a spiritually sensitive awareness of Nineveh’s evil, both morally and in world politics. Yet for some reason he did not want to bring a message of repentance to that wicked country. He had even argued with YHVH at his original commissioning about agreeing to obey the call:

Assyria – an evil people

Although Jonah eventually preached God’s message of coming judgment and repentance to pagan Assyria, the text states that he didn’t want them to repent and avoid destruction. Jonah had anticipated that God would extend the scepter of mercy to a penitent Assyria, but he wanted no part of that.

Perhaps Jonah was spiritually aware of the great damage Assyria would soon do to the ten Jewish tribes barely one century later, cruelly carrying them away into Exile in the late 700’s B.C. (2 Kings 17:23-24; Hosea 10:14). The Assyrian siege of Lachish (depicted on the Lachish Bronzes in the British Museum and mentioned in 2 Chronicles 32:9) witnessed Judean soldiers crucified alive on Assyrian stakes, while other Jews had their flesh ripped apart with burning iron rakes.

Jonah could have had many reasons not to go to Assyria. That nation’s repentance lasted barely 100 years, and after that they brought murderous destruction to Israel. Why bring a message of God’s love and mercy to such a corrupt nation? Yet God still chose Jonah to ‘deliver the letter, the sooner the better.’

“A people who can’t discern between their right hand and their left” (Jonah 4:11)

Jonah had received a clear commission and message. Perhaps he even had the prophetic discernment to know that Nineveh’s repentance would end up being as stable as the morning mist. Yet Jonah missed out on grasping the love God had for these corrupt people. The aching of YHVH’s heart is revealed in Jonah 4:11 – He saw 120,000 people (whether children or adults) totally lacking in spiritual sensitivity and discernment. Therefor He was sending His prophet to them, to share His heart of mercy and forgiveness with that crooked nation, and to call them to repentance.

The first of a three part newsletter

This is the first of a three-part newsletter considering Russian propaganda and disinformation regarding their purported reasons for invading and destroying Ukraine. Their main supposed justification, repeatedly stressed by both President Putin and state-controlled Russian media, is that Ukraine is run by neo-Nazis.

The first newsletter (this one) looks briefly at some charges being propagated by Russian sources and even by some in the West who are not that well-informed about relevant history and biblical presuppositions. The second newsletter will deal with Russia’s historical and present role in officially and unofficially propagating anti-Semitic theories and practices. The third newsletter will consider Ukrainian anti-Semitism and fascist/neo-Nazi movements – their history, influence and threat. These facts are necessary for anyone who wants to draw accurate conclusions about this aspect of the propaganda war.

Do you want to have the heart of Jonah?

“Do you not know that we will judge angels? How much more matters of this life?” (1 Corinthians 6:3). The Apostle Paul assumes that healthy believers in Yeshua will continually be growing in maturity, able to discern matters from the perspective of the God of Jacob. That was a challenge for Jonah, and it is the same for us.

At this moment in Ukraine, it can be said that “her cities have become an object of horror” (Jeremiah 51:43). Hour by hour there are aerial bombardments and artillery barrages of cities. Civilians are penned in by enforced sieges at the hands of Russia’s armies, and famine is weakening and killing over a million people. The words of Isaiah the prophet cry to us: “And [God] was amazed that there was not one to intercede” (Isaiah 59:16).

While it is true that some are interceding, others are manifesting a self-satisfied judgementalism regarding the body blows raining down on the Ukrainian cities of Kyiv, Kharkiv, Mariupol, Kherson and Chernihiv. Some American cable TV personalities, some Evangelicals and charismatics, some (but not all) in the prophetic, apostolic and messianic Jewish movements, are declaring:

Others are proclaiming:

Here is a telling quote from an open letter penned by India’s advocate of non-violence Mahatma Gandhi, on July 2, 1940. In it he offered advice to Winston Churchill, the British King George VI, and everyone in between on how to deal with the Nazi menace:

Those who label Ukraine as ‘a corrupt state’ are probably not thinking in percentages: is Ukraine more corrupt that China, than Russia, than Yemen, than Syria, than the USA – and if so, by how much?  And what if the God of Israel decides to focus His divine rod of discipline on all the corrupt nations of the world, all at once? “If You, YAH, were to keep an account of crooked deeds, O YHVH, who could stand? But with You there is forgiveness, so that You may be feared” (Psalm 130:3-4).

Joshua the non-aligned general?

Over the years Christian pacifists have misinterpreted the meaning of Joshua’s encounter with the Angel of YHVH, mistakenly advocating that believers should not take sides in military conflicts.

The context of this passage concerns the military attack that YHVH the Lord of armies has commanded Joshua to prosecute on the morrow. Note the clear use of the phrase ‘the Captain of the army of YHVH’ here. King David refers to God by His military title – “YHVH of armies, the God of the armies of Israel” (1 Samuel 17:45). According to David, the armies of Israel are also YHVH’s armies.  At Jericho, Joshua is the acting general while YHVH is Joshua’s direct Commander. Make no mistake about it – the God of Israel is fighting on behalf of Joshua and against Canaan. God is explaining to Joshua that He is not simply another participant in a two-sided battle (that is the sense of the ‘no’ in Joshua 5:14), equal in stature to Jericho or Israel.  He is above both Jericho and the Jewish people, yet at the same time Israel is on YHVH’s side and under His command.  A ‘non-aligned’ interpretation of this passage owes more to a pacifistic worldview than to biblical exegesis or exposition.

At this point in history it is becoming progressively easier to fathom how, prior to WWII, so many refused to take a stand against the rising threat of fascist and communist dictatorships. In our day some people are looking straight into the face of 21st century totalitarian despots (whether in Moscow or in Tehran), but then blinking and quickly averting their eyes.

A non-aligned response to Hitler?

On September 1, 1939 the Nazi juggernaut crashed its tanks into Poland, and Stuka bombers dropped their blitzkrieg bombs onto defenseless Polish cities. How would we have responded on that day had we heard people commenting from the safety of foreign armchairs, that Poland ‘had it coming to them because they were a corrupt country’? How would we respond to hearing these ‘specialists’ stating that both sides (Nazis and Poles) are evil, so let us be content to simply pray for both sides – while Polish cities are being leveled and Jews are being herded into ghettos? No, reprehensible inactivity and cowardice never go over that well. Such pontifications would not stand the test of time, nor endure the unblinking gaze of the Holy One of Israel.

In the same way, I suggest that moral equivalencies between Russia’s evil and Ukraine’s evil are eminently unhelpful in terms of clearly understanding or pro-actively responding to the threats here. We need to grasp that Russian threats are not only coming against Ukraine – they apply immediately to the entire European theater, and their ramifications and blowback will affect the entire world.

We remember the words that Lutheran German pastor Martin Niemöller wrote after the defeat of Nazism: “First they came for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up.” Now is the time to ask ourselves, “How shall we respond when they first come for the Ukrainians?”

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

Donations can also be made on-line (by PayPal) through: www.davidstent.org

When history repeats itself

Mark Twain was noted for the one-liner: “History doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes.” As the world attempts to focus on recent events in Ukraine, let’s consider some sobering historical parallels from nearly thirty years ago.

Those events revolve around the September 1999 KGB false-flag bombings of Russian civilian apartments, which were then falsely ascribed to Chechen Islamic terrorists. This triggered the Russian army’s invasion of Muslim Chechnya and the massive artillery and aerial bombing destruction of Chechen cities (including the capital Grozny). And, of course, another important side-effect of that ‘special military operation’ was the rocketing of Vladimir Putin into the Kremlin, where he has since held the Presidency of modern Russia in his iron grip.

This above-noted history is an essential key to deciphering Russian realpolitik and present military strategies in Ukraine.

From unemployed spy to Tsar of Russia

Back in 1985 Vladimir Putin worked for four years as a young KGB spy in Dresden, GDR (Socialist Germany). After the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the disintegration of the USSR, Putin returned to Russia. He quickly found work at St. Petersburg’s City Hall, where his former law professor, Anatoly Sobchak, had just been elected Mayor. Within a brief time, Putin became both Deputy Mayor and Chair of the Committee on Foreign Economic Relations. This position afforded him significant financial benefit and political influence, eventually positioning him to be both Sobchak’s consigliere and his deliverer from serious corruption charges.

In March 1997, then-President Boris Yeltsin named Putin his Deputy Chief of Staff. In July 1998 Putin was made the chief of the Federal Security Service (FSB, the successor to the KGB). And in August 1999 Yeltsin appointed Putin to be his Prime Minister.

On December 31, 1999 Yeltsin unexpectedly resigned and, according to the Constitution of Russia, Putin became Acting President of the Russian Federation. The first presidential decree that Putin signed on 31 December 1999 was titled “On guarantees for the former president of the Russian Federation and the members of his family” This ensured that corruption charges against outgoing President Yeltsin and his relatives would not be pursued. This was most notably targeted at the Mabetex bribery case in which Yeltsin's family members were involved. On August 30, 2000 a criminal investigation in which Putin himself (who, as a member of the Saint Petersburg city government, was one of the suspects) was dropped. A case regarding Putin's alleged corruption in metal exports from 1992 was brought back by Marina Salye, but the case was silenced and she was forced to leave Saint Petersburg.

Putin became President of Russia in March 2000. But prior to becoming President, he intensified a scorched-earth ‘special military campaign’ in Chechnya. His popularity ratings soared from 2% to 53% as a result. The once unemployed spy was about to become the beloved master of Russia.

Grozny means ‘fearsome’ in Russian

The country of Chechnya is located in the Eastern Europe’s North Caucasus, close to Georgia and the Caspian Sea. The majority of Chechens, though darker-skinned, could be described as the original ‘Caucasians.’ Between 1600 and 1800 A.D. the country was Islamized, with Iranian occupiers eventually giving way to Russian Tsarist control. Today many Chechens hope for an independent country free of Russian control. Other Chechens are Saudi-financed jihadis associated with al-Qa’eda or ISIS.

On April 17, 1999 Chechen jihadi leaders Shamil Basayev and Samir ibn al-Khattab met in Grozny and declared the formation of a jihadi army “the main purpose of which is the creation of the Independent Islamic State in the range of Chechnya and Dagestan.” On August 2, 1999 Basayev and Khattab launched an armed invasion by 2,000-3,000 jihadis into Dagestan from their bases in Chechnya. Their forces were pushed back into Chechen territory by August 26, 1999.

With Putin’s accession to the role of Russian Prime Minister on August 9, 1999, Chechnya-related events immediately moved into high gear. Intensive bombings (over 1,700 sorties) and missile attacks on Chechen cities and civilians began on August 25, 1999, leading to a wave of over 100,000 refugees.

Starting September 4, 1999, apartment buildings began to blow up in various places around Russia. Although Putin on September 23, 1999 blamed these on Chechen Islamist terrorists, an active KGB/FSB team had already been caught on September 22, 1999 having just placed such a bomb in the basement of a civilian apartment block in Ryazan, Russia. The bomb’s active ingredient was hexogen (RDX), a military explosive available only to Russian security services. False-flag KGB/FSB activities were the unofficial trigger for Putin’s invasion of Chechnya.

Russian accounts show that Putin’s plan for a crushing military crackdown on Chechnya had been drawn up months earlier than the campaign itself. Russian air strikes and artillery forced at least 100,000 Chechens to flee their homes. Neighboring Ingushetia appealed to the UN regarding over 78,000 refugees that had crossed their borders. Civilian refugees were later estimated to total between 200,000 to 450,000, out of the approximately 800,000 residents in the Chechen Republic.

On October 21, 1999, a Russian Scud short-range ballistic missile strike on the central Grozny marketplace killed more than 140 people, including many women and children, leaving hundreds more wounded. A Russian spokesman said the busy market was targeted because it was used by ‘separatists’ as an arms bazaar.

Human Rights Watch called on the Russian military at that time to stop using FAE, known in Russia as vacuum bombs, in Chechnya. Large number of civilian casualties were caused by what it called “widespread and often indiscriminate bombing and shelling by Russian forces.”

The Russian assault on Grozny began in early December 1999, ending on February 2, 2000 when the Russian army seized the city. Russian Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev said that 2,700 ‘separatists’ were killed trying to leave Grozny.  The siege and fighting devastated the capital like no other European city since World War II. In 2003 the United Nations called Grozny the most destroyed city on Earth.  The estimated total number of casualties: 80,000 killed in Chechnya; 40,000 - 45,000 civilians in neighboring regions.

Similar dynamics and tactics have been used by President Putin in other conflicts, such as Syria/Aleppo (2015), and at this present time in Ukraine (2022). History may not be exactly repeating itself but, as Mark Twain noted, there is a definite rhyme here.

Syrian Aleppo – history repeating itself

The Arab Spring protests in 2011 catalyzed a civil war in Syria, with Aleppo (ancient Halab) being a key rebel center. Many of these rebels were Western-friendly and opposed to Assad. Others were run-of-the-mill jihadis. And finally, some were full-blown ISIS jihadi Islamists. By the summer of 2015, it looked likely that Syrian President and dictator Hafez al-Assad was about to lose control of the country. Russia stepped in, sending bombers, attack helicopters, artillery and missiles, and many military advisors. Iran sent in paramilitary operatives as well as Lebanese Hezbollah fighters.

