Russia Tightens its Grip in Ukraine and Bible Prophecy

When Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon had a dream of a great metallic image, he was so troubled that he threatened to have all of his magicians dissected if they were unable to reveal his dream and its interpretation. The prophet Daniel, however, revealed that the dream signified “what shall be in the latter days” (Dan 2v28).

Hello this is Nick Barnes, with this week’s Bible in the News.

Daniel explained that the interpretation ran chronologically from the Babylonian head of gold, through Medo-Persian breast and arms, Greek belly and thighs, Roman legs, and on to the feet and toes, in whose days “shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed: and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand for ever.” (Dan 2v44)

The legs of iron, to which the feet were attached, signified the Eastern and Western Roman Empires, whose stamp is clearly seen in modern Europe.  And the characteristics, of these two divergent powers, is developed in Daniel chapters 7 & 8.

Daniel 7 shows four beasts, again chronologically representing the four great empires of Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece and Rome.  Out of the fourth, and most terrible beast (the Roman Empire), grows a horn who makes “war with the saints, and prevailed against them; Until the Ancient of days came, and judgment was given to the saints of the most High; and the time came that the saints possessed the kingdom.” (Dan 7:21-22)

This horn symbolised a political power, with a religious aspect (the eyes and mouth), which developed in the west.  It was forged by a Germanic king (Charlemagne) of a Germanic Tribe (the Franks) and its seat was in a German city (Aachen).  Yet it became known as the Holy Roman Empire and its king was entitled Roman Emperor and was styled Kaiser, or Caesar.

And this horn power continues beyond Charlemagne’s First Reich, through Bismarck’s Second Reich and Hitler’s Third Reich, right down to today, where we see a resurgent Germany, again increasingly dominating Western Europe.

And Western Europe shows its Latin ancestry, in its Roman “Christian” religion, its Latin alphabet, its history of Latin based education, and its many languages derived from Latin.  This Latin aspect is signified by the fact that the horn grew out of the Roman beast.

However, if we want to learn how Russia fits into this story, we need to go to Daniel 8.  Here Gabriel explicitly identifies the Medo-Persian Empire and the Greek Empire as the ram and goat respectively, in v20-21.  Greek dominion will be established by a first and great king, we are told, and then be broken into four, lesser powers (v22), seen as four horns (v8).

To this point, the symbology and interpretation almost exactly parallels Daniel 7’s bear and leopard.  However, when we look for the Roman Empire, in Dan 8, we find no equivalent beast to represent it.  Instead we find only a little horn growing out of one of the goat’s four horns, which we are told is “a king of fierce countenance, and understanding dark sentences” who stands up “in the latter time of their [the four horns’] kingdom”.

This horn, from a horn, from the goat, might initially seem unsatisfying and maybe inappropriate, as a symbol for the mighty Roman Dominion.  However, it is not an omission, but is instead the key to understanding the chapter properly.

We are told that this little horn “waxed exceeding great, toward the south, and toward the east, and toward the pleasant land” (v9), but no mention is made of westerly expansion.  This is the clue which explains the riddle.  The little horn is not the Roman Empire per se; it is the Roman Empire as it develops in the East.

That is why Rome, in Dan 8, is symbolised as a power emerging from the Greek goat.  The Roman Empire in the East, and later the Eastern Roman (or Byzantine) Empire developed a Greek character.  Its language (as we know from the New Testament) was Greek, its education and its philosophy was Greek, its religion was Greek, and its alphabet was Greek – and down to today, Eastern Europe bears this mark, with Greek influenced languages and an alphabet derived from the Greek.

So while Dan 7 shows us how, in the latter days, the Roman Empire would develop a Latin aspect in the West, Dan 8 shows us how the Roman Empire would develop a Greek aspect in the East.  And as the little horn of Dan 7 is to “prevail… until the Ancient of days came, and judgment was given to the saints of the most High; and the time came that the saints possessed the kingdom” (Dan 7v21-22), so the little horn of Dan 8 is to “stand up against the Prince of princes; but he shall be broken without hand” (Dan 8v25).

