Oil and Armageddon

What a time to be alive! Think of it: God chose you and me to live at the time that is almost certainly the wind up of human history. But the Christian has nothing to fear. The many things happening that seem so troubling mean that Jesus is about to return. All of the major signals that Jesus and Daniel the prophet foretold for the very end of this present earth age are in our headlines today.

I firmly believe that the European Union, in combination with the international community, is the forming final one-world government of Daniel Chapter 2. The worlds religions coming together in the name of unity and peace is the forming of the apostate harlot church that rides the beast of Revelation chapter 17. Huge banking and commercial institutions merging into one economic power is fulfilling one-world economic Babylon of Revelation Chapter 18. Great increases in technology, knowledge and speed of travel exactly match things prophesied in Daniel chapter 12.

We have seen the rise of false prophets. False teachers pollute our broadcast airwaves with their false doctrines. Wars and rumors of wars are a part of everyday life. We continue to witness famines and pestilences in the form of new, incurable diseases. Earthquakes are occurring often and everywhere. There are wondrous signs in the heavens, from mans walking on the moon to unexplained UFO sightings to unprecedented solar flares recorded by astronomers and other scientists. All these things are eerily like Jesus said it will be just before his return to planet Earth.

Mankind demonstrates all of the wicked ways the apostle Paul predicted in 2 Timothy chapter 3. As if all this were not enough, the prophet Ezekiels prophecies in chapters 37, 38 and 39 loom heavily over the Middle East.

What is the one thing that turns all news-gathering cameras and microphones toward Israel and her hostile neighbors? The answer is oil. Because oil deposits drench the Middle East, world economies are tied to that region as no other. Therefore, all the leaders of the great world powers concern themselves with every bit of news about Israel and her Palestinian adversaries.

The Middle East indeed boils in oil anxieties while the world storms toward an uncertain future. But God is not worried. Neither does He want you to be worried: For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind (2 Tim. 1:7).

God knows the end from the beginning. He has reported, in advance, the conclusion of these matters in His Holy Word, the Bible. Study it and believe it to be absolutely true. Do this and you will find your frown of worry fading into a smile of anticipation. You will know His beloved son, Jesus, is about to return to take Gods children home with Him. (Read John 14:1-3.)

God knew from before the creation that oil would focus attention on the Middle East at the end of human history. He knew at the creation of the Garden of Eden that its lushness of life would bring about the end-time energy source the nations would covet.

Eden's End-Time Energy

Genesis 1: 20-24: And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good. And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth. And the evening and the morning were the fifth day. And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.

Plentiful Prehistoric Petroleum

Lets travel for a moment back to the time God created these things with one majestic sweep of His almighty hand. This was not just a few scatterings of created beings and a mere smattering of vegetation. When the Creator of all things spoke, all of these created things suddenly existed from what had been nothingness only a fraction of a second before. And the earth literally burst forth with dynamic life!

The vast ocean waters surged with life, from the smallest organism to the biggest whale. The brilliant, beautifully colored sky must have seemed suddenly cloudy while the flying, diving, soaring birds of every description tested their masterfully made wings and feathers. The dry land crawled, hopped, ran, leapt and lumbered with marvelous reptiles and mammals of every sort. The sounds and sights must have been too incredible to take into the senses.

Gods creation power, not evolution, produced abundant life in that electrifying second of early earth time. Nothing crawled from primordial soup to change over the next zillion or so years. Everything popped into existence under the hand of the Living God. There were no accidents or errors in the Lords action. He knew exactly what He was doing. In the process, Edens potential end-time energy source oilwas produced.

Genesis 2:4-8: These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens, And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew: for the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground. But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground. And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. And the LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed.

Lush Garden Slush

God is omnipotent (all-powerful). He is omniscient (all-knowing). He is omnipresent (everywhere, all the time). God, through His omnipotence, created the abundant and vast array of life in one split second. He knew all about, in His omniscient foreknowledge, the fall of man through sin. The Lord was, in His omnipresence, already forward in time when petroleum (oil) was formed from the dead, decaying things H was creating in that split second of bringing forth those living things. He is already in the future when the last great battle of history is being fought. He has told us through His prophetic Word that it will be fought in the Middle East. He calls the place Armageddon.