By September 2015, Assad's forces gathered against Aleppo. On September 30, 2015 Russian bombers and attack fighters hit rebel forward military positions and supply lines, and by October 2015 up to 2,000 Lebanese Hezbollah, Afghan and Iraqi Shi’a militia fighters (led by Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps [IRGC] – Quds Force commander Major-General Qassem Suleimani) initiated their ground attacks.

By February 2017 Assad’s forces had nearly surrounded the city. In July 2017 Assad imposed an all-out siege of the city’s rebel-controlled eastern region, blocking even humanitarian assistance. With significant support from Iran, Assad cut off supplies to 320,000 people. Assad then had his forces systematically destroy the medical facilities in rebel-held parts of the city, killing or wounding many of its remaining doctors and nurses. These attacks are considered to be war crimes.

Russian forces used weapons in Syria that are currently being used in Ukraine as well, including the TOS-1A, a surface-to-surface rocket system that fires “fuel-air explosive” (FAE) thermobaric-type warheads. The Russian bunker-buster BETAB-500s was also used, able to take out entire buildings in one hit.

The UNHCR reported in July 2018 that 270,000 people in southern Syria had been displaced by a two-week escalation in fighting alone that erupted after a Russian-backed army offensive to recapture rebel-held southern Syria. By October 1, 2018 the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights claims that Russian air strikes and artillery shells killed 18,000 people (including nearly 8,000 civilians).

According to the Russian Ministry of Defense, by August 2017 Russia had carried out 28,000 sorties in Syria, with 90,000 air strikes. The graphic destruction of these airstrikes in Syria can be seen in this drone footage of Aleppo from Euronews. Such scenes were also commonplace in Grozny. They now are being repeated (and available on drone footage) throughout Ukraine in Kharkiv, Mariupol region, Kiev region, etc.

“A destroyer will come to every city” (Jeremiah 48:8)

The Bible is a comprehensive history book, a compendium of how evil dictators destroyed cities and countries before they were ultimately extinguished from the pages of antiquity. And today, as we watch Russian weapons level the apartments of Ukraine, we can ask ourselves the question: do we think that we are living in times which are so different from those of Assyria, Babylon, Rome and Hitler? This outbreak of a land war in Europe is a wake-up call for us all. Are we ready? Have we counted the cost of what is about to happen? Where does God want us to be, and what does He want us to be doing as we prepare for these challenging times?

Those who plot wickedness

The Scriptures speak strongly against those who shed innocent blood or who attack peaceful people:

Purim – from defeat to victory

The Scroll of Esther has recently been read aloud in synagogues across the world. We heard how Haman had purposed to destroy, kill and eliminate the entire Jewish people (see Esther 7:4). Yet the God of Abraham kept His protective covenant with the exiled sons of Jacob, and turned the tables on His murderous enemies at Purim: “In the letters, the king granted the Jews who were in each and every city the right to assemble and to defend their lives, to destroy, kill, and eliminate the entire army of any people or province which was going to attack them, including children and women, and to plunder their spoils” (Esther 8:11).

The prophet Ezekiel lets us know that the God of Jacob has commissioned Israel to be His mighty army (see Ezekiel 37:9-11). The Jewish nation has been called to be His secret weapon in the affairs of men.

As war slogs forward in Ukraine, as cruel and murderous dictators accelerate the speed of their chariots and tanks, and as they direct their cannons, missiles and bombs against civilian supermarkets, shopping centers, hospitals, schools and theaters, let us pray for God’s mercy, His justice and His breakthroughs both in men’s hearts and on the battlefield.

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

Donations can also be made on-line (by PayPal) through: www.davidstent.org

The Jewish Exile and the hidden face of God

As a little Jewish boy growing up in Montreal I used to sing a Yiddish Purim (Feast of Esther) song: “Haynt is Purim, kinder; S’iz der yontif groys!” (‘Today is Purim, children! It’s the great holiday!’). And once again, according to the Jewish calendar we have arrived at the yearly celebration of the Feast of Esther.

Nearly 2,500 years ago Persia/Iran’s leader Ahasuerus (Old Persian, Xšayāršā) signed off on a Holocaust decree (Esther 3:12) and initialed it with his signet ring: “Scrolls were sent by runners to all the king’s provinces to destroy, kill, and annihilate all the Jews, from the young to the old, the women and toddlers, all on one day (the thirteenth day of the twelfth month, the month of Adar) and to seize their possessions as war plunder” (Esther 3:13).

A Jewish bird in a gilded cage

The Scroll of Esther lays out the plot. The Jewish people had been exiled by God (Leviticus 26:14-39) to Babylon for 70 years (Jeremiah 25:11-12), and were now sheep without a shepherd (Jeremiah 50:6). Their Davidic dynasty was shattered. It would be millennia before it would be fully restored (Amos 9:11-12; Jeremiah 23:5-6). The new Persian conquerors took over from Babylon and in 539 B.C. King Cyrus issued a decree (2 Chronicles 36:22-23) allowing Jews to return to the Promised Land. But less than 50,000 Hebrews took up that challenge, wending their way back to Judea as pioneers and settlers. Most Jews preferred the gilded cage of Iranian and Iraqi Exile for the next 2,500 years. Today most Jewish people avoid the term ‘the Exile,’ but adopt a euphemistic and more ‘politically correct’ term ‘the Diaspora’ (διασπορά, Greek for ‘the scattering’).

Miss Tehran, Persian hit teams and narcissists galore

The Book opens in the middle of a royal Middle Eastern drinking party, MCed by the hot-tempered, impulsive and narcissistic King Ahasuerus. The story segues quickly into an Imperial beauty contest, where a ‘new and improved’ beauty queen (Esther 2:2-14) would soon become the new bride in the harem. Fast forward to an Iranian assassination squad led by two offended royal officials (Esther 2:21-23) whose plot is exposed by Esther’s Jewish cousin Mordechai (Esther 2:7). Nearly all the players are now stage front and center, except Haman, a bully and a high official whose ambitions are only outdone by his murderous bent.

Haman’s hatred for Mordechai sparked a demonic anti-Semitic hatred, and triggered his genocidal plans against all the Jews on planet earth (since all Jews were basically living under Persian control at that time – Esther 1:1; 3:10, 13). In David Pryce-Jones’ classic ‘The Closed Circle: an interpretation of the Arabs’, he explains that “acquisition of honor, pride, dignity, respect and the converse avoidance of shame, disgrace, and humiliation are keys to Arab motivation, clarifying and illuminating behavior in the past as well as in the present” (page 34). This dynamic is found throughout the Middle East, among non-Arab peoples as well, he adds. Pryce-Jones notes that “by definition, honor and shame involve publicity” (page 40).

The God who is hiding

The writer of the Book of Esther never mentions the name of God or His existence. YHVH’s sovereignty in protecting and rescuing His Jewish people is silently brooding over the book, even though it may seem that He is ignoring the clear and present dangers facing His people. God seems to be ‘hiding His face’ (‘hester panim’ in Hebrew, a word play on the Hebrew name ‘Esther’), but in no way is He sleeping or slumbering. He protects us, preserves us and will fulfil every prophetic promise over us to bring us back ­both to the Land of Israel and to Himself. Though in the Book of Esther the fate of the Jewish people seems to turn on something as capricious ­as the ‘purim’, the lot, the ‘toss of the dice’ – the Jewish people’s survival rests in very secure divine hands.

Even today, as the world nervously considers a similar scenario – the Islamic Republic of Iran’s nuclear conspiracy to destroy Israel (the Jewish state) and to wreak havoc on pro-Western forces and neighbors – we can draw encouragement that the same Rock of Israel is watching over His Jewish people.

De-nazifying Purim

Hitler and his fellow Nazis took demonic delight in twisting Jewish themes and traditions into murderous weapons to be used against the sons and daughters of Jacob. Here are some examples of how Nazis perverted the Biblical Purim account:

Two other historical events happened on Purim which have relevance here:

Purim – YHVH’s revolutionary feast

U.S. Corporal Sidney Talmud of Brooklyn was marching through Germany with the 38th Signal Construction Battalion in 1945 when a rare opportunity came his way. Schloss Rheydt, the Renaissance-era palace in Mönchengladbach had been use by Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels as a vacation home. The Allies called it ‘Goebbels’ Castle.’ Since Goebbels had played the key role in the attempted destruction of Europe’s Jews, Army brass thought that it would be poetic justice to use that newly liberated venue to commemorate Jewish holidays (Purim and Passover) celebrating the liberation of the Jewish people.

In the US Army Weekly ‘Yank’ on April 12, 1945, a photo was published from that unusual Purim: a Jewish Welfare Board flag with the Star of David laid out on a table. The Jewish chaplain’s symbol hangs on a flag in the window. The German swastika is left visible in the center, but surmounted by the Torah and the ark.  In the magazine, it was written that the Jewish clergy “raised their voices in an ancient Hebrew hymn of jubilation sung at Purim to celebrate the deliverance of the Jews from an earlier Hitler–Haman of Persia, who long held the Hebrew in captivity in Biblical Times.”

The God of Israel has not changed His heart about His Jewish people, nor has He stopped protecting them from the Pharaohs, the Hamans, the Hitlers, the Hamasniks and the Ayatollahs of this world. As we remember the suspenseful victory brought about by the God who is hiding, let us redouble our prayers, intercession and proactive measures for the salvation and survival of the Jewish people!

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

Donations can also be made on-line (by PayPal) through: www.davidstent.org

Last Days discernment

“So it came about on the third day, when it was morning, that there were thunder and lightning flashes and a thick cloud over the mountain and a very loud trumpet sound, so that all the people who were in the camp trembled” (Exodus 19:16)

“It will come about also on that day that a great trumpet will be blown, and those who were perishing in the land of Assyria and who were scattered in the land of Egypt will come and worship YHVH on the holy mountain in Jerusalem” (Isaiah 27:13)

“And He will send forth His angels with a great trumpet blast, and they will gather together His elect from the four winds, from one end of the sky to the other” (Matthew 24:31)

“If any of your scattered countrymen are at the ends of the earth, from there YHVH your God will gather you, and from there He will bring you back” (Deuteronomy 30:4)

“And if those days had not been cut short, no life would have been saved. But for the sake of the elect those days will be cut short” (Matthew 24:22)

“For false messiahs and false prophets will arise and will provide great signs and wonders, so as to mislead, if possible, even the elect” (Matthew 24:24)

The days are getting more challenging. We are being confronted with scenarios that surprise and trouble us. Humanity is being called upon to ramp up our discernment and our powers of judgment. Especially for those of us who have had our eyes opened and our spirits made alive in Messiah Yeshua, there is an earnest longing for increased spiritual sensitivity, faithfulness and biblical accuracy. May the following thoughts be both a challenge and an encouragement for us, today and in the days ahead.

Discernment – the desire of our hearts

God’s heart yearns for us, that we would gain and exercise discernment: “If only they were wise and they understood this! If only they would discern their future!” (Deuteronomy 32:29)

Our earnest request of God is that He teach us discernment based on His Scriptures: “Teach me good discernment and knowledge, for I believe in Your commandments. Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I keep Your word” (Psalm 119:66-67).

A wise and discerning person has a mind hungry for truth and knowledge: “The mind of the discerning acquires knowledge, and the ear of the wise seeks knowledge” (Proverbs 18:15).

Solomon was the wisest and most discerning of men in his day: “‘And Your servant is in the midst of Your people whom You have chosen, a great people who are too many to be numbered or counted. So give Your servant an understanding heart to judge Your people, to discern between good and evil. For who is capable of judging this great people of Yours?’ Now it was pleasing in the sight of YHVH that Solomon had asked this thing (1 Kings 3:8-10). Now God gave Solomon wisdom and very great discernment and breadth of mind, like the sand that is on the seashore. Solomon’s wisdom surpassed the wisdom of all the people of the east and all the wisdom of Egypt (1 Kings 4:29-30).

Hindrances to discernment

Each one of us struggles with internal stumbling blocks which prevent us from having clear discernment. The Scriptures call this dynamic ‘sin’: “Who can discern his errors? Acquit me of hidden faults” (Psalm 19:12). Yeshua tells us that our own sins can hold us back from clearly discerning what is going on around us. “When it is evening, you say, ‘It will be fair weather, for the sky is red.’ And in the morning, ‘There will be a storm today, for the sky is red and threatening.’ You know how to discern the appearance of the sky, but are you unable to discern the signs of the times?” (Matthew 16:2-3).

A central element in the dynamics of discernment – a man or woman who is obedient to God and to His word will have greater clarity here: “But a natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Corinthians 2:14).

“For everyone who partakes only of milk is unacquainted with the word of righteousness, for he is an infant. But solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to distinguish between good and evil” (Hebrews 5:13-14).

The calling to help people distinguish right and wrong

The tribe of Levi has been gifted with a prophetic calling to strengthen Israel’s discernment: “Moreover, they shall teach My people the difference between the holy and the common, and teach them to distinguish between the unclean and the clean. (Ezekiel 44:23; see Deuteronomy 33:8, 10).

It is no small matter to help God’s people grow in discernment: “Do not become teachers in large numbers, my brothers, since you know that we who are teachers will incur a stricter judgment” (James 3:1).

A prophesied day is coming when the remnant of Israel will move naturally in spiritual and practical discernment: “So you will again distinguish between the righteous and the wicked, between one who serves God and one who does not serve Him” (Malachi 3:18).

