WHO ARE THE PHILISTINES (PALESTINIANS)

ISRAEL WILL BECOME A NATION. LITERALLY IN THE SPRING.

GENESIS 12:1-3
1 Now the LORD had said unto Abram,(CHANGED TO ABRAHAM LATER) Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto a land that I will shew thee:(PALESTINE,ISRAEL)
2 And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing:
3 And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.

EZEKIEL 36:24
24 For I will take you from among the heathen, and gather you out of all countries, and will bring you into your own land.

EZEKIEL 37:9-28
9 Then said he unto me, Prophesy unto the wind, prophesy, son of man, and say to the wind, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Come from the four winds,(ALL THE WORLD) O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.(COME TO LIFE)
10 So I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood up upon their feet, an exceeding great army.(ISRAEL WILL HAVE A POWERFUL ARMY)
11 Then he said unto me, Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel: behold, they say, Our bones are dried, and our hope is lost: we are cut off for our parts.(BURNED BY HITLER)
12 Therefore prophesy and say unto them, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, O my people, I will open your graves, and cause you to come up out of your graves, and bring you into the land of Israel.(THE DRY BONES COME TO LIFE IN ISRAEL)
13 And ye shall know that I am the LORD, when I have opened your graves, O my people, and brought you up out of your graves,
14 And shall put my spirit in you, and ye shall live, and I shall place you in your own land: then shall ye know that I the LORD have spoken it, and performed it, saith the LORD.
15 The word of the LORD came again unto me, saying,
16 Moreover, thou son of man, take thee one stick, and write upon it, For Judah, and for the children of Israel his companions: then take another stick, and write upon it, For Joseph, the stick of Ephraim, and for all the house of Israel his companions:
17 And join them one to another into one stick; and they shall become one in thine hand.
18 And when the children of thy people shall speak unto thee, saying, Wilt thou not shew us what thou meanest by these?
19 Say unto them, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I will take the stick of Joseph, which is in the hand of Ephraim, and the tribes of Israel his fellows, and will put them with him, even with the stick of Judah, and make them one stick, and they shall be one in mine hand.
20 And the sticks whereon thou writest shall be in thine hand before their eyes.
21 And say unto them, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I will take the children of Israel from among the heathen, whither they be gone, and will gather them on every side, and bring them into their own land:
22 And I will make them one nation in the land upon the mountains of Israel; and one king shall be king to them all: and they shall be no more two nations, neither shall they be divided into two kingdoms any more at all:
23 Neither shall they defile themselves any more with their idols, nor with their detestable things, nor with any of their transgressions: but I will save them out of all their dwellingplaces, wherein they have sinned, and will cleanse them: so shall they be my people, and I will be their God.
24 And David my servant shall be king over them; and they all shall have one shepherd: they shall also walk in my judgments, and observe my statutes, and do them.
25 And they shall dwell in the land that I have given unto Jacob my servant, wherein your fathers have dwelt; and they shall dwell therein, even they, and their children, and their children’s children for ever: and my servant David shall be their prince for ever.
26 Moreover I will make a covenant of peace with them; it shall be an everlasting covenant with them: and I will place them, and multiply them, and will set my sanctuary in the midst of them for evermore.
27 My tabernacle also shall be with them: yea, I will be their God, and they shall be my people.
28 And the heathen shall know that I the LORD do sanctify Israel, when my sanctuary shall be in the midst of them for evermore.

MATTHEW 24:32
32 Now learn a parable of the fig tree; When his branch is yet tender, and putteth forth leaves, ye know that summer is nigh:(ISRAEL WAS LITERALLY REBORN JUST BEFORE SUMMER,MAY 14,1948).

MARK 13:28
28 Now learn a parable of the fig tree; When her branch is yet tender, and putteth forth leaves, ye know that summer is near:

DANIEL 9:24
24 Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people and upon thy holy city, to finish the transgression, and to make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up the vision and prophecy, and to anoint the most Holy.

ISRAEL WILL BE IN CONTROL OF JERUSALEM, THE SIGN OF THE START OF THE LAST GENERATION.

LUKE 21:24
24 And they shall fall by the edge of the sword, and shall be led away captive into all nations: and Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled.

ISRAEL SATAN COMES AGAINST

1 CHRONICLES 21:1
1 And Satan stood up against Israel, and provoked David to number Israel.

ISRAELS TROUBLE

JEREMIAH 30:7
7 Alas! for that day is great, so that none is like it: it is even the time of Jacob’s trouble;(ISRAEL) but he shall be saved out of it.

DANIEL 12:1,4
1 And at that time shall Michael(ISRAELS WAR ANGEL) stand up, the great prince which standeth for the children of thy people:(ISRAEL) and there shall be a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation(May 14,48) even to that same time: and at that time thy people shall be delivered, every one that shall be found written in the book.
4 But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end: many shall run to and fro,(WORLD TRAVEL,IMMIGRATION) and knowledge shall be increased.(COMPUTERS,CHIP IMPLANTS ETC)

ISRAELS INHERITED LAND IN THE FUTURE

And here are the bounderies of the land that Israel will inherit either through war or peace or God in the future. God says its Israels land and only Israels land. They will have every inch God promised them of this land in the future.
Egypt east of the Nile River, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, The southern part of Turkey and the Western Half of Iraq west of the Euphrates. Gen 13:14-15, Psm 105:9,11, Gen 15:18, Exe 23:31, Num 34:1-12, Josh 1:4.

ALL THIS LAND ISRAEL WILL DEFINATELY OWN IN THE FUTURE, ITS ISRAELS NOT ISHMAELS LAND.

