Mr. Jack Kinsela has had an excellent ministry of offering commentary and Bible teaching about current events as they relate to God's last days timeline.  Visit his website for a wide variety of articles, commentaries, and Bible teachings:  www.omegaletter.com. 

I haven't tried a subscription yet, but I visit his site regularly (Dan Fox); so I'll post an article here when I find them especially valuable.

Since September 11, there has been a concerted effort to present a new and improved Islam to the world. The moderate Muslim activists in the West avoid referring to teachings that may offend the Western citizen, such as the Islamic code of punishment.

They stress that they believe in Moses and Jesus. They refrain from calling Jews and Christians "infidels", "Zionists" or "Crusaders".

They use the term "Sunday School" in place of "Friday Class", and they end their speeches with the Christian expression "may God bless you".

Islam has two streams of theological thought; those based on Mohammed's sayings in Mecca and those penned from Medina. Both eventually were brought together in the Koran, but reflect two entirely different worldviews.

The Meccan view is the 'universalist' view that holds that Islam, Christianity and Judaism all worship the same Deity and that we are all "People of the Book."

The Medina view is the warlike, conquering Islam that is reflected in the Koran by verses such as, "O you who believe! do not take the Jews and the Christians for friends; they are friends of each other; and whoever amongst you takes them for a friend, then surely he is one of them; surely Allah does not guide the unjust people." [Sura 5.51]

Historians agree that there is a big difference between Mohammed's religious teachings from Mecca and his teachings after his migration to Medina.

In Mecca Mohammed was weak, struggling to be accepted, often mocked at and ridiculed. He tried to appeal to the people of Mecca by being compassionate and loving. His teachings condemned violence, injustice, neglect of the poor.

However, after he moved to Medina and his followers grew in strength and number, he became a relentless warrior, intent on spreading his religion by the sword.

This change in Mohammed's personality becomes apparent by comparing the Meccan and the Medinan suras. The following are some additional examples:

In Sura 73:10 God tells Mohammed to be patient with his opponents "Be patient with what they say, and part from them courteously."

In Sura 2:191 God orders him to kill his opponents "Kill them wherever you find them, and drive them out from wherever they drove you out..."

In Sura 2:256 Allah tells Mohammed not to impose Islam by force "There is no compulsion in religion."

In verse 193 God tells him to kill whoever rejects Islam "Fight (kill) them until there is no persecution and the religion is Allah's."

In Sura 29:46 Allah tells Mohammed to speak nicely to people of the Book (Christians and Jews) "Argue with people of the Book, other then evil doers, only by means of what are better! and say, we believe in what has been sent down to us and sent down to you. Our God is the same as your God, and we are surrendered to him."

Then in Sura 9:29 Allah tells him to fight the people of the Book, "Fight those who do not believe in God and the last day...and fight People of the Book, who do not accept the religion of truth (Islam) until they pay tribute by hand, being inferior."

To justify this sudden change in the Koran's mood from peaceful to militant, conciliatory to confrontational, Mohammed claimed that it was Allah who told him so.

History demonstrates that what actually happened was that Mohammed grew strong in Medina -- strong enough to move from being conciliatory in his religious approach to jihad.

Those who claim to be moderate followers of Islam are those who follow the Meccan Mohammed. The militants follow the Mohammed of Medina.

Islam teaches love, temperance and moderation. It's easy enough to prove. Just read the Koran. However, since few ever will, the American face of moderate Islam will read it to you, as is evidently the case with the Bush administration.

But the same Koran teaches jihad, death and destruction out of the same pages, and while the American face of moderate Islam will never read those to you, the militant Islamist reads them every single day.

Verses like the following:

Men are superior to women (Sura 2:228).

Women have half the rights of men: in court witness (Sura 2:282) and in inheritance (Sura 4:11).

A man may punish his wife by beating her (Sura 4:34).

A man may marry up to four wives at the same time (Sura 4:3).

A wife is a sex object for her husband (Sura 2:223).

Muslims must fight until their opponents submit to Islam (Sura 9:29).

A Muslim must not take a Jew or a a Christian for a friend (Sura 5:51).

