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Jun 3, 2013

In Syria: Terrorists Are Fighting Terrorists

The civil war in Syria is now into its third year. The conflict is between forces loyal to the Syrian Ba’ath Party government and Islamic rebel groups seeking to oust it. So far, the fighting has killed over 70,000 people and as many as 1.4 million Syrian refugees have fled to neighboring countries.

The al-Assad family has ruled Syria for decades with an iron fist. In 1982, Hafez al-Assad conducted a scorched-earth policy against Islamist militants in the town of Hama. The Syrian military went in and killed everyone in sight. This crackdown became known as the Hama massacre, which left 10,000 to 40,000 dead.

Hafez’s son Bashar al-Assad has in many ways topped his father. He uses the Syrian military to regularly bomb areas that resist his will. He has least 27 torture-centers run by Syrian intelligence agencies, where detainees are regularly starved, beaten, and electrically jolted into submission. He also has a network of death squad units that go from town to town, killing people at will.

The brutality of the current Syrian government has convinced many Western nations to back the rebel forces. The general impression is that they are fighting for freedom, and if we just supply them with enough arms, we can help bring democracy to the nation.

President Obama already said that the United States would formally recognize a coalition of Syrian opposition groups as that country’s legitimate representative. The president failed to explain that we are backing a coalition that is filled with jihadists that hate America.

From what I’ve seen of these freedom fighters on various news and video sights, I think the only entity we should be rooting for in Syria is the undertaker. These Islamic fighters are no less brutal than the “evil” Assad regime that they are trying to topple.

Last week, the Free Syrian Army was accused of annihilating the entire population of a Christian village. According to the Assyrian International News Agency (AINA), forces of FSA raided the Christian-populated al-Duvair village in Reef (outskirts of) Homs, near the border with Lebanon today and massacred all its civilian residents, including women and children.

On Memorial Day, U.S. Senator John McCain jaunted over the Turkey-Syrian border to meet with leaders of the Free Syrian Army and its supreme military command. McCain made the brave move to show his support for the rebels. There was one draw back to the trip. The senator was photographed with a man implicated in the kidnapping of eleven Lebanese Shi’ite pilgrims a year ago.

Some of the most troubling evidence against the Syrian rebels comes from videos they themselves published. In several videos they are shown committing mass executions of captured soldiers loyal to President Bashar Assad, which flies in the faces of Geneva Convention regulations. I saw one video that makes me question the sanity of these people. The caption was: “Rebel Eats Heart of Syrian Soldier,” and he did exactly that. He cut open the chest cavity of the dead soldier; cut out his heart and then began chewing on it─raw.

A victory by the Free Syrian Army would like lead to conflict similar to the one going on Iraq. Because the FSA are mostly Sunni jihadists, their ascendancy to power would lead to a prolonged conflicted with Shia Muslims, backed by Iran and Hezbollah movement in Lebanon. The fighting in Iraq has already killed 500,000 people. Since the forces in Syria have far deadlier weapons, the carnage would quickly rival Iraq.

Israel has been tight lipped about the fighting in Syria. The Jewish state has not publicly declared what side it would like to win. However, a recent report, inThe London Times claimed to cite an Israeli intelligence official as saying that the survival of Syrian dictator, Basher Assad, is the preferable outcome.

The best thing we can do is to allow the forces in Syria to fight until they are totally exhausted. It was years of constant warfare that finally brought peace to Lebanon. The people of that nation just got sick of the destruction and lack of basic infrastructure.

I’m not all that hopeful that the Syrians will discover peace and harmony as a better solution to war. Because the Bible predicts that the city of Damascus will someday be completely destroyed, I don’t foresee see war reporters leaving the country any time soon.

“The burden of Damascus. Behold, Damascus is taken away from being a city, and it shall be a ruinous heap” (Isaiah 17:1 ).

--Todd

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In High Places
International spy-thrillers have always been among my weaknesses. I’ve spent far too much time over the years enmeshed cerebrally within one such story or another. Robert Ludlum was perhaps my favorite author within the genre, with such enthralling tales of espionage at the highest levels as The Bourne Identity and The Matarese Circle. I was also hooked at one point on fiction involving Blackford Oakes CIA intrigues authored by William F. Buckley, Jr.

It’s difficult to find such books in electronically-presented form (in Word document) that my synthesized voice, computer program can read for me. I’m now blind due to a retinal disease, and the JAWS (Jobs Accessible Word System) program reads to me most all correspondence and other written materials over the Internet.

It’s just as well that I can’t easily access such books, because these, though entertaining, would be time-wasters for me, especially considering the compression of time I believe we are presently operating within─as we move quickly toward the consummation of human history. There are far more important things to accomplish than being entertained by fictional stories of clandestine doings within top-echelons of governments.

On second thought, we read in our headlines almost hourly of just such intrigues taking place in reality, that if not entertaining─certainly are quite thrilling, in the frightening sense at many levels. So as a fellow watchman with many of you who are reading this column, I, like some of you, am really not missing anything but the love of fiction factor. And, things of factual import are developing at a pace and in fashion precisely the way the greatest of all authors─the Lord Himself─has foretold for all to read.

One such spy-thriller comes to mind that helped bring out in me the interest in Bible prophecy that would in later years transform my thinking in a profound way. That 1960 novel’s title is, In High Places. Its author, Arthur Hiley, a British/Canadian writer who was among the first to produce such novels that later, writers like Robert Ludlum and Tom Clancy would take to great book marketing heights.

In High Places is a story of a fictional Canadian prime minister and his political machinations while trying to maintain power, during the time of the cold war─that was fraught with nuclear threat and Canada’s troubled dealings with immigration. The author attempted and did a good job at showing the evil, wicked and even perverse interactions of politicians at the very top of power politics and in governments at the highest levels.

Even as a very young man reading the novel, I noticed Hailey’s use of biblical reference in selecting his title. The phrase, “in high places” of course is found in the apostle Paul’s passages on spiritual warfare:

“For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places” (Ephesians 6:12 ).

I realized even as a young man of 18, upon reading the book and thinking on its title that the Bible’s use of the phrase was infinitely different in scope from Arthur Hailey’s. Yet at the same time, what I didn’t understand at the time was that the malevolent forces in the fictional realm of Hailey’s geopolitical thriller reflected and represented evil, other worldly forces at at work in real life.

I’m not so sure that the author of the novel, In High Places fully realized it, either. One thing for sure, no one in government in the highest of places today where true wickedness is happening, nor the journalists of our world who are supposed to be the watchdogs on behalf of the citizenry, indicate in the slightest way that they understand the true source from whence the wickedness this way comes.

If they do understand it, they must be in collusion with it, because they aren’t letting us know. But, that’s really a kook-conspiracy notion, is it not? (Human beings in power at the top levels in cahoots with the likes of Satan and his minions!)

Yet, I believe this is precisely what the apostle Paul was saying under inspiration as he penned the words to the Ephesian Christians, and to us─who would follow.

The ultimate battle is being waged in the very highest places. The devil and his minions are using every device at their disposal that is allowed by the God of heaven, who is always in complete control. Those include human beings, who do the demonic entities’ bidding, whether realizing it or not in many cases─probably most cases in these end of the age days.

Look for the demonic influences in high places to become ever more evident while evil men and seducers grow worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived (2 Timothy 3:13 ).



--Terry

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Zechariah 12:3,9:
And in that day will I make Jerusalem a burdensome stone for all people; And it shall come to pass in that day, that I will seek to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem.
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