12 TRIBES INHERIT LAND IN THE FUTURE

EZEKIEL 47:13-23,48:1-35
13 Thus saith the Lord GOD; This shall be the border, whereby ye shall inherit the land according to the twelve tribes of Israel: Joseph shall have two portions.
14 And ye shall inherit it, one as well as another: concerning the which I lifted up mine hand to give it unto your fathers: and this land shall fall unto you for inheritance.
15 And this shall be the border of the land toward the north side, from the great sea, the way of Hethlon, as men go to Zedad;
16 Hamath, Berothah, Sibraim, which is between the border of Damascus and the border of Hamath; Hazarhatticon, which is by the coast of Hauran.
17 And the border from the sea shall be Hazarenan, the border of Damascus, and the north northward, and the border of Hamath. And this is the north side.
18 And the east side ye shall measure from Hauran, and from Damascus, and from Gilead, and from the land of Israel by Jordan, from the border unto the east sea. And this is the east side.
19 And the south side southward, from Tamar even to the waters of strife in Kadesh, the river to the great sea. And this is the south side southward.
20 The west side also shall be the great sea from the border, till a man come over against Hamath. This is the west side.
21 So shall ye divide this land unto you according to the tribes of Israel.
22 And it shall come to pass, that ye shall divide it by lot for an inheritance unto you, and to the strangers that sojourn among you, which shall beget children among you: and they shall be unto you as born in the country among the children of Israel; they shall have inheritance with you among the tribes of Israel.
23 And it shall come to pass, that in what tribe the stranger sojourneth, there shall ye give him his inheritance, saith the Lord GOD.
1 Now these are the names of the tribes. From the north end to the coast of the way of Hethlon, as one goeth to Hamath, Hazarenan, the border of Damascus northward, to the coast of Hamath; for these are his sides east and west; a portion for Dan.
2 And by the border of Dan, from the east side unto the west side, a portion for Asher.
3 And by the border of Asher, from the east side even unto the west side, a portion for Naphtali.
4 And by the border of Naphtali, from the east side unto the west side, a portion for Manasseh.
5 And by the border of Manasseh, from the east side unto the west side, a portion for Ephraim.
6 And by the border of Ephraim, from the east side even unto the west side, a portion for Reuben.
7 And by the border of Reuben, from the east side unto the west side, a portion for Judah.
8 And by the border of Judah, from the east side unto the west side, shall be the offering which ye shall offer of five and twenty thousand reeds in breadth, and in length as one of the other parts, from the east side unto the west side: and the sanctuary shall be in the midst of it.
9 The oblation that ye shall offer unto the LORD shall be of five and twenty thousand in length, and of ten thousand in breadth.
10 And for them, even for the priests, shall be this holy oblation; toward the north five and twenty thousand in length, and toward the west ten thousand in breadth, and toward the east ten thousand in breadth, and toward the south five and twenty thousand in length: and the sanctuary of the LORD shall be in the midst thereof.
11 It shall be for the priests that are sanctified of the sons of Zadok; which have kept my charge, which went not astray when the children of Israel went astray, as the Levites went astray.
12 And this oblation of the land that is offered shall be unto them a thing most holy by the border of the Levites.
13 And over against the border of the priests the Levites shall have five and twenty thousand in length, and ten thousand in breadth: all the length shall be five and twenty thousand, and the breadth ten thousand.
14 And they shall not sell of it, neither exchange, nor alienate the firstfruits of the land: for it is holy unto the LORD.
15 And the five thousand, that are left in the breadth over against the five and twenty thousand, shall be a profane place for the city, for dwelling, and for suburbs: and the city shall be in the midst thereof.
16 And these shall be the measures thereof; the north side four thousand and five hundred, and the south side four thousand and five hundred, and on the east side four thousand and five hundred, and the west side four thousand and five hundred.
17 And the suburbs of the city shall be toward the north two hundred and fifty, and toward the south two hundred and fifty, and toward the east two hundred and fifty, and toward the west two hundred and fifty.
18 And the residue in length over against the oblation of the holy portion shall be ten thousand eastward, and ten thousand westward: and it shall be over against the oblation of the holy portion; and the increase thereof shall be for food unto them that serve the city.
19 And they that serve the city shall serve it out of all the tribes of Israel.
20 All the oblation shall be five and twenty thousand by five and twenty thousand: ye shall offer the holy oblation foursquare, with the possession of the city.
21 And the residue shall be for the prince, on the one side and on the other of the holy oblation, and of the possession of the city, over against the five and twenty thousand of the oblation toward the east border, and westward over against the five and twenty thousand toward the west border, over against the portions for the prince: and it shall be the holy oblation; and the sanctuary of the house shall be in the midst thereof.
22 Moreover from the possession of the Levites, and from the possession of the city, being in the midst of that which is the prince's, between the border of Judah and the border of Benjamin, shall be for the prince.
23 As for the rest of the tribes, from the east side unto the west side, Benjamin shall have a portion.
24 And by the border of Benjamin, from the east side unto the west side, Simeon shall have a portion.
25 And by the border of Simeon, from the east side unto the west side, Issachar a portion.
26 And by the border of Issachar, from the east side unto the west side, Zebulun a portion.
27 And by the border of Zebulun, from the east side unto the west side, Gad a portion.
28 And by the border of Gad, at the south side southward, the border shall be even from Tamar unto the waters of strife in Kadesh, and to the river toward the great sea.
29 This is the land which ye shall divide by lot unto the tribes of Israel for inheritance, and these are their portions, saith the Lord GOD.
30 And these are the goings out of the city on the north side, four thousand and five hundred measures.
31 And the gates of the city shall be after the names of the tribes of Israel: three gates northward; one gate of Reuben, one gate of Judah, one gate of Levi.
32 And at the east side four thousand and five hundred: and three gates; and one gate of Joseph, one gate of Benjamin, one gate of Dan.
33 And at the south side four thousand and five hundred measures: and three gates; one gate of Simeon, one gate of Issachar, one gate of Zebulun.
34 At the west side four thousand and five hundred, with their three gates; one gate of Gad, one gate of Asher, one gate of Naphtali.
35 It was round about eighteen thousand measures: and the name of the city from that day shall be, The LORD is there.

NORTHEAST INTELLIGENCE NETWORK
http://homelandsecurityus.com/?p=2672

ON JOHN LOEFFLER THIS WEEK

Global warming was back on the table this week as familiar faces testified before congress about proposed caps and credits legislation. The problem with C&C is that they didn't work in Europe but cause serious increases in energy costs. Richard Loomis from World Energy Source (www.worldenergysource.com) guests in the first hour.

