Sixty three years ago the world witnessed the most significant fulfillment of biblical prophecy since the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70. On May 14th, 1948, the fig tree was restored, God’s chosen people were once again gathered to the Promised Land, Israel, as prophesied by Jesus Christ in Matthew 24:32, Mark 13:28 and Luke 21:29. Students of eschatology, specifically those holding to a futurist interpretation, have widely agreed that this event heralded the nearness of “summer” and Jesus’ promise to the generation bearing witness that it would “by no means pass away till all things take place”. It is upon this scripture that I have based my long-held belief and hopeful anticipation that we would witness the Lord’s return in my lifetime. According to conventional interpretation, the next big event in the prophetic timeline is the establishment of a seven-year peace treaty between Israel and her enemies, which will purportedly signify the beginning of the tribulation. The most cited scripture in support of this hypothesis is Daniel 9:27 which states “Then he shall confirm a covenant with many for one week; But in the middle of the week He shall bring an end to sacrifice and offering. And on the wing of abominations shall be one who makes desolate, Even until the consummation, which is determined, Is poured out on the desolate” (NKJV). Admittedly I hold no degree in theology (or any degree at all for that matter), but I fail to derive from this passage that the “covenant with many” equates necessarily to a formal peace treaty. Instead, let’s take a look at Psalm 83 for clarity, and perhaps challenge conjecture:
“Do not keep silent, O God! Do not hold Your peace, And do not be still, O God!
For behold, Your enemies make a tumult; And those who hate You have lifted up their head.
They have taken crafty counsel against Your people, And consulted together against Your sheltered ones.
They have said, “Come, and let us cut them off from [being] a nation, That the name of Israel may be remembered no more.”
For they have consulted together with one consent; They form a confederacy against You”
The Hebrew word translated here as confederacy, “bĕriyth”, is the same word in Daniel 9:27 from which “covenant” is derived. The collective agenda behind the covenant in question is not peace, but rather the destruction of Israel. Witness the events unfolding before our eyes in the Middle East over the last six months, culminating at the time of this composition in President Obama’s speech this week. His policies and rhetoric characterize a heretofore unimaginable and head-scratchingly unfathomable abdication of our role as Israel’s most staunch ally. Truly what was once a match made in Heaven, literally, has been abandoned, treated contemptuously, as this administration dons the persona of the harlot, embracing Israel’s enemies whose ideology and existential purpose lead inexorably to the genocide of God’s chosen people, the Jews. As acknowledged by self-loathing Jew David Harris-Gershon in his article, “Israel’s self-made tsunami (http://www.jpost.com/Magazine/Features/Article.aspx?id=221108)”, we are four short months away from the UN General Assembly formally recognizing a Palestinian state. When this transpires, what will be the response of the UN Security Council to Israel’s violation of international law, occupying land belonging to a sovereign state? Will we have a “mandate for action”, as President Obama cited in his speech today in reference to our involvement in Libya? To what specific mandate was he referring? Allow me to submit to you the “Responsibility to Protect (http://www.responsibilitytoprotect.org/index.php/publications)”, authorship of which is widely credited to Samantha Power, the Obama Administration’s Senior Director for Multilateral Affairs and author of the book A Problem From Hell, a study of the U.S. foreign policy response to genocide. The following is taken from a 2002 interview with Ms. Power conducted by the UC Berkeley Institute of International Studies:
(host): Let me give you a thought experiment here, without asking you to address the Palestine-Israel problem: Let’s say you were an adviser to the president of the United States. How would, in response to current events, would you advise him to put a structure in place to monitor that situation, at least one party or another be looking like they might be moving toward genocide?
POWER: Well, I don’t think that in any of the cases, a shortage of information is the problem, and I actually think in the Palestine-Israeli situation, there’s an abundance of information, and what we don’t need is some kind of early warning mechanism there. What we need is a willingness to actually put something on the line in sort of helping the situation. And putting something on the line might mean alienating a domestic constituency of tremendous political and financial import. It may more crucially mean sacrificing — or investing, I think, more than sacrificing — literally billions of dollars not in servicing Israelis’, you know, military, but actually in investing in the new state of Palestine, in investing billions of dollars it would probably take also to support, I think, what will have to be a mammoth protection force. Not of the old, you know, Srebrenica kind or the Rwanda kind, but a meaningful military presence.
A “mammoth protection force”, translating to our military, in cooperation with other UN member states, “protecting” a Palestinian state.
What happened? How did we fall asleep and awaken to this reality? My thoughts on those questions will be explored soon (Lord willing). See you then!
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