The rage in the Middle East today--the hateful conflict between Israel and her radical neighbors--points to the reality that things are aligned precisely as God foretold. Oil is certainly the ingredient that makes the great world powers look to that region with concern. So the present Mid-East problems involving war and peace that tug the world toward Armageddon again go back to the Garden of Eden and the fall of Adam through willful disobedience.

God did not cause this calamity. In His love and concern for us, He simply reported, through prophecy, the end of the matter. Is all of this about oils connection to the creation scientifically possible? I believe it is more than that.

Let us look closer at what the scientific study of petroleum says. Then let us look at what the Bible says about the catastrophic flood God used to judge sin and cleanse the earth of sins corruption.

Todays scientists believe that crude oil was formed over millions of years from the remains of small plant and animal life in the ancient seas. As this lifeprimarily plankton and algae and other organismsdied, it sank to the sea floor where it was buried with sand and mud. Heat, pressure, and bacteria compressed and cooked the material until it formed a thick liquid we know as oil. Over time, the oil traveled upward through the earths crust until its path was blocked by dense rocks. Its under these rocks, called caprocks, where we find most of our oil today.I suggest you read the following Scriptures to get an overview of what the Bible says happened, to produce the dynamics necessary to create the resource we call oil.

Genesis 6:5-7 (paraphrase): Gods creation, man, through his disobedience in the Garden, brought sin into the world. The people of earth became so sinful that every thought they had was only evil. God looked at His once-perfect creation, and its wicked condition made him very sad. So sad, in fact, that He decided to destroy all life on earth by sending a flood. It rained 40 days and 40 nights, and the ark God had instructed Noah to build floated. The waters rose above even the highest mountaintop. All living things except those in Noahs family, the animals Noah had brought into the Ark, and fish and sea life, died.

Paraphrasing that truth, the Bible says in these verses that God sent a great flood because of sin upon the earth. The water covered everything, including the highest mountaintop, by at least 15 cubits. A cubit in Bible times referred to the average length of a mans arm from elbow to longest fingertip, or about 18 inches.

So you can see that this catastrophe involved an incredible amount of water, according to Gods account. This was not just some local flood as some would have us believe. The Bible says that all flesh and plant life on the Earths ground portions died in the flood. This means also, we must believe, that when the water went down, many of the various forms of life in the rivers and the seas were left to flounder and die on the drying ground. This included, of course, the plankton and algae and other vegetation of the rivers and seas. The fossil record shows this was true. Evidence of sea shells and other residue of sea life have been found on some of the highest peaks in the world. When the waters swiftly withdrew, huge chunks of earth, rock and other material broke off and became massive mudslides. Many believe this is the reason the Grand Canyon was cut from the earth as it was.

The dead, decaying animal and sea life, as well as the birds that drowned, were covered by the mud. People, also, according to the Bible, died by the millions and became a part of the mixture that formed within the pockets where oil is now found. Nowhere on earth was there more lushness of plant and animal life than in the region where God had planted the Garden of Eden. It is sensible to think, if one believes the Bible, that the area of Eden which is the Middle Eastwould have the largest deposits of oil. Presently that area of the Middle East is said to have two-thirds of all known oil in the world. It is interesting to note that it is estimated that 77 percent of the worlds total recoverable oil has already been discovered.

Oil: Curse or Blessing?

Genesis 3:17-19: To Adam he said, Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, You must not eat of it, Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.

Genesis 5: 28-29: When Lamech had lived 182 years, he had a son. He named him Noah and said, He will comfort us in the labor and painful toil of our hands caused by the ground the Lord has cursed.

Oil Eases Toil

When Noah and the seven others of his family stepped onto dry land from the ark, they faced the curse God had pronounced on the earth. The curse had been issued because of Adams sin of disobedience. Noah and his family, like all people since the fall in Eden, now had to work for their food. They had to raise the animals. They had to first cultivate and sow the ground with seed. They had to toil by the sweat of their brow to make a living.

Hard labor is not fun for most people. There is usually a sense of accomplishment after a job well done that makes us say as God said when He looked upon all He had created, It is good. The actual doing of the work, however, can be backbreaking.

Throughout history, society has tried to come up with ways to create labor-saving devices. For example, the aqueducts of ancient civilizations saved people from the hard work of hauling water by bringing it directly into the cities. Later, the hand pump to get water from deep wells became an important part of early American life, even in frontier towns. And automated looms saved time and energy in weaving cloth for clothing and other things.

Even these earliest inventions required human power. Except in the few instances where inventions could be driven by the wind or running water, man had to physically generate with his own energy and strength the labor-saving invention he used. He still toiled by the sweat of his brow.

