Tsiyon News

How Emily Changed Her Life! - A few short months ago Emily, while still a teen, was so shy she was afraid to speak with anyone she didn't already know. This made life difficult and unhappy for Emily. Amazingly, that's all over now. How did such an amazing change occur so quickly? Not therapy. No doctors or therapists were involved. No hypnosis. No self-help books. No transcendental meditation or yoga either. Emily says that Messiah intervened to make this remarkable change in her life. Meet Emily in this video and consider her story. If Emily changed her life so can you!

The world is changing at lightning speed. In 2003, the year I moved to Texas, America was still in panic mode from the 9/11/01 Twin Tower terror attacks. Almost everyone believed the government narrative that Iraq had "WMDs" and was somehow supporting the terrorists who had attacked America. We all watched the USA deliver the "shock and awe" blow to Baghdad on TV. Soon the surgical attack of Bagdad was over and the country of Iraq was seemingly subdued in the hands of American forces.

Many thought the USA "victory" would soon bring the end to Mid-East terrorism. They had some reason to think so. On May 1st of 2003 President Bush made a dramatic and widely televised landing on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln. This was the chosen platform from which he made his historic victory speech declaring "Mission Accomplished!"

George W. Bush declares the end of major combat operations in Iraq aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite.)

Chris Matthews on MSNBC called President Bush a “hero” and gushed, “He won the war. He was an effective commander. Everybody recognizes that, I believe, except a few critics.” He added: “Women like a guy who’s president. Check it out. The women like this war. I think we like having a hero as our president. It’s simple.”

Indeed, Gwen Ifill on PBS said Bush was “part Tom Cruise, part Ronald Reagan.”

Brian Williams of NBC, moved by the moment, exclaimed, “The pictures were beautiful. It was quite something to see the first-ever American president on a—on a carrier landing.”

Surely, now the nightmare would all be over soon. The New York Times observed, “The Bush administration is planning to withdraw most United States combat forces from Iraq over the next several months and wants to shrink the American military presence to less than two divisions by the fall, senior allied officials said today.” Not surprisingly, this buoyant euphoria led people to believe it was just a matter of mopping up - then we would be out of there and everything could get back to normal - not.

In hindsight, all of this seems naive and stupid. There were no WNDs. There was no significant connection between Iraq and the terrorists. And a good show with all the bells and whistles does not equal "mission accomplished" - as subsequent history has made plain to all. If anything, the Middle East is now more dangerous than ever, with the Pandora's Box of a nuke race in the Middle East having been opened (see the article below). As I said, a lot has changed since 2003.

Here is more evidence of our changing times: On 11/18/2003 The Boston Globe reported "The Supreme Judicial Court [Massachusetts] today became the nation's first state supreme court to rule that same-sex couples have the legal right to marry."

Imagine that. For 6,000 years of human history marriage had always been defined as a social contract between a man and a woman - the only sort of union that naturally produces children and therefore perpetuated the human race. Society had always been based on that institution and had always protected that institution above all others since the human race itself depends on men and women uniting in marriage - that is, until the Supreme Court of Massachusetts decided in 2003 that "same-sex couples have the legal right to marry."

In 2015, in 37 states - AL, AK, AZ, CA, CO, CT, DE, FL, HI, ID, IA, IL, IN, KS, ME, MD, MA, MN, MT, NC, NH, NJ, NM, NV, NY, OK, OR, PA, RI, SC, UT, VA, VT, WA, WV, WI, and WY - plus Washington, D.C. - same-sex couples can legally "marry." What is more, the US Supreme Court is deliberating on whether same-sex "marriage" is required by the USA Constitution. This is, on the face of it, absurd. Can you imagine the founding fathers who wrote the Constitution, for one instant, thinking that document was to be a guarantee of same-sex marriage? Yet, if the Supremes say it is just that, then the definition of legal "marriage" will have been entirely changed from what it has been for thousands of years, and social mayhem will escalate on a new scale we can't now imagine.

While it seems that everything has been rapidly changing it is reassuring to realize that some things never change. The Creator never changes. He is not controlled by the social or political propaganda of this world but is always absolutely grounded in truth, righteousness, wisdom, love, justice and faithfulness. Likewise, His Word never changes. It is always truthful, right, and a guiding beacon of light through troubled times.

