Interview with Asher Intrater, Messianic Jewish Pastor in Jerusalem

CBN News – “Asher Intrater, director of Revive Israel Ministries and pastor of Ahavat Yeshua Congregation in Jerusalem, has authored several books about Israel and its role in history.

Intrater was raised in a conservative Jewish home in the United States, but came to faith in Yeshua (Jesus) by what he describes as a series of supernatural experiences in the late 1970s.

Asher has helped write several books, including From Iraq to Armageddon, which offers an in-depth analysis of end-time prophecy concerning the Middle East, whether there’s a deeper reason for the war in Iraq, and how close the world may be to the battle of Armageddon.

Intrater spoke with CBN News in depth about what’s really happening in the Middle East from a biblical perspective.

What are the two prerequisites for Christ’s return? Are more Jewish people putting their faith in Christ? He answers this and more.” Source – CBN News.

Check out this awesome interview with Pastor Intrater.  Here is a shorter version, but the longer 18 minute version is highly recommended:

 

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Is This The Beast Arising?

The expansion and increasing power of the “Islamic State” is stunning–from relatively obscure to a recognized, regional player in a month. They have put out a map and timeline for a Caliphate that is eerily similar to what we find in ‘End Times’ Bible passages:

Rev 6:8, “I looked, and behold, an ashen horse; and he who sat on it had the name Death; and Hades was following with him. Authority was given to them over a fourth of the earth, to kill with sword and with famine and with pestilence and by the wild beasts of the earth.”

Rev 13:4,5, “they worshiped the dragon because he gave his authority to the beast; and they worshiped the beast, saying, “Who is like the beast, and who is able to wage war with him?” 5 There was given to him a mouth speaking arrogant words and blasphemies, and authority to act for forty-two months was given to him“

This map and article describe the Islamic State’s geography conquest aims and their timeline to achieve them–its very close to 1/4 of the earth, both by population and area, stretching nearly the length of the “10-40 Window”.   They believe they can achieve their goal in 5 years, but judging by their recent speed overtaking large areas of Syria and Iraq its not unreasonable to wonder if they could achieve it in 3-4 years.

Though Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has a $10 million bounty on his head, since he was formally  in US custody, he continues to gain strength and its difficult to imagine the US carrying out a raid intended to kill him if he takes on the mantle of Head of a new Islamic State.  Already on Twitter we are seeing a constant stream of Muslims giving him bayah, or Islamic religious allegiance, due to the Caliph, the combined spiritual/governmental/military head of the Ummah, the worldwide Muslim populace.

While its far from a sure thing that the new Islamic State is the final incarnation of the seven-headed Beast of Revelation, this one bears watching.

One thing is for sure, we need to be praying for our suffering brethren in areas under the control of IS–deliverance yes, but faithfulness to the end, since we know there will be a great reward in the coming kingdom of Messiah.  And we need to pray for Israel–Biblically its apparent that great hardships are headed their way. Father, give your people peace, and let them see and know the Prince of Peace, Christ Jesus.

Massive Flood That Caused Ancient ‘Big Freeze’ Located – In the Bible, Perhaps?

I guess we shouldn’t be surprised when Big (Government-Funded Evolutionary) Science occasionally confirms the biblical account or at least swerves in that direction, while of course putting an evolutionary interpretational spin on the facts.  Here geologists connect a massive flood with significant atmospheric cooling, exactly what Creationists have been saying for decades.

A giant flood of Arctic meltwater may have triggered an ancient 1,200-year-long chill nicknamed the “Big Freeze,” the last major cold age on Earth, a new study finds.

These findings suggest that changes in the flow of water in the Arctic could suddenly alter the modern climate, study investigators added.

Starting about 12,900 years ago, the Northern Hemisphere was abruptly gripped by centuries of cold, an era technically known as the Younger Dryas. Scientists have suggested this chill helped wipe out most of the large mammals in North America as well as the so-called Clovis people. The Big Freeze was not a glacial period, which are colloquially often called ice ages — it was a cold time in the relatively warm spans between glacial periods.

Although researchers have suggested a cosmic impact might have set off this Big Freeze, the prevailing theory for the cause of the Younger Dryas was a vast pulse of freshwater— a greater volume than all of North America’s Great Lakes combined — that poured into the Atlantic and Arctic Oceans. The source of this flood was apparently the glacial Lake Agassiz, located along the southern margin of the Laurentide Ice Sheet, which at its maximum 21,000 years ago was 6,500 to 9,800 feet (2,000 to 3,000 meters) thick and covered much of North America, from the Arctic Ocean south to Seattle and New York.