But the fantastic energy stored underground around the world soon completely changed everything. The inventions the discovery of the power of oil inspired are nothing short of phenomenal.

Think of the progress! Up until the late 19th century, man could travel on flat land no faster than the fastest horse could run. With the coming of petroleum came the steam engine and other such inventions of locomotion. Man could travel much faster than the fastest horse, for a much longer time before having to stop. The 20th century saw mankind go from the steam engine to the computer-directed solid rocket engines that let man exceed 20,000 miles per hour. And man walked on the moon! All of this happened in about the last 120 years. Before the discovery of the power potential in petroleum, man remained basically unchanged in his ability to progress so far as labor-saving devices were concerned. Not only did oil bring the electricity that powers the washing machines, refrigerators, vacuum cleaners and all the rest, but it also created a tremendous economic base that in turn brought about a leisure class.

Now, there are those who laugh when they read that they are part of a leisure class. They westill toil pretty hard. Compared to our ancestors, however, we Americans live like royalty. As a matter of fact, when you think about it, with our modern conveniences and our ability to travel to and from most anywhere on earth in only a few hours, we live far better than did Solomon.

It is estimated by the experts that on average, each American uses 25 barrels of petroleum each year. The total petroleum consumption in the U.S. has grown at an average annual rate of .5% over the past 25 years. One barrel equals 42 U.S. gallons. Most stunning of all is the communication technology we enjoy. The Internet, for example, is staggering in its present and future implications. Like the prophet Daniel prophesied in Chapter 12, knowledge has increased beyond anything previously imagined. We have only begun to realize the things that harnessing oil has made possible.

The Greed and Consumption Begins

Genesis 11:6: The Lord said, If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them.

The more work-saving devices, the better! This is the attitude of the people of the industrialized world. And, more and more nations are moving toward becoming industrialized. People in general, especially spoiled people with all the modern conveniences, want more and more free time to play rather than work. Vacations, or even weekends on the lakes with powerboats, are much more fun than working 8 to 5 to buy those luxuries and pay the bills. The unquenchable need to buy more and more things is one form of greed. With credit card debt at a staggering dollar amount in America, that greedy addiction cannot be denied.

The Apostle Paul wrote in 2 Timothy 3:1-4 that in the last days people will be covetous and love pleasure more than they love God. Does that describe America today? Everyone wants things, homes, cars, boats, etc., at least as good and, hopefully, even better than the Joneses. When the warm days of springtime come, even the true Christian churches seem to empty into the lakes and other playgrounds on Sundays.

And the plastic credit cards, themselves petroleum-based items, get Americans deeper and deeper into debt. The greed factor gets much bigger. It grows like a snowball rolling downhill. Companies rush to fill the consumers greed. Their own greed and covetousness demand more and more production. Their manufacturing depends upon more and more petroleum to provide the energy necessary for making things.

And this is where Mid-East war and peace come into the picture. Most of the worlds petroleum is in the land God promised Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Not the tiny strip of land-occupied by Israel today, but the total Promised Land (see: Genesis 12:1-7, 13:14-16, 15:18, Deuteronomy 9:4-6, Joshua 1:1-11, 21:43-45.).

Today, Israels neighbors claim most of the worlds petroleum. Most of Israels neighbors are in a state of undeclared war against the tiny Israeli state. As a matter of fact, the enemies of Israel are blood-vowed to push Israel into the Mediterranean Sea.

The mostly Arab governments who, when combined, control the vast oil fields of the Middle East, are an economic superpower just as surely as America is a nuclear superpower. They can bend the will of the rest of the world by raising or simply by threatening to raise the price of oil. The lust for oil is probably the major factor that will bring an invasion into the Middle East. But more about that a bit later.

The industrialized western nations have been lucky so far. The Arab countries, who control two-thirds of the known oil reserves, are too busy fussing and feuding with each other to get together and make demands so far as prices of petroleum are concerned. They more often than not undercut each others prices and keep the prices relatively low. Recent jumps in oil prices, thus gasoline prices throughout the U.S., are but a mild taste of what might be on the horizon. Oil, then, is the one factor that is at the very heart of concern for world leaders. This group, referred to by news media as the international community will do all within its power to put a permanent peace into effect in that region where the greatest oil supplies have been stored since the Flood.

