History records that King Herod I remodeled the Jewish temple in hopes of creating an eternal legacy focused on him.Because of the magnificence of the remodeling, the second temple is most often referred to as Herod’s Temple. This temple stood until destroyed in 70 A.D. by the Roman General Titus.
Clearly this was not the house of the God of Israel. It was an abomination, a hybridization of God’s chosen – humanity in general and the nation of Israel in particular – with the pagan Roman rulers.
King Herod put a golden eagle outside of the Temple of Jerusalem. Like other military standards, this eagle was carried into battle. The presence of the eagle meant the presence of the Roman Legion. By placing one at the gates, Herod was making a powerful statement regarding Jerusalem’s sovereignty under Rome.
Making idols was forbidden to the Jewish people, even if there was no attempt to worship them. Yet the Romans regarded eagle standards as holy symbols, anointing them on special days. Two respected teachers of the law, Judas and Matthias, spoke to religious scholars about this violation.
A group of these men pulled down the golden eagle and cut it into pieces. The king’s captain detained 40 participants, along with Matthias and Judas, and brought them before Herod…Herod had those responsible for the sedition burned alive. He appointed a new high priest: one subordinate to Herod and Rome…
The eagle standard accompanied Titus during his siege of Jerusalem. This led to the demolition of the Second Temple. As for Herod, his heirs continued to rule, even after the destruction of Judea and the Diaspora of the Jewish people.
Israel, choose your leaders and your allies wisely.
You may remember that Jesus Christ also rebuked the temple rulers for, not paganism exactly, but, well, capitalism. And he, too, was put to death.
According to biblical prophecy, the end of the world, AKA the Day of the LORD, explodes into action when his two chosen ones / messiahs – like Zerubabbel and Joshua – speak out for him at a newly built temple.
We can be sure that this latest temple will, like the previous, be built by permission of Israel’s current political ally which procures concessions from hostile opponents to allow construction, provides military protection against attacks, and promotes itself as the Savior from War and Securer of Peace. This will be another monument to hubris, no house of prayer, another den of thieves raking in a fortune from tourism.
“But the court which is without the temple leave out, and measure it not; for it is given unto the Gentiles: and the holycity shall they tread under foot forty and two months [1,240 days].” (Revelation 11:1-2)
Israel was invariably betrayed by the Gentile empires with whom they made alliances for protection – Assyria, Babylon, Greece, Rome. This doesn’t change for the current iteration of the last Empire upon which Israel depends for security. Currently, that is America.
Review America’s abandonment of Christians to the Turkish Moslems after WWI for a preview.
Asa Jennings was a failed small-town Methodist minister from upstate New York working for the YMCA in Smyrna, Turkey, in 1922, when he saved a quarter of a million Christians from perishing in a brutal final chapter of the Armenian Genocide.
“A private individual, a guy without portfolio, who held a minor position in the YMCA, came forward and put together this astonishing rescue…”
Smyrna, known today as Izmir, had been a cosmopolitan port under Greek rule…But after Turkish armed forces defeated the Greeks in September 1922, they began a religious cleansing, with executions and arrests sparking mob violence, rape, and pillage.
In a frantic effort to escape, hundreds of thousands of terrified Christians fled to the quay along the harbor in hopes of finding safe passage. The Turks responded by lighting the city on fire. “A half a million people, packed into a narrow strip of pavement, maybe a mile and a half, two miles long, as a giant fire comes at them, basically pushing them into the sea…”
Jennings, a short, mild-mannered fellow with back problems, had managed to get his family on a ship out with other Americans, but he stayed behind in an effort to help several thousand refugees in safe houses along the quay. Horrified by what he saw, he first bribed an Italian ship captain to spirit away the people from the safe houses. Then he hatched an even bigger plan, securing a flotilla of empty Greek merchant ships to save thousands more…
beyond protecting its own citizens, the US government, with growing commercial ties to Turkey [and hopes for buffer against Russia to the north], was unwilling to get involved…America’s top officer in the region, Admiral Mark Bristol, played tennis outside Constantinople (present-day Istanbul) as Smyrna burned.
You can’t seriously believe that the American government acts on a biblical promise to be blessed for blessing Israel. The bottom line is always about money and power.
Why is the US unequivocal in its support for Israel?
With Israel attacking Gaza for a second week, United States President Joe Biden and his administration are sticking to a long-established script in Washington, expressing unequivocal support for Israel and its “legitimate right to defend itself” from Hamas rocket attacks…
Former US President Harry Truman was the first world leader to recognise Israel when it was created in 1948… right after World War II, when the Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union was taking shape.
The Middle East, with its oil reserves and strategic waterways (think the Suez Canal) was a key battleground for superpower hegemonic influence. The US was taking over from severely weakened European powers as the primary western power broker in the Middle East…
Since President Harry Truman decided to recognize Israel eleven minutes after its declaration of independence, the United States and Israel have had a special relationship, which has evolved over time into a web of military, economic, academic, bureaucratic and personal connections at the local, state and federal levels.
Israel and the United States signed a secret memorandum of understanding in 1965 that marked the beginning of the strategic alliance with the United States…in 1968…the sale of Phantom jets to Israel…established the United States as Israel’s principal arms supplier. It also marked the beginning of the U.S. policy to give Israel a qualitative military edge (QME) over its neighbors.
The Israelis wisely played up their capability to deter the Soviet Union…They began to reap the benefits of this approach on November 31, 1981, when the two countries signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) termed “strategic cooperation…”or the first time, Israel was formally recognized as a strategic ally…
And the American President is the Personification of the Abomination that makes Desolate. This is reflected in political / military power of course.
