Daniel’s Amazing Prophecies About Our Day/Program 1

By: Dr. Jimmy DeYoung; ©2010

Daniel predicted coming world governments centuries before they came about. In light of that, what can we say about the things he prophecies that have not yet happened – like the nations that will align and come against Israel in the future?

Contents

Introduction

Announcer: Today, one out of every four Christian adults believes Jesus could return in their lifetime. The Old Testament prophet Daniel gives us the skeletal outline of all future Bible prophecy and is the key to understanding the book of Revelation. Jesus Christ himself quoted from Daniel, assuring us of its truths. This book contains Daniel’s predictions of four world empires that will rise and fall, his predictions of a final world empire that will be led by a new and powerful global leader, and his warning of an alignment of nations that will come against the nation of Israel in the last days.

Where do we find ourselves in the events Daniel describes? How do Daniel’s prophecies fit into such events as the rapture, the tribulation, the battle of Armageddon, and the second coming of Christ? Today we will take you step-by-step through the book of Daniel to help you understand its message and the events God foretells are up ahead. My guest is journalist and prophecy scholar Dr. Jimmy DeYoung, who has lived and reported from Jerusalem since 1991 and has interviewed every Israeli prime minister over the last 15 years. Join us for this special edition of The John Ankerberg Show.

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John Ankerberg: Welcome to our program. What a great program we have for you today. Let me start by asking, what if I could prove to you that the God of the universe has given information to somebody and they’ve written it in a book, and it’s talking about the future, even about events in our day? You say, I don’t believe it. That’s the problem you have when you are face to face with the prophet of the Old Testament called Daniel. And we’re taking you through the chapters in the book of Daniel to show you that the only way that you can get around this guy is, you’ve got to say he didn’t live in the sixth century, he didn’t write it then, he had to write it after the fact, down about 168 BC. The problem is, all the archeological evidence, all the linguistic evidence, all of the cultural evidence goes against you. And you’ve got to put him there. And even if you put him 168, Daniel doesn’t; he’s giving prophecies that are beyond that, of nations that weren’t even in existence at 168. So you’re stuck either way.

What we really want to fasten on are some of those amazing prophecies, predictions, that Daniel made that do affect us. My guest today is prophecy scholar, Dr. Jimmy DeYoung. He’s lived in Jerusalem since 1991. He’s known every one of the prime ministers during time, he’s interviewed them; he knows the political leaders; he knows the religious leaders. He knows his Bible backwards and forwards.

And, Jimmy, today for people that have joined us just for the first time, we’ve got three white pillars out here, that actually stand for the outline for the book of Revelation, key events that you can surround all the chapters, and we’re going to take them through that. And you’ve also got four brown ones up here that are the four main prophetic passages in the book of Daniel, the 12 chapters that are there. And we really want to talk about these prophecies. How would you advise some of my Christian businessmen and women that have Bible study groups and they’re bringing their neighbors, they want to give this information to people, how can they even make these people think seriously that Daniel got information from God about our future?

Jimmy DeYoung: Well, because of the fact, John, he wrote down, as you’ve already indicated, the events that were going to happen, and he did it many years before. In a previous program, we talked about Daniel chapter 11. Well, when you look at Daniel chapter 11, in the second verse it talks about King Ahasuerus, who will be the fourth Persian king, richer than all the kings put together before him. There’s no way to get around it; that happened in history. Daniel wrote about it 59 years before King Ahasuerus ever came on the scene. He talked about Alexander the Great in chapter 11 verses 3 and 4, a man who would come to power very quickly. At the point of 32 years of age he would be killed and his kingdom divided into four parts. This happened 200 years before Alexander ever appeared on the scene. Daniel wrote about it before it ever happened. And I could go on and on throughout the book of Daniel to help us understand some of these prophecies.

In chapter 2… and these four pillars here represent the four major prophetic passages in the book of Daniel. There are 12 chapters all together, some of them are practical, some of them are historic, but these four are very prophetic. You have the second chapter where he talks about a world empire coming into existence. Now, we have referred to it in the past as the Revived Roman Empire. In chapter 2 he deals with that, and he says it will follow four previous Gentile world powers. Look at history. Just read any history book: you have the Babylonian Empire, the Medo-Persian Empire, the Grecian Empire and the Roman Empire, having already been in existence in the past. That’s what Daniel describes in chapter 2. And then he talks about ten toes of iron and clay. Well, that happens to be the prophecy yet to be fulfilled, which will be the Revived Roman Empire.