Tsiyon, being established on Him and His Word, has remained remarkably the same since 2003, the year we came to Texas. You can listen to our earliest messages and compare them to what we are saying now and you will see that they all add to the same consistent picture. This is a picture of Yah's plan for these last days, how the House of David figures into that, how the remnant of Israel figures into that, and most importantly, how Messiah figures into that. Amid this changing world we have a vision and a mission that is ever before us, that determines everything we do and say. It is the ground under our feet and it is the laser-like goal that marks our way forward. This is so because we are called to point the way through these dark and changing times.

There is a real-life story behind Tsiyon. The testimonies that were video recorded at the recent dedication of our Tsiyon Tabernacle help to tell that story. There, Dawn and I told our Texas story. Our Texas story is over 3 hours long, it includes a lot that we have never shared about our personal lives and the battle we have fought to keep bringing this message to you. Now, we want to share our Texas story with you. You can hear the audio version in our latest radio program. Please tune in this Sabbath.

King Salman bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud makes his first speech as king following the death of King Abdullah, Friday, Jan. 23, 2015 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. (AP Photo/Saudi Press Agency)

Saudi Arabia has reached out to its ally Pakistan to acquire “off-the-shelf” atomic weapons as a nuclear arms race begins to shape up with Shiite rival Iran, US sources said.

“For the Saudis the moment has come,” a former US defense official told the UK’s Sunday Times last week. “There has been a longstanding agreement in place with the Pakistanis and the House of Saud has now made the strategic decision to move forward.”

The anonymous former official said the US did not believe that “any actual weaponry has been transferred yet,” but declared that “the Saudis mean what they say and they will do what they say.”

Tensions between Tehran and the kingdom have grown in the past few months as Saudi Arabia stepped up its air campaign against Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen. King Salman of Saudi Arabia refused an invitation to attend a landmark summit hosted by US President Barack Obama last week, amid ongoing angst over US-led nuclear talks with Iran.

Former Saudi intelligence head Prince Turki bin Faisal expressed the kingdom’s desire for a nuclear weapon last month at the Asan Plenum, a conference held by the South Korean-based Asan Institute for Policy Studies. “Whatever the Iranians have, we will have, too,” he said, according to The New York Times.

Faisal also warned that the Iranian nuclear deal “opens the door to nuclear proliferation, not closes it, as was the initial intention.”

According to the Sunday Times report, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan have enjoyed a mutually beneficial relationship for decades. Saudi Arabia has given Pakistan billions of dollars in subsidized oil, while the latter has unofficially agreed to supply the Gulf state with nuclear warheads.

“Nuclear weapons programs are extremely expensive and there’s no question that a lot of the funding of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program was provided by Saudi Arabia,” Lord David Owen, who served as England’s foreign secretary from 1977-1979, told the weekly publication.

“Given their close relations and close military links, it’s long been assumed that if the Saudis wanted, they would call in a commitment, moral or otherwise, for Pakistan to supply them immediately with nuclear warheads,” he added.

However, the report added, Lt.Gen. Khalid Kidwai, who helped pioneer Pakistan’s nuclear program, denied that Pakistan had ever granted Saudi Arabia access to its nuclear technology.

The main concern shared by US and European officials was that if Saudi Arabia were to acquire an atomic weapon, it could spur other Sunni nations to follow suit.

An anonymous British military official also told The Sunday Times that Western military leaders “all assume the Saudis have made the decision to go nuclear.”

The official added, “The fear is that other Middle Eastern powers — Turkey and Egypt — may feel compelled to do the same and we will see a new, even more dangerous, arms race.”

This position was also mirrored by other, non-Saudi Gulf states at a summit last week between the US and several Arab countries. One unnamed Gulf state leader attending the Camp David summit told The New York Times, “We can’t sit back and be nowhere as Iran is allowed to retain much of its capability and amass its research.”

Report: Saudis to purchase Pakistani atomic bomb

US, UK said to warily eye prospect of a Mideast nuclear arms race amid growing fear of Iranian nukes among Gulf states