Damascus Going Nuclear?
Our local newspaper deeply buried its account of the Jan. 20 Israeli airstrike on Damascus on page 6. Apparently, the super-liberal journalists in our country (The Denver Post and all its subsidiaries are owned by The New York Times) have no knowledge of biblical prophecies, or they would have given the story front-page banner headlines.
To us Christian Bible lovers, the bombing incident signals a jump-start to a prophesied chain of events leading up to Armageddon. Israel is facing fanatical Islamic military attacks on four fronts: Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Gaza. A fifth is beginning to stir on the West Bank—all bankrolled by Iran, of course. As the Islamic noose tightens on the Israeli throat, that small country must employ new defensive operations to survive.
Is it not likely, given the fact Iran has developed diplomatic “friendships” with China and Russia, that Israel could one day be forced to consider the nuclear option as a viable defense? This is not a wild idea. Just this last week, I heard Perry Stone and one other of the many TV evangelists I follow state that only 1/3 of the biblical prophecies remain unfulfilled. This sounds reasonable, and I’m not a scholar of biblical proportions, but I believe the following nearly 3,000-year-old promise by Isaiah is among the very last of the old-guard, patriarchic prophecies.
A Prophecy Against Damascus
“See, Damascus will cease from being a city; it shall be a ruinous heap. The cities of Aroer are forsaken; they shall be for flocks, which shall lie down, and no one shall make them afraid. The fortress also shall cease from Ephraim, and the kingdom from Damascus, and the remnant of Aram; they shall be as the glory of the sons of Israel, says the Lord of Hosts. … In that day his strong cities shall be as a forsaken bough and an uppermost branch, which they left because of the sons of Israel; and there shall be a desolation” (Isa. 17:1-3, 9).
Please note that verse 9 makes it clear that Israelites will be responsible for the complete desolation of the Damascus region, leaving it as just another barren expanse of weeds and desert thickets. Only nuclear weaponry could accomplish such an ending.
Consider this scenario. By nuking Damascus to effectively stop the offensive threat in the north, Israel also sends a strong signal to Tehran that it could be next. Appalled at this very real prospect, Iran and its sponsors will probably agree (along with the rest of the world) to not respond with nukes of their own. Instead, they collectively conspire to build a million-man army (also prophesied) to simply overwhelm the smallish Israeli forces in the manner of a tidal wave.
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In so doing, they thus ignite the plethora of prophecies regarding Armageddon and Daniel’s visions of a horrible end-times war greater than anything the earth has ever experienced. Then, we jump to the book of Revelation which details the entire end-times scenario as now beginning.
The only good thing about these scary possibilities is the corollary assumption that the end-times rapture and return of Jesus Christ to rule the world for a thousand years is also very near. The very real danger of takeovers by artificial intelligence and demonic threats of ruling the world in a soon-nuclear manner pale in significance when laid up against God’s sure plan of rule by Jesus and an eternity with a loving Abba Father.{eoa}
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Ronald D. Mallett is a Colorado native. He is an Air Guard/Air Force veteran, a journalism graduate of Colorado University and former Ford Fellow in mass communications and economics at Stanford University. He was senior executive and consultant to IBM, ITT, Bull SAS in France and MCI for 26 years. He worked another 21 years as a jail/prison/nursing homes director, an active men’s SWAT (Spiritual Warfare Attack Team) prayer warrior and resource missionary to Mexico’s varied indigenous groups.