Pact with the Devil

Daniel 9:27: "He will confirm a covenant with many for one seven [i.e., one week of years]."

One of the things we are to look for prophetically is a one-world government. Some call it the New World Order. The Bible says that at the end of this present age a powerful group of world leaders will imagine to take over the world in all of its aspects, economically, governmentally, technologically, religiously, etc. (Read Revelation 17: 12-13.) That is what happened when Nimrod and his fellow one-worlder friends wanted to establish a single government, economic and religious world order. (Read Genesis, chapter 11.)

Humanism is the false religious philosophy that drove Nimrod and the builders of the tower of Babel. Humanism is still around, and growing as a philosophy through which to bring about total control over all peoples of planet earth and all the wealth of the world. Oil has a very high place in their big plans!

God came down to earth and scattered the tower builders to all parts of the world. He confused the language so they could no longer communicate well enough to continue their satanic building project. Todays similar building project engineers are aided by the computer, which is helping them get around the language barriers. God will again have to intervene, this time at Armageddon.

Todays would-be one-world builders probably think they are doing us a great service by trying to bring us together in peace and unity. The Bible says, however, that such a last days effort to do as Nimrod tried to do at Babel will end up bringing about Antichrist and the worst time in the history of man. Humanism says man himself can do it all apart from God. This is and has always been a formula for utter destruction. Only God can and will take the war out of the Mid-East war and peace equation.

The late Dr. John Walvoord wrote: Now, most of the world is involved in the conflict in the Middle East, and the prosperity of the world depends on some mechanism to guarantee peace and a continued flow of oil from the region. This is precisely what biblical prophecy predicts. The Middle East is the battleground for the road to Armageddon and the second coming of Christ, the prophesied stage for the final drama of world history. With world attention on the Middle East, Israel already back in her ancient land, and the world in a mood for someone to guarantee peace, the major components of the end time are in place.

Derricks Dot the Desert

Deuteronomy 33:24-25: About Asher he said: Most blessed of sons is Asher; let him be favored by his brothers, let him bathe his feet in oil. The bolts of your gates will be iron and bronze, and your strength will equal your days.

Some very good students of prophecy believe Deuteronomy 33:24-25 concerning oil and Asher to have reference to petroleum and the Middle East in the last days. Other students, equally qualified, believe the reference of oil is strictly to olive oil, the highly valued extract taken from olive trees. The Middle East is, of course, well known for producing this natural product. Still others believe there is double reference in this Deuteronomy passage. They think it could refer to both olive oil and petroleum, which is in even greater abundance in the Middle East. I have not made an in-depth study in this particular prophetic area, so cannot make even a good guess as to whether oil here might refer to one, the other, or both. I do believe, though, that this passage is prophetic. The land given to Abrahams seed is guaranteed by God himself to receive a profound blessing.

It is true that Israel and the area given the tribe of Asher have been blessed in the ancient past. But Deuteronomy 33:24-25, in my view, represents a great blessing at some future time, the likes of which has not yet occurred. Olive oil is a well-known product of the region, to be sure. But olive oil is not of enough significance in quantity or as a contributing factor to promise tremendous blessings to either Asher or its neighbors as this prophecy seems to suggest. Neither can we conclude that petroleum has been the kind of blessing implied in this passage. To the contrary, oil has been more a reason for conflict in the region than for blessing. This passage seems to mean that at some future time this region will be a genuine blessing to all of Israel and all others of Ashers neighbors. The oil referred to will be of such great blessing that everybody will love the tribe of Asher.

The tribes have not occupied their God-appointed territories in modern times. The people of that tribe will not occupy that land until the Millennium. Therefore, the promise of great blessings involving oil must be for that time when King Jesus rules and reigns from Jerusalem.

There is no way we can even imagine the things God has planned for that wonderful era. But it is reasonable to wonder if the great petroleum reserves there now might not be used at that future time in some marvelous way to bless the nations. I can hear the environmentalists screaming, There will have to be some miraculous system to keep that stuff from polluting our air, if its going to be a blessing rather than a curse! I can hear some commuters hollering, prices will have to be better, or it wont be heaven on earth!

Regardless, the oil is there, and in great abundance. This is not by accident.

Dr. Paul Feinberg wrote, in respect to oil and Armageddon: Given the oil reserves of this area and the economic power that comes from the redistribution of the world wealth to this region, it is not hard to imagine the prophecies of the ancient seers coming true. Though many regimes seem grossly out of step with our modern, high-tech societies, there is wealth and power enough to send all the nations of the world there to protect that they see as their own self-interests."

