Wars and peace – What I said back in January

Okay. Let’s move on. What about wars?

A Russian invasion of Ukraine could trigger the biggest conflict in Europe since World War II says the Tony Radakin – Head of UK armed forces.

Ukrainian military intelligence believes Russia is preparing to invade Ukraine at the beginning of 2022 in January or February as its mass forces amassing on Ukraine’s eastern border. Around 175 000 Russian troops backed by hundreds of heavy artillery weapons tanks already in place.

Ukraine’s intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov said the U.S. should deter a Russian invasion by increasing its military support for Kyiv.

Russia has denied it has any intention to invade Ukraine but Russia has already denied such things and done them in the past.

What is all that about?

If you know your geography, you know that Russia is in east of Europe. In 1941, the Nazis, having failed to invade Britain after the battle of Britain, decided to invade Russia and they did so.

They tried to invade Russia with operation Barbarossa. In the process, around 27 million Russians died.

What they called the Great Patriotic War went through Ukraine up into Russia, nearly got to Moscow and eventually was turned back by the Russian winter and by the fact that Hitler overextended his troops and couldn’t supply them.

It was the beginning of the defeat of Nazi Germany. But it was a traumatic experience for Russia.

After the war, when Russia won the war and went into Berlin, they then decided they would set up a block of states on its western border which would be its defence against anything like that ever happening again.

So, it set up communist states in East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia. All those countries became communist and would become Russia’s defensive barrier against anything coming from the West.

Then, in 1989 all those countries turned from being communist and kicked out communism. And Russia found itself with these states on its border now turning to the European Union and NATO.

In 1991, the Soviet Union itself collapsed and the countries of the Baltics and all those countries became free from Russia. The Baltic states particularly joined the European Union and NATO, and Russia saw now that it had NATO right on its border.

Ukraine is probably the heartland of pro-Russian sentiment, it’s called ‘Little Russia’ within Russia.

One thing that Russia said would never happen is that Ukraine should move to the Western European bloc. But this is precisely what the Ukrainians want to do right now. They’ve been working on that for the last five years, since they had a bit of a revolution and kicked out the pro-Russian group and wanted to join the European Union and join NATO.

Russia says, ‘No, no way!’

NATO said, ‘Well if they want to join, they can join.’ In fact, this week Biden and Putin had a phone call to discuss the matter.

Biden urged President Putin of Russia to de-escalate tensions in Ukraine. He said that the United States and its allies/partners would respond decisively if Russia further invaded Ukraine.

Russia denied it had an intention to invade Ukraine which I don’t believe.

According to the Russian agency TASS, Putin’s proposals called for the United States to take measures to prevent further eastward expansion of NATO and the annexation to the alliance of the former USSR Republics.

How is it going to go?

Well, probably in the next couple of weeks, they are going to tell you so.

This is something which is not in the distant future, it’s happening right now.

ABC News had a report that the United States Embassy in Kyiv is working on emergency preparations in the event it must evacuate non-emergency personnel or diplomats’ families due to a Russian invasion of Ukraine. That’s the latest news.

So, if they’re talking about it now, about getting their embassy out of Kyiv, that means they’re taking it seriously, that it could happen.

If it does happen, then, this could be a major event.

It seems pretty unthinkable after the end of the Cold War that you could have a war with Russia.

Of course, nobody wants to have a war with Russia because Russia is a highly nuclear armed power, it’s got hypersonic missiles which travel so fast and so low they can’t be picked up by any anti-missile defence system.

And, obviously, if there was a nuclear war involving Russia and the United States, there wouldn’t be much left of the planet.

Now, I don’t think it’s going to happen, because as far as my understanding of Bible prophecy, it is not going. There’s not going to be anything like this happening before the Second Coming of Jesus. I think that there will be things which will stop it from happening.

But there’s a very dangerous situation at the present time probably you may not know too much about it and it’s another warning that the world is in a very unstable situation.

The least severe situation would be that there is some limited Russian intrusion into Ukraine, then they put sanctions upon Russia and one of the results of that be that Russian gas stops coming into Western Europe.

If Russian gas stops coming into Western Europe, then, basically ‘the lights will start going out’, particularly in Germany and throughout much of the European Union because one of the major power supplies in western Europe is Russian gas.

Especially, as the Germans in particular go more down the green route and start shutting down their coal and nuclear power stations. They’re now even more dependent upon Russia.

Therefore, there’s a potential for a real crisis taking place. And we pray that it won’t be but it’s there.

Jesus said, ‘there will wars and rumours of wars, nation against nation, kingdom against kingdom.’ This is another situation facing the world.

You’ve got another one in the Far East: China and Taiwan

Does anyone know anything about that one?

Taiwan is an island off the southern-eastern cost of China which is independent from Beijing. It’s not part of communist China.

After the war, it remained nationalist China, separate from communist China and it has a treaty with America and its leader (President Tsai Ing-wen) has actually confirmed that there are now American troops on Taiwanese soil.

The Communist Party leader of China Xi Jinping said about this:

Earlier last month, China’s military sent a record number of warplanes into the air zone around Taiwan while diplomats and state-run media warned of a possible invasion unless the island toes the CCP line.