Then we open a new thread on the subject of Christian Zionism. A new movement in evangelical churches seeks to turn opinions against Israel. Dr. Paul Merkley is professor emeritus of history at Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, and author of Christian Attitudes toward the State of Israel.John's boralogue focuses on the polarization in American politics today and what it means in the light of the onrushing crises we face, given that both parties seem ignorant of the strategic picture where America is.
http://britanniaradio.blogspot.com/2009/04/john-loeffler-steel-on-steel-caps.html#links

Saturday, 25 April 2009 The Merkley Report. Who are the Palestinians?
Paul Charles MERKLEY

Paul Merkley is a retired Professor of History from Carleton University in Ottawa. His teaching specialties were in the History of the United States in the Twentieth Century and in the Religious Factor in American History. He has published scholarly books and articles on Christian theology of History and on aspects of the role of Christian faith in American politics.Paul’s interest in Israel goes back to 1981 when he spent six months with his family in residence as a visiting Professor at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, where he taught courses in History of Religion in the United States. He has made several subsequent research visits to Israel.


Who are the Palestinians? - by Paul Charles Merkley.

Consider this insight into the earliest history of the Arab-Israeli conflict:

The assassination of Arab brethren like Goliath, by Jewish sheep-herders like David, is the sort of shameful ignominy that we must yet set aright in the domain of the occupied Palestinian homeland.Lest anyone imagine that we could simply pass by this sort of imbecility, we have to note that this is an excerpt from a speech [1] by President Anwar Sadat of Egypt, who declared himself the champion of the Palestinians at the time of the Camp David Accords (1978), and is today widely acclaimed in the West as a prescient statesman, one of the inaugurators of the effort to achieve peace through negotiation in the Middle East.Sadat’s right to pose as the champion of the Palestinians” was vehemently denied by all the other Arab leaders and indeed the whole Arab world -- and this not because his historical knowledge seemed to any of them to be defective, but, rather because it was not vivid enough. Chairman of the PLO Yassir Arafat, during a press conference, September 2, 1983, at a U.N. meeting in Geneva, Arafat stated:We [the Palestinian people] were under Roman imperialism. We sent a Palestinian fisherman, called St. Peter, to Rome; he not only occupied Rome, but also won the hearts of the people. We know how to resist imperialism and occupation. Jesus Christ was the first Palestinian fedayeen [freedom fighter] who carried his sword along the path on which the Palestinians today carry their cross. [2]Statements like these seem to bear out the thesis of the great archeologist, William Foxwell Albright: that a Moslem historian is a contradiction in terms. The Israeli archeologist, Benjamin Mazar, recalled that Albright liked the Arabs very much ... and knew Arabic. But he used to say that a Moslem is unable to become a historian. He believes in the Koran, and in the Koran, Maryam the sister of Moses, is the mother of Jesus Christ! Now if such a thing is determined as the basis of historical study, how can he be a historian? To become a historian is to escape from Islam.[3]

Prior to the question, Who are the Palestinians,is the question, What is Palestine?

The name Palestine is not an invention of the Arabs. It is an invention of the Romans. The Romans chose the name Palestina precisely because it insulted the Jews and their History, memorializing, as it does, the already long-vanished Philistines. These were the people who had invaded this area from the sea about the same time as the Israelites began their conquest of it by land under Joshua, becoming their long-enduring enemies. The distinct life and culture of the Philistines had been swept away centuries before the Romans showed up. (In recent years, following several spectacular archeological expeditions, it has become possible at last to reconstruct some features of that life and culture.)In the Second Century BC, the name Palestina was applied by the Romans to what had been the homeland of the Jewish nation, as part of a deliberate policy of obliterating remembrance of the Jewish nation from this place where their sovereign Kingdom had once been, and where they had lived continuously as part of the subsequent empires of the Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Ptolemies, Seleucids, and Romans -- this people whose resistance to Rome's tyranny had set such a dangerous example for their other subject peoples. This Roman insult is perpetuated and given yet another twist by the hijacking of the name Palestine by the Arab populations of that part of the world today and by their anti-Zionist supporters elsewhere in the world – and, of course, by the UN. These newly-minted Palestinians have, of course, no more historical connection to the Philistines than do the Jews.Prior to 1948, opposition to the project of the Zionists was carried out in the name of the Arab people -- or the Arab people of Palestine. This terminology reflected the fact that (as Bernard Lewis shows) from the end of the Jewish state in antiquity to the beginning of British rule, the area now designated by the name Palestine was not a country and had no frontiers, only administrative boundaries; it was a group of provincial subdivisions, by no means always the same, within a large entity.[4] Nowadays, the term Palestinian nation serves to give color to a claim to aboriginal habitation and possession of the vicinity -- as the term “Arab”, of course, does not. Yet, there never was an Arab state of Palestine, or even an Arab nor an Ottoman Province of Palestine. Even the very name Palestine fell into disuse among the Arabs, only to be revived by the British. At that point it was (unwisely) appropriated by the Zionists. They believed that it would strengthen their proprietary claim to the land to employ the local term preferred by the British. All over the political landscape during the 1920s, 30s, and 40s, there were organizations like the Palestine League, the Pro-Palestine Committee, the Christian Council on Palestine, the American Christian Palestine Committee, and so on -- and all of them were lobbies on behalf of the Jews, on behalf of Zionism! That's what Palestine and Palestinian meant. (Students who are new to the history of modern Israel usually experience something of a jolt when they first encounter this inversion of nomenclature in the documents.)

Secular Zionists had another motive as well for appropriating the title Palestinian: because the name affirmed contemporary geographical associations it served to distinguish their vision of the past and the future of the Jewish people from that of religiously-inclined Zionists, to whom the reality of past and present belonging of the Jews was better conveyed by the term Eretz Israel. (Incidentally: for a while during the 1920s and 1930s the more zealous secularists took to calling themselves Canaanites -- but that vogue eventually passed.)In any case: this usage (Palestinian for Jewish) was no more accurate from a historical point of view than the current usage (Palestinian for Arab.) But this matter does illustrate a hazard that seems to be peculiar to late Twentieth Century political rhetoric: namely, that, in the absence of general respect for historical knowledge, the key concepts in political discussion are handed down from journalists, who derive them from the slogans of contemporary politicians.Prior to 1967, Arab leaders never talked of a Palestinian nation. In the Arab Covenant of 1919, proposed by the Arab Congress in Jerusalem in 1919, we read: The Arab lands are a complete and indivisible whole, and the divisions of whatever nature to which they have been subjected are not approved or recognized by the Arab nation. In the same year, the General Syrian Congress expressed quite another view: We ask that there should be no separation of the southern part of Syria, known as Palestine. In 1937 the local Arab leader, Auni Bey Abdul Hadi, testifying before the British Royal (Peel) Commission that was to come up with a partition plan, said: There is no such country as Palestine. Palestine is a term the Zionists invented. There is no Palestine in the Bible. Our country was for centuries part of Syria. Palestine is alien to us. It is the Zionists who introduced it.In 1946, another Arab spokesman, Princeton University History professor Philip K. Hitti, then widely regarded as the foremost historian of the Arab people, told the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry: There is no such thing as Palestine in history, absolutely not. This view had been endorsed in 1939 by the Arab historian George Antonius, who identified Palestine as part of the whole of the country of that name [Syria] which is now split into mandated territories. And as late as 1956 a Saudi Arabian United Nations delegate said: It is common knowledge that Palestine is nothing but Southern Syria.This is still the real view of Syria’s President Assad, despite that state's window-dressing support of liberated Palestine: Palestine is not only a part of our Arab homeland,Hafez al-Assad used to say, but a basic part of southern Syria.[5]

