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P r o p h e t i c B r i e f  

 What you Sow you will Spill?

The BP Crisis

As Alex, the first named storm of the2010 hurricane season, moves into theGulf of Mexico there are concerns abouthow this or a future storm may impact theability to contain the millions of gallonsof crude which has spewed into the Gulf.I want to offer some thoughts about theBP oil spill and also look at somehistorical events, and then ask some

questions that are important for us toconsider as we look at the continuingcrisis in the Gulf of Mexico.

We know that there are natural causes  behind the blow out of BPs Deepwater Horizon well. But apart from humanerror, mechanical failure and thecomplexity of trying to cap a well locatedone mile beneath the surface of theocean, could there be other causativefactors that don’t have their origin indrilling rigs or oil company policy? Moresuccinctly, could there be spiritualcauses, or, as Hosea said about Israel,could BP have sown to the wind and now

 be reaping a whirlwind? (Hosea 8:7)

The idea of sowing and reaping is veryfamiliar to us as believers. Throughoutthe Word of God we are admonished andinstructed that the quality of the seed willdetermine what kind of harvest is

 produced. The seed is the core act or thekey philosophy and motivation of 

actions, while the harvest is the intended(or unintended) consequences of what is

 produced in the long run. The sacrifice of Christ was so extensive and the seed – the life of Christ – so pure, that He hasreaped and is yet reaping many sons whoare coming unto glory. Likewise, if wesow to please our sinful nature, then fromthat nature we will reap destruction

(Galatians 6:8).

The principle functions in both a

 productive / investment context and alsoas inevitable payback for wrong. So inorder to see what “the seed” of the BP oilspill in the Gulf of Mexico might be, wehave to look back in history and examineevents in light of Kingdom ethics and

 principles.

 Anglo Iranian Oil Company 

Iran has massive oil reserves and islocated directly south of what used to bethe Soviet Union, making it strategic toUnited States interests on both aneconomic and political level throughoutthe 20th century. The British had adominant presence in the region throughtheir colonial expansion, and they hadforged a relationship with Iran whichallowed them to extract oil under theauspices of the AIOC – the Anglo IranianOil Company. In 1901 William KnoxD'Arcy, a millionaire London socialite,negotiated an oil concession with theShah Mozzafar al-Din Shah Qajar of Persia, who was short of cash. The Shahlived well beyond his means and he had

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General David Petraues is the

new Commander in Afghanistan

after General Stanley McCrystal 

was relieved of command by 

President Obama. Can Petraues

do in Afghanistan what he

accomplished in Iraq? 

 In a series of short video

b r i efing s , S co t t Webs t e r  

addresses Afghanistan from the

perspective of the Word of God.

Included in the video sessions

are: 1. Why Be Aware

2. The Formative Process

3. U.S. Involvement 

4. Key Players5.What Does the Future Hold 

6. Kingdom Insights Visit  scottwebsterministries.org  

where all 6 videos have been

posted for viewing.

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Insight and Analysis for the 21st Century

8/9/2019 [Kingdom Perspectives] 03 – What you Sow you will Spill: The BP Crisis

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extravagant personal expenses that thenational treasury could not pay, so he

financed his lifestyle with loans to Iranfrom the UK and Russia – two powerfulnations who wanted his nation’sresources.

The Shah didn’t negotiate very well; he

gave D’Arcy exclusive rights to prospectfor oil for 60 years in a vast tract of territory including most of Iran. Inexchange the Shah received the mere

  pittance (even for that time) of £20,000.He also received some shares of D'Arcy'scompany, and a promise of 16% of future

 profits. The English company found oilin Iran, a nation that has since proven to

 possess the 3rd largest oil reserves in theworld.

By 1950 the AIOC had built the largest

oil refinery in the world at Abadan justupriver from the Persian Gulf. The

company controlled all of the oil in Irandespite repeated attempts by Iran’s

leaders to renegotiate the original terms.The Iranians suspected that the profitswere highly understated to reduceAIOC’s obligation to Iran, and they had

  been unable to negotiate new accounting practices that ensured they would receivetheir full share of the profits. The Britishgovernment made more in taxes fromAIOC profits than Iran did in royaltiesfrom the oil drilled from their ownreserves, a position the Iranians foundmore and more difficult to accept. Wagesfor the laborers at the oil wells and therefinery were very low at .50 cents per day. Refinery workers lived in a

shantytown without running water or electricity.

