Each Christmas we come to another time of proclaiming peace on earth. Many aboard spaceship Earth send tidings of peace and good will. But the prospects for such, sadly, are anything but joyful upon this tremulous sphere–now or at Christmas time, no matter the year. The only one who can spread such tidings –and make joyous times a reality–is relegated to the status of one religious figure among many by those who cry for peace. They, as a matter of fact, do all within their politically correct power to remove mention of Him from the season of celebration that has for centuries bore His holy name.

The incessant plea for there to be peace is, itself, prophetic in nature. The peace today’s earth-dwellers seek above all other is centered around the terrifying prospects of war that threatens to erupt from the most sensitive geographical location on the planet. God considers this place the center of the world. He deals with man based upon their treatment of how they deal with Israel in general, and with Jerusalem in particular.

The Bible is replete with those who deal treacherously, seeking to establish hegemony over the region. The Lord will not allow tranquility to reign so long as that tranquility is based upon establishing governance that does not include Him as sovereign in the matter. One prophecy about such surreptitious “peace” powerfully thunders God’s Word on the matters involved.

“[To wit], the prophets of Israel which prophesy concerning Jerusalem, and which see visions of peace for her, and [there is] no peace, saith the Lord GOD” (Ezek. 13:16).

The Lord God condemns all who try to establish their wicked man-made peace within His land.

“The way of peace they know not; and [there is] no judgment in their goings: they have made them crooked paths: whosoever goeth therein shall not know peace” (Isa. 59:8).

Israel’s God states in no uncertain terms the truth about the false peacemakers: “[There is] no peace, saith the LORD, unto the wicked” (Isa. 48:22). His judgment is certain, and He minces no words in pronouncing what will happen to those who force man-made peace upon Israel and to the people of Israel herself who sign on to that pseudo-guarantee of peace and safety.

“For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape” (1Thess. 5:3).

The prophet Jeremiah speaks for the Lord in pointing the finger of judgment at Israel, which has throughout history turned to others than their God for security.

Although a time will come when Israeli leadership will seek peace-making by the one, satanically driven man who will betray them, for the moment, Israeli leadership is resisting attempts to make them conform to what the world wants for them. And what the world wants is elimination, ultimately, because the world’s ultimate leader during the present time is none other than Lucifer. He directs the minds of world leadership toward antisemitism, as is easily observable as we near the end of the age.

There is more and more invective against the Jewish state’s increasingly unpopular position, hurled by leaderships of earth’s nation-states. God speaks directly about these trying to force peace upon His chosen people: “For they have healed the hurt of the daughter of my people slightly, saying, Peace, peace; when [there is] no peace” (Jer. 8:11).

The present road to false peace will eventuate in devastation –to which the prophet Daniel speaks. The ultimate false peacemaker is the subject of Daniel’s forewarning. The Antichrist.

“And in the latter time of their kingdom, when the transgressors are come to the full, a king of fierce countenance, and understanding dark sentences, shall stand up. And his power shall be mighty, but not by his own power: and he shall destroy wonderfully, and shall prosper, and practise, and shall destroy the mighty and the holy people. And through his policy also he shall cause craft to prosper in his hand; and he shall magnify himself in his heart, and by peace shall destroy many…” (Dan. 8:23-25c).

But, thankfully, that isn’t the end of the story for Israel or the world. Daniel gives the outcome of Antichrist’s false peacemaking that results in unprecedented devastation.

“…he shall also stand up against the Prince of princes; but he shall be broken without hand” (Dan. 8:25d).

Antichrist and all of the phony peacemakers of history will be crushed and ground to powder. They will be blown away by the winds of history into the dustbin of eternity. Daniel foretells the final destruction of the false purveyors of peace talk through interpreting Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar’s strange dream of a man-image that represented the four great kingdoms that would rule over earth until Christ’s return:

“Thou sawest till that a stone was cut out without hands, which smote the image upon his feet that were of iron and clay, and brake them to pieces. Then was the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver, and the gold, broken to pieces together, and became like the chaff of the summer threshing floors; and the wind carried them away, that no place was found for them: and the stone that smote the image became a great mountain, and filled the whole earth” (Dan. 2:34-35).

Nahum the prophet gives the final Word of God about the resolution to the long search for peace. Again, peace on earth centers around Israel, Jerusalem, and the Prince of Peace, that great earthly power-crushing stone–the Lord Jesus Christ.

“Behold upon the mountains the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace! O Judah, keep thy solemn feasts, perform thy vows: for the wicked shall no more pass through thee; he is utterly cut off” (Nah. 1:5).

PEACE is the purpose for which the Christ-child was born–to bring peace to humanity by providing sin-destroying reconciliation to God the Father through Christ’s shed blood on Calvary’s cross. God chose that the Redeemer, His Son Jesus, would become the God-man through Israel. That’s why we are commanded to pray for the peace of Jerusalem (Psalm 122:6). Only when the Prince of Peace reigns and rules will there be peace on Earth, good will toward men.

It seems observably true—to me, at least—that this generation stands on God’s prophetic timeline very near the time Daniel the Old Testament prophet described, as recorded in the following:

And the fourth kingdom shall be strong as iron: forasmuch as iron breaketh in pieces and subdueth all things: and as iron that breaketh all these, shall it break in pieces and bruise. And whereas thou sawest the feet and toes, part of potters’ clay, and part of iron, the kingdom shall be divided; but there shall be in it of the strength of the iron, forasmuch as thou sawest the iron mixed with miry clay. And as the toes of the feet were part of iron, and part of clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong, and partly broken. And whereas thou sawest iron mixed with miry clay, they shall mingle themselves with the seed of men: but they shall not cleave one to another, even as iron is not mixed with clay. (Daniel 2:40-43)

Daniel was given by God both the dream-vision that Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar had one troubling night and its interpretation. The dream was of a huge, metallic, man image. The image, Daniel interpreted, was of four world powers, and a final, fifth world power, which would come on the scene at the very end of human history just before God judged earth’s rebellious governments. Then, the prophecy indicates, a new regime—headed by God himself—will rule and reign:

And in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed: and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand for ever. (Daniel 2:44)

Daniel prophesied that the fifth world power will come out of the fourth. We know the order of world empires from history. The first Daniel interpreted, at the time he was giving the interpretation, was Babylon. The second would be the Medo-Persian. The third would be the Greek Empire, and the fourth would be the Roman Empire, represented in Nebuchadnezzar’s night-vision by the legs of iron. The fifth empire—the final empire, and the only one that is yet to come into being as fulfilled prophecy—is represented by the feet and toes of that metallic monstrosity.

To my understanding, at least, the five world empires given to Daniel in metallic representations—i.e., gold for the head, silver for the breast and arms, brass or bronze for the belly and thighs, and iron for the legs, feet and toes—is indicative of money and the power to rule over the inhabitants of planet earth. Metals have most always been at the center of any economy throughout history. And when the metals represented the power to mold and construct weaponry—e.g., spears, bullets, bombs, war craft like tanks, planes, ships, etc.—the power of the metal and the economies of the world powers become understandable. Money is power, and power is control. These are inextricably linked.

The fifth world power will come from the Roman Empire, which disintegrated but is reforming, we who observe prophecy from the pretrib view believe. We believe that the European Union is almost certainly the nucleus out of which this last Gentile power is emerging. This is the area of central Europe in particular. Rome is the very heart of that nucleus.

