In yesterday's commentary, I addressed the European Union's failed peacemaking trip to the Middle East, as well as plans underway to potentially revisit an EU-led peace conference format that, in Madrid, Spain in 1991, laid the foundation for the Oslo Accords. Whether or not that will come to pass is unsure, but an article appearing in the Tehran Times indicates that EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana believes "ending the Israeli-Palestinian crisis could provoke movement on many stalled fronts." Achieving that goal could, according to the article, "be a key that unlocks other parts of a vastly complicated Middle East puzzle stretching from Egypt up to Lebanon, over to Syria and then across to Iran."

How many times have I made the comment that the entire world believes that the root cause of radical Islamic terrorism is the Arab world's resentment of Israel? Thus, the international community's obsession with Israel.

Zechariah 12:2-3: Behold, I will make Jerusalem a cup of trembling unto all the people round about, when they shall be in the siege both against Judah and against Jerusalem. And in that day will I make Jerusalem a burdensome stone for all people: all that burden themselves with it shall be cut in pieces, though all the people of the earth be gathered together against it.

Resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, in the eyes of secular mankind, is the equivalent of turning water into wine it seems! Fix that and it'll "provoke movement on many stalled fronts" as the EU's Javier Solana put it! It almost makes it sound like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the brake pad of the world, doesn't it? It's this warped kind of logic that presently exists which will ultimately lead the entire world to come against Israel according to Bible prophecy! This will occur in fullness in the Tribulation Period to come when the forces of the Antichrist's global empire and the kings of the east meet up in the Middle East, leading up to Armageddon and the Glorious Appearing of Jesus Christ.

Zechariah 14:2-4: For I will gather all nations against Jerusalem to battle; and the city shall be taken, and the houses rifled, and the women ravished; and half of the city shall go forth into captivity, and the residue of the people shall not be cut off from the city. Then shall the LORD go forth, and fight against those nations, as when he fought in the day of battle. And his feet shall stand in that day upon the mount of Olives, which is before Jerusalem on the east, and the mount of Olives shall cleave in the midst thereof toward the east and toward the west, and there shall be a very great valley; and half of the mountain shall remove toward the north, and half of it toward the south.

Presently, the world views Jerusalem as a burdensome stone and is committed to bringing peace between Israel and its enemies but there will be no true peace in reality, even when the Antichrist somehow confirms a seven-year covenant of peace in the region with many. There will be only a euphoric deception-laden perception of peace which will almost immediately be followed by sudden destruction in the form of the Tribulation Period to come!

1st Thessalonians 5:3: For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape.

My point? When the Middle East puzzle is eventually unlocked, it will be the most evil human being to ever walk the planet who will do so - the Antichrist. What will follow will be a much larger puzzle for mankind to deal with - one that will unfold itself in wave after wave after wave of divine judgment.

And yes, there's plenty of evidence that we're heading toward all these things coming to pass. All one needs to do to see this is true is watch or read the news. Believe it or not, this world is traveling at breakneck speed toward Armageddon!

In the immediate future, there seems no hope that things are going to get better for anyone but that isn't entirely accurate. For the Christian, these events are symbolic that our redemption draweth nigh in the form of the Rapture of the Church. Why? Because as long as the light of the world, the Body of Christ, remains in the world, the darkness that will lift the Antichrist to global greatness by way of unlocking the Middle East puzzle is dispelled by it.

If you're reading this and you're not a Christian, I beg you to consider becoming one now. If the Rapture should occur today and leave you behind to endure the Tribulation Period to come it would be a tragedy, but I would be remiss if I didn't point out that potential for tragedy to befall the nonbeliever exists every day. Why? Because the Tribulation Period doesn't have to begin for you to die and enter into eternity without Christ, the end result of which will be an eternity to spend in hell. Want to learn more about how you can become a Christian? If so, visit my site's Salvation Issues page TODAY!

The United Nations - peacekeeping during daylight hours

Demonstrating just how little the international community cares about the safety of Israel yet expects Israel to do nothing to defend itself from enemies bent on its destruction, Israel National News is reporting that Syria is re-arming Hezbollah right under the international community's nose and is unhindered in doing so, probably because the UN's 20,000-man "peacekeeping" force doesn't operate at night, believe it or not.

