Global SITREP E7-14: Advancing Our Situational Awareness of 'Last Days' Wars

20 November 2014: SITREP E7-14 is a work in progress, and it is as focused an attempt as I can manage to advance our situational awareness of the wars that will occur in these 'last days'. This is one of the most important SITREPs on Eschatology Today. It is a one-post overview of five-part series The Prophetic Road to Revelation linked below. I define the phrase 'last days' as encompassing the time remaining between the present and the onset of Christ's Millennial Kingdom, how ever long that duration of time may actually turn out to be. As we approach what men have declared will be the year 2015 AD, I happen to believe these 'last days' could constitute a relatively short span of time, perhaps a decade and a half at most. I am absolutely certain these 'last days' will be shortened by the Lord in order to prevent the extinction of human life from planet earth. Within a microsecond at any point prior to the start of Israel's 70th Week the Bride of Christ will be taken from this earth in the Harpazo, otherwise known as the Rapture.

As a starting point I'll begin in the very near future, in a post-Psalm 83 world in which Israel will have vanquished those enemies with an 'olam ebah' ancient hatred of the God and people of Israel. These enemies are primarily Sunni and may well manifest themselves on this coming battlefield in the form of the newly declared Islamic State and its Wilayat (provinces). In this near-future world the situational awareness brief would hold that Damascus is a city which no longer exists as described by Isaiah 17 and Jeremiah 49:23-27. In this world there will have been effected a military 'one-state solution; there will be no such thing as a West Bank or a Gaza, there will only be Israel.  Israel will be territorially expanded beyond her present frontiers and, at the minimum, have military control to the north over the whole of Lebanon (Joshua 13:1-7), Syria as far as the Euphrates River to the northeast, western Jordan (Ezekiel 39:11), and the northern Sinai to the Wadi al-Arish and possibly even further south as indicated by Isaiah 19:18-25.

In this time, which is apparently still prior to the advent of the 70th Week (Daniel 9:20-27), Israel will be a an economic power doing robust mercantile business with the Arabian Peninsula and the European Union (Ezekiel 38:13) and other nations of the world. Israel will be at peace, living in safety and security (Ezekiel 38:10-11). By now you have discerned that I am referring to the time just prior to the attempt by a confederation of nations led by the resurgent Russia, its commonwealth of nominally independent, former Soviet states (the military alliance known as the CSTO in other words), along with a lesser group of military powers such as Iran, Libya and Sudan.

At this point we need to take a quick diversion to discover why the Islamic Republic of Iran is not the menacing, nascent nuclear threshold military power that the P5+1 and Israel are currently concerned about. The diversion takes us to Jeremiah 49:34-39 and the second sentence of that passage (verse 35) which states clearly and unequivocally, "Thus says the Lord of hosts: 'Behold, I will break the bow of Elam, the foremost of their might." I believe this verse is a direct reference to Iran's intended delivery system for the nuclear weapons the majority Shi'a Islamic nation is now attempting to arm itself with. The remainder of these verses detail what I have long interpreted to be a preemptive conventional military suppression of Iran by a coalition of nations who come from every direction of the compass.

While it is not known precisely when this fulfillment might occur, we can look to the recent past of the paragraph above concerning Psalm 83 to see that Iran did not play a role of belligerence and armorer of Israel enemies in the final fulfillment of the Psalm 83 war that it is currently casting itself in. There is a reason why Asaph did not itemize Persian participation in the Psalm 83 scenario. In sum, by the time Ezekiel 38/39 comes to fulfillment, Iran is a lesser military power that it is in late 2014, but Iran is not so weak that it cannot participate in the Ezekiel 38/39 attempt by Gog of Magog's confederation of forces invasion. This indicates the Jeremiah 49:34-39 in another prophecy of the end-times prophecies which goes through a process of literal fulfillment, not unlike Psalm 83 which is now in its 66th year of fulfillment process. We'll come back to this shortly.

At this point I will put a few key prophecies in a comparative spotlight.  The prophets Jeremiah and Ezekiel reiterate key points of the same prophetic word given to them by the Lord. I have often searched for Scripture to parallel what is written in Ezekiel 36-39. I believe that parallel exists in Jeremiah 30:1-7 regarding the restoration of Israel and Judah to the land and a point blank reference which ties this restoration directly to the time of Jacobs trouble (i.e. the final 42-months of the Megas Thlipsis). In this set of verses we see a period of time that literally holds within its context a minimum of 1947-48 to at least two and one half decades into the 21st century (according to the generational template of Psalm 90:10). Again, a process of fulfillment is maintained in the plain text of the prophecy.