Who then is this power, still existing in our day, which is derived from the Graeco-Eastern Roman Empire?  In 1453, the Eastern Roman or Byzantine Empire expired at the hands of the Ottoman Turks.  Its courtiers fled to Moscow, and Sophia Palaiologos, the niece of the last Byzantine emperor Constantine XI, married Ivan III of Moscow.  He thus claimed to be successor to the emperor and inheritor of the imperial throne, and so took the title of Czar (or Caesar).  And as Constantinople had been the 2nd capital of the Roman Empire and was known as the 2nd Rome, now Moscow became the 3rd Rome (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_III_of_Russia#Domestic_policy)

This king, Dan 8v23 tells us, will be “a king of fierce countenance, and understanding dark sentences”; and v25 adds “he shall also stand up against the Prince of princes; but he shall be broken without hand”.

This destruction “without hand”, connects back to the prophecy of Dan 2, where the great metallic image was destroyed by a stone “cut out without hands”.  And in Dan 2 we find a clue pointing to a 2nd layer in the symbology.  Not only does the chapter have a straightforward chronological interpretation, as mentioned earlier, it also reveals the great confederacy of nations that will combine to crush Israel.

Daniel 2v35 explicitly states that “the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver, and the gold, [were] broken to pieces together”.  This must mean that, in some sense, the ancient empires will exist again in the latter days, so that they can be broken in pieces together.  So when Christ and his saints advance to Jerusalem, to fight the battle of Armageddon, against them will stand a great confederacy, of all the nations represented in the metallic image.

This assembly will be made up of the nations on the territory of the Babylonian, Medo-Persian, Greek and Roman Empires, but also the Germanic Carolingian and Holy Roman Empires and the Russian Empire.  This host will involve nations from Lisbon to Vladivostok and from St Petersburg to Addis Ababa.

This is that “company” assembled by the “prince of Rosh, Meshech and Tubal” (Eze 38v2 NKJV), and forged from nations of both East and West Europe and also from North Africa and the Middle East, as listed in Eze 38v2, 5 & 6.

The writer John Thomas, in 1854 entitled his exposition of Daniel, “Russia Triumphant, Europe Chained”.  Today we see Russia re-establishing its authority in Eastern and Central Europe, and also in the Caucasus and further east in Central Asia.  Even in Western Europe, Russian exports of oil and gas, and imports of manufactured goods, have brought about close relationships, particularly with Germany.  This is seen in the present crisis over the Ukraine, where continental Europeans are far more reserved in their condemnations and threats than is the US.

The reality is that Russian policy, in the Putin era, is successfully seeking to alienate the United States from its European allies.  In the Cold War (less than thirty years ago) most western Europeans saw Russia as the enemy and the US as their bulwark against oppression.  Today many Europeans feel closer and more sympathetic to Russian views and needs, than to the United States.  And in former Warsaw Pact countries, Russia is teaching its recalcitrant neighbours that American promises count for nothing.  We can easily see that, when Russia leads its host down to the mountains of Israel, there will be nothing more than an ineffectual protest “art thou come to take a spoil” (Eze 38v13).

As we consider the Ukrainian crisis, we see Russia gently flexing its muscles.  As their foreign minister Sergey Lavrov says, Russia does not want war.  What it wants is a restoration of its power at a low cost.  It is calculating that within a year or two of its annexation of Crimea – and that now looks like a done deal – and maybe even the invasion of other parts of eastern Ukraine – and that is looking increasingly likely – it will be back to business as usual, as it was after Georgia, after Litvinenko and after Chechenya.

And while we may feel that the formation of the Gogian Host is still some way off, this is no reason to think that the return of the Lord Jesus is not imminent.  We expect to see Russian resurgence continuing up to, and beyond, the return of Christ.  Russian machinations will continue, maybe for years after that, while the saints, having been raised and gathered, are judged and prepared for the task ahead.  And when Russia finally leads its forces into the pleasant land, Christ’s army will be ready to intervene at the very moment when the Children of Israel are ready to receive him.  We read in Isa 30v18, 19
And therefore will the LORD wait, that he may be gracious unto you, and therefore will he be exalted, that he may have mercy upon you… he will be very gracious unto thee at the voice of thy cry; when he shall hear it, he will answer thee. - Isa 30:18-19 KJV
Or as Jesus said in Mat 23v39
39 For I say unto you, Ye shall not see me henceforth, till ye shall say, Blessed [is] he that cometh in the name of the Lord. - Mat 23:39 KJV

The lesson applies to us too.  God is gracious and God is merciful.  However, we should not cry unto Him only when we have exhausted all other avenues, but seek him daily whilst we have opportunity.

