JEWISH KING JESUS IS COMING AT THE RAPTURE FOR US IN THE CLOUDS-DON'T MISS IT FOR THE WORLD.THE BIBLE TAKEN LITERALLY- WHEN THE PLAIN SENSE MAKES GOOD SENSE-SEEK NO OTHER SENSE-LEST YOU END UP IN NONSENSE.GET SAVED NOW- CALL ON JESUS TODAY.THE ONLY SAVIOR OF THE WHOLE EARTH - NO OTHER.
1 COR 15:23-JESUS THE FIRST FRUITS-CHRISTIANS RAPTURED TO JESUS-FIRST FRUITS OF THE SPIRIT-23 But every man in his own order: Christ the firstfruits; afterward they that are Christ’s at his coming.ROMANS 8:23 And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.(THE PRE-TRIB RAPTURE)
EZEKIEL 38:1-7
1 And the word of the LORD came unto me, saying,
2 Son of man, set thy face against Gog,(RULER) the land of Magog,(RUSSIA) the chief prince of Meshech (MOSCOW) and Tubal,(TOBOLSK) and prophesy against him,
3 And say, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I am against thee, O Gog,(LEADER OF RUSSIA) the chief prince of Meshech(MOSCOW) and Tubal:TOBOLSK)
4 And I (GOD) will turn thee back, and put hooks into thy jaws,(GOD FORCES THE RUSSIA-MUSLIMS TO MARCH) and I will bring thee forth, and all thine army, horses and horsemen, all of them clothed with all sorts of armour, even a great company with bucklers and shields, all of them handling swords:
5 Persia,(IRAN,IRAQ) Ethiopia, and Libya with them; all of them with shield and helmet:
6 Gomer,(GERMANY) and all his bands; the house of Togarmah (TURKEY) of the north quarters, and all his bands: and many people with thee.(AFRICAN MUSLIMS,SUDAN,TUNESIA ETC)
7 Be thou prepared, and prepare for thyself, thou, and all thy company that are assembled unto thee, and be thou a guard unto them.
EZEKIEL 39:1-23
1 Therefore, thou son of man, prophesy against Gog,(LEADER OF RUSSIA) and say, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I am against thee, O Gog, the chief prince of Meshech (MOSCOW) and Tubal: (TUBOLSK)
2 And I will turn thee back,(RUSSIA-ARAB MUSLIM ISRAEL HATERS) and leave but the sixth part of thee,(5/6TH OR 300 MILLION DEAD RUSSIAN/ARAB/MUSLIMS I BELIEVE) and will cause thee to come up from the north parts,(RUSSIA) and will bring thee upon the mountains of Israel:
3 And I will smite thy bow out of thy left hand, and will cause thine arrows to fall out of thy right hand.
4 Thou shalt fall upon the mountains of Israel, thou, and all thy bands,( ARABS) and the people that is with thee: I will give thee unto the ravenous birds of every sort, and to the beasts of the field to be devoured.
5 Thou shalt fall upon the open field: for I have spoken it, saith the Lord GOD.
6 And I will send a fire on Magog,(NUCLEAR ATOMIC BOMB) and among them that dwell carelessly in the isles: and they shall know that I am the LORD.
7 So will I make my holy name known in the midst of my people Israel; and I will not let them pollute my holy name any more: and the heathen shall know that I am the LORD, the Holy One in Israel.
8 Behold, it is come, and it is done, saith the Lord GOD; this is the day whereof I have spoken.
9 And they that dwell in the cities of Israel shall go forth, and shall set on fire and burn the weapons, both the shields and the bucklers, the bows and the arrows, and the handstaves, and the spears, and they shall burn them with fire seven years:
10 So that they shall take no wood out of the field, neither cut down any out of the forests; for they shall burn the weapons with fire: and they shall spoil those that spoiled them, and rob those that robbed them, saith the Lord GOD.
11 And it shall come to pass in that day, that I will give unto Gog (RUSSIA/ARAB/MUSLIMS) a place there of graves in Israel, the valley of the passengers (EAST OF THE DEAD SEA IN JORDAN VALLEY) on the east of the sea: and it shall stop the noses of the passengers: and there shall they bury Gog (RUSSIAN) and all his multitude:(ARAB/MUSLIM HORDE) and they shall call it The valley of Hamongog.(BURIEL SITE OF THE 300 MILLION,RUSSIAN/ARAB/MUSLIMS)
12 And seven months shall the house of Israel be burying of them, that they may cleanse the land.(OF ISRAEL)
13 Yea, all the people of the land (OF ISRAEL) shall bury them; and it shall be to them a renown the day that I (GOD-JESUS) shall be glorified, saith the Lord GOD.
