Today we have an excellent guest post from Alisha Venetis.  Alisha Venetis is co-founder of www.thePrepRoom.net; an online store specializing in emergency preparedness supplies.  She writes for Smart Girl Nation, as well as other conservative blogs, where she reports on world politics, domestic and global economics and the potentially negative ramifications they may have on America.

The Birth of a Nation

On May 14, 1948, the nation of Israel was born out of the ashes of the Holocaust. A day later, they were attacked by Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq. Having had very little time, weaponry and man-power, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) quickly trained their civilian men and women for combat, something still done today.   Miraculously, Israel managed to survive with some last minute aid by the U.S. This was the first time Israel was attacked as a Nation but certainly not their last.

I mean really, what’s the appeal for these other Middle Eastern countries? Israel is the size of Rhode Island compared to the whole United States. It is the 100th smallest country, with less than 1/1000th of the world's population and  80% of Israel’s land is desert. Golda Meir, the former Israeli prime minister, used to joke that Israel was the only place in the Middle East without oil.  So what could this country possibly bring to the table?

Why Size Doesn’t Matter

What this small country has accomplished in sixty-four short years is nothing short of a miracle. This tiny county, which has been called a technological power house by Bill Gates, leads the rest of the globe in many areas.  Consider the following;

Technology

• Motorola developed the first cell phone in Israel.

• A coding for a chip that allows laptop computers to function, voicemail and technology for AOL Instant Messenger was developed in Israel.

• Israel has the highest concentration of hi-tech companies in the world, apart from Silicon Valley in California.

• Israel has designed the airlines industry’s most impressive flight security system. Their security is so strict the US consults with Israel often on how to handle its security threats. Israel has been linked to the “ground breaking” cyber attack on Iran’s nuclear reactor. This cyber attack is believed to set back Iran’s nuclear capabilities by about three years.

• Israel has one if the best trained and powerful military’s in the world.

• It is rumored that U.S. military experts don’t even study Israel’s wars because Israel’s winning outcomes are too improbable. Let’s keep in mind they are also spending more per capita on her protection than any other country on earth.

• When Golda Meir was elected Prime Minister of Israel in 1969; she became the world's second elected female leader in modern times (even as Israel is surrounded by some countries who consider women lower than animals).

• Israel has the third highest rate of entrepreneurship, and the highest rate among people over 55 and among women. Israelis invented a hydrogen car that uses just a tank of water.

• Israel is one of the largest exporters of fresh produce and flowers in the world, despite the fact that about 80% of Israel’s land is desert.  Israel has defied agricultural odds.

• The USA would not be as medically advanced if it were not for Israeli advancements.  Israeli scientists developed the first non-radiation computerized test for breast cancer.

• An Israeli company developed a computerized system for ensuring proper administration of medications, thus removing human error from the dipension of medicine and potentially saving thousands of lives per year.

• An Israeli company developed the first ingestible video camera. This camera is so small it fits inside a pill and helps doctors diagnose cancer and other digestive disorders.

• Israeli stem-cell technology is being used in the U.S. to regenerate heart tissue.

• Teva is one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies and a major producer of generic drugs.

• When the U. S. Embassy in Kenya was bombed in 1998, Israeli rescue teams were on the scene within a day to help save some of the victims. Israel was the first nation in the world to adopt the Kimberly process, an international standard that certifies diamonds as "conflict free."

• Hebrew (the official language of Israel) is the only dead language that has been revived after 2,000 years.

Alisha Venetis is co-founder of www.thePrepRoom.net; an online store specializing in emergency preparedness supplies.  She writes for Smart Girl Nation, as well as other conservative blogs, where she reports on world politics, domestic and global economics and the potentially negative ramifications they may have on America.

Are the Palestinians going to unilaterally declare independence and ask the UN to formally recognize an independent Palestinian state based on pre-1967 borders this September?  That is what many in the Israeli government now fear.  At this point the Palestinians have pretty much given up on negotiations with Israel and they have initiated an all-out effort to get the international community behind their effort to achieve statehood in 2011.  The Scriptures warn over and over again about dividing the land of Israel, and many believe that those warnings were put into the Bible for the last days.  So could we actually see the UN establish a formal Palestinian state without the approval of Israel by the end of 2011?  Unfortunately, a whole lot of signs are pointing in that direction.

A recent article in The New York Times noted the intense pressure that Israel is under right now.  Basically the global community is telling them to give away the farm to the Palestinians or else the UN is just going to go ahead and do it anyway....

With revolutionary fervor sweeping the Middle East, Israel is under mounting pressure to make a far-reaching offer to the Palestinians or face a United Nations vote welcoming the State of Palestine as a member whose territory includes all of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem.

