Timeless?

5712 words long.

Published on 2024-06-30

This article originally appeared as "Timeless?", a chapter in my book Peace, like Solomon Never Knew.

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Ruined cities helped us sort out the lengths of the seven church ages in a quantitative way, but ruinous empires can only help us sort secular political ages in a qualitative way. Empire clocks are short on details useful for predicting time. They tell us the number of empires, their sequence, and their nature, but little of how long they will last. They are “timeless” clocks. Many have written about the progression of empires foretold by the prophet Daniel and the Apostle John. Let’s see if we have anything new to add...

A Rule for Empires

A picture of the course of empires must be pieced together from more than two Biblical books. Daniel and Revelation form the backbone, while other books supply details. It is like dendrochronology, the science of using tree rings to reconstruct ancient climate. Variations in temperature and rainfall affect the rings’ size, number, and chemical composition. Some trees live longer than others. Any two trees may overlap in time or not. By comparing variations in ring thicknesses between trees, scientists match them up and arrange the trees in chronological order. We will do the same.

The Bible contains prophecies about many kingdoms. Most are not part of the special sequence God emphasized throughout the Bible. Near as I can tell, there is but one master Empire Clock; any given prophecy shows a slice of it. How do you decide if a kingdom belongs to this sequence? Ellis Skolfield had a simple test:

Skolfield arrived at this conclusion by studying the great empires that marched through the Mideast, each proposed by some scholar as potentially belonging to this menagerie of seven “beasts”. That list has more names than can be accounted for by the Bible. Either Scripture left some out or some empires do not qualify. The only consistent test Skolfield could identify was possession of Jerusalem. Of course, even that rule had one exception.

Skolfield’s rule is supported (ambiguously) by these verses from Revelation 17, the core verses that establish the full scope of the Empire Clock.

Then the angel carried me away in the Spirit

into a wilderness. There I saw a woman sitting on

a scarlet beast that was covered with blasphemous names

and had seven heads and ten horns.

- Revelation 17:3, NIV

“This calls for a mind with wisdom.

The seven heads are seven hills on which the woman sits.

They are also seven kings.

Five have fallen, one is, the other has not yet come;

but when he does come, he must remain for only

a little while. The beast who once was, and now is not,

is an eighth king. He belongs to the seven and is going

to his destruction.

“The ten horns you saw are ten kings who have not yet

received a kingdom, but who for one hour will receive

authority as kings along with the beast.

- Revelation 17:9-12, NIV

These images of heads, horns and hills are the key to assembling our chronology of empires. Like a spiritual clock, the number seven is emphasized. The majority of the time dominated by these empires will be apportioned to the first seven, which appear in sequence. Those seven will be followed by an eighth empire, then for a brief interval, by ten more to exist in parallel. That gives us eighteen kingdoms to identify!

The reference to seven hills led many commentators to posit Rome as the beast. However, the first five empires on the list sprang up before Rome. This is our Scriptural evidence that Jerusalem, also built on seven hills, is the geopolitical feature common to the empires.

A Little While

Before we name the empires, pay attention to the two time references, “a little while” and “one hour”. The first is so imprecise as to seem useless, while the second is so short as to seem pointless. Nevertheless, we may draw useful conclusions from each.

How long is “a little while”? Would the seventh be the shortest or longest lived empire? If the shortest, would Jesus have bothered with these words? No, he is trying to reassure and encourage the church and Israel that though the rule of this empire will be long, it will come to an end. History bears this out. Let’s meet our rogue’s gallery:

1. Israel/Judah (1000-740, 701-597 BC). 364 years.
2. Assyrian Empire - tribute (740-701 BC). 40 years.
3. Babylonian Empire (597-539 BC). 58 years.
4. Medo-Persian Empire (539-332 BC). 207 years.
5. Greek Empires: Macedonian, Ptolemaic, Seleucid, Hasmonean (332-63 BC). 269 years.
6. Roman Empire (63 BC-637 AD). 710 years.
7. Islamic Empires (637-1099, 1187-1229, 1244-1967 AD). 1230 years. (Muslims controlled Jerusalem under the British mandate from 1917-1948, and East Jerusalem under Jordan from 1948 until the 1967 war.)
8. ???

