by Michael G. Mickey
(3-10-08)

A WorldNetDaily.com article indicates that Syria is intensely arming itself, placing into position rockets and missiles capable of striking the entire Jewish state, according to an assessment presented to the Knesset yesterday.

Israel Defense Forces Military Intelligence chiefs additionally addressed threats posed to Israel's northern border by Hezbollah and presented the grim assessment that Iran could cross "the technological threshold" enabling it to assemble a nuclear bomb by the end of next year. It sure sounds like the end times in the Middle East, doesn't it? You bet it does - and I believe it's anything but coincidence.

As I read the WorldNetDaily article linked above, my mind was taken back to a commentary I read that recently appeared in the Salt Lake Tribune entitled "The next Mideast war is a rocket away."

The commentary highlights just how quickly things good get out-of-hand in the region and, quite possibly, bring about the fulfillment of Bible prophecy. The following is Michael B. Oren's take on how it could, hypothetically, unfold:

It begins with a single Qassam rocket, one of the thousands of homemade projectiles fired in recent years by the Islamic radicals of Hamas from the Gaza Strip into southern Israel. The rockets have made life nightmarish for many Israelis but have largely missed their targets. But this one gets "lucky": It smashes into an elementary school, wounding 40children and killing 15.

The Israeli government, which had heretofore responded to the Qassams with airstrikes and small ground raids, cannot resist the nationwide demand for action. Within hours, tens of thousands of Israeli troops and hundreds of tanks are rushing into Gaza, battling house-to-house in teeming refugee camps. Just as swiftly, Palestinian officials accuse Israel of perpetrating a massacre and invite the foreign press to photograph the corpse-strewn rubble. The images flash around the Middle East on al-Jazeera TV and trigger violent demonstrations in Arab capitals.

Hezbollah, the radical Lebanese Shiite militia, then gets into the act, raining Katyusha rockets on northern Israel. But when Israeli warplanes bomb the Katyusha batteries, Syria leaps in, sending its commandos to retaliate by capturing key Israeli bunkers atop the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. Israel's counterattack succeeds only in precipitating a hailstorm of Syrian Scud-D missiles, some armed with chemical warheads, into Israeli cities. Then, just as Israeli planes are incinerating the main electrical plant in Damascus, the first of hundreds of Shehab-3rockets, pre-targeted at Tel Aviv, lift off from Tehran.

What Oren describes above is one of many scenarios Israeli Defense Forces have recently conducted war games to prepare for. Some of these, according to Oren, Israel believes it can win handily. Others, however, would seem to point to Israel barely surviving the onslaught. The latter is why we should bear in mind prophecies of old that predict battles of tremendous destruction taking place in the Middle East prior to the visible, physical, bodily return of Jesus Christ to the earth, particularly one that envisions a day coming when Damascus, safe haven of terrorist organizations of every type, "will be taken away from being a city" shall be left "a ruinous heap." (Isaiah 17:1)

Far-fetched? Hardly. We're only one rocket away, potentially, from Bible prophecy being fulfilled before our very eyes.

Note: While it isn't a given that Damascus' destruction will come as a result of a military attack carried out against it, this would seem the most likely scenario in light of current conditions in the region.