Middle East Update

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 483^rd 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 483^rd  and the 484^th 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 483^rd 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 

Commerce is better than Bullets

From the pages of Midnight Rising: Warning Signs for this Generation


We cannot predict the day or the hour, but all sides in the Middle East have acknowledged explicitly the necessity for a real and lasting peace. Life is too short to live angrily all the time. And commerce is better than bullets. They may desire it, but their deceptive hearts will deny them the reality of it. Nevertheless, as we have stated before, we are not awaiting a peace treaty, but a voice like a trumpet shouting, "Come up here!"




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 

Middle East Update

An old idea is being revisited, that the Israelis in the settlements should simply live within the borders of the Palestinian state in peace, just as many Palestinians live in Israel.  It is better to be friends than enemies, and that is the wind that President Obama is sailing on.  It has been ever since he took office.  It is the philosophy that animates his mind, to allow the world to live in peace and harmony; but most especially, in the Middle East.

This plan was posited some few years ago, and dismissed, but both sides are brushing off the dust, to see if there may be slight alterations that would satisfactorily remove barriers.  They are beginning to appreciate that commerce is more profitable, and is preferable to war.  The extremists in Gaza will eventually be shouted down and eliminated.  The people of Gaza want to be recognized as a nation unto themselves, and to the world, just as much as the Jews want a piece of Jerusalem for their temple.

The problem is that both sides are driven by their ideologies, and not by common sense.  They both believe firmly that Jerusalem is their own, and neither side wants to give ground, especially the Jews.  Israel is the one whom the world sees as an interloper, because they have broken the borders that the Gentile world gave them in 1948.  It is really that simple, and if not agreed upon, it will be imposed.  Israel will be given land sufficient for its temple requirements, as well as its associated gatekeepers, musicians, and priests.  There has been talk in recent days about Israel perhaps buying a perpetual lease for a settlement sufficient for the worshipers of the God of Israel.

We cannot know altogether how God has this worked out, the details.  We are not prophets, except insofar as we bring the words of the prophets to the world.  We cannot know the details, lest we be able to discern the day and the hour. 

But we most certainly can recognize the times and the seasons when they arrive upon the earth.  In that day, all of the named nations of the world in the Bible (there aren’t really that many of them) will be aligned in a certain way – this one allied with that one, and the enemy of another.  There is a geopolitical stage provided concerning Israel and those nations that play a part in end-time prophecies.  When that geopolitical stage is set, the times and the seasons will be upon us. 

The entire world is today poised for the fulfillment of prophecy, and yet, is willfully and woefully ignorant of it.  People watch the “educational” channels around the world and are bombarded almost daily with lies, distortions and doubts about God’s Word.  Even as that Word is being fulfilled all around them.

What was the first thing that the serpent asked Eve?  What was the first question mark in the Bible asking.  The devil said to Eve, “Has God indeed said…?”  He is asking that same question all over the world still today, even as a brilliant man with apparently peaceful ambitions for all the world is in the midst of doing the very first thing that is said of the one called Antichrist; he is brokering the negotiations for peace between Israel and the whole Arab community. 

How does he hope to do that?  By tearing down the ancient tribal paradigms and constructing a new paradigm of peace and safety and goodwill.  The pundits do not believe it can happen, but it is going to happen, because the Jewish prophets saw it.  President Obama is bringing a message of great hope to the world.  It is being done at great cost to the United States, but he is high on the list of those who seek a global economy and currency.  Not to bring the world down to the level of the poor, but to bring those who are now in poverty hope for an equitable wage for their day’s labor. 

The conservative press railed against Obama for his pledge to “spread the wealth around” during the 2008 campaign in answer to a question asked by a woman in the gathering.  Joe the Plumber arose (how absurdly ignorant and unthinking are we anyway?), and had his moment in the sun. 

Obama made that statement, and it ought to be clear by now that he doesn’t say things that he doesn’t mean.  He seeks a kinder and gentler America, and world.  Without government regulation, corporations have sucked dry the treasury of the nation and pledged our land as collateral to other nations.  What are we thinking?  Without government regulation, the food industry would quickly become dangerous.  Corporations have no heart, but they reflect the hearts of those in charge, because those in charge are the ones who have lost contact with “commoners,” and see them as prey, whose blood is measured in dollars.  They are vicious carnivores, all.

