"The end of all things is near; therefore, be of sound judgment and sober spirit for the purpose of prayer. Above all, keep fervent in your love for one another, because love covers a multitude of sins" (1 Peter 4:7-8).
"Know this first of all, that in the last days mockers will come with their mocking, following after their own lusts, and saying, 'Where is the promise of His coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all continues just as it was from the beginning of creation' " (2 Peter 3:3-4).
Sobriety and mockery are both characteristics of the last days. Immediately prior to the return of Messiah Yeshua, the opposing seeds of fervent love and unbridled lust will bear fruit which will be manifested for all to see.
The Middle East is an anvil upon which the ways of God and the counterfeits of the enemy are being hammered out. The restoration of the Jewish people to both their patriarchal homeland and to their covenantal God have catalyzed satanic counter-plots. Intercessors need to be aware of these evil strategies, and to respond appropriately in prayer.
The crocodile of appeasement
Winston Churchill once declared, "An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last." At another time he added, "If a dog makes a dash for my trousers, I shoot him down before he can bite." Churchill in his day was trying to wake a sleeping England and a slumbering Europe regarding the looming threat of Nazi tyranny. For the most part the lion's share of British leadership did not want to believe Winston's warnings.
Churchill spoke out when Britain caved in to Hitler over the surrender of Czech Sudetenland to the German Reich: "The partition of Czechoslovakia under pressure from England and France amounts to the complete surrender of the Western democracies to the Nazi threat of force … It is not Czechoslovakia alone which is menaced, but also the freedom and the democracy of all nations. The belief that security can be obtained by throwing a small state to the wolves is a fatal delusion."
Churchill's prophetic warning was ignored by the British Empire's leaders, and the result was World War II. He avowed to Neville Chamberlin on the latter's return to England with the Munich Accords in his hands, "You were given the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor and you will have war."
The same spirit of appeasement is alive and well and living in all the major capitals of the Western world, and much of it is focused on appeasing the world of Islamism and its attitudes and goals vis-à-vis the Jewish people and their state.
Appeasing jihad
In 2008 I found myself walking through a rough neighborhood in Munich, Germany with my oldest son. We passed through a tense crowd of Kurds demonstrating in an equally tense Turkish neighborhood – all of them ringed by tense German riot police. On the other side of that potential mayhem, we happened upon an old Lutheran church built in the mid 1800's. Meditating beside the gravestones, I mused about whether or not these Christians of yesteryear could have imagined the earth-shaking changes that were to befall Germany within 150 years of their passing on – two World Wars, the rise of a racist and murderous fascist terror apparatus, the swelling of a significant and non-assimilating Islamic immigrant population (containing active Islamist and Salafist terror cells). It would have staggered their imagination.
Today many German Lutherans (and other Western Christians as well) are post-Modernist, having gone through the loss of their own personal faith in Yeshua. Mistakenly, this post-Christian Western world blindly believes that the Middle East has gone through a similar loss of faith in Islam, or that the Islamic world can be persuaded to step away from Quranic extremes through the influence of Western secular and material blandishments. The West is always puzzled when Islamists not only reject Western culture, but when they actively try to destroy both that culture and Westerners as well. But rather than respond as did Churchill to the aggressive canine, the Western world stands frozen in shock, mired in rejection – deeply puzzled as to why Islamists hate them.
The more that jihadis push for their agenda, the more that jihadi lone wolves or Islamist terror cells attack Westerners or Israelis – the more it seems that the spirit of appeasement rises to fog the situation, to obfuscate and impede clear vision of Islamism both as a source of terrorism and as an enemy force. The combination of fear of increased Islamist terror coupled with spectacles filmy with Middle Eastern oil – these motives have led to a censoring at the government level of clear warnings regarding the jihadi danger. The avoidance of the words 'terror,' 'terrorist' and 'Islamist' on the part of US and European governments and Western news media reveals the spirit of appeasement at work. The present American government's refusal to classify jihadi attacks in Boston or at Fort Hood as Islamist terror reveals the depth of this spiritual appeasement.
Churchill once expressed an optimistic faith in his American allies: "The Americans will always do the right thing...after they've exhausted all the alternatives." May Churchill's optimistic take be shown to have some practical foundation, speedily and in our day!
Pray for the leaders of the West – that they will have a revelation of the dangers facing them; that they will have the courage to speak out and respond pro-actively; that they will give their heart to Yeshua
The threat of world Communism
When Hitler wrote his Mein Kampf ('My struggle,' where he openly advocated genocide of the Jewish people), for the most part the West refused to take him seriously. The Fuehrer is only saying those things for internal political needs; he would never make such crazy plans actionable, said the West.
In the 1920's and 30's Marxism-Leninism arose as a new totalitarian dictatorship, intent at overtaking and conquering the West. At that time many liberals scoffed at those who saw Communism as a world threat. Even when the death toll in Stalin's gulags rose to surpass Hitler's camps, and even after the suppression of Jewish life and culture in the Soviet Union was clear, many sympathizers (including my own parents) refused to come to terms with these cold realities.
