Top Five Objections To Christianity … And How You Can Answer Them

Podcast: Download (Duration: 43:00 — 7.4MB)

Guest: Alex McFarland, President, Southern Evangelical Seminary

“But sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence.” I Peter 3:15

Just a reminder to take advantage of your privilege to vote this coming Tuesday, November 2nd in the mid-term election.  Candidates for national, state, and local offices are on the ballot.  As we have especially seen in the last two years, the worldview of our elected officials greatly impacts the policies that effect every area of life: health care, economics, family, marriage, unborn children, education, national security, church, freedom of speech, etc.  So make sure you get to your polling place this Tuesday and cast your vote!

Alex McFarland, author and president of Southern Evangelical Seminary in Charlotte, North Carolina, joins us this weekend on The Christian Worldview to discuss the five objections to Christianity that every Christian needs to be able to answer.  Alex has spoken to thousands of students and adults across the country and the same objections to Christianity come up again and again.  Take heart — there are clear and concise answers to each of them.

So be prepared for that next conversation with your family member, co-worker, or stranger.  Sharpen your defense of the faith this weekend on The Christian Worldview!

With All Due Respect, The Vatican’s Latest, Painful Pronouncement On Israel is Wrong

Bankruptcy in the Cathedral

The news that the Crystal Cathedral had filed for bankruptcy protection made for an instant sensation. The church established by Robert Schuller, the very prophet of “Possibility Thinking,” was now forced to seek protection from its creditors, listing $55 million in debt, including a $36 million mortgage.

The Los Angeles Times ran “Cracked Crystal” as a headline. The New York Times reported that the “landmark megachurch” would continue, even as it sought protection from its impatient creditors. From coast to coast, the news traveled fast.

A statement posted on the church’s website dated October 18 was titled, “A New Chapter for the Crystal Cathedral.” It began by stating that recent financial reports “indicate the best cash flow the Ministry has experienced in 10 years.” But, after describing efforts to forestall action by its creditors, the statement read:

As is often the case, negotiations and decisions do not move fast enough to satisfy all parties. A small number of creditors chose to file lawsuits and obtained writs of attachment. Ultimately, the Creditors Committee decided not to extend the moratorium. For these reasons, the Ministry now finds it necessary to seek the protection of a Chapter 11. The Ministry is extremely grateful for the time and effort expended by the Creditors Committee to date, and looks forward to working with them to finalize a payment plan that is fair to all vendors and consistent with our belief as a Ministry and emerge from Chapter 11 as quickly as possible.

Dr. Sheila Schuller Coleman, daughter of founding pastor Robert H. Schuller and the church’s senior pastor, told The New York Times that the church had been unable to cut its budget quickly enough to avert the crisis. The church pledged to continue its worship services and its weekly “Hour of Power” television broadcast, the longest-running religious broadcast in the nation. At the same time, the church has sought to sell unused property and was forced to lay off staff.

Sheila Schuller Coleman told the Los Angeles Times, “Tough times never last, every storm comes to an end. Right now, people need to hear that message more than ever.” She continued, “Everybody is hurting today. We are no exception.” The elder Schuller commented, “Challenging situations are nothing new to our 55-year-old ministry.”

Without doubt, the media impact of the news was guaranteed by the fact that Robert Schuller has been so closely identified with his own version of prosperity theology. How does the ministry built on “Possibility Thinking” declare financial bankruptcy?

Robert H. Schuller founded the Garden Grove Community Church in 1955. Within six years he had led the young church to build a multi-million dollar church facility designed by architect Robert Neutra. In 1981 the church dedicated the famous “Crystal Cathedral,” a massive glass sanctuary designed by Philip Johnson, one of the most famous architects of the twentieth century. The church became familiar to millions of Americans through the broadcasts of the “Hour of Power.”

“Possibility Thinking” was Schuller’s central message. He told his fellow preachers not to worry about repeating themselves in sermons, insisting that every message (he did not like to call his messages “sermons”) must be about the development of a positive mental outlook.

Though ordained in the Reformed Church in America, Schuller minimized historic Christian orthodoxy and stressed instead the message of positive thinking. In his 1982 book, Self-Esteem: The New Reformation, Schuller explicitly replaced the message of salvation from sin with a message of rescue from low self-esteem. In his 2001 autobiography, My Journey, Schuller told of the massive influence of Dale Carnegie and Norman Vincent Peale on his thinking and theology. He told of his decision early in his ministry to replace theology with therapy. “I realized that every sermon I preached (whether formally from the pulpit or casually at a coffee shop) should be designed, not to ‘teach’ or ‘convert’ people, but rather to encourage them, to give them a lift. I decided to adopt the spirit, style, strategy, and substance of a ‘therapist’ in the pulpit.”