Daniel also prophesied about the last world empire’s leader who would leap to center stage at just the right moment in Satan’s plans to bring him to power:

And after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off, but not for himself: and the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary; and the end thereof shall be with a flood, and unto the end of the war desolations are determined. And he shall confirm the covenant with many for one week: and in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease, and for the overspreading of abominations he shall make it desolate, even until the consummation, and that determined shall be poured upon the desolate. (Daniel 9:26-27)

Antichrist, “the beast,” as this vicious future tyrant is termed, will come to power and rule ruthlessly. His power will emanate from economics—the ability to call all to worship him through a mark and numbering system that will control buying and selling. (Read Revelation 13:16-18 to understand this 666 system of absolute control.)

We are witnessing economic rearrangements at present like no other generation has seen. Even the United States—as anyone with any sense of what’s been going on in the news will attest—is being forced into a mold of one-world economic order. It is all leading toward the mark and numbering system that will give Antichrist his power. (Read Revelation 17:12-13 to learn of the ten economic power blocs that will develop, then give power and authority to the beast—Antichrist, the ruler of the fifth and final world empire.)

Europe today is in dynamic upheaval, struggling to stand on the feet and toes that will give the eventual Antichrist system its balance, its equilibrium. But just as Daniel the prophet foretold, the feet and toes are not made of purely a metal of strength. The EU is made partly of the governmental strength that was the ancient Roman Empire, but also is constructed of weakness intrinsic within the governments of contemporary times. This makes the whole structure that is the final form of all worldly economic-governmental power subject to crashing to final collapse. This is exactly what Daniel foresaw as given above in Daniel 2:44.

A news story exposes, I believe, the prophesied struggle the reviving Roman Empire is having. The problem of everything not fitting together well is obvious in considering the economic situation.

The European Commission said on Monday that talks between Greece and its creditor institutions on a third bailout had begun in Athens after a delay of a few days.

“Teams from the institutions are now already on the ground in Athens, and work is starting immediately as we speak. Work has started, meaning that the institutions are talking to the Greek authorities”, a Commission spokeswoman said.

Talks were due to have started last week, but were delayed because of organizational issues. (Negotiations for new bailout deal start in Athens, World Bulletin / News Desk)

Europe is caught in powerful monetary winds of change. Greece, the 10^th nation to join the EU is at the center of this change. It all portends an eventual forcing by the master manipulator –Satan—of Europe, and most of the rest of the world, into the 666 system of control.

Paul the apostle wrote of the economic reality that drives the world toward God’s judgment and wrath: “But they that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition. For the love of money is the root of all evil” (1 Timothy 6:9-10a).

Certainly, the truth of God’s Word frames what is happening at this time in history, and where it all is heading as the rulers of this fallen sphere grasp for the wealth of this world and strive to cast off the bonds of governance God wisely placed upon the would-be masters of planet earth.

Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you. Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are motheaten. Your gold and silver is cankered; and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days. Behold, the hire of the labourers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth: and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of sabaoth. Ye have lived in pleasure on the earth, and been wanton; ye have nourished your hearts, as in a day of slaughter. Ye have condemned and killed the just; and he doth not resist you. (James 5:1-6)

We are in the end of the age era of the toes of Nebuchadnezzar’s night-vision.

Israel is the one nation, and Jerusalem is the one city on the planet God personally reserves unto himself. He doesn’t equivocate; it is His nation and city, and anyone or anything that tries to wrest it from Him will suffer eternal consequences.

We ascertain this when reading verses such as follows:

“…for the land is Mine; for you are but aliens and sojourners with Me” (Lev. 25:23). “…then I will uproot you from My land which I have given you…” (2 Chron. 7:20) “Behold, I will make Jerusalem a cup of trembling unto all the people round about, when they shall be in the siege both against Judah and against Jerusalem. And in that day will I make Jerusalem a burdensome stone for all people: all that burden themselves with it shall be cut in pieces, though all the people of the earth be gathered together against it (Zech. 12:2-3).

The God of Creation, who in reality owns every atom of existence, clearly tells the inhabitants of Planet Earth that these are His geographical places He reserves for himself. The Lord, in warning those who would harm Jerusalem, refers to that city this way: “For thus saith the LORD of hosts; After the glory hath he sent me unto the nations which spoiled you: for he that toucheth you toucheth the apple of his eye” (Zech. 2:8).

