Diplomacy almost always moves at geologic speed. It moves like the stones on the floor of Death Valley, California. But it moves. Forward, always forward as time marches toward its end. Like waves pounding in sequence upon the shore, year follows year toward the great white throne and the destruction of this earth and the creation of the new. “Doomsday” is a long way off yet. There is much that is prophesied to happen before that fateful day. And the words of the prophets have never failed.
Those who say, “This has not happened, or that has not happened, and so prophecy must be faulty,” do not stop to consider that what has not yet happened, surely will happen; just as all that has been prophesied concerning things that have happened in the past were fulfilled, literally and precisely, so also will those things that have not yet been fulfilled be fulfilled in that same manner. The fact that a thing has not been fulfilled does in no way preclude the certainty that it will be fulfilled. That is akin to saying that because today is not tomorrow, tomorrow will not come. It is not even a skillfully evasive rhetorical maneuver, let alone a logical suggestion that prophecy may not be fulfilled. Indeed, the history of prophecy proves that prophecy is fulfilled literally and surely.
If what we are reading in the press lately is true, that the U.S. is offering three billion dollars worth of stealth fighter jets, an assurance that Obama will not allow a resolution in the U.N. granting Palestinian statehood, and that the U.S. will not ask for another moratorium of settlement-building in the “occupied” territories; all for a three-month moratorium now; if these things are true, then it is clear that there is either a desperation in Obama’s mind concerning his determination to accomplish Middle East peace on his watch, or the deal has been struck, but not made public, or confirmed, by any of those involved in the negotiations.
Ostensibly, the three-month moratorium would be for the settlement of the issue of borders between Israel and Palestine, paving the way for a settlement of the lesser issues that divide the two parties. Obama may not give Israel a choice in the matter. The Israelis are pressing for increasing concessions from the U.S. It is almost laughable to see the U.S. groveling at the feet of the Jews, offering so much for so little. It is an interesting table setting.
We cannot take at face value what governments release to the press or to their own peoples. We do not know what happens behind closed doors. We do know that not everything that governments tell their constituents is true. We do not know what we do not know.
This latest round of news stories certainly gives the Israelis a great deal of face-saving domestically. That East Jerusalem is not a part of the new moratorium will allow Israel to claim a sort of victory among its people. Construction will continue apace there, and Israel can claim Jerusalem as its capitol. The Palestinians will be gaining a sovereign charter, so that they can claim victory as well.
The reason that diplomacy moves at glacial speed is because it takes time to change a nation’s heart – not the government’s, but the hearts of the people. For millennia, the governments of the region have been preaching and teaching and indoctrinating their peoples with a mindset completely opposed to peace. One does not change a nation’s heart overnight. Do it too quickly and you risk an overthrow of your government by a citizenry that feels betrayed. And this is especially true in the Middle East, where feelings run so deep.
Governments may make peace, but that does not abate the hatred in the hearts of the peoples. Those tempers must be cooled down before announcements can be made that run contrary to the national will of the people. There may already be an agreement as to borders and the whole nine yards, but there would be no public word of it until the various peoples have been effectively moved. Until the nation of the beast “confirms” that covenant, Daniel’s seventieth week will not begin.
Should we then assume that such an agreement is already in place, waiting for the governments to change the hearts of their people? Of course not. But it is certainly a possibility. Probably, the sides are as deeply divided on a governmental level as the press indicates that they are. Why then, would President Obama make the monumental concessions that he is apparently making to Israel, knowing that all Israel has to do is negotiate for three months, and then all bets are off? Obama is not an idiot – the antichrist, perhaps, but not stupid. Indeed, the antichrist is more brilliant than any man, excepting only the Son of Man. His is all the power and authority of the devil himself, who stood too proudly at the very pinnacle of God’s creation before he fell.
Thus, there must be something that we do not know about what is going on, the secret machinations among the governments of the world. We shall see. It seems a grave danger to risk one’s entire fortune on a single hand of cards. Because, by promising not to allow the Security Council of the U.N. to declare Palestine a state, and by promising that there will be no further requests for moratoria, Obama has apparently painted himself into a corner. His only recourse, if the Israelis and the Palestinians fail in this three-month quest for peace, will be to make it a matter of war or peace.
Given that scenario, having put the integrity of the U.S. on the line, Obama would seem to be caught between honoring his word, simply forgetting about one of his key goals as president; between that, and forcing his will upon both sides in these negotiations.
