Rapture and End Times

US planning Mideast peace summit next month / Israel Hayom August 25, 2020

The United States is working to convene a Middle East peace summit in the next few weeks, a senior Emirati diplomat told Israel Hayom Monday.

The Emirati official said that US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s five-day visit to the Middle East and Africa, which began in Jerusalem, is part of Washington’s effort to lay the groundwork for the peace summit.

Sources familiar with the issue said that the summit is to take place in one of the Persian Gulf sheikdoms, adding that the US is trying to secure the participation of Bahrain, Oman, Morocco, Sudan, and Chad, alongside Israel and the UAE.

Other states, including Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Jordan – the latter two already having peace treaties with Israel – have yet to confirm their participation in the summit.

The diplomat added that prior to and during Pompeo’s visit to Israel, Palestinian officials were invited to the summit. The message was also conveyed to the PA that Pompeo is willing to visit PA President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah to personally invite him to the summit.

Palestinian Leader Says He’s Ready for Israel Peace Talks with U.S., U.N., Europe and Russia / Newsweek, August 25, 2020

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has expressed his readiness to return to peace talks with Israel mediated by the European Union, Russia, the United Nations and the United States, which has aligned itself exceptionally closely with Israel in recent years.

On Tuesday Abbas received U.K. Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab in the West Bank capital of Ramallah, where the Palestinian leader told London’s top diplomat of the Palestinian sides’ “commitment to achieving peace in accordance with the resolutions of international legitimacy, and that we are ready to go to negotiations under the auspices of the International Quartet and with the participation of other countries, as well as our firm commitment to fight global terrorism,” according to a handout released by his office.

As “watchmen on the wall” we want to alert you to an upcoming, still in the future event – a Arab-Israeli Peace Agreement. This upcoming comprehensive international peace treaty is the major End Times sign, and indicates the beginning of the 7 year Tribulation. It is the prophetic trip wire that is more critical than any other modern sign.

He will make a firm covenant
with many for one week,
but in the middle of the week
he will put a stop to sacrifice and offering.
And the abomination of desolation
will be on a wing of the temple
until the decreed destruction
is poured out on the desolator. (Daniel 9:27)

In prophetic analysis, we look at the key people and current events from a multidimensional perspective. This gives us an insight into when “the time is fulfilled.”

Some 3,500 years ago the Canaanites inhabited the land that God promised to give to the offspring of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. God promised that He would give the land of Israel to the Jewish people as an eternal possession. The promise was unconditional. God confirmed it at least 55 times with an oath and stated at least 12 times that the covenant was everlasting.

This chapter of the Book of Joshua begins the account of the dividing of the land of Canaan among the tribes of Israel by lot; a narrative showing the performance of the promise made to the fathers, that this land should be given to the seed of Jacob.

Joshua was now old, getting on in years, and the Lord said to him, “You have become old, getting on in years, but a great deal of the land remains to be possessed…distribute the land as an inheritance for Israel, as I have commanded you. Therefore, divide this land as an inheritance...” (Joshua 13:1,6,7)

Why did the Lord dispossess the Canaanites?

Biblically, Canaanites are identified in Genesis as descendants of Canaan, a son of Ham and grandson of Noah. Canaan was situated at the crossroads of several cultures, and throughout its recorded history its art and literature illustrate a mixture of many elements: Egyptian, Mycenaean, Cretan, Hurrian, and Mesopotamian. Most of what is known about Canaanite religion is derived from a series of tablets discovered at Ras Shamra. The principal god was El, but the jurisdiction over rainfall and fertility was delegated to Baal, or Hadad. Other important deities included Resheph, lord of plague and the nether world; Kothar, the divine craftsman; Asherah, consort of El; and Astarte, goddess of fertility.

Because the Canaanite religion was a fertility religion, ritual prostitution of both males and females was a common feature of worship.

Temple prostitution is one of the major things Judaism detested about paganism, and the Torah went to great lengths to de-sexualize religion and religious rites. For example, Deuteronomy 23:18 states: Do not bring a female prostitute’s wages or a male prostitute’s earnings into the house of the Lord your God to fulfill any vow, because both are detestable to the Lord your God.

