Standing in support of Israel, Jews, and believers in all the nations, in the name of Jesus (Yeshua). Sharing biblical truth, encouragement, news and prophecy.
Jonathan Cahn Reveals the Shocking Biblical Roots of ISIS
As the Islamic State threatens the world with unthinkable acts of violence, it troubles many to consider what the future may hold.
But to understand their power and perhaps even their evil, one must first look into the depths of history.
According to the BBC, the terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi swore his allegiance to Osama Bin Laden and al-Qaida in Iraq in 2004. After his death in 2006, al-Qaida created the Islamic State, and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi became its driving force.
However, Rabbi Jonathan Cahn says ISIS roots go back much further—to the Bible.
"ISIS you almost could say ... is the remanifestation of the ancient Assyrians, I mean, down to the land," Cahn says. "Most likely, even more than al-Qaida, they literally most likely even more strongly have the blood of the Assyrians in them."
Assyrians specialized in mutilation, Cahn says, and they would display the bodies to make people surrender.
"That's exactly what ISIS does."
And there are more connections between the ancient Assyrians and today's terrorists.
"These are literally, it's a stronger thing going on and it's more evil," Cahn says. "A year ago, they took over the city of Mosul," which was the biblical site of the city of Nineveh.
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I remember years ago watching the popular 1970’s rapture movie, “Thief in the Night,” with my two oldest children. A week later they came home early from school and their mother and I were not there. They told us later how frightened they became thinking we’d been raptured and left them behind.
That’s when I realized something wasn’t kosher about a teaching that could create such fear in children. Especially when you add in all the chaos that would ensue when pilots and bus drivers suddenly disappear.
As most know, this Rapture teaching was popularized by John Nelson Darby in the early eighteen hundreds. To his credit he departed from Replacement Theology after seeing the prophets had promised a future restoration of Israel. But he stumbled in believing the Church and Israel would remain two separate people of God with different inheritances. He believed Christians would go to Heaven and the Jews would inherit the Promised Land.
To fulfill his understanding he taught Jesus would come secretly like a “thief in the night” to snatch away all Christians before the Tribulation, no matter how worldly, and bring us to Heaven. The Jews, after being brought to repentance as a result of the Tribulation, would set up their Davidic kingdom in Israel to rule the world for the Millennium.
But Darby’s theology was fundamentally flawed because it divided the body of Messiah in half based on ethnicity. For we know “there is neither Jew nor Greek…for you are all one in Messiah Yeshua” (Gal 3:28). He did not see God had only one kingdom, one people, and that all who were chosen in Messiah will reign with him here on earth!
As for Yeshua coming suddenly upon us as a thief at night, that is the last thing a believer would want to experience. Paul’s warning couldn’t be clearer: “For you yourselves know full well that the day of the Lord will come just like a thief in the night… but you brethren, are not in darkness, that the day should overtake you like a thief...so then, LET US NOT SLEEP AS THE OTHERS DO, but let us be alert and sober” (1Thess. 5:2-4,6).
It is the inattentive, unprepared believer deceived by a world system with its strong religious component, along with the unbelievers, who will be caught napping. Yeshua likened that believer to the head of the house, who, if he had stayed awake, “would not have allowed his house to be broken into” (Matt: 24:42-44). The same warning was given to the dozing saints at Sardis: “If you do not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know what hour I will come upon you” (Rev. 3:3-5).
The one thing we know for sure about the Lord’s coming is we won’t know for sure when he is coming. Even he didn’t know when he’d be back! Pre-trib, mid-trib, post-trib? Who knows? Only the Father. That’s why we are “to be dressed in readiness and keeps our lamps lit” (Luke 12:35) – listening daily to His voice, and walking in love, faith and obedience.
Although we won’t know the day or hour, multiple signs will alert us “that he is near, even right at the door” (Matt 24:33). Yes, the worldly ones will be taken by surprise “as in the days of Noah,” but Noah and his family were literally on board with it all before God shut the door. In the same way, Peter tells us to expect a salvation “ready to be revealed in the last time… and to fix your hope completely on the grace to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ” (1 Pet. 1:5,13).