14 And they shall sever out men of continual employment,(NUCLEAR ATOMIC BOMB EXPERTS) passing through the land to bury with the passengers those that remain upon the face of the earth, to cleanse it: after the end of seven months shall they search.
15 And the passengers that pass through the land, when any seeth a man’s bone, then shall he set up a sign by it,(WON'T TOUCH IT) till the buriers have buried it (PROPERLY) in the valley of Hamongog.(RUSSIA/ARAB/MUSLIMS NEW BURIEL SITE)(EAST OF THE DEAD SEA IN THE JORDAN VALLEY)
16 And also the name of the city shall be Hamonah. Thus shall they cleanse the land.(OF THE ISRAEL-GOD HATERS)
17 And, thou son of man, thus saith the Lord GOD; Speak unto every feathered fowl,(500 MILLION MIGRATING BIRDS THREW ISRAEL EVERY SPRING,FALL) and to every beast of the field, Assemble yourselves, and come; gather yourselves on every side to my sacrifice that I do sacrifice for you, even a great sacrifice upon the mountains of Israel, that ye may eat flesh, and drink blood.(OF THE RUSSIAN/ARAB/MUSLIM ARMIES)
18 Ye shall eat the flesh of the mighty, and drink the blood of the princes of the earth, of rams, of lambs, and of goats, of bullocks, all of them fatlings of Bashan.
19 And ye (MIGRATING BIRDS IN ISRAEL) shall eat fat till ye be full, and drink blood till ye be drunken, of my sacrifice which I have sacrificed for you.(RUSSIAN/ARAB/MUSLIM ISRAEL HATERS)
20 Thus ye shall be filled at my table with horses and chariots, with mighty men, and with all men of war, saith the Lord GOD.
21 And I (GOD-JESUS) will set my glory among the heathen,(WORLD NATIONS) and all the heathen (WORLD NATIONS) shall see my judgment that I have executed,(AGAINST ISRAELS ENEMIES) and my (GODS) hand that I have laid upon them.(ISRAELS HATER ENEMIES)
22 So the house of Israel shall know that I am the LORD their God from that day and forward.
23 And the heathen shall know that the house of Israel went into captivity for their iniquity: because they trespassed against me, therefore hid I my face from them, and gave them into the hand of their enemies: so fell they all by the sword.
24 According to their uncleanness and according to their transgressions have I done unto them, and hid my face from them.
RUSSIA-CHINA-MUSLIMS AGAINST ISRAEL
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4_x1SENpWI
THE SEX FOR MURDER DEATH CULT ISLAM THINKS THIS IS THE BIGGEST ISLAMIC GRAVE SITE IN THE WORLD. BUT THE BIGGEST WILL BE EAST OF THE DEAD SEA IN THE JORDAN VALLEY VERY SOON NOW. ONCE ISRAEL TAKES CARE OF ISLAM WITH GODS HELP.
JOEL 2:20
20 But I will remove far off from you the northern (RUSSIAN-ISLAMIC) army, and will drive him into a land barren and desolate, with his face toward the east sea, and his hinder part toward the utmost sea, and his stink shall come up, and his ill savour shall come up, because he hath done great things.
World's largest cemetery grows bigger as Shi'ite militias bury their dead-[Reuters]-By Alaa al-Marjani and Saif Hameed-August 23, 2016-YAHOONEWS
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The world's largest cemetery, in Iraq's Shi'ite holy city of Najaf, is expanding at double its usual rate as the nation's death rate increased with the war on Islamic State.The Wadi al-Salam cemetery, Arabic for "Peace Valley," has a special place in the hearts of Shi'ite Muslims as it surrounds the Mausoleum of their first imam, Ali Bin Abi Talib, a cousin and son-in-law of Prophet Mohammad.The pace of daily burials rose to 150-200 after Islamic State, the ultra-hardline Sunni group overran a third of the country in 2014, said Jihad Abu Saybi, a historian of the cemetery. The rate was 80-120 a day previously, he said.Shi'ite paramilitary often visit Ali's golden-domed shrine before heading to the frontlines to battle Islamic State, and request to be laid to rest in Wadi al-Salam should they be killed, as a reward for their sacrifice.As land becomes scarce, the cost of a standard 25 square meter family burial lot has risen to about 5 million Iraqi dinars ($4100) almost double the amount paid for the same lots before violence escalated as IS exerted control over large swathes of north and western Iraq in 2014.Millions of graves of different shapes lie in the roughly 10 square km (4 square miles) cemetery that attracts burials from Shiites all over the world. By nationality, Iraq's Iranian neighbors are thought to come second in number people interred near Ali's golden-domed shrine.Often built with baked bricks and plaster, decorated with Koranic calligraphy, some graves are above ground tombs, reflecting the wealth of those within.(Editing by Jeremy Gaunt.)