That said, we must recognize that this is still the devil’s world. He is still its ruler, and all the governments of the world are staged according to his principles.  That is an inescapable fact.  Corporations buy their politicians, and the largesse flows in freely.  That’s just the way things work.

The world wants not to know what God has to say about these times and seasons.  For they know that they would stand convicted of their evil ways, their lack of true justice, their greed and avarice, and their insatiable lust for more and more and more.  The world wants to speculate.  It wants to question, as if mankind might sit in judgment upon God.  Its day is coming, and faster than all but a few recognize.

The world realizes that “something big” is about to happen. Some look upon the Mayan calendar and suppose that civilization must end in 2012.  Actually, “big things” happen with great frequency after that treaty is signed and ratified.  Some call it the end of the world, or Doomsday.  The signing of  that treaty referred to in Dan. 9:24 does not end with the extinction of the earth and all its inhabitants.

But it does indeed set in motion the final seven years of Gentile world dominion.  The Mayans may be right.  There may be enough “natural” disasters between now and the end of December, 2012, that civilizations will break down.  After all, great earthquakes will shake the entire planet.  An asteroid the size of a mountain will actually break open the crust of the earth, according to Isaiah, and magma, coupled with the earthquakes will reshape the land masses.  With no passable roads in order to get to the marketplaces with their weekly deliveries; with broken oil pipelines the world over; with broken runways, and no way to get adequate supplies of diesel fuel or gasoline or food to the market, people might find themselves killing one another over something as small as a can of peas.  It could happen in 2012, or the Mayans may have it wrong, or our calendar might not be correct.  Who knows these things?  But we can know what is written in the  Word of God.

When all is said and done, the startling fact remains that we may indeed be that generation of saints to be alive at the rapture of the Church.  What joy and rejoicing there will be!  But we spend a lot more time immersed in temporal things than we do walking through our temporal lives with an eternal perspective.  That is where faith, hope and love are found in abundance.  When our hearts are in heaven, it is because that is where our treasure is, who serve the Lord.

The fact that these negotiations persist, and that the world is bearing down on both Israel and the Palestinians to stop this stupid fighting and get down to business; all this is the way in which the saints will know that the end of this age is very near indeed. 

Hope is the forgotten virtue.  Men hope for  temporal things, only to have them end at a hole in the ground.  How much more blessed is the man who lives this life “beyond that hole in the ground,” beyond the grave, seeing his temporal life as the precursor to his eternal estate.  But the first shall be last, and the last shall be first.  Every time that “hope” is found in the New Testament, it concerns the resurrection of the NT saints at the rapture of the Church. 

Those saints who are alive at that time are “translated” in a moment from mortal to immortal.  We go bodily to the home that Jesus Christ has been building for us for the past two thousand years.  It has taken Him that long, and He is God Almighty.  How grand must it be? 

When we take our hopes off temporal things and put them on things that have to do with service to God while we are still here, our paradigm of life changes, and we have peace and love and joy and hope aplenty; and all the more as we see the Day approaching.  The temporal circumstances of our temporal lives mean very little in comparison with our heavenly home.  Indeed, those who have the least today have the most reason to hope for the rapture of the Church.  There is more genuine faith found among the poor than any rich people.  The impasses will eventually be broken between the Israelis and the Palestinians, and a peace agreement will be reached.  Before that day dawns, our Day will begin.  Progress toward the treaty is haltingly moving forward, and we have much reason to be hopeful.

Read more about Wm. Anderson Simpson author of Midnight Rising-Warning Signs For This Generation-Deep River Books 2010. www.midnightrisingbook.net 

Earl D. Radmacher's Thoughts on Midnight Rising

“In terms of prophecy, this book is a watershed. It changes the way we must consider the prophetic stage.  This book is startling, not only because of the clarity it offers, but because it gives a sense of immediacy to the imminence of the Rapture.”

  

-Earl D. Radmacher, M.A., Th.D., President Emeritus,

Western Seminary, Portland, Oregon

Read more about Wm. Anderson Simpson author of Midnight Rising-Warning Signs For This Generation-Deep River Books 2010. www.midnightrisingbook.net 

Middle East Update

It was a close thing, or so it appeared, the renewal of the moratorium of settlement building in the West Bank and east Jerusalem.  Benjamin Netanyahu’s hard-line panel finally gave him a resounding, “No” to his suggestion that the moratorium might be unofficially extended.

