Isaiah 11:14 They will swoop down on the slopes of Philistia to the west; together they will plunder the people to the east. They will subdue Edom and Moab, and the Ammonites will be subject to them.
Zechariah 12:1 This is the word of the LORD concerning Israel. The LORD, who stretches out the heavens, who lays the foundation of the earth, and who forms the spirit of man within him, declares: 2 “I am going to make Jerusalem a cup that sends all the surrounding peoples reeling. Judah will be besieged as well as Jerusalem. 3 On that day, when all the nations of the earth are gathered against her, I will make Jerusalem an immovable rock for all the nations. All who try to move it will injure themselves. 4 On that day I will strike every horse with panic and its rider with madness,” declares the LORD. “I will keep a watchful eye over the house of Judah, but I will blind all the horses of the nations. 5 Then the leaders of Judah will say in their hearts, ‘The people of Jerusalem are strong, because the LORD Almighty is their God.’ 6 “On that day I will make the leaders of Judah like a firepot in a woodpile, like a flaming torch among sheaves. They will consume right and left all the surrounding peoples, but Jerusalem will remain intact in her place.
There are several differences between this prophecy of Zechariah and the very similar one found in Chapter 14. Twice in this passage (v.2 & v.6) he refers to “all the surrounding peoples,” who will be “sent reeling” and “consumed right and left.” The passage does also mention “all the nations of the earth” being gathered against her, but there is no other evidence to suggest the actual armies of other nations being present in the area, as definitely IS the case in Chapter 14.
Secondly, in this prophecy it is Israel (specifically Judah) who will be “like a flaming torch among sheaves,” whereas, in Zechariah 14 it is the LORD himself Who will fight against all those nations. Jerusalem “will remain intact” here, while in the second prophecy Jerusalem will be captured. These are two distinctly different wars, at different times!
The nations of the world currently “gather together” at the United Nations building in New York City. That is where they will take decisions regarding Jerusalem – for example, to recognise a second Palestinian State with East Jerusalem as its capital.
That option is already up for discussion in September 2011 so, by the time you read this, it may already have been taken and this war could be very close, indeed! Certainly, every nation that votes to divide the city of Jerusalem will bring a curse upon themselves. (Genesis 12:3 & Joel 3:2)
Greater Israel?
This Middle Eastern war will inevitably redraw the map of the region. Israel’s enemies will have disappeared like dust, chaff and tumbleweeds – not to be seen again as any kind of threat to her. This will leave a greatly expanded Israel, for as they ‘drive out’ those who sought their destruction, the Israelis will move in and take over their territory.
Now, the stage is set for the great in-gathering of the Israelite tribes, which we are only seeing the very beginning of at the moment. There are around fifteen million Jewish people in the world at present.
If we add in the ten tribe nations and groups that we are aware of – the Pashtuns (Afghanistan and Pakistan), Kashmiris (India), Menashe (India/Burmese border), Igbo (Nigeria), Lemba (South Africa and Zimbabwe), and many others – we reach a total figure of perhaps ninety million people?
Ninety million Jews and Israelites would never be able to live within the current boundaries of the state of Israel, which currently has a total population of around seven million. Instead, the new Israelite immigrants will “settle in the desolate cities” of their former enemies.
Isaiah 54:2 Enlarge the place of your tent, stretch your tent curtains wide, do not hold back; lengthen your cords, strengthen your stakes. 3 For you will spread out to the right and to the left; your descendants will dispossess nations and settle in their desolate cities.
14 In righteousness you will be established: Tyranny will be far from you; you will have nothing to fear. Terror will be far removed; it will not come near you. 15 If anyone does attack you, it will not be my doing; whoever attacks you will surrender to you ...
17 no weapon forged against you will prevail, and you will refute every tongue that accuses you. This is the heritage of the servants of the LORD, and this is their vindication from me,” declares the LORD.
In the days of Solomon, Israel was much larger and included the lands of Gilead and Bashan, which correspond to parts of Syria and Jordan. The current borders of the State of Israel are NOT the borders defined by the prophets. The biblical definition of Israel’s boundaries has been “from the great river to the wadi of Egypt:”
Genesis 15:18 On that day the LORD made a covenant with Abram and said, “To your descendants I give this land, from the Wadi of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates.
Zechariah 10:8 I will signal for them and gather them in. Surely I will redeem them; they will be as numerous as before. 9 Though I scatter them among the peoples, yet in distant lands they will remember me. They and their children will survive, and they will return. 10 I will bring them back from Egypt and gather them from Assyria. I will bring them to Gilead and Lebanon, and there will not be room enough for them.
This ‘greater Israel’ will include large parts of Syria, beyond the Golan Heights (the former Israelite territory, once known as Gilead); Jordan and probably all of Lebanon.
