The world is hearing much these days about "prophets." Was Moses a prophet? Was Jesus a prophet? Was Mohammed a prophet?
Interestingly, Moses, the man credited with leading the children of Israel out of Egypt is considered a great prophet by followers of Islam. Moses, or Musa, is mentioned often in the Quran. Much of the Quran is based on the teachings of Moses as opposed to the teaching of Jesus.
Jesus is considered by Christians to be the Son of God. He was the Messiah all prophets before him, including Moses, had predicted changing them from mere "predictors" into true prophets.
There are very few predictions that were issued by Mohammed that were of any consequence. Indeed, his predictions were usually limited to whether his army would win an upcoming battle. No one predicted his coming and thus, his claims of being a "prophet" were largely looked upon by the Arab world at the time with great skepticism.
This leads one to ask, what constitutes a prophet? Anyone can make predictions; it's the fact that the predictions come to pass that makes the difference.
Given the label of saint rather than prophet, a young peasant girl by the name of Bernadette Soubirous made several predictions she claimed were given to her by the Virgin Mary at Lourdes, France. The first prediction was that miracles and cures would occur at Lourdes and this has come to pass. There are a multitude of documented and verified cures and miracles by visitors who were believers and unbelievers alike.
Perhaps less known is that Bernadette also predicted that man would "harness the power of lightening." Many years later, Thomas Edison did just that. She predicted that man would walk on the moon a full quarter century before the Wright brothers took their historic first flight. A dire warning that Germany would "rise up and stifle most of Europe" came to pass in the form of World War II.
Unlike prophets before her, Bernadette did not claim her words came from God but from Mary, the Mother of Jesus Christ. Indeed, since the death of Christ, nearly all announced prophecies have come from the Virgin Mary and not God himself.
The fifth and final prediction from Saint Bernadette of Lourdes covered two major topics. She predicted there would be a "second golden age of man," but not until man turned against the science that had run wild "combining the essence of man and the essence of a beast." Just recently, genetic engineers have talked of combining the DNA of man and animal. Bernadette claimed that "monsters would be spawned" and this would be the catalyst that would make humankind rise up against such science and those practicing it.
Equally chilling was the prediction that the Christian countries of the world would unite to defeat the followers of Mohammed. The year she said this great battle would begin was the year 2000. This horrible and bloody battle, that would claim the lives of millions, would be ended by a nuclear attack on present day Iran. She predicted a "bomb of great power would fall on a city in Persia." In Bernadette's day, there was no Iran.
It is unlikely this poor and uneducated girl, who could barely read, knew anything about the "followers of Mohammed." Why would she mention them specifically? Is it just coincidence that the world is now trying to prevent Iran, considered by many to be the heart of radical Islam, from getting its own nuclear weapons? Was it just chance that the first shot fired in this war was the taking of American hostages in Iran in the 1970's?
Some would say the attack on America didn't take place until 2001, so Bernadette was wrong. But was she? It was in the year 2000 that George W. Bush, the man who has openly declared war on the radical element of Islam and labeled them evil, was elected president. Up until that time, the leaders of the free world had tried to ignore terrorists, hoping they would go away.
But was this young girl a prophet? Yes, by all standards, many believe that she was. She made predictions that came to pass and she made predictions about things she could have had no prior knowledge. But perhaps the strongest indication that there was something very special about Bernadette Soubirous, who died in 1879, is the fact that to this day, her body is virtually the same as the day she died.
Buried for 30 years, her body was exhumed when the investigation for sainthood began. The investigators were startled to look at a young woman with almost no signs of decomposition. She appeared as though she had just died the day before they saw her. Also missing was the normal odor of a decaying body. After their investigation, she was once again buried, only to be exhumed again in 1919.
Again, there were no signs of normal decomposition or odor. The last examination of Saint Bernadette's body was done in 1925 when even her liver was examined and found to be soft and in near normal condition even though she had died nearly 40 years earlier.
A crystal coffin was made and to this day the miracle that is Saint Bernadette remains in full view in the chapel in the Church of St. Gildard at the convent in Nevers, France. A light plastic mold was made of her face and hands to add color but her body remains much as did the last day of her life over 100 years ago.
Should the Christian world heed the prediction of the war to come given to the world from the Virgin Mary through this humble peasant girl over a hundred years ago? Would it not be prudent to prepare for what is to come?
