Arab World in Prophecy

Good afternoon again, everyone. Years ago, actually it was a class at Ambassador College.

I believe it was a class a year ahead of me, a year behind Rick Bean at Big Sandy, Texas.

There was a young man in that class with the last name of McCoy, and a young lady in that class with the last name of Hatfield.

And they had fun with the Hatfields and the McCoys, and it was all good-natured. But you know that story going back, you know, a long time ago, and no telling back in the 19th century how many people finally died from that blood feud.

We want to talk about a blood feud here today as well, and this one goes back a lot longer than that. There has been bad blood all the way back to the Patriarch Abraham, and a lot of it has to do with some of his descendants, along with some other peoples as well. Winston Churchill is the one who is attributed with having made the statement essentially to this effect, that the farther backward you can look, the farther forward you can see. And today, I want to talk with you about the Arab world. It's a little difficult to determine what phrase do we use, because when you say the Arab world, you're talking from Morocco all the way across Northern Africa and into and through the Middle East. And this is a mishmash of various peoples. One author that I read once upon a time suggested maybe it's more accurate to call them the Arabic-speaking peoples, or making that a linguistic group. People who are somewhat bound together by common language. However, you get over into Iran, you've got people who we tend to lump into this category, but they speak Farsi, Persian peoples, totally different peoples. Now, we have a few slides I want to show to you today. We'll get to those in a little bit.

Let's go to Genesis and look at a few scriptural passages that refreshes our mind as far as where these peoples come from. You know, nations are families that grow large, and in general, the Arabic peoples trace their lineage back to one man. It's not quite that simple, but one man whose name is Ishmael. Genesis 16 tells us about Ishmael, and again, just noticing a little bit here, you remember the story in Abraham's life where he and Sarai, Abram and Sarai, were promised this son. And, you know, being human beings like us, we get impatient, and we decide sometimes we need to help God out. And so, I forget, 12-13 years down the line, that's where the story with Hagar came along, Sarai or Sarai's handmaiden, who was an Egyptian. Now, Egyptians come from the line of Ham. Mitsraim is known to be the father of your basic, the old Egyptian stock people, and he was the son of Ham. So, here is Abraham, and then here's Hagar, who is of this Egyptian line. And so, they have a son. But let's look here in Genesis 16 verse 11, and this is the angel of the Lord speaking to her. This is to Hagar, who was to have a child. Behold, you're with child, and you shall bear a son, and you shall call his name Ishmael. And the word there, at least in my Bible, has a marginal note that it literally means, God hears. God had heard her cry. I also have wondered if it wasn't a message to Abraham as well, that they've been waiting for years for the son of promise, who would be born later, who's named Isaac. But that God heard, that God was aware, but at least here, it's presented that it was a message to Hagar. God's heard your your cry. Because the Lord has heard your affliction. Verse 12, notice, he shall be a wild man. His hand shall be against every man, and every man's hand against him, and he shall dwell in the presence of all his brethren. So some of these phrases are good to file away, because there are national characteristics that get woven into the very national fabric of peoples that then grow to be nations, or maybe great nations, and you still have these national traits that are there. Wild man, hand against every man, every man's hand against him. Now, let's look at chapter 17. Chapter 17, we have in this chapter, God once again appears to Abram. He's a spring chicken in 99.

It's been 24 years, but God says, you know, I remember you're going to have this son in about a year, this set time. But later in the chapter, we have, for instance, in verse 18, verse 18. And Abraham said to God, Oh, that Ishmael might live before you. Then God said, No, Sarah, your wife shall bear you a son. And she's a young spring chicken of 89 at this time. And you shall call his name Isaac. I will establish my covenant with him.

In other words, not Ishmael, but with Isaac. For an everlasting covenant, and with his descendants after him. Verse 20, God reminds him, I haven't forgotten about your other son Ishmael. As for Ishmael, I have heard you, behold, I have blessed him, and will make him fruitful, and will multiply him exceedingly. He shall beget twelve princes, and I will make him a great nation. Now, there's another place later where it mentions these twelve sons that became princes that came from him. Chapter 21. Just notice a little bit more here. I don't want to spend too much time.

But Genesis 21. And here we have this chapter that tells us that Isaac is born.

And something takes place that you would think they could have foreseen. Because Sarah is not going to be happy with this other woman, with this other son of her husband living in their house. And so, there's a parting of the ways. So, let's go to verse 17. Sarah has said, get out, verse 17, and God heard the voice of the lad, and the angel of God called to Hagar out of heaven and said, what I owe you, Hagar, fear not, for God has heard the voice of the lad where he is.