Slick, Soaked, Sandy Soil

Genesis 11:2-3: As men moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there. They said to each other, 'Come, lets make bricks and bake them thoroughly.' They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar.

Middle East soil cannot contain the petroleum substances that boil just beneath its surface. The tower of Babel builders found the sticky stuff to be a devilish blessing rather than a curse. They used it to paste together the bricks they made to build the ungodly structure.

Slime was the thick, asphalt-like material they found in abundance on the plane of Shinar. It apparently was perfect for the project Nimrod was determined to complete. The boiling petroleum broth has been a constant part of some areas of the regions throughout recorded history. The south end of the Dead Sea was said to have looked like a boiling cauldron of asphalt as recently as the late 19th century.

Towers of Power

Genesis 11:4: Then they said, Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth.

Saddam Hussein left Kuwait in a hurry when the Desert Storm coalition forces pulverized much of his military in 1991. Before he left that small country he had invaded for its oil riches, he set the oil wells on fire. Millions of petrodollars went up in black, sky-darkening smoke. Oil fire specialists were called in to douse the flame and smoke. The Iraqi dictator knew exactly where he could hurt the western industrial nations most. The money lenders of the world the great financiers that control world economieswere, for the moment, helpless to stop their losses. One big part of their tremendous power seemed to be literally going up in smoke!

Those black towers of steel represent, at least symbolically, the modern day tower of Babel. The structures, looking like small Eiffel towers on the desert sand, serve as monuments to the one-world gigantic monetary power structure being built today. As stated before, this was the primary reason all of those nations, including Saddam Husseins frightened neighbors, got together to stop the rampaging tyrant.

We watch and complain about the rising fuel prices. Oil and its costs affects us in so many ways that that topic would itself provide enough material to make a book. Gasoline is only one aspect of oil price considerations. Electricity and all that involves, plastics for every manufacturing process you can name, communications and its many aspects, all these and many more things are impacted by the price of petroleum. The United States is particularly a sitting target for price increase tyranny. The American people will yet suffer the consequences of the one-world controllers intentions to gather to themselves the wealth of the world.

The vast wealth of the Middle East must be preserved at all costs. Even to the destruction of national economies and of human life. The Middle East is the one area of the world where the one-world tower builders will control, no matter the price. Armageddon will be their final attempt to stop God from establishing Jesus Christs throne in the heart of that land.

Real Rags to Riches

Revelation 18:11-18 (paraphrase): The merchants of the earth will weep and mourn over her because no one buys their cargoes any morecargoes of gold, silver, precious stones and pearls; fine linen, purple, silk and scarlet cloth; every sort of citron wood, and articles of every kind made of ivory, costly wood, bronze, iron and marble; cargoes of cinnamon and spice, of incense, myrrh and frankincense, of wine and olive oil, of fine flour and wheat; cattle and sheep; horses and carriages; and bodies and souls of men. They will say, the fruit you longed for is gone from you. All your riches and splendor have vanished, never to be recovered. The merchants who sold these things and gained their wealth from her will stand far off, terrified at her torment. They will weep and mourn and cry out: Woe! Woe, O great city, dressed in fine linen, purple and scarlet, and glittering with gold, precious stones and pearls! In one hour such great wealth has been brought to ruin! Every sea captain, and all who travel by ship, the sailors, and all who earn their living from the sea, will stand far off. When they see the smoke of her burning, they will exclaim, Was there ever a city like this great city?

As has been demonstrated within recent years, the economic well-being of entire nations depends upon availability of reasonably priced energy. The state of California, itself having as large an economy as most nations, is a prime example just within the United States.

Political environmental extremists, by forbidding the building of new power plants and prohibiting the development of energy resources, have greatly affected Californias way of life. Rolling brownouts and blackouts of electricity in 2001 caused problems from inconvenience to hardship on many Californians. OPEC (Oil Producing Exporting Countries) have the power to cause all nations to bend to their will in a similar and more troubling way. Their power is based upon their ability to control 1) production, 2) prices and 3) embargo. They are, in effect, a superpower. National economies rise and fall based upon the petroleum they can distribute and withhold. Oil is the lifeblood of the developed and the developing nations of the world.