Drawing incorrect conclusions based on faulty discernment

Messiah Yeshua was once interacting with some Jewish Galileans about the reason for two specific and recent tragedies – one in Galilee and one in Jerusalem. Some were blaming the victims of those tragedies, ascribing greater sin to them than to the unharmed bystanders.

Yeshua’s point was stark: those people who had suffered harm or death were not worse sinners than the ‘innocent’ bystanders. Actually, all were in need of heartfelt repentance, especially in light of the fast-approaching judgment on 68-80 A.D. – the destruction of the Second Temple and the Roman Exile.

Two sides of the same rod

The ten northern tribes of Israel had embraced other loves, other gods and other morality, rather than that of YHVH. The God of Jacob is a jealous God determined to win His bride back to His heart. In order to turn their hearts back to Him, He extended a severe mercy to His Jewish people, which involved drawing the cruel and heartless Assyrian empire (His ‘rod’) down to the Promised Land to wreak havoc and exile on the ten tribes.

Isaiah the prophet gives us insight into how Assyria’s leader understood his own calling, and how Assyria’s perspective was totally the opposite from YHVH’s.

God calls Assyria the rod of His anger, stretched out against His Chosen People who had embraced idolatry and grievous social sin. Yet this ‘divine rod’ intended to go far beyond his divine commission. Assyria would boast that their military success was due to the superiority of their national demonic gods and the strength of their armies and weapons. This hubris – Assyrian hutzpa – would bring the full curse of Genesis 12:3, the full wrath of Israel’s God, down upon their heads. But even in the midst of horrific judgment, Israel was encouraged to draw strength from the prophetic future, when God would wipe Assyria off the map:

YHVH’s burning judgment on Assyria in days to come would be significantly greater than the Assyrian judgment that fell upon Israel.

The destruction of the prideful destroyer

Another example of God’s fearful dealings with prideful and destructive empires is laid out in great detail in Ezekiel. Though the prophet recognizes that YHVH has allowed Edom/Esau to invade and wreak havoc on Judah’s cities, pastures and civilian population, the God of Jacob warns that He is always watching, and that He Himself will repay Edom for all the evil they have done against the Jewish people:

Talking heads and other experts

Yeshua once responded to some theologians in His day, “You are mistaken, since you do not understand either the Scriptures or the power of God” (Matthew 22:29). My life experience has underscored the truth of Yeshua’s words. Much of the body of Messiah is divided here – on one side are those who don’t know the Scriptures well, and on the other side those who have not experienced the Holy Spirit’s power (and therefor deny its charismatic reality). In the same way, there are some popular media ‘experts’ who, though they may be forceful speakers and fast talkers, nevertheless seem bereft of biblical compassion, historical perspective and godly discernment.

Someone has said that an expert is “somebody who is more than 50 miles from home, has no responsibility for implementing the advice he gives, and shows slides.” The greatest refugee crisis since World War II has now broken out in Ukraine. The destruction of Ukrainian cities, villages and essential infrastructure (replete with bone-crushing civilian casualties) continues with a cruelty that would bring a faint smile to Hitler’s lips. On a personal note, two days ago in the Ukrainian Jewish village of Yasnohorodka (west-south-west of Kyiv) where my grandmother was born in 1888, Russian troops attacked and murdered five civilians.

Yet I have been dumbstruck to hear some self-proclaimed ‘experts’ insist that this pre-World War III situation is no real tragedy, because of the following supposed reasons:

Hitler redux

On September 30, 1938 Prime Minister Chamberlain met with Adolph Hitler in Munich, signing away a portion of Czech Sudetenland to Nazi annexation. One year later, on September 1, 1939 the Nazi juggernaut blitzkrieged into Poland with tanks, mobile artillery and Stuka bombers, destroying cities and annihilating civilians. WWII had broken out, the Holocaust following close on its heels. Would Christians in those days have been apologists for Hitler, lamely bleating that there are two sides to every story, that righteous leaders exist in Germany, and that we need to make sure to focus equal time on the many other countries in Europe instead?

Russia illegally seized sections of Eastern Ukraine in February-March 2014. Eight years later, on February 24, 2022 it invaded Ukraine from the territories of Russia, Belarus, and annexed sections of Crimea, with over 190.000 troops attacking over 20 Ukrainian locations. This is Sudetenland revisited. Will the world act any differently than it did in 1939?

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

Donations can also be made on-line (by PayPal) through: www.davidstent.org

The Kremlin Statements

This is part two of a two-part newsletter. Here is the link for part one.

“There are decades where nothing happens, and there are weeks where decades happen” (Vladimir Lenin).

“They took counsel together to devise a plan, but it came to naught. They talked about a strategy, but it will not stand, for God is with us!” (Isaiah 8:10)

Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, the President of the Russian Federation, recently gave two addresses in the Kremlin, one on February 21, 2022 and one on February 24, 2022.

In the first address, he outlined what he sees as Ukrainian and Western threats to Russia. He then warned the West of measures Russia was about to take. At the end of his speech, he recognized the independence and sovereignty of the regions which broke away from Ukraine in Donetsk and Lugansk under Russian oversight and military support. The subsequent ratification of these two Treaties of Friendship and Mutual Assistance now paved the way for ‘legal justification’ of Russia’s planned invasion of the rest of Ukraine three days later, on February 24, 2022.

In Putin’s second address on February 24, 2022, he classified the current situation as a ‘clear and present danger’ to Russia’s security and survival. He then announced that Russia was invading Ukraine:

Putin has triggered a land war in the heart of Eastern Europe. Michael Kofman (Research Program Director in the Russia Studies Program at CAN, Fellow at the Kennan Institute, Woodrow Wilson International Center, Washington, DC) states: “This is not an operation limited to the Donbas. It is a military operation with maximalist war aims, whose aim is regime change.” A senior U.S. defense official said, “We haven’t seen a conventional move like this, nation-state to nation-state, since World War II, certainly nothing on this size and scope and scale.” “It’s our assessment that they have every intention of decapitating the government and installing their own method of governance, which would explain these early moves towards Kyiv.”

In light of the fact that President Putin has been both ‘telegraphing’ his moves and openly carrying them out, his other declarations and threats in these two speeches will now be considered. The following quotes are from the above-linked transcripts of Putin’s two addresses. 

“Russia’s enemies – sub-human and evil”

Western leaders possess “attitudes that are directly leading to degradation and degeneration, because they are contrary to human nature.” The West has “low cultural standards and arrogance.” “Where did this insolent manner of talking . . . come from, . . . this contemptuous and disdainful attitude?”

“A stable statehood has never developed in Ukraine. Its electoral and other political procedures just serve as a cover, a screen for the redistribution of power and property between various oligarchic clans. Corruption . . . has gone beyond the usual scope in Ukraine. It has literally permeated and corroded Ukrainian statehood, the entire system, and all branches of power.”

“Neanderthal and aggressive nationalism and neo-Nazism . . . have been elevated in Ukraine to the rank of national policy.” Ukrainian authorities are “radicals [who have become] increasingly brazen in their actions.”

Ukraine’s “nationalists who have seized power have unleashed a persecution, a real terror campaign against those who opposed their anti-constitutional actions . . . A wave of violence swept Ukrainian cities, including a series of high-profile and unpunished murders . . . But we know their names and we will do everything to punish them, find them and bring them to justice.”

“Ukrainian society . . . far-right nationalism . . . rapidly developed into aggressive Russophobia and neo-Nazism. This resulted in the participation of Ukrainian nationalists and neo-Nazis in the terrorist groups in the North Caucasus and the increasingly loud territorial claims to Russia.”

“The Kyiv authorities . . . have opted for aggressive action, for activating extremist cells, including radical Islamist organizations, for sending subversives to stage terrorist attacks at critical infrastructure facilities, and for kidnapping Russian citizens. We have factual proof that such aggressive actions are being taken with support from Western security services.”

“The Ukrainian authorities . . . began by building their statehood on the negation of everything that united us, trying to distort the mentality and historical memory of millions of people, of entire generations living in Ukraine. It is not surprising that Ukrainian society was faced with the rise of far-right nationalism, which rapidly developed into aggressive Russophobia and neo-Nazism.”

“The United States and other Western partners . . . immediately tried to put the final squeeze on us, finish us off, and utterly destroy us. This is how it was in the 1990’s and the early 2000’s . . .  before we broke the back of international terrorism in the Caucasus! We remember this and will never forget”

“The leading NATO countries are supporting the far-right nationalists and neo-Nazis in Ukraine . . . They will undoubtedly try to bring war to Crimea just as they have done in Donbass, to kill innocent people just as members of the punitive units of Ukrainian nationalists and Hitler’s accomplices did during the Great Patriotic War.”

“The purpose of this operation is to protect people who, for eight years now, have been facing humiliation and genocide perpetrated by the Kyiv regime . . . We had to stop that atrocity, that genocide of the millions of people who live there and who pinned their hopes on Russia, on all of us. It is their aspirations, the feelings and pain of these people that were the main motivating force behind our decision to recognize the independence of the Donbass people’s republics.”

“Russia is facing a life and death threat”

“The US-built Maritime Operations Centre in Ochakov makes it possible to support activity by NATO warships, including the use of precision weapons, against the Russian Black Sea Fleet and our infrastructure on the entire Black Sea Coast.”

“American strategic planning documents confirm the possibility of a so-called preemptive strike at enemy missile systems. We also know the main adversary of the United States and NATO. It is Russia. NATO documents officially declare our country to be the main threat to Euro-Atlantic security. Ukraine will serve as an advanced bridgehead for such a strike . . . The Pentagon has been openly developing many land-based attack weapons, including ballistic missiles . . .  If deployed in Ukraine, such systems will be able to hit targets in Russia’s entire European part. The flying time of Tomahawk cruise missiles to Moscow will be less than 35 minutes; ballistic missiles from Kharkov will take seven to eight minutes; and hypersonic assault weapons, four to five minutes. It is like a knife to the throat. I have no doubt that they hope to carry out these plans.”

“For the United States and its allies, it is a policy of containing Russia, with obvious geopolitical dividends. For our country, it is a matter of life and death, a matter of our historical future as a nation. This is not an exaggeration; this is a fact. It is not only a very real threat to our interests but to the very existence of our state and to its sovereignty. It is the red line which we have spoken about on numerous occasions. They have crossed it.”

“The showdown between Russia and these forces cannot be avoided. It is only a matter of time. They are getting ready and waiting for the right moment. Moreover, they went as far as aspire to acquire nuclear weapons. We will not let this happen.”

“I would like to be clear and straightforward: in the current circumstances, when our proposals for an equal dialogue on fundamental issues have actually remained unanswered by the United States and NATO, when the level of threats to our country has increased significantly, Russia has every right to respond in order to ensure its security. That is exactly what we will do.”

Russia threatens her enemies

“I reiterate: we are acting to defend ourselves from the threats created for us and from a worse peril than what is happening now.”

“If Ukraine acquires weapons of mass destruction, the situation in the world and in Europe will drastically change, especially for us, for Russia. We cannot but react to this real danger, all the more so since, let me repeat, Ukraine’s Western patrons may help it acquire these weapons to create yet another threat to our country.”

“Ukraine’s accession to NATO and the subsequent deployment of NATO facilities has already been decided and is only a matter of time. We clearly understand that given this scenario, the level of military threats to Russia will increase dramatically, several times over. And I would like to emphasize at this point that the risk of a sudden strike at our country will multiply.”

“The old treaties and agreements are no longer effective. Entreaties and requests do not help.”

“Those who then embarked on the path of violence, bloodshed and lawlessness did not recognize then and do not recognize now any solution to the Donbass issue other than a military one . . . We want those who seized and continue to hold power in Kyiv to immediately stop hostilities. Otherwise, the responsibility for the possible continuation of the bloodshed will lie entirely on the conscience of Ukraine’s ruling regime.”

“Today’s Russia remains one of the most powerful nuclear states. Moreover, it has a certain advantage in several cutting-edge weapons. In this context, there should be no doubt for anyone that any potential aggressor will face defeat and ominous consequences should it directly attack our country.”

“They did not leave us any other option for defending Russia and our people, other than the one we are forced to use today. In these circumstances, we have to take bold and immediate action.”

“I would now like to say something very important for those who may be tempted to interfere in these developments from the outside. No matter who tries to stand in our way or all the more so create threats for our country and our people, they must know that Russia will respond immediately, and the consequences will be such as you have never seen in your entire history. No matter how the events unfold, we are ready. All the necessary decisions in this regard have been taken. I hope that my words will be heard.”

“At the end of the day, the future of Russia is in the hands of its multi-ethnic people, as has always been the case in our history. This means that the decisions that I made will be executed, that we will achieve the goals we have set, and reliably guarantee the security of our Motherland.”

The plans of a Tsar

What does Putin mean when he says the following “We will seek to demilitarize and de-Nazify Ukraine, as well as bring to trial those who perpetrated numerous bloody crimes against civilians, including against citizens of the Russian Federation”?

Demilitarization means that Ukraine will no longer be allowed to have an army which can defend itself against Russia. That would turn Ukraine into a puppet colony of Russia.

De-Nazification means the removal and/or assassination of Ukraine’s leadership, which Putin classifies as neo-Nazi. A senior U.S. defense official who spoke on condition of anonymity said, “It’s our assessment that they have every intention of decapitating the government and installing their own method of governance, which would explain these early moves towards Kyiv.” Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that Russian “sabotage forces had entered the city to hunt him and his family down.”