Dennis Voskuil, a professor of church history at Schuller’s alma mater, Western Theological Seminary, placed Schuller within the context of the New Thought movement. “Robert Schuller is indirectly related to a long line of popular religionists who have proclaimed the gospel of this-worldly well-being through positive thinking,” he wrote. “His lineage includes such disparate figures as Phineas Parkhurst Quimby, Mary Baker Eddy, Charles and Myrtle Fillmore, Ralph Waldo Trine, and Norman Vincent Peale. While there are many ideological branches on this family tree, all of its members have stressed a utilitarian message of self-help through some form of mind-conditioning.”

After detailing Schuller’s distinctive pilgrimage, Voskuil concluded: “By several standards, then, Schuller is an unconventional evangelical. But while he may be unusual, he is by no means unique, for he is merely one of the most prominent of a large and growing group of evangelicals who are promulgating the gospel of success.”

Those words were written almost thirty years ago. How does the “gospel of success” deal with bankruptcy? The filing of bankruptcy papers would be humbling enough for any ministry, but how does the very epicenter of “Possibility Thinking” deal with the stark reality of financial calamity?

In his 1986 book, Your Church Has a Fantastic Future, Schuller provided what he called “A Possibility Thinker’s Guide to a Successful Church.” The book is a manual for a ministry built on pure pragmatism, sensationalistic promotion, a therapeutic message, and a constant and incessant focus on thinking positively.

His message about money was simple: “No church has a money problem; churches only have idea problems,” he asserted.

In an odd and upside-down way, the news of bankruptcy at the Crystal Cathedral makes that point emphatically. The most significant problem at the Crystal Cathedral is not financial, but theological. The issue is not money, but this ministry’s message. The “gospel of success” is not the Gospel of Jesus Christ, therapy is no substitute for theology, and “Possibility Thinking” is not the message of the Bible.

It turns out that Robert Schuller offers the best analysis of this crisis with his own words. “No church has a money problem; churches only have idea problems.” The theological crisis in Garden Grove is far more significant than the financial crisis.

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Nicole Santa Cruz, “Crystal Cathedral Files for Bankruptcy Protection,” The Los Angeles Times, Tuesday, October 19, 2010.

“Cracked Crystal,” The Los Angeles Times, Wednesday, October 20, 2010.

“A New Chapter for the Crystal Cathedral,” statement dated October 18, 2010 posted at http://www.crystalcathedral.org/events_news/media/press_releases/press_10182010.php

Rebecca Cathcart, “California’s Crystal Cathedral Files for Bankruptcy,” The New York Times, Tuesday, October 19, 2010.

Amy Taxin, “Crystal Cathedral Megachurch, Home of ‘Hour of Power,’ Files for Bankruptcy in California,” Associated Press, Tuesday, October 19, 2010.

Dennis Voskuil, Mountains Into Goldmines: Robert Schuller and the Gospel of Success (Eerdmans, 1983), pp. 115, 129.

Robert H. Schuller, Self-Esteem: The New Reformation (Word Books, 1982).

Robert H. Schuller, Your Church Has a Fantastic Future (Regal Books, 1986), p. 303.

Robert H. Schuller, My Journey: From an Iowa Farm to a Cathedral of Dreams (Harper San Francisco, 2001), pp. 171-172.

Communism’s Continuing Influence on America and Christians

Podcast: Download (Duration: 50:47 — 23.3MB)

Dr. David Noebel, president of Summit Ministries

“There is a way which seems right to a man, But its end is the way of death” (Proverbs 14:12).

The dictionary definition of communism is: “a system of social organization in which all economic and social activity is controlled by a totalitarian state dominated by a single and self-perpetuating political party.”

With hundreds of millions of people murdered, imprisoned, or impoverished in the last century by communist governments in the Soviet Union, China, Cambodia, Cuba, and elsewhere, it’s a good thing this failed experiment in governance has been thrown on the ash heap of history.

Or has it? According to Dr. David Noebel, president of Summit Ministries and author of the new book You Can Still Trust the Communists: To be Communists, communism and its stealthy step-children — Marxism, socialism, progressivism — are very much alive and growing in America and around the world right now … even amongst professing Christians.