Read the rest of the article here.

Book Review: “Hidden in Plain Sight” by Mark Davidson

“Hidden in Plain Sight” by Mark Davidson, Xulon Press, 2011

Mr Davidson has written a book that puts forward a new theory on ‘End Times’ biblical prophecy leading up to the emergence of the Antichrist and preceding the return of Jesus Christ, predicted in the Bible.  It approaches these prophecies from the increasingly common viewpoint that it is the Islamic world (the countries surrounding Israel) that produces Antichrist and not a “Revived Roman Empire” of 10 Western European nations, the prevailing understanding over the last half century.  This new view has also been advocated in such books as “Islamic Antichrist” and “Mideast Beast” by Joel Richardson, one its most well-known proponents.  It is also discussed every week on CBN by Erick Stakelbeck.  Many Christians are turning to this view as events in the Middle East are leading toward Islam as the “End Times Beast” rather than Western Europe.  I agree that there is much biblical support for the Islamic End Times paradigm.

Briefly, Mark sees parallels in three prophetic visions, two in the Book of Daniel and one in Revelation.  Daniel Chapter 7 discusses four beasts – a lion, a bear, a leopard and a terrible beast, while Daniel 8 tells the story of two, a ram and a goat.  The Revelation vision that he relates are the four horsemen of the sealed scrolls – they are white, red, black and pale green, in that order.  Mr. Davidson believes that all three visions are discussing the same period of time, just prior to the “Tribulation”, a 7-seven year period of regional and perhaps world-wide trauma that (some Christians believe) immediately precedes the return of Christ.

Here is the unique aspect of this book:  Davidson’s view that Daniel 7 is not “rerunning” prophecies in Daniel 2 as most current commentators believe, but is previewing End Times events with “Four Signposts”.  Briefly, these are:

1. the lion = Saddam Hussein and Iraq (already completed),
2. the bear = Iran invading Islamic Countries to its south, west and north (soon to occur),
3. the four-headed leopard = Turkey and a confederation of Sunni nations that repel Shiite Iran (further in the future), and
4. the terrible beast = the Antichrist empire that subsumes the previous three just before the Tribulation.

He believes that the four horsemen correspond exactly with these and the Daniel 8 Ram and Goat reiterate the 2^nd and 3^rd of them.

Davidson supports his thesis by first showing that although the Daniel 2 vision of the four-part metallic statue and the Daniel 7 vision of the four animals/beast concern the same four general people-group/empires, Daniel 2 tells the history of these empires during Daniel’s day through the formation of the Islamic Caliphates, while Daniel 7 reprises them during the end times, recapitulating, if you will, their lives in a last effort for greatness before being put down by each subsequent empire.  The book of Daniel self-identifies the first three of these as Babylon, Persia and Greece, while Davidson shows from historical sources that the fourth “terrible beast” can only be the Antichrist.

The strengths of this book include the solid historical research into the empires, their accomplishments and conquests and how they relate to biblical prophecy, particularly  the Islamic Caliphates of the Middle Ages.  He digs up some important events that support the notion that the fourth beast is indeed Islam.  He has included some great maps of the Middle East, graphically showing each phase of his interpretations clearly and understandably.  Mark delves into the original languages, particularly interpretations of Hebrew and Greek words to buttress his points.

As I stated earlier, I too am a believer in the Islamic Antichrist End Time paradigm and I share many beliefs in common with Mark.  In the final analysis however, Mark did not convince me to join him in seeing Daniel 7 as future to us, just preceding ‘the Tribulation.’   I continue to believe that Daniel 2 and Daniel 7 are strongly related to each other (the most common view today, I think he would agree).  What Mark unraveled for us regarding the 2^nd chapter I see as being reiterated in the 7^th.  I believe the Islamic terrible beast will remain in power (more or less) until Jesus returns.