“Bring to trial” means that Putin is planning to have show trials similar to those hosted by the Soviet Union (the Moscow Trials of the Great Purge period – 1937–38) where guilty verdicts were unanimous and pre-approved.

Putin has made two threats to use nuclear weapons against the West in his speeches. The latest and strongest one was on February 24, 2022: “The consequences will be such as you have never seen in your entire history. No matter how the events unfold, we are ready. All the necessary decisions in this regard have been taken. I hope that my words will be heard.”

On Sunday February 27, 2022 Putin further announced, “I'm ordering the Defense Minister and Chief of the General Staff to switch the Russian army's deterrent forces onto a high alert mode of combat stand-by duty.”  This command was publicly announced, raising missile alert preparedness to Russia’s nuclear forces.

According to a former head of Britain’s MI6 external intelligence agency, Alex Younger, President Putin is “playing poker rather than chess” to create options for himself. “At the moment I cannot see a scenario where he can back down in a way that satisfies the expectations that he has created . . . It feels dangerous and it’s clearly getting more dangerous. It’s hard to see a safe landing zone given the expectations that President Putin has created.” 

Not much has changed since 1944

The observations of George Kennan (former U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union) made in Moscow of 1944 are penetrating in their insight. They shed helpful light on the mind, perspectives and strategies of both Russia and President Putin.

“Soviet leaders have never forgotten the weak and vulnerable position in which the Soviet regime found itself in the early days of its power . . .  These left in Soviet minds an indelible and undoubtedly exaggerated impression of the dangers which threatened Soviet power from without. Fed by the traditional Russian mistrust of the stranger . . . this feeling of fear and insecurity lived and flourished and came to underlie almost all Soviet thought about the outside world.”

Russia’s goals focus on “the concrete task of becoming the dominant power of eastern and central Europe.” They involve “new territorial acquisitions designed to strengthen Russia’s strategic and political position, and in the creation of a sphere of influence even beyond these limits. In drawing up this expansionist program, Soviet planners leaned heavily on the latter-day traditions of Tsarist diplomacy . . . The men in the Kremlin have never abandoned their faith in that program of territorial and political expansion which had once commended itself so strongly to Tsarist diplomatists.”

Geographic and military strategic goals include: “the re-establishment of Russian power in Finland and the Baltic states . . .  eastern Poland, a protectorate over western Poland . . . the establishment of dominant Russian influence over all the Slavs of central Europe and the Balkans . . . intended to prevent the formation in central and eastern Europe of any power or coalition of powers capable of challenging Russian security.”

“For the smaller countries of eastern and central Europe, the issue is not one of communism or capitalism. It is one of the independence of national life or of domination by a big power . . . It is not a question of boundaries or of constitutions or of formal independence. It is a question of real power relationships”

On the edge of a cliff

Vladimir Putin is a world-class poker player playing the game of his life here. He is going toe-to-toe with world leaders who are not as able to project similar sang froid – cold-blooded purpose and unflappable intensity. The lives of many are hanging in the balance, as does the balance of nuclear terror and mutually assured destruction. As we speak, the citizens of Ukraine are resolutely withstanding the unsheathed fist of Russia’s military juggernaut, paying dearly in blood and destruction. It is time to be praying with all sobriety.

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

Donations can also be made on-line (by PayPal) through: www.davidstent.org

Russia’s Empire spirit and the spiritual roots of the Ukrainian war

Russian tanks are rolling across Ukraine’s Eastern European Plains. Moscow’s artillery shells and rockets, missiles and bombs are striking military and civilian targets from the Black Sea lowlands to the Dnieper uplands. The iron fist of the Red Bear is smashing down on the gold-azure trident (the tryzub – a Trinitarian or falcon-like Viking symbol from ancient Kyiv) of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. A major ground war is exploding and the ground is shaking in Eastern Europe.

Yet only twelve days ago on Tuesday February 15, 2022 Russia's Deputy Ambassador to the United Nations Dmitry Polyanskiy declared that Western leaders were foolishly paranoid: “I think they need to have a good doctor, I recommend them to do it. Specialist on such paranoia cases! . . . Our troops are on our territory, [and they] represent a threat to no one.” The Great Soviet Encyclopedia of 1952 defined dezinformatsiya as the dissemination of “false information with the intention to deceive public opinion.” The whole world is watching events in Russia and Ukraine, and we remember Elijah’s words to King Ahab: “Have you murdered and also taken possession?” (1 Kings 21:19).

God offends the mind to reveal the heart (see Luke 2:34-35). The breaking out of war in Eastern Europe is exposing the secrets of men’s hearts (see 1 Corinthians14:25; Proverbs 25:2). Here are some insights into the strategic worldviews of Russia, President Vladimir Putin and Western leaders.

Moscow the Third Rome

History sheds light on a paradigm underpinning Russia’s worldview regarding its own calling and spiritual role.

In 1492 the Orthodox Metropolitan of Moscow Zosimus stated in the foreword to his book Presentation of the Paschalion that Tsar Ivan III was “the new Tsar Constantine of the new city of Constantine – Moscow.” The monk Philotheus of Pskov declared in the early 16th century: “So know, pious king, that all the Christian kingdoms came to an end and came together in a single kingdom of yours. Two Romes have fallen, the third stands, and there will be no fourth. No one shall replace your Christian Tsardom according to the great Theologian!”

‘Moscow the third Rome’ (Москва — Третий Рим) is a theological-imperialist concept stating that:

According to this Replacement Theology worldview, God’s Messianic kingdom finds its greatest and final expression not in Jerusalem but in Russia.

Like Constantine the Great, Putin sees Christianity as the spiritual glue that will unify and strengthen his empire. Since becoming President of Russia, Putin has cast himself as the true defender of Christians throughout the world, the leader of the Third Rome. He wants people to recognize his spiritual calling as the rebuilder of a Moscow-based Christendom.

In a September 2013 speech at the Valdai Club Putin declared: “We see many of the Euro-Atlantic countries are actually rejecting their roots, including the Christian values that constitute the basis of Western civilization. They are denying moral principles and all traditional identities: national, cultural, religious and even sexual. They are implementing policies that equate large families with same-sex partnerships, belief in God with the belief in Satan.”

In a March 2014 speech given at the Kremlin just after Russia annexed Crimea, Putin pointed to Russia’s spiritual authority over Ukraine and Belarus, based on Vladimir the Great’s mass baptism of Kyiv in 988 A.D.:

On July 12, 2021 Putin again proclaimed Russia’s Third Rome perspective, that Moscow alone must rule over Kyiv:

As British journalist and Rector Giles Davis points out: “At the heart of this post-Soviet revival of Christianity is another Vladimir. Vladimir Putin. Many people don’t appreciate the extent to which the invasion of Ukraine is a spiritual quest for him. The Baptism of Rus is the founding event of the formation of the Russian religious psyche, the Russian Orthodox church traces its origins back here. That’s why Putin is not so much interested in a few Russian-leaning districts to the east of Ukraine. His goal, terrifyingly, is Kyiv itself.”

Putin declared to the Kremlin on February 21, 2022 that “Ukraine is an inalienable part of our own history, culture and spiritual space.” This phrase has deep resonance for those who are steeped in over a thousand years of Russian religious history. Herein lies a key to his imperialistically-based invasion of Ukraine which began on February 23, 2022.

The Ukrainian response to Putin’s narrative can be seen when, in 2019, the Ukrainian Orthodox churches declared their independence from the Russian Orthodox Church, with Ecumenical Patriarch and Archbishop Bartholomew I of Constantinople supporting the Ukrainian move. Former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko described this as “a great victory for the devout Ukrainian nation over the Moscow demons, a victory of good over evil, light over darkness.”

Paranoia strikes deep

“In every tyrant's heart there springs in the end this poison, that he cannot trust a friend” (Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound, line 224).

Russian history reveals the murderous role of paranoid megalomania in some of its most outstanding leaders. While it is true that paranoia is the bane of many dictators, Moscow seems to have had more than its fair share of these. A cursory study of these manifestations may help us to make sense of current events in Eastern Europe.

King Saul’s fears of losing his crown led to the growth of malignant suspicion and murderous paranoia against David, his loyal servant:

Saul’s toxic fears left his heart wide open to demonic influence and murder. He began to suspect his loyal diplomats and courtiers of siding with his ‘enemy’ David:

Ivan the Terrible and his Black Riders

The first Tsar of All Russia (‘Tsar’ is the Russian pronunciation of the Latin word ‘Caesar’ or emperor) was Ivan IV  (1547-1584), known as Grozny (‘formidable’ or ‘fearful’). Severely cruel treatment he suffered as a child left a hard residue of extreme mistrust, blinding hatred and anger – especially toward those he felt had betrayed him. As a teenager, Ivan took his resentment out on animals, pulling the feathers off live birds and throwing dogs and cats out of windows.

Ivan created a thousand strong group of fanatically loyal secret police, known as the Oprichniki. They were akin to the Nazgûl, the ringwraiths or Black Riders of Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings. Dressed totally in black, they rode around in solid black carriages pulled by black horses. Severed dogs’ heads were tied to their saddles, symbolizing resolve in sniffing out traitors, as well as brooms (symbolizing a murderously clean sweep of traitors). Anyone suspected of treason or betrayal was tortured and/or murdered. Methods included boiling alive, impalement, being roasted in huge frying pans over an open fire, or being torn limb from limb by horses. In 1570 the entire civil, religious and business leadership of Novgorod (12,000 people) was rounded up, tortured, beaten to death. Their wives and children were bound and thrown into the icy Volkhov river. Ivan ended up killing his own son Ivan Ivanovich in a fit of paranoid rage.

Michael Khodarkovsky, Professor of Russian History at Loyola University in Chicago, notes that the Russian dictator Joseph Stalin justified both his own mass murders and “his claim that Russia needed a strong leader” by referring to Ivan the Terrible’s behavior. In our day, he added, “President Vladimir Putin relies on the images of Ivan IV and Stalin to convey the same message and validate his own dictatorial rule.”

In 2016, the first ever monument to Ivan the Terrible was unveiled in Oryol, about 200 miles south-west of Moscow, to mark 450 years since he founded the town in 1566. Alexander Prokhanov, editor of the extreme-right Russian newspaper Zavtra declared in honor of the event: “Weak leaders have ruined our country. Alexander II freed the serfs and they came to the city and caused a revolution. Nicholas II was a weak tsar and look what happened. Gorbachev was weak and as a result a great state collapsed.”

Local Governor of Oryol, Vadim Potomsky added: “Look at the size of [our] country. How else would you rule it? Trying to do it calmly and tolerantly is never going to work. We need a strong leader. And people here respect strong authority. They don’t fear it, they respect it. Remember how Russia was treated 15 years ago? Nobody asked us anything. And now thanks to Putin we have recovered our position in the world.”

Peter the Great’s murderous paranoia

Peter the Great transformed his country (at the loss of many lives) into a major European super-power. He was well known for his extreme cruelty and paranoia. Two of his strongest motivations were: a fear for his personal safety, a hatred and need to revenge himself against an ‘old Russia’; and a desire for total independence in his actions and control over his environment.

Peter oversaw the death of 30,000 to 100,000 workers in his construction of St Petersburg. He put his son Alexei on trial, had him tortured and whipped to the point where he died of his wounds. No other European monarchs oversaw the torture and death of their own children.

Peter oversaw savage reprisals and tortures to crush the leaders of the Streltsy infantry rebellion. Between September 1698 and February 1699, 1,182 Streltsy were executed and 601 were whipped, branded with irons or sent into exile. The investigation and executions continued up until 1707.

The paranoid uncle 

Joseph Stalin, the infamous dictator of the Soviet Union (or ‘Uncle Joe’ as he was nicknamed by FDR)  had the blood of between six to nine million people directly on his hands, with the possibility of tens of millions more following in quick succession. Between the summer of 1936 and 1938, Stalin’s regime summarily executed over 750,000 Soviet citizens without trial. In the same period, more than a million Soviet citizens were sent to the labor camps of the Gulag, and many would not return.  Stalin also engineered two forced famines (1921-23) and the infamous Ukrainian Holodomor [Ukrainian for ‘death hunger’] of 1932-33, in which between 8 and 10 million Ukrainians died.

In 1951 Nikita Khrushchev and Anastas Mikoyan, members of Stalin’s inner circle, were his guests at the Black Sea mansion of Novy Afon. One evening, Stalin walked out of his vacation home and addressed Khrushchev: “I’m a rotten person. I don’t trust anybody. I don’t even trust myself.” As Khrushchev recalled in his 1970 memoirs: Stalin “instilled in … us all the suspicion that we were all surrounded by enemies.” The destructive influence of Stalin’s paranoia on generations of Russians, especially on members of the KGB, needs to be factored into any consideration of what motivates Vladimir Putin’s worldview and strategies.

Non-Russian paranoia

Iraq’s dictator Saddam Hussein once told a guest: “I know that there are scores of people plotting to kill me, and this is not difficult to understand. After all, did we not seize power by plotting against our predecessors? However, I am far cleverer than they are. I know that they are conspiring to kill me long before they actually start planning to do so. This enables me to get them before they have the faintest chance of striking at me.”  This striking vignette reveals something about how the leadership of Russia views the West, NATO and Ukraine, and why Putin has engaged in what is for him a pre-emptive strike against Ukraine.