Mohammed Mossadegh &

Nationalization

Mohammed Mossadegh was electedPrime Minister by the parliament of Iranin 1951; he was a secularist who arguedvigorously for Iranian nationalism. Hewas educated in Switzerland and Franceas a lawyer, and his graduate thesisargued in favor of fully secularizing thelegal system in Iran and that is the

  platform he was most aggressively in

support of. He opposed military allianceswith the Great Powers, and he had

  previously led the 1944-45 opposition tothe granting of an oil concession to theSoviet Union. His position concerningthe nationalization of the oil industry wasclearly stated in a speech in June of 1951: "Our long years of negotiations with

  foreign countries…have yielded noresults thus far. With the oil revenues wecould meet our entire budget and combat 

  poverty, disease, and backwardnessamong our people. Another important 

Galatians 6:7 

 Do not be deceived, God 

is not mocked; for whatever a man sows,that he will also reap(NKJV)

ISSUE 308 JUNE 30TH 2010

The admonition from

the Word of God is not 

t o b e d e c e i v e d  

concerning sowing and 

reaping. The danger is to

disconnect one set of 

events from the other,

or to think that actionshave no consequences;

that is a state the Bible

calls deception. God is

not mocked; He does

not let avarice and 

r a p a c i o u s n e s s g o

unpunished. What a

man sows, that he will 

also reap.

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stormed in 1979. U.S. personnel were heldhostage for nearly two years and themullah’s declared Iran to be an IslamicRepublic, the ramifications of which arestill impacting regional and globaldevelopments.

Sowing and Reaping 

Beyond the political and natural elements,  blowback is simply another word for reaping what has been sown. In this regardthere are a number of striking parallelsand similarities between Operation Ajaxand the BP oil spill, among them:

The fact that it is BP which is spewing oil all over the U.S. I suppose the history of many multi-national corporations could bereviewed to see what type of seeds have

  been sown in their development – this is  just one. There are many oil companieswith drilling rigs in the Gulf of Mexicoand on the North Shore of Alaska, but it

 just so happens that it was a BP wellheadwhich broke and which cannot be cappedto date – and it was BP, acting in accordwith the Anglo-American alliance, thatremoved a president and destabilized acountry social ly , pol i t ical ly and

economically.

 Both occurrences were in a body of water known as the Gulf . In Iran the Abadanrefinery is located near the Persian Gulf,on the delta of the Shatt al Arab (a river that forms the border between Iran andIraq). It is the terminus of major oil

 pipelines and is an important oil refiningand shipping center. Change the name toGulf of Mexico and the river toMississippi and these salient factsdescribe the location of the BP oil spillnearly perfectly.

  Sowing was filled with intrigue and covert action by government agencies,reaping is occurring on an international 

  stage with the eyes of the world on the gulf oil spill. Few knew what happened inIran in 1953, the report was classified for decades. As an American I had no ideauntil a few years ago (although manyIranians would have known – it is ahistorical offense in the nation, where it isknown as the 28 Mordad coup de etat 

  based on the Iranian calendar). But now

the oil in the Gulf of Mexico is being played out by the international media onthe world stage, to the point that video can

 be accessed that shows the blown out wellgushing oil one mile beneath the sea – even the hidden things are open to anyonewho wishes to look:  For there is nothing covered that will not be revealed, nor hidden that will not be known. 3 Thereforewhatever you have spoken in the dark will be heard in the light, and what you have

  spoken in the ear in inner rooms will be  proclaimed on the housetops (Luke12:2-3).

The sowing in Iran focused on the use of any means to extract oil for massive

 profit; reaping in the Gulf of Mexico isusing every means but still being unableto stop the oil while money is being hemorrhaged. Calculating the spill to datevaries based on estimates, but it is

  probably between 1.9 million to 3.5million barrels, or about 80 million to 150million gallons since the rig exploded onApril 20 (by contrast, the ExxonValdez spill off Alaska in 1989 released anestimated 10.8 million gallons of oil). Theoil is spilling out at the rate of one ExxonValdez every 4 days…for the last 2+

months.  Is the glut of oil fouling the Gulf of Mexico the moral equivalent of Israel’squest for meat in the wilderness, and God 

 granting it to them until it ran out their nostrils and killed them? (Numbers11:18-20, 33)

The alliance of political will between theU.S. and the U.K. has turned toadversarial views about the oil spill. In1953 Winston Churchill then primeminister and his foreign affairs minister conspired with Dwight Eisenhower andthe Dulles brothers about how to reassertBPs extraction of oil from Iran. The two

governments agreed to pool their resources on a joint strategy to get accessto the oil in Iran. However, the twogovernments are now having adversarialdiscussions; David Cameron expressedconcern to Barack Obama at the recentG-20 meeting about the negative views of Americans towards BP because of the oilspill. It is yet to be seen if the politicaldestabilization sown in Iran via the coupof Mossadegh will produce a reaping in

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PERSPECTIVE

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the same realm in the political systems of the U.S. & the U.K.

