Journey to Israel.

I am on a mission to learn about Israel. I have had some very helpful suggestions from FBook...Thanks Guys. I just want to really learn...well try to learn and understand... what it's all about. Why are so many countries turning against Israel as mention further in this article? Now Hussein is turning against Israel by wanting to confront 'Her' Prime Misnister. I would give just about anything to go on this upcoming tour to Israel, but unfortunately, it is just not possible financially. But I can and I will be making full use of my library. Learning from a few books that have been suggested as a place for me to start. I can't go on saying I support the cause without at least knowing some of the history - apart from Bible History and Christian stories I have read.

Happy Passover and epicenter update‏
Joel Rosenberg
Thursday, 9 April 2009
HAPPY PASSOVER -- AND AN EPICENTER CONFERENCE UPDATE

* Come with us to Israel and stand with the Jewish people
By Joel C. Rosenberg (Washington, D.C., April 8, 2009) --

"I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage." (Exodus 20:2)

Lynn and the boys and I are celebrating Passover this year with our Joshua Fund team. As we do, we are rejoicing over how the Lord has delivered the Jewish people through so many trials in recent decades, and how He has miraculously and prophetically resurrected the State of Israel, as He had promised in the Scriptures to do in the "last days" of human history. We are also praying for the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob to deliver the children of Israel from rising new threats - this time from Iran and Radical Islam, not the Pharoah of Egypt.

Many nations around the world are turning against Israel at present. The Turkish Prime Minister recently called for Israel to be banned from the U.N. A Spanish court is considering trying Israeli military officials on "war crimes" charges for defending Israel from Hamas rocket attacks. Boycotts of Israeli goods and services are being called for around the world. And now comes this headline in a leading Israeli newspaper: "Obama team readying for confrontation with Netanyahu."

That said, we are not worried. The Lord who has been so faithful to the Jewish people from time immemorial will show His mighty hand once again. That was the theme of this year's Epicenter Conference, that we serve a great and mighty God, a prayer-hearing and a prayer-answering God, a God who loves Israel and will bless her. In my "State of the Epicenter" address on Saturday, I spoke from the Book of Esther about another time in history when the leader of Iran/Persia (King Xerxes) called for the annihilation of the Jewish people. It seemed hopeless. But as the Jews who really loved the Lord fasted and prayed and turned their hearts towards Him, the Lord heard their cries and sent a great deliverance through one man (Mordechai) and one woman (Hadassah/Esther) willing to serve Him even unto death. Will He not provide such a great deliverance again, as we turn our hearts towards Him and seek His face and ask Him to forgive us and heal us and draw us close to His heart?

We believe the Iran crisis provides a tremendous opportunity for the Church to stand with Israel and bless Israel and see the God of Israel do a mighty miracle. The Joshua Fund team, therefore, is committed to doing everything we possibly can to educate Christians around the world and mobilize a global movement of people who will bless Israel and her neighbors in the name of Jesus. This November 5-17, we will be a leading a Joshua Fund "Prayer & Vision Trip" to Israel, concluding with our first-ever "Jerusalem Prayer Summit." We would love to have you join us for this extraordinary opportunity to walk the land that Jesus walked, learn the history and the prophetic future of the Holy Land, meet Israeli pastors and Joshua Fund allies, and see how powerfully the God of Israel is moving today. Please pray about it and then, if the Lord gives you the green light, please join us on what will be an unforgettable experience.

EPICENTER CONFERENCE UPDATE:

* As more data are coming in, it appears that more than 20,000 people participated in person and on-line, not the 13,000 we first reported

* A total of 57 countries had people watching on-line

* A total of 92 churches in the U.S., Canada and Israel showed the conference to their congregations

* You can now pre-order CDs, DVDs and/or MP3s of the conference at www.epicenter09.com

[To read more of the update -- including an update from the 2009 Epicenter Conference on the keynote messages delivered by Lt.-General Jerry Boykin and Pastor Chuck Smith -- please click below]

To read the rest of this report on Joel's weblog, please click here

To join 90,000 subscribers of Joel's email updates, please click here

To pre-order audio or video copies of the 2009 Epicenter Conference, please click here
COME TO ISRAEL WITH US IN NOVEMBER
Dear Friends:

It is with great excitement over God's wonderful love and plan for Israel and the people of the epicenter that I invite you to join us for our next Joshua Fund "Prayer & Vision Trip." It will be held November 5-17, 2009, and culminate in our first-ever "Jerusalem Prayer Summit."