The news we see in the World today, demonstrates that God’s hand is bringing His plan to fulfillment; is gathering the nations to “the battle of the great day of God Almighty”.  These events in the Ukraine could indeed be the very last things we see before we are taken to judgment, and we pray that it may be so.  But if not God’s will, we hope to see you again next week for another Bible in the News.

The Mystery of Flight MH370. Western Spy Agencies Sketch Uighur Terror Attack on the Malaysian Airliner

:The Mystery of Flight MH370. Western Spy Agencies Sketch Uighur Terror Attack on the Malaysian Airliner 

Debka 14-Mar-14 

By the sixth day of the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, a Boeing Airlines 777-200ER with 239 people aboard, nothing was certain, except that no international airline or intelligence official knew what had caused the flight to vanish without a trace shortly after its takeoff from Kuala Lumpur en route for Beijing. 

It was generally acknowledged, although not publicly by Malaysian or Chinese officials, that the international airports of Asia had, by their lax security, become fair game for all kinds of miscreants. 

DEBKA Weekly’s counterterrorism experts note that, whereas Palestinian air hijacks and explosions date back 45 years to the 1970s, this bane is a relative newcomer to the Far East. 

The 1995 Bojinka plot was the first large-scale Islamist attack to be plotted in that region. Al Qaeda assigned Ramzi Yousef and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to follow Osama Bin Laden’s master plan for throwing international civil aviation into disarray by blowing up 11 passenger flights in mid-air en route from the Far East to the US. 

An approximate total of 4,000 passengers were to die 

Counterterrorism experts point to Uighur extremists 

That plot was never executed. But already then, 19 years ago, Al Qaeda and its activists took note of the laxness of security at East Asian airports and saw how easy it would be to smuggle explosives onto planes taking off from there. 

The US Director of Intelligence John Brennan, asked on March 11 at a hearing before the Council on Foreign Relations, whether he had ruled out terrorism as a factor in the Malaysian airliner’s disappearance, replied: “No I wouldn’t rule it out. Not at all.” 

If anyone knows about the glaring security holes, which the Malaysian authorities are striving to conceal, it is the CIA director. He must be well aware that Kuala Lumpur’s international airport is wide open. 

By Wednesday, March 12, the area covered by the search for the Malaysian plane had expanded to 27,000 square nautical miles, encompassing five countries – Vietnam, Burma, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines, and a vast swath of the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. 

The dominant theory held by the Western and Far Eastern counterterrorism services consulted by DEBKA Weekly counterterrorism sources was that a band of terrorists, probably members of the East Turkestan Liberation Organization-ETLO, was responsible for seizing the Malaysian airliner plane and causing its disappearance by an undiscovered act of sabotage. 

The ETLO is a separatist Chinese Uighur organization, which uses violent means to fight for an independent "East Turkestan" state in Xinjiang, Western China. This region has a population of 18 million, eight million of which are Turkic-speaking Muslim Uighurs. 

The ETLO, founded in Turkey in 1996 to fight the Chinese government in Xinjiang, is designated a terrorist organization by the governments of China and Kazakhstan. 

Three scenarios of terror 

Three scenarios are conjectured: 

1. At Kuala Lumpur International Airport, one of the largest airports in Southeast Asia, Malaysian security personnel may be bribed to allow an individual to wander through the closed areas of the airport and stroll onto the runways right up to stationary aircraft. 

2. Most passenger planes, except those taking off from China or India, don’t carry air marshals on international flights, and their crew rarely complies with standard restrictions for keeping passengers under control. 

Two young Australian women, who flew Malaysian Airlines two years ago, showed photos of themselves with the pilots, with whom they spent a couple of hours in the cockpit by invitation. One of those pilots flew the missing airliner. 

3. The suspect band of terrorists could have boarded the flight without going through the formal pre-boarding procedures such as luggage and ticket checks. 

