When, Where, And How Will The Time-Bomb Of Revelation 9:13-19 Go Off?
VOL. 70 * NEWSLETTER * JULY 7, 2014
Shalom shalom, friends:
These are truly the final years of this age. When America was manipulated by the G.W. Bush Jr. government to go to war against Iraq the Lord said this war (which was really an invasion as America was under no threat from Iraq) would open a hornets’ nest.
And so it has!
Under Saddam Hussein both Christians and Jews were free to practice their faith, provided they presented no threat to Saddam’s rule. But once Saddam was eliminated, Islamic “hornets” appeared and began their reign of terror – Shi’ites against Sunnis and Sunnis against Shiites. Saddam had been a Sunni and kept the Shiites under control. With the elimination of Saddam, all restraints lifted.
Soon after Saddam’s demise, the “Arab spring” began. Starting in Egypt, it quickly spread across the Arab world[1], erupting with the greatest of violence in Syria, spreading into Iraq and being supported by Iran. The West observed but did nothing, blind to the dangers of a deadly time-bomb.Today, fanatic Islam is gaining ever more control in Syria, Iraq and Iran, bringing unimaginable violence, terror and morbid brutality.
To understand the rise of this bloody Islamic Jihad we must look for its inception, which occurred with the advent of AyutollahRuhollahMousavi Khomeini[2]. It gained momentum upon his return to Iran from exile in Paris, France. Khomeini had been a student of Shia Islam but had shunned political activities during the 1930’s, believing that the foremost religious scholars should lead the revolutionaries.
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In 1955, a nationwide campaign against the Baha’i sect was launched, whom Khomeini sought to purge from Iran but the most prominent religious leader, Ayatollah Boroujerdi, did not support him.
However, Khomeini’s activities changed with the death of Boroujerdion March 31, 1961, for Khomeini now emerged as one of Boroujerdi’s successors and took over his position of leadership. He was soon accepted as Marja-e Taqlid[3] by a large number of Iranian Shi’ites.
In the autumn of 1962, the government of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi[4] passed new laws concerning local and provincial council elections. Khomeini opposed fearing infiltration of the religious minority Baha’is by allowing them to seek office. He telegraphed the Mohammad Reza Shah and the prime minister of the day, warning them to desist from violating both the law of Islam and the 1907 Iranian Constitution.
In January 1963, the Shah announced a six-point program of reform called the White Revolution, an American-inspired package of measures designed as a step towards westernization. In order to legitimize the White Revolution, the Shah called for a national referendum in which 5,598,711 votes supported the reforms with only 4,115 against.
On January 22, 1963, Ayatollah Khomeini issued a strongly worded declaration denouncing the Shah and his plans. He listed the various ways in which the Shah had violated the constitution, condemned the spread of moral corruption in the country, and accused the Shah of comprehensive submission to America and Israel.
Khomeini, who was a master of rhetoric, fomented ever more violent opposition to the Shah and his programs with inciting speeches in favor of an Islamic Republic. This led to his arrest and to a popular uprising of 15 Khordad 1342, that was only quelled after 6 days. This uprising marked a turning point in Iranian history.
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The Shah’s regime continued its pro-American policies and in the autumn of 1964, it concluded an agreement with the United States. Khomeini delivered a blistering speech against the Shah in which he denounced the agreement as surrender of Iranian independence and sovereignty. His continued opposition to the Shah’s reforms[5] and inflammatory speeches led to several arrests and finally, on November 4, 1964, to his exile to Turkey.
During his years in exile, Khomeini developed a theory, Velayat-e faqeeh, of what a state founded on Islamic principles and led by the clergy would be like. He taught his theory at a local Islamic school, mostly to other Iranians. He also began making video tapes of his sermons, which were smuggled into and sold in Iranian bazaars. Through these methods, Khomeini became the accepted leader of the Iranian opposition to the government of the Shah. As Turkish law forbade Ayatollah Khomeini to wear the cloak and turban of the Muslim scholar – an identity integral to his being – he left Turkey on September 5, 1965, for Najaf in Iraq, where he spent thirteen years.
The most visible sign of the popularity of Ayatollah Khomeini in the pre-revolutionary years was above all at the heart of the religious institution in Qom. On the anniversary of the uprising of 15 Khordada furious mass protests took place in Qom; it was suppressed by the security forces with heavy loss of life. This was the first in a series of popular confrontations that, gathering momentum throughout 1978, soon turned into a vast revolutionary movement, demanding the overthrow of the Pahlavi regime and the installation of an Islamic government.