If you have never been to the Holy Land, it is hard to describe what a profound spiritual effect such a journey can have on you and your family. You may have heard others say God's Word seemed to "come alive" in a new way when they walked where Jesus walked, from the shores of Galilee to the Mount of Olives and into the streets of Jerusalem. Well, it's true, and I believe our 2009 Israel trip will allow you to experience this for yourself and intensify your desire to walk closely with Jesus Christ.

If you have been to Israel before, this trip will be a great opportunity to deepen your understanding of how powerfully the Lord is moving there. I will teach at key locations and answer your questions about the future of the epicenter. You will have the opportunity to meet with and pray for local pastors and ministry leaders. We are arranging for you to spend time engaged in a practical Joshua Fund ministry project to bless the poor and needy. What's more, you will participate in a two-day conference to pray for the peace of Jerusalem at this critical hour.

We can take up to 300 people, and to make your experience as personal and special as possible, you will be assigned to one of seven buses of about 45 people. Each bus will be hosted by a Joshua Fund staff or board member or couple, or one of our close allies. You will ride that bus with your host every day, and in the process you'll get to know the people on your bus, study the Bible with them, pray with and for them, discover Israel together with them, ask questions with them, and thus form a small community. Lord willing, I will rotate through the buses to get to know you and answer your questions. Each bus will also have a professional, licensed Israeli tour guide who know every detail of the country inside and out.

As always, we will do our best to keep you up-to-date on the kinds of projects we are doing, and brief you on how those projects are proceeding. We will also let you know about the kinds of projects we are developing for the future. In no way do we want to pressure anyone to give financially. We fully believe the Lord will provide for the needs of the people we seek to serve. But if you or others wish to help, we welcome your support, and all financial gifts are tax-deductible.

If you would like to make a contribution to the on-going work of The Joshua Fund please make your check payable to "The Joshua Fund" and send to:

The Joshua Fund
18950 Base Camp Road
Monument, Colorado 80132-8009

Thanks so much and may the Lord richly bless you and your family as you bless Israel and her neighbors in the name of Jesus -- especially at critical moment in history of the epicenter.

Would you consider making a donation of $50, $100 or $500 per month to The Joshua Fund to help us bless Israelis in the name of Jesus? Please click here to find out more, and/or to make a secure donation on-line.

To get the latest prayer requests and updates on the work of TJF, please visit The Joshua Fund's weblog

To learn more about The Joshua Fund's Prayer & Vision Trip to Israel, or to register today on-line, please click here
Thank you for reading. Please feel free to forward to others.

TO BOOK JOEL FOR AN INTERVIEW please contact Beverly Rykerd at 1-888-481-0405, (719) 481-0537, or (719) 440-2746 (cell), or brykerd@ix.netcom.com.

Clinton doublespeak

Spiritmakwakwa thinks Clinton speak with forked tongue.


SHOULD WE LET IRAN HAVE NUCLEAR WEAPONS?

Incredibly, a growing chorus of "experts" says yes.
By Joel C. Rosenberg


(New York City, New York, March 12, 2009) -- U.S. and Israeli experts increasingly believe Iran could have its first nuclear weapon by the end of 2009 or early 2010. President Barack Obama has all but ruled out military force to stop Iran, preferring instead to pursue direct negotiations with Tehran.

Last week, however, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khameini, dismissed such talk. "Negotiations with whom?" asked Khameini. "With an occupying and bullying regime [Israel], who does not believe in any other principle other than force?….Or negotiations with America and Britain who committed the biggest sin in creating and supporting this cancerous tumor [the Jewish State]?"