Sometime after the Six Day War of 1967, Arab rhetoric took a 180 degree turn. Now the Arab-speaking people who were the rightful owners of the vicinity became the Palestinian people, the aboriginal inhabitants. The concept first appears with full clarity in the same Palestinian Covenant that rejects the legitimacy of the concept Jewish people/nation and calls for Israel's destruction. Henceforward, Arab politicians everywhere nodded agreement as Yassir Arafat explained that the Palestinian people were in place before the Jews arrived. They were, moreover, the carriers of a civilization higher than any that has ever been seen anywhere else. This he described before the Assembly of the United Nations 1983:[Before the Jewish invasion, which began in 1881,] Palestine was then a verdant land, inhabited by an Arab people in the course of building its life and enriching its indigenous culture.... It pains our people greatly to witness the propagation of the myth that its homeland was a desert until it was made to bloom by the toil of foreign settlers, that it was a land without a people, and that the settler entity caused no harm to any human being. No, such lies must be exposed from this rostrum for the world must know that Palestine was the cradle of the most ancient cultures and civilizations. Its Arab people were engaged in farming and building, spreading culture throughout the land for thousands of years, setting an example in the practice of religious tolerance and freedom of worship, actions as faithful guardians of the holy places of all religions.... Religious brotherhood was the hall-mark of our Holy City [Jerusalem] before it succumbed to catastrophe. Our people continued to pursue this enlightened policy until the establishment of the state of Israel and their dispersion. This did not deter our people from pursuing their humanitarian role on Palestinian soil. Nor will they permit their land to become a launching pad for aggression or a racist camp for the destruction of civilization, culture, progress and peace. Our people cannot but maintain the privileged task of defending their native land, their Arab nationhood, their culture and civilization, and in safeguarding the cradle of the monotheistic religions. [6]Travelers’ accounts of the land belonging to the period described by Arafat afford quite a different picture. Alphonse Lamartine described the scene in 1835:Outside the gates of Jerusalem we saw indeed no living object, heard no living sound. We found the same void, the same silence as we should have found before the entombed gates of Pompeii or Hercalaneum ….A complete, eternal silence reigns in the town, in the highways, in the country … the tomb of a whole people.]

Mark Twain traveled to the Holy Land in 1867 and recorded this:

[It is] Desolate country, whose soil is rich enough, but given over wholly to weeds -- a silent mournful expanse…. A desolation is here that not even imagination can grace with the pomp of life and action…. We never saw a human being on the whole route.... There was hardly a tree or a shrub anywhere. Even the olive and the cactus, those fast friends of a worthless soil, had almost deserted the country. [7] These observations, recorded en passage by literary men, may not carry the day with all readers. If so, here is a description dating from 1913, appearing in the records of the Palestine Royal Commission:The road leading from Gaza to the north was only a summer track suitable for transport by camels and carts ... [N]o orange groves, orchards or vineyards were to be seen until one reached Yabna village ... Not in a single village in this area was water used for irrigation ... Houses were all of mud. No windows were anywhere to be seen ... sanitary conditions horrible ... schools do not exist ... Many ruins of villages were scattered over the area, as owing to the prevalence of malaria, many villages were deserted by their inhabitants.

And here is a report by the Director of Development, appointed by the British Government, 1933:

We found it inhabited by fellahin who lived in mud hovels and suffered severely from the prevalent malaria.... The individual plots ... changed hands annually. There was little public security, and the fellahin's lot was an alternation of pillage and blackmail by their neighbours, the Bedouin.Irrefutable testimony to the situation in Palestine at the time of the Mandate is found in the work of Walter Lowdermilk, Assistant Chief of the U.S. Soil Conservation Service, and author of foundation scholarly studies on global natural resources. For over twenty years he conducted vast field research on all the inhabited continents to find the lines of causal connection between the use of land and the prosperity of nations. In his book, Palestine: Land of Promise (1944), he draws upon the huge body of field research which he and his associates had done in Palestine under the auspices of the U.S. Conservation Service to review the history of the area of the Mandate as he found it revealed in the archeological record and in the condition of the land in the late 1930s.An Arab legend tells us that once upon a time an angel, carrying a sack of stones, flew over Palestine; suddenly the sack burst and all the stones were strewn about upon the hills. The true story reads differently. Once upon a time the hills of Palestine were covered with rich red earth and protected by forests, smaller vegetation and terraces. Then the trees were cut down, the terraces were neglected, the fertile soil was washed away by rain and finally only the stones were left on the fields.... Two thousand years ago Palestine, with its neighbors, Egypt and Syria, represented one of the most advanced economic areas of the Roman Empire…. [T]he breakdown of agriculture ... took place between the seventh and twentieth centuries [under the early Muslim rulers.] In this period of decay, agriculture, which had previously achieved remarkable refinements in conservation, declined under exploitation by ignorant rulers and repeated invasions of nomads.... After the expulsion of the Crusaders and a new invasion by Arab nomads, the decline of Palestine proceeded at an accelerated pace .... Desert Arabs poured into the land and to the very gates of Jerusalem, stealing and plundering on the roads throughout the country….The country became a desert land with no one to till the soil .… During these years of decline, Palestine had been gradually depopulated; the lowest point was reached about 1850 when the total population was below 200,000. Visiting Mandate Palestine in 1938, Lowdermilk found Jewish colonies struggling to reverse the effects of all those centuries of neglect and abuse of the soil.

