“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
Biblical Commentary by Robert D. Mock MD
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 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 Israel. Let 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 years. Only 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
Zechariah 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 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”.
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.
It was Mark Anthony, who ruled by a surrogate Idumean (Edomites) king, Herod the Great. Under 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)
“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
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.
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 wrapping 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 Order. Isn’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 reconstruction. Ironically, 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.
By 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.
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.
On 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 Jihad. With 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.”
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 army. Using 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.
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 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.
Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, Secretary-General of the Military Wing of Hezbollah
A 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 inspection. They 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 route. Follow 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.
In 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
The 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 Khatami. The 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.
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 Assad. By 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.
Prince 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
Within 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 2001. With 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.
In 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 Department. With 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.
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. Abbas 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.
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 Strip. Israelis 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 targets. Israeli 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.
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 west. Its 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 state” trio that would become members of the World Alliance of Nations under the rule of the “Force” within the Vatican that was called the “Black Internationale” by 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 Hosts. During 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 -
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
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.
FAIR USE NOTICE
This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been
specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material
available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political,
human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc.
We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as
provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title
17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit
to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included
information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml