There's a lot of stuff going on now that people regard as end-times related, specifically things going on in the Middle East that obviously concern the whole world. It's good to know that the Lord has a plan and that He knows what's going on and that none of this stuff gets past Him.

People are wondering whether or not we are actually engaged in World War III or not. I thought about that quite a bit. It's an appropriate question because that's one of the things that's been going around on the news from some time. There are always people in the media who poo-poo idea that something big is going on. The current situation in the Middle East has been compared by those in a position to know, to what happened right before World War II.

If you are familiar with history, the Prime Minister of France, Philippe Petain was in a situation where he was trying to appease Adolph Hitler, to the point where he gave away whole countries. I doubt that the man knew that this maniac was going to try to dominate the whole planet and blow up whatever he wanted. Once Hitler was appeased, Hitler became bolder and invaded Poland and the war was on with a vengeance.

The British people endured a lot of suffering due to bad decisions on the part of their leadership because they thought that their enemies were just like them, and they were not. We have a similar situation going on right now.

World War II ushered in the awfulness of atomic warfare. North Korea now has nuclear capability and Iran will soon have it as well. Their heavy water facility is nearly completed. There's only one reason for having such a facility. Defense and weapons analysts have been saying for decades that World War III will start in the Middle East. That position has not changed at all and has very much intensified over time.

I'm just your average person, and I haven't been fooled from the first moment I found out that Iran was building a nuclear "power plant." When you have all of the oil energy you'll ever need, you don't need a nuclear power station, do you? I instantly, and I mean instantly realized that they were not being truthful and that they would have every intention of creating nuclear weapons to use against their enemies, most specifically Israel. Israel knocked out Iraq's nuclear facilities before they could be used one way or another by Saddam Hussein, for which the world should be thankful.

The situation is a little different for Israel now. It's a lot hotter. Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said, "As the Imam said, Israel must be wiped off the map." He has said that the Holocaust was myth. He has made such inflammatory statements on several occasions in public and has not retracted them or offered any apology. He believes it is true. He wants to be part of it. I can't see where his statements have made the rest of the world that nervous. I would have thought there would have been a huge outcry against this man, though I think when you are dealing with egomaniacal types, calmer heads must prevail. Calm, but not inactive.

So are we in the middle of World War III? Lots of pundits and military analysts would say so. They are saying that it's a war between civilizations, that it's a war between Islam and the rest of western civilization. I don't see it that way. I see it like this; there are some extremist Islamic fundamentalists that blew up some buildings here and killed thousands of our people, and they need to be stopped, and it's better to stop them over in their countries instead of in ours.

However, that is not how radical Islam sees it. They do see it as a battle between civilizations, theirs and western civilization and they're pursuing it that way. One of the things that we need to remember about these people is that when the news media tends to go to more moderate, liberal Islamics, and most of the media is not supplying a complete picture of what is going on in the Middle East.

For example, when the towers went down, the media didn't show the vast majority of the Palestinian people celebrating in the streets of the West Bank in Gaza. They did not show the many people in the streets of Syria and Lebanon and other countries celebrating in the streets. I'm not saying there isn't a distinction between Islamic groups here, but the ones that we should be concerned with are the ones that want to blow us all up or see us all decapitated.

If you are a fundamentalist Islamic you are going to believe and practice the teachings of Muhammad, and you are not going to believe and practice the early teachings of Muhammad, because they are circumvented by the later teachings of Muhammad. The early teachings of Muhammad said that Islam were people of the Book, meaning the Bible, and that included the Jews and that they were to be reached out to. The later teachings of Muhammad said that everybody outside of Islam, especially the Jews, are to be plagued, killed or maimed.

In this day and age, we can see across the globe via television. We can see what Arab nations broadcast on their stations. These are mostly government sponsored stations, and they broadcast cleric's messages. They have guys waving swords saying that they need to cut off the heads of Americans. I'm glad that my pastor doesn't wave a sword around on Sundays saying that we need to cut off the heads of the unbelieving. That's what the Muslim clerics are doing, and the guys at these meetings are cheering.

Their are radicals and there are moderates in Islam, and the moderates have no power in the religion. The guys wielding the swords have the power in that religion. The moderates are not going to go up against them.

It's the same way with the nations of the world. Most of Europe are allowing Israel and the United States to take care of by proxy, situations that they don't want to take care of. When the President of Iran today essentially said that he thinks the west (the United States) will back off of the threat to stop Iran's nuclear progression, he is really saying that if we try to do anything about it he will shoot some missiles into Tel-Aviv and blow it up.

Israel is very frightened that if the United States doesn't do something soon, (probably before March) that they will have to do something pre-emptive themselves. What would probably happen then? The world is largely anti-Semitic, and Israel has many enemies. The IDF is taking these things seriously. Is the rest of the world? I hope so. When will enough children have been maimed and killed to satisfy the insane anger of old men?