Prophets come when we least expect them and they rarely announce themselves. Most did not asked for the burden of being a prophet and it is a burden as most were ridiculed and belittled. Time and time again real prophets warn us of things to come. We just need to hear them.
#1
Another component of a prophet's job, perhaps more important, was to explain what God was doing _right now_ and call people to repent and get back on track. Predicting the future accurately was one of the tests of a genuine prophet, as was prophesying "in the name of the Lord." Showing credentials, so to speak. I'm not persuaded that prophesying in the name of Mary meets the Old Testament criteria . . .
FWIW, I get pretty ticked at the folks who pronounce AIDS or 911 to be the judgement of God on America for its sins. Maybe, maybe not, but who appointed them the prophetic voice of God? Credentials, please.
Posted by: James ||
12/23/2004 23:18 Comments ||
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The notion that we are fighting an "insurgency" largely organized and staffed by former elements of Saddam Hussein's Baathist regime is now fully enshrined as an integral piece of the conventional wisdom. Like earlier bits of the learned consensus — to which it is closely linked — it is factually wrong and strategically dangerous.
That it is factually wrong is easily demonstrated, for the man invariably branded the most powerful leader of the terrorist assault against Iraq — Abu Musab al Zarqawi — is not a Baathist, and indeed is not even an Iraqi. He is a Palestinian Arab from Jordan who was based in Iran for several years, and who — when the West Europeans found he was creating a terror network in their countries (primarily Germany and Italy) and protested to the Iranians — moved into Iraqi Kurdistan with Iranian protection and support, as the moving force in Ansar al Islam.
You cannot have it both ways. If Zarqawi is indeed the deus ex machina of the Iraqi terror war, it cannot be right to say that the "insurgency" is primarily composed of Saddam's followers. Zarqawi forces us to think in regional terms rather than focusing our attention on Iraq alone. Unless you think that Iraqi Defense Minister Shaalan is a drooling idiot, you must take seriously his primal screams against Iran and Syria ("terrorism in Iraq is orchestrated by Iranian intelligence, Syrian intelligence, and Saddam loyalists"). Indeed, there has been a flood of reports linking Syria to the terror war, including the recent news that the shattered remnants from Fallujah have found haven and succor across the Syrian border. Finally, the Wahabbist component carries the unmistakable fingerprints of the quavering royal family across the border in Saudi Arabia.
The terror war in Iraq was not improvised, but carefully planned by the four great terror masters (Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Saudi Arabia) during the infuriatingly long run-up to the liberation. They made no secret of it; you have only to go back to the public statements of the Iranian mullahs and the Syrian Baathists to see it, for top Iranian officials and Bashir Assad publicly announced it (the mullahs in their mosques, Bashir in a published interview). They had a simple and dramatic word for the strategy: Lebanon. Assad and the mullahs prepared to turn Iraq into a replay of the terror war they had jointly waged against us in Lebanon in the 1980s: suicide bombings, hostage-taking, and religious/political uprisings. It could not have been more explicit.
Some of our brighter journalists have recently written about Iraqi documents that show how Saddam instructed his cohorts to melt away when Coalition forces entered Iraq, and then wage the sort of guerilla campaign we now see. But neither they nor our buffoonish intelligence "community" have looked at the documents in the context of the combined planning among the four key regimes. Anyone who goes back to the pre-OIF period can see the remarkable tempo of airplanes flying back and forth between Damascus, Baghdad, Tehran, and even Pyongyang (remember the Axis of Evil?), as military and intelligence officials worked out their strategies. Some of those flights, as for example those between Saddam's Baghdad and the mullahs' Tehran, were a kind of man-bites-dog story, since in the past such flights carried armaments to be dropped on the destination, whereas in 2002 and early 2003 they carried government officials planning the terror war against us in Iraq.
The myth of the Baathist insurgency is actually just the latest version of the old error according to which Sunnis and Shiites can't work together. This myth dominated our "intelligence" on the Middle East for decades, even though it was known that the Iranian (Shiite) Revolutionary Guards were trained in (Syrian-dominated, hence secular Baathist) Lebanon by Arafat's (Sunni) Fatah, starting as early as 1972. The terror masters worked together for a long time, not just after the destruction of the Taliban. But we refused to see it, just as today we refuse to see that the assault against us is regional, not just Iraqi.