Let’s face the obvious objections.

Egypt. The Hebrew people were slaves in Egypt, which in its day was the largest empire in the world. Yet in those days, Israel was not yet a nation, and Jerusalem not yet the site of God’s temple. Furthermore, Egypt is usually named explicitly in prophecy, not hidden behind a riddle. It does not belong on the list.

(Egypt does fit on a longer list of ten empires as discussed in the chapters "Job: The Course of Empires" and "The Meaning of the Beasts of Job" from Plague, Precept, Prophet, Peace.)

Israel. Isn’t calling Israel one of Satan’s beasts anti-Semitic? United Israel remained faithful to God until Solomon’s death. Once the kingdom split into Israel and Judah, some kings were faithful and some were not. Thus Israel began as God’s kingdom, but progressively transformed into a beast.

Assyria. Sennacherib’s siege of Jerusalem during Hezekiah’s reign failed, so why does Assyria make the list? First, the northern kingdom of Israel was permanently destroyed by them. Second, at least three kings of Judah paid tribute, making them vassals of Assyria.

Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, and Rome. Few scholars dispute the presence of these kingdoms on the list. Daniel explicitly fingered Babylon by telling Nebuchadnezzar that he was the head of gold on the statue in his dream. Daniel then had prophecies related to Greece, describing smaller empires breaking off from it, permitting us to lump all the Hellenistic kingdoms into one beast. Finally, John was told “five have fallen, one is...” “Is” means it had to have still been around when John was alive. The empire holding Jerusalem when John lived was Rome, which exhibited other characteristics matching Daniel’s visions.

Islam. As the seventh kingdom, this is where the phrase “remain for only a little while” applies. After Israel lost its freedom, each empire occupied Jerusalem longer than the one before it. Collectively, the Islamic empires occupied Jerusalem almost as long as all the others combined.

The Mongol Empire. The Mongols conquered the second largest empire in history. They destroyed the Islamic Abbasid and Ayyubid dynasties. Their army reached as far as Gaza, and may have sent raiding parties to Jerusalem, but never captured it, so they are not numbered among these beasts. Their devastation of Eastern Europe and the Black Death that followed mere decades later convinced many Christians that the end was near. They were certain the Mongols were one of the kingdoms of Revelation. Strangely enough, Kitbuqa, the Mongol general who led the attacks on Damascus and Baghdad, was a Christian!

The British Empire. Britain briefly held Jerusalem following World War I, until the rebirth of Israel. For a time, Britain controlled the largest empire the world has ever seen. In area, it controlled a quarter of the globe. Could it be the eighth kingdom? Given that it lost its empire and the world has not ended yet, no. However, it may one day be one of the ten horns.

According to Nebuchadnezzar’s dream of the statue destroyed by God, the fourth empire of the statue was Rome. This corresponds to the fifth empire of the seven in Revelation 17. Of this part of the statue, the dream showed “its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of baked clay.” (Daniel 2:33) Daniel’s interpretation followed:

Finally, there will be a fourth kingdom, strong as iron—

for iron breaks and smashes everything—and as iron

breaks things to pieces, so it will crush and break

all the others. Just as you saw that the feet and toes were

partly of baked clay and partly of iron, so this will be a

divided kingdom; yet it will have some of the strength

of iron in it, even as you saw iron mixed with clay.

As the toes were partly iron and partly clay, so this

kingdom will be partly strong and partly brittle.

And just as you saw the iron mixed with baked clay,

so the people will be a mixture and will not remain united,

any more than iron mixes with clay.

- Daniel 2:40-43, NIV

The two legs anticipate the Roman Empire being split into East and West. (Rome is fourth in Daniel’s list but fifth in John’s in Revelation. John’s list starts earlier!) The ten toes suggest Rome would split into smaller nations which would possess only a portion of Rome’s power. This describes Europe perfectly. More than ten nations arose from the ashes of the Roman Empire. In Biblical prophecy, ten is a number of human completeness, so it need not be exact. However, only these European nations acquired overseas colonial empires: Portugal, Spain, France, the Netherlands, Denmark, Germany, Belgium, Italy, and England, nine in all. Austro-Hungary, Bulgaria, Poland, Serbia and others formed empires at one time, but were carved out of neighboring pieces of Europe and either lacked overseas territories or were never part of Ancient Rome. What of the tenth? One more powerful empire was forged from people of European descent: America.