A Muslim apostate must be killed (Sura 9:12).

Stealing is punished by the amputation of the hands (Sura 5:38).

Adultery is punished by public flogging (Sura 24:2).

Resisting Islam is punished by death, crucifixion or the cutting off of the hands and feet (Sura 5:33).

Fate decides everyone's eternal destination (Sura 17:13).

Every Muslim will pass through Hell (Sura 19:71).

Heaven in Islam is the place where a Muslim will be reclining, eating meats and delicious fruits, drinking exquisite wines, and engaging in sex with virgins (Sura 55:54- 56) & (Sura 52:17,19).

You might notice I didn't include a lot of the 'moderate' verses 'proving' the Koran presents Islam as a religion of peace and love.

That isn't because they aren't there. But they are rendered meaningless by the verses that teach the opposite.

Islamic apologists point to the warlike nature of the Old Testament and the seeming contradiction presented by the Prince of Peace in the New Testament.

But the Koran isn't two separate religions based on two separate Dispensations of God, clearly divided by 400 years of silence followed by the fulfillment of the Old Testament in the life of Jesus Christ.

One has to be an Islamic scholar to separate the Meccan verses from the Medinan verses to know whether Allah wants them to be friends with Christians and Jews or to crucify them.

It is that split personality within Islam that separates the moderates from the militants. We are told that the moderates are in the majority, but all the evidence seems to indicate the exact opposite.

In any case, there are approaching two billion Muslims in the world -- that is two thousand million, to put it more descriptively. If even ten percent of Islam follows the Mohammed of Medina, that's 100 million militant Muslims.

That's a lot, no matter how you interpret it.

http://www.omegaletter.com/articles.asp?ArticleID=5900

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How To Be a Dhimmi, Without Even Trying. . .

Terror - Islam
Thursday, March 02, 2006
Jack Kinsella - Omega Letter Editor

I had a most interesting conversation with my brother yesterday regarding the Danish cartoons and the global Islamic rioting that followed it.

My brother and I love to discuss the things that are going on in the world. Being brothers, we can be blunt with one another.

That's what makes those conversations fun. We don't get to have these conversations as often since I moved to North Carolina. It showed.

I was astonished to hear him mount an impassioned criticism of the Danish press for printing the cartoons and inflaming Islamic sentiments.

He waxed forth with rhetorical questions about how 'we would feel' if Danish newspapers posted blasphemous cartoons about Jesus, and so forth.

He went on to warn of the dire consequences that might ensue should we inflame the passions of the moderate Islamic world, and said that, even in a free country, the press should have suppressed the cartoons 'out of respect for Islam'.

I was still picking my jaw up off the floor when I noticed his eyes seemed to be slightly out-of-focus and his voice had taken on a monotone quality. (Then I remembered his only sources of information are CNN and the CBC.)

Like I said, we are brothers, so I didn't have to sugar-coat my response.

"Want me to play that back to you so you can hear how completely you've been brainwashed?"

"Have not!"

"Have so!"

"Oh, yeah?"

"So, in your view, then, you are saying that "out of respect for Islam" we should submit to Islamic censorship when it comes to what is insulting to Islam?"

"Well, I don't like the way you put it, exactly, but yes."

"Did you see the cartoons?"

"No."

"How did they offend Islam? I mean, specifically. What about them was offensive?"

"They made the moderate Muslims mad. They didn't have to print them."

"If YOU don't know what made them mad, then how would you know if you did something to make them mad?"

"Ummm. . . I don't know the whole Koran."

"So, then, your argument expands to include the Western world gaining a rudimentary understanding of the Koran so as to avoid giving offense?"

"Well, it wouldn't hurt."

"So, your argument expands to exposing the West to Koranic teachings so that nobody inadvertently gives offense to a religion that the West owes respect. While we're on the subject, didn't Dad always teach us that respect is something that has to be earned in order to be genuine? What, exactly, has Islam done to earn your respect? Let's be fair. What has Islam done to earn global respect? You know, like Christianity has earned global respect for say, its charity. America is the most philanthropic country in the world, for example."