I thought Mark could have provided more discussion and rationale of his theory that the seven-headed dragon of Revelation 17 consists of nations that all eventually become Muslim; I thought he tried to force this point and I did not understand the need for it.  I also did not see the strong correspondence between the four horseman and the animals/beasts of Daniel 7, however I do agree with his conclusion that the last, green horseman concerns Islam.  I know it was beyond the scope of his topic, but isolating the first 4 scrolls (four horsemen) from the last 3, and for that matter the Trumpets and the Bowls left me wondering how they related; a brief discussion of this would have helped.  Davidson is careful not to assign possible dates to his predictions, and also leaves some room for variance from his theory and how events might transpire.  He writes with an air of humility.

Davidson opened my eyes to some great revelations, particularly in the areas of history relating to Islam destroying the eastern Roman empire headquartered in Constantinople, the evolution of Baal worship into the ‘Allah’ of the Arabian peninsula, and the translation of original language words and their meanings as they relate to End Times realities.  One example is the Greek word is toxon, meaning “bow”, often used for launching poisoned arrows.  The word of course came to mean “poison”; it shows up  in Revelation 6:2 as the bow being carried by the rider on the white horse.  Davidson relates this to Saddam’s WMDs; I’m not ready to agree with him, but it is intriguing.

I learned a great deal from his book and would recommend it to others. I was challenged to examine my beliefs and investigate scripture more closely.  This is always worthwhile. I often find myself adjusting my beliefs as I consider the light given to my brothers and sisters from God’s Word.  This book will certainly help you do that too.

Gold-winning gymnast Aly Raisman heading to Israel

The Times of Israel – Jewish American who paid tribute to Munich 11 accepts invite from Diaspora minister

By JTA and Times of Israel staff August 11, 2012, 6:27 pm

Gold-winning American Jewish gymnast Aly Raisman has accepted an invitation from Israel Diaspora Affairs Minister Yuli Edelstein for her and her family to make their first visit to Israel.

Raisman, who performs floor routines to the melody of “Hava Nagilah,” won an individual gold medal in her floor exercise last week and a bronze on the balance beam after helping the U.S. women’s team take the gold.

No dates for her visit were immediately announced.

Raisman honored the memory of slain Israeli athletes after she took gold in the women’s floor exercise last Tuesday. Raisman said she would have supported a decision to observe a moment of silence in honor of the Israeli athletes murdered by Palestinian terrorists during the 1972 Munich games.

“If there had been a moment’s silence, I would have supported it and respected it,” she said.

Though she made clear her support for remembering the Israelis, she did not choose her routine’s music for political reasons, she said. “Having that floor music wasn’t intentional,” Raisman said. “But the fact it was on the 40th anniversary is special, and winning the gold today means a lot to me.”

On Wednesday the widows of two Israeli athletes killed in the Munich Olympics bitterly attacked the president of the International Olympic Committee, Jacques Rogge, at a memorial service for the Munich 11 in London over his refusal to allow a minute of silence at the opening ceremony.

“Shame on you, IOC,” said Ankie Spitzer, who was married to fencing coach Andre Spitzer. Spitzer was speaking to an audience that included Rogge. “You have forsaken the 11 members of your Olympic family. You are against them only because they are Israelis and Jews.”

Miriam Shaviv contributed to this article

Gold-winning gymnast Aly Raisman heading to Israel | The Times of Israel.

Aly Raisman nails the floor exercise and the gold on the 40th Anniversary of the Munich Massacre

This Jewish-American athlete wins gold 40 years to the day after Islamic gunmen killed Israeli Olympic athletes and coaches at the 1972 Munich games.  Here is link to see a video of her routine.

By Leonard Greene, NY Post

It wasn’t a gloved-fist salute from the medal stand, but Jewish-American gymnast Aly Raisman made quite a statement yesterday by winning a gold medal and invoking the memory of the Israeli athletes killed 40 years ago in Munich.

Raisman finished first in the women’s floor exercise, but she deserves to have another medal draped around her neck for having the chutzpah to face the world and do what needed to be done and say what needed to be said.

At the same Olympic Games where bigoted organizers stubbornly refuse to honor the slain athletes with a moment of silence, 18-year-old Raisman loudly shocked observers first by winning, then by paying her own tribute to 11 sportsmen who died long before she was born.

Reuters

GYM DANDY: Jewish-American gymnast Aly Raisman dazzles the London Games yesterday with her Olympic gold-medal floor routine set to the crowd-pleasing “Hava Nagila.”

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And if that weren’t enough, she won her event with the Hebrew folk song “Hava Nagila” playing in the background.

“Having that floor music wasn’t intentional,” an emotional but poised Raisman told reporters after her performance.

