VARIOUS ARTICLES BY PHILO

VARIOUS ARTICLES BY PHILO-ISRAEL II

Clinton and Starr: Manasseh versus Ephraim?

January, 1999

The impeachment and impending trial of President Clinton by a Congress bitterly divided along partisan lines may be viewed as a cultural battle between his liberal defenders and his conservative enemies. The Republicans seek to remove Clinton from office for what they feel he and the Democrats symbolize: draft-dodging, pot-smoking, abortion, gay rights, sexual promiscuity, big government, free trade, UN sponsored internationalism and a general lack of moral values in society. Democrats seek to defend Clinton because he represents the last line of defense against what they feel the Republicans symbolize: religious puritanism, a return to unrestrained free-market economics, business greed, union-busting, threats to Social Security and Medicare, intolerance to liberal life styles, rule by Ralph Reed, Pat Robertson, and the the religious right and a general lack of fairness in society.

What is most interesting about the whole Clinton impeachment battle and this cultural civil war is that , to some extent, it reflects the old polarization between North and South that existed before, during, and after the Civil War. Mind you, Clinton is himself a born-and-bred son of Arkansas and many of those who seek to remove him are from the north and west. Nevertheless, the Democrats seem to reflect the values of the old Yankee Northeast, Scandinavian Upper Midwest , and Pacific Coast; the Republicans have become, for better or for worse, the party of the old Confederacy. Most 1990's top GOP leaders, Newt Gingrich, Dick Armey, Phil Gramm, Tom De Lay, and Trent Lott are elected from southern states. Kenneth Starr is from Texas. Even Henry Hyde, from Illinois, has always voted with his Southern colleagues and is 100% in accord with the Christian Coalition . Georgia historian , Dan Carter, remarks on the impeachment process : "I've been surprised that there's been so little discussion of how much this whole process has been driven by the Southernization of the Republican Party. "

A recent article in the New York Times of December 27, 1998 comments on the strong Southern regional flavor of the Republican Party in Congress and its anti-Clinton crusade:

"Clinton, a Southerner as Johnson was, has his harshest critics in his native South, where the values that inflame conservatives are most intense. A recent New York Times/CBS News poll found support for impeachment higher in the South than in any other part of the country. …Many Southerners revel in the South's new-found Republicanism. One T-shirt shows the Confederate battle flag in the form of a Republican elephant with the words "Lincoln's Worst Nightmare!" The back features the flags of the Southern states and the words "A States Rights Republican Majority From Dixie."

In the last seventy years, the position of the two parties in national politics has completely reversed. In 1928, the Republicans had a strong majority in the Northeast, Midwest, and Far West; the Democrats were based in a solid Democratic South. Now, a majority of Southern whites are as staunchly Republican as their grandparents were Democrat. The reason for this is that the GOP in the South now reflects the traditional Southern philosophy of States Rights and limited government far more than the Democrats do. As well, the importance of cultural issues has driven many evangelicals into the Republican party. The core of the GOP are now Southern white evangelicals whom the party must appeal to. Those outside the South, in contrast, are, at least as far as national politics are concerned, have been driven into the arms of the Democrats, who dominate New England Congressional delegations.

The party of Lincoln has become the party of Rush Limbaugh, Pat Robertson and of conservative values most deeply cherished in a resurgent South. Trent Lott, a strong Southern patriot, told Southern Partisan magazine during the 1980's: "I think that a lot of the fundamental principles that Jefferson Davis believed in are very important to people across the country, and they apply to the Republican Party," and that the GOP agenda "from tax policy, to foreign policy, from individual rights to neighborhood security are things that Jefferson Davis and his people believed in."

Is the partisan battle over Bill Clinton but a continuation of the old North-South conflict? Is the North-South conflict itself the result of cultural differences that go back far beyond even the foundation of America itself? A brilliant book by historian David Hackett Fischer recently interpreted American history and its regional conflicts as continuations of a thousand years of English history and its regional conflicts. The New England Puritans, who set the tone for much of Northeastern and Midwestern politics, came from the region of East Anglia; Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridge, Essex. From Massachusetts, their descendants spread across the northern states:

"The emigrants who came to Massachusetts in the great migration became the breeding stock for America's Yankee population…..They occupied much of southern New England, eastern New jersey and nortrhern New York. In the nineteenth century , their descendants migrated …west to the Pacific. Along the way, they founded the future cities of Buffalo, Cleveland , Chicago, St. Paul, Denver, San Francisco and Salt Lake City. Today, throughout this vast area, most families of Yankee descent trace their American beginnings to an English ancestor who came ashore in Massachusetts Bay within five years of the year 1635", David Hackett Fischer, Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America, (New York, Oxford University Press, 1991), p.17.

In contrast, many Southerners of Virginia and the Carolinas traced back to western England, and the Oxford region . They were much more conservative and royalist in their sympathies than the East Anglians who supported Oliver Cromwell in the English Civil War, replaced the monarchy with a republic, used the tune of Yankee Doodle as their Puritan anthem, and were willing to experiment with new ideas:

"A second historical region, which sent many sons to Virginia, was a broad belt of territory through the south of England, extending from Kent to Devon, and north as far as Warwick. It encompassed the ancient kingdom of Wessex and its Mercian protectorates-the realm of Alfred and Aethelred. This area had the least articulated sense of regional identity because it believed itself to be the heartland of the country-In Henry James's phrase, " midmost England, unmitigated England." Nevertheless, it had a cultural existence which was defined by its history, in ways that made it distinct from East Anglia, the North Country and the Celtic cultures of Wales and Cornwall to the west. Roughly 60 percent of Virginia gentlemen and servants came from this region." , Fischer, p.794.

It would seem that the portion of England that colonized Virginia and the Carolinas was predominately Ephraimite in its origins. The English class system was transplanted to Charleston. Much of the Anglo-Saxon, as opposed to the Celtic, population of the American South I believe to be descended from Ephraim. The Southern gentleman and plantation system is a transplanting of conservative English values. The portion of the USA settled by the Puritan-Yankee stock of East Anglia is very likely, and many British Israel writers like Adam Rutherford agree, descended from half of the tribe of Manasseh, as are many from the north of England. The large contingent of German Americans from the Rhineland may be the other half-tribe of Manasseh. One of the Germanic tribes that settled on the Rhine was the USIPI , a name derived from Joseph. If it is true than much of the North-South conflict in the USA can be seen as a rivalry between A conservative Ephraim in the South and a liberal Manasseh in the North. The South controlled the USA between 1789 and 1861. Lincoln's election, the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the industrialization of the northern states shifted the balance of power from Ephraim to Manasseh after that time. Now the South appears to be making an economic and political comeback based on economics and population shifts. US politics still mirrors the ancient division.

Prophecy suggests that the Clinton impeachment battle is only another step along the way towards a growing cultural civil war within the USA which could someday have regional implications. Internal divisions weakened ancient Israel long before their enemies did and even made possible their enemies, aggression. Abraham Lincoln himself recognized the Civil War as a judgment of God on his country. While another military war between North and South seems far-fetched in 1998, political and economic tensions between the regions could increase in the future as they have in the past, particularly in hard times. In this context, Isaiah seems to predict that the old tensions between North and South in the USA could resurface with a venegeance in some form if steps toward reconciliation are not taken:

Isa:9:19-21: Through the wrath of the LORD of hosts is the land darkened, and the people shall be as the fuel of the fire: no man shall spare his brother. And he shall snatch on the right hand, and be hungry; and he shall eat on the left hand, and they shall not be satisfied: they shall eat every man the flesh of his own arm: Manasseh, Ephraim; and Ephraim, Manasseh: and they together shall be against Judah. For all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still.

The Return of Genghis Khan: Gog and Magog in History and Prophecy

January 21,1999

In studying the history of the Middle Ages I am quite astonished by the parallels between I find there and what is prophesied to happen in the future in the Book of Revelation. This is not surprising, as Revelation 12 and 13 show the thousand-plus years of the Middle Ages are a type of the 1,260 days at the end of the age. Can the historical events of the past shed light on what is to come in the future?

The period before and during the beginning of the Middle Ages saw the spread of popular religious fervor all around the world. Hinduism and Buddhism, around for centuries, took final form and spread throughout Asia, incorporating popular practices of idol worship into their systems. In Europe, the same thing happened as Catholicism became the state religion and co-opted Roman paganism. No other form of Christianity was tolerated by the fourth century. In the meantime, Islam emerged on the scene with a fanatical fervor in the 600's and threatened Catholic Europe. Economies and governmental structures collapsed and famine, chaos and disease were rampant.[Mt. 24, Rev. 6].

Iraq became the center of the Muslim world under the Abbasids, while Europe united under Charlemagne in the 700's and early 800's who forged a Catholic Roman Empire and waged 50 wars to stamp out all political and religious opposition. Germany eventually assumed the leadership of Europe and its Emperor, Frederick Barbarossa persecuted Waldensians and attacked the Slavic nations to his east. Hitler named his invasion of Russia after this powerful and ruthless emperor; Nazi propagandists invoked the feudal structure of medieval Europe as a blueprint for the Nazi New Order. Winston Churchill described that order as a "New Dark Age". Heinrich Himmler patterned his SS after the medieval crusading orders of the Templars and the Teutonic Knights. The Germans, supported by other Europeans, invaded Palestine in the Crusades, massacred many of the Jews still living there, and set up a Kingdom of Jerusalem. Eventually they were driven from the Holy Land in the 1200's by the Iraqi Saladin who came from Takrit, the birthplace of Saddam Hussein. The German emperors and the Papacy allied but fought one another through the Middle Ages with the Pope winning in the short term, but the kings of Europe eventually plundering the church and seizing its vast wealth in the 1500's.[Revelation 17.11-14].

Judgment fell on this persecuting Europe in the 1200's from Gog and Magog. Teutonic knights with crosses on their breasts attacked Russia only to be defeated by Alexander Nevsky, at terrible costs to the Russians. The Mongols, descendants of Magog, led by Genghis Khan conquered all of China and eventually Russia and poured into Europe, where they were eventually turned. They pillaged murdered and destroyed everywhere they went. If the German push to the east is described in the first part of Revelation 9 the second part prophesies a vast plundering army from the Far East attacking Europe. It is interesting that Gog, the future Asian ruler, is said to come from the land of Magog, today Mongolia and north China, while ruling Rosh, Meschech, and Tubal, which is Russia. Russia right now is in a process of seeming disintegration and could either be reunifed under General Lebed or, worse, Zhirinovsky or the outright Russian fascists of Pamyat. Interesting, Zhirinovsky, who is now in eclipse in Russia, titled his first autobiography The Last March South in which he advocating Russia march to the Indian Ocean, and overrun Iran and maybe Iraq to save the world from Islam. This is exactly what the Bible says Russia or a power in control of Russia will eventually do in Ezekiel 38 and 39. Alternatively, Russia could fall apart like it did in the Middle Ages and become subject to China, or a dictator from Central Asia. One cannot read Ezekiel 38 without thinking of the plundering hordes of the Huns and Mongols. The army was turned back when Genghis Khan died in 1227. [Ezek39.1-2]. The Mongols also overran the whole Middle East except for Egypt, just as the Asian forces will at the time of Armageddon.[Rev.16.12; Ezek. 25.10]. Their invasion left nothing standing, though many eventually became Muslims.

1929-1999?

January 24,1999

An article in Esquire by Walter Russell Mead in October 1998 drew some interesting and scary parallels between 1928 and 1998. Then as now the stock market was horrendously overvalued.. 1928 was a very good year economically: millions jumped into the Big Bull Market. Inflation was nonexistent and "New Era" economists said technology had rendered the business cycle obsolete. The Federal Reserve, however, began to issue warnings about the dangers of stock-market speculation. A Religious Right had been very strong in the US earlier in the 1920's but its influence began to fade after 1925. Autos and highways were the growth industry then, paralleling computers and the information highway today.

Overseas the international debt problem seemed to have been solved; Europe was prospering and the Nazis after a surge in 1924, were marginalised between 1925 and 1928. Germany in 1928 replaced its conservative government with a socialist one. Britain in 1929 ousted its conservatives for a Labor government. The Little Entente of Poles, Czechs, and Hungarians were turning west, like the expansion of NATO today as were the Baltic states. Russia in the mid 1920's had even partly to capitalism and a certain amount of liberalisation. Foreign investment was westernising China and Japan was firmly linked to the western alliance. There were riots in Palestine as Jews continued to immigrate and Palestinians sought to oppose them.

In 1928 there were financial crises in Indonesia and Latin America. Democracy seemed to be spreading in Mexico, Argentina, and Brazil. A movement for a United States of Europe, the Paneuropa Union of Count Richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi had support of many of the elites in Europe, especially the French under the diplomacy of Aristide Briand. In 1929 Briand presented a proposal before the League of Nations for a United States of Europe. The forces of nationalism, however, were still too strong and the Depression made them stronger. Hitler would eventually come to power in Germany and hijack the idea of European unity for himself.

A Missing Israelite -Celtic Link found…in China?

January 31, 1999

A new book , entitled The Mummies of Urumchi by Elizabeth Wayland Barber [Hardcover - 384 pages (January 1999) W.W. Norton & Company; ISBN: 0393045218] examines the finding of mummies from about 2000 years ago on the western fringes of China. These mummies, however, are white and are of the same physical type as Scots and Irish. The fabrics they weaved are similar to those not only in Scotland and Ireland, but in Iran.

According to Kirkus Reviews of December 1, 1998: "Afforded a rare glimpse of prehistoric fabrics, the author draws parallels with the weaving techniques of Japan and the Middle East, particularly Persia but also, more provocatively, with those of the Celtic peoples of Ireland and Scotland. She speculates that these mysterious people were peripatetic herders and oasis-hoppers of Indo-European origin, possibly Turkic-speaking, and she establishes links between the Caucasian people of this remote Chinese region and the ancient Celts. Other evidence may link the mummies with the ancient Iranians."

While this all may be coincidence, is it more likely that here we have a branch of lost Israel, driven from the cities of the Medes mentioned in I Kings 17 as the site of Israel's captivity which had wandered deep into Central Asia along the historic migration and trade routes across Mongolia. Driven westward by the Huns, they may have eventually arrived in Europe, or at least they may have been an eastern offshoot of others who went west from Media to Celtic Europe.

Danish scholar Anne Katrine Gade Kristensen of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters, after an extensive study of Assyrian tablets, was literally forced to conclude that the mysterious Cimmerians who appear in Iran and Armenia in the very time and place where Israel disappeared were part of the Lost Ten Tribes. [See her study, Who were the Cimmerians?, Munksgaard, Copenhagen, 1988].

Many other Israelite deportees did not stay in Assyria or Media but were removed, along with the Assyrians and Medes themselves, hundreds of miles away to Cappadocia and the Ukraine [Diodorus Siculus, II, 43]. The geographer Strabo found White Syrians in Cappadocia (Strabo 12,3,9) Syria included Palesine. Jews in the Caucasus preserved traditions of descent from the Ten Tribes ( Commentary, October, 1946). Even Alan Godbey of Duke University in his massive 1929 study The Lost Tribes a Myth found a belief in the Israelite origin of Caucasian Jews credible.

The historic presence of lost Israelites and other Mideastern peoples in Afghanistan and Central Asia east of the Caspian was commonly accepted by British anthropologists in the nineteenth century. [See H.W. Bellew, An Inquiry into the Ethnography of Afghanistan, published 1891, reprinted 1973 by Akademische Druck. Verlaganstalt, Graz, Austria, p.156 and See also Forster, One Primeval Language, 1848, which produced a map showing the lost tribes on the eastern shore of the Caspian and in Afghanistan.

The Armenian linguist Martiros Kavoukjian, in comparing Indo-European languages, found powerful evidence that the closest relatives to the Celtic languages of old Cymric, Cornish, and Breton were not the Germanic or Slavic tongues, but Armenian. On the basis of this and other proofs, he was able to conclude that the cradle of Western Europeans was not Scandinavia but Armenia and the Caucasus. The Celts, moreover, were, as many historians always asserted before Darwinism destroyed faith in the Bible, the descendants of the ancient Cimmerians. Place names in Armenia clearly foreshadowed those of Celtic peoples. Eriani=Erin, Gulutahi= Galatia, Gaul, Uelikuni=Wales. [Martiros Kavoukjian, Armenia, Subartu, and Sumer, (Montreal, 1987), pp.117-22, 127-34].

Samuel Lysons, no British Israelite, concluded in 1865 after a study of Celtic language and religious customs that the religion of the British Celts was the very same Baal worship practiced by the ancient Canaanites and adopted by the Israelites:

" I confess that but for the universal tradition which assigns our descent to Japhet, I should have been rather inclined to attribute to the British Celts a Semitic origin, both on account of the relics of worship which we find in Britain, and also on account of the language, the traces of which we find stil attaching to the names of those places where they carried on their religious ceremonies." Samuel Lysons, Our British Ancestors: Who and What Were They?, ( Oxford and London, John Henry and James Parker, 1865), p.18

Tribal Politics: Footsteps of Simeon in the Ancient and Modern World

February 2,1999

In most cases, the identity of modern Israelite peoples can be identified with a single modern nationality. The Reubenites are the French, The Danites the Irish, the Ephraimites and Manassites the Anglo-Saxons, the Judahites the Jews, etc. The fate of Simeon and Levi , however, was to be scattered among the other tribes of Israel.

Simeon and Levi were virtually twin brothers, born of Leah and related to Judah, Reuben, Zebulun, and Issachar .What can be learned from Biblical history, Jewish tradition, and literature such as the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, likely written 200-100 B.C..shows that in character they were quite similar, being hot-tempered, volatile, and extremely violent in their actions. When Reuben forfeited the birthright, Simeon was next in line. His warlike temperament, however, and that of Levi, came out in the incident recorded in Genesis 35. When Dinah, their sister, married Shechem, the Canaanite prince, Simeon and Levi were deeply offended. The incident suggests something about both of these brothers. They were very honor-conscious. Some Bible commentators, moreover, suggest that their violent attack on the Shechemites was motivated by racism. They were fearful of a scheme to assimilate the family of Israel into the Mediterranean culture and family of the Canaanites. In response, Simeon and Levi came up with a scheme of their own. They would go along with the Canaanite plan but would ask the Shechemites to be circumcised. When the men were incapacitated, Simeon and Levi led an attack in which the Canaanite men were massacred, and the women and children, along with the property, spoiled. Jacob was outraged by this incident which gave the God of Israel a horrible reputation. Here were hate crimes committed in the name of religion, even if Simeon and Levi felt they were justified to prevent assimilation.

Genesis implies other facts about Simeon. He seems to have been the ringleader in the conspiracy against Joseph. Judah wanted to sell Joseph. Reuben hoped to save him but wound up collaborating with his brothers. Simeon wished to murder Joseph outright. When the brothers later journey to Egypt, Joseph, now the vizier under Pharaoh Ammenehmet III, takes Simeon alone as a hostage. Eventually Joseph led Simeon to repentance, but one gets the impression of a patriarch that was brave and valiant in war, and devout in his own way, but, along with Levi, prone to wrath, hatred, conspiracies, prejudice, and much violence. Jacob practically disawowed them. Their punishment was to be that they would have no exclusive state of their own, but be divided, in the case of Simeon, and scattered, in the case of Levi, among the children of Israel. Levi, of course, was a deep thinker and so strict in his zeal for the law, that his punishment was turned into a blessing. His descendants were assigned cities among the other tribes. Centuries later, most of them joined with Judah in rejecting idolatry and became scattered, along with the Jews, among other nations, Israelite as well as non-Israelite. Some Welshmen and Belgian Walloons may, however, be of Levi.

Simeon, however, quickly turned to other religions. During the trek in the wilderness, half of the tribe was slain from disease from joining themselves to the religion of Balaam. In spite of their racism, the Simeonites often frequently married into other nations. One or two of the sons of Simeon was descended from a Canaanite family. Once in the Promised land, the bravery of Simeon's warrior ethic came out , when, in alliance with Judah, the tribe participated in the conquest of the Negev. In return for this, Simeon was assigned territory in the south belonging to Judah. Simeon seems to lived in some of the most arid and barren land in Palestine. Here they remained a fierce and fractious clan. David had to struggle with the men of Ziph who almost betrayed him to Saul.

During the division of Israel and Judah, it is evident that much of Simeon, or at least a portion, migrated northward into Jeroboam's territory near Zebulun and Asher , while other Simeonites even colonized near Petra. They were, evidently, an adventurous tribe of people, which helped fulfil Jacob's prophecy. Some remained with the Jews to this day, Simon being a common Jewish name. The northern branch, however, was taken to Assyria with Zebulun, Issachar, Asher, and other tribes. The descendants of Simeon, or at lesat a portion of them, will thus be found in northwestern Europe.

In the fourth century B.C. a wave of Celtic tribesmen led by the Senones invaded northern Italy and almost conquered Rome. They were defeated by the Romans and eventually settled in France. Others among the Celtic peoples spreading across Europe were likely as well descended from the northern Simeonites who migrated with Asher and Zebulun across Turkey or the Ukraine from the land of their capitivity as Cimmerians and Scythians.

In the second century B.C. a very warlike people migrated into the British Isles from what is now Holland and Belgium. These people were known as the Iceni, or the Simeni. Simeni is Latin for Simeon. Another tribe in Belgium was known as the Levaci, and near by were the Sabuloni [Zebulun] and the Eburones, who are in part ancestors of the Walloons [Heber was a son of Asher]. In Brittany, meanwhile, a people known as the Namnetes had settled, whom Yair Davidy belives to be descended from the Simeonite clan of Nemuel [I chr 4.24]. This suggests that many of the people of the Celtic fringe are descended from Simeon. The history of the Iceni reads like that in Genesis 35 . Led by the warlike Queen Boadicea, the Iceni/Simeni rose up against the Romans around 70 A.D. They plundered and massacred the Roman settlements very savagely and provoked a massive Roman intervention in Britain under the general Agricola. The Celtic fringe was to be unconquered by both both Roman and Anglo-Saxon. The Bretons of France and the Scots of the Clyde[descended from the British Dumnonii],as well as the Welsh remained unconquered, but they were to remain divided, fiercely independent, and constantly feuding down through the centuries. Other Celts were absorbed into the Frankish populations in the Low Countries.

The result was that the descendants of Simeon became scattered among the other sons of Israel now as then. The process continued into modern times. Most French-Canadians trace their descent from Reuben, Norman Benjamin, and the native Cree and Huron with whom they intermarried. About one-sixth of their genes, however, traces back to Brittany, likely the Namnetes, so the Quebecois are a mixture of Reuben and Simeon; the more Acadians of New Brunswick and Louisiana being more Reubenite, coming from Poitou in western France. The history of the French-Canadians in many ways parallels that of the Afrikaners. Afrikaans more closely resembles Flemish than Dutch, so it is likely that the Afrikaner people, who are about one-third Dutch-Flemish, one third German, and one-sixth French, with a certain amount of African genes as well, are a mixture of Simeon with Zebulun and Issachar. Some Belgian Walloons would be a mixture of Simeon and Asher. Both Quebecois and Afrikaners have a parallel history. They were the white tribes that opened North America and Africa to European settlement. They were adventurous and warlike. They were less interested in farming than in commerce. They were deeply religious, but in a strongly tribal way. To be a Boer was to be a staunch Calvinist; to be a French-Canadian habitant was to be an ultratraditionalist Catholic. Both were to become ruled by the English before 1800. Most of their later history would be devoted to resentment of English rule and resistance to assimilation. Separatism in Quebec in some ways parallels apartheid in South Africa. The revolutionary Afrikaner Resistance Movement of John Terreblanche wants an independent Afrikaner homeland. It is an interesting coincedence that Simard is a common Quebec name, and the chief naval base of South Africa is called Simonstown.

Much more could be said about these proud peoples, but it would require a whole book to do so. It is probable, however, that the separatist movement in Quebec, led by the popular Lucien Bouchard, will eventually succeed in breaking up Canada, causing its economy to collapse, its provinces to go their own way, and an Ulster-style civil war break out in Montreal. An American writer named Lansing Lamont has presented a chilling portrait of the possible destruction of one of the finest and humane countries that has ever existed in a book entitled Breakup. The demise of South Africa could be much more violent, given the greater complexities in its society. The end of apartheid has never been accepted by many militant Afrikaners who saw racial separation as their only means of survival. Civil War in South Africa between verkrampte [hard-line] separatists and other elements of the population could be an eventuality leading to possible European intervention. At any rate, the English South Africans have long relinquished their political control to first the Afrikaners and now the Xhosa, Zulus, and others.

What about the British Isles? Many Highland and West-fringe Scots are descended from Simeon as well as the Zarah line of Judah. Scotland and Ulster are a mixture of Judah, Joseph, and Simeon. The people of Glasgow are heavily Briton and Irish [Danite] and have a long tradition, as do many of the border English and Scots, of clan violence, pugnaciousness, and manly tribalism. The Scottish National Party is quite strong, advocates an independent Scotland, and lionizes the legendary Sir William Wallace glorified in the film Braveheart. The same is true of the Welsh and the Bretons in France. The Bretons want to separate from France, have resorted to terorrism to support their cause, and have given birth to many of the most militant agitators of the French Revolution and theFrench far right like the fascist Jacques Doriot and the populist Jean-Marie Le Pen. The gradual of the United Kingdom in the future remains a distinct possiblity, as does the constant threat of civil war in Ireland, which would provoke European intervention.

Even the United States is part of the scattering of Simeon. The Ulster and border Scots settled in America in the 1700's and moved to the frontier. The ancient Celtic warrior ethic and tribal faith endured here as well. Much of the American South, particularly in the more mountainous regions is very Celtic, as pointed out by Southern patriots like Professor Gerald Mc Whinney of the University of Alabama and David Hackett Fischer in his new book Albion's Seed. Partial descent from Simeon is a factor in the Southern character, for both good and evil. It has produced tremendous musical and literary talent and the bravery and genius of a Patton, a MacArthur, and the Southern military tradition. It has also produced a counterweight to the more materialistic and selfish Northern way of life. On the other hand, there is a legacy of slavery, political violence and organized racism which still deeply divides the American soul. Movements even exist, though they are small, patterned after the Scottish Nationalists and the Parti Quebecois to revive an independent Confederate nation. If US power wanes and its economy worsens, will Southern nationalism once again become, in ten , fifteen , or twenty years, a serious and divisive force?

Jacob's deathbed prophecy seems to suggest that tension between Celt and Anglo-Saxon, reviving the old enmity between Simeon and Joseph, will be a factor in the political and social turmoil of the last days:

Gen:49:5: Simeon and Levi are brethren; instruments of cruelty are in their habitations.

Another translation says "their swords are weapons of violence". Simeon and Levi would be distinguished by their wrathful and volatile nature. Quebecers still brood over the English Conquest of 1759; Afrikaners still nurture the memories of British concentration camps; Scots recall the massacre of Culloden; Southerners remember The Lost Cause, Sherman's March to the Sea, and Reconstruction. Some today resent the Civil Rights movement of the 1960's and most dislike general Federal meddling with State's Rights and the Tenth Amendment.

Gen:49:6: O my soul, come not thou into their secret; unto their assembly

The Quebec Legislature is, interestingly, called the National Assembly. Another translation says "Council" The Greek for council is Kuklos, from which we get the Ku-Klux Klan. Klansmen, a secret society if there ever was one,wear a Celtic Cross on their robes and most Klaverns in the 1990's are found in the Celtic areas of Alabama, Tennessee, the Carolinas, etc.], mine honour, be not thou united: for in their anger they slew a man, and in their selfwill they digged down a wall.

Gen:49:7: Cursed be their anger, for it was fierce; and their wrath, for it was cruel: I will divide them in Jacob, and scatter them in Israel.