Isaiah 11:11 In that day the Lord will reach out his hand a second time to reclaim the remnant that is left of his people from Assyria, from Lower Egypt, from Upper Egypt, from Cush, from Elam, from Babylonia, from Hamath and from the islands of the sea. 12 He will raise a banner for the nations and gather the exiles of Israel; he will assemble the scattered people of Judah from the four quarters of the earth. 13 Ephraim's jealousy will vanish, and Judah's enemies will be cut off; Ephraim will not be jealous of Judah, nor Judah hostile toward Ephraim. 14 They will swoop down on the slopes of Philistia to the west; together they will plunder the people to the east. They will lay hands on Edom and Moab, and the Ammonites will be subject to them.
It will also include the Gaza Strip (originally Philistine land, though the current ‘Palestinians’ are that in name only and have absolutely no connection to those ancient Philistines); the so-called West Bank (the biblical Judea and Samaria); probably the Sinai peninsula of Egypt; large areas of Jordan and probably some of Saudi Arabia (the former land of Midian, where the ancient Israelites wandered after crossing the Red Sea – leaving petraglyphs of the outline of their sandals everywhere they walked!1).
Along with the newly captured territory, Israel will also gain great wealth from these defeated nations, including, quite probably, control of the area’s oil wealth – this will be a major victory!
Unfortunately, the rest of the world will NOT be rejoicing over Israel’s victory! Many nations will be greatly affronted that Israel would once again have the audacity to defend itself and would certainly not admit that the God of Israel had worked a miracle on her behalf.
Particularly, I believe relations with the United States of America will deteriorate and the USA will make more and more unreasonable demands on Israel.
As they see Israel unapologetic, and the 2nd Exodus of Israelite tribes from Asia and Africa begin, I believe they will go to great lengths to prevent US Jews from joining them, or even from transferring any of their many assets to Israel.
6-hour war in the Middle East?
1 Israel has a nuclear weapon capability, and maintains a ‘Samson option,’ to strike at those nations around her if her survival is threatened.
2 Isaiah 28 seems to describe the current Middle East ‘peace process’ as a “covenant with death … a contract with Hell (Sheol)” for Israel. God Himself will annul this contract!
3 Isaiah 17 describes the complete destruction of Damascus, capital of Syria – a city which is proud to be the longest continuously inhabited city in the world, never before destroyed.
4 Along with Syria, many other ‘surrounding nation
s’ are mentioned, including Iran – the most likely to attack with a nuclear missile – but they will become like chaff in the wind, like dust in a storm!
5 This war will be of very short duration and is liable to be a nuclear one – “In the evening, sudden terror! Before morning, they are gone!”
6 Zechariah 5 possibly describes nuclear missiles, being prepared by Iran. They have boasted of hidden missile capability, but do these already have nuclear warheads?
7 This war could possibly be triggered by the coming UN vote on recognising a second Palestinian State. It is possible that all (certainly most) of the UN states will gather against Israel in this vote – fulfilling part of the Zechariah 12 prophecy.
8 Israel will gain a large amount of territory from Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and probably also from Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
9 Now there will be room for the in-gathering of potentially ninety million Israelites, who will come from former Assyria (Asia), and from African nations, via Egypt.
10 Not only will Israel gain new territory, but she will also gain the wealth of those defeated, and fleeing, nations. Israel will suddenly be a power to be reckoned with, no longer hampered by enemies around, or within, her borders!
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9 Riding a ten-horned beast
The world globalisation movement involves many more states than simply the USA – in that sense Mega-Babylon is a world-wide phenomenon.
We, in the countries of the West, and many others in Asia, South America and elsewhere, are caught up in this market-economy, globalisation movement – where the very rich get richer, the majority of us get poorer and the poorest suffer greatly! We have all drunk of the wine of her impurity, shared in her luxuries.
We are led by luxuries. Just think for a minute: How many mobile phones has your family purchased in the last 10 years? How many cars? How many luxury electronic items have we purchased? Our grandparents had no need of any of these things and probably lived happier lives, on average.
But the problem with globalisation and the market economy is that more and more of the world's population are being left behind – 'Falling Off the Edge', as Alex Perry calls it in his book of the same title.
The God of Israel continually makes it clear in the Tanakh that He is concerned with how we treat the poor and under-privileged. He continually upbraids Israel and Judah through his prophets, because of their exploitation of the weak and marginalised.
It is for this very reason that he removed the Israelites, and later Judah, from the land he had promised to them. (Amos 2:6,7; 3:10,11; 5:11,12; etc.) He is totally opposed to globalisation, greed and exploitation of the weak, no matter what nation it occurs in! The idea that the God of Israel would be aligned with those in power today is a total distortion of the truth!
Revelation 17:3 Then the angel carried me away in the Spirit into a desert. There I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast that was covered with blasphemous names and had seven heads and ten horns.
In The Revelation the whore is described as riding upon a scarlet leopard-like beast. The ancient Babylonian Goddess, Ishtar, was regularly depicted as riding on either a leopard or a lion. This similar beast in The Revelation is described as having seven heads and ten horns (kind of difficult to picture this!).
