It is August. Things are heating up around the world this summer, both climatically and climactically. My friend, Bryan Mistele, has followed world events and connected them to Biblical prophecy about as articulately as anyone I know. Bryan is a follower of Jesus, devoted to his family, and the co-founder/President/CEO of INRIX, the leading global provider of traffic information and driver services.
Read on about what has happened just since the beginning of the year to the countries that play starring roles in God’s prophetic story:
• Israel: In the last six months, the attempt at peace negotiations led U.S. failed and last month, the Palestinian Authority aligned itself with Hamas – a recognized terrorist organization committed to Israel’s destruction. The U.S. announced it will continue to send half-a-
billion dollars to this group every year to support its activities. This week after three teens were found murdered in the Gaza strip, violence erupted which is further escalating tensions in the region.
• Syria: The brutal civil war within Syria took a turn for the worse as ISIS (a terrorist organization so radical that even al Qaeda has denounced it) took over large parts of Syria and Iraq. ISIS renamed itself “The Islamic State” and declared the restoration of the “caliphate” in territory they seized in both Syria and Iraq, and ordered the world’s Muslims to obey its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi who was declared Caliph of the new state and the successor to Muhammad. This “new State” is larger than the U.K. Sharia law was declared, and ISIS demanded that all jihadist organizations must now offer up their support to ISIS leader. It’s worth noting that ISIS is incredibly well funded ($500M seized from the Mosul Bank) and well equipped with US arms & equipment seized from Iraqi forces, so they well positioned to make a bigger impact moving forward.
• Iraq: After the U.S. pulled all of its troops out of Iraq and declared the “war was over”, ISIS proceeded to take over large parts of Northern and Western Iraq including Mosul, Tikrit, Fallujah and a dozen other cities. ISIS is now at the doorstep of Baghdad, which has many in Baghdad worried. The U.S. announced it would put a total of about 470 troops back into Iraq to try and protect just its embassy. The U.S. has stated it would like to see an end to the Al-Maliki regime, and most believe the government will fall in the near future. To counter this, Al-Maliki has now aligned itself with Iran and is now receiving support from them – including arms and fighter jets received this week, so Iraq has turned from an ally of the U.S. to an ally of Iran.
• Iran: Nuclear talks between Iran and the UN are in a final, critical stage with a deadline of July 20th to conclude negotiations. However, ISIS (a Sunni organization) is a threat to Iran’s own visions of a Shia-based Caliphate. Iran’s foreign minister declared that it “will not abandon or give up its technological or scientific advances. In addition it would not be prudent … to expect us to do otherwise”. Most believe the nuclear talks will end without an agreement and that Iran’s possession of nuclear weapons is inevitable at this point.
• Turkey: Once the region’s only secular state and ally of the United States, the country has become more divided and a pending election promises to shift the country away from secularism and further toward an Islamic state. ISIS also views Turkey as a key centerpiece of its expansion plans alongside Jordan, Palestine, Israel and Lebanon.
• Russia: Russia, sensing the U.S. would do nothing, invaded the Ukraine and took over Crimea – a major land mass on the Northern coast of the black sea. Russia deployed more than 40,000 troops and is now poised to take over larger parts of the Ukraine. This represents the first time since World War II that Russia has expanded its borders and certainly signals an end to the “reset” in U.S.-Russian relations declared six years ago and a renewed desire by Putin to try and restore some of the former Soviet Union.
• China: China, sensing the U.S. would do nothing, has been increasingly aggressive in the South China Sea – declaring expanded borders that extend its territorial claims to pretty much all of Southeast Asia including islands and territories currently claimed by Japan, Taiwan, Malaysia, Vietnam and the Philippines.
• Niger: While the kidnapping of 200 schoolgirls by Boku Haram caught the attention of the world, less reported is what Boku Haram actually demanding – namely, Boku Haram (an al Qaeda-affiliated organization) wants the establishment of an Islamic Caliphate in Africa.
• Brunei: Brunei became the first Asian country to adopt Sharia law. Amnesty International stated that doing so would take Brunei “back to the dark ages”.
This list could go on and on – there are many more countries I could talk about, and it would be also interesting to discuss the increasing persecution of Jews around the world (including in the Ukraine, across Europe and in Africa), the increasing persecution of Christians around the world (including in Africa, where the majority of the 200 schoolgirls were Christian and forced to convert to Islam) as well as the return of many deadly diseases once though wiped out – such as polio, TB, the Plague and Typhoid), but let me stop here and try and draw some conclusions.
First, with the exception of Brunei, all of the countries listed above are specifically mentioned in the Bible(1) as characters in God’s prophetic story which unfolds during the end times and there are dramatic changes happening in all of these countries. Whether it’s the attempt by Sunni’s or Shiites to establish an Islamic caliphate or countries like Russia and China getting more aggressive in their territorial ambitions, it’s clear that the beginning of the 21st century will be marked by more wars and violence, not less. In fact, it’s worth pointing out that Saturday was the 100-year anniversary of the start of World War I – the first time that a war impacted the whole world, rather than just a couple of countries. 2014 is starting to look pretty similar to 1914, and I’m not sure we’ve learned any lessons in that time.
Second, we should not forget that each of the conflicts mentioned above impacts real people. Whether it’s the capture of the 200 schoolgirls (163 of which were Christian), the slaughter of Christians and Shiites in the ISIS controlled territories of Iraq and Syria, or even the woman I had lunch with this week who joined the Company I work at from the Ukraine with a Ukrainian passport and doesn’t know when her visa expires whether she’ll be forced to return to what is now part of Russia and become a Russian citizen – millions upon millions of people are being impacted by the turmoil around the world. They need our earnest prayer above all things.
Third, I think it’s naïve to think that the U.S. can solve all these problems. It’s quite clear (for better or worse), that the U.S. is increasingly becoming isolationist after the long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and will not be a major player on the world stage in the near term. Interestingly enough, many have asked me what role America plays in the end times, and my response is always “we’re not even mentioned”. As the news reports are written about the increasing conflicts above, this is probably an accurate description of our role.
Finally, it’s quite clear that events are marching forward on God’s prophetic timeline. I can’t help but feel that we’re getting closer than we’ve ever been to the next major event on God’s timeline (which, as I’ve written about before, is a major war in the Middle East centered on Israel and the Arab countries). The idea that World War II was “the war to end all wars” and that the United Nations would bring any sort of stability or peace the world is genuinely laughable at this point.
I’m not smart enough to make any sort of predictions about when this will occur (I’ll leave that to Joel Rosenberg who’s recent fiction book accurately predicted the rise of an Islamic caliphate and centered around the events now happening in Iran, Iraq and Syria), but I am confident that the events that are now unfolding are setting the stage for the beginning of God’s final plan. It’s exciting to see how God’s hand is transforming the world to prepare for Christ’s ultimate return!
Something to consider….
Bryan Mistele
Notes:
1. The countries listed are descended from the nations of Gog, Magog, Meshech, Tubal, Persia, Cush, Put, Gomer, and Beth Togarmah listed in Ezekiel 38:1-6. A full description of the history of these nations and how they became the modern-day nations listed above are beyond the scope of this letter. For a complete analysis, however, see Hal Lindsey, The Late Great Planet Earth, chapter 5 or Hal Lindsey, Planet Earth: The Final Chapter, 175-176.
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