Cheney Pushes; Rice Holds Bush Back

In the world of scuttlebutt news, there is a lot of speculation and contradictions, because people read the signs differently.

Apparently, within the White House itself, there are two differing views as to how to handle the Iranian nuclear question, and President Bush appears to be caught in the middle.

Vice President Cheney is said to have been pushing for war with Iran for a long time, while Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice opposes it. The Guardian (from the U.K.) gives some insight into this push and pull (quoted also in the Jerusalem Post).

http://www.guardian.co.uk/frontpage/story/0,,2127343,00.html

The article reads, in part:

The Washington source said Mr Bush and Mr Cheney did not trust any potential successors in the White House, Republican or Democratic, to deal with Iran decisively. They are also reluctant for Israel to carry out any strikes because the US would get the blame in the region anyway.

"The red line is not in Iran. The red line is in Israel. If Israel is adamant it will attack, the US will have to take decisive action," Mr Cronin said. "The choices are: tell Israel no, let Israel do the job, or do the job yourself."

Almost half of the US's 277 warships are stationed close to Iran, including two aircraft carrier groups. The aircraft carrier USS Enterprise left Virginia last week for the Gulf. A Pentagon spokesman said it was to replace the USS Nimitz and there would be no overlap that would mean three carriers in Gulf at the same time.

No decision on military action is expected until next year. In the meantime, the state department will continue to pursue the diplomatic route.

[End of quote]

One thing this article shows clearly: this confrontation with Iran is all about the Israeli state and American commitment to the ideals of Zionism. "The red line is in Israel."

It really comes down to what Isaiah calls "the controversy of Zion" (Isaiah 34:8). Who owns the land? Do the Zionists have the God-given right to take it away from the Palestinians by force? There is no question that the Zionist movement is the root cause of the present conflict, at least in the modern era. But the question goes much deeper than this, because it is ultimately rooted in Scripture and in events going back to the book of Genesis.

This is why it is so important that we understand the biblical nature of this conflict and which prophecies are actually being fulfilled in all of this. Most of the Christian world believes that the Jews are Israel and that the prophecies of the regathering of the house of Israel are being fulfilled in Zionism. They believe also that the Palestinians are opposing the Divine Will by not signing their land over to Jewish immigrants and leaving for other lands.

It is becoming more and more common to read statements equating the Palestinians either to the ancient Philistines, Canaanites, or Edomites in order to cast them as "bad guys" in the sight of God. Not only does such a view presume that we are living in Old Covenant times, but it is also just a shoddy historical view.

Anyone who studies history can see that with the conquests and migrations of people over the centuries, the present-day Palestinians are not the ancient Philistines or Canaanites. Those people disappeared or were driven out long ago, and were replaced for many centuries by Greek and Roman Christians--after the Jews were expelled. After the rise of Islam, those people were conquered, and other people moved in among them.

As for Edom, plain history tells us that the Edomites were conquered and absorbed into world Jewry around 126 B.C. This is recorded in every history book, including the Jewish Encyclopedia. The Edomites were the most radical Jews in the war with the Romans, as Josephus clearly tells us. Many of them were killed, of course, in 70 A.D., but the rest of them were expelled from the land AS JEWS, and as Josephus says, "hereafter were no other than Jews" (Antiquities of the Jews, XIII, ix, 1).

So if we fast-forward to modern times, where we have seen a Zionist-Jewish immigration to Palestine, WHO ARE THE REAL EDOMITES? Certainly not the Palestinians, unless some Jews happened to remain among them for the past 2,000 years who were descendants of those original Edomites. No, Church leaders and prophecy teachers are either lying or ignorant of plain history. Actually, they are blinded by God Himself in order to fulfill an underlying Divine Purpose of which they know nothing.

This is why I wrote my book, The Struggle for the Birthright. It is to show this underlying purpose and its roots in the book of Genesis. It shows how Jacob obtained the birthright in an unlawful manner from Esau-Edom. It shows how their father Isaac prophesied that Esau would obtain the dominion at some point in history in order to do justice to him. It shows how modern Zionism was God's way of forcing Jacob (Britain) to give back the birthright to Esau in 1948, in order to allow Esau time to prove himself unworthy of it.

But in order to accomplish this, God had to blind the Church and most of the Western world, so that they would not know what they were doing. The Church can certainly claim ignorance in this, and for this reason God will limit the amount of judgment upon the Church. But the only real solution is for God to intervene, open the eyes of the Church, cause them to repent, and then let God "right the unrightable wrong."

Meanwhile, God has called some of us to bear witness of the truth in this matter, so that those who have eyes to see will see.