The King Of The South

One of the advantages I have as an Ambassador In Christ is access to information deep in time that we call the future. And really the advantage I have is that I believe what the Bible has to say about that future. Most people don't believe or have a hard time accepting what the Bible says about the future. Thus, they tend to ignore or reject what the Bible clearly and plainly says will happen in the fullness of time. It does take time to properly sift the information from the pages of scripture as well as a certain spiritual maturity to properly gauge the timing of the events recorded in the Bible, both old and new testaments, and fit it like a puzzle piece within the proper context of history, past, present and future.

As you know or may not know, I believe we are nearing the end of the Church Age: a period of time that followed the Resurrection of Christ in 30AD (approx) to the present in 2013AD. The Church Age was unknown to the Jewish prophets of the Old Testament and thus events outlined in the Old Testament have no bearing in our present time until the close of the Church Age which is yet unknown and is currently ongoing. However, we see today many outlines and forms in the shadows that will ultimately show themselves in the full light of day tomorrow. One of those forms is the political/military entity known as the King of the South.

All prophecies in the Old Testament relate to Israel and her future King. With the return of the state of Israel in 1947-48 onto the world stage the Old Testament prophecies concerning Israel have the potential of becoming activated. In the book of Daniel, the nation of Israel is surrounded by four antagonists which it must contend with until the return of her glorious King and his army which in turn will establish Israel as the preeminent nation of the nations of the world. The four antagonists are divided like the four directions of the compass: North, South, East and West with Israel at the center. The antagonists are geographically located thusly from the center of political gravity which is located in Israel.

The King of the South is the great kingdom of Egypt. At least "great" from its glorious past. But it is to the future we seek to understand the makeup of this antagonist which will arise to challenge the nation of Israel which by the way will be the last "king of the south" to do so forever! I say this because Egypt has gone through many transformations politically and religiously speaking since the Book of Daniel was written however as time draws to a close on the Church Age I believe we can discern the ultimate political makeup of this King and kingdom as prophesied in the Old Testament.

I've written in the past that Egypt along with Saudi Arabia are the twin cultures/political entities that makeup the core of the Sunni Moslem world. The Sunni world rises and falls with them and I believe that a new Moslem Caliphate will arise centered on the Sunni Moslem religion which in turn will expel Iran and any Shiite influenced country such as Syria from its political and military orbit. I believe the Sunni Moslem world centered in Egypt politically and Saudi Arabia religiously is the King of the South of the Old Testament.

With the advent of the so called Arab Spring, we see a consolidation of the Sunni Moslem world currently taking place much to the chagrin of those in the West that want to see a more unified global political order with the West as the cockpit of this politico-commercial paradigm. A Moslem Caliphate will challenge this paradigm.

From Foreign Affairs we see the consolidation occurring internally within Egypt itself:

Addressing graduates of military academies is a standard responsibility for high-ranking military officers all over the world. But last week, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the commander of Egypt’s armed forces, which recently deposed the country’s first freely elected president, went far beyond the conventions of the genre in a speech to graduates of Egypt’s Navy and Air Defense academies. Sisi’s true audience was the wider Egyptian public, and he presented himself less as a general in the armed forces than as a populist strongman. He urged Egyptians to take to the streets to show their support for the provisional government that he had installed after launching a coup to remove from power President Mohamed Morsi, a longtime leader of the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood. “I’ve never asked you for anything,” Sisi declared, before requesting a “mandate” to confront the Muslim Brotherhood, whose supporters have launched protests and sit-ins to denounce the new military-backed regime.

Sisi’s speech was only the latest suggestion that he will not be content to simply serve as the leader of Egypt’s military. Although he has vowed to lead Egypt through a democratic transition, there are plenty of indications that he is less than enthusiastic about democracy and that he intends to hold on to political power himself. But that’s not to say that he envisions a return to the secular authoritarianism of Egypt’s recent past. Given the details of Sisi’s biography and the content of his only published work, a thesis he wrote in 2006 while studying at the U.S. Army War College in Pennsylvania, it seems possible that he might have something altogether different in mind: a hybrid regime that would combine Islamism with militarism. To judge from the ideas about governance that he put forward in his thesis, Sisi might see himself less as a custodian of Egypt’s democratic future than as an Egyptian version of Muhammed Zia ul-Haq, the Pakistani general who seized power in 1977 and set about to “Islamicize” state and society in Pakistan.

