The Middle East

Over the last 5 months or so I have taken quite the interest in the Middle East. Anything to do with it, the history of it, whats going on today and how it matters to us. After all it is where everything began, and is the center of most of the happenings in the Bible, so it had to be somewhat important.

I think what sparked my interest in the Middle East was my beginning to become more involved with prophecy and end times happenings, and there were just a lot of prophecy that has to do with things in the Mid East and more specifically, Israel. I then got suggested an author to read by one of my great friends Garrett, who had been becoming increasingly interested in the same thing I had. He suggested I read some stuff of Joel Rosenburg. So I began to read the books “Epicenter” and “Inside the Revolution”. Before Rosenburg wrote these to non-fiction books, he wrote a series of political thrillers, starting with “The Last Jihad”. In this series he based his writings on prophecy from Ezekiel 38-39.  Strangely enough a lot of stuff was happening in his books that was happening after he had wrote it. Such as the opening scene from “The Last Jihad” is two planes crashing into American buildings in an act of terrorism. “The Last Jihad” was published some time before the events of 9-11, at least 6 months I believe. But as I have read both of his books I have began to learn a lot about the Middle East. There are so many prophetic things come true that it is crazy really. Like in Eziekel it talks about how Russia and Iran will come together against Israel, and looks like it is coming true. It talks about how Israel will become united again and establish itself, which happened a good while ago. One that I just came across in reading “Epicenter” I found very interesting. There is prophecy in the Bible that says Israel will be given great gifts of the depths (oil?). Now Israel had never been known to be a place that had a huge surplus of oil at all. But over the past years there have been huge findings of oil in Israel, in fact I believe I read that it was there may be some of the biggest findings of oil that have ever been found in Israel (which is prophesied that Israel will have great great prosperity in the last days). Even crazier is that these findings have been found in the Valley of Megiddo, which if you don’t know is where the battle of Armageddon is supposed to take place. Somebody in Rosenburgs book asks, what could Israel possess in the last days that would make it such a prize for conquest that world’s armies would meet there to fight the spoils? …..perhaps the one of the greatest oil deposits ever found?

Those are just a few of the things that have interested in my pursuit of knowledge of what is going on in the Middle East. Rosenburg also gets into Islam and the difference in the radicals and the reformers, which is also very interesting. There is just so much more going on, I can’t even begin to get into it all, nor am I anywhere close to understanding it all. I think that everybody should take an interest and try to gain an understanding to what is going on over there. If anything just so you understand what is going on in the world. God is doing some stuff I believe, and I think we should all be paying attention to what is going on outside of our little worlds. Check out Joel Rosenburg’s blog at http://flashtrafficblog.wordpress.com/