By Christine Darg

Israel continues to retaliate against a constant barrage of increasingly dangerous rockets from Gaza, the Hamas-ruled enclave, as this Israel Defense Forces artwork illustrates. A ground invasion into the Gaza Strip is being prepared.

Serious developments include threats by Hamas to target Israel’s international airport, and the terrorist organization has launched three rockets aimed at a nuclear reactor in Dimona, Israel, this week. Israel’s Iron Dome defense system shot down one of the rockets, and the other two missiles missed their target. Intercessors, keep praying: a potential disaster was averted.

Although offensives by Israel against terrorists in the Gaza Strip have been happening from time to time ever since Israel withdrew from the Gaza (in the illusive hope of peace), the Iranian-backed Hamas arsenal now includes rockets, some Syrian, that are more dangerous. These missiles can hit the capital Jerusalem and Tel Aviv from the Gaza Strip.

Hamas is still officially recognized as a terrorist organization by the United States, the European Union, Japan, Canada, but support for Israel from the United States’ Administration is waning by the day.  God is allowing Israel to be more and more isolated as he is determined to bring Israel totally to himself.

Despite constant accusations of being the overbearing aggressor, Israel humanely continues to send warnings to the civilian population before targeting terrorists, who hide in crowded neighborhoods, using women and children as human shields.

The noted American philosopher Eric Hoffer observed: “I have a premonition that will not leave me. As it goes with Israel, so will it go with all of us. Should Israel perish the Holocaust will be upon us.” (quoted from Los Angeles Times by Mark Steyn in his book, “After America”)

As the world seems to be unravelling from the Mideast outwards, pray for the minimum shedding of blood. Those who understand the times know that these events, intifadas and shakings are the birth pains of Messiah.

Pray and proclaim Zechariah 12: 1-3

A prophecy: The word of the Lord concerning Israel.

The Lord, who stretches out the heavens, who lays the foundation of the earth, and who forms the human spirit within a person, declares: “I am going to make Jerusalem a cup that sends all the surrounding peoples reeling. Judah will be besieged as well as Jerusalem.  On that day, when all the nations of the earth are gathered against her, I will make Jerusalem an immovable rock for all the nations. All who try to move it will injure themselves.