While we hear almost daily that Israel needs to stop its overflights over Lebanon, the international community doesn't have the willpower to stop Syria from re-arming a terrorist organization that is holed up all around its alleged peacekeepers. Does this surprise those of us monitoring current events through the lens of Bible prophecy? No! As it was in the past, so it is now and will continue to be until Christ returns and sets things straight!

Mankind as a whole, under the leadership of the god of this world, Satan, perpetually sets itself against God. Therefore, the fact Israel's enemies are bent on its destruction is not of any legitimate concern where mankind is concerned as a whole. We see that each and every time the international community talks about Israel surrendering land to its enemies in return for peace! The lands Israel presently inhabits (and far more than that in fact) were given to her by God Himself in an everlasting covenant. Therefore, the act of man pressuring Israel to hand over these lands to its enemies, threatening its survival in the process, is in outright defiance of God Himself. It isn't going unnoticed from on high to be sure, as we see in Psalm 2.

Psalm 2:1-6: Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD, and against his anointed, saying, Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us. He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision. Then shall he speak unto them in his wrath, and vex them in his sore displeasure. Yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion.

The bottom line? The Lord will not be mocked by man whom He made with His hands. Regardless of what the heathen of the world hope to see take place, the end result will be the same. The King is established and all judgment has been committed unto Him (John 5:22). He will sit upon the throne of David in Jerusalem in the prophetic future (Isaiah 9:7) and there is no power on earth or beyond capable of altering that! Thus sayeth the Lord!

The End Times Pestilence Threat

Matthew 24:7: For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places.

Revelation 6:8: And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.

In Matthew 24:7, we see warfare, famine and pestilences will play a large role in the end times. Revelation 6:8 echoes the same where we see the sword, hunger, death and the beasts of the earth are going to result in the death of a fourth of mankind in the early Tribulation Period alone!

Remember the panic that was openly being expressed just a short time ago that the bird flu pestilence could mutate into a killer virus capable of killing literally tens of millions of people around the world? Oddly, in spite of evidence suggestive that the threat of a global flu pandemic of that magnitude is rising, as shown in an AFP article linked below, the talk of it being the threat it once seemed to be is decreasing.

How asleep must we be, as a world, when a headline like "Bird flu mutates to remain a serious pandemic risk" is practically out of sight in light of the threat it poses to mankind? The kind of world that Bible prophecy warns will exist in the time of the end, of course - a world full of people too distracted to see the signs around them pointing toward impending disaster looming on the prophetic horizon of an absolutely apocalyptic scale.

Is it any wonder that the Tribulation Period will come upon the world much as the Great Flood did in the days of Noah? I think not.

No "tolerance" was shown to Mary Stachowicz, the Christian victim of a gay man's hatred

As WorldNetDaily is reporting, Mary Stachowicz was stabbed with her killer's knife so hard it bent the blade. She was also strangled, raped and beaten. Why? Because, as a Christian, she openly questioned her killer, a gay man, about his lifestyle. So this was clearly a hate crime, right? Well no, not according to her killer's attorney. According to defense attorney Crystal Marchigiani, "It happened because she could not leave him alone in his (homosexual) lifestyle."

Now I ask you: If a born-again male Christian had killed a homosexual woman, how long would it have taken for news of an incident as brutal as this one was to be top news around the nation? Not too long, let me tell you! All the pro-homosexual activists of the world would be squalling their heads off, crying that this Christian man should've been "tolerant" of his victim's lifestyle amid many tears of anguish, but this woman's brutal killing? I'll bet that the majority of my site's readers, unless they caught the story on WorldNetDaily, didn't even know this murder happened. That would be because, as I love to point out, tolerance is a one-way street!

As the WorldNetDaily story highlights, there has been no outcry for gays to be tolerant of Christians like Mary Stachowicz from organizations such as the Human Rights Campaign, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance or the Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation. Only Soulforce, a pro-homosexual organization that works in churches trying to influence Christians to overlook the Bible's teachings against the topic of homosexuality, had anything to say and even that was ridiculous in my opinion.

Soulforce said, via a press release, that it condemns this murder like it does all murders, but indicated that "a hate crime needs to have an intent to intimidate a whole class of people."

What an interesting and totally hypocritical position for the homosexual community to take, in light of the press it drummed up when homosexual Matthew Shepard was killed in 1998 in a similarly brutal fashion because of his homosexuality, for example.

If what happened to Matthew Shepard was a hate crime in the opinion of the homosexual community (and it was), the same should be true in the case of Mary Stachowicz!

