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cupoftrembling“Jerusalem, a Cup of Trembling”

The Oracles of God in Zechariah 9-14 and the Beginning Days of Redemption

A History of Jerusalem and the Land

Translation by the New King James Version

Rabbinic Commentary by Maggid ben Yoseif

www.torah-voice.org

Biblical Commentary by Robert D. Mock MD

robertmock@biblesearchers.com

February 9, 2002

Edited March, 2003

Reedited December 2006 and May 2008

Zechariah 12, Verse 2

 

Topics

The Burden of the Lord Against Israel

I will Make Jerusalem a Cup of Trembling

The History of Jerusalem in days of Abraham and the Judges

The History of Jerusalem from the days of King David to the 20th Century

The Jews, the Land and the Treaty of Versailles

The Jews, Hitler, the Holocaust and the Time of Jacob’s Trouble

The Woman in Travail giveth Birth - A Nation is Born, Israel

The Origins of the Palestinian Crisis

Blood Feud in the House of Abraham

Blood Feud in the House of Isaac

A Cup of Trembling

The Nations of the World Tremble

 

The Burden of the Lord Against Israel

 

Zechariah 12:1 – “The Burden of the Lord against Israel. 

Thus says the Lord, who stretches out the heavens,

Lays the foundation of the earth.”

 

The Lord of hosts very succinctly states His purpose: this is an oracle against IsraelLet us not be deceived, many have seen the great suffering the Jewish people have gone through, the Holocaust, the multiple wars where the Moslem nations around them have sought to exterminate or “drive them out to the sea” and have said, “Enough is enough”.  Then the Lord of hosts states, “Here is another oracle or “burden” that will be placed upon you.” 

 

The facts are the nations of the earth have intensified their anti-Semitic feelings against the Nation of Israel over and over the last fifty yearsOnly one time has the United Nations had a favorable legislation for the Jewish people.  That was in the year of 1947, when the nations of the world voted for the Jewish people to have their own homeland. Granted that only 10% of the land that was chartered for them by the League of Nations was eventually given to them, but even so the vote was favorable.  Since then, there has not been any nation that has been under the severest condemnation by vote after vote as the Nation of Israel.  There has not been a nation that has had to fight as many wars for its own national survival than the Nation of Israel. There has not been a nation that what little land was given for her own homeland that has been demanded over and over to partition, give up to another peoples who sole purpose is to seek the extermination of the Jewish people. Yet the Burden of the Lord has been upon Israel.

 

With this the Lord of hosts states His credentials.  “I am He that created the Universe and stretched out the heavens like a carpet into the vast reaches of infinite space.  I am He that formed the iron gyroscoping core in the center of the earth and laid a mantle on top of it. This is the Lord of hosts and with it He says, Trust me!

 

The awesome power and majesty of the Divine One is so immense that we invite you to a separate study on God the Creator and the Throne of God.

 

“And forms the spirit of man within him.”

 

Imbedded in the matrix of the DNA in man is the Image of Creation”.  The Lord of hosts, the ruler of all universes, all dimensions of the created worlds left an imprint of the World of the Divine in the formation, not just creation, of man. This was the Image of God”.  For us to understand how man became a living soul by combining the “dust of the ground” and adding the breath of God, we must understand how the Lord of hosts created the universes and the multiple dimensions of created beings.  

 

Within the matrix of man and the Image of God in which man was creation is the model or blueprint of all creation.  A miniature model of the Divine, the creation of man was the highlight and epitome of creation.  To understand the nature of man, the Image of God, one must also understand the process of creation as understood by the Hebrews.  We invite you to a study on The Worlds of Creation and the Spirit and Souls of Man.

 

I will Make Jerusalem a Cup of Trembling

 

http://home.earthlink.net/~theoson/WOMAN-DRINKING.jpgZechariah 12:2 – Behold, I will make Jerusalem a cup of trembling

Unto all the people round about,

When they shall be in the siege both against Judah

And against Jerusalem  .

 

Drinking from the “Chalice” of the God of Israel

 

Redak calls this a cup of poison to all who drink.  The Targum Yonatan says there will even be Jews who will oppose Jerusalem!! How true this is with those wanting to divide Jerusalem and look how the issue of the division of Jerusalem led to Barak’s downfall and Sharon’s rise.  DON’T TOUCH JERUSALEM, SAYS HASHEM!!

 

The city of Jerusalem means “city of peace.”  Today with about 650,000 people, it only stands as a moderate size city, yet go to your T.V. set and there is no other city in the world that is constantly on the world media and has been for over a decade.  Since the beginning of the Palestinian Intifada by the Palestinian terrorist’s organization, on September 11, 2000, the world’s attention is constantly riveted by news from Israel and Jerusalem. 

 

The History of Jerusalem in days of Abraham and the Judges

 

The city of Jerusalem has witnessed more wars, sieges, destructions, rebuilding, bloodshed, human suffering and terror than any other city in the world.  The first historical mention of Jerusalem is in the Genesis, when Abraham, after routing and overcoming the five kings of the east who invaded the Vale of Shiddon, where the Dead Sea now is, and took Abraham’s nephew, Lot and his family captive.  After this historical defeat by this Eastern potentate, son of a Sumerian oracular priest, Abram, he met the king of Salem, Melchizedek, and gave the tithe of the war booty after defeating the coalition of kings. (Genesis 14:18)   Many scholars have felt that this mysterious king was non other than Shem, the son of Noah, who as the oldest man in the world would have had great respect and honor.  This city of Salem, or the city of “Peace”, is the very site of Old Jerusalem.

 

Jerusalem is first identified in non-biblical texts as early as the 18th to 19th century BCE in ancient Egyptian texts.  The Amarna Letters, dating from the 14th century B.C. mention a city of Canaan by the name of Urusalim and later identified by the same name in Assyrian texts. 

 

The city is next mentioned in the Bible, after the destruction of Ai, (c.1451 BC) when the combined forces of the Adoni-zedek, king of Jerusalem (Lord - King) plus Hoham , king of Hebron; Piram (“a wild ass’), king of Jarmuth; Japhia (“the radiant one”), king of Lachish, and Debir (“oracle”), king of Eglon led an invasion force against Gibeon, one of the ‘Royal cities’, just about 5 miles north of Jerusalem on the road to Joppa.  Gibeon, a city without a king, ruled in a form of democracy by a council of elders, was also known as a city of mighty men.  Fearful of the Israelite invasion with the destruction of Jericho and Ai, Gibeon by subterfuge convinced some of the princes of Israel to form a peace pact with them. 

 

As such, five cities in the vicinity of Jerusalem, Hebron (“union, league or association”) 19 miles southwest of Jerusalem, Jarmuth (a height”) 15 miles to the southwest, Lachish, 30 miles southwest in the Shephelah, or low hills of Judah, and Eglon (“rolling”), 14 miles from Gaza, banded together to attack and punish Gibeon. Joshua, and a defensive force of Israelites in a forced march all night ascended the escarpment of the hills around Jericho and the Dead Sea and sent the forces of the confederacy in panic, while the “act of God” finished off the forces by hailstones in a meteor shower of fiery bolides during the Long day of Joshua, when the Lord of Hosts, listened to the cry of Joshua, ”Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon; and thou, Moon, in the valley of Ajalon.” (Joshua 10:13) to the west.

 

After the Day of Dedication at Gilgal, Joshua died and was buried.  It was now up to the tribes of Israel to go out and possess the land that had been divided for their habitation.  Apparently though Phineas, the High Priest, with consultation with the Urim and the Thummin on the breastplate, it was Judah who was commanded to take the lead and start the act of claiming the land.  Judah, along with Simeon, “fought against it (Jerusalem)” and “set the city on fire” (Judges 1: 9).  Though razed, the Jebusites, continued to rule at their mountain fortress.  Yet, this initiated the first acts of possessing the Land of the Promise.

 

The name Jerusalem is still one of debate.  Rabbinical sources claim the name came from the name Abraham gave to the site on Mount Moriah (Genesis 22) when he offered up his son, Isaac, as a sacrifice to his God.  On Mount Moriah, where later the Temple of Solomon would be built (2 Samuel 24:18-25, 2 Chronicles 3:1), Abraham called this site, Jehovah-jireh (Genesis 22:14) or “Jehovah will provide”, and coming from the Hebrew root, “vision of Jehovah”. 

 

The History of Jerusalem from the days of King David to the 20th Century

 

Four hundred years later, we meet David, a Hebrew herdsman, turned mercenary for the Philistines in the reign of Saul, the first king of Judah, made an assault on the citadel of the Jebusites, the old city of Salem.  By daring maneuvers, David and his men were able to scale the city walls, and overcome the city (2 Samuel 5: 6-7), the city which became his capital city, Jebu-salem, or was it rather, “Jireh-salem or “Jehovah will provide peace.”    Upon this site, Solomon built buildings of adornment including a Temple to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, which stood unparalleled in ancient times. 