Canaanite religion practiced ritualized child sacrifice. Kleitarchos, a Greek historian, wrote:

“Whenever they seek to obtain some great favor, they vow one of their children, burning it as a sacrifice to the deity, if they are especially eager to gain success. There stands in their midst a bronze statue of Ba’al, its hands extended over a bronze brazier, the flames of which engulf the child. When the flames fall upon the body, the limbs contract and the open mouth seems almost to be laughing, until the contracted body slips quietly into the brazier.”

Diodorus, a third-century BCE Greek historian, paints a similar picture:

“There was in their city a bronze image of Kronos (Ba’al), extending its hands, palms up and sloping toward the ground, so that each of the children when placed thereon rolled down and fell into a sort of gaping pit filled with fire.”

Afterwards, the bones and ashes would be carefully scraped out of the fire pit, sealed in a clay pot, and buried, and a stela (burial stone) would be placed on top, inscribed with the vow to the god or goddess in return for a favor.

The Israelites would have been tempted to practice human sacrifice themselves if the Canaanite religion had been allowed to co-exist. In fact, the some Jews were either tempted, or did in fact practice it. According to Hebrew history, the Hebrews regularly abandoned the Yahweh religion for local cults, particularly Canaanite cults. The Canaanite religion focused on the god Baal, and the Hebrews frequently disassembled their Yahweh altars and built Baal altars:

Ahab son of Omri became king over Israel in the thirty-eighth year of Judah’s King Asa; Ahab son of Omri reigned over Israel in Samaria 22 years. But Ahab son of Omri did what was evil in the Lord’s sight more than all who were before him. Then, as if following the sin of Jeroboam son of Nebat were a trivial matter, he married Jezebel, the daughter of Ethbaal king of the Sidonians, and then proceeded to serve Baal and worship him. He set up an altar for Baal in the temple of Baal that he had built in Samaria. Ahab also made an Asherah pole. Ahab did more to provoke the Lord God of Israel than all the kings of Israel who were before him. (1 Kings 16:29-33)

The prophet Micah (6:6-8) anticipates the powerful hold that human sacrifice has on the psyche. Micah starts of with a question that any God-fearing person might ask: “‘With what shall I come before the Lord and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings. . . thousands of rams . . . rivers of oil? Shall I give my first born for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?‘” Notice how the offerings progress from minor to major: from burn offerings, to thousands of rams, to rivers of oil, to finally—the ultimate sacrifice—killing one’s first-born child to atone for sin.

Micah gives the answer: “He has shown you, O man, what is good, and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.”

The land was polluted because of the Canaanite’s ritual prostitution and their rampant child sacrifice. The land of Canaan had become like Sodom and Gomorrah – on a national scale.

God commanded the Israelites to go there and replace Canaanite religion with Judaism, and make it into a holy place.

During the transition from the Late Bronze to the Early Iron Age—probably about 1250 B.C.—the Israelites entered Canaan, settling at first in the hill country and in the south. Finally, Israel annihilated all of the Canaanites:

So Joshua took the entire land, in keeping with all that the Lord had told Moses. Joshua then gave it as an inheritance to Israel according to their tribal allotments. After this, the land had rest from war. (Joshua 11:23)

To anyone who pays attention to world events and history, the moves against Israel in 2020 should be setting off Armageddon alarms. For all the troubles in the world, it seems little Israel is at the center of the discussions. Truly, Jerusalem is a heavy stone for all the peoples:

“Look, I will make Jerusalem a cup that causes staggering for the peoples who surround the city… On that day I will make Jerusalem a heavy stone for all the peoples; all who try to lift it will injure themselves severely when all the nations of the earth gather against her.“ (Zechariah 12:2 – 3)

‘We are the Canaanites’ / Israel National News, February 20, 2018

During his address at the UN Security Council in which he called on the international community to hold a Middle East peace conference, with the goal of launching multilateral negotiations, Abbas claimed that the Arab residents of Judea, Samaria, and Gaza were in fact descended from the ancient Canaanites.