Karl Marx’s take on Russian world domination

In a speech delivered in London on 22 January 1867, Karl Marx stated that Russia’s “methods, its tactics, its manoeuvers may change, but the polar star of its policy – world domination – is a fixed star.” Marx spoke of pre-Communist Russia at that time. Years later, the Marxist-Leninist doctrine of world revolution as a historical necessity added fuel to the fire of this political dynamic during the 20th century.

The sword, the shield and Alexander Nevsky

The symbolic icon of the KGB (Russia’s former equivalent to the American CIA) was a sword and a shield – the shield to defend the revolution, and the sword to smite its foes.

Kyiven Prince Alexander Nevsky (one of the historical founders of ancient Russia) traditionally made a declaration in 1242 A.D. which sums up Russian perspectives on how it sees the West as an existential threat: “Those who come to us in peace will be welcome as guests. But those who come to us with a sword in hand will die with that very sword!”

Emperor Alexander III (the father of Russia’s last tsar, Nicholas II) used to say that Russia has only two allies – the army and the navy.

Maxim Litvinov, former Soviet Ambassador to the USA (1941-43) noted that, from his perspective, the root cause of the clash between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. is “the ideological conception prevailing here [in Moscow] that conflict between the Communist and capitalist worlds is inevitable.” In “Soviet Foreign Policy: Mental Alienation or Universal Revolution,” John Hodgson agrees.

Dr. Robert E. Berls Jr., doyen analyst of Russian strategic studies, has noted that many believe that “Russia will never abandon its vision of itself as a great power and must strive to attain this status . . . Russia cannot survive other than as a great power . . . A conflict with the West as inevitable because neither side is willing to compromise. Although many Russians view some elements of the West as a model to be emulated, they consider that the West remains a threat to Russia.”

Vladislav Surkov, a former ideological advisor to President Putin . . . has stated that Russia has abandoned its centuries-long hope of integrating with the West and is bracing for “100 years of geopolitical solitude.” This “solitude” does not mean complete isolation, but it does mean that Russia’s openness to the West will be limited in the future.

According to Michael Kimmage and Liana Fix of the German Marshall Fund, a Washington, D.C.-based research organization, “Putin has begun exploring coercive options beyond the annexation of Crimea and occupation of the Donbass, neither of which has given him what he wants . . .  A minimal objective would be to topple the Ukrainian government . . . and to install a puppet leader. A more ambitious objective would be to divide the country in two, with the line between Russia and a rump Ukrainian state one of Putin's choosing. The most expansive goal would be to conquer Ukraine entirely and then either to occupy it or to demand that its independence be negotiated on Putin's terms.”

The dying of the light?

In Tolkein’s The Two Towers, Théoden’s delivers a sobering soliloquy before the Battle of Helm’s Deep: “The days have gone down in the West, behind the hills, into shadow. How did it come to this?”

In the days of Hitler, the West was asleep at the wheel. Chamberlain’s indecisive stutter greeted the Nazi belligerent annexation of Czech Sudetenland, where more than three million people (including many ethnic Germans) lived. Most of Europe applauded the Munich Agreement, believing that this was the best chance to prevent a major war on the European Continent. Hitler announced that this was his last territorial claim in Europe. Europe’s enabling of Hitler actually opened the door to a full-blown WWII.

A question needs to be asked: Is the West ready and willing to stop Putin by responding militarily and check-mating Russia’s expansion westward, its Drang nach Westen (‘push to the west’), before it becomes unstoppable? We seem to be living in days which have strong parallels to those just prior to WWII, days when the Berlin Wall still stood unblinking, when Russia still stretched its gnarled hand across Eastern Europe. Could we be witnessing the rise of an evil manifestation – something like unto what Daniel the prophet described as ‘the fourth beast’ – “a fourth beast, dreadful and terrible, and extremely strong; and it had large iron teeth” (Daniel 7:7).  It bears remembering that Russia – Putin’s ‘Third Rome’ – is, historically speaking, a modern flowering of one aspect of the revived Roman Empire.

But rather than recognizing the immediacy of the threat, many in the West are responding with agonizing slowness. A spiritual narcissism is revealing itself with questions like: how would the spread of hostilities affect Western pocketbooks, or raise the price of gas, or affect inflation. But would such a timid Western response have been sufficient to stop Hitler in his tracks back in the day? And what about the agonies that Ukrainians are facing as they face the Russian juggernaut with Molotov cocktails and anti-tank shoulder-fired rockets? Some are stating that, as long as Russia does not cross into NATO-affiliated countries, there is no need to respond militarily to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Had this sort of response been the reaction to Hitler’s blitzkriegs, WWII would have been decisively lost. Should the West wait until Poland or the Baltic Countries or Hungary are overrun? As long as the West refuses to move toward energy self-sufficiency and balks at keeping up its military deterrent, Russian bullying and military threats will more than win the day.

Putin in his own words

Our next newsletter in a few days’ time will look at Putin’s battle plans in his own words – his Kremlin speeches just prior to the Ukraine invasion on February 21 and 24, 2022. Stay tuned!

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

Donations can also be made on-line (by PayPal) through: www.davidstent.org

Remember the days of old – war and false flags in the Bible

“Remember the days of old. Consider the years of all generations. Ask your father and he will inform you – your elders, and they will tell you. When the Most High gave the nations their inheritance, when He separated the sons of mankind, He set the boundaries of the peoples according to the number of the sons of Israel. For YHVH’s portion is His people; Jacob is the allotment of His inheritance” (Deuteronomy 32:7-9).

The Scriptures place great stress on the importance of remembering. Remembering can be a holy act.

On the other hand, not remembering can be a dangerous act:

Rabbi Nachman of Breslov once said that “Forgetfulness leads to exile, but remembering is the key to redemption.” The German philosopher G.W. Hegel sums it up: “What experience and history teach is this – that nations and governments have never learned anything from history, or acted upon any lessons they might have drawn from it” (Georg Wilhelm Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of History, 1832). The philosopher George Santayana adds a postscript, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” (The Life of Reason, vol. one, 1905). 

Jephthah – a Special Operations Forces judge

The ninth judge of Israel, Jephthah, was the illegitimate offspring of Gideon and an unnamed prostitute (Judges 11:1). Rejected by Gideon’s legitimate sons, he fled to the other side of the Jordan River, residing in a rough neighborhood, the Land of Tov (Judges 11:3; 2 Samuel 10:6-8; 1 Maccabees 5:13). When the Jews of neighboring Gilead faced a mortal threat from the hateful sons of Ammon, they turned to Jephthah, calling on his military prowess to deliver the very people who had rejected him. Accepting the request, Jephthah went to parlay with the Ammonites – an ancient Middle Eastern kind of ‘peace talks’ (Judges 11:12-15). The Book of Judges allows us to eavesdrop on their secret negotiations:

Even back in biblical days, enemies of Israel turned to false narratives in their propagandistic clashes against the Jewish people. With a battle royal on the horizon if peace talks failed, Ammon falsely accused Israel of invading and occupying Ammonite lands. Jephthah contradicted their deceitful narrative, reaching back 300 years to supportive historical facts as well as to God’s perspective on it all. Negotiations broke down and the battle was joined. In the words of Eli Wallach’s (Tuco) ad-lib in Sergio Leone’s ‘The Good, the Bad and the Ugly,’ “When you have to shoot, shoot. Don’t talk!”

Jephthah’s appeal to history as the region tottered on the edge of the cliff can help as we consider modern parallels.

Schindler’s other list

Steven Spielberg’s 1994 Academy Award winning movie ‘Schindler’s List’ brought the tragedy of the Holocaust home to millions of viewers in a shockingly personal way. But, as Hollywood often does, it glossed over a few unsavory aspects of Oskar Schindler’s earlier life. Schindler had once served as a Nazi spy in the Nazi Abwehr’s (German military intelligence) Command Unit VIII under a Major Plathe. One of his most important tasks was to procure Polish uniforms to be used in a false flag attack on August 31, 1939 which would give Hitler a pretext – a casus belli – to justify his invasion of Poland (code-named Fall Weiß - ‘White Plan’) and to kick off World War II the next morning. Adolf Hitler had told his generals on August 22: “I will provide a propagandistic casus belli. Its credibility doesn't matter. The victor will not be asked whether he told the truth.” 

Reinhard Heydrich (one of the chief architects of the Holocaust) and Heinrich Müller, (chief of the Gestapo secret police), supervised and managed Operation Himmler, an assortment of false flag attacks drawn up by Heinrich Himmler (Chief of the SS). Other false flag attacks on that night were:

The specific target in this sub-operation (Aktion ‘Großmutter gestorben’ – Operation ‘Grandmother has died’) was a Nazi attack on a German radio station tower (Sender Gleiwitz) in Gleiwitz, Upper Silesia (then under German control). On the night of August 31, 1939 a small group of Nazi operatives dressed in Polish uniforms seized the Gleiwitz station and broadcast a short anti-German message in Polish. Millions of Germans were horrified to hear this radio transmission and were ready to stand with Hitler against Poland. The attack and the broadcast were made to look like the work of Polish anti-German saboteurs.

Just before the temporary seizing of the radio tower, the Gestapo had arrested and executed Franciszek Honiok, a 43-year-old unmarried Upper Silesian Catholic farmer who sympathized with the Poles. They dressed him to look like a saboteur, injected and rendered him unconscious, and then shot him, leaving his corpse at the scene to give the impression that he had been killed attacking the station. Several prisoners from the Dachau concentration camp were also drugged and shot on site, their faces disfigured to make identification impossible.

In his address before the German Reichstag on September 1, 1939, Hitler declared: “This night for the first time Polish regular soldiers fired on our territory. Since 5.45 A.M. we have been returning the fire, and from now on bombs will be met by bombs.”

Hitler and Nazi media for months had falsely accused Polish authorities of organizing and tolerating violent ethnic cleansing of ethnic Germans living in Poland. At his Reichstag address, he repeated these false charges, mentioning the 21 false flag attacks as his reason for invading Poland:

Let him who is without sin . . .

False flag operations have been proposed and/or carried out by many other countries throughout history, even by Western Powers. Here are two examples of many available:

How do you say ‘false flag’ in Russian?

The Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Valeriy Zaluzhnyi sent out a communique a few days ago warning Ukrainians that intelligence sources have picked up information about false flag operations set in place by Russian special forces and political proxies in the regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, areas which broke away from Ukraine in a Russian-orchestrated operation back in 2014. He specifically talked about the laying of land mines in public spaces, on train tracks and bus routes in Donetsk and Luhansk, where Russian citizens (former Ukrainians) live. The goal would be is to cause civilian casualties which could then be used by Russia as a pretext to invade Ukraine – the same modus operandi as Hitler and Himmler.

Also in the past few days, the Commander of the Ukrainian Joint Forces Operation Oleksandr Pavliuk appealed to the Ukrainian people, reporting that there is a high probability of false flag terrorist acts organized by Russia in Donbas: “According to our intelligence, there is a high probability of terrorist acts aimed at killing civilians and accusing the Ukrainian military of doing so. Unfortunately, we are unable to verify this information or influence it, so I appeal to all of you in the hope that exposing these possible plans will save lives.”

Shelling, sniping, mortar attacks and car bombs have begun to shake the ground near the tense dividing line between Ukraine and those territories seized by Russia in 2014. Break-away leaders of the Ukrainian-Russian client states are threatening to call upon Russia to defend them from supposed Ukrainian attacks. Most people in the world are not sufficiently aware of recent history to be on the outlook for the Russian false flag dynamic as a pretext for invasion of Ukraine on the radar.

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

Donations can also be made on-line (by PayPal) through: www.davidstent.org

Communism at the Gates of Europe

Last Days dreams and prophetic words are part of God’s upcoming oracular scenario. Joel tells us on the highest authority that the day is coming when YHVH will pour out His Spirit on all flesh: the sons and daughters of Israel will prophesy, old Jewish men will dream dreams, and young Hebrew men will see visions (see Joel 2:28).

Thirty-five years ago a minister friend, now with the Lord, shared a three-part prophetic riddle from God concerning global geopolitics. He was told that “Communism would become Commu-wasm” – that Communism would soon become ‘a thing of the past.’ European Communism’s collapse into ‘Commu-wasm’ truly took the U.S. Intelligence community by complete surprise. 

The God of Jacob had many purposes connected to the collapse of the Communist empire. One exceptional purpose involved the release of Soviet Jews, imprisoned for just over 70 years in a hostile country. They would now be free to come home to Israel, in a foreshadowing of Jeremiah 16:14-15.

The conclusion of the ‘riddle’ was this: Communism would be resuscitated and again become a political system of world revolution and domination – the dictatorship of the proletariat. It would then join up with a worldwide jihadi Islamist movement, but the Islamist part would be the stronger of the two. This blended movement would be horrendously evil.

This newsletter will examine the history of the people-groups of the Ukraine, including some of the terrible moments in recent history connected both to the Cossacks, the Soviet Union, the Nazis and recent military clashes between Ukraine and Russia. What do these things portend for the immediate future?