We are, of course, considering that the United States is the nation from which the antichrist will arise. However, seeing precisely what the prophets have written, that is no far-fetched interpretation. More far-fetched by far is the interpretation that was developed before there even was a United States of America.
The ten-nation federation that everyone seems to conclude is the progenitor of the antichrist is not the scenario that the Scriptures describe. The Bible say that the little horn of Daniel 7:24 arises after those ten, not during their heyday. He arises from among them, but nowhere is he ever identified as one of them. Otherwise, we would be looking for a nine-nation federation, not a ten-nation, seeing that he would have to be one of the ten. The conventional interpretation breaks down at this point.
A horn in Scripture is symbolic of a Gentile king. There are the ten, and there is the “little horn” which the same verse states clearly arose after the ten. In all of human history, there has only been one nation that has arisen from the sands of the ancient Roman Empire and become a world empire. Many of the former Roman Empire’s subject states have tried. Britain, France, Spain, Italy – many nations that were under the Roman heel have attempted to rule the world, but none has.
There has been one nation that is essentially a conglomeration of peoples who were formerly Roman subjects that has arisen and become great, of whom the world says today, “Who is like him? Who is able to make war against him?” That we should now find ourselves doing the very first thing that is said of the beast, pressing for a covenant of peace between Israel and her Arab neighbors, ought to give us serious pause to consider the ramifications of what we are doing. On the level of theological academia, this interpretation is making minor inroads, but is still met with abrupt dismissal in most schools.
Whether the antichrist is Obama or some future president, it is and has been the United States that has been the primary broker of the last thirty-plus years of negotiations. To find a president who has made that one of his most prominent goals, and who has the power of our military at his disposal, it seems evident that we are the nation that will give rise to that deceptively sinister individual.
Conventional wisdom has the U.S. suddenly collapsing and some other nation rising almost immediately to world dominance. Let’s be clear: the nation with the most and the biggest weapons wins. Even if the U.S. became fiscally insolvent, what nation is going to come over here and fight us on our own ground to claim the land as payment of our debt? Shall China invade our soil and lay claim to Washington, D.C.? Even the notion is absurd. Shall we just cut our own throats and let them have our nation? No, we think that we are secure in our defenses. Certainly, our military and its arms cannot be matched by any earthly power, or all the earthly powers combined. But there is a Power who is able to defeat us, and He has already started. We just don’t know it yet. There is yet another power, Satan, who is driving us to divide God’s land, and he must be defeated before our King takes His throne. The end was written from before the beginning, and the fulfillment of the relatively few remaining prophecies is standing at the door.
Yes, these are very interesting days indeed in which to be saints on earth. We cannot tell from the press how near we are to that treaty that restarts the clock on Daniel’s seventy weeks of years, but we see the things shaping up on the world stage for that seventieth week to begin. It starts with a comprehensive Middle East peace agreement.
But the saints do not ever sit waiting for a treaty to be confirmed. Indeed, we seek the coming of the Groom for His bride, as that must take place before the seventieth week of Daniel can commence. If we see what we see going on in the world, and we see the movement toward peace progressing, even haltingly, and seeing that the resurrection of the dead in Christ and the translation of living saints from mortal to immortal must occur before the beginning of Daniel’s seventieth week, then our hope ought to be inestimably heightened.
Evangelicals the world over have been announcing for years that “Armageddon” is near, without considering the theological ramifications of that statement. If, as they say, the tribulation is about to unfold, then they surely ought to be studying the prophets with an eye toward the current world stage. It is contradictory to ignore the present realities as if they mean nothing, and then to say that the end is near. If their view is correct, then the current world stage must already be set for the unfolding of the things that follow the translation of the saints.
Given that, why are they stuck on the notion of this nation suddenly collapsing and another nation rising to take our place, not only on the world stage, but also in the Middle East peace negotiations? It makes no sense. It is, in light of the presently reality on the ground in the whole world, oxymoronic at best. The most powerful, the richest, the most beneficent, the most democratic nation the world has ever dreamed of is doing what it is written that it would be doing, and the devil has us straining to find anything except the obvious. He knew four hundred years ago that we would reach this point in history, and laid the foundation then for our deception today. It is outrageous to suppose that the Church should be so ignorant of these things. In is almost inconceivable that learned and devout men such as bless the Church today should be so steadfastly drawn to an interpretation that has no chance of fulfillment, when right under their noses, prophecy is unfolding more rapidly every day. It is almost incomprehensible that such gifted saints should not see and declare that the seasons and the times are upon us, and explaining why we believe it is so.
