Shalom Partner and Friend of Israel,

Like in everything, God's Word gives us the clear truth regarding Israel. On the 20th May, President Obama once again put himself and the USA on the wrong side of God, as he supported the enemies of Israel by humiliating Prime Minister Netanyahu and Israel by publicly forcing them to return to the 1967 borders. What has been happening in the Middle East over the past months is not only the rise of Islam in the world, but the rise of the enemies of Israel who seek the destruction of that nation and the death of every Jewish person. God is true to His Word and the land of Israel and His wrath and judgment on those who even try to divide ‘His Land’ is imminent!

For, behold, in those days and in that time, when I will bring again the exiles of Judah and Jerusalem, I will also gather all nations and will bring them down into the valley of Jehoshaphat. And I will fight with them there for My people (Jews) and for My inheritance Israel, whom they have scattered among the nations, and divided My land. Joel 3:1 - 2

God is true to His Word… "Don’t divide MY Land!"

"Tornado devastates Joplin, MO., DIVIDING or splitting it in HALF today Monday May ... This comes 4 days after Obama delivers a speech about DIVIDING ISRAEL and JERUSALEM. ...." (World News Network 24th May)

"Even when America turns its back on Israel like Obama did last week, demanding that Israel reduce its borders back to 1967, we learn Israel is a good friend. Benjamin Netanyahu prayed for Joplin, Missouri after the tornado struck the Route 66 town. Netanyahu said; ‘When America suffers, Israel feels it…’" BBCW 24th May

"JOPLIN, 23rd May — Rescue crews worked into the rain-soaked chill of night, ignoring lightning and strong winds to dig through splintered homes, crumpled businesses and crushed cars in this Missouri town walloped by the deadliest single tornado in nearly six decades. Even more ominous: More storms, possibly strong ones, were on the horizon… The death toll in Joplin reached 116 on Monday and was expected to climb. The killer tornado ripped through the heart of Joplin, a blue-collar southwest Missouri town of 50,000 people, Sunday night, slamming straight into St. John's Regional Medical Center... The tornado destroyed possibly "thousands" of homes, Fire Chief Mitch Randles told AP. It levelled hundreds of businesses, including massive ones such as Home Depot and Wal-Mart… In Joplin, much of the town's landscape was changed beyond recognition. House after house was reduced to slabs, cars were crushed like soda cans and shaken residents roamed streets in search of missing family members…" Associated Press Tuesday May 24th

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu on Monday 24th May repeated his criticism of President Obama’ plan for peace negotiations with Palestinians, saying that his country could not return to the boundaries it had before 1967 because of the risks it would pose to Israel’s security. In remarks to a pro-Israel lobby, Netanyahu said that while Israel is eager to negotiate a peace deal, "it must leave Israel with security. Therefore, it cannot return to the indefensible 1967 lines." Los Angeles Times

The bottom line is that Israel has every right to defend itself from those who brazenly call for the destruction of the state of Israel and all of the Jewish people, just as we have the right to defend ourselves from those who seek our destruction. The Bible clearly states this and as we sit down and spend the next 10 minutes reading the anchor verses they are for us today; Genesis 12:1-7, 13:14-16, 15:18, Deuteronomy 9:4-6, Joshua 1:1-11, 21:43-45.

We could literally spend hours reading all the passages in God’s Word that confirm that modern-day Israel is the land God promised to Abraham and gave to His children. We don’t have to be Bible scholars to quickly realize in just the few key passages above that the land of Israel is indeed the exact land God Himself promised to His children 4,000 years ago, and fulfilled that promise in 1385 B.C. when Joshua took possession of that land.

Having laid the Biblical case to support that the land of Israel belongs to the Jewish people… now you can see why giving away even one inch of that land to anyone else is going against God Himself. No person, no nation, has the right to give away what God promised and gave to the Jewish people. Those who do make themselves an enemy of God! "The enemies of Israel"… are in fact "the enemies of God!"

Israel is God’s flesh-and-blood, real-life prophetic message to all nations of the earth and especially to the Church. Israel cannot and indeed must not be ignored.

In this turbulent hour of terror… What in the world is God doing with Israel? What is He saying… and how is He calling Christians to respond? Through the endless pressures on His covenant people, God is turning the hearts of His ancient covenant people back to Him (Hosea 2:14 - 16). In addition, He is battling the bondage called Islam and birthing a harvest of Arab souls… But He is also using Israel as a testing ground, or threshing floor for the nations and the Church.