Dr. Noebel will tell us how communistic ideas have influenced American society and why every Christian should be opposed to this God-rejecting worldview.

Additional Resources:

A Communist Rally in Washington, D.C.

Don’t Worry, Be Mourning

Podcast: Download (Duration: 50:48 — 8.7MB)

“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted” (Matthew 5:4).

To mourn means “to feel or express sorrow or grief.”  We live in a culture that doesn’t like to mourn.  In the midst of death or trials, people are encouraged to “focus on the positive”, to “don’t worry, be happy”, to seek “closure” soon after tragedy strikes.  Go to a funeral nowadays and you’re just as likely to encounter humor and laughter and a “celebration” as you are mourning for the dead.

But is this the way God wants Christians to be?  If we’re to be like Christ, what does it mean that He was a “man of sorrows and acquainted with grief?”  Over what are we to mourn?

You may be reading this and saying, “Why would I want to listen to a radio program on mourning — what a downer!”  Well, tune in this weekend to The Christian Worldview to find out why mourning for the right things at the right times is so critical for your spiritual growth.

Ahmadinejad, Hezbollah, Obama and the 2010 Elections

FYI: I’m scheduled to be interviewed on the following programs:

• Friday, Oct 15, during the 7pm eastern hour–  Fox Business Channel with David Asman. Topics: Ahmadinejad, Iran and The Twelfth Imam.
• Sunday, Oct 17 at 1:10pm – Fox News Channel. Topics: Ahmadinejad, Iran and The Twelfth Imam.
• Tuesday, Oct 19 (official day of the book launch) – CBN’s “The 700 Club.” (check local listings for times in your area)
• Please check back for book tour media updates.
• For the 13-city tour schedule, please click here.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad arrived in Beirut Wednesday morning for a highly provocative trip to Lebanon. He was greeted by tens of thousands of Radical Muslims as a hero of the Islamic Revolution and on Thursday visited the border with Israel. His mission: to rally the terrorist forces of Hezbollah for an apocalyptic war with the Jewish state that will set the stage for the coming of the Shia Islamic messiah known as the “Mahdi” or the “Twelfth Imam.”

But annihilating Israel is not the ultimate objective for Ahmadinejad or Hezbollah. Israel, in the End Times theology of both Ahmadinejad and Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, is only the “little Satan.” The U.S., they believe, is the “Great Satan” and must be annihilated, too.

By large margins, American voters instinctively understand that the strengthening of the Iranian-Hezbollah alliance poses not only a grave and growing danger to Israel, but also to U.S. national security. But voters are increasingly concerned that President Barack Obama and Congressional Democrats don’t get it. They worry Democrats have neither the wisdom nor the will to protect the American people or allies like Israel from Radical Islam, and this could cost their party at the polls in a few weeks.

Consider the findings of a new survey released this week by McLaughlin & Associates, a nationally respected polling firm:

• A stunning eight-out-of ten of likely American voters (78.5%) say they do not believe President Obama’s policies towards Iran (such as economic sanctions and repeated attempts to engage the mullahs diplomatically) will stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons.

• An overwhelming number of voters (79.9%), believe that once Iran gets nuclear weapons, they will launch nuclear missile attacks against Israel.

• Even more Americans (85.3%) are concerned that Iran will give nuclear weapons to terrorist groups (like Hezbollah) once they get the Bomb.

• That’s why six in ten voters (59.8%) support U.S. military strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities if economic sanctions don’t work.

• What’s more, if the Obama administration won’t take decisive action, six in ten voters (58.4%) would support Israel if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered military strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Americans are right to be worried. With Iran’s help, Hezbollah has become the most dangerous Shia Muslim terrorist organization in the world. Consider a sampling of Nasrallah’s statements in recent years:

• “Let the entire world hear me. Our hostility to the Great Satan [America] is absolute. . . . Regardless of how the world has changed after 11 September, ‘Death to America’ will remain our reverberating and powerful slogan: ‘Death to America.’”

• “We do not believe in multiple Islamic republics; we do believe, however, in a single Islamic world governed by a central government.”

• “Jerusalem and Palestine will not be regained with political games but with guns.”

• “America will remain the nation’s chief enemy and the greatest Satan of all. Israel will always be for us a cancerous growth that needs to be eradicated.”

• “I ask Almighty Allah . . . to make you the men who would clear the way for the Mahdi of this earth to establish divine justice.”

