Customer Reviews

Isralestine: The Ancient Blueprints of the Future Middle East

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If you are a student of Eschatology, then this is one you'll want to have for your library. Bill has done an excellent job in explaining what he feels is the proper sequence of End Time events, which centers on a verse from Psalms which has gotten very little attention in the past. A verse when in full counsel seems to support and set the stage for the well-trodden Ezekiel 38-39 (Gog and Magog) war. Psalms 83 prophecies, truly seems to be unfolding before our very eyes in the evening news, and this books does a brilliant job of showing the correlation between this End Time prophecies and the current circumstances evolving in the Middle East today! If you are wanting to get into a study of Eschatology and how it corresponds to todays events, this is one you won't want to miss! Also, Bill is very open to entertaining and answering thoughtful questions via his website for the book: www.isralestine.net. Another excellent and complete study on Eschatology is by PhD. Aronld Fruchtenbaum which is titled, "Foot Steps of the Messiah", and the Study guide/workbook which is a must for any truly serious Eschatology student! Enjoy!

"Isralestine" is a book which will make you think deeply. It will challenge your paradigms. It is as exciting a read as a thriller but much more interesting. Of its detractors, I have only read one whose comments struck me as fair and objective and whose points were worth considering.

My opinion is that Bill Salus has tried to be as objective as possible. One thing is sure: he knows his subject intimately. Of course, that is not necessarily a prerequisite for objectivity. But his approach is neither confrontational nor controversial. It can only be taken as so by readers who have a contrary paradigm to what "Isralestine" is saying.

We live in a world where the media, generally, is hyper-critical of Israel. Whenever Israel retaliates, it is reported as revenge--which in my view (even if it were revenge) is less vicious than unprovoked attack inspired by deep hatred.

When Israel built a wall to protect herself against utterly demonic attacks from people hell-bent on her total annihilation, it was condemned, even by Anglican clergy, as an apartheid wall. In other words, Israel has no right to protect herself. The Soviet Union, on the contrary--like other powers throughout history--can build a wall to divide people who were no threat to them without any outcry from the international community. This disturbing double-standard can only be spiritual, thus demonic.

The hypocrisy of such people is blatant. Who would like to live in a country of a population roughly (till recently) that of Wales, surrounded by countless millions of people who believe it is ordered by their god to annihilate you in the most merciless and brutal way possible--to the point that they train little children to strap themselves with explosives and murder your people and themselves to boot? NO sane person would want to live under such conditions. Yet the world's media, the UN, the whole Islamic world, the Vatican, and even so-called Christians, take the side of the murderers and slander those who would defend themselves.

Salus' statements on Israel being the recipient of murderous psychopaths (he doesn't actually call them that but it's what they are) is quite correct. He shows from Bible prophesy, clearly and concisely, what these prophecies say about Israel and her implacable enemies. He also shows from Bible prophecy the world's attitude. He shows from the Scriptures things in great detail that I personally had never noticed before though they are right there.

The thing about Bible prophecy (in comparison to so-called prophecy of the Koran, none of which has materialized) is that much of it has happened since before and after the time of Christ, is happening now, and much is still about to happen. Remember, the Bible names names and gives places. No other "prophets" other than those of the Bible have done so and with such deadly accuracy.

Prophecy proves the Bible to be true, God to be faithful and all other religions to be false. Of course, people who are religious make their religions their gods. And any person whose god is their religion--or philosophy, political stance or word view--is going to be upset and angry if that paradigm is challenged. Most people will not stop and ask if they should change their world view if it is proved to be in error. In fact, Catholicism and Islam teach their adherents that it is wrong to be objective about their religions. To doubt either, is to sin. What stark contrast to the Bible which teaches total objectivity [e.g., 1 John 4:1 & 1 Thessalonians 5:21].

So Bill Salus' detractors are no different when they are not being objective.

I personally felt that Mr Salus was wrong regarding his prophetic view of Israel taking over the lands from Egypt and the Arabs prior to the Rapture. I had no problem with the view of the Edomites ("Palestinians") being utterly wiped out by Israel prior to the Rapture. That's because it is clearly stated in Obadiah v. 18 that God will use Israel to carry it out, as opposed to His return at Armageddon when He Personally, and His heavenly armies, will destroy all the remaining enemies of Israel. Also, Scripture makes no bones about Israel eventually taking those other surrounding lands. It's prophesied there without a doubt. But my understanding was that was to happen at Christ's return. I had also thought that Ezekiel's prophecies regarding Gog and Magog were reiterated in Revelation 20:7-9, those being one thousand years after Christ had returned to earth.