Many of the statements emerging from official (that is, both governmental and media) Washington nowadays reflect yet another error, a corollary of the axiom that sees the region hopelessly divided between Shiites and Sunnis. The corollary has it that the impending electoral victory of the Iraqi Shiites will greatly increase Iranian leverage in Iraq. The truth, as Reuel Gerecht so eloquently demonstrated in the Wall Street Journal last week, is precisely the opposite, because the Shiite leaders in Iraq are fundamentally opposed to the Iranian doctrine that places a theocratic dictator atop civil society. The Iraqis adhere to the traditional Shiite view that people in turbans should work in mosques, leaving civil society to secular leaders, and therefore their victory in Iraq will threaten the sway of the mullahs across the border. We should not view all Shiites as a coherent community, and we should welcome a traditional Shiite society in Iraq, and recognize that it is a valuable weapon in the war against the terror masters in Tehran.
The mullahs know this well. They dread the success of traditional Shiites in Baghdad, and they are desperately trying to foment a Sunni/Shiite clash of civilizations. That is the explanation of the resumption of suicide-bombing attacks in the holy Shiite cities of Najaf and Karbala, which the mullahs' intelligence agents had terminated when previous bombings intensified anti-Iranian (rather than the hoped-for anti-Sunni) passions. As many Iraqi leaders have observed, the recent attacks in the holy places demonstrate desperation, not growing "insurgent" strength.
The clear strategic conclusion remains what it should have been long before Coalition troops entered Saddam's evil domain: No matter how strongly we wish it to be otherwise, we are engaged in a regional war, of which Iraq is but a single battlefield. The war cannot be won in Iraq alone, because the enemy is based throughout the region and his bases and headquarters are located beyond our current reach. His power is directly proportional to our unwillingness to see the true nature of the war, and our decision to limit the scope of our campaign.
The true nature of the war exposes yet another current myth: that we are at greater risk because we failed to send sufficient troops into Iraq. More troops would simply mean more targets for the terrorists, since we are not prepared — nor should we be — to establish a full-scale military occupation and to "seal off" the borders with Iran, Syria, and Saudi Arabia. Hell, we can't even seal off the Mexican border with the United States, an area we know well. How can we expect to build a wall around Iraq?
No, we can only win in Iraq if we fully engage in the terror war, which means using our most lethal weapon — freedom — against the terror masters, all of them. The peoples of Syria, Iran, and Saudi Arabia are restive, they look to us for political support. Why have we not endorsed the call for political referenda in Syria and Iran? Why are we so (rightly and honorably) supportive of free elections in the Ukraine, while remaining silent about — or, in the disgraceful case of outgoing Secretary of State Colin Powell, openly hostile to — free elections in Iran and Syria? Why are we not advancing both our values and our interests in the war against the terror masters?
#1
In an interview on Frontpage Magazine, Gen. Thomas McInerney says some similar things:
"Now, thereâs a web of terror enablers out there who must be held accountable. There were eight countries altogether: Afghanistan and Iraq, though those terror-sponsoring regimes have been changed; Libya, which took an off-ramp because of our actions; Iran, which is sitting out there right now and is the king of terror; Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan, though they are changing and are in a kind of gray zone but are still major problems; and then, of course, North Korea. So, when you want to focus on whatâs next for the war of terror, itâs these five remaining countries.
The Iranian and Syrian governments are fueling the instability in Iraq today. Those insurgents could not survive unless they were fueled and funded by Iran and Syria. Iran itself is funding 30,000 Shi'ites and others in Iraq to create this instability.
Another threat to America is the possibility of Iran acquiring nuclear weapons. We cannot allow Iran to go nuclear, because if they do, those weapons will be transferred through Hizbollah and other terrorist groups over here, into our cities."
#2
Ledeen's is the most honest and incisive analysis yet. He is telling us truths that few in this country, and almost no one abroad except for the miserable subjects of the terror master regimes, want to hear. The enemy is fascism, and it is a regional enemy.
There can be no accomodation with that enemy. It must be defeated, and that defeat will only come through popular revolt with our explcit support.