Jesus, the Messiah, said about this city, while weeping, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, [thou] that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under [her] wings, and ye would not!” (Matt. 23:37).

These and many other Scriptures make it undeniably clear that God loves Israel and Jerusalem. He considers them His personal earthly real estate. He loved them in the past, and has great prophetic plans for them. Therefore, He loves Israel and Jerusalem today.

This being the documentable case, I’ve always had a question within the milieu of eschatological consideration in which I’ve engaged for a number of decades.

The question: Why the following reference to this divinely designated real estate?

“And their dead bodies [shall lie] in the street of the great city, which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified” (Rev.11:8).

The reference here is to the two witnesses who will preach to the earth dwellers of the tribulation era. The question that has always ruminated in my mind is why God calls this beloved city and nation, “spiritually,” “Sodom and Egypt”?

The people of Israel, before its dispersions and after its modern regathering in the land, have been wicked and done things contrary to God’s will. But, so has every other city and nation that has ever existed on Planet Earth.

The condemnation in this Revelation context, seems, to my mind, reference to prophecy yet future. Jerusalem is destined to become as wicked as the ancient city of Sodom and the idol-worshipping ancient Egypt, in God’s holy view. This shouldn’t surprise, considering how the devil is working overtime in every city and nation of the world today. Satan wanted to usurp the throne of God, e.g., Isa. 14:13-14. It stands to reason –and to scriptural analysis–that the wicked one would want to usurp Christ’s future earthly throne as well. And, for a fact, not even the unbelieving heathens of the world can deny that Jerusalem and the nation Israel are at the center of global conflict today. It is the most feared potential point for triggering nuclear conflagration on this old troubled sphere.

Lucifer, the fallen one, is certainly working his devilish plan to bring all to Armageddon. This includes his all out-efforts against the apple of God’s eye –the city of Zion –Jerusalem. He will indeed succeed in making Jerusalem, spiritually, like Sodom. Proof that Satan’s plan is far along in its progress toward that goal is in today’s news, as follows:

On the anniversary of the destruction of the two Jewish Holy Temples in Jerusalem, Tisha B’Av, an Israeli Arab lawmaker insisted in a radio interview that neither ever existed. Joint Arab List (Ra’am Tal) Knesset member Masoud Ganaim made the statement during an interview Sunday (July 26) on Galei Tzahal Army Radio. Ganaim was asked – as was Jewish lawmaker Yinon Magal from the Bayit Yehudi party — about violent riots that were being perpetrated by Muslim Arabs in the Al Aqsa mosque on the site of the Temple Mount. The rioting Arabs hurled rocks, cement blocks, firebombs and other explosives at Israel Police and even Waqf Islamic Authority security personnel from inside the mosque.

When asked about the violence, Ganaim said that the rock-throwing was not the problem: the real issue, he said, was the “incitement” caused by Jews wanting to pray at the site, considered the holiest in the Jewish faith. Ganaim also said during the conversation that no Jewish Temples ever existed on the Temple Mount – and that he knows this for a fact because he is a history teacher. “The State of Israel knows that Jews and Israel have no legitimacy to the site except for their legitimacy as an occupier – a legitimacy won by force,” he said.  (The Jewish Press » » ‘Jewish Holy Temples Never Existed’ Says Israeli Arab MK , Rapture Ready News 7/27/15)

Regardless of all lies by Israel’s enemies to the contrary, things are prophetically setting up for the moment when the man of sin, Satan’s false messiah, Antichrist, sits in a temple atop Mount Moriah, precisely above the spot where the Ark of the Covenant once sat (2 Thes. 2:3-4). He might even sit upon the same Ark, if it is found, or a counterfeit one, declaring himself to be God, and demanding worship (Rev. 13). Israel’s prideful enemies pervert at every turn the order God has established for the Jews and for Israel. Antichrist will be the ultimately evolved pridefulness against God’s Holy Will. Here’s what God says about mankind’s pride –especially that which perverts His creation order:

“The fear of the LORD [is] to hate evil: pride, and arrogancy, and the evil way, and the froward mouth, do I hate” (Prov. 8:13).

