The Magoi and the Birth of Jesus Messiah

The Eschatology Today tradition continues to bring this post forward. This is the 15th re-posting.

10 December 2025: (Original Posting date 6 January 2010): The above image is an artistic rendering of the three Magoi (Magi). In fact, there had to have been quite an entourage who accompanied the Magoi, primarily because of the basic fact that no one makes a 1,000+ mile round trip journey across the desert east of the Jordan River, that between the Parthian Empire and Roman-occupied Israel west of the Jordan River without the supplies of a life-sustaining caravan and significant numbers of mounted cavalry for protection. The actual number of gentile visitors from the east was probably closer to 300 than just 3. It's also a minor miracle that the illegitimate Roman puppet King Herod did not think the appearance of this caravan from the east wasn't the advance guard of a Parthian invasion.

The importance of the whole story about the Magoi (Matthew 2:1-12) is quite likely unknown by most Christians. That's because we've not spent much time learning about it, even though it is Scripture, Old Testament (Numbers 24:14-25; Micah 5:2-5; Isaiah 60:2-6) and very specific prophetic Scripture at that.

Oh, we all know and have visualized one way or another the "We Three Kings" Christmas carol, and have seen Nativity scene imagery like the above for the sum of our lives, but that's not the half of it. There's more... so much more to the story.

The more I think about it, the more I am astounded by the fact that the gentile Magoi who came out of the Parthian (Persian) Empire and made this tremendous journey did so after fervently holding to the prophet Daniel's detailed prophecy (given by the angel Gabriel in Daniel 9:24-26) concerning the coming of the Messiah for over 600 years, and waited generation after generation for a very specific sign in the skies, and all the while knowing the precise number of days until the Messiah's birth because of the details given in the prophecy. They knew how to count Hebrew years, and exactly how many days each year had. They knew precisely when to look for the star.

And then once that sign appeared and the number of days had elapsed they rounded up the multiple parts of a large caravan and the water and provisions for the entire group's survival, plus the gifts for the object of their 500+ year devotion for what had to be a round trip of something well in excess of 1,900 miles across barren desert, mountains, marshes, rivers and wadis.... I stand here approximately two millennia and two decades later in complete awe just thinking about it.

The caravan was quite probably a round trip from Seleucia to Jerusalem and back, on foot and by beast of burden, of GENTILE believers coming from the Magoi's descendants of Nebuchadnezzar's Babylonian Empire, the Persian Empire, Alexander the Great's Empire, the Seleucid Empire to the Parthian Empire of the Roman Era.

That these GENTILES, these Magoi, had clung to and fervently believed in the exquisitely detailed God-breathed prophecy of Daniel concerning the coming birth of the Messiah for hundreds and hundreds of years, through all of the events, wars, and tumults that had occurred in this crossroads region of the known world, is without question the greatest account of the prophetic Word of God causing belief in the God of Israel among gentiles in history prior to the crucifixion, death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Having been in those same Middle Eastern deserts, such a specifically purposeful journey undertaken 2,000 years ago is mind-boggling to this author. These gentiles from the regions and lands of Israel's captivity knew the details of, believed in, and all the while eagerly awaited the birth of the Messiah. And the Jews, for the most part, due to their disobedience and the spiritual blindness and deafness placed upon them by the Covenant of Moab, besides the Covenant of Horeb, (Deuteronomy 29) knew nothing of His coming; that He would literally be the God of their fathers born in the flesh of a man.

And here we are, knowing in detail that the days of time which are left until the advent of Daniel's 70th Week are all but palpable... just stand in awe and in praise of God. My brothers and sisters, just stand in awe and praise to be a living part of all this.

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL!

Daniel's 70th Week and the Harpazo

UPDATE 01 September 2015: It's always a very disturbing thing to see such rampant deviation from the doctrine to be found within the Word of God coming from people who self-identify as believing Christians. It is everywhere one casts his or her gaze these days. It is beyond me to understand why such people will go to other men or women for religious doctrine instead of to Living Word of God, and the Holy Spirit which the Lord sent to be among us, to instruct, convict and assist us. But, you know what, all of this apostasy is yet another 'sign of the times', a sign of the great apostasy that is as much a part of last days eschatology as the battle of Gog/Magog or the 70th Week itself. These things are all synonymous indications and warning of precisely what time we live in.  

