Chapter 2

Obama and the King of the South

From the booklet The King of the South
By Gerald Flurry

In 1994, United States President Bill Clinton said this about North Korea: “This agreement is good for the United States, good for our allies, and good for the safety of the entire world. … Under the agreement, North Korea has agreed to freeze its existing nuclear program and to accept international inspection of all existing facilities. This agreement represents the first step on the road to a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula. It does not rely on trust. Compliance will be certified by the International Atomic Energy Agency.”

Despite President Clinton’s assurances, North Korea got the bomb 12 years later.

This history is being repeated almost precisely—but will prove to be even more dangerous—with Iran.

President Barack Obama made very similar statements regarding Iran when signing on to the 2016 nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (jcpoa). And now Iran is on the brink of manufacturing its own nuclear weapons.

Realize that nuclear warfare is near! It is prophesied over 100 times in Bible prophecy. And Mr. Obama helped pave the way for these horrifying prophecies to be fulfilled!

If not for divine intervention, the human race would face extinction! We are racing toward that prophetic fulfillment!

You can prove this. But will you believe God? Or will you wait until it is too late physically to even respond to God?

The Worst Foreign-Policy Blunder in American History

In 2015, the U.S. spearheaded an international effort to negotiate a nuclear deal with Iran. When it was implemented on January 16, 2016, the U.S. and the European Union lifted sanctions on Iran, released over $100 billion in frozen assets, and welcomed Iran into a range of economic deals. And they received nothing in return. Iran changed nothing in its policies of aggression, subversion and sponsoring terrorism. It didn’t even say it would reform in any of these areas! Without giving in on anything, Iran was given all it needed to accelerate its race toward acquiring the nuclear bomb.

The whole nuclear agreement hinged on trust. The Obama administration said it would implement “snapback sanctions” if it found the Iranians cheating on the deal. But Iran cheated repeatedly and faced no consequences.

When has Iran not cheated after making a significant agreement with the West? This nation had broken its agreements with the United Nations over nuclear inspections many times before this deal was signed. Once the deal was implemented, the inspections still didn’t achieve anything. Iran just kept deceiving the UN, buying time to continue its nuclear activities—and the UN and the rest of the world played along.

During the nuclear talks, Iran’s leaders continued to call Israel “the little Satan” and America “the great Satan.” They have a history of hating America and wanting to wipe our existence off the map. Just days before the jcpoa was signed, Iran’s president marched with a huge crowd of Iranians who were holding “Death to Israel” and “Death to America” signs. That alone should be enough to trumpet the fact that they couldn’t be trusted and that this deal was a humiliation for the Western world—especially America. Anybody with common sense knows you should not negotiate with nations that yearn for your destruction.

When the agreement was concluded, many people were elated. There should have been no celebration. The world needed to be pulled away from the brink of annihilation, but this deal did the opposite.

The day the jcpoa was implemented, Iran’s supreme leader said the country’s aggressively anti-American and anti-Israel policy would continue unchanged. Two days later, Iran ordered its military to accelerate its illegal intercontinental ballistic missile program. These missiles are capable of carrying nuclear warheads. This program was illegal because the original deal said Iran had to wait eight years before speeding it up. Instead Iran accelerated it immediately! This announcement was proof that Iran was already breaking a big part of the agreement. But President Obama turned a blind eye to it.

We must judge not by words, but by fruits. Iran’s fruits show it shamelessly violated the deal. That is why President Donald Trump withdrew the U.S. from the deal and reimposed sanctions on Iran.

The Biden administration has been working to revive this catastrophic deal. Can any honest person believe Iran will adhere to a new deal? This time, the stakes are much higher! What is at stake is nothing less than human survival. If you doubt this, just talk to the Jewish people Iran repeatedly says it wants to wipe off the map. Israel believes its survival rests on whether or not Iran gets a nuclear bomb!

The Most Dangerous Lie in History

Since the Iranian Revolution, the majority of Americans have rightfully held an unfavorable view of the Islamic regime in Iran. Most politically aware Americans know about the anti-American and anti-Semitic ranting of Iran’s mullahs. Many are worried about the Islamic republic’s development of nuclear weapons and how the mullahs would use them.

So how did President Obama get this deal to go through? His methods reveal much about his administration and about him personally.