Arise, lift up the lad, hold him with your hand, for I will make him a great nation.

So, the water was provided that the lad was given something to drink. Verse 20. God was with the lad. He grew and dwelt in the wilderness and became an archer. He dwelt in the wilderness of Peran, and his mother took a wife for him from the land of Egypt. So, Abraham, of course, of the line of Shem, and has a child with Hagar, who's of the line of Ham. The child is half and half, and at this point, the mother takes a wife from Mithraim, from Egypt, of the line of Ham. So, children born specifically to Isaac and this Egyptian. Why is there three-quarters Egyptian? They are more Egyptian than they are Semitic of the line of Abraham. Well, chapter 25.

Verse 12. Now, this is the genealogy of Ishmael, Abraham's son, whom Hagar the Egyptian, Sarah's maidservant, Bored Abraham. These are the names of the sons of Ishmael, by their names, according to their generations. The firstborn of Ishmael, Nebba Yot, then Kedar, Adbiel, Midsom, Mishma, Duma, Masah, Hadar, Timah, Jeter, Nafesh, Kedamah. These are the sons of Ishmael. These were their names by their towns, their settlements, twelve princes, according to their nations. Now, we could even follow the story a little later, where a daughter of Ishmael, a daughter, a sister of all of these boys, marries Esau, who was brother of Isaac. We see the lines are all intermixed.

Abraham, after Sarah's death, he remarried him with Katera. Here are a number of offspring mentioned. They're not of the line of Isaac, but they are related peoples, and they're somewhat intermingled with other peoples, like the line of Egypt. It gets to be a bit of a convoluted story, but again, I think for our purposes today, it's about as far as we have to go, except I just thought of Lot. You had Lot with his daughters, and you had Moab and Ammon, who tend to get lumped in with the Arabic peoples, Arabic-speaking peoples, peoples who have had this age-old rivalry with the line of Abraham through specifically Isaac, Jacob, and on. It is interesting that one of the core beliefs that we have in the Church of God is what we just did. I saw the full moon, what, one, two nights ago. Couldn't believe it. It had been a month since the feast started, the Feast of Tabernacles. Or it was mentioned in the opening prayer, this weekly Sabbath reminds us there is this one thousand year reign that is yet ahead for the people of God.

That is a core belief of the Church, always has been. Can you remember how exciting it was when you or your family learned about that truth? But I think we should realize there are others of other religions who have similar concepts of this great world-ruling empire, and one of them is in the world of Islam. I'm going to show you a few slides which underscore, you see, I started out with the idea of this bad blood, this blood feud. It has continued for pushing four thousand years, a long, long time. It is still a blood feud because this summer we saw what happened in the Gaza Strip. As Israel got sick and tired of having bombs lobbed over and tunnels built under, and they took care of the problem for a little while. But we see it hasn't gone away because what has happened this week in Israel, we see a different tactic. We have some fanatic in a vehicle plowing into a group of people, and in one case he got out with some kind of a piece of iron attacking people. I mean, it's, well, we read the phrase, a wild man, and there's enough dots here that we connect. But there has been within Islam this concept of a world-ruling empire, and at the end it will be ruled over by one called a caliph. You've heard that term caliph. A caliph is just essentially a successor of Mohammed. Mohammed died in 632 A.D., and the first one to take his job, his name was Abu Bakr. Now, remember that name. It's going to come back because this summer, actually, when we were over there starting camp, I think it was the registration day, June 29th, over in Iraq and Syria, there was the proclamation of a brand new caliphate.

And the guy at the helm has taken the name of the first caliph, and he's known as Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and I'll show you a picture of his handsome self here a little bit later. But, you see, with the death of Mohammed, your Middle Eastern peoples have always been right to follow strong leadership.