I believe what we are seeing here and in other parts of the globe specifically in Russia is the marriage once again of religion with the state. For awhile during the 20th Century, religion had run its course and secular atheistic government was the order of the day with all its attendant tragedies that was the Communist International order. The conservative estimate of the losses suffered internally by these types of governments was at least 100 million souls murdered during this time period. The Ottoman Empire after World War One was disassembled by Ataturk and the Caliphate abolished. In order to maintain the regime brutality was the order of the day mainly directed against Moslems. However, time has shown that from a state perspective, the dismantling may have been disadvantageous as far as victory on the battlefield is concerned. The article expands further:

But even though he overthrew a government dominated by Islamists, there is reason to suspect that Sisi’s true goal might not be the establishment of a more inclusive, secular democracy but, rather, a military-led resurrection and reformation of the Islamist project that the Brotherhood so abysmally mishandled. Indeed, after Morsi became president, he tapped Sisi to become defense minster precisely because there was plenty of evidence that the general was sympathetic to Islamism. He is reputed to be a particularly devout Muslim who frequently inserts Koranic verses into informal conversations, and his wife wears the conservative dress favored by more orthodox Muslims. Those concerned about Sisi’s views on women’s rights were alarmed by his defense of the military’s use of “virginity tests” for female demonstrators detained during the uprising against Mubarak. Human-rights activists argued that the “tests” were amounted to sexual assaults; Sisi countered that they were intended “to protect the girls from rape.”

Morsi likely also found much to admire in the thesis that Sisi produced at the U.S. Army War College, which, despite its innocuous title (“Democracy in the Middle East”), reads like a tract produced by the Muslim Brotherhood. In his opening paragraph, Sisi emphasizes the centrality of religion to the politics of the region, arguing that “for democracy to be successful in the Middle East,” it must show “respect to the religious nature of the culture” and seek “public support from religious leaders [who] can help build strong support for the establishment of democratic systems.” Egyptians and other Arabs will view democracy positively, he wrote, only if it “sustains the religious base versus devaluing religion and creating instability.” Secularism, according to Sisi, “is unlikely to be favorably received by the vast majority of Middle Easterners, who are devout followers of the Islamic faith.” He condemns governments that “tend toward secular rule,” because they “disenfranchise large segments of the population who believe religion should not be excluded from government,” and because “they often send religious leaders to prison.”

But Sisi’s thesis goes beyond simply rejecting the idea of a secular state; it embraces a more radical view of the proper place of religion in an Islamic democracy. He writes: “Democracy cannot be understood in the Middle East without an understanding of the concept of El Kalafa,” or the caliphate, which Sisi defines as the 70-year period when Muslims were led by Muhammad and his immediate successors. Re-establishing this kind of leadership “is widely recognized as the goal for any new form of government” in the Middle East, he asserts. The central political mechanisms in such a system, he believes, are al-bi'ah (fealty to a ruler) and shura (a ruler’s consultation with his subjects). Apologists for Islamic rule sometimes suggest that these concepts are inherently democratic, but in reality they fall far short of the democratic mark.

And when we say "democratic mark" then we are talking about a "Western" oriented democratic mark, of course. Again, this return to religion and its marriage to the state is also being sown in Russia under Vladimir Putin. In Moscow, the marriage of the Eastern Orthodox Church to the State has been ongoing for 20 years now. So between China and Europe we see a massive continental divide from Moscow to Cairo that is dividing the world with Israel at the center with regimes that are unified with the local religion and governments in the West and East that are moving away from such an arrangement. An exception may be made in the West but for a short time only per the Book of Revelation. The article concludes:

If Sisi’s thesis truly reflects his thinking -- and there is no reason to believe otherwise -- it suggests not only that he might want to stay at the helm of the new Egyptian state but that his vision of how to steer Egyptian society differs markedly from those of the secular-nationalist military rulers who led Egypt for decades: Gamal Abdel al-Nasser, Anwar al-Sadat, and Mubarak. The ideas in Sisi’s thesis hew closer to those of Zia ul-Haq, who overthrew Pakistan’s democratically elected government in 1977 and soon began a campaign of “Islamicization” that included the introduction of some elements of sharia into Pakistani law, along with a state-subsidized boom in religious education. It is worth noting that Sisi has gone out of his way to court the Salafist al-Nour Party, by ensuring that the constitutional declaration issued on July 13 preserved the controversial article stating “the principles of sharia law derived from established Sunni canons” will be Egypt's “main source of legislation.” He also tried to undercut support for the leaders of the Brotherhood by appealing directly to their followers, referring to them as “good Egyptians” and “our brothers.” These moves may have been intended to inoculate him against the charge that the coup was anti-Islamist -- a critical point, since Islamism still enjoys broad support in many parts of Egyptian society. But it may also reflect a genuine belief in and commitment to Islamism.

