Iraq, Saddam, Bush, Satan and God

There has been much debate about the war in Iraq, the wisdom, or necessity, of going into Iraq as a part of the war on terror, and whether Bush lied. This article is not an attempt to promote any one person or group, or disparage any other. This is actually a pre-9/11 conviction that stretches right into the present. It is an attempt to explain what God has been revealing in my heart over the last twenty some years.

I’ll begin this article in the late 1970s with the fall of the pro-US Shah of Iran. In 1977-78 the Jimmy Carter administration began a policy of promoting individual rights at any cost, similar to the ACLU lawsuits which sue for the rights of an individual even if it infringes on the rights of the majority surrounding that individual. A clear example is a suit against the Boy Scouts to allow homosexual troop leaders. Jimmy Carter focused a lot of his efforts abroad, and in particular Iran. His plan would go so far as to force from power the pro-US Monarchy of the Shah of Iran on the grounds of human rights abuses. The Shah could be classified as a dictator, but he was by no means a ruthless, or even reckless despot. He worked to modernize Iran and grant greater freedoms while simultaneously suppressing any voices of discontent and imprisoning those who opposed him. He was accused of keeping most of the wealth of the nation under the control of family and friends, while working to bring Iran into the twentieth century and bettering the lives of many Iranians. Many Iranians despised him because he was secularizing the government and was pro US and pro Israel.

Carter had no problem with the idea of Ayatollah Khomeini, who enjoyed some popular support among Iranians, as the likely new leader of Iran. In Iran there were three primary, yet disparate, groups that supported Khomeini; those who supported an Islamic state under the dictates of Sharia law; those who in general wanted more freedoms, more choice, free elections, freedom from what they considered a repressive dictatorship and even more westernization; and the Russians, who were seeking to turn Iran against the US and gain greater access into Middle East politics and ideology.

Ironically, it was Jimmy Carters visit to Iran on December 31 of 1977, coupled with the considerable amount of freedom of expression allowed by the Shah, and his repressive style when it came to any dissent leveled against himself and his monarchy that ultimately led to the flight of the Shah from Iran, and the return of Khomeini to Iran to take control of the government. Because of the liberalization of free speech allowed by the Shah, Khomeini was able to communicate from London where he was allowed to live in exile. His communications were constant calls for the people of Iran to reject the Shah. He appealed to Iranians, especially fundamentalist Muslims, to reject everything about the rule of the Shah on the grounds that he had established a secular government, allowed women's rights and acknowledged Israel, along with other things. Many Iranians increasingly heeded those calls. President Carter’s visit sparked protests in the city of Qom where many protesters were shot dead. In the subsequent protests that followed many hundreds more were shot to death as they protested the reign of the Shah. On January 16, 1979 the Shah fled Iran and Khomeini returned to rule on February 1 of that same year. The Iranian Revolution drove the Shah out and returned the Ayatollah without an armed uprising. It was all accomplished by calling on the deep rooted Islamic beliefs that Islam should rule all nations, even if by force, but as a more immediate matter Iran needed to be rescued from the moderate secular rule of the Shah.

After the Khomeini gained power, women lost the rights they had been granted by the Shah, thousands of Soviet and other prisoners were executed, 20,000 pro-western and pro-Shah individuals were executed, the American Embassy was seized on November 4, 1979 when 52 Americans were held for 444 days with Khomeini’s blessings, and most importantly the Iranian Revolution began to be exported to the rest of the world. On September 22, 1980 Saddam Hussein would attack Iran, thinking that he could conquer during a time of instability near the beginning of the Ayatollah's reign. However, Saddam had not counted on the Islamic fanaticism of human waves of Muslim martyr soldiers who pushed the Iraqi army back to a point where the Iranians were able to switch from a defensive stand to an offensive push. Many young Islamic Iranian soldiers volunteered to be martyrs. They ran through the mine fields set up by the Iraqis to explode the mines to provide safe passage to the fighters that followed behind them.

These last points lead me to the reason for discussing the previous historical information. In 1982 the Reagan Administration stepped up support for Saddam and the Iraqi army. Iran was on a “holy” mission of exporting the purest form of Islam­world dominating jihadist Islam­into the rest of the world. Khomeini saw the US as the great Satan and made the US one of his chief targets of vile and hate. Even though Saddam had started the war with the intent of conquering Iran, the Reagan Administration realized the long term consequences of allowing a militant Islamic Iran to capture and control Iraq. In 1988, after half a million deaths between the Iraqi and Iranian armies and civilians, the war ended in a draw with the old borders again intact.

The US government supported Iraq against the Iranians, but what was allowed to slip through the cracks was Saddam's vision of a united Islamic superpower comprised of the exact nations that are outlined in prophecy as the ten nation base of the anti-Christ. That base looks like the ancient Greek Empire when you look at a map. In all of the prophecies of Daniel people have interpreted the four empires of Daniel as being Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece and Rome, and then they have to add a revised Rome to the equation to make that work. The truth is that the prophecies always jumped from Greece to the anti-Christ of the end times, totally skipping over Rome. This coincides with the sixty-nine weeks of Daniel 9 which have been fulfilled in the past, and the seventieth which is still yet to come. There is a void in prophecy which God has filled with the church age of grace. Rome is not a part of Daniel’s prophecies because it fell into the void provided by the current age of grace and forgiveness.