Then at Jeremiah 30:10b there is something that should be very familiar to all students of prophecy: "Jacob shall return, have rest and be quiet, and no one shall make him afraid." Compare this with Ezekiel 38:11 which says: "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’" That these are things of the 'last days' is beyond question as Jeremiah writes, "In the latter days you will consider it." 

Jeremiah 30:16 reads, "Therefore all those who devour you shall be devoured; and all your adversaries, every one of them, shall go into captivity; those who plunder you shall become plunder, and all who prey upon you I will make a prey." Turning immediately to Ezekiel  39:10b the identical judgment is pronounced: "...Israel...will plunder those who plundered them, and pillage those who pillaged them,” says the Lord God."

Another prophetic parallel is found between Jeremiah 31:33-34, where it is written, "But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. No more shall every man teach his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, says the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.”" This is clearly a direct reference to what the Lord says in Ezekiel 39:29, "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." 

Is there any doubt these things are specifically the Lord God's dealings with Israel that will be occurring during the 70th Week, the purpose of which the angel Gabriel informed of Daniel by saying:

"Seventy weeks are determined
For your people and for your holy city,
To finish the transgression,
To make an end of sins,
To make reconciliation for iniquity,
To bring in everlasting righteousness,
To seal up vision and prophecy,
And to anoint the Most Holy."

Since we are looking at the 70th Week, I must now turn to Daniel 11:40 and make an important note that the "him," and the "he" in this verse are direct references to the Antichrist, the rest of the plain text is virtually self-explanatory. "At the time of the end the king of the South shall attack him; and the king of the North shall come against him like a whirlwind, with chariots, horsemen, and with many ships; and he shall enter the countries, overwhelm them, and pass through." And where is "he" at this time when these armies from the south and the north attack him? I  think he  is in Israel at this time which gives us the point of reference for identifying the directions from which these enemies come against him.

Let me ask a question here.  Are there two invasions of Israel in the last days? Is Daniel 11:40 a different end time war than the one Ezekiel prophecies about with enemies coming from both the north and south of Israel? If so, then during what period of time would Israel have men set aside to mark and bury the dead in the Valley of the Passengers/Hamonah east of the Dead Sea or be burning the enemy weaponry for the subsequent seven years?

Before these questions are answered, I will pose another necessary question that needs to be addressed first. Does Israel currently dwell in all of the land the God promised to them “for all time”?

According to Joshua 1:4 (Joshua ben Nun) the answer is no, Israel does not yet possess all of the land God has promised to them for all time. That land includes the entire wilderness that Joshua’s feet have trod upon; plus Lebanon, and all of the land to the east as far as the Euphrates River, plus all of the land of the ancient Hittites towards the west where the sun sets shall be Israel’s sea coast border. Going back further to the Abrahamic Covenant, the land is detailed in Genesis 13:14-17 and in Genesis 15:18-21. 

During Joshua’s time the Hittites were in the era known as the ‘New Kingdom’ circa 1400-1200 BC. This Hittite territory was in what is today virtually all of central Turkey and extended in a strip of land westward to the Aegean Sea. The Hittites were the principle enemy of the Egyptian pharaohs.

When will Israel take full possession of the land God has promised to them “for all time”? That answer depends on which scholar of the Bible one makes such an inquiry.  However, based upon my studies it appears full possession of the promised land will occur in stages over a certain, and now decidedly limited, amount of time. It will also be conditional or dispensational to the time when Israel is fully within the new covenant relationship with God and Christ on the throne in Jerusalem during the Millennium. Everything that has happened to Israel over time, at the present and into the future is for the purpose of God fulfilling His covenant with Abraham, and the 70^th Week prophecy given by the angel Gabriel is without question the culmination of that promise. This is when Israel will take full possession of the promised covenant lands. 

I believe the ‘last days’ wars are key to the acquisition of the promised possession. These wars commenced with the Psalm 83 war and will conclude with the Magog war and the wars of Israel’s 70^th Week. As it is written in Jeremiah 30:16, thus says the Lord, “‘Therefore all those who devour you shall be devoured; and all your adversaries, every one of them, shall go into captivity; Those who plunder you shall become plunder, and all who prey upon you I will make a prey.” So much for Turkey being a dominant force during the 70^th Week according to some theories.

