Dear John and the Doves,
Please accept my brief analysis on the rapidly developing world situation and the End Times:
Now that Damascus has fallen, but is not a ruinous heap just yet, what can we expect to happen next?
Since Syria's former president Bashar al-Assad is now in Moscow, combined with Russia's former military presence in the country and it's interests in the Middle East, it occurs to me that the recent events may give Russia and it's companions a reason to start preparing a ground attack on Syria and thereby on Israel, perhaps not immediately, but after awhile.
If this takes place, then the battle of the Valley of Jehoshaphat, or the Valley of Decision, may be at hand, which to my understanding is not yet the final battle of Armageddon that will take place in connection with the Second Advent of Jesus, but in which nevertheless the Lord himself will protect His People Israel:
3:14 Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision: for the day of the LORD is near in the valley of decision.
3:15 The sun and the moon shall be darkened, and the stars shall withdraw their shining.
3:16 The LORD also shall roar out of Zion, and utter his voice from Jerusalem; and the heavens and the earth shall shake: but the LORD will be the hope of his people, and the strength of the children of Israel.
Joel
See how this compares to the prophecy about Damascus:
17:1 The burden of Damascus. Behold, Damascus is taken away from being a city, and it shall be a ruinous heap.
17:2 The cities of Aroer are forsaken: they shall be for flocks, which shall lie down, and none shall make them afraid.
17:3 The fortress also shall cease from Ephraim, and the kingdom from Damascus, and the remnant of Syria: they shall be as the glory of the children of Israel, saith the LORD of hosts.
17:4 And in that day it shall come to pass, that the glory of Jacob shall be made thin, and the fatness of his flesh shall wax lean.
17:5 And it shall be as when the harvestman gathereth the corn, and reapeth the ears with his arm; and it shall be as he that gathereth ears in the valley of Rephaim.
17:6 Yet gleaning grapes shall be left in it, as the shaking of an olive tree, two or three berries in the top of the uppermost bough, four or five in the outmost fruitful branches thereof, saith the LORD God of Israel.
17:7 At that day shall a man look to his Maker, and his eyes shall have respect to the Holy One of Israel.
17:8 And he shall not look to the altars, the work of his hands, neither shall respect that which his fingers have made, either the groves, or the images.
17:9 In that day shall his strong cities be as a forsaken bough, and an uppermost branch, which they left because of the children of Israel: and there shall be desolation.
17:10 Because thou hast forgotten the God of thy salvation, and hast not been mindful of the rock of thy strength, therefore shalt thou plant pleasant plants, and shalt set it with strange slips:
17:11 In the day shalt thou make thy plant to grow, and in the morning shalt thou make thy seed to flourish: but the harvest shall be a heap in the day of grief and of desperate sorrow.
17:12 Woe to the multitude of many people, which make a noise like the noise of the seas; and to the rushing of nations, that make a rushing like the rushing of mighty waters!
17:13 The nations shall rush like the rushing of many waters: but God shall rebuke them, and they shall flee far off, and shall be chased as the chaff of the mountains before the wind, and like a rolling thing before the whirlwind.
17:14 And behold at eveningtide trouble; and before the morning he is not. This is the portion of them that spoil us, and the lot of them that rob us.
This will be the fulfillment in our days of what Luke describes as synonymous to the Abomination of Desolation, after which the sun and moon will be darkened and Son of Man arrives in the clouds to bring his own home:
21:20 And when ye shall see Jerusalem compassed with armies, then know that the desolation thereof is nigh.
21:21 Then let them which are in Judaea flee to the mountains; and let them which are in the midst of it depart out; and let not them that are in the countries enter thereinto.
...
21:25 And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring;
21:26 Men's hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth: for the powers of heaven shall be shaken.
21:27 And then shall they see the Son of man coming in a cloud with power and great glory.
Luke
This happens when the Lamb, or Jesus, opens the Sixth Seal in the Book of Revelation:
6:12 And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood;
This is when the True Believers in Christ are caught up in the Heaven in the Rapture and His People Israel will be gathered to be nourished by the LORD Himself in the wilderness for time, and times and half a time, the reminder of Daniel Seventieth Week, from the face of the serpent.
Come Lord Jesus!
Yours in Christ,
E.L.