Economic Impact

The greatest reaping of the Gulf oil spill isthe devastating economic impact in a timewhen the nation is trying to emerge fromrecession.

✦ In Louisiana, seafood and tourismgenerate $2.4 billion a year and $8.3

  billion, respectively – both of which are

nearly eliminated in the immediate.✦ In May, Nathaniel Karp, chief economist

for the Alabama bank BBVA Compass, projected eventual losses for the four gulf states at $4.3 billion, including $191

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million in losses to Alabama. In Junehe raised that projection to $11.5

 billion.

✦ If the oil continues to wash up on moreof Florida’s beaches it will drasticallyimpact tourism, the state’s largestindustry which generates about $60

 billion a year; the Gulf Coast countiesalone stand to lose $11 billion and200,000 jobs if visitor numbers decline50 percent.

The economic impact extends far beyondthe immediate gulf states however. Justas BP and the oil companies (and their s h a r e h o l d e r s a n d r e s p e c t i v egovernments) were enriched through theexploitation of Iranian oil, the same

  parties are now paying dearly for thespill. The price of BP stock has

 plummeted by more than 50 percent sincethe April 20 blowout, from just over $60a share to below $30.

The proportion of ownership of BP  stock in 2010 – those taking the primary  financial hit – is the same as thoseenriched by Iranian oil in 1953. Aconsortium of companies was put

together to divide up AIOC so that 5 U.S.oil companies each got 8% of the oilextracted from Iran for a total of 40%American ownership. AIOC was allowedto keep 40% also, and the rest was spreadover a few other companies in other nations. That is almost exactly the

 percentages of stock ownership of BP in

2010, so that stockholders and pensionfunds in both the UK and US are beingnegatively impacted in almost the precise

 proportion of how they were enriched 60years ago. There are mutual funds and

  pension funds that will be affected on both sides of the Atlantic. The erasure of about $100 billion in BP stock value hastranslated into big losses for severalfunds that directly affect the U.S.: a) theCalifornia Public Employees’ Retirementsystem has lost more than $284 million invalue b) Nebraska’s retirement fund, for instance, reportedly will lose $1.3 millioneach quarter that BP suspends itsdividend.

Galatians 6:7  Do not be deceived,God is not mocked; for whatever aman sows, that he will also reap

The admonition from the Word of God isnot to be deceived concerning sowingand reaping. The danger is to disconnectone set of events from the other, or tothink that actions have no consequences;that is a state the Bible calls deception.God is not mocked; He does not letavarice and rapaciousness go unpunished.

What a man sows, that he will also reap.Understanding this aspect of God’snature causes us to ask:  Are we living ina time of reaping in the earth, a timewhen “the teeth of the great lions” arebeing broken by God?

  Job 4:8 As I have observed, thosewho plow evil and those who sowtrouble reap it. 9 At the breath of   God they are destroyed ; at the blast of his anger they perish. 10 elions may roar and growl, yet  theteeth of the great lions are

broken.

If in fact it is a time of reaping that produces crisis and destabilization, whatis the response that the Lord requiresfrom us?

ISSUE 308 JUNE 30TH 2010

Releasing The New Prophetic Dimension • Activating The Capacity To Build • Obeying The Command To Finish

Resource List for Further Study

The following can be accessed to learn more about the history and events contained in this article.

1. All the Shah's Men : An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror , Stephen Kinzer, (John Wiley & Sons, 2004)

2.The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power, Daniel Yergin (Simon and Schuster, New York, 1991)

3.Khomeinism: Essays on the Islamic Republic, Ervand Abrahamian, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993)

4.U.S. Foreign Policy and the Shah: Building a Client State in Iran, Mark J. Gasiorowski (Cornell University Press: 1991).

5.The CIAs after action report on Operation Ajax can be found online @: http://web.payk.net/politics/cia-docs/published/ 

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