The Beast Rises Up From The Sea

Iranian President Ahmadinejad has been a very, very busy boy this week. He declared the Holocaust a myth and said that if the Europeans believed they had killed Jews, then they ought to pay the price, not the Muslims of the Middle East.

He suggested Israel be moved to Alaska.

And, he came right out and told the truth about the movement for Palestinian statehood; that it is not, at all, about geographical territory, but is instead about victory for Islam.

The Muslim Brotherhood, never racists who could, or would allow themselves to be outdone, also got in on the act, proclaiming that Israel is a cancer that will soon be destroyed.

Oh yes, and the Iranian Foreign Minister when asked to clarify Ahmadinejad's remarks, said, Ahmadinejad's words expressed the official view of the government of Iran:

“The words of [president] Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on the Holocaust and on Israel are not personal opinions, nor isolated statements but they express the view of the [Iranian] government."

Pullitzer Prize winning writer, Charles Krauthammer, says Iran is arming itself for Armageddon:

Holocaust denial and calls for Israel’s destruction are commonplace in the Middle East. They can be seen every day on Hezbollah TV, in Syrian media, in Egyptian editorials appearing in semiofficial newspapers. But none of these aspiring mass murderers are on the verge of acquiring nuclear weapons that could do in one afternoon what it took Hitler six years to do: destroy an entire Jewish civilization and extinguish 6 million souls.

Everyone knows where Iran’s nuclear weapons will be aimed. Everyone knows they will be put on Shahab rockets, which have been modified so that they can reach Israel. And everyone knows that if the button is ever pushed, it will be the end of Israel.

But it gets worse.

The president of a country about to go nuclear is a confirmed believer in the coming apocalypse. Like Judaism and Christianity, Shiite Islam has its own version of the messianic return -- the reappearance of the Twelfth Imam. The more devout believers in Iran pray at the Jamkaran mosque, which houses a well from which, some believe, he will emerge.

When Ahmadinejad unexpectedly won the presidential elections, he immediately gave $17 million of government funds to the shrine. Last month Ahmadinejad said publicly that the main mission of the Islamic Revolution is to pave the way for the reappearance of the Twelfth Imam.

And as in some versions of fundamentalist Christianity, the second coming will be accompanied by the usual trials and tribulations, death and destruction. Iranian journalist Hossein Bastani reported Ahmadinejad saying in official meetings that the hidden imam will reappear in two years.

So a Holocaust-denying, virulently anti-Semitic, aspiring genocidist, on the verge of acquiring weapons of the apocalypse, believes that the end is not only near but nearer than the next American presidential election. (Pity the Democrats. They cannot catch a break.) This kind of man would have, to put it gently, less inhibition about starting Armageddon than a normal person. Indeed, with millennial bliss pending, he would have positive incentive to, as they say in Jewish eschatology, hasten the end.

Yes, this is where we find ourselves today.

It looks as if the Beast is rising up out of the ocean. The plans are being laid for the temple to be taken over. The Beast will attempt to set up his abomination of desolation in the very heart of God's land.

Are all these things just quaint old metaphors, or will we allow them to become reality?

Will we allow the man who thinks he is the Mahdi (the Islamic Messiah) to destroy the state of Israel, and claim it for Allah?

Will we allow this maniac to set up his maniacal rule (Sharia) in the land of milk and honey? Will Sharia rule, or will Freedom rule?

We must decide, and soon. The answer to Hitler was always the utter destruction of the Nazi government and ideology. Such, now, is our only choice.