28 August 2015:  It's time once again for an update regarding the Harpazo of the bride of Christ due to the fact that there is now an in-progress effort by some false teachers who are going to try to convince as many of you as is possible of a couple of things. One thing is that everything you know about the 'end times' is wrong, and the other is that Harpazo will not occur prior to the 70th Week, but during it. 

I will not name these false teachers because it may well be that their names might not be written in the Book of Life, so why should I name them in this space? (Matthew 7:21) They also wish to make a large sum of cash money TO COME DIRECTLY FROM YOU for their effort to instruct their unbiblical nonsense, so you will learn of their names soon enough. These are not Christian brethren that constantly argue against us in our belief as led by the Holy Spirit. They are clearly identified as last days 'Laodiceans' in Revelation 3:15-19.

These false teachers will attempt to instruct that the bride of Christ will be subject to the wrath of God during the 70th Week; that the cataclysmic effects upon the whole earth as the Lord Jesus Christ opens the seven seals will also befall the bride of Christ as much as it will those who would believe the lie of Satan and his beast and false prophet.

I will use the word of God, as given to the apostle Paul in his letter to the Ephesians (link embedded in the text for context), to preemptively destroy everything these false teachers have to say to us and to the as yet unsaved masses.  The Harpazo of the bride of Christ will occur prior to the 70th Week, and Paul was inspired by the Holy Spirit to tell us why this IS the fact of the matter:

"Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her, that He might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word, that He might present her to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish."

Let me repeat: We, the bride of the LORD Jesus Christ, God incarnate, are beloved by Him, He gave Himself for us, and He washes us and cleanses us by the power of His word, so that He will soon present us to Himself as a glorious bride, without so much as a single spot or wrinkle, completely holy and without blemish! 

Does this sound even remotely like the bride of Christ will be subject to the wrath of God loosed upon the world during the 70th Week? Is any of the bride of Christ to be subject to death, disfigurement, disease, dismemberment, tortured, raped, pillaged, bloodied and bruised? Of course not! So as you come to see the assault from the false teaching of disreputable men, stop them in their tracks and refute them with His word that washes us and makes us glorious for Him to present us to Himself.


29 September 2013: It has been suggested by a couple of those Christians who do not believe there can be any pre-70th Week wars because God would not allow them prior to the Harpazo/Rapture because that would be tantamount to judgment befalling the Bride of Christ. It is those Christians then that the key question of this addendum is addressed: How do you reconcile the current and ongoing wholesale extermination of Christians in the Middle East by Islamic Jihadists? The rampant martyrdom of our brethren across the whole of the Middle East and and Southwest Asia, excepting only the State of Israel, has reached epic if not Biblical proportions. Therefore and within your own eschatological view, how do you deal with this most uncomfortable truth?

UPDATED and REVISED 23 September 2013: Following some fairly intensive study I feel there's a need to update this post with some additional information which is directly relevant to where I left off with the 19 July update. As stated in the second-to-last paragraph, I believe there is a direct prologue correlation of the coming Harpazo of the Bride of Christ with the Harpazo of Enoch prior to the Flood.

However, that is not the most appropriate prologue to cite according to what I believe God has informed us of in Genesis 6 and 7.  Noah, his sons, their wives and the building of the ark itself as an avenue of escape from the judgment of the Flood is an exceptionally poignant and prophetic prologue.  The enigmatic verses of 2 Thessalonians 2:1-6, which many pre-70th Week dispensationalists do an eschatological tap dance around, is resolved fully and to the literal letter of Paul's inspired declaration on the subject.

Make no mistake, I am definitively of the pre-70th Week dispensational view, however it is entirely due to what God says in His Living Word of Genesis 5, 6 and 7 that I no longer can accept that there will be any gap of time between the Harpazo and Day 1 of the 70th Week.