Mixing it up

A quick look at the origins of Ukrainian history shows that over the years a mix of many ethnic groups passed through and/or settled in that area, including Cimmerians, Scythians, Taurians, Sarmatians, Roxolani, Alans, Iranian tribes, Goths, Huns, Volga Bulgars, Avars, Magyars, Pechenegs, Torks, Cumans and Mongols. This region saw the ebb and flow of many wanderers, adventurers and marauders. By the seventeenth-century, the ethnicities known as the East Slavs had settled into four distinct groupings: the Ukrainians, the Belarusians, the Rusyns (Carpatho-Rusins), and the Russians, each with their own national-cultural identity and language.

The roots of Rus

The word ‘Rus’ is embedded in the names of two modern countries – Belarus and Russia. It may surprise some, however, to discover that the origins of this word ‘Rus’ are connected not with the Slavic world but with Swedish Vikings, also known as the Varangians. Traders, slavers and pirates originally from the Uppland province in the Stockholm archipelago, traveled far and wide during the 700’s-900’s A.D. in search of adventure, loot and conquest. They attacked and later settled in northern France (Normandy), raided the Frisians and sailed up the Seine, Loire, Rhine, Dnieper and Volga rivers, causing great devastation and plundering monasteries as well.

The Old Norse word ‘róðr’ refers to a crew of men who row with oars. The Swedish town Roslagen derives its name from that root word. Early Rus settlements included the northwestern Russian town of Staraya Ladoga near Finland. An archeological talisman with the face of Odin (Óðinn), the Norse god of war was discovered there from circa A.D. 750. The Frankish Annals of St. Bertin mention a group of Rhos Norsemen visiting Constantinople around 838.  

The original Kyiv region in central Ukraine was at that time populated by the Polianii, a tribe of Iranian origin. Close by were the Finnish Chuds and some Eastern Slavic tribes (the Drevlians and Severians).   All had been conquered by and paid tribute to the Varangians or the Turkic Khazars. In 862, there was a rebellion  against the Varangians who were ruling from in the area of Novgorod, southeast of modern Saint Petersburg in Russia. After a period of civil war, the Varangians (known also as the Rus) returned to rule over these tribes. According to the ancient Ukrainian Primary Chronicle: “They accordingly went overseas to the Varangian Rus. … The Chuds, the Slavs, the Krivichii and the Ves then spoke to the Rus. They thus selected three brothers with their kinfolk, who took with them all the Rus and migrated.”

These three Viking brothers (Rurik, Sineus and Truvor) established themselves in Novgorod, Beloozero (modern Belozersk), and Izborsk. When the latter two brothers died,  Rurik became the sole ruler of the territory and the progenitor of the Rurik Dynasty. After some time, the narrative mentions that two of Rurik's men, Askold and Dir, asked him for permission to go to Constantinople (Tsargrad). On their way south, they discovered “a small city on a hill” named Kyiv (according to ancient sources). They captured the town and the surrounding country from the Khazars, populated the region with more Varangian, and “established their dominion over the country of the Polianii.”

By 882, Rurik's successor, Oleg of Novgorod, moved to Kyiv and founded the state of Rus. What we now think of as the ‘medieval Russian kings’ were actually the Rus – Swedish Vikings who founded a kingdom – not in Moscow but in Novgorod and then in Kyiv – which over the centuries slowly morphed into the Russian Empire

Moscow at that time was an insignificant trading post, mentioned for the first time in historical records in 1147. The year 1303 saw the beginning of the Grand Duchy of Moscow, while in 1547 Ivan IV Vasilyevich (Ivan the Terrible) was the first Moscow ruler to declare himself ‘Tsar (Emperor) of all Russia.’

The rise and fall of Rus

Ukrainian Rus was founded in 882, and in 988 it adopted Greek Orthodox Christianity. From the 900’s to the 1000’s Rus was the largest and most powerful state in Europe. But mortally wounded by internecine quarrels and Mongol invasions (the Golden Horde), Rus was conquered and incorporated, first into the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and eventually into the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (1569). An autonomous Cossack Hetmanate existed in Ukraine between 1654 and 1764, after a successful uprising against Polish occupiers championed by Bohdan Khmelnystky (also responsible for the massacre of between 40,000 and 100,000 Ukrainian Jews). This Cossack region remained autonomous, though under Russian protection, until crushed by Catherine the Great in 1764.

During the latter part of the 1700’s, most of Ukraine was conquered by the Russian Empire. In 1783, Empress Catherine II signed the Manifesto for the Acceptance of the Crimean Peninsula, acknowledging that Russian troops already occupied Crimea. When czarist Russia collapsed in 1917, Ukraine enjoyed a three year independence (1917-20), but was soon reconquered by a brutal Soviet regime that engineered two forced famines (1921-23) and the infamous Holodomor [Ukrainian for ‘death hunger’] of 1932-33, in which between 8 and 10 million Ukrainians died.

The first Soviet census in 1926 showed that in all territories of eastern Ukraine, including those that are now contested by Putin, ethnic Ukrainians far outnumbered ethnic Russians. In the 1930’s the demographic devastation wrought by Stalin’s agricultural genocide (up to ten million Ukrainians died in the ‘Holodomor’ enforced famine) drastically lowered the percentage of native Ukrainians.  Stalin then imported millions of Russians and other Soviet citizens to help repopulate the coal- and iron-ore-rich east, altering the demography of eastern Ukraine.

In World War II, Nazi forces murdered over 2.5 million Jewish Ukrainians, most famous of which were the murder-ravine of Babyn Yar (33,771 Jews slaughtered), and the October 1941 Odessa Massacre of more than 50,000 Jews.

The Chernobyl nuclear reactor explosion-meltdown on April 26, 1986 in southern Ukraine resulted in “the largest anthropogenic disaster in the history of mankind.”  The National Research Centre for Radiation Medicine (NRCRM) based in Kyiv, Ukraine, estimates that three million Ukrainian citizens suffered radiation damage, while in Belarus around 800,000 people were registered as being affected by radiation following the disaster.

Independence for Ukraine in the modern era was achieved in 1991 with the dissolution of the USSR.

Russian suppression of Ukrainian language and culture

Under Catherine the Great’s rule, Imperial Tsarist Russia tried to crush Ukraine’s and Crimea’s national, cultural and linguistic identities. Three modern terms describe these processes: cultural genocide; ethnocide; linguicide. These are defined as acts and measures undertaken to destroy nations’ or ethnic groups’ culture through spiritual, national, and cultural destruction; the destruction of culture while keeping the people alive; the eradication of a people’s language. It is sobering to note that Stalin took these measures against the Jewish people during his reign. Imperial Russian, Polish, Austrian and Communist authorities directed similar attacks against Ukrainians. These included 60 prohibitions against the use of Ukrainian language and culture in 337 years of foreign rule. Modern Ukraine is attempting to overcome the negative legacy of these policies and to undo the centuries of repression. Here are a handful of examples:

1720 –  Tsar Peter I bans book printing in the Ukrainian language
1763 – Empress Catherine II bans teaching Ukrainian in the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy

1863 – Tsar Alexander II prohibits Ukrainian (‘Little Russian’) literature: “A separate Little Russian language has never existed, does not exist and cannot exist”
1876 – Tsar Alexander II bans Ukrainian theatrical performances and sheet music

1881 – Tsar Alexander II bans Ukrainian in public schools and in church sermons
1884 – Tsar Alexander III bans all Ukrainian theatrical performances
1888 – Tsar Alexander III bans Ukrainian in all official institutions and the baptizing of people with Ukrainian names
1895 – Tsar Nicholas II prohibits publishing children’s books in Ukrainian

1910 – Tsar Nicholas II closes all Ukrainian cultural associations, publishing houses

1914 – Tsar Nicholas II bans celebrating prominent Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko’s 100th birthday; bans Ukrainian press

1922 – USSR. The Central Committee of the Communist Party declares that two cultures are fighting in Ukraine – the urban (Russian) and the village (Ukrainian) cultures, in which the Russian must win

1933 – Stalin terminates Ukrainization.
1984 – USSR. Russian language teachers receive 15% salary raise over Ukrainian language teachers

In light of this anti-Ukrainian mindset demonstrated throughout history by Russian tsars and commissars, consider the statement of Vladimir Putin, President of the Russian Federation, when he addressed the Kremlin on March 18, 2014 concerning the ‘unshakeable brotherhood between the Russian and Ukrainian people’: “We are not simply close neighbors but, as I have said many times already, we are one people . . .  We cannot live without each other.”

A fitting German proverb comes to mind: “Und willst Du nicht mein Bruder sein, so schlag' ich Dir den Schädel ein” (‘If you won’t be my brother, I’ll beat your skull in’). 

An iron curtain has descended

In a post-WWII address delivered by former UK PM Winston Churchill at Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri on Tuesday, March 5, 1946, the British bulldog noted:

Whereas Churchill was still able to remember better days in that speech (“I have a strong admiration and regards for the valiant Russian people and for my wartime comrade, Marshal Stalin”), times had changed and alliances were shifting. The Cold War officially began with the announcement  of the Truman Doctrine on March 12, 1947, its primary goal being the containing of Soviet revolutionary geopolitical expansion. The Cold War ended on December 26, 1991 with the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

In the West, the collapse of the Communist Empire was greeted with shouts of jubilation. Roger Waters, formerly of Pink Floyd, led 350,000 fans in a Potsdamer Platz rock concert based on their LP “The Wall.” Deutsche Welle declared that this was a historically significant event: “The crowd at the Potsdamer Platz and those watching at home weren't just united by a huge rock concert.  Together, once again, they'd toppled the Berlin Wall.”

But to many Communist leaders, it was not a time to laugh and to dance, but a time to weep and to mourn: they were watching the uprooting of all they had planted (Ecclesiastes 3:2-4). In his Annual Address to the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation at the Kremlin on April 25, 2005, president Putin remarked:

Breaking your brother’s leg

For a significant percentage of Russians, to this day there remains a festering open wound when remembering the collapse of the Soviet Union. Many suffered humiliation and poverty, but many in the prosperous West crowed triumphantly about the collapse of their Russian communist enemies. The Germans have a word for it – schadenfreude, a response of joy at other people’s misfortunes.

For Putin, then a KGB officer based in East Germany, this was a personal defeat, and he suffered the same misery as his compatriots. In a December 12, 2021 excerpt from an upcoming film by Russian broadcaster Channel One, dubbed ‘Russia. Recent History.,’ President Putin revealed that just after the collapse of the Soviet Union he occasionally moonlighted as a taxi driver to boost his income: “Sometimes I had to earn extra money. I mean, earn extra money by car, as a private driver. It's unpleasant to talk about to be honest but, unfortunately, that was the case.” To Putin, the collapse of the Soviet Union was “the collapse of historical Russia under the name of the Soviet Union”

As Putin watched continuing developments, NATO relentlessly expanded eastward:

In 2021 NATO officially recognized three new aspiring members – Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, and Ukraine. It would not be surprising that this former 16 year veteran KGB foreign intelligence officer would not be pleased at such a development.

Of course, at the same time Russia was making its own unilateral moves involving military muscle:

Putin’s childhood may reveal some clues about his personality which could have a decisive effect on how he views threats and challenges. The Jewish high-school schoolteacher who taught the German language to Putin, Vera Gurevich, noted that when a 14-year-old Putin broke one of his classmate’s legs, he said at the time that some people  “only understand force.”

In a 2015 interview, Gurevich was asked what she saw as the essential element of Putin’s personality. She said this: “If people hurt him . . . he reacted immediately, like a cat . . . He would fight like a cat – suddenly – with his arms and legs and teeth.”

Addressing the annual Valdai Club conference on October 23, 2015, Putin explained his decision to confront ISIS militarily. “In a classic Putin turn of phrase the Russian president said he had learned on the streets of his home town of Leningrad 50 years ago that ‘when a fight is inevitable, you have to hit first.’”

Red lines for Red Russia

Just before NATO’s 2008 summit, Putin warned that steps to bring Ukraine into the NATO alliance “would be a hostile act toward Russia.”  A few months later, Russia invaded Georgia.

In Putin’s March 2014 address to the State Duma he said:

In December 2021 Fyodor Lukyanov, editor-in-chief of Russia in Global Affairs and chairman of the Presidium of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, noted that “the issue is not so much Ukraine but the underlying principle: if a military alliance seeks to expand, it has to consider the interests of those who are opposed . . . That’s the red line, and, if crossed, Russia will respond.”

Putin has made it one of his historical missions to stop Western advances into what he believes are Russia’s regions of influence. Any NATO moves towards bringing Ukraine or Georgia into alliance with the West (officially or surreptitiously) are considered the crossing of a red line. 

Rolling back the changes

President Putin stressed in his speech to the Munich Conference on Security Policy (February 10, 2007): “I consider that the unipolar model is not only unacceptable but also impossible in today’s world  . . . One state and, of course, first and foremost the United States, has overstepped its national borders in every way.”

Putin is looking to roll back all European developments which have occurred since the fall of the Berlin Wall. He is championing the re-establishment of Russia as a Great Power whose perspective and interests must be honored – a decisive new role for Russia as the nation casting the deciding or blocking ballot regarding political realities.  These demands, called the Putin Doctrine, include:

NATO would be required to cease all further expansion to the east, and to not help countries (such as Ukraine) that are presently outside the alliance. NATO and the USA would have to severely limit training and exercises in areas that Moscow prohibits, and refrain from deploying nuclear weapons anywhere in Europe. As a result, of course, all Eastern European countries that joined NATO after 1997 would then be virtually defenseless, forced to defer to Russian wishes or suffer the consequences.