The Beast kingdom will look like Ancient Greece. However, it has nothing to do with modern Greece, but the lands that they conquered. That land stretches from Turkey through Afghanistan and Pakistan, through North Africa and all of the Middle East. Saddam has tried to portray himself as the second coming of Nebuchadnezzar. He even had his image compared to images of Nebuchadnezzar in his attempts to convince the people. He was trying to bring about the kingdom of the beast before its time. He was trying to be Nebuchadnezzar all over again by expanding his kingdom by force and other means. On August 2, 1990 he attacked Kuwait. Iraq owed Kuwait a lot of money, which it had loaned along with many other Middle East nations to Iraq in their support against Iran. Saddam accused Kuwait of horizontal drilling and Kuwait was increasing oil output and driving prices down at a time when Iraq needed to sell their oil for top dollar. In one day Saddam tackled all of these problems, revived the pursuit of his new Babylonian territory, and secured a new source of financing for his military by attacking Kuwait and annexing it.

This is where I must begin to input my personal views, although I do believe that God has been dealing with my heart on these issues for many years. Saddam became president of Iraq in 1979, the same year that Khomeini returned triumphantly to Iran. Khomeini had a hatred for all things not Muslim, especially the US and Israel. However, I always had the deep conviction that Saddam was the greater threat to world security. He was vigorously pursuing nuclear, chemical and conventional weapons, but it was his attempts to revive the glory of the ancient city of Babylon and the maniacal fantasies of a one nation Arab/Muslim Middle East that was the real threat. I had no knowledge of his grand scheme all those years ago, but I did have the deep inner Holy Ghost conviction that there was something very wrong with this man being in power. When the world came together on the behalf of Kuwait, and attacked Iraq on August 2, 1990, I felt that perhaps this was God dealing with the worlds greatest threat in the person of Saddam. However, the world being what it is had no resolve to deal with despots. They liberated Kuwait from a criminal, but allowed the criminal to go free.

Thirteen years later, in the months that led up to the March 20, 2003 invasion of Iraq as a part of the war on terror, there was some evidence that Saddam had revived his programs for weapons of mass destruction; including nuclear weapons. There were some dissenting voices, and the evidence was not strong, but Saddam was thumbing his nose at the world and blocking the inspectors from entering his country. When the inspectors were allowed to enter Iraq for secret inspections their itinerary was known far enough in advance by the Iraqis that the locations to be tested were observed in what appeared to be a pre-inspection makeovers. Nothing significant was ever found, but Russia, France, Germany, Syria and even Iran had every reason in the world to help Iraq cleanse the country of weapons technology. Many of these countries were dealing goods and technology to the Iraqis despite UN sanctions, and in the case of Iran, anything they could do to help a fellow Arab in the war against the great Satan US. There might not have been weapons under development in Iraq, but it is hard to prove unequivocally that they were not there.

Before President Bush ever began to make a point for attacking Iraq, it was in my heart and in my prayers that Saddam would be neutralized by some means. When the notion of attacking Iraq was again presented to the world I felt that perhaps God was about to do that neutralizing. This time, however, the world was against Bush 2. When Bush started to make his case for attacking Saddam I was in agreement, but from the very first time that I heard him make the case on the grounds of nuclear weapons I knew in my spirit that it was going to come back to haunt him. And it has. People have said that it was about the oil, but all we had to do was lift the oil embargo that was placed on Iraq because of their many misdeeds and buy all the oil we wanted. Or we could have bought our fill on the (open) black market that was thriving at the time over Iraqi oil. But we didn’t. Now the Iraqi people own and control the oil and we have to pay like anyone else. The Iraqis are reexamining deals made under Saddam with China, Russia, India and other nations while under embargo and moving ahead with some of them. So much for Bush, Cheney and Haliburton owning the oil fields of Iraq.

Bush recognizes that Al-Qaida and other pure Islamic groups have declared Iraq to be the central war against the non-Muslim world. He has been pushing forward in unconventional ways to protect the people of the US while many people in the US gripe and complain. However, when we fight this war in Iraq we are fighting for the safety of the whole world. Many pure Muslim jihadist groups have been weakened even while recruiting is up. But something else is up also. The numbers of people who are seeing Jesus for the first time and accepting Him as Lord and savior, those who are born-again, in the Middle East and in the Muslim world is increasing. This article is not intended to be a cheerleader for Bush, but, again on a personal note; when I stand before the judgment seat of Christ I expect that I will hear Jesus say to George W Bush, “Well done thou good and faithful servant,” even while others try to point the finger of accusation against him.

In Daniel 10 we see the spiritual princes of Persia and Greecia warring it out with Michael the angel of God as these spiritual princes try to bring their kingdoms into existence. What we have been witnessing in the last decades is the spiritual prince that will bring the final kingdom of the anti-Christ into existence in the Middle East trying to accomplish his goal before his time. God always has a mightier nation to move in the natural world to hold back the full implementation of what Satan is trying to do in the natural world. George Bush may not even know what it is that he is involved with, but I do believe that, “The king’s heart is in the hand of the LORD, as the rivers of water: he turneth it whithersoever he will.” Proverbs 21:1 God has used the US to restrain the KINGDOM OF THE BEAST before its time.

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