As the Passover season of deliverance approaches, the world focuses on the Middle East. Chemical warfare near Idlib targeted civilians, causing the gruesome death of nearly 100 (including lots of children) and the injury of more than 500. The cruelty and carnage shake the souls of all who see video footage of the casualties. Syrian fighter-bombers involved in that incident (and operating under a protective Russian military umbrella) were destroyed …Read More
Cold love and shaking kingdoms
Senator and historian Publius Cornelius Tacitus (54-117 AD) once commented on political transitions in the Roman Empire: “Dum hac totius orbis mutatione fortuna imperii transit” (“With worldwide convulsion the Imperial power was changing hands”). The recent changeover of political power in the USA might not be global in scope, but the world’s scoop-hungry media has whipped up this national news into tsunami-like dimensions. Bitter acrimony has infected American social media more quickly than the Stuxnet virus. Public …Read More
Sweeping away the refuge of lies (Isaiah 28:16-17)
Yesterday (Sunday January 15, 2017) in the early evening a rooster crowed in Paris. A small droplet of victory fell from Heaven. The “Conférence pour la Paix au Proche-Orient” (Conference for Peace in the Near East) decided not to approve its original detailed pre-conference communiqué which would have been an evil decree ratcheting up ‘lawfare’ against the Jewish state. Over the past week believers worldwide have called out to Jacob’s …Read More
The crumbling of Europa
Is Paris burning? The flames are not visible to the naked eye, but they roar nevertheless in the realm of the spirit. On Sunday January 15, 2017 more than seventy nations and organizations will gather in the ‘City of Lights’ (named because it was one of the first European cities to have gas-burning street lamps). There the nations will bang nails into a coffin that actually contains the disintegrating remains …Read More
Replacement Blowback
Newton’s third law of motion states that “for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.” This principle also manifests itself in politics, in war and in religion. The intelligence community uses the term ‘blowback’ to describe an analogous dynamic – the unintended consequences, unwanted side-effects or repercussions of a black operation that backfires. Replacement Theology (an anti-Semitic expression of Christian theology that raised its head in the 2nd Century …Read More
Crossing the line
The U.N. Security Council has just voted Resolution 2334 into law, declaring Israel’s restoration to Jerusalem to be illegal by a vote of 14 to zero. The US represented by Samantha Power abstained on this vote. In 2011 the US vetoed a similar resolution. What does this vote mean politically, spiritually and biblically? Here are three developing ramifications of this Resolution. From ‘illegitimate’ to ‘illegal’ A U.N. Security Council (SC) …Read More