Here we say a fierce spirit of national and tribal independence, often revengeful in nature, which can often become so implacable as to jeopardize the larger nation of which the Celts are a part. Violence is often the result.

"Digged down a wall" can also be rendered as slaying cattle. This used to happen frequently in Celtic countries. "Cattle" however, can also be taken figuratively to refer to the source of wealth. The word "capital" is derived from "cattle". Celtic communities believe in a religious-warrior-tribal ethic much more than a money-making or commercial one. The Parti Quebecois is very socialist; the traditional Southern patriot valued the rural way of life, not the commercial one; Scotland is a socialist bastion, the region around Glasgow being known as the "Red Clyde". Afrikaners control the government in South Africa; business was generally the province of the English. Even the Religious Right in the U.S. is much more concerned about moral and religious issues than free enterprise for its own sake, they are libertarian conservatives, not the pure libertarians one finds in Alaska and the western states.

The hint here is that, in the last days, militant Celtic politics based on ethnic values may be a factor in the weakening of the English-speaking economies.

After 2000: Great Depression or Pax Americana?

February 6, 1999

It seems to me that future events could go one of two ways, or a combination of them : 1.) a repetition of the Great Depression of the 1920's 2.) a repetition of the Belle Epoque of 1896-1914. Either scenario , of course, ends in a World War, but the latter has a longer curve to it.

Scenario 1: 1929-1999? An article in Esquire by Walter Russell Mead in October 1998 drew some interesting and scary parallels between 1928 and 1998. Then as now the stock market was horrendously overvalued.. 1928 was a very good year economically: millions jumped into the Big Bull Market. Inflation was nonexistent and "New Era" economists said technology had rendered the business cycle obsolete. The Federal Reserve, however, began to issue warnings about the dangers of stock-market speculation. A Religious Right had been very strong in the US earlier in the 1920's but its influence began to fade after 1925. Autos and highways were the growth industry then, paralleling computers and the information highway today.

Scenario 2: a return to the Pax Americana of the early 1900's is more interesting. In the 1890's after a long period of deflation and setbacks, Great Britain in 1897 seemed to be very much on top of the world. The USA became a world power in 1898 when it defeated Spain and annexed Cuba. Now it seems possible that the USA is truly in Britain's place as the one global superpower. A key to understanding the politics of the late 20^th and early 21^st centuries is to realize we are in the information and electronic age and many struggles that took place on the battlefield now take place in capital markets. Bismarck united Germany on the battlefield after several decades of economic domination by Prussia of the other German states through the Zollverein , a customs union; Hitler united Europe on the battlefield very briefly; Kohl united Germany through the deutschemark. Germany is inexorably uniting Europe through economics. The euro, computer technology, high-speed rail, electronic media, are all creating one Europe in spite of what the Euroskeptic politicians say. Eventually, even the populist parties of the new European right will have to adjust to this reality.

More parallels: Germany under its unity Chancellor Bismarck was a stable force in Europe. A smart practical statesman, Bismarck followed conservative policies at home and abroad designed to assuage European fears of the new united Germany. When his friend Kaiser Wilhelm I died in 1889, his heir Frederick III died the same year of cancer. Germany was now in the hands of the unstable Wilhelm II who fired Bismarck and embarked upon a much more erratic course in domestic and foreign affairs. The left in Germany, represented by the SPD, continued to grow in strength as did a racist nationalism sponsored by the Pan-German league and various anti-Semitic parties. The German conservatives adopted the program of the far right at the Tivoli Congress of 1893. Tensions between Prussia and western Germany contributed to the instability of the Second Reich. The Kaiser meanwhile, sought to make his presence felt in Europe and the world, even calling for a United States of Europe as early as 1912. Britain and Germany had been friends under Bismarck, but when Wilhelm embarked on building a navy and turning Germany into a world power, the friendship deteriorated.

Helmut Kohl, like Bismarck, sought to follow conservative policies and reassure Europeans Germany posed them no danger. Now, like Bismarck, he is gone, fired by the German people themselves. Nonetheless, he forged a new Fourth German Reich whose capital is once again Berlin. The new Berlin Republic under an inexperienced socialist government threatens to be an unstable force in Europe. It is likely that conservatives may return to power soon. Interesting, the CDU under Wolfgang Schäuble has adopted much of the anti-immigrant position of the far -right Republikaner, Deutsche Volksunion, and Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands, which are the descendants of the pan-German parties of Wilhelm's day. Another possibility for Germany is that the inevitable conservative backlash against Schroeder could produce a Bavarian chancellor in the form of Edmund Stoiber, who is the true heir to Franz-Josef Strauss. The Catholic populism represented by Strauss and now Stoiber has over a century of history behind it, coming from the old Bavarian People's Party. During the 1920's some ultraconservative governments of this party in Bavaria tolerated the Nazis and even gave them quiet support. A Stoiber government might well provide a more tolerant climate for a future ultranationalist revival.

In Austria, there is a revival of ties between Vienna and Budapest, with Hapbsburgs active in the process. Karl von Habsburg, son of Otto von Habsburg is a conservative Euro-MP for Austria and leader of Austria's Paneuropa Union, his younger brother Georg works for the Hungarian government in a position furthering European unity. Is the recreation of some kind of Danube federation with a Habsburg president possible? Despite its recent setbacks, the powerful Freedom Party of Jörg Haider is still a force to be reckoned with. Once liberal, the party and its leader is now populist and ultranationalist, but with strong pan-German undertones. A century ago, Austria had an ex-liberal ultranationalist movement led by Georg von Schönerer more poweful than anything in Germany from which young Adolf Hitler drew many of his ideas.

Britain in the early 1900's had , despite it vast power, became a 'weary titan' faced with German and American competition. After long years of Tory rule under Lord Salisbury and Arthur Balfour, a revived liberal left returned to power under Henry Campbell-Bannerman and Herbert Asquith in 1906. The Tories were marginalized and driven from power until 1922. Asquith clipped the power of the Lords, sought home rule for Ireland, and introduced the first pensions. Tony Blair has, for the first time in a century, restored the old British Liberal ideology in Labor guise. New Labor is far closer to British Liberalism than traditional British socialism. Blair wants to reform the welfare state, devolve power to Scotland and Wales, further weaken the Lords. He may have to face social unrest at home and move Britain closer to Europe , for which he may face the opposition of an increasingly radical Tory party under William Hague which will desperately oppose any further efforts to integrate Britain into Europe. British politics could well turn nasty as it did in 1910-1914. George Dangerfield's old classic The Strange Death of Liberal England described the nervous breakdown of British society at that time. World War I may have saved Britain from a civil war in which the Tories under Andrew Bonar Law were planning a coup against the Liberal government.

Finally, there is America. If the second scenario is accurate, there will be a decade or two of Pax Americana in which the US will dominate the world economically , culturally, and militarily as it did after 1945and Britain did a century ago. It is likely to do so under a new Republican administration led by Texas governor George W. Bush. Republicans will reinvent themselves following the Clinton years. Under Ronald Reagan, Newt Gingrich, Dick Armey, Phil Gramm and others, the Republicans sought to return to the politics of the Gilded Age, the 1880's and 1890's. Reagan was popular because of his optimism and the ability to present his unabashedly pro-business ideology in positive terms. The Republicans of the 90's in Congress came across as much more divisive and negative. The religious right scared many voters. Clinton, who is the modern parallel to Grover Cleveland and a masterful politican. They don't call him 'Slick Willie' for nothing. Clinton was better able to reflect the mood of the voters than Dole or Gingrich. Most Americans subscribe to a kind of practical libertarianism. The real majority philosophy in America is neither conservatism nor liberalism but libertarianism.

Libertarianism in its purest form is a radical philosophy inspired by Ayn Rand and "Austrian" economists like Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich von Hayek. It argues that government intervention in either the marketplace or private morality is criminal and totally unwarranted. Some radical libertarians, like Howard Stern, are left-wing, wanting the government out of their private bedroom; others, like Dick Armey, are libertarian-conservatives who oppose government welfare programs but want strong legislation in the moral sphere. Most of the popular Republican governors, as well as Clinton, have retained power by practicing a workable model of libertarian thinking. Government spending and programs will be trimmed, taxes reduced, power turned back to the states, abortion and life-styles made a matter of personal choice…but some government intervention on behalf of education and the environment, workfare, training, personal rights will be encouraged. The Bush brothers now talk of a "compassionate conservatism" and will try to include minorities, create a new Reagan coalition, and preach a New Nationalism not unlike Teddy Roosevelt. Teddy Roosevelt and the Progressive policies he represented may well represent a model for the new GOP agenda after 2000. This would give them the majority status they had between 1896 and 1932, though a depression would eventually restore the Democrats to power with a patrician, perhaps a young Kennedy or a Rockefeller, at their head. Democratic presidencies are often accompanied by major wars.

Watch Saddam!

March 6,1999

Keep your eyes on Saddam Hussein.

We in the Church of God ran into trouble as we saw world events in the light of unfolding prophecy: wasn't Franz-Josef Strauss the Beast and tribulation to begin in 1972? Speculations such as these have caused many to turn off on watching both world events and prophecy. Witness a recent article in a Church of God International publication:

"Beware of those who come along and, with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other, attempt to read prophetic fulfillments into the headlines. To "watch" is to be alert, or prepared. Jesus said, "Watch therefore, for you do not know what hour your Lord is coming" (Matthew 24:42). This does not mean that we should watch for prophetic fulfillments in the headlines so that we will know how much time we have left before the Second Coming. It simply means that we should make sure we are prepared at all times because we do not know when Christ will return. The true "work of the watchman" is not a "work" of attempting to read prophetic fulfillments into the daily headlines. It is not a "work" of watching the weather, or reporting on the pope's latest visit, or shouting about El Niño or the latest natural disaster. It is a work of preaching repentance and the remission of sins to as many as possible, and of providing faith-enhancing instructions for those who turn to God. "

This popular position, of course, in my opinion, can turn a church into a social club where people just focus on everyday life and concentrate solely on personal Christian living. Don't get me wrong: Romans , James, I Cor 13 and Matthew are far more important than who the Beast might be or whether El Nino will bring drought to Texas. Nevertheless, prophecy shows us a LIVING Jesus Christ active in the world today and the consequences of human misrule.

The overall outline of prophecy described in The Plain Truth over decades has been absolutely confirmed: a growing ecological crisis, world financial turmoil, upset weather , moral decay in the US and Britain, the absence of war between the US and Russia, the sudden reunification of Germany and re-emergence of the nations of eastern Europe, the resurgence of fascism and radical right politics, the growth of religious extremism in the Middle East and even in the USA, the moves to build a Third Temple in Jerusalem, the massive apostacy within the Church of God itself and the dominance of a skeptical, lukewarm condition in the church at the end of the age..all of these were predicted, as has been the inexorable uniting of Europe and the creation of a European currency. HWA was mistaken in his names, dates, and details; he has been proven an effective student of Bible prophecy on the major issues.

So long as one does not become too dogmatic in speculating, understanding prophecy and watching trends in world events, as well as understanding Biblical and historical perspectives on current affairs, is, in my opinion, healthy and necessary for Christians, providing it is done in a mature and balanced way.

Now, what's all this got to do with that madman Saddam? His background, evil nature, ambitions, and philosophy seem to mark him out as a key player in prophecy and events due to play out in the Middle East. A little history from the Middle Ages suggests that he, and/or a possible future fundamentalist leader in Egypt may even be the prophesied 'King of the South' spoken of by Daniel.

Historically, the Hellenistic rulers of Egypt fulfilled the role of 'King of the South' . Eventually ruled by the Romans and then the Byzantine Greeks, Egypt was conquered in the 7th century by the Arabs. The capital of the Arab world, however, became Baghdad from which the radical Abbasid caliphs ruled all of Islam during the time of Charlemagne in the 8th and 9th centuries. After a brief but splendid golden age memorized in the tales of the Arabian nights and Sinbad the sailor, Iraq went into decline in the late 9th and 10th centuries as leadership in the Arab world passed to the Fatimid rulers of Egypt. Egypt, too collapsed in civil war and has never recovered her ancient prosperity to this day, at last fulfilling Ezekiel 29.15 that Egypt "shall be the basest of the kingdoms; neither shall it exalt itself any more above the nations: for I will diminish them, that they shall no more rule over the nations."

Beginning in 1095 European armies invaded the Middle East as Antiochus Epiphanes, the Romans, Napoleon, Mussolini and Rommel had doneor would do. German forces were present in Palestine in World War I as well. These were partial fulfillments of Ezek 23.23-24, Dan 11.40-41and the, fulfilling the role at that time of 'the King of the North'. They persecuted both Jews and Muslims, entering the Holy Land with both a religious fervor and a desire for plunder. The Babylonian invasion of Judah in Nebuchadnezzar's time described in Psalm 74 reads like a typical fulfillment of the medieval Crusades, themselves a type of a future anti-Semitic European crusade to come.

"Lift up thy feet unto the perpetual desolations; even all that the enemy hath done wickedly in the sanctuary. Thine enemies roar in the midst of thy congregations; they set up their ensigns for signs. A man was famous according as he had lifted up axes upon the thick trees. But now they break down the carved work thereof at once with axes and hammers. They have cast fire into thy sanctuary, they have defiled by casting down the dwelling place of thy name to the ground. They said in their hearts, Let us destroy them together: they have burned up all the synagogues of God in the land. We see not our signs: there is no more any prophet: neither is there among us any that knoweth how long. Have respect unto the covenant: for the dark places of the earth are full of the habitations of cruelty[Ps 74.4-9, 20]."

It is significant that according to the German historian and anthropologist Adam Wendt in his book It Began at Babel that one of the meanings of 'Europe' (supposedly named after the goddess Europa) is 'dark places of the earth".

The Arabs found a new champion in the legendary warrior Saladin, who came from the Iraqi town of Takrit. This is the same town from which Saddam Hussein hails. Saladin forged a temporary unity of Egypt, Syria, and Iraq in an Islamic holy war to expel the Europeans from the Arab domains. His victoryt was only temporary, as much of the Arab world was invaded by the Japhethic Turks, sons of Togarmah from Central Asia and later by the Mongols of Tamurlane, sons of Magog, enacting in type the end-time invasion of 'the sons of the east' into the Middle East [Ezek 25.4-7; Rev. 16.12].

What does all this mean? In spite of George Bush's defeat of his armies in 1991 and Bill Clinton's bombing attacks Saddam remains firmly on his throne and a force to be reckoned with politically as well as militarily. It is not likely that the United States will be able to dislodge him with a prolonged war of bombing and attrition which reminds one of LBJ's air war on North Vietnam. Saddam has created one of the most repressive regimes in the world in which he has hired 50% of his people to spy on the other 50% ! It is very difficult to create an organized opposition under these circumstances. It is possible, though not definite that Clinton may, like LBJ, spend his strength in vain [Lev.26.20] trying to neutralize him.

Saddam, meanwhile, wins just by staying in power and defying the US. He sees himself as the new Nebuchadnezzar and Saladin, and hopes that his militancy and standing up to Clinton (and maybe Bush's son Texas Governor George W. Bush after him?) will built up his prestige to the point where other Arab states will join him. To enter the realm of speculation, could a disturbance over the Temple Mount trigger another not only a new Arab-Israeli war but a fundamentalist revolution in Egypt which could join with a post-Assad Syria and Iraq in a new Caliphate led by Saddam which would confront both Israel and Europe and join forces with the latter in an 'anti-Zionist' alliance to ultimately fight Jesus Christ at Armageddon? [Ps.83].

Iron and Brass: The Eastern and Western Legs of the Roman Empire

March 8, 1999

The Bible predicts a revived Roman Empire with two legs. One of these I believe will come from the Roman Catholic world. The other will come from the Greek Orthodox world of the Balkan peninsula.

The current crisis over Kosovo highlights the rise of militant nationalism in the Balkans and the countries of the former Communist bloc in Eastern Europe. For over half a century the Radio/Worldwide Church of God and its offshoots have predicted the coming of a European power, formed by ten dictators or recrowned kings which would revive the ancient Roman Empire, bring about the Great Tribulation, and fight Jesus Christ at His return:

"Rv:17:12: And the ten horns which thou sawest are ten kings, which have received no kingdom as yet; but receive power as kings one hour with the beast.Rv:17:13: These have one mind, and shall give their power and strength unto the beast."

Mr. Armstrong himself recognized that even at the height of the Cold War in 1950 that many of the nations that would comprise this future empire would come from behind the Iron Curtain:

"Suddenly the world will behold a UNITED STATES OF EUROPE! Some of the Balkan nations which have been under Russia's boot will be members of it! TEN dictators in Europe will unite, in a gigantic European COMBINE, turning their united military power and resources over to the new LEADER of Europe!"

" These will include Germany and Italy, probably Spain and Portugal and France, Greece, and probably some of the Balkan nations from among Yugoslavia, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Rumania, or others. I can't tell you now exactly which nations. But in all probability Belgium, Holland, Denamrk, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland will NOT join this federation. Definitely Britain will not be in it. And definitely, the whole thing will be FASCIST…" [Herbert W. Armstrong, " The Hydrogen Bomb Shifts Trend" , The Plain Truth, March, 1950.]

Half a century later, history has vindicated HWA. The Iron Curtain collapsed and Germany has reunited. Moreover, ultranationalist governments and movements are well on the way to revival in both western and eastern Europe.

Daniel chapter 2 tells the story of how King Nebuchadnezzar had a terrifying dream in which he saw a great statue, in the form of a man, possibly Nebuchadnezzar himself. The head of the statue was gold, the breast silver, the thighs brass or bronze, and the two legs iron, with ten toes on the feet of iron and clay. A stone smashed the image and then replaced it, growing into a great mountain. With God's revelation, Daniel was able to interpret the king's dream as a prediction of 2,500 years of human history and world empires yet to come. The gold head was Babylon, the silver breast was the Medo-Persian empire, the brass thighs the Greco-Macedonian, and the iron legs the Roman empire which would continue until the stone, Jesus Christ, smashed it and replaced it with the Kingdom of God.

"Dan:2:39: And after thee shall arise another kingdom inferior to thee, and another third kingdom of brass, which shall bear rule over all the earth.

Dan:2:40: And the fourth kingdom shall be strong as iron: forasmuch as iron breaketh in pieces and subdueth all things: and as iron that breaketh all these, shall it break in pieces and bruise.

Dan:2:41: And whereas thou sawest the feet and toes, part of potters' clay, and part of iron, the kingdom shall be divided; but there shall be in it of the strength of the iron, forasmuch as thou sawest the iron mixed with miry clay.

Dan:2:42: And as the toes of the feet were part of iron, and part of clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong, and partly broken.

Dan:2:43: And whereas thou sawest iron mixed with miry clay, they shall mingle themselves with the seed of men: but they shall not cleave one to another, even as iron is not mixed with clay.

Dan:2:44: And in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed: and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand for ever."

It is important to note that iron was used to symbolize the fourth, or Roman kingdom, while brass symbolized the Greek. This is of great importance in understanding what is happening in Eastern Europe. The lower part of the great image had two legs, which we now see represent the two historic divisions of the Roman Empire and of Europe down through history. The ten toes represent the ten European nations or groups of nations reviving Rome at the very end of the age. The iron may represent either industrial or authoritarian nations like Germany, while the miry clay may represent the more agrarian nations of Latin or Eastern Europe, or parts of those nations. The union will be incompatible and not last very long, though it will do tremendous damage in the few years of its existence.

In Luke 21.24 we read of the 'times of the Gentiles' which would be fulfilled at the end of the age. We have always understood this as referring to a seven times punishment. Many Bible scholars ,of course, understand a time to be either 360 days or 360 years [Num14.34; Dan 12.7; Rev. 11.2-3,12.6,14, 13.5]. Therefore seven times = seven years or 2,520 years. For his pride, King Nebuchadnezzar was punished for seven years, losing his sanity and his kingdom, then it was restored to him.

Dan:4:20: The tree that thou sawest, which grew, and was strong, whose height reached unto the heaven, and the sight thereof to all the earth;

Dan:4:21: Whose leaves were fair, and the fruit thereof much, and in it was meat for all; under which the beasts of the field dwelt, and upon whose branches the fowls of the heaven had their habitation:

Dan:4:22: It is thou, O king, that art grown and become strong: for thy greatness is grown, and reacheth unto heaven, and thy dominion to the end of the earth.

Dan:4:23: And whereas the king saw a watcher and an holy one coming down from heaven, and saying, Hew the tree down, and destroy it; yet leave the stump of the roots thereof in the earth, even with a band of iron and brass, in the tender grass of the field; and let it be wet with the dew of heaven, and let his portion be with the beasts of the field, till seven times pass over him;

Dan:4:24: This is the interpretation, O king, and this is the decree of the most High, which is come upon my lord the king:

Dan:4:25: That they shall drive thee from men, and thy dwelling shall be with the beasts of the field, and they shall make thee to eat grass as oxen, and they shall wet thee with the dew of heaven, and seven times shall pass over thee, till thou know that the most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever he will.

Dan:4:26: And whereas they commanded to leave the stump of the tree roots; thy kingdom shall be sure unto thee, after that thou shalt have known that the heavens do rule.

Because, in the book of Daniel, the king was always synonymous with the kingdom [Dan.7.4], the seven times punishment which fell on Nebuchadnezzar later fell on the entire kingdom or system of Babylon. When Belshazzar later provoked the God who had humbled Nebuchadnezzar, God showed him a terrifying vision in which a hand wrote 'MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN' on the palace wall. Daniel once more interpreted the vision that Babylon would be deprived of its kingdom, which would be that very night given to the Medes and Persians:

Dan:5:20: But when his heart was lifted up, and his mind hardened in pride, he was deposed from his kingly throne, and they took his glory from him:

Dan:5:21: And he was driven from the sons of men; and his heart was made like the beasts, and his dwelling was with the wild asses: they fed him with grass like oxen, and his body was wet with the dew of heaven; till he knew that the most high God ruled in the kingdom of men, and that he appointeth over it whomsoever he will.

Dan:5:22: And thou his son, O Belshazzar, hast not humbled thine heart, though thou knewest all this;

Dan:5:23: But hast lifted up thyself against the LORD of heaven; and they have brought the vessels of his house before thee, and thou, and thy lords, thy wives, and thy concubines, have drunk wine in them; and thou hast praised the gods of silver, and gold, of brass, iron, wood, and stone, which see not, nor hear, nor know: and the God in whose hand thy breath is, and whose are all thy ways, hast thou not glorified:

Dan:5:24: Then was the part of the hand sent from him; and this writing was written.

Dan:5:25: And this is the writing that was written, MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN.

Dan:5:26: This is the interpretation of the thing: MENE; God hath numbered thy kingdom, and finished it.

Dan:5:27: TEKEL; Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting.

Dan:5:28: PERES; Thy kingdom is divided, and given to the Medes and Persians.

What is interesting is that 'MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN' referred to denominations of currency, or had a certain numerical value the total of which added up to 2,520. 'MENE=1000+ MENE=1000+ TEKEL=500+ UPHARSIN=20. This suggests a 2,520 year deprivation of world dominion for the system represented by Babylon and now incorporated into Rome, which has the mouth of the Babylonian lion, the feet of the Persian bear and the body of the Greek leopard [Rev 13.2]. Babylon fell during the month of Tishri, the seventh month, early October, in 538 B.C.

Seven times later brings one to early October ,1982, when Helmut Kohl, the architect of German reunification and nationalist revival began his 16 year reign,. Shortly after that Pope John Paul II made a statement on Europe reviving its unity and spiritual roots. Brezhnev died in November, 1982, setting in action the chain of events that brought Mikhail Gorbachev to power and destroyed Communism. Within a year, the radical right in Europe, after years on the fringes, made its first breakthrough to respectability with the rapid rise of the National Front of Jean-Marie Le Pen. Other movements, like the Austrian Freedom Party, the German Republikaner, the Italian Northern League, soon followed. France abandoned socialism and began to pursue full economic integration with Germany while German tanks paraded in Paris. The Single European Act, Single Market, Maastricht Treaty and Eurocorps soon followed, as have European passports and now a common European currency. Meanwhile, Communism collapsed in the east, Germany was reunified, moved its capital to Berlin and witnessed a neo-Nazi revival among its youth. Yugoslavia broke up and ultranationalist movements based on Le Pen's like the Greater Romania party of Corneliu Vadim Tudor or the Hungarian Justice and Life Party of Istvan Czurkas movements took root in many eastern European countries. Croatia, under Franjo Tudjman has openly rehabilitated the wartime Nazi/Catholic regime of Ante Pavelich, while the Serbs under Slobodan Milosevic have embarked on a genocidal war of revenge that has made them the terror of Europe.

The king and by implication , the kingdom of Babylon were symbolized in Daniel 4 by a great tree, which was to be chopped down at the beginning of the seven times punishment. At the end of it, the tree would begin to regrow, but it would take perhaps 20, 30, 40 years for the tree to fully regrow from the stump that was allowed to remain:

"Dan:4:15: Nevertheless leave the stump of his roots in the earth, even with a band of iron and brass, in the tender grass of the field; and let it be wet with the dew of heaven, and let his portion be with the beasts in the grass of the earth:

Dan:4:16: Let his heart be changed from man's, and let a beast's heart be given unto him; and let seven times pass over him.

Dan:4:17: This matter is by the decree of the watchers, and the demand by the word of the holy ones: to the intent that the living may know that the most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever he will, and setteth up over it the basest of men."

He stump represents the political system which would be denied complete world rule under Persia , Greece, and Rome. The band of iron and brass, however, as it corresponds to the two legs of post-Roman European civilization. The iron represents Latin Europe, Rome was the kingdom of iron; but the brass represents Greece, which, following the foundation of Constantinople by Diocletian, became the cultural heart of the Eastern Roman Empire. The iron and brass on the stump therefore represent Rome and Byzantium.

The eastern leg dominated after the fall of Rome in 476 AD in the 5th , 6th, and 7th centuries, until the Arabs overran much of Asian Byzantium and Charlemagne revived the Roman Empire in the west after 800 AD. The western leg was continued by the German emperors of the Middle Ages and their Habsburg successors, followed by Napoleon and Hitler. In the east, Byzantium comprised the eastern leg until Constantinople fell to the Turks in 1453, ruling over part of Turkey and imparting Greek culture to Serbia/Montenegro, Macedonia, Bulgaria, and Romania. This region eventually rejected Roman Catholicism for Greek Orthodoxy after 1054.

The religious and cultural division between Latin and Greek spheres still exists in Europe today. West of the 'Vodka Line' religion is generally Roman Catholic, script is Latin, capitalism is encouraged, and politics has some liberal currents, history traces to Rome; east of the line religion is orthodox, script is cyrillic [except in Romania] capitalism is frowned upon, [save in Greece] , politics is much more turbulent and extreme and history traces back to Byzantium.

The outcome of all of this is that it may well be that five of the ten toes on Daniel's image will come from not only western Europe, but some of the central European countries that made up the Habsburg domain. Germany, Italy, Spain, France, and a revived Danubian Federation of Austria, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Croatia, Slovenia, and Slovakia with a young Habsburg as president could well make up the five western kingdoms. As for the east, perhaps a revived Byzantium with Greece, Serbia/Montenegro, Macedonia, Bulgaria and Romania.

couraged, and politics has some liberal currents, history traces to Rome; east of the line religion is orthodox, script is cyrillic [except in Romania] capitalism is frowned upon, [save in Greece] , politics is much more turbulent and extreme and history traces back to Byzantium.

What is Prophesied for Africa?

While world attention seems to be focused on the Middle East, Europe, and China, and Americans seemed focused on the new Bush Administration and the scandals of the old Clinton Administration, a new world power may be forming in Africa. Its architect and leader may be none other than America's arch-enemy, Libya's Colonel Muammar Qaddafi.