Here in chapter 7, he talks about a little horn coming out of ten horns. Now, the ten horns in chapter 7 verse 7, and the little horn in chapter 7 verse 8. To define that – and people can look back at previous programs we’ve done to see all about chapter 7 – but, in essence, again, he introduces those four Gentile world powers: the Babylonian, Medo-Persian, Grecian and Roman Empire. And then those ten horns are on the Roman Empire, indicated later in the passage, verse 24, that will be a kingdom yet to come into existence. And we see the infrastructure for it in place right now. The little horn would be the Antichrist. Jesus Christ talked about the Antichrist. He said that deception will be the major indicator that the Antichrist is about to appear. In His Olivet discourse, He says in verses 4, 5, 11, and 24 that deception will lead the way. We have all types of deception on the world scene today. But he talks about how this deception will be communicated through signs, wonders and miracles. Now, do I believe that Jesus cannot perform a miracle? No, Jesus can do whatever He wants to do. I don’t tell Jesus what He does. I simply report to you what He says, and He says signs, wonders and miracles will be an indicator of the Antichrist coming on the scene. Well, we have a proliferation, as I said, of those signs, wonders and miracles. I believe the Antichrist is alive and well on planet earth, about to appear.

We talked about what’s going to take place in the terrible Tribulation period of time, the seven years between the rapture of the church and the second coming of Christ: the tyrant, the treaty and the temple. Well, everybody’s talking about a Middle East Peace Treaty. And you have, of course, the tyrant, I said, the Antichrist on the scene. And the temple, well, everybody knows that the Jewish people in Israel are preparing to build the temple. In fact, even the Muslim world believes that the Jews are about to build the temple, because once in a while you’ll hear stories coming out of the Islamic world, that those Jews are trying to take over the Temple Mount and build the temple. That’s an indicator that they believe it’s close at hand as well.

And then chapter 11 is the alignment of the nations. And when you realize that, as we look at the news reported today, there are a group of nations that are aligning themselves against the Jewish State. Now, John, I don’t think that any skeptic can look at all of these things predicted in the book of Daniel and say, wait a minute, nothing to it. I believe they have to investigate, look into what the book of Daniel’s talking about. And, of course, when you read the book of Revelation, these four chapters in Daniel, chapters 2, 7, 9, and 11, are only pinpointing on that seven year Tribulation period which John the revelator wrote 16 chapters detailing what’s going to happen there. Everything we see is indicative of the fact the stage is set, the actors are in place, the curtain is about is about to go up. Somebody has to just say, I’m not going to accept anything as it relates to history or prophecy. I’m just going to ignore it all, to not really believe that we’re living in the days that both the prophets talked about.

Ankerberg: Alright, Jimmy, take what you just said and let’s bring it over to the book of Revelation. People that have just joined us this week, you got three pillars up here, the main points for the book of Revelation. You’re putting all the chapters around these. What are these?

DeYoung: Well, the one to the left of their screen, the first of the smaller pillars, would be the rapture of the church. It’s the next main event in God’s calendar of activities. And actually, John, there’s not one prophecy in the word of God, from the 17 Old Testament prophetic books, from the book of Revelation itself, there’s not one prophecy that has to be fulfilled before the rapture of the church takes place. Every prophecy that we’ll talk about from the book of Daniel, from the book of Revelation, is fulfilled after the rapture of the church. In Revelation 4:1, John hears as it were, a trumpet talking with him. That’s apocalyptic literature using a symbol to communicate an absolute truth. And when you go back to 1 Thessalonians chapter 4 verses 13-18, there’s going to be a sound of a trumpet that calls us up to be with Him. 1 Corinthians chapter 15 verses 51-53 talks about, “in the moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump,” we’re caught up to be with Him. That’s the rapture of the church. That’s chapter 4 verse 1.

The next 16 chapters would be the space between the first pillar and the second pillar and that’s the seven year Tribulation period, 16 chapters, detailed information about that period in time. And these four pillars in the book of Daniel, which represent chapters 2, 7, 9 and 11, gives us more detailed information about the Tribulation period.

The middle pillar there is representing the second coming of Christ, Revelation chapter 19 verse 11 and following, deals with Jesus getting on a white horse and coming back, as Zechariah the prophet says, to the Mount of Olives in the city of Jerusalem, touching down there, His second coming. Then the space between the second and the third pillar would be the 1000 year millennial kingdom, when Jesus Christ will rule and reign from a temple that will stand on the Temple Mount in the city of Jerusalem, a temple, that He Himself builds. And then, of course, the Great White Throne Judgment, a terrible time of retribution and all of those who’ve rejected Jesus Christ will be cast into the lake of fire, which is the second death. And after that, new heavens, new earth and new Jerusalem. So, that’s the walk through Revelation, basically, using those three pillars and the three significant events in the book of Revelation.

Ankerberg: Alright, now let’s go back to the question I asked you at the top. The fact is, how do you introduce this to a skeptic? Well, you can show the linguistic arguments; you can show the archaeological arguments; you can say, if Daniel lived here in the sixth century and all of this stuff followed, you’re a hung duck. Boy, I mean, you’ve got evidence on the table. But there’s something else, and you’re the only guest I think that I can do this with, okay. And I haven’t even told you about this, so this is going to be a surprise to you. But let’s take a break, and when we come back, I want Jimmy to take us around the nations that are surrounding Israel today. You have lived in Jerusalem since 1991; you’ve lived there as a correspondent, and a journalist; you’ve covered all the major new events; you know the political leaders; you know the religious leaders; and you have traveled in the Middle East. Alright, you’re the only one that can do this, I want you to tell us what you see when you live in Jerusalem, when you live there and you travel around Israel, what is the tension that you feel in Israel? Because there’s the ring of truth to the news when you compare it to the Bible, okay? Folks, you will not want to miss this. Stick with us, we’ll be right back.

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Ankerberg: Alright, we’re back. We’re talking with Dr. Jimmy DeYoung, who’s lived in Jerusalem since 1991. And, Jimmy, we’ve been talking about the outline for the book of Daniel and the outline for the book of Revelation. And we are talking about the prophecies that these have made. God has given them information about the future, about our time. And one of the things, the fourth pillar, here in Daniel chapter 11, is the thing is the alignment of nations that are going to come against Israel in the last days. We find it also in the book of Revelation; we can find it in the book of Ezekiel. And you have a perspective that very few people I know have; and that is, you’ve lived there. You know what’s going on right now. And the information you’re going to give right now, realize we’re going into 187 nations of the world, okay, so they’re all listening. So you got primetime in Europe and across Saudi Arabia and down into Egypt. And we’re going to talk about those spots. But, talk about it in terms of what you are actually seeing. Cover it as a news correspondent, would you.

DeYoung: John, I’d have to start with those nations that are on the borders of the State of Israel today. From top to bottom of the State of Israel, just a bit more than 300 miles. Let’s start in the south. You have Egypt. Egypt, a very old Gentile nation dating back thousands of years, has now moved to a position where they’ve had one president for a number of years. Over 30 years, Hosni Mubarak has been the president. Now, we talked in previous programs about the fact that a peace treaty needs to be confirmed. And the first peace treaty that Israel ever signed was with Egypt, when Anwar Sadat was the president. He was assassinated because of that peace treaty. And then Hosni Mubarak comes to power. Why that peace treaty has never been normalized is Hosni Mubarak has never come to visit Israel. There has not been any diplomatic relations between the two countries. But I believe Hosni Mubarak is probably doing that on purpose. He’s in trouble. The Islamic Brotherhood, which is basically the father of all the Islamic terrorist organizations in the world, they are a major power in Egypt. They would like to overthrow Hosni Mubarak and come to power and make Egypt an Islamic Republic like Iran is. They would be ruled then by the sharia law. The Islamic law would be the law of the land.

Ankerberg: Jimmy, tell me some of the leaders that have actually come out of the Egyptian Brotherhood.

DeYoung: Well, you have, of course, the number two in al Qaeda under Osama bin Laden. He was one of the men involved in the assassination of President Anwar Sadat. You have Sheik Yassin, who came out of the Islamic Brotherhood. He founded a mosque in the Gaza Strip. He was the blind cleric that was assassinated by the Israeli government. Yasser Arafat, though people try to say he was born in Jerusalem, he was actually born in Cairo, Egypt, and trained up through some of the leaders in the Islamic Brotherhood.

But these are major leaders that have come out of the Islamic Brotherhood, located in Egypt, and they have been the one, the terrorists, that have attacked those Jewish people in the State of Israel, trying to wipe Israel off the face of the earth.

You come then north, up the eastern shore of the State of Israel, up through the Arabah, the valley that is the extension of the Jordan Valley. And you have Jordan, with the longest border of any of the nations surrounding Israel. To some extent, King Abdullah of Jordan is a peacemaker like his father, the late King Hussein. But, indeed, he has some problems because there is an Islamic element that’s forming in Jordan. Remember King Abdullah is not a Palestinian. He’s a Hashemite, located in Saudi Arabia today. In fact, his great grandfather was the Sharif of Mecca and Medina, the governor of those two very sacred Islamic cities. But there is that element there in Jordan that would like to overthrow him. Eighty percent of the population of Jordan is Palestinian. He’s not, remember, a Palestinian. They would like to overthrow him. And many have even said that’s probably the Palestinian State, instead of the one they would like to set up in Israel.