Israel a testing ground? The little one chapter book of Obadiah is extremely relevant today. It forewarns us that the Lord's vengeance will soon fall upon all Gentile nations: "For the day of Jehovah is near on all the nations; as you have done it shall be done to you. Your reward shall return upon your head." Obadiah 1:15

The prophet Obadiah highlights the important biblical principle that nations are judged according to the manner in which they treat the Jewish people. When Israel is attacked, even those who do not actively harm her but "stand aloof" (emotionally detached; apart; away, without sympathy etc) and fail to help will reap God's judgment. The tiny Jewish State is the world's threshing floor, where the intents of hearts are exposed. See… Micah 4:11 - 13

God guarantees judgment to fall on the unrepentant peoples of the earth for dividing up His land Israel, covenanted in stewardship to the Jews. This is both biblical and historical facts. See… Joel 3:2 and Jeremiah 12:14. The nations' excuse that Israel has sinned against Him is still heard today and this does not exonerate (to escape the negative consequences of one’s own actions) them from their misdeeds against her (Israel) (Jeremiah 50:7; Ezekiel 35:15). A sobering thought…?

What do these upheavals mean to Church Leaders and their Congregations Worldwide?

The Middle East is considered to be the epicentre of God’s plan and purpose for the world! The first chapter of the Bible in Genesis begins in the Middle East…

...And the last two cities ever mentioned in the Bible (Revelations) are Jerusalem and Babylon (which are now Israel and Iraq). So with this in mind we believe that pastors of churches throughout the world have an opportunity to explain to their congregations that God is at work in a very powerful way in Israel and the Middle East… Thus, He is shaking Christians out of their spiritual slumber and to focus on Israel!

Hadrian’s Curse…?

It’s amazing that almost 2,000 years ago, the Roman Emperor Hadrian cursed the Jewish People and decreed ‘…that Judea should be henceforth called "Palestine" after the Philistines, an ancient enemy of Israel that had disappeared from the world’s stage more than 600 years earlier.’ It was his final twist of the knife and legacy after wars, massacres, persecutions, and exiles that had largely extinguished the Jewish presence from Judea.

Today, the modern enemies of Israel have dusted off Hadrian’s curse and are attempting to pull off a monumental theft. The Arab world has reincarnated "Palestine" to steal Israel’s heritage and the Land God has given by covenant to the Jewish People. The Palestinian cause is really a BIG lie since there never were a "Palestinian" people. It is such a successful fabrication that many otherwise informed people have been duped and mislead. This propaganda has become a powerful weapon used by Israel’s enemies, the Arabs, to try to conquer Israel without firing a shot, without an army, tanks or jets.

God has returned the Jewish People to their land proving that what He has blessed cannot be cursed!

They returned to their land and re-established sovereignty over it. They rebuilt Jerusalem as their capital, and re-settled desolate Judea. They did all this only to now confront the reincarnated curse of Hadrian in the guise of "Arabs" renaming themselves "Palestinians" and claiming all the ancient Land of Israel as their own.

Hadrian’s ancient curse once again threatens Israel’s very existence! Israel’s success and endurance, and the world’s hope for peace in the 21st century, demands that the deceit and danger of a so-called "Palestinian state" must be exposed and avoided and it is our fervent hope… that Hadrian’s Curse will instead expose the historical truth.

What is the Arabs’ Ultimate Goal?

Following the Six Day War, the Arab countries, defeated by a small county determined to survive, understood that Israel would be impossible to beat militarily. They understood that the "Israeli Samson" would be possible to beat… only by way of the cunning of the "Philistine Delilah."

And that’s what happened….! No longer would there be cries firing up the masses to genocide, but rather, sophistication… A melody carefully aimed at the delicate western ear. The Arabs discovered that from a propaganda standpoint, it was easier to convince world public opinion of the rights of the poor, small, deprived "Palestinian People" to its own state, than to justify the demand of the enormous Arab empire for an addition of territory from a tiny country fighting for its life.

The Palestinian People is a fabrication invented with a fore-thought as a psychological weapon of Arab countries defeated in battle. So was born the worldwide propaganda campaign that turned matters on their head. The Israeli "David" against the Arab "Goliath" was transformed, by way of sophisticated propaganda, into the Israeli "Goliath" oppressing the Palestinian "David."

The object of this propaganda is to blot out and forget the name and identity of the ancient, Biblical Eretz Yisrael (Land of Israel), and to transform it into the land of "the Palestinian People" fabricated by Arab propaganda. By means of brainwashing, fabrications, lies, falsification, and taking advantage of the world’s ignorance and the international media’s superficiality.

It is a process has been taking place in broad daylight, for several dozen years already, of counterfeiting and blotting out history. And just as Goebbels and Hitler, the arch propagandists of the 20th century said derisively, the bigger the lie, the more people will believe in it!

Fulfilling the demands of the Palestinian’ LIE will put an end to the identity of Israel. Following the loss of the Land’s identity, will come the loss of the right to the land. For, if there are "Palestinians," that implies that there is also a land called Palestine, and if there is a Palestine… then there is no Israel. In the same way they are trying to disprove the Bible and in so doing destroy Christianity!

