Chapter 8

No Shortage of Oil

As Saudi-Arabia says,

After John said it in Revelation

Around 2000 years earlier

News 266

The Australian, March 13, 2003

News Radio, March 19, 2003

WHO is invading WHOM ?

While the news report indicates that Iran did not want to take steps of oil assurance that could imply support for the USA, Saudi Arabia among the OPEC nations, had no little certainty to present.

Claiming that it had “plenty” of oil, indeed of SPARE OIL CAPACITY to maintain oil supplies even if a US invasion of Iraq should prevent Iraqi exports (indeed snuff them out), it provided a clear statement, one which in these days of pseudo-diplomacy, stands out for its plain dealing. “The test is, when the need is there, whether we will use the capacity or not and I can assure you we will.” This was from the Saudi Oil Minister, Ali al Naimi.

John in the book of Revelation, with which the Bible closes its revelation, its sole authorisesed written revelation for mankind (SMR), has a surprisingly similar statement to make, and indeed, the similarity is SO STRIKING that this author for one, could not help being more or less instantly reminded of the declaration of Revelation 6 when reading this newspaper report.

Revelation 6 in fact has this to say, at verse 6:

v “And I heard a voice in the midst of the four living creatures saying,

’A quart of wheat for a denarius, and three quart of barley for a denarius,
and do not harm the oil and the wine.’ ”

Despite the macabre oil massacre, when the flow and the smoke was black, black, black and not red, in the Gulf War of 1991, where many billions were needed to restore Kuwaiti oil flow and wells, oil has not become unavailable, or so dear that trips for thousands of miles require one to be rich!

Now the question arises, Will some subtle Arab decide to hold the US to ransom, if the war should be protracted, by making oil an unconscionable price ? No, says Saudi Arabia, that is not the way it is going to be, as far as we are concerned.

However, would Hussein seek to close his wells and bomb those of others ? It would increase rather than diminish his problems and foes.

Revelation 6 has been a matter of some detailed enquiry on this Web page, before. In fact, it will be useful here to set our current interest in the OIL PREDICTION, in its setting in that book, Revelation, by citing a section of Deliverance from Disorientation Ch. 11.

REVELATION 6 IS NOT SURPRISED

If then it is the exact opposite, in what way does it forward the Christian message ? In this, that in prophetic scriptures of Revelation 6 you find a series of calamitous judgments on the earth, involving the reckless renegacy of the human spirit, a sort of spiritual bacterial infection if you will, so that death becomes a way of life, that is, death to others and sometimes even to human bombs with or without airliners attached.

Thus in Revelation 6:4, tracing infections to come, we find that "it was granted to the one who sat on it to take peace from the earth, and that people should kill one another; and there was given him a great sword." To whom was this given ? Why, to the rider on "the fiery red horse."

This was in fulfilment of certain seals being broken on a volume which contained an account of, or orders for, or both, concerning the ages to come. The equine emissions, the chargers which proceeded were symbols of the dynamics, good or evil, and here most evil, to come to the chameleon inhabitants of the earth, changing colour from citizens of the world God made, to impassioned and pliant tools of the devil in numbers that all but make the mind melt. But this is not all.

In a later phase, another such equine charger comes out with a new evil, judgment and stark rebuke to the God-defiant and self-reliant, or idolatrously inflamed denizens of the earth, which make up so large a proportion, whether they worship nature, human nature or other creation.

Here a "pale horse" comes forth, "and the name of him who sat on it was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given to them over a fourth of the earth, to kill with sword, with hunger, with death, and by the beasts of the earth." Some of these creatures may be small^*1, like bacteria, but the hunger and the death are quite straightforward, for those whose ways forward that sort of thing, in their internecine struggles, so amazingly in the name of their religion very often, and more and more manifestly so, in the case of the Muslim 'faith'. Killing with 'death' is a fascinating semantic challenge. What does it mean ?

Perhaps it suggests the sheer prodigy of mathematics involved in this sort of suicidal mission. It is one now becoming more obviously so, as nice religionists decide to blow up children and youth, for example, in whole or in part, to death or to paraplegia, by making themselves into a species of civilian arms raid, casting their own flesh with the bombs, like a kind of stucco onto unadmiring bystanders of their folly.

Perhaps the intention of the biblical text , 'killing with death' here may be phrased as follows. It is like a swath of death, a tragic travesty of death, a sort of lively acquaintance with death, as if not mere murder but death itself were the weapon, an insane seeming, but spiritually produced degradation in many of mankind, so that death becomes the ultimate, a weapon of desire, a far flung malign fragrance of abominable desolation. Americans, bin Laden indicated, want to live; but his people were willing to die, and to kill with death, their own dying bodies becoming the source of death. Indeed, that literally fulfils it.

