Jerusalem Countdown, Revised and Updated: A Prelude To War

By John Hagee

BEST SELLER WITH OVER 1 MILLION COPIES SOLD

World War III Has Begun!
This revision of Jerusalem Countdown, updated to address the recent conflict with Hezbollah, the roles of North Korea and Syria in the coming nuclear showdown, and the infiltration of Islamic terrorists on American soil. Enhancing the message of the original edition, which has sold more than 800,000 copies, John Hagee anticipates Israel’s strategies toward the Iranian threat and the resulting effect upon America. Hagee skillfully unveils the reasons radical Islam and Israel cannot dwell peaceably together as he paints a convincing picture explaining why Christians must support the State of Israel. 

About the Author

John Hagee is the senior pastor of Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Texas. The nondenominational evangelical church now has more than 18,000 active members. Known best nationally for his End-Times writings, he has authored several fiction and nonfiction best sellers.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Frontline
• Release date: Oct 1, 2013
• ISBN: 9781599793153

John Hagee

Pastor John Hagee is the founder and senior pastor of Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Texas, a non-denominational evangelical church with more than 19,000 active members. He is the founder and chairman of Christians United for Israel. He is also the president and C.E.O. of John Hagee Ministries, which telecasts his national radio and television ministry throughout America and can be seen weekly in 99 million homes and in more than 200 nations worldwide. John Hagee graduated from Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas, then earned his Masters Degree from North Texas University. He received his Theological Studies from Southwestern Assemblies of God University and an Honorary Doctorates from Oral Roberts University, Canada Christian College, and from Netanya Academic College in Israel. He is the author of twenty-two major books including two New York Times bestsellers. Pastor John Hagee and his wife Diana Castro Hagee have been blessed with five children and twelve grandchildren.

Book preview

Hagee-Jerusalem_REV_QUOTE_0002_001

Most CHARISMA HOUSE BOOK GROUP products are available at special quantity discounts for bulk purchase for sales promotions, premiums, fund-raising, and educational needs. For details, write Charisma House Book Group, 600 Rinehart Road, Lake Mary, Florida 32746, or telephone [phone].

JERUSALEM COUNTDOWN by John Hagee

Published by FrontLine

Charisma Media/Charisma House Book Group

600 Rinehart Road

Lake Mary, Florida 32746

www.charismahouse.com

This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission of the publisher, except as provided by United States of America copyright law.

Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture quotations are from the New King James Version of the Bible. Copyright © 1979, 1980, 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc., publishers. Used by permission.

Scripture quotations marked KJV are from the King James Version of the Bible.

Scripture quotations marked NAS are from the New American Standard Bible. Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977 by the Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. (www.Lockman.org)

Scripture quotations marked NIV are from the Holy Bible, New International Version. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, International Bible Society. Used by permission.

Quotations from the Quran are from The Quran Translation, 7th edition, by Abdullah Yusef Ali (Elmhurst, NY: Tahrike Tarsile Quran, Inc., 2001).

Copyright © 2006, 2007 by John Hagee

All rights reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Hagee, John.

Jerusalem countdown / John Hagee.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references (p. ).

ISBN-13: 978-1-59979-089-3 (trade pbk.) 1. Bible--Prophecies--Jerusalem. 2. Jerusalem in the Bible. 3. Bible--Prophecies--Israel. 4. Israel (Christian theology)--Biblical teaching. I. Title.

BS649.J38H35 2007

236'.9--dc22

2006038251

E-book ISBN: 978-1-59979-315-3

Lovingly dedicated to Derek Prince:

a lover of Israel,

a world-class Bible scholar and teacher,

a personal spiritual advisor,

and a most cherished friend.

CONTENTS

Introduction

1 World War III Has Begun

2 Hitler’s Nazis and Islamo-Fascists

SECTION 1—WHERE ARE WE TODAY?

3 The Coming Nuclear Countdown Between Iran and Israel

4 An American Hiroshima?

5 Unveiling Islam

SECTION 2—HOW DID WE REACH THIS POINT?

6 Jerusalem: The City of God

7 The War Against the Jews

8 The Rise of Anti-Semitism

9 Centuries of Mistreatment

10 Jerusalem Regains Independence

SECTION 3—WHAT DOES THE FUTURE HOLD?

11 The Second Exodus Begins

12 Ezekiel’s War: The Russians Are Coming

13 The End of the Beginning

SECTION 4—WHAT IS THE CHRISTIAN PERSPECTIVE?