Qaddafi recently celebrated thirty years in power by proposing the creation of a United States of Africa. While Nigeria, South Africa, and several other states remained skeptical, many of the other African rulers were more friendly to the idea of creating an African Union with a President, parliament, and common currency.

There is no doubt Qaddafi would like to be President of Africa. For many years the Libyan dictator sought to unite the Arab nations under his rule. This was the dream of Egypt's dictator Gamal Abdul Nasser [1952-1970] who served as a role model for the young Libyan who took power in a coup in 1969. This coup, interestingly enough, took place in the wake of an incident in which a young man, later ruled mentally deranged by an Israeli court, attempted to burn down the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem in the hope that it would hasten the rebuilding of a Third Temple. Instead, it hastened the emergence of Colonel Muammar Qaddafi as a would -be Islamic messiah.

Qaddafi is deeply, even fanatically religious, but he is not a traditional Muslim. Born in a tent in the Libyan desert in 1942, his father had fought the Italian subjugation of his country. From this, and his own experiences of being a desert bedouin moving to the city, Qaddafi has always harbored a bitter resentment of Europeans and Americans. After he took power in 1969, he expelled the US Air Force from its base at Wheelus. His new goals were to promote the well-being and economic development of his country with Libya's rich oil revenues and to unite all Arabs under his rule in an Arab Federation. A third goal was the total destruction of the State of Israel.

Qaddafi quickly gained a reputation as a wild radical among Arab rulers. Even Nasser could not control his fiery new disciple. Qaddafi's relationship with Anwar Sadat was much worse and Egypt and fought pitched battles in the desert in 1977. In the meantime he turned Libya into a totalitarian state. Libya was turned into a sort of direct democracy by people's committees but the ultimate decisions rested with the Leader, Qaddafi. Qaddafi purged dissent country with a Cultural Revolution like that in China. Billboards with his picture and slogans are everywhere. Qaddafi set down his ideas in his Green Book, patterned after Mao's Red Book, in which the philosophy was Qaddafi's version of Islam mixed with elements of European socialism and fascism. Qaddafi tried to acquire atomic weapons, bomb Israel when Israel downed a Libyan jetliner, and strongly supported terrorists of both the extreme left and the extreme right. In the1970's he sent troops to support the then-dictator Idi Amin of Uganda, 'Africa's Hitler', and sought to strike at Britain through support of the IRA. He is also a firm ally of Louis Farrakhan in the United States, whose 'Nation of Islam' believes white people are a creation of the Devil. Libya has one of the worst human rights records in the world. No dissent is tolerated, and torture is freely used.

Most of the Arab world has turned a deaf ear to Qaddafi. More moderate leaders considered him at best overzealous and at worst deranged, evil, and perhaps possessed. During the1980's his terrorist attacks on American citizens caused President Ronald Reagan in 1986 to launch an air strike directly into his tent. His adopted daughter was killed.

[Warfare between the United States and Libyan terrorists is nothing new. One of the first enemies the new American Republic faced at the dawn of the1800's were the Barbary Pirates of Tripoli. President Thomas Jefferson sent some of the first US Marines there to rescue hijacked Americans].

In the aftermath of Reagan's attack, Qaddafi became very quiet, striking back with the bombing of a TWA flight over Lockerbie, Scotland, only when Reagan was out of office. Lockerbie, though, widened the rift between Libya and other Arab nations, some of whom joined in placing sanctions on Libya in the 1990's. More militant Arabs have found a new champion in Iraq's Saddam Hussein, who is far more powerful and dangerous than Qaddafi, if less colorful. Qaddafi, meanwhile, has become more and more disillusioned with the Arab cause. He expelled Libya's Palestinians, letting Yasser Arafat take care of them. He even makes racial slurs against the Arabs. Qaddafi, though, is still Qaddafi, with gigantic dreams of power and empire. He has now shifted his dreams to Africa.

For years Qaddafi has been overshadowed by Saddam. Now there is growing evidence to suggest that he, or possibly his son, may yet play a major role in the climactic events prophesied in the Bible. Is Africa mentioned in Bible prophecies for the21st Century? Egypt certainly is, so is Ethiopia, and even Libya, but what of nations like Nigeria, Ghana, the Congo, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, and , of course, South Africa?

According the research of Worldwide Church of God theologian Herman Hoeh, most of the peoples of Africa are descended from Noah's middle son Ham and his four sons, Cush, Phut, Mizraim, and Canaan. The sons of Mizraim and of Canaan were lighter-skinned. Mizraim is thefather of the Egyptians, who still call their country Misr. The people of Crete and the Palestinians of Gaza are also descended from Mizraim[Gen 21.34, Zech 9.6-7, Jer. 47.4, Amos 9.7, and Gen.10.14]. The Libyans and peoples of western Sudan are also descended from Mizraim.[IIChr 12.3, 16.8, Gen 10.14]. The Berbers of Libya, including the Qathhaffa Tribe, from whom Colonel Qaddafi is descended, are actually Semites descended from Lud, son of Shem. Most of the desert nations of North Africa, especially Egypt, have heavily intermarried with the Arab tribes descended from Abraham's son Ishmael. Ishmael himself, however, was a descendant on Hagar's side of Mizraim. Canaanite descendants of the ancient Carthaginians can likely be found in Tunisia.

But what of black, Sub-Saharan Africa? The name Cush itself, is translated as 'black' and the Greeks called Cush 'Ethiops'. The Hebrew word for 'Ethiopia' in the Bible is actually 'Cush'.

The late Canadian theologian Arthur C. Custance said that: "while there was a Cush in or near Mesopotamia at the very beginning, the most prominent settlement established by descendants of this patriarch was in Ethiopia. The Ethiopians have been habitually considered true blacks, which is recognized indirectly in Scripture when the prophet asks, "Can the Ethiopian change his skin?" (Jeremiah. 13:23)." Arthur Custance, Noah's Three Sons, The Roots of the Nations: Chapter 3, 'The Descendants Of Ham', http://www.custance. org/noah/ch3h.html. ]

The sons of Cush revived the ancient Sumerian civilization at Erech and Ur in Iraq but then moved on into India and Ethiopia. From there they spread down the East African coast. Names such as Zambia [a Sumerian king] or Uganda may even be derived from Sumerian or Indian origin.

If the black nations of East Africa come from Cush, many of those of West Africa come from Phut or Put, whose name means 'bow' or 'warrior'. The Greeks called West Africa 'Put' and the name 'Put' is translated as 'Libya' in the Bible. The rivers Pet or Putu are found in West Africa. According to Custance: "It is therefore possible that all of Africa, despite the different shades of colour of its native populations, was initially settled by various members of this one Hamitic family." Arthur Custance, Noah's Three Sons, The Roots of the Nations: Chapter 3, 'The Descendants Of Ham',

http://www.custance. org/noah/ch3h.html.]

Therefore, when the Bible talks about Egypt, Ethiopia and Libya, it literally says 'Mizraim, Cush, and Put' and can include the ENTIRE CONTINENT OF AFRICA! The peoples that settled in Africa were once quite technically advanced. Shem dwelt in tents while Ham built cities. The Semites were teachers, the Japhethites thinkers, and the Hamites builders. Sadly, many of the Hamites quickly rebelled against the monotheistic teachings of Noah, preferring the worship of pagan gods. As they spread into Africa, these practices of fertility and demon -worship debased much of African civilization. Africans began to enslave each other and then the Europeans came in to buy the slaves, carve up the continent and rule it. After WorldWar II, the African states became independent of European rule, but most of them collapsed into tribal war.

After 40 years of independence, Africans seem ready for a desperate and drastic solution to their enormous problems. Africa was$116 billion in debt in 1990; it was $320 billion in 1998, almost three times the continent's revenues. Almost half of the50 countries of Africa are involved in tribal wars, some of which have made the Balkan conflicts look like a picnic. Large sections of the continent are sliding into anarchy and millions are already infected with HIV. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse of religious fanaticism, war, famine, and pestilence in Revelation 6, destined to kill a quarter of humanity are already riding in much of Africa. Following this period of the 'beginning of sorrows', the Bible predicts a Great Tribulation brought on by a revival of the medieval Holy Roman Empire in Europe. This empire will possibly be ruled by the House of Habsburg . Islamic fundamentalism will trigger a Roman Catholic fundamentalism and a European invasion of the Middle East and of North Africa:

The Bible talks in Daniel 11 about two rulers, called the King of the North, and the King of the South. In the original fulfilment of those prophecies, in the period between the Old and New Testaments, the King of the North represented the Seleucid ruler of Syria; the King of the South was the Ptolemaic ruler of Egypt. Around Daniel 11.20 the prophecy begins to jump to the future. The King of the North would become the Roman Empire and the Holy Roman Empire of the MiddleAges. Eventually, it would seem, the Habsburgs, Napoleon, Mussolini, and Hitler fulfilled that role. The King of the South is Egypt, Ethiopia, or Libya.

Sometime, likely in the next 10 to 20 years an Islamic power rooted in Africa will pose such a threat to the countries of the European Union that they will invade North Africa in a new Crusade at the same time they enter into Palestine, at the very beginning of the Great Tribulation:

"And at the time of the end shall the king of the south [Probably Egypt or Libya, but possibly Iraq or Saudi Arabia push at him:

and the king of the north [a future European Emperor-President, likely Austrian or German]shall come against him like a whirlwind, with chariots[tanks], and with horsemen, and with many ships; and he shall enter into the countries, and shall overflow and pass over.

He shall enter also into the glorious land[Palestine], and many [countries] shall be overthrown: but these shall escape out of his hand, [even] Edom, and Moab, and the chief of the children of Ammon[Jordan]. He shall stretch forth his hand also upon the countries: and the land of Egypt shall not escape. But he shall have power over the treasures of gold and of silver, and over all the precious things of Egypt: and the Libyans [Phutites -West Africans]and the Ethiopians [Cushites-East Africans] [shall be] at his steps [Dan.11: 40-43]." The New International Version says 'with the Libyans and Nubians in submission'.

Ezekiel 30 gives more details, implying that the European power will militarily invade and conquer many of the very nations Qaddafi seeks to unite under his rule:

The word of the LORD came again unto me, saying, Son of man, prophesy and say, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Howl ye, Woe worth the day! For the day [is] near, even the day of the LORD [is] near, a cloudy day; it shall be the time of the heathen And the sword shall come upon Egypt, and great pain shall be in Ethiopia[Cush, East Africa], when the slain shall fall in Egypt, and they shall take away her multitude, and her foundations shall be broken down.Ethiopia[Cush-East Africa] and Libya [Phut-West Africa], and Lydia, [Lud-the Berber nations of Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, and Libya, plus Saharan nations like Chad and Mauretainia. Qaddafi is himself a Berber], all the mingled [Hebrew: Ereb, or Arab]people, and Chub {literally, "a horde", and the men of the land that is in league[ in the Latin Vulgate, this is rendered by the word from which we get 'federation']shall fall with them by the sword." [Ezek.30:1-5].

During the Tribulation most of Africa will be under the domination of a German-led Europe until Jesus Christ returns to deliver all nations.

===============

Who are the Lost Tribes? A Commentary on Some Notes by Dr. Herman Hoeh.

If the British nations are Ephraim and the United States is Manasseh, then
where are the other lost tribes of Israel? In his widely read book, The
United States and Britain in Prophecy. Worldwide Church of God Pastor
General Herbert W. Armstrong identified The British nations as Ephraim and
the United States as Manasseh. He did not generally discuss where the other
tribes had gone except to say that they had also migrated to northwestern
Europe:

"We lack space for a detailed explanation of the specific identity of all of
these other tribes in the nations of our twentieth century. Suffice it to
say here that there is ample evidence that these other eight tribes have
descended into such northwestern European nations as Holland, Belgium,
Denmark, northern France, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Sweden, Norway. The
people of Iceland are also of Viking stock. The political boundaries of
Europe, as they exist today, do not necessarily show lines of division
between descendants of these original tribes of Israel."

Worldwide Church of God theologian, Dr. Herman Hoeh later located the
smaller tribes by

1.) recognizing that Scandinavia and Western Europe were descended from
Israelite Celtic and Scythian tribes stock are of Israel and
2.) determining which country had the unique characteristics and prophesied
destiny of each tribe that no other country had.

This article is an expansion and an updating of Dr, Hoeh's notes, put into
my own words. Some of my own research has been added.

In the prophecies of Genesis 49 and Deuteronomy 33 for the last days, these
destinies and different traits are laid out.

1. Reuben: "Unstable as boiling water", having the "excellency of dignity",
or greatness, is, without a doubt, in northern France. A river Arnon flows
into the Loire near Orleans. The only other place on exists is on the
southern boundary of ancient Reuben in Jordan. Southern France is Latin,
descended from Rodanim, son of Javan. France is the only longstanding
European democracy that is unstable. The French set the styles for the world
in terms of excellence, and have the same tendencies as Reuben in sexual
matters. Moses says: 'Let Reuben live and not die in that his men become
few' [Deut 33.6]. This can also be translated as "Long Live Reuben" , or,
"Vive la France". France now has one of the lowest birthrates in Europe.
She once had as many people as Russia, and was the greatest power in Europe
after 1648, being the firstfruits of Israel's strength. She lost her
preeminence in a series of wars lasting from 1754 to 1815, but has remained
a great power though the birthright passed to the Anglo-Saxons.

2.Simeon: received no blessing from Moses, who does not even mention the
tribe. Jacob said they would be scattered among Israel. Simeon's original
territory was in the south of Judah, but a branch migrated to the north when
Israel and Judah split. The Senones and Semnones may represent Simeonites in
Western Europe. A large part of the Simeonites can be found among the
Celtic Britons who had the tribe of the Simeni. These Celts scattered into
Scotland, Brittany, and later into Quebec and the American South , where
they are mixed with other tribes. Where you find violence and a strong
desire for tribal independence you will likely find Simeonites. Witness
Quebec separatism, Scottish nationalism, and new movements among "Celtic"
Southerners to restore the Confederate States of America.

3. Levi: a tribe of priests that was scattered among Israel (Gen. 49.5-7).
God never gave them their own tribal land, save cities in the other tribes.
When Jeroboam set up his own priests, they went to Judah so they are today
among the Jews as Levi, Levine, Cohen, Segal, and similar names (I Kings
12.31).

4.Judah: represents mainly the Jewish people, both Ashkenazim and
Sepahardim, dispersed among all nations. While Judaism has made many
converts, the theory that most Jews are Turkish Khazars is simply not true.
The State of Israel is a powerful warrior nation defying its enemies, and
Judah has lots of enemies in a very antisemitic world. A small part of Judah
went captive with Israel in II Kings 18.13. We find them today among the
lost tribes as the Jutes from Jutland who settled in the region of England
called Kent. Many of the Highland Scots and Northern Irish are also
descended from the Zarah line of Judah.

5.Issachar: A large-boned donkey [Gen 49.14-15]. A donkey is slow-moving,
stubborn, but a willing beast of burden. Such is Finland today. The land is
pleasant and good but not especially rich. Finland has always lain between
the two burdens of Europe and Russia, and become a servant to both.
Deut.33.19 describes wealth from fishing, sand, peat bogs. It is probable
that the western people of Finland are Issachar; the Karelians and other
eastern Finns are from Japheth. Finns and Flemings migrated from Central
Asia. The name Isagarus is found in Afghanistan . Some Jews in this region
in modern times had the name Isacharoff, found nowhere else. The name Flamen
,or Fleming may come from Brahmin.

6. Zebulun: represents the Netherlands. There is a region of Afghanistan
called Zabulistan, with a river called the Helmund. The town of Helmond is
found in southern Holland. The "Sabalingoi"["people of Zebulun"] were
found on the shores of the North Sea in Roman times. They dwell at the shore
of the sea and have the biggest port in the world. Their flank is unto Sidon
, which means fish. The Dutch lie opposite the biggest fishing bank in the
North Sea. Dutch colonies in Indonesia, Africa, Brazil, and Guiana bordered
on Portuguese ones. The Portuguese are in part descended from Sidonian
Phoenicians. Royal Dutch Shell has sucked the abundance of the sea and the
sand, as have the Afrikaners with their diamonds in South Africa. Zebulun
and Issachar were to share jointly in the same blessings. Frisians and
Flemings might be the sons of the latter.

7: Dan: was originally in two parts. One around Joppa, the other in the
north of Palestine. Dan refused to fight alongside the other tribes in
Judges 5.17. many migrated to Greece where they became the Danaans, and from
there sailed to Ireland, where they were called Tuatha de Danaan. Dan would
stand up to rule his own people as one of the separate tribes of Israel. The
Irish love politics, law, and law enforcement. They would win independence
through guerrilla warfare, which Jacob described as being like a serpent in
the grass. The symbol of the IRA is a coiled serpent.

The northern group of Danites likely became the ancestor of at least part of
the Danes. The old Holsatian Chronicle plainly says the Danes are descended
from the Tribe of Dan, but many as well could be from Benjamin and Naphtali.
A map by the geographer Ortellius around 1570 placed Danorum and Nephtalim
in Russianot far from Scandinavia.

8. Gad: A troop, or militia: the Swiss are the only Israelite nation [save
the Jews] in which every man is mobilizedfordefense. Troops will come
against Gad but he will troop upon their heel. Gad will tear the arm with
the crown of the head .of the Habsburg Empire, and choose the first part for
himself. To him would come the heads of the people. Nations always negotiate
in Geneva.

9. Asher: the Belgians and Luxemburgers, and most likely the French-speaking
Walloons. Jacob said his bread shall be fat and he shall yield royal
dainties.[Gen 49.20]. This very verse is quoted in a medieval chronicle in
Liege, Belgium, applying it to the city. The Belgians were at the core of
the medieval kingdom of Burgundy. They produced fine Flemish paintings,
royal tapestries, diamonds, porcelain, lace, chivalry, and, if eastern
France is included, champagne. The references to oil and brass hint at an
industrial people. The Walloons were metal workers and miners for centuries
and pioneered the Industrial Revolution in Europe. The Welsh also come from
Asher. Like the Walloons they are coal miners and musicians. Camden's
History of Britain says that Asher settled in western Britain and worked the
tin mines there.

10:Naphtali: Sweden, and possibly some of Denmark and Norway. Satisfied with
favor, full of the blessings of the Lord. Naphtali is a prancing deer which
gives goodly words[Gen.49.21]. Sweden has a well balanced economy, gives out
Nobel Prizes, sends out diplomats to give words of conciliation and peace.
Possessing the sea and the south refers to the Sea of Galilee and the
Swedish Baltic empire of the1600's and 1700's.

11.Ephraim: is clearly the British Commonwealth , including Canada,
Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and many other British places. It is
also very likely that there is a lot of Ephraim in the American South.
Anglo-Saxon Southerners came from the western parts of England and are very
conservative and pro-English. One of the meanings is "Restored". The British
restored the monarchy and cling to tradition. When Jacob blessed Ephraim, he
laid the right hand upon him, symbolizing British conservatism.

12.Benjamin: Norway, Iceland, and parts of Denmark. Benjamin was given to
David , for Jerusalem was in the territory of Benjamin, not Judah[I Ki
11.35]. Benjamin was told to flee the destruction of Jerusalem. [Jer 6.1].
Sennacherib likely took many Benjamites and Judahites captive. The Judahites
became the Jutes, the Benjamites the Varini, or wolf people, who settled in
Norway. Benjamin is compared to a wolf that plunders in the morning and
divides the prey in the evening [Gen 49.27], an apt description of the
Vikings. Benjamin was the smallest tribe both then and now. An element
settled in Normandy and may be among French Canadians today.

13. Manasseh: is the United States, especially in the Northeast and
Midwest. The Puritans came from East Anglia, not western England. Manasseh
was to be a liberal nation, its name meaning "Causing to forget". Jacob
blessed Manasseh in his left hand. Northern Americans like new inventions,
new ideas, and a democratic form of government. According to sociologist
James M. Jasper, in his new book Restless Nation, the whole key to the
American character is reinventing yourself with a new place, a new name, a
new frontier. Ephraim was to be blessed before Manasseh in Gen. 48. In
the1800's Manasseh was a people but Ephraim was greater, but in the 20th
century, Ephraim would become a commonwealth of nations while Manasseh would
become great. According to theologian Herman Hoeh, "In all the world
there is no group of nations which so perfectly correspond to the
prophecies" , each having its own characteristics, although there would be
non-Israelite peoples, as well as other Israelite peoples among the various
tribes.

In a brief summary , we have:

Reuben Unstable as water, excellency of dignity: France
Simeon Weapons of violence, scattered: Celtic fringe
Levi Among the Jews: tend to be priests, intellectuals, musicians
Judah Hand in neck of enemies, Messiah, The Jewish Diaspora, State of
Israel, Highland Scots and Ulster, much of European royalty
Zebulun A haven for ships, treasures from sea and sand: Netherlands and
Afrikaners
Issachar Between two burdens, servant unto tribute: Finland and Friesland
Dan Judge his people, serpent by the way: Ireland and part of Denmark
Gad A militia: Switzerland
Asher Royal dainties, iron and bronze: Belgium and Wales
Naphtali Goodly words, possess lake: Sweden
Ephraim "Restoration", Multitude of nations, birthright: British
Commonwealth
Benjamin Raven as wolf: Norway, Iceland, part of Denmark.
Manasseh "Causing to Forget", Birthright, single nation: USA

=======
Did the Exodus Happen? Answering the Skeptics

A new wave of scholars is now dogmatically declaring that the Exodus never took place. They insist it's just a myth concocted centuries later in the time of Josiah to justify the existence of a Jewish state. Some of these new skeptics, such as Zeev Hertzog and Israel Finkelstein of Tel Aviv University, are Jewish themselves!

The implications of their teaching are profound. They insist that, historically, there really is no such thing as a Jewish or Israelite people descended from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. There never was an Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob. Moses was a myth, and never wrote the first five books of the Bible. The so-called Israelites are just Canaanites that emerged in Palestine, were joined by a few nomads, and concocted a new religion.

If these new theories are true, then

* The Jewish people have no historical claim to either the land of Canaan, being a nation, or maintaining the State of Israel today. They might as well turn it over to Mr.Arafat and his Palestinians who themselves claim Canaanite and Philistine origin. Accoprding to the new historians, Israelites aren't Israelites, just Palestinians.

* Christians can't rely on the authority of the Bible if the very events that foreshadow the death and sacrifice of Jesus Christ are myth. The Passover in Exodus 12 points to His death and He observed as a memorial as did Paul's converts in I Corinthians who recognized vital spiritual lessons in the Hebrew Exodus.

The new archaeological theories present a fundamental attack on the very foundations of both Judaism and Christianity. A piece by Religion Editor Teresa Watananbe states that most archaeologists now insist the Exodus never happened. This view has permeated liberal religious circles as well. On Sunday, April 8, 2001. Rabbi David Wolpe spoke at the Sinai Temple in Westwood, California. He insisted 'that virtually every modern archaeologist who has investigated the story of the Exodus, with very few exceptions, agrees that the way the Bible describes the Exodus is not the way it happened, if it happened at all'.

According to Watanabe:

'After a century of excavations trying to prove the ancient accounts true, archaeologists say there is no conclusive evidence that the Israelites were ever in Egypt, were ever enslaved, ever wandered in the Sinai wilderness for 40 years or ever conquered the land of Canaan under Joshua's leadership.'

Instead, ' the prevailing theory is that Israel probably emerged peacefully out of Canaan--modern-day Lebanon, southern Syria, Jordan and the West Bank of Israel' and ' the Canaanites who took on a new identity as Israelites were perhaps joined or led by a small group of Semites from Egypt'….As they expanded their settlement, they may have begun to clash with neighbors, perhaps providing the historical nuggets for the conflicts recorded in Joshua and Judges. '

Denial of the Exodus and the reality of the Biblical account is nothing new. Neither are these arguments. The skeptics have been around for over 200 years, and much of their teaching the accepted wisdom in universities for a long time. The theories are now being recycled because of a lot of new archaeological evidence that Professor Finkelstein and others have uncovered. This evidence, it is claimed, provides no evidence for the Exodus or the Bible.

Are the skeptics right? They are looking at the right evidence, but at the wrong time. Dating in the history of Egypt and Palestine is based on a couple of assumptions that professors have handed down over the decades. First, they assume the Exodus took place, not when the Bible says it did, around 1450-1447 BC but around 1300 BC. The Bible says the Hebrews built the city of Ramesses and that existed around the time of Ramses II who is dated around 1290. There is no evidence of Hebrews or an Exodus at that time.

What if, however, the Hebrews built the city of Avaris, which existed before the city of Ramesses, and the term 'Ramesses' was a later edition by an editor? Also, what if the Egyptian chronology itself has been wrongly focused? At the very time the historical establishment was more and more rejecting the Biblical record, a handful of archaeologists were questioning the accepted wisdom. In 1991 a group led by Peter James published a book called Centuries of Darkness. Four years later British archaeologist David Rohl published A Test of Time, marketed in America as Pharaohs and Kings. Both of these books argue, convincingly in my opinion, that the traditional dating of much of ancient history before 1000 BC in most history books is flawed.

Both James and Rohl did not start out with an agenda of trying to prove the Bible. They just went to the Egyptian tombs and monuments and concluded that several of the later dynasties ruled side by side. This meant that earlier dynasties were placed anywhere from one hundred to three hundred years further back than they should have been. The three hundred year 'Dark Age' which historians describe in Greece, Phoenicia, and other places, shrinks and even disappears. The Pharaoh Shishak who invaded Jerusalem has been identified with identified with Soshenk. But Soshenk never attacked Jerusalem but northern Israel ! Another Pharaoh did attack Jerusalem…the famous Rameses II! In Egyptian he is Ra Me Shi Sha, the Shishak being a Hebrew nickname for 'The Destroyer'. Rohl concluded that Shishak was Rameses, that the splendorous late Canaanite period was the time of Solomon , that the period of the El Amarna letters was the time of Saul and David.

Rohl's biggest discovery, though, was in finding the evidence for the Exodus in the Thirteenth Dynasty. His findings are summarized by John Fulton, a supporter of David Rohl:

'Before Moses, the Bible records that the Israelites were enslaved by their Egyptian hosts (Exodus 1:8-14). In the Brooklyn Museum (p.276, fig. 310) resides a papyrus scroll numbered Brooklyn 35:1446 which was acquired in the late 19th century by Charles Wilbour. This dates to the reign of Sobekhotep III, the predecessor of Neferhotep I and so the pharaoh who reigned one generation before Moses. This papyrus is a decree by the pharaoh for a transfer of slaves. Of the 95 names of slaves mentioned in the letter, 50% are Semitic in origin. What is more, it lists the names of these slaves in the original Semitic language and then adds the Egyptian name that each had been assigned, which is something the Bible records the Egyptians as doing, cf. Joseph's name given to him by pharaoh (Genesis 41:45). Some of the Semitic names are biblical and include:-

· Menahem - a Menahem is recorded as the 16th king of Israel in 743-738 BC

· Issachar and Asher - both Patriachs of Israel and sons of Jacob.

· Shiprah - the name carried by one of the Israelite midwives who were instructed in Exodus 1:15-21 to kill Israelite newborn males.

That 50% of the names are Israelite means that there must have been a very large group of them in the Egyptian Delta at that time, corroborating the testimony of Exodus 1:7 which alludes to how numerous the Israelites became. Also, the female slaves outnumber the male slaves on the papyrus by about 3 to 1, again hinting at the culling of male Hebrew children. There was no military campaign into Palestine in the 13th Dynasty to account for these large numbers of slaves.'

