Hal Lindsey Report (may 27, 2011) - Israel, Wild Weather In American Heartland & May 21st 'End of the World' Hype

This was an interesting week in Washington, D.C. It started with President Obama attempting a preemptive maneuver that backfired.

House Speaker John Boehner invited Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to address a joint session of Congress on May 24. Fearing that the Israeli leader might outline a bold new peace initiative in the Middle East -- and put the Palestinians, the Europeans, and the Administration in a box -- the President decided to deliver his own major foreign policy address the day before Netanyahu was scheduled to visit the White House.

So he drove a few blocks down the street to the State Department and spoke to the world. Ostensibly, he was outlining the US policy for dealing with the upheaval of the so-called "Arab Spring." Never mind that that train left the station weeks ago. Never mind that the speech was a mishmash of half-cooked platitudes. Never mind that the speech essentially put most of the world to sleep. That wasn't the real point of the speech at all. The real point was to lay down the President's "vision" for how to settle the Israeli-Palestinian question before Prime Minister Netanyahu got to town and had a chance to do so.

The President broke with 60 years of bi-partisan tradition and did something no previous President had done. (Of course, we DID vote for "change," didn't we?) He laid down specific parameters for the talks between the Palestinians and the Israelis. He demanded that the Israelis withdraw to the "1967 borders." Never mind that there's no such thing as "1967 borders." Technically, those are the 1949 armistice lines. But that's a ticky-tack detail in the President's mind.

He also slyly mentioned that the new Palestinian state needs to be "contiguous." That means the two parts need to be touching or connected physically.

What the President doesn't realize (or maybe he does) is that he has now moved the goal line in the eyes and minds of the Palestinians. What they had once thought to be the best they could ever hope for now appears, if the President is heeded, to be the new "starting point" for future negotiations.

What the President doesn't realize (or maybe he does) is that his demand leaves Israel only 9 miles wide at its most critical point. That means the waist of the nation is utterly indefensible.

And what the President didn't realize -- but he most certainly does now -- is that Israel CANNOT and WILL NOT fall back to those indefensible lines.

That's precisely what Prime Minister Netanyahu told the President before God and the world and the press after their meeting at the White House the next day. In fact, some observers have commented that the Prime Minister gave the still-novice President a stern lesson in history and Middle East reality. I don't think Mr. Obama liked it very much. Netanyahu flat-out said Israel "cannot go back to the 1967 lines because those lines are indefensible, because they don't take into account certain changes that have taken place on the ground, demographic changes that have taken place over the last 44 years."

But the President is nothing if not a politician. So a couple of days later, he once again traveled a few blocks down the street. This time he paid a visit to the annual meeting of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC. He stood before those 10,000 supporters of Israel (most of whom are, oddly, still solid Democrats and Obama supporters. Go figure.) and appeared to be doing a little backpedaling. He "clarified" his earlier comments by noting that he had also suggested that significant "land swaps" would be needed to account for the changes in demographics over the last 44 years.

Then he took a swipe at Mister Netanyahu, implying that he knew more about the whole process than the Prime Minister did. The President said, "Israelis and Palestinians... will negotiate a border that is different than the one that existed on June 4, 1967. That's what mutually agreed-upon swaps means. It is a well-known formula to all who have worked on this issue for a generation. (Emphasis mine.) It allows the parties themselves to account for the changes that have taken place over the last 44 years."

The President smugly described his land swap caveat as "... a well-known formula to all who have worked on this issue for a generation." That obviously does not include President Obama. However, since Mr. Netanyahu served as Israel's UN Ambassador from 1984 to 1988, its Prime Minister from 1996 to 1999, and its Foreign Minister from 2002 to 2003, before becoming Prime Minister again in 2009, that means he has been intimately involved in this issue for at least 27 years. Some would consider that almost a generation!

By the way, if you saw Mr. Netanyahu's speech before the Congress on Tuesday, you heard as clear and concise a delineation of the danger Israel faces as I have ever heard. You also understand now why this issue will never be settled. Mr. Netanyahu put it succinctly: "You see, our conflict has never been about the establishment of a Palestinian state. It has always been about the existence of the Jewish state."

The official Hamas spokesman in Gaza confirmed Netanyahu's assertion. Before the President had even gotten back to the White House following his State Department speech, Sami Abu Zuhri told Reuters, "Hamas will not recognize the Israeli occupation under any condition."

But the battles raging in Washington last week pale when compared to the actual devastation experienced by the residents of Joplin, Missouri, last Sunday evening. At dinnertime, a monster tornado nearly a mile wide tore through the heart of that city of 50,000 people. More than 2,000 homes, businesses, schools, and other buildings were destroyed. By Tuesday, the death toll had climbed to 117 with hundreds injured. Some authorities estimate that as many as 1,500 may still be missing. It was the single deadliest tornado in the US in the last 60 years.

Following close on the heels of the devastating tornadoes in Alabama and across the South, the massive flooding along the Mississippi River, and the droughts and rampaging wildfires across Texas and the Southwest, it makes us wonder if the weather has gone wild. Is there prophetic significance? I believe so.

Finally, May 21st came and went, but the Church is still here. It seems the only ones who took Harold Camping's date-specific prediction seriously were the liberal media. And they covered the story for the opportunity to discredit the Bible and Christians. In fact, the American Atheists used the occasion to sponsor billboards across the nation that read: "The Rapture: You Know It's Nonsense! 2000 Years of 'Any Day Now.'"

But we can't allow the chuckling and snorting of the world to distract us from the truth: it really could be "any day now!" Jesus Himself 'commanded' us to recognize the signs that will indicate when the time of His coming is near. I still firmly believe that we are the generation that will see Christ's sudden return for His Church. Don't be ashamed to acknowledge that reality. Don't be caught unprepared

And don't miss this week's Report on TBN, Daystar, Inspiration, CPM Network, various local stations, www.hallindsey.com or www.hischannel.com. Check your local listings.

God Bless,
Hal Lindsey

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