The name Hezbollah has been all over the news. Hezbollah was founded by Iran in 1982 by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). Iran has many proxies in Iraq; however, the three major terror organizations they control are Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis in Yemen. Hezbollah means “Party of Allah,” and it is Iran’s strongest proxy.
Hezbollah has been firing rockets into Israel almost nonstop since October 8th—a day after the Hamas militants stormed into southern Israel and committed its atrocious massacre. Cross-border fighting has gone on almost daily for nearly ten months, as both sides are firing back and forth.
Israel has taken out several key Iranian and Hezbollah leaders during this exchange of fire, and many thousands of Israelis have been displaced in the country’s north. I was reading this week that northern Israel is littered today with what we could call “ghost towns.”
Israel has been fighting against Hamas in Gaza, down to the south, but the ongoing question is: when will this northern front with Hezbollah break out? For ten months now, there’s been a great deal of back and forth, but all-out war has been avoided. Israel and Hezbollah have been pursuing a long campaign of almost “low-level hostilities” along the border. However, last Saturday, it appears that Hezbollah may have gone too far.
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We all saw news of the missile strike in the Golan Heights that killed 12 children between the ages of 10 and 20 who were practicing out on a soccer field. The Hezbollah rocket, fired from Lebanon, hit this soccer field in a Druze-Arab village.
The Druze are a people who live in northern Israel, as well as in Syria and Lebanon. There are about a million Duze people today. They are an Arab sect, considered separate from Islam, that believes in a conglomeration of several religions and philosophies. Really, they are an offshoot of Islam.
Despite Iran denying any connection whatsoever, the deadly rocket that hit the Druze soccer field was unequivocally proven to have been made in Iran. Tehran’s fingerprints are all over this brutal attack.
As mentioned earlier, the missile was fired at a community in the Golan Heights. You may wonder, what is the Golan Heights? The Golan Heights is about a 500 square mile-area in northern Israel that borders Syria. It was captured by Israel in the 1967 war. While it is claimed to be a disputed territory, when Donald Trump was President, it was recognized as part of Israel. Because of its location in proximity to the borders of Lebanon and Syria, it is more accessible to rocket fire.
In light of this missile attack, Israel’s security cabinet approved a military response, giving Prime Minister Netanyahu full leeway to respond to this attack.
CNN has a headline that says, “The Israel-Hezbollah War That No One Wants Could Finally Blow Up.” Hezbollah’s attack could be the final trigger for this war. Prime Minister Netanyahu said on Monday, “Our response is coming, and it will be severe.”
Over the course of a few hours, Israel this week carried out the targeted elimination of Fuad Shukr, Hezbollah’s military chief, who ordered the deadly rocket attack, and Ismail Haniyeh, chairman of Hamas’ Political Bureau, who was in Tehran for the inauguration of Iran’s new President.
The world right now is holding its collective breath. Will Hezbollah unleash a full offensive, and what part might Iran play in this war if it breaks out? Hezbollah has at least 150,000 missiles and rockets pointing south into Israel, and many of those projectiles are locked on Tel Aviv. A war would certainly devastate Lebanon, but would also do serious damage to Israel.
Now, at the same time that Israel is facing this potential Northern Front war with Hezbollah in Lebanon, Turkey is turning up the heat on Israel in a major way. Earlier this week, they issued a threat of invading Israel. This is a stunning development. A headline from Fox News reads, “Turkey’s Erdogan Threatens To Invade Israel Over The War In Gaza, As Regional Tensions Grow.” This is a shocking and significant escalation by Turkey, which is a member of NATO.
Reuters reported:
President Tayyip Erdogan said on Sunday that Turkey might enter Israel as it had done in the past in Libya and Nagorno-Karabakh, though he did not spell out what sort of intervention he was suggesting.
Erdogan, who has been a fierce critic of Israel’s offensive in Gaza, started discussing that war during a speech praising his country’s defence industry.
“We must be very strong so that Israel can’t do these ridiculous things to Palestine. Just like we entered Karabakh, just like we entered Libya, we might do similar to them,” Erdogan told a meeting of his ruling AK Party in his hometown of Rize.
“There is no reason why we cannot do this … We must be strong so that we can take these steps,” Erdogan added in the televised address.
Erdogan has also said that Hamas is not a terrorist organization but instead a “liberation group” who are “waging a battle to protect their land and their people.” Meanwhile, he calls Israel a terror state.
In a statement on Monday, Turkey’s Foreign Ministry compared Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Adolf Hitler, claiming his actions in Gaza are “genocidal.”
I think we can safely say that the Middle East powder keg is being ignited like never before. The fuse of the Gog-Magog war is beginning to burn, and here we see two of the key players heating up that the Bible says will attack Israel in the end times.
In Ezekiel 38:5, we have Persia, modern-day Iran, mentioned, as well as four ancient nations that are located in modern-day Turkey. Iran and Turkey today are in the headlines with the will, the desire, the means, and the motivation to attack Israel. In addition, Hezbollah could easily be part of the “many peoples with you” mentioned in Ezekiel 38:6 that will join Russia, Iran, and Turkey to invade the Jewish State.
Iran wants to attack Israel and invade Israel. They already have, and it’s doing so through its proxy, Hezbollah, as we speak. Now, the President of Turkey is threatening to invade Israel. Russia, of course, is the other key player in all this; they are “Rosh” mentioned in Ezekiel chapter 38. It would take little convincing at this point for these nations to join together to form this coalition.
These developments show that we’re far down the road to the Gog-Magog war, and ultimately, to Armageddon. It’s another sign to us of the nearness of the coming of Jesus Christ. We need to be ready in how we live our lives each day and what we do to prepare for the coming of Jesus Christ.
This article originally appeared on Harbinger’s Daily and is reposted with permission.
Mark Hitchcock is an author, associate professor at Dallas Theological Seminary, Senior Pastor of Faith Bible Church in Oklahoma, and hosts the weekly program “Marking The End Times.”
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Abby Trivett