ForHimAlone
September 29th 2004, 03:29 AM
Ladies and Gentleman of the Body of Christ,
Grace and peace be unto you in the name of our precious Saviour. I hope that this letter finds you strong in the love and grace and peace of our Lord.
My subject of course in this military forum is to discuss the current military situation we may soon face in regards to Iran and North Korea.
It is written by our Apostle that first of all prayers may be offered up for all men, especially they who are in authority, that we may lead godly and peaceable lives in this present, evil world, as we here have "no continuing city" but look for a "city whose builder and maker is God" and therefore are strangers and pilgrims awaiting the transformation when we shall "inherit the earth" in the restoration when we shall be raised, changed, made immortal with Christ when He shall return in glory to judgment. Whoever our leaders are, the Lord by His Spirit tells us to pray for our leaders that they may make the right decisions that will provide "for the common defense" of our great nation, given to us by God in His divine providence, through the happy times the Church was able to procure in the world, having had its foothold long before Islam set foot in the earth, and thereby was able to endure all its persecution as well as that of the papacy.
Iran is that country which in ancient times was the Medes and Persian kingdom, one of those kingdoms which in the vision of Daniel was described as the "bear" kingdom, and in the vision of Nebuchadnezzar, interpreted by the same Daniel (chapter 2) is delineated as that part of the king's image as the "chest and arms of silver" in a statue or image of a figure the head of which was gold, followed by silver chest and shoulders, a belly made of brass, and iron legs, descending to iron and clay toes. The top-heavy image, then was in the vision struck by a "stone cut out of a mountain" "made without hands" and it struck the image on the toes and the entire image crashes to the ground. The courteous reader of this thread remark may investigate for him/herself in Daniel chapters 2 and 7 respectively for each vision mentioned herein.
Strategically Iran has a mighty army and, as some in recent history may remember that Iran fought a rather long war with Iraq. There are in this, discussions that may be had that Russia had funded the Iranian side while the United States funded the Iraqi side, thus it would appear that this war was "aided" by each super-power in the background. The difference being that, instead of Viet Nam where we also fought a political war against the Russians by proxy in similar fashion as Korea was as well, all these conflicts have the common denominator that it was really the United States pitted against the Russians. Ronald Reagan, whatever else you may like or dislike about him, is historically a key player in the end of the Cold War as those "baby boomer" generation adults like to say, and with the Almighties' guidance of his presidency, the United States moved into a place where she became the last, remaining superpower. Iran doesn't like that much for reasons I would like to elaborate further upon, not the least of which remain those bitter memories of that long war with Iraq for one thing and the long hostage stand-off that the United States endured also with that nation's leadership instigating the terrorism that now seems on the verge of becoming a commonplace occurance on the radical islamic websites posting their executions.
Strategically, Iran has a sizeable army and fairly sophisticated military hardware. They have a decent airforce with plenty of planes and pilots. The Iranian people are to be noted for the excellence in electronics and mathematics and sciences. With all of this, the recent statements made about their plans to create nuclear weapons should be of the greatest concern, and rightly is to our current president, to our nation for several reasons.
Iran is ideally located to wage a war against the United States. Deep inland, it is protected by vast mountain ranges and has an area larger than that of its neighbor, Iraq. Launching airplanes and / or missles from sea would take quite a while to reach targets in Iran, while Iran, with properly equipped missle technology, could easily reach targets in Iraq against the U.S. forces and Israel within minutes and also reach land-based civilian targets in the United States within some 30 minutes or so.
Our response times depend of course on variables like the element of surprise and God's using that nation to punish this country as he did of Israel in ancient times. If America has knowledge we may advance a protective posture and prevent something from happening in the first place. But if Iran or North Korea continue to develop nuclear technology it is only a matter of time before it falls into the wrong hands, and a question of when and not "if" it will happen here on our own soil. America might as well wake up to the fact that, as the first nation to invent and then use them (albeit I believe in a wise, agonizingly thought-over decision by Trueman) we shall also be the first nation to receive them in warfare against us, or more likely in terrorism.