Putin’s moves have triggered a renewed great-power rivalry that many analysts say will dominate international relations in the decades ahead. This conflict marks a clear shift in the global security environment – from a unipolar period of U.S. dominance to one defined by renewed competition between great powers. Russia’s present aggression in Ukraine has triggered the greatest security crisis in Europe since the Cold War.  It is worth remembering that Russia’s recent seizure of Crimea in eastern Ukraine was the first time since World War II that a European state annexed the territory of another state. By seizing Crimea, Russia has solidified its control on the Black Sea. It can project more power into the Mediterranean, Middle East, and North Africa.

From shame to vengeance – Make Russia great again!

There is an interesting philosophical parallel between Putin’s goals and the language of former President Donald Trump’s famous campaign slogan ‘Make America Great Again!’ “It was always Putin’s goal to restore Russia to the status of a great power in northern Eurasia,” writes Gerard Toal, an international affairs professor at Virginia Tech, in his book Near Abroad. “The end goal was not to re-create the Soviet Union but to make Russia great again.”

In 1994 former U.S. National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski described Ukraine as a strategic lynchpin: “It cannot be stressed strongly enough that without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be an empire, but with Ukraine suborned and then subordinated, Russia automatically becomes an empire.”

Playing poker with the Godfather

In a recent address on July 20, 2021 titled ‘On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians,’ Putin made threats which would do honor to Francis Ford Coppola’s Godfather:

In his article ‘What the West gets wrong about Putin,’ Harald Malmgren (a geopolitical strategist, negotiator and former aide to Presidents John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Gerald Ford) describes a 1992 conversation he had with Vladimir Putin when the latter was serving as head of the Committee for External Relations under St. Petersburg Mayor Anatoly Sobchak.  Putin shared with Malmgren his own unique perspective on how to solve disputes between sovereign nations:

The Rand Corporation released a scholarly article in 2020 dealing with Russia’s Mafioso tactics, titled ‘Russia's Hostile Measures: Combating Russian Gray Zone Aggression Against NATO in the Contact, Blunt, and Surge Layers of Competition.’

The present ‘Mexican standoff’ between Russia and the West is Putin’s calculated poker bluff, an elegantly prepared ‘dinner party’ meant to resolve the dispute in his favor. Yet, as former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger has stated, “Putin should come to realize that, whatever his grievances, a policy of military impositions would produce another Cold War.”

Here are some comments from respected analysts of the situation:

War games

After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, newly independent Ukraine inherited the third largest nuclear stockpile in the world. The country possessed 130 ICBMs with six warheads each, 46 ICBMs with ten warheads apiece, as well as 33 heavy bombers, totaling approximately 1,700 warheads – all on Ukrainian territory. Ukraine had physical control of the weapons, but operational control was dependent on Russian-controlled command and control systems. In 1992, Ukraine agreed to voluntarily remove over 3,000 tactical nuclear weapons. Following the signing of the 1994 Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances  with the U.S., the U.K., and Russia, Ukraine agreed to destroy the rest of its nuclear weapons, and to join the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. By 1996, all remaining Soviet-era strategic warheads had been transferred to Russia.

Ukraine’s post-2014 foreign policy was based on the security guarantees that there would be a Western front united against Russia, efficacious sanctions as a means of neutralizing Moscow, and a swift NATO membership for Ukraine. These expectations have failed to materialize.

Peter Pomerantsev, Senior Fellow at SNF Agora Institute, Johns Hopkins University, points out some awkward overreach in Russia’s strategic thinking:

Tatyana Stanovaya, the founder of the political analysis project R.Politik and a nonresident scholar at the Carnegie Moscow Center, brings this striking perspective:

On April 8, 2021 discussing a possible Ukrainian military offensive to recover occupied Donbass (a region in eastern Ukraine), Deputy Head of the Russian Presidential Administration Dmitry Kozak, declared, “I believe, and there are already such assessments – I support those assessments that exist inside Ukraine, that the beginning of hostilities is the beginning of the end of Ukraine. This is a crossbow – a shot not in the leg, but in the temple.” Kozak added that Ukraine’s entry into NATO would also lead to the collapse of Ukraine.

Some analysts fear that the United States will lose credibility around the world if it sidesteps the blunting of Russian aggression, especially after its recent stumbling retreat from Afghanistan. There are concerns that this will embolden U.S. rivals. Matthew Kroening, of the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, suggests that a Chinese invasion of Taiwan or Iranian development of nuclear weapons are two possible blowback scenarios here.

Military analysts have set out what the coming order of battle might look like. Russia’s expanding military footprint includes T-80U main battle tanks, self-propelled howitzers, infantry fighting vehicles, multiple launch rocket systems (MLRSs), heavy flamethrowers, short-range ballistic missile systems (SRBMs), towed artillery, surface-to-air missiles (SAMs), and support vehicles.

Russian military forces – including elements of the 41st Combined Field Army and 144th Guards Motorized Rifle Division – would outmatch Ukrainian conventional forces and overrun Kiev in a matter of hours. Russian army personnel and equipment are garrisoned 160 miles north of the border, well within striking distance of Ukraine. Military analysts note that the massing over one hundred and seventy thousand troops on the Ukrainian border indicates that Putin has no intention of turning his troops around unless Russian demands are accepted.

Russia’s main actions in Ukraine up to this point have involved irregular warfare – clandestine support to irregulars, cyber warfare, and a heavy emphasis on special operations forces and intelligence units. Ukraine’s projected response to a regular military invasion would end up being the time-honored tactics of guerilla warfare fighting against a larger conventional force. In the 1980’s the Russian bear was brought to its knees through such tactics in Afghanistan.

Both the United States and European allies are unlikely to engage Russia directly over Ukraine. Indeed, US forces are at present only symbolic, and NATO forces are not able to prevent a Russian blitzkrieg. Ukraine’s status as a non-NATO member means that the alliance is not obligated to respond militarily to a Russian invasion of Ukraine. Threatened deterrence by crippling sanctions from the West would probably not be supported by Germany and Austria, who have clearly noted their desire to remain neutral in a war with Russia (the stone-faced supplier of much of their natural gas). Caught in a power struggle between major adversaries, the Ukrainian people find themselves in an extremely shaky predicament.

Golden eagles and tourist brochures

Putin presents a public image of himself to the Russian people as a tsar-like figure. It seems that he wants the history books to describe him as the Great Unifier of Russian lands and as the hegemon of the Russian world. In the massive and opulent palace which he has built on the Black Sea, Putin has placed statues of gold-plated double-headed eagles (a classic Imperial Russian symbol) throughout the structure.

Vladislav Surkov was once known as Putin’s Rasputin, the Grey Cardinal of the Kremlin or the Puppet Master. He was the Kremlin’s main ideologist and the mastermind of Putin’s current Ukraine policy. A few days after retiring from government service, he gave an interview on February 26, 2020:

Enemy at the Gates

Joshua Yaffa, Moscow correspondent for The New Yorker, sums up the current imbroglio: “Tens of millions of Ukrainians have become the unwitting hostages in Putin’s attempt to wrest a better deal.”

Mary Elise Sarotte, a historian and professor at Johns Hopkins University, and the author of ‘Not One Inch: America, Russia, and the Making of Post-Cold War Stalemate’ confesses: “There’s a non-insignificant chance we could see, in 2022, a massive European land war that is a result, at least in part, of the way Russia believes the West handled the end of the Cold War.”

Olivia Ward, former Toronto Star foreign affairs reporter, concludes: “Ukraine . . . has found itself between Eurasia and the EU. That’s where the metaphor ‘The Gates of Europe’ comes from . . . Ukraine . . . is at the crossroads of east and west.”

In the famous words of Karl Marx in his Introduction to ‘The Communist Manifesto:’ “A spectre is haunting Europe – the spectre of communism.” Indeed. A reborn communism is preparing its armies to move in the direction of ‘The Gates of Europe.’

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

Donations can also be made on-line (by PayPal) through: www.davidstent.org

Lessons from Nazi history

In a memorable scene in Steven Spielberg’s film Schindler’s List, a group of Jewish men in the Polish suburb of Kraków-Płaszów huddle around an old oil barrel, warming their hands over burning scrap wood. One of them confidently proclaims, “There’s nowhere down from here. This is it! This is the bottom. The ghetto is liberty!” This fellow had certainly not succumbed to despair; he felt that there was nowhere to go but up. But his appalling misreading of the situation would soon become poignantly clear.

A retrospective look at some of the Nazi Reich’s principles and strategies – hammered out by Adolf Hitler, Joseph Goebbels and Heinrich Himmler – might deepen our understanding of how totalitarian rule can invade and absorb a whole society. These lessons have stunning relevance for our world as we stumble through this present darkness, and not yet at the bottom. Four areas will be considered: propaganda, secrecy, censorship, and obedience. The Nazi police state’s use of fear and punishment to manipulate its citizens will also be evaluated. 

Propaganda – the engineering of consent

Edward Bernays, born in 1891 to a Viennese Jewish family, was an American pioneer in the field of propaganda (which he renamed ‘public relations’). Known as “the father of public relations” Bernays was named one of the 100 most influential Americans of the 20th century by Life magazine. He helped to consolidate a marriage between theories of mass psychology and the goals of politicians and financial magnates. In his influential book Propaganda (published in 1928), Bernays sums up:

Bernays developed an approach dubbed “the engineering of consent” – providing leaders with the means to “control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing about it.” He developed highly successful ad campaigns for American Tobacco Company, Calvin Coolidge, Cartier, CBS, General Electric, Proctor & Gamble, United Fruit, etc. One of Bernays’ propaganda methods included the instilling of fear through mass media. Another tenet was to convince people that they want/need things that they do not actually need.

Bernays never imagined that Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi Minister overseeing the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda (Reichsministerium für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda), would use Bernays’ techniques to catalyze the crushing and murder of Europe’s Jews. Bernays’ books featured prominently on Goebbels’ bookshelves.

Bernays’ propaganda methods were in fact a generic weapon to mold public opinion in any number of directions, whether ethical or not. Some theologians define witchcraft as the use of manipulative techniques to exercise control, influence behavior and consolidate power over the targeted victim. Recognizable spiritual similarities between propaganda and witchcraft present themselves for our consideration.

Coercion and fuzzy thinking

In Nicholas O'Shaughnessy’s Selling Hitler: Propaganda and the Nazi Brand, he notes that “Hitler’s great insight, which makes him unique among historical actors, was the recognition that violence and propaganda could and should be an integrated phenomenon.”

When propaganda goals are backed up by the coercive power of the state, it is prudent to remember that Nazi methods are not always confined to dead Nazis. As English writer, philosopher and lay theologian G. K. Chesterton once said: “This is the essential mark of tyranny: that it is always new. Tyranny always enters by the unguarded gate. All tyrannies are new tyrannies . . . Remember that newspapers are popular organs that may be turned against the people. Whatever the new tyrant is, he will not wear the exact uniform of the old tyrant.”

Hitler’s chief architect, Albert Speer, told the Nuremberg Tribunal “that what distinguished the Third Reich from all previous dictatorships was its use of all the means of communication . . . to deprive its objects of the power of independent thought.” The strong effect of constant media bombardment was utilized by Goebbels in a technique known as ‘repeated exposure effect’ or ‘illusory truth effect.’

Commenting on this dynamic, German author, political commentator and Holocaust survivor Hannah Arendt notes:

The weapon of fear

Nazi propaganda aimed to exploit people’s fear of uncertainty and instability. Goebbels’ posters proclaimed ‘Bread and Work’ (touching working-class fear of unemployment), or ‘Mother and Child’ (touching fears about the weakening of the home), or presented demonic-looking Jews or Communists (supposed ‘race-enemies’ of the German people, or political enemies of the Nazis).

The Nazis presented the main political threat as coming from the Left. The tsunami of fear that they catalyzed moved the Germans masses to bolt to the Right. Today the exact opposite can be the case. Some Germans use the fear of the Right in order to catalyze the masses away from positions held by a broad spectrum of people (some who hold conservative views) who also disagree with current epidemiological policies. Can one discern in this development a mirror-image of the Nazi technique? Yet this technique is every bit as dangerous today as was the Hitlerian original.

The recent fostering of a world-wide tidal wave of fear concerning infectious respiratory disease has led to a global panic similar in nature to the fear described in Proverbs 22:13, where a panicking individual envisions a prowling lion pacing the streets of an Israelite town – a nearly impossible occurrence: “The lazy one says, ‘There is a lion outside! I will be killed in the streets!’”

Yet a fact-based analysis of world population deaths during the past handful of years does not validate such a scenario:

Reuters attempted to downplay these numbers by noting that these .76% totals do not differentiate between those who died of a respiratory illness and all other deaths. That is certainly true. But if there were indeed a marked increase in world deaths, those increases would be reflected in the official figures.  No such increase is observable. When such a huge gap presents itself between facts and worldwide media and governmental claims, it would be proper to consider if propaganda is once again at work, revealing its Rasputin-like hand.

The prophet Isaiah speaks in a different time about a different situation, but his principle seems to have particular relevance for these days: “I also will choose their delusions, and will bring their fears upon them” (Isaiah 66:4). The words of Proverbs 3:25 are a comfort in this situation: “Do not be afraid of sudden danger, nor of trouble from the wicked when it comes!”

