A terror attack in Connecticut, Hurricane Nicole heads for Bermuda, and Russia cutting
deals for new military bases around the world.
It's Skywatch TV for Thursday, October 13, 2016.
I'm Derek Gilbert.
Next up, the USS Mason was fired on again by Iran-backed Houdi rebels in Yemen.
That's the second time this week.
The guided missile destroyer was targeted again Wednesday night by at least one incoming
missile.
The destroyer fired countermeasures, not sure whether the countermeasures took the missile
down or it just went off target.
The Mason fired three missiles in self-defense Sunday night during the first attack.
Again, not sure if the anti-missile missiles were effective or if the rebels' aim was
bad.
Intelligence sources believe that these missiles were supplied to the rebels by Iran, and not
just anti-ship missiles, but also SCUD-D surface-to-surface missiles, which have a range of about 500
miles.
The anti-ship missiles, as we've reported earlier this week, have a range of about 75
miles.
That's more than enough to cover the Bob Elkman-Deb Strait, which connects the Red Sea to the
Indian Ocean.
Somehow Israeli, Saudi, American intelligence missed the shipment of these missiles from
Iran to Yemen, and also the construction of three missile batteries on the coast.
This would put about a third of the oil exports from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates
at risk.
Now, we're learning this morning that last night the U.S. Navy targeted those missile
batteries and radar installations with missiles, the idea being to keep the rebels from being
able to shoot at shipping going through the Bob Elkman-Deb Strait.
Meanwhile, Russia has been taking tough talk from American politicians seriously.
That's one thing to play to the home crowd, but Moscow also hears what our politicians
are saying, and apparently the Kremlin is not amused.
Analysts who are looking at what Russia's been doing lately are, for example, deploying
those advanced anti-missile missiles in Syria or the anti-aircraft missiles.
First time they've ever been used outside Russia's borders.
They are analyzing this and interpreting this as Vladimir Putin gambling that it would
be better to risk a confrontation with the United States over Syria right now rather
than in January because it appears that, well, he may believe he could deal with somebody
more reasonable now than after Inauguration Day.
One of the candidates is called for talking to Russia, trying to work together to eliminate
ISIS, whereas the other candidate is called for setting up a no-fly zone over Syria, which
could potentially mean shooting down Russian aircraft and backed regime change for a couple
of Russian allies, Bashar al-Assad in Syria, who's still hanging on.
In Ukraine, former President Viktor Yanukovych, who was run out of the country a couple of
years ago with the help of the United States and NATO, part of a long-time plan by candidate
number two to bring NATO right up to Russia's borders by admitting Ukraine, Putin may feel
that he's got a better chance of dealing with somebody reasonable today than after Inauguration
Day.
And to that end, the Russians not only getting more aggressive in Syria, but cutting deals
to set up military bases around the world.
How do you escape the encroachment or the encirclement of America's military bases around
your country?
You expand your military footprint.
Russia negotiating a deal with Egypt to set up a new base there, also talking to Vietnam
and Cuba.
Remember what happened last time.
Now, people who rely on the mainstream media for news about what's going on between the
United States and Russia are not getting a balanced report, surprise, surprise.
Most of the major U.S. media is cheering on the hawks in Washington, D.C. as if setting
up a no-fly zone is just a matter of putting up a few signs that no trespassing.
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine Corps General Joseph Dunford, says
a no-fly zone over Syria would be an act of war against Russia.
That has to be top of mind when we're considering what to do.
And yet, liberal media pundits from the New York Times to Vice News to the Huffington Post
to the Daily Beast are all agitating for more military intervention in Syria as if there's
no risk not just to the soldiers on the ground, which certainly there is.
I mean, it's bad enough that they're advocating to put other people's children in harm's
way.
But we're dealing with a country that is intercontinental ballistic nuclear missiles.
Perhaps a little more caution would be wise in this case.
Has anyone noticed that the Democrats, the liberals in America have become the war party
all of a sudden?
Now, to be fair, Republicans are on board with this, too.
In reality, what we have in Washington, D.C. is a bifactional war party, by which I mean
they will go to whichever of the two major parties is most likely to go along with their
foreign policy.
We think of the neocons as being Republicans, but the neocons who really came to power during
the George H.W. Bush administration were Democrats until they realized the Democrats weren't
going to go along with their anti-Russia pro-war strategy.
And they switched over to the Republican Party during the Reagan administration, really came
to power under George H.W. Bush.
The reason so many of these neocons, as Hillary Clinton is proud to say, are switching parties
is because they perceive she will be more likely to continue their endless war.
We're watching a slow-motion train wreck.
Unless cooler heads prevail here, the war that our parents and grandparents lost sleep
over during the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations may be on us before we realize it.