Going a bit north from that, you have Syria. Bashar Assad, following in the footsteps of his father, Hafez al-Assad, who was the number one dictator in the Middle East in the Arab countries until he died. Bashar Assad has made association with men like President Ahmadinejad of Iran. We’re talking about some of the Islamic leaders that are ruling, for example, Hamas. Mishaal, who was the exiled leader of Hamas, located in the city of Damascus. I do believe that in the city of Damascus, there are 11 Islamic fundamentalist terrorist organizations headquartered. There’s been a connection between Syria and what’s going on, the insurgency located there in Iraq, and the supply of those items needed to overthrow the Iraqi government. You have all the munitions, the monies, the manpower, coming out of Iran, going through Damascus, across the Bekáa Valley, up into southern Lebanon and Hezbollah, which would be in southern Lebanon. So, Syria’s playing a key role in the Middle East. Though they’re talking about peace, they’re really ready to go to war.

And of course, you’ve got Lebanon. I mentioned Hezbollah. You have at Israel’s southern border, Hamas; at their northern border, Hezbollah. Hezbollah, they are not Lebanese people; they are a part of the Revolutionary Guard sent into Lebanon for the purpose of wiping out Israel, by the late Ayatollah Khomeini, who established, basically, over 40 years ago, the Islamic Republic in what we know today as Iran. And the Islamic Republic, that is supplying all of the munitions, the monies, the man-power, the training of the terrorists around the world. That’s just the nations surrounding the State of Israel.

Ankerberg: Yeah.

DeYoung: And we can expand from there.

Ankerberg: And I saw last night on the news when Benjamin Netanyahu was with the president of Russia, as well as with Putin, that in the news conference he said, you know what, fellows, we used to have just 6,000 rockets when we had the war with the Hezbollah up there. But now, after we’ve had peace for a couple of years, the fact is, now we’ve got 60,000 rockets on our border – 60,000 rockets on the Israeli border. And, Jimmy, you and I, we drove out there in an afternoon, so I’m talking about being close. Alright, that’s a lot of rockets to be on your border up there. Keep going.

DeYoung: Well, indeed, those rockets are focused on the State of Israel. During the war between the Israeli Defense Force and Hezbollah out of Southern Lebanon, back in 2006, they fired many of those rockets, coming as far south as Haifa and across the Galilee into Tiberius, etc. Now they are claiming they have rocket power that can reach into Tel Aviv and into the northern sections of modern-day Jerusalem. So, these are major enemies.

When you stretch out from there, you go over to Turkey. Here’s a country where Islam, basically, stopped its movement to the West. Now, they have a leader, who is basically a radical Islamic leader. His name is Tayyip Erdogan. He is the prime minister of Turkey, and his president, Abdullah Gül, is also a compatriot of his, both of them Islamic fundamentalist leaders who would like to see Turkey as the pan-Islamic leader of the world. They want to do that. And, of course, they have now, associations and are going to be nuclear powered from Russia, from Iran. The relationship between Tayyip Erdogan and the President of Iran, Ahmadinejad, very, very close, as they continue to try to say they’re negotiating between the Israelis and the Syrians to establish peace. They have, of course, Iran, with Ahmadinejad and the Ayatollah Ali Khomeini, who has said Israel must be wiped off the face of the earth.

You continue around, you see the other nations. Afghanistan, Pakistan, it’ll be a part of that coalition going into Northern Africa. You have there Ethiopia, Somalia, Sudan. All of these nations aligning themselves with what is going to be a move by this group of nations, this alignment, this coalition, to come in and try to wipe out the Jewish State of Israel.

Ankerberg: Yeah, Jimmy, the reason I wanted people to hear that is because when you hear it, you have to say, yeah that’s true, okay. And, oh, by the way, the biblical prophets are talking about that group of nations, and its happening now, okay. And it’s only going to get worse, according to the prophet Daniel and what we’re hearing in the book of Revelation. What’s the hope in all of this, Jimmy?

DeYoung: The hope is that the return of Jesus Christ for the rapture of the church is close at hand; because this alignment of nations will not make their move against Israel until after the rapture has left this place. That should encourage us to be eagerly anticipating the soon return of Jesus Christ, when He takes us out of this world into the heavenlies with Him. But it also should encourage us to go out and use these people, who are skeptics, as it relates to Bible prophecy being fulfilled into the near future. Show them what we’ve talked about. Your first question was, how can we talk to those skeptics about what Bible prophecy has to say and help them to realize they’d better be paying attention? We need to do that, we need to use this vehicle to try to win them to Jesus Christ, or encourage them in their own Christian life.

Ankerberg: Alright, next week we’re going to take this a step further. This is just a news correspondent, basically, covering the Middle East. But we actually went into Israel and we actually interviewed the political leaders, including Benjamin Netanyahu himself. And next week we’re going to show you segments of our interviews with those folks, and you’re going to be able to hear it. And, we actually have, with the key spokesman for the Palestinians, as well, one of the relations to Yasser Arafat. And so it’s going to be a very interesting program. And I hope that you’ll join us as we continue to walk through the book of Daniel and we walk through the book of Revelation.

Read Part 7