"Ummm, I don't know. Let me think."

"No, I mean, really. If the West owes Islam respect it doesn't grant any other religion, including Christianity or Judaism, you must be able to articulate some reason why."

"I hate it when you do that!"

"So, we should learn a religion that we respect for reasons we can't define, so as to avoid giving offense to 'moderates' to prevent them from rising up and killing us? Those who do, like the cartoonists, should be punished? And if you offend Islam because you failed to learn the lessons of the Koran, should you be punished?"

"Wow! Did I say that?"

"Calling these cartoons "unacceptable," and censoring ourselves "in respect" to Islam brings the west into compliance with a central statute of Islamic sharia law. That's not respect. It's submission."

After our conversation, I started reading some of CBC's archived coverage of the Danish cartoon uprising and it was easy to see where my brother got the 'submission' soap to wash his brain with.

Leading headlines like "Protests of Cartoons of the Prophet Escalate in Islamic World" and "Tens of Thousands of Palestinians Demonstrate Against Prophet Cartoons" covered stories that centered on the offense rendered Islam's "Prophet" while each reference to Mohammed conformed to the proper Islamic title of "The Prophet Mohammed."

Noted one story, "Islamic law, based on clerics' interpretation of the Qur'an and the sayings of the Prophet, absolutely forbids depictions of the Prophet Muhammad, even positive images, in order to prevent idolatry."

It is worthy of noting that the CBC story is incorrect. Islamic law does NOT 'absolutely forbid depictions of the Prophet Mohammed. (That prohibition varies by sect within Islam.)

So, the CBC failed to study the Koran as carefully as it should have. If it makes another mistake, this time insulting Islam, should it be punished? Should editors start worrying about when they will get THEIR midnight knock on the door?

It is but one example of many to the submission of the Canadian press to Islamic restrictions. In each story, 'Prophet' was carefully capitalized.

Have you ever seen the secular press capitalize 'he' when referring to Jesus? Have you ever seen the secular press refer to Jesus as the "Messiah" the way Mohammed is referred to as 'the Prophet'?

The cartoons themselves were described, but not shown. The descriptions were carefully crafted to convey the sense of insult without repeating the insult itself.

All the editorializing was reserved for those who inflamed the global rioting by their insensitivity to Islam, not on the fact that 'moderate' Islam was rioting over a cartoon!

It was so powerful that my brother, whom I love and deeply respect, was so taken in that his reaction to the propaganda blitz was an argument in favor of Western submission to Islamic law "out of respect" for Islam.

"For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only He who now letteth will let, until He be taken out of the way. And THEN shall that Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of His mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of His coming: Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders, And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie:" (2nd Thessalonians 2:7-11)

When that strong delusion does come, it will come upon a world more than prepared to receive it.

"Therefore, brethren, stand fast, and hold the traditions which ye have been taught, whether by word, or our epistle." (2nd Thessalonians 2:15)

Until He comes.

Excerpted from the Omega Letter Daily Intelligence Digest, Volume 53, Issue 24

Olive Tree Ministries has a nice collection of articles.  Ms. Jan Markell also writes commentaries for Jack Kinsela's website.

Haven’t You Heard -- "Your “Purpose" Isn’t Prophecy?

In Defense of the Faith
Saturday, February 12, 2005
Jan Markell

I am deeply concerned and grieved that some of our nation’s most prominent Christian leaders just can’t get it right when it comes to issues of Bible prophecy or Israel. Equally troubling is the fact that eschatology has vanished from our pulpits some 15 – 20 years ago because it is “divisive,” “confusing,” and might drive away today’s “seekers.” I cannot figure out why the message that “the King is coming” doesn’t fit in to today’s “feel good” theology.

The Bible says in II Thessalonians that there will be a great “falling away” from sound doctrine. Perhaps that explains the surge of the trendy theology called “Preterism” which teaches that all or most of prophecy is history. It took place in 70 AD with the destruction of Jerusalem. The Tribulation was the persecution of the saints. Nero was the antichrist most likely, though he died in 68 AD by suicide.

