Iraq's President Talabani suffers stroke

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/18/jalal-talabani-stroke-iraq-president_n_2321542.html

BAGHDAD — Iraqi President Jalal Talabani has suffered a stroke and was in intensive care at a Baghdad hospital Tuesday, injecting new uncertainty into the country's political future a year after the U.S. military left…

The presidential office initially said Tuesday that Talabani was hospitalized the previous evening after showing signs of fatigue…

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki was among those who stopped by to check on the president, according to his spokesman, Ali al-Moussawi…

Iraq at one point had three vice presidents at a time, though one resigned last year and the other, Sunni politician Tariq al-Hashemi, has fled the country after arrest warrants were issued against him.

In the event of the president's death, Shiite Vice President Khudier al-Khuzaie would be expected to assume the president's duties temporarily because he is the only vice president remaining in Iraq, said legal expert Tariq Harb.

Lawmakers would have up to one month to choose a permanent replacement. Iraq's Kurds would likely insist that the presidency remain in their hands, though there is no guarantee of that outcome.

Comment:

Iraq has always been an important country to watch, because it is a prophetic type of Babylon. For this reason we have believed for years that Iraq would eventually fracture into three separate nations, according to the pattern on Revelation 16:19,

¹⁹ And the great city was split into three parts, and the cities of the nations fell. And Babylon the great was remembered before God, to give her the cup of the wine of His fierce wrath.

Iraq has a political and religious fault line with the Kurds in the north, the Sunnis in the middle, and the Shia in the south. I believe that in the end, the country will split apart, and when it does, the nation’s currency will collapse as well. But before that happens, the currency will rise to where it was before the first Gulf War.

Iraq is NOT Babylon, of course, but only a type. Today’s “Babylon” is a worldwide system empowered mostly by the Western banking system, which prints “currency” that is its life blood. This currency is the “current,” that is, its Euphrates River, and for this reason, we have watched the Iraqi dinar as part of the signs of Babylon.

History shows us that when King Cyrus of Persia, allied with King Darius the Mede, conquered Babylon, they diverted the river and came into the city on the dry river bed. We believe that this will unfold today as the revaluation of the dinar.

But when Babylon was overthrown in Daniel 5, the king was killed (5:30). For this reason, we have believed that Prime Minister Maliki would be overthrown, kicked out of office, or killed at the time of the revaluation of the currency. So when President Talabani had a stroke and was said to be in a coma, I wondered if perhaps we had been watching the wrong “king.” Since Iraq has no king as such, we have to deal with presidents and prime ministers.

Yet it still comes down to the fact that Maliki’s name is derived from a leader or king. Even in Hebrew, Melek means “king.” And in a parliamentary system, a president holds little actual power. It is the prime minister that holds power. So Maliki is the real king in Iraq, not Talabani. His power grab in recent years has only proven this view.

Even so, Talabani’s stroke Monday night, announced on Tuesday, is a partial fulfillment of Daniel 5:30. I consider him to be an early indication of something more to come. The Iraqi constitution says that they must hold elections in 30 days from the time that the presidential seat is vacated. If the seat was vacated yesterday, December 18, then perhaps they will hold elections around January 17, 2013, which happens to be 21 years since the start of the Gulf War in 1991 (that is, the bombing campaign).

It is also 16 x 414 days (inclusive) since our Jubilee Prayer Campaign (November 29, 1993).

It is also 30 years since I joined the Net of Prayer on January 17, 1983. This makes it a watch date, because we are repeating many aspects of the time cycle that we saw from November 1982 until late January 1983.

We are also watching January 23 and 27 in particular, as these dates end the current cycle of watch dates.

So perhaps Talabani’s stroke is a precursor to next month’s events. At any rate, the fact that such a significant person suffered a stroke toward the end of our Cosmic warfare (which ends today at 2:16 p.m., CST), provides a strong link.

To this we might add Mrs. Clinton’s recent hospitalization after fainting and suffering a concussion. When we see unusual events like this, we can often see them as dim reflections of a spiritual battle going on in the heavens.