“But the fact it was on the 40th anniversary is special, and winning the gold today means a lot to me.”

Then Raisman stuck the landing.

“If there had been a moment’s silence,” the 18-year-old woman told the world, “I would have supported it and respected it.”

It was 40 years ago at the 1972 Munich Games that members of the Israeli Olympic delegation were taken hostage and eventually killed by Palestinian radicals.

Executed in the massacre were 11 Israeli athletes and officials and a West German police officer.

The martyrs were remembered this week during a London ceremony filled with sadness and reflection.

But not a peep about them has been said publicly in the one place where it counts — at the Summer Games on Olympic soil.

The International Olympic Committee and its president, Jacques Rogge, have refused to properly honor the dead, arguing that the opening ceremony wasn’t an appropriate forum for a moment of silence.

But if the opening ceremony is good enough for James Bond and Mr. Bean, it’s hard to understand why it’s not good enough for 60 seconds of solitude.

Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/jewish_gal_shows_up_ioc_with_gold_6OBzi2VCkaszwS0ij3n7OI#ixzz2314YDddx

The book ‘Aftershock’ (2nd Edition, John Wiley & Sons, 2011) by David Wiedemer, et al

Has anyone read this book?  I couldn’t put it down-I read it cover to cover in two days.  It was really an eye-opener, explaining macro-economics in fairly simple terms.  The authors believe we’ve been in a very long ‘bubble’ economy (inflated beyond what economic fundamentals dictate), starting around 1982.  Their first book, America’s Bubble Economy, published in 2006, predicted a series of six bubbles that would soon burst, collapsing the artificially high level of growth we’ve had since the ’90s.  The first four bubbles began popping in 2007 starting with real estate, followed by the stock market crash in 2008.  The other two, personal debt and discretionary spending, are derivatives of these.  The remaining bubbles (government debt and the U.S. Dollar) haven’t popped yet, but when they do we’re going to have high inflation and high unemployment for years.

They show how the Fed has inflated the money supply by 3X what it was just 2 years ago (never been done before), and there is no sign of that stopping since its the only thing keeping us from sinking into a depression.  The problem is, the longer it goes on, the longer the eventual depression will last and the deeper it will be when the government debt bubble finally pops.   Their thesis: when the supply of money increases, as with anything its value goes down, meaning it buys less.  This is the sole reason for inflation, and is a separate phenomenon from, for example, ‘supply and demand.’  America’s current national debt is over $15 trillion (see debt clock to the right of this article), and the book says the Fed will continue to increase the money supply (by buying bonds) until the debt reaches about $20-$25 trillion, at which point no one, individuals nor foreign central banks, not even the Fed, will buy our obligations anymore.  And as the money supply increases, the value of U.S. Dollars will deflate big time.

However, the authors do believe the Euro and Dollar will continue to be “reserve” currencies, and they don’t predict the demise of either, despite, for instance, all the E.U.’s present debt problems.  Both currencies will certainly be worth a lot less.  They also don’t predict “the end of America.”

Bottom line–they highly advise getting low, fixed-rate loans on your home, making only the minimum payments (because of inflation it will be easier to pay off those dollars in the future) dump all other RE, sell your business, sell stock, sell any valuables/collectables, pay off your car (its easy to repossess if you lose your job and can’t make payments, while your home will be difficult to take away), and buy GOLD.  They say that for many years it will be the only thing that will hold its value, particularly because of its demand in the Middle East and Asia.  At a certain point, far into the mega-depression, actually near its end, gold will be a bubble also and then it will be time to sell.  But not now.  Buy now.

Wiedemer and partners foresee this ‘Aftershock’ starting in about 2013-2016. They don’t give exact dates, because its timing depends on a lot of factors, including the actions of the Fed, Congress, and what happens internationally.  But they do believe at this point it is unavoidable, due to the unpayable U.S. debt and huge increase in our money supply.

Aftershock was not written from a spiritual perspective, but certainly it is ‘contrarian.’  There’s not a lot of support in the economics community for Wiedemer & Co.’s viewpoint which considers the economy as evolving rather than cyclical, the standard understanding.

They foresee a lot of civil unrest, many businesses and homeowners squatting and not paying mortgage/rent, huge changes in entitlements, significant decreases in inflation-adjusted salaries, and joblessness in the 40-60% range.  Perhaps Jesus will return in the midst of all this forecasted chaos.