Darby was right that the Lord will come for his own before he returns to visit fiery judgment upon the nations and sets up his kingdom. But this salvation will not beam us up to Heaven. Nor will it be for carnal Christians. Nor will it be in secret. It will be for those who are ready, and will take place in front of the whole world as a witness to the truth about Yeshua. “The Lord has bared His holy arm in the sight of all the nations, that all the ends of the earth may see the salvation of our God” (Isa. 52:10).
I believe it will be seen as nothing less than the long-awaited restoration of Ephraim with Judah in Messiah. “Then it will happen on that day that the Lord will again recover the second time with His hand, the remnant of His people who will remain” (Isa. 11:11)
But nobody is going anywhere until “the apostasy comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed” (2 Thess. 2:4).
Make no mistake: Hanukkah and Christmas are connected through Yeshua.
Israel: All the Feasts Tie Into the Gospel
Hanukkah is the final feast in the Jewish calendar and tells a remarkable story of the deliverance of Israel from the control of the Ancient Greeks in 164 B.C. The Seleucid Dynasty had assumed rule of the area through a political and military struggle after Alexander the Great had died.
In their wake, they sought to assimilate the people into their Hellenistic culture (ancient Greek culture or ideals) and way of life with no exceptions, dealing ruthlessly with anyone who would oppose them. Had they been completely successful, they could have threatened the very environment that brought Messiah into the world.
Not only did they ransack the holy temple of God, desecrating all of its contents, but they actually sacrificed a pig to their Greek god Zeus on the temple altar, which naturally repulsed all of the Jews, owing to their strict dietary laws, where the pig was considered most unclean.
The Jews were outraged, and a priest named Mattathias and his five sons took up against several of their soldiers and killed them, which sparked a revolt. Being completely outnumbered, they utilized guerilla-style warfare tactics, first in the hill country and then throughout the land, which took some time. They met with surprising success, and their faith in the God of Israel inspired the nation to take back their own country, despite the odds that were against them.
In the month of Kislev (December), they reached Jerusalem and took back the temple. In restoring the menorah, which symbolized the light of God, they only had enough oil to last for one day, as it took eight days to prepare new oil. However, the oil miraculously lasted for eight days. This event demonstrated two miracles of God: the first to deliver His people and the second to lighten His temple.
The temple was restored and rededicated to God, and a new holiday was established called Hanukkah (Hebrew for dedication) to remind Israel of these miracles, the Festival of Lights. Hanukkah was not one of the original Jewish feasts mentioned in Leviticus 23, as it had not happened yet. However in light of its significance, its prophetic picture through Daniel, as well as God's intervention, it became part of the Jewish calendar and has been celebrated ever since by Jews and some Christians all over the world.
Yeshua/Jesus Is Our Hanukkah
Isn't it fascinating that the very last miracle recorded in the Jewish calendar is a miracle of light to foreshadow and tell us of the great Light that was to come into the world? In fact Yeshua/Jesus celebrated Hanukkah and forever connected its significance by reflecting His own Messiahship through this celebration (John 10:22-39). Isn't it interesting that in all the feasts, we can see the character of God's love and light for mankind? What a connection for us as believers and especially toward our Jewish friends and neighbors in our witness and love towards them.
Nowhere is this clearer than through the Hanukkah celebration that we see the light of the world. Scripture tells us that God knows the beginning from the end, so don't you think He knew that the nations would also celebrate His birth and coming during this same season? So that the festival of Hanukkah, like many of the other feasts is actually a prophetic foreshadow of Yeshua/Jesus Himself and the Christmas season that celebrates His birth.
As a result, the two holidays work beautifully together in tandem to lift up God's Son upon the earth and are intricately linked, from the old to the new. And Christians everywhere, like the Jews, can enjoy this wonderful holiday.
