Signs of the Times – Part unknown

Syria Takes Control in Lebanon

If Iraq were not dominating the news, we would hear much more of the removal from power of the rebel Maronite leader Michel Aoun by Syrian forces in Lebanon. Aoun overthrew the legal Lebanese government in September, 1988 and since then has been trying to establish an independent Maronite state in Lebanon.

Syria would have moved against him long ago except for objections of the American, Israeli and French governments. American objections were apparently dropped when Syria joined the U.S.-led multinational force against Iraq. After an attempted assassination sent Aoun fleeing for refuge in the French embassy, the Syrians bombed his stronghold and moved soldiers and armor into the Christian sector for the first time.

After pillaging and robbing the area, including the presidential palace, the Syrian army carted off to Damascus all the equipment, computers and secret files of the Lebanese defense ministry. The Maronite community, half of which has already left Lebanon, is demoralized with its dream of a separate identity crushed.

Although nine other armed militias still exist in Lebanon, Syria now has the military power to control them. Except for the southern portion of the country, where Israel still occupies a security zone, Syria has undisputed control and the power to restore order in a country devastated by 15 years of civil war.

Violence on Temple Mount

Although Syria’s assault on the Maronite Christian rebels left hundreds of Lebanese dead, that statistic was hardly mentioned in the news reports. With Israel, however, it is a different story. When 21 Palestinians were killed by Israeli security forces in putting down a riot by an estimated 5,000 rock-throwing Palestinians, the whole world reacted in condemnation even before any official investigation was held.

The violence was triggered when an ultraconservative Jewish group, known as The Temple Mount Faithful, were set upon by the Palestinians. The Jewish group was attempting to ascend the footpath to the temple mount on which Solomon’s temple once stood but is now the site of a Moslem mosque. Although the United States seldom votes against Israel in the UN, this time it was forced to do so because of the need to hold together the Arab coalition against Iraq.

Despite the care taken by the western allies to avoid linking the Israeli-Palestinian issue to the Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait, this incident has given a windfall of encouragement to Saddam Hussein who has sought to establish such a linkage to split the Arab world from the West. Some analysts feel the incident has raised expectations in the Arab world that any settlement of the gulf crisis will include at least some measure of change for the Palestinian problem.

Britain to Lift Ban on Religious Broadcasting

Britain is reported to be considering allowing sectarian religious groups to broadcast or advertise on TV or radio. To try to prevent the fraud and abuse that has characterized some religious programming in the United States, appeals for money will not be allowed. Programs that involve faith healing and supposed miracles will also be banned.

In the United States, local Chris­tadelphian ecclesias have broadcast on radio since the early 1930’s and on television since the 1950’s. A weekly Sunday morning radio program called “This is Your Bible” was aired in Southern California for nearly 20 years and several 13-week series of television programs were given during the 1960’s. The late Brother Maurice Stewart broadcast a weekly TV program in the Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo areas of California for many years. Many of these programs were also put on by ecclesias in other areas.

In recent years, cable TV has opened up a new opportunity for preaching. Many cable companies will put taped programs on their public service channel. Programs are being broadcast regularly in many areas and it can be an important means by which even isolated individuals can let the light of the gospel shine in their part of the world.

Middle East Crisis Sparks Interest in Prophecy

Book stores across the country are experiencing a boom in the sale of books dealing with prophecy and religion, according to a recent New York Times article. Since Iraq invaded Kuwait on Aug. 2, the major bookstore chains report sales increases on the order of 25 to 50 percent in the religious book category.

Those buying books on prophecy are reported to be trying to make sense of the political upheavals in Eastern Europe and elsewhere. Hal Lindsey’s 1970 book “The Late Great Planet Earth” is said to be selling in record numbers as is the recently published “Armageddon–Appointment With Destiny” by Grant Jeffries. Many booksellers are reported to have been surprised at the interest in Nostradamus books which are classified with New Age or astrology. Nostradamus was the pen name of a 16th century physician and astrologer who claimed the ability to predict the future.

A recent extensively advertised lecture series on world events and Bible prophecy given by the Chris­tadelphians in Pasadena, California, drew the best response from the public of any similar event for many years. Interest in Christadelphian literature on prophetic subjects also seems to be increasing.

It is hoped that the curiosity being shown by the public in the more dramatic events taking place in the world will carry forward to an interest in the full scriptural message of salvation. At present we are blessed with an abundance of world shaking political and social developments to reinforce our confidence in the inspired word of God.

U.S. and Soviets Reach Arms Accord

As a result of negotiations that have been under way since March 1989, the United States and the So­viet Union reached agreement in principle on a conventional arms treaty. The treaty will require the Soviets to destroy thousands of tanks, artillery pieces and armored vehicles in Europe. The reductions in these armaments will make the launching of a land offensive by either NATO or the Soviet Union extremely difficult.