For many months before the deal was made, a key member of Obama’s inner circle was working hard to assuage people’s fears. At a meeting with Democratic Party activists in 2014, Benjamin Rhodes, then deputy national security adviser for strategic communications, argued that a nuclear agreement with Tehran was “the best opportunity we’ve had to resolve the Iranian [nuclear] issue.” He said this deal was “probably the biggest thing President Obama will do in his second term on foreign policy.”

After the deal was implemented on January 16, 2016, Rhodes explained in a New York Times Magazine interview that if he wanted to get anyone other than those on the hard left to accept a deal with Tehran, he had to lie. He blatantly and willfully deceived what he considered a corrupt and inexperienced American media about all sorts of things. “The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old,” Rhodes explained, “and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns. … They literally know nothing” (May 5, 2016; emphasis mine throughout).

Rhodes admitted to making up a story about how the administration’s negotiations began. He told the press that a “thaw” in American-Iranian relations was made possible by the election of President Hassan Rouhani and other Iranian “moderates” in the summer of 2013. Yet he acknowledged that he wasn’t actually sure whether Rouhani was a “moderate” or not, then bragged about how easy it was to deceive journalists to get the deal passed without congressional approval.

What a spectacle America has become to the world! It was as if lawless children were in charge of America’s foreign policy!

In August 2016, it was discovered that the Obama administration had secretly shipped $400 million cash in an unmarked plane to Iran, at the very time that Iran was releasing four Americans who had been imprisoned there. It was a ransom payment—despite the White House insisting that it did no such thing. The late Charles Krauthammer said, “I think the real issue here is not the fact that we did ransom, because I think people know that we do it in a lot of disguised ways. … It’s that they lied and they lie shamelessly and they lie when the lie is uncovered. That’s what is so scary, and they lie about the entire Iran deal. This is the tip of the iceberg. … Every item on the Iran deal that we were promised, we would hold the line on X, Y and Z, we did this or we are getting inspections … they lied all the way through and that deal is shot through with denials, with all kinds of statements that are not so, and we are going to suffer” (Aug. 18, 2016).

In 2013, during Obama’s presidency, I wrote the first version of my booklet America Under Attack, which explained the reason behind such ruinous policies. “Many people can see that these are disastrous decisions,” I wrote. “But we must understand that this isn’t simply the result of ineptitude on the part of this administration, or naivety about how the world really works. We are seeing the aftereffects of a calculated, aggressive, satanic attack aimed at weakening and ultimately destroying the nations of Israel, starting with the world’s most powerful nation!”

That booklet exposed the spiritual reality behind these terrible actions: Satan the devil is behind Barack Obama empowering Iran.

The Devil’s Fingerprints

This trend has only gotten worse under Joe Biden. Many people can clearly see that Biden is not really in charge of the government. He has filled his administration with Obama-era officials, and Mr. Obama himself is really directing the show! Some say, correctly, that this is effectively Obama’s third term.

We must be able to recognize the devil’s fingerprints on what is taking place here.

Satan is revealed as a liar from the beginning of the Bible (Genesis 3:4). There is no truth in the devil—none at all! And the radical left lie like the devil. That is the spirit behind these people who will say and do anything to accomplish their goals. They will stop at nothing to take over the government and align America with the Islamic regime in Iran. Every time they are challenged on anything illegal they have done, they lie—over and over and over again.

Yet still, no matter how outrageous the reply, people somehow accept it! The spirit of deception is troublingly deep, and it points directly to the influence of the devil. These people are swayed by the devil!

We must recognize that the real enemy is not Barack Obama. The real culprit behind his efforts is not a man! I am not blaming him—I am blaming Satan!

The Bible shows that anciently, God raised up the kingdom of Israel to represent Him. Satan attacked that nation in every way he could. History shows that at one point, an enemy almost completely destroyed itbut God raised up a flawed human king to temporarily save the nation. “For the Lord saw the affliction of Israel, that it was very bitter: for there was not any shut up, nor any left, nor any helper for Israel. And the Lord said not that he would blot out the name of Israel from under heaven: but he saved them by the hand of Jeroboam the son of Joash” (2 Kings 14:26-27). The book of Kings is part of the former prophets. It is a book of prophecy for this end time especially.

A man tried to blot out the name of Israel—a very satanic goal. Satan hates everything God is about and wants to destroy it every way he can. But this passage shows that anciently, God stopped this from happening—and He did so through King Jeroboam ii.