As expected, the Palestinians walked away from further discussion, saying that Israel was acting unilaterally in a way that made further negotiations fruitless, claiming land for themselves during the negotiations that were under negotiation. 

It was not long after that that the Palestinians began to make noises about going to the United Nations and asking that body to declare them a sovereign state.  Two European nations had already suggested that it might be brought before the Security Council, and now the Palestinians are broaching the matter publicly.  Even President Abbas, who had heretofore voiced nothing of the kind, has gone on record as saying that if peace is not achieved by the end of the one-year period of negotiations, he will consider asking the U.N. to declare them a sovereign state, in accordance with the 1967 borders of Israel.

President Netanyahu has warned that such a move would cause immeasurable trouble.  In order for the Palestinians to realize sovereignty, they would have to push out the Israeli garrisons stationed in the West Bank, against the superior firepower and weaponry of the Israelis.  The United Nations and the United States would have to secure the borders, and an all-out war against Israel would begin. 

For the U.N. to declare Palestinian sovereignty of the land outside the 1967 borders would be a grave danger to Israel, as a state of war would be renewed vigorously.  Israel’s weaponry is far superior to that of the Palestinians, but it is nowhere equal to that of the rest of the Gentile world.  Yes, it would cause immeasurable trouble, but it would be as much trouble for Israel as for the Palestinians, probably more. 

Thus, Netanyahu’s statement was a tacit admission that peace must be made during the current negotiations – this, while the Israelis are pushing down Palestinian homes in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, and beginning construction on those lands of up to six hundred new homes for the Jewish settlers. 

The world sees this, and does not consider God’s ownership of that entire city, Jerusalem, where He has placed His name, but the world views it as a provocation of the worst sort.  It jangles their anger and clangs their resentment against Israel.  In point of fact, if Israel went on to take all of the Promised Land, God would stand behind them; nay, in front of them, as their Banner.  But they are not looking to God in this.  All sides are viewing the whole matter from an earthly perspective, using worldly wisdom, jockeying for position and advantage.  Unfortunately for Israel, the world is siding with the Palestinians, and Israel’s hand is going to be forced to either enter into a sinful treaty with the most wicked man ever to draw breath, or to attempt to face down the armies of the entire earth.  Guess which option they will choose.  We are told which one: peace with “many.”

If Israel were spiritual, God would bring them into their land, but they are not, nor have they been for more than two thousand years.  By the time of Christ’s First Advent, the political entities – the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Herodians, among others, had so corrupted the rituals of Israel as to make a mockery of the God whom they would soon mock to His face, scourging Him according to their apostasy, and finally, killing Him.

If, if, if!  We know this:  Israel is going to enter into a covenant with the antichrist.  We know that she will allow God’s land to be divided, but that she will be rewarded with the privilege of erecting a temple and resuming animal sacrifices.  However, God will not be in that temple.  The holy of holies in that temple will be a stench in the nostrils of God.  If Israel was apostate in Christ’s day, and given that they have spent two millennia scattered among unbelieving Gentiles, how apostate must they be today? 

While there is a remnant that is loyal to God in Israel today, they are a tiny minority.  They feel the heavy heel of the Gentile world pressing hard upon their collective neck.  The careful wording of Daniel does not necessarily imply that Israel is happy with this covenant.  Seeing that the angel specifically told Daniel that this prophecy concerned Daniel and his people and the holy city, we know that Israel is a party to this covenant, but Daniel does not say that Israel confirms the treaty.  Rather, he says that the antichrist is the one who confirms that treaty. 

We know that it is a single man who is the primary broker of this treaty, since the masculine singular pronoun “he” is used throughout the references to the end-time ruler.  Thus, it is not the United Nations, for it is a single nation, with ten allies.  It is the leader of that single nation that is the villainous culprit we call antichrist.

Those who claim that the antichrist is the leader of a ten-nation federation are close, but he is not one of the ten.  Daniel specifically says that this nation from which the beast would arise is “another” nation, a “little one,” that arises from the ten, but not among them, and becomes great.  We find the United States being the primary broker of a comprehensive Middle East peace agreement, even as our current president has openly declared that it is his firm intention to bring peace to the Middle East, and is today working vigorously toward that end.  Surely, this nation arose from the sands of the old Roman Empire.  None other has so arisen and become great.