Mohammed had great success in rallying forces to his side, but he died. Someone stood up. He has the name Caliph. You have this succession. You can look it up on the Cyclopedian. You can look up online. You can find a listing of these names of various caliphs through history. Of course, there was a time, I won't go into that, a time when there was kind of a division, a question of, is it this guy or is it that guy? And that's why we have the Shiites and we have the Sunnis today. But again, another story. But different times in history, we have had a powerful leader rally a lot of people to his side with the intent of forming a world-ruling caliphate. And it seems they've always had their eye on the Western world, which for most of time meant their eyes were on Europe. Now, here we have, I hope you know what this is, this is the hot spot. This is where it's happening. We have, of course, Europe back up here to the North and the West, but from Egypt, always a key player. Little country called Israel. We have Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabian Peninsula, Iran. But a lot has happened this year in the Syria-Iraq area. You have heard the term, first I heard, ISIS, Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria. You will also hear the term ISIL, Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. I'll show you in a little bit. It's an old geographical term. That area from Syria, Jordan, Israel, that's called the Levant. In fact, once upon a time, this far eastern part of the Mediterranean was called the Levantine Sea. More and more, though, they want to just simply be known as the Islamic State because they have their sights set on much greater areas than Iraq and Syria. In fact, just lately there were encroachments in the far northern Lebanon.

Now, here's a slide that shows the Levant. So that's where that term ISIL came from, which again, I think both of those are falling into disuse. But, you know, from the Sinai, which is part, sorry, I had too much caffeinated coffee this morning, the Sinai, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, you know, and you've got Syria, you've got Lebanon, Israel, Jordan in the middle there. That's the Levant.

Muhammad dies 632. Abu Bakr takes over. Not quite 30 years you have this first caliphate that is proclaimed, but the olive green shows the extent of the territory.

During this time, they had their eyes over here on what Constantinople, it used to be called, modern-day Istanbul, but they returned back. Long ago, the Emperor Theodosius had this double wall built around the old city of Constantinople, as it was known that time. And those walls proved to be impercable until the day and age when cannons could be cast and a breach made in the walls, and then by sheared numbers, they finally took it over. But the Rashudin caliphate, that was followed by the Umayyad. Now, during this time, we actually had two times when they be seized, Istanbul. The walls turned them back. The Arabic Navy and Army were both defeated. But you'll notice something different here is that it has spread not just Egypt and part of Libya, but all the way across in all this area here, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, and then they got a foothold in Europe. You see, they tried from this direction to get into Europe.

It didn't work. Later, they crossed over Gibraltar, took over the bulk of Spain and Portugal.

Now, it was during this time, they actually took forces and they went up into Europe. They went up toward Paris, a place called Tours, 732 AD, the Battle of Tours, one of those big, classic, life-changing battles that took place. They came up against the army of the Frankish Kingdom under Charles Martel, who was the grandfather of Charlemagne. But they got up into around Tours and they were resoundingly defeated and pushed back out of Western Europe. Slowly, they lost their foothold in Spain and had to go back to Northern Africa and across through the Middle East. So, I mean, look at the territory that they got. They tried the door to Europe. On the other end, they were turned back. That was followed by a caliphate that lasted 500 years. So, obviously, it wasn't the same man leading, but a series of men. But here, once again, all the way from Algeria to Tunisia, all the way across the entire Saudi Arabian Peninsula, all the way here between the Black and Caspian Seas at Armenian area, modern Iran and areas above that. Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, a bunch of stans over there, and even Pakistan, Afghanistan. So, vast area. They don't give up. They don't give up. Now, this last one, this fourth one here, I have included the Ottoman caliphate. You can't see probably the color code key down here at the bottom, but it started, see, there's Constantinople, modern Istanbul, and it started right in this area. And then the color code shows how it slowly, slowly enlarged what they did at this time.

Modern weaponry had progressed to the point where they cast cannons large enough that they blasted away at the Theodosian walls in one area enough to breach it. Then by sheer numbers, they charged in. They took over Constantinople.

Well, they tried again Europe, but from the east. They got Hungary. There's Budapest. They came up against Vienna. Now, Vienna was important because at this time in the 1500s, that's the headquarters of the Habsburgs, the Habsburg lineup, the Holy Roman Emperors.

They would get to the gates of Vienna. They tried in the 1500s. There was a big battle of Vienna, and then 150 years later in the late 1600s, there was another battle of Vienna. It almost fell, but at the last moment up here in Poland, you had Polish forces under their king, Jan Sobieski, came down. You had German forces who came down under Prinz Eugen, and they arrived at the time, and Vienna was saved. That's as far as the Ottomans, the Ottomans, the Arabic caliphate, got from that direction. That takes us, 1924, takes us through World War I. World War I, remember, the Ottoman Empire threw in with the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Germany, and they lost. After they lost, the Western powers essentially divided all their territory up. France was given the mandate over this western part of North Africa. That's why your French foreign legion, you know, if you get down here, you watch the news, and down here end up Mali, northern Nigeria even. You've got this Boko Haram that took all these little girls from the school. You've got things happening in Mali, Burkina Faso, some of those areas. You'll read where some of the French, I guess the remnant of what once was the French foreign legion is down there.

