With concerns rising about a possible Israel war with Iran this fall, the U.S. and Israel will soon hold a major military exercise.  “The US and Israel will commence the largest-ever joint air defense drill of its  kind in Israel on October 21, an army source said on Tuesday,” reports the Jerusalem Post. “The  exercise, named Austere Challenge 12, was originally scheduled for last spring  but was postponed due to regional tensions with Iran. On October 14,  large numbers of American soldiers are expected to begin arriving in Israel,  where they will set up aerial defense positions on Israeli territory and on US  Navy vessels off the Israeli coastline. The three-week drill will  simulate various missile defense scenarios, and is expected to end with a  live-fire interception of a decoy incoming Patriot missile….At the end of August, the US  said it would decrease the original number of American forces due to take part  in AC12. An Israeli defense source said at the time that the exercise will still  be the largest of its kind to date, adding, ‘Defense cooperation between Israel  and the US has never been better.’ In 2009, the IDF and US European  Command held the Juniper Cobra 10 air defense exercise, which involved 1,400 US  soldiers and the same number of IDF soldiers. The drill went through  three phases: a field training exercise; computer simulation command  post-exercise to test interoperability capabilities; and a live-fire exercise  involving a Patriot missile interception.”

On the same day, IDF’s Home Front Command will run a national earthquake emergency drill. Israeli officials believe the country will soon experience a massive, devastating earthquake and that the Jewish state is not yet adequately prepared to handle such a disaster. “The IDF Home Front Command will hold a nationwide drill this month aimed at  preparing emergency services and the general population for the scenario of a  destructive earthquake,” reports the Jerusalem Post. “The drill, Turning Point 6, will commence on  October 21 and will be unique among Home Front exercises by focusing on a  natural disaster, rather than simulating missile attacks from multiple fronts,  as it has done in the past….Israel sits on the  active Syrian- African fault line, and geologists have warned that the region is  due for a major earthquake. Geologists have predicted a quake measuring at least  a six on the Richter scale in the coming years. The last major earthquake struck the area in 1927, killing 300 people in Jerusalem and Jericho. In 1837, some 4,000 people were killed when an earthquake centered near Lake Kinneret rocked the area. In this month’s drill, a mock earthquake will  occur in the Arava area of the south and the upper Galilee in the north, causing  widespread destruction in the Gush Dan metropolitan area. The drill will include  scenarios of tsunami waves striking Tel Aviv beaches. Planners of the  exercise will ask emergency services to deal with 7,000 ‘casualties,’ 70,000  injuries and 170,000 displaced people.” See also: Drill to prepare home front for major quake (Ynet News)

Bible prophecy does, in fact, indicate that Israel will face terrible wars in the “last days,” as well as several devastating earthquakes. Consider two examples:

• Ezekiel 38:18-20 –“It will come about on that day, when Gog comes against the land of Israel, declares the Lord God, that My fury will mount up in My anger. In My zeal and in My blazing wrath I declare that on that day there will surely be a great earthquake in the land of Israel. The fish of the sea, the birds of the heavens, the beasts of the field, all the creeping things that creep on the earth, and all the men who are on the face of the earth will shake at My presence; the mountains also will be thrown down, the steep pathways will collapse and every wall will fall to the ground.”
• Revelation 6:12-17 — “I looked when He broke the sixth seal, and there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth made of hair, and the whole moon became like blood;and the stars of the sky fell to the earth, as a fig tree casts its unripe figs when shaken by a great wind.The sky was split apart like a scroll when it is rolled up, and every mountain and island were moved out of their places.Then the kings of the earth and the great men and the commanders and the rich and the strong and every slave and free man hid themselves in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains;and they said to the mountains and to the rocks, ‘Fall on us and hide us from the presence of Him who sits on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb; for the great day of their wrath has come, and who is able to stand?’”

In the Scriptures, God tells Israel’s enemy to “get ready, be prepared” for the prophetic traumas that are coming (Ezekiel 38:7, NIV). It behooves the State of Israel to get ready, too, as well as the Church.

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• The Tehran Initiative — a political thriller about an American President pressuring an Israeli Prime Minister not to launch a preemptive strike against Iran
• The Ezekiel Option — a novel about what it would look like if the prophecies of Ezekiel 38-39 (the “War of Gog & Magog”) came true in our lifetime
• Implosion: Can America Recover From Its Economic & Spiritual Challenges In Time?
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