Former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, in a coma for eight years following a massive stroke in 2006, may be pulled from life-support as his medical condition has deteriorated following kidney surgery that backfired.
Family members suggested he was not expected to live more than four days, though officials at Sheba Hospital in Israel say he could continue to function in his current comatose state on life support for a long time.
Doctors and the family are expected to confer on the best course of action as his chances for recovery are considered now to be extremely low and all treatment options have been exhausted.
Sharon's condition has been on the decline since being hospitalized for renal failure.
Sharon, 85, served as Israel's prime minister from 2001 to 2006 when he became incapacitated. During his tenure, he initiated a disengagement plan, during which thousands of Jews were deported from Gaza and northern Samaria – turning the once-fertile region over to Hamas-control.
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Sharon suffered a serious stroke on January 4, 2006, and has been comatose since.
In January 2013, Israeli specialists reported Sharon had showed "significant brain activity" in an MRI scan, responding to pictures of his family seven years after the stroke.
Sharon's death is of interest to mystics in Israel as well as prophecy buffs around the world because of a prediction by the late revered Rabbi Yitzhak Kaduri, who told followers the Messiah would not come before the former prime minister passed away. Carl Gallups authored the book "The Rabbi Who Found Messiah" and inspired a movie on the subject of the same name in late 2013.
In 2007, Kaduri, the most famous rabbi in Israel's modern history, at 108 years old, left a cryptic death note revealing the name of the long-awaited Messiah. Within a year after the rabbi's death, the note was reported to have been verified as authentic by some of Kaduri's closest followers and then placed on Kaduri's own website.
The purported Kaduri message proclaimed that Messiah's name was Yehoshua, or Jesus.
It shocked the religious world.
Shortly thereafter the furor began. The note immediately disappeared from Kaduri's website. The media refused to report further on the matter.
The Kaduri family, and several others close to the Kaduri ministry, began to claim that the note was a forgery or a mere fabrication – a cruel joke.
Gallups, an American pastor and former police officer, used his detective skills to piece the mystery together in "The Rabbi Who Found Messiah: The Story of Yitzhak Kaduri and His Prophecies of the Endtime," a book and movie combination that has reignited the controversy surrounding his prediction about the Messiah and Sharon.
Chuck Missler, founder of Koinonia House ministry, says that in the book, Gallups "explodes one of the biggest bombshells of our lifetime. The implications of these astonishing declarations from the most venerated ultra-orthodox rabbi in Israel impacts every one of us – not just those of the traditional Jewish faith. This is a must-read for anyone who takes God seriously."