Let’s return now to the questions I posed above.  

Are there two invasions of Israel in the last days? That depends on some specifics, such as if at the time of Daniel 11:40 the Antichrist in Israel with power and authority at the start of the 70^th Week. It occurs to me that for the literal fulfillment of John 5:43 his physical presence in Israel would appear to be a necessity. After all, it is this impostor of Moshiach ben David's 7-year covenant that Israel will accept in their misguided belief that he will be Moshiach ben David. I think the covenant he makes with the expanded great power that Israel will be at that time is a 7-year ‘partnership for peace’ between the Antichrist’s EU/NATO and Israel. 

Therefore, is Daniel 11:40 a different 'last days' war than the one Ezekiel 38/39 prophecies about with enemies coming from both the north and south of Israel?  I think not. While there is no mention of Temple worship and the associated rituals, that omission may merely be an indicator that the Temple structures complex on Mount Moriah (Zion) remains under construction or is nearly completed but unconsecrated at that time.

The  start of the 70^th Week is precisely 42 months prior to the Abomination of Desolation. It should be obvious that those  42 months amounts to a very short, finite amount of time; just enough for one great world war centered in the Middle East around Israel, but not two.  I have come to think that these Scriptures indicate the Magog Confederation invasion occurs when Israel is living in a false sense of peace and security during the first 42 months of the 70^th Week (the Thlipsis). God supernaturally destroys five-sixths of those enemies and send fire upon Magog Confederation's homelands and those dwelling securely in the coastlands. However, Antichrist is there with his False Prophet and all the attendant signs and lying wonders to usurp full credit of the miraculous defeat of the Magog Confederation's forces. And the people will believe this lie, as can be seen in the great overview of this period given to us by Paul in 2 Thessalonians 2:1-11, with particular respect to verse 11.

Then there's the second 42 months of the 70th Week, the Megas Thlipsis, and I believe Daniel 11: 41-45 are a brief overview of that period of time, with verse 44 directly related to the gathering Antichrist's forces at Harmagedōn (a/k/a Armageddon) to square off against a remnant army from the north and the approaching massive army of the kings of the east (image at the top) for whom the Euphrates River has been prepared for their passing over. But instead of fighting each other these forces square off to wage war upon Jesus Christ and His Saints at the Second Coming.

This now leaves one final question I posed above:  During what period of time would the fulfillment of Ezekiel 39:11-16 occur where Israel has men set aside and employed to mark and bury the dead soldiers  of the Magog Confederation in the Valley of the Passengers east of the Dead Sea? When would Israel be burning the enemy's weaponry for a subsequent seven years of time? Could this activity not be occurring at the start of the Millennium? I think the answer here is an affirmative.

This has been an attempt to advance an understanding of the ‘last days’ wars in consideration that there does not appear to be enough time left with the outside limit set by Psalm90:10 for all these prophetic things to take place and in consideration of the Lord cutting short those days into order that mankind survive the Megas Thlipsis.  Do not consider this to be chiseled in stone doctrine or dogma; it’s an interpretation of many inter-related Scriptures which I pray will lead to increased Bereanism by all.

Addendum: An Eschatological Clarification

 Daniel chapter 10 and 11 are the angel Gabriel's instructive narrative to the prophet Daniel of world events - primarily warfare and conflicts waged by European kings and their kingdoms in the Middle East across a great span of time totaling 27 centuries (6th century BC to the 21st century AD).

These two chapters are an indispensable key to unlocking and understanding 'last days' events; primarily leaders, battles and wars, and the future of Israel across this great expanse of time to the 'last days'.

The prelude to this entire narrative (Daniel 10:1-9) by the angel Gabriel occurs when Daniel is lying beside the Tigris (Hiddekel) River, in present-day Iraq which was at that time under the control of the Medo-Persian Empire (the second great world empire) and Daniel has an incredible vision of Gabriel in all of his angelic glory.

Gabriel begins the narrative by relating to Daniel how there are angelic contests involving Gabriel and Michael against other angelic beings which determine which kingdoms on the earth rise and which fall.

Gabriel begins this narrative be describing when the rise of the Macedonian-Greek king Alexander the Great (Alexander III of Macedon) and his world empire would occur (the third great world empire).