Bill Salus, though, shows that God will be using Israel against those Arab lands and that ISRAEL will be taking them, NOT Christ with His returning saints.

I had never noticed that before in the prophecies. But Bill Salus gives the essential Scriptures and points them out word for word. It is there for all to see; and it meant I had to think on these Scriptures and bring my thoughts into line with them, no matter how I'd seen them before.

I am having still to give those Scriptures--and "Isralestine"--much thought because it is easy to want something to be so, especially when you feel it is going to champion justice.

Having read much on the suffering of Christian Arabs persecuted and murdered by Muslims, I would greatly love to see the turn of the tide against Islam, especially at the hands of Israel representing the God of the Bible: The Muslim longing for the annihilation of Israel is because its very existence is an affront to their god "Allah." (See the books of former Imam Mark A. Gabriel.) Israel's existence to the Muslim mind, verifies the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. It tells them that the God of the Jews and the Christians is powerful and that Allah is impotent. They would have to change their tune if "Isralestine" was correct. As a Christian that would please me, especially as so many Arab Muslims are now already coming to that conclusion and repenting of their anti-Semitism and becoming Christians.

So, I am re-reading "Isralestine" as objectively as possible. It will take a much-prayer-and-logic approach. So far, the contents of "Isralestine" strike me as correct. I hope that many Muslims will read it, I hope that Jews will read it and I hope that Christians will read it.

For me this is one of those books that should be in the secular book stores and even in the supermarkets because it's a view of the Middle-East that is not going to be shown by the world's present news media. After all, so far, it looks as if the prophecies regarding "Isralestine" is starting to be fulfilled--if the latest news regarding Gaza is anything to go by.

I have to say that regarding the many books I have read on prophecy so far, this one is the most exciting. Salus is either bang on target or he is way off it. Only time will tell. Judging by what the Scriptures say, either way, we won't have very long to wait.

Author Bill Salus, with Isralestine: Ancient Blueprints of the Future Middle East (High Way Publishing, July 2008), has delivered a book that is at the very least intensely thought-provoking. His unique view presents work of a cutting-edge sort achieved by very few who deal with matters so likely relevant to our daily headlines.

Salus' postulations add scripturally backed levels of strata in thinking anew on one particular area, considering current issues and events. My own set-in-stone position hasn't yet fractured, but I sense the quaking, so must rethink the composite that forms the foundation. The reading of Isralestine is an ingredient well worth adding to the mixture in making the eschatological base more secure.

Ezekiel chapters 38 and 39 represent at this time on the world stage of history the most observable of all Bible prophecies yet future. Dynamic rearrangements take place on an almost hourly basis--actions that should alert the Bible prophecy student who holds the literalist position that we are witnessing stage-setting for the Gog-Magog attack on Israel, foretold for the time leading up to Christ's second coming.

Rosh, believed to be the ancient name for the area where present day Russia sits, is prophesied to take a coalition of peoples and nations on an attack southward toward Israel. A leader of Rosh the Prophet Ezekiel calls Gog will, according to the prophecy, bring the armies from the region he calls collectively Magog in an all-out effort to take great riches from the land the prophecy terms "the mountains of Israel" in the King James Version (KJV) of the Bible.

Persia is given as Gog's chief ally in the rampage southward. Iran, of course, currently occupies the majority of real estate that made up the land of ancient Persia. Therefore, anyone reading this review, whether prophecy student or unfamiliar with prophecy, should see clearly that these prophetic players are in the news these days as consistently as is Israel, the intended victim of Rosh, Persia (Russia, Iran), and the others who will be "like a cloud to cover the land," according to that Ezekiel 38-39 foretelling.

Russia's prime minister, Vladimir Putin, is looking southward. Perhaps he doesn't precisely fit the profile as yet-that given to the one called Gog. Putin is, however, looking to Syria and to break-away Georgian rebels, having recently created pretext for invading the former Soviet state. The prophesied path to Israel is in that southerly direction.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad presents two faces, one for the western press and diplomats, another for his own people and the Islamics of the Mid-East region and the world. The Persian dictator tells the West his country is not a threat to anyone, rather that Israel is the problem. Iran wants only to produce peaceful nuclear energy for the people. On the other hand, Ahmadinejad promises Islam that Israel will be purged forever from the planet. He makes such threats almost on a daily basis.

Russia and Iran have interlinked through agreements and technological intertwining in an alliance that can't be denied. The Rosh/Persian connection seems almost certainly in the stage-setting process for the attack over the "mountains of Israel," -an assault long held as inevitable by those who interpret as literal Bible prophecy yet future.