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad also dismissed his American counterpart's desire for direct talks, saying they could only happen if the U.S. abandons her "satanic, coercive and aggressive ways."

Yet even as the leaders of Iran talk about annihilating Israel and the U.S., and feverishly try to build, buy or steal nuclear weapons, a growing chorus of "experts" in the U.S. foreign policy community are actually suggesting a nuclear-armed Iran might not be such a terrible thing.

Barry R. Posen of the MIT Center for International Studies wrote an op-ed for the New York Times on February 27, 2006, entitled, "We Can Live with a Nuclear Iran."

Journalist Paul Starobin, in a column published in National Journal on May 19, 2006, argued that "Iran's acquisition of a bomb would probably improve the chances of the U.S. and Iran renewing a dialogue after all these years" because, as one Mideast analyst told him, "they see acquisition of a nuclear weapon as a precondition of having talks with the U.S." (emphasis added)

Ted Koppel, the former host of ABC's Nightline, suggested in a 2006 op-ed in the New York Times that the world should allow Iran to get the Bomb. "Washington should instead bow to the inevitable," he insisted. "If Iran is bound and determined to have nuclear weapons, let it."

CNN founder Ted Turner went even further. "They [Iran] are a sovereign state-we have 28,000 [nuclear warheads]-why can't they have 10?" he argued in 2006. "They aren't usable by any sane person."

In the fall of 2007, former CENTCOM commander John Abizaid said publicly, "There are ways to live with a nuclear Iran. I believe we have the power to deter Iran if they go nuclear," just as we deterred the Soviet Union and China. "Iran is not a suicidal nation," he added. "Nuclear deterrence would work with Iran."

Throughout the 2008 presidential primaries, deterrence and containment were the themes of the Democratic contenders. Then-Senator Barack Obama dismissed the seriousness of the Iranian threat during his campaign, saying it was nothing compared to the threat the Soviet Union posed during the Cold War.

Former U.N. Then-Senator Hillary Clinton was even more explicit during an interview on ABC's Good Morning America on the morning of the Pennsylvania primaries. She threatened to wipe Iran out after an Iranian nuclear attack, hoping that such strong language would deter the Iranian regime from launching such an attack. "You said, 'If Iran were to strike Israel, there would be a massive retaliation,'" noted host Chris Cuomo. "Scary words, Mrs. Clinton. Does 'massive retaliation' mean you go into Iran, you would bomb Iran? Is that what that's supposed to suggest?"

"Well, the question was if Iran were to launch a nuclear attack on Israel, what would our response be?" Clinton replied. "And I want the Iranians to know that if I'm the president, we will attack Iran, and I want them to understand that, because it does mean that they have to look very carefully at their society. Because at whatever stage of development they might be in their nuclear weapons program, in the next ten years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them. That's like a terrible thing to say, but those people who run Iran need to understand that because that perhaps will deter them from doing something that would be reckless, foolish, and tragic."

Clinton is now the Secretary of State, responsible for orchestrating direct negotiations. But there are two serious flaws in Clinton's thinking. Personally,

First, by offering a reactive rather than a proactive military strategy vis-à-vis Iran, she is allowing for the possibility of another Holocaust. If Iranian leaders acquire nuclear warheads and can attach them to the high-speed ballistic missiles they already have, Ahmadinejad could kill some six million Jews in about six minutes. What good would it then be to say that the U.S. would obliterate Iran after Ahmadinejad or a successor accomplishes another Holocaust?

Second, Clinton and her like-minded colleagues hope their tough talk will deter Iran's leaders from launching a nuclear attack against Israel. But will it? Consider events through the lens of Shia eschatology, or End Times theology. Ahmadinejad and his colleagues have publicly stated that the end of the world is near and that the return of the Islamic Messiah known as the "Mahdi" or the "Twelfth Imam" is "imminent." To bring about the conditions optimal for the Mahdi's return, Iran's leaders must - according to Shia scholars - create global chaos and carnage.