[There are] about 300 colonies defying great hardships and applying the principles of co-operation and soil conservation to the old Land of Israel.... Here in one corner of the Near East, thoroughgoing work is in progress to rebuild the fertility of the land instead of condemning it by neglect to further destruction and decay…. Mandate officials had little success in their attempts to get the Arabs to plant trees, even though the seedlings were free and assistance in planting was given…. Along with the need for improved techniques in the use of land and the development of industries, Palestine, like the rest of the Near East, must have a larger population if it is to be restored to full activity and prosperity. [8]A summary of the local history which appears in an official report of the British government in 1937 re-enforces Lowdermilk’s conclusions:In the twelve centuries or more that have passed since the Arab conquest, Palestine has virtually dropped out of history.…In economics as in politics Palestine lay outside the main stream of the world's life. In the realm of thought, in science or in letters, it made no contribution to modern civilization. Its last state was worse than its first. [9]Ignoring these abundantly-recorded realities, champions of Palestinian liberation developed in the 1960s and 1970s the narrative of the Palestinians as the autochthonous population of the region. They are the descendants of the Philistines, and of the Jebusites, its First Nation, present in the land from time immemorial.There are innumerable problems with this historical argument however -- although not markedly greater than those that arise to a thinking person who is asked to consider the claims of all the other tribes and nations of the world who ask us, with a straight face, to consider them autochthonous(which means, self-seeding – a ridiculous term.) The Philistines, according to all reliable historians, were not a Semitic people, but a people of Aegean origin who settled on the southern coast of Palestine in the 12th century BC, shortly before the arrival of the Israelites. The Jebusites, likewise non-Semitic, but also not nearly related to the Philistines, once possessed many of the cities of the highlands of what became Israel, and were finally dislodged from their most important stronghold, Jerusalem, by David, somewhere shortly before 1000 BC.There is an unavoidable logical problem facing anyone wishing to combine this claim to autochthonous standing in the region with the other claim, that of Arab ancestry -- given that none of the oldest pre-Israelite inhabitants seems to have been Semitic at all -- and certainly none were Arabs. Yet, when the polemical occasion requires it, the same Palestinians do double-service as Arabs. Our nation is the Arab nation, extending from the Atlantic to the Red Sea and Beyond, Arafat declaims (on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.) Zuheir Muhsim, member of the PLO Executive Council, March, 1977 let the cat out of the bag long ago:

Yes, the existence of a separate Palestinian identity serves only tactical purposes. The founding of a Palestinian state is a new tool in the continuing battle against Israel … In fact, there is no Palestinian people ... Only for political reasons do we speak of a Palestinian identity. [10]The Arabs entered the area with the Moslem conquests in the Seventh Century. During those early years of Arab empire, the vast majority of those subjects of that Empire who lived in the Hold Land were Christians and Jews. Jews and Christians still worked the land during the centuries of early Arab rule because the Arabs, being Bedouins, had only contempt for agricultural life. The probability is that few of the original Arab conquerors of Seventh century survived subsequent wars and disease. In documents deriving from the succeeding period, the word Arab reverts to its earlier meaning of Bedouin or nomad, becoming in effect a social rather than an ethnic term.[11]Arriving in the last decade of the Eleventh Century, the Crusaders (to the everlasting shame of our civilization) carried out a far-reaching slaughter of Muslims in Jerusalem; and thereafter the Latin Crusaders’ oppression of the Eastern Christians (mainly Greek Orthodox and Eastern, and mainly Arab-speaking) reduced the Arab component further. After the Latin Kingdoms had been closed down by Muslim re-conquest, the new rulers replenished the population by introducing Turks, Kurds, Africans, Berbers, Balkan Slavs, Greeks, Syrians, Egyptians, Persians, Georgians, Circassians and many others. Travelers in the region today see the evidence of this abundant racial variety in the faces of the local people.Thus Arab rule (as distinct from rule by subsequent Moslem conquerors who eventually used the Arabic language) is extremely brief -- in fact, coinciding virtually with the years of the regime of the first Muslim conquerors, the Umayyads (660s to 750.)Felix Bovet, a Swiss scholar who visited in 1858, describes the visible impact of Arab conquest thereafter:They pitched their tents in its grazing fields or built their places of refuge in its ruined cities. They created nothing in it. Since they were strangers in the land, they never became its masters. The desert wind that brought them thither could one day carry them away without their leaving behind them any sign of their passage through it. [12]Another way to measure this matter of Arab belonging to the area is this: that, in the twelve centuries of the Arab presence in Palestine before the return of the Jews of modern times, the Arabs built only a single new town: Ramleh.[13]

All responsible debate about what is Palestine and who has rights and what they are in Palestine, begins with the Balfour Declaration of November, 1917:His Majesty's Government view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.
What, then, was this Palestine, to which the Balfour Declaration casually alludes? The last edition we have of the Encyclopedia Britannica prior to the Balfour Declaration defines Palestine as follows:PALESTINE: ... conventionally used as a name for the territory which, in the Old Testament, is claimed as the inheritance of the pre-exilic Jews.... We may describe Palestine as the strip of land extending along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea .... Eastward there is no such definite border. The river Jordan, it is true, marks a delimitation between western and eastern Palestine; but it is practically impossible to say where the latter ends and the Arabian desert begins.In all of the record of all of the deliberations of the British and the French and the Americans leading to the Balfour Declaration it is always taken for granted that what is being proposed is a homeland for the Jews in some part of what (as this encyclopedic definition makes clear) has always been defined as that part of the world where the Jews once had their inheritance. There was simply no other way of defining this area.For over three thousand years, from the time of the conquest of these lands by the Israelites from the Canaanites and the Philistines (and others) until the twentieth century, Israelites have been present in this land. Jews greatly outnumbered Christians in the last centuries of Roman rule inPalestina. The estimated five million Jews who lived there before the Revolts of 66- 70 AD and 132-136 AD were probably reduced, by massacre or by flight, to perhaps three million by the beginning of the Third Century. Roman law forbade them to live in Jerusalem; but after a while the authorities pretended not to notice the remnant that continued to cling to the city during all this period. The centre of Jewish, culture, however, moved to Yavneh, and then to Tiberias and then to Safat in the Galilee.After the conversion of the Empire to Christianity, persecution of the Jews began again - just as the Roman authorities were showing signs of wearying of it. Then, having lived for three centuries in humiliation under Roman-Christian (that is, Byzantine) rule, the Jews made the mistake of showing support for the Persian invaders who overthrew the Byzantines in 611-614. This regime lasted only a little more than a decade, and the Jews paid the price of yet another massacre for their disloyalty when Byzantine rule was restored. When the first of the Moslem conquerors in turn overthrew the Byzantines forever (633), the Jews, much reduced in numbers and in substance, welcomed the restoration of Muslim rule as relatively temperate.