Nasrallah is not just talk. He practices what he preaches. That’s why Ahmadinejad counts him such a close and reliable ally.

He helped found Hezbollah in 1982 with direct Iranian funding, training, and organizational assistance. He then helped build it into an enormous force with aid and ongoing strategic and tactical guidance from Iran. By 1983, Nasrallah and his team had already recruited and trained some two hundred jihadists. On October 23 of that year, they launched the truck bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks, killing more Americans at one time than any terrorist had before that point. The attack resulted in “the largest non-nuclear explosion that had ever been detonated on the face of the Earth,” according to a U.S. federal court judge who later found the Islamic Republic of Iran liable for perpetrating the crime and awarded the surviving American families some $2.6 billion in damages.

By the time of the Second Lebanon War against Israel in 2006, Hezbollah had more than 6,000 trained jihadists in their network compared to 170,000 IDF forces and over 400,000 Israeli reservists. Yet under Nasrallah’s leadership, Hezbollah was widely perceived to have won that month-long showdown.

Terrorist attacks by Hezbollah have extended far beyond the suicide truck bombings of the U.S. Marine barracks in 1983. According to the U.S. State Department’s 2008 Patterns of Global Terrorism report,  Hezbollah was also behind the 1984 attack on the U.S. Embassy annex in Beirut; the 1985 hijacking of TWA flight 847, during which a U.S. Navy diver was murdered; the kidnapping, detention, and murder of Americans and other Westerners in Lebanon in the 1980s; the 1992 attacks on the Israeli Embassy in Argentina; the 1994 attack on the Argentine-Israeli Mutual Association (AMIA) in Buenos Aires; and the 2000 kidnapping of three Israeli soldiers and an Israeli noncombatant.” In 2004, Nasrallah’s forces began training members of the Iraqi “Mahdi Army”—the Shia terrorist group run by Moqtada al-Sadr—to attack and kill U.S., Coalition, and Iraqi military forces, as well as Iraqi civilians.

Now, with Ahmadinejad’s encouragement and financing, Nasrallah is building what he believes will be the ultimate fighting force to destroy the U.S. and Israel in the “End of Days.”

According to Hezbollah documents captured by Israeli soldiers during the 2006 war, Nasrallah has recruited 42,000 Muslim children ages eight to sixteen into a jihadist youth movement known as “the Imam al-Mahdi Scouts.” The children are immersed in understanding Shia eschatology—End Times theology—about the coming of the Twelfth Imam. They study the lives and teachings of Nasrallah and current Iranian Ayatollah Khamenei, whom they refer to as their “commander-leader.” They wear camouflage suits, paint their faces black, and swear an oath to participate in jihad against Jewish and Christian infidels. According to official organization documents, 120 members have already died in terrorist actions, including as suicide bombers. Once they turn seventeen, they are encouraged to join Hezbollah’s formal military units.

Meanwhile, Ahmadinejad has helped Hezbollah build up a force of more than 30,000 missiles and rockets aimed at Israel, despite a U.N. Security Council resolution forbidding the rearmament of such terror groups after the 20-6 war with Israel. Now imagine both Ahmadinejad and Nasrallah with nuclear warheads.

Americans are worried, and they are increasingly convinced that neither President Obama nor his party are up to the task of stopping the Radicals. Nor do they believe liberals are giving proper backing to faithful allies like Israel who live on the front lines. To be sure, fear of Radical Islam is not the primary issue motivating voters this fall. The economy and jobs still top the list. But given the hostile political environment Congressional Democrats are already operating in, voter perceptions of their party as weak on national security and appeasers of Iran will be costly and could add to the center-right electoral tsunami that seems to be building momentum.

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Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)

• AHMADINEJAD SAYS U.S. TRYING TO PREVENT 12TH IMAM ARRIVAL
• IRAN’S SUPREME LEADER HINTS: VOTE FOR AHMADINEJAD
• NBC NEWS ASKS AHMADINEJAD ABOUT 12TH IMAM

Evolution and the Empty Nest Syndrome

Michael Shermer publishes Skeptic magazine, teaches at Claremont Graduate University, and writes a regular column for Scientific American. He is an ardent defender of evolutionary theory and a well-known critic of all supernatural claims. In today’s edition of USA Today, Shermer writes about the “empty nest syndrome” — the difficulty many parents face when their offspring go off to college.