These predictions, then,  proceed in Ch. 6 of Revelation, till we see a tableau in heaven toward  s the end of this chapter.  What is occurring there ? What is there the scene while such lethal things proceed on earth, such maddened men, reaping the spiritual pathology which comes from ignoring the source and centre of spiritual well-being, the Creator, and the necessary redemption which is a pre-condition for sinful man, before he can know God (the one who made life, that so many so despise in their misguided preoccupations)!

In heaven, we see some of the results of such things. Here in the vision, are beheld the slaughtered saints, those who have died for Christ, "slain for the word of God and for the testimony which they held" . In the safety of heaven, "under the altar", personally covered, each one by His redemptive blood, His atoning death, they show concern. A white robe is given them, while they await the outcome of all these things.

Concerned at the hideous suffering, they ask - HOW LONG must such things go on ?  and are told that they must wait yet a little, for the full number of those of the redeemed have yet to come, the completion of the complement in particular, of those yet to be slain for their faith in Christ.

That of course is being superabundantly fulfilled from the days of the Roman Inquisition (cf. SMR pp. 1032-1088, Beauty of Holiness Chs. 4,  8, Ancient Words, Modern Deeds Ch. 14), to the Islamic Jihad, and in such places as Sudan - apart from the USA now -  where in multitudinous ways, Christians are slaughtered, just as they were also most efficiently in the USSR, the monolith of horror so well exposed by Solzhenitsyn in his One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, First Circle and Gulag Archipelago.

The records of the Chinese nation are also outstanding, in their rather burlesqued version of Communism, now so immersed in what could almost be called capitalism, so rampant is its misuse of freedom on the one hand in various commercial ... liberties, as likewise abuse of it, in intrusions in the affairs of Christians, imprisoning pastors, suppressing worshippers and the like (cf. Beauty of Holiness Ch. 4, News 37, Barbs, Arrows and Balms 18,  and Index, China).

Such is the plethora of death in our globe, that such heavenly visions have unearthly but alas all too worldly fulfilments! It is in the fulfilment, that the orgies of executions and maimings exhibit to the letter the seemingly profuse but clearly predicted accounts of nearly two millenia ago, of events leading to the end of our Age, of mordant things to come, as also summarised in Matthew 24, Luke 21 and such places (cf. Answers to Questions Ch. 5). It is in this way that the insanitary, deadly delusions that make death a slight thing in the interests of land, or pride, or both, or some parallels, continue, and continue as predicted. They rise like waves; they surge like galloping horses.

SUBJECTIVE AND OBJECTIVE OBJECTIVES

In the case of Israel in particular, it proceeds. People are slaughtered and slaughtered like some breach from a band-stand of musicians, maddened, and blowing themselves up amongst the kids. Buses, shopping centres, just the thing! Straight to heaven, they may be told, for such valour against the little ones, or any ones in view, just as the Koran likewise gave such results for the prodigies of adult valour in fighting for the faith, literally!^*2

The objective, then^*1 ?

It is

· 1) Jerusalem in part as a Palestinian capital city and

· 2) a Palestinian State, like a lion's den in the midst of your home, in the heart of Israel. For this, slaughter is the order of the day, and it is to be of civilians, children, youth, yes in buses, school children a specialty, it would appear at times, targeted.

This amiable ploy, seemingly to induce reaction, repression of the violators in order to prevent the violence, leading to international intervention, bargaining of what is left of Israel as a counter-move, and advance, thus proceeds very much on target. It is just that the target is unprotected, civil bodies.

END OF EXCERPT

In our Ch. 11 of Deliverance from Disorientation, emphasis was then laid on the focus on Israel in all this blood; and indeed, the restless Islamic urge so surge and squander the lives of all, including the little ones of Israel is a matter of half a century, including the divinely paid back attack of Colonel Nasser of Egypt, the Hussein of his day, as far as Israel was concerned.

Thus while some Islamic sources speak as if this attack, now impending, is a matter of persecution of Muslims, it is apparent from the genesis of the recent escalation of blood letting, namely Osama bin Laden (cf. Lord of Life Ch. 3, Ch. 8, *1), that his concern was that the USA had HELPED ISRAEL, intolerable to him, and requiring retribution, hatred and focus for war on the land. We must not forget, then, the focus. There is a special reason for Christian Biblical Apologetics to seek this focus, along with bin Laden, because this too is biblical, exhibiting the fulfilment as so often, of prophecy in our own generation, on a large scale (cf. SMR Chs. 8, 9).

