Jackson said nothing. He had no idea what to say or do. Part of him knew Allen was right. They had a very narrow window to take action, if they were going to take action at all. But how could he justify killing two leaders in one strike when neither had directly attacked the United States of America? Some in Washington believed in the doctrine of preemption, but Jackson had risen to political power opposing such a doctrine with every fiber of his being. His critics berated him for being “in over his head.” If he didn’t move decisively now, they would have a field day at his expense. The political price to him and his administration could be catastrophic. But if he ordered a military strike, wouldn’t he be ceding the very principle over which he had taken Naphtali to the woodshed?
Even as he considered his rapidly shrinking set of options and weighed the costs of each, a news flash was scrolling across the bottom of the screen on CNN. “EXCLUSIVE: CNN has learned that five Iranian children in Tehran have been killed in an Israeli missile strike…. Ayatollah Hosseini has denounced Israel for ‘stepping over a line’ and has vowed to ‘accelerate the collapse of the Zionist entity’ by turning Israel into a ‘crematorium.’… Israeli leaders have not yet commented on the record, but one unnamed senior military official told CNN that it was possible there had been a ‘mistake’ and the IDF was ‘taking a careful look at the accusation.’”
Jackson’s knuckles were white as they gripped the armrests of his chair. Events were rapidly spiraling out of control. It was not difficult to imagine the Mahdi launching nuclear missiles at Israel — possibly dozens of them — from Pakistan at any moment. His own press conference, therefore, was obviously off. Jackson couldn’t possibly go out there now and denounce the Israelis and call for a cease-fire. He couldn’t threaten to side with the Russians and the Chinese at the United Nations and support a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning Israel for its “targeting of civilians.” That had been his plan. But in an instant the dynamic had changed, and Jackson felt paralyzed, entirely unsure what to do next and bitterly aware that time was not on his side.
39
Dr. Birjandi stopped praying, got off his knees, rose to his feet, and began pacing the guest room, trying to get his mind around the enormity of what the Lord had just revealed to him. The end of Damascus had come. Indeed, its utter destruction was imminent.
The Lord had spoken to him from two Old Testament passages — Isaiah 17 and Jeremiah 49. As Birjandi padded back and forth from one end of his little guest suite to the other, the old man chastised himself for being so focused on teaching his disciples about the prophetic future of Iran that he had failed to ponder the prophetic future of Syria. In his defense, of course, it was only in the last few hours that he had even considered the possibility that Syria was going to be a critical element in this war. So far President Mustafa had not launched an all-out offensive against the Israelis, and Birjandi’s thoughts had thus far not been drawn to the Syrian leader or the Syrian capital. But now that he was here, and now that the Lord had opened his eyes and allowed him to see a glimpse of what was coming, it was all beginning to make sense, and Birjandi’s fragile heart was racing.
“‘The oracle concerning Damascus,’” Birjandi muttered to himself, reciting Isaiah 17:1. “Behold, Damascus is about to be removed from being a city and will become a fallen ruin,” the Lord God Almighty had declared through his prophet. The next few verses then revealed that the “fortified city” and the “sovereignty” of Damascus would “disappear” and “fade.”
Souri had once read to him another translation of the first few verses of Isaiah 17, and these were even more clear.
A Message concerning Damascus: “Watch this: Damascus undone as a city, a pile of dust and rubble! Her towns emptied of people. The sheep and goats will move in and take over the towns as if they owned them — which they will!… Not a trace of government left in Damascus.”
As Birjandi then recalled the prophecies of Jeremiah 49:23–27 from memory, he found them just as chilling.
Concerning Damascus. “Hamath and Arpad are put to shame, for they have heard bad news; they are disheartened. There is anxiety by the sea, it cannot be calmed. Damascus has become helpless; she has turned away to flee, and panic has gripped her; distress and pangs have taken hold of her like a woman in childbirth. How the city of praise has not been deserted, the town of My joy! Therefore, her young men will fall in her streets, and all the men of war will be silenced in that day,” declares the Lord of hosts. “I will set fire to the wall of Damascus, and it will devour the fortified towers of Ben-hadad.”
Not once but twice in the Holy Scriptures, the Lord had foretold the utter and complete future destruction of Damascus. The second of the prophecies clearly indicated the destruction would come by fire. Yet neither prophecy had ever been fulfilled. Yes, Damascus had been attacked and conquered numerous times throughout history, but it had never been utterly destroyed and made uninhabitable. To the contrary, Birjandi knew that Damascus was one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities on the planet, if not the oldest.
As Birjandi considered both texts, he found it odd that neither passage gave a direct indication of when the prophecies would come to pass. The prophecies of Ezekiel 38 and 39, by contrast, said Iran’s military (among others) would be judged by the God of Israel in “the last days” of history. Indeed, the prophecies of Jeremiah 49:34–39—also about the future judgment of Iran’s leaders — were specifically described as happening in “the last days.” Yet as Birjandi reviewed the prophecies regarding Damascus again and again, he found no specific time reference in either passage.
Still, what was important, Birjandi reminded himself, was the context of both prophecies. The thirteenth chapter of Isaiah through at least the nineteenth chapter were all End Times prophecies, as far as Birjandi could tell. Isaiah 13 was about the future destruction of Babylon, and at least twice in that chapter the Hebrew prophet made reference to “the day of the Lord,” saying it was “near” and “coming,” indicating that these events would occur near but prior to the literal, physical, actual second coming of Jesus Christ back to earth. Isaiah 19, meanwhile, was about the coming judgment of Egypt followed by a tremendous spiritual awakening in Egypt in the End Times. Indeed, one of Birjandi’s favorite passages of Scripture, one that gave him hope for the future of the Middle East, was the last few verses of Isaiah 19, in which the Lord declared that after a time of tyranny in Egypt and subsequent judgment, “the Lord will strike Egypt, striking but healing; so they will return to the Lord, and He will respond to them and will heal them.” What a blessed future that foretold.
The same was true about Jeremiah’s prophecies. The forty-ninth chapter through the fifty-first chapter of Jeremiah all described events the Hebrew prophet indicated would occur in the “last days,” from the judgment of the leaders of Damascus and Iran to the judgment of Babylon in the final days of history before the return of Jesus Christ.
Birjandi was well aware that not every prophecy scholar agreed about such things. Indeed, while his wife was still alive, Birjandi and Souri had read more commentaries about such prophecies than he could count and had found disagreements among many of the scholars. But Birjandi knew there was no mistaking the message the Lord had spoken to him; Isaiah and Jeremiah had both written about the same future event… and that future was now.