Visible Beneficiaries and Invisible Victims
The seen and unseen
I attended college only briefly finding that I wasn’t really suited for the rigidity and formality of it all. That does not mean that I was against education; I love to learn. I adopted Thomas Sowell and Walter E. Williams as two of my professors and really enjoyed their columns and books. I have been thinking a lot lately about something that I remember from Walter Williams: The seen and unseen. It is a good read and probably useful for context before continuing this piece.
I am not sure that I really want to write this but again feel impressed to do it, so I will. This may be seen as my continuing series: How to Lose Friends and Alienate People (Dale Carnegie would cringe). That is not my intent, but the Gospel is offensive to those who are perishing. Sha’ul (Paul) writes to Timothy in 2 Timothy 4:3-4:
For the time will come when men will not tolerate sound doctrine, but with itching ears they will gather around themselves teachers to suit their own desires. So they will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.
If you “will not tolerate sound doctrine,” but wish to surround yourself with people preaching what you already believe, there will be no learning, and you will be uncomfortable here. If you are willing to be challenged, please continue all the way to the end; it will get bumpy along the way.
As I write this, America, Israel, and Iran are a few days into a two week “cease fire.” (There sure seems to be a lot of shooting in this “cease fire.”) We need to begin with this fact, Iran will continue on and it will always be an enemy of America (the Great Satan) and the modern nation state called Israel (the Little Satan). How do I know? Until 1935, Iran was known as Persia. Persia/Iran is included in the list of countries aligned against YHVH in the final battle as told in Ezekiel 38:5. (Please consider this excellent article about Ezekiel 38-39). Persia/Iran is not going to become some sort of western democracy. We do not yet know the outcome of this war, we could declare victory, we probably will, but in the end, America loses. This issue will not be fully dealt with until Yeshua Messiah returns and finishes it. And He will finish it! That is what the Bible says.
I will tell you that you will not truly understand the rest of this piece until you understand that The United States of America is end times Israel. When you read end times prophecy and Israel is referenced, it does not mean the modern nation state of Israel, that is actually Judah. It means the United States of America. This is not replacement theology; this is a proper understanding of what the Bible actually says. You can dig into that in my previous post Have You Considered This: America in Biblical Prophecy?, and my book.
Once you understand that America is Israel, you should realize that it is America’s history. Why are we here in North America? Because we were kicked out of the promised land for disobedience! The northern kingdom of Israel has never returned to the promised land. This is a manifestation of the curses that YHVH promised in Leviticus 26 and reiterated in Deuteronomy 28. You might respond that was given to “the Jews.” You would be wrong. It was given to Israel; those two terms are absolutely not synonymous. You might say, “that doesn’t apply to us, we are Christians and under the ‘New Covenant.’” If you believe that, you should consider my prior post The New Covenant to put that myth to rest.
There are blessings that go along with the curses in Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28. Blessings come from obedience. If we are experiencing curses, and not blessings, what do you think we should infer from that? Just to make sure we are on the same page as to the answer to that question, I will answer it: We are disobedient! We also find another blessing given to Abraham, passed to Isaac, then passed to Jacob/Israel in Genesis 22:17:
Your descendants will possess the gates of their enemies.
In ancient times, cities were walled with access controlled through the city gates so the city could be sealed off to prevent enemy invasion. There are maritime gates as well. Gibraltar is a gate that can control access to the Mediterranean Sea. Bab el-Mandeb is a strait (a gate) that the Houthis are using to control access to the Red Sea and Suez Canal. Iran is using the Strait of Hormuz (another gate) to control access to the Persian Gulf. At this moment, who is in control of Bab el-Mandeb and the Strait of Hormuz? Iran, directly over Hormuz and through their proxy, the Houthis, they control Bab el-Mandeb. Are we being blessed? Do we control/possess the gates of our enemies? I’m sure you know the answer is “No.” Do you properly infer from that that we are being cursed for our disobedience? I hope so.