While this has always been a difficult time for parents, in recent years many parents seem to be having a more difficult time than usual. Some colleges report that parents have to be told to go home. One college reported about a mother who slept in her daughter’s dorm room for a couple of nights until the girl’s roommate complained to school authorities.

Shermer has now experienced the “empty nest syndrome” for himself, as his daughter began her college studies just over a month ago. He clearly misses his daughter. And yet, how does he explain this experience?

He writes: “Why does it hurt so bad? Science has an answer: We are social mammals who experience deep attachment to our fellow friends and family, an evolutionary throwback to our Paleolithic hunter-gatherer days of living in small bands.”

You read that right. Shermer reduces the love of a parent for a child to “an evolutionary throwback.” He adds to this a physiological theory:

We parents can’t help feeling this way, and neuroscience explains why. Addictive chemicals such as dopamine and oxytocin surge through the brain and body during positive social interactions (especially touch). This causes us to feel closer to one another. Between parents and offspring, it cements a bond so solid that it is broken only under the most unusual (and usually pathological) circumstances.

He concludes with words that can hardly be described as sentimental. “Each of us parents makes one small contribution to the evolutionary imperative of life’s continuity from one generation to the next,” he suggests.

Rarely is the sterility and bleakness of the evolutionary worldview displayed with such candor. The love of a parent for a child is reduced to an evolutionary factor that works through a physiological process of chemical interactions in the brain.

If evolution is true, it must explain everything. Michael Shermer’s article demonstrates just how unsatisfying that explanation is.

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Michael Shermer, “Making Sense of the Empty Nest Syndrome,” USA Today, Wednesday, October 13, 2010.

So What is God Really Like?

Podcast: Download (Duration: 50:48 — 8.7MB)

Guest: Matthew Fletcher, Senior Pastor, First Baptist Church, Weymouth, MA

Last week in Mobile, AL at the Expositors’ Conference, Dr. R.C. Sproul began one of the best sermons I’ve ever heard entitled “The Holiness of God in Preaching” talking about God’s attributes.

It’s not an overstatement to say that one’s understanding of the attributes of God (His nature and character) determines everything … from the way we approach Him, to our view of the world around us, to how we live our lives.

Just this week, USA Today ran a story about a survey performed by two sociologists from Baylor University regarding Americans’ view of God.  The results show that people see God one of four ways: authoritative, benevolent, critical, or distant.

Are any of these four views biblically correct?  And what about the love of God — does His love trump all His other attributes like His wrath or justice?

Matthew Fletcher, senior pastor of First Baptist Church in Weymouth, Massachusetts, attended the conference and will join us this weekend on The Christian Worldview to explain why a biblical view of God’s attributes is so important and how we can develop a better understanding of the King of the Universe.

Sign of Despair, Song of Triumph

The following blog entry is from Phil Johnson over at Pyromaniacs….

How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?
How long must I take counsel in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all the day? How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?
Consider and answer me, O LORD my God; light up my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death,
lest my enemy say, “I have prevailed over him,” lest my foes rejoice because I am shaken.
But I have trusted in your steadfast love; my heart shall rejoice in your salvation.
I will sing to the LORD, because he has dealt bountifully with me.

salm 13 is a fascinating look into a side of David’s prayer life we can all easily relate to. This man after God’s own heart pours his soul out in frustration, fear, and ultimately faith as he struggles through the ordeal of tribulation.

The psalm is first of all a great prayer. There’s nothing typical about it; in fact, it shatters our presuppositions about what really “spiritual” praying is like. But a close look shows it is in perfect harmony with how Jesus taught us to pray. Brevity and honesty two qualities sadly missing from most of our prayers stand out as its hallmarks.

More than a lesson about prayer, however, this psalm is a model response for those of us going through deep trials. David wrote it in anguish over the apparent success of an unrelenting enemy. We don’t know which enemy it might have been Saul, the renegade king, who chased David like an outlaw; or it could have been the Philistines, who as a nation epitomized all that God hates.

Imagine David’s frustration, seeing enemies like that prosper while it seemed God was hiding His face from him! If we’re honest, we have to admit that we understand David’s inner turmoil in the opening cry of this psalm all too well.

But that initial, desperate groan is only the beginning of the story. In the six brief verses of Psalm 13, David moves from doubt to deliverance, teaching us the sublime and emancipating principle that victory depends chiefly on how we look at our trials.