14 The Magnificent Codicil

15 Who Is a Jew?

16 The Potter’s House

17 Has God Rejected Israel?

18 God Blesses Gentiles Who Bless Israel

19 All Israel Will Be Saved

20 Five Bible Reasons Christians Should Support Israel

Appendix: Israel—Historical Timeline

Notes

INTRODUCTION

JERUSALEM COUNTDOWNis a page-turning heart-stopper! Using my confidential sources in Israel, information from military experts around the world, and electrifying revelations from Bible prophecy, I will expose this reality: unless the entire world—including America, Israel, and the Middle East—reaches soon a diplomatic and peaceful solution to Iran’s nuclear threat, Israel and America will be on a nuclear collision course with Iran!

Let’s connect the dots.

Iran is the command post for global Islamic terror. Iran has made it clear to America, Europe, and the United Nations that it intends to join the nuclear club. Iran’s president has announced that Iran will share its nuclear power with the Islamic world.

Iran’s hatred for America and Israel is without limit. Iran’s nuclear program is designed to make Islam a global force and, in my judgment, is as great a threat to democracy as Hitler’s Nazis and Lenin’s Communism.

The attack on 9/11 proved that Islamic terrorists are willing to use their weapons against America on American soil.

America and Israel will be forced to stop Iran’s nuclear production or gamble with the national security of both nations.

Will that attack happen—and when?

What will be the response of Islamic nations if America and Israel bomb Iran’s nuclear production sites?

Will Islamic nations join Russia in a military coalition to attack Israel as described by the prophet Ezekiel?

The Jerusalem Countdown has begun, and in its aftermath the world will change forever!

1WORLD WAR III HAS BEGUN

THE NEW REVELATIONS shared in this chapter and the next make it clear: America is now engaged in a bloody battle with religious fanatics on a mission from their god to kill Christians and Jews. America is stumbling in the fog of political correctness, lacking the intellectual honesty to admit that radical Islam has every intention of conquering Western civilization.

There are fifty-seven Islamic nations (about 1.3 billion people), of which twenty-two are Arab nations (about 300 million people).¹ The Islamic religion is a rapidly growing religion that is often controlled by militants who want to impose their beliefs on the rest of the world. Their three main goals are to:

1. Drive all westerners out of the Middle East.

2. Exterminate Christians and Jews.

3. Establish a one-world Islamic government and religion.

Militants believe all Muslims are soldiers in Allah’s army who must fight, or, if they don’t fight, they must give financial support to those who do. They believe:

• All non-Muslims are their enemy.

• All non-Muslims must be forced to submit to Islam.

• All territory that has ever been under Islamic rule must be brought back under Islamic rule forever.

• When Muslims become the majority in any country they must control the government.

• The Jews are only temporary residents of Jerusalem and Israel.

• There can be a temporary peace of up to ten years between Islam and others but no permanent peace.

• There can be no concessions to non-Muslims; all concessions by non-Muslims are signs of weakness and an indication that Muslims are winning.

• Muslims can sign a temporary peace treaty and break it if doing so advances the cause of Islam.

• Muslims are in a holy war (jihad) until Judgment Day.

Muslims believe Christians and Jews have distorted the Scriptures (they believe the Bible is full of errors), but Allah’s messenger, Muhammad, corrected the distortions and gave Islam the Quran. Muhammad’s teachings supersede those of Jesus and all others. They believe Islam is the only true religion and is destined to replace all other religions. Muslims must do more good works than bad or die a martyr’s death to be saved (in effect, salvation by works), and all Jews and Christians are cursed. The more radical members don’t believe in a civil society. They quickly deny basic freedoms such as human rights, civil rights, and women’s rights, and they readily justify the killing of innocent men, women, and children to promote their cause.

Here are some additional Muslim beliefs, shown in contrast to the beliefs of Christianity:

• Muslims worship the moon god of Mecca called Allah.

• Muslims say Allah is not love, but Christians say Jehovah is love.

• Muslims say Allah is not a father, but Christians call Jehovah Father.

• Muslims say Allah cannot be known in a personal way, but Christians say Jehovah can be known personally.

• Muslims say Allah made a covenant with Abraham to give the Promised Land to Ishmael’s descendants, but Christians and Jews say Jehovah made a covenant with Abraham to give the Promised Land to Isaac and his descendants.

• Muslims say Jesus was created from dust like Adam, but Christians say Jesus was born of a virgin.

• Muslims say Jesus was a messenger of God, but Christians say Jesus is the Son of God.

• Muslims say Judas Iscariot died on the cross, but Christians say Jesus died on the cross.

• Muslims say their sins can be forgiven, but they have to kill an infidel (non-Muslim) to obtain forgiveness.

• Muslims believe in a Messiah called the Mahdi, but Christians say the Messiah is Jesus.

