Monthly Archives: March 2009

NETANYAHU WARNS IRANIAN MESSIANIC APOCALYPTIC CULT MAY GET NUCLEAR WEAPONS: If U.S. doesn’t act, Israel will

March 31, 2009 By in Epicenter

netanyahu-firstspeech

(San Diego, CA) — Newly-inaugurated Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is wasting no time in laying out the existential threats facing Western civilization. In his first speech to the nation, as well as in various media interviews, he warned that Iran’s messianic, apocalpytic cult leaders will get their hands on nuclear weapons soon, and that if the U.S. won’t act decisively to stop Iran, Israel will.

“The Obama presidency has two great missions: fixing the economy, and preventing Iran from gaining nuclear weapons,” Netanyahu told The Atlantic. The Iranian drive for a nuclear weapon was a “hinge of history,” he said, emphasizing that all of “Western civilization” was responsible for preventing an Iranian bomb.

“You don’t want a messianic apocalyptic cult controlling atomic bombs,” Netanyahu said of the Iranian regime. “When the wide-eyed believer gets hold of the reins of power and the weapons of mass death, then the entire world should start worrying, and that is what is happening in Iran.”

“Iran is a composite leadership, but in that composite leadership there are elements of wide-eyed fanaticism that do not exist right now in any other would-be nuclear power in the world. That’s what makes them so dangerous,” he said. “Since the dawn of the nuclear age, we have not had a fanatic regime that might put its zealotry above its self-interest. People say that they’ll behave like any other nuclear power. Can you take the risk? Can you assume that?”

On Wednesday, Lt-General (ret.) Jerry Boykin and I will be addressing about 150 evangelical Christian leaders from all over southern California. We will be briefing them on the latest developments in Israel, Iran and the epicenter. We’ll be talking about the vital importance of mobilizing a global movement of Christians who will bless the people of Israel with everlasting love and unwavering support. We’ll answer their questions about the 2009 Epicenter Conference set for this Saturday, and share with them about the work of The Joshua Fund and our urgent mission — to “pray for peace, but prepare for war.” We’ll also be discussing some new projects and initiatives that I will brief you on soon, too.

“Israel seeks peace with the entire Arab and Muslim world, but continues to be threatened by the forces of Islamic extremists, Prime Minister-designate Binyamin Netanyahu said Tuesday evening,” reported the Jerusalem Post. “‘These are irregular times,’ Netanyahu told the Knesset plenum in opening marks to his speech….’Today Israel is faced with two tests — an economic crisis and a security crisis. The source of these crises are neither our past actions nor past mistakes… our [current] actions, however, will determine the results of these crises.’….Netanyahu pointed to the ‘spread of extreme Islam in our area, and all over the world,’ warning against the nuclear armament of these extreme forces, hinting at the development of Iran’s nuclear activities. The Iranian leader’s plan to erase Israel falls on deaf ears around the world, and is almost accepted as ‘routine,’ Netanyahu said.”

EPICENTER CONF. SET FOR APRIL 4

March 30, 2009 By in Epicenter
April 4th in San Diego

April 4th in San Diego

It’s shaping up to be a dramatic week. On Tuesday, Benjamin Netanyahu will become Israel’s next Prime Minister. Also on Tuesday, the U.S. and Iran begin direct talks in the Netherlands for the first time since the Shah of Iran was ousted from power in 1979. Meanwhile, the G20 Summit of world leaders begins in London on Thursday to discuss radical reconstructive surgery to the international financial system, including the Russian and Chinese proposal of creating a new, single, common global currency.

We’ll consider the significance of these and other developments and trends at the 2009 Epicenter Conference on Saturday, April 4th at Cox Arena in San Diego. Last April, we held the premiere Epicenter Conference in Jerusalem for some 2,000 Christian leaders from all over the world. This year, we are expecting upwards of 8,000 or more attendees.

