That was my frequent question to my very pregnant wife during her labor with our two youngest children. I could see the meter registering spasms of pain on her  electronic fetal monitor. My questions were usually answered by “Of course I felt it!”. Similarly, the Bible describes increasing earthquakes in the end times as “labor pains” or “birth pangs”.(Mark 13:8). Do the devastating earthquakes in Haiti, and now in Chile, have any prophetic meaning? Are these earthquakes “labor pains” prior to the end of time, or just random incidents?

Jeremiah in 15:17 said “They keep saying to me, ‘Where is the word of the LORD?  Let it now be fulfilled’ “ Those who don’t believe in God and His Son will raise the same questions in the end times, doubting that prophecy will ever be fulfilled. They will say, "Where is this 'coming' he promised? Ever since our fathers died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation." (II Peter 3:4).  Last week’s quake in Chile actually shifted the axis of the earth, according to NASA scientists (AP, 3/9/10). The shift was only microseconds, but think of the power that it takes to move an entire planet. God was, once again, proving His omnipotence. The recent shift of the earth’s axis is just one more proof of God’s end times power and actions.

At the same time, what has been going on with Israel, the nation the treatment of which will determine the future of the world, according to scripture? For the last two years the 22 member Arab League has avoided any negotiations with Israel. The League cut off contact with Israel after it responded to rockets launched against it by invading Gaza. However, for the last few months the United States has been pressuring Israel and the members of the Arab League to resume negotiations. On Wednesday, after two years of no contact, the Arab League members voted to resume negotiations with Israel, hoping to convince Israel to give up the land Israel obtained when it was attacked in 1967. In voting for the resumption, the League affirmed that US pressure led to the change: “The American administration’s current direction for serious involvement in the peace process is a positive manner and a window of opportunity that can be built upon”, said Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Mouallam on Egyptian state television. Other League members, according to the New York Times, said that the vote was “a reaction to the sustained United States diplomatic efforts”. (NYT, 3/3/10).

What does this tell us? First, America is exerting maximum pressure on Israel to give up its God-given land, contrary to scripture. Second, America has quite obviously convinced the members of the Arab League that the US will be able to push Israel into surrendering its land to Palestinians. Otherwise, why would the 22 Arab nations agree this week to re-start negotiations with their hated enemy? Why should we care? “Those who bless Israel will be blessed and those who curse Israel will be cursed”. (Gen. 12:3). Unfortunately, our nation is embarked upon a regular, persistent and persuasive effort to make God’s chosen nation give up the land that He said not to give up. We will certainly pay the price for doing so.   

Grocery shelves empty. Electricity out. Government agencies shut down. Transportation crippled. Is this week’s east coast “Snowmageddon” also, like Haiti, a small preview of a larger catastrophe that America can expect to experience after it stabs Israel in the back and refuses to come to its defense? The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday featured a front page picture of empty shelves in the produce section of a grocery in Virginia. One commentator, upon first seeing the picture in the WSJ, said he thought it was a picture taken in Russia. Food, and the increasing lack of food, will be the major human problem encountered by the people living in the Daughter of Babylon/America once it betrays Israel.

Israel was in the news, as it usually is, all week, as the media focused on Iran’s threats that it would shock the world on February 11^th, the regime’s 31^st annual founding day. Iran, identified in the Bible as Persia, the land of the Medes – its original name – announced that it was now a “nuclear nation.” Jeremiah prophetically told us: “Make bright the arrows; gather the shields: the LORD hath raised up the spirit of the kings of the Medes: for his device is against Babylon, to destroy it; because it is the vengeance of the LORD,….” (Jeremiah 51:11). Not only will Iran invade Israel, along with Russia (Ezekiel 38 and 39), it will also be used by God to destroy the nation that betrays Israel, His chosen people. So, Iran’s announcement today, which some derided, is significant, because Iran has confirmed what many have known for some time that Iran/Persia/Land of the Medes is now in the “Nuclear Club”, and will soon be able to produce nuclear weapons. In 2007 Russia’s Vladimir Putin became the first leader of Russia to pay a state visit to Iran. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran’s Muslim President, met with Putin. It’s doubtful that they spent their time together discussing global warming. The Lord looked down through time to the collaboration between Russia and Iran, and inspired Ezekiel to write about what would come. Today, as Iran confirmed that they have/will have the ability to engage in nuclear war, more clues of the end times mystery came into place. We live in interesting times.