• Muslims say the Messiah will be a descendant of Muhammad, but Christians and Jews say the Messiah will be a descendant of King David.

• Muslims say the Messiah will reign on earth for seven years and die, but Christians say He will reign on earth for one thousand years and never die.

• Muslims say the Messiah will conquer Israel, but Christians and Jews say the Messiah will rescue Israel.

• Muslims believe in a great war at the end of the age called the Mother of all Battles, but Christians call it the Battle of Armageddon and Jews call it the Battle of All Battles.²

Those who say that Christianity and Islam are sister faiths need to get their heads out of the sand.

President George Bush has given moral clarity to this clash of civilizations, saying, This nation is at war with Islamic fascists.³

Rush Limbaugh, America’s foremost conservative radio icon, has said, This is a religious war.…There is no room for compromise in a religious war…no room for ‘settlement.’⁴

Cal Thomas said, It is life or death. We want to live and they want us dead. Any questions?…We had better overthrow them before they overthrow us. Who can doubt their ultimate objective?⁵

Their ultimate objective has clearly been established by the president of Iran, the new Hitler of the Middle East. He said at a Tehran news conference in support of the Palestinians who voted on a terrorist organization, Hamas, to lead their government: Like it or not, the Zionist regime [Israel] is heading toward annihilation. Ahmadinejad called Israel a rotten, dried tree that will be annihilated by one storm.⁶

Ahmadinejad’s response to the nations of the world who are concerned that they are making nuclear weapons to attack Israel and America is as follows:

Our answer to those who are angry about Iran achieving the full nuclear cycle is one phrase, we say: Be angry and die of this anger.⁷

Ahmadinejad has denied that the Holocaust ever happened! He holds that six million Jews were not systematically slaughtered in Hitler’s final solution. Ahmadinejad said:

Today, they [Europeans] have created a myth in the name of Holocaust and consider it to be above God, religion and the prophets.…If you committed this big crime [Holocaust], then why should the oppressed Palestinian nation pay the price? This is our proposal: if you [Europeans] committed the crime, then give a part of your own land in Europe, the United States, Canada or Alaska to them [Jews] so that the Jews can establish their country.⁸

His tirade against Israel makes it clear that he intends to use nuclear weapons against the Jewish state:

There is no doubt that the new wave [of attacks] in Palestine will soon wipe off this disgraceful blot [Israel] from the face of the Islamic world.…Israel must be wiped off the map.⁹

There is a clear and present danger to America and Israel from a nuclear Iran. There will soon be a nuclear blast in the Middle East that will transform the road to Armageddon into a racetrack. America and Israel will either take down Iran, or Iran will become nuclear and take down America and Israel.

The attack by nineteen Islamic terrorists on September 11, 2001, should have proven, even to America’s liberals, that radical Islam has the willingness to attack and kill us en masse on our soil. Thank God they did not have nuclear weapons on 9/11, or our casualties would have been in the millions.

I believe Iran already has the ability to enrich plutonium, giving them the capacity to make nuclear suitcase bombs that will be smuggled into America’s major cities to Islamic terrorist cells prepared to create an American Hiroshima. On a quiet street, the men next door are going about their business—the business of nuclear terrorism.

Nuclear power will give Iran the ability to launch medium-range missiles with nuclear warheads. These missiles can reach London, Jerusalem, and New York City, thanks to Russian scientists who have been working with Iran for years in the development of their nuclear program.

Imagine the global impact if those three major cities were attacked in one hour, creating a nuclear holocaust in three nations.

Just because you can’t imagine a nightmare of megaproportions becoming reality, do not be duped into believing it can’t happen.

In 1860, Americans never imagined that in a matter of months their fathers, sons, and husbands would be killing each other in the nightmare that was the Civil War. More than six hundred twenty thousand Americans died in that war—one of the darkest hours of our history.¹⁰ It was unimaginable…but it happened.

In 1939, the citizens of London never imagined that more than forty thousand of their fellow citizens would lie dead in the streets from Nazi bombings, and that within five years Great Britain would never be great again.¹¹ In December of 1941, Americans could not imagine the Japanese would attack Pearl Harbor, killing almost three thousand Americans while Japanese diplomats were in the offices of Secretary of State Cordell Hull, talking of peace while bombs were falling and Americans were dying at Pearl Harbor.¹²

No one imagined 9/11 could happen…but it did!

Those who forget the mistakes of the past are doomed to repeat them in the future.

Today few can imagine that Iran could possibly launch three nuclear missiles in one hour to destroy New York City, London, and Jerusalem to create a nuclear holocaust. The truth is, if Iran is not stopped, the maniacal dream of President Ahmadinejad will become a literal nightmare for Western civilization.

