While You Were Sleeping

"Therefore let us not sleep as do others, but let us watch and be sober." 
1 Thessalonians 5:6
*******

The Attributes of a Sleeper:

• He knows nothing, is oblivious of surroundings
• Any knowledge stored up is useless because he is not conscious
• He cannot defend himself
• He is inactive and unproductive...

"Northern Thunder"
Almost two weeks ago
350,000 ground troops...
20,000 tanks...
2,500 fighter jets...
460 helicopters...
positioned themselves in northern Saudi Arabia to invade Syria.  This is an alliance of more than 20 nations led by Saudi Arabia and backed by the United States of America.

---

What strange weather we have had the past few days!  The sun has just hidden itself behind one of a number of snow clouds passing through.  One moment I bask in the warmth of late winter sun...and the next moment confetti snow begins to swirl and dance all around me.  The escalonia just outside my window is still leafless, but soft, furry catkins adorn the willow hedge in the back garden.  Here in Orkney we are suspended between seasons. 

As much as I would prefer to live in denial, my spirit is sensing that the world as we know it is also weathering a change of seasons.  I am returning to this tumultuous reality, after a brief hiatus from 'bad news.'  At times I find myself all but swept away in the avalanche of fulfilled prophecy.

The caustic rebellion which began as 'Arab Spring' in December 2010, has spread like gangrene, carrying death and destruction across northern Africa and the Middle East.  The world has witnessed the realization of Prophetic Words spoken almost three thousand years ago... hundreds of years before the birth of Christ:

"Wail, 'Alas for the day!'  For the day is near, the day of the Lord is near:
It will be a day of clouds, a time of doom for the nations.
A sword shall come upon Egypt..."
(Ezekiel 30:3-4)

"And I will stir up Egyptians against Egyptians, and they will fight, each against another and each against his neighbor, city against city, kingdom against kingdom;
and the spirit of the Egyptians within them will be emptied out...
and I will give over the Egyptians into the hand of a hard master,
and a fierce king will rule over them, declares the Lord God of hosts."
(Isaiah 19:1-4)

How have these prophecies been fulfilled?  Below is an excerpt from an article in World News, dated 18 January 2016:

Five Years On:  Egypt after the Arab Spring
"On July 3, 2013, two years after the beginning of Arab Spring, the head of  Egypt's armed  forces arrested Islamist President Mohammad Morsi and suspended the constitution (does this sound familiar?).  Morsi, who was the first Egyptian president to be democratically elected, is a senior member of the Muslim Brotherhood. 
His presidency was brief and chaotic...
One year after .Morsi's ouster  won the presidency with 97% of votes. 

He has since silenced the opposition, press and NGOs, banned the Muslim Brotherhood, and kidnapped and killed hundreds of demonstrators. 
His policies have been harsher than those of his predecessor. 
The number of journalists imprisoned is at an all time high.
An estimated 40,000 political detainees are in Egyptian prisons!
*******

The current nightmare unfolding in Syria (also a direct result of U.S. engineered destabilization) is another chilling example of prophetic fulfillment.  Sadly, scholars believe that Damascus is/was the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world...

"Behold, Damascus will cease to be a city and will become a heap of ruins.  The cities of Aroer are deserted...the fortress will disappear...and the kingdom from Damascus...Ah, the thunder of many peoples; they thunder like the thundering of the sea!  Ah, the roar of nations; they roar like the roaring of mighty waters!  The nations roar like the roaring of many waters, but He will rebuke them, and they will flee far away, chased like chaff on the mountains before the wind and whirling dust before the storm."  (Isaiah 17:1-3, 12-13)

The ruins of Damascus, Syria

My husband Henry spent several weeks at Christmas providing medical care for Syrian refugees who had been "chased like chaff on the mountains...like dust before the storm."  The precise unfolding of the Prophets' predictions has captivated and disturbed me.  Only an all-knowing, timeless God could inspire such prophecy in minute detail!

Noting the amassing of troops and war machines in northern Saudi Arabia (a group four times the size of the British Army) I began to wonder:  

What's next on the Prophetic Calendar?

The whole world trembles
while the majority of people in the United States slumber,
drunk with the distraction of the ridiculous and inane!

Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has warned that invasion of Syria by the U.S. backed coalition will spark World War III!  Syria appears to be the stage set for a possible showdown between the United States and Russia!  

Yet THIS WEEK Russia, citing the "OPEN SKIES TREATY" (signed in 1992)
has asked permission to begin flying surveillance planes equipped with high powered digital cameras over the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA!

What is next on the Prophetic Calendar?  
I turn the page in my Bible and read the beginning of Isaiah 21:

"Fallen, Fallen is Babylon"

"As whirlwinds in the Negev sweep on,
it comes from the wilderness,
From a terrible land.
A stern vision is told to me;
the traitor betrays,
and the destroyer destroys.
Go up, O Elam;
lay siege, o Media;
all the sighing she has caused I will bring to an end.
Therefore my loins are filled with anguish;
pangs have seized me,
like the pangs of a woman in labor;
I am bowed down so that I cannot hear;
I am dismayed so that I cannot see.
My heart staggers; horror has appalled me...

They prepare the table
they spread the rugs,
they eat, they drink."
(they are oblivious to what is coming, and Isaiah speaks:)

"Arise, O princes
oil the shield!

For the Lord said to me:
'Go, set a watchman;
let him announce what he sees...
let him listen diligently,
very diligently.'
Then he who saw cried out:
'Upon a watchtower I stand, O Lord,
continually by day,
and at my post I am stationed whole nights.
And behold, here come riders...
And he answered,
'Fallen, fallen is Babylon;
and all the carved images of her gods
He has shattered to the ground.'
O my threshed and winnowed one,
what I have heard from the Lord of hosts,
The God of Israel,
I announce to you.'"

Revelation 18:1-8

"After this I saw another angel coming down from heaven, having great authority, and the earth was made bright with his glory.  And he called out with a mighty voice,

'Fallen, fallen is Babylon the Great!
She has become a dwelling place for demons,
a haunt for every unclean spirit,
a haunt for every unclean bird,
a haunt for every unclean and detestable beast.
For all nations have drunk
the wine of the passion of her sexual immorality;
and the kings of the earth have committed immorality with her,
and the merchants of the earth have grown rich
from the power of her luxurious living.'

Then I heard another voice from heaven saying,

Come out of her, my people,
lest you take part in her sins,
lest you share in her plagues;
for her sins are heaped high as heaven,
and God has remembered her iniquities.
Pay her back as she herself has paid back others,
and repay her double for her deeds;
mix a double portion for her in the cup she mixed.
As she glorified herself and lived in luxury,
so give her a like measure of torment and mourning,
since in her heart she says,
'I sit as queen,
I am no widow,
and mourning shall I never see.'
For this reason her plagues will come
IN A SINGLE DAY,
death and mourning and famine,
and she will be burned up with fire;
for
MIGHTY IS THE LORD GOD WHO HAS JUDGED HER."