The theme will be: “Understanding Today’s Global Crises In Light of Bible Prophecy.” Key speakers include Lt-General (ret.) Jerry Boykin discussing the most serious threats facing the U.S., Israel and our allies in 2009; Pastor Chuck Smith discussing God’s everlasting love for Israel and Ezekiel’s prophecies concerning the “War of Gog and Magog”; and several special guests. I will be speaking on the global economic crisis, Inside The Revolution, as well as on “The State of the Epicenter.” We’ll also be talking about the work of The Joshua Fund and how you can be involved in blessing Israel and her neighbors in the name of Jesus.

The event is free. No ticket is required. We will be taking an offering to help cover expenses. Just come early to make sure you get a seat, as guests are coming from all over the country. More than 40 churches around the U.S. will also be showing a live, high-resolution, broadband Internet feed of the conference to their congregations. Details on locations of these satellite venues will be announced later this week. You can also watch the event live on-line at www.epicenter09.com.

Please be praying for us. Thanks so much and God bless you.

>> Help The Joshua Fund help needy Israelis at Passover

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“REVOLUTION” CLIMBS TO #7

March 29, 2009 By in Epicenter

newyorktimes22Inside The Revolution climbed to #7 on the New York Times hardcover non-fiction best-seller list this week, up from #11 last week. ITR also hit #14 on the Publishers Weekly best-seller list this week.

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ISRAEL, EGYPT MARK 30 YEARS OF PEACE: 1979 was a game-changing year in the epicenter

March 27, 2009 By in Epicenter

 

Israel and Egypt signed an historic peace treaty on March 26, 1979

Israel and Egypt signed an historic peace treaty on March 26, 1979

>> Would you like to bless needy Israelis during this Passover season through The Joshua Fund?

The year 1979 was a game-changer in the epicenter for Radicals, Reformers and Revivalists alike.

  • In January 1979, the Shah of Iran — not a Reformer, but certainly a long-time friend of the U.S. and Israel — was ousted from power.
  • On February 1st, the Ayatollah Khomeini — the first true Radical of the modern era — returned to Iran after decades in exile and was met by millions of Muslims who greeted him as the possible Islamic Messiah, chanting, “The Holy One has come!” 
  • On March 26th, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat — the first true Reformer of the modern era — and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin signed the Camp David Accords at the White House, an historic peace treaty unprecedented in the annals of 4,000+ years of Jewish-Egyptian relations.
  • On April 1st, the Ayatollah Khomeini declared Iran the world’s first “Islamic Republic,” putting the country under Sharia law and creating a Radical tyranny unlike any other at the time in the Middle East.
  • By November of that pivotal year, Radical followers of Khomeini had seized the American Embassy in Tehran and began holding 52 hostages for 444 humiliating days.
  • Also in November, Radical Muslim gunmen led by a man claiming to be the Islamic Messiah known as a the “Twelfth Imam” seized a key mosque in Mecca and triggered an enormous crisis for the Saudi government (Saudi troops eventually had to storm the mosque, leaving hundreds dead and wounded)
  • In December of that year, the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, a move that would lead to the rise of Osama bin Laden and the birth of al Qaeda, the Radical terror network, and later the dissolution of the Soviet empire.
  • Curiously, it was also in December of 1979 that Warner Brothers and an evangelical Christian ministry called Campus Crusade For Christ released the JESUS film, a drama of the life of Jesus of Nazareth based on the Gospel According to Luke. It has since been translated into more than 1,000 languages and dialects, has been seen by more than two billion people worldwide, and has become a key tool used by Revivalists to reach Muslims with the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Something was clearly crackling in the spiritual realm that year. The question now is: Where are we thirty years later?