CONSIDER THE SIZE OF THE ISLAMIC FASCISTS’ ARMY

How massive is this radical Islamic army that America and Israel face? Scholarly sources state that there are 1.3 billion people on the face of the earth practicing Islam…approximately one-fifth of mankind.¹³

Walid Shoebat, trained from his youth to become a PLO terrorist and suicide bomber who converted to Christianity in his twenties, was asked the following question on the John Hagee Ministries national and worldwide telecast: What percentage of Islamics are willing to wage jihad against America and Israel?

Walid Shoebat: We can say over 73 percent of the Arab world supports the jihad ideology…for many years they [Islamic leaders] have been saying 15 percent. That’s not accurate. It’s almost over 73 percent.

Let’s look at the bright side and say it’s only 15 percent of 1.3 billion people. That means the Islamic army consists of 200 million who are willing to die killing Americans and Jews.

Let’s suppose that Walid Shoebat is absolutely accurate in stating that 73 percent of 1.3 billion Islamics are willing to die bringing down Western civilization. That’s almost 1 billion people, more than three times the present population of the United States. This is a religious army unlike anything the Western world has seen since the dawn of civilization. They intend to roll back the clock of history to the seventh century. Could we be entering a new Dark Ages?

BREAKING COVENANTS AND PEACE TREATIES

On our national and international telecast, I questioned Walid Shoebat about whether lying is acceptable in Islam for the purpose of advancing the Islamic faith.

Shoebat: "Yes. Lying is acceptable to make peace between husband and wife, and another occasion is in jihad. Pastor, you can lie to the husband, and you can lie to the wife, and say, ‘He loves you,’ ‘She loves you,’ so the two can get along. This is lying in the minor element. But lying is the major element in jihad.

"Covenant-breaking is the major issue in Islam. You don’t want to break covenant because Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, in the Hudaybiyya treaty with Quraysh, broke the covenant. He was critiqued by his Muslim followers, and he said, ‘There is no covenant with unbelievers.’

"In fact, Pastor Hagee, when I confronted my father as I was preparing to leave home, it was the last words I had with my father. I purchased land from our father, and I had the bill of sale. And as I left, I asked my father, saying, ‘Father, I’m not interested in the inheritance. I’m not interested in your blessings. I’m simply interested in the bill of sale that we have.’

"He said, ‘Son, you know in Islam we do not have to honor agreements with unbelievers.’ So it doesn’t matter what covenant you sign; they don’t have to honor the covenant. So what’s the use of having all these peace treaties? All Christians must look at the word Hudna.

"Hudna in Islam is the process of establishing covenant or a peace treaty with an enemy. And it’s done solely for two purposes: one is to gain concessions, as the Palestinians did, and the other is to regain strength.

"This is why Hezbollah accepts Hudna with Israel. It’s not the Oslo Peace Accord, as we think. It’s the Oslo Hudna Accord in the mind of all Islamics. Gentiles and Jews look at the Oslo Peace Accord and believe it is a valid document, but in the Middle East, we call it the ‘Oslo Hudna Accord,’ and we never intend to keep the document."

Pastor Hagee: That’s very interesting. That means any peace treaty they sign, they’re not obligated to keep it.

Shoebat: Not at all. The treaty is just an absolute waste of time to even to pursue it. If they sign it, they simply are not going to honor it, and anybody who believes it is becoming deceived, just like Chamberlain of England.

ISLAMIC TEACHINGS CONCERNING CHRISTIANS

Hagee: What are the teachings of Islam concerning the Christian people?

Shoebat: Well, Islam is very clear. This is what we see the Islamic movement doing now. This is the war against the Saturday people first, and the Sunday people next. Islam solely has one purpose and one purpose alone as a religion. It came to correct the Jews and to correct the Christians, to correct the Judeo-Christian world that God is not our Father. God is not a father.…Jesus is not a Son of God…because God has no Son. God is not the Holy Spirit, and Jesus was never crucified.

Hagee: So, in essence, Islam came to correct the Christians, and by the power of the sword, if you have to.

Shoebat: Jihad comes in several stages: by the pen, by finances, and by the sword, as well. So Islam came to establish jihad. And if you look at every single Muslim demonstration, the war is with the Christian world. They don’t differentiate between Presbyterian, Pentecostal, or Catholic. They are all the Christian world. That’s how they view America.

TERRORIST TRAINING

Hagee: What about the training you received as a child and teenager, which started you down the road to becoming a terrorist?