The skeptics look for Israel in the Egypt of the Nineteenth Dynasty and remain skeptics, because the proof is in the Egypt of the Thirteenth Dynasty. The site of Avaris has been uncovered by the Austrian archaeologist Manfred Bietak in the land of Goshen underneath that of the city of Ramesses. It provides plenty of proof, says Fulton, for Israel's presence and sufferings in Egypt:

'The people who lived in Avaris, however, were not Egyptian but Asiatic Palestinian or Syrian. The finds there included numerous pottery fragments of Palestinian origin. Several factors about the graves were particularly fascinating:-

· 65% of the burials were of children under 18 months of age, the normal for this period being 20-30%. Could this be due to the killing of the male Israelite children by the Egyptians, recorded in Exodus 1:22? · A disproportionately high number of adult women as opposed to adult men are buried here, again pointing to the slaughter of male Israelite babies.

· There are large numbers of long-haired Asiatic sheep buried which indicate these people to be shepherds.

· Large numbers of weapons found in the male graves indicate the warlike nature of the people.'

According to the Bible, Moses was born around 1527 BC, in the reign of Neferhotep I. A few fragments of ancient records from a Jewish historian called Artapanus were preserved by the Catholic historian Eusebius. They say that the Pharaoh's daughter at the time Moses was born was called Merris. She married the Pharaoh Khenephres, also called Sobekhotep IV .

Moses or Mousos, meanwhile became a great general who invaded Nubia and Ethiopia. Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, 2.10.1-2 tells the story. The Ethiopians had invaded Egypt and had practically overrun the country :

'The Egyptians, under this sad oppression, betook themselves to their oracles and prophecies; and when God had given them this counsel, to make use of Moses the Hebrew, and take his assistance, the king commanded his daughter to produce him, that he might be the general of their army…. So Moses….cheerfully undertook the business' and defeated the African invaders by marching through a snake-infested region and taking them by surprise: ' When he had therefore proceeded thus on his journey, he came upon the Ethiopians before they expected him; and, joining battle with them, he beat them, and deprived them of the hopes they had of success against the Egyptians, and went on in overthrowing their cities, and indeed made a great slaughter of these Ethiopians.'

Josephus was right. A monument in the British Museum tells of Khanferre or Khenephres invading Sudan and Ethiopia, the only Thirteenth Dynasty ruler to do so. Remains of an Egyptian government building with the Pharaoh's statue has been found hundreds of miles south of known Egyptian territory.

Sobekhotep IV/Khenephres was the Pharaoh of the Oppression from whom Moses fled, about 1487 BC. The forty years Moses spent in Midian were likely 1487-1447 BC. The Pharaoh of the Exodus was Dudimose. Fulton records that the Austrians found evidence both of God's slaying of the firstborn and the sudden departure of Israel from Goshen:

'The Tenth Plague to be sent on Egypt just before the Exodus was the plague on the first-born, recorded in Exodus 12:29,30. At the end of stratum G/1 at Tell ed-Daba or the ancient city of Avaris (p.293), archaeologists found shallow burial pits into which the victims of some terrible disaster had been thrown. These death pits were not carefully organised internments; the bodies were simply thrown in on top of one another. Could these be the burial pits of the first-born Egyptians? What is more, immediately after this disaster, the remaining population left Avaris en masse; this fits perfectly with the Exodus of the Israelites following the final terrible plague.'

Manetho, the Egyptian historian wrote how Egypt collapsed in the reign of Dudimose :

'Tutimaos: In his reign, for what cause I know not, a blast of God smote us; and unexpectedly, from the regions of the East, invaders of obscure race marched in confidence of victory against our land (Egypt). By main force they easily seized it without striking a blow and having overpowered the rulers of the land, they then burned our cities ruthlessly, razed to the ground the temples of the gods and treated all our natives with cruel hostility, massacring some and leading into slavery the wives and children of others.'

The invaders were the so-called Hyksos or Shepherd Kings, who were the Amalekites Israel encountered after leaving Egypt. They found Egypt, devastated by Divine judgment an easy prey.

Did the Exodus Happen? ' The continuing archaeological discoveries' says Fulton, 'here in the ancient city of Avaris mirror exactly the early Israelites revealed in the Old Testament. For two centuries no evidence was found for the Israelites when looking in the strata of the 19th Dynasty. Now that the chronologies have begun to be amended and the sojourn in Egypt placed in the 12th and 13th Dynasties, we have a wealth of archaeological evidence corroborating the biblical account. '

======================================

Some Thoughts on Judah, the Right, and the Left

I was recently confronted by a friend of mine who accused the Jews of fostering Communism. This is a common charge made by the extreme right. Many British Israelites believe the Jews are Edomite Khazars and the Identity movement even asserts they are the Seed of Satan!

As one who is very much opposed to both Communism and Anti-Semitism I felt I needed to comment on these accusations.

It is true that many Jews were and have attracted to various forms of Communism and socialism, as well as liberalism. To me, though, the Bible and genetics overwhelmingly bears out that the Jews are mostly the children of Judah, Benjamin, and Levi. They are not Edomites. They are God's people, the House of Judah, who preserved His Word and fathered Jesus Christ, the Messiah. The attraction of many Jews to leftist politics is not the result of some bogus conspiracy. It rather stems from their national character as a Messianic people. Many Jews are deep thinkers and, even if they do not believe in God, see the world as it ought to be, free of oppression and injustice. Consequently, most Jews in the United States still
tend to be on the left of the political spectrum. Like African Americans , they are
overwhelmingly Democratic.

The State of Israel is in many ways the most purely socialist in the world,
with its kibbutzim. This is nothing new. While Jeroboam II in Samaria let
the rich get richer and the poor poorer, Uzziah in Jerusalem was solving his
unemployment problem by settling kibbutzim in the Negev...in the eighth
century BC. [II Chr. 26.9-10].

Why are Jews more socialist than Anglo-Saxons, especially Manassites? We are
by nature a Messianic people. Most of the prophets of the Bible came from
either Judah or Levi. Social justice is a very important part of the Old
Testament. Salvation was collective and national as well as individual. The
religious right in the United States sees salvation much more as an
individual matter and this leads Oliver North, Jerry Falwell, etc. them to a
kind of Puritan Ethic that frowns on unions and welfare. The Calvinist idea, as
distorted by some American theologians, taught that most were predestined to
go to hell. Those who were part of God's elect showed it by hardwork and
prosperity. If you were rich, it wasa sign of God's favor. If you were poor,
it proved your wicked moral character and the best thing to do was to let
you starve until you got out there and hustled. This idea is alive and well.
Just tune into Rush Limbaugh, Neal Boortz, etc.

I'm not against conservatism, just this
particular brand of it. I prefer the traditional British Tory
Disraelian-Churchillian approach which has now died in England. When Herbert
Hoover told Winston Churchill that unemployment insurance destroyed
character, the greatest statesman of the twentieth century replied' Life
itself has enough trials without us having to go seek more'. No one can fault the Jews for lack of enterprise ora work ethic, but Jewish thought, unlike the individualist conservatism of Mr. Limbaugh, always had a place forboth excellence and fairness.

An interesting book by Martin Gannon looked at business cultures: the
Americans could be understood by a football huddle, the British by a stable
old house, the French by a vineyard, the Germans by a symphony
orchestra...and the Israelis by the Kibbutz.

Centuries of persecution in ghettos caused Jews to draw together. In the
meantime they hoped for the coming of the Messiah, not understanding that
Jesus was that Messiah or that those who claimed to be Christians and
persecuted them had horribly distorted his message. When the Enlightenment
came in the1700's, Jews embraced liberal ideas because they separated
church and state. Karl Marx grew up in Trier in Germany. He was a Levite,
the original family name was Halevi. He had many Levite traits. He was a
brilliant thinker and an idealist with a very violent temper. He was raised
as a Lutheran and was a political liberal before becoming converted to
atheism. Expelled from Germany he went to Paris in 1842 or 1843 where
communist ideas had been circulating for decades. A Frenchman called
Gracchus Babeuf tried a communist coup in Paris in 1796. Marx picked up
these ideas and met Friedrich Engels, a pure German, in Paris. Both began
reading the laissez-faire economists Malthus and Ricardo whose ideas are
still very popular with today's right-wing libertarians. Just read Lord
Rees-Mogg and James Dale Davidson. These economists taught the poor had only
themselves to blame and nothing could be done to help them.
Marx ,of course, read capitalism wrong as did its promoters. At that time
population was growing faster than food supply, leading to the harsh
economics of Ricardo and Malthus and to Marx concluding that capitalism
would dig its own grave.

In reality, the industrial revolution and free trade, with factory and
social welfare legislation began to slowly improve the lot of workers. The
harsh free market economics of Ricardo were replaced by the economics of
Alfred Marshall. Interestingly..Jews were also important in libertarian
thinking. Ludwig von Mises in Austria was Jewish by ancestry, so was Ayn
Rand [Alissa Rosenbaum]. Then there is Milton Friedman and Barry Goldwater, not to mention
Alan Greenspan. The Messianic strain in Judaism comes out in capitalism as well. Other than
the Rothschilds, few big businessmen have been Jewish, though.

By 1900, socialism in most of western Europe was democratic and reformist.
Not so in Russia. Many Jews there became Marxist because the Czarist regime
was so oppressive. My great-grandparents fled that system for America and
Canada. The Czar wanted to murder one-third of Russia's Jews, convert the
remaining third to Orthodoxy, and banish the remaining third. Those Jews in
eastern Europe who turned to Marxism had already lost their faith. They did
not embrace Zionism like Theodore Herzl and David Ben-Gurion on the left, or
Vladimir Jabotinsky and Menachem Begin on the right. There were and are Jewish
fascists. Interestingly, many Italian Jews were good Fascists in the1920's
and many early Italian Fascists, including Mussolini himself, were not at
that time anti-Semitic.

Trotsky, Kamenev, Zinoviev, Bukharin, Radek, Kaganovich, Bela Kun, Rosa
Luxemburg were lapsed Jews who turned to Bolshevism as a new faith. The
proletariat was the chosen people, the Communist Party the church. Marx was
the prophet; Lenin [a Tartar, not a Jew] the apostle. Capitalism was the
Devil, its crisis Armageddon, the classless society a godless version of the
Millennium. As I have said, Communism was a religion of revolution and a
Judeo-Christian heresy.

Because many Jews in Russia supported Communism, many deduced that

therefore Communism was Jewish. Among them were Henry Ford and Adolf Hitler .

Why is there so
much anti-Semitism? Gen. 49 predicts that Judah would have many enemies. The
Jews would be dispersed among all nations. Because of their education, Jews
like Daniel and his companions, Mordechai and Esther would tend to rise to
the top in many societies. They would, of course, be different and provoke
anti-Semitism. The idea of a Jewish conspiracy wanting to dominate the world
is as old as the Greek Apion, whom Josephus wrote against.

Orthodox Catholic theology had a big role to play in all this. After the Jews
revolted against the Romans one time too many, Judaism was outlawed in the
Empire. The Roman church sought to distance
themselves from Judaism with Easter, Sunday, and a theology that taught the
Jews killed Christ and that God had foresaken them. Jews in the Middle Ages
were forbidden to own land and had to become merchants and moneylenders to
survive. In Poland, Romania, the Ukraine, Hungary, Russia, you had peasant
societies in which the middle class was Jewish. Resentment against
capitalism in western Europe was by and large not anti-Semitic. It was very
anti-Semitic in the east. Many Jews either became Zionists, Americans, or
socialists.

After Stalin took over, the 'Jewish' cast of Bolshevism was less apparent.
Many lapsed Jews like Lazar Kaganovich did join the Communist Party. After
all, the Communist melting pot offered them social advancement and a new
faith. It attacked the Orthodox religion that had persecuted them. Stalin, a
Georgian, however, was almost as anti-Semitic as Hitler. When he died in
1953 he was planning to kill all the Jews in Russia.

A Jew could be a Communist if he or she rejected his or her Jewish identity
and became a good Russian. Stalin and his successors tolerated this. A Jew
could not be a good Nazi. Marxism was a Jewish-Christian heresy spawned by a
renegade Levite; Nazism is a pagan religion of Assyrian/Chaldean derivation.
Yes, Nazism is a religion. There are many different forms of fascism, but
the Nazi variety is especially malignant. Communism is violent and brutal in
the extreme, and sees that brutality as a means to a classless utopia. Nazism
glorifies force and violence for its own sake, as a means to a racial utopia.

The name Ashur, for Assyria, means 'strong' and 'powerful'. Here is much of

the German character in a nutshell. Might is right. Marx taught that
class war determined everything; Hitler believed that race did. Some races
were superior species to others. To advance the human species one needed to
put the blond Aryan in charge and enslave everone else. Hitler's vision came
in part from his childhood reading of Wild West novels. Germans were the
cowboys, Slavs were the Indians. Hitler wanted to conquer Russia up to the
Urals, exterminate and enslave the Poles, Russians, and Ukrainians, and
colonize the region with Aryan peasant communities. In a couple of
generations a German super race of 200-300 million would spread from the
Atlantic to the Urals. In alliance with England it would dominate the
world. Every Jew on earth would be killed. Why?

The Jew to Hitler represented the antithesis of the Nazi racial utopia. Keep
in mind that Nazism was pagan. Heinrich Himmler and his SS encouraged the
worship of nature. Judaism and Christianity taught humility, equality,
compassion, brotherhood, and the notion that God was working through Israel
as His instrument for the benefit of all mankind. This clashes severly with
Nazi morality which says that the weak must be exterminated for the benefit
of the species. It seems the new Nazi man that the SS envisioned would be a
reincarnated Viking: a nature-worshipping peasant warrior who would delight
in fighting, be strong and racially pure, and eventually become a superman
through selective breeding and a little help from black magic. In essence,
the hidden agenda of Nazism was 'ye shall be as gods'. Its inspiration came
directly from a fallen superangel who insists on competition with God and that
struggle is the father of all things.

The Jew, who preserved the laws of God, stood in the way of this racial
utopia. Nazi propaganda built upon a number of half-truths. Many Jews were
Communists, therefore Jews controlled the Soviet Union. The Rothschilds were
influential bankers, therefore the Jews were behind capitalism. FDR was
advised by Bernard Baruch and other Jews, therefore the Jews controlled
America. Hitler to the end saw World War II as a war against the Jews.
That's why he was more obsessed with the Holocaust than defeating the
enemies he had made. Many German-Jewish scientists came to America and gave
her the A-bomb.

Because of their customs and laws the Jews stood out from all the nations
they were scattered among. By necessity they congregated in the cities.
Centuries of persecution and their own stress upon education and
Messianic inclinations turned them towards liberal and socialist ideas. Jews
are thinkers and tend to be idealists even if they are secular. They are
attracted to the arts and journalism. During the Depression, some, like
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, thought Communism was the answer. So did Alger
Hiss, who was not Jewish. This led them, and people like them,
unfortunately, to acts of treason.

Most American Jews have been liberals, but before the1960's were strongly
opposed to Communism. Most American Jews are quite irreligious but even many
rich Jews tend to vote Democratic because, in back of their minds, they
equate the right wing, even conservative Republicans, with a tyranny of a
non-Jewish majority. Democrats are seen as more tolerant of minorities and
more willing to help the underdog. Even though the far right are the most violent haters of the Jews, the far left has been consistently pro-Arab and anti-Israel.
===============================================

The Left, the Right, and theVerdict of Prophecy

Here's a brief guide to some of the journals I am familiar with, laid out on
a spectrum from reactionary right to radical left.

I personally prefer the New Republic on the Left and the Weekly Standard on
the Right. The former are liberal Democrats who try to live in the real
world, without blaming either government or corporations for everything. The
latter thinks there's more to a nation than a bunch of yuppies playing
'Survivor'. ...but I'm not sure I'd want them in power.

I wouldn't give the time of day to libertarianism....

As for Buckley and company, they love Bush but last year
they were castigating him for his 'compassionate conservatism' rhetoric. By
definition, they feel, conservatism is not compassionate, cannot be, and
should not be. [something liberals agreed with...which is why they are not
conservatives.] Some NR writers seem less like
conservatives than free market libertarian.

National Review [William F. Buckley, Rush Limbaugh, and other
Bushites...Libertarian/Conservative] Traditional Minds and Free Markets. My
country, never wrong, except when it's too liberal: "Things were so much
better then, girls were girls and men were men, Mister we could use a man
like Herbert Hoover again..and we've got him."

Solution to problems: 'Give a tax credit and blame Liberals, they're responsible for everything!'

Reason [Harry Browne...Radical Libertarian] 'Free Minds and Free Markets'.
My country?...no such thing...a collection of sovereign individuals.

Solution to problems:'Privatize EVERYTHING, blame government intervention.'

Weekly Standard [Bill Kristol, John Mc Cain..Nationalist Conservative]
"Speak Softly and carry a Big Stick...My country, right or wrong...TR Rides
Again."

Solution to problems: Gunboat diplomacy, 'American credibility is at stake, bomb Iraq.'

New Republic [Bill Clinton, Al Gore, 'New Democrats'] "Let's have Free
Trade...but I Feel Your Pain...My country, sometimes wrong...I can negotiate
anything...I did not have sex with..."

Solution to problems: '200 policy proposals for everything, don't worry, Bubba Clinton will fix it.'

American Prospect [Hillary Clinton, Ted Kennedy, Traditional Liberals]
"Government Works....Mister, we could use a man like Franklin D. Roosevelt
again (or a woman like Eleanor!!!!). My country, usually wrong....we support
a woman's right to...."

Solution to problems: 'Levy some new taxes, set up some gender and minority quotas, blame white males, and set up a new Federal Bureau.'

The Nation [Naderite, Green Party] Down with Globalization...My country,
always wrong and owned by Bill Gates...Workers and Whales of the World
Unite!.

Solution to problems: 'Blame the corporations, boycott a multinational.'

OK, after we've taken a tongue -in -cheek view looked at how everybody wants to run things, where does this put us in Bible prophecy? I don't think, like William Dankenbring does, that Bill Clinton is the Antichrist. Neither do I think, like GTA, that the election of Al Gore would have hastened the destruction of the country. GTA's often excellent commentary has often been marred by his sarcasm and tendency to read a conservative Americanism into the Bible.

Clinton is a latter day Grover Cleveland, George W. Bush a latter day Mc Kinley. Mc Cain thinks he's Teddy Roosevelt. This might give you some idea where we are....there are a lot of parallels with 100 years ago. The US is now clearly where the British Empire was in 1901...the global superpower. Its dominance, however, is far more thorough. The French have coined the term 'hyperpower' to describe the US. THE USSR collapsed, leaving the US as the unquestioned chief of the nations.

Europeans could identify with Clinton, who was an internationalist free-trader and a sixties radical who feels guilty about American power. Al Gore wasa radical environmentalist. Even under Clinton, Europe and America continued to drift apart. The American Empire, unlike the British, is much more informal. it is economic and cultural. Globalization wears Mickey Mouse Ears, and so do French children much to the disappointment of their leaders. Clinton, though, signed treaties and told Europeans he felt their pain as free markets swept all before them, toppling first communism, then socialism, then welfare capitalism.

Bush really gets under Europe's skin. He is a symbol of everything their leaders hate about America. Cowboy, entrepeneur, anti-intellectual, anti-union, anti-welfare, unabashed defender of free market capitalism, most conservative since Hoover. Reagan II. America and Europe have different interests and approaches and Bush's doctrine says America should look out for Number One. America is Number One and Proud of It. If we need a missile defense, we will have it. If the Kyoto Treaty is a bad deal, we will scrap it. If we need to bomb Saddam of Qaddafi, we'll do it.

Over the long term, Bush's policies and approach will only serve to anatagonize Europeans further. They are much more afraid of Russia and the Arabs than we are. They will resent American power more and more, and this will further the growth of a European army, but a newgeneration will become more Anti-American politically whilecontinuing to enjoy American TV and videos.

Bush won't, in my opinion, bring WWIII. It appears he and Cheney will, however, further estrange America from Europe, spur anti-Americanism there, and even divide Americans at home. Bush talks like an Eisenhower and governs like a Goldwater. He thinks his hard-right conservative agenda is OK, he just has to sell it better. I think the Democrats could make substantial gains in 2002. If Bush is too rigid, gridlock will worsen and the country's cultural andemotional divisions will widen. Interesting. his great grandfather sat on the Federal reserve and advised Herbert Hoover.

The Israel described in the Book of Amos had a religious right government. The House of Jehu, in league with Jonadab the traditionalist had overthrown the wicked and immoral House of Ahab, which had slaughtered infants and aggravated the culture war. Jehu, a right-wing patriot and cowboy general from the Rocky Mountains of Gilead [that's what the word means...hills of rock!] overthrew the Ahabites in a coup. He brought Israel back not to the God of Abraham but to their traditional religion. Israel under Jeroboam II from 790-750 was military powerful. They made a big show of religion at Bethel. Sermons were typical, castigating the Syrians, Philistines and other rogue states. When God sent Amos to them, he started out that way to get their attention, then began sounding more like Ralph Nader than Rush Limbaugh. There were two kinds of justice, one for the rich and one for the poor. The rich were getting richer and the poor poorer. Samaria was now surrounded by slums and there were hunger riots. The rich didn't care. Israel seemed invincible but would come down quickly.

Amos's message was rejected. He was seen as a whiner, if not a Liberal. Soon after he preached a terrible quake hit Israel and Judah. The economy took a heavy blow. Jeroboam died and his son was assassinated. The new king, Menachem, was a left-wing Yankee from western Manasseh. He soaked the business classes to appease the Assyrians, who were quickly on the march after decades of pacifism. In the meantime, Israel had degenerated from the time of Amos. Baalism and immorality were back with a venegeance.

Israel tore herself apart from within.

Menachem's house didn't last long...the redneck Pekah took over, another cowboy who rebelled against Assyria and brought in Tiglath's armies. Tiglath deported half the kingdom and set up a puppet government under Hoshea. Isaiah warned Israel's last king. [Isa. 28], who would not heed. The rest of Israel was removed.

To me, Bush is not the messiah somethink he is, but a modern-day Jehu or Jeroboam II who may, like the cowboy kings of ancient Israel, further polarize the country and isolate it from its allies.

======

On France's New Law

"There is a very strong anti-religious bias that has emerged in Europe," he was quoted as saying. "If you're an evangelical, you are a nut."

France, sadly has never been known as a bastion of religious freedom. In the Middle Ages numerous sects arose such as the Cathars, Albigensians, and Waldensians. The King of France in the early 1200's mounted a terrible crusade against them. In the 1500's Protestantism began to arise in southern France in some of the very same regions. Protestants were massacred in Paris during the 16th century. St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre. A statesmanlike king, Henry IV, brought religious toleration to France in 1587 by converting to Catholicism. Under the Edict of Nantes France remained Catholic but tolerated her Protestants.

The French Huguenots [from Eidgenossen,'federation'] were the most talented minority in France. They were entrepeneurs who lived mostly on the west coast and in the southern part of the country. Many were probably not descendants of Reuben, who lived in the Paris basin, but may have either come from Javan's son Rodanim [Rhone]or were Gadites like the French Swiss.

It may well have been that tolerating those who read the Bible enabled God to bless France in the 17th century. During that time she became the first nation of Israel to rise to world power.

Gen:49:3: Reuben, thou art my firstborn, my might, and the beginning of my strength, the excellency of dignity, and the excellency of power:
Gen:49:4: Unstable as water, thou shalt not excel; because thou wentest up to thy father's bed; then defiledst thou it: he went up to my couch.

Catholic France, for political reasons, entered the Thirty Years War on the side of the Protestants. This was the most terrible war in European history until 1914. In the 1500's northern Europe had revolted against the Catholic Church. The Austrian and Spanish Habsburgs launched this war in 1618. They wanted to reunify the Holy Roman Empire and crush Protestantism. They defeated the Czechs and Hungarian Protestants. They then defeated the Calvinists of the Rhineland and the Dutch and Danes. Sweden was a great power under Gustavus Adolphus and his modern army saved the Protestant cause.

Judg:5:18: 'Zebulun and Naphtali were a people that jeoparded their lives unto the death in the high places of the field.'

The Peace Of Westphalia in 1648 ratified the religious division of Europe. The Habsburgs failed and their power began to decline. In 1653 the French army crushed Spanish power. France was now the number one world power and would remain so until the 1760's.

When Louis XIV came to the throne in 1661 he set out to make himself an absolute monarch. He had his reasons for doing so. The nobles in France were very powerful and the people looked to the king to defend them. In England, the people and the nobles joined forces to restrain the king. This is how we got relatively limited government. France did not have this luxury. Louis built the huge palace at Versailles to attract the nobles there and clip their power. He suspended the Estates-General which was the French parliament and the aristocratic courts. He taxed people unmercifully like Solomon. He built up a huge army and tried to unite Europe under his throne.

Louis, like Nebuchadnezzar, thought France should have one religion: Roman Catholic. He revoked the edict of toleration and persecuted the Huguenots. Many fled to Holland, Prussia, England, South Africa, and to America. Families like the Rocquefeulliers [Rockefellers] and Broucards[Brokaws]. I believe this brought a self-inflicted curse upon France. By driving out many Bible-readers and good business people and supporting an oppressive state religion of Jesuit Catholicism, Louis XIV and his two successors:

1.Made deism and atheism instead of Protestantism the alternatives to the status quo. When the Age of Reason came to Protestant Britain and America in the 1700's it was far less hostile to religion than in France.

2.Weakened the growth of a French business class which did not emerge until the 1830's and 1840's.

When the French Revolution broke out in 1789 it turned violently against religion...unlike the American Revolution.

Num:16:1: "Now Korah, the son of Izhar, the son of Kohath, the son of Levi, and Dathan and Abiram, the sons of Eliab, and On, the son of Peleth, sons of Reuben, took men:
Num:16:2: And they rose up before Moses, with certain of the children of Israel, two hundred and fifty princes of the assembly, famous in the congregation, men of renown:
Num:16:3: And they gathered themselves together against Moses and against Aaron, and said unto them, Ye take too much upon you, seeing all the congregation are holy, every one of them, and the LORD is among them: wherefore then lift ye up yourselves above the congregation of the LORD?"

The Reubenites joined Korah as ringleaders in a democratic revolution against religious authority. Later, Napoleon reesstablished the Catholic Church but also tried to spread religious toleration, trying to suppress the Inquisition in Spain.

Eventually after another round of wars and revolutions France became a Republic in the 1870's and remained such ever since except for the Vichy years 1940-1945. Marshal Petain ruled as a king without a crown, interned Jews, and turned education back over to the Catholic Church.

Even though France preaches respect for the human person, the symbol of Reuben was a man, not an animal, she has often not had a good record when it comes to religious freedom.

Judg:5:16: Why abodest thou among the sheepfolds, to hear the bleatings of the flocks? For the divisions of Reuben there were great searchings of heart.

France has, as a result of Louis XIV's intolerance and the failure of the Reformation there, a long history of cultural war. She has been perenially split between a religious right which tolerates only Catholicism and an antireligious left which is often atheistic. There are far more atheists and communists in France than in Britain or America. There are also more home-grown fascists like Jean Marie Le Pen [Catholic] and Bruno Megret [Pagan]. It is not America's Protestant culture in which massive immigration of refugees from European persecution threw Puritans, Catholics, Quakers, and others together.

The new laws in France make it possible for the Republic, or somebody like Le Pen who would destroy the Republic, to clamp down on any religion it doesn't like....especially 'American' ones. France has never been a great place for religious toleration. Europeans don't like Bush because he is an evangelical. America recognizes all religions, but even without the new law, France only recognized Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, and Jewish as official religions. Most Europeans are quite irreligious. Taxes are horrendous for tithe payers. Sunday legislation is strong, especially in Germany.