The Final Hour

Will these “ten toes” of Rome reprise their roles at the time of the end as the ten kings who receive authority for “one hour”? IDK. But Daniel does:

“He gave me this explanation:

‘The fourth beast is a fourth kingdom that will

appear on earth. It will be different from

all the other kingdoms and will devour the whole earth,

trampling it down and crushing it. The ten horns

are ten kings who will come from this kingdom...'

- Daniel 7:23-24a, NIV

The only group of ten nations that ever collectively devoured the whole earth were the European colonial empires, which sprang from the ruins of the Roman Empire.

Exactly how long is “how long”? Jesus cautioned reticence:

“But about that day or hour no one knows,

not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son,

but only the Father.”

- Mark 13:32, NIV

Jesus said those words before John received the Revelation. Did the Bible’s final book shed light on the day or hour? For one, a day in prophecy may be a day, a year, or even a thousand years. Given how confused the chronologies were during the first millennium of the church, being off by a thousand years was easy. The early church believed the creation was about 5,000 BC, but by the Reformation (thanks to Venerable Bede and Ussher), that changed to roughly 4,000 BC. At this point, we really are in the seventh millennium since the creation. The church can now confidently say Christ will return less than a millennium from today.

The key word is not when, but about. Jesus is not saying we can’t know which day (millennium) he will return. He is saying we can’t know about it. Events in that “day” will take us by surprise. The greater uncertainty is not time, but something else. The end times will at the same time conform to Holy writ and defy human expectations.

If “day” means a thousand years, what do we make of the “hour” that the ten horn kingdoms will reign? An hour is one twenty-fourth of a day. Divide a millennium by twenty-four and what do you get?

Forty-one years and eight months. Recall the numerous prophecies of forty-two months? Now we have one that nearly equals forty-two years. What would a forty-two year conflict look like? One possibility is forty years of painful struggle, followed by one climactic battle in the forty-first year, followed by a forty-second year of victory celebrations and peace.

Is the preceding scenario a reprise of the Exodus? Yes. It describes humanity’s Exodus from God’s rule. Mankind will throw off all restraint, persecute the church relentlessly, and think it has defeated Christianity and its God at last. Under a delusion, people will celebrate peace. Then Christ will return and prove them wrong:

While people are saying,

“Peace and safety,”

destruction will come on them suddenly,

as labor pains on a pregnant woman,

and they will not escape.

- 1 Thessalonians 5:3, NIV

(The imagery of labor pains is our clue that The Motherhood Pattern is in view.)

Looking for Beasts Through a Wide-angle Lens

What about the rest of the Bible? Look carefully and you will see that beastly empires pop up where you least expect them. The following list is not exhaustive.

Job. This book introduces Behemoth ( Job 40) and Leviathan ( Job 3, 7 & 41), beasts from the land and sea, respectively. These creatures match two beasts from Revelation 13. One is the eighth kingdom of Revelation 17.

That association is well known to scholars. One I have never seen cited in the literature is found in Job 20:

Though he flees from an iron weapon,

a bronze-tipped arrow pierces him.

- Job 20:24, NIV

Iron here refers to the iron kingdom, Rome, while bronze refers to Greece. The justification for this interpretation appears in “CSI Babylon”. What this shows is that the metaphors of one prophet sometimes transfer over to another.

Daniel & Revelation. Confusingly, Daniel’s visions employ different figurative language to describe the same empires. Medo-Persia is silver in chapter 2, a bear in chapter 7, and a ram in chapter 8. Greece is bronze, a leopard with four heads (because it split into four kingdoms), and a goat. Rome is iron and a terrible beast, while Babylon is gold and a lion.