If we have ships in the Persian gulf, we have a large amount of time required to reach targets in Iran, many minutes for missles to go across the sea and over the mountains. In Iraq, with some military presence, we can cut our response time down to mere minutes as well. The obvious reasons for securing Iraq should be apparent. Iran is the gravest threat to world peace at this time and America must take measures that will ensure our survival if an attempt is made by this or any other nation whose leanings are more rather than less hostile towards the United States.
A secure foothold in Iraq is the only way that we may ensure that a deterrent is present that for the present will detain Iran as it seeks to negotiate with the world to legitimize its nuclear ambitions, and has stated publically before that same body that disarmmament is only an option of it is done "indiscriminantly" - a tacit reference to Israel's nuclear capability, long known in the region and detested.
Pakistan and India both have nuclear weapons. While predominantly hindoo, India has a sizeable muslim population. Pakistan, on the other hand, is an islamic nation, the only one with nuclear weapons, its military-style dictator currently in power, with the United States hoping he lives long enough for the country to build a good relationship with us. There is a flap of course about this country selling nuclear secrets and I defer on judging this matter. I only mention them because they, too, are players in a theatre that is getting larger.
America is basically with Australia and England to a lesser degree, faced off against the rest of the world. France and Germany are more or less "secular" in their socio-political outlook, and socialistic policies dominate much of their existence globally with the world powers. Now that they are unified in their currency it may be only a matter of time before they attempt once again to find a person to represent all of them but I do not have the space to enter in to this discussion and this is not the subject before us.
Scripture seems to say that the last kingdoms in the world would come out of the visions of Daniel. These four world-empires are Babylon, Persia, (Iran) Greece, and Rome. Now the schoolmen tell us that all these empires are long since past, and that what remains of the old, Roman kingdom became the Holy Roman Empire and then the Papal Roman Empire and that lasted till the Reformation. The Futurist perspective of interpreting the Apocalypse of Jesus Christ tries to say that the antichristian empire appearing in the "great tribulation" before the return of Christ appears during a brief, 3 1/2 year period before the end of history.
NOTE: the above is based on extracting Daniel 9:26-27 and taking the last "week" of the "70 Weeks Prophecy" in Daniel 9:24-27 (a prophecy most surely about the first advent of Christ) and taking out the "last week" or "seven years" of that period, and removing it to the end of history, to what is dubbed from Jeremiah the time of "Jacob's Trouble" or the "Great Tribulation" spoken of by Christ our Lord in Matthew 24/Luke 21/Mark 13. (SEE THEOLOGYWEB STORE FOR A GREAT T-SHIRT on THIS)
Now, The idealist does nothing with the Daniel passage. No attempt is made to find a final, unfulfilled "week" that must coincide with this "great tribulation" that these zealots almost seem to want to happen.
I personally have read and possess a host of the absolute finest commentators on Revelation that have among mere men graced the pages of history. Men as Lardner (quoted at length in Adam Clarke) , George Croley, A.M., A. T. Atkinson, Oswalt T. Allis, and more familiar names as Barnes and Elliott, Gabelein, Sir Robert Anderson, and others. Having availed myself of a library and sufficient ancient, and worthy works ready to examine, I began to pour over them in order to see where various interpreters fell in regards to various end-time events.
But the subject of Iran kept popping up. This nation will serve some aweful purpose in the last days, I am afraid. I pray for America as she is the remaining world power, whose roots were in the Gospel soil, and has been shaken of violent winds in history to a point where the ground is very wet underneath her feet. If we remain humble the Lord will sustain us. If we become haughty the Lord shall allow our enemies to conquer us, as the Israelites of old. And yet, something in my spirit believes without knowing why that America's demise shall somehow herald the end of history.