The most terrible part is that large sections of Israel itself; Gaza and Judah and Samaria (the so called Westbank), have already fallen into the Arab propaganda trap. This is a war that is not being waged by means of weapons and armies, or over physical territory. It is being waged on the battlefields of awareness of the Land’s identity and the God of Israel. The Roman name "Philistia" was a fiction invented by the Roman emperor Hadrian after the Bar Kochba Revolt in 135 C.E., a fiction of Hadrian then… and a fiction of the Arabs today, to the same degree.

It is a fabrication that represents NO people, not then and not today. It is a sophisticated fiction invented for one purpose and one purpose alone: to wipe out a land’s identity. If the land is called Palestine, then the Jewish people are occupiers. If the land is called Israel, then the Arabs are occupiers! This is the essence of the Arab propaganda war, which is intended to steal the identity of Israel and to transform it into Palestine, and by such means to turn the Jewish people into occupiers of Israel. That’s the whole story!

The amazing thing is that it’s all out in the open. Section 12 of the Palestinian charter summarizes the idea of this temporary identity, by stating that: "The Palestinian people believe in Arab unification. It believes that in order to fulfill its task towards achieving this goal, it must… at this stage of its national struggle, preserve all the components of its Palestinian personality, and it must increase awareness of its existence, and reject all plans liable to weaken it or make it disappear."

Are there another people in the world that writes in its charter of self-definition the expression; "at this stage?

And what will be in the next stage?

Could it be that after conquering Israel… the territory will then be divided up between Arab countries, and those Arab countries themselves will throw Palestine into the waste basket of history?

For the Arabs, exploding with laughter over the foolishness of the West, it is clear that if an additional Arab state arises in the western portion of Israel that will not serve the right of self-determination, but the demand of imperial conquest of all Israel by the Arab nation.

Were there any trace of truth to the claim regarding the historicity of a Palestinian People, we should certainly have expected to find mention of it in the history books and encyclopaedias, as well as in archaeological research?

Most western commentators (secular, Jewish, and Christian), feel that Hamas’ victory paves the way for its downfall. At last, they say, the warmonger must remove its mask and show its face ~ a face that salivates for Jewish blood, vowing never to recognize Israel’s right to exist. Despite the currently popular view, we must not assume that Hamas’ victory leaves Israel any better off. To the contrary, it is more likely that her security is even further threatened, and her demise, apart from ‘Divine intervention,’ a real potentiality.

Even if Hamas maintains its present, very blatant policy of destroying the Jewish State, it is not by any means a foregone conclusion the nations will come to Israel’s aid.

True, there's been a bit of international dismay at Hamas’ unforeseen victory. But ultimately, an increasingly Islamic Europe has little reason to risk going to war for Israel. Russia has already announced its willingness to recognize and deal with a Hamas-led Palestine. The United Nations, with its 22 Arab and 46 Muslim-majority countries, has already essentially abandoned Israel.

Only the United States and a handful of other Western Nations still count… the sliver of a State of Israel as a worthwhile friend and ally (despite its questionable record in this regard).

Thank God for praying, Bible-believing, Holy Spirit energized Christians that unconditionally loves and blesses Israel! And, we ought to be thankful that God is giving all an opportunity to see more clearly. Ultimately, Creator God wins and He will not allow Allah to triumph and be exalted over Adonai (The Lord)... Hallelujah!

Obadiah’s Revelation Today…?

"This is what the Sovereign LORD says about Edom - We have heard a message from the LORD: An envoy was sent to the nations to say, ‘Rise, and let us go against her for battle." Obadiah 1:1 Obadiah writes about an all-out war between the house of Jacob and the house of Esau and that none of Esau will survive. In today's terminology, it means an all-out war between the Israelis and Palestinians and the power of a ‘Palestinian State’ shall not survive! This is going to be a vicious war. A war that Israel fights for its very survival…. It is a fight to the death with no mercy. This is the real spirit of Islam unleashed against Israel.

"And the house of Jacob shall be a fire, and the house of Joseph a flame, and the house of Esau for stubble, and they shall kindle in them, and devour them; and there shall not be any remaining of the house of Esau; for the Lord hath spoken it." Obadiah 1:18 Obadiah also says what God intends to do to Israel’s enemies. God is going to avenge His chosen people. Obadiah says that God is going to confuse, chase, destroy, demolish, desolate, drunken, drag, punish and even retard them. In the 18th verse of this one-chapter book, Obadiah says, "There will be no survivors."

Today, Israel is surrounded by fires of revolt and civil war in neighbouring Arab countries. These conflicts are creating huge updraft flames with the potential of leaping across Israeli borders soon! For more than a generation, Israel has known what it can expect from its unfriendly neighbours. One factor is that Israelis and Jews around the world fervently anticipate the coming of Messiah. Conversely, the Moslem world is appealing to Allah that he sends their messiah known as the "Mahdi" 12th Imam.