DEAD SEA SCRIPTURES IN THE BIBLE.
GENESIS 14:3
3 All these were joined together in the vale of Siddim, which is the salt sea.
DEUTERONOMY 3:17
17 The plain also, and Jordan, and the coast thereof, from Chinnereth even unto the sea of the plain, even the salt sea, under Ashdothpisgah eastward.
DEUTORONOMY 4:49
49 And all the plain on this side Jordan eastward, even unto the sea of the plain, under the springs of Pisgah.
NUMBERS 34:12
12 And the border shall go down to Jordan, and the goings out of it shall be at the salt sea: this shall be your land with the coasts thereof round about.
JOSHUA 3:16
16 That the waters which came down from above stood and rose up upon an heap very far from the city Adam, that is beside Zaretan: and those that came down toward the sea of the plain, even the salt sea, failed, and were cut off: and the people passed over right against Jericho.
ZECHARIAH 14:7-9
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.
EZEKIEL 47:7-11
7 Now when I had returned, behold, at the bank of the river were very many trees on the one side and on the other.
8 Then said he unto me, These waters issue out toward the east country, and go down into the desert, and go into the sea: which being brought forth into the sea, the waters shall be healed.
9 And it shall come to pass, that every thing that liveth, which moveth, whithersoever the rivers shall come, shall live: and there shall be a very great multitude of fish, because these waters shall come thither: for they shall be healed; and every thing shall live whither the river cometh.
10 And it shall come to pass, that the fishers shall stand upon it from Engedi even unto Eneglaim; they shall be a place to spread forth nets; their fish shall be according to their kinds, as the fish of the great sea, exceeding many.
11 But the miry places thereof and the marishes thereof shall not be healed; they shall be given to salt.
Dead Sea drying: A new low-point for Earth-By Kevin Connolly BBC Middle East correspondent-17 June 2016
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-36477284 (pictures to story)
1 And the word of the LORD came unto me, saying,
2 Son of man, set thy face against Gog,(RULER) the land of Magog,(RUSSIA) the chief prince of Meshech (MOSCOW) and Tubal,(TOBOLSK) and prophesy against him,
3 And say, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I am against thee, O Gog,(LEADER OF RUSSIA) the chief prince of Meshech(MOSCOW) and Tubal:TOBOLSK)
4 And I (GOD) will turn thee back, and put hooks into thy jaws,(GOD FORCES THE RUSSIA-MUSLIMS TO MARCH) and I will bring thee forth, and all thine army, horses and horsemen, all of them clothed with all sorts of armour, even a great company with bucklers and shields, all of them handling swords:
5 Persia,(IRAN,IRAQ) Ethiopia, and Libya with them; all of them with shield and helmet:
6 Gomer,(GERMANY) and all his bands; the house of Togarmah (TURKEY) of the north quarters, and all his bands: and many people with thee.(AFRICAN MUSLIMS,SUDAN,TUNESIA ETC)
7 Be thou prepared, and prepare for thyself, thou, and all thy company that are assembled unto thee, and be thou a guard unto them.
EZEKIEL 39:1-23
1 Therefore, thou son of man, prophesy against Gog,(LEADER OF RUSSIA) and say, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I am against thee, O Gog, the chief prince of Meshech (MOSCOW) and Tubal: (TUBOLSK)
2 And I will turn thee back,(RUSSIA-ARAB MUSLIM ISRAEL HATERS) and leave but the sixth part of thee,(5/6TH OR 300 MILLION DEAD RUSSIAN/ARAB/MUSLIMS I BELIEVE) and will cause thee to come up from the north parts,(RUSSIA) and will bring thee upon the mountains of Israel:
3 And I will smite thy bow out of thy left hand, and will cause thine arrows to fall out of thy right hand.
4 Thou shalt fall upon the mountains of Israel, thou, and all thy bands,( ARABS) and the people that is with thee: I will give thee unto the ravenous birds of every sort, and to the beasts of the field to be devoured.
5 Thou shalt fall upon the open field: for I have spoken it, saith the Lord GOD.
6 And I will send a fire on Magog,(NUCLEAR ATOMIC BOMB) and among them that dwell carelessly in the isles: and they shall know that I am the LORD.