While his however is murderous, seeking force to exalt a religion that lacks logical credentials and impose on those who do not follow it, ours is benevolent, in the interests of the love of God and reconciliation with Him. Christ did not come to destroy but to save! (Luke 9).

· “And it came to pass, when the time was come that he should be received up, he stedfastly set his face to go to Jerusalem, ⁵²And sent messengers before his face: and they went, and entered into a village of the Samaritans, to make ready for him. ⁵³And they did not receive him, because his face was as though he would go to Jerusalem.

”⁵⁴And when his disciples James and John saw this, they said, Lord, wilt thou that we command fire to come down from heaven, and consume them, even as Elias did? ⁵⁵But he turned, and rebuked them, and said,

· ‘Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of. ⁵⁶For the Son of man is not come to destroy men’s lives, but to save them.’ ”

As often pointed out, there IS TO BE, whether you read Romans 11 (cf. Biblical Workman Chs. 1 and 3), or Micah 7 or Zechariah 12, 14, or indeed Ezekiel 36-39 (cf. SMR Appendix A), a twofold development concerning Israel upon its return.

· Part of this is to be a concerted series of assaults which will PROVE VERY COSTLY to the assailants, while Israel is not subdued.

· Another is that in the very midst of this series, as it reaches its unhallowed, specialised anti-semitic heights, the Spirit of God is to be poured out on Israel so that in masses, Jews will come back to their own Messiah, their sojourn apart from whom has left them for nearly two millennia, homeless, as they sought to leave Him (that is, as their authorities of that day sought to do so) homeless as to body^*2, though without any success at all, so that in their failure, the Church surged to phenomenal proportions, to become the greatest of the world religions, indeed the only one available for scientific testing, which inimitably and uniquely meets every test, explicit and implicit, and hence what we term a ‘meta-religion’ (cf. A Spiritual Potpourri Ch. 15, *1 ^*3 ).

This is so for many reasons^*4, but not least because in it were supplied

· a PERSON, infallible, glorious, predicted, unassailable (in reputation and works) except by assault (of His body),

· duly provided for in the prophecies about Him, present a millennium ahead of time;

· a book which is eminently testable and gloriously and indefectibly fulfilled; and

· a road map, to use the present term, which enables the Christian to know just where things are, and when the return of Christ is near, which it is, in these most definite of terms (cf. Answers to Questions Ch. 5, SMR Ch. 8).

This too is predicted, this availability of knowledge of the near approach of His, Christ’s return, and this time it is equipped with two millennia of forecast, while indeed the events concerned are happening NOW, and have been since 1948, with the return of Israel and the full dress rehearsal of the end, with the second last Act occurring in the last century, duly, truly and in conspicuous detail. Many are the other reasons, but for this point, this suffices.

Hence as murder becomes the secret weapon, now clearly shown to the world, of the Islamic purist (as the Koran assessment shows cf. More Marvels Ch. 4), though not of course of all Moslems by any means, so does OIL come just as it also was predicted, not showing itself as the crucial or governing feature of war, to reduce it. On the contrary, as Revelation 6 shows so clearly in verses 4 and 8, the inflammable passions of war will burn to excess, like a religious mania, which indeed for many they explicitly are!

v ⁴”Another horse, fiery red, went out. And it was granted to the one who sat on it to take peace from the earth, and that people should kill one another; and there was given to him a great sword.

v ⁵”When He opened the third seal, I heard the third living creature say, “Come and see.” So I looked, and behold, a black horse, and he who sat on it had a pair of scales in his hand. ⁶And I heard a voice in the midst of the four living creatures saying, “A quart of wheat for a denarius, and three quarts of barley for a denarius; and do not harm the oil and the wine.”

v ⁷”When He opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature saying, ‘Come and see.’ ⁸So I looked, and behold, a pale horse. And the name of him who sat on it was Death, and Hades followed with him. And power was given to them over a fourth of the earth, to kill with sword, with hunger, with death, and by the beasts of the earth.

v ⁹”When He opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and for the testimony which they held. ¹⁰And they cried with a loud voice, saying, ‘How long, O Lord, holy and true, until You judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?’ ¹¹Then a white robe was given to each of them; and it was said to them that they should rest a little while longer, until both the number of their fellow servants and their brethren, who would be killed as they were, was completed.

v ¹²”I looked when He opened the sixth seal, and behold, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became like blood.”

(Bold added.)

NOTES

*1 On Wednesday, March 19, 2003, there could be heard on ABC News Radio, a rather lengthy statement from the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia in which he made it perfectly clear that he did not support the war on Iraq, that not one Saudi foot would be on the oil of that land, that ALL, repeat ALL, settlements and results, agreeable to the Saudis, would involve a resolution of the Palestinian ferment: this inevitable, primary and certain.