Let's investigate this a little further and take a careful look at the three chapters in John's Gospel that surround the Hanukkah Feast. In John chapter 9, Yeshua/Jesus gives sight to a blind man that should in itself be enough testimony for the Jewish leadership to acknowledge His sovereignty. But before the miracle has even taken place see what He says, "I am the Light of the World" and here He makes a prophetic proclamation of who He is(John 9:5).
On Hanukkah in John Chapter 10, Yeshua/Jesus went into the temple area giving perhaps one of the only teachings where He actually refers to Himself as the Messiah,"I and the Father are one" (verse 30). Here He asks the Pharisees to review His credentials by acknowledging the miracles He had performed to provide authenticity as to who He said and claimed to be in the flesh.
Then in the very next chapter (11), Yeshua performs perhaps His greatest of all miracles by raising Lazarus from the dead, which also acts a prophetic picture of what He was about to do with His own life through His resurrection. "I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. To the Jew first and then to the Gentile — Do you believe this?" Yeshua asked(John 11:25).
There is no greater miracle in this world than the gift of God's one and only Son, and so there is also a beautiful connection that exists between Hanukkah and Christmas, as Hanukkah truly foretells of the great Light that was to come into the world and Christmas celebrates that Light. To both Jew and Gentile alike, as believers in Yeshua/Jesus, we have liberty to celebrate these holidays that remind us of God's faithfulness and deliverance to His people.
For Jewish believers to enjoy fellowship with their Gentile family during the Christmas season and for Gentile believers to have fellowship with their Jewish family lighting the Hanukkah candles. What matters most is that Yeshua/Jesus would be lifted up that He would draw all men and women to Himself, Amen.
How To Observe Hanukkah
Hanukkah is observed using a menorah, which is a candlestick that holds nine candles. One for each day of the miracle and the ninth, called the Shamash, which actually means attendant or servant and of course, who is the great servant, but Yeshua/Jesus Himself, who gives light to all of us.
On each of the days, the Shamash candle is lit and used to light the other candles, increasing one each day until the last day, when they are all lit. Gifts are given on each night and chocolate money is given to the children, known as Hanukkah Gelt. Special foods are eaten, usually those cooked in oil to commemorate the miracle, such as Latkes (potato pancakes), and doughnuts and a traditional game is played with a dreidel, a four sided spinning toy.
May His great light and His servant's heart lighten us and cause us to show His presence and His glory to the world that these generations would know the truth about God and that it would set them free to follow Him.
Happy Hanukkah and Merry Christmas, everyone!
Grant Berry is a Jewish believer in Yeshua/Jesus and author of The New Covenant Prophecy and The Ezekiel Generation. He has founded Reconnecting Ministries with the specific focus to help the church reconnect spiritually to Israel and considers it vital to the kingdom of God in the last days. His website is reconnectingministries.org.
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My last series of political thrillers -- The Twelfth Imam, The Tehran Initiativeand Damascus Countdown-- imagined a scenario in which Iran's Shia Muslim leaders, driven by their genocidal belief in End Times Islamic prophecies, built an arsenal of nuclear weapons and set into motion a plan to annihilate Israel and the United States.
Now, my latest political thriller series -- The Third Target (which was published in January 2015), and my forthcoming novel, The First Hostage (which releasesDecember 29th) -- imagines a scenario in which the leaders of ISIS are driven by a Sunni version of genocidal End Times prophecies to capture chemical weapons in Syria and launch a series of horrific attacks against U.S., Israeli, and Sunni Arab leaders. At the heart of the series is a fictional New York Times reporter trying to understand what Apocalyptic Islam is and get ahead of the coming attacks.
As The First Hostage unfolds, ISIS leaders are trying feverishly to draw the U.S. and the Western powers ("the forces of Rome") into a bloody ground war in Syria. Why? In order to fulfill Islamic prophecies about an apocalyptic End Times battle in an obscure Syrian town called Dabiq and establish a global Islamic kingdom or caliphate.