From Alexander the narrative of Gabriel traces a bloodline, a genetic lineage of kings to the forerunner of the Antichrist, Antiochus IV Epiphanes. Antiochus wars against the Macedonian-Greek kings of Ptolemaic Egypt are vividly described, as is his all important encounter in 168-67 BC with the rising fourth great world empire, the Roman Empire. The details of this are found in Daniel 11:29-31.

There is a seamless transition in Daniel 11 between the forerunner Antichrist Antiochus IV Epiphanes and the future Antichrist of Israel's 70th Week. This evokes the bloodline, a direct genetic link between the two. I believe this transition, a literal leap forward in time of more than 2,100 years plus a generation (this generation) occurs in the empty space between verses 35 and 36 of Daniel 11.

In Daniel 36 through 39 the angel Gabriel foretells the coming Antichrist's exploits in the near future and his rise to power, his takeover of entire nations at the start of the 70th Week.

Daniel 11:40 therefore is a battle which occurs during the early part of the 70th Week. I think this could well be the same battle as the Lord had Ezekiel prophesy about in chapters 38 and 39.

Then in Daniel 11:41-43 there's the European Antichrist's retaliatory military campaign of conquest throughout the eastern Mediterranean region.

Finally, Gabriel ends the narrative at verse 44 in what I believe is the intelligence report Antichrist receives informing him of the approach of massive armies - a remnant army from the north and the army of the kings of the East heading for the Euphrates River which has been dried up for their crossing. This is the stage setting for the final battle of Har Megadone (Armageddon) at the end of the 70th Week.

We all know what happens next.

Marana'tha!

Global SITREP E5-14: Beholding The Truth About Armageddon

16 November 2014: As with many of the posts here, this one is about Bible prophecy. Be forewarned, this will not be a sugar-coated treatise on what lies in the immediate future. 

In Daniel 9:26c the angel Gabriel spoke these prophetic words to Daniel: "The end of it shall be with a flood, and till the end of the war desolations are determined."  Thus for the one-thousand nine-hundred forty-four years since the sacking of Jerusalem and the complete destruction of the Second Temple of God on Zion (Mount Moriah) in 70 AD have the continuous wars heralding the end of the present ago of mankind raged. And the final prophetic flood is just barely being restrained at the gates. 

In our Lord Jesus Christ's sermon on the Mount of Olives He foretold a more detailed reiteration of Gabriel's prophecy what would occur in the final 42 months of the 70th Week. This, He said, would follow immediately after the image of the Antichrist is stood up in the Holy Place of the 3rd Temple on Zion (Mount Moriah):  "For then there will be great tribulation (megas thlipsis), such as has not been since the beginning of the world until this time, no, nor ever shall be. And unless those days were shortened, no flesh would be saved; but for the elect’s sake those days will be shortened." 

Now most people who are known by His Name will immediately and correctly relate this statement to the passage in The Revelation of Jesus Christ found in chapter sixteen, verses twelve through sixteen. However, that is not the complete picture that Scripture provides to us. In no way do I belittle this God-breathed Scripture, yet in my studies I found it to be missing prophetic detail found elsewhere in Scripture that provides vivid detail of occurs in those final 42 months, especially right up to the very moment preceding Jesus' Second Coming. We know the earth will be shattered under the judgments of God during the whole of the 70th Week, but there is far more detail given of the complete prophetic picture.

For that more complete prophetic picture we must turn to the prophet Isaiah and his direct call from God Almighty to become His prophet two-thousand seven-hundred fifty-four years ago. The date of Isaiah's call to be a prophet was in 740-739 BC when King Uzziah of Judah, who was afflicted with leprosy over the period of a decade for his failure to obey God, finally passed away. 

Isaiah 6 tells us of his realization of being a hopeless dead man covered from his lips to his toes in his sins, and of his immediate repentance to God upon seeing the Lord sitting upon a throne. And Isaiah thereafter was instantly confessing the sins which made him totally unworthy to view the immense power, Holiness and Glory which he beheld in front of his eyes. Then upon the confession of his sins Isaiah speaks to the sight of mighty and majestic pair of six-winged seraphim which stood above the temple of God. As an aside and for what it might be worth to the reader, I would like to note here that Isaiah's description of the disposition of the seraph's six wings (two wings folded over the face, two to fly with and two wings covering the feet) appeared to my mind's eye as a representation of what we know as the Star of David. Whenever I see the Star of David, I see a representation of the majestic seraph standing above the Temple of God.