But then from here and around Libya and on Egypt and in the Middle East, you had it under the British mandate. And it was that way until, I think, 1948. You had the Israeli war of independence.

1948, the little country called Israel came into being. So that's kind of a background there that I wanted to go through with you. Let's see here. Here's something I wanted to read. This was a Reuters, you're familiar with Reuters news line. This was dated, as I mentioned, June 29th, this year, 2014, about the declaration of the new Caliphate. The extremist Sunni group. You see you have the Shiites more so over in Iran. The majority are Sunni Muslims. But we have an extremist group within that. And that's where all of this has erupted this year. Actually, more than this year, it's been what? Two, I guess last summer. The summer wasn't the second or was the third year anniversary of the events in Libya Benghazi. I think it was two years. Just in this last window of time, all of these firestorms have been erupting here and there. Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, you know, Morsi being put in power, then the Egyptians realized Morsi's worse than, I mean, the Brotherhood's worse than Morsi was. All of these are at the hands of extremists or fanatics from the Sunni side. So the article says the extremist Sunni group known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria or ISIS on Sunday, this is last June, declared a new Caliphate, an Islamic State to claim dominion over Muslims across the globe. The group shadowy leader known as Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is the caliph, meaning he is the successor to the Prophet Muhammad. Skipping down the article a ways, it says, restoring the caliphate and with it a measure of the glory that attended Islam's golden age has been the stated goal of Sunni Muslim activists for decades. From the Muslim Brotherhood to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda, al-Baghdadi's group now, though, is the first to assert it. The statement from al-Baghdadi said, the time has come for those generations that were drowning in oceans of disgrace. Let me pause there. Oceans of disgrace. They tried time and time again. Time and time again to take Europe. They changed tactics. They tried the other end of Europe. They got turned back. They're changing tactics today. I'll show you a map a little later. A clear tactic they're using now is immigration. You have some countries like France and Belgium and Netherlands that are in the band of the 20 to 50 percent in those countries are Muslim. And that is a problem. Okay, let me continue. Drowning in oceans of disgrace, being nursed by the milk of humiliation, being ruled over by the vilest of all people. I think that means people like us from the Western world. Continuing after their long slumber in the darkness of neglect, the time has come for them to rise. So this guy has taken the name Abu Bakr. He has taken the flag of the first caliph as well, the Black Flags of Khorasan, which was northeastern Iraq. I remember when Benghazi, all the events that happened there, our ambassador was killed, the four people who were killed, and horrible, horrible story. But in no time, it mentioned in the news some of the government buildings, as some of the Western powers were getting their people out of there. And it mentioned that over these former embassies, the Black Flags of the Muslim Brotherhood were flying. That Black Flag dates all the way back to the first caliph. Abu Bakr, the Black Flags.

Now we have a guy saying he is now the new caliph. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, taking the Black Flags. Most of these things go way over the head of those of us in the Western world. But in the world of Islam, they make the connections. They understand the symbolism and the significance. But the Muslim tradition is that at the time of the end, there will be a worldwide caliphate ruled over by a caliph, a successor of Muhammad, and at his side will be a makhdi. I may not be pronouncing that quite right. A makhdi. And he is the end-time redeemer. And it always amazes me the counterfeits that Satan has. Because we can go to the book of Revelation, and at the time of the end, in Babylon, you have the beast and you have the false prophet. Those two allied together. We have seen that in history. Meanwhile, in this other force, and all of this is leading us to considering some things about the king of the south, this other world, you have this end-time political military economic leader called a caliph, and then this redeemer, the religious leader, the makhdi, working together. Now, some look at this Abu Bakr, and they say, ah, it's just flashing a pan. He's here today. He'll be gone tomorrow. We don't know. We don't know. I mean, my gut feeling is, yeah, I think he'll, I think he'll, you know, a drone may have taken, a drone may have took him out today, for all we know.

We have this article. I hope you all got the Good News magazine. This is the September-October. And, right, right in the middle, Islamic Caliphate declared, what does it mean? Tom Robinson. Excellent article. Excellent article. A lot of history, a lot of background, and so I'll just refer to that. Let you, let you look at that another time. Let's go now. You may have noticed I have too many notes, too much material. Okay, let's go to Daniel chapter 11. And I believe now we can consider a few things. Transfiring. Look at some possibilities. Daniel 11. Fascinating chapter. It begins right there in the days of Daniel.