No matter how many speeches I've delivered, or columns and blogs and interviews I've given, it's been challenging, to say the least, to get leaders to focus on the genocidal intentions of our enemies and the Islamic eschatology that is driving them.
That said, I'm encouraged by three recent developments:
The first was the publication in August of an absolutely excellent non-fiction book called,The ISIS Apocalypse: The History, Strategy, and Doomsday Vision of the Islamic State. It was written by a Brookings Institution scholar, Dr. Will McCants. It is extremely well-written and carefully sourced and explains the significance of these Islamic prophecies, including those concerning Dabiq. I have already highly recommend it to various presidential candidates and Members of the House and Senate, and I hope it is widely read among the general public, as well.
The second is that two GOP presidential candidates -- Sen. Marco Rubio and Sen. Rick Santorum -- are speaking out clearly about the threat not just of Radical Islam but specifically of Apocalyptic Islam, including at the recent conference organized by the Republican Jewish Coalition. (to read more, click here) My hope that other candidates and current office-holders, military leaders and intelligence experts will start studying and publicly discussing this matter.
The third source of encouragement -- and amazement -- is a front-page story in theNew York Times this morning, headlined, "U.S. Strategy Seeks To Avoid ISIS Prophecy." I commend it to your attention. Indeed, in reading the article, it was a bit eerie. After all, a real-life New York Times reporter is trying to understand Apocalyptic Islam and is reporting about a possible U.S. showdown with ISIS in the Syrian town of Dabiq, something ripped right out of my novels. Unreal.
Here are a few excerpts:
As the debate on how best to contain the Islamic State continues to rage in Western capitals, the militants themselves have made one point patently clear: They want the United States and its allies to be dragged into a ground war.
In fact, when the United States first invaded Iraq, one of the most enthusiastic proponents of the move was the man who founded the terrorist cell that would one day become the Islamic State, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. He excitedly called the Americans’ 2003 intervention “the Blessed Invasion.”
His reaction — ignored by some, and dismissed as rhetoric by others — points to one of the core beliefs motivating the terrorist group now holding large stretches of Iraq and Syria: The group bases its ideology on prophetic texts stating that Islam will be victorious after an apocalyptic battle to be set off once Western armies come to the region.
Should that invasion happen, the Islamic State not only would be able to declare its prophecy fulfilled, but could also turn the occurrence into a new recruiting drive at the very moment the terrorist group appears to be losing volunteers....
The Islamic State’s propaganda is rife with references to apocalyptic prophecy about the last great battle that sets the stage for the end times. Terrorism experts say it has become a powerful recruiting tool for the group, also known as ISIS or ISIL, which sells potential fighters on the promise that joining will give them the most direct chance to battle Western interests and will bring ancient Islamic prophecies to fruition.
The specific scripture they are referring to describes a battle in Dabiq as well as in al-Amaq, small towns that still exist in northern Syria. The countdown to the apocalypse begins once the “Romans” — a term that militants have now conveniently expanded to include Americans and their allies — set foot in Dabiq...
Fascinating. I'll do my best to keep you posted as this drama unfolds....
"December: a Time of Surprises and the Release of New Gifts" and "Love, Hope and Joy Being Released"
Doug Addison, Los Angeles, CA
The Elijah List
Get ready to cross over into a new time in which things will not go the way they did in the past.
December is going to be a time of surprises and the release of new gifts and revelation. It is going to look strange at times as we are in the midst of a major transition.
Unexpected blessings and deeper insight and revelation are coming. This is a time to pull back and not get too busy. Take time to listen and write down what God is speaking right now. Expect to hear God's voice and to have prophetic dreams between Christmas and the New Year.
The first part of 2016 will start to ramp up and sudden turnarounds will begin to increase.
Expect sudden acceleration and advancement.
Last New Year's Eve
On December 31, 2014 I had a very powerful spiritual encounter. I literally heard audible cries of people who have been wounded by uncaring Christians and leaders. The Lord told me, "Their cries have reached My ears and I must respond."