This is really so simple I feel I should head-slap myself as NCIS' Jethro Gibbs would head-slap Tony DiNozzo for some unprofessional silliness simply because I did not see this sooner. 

Genesis 5:32 and 6:10 tell us Noah was 500 years old and to him were born after his 500th year three sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth.


Genesis 6:3 and 6:13 and 6:17 provide the details that the Lord's judgment was announced in advance and would come upon the earth in exactly 100 years time from Noah's 500th year on the earth. Noah and sons were found to be pure in the generations from Adam; that is to say their DNA was pure and uncorrupted by any fallen angelic corruption, and so they were excepted from the wrath to come, to be saved from the coming judgment of destruction upon the earth. 

Then Noah receives his precise instructions from the Lord on how he is to construct the ark and he does exactly as commanded. Clearly to be assumed from the text here is that Noah's sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth, were all born and raised to a working age during the 20 years following Noah's receiving this instruction from God. Therefore, since Shem, Ham and Japheth are not known to us to have been triplets, at the minimum their ages would have been 20, 19 and 18, respectively, when the laborious task of constructing the ark was begun in earnest.

Then at Genesis 7:1, 6 and 11 come the very interesting details. Here the Lord informs us that the construction of ark was completed. Noah and his family are told to enter into the ark and the Flood commences on that same day. 

This day is specified in Genesis 7:6 to have occurred when Noah was 600-years old -- and Genesis 7:11 gets very specific that this occurred on the 17th day of the 2nd month of that 600th year. No reason is given for this specificity, but my sense in literally interpreting this is that it somehow relates directly to the future Harpazo (end of the Age of Grace - start of the 70th Week) occurring within the exact same template of a certain specified or appointed day and hour known only by God the Father. 

This, obviously, brings us to the point wherein I am sure some of my fellow dispensationalists will object to what has been written here thus far. They will say, "Ah, but you have violated the the inviolable, you have violated the "Doctrine of Imminence. This cannot happen." Really?  What is the "Doctrine of Imminence?" Is the "Doctrine of Imminence" given to us in the plain text of His Word, is it demonstratively inspired of the Holy Spirit, or is it something that has been interpretively inferred by fallible men based upon what the Lord has said, both in text and in-person? Obviously, this doctrine has been interpretively inferred in relatively recently times by men, and therefore it suffers from a weakness that must be defended.

What is provided here is based upon the God-breathed narrative about the Flood of Noah, and this includes the prophetic template or foreshadowing that the very elect of God were saved from certain destruction via Divine judgment of a kind that had never before occurred on the earth. Also included here is the direct albeit figurative reference from the angel Gabriel to the prophet Daniel that the end of the present age will come "the end thereof shall be with a flood" (Daniel 9:26c) and the very specific reference given to us by the Lord Jesus Christ in the Olivet Discourse found in Matthew 24:36-39 (emphasis added):

"But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, but My Father only. But as the days of Noah were, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be. For as in the days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and did not know until the flood came and took them all away, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be."

Need any more be stated?

13 July 2011: This time we're back into the "meat and 'taters" of eschatological study. I say "meat and 'taters" because this is some truly heavy fare that will require significant Berean study, commentary, and probably some editing in the process. I am not really teaching anything with this post, but rather I'm as much learning in this process as are those who are reading this for the first time.

To begin with, a verse from Daniel that we should all be quite familiar with. It is this verse which I believe is indicative of both the revealing of the Antichrist and the commencement of Daniel's 70th Week and the imminent Harpazo of the Bride of Christ which meany teach is a signless event.

"Then he shall confirm a covenant with many for one week; But in the middle of the week he shall bring an end to sacrifice and offering." (Daniel 9:27a NKJV)

How does this verse relate to Paul's exhorations to the Thessalonians who were very concerned that Daniel's 70th Week had commenced.