Ayatollah RuhollahKhomeini reacted with a message in which he declared the events in Qom and similar disturbances elsewhere to be a sign of hope that “freedom and liberation from the bonds of imperialism” were at hand. The beginning of the revolution came indeed some two and a half years later.
In the wake of these protests, Khomeini was deported to Iraq and on October 3, 1978, he left Iraq for Kuwait, but was refused entry at the border. After a period of hesitation in which Algeria, Lebanon and Syria were considered as possible destinations, Khomeini chose to move to Paris, which was to be his last place of residence before his triumphant return to Iran. Once arrived in Paris, Khomeini took up residence in a house that had been rented for him by Iranian exiles in France. From now on the journalists from across the world made their way to France, and the image and the words of the Ayatollah Khomeini soon became a daily feature in the world’s media.
Khomeini was not allowed to return to Iran during the Shah’s reign.[6] Students, the middle-class, self-employed businessmen, and the military all took to the streets in protest. The Shah turned to the U.S. for help, but on January 17, 1979, ultimately had to leave the country himself in the face of the revolution at his doorstep. He died on 27. July 1980, aged 60, of non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a type of cancer.
Two weeks later, on Thursday, 1 February 1979[7], Khomeini returned in triumph to Iran, welcomed by a cheering crowd estimated (by BBC) to be of up to five million people, and began laying the groundwork for the Islamic state he had for so long been imagining.
On February 12, 1979, following sporadic street gunfight, all divisions of the regime, political, administrative, and military, finally collapsed. The revolution had triumphed.
On 30.and 31. March 1979, a referendum to replace the monarchy with an Islamic Republic passed by 98%. Ayatollah Khomeini[8] proclaimed the next day, April 1, 1979, as the “first day of God’s [Allah’s] government”. He obtained the title of “Imam” (highest religious rank in Shia). With the establishment of the Islamic Republic of Iran he became Supreme Leader (Vali-e Faqeeh).
During this period, he had other clerics formulate an Islamic constitution for Iran. He also was more forceful than before: “Don’t listen to those who speak of democracy. They all are against Islam. They want to take the nation away from its mission. We will break all the poison pens of those who speak of nationalism, democracy, and such things.”
I believe that it was at that time that the “prince of Persia”[9] took possession of Khomeini’s faculties, establishing a Islamic theocratic rule over Iran. Khomeini never fulfilled his pre-revolution promises and marginalized and crushed all who opposed his clerical rules. He ordered the establishment of many institutions to consolidate power and safeguard the cleric leadership. During his early years in power he launched the Cultural Revolution in order to Islamize the entire country. Many people were laid off, and lots of books were revised or burnt according to the new Islamic values. Newly established Islamic Judiciary system sentenced many Iranians to death and long-term imprisonment as they were in opposition to those radical changes.
An early event in the history of the Islamic republic that had a long term impact was the Iran hostage crisis. Following the admitting of the former Shah of Iran into the United States for cancer treatment, on November 4, 1979, Iranian students seized US embassy personnel, labeling the embassy a “den of spies.”[111] Fifty-two hostages were held for 444 days until January 1981.[112] An American military attempt to rescue the hostages (under the Presidency of Jimmy Carter) failed.[113]
The takeover was enormously popular in Iran, where thousands gathered in support of the hostage takers, and it is thought to have strengthened the prestige of the Ayatollah Khomeini and consolidated the hold of anti-Americanism. The leading Western power had been brought to its knees in the sight of the whole world, losing “face.” Khomeini’s Islam appeared triumphant over Western imperialism and corruption. From that time on, spreading the Islamic state even across Western nations seemed no longer an impossibility but rather a necessity. The time of the “holy Jihad” against all infidels had its inception at that hostage taking.
It was also at this time that Khomeini began referring to America as the “Great Satan.” He reigned as absolute ruler of Iran from 1979 until his death on June 3, 1989 (see “History of Iran”).
Without knowing the history of Iran and Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, it is impossible to understand the present movement of Islam, which like a tsunami is rushing across the globe, seeking to swallow up everything in its path. It was Khomeini who, at the behest of the indwelling “prince of Persia” (I’m sure he was not himself aware of this demon ruling over his faculties) who initiated this movement and began to advance it with increasing violence, spreading fear, terror, bloodshed and death, and ever more stringent Islamic laws.
Islam’s present offspring is ISIS, a monster organization seeking to spread Khomeini’s ideals of an Islamic state across the Middle East and the globe. Although Khomeini was a Shia, the ISIS members are mainly Sunnis who have mutated into a far bloodier and violent form of Islam than even the Shias or Al-Quaida ever upheld. They have already infiltrated many countries where they successfully recruit new members. Whoever loves to kill, torture, and commit atrocities without penalty happily joins this hellish brood ISIS, as was also the case with the Nazis.