After this, I began getting more revelation about the new move from God that is going to be for the outcasts and those who have been rejected by Christianity. This is going to start in 2016 with many people who are wounded warriors.
This new order of things is going to look and feel unusual and stretch your understanding of what is possible.
"But with God all things are possible." Matthew 19:26b NIV
The Children of Promise
The spiritual atmosphere is full of expectation right now. Things are pregnant and ready for the birth of something new. But there is a moment of silence just before it happens.
You will need to pause from busyness to capture all that is happening as sometimes it might not be all that dramatic.
God is preparing the ones who have been in a season of obscurity to begin to come forward in 2016.
For many people this has been a painful time of rejection and feeling that they missed God. These wounded warriors are similar to the "children of God" mentioned in Romans 8.
"I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed."Romans 8:18–19
Many people who are going to be part of this next movement have been rejected and wounded and have been in a seven-year wilderness season since 2008. But God has hidden them for this very time to come forward. As this is happening, the earth itself is experiencing birth pains and turmoil.
"We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time." Romans 8:22
Look Back 9 Months Ago
Quite often God will speak to us or release something and it takes time to germinate and form. It is similar to the way a baby comes 9 months after conception. In March 2015, nine months ago, spiritual invitations went out and the wounded warriors and hidden ones began to awaken.
Look back to what started to happen last March but may not have fully taken shape yet in your life. A major verdict happened over the spiritual lives of those who have been hidden and are being called to be part of this next move of God.
Next 9 Months
The next nine months, between December 2015 and September 2016, will be a strategic time of birthing the destiny of many who are called to the next level. Like childbirth, it is often painful and messy and you will be stretched in your understanding of what is possible.
The enemy will try to bring accusations and jealousy against those who are coming forward. You will be able to recognize those who are being promoted by their humility, love and honor.
It will be important for us all to keep in mind that as we cross into this new season we will need to, "Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past"(Isaiah 43:18).
A Prophetic Sign
I got these prophetic words last week and God spoke to me that as a sign of this new movement coming, a baby girl was born to Facebook CEO and billionaires Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan. On the week of Thanksgiving, their daughter Max Chan Zuckerberg was born.
The Zuckerbergs created a fund and pledged to give 99% of its $45 billion to charity to help find cures for diseases and to promote human equality. The Facebook CEO included a letter to his daughter in Tuesday's post. He wrote:
"Max, we love you and feel a great responsibility to leave the world a better place for you and all children. We wish you a life filled with the same love, hope and joy you give us. We can't wait to see what you bring to this world." (Read the full story here.)
The meaning of the name Max is the "greatest." We are about to see one of the greatest moves of God that will bring love, hope and joy to the world.
God moved on the Zuckerbergs to give their wealth to charity and it will indeed help starving people and fund the discovery of cures for diseases. God is moving to release finances into the world and into the Kingdom of God.
Doug Addison is a prophetic dream interpreter, speaker, writer, Life Coach, and stand-up comedian. His high energy, prophetic messages have been shared on television, radio and the internet for over a decade. Doug travels the world bringing a message of love, hope and having fun! His unique style helps people discover their destiny and experience God's supernatural love and power.
Doug releases Daily Prophetic Words online and is the author of several books, including Understand Your Dreams Now: Spiritual Dream Interpretation and Personal Development God's Way. He and his wife Linda live in Los Angeles, California.
Unexpected blessings and deeper insight and revelation are coming. This is a time to pull back and not get too busy. Take time to listen and write down what God is speaking right now. Expect to hear God's voice and to have prophetic dreams between Christmas and the New Year.
God is preparing the ones who have been in a season of obscurity to begin to come forward in 2016. 
I got these prophetic words last week and God spoke to me that as a sign of this new movement coming, a baby girl was born to Facebook CEO and billionaires Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan. On the week of Thanksgiving, their daughter Max Chan Zuckerberg was born.