"Now, brethren, concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering together to Him, we ask you, not to be soon shaken in mind or troubled, either by spirit or by word or by letter, as if from us, as though the day of Christ had come. Let no one deceive you by any means; for that Day will not come unless the falling away comes first, and the man of sin is revealed, the son of perdition, who opposes and exalts himself above all that is called God or that is worshiped, so that he sits as God in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God." (2 Thessalonians 2:1-4)

If 2 Thessalonians 2:1-3 is definitively referring to the Harpazo of the Bride of Christ, then clearly that event is not signless event with spiritual apostasy and the revealing of the Antichrist being definitive temporal signs that the Harpazo must occur after the restrainer is moved out of the way. As Paul strenuously exhorts - let no one deceive us in any way about this.

So, if I understand this correctly, and I think I've done my homework here, what Paul is teaching to the Thessalonians, and to all Christians up to the present time, is that the apostasy (falling away) precedes the revealing of the Antichrist and the revealing of the Antichrist precedes the Harpazo.

Here is where I, as a pretribulationist believer, found that I must assume in reading these verses that Paul had taught the Thessalonians about a pretribulation Harpazo. Indeed the assumption is correct because Paul so states in the very next verse (2 Thessalonians 2:5) that he had previously taught the Thessalonians exactly that.

However, in spite of the teaching they had received the Thessalonians thought they were living in the tribulation, during Daniel's 70th Week. They were extremely concerned that they had missed the Harpazo which in turn made Paul's correction to them in these verses absolutely necessary; he had to prove to them in no uncertain terms that the Harpazo had not occurred and thus gave them specific signs with with to prove his teaching and alleviate their fears.

UPDATE 19 July 2011: I believe the restrainer is the Bride of Christ empowered by the Holy Spirit.

In my study I realized that knowledge of who the restrainer is has been the fact of the matter since the Day of Pentecost (read: Paul in Romans 5:5). The restrainers role will end on the Day of Harpazo. This finite period of time is also referred to as the Dispensation of Grace, and is referred to by Paul in Romans 11:25 as "until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in."

As for Daniel's 70th Week, we all know those literal 7 years have two 42-month long halves. It is the second half which is a Great Tribulation like nothing ever experienced on the earth in the past or ever again in the future. The near annihilation of all life on the earth if those future days are not cut short by the direct intervention of God.

Those months are foretold in the Old Testament.

Isaiah 26:19-21 (Isaiah refers to this period as "the indignation" and also prophecy's the Harpazo will "hide" us in certain chambers until this period of time is past. Those chambers (literally "dwellings") were revealed to us by the Lord Himself in John 14:1-3. Zephaniah also speaks to our being "hid" in "the day of the LORD's anger (i.e. the day of the LORD's wrath). The same is said in Psalm 27:5.

As a template for the Harpazo of the Bride of Christ, I think the Harpazo of Enoch prior to Noah's Flood serves us very well. Genesis 5 tells us that Enoch lived 365 years and was Harpazoed straight to God. It is interesting to note here that by counting the years between Enoch's harpazo and day one of Noah's Flood we can see that he was caught up 531 years prior to the flood. Now while that's a serious amount of years prior to the end of that dispensation, it's all relative because people prior to the flood were on the average living for just under a millennium of years (circa 9 centuries give or take a decade or two). Now Psalm 90:10 tells us we live (on average) for 70 years or 80 years with strength.

The point is the Bride of Christ will be Harpazoed as was Enoch, prior to the wrath of God being poured out. And since Daniel's 70th Week is not relative to the Bride of Christ, but to Israel, we're gone prior to the commencement of those 7 years, and which our Lord said would be inclusive of the lifespan of the generation alive at that time. Given that the prophetic re-birth of Israel (Ezekiel 37) occurred 65 years ago, I would tend to think we're on the tail end of the timelime that's left prior to Daniel's 70th Week commencing.

Daniel 9:27: "Gabar Bĕriyth Rab"

11 January 2013: This will be a companion exegetic article to Ezekiel 37:10 "Meh'ode Gadowl Chayil" posted here on 1 January 2013. I awoke with a start at 3 AM this morning with the burning thought that Israel is to be confirmed within the "gabar bĕriyth rab" or "covenant among many" found in Daniel 9:27 at the very beginning of the 70th Week. I now believe the NATO alliance resolves the eschatological issue of what ultimately becomes of the Israel Defense Forces following the near-future decisive victory in fulfillment of Psalm 83, to the almost unfathomable security condition that is prophesied to exist prior to Ezekiel 38/39, and, ultimately to the advent of the 70th Week as presented in the concluding paragraph post of that article.