So where is the incentive for the Palestinians to negotiate in all of this?  If the Israelis don't give them a Palestinian state based on pre-1967 borders with East Jerusalem as the capital they will just wait for the UN to hand it to them.

Yes, it could really happen.

The following are 10 alarming signs that momentum is building for the UN to formally recognize an independent Palestinian state in 2011....

#1 The World Bank has publicly endorsed the formation of an independent Palestinian state.

#2 The IMF is formally backing the establishment of a Palestinian state in the near future.

#3 A recent United Nations report made the following statement about the Palestinian Authority: "In six areas where the UN is most engaged, governmental functions are now sufficient for a functioning government of a state."

#4 The Ad-hoc Liaison Committee on Palestine, composed of the EU, the United States, Canada, Norway, Russia, four Arab countries, the UN, the World Bank and the IMF, has endorsed the UN report and says that the Palestinians are ready for an independent state.

#5 U.S. and EU officials are warning that if Israel does not agree to a Palestinian state within the next few months, "the Quartet may be compelled to recognize a Palestinian State in the 1967 borders, with east Jerusalem as its capital".

#6 It is being reported in the international media that the following 4 points form the core of Obama's strategy for bringing about a Palestinian state: "Israel's acceptance of a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders; Palestinian acceptance that there would be no right to return to Israeli land; Jerusalem as the capital of both states; and the protection of Israel's security needs."

#7 Earlier this year, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made the following statement about the situation in Israel: "The status quo between Palestinians and Israelis is no more sustainable than the political systems that have crumbled in recent months."

#8 New Egyptian Foreign Minister Nabil al-Arabi is now asking the United States to formally recognize a Palestinian state.

#9 The Palestinian Authority has set September 2011 as the deadline to be ready for statehood.

#10 Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas sounds convinced that Barack Obama is going to make good on his promise to deliver an independent state into the hands of the Palestinians by the end of the year: "We are counting on the words of U.S. President Barack Obama who said his vision is to see a Palestinian state this coming September according to a deadline set by the Quartet."

Sadly, an independent Palestinian state would probably only make war more likely.

The following is how author Joel C. Rosenberg recently explained it....

If the Palestinians make a unilateral declaration of what they want, what will stop Israel from unilaterally declaring what they want? What if the Palestinians try to forcibly evict the Jews living in the West Bank? Those Jews would certainly fight back. Would the Israeli military move to defend the Jewish settlers? Would Palestinian security forces then fire upon the Israeli forces? Would the U.N. move into to condemn and isolate Israel, and even impose draconian economic sanctions on the Jewish state? Events could spiral out of control. Indeed, the likelihood is that far more violence — not peace — would result by such a Palestinian declaration of statehood outside the context of negotiations with Israel.

Unfortunately, even if the Palestinians get a state, there is going to be a massive war in the Middle East.

In Lebanon, Hezbollah is arming to the teeth and they are absolutely obsessed with driving Israel into the sea.

Syria had been getting ready for war for decades, and it is almost certainly just a matter of time before Israel and Syria go head to head.

Iran continues to develop their nuclear program and it is seemingly inevitable that at some point the Israelis will strike them in order to stop that.

Egypt has just taken a hard turn towards radical Islam and a recent poll found that the majority of the Egyptian people are in favor of ending the peace treaty with Israel.

So, no, the Middle East is not getting closer to peace.

In fact, it is getting much closer to war.

We live in very unstable times.  Please pray for peace in the Middle East.

So exactly just who is NATO "helping" in Libya?  Are we actually making it possible for radical Islamic jihadists to take control of Libya?  Are we now providing air cover for some of the exact same terrorists that were shooting at our soldiers in Iraq?  You might not like the answers to those questions.  Nobody is claiming that Gadhafi is not a horrible dictator and tyrant.  However, is it really in our interest to have al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood replace him?  The Scriptures tell us in the book of Ezekiel that in the last days the nation of Libya will come against Israel.  Are we making this possible by injecting ourselves into the middle of this civil war?

The mainstream media has been pushing this war really hard, and it is really easy for most Americans to simply trust the judgment of the news channels, but there are some really hard questions that we need to ask about our involvement in Libya.

For example, what in the world is Libya going to look like after all this is over?

Is it going to take a hard turn towards radical Islam and end up being ruled by the Muslim Brotherhood and/or al-Qaeda?

According to The Telegraph, the leader of the Libyan rebels is even admitting that his "troops" include jihadists that were firing bullets at U.S. troops in Iraq....

Abdel-Hakim al-Hasidi, the Libyan rebel leader, has said jihadists who fought against allied troops in Iraq are on the front lines of the battle against Muammar Gaddafi's regime.

