UPDATE: Please go here for update as of 2-21-11, as events are moving so fast. Link also includes map.
There has been unrest, regime change, or heavy protesting taking place in Tunisia, Algeria, Egypt, Yemen, Sudan and Lebanon over the last several weeks. Arutz Sheva reports, “With no fewer than five major areas of unrest/revolutions/regime changes going on in the Arab world, Arab satellite television, one of the mainstays of information dissemination in the Middle East, has been playing a major role in communicating news – or attempting, if not to suppress it, then at least to spin it.”
Part of that suppression is Egypt’s decision to shut off internet today in the wake of intensifying protests against the government. The people have been protesting President Hosni Mubarek, Egypt’s President for nearly thirty years. As this Dallas Morning News editorial aptly titled ‘Why we should care about Egypt protests‘ states, “American foreign policy in the Middle East, for the past four decades, has relied heavily on keeping certain dictatorships firmly in power — Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Jordan. We call most of them monarchies, but their rulers are not in power because of any kind of free and fair election. They survive because the U.S. government does everything in its power to keep them there. Despite all of our talk about democracy, it would be America’s (and Israel’s ) worst nightmare if the government of Hosni Mubarak were to suddenly fall from power and be replaced by a democratically elected government that truly represents the will of the Egyptian masses. Because the Egyptian masses are not predictable and could easily be swayed by the populist promises of Islamist parties such as the Muslim Brotherhood. Every single Middle Eastern country with a democratic form of government has experimented with the extremes — even Israel. Eventually, voters learn to moderate their leadership, but it takes time. And when you’re talking about the Middle East’s most populist country with an extremely high poverty rate, it really could take Egyptians a long time to figure out what, exactly they want. In the meantime, Egypt risks lurching back and forth, and an elected Islamist government could well decide, for example, that it’s No. 1 priority is to support its Hamas brothers in neighboring Gaza.”
Unrest and collapsing peace talks in the Middle East are constant and troublesome, but revolutions and prophetic alliances being cemented before our eyes is quite another thing entirely. Tunisia, Algeria, and Sudan are northern tier African countries prophesied to ally with Turkey-Iran-Russia in the Gog-Magog battle Ezekiel describes in chapters 38 and 39. Joel C. Rosenberg discussed a growing concern of the tightening ties between Russia, Iran and Sudan, here.
As we know, last week Lebanon’s government fell because of a governmental coup by the terrorist organization Hezbollah. Hezbollah is backed by Iran and Syria. Tunisia and Algeria are protesting economic hardships and the obvious graft and corruption of wealthy officials in the face of devastating poverty. Additionally, the Israel peace talks are widely acknowledged to have failed this month.
In a short article titled “Winds of Arab revolt reach Yemen” it was stated “Tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets of the Yemeni capital yesterday to demand the end of the three-decade rule of its President in the latest sign of rebellion sweeping the Arab world.”
It seems that unrest, even revolutions, are catching. Yet Jesus told us in Matthew 24:7 that in the Tribulation nation would rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. The word for nation in this context is “ethnos”, or ‘race’. This means that civil war will be a norm in addition to country vs. country kinds of war. It is interesting to note that Yemen and Egypt’s leaders have been in power for about thirty years, Tunisia’s President has been in power for for 22, Yemen’s president for 21 years.
There is a reason all these middle eastern nations are in the news just now. They are prominent in the last days and in the Tribulation. They are biblically prophesied to have a role in God’s continuing plan of redemption and judgment. That they are nearly at the point of fulfilling that role now speaks to how close we are to the rapture.
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