A few observations:

  • Reza Pahlavi, the son of the late Shah, now lives in Maryland and is trying to build a global movement to overthrow the mullahs and ayatollahs and bring democratic reform to Iran.
  • The Iranian Revolution is rapidly approaching its most dangerous moment. Its current leaders believe the end of the world is at hand, the Islamic Messiah’s return to earth is “imminent,” and the way to hasten the coming of the Twelfth Imam is to annihilate Israel and the U.S. What’s more, the current leaders of Iran are feverishly trying to build, buy or steal nuclear weapons and build alliances with three nuclear powers — Russia, China and North Korea.
  • Egypt and Israel have a cold but stable peace. True, Sadat was assassinated by Radicals, but he did inspire a new generation of Arab Muslim Reformers throughout the region, particularly in Iraq. Unfortunately, current Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak is by no means a Reformer. He is, instead, a “Resister” of almost any sort of positive change.
  • Menachem Begin’s disciple — Benjamin Netanyahu — is about to become the next Prime Minister of Israel.
  • Afghanistan is in the hands of the Reformers, though the Radicals of al Qaeda and the Taliban are battling hard to take it back.
  • The Revivalists have a new tool for reaching Muslims with the gospel — the new film, “Damascus,” which will premiere at the Vatican on May 16th and spread throughout Protestant and Catholic churches in the Middle East this summer. I just met with the executive producer of the film and will have more details soon.

Bottom line: Thirty years after the Islamic Revolution began in Iran, and the Reformer Revolution began with the Camp David Accords, and the Revivalist Revolution began with the JESUS film, the battle for hearts, minds and souls in the epicenter rages on with increasing intensity. Watching all three movements is the Islamic “Rank-and-File,” the vast majority of the world’s 1.3 billion Muslims. The Rank-and-File represent the vast middle ground of the Muslim world. They are going about their day-to-day lives without much of a desire to be Revolutionaries of any kind. But they are the audience to which the Radicals, the Reformers, and the Revivalists are speaking. If any of these major movements ever gains the majority — or even a working plurality — of the Rank-and-File, the entire world will be forever changed, for good or ill. Understanding these three Revolutionary movements — including the crises they are responding to and the answers they are offering — is of absolutely critical importance. Those who ignore these trends do so at their peril.

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EUROPEAN UNION PRESIDENT: U.S. ECONOMIC PLANS ARE “A ROAD TO HELL”

March 25, 2009 By in Epicenter

THURSDAY @ 7pm eastern: KBRT, “Rich Buhler,” southern CA

UPDATES:

The global economic crisis is bad and getting worse, and calls for sweeping changes are growing.

China is now so concerned about instability within the international economic system its leaders are heading into the April 2nd G20 summit in London calling for the creation of a new global “super currency,” a stable, simple, single, common form of foreign exchange. “The surprise proposal by Beijing’s central bank governor reflects unease about its vast holdings of U.S. government bonds and adds to Chinese pressure to overhaul a global financial system dominated by the dollar and Western governments,” reports the AP. “Both the United States and the European Union brushed off the idea.” China joins leaders in Russia, Iran, Libya and Kazakhstan who have called for a new single currency in some shape or form in recent weeks.

The Bank of England, meanwhile, is telling British Prime Minister Gordon Brown that the U.K. simply cannot afford a new stimulus (read: government spending) plan.

Now a senior European leader is calling the U.S. spend-your-way-out-of-the-crisis plan (involving $9.3 trillion in new debt over the next decade) an absolute disastrous approach. “The president of the European Union on Wednesday slammed U.S. plans to spend its way out of recession as ‘ road to hell,'” reports the AP. “Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek, whose country currently holds the rotating EU presidency, told the European Parliament that President Barack Obama’s massive stimulus package and banking bailout ‘will undermine the liquidity of the global financial market.’ A day after his government collapsed because of a parliamentary vote of no-confidence, Topolanek took the EU presidency on a collision course with Washington over how to deal with the global economic recession.”