What type of government do you think they are going to set up once this is over?

The American people need to start demanding some answers.

Why are we on the side of al-Qaeda in Libya but against them in Iraq and Afghanistan?

CBS News recently quoted former CIA officer Bruce Riedel as saying the following....

"There is no question that al Qaeda's Libyan franchise, Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, is a part of the opposition. It has always been Qaddafi's biggest enemy and its stronghold is Benghazi. What is unclear is how much of the opposition is al Qaeda/Libyan Islamic Fighting Group - 2 percent or 80 percent."

Shouldn't we have learned more about who we are supporting before we jumped in?

Are we actually using our military to support the spread of radical Islam in north Africa?

According to Webster Tarpley, a study conducted at West Point found that Libya has one of the highest concentrations of jihadists on the planet....

The most striking finding which emerges from the West Point study is that the corridor which goes from Benghazi to Tobruk, passing through the city of Darnah (also transliterated as Derna) them represents one of the greatest concentrations of jihadi terrorists to be found anywhere in the world, and by some measures can be regarded as the leading source of suicide bombers anywhere on the planet. Darnah, with one terrorist fighter sent into Iraq to kill Americans for every 1,000 to 1,500 persons of population, emerges as suicide bomber heaven, easily surpassing the closest competitor, which was Riyad, Saudi Arabia.

The more one examines the situation in Libya, the better Gadhafi looks.  The truth is that these "rebels" are not fighting Gadhafi because they want a western-style democracy.  Rather, they are fighting him because they want to set up a radical Islamic jihadist state.

The truth is that NATO knows precisely who they are arming and who they are helping take power in Libya.  As Steve Watson recently noted, there are reports that there are 1000 (or more) al-Qaeda fighters among the rebels in Libya....

A former leader of an al Qaeda linked group in Libya claims that there are around 1000 fundamentalist Islamic fighters in the country that have joined the uprising against Col. Moammar Gaddafi’s forces, a number that jives with intelligence reports and independent estimates.

How in the world is America going to be better off with al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood in control of Libya?

None of this makes any sense.

We are told that we have to have our soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq for years and years in order to "fight al-Qaeda" and then we are helping them take power in Libya?

What in the world is going on out there?

We are living in the last days and weird things are going to happen.

So what do all of you think about what is happening in Libya?  Please feel free to leave a comment with your opinion below....

A question that a lot of people are wondering about right now is whether or not the Japan earthquake is mentioned in the Bible.  In particular, many are asking if the earthquake in Japan has anything to do with Bible prophecy.  So is the Japan earthquake in the Bible?

Well, no, the massive earthquake that recently hit Japan is not in the Bible.

However, the Scriptures do tell us that earthquakes will be one of the signs of the last days.

That does not mean that God caused the earthquake in Japan.  That does not mean that God is going to be causing the major earthquakes that are to come.  What it does mean is that an increase in the size and frequency of earthquakes should be a sign to us that the return of Jesus Christ is getting closer.

So where in the Bible does it talk about earthquakes in the last days?

In Matthew 24:7, Jesus declared the following about the last days....

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

In Mark 13:8 we see a similar warning by the Messiah....

Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be earthquakes in various places, and famines. These are the beginning of birth pains.

In Luke 21:11, Jesus mentioned earthquakes as a sign of the last days along with famines, pestilences and "great signs" from heaven....

There will be great earthquakes, famines and pestilences in various places, and fearful events and great signs from heaven.

In the book of Revelation, it tells us that the greatest earthquake of all time will occur just before the end of the Great Tribulation.  Revelation 16:18 says the following....

Then there came flashes of lightning, rumblings, peals of thunder and a severe earthquake. No earthquake like it has ever occurred since mankind has been on earth, so tremendous was the quake.

So what does all of this mean?

It means that we should expect more very powerful earthquakes as we get deeper into the last days.

Considering what just happened in Japan, that is a very sobering thought.  Many of us will never forget the footage of the massive tsunami in Japan washing cars and homes and people across the countryside as if they were toys for children....

As bad as the earthquake and tsunami in Japan were, the truth is that a lot of stuff much worse than that is eventually headed our way.

In Matthew 24:21, Jesus tells us that the Great Tribulation will be the worst time in all of human history....

For then there will be great distress, unequaled from the beginning of the world until now—and never to be equaled again.

When Jesus said that, He was not messing around.  We are rapidly approaching a time that will be the most horrible that the world has ever seen.

Are you ready for that?

Those that don't know Jesus are not going to have any hope in the days ahead.

But that does not have to be you.  The truth is that Jesus came to this earth and died for your sins.  He rose from the dead and now the time of His return from heaven is drawing near.

