{pagebreak:For I will gather all the nations to battle against Jerusalem}

For I will gather all the nations to battle against Jerusalem.

Zech 14:2a

During May, I was in Geneva on a prayer assignment because of the UN Human Rights Conference known as Durban II that was taking place there. This conference was a follow up of a previous conference, "Durban I" held in South Africa in 2001. Durban I became an Israel bashing conference and Durban II was more of the same. The lead speaker in Geneva was Ahmadinejad the President of Iran, who used the occasion to once again curse and threaten Israel. Though some 20 nations walked out of his speech, as soon as he was done they came right back in as if nothing had happened. Most of those who remained for his speech gave him a round of applause. Israel and many of her friends were encouraged by the "walk out" - though in reality this was a deception, you might even say it was a cruel joke. The walk out meant very little in real terms. If those nations had walked out and stayed out it would have sent a different message but this was just "play acting". Israel and another 8 nations refused to attend and that did say something. But 9 nations out of the whole United Nations is but an insignificant drop in the bucket.

In 1938, right after Germany absorbed Austria, the US President called an international conference to consider what could be done to help the Jews. The conference was to be held in Geneva, but the Swiss refused. So, in the end, it was held on the other side of the lake in Evian, France. At that Evian Conference, it became clear that no nation was willing to help the Jewish refugees. The Australian delegate said "we don't have a race problem and we don't want to import one". The Canadian delegate said "we are a small nation and one Jew would be too many". Even the Americans who initiated the conference refused to accept any Jews. Hitler had a spy at the conference who reported back to him, "do whatever you want to the Jews, the world doesn't want them and doesn't care". It seems to me that we are back in that same place today. As I see it, Durban II was really Evian II.

We don't know how close we are to the prophesy in Zech 14:2a, but we can already see the noose of the nations tightening around Israel's throat. There is an evil wind blowing over the earth. The Dragon of Anti-Semitism is once again prowling the earth and is being welcomed in many places. Little Israel tops the list for the "nation that is the greatest danger to world peace". In the western academic world and in European Labor movements they continue to try to organize boycotts against Israel. Israel acting in self defense is branded a war criminal and the threats of Iran, Hamas and Hizbullah to annihilate Israel are either ignored or cheered. The Palestinians in both word and deed refuse to acknowledge the legitimacy of Israel as a nation, yet Israel is supposed to uproot its own people living on their God given land and help in the creation of yet another Arab/Moslem/terrorist state.

{pagebreak:Israel and the USA}

Israel and the USA

Our concern that U.S. President Barack Obama would favor the Moslem world has proven true. Obama wants to make friends in the Moslem world, and he wants to bring them a gift -- paid for by Israel. With all the problems facing the world it seems that Obama's #1 international priority is the establishment of a Palestinian State.

On June 4 Obama delivered his much awaited speech to the Moslem world from Cairo and the bad greatly outweighed the good. In it he equated the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and the Lord Yeshua Himself with Allah; and did the same with the Torah and the New Testament talking about them as if they were the same as the Koran. He demanded that Israel stop all building in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem. He equated the suffering of the Palestinians with the Holocaust; and said the Jewish People had received the Land of Israel because of the Holocaust, which is what the Arabs have been saying for years. This contradicts God's promise to the Jewish people when He said in Genesis 17:7-8: And I will establish My covenant between Me and you and your descendants after you in their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and your descendants after you. Also I give to you and your descendants after you the land in which you are a stranger, all the land of Canaan, as an everlasting possession; and I will be their God. Obama's statements and actions will bring him into direct conflict with God.

It is very bizarre and disturbing that the world is not willing to recognize that the Palestinians do not want a division of the Land, they want the extermination of Israel. We have seen time and again foolish, generous offers to the Palestinians that they have consistently rejected. We end up in the situation where the most any Israeli is willing to give to the Palestinians is not enough for them. The only way logically to understand this is that the Palestinians are not willing to either recognize Israel as a legitimate State and they are not willing to agree to the end of the conflict. As recently as this month a leading PLO official said: Fatah has never recognized Israel's right to exist and it has no intention of ever doing so. He went on to state that they would never relinquish the armed struggle against Israel no matter how long the occupation continues. its adherence to the option of pursuing all forms of an armed struggle against Israel is active.