If Sisi continues to seek legitimacy for military rule by associating it with Islamism, it could prove to be a disaster for Egypt. At the very least, it would set back the democratic cause immeasurably. It would also reinforce the military’s octopus-like hold on the economy, which is already one of the major obstacles to the country's economic development. And it would also pose new dilemmas for the military itself: somehow it would need to reconcile serving the strategic objectives of Islam and those of its American patrons. It’s not clear whether that circle could be squared. And the experiment would likely come at the expense of the Egyptian people.

The question that is left to us to ask is why? Why is Egypt pursuing this course as well as Russia. What long term agenda are they pursuing and will the West be forced into a confrontational position with the King of the South? I suspect, we may know sooner than expected.

Read A Little, Learn A Little

Here are a couple of articles I thought were relevant to our ongoing view of how the world is turning. Some are couple of months old but still worth the read. I'm still continually amazed how world events are unfolding in our time in relation to Biblical Eschatology. To me, prophecy is the proof that there is a God. I certainly understand why a society throughly entrenched in a materialist mentality would not believe in the Divine Creator but then the Bible does state that he is invisible with only the Christ being the visible part of the God-head. Whatever your views, the next couple of articles should serve to enrich and explore the coming wave of reality upon our beliefs.



The Coming Fourth Reich -

Proxcimitron- The Miracle of Technology

Potemkin Nation - Seeing Is Not Believing

Pax Americana - USA is #1

Power of the forehead - More Here Than Meets The Eye

Attack of the Drones - Cue The Imperial March

That Military Industrial Complex - By The Numbers

Kings of the East

Checks and Balances

Why does the United States attack one country but leave another alone? Why does one country merit our attention, militarily speaking, while another does not? How is it that we would attack Iraq in 1990 and in 2003 with such force - navy, air force, army & marines - that it would end the Saddam regime permanently, yet we agonize over Syria or Libya much to the detriment of nascent opposition forces trying to overthrow their dictatorial masters? Do natural resources play a part in our decision making processes in determining a direct or indirect response?

Mother Russia

My friends, the answer is blowing in the wind. A Russian wind to be precise. Since World War II, beginning with the Roosevelt Administration, the United States has made a strategic decision not to engage militarily with the Russians, communist or otherwise, where ever the they may be ensconced. They too have made a decision to not engage with us in a direct military conflagration by conventional or nuclear arms on US forces in any country that we have set up base camp. If either side attacks the other then all options are on the table and the consequences will be unforeseen. So, wherever the Russians are based then we are not and conversely, where we are based the Russians are not. The US will not attack a country in which the Russians are based and the Russians will not attack a country where we are based.

We see this "gentlemen's agreement" playing out between Russia and the United States over the whole world since WWII such as in East and West Berlin, Eastern Europe, East and West Germany during the Cold War, and of course in Cuba under Castro. This politico-military dichotomy spilled over into Communist China after 1949 and again, we decided that we would not attack the Chinese in a direct military action.

Korea

The invasion of South Korea by the North Koreans would probably have been successfully pulled off by the North had they not attacked the American Army based in South Korea directly. No doubt while North Korea swept all before them in summer months of 1950, if no American forces were in the country, then the Truman Administration would have basically abandoned the South to its fate citing this gentlemen's agreement with Russia. But Americans were there and we were directly attacked and thus we counterattacked under MacArthur and by the Winter of 1950, US forces pushed the North Koreans all the way back to China.

Then a funny thing occurred - we decided to extend to China that same gentlemen's agreement accorded to Russia. Perhaps the Russians were directly involved with the Chinese or we believed they were and thus when China herself counterattacked us at the Yalu River, they called our bluff and watched us retreat back to the 38th Parallel dividing North and South Korea. For the next two and a half years we would joust over the middle of Korea before a truce was set in place with the advent of General Eisenhower as President of the United States in 1953. It's been this way for 60 years now.

Viet Nam

Viet Nam 10 years later also was governed by this same condition. We felt the Russian/Chinese investment in North Vietnam was big enough to prevent an actual invasion by US forces and thus, like Korea, we would come to "respect" the gentlemen's agreement and only fight for South Viet Nam in a limited way. We had hoped that the North would make a truce like in Korea but political forces in the United States had turned leftward and unlike in Korea, American forces pulled out of Viet Nam by 1973. With no American forces to check the Russian/Chinese North, the Communist conventional forces invaded openly in '74 and occupied Saigon by 1975.

Proxy Forces

Vietnam also proved that proxy forces could be used to great effect to bypass this gentlemen's agreement between Russia and the United States. Russians could indeed attack American forces directly without necessarily violating this agreement. Guerrilla forces financed and supplied by the Russians/Chinese could attack the Americans and her allies with impunity which is the difference between Korea and Viet Nam.