As I document in my new non-fiction book, Inside The Revolution, Ahmadinejad believes he has been chosen by Allah to annihilate the U.S. and Israel and export the Islamic Revolution. The only way that is remotely possible, humanly speaking, is for Iran to acquire nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them against America and Israel. How then could the West successfully deter or contain Iran's messianic, apocalyptic leaders? If they die, these Radicals believe they are going directly to Paradise. What could we possibly offer them as either carrots or sticks that would keep them from what they see as their God-given duty when their failure to obey could be, in their minds, disobedience punishable by an eternity in the fires of hell?

Yet many in Washington do not see the problem. Vice President Joe Biden, for example, said during the campaign, "My concern is not that a nuclear Iran some day would be moved by messianic fervor to use a nuclear weapon as an Armageddon device and commit national suicide in order to hasten the return of the Hidden Imam. My worry is that the fear of a nuclear Iran could spark an arms race in the Middle East, with Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria, and others joining in."

A nuclear arms race is certainly a very real concern. But based on the evidence, why would Biden be so quick to dismiss the messianic fervor of Iran's leadership? Ahmadinejad, after all, is not just another power-hungry dictator in the mold of the Soviet or Chinese leaders of yore. Neither is Khamenei. They are not Communists. They are not atheists. They do not believe that this world is all there is. They are devout Shia Islamic extremists. They believe they are Shia "John the Baptists," forerunners of the soon-coming Islamic messiah. They believe their life mission is to kill millions of Jews and Christians and usher in an Islamic caliphate. If they die, they are convinced they know where they are going. But they do not really believe they are going to die-not at the hand of the infidels, at any rate. They believe instead that they have been chosen for a divine appointment and that nothing can stop them. That is what makes them so dangerous.

Unfortunately, too many Washington politicians-Obama, Clinton, and Biden included-do not yet understand this. To misunderstand the nature and threat of evil is to risk being blindsided by it. To misunderstand the nature and threat of Iran's End Times theology could be the prelude to genocide. Dare we be blindsided?

[Note: Glenn Beck asked me to draft this article. It was adapted from Inside The Revolution, posted on Glenn's website and sent to his email subscribers.]

To visit Joel's weblog site and get the latest developments in Israel, Iraq and the epicenter -- including the latest on Netanyahu's efforts to form a new government in Israel and an analysis of the U.S. economic crisis in light of Bible prophecy -- please click here
http://flashtrafficblog.wordpress.com/
http://www.joelrosenberg.com/flashtraffic_form.asp

Iran fires test rocket

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran has test-fired a new air-to-surface missile, Iranian media reported Sunday, in the Islamic Republic's latest display of its military capability.
The missile test was carried out despite the offer by the administration of new U.S. President Barack Obama to engage Iran in direct talks if it "unclenches its fist."
A top Iranian military commander last week said that Iranian missiles could now reach Israeli nuclear sites. Iran has often said it has missiles able to reach the Jewish state but had not previously mentioned such specific targets.

for the full story go to....http://blogs.reuters.com/pakistan/

The U.S. Should Not Open an Interests Section in Tehran

Thanks to MEF, who wants us all to spread the word. Used with permission.

The U.S. Should Not Open an Interests Section in Tehran
by Michael Rubin
CFR Forum
November 4, 2008
http://www.meforum.org/article/2003

In its waning days, the Bush administration is setting the stage for establishment of a U.S. Interests Section in Tehran manned by U.S. diplomats. The new administration should let this ill-thought and poorly-timed initiative drop.