The French lesson is setting a dangerous precedent. Russia, a place never even considering tolerance, is already cracking down on foreign sects. China is about to follow.

====

Can We Win the Next War?

In spite of our confidence that we are now the only superpower and are
invincible. Britain felt that way in the early decades of this century. She
almost lost World War II as a result. Now, West Point historian Frederick W.
Kagan warns that America is making the same mistakes Britain did and could
lose World War III as a result. 'Make no bones about it', he writes in the
Weekly Standard, July2-9,2001, ' there will be another war.' The 1990's and
2000's represent not 'The End of History', but 'an interwar period, the
tenth the United States has faced as a nation.' With the exception of the
Cold War we failed to be prepared. Kagan worries that the 'evidence is
growing that we will fail in this one, too.'

American policymakers need to recognize that World War III will come unless
it is actively deterred by a strong defense and the will to use it. At the
present time, however, the US military is seriously underfunded, neglected,
and poorly trained. Drastically weakened by Vietnam in the 1970's and
restored by Reagan in the 1980's, it was in a position to defeat Saddam
Hussien, but it took weeks of buildup. Bill Clinton, a former 60's radical,
balanced the budget on the backs of the army and navy (Coolidge and
Eisenhower and others also cut the army). Bush plans further cuts in favor
of an antimissile system.

'There is', however, according to Kagan,'a minimum size below which a
military organization cannot maintain itself.'The new high-tech military is
very specialized, but so depleted that troops sent abroad on missions have
to cannibalize units elsewhere for trained personnel. Morale is bad. We
have a volunteer army with too few volunteers, amny of whom are poor,
African-American, and Hispanic. Even some Marines are living on food stamps.
Cut this force further and, says Kagan, you will have a real crisis:

'It is already difficult to convince young men and women to join the armed
forces and stay there. It will become much more so as the services are cut.
Would-be recruits will see that a smaller force will have to work harder and
longer, and will achieve lower standards of performance and readiness. Who
will want to join such an organization'.

We certainly need an antimissile defense to deter China, North Korea, Iran,
and other states ruthless enough to consider actually using nuclear
missiles. America cannot, however do this at the expense of an effective
army, navy, air force, and Marine Corps. This, says Kagan, is a prescription
for the collapse of our armed forces.

'For all these reasons, the proposal to reduce the size of our armed forces
by cutting combat units should be rejected out of hand. So should the plan
to fund missile defense by starving combat forces.'

'The threat of missile attack is serious, but it is not by any means the
only threat we face. If we gut our armed forces to pay for missile defense,
we will lose our position in the world and our ability to maintain the peace
at least as rapidly and surely as if we had no missile defense.'

The Eisenhower Administration tried the same thing. The army was slashed to
the bone and the air force purchased hundreds of medium-range B-47 bombers
and long-range B-52's, some of which are still in service after almost fifty
years. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles drew a line around the
Communist world. If anybody crossed it, the US would retaliate with nuclear
weapons. It didn't work. Communism spread into Southeast Asia, Cuba, and
Africa and the threat of obliterating Moscow alone would not stop it. The
'Bigger Bang for a Buck' idea didn't work then and won't work now. We need
state of the art computerized weapons, but without enough weapons or good
soldiers and the means to deploy, supply, and support them they are useless
toys that won't stop Saddam, Zhiang, or anyone else. Smart bombs cannot be
launched against Baghdad from North Dakota. Also, you needto havethe
intelligence to find out where the enemy's weapons are. In 1999 we wasted
many expensive missiles firing at haystacks Slobo camouflaged like tanks.
Even World War II taught that strategic air power alone was ineffective
unless combined with a good army with tactical air support.

'The whole history of warfare' Kagan agrees, 'confirms that success lies in
integrating all of the assets at your disposal as effectively as possible,
whether they be pike, horse, and arrow, or bomber, tank, and rifleman. Only
in recent years have techno-enthusiasts forgotten this lesson and begun once
again to imagine that a single type of weapon by itself can dominate the
battlefield.'

The United States is responsible for restraining China in the Far East and
keeping the lid on in the Middle East. To do this requires an army and a
navy capable of fighting a two and a half front war. Under the new Bush
administration plan we wil only be capable of fighting a war on one front,
and do it badly. What if we had to deal with Zhang's nationalist heirs
attacking Taiwan, North Korea attacking South Korea, Qaddafi staging coups
in Africa, Saddam, Assad and the Iranian mullahs moving on the Gulf and
Israel, and a new Slobo somewhere in the Balkans...all at the same time. We
would be stretched horribly thin! Worse yet, what if we had to deal with
all this....and trouble in and with Mexico!!!!!

'It is well to remember here that today's techno-enthusiasts had their
counterparts in earlier times', writes Kagan. The British cabinet of Lloyd
George in 1919 thought 'Man-power in its war use will more and more tend to
become subsidiary and auxiliary to the full development and use of
mechanical power.'Few in Britain thought in the 1920's there would be
another Great War. It was so horrible as to be unthinkable.

France was strong behind her Maginot Line and Germany was a disarmed
democracy that had signed the Locarno and Kellogg-Briand pacts outlawing
war.
Britain, it was felt, would no longer need a big army. The tank and the
airplane would make armies obsolete. Airpower alone would deter Britain's
foes and support peacekeeping operations.

The interwar British army couldn't find enough soldiers and couldn't pay
them adequately. Morale was bad. Britain still maintained her empire but
pursued policies of isolationism and appeasement. World War II started in
1931 in Asia when Japan invaded Manchuria. Two years later Hitler seized
power in Germany. According to a British cabinet report Britain had few
resources to deter the sudden rise of three aggressive fascist powers:

'Our present resources do not permit us even to aim at anything better than
to place in the field single divisions in each of the first two months of
the war, a third at the end of the fourth month, and the remaining two
divisions at the end of the sixth month.'

'The demands of economy have prevented us from providing the modern
equipment and the extremely important and expensive item of sufficient
reserves of ammunition which would be necessary for war on the continent of
Europe, and even for a major contingency on the Frontiers of India.'

'The most we could do at present if called upon to intervene in Europe, and
it is probably well known to both our friends and enemies,
would be to provide a small contingent of, say, one or at most two divisions
at the outbreak of war, equipping them to a certain extent at the expense of
later divisions preparing to go overseas.'

Within two years Germany was rearming and Italy invading Ethiopia.
like Britain in the 1930's. The British had to deter Hitler in Europe,
Mussolini in the Mediterranean, and Japan in the Far East. They couldn't do
it. Though Britain was cradle of the tank, little new weaponry was deployed.
Britain was still relying on biplanes as the governments of Stanley Baldwin
and Neville Chamberlain reluctantly began to rearm. It was almost too late.
The army alone need over £145 million, Parliament, motivated by politics
instead of military reality voted only £20 million. As a result, says Kagan,
'Britain was nearly defeated, her cities were bombed, she took hundreds of
thousands of casualties, and she lost her position as the world's leading
power.'

Britain entered World War II expecting a repeat of World War I. Instead the
German army crushed the Allied forces in the West in a lightning thrust
within a single month May 10-June 10, 1940 [compare Hosea:5:7: 'now shall a
month devour them with their portions..'] The Dutch, overwhelmed by
paratroopers and terror bombing fell within a week, the Belgians within
three. Before the Allies knew what had hit them, hundreds of German tanks
had slipped through the Ardennes, shattered half the French army, and
trapped the British against the sea. It was only by a miracle from God that
the British army escaped. They had no weapons and were no match at that time
for the Wehrmacht's professional soldiers. Had Hitler defeated the RAF,
Britain might have been conquered.

'Exactly the same preoccupation with political reality at the expense of the
real world can be seen in Washington today', says Kagan. Boosting our
defenses may require up to $150 billion a year in additional spending, not
counting missile defense. Neither Bush, who wants his tax cut nor the
Democrats, who want to spend more on health care and education are willing
to spend anywhere this amount. Few liberal Democrats or libertarian
Republicans in Washington are worried about fighting a major World War III
on land, sea, air, and in space. As it did in the 1920's and early 1930's it
seems all too easy to starve national defense. The US however, doesnot have
ordinary defense needs.

Pat Buchanan was an open isolationist and got barely 1% of the vote. George
W. Bush, though, seems to be a closet isolationist or at least a
unilateralist who thinks America needs to go it alone, but without the
military means to do so. We can either spread our forces thinner, when they
are already dangerously overstretched and overworked...or we can turn
isolationist like we did in the 1920's.

Fortress America, though, is an illusion. The United States is at the heart
ofa global economy and has global interests. Bush knows this and knows it
well. If the US withdraws its forces from Europe, Japan, Korea, the Mideast,
it will invite not only aggression, but force Europeans and Japanese to look
to themselves.

According once more to Kagan: 'Our interests in Europe, East Asia, and the
Middle East will not go away just because we pull our forces out, and once
we withdraw them, we may find it very difficult to send them back again when
we need to.'

Could we stop Saddam if he starts rolling towards Saudi Arabia? We are in
far worse shape than in 1990. We could bomb Iraq off the map but without
being able to get a big enough army over there fast enough could we stop
100,000-200,000 Iraqis?

Even if we were to rearm now we could still leave a dangerous window of
opportunity for China, Iraq, etc. to attack our interests. If we do not
rearm now that window could, warns Kagan, become even more deadly than the
one in the 1930's for

'...all experience argues that there will be another war-and that we, like
many before us, will be unready for it. We will fail to deter it; we will
endure reverses in its earliest phases; we will suffer from it grievously
and needlessly; and we may not win it. The real world has a way of punishing
those who ignore it.'

Biblical history has a number of warnings about such a situation. Ancient
Israel's planners also saw themselvesas a confident superpower with no major
wars on the horizon:

Amos:6:1: 'Woe to them that are at ease in Zion, and trust in the mountain
of Samaria, which are named chief of the nations, to whom the house of
Israel came!'Amos:6:3: 'Ye that put far away the evil day, and cause the
seat of violence to come near...'

Within a matter of years Assyria rapidly revived under Tiglath-Pileser III
to suddenly shatter Israel's power: Amos:6:14: 'But, behold, I will raise
up against you a nation, O house of Israel, saith the LORD the God of hosts;
and they shall afflict you from the entering in of Hamath unto the river of
the wilderness.'

Even before that time Israel began to suffer humilaition in local wars and
even the destruction of some of her cities by earthquake:

Amos:4:10-11: 'I have sent among you the pestilence after the manner of
Egypt: your young men have I slain with the sword, and have taken away your
horses; and I have made the stink of your camps to come up unto your
nostrils: yet have ye not returned unto me, saith the LORD. I have
overthrown some of you, as God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah, and ye were as
a firebrand plucked out of the burning: yet have ye not returned unto me,
saith the LORD.'

Economic problems are causing and will cause America to disarm herself as
Britain did:

Isa:17:3-4: The fortress also shall cease from Ephraim, and the kingdom from
Damascus, and the remnant of Syria: they shall be as the glory of the
children of Israel, saith the LORD of hosts. And in that day it shall come
to pass, that the glory of Jacob shall be made thin, and the fatness of his
flesh shall wax lean.

Economic stagnation caused Britain not to invest in enough economic or
military technologies, letting Germany take the lead. Will America suffer a
similar form of senility?

Hosea:7:8-11: 'Ephraim, he hath mixed himself among the people; Ephraim is a
cake not turned. Strangers have devoured his strength, and he knoweth it
not: yea, gray hairs are here and there upon him, yet he knoweth not. And
the pride of Israel testifieth to his face: and they do not return to the
LORD their God, nor seek him for all this. Ephraim also is like a silly dove
without heart: they call to Egypt, they go to Assyria.'

Weakness abroad will effect prosperity at home. The east wind comes out of
the Arabian desert and dries up the soil:

Hosea:13:15: 'Though he be fruitful among his brethren, an east wind shall
come, the wind of the LORD shall come up from the wilderness, and his spring
shall become dry, and his fountain shall be dried up: he shall spoil the
treasure of all pleasant vessels.'

The US and Britain will come to rely more and more upon the European Union,
led by an assertive Germany, partly descended from Ashur, for defense and
trade.

Hosea:8:9-10: For they are gone up to Assyria, a wild ass alone by himself:
Ephraim hath hired lovers. Yea, though they have hired among the nations,
now will I gather them, and they shall sorrow a little for the burden of the
king of princes.

Impossible as it may seem, US hegemony could quickly begin to fade in the
face of internal problems, leaving a global power vacuum to be suddenly
filled by a European power:

Hosea:9:11: 'As for Ephraim, their glory shall fly away like a bird, from
the birth, and from the womb, and from the conception.'

America's possible sudden demise as a superpower, something no one should
want, may come about because of a reluctance to heed history:

Hosea:11:6: 'And the sword shall abide on his cities, and shall consume his
branches, and devour them, because of their own counsels.'

Ezekiel 7.10-14 warns that the pride of Israel in the last days would bud
and she would be preoccupied with making money. When war would finally come,
the nation would be unprepared and unable to mobilize properly: Ezek:7:14:
'They have blown the trumpet, even to make all ready; but none goeth to the
battle: for my wrath is upon all the multitude thereof.' Once [Lam 1.1-2]
'great among the nations' Israel, like ancient Jerusalem, would 'become
tributary' and her former allies, no longer able to trust her, would 'deal
treacherously with her ...[and]become her enemies. They would be 'gone
without strength before the pursuer' Lam:1:6:

Existing airborne, silo-based missile, and submarine deterrents and
underfunded military forces may not be sufficient when World War III comes:
Amos:2:14-16: 'Therefore the flight shall perish from the swift, and the
strong shall not strengthen his force, neither shall the mighty deliver
himself. Neither shall he stand that handleth the bow; and he that is swift
of foot shall not deliver himself: neither shall he that rideth the horse
deliver himself. And he that is courageous among the mighty shall flee away
naked in that day, saith the LORD.'

Amos:9:2: Though they dig into hell, thence shall mine hand take them;
though they climb up to heaven, thence will I bring them down:
Amos:9:3: And though they hide themselves in the top of Carmel, I will
search and take them out thence; and though they be hid from my sight in the
bottom of the sea, thence will I command the serpent, and he shall bite
them....'

Bible prophecy warns of the sudden military decline of the descendants of
modern Israel:

Micah:5:8: And the remnant of Jacob shall be among the Gentiles in the midst
of many people as a lion among the beasts of the forest, as a young lion
among the flocks of sheep: who, if he go through, both treadeth down, and
teareth in pieces, and none can deliver.
Micah:5:9: Thine hand shall be lifted up upon thine adversaries, and all
thine enemies shall be cut off.
Micah:5:10: And it shall come to pass in that day, saith the LORD, that I
will cut off thy horses out of the midst of thee, and I will destroy thy
chariots:
Micah:5:11: And I will cut off the cities of thy land, and throw down all
thy strong holds:

In the end, however, it predicts their deliverance by the personal
intervention of Jesus Christ who will put an end to war:

Zech:9:9: Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of
Jerusalem: behold, thy King cometh unto thee: he is just, and having
salvation; lowly, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an
ass.
Zech:9:10: And I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim, and the horse from
Jerusalem, and the battle bow shall be cut off: and he shall speak peace
unto the heathen: and his dominion shall be from sea even to sea, and from
river even to the ends of the earth.

Zech:10:6: And I will strengthen the house of Judah, and I will save the
house of Joseph, and I will bring them again to place them; for I have mercy
upon them: and they shall be as though I had not cast them off: for I am the
LORD their God, and will hear them.
Zech:10:7: And they of Ephraim shall be like a mighty man, and their heart
shall rejoice as through wine: yea, their children shall see it, and be
glad; their heart shall rejoice in the LORD.
Zech:10:8: I will hiss for them, and gather them; for I have redeemed them:
and they shall increase as they have increased.
===

America's Destiny in the names of Manasseh's Descendants

Is the history and future of the United States of America revealed in the names given to the descendants of the ancient patriarch Manasseh, eldest son of Joseph, who was to ultimately father much of the American people?

Manasseh:

Joseph named his son Manasseh after he had been lifted from prison and named vizier of Egypt in the reign of Pharaoh Amenehmet III in the Twelfth Dynasty. Manasseh was born around 1690 BC.

Gen:41:50: And unto Joseph were born two sons before the years of famine came, which Asenath the daughter of Poti-pherah priest of On bare unto him.

Gen:41:51: And Joseph called the name of the firstborn Manasseh: For God, said he, hath made me forget all my toil, and all my father's house.

Gen:41:52: And the name of the second called he Ephraim: For God hath caused me to be fruitful in the land of my affliction.

The name Manasseh, means 'causing to forget', or 'forgetfulness'. God had caused Joseph to forget his sorrowful past. The American character, the Old South excepted [there is a lot of Ephraim there], is based upon the idea of rejecting the European past and creating a new future. Rejection of Europe is one of the cardinal tenets of Americanism

As Jacob/Israel was dying around 1665 BC, Manasseh, together with his brother younger Ephraim, was blessed by Jacob. The whole incident is very significant. In Gen 48.1-14 the dying Jacob prepares to bless Joseph's two sons who will become his the primary heirs to the promises of wealth and power given to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

Gen:48:15: And he blessed Joseph, and said, God, before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac did walk, the God which fed me all my life long unto this day,

Gen:48:16: The Angel which redeemed me from all evil, bless the lads; and let my name be named on them, and the name of my fathers Abraham and Isaac; and let them grow into a multitude in the midst of the earth.

The British Isles are located at the very center of the Land Hemisphere of the earth. That is, if one were to divide the surface of the globe into two equal parts, one of which would contain the maximum land possible, the center of that hemisphere would be in Britain. The sons of Joseph would grow together in Palestine and later Britain a before assuming a separate destiny after 1600.

Gen:48:17: And when Joseph saw that his father laid his right hand upon the head of Ephraim, it displeased him: and he held up his father's hand, to remove it from Ephraim's head unto Manasseh's head.

Gen:48:18: And Joseph said unto his father, Not so, my father: for this is the firstborn; put thy right hand upon his head.

One has the impression from this that Joseph had a preference for Manasseh and saw no reason why he shouldn't have the right hand laid on him …giving him preeeminence over Ephraim. God inspired Israel to lay it upon Ephraim instead:

Gen:48:19: And his father refused, and said, I know it, my son, I know it: he also shall become a people, and he also shall be great: but truly his younger brother shall be greater than he, and his seed shall become a multitude of nations.

Gen:48:20: And he blessed them that day, saying, In thee shall Israel bless, saying, God make thee as Ephraim and as Manasseh: and he set Ephraim before Manasseh.

Ephraim Set Before Manasseh:

Skeptics have always wondered why, if Ephraim was to be greater, the United States is now far greater than Britain. The prophecy appears to be ongoing, with Ephraim having the preeminence first and Manasseh obtaining it later on.

'he set

Ephraim before Manasseh'

Ephraim: British Empire and Southern US

Manasseh: USA except South

1800-1914

'his younger brother shall be greater than he':

Britain becomes the world power of the 1800's.

'he also shall become a people':

The USA becomes a nation

dwelling in the shadow of Britain

until after the Civil War.

1914-

'and his seed shall become a multitude of nations': Britain begins to lose dominance to the USA. Canada, Australia, New Zealand, others become nations in own right.

'and he also shall be great':

South loses control of the Union,

United States industralizes

and becomes the leading power.

The name of Manasseh foreshadows a people that would be a great single nation, but one that would be more liberal, in the sense of being individualistic and free-thinking, than the nations to come from Ephraim. The name points to a time of blessing when these people would want to forget their Old World past and live in the present and future. They would receive their blessing jointly with the Ephraimites, but eventually overshadow them.

Manasseh=Responsible Representation:

According to Yair Davidy :

'THE NAME "MENASSEH" IN HEBREW ENCAPSULATES THE MEANING OF NORTH AMERICAN DEMOCRACY!

'The Patriarch Joseph son of Israel had two sons, Ephraim and Menasseh, whose names testified to aspects of their national destiny: "And unto Joseph were born two sons before the years of famine came, which Asenath the daughter of Poti-phera priest of On bare unto him.

"And Joseph called the name of the firstborn Manasseh: For God has caused me to forget [Hebrew: `Nashani'] all my troubles and my father's family (Genesis 41;50-51).

The Hebrew word translated above as "forget" is derived from a root, "NOSHE", connoting "movement from its proper place": One forgets when something "slips one's mind", as if to say that whatever has been forgotten has moved from its proper place in the brain's retrieval system. Similarly, "And Jacob was left alone and there wrestled a man with him....... "And when he saw that he prevailed not against him, he touched the hollow of his thigh, and the hollow of Jacob's thigh was out of joint as he wrestled with him........ "Therefore the children of Israel eat not of the displaced nerve [Hebrew: "Gid HaNosheh")... (Genesis 32;24,25,32).

The sciatic nerve is called "Gid HaNoSHeh" meaning "the sinew that was displaced" (Genesis 32;33) when Jacob wrestled with the angel, and consequently (though victorious) limped away..By the same principle a creditor in Hebrew is called a "Nosheh" since what is rightfully his he has

moved out of his domain and placed in charge of another and may demand an accounting of his own. Women collectively are called in the Plural "NoSHim" [and not "Ishoth" as they should logically be] since communally their collective rights are delegated elsewhere, i.e. in their husbands upon whom they have a claim to be represented by them. It follows that any name derived from this root "NoSHeH" has several possible connotations including "forget", "move, or slip", "credit or oblige an accounting" (i.e. hold responsible), or be responsible to and "represent". It seems that the name Menasseh (derived from the root "NaSHeH") may be understood to mean "responsible representation" which is the type of Democratic Government the U.S.A. sometimes seems to base its whole being upon.

A linguistic analysis (freely translated) of the name "Manasseh" by Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch (1808-1888) extracted from his Commentary on the Book of Genesis serves as background to the above interpretation: [Genesis 41;51:`.."Forget" is not the only meaning of "Nosheh". "Nosheh" also means: to be the bearer of a claim, to be a creditor. [Genesis 32;33:]` "Nosheh" ...to have body or property in anothers trust.

Thus the "NoSHeH" (Creditor) has passed to another person part of his property and as a result he demands something from him.....a woman in the singular [Hebrew: "Ishah"] ...complements (her husband) and stands by his side as an equal. In the plural [i.e. in the plural name for women,

"NoSHim"], however, is revealed the communal status of woman, who surrenders some of her rights to the man and these rights are represented by him. Only in the mass, in the life of the general whole group, do women reveal themselves as weak and lacking resourcefulness. - Women, however, are "Noshim" (i.e. "creditors") with a claim [to be represented] on the husband who owes it to them' (S.R. Hirsch on Genesis 32;33).

The relevant verse regarding the name MENASSEH, Genesis 41;51, says: "And Joseph called the name of the firstborn Manasseh: For God has caused me to forget [Hebrew: `Nashani'] all my troubles and my father's family (Genesis 41;50-51).

S.R. Hirsch on the above states that "nashani" does not mean "forget" in case of the name "Menasseh" (Genesis 41;51 continued) but rather delegated representation: `The correct interpretation therefore of "Nashani" [from which the name "Menasseh is derived] is that God has made my tragedy and my [loss of] family credit claims. From that which till now appeared to be tragedy and torment God has made a tool to form my happiness. I am greatly obligated to

my tragedy and [loss of] family'.

In the light of the above observations and the Commentary of Rabbi S.R. Hirsch, the verse (Genesis 41;512) may be re-formulated and understood as

saying: "And he called the name of the firstborn Menasseh: for of all my troubles and [loss of] my father's family, God has made representative agents [Hebrew: "nashani"=] acting on my behalf and to whom I am obliged".

The name MENASSEH is therefore derivable from the root "Nosheh" as demonstrated in the above verse. A Creditor is a "nosheh" because he has a claim on somebody else; women are "noshim" ["nosh-im" = plural of "noshe"!] because as a group they have a claim on their husbands to represent their interests. Joseph named his firstborn "Menasseh" because (through God's agency) he "owed" his success to his personal troubles and loss which had become both his creditors and agents on his behalf. "MENASSEH" according to the above study actually means: "RESPONSIBLE REPRESENTATION OBLIGATING THE REPRESENTED"!

The U.S.A. was founded and dominated by descendants of Menasseh. Before the foundation of the U.S.A. North America was settled by migrants mainly from the British Isles. Friction developed between the British Government and the settlers who adopted the slogan: "No Taxation Without

Representation". In other words they demanded the application of those very principles embodied in the name "Menasseh" according to the above explanation!!

When these demands were not met, Revolution resulted and all those ("Loyalists") who were not prepared to fight against the "mother country" were driven out and moved to Canada. The Americans were prepared to kill or be killed and to engage in fratricidal strife all for the sake of an ideal which in Hebrew could be termed "MENASSEH"! After the War of Independence 13 colonies (representing 13 Tribes of Israel?) formed the U.S.A. It was proposed and seriously considered to adopt Hebrew as the national language and the Mosaic Code as obligatory Constitutional Law. A picture of the Israelites crossing the Red Sea was suggested as the National emblem. The Constitution of the United States of America laid the basis for Responsible Representative Government. Foreign observers are constantly surprised by the importance attached by Americans to their Constitution.

Whether something is right or wrong or whether or not it is "Constitutional" appear to be synonymous considerations to the American mind, as if the principle embodied in the name "Menasseh" is part of their very personal being!! Much of the U.S.A.'s foreign policy often seems dedicated ideally to encouraging forms of representative responsible government (resembling that of the U.S.A.) being adopted by others. Other countries are Democratic but only the U.S.A. makes Republican Democracy an expression of itself. Only the U.S.A. is Menasseh! The American Civil War was brought on by several factors including the issue of slavery but the immediate cause was over the Constitutional right claimed by some States to secede from the UNION.

Regardless of which side was or was not in the right, the victorious "Yankee" northern "Union" side believed it was fighting for the principle enunciated by Abraham Lincoln of: "Government of the people, by the people, and for the people". Another aspect of the name "Menasseh" according to the explanation of S.R.Hirsch was that through representation (in this case before God) Joseph had been enabled to turn his failure and deprived status into the basis of his later success: The American belief in equality of opportunity reflects this same principle. '

Asriel and Manifest Destiny:

Manasseh gave birth to a son, whom he named Asriel. Asriel was born even while, it would seem, Joseph was still alive. He name meant 'I shall be prince of God' , and is related to Hebrew roots for 'advance', 'progress', 'set right', and 'call blessed'. Jewish tradition doesn't say much about Manasseh, except that he was very big and physically strong, and that Joseph, as vizier of Egypt, put him in charge of his administration. Manasseh was a CEO, albeit in the public sector. The name Manasseh gave to his firstborn shows a confident outlook, an optimism in the future, and a belief in progress and a God-ordained Manifest Destiny. It also hints that the Manassites would be idealists, dreamers like Joseph wanting to set the world right, a belief shared by the Puritans, the Founding Fathers, theAbolitionists, Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, FDR, the Kennedys, LBJ, Ralph Nader, Jimmy Carter, and even Ronald Reagan.

Manasseh later in life seems to fallen on hard times. His first wife may have died and he married an Aramaic woman called 'Maacah' or 'oppression' . New rulers came to the Egyptian throne who did not remember Joseph and it is possible Manasseh began to see things turning for the worse if he lived to, say 1550 BC. He gave birth to a second son while Joseph was still alive called Machir, meaning 'sold, slavery, or salesman'. It is possible that by this time Manasseh could sense Israel was in for a hard time in Egypt.

America=Machir's Land?:

The name America itself, from Amerigo Vespucci, could well ultimately be related, says Yair Davidy, to that of Machir:

'THE NAME MACHIR IS RECALLED IN THAT OF AMERICA! The Phoenicians are believed to have visited AMERICA and named it - "The Great North Country" and the Hebrew prophets predicted that in the end time the Lost Ten Tribes would return from the "North Country" (e.g.