7 So will I make my holy name known in the midst of my people Israel; and I will not let them pollute my holy name any more: and the heathen shall know that I am the LORD, the Holy One in Israel.
8 Behold, it is come, and it is done, saith the Lord GOD; this is the day whereof I have spoken.
9 And they that dwell in the cities of Israel shall go forth, and shall set on fire and burn the weapons, both the shields and the bucklers, the bows and the arrows, and the handstaves, and the spears, and they shall burn them with fire seven years:
10 So that they shall take no wood out of the field, neither cut down any out of the forests; for they shall burn the weapons with fire: and they shall spoil those that spoiled them, and rob those that robbed them, saith the Lord GOD.
11 And it shall come to pass in that day, that I will give unto Gog (RUSSIA/ARAB/MUSLIMS) a place there of graves in Israel, the valley of the passengers (EAST OF THE DEAD SEA IN JORDAN VALLEY) on the east of the sea: and it shall stop the noses of the passengers: and there shall they bury Gog (RUSSIAN) and all his multitude:(ARAB/MUSLIM HORDE) and they shall call it The valley of Hamongog.(BURIEL SITE OF THE 300 MILLION,RUSSIAN/ARAB/MUSLIMS)
12 And seven months shall the house of Israel be burying of them, that they may cleanse the land.(OF ISRAEL)
13 Yea, all the people of the land (OF ISRAEL) shall bury them; and it shall be to them a renown the day that I (GOD-JESUS) shall be glorified, saith the Lord GOD.
14 And they shall sever out men of continual employment,(NUCLEAR ATOMIC BOMB EXPERTS) passing through the land to bury with the passengers those that remain upon the face of the earth, to cleanse it: after the end of seven months shall they search.
15 And the passengers that pass through the land, when any seeth a man’s bone, then shall he set up a sign by it,(WON'T TOUCH IT) till the buriers have buried it (PROPERLY) in the valley of Hamongog.(RUSSIA/ARAB/MUSLIMS NEW BURIEL SITE)(EAST OF THE DEAD SEA IN THE JORDAN VALLEY)
16 And also the name of the city shall be Hamonah. Thus shall they cleanse the land.(OF THE ISRAEL-GOD HATERS)
17 And, thou son of man, thus saith the Lord GOD; Speak unto every feathered fowl,(500 MILLION MIGRATING BIRDS THREW ISRAEL EVERY SPRING,FALL) and to every beast of the field, Assemble yourselves, and come; gather yourselves on every side to my sacrifice that I do sacrifice for you, even a great sacrifice upon the mountains of Israel, that ye may eat flesh, and drink blood.(OF THE RUSSIAN/ARAB/MUSLIM ARMIES)
18 Ye shall eat the flesh of the mighty, and drink the blood of the princes of the earth, of rams, of lambs, and of goats, of bullocks, all of them fatlings of Bashan.
19 And ye (MIGRATING BIRDS IN ISRAEL) shall eat fat till ye be full, and drink blood till ye be drunken, of my sacrifice which I have sacrificed for you.(RUSSIAN/ARAB/MUSLIM ISRAEL HATERS)
20 Thus ye shall be filled at my table with horses and chariots, with mighty men, and with all men of war, saith the Lord GOD.
21 And I (GOD-JESUS) will set my glory among the heathen,(WORLD NATIONS) and all the heathen (WORLD NATIONS) shall see my judgment that I have executed,(AGAINST ISRAELS ENEMIES) and my (GODS) hand that I have laid upon them.(ISRAELS HATER ENEMIES)
22 So the house of Israel shall know that I am the LORD their God from that day and forward.
23 And the heathen shall know that the house of Israel went into captivity for their iniquity: because they trespassed against me, therefore hid I my face from them, and gave them into the hand of their enemies: so fell they all by the sword.
24 According to their uncleanness and according to their transgressions have I done unto them, and hid my face from them.
RUSSIA-CHINA-MUSLIMS AGAINST ISRAEL
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4_x1SENpWI
THE SEX FOR MURDER DEATH CULT ISLAM THINKS THIS IS THE BIGGEST ISLAMIC GRAVE SITE IN THE WORLD. BUT THE BIGGEST WILL BE EAST OF THE DEAD SEA IN THE JORDAN VALLEY VERY SOON NOW. ONCE ISRAEL TAKES CARE OF ISLAM WITH GODS HELP.