It is important to understand the prophetic principle of duality. History is repeating itself today. Just what is the prophetic name of Israel? In our day, the emphasis is on three physical nations of Israel: America, Britain and the Jewish nation in the Middle East.

Iran’s mullahs publicly say they want to “wipe Israel off the map.” That is another way of saying they want to “blot out the name of Israel from under heaven”!

Why in the world would an American president align with these murderers? And why implement a deal that virtually guarantees Iran becomes a nuclear power?

This prophetic passage in 2 Kings 14 explains. President Obama shares the goal to “blot out the name of Israel”!

The Iranians may not know that the Americans are literal descendants of ancient Israel, but they do label America “the great Satan” and the Jewish state “the little Satan.” They really want to blot these nations out! And through his nuclear deal, Barack Obama was helping them accomplish this goal!

Obama decided to partner with the Islamic republic and to brazenly lie to the American people because he wants to blot out both the Jewish state and America! He also expressed hatred for Britain. Like the ancient Seleucid King Antiochus (Daniel 8:24), he is empowered by the devil to destroy the people of Israel through flattery and deceits that lead to violence. When you understand this spiritual dimension, it becomes far easier to understand why President Obama did the things he did.

Satan destroyed Israel in the past and is about to do it again—unless our people repent!

The Cause of America’s Curses

In the 1930s and 1940s, Adolf Hitler and the Nazis kept pushing and pushing, yet Britain and America just hoped the problem would go away. They thought Hitler could be appeased with words and treaties. But that did not stop him. Only superior will and power stops a tyrant or madman.

Throughout the 1930s, Winston Churchill warned Britain and America about Hitler. The politicians, media and educational institutions were overwhelmingly pacifist and against him. (This is thoroughly explained in my free booklet Winston S. Churchill: The Watchman.) In fact, he stood alone among world leaders! And that almost cost the Allies victory in World War ii!

We have learned virtually nothing from Churchill’s warning. In fact, the pacifists have grown much stronger today.

Our leaders fail to understand history because they refuse to understand that evil human nature is within every individual on Earth—including you and me! (Jeremiah 17:9). For example, our refusal to use our military might is often not because of righteousness, as we like to believe, but despicable weakness resulting from our sins. We simply lack the faith, character and courage to fight against Iran, the number one terrorist nation today. In the end, we will prove too weak to survive!

History thunders for us to awaken.

The great Russian writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky feared Russian radicalism and what it would do to his country. Only days after he died, the czar was overthrown and killed by radicals. Where did their radical movement lead? To Joseph Stalin and the spread of violent communism over much of the world.

Mr. Obama’s appeasement of and support for the Iranian regime cannot be explained logically. Such a catastrophic policy can only be understood in the context of the satanic deception that blankets this entire world (Revelation 12:9). Those efforts shoved the world closer to the brink of nuclear annihilation—and nothing could please the devil more! “[T]hat old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world” had his fingerprints all over those developments. He passionately hates mankind and loves causing the death of millions—even billions!

The Obama administration’s handling of Iran was a monumental disaster. While respect for America slightly rebounded under President Trump, it has completely collapsed under Joe Biden’s administration, or what is really Obama’s third term. Instead, America’s enemies shake their fists at us at every turn, and we let them get away with it. America’s credibility is in tatters.

We live in exceedingly dangerous times. We are talking about nuclear bombs! That makes America’s foolishness all the more alarming and disgraceful.

No words will stop this king of terror. The Iranian leader believes that causing a nuclear cataclysm will hasten the coming of his messiah. No matter what happens, these religious zealots believe they are winners.

No other nuclear power thinks like that! It makes nuclear war inevitable!

All the wishful thinking in this world won’t stop that calamity—just as the pacifist dreamers of the 1930s didn’t stop Adolf Hitler!

Jesus Christ prophesied the outcome of these problems in Matthew 24:21-22. He said the coming “great tribulation” would be worse than any in mankind’s long, tragic history! He warned that unless these perilous days were shortened, no flesh would be saved alive! Passages like this and Daniel 12:1 describe a time of such catastrophic destruction that they could only apply to weapons of mass destruction. Isaiah 6:11, Jeremiah 2:15 and many other prophecies foretell cities without even one inhabitant. Only nuclear weapons could cause that!

Sadly, shamefully, we have brought this outcome on ourselves. Nuclear war, provoked by “the king of the south,” is coming upon the whole world very soon!

Continue Reading: Chapter 3: Who Will Join the Alliance?