When the Crusaders came, they massacred thousands of the Jews, and forbade the survivors from entering Jerusalem again. This is believed to be the nadir in the story of Jewish presence in the Holy Land. Probably only a few thousand Jews remained in the Holy Land. Again, when Islamic rule returned -- this time under Saladin of Damascus, a Kurd -- the Jews had reason to rejoice in the relative improvement of their condition. Under the Ottomans, Jewish numbers increased again -- perhaps to about 30,000 by 1881. By the middle of the Nineteenth century, the total population of the whole region that became the British mandate of Palestine was about 400,000 -- less than 4% of today's population. By World War I, 600,000 lived in Western Palestine (i.e., present Israel). Of these, about 80,000 were Jews.Anyone who has any respect for the history of that region knows that by the time of the Balfour Declaration of November, 1917, Jews were a minority in Palestine as a whole -- only about 83,000 in 1922. And so one is not surprised to find that the Balfour Declaration clearly says that the work of making a Jewish state here is going to have to deal as justly as possible with the claims of those other populations. The other populations, however, are never identified as the Palestinians -- certainly never by themselves. Apart from small pockets of several other nationalities, the majority were mainly Arabs.Palestine had never been a Province of the Ottoman Empire, and had, indeed, never been governed as a distinct unity but for most of Ottoman history as a region of a large jurisdiction dominated by Syria/Lebanon. Throughout all of the tangled and noisy history of this area from 1917 until 1948 it never occurred to any responsible figure to use the term in any other than a regional-geographical sense.

In 1922, the League of Nations assigned to Great Britain a Mandate on its behalf over Palestine. As defined by that Act, Palestine included what is now Israel, as well as what is now generally (and inaccurately) called the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, as well as everything on the other side of the Jordan all the way to desert portions of Iraq and Saudi Arabia. Shortly after, the British government attempted to take into account the unwillingness of the Arab people of Palestine to live in a Jewish state by partitioning this historic region This they did, by severing everything East of the Jordan river, calling that the Kingdom of Transjordan, later Jordan. The portion of land assigned to this kingdom was about four-fifths of the whole of Mandate of Palestine: 35,000 sq. miles. Today, Jordan roughly the population of Israel and is publicly (and gleefully) declared to be free of Jews.Incidentally: most Western commentators and most governments of Western nations as well as the UN, refer to the predominantly Arab-speaking central portions of what was once Palestine as the West Bank, and treat with scorn the use of the terms Judea and Samaria. We are told that use of these terms marks one as a biblical literalist or fundamentalist, and/or as a tool (witting or unwitting) of religious zealots. In fact, Judea and Samaria were the terms used by the British during the Mandate period. These are the terms that appear on the maps. It is the term West Bank which is the politically-loaded newcomer to the debate. Until sometime after 1967, the term West Bank, had application only to a river; henceforth the term (in capital letters) was kept alive by Jordan to bolster its case that it had been deprived of half of its Kingdom – the other bank -- even though the Britain and the League of Nations had established the Jordan River as the western frontier of the Kingdom of Transjordan, and even though the UN had decided in 1947 that this territory would belong to the new Arab state which should be built within the confines of the Balfour mandate, as defined I947. Then, after the King of Jordan abandoned his claim to rule in this region, and designated the PLO as the natural leaders of the Palestinian People, the West Bank by a further twist of logic became the usual designation for everything extending westward from the actual west bank of the River Jordan, up to the tops of the mountain ranges, and then halfway down the other side towards the Mediterranean Sea.

Bernard Lewis demonstrates that very notion of an Arab national identity, in the sense now promulgated, is an invention of the early Twentieth Century and derives from Western habits of thought. Using European analogies, our politicians and our scholars speak of the Arabic-speaking people as a nation or group of sister nations in the European sense, united by a common territory, language and culture and a common aspiration to a political independence. No one denies that there were many centuries of Arab rule over the region which we call the Holy Land. These centuries were, however, by no means uninterrupted. There were also periods of Persian rule, Seljuk rule, Egyptian rule, and lastly there were four hundred years (exactly) of Ottoman rule. When the British were locked in their life-and-death struggle with the central Powers and Turkey, they made a dramatic bid to all the non-Turkish races of the region, promising them whatever they wanted to hear. In particular, they tapped into the movement of Arab nationalism (whose roots, in any case, were in the recent history of European nationalist movements.) Arab-speaking politicians who wished to participate in the overthrow of the Ottomans, abetted by Lawrence of Arabia and other nationalist romantics, championed Arab nationalism.In playing to these Arab-nationalist forces the British agreed to minimize the presence in the whole region of such non-Arab peoples as the Assyrians (who were Christians of ancient standing), the Kurds (whom were read about in today’s newspapers still) and many many others. Arab nationalists, for their own purposes, have always magnified the Arab part of the story.It is logically impossible to make the case that Palestine belongs to the local non-Jewish population because they belong to the Arab Nation and simultaneously to speak of the immemorial existence of the Palestinian nation. An argument based on either of these premises is in any case incompatible with the clear teaching of Islam which is that all Muslims belong to the nation of Islam, the dar al-Islam.While it is historically insupportable, therefore, to speak of many centuries of Arab rule, it is perfectly correct to speak of many centuries of Muslim rule.The majority [of the inhabitants of Mandate Palestine] belonged to ...the nation of Islam...[and] thought of themselves primarily as Muslims. When further clarification was necessary, it might be territorial -- Egyptians, Syrian, Iraqi -- or social -- townsman, peasant, nomad. It is to this last that the term Arab belongs. So little had it retained of its ethnic meaning that we even find it applied at times to non-Arab nomads of Kurdish or Turkoman extraction. [14]Many Christians who regard themselves as realists and also as people of goodwill ask: What does it matter if the case for the Palestinian people lacks historical substance? Would it not be better if we all simply nodded agreeably as the Palestinians recited their alternative narrative and then get on with the work of reconciliation ?