Shoebat: "Well, Americans must understand that anti-Semitism starts like milk you feed to a baby. When I was six years old going to kindergarten, just before the Six-Day War erupted, we were singing a song. [Sings song in foreign language.] I’m saying this in Arabic, which means, ‘Arabs are beloved, and Jews are dogs.’

"I continued my education by entering an Anglican Lutheran school, third and fourth grade, which was supposedly a Christian school. There the Bible was taught to us as Moses was a Palestinian revolutionist.…Jesus was a Palestinian revolutionist. In fact, prominent figures, all Christian Palestinian prominent figures, say that the biblical characters were all Palestinian revolutionists.

"Going to the government schools, things took on a much different nature. Now we were learning the Quran. Now we were learning the hadith. Terrorism was being taught as a part of the religion. I was in high school, about fourteen, fifteen, or sixteen, those ages. And we memorized most of the Quran.

"Our educators were graduates of Al Azhar University. Most Americans don’t know what that really entails. Al Azhar University is the number one university that serves all the Sunni Muslim world with graduates and scholars. All these graduates, almost all of them, teach the jihadist movement. And the Islamic brotherhood coming out of Egypt was very influential in our area. Jihadiya will teach us martyrdom, that in order to establish salvation, we must die ourselves in order to go to heaven, and not just to receive seventy virgins—there’s seventy-two rooms with seventy-two beds, and on each bed or each sheet, seventy-two virgins. In fact, we memorized it: ‘Do not think that the ones who die in jihad in the cause of Allah are dead, but are alive with Allah, receiving his blessings.’

And we learned also the Islamic hadith. The Islamic hadiths, regarding jihad.…There’s about a hundred hadiths talking about jihad. And it talks about eschatology. Islam is filled with eschatology regarding the end of days. And what Muhammad the Prophet of Islam said was very clear: [speaking in Arabic], which means in English, ‘The day of judgment shall not come to pass until the tribes of Islam defeat the tribes of Israel in Jerusalem and the surrounding nations. The trees will cry out and the stones will cry out, Here is a Jew hiding behind me. Come, O Muslim. Come, O Allah. Come and kill him."’

So terrorism was inculcated in the religious perspective, in social perspective, in the graffiti all around the walls. You wouldn’t find a square meter in the Palestinian areas that didn’t have graffiti. And what kind of graffiti are we talking about, Pastor? Things like, ‘We knock on the gates of heaven with the skulls of Jews.’ ‘So in order to enter Paradise, you must kill Jews.’ ‘You must die as a Shahid or a martyr.’ That was part of that entire social structure.

Hagee: Were you as a child taught that Jews were descendants from apes and monkeys?

Shoebat: "Even going to the local zoo you would see monkeys, and the teacher would say, ‘These are the descendants of the Jews.’ We were given the Quranic verse regarding this, which means, ‘We have converted these Sabbath breakers, the Jews, to becoming detestable monkeys.’ Then you see all the Palestinian clergies saying these things.

It was very parallel to what you saw in Nazi Germany. Although we denied the Holocaust even ever existed…and that the Holocaust was a fabrication to establish the Zionist entity [Israel]…and that we had nothing to do with Hitler. That wasn’t true.

EYEWITNESS ACCOUNT OF TERRORISM

Walid Shoebat continued the shocking interview by sharing his personal story.

Shoebat: "I remember when I was doing my research, Pastor Hagee, going to Hebron. I saw a bus [owned by Jews] being stolen by the Palestinians with bars of iron and wire mesh. And I asked myself, Why are the Jews not allowed to live amongst us?

"My friend was pounding a nail in the head of a Jew who was in the bus. You see in Ramallah Square, in the capital of Palestine, which the Americans helped create, you see thousands and thousands of men in the square of Ramallah carrying body parts of a so-called collaborator. Somebody maybe was sympathizing with Israel. They cut his guts out, cut his heart out, and his kidneys, and put them on a platter. And you see the men and the children carrying the body parts through the streets, shouting, ‘Allah Akbar’ in a frenzied fashion, in a euphoric fashion.

My country, Pastor Hagee, has become the night of the living dead—literally, not allegorically. What we accuse the Jews of, the blood ritual, we carried out literally. If you think in reverse, what we [Muslims] accuse America of…they carry out literally.

WHAT IS NEXT: NUCLEAR OR NOT?

Shoebat: "I see Hezbollah accepting a cessation of hostilities as Condoleezza Rice states it. Yet as I mentioned before, this is what Islam calls Hudna. The Palestinians will sign peace treaties with Israel. That’s not a problem. It is permissible to sign a peace treaty with the enemy because the terrorists have no intention of keeping it. They are regaining strength for the next fight.

"The United Nations clearly says