Compass Point

Today I will be in the Beyond Today studio taping two programs, "The Bible's Challenge to You" and Armageddon in Your Lifetime".

While writing the first program I used a book, "Religious Literacy" for background information. Stephen Prothero's book was useful to trace not just the lack of understanding that most people today have about religion in general and the Bible in particular. He also gives the historical reasons for the decline in religious education in America.

I knew the statistics about Biblical illiteracy but to understand the cultural changes over the last 175 years to bring this about has been interesting. My point in the program is to bring to light the challenge from God's word to "prove" God and the Bible to be the source of life for all humans.

The program on Armageddon is being done with Scott Ashely, the managing editor of The Good News magazine. He and I traveled to Megiddo several months ago and walked over the ancient site of Megiddo, the site of the events in Revelation 16. This should be a good program  as we both are very interested in the history of the Bible lands and prophecy.

Israel is Doomed (Again)

There are a number of clearl thinking voices commenting on the threat to Israel from Iran and other radical Islamic groups. This article by Paul Greenberg is just one example.

A thought struck me when I read  the part about the demographics  of  Israelis and Arabs...
 

But even if none of those potential disasters materialize, there is always the demographic bomb. As Hillel Halkin points out, Israel's Arab population is growing far faster than its Jewish one. ("Israel's Jewish majority, whose ratio to its Arab minority was 10-to-1 in the 1950s and now stands at 4-to-1, will continue to shrink, almost certainly to 3-to-1 and possibly well-beyond . . ." Till slowly Israel's Jews, like Lebanon's Christians, find themselves outnumbered, beleaguered, and engulfed in sporadic civil war. 

Israel, like all other modern western nations (the US included), is facing a decline in the birth rate of the native born majority. The abortion rate in Israel is quite high compared to its population. Between 1979 and 2003 over 433,000 (13% of children) abortions were legally performed. Since the beginning of the state in 1948 it is estimated that over two million murders of unborn childrren have been done.

Those statistics are sobering and shocking. The modern Jewish state has succumbed to the ancient rites of child sacrifice so prevalent in that land before God handed it to their ancestors  in the days of Joshua. When Israel incorporated these hideous rites into their own culture God sent them into captivity, obliterated the nation.

Abortion is the result of the deification of the self. It is an act of convenience that robs the soul of a people rendering them incapable of determining right and wrong. It is gross idolatry for which God will yet bring another captivity on modern Israel, and this includes more than the current Jewish state.

Israel indeed is doomed, but the punishment will come from God. He may use whom He will as the instrument of His judgment, but it will surely come unless there is a repentance that clears this stain from the land.