In Daniel 7, the lion, bear, leopard, and terrible beast rise from the sea, just like the beast from the sea (Leviathan) in Revelation 13:

The dragon stood on the shore of the sea.

And I saw a beast coming out of the sea.

It had ten horns and seven heads, with ten crowns

on its horns, and on each head a blasphemous name.

The beast I saw resembled a leopard, but had feet

like those of a bear and a mouth like that of a lion.

The dragon gave the beast his power and his throne

and great authority.

- Revelation 13:1-2, NIV

This suggests that parts of the Babylonian, Medo-Persian and Greek Empires will coalesce into a single entity. It will likely be Islamic, as they include present day Iran, Iraq, and and Turkey.

Jeremiah & Lamentations. Some of those animals appear elsewhere:

A lion has come out of his lair;

a destroyer of nations has set out.

He has left his place

to lay waste your land.

Your towns will lie in ruins

without inhabitant.

- Jeremiah 4:7, NIV

Therefore a lion from the forest will attack them,

a wolf from the desert will ravage them,

a leopard will lie in wait near their towns

to tear to pieces any who venture out,

for their rebellion is great

and their backslidings many.

- Jeremiah 5:6, NIV

The main difference above is the substitution of a wolf for the bear. But Jeremiah in Lamentations writes this:

Like a bear lying in wait,

like a lion in hiding,

he dragged me from the path and mangled me

and left me without help.

He drew his bow

and made me the target for his arrows.

He pierced my heart

with arrows from his quiver.

- Lamentations 3:10-13

The mention of arrows matches Job 20, and here the missing bear is present, along with the lion.

Hosea. The trio of animals makes another appearance:

So I will be like a lion to them,

like a leopard I will lurk by the path.

Like a bear robbed of her cubs,

I will attack them and rip them open;

like a lion I will devour them—

a wild animal will tear them apart.

- Hosea 13:7-8

Isaiah. In Isaiah, we see lion, bear, leopard and wolf:

The wolf will live with the lamb,

the leopard will lie down with the goat,

the calf and the lion and the yearling together;

and a little child will lead them.

The cow will feed with the bear,

their young will lie down together,

and the lion will eat straw

like the ox.

- Isaiah 11:6-7

Unlike all the other Scripture cited, this passage is hopeful. It also has goats and lambs; a ram is an adult male lamb. Thus two of Daniel’s collections of animals are present, plus the wolf that Jeremiah used. Where does the wolf fit in?

Habakkuk. This prophet was informed that Babylon would soon be on its way to destroy Israel. Again with the animals:

Their horses are swifter than leopards,

fiercer than wolves at dusk.

Their cavalry gallops headlong;

their horsemen come from afar.

They fly like an eagle swooping to devour;

- Habakkuk 1:8, NIV

What’s with the eagle? Daniel described Babylon’s beast as more than a lion:

“The first was like a lion, and it had the wings of an eagle.

I watched until its wings were torn off and it was lifted

from the ground so that it stood on two feet like a

human being, and the mind of a human was given to it.

- Daniel 7:4, NIV

So Habakkuk identifies three of these four creatures, including the wolf, but not the bear. Daniel listed four beasts, but the fourth was not compared to an identifiable creature:

“After that, in my vision at night I looked,

and there before me was a fourth beast—

terrifying and frightening and very powerful.

It had large iron teeth; it crushed and devoured

its victims and trampled underfoot whatever was left.

It was different from all the former beasts,

and it had ten horns.

- Daniel 7:7, NIV

This associates the metal iron with the fourth beast, as well as the ten horns. What would make it terrifying? We know that Rome lasted longer than all other empires, and its offspring, the colonial powers, devoured the whole earth. Is this beast the wolf?

Yes! The mythical tale of the founding of Rome has two brothers, Romulus and Remus, suckled by a wolf. Thus the several prophets, by using combinations of eagle, lion, bear, leopard, and wolf, though never all in one place, collectively define the full set of four beasts. It might have been dangerous for future believers if Daniel were to call the fourth beast a wolf; it would alert and anger Rome. After all, he was told to “seal up” his book until the end. Disguising Rome’s identity as the fourth beast might have been part of that.