The strategic cooperation agreements…shifted at least part of the focus of relations with Israel from Congress to the Executive Branch.
In 1989, the United States accepted an Israeli invitation to establish munitions stockpiles in Israel for use by the United States…missiles, armored vehicles, and artillery ammunition…
By the end of Reagan’s term, the U.S. had prepositioned equipment in Israel, regularly held joint training exercises, began co-development of the Arrow Anti-Tactical Ballistic Missileand was engaged in a host of other cooperative military endeavors.
Today, these strategic ties are stronger than ever…
In September 2016, the two governments signed a new ten-year Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on military aid covering FY2019 to FY2028…the MOU provides Israel with a record $38 billion in military aid …grants plus $5 billion in missile defense appropriations…pledges to request $500 million in annual combined funding for joint U.S.-Israeli missile defense programs…
in May 2017…the Trump administration announced it was adding an additional $75 million to the MOU signed in September 2016 for Israel’s missile defense programs…
U.S. General Joseph Votel, the head of the United States Central Command (CENTCOM), made an official visit to Israel for meetings with defense officials in late April 2018. This was the first time that a head of CENTCOM had ever visited Israel on official business…
Congress passed the annual National Defense Authorization Act in December 2020…includes $3.3 billion in security assistance to Israel, and $500 million for U.S.-Israel missile defense cooperation…New in this year’s bill is the…permitting of the president to exceed the current limitation of $200 million on the transfer of PGMs in non-emergency situations.
In first, US establishes permanent military base in Israel
For the first time in history, the United States on Monday established an official, permanent military base in Israel…
Brig. Gen. Tzvika Haimovitch, head of the IAF’s Aerial Defense Command, announced the establishment of the installation on Monday evening.
“It’s nothing short of historic,” he said…US military forces are routinely based in Israel, both for joint exercises and for routine cooperation with the IDF, but Haimovitch described the new base as a meaningful change.
“We established an American base in the State of Israel, in the Israel Defense Forces, for the first time, with an American flag,” he said.
“when ye shall see all these things, know that it is near, even at the doors…” (Matthew 24:32-36)
Every nation that befriended Israel did so for the purpose of getting a land base in the center of the civilized world for its own benefit, not Israel’s, and will invariably sacrifice Israel to their joint enemies in the classic strategy “the enemy of my friend is my friend…when they offer better benefits. “
How World War 3 is inevitable
This piece is aimed at…providing the readers with a factual analysis of the possible forthcoming events leading to world war III.
America’s Fight for “Freedom”… Again…?
America can safely be dubbed as number one among the possible initiators of world war 3. Chronological record shows that whenever there is a conflict, anywhere in the world; nine times out of ten, it is the US, who is involved in some capacity. It has a long history of engineering coups, toppling regimes and baking military juntas all around the world…
most of the military operations launched since World War II have been launched by the U.S.
And American military spending dwarfs the rest of the world put together.
Not only is war bad for civilians, it is also bad for the economy and makes us poor.
The oligarchs are the only ones who benefit.
“Wherefore hear the word of the LORD, ye scornful men, that rule this people which is in Jerusalem.
That would be Israel’s Knesset.
Because ye have said, We have made a covenant with death, and with hell are we at agreement; when the overflowing scourge shall pass through, it shall not come unto us…
That would be Israel’s reliance on the American military-industrial complex to save them.
Therefore thus saith the LORD God, Behold, I lay in Zion – NOT WASHINGTON – for a foundation a stone, a tried stone, a precious corner stone, a sure foundation – SECURITY – : he that believeth shall not make haste.
Judgment also will I lay to the line, and righteousness to the plummet: and the hail shall sweep away the refuge of lies, and the waters shall overflow the hiding place. And your covenant with death shall be disannulled, and your agreement with hell shall not stand; when the overflowing scourge shall pass through, then ye shall be trodden down by it. From the time that it goeth forth it shall take you: for morning by morning shall it pass over, by day and by night: and it shall be a vexation only to understand the report…Now therefore be ye not mockers, lest your bands be made strong:
for I have heard from the LORD God of hosts a consumption / utterly consumed, devastation, even determined upon the whole earth. ” (Isaiah 28:14-22)
That would be World War III – desolation, destruction, devastation of the whole earth.
Wherefore if they shall say unto you, Behold, he [the savior] is in the desert;
go not forth: behold, he is in the secret chambers;
believe it not…
For wheresoever the carcase is, there will the eagles be gathered together.” (Matthew 24:28)
The disciples certainly understood Yeshua haMashiach’s characterization of
- eagles gathering on a carcase
- as Roman peacekeepers swooping in on the spoils of war.
The eagle was THE emblem of Rome.
And it hasn’t changed. The fourth world empire stands until it is defeated at the second coming of Jesus Christ.
In our industrial age, oil is among the biggest spoils of war.
Oil was not the only goal of the Iraq War, but it was certainly the central one, as top U.S. military and political figures have attested to in the years following the invasion.
“Of course it’s about oil; we can’t really deny that,” said Gen. John Abizaid, former head of U.S. Central Command and Military Operations in Iraq, in 2007. Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan agreed, writing in his memoir, “I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil.” Then-Sen. and now Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said the same in 2007: “People say we’re not fighting for oil. Of course we are.”
For the first time in about 30 years, Western oil companies are exploring for and producing oil in Iraq from some of the world’s largest oil fields and reaping enormous profit. And while the U.S. has also maintained a fairly consistent level of Iraq oil imports since the invasion, the benefits are not finding their way through Iraq’s economy or society.
Earlier on Monday, the US army deployed fighters from the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in the vicinity of the base for security.
The new base will be the fourth in the governorate, and the ninth in eastern Syria.
Kingdom Come 