JOEL 2:20
20 But I will remove far off from you the northern (RUSSIAN-ISLAMIC) army, and will drive him into a land barren and desolate, with his face toward the east sea, and his hinder part toward the utmost sea, and his stink shall come up, and his ill savour shall come up, because he hath done great things.
World's largest cemetery grows bigger as Shi'ite militias bury their dead-[Reuters]-By Alaa al-Marjani and Saif Hameed-August 23, 2016-YAHOONEWS
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The world's largest cemetery, in Iraq's Shi'ite holy city of Najaf, is expanding at double its usual rate as the nation's death rate increased with the war on Islamic State.The Wadi al-Salam cemetery, Arabic for "Peace Valley," has a special place in the hearts of Shi'ite Muslims as it surrounds the Mausoleum of their first imam, Ali Bin Abi Talib, a cousin and son-in-law of Prophet Mohammad.The pace of daily burials rose to 150-200 after Islamic State, the ultra-hardline Sunni group overran a third of the country in 2014, said Jihad Abu Saybi, a historian of the cemetery. The rate was 80-120 a day previously, he said.Shi'ite paramilitary often visit Ali's golden-domed shrine before heading to the frontlines to battle Islamic State, and request to be laid to rest in Wadi al-Salam should they be killed, as a reward for their sacrifice.As land becomes scarce, the cost of a standard 25 square meter family burial lot has risen to about 5 million Iraqi dinars ($4100) almost double the amount paid for the same lots before violence escalated as IS exerted control over large swathes of north and western Iraq in 2014.Millions of graves of different shapes lie in the roughly 10 square km (4 square miles) cemetery that attracts burials from Shiites all over the world. By nationality, Iraq's Iranian neighbors are thought to come second in number people interred near Ali's golden-domed shrine.Often built with baked bricks and plaster, decorated with Koranic calligraphy, some graves are above ground tombs, reflecting the wealth of those within.(Editing by Jeremy Gaunt.)
DEAD SEA SCRIPTURES IN THE BIBLE.
GENESIS 14:3
3 All these were joined together in the vale of Siddim, which is the salt sea.
DEUTERONOMY 3:17
17 The plain also, and Jordan, and the coast thereof, from Chinnereth even unto the sea of the plain, even the salt sea, under Ashdothpisgah eastward.
DEUTORONOMY 4:49
49 And all the plain on this side Jordan eastward, even unto the sea of the plain, under the springs of Pisgah.
NUMBERS 34:12
12 And the border shall go down to Jordan, and the goings out of it shall be at the salt sea: this shall be your land with the coasts thereof round about.
JOSHUA 3:16
16 That the waters which came down from above stood and rose up upon an heap very far from the city Adam, that is beside Zaretan: and those that came down toward the sea of the plain, even the salt sea, failed, and were cut off: and the people passed over right against Jericho.
ZECHARIAH 14:7-9
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.
EZEKIEL 47:7-11
7 Now when I had returned, behold, at the bank of the river were very many trees on the one side and on the other.
8 Then said he unto me, These waters issue out toward the east country, and go down into the desert, and go into the sea: which being brought forth into the sea, the waters shall be healed.
9 And it shall come to pass, that every thing that liveth, which moveth, whithersoever the rivers shall come, shall live: and there shall be a very great multitude of fish, because these waters shall come thither: for they shall be healed; and every thing shall live whither the river cometh.
10 And it shall come to pass, that the fishers shall stand upon it from Engedi even unto Eneglaim; they shall be a place to spread forth nets; their fish shall be according to their kinds, as the fish of the great sea, exceeding many.