Isaiah 31;8) and they certainly were well acquainted with the Phoenicians. The Vikings attempted to settle in North America and named it "MARKLAND" which is believed to mean "Land of Darkness". Even so, Maruk (a permutation of Machir) and Mark (in "Markland") are not dissimilar. After the Vikings, the existence of America was realised by people in Britain including fishermen from the port of Bristol. Richard Ameryk, a Bristol merchant 1470's is now claimed to have maybe given

America its name. Ameryk was of Welsh ancestry and his family name originally was "Ap-Meryk", possibly denoting "Son of Machir". The more commonly accepted explanation is that the name "America" comes from that of the Explorer, Amerigo Vespucci (1451-1512) also called "America" and (after 1507) "America" is said to have been named in his honor. At all events, the name Amerigo or "America" is similar to Medieval appellations (Aimerico, etc.) for a Jewish Prince of southern

France whose proper Hebrew name (from which the Latinised appellations

were derived) was MACHIR. The name in Hebrew was also given as "HaMachiri". The Hebrew version is difficult for untrained westerners to pronounce (or even remember) and so

was rendered in Medieval Latin as "Americo" or "Amerigo" and this name was later given to Amerigo Vespucci who gave his name to the land of America. It follows that the name AMERICA may well be understood to mean "Land of Machir", son of Menasseh. The very name "Menasseh" in Hebrew (according to the Commentary of Rabbi Shimshon Raphael Hirsch) can mean delegated responsible representation and this is a fundamental aspect of the North American character. The USA was created when its early settlers declared "no taxation without representation" and fought against Britain for their Independence. America was named after Machir, and Benyamin Turkia pointed out that

"Machir" in Hebrew can mean "selling" and the principles of Capitalism and Free Enterprise have also become part of the American character.'

Machir's name is very important as well, for it prophesied that the future nation would one day be one of optimistic entrepeneurs. The chief business of Manasseh would be business. Machir seems to have reacted, as he grew up, to his father's lax moral behavior by marrying a Benjamite. Interestingly, liberal and conservative generations will sharply alternate in American history.

Machir's Sons and Puritan NewEngland:

Machir gave birth to three sons: Peresh ['fertilizer'], Sheresh ['root'], and Gilead ['rocky region ']. These were born at Joseph's knee. Again, the names Machir gave them suggest a future of scraping out a living from barren soil. Centuries later, the Puritans would come to New England's rocky shores. They would be the 'root' of the American nation. Later, the sons of Manasseh would push far to the west into the Rocky Mountains.

Sheresh gave birth to Ulam and Rekem. 'Ulam' means 'silenced' or 'fettered' and that of his son Bedan signifies 'in judging'. Rekem means 'Their leader, 'passage way' and is related to the roots of 'needlework', 'embroiderer', 'skilfully woven', and 'mix colors'.

Do we have here allusions to the intolerance and witch trials of early New England, followed by a laterYankee migration westward through NewYork 's gateway? Are the names attached to Rekem a prediction of New England's textile industry.?

Abiezer and the Founding Fathers:

It seems that only the descendants of Gilead grew to father the other Manassite clans other than those of Asriel. Gilead may have lapsed into immorality, and bore his first son, Jeezer, 'no help'. He possibly an adopted son borne by Hammolek, Gilead's sister. His name was changed to Abiezer and he went on to foster the great judge Gideon four generations later. The Abiezerites were wheat farmers who settled in western Manasseh. They were the most stigmatized of the Manassite clans. The Machirites were already giving birth to great military heroes. Gilead was a man of war and his descendants became rude frontier cowboys like Jepthah. Gideon, whose name mean 'hewer' was Israel's deliverer. He had to handle the Ephraimites tactfully. When Manasseh wished to make him king, Gideon refused. One can only think of George Washington and also President Dwight Eisenhower, whose name means, 'hewer of iron' who refused a third term as President.

Jeezer or 'no help' suggests a struggling fledgling America, Abiezer, my Father is help suggests God himself would come to their aid largely through the founding Fathers.

Helek fortells Westward Expansion, Civil War, and the Gilded Age:

Gilead's next son was Helek, whose name means 'portion', 'divide, separate, and be smooth, slippery, and deceitful. Even as the generation of the Founding Fathers began to pass, Americans acquired and divided up the lands west of the Appalachians. This expansion, though, led to a Civil War between the Manassites of the north and the Southern states, many of whose people were of Ephraim. The aftermath of the Civil War witnessed the full enshrinement of corruption. Hence we have the Gilded Age of Jay Gould, Jim Fiske, Boss Tweed and others foreshadowed.

Shemida : the Emergence of Modern America:

The next son of Gilead was Shemida, 'wise'. 'Shem', of course means fame, and glory. The US began to become a giant world power after the Civil War, overtaking Britain in population. The 'ida' is from 'yada', which can mean 'to know by experience'. Religious belief in America began to decline around the 1880's. In its place was a belief in evolution and Social Darwinism among intellectuals. The philosopher William James, who was evidently influenced by the occult, taught the philosophy of pragmatism. Morality was based not on absolute law but on human experience and deciding for yourself what is right and wrong. Shemida had four sons; Ahiram, 'brotherly or fraternal' , Shechem, 'shoulder', or 'early riser', Likhi, 'learning', and Aniam, 'I am the people' , or 'lament of the people'. These names hint at the rise of labor unions, ethnic labor, Shechem was a Canaanite city in which Abimlelech practiced ethnic and machine politics. Learning and education grew along with industry . The problems of industrialization eventually triggered the People's Party or Populist revolt among farmers in the early 1890's. The 'lament' may foreshadow the terrible depression of the 1890's.

Hepher: TheTwentieth Century:

Gilead's youngest son was called 'Hepher', or 'well', from 'to dig, search out, explore'. In at the turn of the century oil was discovered in Texas, and Henry Ford invented the Model T. America entered the auto age and mass consumption age. The name 'Hepher' has a dual meaning, and it can mean, 'to feel ashamed' or 'feel abashed'. Americans in the twentieth century would have great power, but, unlike other nations, often feel ashamed of it and guilt stricken.

Hepher gave birth to but one son, Zeleophead, whose name meant 'firstborn' or 'wound'. In World War I America emerged as the leading power on earth, but the slaughter of the Great War and the Great Depression would wound the American psyche. Zelepohead himself died, and left no sons, but had five daughters whom Moses permitted to become his heirs.

The Daughters of Zeleophead: the Feminization of America: This foreshadowed, among other things, the feminization of American society. Women were granted the vote in 1920.

Malah: the Great War:The name of the first daughter, 'Malah', means 'sick', 'grieved', or 'sorry'. World War I unleashed a terrible influenza epidemic in 1918-1919 which killed thousands and left people disillusioned with idealistic causes. This was the time of the Lost Generation of the 1920's.

Noah: A Mobile Society: 'Noah', means 'motion', 'totter', 'vagabond', 'cause to wander'. The United States since the1920's has been a mobile, restless society. People move constantly and do not settle in one place for long. In 1929, the stock market tottered and crashed, bringing the Great Depression and causing millions to wander looking for work.

Gideon and Abimelech, a Parable for Twentieth Century America ?

The history of the United States in many ways reminds one of that of Israel under the Judges. Two wonderful books by William Strauss and Neil Howe, Generations : The History of America's Future,1584 to 2069 (New York: William Morrow, 1991) and The Fourth Turning : An American Prophecy (NewYork: Broadway Books: 1996). They look at American history in terms of a cycle of generations. The cycle begins with a generation of idealists who try to change the world. They inspire and lead the great revolutions of American History. For example, the Puritan generation, led by Johanathan Winthrop, came to America in the 1630's to set up 'a shining city on a hill', a Bible Commonwealth. Their children of the Cavalier Generation were much more cynical and out to survive and make money. New England began to decline morally. In the 1670's, 1680's and 1690's New England faced near massacre by the Indian chief Metacom, suppression of her freedoms by the tyrannical governor Edmund Andros, and a war in the French in Quebec, inspired by Jesuit fervor, sought to crush the Protestant colonies. Many Puritans saw the judgment of God in New England's crisis. God raised up a series of deliverers who defeated the Indians, overthrew Andros in a dress rehearsal for the American Revolution and held the French at bay.

The cycle would repeat itself in the time of the American Revolution. TheAwakening Generation of the 1730's were religious revivalists but their children , the Liberty Generation, were drunkards, thieves and pirates. The crisis came with the American Revolution. God raised up GeorgeWashington and others as deliverers.

Again, in the nineteenth century, the Transcendental Generation of the 1830's were religious reformers and idealists. Their children of the Gilded Generation were immoral and cynical. During the crisis of the Civil War Abraham Lincoln emerged as prophet and America's greatest president.

The pattern is not unlike that in the Book of Judges. Israel would be moral for a time. Then, the next generation would depart from the values God had taught their fathers and embrace wrong ideas and practices. The nation would go into a crisis, involving defeat in war, economic hardship, drought, disease, and other punishments inflicted by God or by their own lifestyles. Israel, often warned by a prophet, would then cry out for deliverance and God would raise up a judge, or deliverer, who would lead them into war and deliver them by a miraculous victory. Israel would obey for a time, until another generation forgot, failed to learn from history, and repeated the cycle. Each time, Israel would become more degenerate and even when they repented, they would move farther away from the true religion.

Judg:2:10: And also all that generation were gathered unto their fathers: and there arose another generation after them, which knew not the LORD, nor yet the works which he had done for Israel.

Judg:2:11: And the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the LORD, and served Baalim:

Judg:2:12: And they forsook the LORD God of their fathers, which brought them out of the land of Egypt, and followed other gods, of the gods of the people that were round about them, and bowed themselves unto them, and provoked the LORD to anger.

Judg:2:13: And they forsook the LORD, and served Baal and Ashtaroth.

Judg:2:14: And the anger of the LORD was hot against Israel, and he delivered them into the hands of spoilers that spoiled them, and he sold them into the hands of their enemies round about, so that they could not any longer stand before their enemies.

Judg:2:15: Whithersoever they went out, the hand of the LORD was against them for evil, as the LORD had said, and as the LORD had sworn unto them: and they were greatly distressed.

Judg:2:16: Nevertheless the LORD raised up judges, which delivered them out of the hand of those that spoiled them.

Judg:2:17: And yet they would not hearken unto their judges, but they went a whoring after other gods, and bowed themselves unto them: they turned quickly out of the way which their fathers walked in, obeying the commandments of the LORD; but they did not so.

Judg:2:18: And when the LORD raised them up judges, then the LORD was with the judge, and delivered them out of the hand of their enemies all the days of the judge: for it repented the LORD because of their groanings by reason of them that oppressed them and vexed them.

Judg:2:19: And it came to pass, when the judge was dead, that they returned, and corrupted themselves more than their fathers, in following other gods to serve them, and to bow down unto them; they ceased not from their own doings, nor from their stubborn way.

The United States entered World War I in a very idealistic mood, wanting to 'make the world safe for democracy'. Germany was narrowly defeated in 1918 but Americans found the war a disillusioning experience and returned to isolationism. During the 1920's morals collapsed and business was enshrined as the new god. After the Scopes Trial many common people accepted evolution as a fact. Greed and dishonesty were rampant. The result was the crash of 1929 and the Great Depression. One out of every three Americans was out of work, drought, grasshoppers, and dust storms swept the Great Plains. Franklin Roosevelt, like Joseph and Manasseh in Egypt, was able to relieve some of the suffering with his New Deal, but he could not end the Depression. Adolf Hitler, meanwhile rearmed Germany, turned it into the most ferocious racist and pagan tyranny in history, and set off on a path of world conquest. He conquered most of Europe, including France and almost destroyed Britain and Russia. Japan, meanwhile, joined forces with Nazi Germany in waging war upon the United States. Between January and May of 1942 one Japanese victory after another frightened Americans. It is said that the churches were jammed in May of 1942.

Ike: 20^th Century Gideon: Again, God would raise up a deliverer, a Kansas farm boy named Dwight D. Eisenhower. Ike's name is interesting, for Eisenhower means 'Hewer of Iron' in German. It is the same as that of the judge Gideon, whose name meant 'to hew down'. The story of Gideon is told in Judges 6 and 7. Like Gideon, Ike emerged from rural poverty to lead Manasseh's and Israel's army, defeated the enemy through deception, used diplomacy to preserve an alliance, captured war criminals, and ruled over Manasseh in a time of prosperity. Gideon rejected monarchy, Ike a third term.

Abimelech: a Parable of the 60's: The story of Gideon is followed by that of one of his sons, Abimelech. The name means 'My father was king'. After Gideon died, Abimelech, who was young and charismatic, began to politic. He wanted to be Israel's first king. The moral climate was again beginning to change.

Abimelech was Israel's first machine politician. He appealed to the ethnic vote in Shechem and bought votes and support through patronage. A portion of Manasseh elected him king, whereupon he slew his brothers. Abimelech was quite popular for three years, then his supporters began to turn against him. A brash, militant revolutionary named Gaal incited the Shechemites against their elected king , and civil war resulted. Gaal was defeated in a brutal battle, but Abimelech was assassinated. What we have here seems like a parable of the 1960's and early 1970's in America. At the end of the1950's the rather superficial religious revival that had begun in World War II was waning. A new generation would soon come of age that had only known affluence and questioned tradition and authority. Joseph P. Kennedy, a descendant of Brian Boru, wanted to be President but his isolationist views incurred the wrath of FDR. He then decided to make his sons President. In 1960 he made a deal with the Chicago Mob to stuff the ballot boxes, electing his son John F. Kennedy President. The Kennedys practiced ethnic machine politics and had a royal flair.

Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon were three gifted but very corrupt Presidents. The public mood would turn against each of them and near civil war broke out under Johnson and Nixon. America's cities were in flames. Kennedy was murdered, Johnson and Nixon hounded from office. Richard Nixon, interestingly, was the most 'monarchical' of all. He was of the Davidic line. He triedto 'Europeanize' the Presidency. He took his governing style from Charles De Gaulle and his foreign policy, through Dr. Henry Kissinger, from Metternich and Bismarck. He had the Secret Service wear outlandish uniforms and set up a Palace Guard of loyalists led by H.R. Haldeman. Openly defying the law, he was driven from power by public wrath, Congress and the libertarian Barry Goldwater. It was the end of the 'Imperial Presidency' and even under Ronald Reagan the office did not fully recover its prestige.

Judg:9:55: And when the men of Israel saw that Abimelech was dead, they departed every man unto his place.

A new generation of Americans jettisoned the idealism and turned to the selfishness of the Me Decade. The family and traditional values continued to disintegrate.

Hoglah: The Suburban Nation: The name of Zeleophead's next daughter , 'Hoglah' means 'partridge' or 'quail'. This is a bird that hatches the eggs of others. It flees at the first sense of danger and its children leave the nest early but still flock together with the mother. We have an image here of the postwar world where the economy is based on services and investing , not producing, and where America, after Vietnam, begins to back down before its adversaries. As well, the traditional extended family structure would be in danger as youth would leave the nest.

Milcah: The Feminist Era: 'Milcah', or 'queen' is again an allusion to the growing influence of gender and life style politics. From the late 1960's on abortion and other 'women's issues' would drive much of the political debate. The possibility of a female President is hinted at, possibly Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Tirzah: Hedonism: 'Tirzah', the name of the youngest daughter, means 'favorable', 'pleasure' , or 'delight'. America since the 1970's has become a hedonistic, or pleasure-seeking society. This is less true with the Ephraimites of the South. Moral and family values, as well as those of community have disintegrated, and individualism is rampant. Looking Out for Number One became a bestseller in 1977. A majority of Americans are now pro-choice on abortion and even tolerate homosexuality.

President Hillary?: What next? . Of course the Bible predicts an unprecedented time of trouble for modern Israel, including the United States . .In Jer:30:7 we read: Alas! for that day is great, so that none is like it: it is even the time of Jacob's trouble; but he shall be saved out of it.' This, interestingly is a view shared by Strauss and Howe: 'Just after the millennium, America will enter a new era that will culminate with a crisis comparable to the American Revolution, the Civil War, the Great Depression, and World War II. The survival of the nation will almost certainly be at stake.' It is likely that this crisis will involve a major economic collapse and a serious ecological crisis. In the past God sent a Washington or a Lincoln. This time, we might have Hillary Clinton. The Bush/Cheney Administration is comparable in many ways to the Presidencies of the Gilded Age or the 1920's. Unabashedly pro-business, it is even beginning to tamper with Social Security. The welfare safety net is long gone, dismantled by Newt Gingrich with Clinton's help. An economic downturn will leave many destitute. Drought and floods aggravated by global warming will devastate large sections of the country. In these circumstances, national unity could well begin to unravel. In 2004 or 2008 John McCain could mount a third party candidacy recalling Teddy Roosevelt's Bull Moose party. The result, however, could well be the splitting of the Republican vote as in 1912 and the election of Hillary.

I have no doubt that Hillary Rodham Clinton has her eyes on the White House. If she were to be elected President, she would radically polarize the country. Hillary is a far more dogmatic liberal than her husband. In power, she would surround herself with people of her persuasion. Her radical agenda includes support for abortion on demand, childrens' rights, full equality for gays and lesbians, and government health care.

Isa:3:12: As for my people, children are their oppressors, and women rule over them. O my people, they which lead thee cause thee to err, and destroy the way of thy paths.

A Clinton Restoration coming on the heels of an ultraconservative Bush/Cheney Administration would galvanize the Religious Right more. Many hard-right fundamentalists, especially in the South, compare Hillary to Jezebel, as these sample quotes show:

'This world sees our women usurping authority over our leaders, is it any wonder why President Hillary is having such a ball in the White House. As with Ahab and Jezebel, Bill may be President, but Hillary runs the country.'…..'America has had a President and First Lady for two terms that is nothing less than a present day Ahab and Jezebel. Need we say more? They have had their questionable land deal, Hillary was even told by our military once to "go to the dogs," that "maybe they will take you." This was Jezebel's destiny - she went to the dogs (2 Kings 9:35-37). But most striking here is the undisputed fact that if it were not for Hillary, Bill Clinton would not be President. From the beginning, her decision to "stand by her man" has put and kept Bill in office. Hillary Clinton is a corrupt testimony of the great value that the bride affords to the body of Christ.' …..'The North has four dynasties, and lots of bad kings. None of these kings are as bad as Ahab, who is really just a puppet of his wife, Jezebel, a pre-incarnate Hillary.'….'Bill and Hillary are really a modern day Ahab and Jezebel. There are many parallels between these two couples that we cannot go into here.'…..'When I look at Clinton and Hillary I do see Ahab and his Jezebel, as servants of this godless new world order of Satanists.' ….'Bill and Hillary are our Ahab and Jezebel. Things are going to get worse for the United States.'

At best, Hillary is seen by the right wing as a socialist, at worst, many believe her to be a witch, a closet lesbian, a hater of Christians, a worshipper of the Earth Goddess, and a tool of an international conspiracy involving the Illuminati, the UN, international bankers, etc. A lot of this is likely nonsense, but the fact that many believe it might have serious consequences for the country.

Ezek:22:9: 'In thee are men that carry tales to shed blood: and in thee they eat upon the mountains: in the midst of thee they commit lewdness' .

It is true that Hillary is an admirer of Eleanor Roosevelt, and has had sessions with a NewAge faith healer called Jean Houston who once encouraged her to have an imaginary conversation with her mentor. Jean Houston, paradoxically, is a descendant of both Sam Houston and Robert E. Lee:

'I am from two very different ethnic groups, half Scot, half Sicilian. My mother's name is Maria Luciatti Serafini, and my father's Jack Houston. My mother was born in Siracusa, Sicily. My father was from an old Southern family, the Houstons of Texas, and Sam Houston was my great, great grandfather. Robert E. Lee was my great, great, great grandfather. I come from an old, old American family and from an immigrant family, too, and I embody all these cultures.'

She definitely has New Age ideas:

'Life has many purposes. The deep purpose for me is to be a minstrel. At this point in time, this day and age, my purpose is so overpowering that I wake up with it every morning, and it is very obvious. The earth is at the greatest period of crisis in history. We are being called to be co-creators. I don't think we can finally destroy our earth, but we can cause an awful lot of damage to her in the next ten or twenty thousand years. Earth may eventually shrug her shoulders and go back to normal. My purpose is to warn that we are neither prepared nor educated to be co-creators, co-transmitters of this planet. We're not living in the year 1845! Suddenly, we have been thrust into an immense responsibility, which I call "Type-One Civilization." My purpose is to learn as much as I can about what it means to be a world co-creator.'

'If I had been an abbess in a convent 500 years ago, my purpose would have been to create a harmonic realm to extol God and Nature and to find out as much as I could about God and Nature. I would have been a "Hildegarde of Bingen" type. That would have been a natural form for me. Now, my purpose is to extend the life of God/Goddess in the world; to be a Godseed in the world; to emphasize as much as we can the traits of serving, compassion, love, pleasure, while not avoiding pain or tragedy, because they are necessary complements to the former; to find meaning in, as well as patterns of connection between, all of us, even at times when society seems utterly leveled. Those levelings are part of a much larger story.'

Some of these ideas would be seen by many Christians as blasphemous:

'Our local humanity will always feel inadequate to the Godsoul it is housing. In Eastern religions, there's a level of maintaining a type of equanimity that we do not necessarily find in Western religions, not to the same extent, anyway. I think we have some great surprises in store for us. Jesus was really very cranky, to the end. That's why I don't object to that new movie, "The Last Temptation of Christ." The Buddha was far more eccentric than we are.'

Dixie Rising: The Confederacy Returns:

Many on the Religious Right would fear a retribution from a Hillary Clinton administration possibly elected without a majority in a single Southern state. They remember Waco. In 1993 and 1994, the Clinton agenda was dictated by Hillary. It provoked the rise of Rush Limbaugh and the Gingrich Republican Revolution. The next time, it could trigger a Southern response that might be even more radical. In recent years a small but vocal movement has arisen in the South which seeks to not only rehabilitate but revive the Confederate States of America. While it repudiates slavery, it is very right wing and strongly religious in tone. It is represented mainly by the League of the South led by Dr. Michael Hill.

In 1999 the Southern nationalist movement organized a political party called the Southern Party. Its constititution begins: 'We, the People of the Southern States, with each state acting in its sovereign and independent character, in order to form a political compact between the Southern People, committed to Judeo-Christian principles, limited government, free trade and open markets in accordance with the will and well being of the Southern people, and invoking the favor and guidance of Almighty God, do hereby ordain and establish this constitution of the Southern Party.'

In essence, the New Confederates draw their inspiration from the Quebec and Scottish secessionist movements. They are, however, far more free market and right wing. Dr. Hill and his followers no longer believe that a true conservative Christian revival is possible within an 'American Empire' dominated by what they see as Yankee political correctness and multiculturalism. The South, descended from Ephraimites and Celtic tribal groups is and should be, they say, a nation apart.

According to Dr. Hill, 'America is only a geographical expression' and in this respect , 'American Southerners have much in common with the Scots and the Welsh in Britain, the Lombards and Sicilians in Italy and the Ukrainians in the defunct Soviet Union.' Southrons, as the New Confederates like to call themselves, are still maligned as rednecks despite their enormous contribution to American culture:

'What would American literature be without Mark Twain, Edgar Allan Poe, William Faulkner, Walker Percy and Eudora Welty? What sort of political system would our ancestors have given us, if George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison had decided to remain British? What kind of popular music could we listen to, if white "crackers" like Hank Williams and Merle Haggard and Southern blacks like Louis Armstrong and Ray Charles had been content with the bland commercial music churned out by Tin Pan Alley? The mind of the South remains distinctive, even today, if only for the tenacity with which its people hold onto their religious faith.'

Dr. Hill looks at what happened in Yugoslavia and says it could, and should, happen here as : 'a new group of Southerners is calling for nothing more revolutionary than home rule for the states established by the U.S. Constitution. The Southern League was founded in 1994 at a meeting of scholars, journalists and political activists in Tuscaloosa, Ala. Our members are pledged to seek the well-being and independence of the Southern people by every honorable means.' Clintonism is and will be the catalyst of a Confederate revival: 'National uniformity is being imposed by the political class that runs Washington, the economic class that owns Wall Street and the cultural class in charge of Hollywood and the Ivy League' for what had been a genuinely federal union 'has been turned into a multicultural, continental empire, ruled from Washington by federal agencies and under the thumb of the federal judiciary.'

'We believe', said Hill in 1995, 'it is time for the people of the Southern states to take control of their own governments, their own institutions, their own culture, their own communities and their own lives.' The New Confederates are strongly driven by evangelical religion: 'On a spiritual level, we take our stand squarely within the tradition of Christianity. This historic faith, though everywhere attacked by the hollow men of modernity, has always been central to the pursuit of personal honor, political liberty and human charity. Asking for only the religious freedoms guaranteed in the Bill of Rights, we oppose the government's campaign against our Christian traditions.' Southern culture and symbols must be preserved, he argues, and the right to fly the Confederate flag defended.

Most of Dixie's problems, implies Hill, are the result of meddlesome Yankee liberals:

'After so many decades of strife, black and white Southerners of good will should be left alone to work out their destinies, avoiding, before it is too late, the urban hell that has been created by the lawyers, social engineers and imperial bureaucrats who have grown rich on programs that have done nothing to help anyone but themselves.'

Southerners, he asserts, need to be proud of their identity:

'Southerners respect the rights of all Americans in every region to preserve their authentic cultural traditions and demand the same respect from others. For too long, Northern intellectuals have tried to control Southern culture and to northernise our schools and universities. They and their Southern allies have rewritten history and imposed their mythology upon generations of students, who have come to believe that their ancestors were uniquely guilty in the annals of inhumanity, that their region is -- in the graphic phrase of one brainwashed Southerner -- "the nation's armpit." This is not scholarship but propaganda.'

The solution, say the militants of the Southern Party, is nothing less than reversing the verdict of 1865:

'Ever since Appomattox, we have never experienced true liberty or true freedom in the way that pre-1865 Americans did. We are so grateful to the right-wing revolutionaries in Congress whenever they grant us the right to keep another 1% of the money which we earned by the sweat of our brow. Since Appomattox, the union and the government have become divine in the eyes of Americans. An idol has replaced Yahweh, one which does not have the same powers as I AM, but holds the power of our pay-check. We shall only experience real God-given liberty when, as a nation and people, we repent of our errors, not just back to the 1960s, but to the 1860s. May the day of our repentance come soon!'

David P. Henreckson, Dixie Net Gazette.

Hillary, moreover, is the figure they believe can move their party from the fringe to the mainstream, if she ever attains the White House. According to one Southern party leader:

'If Strauss and Howe are right, then in the next few years (possibly around 2004 but it could be sooner) an event will occur that will send shock waves through the country. ….' All major crises in US history greatly expanded Federal power, a future crisis would prompt Hillary to do so even more.

'This is something we better notice now. Otherwise we could wake up in the Crisis and find our identity as a sovereign Constitutional Republic gone. Here is yet another Crisis scenario: a sudden Federal Government crackdown, with the full backing of the supranational elites. Imagine what happened to Elian Gonzalez' relatives happening all over the country, all at once! A deadly struggle could ensue between those who want freedom and those who identify with the growing supranationalist megastate.

This fight, of course, is already brewing. On one side of the fence, we are seeing the increasing Federalization of police forces, and an increased Federal involvement in almost every aspect of our lives. Our current "public school" system had already become a haven for moral relativists and statists; it is becoming one for supranationalist propaganda in the guise of creating "global citizens." On the other side are, for example, homeschoolers consisting of Christians and freedom-lovers generally who are speaking against the government school system with their feet. These and many others have taken to the Internet as the dominant alternative to a national print media they regard as controlled by powerful interests taking us closer to global government every year. There is a good deal of paranoia. Much of it is probably justified. Were the megastate to form in a Crisis, and continue late-1990s tendencies toward employee databases and biometrically encoded national ID cards, it would have at its disposal a technology making it very difficult to oppose. Those in power could make it almost impossible for their opponents to earn a living legally-assuming they could maintain control of the rank and file.'