 

Jerusalem Window by Bracha Lavee

 

Since Abraham’s day, thirty eight times the city of Jerusalem has been conquered and reconquered as the winds of wars have swept over its walls. In the fifteen  centuries, from Abraham to the final destruction of Jerusalem in 70 C.E. by the Roman general Titus, the city was besieged at least seventeen times, razed to the ground at least twice and it walls leveled another two times.  No city, in ancient or modern times has been assaulted and overthrown as many times as Jerusalem, only to rebound to greater glory.

 

First came the Egyptians, who plundered the temple of Solomon, then the city was taken by the Philistines and Arabians during the reign of Jehoram (c. 886 BCE) and later by the Israelites in the reign of Amaziah, (c 826 BCE) and then the Assyrians laid a siege but the army of Sennacherib were vaporized by an interplanetary bolide, and the wounded king fled back to Assyria.  The Babylonians, after witnessing the vast wealth that remained in the city by invitation of the King Hezekiah, later came to plunder, and eventually destroy the entire city.  Three times it was conquered by Nebuchadnezzar, in the years, 607, 597, 596 BCE and then razed to the ground.

 

The restoration of the city and the temple was restarted under the decree of Cyrus in 538 BCE and completed under Artaxerses 1, who initially commissioned governor Zerubbabel to complete the House of the Lord, Ezra (457 BCE) to bring the priests for the temple service, and Nehemiah to rebuild the walls (445 BCE)The gates to the city were later opened without siege to Alexander the Great in 332 BCE who worshipped in the Temple of God, only to be plundered and conquered by the Seleucid Greek ruler, Antiochus IV Epiphanes, in 167 BCE who desecrated the temple by offering a pig on the altar of God and erected a statue of Zeus in the temple.  The brief independence by the Maccabean rulers was soon ended by the power and control of the Roman Empire beginning with the capture by Pompey in 63 BCE  It was again plundered by Crassus, in 54 BCE and again the Parthian emperor in 40 BCE. 

http://www.elzahraa-stud.org.eg/history/Mohamed%20Ali%20pasha.jpg

It was Mark Anthony, who ruled by a surrogate Idumean (Edomites) king, Herod the GreatUnder Herod, the Temple of Zerubbabel was enlarged and restored to a grandeur unparalleled in Roman times, and renamed the Temple of Herod.  The Herodians controlled the city, under the watchful eye of Roman procurators in the fortress of Antonia until it was again destroyed and the temple eradicated by Titus in 70 C.E.  Hadrian restored the city as a Roman colony after the revolt of Bar Kochba in 135 C.E. and erected the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus on the site of the Temple Mount.  The Emperor Constantine established the Christian influence by the erection of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in 336 C.E., and later Emperor Justinian added several churches and hospitals about 532 C.E. 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 

The city was taken by the Persians under Chosroes II in 614 C.E., yet by the year 637 C.E., the city was surrendered by the Patriarch Sophronius to Khalif Omar, the Abassidian ruler in person.  The Arabian caliphs ruled the city, first the Abbasids, and then the Fatimid dynasty, and then in 1084, Ortaok, a Turkman chief assumed its rulership.

 

 Mohammed Ali the Great, the Pasha of Egypt (1769-1848)

 

The Christian crusades in the 11th to 13th century C.E. began in 1099 C.E., when they conquered the Turks.  For eighty-eight years Jerusalem remained in Christian hands until the Catholic Crusaders were finally driven out by the famed Muslem warrior, Saladine the Great in 1187 C.E. 

 

 In 1277, Jerusalem was nominally annexed to the kingdom of Sicily.  In 1517, it passed under the sway of the Ottoman sultan Selim I, whose successor Suleiman the Great built the present walls that surround the city today in 1542 C.E.  Mohammed Ali the Great, the pasha of Egypt, took possession of Jerusalem in 1832 BCE and after the bombardment of Acre it was again restored to the sultan.

 

It is hard to conceive of a Jerusalem unlike the modern metropolitan city of today, yet let us look at Jerusalem through the eyes of William Smith, LL.D, as described in The Dictionary of the Bible in 1884. 

 

Jerusalem 1884 - “Modern Jerusalem (1884), called by the Arabs el-Khuds, is built upon the ruins of ancient Jerusalem.  The accumulated rubbish of centuries is very great, being 100 feet deep around the temple walls and 40 feet deep on the hill of Zion.  The modern wall, built in 1542, forms an irregular quadrangle about 2 ½ miles in circuit, with seven gates and 34 towers.  It varies in height from 20 to 60 feet.  The streets within are narrow, ungraded, crooked, and often filthy.  The houses are of hewn stone, with flat roofs and frequent domes. There are few windows toward the street.

 

The most beautiful part of modern Jerusalem is the former temple area (Mount Moriah), “with its lawns and cypress trees, and its noble dome rising high above the wall.”  This enclosure, now called Haran esh-Sherif, is 35 acres in extent, and is nearly a mile in circuit. 

 

On the site of the ancient temple stands the Mosque of Omar, “perhaps the very noblest specimen of building-art in Asia.” It is the most prominent as well as the most beautiful building in the whole city.”  The mosque is an octagonal building each side measuring 66 feet. It is surmounted by a dome, whose top is 170 feet from the ground. 

 

The Church of the Holy Sepulcher, which is claimed, but without sufficient reason, to be upon the site of Calvary, is “a collection of chapels and altars of different ages and a unique museum of religious curiosities from Adam to Christ.” 

 

The present number of inhabitants in Jerusalem is variously estimated.  Probably Pierotti’s estimate is very near the truth, 20,330; of whom 5068 are Christians, 7556 Mohammedans (Arabs and Turks), and 7706 Jews.”  (Smith, William LL.D, the Bible Dictionary, Universal Book and Bible House, Philadelphia, 1884)

 

The Jews, the Land and the Treaty of Versailles

 

http://lh4.google.com/caitlinomalley/R1LKsKdN9aI/AAAAAAAAB2k/yCPXMPCzoiE/STA72398.JPG?imgmax=512What is fascinating is the blend of Jew, Moslems and Christians that existed in Jerusalem in 1884.  This is the Jerusalem and the Land of Israel that the scholars on prophecy, coming out of the Great Awakening in the 1830’s and 1840’s knew.  When Czar Alexander II was assassinated in 1881 by revolutionaries, the Jews were blamed and persecution and pogroms in Russia led to a massive exodus to the New World.  Between 1881 and 1919, the population of Jews in the United States grew from fifty thousand to four million, escaping anti-Semitism, a world without hope and poverty

 

The Palace of Versailles where the 1919 Treaty of Versailles was Signed

 

 On the aftermath of World War 1, which ended in 1919, the idea of a homeland for the Jewish people in the region called British Colonial Palestine came into being.  This idea was being promoted by President Benes of Czechoslovakia along with U.S. President Woodrow Wilson.  The Jews, along with other distinct national groups were promoted as being entitled to their own national countries.  These countries included Australia, Canada, South Africa and multiple European regions were identified as sovereign nations. 

 

Image:Kingabdullahbinhussein.jpgThe architects of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles agreed that the Jewish people should be allowed to settle in the area called British Palestine and the Arabian peoples would settle in the area from Iraq to Yemen.  The Jewish people were to settle in the land west of the Jordan River and all the land east of the Jordan would go to the children of Ishmael. To the world leaders at Versailles, there were no such “people” as the Palestinian people.  All of the above national peoples achieved their sovereign homelands at this time, except the Jewish people.

 

King Abdullah I (as-Sayyid Abdullah bin al-Husayn) of Jordan

 

The British Lion, trying to protect its fading empire, had different ideas.  Out the land of British Palestine, in 1921, the British government created the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordanian Palestine, better recognized as a sovereign state for Arabs in the land of Palestine. Not only creating a Palestinian state for Palestinians, the British with King Abdullah, took the mandate from the Treaty of Versailles and gave an additional third of the land dedicated for the Nation of Israel and incorporated it into the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan PalestineAfter this, when the land was occupied by King Abdullah of Jordan, he dropped the word, Palestine, and the word Transjordan and his nation became the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.  Not only that, the British continued to use their political influence to prevent the establishment of a Jewish state within the region.

 

The Jews, Hitler, the Holocaust and the Time of Jacob’s Trouble

 

On January 30, 1933, over seventy years ago, Adolf Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany.  The destruction of the constitutional government in Germany was sealed and the promise of any future homeland or even a promised home in America was closed to the Jewish people.  In the same year, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was sworn in as President of the United States.  Both countries, the United States and Germany, were coming out of a Great Worldwide Depression. Both men led their respective countries, Germany and the United States for the next twelve years and both died in the same month of April, 1945

 

 

Hitler immediately began pogroms to isolate and evict the Jewish people, first in Germany  and then in every European country that came under his control and influencePresident Roosevelt immediate closed the borders of America to the immigration of any Jews and to the hopes of any Jews escaping the progressively longer and longer arm of persecution and torture by the German Nazi SS police.

 

Hitler, using two emergency provisions in the Weimar Constitution, articles 24 and 48, which allow the president to usurp the powers of the state governments, suspend the constitutional guarantees of civil liberties, and to dissolve the Reichstag.  On the night of February 27, 1933, the Reichstag building was set aflame and the official liberties of all citizens in Germany ceased.  First the communists were hunted as a “shoot to kill” order in any public demonstration was enacted. 