China warned that it would use nuclear weapons if any outside country involved itself in the conflict over Taiwan.

Now, I said there are some U.S. forces currently in Taiwan. And there’s a defence arrangement between the U.S. and Taiwan.

Apart from the danger of war, if anything goes up there, you’ve got a huge number of supplies which come from both China and Taiwan into the rest of the world, and which are now a key part of the whole economic structure of the world.

Once the supply chain goes down, and it’s really going down in China anyway because of COVID, then you have a shortage of supplies right around the world.

One of the things people may not know is that Taiwan produces 90% of the world’s semiconductors which are used in all high-tech goods.

These semiconductors are needed for mobile phones, for cars, for all kinds of high-tech stuff, computers, everything. If this goes down, then Taiwan doesn’t produce them and the whole system is going to be really shaken to the core by what takes place.

There’s one more situation: Israel and Iran

General Hussein Salami, chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard in Iran said,

So, what he’s saying is clear.

The U.S. is trying to renegotiate the Iran Nuclear Deal. If it fails, which looks likely, nothing will stop Iran from continuing its process towards building nuclear weapons.

Israel reckons Iran is only months away from achieving it. Israel fears that Iran is close to being able to produce a bomb and it sees this as a threat to its existence.

The Israeli Defence Forces Chief of Staff, a man called Aviv Khavi, revealed recently that Israel has operational plans for a strike on Iran’s nuclear program as well as its missile and rockets sites.

This would be then an attack on mainland Iran coming from Israel. If that happens, then, it will set off a wider conflict for sure.

Russia is allied to Iran; Russia is in Syria. Iran has missiles all around Israel, including in Lebanon, and Russia, Iran, and Turkey are all involved in Syria at this present time.

These three countries have met several times to increase cooperation among their nations and a first strike attack against Iran from Israel would certainly lead to a military response from Iran. It could provide Russia, Turkey, and Iran with the excuse that they need to launch an invasion of Israel.

Have you heard anything about that happening in the Bible? I see a few people nodding their heads. Ezekiel chapters 38 and 39: ‘The power comes down from the north led by great power to the outermost north with Persia as one of the countries (Iran), Togarma which is probably Turkey and other countries in alliance coming against Israel in the last days.’

An invasion of Israel, could that happen?

At the same time as this is happening, there is a rather extraordinary peace proposal which has come from Saudi Arabia. You probably haven’t heard this in the news, but I get ‘news from behind the news’.

As you may know, Israel has already made an alliance with several moderate Arab states including the United Arab Emirates. Countries in the Persian Gulf area, Morocco and others have been drawn into it.

There’s a movement amongst modern moderate Arabs to make of a deal with Israel and Saudi Arabia.

Some are still interested but have not made the alliance. However, the Saudi representative to the U.N. said that the entire Muslim world will recognize Israel if it withdraws to the green line.

‘The entire Muslim world will recognize Israel.’ Saudi Arabia has some clout in the Muslim world. Do they know what they’re saying?

What does ‘if Israel withdraws to the green line mean? It means if it withdraws from the territories in the West Bank, Judea and Samaria, and Jerusalem.

Therefore, if Israel withdraws from those territories, the Saudis are saying that the whole Muslim world is going to make peace with Israel, which means the end of conflict peace, and safety.

The Israeli foreign minister, a man called Benny Gantz, is already talking to the Palestinian president Abbas about this.

President Abbas has also contacted Putin in Russia saying that he needs some help to get Israel out of the West Bank, Judea and Samaria, and to set up the Palestinian state to make the peace program work.

The present Prime Minister of Israel Naftali Bennett, who’s quite a right-winger said, ‘No way’. Especially, ‘No way to Jerusalem ever being divided’. He said that key thing for Israel is that Jerusalem remains the undivided capital of Israel, never to be divided.

But Bennett is only going to be there for another year in fact. And because of the strange coalition arrangement Israel has, in 2023, he’s going to be substituted by a man called Yaya Lapid who will then become the Prime Minister of Israel.

Lapid is much more of a leftist, and more open to the idea of peace. And it occurs to me that the possibility is that, from that point onwards, you could then see some movement in that direction.

So, peace, war; which one is it going to be?

When you look in the Bible, you see that both, war and peace, are prophesied for the end of days.

Ezekiel 38 and 39 speak about a war coming down from the North.

Daniel chapter 9 verse 27 speaks about a covenant which is made for a seven-year period by ‘the prince to come’ who I think is the Antichrist. And there is some peace agreement described in it.

Jerusalem as the ‘burdensome stone’ is one of the subjects of Zechariah chapter 12. Therefore, Jerusalem is going to be the centre of world attention.

All these things are coming together now.

One of the puzzles of biblical prophecy is to work out the order in which they happen, and people have different ideas about it.

I’m not going to give you an order right now, but it’s all these things are in the pipeline: the peace and the war, and the issue over Jerusalem, over Judea, Samaria, the West Bank.

That is in the pipeline and events are moving that way.

Are we moving towards the end of day’s situation? I think we are, for sure.