They would then be free to sabotage the flight in two ways: 

- By boarding the plane hours before the crew and passengers, they could have secretly hijacked the flight Friday, March 7, when it was still on the ground before takeoff. 

This option would have required a very large group of terrorists, from 6-10 spread out through the plane to nab each passenger or crew member as they boarded. 

The hijackers may have reached the cockpit from the cargo hold 

This theory would account for the unusual terseness of the pilot’s response to air control when flying over Tho Chu Island. In the plane’s last known contact before it disappeared, the pilot is recorded as saying just three words: “Okay, Roger, received.” 

The air crew may have been held down by the hijackers and prevented forcibly from giving the game away. 

- Alternatively, the terrorists did not enter the passenger cabin, but the cargo hold. Only after takeover did they make their way into the cockpit and seize control of the aircraft 

This would explain the aircraft’s sudden sharp turn west, away from its assigned route and back to Malaysia, without signaling air control. 

The prevailing theory among intelligence experts is that at some point, either the terrorists killed the pilots and crew or decompressed the plane causing all 239 people aboard to die. 

This kind of Boeing jet would keep on gliding for some time until it ran out of fuel and crashed. The fact that was crippled would not have been noticed for some time, until it plunged into the sea or in a jungle. 

It has even been suggested that, by the time had MH370 turned around and flown about 500 kilometers back over Malaysia, everyone on board, pilots, passengers and terrorists, were already dead or unconscious. 

Surprise Saudi Move to Bury Hatchet with Iran. Secret Saudi-Iranian Dialogue in Oman Augurs Rouhani Visit to Riyadh

Surprise Saudi Move to Bury Hatchet with Iran. Secret Saudi-Iranian Dialogue in Oman Augurs Rouhani Visit to Riyadh 

Debka 14-Mar-14 

It was Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani who broke the ice overlaying relations with the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) with a visit to the Sultanate of Oman visit on Wednesday March 12. He came with a high-powered delegation booked to sign some impressive accords with Sultan Qaboos. One covered the construction of a highly strategic project, a new causeway spanning the Straits of Hormuz to give Iran and the GCC their first land link. 

That day, a historic photo appeared on the home page of the official website of former Iranian president Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani: a 1994 photo of King Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz, then Saudi Crown Prince, paying a visit to the Rafsanjani residence in North Tehran. The photo is attached to this article. 

Its publication for the first time is profoundly significant as a portent of the dramatic changes overtaking the Gulf-Middle East region, DEBKA Weekly’s intelligence and Gulf sources report. 

More specifically, it was an agreed code to signal that the secret dialogue between the Iranian and Saudi governments had matured sufficiently for their reconciliation to come out in the open and become official. That dialogue was initiated after Rouhani’s election in mid-2013. 

The next step was to be a royal invitation for the Iranian president to pay an early visit to Saudi Arabia. 

Rouhani and Rafsanjani also hoped for an invitation to join the pilgrimage to Mecca, but this is not so far on offer. 

Rafsanjani was the key which unlocked the Iranian-Saudi door: 

Rafsanjani was the obvious key for opening the door to Riyadh. He has always been viewed in Tehran, Washington and Riyadh as the most ardent Saudi fan in Iran’s ruling circles. As president in the 1990s, he worked hard to improve relations with Riyadh, and subsequently stayed in touch with the Saudi royal family, especially King Abdullah, through such channels as Persian Gulf tycoons in business with Rafsanjani’s sons Mehdi and Mohsen and his daughter Faezeh. 

Through them, he kept up a correspondence with Saudi friends. 

In the past year, this channel worked overtime – put to use by Rafsanjani, who had become Rouhani’s mentor, to test the water for an accommodation between the new Iranian president and Riyadh. 

Up until about mid-December to early January, these overtures went unanswered. Saudi rulers wanted no truck with Tehran, because they were incensed over the Obama administration’s rapprochement with Iran – first clandestine then official - which produced the six-power negotiating track and its culmination last November in an interim nuclear pact with Iran. 

They accused the Americans of treachery and stabbing them in the back. 

Any possible Saudi-Iranian thaw was additionally weighed down by the two governments on opposite sides of the Syrian war. 