And it says, well, here there be this many more kings of Persia. And then Daniel had already covered the fact that then next comes Greece. And he says that in Daniel 11 at the end of verse 2. When we think of Greece as a world-ruling empire, you can't help but think of the name Alexander the Great. And it goes on and talks about how that kingdom is going to be broken up. And yes, Alexander died. He had conquered the bulk of the Mediterranean known world. He died early on. He was only 30 some years old. He had two sons who were quickly and summarily executed. So there's no line to follow. There won't be a line through Alexander. The Grecian Empire was divided into four pieces. You had four generals. Now, two of them quickly pass in history. Within 20 years, they're gone. You had Lysimachus and Cassander. Don't ask me why I remember these names. I do.

But you had Lysimachus and Cassander, these areas of Greece, Thrace, Macedonia, and above.

But like I say, those two, they were kind of flashing a pan. Within 20-25 years, they're totally gone. But you had over here in Syria, the Seliusid family, and down in Egypt, you had the Ptolemies. In short order, you have the Seliusid family to the north and the Ptolemies to the south.

Because to keep your eye on the ball, in Daniel 11, continue to ask the question, who controls the Holy Land? Because it's going to ship back and forth and back and forth. And there's Antiochus the third has it, and then Nicanter Selius the fourth has it, and back and forth and back and forth. Now, let's skip over most of this chapter. Let's go over to verse. Actually, verses 36, 37, 38 are interesting as a forerunner.

We had a king who will exalt himself above every god and speak blasphemily against the God of gods. Verse 38, in their place he shall honor the God of fortresses Okay, it speaks of a foreign god in verse 39. But largely what we are looking at here is a forerunner whose name was Antiochus Epiphanes.

Antiochus the fourth, from the group up to the north. He desecrated the temple. He slaughtered pigs and had the blood spewed everywhere in the Holy of Holies. Placed the bust of Jupiter Olympus there. Had his soldiers out in the courtyard doing things. I will go no further. Disgusting! And when Jesus Christ walked the earth, he said, when you see the abomination that maketh desolate, once again stand in the holy place, he's referring back.

He said it was spoken of by Daniel the prophet. He's referring to that and something similar is going to happen again. But verse 40, chapter 11, verse 40, at the time of the end. So he just takes a quantum leap across the centuries and he comes to the time of the end. The king of the south. So in this chapter, had we followed it phrase by phrase, we would see there's this power base down at that time it was down south and then there's this power base up north.

But the challenge is these places don't always stay in the same, they don't have the same address. They move around. Because the one that was in Syria later on moved over to Italy and later on more so up into Central Europe. And even as recently as World War II, we have the basic military power base up in Central Europe in Germany. But you had, like the other foot of that beast, down in the religious side of it, down in Italy.

The king of the south, yes, for a lot of history Egypt has been the key, but we can't afford to say it will always stay there. It might move around as well. Egypt, as we look at it today, doesn't seem to be the player that it was. Some of you remember, like I do when I was a teenager, the Plain Truth magazine came and on the cover it had Gamal Abdul Nasser.

I mean, that's back when we knew who the king of the south was going to be. And then he died on us. But I do remember that cover, Gamal Abdul Nasser, but he was the strong man down here in Egypt, and we rightfully so had our eyes on it. But a lot has happened since the 1950s and 60s. Lots has happened. So at the time of the end, the king of the south shall attack him. Now, this is a new King James. I still like the old King James that says, shall push at him. Somehow I like that better. He'll push, he'll attack at him. Well, the him in this chapter has been the king of the north.

And then it comes back to him. And the king of the north shall come against him like a whirlwind with chariots, horsemen, with many ships. He shall enter the countries, overwhelm them, and pass through. He shall enter the glorious land. Many countries shall be overthrown, but these shall escape out of his hand. Edom, Moab, the prominent people of Ammon. He shall stretch out his hand against the countries, and the land of Egypt shall not escape.

He shall have power over the treasures of gold and silver, and over all the precious things of Egypt. Also the Libyans and Ethiopians shall follow at his heels. A push for an attack. There was a time you will remember when the world faced something brand new.

We had oil-producing and exporting countries, OPEC, and they began tightening down the spigot of oil to the world, which hurt Europe and other places worse than it hurt us at that time in the 1970s.

