With only six days left to the U.N. deadline, the New York Times is set to rock official Washington.
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“As Russian and coalition forces surround Israel and bring the region to the brink of nuclear war, administration officials ― including the president ― have consulted prophecy experts about the possibility that the showdown could be the start of a biblical apocalypse, sources close to the White House tell the New York Times.”
That’s the lead sentence in an explosive, front-page story ― written, edited, proofed, fact-checked, and ready to roll.
But editors at the Times are holding it back for reasons yet unknown. It was supposed to run Thursday. Then Friday. And now it has been spiked again.
The story, written by Times White House reporter Marcus Jackson, is the subject of knock-down, drag-out fights inside the Times’ newsrooms in New York and Washington. Jackson, who refused to return repeated phone calls, is basing his story on a 37-page brief called “The Ezekiel Option,” written by former Israeli Mossad chief Dr. Eliezer Mordechai.
The brief ― the entire copy of which has been obtained exclusively by THE DRUDGE REPORT [and available in PDF format by clicking here] ― explains Mordechai’s theory that the world is witnessing the fulfillment of ancient biblical prophecies found in Ezekiel 38 and 39 in which Russia [Magog] joins with Iran [Persia], Libya [Put], Germany [Gomer], and various other Middle Eastern allies to attack a newly prosperous and peaceful Israel.
According to Mordechai, at the last minute ― when all hope seems lost ― God will supernaturally intervene and destroy Israel’s enemies with fire from heaven, like a scene out of Peter Jackson’s Return of the King.
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Then, writes Mordechai, huge numbers of Jews and Gentiles will experience “the most dramatic spiritual awakening in the history of mankind.”
A top White House source tells THE DRUDGE REPORT that such talk is “absolutely nuts” and that no such brief has ever been given to the president.
“You’re a liar, Drudge!” said one irate aide, demanding he not be named. “No one’s talking to prophecy gurus or reading Nostradamus or calling psychic hotlines. You think we’re complete lunatics? It’s a hoax, Drudge. You’re getting spun. Take it from me: no one in the White House is basing U.S. foreign policy on the book of Ezekiel. Period.”
But THE DRUDGE REPORT has learned that Jackson’s story quotes two unnamed but very senior U.S. government officials saying the brief does exist, and has, in fact, been read by the president.
THE DRUDGE REPORT has also learned that MacPherson is not the first U.S. president to be intrigued with Ezekiel’s prophecy.
On page 1001 of his book United States: Essays, 1952–1992, Gore Vidal describes a 1971 banquet that Ronald Reagan, then governor of California, attended to honor State Senator James Mills. After the main course, Reagan asked Mills if he was familiar with “the fierce Old Testament Prophet Ezekiel.” Mills said he was, so Reagan ― “with firelit intensity” ― told him Russia was the Magog in Ezekiel’s prophecy and was thus doomed to destruction.
On pages 1001–1002, Vidal quotes Reagan as saying:
* “In the thirty-eighth chapter of Ezekiel it says God will take the children of Israel from among the heathen
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when [sic] they’d been scattered and will gather them again in the promised land. That has finally come about after 2,000 years.”
* “For the first time ever, everything is in place for the battle of Armageddon and the Second Coming of Christ.”
* “Everything is falling into place. It can’t be too long now. Ezekiel says that fire and brimstone will be rained upon the enemies of God’s people.”
* “Ezekiel tells us that Gog, the nation that will lead all the other powers into darkness against Israel, will come out of the north. What other powerful nation is to the north of Israel? None. But it didn’t seem to make sense before the Russian revolution, when Russia was a Christian country. Now it does, now that Russia has become communistic and atheistic, now that Russia has set itself against God. Now it fits the description perfectly.”
In his book, Vidal notes that ten years later, Reagan was president of the United States, and points to the “Evil Empire” speech Reagan gave in 1983. “That was the year that Reagan decided to alert the nation to Gog,” wrote Vidal.
On March 8, 1983, Reagan declared, “They [the Soviet Union] are the focus of evil in the modern world,” later adding, “I believe that Communism is another sad, bizarre chapter in human history whose last pages even now are being written.” [Vidal’s italics]
A leading Israeli Bible scholar — offered a summary of the brief over the phone — tells THE DRUDGE REPORT it “is the work of a tired old man,” has no merit, and completely mischaracterizes the context of Ezekiel 38 and 39.
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“No one in Israel thinks God is about to send fire from heaven,” he said, insisting on anonymity. “Israel has a nuclear arsenal. This is why. How dare the prime minister desecrate the memory of Auschwitz and Treblinka by hesitating. No supernatural being is going to save us. Only Jews can save the Jews. It’s time to push the button.”
A scholar at Al Azhar University in Cairo told the Times that any talk of “the end of radical Islam as we know it” will merely intensify the wrath of the Muslim world against Israel. “Allah is not on the side of the Jews. He will not be mocked by claims that he is. The world will know who the One True God really is when Israel is wiped off the face of the map forever.”
IMPACTING…
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Reports are moved when circumstances warrant
http://www.drudgereport.com for updates
Mordechai’s unlisted phone started ringing off the hook.
By the time the AP and Reuters started moving wire stories on the Ezekiel brief, the New York Times felt forced to run the full story and get ahead of the pack.
By the time the U.S. woke up Sunday morning, Mordechai was at a television studio in Jerusalem doing back-to-back satellite interviews on NBC’s Meet the Press, ABC’s This Week, CBS’s Face the Nation, FOX News Sunday, and CNN’s Late Edition, followed by a spate of interviews for Israeli and European networks as well as Al-Jazeera.
Mordechai knew the White House must be terrified at how the public and the international community would perceive the story. But Mordechai himself had never felt such exhilaration in his life.
Gogolov cackled as Jibril read him the story.
The Jews were such a pathetic lot, he mused.
Let them pray to their gods. Let them cling to their false hopes. The only firestorm coming was the one he himself would unleash on Israel.
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Bennett wondered if he looked as scared as he felt.