11 But the miry places thereof and the marishes thereof shall not be healed; they shall be given to salt.
Dead Sea drying: A new low-point for Earth-By Kevin Connolly BBC Middle East correspondent-17 June 2016
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-36477284 (pictures to story)
The
Dead Sea, the salty lake located at the lowest point on Earth, is
gradually shrinking under the heat of the Middle Eastern sun. For those
who live on its shores it's a slow-motion crisis - but finding extra
water to sustain the sea will be a huge challenge.If there's one thing
everyone knows about the Dead Sea it is that you can't sink in it.It is
eight or nine times saltier than the oceans of the world - so dense and
mineral rich that it doesn't even feel like normal water, more like
olive oil mixed with sand.For decades no holiday in the Holy Land or
Jordan has been complete without a photograph of the bather sitting bolt
upright on the surface, usually reading a newspaper to emphasise the
extraordinary properties of the water.But the Dead Sea is also a unique
ecosystem and a sensitive barometer of the state of the environment in a
part of the world where an arid climate and the need to irrigate farms
combine to create a permanent shortage of water.You may have read that
the Dead Sea is dying. You can see why the idea appeals to headline
writers but it isn't quite true.As the level drops, the density and
saltiness are rising and will eventually reach a point where the rate of
evaporation will reach a kind of equilibrium. So it might get a lot
smaller, but it won't disappear entirely.It is however shrinking at an
alarming rate - the surface level is dropping more than a metre (3ft) a
year.When you consider that the surface of the Dead Sea is the lowest
point on the planet - currently 420m (1,380ft) below sea level - that
means that the planet's lowest point is being recalibrated on an annual
basis.It is deep enough that journeying along the road that winds down
to the shore causes your ears to pop as they do on an aircraft coming in
to land.The landscapes of the Dead Sea have an extraordinary, almost
lunar quality to them - imagine the Grand Canyon with Lake Como nestling
in its depths. And the people of the ancient world understood that
there was something unique in the place, even if they couldn't be quite
sure what it was.The story goes that Cleopatra used products from the
area as part of her beauty regime, which as everyone knows also
allegedly included asses' milk and almond extract - although in truth
tales like that are ten-a-penny around the Middle East.And it's possible
that King Herod, who had a winter palace nearby, came here for his
health too - although his tarnished historical reputation does tend to
devalue his worth as a celebrity endorser in the classical world.What is
certain is that when the Romans occupied the Middle East they exerted
rigid military control over the roads around the Dead Sea because it was
such a fertile source of salt - a commodity so valuable then that it
was used as a form of currency.And the health benefits appear to be real
enough. The intense barometric pressure so far below sea level may
produce atmospheric conditions beneficial for asthmatics - I am a
sufferer and I noticed a degree of difference.And people with the
painful skin disease psoriasis also seem to find relief in the
combination of mineral-rich water, soothing mud and intense sunlight. In
some countries, health agencies and charities pay for people with the
condition to come on therapeutic trips.So even though the Dead Sea is
shrinking and changing, it still has an economic value. Tourists can
choose to visit resorts in either Jordan or Israel and both countries
also export cosmetic products manufactured in the area.Part of the
shoreline is in the West Bank under Israeli occupation so it's possible
that in future Palestinians too will reap the economic benefits of the
sea's unique properties.But there's no doubt that the decline in the
water level has been spectacular.During the World War One, British
engineers scratched initials on a rock to mark the level of the water. A
century on, those scratch-marks are high on a bone-dry rock.To reach
the current water level you must climb down the rocks, cross a busy main
road, make your way through a thicket of marshy plants and trek across a
yawning mud flat. It's about 2km (1.25 miles) in all.A few kilometres
along the coastline, in the tourist resort of Ein Gedi, the retreating
of the water has created a huge problem.When the main building, with its
restaurant, shower block and souvenir shop, was built towards the end
of the 1980s, the waves lapped up against the walls.Now the resort has
had to buy a special train in which tourists are towed down to the
water's edge by a tractor (another 2km journey).For Nir Vanger, who runs
the business side of Ein Gedi's tourist operations, it's an unnerving
rate of change."The sea was right here when I was 18 years old, so it's
not like we're talking about 500 or a 1000 years ago," he says. "The
Dead Sea was here and now it's 2km away, and with the tractor and the
gasoline and the staff it costs us $500,000 a year to chase the sea."I
grew up here on the Dead Sea - all my life is here, and unfortunately in
the last few years that's a bit of a sad life because you see your home
landscape going and disappearing, and you know that what you leave for
your children and grandchildren won't be what you grew up with."When we
built a new house my wife asked me if I wanted a view of the sea and I
said we should build it with a view of the mountains because they stay
where they are and the sea keeps moving.'So it's not hard to understand
the mystique of the Dead Sea, with its unique chemistry, harsh
micro-climate and soaring camel-coloured mountains - a landscape that
would still be recognisable to Herod and Cleopatra, give or take the odd
multi-storey concrete hotel.But to a geologist it is simply the
terminal lake of the River Jordan - its end point. The river flows in at
one end but the water doesn't flow out again at the other - it just
sits there and evaporates.And while it is an exaggeration to say that
the Dead Sea is dying, that would be a reasonable description of the
river that feeds it.It's true that in the brief rainy season there are
flash floods that bring water coursing through the wadis, or stony
inlets. But these are parched for most of the year, and the river itself
barely more than a trickle.There are places in Israel and in the
occupied West Bank where, in the dry season, you can almost step over
it.The Jordan was once one of the great waterways of the ancient world -
Christ was baptised in it - and even in relatively modern times it was a
surging river prone to flooding in rainy winters.In 1847, the US
government despatched a naval expedition to explore the Jordan for
motives that appear to have been as much religious as they were
scientific or navigational.The expedition was led by a doughty officer
called William F Lynch, who deserves a footnote in the history of the
region if only because he may have been the first person to calculate
that the Dead Sea lies below sea level.Lynch's description of his
adventures is entertaining, even if he has a habit of describing the
indigenous peoples of the region in ways that grate on 21st Century
sensibilities.What's interesting is his description of the river itself,
where at one point he finds a series of 5m-high waterfalls separated by
rapids - he even fears that he'll lose one or more of the expedition's
boats."We halted at the ruins of an old bridge now forming obstructions
over which the foaming river rushed like a mountain torrent," he writes.