There are Full and Partial Preterists. A Partial Preterist would consider a Full Preterist heretical, for a Full Preterist teaches that Jesus even returned in 70 AD, although only “in spirit.” But all Preterists believe there is no future antichrist, Tribulation, Millennium, or role for national Israel present or future. They do believe in the Second Coming of Christ and the resurrection of believers, but not in a Rapture.

The theology came along in the 1600’s but wasn’t made trendy until 20th Century teachers like Ken Gentry, R.C. Sproul, Gary DeMar, and “The Bible Answerman” Hank Hanegraaff started heralding it. Hanegraaff clearly never met a Dispensationalist he didn’t address in a demeaning manner.

He uses his powerful international radio microphone to denounce Tim Lahaye, Hal Lindsey, and many more, on a weekly basis.

Hank or his guests weekly plead the cause of the persecuted and “occupied” Palestinians with distorted Scripture and historical revisionism, yet his books and radio show make him one of the most powerful men in the forefront of Christianity.

But even more respected is Rick Warren, the man trying to give us all “purpose” while at the same time telling his readers to stay away from Bible prophecy. While I know that many have grown from the whole “purpose-driven phenomenon,” I am grieved that this powerful Christian leader says on pages 285-286 of his book, “The Purpose Driven Life,” that Jesus told his disciples, “The details of my return are none of your business.”

Rick, give us chapter and verse for that! We are to focus on our “mission” which isn’t Bible prophecy. We are to preach the gospel to every nation and then the end will come says Rick, but that happens in the Tribulation.

He suggests that prophecy is a “diversion of the devil” and then implies that those who do not focus on the work God has planned for us—from which prophecy diverts us—is not fit for the Kingdom of God.

He doesn’t get it that two thirds of the Bible is prophecy and that Jesus tells us to “watch and pray” for His return. In Matthew 16, He chastises the Pharisees for knowing the signs of the weather but not the signs of the times.

Rick robs of us our “blessed hope” and our “purpose” could in no way have anything to do with sounding an alarm to the lateness of the hour which would fit into Rick’s evangelistic plan. Bible prophecy and evangelism fit like a hand in a glove!

The misunderstanding or abuse of prophecy goes all the way to the top. Many of us campaigned for George W. Bush praying that by his second term he would be reached by men with sound theology to better shape his Middle East goals. But he remains blinded by his Replacement Theology background—that is, the Church is the new Israel so we can pressure Israel to carve up her land until the cows come home and there will be no consequences.

Most of his staff falls into the same camp, but they all put America at risk. If they only had been taught sound eschatology, this might not be the case.

I conclude that you can have an international platform, sell millions of books, and even rise to high political office with little consequences if you have indifference towards prophecy or skewed eschatological theology, and have Israel not much more relevant than the Canary Islands.

The bottom line is this: Millions of prophecy books including “The Late-Great Planet Earth” and the “Left Behind” series have won untold numbers for Eternity. The hour is much too late to have these theologies torn apart and ridiculed when we need to use such teachings to win the lost while we have time!

How convenient of the enemy to blur the sound theology behind true Dispensationalist teaching and get people wondering if all prophecy is history, the Church is Israel, and we are deluded if we think our “purpose” is to believe sound prophecy teaching when that is but a diversion.

I’m frustrated and I wonder if God isn’t weeping.

(Jan Markell is founder/director of Olive Tree Ministries. For more information, her e-mail alerts, or to sign up for her print newsletter, visit her Web site,www.olivetreeviews.org www.olivetreeviews.org. You can learn more from the category on the site called “Prophecy Watch.”)

http://www.omegaletter.com/articles.asp?ArticleID=4694

26Feb06

Is Israel sitting on enormous oil reserve?
Company uses biblical verses to locate drilling
By:Aaron Klein

KIBBUTZ MA'ANIT, Israel – Is Israel sitting on an enormous oil reserve mapped out in the Old Testament that when found will immediately change the geopolitical structure of the Middle East and confirm the validity of the Bible to people around the world?