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BIG VOTE IN ISRAEL TODAY: Labor Party votes to join government

March 24, 2009 By in Epicenter

Barak convinces Labor to join new governmentUPDATE: “Labor members voted in favor of chairman Ehud Barak’s proposal for the party to join a Likud-led government during Tuesday night’s convention at Tel Aviv’s Exhibition Grounds,” reports the Jerusalem Post. “1,071 party members attended the convention, with 58 percent voting in favor of joining  the government and 42% voting against it — a margin of 173 votes.”

ORIGINAL POST: Will they, or won’t they? That’s the big question at the moment. The 1,478 members of Israel’s Labor Party — led by former Prime Minister Ehud Barak — convenes Tuesday to decide whether to accept Benjamin Netanyahu’s offer to join his “unity” government in the face of existential threats from Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas.

Negotiators hammered out a draft agreement yesterday and overnight for the Labor delegates to review, debate and decide upon. A vote by secret ballot is being held, and news reports suggest the results should be known by 8pm Israel time, or 1pm eastern. Senior Labor Party leaders close to Barak say they believe they have the votes to win and join Netanyahu’s government. A significant development came when Labor MK Isaac Herzog announced he was endorsing the deal and voting to join the government. Herzog is widely seen as Barak’s successor. His father, the late Chaim Herzog, was one of Israel’s Founding Fathers and once the President of the country. If Labor does vote to join, Barak will be Defense Minister.

For other details of the agreement, see this report in the Jerusalem Post.

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GRANDSON OF KHOMEINI FIERCELY DENOUNCES REVOLUTION: The “mother of the Revolution” is dead at 93

March 23, 2009 By in Epicenter

The grandson of the Khomeinis is denouncing the Iranian Revolution.

The grandson of the Khomeinis is denouncing the Iranian Revolution.

Thirty years after the Revolution began — and twenty years after the death of her husband — the wife of the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini has died at the age of 93, reports the Associated Press.

Khadijeh Saqafi was known as the “mother of the Islamic revolution.” She died Saturday in Tehran. “Thousands of people, including Iran’s president and supreme leader, attended her funeral at Tehran University on Sunday….”Saqafi, who married Khomeini in 1931, stayed out of the public eye during much of her life,” reports AP. “Former Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani described her as the ‘closest and most patient’ supporter of her husband and his struggle against the U.S.-backed shah’s government, according to the state-run IRNA news agency….Saqafi is survived by three daughters. One of her son’s, Ahmad, died in 1995 at the age of 50 after suffering a massive cardiac arrest. Another son, Mostafa, was killed in 1977 in Iraq.”

The death of Khomeini’s widow will now open the door to renewed and more pointed analysis of the impact of the Islamic Revolution inside Iran. President Obama released a video on Friday reaching out to the leaders of Iran and holding out an olive branch I am convinced won’t be accepted and which reflects the administration’s disturbing lack of understanding of the eschatology — End Times theology — of the current Ayatollah and the President of Iran. Yet, in an extraordinary development, as I report in my new book, one of the Khomeini heirs is denouncing his grandfather’s and grandmother’s legacy and is calling for the creation of a pro-American democracy in Iran. What’s more, this grandson is siding with pro-democracy forces against the re-election of Ahmadinejad in June. Developing…

Excerpts from Chapter 16, “The Defector,” in Inside The Revolution:

On September 26, 2003, the grandson of the Ayatollah Khomeini—a highly respected Shia cleric in his own right—calmly stood up before an audience in Washington, D.C. He looked out over the crowd, took a deep breath, and then, speaking through an interpreter, denounced the Islamic Revolution, said it was time to usher in a new era of freedom and democracy in his country, and urged the Bush administration to mobilize the American people to overthrow the Iranian regime much as Winston Churchill had mobilized the British to destroy Adolf Hitler.

“As you know, the history of Iran in the nineteenth century was the history of a country under dictatorship,” Hossein Khomeini, then forty-four, told the gathering at the American Enterprise Institute, just blocks from the White House. “But the Revolution and Mr. Khomeini promised to change the Iranian situation and bring democracy to Iran. But, unfortunately, as things turned out, Iran[1] again became . . . [an] even worse dictatorship after the Revolution.”