Even the rumor of supply shortages threatens the lifestyles of people in America, Europe and Japan, the nations having the most to lose when OPEC turns down the flow of petroleum. Energy, which is far and away fueled by oil more than by any other source, is the thing that is at the heart of the developing one world orders ability to control the citizenry of planet Earth.

Energy is at the center of the power and wealth that provide livelihoods and luxuries. Revelation has much to say about the end-time Babylonian system of economic control over people, as the Scripture passage above indicates. The very souls of men, women and children are at the mercy of the elite who control buying and selling. That system of commerce depends upon the ability to deliver the goods. Therefore, they who control the oil that is used in the manufacturing and delivery of merchandise are the masters of this world system! The sheiks and leaders of the Middle East, with two-thirds of petroleum deposits of the world, are in a commanding position as they deal with the one-world builders.

From Tent to High Rent

Jeremiah 17:3-4: "My mountain in the land and your wealth and all your treasures I will give away as plunder, together with your high places, because of sin throughout your country. Through your own fault you will lose the inheritance I gave you. I will enslave you to your enemies in a land you do not know"

Much of the tremendous oil riches lie beneath land promised to Abrahams seed in Genesis 17. Israel, however, refused to fully claim that Promised Land. Worse, Gods chosen people disobeyed Gods loving instructions on a number of occasions. When they did, they were put out of the portions of the original land grant territory they did occupy. Other peoples moved in and occupied the land. Intruders still hold on to the majority of Israels land today. But, their land grab was, is, and will always be illegal in Gods perfect sight.

Just as Jeremiah prophesied, the land has yielded its treasures and substance to those other than Gods disobedient people. Oil is the treasure and substance in our day. The mostly Islamic Arabs now have the riches, as foretold in that Jeremiah 17 passage.

With the second industrial revolution came an explosion of wealth for many of the tent-dwelling Arabs and others in that land of oil. The most powerful of those people suddenly found themselves among the richest on earth. This is because their petroleum was needed to run the motorized machinery of industrys production lines. The sheiks and kings of the Middle East did literally go from rags to riches. From tent to high rent!

At the same time however, despite their nations riches from oil sales, the majority of those people remain under the oppressive dark force of Islam. Most of the Arab and other populations of the Middle East live as poorly as did their ancestors. Those royal families and other privileged people in high places enjoy the limousines, the jet planes, palaces, etc. You might say: Thats the way it is in America, too. Only the few have the wealth.

But the difference is that Americans have the opportunity to work and worship as they please. Religion, under the guise of government, does not hold an iron grip around the throats of our people. Our heritage is filled with rags to riches stories concerning men and women who have achieve great wealth.

The right to worship without fear of having our heads chopped off for believing in a way different from the state religion is at the heart of our true wealth. This is a right we must not take for granted. There will come a time when the whole world will be forced to live as many of the poor unfortunates in much of the Middle East live today. The story of that future horror can be found in Revelation, chapter 13.

Blessings Cause Curse

Jeremiah 17:11: "Like a partridge that hatches eggs it did not lay is the man who gains riches by unjust means. When his life is half gone, they will desert him, and in the end he will prove to be a fool."

Riches seem to most of us a blessing. We think of how wonderful it would be to come into a lot of money. This covetousness is easily seen in the popularity of such TV programs as Who Wants To Be a Millionaire? Daydreaming about lots of money has not just recently become part of our culture. Some of us remember a program called The Millionaire. In this series of stories, an unknown donor gave away one million dollars each week to a very surprised person. It was, of course, fiction, but it was a very popular show. The stories sometimes portrayed that the million dollar gift ended up being a source of unhappiness rather than joy. Ishmael remember him? Abrahams son by Hagar, Sarahs handmaid, was promised great blessings by God. Many of the Arab people today legitimately claim Abraham as their father. Some prophecy students believe that because the Arab nations have the greatest amount of oil, that fact is fulfillment of Gods promise to bless Abrahams descendantsin this case, his descendents by Keturah, whom the patriarch married following Sarahs death.

But we must look at the truth of the matter. The oil riches cannot be a blessing from God. He did not promise this part of Abrahams family the land they presently occupy. Most of that land is rightfully the Jews land. It belongs to Israel. God promised it to them.

