Atop the list of end time’s Antichrist signs are current Middle East war gyrations. The Bible predicts that hostilities between the Jews and their Arab and Persian enemies will rise to an unprecedented fever pitch. It further states that the whole world will someday turn against Israel, leaving the Jewish State to fend for itself. From the looks of things in the cradle of civilization, that time appears to have come!
Eschatologists email each other daily with new evidences that current events continue to reinforce their conclusions that humanity is hastening toward the dreaded “Tribulation Period”. Many of them teach that this 7-year period commences with a covenant confirmed for a similar duration between Israel and the Antichrist according to Daniel 9:27. Isaiah 28:15 and 18 identifies this Middle East peace - pact as a “covenant of death”. Isaiah’s rendition likens it to an agreement with Hell!
Undeniably the spotlight has again turned toward Israel, only this time the stakes have risen to an insurmountable high. All the Middle East prophetic chess pieces, political leaders, military arsenals, and terrorist organizations, like the Hezbollah, Al-Qaeda, and Hamas are in place for the final showdown.
There appears no way around it, this must be it! The time has come for a charismatic world leader to emerge and put a peace-proposal together that puts the Middle East temporarily out of its misery and finally works!
I say temporarily, because the prophecy contained in Daniel chapter nine clearly foretells that the Antichrist will violate this peace treaty at the mid-point of the Tribulation Period. He then turns his hatred toward the Jews, and in Zechariah 13:8 we are informed that he will successfully kill two-thirds of the Israeli Jewish population living at that time. In light of other important preceding prophetic events, which I’m about to introduce, we can anticipate that the final Jewish body-count affected by his end time’s genocidal effort will total well into the millions!
This brings me to the prophetic point of this article whereby I must thrust a monkey wrench into most end time’s models. All the above is true, however the Bible declares that before the peace-pact is confirmed; powerful Mideast wars are foretold to occur!
According to yet unfulfilled prophecies contained in Isaiah 17, Psalm 83, and Ezekiel 38 & 39, Israel will first do battle against the Syria, Iran, the Hezbollah, and many other of their surrounding Arab enemies. Some scholars predict that these three Bible prophecies will occur soon, sequentially, and in rapid succession.
Isaiah 17:1 suggests that Israel is about to nuke Damascus turning it into a ruinous heap. Most military analysts suspect that Israel presently has the nuclear wherewithal to accomplish this damnation of Damascus. Isaiah’s entire prophecy seems to infer that the Israeli Defense Forces are the instrument through which the destruction of the world’s oldest continuously populated city occurs.
Psalm 83 encourages the possibility that Israel will then battle against the Palestinians, Hezbollah, Hamas, and many other surrounding Arab enemies, like the Saudis, Lebanese, Jordanians, and Egyptians. This prophetic psalm declares these enemies of Israel will unite to wipe the Jewish State off of the map, so that the “name Israel be remembered no more”. (Psalm 83:4)
As I point out in my book, Isralestine, The Ancient Blueprints of the Future Middle East, this Arab confederacy likewise meets its demise at the hands of the I.D.F. according to assorted Bible prophecies.
Then flip a few prophetic pages forward to the war between Israel and Iran. After Damascus goes down and the inner ring of Arab populations that share common borders with Israel meet their pending doom as per Psalm 83, Iran is scheduled to team up with Russia, Turkey, Libya and a hostile host of others in fulfillment of the Ezekiel 38 & 39 invasion of Israel.
In light of Iran’s present full court press for a nuclear weapon purposed to wipe Israel off of the pages of time, this is the prophecy most frequently discussed by eschatologists today. Ezekiel 38:18-39:6 predicts yet another massive Israeli victory over Iran and its powerful allies.
At this point I could itemize the litany of current Mideast events that undeniably indicate the world has arrived at this final fateful hour; however that’s reserved for a subsequent article. What I deposit with you in closing is that the events leading up to the Antichrist’s 7 year temporary peace-pact with Israel are about to happen. As eerie the thought may be, one could possibly presume that the Antichrist may be alive and residing somewhere on the earth today!
Furthermore; the Israeli victories in the wars listed above dictate that the content of the false covenant will probably not contain the present Israeli-Palestinian 2-state peace proposals. According to Bible prophecy Israel soon defeats the Palestinians and their Arab cohorts; thus achieving this illusive peace militarily before the advent of the Antichrist. No; Isaiah’s covenant with death, will likely paint and entirely different geopolitical picture upon its pages.
To imagine its content, one must envision the existence of a significantly different, more prosperous and powerful Israel. A Jewish State that is probably much larger and more densely populated with Jews than the lesser Israel of today.
A Greater Israel, that dwells securely in receipt of vast Arab and Iranian arsenals and spoils of war. A prosperous nation that is freed from further Arab terror, torment, and threats to be wiped off of the map.
Only then can one search the scriptures to grasp the enormity of the Antichrist’s last days covenant with Israel. Christians today ought to understand current Middle East and world events in order to utilize Bible prophecy as a witnessing tool for reaching out to a harvest field of souls. The world is filled with humanity hunkering down and hungering for truth and prophetic information, and the God of the Bible has not let them down.
By prophecydepot.blogspot.com