Then, immediately following Isaiah's confession of his sins, one of he seraph's flew to Isaiah, touching his lips with a live coal from the burning altar before God and declaring the removal of his iniquity and the purging of all sin from him. Isaiah the prophet was born-again in the presence of God at the very moment he is called to prophecy. And Isaiah hears the voice of YHWH God speaking, "Who shall I send, who will carry forth for us?" Isaiah's response is immediate, "Here am I; Send me!" 

What YHWH God says next to Isaiah is most instructive, even in our day! It is a direct repetition of what God had instructed Moses about, and Moses in turn had spoken directly to all of Israel in the Covenant of Moab found in Deuteronomy 29:2-4. (See also: Romans 11) So to Isaiah the Lord God specifically identifies "this people" who Isaiah is to speak the prophetic word to:

"Go, and tell this people:

‘Keep on hearing, but do not understand;
Keep on seeing, but do not perceive.’

Make the heart of this people dull,
And their ears heavy,
And shut their eyes;
Lest they see with their eyes,
And hear with their ears,
And understand with their heart,And return and be healed."

No question about it, Isaiah is to prophecy about these things to Israel, and we, in turn, receive this word through the inspired recorded Lord's word, the Holy Bible. 

Now here's where the exquisite details about the final forty-two months of the Megas Thlipsis (Great Tribulation) are made clear. After being told by God who he is to tell these things to, Isaiah asks a question: "Lord, how long?" And the Lord God gives His response to this which is completely unambiguous even though the language is more than 27 centuries old:

"Until cities are devastated, without inhabitant,
Houses are without people
And the land is utterly desolate,

The Lord has removed men far away,
And the forsaken places are many in the midst of the land.

Yet there will be a tenth portion in it,
And it will again be subject to burning,
Like a terebinth or an oak
Whose stump remains when it is felled.
The holy seed is its stump."

Planet earth today is home to something over 7.2 billion people and that number is growing annually by about 72 million additional people. By he end of the 42 months of the Megas Thlipsis the number of mankind who survive because God will have shortened the days in order to save what human life remains will be but a tenth of the number alive when the 70th Week began. There will be no cities and no one will be living in them. The remainder of the land will be utterly desolate.

I would roughly estimate that number will be just under 8 billion people living at the time. In real numbers that means every person who is alive today, all 7.2 billion of them, and excepting only those taken by Jesus Christ at the instant of the Harpazo, will have been killed. The remnant tenth of human life upon the earth will number 800 million, and of those (the 200 million of the army of the kings of the East, plus the armies of the Beast gathered at Har Megiddo) will be dispatched into eternity as described in Revelation 19:17-21.

The remnant of mankind, perhaps 600 million or so, will be the stump spoken of in the prophecy directly from God to Isaiah above. All men are created in the image of God, and this is the holy seed of the stump of mankind that will repopulate the earth during the 1,000 years of the Millennial Kingdom of Jesus Christ.

So, as stated many times here, the flood of prophetic fulfillment is about to commence; the Restrainer who is currently holding back the flood at the gates will soon be taken out of the way. Will you be one of those who will soon be swept away by the irresistible force of the flood and into oblivion and the second death for all eternity? Or will you gaze upon and recognize Jesus Christ, God Incarnate, as Isaiah gazed upon and recognized God Almighty, and begin confessing your sin and unworthiness and thereby receive the eternal life the Lord has promised to all that would receive Him into their heart. At this time do you dare deny He is who He has proven Himself to be? It up to you, no one can do this for you. Your future is right now and it lies between just you and the God who created you. Make the right choice. Choose God. Choose now, before its too late.

Revived Roman Empire: Correcting a Hermeneutical Error

29 March 2014:  Where in the Word of God should one go to read a prophetic text, even so much as a single sentence, which is  descriptive of the concept of a revival of the Roman Empire?  I have searched all of the prophetic texts, of which the prophetically quintessential 2nd and 7th and 8th chapters of Daniel  plus the 13th chapter of The Revelation of Jesus Christ are the most vividly descriptive, and I came away with... nothing. These things and recent discussions with fellow students of Biblical eschatology once again have served to remind that what I believe is an error in hermeneutics that needs to be addressed at the minimum and corrected at some point. This is my attempt at a correction.

By the same token one can go online and search the phrase "revived Roman Empire" or some closely related phrase and find active links to 800,000 articles and literary works which discuss it at length. The vast majority of those articles and literary works support the concept, and even identify the revival of the Roman Empire as a sure sign of the arrival of the last days. And don't get me wrong here, I am as guilty as the next guy (or gal) in having previously made use of the phrase "revived Rome" when discussing things of an eschatological nature. It seems to be a natural and widely accepted practice. But is it purely Biblical? The short answer is no,  the eschatological concept of a "revived Rome" is not Biblical, it is a man-made assumption.

What was the key detail of the God-breathed interpretation given by the prophet Daniel to Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar about the fourth kingdom represented in his vision? In Daniel 2 the interpretation regarding the first the world empire, that of Nebuchadnezzar's Babylon, in contained in all of two verses (37 and 38). The next two subsequent world empires (Medo-Persia and Greece) each share one-half of the single verse within Daniel 2:39. But then from Daniel 2:40-43 the interpretive attributes of the fourth empire are given some very good detail which denotes the importance of this empire as the world's last empire. The key God-breathed detail here is that the two legs of iron resolve themselves to a pair of feet each containing ten individual toes. Those ten toes, the essential elements or nations of  the Roman Empire, exist to this day.

In Daniel 7:7-8; 23-27 even more detail is given about the fourth beast in a God-breathed vision Daniel received just prior to the fall of Babylon to the Medo-Persian Empire. These two sets of verses in Daniel 7 say absolutely nothing about the fourth beast falling only to be revived again. This beast is continuous throughout time, from its first appearance in ancient history where it supplanted the Greek third beast to its destruction in the future by Jesus Christ at the conclusion of the 70th Week.

In Daniel 8:23-26 where the angel Gabriel is providing an even more detailed interpretation of his vision regarding of the Greek conquest of the Persian Empire, once again there is the central theme of continuity from those ancient times to the present and future times of the 70th Week. I would advise the reader to continue reading the Book of Daniel, chapters 9 through 12 as the unrelenting prophetic narrative is continued to the conclusion.

Revelation 13 is the basis of the interpretive artistic imagery seen above. It is also the God-breathed reiteration of all that was revealed to the prophet Daniel through earlier visions and Gabriel's interpretations.

As a more current benchmark reference for this subject I submit to you that Don Koenig's article "In God's eyes the Roman fourth beast still rules the world" at his ThePropheticYears.Com website fulfills this role. You can also find reference my own "Daniel 7: The Key Prophecy Confirming a Roman Antichrist." Both of these articles cover slightly different aspects of the correct Biblical instruction. However, the essential element, as Don states in his article, 

"There is no other worldwide Gentile kingdom in scripture between the time of the ancient Roman Empire and the time that the latter-day prince makes a seven-year covenant with Israel at the end of the Gentile age (Dan 9:27). Therefore, in God’s eyes we must still exist in the era of the Roman fourth beast that is recorded in the book of Daniel (Dan 2:40, 7)."

The bottom line here is that as a sign that the last days have arrived one need not bother to look for a revival of something that from the Lord's perspective never ceased to exist. There is no break in the Biblical prophetic narrative where the fourth beast ceased to exist only to be revived again in the last days. You want to see the sign of a revived Rome, to see the fourth beast empire, then look outside your front door, look on a map, look no further than where you are living right now if that place is anywhere in Europe west of the Russian Federation, anywhere in the entirety of the Western Hemisphere, and also in certain nations in Africa and the Western Pacific rim. In these same locations you will also find "Tarshish and all their young lions" as declared by the Lord to the prophet Ezekiel.

So, Rome never fell, and there is no "revival of the Roman Empire" that we need to see occur prior to the 70th Week. The fourth world empire is here now and it is a global power: economically, politically and militarily. And consider this if you're interested in looking for a definitive sign of the last days. Daniel 11:21 contains a detailed precursory view of the coming Antichrist and his sudden rise to global power. That precursor was manifest in the person of Antiochus IV Epiphanes, the supreme ruler of the Hellenic (Greek) Seleucid Empire. The man who will be the Antichrist leading the already existent fourth world empire will be one of the leaders of an existing Western nation who will suddenly, and by intrigue or the aid of a few of the elite of the peer leadership around him, take full control of the already existing reigns of power of the already existing political structure, exactly as Antiochus IV Epiphanes did with the Seleucid Empire in the Daniel 11:21 template of 2,189 years ago. That man could very well be any one of the men seen standing in front of national flags and symbols in a lineup of Western leaders at any of the numerous summits or peace negotiations seen on the evening news. He just hasn't been revealed yet.

Marana'tha!