In recent years, Christian liberals have found support for this thinking in an unlikely place: in the thinking and the writing of those Israel politicians of the left who were the authors of the policy of seeking peace through negotiation with the Palestine Liberation Organization -- the process which brought about the ruinous 1993 Oslo Accords. Shimon Peres, the Israeli politician who invested more than any other in this process, suggested in a book written in 1993 what might be called a Gordian knot approach to the embarrassment of dealing with the Palestinians arguments about their history. After reviewing the story more-or-less along the lines which we have just followed he concludes: Until the 1948 War of Independence, the Palestinian people did not exist as a separate entity, either in their own consciousness or in the minds of other people, including the Arab nations .... During the British Mandate, Palestinian nationalist consciousness was defined as being part of the greater Arab nation, giving Palestinians a different, separate identity from that of the Jews living in the region ...[Their slogan was:] PALESTINE IS ARAB. Rather than claim ownership of the land in the name of a particular nationality, they did so in the name of pan-Arabism. They also asked for and received Arab solidarity before the 1948, on ideological grounds of unification, not a particular national identity.An attempt to combine these general and particular nationalist trends is found in the PLO's Palestinian Covenant, which asserts that Palestine is the national homeland of the Palestinian Arab people; it is an integral part of the Arab homeland, and the Palestinian people are an integral part of the Arab nation. In other words, even the founding document of the Palestinian national movement does not lay claim to the land on behalf of Palestinians alone ... Only during the ideological struggle against the State of Israel and the Zionist movement did the ideologues of the Palestinian camp begin to speak about a specific historical Palestinian connection to this controversial land, a connection that is independent of any pan-Arab context. At that time, the Palestinians began to be described as the descendents of the ancient Jebusites, and some even suggested that the Palestinian people existed from time immemorial.

But then he sweeps away all these merely historical considerations:

These facts [my emphasis] do not question the legitimacy of Palestinian national consciousness. The modern democratic outlook recognizes the validity of forming a new national association, termed people building in the professional literature, based on the consciousness of independence by any group that establishes such a national association.In short: facts, schmacts. Anybody can invent a nation any time that it serves a purpose!The Palestinians became a people when they decided to do so and when they began to act as a national collective. Questions of how they began to act as a national collective and what factors led to this awakening are of interest to historians and sociologists, but the speculations make no difference in determining strategy. Strategy depends upon present reality. . . . Just as we Jewish people did not ask the Palestinians for permission to become a state, neither do they need our permission to become a people. [15]Thus Peres dismisses the integrity of three millennia of historiography, leveling all recitals of the past to the moral and intellectual standing of myth. Perhaps such contempt for historical fact makes sense to a man who could say (1n May of 1994): Today we have ended the Arab-Israeli conflict. Utopia is coming.[16] People who dismiss mere historical facts for the sake of realism will eventually learn that there is nothing more real than historical fact. Historians, and others who take history seriously, have reason for concern regarding the recent habit of such Christian organizations as the Middle East Council of Churches and the World Council of Churches of patronizing the fantasy-histories of self-declared aboriginal people and others who claim to be victims of Eurocentrism,linear thinking and other alleged vices of the Western mind. It used to be better understood than it is today that Christian faith depends upon the historical validity of certain entirely specific events, which appear in historical documents and which have been subject to critical examination for over nineteen hundred years, and which are alleged to recapitulate the largest meanings in human history. This realization is at the heart of the entirely unique preoccupation with the determination of historical fact which has always characterized Western civilization. But respect for historical fact is not widespread in an age when historical thinking is generally despised and historical content has been almost entirely driven from the curriculum of schools. The point of historical research is not to move us along the path of peace and reconciliation. It is to find truth. It is simple fantasy to talk of a well-developed Arab civilization in the region and equally fantastic to ground the claim of its present Arab-speaking residents in a calim to aboriginal title.I have found for my sins that Christian pro-Palestinian zealots will scream at you that all your historical generalizations come out an evil heart, that you are deaf to the need of love and understanding. They claim to know that your generalizations are all the opposite of truth, but they do not step forward with historical documentation.Parties who will not listen to arguments about truth are never going to be moved down the path of reconciliation. We must not let fear of appearing to be an enemy of peace and reconciliation make us enemies of historical truth.Paul C. Merkley.

[1] Quoted in Ramon Bennett, Philistine: The Great Deception (Jerusalem: Arm of Salvation, 1995), 137.
[2] Quoted in Bat Ye’or, The Dhimmim: The Dhimmi: Jews and Christians Under Islam (London: Associated University Presses, 1985), 145.
[3] Leona Glidden Running and David Noel Freedman, William Foxwell Albright: A Twentieth -Century Genius ( New York: Two Continents/Morgan, 1975.), 384.
[4] See Bernard Lewis, The Palestinians and the PLO: A Historical Approach, Commentary, January, 1975.
[5] All the quotations in this paragraph derive from Joan Peters, From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict Over Palestine (London: Michael Joseph, 1985), 139-140.
[6] Speech to United Nations General Assembly, New York, November 13, 1974.
[7] Quoted in Binyamin Netanyahu, A Place Among the Nations Bantam Books, 1993), pp. 38-40.
[8] The specific portions which I have quoted come from Walter Lowdermilk Palestine: Land of Promise (New York: Harper, 1944), pp. 133, 59, 28, 5-6, 80-83. Lowdermilk’s research materials are in the file, Walter Lowdermilk,in Franklin Delano Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, N.Y.]
[9] Palestine Royal Commission Report of 1937, cited in Peters, 140.
[10] Quoted from Dutch daily, Trouw, March, 1977, by Peters, 137.
[11] Bernard Lewis, The Arabs in History, cited in Peters, 152.
[12] Quoted by Netanyahu, 43.
[13] Netanyahu, 43-44.
[14] Lewis, The Arabs, 15, cited in Peters, 152-154.
[15] Shimon Peres, The New Middle East (New York: Henry Holt, 1993), 165-166.
[16] Quoted in Jerusalem Post, June 4, 1994.

JESUS RETURNS TO EARTH BODILY LIKE HE LEFT

ACTS 1:10-11
10 And while they looked stedfastly toward heaven as he went up, behold, two men stood by them in white apparel;
11 Which also said, Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? this same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven.