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The Burning of the Reichstag of Germany

 

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/images/jude2.gifRacial purity became the obsession of Hitler, and Slavs, Gypsies, and blacks were inferior, but at the bottom of the list were the Jews, ‘the most dangerous of races, in part because they parasitically lived off the other races and weakened them.”  (Berenbaum, Michael, The World Must Know, The Story of the Holocaust as Told in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum., Little, Brown and Company, New York, 1993, p. 21)   Here Hitler claimed the Jews were the ‘eternal mushroom of humanity.  The Aryan race was in his mind destined to be superior, and the master race would dominate if it preserved its purity.  Immediately, the country underwent scrutiny, person by person, through family lineages, facial and body typing (skull size, nose width and eye color) and quickly policies of forced segregation, forced sterilization and later systematic murder were instituted. 

 

The Jewish Patch of Identity in Nazi Germany

 

Official persecution of the Jews began on April 1, 1933, in which a national boycott was instituted against all Jewish shops and businesses.  Storm troopers were stationed in front of Jewish-owned shops.  The Star of David in yellow and black was painted over thousands of store windows, and signs, “German, Defend yourselves! Don’t buy from the Jews, The Jews are our Misfortune or simply Jude” were hung outside. 

 

http://aim.search.aol.com/search/redir?src=image&clickedItemURN=http%3A%2F%2Fcontent.answers.com%2Fmain%2Fcontent%2Fwp%2Fen%2Ff%2Ff2%2FKonkordat.jpg&moduleId=image_details.jsp.M&clickedItemDescription=Image%20DetailsThe Signing of the Papal Concordat with Nazi Germany by Papal Secretary of State Eugenio Pacelli the future

Pope Pius XII (1933)

 

This same sign, the yellow Star of David, eventually came to be a forced personal insignia that all Jews had to wear on their clothes when they walked outside their homes.  Under what became known as the Nuremberg Race Laws (1935), Germany began a systematic division of the people of Germany between the Germans and the JewsHitler wanted to be sure that in the future, Germany would no longer be mongrelized, which he claimed had ‘robbed us of world domination.” (Ibid 34) By 1935, German Jews were stripped of their citizenship.  By 1937, all Jewish property was registered and then Aryanized in 1938 and in 1938, all German Jewish passports were marked with the letter J, for Jude.  In August 17, 1938, all Jewish men had to take a middle name, Israel, and all Jewish women, had to take the middle name, Sara.    

Niemöller

The Christian Church in Germany as a whole fell in line with the Nazification of Germany.   The Roman Catholic Church in 1933 signed a concordat with Hitler, which was negotiated by Papal Secretary of State Eugenio Pacelli, the former papal nuncio in Berlin and the later Pope Pius XII, which granted freedom of practice to the Catholic Church, with the understanding that the Catholic Church would not interfere in any way with German politics.  With the moral voice of the Papacy gone, the concordat in reality became a victory for the Fuhrer and became subservient to the regimeProtestant Churches as a whole, with the exception of a few pastors were caught up in the zealous nationalism of Nazism.  The German Christians Faith Movement took over the mainstream church offices to be opposed only by the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Confessional Church, led by the Reverend Martin Niemöller.  It was his famous quote, which lasts to this day:

 

Image:Munich agreement.jpgReverend Martin Niemöller - “First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a socialist.  Then they came for the trade-unionists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a trade unionists. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out – because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me – and there was no one left to speak for me.”  (Bildarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin, German, quoted in Ibid, 41) 

 

The Munich Conference signed by (from left to right), Chamberlain, Daladier, Hitler, Mussolini, and Ciano

 

Image:1938 Interior of Berlin synagogue after Kristallnacht.jpgNazi expansionism began in earnest in 1939They had already taken over the Saarland by a plebiscite vote in January, 1935, and then in March 12, 1938, they took over Austria.  In the Munich Conference on September 28 and 29, 1938, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain of Great Britain abandoned the most prosperous and most democratic country in central Europe, along with the leaders of France and Italy, when they conceded that the three million ethnic Germans living in the region in Czechoslovakia where they were a minority, could have autonomy within the center of the country of Czechoslovakia. 

 

The Interior of the Berlin Synagogue after Kristallnacht “The Night of Broken Glass” in 1938

 

Chamberlain return to England triumphant that he had brought, “peace in our time”, along with these words, How horrible, fantastic, incredible it is that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas masks here because of a quarrel in a faraway country between people of whom we know nothing.”  (Ibid 47)  By March, 1939, Germany had taken over Czechoslovakia and in six months, Britain was at war with Germany.  Chamberlain was now history. 

 

This concept is called Balkanization, where a minority ethnic group is given autonomy within a national country, was later tried again in Yugoslavia by the US and NATO in order to carve out a Moslem State within the existing sovereign nation of Yugoslavia, whose national framework was a conglomerate of Moslems, Eastern Orthodox (Christians) and Roman Catholic citizens.  The wars at Kosovo with the resultant thousands loosing their lives in religious genocide and is also the present political blue-print imposed upon the State of Israel by the United Nations with the internal Palestinian state, the West Bank and Gaza.  In fact, when the United Nations and the United States were in the process of http://content.answers.com/main/content/wp/en/thumb/e/e6/300px-Kristallnacht_example_of_physical_damage.jpginvading the Balkans, President Bill Clinton assured Yasser Arafat that this war was done to give him time to create a more positive attitude and support by the American people to support a Palestinian State in Israel.”  (Vendyl Jones, War and Religion, www.vendyljones.org.il/war.htm pg. 22)

 

Kristallnacht, the “Night of Broken Glass” (1938)

 

It was Yasser Arafat as recorded in the Jerusalem Post and Palestinian news agencies demanded that  ...”the ‘international community’ …end the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land just as it ended the persecution of the Albanians in Kosovo.”  Further…”just as the international community managed to put an end to the oppression in Kosovo and reach a peace agreement, the international community is called upon to revitalize the peace process in the Middle East and put and end to Israeli occupation of Palestinian land.” (Ibid 32)

 

Evian Royal Palace, Evian-les-Bains, Rhône-AlpesAnd then came Kristallnacht, the “Crystal Night of the Night of Broken Glass”. It was November 9, 1938, and a violent but orchestrated outburst of anti-Jewish emotion broke out throughout all the Reich land.  A seventeen-year old Polish Jewish boy, Herschel Grynszpan, in desperation because his parents were to be deported out of Germany to Poland, but Poland refused to accept them, assassinated a minor German embassy official in Paris.  Gestapo Chief Heinrich Muller sent a telegram to all police stations that ‘in shortest order, actions against Jews and especially their synagogues will take place in all Germany.  These are not to be interfered with.”  (Ibid 54) 

 

Hotel Royale at Evian-les-Bains on Lake Geneva

 

The police were ordered to arrest the victims and fire companies were ordered to let the synagogues burn down.  In the next 48 hours over one thousand synagogues were torched and burned along with their hand written Torah scrolls and prayer booksSeven thousand Jewish businesses were looted and ransacked, ninety six Jews were killed and Jewish cemeteries, hospitals, schools and homes were desecrated or destroyed.  Thirty thousand Jews were arrested. The concentration camps of Dachau, Buchenwald, and Sachsenhausen were filled. 

 

All countries of the world by this time had closed their borders to the Jews.  In July, 1938, delegations from 32 different countries met at the Hotel Royale at Evian-les-Baines on Lake Geneva, as a token gesture by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to deal with the Jewish emigration crisis.  As the chief concierge at Hotel Royale stated,

 

Evian31.jpgPresident Franklin D. Roosevelt - “Very important people were here and all the delegates had a nice time. They took pleasure cruises on the lake.  They gambled at night at the casino.  They took mineral baths and massages at the Etablissement Thermal.  Some of them took the excursion to Chamonix to go summer skiing. Some went riding; we have, you know, one of the best stables in France. But of course, it is difficult to sit indoors hearing speeches when all the pleasures that Evian offers are outside.” (Ibid 48)

 

Hotel Royale at Evian-les-Bains on Lake Geneva

 

The voice of the nations was clear.  No country would be expected to receive any more immigrants than were expected under existing laws.  The American quota would remain the same.  The British were given assurances that the question of Jewish immigration to Palestine, under the British mandate would not be discussed.  The status quo remained the same and the Jews were soon to head to the concentration camps. United States immigration, under a strict quota system, restricted immigration by myriad  of paperwork, including a certificate of good conduct to be given by one’s local Liquidationauthority, the Gestapo.  After war broke out in 1939, all German Jews were barred as potential German spies. 

 

The Germans Burning and Liquidating the Warsaw Ghetto – Yad Vashem

 

For the first time in American history, between 1932 and 1938, there were more emigrants leaving the United States than those immigrating to America. Between 1933 and 1945, only two years, 1938 and 1939, were the immigration quotas for Germany and Austria filled.  This was not a unilateral government ploy, for only 9 percent of the American public supported changing immigration laws to allow refugees from persecution to enter this country.  Anti-Semitism was rampant and every poll expressed the sentiment that Jews posed a major threat to this country.  Even a bill, the Wagner-Rogers Bill, to rescue Jewish children died in committee due to the lack of support.  Even so, the United States did receive the largest number of refugees between the years of 1933 to 1945, a total of 132,000, a little more than 10,000 refugees per year.

 

The story of the Holocaust has been told and the horrors of the ghettos and the concentration camps should forever be burned in the consciousness of mankind.  In Warsaw, the decree to establish the Warsaw Ghetto was announced on Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, October 12, 1940. Sixty years later, on the eve of Rosh Hashanah (Jewish New Year, September 28, 2000, Ariel Sharon, then the leader of the opposition right-wing Likud party, traveled to the Temple Mount in the Old City of Jerusalem with security officers and Likud MK’s and exercised his right to inspect and visit the Mount which was still under the Israeli control since the 1967 Six-day War. 

 

On October 4, 2000, four days prior to Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, and sixty years after the decree to establish the Warsaw Ghetto, Yasser Arafat announced the Day of Rage and the Second Intifada of the Palestinians began, seeking to drive the Nation of Israel out to the sea.  For students of prophecy, Rosh Hashanah, 2010, seventy years after the decree to establish the Warsaw Ghetto and officially imprison the Jews must be a day watch in the future.

 

http://www.scrapbookpages.com/EasternGermany/Wannsee/WannseeHouse01.JPGIn Warsaw, schedules were posted on billboards on when to move and whole neighborhoods were forced evacuated at a time.  While Jews were forced out of their neighborhood, Poles were also evacuated to make room for the Ghetto.  Within two weeks, 133,000 Christian Poles and 138,000 Jews were relocated, taking only those possessions they could carry on a wagon.  In the Warsaw Ghetto, 30 percent of the cities population was forced to occupy only 2.4 percent of the cities land. The Jews had now been segregated; isolated and insulated from their neighbors, homes and the national life they had grown to love.   

 

The Villa at Wannsee where the “Final Solution” Conference was Held

 

On January 20, 1942, at the Wannsee Conference, the meeting of officials who were responsible to coordinate the systematic slaughter of the Jews, the Final Solution to the Jewish Problem” was formally announced.  Genocide has been a sad part of the history of mankind, but the Holocaust was unique in that is was premeditated, coordinated, and intentionally implemented. The goal of the “Final Solution” would have been the systematic destruction of every Jew, eleven million by their estimates, including those in England and in Ireland.  This was the first time, a biological reason was given to destroy the Jews, and it served no means to an end, but was a fundamental goal of the architects of the policy. 

 

For those who know prophecy well, the Holocaust will not match the horrors of the coming tribulation, a tribulation that will be experienced by all peoples, on every continent and of every race and religion.  Yet the Holocaust of the Jews, an account missed by most biblical scholars was prophesied by Jeremiah the Prophet when he said,

 

Jeremiah 30:4-9:  “This is what the Lord has said to Israel and Judah. These are the words of the Lord:

 

“You shall hear a cry of terror, or fear without reliefAsk and see: can a man bear a child?  Why then do I see every man gripping his sides like a woman in labor, every face changed, all turned pale?  Awful is that day: when has there been its like? A time of trouble for Jacob, yet he shall come through it safely.

 

In that day, says the Lord of hosts, I will break their yoke off their necks and snap their cords; foreigners shall no longer use them as they please, they shall serve the Lord their God and David their king, whom I will raise up for them.”

 

Image:Rows of bodies of dead inmates fill the yard of Lager Nordhausen, a Gestapo concentration camp.jpgThe Time of Jacob’s Trouble was a time on earth when all the world participated in the isolation and destruction of God’s chosen peopleOutside of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, no Christian denomination was willing to raise a cry of outrage to the treatment of the Jewish people.  The concept of Replacement Theology and Spiritual Israel, which was instituted in the collective consciousness of the gentile Christian church by the orthodox Roman Church, had so permeated Roman Catholic Church and all the Protestant denominations.  Called Christians, they acted as though the Jews and Israel did not exist.

 

Rows of bodies of dead inmates fill the yard of Lager Nordhausen, a Gestapo concentration camp

 

A careful picture of God’s dealing with His chosen ones will lead any careful scholar to one conclusion, the Lord of hosts always punished Israel first.  We talk so much about the exile and destruction of the Jewish people, the exile and loss of identity of the citizens of the Nation of Israel, but we fail to read the rest of the oracles of destruction concerning the rest of the nations surrounding Israel.  God always chose His people to send them into the fires of purification yet the promise of redemption was always given; ‘I will redeem you not because you are worthy, in fact you are a stiff-necked and rebellious people, but I will redeem you, because I am the Lord your God and I will honor My Holy Name. (paraphrased) 

 

By the time the ReNewed Covenant was revealed in the gospels and the future prophecies of the time of the end was revealed to John the Revelator, not one of the nations of the Middle East that surrounded the Nation of Israel and Judah existed. The national identity of the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Edomites, the Ammonites, the Philistines (Palestinians), Gebelites, the Hagerites, the Moabites, and the Ismaelites all disappeared as nationalistic or cultural people.  They all disappeared only to be revived and resurrected at the time of the end.  Yes the Drama of the Ages will be played for the last time, and then the Day of the Lord will come.

 

The Woman in Travail Giveth Birth - A Nation is Born, Israel

 

“What we’re seeing here … are the birth pangs of a new Middle East and whatever we do, we have to be certain that we are pushing forward to the new Middle East, not going back to the old one.” – Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in 2007

 

The Travail of Birth Continues – Israel’s 60th Birthday 2008

 

Menachem BeginThis present document seeks to evaluate not the horrors that the German Nazi regimen committed upon God’s chosen ones, but to document the failure of all nations and almost all religions to address the atrocities of evil to any person of race or religion.  The lapse of moral consciousness and the complicity of all nations is a stark reality that this drama will be repeated again before the end of days.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/images/altalena1.jpg

Menachem Wolfovich Begin the 6th Prime Minister of Israel (Likud) between the years of 1977-1983

 

Menachem Begin on the Sea Shore of Tel Aviv on June 1, 1949 with the Irgun Underground Fighters on the first Anniversary of the Shelling of the “Altalena” by Ben Gurion and the Israeli IDF

 

Prior to 1939, most Jewish refugees were able to escape to Palestine, but in that year, a British White Paper limited the number of immigrants for the next five years to only 15,000 per yearThe world had effectively closed its doors to the Jewish people.  Even the promised Jewish homeland, as proposed by the Versailles Treaty, was effectively blocked.  The Jewish inhabitants within the land of Palestine seeking their own national identity eventually had to bring this to a reality by the sword.  The award winning movie, Exodus, is a documentary of this event.  In what is now known as the War of Liberation, the forces under Menachem Begin, in 1947, drove the British out of Colonial Palestine. The last world empire, the British, threw up their hands in despair and left the region on May 15, 1948. 

 

http://www.palestinehistory.com/history/images/tl_1948_1.jpgJust prior to that date, on November 29, 1947, the United Nations passed UN Resolution 181 (II), which effectively gave Israel less than 10% of the land mandated in the 1919 Treaty of Versailles.  The Jewish people accepted the resolution, but the Arabs did not. During this time the Palestinian populations indigenous to other Arab states were sent flooding into the land of Israel in preparation to destroy this fledgling nation

 

The Declaration of the Sovereignty of Israel on May 14, 1948

 

By the time the Nation of Israel declared her sovereignty on May 14, 1948, they were attacked by Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and IraqFighting twenty months against the five member Arab coalition, against forces that far outnumber them, Israel won her own freedom and independenceYet, of the land partitioned to the Nation of Israel in 1947, after the war was over, Israel survived, but Egypt occupied the Gaza Strip and the Jordan occupied the West Bank. 

 

The Origins of the Palestinian Crisis

 

http://sabbah.biz/mt/wp-content/nakba_48_Nahr_Al_Barid_Refugee_Camp.jpgThe Palestinian Refugee Camp of Al Barid in Tarablus, Lebanon in 1952

 

Once the war was over, the Palestinian peoples who came into the country to drive out the Jewish people, were no longer welcome back into the countries of their origin. The Arab leaders promise to the Palestinians was that “As soon as you drive the Jews into the sea, you can return.”  To the shock of the governments of Jordan, Iran Iraq and Syria, when the 600,000 Palestinians wanted to return to the countries of their origin, they were refused. They were now refugees from their own Arabian nationsThis is the origin of the Palestinian Arabs today. 

 

http://www.jafi.org.il/education/100/maps/IMAGES/MANDATE.GIFIt was the UN that altered the definition ofrefugee” that states, anyone who arrived into the land of Israel within two years prior to the 1948 War of Independence would be called a refugee.  It was the UN and the Nation of Israel that put up $150 million to resettle to their own homes, except one problem, those that returned were shot by Arafat’s PLOThis is important to keep in mind, when the Palestinians claim Israel as their homeland for thousands of years. This is well documented in the book, From Time Immemorial (Harper and Row, 1984) by former White House consultant and CBS free-lance writer, Joan Peters. 

 

The Jewish National Homeland (Eretz Israel) voted by the Treaty of Versailles and Governed by the British Mandate between the years of 1920-1946

 

Nineteen years later, in 1967, I was training as a non-combatant soldier at a medical cadet camp in Michigan when the word came across the airwaves that Israel had once again gone to war in defense of her country.   During this Six Day War of 1967, the Jewish soldiers broke through the Jordanian front line capturing the Temple Mount and immediately went to pray at the Western Wall.  During these six days, Israel took control of the West Bank and Gaza, which was mandated to Israel by the 1919 Treaty of Versailles. 

 

The West Bank was taken over by King Abdullah of Jordan in 1921 with the support of the British and reclaimed again after repartitioned in 1947 to Israel, but remained in the control of the Kingdom of Jordan after the war with Israel. 

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On the other hand, the Gaza Strip, remained in the control of Egypt after the 1967 war.  For the first time in 1900 years, the entire city of Jerusalem was once again restored to the custody of the House of Judah

 

Nobel Laureate Albert Einstein in Berlin Study in 1919 when he joined the Jewish Zionists dream of a Jewish Homeland

 

Yet what was the modern origin of the intense hatred of the Moslems with the Jewish people?  It is understood by students of history that the conflict between the Moslems and the Jews derive from three ancient sources.

 

Blood Feud in the House of Abraham

 

http://www.learner.org/channel/workshops/geography/timeline4/1947.jpgAbraham had two sons; Ishmael the oldest son born to the Egyptian handmaiden, Hagar, and Isaac the legitimate son of the promise given by the Lord to Abram and SarahThe birth of Ishmael was Abram and Sarah’s attempt to humanly reconstruct the promise of God to Abram that out of his loins would come a son, whose “seed” would be a blessing to all nationsIshmael was the legitimate heir to the spiritual and physical inheritance and legacy of Abram according to the customs of the Sumerians.  From Ishmael (House of Ishmael) was born twelve sons, the progenitor fathers of the tribes of the Arabians.  The descendants of the twelve tribes of Ishmael have through the centuries sought to retake the ‘blessing’ of the birthright.

 

The 1947 UN Partition Plan to Define the National Territories between the

Children of Isaac (Jews) and the Children of Ishmael (Arabs)

 

That which was “Given” was “Taken Away” in 1922 as a British Gift to King Abdullah of Jordan

 

It was the son, Isaac who was the fulfillment of the “Promise” of God to Abraham.  He was the type of the future messiah (Maschiach) that was to be given to the seed of Abraham. Isaac was the only descendant of Abraham, until after the return to the Promised Land by the children of Israel that never did leave the land of Israel.   The sacrifice of Isaac by Abraham on Mount Moriah was a shadow picture of the future execution of Yahshua, the “only Begotten Son of the God of Israel”. As Jesus bore the burden of His hanging as One accursed of God without a murmur while the afflictions of the world were placed upon His shoulders, so Isaac has always been known to the sages of Judah as the silent one”. 

 

Even so the conflict between the tribes of Arabia, the descendants of Ishmael, and the tribes of Israel (Jacob), the descendants of Isaac is the final chapter of this aging conflict. The final works of Mohammed the Prophet to take the Torah as given to the children of Israel and to rewrite it with the children of the promise being the children of Ishmael in the Holy Koran is part of the genetic mindset of the Ishmaelites to eradicate the descendants of Isaac from the face of the earth.

 

Blood Feud in the House of Isaac

 

http://www.israelcelebrates60.com/images/articles/5bc70c75.jpgThe blood feud did not stop with the House of Abraham, but continued with the two sons of Isaac; Esau and Jacob.  The Esau the eldest was a man of the out of doors, a respected hunter of his generation.  As the eldest, he was heir to the inheritance, spiritual and physical of Isaac. Yet, Rebecca, their mother was determined that her favorite son, Jacob, the keeper of the flocks and protector of the household was to have the blessing of the birthright.  That Jacob was a full participant in this scheme to usurp the birthright is one of the favorite of all the Biblical stories for children. For a bowl of pottage of lentil soup to a hunter starved after a poor day hunting for meat for the household became the landmark legal transfer of the birthright from the eldest to the youngest.

 

The fact that this sale of the birthright was not recognized by Patriarch Isaac, is well known with his intent to still give the blessing of the birthright to his oldest son Esau, upon his death.  Yet as a master of deception Jacob, tricked his father and obtained the spiritual blessing and incurred the permanent hatred of Esau and his descendants to this present day.  The land of Edom and the Edomites are known throughout history as one of the major antagonists of Israel, to the fact that one of the last words of the Lord of hosts given in the scripture is to Jacob I love, but Esau I hate.”

 

The Jewish Sovereign Dream of the Greater Israel from Egypt to the Euphrates – 60th Birthday of Israel (2008)

 

That Herod the Great, an Idumean (Edomite), of the House of Esau and his dying passion to destroy the “Messiah Child” in Bethlehem is only part of the continuous struggle between the Houses of Isaac and Jacob. That the Jewish people recognized the Empire of Rome as “Edom” was not just a spiritual historical revisionism, but a recognition that the foundation of Rome truly came from the genetic loins of Esau. That the spiritual and physical birthright of Isaac would be fulfilled with the birth of the messiah and the final restoration of the descendants of Isaac in the Land at the time of the end also highlights this blood feud between Jacob and EsauThat the land of Edom is predominately encompassed in part by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the holy cities of Mecca and Medina may be significant to future prophecy fulfillment.  That the descendants of the Roman Empire, including the Principate of the Papacy, called the Vatican, are the legacy of ancient Rome may be in part an answer to the conflict between the English and the Americans in the modern War against Iraq by the French, Germans and the Pope.   

 

The Cup of Trembling

 

http://www.bracha-lavee.com/prints/jerusalem/J13.jpgMy Lovely Jerusalem by Bracha Lavee

 

The “Cup of Trembling” gives us a unique word in scripture, “Cup which comes from the Hebrew word, caph, (Strong’s 5592) which means in its original sense of containing a vestibuleor a dish for holding blood or wine, or a basin, bowl, cup, doorpost, gate, or threshold.  Out of this context, we can envision, the harlot’s cup in Revelation, or the Cups or Bowls of Wrath that the Lord of Hosts will pour out upon the earth at that time of the endAs with a lot of words of mystical dimensions, we can see a tension in meaning from the destructiveness of the harlot’s cup of greed and control and the cleansing cup of the wrath of God

 

Zechariah, known as the ‘prophet of Jerusalem’, now begins to show the ascendant and strident relationship that Jerusalem will have with her neighbors and the rest of the world at the time of the end.  In Zechariah 2, we see Jerusalem as a city that ‘will be inhabited without walls, because of the multitude of men and cattle within it.” (2:4) Then the Lord of Hosts threatens that anyone who messes with Zion is ‘touching the “apple (pupil) of His Eye (2:8)  Whereas the Lord will one day live in the midst of the city (2:10) we also see that many non-Jews, or “many nations will join themselves to the Lord in that day and will become My people”.  (2:11) 

 

By the time we get to Zechariah 8, we begin to see that the Lord is becoming “exceedingly jealous for Zion, yes with great wrath I am jealous for her.”  (8:2) This wrath gives many hints of the wrath of God that will pour out upon those that assault Jerusalem at the end of this era.  This city will not be known as a dirty medieval fore lone city, nor a skyscraper laden secular metropolis in 21st century in the Middle East, but rather it will be renown as the City of Truth and the mountain of the Lord of hosts, the holy mountain.” (8:2) It will become a city of the elderly and children, a symbol of safety and longevity.  The return of the House of Judah from Persia, was a miracle in itself, but “if it be marvelous in the eyes of the remnant of this people in these days, should it also be marvelous in mine eyes?” (8:6)  It is suggested, that the 6th century return of the Jews was dramatic but wait until the final return and ingathering of the chosen ones of God in the final days.  That restoration will come from the land of the east and of the west.” (8:7) Again in Zechariah 10, God speaks of His intention to recover His people from foreign exile, yet when He whistles for them (vs. 8) He is calling for them where He has scattered them “among the people …in far countries.”  (vs.9)   

 

This present chapter also in part with Zechariah 9 is spelling out divine judgment that will be meted out to the nations surrounding or are ‘round about’ Jerusalem, Lebanon, Syria, and the Palestinians.  These same peoples were opponents of Israel and Judah in Zechariah’s time.  In as much in this present passage the Lord of hosts identifies Himself with the unrivaled credential as the all-knowing Creator God and the Maker of the Spirit of man, the present text of making “Jerusalem a cup that causes reeling to all the people around”, for when they surround Jerusalem, a cosmic or inter-dimensional event occurs, they will have to drink of the chalice of the Almighty, which will cause them to stagger like a drunken man. 

 

Some scholars suggest that this was in reference to the invasion and siege by the Romans in 68-70 C.E., as prophetically envisioned by Zechariah five centuries prior.  The problem is, Rome was not a nation that was about or surrounding Jerusalem, and Rome did not stagger like a drunken man, but literally vanquished the city of Jerusalem and the Temple of God. 

 

There is no known historical event that matches this siege around Jerusalem as described in Zechariah 12.  As such, it suggests, we must apply this to a still yet future siege that will occur.   If any text can be understood in the macro and micro political world today, it is this text.  The Arab-Israeli conflicts are superimposed on the Arab league control of the world oil market which fuels the industrial world and also the Arab world, who is feeding and harboring the economic nest-egg of the terrorist’ organizations.  

 

The Nations of the World Tremble

 

Terror?  Theologians preaching on prophecy for decades have expounded on potential scenarios http://www.bracha-lavee.com/prints/jerusalem/J12.jpgwrapping up the End of Days.  None to my knowledge imagined a War against Terror to be the cutting wedge to bring our world to a One World OrderIsn’t it amazing how Tribulation may be brought into the Time of the End on the coattails of a Christian moral crusade against “Evil? The White Horse of the First Seal may be riding by and inciting the beginning of Tribulation by an assault against what the western globalists envisioned as the dominions of Satan.

 

“The City of David” by Bracha Lavee

 

Basking in the brief moment of pleasure over a “job well done” as the al Qaeda network retreated from the mountains of Afghanistan, American President George Bush, and the fledgling alignment of world governments inaugurated the birth of their first nation, a “baby” in the world of nations, a government modeled after the designs of the world court of opinion and the United Nations, as the birth of the New Afghanistan emerged. With the completion of the Tokyo conference of Afghanistan, with the assistance of donor nations, the interim and emerging Afghan prime minister Hamid Karzai set out to restore his war torn country with $4.5 billion dollars for reconstructionIronically, it was not the United States who was the biggest contributor, but Japan and Iran, the latter now on the terrorist’ list of supporting nations, each contributed half a billion dollars compared to the modest 290 million by America. They backed up the vast military effort of the war in Afghanistan and the continuing US presence needed to remain in the country to protect the emerging infrastructure of this model UN state

 

http://www.kumah.org/uploaded_images/George-Bush-768979.jpgBy January, 2002, fifteen months after the rise of the Palestinian intifada by Yasser Arafat in Israel in October, 2000 and four months after the catastrophic announcement of the fundamental Islamic intifada by the destruction of the Twin Towers in New York and the Pentagon in Washington by Osama ben Laden, the Islamic world was rapidly aligning herself against her stated enemy, Jerusalem

 

President George Bush in Jerusalem on January 9, 2008 to finish the Architectural Plans for a Palestinian State by January 2009

 

With President George Bush continuing to provoke decisions on the alignment of political power against the shadowy world of terror, the cuffs are being unleashed with threats of military retaliation against, not only nations directly involved with exporting terrorists, but those involved with funding and harboring terrorists.  In the State of the Union message, on January 29, 2002, Iran, Iraq, and North Korea were globally announced by US President Bush as the Axis of Evil and the focus of America’s special attention in the next step in the War against Terror.

 

http://www.whitehousehistory.org/04/subs_pph/images/uploads/42/1625.jpgOn January 23, 2002, Yasser Arafat for the first time publicly ordered his 20,000 man police force to go to war against Israel.  As such, Arafat burned his last bridge to the 1993 Oslo Peace Accord, which gave birth to the Palestinian Authority and allowed it to establish a police force only for civilian defense purposes.  Up until this date, Arafat had walked a fine line in keeping his forces clear of the Palestinian terrorist operations against the State of Israel.  With the declaration by Arafat’s secretary, Abvdul Rahman, declaring that all Palestinian accord with Israel are null and void, he took the dramatic step to align himself fully with the sister terrorist groups such as Hamas, the Islamic JihadWith this declaration, he threatened the United States that cutting ties with the Palestinian Authority would “cause an earthquake in the region that no one will be able to stop.”

 

Signing of the Camp David Accord between Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Chairman of the Palestinian Authority Yasser Arafat on September 13, 1993

 

This threat by Arafat raised the war tensions another notch, for it was a declaration of war not against Israel, but against America.  In essence, like  ben Laden, Arafat was warning the United States that he was capable of plunging the entire Middle East into a convulsing showdown with not only Israel, but with America, the big Satan.

 

Like a bird, trapped in a cage, Arafat, in virtual house arrest in Ramallah since December 3, 2001, was prepared to unleash the vast storehouses of military munitions that had infiltrated into his country.  We may be surprised at the amount of stocked military munitions Arafat had in warehouses.  In 1983, before being driven out of Lebanon by then Minister of Defense, Ariel Sharon, enough munitions were captured by the Israeli army from the war chest of Arafat in Lebanon to arm a million man armyUsing European and Islamic moneys to fund his Fatah, smuggled weaponry has traversed along the ancient Gaza tunnel system, used by David, the heir apparent to the King of Israel, when he was a paid mercenary by the Philistines.  These smuggling operations would make the Karine A smuggling ship look like a dime-store purchase.

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Yasser Arafat attended the Middle East Crisis Summit in Washington in 1996. From left to right are Yasser Arafat, Jordanian King Abdullah II Bin Hussein, the then US president Bill Clinton and then Isreali Prime Minister Netanyahu.

 

Within hours, the new media leaks revealed that Bush’s US presidential forum was prepared to sever relations with Arafat and the Palestinian Authority, shut down the PLO’s Washington office, and add Arafat’s Fatah, his presidential guard, Force 17 plus the Tanzim and Aqsa Brigades to the State Department’s list of terror organization.  The mediation of US envoy, Zinni ended and formal ruptures were beginning to break like a separating rift in a continental plate. 

 

The late Palestinian leader Yasser ArafatThe continental plates under the European Union in the meantime were reeling because of the revelation of the vast funding that had been given to Yasser Arafat for the Palestinian Authority.  These funds, from the European Union, were pocketed by every member of the military arm of the Palestinian Authority, the Fatah.   In reality the European Union was in collusion with the world of terror and with harboring and abetting the Palestinian terrorists. 

 

Palestinian Chairman Yasser Arafat

 

The largest population of Moslems in the world outside of the Middle-East was in Europe.  It was dotted with nests of terrorists cells.  The price of extortion was now becoming the long arm of those countries befriending the terrorists, who sought to destroy Judah and Jerusalem.  What was particularly amazing was the unveiling of the normally cloaked and secret world of diplomacy and political alignments that have given birth.

 

Within twenty-four hours after Arafat’s announcement, the 300 long-range missiles pointed at the north Israeli towns of Kiryat Shmoneh, Safed, Tiberias, Nahariya, Acre and Haifa’s environs and industry, including the oil refineries, came unveiled.  The Iranian Revolutionary Guard contingents, who supposedly left Lebanon, when Tehran ordered them to break off contact with the Hezbollah, raised their concealed head unleashing a barrage of mortar and missiles against the Shaaba farm sector in northern Israel,.  The Syrian funnel of arms from Iran to Damascus and then to the Shiite extremists in Lebanon had been altered, when the Turkish warplanes penetrated through the Syrian and Iraqi airspace, while the Iranian cargo planes were still landed in Damascus.

 

When the political volcano erupted with the capture of the Iranian ship, Karine-A, that was captured in the Red Sea on January 3, 2002, carrying arms for the Palestinians under the signed orders of Yasser Arafat, the naval export arm of Iran, who negotiated as friends of the U.S. in the war in Afghanistan, was revealed to the world community.  The implications were clear.  After all the evidence was in and it had been circulated to all the regimens, especially Egypt, Saudi, Syria, Iran who were in a talking mode with the American president, the message became loud and clear. The Bush administration was committed to routing out terror everywhere, and Arafat was caught red-handed committing, aiding and abetting terror, so he was now the target of the anti-terror war. 

http://mikefarinha.files.wordpress.com/2006/07/nasrallah.jpg

Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, Secretary-General of the Military Wing of Hezbollah

 

http://www.abc.net.au/reslib/200706/r151764_541572.jpgA virtual blockade had been imposed on the western Mediterranean shores off the coast of Gaza and Lebanon since September, 2001, which included 70 ships of the 6th US Fleet plus British, German, Turkish and Israeli warships.  The combined forces are under the US command with the umbrella of Turkish and Israeli jets overhead.  They were looking predominately for fleeing al Qaeda operatives. Since the Karine-A capture and intelligence information that Syrian merchant ships are smuggling parts and components for the Iraqi military and weaponry systems, the merchant marine has been targeted for inspectionThey were preparing a massive buildup for a US invasion in its country. 

 

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas

 

With a virtual blockade by heavy marine presence in the Persian Gulf, the smuggling operations are being routed through the Mediterranean Sea, through Lebanon, Syria and into Iraq.  Is it any wonder why this study group has since we began our study in the fall 2000, favored a Lebanon, Syria invasion routeFollow the smugglers and follow the money. It appeared clear that Zechariah 9 was suggesting that something will happen along this route. 

 

On January 30, 2002, Syria filed a formal protest to Washington with the US Charge d’affaires in Damascus of  “sea piracy” by the boarding and inspecting two Syrian-registered merchant ships with citrus off the coast of Cyprus, named the “Captain Mohammed” and ”Hajii Rahmeh”.  This event occurred two days after Britain accused Syria of committing the most serious violation of UN sanctions against Iraq, of importing and selling since 1990 of 200,000 barrels of oil per day of Iraqi oil to the tune of 1 billion dollars a year in revenue for Saddam Hussein. 

 

http://www.onejerusalem.com/wp-content/haniyeh.jpgIn the meantime, U.S. and Israeli intelligence source began to reveal the arrival of al Qaida escapees from Afghanistan into the refugee camps of the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, plus into the coastal town of Tyre.  These fugitives, from America’s War against Terror, are now being fed and supplied with weapons by the expeditionary force of Iranian Revolutionary Guards and Hezbollah operatives.  So what are we seeing?   Here we have an inflammatory mix of al Qaida, Palestinian, Hezbollah and Iranian revolutionaries, all trained to fight in combat against larger and superior military forces. 

 

Hamas Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniya

 

http://cache.eb.com/eb/image?id=91261&rendTypeId=4The first front was along the Israel’s Lebanese frontier border was controlled by Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah.  The second front was be controlled by Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat (Sunni Arab) within the Palestinian regions of the Gaza Strip and the interior regions of Israel in the Shomron called the West Bank, the future inheritance of the Lost Tribes of the House of Israel from the House of Ephraim and Joseph.   The third front was to be controlled by Syrian president Bashar Assad.  The apparent power behind the throne was destined to be “not” Saddam Hussein, but the Ayatollahs of Iran, fronted in 2002 – 2004 by Iranian president Muhammad KhatamiThe Palestinian-Hezbullah-Syrian-Iranian axis would yet be fronts for more powerful global interests.  These global powers would be revealed as the “Two Horns” on the Ram of Persia (Iran) of Daniel 8; known as the Red Internationale of the Leninist Communist Russia and China.

 

King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud of Saudi Arabia, Prime Minister and Custodian of the Two Islamic Holy Mosques

 

The genie was out of the bottle and one of its resting spots was along the Israel’s Lebanese frontier border.  This second front was to be controlled by Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, Iranian president Muhammad Khatami and Syrian president Bashar AssadBy 2002, the Palestinian-Hezbullah-Iranian-Syrian axis would be aligned along the northern border of Israel.  The shifting of these political continental plates was still progressively unfolding. With the Palestinian-Hezbollah-Iranian-Syrian axis now aligned along the Lebanese border, the rumblings of plate collisions were being felt along the border east of the Jordan River. 

 

http://brightcove.vo.llnwd.net/d4/unsecured/media/86259178/86259178_1178871093_d3ee73065097f82486546c63380d976fefcb67d7.jpgPrince Abdullah, the de facto monarch of Saudi Arabia, was in the process of negotiating a secret mutual defense pact and trade agreement with the anti-American regimes of Iran and Iraq in late 2001.  After half of a century of close inter-dependence with America, the aspirations of the Saudi military, religious leadership, younger members of the Saudi family and a majority of the Saudi tribal leaders, was for Saudi Arabia, the mother country of Islam and the guardian of the two holiest sites of Islam, to separate itself from the United States and become the leading power in the Middle East-Gulf region

 

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad

 

Hosni MubarakWithin hours, in the early dawn of 2002, like the speed of lightning, the heads of state, Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah, Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and Iranian President Mohammed Khatami formalized a mutual pact of mutual understanding with each of their kingdoms.  With this, the trio also agreed to invite Syrian president Bashar Assad sat on the Security Council of the United Nations to join the alliance.  This included the secret Iraqi-Syrian cooperation agreements signed in the year of 2001With this spirit of Islamic détente, a Saudi-Iraqi-Iranian-Syrian block emerged along the eastern border of Israel.

 

 With the European Union in a furor as they were caught naked in funneling money to the Palestinian Authority, they threatened to cut the spigot of money, because it included the receipt of Arafat’s guarantee that no Palestinian armed force would take part in hostilities against Israel.

 

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarek

 

While the Saudis were preparing the exit map for the American military, they were also preparing the welcome map for al Qaeda fighters from Afghanistan.  This included funneling money to pay for the flow of smuggled weapons, including the smuggling ship, Karine A, from Iran to the Middle Eastern Palestinian and terrorist’ organizations.  In the meantime, Arafat’s emissaries were scuttling around the Arab oil-producing states while Saudi Arabia was taking the radical step of assuming the mantle of shouldering the military cost of waging war on Israel.  With this in mind, we now had the Saudi-Iraqi-Iranian-Syrian-Palestinian block now emerging not only along the eastern border but across the heartland of Israel.  

 

What is interesting was the culpability of the United States itself.  Military experts agreed that the Palestinian Fatah and the Force 17 were not just a defensive police force but rather a regular organized military corps with a hierarchy command, an operations arm, foreign intelligence, an advanced communication network and considerable mobility. Its mobile deployment vehicles had been supplied mainly by donations from the United States, UK, Germany, France and Italy.  In other words, America and the soon to be European Union supplied the military vehicles, while Saudi, Iraq, Iran and Syria supplied the armaments. 

 

http://www.geocities.com/arabracismandislamicjihad/hezbollah_hamas_nazi_salute.jpgIn the meantime, President Hosni Mubarek of Egypt appeared to take a sudden change of heart in late January, 2002, towards the Sharon government as he appeared to turn his back on the radical Islamic block.  With the progressive demarcation and no middle ground remaining, Arafat’s days were numbered in the eyes of the Bush State DepartmentWith the threat of holding up deliveries of the latest and most sophisticated of US weaponry, President Mubarek gave his assent to side with the Americans two days before President Bush’s 2002 State of the Union speech.  This act set in motion a strong Arab-Islamic bloc still rallying behind the America’s War against Terror whose Middle East support was led by Egypt, Jordan, Oman, and Turkey with the military support of Israel and Israel’s secret military pacts with India, Turkey and Jordan.  This merging and remerging of alliances set the European Union and NATO posturing as senior partner with the Iranian-Iraqi-Saudis and gleaning the economic rewards, but appearing to pit themselves against America in the economic, political, and military arenas

 

The Ideological Culture of Anti-Semitism between Nazi German and Hamas of the Muslim Brotherhood and Hezbollah

 

Yet, “divide and conquer” has always been the guiding force behind the Western Globalists known as the Golden Internationale’s bid and quest for world domination.  Two thousand five hundred years ago, the God of Israel caricatured this global force as a powerful, fast, and fleeting “He-Goat with a Great Horn to the Prophet Daniel.

 

What is strange in all this political roulette erupted over the weekend of February 3, 2002, a new revelation was unfolding as senior officials in the Palestinian Liberation Organization met with Ariel Sharon in early January. They included Abu Mazen (Arafat’s unofficial deputy Mahmoud Abbas), Mohammed Rashid (Arafat’s top financial advisor) and Abu Ala (the Palestinians legislation Speaker, Ahmed Qorei).  Out of this discussion came direct realization that they were being isolated by America.

 

Yet, the finger of the Lord of hosts would continue to stir the passions and envy of the global forces dominating the “seventy nations of the world”.  Whereas Yasser Arafat seemed to be such an immutable and potent force in the Middle East, it would take the HIV virus to bring to him this ignoble end to this archetype of all the terrorists of the world.  On November 11, 2004, Yasser Arafat would be dead from AIDS in a Parisian hospital.

 

The rise of the Al-Qaeda, Palestinian, Hezbollah, Syrian, and Iranian alliance on the northern and northeastern border of Israel would also reveal its real power source, Russia and China.  They would soon become a potent force that would later give Olmert’s Israel a humiliating “black eye” in the prestige of the international community as thousand of Katyusha rockets rained down upon the Galilee region in the summer of 2006. The shifting of these political continental plates was still progressively unfolding. With the Palestinian-Hezbollah-Iranian-Syrian axis now aligned along the Lebanese border, the rumblings of plate collisions were being felt along the border east of the Jordan River.  Two years later in 2008, the decimated forces of Hezbollah in Lebanon had been reinforced with tens of thousands of new advanced missiles all pointing to Israel, from Iran to Syria using Russian and Chinese weaponry

 

With the fate of the Palestinians in limbo with Yasser Arafat dead and his prime supporter, Saddam Hussein in prison and soon to be executed on the last day of 2006, the vacuum of power stimulated the Western Globalists of the Golden Internationale in motion to redefine the destiny of the Palestinian people by promoting, supporting, and demanding the democratic elections of new Palestinian leadership in January 2005.  It was Arafat’s aid, Mahmoud Abbas, who would win and become the newly elected President of the of the Palestinian Authority.  There was one key fact that still eluded biblical prophecy; like Arafat, President Mahmoud Abbas would also not rule from the region of the Gaza Strip.   http://www.bracha-lavee.com/tapestries/from_generation.jpgAbbas also would remain at the Palestinian headquarters near the site of the former home of Joseph of Arimathea, the rich man of Jerusalem who gave Jesus the Nazarene (Yahshua HaNotzri) his tomb.  Today the town of Arimathea is called Ramallah.