If minor outstanding issues are settled successfully, the Bush administration is expected to participate in a 34-nation Paris Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, Nov. 19. The meeting has been called to affirm German reunification and plan Europe’s future in the post cold war era. The U.S. considers the reaching of an agreement on conventional arms a necessary preliminary to the conference. Negotiations are also proceeding toward a treaty that would reduce long range nuclear missiles in Europe. If these are concluded by the end of the year, as planned, Presidents Bush and Gorbachev will celebrate with a summit meeting in Moscow.

Talks with Palestinians on Hold during Gulf Crisis

In a statement before meeting with U.S. Secretary of State James Baker, Israeli Foreign Minister David Levy said that Israeli-Palestinian dialogue has been put “on ice” during the Persian Gulf crisis. He indicated the Middle East region is changing rapidly and Israel wants to know how it will look when the crisis is over before proceeding.

At the meeting, Levy reportedly received assurance that the U.S. will come to Israel’s defense if it is attacked by Iraq. “If there is an Iraqi attack on Israel, the reaction will not just be an Israeli one,” Baker is quoted as saying. Saddam Hussein had threatened to strike at both Israel and the Saudi oilfields if Iraq were strangled economically. Israeli observers are apprehensive that if Sad-dam gets desperate, he might seek to involve Israel to get Arab nations to unite behind him. U.S. officials have made clear that an Iraqi incursion into Jordan – let alone an attack on Israel – would be a “detonator” causing the U.S. to respond “immediately and forcefully.”

Germany Pledges Commitment to United Europe

Following the reuniting of Germany into the most populous and economically powerful country in Europe, many of its leaders made statements to reassure Europe and the world that the new nation was committed to cooperation for the 1992 economic integration of Europe despite the daunting task of rebuilding the economy in the east.

In the weeks approaching unification, many East Germans expressed growing anxiety over the hardships to be faced in the unification process. By some estimates, up to half the workers may be unemployed as seven out of ten companies go out of business. Over the next several years, the cost to bring the country to western standards is estimated to be in the hundreds of billions of dollars. Ten billion dollars in economic aid has been promised to the Soviet Union as they pull their troops out over the next several years.

Unification has changed the bal­ance of power in Europe. The Soviet Union has signed a 20-year pact of friendship and cooperation with Germany and Soviet Foreign Minister Edward Shevardnadze refers to Germany as an “ally.” Although commitment to NATO and the economic community seems solid, the question many German leaders are asking is whether the new nation will be able to meet the expectations of both the east and the west.

Water a Critical Issue in the Middle East

Although the nations of the world are gathered in the middle east to protect their oil supplies, water is a more crucial commodity to the peoples of the region. Even in patriarchal times, water was a source of controversy in the land of Israel (Gen. 21 & 26). Today, it is becoming a serious problem in all the na­tions from Turkey to the Sudan and the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf.

In Israel, hydrologists have warned the government that water reserves are being used up 15 times faster than they are being replenished each year. Years of over-pumping has caused a deterioration of both the quantity and quality of the underground supply. Scientists are warning that drastic emergency measures, such as cutting back on agriculture, are necessary to avert disaster within five years. Even with some of the most modern methods of irrigation in the world, Israel uses 70 percent of its water for agriculture and some 17 percent of its energy to pump water.

Forty percent of Israel’s water comes from the aquifers beneath the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. This complicates any consideration of giving up control over these administered territories.

The Jordan river which Israel shares with Jordan is now so overused that its increasingly saline water can only be used on the most salt-resistant crops. The flow is meticulously monitored and allocation between the two countries carefully supervised to avoid the controversies that have occurred in the past.

Desalinization of seawater is often proposed as a solution to Israel’s water crisis. The plan is rejected, however, because of the experience of Saudi Arabia. There a plant that cost over $20 billion is able to supply less than three percent of the water required. A scheme that Israeli experts consider more realistic is the shipment of water from Turkey in huge plastic barges. An agreement has been made to purchase the equivalent of about 200,000 acre feet per year which is almost equal to the present national usage. Terminal facilities and pipelines expected to cost around $200 million will have to be built to handle the water.

Jordan, Syria, Iraq, Egypt and Ethiopia all have severe water problems brought about by exploding populations and the increased agriculture and industry that those populations require. Because there are no international obligations for headwaters countries to share water resources with downstream countries, many observers fear armed conflict over water to be as serious a threat in the region as the present confrontation over oil.

Israel Keeps Low Profile in Mideast Crisis

Although Israel has long been considered a most important ally of the United States in the Middle East, strategic necessity has limited the role Israel is being permitted to play in the present crisis. Iraq’s President Saddam Hussein would like to define the present conflict as a confrontation between Arabs on the one side and Israel and the U.S. on the other. Hatred of Israel has always been a rallying cry to Arabs so Saddam is expected to use it to try to break the resolve of those Arab states now standing up against him.