Most political scientists who are not living in fantasy recognize that even if Israel was willing, a Palestinian State would not be viable as a nation and after a bloody civil war it would become an even deadlier enemy of Israel than it is today. A Hamas dictatorship in both Gaza and Judea and Samaria! An Islamic dictatorship openly committed to the destruction of Israel.

Obama is also refusing to honor President Bush's agreements with Israel that "natural growth" in the settlements is acceptable and growth in those places that both Israel and Bush expected to remain part of Israel was also OK. This means clearly that the promises of the USA cannot be trusted and this too will have consequences beyond the Israeli - American relationship.

Obama is trying to force Israel to submit to Palestinian and Arab demands. The Palestinian President Abbas in an interview with an American newspaper actually said that he expected Obama's pressure on Israel would bring down the present Israeli Government within two years. Another member of Abbas's team said that Obama told them that Jerusalem will never be united under Israeli sovereignty. What in the world is going on?

Obama seems to be the great compromiser, the great appeaser: making peace with the bad guys at the expense of the good guys. He is returning the American Ambassador to Syria after four years in which no American Ambassador was in Damascus. What did Syria do to earn this reward? Absolutely nothing. They are still "best friends" with Iran, the Syrian President being the first to congratulate Ahmadinejad on his reelection as President of Iran, giving shelter to the leaders of Hamas and supplying Hezbullah with weapons to use against Israel and against the legitimate Lebanese Government.

When Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered his major policy address 10 days after Obama's, the good outweighed the bad. On the negative side, Netanyahu used the word "state" for the first time to describe a future Palestinian entity. We believe that the establishment of a Palestinian State on the Land that God promised to the Jewish People is unbiblical and would be a great sin before the Lord. But despite that point, Netanyahu declared - in opposition to Obama -- that the Jewish title to the Land of Israel was not because of the Holocaust but because of our inheritance from Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. He reminded the people that the Palestinians do not have a state because they have repeatedly refused to agree to a division of the Land. He demanded that the Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish State before a Palestinian State is formed. He said that such a state must be demilitarized. He categorically refused the idea of the right of return for Palestinian refugees to Israel's borders. He proclaimed that Jerusalem would remain the undivided capitol of Israel. He insisted on secure and defensible borders. He also refused to accede to the demand to stop natural growth building in existing settlements, which he termed normal life. What Netanyahu did with his statements and his history lesson was to throw the ball back into the Palestinian court. In a real way he defied the United States and drew a very clear red line. All this is bringing Israel closer to a direct confrontation with the U.S., and the other nations.

Netanyahu's main priority is the existential threat of an Iranian nuclear weapon. A nuclear armed Iran would change the whole dynamics and the balance of power in the Middle East. All the nations there (except Israel) would come under its influence, power and authority - all this even without the use of the bomb, its threat would be enough. Iran has never been an integrated nation in the Middle East; it is Persian and Shiite Moslem, whilst the other M.E. nations are Arab and Sunni Moslem. Iran has felt oppressed by the Arab world for centuries. This would be its time for revenge and taking what it considers its rightful place as the ruler of the Moslem world.

{pagebreak:A Descent into Darkness}

A Descent into Darkness

On May 25^th the world descended a new level into the approaching deep darkness Isa 60:2,b For behold, the darkness shall cover the earth, And deep darkness the people. This was the day North Korea exploded its second nuclear device. At this point the reaction of the nations has been very mild, almost non existent. This explosion should have rung alarm bells all over the world but it seems that it has only been heard in Israel, Japan and South Korea. This comes after years of negotiations led by the USA, trying to bribe North Korea to stop its nuclear weapons project. It has happened after years of North Korea seemingly agreeing to international demands to stop its nuclear projects, but secretly moving ahead with them.

While Japan and South Korea are directly threatened by a North Korean bomb, Israel too is in danger of North Korean technology. The Syrian reactor building that was destroyed by Israel more than a year ago was built by North Korean technicians and it is reported that 11 North Koreans were killed in the Israeli bombing. Too, Iran's missile technology is mostly North Korean. We don't know how much help North Korea is providing to Iran's march to the bomb but we can assume there is at least some help there. Too submitting to allowing a North Korean nuclear weapon is a precedent that could be applied to Iran as well.