Security and secrecy

When fear roams the streets, the power of the totalitarian state is quick to come to the rescue with a promise of security. Nazi propaganda in its day stressed that the Reich would safeguard security (sicherheit in German) for its obedient citizens.

The organization tasked with bringing security to German citizens was under the control of Heinrich Himmler and operated as a subdivision of the SS (Schutzstaffel, Protection Squadron). It was known as SD (Sicherheitsdienst des Reichsführers - SS; Security Service of the Reichsführer - SS) and was the Nazi Party intelligence agency. A sister organization to the Gestapo, it took on an increasingly prominent role in Nazi anti-Jewish policies – most infamously, as a key component of the Einsatzgruppen (Nazi murder squads in Ukraine and Russia which targeted Jewish civilians).

Vera Sharav (English link starts at 2:20) a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust, remembers what it was like in those days: “Under the Nazi regime, . . . the Soviet regime and under the Chinese regime, you have a dictatorship that is running the society with fear, constant fear and surveillance.” She adds, “If you deny the human individual the right to think and question and assess and make decisions based on their own judgment and experience, then you are creating robots.”

The OSS (Office of Strategic Services), America’s pre-cursor to the CIA, worked up a psychological profile on Adolf Hitler, describing his perspective on how to run internal state security and his use of the big lie. His primary rules were:

Censorship

Aldous Huxley once noted: “In a democratic state the propagandist will have rivals competing with him for the support of the public. In totalitarian states there is no liberty of expression for writers and no liberty of choice for their readers. There is only one propagandist – the state.”

Goebbels wrote in his diary “The essence of propaganda consists in winning people over to an idea so sincerely, so vitally, that in the end they succumb to it utterly and can never again escape from it.” Both Hitler and Goebbels agreed that, in order to achieve this goal, there must be totalitarian control of the news media. In Mein Kampf Hitler stated, “The function of propaganda is . . . not to weigh and ponder the rights of different people, but exclusively to emphasize the one right which it has set out to argue for. Its task is not to make an objective study of the truth . . . [but] to serve our own right, always and unflinchingly.”

The present state of social media affairs, where Twitter, Facebook et al., engage in ‘politically correct’ censorship and purging of social media pages, indicates society’s serious downward slide into a totalitarian swamp.

Historian and psychologist Jay Y. Gonen describes the Nazi perspective as ‘group narcissism,’ and sees it as one of the most important sources of human aggression: “In a world that is seen through a narcissistic tunnel vision, only oneself or one’s group has any rights.” The principal aim of Nazi propaganda, according historian Neil Gregor, was “to absorb the individual into a mass of like-minded people.”

For the Nazi party, censorship included hiding ‘bad news’ from public ears and eyes. That might mean downplaying Wehrmacht losses at Stalingrad, or keeping the reality of the genocide of the Jewish people away from the German mass media. This was done in three ways:

Addressing high ranking officers in Poznań on October 4, 1943, Himmler, the head of the SD and the SS, said that “Most of you men know what it is like to see 100 corpses side by side, or 500 or 1,000. To have stood fast through this - and except for cases of human weakness - to have stayed decent, that has made us hard. This is an unwritten and never-to-be-written page of glory in our history.  All in all, however, we can say that we have carried out this most difficult of tasks in a spirit of love for our people. And we have suffered no harm to our inner being, our soul, our character.”

Censorship continues to be seen in today’s Western media (including social media organs), in medical publications and in politicians’ declarations, regarding many pertinent facts (including extent of sickness and death, record-keeping of adverse medical effects, efficacy of mandated treatments and ‘preventative measures,’ the necessity for inoculating children and young adults, etc.). One recent example to which we are eye-witnesses, involves the Israeli media who simply refused to report on a recent protest demonstration of over 10,000 people in the Tel Aviv area concerning medical coercion, while simultaneously reporting (on the same day) about four small non-related demonstrations of 20 to 100 people each in other parts of the country.

Obedience and civil rights

One of the first acts of the Nazi regime was to establish an emergency quasi-legal umbrella whose members swore absolute loyalty to Adolf Hitler (bypassing the German Constitution). These were the Volksgerichtshof and the Sondergericht special courts.

In April 1933, Hitler passed anti-Semitic laws, purging Jewish and also Socialist judges, lawyers, and other court officers from their professions. The Academy of German Law and Nazi legal theorists, such as Carl Schmitt, advocated the Nazification of German law, in order to cleanse it of “Jewish influence.”

Many German Christians, especially the Deutsche Christen (a pro-Nazi Christian movement), championed obedience to the now-Nazi government based on their reading of Romans 13:1-5:


Their movement gave birth to the fiercely anti-Semitic ‘Institute for the Study and Elimination of Jewish Influence on German Church Life’ (Instituts zur Erforschung jüdischen Einflusses auf das deutsche kirchliche Leben). This institute was headed by Walter Grundmann, later a Stasi collaborator. It denied Yeshua’s Jewishness and called for the removal of any Jewish elements from the Bible and from the Christian faith.

German history and narrative speaks highly of the value of Gehorsam and Folgsamkeit, (both terms mean ‘obedience to one’s superiors’). Yet what is one to do when one’s leaders are evil, or are causing harm to their own citizens? The prophets of Israel spoke God’s perspectives and His truth to evil kings, and often suffered punishment for their courageous stand. In Acts 4:5-22 the Jewish apostles refused to submit to a command to “speak no longer in this Man’s name,” responding in this way: “Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you rather than to God, make your own judgment. For we cannot stop speaking about what we have seen and heard” (Acts 4:19-20).

Later on, the apostles were arrested again. “When they had brought them, they had them stand before the Council. The high priest interrogated them, saying, ‘We gave you strict orders not to continue teaching in this name, and yet, you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching and intend to bring this Man’s blood upon us.’ But Peter and the apostles answered, ‘We must obey God rather than men’” (Acts 5:27-29).

Recent German history reminds us of such brave heroes as Corrie ten Boom, the White Rose group, Dietrich Boenhoeffer, etc., all who were willing to pay the price for opposing evil in high places. These people did not distort Yeshua’s words into ‘Render unto Hitler the things that are Hitler’s.’  They did not submit to and cooperate with the fear-based control and totalitarianism of the Nazis. True believers in Messiah Yeshua recognize that ‘Arbeit macht frei’ (German for ‘work makes you free’ – a Nazi sign posted at the entrance to Auschwitz) is a lie, and also that obedience to authorities also does not makes one free.

We are not called upon to blindly rubber-stamp any and all governmental decisions. Our call is to obey God, His word and His ways, even if that entails civil disobedience.

 
Riki Tiki Tavi

In  1970 the folk-pop-rock singer Donovan came out with a song modeled on Rudyard Kipling’s ‘Riki Tiki Tavi,’ a mongoose who protected a family by killing marauding cobra snakes. One of the lines in that song was “United Nations ain’t really united, and the Organization really ain’t organized.” Donovan had come to the realization that sometimes governments, security forces and even the media “won’t be coming around for to kill your snakes no more, my love.”  It is hard for many of us to realize that some of our national leaders and authorities in various spheres are actually in league with corrupt and evil strategies which, in time, will lead to the rise of great evil in this world.

As believers, we need to look unblinkingly at the wickedness now being propagated by Big Pharma and their governmental fellow-travelers, as well as by tycoons, men of wealth and power. These power-players are willingly concealing the growing empirical evidence of damaging side-effects and inefficient pharmaceutical solutions, while simultaneously pushing for a worldwide ID framework, one which can easily lead to full-blown totalitarianism and financial tyranny.

“Be careful how you walk, not as fools but as wise people, making the most of your time, because the days are evil” (Ephesians 5:15-16).

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

Donations can also be made on-line (PayPal or credit card) through: www.davidstent.org

Licking honey with the prophets

There is a Yiddish story about a man who spent all his free time at the shtetl kretchmeh (in Yiddish, a tavern doubling as an inn; in Polish karczma or in Ukrainian корчма). His wife bitterly complained about his all too frequent absences, asking him what he does there anyway with all his spare time. He offered her to come and see for herself. They entered and sat down at a rough wooden table. He ordered an overflowing flagon of beer for her. She took one sip and spit it right out with a sour face. The husband commented with a smile, “Nu, du maynst ich lek honik?” – “So, you think I’m sitting here licking honey?” What may be enjoyable to some, may actually be bitter to others.

Some of us imagine prophets and the prophetic ministry and gifts in an enjoyably ethereal way. The actors on our stage are mystical heroes like King Arthur’s Knights of the Round Table. waxing poetic about prayer or worship or specific catastrophes about to occur on specific dates. These idealized prophetic utterances often focus on repentance or encouragement. This newsletter offers a slightly different and perhaps more broad biblical perspective on what prophets are often called to be and do.

Aslan on the move

Amos was not a professional minister. He was not a card-carrying member of the Union of Judean Prophets, and had not paid his dues to the Seer’s Guild. He confesses when challenged, “I am not a prophet, nor am I the son of a prophet, for I am a herdsman and a grower of sycamore figs. But YHVH took me from following the flock, and YHVH said to me, ‘Go prophesy to My people Israel’” (Amos 7:14-15). A gentleman farmer from Tekoa, Amos was abruptly turned into a man ‘on a mission from God’ (Amos 1:1). His prophetic ministry began when he heard the thunderous roar of the Lion of Judah: “A lion has roared! Who will not fear? YHVH God has spoken! Who can do anything but prophesy?” (Amos 3:8).

Amos of Judah was ordained by the hand of YHVH to deliver a message to the rebellious ten tribes of Israel. He had to cross the ‘DMZ’ (from Judah in the south to the Northern Kingdom) to communicate God’s words, perspectives, rebukes and Last Days prophecies to King Jeroboam II at the royal palace and citadel of Bethel (Amos 7:12-13). His 100% accurate message was vehemently rejected by King Jeroboam II and by Amaziah the Aaronic priest in charge of the Bethel sanctuary.

Stop with the conspiracy message!

Before Amaziah threw Amos out of Bethel, he made doubly sure that he and King Jeroboam were on the same page. “Then Amaziah, the Kohen of Bethel, sent word to Jeroboam King of Israel, saying, ‘Amos has conspired against you in the midst of the House of Israel. The land is unable to endure all his words!’” (Amos 7:10).

What was this message that so upset the king and the religious authorities? The answer is found in Israel’s behavior Amos chapters 1 through 7:

It is worth noticing that these eight points have to do with business ethics, sexual morality, narcissism, external but not internal spiritual-religious behavior, speaking the truth in governmental dealings, and caring for the physical welfare of the Jewish people.

Shutting down the prophets

The spiritual and religious leaders in the Northern Kingdom of Israel were trying to shut the mouths of those who spoke for God to their own people. In this biblical period there was also censorship: Israel’s leaders forced Nazirites to violate their vows and to compromise the source of their strength and purity (see Numbers 6; Judges 13:5; Luke 1:15). Prophets who refused to toe the line and parrot what society’s leaders told them to say, found themselves removed from the public social media of their day (Amos 2:12; 7:12-13). Israel’s leaders had rejected the Teaching (Torah) of Moses, their national constitution and legal protection. So it was not surprising that kings and priests also rejected God’s faithful prophets who were bringing the word of the Lord.

Specifically, these leaders wanted to totally shut down the prophetic message of coming judgment on Israel’s kings and priests (Amos 5:12-13, 27; 6:7; 7:17; etc.). It is sobering to note that immediately after Amos’ argument with YHVH over the possible divine destruction of the Jewish people (Amos 7:1-9) – right after Amos’ Abrahamic-style intercessory bargaining with God to spare His own people – Amaziah and Jeroboam commanded Amos to shut his mouth and flee back to Judah. By spurning Amos’ words of warning, they thereby sealed the deal on their own destruction.

God’s prophetic word to a disobedient nation

In his day, Jeremiah had to contend with men prophesying false messages in the name of YHVH. The God of Jacob Himself described these people as false dealers, greedy for gain (Jeremiah 6:13-14), bringing only superficial healing to their people (8:11), speakers of falsehoods, false visions and deception (14:13-14), ministering from the stubbornness of their own hearts (23:17). YHVH adds that they have misled the people and have whitewashed the true nature of the problems facing Israel (Ezekiel 13:9-17).

We should not be surprised when, in our day, God raises up prophetic voices to address the sins of our world in general and of our cultures specifically. When dishonesty, the profit motive, false solutions and deception characterize governmental decisions and decisions of those entrusted with the public welfare and health, be sure that you will hear Aslan roaring His heart, His word and His strategies over the nations and their leaders.

“These are the things which you shall do: speak the truth to one another; judge with truth and judgment for peace at your gates. Also let none of you devise evil in your heart against another, and do not love perjury. For all these things are what I hate!” (Zechariah 8:16-17). Those who minister YHVH’s prophetic word are not always licking honey, but they know that a time is coming when God Himself will “reward Your bond-servants the prophets and the saints and those who fear Your name, the small and the great, and to destroy those who destroy the earth” (Revelation 11:18).

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

Donations can also be made on-line (by PayPal) through: www.davidstent.org

By continuing to use the site, you agree to the use of cookies. more information

The cookie settings on this website are set to "allow cookies" to give you the best browsing experience possible. If you continue to use this website without changing your cookie settings or you click "Accept" below then you are consenting to this.

Close