Diplomacy is the correct, the Christian and the moral thing to do. What would we do in any domestic or local issue? We'd try to work it out. But there is a place for "war" and that is when "love thy neighbor as thyself" becomes impossible.
Now, I full-well realize the martyrs gave their blood for the testimony of Christ and did not bear the word in vain. They "resisted not evil" as it were. But that was during the infancy days of the faith when the martyrs served to solidify the believers and increase their numbers. Our age is now loathe to offer up themselves upon the altar. Martyrdom is not in vogue now. If the United States adopted a policy of love our neighbor even if they invade us we might as well realize the multi-culturalism the kids are learning may actually help them as they will need to learn the language of whatever nation conquers. But there is a proper time to defend one's home, and property and sacred honor. And that is when men who for no other reason than because their interpretation of the Koran says we are the "great satan" want to destroy our way of life. If there was next door to you someone that wanted to beat you up all the time, and they were intimidating you, there are two options, properly described as "fight or flight". Either we accommodate ourselves to what these, few seeming fanatical individuals desire, in their sectarian viewpoint want, or we find them and bring them to justice if they have injured us or defend against them if they are plotting against us.
But in a real-life situation we must either defend or run. That is what the United States now must do with the World. We are being bullied by the rest of the world into subscribing to the Western European version of Socialistic democracy. Philip Mauro a 100 years ago spent a great deal of time hitting this nail on the head in his Number of Man.
Distinguished reader, I would kindly ask you to pray about what you think the President might do about Iran and that our nation may not soon suffer annihilation at the hands of a weaker nation, as such is possible if God turns his face from us for our sins.
What do you think the Government should do about Iran and North Korea? Is negotiation enough? Should we institute a new draft and increase our military by another 1/3?
Personally I think that increasingly our military whether we like it or not is a great idea and will at once do a lot to help this nation. Far too much crime occurring in the inner city is eradicated when most of the 18-25 year old male population (not in prison already or dead) can serve a 3-4 year term in the military. Frankly I am surprised we don't have the exact, same policy of Israel that everybody who can serve is to serve at least once in the military. I think it would be a good thing for America and make us closer as a nation. Is our nation is divided because far too many people don't love it enough to defend it?
I also think that we can at once help our nation's employment if we adopt a war-time budget now for the next 10 years. We are not going to win the war on terror if we sit back and wait for them to develop bombs that can reach us. Having the largest military in the world will not defend against CIVILIAN targets. We do not have any kind of lazer-beams that can shoot down missles. Now I do believe we have anti-ballistic missle systems but they are not 100% effective. But if we are not careful our entire nation can be whipped out in just a few, brief moments if we do not attend to what is pressing.
Our border with Mexico is troublesome and if they were a militaristic country we'd be in deep voodoo. We must make a wall that will prevent any entry into this nation without authorization. If we are cavalier about our borders we don't have an excuse for why the terrorists got into this nation. Besides Iran and North Korea, I'd say our border with Mexico is our number one problem afterwards. I am compassionate about the plight of poor, working people seeking a better way of life. I think they should be intelligent, and given enough social manners to have them do it according to our rules, and not any way they see fit. I believe in the Sovereignty of this nation and until that goes away I will never support any policy that makes America grovel at the foot of Mexico. They are a corrupted nation and until they get that straightened out our official policy should be a closed border and a wall erected to prevent anyone coming over.
Who's going to pay for the wall? Taxpayers? No way! Who then? Prisons. They are rich and they are filled with free labor. "Hard Time" isn't getting free drugs, having sex, exercise, and so on that prisoners receive now. It will be good for them. They won't be tortured or in gangs. It will be meaningful, good, hard labor that they will benefit from. But who's going to convince anyone that this could fly? We're all such bleeding-heart liberals.
So your suggestions on Iran are welcomed as are your prayers for Iran, for N. Korea and for our President and the Congress, our elected leaders.
But God is in control and he can tip the scale one way or the other.