December 23, 2004: To withdraw or not to withdraw-- that is the government's question. Actually, we don't think the government is Hamlet. Sudan told the UN, African Union, and the Darfur rebels last week that it would cease military operations in Darfur and withdraw its military forces. Of course it didn't happen. The government constantly plays this game of diplomatic "peace talk" while continuing to pursue "ethnic cleansing" warfare. In the case of south Sudan, peace only came when the SPLA began to: (1) win on the ground and (2) threaten Sudan's oil fields. Reports indicate that at the same time the government said it was withdrawing its forces from Darfur, air force aircraft bombed a village in Darfur and the army continued to move its forces into Darfur. The army was attacking the town of Labado (in South Darfur) on December 17. An international aid worker (from Doctors Without Borders, a medical NGO) was slain in that battle. Refugees from these battles eventually show up at camps in Chad and tell NGO workers what they have seen. Most governmental and NGO reports, however, agree that violence isn't the biggest killer—disease and famine promoted by the violence are the biggest killers. The World Health Organization estimates the number of people killed by disease and famine in the Darfur region since March 2004 is 70,000.
How does the Sudanese military operate in Darfur? Perhaps the best way to answer this is to look at how the Sudanese military operated in south Sudan . Regular military units and security police occupied key villages, towns, crossroads, and economic sites (oil fields). Regular military units would occasionally fight southern Sudan's SPLA guerrillas. The "ethnic cleansing" of Christian and animist black Africans was usually handled by tribal "militias." This created a tribal type warfare. The SPLA is by no means a Dinka tribal organization, but the Dinka tribe is a major supplier of manpower and leadership to the SPLA.) These militias were sometimes called "Islamist" or "Muslim" militias. These militias were paid by the Sudanese government and also made money from plundering their victims' villages. The militias were also accused of slaving. When south Sudanese tribes began describing Islamist militia violence and slaving in the late 1980s many Western journalists were dubious-- not necessarily dubious about the violence but dubious about the slaving allegations. Over the next ten years, however, numerous western religious and news organizations confirmed the selling of captives. Calling this slavery wasn't out of line at all. The way the Islamist militias were organized and deployed also told an old but relevant story: the Sudanese government used both religious and tribal divisions to prosecute the war against the SPLA and other south Sudanese rebels.
Khartoum is definitely using a similar mix of militia and regular Sudanese military forces out west in Darfur. Confirmed reports place Sudanese Army and security police at airfields in Darfur and along major transportation routes. Darfurian refugees often report that they were attacked by militias or irregular forces (for example, the so-called Janjaweed), not Sudanese regular forces. The Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) in the Darfur region (don't confuse it with the SPLA in the south) is a political and military coalition drawn from the three largest ethnic groups in Darfur -- the Fur, Zaghawa and the Masaleet. The Fur are the region's most numerous ethnic group. "Dar" indicates "land." "Darfur" is shorthand for "land of the Fur tribe." The Fur, Zaghawa, and Masaleet are usually described as "African" (black) Muslims and many are subsistence farmers. NGO sources report that nomadic "Arab" Muslim tribes from Northern Darfur man the Janjaweed militias. This is why the fighting in Darfur is sometimes characterized as "nomad versus farmer." However, one NGO source claims the Sudanese government is paying the "nomads" the equivalent of $80 a month —perhaps more if they can provide a horse or a camel—to serve in the Janjaweed militia.
Sudanese Internet sources claim that Sudan has a "significant" military presence in North, South, and West Darfur. What this means in terms of actual units and number of personnel is decidedly unclear. If someone in the Sudanese Army wants to send StrategyPage an email with this information, please feel free to do so. In West Darfur, the Army has units of 500 to 600 troops (battalions). Given the size of the region, the number of key transportation routes and transportation nodes the Army must secure, 12 to 15 battalions would be a minimum number. That suggests deployed regular forces of at least 20,000 to 25,000 troops (accounting for support and transportation as well as security and combat units). Again, treat this as a minimum figure; given the low-level of training and reliability we've seen in Sudanese forces, there are probably more troops on the ground. Given that SLA and JEM rebels claim to deploy "several hundred" fighters in pitched battles against the Sudanese Army, a figure of 40,000 Sudanese government forces might be more realistic. As for the number of Janjaweed militamen? The sad truth is that a few committed killers —operating as horse-borne or truck-borne raiders-- can kill a lot of unprotected civilians. The Sudanese government could be using as few as 3,000 to 5,000 militiamen in its campaign to destroy villages that the Sudanese government believes are supporting the rebels. This is a "best guess" given the general lack of data, but an arguably accurate ballpark figure, considering the tactics and weapons employed, and the relative defenselessness of most Sudanese villages.
Posted by: Steve ||
12/23/2004 10:02:50 AM ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