The author of Isralestine: The Ancient Blueprints of the Future Middle East, agrees with the assessment that things are shaping dramatically for the Gog-Magog showdown, in which God himself will obliterate all but one-sixth of the invading forces. He agrees, too, that much of these forces will be constituted of Islamics. The unique assertion Salus brings into prophecy yet future for the Middle East, however, is that the Gog-Magog forces will not include Arab Islamics, at least not the Arab Muslim enemy forces that surround the Jewish state today.

These present-day Arab Islamic enemies will, the author believes-based upon Psalm 83 and other prophetic passages he quite convincingly documents--be defeated in a spectacular military action prior to the time of Ezekiel's Gog-Magog assault. The powerful, nuclear-equipped Israeli Defense Force (IDF), Salus contends, will not only defeat the Arab nation-state antagonists who came against them in 1948, 1956, 1967 and 1973, but will win through battle most of the land divinely granted Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The victory will set the stage for Israel's becoming an extremely wealthy nation, and a people relatively at rest, with "unwalled villages," conditions that must prevail for the Jewish state in order to fit the condition enjoyed by Israel at the time Gog gets his "evil thought" to attack (Ezek. 38:10-12).

All conditions are in order for the IDF to carry out fulfillment of this military spectacular, according to Salus' well-structured scenario. The possibilities to be considered within such an eventuality, should it take place within a near time-frame, are awe-inspiring. Certainly, it would completely reorchestrate the Middle East dynamic, and would re-order thinking in eschatological circles.

My own cogitations tell me such changes would require that the rapture of the church precede such an Arab defeat--thus to meet the relative surface calm, business-more-or-less-as-usual time predicted by Jesus to occur just before He comes in the air for believers. (Read Luke 17: 26-29.)

The author is convinced that God would not allow such a galvanizing prophetic event to take place, as would be the catastrophic Arab defeat by the IDF, without due forewarning within the time near its coming to pass. He offers a recent archaeological find as evidence for the validity of his belief in the soon-to-come IDF victory over Israel's Arab Islamic enemies.

He contends that the confirming piece of the end-times puzzle was uncovered in Ireland on July 26, 2006. An engineer digging up Irish bog land to create commercial potting soil noticed just beyond the bucket of his bulldozer a well-preserved ancient parchment. It was Psalm 83, opened up in place and in plain view.

Salus writes, "Perhaps it is no coincidence that this Psalm that is filled with prophetic content has been dug up, dusted off, and rendered newsworthy in these latter days."

The author is convinced that by placing this 83rd Psalm piece of the end-time puzzle into its proper place, predicted events come into appropriate alignment. This discovery now completes the last-days puzzle, according to Salus. It should, he contends, enable prophecy buffs to confidently forecast the coming Arab-Israeli war, followed by the Russian-Iranian led invasion of Israel described in Ezekiel 38 and 39.

I have to say that with his book, Bill has my attention, when thinking on things taking place at such a torrid pace in the Middle East and the world. Isralestine: Ancient Blueprints of the Future Middle East is a cutting-edge work I think is a must-read.

Terry James - Reviewer Co-founder of Raptureready.com the Internets largest Bible prophecy website

I have read Isralestine from cover to cover and have found Mr. Salus' Bible knowledge to be stunning and cutting edge and accurate. He covers each subject by referencing verse by verse why this is truly the next chapter in the near future. I have always wondered why certain countries were not mentioned in Ezekiel 38 and this answers it. The dwelling safely in a land without walls has never described Israel unless this scenario happens. Israel's "exceedingly great army" only makes sense for a Psalm 83 conflict.

There are many things in this book that answers more questions than it brings up that make sense in today's current situation in the Middle East.

Let's face it! It does not take a rocket scientist to know that Israel is being pushed in by all sides. Very violently from the West Bank and Gaza and the most recent war in the north from Lebanon as a puppet of Syria. All of this pressure is being fueled and financed by Iran who openly (just a couple of days ago at the U.N.) calls for the destruction of Israel along with the U.S.A. and continues to work to build nuclear weapons as fast as they can. Those who deny these things are destined to repeat the history we had in the late 1930's with Hitler's false promises.

The huge difference now, is that there are many countries who "state" sponsor terrorism against Israel and the United States.

Israel has firmly clung to the motto of "NEVER AGAIN" as it applies to the Holocaust since it became a nation in 1948. It's very existance is now being threatened along every border and from Iran who is close to delivering on their promise to annialate them. Those who would hide their heads in the sand will be taken by complete surprise when all of this explodes in front of them. Something has to give and Israel has given all that they can to try to keep the peace and it is not working.