Today is the 29th Anniversary of the Iranian seizure of the U.S. embassy in Tehran. Both reformists and hardliners continue to endorse the seizure. Few Americans remember the details of the embassy seizure. On November 1, 1979, Zbigniew Brzezinski, president Jimmy Carter's National Security Advisor, met with Iranian Prime Minister Mehdi Bazargan and Foreign Minister Ebrahim Yazdi in Algiers to discuss, among other issues, the restoration of the U.S.-Iran relationship. The Shah was gone, but the U.S. government wanted to cement its relationship with the new revolutionary regime. Photos of their handshake appeared in Iranian newspapers the next day. Students, with Ayatollah Ruhollah's blessing, stormed the embassy the next day, holding 52 American diplomats for 444 days. What went wrong? In many ways, the U.S. diplomats were pawns in a struggle that had less to do with the United States and far more to do with Iran's domestic politics. The Islamic Revolution was popular: Fully ten percent of the Iranian population took part, not only ayatollahs and seminary students, but also liberals, merchants, students, religious leftists, among others. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini was a symbol but, for months, it was uncertain he would be able to consolidate the power which history demonstrates he desired. His followers—Students Following the Line of the Imam—used the manufactured embassy crisis to force Bazargan's resignation and consolidate the revolution. Khomeini came out of the embassy seizure much stronger than his regime went into it. The Carter administration may have sought to engage moderates, but they inadvertently bolstered the hardliners.

The same pattern repeated when, in what became the Iran-Contra Affair, U.S. officials sought to engage revolutionary authorities in Tehran. One week after former U.S. national security advisor Robert McFarlane's secret trip to Tehran, Mehdi Hashemi, the son-in-law of Khomeini's deputy Hossein Ali Montazeri, leaked word of secret talks in pamphlets distributed at the University of Tehran. Six months later, Montazeri or his immediate aidesleaked word of McFarlane's meetings in the pro-Syrian Lebanese magazine Ash Shira‘a. Twenty-two years ago today, former president and Expediency Council chairman Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani confirmed the meeting to the international press. Whatever one thinks of Reagan administration actions, the fact remains that Iranian officials betrayed U.S. confidence in secret talks and crippled the remainder of the Reagan presidency. They did so, not out of spite for the United States, but rather for narrow domestic political reasons.

The list continues. After Mohammad Khatami's so-called Dialogue of Civilizations initiative, radical Iranian vigilantes attacked a busload of American businessmen. They did so to embarrass the Iranian government. The same day Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice waved the conditions outlined in her May 31, 2006 speech and sent Undersecretary of State William Burns to Geneva to join nuclear negotiations and offer the Iranian government a generous incentives package, Mohammad Jafar Assadi, commander of the Revolutionary Guards' ground forces, declared that the concession proved that "America has no other choice but to leave the Middle East region beaten and humiliated." The problem is not diplomacy. Rather, it is inattention to timing. Poorly calibrated diplomacy can backfire, spark crisis, and benefit hardliners.

One day, it may be appropriate to send U.S. diplomats to Tehran. That day is not now nor will it come until there is broad consensus across the Iranian political spectrum about the direction in which Iranian leaders should take their country. The new U.S. President must think not only of U.S. desires, but also remain cognizant of the complex political scene in Tehran. While Iranians jockey for position ahead of their June 2009 presidential elections, and while vigilante groups continue to flex their muscles, any attempt to send U.S. diplomats prematurely may spark the crisis and test which Senator Joe Biden warned against.

Related Topics: Iran, US policy

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The Middle East Forum

Iran’s Economy Runs Out Of Steam

Iran’s Economy Runs Out Of Steam
by Michael Rubin
Forbes.com
October 17, 2008
http://www.meforum.org/article/1997

As markets floundered amid the credit crunch, Iran's leadership celebrated the West's economic crisis. On Oct. 11, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared, "The claim that the free market manages all things is a huge lie and benefits only thieves and criminals." Two days later, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei decreed that the West's financial crisis was a sign of "the ineffectiveness of liberal democracy-based policies."

The Iranian leadership may rue their words. Ahmadinejad has run Iran's economy into the ground. On Oct. 11, just a day after Ahmadinejad declared prices in decline, the Central Bank reported inflation above 30%. Such figures are still likely low. Both Shahab News and Aftab-e Yazd have noted the tendency of Iranian officials to pull numbers from thin air.