Dr. John Walvoord said with regard to Gods Word on the land grant promises to Israel: This biblical account clearly referred to a specific geographical land, not some general blessing or a promise of heaven. The continued revelation of God to Abram elaborated the promise again as recorded in Genesis 17. The promise of the land is tied to the promise of a continuing heritageThe meaning to Abraham and the early readers of Scripture is clear. The land promised was Palestine, stretching from the Sinai Desert north and east to the Euphrates River. This would include all the holdings of present-day Israel, Lebanon, and the West Bank of Jordan, plus substantial portions of Syria, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia.

Abrahams family by Hagar and later by Keturah will come into their full blessing during the Millennium era. They will then become a great nation just as the Lord promised.

Today, however, they are under a curse, not a blessing.

Gods Word in the matter is absolutely true. The Arab people today continue to live under the curse of radical Islamic fundamentalists, who would just as soon murder their own as the Jews they hate so much. The internationalist one-world builders more often than not look the other way when these poor, hapless people suffer atrocities by those over them. This is because the world wants the vast oil deposits the Islamic tyrants hold in their bloodstained hands.

Is Oil Gogs Spoil?

Ezekiel - 38:1-3: And the word of the LORD came unto me, saying, Son of man, set thy face against Gog, the land of Magog, the chief prince of Meshech and Tubal, and prophesy against him, And say, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold I am against thee, O Gog, the chief prince of Meshech and Tubal.

Ezekiel 38:10-12: Thus saith the Lord GOD; It shall also come to pass, that at the same time shall things come into thy mind, and thou shalt think an evil thought: And thou shalt say, I will go up to the land of unwalled villages; I will go to them that are at rest, that dwell safely, all of them dwelling without walls, and having neither bars nor gates, To take a spoil, and to take a prey; to turn thine hand upon the desolate places that are now inhabited, and upon the people that are gathered out of the nations, which have gotten cattle and goods, that dwell in the midst of the land."

War has been the way of life for people of the Middle East for centuries. We know from our daily, even hourly, news reports from that region that the people there live everyday under threat of a breakout of fighting. Many times these fightings involve gunfire and people are killed. Or terrorist bombs are used to murder both Arabs and Jews who only want to live in peace. There is coming a time when God, himself, will intervene directly into this matter of Mid-East war and peace.

Ezekiel the prophet foretells this coming time of Gods intervention. The prophet says this will happen in the latter days. The prophecy even predicts the reason why the festering boil of hostility will come to a head. God will allow the leader of those who hate Israel to think an evil thought.

That leader is called in the Bible, Gog, the chief prince of Meshech and Tubal. The evil thought will involve some sort of spoil. What is spoil? In this particular meaning of the word, "spoil (as given in the KJV) is the material things that are the reward of victory in war. The leader called Gog by Gods Word will lust after something in the heart of Palestine that will promise him great riches as his reward for victory. It isnt a great stretch of creduility to believe that oil is chief among the spoils of war the Gog leader will seek.

Of course, the Bible says that leader and his forces will never achieve their objective. God will supernaturally destroy all but one-sixth of the Gog-Magog coalition. This will render forces of this area more or less impotent for war-making for the most part. This is perhaps when Antichrist and his forces will move to fill the void left by the devestated Gog-Magog armies. Other forces of greed and plunder will then begin to beat the drums of war. Middle East oil will likely draw their collective attention to the region. Antichrist will take notice of that ravenous desire to control what he has staked out for himself. Heres what Gods prophetic Word has to say.

But tidings out of the east and out of the north shall trouble him: therefore he shall go forth with great fury to destroy, and utterly to make away many (Dan. 11:44).

The one place on earth that Antichrist will covet is Jerusalem, and in particular, Mount Moriah, and the very place where the Holy of Holies will sit in the Jewish Temple, which will have been rebuilt by that time. Satan wants to claim the very spot where the Ark of the Covenant sat, because that spot seems to be the direct contact point between God and man. Remember this is where the veil was rent from top to bottom, signifying men, women, and children now have direct access to God the Father through Jesus Christ, His Son who died at that instant of the veils ripping for the sins of the world.

All armies will begin to march to the valley of Jezreel, on the plain of Esdraleon, near the ancient city of Megiddo. They will come to do battle no doubt, in part at least, over the dwindling petroleum resources in the Middle East. Actually, however, God will be drawing them there to put an end to mankinds madness. The Lord says about that: I will also gather all nations, and will bring them down into the valley of Jehoshaphat, and will plead with them there for my people and for my heritage Israel, whom they have scattered among the nations, and parted my land (Joel 3:2). The Lord will slaughter the armies of rebels that day at the final battle of the war called Armageddon.