I truly believe that all Israel wants is to live in peace and be accepted and respected as a soveriegn nation. They have not had this for over the 50 years of their short existance as a nation. It really is "their God given land" as promised to them by God Himself in a covenant that will not be abandoned. Those who will encourage them to give up more land only to put their weapons closer to destroying Israel will be judged by God Himself. We are at a crossroad in history that Isael must decide to say "enough is enough" to those who want to take it from them.

All of the wars that have been fought by them have been to keep what little territory that man has granted to them. They have tried to make the best of what the world has told them that they should do only to have them suffer constant violence and worldwide condemnation for fighting back.

Bill Salus has indentified scripture that puts their next step into prospective and sets the stage for what the world will look like as we open the curtain on God's final acts. It makes total sense and leaves the reader with a complete picture of the map that God has laid out for His final solution.

Kudos to Mr. Salus for his insight and study of the Bible to show us how to understand God's plan for the next headlines that we will be reading soon.

I highly recommend reading this book.

Most prophecy scholars conclude that Ezekiel 38-39 is the next big prophetic event to unfold. Yet they have no explanation for how we get from the current state of the Middle East to the situation described in Ezekiel. Some obvious unanswered questions are how did Israel get so rich that Russia is "compelled" to attack, how did Israel get so secure it is known as a land of unwalled villages, and why aren't the hostile countries immediately surrounding Israel on the combatant list of Ezekiel 38? Bill Salus's answers from Psalm 83 are logical and ring true to me.

One would expect that the closer we get to the end of the End Times the better our understanding of the Bible prophecies would become. So I'm surprised that there are not more books like this that fill in the gaps and highlight how current events are aligning with the Scriptures. Contrary to Mr. Salus's critics, I found his presentation easy to follow and appreciated his references to previous and upcoming chapters. It served to tie his various points together, to support them, and to avoid repetition. And Mr Salus's mastery of Hebrew oddly validated the strength of his arguments also.

Lastly, let me give a few one-liners to the critics. A man is known by his enemies as well as by his friends. And a stupid argument against something is as good as a good argument for it. Since I'm critiquing the book and not the reviewers I'll say no more.

After getting started, I found this a hard book to put down. It is not a light read. As a student of biblical prophecy for many years I found myself cross referencing and connecting the dots that I have many times grappled with before. "Has this prophecy been fulfilled? If so when?" Most of the prophecies in question are to do with the nations immediately bordering today's Israel. I don't want to take any of Bill Salus' "thunder" here, so to the students of prophecy I say "You need to get this book". Not just for reading, but for studying and keeping for reference. It took me a proverbial "lot of heavy chewing" to get it down but all the trails need to be explored if you are like me and need to test the presented hypotheses, which incidentally, do hold up well. Yes, there are always questions left in the pursuit of the meaning of many prophetic scriptural passages, and this is the norm. This book is worthy of a place in your study library.

This is the best book I have ever read about the end of this age events. It fills in many of the holes left by other prophecy writers. I couldn't put it down and have read it 3 times.

Eschatology students have to read this book. An obvious parallel is made during this read between today's most important political scenarios, and how they are being played out in the middle east and otherwise. This read is written from a biblical world view, and shows the prophetic side of God's word as it written. It can help us all understand more about these uncertain times we live in.

Interested in Eschatology? Then this is one is a must read! Biblical prophecy is unfolding everyday right in plain view. We see it everywhere all around us, on the radio and television. Whats going on? This book is a fantastic look into End Time prophecy and the political situations we see shaping up in the middle east today. Do your self a favor, and don't miss out on this book!

While Mr. Salus has come to some understanding of the potential significance of Psalm 83 as regards end-time players in prophecy, it should be realized that insights into Psalm 83, while somewhat rare outside of some circles, can be found in writings about 100 to 150 years old by expositors such as J.N.Darby, William Kelly, Edward Dennet, T.E.Baines, and Walter Scott, besides others. Some promoting Salus' book have made comments on how he has seen things that other expositors have missed. While this is undoubtedly true, one must ask, which expositors and which did NOT miss these insights before Mr. Salus? Though not all writers from the 19th and early 20th Century are enitrely easy to read (some are undoubtedly more acceissible than others), the writings of such men as listed above, written many, many years before Israel was even back in the land, are often more reliable that more modern expositions for they relied on the Bible alone and not newspapers and periodicals for insigths into the future. Anyone who reads Salus should consider it their intellectual duty to read the other texts dealing with the same material as well.