If time moves along an exponential curve, then it must be swirling like the water draining out of a great pool, having entered the vortex of the end times. And if that is so, then we absolutely must not be as blind as the Pharisees of old, not recognizing the scene on earth when it is so plain to see. Yes, the Evangelicals are correct in identifying the times and the seasons, but if their interpretation of these things is true, then the times and the seasons cannot be pressing very hard against us, because diplomacy does move at geologic speed, and their interpretation must occur over several decades, at least. But if they are wrong, then the Lord is at the door, and we may expect to see His face and hear His voice very shortly indeed. The devil has long sought – always sought – to delay our blessed hope in our own minds. And so he is doing with the conventional view. To say that it is near, but that the world stage is in no way set up for the things that must follow the rapture, is to say that much must change before we can realistically expect the rapture. It must depend upon what one means by “near.”
For the prophets did not say that God would stick His finger into the world and rearrange alliances and bring about the circumstances that are foretold. Rather, God simply took the prophets to a point in time future, and those blessed men described the scenes that they saw. They were taken outside of time, so to speak, so that they could see the whole of time at one time, and told to describe the visions that they had seen. It has always been through the normal evolution of political events that brought the world stage to a place where prophecy could be fulfilled. Whenever the objective circumstances on the ground matched the words of the prophets, the prophecies were fulfilled forthwith.
It is almost as incomprehensible that the Jews in Jesus’ day could not determine from Daniel’s prophecies that Jesus was indeed the long-awaited Messiah. Daniel gave them date of Christ’s First Advent when he prophesied a 490 year period in which God would complete His restoration of His people to the land in glorified bodies.
After the 483rd year, the clock on those 490 years would stop for an indeterminate period of time, during which Messiah the Prince would come and be rejected, and the temple would be destroyed. After those things, the gap between the 483rd and the 484th years would extend all the way through the Church Age. So far, the gap has extended for two thousand years, and the final seven years have not resumed the countdown to Israel’s restoration in glory under her gracious King.
The gap of time in God’s dealings with the Jews as a nation will end when the Church Age is completed. Shortly after the rapture, God will pick up the clock and start in the instant in which the antichrist confirms that treaty. This happens when a comprehensive Middle East peace treaty, as described in Daniel, as referenced above.
The Jews were given the beginning date of those 490 years. It is a minor calculation to reach the conclusion that Jesus was the Messiah. It was after the 483rd year ended that Jesus came and was rejected. The beginning point of the 490 years was the command of King Artaxerxes of Persia to restore Jerusalem and the city wall. This command went forth in 444 B.C. The Jews had to actually know that Jesus was their Coming One, but for personal and political reasons, they were unwilling to accept Him, lest their political positions and their societal standing should be reduced. Politicians were as self-serving and corrupt, long before Christ’s day, as they are today. Altruism does not hold sway in any government in the world. The fact that this nation is fighting so rabidly against the altruistic vision of the United States that President Obama has proposed and through which he is engaging the rest of the world bespeaks the cold and rebellious heart of the nation. But the rest of the world sees it and rejoices. That is, the peoples of the word see it, but the governments see Obama as weak, when he is actually portraying himself as a meek leader. They have not felt the eagle’s talons in many years, but those talons are as hard as iron and sharp enough to pierce whatever they grasp.
Today, the world stage is set for the things that must follow the rapture, and we watch breathlessly as the nation of the beast uses whatever coercion he can bring to bear to bring peace to the Middle East. Gentlemen may cry, “Peace! Peace!” but there will be no peace until the King of kings sits on His throne. The peace that the antichrist introduces will fail amid the terrible devastations of the Great Tribulation. And then he will be judged.
World, open your collective eye and see what is happening in our day. How very exciting, to hope and believe that we may well be numbered among that generation of saints that never tastes death, those who are translated at the rapture of the Church.
Get the word out, folks! The time is one day shorter every day. There cannot be very many days left. Minister the word of reconciliation to the lost, and build up the hope of the saints by holding forth before them the very word of our hope. It is time for the bride of Christ to turn her eye heavenward and to fill her lamps with oil, a symbol of the Holy Spirit. Let us not be found in adultery with the world, but serving God as ambassadors from heaven to earth. It is later than it was when it was later than we thought!
Page 84. To Read more about Wm. Anderson Simpson author of Midnight Rising-Warning Signs For This Generation-Deep River Books 2010. www.midnightrisingbook.net
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