Will that push be oil? We don't know. We have to believe it may well be a part of the equation.

What other, what else came along in the 70s? What about terrorism? Of course, it goes back a lot further than that, but high-profile terrorism. That you'd have people trying to fly from Athens, Greece to Beirut, Lebanon, and their airplane is commandeered, and it's forced to land somewhere else, and a ransom is declared. But, you know, largely people survived at that time. Tactics have changed. Airplanes, we all remember airplanes have been used, and for a far more heinous reason.

So we have to keep our eyes on that, but terrorism. Well, why have a smartphone unless I can bring it and use it once in a while? Of course, as I've said before, they're only as smart as the operator.

And that was not funny, by the way. But I'm going to Fox News on the smartphone, and there's a tab for World.

And let me just see what the headlines are. The UN report says Iran is stalling nuclear weapons probe. If that's news? Okay. Ukraine accuses Russia of sending in dozens of tanks and weapons into the rebel-held east. Germany, tomorrow, 25th anniversary of the fall of the wall.

French military says 24 jihadists killed in Mali. That's one of those areas over here in that part of Africa. The Israeli town investigating, shooting in Arab town. Sudan presidential palace attacker killed. Another one on some Tunisia Islamists. Gorbachev. You see, yesterday, Gorbachev shows back up at what used to be the wall in Berlin. Gorbachev warns that the world is again on the brink of a new Cold War. Suicide attack kills eight in northern Iraq.

The militant leader explains targeting Egyptian soldiers. Well, I think that's as far as we need to go there. There's a better picture. There's a picture of my grandson up in Alaska. Six months old the other day. Anyhow, it's hard to put his picture down. So we have terrorism. And just in the last couple of weeks, different tactics, as I said a while ago, in Israel, get a vehicle, plow into a group of people. It hasn't gone away. It intensifies we have to keep our eyes on the specter of terrorism. We have missile technology. I didn't look it up, but there's a prophecy that the weak will say, I am strong. And you can have little countries that can get some... Well, look at North Korea. In one sense, insignificant, but wow, the progress they are making. And when will they be able to lob a missile over here, and what will they arm it with? Well, the same is true with some of these areas in the Middle East. Let me see if I can go back.

We've got some little countries that would normally say insignificant. Historically, you've had a place like Egypt have been the key. Saudi Arabia, tremendous power economically and militarily because we've given them the goods.

Iran, they are perfecting. I got here without... In fact, I think there was a Jim Tuxk News report. I think there was an article where you've got some of your top minds that well believed that Iran may already have some low-grade weapons, nuclear weapons.

I don't think they've got missiles that could reach here.

But what about little countries that are saying, I am strong, and they lob missiles toward Europe, European capital? Something else that we have heard this fall, not that many weeks before the feast, the Israeli Mossad, their secret service, the Mossad intercepted a credible plot. It was reported to assassinate the Pope. Now, if they take out the Pope, I would say that would qualify as an attack or a push. And then just yesterday, I saw that the British had discovered a plot against the Queen. I'd say if you have a group that takes out the Queen, that's a problem. That's a push, at least. That's an attack. So we have, I mean, you could have state leaders assassinated. And that's the heinous side of terrorism. It's undercover. You can't as easily see. It's not like in World War I, World War II, Civil War, War of 1812. I mean, whatever war you in history want to look at. You have this nation and his allies against this nation and their allies, and you know who you're fighting. And America and others of the West began to realize with some of the conflicts in Southeast Asia that we don't always, we can't always look and tell who the enemy is. So we have lots to watch in the Middle East. We saw seemingly rising out of nowhere this summer the Islamic State. And now we have an administration that pulled all the troops out. Of course, America has a long-standing history of leaving battles unfinished. And now what are we doing with what has happened with ISIS? We're sending more troops back in, but they're not in combatant roles, we're told. So we will see. We have had countries like Britain and Canada. You saw what happened in Canada there at the Parliament recently. The Sergeant at Arms plugged the guy that killed one of the members. We have had Canada, Britain, Australia raise their terror threat levels to about the second notch from the highest. And here we sit in our country and our southern border is just open. It is open, and I don't know about the other borders either. But the southern one is open. We don't know what we have here, and I think we should expect to be hit again, and we'll be hit hard. How many times God may allow little forerunners to take place before it finally comes to a head. Now, we can pause and ask, what do we know? And maybe that's safest, because there are a lot of things we don't know. What do we know? Well, from Daniel 11, we know there will be a power base, the king of the south.

Where it will be headquartered, again, it has been in Egypt a lot of times. For a lot of Daniel 11, as you follow that through, the power base was Egypt. It would seem that the power base has shifted over in this direction now. We do know there will be some type of a power base that will come together.

At the time of the end, we will have a power base. We have no reason to look anywhere else but Europe, or one up north, and somewhere down the Middle East, four power bases down south. Later on, there will be a power base to the far east. But again, that's not really a factor here, well, until the end of Daniel 11, where padding's out of the north and east, and he turns and goes the other way.

But there will be these power bases solidifying. There will be a continuation of this clash of civilizations. Christianity, as the world knows it, Christianity and Islam, these are incompatible. If you read about Islam, you look into Surreal Law, you look at the way they treat women. It is incompatible with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. There has been, for hundreds of years, this ongoing clash of civilizations, and we can see that will continue and intensify. We will see some type of an attack or push later on.

We know that'll happen. We don't know exactly what it is. We will have a power base from the north sweep through, take over this whole Middle Eastern area. And at the time of the end, we know that this Arabic-speaking world, this Middle Eastern world, largely will be overrun, just be destroyed. There are so many prophecies that talk about Ammon, Moab, Edom, Philistia, and just one after another. And they are, and maybe like we read in Daniel 11, it'll be the king of the north sweeping through. And maybe others, it's when you have your final culmination of European power and your men of the east coming to lock horns there again.

But one or the other of those times, they're going to be run over. Okay, how's my time doing? We're getting there. We're getting there. Psalm 83. This look is Psalm 83. It's a fascinating prophetic psalm. There's a lot of prophecy in the book of Psalms. It's easy to skip right over.

Psalm 83 is curious because here's a listing of a lot of people's allied together. The common denominator is the hate God, the hate Israel. They want to destroy the name Israel from under heaven. In this article in The Good News magazine, if you get a chance to read it, or you can go online and read it, but Tom Robinson also refers to this chapter. Psalm 83, Psalm of Asaph.

Do not be silent, O God. Do not hold your peace. Do not be still, O God. For behold, your enemies make a tumult. Those who hate you, speaking to God, have lifted up their head. They have taken crafty counsel against your people. So what would that refer to? Especially as you look at this gathering of peoples, and I've seen in commentaries where they're kind of puzzled. They're saying, we've never in history, in history, we cannot find a time when this grouping of people came together.

Therefore, it must be for the future. Your people, if it is the time of the end, who else could that be but the end-time descendants physically of Abraham, the people of Israel, and consulted together against your sheltered ones.

Now, that is a verse that through back through the decades in the Church of God, we've looked at, you know, we don't talk so much about place of safety anymore. We've got too many pieces of the puzzle missing, too many things we don't know, but there are things we do know. But we used to look at this and wonder, well, is that referring to this grouping of people going against the end-time descendants of Abraham plus the Church of God?

And we can't rule that out. Verse 4, they have said, Come and let us cut them off from being a nation that the name of Israel may be remembered no more. That's the glue that binds them together. They want to destroy the people of Israel. For they have consulted together with one consent. They form a confederacy against you. And then notice the tense of Edom. Well, Edom, that was Esau. That's the blood brother of Jacob. But the promise, the birthright, didn't go to Esau.

It went to Jacob. And you know from Genesis the animosity that was there and how the Edomites, the Esalites, basically became aligned with some of these other peoples like descendants of Ishmael. Now, where are the Edomites today? Well, we used to say they're in Turkey, but probably scattered through a lot of areas of this Middle Eastern area. And the Ishmaelites.

We know Ishmael, again, son of Abraham, but through Hagar. Moab, son of Lot, through one of his daughters. And the Hagrites, apparently descendants of Hagar. Gebal, an Ammon, Moab, an Ammon, another son of Lot, through a daughter. And Amalek, the Amalekites, rather, they crop up here and there. And there was a time when God told Israel to kill every last one of them, and they didn't do it. They're still here. They'll come back to bite us.