Why should a whole class of people, namely homosexuals, feel "intimidated" that someone is going to kill them because Matthew Shepard got killed in an isolated incident because of his sexual orientation yet Christians should not feel threatened by homosexuals when a Christian woman is murdered in an isolated incident because of her religious beliefs? It's one of the great mysteries of the end times I suppose - yet another shining example of a world turned upside down and inside out where its sense of right and wrong is concerned!

Although I don't, in affirmation of my belief in the Word of God, support the practice of homosexuality, I believe what happened to Matthew was disgustingly discriminatory, brutal, and even barbaric. If I, as a heterosexual Christian, can say that, why can't the pro-homosexual community take a similar stand where the death of Mary Stachowicz is concerned, drawing attention to the fact that her killer was driven to murder her because he, a gay man, was prejudiced against her religion?

(Note: The issue of whether Shepard was killed because of his sexual orientation has both been made in court proceedings and denied. What is undeniable, however, is that two heterosexual men chose Matthew Shepard from a gay hangout called the Fireside Lounge as the target of their robbery and attack, which seems to me pretty convincing that Matthew's sexuality was a factor in the events that led to his death.)

Does God exist?

A Breitbart.com article opens as follows (emphasis mine): Nearly half of Americans are not sure God exists, according to a poll that also found divisions among the public on whether God is male or female or whether God has a human form and has control over events.

42% of Americans now say they're not sure God exists, according to the article, up from 34% just three short years ago. If this, in and of itself, doesn't indicate we're living in the end times, I don't know what does!

And there is confusion as to the gender of the Almighty? How can that be true when He is called He and Father throughout the Bible and never even once referred to in a feminine manner? A strong possibility we have to consider, of course, in this age of "enlightened spirituality" we live in, is that many people who responded to the poll may be involved in idolatry. Gone, after all, are the days when the name "God" exclusively referred, in the minds of most everyone, to the one and only true God!

And we don't know if God has control over events? The person who questions that is the person I wish I could lead to this website where. day in and day out, I document the fact that everything predicted in Bible prophecy to be fulfilled either has been literally fulfilled or is coming into view on the prophetic horizon to be literally fulfilled in a similar manner? That, from my perspective, seals the deal and answers the question of whether there is a God with a thunderous, "YES!"

One of my favorite end times writers, Jack Kinsella, wrote the following on the Bible which I believe clearly serves as evidence that there is a God. Who, upon understanding its composition as Kinsella does, could question this? Kinsella wrote:

The Bible is made up of sixty-six separate books. They were written over a period of 1600 years, roughly a span of forty generations. The human authors of the books of the Bible came from every conceivable walk of life.

Moses was a political leader who was trained in the universities of Egypt. Peter was a simple fisherman. Amos was a herdsman, while Joshua, a military general.

Nehemiah was a cup bearer to the king of Persia and Daniel, prime minister in the courts of Babylon. Luke was a physician. Solomon a philosopher-king. Matthew was a tax collector, while Paul was a converted Pharisee who made tents for a living.

For perspective, consider this. Imagine you could assemble your ten favorite writers and have each of them write a book on a single controversial subject. Now, you pull the whole thing together, unedited, as the 'definitive' work on that particular topic.

Would the finished product, do you imagine, flow together as seamlessly as do the books of Scripture? Would they be in harmony and without a single contradiction? Would they be accurate in all possible areas and each progressively explain and expound upon the book that came before?

Remember, you are using your ten favorite writers, all living at the same time, all addressing only one topic. The Bible is the product of 40 writers over 40 generations addressing every topic from science to medicine, from creation to the destruction of the world, from, as Norman Geisler once put it, "Paradise Lost in Genesis to Paradise Regained in Revelation."

Oh yes, there is a God! The fact that we continue to move, in a demonstrable manner, closer to the "Paradise Regained in Revelation" phase of the Bible's teachings should not only compel us to live godly lives but to share our faith with others as time to do so, based on the prophetic signs of Christ's return appearing in the news headlines of the world around us, is demonstrably running out! This is especially true when we see that our target audience, the lost, is continuing to swell in ever-increasing numbers!

Got Evidence? Well, yeah!

Do I have any evidence that Jesus Christ is coming soon? Well, there's all of the above to consider and a whole lot more where that come from.

If the Lord should delay His coming until tomorrow and beyond, I plan on laying out as much of that evidence I possibly can for all to see, right here at RaptureAlert.com - where God is known to be alive, on His throne, and in control!

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