“The LORD is slow to anger, and great in power, and will not at all acquit the wicked: the LORD hath his way in the whirlwind and in the storm, and the clouds are the dust of his feet” (Nahum 1:3).

Following are excerpts from Near East Report and Root & Branch Association.

The Arab states are not cooperating with the United States in its efforts to contain Saddam Hussein . . . During the Gulf crisis Arab leaders assessed the risk of joining the anti-Saddam coalition as minimal, because they were justifiably confident.

Today, with Sad- dam still in power, much of his army reconstituted and the United States reluctant to fight him, these leaders regard the risk of alienating Saddam as enormous. . . Today Saddam is a hero to the masses in all Arab countries for defying the United States . . . [and] with the emergence of an increasingly defiant Russia and assertive European Union, Arab leaders cherish the belief they have other options.

Iraq is the world’s second largest exporter of oil. Under the U.N. administered oil-for-food program, Iraq earns more than enough money to meet the humanitarian needs of its people. Any malnutrition in Iraq is not the result of sanctions — it is because Saddam is withholding distribution of humanitarian goods to the Iraqi people. . .

$2 billion was spent to construct new presidential palaces since the Persian Gulf War. For that matter, hospitals for the elite such as Saddam Cardiac Hospital are not short of medicines.

Last February Israel went on missile alert and aircraft were launched heading for Iraq by both the U.S. and Israel. . . At the last moment, Hussein stopped his missile preparations. The aircraft were recalled.

The flight of the missile is only a matter of minutes to their targets, but Israel will know about the missile’s intentions within seconds after it launches. . .

Saddam Hussein wants to be the messiah of the Arab world. However, according to the ancient prophets of Israel, something else will happen. It will be swift and ferocious. It will be fire from heaven and it will rain down on the Palestinians in the mountains of Israel.

It will fall upon Damascus and Syria. It will hit Jordan and Iraq. The face of the Middle East will never be the same again. The world will gasp at the suddenness and devastation upon Israel’s enemies. The world will reel with the fact that there is no God like the God of Israel. Not only has God changed the status of their arch enemies to non-existent, but God has shown that His favor is clearly with Israel. This is the outworking of a conflict between the God of Israel and Allah, the God of the Muslims. There is a huge difference between these two gods.

“. . . And I shall call for a sword against him on all My mountains,” declares the Lord God.”

The late David Breese said, “The basic political and ‘moral’ foundation of Babylon was found in the statement of the early Babylonians when they said, ‘Let us build us a city and a tower whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name.’ (Gen. 11:4).”

Babylon is still trying to build a tower higher than anyone else. The self-styled Nebuchad­nezzar needs to read in THE BOOK what happened to that Babylonian king when he exalted himself above God.

The application for us today is that this is not a time for self-seeking, self- aggrandizement and self- ambition. Judgment is about to break. We must rather give all of ourselves to the Kingdom, as Mordecai told Esther, “who knows whether you are come to the kingdom for such a time as this?”