The room was filled with over a hundred seasoned political professionals. They may have thought they had heard it all. But they had not heard this. Indeed, they could hardly believe it. This was no right-wing pundit speaking. This was no neoconservative policy wonk. This was a member of the ayatollah’s own family. This was the son of the ayatollah’s own firstborn son, Mostafa. And he had just become the Revolution’s most outspoken opponent.

The AEI speech was not the first time Hossein Khomeini had spoken out publicly against his family and the Revolution. He had actually been speaking out for years, and at the time was living not in Iran but in exile in Iraq. Just before coming to the States, he had given an interview on an Arabic television network in which he called the current Iranian regime “the world’s worst dictatorship” and argued that the mullahs in Iran were exploiting Islam “to continue their tyrannical rule.” What’s more, he called for “a democratic regime that does not make use of religion as a means of oppressing the people and strangling society” and insisted it was time “to separate the religion from the state.”

But this was the first time the Defector in Chief had spoken out against the Iranian regime on American soil. “At the beginning, the first few years of the Revolution, I was involved in that process,” Khomeini, who was in his early twenties in 1979, explained. “However, about two years after the Revolution, I started questioning and doubting the practices and behavior of the Islamic Republic, especially in terms of the executions and pressures on the public. . . . At that time I still believed in the legitimacy of a theocratic regime. Yet my criticism was reflected in the papers, in the newspapers of the time, and I was somehow forced to retire from politics and devoted all my time to religious studies. . . . [In] the last few years, I’ve come to the belief that a theocratic regime, a religious government, is not compatible with Islamic tenets, because that should be established only after the reappearance of the absent Twelfth Imam.”

This last sentence was a fascinating point, and one whose significance, I must admit, I did not understand properly at the time. I had not spent time studying the coming of the Twelfth Imam. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, after all, had not yet emerged as the president of Iran, and no Shia Muslim leaders that I was aware of were talking openly about the “imminent” arrival of the Mahdi, much less about the apocalyptic implications of such a development. Like many in Washington, in the fall of 2003 I was focused mostly on the exciting liberation of Iraq and what this meant for the rest of the region.

But Hossein Khomeini was ahead of the curve. He had been thinking long and hard about Shia theology and trying to come to logical conclusions about what his beliefs meant for his own life and the lives of his countrymen.

In the process, he had come to two conclusions: 1) the Islamic Revolution had been an unmitigated disaster, crushing the lives and dreams of millions of Iranians; and 2) as he noted to the AEI crowd, “religion cannot mix with government in the absence of the Messiah.” That is, Khomeini believes that until the Mahdi comes and sets up his global caliphate, there is no place on earth for an Islamic government predicated on Sharia law….

INTERVIEW SCHEDULE ON MONDAY (all times eastern and subject to change)

  • Noon to 1pm — American Family Radio Network (live)
  • 3:15pm to 4pm — Worldview Radio with Brannon House (taped — to be aired Wednesday)
  • 4:15pm to 5pm — Janet Parshall Show (live)
  • 5:15pm to 5:45pm — KJSL, St. Louis (live)
  • 6:30pm to 7:00pm — “Victoria Taft Show,” KPAM, Portland (taped)
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INSIDE THE REVOLUTION HITS BEST-SELLER LISTS

March 22, 2009 By in Epicenter

newyorktimes21

Inside The Revolution debuted this week at #11 on the New York Times hardcover non-fiction best-seller list.

ITR also debuted on Friday at #6 on the Wall Street Journal hardcover non-fiction best-seller list.

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* Would you like to tour Israel with Joel C. Rosenberg and The Joshua Fund, see the places where Jesus walked, and pray for the peace of Jerusalem? Please click here for more information on TJF’s “Prayer & Vision Trip” and “Jerusalem Prayer Summit” to be held November 5-17.