So believes John Brown, an evangelical Christian and founder and chairman of Zion Oil and Gas, a company he and others poured several million dollars into to drill a hole 15,000 feet deep that will as soon as next week tap a rock interval that may contain oil.

"The Bible spells out where the oil is," Brown told WND yesterday outside his drilling rig off a highway between Haifa and Tel Aviv.

"It's very specific. Now we're here to find it, and I know that when we do, the Scriptures will come alive for everyone who hears about it. And Israel will have enough oil not to worry about all the implications of the Arab states using their oil to threaten and gain power."

Brown, pointing to the Bible he says he always carries with him, referred to several biblical passages he is certain indicate where to find petroleum. He stressed that two passages, detailing God's blessings to each of biblical patriarch Jacob's 12 sons, are very specific:

"Let Asher be blessed ... and let him dip his foot in oil." – Deuteronomy 33:24

"Joseph is a fruitful bough by a well ... blessings of heaven above, blessings of the deep that couches beneath shall be on the head of Joseph, and on the crown of the head." – Genesis 49: 22-26

Brown also pointed to other verses, such as the continuation of Joseph's blessing in Deuteronomy 33: "For the deep that couches beneath ... and for the chief things of the ancient mountains, and for the precious things of primordial hills, and for the precious things of the earth."

The Twelve Tribes were each given a section of Israel as inheritance, Brown explains.

Mapping the tribes' biblical territory indeed shows that Asher's area resembles a giant foot "dipped" into the top, or "crown" area of the land of Joseph's son, Manasseh.

"The oil is there, where Joseph's head is met by Asher's foot," said Brown.

Brown says he used a strategy explained to him by James Spillman, an evangelical minister and Bible scholar who lectured at his local church, to determine exactly where on the biblical map the oil might be.

He then set out on a quest to find it, forming Zion Oil and Gas, which in 2000 was awarded by the Israeli government a small onshore petroleum license. In 2003, the company was granted an extended license that includes 95,800 acres of the area not far from Tel Aviv that Brown believes contains oil – Kibbutz Ma'anit.

The company immediately attracted some of the industry's top talent, including its current CEO Gene Soltero, a successful drilling veteran, and Glen Perry, its executive vice-president, who previously engineered for oil giants Exxon and Energy Reserve Group.

"Our project, while it may be based on faith and the Bible, is entirely grounded in geology and scientific evidence," said Perry.

Perry said the company, as well as independent contractors, conducted seismic and geologic studies that found the drill area contains signs of hydrocarbons evidencing likely oil and rock intervals deep in the ground conducive to petroleum storage.

Soltero calls his company's project "a class A drillable prospect with reasonable chances of success ... drillable by any international standards."

Another company previously drilled in Ma'anit through several earth layers to a depth of 7,600 feet, past the Jurassic crest, but did not permeate any reefs containing petroleum and reportedly had to suspend operations due to lack of funds.

Geologists told Zion Oil the Jurassic area beneath the drilling site consisted of closely packed limestone that was not porous enough to store vast sums of oil.

So Zion, backed by some cash from private Jewish and Christian investors, set up shop and dug past the Jurassic zone, drilling to about 15,000 feet to the deep Triassic layers, where tests indicate 10 rock intervals may contain oil.

Engineers the next few days will shoot large, pressurized rock perforating bullets into one of the intervals Brown hopes will contain oil or at least more oil-bearing hydrocarbons indicating petroleum is nearby.

"I think we may see petroleum come out," said Brown. "It doesn't happen right away, it takes a few days, but something might be happening really, really soon."

Perry said if the company doesn't strike oil with this week's perforation, "we'll keep searching. There are several other rock intervals. This is just one of many possibilities."

The company also says studies indicate a large structural feature perhaps 5,000-10,000 feet deeper then the current drilling zone may contain a formation that has enough oil to make Israel a world class producer.

"These kinds of similar zones around the world have contained billions of barrels," said Soltero.

For Brown, it's all about Israel.

"You have these Arab states that threaten boycotts and throw their oil weight around to get countries to pressure Israel," said Brown. "Imagine if Israel becomes a huge oil producer. There will be no more placating anyone since they have the oil."

