“DARKNESS IS DESCENDING ON OUR REGION”, NETANYAHU WARNS

Posted on by

Speaking before the annual American Israel Public Affairs Committee conference in Washington Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned of a clear and present danger facing the world: the threat of a nuclear Iran. It was good to hear him quote Scripture  – the Book of Esther.

“Darkness is descending on our region,” Netanyahu warned, naming “radical tyranny” as the force behind Tehran’s quest to build an “aggressive empire” that includes Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Gaza, Yemen and more—all in a quest to seek Israel’s destruction.

He condemned President Obama’s 2015 Iran nuclear agreement and said Iran its proxies are looking for ways to attack Israel.

“Last week, we read in the Book of Esther about an earlier Persian attempt to exterminate our people. They failed then. They’ll fail now.”

“In addition to moving its army, its air force, its navy to Syria to be able to attack Israel from closer hand—it’s also seeking to develop, to build precision-guided missile factories in Syria, Lebanon against Israel. I will not let that happen,” he vowed, before praising President Donald Trump for his firm stance against a nuclear Iran.

“President Trump has made it clear that his administration will not accept Iran’s aggression in the region. He has made clear that he too will never accept a nuclear-armed Iran. That is the right policy. I salute President Trump on this,” Netanyahu said.

“And the president has also made it clear that if the fatal flaws of the nuclear deal are not fixed, he will walk away from the deal and restore sanctions,” he added. “Israel will be right there by America’s side, and let me tell you, so will a hundred countries in the region.

Netanyahu concluded by reminding those present that the “wellspring” of the U.S. and Israel’s enduring friendship was their shared values, under girded by a strong faith in God.

“They come from a certain book—a great book, a good book. It’s called the Bible,” Netanyahu told the audience. “It says that all of us are created in the image of God.”

“These values are an inseparable part of America’s story,” he continued. “They’re an inseparable part of Israel’s story. And today we’re writing a new chapter of our common story—a story of freedom, of justice, of peace, of hope.”

“And it’s because we’re inspired by the same ideas because we’re animated by the same values that America and Israel have forged, an eternal bond that can never ever be broken,” he said.

2500 year old Judah soldiers handwriting discovery confirms Gods word is true

Posted on by

Israeli archaeologist Prof. Ehud Netzer displays the shard from a 2,000-year-old amphora bearing the name of “Herod the Great, King of Judea” July 9. The unique ceramic shard, found during a recent archaeological dig on the ancient desert fortress of Masada, came from a large amphora used for shipping Italian wine to the king who ruled the holy land at the time of Jesus’ birth.

2500 years old pottery
The discovery in question refers to findings posted in April by Israel’s Tel Aviv University, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, which demonstrates that it was not only the elites who could read.

“We’re dealing with really low-level soldiers in a remote place who can write,” said Israel Finkelstein, an archaeologist and biblical scholar at Tel Aviv University. “So there must have been some sort of educational system in Judah at that time.”

Finkelstein suggested that what this discovery means is that people in the kingdom had the capacity to write and put together parts of the Old Testament even earlier than it was believed.

“There’s a heated discussion regarding the timing of the composition of a critical mass of biblical texts, but to answer this, one must ask a broader question: What were the literacy rates in Judah at the end of the First Temple period? And what were the literacy rates later on?” the researcher elaborated.

The Bible states in Genesis 5:1, that Adam, the first man in the Bible, had the ability to speak and write.

The Israelites were commanded to write the commands of the Lord on their door posts and bind them on their hands and foreheads (Deuteronomy 6:4–9, 11:18–20), if they could not read or write, what would be the point of these commands?

Most conservative biblical scholars who start with God’s Word believe the Old Testament record that the books were written by the persons associated with them or those who claim to have written them. They also accept that these books were written during the time period they claim to have been written in (e.g., the prophet Isaiah during the reigns of the pre-exilic kings Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah). If these books were not written until decades or even centuries after the events happened, the historicity, accuracy, and infallibility of the texts are called into question since they claim to have been written much earlier.

The pottery shards discovery in Judah, supports the accuracy of God’s Word, because it shows that Israelites were more literate than many scholars believe.

“If history has taught anything, it’s that eventually research and science will confirm Scripture. We have an imperfect and incomplete understanding of history and science, but God’s Word was ultimately written by the God who was there and who never lies (Titus 1:2),” the article added.