Many times Christians in America speak of the persecution that is coming someday. But the truth is that intense persecution of Christians is already here. According to a new report from the Pew Research Center, two out of every three people in the world now live in countries where religion is highly restricted. Governments around the globe are regularly killing Christians, torturing Christians and imprisoning Christians in absolutely horrific conditions. But it isn't just governments that are persecuting Christians. Jihadist groups throughout the Islamic world have taken it upon themselves to slaughter those who commit "blasphemy" by preaching the gospel. The truth is that it is a very dangerous time to be a Christian, and things are only going to get even more intense as we get deeper into the last days.
Things are really getting frightening out there. Just consider a few of the recent reports of Christian persecution from around the globe....
*Christian organizations around the world are expressing outrage over the killing of ten Christian medical workers who were serving the poor in the northeastern province of Badakhshan in Afghanistan. According to reports, the Christian medical workers were killed by jihadists for "spying for the Americans" and for "preaching Christianity".
*Two brothers were recently shot dead by Islamic extremists outside a courtroom in the Pakistani's Punjab province. The brothers were facing blasphemy charges after allegedly distributing gospel pamphlets.
*A Christian pastor in the Russian republic of Dagestan known for founding the biggest Protestant church in the region and for successfully sharing the gospel with Muslims was recently shot and killed by unidentified gunmen.
*Christians in Bhutan were disheartened to learn that the government there has proposed the kind of "anti-conversion law" that other nations have used as a pretext for persecuting Christians and shutting down the sharing of the gospel.
But it just isn't in other areas of the world where Christianity is being persecuted. The truth is that Christians are now being heavily persecuted inside the United States itself....
*A newly filed lawsuit against Augusta State University in Georgia alleges that university officials essentially gave a graduate student in counseling the choice of either giving up her Christian beliefs or being expelled from the program.
*Two other Christians were arrested recently for sharing the gospel and singing hymns on a public sidewalk outside an Islamic mosque in the city of Philadelphia.
So would you continue preaching the gospel if it meant that you would be put in jail?
That is something to think about.
The sad thing is that most American Christians don't preach the gospel anyway.
In fact, for most Americans, God is not a very important part of their lives at all. According to a brand new study by the Barna Group, only 12 percent of American adults say that faith is a top priority in their lives.
Only 12 percent?
Unfortunately, even many of those Americans that do consider faith to be important have been completely lulled to sleep by their "shepherds".
All over the United States, Christians are being taught by their "life coaches" to "live their best lives now" while millions of other Christians throughout the world are literally risking their lives to advance the gospel.
Christians across America better start waking up. The last days are upon us and a time is coming when Christians are going to be killed in staggering numbers. We all need to decide right now what we are willing to give up for the sake of Christ.
An event has just occurred that the rest of the world has not taken much notice of yet, but it is one that will soon have Bible prophecy students buzzing with anticipation. There has been a major discovery of oil in Israel. An Israeli oil prospecting and production firm has formally announced the discovery of a "commercially sized" oil field in central Israel. Ever since it became a nation again in 1948, Israel has been importing all of the oil that it needs, so needless to say this is potentially an incredibly exciting development. For years, many Bible prophecy teachers have believed that oil would be discovered in Israel in the last days, but up until now there hasn't been much to report.
Now there is.
A recent article in Haaretz provided some more details on this new discovery....
Givot Olam Oil Ltd notified the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange of the find in its "Megev Five" drill near the town of Rosh Ha’ayin, saying it can produce 470 barrels of oil a day.
But this has not been the only major discovery in Israel in recent years. In January 2009, Nobel Drilling announced that they had found a massive natural gas field approximately 60 to 90 miles offshore from Israel. The firm says that the field contains enough natural gas to supply everything that Israel needs for the next 10 or 20 years.
Things are changing.
So will these new discoveries fundamentally change the politics of the Middle East?
Are we seeing Bible prophecy being fulfilled right before our eyes?
For years, there have been some Bible teachers that have pointed to scriptures such as Deuteronomy 33:24 as evidence that Israel would someday be blessed with oil....
"And of Asher he said, Let Asher be blessed with children; let him be acceptable to his brethren, and let him dip his foot in oil."
The truth is that there is a lot of debate about the "oil" passages throughout the Bible, but these new discoveries are certainly strengthening the case of those who strongly believe there is a lot of oil in Israel.
So could the discovery of oil in Israel end up being one of the things that sparks the next war in the Middle East?
Only time will tell.
But one thing is for sure - we certainly do live in extraordinary times.