Thank you for reading. May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Love of God the Father and communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.
Grace and peace be unto you in the name of our precious Saviour. I hope that this letter finds you strong in the love and grace and peace of our Lord.
My subject of course in this military forum is to discuss the current military situation we may soon face in regards to Iran and North Korea.
It is written by our Apostle that first of all prayers may be offered up for all men, especially they who are in authority, that we may lead godly and peaceable lives in this present, evil world, as we here have "no continuing city" but look for a "city whose builder and maker is God" and therefore are strangers and pilgrims awaiting the transformation when we shall "inherit the earth" in the restoration when we shall be raised, changed, made immortal with Christ when He shall return in glory to judgment. Whoever our leaders are, the Lord by His Spirit tells us to pray for our leaders that they may make the right decisions that will provide "for the common defense" of our great nation, given to us by God in His divine providence, through the happy times the Church was able to procure in the world, having had its foothold long before Islam set foot in the earth, and thereby was able to endure all its persecution as well as that of the papacy.
Iran is that country which in ancient times was the Medes and Persian kingdom, one of those kingdoms which in the vision of Daniel was described as the "bear" kingdom, and in the vision of Nebuchadnezzar, interpreted by the same Daniel (chapter 2) is delineated as that part of the king's image as the "chest and arms of silver" in a statue or image of a figure the head of which was gold, followed by silver chest and shoulders, a belly made of brass, and iron legs, descending to iron and clay toes. The top-heavy image, then was in the vision struck by a "stone cut out of a mountain" "made without hands" and it struck the image on the toes and the entire image crashes to the ground. The courteous reader of this thread remark may investigate for him/herself in Daniel chapters 2 and 7 respectively for each vision mentioned herein.
Strategically Iran has a mighty army and, as some in recent history may remember that Iran fought a rather long war with Iraq. There are in this, discussions that may be had that Russia had funded the Iranian side while the United States funded the Iraqi side, thus it would appear that this war was "aided" by each super-power in the background. The difference being that, instead of Viet Nam where we also fought a political war against the Russians by proxy in similar fashion as Korea was as well, all these conflicts have the common denominator that it was really the United States pitted against the Russians. Ronald Reagan, whatever else you may like or dislike about him, is historically a key player in the end of the Cold War as those "baby boomer" generation adults like to say, and with the Almighties' guidance of his presidency, the United States moved into a place where she became the last, remaining superpower. Iran doesn't like that much for reasons I would like to elaborate further upon, not the least of which remain those bitter memories of that long war with Iraq for one thing and the long hostage stand-off that the United States endured also with that nation's leadership instigating the terrorism that now seems on the verge of becoming a commonplace occurance on the radical islamic websites posting their executions.
Strategically, Iran has a sizeable army and fairly sophisticated military hardware. They have a decent airforce with plenty of planes and pilots. The Iranian people are to be noted for the excellence in electronics and mathematics and sciences. With all of this, the recent statements made about their plans to create nuclear weapons should be of the greatest concern, and rightly is to our current president, to our nation for several reasons.
Iran is ideally located to wage a war against the United States. Deep inland, it is protected by vast mountain ranges and has an area larger than that of its neighbor, Iraq. Launching airplanes and / or missles from sea would take quite a while to reach targets in Iran, while Iran, with properly equipped missle technology, could easily reach targets in Iraq against the U.S. forces and Israel within minutes and also reach land-based civilian targets in the United States within some 30 minutes or so.
Our response times depend of course on variables like the element of surprise and God's using that nation to punish this country as he did of Israel in ancient times. If America has knowledge we may advance a protective posture and prevent something from happening in the first place. But if Iran or North Korea continue to develop nuclear technology it is only a matter of time before it falls into the wrong hands, and a question of when and not "if" it will happen here on our own soil. America might as well wake up to the fact that, as the first nation to invent and then use them (albeit I believe in a wise, agonizingly thought-over decision by Trueman) we shall also be the first nation to receive them in warfare against us, or more likely in terrorism.