If this North Korean nuclear weapon technology and the Iranian nuclear threat does not quickly become Obama's main priority then we can already state that his is a failed presidency that will lead the nations (not just the USA), deeper and deeper into darkness. In truth the problem of North Korea's nuclear weapons is not just Obama's fault. Successive US administrations have chosen the route of bribery and appeasement rather than making the difficult but needed decision to use military force. This would have been difficult as Seoul, the capital of South Korea is within artillery range of North Korea and the massed guns there are innumerable. However now that the North Koreans have shown that they have nuclear capability the problem is magnified one thousand fold. The same is true of the Iranian situation. If their nuclear project is stopped now, however that might be, though the cost will be great, the cost will be magnified 1,000 times if they are allowed to actually produce a bomb.

If Obama (and the other nations) cannot stand up to a failed state like North Korea and instead chooses to make his mark by pressuring and threatening Israel, then we are all in a great deal of trouble. There is already a perversity to Obama's decisions that bode ill and evil for life on this earth. A friend sent me the following quote by columnist Burt Prelutsky, which is so true but again very few seem to see it:

On a more serious note, I sincerely hope that when the President (Obama) goes in for his annual check-up, the doctors will do a brain scan. Surely something must be terribly wrong with a man who seems to be far more concerned with a Jew building a house in Israel than with Muslims building a nuclear bomb in Iran.

Some people think that comparing today with the time of the 1930/40's is a gross exaggeration. However if you look at it through the lens of how most of the world is relating to the Jewish Nation - Israel, the comparison is chillingly accurate. An English philosopher Edmund Burke said: All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. It seems to me that we are in that kind of time again. Most of us do not have access to government policy makers nor those who mold the perception and understanding of the peoples of the world. However our authority and weapon of both truth and warfare is in prayer and it is mighty. 2 Co 10:4: For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds.

{pagebreak:Pray for}

Pray for:

God's people to be alert to the day and hour in which we live and to be ready to cry out to Him for His will to be done on earth as it is written in heaven. And to bear witness to this world of the age we are living in.

Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.

Eph 6:13

Watch, stand fast in the faith, be brave, be strong.

1 Co 16:13

Therefore let us not sleep, as others do, but let us watch and be sober.

1 Th 5:6

See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be unwise, but understand what the will of the Lord is.

Eph 5:15-17

P.M. Netanyahu and the Israeli Government to know what Israel should do and to have the courage and wisdom to do it.

Be strong and courageous; do not be afraid nor dismayed before the king of Assyria, nor before all the multitude that is with him; for there are more with us than with him.2 Ch 32:7

The Jewish People in exile to clearly see the rise of Anti-Semitism world wide and to quickly come home. (As an example, in the U.K. Anti-Semitic acts have more than doubled in the last year.)

..the LORD your God will bring you back from captivity, and have compassion on you, and gather you again from all the nations where the LORD your God has scattered you. If any of you are driven out to the farthest parts under heaven, from there the LORD your God will gather you, and from there He will bring you. Then the LORD your God will bring you to the land which your fathers possessed, and you shall possess it. He will prosper you and multiply you more than your fathers. And the LORD your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants, to love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live.

Deut 30:3-6

The Lord to continue to shake Iran, physically, politically and spiritually so that they cannot complete their nuclear projects. (We have been praying for earthquakes to destroy their nuclear plants and while that has not yet happened the recent riots and continuing political upheaval there is an earthquake of sorts. May it continue to a good purpose.) There are also reports of many Iranians coming to Yeshua - often by dreams and visions.

See that you do not refuse Him who speaks. For if they did not escape who refused Him who spoke on earth, much more shall we not escape if we turn away from Him who speaks from heaven, whose voice then shook the earth; but now He has promised, saying, "YET ONCE MORE I SHAKE NOT ONLY THE EARTH, BUT ALSO HEAVEN." Now this, "YET ONCE MORE," indicates the removal of those things that are being shaken, as of things that are made, that the things which cannot be shaken may remain. Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us have grace, by which we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear. For our God is a consuming fire.

Heb 12:25-29

This SOS is an expansion of the invitation to the IPCJ 2010 who's theme will be For I will gather all the nations to battle against Jerusalem. Zech 14:2a. The dates will be 25 January - 1 February 2010 with a prayer tour following 1 February - 6 February. The brochures will be in the mail in September. If you are not on the list for the Prayer Conference and want to receive an invitation please send an email to: sonia@ifij.org.

The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make His face shine upon you, and be gracious to you; the Lord lift up His countenance upon you, and give you peace.

Numbers 6:24-26

Eliyahu Ben-Haim
Jerusalem, Israel 28 July 2009