Of course, the United States also could enlist guerrilla proxy forces against Russia as well. Both Afghanistan and Nicaragua were cases of American-backed proxies fighting the Russians during the 1980's under the able leadership of Ronald Reagan. The Mujahadeen of Afghanistan and the Contras of Nicaragua successfully destabilized Russian occupation and influence enough that the USA ended up on the winning side.

A New World Order

The end of the Cold War does not end the gentlemen's agreement. Since the "fall" of communism in Russia and the advent of the Moslem War Of Terror in the West, the United States is still operating under this politico-military regime. We will not attack a country that houses Russian/Chinese military forces. And the same is true for them on us. Hence, we invaded Iraq and Afghanistan after 2001 but have not and will not invade Iran or Syria today because the Russians are based in both of these countries. Cuba also is still very much invested by the Russians which we could easily squash if we so desired. Libya did not base Russians or Chinese and thus we got more easily involved.

The one event that will destabilize this Russian-American dynamic will be the so called "Arab Spring". It's quite possible that a Sunni-Moslem political uprising will push the United States completely out of the Middle East as far as military bases are concerned. If this is the case, then our relationship with Israel becomes that much more important thus exacerbating the tensions with the Sunni-Moslem world which in turn could provoke nations like Qatar or Kuwait to kick us out of their countries for political - religious reasons. Similar to the OPEC Oil Embargo of 1973 to punish the United States for directly supporting Israel during the Yom-Kippur War, a future conflagration with the Sunni-Moslem world could instigate a crisis that causes military base closings and troop withdrawals from Turkey, Egypt, Jordan, Qatar and Kuwait. For the first time since WWII, we could see a Middle East not occupied by American/Western forces which in turn could tempt the Russians to challenge the gentlemen's agreement over this part of the world.

Fasten your seatbelts.

A Few Things

Greetings from Legatus. It's been a hectic year and a half with family medical issues and job postings going haywire which has robbed me of my time at the computer. But I believe I now may be able to share my thoughts and ideas in regards to all things political/religious/economic, if you'll be so kind as to indulge me.

Boston: My first thought when I heard there were explosions at the Boston Marathon was Islamic Terror had struck again. Occam's Razor states that the most obvious answer is the answer and in this case when people were struck down by two bomb blasts seconds apart in Boston last Monday then we were looking at Moslem-inspired terrorism par excellence. Could we have been wrong? Certainly, but let us not throw out common sense for the sake of political correctness. Was this "home-grown" terrorism with no political state-sponsored support? Perhaps. But I suspect that with John Kerry as the newly minted Secretary of State that someone or some nation was sending a message in no uncertain and bloody terms. Consider that John Kerry, ex-Senator from Massachusetts, hails from this state and with his recent elevation to this post, some rogue nation or perhaps even the remnants of Al Qaida wanted to send a message that would get past the big noses at the State Department specifically and the Obama Administration generally. The arrogance of this administration to assume that since Obama is not George W. Bush, the world would just come running to Obama and Company for succor and guidance, has proven to be a red herring. This administration in many ways has simply carried on where George W left off. Right or wrong Obama's foreign policy has been a continuation of the Bush Administration which in turn has followed the dictates of the U.S. State Department.

The State Department has recommended that we embrace the Moslem Brotherhood and has done so since the mid-2000's starting under the GW administration. Perhaps they know something we don't and that the Moslem Brotherhood of Egypt has indeed been embraced by the Sunni Arab/Moslem peoples of North Africa and the Levantine region of Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. Perhaps the United States is simply bowing to the inevitable? Perhaps neither GW nor Obama can do anything about it but simply hope by recognizing the MoBro's that they in turn once they take power over all of the Sunni Arab world will come to embrace the United States specifically and the West in general. Guess we'll wait and see. In the meantime, we should be honest with ourselves and admit we have an "Islamic Terror" Agenda being played out in the West by both state and non-state actors.

When will this agenda of Islamic Terror be discarded? I suspect that when the Moslem Brotherhood has finally rested political control from Western supported despotic regimes from North Africa to the Arabian Peninsula and erects an official Moslem Caliphate then perhaps we'll see a cease and desist order come down from on high to stop attacking Westerners in their home countries. By attacking us at home they believe we will remove ourselves in their own countries and regions, both politically and militarily, thus paving the way for the Moslem Brotherhood to take control from regimes that we have supported since the Cold War. Their calculus may unfortunately prove correct since political correctness on our part has only served to embolden them to follow this course of action. Drones will not stop them. Sanctions will not stop them. Boots on the ground will stop them, if we have the courage. Alas, we don't have that courage anymore.