Zephaniah. This prophet includes a detail that reinforces the idea that Rome is the wolf:

Her officials within her

are roaring lions;

her rulers are evening wolves,

who leave nothing for the morning.

- Zephaniah 3:3, NIV

While lions normally hunt at night, they often hunt at dawn. This passage emphasizes that the wolves hunt in the evening. The prophecy is saying something about time. From morning to night, beasts will attack Israel. Babylon (the lion) was the first of the four, while Rome (the wolf ) was the last, coming in the evening.

Ezekiel. Chapter 22 of Ezekiel references both metals and animals. First, he tells the people they are worthless:

“Son of man, the people of Israel have become dross to me;

all of them are the copper, tin, iron and lead left inside

a furnace. They are but the dross of silver.

- Ezekiel 22:18, NIV

Remember the progression in Daniel? Gold, silver, bronze then iron. Here we have the silver and iron. Bronze is an alloy of copper and tin. Lastly, lead is the metal that alchemists tried to transmute into gold. As for the animals:

There is a conspiracy of her princes within her

like a roaring lion tearing its prey; they devour people...

Her officials within her are like wolves tearing their prey;

they shed blood and kill people to make unjust gain.

- Ezekiel 22:25-27, NIV

Again, this prophet begins with the lion and ends with the wolves. Note the trend. Mentions of lions, leopards and bears are sometimes plural and sometimes singular. Wolves are always referred to in the plural, emphasizing their destructiveness and coordination.

The Gospels. The Old Testament, especially parts of Ezekiel not quoted, sometimes equates wolves with betrayers from inside Jewish society, it’s princes, prophets and priests, but other times external enemies. Jesus and Paul uniformly affiliate wolves with heretics and false believers who will destroy the church.

“Watch out for false prophets.

They come to you in sheep’s clothing,

but inwardly they are ferocious wolves.

- Matthew 7:15, NIV

If we take all this together, then the final beasts of Revelation come into focus. The lion, bear and leopard are the external foes of the church, finally united. The wolves, that terrible beast, are the empire that looks Christian but isn’t:

Then I saw a second beast, coming out of the earth.

It had two horns like a lamb, but it spoke like a dragon.

- Revelation 13:11, NIV

This beast from the earth, Behemoth, is the ultimate example of the wolf in sheep’s clothing.

(See “One Greater than Solomon” for an additional historical event prophesied by Matthew 7:15.)

What is the point in scrutinizing two fistfuls of prophets just so we could call Rome a wolf? It opens our eyes to a wealth of prophetic detail that may shed light on the meaning of difficult passages. It shouts, “Look closer!” Some dark times in my life came when I read the Bible and said, “So what?” I had exhausted the meaning of the words I was reading. I needed to see something new in its pages. New problems require new answers. These connections open up a new dimension to chapters all over the Bible because of human nature. When we aren’t sure if there is treasure buried in a field, our search is cursory. When we are sure it’s there, we leave no stone unturned. We found the right field.

Timed Trials

The beginning of this chapter claimed the Empire Clock is “timeless”; the duration of each empire was not given. That is not entirely true. Daniel learned from Jeremiah (as related in Daniel 9:2) that the Babylonian exile would last seventy years. The length of the oppression of one other beast was also given, though the calculation is tricky. Daniel sets the conundrum up for us, and Revelation adds to the confusion:

“He gave me this explanation:

‘The fourth beast is a fourth kingdom that will appear on earth.

It will be different from all the other kingdoms and will

devour the whole earth, trampling it down and crushing it.

The ten horns are ten kings who will come from this kingdom.

After them another king will arise, different from the

earlier ones; he will subdue three kings. He will speak

against the Most High and oppress his holy people and try

to change the set times and the laws. The holy people will

be delivered into his hands for a time, times and half a time.

- Daniel 7:23-25

The beast I saw resembled a leopard,

but had feet like those of a bear

and a mouth like that of a lion...