Prince Mohammed repairs relations with Washington 

King Abdullah and Intelligence chief Prince Bandar bin Sultan were deeply committed to the deadly rebel fight to oust Syrian President Bashar Assad, Iran’s leading Middle East ally. 

Tehran was further dismayed by Saudi Arabia’s engagement with Pakistan for the acquisition of a nuclear weapons capability and the import of Pakistani military units - as well as Riyadh’s undercover military and intelligence relations with Israel. 

Then, at the start of 2014, matters swerved sharply in a different direction. 

Prince Bandar was quietly dropped as Saudi intelligence chief and supreme commander of Saudi intervention in Syria against Assad and Hizballah in Lebanon. He paid the price for falling down on his pledge to the king to personally see to Assad’s ouster, and was forced to make way for his foremost rival, Saudi Interior Minister Prince Mohammed Bin Nayef. 

This changeover enabled Riyadh to take a fresh look at the Iranian channel which Rafsanjani had kept alive. 

Prince Mohammed first carried out urgent repairs on Saudi relations with the Obama administration. He started with Syria, where he instigated military and intelligence cooperation with the US. 

Iran took this step as the start of Saudi Arabia’s drawdown of its intervention in the Syrian war behind the rebel cause. 

Saudi breach with Qatar pleases Tehran 

Next came a Saudi overture to US Deputy Secretary of State William Burns, the Obama administration’s point man in its exchanges with Tehran. Prince Mohammed and Prince Muqrin Bin Abdulaziz, Second Deputy Prime Minister, who was moved into the intelligence slot, were instructed by the king to approach the American official, which Bandar had refused to do. 

Rafsanjani then adopted Burns’s center of operations, the Omani capital of Muscat, as the hub for the complex and delicate exchanges leading up to a truce between Iran and Saudi Arabia. 

Those exchanges gained an extra spurt from Saudi steps against Qatar and the war Riyadh declared on the Muslim Brotherhood, DEBKA Weekly’s sources in the Gulf report. 

On Tuesday March 11, Riyadh gave Doha a tough ultimatum: Cut ties with Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, shut down the Al-Jazeera global television channel and expel local branches of the US Brookings Institution and Rand Corporation think tanks – or else face a Saudi blockade by air, land and sea. 

Earlier, the Saudi ambassador was recalled from Doha and a decree branded as ‘terrorist organizations the Brotherhood, Lebanon’s Hizballah, al Qaeda-linked Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, and the Syrian Islamist Jabhat al-Nusra. 

The king had already decreed that any Saudi fighting abroad faced 20-30-years jail sentences; and anyone joining, endorsing or providing moral or material support to groups classified as “terrorist” or “extremist” risked five to 30 years in prison. 

This decree followed the gazetting of a sweeping Saudi new anti- terrorism law prohibiting “acts that disturb public order, promote insecurity, undermine national unity or harm the reputation of the kingdom.” 

In moving against Qatar, Riyadh was primarily motivated by its desire to help Egyptian Defense Minister Gen. Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi shore up his position, while crushing the Muslim Brotherhood and running for president. However those steps brought enormous satisfaction to Iran’s rulers. 

King Abdullah’s capacity for U-turns 

Qatar had become one of Iran’s biggest enemies in the Gulf, owing to its backing for the Muslim Brotherhood, and military, financial and intelligence assistance to Syrian rebels. The Iranian leadership was hence overjoyed when Riyadh saved them the trouble of directly punishing Qatar. 

All these events came together this week to set the stage for the Iranian president Rouhani’s epic visit to Saudi Arabia and the fruition of Rafsanjani’s ploy. 

At the same time, DEBKA Weekly’s sources warn that a new Iranian-Saudi relationship is not yet worth treating as an accomplished fact. 

Just seven years ago, in March 3, 2007, the Iranian president of the day, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was invited by King Abdullah for a visit to Riyadh. They were pictured holding hands as they walked out of the airport and went on to discuss how to protect the Islamic world from hostile “conspiracies." 

That year too, Ahmadinejad broke new ground as the first Iranian leader to attend the GCC annual summit, which was established in the first place in 1988 to contain Revolutionary Iran’s expansionism. 

Yet, before long, the Saudi King Abdullah had a change of heart and turned against Tehran. He is quite capable of repeating this turnabout once again. 

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