The vast expansion of Federal Power in the service of a radical cultural agenda would, the Southern Party hopes, convince many that only secession could preserve family values, free enterprise, and limited government.

Last year Hill wrote: 'In a recent editorial, syndicated columnist Walter Williams observed that there are basically two sorts of folks in America today: those who wish to be left alone and those who wish to tell everyone else how to live. Putting aside the real natures of the Democrat and Republican parties (they both are secular, centralizing organizations who see salvation in power politics), the Bush voters generally fall into the first category and the Gore supporters into the second. Moreover, the Bush constituency is mainly made up of white European stock that favors gun ownership, Christian morality, less government, fewer programs for minority “victim” groups, and a strict interpretation of the Constitution. The Gore constituency –the elites and their various minority clients—favor gun control, big government, more programs, high taxes, the normalization of deviant behavior, a secular notion of human rights, and a very loose construction of a living and evolving Constitution. In other words, they are polar opposites in many respects. There is no room for compromise. Would not a friendly separation now be preferable to a bloody conflict later? It is past time that Merle and Madonna part company.'

If Quebec and Scotland succeeded, it would provide further inspiration. At some point in the future a charismatic and credible leader will take up the cause of Southern nationalism. Pat Buchanan and Trent Lott have, in the past, written for Southern nationalist magazines. The ideal leader, however, might be someone such as Dick Armey or Attorney General John Ashcroft , who is intensely religious and fiercely conservative and who once gave an interview to Southern Partisan magazine.

According to the Southern Party writer:

'Culturally, though, the United States is not coming together. Its regions are gradually drifting apart. If the supranational elites cannot maintain control over the rank and file, the coming Fourth Turning could be the scene of a national breakup that would provide the best opportunity ever for creating a genuine Southron Republic. Even those who reject such thinking must acknowledge that there is no guarantee that what we now call "the United States" will survive the next Crisis intact.'

Lyndon LaRouche and the New Yankee Fascism:

Such a scenario could create the breakup of the another particularly if it came in conjunction with social unrest in Mexico spilling over into an increasingly Hispanized American Southwest. American blacks would not wish to be part of a new Confederacy. Feelings in the North could become radicalized as well, for the Northeast and the Midwest have their own radical fringe. The North, too, has its rightist radicals despite its liberal exterior. There are the militia groups in the Midwest and Far West, some of which are openly neo-Nazi. The most interesting, however, is the US Labor Party of Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr. La Rouche does not mimic Nazism. His ideology, which some have even called 'fascist', is definitely home-grown and heavily Catholic in content. What is significant is that La Rouche and his followers return the Yankee-hatred of the New Confederates….with interest. If Hill loathes Yankees in the tradition of Stonewall Jackson, La Rouche loathes the South in the tradition of General Sherman.

The New Confederates have always been men of the right who hate Big Government. La Rouche sees Big Government as a means of keeping America strong. As far right as he is, La Rouche is a self-proclaimed FDR Democrat who wants another New Deal. His heroes include Washington and the Federalists, Henry Clay and the founders of the American System, Lincoln, and, of course, FDR. La Rouche has even strongly defended Bill and Hillary Clinton from their Southern Republican detractors:

'There is no deal the President could accept, even by offering to resign, which would prevent that Confederate lynch-mob from tearing him--and his wife, too--limb from limb, deal or no deal. This is a lynch mob, filled with murderous, wild-eyed hatred. This is a lynch mob, which, once whipped up, will never quit until either they are dispersed, or Bill Clinton is dead and his family broken and ruined. Those of you who know the traditions of the Confederacy, know what these guys are like, when they did not get their way. The killing then just goes on and on.'

La Rouchians view American history as a struggle for freedom against a sinister conspiracy of British oligarchs that still goes on today. Alexander Hamilton wanted to build a strong country; Southerners like Thomas Jefferson wanted to weaken it. The Confederacy was a British tool to divide and destroy the American Republic and Southern Republicans of today, Newt Gingrich, Dick Armey, Tom Delay, and John Ashcroft, are still at it…as supposed British agents. If Michael Hill blames Yankee do-goodism for ruining the country LaRouche blames the Southern slaveowners' mentality that, in its latest limited government, free market version still seeks to weaken and exploit Americans:

'We are now the most immoral, most degenerate United States we've been in our entire history. And that has been the increasing trend of the past 30 years, especially the past quarter-century. We're now again, because of the foolishness--not simply because of Wall Street. Yes, the Wall Street crowd and the British have done this to us. The new Confederacy coming out of the Southern states and elsewhere has done this to us. '

The South, says LaRouche, is turning the whole nation into a giant sweatshop:

'The wealth has moved out of the Northern states, and moved down into what was, at one time, the Confederacy. And, out of the Confederacy, the Southern Strategy, the racist policy of the Republican Party, augmented by the racist policy brought in with Jimmy Carter, and his type, and the so-called Boll Weevils, in the late-1970s, has destroyed the United States. And it has created a new concentration of wealth, centered in the states which used to be the heart of the Confederacy. Racism reigns. A return to neo-Confederacy reigns. The rust belt rusts, and nothing good is built in the area of the new Confederacy--just things, like these glorified tarpaper shacks, which burgeon on the hills around here, to house the people, who came in like the incoming tide, and are going out like a stinking disaster.'

Civil War II ? :

The idea of the United States breaking up like Canada might seems far fetched, but Bible prophecy and the lessons of history indicate it could very possibly happen sometime within the next 15-30 years. Compared to Canada we have had a much more violent history. Our breakup could be much more traumatic, like the breakup of Yugoslavia or the Soviet Union, or our own Civil War.

A recent book, privately published by a Croatian immigrant, Thomas Chittum, Civil War Two: The Coming Breakup of America, (Show Low, AZ: American Eagle Publications 1996) warns that what happened in Yugoslavia could happen here. Professor Martin Van Creveld of Hebrew University in Jerusalem points out that the United States is a multiethnic society with a long tradition of violence. What now holds the country together is economic prosperity. Take that away and tensions between blacks, whites and Latinos could escalate into a civil war. This concern is shared by people on both the left and the right. On one end of the spectrum, right-wing populist Pat Buchanan feels that, 'it is clear that America is headed towards Balkanization' (Chittum, 113-114).

This is not just a concern of right-wingers or nativists. Gore Vidal is an outspoken liberal, who fears that 'something on the order of the ethnic rebellions in the Soviet Union' could happen here. (The Decline and Fall of the American Empire, 1992, pp. 50, 57, in Chittum , p. 113). William Lind in the liberal Washington Post feels we entered the opening stages of a Second Civil War even as we celebrated the centennial of the first one in the 1960's:

'It's funny how clearly the American century is marked: 1865 to 1965. The first Civil War made us one nation. After 1965 and another war, we disunited-deconstructed-with equal speed into blacks, whites, Hispanics, women, gays, victims, oppressors, left-handed albinos; you name it. In three decades we covered the distance that had taken Rome three centuries to cover.' (William Lind, 'Militant Musings, The Washington Post, April 30, 1995, in Chittum, p.115).

What was once unthinkable is now being discussed, and not only by black and white separatists. John Powers of the Boston Globe, November 12, 1995 warns 'Is the United States destined to come apart as the Soviet Union did, fracturing into dozens of rival sociocultural and political enclaves?' (Chittum, p. 119). According to Charles Krauthammer in Time, November 13, 1995: "America is proceeding blithely down the path of diversity and ethnic separatism. America's destination, however, is not Canada, which will find some civil way out of its dilemma. America's destination is the Balkans.' (Chittum, p. 120). Robert Kaplan, author of The Coming Anarchy, feels 'it is not clear that the United States will survive the next century in exactly its present form .'(Chittum, p. 121).

Was the Civil War of 1861-1865 but a type of another, more ferocious conflict in which the forces of the Federal Government and a new Confederacy battle it out with missiles, tanks, and planes from Texas to Virginia? The devastation and impact upon the economy would be enormous, not to mention the tribal and racial and hatreds that would be unleashed. Could it happen here? How would such a divided country stand up against a European threat?

Yair Davidy thinks Isaiah 9:21 can apply to a civil war between the northern and southern United States:

'[ISA 9:21] MANASSEH EPHRAIM, AND EPHRAIM MANASSEH, AND TOGETHER THEY ARE AGAINST JUDAH. FOR ALL THIS HIS ANGER IS NOT TURNED AWAY AND HIS HAND IS STRETCHED OUT STILL. 'MANASSEH EPHRAIM, AND EPHRAIM MANASSEH, AND TOGETHER THEY ARE AGAINST JUDAH' This is on one hand a parable using familiar names for how people act (or will act) on an individual level. On the other hand it says that Menasseh (USA?) and Ephraim (Britain & Co) or the Menasseh section of the USA versus the Ephraim section (?). In the American Civil War the Confederates were almost de facto allies of Britain against the North. Was this Menasseh versus Ephraim? '

Redemption and Restoration:

We know, of course from the Bible that the repentance and ultimate deliverance of Manasseh-Israel and Ephraim as well will next time comefrom the return of JesusChrist . Remember, David the King typed the Messiah. In view of this, it seems that the names of those Manassites I Chronicles12.20 foreshadow the repentance and restoration of the nation. Adnah, 'pleasure' indicates the present state of a rebellious people; Jozabad, 'God has endowed' , that God still has a purpose for His people; Jediael, 'God makes known' , that God has warned and will make known their purpose and identity in tribulation; Michael, 'Who is like God', that Americans in their worst crisis will recognizethetrueGod; Elihu, 'He is my God' , that they will repent and be restored; and Zilthai, 'dark' , that deliverance will certainly include African and other non-Manassite Americans.

The leaders of Manasseh under David's rule were Iddo 'timely' and lovely' , son of Zechariah 'God remembers' over the Gileadites and Joel, 'TheEternal is God', son of Pedaiah 'TheEternal has Ransomed' over the Asrielite Manassites. These names look forward to America's blessed state in the Millennium.

Did a Volcanic Eruption bring the Dark Ages?

In AD 535-536 the world was stricken by one of the greatest natural
disasters ever to take place. The cause of that disaster was a massive
volcanic explosion and eruption in the Sunda Straits region of Sumatra and
Java. The Indonesian Book of Ancient Kings talks of a "mighty roar of
thunder" from a mountain accompanied by " A furious shaking of the earth,
total darkness, thunder and lightning" followed by " a furious gale together
with torrential rain and a deadly storm" that "darkened the entire world".
The eruption paled those of Mt. St. Helens [1980] and Krakatoa [1883]into
insignificance. The Indonesian record even claimed that the earth collapsed,
creating the strait that now separates Java and Sumatra.

Far away in Nanjing, China, the explosion was heard recorded in the History
of the Southern Dynasties. From the southwest, it records, "there was twice
the sound of thunder" in February, 535. Traces of acid snow dated from that
time appear in the ice caps of both Greenland and Antarctica. Even in modern
times, volcanic explosions have thrown enormous amounts of dust and
chemicals into the sky, weakening the sun's rays and disrupting world
weather patterns. The 535 event "altered world history dramatically and
permanently" according to a provocative new book by British journalist
David Keys entitled Catastrophe: an Investigation into the Origins of the
Modern World ( New York, Ballantine Books, 1999).

The huge amounts of dust and gas thrown into the air went into the
stratosphere, partially blotting out the light of the sun itself for a year
and a half. According to John of Ephesus " The sun became dark, and its
darkness lasted for eighteen months". The Byzantine historian Procopius
described "a most dread portent" taking place in 535 when " the sun gave
forth its light without brightness like the moon during this whole year".
Zacharias of Mytilene recorded" The sun began to be darkened by day and the
moon by night." John the Lydian wrote "The sun became dim for nearly the
whole year."

The eruption had a 'nuclear winter' effect upon the whole earth.
Cassiodorus Senator witnessed " A spring without mildness and a summer
without heat." North winds chilled the harvests of Byzantium: "Rain is
denied and the reaper fears new frosts." The climactic disasters were
worldwide and lasted for several years. Babylonia, part of the Sassanid
Persian Empire witnessed record snowfalls that killed many of the birds.
Prolonged droughts hit Africa, Central Asia, the Americas, China, Korea, and
Japan, often followed by floods and torrents.

The eruption, drought, floods, and epidemics radically changed the course of
human history. In East Africa, the rodent population exploded, migrating
outward bearing fleas and bubonic plague which were spread to the human
population, which brought it along the trade routes to Yemen, Egypt,
Constantinople, Europe, and Persia. Spreading through Central Asia, the
plague struck the Orient with a vengeance as well. A global chain reaction
was triggered which had a profound course on all future history. The famine
and plague weakened and destabilised East Africa, Byzantium, Persia,
southern Arabia, Africa, much of Europe, Central Asia, southern China,
Mexico, and Peru. In their place, whole new civilisations arose.

How the Eruption of 535 changed Human History

Before 535 After 535
Africa: flourishing trade and agriculture with Ethiopia a major power
Africa: collapse of trade and most farming, reversion to herding
Eastern Roman Empire: powerful, prosperous urbanised empire preserves Roman
rule in Asia Minor, Egypt, Syria, Balkans. Eastern Roman Empire:
Predominately Greek Byzantine State shrinks essentially to Greece and Asia
Minor. Most big cities collapse.
Western Europe: Despite barbarian kingdoms, still Mediterranean in
character. Arian Visigoths rule Spain. Wealth and power in Mediterranean
Gaul. Celts hold back Saxon invaders in Britain. Western Europe: Arians
decimated and Catholic orthodoxy shapes Spanish culture. Franks avoid
southern Gaul, creating core of future France in Paris. Plague decimates
Celtic Britain, permitting full Saxon conquest and emergence of England.
Arabia and Persia: Zoroastrian Persia dominates Near East. Wealth and power
of pagan Arabs concentrated in Yemen. Arabia and Persia: Collapse of
southern Arabian culture and emergence of Medina and Mecca along with family
of Muhammad. Apocalyptic expectations lead to rise of Islam as world
religion an Arabs as world power.
Central Asia: Avars dominate Mongolian regions. Central Asia: Turks defeat
Avars and emerge as future superpower.
Far East: China and Korea fragmented into several kingdoms, Japan isolated
from mainland culture. Far East: Southern China devastated by plague,
famine, and chaos leading to forcible reunification of China under Sui
Dynasty. Korea becomes united kingdom, new states emerge in Southeast Asia.
Japan exposed to Buddhism and Chinese culture.
Western Hemisphere: Mexican civilisation of Teotihuacan and Nazca culture of
coastal Peru flourish. Western Hemisphere: Teotihuacan collapses in social
revolution, rise and fall of Maya, political fragmentation of Mexico and
Central America. Culture in South America shifts to Andes, paving way for
future Incas.

We tend to think of the Dark Ages as inevitably flowing out of ancient
times. What if, on the other hand, the curtain was instead suddenly wrung
down on antiquity by a global environmental disaster. The ancient world was
still very much alive in AD 534. True, the Roman Empire had fallen in the
West, and barbarian kingdoms ruled in Italy, Spain, Tunisia, and northern
Gaul. Medieval civilisation as we know it, though, was still inconceivable.
The Visigoths, Vandals, and Ostrogoths who ruled much of the old Western
Empire were Arian Christians who rejected Catholicism and claimed Jesus to
be merely a created being. In Britain, the Celtic Britons traded with the
Continent and held back the Angles and Saxons from full conquest of the
island. In Gaul, the Franks embraced the Catholic Trinity and cast an eager
eye upon the rich cities of the Rhône valley. Had not the plague devastated
Europe, Italy and Spain might have remained Arian, and the Franks might
have moved south, creating France as a Mediterranean, not a north Atlantic
kingdom. Britain might never have become England. Europe might never have
become Catholic. A Mediterranean economy would have revived, but there might
have been no Charlemagne. One Roman Emperor would have ruled, in the East.

Ethiopia would have remained a flourishing centre of trade with a strong
Roman Empire governed from Constantinople would have ruled the Near East for
centuries. The Turks would never have risen to power from the drought that
killed the horses of their overlords, the Avars. Byzantium and Persia would
have remained strong and prosperous, and the Arabs never have risen to the
point where they could conquer both of them. Without the collapse of Yemen,
Muhammad's great grandfather would never have prospered as a trader, giving
his family the standing to help it later spread Islam. Islam might never
have been the gigantic force it eventually became. China and Korea might
never have been reunified; Japan might never have adopted much of Chinese
culture. In Mexico, the Teotihuacan culture might have gone on to dominate
all of Central and even North America.

All of this is, of course, speculation, but the idea that the Dark Ages,
and, by extension, the Middle Ages and modern times as we know them are the
result of a global ecological catastrophe is intriguing.

Could it happen again? Keys seems to think so. While not a religious
fundamentalist, the author sketches a scene that instantly brings to mind
the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

Dormant fields of volcanic magma are rumbling beneath Yellowstone in
Wyoming, Long Valley in California, Naples in Italy, Rabaul in New Guinea,
as well as in Mexico and the Aleutians. Any one of these erupting on a large
scale could disrupt climate, aggravate existing El Niño effects, and once
again alter or at least accelerate the direction of history. Drought and
massive crop failure would strike China, Russia, India, Africa, and Brazil.
Such actually happened in 1876-1878 when up to twenty million died in some
of these regions. Keyes suggests that :

" In a virtually planetwide disaster of this scale, political administration
would rapidly disintegrate in many areas. Banditry would increase, huge
refugee flows would develop, epidemics would break out, and the medical
infrastructure would be totally overwhelmed. Cholera, measles, typhus, and
dysentery epidemics would occur on a massive scale. And, as in the sixth
century, it is even conceivable that bubonic plague could again devastate
substantial areas."

" Millions of wild rodents in central Asia, southwest China, East Africa,
the central Andes, the western United States, Brazil, and central India
still carry the plague bacillus. Climactic chaos could still lead to the
disease breaking out of its wild-rodent reservoir into the human world on a
substantial scale in Asia, Africa, and south America if the medical
infrastructure collapsed there."

Keyes sees refugee further spreading disease and conflict. Mexican refugees
heading into the United States would be beyond Washington's ability to
contain and the same would be true of North African Muslims seeking to enter
Europe. While the Third World would face "famine, epidemics, and
administrative collapse", even North America and Western Europe would face
food shortages and rationing, as well as an economic downturn:

"If much of Asia and Africa was plunged into demographic, agricultural, and
political chaos, the West would quickly feel the draft. This would almost
certainly lead to a downturn in western economies, already likely to be
enduring food and gasoline rationing, and a slump would obviously create
substantial unemployment.
Not all countries in Europe would be hit equally-and this in itself would
impose major political strains within the European Community.
Inevitable U.S. and European attempts to use their wealth to import scarce
food from a famine-hit Third World, the West's inability to deliver
effective aid, and inevitable fury over Western attempts to repel refugees
would combine to inflame Third World public opinion against the West. The
event would have the long-term effect of reducing Western involvement in,
and power over, the Third World. Europe, North America, and potentially
Australia would probably develop a siege mentality and become increasingly
isolated.
Significantly, this would have the related long-term effect of freeing up
the Third World, removing superpower influence over it. Its debt burden
would simply vanish. The disaster would no doubt allow some Third World
countries to dominate others in a way that Western economic, political, and
military influence has prevented up till now. And the famines and epidemics
might well also lead to the strengthening of fundamentalist religious
movements."
===================

Rise of theGileadites

A lot of interesting stuff going on in the news in the Mideast, etc. Bush made his choice and from his point of view it was the best one he could make. General Powell didn't want the job, Mc Cain wanted Bush's job, Tom Ridge was too liberal on abortion, John Danforth reluctant.

Dick Cheney has a lot of ability and experience and could succeed to the Presidency itself if Bush were to resign or be incapacitated. He would be a very capable President in terms of ability, but....

What is not known about Cheney is that despite his low-key manner he is more conservative than Ronald Reagan or even Newt Gingrich. He would be the first president from a Rocky Mountain state and the most conservative in American history. Wyoming is a place where people believe very much in self-reliance and prefer probusiness economic development to proenvironmental and welfare policies. Half of the state is owned by the Feds and Wyoming people, like most Westerners resent this.

In looking at politics from the point of view of Biblical prophecy, I am not going to attack or defend Cheney. [many if not most people in the Church of God come from very conservative backgrounds and would no doubt agree with many of his views] God makes and unmakes leaders or allows people to choose them.

What is interesting is that Wyoming occupies the same place in America that Gilead did in ancient Israel...it was a cattle-raising region on the far side of the Jordan belonging in large part to Manasseh. The name itself means " Hills of Rock", i.e. Rocky Mountains. The leaders that came from Gilead, like Jephthah, Elijah, Jehu and his house, Pekah, tended to be "cowboyish" in their personality and, if Israel had such, their politics.

Dick Cheney might, even more than Bush, spearhead a political and cultural reaction against the radical social liberalism promoted by the Clinton Administration [assuming he has a Republican Congress]. He would have the strong support of the Religious Right who might see him as a latter-day Jehu out to undo the work of the Clintons whom they sometimes compare to Ahab and Jezebel.

Such an ultraconservative administration could, in the long run, produce unintended consequences. With Republicans, odften allied with religious evangelicals in control of Congress, most governorships, state legislatures, the White House, and, eventually the Supreme Court, there would be few or no checks and balances on rights of minorities such as sabbatarians. While liberal human rights legislation encourages immoral behavior, it also safeguards the rights of ethnic and religious minorities.

This is not, of course, to say that Democrats and liberals also do not trample upon civil liberties. Woodrow Wilson tolerated the Church of God, Seventh Day, as had Lincoln, but conscientious objectors were badly treated in World War I. In World War II FDR interned many Japanese Americans, and the Clinton Administration's actions at Waco were quite ominous. The Attorney Generals of California who tried to seize control of the Worldwide Church of God were Republicans There is thus a danger from elements of both the Religious Right and the Anti-Fundamentalist Left.

A Bush-Cheney administration steeped in a Texas-Wyoming philosophy of "leave me alone" might, if it is not careful, polarize the country especially it were to strip remaining New Deal and Great Society social safety nets such as food stamps [Isa 10.1], curtail legal aid for the poor, appoint States' Rights judges who might weaken the Voting Rights Act of 1965, as well as prolabor and environmental legislation. The result would be social unrest and a liberal reaction in 2004, 2008, or 2012. It is possible that, if Hillary Clinton wins her New York Senate seat she would be in a position to lead a future swing to the far left. The result would be even more polarization from an ultraliberal government might wreak havoc on defense, traditional values, business stability, and fundamentalist churches.

Both ancient Israel and Judah in their periods of decline swung back and forth between right and left. The House of Ahab was followed by the long reign of the House of Jehu, under which the rich got richer and the poor got poorer. A ring of slums grew up around Samaria! King Menahem came to power and soaked the rich to appease Assyria around 745-738 BC. His son was overthrown by the cowboy nationalist Pekah in 734 as Israel descended into assassination and civil war..until Assyria marched in.

====

New Evidence We Are Israel:

Herodotus found people in the Balkans who had migrated there from Media:

"The only people of whom I can hear as dwelling beyond the Ister are the
race named Sigynnae, who wear, they say, a dress like the Medes....the
people of that country use chariots. Their borders reach down almost to the
Eneti upon the Adriatic Sea, and they call themselves colonists of the
Medes; but how they can be colonists of the Medes I for my part cannot
imagine. Still nothing is impossible in the long lapse of ages. Sigynnae is
the name which the Ligurians who dwell above Massilia give to traders, while
among the Cyprians the word means spears." [Herodotus, The History, Book V,
Rawlinson translation].

" I confess that but for the universal tradition which assigns our descent
to Japhet, I should have been rather inclined to attribute to the British
Celts a Semitic origin, both on account of the relics of worship which we
find in Britain, and also on account of the language, the traces of which we
find stil attaching to the names of those places where they carried on their
religious ceremonies." Samuel Lysons, Our British Ancestors: Who and What
Were They?, ( Oxford and London, John Henry and James Parker, 1865), p.18

The Scythians included Israelite elements. The Behistun Rock inscription of
Darius translates 'Gimira' in the Babylonian as 'Saka' in the Persian.
According to Rawlinson's History of Herodotus: " The ethnic name of Gimiri
first occurs in the cuneiform records of the time of Darius.as the Semitic
equivalent of the Arian name Saka.."

Israelites were dispersed into southern Russia, the Ukraine, and Central
Asia. The original Scythians were living in Russia long before Israel's
captivity. They were descended from the Timber Grave Culture of the Bronze
Age.When the invaded the Near East, however, they absorbed Israelites and
others whom they moved to southern Russia from the cities of the Medes.
Diodorus of Sicily, Roman historian, records this: "... many conquered
peoples were removed to other homes, and two of these became very great
colonies: the one was composed of Assyrians and was removed to the land
between Paphlagonia and Pontus, and the other was drawn from Media and
planted along the Tanais (the River Don in ancient Scythia -- the modern
Ukraine, north of the Black Sea, in southern Russia)." Diodorus Siculus,
II, § 43. These people becamne known as Sauromatae, or northern Medes.

The earliest artifacts of the Scythians found in the Ukraine around this
time show unmistakable Persian influence: "We have seen that very ancient
monuments, which we have every reason for assigning to the Scythians, can
only be explained by Iranian parallels, and that it is impossible to define
the general character of Scythian art, except by connecting with Persian art
of the same period." Mikhail Rostovtseff, Iranians and Greeks in South
Russia, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1922, page 60.

Jewish tradition affirms that the Ten Tribes found their way into the
regions north of the Caucasus and Black Seas:

"And as for your seeing him gather to himself another multitude that was
peaceable, these are the nine tribes that were taken away from their own
land into exile in the days of King Hoshea, whom Shalmaneser, king of the
Assyrians, made captives; he took them across the river, and they were taken
into another land. But they formed this plan for themselves, that they would
leave the multitude of the nations and go to a more distant region, where no
human beings had ever lived, so that there at least they might keep their
statutes that they had not kept in their own land. And they went in by the
narrow passages of the Euphrates river. For at that time the Most High
performed signs for them, and stopped the channels of the river until they
had crossed over. Through that region there was a long way to go, a journey
of a year and a half; and that country is called Arzareth. Then they lived
there until the last times; and now, when they are about to come again, the
Most High will stop the channels of the river again, so that they may be
able to cross over. Therefore you saw the multitude gathered together in
peace. But those who are left of your people, who are found within my holy
borders, shall be saved." [2 Esdras 13:39-47].

The Arsareth is generally identified with the Siret in Romania. Jews in the
Caucasus preserved traditions of descent from the Ten Tribes ( Commentary,
October, 1946). Even Alan Godbey of Duke University in his massive 1929
study The Lost Tribes a Myth found a belief in the Israelite origin of
Caucasian Jews credible. The historic presence of lost Israelites and other
Mideastern peoples in Afghanistan and Central Asia east of the Caspian was
commonly accepted by British anthropologists in the nineteenth century.
[See H.W. Bellew, An Inquiry into the Ethnography of Afghanistan, published
1891, reprinted 1973 by Akademische Drueck. Verlaganstalt, Graz, Austria,
p.156 and See also Charles Forster, The One Primeval Language
London, R. Bentley, 1851-54., which produced a map showing the lost tribes
on the eastern shore of the Caspian and in Afghanistan.