Today ever more nations, both Western and Middle Eastern, are forming a military alliance to eradicate ISIS. It will be like the Hydra of Greek Mythology – when one of her heads was cut off, two grew in its place. This nightmare of an Islamic state spreading across the globe will not disappear and will cause more and more nations to join in the effort to purge the world of this evil.
The Book of Revelation, 9:13-19, states that at the sounding of the 6th trumpet, something incredibly evil and terrible occurs:
“Release the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates.”
The Euphrates has its beginning in Turkey, flows through Syria and Iraq. Turkey claims the river to be theirs and built dams for their use, the biggest of them being the Atatuerk dam, which can close the river off like a faucet, turning it into a trickle for Syria and Iraq
Four angels are being held at the Euphrates for a precise hour, day, month and year when they will be released to kill a third of mankind.
Today’s earth population numbers 7 billion. One third is 2,3 billion. An enormous number! A dreadful World War is on the horizon.
The question is: WHERE are those four angels bound: in Turkey, in Syria, or Iraq? And when is the hour, the day, the month, the year that this as yet limited warfare will erupt into the world war in which one third of mankind will perish? And what earthly cause (apart from the 6th trumpet) will have these four extremely evil angels released from their bonds at the Euphrates on that precise date? And in which country will this occur – Turkey? Syria? Or Iraq? I believe this mighty and extremely important river, together with the world’s largest dam, will play a part in the timing and cause that will bring about the release of those angels.
Turkey has once again become an Islamic State[10], where Christians are no longer safe, as in Syria, Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia etc. The present beheading especially of Christians by ISIS, brings Revelation 6:9-11 into focus, at the time when the 5th seal is being broken, when a foreordained number of believers in Yeshua shall be killed like those were whose souls are under the altar: by beheading, crucifying, hanging and butchering.
I have asked myself again and again: had the whole Body of Messiah (not merely individuals) kept the Lord Yeshua’s No. 1 commandment, which He repeated three times, “Love one another as I have loved you because by THAT shall ALL MEN KNOW that you are My disciples;”[11] and had the Body “become one with each other as He and the Father are one,”[12] would that have prevented the emergence of Ayatollah Khomeini and the Iranian Islamic Republic, now morphed into ISIS, to make of the world an Islamic Caliphate?
Yeshua said that Scripture cannot be broken; hence what is written in Revelation will come to pass. But I would argue that had the Church at large, the whole Body of Messiah, practiced the commandment and desire of the Lord’s heart, most of the world would already be evangelized, for such love and unity would draw the lost and hurting to Yeshua as moths are drawn to a flame. And Islam would lie dormant, never having grown into this horrific monster that it has now become.
The conclusion appears to be this: the Body of Messiah, the Church at large, has failed in its mission, while the followers of Allah are devoted to their god and faith even unto sacrificing their own lives.
Anyone still slumbering and sleeping, thinking no evil shall come near him, will wake up one day to a rule of terror from which there will be no escape. There will be no hiding place, no refuge, neither underground, in mountains and caves nor even underwater. Today’s technology can locate anyone wherever they hide.
Even now, citizens of Western nations are being watched and monitored day and night. New laws have effectively robbed people of their civil liberties – although widely unnoticed by them–and make it possible to round them up and incarcerate them for any reason at any place for any amount of time without access to legal counsel.
And all of this is only the prelude to the climaxing 7 years of tribulation, beginning with the appearance of the 2 Witnesses. Today’s terror is only a tiny foretaste of what will be once the four angels are set free at the Euphrates.
Who wants to remain like the ostrich, sticking his head in the sand?
Nevertheless, Rev. 9:20-21 states that the remaining two thirds of mankind, following this horrific WWIII, will not repent of the works of their hands, nor turn from their false gods and religions, nor will they repent of their thefts, murders, drug dealings and abuses, nor their sexual perversions.
Dreams of an utopian New World Order of peace and prosperity, happiness and safety, will merely trap people as in a spider’s net of the One World Government. Only one Kingdom offers peace, justice, happiness and prosperity, and that is the coming Kingdom of G-d in the Messianic Reign.
In Yeshua’s Words to those who love Him: “Let not your hearts be troubled, neither be afraid” (Jn 14:27). May we, the followers of Yeshua, never submit to fear, but keep our faith, hope, love and trust in G-d Almighty and His Son Yeshua (His Name means salvation).
There is but ONE safe haven, ONE safe Refuge and Hiding Place – the G-d of all the earth, the Almighty King of the universe, the Holy One of Israel; and the Name of Yeshua, Messiah and Redeemer of Israel, Savior of the world and of all who approach Him in faith, with a repentant heart.