How obvious must it be before learned men see what is happening right before their eyes.  The present reality does not fit their preconceived (conceived 400 years ago) picture of the end times, and so it is summarily dismissed.  Not to cast aspersions upon men of honor and integrity, men of faith, men of God, but how can it be that so few understand this obvious truth? 

It is because they do not account for the United States in prophecy.  If that is so, then the treaty that Daniel wrote of must await the (unexplained) collapse of the United States, the rise of another man who will be worshiped by the world, who has the solution to the Middle East puzzle. 

If those who do not see the present world stage in light of the writings of the ancient Jewish prophets, then their vision offers little or no hope to those living on the earth today.  Their hope is the resurrection, and not the rapture of the Church.  It is a good hope; good enough for many generations of Christians through the millennia since Christ, but it does not offer the immediacy or the detailed accuracy of an American beast. 

If this position proves to be true, then we are witnessing the climax of the Age in the negotiations that pit man against God.  We are watching as the nation of the beast presses Israel into submission.  If the United Nations declares Palestine a sovereign state, then Israel must again be driven from the land.  There is nothing in the prophets concerning that, except during the tribulation.  Since the Church remains on the earth today, we are not in the tribulation period, but it is yet future. 

It is the signing of a comprehensive Middle East peace agreement that begins that final seven years of Gentile world dominion.  There will be no United Nations during the Kingdom Age, but our Lord will be King of all the kings of all the kingdoms of the earth.  It will be a time when the classes of nobility will be distinguished again, and every nation will have its king: there will be no democracies or communist oligarchies or any totalitarian states, as all will be united in their acceptance of Christ as King and Sovereign of the entire creation.

Gentiles will no longer be able to press against Jerusalem, though they will have it surrounded at the end of the Millennial Kingdom.  Fire will then come down from heaven and destroy all of those who have resisted our Lord’s sovereignty.

One thousand seven years, plus seventy-five days, will follow the signing of that treaty (see Dan 12:8-13).  The first seven years will be a time of judgment upon the earth:  darkness and terrible pestilences and famines.  After the seven years of tribulation, our Lord returns to the earth. 

It is not until the passing of seventy-five days after His Second Advent that He is crowned King of kings and Lord of lords.  Of those seventy-five days, we are told nothing.  Many expositors suppose that it will be a time when the rubble left from the tribulation period will be cleared away and the earth will be renewed.  There is no Scripture to refute that supposition, but neither is there any to support it.  Surely, during that time, Church Age saints will be crowned in the kingdoms of earth, where they will rule under the King of kings.  The millennial Temple will be constructed, for Christ’s throne will surely be placed in the Holy of Holies in the Millennial Temple.  Ezekiel wrote extensively about that Temple.

The salient fact in all of the ongoing discussion of end-time events is that a man whom the whole world views favorably is brokering that Middle East treaty today.  That this man is the leader of the richest, most benevolent nation the world has ever seen (not to mention the most powerful by any account) should come as no surprise to any candid mind.  No tiny nation is going to suddenly come into world dominance.  It already has. 

The future is now, and the whole of Gentile world dominion is swirling down the vortex of time toward its destruction.  If the United States is the nation of the beast, then we are going to have a leader over whom the world rejoices.  He will be bent toward the goal of a comprehensive Middle East peace treaty.  Our president has made it an openly-stated goal of his administration to lead the world into peace, and most especially in the Middle East.  He determinedly expects to make that the crowning jewel among all his accomplishments in office.

This, and the world loves him.  Unique in the annals of human history, nations around the world held celebrations when President Obama won the victory in 2008.  Some nations held street parties and had fireworks displays in celebrating his election and inauguration.  When have the nations of the world ever done such a thing for the rise to power of another individual in a distant land?  Never.

The coffee is beyond stale.  It is thirty-odd years old.  Never have so many slept through so much.  It is time to wake up and drink that bitter brew that proves that the four hundred year old interpretation no longer obtains, but that the present reality is the substance of our long-suffering hope.

Read more about Wm. Anderson Simpson author of Midnight Rising-Warning Signs For This Generation-Deep River Books 2010. www.midnightrisingbook.net