Does America have the power to take both back? America has the strongest military ever assembled on planet Earth. Of course we could do it. In Leviticus 26:19, in the curses section, you will find:
And I will break the pride of your power; and I will make your heaven as iron, and your earth as brass:
The “I” here is YHVH, Almighty God Himself. He is saying that all of our power will be worthless when we are disobedient, and we are. He is also breaking our will to use our power. Understand, one submarine off of the coast of Iran could eliminate this problem of the closed maritime gates in mere minutes. It could open both the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea. That is how much power we have in just one submarine that we are unwilling to use because He has broken the “pride of our power.” This is where most people will say that this is unthinkable. We can’t do that! How many are going to stop reading here?!?! We are here to think and consider things we may not have considered, even uncomfortable things. Please continue.
There are about 90 million people in Iran, most (about 90% are Shia Muslims) are enemies of the Living God, and most will fight against Him when He returns; they will die, physically first, and then be tossed into the Lake of Fire, the second death. Many in Iran and elsewhere are having visions of Yeshua causing them to turn away from the false moon-god of Islam and to the True God, YHVH. Joel said this would happen (Joel 2:28-29) and Peter repeated it at Shavuot (Acts 2:17-18). He is saving some, those He has chosen. He is saving these people from the second death as Yeshua said in Matthew 10:28:
Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Instead, fear the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell.
We get so caught up in this life. We dismiss that Yeshua’s Gospel was never about his death, burial and resurrection. His Gospel is “The Gospel of the Kingdom.” Modern Christianity has made “the Gospel” a story about Him but ignore what He said and taught, you know, the red letters in the Bible. (I unpack this very thing in my book Blessings & Curses: if my people…) He said in John 16:33:
I have told you these things so that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take courage; I have overcome the world!
Yeshua said, “You will have tribulation.” There is no escaping that via some fictitious Pre-Tribulation Rapture. There is no such thing; it is a Christian fantasy. He spoke “I have overcome the world!” as if it is a done deal. To Him, the Eternal God, it is already accomplished, only not yet. We live in a temporal world where it is “not yet.” No matter how much tribulation is to come we are to place our hope in the fact that He is coming back to set up His Kingdom on the Earth to rule and reign for a thousand years. That is our hope, not this life. We are not going to Heaven; He is coming here! We believe Him that He has already overcome the world, that He will resurrect us. He proved it by resurrecting the First Fruits after He came out of the tomb (Matthew 27:50-53):
When Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice, He yielded up His spirit. At that moment the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth quaked, and the rocks were split. The tombs broke open, and the bodies of many saints who had fallen asleep were raised. After Jesus’ resurrection, when they had come out of the tombs, they entered the holy city and appeared to many people.
He presented these to His Father in Heaven the next morning fulfilling the Feast of First Fruits in His position as the High Priest forever in the order of Melchizedek. Please see my earlier piece, Easter or Passover, for a more detailed chronology and explanation.
Back to offending people by even suggesting that we use nuclear weapons to solve the Iran problem. You say, “But millions will die.” Yes, they will. Sounds heartless. Let’s step back and consider the bigger picture. The Strait of Hormuz is effectively closed by Iran. What most people hear is that oil and natural gas cannot get out of the Persian Gulf. That is the headline but is it so much bigger than that. You must consider that massive amounts of fertilizer come out of the Persian Gulf. It is planting season in the northern hemisphere, the time when the fertilizer must be applied to be effective. Fertilizer is stuck behind a closure imposed by Iran. If you miss the window to apply it, it is ineffective. Growing seasons cannot be moved. Yields from this season will fall precipitously without it. We aren’t feeling it yet, but it will be felt later this year and into next year. Not only that, but diesel availability is becoming an issue in many countries. This is not only high prices, it is availability. Farm equipment and transportation run on diesel. Without diesel, what we do manage to grow without sufficient fertilizer may not be able to be harvested or transported to market. It is this simple, there are already millions of dead people that just don’t know it yet. There will be mass starvation when food is not produced and delivered to markets. Iran has already murdered millions of innocent people, people not connected to this war in any way, with the closure of the strait and the wanton destruction of their neighboring country’s production facilities for oil, refined fuels, liquified natural gas, nitrogen and phosphate fertilizers, and helium—Facilities that will take years to repair. Those millions are the invisible victims of Iran’s actions. It has already happened, just not yet. The visible beneficiaries are those Iranians not killed in the nuclear blasts that would end this war and open the strait.