The Scriptures tell us that in the last days there will be wars and rumors of wars, and that is certainly true of the times that we are living in today. Iran's nuclear program continues to advance, and world leaders around the globe are becoming increasingly alarmed. In fact, even Russian President Dmitry Medvedev is now warning that Iran is close to having the potential to build a nuclear weapon. For years, Russia has been one of Iran's most vigorous defenders on the world scene, but now even the Russian government is expressing reservations about what is going on in that country. That should set off alarm bells for all of us.
Not only that, but now even Arab nations are expressing concern about Iran's nuclear program. For example, the United Arab Emirates ambassador to the United States recently said that it would be extremely difficult for his nation to coexist with a nuclear Iran and that it would support any actions the U.S. took to prevent such a possibility.
The UAE would support a U.S. military strike on Iran?
But does being able to produce nuclear power mean that Iran is also planning to develop nuclear weapons?
The truth is that we all know the answer to that question.
In fact, a former of Iran's Revolutionary Guard who relayed its secret operations to the CIA for 10 years says that Iran will commit the "most horrendous suicide bombing in human history" if it is not stopped from developing nuclear weapons.
So who is going to stop them?
The United States?
That seems quite likely as long as Barack Obama is running things.
Israel?
Perhaps.
For now, Israel has been trying to talk peace with the Palestinians, but they are also preparing for war.
The world has certainly been trying to push Israel and the Palestinians to the negotiating table, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has expressed interest in sitting down with them. Netanyahu says that he believes that direct talks with the Palestinians will begin very soon and he recently predicted that they will be "very, very tough".
But on another occasion recently, Netanyahu said that he does not envision actually reaching a negotiated Middle East peace settlement within the next two years, despite his Palestinian counterpart's declared intentions to set up infrastructure for a state by 2011.
So it looks like Netanyahu expects peace talks with the Palestinians to begin soon, but he is not anticipating that they will bear any fruit in the foreseeable future.
Not that any of the other "peace agreements" with the Palestinians have ever worked out.
In the end, war always ends up breaking out again.
And war tensions are certainly on the rise in the region once again.
Debka is reporting that 20,000 Hezbollah troops have advanced and are dug into 160 new positions in South Lebanon. Israel is believed to be "preparing something" for Lebanon and Hezbollah is on high alert to prevent it, unnamed sources in the group were quoted by London-based newspaper Al-Sharq Al-Awsat as saying recently.
In addition, according to the Palestinian Authority daily newspaper Al-Hayat al-Jadida, Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas recently told Arab leaders that the PA is ready to wage war on Israel if the rest of the Arab world does. The following is what Abbas reportedly told them....
"If you want war, and if all of you will fight Israel, we are in favor. But the Palestinians will not fight alone because they don't have the ability to do it."
To the world media, Abbas talks about peace, peace, peace, but to his fellow Arab leaders he says that the Palestinian Authority is ready for war with Israel.
What a hypocrite.
The truth is that even if a "peace agreement" is reached, and even if a "Palestinian state" is created, more wars in the Middle East are inevitable.
These are the last days, and wars are going to continue until the end. The only time that there is going to be true peace is after the King of Kings, the Messiah, returns to this earth and sets up His kingdom in Jerusalem.
Right away it is important to warn you that the premise of this article is highly controversial. Throughout history, God has always dealt very harshly with anyone who has turned their backs on Israel. In fact, as we will document below, God has dealt very harshly with the United States on a number of occasions when the U.S. has been involved in the dividing of the land of Israel. God gave the promised land to the people of Israel forever, and nobody has the right to give one inch of that land away. But the Scriptures tell us that in the last days that is exactly what is going to happen. The truth is that world leaders never learn. They are still messing with the land of Israel just like they always have throughout history. However, those nations who do mess with Israel have often found themselves cursed. So is the Gulf of Mexico oil spill a curse that has been brought upon us because Barack Obama is trying to divide the land of Israel?
The truth is that we don't have a definitive answer for that question. Only God can tell us exactly why something happens. But below we will detail the evidence for why these two things may be connected.
Barack Obama And The Division Of The Land Of Israel
Barack Obama has rapidly become the most anti-Israel president in U.S. history. In fact, it was reported in the international media on April 30th that Barack Obama had already decided that if Israel and the Palestinians have not agreed to a peace agreement by the end of the year, the Middle East peace process will be handed over to the international community and a final solution will be imposed on both parties.