According to the God-breathed prophecies the angel Gabriel gave to the prophet Daniel, there would be only four prophetically important world empires to exist between that time and the establishment of the Kingdom of God on Earth: the Babylonian, the Medo-Persian, the Grecian and the Roman. Of these the last, the Roman, would not end, but would re-emerge in the last days as ten ethnically diverse kingdoms giving their authority to the Antichrist, a man who rises to achieve supreme authority over all of them, and thereafter through dark schemes, deception and military conquest over the global community of nations.

The illustration (click to enlarge) above shows the expansion of Rome over time, from its early days as a republic to its largest extent as an empire, perhaps just a decade or so from when we believe John was given The Revelation of Jesus Christ on Patmos. Within these lands and their territories and former colonies across the globe we can almost certainly find the "Beast Empire" of the 70th Week.

Living Eschatology is the Living Word of God

Immediately prior to the 70th Week there is prophetic reference to such an alliance in Ezekiel 38:13 as "the merchants of Tarshish" in association with the kingdoms of the Arabian peninsula, Sheba and Dedan. Evidence of this alliance is extant today, particularly in media reports of the close cooperation between NATO and the kingdoms of the Arabian Peninsula such as Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the UAE and Kuwait.

The modern beginnings of this alliance began with the events of 1991 and Operation Desert Storm. They continue today with the recent events in Libya (2011) and now Syria (2011-12), and have been equally evident in Operation Iraqi Freedom (Iraq 2003-2010) and Operation Enduring Freedom (Afghanistan 2001-2013) where the NATO military presence is particularly robust. We can therefore reasonably expect the modern "Roman Empire" to continue its growth and expansion as Bible prophecy has flawlessly forecast for the past 2,645 years (Daniel 2:1 to Present Day).

In the several hundred years that immediately preceded the literal fulfillment of Daniel 9:26 and Matthew 24:2, many military alliances, battles and wars occurred over a vast area which prophetically facilitated and then culminated in that single event on Tishba B'Av 70 AD. Few of those events were of sufficient importance to warrant mention within the Biblical text, excepting only the prophetic narrative of Daniel 10:10 through Daniel 11:45. Rome, specifically the Roman Legions which executed the sack of Jerusalem and the razing of the Temple, (V Macedonica, X Fretensis, XII Fulminata and XV Apollinaris), were a unified force operating under the supreme authority of just one man, but they were named for the regions where they had been formed, had been fought in conquest for Rome, or for the supreme deity worshiped by the Roman Emperor.

Roman Legions sack the Temple, Tisha B'Av 70 AD

There is no prophetic text in the Bible describing a repeat of a military campaign of this type. Instead there is the peaceful sounding "gabar bĕriyth rab" or "covenant among many" of Daniel 9:27 that will be confirmed.  I believe this points to Israel's admission into the NATO alliance and its unwitting (for the most part) acceptance of the man who will be the Antichrist. I believe this was prophesied to occur by Jesus Christ at the Temple, and was recorded in John 5:43: "I have come in My Father’s name, and you do not receive Me; if another comes in his own name, him you will receive."  

In these last days Israel wants nothing more than to be accepted as an equal by these modern Roman nations, yet they are the same Roman nations where for nearly 20 centuries since their forefathers forced exile from the land they had been relentlessly persecuted, chased, evicted, forcibly converted, and ultimately murdered on an industrial scale. To these Roman nations Israel wishes to return in military and political alliance just a generation after God had taken them out and returned them to their own land as promised. 