Whose Promised Land? Psalm 78:54-55 (ISRAELS)
54 And He brought them to His holy border, This mountain which His right hand had acquired.
55 He also drove out the nations before them,Allotted them an inheritance by survey, And made the tribes of Israel dwell in their tents.

JESUS RETURNS TO EARTH BODILY TO RULE AND REIGN FROM DAVIDS THRONE FOREVER AND WE COME BACK WITH HIM ON WHITE HORSES.

ACTS 1:10-11
10 And while they looked stedfastly toward heaven as he went up, behold, two men stood by them in white apparel;
11 Which also said, Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? this same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven.

ZECHARIAH 14:4
4 And his feet shall stand in that day upon the mount of Olives, which is before Jerusalem on the east, and the mount of Olives shall cleave in the midst thereof toward the east and toward the west, and there shall be a very great valley; and half of the mountain shall remove toward the north, and half of it toward the south.

REVELATION 19:11-16
11 And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and he that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he doth judge and make war.
12 His eyes were as a flame of fire, and on his head were many crowns; and he had a name written, that no man knew, but he himself.
13 And he was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood: and his name is called The Word of God.
14 And the armies which were in heaven followed him upon white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean.
15 And out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations: and he shall rule them with a rod of iron: and he treadeth the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God.
16 And he hath on his vesture and on his thigh a name written, KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS.

JUDE 14-16
14 And Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these, saying, Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of his saints,
15 To execute judgment upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed, and of all their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against him.
16 These are murmurers, complainers, walking after their own lusts; and their mouth speaketh great swelling words, having men's persons in admiration because of advantage.

JERUSALEM DIVIDED

ZECHARIAH 12:1-5 King James Bible
1 The burden of the word of the LORD for Israel, saith the LORD, which stretcheth forth the heavens, and layeth the foundation of the earth, and formeth the spirit of man within him.
2 Behold, I will make Jerusalem a cup of trembling unto all the people round about, when they shall be in the siege both against Judah and against Jerusalem.
3 And in that day will I make Jerusalem a burdensome stone for all people: all that burden themselves with it shall be cut in pieces, though all the people of the earth be gathered together against it.
4 In that day, saith the LORD, I will smite every horse with astonishment, and his rider with madness: and I will open mine eyes upon the house of Judah, and will smite every horse of the people with blindness.
5 And the governors of Judah shall say in their heart, The inhabitants of Jerusalem shall be my strength in the LORD of hosts their God.

JOEL 3:2
2 I will also gather all nations, and will bring them down into the valley of Jehoshaphat, and will plead with them there for my people and for my heritage Israel, whom they have scattered among the nations, and parted my land.

ZECHARIAH 14:1-9 King James Bible
1 Behold, the day of the LORD cometh, and thy spoil shall be divided in the midst of thee.
2 For I will gather all nations against Jerusalem to battle; and the city shall be taken, and the houses rifled, and the women ravished; and half of the city shall go forth into captivity, and the residue of the people shall not be cut off from the city.
3 Then shall the LORD go forth, and fight against those nations, as when he fought in the day of battle.
4 And his feet shall stand in that day upon the mount of Olives, which is before Jerusalem on the east, and the mount of Olives shall cleave in the midst thereof toward the east and toward the west, and there shall be a very great valley; and half of the mountain shall remove toward the north, and half of it toward the south. 5 And ye shall flee to the valley of the mountains; for the valley of the mountains shall reach unto Azal: yea, ye shall flee, like as ye fled from before the earthquake in the days of Uzziah king of Judah: and the LORD my God shall come, and all the saints with thee.
6 And it shall come to pass in that day, that the light shall not be clear, nor dark:
7 But it shall be one day which shall be known to the LORD, not day, nor night: but it shall come to pass, that at evening time it shall be light.
8 And it shall be in that day, that living waters shall go out from Jerusalem; half of them toward the former sea, and half of them toward the hinder sea: in summer and in winter shall it be.
9 And the LORD shall be king over all the earth: in that day shall there be one LORD, and his name one.

JUDGEMENT SIGNS IN DAYS OF LOT. NO BODY LISTENED TO WARNING SIGNS

LUKE 17:28-32
28 Likewise also as it was in the days of Lot; they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded;
29 But the same day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all.
30 Even thus shall it be in the day when the Son of man is revealed.
31 In that day, he which shall be upon the housetop, and his stuff in the house, let him not come down to take it away: and he that is in the field, let him likewise not return back.
32 Remember Lot's wife.

JUDGEMENT SIGNS IN DAYS OF NOAH. WORLDWIDE FLOODING,CURRUPTION,VIOLENCE (TERRORISM).

MATTHEW 24:37-39
37 But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.
38 For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark,
39 And knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.

GENESIS 6:11-13
11 The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence.
12 And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth.
13 And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth.

LUKE 17:25-27
25 But first must he suffer many things, and be rejected of this generation.
26 And as it was in the days of Noe, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man.
27 They did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, and the flood came, and destroyed them all.

THE JUDGEMENT OF THE NATIONS

JOEL 3:2
2 I will also gather all nations, and will bring them down into the valley of Jehoshaphat, and will plead with them there for my people and for my heritage Israel, whom they have scattered among the nations, and parted my land.

DANIEL 12:8-13
8 And I (DANIEL) heard, but I understood not: then said I, O my Lord, what shall be the end of these things?
9 And he said, Go thy way, Daniel: for the words are closed up and sealed till the time of the end.
10 Many shall be purified, and made white, and tried; but the wicked shall do wickedly: and none of the wicked shall understand; but the wise shall understand.
11 And from the time that the daily sacrifice shall be taken away, (at the 3 1/2 yr mark of the 7 yr treaty) and the abomination that maketh desolate set up, there shall be a thousand two hundred and ninety days.
12 Blessed is he that waiteth, and cometh to the thousand three hundred and five and thirty days.
13 But go thou thy way till the end be: for thou shalt rest, and stand in thy lot at the end of the days.

MATTHEW 25:31-46
31 When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory:
32 And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats:
33 And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left.
34 Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world:
35 For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in:
36 Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.
37 Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink?
38 When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee?
39 Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?
40 And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.
41 Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels:
42 For I was an hungred, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink:
43 I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not.
44 Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee?
45 Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me.
46 And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal.