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Why Is Israel, One of the World’s Driest Countries, Now Overflowing With Drinking Water?

Israel now gets 55 percent of its domestic water from desalination, and that has helped to turn one of the world’s driest countries into the unlikeliest of water giants.

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In 2008, Israel teetered on the edge of a water shortage catastrophe, today Israel has more water than it needs

“The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them; and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose. It shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice even with joy and singing: the glory of Lebanon shall be given unto it, the excellency of Carmel and Sharon, they shall see the glory of the LORD, and the excellency of our God.” Isaiah 35:1,2 (KJV)

EDITOR’S NOTE: Prophetically, the verses from Isaiah 35 will be fulfilled during the Millennial Reign of Jesus Christ from Jerusalem on the Throne of David. But even now, we continue to see God’s blessing on Israel above that of all the other nations around them. Tiny, little Israel holds an amazing amount of patents for technology, farming, and water purification. 

Article written by Rowan Jacobsen

Ten miles south of Tel Aviv, I stand on a catwalk over two concrete reservoirs the size of football fields and watch water pour into them from a massive pipe emerging from the sand. The pipe is so large I could walk through it standing upright, were it not full of Mediterranean seawater pumped from an intake a mile offshore.

“Now, that’s a pump!” Edo Bar-Zeev shouts to me over the din of the motors, grinning with undisguised awe at the scene before us. The reservoirs beneath us contain several feet of sand through which the seawater filters before making its way to a vast metal hangar, where it is transformed into enough drinking water to supply 1.5 million people.

We are standing above the new Sorek desalination plant, the largest reverse-osmosis desal facility in the world, and we are staring at Israel’s salvation. Just a few years ago, in the depths of its worst drought in at least 900 years, Israel was running out of water. Now it has a surplus. That remarkable turnaround was accomplished through national campaigns to conserve and reuse Israel’s meager water resources, but the biggest impact came from a new wave of desalination plants.

Israel now gets 55 percent of its domestic water from desalination, and that has helped to turn one of the world’s driest countries into the unlikeliest of water giants.

Bar-Zeev, who recently joined Israel’s Zuckerberg Institute for Water Research after completing his postdoc work at Yale University, is an expert on biofouling, which has always been an Achilles’ heel of desalination and one of the reasons it has been considered a last resort. Desal works by pushing saltwater into membranes containing microscopic pores. The water gets through, while the larger salt molecules are left behind. But microorganisms in seawater quickly colonize the membranes and block the pores, and controlling them requires periodic costly and chemical-intensive cleaning. But Bar-Zeev and colleagues developed a chemical-free system using porous lava stone to capture the microorganisms before they reach the membranes. It’s just one of many breakthroughs in membrane technology that have made desalination much more efficient. Israel now gets 55 percent of its domestic water from desalination, and that has helped to turn one of the world’s driest countries into the unlikeliest of water giants.

Driven by necessity, Israel is learning to squeeze more out of a drop of water than any country on Earth, and much of that learning is happening at the Zuckerberg Institute, where researchers have pioneered new techniques in drip irrigation, water treatment and desalination. They have developed resilient well systems for African villages and biological digesters than can halve the water usage of most homes.

IDE’s Ashkelon Plant

The institute’s original mission was to improve life in Israel’s bone-dry Negev Desert, but the lessons look increasingly applicable to the entire Fertile Crescent. “The Middle East is drying up,” says Osnat Gillor, a professor at the Zuckerberg Institute who studies the use of recycled wastewater on crops. “The only country that isn’t suffering acute water stress is Israel.”

That water stress has been a major factor in the turmoil tearing apart the Middle East, but Bar-Zeev believes that Israel’s solutions can help its parched neighbors, too — and in the process, bring together old enemies in common cause.

Bar-Zeev acknowledges that water will likely be a source of conflict in the Middle East in the future. “But I believe water can be a bridge, through joint ventures,” he says. “And one of those ventures is desalination.”

Driven to desperation

In 2008, Israel teetered on the edge of catastrophe. A decade-long drought had scorched the Fertile Crescent, and Israel’s largest source of freshwater, the Sea of Galilee, had dropped to within inches of the “black line” at which irreversible salt infiltration would flood the lake and ruin it forever. Water restrictions were imposed, and many farmers lost a year’s crops.

Their counterparts in Syria fared much worse. As the drought intensified and the water table plunged, Syria’s farmers chased it, drilling wells 100, 200, then 500 meters (300, 700, then 1,600 feet) down in a literal race to the bottom. Eventually, the wells ran dry and Syria’s farmland collapsed in an epic dust storm. More than a million farmers joined massive shantytowns on the outskirts of Aleppo, Homs, Damascus and other cities in a futile attempt to find work and purpose.

And that, according to the authors of “Climate Change in the Fertile Crescent and Implications of the Recent Syrian Drought,” a 2015 paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, was the tinder that burned Syria to the ground. “The rapidly growing urban peripheries of Syria,” they wrote, “marked by illegal settlements, overcrowding, poor infrastructure, unemployment, and crime, were neglected by the Assad government and became the heart of the developing unrest.”

Similar stories are playing out across the Middle East, where drought and agricultural collapse have produced a lost generation with no prospects and simmering resentments. Iran, Iraq and Jordan all face water catastrophes. Water is driving the entire region to desperate acts.

More water than needs

Except Israel. Amazingly, Israel has more water than it needs. The turnaround started in 2007, when low-flow toilets and showerheads were installed nationwide and the national water authority built innovative water treatment systems that recapture 86 percent of the water that goes down the drain and use it for irrigation — vastly more than the second-most-efficient country in the world, Spain, which recycles 19 percent.

But even with those measures, Israel still needed about 1.9 billion cubic meters (2.5 billion cubic yards) of freshwater per year and was getting just 1.4 billion cubic meters (1.8 billion cubic yards) from natural sources. That 500-million-cubic-meter (650-million-cubic-yard) shortfall was why the Sea of Galilee was draining like an unplugged tub and why the country was about to lose its farms.

The country faces a previously unfathomable question: What to do with its extra water?

Enter desalination. The Ashkelon plant, in 2005, provided 127 million cubic meters (166 million cubic yards) of water. Hadera, in 2009, put out another 140 million cubic meters (183 million cubic yards). And now Sorek, 150 million cubic meters (196 million cubic yards). All told, desal plants can provide some 600 million cubic meters (785 million cubic yards) of water a year, and more are on the way.

The Sea of Galilee is fuller. Israel’s farms are thriving. And the country faces a previously unfathomable question: What to do with its extra water?

Water diplomacy

Inside Sorek, 50,000 membranes enclosed in vertical white cylinders, each 4 feet high and 16 inches wide, are whirring like jet engines. The whole thing feels like a throbbing spaceship about to blast off. The cylinders contain sheets of plastic membranes wrapped around a central pipe, and the membranes are stippled with pores less than a hundredth the diameter of a human hair. Water shoots into the cylinders at a pressure of 70 atmospheres and is pushed through the membranes, while the remaining brine is returned to the sea.

Desalination used to be an expensive energy hog, but the kind of advanced technologies being employed at Sorek have been a game changer. Water produced by desalination costs just a third of what it did in the 1990s. Sorek can produce a thousand liters of drinking water for 58 cents. Israeli households pay about US$30 a month for their water — similar to households in most US cities, and far less than Las Vegas (US$47) or Los Angeles (US$58).

The International Desalination Association claims that 300 million people get water from desalination, and that number is quickly rising. IDE, the Israeli company that built Ashkelon, Hadera and Sorek, recently finished the Carlsbad desalination plant in Southern California, a close cousin of its Israel plants, and it has many more in the works. Worldwide, the equivalent of six additional Sorek plants are coming online every year. The desalination era is here.

What excites Bar-Zeev the most is the opportunity for water diplomacy. Israel supplies the West Bank with water, as required by the 1995 Oslo II Accords, but the Palestinians still receive far less than they need. Water has been entangled with other negotiations in the ill-fated peace process, but now that more is at hand, many observers see the opportunity to depoliticize it. Bar-Zeev has ambitious plans for a Water Knows No Boundaries conference in 2018, which will bring together water scientists from Egypt, Turkey, Jordan, Israel, the West Bank and Gaza for a meeting of the minds.

Even more ambitious is the US$900 million Red Sea–Dead Sea Canal, a joint venture between Israel and Jordan to build a large desalination plant on the Red Sea, where they share a border, and divide the water among Israelis, Jordanians and the Palestinians. The brine discharge from the plant will be piped 100 miles north through Jordan to replenish the Dead Sea, which has been dropping a meter per year since the two countries began diverting the only river that feeds it in the 1960s. By 2020, these old foes will be drinking from the same tap.

On the far end of the Sorek plant, Bar-Zeev and I get to share a tap as well. Branching off from the main line where the Sorek water enters the Israeli grid is a simple spigot, a paper cup dispenser beside it. I open the tap and drink cup after cup of what was the Mediterranean Sea 40 minutes ago. It tastes cold, clear and miraculous.

The contrasts couldn’t be starker. A few miles from here, water disappeared and civilization crumbled. Here, a galvanized civilization created water from nothingness. As Bar-Zeev and I drink deep, and the climate sizzles, I wonder which of these stories will be the exception, and which the rule. source

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Cults

Study Finds That Christian Support For Donald Trump Comes Mostly From The New Apostolic Reformation Who Believe They Are Taking Over The World

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The New Apostolic Reformation cult with their Seven Mountains Mandate heresy makes up the core of Christian support for Donald Trump and the presidency

We have warned you about the New Apostolic Reformation for many years now, with their man-centered and earth-centered doctrine of what they call the 7 Mountains Mandate for world domination. They are an excellent illustration of what Paul is talking about in 2 Thessalonians 2:3 with the ‘falling away’ from correct doctrinal teaching in the last days. Sadly, these ‘apostles of the NAR’ are the driving force behind Donald Trump and his bid to retake the White House. That’s not good.

If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.” 2 Chronicles 7:14 (KJB)

Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.” 1 John 2:15 (KJB)

God makes a great promise to the Jewish people who are called by His Name of Jehovah, that if they will humble themselves and repent, He will heal their land. This promise is 100% given to the Jews, and 100% given to God’s holy land of Israel. America doesn’t enter the equation at any point, coming or going. The New Apostolic Reformation teaches Christian world domination, for the Lord of course, to set up a kingdom here on Earth without Jesus coming back first to create it. That is heresy. Christians are called to be a witness to the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and to stay separate and apart from the world system. Vote for whomever you want in November, but do it with the knowledge that Christians will never ‘take over the world for Jesus’ because no Christian is called to do that.

The New Apostolic Reformation and the Seven Mountains Mandate is the driving force behind another Donald Trump presidency

FROM RELIGION NEWS: This past month, a group of self-styled American Christian prophets released an urgent word from God on YouTube about an impending Islamic uprising in the U.S. Pointing to pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses, they declared that an “insurrection is forming that is like unto the communist takeover in Russia. … This is not only about bringing a Palestinian state to the Middle East but an Islamic state to North America and other nations.”

The good news, according to these prophets, is that God also says, “If the church repents, I will relent. I will protect your nations.”

If this God-speaking-through-prophets-and-warning-nations-about-other-religions business sounds fringy and oddball in modern Christianity, it once was. But such prophecies and these prophets are rapidly redefining mainstream American evangelical theology, practice and politics. They are affiliated with a movement called the New Apostolic Reformation, a set of leadership networks whose leaders call themselves modern-day apostles and prophets and believe they are commissioned by God to take over the world.

This NAR movement runs like a golden thread through recent flashpoints of evangelical Christian support for Donald Trump, Christian nationalism and Christian extremism. NAR leaders were central to the mobilization of Christians for the Jan. 6 insurrection, and many apostles, prophets and NAR symbols were present around the U.S. Capitol that day. NAR ideas helped inspire the recent controversy surrounding the Alabama Supreme Court in vitro fertilization rulingHouse Speaker Mike Johnson flies a flag outside his office that is closely associated with the NAR’s aggressive prophetic politics.

The reasonable objector may argue that all of those things might be true, and yet the NAR could still be a fringe movement. How much influence do NAR ideas have on broader American evangelicalism?

It’s true that the NAR networks come from the amorphous nondenominational, charismatic sector of American evangelicalism that seeks to restore the supernatural dimensions of early Christianity. Historically these groups have been outside the evangelical mainstream.

But we have collected data showing just how far these NAR-associated beliefs and practices have spread within American evangelical communities. The present-day reach and influence of these ideas may be shocking to those acquainted with conventional evangelicalism. Charismatic theologies, NAR prophecies and radical politics that once operated on the margins of evangelicalism have moved to the center of the action. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this transformation has a lot to do with Donald Trump.

The New Apostolic Reformation refers to a set of charismatic leadership networks established in the late 1990s and early 2000s by a renegade evangelical seminary professor named C. Peter Wagner. Almost all of its leaders, including Wagner himself, believed themselves to be newly commissioned apostles and prophets, endowed with immense supernatural authority to revolutionize the church, to defeat Satan and his demons and build the kingdom of God on earth.

The Seven Mountains prophecy imagines every society as having seven major arenas of influence — religion, family, education, government, media, entertainment and commerce — and the prophecy commands Christians to conquer the tops of each of these mountains so that Christian influence can flow down into broader society. Put simply, the Seven Mountain Mandate is a prophetically derived, systematic program for Christian supremacy.

Shortly after Trump declared his candidacy for president in summer of 2015, he enlisted his friend and spiritual adviser, Paula White-Cain, a charismatic apostle and televangelist, “to be the bridge between him and evangelicals.” White-Cain began by inviting many of her fellow charismatic evangelical leaders — Messianic rabbis, televangelists, prophets, NAR apostles and megachurch pastors — to meet with Trump early in the campaign.

The fact that these NAR-affiliated Christians make up the core of Christian Trump support and the new base of the Republican Party also helps explain why many elected officials have taken a decidedly charismatic turn. It explains why a Southern Baptist in good standing like Mike Johnson would be linking arms with NAR apostles, why provocateur Roger Stone has claimed he too is the subject of prophecies and announced in 2022 that he had a vision of a demonic portal above Joe Biden’s White House. It explains why former Texas Gov. Rick Perry would propagate the notion of Trump being anointed by God. READ MORE

Now The End Begins is your front line defense against the rising tide of darkness in the last Days before the Rapture of the Church

When you contribute to this fundraising effort, you are helping us to do what the Lord called us to do. The money you send in goes primarily to the overall daily operations of this site. When people ask for Bibles, we send them out at no charge. When people write in and say how much they would like gospel tracts but cannot afford them, we send them a box at no cost to them for either the tracts or the shipping, no matter where they are in the world. We have a Gospel Billboard program. We are now broadcasting Bible studies, Podcasts and a Sunday Service 5 times a week, thanks to your generous donations. All this is possible because YOU pray for us, YOU support us, and YOU give so we can continue growing.

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But whatever you do, don’t do nothing. Time is short and we need your help right now. The Lord has given us an open door with a tremendous ‘course’ for us to fulfill that will create an excellent experience at the Judgement Seat of Christ. Please pray for our efforts, and if the Lord leads you to donate, be as generous as possible. The war is REAL, the battle HOT and the time is SHORTTO THE FIGHT!!!

“Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ;” Titus 2:13 (KJB)

“Thank you very much!” – Geoffrey, editor-in-chief, NTEB

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Israel Launches Major Military Offensive On Hamas Stronghold In Rafah As IDF Spokesman Confirms Targeted Airstrikes And Tanks On The Ground

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The War Cabinet unanimously decided that Israel will ‘continue its operation in Rafah in order to exert military pressure on Hamas in order to promote the release of our hostages and the other goals of the war’

On the Podcast today, we covered the breaking news coming out of Israel as it was happening, and we told you that, in our opinion, the IDF was not going to accept the Hamas truce in light of the 4 IDF soldiers that were killed on Sunday. Also the fact that Hamas was lying about the truce was another major consideration. Now comes more breaking news that the IDF has indeed launched an operation in Rafah with blistering targeted airstrikes and tanks rolling in on the ground.

“Howl, O gate; cry, O city; thou, whole Palestina, art dissolved: for there shall come from the north a smoke, and none shall be alone in his appointed times.” Isaiah 14:31 (KJB)

About two hours after Hamas’ responded positively to an Egyptian-Qatari cease-fire proposal, Palestinian and Arab media reported Monday evening that IDF forces and tanks began to enter Gaza’s East Rafah, in following intense heavy shelling in the eastern area of ​​the city.  The IDF spokesman confirmed the report and said that “IDF forces are attacking and operating now against targets of the terrorist organization Hamas in a targeted manner in East Rafah.” The Palestinians reported that houses were blown up in the al-Shuqa area and around the Rafah Crossing, and that there was tank fire and artillery shelling from the east. **THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS STORY AND WE WILL KEEP YOU UPDATED**

IDF strikes Hamas terror targets in East Rafah

FROM THE JERUSALEM POST: The Prime Minister’s Office said earlier on Monday night that the War Cabinet had agreed to continue with Israel’s planned Rafah operation. “The War Cabinet unanimously decided that Israel continues the operation in Rafah to exert military pressure on Hamas in order to promote the release of our hostages and the other goals of the war,” the statement read.

The PMO also noted that in parallel and despite the fact that the “proposal is far from Israel’s necessary requirements, Israel will send a delegation of mediators to exhaust the possibility of reaching an agreement under conditions acceptable to Israel.”

This comes despite Hamas’s earlier agreement with the Qatari and Egyptian ceasefire proposal. A former Senior Israeli security source told The Jerusalem Post on Monday that the proposed “deal” Hamas said they agreed upon doesn’t actually exist.

Chairman of the National Unity Party Benny Gantz stated on Monday: “I want to address the citizens of Israel and especially the families of the hostages. We face a cruel enemy. We will never give up on the effort to bring our hostages home. We will continue to work for their return as a matter of duty. The negotiation team is working around the clock to examine the proposal presented by Hamas, which does not align with the dialogue held so far with the mediators and contains significant differences. Nevertheless, we continue to turn every stone and dispatch delegations to Cairo.”

“Every decision will be brought to the security cabinet – there will be no political considerations,” he added. “Even the military operation in Rafah is an integral part of our ongoing efforts and commitment to bring back our abductees and change the security reality in the south. We will continue all efforts until we bring them home.” READ MORE

Now The End Begins is your front line defense against the rising tide of darkness in the last Days before the Rapture of the Church

When you contribute to this fundraising effort, you are helping us to do what the Lord called us to do. The money you send in goes primarily to the overall daily operations of this site. When people ask for Bibles, we send them out at no charge. When people write in and say how much they would like gospel tracts but cannot afford them, we send them a box at no cost to them for either the tracts or the shipping, no matter where they are in the world. We have a Gospel Billboard program. We are now broadcasting Bible studies, Podcasts and a Sunday Service 5 times a week, thanks to your generous donations. All this is possible because YOU pray for us, YOU support us, and YOU give so we can continue growing.

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But whatever you do, don’t do nothing. Time is short and we need your help right now. The Lord has given us an open door with a tremendous ‘course’ for us to fulfill that will create an excellent experience at the Judgement Seat of Christ. Please pray for our efforts, and if the Lord leads you to donate, be as generous as possible. The war is REAL, the battle HOT and the time is SHORTTO THE FIGHT!!!

“Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ;” Titus 2:13 (KJB)

“Thank you very much!” – Geoffrey, editor-in-chief, NTEB

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End Times

Russell Brand Was ‘Baptized’ Into The Roman Catholic Church, It Was Not The Believers Baptism Of Romans 6 According To The Scriptures, Pray For His Salvation

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Russell Brand has no testimony of salvation after being baptized into the Roman Catholic Church, he got wet but not saved

Much has been made in recent days about the baptism of Hollywood actor and social media star Russell Brand, and we would do well to compare this and all such topics to what the scripture tells us is true about these things. Our starting point regarding Russell Brand is to see if we can figure out exactly what he was baptized in to, and fortunately, we already have that information. Russell Brand has been baptized into the Roman Catholic Church created by the Emperor Constantine in the 4th century.

“Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.” Romans 6:3,4 (KJB)

We could almost end our quest here, now that we know that Brand has become a Roman Catholic. But for the sake of fairness we shall continue. The second thing we need to ascertain if we can find his testimony of salvation, so far I have come across nothing that would indicate he has heard Paul’s gospel of the death, burial and resurrection on the third day of Jesus Christ according to the scripture. If you have a link to his salvation testimony please post it in the comments section below this article.

The third thing we need to look at as what Russell Brand thinks he has done in getting baptized into the Roman Catholic Church. Is he aware of his sinful condition? Is he trusting the shed blood of Jesus Christ alone? I have reviewed multiple videos posted by Brand, and he thinks that his good works are now necessary to maintain his state as a Christian. About his baptism, Brand says he has now been ‘awakened and untethered’ to this ‘new level of consciousness’. In his mind, Jesus is a thing, not a Person, and he has joined this mystical group of knowledge seekers much like the Rosicrucians. He has religion all right, he just doesn’t have Jesus, and he doesn’t have Jesus because no one gave him the gospel. Joining the Roman Catholic Church makes you a member of that organization, it doesn’t save your soul. In the Bible, people are baptized after getting saved, and then they were added to the church.

If you want to do something nice for Russell Brand, pray the Lord will send born again Christians his way to give him the gospel, that’s the nicest thing you could do for him. Remember back in 2019 when Kanye West pretended to get saved, and what an unholy mess all that turned out to be? In 2024, West is a Jew-hating, antisemite who performs with satanists and is getting ready to launch a porn channel. You know what Kanye didn’t have 5 years ago? He didn’t have a testimony of salvation, and neither does Russell Brand in 2024. I was a Roman Catholic for 30 years before I got saved, so I know just what a godless mess the Roman Catholic Church truly is. Pray for Russell Brand to get saved, because he’s not and he very much needs to be.

Now The End Begins is your front line defense against the rising tide of darkness in the last Days before the Rapture of the Church

When you contribute to this fundraising effort, you are helping us to do what the Lord called us to do. The money you send in goes primarily to the overall daily operations of this site. When people ask for Bibles, we send them out at no charge. When people write in and say how much they would like gospel tracts but cannot afford them, we send them a box at no cost to them for either the tracts or the shipping, no matter where they are in the world. We have a Gospel Billboard program. We are now broadcasting Bible studies, Podcasts and a Sunday Service 5 times a week, thanks to your generous donations. All this is possible because YOU pray for us, YOU support us, and YOU give so we can continue growing.

campaign-1486-2024-new2

But whatever you do, don’t do nothing. Time is short and we need your help right now. The Lord has given us an open door with a tremendous ‘course’ for us to fulfill that will create an excellent experience at the Judgement Seat of Christ. Please pray for our efforts, and if the Lord leads you to donate, be as generous as possible. The war is REAL, the battle HOT and the time is SHORTTO THE FIGHT!!!

“Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ;” Titus 2:13 (KJB)

“Thank you very much!” – Geoffrey, editor-in-chief, NTEB

Continue Reading

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