Parliamentarians and journalists might complain but, as the Islamic Republic reverts to a Soviet-style command economy, regime intolerance toward technocratic expertise grows. Hojjat al-Eslam Ha'eri Shirazi, the Supreme Leader's personal representative in the city of Shiraz, explained, "The banking system wants to demand interest rates in exchange for loans to the people. We will not let them do so. And should a couple of banks go bankrupt as a result, so what? What is worse anyway, closure of factories or banks?"

Non-oil sector production is stagnant. Factories may remain open but many do not pay workers. On Oct. 2, for example, tire factory workers staged a protest in front of the Ministry of Labor seeking six months' unpaid wages. In recent weeks, wild cat strikes have occurred in Tehran, Isfahan, Qazvin and Sanandaj. Purchasing power has plummeted.

To mitigate such trends, the government has imposed price controls. On June 11, the daily Resalat reported that the paramilitary Basij, a subdivision of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, would enforce low prices. Over subsequent days, the Iranian press featured photos of Basij beating merchants whose prices were too high.
The combination of high liquidity, sparked by Ahmadinejad's arbitrary decree lowering interest rates to single digits, no-interest banking and inflation has led wealthy Iranians to pour money into real estate. Housing costs have skyrocketed; Tehran real estate prices rival New York's. The average Iranian family now pays 60% of its income for rent, while the Ministry of Housing estimates 1.5 million Iranians are homeless.

To fight economic malaise, Ahmadinejad has raided Iran's foreign reserves. In the past two months alone, Iranian papers have reported more than $15 billion in withdrawals from the reserves to import refined gas and several additional billion dollars to subsidize industrial schemes. Ahmadinejad's reinstatement of subsidies has meant Iran once again must import 40% of its refined petroleum needs.
He will need to continue spending. Last winter, Iran ran out of gas. Food prices more than doubled and the Revolutionary Guards had to deploy on the streets of towns and cities to keep order. On Oct. 1, the Parliament's Energy Commission predicted another "severe gas shortage" again within months.

As oil prices plummet, Iranian pessimism grows. In 2006, Tehran planned its budget assuming an oil price of $60/barrel. High oil prices masked Ahmadinejad's incompetence. While Iran's budgetary process has grown more opaque, it appears that Ahmadinejad constructed his budget with the assumption of oil price stability. Now that oil has plummeted, the Islamic Republic is in trouble.

On Oct. 7, Asr-e Iran asked, "How much did we save from the period when oil price was up to $130 per barrel? Did we build up a foreign exchange reserve? The authorities don't provide us with a clear and official answer about the foreign currency reserve ... and there is some fear that the entire reserve has gone to imports of junk." The paper's fear is justified.

While Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait now boast Sovereign Wealth Funds worth hundreds of billions of dollars, on Sept. 15 an unreleased Central Bank report leaked by an Iranian parliamentarian estimated the Islamic Republic's own future fund to be only $7 billion.

Iran's strategic challenge and nuclear ambitions will be the most immediate foreign policy challenge facing the new administration. The National Iranian American Council, Tehran's de facto lobby in Washington, urges a relaxation of sanctions. So too does the Council on Foreign Relations. Condoleezza Rice offers a defiant Tehran financial incentives.

Such strategies are wrong. Throwing an economic lifeline to a terror-sponsoring regime dedicated to the acquisition of nuclear weapons capability would be nothing short of diplomatic malpractice on a Carter-esque scale. Not only has the Islamic Republic squandered billions on nuclear weapons, destabilizing Iraq and Afghanistan, and sponsoring terrorism, but it has also pitched itself to countries like Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Sudan and Senegal as a pillar of an ideology that will defeat liberal Western democracy. Nothing would be a more powerful signal to those applauding Ahmadinejad's rhetoric than watching the Islamic Republic collapse under the weight of its own follies.

Michael Rubin, editor of the Middle East Quarterly, is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute

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The Middle East Forum



"The Iranian leadership may rue their words. Ahmadinejad has run Iran's economy into the ground."
So what does this really mean for Iran now? Will the madman thug a-mad-inejad panic himself into an evn more foolish move against the West?