Pray and pray hard.
By the time you see this report, Hurricane Nicole will be on top of Bermuda, battering
it with 125-mile-an-hour winds as a category two storm as of Wednesday night, expected
to dump at least eight inches of rain on the island.
Back to the Republican-Democrat thing, I'm glad to report there are at least some things
that the two major parties can still agree on.
A bipartisan group of American lawmakers is leading an effort to stop UNESCO, that's
the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization, from passing a resolution
that would redefine Jerusalem's Temple Mount and Western Wall as holy Muslim sites, renaming
them Al-Aqsa Mosque and Al-Barak.
And to give you an idea of where UNESCO is leaning with this resolution, their draft
actually puts the words Temple Mount between scare quotes.
Well, speaking of Jerusalem, I mentioned that Yom Kippur, the day of atonement, was yesterday
actually from sundown Tuesday until sundown Wednesday.
Yesterday was also the day of the Shia Muslim Festival called Ashura.
This mourns the death of Imam Hussein, who was the grandson of Muhammad, killed at the
Battle of Karbala in 680.
Sunnis follow the caliph.
Shias believe that Hussein was the last legal, if you will, or authentic leader of Islam.
This festival is celebrated by Shia Muslims around the world in very, well, gruesome fashion,
usually for men and boys, by cutting themselves with knives, swords and other sharp objects.
And I should warn you that these pictures, by the way, are disturbing, so you may want
to fast forward through the next couple of photos before we get to them, but I'm trying
to make a point here about the nature, the source of this particular sect.
The Washington Post headline talking about the story about this festival calls it, and
I quote, one of the most emotional events in Islam, emotional events in Islam.
That isn't the word I would choose to describe it.
I think if you substitute the word demonic for emotional, you're a lot closer to it.
Human bloodletting has been part of pagan rituals for thousands of years.
I mean, the priests of Baal on Mount Carmel, confronted by Elijah, when Baal wouldn't
answer them, cut themselves, let the blood flow.
But this probably goes back much farther than that, because all the way back to the time
of Noah, more than 5,000 years ago, possibly 6,000 years ago, God told Noah that no one
was to shed human blood, that there would be a reckoning for anyone or any animal even
that shed human blood, because blood is the life.
God wasn't inventing something that people weren't already doing.
He was telling Noah to tell his children and then to pass on to humans as they repopulated
the earth, don't spill human blood.
And yet pagan religions over and over again, make that an essential part of their rituals.
It continues to this day in the form of Eshura and other rites around the world.
And in Germany, the federal agency responsible for vetting immigrants admits that they're
letting migrants in, even when they know their passports and IDs have been forged.
This is especially relevant because of the migrant crisis caused by the civil war in
Syria.
According to reports, more than 1% of the documents provided by immigrants to officials
in Germany have been forged.
Now, it doesn't sound like much, but according to the information released by German press
yesterday, out of 217,000 passports, birth certificates and driver's licenses processed
by the Bureau in charge of vetting immigrants, more than 2,200 of them were fake.
That's a lot of people, especially if they've a mind to misbehave.
And remember, earlier this year, the French Interior Minister said that the Islamic State
has created an entire industry around creating false documents.
And that's a warning for us here in the United States, too.
The crash of a small plane in Connecticut Tuesday was reportedly an intentional act.
That's the conclusion of the National Transportation Security Board.
The plane piloted by a Jordanian national, Farras M. Freitach.
He came to the U.S. on a student visa in 2012 to learn how to fly.
It's not clear if he was still in the country illegally or legally, rather, at the time
of the crash.
Freitach was killed when the plane went down.
His motive isn't clear, but a survivor of the crash, a flight instructor who was hospitalized
with serious injuries, told authorities that the crash was intentional.
The FBI is investigating this as a potential terror act because the plane crashed near
a Pratt & Whitney factory.
Pratt & Whitney makes aviation parts for the military.
It's classified as crucial or critical infrastructure by the United States government.
The creepy clown craze has crossed the ocean.
They've been spotted in a number of cities across the United Kingdom.
Fifty-nine sightings in Kent, which is southeast England, alone in Northumbria, which is northeastern
England.
Police are urging costume shops not to even sell or rent clown costumes.
In London, New Scotland Yard put out a press release Tuesday, three of the incidents there
considered criminal offenses.
One man assaulted by a clown with a knife cut his hand down to the bone.
He's going to leave him with a permanent disability.
There is a spirit at work here, taking a concept intended to entertain and amuse, especially
children, and turning it into something monstrous.
It's not funny.
If you're old enough, like me, and you're from Chicago, like me especially, you remember
this guy, John Wayne Gacy, aka Pogo the Clown.