In these last days Israel's military forces reciprocally and routinely war game with and play host to in the land of Israel the modern equivalent of Rome's legions. Soon this covenant, this alliance, pact, peace treaty or whatever we would call it, will come to pass and it will be the doorway to the abomination of desolation and the time of Jacob's trouble (Jeremiah 30:7). And some people say that history does not repeat itself. Well, history will repeat itself, but this last time it is for the glory of God and the establishment of His kingdom upon this Earth.

Notes on the Latter Years Wars

12 May 2010: Here are some brief notes regarding eschatological issues I have noticed more than a few brethren have been asking questions about concerning the series of imminent latter years wars.

During the Psalm 83/Isaiah17 (and associated prophecies) war, Israel does take an initial hit on its population, but it is not a devastating or incapacitating hit. Nor is it a hit which destroys the county's national infrastructure. This soon-to-be fact is manifest by the Lord in Ezekiel 38/39. Shortly thereafter the war of Psalm83/Isaiah17 the Lord declares that Israel has recovered from this war and is in possession of great wealth. The Word of God came upon Ezekiel describing Israel in the post-Psalm83/Isaiah 17 reality, saying: (bold emphasis added)

Ezekiel 38:8
In the latter years you will come into the land of those brought back from the sword and gathered from many people on the mountains of Israel, which had long been desolate; they were brought out of the nations, and now all of them dwell safely.

Ezekiel 38:11-13
You will say, ‘I will go up against a land of unwalled villages; I will go to a peaceful people, who dwell safely, all of them dwelling without walls, and having neither bars nor gates’— to take plunder and to take booty, to stretch out your hand against the waste places that are again inhabited, and against a people gathered from the nations, who have acquired livestock and goods, who dwell in the midst of the land. Sheba, Dedan, the merchants of Tarshish, and all their young lions will say to you, ‘Have you come to take plunder? Have you gathered your army to take booty, to carry away silver and gold, to take away livestock and goods, to take great plunder?’”’

Notice in the above verses that Israel is living in complete safety. Israel has zero fear of any nuclear-armed or WMD-possessing enemy, not newly Islamist Turkey, not Shi'ite Iran under the Ayatollah and IRGC, nor Russia under KGB/FSB rule, nor any of the nations of the named Gog/Magog confederation. Is this not indicative of Israel becoming a superpower? In a type-contrast, did not the United States homeland continually live in peace and safety after WWII, until very recent times, due to our overwhelming military and economic superiority? This will almost pale in comparison to what Israel achieves in the near-term due to the sovereign will of God.

Also, notice in Ezekiel 39:21-29 the specific God-given purposes for which this prophetic and ultimate judgment against the Gog/Magog confederation will occur prior to Daniel's 70th Week.

“I will set My glory among the nations; all the nations shall see My judgment which I have executed, and My hand which I have laid on them. So the house of Israel shall know that I am the LORD their God from that day forward. The Gentiles shall know that the house of Israel went into captivity for their iniquity; because they were unfaithful to Me, therefore I hid My face from them. I gave them into the hand of their enemies, and they all fell by the sword. According to their uncleanness and according to their transgressions I have dealt with them, and hidden My face from them.""

“Therefore thus says the Lord GOD: ‘Now I will bring back the captives of Jacob, and have mercy on the whole house of Israel; and I will be jealous for My holy name— after they have borne their shame, and all their unfaithfulness in which they were unfaithful to Me, when they dwelt safely in their own land and no one made them afraid. When I have brought them back from the peoples and gathered them out of their enemies’ lands, and I am hallowed in them in the sight of many nations, then they shall know that I am the LORD their God, who sent them into captivity among the nations, but also brought them back to their land, and left none of them captive any longer. And I will not hide My face from them anymore; for I shall have poured out My Spirit on the house of Israel,’ says the Lord GOD.”

Brethren, none of us should make any eschatological mistake about these events and what follows them in relatively short order, including our own imminent Harpazo. The prophetic fact of that matter is that Daniel's 70th Week is Satan's and his demons direct intervention in human affairs, centered on Israel and Jerusalem's Temple Mount, in an attempt to physically destroy all of that which God has just accomplished through Psalm 83/Isaiah 17 and Ezekiel 38/39.