Brown continued: "Of course there are the giant biblical implications. This will get people thinking about God and realizing His word it the truth."

Aaron Klein is WorldNetDaily's Jerusalem bureau chief, whose past interview subjects have included Yasser Arafat, Ehud Barak, Shlomo Ben Ami and leaders of the Taliban.

Posted: September 21, 2005-FROM WND'S JERUSALEM BUREAU
1:00 a.m. Eastern

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=46428

In reference to the Gog/Magog invasion:

“Ezekiel 39:9 begins the description of the aftermath.  It is gruesome but also amazing in its detail when looked at in comparison to today.  “Then those who live in the towns of Israel will go out and use the weapons for fuel and burn them up – the small and large shields, the bows and arrows, the war clubs and spears.  For seven years they will use them for fuel. 

This statement is remarkable for two reasons.

First is the nature of the weapons.  In the time that Ezekiel wrote this, burning weapons made perfect sense because they were made of wood.  What of today’s weapons however?  How do you burn warplanes and other metals?  Amazingly, Russia has been using Lignostone in the production of its weapons.  Lignostone “is a special kind of wood used for ‘coke breakers.’  It is stronger than steel, is very elastic… and it burns better than coal.  (p. 90,  LaHaye,  Are We Living in the End Times?)  You can read more about Lignostone on its website at www.lignostone.com.”

Source:

http://www.spreadinglight.com/prophecy/gog.html

Lignostone was invented by Ter Apel from Holland.  Apparently, they were searching for a burnable product to replace coal.  What they found was a superior wood product that could be machined like metal, but included the flexibility of some plastics.  Here are some snippets of information from various websites regarding Lignostone.

"This material has excellent mechanical, thermal and electrical properties. It is commonly used as structural insulation in electrical apparatus, conveyor wearstrips and curves, LNG pipe supports, pattern plates, woodworking machine tables, gears, gear racks, and die boards. Its unique composition provides shielding against nuclear radiation which is useful in some medical and defense applications."'

http://www.roechling.co.uk/lignostone.htm

APPLICATIONS

Oil filled transformers   pressure ring lead support step block pressure block clamping beam threaded rod & square nuts. Cryogenic   supports in LNG/LPG vessel pipe support Metal Foundry   pattern plate Nuclear Shielding materials Others   staywire Insulators Electrical Bus bar supports

PRODUCTION RANGE

Sheets   Size : 1000 x 2000 mm; thk 8-200 mm 2000 x 2000 mm; thk 15-100 mm 2000 x 4000 mm; thk 15-100 mm   Many sizes available ex-stock at short notice. Max. size: 3400 X 4200 mm Rings   Single-piece rings up to 3400 mm in diameter; larger diameter ring are made from segments. Beams   Maximum length: 5000mm fully machined Rods and Nuts   M8 - M24 ex-stock. Other sizes on request Machined Components   The production of CNC machined components as per drawings exceed more than 50% of our turnover with Lignostone®.

http://www.roechling-asia.com/product_lignostone.htm

Lignostone is a compressed laminated wood, made to meet the stringent industrial requirements, as in electrical insulation (transformer), thermal insulation (cryogenic), foundaries (pattern plate) and Staywire industries.

Lignostone densified wood provides the advantages of wood with exceptional strength and durability. The basic material for Lignostone Woodworkers Mallets and Hammers consists of layered beech wood veneer, bonded together with a synthetic resin under high pressure.

This process creates a product of great strength and consistency. The hardness of Lignostone densified wood is approximately five times that of solid beech, yet it has twice the elasticity. In addition, Lignostone is guaranteed not to split or crack, providing a lifetime of service. Regardless of the application, you will feel the exceptional quality as you guide these beautiful striking instruments.

www.gtlimited.com/ligno.html

Iran's Messianic Menace
By Daniel Pipes
FrontPageMagazine.com | January 10, 2006

Thanks to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran, a new word has entered the political vocabulary: mahdaviat.