Iraq has a long history of exploiting the Jews for political propaganda purposes. When the present Bathist regime came to power in 1969, it hanged nine Jews in a public square in Baghdad on the charge that they had spied for Israel. Later, a senior Iraqi official admitted that the hangings were actually intended to strike fear into the general populace by demonstrating the ruthlessness of the new regime.

Saddam has also invoked the name of Israel in his oft-repeated claim of the descent of the Iraqi people from the peoples of ancient Mesopotamia. Israel and the Jews offer a useful link between the Babylonian past and the present-day Palestinian question. In 1978, Saddam, who fancies himself a modern-day Nebuchadnezzar, said that the Egyptian peace with Israel was evidence that Iraq had been “chosen yet another time as were their forefathers the Babylonians and Assyrians to defend the honor of the nation and of usurped Palestine.”

Although Saddam appears to be conscious of his place in history, he is obviously not aware of the divinely controlled destiny of the Jews and their land. A generation ago Gamel Abdel Nasser of Egypt achieved a measure of success in leading the Arab world until his course of action brought him into conflict with God’s purpose for the nation of Israel. It remains to be seen how the challenge of Saddam Hussein will read in the history books.

Arab Masses Support Saddam

Although a majority of Arab governments quickly joined the United States in opposing Iraqi aggression, there appears to be a ground swell of support for Saddam Hussein among the masses of those same nations. Given Saddam’s record of brutality against both his own subjects and those of neighboring states, the outpouring of support is puzzling to the western mind. But to the poor and dispossessed of the Arab world Saddam is a modern day Saladin, the 12th-century hero who unified the Arabs and drove the crusaders from their shores.

Nowhere is his support more enthusiastic than among the Palestinians in the Israeli occupied areas, where they take to the streets chanting slogans and waving placards. Some are even said to be calling for Saddam to attack Israel with chemical weapons. In Jordan, where half the population is Palestinian, excitement for Saddam’s cause has the Hashemite monarchy in a difficult position. The king, who has agreed to uphold the U.N. embargo, is caught in a hopeless squeeze because the country is almost entirely dependent on Iraq and is being flooded with refugees from Kuwait.

For the present, Saddam’s strategy appears to be to avoid a shooting war. He is using hostages to deter an attack by the west while trying to break down the resolve of his enemies through propaganda. Meanwhile, as the embargo takes effect, the question may be which side can outlast the other. At this point, it appears that the poverty-stricken Arab masses will end up losers whatever happens, as Arabs are pitted against Arabs and the west takes control of the oil.

Oil Price Rise Threatens New Order in East Europe

The harsh economic conditions that drove the Soviet satellite nations to overthrow communism may get a lot worse if the world price of oil remains at more than $25 per barrel. Under communism, the Soviet Union supplied cheap subsidized oil to the nations it dominated. Now that these nations, Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Bulgaria, are moving to a market economy their energy supplies will have to be purchased at world prices, which will represent a grave economic setback for these countries.

At worst the added burden could contribute to economic collapse that some analysts fear might cause political unrest that could result in the new democratic governments being swept aside and replaced by anti-western dictatorships along the lines of Iraq. Trying to avert such a catastrophe, the western nations are encouraging western companies to continue investing in Eastern European joint ventures ranging from automobile production to telecommunications. The question now is whether the citizens of these countries will be willing to accept the hardships that are sure to come before conditions get any better.

Terrorists move back to Iraq

In the middle 1980s, when Sad-dam Hussein needed western help in his war with Iran, he tried to show that he had gone out of the business of sponsoring terrorism by sending the infamous Abu Nidal packing to Libya. Now that Iraq is no longer under obligation to the west a number of international hit men, including Yaser Arafat’s elite Force 17 unit, are back in Baghdad.

Many experts on terrorism warn of the possibility of attacks on western targets such as embassies and troop concentrations. Another likely possibility is action against Arab states that are supporting U.N. efforts against Iraq. The goal would be to weaken the already shaky resolve of these governments.

Saddam has long sponsored assassination teams against Iraqi dissidents and foreign Arab enemies, particularly Syria. Some analysts feel these tactics might be used if the standoff with the U.S. were to turn into a prolonged diplomatic duel and the Arab leaders need just a little extra pressure to weaken their resolve.

The U.S. takes all these possibilities seriously. It is putting in place all possible defenses such as barriers at troop camps to thwart a truck bombing like the one that killed 241 marines in Beirut in 1983. Protection is being tightened in the oil fields where sabotage is a mounting concern. Whether Saddam will take the terrorist option remains to be seen but it is now an essential part of his arsenal of weapons which he hopes will enable him to rule the Arab world.