Recent archaeological finds now connect the Celts of Hallstatt and Britain
with some of the nomads of the eastern steppes. A recent book by Elizabeth
Wayland Barber entitled The Mummies of Urumchi presented strong evidence
that the nomadic Yuezhi orYue -Chi of Chinese records were the same peoples
as the Celts of Western Europe. Frescoes of these Tokharians had pale
cheeks, handlebar mustaches, full beards, red hair, and blue eyes. Their
tongue was Indo-European: "they and the Iranians were the only Indo-European
speakers we have heard of dwelling in the Tarim Basin." [119]. Defeated by
the ancestors of the Huns, many of theYuezhi fled westward to Bactria in
Iran after 200 BC. Like the later La Tene Celts, they had chariots: " a
whole cluster of Chinese words to do with wheels, wheel spokes, axles, and
chariots-all objects first invented in west-central Eurasia -has proved to
be Indo-European in origin." [Barber, p. 123]. Some of these words "seem to
go back to Iranian forms" [Barber, p.123].

Even more revealing were the burials found at an oasis in the Gobi Desert.
The clothing on the mummies was woven with tartan patterns remarkably
similar to that found among the Celtic tribes of Hallstatt: "the chief
decoration was plaid-that is, wide and narrow color strips in both warp and
weft, as in the woolen twill material of a Scottish kilt." [Barber, p. 133].
According to Barber, "there lay the big surprise. The Gaelic -speaking
Scots, along with the Irish, Welsh, and Bretons, belong to the Celtic branch
of Indo-European; and the Indo-European family tree, when organized by
dialect similarity.rather than modern geography.shows Tokharian on the
branch to Celtic. For Tokharian shows more linguistic features with Celtic
than with any other branch." [Barber, p. 133].

In other words, the closest linguistic relatives to the Irish, Welsh, Gauls,
Bretons, and Scots, are not Germans or even Italians, but a Scytho-Sarmatian
nomad people which was dwelling near the borders of China. The plaids woven
by Scots today are very similar to those of the Hallstatt Celts and their
Central Asian cousins. As for the Asian plaids: " Not only does this woolen
plaid twill look like Scottish tartans, but it also has the same weight,
fill, and initial thickness as kilt cloth and the Hallstatt materials."
[Barber, p. 138]. Given their striking similarities, Barber says "I have to
conclude the Hami and Hallstatt traditions are directly related." [p.141].

There is, moreover, evidence that neither Europe nor Central Asia was the
cradle of these peoples, but that they learned their weaving from a
tradition that was already many centuries old and came from the northern
border of the Caucasus, and, before that, Mesopotamia:

"It suggests, first, that the two groups of twill weavers moved outward from
a central spot, rather than half of them traversing the entire
cross-continental distance (in either direction). Starting from the general
vicinity of the Caucasus, one group went west, the other east.sometime after
rudimentary knowledge of woolly sheep, simple diagonal twill, and plaid
coloring developed there. They carried that knowledge with them. This
scenario also matches the most widely held theory as to where the
proto-Indo-Europeans started from, around 3000 B.C., when they began
spreading out toward their current positions-namely, the patch of steppe
just north of the Black Sea, Caucasus.

Does this mean that our two groups of weavers had to be Indo-Europeans ? No:
today the Caucasus zone buzzes with many languages, some Indo-European
(like Persian, Ossetic, and Armenian) and some not (like Georgian and
Chechen). So on that evidence our immigrants might have spoken anything."
[p.144]. In other words, both the ancestors of the Celts and many of the
peoples of the steppes were related, and migrated not from Europe or the
Far East but from the regions of Israel's captivity and early dispersion:

".the striking similarities between the plaid twills of Hami and Hallstatt
greatly strengthen the case for the Celtic and Hami weavers arising from the
same ancestral tradition. Though lying four thousand miles apart, they
paralleled each other too closely for sheer chance." [Barber, p. 144].

The weaving technology, however, was much older than the migrations, which
reflect an Israelite dispersion from the one end of the earth to the other
prophesied in Deuteronomy 28:64: " What Tokharian and Celtic shared was
being first out of the cannon, as it were-being the earliest groups to start
trekking away from the homeland, and for that reason, perhaps, carrying the
same technology." [Barber, p. 145].

In not only language and technology but appearance were the Celts and the
eastern nomads linked:

".we may add the striking physical similarity of the Celts or Gauls observed
by the Greeks and Romans with some of our tall, blondish, and probably
blue-eyed mummies, a somewhat unusual type in the genetics of Eurasia ."
[p.145].

"The case looks good for the mummies from Hami, at least, having been
Tokharians and erstwhile neighbors of the Celts" according to Barber, who
felt that both had dispersed from the Caucasus in the search for metal ores
[p.145]. Remember that the Jews of the Causacus had traditions of Israelite
origin.

Generally, most of the evidence connects the Hallstatt C and D Celts with
the Cimmerians rather than the Scythians. Professor Stuart Piggott's Ancient
Europe has a map of Cimmerian horse-bits trailing up the Danube. Sharon
Turner's History of The Anglo-Saxons, Volume I, traced the European Celts to
the Cimmerians. The Sigynnae of the Balkans mentioned by Herodotus claimed
to be colonists from Media. TheWelsh [Cymry] Triads traced their ancestry
to the Constantinople region. The Cimbri of Denmark would seem to be
Germanized Celts. The La Tene migrations would show a more Scythian
influence. There was a more Scythian influence in their art. As the mummies
suggest, some of these Celts may even have had Sarmatian [descended from
Medes] links. GeorgeVernadsky, The Origins of Russia (Oxford University
Press, 1956) quotes a letter from Professor W.E.D. Allen:

"It has been suggested that the 'outer clans' or 'outer tribes' of the Alans
were called Antes. This latter name was widespread as a compound among
theCelts of Britain: Brigantes, Decantes, Novantes, Setantes, Trinovantes."
p. 53.

This evidence of Sarmatian elements among the Celtic British is connected by
Allen to "the disruption of the Cimmerian cultural world in Eastern Europe
by the Scythians about the end of the 7th century B.C." GeorgeVernadsky, The
Origins of Russia (Oxford University Press, 1956) p.54.

Vernadsky goes on to say

"The Cimmerians must have been in contact with the peoples of the
Alanic-Tokharian sphere even before the beginning of the Scythian offensive.
There is no consensus of Scholarly opinion on the ethnic background of the
Cimmerians. Some scholars relate them to the Thracians; others, to the
Celts. In any case, as J. Harmatta has pointed out, the names of their
rulers which we know are Iranian. This indicates that the Cimmerians, or
part of them, were controlled by the Iranians." GeorgeVernadsky, The Origins
of Russia (Oxford University Press, 1956) p.54.

The presence of Israelites on the vast steppes stretching from the Ukraine
to China is supported by other evidence uncovered by Jewish scholars Simcha
Jacobovici and Rabbi Eliyahu Avichail. Neither of these men believe the
Celts or Anglo-Saxons are Israelites, but their findings have detected the
trail. Along the ancient silk road lies the city of Samarkand, an ancient
cultural, whose Jewish community died out over a century ago. The name means
'City of the Samarians'. Its origins were uncertain, but possibly of the
Ten Tribes. The name of Isacharov was found in this region and nowhere else.
Jewish tradition also connected Naphtali with this region, where one of the
Tokharian or Yuezhi tribes was known as the Ephthalites, or, to medieval
writers, Nepthalites. This shows that the Cimmerians, Celts, Yuezhi,
Ephthalites, and Israel were all the same people. A nearby region of
Afghanistan is known as Zabulistan (Arts and Entertianment Network, April
16, 2000).

Their remains , of course, the all-important origins of the Anglo-Saxons and
Vikings, whom Sharon Turner traced to the Scythians:

"The Saxons were a German orTeutonic, that is a Gothic orScythian tribe,
and of the various Scythian nations which have been recorded, the Sakai or
Sacae, are the people from whom the descent of the Saxons may be inferred,
with theleast violation of probability."

"That some of the divisions of this people were really called Saka-Suna, is
obvious from Pliny; for he says that the Sakai, who settled in Armenia, were
named Sacassani, which is but Saka-Suna spelt by a person unacquainted with
the meaning of the combined words. And the name Sacasena, which they gave to
the part of Armenia they occupied, is nearly the same sound as Saxonia. It
is also important to remark, that Ptolemy mentions a Scythian people, sprung
from the Sakai, by the name of Saxones." {Turner, pp. 100-101].

On the migrations of the Germanic tribes from the steppes, George Vernadsky
wrote:

"The Teutonic peoples likewise must have migrated westward in several waves.
The bulk of them might have settled in Germany and Scandinavia in the first
half of the first millennium B.C. Other tribes and groups trekked westward
much later. The first settlers in the forest area of Germany were apparently
not a nation of horseman. Tacitus (Germania, 6) says of theGermans at large
that 'There is more strength in their infantry [than in cavalry], and
accordingly cavalry and infantry fight in onebody'. Only one German tribe,
according to Tacitus (ibid,30), that of the Tencteri,'excel in the
accomplishments of trained horsemen'. Presumably, the Tencteri came to the
Rhine from the steppe area much later than most of the other tribes."
[GeorgeVernadsky, The Origins of Russia (Oxford University Press, 1956)] p.
54.

A recent study of archaelogy by T. Burton Brown reveals an author mystified
by the presence on Anglo-Saxon pottery of numerous Middle Eastern and
Caucasian motifs from the Bronze Age for which he cannot account [ T. Burton
Brown , Second Milennium Archaelogy, ( Wooton: Woodstock, Oxfordshire, U.K.,
T. Burton Brown ,1978), pp.208-23].

Norse mythology itself speaks of a massive migration of tribes from Scythia
to the shores of the North Sea and Baltic under the legendary Odin : The
Hervarer Saga records how Odin, who owned a great deal of land in Asia
(Tyrkland), "was foreknowing and skilled in witchcraft" and "knew that his
descendants would live in the northern part of the world", whereupon he left
his brothers to rule Asgard in Scythia, and led a mass migration from
Scythia, Asia Minor, and Armenia to Scandinavia. "At this time the Asia-men
and Tyrkjar came from the east and settled in the northern lands; their
leader was called Odin." Paul du Chaillu The Viking Age, I, pp. 11.
Historian recorded the opinion that:

" The mythological literature of the North bears evidence of a belief
prevalent among the people , that their ancestors migrated at a remote
period from the shores of the Black Sea , to the shores of the Baltic."
[ibid., 25-26].

The Viking ship burial mounds of Scandinavia hearkened back to the wagon
burial mounds of Scythia. Even more astoundingly are the runic
inscriptions found in Blekinge, in southern Sweden. Runing writings have
always fascinated and mystified scholars. Recently, a Scandinavian known as
Örjan Svensson has deciphered. He discovered that they were written in a
Hebrew-Aramaic language and were rituals of Baal worship:

"The Björketorp monument consists of three erected stones or menhirs.
Together they form a triangle whose sides are approximately 7.5, 7.5 and 5
meters. The highest stone, the so called Björketorp or Lister stone which
has a runic inscription, is located in the symmetry axis of the triangle and
it is 4 meters high above ground. The other two stones are 3 meters high
each. These dimensions are consistent with the fact that the runic
inscription and several other inscribed signs on the monument are Semitic.
Thus we can note that the dimensions of the Björketorp monument agrees very
well with the Hebrew cubit, which was approximately 0.5 meters. If we use
Hebrew cubits instead of meters we can note that the triangle side which is
parallel to the front of the Björketorp stone is approximately ten cubits in
length, signifying completion. The other two sides are approximately 15
cubits each. 15 was in ancient times a number that was especially associated
with the Semitic goddess Ishtar. The triangle as a symbol was also
associated with Ishtar. It symbolised her pudenda. It is therefore very
likely that the Björketorp monument is a monument that is dedicated to
Ishtar. This is confirmed by the fact that the Björketorp stone also is
known as the Listerby or Lister stone, in effect meaning the stone dedicated
to Ishtar ("L'ISHTAR" in Semitic language)." [Örjan Svensson, "The True
Significance of the Björketorp Monument in General and Its Runic Inscription
in Particular", http://home.swipnet.se/~w-93783/Bjorketorp/bjorketorp.html,
2000].
The decoded inscription from Björketorp reads:
"The strong happiness of the violent love, break and cut off!
- The strong satisfaction, and El, of eternity and wisdom,
pour out wholly and fully!
And this pudenda, assist his flight!
And the moist entrance, assure certainly your nudity!
And assure the violence of his desire!
And become desolate drenchingly with fullness!"
[http://home.swipnet.se/~w-93783/Bjorketorp/bjorketorp.html]

That from Stentoften reads: "The delight of the father rises and strikes.
The proud delight declines and strikes.
Joy and strength pounds the bodies.
Highness and strength pounds with its devastatingly ruining flight.
The hand of our eradication from the height of El reaches the innermost part
of the pelvis of your desire.
The complete nudity seeks his flight and El, the lover, lets you, girl,
drink of the rushing water and mud.
Pudenda. [http://home.swipnet.se/~w-93783/Stentoften/stentoften.html].

This is as close to a smoking gun as one can find: the ancestors of the
Nordic peoples still speaking a Semitic dialect and following the very
religion, as did Lysons' British Celts, that Israel followed on the eve of
their captivity.

========

Stolen Birthrights: Jacob, Esau, and Healing the Politics of Revenge

The conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians is similar in many ways to that between the United States and Latin America. Is there a connection?

As Israel has spread among the nations, so has Edom. Prophecy says that a time would come, when Jacob's sins would allow Esau to revolt against him [Gen 28.39-41]. Esau would inhabit some of the drier areas of the earth, be dominated by Jacob, have a bitter vendetta against him, and eventually throw off Anglo-Saxon/Israeli rule.

US-Latin American relations reads like a Jacob and Esau story. Esau was the red-skinned macho man, a warrior and a hunter. He would give you the shirt off his back but if you crossed him, he would likely kill you. Jacob was the Anglo, easy-going, money-minded, but ready to rip you off. Even though God intended Jacob to get the birthright, Jacob went out and stole it and Esau's descendants have never forgiven him.

When Rome invaded Judea in 70 AD the Idumeans revolted against the Jews. The Jews eventually were expelled but the Edomites remained and many are among the Palestinians today. Once again, they consider the Israelis [Judah] to have stolen their land. They want it back, by any means necessary: 'Because thou hast said, These two nations and these two countries shall be mine, and we will possess it; whereas the LORD was there….As thou didst rejoice at the inheritance of the house of Israel, because it was desolate, so will I do unto thee: thou shalt be desolate, O mount Seir, and all Idumea, even all of it: and they shall know that I am the LORD' [Ezek:35:10, 15].

The Bulletin goes on to say: 'Edom is the current PLO that reside primarily in Jordan'.

But, just as Jacob's sons have migrated, so have Esau's. Some went to Iraq. Bozrah was the capital of Edom; Basra is an important city in the south of Iraq:

"I know this is just a theory, but I suspect that the 'Edomite' people of the original 'Bozrah', migrated, for some reason, to Iraq. I have done some historical research on the matter and still can't prove the theory, but it does seem to fit. If that is indeed true, then the prophesy pertaining to 'Edom' that we find in Ezekiel, Daniel, Jeremiah, and Isaiah may be fulfilled in judgement against the modern day Iraq. Actually in psalm 137, Edom is called the daughter of Babylon, so perhaps we are on target here.' Epiphany Bulletin: http://www.epiphanybulletin.com/edom.htmEDOM. We all know what Iraq is about. Saddam is moving troops up to the Syrian border to support Syria's Bashar Assad in a coming war with Israel and is probably working on chemical weapons that may be responsible for a prophetic 'wound' Judah is yet to receive.

'When Ephraim saw his sickness, and Judah saw his wound, then went Ephraim to the Assyrian, and sent to king Jareb: yet could he not heal you, nor cure you of your wound. For I will be unto Ephraim as a lion, and as a young lion to the house of Judah: I, even I, will tear and go away; I will take away, and none shall rescue him.

[Hosea 5.13-14]. What is interesting is that the name 'Assad' means 'lion'. Will the Israelis suffer defeat in the next or a future round of war with Syria and Iraq?

The Jacob-Esau story involves more than just the Middle East. In Ezekiel's prophecy, which applies to the future as well as Ezekiel's day, the Edomites lay a claim on not only on Palestine, occupied by a remnant of the House of Judah, but also upon the land of the House of Israel. According to the Epiphany Bulletin: 'The key here is that the 'two' lands refer to the combined lands of Israel and Judah, a situation that has happened in our day, and that the Edomites desire to possess the lands that the Lord has already given to Israel. Sound familiar? We hear this constant chant by the Palestinian's today, that the land of Israel belongs to them and not Israel.' http://www.epiphanybulletin.com/edom.htmEDOM

The House of Israel is not in Palestine today, but Edomites still have a claim on its territory. How? Because many Edomites migrated from the Middle East not only to Turkey and Central Asia, but even to Latin Europe and the New World.

The Gujjar Turks of India claim to be descended from ISAAC whom they call Ishaque and have the legend of how Yaqub cheated his brother Ash[Esau] of his birthright:

'Ishaque (Isaac) told his sons that the one who fed him kabobs from goat meat would succeed him as prophet. His son's, Ash and Yaqub, (Esau and Jacob) went their separate ways to find the goat meat for the kabobs. While Ash went in to the forest in search for the goat Yaqub got some help from his mother who apparently had her own goats and helped her son prepare them. Having eaten the Kabobs prepared by Yaqub, Hazrat Ishaque blessed Yaqub and appointed him as his heir to the birth right.' birthright .<http://cbr.nc.us.mensa.org/homepages/MABrandon/Origins.html.>

Edomites also went into Europe. There are place names in the Balkans like Edoma in Macedonia and Odomantis. Ausones living around Rome whom the Romans and Sabellians absorbed Pinon the Edomite possibly gave his name to the Italian Apennines:

Book of Jasher 90: 7-9: 'And the children of Chittim [Italus]continued their pursuit of Edom, and they smote them with a great slaughter and Edom became subject to the children of Chittim. And the children of Chittim ruled over Edom, and Edom became under the hand of the children of Chittim and became one kingdom from that day. And from that time they could no more lift up their heads, and their kingdom became one with the children of Chittim.'

Sepharad, mentioned in Obadiah, is considered by Jewish writers to be Spain. Jewish commentators identified Edom with Rome and Spain, although I cannot prove there are Edomites in Spain, many Roman colonists settled there among the children of Tarshish.

Judah Halevi wrote in the Middle Ages :

'My heart is in the East, and I in the depths of the West. My food has no taste. How can it be sweet? How can I fulfill my pledges and my vows, when Zion is in the power of Edom, and I in the fetters of Arabia? It will be nothing to me to leave all the goodness of Spain. So rich will it be to see the dust of the ruined sanctuary.
Judah Ha Levi <http://iupjournals.org/jss/jss4-3.html: http://iupjournals.org/jss/jss4-3.html>'

From The Perspective Of Nachmanides : 'The Torah teaches that Esav is the parent of Edom and rabbinic tradition views the Roman Empire as the heirs of Edom. Rome represents the historic and the still present "oppressor" both from a cultural and political perspective. Nachmanides lived in 12th century Christian Spain. Christian Spain was part of the Roman Catholic Church and was also considered to be the spiritual heir of Rome and Edom.' <http://www.hillel.org/hillel/newhille.nsf/ 044a457be6be9112852567d500596cd3/de03fb64f9b0a705852567d50061e98c?OpenDocument >

Just as 'Ephraim' prophetically refers to all of Anglo-Saxon Israel, 'Assyria' to all of Germany and Austria, and 'Media' to the whole Russian sphere, so 'Edom' can embrace the whole Latin world even if most of its descendants do not come from Esau. As a spiritual part of the House of Esau, Spanish America, especially Mexico thus is destined to play an important role in prophecy.

Let's look at a brief history of the region. Esau was to dwell away from the choice places of the earth given to Jacob. Spain is far more arid than France or most of Europe, and the same is true of Mexico. Edom was to the south of Israel. Spain in the 1500's mounted the Inquisition against the Jews, drove the Dutch to revolt, and tried to invade Britain but were stopped in 1588 by an act of God, the destruction of their Armada. Spain's rulers and settlers now turned their attention to the New World. Mexican Indians seem to be descended from the Canaanite Hivites. One of the tribes in that area was called Chivim. Spanish people come mostly from Tarshish, grandson of Japheth. Tradition has it, though, that some of the ruling Spanish element in the Latin American population comes from Kenaz, duke of Esau. The dukes of Edom in Gen 36 were the military dictators of their day. Some American Indians do as well. The name of the Alabama River comes from Esau's Canaanite wife, Oholibamah.

Just as Esau's clan came to conquer and amalgamate with the Hivites of Petra, so did the Spanish Conquistadores amalgamate with the Indians they conquered.

All of the American Southwest was populated and ruled by Spaniards and Mexicans . After1820 Anglos poured in, first to Texas, which revolted against Mexico in 1836. In 1845 US President James K Polk annexed Texas and this led to the Mexican War of 1846-1848 in which the United States seized California, Arizona, and New Mexico. Even though we paid Mexico for them, many Mexican patriots have never accepted the loss of this stolen birthright. Consciously or unconsciously Mexico is taking it back, through immigration, free trade, and a higher birth rate. Within a couple of decades, Hispanics will be a majority or near-majority in the Southwest and many will have dual citizenship. Spanish will become the majority tongue and the complexion of police departments, schools and local governments will alter. Anglos will move out and Hispanics move in. Ethnic tensions may well grow. Political movements agitating for annexation to Mexico may well emerge, and if Vincente Fox is replaced with an anti-American leftist or far rightist regime, they may well be encouraged.

Historically, political turmoil in Mexico will spill across the border. In 1910, Mexico underwent a violent revolution which led to civil war and the death of 10% of the Mexican population. Roving bands of political armies of left and right terrorized the countryside and one of them, led by Pancho Villa, attacked New Mexico, bringing in the US Army. Some factions were already getting German arms and Mexico was invited to join the First World War on the German side in return for her stolen territories.

The Israeli-Palestinian and US-Latin American situations are part of the same story. The parallel is not lost on the Epiphany Bulletin:

'There are a number of cities right along the coast of Israel, none the least of which is 'Gaza'. Today 'Gaza' is the armpit of the area. It is like going to a poor Mexican town south of the Texas border where the people live in pallid squalor. In Gaza though, there is something different. The people are primarily Palestinians who hate Israel with a passion, and while many of them work in Israel, they have supported and instigated many terrorist groups.'

As the nations of Israel decline, the nations of Edom will become more assertive seeking the return of what they feel is their land. According to prophecy, they are in danger of letting their bitterness over some very real injustices cause them to over react. The US does owe Mexico respect and financial support, for the fate of the two Distant Neighbors are closely linked. Mexico owes the US forgiveness for past injustices and a recognition that America's fate is also Mexico's.

God will judge Israel first, but he holds the nations of Esau doubly accountable for how they will act at that time, because they are brother nations . If they join forces with Israel's enemies, they will suffer a similar fate:

Ezek:35:11: Therefore, as I live, saith the Lord GOD, I will even do according to thine anger, and according to thine envy which thou hast used out of thy hatred against them; and I will make myself known among them, when I have judged thee.

Ezek:35:12: And thou shalt know that I am the LORD, and that I have heard all thy blasphemies which thou hast spoken against the mountains of Israel, saying, They are laid desolate, they are given us to consume.

Ezek:35:13: Thus with your mouth ye have boasted against me, and have multiplied your words against me: I have heard them.

Ezek:35:14: Thus saith the Lord GOD; When the whole earth rejoiceth, I will make thee desolate.

Ezek:35:15: As thou didst rejoice at the inheritance of the house of Israel, because it was desolate, so will I do unto thee: thou shalt be desolate, O mount Seir, and all Idumea, even all of it: and they shall know that I am the LORD.

==================

History of the World before the Flood 4000-2325 BC

Creation of Adam and Eve shortly after 4000 BC. Garden of Eden was in Armenia, near Tabriz in northern Iran. Adam and Eve expelled.

AM 50 birth of Cain and Abel and their wives [AM=Anno Mundi=from Creation]

100/3900 Cain murders Abel, becomes wanderer in land of NOD, in northern Iran

AM 130 Seth born

Enosh born AM 220

Enoch born to Cain, Descendants of Cain represented by Ubaid culture, Sialk culture in Iran. Demon motifs traced on pottery.

Adam and Eve continue to have other children, settle northern Mesopotamia as Tell Halaf culture.

300/3700 Cainan born AM 325 Irad born to line of Cain

Cainites settling in Dilmun near Bahrein.

Mahalaleel born AM 395, 'praises of God',

in 4^th and 5^th generation sons of Cain also given names of God , Mehujael. It would seem for a while, until Lamech, [Gilgamesh?] sixth from Cain arrived on the scene that the Sumerians began to acknowledge the true God, using the name of 'El'.

Jared born AM 460

City of Eridu, one of first, named after Irad. Cainites found Sumer.

500/3500 Uruk culture. Enoch of Cain=Unuk=Uruk

Enoch born AM 622,

Methusaleh born AM 687, 'death will be sent' , Enoch likely saw coming catastrophe of the Flood.

Methushael born in line of Cain

700/3300 Lamech probably born in line of Cain

Beginnings of Egypt Dynasty I , Menes.

Jewish tradition has it Enoch preached to many rulers of different lands. It would seem Lamech opposed him and stamped out any mention of EL, the true Creator.

800/3200 Birth of Lamech, son of Methusaleh, 874 AM, Adam still alive, able to pass on knowledge to him and then to Noah

Cainite Line of Lamech: Jabal, Jubal name means 'rivers' , same as Tubal -Cain, indicates settlement in Sumer. First business records kept by temples in Uruk.

Early Bronze Age begins in Sumer, Pyramids are built in Egypt. Tubal-Cain will instruct many in farm tools, plows, weapons. Cities will spring up all across Mesopotamia and Asia Minor.

900/3100 Adam died AM 930

Enoch walks 300 years with God 687-987, God then took Enoch elsewhere to escape persecution. Date of Enoch's death unknown.

Urban Revolution beginning in Sumer

Noah Born, probably in Shuruppak in Sumer, AM 1031

1100/2900 Early Dynastic Period I , Golden Age of Democracy in Sumer

Mahalalel dies AM 1235, Jared dies AM 1290

1300/2700 Early Dynastic II, time of the god-kings, Gilgamesh. Story of Gilgamesh is interesting. He is tyrant warrior king, could possibly even have been [Gi]L[g]amech ? Babylonian epics written down 1000 years later put him after the flood but talk of hisattempt to find the secret of eternal life in a forested garden far to the north, guarded by a fire-breathing creature. Gilgamesh learns that there is no eternal life for him, but only for Ut Napishtim, who survived the Great Flood.

Noah probably flees Shuruppak for Egypt according to Josephus. This is the period of DynastiesV, and VI in Egypt. Noah, a powerful merchant prince, probably establishes a business there. Seth, interestingly, was worshipped as a god in Egypt.

Climax of Early Bronze Age. Old Kingdom in Egypt, warring city-states in Sumer and Asia Minor[Turkey] Empire of Ebla in Syria. Indus Valley civilization in India related to Sumer. In China, Settlements along Yellow River called Yangzhao. Humanity concentrated in the major river valleys where Noah will reach them by boat. Noah obviously has experience as a shipbuilder and a manager. According to Egytian tradition he was also a good speaker.

AM 1430/2475 BC: Noah, in Egypt, begins building ark and warning humanity.

1500/2500

AM 1531 Noah begets Japheth, 1556, Ham, 1557, Shem, 1559.

Early Dynastic III, Violence fills the earth, dynastic wars.

1600/2400 1651 Lamech (Sethite) dies, 2330 BC.

AM 1656 Methusaleh dies in same year as the Flood, 2325 BC.

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