He assaulted and murdered at least 33 teenage boys and young men during the 1970s.
This spirit behind this creepy clown craze, it's demonic.
Something normally perceived as harmless and innocent, and twisting it into something
evil and deadly.
One final note, comments yesterday on amillennialism.
I had wanted to make a point yesterday that we Christians, believers, should be a little
more gracious to one another, and I'll say why.
If you look at the apostles in the Scriptures, you'll notice that they didn't really understand
the nature of the Messiah's mission, even though they walked alongside him for three
years prior to his crucifixion, and even 40 days after his resurrection in Acts chapter
1, they were still asking him, would you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?
They were looking for a political and military savior.
They didn't get it.
But the apostle Paul writes in 1 Corinthians that if the rulers of this world, and the
word he uses, archons, he was talking about spiritual entities, if they had understood
the mystery that God was revealing, they would never have crucified the Lord of glory.
They didn't understand his mission, the principalities and powers, the supernatural entities arrayed
against us who seek to destroy us.
They didn't get it, and that was by God's design.
The prophecies in the Old Testament of the Messiah's first coming were sufficiently obscured
that they didn't get it, and that was God's plan.
So I suspect the prophecies of Messiah's second coming are not any more clear to us
than they were to the apostles, and so we should be a little more gracious to one another
because we probably won't understand them until we, like the apostles on the day of
Pentecost and after, can view Messiah's return in the rearview mirror.
That was the point I was trying to make.
Well, unfortunately, I kind of obscured that point by giving a description of Amillennialism
and I painted with a very broad brush.
Now there are very different flavors of Amillennialism, case in point, the couple of emails that
I received from people who believe, hold an Amillennial worldview, who were correct in
saying I did not correctly characterize what they believe, but neither of the two of them
didn't agree with each other either.
But again, that was beside the point.
I shouldn't have even brought it up, and so I apologize for mischaracterizing what Amillennialists
believe because I was too general.
Not all of them believe the same thing, just as all Premillennialists don't believe the
same thing.
Pre-trib, post-trib, mid-trib, pre-rat, numerous flavors.
The point was, at the marriage supper of the Lamb, God's probably going to sit us all down
and say, none of you had it right, and so again, we should just be a little more gracious
with one another when we gather to discuss.
Let iron sharpen iron, but let's try not to create too many sparks.
This week on Skywatch TV, a powerful discussion with John Schlitt, legendary lead singer of
the band Petra, really broke the mold for contemporary Christian music back in the 80s.
He talks about his disc, The Grafting, which is really heartfelt.
It's a tribute, he said, to the women who gave up children for adoption.
Those children who became his first five grandchildren, adopted into his family, gave them up rather
than terminating them.
The Grafting, the video, you will see it during the program, it packs an emotional punch.
The program will air at 6.30 tonight, Central Time, on Kalamazoo, Michigan, WLLA television
there, and then Saturday night, the Victory Television Network in Arkansas at 3.30 p.m.
Saturday afternoon, 6.30 p.m. Central Time, WCLF Tampa, available now on demand, the Skywatch
TV channel on Roku and on YouTube.
This week, a web exclusive interview, couldn't fit it into the network television schedule,
but a filmmaker with a unique perspective and a unique style, really sets him apart
in the world of Christian documentary films.
Trey Smith joins us to talk about his God in a Nutshell project.
You'll see that, again, only on the web, web exclusive from Skywatch TV at skywatchtv.com
and Skywatch TV channel on Roku and YouTube.
By the way, today being Thursday, a new episode of Into the Multiverse available as well, check
it out, skywatchtv.com or the Skywatch TV channels on Roku and YouTube.
And of course, if you need a portable version, the Skywatch TV podcast is for you, audio versions
of all of our programs available to listen while you work.
You can find it online at skywatchtv.com, click the top menu bar where it says podcast.
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You might ask, well, thanks for asking, DerekPGilbert.com, where we've got an interview now with Islamic
eschatology expert Dr. Timothy Furnish.
What do Sunni Muslims believe and why is the coming battle of Dabak Syria so important?
Well, to them, they believe it kicks off the end times and the Mahdi's return to lead
them to global victorious jihad.
They truly believe it.
Why do we in the West have such a hard time accepting that they truly believe what they
say they believe?
Dr. Furnish explains, you'll find that at DerekPGilbert.com.
My email address for your comments, questions and suggestions, DGilbert at skywatchtv.com.
Thank you for watching as we keep watch.
I'm Derek Gilbert and this is Skywatch TV.
Can you sing the blues with a heart full of joy?
The answer is yes, because as you may know all too well.
The joy that comes from accepting Jesus Christ only follows after you've been broken for
good.
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