Speaking of the Iraqis as brothers - with immense ethical and moral implications in view of what Hussein, not therefore seen as fit for removal, has been doing - and keeping that fraternity intact in the face of the enormities of his aggressions, the Saudis, through this governmental voice at least, thus align themselves.

And with what are they so aligned ? It is not at all with the nation which helped so vastly to deliver them from regional turmoil in the Gulf War, when a neighbouring ‘brother’ (?) nation was being actively invaded by Iraq, with no small cruelty, but rather is it with the one whose inflated bombast, whose thousands of dollar rewards to assassins of Jews, quite explicit, is a constant use of murder, even of mere civilians or the young (no exclusion clause is known) for ‘religious’ purposes. In this statement, then, Saudi Arabia is aligned with Iraq, whose explicit announcement during the Gulf War in 1991, was this, that it was STILL (since 1948) at war with Israel.

Thus is the Koran militance exhibited, the intolerance of Israel, the insistence on augmenting the grab of Palestine (expressly mentioned in the Crown Prince address) already carried out in violation of the international agreement confirmed after World War I, of the British Balfour Declaration which appointed Palestine (NOT part of it) to the Jews. This means the furthering of that ludicrous, unjust, violent and vile desire to remove Israel from YET MORE of the Palestine accorded to it, till the fraction becomes little more than a fragment, fulfillilng the ambitious and insurgent desires of Islamic hosts. Hosts ? it is indeed nothing less that affronted the infant Israel from which the UN wanted to remove not only ALL of Jerusalem – making it international – but all cohesion of the bits of land to be ‘given’ to it, like scraps to dogs. It was these hosts, in this first occasion, which by miraculous power, and prophetic statement made some 2500 years ago, Israel, not even a nation at the time, overcame. Read Zechariah 12 and see – one of Israel at such a time, it said, would be as a thousand. SO it was written so it was done.

Who then is invading whom ? While the commercial side of things has been expressly guaranteed by (and for ?) Saudi Arabia, in terms of oil, the intent is still Israel, just as in the case of bin Laden, though with this difference, that it is enough that Islam gets still more of Palestine, and be clear, the emphasis of the Crown Prince IS ISLAM in terms of which he still, amazingly, sees Iraq despite its leadership, record and ways, as a part. Amazing ? this is so only in terms of the peaceable front so many provide: in fact, it is fully in accord with what has been found in the Koran (cf. More Marvels Ch. 4).

Hence the impress of bin Laden which led to the invasion of the USA by that party, however temporarily, yet not inconsequentially, that which specified USA as the source of the trouble because of help to Israel. This America aided in overcoming Islamic insurgencies especially in 1973, which otherwise might have removed that tiny nation of Israel from existence, a sort of partial genocide which no one in the UN seems to mind at all, yes, nor any of the pan-Islamic groups which from time to time advise they will help arm the Palestinians, who indeed might well have a State, but of course not in Israel tiny apportionment, perhaps rather in Jordan which took so much of the ‘Jewish’ Palestine in the beginning.

All proceeds therefore, precisely as in the Biblical prophecy. The hatred of Israel, the efforts to take over Jerusalem as in Zechariah 12, 14, the stormy times, the suffering of those who seek to so confront God who gave to Israel its place, and removed it at His pleasure in discipline only to restore it at His own time, as equally predicted (cf. SMR Appendix A, Ch. 9, Galloping Events Ch. 4), the concentration of wars in the most unpeacable possible way in the Middle East, the abundance of false prophets, the lust for death and its apparent holding to be inconsequential (as often expressly cited to be so by bomb-type incendiarists acting allegedly for someone called Allah, one, but which one ? not the Lord who apportioned things differently, and died rather than damn, so that anyone who believes might have ETERNAL life).

It is all there. In the end ? there is no peace, except perhaps a short delusive time for self-congratulation as in I Thessalonians 5, which serves, like black velvet for the backing of a precious jewel, as the background for “sudden destruction”, yes even as they cry “Peace!”

Not one word fails, but force will fail, and the world will falter and fall, as Armageddon (set in the Middle East!) proceeds on its fateful course.

Not one word of what ? Not one word of the Bible, which alone stands veriable and consummately is verified in all things.

*2 See A Spiritual Potpourri Ch. 15, Endnote 2, SMR Ch. 6, Joyful Jottings 25

.

*3 Indeed the only one available for effective scientific testing, and one which inimitably and uniquely meets every test, explicit and implicit, and hence what we term a ‘meta-religion’ (cf. A Spiritual Potpourri Ch. 15, *1).

*4 See SMR Chs. 1, 3, 10, TMR, and Repent or Perish for example.