Son of Hamas Leader becomes a Christian
Check out
this article for the story. Pretty amazing. And,
here is an article by Joel Rosenberg, who describes the multitudes of conversions to Christ taking place in the Muslim world. God's Spirit is doing something unprecedented and it is awesome to see. I wish the major news outlets would pick it up.
My Blog Seems to Be a Misnomer & Mediterranean Union
OK, I have to admit. Every time I have posted recently (which is certainly a relative term given my frequency), it has not been on Christian living, or Christian doctrine. It has usually been on something in the news that seems to have prophetic significance, or could have significance in the future. I hope you don't see that as evidence of an unbalanced or disturbed mind (!).
So perhaps my blog is misnamed. Sorry about that. But it is fascinating to me that there is so much news out there that points toward future events like: a one-world government, a future world ruler, a mark that we all have to take for economic participation, government's continued intrusion into our personal lives, and more. This is an incredibly bizarre time in history, and, I believe, we are nearing what the Bible speaks of as the "last days".
Today's post is another in the same vein. If you read Daniel 9:20-27, you'll see prophecies given in the 500s B.C. that refer to the coming of the Messiah ("Anointed One"), followed by the destruction of the Jewish Temple, and a future, evil ruler to come after the Messiah. The key verses for today's post are 26 and 27:
After the sixty-two sevens, the Anointed One will be cut off and will have nothing. The people of the ruler who will come will destroy the city and the sanctuary. The end will come like a flood: War will continue until the end, and desolations have been decreed. He will confirm a covenant with many for one seven. In the middle of the seven he will put an end to sacrifice and offering. And on a wing of the temple he will set up an abomination that causes desolation, until the end that is decreed is poured out on him.So Jesus, the Messiah, was cut off - as we know. Then it says, "the people of the ruler who will come will destroy the city and the sanctuary." From the previous verse (25) we know that the "city" is Jerusalem, and of course the Jews would have referred to the Temple as the only "sanctuary." We know that the Romans destroyed the city and the Temple of Jerusalem in 70 AD (40 years or so after Jesus died). So the Romans are the "people of the ruler who will come". But who is the "ruler" who will come? Is he a good guy or a bad guy? The next verse, 9:27, makes it clear that he's a bad guy:
He will confirm a covenant with many for one seven. In the middle of the seven, he will put an end to sacrifice and offering. And on a wing of the temple he will set up an abomination that causes desolation, until the end that is decreed is poured out on him.
What makes it clear that he's a bad guy is this "abomination that causes desolation." This probably refers to something absolutely blasphemous, evil and unholy introduced into the Jewish Temple. This has already happened once - there was an "abomination" set up by the Greek king Antiochus IV ("Epiphanes") - a pig sacrificed on the altar of the Jewish Temple in 168 B.C. Could that have been the abomination referred to by Danel in 9:27? I don't think so, because Jesus spoke of a future abomination in Matthew 24:15 - and Jesus lived after Antiochus. And Paul speaks of "the man of lawlessness" who will come, the man who "will oppose and will exalt himself over everything that is called God or is worshiped, so that he sets himself up in God's temple, proclaiming himself to be God." (2 Thess. 2:4). That seems to be the abomination that Jesus is speaking of.
So there is this bad guy, predicted in Daniel 9, who comes from the "people who will destroy the city and the sanctuary".
In addition, in Daniel 2 and 7, the fourth kingdom has usually been interpreted by scholars as the Roman kingdom. Daniel 7:25-26 refers to an evil ruler from this kingdom. In Daniel 2:44, Daniel says that in the time of this fourth kingdom, God will set up His kingdom and crush all the others. So it seems, at least in my opinion, that: A) the Antichrist world ruler will be a Roman, or at least out of the Roman Empire; and B) there would be a Roman empire of some kind in the last days, for the Antichrist to come out of.
Now, I admit this has always bothered me when end-times people would equate the Roman Empire to modern-day Europe, because the old Roman Empire didn't just encompass modern Europe - it controlled the Mediterranean world as well. But, you have to check
this story out.
Incredible, isn't it?
Now, something else that bothers me when I think about this is that in many ways, the United States shares the same cultural heritage, legal system, and many other social aspects as Europe. We trace many of our customs, especially legal ones, back to the Roman empire and the rebirth of classical Greco-Roman culture during the Renaissance. Should the US be considered part of the rebirthing Roman Empire, or not? I don't know.
