Mar 18, 2013
Dealing with Crazy North Korea North Korea has long been a source for continuous belligerent rhetoric. The saber rattling reached new heights last week as the leadership in Pyongang pulled out all the stops. North Korea said it has a long-range missile armed with a nuclear warhead. It cut off a Red Cross hotline with South Korea, and it canceled the 60-year-old armistice that ended the Korean War. Supreme leader Kim Jong-un also told troops to “prepare for war.” North Korea is the most heavily armed nation on earth. It only has a population 24 million, but yet has managed to amass a military of 1.1 million soldiers. If you look at North Korea via Goggle Earth satellite map, you will find a country peppered with military bases. What worries the folks most at the State Department is that these latest series of threats are not coming from the late Kim Jong-il, but his 28-year-old dictator son, Kim Jong-un who is now running the show. Kim Jon-il was a power-hungry dictator, but Kim Jong-un has the added dimension of being reckless. He is widely blamed for ordering artillery selling that killed four South Koreans in 2010 and the torpedo attack on a South Korean warship that same year. The great danger about this new round of bluster is the loss of credibility over time. Kim Jong-un can keep telling military units they have “entered the final all-out war stage” and “are awaiting the final order to strike.” Eventually, words need to be followed up by action. “There is deep concern in South Korea and among US policymakers that North Korea might carry out a conventional attack in the western sea or along the DMZ [demilitarized zone] that would trigger a very serious South Korean response, and that we would be caught in an escalatory situation that could be extremely dangerous,” said says Daniel Sneider, a Korea expert at Stanford University. North Korea may have some nuclear weapons and a large military, but it is extremely lacking in modern technology. There is a big difference between possessing a static nuclear device, and having one that is small enough to be launched atop a missile or delivered by an airplane. Their jets are 1950’s style hand-me-downs from the Soviet Union. Pyongyang has 820 fighter jets, but it lacks enough fuel to fly them. Jennifer Lind, professor of political science at Dartmouth College said, “Their air force was so antiquated that it would have been shot out of the sky in the first few hours of a conflict.” What makes North Korea a credible threat to its southern neighbor is level of fanaticism that exits nowhere else on earth. The Iranians may say, “Death to America” once a year. In North Korea, every day is, “Death to America” and what we see as its “South Korean puppet-stat.” In any war, the North Koreans would come charging across the border with little regard to their inability to actually win a conflict. Few people in the western world realize the existent that the North Korea system has gone to in order to control the minds of its citizens. Before hand, it was standard practice for everyone to go into this endless hand clapping exercise whenever the “great leader” visited. Now, when fat boy addresses a crowd, everyone is required to show their affection by acting like they are having an epileptic seizure. The failure to follow this weird protocol can get you sent off to a death camp. I think we are playing a losing game by allowing the North Koreans to grab headlines by making these threats. Kim Jong-un is savvy to western technology, and I’m sure he loves to read about himself in the global media. South Korea learned that vigilance is the only way to deal with despotism. After the 2010 attacks, Seoul vowed to respond to any future act of military aggression from the North. Since South Korea has just elected a woman prime minister, it is all the more likely that her resolve will be tested. The big question here is, what would be the prophetic significance of waking-up some morning to find that the Korean Peninsula had erupted into flames? Since the world is already in a profound state of financial instability, a war in Asian would likely set off a chain of events. Since war is one of the calling cards of the Tribulation hour, it would be all the more a sign of the end. “And ye shall hear of wars and rumors of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places. All these are the beginning of sorrows” (Matthew 24:6-8, KJV). --Todd
Peace Arrangements for Coming Desolation A spirit of accommodation is wafting about in and around Jerusalem during these increasingly strange times. Israel seems─if Israeli President Shimon Peres is speaking from his heart─to be in agreement that a peace arrangement is all but a done deal. “President Shimon Peres has commented on the peace process in his speech before the European Parliament plenum: ‘The peace process with the Palestinians already has an agreed beginning and an agreed solution. Two states for two nations. An Arab state – Palestine. A Jewish state – Israel – living in peace, security and economic cooperation.’ Peres added: ‘Peace for Israel is not just a strategic choice. It is a moral call which stems from the depth of our heritage.’” (“Peres: Two States Solution Agreed Beginning for Peace,” Israel News, March 12, 2013). It is becoming more apparent by the day that a number of members of the Israeli government harbor not the spirit of King David, a man after God’s own heart, but another spirit─perhaps the spirit of Antichrist, which observably infects the humanistic, diplomatic world as condemned in Psalms, chapter 2. “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” (Psalm 2:2-3). While Peres’ words, understandably, reflect the sentiments of the dovish elements within the coalition that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is struggling to hold together, it cannot be ignored that Netanyahu’s silence on the matters of a two-state proposition is deafening. We might just be very near the time when a peace covenant is cobbled that will bring to front and center the prophecy that leads to the consummation of the age. That covenant─well known by most Bible prophecy students─is given by the prophet Daniel: “And after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off, but not for himself: and the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary; and the end thereof shall be with a flood, and unto the end of the war desolations are determined. And he shall confirm the covenant with many for one week: and in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease, and for the overspreading of abominations he shall make it desolate, even until the consummation, and that determined shall be poured upon the desolate” (Daniel 9: 26-27). Like many observers of the times who hold to a Pre-Trib view of Bible prophecy propose, we understand that there must be a covenant in place when the “prince that shall come,” Antichrist, steps forward as a world leader from the area of the European Union (EU). Although such building material for a covenant has for some time been in place as backdrop─a proposed foundational bed of understanding that a two-state solution (a nation of Israel and a nation of Palestine) will eventually be confirmed—the implementation of such a solution has been unreachable. There are too many reasons that this has been so to go into in this commentary. But, suffice it to say that the chasm separating the two sides has been one seemingly impossible to span. There has been almost complete intransigence on the part of those negotiating from the so-called Palestinian side. And, until the statement by Peres, there seemed only a cat and mouse-type hinting that the Benjamin Netanyahu government was toying around with the idea of eventually sitting down to talk with the inheritors of Yasser Arafat’s hatred for Israel. Now, Shimon Peres declares, “Peace for Israel is not just a strategic choice. It is a moral call, which stems from the depth of our heritage.” He thus blatantly─in my opinion, equates Israel’s refusal to agree to giving-up God-given land for a Satan-inspired-peace in a two-state solution as being immoral. This is precisely what the Israel-hating majority in the United Nations and in the diplomatic world, not to mention the entire Arab world have been declaring for years. Israel is the occupier… Benjamin Netanyahu seems in a severe bind. He is desperately trying to hold on to a very tenuous coalition─a coalition that is ready to make a covenant made with death and hell (read Isaiah 28:15, 18). It will be quite fascinating to observe goings on at Jerusalem, if and when President Obama goes there to work on the peace everyone is clamoring for these days. Daniel foretold that there is coming an agreement that will be a peace that will destroy many. It will be peace that will produce a flood of catastrophe that will make the region and world desolate until the very consummation of the age. All other signals point to the fact that this generation is on the brink of something most ominous. But Jesus, Himself, said that when we see these things begin to come to pass, we are to look up─our redemption draws near! (See Luke 21:28.)Request from Terry HeavenVision: Glimpses into Glory is now on amazon.com in hardback book version. This is the story of my Good Friday, April 22, 2011 clinical death, when my heart stopped 3 different times over the course of an hour. Defibrillation paddles were used to restart my heart, but it was, as we know, the God of Heaven who restored life in those strange, but exhilarating moments when I stood before a Heavenly Throng of young, cheering people. It was I believe the Lord has shown me, the cloud of witnesses of Hebrews 12: 1-2. Many of you have graciously told me you read and were blessed by what the Lord has to say through the book. Now that it is up in true book form on Amazon, I ask that as many as will do so write a review of HeavenVision and put it on amazon.com. This will move the book forward in its promotion so that we can get it in front of as many people as is in God’s Will for the book. Also, if you could get copies for friends and loved ones through Amazon, it would boost the book’s rankings, and that, combined with mention on your social media forums can help the book, as is said, “Go viral”. Thanks so much for your friendship with Rapture Ready, and with your kind consideration in reading this request. The link to the book on Amazon is the following. Link to Amazon --Terry
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