If we have ships in the Persian gulf, we have a large amount of time required to reach targets in Iran, many minutes for missles to go across the sea and over the mountains. In Iraq, with some military presence, we can cut our response time down to mere minutes as well. The obvious reasons for securing Iraq should be apparent. Iran is the gravest threat to world peace at this time and America must take measures that will ensure our survival if an attempt is made by this or any other nation whose leanings are more rather than less hostile towards the United States.
A secure foothold in Iraq is the only way that we may ensure that a deterrent is present that for the present will detain Iran as it seeks to negotiate with the world to legitimize its nuclear ambitions, and has stated publically before that same body that disarmmament is only an option of it is done "indiscriminantly" - a tacit reference to Israel's nuclear capability, long known in the region and detested.
Pakistan and India both have nuclear weapons. While predominantly hindoo, India has a sizeable muslim population. Pakistan, on the other hand, is an islamic nation, the only one with nuclear weapons, its military-style dictator currently in power, with the United States hoping he lives long enough for the country to build a good relationship with us. There is a flap of course about this country selling nuclear secrets and I defer on judging this matter. I only mention them because they, too, are players in a theatre that is getting larger.
America is basically with Australia and England to a lesser degree, faced off against the rest of the world. France and Germany are more or less "secular" in their socio-political outlook, and socialistic policies dominate much of their existence globally with the world powers. Now that they are unified in their currency it may be only a matter of time before they attempt once again to find a person to represent all of them but I do not have the space to enter in to this discussion and this is not the subject before us.
Scripture seems to say that the last kingdoms in the world would come out of the visions of Daniel. These four world-empires are Babylon, Persia, (Iran) Greece, and Rome. Now the schoolmen tell us that all these empires are long since past, and that what remains of the old, Roman kingdom became the Holy Roman Empire and then the Papal Roman Empire and that lasted till the Reformation. The Futurist perspective of interpreting the Apocalypse of Jesus Christ tries to say that the antichristian empire appearing in the "great tribulation" before the return of Christ appears during a brief, 3 1/2 year period before the end of history.
NOTE: the above is based on extracting Daniel 9:26-27 and taking the last "week" of the "70 Weeks Prophecy" in Daniel 9:24-27 (a prophecy most surely about the first advent of Christ) and taking out the "last week" or "seven years" of that period, and removing it to the end of history, to what is dubbed from Jeremiah the time of "Jacob's Trouble" or the "Great Tribulation" spoken of by Christ our Lord in Matthew 24/Luke 21/Mark 13. (SEE THEOLOGYWEB STORE FOR A GREAT T-SHIRT on THIS)
Now, The idealist does nothing with the Daniel passage. No attempt is made to find a final, unfulfilled "week" that must coincide with this "great tribulation" that these zealots almost seem to want to happen.
I personally have read and possess a host of the absolute finest commentators on Revelation that have among mere men graced the pages of history. Men as Lardner (quoted at length in Adam Clarke) , George Croley, A.M., A. T. Atkinson, Oswalt T. Allis, and more familiar names as Barnes and Elliott, Gabelein, Sir Robert Anderson, and others. Having availed myself of a library and sufficient ancient, and worthy works ready to examine, I began to pour over them in order to see where various interpreters fell in regards to various end-time events.
But the subject of Iran kept popping up. This nation will serve some aweful purpose in the last days, I am afraid. I pray for America as she is the remaining world power, whose roots were in the Gospel soil, and has been shaken of violent winds in history to a point where the ground is very wet underneath her feet. If we remain humble the Lord will sustain us. If we become haughty the Lord shall allow our enemies to conquer us, as the Israelites of old. And yet, something in my spirit believes without knowing why that America's demise shall somehow herald the end of history.
