If that weren’t enough, Ezekiel stated categorically that as such events unfolded, the entire world would perceive Israel and Jerusalem as God Himself did, as the center of history. Ezekiel chapter 5, verse 5, put it this way: “This is what the Sovereign Lord says: This is Jerusalem, which I have set in the center of the nations, with countries all around her.” And sure enough, it was all coming true. All eyes were now riveted on Israel, the epicenter of all the major events that were shaking the world and shaping its future.
As for Europe, Dr. Mordechai and most of the Bible scholars Bennett had been studying since the older man’s death strongly believed that it had a starring role in the End Times drama as well. In Daniel chapter 2 and chapter 7, for example, the Hebrew prophet foretold not only the rise of a ferocious and powerful Roman Empire emerging after the empires of Babylon, Media-Persia, and Greece — something that happened just as Daniel said it would, hundreds of years after he wrote those prophecies — but also of a revived and all-powerful Roman Empire at the end of history.
Daniel 8:8–9 seemed to indicate that the Antichrist would be a ruler who emerged from the ashes of the Greco-Roman Empire and would gather enormous powers as his military forces moved south and east toward the land of Israel, to surround and eventually conquer it.
Daniel 9:26–27 indicated that the AntichrisT — whom the Bible described as a horrifically evil, all-powerful future world dictator — would emerge from the people who would destroy the Temple and the Holy City of Jerusalem after the Messiah was “cut off.” It was the Romans, of course, who had destroyed the Temple and Jerusalem in AD 70, not long after they crucified Jesus, the King of the Jews and the Savior of the Gentiles. It seemed obvious to Bennett, therefore, that the Antichrist was going to rise out of a revived Roman Empire.
Of course, the very notion of a revived Roman Empire had seemed absolutely impossible during the twentieth century. With the onslaught of World Wars I and II and the deaths of tens of millions of people, no continent on earth was more divided, more destroyed, more enfeebled, more soaked with blood and steeped in hatred for one another than Europe. But then, lo and behold, Israel was reborn in 1948, just as the Scriptures foretold, and Europe began to rise as well. The European Economic Community — the forerunner of the European Union — was created on March 25, 1957, upon the signing of the now-famous Treaty of Rome. Sixteen hundred years after the Roman Empire had faded into the night, it was suddenly rising again, like a phoenix from the ashes. And look at it now, Bennett thought. The EU comprised more than two dozen member states, nearly half a billion people, one tightly integrated economic system, one currency, one increasingly integrated political system, one foreign policy czar, one passport for all its people, borderless crossings, and all of it right on schedule according to Bible prophecy.
Iraq, too, had a role in the last days. The Hebrew prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah had made that clear, as had Ezekiel and the apostle John in the book of Revelation. And amazingly, Babylon really had risen from the dead and was now the center of power and commerce in the postwar Middle East. People had said it could never happen, but it had. Bennett had seen it with his own eyes.
Remarkably, Asia seemed to have a powerful presence in history’s last chapter, Bennett had discovered. Revelation 16:12 explicitly stated the “kings from the east” would come marching through Iraq, up the Euphrates River valley, onward to Babylon, and eventually on to Armageddon, in Israel’s oil-rich Jezreel Valley. Who exactly were these kings? Bennett wasn’t yet sure. The leaders of China seemed to be waiting in the bull pen, as it were, for their moment on the field. Perhaps North Korea and Indonesia would join them. India and Pakistan might too. Time would tell, but based on what he had witnessed so far, it wasn’t hard for Bennett to imagine a new coalition of Asian military machines banding together to attack Israel in the not-too-distant future.
But no matter how hard he looked, he couldn’t find any specific reference in the Scriptures to the United States playing an End Times role, and it bothered him greatly. Was he missing an obvious reference? Or was it true that none were there? And if America wasn’t in the Bible, Bennett had wondered for months, then what was going to happen to his country?
Several months earlier, he and Erin had had dinner with a Jordanian pastor friend who suggested the answer to his question was the Rapture. At some point soon, the pastor had argued, hundreds of millions — possibly even billions — of born-again followers of Jesus Christ were suddenly going to disappear around the world in the blink of an eye, caught up in the heavens with Jesus Himself. When that happened, the pastor had asked, wouldn’t America essentially implode?
That was probably true, Bennett realized. He remembered how devastated the American people had been after losing nearly three thousand souls on 9/11. How would they react when twenty or thirty or fifty million people or more were suddenly gone? What would happen when some of the highest-ranking officials in the government suddenly disappeared? What if tens of thousands of military commanders and police officers and firefighters and doctors simply vanished, from the Carolinas to California? Could any country recover from such an event? Not quickly, Bennett concluded. That would certainly explain how the U.S. could effectively be neutralized in the last days.
But what Bennett had never really considered carefully until now was the possibility that something else might devastate the American people, rendering them ineffective heading into the last of the last days. A financial downturn on Wall Street. The sudden collapse of the dollar. The beginning of another Great Depression. A series of devastating earthquakes. Or hurricanes. Or other natural disasters, like a tsunami. Now America had been hit by the most cataclysmic terrorist attack of all time — five nuclear warheads. And there might be more to come. None of it was clearly prophesied in the Scriptures. Not that he could find. But perhaps he should have foreseen the neutralization of America by reading more carefully between the lines.
If so, what else was he missing? What exactly was coming next? What would he tell the president when they stood face-to-face — a meeting that was less than twenty-four hours away?
31
“Perhaps it is time for you to leave,” Al-Hassani said coldly.
The seventy-six-year-old Iraqi leader had no intention of being accused of genocide by the secretary-general of the United Nations, especially one who was all but threatening him with invasion if the United States of Eurasia didn’t start shipping his pals more oil and lowering prices for them more quickly. But Lucente clearly wasn’t ready to go.
“I’m not leaving here until you and I come to an understanding,” the secretary-general replied.
“There is nothing more to discuss,” Al-Hassani shot back. “I am telling you point-blank that neither I nor anyone employed by, paid by, or associated with the USE had anything to do with these evil attacks against the U.S. Period. End of sentence. End of discussion.”
Tariq sipped his tea and said nothing.
“On the record,” Al-Hassani continued, “I tell you what I have already said publicly. I condemn these attacks and anyone who was involved. But between you and me, Salvador, while this is a very dark day, it has — albeit unexpectedly — created a historic opening, and you know it. Sitting before you and me is an opportunity to reshape the world in a way not seen since the collapse of the Roman Empire. Are you going to just let it slip away? Or are you going to seize the moment and fulfill your destiny?”