 

“From Generation to Generation” by Bracha Lavee

 

Conflict would still erupt in the Palestinian legislature when on January 25, 2006, the Palestinian Legislative Council’s election (first since 1996) was won by the Hamas Palestinian Organization of the Muslim Brotherhood with 74 seats to the ruling Fatah’s of 45 seats, effectively winning 45 percent of the popular vote (56% of the seats) with Fatah winning 42 percent of the popular vote (34% of the seats).  Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei resigned and Hamas leader Ismail Haniya became the new Prime Minister and formed a new government.  Suddenly the parchments of the prophetic scrolls began to come alive.  For the first time since the days of Kings David and Solomon when the Philistines ruled from the Gaza region has a “king” ruled.  It appeared that prophetic destiny was about to be set in motion.

 

For the citizens of Israel, the clouds on the horizon were ominous.  For the Israeli Defense Forces, instead of chasing and trying to pre-empt a cascading barrage of terrorist squads, it must now prepare to face medium size battles against military forces along its northern and eastern borders and also face the military enemy from within; in the West Bank and Gaza StripIsraelis had become somewhat immune to listening about Israeli air force bombardments against empty Palestinian police centers and tank assaults sent to demolish those Palestinian police facilities, which were harboring nests of terrorist cells. 

 

A new specter of war loomed upon their horizon, as they headed about with aerial assaults on mobile military units heading from the inside and outside towards Israeli targetsIsraeli tanks positioned themselves not in pre-emptive assaults on empty Palestinian targets but began to assume a defensive shield on the interior and exterior borders against their enemies.  In the meantime, Israel began to set up a full perimeter shield as a concrete wall raised itself up around the city of Jerusalem producing a total blockade of human and vehicular traffic coming in and out of the city.

 

It appeared that we were seeing the full scale preparation for a regional war of Islamic states against Israel. Instead the world witnessed an escalation in the War against Terror as the United States, using the undocumented premise of Saddam Hussein’s continuing assemblage of weapons of mass destruction” formed the Second Bush coalition to invade Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in March 2003, this time to destroy the Baath government of Iraq, capture Saddam Hussein holed up in a virtual dirt prison, to be executed by hanging by the new American sponsored democratically elected government in Iraq on December 31, 2006.  The power of ancient and restored Babylon had “fallen” and was over.  Babylon had fallen twice and its power transferred to the new “Force” that rising on the geo-political landscape during the season of Succot 2006 after the close of the 2006 Israeli-Hezbollah War and the Rome Peace Summit that effectively put the armies of Rome (NATO) at the northern gates of Jerusalem. The Third Babylon would seek its fulfillment in the Sea Beast that was rising from the oceans or masses of people.

 

“Jerusalem and Symbols” by Bracha Lavee

 

An occupation force of 150,000 Americans would begin the Balkanization or the pacification of the Iraqi people as the western globalists began the process of dividing or fragmenting the former Nation of Iraq into three smaller and more cooperative regions ruled by the Sunnis, the Shiites and the Kurds.

 

The Nation of Afghanistan was militarily conquered and suppressed by the American led coalition forces. They began the transformation of rebuilding that nation in the Middle East into a democratic ally with the westIts new ruling power would arise, as the United States transferred its rule to the European Union’s NATO in September 2006.  With the belly of Russia (Afghanistan) and the northern border of Israel (Lebanon) now under the power of UNIFIL, the UN, and NATO forces, within a year, it appeared destined, with the United States proclaiming its exit strategy that the Nation of Iraq would become the third Middle Eastern nation to fall under the power of the “Forces of Rome”.

 

Were we seeing the rise of a client statetrio that would become members of the World Alliance of Nations under the rule of the Force within the Vatican that was called the Black Internationaleby the late Pope John Paul II?   Within three years and one half years, (Spring 2003 to the Fall 2006) the forces of NATO (Rome) would be imbedded into Afghanistan, the underbelly of Russia, and Lebanon, the northern border of Israel.  Within five years (2008) the forces of NATO would be imbedded in Gaza and the West Bank.  They would now be in control of the interior regions of Israel.  It appeared that a repeat of Hitler’s Nazification of the Nation of Czechoslovakia prior to World War II was again returning this time to destroy the sovereign State of Israel.

 

If the march of prophecy continues, by the fall of 2008, the long feared and anticipated Gogu-Magog War of Ezekiel against Israel may be a fact of history. For those “watching” and “waiting”, the Lord of hosts may be about to hand His chalice of wrath to the nations surrounding Israel and watch as they reel about like drunken men.

 

Jerusalem is a “Cup of Poison”, the chalice of the Lord of HostsDuring the next siege, the nations that surround Israel will be reeling and trembling. 

 

“The Lord of Hosts will come into the land of Syria and will establish Himself in Damascus.  Sidon will close her borders to Syria. Tyre will be destroyed by fire. The citizens of Ashkelon will tremble in fear and the citizens in Gaza will writhe in terror.  The king of Gaza, the Prime Minister of Hamas will vanish.  The hatred and rage from the mouths of the Palestinian terrorists and the blood of innocent families will be dashed from their mouths.  And the survivors of this siege will belong to the God of Israel and peacefully reside with the Jewish people as the Gibeonites and the Jebusite did in the days of old.” (Paraphrased from Zechariah 9:1-7)

                                                                                                                                                       

“The United Jerusalem” by Bracha Lavee

 

 

 

Links

 

“These and Other Happenings have awakened me to the Jewish National Sentiment” – Albert Einstein

Go to Zechariah 12:3-14 -

Jerusalem, a Burdensome Stone                                                                              

 

Topics

Jerusalem a Burdensome Stone

Nations of the Earth Gather against Jerusalem

The Lord of hosts will Smite the Nations

The Governors of Judah as a Hearth or Torch of Fire

The Latter Rain - Pouring out Grace and Supplication

The Scales Fall off the Eyes of the Jews and they accept Yehoshua as an Anointed One

Mourning in the Land of Israel

 

 

Index for the Commentary on the Prophecies of Zechariah

 

The Redemption and Restoration of Jerusalem and Israel

Zechariah 1 - God remembers and God blesses at the Appointed Time

Zechariah 2 – God sets His sights to Rebuild Jerusalem

Zechariah 3 – The Priesthood is Re-consecrated for the Temple

Zechariah 4 – God sends Israel His Anointed Ones and His faithful Eyes

Zechariah 5 – The Flying of the Megillah and the Cleansing of the Land

Zechariah 6 – The Four Chariots, Temple is Built and Israel is a Theocracy

Zechariah 7 – Replace Feasts of Fasting with Obedience, Justice and Mercy

Zechariah 8 – Let us Feast with Joy – God returns to Dwell with His People

 

The Oracles and Judgments of the God of Israel

 Zechariah 9 - Part One – The Burden of the Lord on the Fertile Crescent

Zechariah 9 - Part Two – The God of Israel wants Damascus to be One of His Zions

 Zechariah 9 - Part Three – The Prelude to the 2006 Israeli-Hezbollah War – Global News

Zechariah 9 - Part Four The Israeli-Hezbollah War in the Summer 2006

17 Tammuz to the 9th Av 5766 – Global News

 Zechariah 9 - Part Five – The Oracles of HaShem against the Palestinians

Zechariah 10 – Latter Rain - Restoration of the Houses of Judah & Joseph

Zechariah 11 – The Shepherds and the Staff in the Land of Israel

Zechariah 12:1 – The Creator and the Throne of the God of Israel

Zechariah 12:1 – The Creator, the Worlds of Creation, the Spirit of God, and the Souls of Man

Zechariah 12:1-2 –    Jerusalem, a Cup of Trembling

Zechariah 12:3-14 – Jerusalem, a Burdensome Stone

Zechariah 13 – The Gihon Fountain flows from the Temple of the Lord

Zechariah 14 - I will gather all Nations to battle at Jerusalem
The Lord’s feet will stand on the Mount of Olives

 

Message from BibleSearchers

 

BibleSearchers scans the world for information that has relevance on the time of the end.  It is our prayer that this will allow the believers in the Almighty One of Israel to “watch and be ready”.  Our readiness has nothing to do trying to halt the progression of evil on our planet earth.  In our readiness, we seek to be prepared for the coming of the Messiah of Israel so that goodness and evil will be manifested in its fullest.  Our preparation is a pathway of spiritual readiness for a world of peace.  Our defender is the Lord of hosts. The time of the end suggests that the Eternal One of Israel’s intent is to close out this chapter of earth’s history so that the perpetrators of evil, those that seek power, greed and control, will be eliminated from this planet earth.  The wars of the heavens are being played out on this planet earth and humans will live through it to testify of the might, power, justice and the love of the God of Israel.  In a world of corruption and disinformation, we cannot always know what the historical truth is and who is promoting evil or mis-information.  We cannot guarantee our sources but we will always seek to portray trends that can be validated in the Torah and the testimony of the prophets of the Old and the New Testament.

 

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