Let’s say we don’t go nuclear and instead go back to Trump’s “Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day.” The Iranians already put women and children around the power plants and on the bridges to prevent us from attacking those. First, that is deplorable to use women and children as human shields. Without question. But, how many people would there actually be? As I said above, Iran has already killed millions. If the closure persists, we will soon find ourselves in the planting season for the southern hemisphere where there will be insufficient fertilizer to plant those crops as well. This means millions more will die from starvation following the lack of available food after that growing season. Lather, rinse, repeat. It could even be argued that if we were to go ahead and hit the power plants and bridges in spite of the human shields and many of them die that it might be better for those than the survivors. Tehran was already in a severe drought before any of this started. If we take out all of the power plants, desalination plants would become inoperable causing millions to die of dehydration and disease. Again, the visible human shields that Iran put around their infrastructure are the visible beneficiaries of not attacking. The invisible victims remain, invisible. They are there though.
This is the human attempt to solve this problem. We have the firepower to do it. We don’t have the will because we refuse to see the invisible victims and because of the curses. The real solution to this problem is back in the question of why we no longer control the gates of our enemies, why we are cursed. Disobedience. You might say, “Disobedience to what?” To YHVH’s ways, His Torah. “But we’re not Jewish!” If you are still saying that here, you need to go back to the beginning and follow the links in this article to the background information that I have already provided for you. The real solution is to fall on our faces, repent, turn from our lawlessness [Torahlessness], our wicked ways, and then cry out for forgiveness for our disobedience.
2 Chronicles 7:14 is where I get the subtitle for my book Blessings & Curses: if my people… We should consider that here, but we will not start in the middle of the sentence, we shall back up to the beginning in verse 13:
If I close the sky so there is no rain, or if I command the locust to devour the land, or if I send a plague among My people, and if My people who are called by My name humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, forgive their sin, and heal their land.
The part people tend to skip over, dare I say, “Ignore,” are the curses in verse 13. Why the curses? They are pointing back to the full list in Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28. This passage provides the solution to the curses. Humble yourself. Pray. Seek His, YHVH’s, face. Turn from your wicked ways (repent). Only then will He hear from heaven, forgive our sins and heal our land. We can keep trying to do it our own way, in our own power. We will fail.
I have read the Bible. I already know that collectively we will not do this (Read Revelation, Daniel, Zechariah, etc. and then see Isaiah 55:11). That is collectively. You and I will each stand before YHVH individually. Whether we find our names written in the Book of Life or not will be determined by how we choose to live. Whether we choose obedience or not. Whether we choose to live as Yeshua lived and taught. Yeshua is to be our example. The Torah is not dead nor done away with; it is the unchanging standard that will finally be written on the hearts of those that choose it and choose Him, when the New Covenant that YHVH communicated to Jeremiah finally arrives. Jeremiah 31:31-24:
Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah.
It will not be like the covenant I made with their fathers when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant they broke, though I was a husband to them,” declares the LORD.
“But this is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the LORD.
I will put My law in their minds and inscribe it on their hearts.
And I will be their God, and they will be My people.
No longer will each man teach his neighbor or his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ because they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the LORD.
For I will forgive their iniquities and will remember their sins no more.”
The four horsemen of Revelation 6 are riding. Revelation is playing out before your eyes. You will see the wars, famine, and death increase as time marches on. Birth Pains are here. The contractions are accelerating and intensifying. Billions will be dead in the next few years (Read Revelation 6:8 and then do the math). I showed you earlier how this is playing out. Are you ready? I do highly suggest my book to understand all of this and have access to the resources to prove it for yourself; after that, live as if you believe it.
Please consider my book Blessings & Curses: if my people…
This book reveals who we are, where we are, and what we can expect in the near future. Those are big claims. Get your copy today at Amazon and test those claims!
Visit the book’s website here: www.blessingsandcursesbook.com
New here? Consider reading the introduction here.
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