Becoming a citizen now of the divine Kingdom is the call of the hour. Do not delay! Do not procrastinate!
Yours in the Name of Yeshua, the only Savior whose Name, blood and cross deliver and save.
[1] Although all the Middle Eastern nations – apart from Israel – are summed up into “Arab” nations, most of them are not actually Arabs. Iranians, Iraqis, Syrians, Lebanese, Egyptians, Maroccans, and… and..all are not Arabs. Qatar, Dubai, Kuweit, United Emirates, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and a few more, are Arabs, most descended from Beduin.
[3] Literally means “Source to Imitate/Follow” or “Religious Reference”. It is the label provided to Shia authority, a Grand Ayatollah with the authority to make legal decisions within the confines of Islamic law for followers and less-credentialed clerics. After the Qur’an and the Prophets and Imams, mara-ji’ are the highest authority on religious laws in Usuli Shia Islam.
[4] Photo gallery: http://www.iranchamber.com/history/photo_albums/shah_album1/shah_album1.php ; http://www.iranchamber.com/history/photo_albums/shah_album3/shah_album3.php
[6] Other reports state that Khomeini refused to return until the Shah had left.
[7] On his chartered flight back to Teheran 120 journalists accompanied him,including three women. One of the journalists, Peter Jennings, asked: “Ayatollah, would you be so kind as to tell us how you feel about being back in Iran?” Khomeini answered via his aide Sadegh Ghotbzadeh: “Hichi” (Nothing). This statement – much discussed at the time and since – was considered by some reflective of his mystical beliefs and non-attachment to ego. Others considered it a warning to Iranians who hoped he would be a “mainstream nationalist leader” that they were in for disappointment. To others, it was a reflection of an unfeeling leader incapable or unconcerned with understanding the thoughts, beliefs, or the needs of the Iranian populace.
[9] Daniel 10:13, 20
[10] Antichrist Turkish Minister Said “Christianity Is No Longer A Religion” [by Ben Barrack] on September 4, 2014 in General.
Turkish Environment and Urbanism Minister Erdogan Bayraktar is claiming that Christianity is no longer a religion but a culture. Conversely, this anti-christian Turk thinks Islam is a religion of peace that the world wishes to corrupt and turn into a culture as well (www.shoebat.com / http://shoebat.com/2014/09/04/turkish-minister-admits-antichrist )
Via Hurriyet Daily News:
“The biggest three countries in the world are not Muslim countries. China, India – only the U.S. believes in a single God. Spirituality and religious feelings are weakening,” Bayraktar said.
“There are 2.5 billion Christians in the world,” Bayraktar said. “Christianity is no longer a religion. It’s a culture now. But that is not what a religion is like. A religion teaches; it is a form of life that gives one peace and happiness. That is what they want to turn [Islam] into as well.”
Can’t get much more antichrist than that.——————–
St. Paul travelled thro’ Turkey and brought the good news to them to them that Jesus Christ is their Savior. Here come the Muslim invaders to trample on whatever Paul & John the Revelator established in Turkey, much before the onslaught of Islam during the 7th century
[11] John 13:34-35; 15:12, 17; rabbinical ruling establishes a commandment repeated 3 times as making it a more stringent, absolute commandment. For example, the Kashrut law of separating dairy foods and meat – especially beef – foods, not eating it together, derives from 3 repetitions, the 3rd repetition expanding the commandment to keeping even the dishes and silverware separated. The commandment, “You shall not boil a kid in its mother’s milk” is repeated 3 times (Ex 23:19; 34:26; Deut. 14:21), with each repetition rendering the commandment more stringent, more absolute, expanding its observance.
In view of the Lord Yeshua having restated this commandment 3 times implies that it must extend into every area of our life. It is not to be observed only occasionally or with someone we like, for whom we hold a preference, but daily, at all times, whether liked or not so liked, whether difficult or not, poor and “unimportant” or well-to-do and prominent. It is an ABSOLUTE commandment and not keeping it will have dire consequences, for it is the standard by which the Lord will judge those who claim to believe in Him and love and follow Him.
[12]John 17:20-23; this He also states 3 times, adding twice “that the world may believe and know that You [Father] have sent Me.” What does THIS imply? A 3-fold statement in His prayer to the Father denotes an ABSOLUTE! Anyone claiming to be His disciple yet does not promote, uphold and practice unity within the Body at large – not only his own congregation – will face the Lord’s judgment, and should fear to be told by Him, “But I have this against you!” Or worse yet, “I never knew you!”