- Revelation 13:2

The first problem concerns when the fifth king will arrive relative to the fourth beast (Rome). Some believe it comes after the fourth beast finishes devouring the whole earth, placing it during the future end times. However, if the defining feature is capturing Jerusalem, this fifth king comes after the fourth, but arrives before the fourth kingdom finishes its devouring. That is the interpretation chosen here.

The second problem is identifying the three kings this fifth king subdued. Some assume they are the leopard, bear and lion kingdoms of Revelation 13:2, since they also number three. However, that chapter is about the eighth kingdom, not the seventh. That final kingdom really does show up at the end, and there is territorial overlap. The eighth conquers Persia (Iran), Babylon (Iraq) and Greece (or possibly Turkey, which annexed Constantinople, long the center of Greek Civilization under the Eastern Roman Empire), because those three nations are the bear, lion and leopard.

Which three previous kings did the seventh king conquer, then? Since we previously identified it as the Islamic Empires, we know. They were Syria, Babylon and Persia, the second, third and fourth kingdoms in the list of eight. Note that two out of three of the kingdoms controlled by the seventh king match those of the eighth king.

That leads us to the core question: how much time is a “time”? The phrase “a time, times and half a time” (used twice in Daniel and once in Revelation) has been taken to mean many things. Some say it means one time plus two more times plus a half a time, or three-and-a-half times. They believe one “time” is one year. This 3.5 year period is thus half of seven years. Popular Dispensational systems teach that the Great Tribulation will last seven years, with the second half being the worst.

Ellis Skolfield compared the phrase to old song lyrics: “once, twice, three times a lady”. He said the way to read it was “a time, a second time, and half a time”. To him, there are only two-and-a-half times. He proposed that instead of a year, “time” stood for a millennium. Thus the total would be 2,500 years. He then uses this vast span of time to connect two ancient events to two modern events. First, from the first year of Belshazzar in 552 BC to the reestablishment of Israel in 1948 is one block of 2,500 years. Second, from Cyrus’ edict in 533 BC permitting the Jews to rebuild Jerusalem to the recapture of all of Jerusalem by modern Israel in 1967 was another 2,500 years.

While I applaud Skolfield’s math skills, he does not appear to have measured the same thing those verses were measuring. Daniel 7:25 does not measure the entire time that the Jews would be dispossessed. It only measures how long the seventh empire will occupy Jerusalem.

How long was that? This is complicated, because the city changed hands several times. The Muslims captured Jerusalem in 637 AD. They lost it to the Crusaders in 1099 AD, regained it in 1187 AD, lost it to the Crusaders again in 1229 AD, recovered it again in 1244 AD. They held it until World War I, when Britain captured it in 1917 AD. However, during the British Mandatory period, while Britain administered the mandate on behalf of the League of Nations, de facto control over much of Jerusalem remained in the hands of the Muslims. Active measures were taken to prevent European Jews from emigrating there. Following Israel’s war for independence, Jordan retained control over East Jerusalem. Israel did not acquire full control until after the Six Day War in 1967. All told, Islamic control lasted 1,330 years minus a century of Crusader control, for 1,230 years in all.

Some Old Testament prophecies use a prophetic calendar where years have 360 days, not 365.25 days. To get the number of prophetic years, we multiply by a scale factor:

to get 1,248 prophetic years. How do we get that out of “a time, times and half a time”? What if the first “time” is still a millennia, but the “times” is two centuries? Then the “half a time” would be a half a century. Total it up and you get 1,000 + 200 + 50 = 1,250 prophetic years. This differs by our historical analysis by only two years. Given some of the above dates are not precisely known and we have rounded to the nearest year in places instead of going down to the actual months when events took place, the agreement between 1,248 is as good as our accuracy permits.

This is a long way of saying that the Bible accurately foretold how long the seventh empire would occupy Jerusalem, to the point of accommodating times when Jerusalem changed hands. 1,250 years is a lot longer than 3.5. Does Daniel say anything that would help us decide between the two? Yes, he does.

“This is the end of the matter.

I, Daniel, was deeply troubled by my thoughts,

and my face turned pale,

but I kept the matter to myself.”