Not surprisingly, it’s a technical religious term. Mahdaviat derives from mahdi, Arabic for “rightly-guided one,” a major figure in Islamic eschatology. He is, explains the Encyclopaedia of Islam, “the restorer of religion and justice who will rule before the end of the world.” The concept originated in the earliest years of Islam and, over time, became particularly identified with the Shi‘ite branch. Whereas “it never became an essential part of Sunni religious doctrine,” continues the encyclopedia, “Belief in the coming of the Mahdi of the Family of the Prophet became a central aspect of the faith in radical Shi‘ism,” where it is also known as the return of the Twelfth Imam.

Mahdaviat means “belief in and efforts to prepare for the Mahdi.”

In a fine piece of reporting, Scott Peterson of the Christian Science Monitor shows the centrality of mahdaviat in Ahmadinejad’s outlook and explores its implications for his policies.

When he was still mayor of Tehran in 2004, for example, Ahmadinejad appears to have secretly instructed the city council to build a grand avenue to prepare for the Mahdi. A year later, as president, he allocated US$17 million for a blue-tiled mosque closely associated with mahdaviat in Jamkaran, south of the capital. He has instigated the building of a direct Tehran-Jamkaran railroad line. He had a list of his proposed cabinet members dropped into a well adjacent to the Jamkaran mosque, it is said, to benefit from its purported divine connection.

He often raises the topic, and not just to Muslims. When addressing the United Nations in September, Ahmadinejad flummoxed his audience of world political leaders by concluding his address with a prayer for the Mahdi’s appearance: “O mighty Lord, I pray to you to hasten the emergence of your last repository, the Promised One, that perfect and pure human being, the one that will fill this world with justice and peace.”

On returning to Iran from New York, Ahmadinejad recalled the effect of his U.N. speech:

one of our group told me that when I started to say “In the name of God the almighty and merciful,” he saw a light around me, and I was placed inside this aura. I felt it myself. I felt the atmosphere suddenly change, and for those 27 or 28 minutes, the leaders of the world did not blink. … And they were rapt. It seemed as if a hand was holding them there and had opened their eyes to receive the message from the Islamic republic.

What Peterson calls the “presidential obsession” with mahdaviat leads Ahmadinejad to “a certitude that leaves little room for compromise. From redressing the gulf between rich and poor in Iran, to challenging the United States and Israel and enhancing Iran’s power with nuclear programs, every issue is designed to lay the foundation for the Mahdi’s return.”

“Mahdaviat is a code for [Iran’s Islamic] revolution, and is the spirit of the revolution,” says the head of an institute dedicated to studying and speeding the Mahdi’s appearance. “This kind of mentality makes you very strong,” observes the political editor of Resalat newspaper, Amir Mohebian. “If I think the Mahdi will come in two, three, or four years, why should I be soft? Now is the time to stand strong, to be hard.” Some Iranians, reports PBS, “worry that their new president has no fear of international turmoil, may think it's just a sign from God.”

Mahdaviat has direct and ominous implications for the U.S.-Iran confrontation, says an Ahmadinejad supporter, Hamidreza Taraghi of Iran’s hard-line Islamic Coalition Society. It implies seeing Washington as the rival to Tehran and even as a false Mahdi. For Ahmadinejad, the top priority is to challenge America, and specifically to create a powerful model state based on “Islamic democracy” by which to oppose it. Taraghi predicts trouble ahead unless Americans fundamentally change their ways.

I’d reverse that formulation. The most dangerous leaders in modern history are those (like Hitler) equipped with a totalitarian ideology and a mystical belief in their own mission. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad fulfills both these criteria, as revealed by his U.N. comments. That combined with his expected nuclear arsenal make him an adversary who must be stopped, and urgently.

http://www.frontpagemagazine.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=20835