The Inward Look
At first David looks inside himself, and sees only his own sorrow (vv. 1-2a). See how many times in these early verses he uses the first-person pronouns: “I,” “me,” “my,” “my soul,” “my enemy,” “my heart.” He’s questioning God, wallowing in his own defeat, wondering why God seems to be hiding His face.

Was God hiding His face? Of course not! David was merely looking in the wrong place.

There’s a serious danger in the wrong kind of inward look. Healthy introspection, the kind that leads to confession of sin and the humble brokenness of which Jesus spoke in Matthew 5:3-5, is critical to our spiritual survival. But looming in the face of those who look within themselves is a monstrous peril: a morbid preoccupation with our own inadequacies that breeds depression and debilitates us spiritually.

The difference between the two kinds of self-reflection is not so subtle. A wholesome look inside becomes hurtful when we begin looking within ourselves for a solution to the problems we find there. The solution doesn’t reside in us; we must look elsewhere.

The Outward Look
David turns his focus from within and begins to look around (vv. 2b-4). Now all he sees are his surroundings. What a different David this is from the young shepherd who strode confidently into the presence of the mighty Goliath with no armor and only a few pebbles for weapons! Pay careful heed to the lesson: one great victory does not ensure future triumph.

This time David is fearful. We can sense his trembling, as he grapples with a paralyzing dread that this trial might ultimately kill him (v. 3).

I’ve felt that way, too, and in trials of much less consequence than David’s. Such fear is the inevitable result of looking at circumstances and hoping some kind of help will come through them.

But deliverance doesn’t come through circumstances, either.

The Upward Look
Finally, in verses 5 and 6, David looks to the Lord, and there he sees his salvation. Compare this passage to verses 1 and 2. “Me . . .I . . .mine” has given way to “thy mercy . . . thy salvation . . . the Lord.”

Thus what in the beginning sounded like a dismal wail of unbelief becomes an exhilarating hymn of faith. What’s the difference? The trial has not changed but David’s point of view has. Now his eyes are clearly directed upward.

Salvation belongs to the Lord (Psalm 3:8) that goes for deliverance from trials as well as salvation from sin. No other truth emerges from everywhere in Scripture so definitively. If we look around or within or anywhere but to God for a way of escape, we are condemned to disappointment and ultimate failure.

It is God who provides the way of escape not out of our trials, but rather through them. He enables us to bear testing, not avoid it (1 Cor. 10:13). And He uses our tribulations to accomplish His wonderful purpose in us (Rom. 5:3-5, James 1:3-4).

Thus God works all things including our hardest testings together for our good. That’s the ultimate victory, and it’s how even in our darkest hour of trials, we can fix our eyes on Him and say confidently with David, “He hath dealt bountifully with me” (v. 6).

Moscow’s Big Surprise for Iran This Week

A senior Israeli government official last week told me that Prime Minister Netanyahu will assess the effectiveness of international economic sanctions on Iran in December and January. “Decisions will have to made after that,” he said. What kind of decisions? The official wasn’t particularly optimistic that sanctions would work, but when pressed wouldn’t say what Netanyahu might do next. Still, the implication was fairly clear: If Iran’s nuclear weapons program is not severely hampered enough by the first of the new year – by a combination of diplomacy, international sanctions, and/or covert actions inside Iran – Netanyahu and his government feel they have no choice but to launch preemptive military strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities.

There are early indications that sanctions are driving up prices inside Iran and causing political unrest. Some Western governments appear to be stepping up an aggressive covert war to sabotage Iran’s nuclear program. Now, Moscow has curiously announced a big surprise for Iran – it has cancelled the sale to Iran its state-of-the-art S-300 anti-aircraft missile system. In fact, the Russian company that builds the missile system says it’s going to refund about $166 million which Iran has already paid. The reason for the cancellation is the new U.N. economic sanctions which were imposed on Iran. Noteworthy is that this is a reversal of Russia’s position earlier this year when it vowed to deliver the S-300 system to Iran despite the sanctions. It also goes against the trend of the last decade when Russia was building ever an ever closer and deeper alliance with Iran. Indeed, Iran is now threatening to sue Russia to keep the contract and deliver the missiles.

What does all this mean? Is Russia fundamentally backing away from Iran, or making a tactical adjustment? Do Putin and Medvedev agree on this decision, or is there a split inside the Kremlin? Could sanctions actually delay a war between Iran and Israel? Important questions all, but it’s too early to say. For now, let’s keep praying for the peace of Jerusalem. No one wants to see more blood spilled in the region.

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