The Annapolis Conference

You boast, “We have entered into a covenant with death, with the grave we have made an agreement. When an overwhelming scourge sweeps by, it cannot touch us, for we have made a lie our refuge and falsehood our hiding place.” (Isaiah 28:15)

Perspective by Jack Kelley

You boast, “We have entered into a covenant with death, with the grave we have made an agreement. When an overwhelming scourge sweeps by, it cannot touch us, for we have made a lie our refuge and falsehood our hiding place.” (Isaiah 28:15)

We’re all frustrated and even heart broken over the direction being taken by world leaders after the Annapolis Conference. We expected Iran and Hamas to call it a failure, they weren’t invited. But the senior Palestinian negotiator’s attack against President Bush while standing in America was particularly unsettling.

Quoting from DEBKAfile. “In an interview from Washington, senior Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said Wednesday, Nov. 28, the US president does not negotiate in the Palestinians’ name, does not represent them and his words are not relevant to the Palestinian cause. On such issues as recognizing Israel, said the Palestinian negotiator, Bush is not competent to determine how we act. If the US president seeks an exchange of territory, he can do this with Mexico.”

This is the moderate that Washington has described as “someone we can do business with.”

Following a decades long tradition, Western diplomats will no doubt dismiss comments like this as being only “for local consumption” still not catching on that these statements are actually the truth and what’s being fed to the West are the lies. The only refreshing thing about Iranian Pres. Ahmadejad is that at least he’s telling everyone the same story.

But it’s neither my calling nor my intention to offer political commentary. The web is already abuzz with such. I want to put this all into Biblical perspective.

I don’t know whether anything will come out of this conference or not, but I do know that someday soon some world conference will put Israel into such a compromised position that they’ll think peace has finally arrived just at the moment when they’re at their most vulnerable. Given Israel’s current political weakness, if it’s God’s timing the Annapolis conference could lead to such a situation. But if it doesn’t another one will. Israel has to be transformed from a warrior nation on continual high alert like they are now, into a peaceful and unsuspecting people – all of them living without walls and without gates or bars, as Ezekiel 38:11 predicts they’ll become.

This has to happen before Daniel’s 70th week can start, and while it’s a painful thing to watch we know that Israel has to be left with only God as their defender. Then the Russian / Iranian coalition will attack, God will intervene, the whole world will see it, and the 70th Week will begin.

And somewhere in the midst of all that the Church will disappear. The run up to the Battle of Ezekiel 38 will be the last thing we ever witness on Earth. It could be a while before it’s completely fulfilled, but we’ve already seen the beginning.

In the mean time we still pray for the Peace of Jerusalem and we still let our leaders know of our displeasure each time they take the wrong side in this issue. We suffer with them through the “natural” disasters that always follow, pleading with them once again to realize that these killer storms are not mere coincidence but signs of God’s mounting anger over their attempts to divide His land.

Like John did, we’re seeing God’s plan unfold right before our eyes, and when we consider the outcome it’s as sweet as honey in our mouths. But knowing what it takes to make it happen is enough to make us sick to our stomachs. (Rev. 10:10) 11-28-07

Dec. 9 UPDATE

Here are several dots that when I first wrote this perspective hadn’t been connected yet.

1. After a huge build up of Naval forces in the Gulf that everybody thought was a run up to the attack on Iran, the US intelligence community suddenly discovers that there hasn’t been a threat since 2003.

2. This was right on the heels of a disastrous meeting between Iran and the EU where Iran’s brand new nuclear negotiator told Javier Solana that all previous understandings were revoked, they’re back to square one, and the discussion is over.

3. At the same time Iran is working to influence OPEC to abandon the dollar. Iran itself is now refusing to accept dollars in payment for oil, calling it an unstable currency.

4. Then Iran and Saudi Arabia publicly cozy up at the 28th annual meeting of the Gulf Cooperation Council, a group of Arab nations specifically formed to counter Iran’s revolutionary activities. Iran has never been invited to those meetings before and is not even an Arab country, but this year made a major speech calling for regional cooperation against “outsiders”.

5. After pulling out all the stops to get “moderate” Arabs to Annapolis, the US suddenly withdraws the resolution they had written for the purpose of calling the meeting a success after Israel discovered that the resolution would obligate them to the Security Council. It turns out that Israel hadn’t been consulted in advance.

At Annapolis, Israeli delegates had to use the service entrance because Arabs refused to share the main entrance with them, Jewish reporters were barred from Arab meetings, the US refused to share intelligence with Israel and didn’t warn them about the impending about face on Iran. In Israel, several senior officials feel like the US has cut Israel loose to fend for itself.

Now DEBKAfile is reporting that the US and Iran have made a deal brokered by Saudi Arabia that in exchange for Iran no longer sending arms and explosives into Iraq and Afghanistan and staying out of the Lebanese election, the US will “remember” that Iran abandoned the military part of its nuclear program back in 2003, call off plans to attack Iran, and allow Hizbollah to play a major role in the new Lebanese government.

According to DEBKAfile the well-connected Saudi journalist Jihad El-Khazen gave his version of the course of events in the Arab newspaper Al-Hayat:

“Here is what happened: The rate of violent acts dropped in Iraq; therefore the American intelligence services discovered that Iran had halted its military nuclear program in 2003. This means that the resumption of violence will make American intelligence services find out that there is a secret military program that is different from the peaceful and famous one.”

Saudi Arabia has apparently agreed to broker this deal, and has agreed to help mediate all future disputes between the two countries, explaining why Iranian Pres. Ahmadinejad was made to feel so welcome at the GCC meeting.

If all this comes to pass, it’s a gigantic power play that seems to have put Ezekiel 38 back on the fast track, since an effort by the US to stop or delay Iran’s acquisition of Nukes could have set things back several years.

This week the leader of Hamas went to Saudi Arabia to discuss a limited truce with Israel to head off a major Jewish attack on the Gaza that’s in the works. If some kind of peace guarantee comes along for Israel now, we should consider the possibility that God’s time is finally near.