PRESIDENT OBAMA APPEALS TO LEADERS OF IRAN, BUT IGNORES THEIR END TIMES THEOLOGY

March 20, 2009 By in Epicenter
President Obama appeals to Iran's leaders through a video released for the Persian new year

President Obama appeals to Iran's leaders through a video released for the Persian new year

“President Barack Obama told Iran’s people and leaders that the United States wants to engage with their country and end decades of strained relationship, but not unless their officials stop making threats,” reports the Associated Press. “Obama on Friday released a video message with Farsi subtitles that urged the two countries to resolve their long-standing differences. His video was timed to the festival of Nowruz (no-ROOZ), which means ‘new day.’ It marks the arrival of spring and is a major holiday in Iran.”

Excerpts:

  • “So in this season of new beginnings I would like to speak clearly to Iran’s leaders. We have serious differences that have grown over time. My administration is now committed to diplomacy that addresses the full range of issues before us, and to pursuing constructive ties among the United States, Iran and the international community…..We will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist….”
  • “You, too, have a choice. The United States wants the Islamic Republic of Iran to take its rightful place in the community of nations. You have that right, but it comes with real responsibilities, and that place cannot be reached through terror or arms, but rather through peaceful actions that demonstrate the true greatness of the Iranian people and civilization….”
  • “For nearly three decades relations between our nations have been strained. But at this holiday we are reminded of the common humanity that binds us together.”

What the President and his senior advisors are missing — and what I explain in detail in the new book — is that the leaders of Iran have already made their choice. They believe the end of the world is at hand, that the Islamic Messiah’s arrival is “imminent,” and that the way to hasten the coming of the “Mahdi” or the “Twelfth Imam” is to annihilate Israel and the United States and destroy Judeo-Christian civilization as we know it. They fear the fires of hell if they “disobey” what they believe Allah has told them to do. The sooner Washington understands that, the sooner they can begin coming to grips with the fact that the regime in Tehran today is far more dangerous than the one we faced thirty years ago this spring when the Ayatollah Khomeini rose to power and we severed all diplomatic ties.

* Please join us for the 2009 Epicenter Conference on April 4th in San Diego (and on-line)

* To download Inside The Revolution to your iPod, please click here

* Inside The Revolution hits #6 on the Wall Street Journal hardcover non-fiction best-seller list

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U.N. PANEL SAYS WORLD SHOULD DITCH THE DOLLAR: World leaders discussing move to single currency

March 19, 2009 By in Epicenter
Will the euro become the world's currency?

Will the euro become the world's currency?

“A U.N. panel will next week recommend that the world ditch the dollar as its reserve currency in favor of a shared basket of currencies, a member of the panel said on Wednesday, adding to pressure on the dollar,” reports a Reuters story this morning.

“Currency specialist Avinash Persaud, a member of the panel of experts, told a Reuters Funds Summit in Luxembourg that the proposal was to create something like the old Ecu, or European currency unit, that was a hard-traded, weighted basket. Persaud, chairman of consultants Intelligence Capital and a former currency chief at JPMorgan, said the recommendation would be one of a number delivered to the United Nations on March 25 by the U.N. Commission of Experts on International Financial Reform. ‘It is a good moment to move to a shared reserve currency,’ he said.”

The story comes just a day after the Moscow Times reported that Russian leaders are coming to the G20 summit of world leaders in London on April 2nd prepared to call for moving to a new single common currency. The leaders of Iran, Libya and Kazakhstan have also begun speaking about creating single currencies within their regions — the Middle East, Africa and Central Asia, respectively. The IMF, Asian Development Bank and other international and regional financial institutions in recent years have been studying how to move to a single currency as well. The “Euro” is the model many are looking to, in part because 20% of the world’s foreign exchange reserves are already held in euros.