The meaning of the seven heads is not made immediately clear, although comparing this with the prophecies of Daniel, we can see that they relate to re-incarnations of the same moving empire-spirit down through history. Therefore, the seven heads, or seven mountains, are in chronological order – they are empires that follow one another down through history – Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, Rome, with one final beast yet to be revealed.
The feature that is more clearly spelled out here is that of the ten horns. The Revelation says specifically that these are ten kings, or rulers, who rule with the harlot, though initially being under her domination and control.
Eventually, these nations will tire of her domination and plot to overthrow Mega-Babylon completely. Therefore, we should be looking for nations which dominate economically along with America.
Many have taken this ten-nation configuration to be a re-constructed Europe – the European Economic Community (EC), Brussels, European Monetary Union, the Euro and all that goes with it. Are they correct? Well, we need also to refer here to the prophecy of the statue in Daniel 2.
Daniel 2:31 “Your Majesty looked, and there before you stood a large statue—an enormous, dazzling statue, awesome in appearance. 32 The head of the statue was made of pure gold, its chest and arms of silver, its belly and thighs of bronze, 33 its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of baked clay. 34 While you were watching, a rock was cut out, but not by human hands. It struck the statue on its feet of iron and clay and smashed them. 35 Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver and the gold were all broken to pieces and became like chaff on a threshing floor in the summer. The wind swept them away without leaving a trace. But the rock that struck the statue became a huge mountain and filled the whole earth.
36 “This was the dream, and now we will interpret it to the king. 37 Your Majesty, you are the king of kings. The God of heaven has given you dominion and power and might and glory; 38 in your hands he has placed all mankind and the beasts of the field and the birds in the sky. Wherever they live, he has made you ruler over them all. You are that head of gold. 39 “After you, another kingdom will arise, inferior to yours. Next, a third kingdom, one of bronze, will rule over the whole earth.
40 Finally, there will be a fourth kingdom, strong as iron—for iron breaks and smashes everything—and as iron breaks things to pieces, so it will crush and break all the others. 41 Just as you saw that the feet and toes were partly of baked clay and partly of iron, so this will be a divided kingdom; yet it will have some of the strength of iron in it, even as you saw iron mixed with clay. 42 As the toes were partly iron and partly clay, so this kingdom will be partly strong and partly brittle. 43 And just as you saw the iron mixed with baked clay, so the people will be a mixture and will not remain united, any more than iron mixes with clay.
44 “In the time of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed, nor will it be left to another people. It will crush all those kingdoms and bring them to an end, but it will itself endure forever. 45 This is the meaning of the vision of the rock cut out of a mountain, but not by human hands—a rock that broke the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver and the gold to pieces. “The great God has shown the king what will take place in the future. The dream is true and its interpretation is trustworthy.”
The rock – the Kingdom of God – will destroy the spirit of empire once and for all. This statue prophecy is very similar to the seven-headed, ten-horned beast. It depicts four empires stretching forward through history from Daniel's time onward.
Daniel received this revelation while the world was under the Babylonian Empire, (the head of gold), but shortly after that it was toppled by the Medo-Persian Empire, (the shoulders and arms of silver). In turn these were followed by the Greek Empire of Alexander the Great and his followers, (the loins of bronze), and then the Roman Empire, (the legs of iron).
There is one more empire mentioned by Daniel, the feet of iron mixed with clay – an end-time empire with ten toes containing some of the iron (i.e. from the Roman Empire), but also of clay, (i.e. NOT from the Roman Empire).
Let’s consider the European Union (formerly the European Community), centred on Brussels. The original community was formed by the Treaty of Rome – certainly a link there with the 'legs of iron'.
The community grew to nine nations – it would have been ten, but Norway dropped out, some think partly because of this end-time prophecy of Daniel! The community then became 12, then 25 and is currently composed of 27 nations – with another seven under consideration.1
Many of these nations have no conceivable link with the old Roman Empire. Certainly nations such as Italy, France, Spain, Greece
and Britain were once under control of Rome, but Sweden, Poland, Ireland, Denmark, Czech Republic, have no such connection. Perhaps the EC does not quite fit – quite apart from it NOT having ten nations!
But think again, if the feet – and ten toes – were composed entirely of iron in Daniel's prophecy, then we would expect to find this union within Europe. But that is clearly NOT the case, the feet are 'of iron mixed with clay' – two things which do not mix, naturally.
Some of these ten nations may have a former link with Rome – the toes of iron; but they are joined by other nations who are 'toes of clay' and therefore have NO connection with Rome. Where does that leave us, then? Can we relate this to any powerful union which mixes some nations of Europe and other nations outside of Europe, in this way?
One group does spring to mind – not a political union, which many have sought in vain to identify, but a powerful economic union. Heard of the G8? Or indeed the G20? What are these groups? The G8 is considered to be a gathering of the strongest nations of the world, in economic terms.
The Whore and her Mother: 9/11, Babylon and the Return of the King Page 10