In fact, Haaretz reported on April 30th that Barack Obama had already conferred with "several European leaders" at that point and that it had been decided that the "international peace conference" would be run by the Quartet of Middle East peacemakers - the United States, European Union, United Nations and Russia - and the goal would be to forge a united global front for creating a Palestinian state.
So if this was being reported on April 30th, and Barack Obama had already spent a good amount of time talking with European leaders about this plan prior to that date, then it seems quite likely that Obama had started implementing this new Middle East strategy at least a week or two earlier.
Coincidentally, BP's Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico exploded on April 20th, 2010.
Before you convince yourself that the two events are unrelated, keep reading the rest of the article.
The truth is that God does not like it when anyone tries to take the land of Israel and give to to someone else.
And that is exactly what Barack Obama's plan would do.
If Obama's plan is implemented, the international community will almost certainly come up with the "final solution" that the UN, the EU and Barack Obama have been seeking all along - a Palestinian state along pre-1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital.
So now the Palestinians have absolutely no incentive to negotiate with Israel at all.
The reality is that the Palestinians can just sit back, allow the negotiations to fail, and still get a Palestinian state with a capital in East Jerusalem just like they always wanted anyway.
"If you enforce a time limit and then introduce an imposed solution if they don't succeed after a period, then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: you're going to guarantee the talks won't succeed."
Not that Israel should be considering giving away one single inch of the promised land anyway.
But now the Palestinians will just sit back and wait for the international community to give them the state that they have been promised along with a capital in East Jerusalem.
The sad truth is that Barack Obama has been promising them a Palestinian state for a long time. According to WorldNetDaily, Barack Obama told the Palestinian leadership all the way back in 2008 that he supports a Palestinian state with a Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem.
So why in the world would the Palestinians be willing to accept anything less from Israel?
Meanwhile, Barack Obama and his administration are bringing a curse on to the United States of America.
Examples Of Horrific Disasters That Have Occurred At Times The U.S. Has Been Involved In Dividing Up The Land Of Israel
In a previous article, we detailed what has happened before when the U.S. government has tried to divide the land of Israel....
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In the Scriptures, we are warned that the city of Jerusalem would one day become a huge stumbling stone for the nations in Zechariah 12:3.....
"On that day, when all the nations of the earth are gathered against her, I will make Jerusalem an immovable rock for all the nations. All who try to move it will injure themselves."
Is that not what has happened?
The truth is that God gave that land to Israel long ago, and now that He has started to bring His people back to the land, anyone who tries to give it away is going to be under a curse.
So is there any evidence of a curse on those who try to divide the land of Israel today?
Yes.
Consider these examples.....
#1) On April 30, 2003, America was positioned to be the catalyst for the so-called "solution" to the Middle East crisis. As Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas was sworn in, the "Road Map" peace plan was set in motion.
The very next day began the worst month of tornadoes in United States history - more than 500 in a single month. Under normal conditions, 1,000 tornadoes hit the United States each year, but in just eight days that May, 375 twisters ripped across the heartland of America.
#2) May 9, 2003, President Bush addressed students at the University of South Carolina. Bush called on the Palestinians to embrace the roadmap to peace, and Bush expressed his desire to see the flag of Palestine raised over a free nation.
Hours later, tornadoes returned and Oklahoma City again became the target for deadly twisters, reducing many businesses and homes to splinters and bricks. The tornadoes of May devastated the Midwest with the third worst property damage in American history.
#3) On October 30, 1991, in a meeting scheduled by George H.W. Bush, Israelis and Palestinians discussed ways to achieve peace in the Middle East. Opening talks focused on trading parts of Israel for a peace agreement.
That same day, thousands of miles away, a powerful storm was brewing off of the coast of Nova Scotia. On October 31st, what would be known as "The Perfect Storm" smashed into New England, pummeling the President's Kennebunkport, Maine home with waves 30 feet high. It was a storm so rare that the weather patterns required to create it only happen about once every 100 years.
#4) On August 23rd, 1992, Middle East peace talks resumed in Washington, D.C. with hope that there would be a great breakthrough. These talks focused on surrendering the biblical lands of Judea and Samaria in exchange for peace. Hundreds of miles south of there at the same time, Florida was the target for one of the worst natural disasters in U.S. history. Hurricane Andrew ripped through the state with an eye more than 30 miles wide and winds up to 178 miles per hour leaving behind a 32 billion dollar disaster.
#5) Between August 16th and 30th, 2005, Ariel Sharon expelled 9,480 Jewish settlers from 21 settlements in Gaza and four settlements in the northern West Bank.