Can there be serious doubt that this rebellious generation stands poised upon the precipice of the end of days?

Terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 on the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon being always in our thinking, it is perhaps appropriate to reflect upon where this generation might stand while the prophesied apocalyptic storm approaches.

My colleagues and I often discuss these days the apparent lull in birth pang-like contractions the world seems to be in at this time. Other than the tsunami of December 2004, the catastrophic hurricanes that hit the Gulf Coast in 2005, and the current ISIS rampages across the Middle East, major convulsions that might be harbingers of the tribulation have seemed minimally significant. But, upon closer examination, is the supposed lull really a lull?

Scripture verses like the following come to mind, when thinking on end-time activity prophesied, with regard to the “time of sorrows” spoken of by the Lord: “And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring” (Lk. 21:25).

Jesus said world conditions just before His return will be like a woman in travail with child. Geopolitical, geophysical and societal/cultural matters will be in a state of wave-like flare-ups. Yet there seems a dichotomy in His Mount of Olives discourse prophecies. Jesus’ words indicate that the time of His coming will be preceded by, at the same time, a worldwide perception that lulls earth’s inhabitants into a sense of things being as usual. Here is what He said in a couple of prophetic passages: “Therefore be ye also ready: for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh” (Matt. 24:44). “And as it was in the days of Noe, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man. They did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, and the flood came, and destroyed them all. Likewise also as it was in the days of Lot; they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded; But the same day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all. Even thus shall it be in the day when the Son of man is revealed” (Lk. 17:26-30).

Perhaps a bit earlier–in the late 20th century— we were left to wonder why this dichotomy. Why Jesus foretold a time of tremendously increased troubles for the world –that come in birth pang-like fashion—and yet at the same time gave a picture of a day when no one will really see the birth pangs, except those who are truly watching for end-time things that are occurring. How can it be that these painful contractions are going on, while they are, for the most part, not noticed, just before Christ intervenes with catastrophic results?

The answer is, I think, that the contractions are so frequent now that the world has by and large become desensitized to what is happening. The quaking earth, the raging seas–both literally and figuratively (the seas of humanity), the signals of societal collapse, and all the rest assaulting our brains day and night through reports from the ever-present news media simply overload the senses. Thus there is at the same time the birth pang-like convulsions and the ho-hum attitude –even among God’s people—that things are the same as always. So, the perceived lull is really no lull at all. We reflect on what’s really going on at present.

• The world’s economy is as near collapse as the next financial default of any number of nations.
• The highest court in America has over-ruled God in the matter of His making marriage between a man and a woman, forcing upon the American people what God’s Word calls Abomination.
• America’s president embraces the tyrants of the world yet flagrantly demonstrates his dislike for Israel, threatening to pull America away from close alliance with the Jewish state.

Yet the world wags on, with America – in spite of rumors of serious economic and social ills that could disrupt not only the U.S., but the world’s economy, continuing to carry on business as usual.

We can definitely begin to understand the two conditions co-existing that seem in such diametric opposition one to the other. We begin to comprehend the paradox —both the great upheaval, and the sense of business as usual.

Obviously Jesus Christ, who is God, foresaw this incrementalism that will dull the perception of most alive on Planet Earth just before He intervenes catastrophically into the affairs of mankind in the end of days. He knew all about the lull that will in actuality not be a lull at all, but a situation not unlike the proverbial frog who does not realize it is being boiled alive because it can’t perceive its precarious, even lethal, circumstance.

That is why Jesus instructed those who are called by His holy name: “And what I say unto you I say unto all, Watch.” (Mk. 13:37).