Radical Islam is directly linked to ancient Edom ~ one of Israel’s worst all-time enemies in bible times.

Most Muslims believe their messiah (Mahdi) will be a descendant of Muhammad and the son of Fatima with a broad forehead, pointed nose and that he will return just before the end of the world and his appearance will be preceded by a number of prophetic events during 3 years of horrendous world chaos, tyranny and oppression. (Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?) They also believe that he will rule for 7 years and he will lead prayer in Mecca… and as ridiculous as can be… they believe that Yeshua (Jesus) will be at his side and follow him in this process.

Ezekiel 36:1 - 5 prophesied that the mountains of Israel would be taken from Israel's enemies and given back to Israel after their return from exile. These ancient heights are the Golan Heights and the mountains in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank). This prophecy was fulfilled when Israel took back the Golan Heights and the West Bank in the Six-Day-War In 1967.

These are the days of Zechariah ~~~ Current events concerning Israel resonate with Zechariah 12 and we believe that we are experiencing the beginning of birth pangs that will culminate in the fulfilment of this profound prophecy. Therefore, we also believe the ways of God disclosed in this passage is key to grasping what the Spirit is saying to the Church in this hour...!

Zechariah 12 ~ like today, God causes the world to focus on Jerusalem. He then turns the city into something likened to a cup of poison to all those surrounding her, and a burdensome stone injuring all who try to move her.

This siege against Jerusalem is really against all Israel, with many Jewish lives lost. But the Lord rises to Israel's defence, and strikes down those set against her. "And it will come about in that day that I will set about to destroy all nations that come against Jerusalem" (v.9) God guarantees ultimate victory for Israel and judgment against her enemies, but not without significant loss of Jewish life. It seems that we are rapidly heading towards that day. The nations around Israel are posturing against her. Today, Israel is forced to be at war within her borders. Rockets are being shot at her from Gaza and Lebanon. Once again the United States again asks her to show restraint in how she deals with her enemies to keep from upsetting its plans for Iraq and the Middle East. The United Nations repeatedly condemns her. Around the world, protests against Israel are a daily occurrence. In Europe, anti-Semitic acts are on the rise. Flotillas are sent out to Gaza with so-called humanitarian aid and with activists bent on the destruction of Israel.

But what does this have to do with us? We can think of three very good reasons that this has everything to do with the Church.

First; Yeshua Himself said that He would return to this earth only when the Jewish nation welcomed Him back (Matthew 23:39). No other nation has been given such an awesome responsibility and privilege. If we yearn for His return and receipt of His full inheritance, we must pray for Israel to welcome Him back. Zechariah 12:10 tells us that in the day of Jerusalem's siege God "will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and supplication. They will look on me, the one they have pierced, and they will mourn for him as one mourns for an only child, and grieve bitterly for him as one grieves for a firstborn son." As we near the day of the nations lay siege to Jerusalem, we must pray for God to pour out this spirit of grace and supplication, and for Israel to receive it. This will hasten the Lord's return!

Secondly; Zechariah 14 prophesies regarding the Lord's return: "On that day his feet will stand on the Mount of Olives, east of Jerusalem, and the Mount of Olives will be split in two from east to west, forming a great valley, with half of the mountain moving north and half moving south." Yeshua (Jesus) is returning to "East Jerusalem!" to battle for His Jewish nation. We must not think for a moment that one-inch of land destined to be part of God's ultimate redemption can be given away in order to facilitate "peace." The Arab League has endorsed a plan to work with Israel not for the PEACE of Jerusalem, but for a PIECE of Jerusalem. Land did not appease Hitler in World War II, and it will not appease Allah today.

Thirdly; it is ultimately a battle about who will be worshipped; the God of Israel or the god of Islam. Whoever will be worshipped on God’s Holy Mountain in Jerusalem will be worshipped throughout the Earth!

God's message to the Church through the Jewish nation today is to prepare your hearts wholly for Him, by loving what He loves. His ways are not the ways of the world. We must align in holy love with His ancient covenant people by praying for, being accurately informed about, and standing with the Jews. This is the day. Indeed and this is the hour! To stand with Israel is, from God’s perspective, to truly stand for the blessing and for the nation of South Africa… and ultimately all nations.

God’s Word insists that the Church stand with His purposes for Israel and to pray for the peace of Jerusalem. This is not optional; it is a test of the Church’s obedience, especially in these End-Time days.

We hope that you enjoy and become more informed by our work. We serve an awesome God and we are humbled by this opportunity to bring you this information. With Shalom to you and your family always,
Alf & Julie Saunders

15th July, 2011