Daniel's 70th Week is brought to an end with the full and indescribably majestic Revelation of Jesus our God and Messiah to the whole world.

Babylon and the End of the Age

6 February 2009: Is the Babylon of the Old Testament the same Babylon New Testament Scripture refers to at the ‘End of the Age”? The purpose of this article is to point out why I do not believe the two are to be confused. The original, physical political entity known as Babylon was the original ‘World Empire’ from the Biblical perspective and other is ‘symbolic’ of the global system of government during Daniel’s 70th Week.

Yes, I hold to the interpretation that there will be no resurrection of a physical or historical Babylonian Empire. The Scriptural evidence for this interpretation is the God-given vision of Daniel regarding the statue which began with Nebuchadnezzar and Daniel’s vision of the distant future and the time of the end. That Babylon is gone forever into history and is the fulfilled prophecy of Isaiah 13:20-21.

The God-given sequence of empires thereafter is very specific with each subsequent Middle Eastern empire built upon the ruins of the Babylonian Empire: the Persian Empire, the Hellenic Empire of Alexander and its prophesied division into four rump empires, of which the Seleucid Empire and its Antichrist precursor (Antiochus IV Epiphanes) was most important, and finally the Roman Empire.

The physical destruction of Babylon, as prophesied also by Jeremiah 50 and 51, occurred over many years and was not complete until Seleucia, the new capital of the Seleucid Empire founded by Seleucus I Nicator circa 305 BC was literally built brick by brick from the ruins of Nebuchadnezzar’s Babylon. Any Bible prophecy student can look at a detailed map of modern day Iraq and determine that the ruins of Nebuchadnezzar’s Babylon lies just east of the Euphrates River near the city of Al-Hillah and Seleucia was built in the desert 20 miles south of modern day Baghdad and 70 miles to the northeast of the original Babylon along the banks of the Tigris River. Aside from the geographic differences, Babylon was an ancient Middle Eastern culture while Seleucia was very much a Western Hellenistic culture.

In addition to this we also have Isaiah 13 serving as a central prophetic theme regarding a symbolic “Babylon” and the end times “pains of a woman in childbirth” concurrent with the overwhelming fear that overtakes every man’s heart, and the darkening of the stars in their constellations, the sun and the moon which was repeated by Jesus Christ during his Olivet Discourse found in Matthew 24. Isaiah’s Babylon in this prophecy is a symbolic Babylon representing the utterly corrupt world government system of the Antichrist within Daniel’s 70th Week.

In this day and age it is very interesting to note that Israel, in the form of its military and intelligence services has returned to northern Iraq, in the region known today as Kurdistan and in ancient times as Assyria. The Israeli’s are developing an alliance with the Kurd’s and providing them with state of the art military equipment and training. What the Israeli’s receive in return is copious amounts of critical human intelligence regarding all manner of goings-on within western Iran, northern Syria and eastern Turkey. For their part the Iranians, Syrians and Turks are none too pleased with this alliance. Perhaps it is this Israeli-Kurdish military alliance that Jeremiah 51:6 speaks to with respect to Daniel’s 70th Week, for there appears to be a direct correlation between Jeremiah 51 and Revelation 17 and 18.

In the aftermath of the soon-to-be fulfilled prophecies of Isaiah 17, Psalm 83 and Ezekiel 38/39 the global dominant kingdom of the Antichrist shall arise. Since the prophetic word of Revelation came directly from the Father to the Son to John on Patmos, circa 90-95 AD, it most assuredly speaks of future events even to our age, yet given the signs of the times we know the season is upon the world and this future is within the span of this generation. That modern Iraq will fall within the Euro-centric kingdom of “the people of the prince who is to come,” that is out of the two legs standing upon ten toes. This last day’s kingdom of the Antichrist is a revival of the Roman Empire, and the inclusion of modern-day, post Saddam Iraq can be seen in the events that have occurred in the past seven years since 2003 and Operation Iraqi Freedom. Iraq is now completely an integral part of the Western sphere of influence and will play a key role in the coming post-paradigm shift of the current world order.