Diplomacy is the correct, the Christian and the moral thing to do. What would we do in any domestic or local issue? We'd try to work it out. But there is a place for "war" and that is when "love thy neighbor as thyself" becomes impossible.
Now, I full-well realize the martyrs gave their blood for the testimony of Christ and did not bear the word in vain. They "resisted not evil" as it were. But that was during the infancy days of the faith when the martyrs served to solidify the believers and increase their numbers. Our age is now loathe to offer up themselves upon the altar. Martyrdom is not in vogue now. If the United States adopted a policy of love our neighbor even if they invade us we might as well realize the multi-culturalism the kids are learning may actually help them as they will need to learn the language of whatever nation conquers. But there is a proper time to defend one's home, and property and sacred honor. And that is when men who for no other reason than because their interpretation of the Koran says we are the "great satan" want to destroy our way of life. If there was next door to you someone that wanted to beat you up all the time, and they were intimidating you, there are two options, properly described as "fight or flight". Either we accommodate ourselves to what these, few seeming fanatical individuals desire, in their sectarian viewpoint want, or we find them and bring them to justice if they have injured us or defend against them if they are plotting against us.
But in a real-life situation we must either defend or run. That is what the United States now must do with the World. We are being bullied by the rest of the world into subscribing to the Western European version of Socialistic democracy. Philip Mauro a 100 years ago spent a great deal of time hitting this nail on the head in his Number of Man.
Distinguished reader, I would kindly ask you to pray about what you think the President might do about Iran and that our nation may not soon suffer annihilation at the hands of a weaker nation, as such is possible if God turns his face from us for our sins.
What do you think the Government should do about Iran and North Korea? Is negotiation enough? Should we institute a new draft and increase our military by another 1/3?
Personally I think that increasingly our military whether we like it or not is a great idea and will at once do a lot to help this nation. Far too much crime occurring in the inner city is eradicated when most of the 18-25 year old male population (not in prison already or dead) can serve a 3-4 year term in the military. Frankly I am surprised we don't have the exact, same policy of Israel that everybody who can serve is to serve at least once in the military. I think it would be a good thing for America and make us closer as a nation. Is our nation is divided because far too many people don't love it enough to defend it?
I also think that we can at once help our nation's employment if we adopt a war-time budget now for the next 10 years. We are not going to win the war on terror if we sit back and wait for them to develop bombs that can reach us. Having the largest military in the world will not defend against CIVILIAN targets. We do not have any kind of lazer-beams that can shoot down missles. Now I do believe we have anti-ballistic missle systems but they are not 100% effective. But if we are not careful our entire nation can be whipped out in just a few, brief moments if we do not attend to what is pressing.
Our border with Mexico is troublesome and if they were a militaristic country we'd be in deep voodoo. We must make a wall that will prevent any entry into this nation without authorization. If we are cavalier about our borders we don't have an excuse for why the terrorists got into this nation. Besides Iran and North Korea, I'd say our border with Mexico is our number one problem afterwards. I am compassionate about the plight of poor, working people seeking a better way of life. I think they should be intelligent, and given enough social manners to have them do it according to our rules, and not any way they see fit. I believe in the Sovereignty of this nation and until that goes away I will never support any policy that makes America grovel at the foot of Mexico. They are a corrupted nation and until they get that straightened out our official policy should be a closed border and a wall erected to prevent anyone coming over.
Who's going to pay for the wall? Taxpayers? No way! Who then? Prisons. They are rich and they are filled with free labor. "Hard Time" isn't getting free drugs, having sex, exercise, and so on that prisoners receive now. It will be good for them. They won't be tortured or in gangs. It will be meaningful, good, hard labor that they will benefit from. But who's going to convince anyone that this could fly? We're all such bleeding-heart liberals.
So your suggestions on Iran are welcomed as are your prayers for Iran, for N. Korea and for our President and the Congress, our elected leaders.
But God is in control and he can tip the scale one way or the other.
Thank you for reading. May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Love of God the Father and communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.