My Way News - Russia expands Georgia blitz, deploys ships

AP reports: "Russia and Georgia clashed on land and at sea Sunday despite a Georgian cease-fire offer and claim of withdrawal from the separatist province of South Ossetia, officials from both countries said."

Comment: Is this the start of Ezekiel's war in which the Gog Alliance invades Israel? No, I don't think it is. I think this is simply a matter of Georgia miscalculating Russia's resolve when they attempted to bring South Ossetia back into the told, a miscalculation they are now paying for. This war is still important prophetically because it's the continuation of a trend in which Russia is regaining some of its former power and prestige and seeking to expand its influence among the former Soviet republics.

Several potential outcomes will interest us in terms of the unfolding of Bible prophecy:

- If Russia is successful at annexing all or part of South Ossetia or even subjugating all of Georgia, it will be an important expansion of Russian power and a territorial expansion south, closer to Israel and the Middle East's oil fields.

- This drives the nail into the coffin of any hope of a peaceful integration of Russia into NATO and the EU, a hope many naive people had for the future of Europe. This war, if it expands, may provoke a crisis with NATO and the EU, and if it is resolved in a way that leaves those two organizations stronger and more able to exert their influence over the region, that will also be prophetically important if we imagine the EU as the sponsor of the covenant with many and NATO the future military guarantor of Israel's security.

- Finally, this war once again reveals the impotence of the U.N. and the failure of the post-WWII arrangement in the 21st Century. When the great powers that run the U.N. are the instigators of war and exercise their veto power to prevent others from meddling in their affairs, the system is broken. Perhaps this will be the catalyst for a new arrangement or will further set the stage for the EU or the Med Union to replace the U.N. on a regional and then global level.

For now, this is simply a minor war between a great power and very small state, but it has the potential to be an important conflict that sets Russia's path firmly away from the West and toward it's familiar role of rebel power seeking to challenge the status quo.