If you will repent of your sins and give your life to Him, He will forgive your sins and will give you eternal life.

For much more on how to become a follower of Jesus Christ, we urge you to read an article that we posted on another one of our websites entitled "What Does The Bible Say About Salvation?"

The times ahead are going to be absolutely horrible.  By the time all is said and done, billions are going to die.  The earth is going to be an absolute wasteland.  There is going to be more suffering and more agony than during any other period of human history.

But it can be a time of great victory and adventure for you - if you know Jesus.

So what do all of you think about the recent earthquake in Japan?  Please feel free to leave a comment with your opinion below....

So much for Muslims and Christians coming together in brotherly love in Egypt.  In the aftermath of the revolution in Egypt, the persecution of Christians in that nation has escalated dramatically.  In our last post, we warned that Egypt was about to take a hard turn toward radical Islam, and we were right.  Churches are being bombed, Christians are being attacked and there have even been reports of government forces opening fire on church buildings.  As radical Islam gets an even stronger hold on Egyptian society, the horrific persecution of Christians in Egypt is only going to increase.  Let us pray for our brothers and sisters in Egypt because they are living in the middle of a nightmare right now.  Unfortunately, the Scriptures tell us that in the last days persecution is going to increase for all Christians.

At this point there are almost daily stories in the international news about the persecution of Christians in Egypt.

For example, check out the following excerpt from a story today in the Jerusalem Post....

The Health Ministry said the 13 people were killed and 140 wounded in violence on Tuesday night ignited by tensions built up since an arson attack on a church south of Cairo on Saturday.

This recent violence was sparked by an attack over the weekend during which an estimated 4,000 Muslims violently assaulted Christian homes and burned a church in the Egyptian town of Soul which is about 18 miles from Cairo.

The Assyrian International News Agency noted that witnesses of the church burning said that the radical Muslims involved were chanting "Allahu Akbar" as they destroyed the church....

Witnesses said the mob chanted "Allahu Akbar" and vowed to conduct their morning prayers on the church plot after razing it.

Unfortunately, violence against Christians in Egypt is not new.  Back on New Year's Eve 21 people were killed and 43 people were injured when a massive bomb went off outside a Coptic church in the city Alexandria, Egypt.

Another example of the persecution of Christians in Egypt prior to the recent revolution was recently noted by Family Security Matters....

Despite wallowing in money from America, Mubarak had made no attempt to improve the plight of Egypt’s Christians. As noted by Raymond Ibrahim, in November 2010, Egyptian security forces opened fire upon Christians who had not followed discriminatory building regulations. The Copts had constructed the St. Mary and St. Michael churches in the district of Giza. Three unarmed Christians died from gunfire, and a small girl was suffocated by tear gas. Wounded demonstrators were handcuffed to hospital beds before being sent to detention camps.

Many of our political leaders and many in the mainstream media have been praising the recent Egyptian revolution, but the truth is that it was not about freedom and liberty.

Instead, what the Egyptian revolution really represented was a hard turn toward radical Islam.

Egypt is becoming a radical Islamist state.  10 percent of the population of Egypt is Christian, and they are no longer going to be able to feel safe.  More churches are likely to be burned and more Christians are likely to die.

Please pray for the Christians in Egypt.  Someday we all may be facing the kind of persecution that they are going through right now.

Many Christians have believed for a long time that Egypt would take a hard turn towards radical Islam in the last days.  Well, it looks like that might be starting to happen.  This week tens of thousands of radical Islamic protesters have been violently clashing with police and security forces in some of Egypt's biggest cities.  So far, at least 4 people have died and dozens have been injured during the Egypt protests.  The level of violence that we are witnessing during these protests is absolutely stunning.  One of America's biggest allies in the Middle East is rapidly becoming destabilized.

There are reports that police have been forced to use water cannons and tear gas on the protesters.  But this has just seemed to make the Islamic radicals even more determined.

So what are they protesting about?

Well, supposedly this is all about "economic conditions" and the rising cost of living, but the protesters are also demanding the ouster of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

Mubarak has been in power for three decades, and hardline Muslims in Egypt see him as way too friendly with Israel and the United States.

So while most mainstream media news reports will continue to characterize these as "economic protests", let there be no mistake - the vast majority of these protesters desire to see radical Islam take power in Egypt.

If that happens, it will be extremely bad news for the United States and Israel.

Organizers are promising that even bigger protests are planned.  It does not look like things are going to cool down in Egypt any time soon.

So could this be the beginning of an Islamic revolution in Egypt?

Let's pray that it is not.

The following is incredibly shocking raw video from the recent protest in Egypt.  As you can see, things are rapidly becoming very, very serious....