President Ronald Reagan spoke clearly to this dynamic of appeasement in his day, on October 27, 1964 in a speech known as "A Time for Choosing":
"We cannot buy our security, our freedom from the threat of the bomb by committing an immorality so great as saying to a billion human beings now enslaved behind the Iron Curtain, 'Give up your dreams of freedom because to save our own skins, we're willing to make a deal with your slave masters.' Alexander Hamilton said, 'A nation which can prefer disgrace to danger is prepared for a master, and deserves one.' Now let's set the record straight. There's no argument over the choice between peace and war, but there's only one guaranteed way you can have peace – and you can have it in the next second – surrender.
Admittedly, there's a risk in any course we follow other than this, but every lesson of history tells us that the greater risk lies in appeasement, and this is the specter our well-meaning liberal friends refuse to face – that their policy of accommodation is appeasement, and it gives no choice between peace and war, only between fight or surrender. If we continue to accommodate, continue to back and retreat, eventually we have to face the final demand – the ultimatum. And what then – when Nikita Khrushchev has told his people he knows what our answer will be? He has told them that we're retreating under the pressure of the Cold War, and someday when the time comes to deliver the final ultimatum, our surrender will be voluntary, because by that time we will have been weakened from within spiritually, morally, and economically. He believes this because from our side he's heard voices pleading for 'peace at any price' or 'better Red than dead,' or as one commentator put it, he'd rather 'live on his knees than die on his feet.' And therein lies the road to war, because those voices don't speak for the rest of us.
You and I know and do not believe that life is so dear and peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery. If nothing in life is worth dying for, when did this begin – just in the face of this enemy? Or should Moses have told the children of Israel to live in slavery under the pharaohs? Should Christ have refused the cross? Should the patriots at Concord Bridge have thrown down their guns and refused to fire the shot heard 'round the world? The martyrs of history were not fools, and our honored dead who gave their lives to stop the advance of the Nazis didn't die in vain. Where, then, is the road to peace? Well it's a simple answer after all.
You and I have the courage to say to our enemies, 'There is a price we will not pay.' 'There is a point beyond which they must not advance'…Winston Churchill said, 'The destiny of man is not measured by material computations. When great forces are on the move in the world, we learn we're spirits – not animals.' And he said, 'There's something going on in time and space, and beyond time and space, which, whether we like it or not, spells duty.' You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We'll preserve for our children this…last best hope of man…, or we'll sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness."
The threat of world jihad
Parallels can and should be drawn between Churchill's day and ours. While the West pushes Israel to whittle down the borders of its biblical homeland, the Islamist world continues to trumpet its own jihadi agenda:
Islamist leaders from Egypt to Saudi Arabia (both American allies) call for jihad and total genocide against the Jewish people and the State of Israel, backing up their calls with spine-chilling quotes from Islam's two authoritative holy books (the Quran and the Hadith)
The Arab Palestinian world has split into two forces (Islamist Hamas in Gaza, and the ex-PLO in the West Bank). One calls for Israel's destruction based on the abovementioned Islamic quotes, while the other threatens the destruction of Israel while praising terrorists and supporting their families.
The Western world is not recognizing that it is supporting, appeasing and advocating the strategies and agendas of Israel's enemies, while simultaneously calling these moves a "peace process." What happened in Sudetenland is being repeated, but this time it is in Samaria, in Silwan and in Sderot.
Three strikes, you're out?
The threats of world totalitarianism which have arisen in the 20th century can be color-coded – black (Nazi Germany), red (world Communist movement) and green (the rise of jihadi Islam). In each case the politically correct wise man tends to smile condescendingly at the "supposed danger" (as one would at a senile but harmless uncle) while ignoring the mountain of doom lurking in the fog. Like King Théoden (of Lord of the Rings fame) under the malevolent influence of Wormtongue, many world leaders are unwittingly blinded by a spiritual fog of appeasement. They are not attuned to the clear and present danger that Islamism presents both to the Western world and to the Jewish people and their state.
"You therefore, beloved, knowing this … be on your guard so that you are not carried away by the error of unprincipled men" (2 Peter 3:17)
Pray for the leaders of your spiritual movements and congregation – that the God of Israel will grant greater revelation of His heart and strategies for the Jewish people and reveal the true sources of spiritual fogging.
Pray for the leaders of Islam – that the God of Israel will grant them a clear revelation of Messiah Yeshua and of His heart and strategies for the Jewish people, the courage and strategies to walk in light of these spiritual truths, and the wisdom to lead their people accordingly
Your prayers and support hold up our arms and are the enablement of God to us in the work He has called us to do!
In Messiah Yeshua,
Avner Boskey
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