Longtime readers know I was a fan of George Bush as president and anything but a fan of the current one. Let’s just get that out of the way and set it aside for a moment. This post isn’t about politics, though it has helped me continue my journey beyond politics.

I was under the impression that the U.S. is coming under judgment because (among other things, e.g., life issues) BHO’s policies represent a sharp, unprecedented break from 60+ years of American support for Israel. Jimmy Carter’s and Bill Clinton’s coddling of Israel’s enemies seem to stand as pale shadows in contrast with the deep, settling darkness BHO appears to be pursuing in that domain.

I was inclined to see BHO himself as the cause of impending judgment and/or view his election in itself as a kind judgment — the out-working of widespread apostasy and idolatry in any number of domains. Those still may be true, but in much too small a context — i.e., I was wrong to focus only on him. Hear me out.

I just discovered one of those Biblical-prophetic close-in date “things” I’ve been seeing the past year. It was so clear when I did the spreadsheet an hour ago as to make me sit up and gasp in trembling awe for what it says about God’s nature (outside of time; omnipotent; omnipresent; seen it all “already”) and what it implies about our near future.

Short take: one way or the other, there won’t be a lot more of it (our future) down here on earth!

As many of you know, I’ve written several times about how, the 1260-, 1290- and 1335-day prophetic measuring sticks laid out in Daniel and Revelation seem to demarcate not just the tribulation period, but a series of what one might describe as “time ripples” linking pairs and groups of key end-times, trib-related events.

If we think of these as akin to contractions or birth pains, we would find ample Biblical support, though I’m not wedded to that imagery in relation to this. The point is that key milestones around Israel (e.g., Netanyahu’s 2005 resignation) seem to be tightly linked according to these three Danielian date-spans to key events here in the U.S. (e.g., BHO’s inauguration) and vice versa.

Late last night, over a big bowl of vanilla ice cream over warm berries at my kitchen counter (yum!), I was startled to read, on pages 132-133 of Chuck Missler’s book “20/20 Prophecy” about the May 26, 2005 meeting between then-President Bush and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and the announcement that followed it. If memory serves, that took place around one of my brother’s several relapses with cancer. I was kinda distracted and so never read much of the commentary on it.

Here’s the Bush money quote:

Any final status agreement must be reached between the two parties, and changes to the 1949 Armistice Lines must be mutually agreed to. A viable two-state solution must ensure contiguity on the West Bank, and a state of scattered territories will not work. There must also be meaningful linkages between the West Bank and Gaza. This is the position of the United States today; it will be the position of the United States at the time of final status negotiations.

George Bush, the man whom I’d thought was a staunch defender of Israel (and who was, in many ways), had just drawn a line in the sand for them far more conciliatory to those who have sought their elimination than any U.S. president ever.

The 1949 lines represent the point in time at which Israel, in its modern incarnation, was at its weakest — just after its Arab neighbors had taken what would be their best shot at a national partial-birth abortion. (Their attempt at national infanticide, in 1967, would fail as well).

The 1949 lines did not allow Israel access to East Jerusalem or to the Temple Mount — a geographical state-of-affairs about as hard against the grain of God’s plan as its possible to get. (I didn’t know this until recently, but Jerusalem isn’t mentioned even once in the Koran. muslims only grafted it onto their narrative as a ‘holy’ site later in a move that seemed almost perfectly crafted to oppose and irritate Jews and Christians. Question: what other cities outside of their historical lands have muslims ever claimed as holy after mohammed’s death? Exactly…  )

The 1949 Armistice Lines represent an undoing of every gain Israel has ever made in its efforts to establish common-sense buffers from regular attack. They represent a profoundly smaller footprint than the 1921 British Mandate for Palestine from which the entire country of Jordan was carved out specifically for the purposes of housing those who fled in advance of Arab attempts at incursion. To the degree that the media’s memories go back at all, they seldom go back to any of these key events in Israel’s struggle to exist, or their details, much less the reason Israel was established in the first place (the Holocaust).

I won’t belabor the point. Many other commentators far wiser and more studied in these things than I am have described that May 26, 2005 meeting between Bush and Abbas, and its outcome, in superlative terms. (I.e., superlatively negative for Israel). Even if you disagree with me, it cannot be argued that it was a major watershed for that country, and ours.

On the premise that, in the Hebrew (i.e., Biblical) worldview prophecy is pattern, and not just prediction (aka, “history echoes”), here’s what I discovered:

May 26, 2005 plus 1260 days takes us to November 6, 20098, the day all voting results from the fifty states in the 2008 presidential election had come in, making clear beyond a shadow of a doubt that BHO was this country’s choice.

May 26,2005 plus 1290 days takes us to December 6, 2008, the day that BHO first began to reveal the full scope of his socialist agenda (‘Public Works on a Vast Scale’, said the relatively staid and left-leaning WaPo). In a prophetic vein, it also happens to have been the 4th anniversary of the Al Q’aeda attack on the U.S. Consulate in Jedda, Saudi Arabia, the 10th anniversary of Hugo Chavez’ election, the 39th anniversary (3X13) of the murder by Hells’ Angels members at a Rolling Stones concert at the Altamont Motor Speedway.

It’s also the 125th anniversary of the Washington Monument: “On December 6, 1884, workers placed the 3,300 pound marble capstone on the Washington Monument, and topped it with a nine-inch pyramid of cast aluminum, completing construction of the 555-foot Egyptian obelisk.”

(That would translate, in prophetic terms as a kind of national-scale institutionalization of Baal worship (the obelisk), but there’s more to it than that. Interestingly, the monument’s height symbolizes grace (five) as well as grace perfected (repeated 3X). Very interesting. [UPDATE I: I just realized, during some prayer time, that the 125th anniversary, in 2008, would also be 5X5X5. Again, grace perfected. What might that mean in this context? Perhaps that America has tried God's patience to an extreme degree. Fortunately, the author of grace has plenty of it to pour out, though he will not do so forever.]

But here’s what sent cold shivers up my spine…

Wait for it…

May 26, 2005 plus 1335 days (Daniel 12:12) takes us to… January 20, 2009 — the date millions have anticipated as the dawn of a new age of ‘hope’, ‘peace’ and ‘change’… the date BHO was inaugurated U.S. President.

Something fundamentally different began on that day [UPDATE II: Daniel says, "Blessed is he who waits and arrives at the 1,335 days". I don't know if 1-20-09 was the 1,335 day mark, but it certainly seems to have been one of great significance.]

Everyone senses it.

It has been my view, for some time, that that (1-20-09) was the beginning of the tribulation — a period of accelerating descent into awfulness that has its pivot-point (middle) in the summer of 2012: beginning the day before the 236th anniversary of this country’s independence, coming to a crescendo during the London Olympics (and BHO’s 51st birthday), and concluding on Rosh Hashanah 5772 (Sept. 16, 2012). [UPDATE III: Just to be clear, that theory would put the really bad part of the trib after RH 5772, with the real end-of-world stuff in 2015. The other possibility, of course, is that 2005 marked the jumping-off-place and we're now in the nasty bit but, frankly, I just don't see it.]

Keep praying folks. We must remember that this kind of stuff sits in the context of the One who has overcome it all already — the one who resides in all believers, infinitely more powerful than the one who is in the world.