Phyllisia, with the inhabitants of Tyra, Syria, has joined together with them. They've helped the children of Lot. Goes on mentioning, deal with them as with Midian, Cicerah, Jabin, broke cash on some of his times when historically mentioning judges, when God has come and intervened for his people and delivered them. Verse 12, who said, let us take for ourselves the pastors of God for a possession. But you know, throughout all of this, one thing we do know, God is sovereign. God has a plan. That plan is precisely, exactly on time. And all of this has happened and will continue to happen all the way up to the time when the feet of Christ stand on the Mount of Olives, so that, verse 18 can be fulfilled, that they may know that you, whose name alone is the Lord, are the most high over the earth. So we look at the world seen today, and specifically this Middle Eastern area. Wait a minute, I promised I'd show you a picture of a fine-looking man here. There's his picture. Abu Bakr, al-Baghdadi, the one who proclaimed a caliphate. Let's look at this map. Muslim population percentage by country.

The key down here, kind of that olive green, that darker green, that's the 80 to 100 percent.

All of these areas here, 80 to 100 percent, including Somalia there. Then we have the next band, 50 to 80. And notice France, Belgium, Netherlands.

And notice some of these areas up above, let's see, I'd be, I think a lot of your stands. Turkmenistan, Krizikistan, up there. And Indonesia, Malaysia. Indonesia has the highest Muslim population of any country in the world, just because of the sheer numbers down in that country. There are more Muslims in Indonesia than several countries in the Middle East.

10 to 50, thankfully we're still on the 1 to 10 percent. And Russia, China, of course you've got some like Australia, parts of southern Africa, parts of a good part of South America, Canada.

They don't even make the scale. There are so few. But they walk among us. They're here. And there is a phenomenal appeal because you're having from western countries, including our own peoples flocking to this Islamic state, wanting to get in on the ground floor.

If you stand here and we look, won't be long, we'll cross into 2015 by the Roman calendar.

What is all this for 10? The latest Good News magazine, if you don't get that, you need to get that one. I just got it the other day, just read two or three articles. Cover article, is America's all... what is the title? America's war on God. Thank you, Truman. America's war on God. Anything to do with God, church, Bible, morality, absolute values, America, there's an all-out war. You can't have the Bible in the classroom, but you can have the Koran. I mean, we're heading that way fast. It wasn't that long ago, just before we took off on our trip for the feast, we were flying through Houston. It wasn't that long ago that that mayor was calling for church pastors to turn in, turn themselves in, and messages they may have given that were politically incorrect, because maybe they were against things like homosexuality, etc. Well, thankfully, there was a hue and cry, and she's had to back up from that.

We will watch that in this country. We will watch for a continued power vacuum here, because we are the world's lone superpower still, but we're not leading, as we have for so many decades.

We will watch for a king of the south. Somewhere down here, we will watch for a king of the north. Somewhere up here in Europe. We will keep our eyes on the Roman Church. I've seen more than one news articles where the Pope himself and others from the Vatican have called strongly for the fact that there need to be boots on the ground in Iraq and Syria to stop the Islamic State. They know where it's going. They know where they have their sites set. Let's close over in Zechariah 12.

Find Matthew and back up a couple of books. Zechariah is not that hard to find. Zechariah 12. Let's read verses 2 and 3. This is where it's headed. After that, the kingdom of God. But verse 2, Behold, I will make Jerusalem a cup of drunkenness to all the surrounding peoples when they lay siege against Judah and Jerusalem. And it shall happen in that day that I will make Jerusalem a very heavy stone for all peoples. All who would heave it away will surely be cut in pieces, though all nations of the earth are gathered against it. There is an old saying I've heard many times, and I wish I knew the exact quote and who it's from, but it's something to the effect that whom heaven would destroy, it first tempts to fix the Middle East crisis.

And there's a lot of truth to that because no human being can do that.

It's going to take the feet of Jesus Christ standing on that Mount of Olives.

The Plain Truth magazine started, if I'm correct, it was February 1934. Does anyone remember differently? It's real close. I have a photocopy at home of page one. It is a world dictator about to appear. I found the quote scrolling through, this is about four years later, December 38.

December 38. Now remember, we've just got things in Europe about to erupt. We're not into World War II yet. But Mr. Herbert Armstrong warned the readers of the Plain Truth at that time. Watched the Middle East. He quoted this scripture and he wrote, In due time, all nations of the world will be fighting over possession of Palestine, as it was called then, Palestine and the city of Jerusalem. Bible prophecy paints a bleak picture from here to the time of the end. We keep our eyes on the Middle East. We keep our eyes on Jerusalem, on Israel, on Europe, on the Roman Church.

And we keep our eyes on our own country, because the day comes we have to no longer be a factor. And we keep our eyes on, well, so many things. So let us pray as Jesus taught us, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done.