Wake up, America

By Barry Casselman
Published April 17, 2006

For about 35 years, America has dreamt. From the end of the Vietnam War to September 11, 2001, it was a spectacular reverie. It included a triumphal and mostly nonviolent end to the Cold War, our rise to sole possession of the military superpower cup, and the continuation of our hegemony over the world economy. It was the realization of the mythic "American dream" so long celebrated by our writers, idealists and political scientists. It was a fantastic if premature waking dream that unified the values of our forbears in Europe with the spiritual and secular pragmatism of our own earlier pioneer culture. It seemed to have the sturdy architecture of British legal principle, the solid foundations of the intellectual fruits of the post-medieval Renaissance, and the constant, if not infinite, nurture of science and technological vention.
    The world, however, is always in changing itself, and it has little respect for predictable outcomes.
    It has no time, as well, for pretense.
    For five years now, the United States has begun to adjust to a world it had not really seen coming. Yes, some who understood the emerging computer and Internet technologies did predict dramatic change, but no one truly knew that this would change the world as the Industrial Revolution did about 200 years before. Yes, a few political scientists who did the math speculated that, at some future date, China and India would become the major economies of the world, but until India abandoned socialism and China embraced capitalism (minus representative democracy), it was only speculation. Yes, a few medical scientists knew that new diseases would likely attack our species, and that a horrific influenza pandemic would come again, but no one knew what, how and when.
     A few statesmen, including the young Winston Churchill, saw danger from Islamic fanaticism, but since the Dark Ages when Islamic culture flowered and was more advanced than Europe, and the Ottoman Empire declined, Islam was not taken seriously in the West and in America where few Moslems lived. American enemies in the past: British imperialists; Mediterranean pirates; Spanish colonialists; the Central Powers of Europe; the Nazis of Germany; Japan and their Axis allies; the Soviet Union and international communism came and went. American power dispatched them all, even when they descended into the barbarism of the Holocaust, Japanese militarism and Soviet oppression.
     Now we face a new and perhaps more ominous enemy. We also have allowed many of our domestic institutions to be weakened by neglect, bad planning, distraction and procrastination.
    Our affluent population is dramatically changing its demographic structure. Our medical science enables Americans to live longer than they did only a century before, even half a century before. We now ask most Americans to retire before they need to, and we have not prepared for how they will live after they retire.
    Our pension funds -- the Social Security, private, corporate and public-employee plans -- are collapsing under the weight of unanticipated participants and funding capacity. We delay dealing with this when we are most able. Our medical technology has produced medicines, procedures and equipment that can seemingly meet all threats and challenges, but we have increasingly diminished ways to provide and distribute this care. Our education system has been compromised by political correctness, lack of discipline, institutional bickering and inefficiencies.
     We have become preoccupied, as a device of our national procrastination, with two aspects of public life which do not solve problems.
     The first is the incessant distraction of social issues which cannot be resolved by government. Legislation cannot satisfy questions of religion, morality and spiritual value, no matter how much demogogues try to inject it into the discourse of public policy. Politicians often cave into this because it gives them political cover for the fact that they are not resolving the issues and problems government was designed to deal with.
     A second preoccupation is with the details and minutiae of the electoral process. The recent incessant debate about how elections are paid for, by whom, and how much has gone beyond the valid concern of the integrity of the elections in America. They are now just another device for attempting to gain political advantage, and to turn public attention away from more critical issues. Like legislators who raise their own pay while calling for the rest of us to tighten our belts, it is political vanity out of control.
     In 1860, the nation faced a great crisis, and it elected Abraham Lincoln. In 1932 and 1940, it faced equally great crises of economic depression and war. It elected and re-elected Franklin Roosevelt.
    In 2008, crises now growing and accumulating will loom before the voters of America. These crises are not only military, but they are also the work of our own making and continued procrastination. Both Democrats and Republicans abet this political daydreaming.
     It's time to wake up from this reverie. It's past time to wake up.
    
    Barry Casselman writes about national politics for Preludium News Service. 

Source:
    
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20060416-103029-1067r.htm

August through September 2006, Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa invited several prophecy teachers and scholars to speak, each on a slightly different topic.  All of the talks are available online.  Check them out here.  Dan thought that every one of them were excellent.

It included Mark Hitchcock, Thomas Ice, David Hocking, Dave Hunt, Joel Rosenberg, and Chuck Smith.

Click here for their site:  http://www.calvarychapelcostamesa.com/maranathaprophecy/