"The river was 30 yards wide."Eighty years or so later, there was still
enough water in the Jordan to allow a Russian Zionist engineer called
Pinchas Rutenberg to construct a hydro-electric power station in a
remote stretch of the river valley - its abandoned buildings still stand
there in what is now a desiccated landscape.Things are startling
different these days.The geography of the region hasn't changed, of
course. The northern section of the Jordan flows into the Sea of Galilee
and then the southern section flows south out of the Galilee and down
into the Dead Sea.But the amounts of water flowing into and out of that
system have changed spectacularly in recent decades - all part of the
complicated politics of water in the Middle East.Israel has a dam across
the southern section of the Sea of Galilee which gives it control of
the amount of water flowing into the Jordan - it regards the Galilee as a
vital strategic water asset, even though it's been steadily increasing
the amount of fresh water it creates through desalination plants in the
Mediterranean.The Israeli government began taking water out of the
Jordan Valley system in the 1950s, the decade before it completed the
dam.And this creates problems for farmers in both Jordan and the
Palestinian territory of the West Bank - all of whom need water to
irrigate their farms and feed their people.But Israel has problems too -
although it has enough money and enough technical resources to ensure
its own people have enough water.The River Jordan is fed by the River
Yarmouk, which flows through Syria. Over the last 30 years or so, the
Syrians have built more than 40 dams to harness the water in the Yarmouk
- water that once fed the Jordan.Some Jordanians believe Syria built
some of these dams to punish Israel and Jordan for signing a peace
treaty in 1994.The deal brought Jordan into line with Egypt, which
signed a similar treaty in 1979, but left it badly out of step with
other countries like Syria.Others are prepared to accept that the
Syrians built the dams because their own people needed water, but either
way the result is the same - less water available for a once-mighty
river.And of course the Kingdom of Jordan has built dams for its own
purposes too.More broadly still, the Jordan Valley is not the only place
in the Middle East where the construction of a dam has created a
strategic dispute.When Turkey built the Ataturk Dam on the Euphrates in
the 1990s, Iraq and Syria complained that the vast construction project
cut the flow of water to them.There is one bright spot in this otherwise
overwhelmingly gloomy regional picture.In recent years, Israel has
increased the amount of water being released in the River Jordan - the
effect has only been to turn a trickle into a slightly bigger trickle,
but it's better than nothing.The bottom line is that as populations rise
across the Middle East, the demand for water is rising with it - and in
a region where it's almost impossible to make broad, multi-lateral
political agreements, it's difficult to imagine a deal being struck to
manage water more fairly, more wisely and less competitively.There are
other factors which affect the level of the Dead Sea - both Israel and
Jordan use huge evaporation basins to extract valuable phosphates from
the water to be exported as fertiliser - but it's the striking decline
in the River Jordan which does most to explain why the Dead Sea is in
crisis.On the Jordanian shore of the sea, there is a small community of
families growing tomatoes, bananas and watermelons in fields kept lush
by underground supplies of fresh water, which sweep down from the
surrounding mountains.Among the farmers there is Salim al-Huwemel. Like
Nir Vanger in Ein Gedi, he feels rooted in the land."We'll never leave,"
he says as the young men of the village harvest melons in the cool
early evening sunset, "Even if the Dead Sea were to rise up and sweep us
into a sinkhole. We will always be here."Those sinkholes are the common
enemy of villages and business on both the Jordanian and Israeli
coastlines.They form when underground salt deposits left behind by the
sea as it retreats either collapse into huge chasms or dissolve when
fresh water seeps underground and causes the ground above to give
way.Some of the craters are huge - perhaps 100m across and 50m deep -
and in places it looks as though the area is in the grip of a powerful
earthquake happening over the course of several decades.The Jordanian
farmers showed me the ruined site of an old salt factory that collapsed
into a hole.On a section of shore that is within the West Bank, a resort
has been closed because part of it was swallowed up by another sink
hole.And an Israeli filling station has closed because the road around
it started to crack, split and collapse.All in all, there are now more
than 5,500 such holes around the shoreline where 40 years ago there were
none.This is somewhere where you feel geology is happening in real