- Daniel 7:28, NIV

Daniel had already endured years of captivity and absorbed Jeremiah’s prophecy that it would last seventy in all. Three more years of desolation would not make Daniel’s face go pale. A dozen centuries would.

By your indulgence, let us make a few more calculations. Israel signed a peace treaty with Egypt in 1979. This was twelve years after 1967, or the end of 1,248 + 12 = 1,260 years of Arab hostility. 1,260 appears twice in Revelation as is, and elsewhere as forty-two months, since 1,260 = 42 x 30. According to Biblical numerology, forty-two symbolizes forty units of struggle (like the wandering in the desert under Moses), followed one unit of battle and victory, leading to one unit of peace.

Our unit is a month of years: thirty. The first 1,200 years of Muslim rule was the forty months of years of wandering and testing in the desert of the world. Its climax was 1917, when Britain stripped Jerusalem from the Ottoman Empire, and it ended with the conclusion of World War I in 1919.

The forty-first month ran from 1919 to 1948. This was the month of battle. It included Arab persecution, riots and attacks against Jews in Palestine and the Nazi’s horrific holocaust. It culminated in Israel’s war of independence, when they retook part of the Promised Land and became a nation again.

The forty-second month, from 1949 to 1979, was not without trouble and war, but its climax was the recapture of Jerusalem in 1967, leading to the Camp David peace accords with Egypt in 1978 and subsequent peace treaty signed in 1979. Compared to millennia of suffering as exiles, it truly was a time of peace.

There are people who deny that modern Israel has any connection to the ancient kingdom destroyed long ago. These prophecies do not lie. God kept his promise. The journey was horrific, but God had it planned down to the year, even down to the day. We can take comfort that God’s sovereign will has not failed and will not fail, and that will is eternal peace for those who love Him.

Our Unvarnished History

We sampled the writings of nine prophets plus Jesus to get a handle on how pervasive the beastly empires are in Scripture. Ideally, we would search each of the chapters visited for deeper insight, but that would make an already long book too heavy to lift. (This author has begun writing a follow up book on Habakkuk, working it into this prophetic structure.) The Bible is full of clues and they are spread widely. The Lord told us far more about the end times than we realize. He has also provided information to help us understand and endure our times.

Colonialism, racism, white privilege, Euro-centrism, genocide, and related hot-button issues plague our public discourse. Statues of people once celebrated as heroes are being toppled. How should Christians respond? Is Western Civilization worth saving? What about all the evils done in its name? Does the Bible hold answers?

Yes, but they might not be ones you like. If we accept that America, England, and the other European colonial empires were the feet of iron and baked clay in Daniel’s prophecy, what are the implications? The iron is the evil remnant of Rome, strong and cruel. The clay is true humanity, because Adam was formed from clay. That is the church, led by the new Adam. Those empires were partly good and partly evil, partly Christian and partly worldly.

Those empires had a mission: destroy every nation.

The LORD is angry with all nations;

his wrath is on all their armies.

He will totally destroy them,

he will give them over to slaughter.

- Isaiah 34:2, NIV

In the Old Testament, God used wicked pagan empires to judge Israel, but after the judgment was complete, God then destroyed those pagan empires. In like fashion, God empowered the European nations to become great empires, conquer the whole earth, force some civilized behavior upon them, uproot select barbaric practices like cannibalism, human sacrifice, and ultimately slavery, and then He stripped them of their empires.

From this we learn that parts of the culture we inherited from Europe are worth preserving and parts should be discarded. There are people who want to rid our culture of all Christian influence. We must oppose them forcefully. However, we must also own up to our failings and strive to imitate our savior better.

Many people will never accept that it was God’s will to spread destruction upon the whole world. His wrath is great against wickedness and His justice did righteously consume many peoples, just as he will not spare Europe or America on the day he returns. Did the Lord not determine that Byzantium should fall? Or that the plague slaughter over half of Europe? He continually disciplines His church. If the church – which He loves – is so scourged, what of the rest of the world? When those who hate Christianity succeed in expelling it from their communities, they will have tossed out the good clay. Then only iron will remain, and its unyielding, totalitarian godlessness will exact greater suffering than the church ever did.