On January 4th, 2006, Sharon had a stroke, and he fell into a coma and is now in a persistent vegetative state.
#6) The U.S. had strongly pressured Sharon to evacuate those settlers from Gaza.
On August 29th, 2005 the storm that would become Hurricane Katrina formed, and it devastated New Orleans and the surrounding areas to such an extent that they still have not recovered. That devastating storm caused at least 200 billion dollars in damage.
#7) In June of 2001, George W. Bush sent CIA director George Tenet to Israel in an attempt to implement the Mitchell Plan. The Mitchell plan called for, among other things, the cessation of new building in the Jewish settlements.
On the same day that Tenet met with Israeli and Palestinian officials, tropical storm Allison formed in the Gulf of Mexico and moved over Texas, the President's home state, and dropped over 28 inches of rain over the Houston area alone, causing over $4 billion dollars in damage. The storm then moved to Florida and up the east coast causing damage as far as Pennsylvania. The meteorologists called Allison the "worst tropical storm in history".
There are many more examples of this phenomenon here:
In the book of Joel, God warns specifically against dividing the land of Israel.
Joel 3:1-2 states, "...I will enter into judgment with them there on behalf of my people and my inheritance, Israel, whom they have scattered among the nations; and they have divided up my land."
You just cannot go against the Word of God and win.
So is the Gulf of Mexico oil spill a curse on the United States for trying to divide up the land of Israel?
Or could it just be a coincidence?
Could all of the examples cited above just be a string of coincidences?
You make the call.
****UPDATE****
A YouTube video has been posted by Carl Gallups of Hickory Hammock Baptist Church in Milton, Florida that examines this same idea. A copy of the video is posted below. In the video, Gallups points to April 19th as being the key date, which is very interesting.
"April the 19th, Israel celebrates its independence in 2010," Gallups explains in the video. "On April the 19th, Fox News reports that the U.S. will no longer automatically support Israel in the United Nations. The next day, on April the 20th, the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explodes. Coincidence? Or the hand and judgment of God?"
So is this even more evidence that our treatment of Israel is linked to the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico? Watch the video for yourself and decide....
God is doing amazing things in these last days! The Scriptures tell us that the gospel of Yahshua (Jesus) will literally be preached to the ends of the earth, and that is happening right in front of our eyes. Some time ago, the Lord laid a tremendous burden for the African pygmies on Dr. Bree Keyton's heart while she was in prayer. She did some research and she discovered that the indigenous pygmies of the Democratic Republic of the Congo are literally being eaten out of existence. Yes, it is actually happening. Anti-government rebel forces that hide in the jungle, particularly the Movement for the Liberation of Congo, consider the pygmies to be animals and they hunt them for food. In fact, they have been using them for food so much that the pygmies are threatened with extinction.
Unfortunately, cannibalism is alive and well in 2010.
The Lord God has always had a heart for "the least of these", and in Africa, the pygmies are really treated as the lowest of the low.
The truth is that the pygmies are hated by even their fellow Africans throughout much of Africa. Many Africans actually consider the pygmies to be directly related to monkeys, and most of the time the pygmies are treated little better than animals. In fact, in some areas of Africa, pygmies are actually openly owned as slaves.
In Congo, the pygmies are caught in the middle of a brutal civil war, and they are being systematically wiped out. Both sides in the conflict consider the pygmies to be subhuman and as noted above, the anti-government rebels regularly eat them.
Other Africans actually believe that the flesh of the pygmies can confer magical powers, and so sometimes pygmies are being killed for that reason as well.
So needless to say, something urgent needs to be done to save these precious pygmies.
That is where Dr. Bree Keyton comes in.
Bree Keyton is an on-fire Christian evangelist who is waging a one woman crusade to rescue these pygmies.
She has already made a couple of trips into the areas where the pygmies live and she has been able to rescue some of the pygmy tribes and bring them to a location where they will be safe. It is incredibly dangerous work, but God has kept her and her team safe.
The truth is that God loves the pygmies as much as he loves anyone else. Dr. Bree Keyton is doing wonderful thing. More pygmy tribes have learned about what Bree Keyton is doing and now they want to be saved as well.
To learn how you can get involved in this outreach, please visit Dr. Bree Keyton's official website:
The most wonderful thing in all of this is that as a result of Dr. Bree Keyton's rescue missions, entire tribes of pygmies are receiving Yahshua (Jesus) as Savior and Lord. These are now our brothers and sisters in Christ and we will see them in heaven someday.
For more on Dr. Bree Keyton's outreach to the pygmies, check out the video posted below....