time. Where the sea has retreated, the salt crust beneath your feet
creaks and crumbles deafeningly as though you're walking over sheets of
cracked glass.It is an exciting place to be a scientist, says Dr Gidi
Baer of the Geological Survey of Israel. Dr Baer says geologists are
getting better at predicting where sinkholes are going to open - which
is important when you consider that there are several busy roads running
around the coastline. But the problem's getting worse."The number's not
linear," he told me. "It's growing and accelerating. This year, for
example, about 700 sinkholes formed, but in previous years the number
was lower. In the 1990s it was a few dozen, now it's
hundreds."Diagnosing what's wrong with the Dead Sea isn't difficult - it
has after all been shrinking for at least 100 years, since those
British engineers left their mark in the rock.Deciding what, if
anything, should be done about the water level is more complex - a huge
scientific and political issue. Geologists make the point that the level
of the water in the past has probably been both higher and lower than
it is now.The question is what the costs and benefits of any attempt to
"save" the Dead Sea might be - whether that would be to slow the rate of
decline or to do something vastly more ambitious and start to raise the
level again."You have to ask, what we are trying to preserve here,"
says Dr Ittai Gavrieli, another scientist from the Geological Survey of
Israel."Are we trying to raise the water level? To preserve the unique
chemistry of the Dead Sea? And for what purpose - for tourism? If we
want to restore the flow of the Jordan river, for example, then Israel
would have to desalinate more water and that would cost money and have
an environmental impact too."If the Jordan were ever restored, of
course, it would be impossible to expect that Palestinian and Jordanian
farming communities desperate for water on either bank would simply sit
back and let the water flow by in the interests of science.But there is,
of course, a case for doing something.Salem Abdel Rahman, a Jordanian
activist for the Ecopeace Middle East environmental group puts it like
this: "We are not talking about saving the Dead Sea because it's nice or
not nice. We think that the Dead Sea is a symptom of sickness in the
management of water resources. The saving of the Dead Sea will be a good
indication that we moved away from sickness to a healthy
environment."If the waters of the River Jordan are not to be restored,
the likeliest scheme to revitalise the Dead Sea involves constructing a
huge pipeline that would bring water across the desert from the Red Sea,
far to the south.Similar ideas have been around for long time - British
engineers once contemplated constructing canals to connect the
Mediterranean to the Red Sea via the Dead Sea.It would have provided an
alternative to the Suez Canal under British control, but proved
impracticable because of the depth at which the Dead Sea lies below sea
level.Even by modern engineering standards, the Red-Dead project as it's
known would present some formidable technical challenges.Water would
have to be desalinated first at the Red Sea (salty water would pollute
the Dead Sea's unique chemistry). It would then have to be pumped up to a
great height and fed into enormous pipes that would channel the water
across the desert to its destination.The extra fresh water would benefit
not just Jordan and Israel but the Palestinians too, so the World Bank
is keen and the US is likely to provide at least some of the start-up
capital.But the technical, financial and political difficulties are
forbidding and the pipeline is unlikely to be built soon, if indeed at
all.It's possible, of course, that the countries of the Middle East will
find that co-operation impossible - multilateral agreements in this
part of the world are rare.In which case, the Dead Sea will continue to
shrink at something like its current rate for years to come, but it
won't die.The science of saltiness and saturation means that the Dead
Sea will eventually reach a point of equilibrium where it will stop
shrinking. In simple terms, the amount of water in the sea's briny
cocktail and the amount of evaporated moisture in the air above it would
reach a kind of balance.And the Dead Sea has another trick up its
sleeve too - it is prone to a certain level of evaporation for example
but it's also hygroscopic, which means it is capable of absorbing water
from the atmosphere around it. It's almost as though this endangered
natural treasure has a kind of in-built safety mechanism.The
sun-loungers in Jordan and Israel alike may have to be pushed quite a
bit further across the beach before we get to this point, but a minimum
level will one day be reached.So this is not in the end a story about
how the Dead Sea is going to die - more an encouraging story about how
nature in a region where man has not always been careful with natural
resources can sometimes find a way to protect itself.