The Arab-Israeli Peace Initiative (or covenant) will be signed one way or another, and it will revolve around an initial 7 year security agreement.

is a sad fact that every time the United States tries to appease the Arab and Muslim nations and give away Israel’s land, disaster strikes. Since 1979, the efforts of a U.S. President to diminish Israel have caused such judgments as the Three Mile Island accident, the “Perfect Storm”, Hurricane Andrew, the Northridge earthquake that hit southern California, Hurricane George, multiple huge tornado clusters, Katrina, and a half-mile wide EF-5 multiple-vortex tornado that ripped through Joplin, Missouri.

What could happen next?

The roaring sea and waves are indeed a “sign of Jonah” – a prophetic warning to the people of the world. This month is for observant Jews to begin a self-examination and repentance, a process that leads to Rosh Hashanah and ends with the holiday of Yom Kippur.

The shofar is traditionally blown each morning for the entire month of Elul, the month preceding Rosh Hashanah – the Feast of Trumpets. The sound of the shofar is intended to awaken the listeners from their “slumbers” and alert them to the coming judgment.

The Feast of Trumpets is the Jewish New Year. It is the anniversary of the creation of Adam and Eve, and a day of judgment and coronation of God as king. 3 books are opened, the book of life, for the righteous among the nations, the book of death, for the most evil who receive the seal of death, and the third book for the ones living in doubts with non-evil sins. The final judgment is not done before the start of Yom Kippur. It is sometimes possible to receive the seal of life by asking for forgiveness.

The 30 days to the Feast of Trumpets, and the 10 days leading up to Yom Kippur equal 40 days. According to Jewish tradition, the month of Elul is the time that Moses spent on Mount Sinai preparing the second set of tablets after the golden calf incident (Ex. 32; 34:27-28). Elul marked the beginning of a period of 40 days that Moses prayed for God to forgive the people for worshiping the golden calf.

What does the name of the month Elul mean? Elul has been interpreted as an acronym, with its Hebrew letters “Aleph,” “Lamed,” “Vav,” “Lamed” representing the words “Ani L’Dodi V’Dodi Li” (Song of Songs 6:3). These words mean “I am my Beloved’s and my Beloved is mine” and herein “my Beloved” refers to God, and “I” refers to His people. God wants us to become His beloved sons so that we can enjoy sweet communion and fellowship with Him.

Judgement is coming soon.

Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time: “Get up! Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach the message that I tell you.” So Jonah got up and went to Nineveh according to the Lord’s command.

Now Nineveh was an extremely large city, a three-day walk. Jonah set out on the first day of his walk in the city and proclaimed, “In 40 days Nineveh will be demolished!” The men of Nineveh believed in God. They proclaimed a fast and dressed in sackcloth—from the greatest of them to the least.

When word reached the king of Nineveh, he got up from his throne, took off his royal robe, put on sackcloth, and sat in ashes. Then he issued a decree in Nineveh:

By order of the king and his nobles: No man or beast, herd or flock, is to taste anything at all. They must not eat or drink water. Furthermore, both man and beast must be covered with sackcloth, and everyone must call out earnestly to God. Each must turn from his evil ways and from the violence he is doing. Who knows? God may turn and relent; He may turn from His burning anger so that we will not perish.

Then God saw their actions—that they had turned from their evil ways—so God relented from the disaster He had threatened to do to them. And He did not do it. (Jonah 3:1-10)

It is not too late. Now is the time to repent as an individual, and for the people of America to repent, as a nation.

Come, let us return to the Lord.
For He has torn us,
and He will heal us;
He has wounded us,
and He will bind up our wounds.
He will revive us after two days,
and on the third day He will raise us up
so we can live in His presence. (Hosea 6:1-2)

If you are not sure that you are saved, you can accept Christ into your life right now, by praying:

“Lord Jesus, I believe you are the Son of God. Thank you for dying on the cross for my sins.  Please forgive my sins and give me the gift of eternal life.  I ask you in to my life and heart to be my Lord and Savior.”

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Reader Comments:

Excellent article, very interesting… we’ll have to keep an eye on this peace accord and what direction it takes. morningstar, Aug 27, 2020