The Arab Spring: The Heathen Are Raging...

The so-called ‘Arab spring’, so anticipated as the dawn of a new democratic era for the long oppressed Arab world, has instead proven to be what many of us predicted , a desolate winter for the Jewish and Christian minorities in Egypt, Syria, and the rest of the Arab world.

As the psalmist proclaimed so long ago, the heathen (the nations) are raging, and their people imagine a vain thing.

Indeed, there are so many vain imaginations going around the world, one doesn’t know where to start to critique them. It was certainly a vain imagination that the Muslim dominated middle east could ever countenance anything at all like western style democracy. What a made for TV delusion! A young people’s ”Face book and twitter” revolution, which would usher in a new era of human rights, respect for other religions, in Egypt , Libya or Yemen?

Islam and democratic republicanism cannot coexist. In Islam there can be no rule of law, nor equality under the law, it is impossible. The Koran dictates a dual status, only Muslim men are full citizens , the rest are under a second class citizenship, called Dhimminitude. The idea of Dhimmi status as taught in the Koran, is to “Make them feel humiliated”,(them being the ‘Kafirs’, that is unbelievers).

Within one week of the ouster of Hosni Mubarek, the Muslim Brotherhood had enough influence over the Egyptian army to be able to turn them on an unarmed Coptic monastery, pushing over its walls with armored personnel carriers, and shooting monks as they chanted the Kyrie Eliason,(Lord Have Mercy) !

Christians are being slaughtered in the streets in Cairo, as this National Review article attests,

Sunday’s bloody attack on Coptic demonstrators left some 25 Christians dead and hundreds wounded. It also left foreign observers confused, as was reflected in a very disturbing White House statement….

Libya has become a blood bath for anyone suspected of aiding Ghaddafi. Because Ghaddafi hired mercenaries from black Africa, black young men are being rounded up, beaten, imprisoned and in some cases executed without a trial. Afghanistan recently announced the eradication of the last christian church on its soil. (This is what our sons shed their blood for?)

Syria’s brutality against her own people who have been protesting the cruel Assad regime has become renown. President Bashir Assad has threatened that should NATO interfere as they did in Ghaddafi’s Libya, he would “rain rockets” down upon Tel Aviv Israel, thus playing the “Hate Israel” card which never fails to resonate in the Muslim Arab world. (*scroll down for article)

It is vain to imagine that Islam could ever have peace, anywhere in the world. In all of the 14 centuries of Islam’s existence, it has never brought peace to any land, other than the peace of death and crushing submission. Islam has always had “bloody borders” and even within itself, has never known anything but constant warfare.

The middle east before the “Arab Spring” was already tense, agitated and for the most part ruled by brutal pragmatists. It was in their own interests to subdue the radical Muslims among them, they knew better than anyone what they were dealing with.

Yes they ruled with an iron fist, but Mubarek, Saddam Hussein, Assad, and the Shah of Iran held back forces which having been uncapped, will prove to be far more violent, hateful, and unreasonable than Saddam Hussein ever dreamed of being.

But we mustn’t forget that there is in the same Psalm, a certain“He who sits in the heavens…”. He is the Sovereign ruler who “Works all things after the council of His own will“, and causes even” the wrath of man to praise him“. The Most High God is the one who has taken the binders off of the Muslim brotherhood, allowing them to capitalize on the ferment in the middle east, for those nations have an appointment with Divine destiny, the prophecies are about to be fulfilled, Jesus is coming.

Syria,Jordan,Egypt, Southern Lebanon, the Saudi’s Yemen and all of Israel’s immediate neighbors are slated for a devastating war, an attack on Israel with the aim to wipe her name off of the map, and to blot Israel out of remembrance. It is prophesied in Psalm 83, and the players are being set into place. Come quickly Lord Jesus!

Israeli officials are keeping a close eye on the ongoing popular Sunni Muslim revolt against the Syrian Assad family regime that has been in power since 1970. The current dictator, Bashar Assad, was namedPresident of the Arab country in the year 2000 following of the death of his father, Hafez Assad. He was best known for ordering the 1982 massacre of nearly 20,000 of his citizens in the city of Hama. Known as an Islamic fundamentalist stronghold, that same city has been the scene of some of the worst clashes between government forces and civilian protestors during this year’s bloody revolt, which has left around 3,000 people dead.

Israeli officials are worried that growing defections by many of Assad’s police and army personnel may spur the dictator to order a diversionarymilitary attack upon the enemy Jewish state. Some believe this may come in the form of a Lebanese Hezbollah rocket assault upon Israel, since the Shiite group has received substantial support from Assad, and therefore wants to see him remain in power, as does Hezbollah’s other main patron, Iran.

[Psalms 2:1-2]As the psalmist proclaimed so long ago, the heathen (the nations) are raging, and their people imagine a vain thing.

And the blasphemy continues...

The "prophetic" fulfillment of this passage is not now with this year's brand of screaming reprobates, but refers to Pontius Pilate, the Gentiles and the people of Israel. See Acts 4:23-31.

Your association is blasphemy because it makes profane the words of David in clear reference to Jesus Christ and His work of Salvation. In this article you replace Christ with the current political state of Israel who is at war with LORD and "his Anointed", Jesus Christ, then make the "raging heathens" not raging at Christ but this political state Israel.

Again proving that Premillennial Dysfunctionalism is the home of the true "Replacementarians"

I know that Acts 4 teaches us that it fulfills Pilate and Herod, buut there is also an eschatological fulfillment.

Says who?

I think you missed the point of the objection. The passage clearly refers to Jesus Christ, to gratuitously replace a prophecy about our LORD with a people who have, by definition, rejected our LORD is a bridge too far. You will need to show where in Scripture replacing Christ with sinners is demonstrated.

I am assuming that as a pastor, and a prophecy enthusiast, you are all too well familiar with OT types where the type foreshadows our LORD. In that you should know that our LORD never foreshadows a type which is what you are more than suggesting here.

Besides, in your reference to "kings" there are only six nations with absolute monarchies, none of them in the news regarding any "raging" against Israel nor "raging" in general. In fact, it is the nations without monarchies, constitutional or absolute, that would fall under any loose definition of "raging". Egypt is technically a military junta while no one has a clue as to what Libya is now but it is quite certain there won't be a monarchy - my guess, most likely a copy of Egypt.

, why do the “Kings of the earth” show up again at the parousia to resist Jesus?(Rev 19:19)

Do you really want to have a non-Dispensational discussion on the various interpretations of that passage? (I'm game).

But the major problem you have with that view is that it flies in total conflict with 2 Peter 3:10 where the coming of the LORD "as a thief in the night" doesn't have a "rapture", "seven year tribulation", a "thousand years of earthly rule" nor the mother of all wars jammed in between it and "heavens..the elements..the earth and the works...will be burned up." In fact, the repeating of the idea that we are looking for the hasting of that day of Judgment in the paragraph that follows should make things quite clear that Peter didn't see 1007 years of strife immediately following a "rapture". Our LORD's many parables on that matter make it look like we are living our days like the days of Noah or Lot and next thing is this Divine Judgment applied to the world - no dragging on of a pointless existence the glorified and perfected literally rubbing elbows with the corrupt, mortal and reprobate.

I do agree strongly with you that for a short period of time immediately preceding the Parousia it is going to become very weird and profoundly evil. How we both come to that conclusion is wildly different even though we claim literally the same source texts.

Again, it is painful to see teachings that attempt to make our LORD a type to foreshadow the profane and by your own doctrines a people under God's Judgment.

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