Iraq Bids for Mideast Power

During the Arab summit meeting in Baghdad last June, Iraq’s President Saddam Hussein strongly advocated concerted action by the Arab nations to assert their economic power. Since then he has used his overwhelming military power to establish undisputed dominance in the Middle East and to intimidate his Arab neighbors to join this confrontation whether they want to or not. As this is written, his invasion of Kuwait has given him control of that tiny nation’s huge oil reserves; he has annexed the kingdom and has installed his own government.

We do not know what effect the sanctions imposed by nations throughout the world will have on Hussein. For the first time since WW II, the Soviet Union and the United States issued a joint statement condemning a nation’s military aggression. Furthermore, the Soviet Union, one of Iraq’s major suppliers has announced an arms embargo. The U.S. announced the freezing of Iraqi assets and a boycott of Iraqi oil. Ironically, throughout Iraq’s eight-year war with Iran, Kuwait gave a great deal of money to Iraq to finance the war. Although most of Iraq’s neighbors appeared too intimidated to speak out, it was clear they felt betrayed by Hussein. As the news media reminds us numerous times, the name Saddam in Arabic means “one who confronts.”

Israel May Have Chemical Weapon

In the most far-reaching comment to date on the subject of chemical weapons, Israeli Science Minister Yuval Neeman said that Israel is capable of responding with its own chemical weapons if Iraq attacks Is­rael with such weapons. Israel’s defense minister refused to comment on the statement. Israel has long been thought to have chemical weapons, but government officials have never admitted it.

Last April Iraqi President Saddam Hussein threatened the use of chemical weapons against Israel if Israel attacked Iraq. Hussein no doubt was fearful of a preemptive strike like Israel’s 1981 bombing of the Iraqi reactor, where Israel believed nuclear weapons development was taking place.

Thatcher Cool to EC’92

The 12 European nations that comprise the European Community are committed by treaty to establishing economic and monetary unity by the end of 1992. Of the twelve, none is more reluctant to surrender its individual sovereignty than Britain. The mood of British hostility was given embarrassing publicity recently by the injudicious remarks of cabinet Secretary for Trade and Industry Nicholas Ridley. He reportedly labeled the unity plan “a German racket designed to take over the whole of Europe.” This, along with other intemperate observations in which the name of Adolph Hitler was mentioned, led to the minister’s retirement. Many observers, however, believe the sentiments expressed so crudely are not that far out of line with the feelings of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and her government.

The question some observers are asking is whether Britain, with her world-wide economic interests, cultural ties to former colonies around the world, and historic dedication to free trade, can really be at home in an insular community whose economic interests are largely internal. At EC headquarters in Brussels, a staff of 15,000 people are now writing rules and regulations, and planning for the bureaucracy that will govern trade within the community in the year 1993. It will be interesting to follow this line of events as that time approaches. According to the traditional Christadelphian interpretation of Bible prophecy, Britain’s role in latter-day events as the confronter of Gog (Ezek 38:13) requires her to be separate from the nations of continental Europe. This seems to be her natural bent at this time.

Harvest Swamps Soviet Facilities

The Soviet Union reports a grain crop so large that it has overwhelmed the nation’ s ability to collect and store it. The crop is expected to reach 260 million tons compared to last year’s record 211 million tons. Many tens of thousands of soldiers, along with army trucks, have been sent into the harvest campaign and 10 to 15 percent of the nation’s civilian trucks have also been drafted.

Shortages of fuel, trucks and storage space are said to be causing the loss of 2 million tons a day because it cannot be harvested and stored quickly enough. The Soviet media blames the crisis on the centrally planned economy’s lack of flexibility to allocate resources. The country is said to regularly lose about a quarter of the food crop on the way to market.

Israel Seeking High-Tech Industry

Many Soviet immigrants to Israel have advanced degrees in science, mathematics and engineering and are now being put to work in colleges and existing industries. But if the influx continues as expected, Israel will run out of suitable positions for these immigrants. Planners estimate that in a few years the 12,000 senior scientists now in Israel may be overwhelmed by at least 20,000 new colleagues.

To absorb these people and employ them at their highest skill levels, several lines of expansion are planned. Many of the first will be employed in the development of projects already planned such as transportation, roads and utilities. But, as some planners point out, only a limited number can be used in this way because of the huge amount of public money needed to finance the projects. What is needed, say the experts, is more commercial high-tech enterprise.

Israel’s Science Ministry is, therefore, identifying fields in which Israel has a good chance of capturing a sizable share of the world market and is seeking the capital to establish research laboratories and eventually factories. The planners want to make sure that the technically trained immigrants are absorbed in Israel where they can help the country’s technological advancement. They believe, as a member of the Science Ministry expressed, “employing the expertise of these new immigrants can lead the country into a period of tremendous growth and prosperity.” As prophesied through Ezekiel, the Gogian invader will come to a land that is rich in silver and gold (Ezk. 38:13). What we see now may be God’s way of bringing about such conditions of affluence.