A dear friend remarked that they were concerned that Israel’s intransigents over the solution to peace with the Palestinians would spark another world war. My friend and I don’t share the same eschatological perspective which required a response in secular terms. I suggested they look to Turkey and Iran as the spark for the next world conflict. Not what they wanted to hear since they hope there will be no world conflict at all. But the vision of the ram and the goat in Daniel chapter eight and the great warrior king of Daniel chapter eleven tells a different story, one of a serious world conflict.
The question is, should we apply the vision of the ram and the goat to our present day? That is the pitfall that lies within any prophetical interpretation, that we apply the scripture to a time for which it is not intended. So let me preface the rest of this article with the supposition that if we are on the cusp of the breaking of the seals in the Book of Revelation then what follows is relevant to current events. If we are not, then what follows will not bear out in world events. The good part about that is, time and world events will let you be the judge.
On the surface it appears there is no question concerning the identities of the ram and the goat of Daniel eight. The identities are given in Daniel 8:20-21; the ram is the kings of Media and Persia and the goat is the king of Greece. Based on these identities, the king of Greece is commonly applied to Alexander the Great who defeated the Medio Persian empire. To further support Alexander the Great as the goat, history tells us that his empire split into four kingdoms following his unexpected death at a young age. So where is the problem with understanding that the prophecy of Daniel eight was fulfilled by Greece and Alexander before the birth of Christ?
The problem with applying the vision to the Greece of Alexander is that Daniel 8:17-19 make it clear that the vision applies to the end times which has not occurred. Indeed if we look at the breakup of the Greek empire following Alexander’s death we find that it split into five kingdoms, then four, and eventually three. While there are similarities between Alexander and Greece with Daniel eight, it is necessary to ignore the end times constraint and also ignore the full history of the breakup of his kingdom to support an interpretation that the prophecy has already been historically fulfilled. Still it does say Greece right there in verse twenty one, or does it?
The Septuagint version of the Old Testament, the version translated into Greek from the Hebrew and the version used for Protestant Bible Old Testament, interprets the Hebrew word Javan as Greece. The kings of Daniel eight in the Hebrew are named Persia, Maday and Javan. The question is did Daniel see Greece as the land of Javan as did the Septuagint translators? Probably not. The Jews did not associate Javan with Greece until after the restoration of the second Temple and the rise of Greece as a world power. Daniel’s understanding of Javan in his prophecies written between 605 and 530 BC differs from that of the Septuagint translation written around 130 BC. Where then is the land of Daniel’s Javan in modern times?
The land of Javan today is centered in modern Turkey while Iran is associated with the land of Persia. If you follow current events in the Middle East you know that Turkey is supporting anti-Assad Syrian rebels and using its own military in Syria against the pro-Iranian Assad government. Turkey does not want Iran to establish a long term presence in Syria and it does not want the Kurds to establish an autonomous state there either. Israel too, has been petitioning the Russians to prevent the Iranians from filling the void left by the defeat of ISIS in Syria. What the news labels as a Syrian civil war in reality is a war between two entranced religious ideologies fought by Turkish and Iranian surrogates. A major consequence of the establishment of a caliphate by ISIS and the response to destroy it, is that tolerance between Sunni and Shia has also been destroyed. Previously diverse Sunni and Shia neighborhoods in Iraq and Syria are a fraction of what they once were and that lack of tolerance is extending to Yemen.
Let me restate the premise I started with, if we are on the cusp of the end times then we can look for current states to fulfill the rolls of the ram and the goat. If that premise is true then, according to Daniel eight, Shia hegemony will rise in the Middle East, led by Iran, until Sunni tolerance is exhausted and establishes a Sunni hegemony led by a great warrior king coming from Turkey. Is that too far-fetched? Consider that Turkey has the largest army in the Middle East and in fact has the largest military forces committed to NATO. Turkey, embolden by its defense treaty with NATO, was not deterred in shooting down a Russian fighter jet after Russia continually ignored Turkey’s warnings not to violate Turkish airspace. When the conflagration between the ram and the goat occurs the boundaries that define nation states in the Middle East will dissolve or existed only on paper as it does with Syria today.
Is such a conflict imminent? Not as the world exists at the moment but the Turkish government is evolving to assume such a role with the April 16, 2017 referendum. With new constitutional powers behind the Turkish president the world will witness a more aggressive Turkey. The president of Turkey will hold complete control with no governmental checks and balances subject to presidential dictates. The United States, Europe, and NATO will align with Turkey while Russia stays aligned with Syria, Iran, and Iran’s satellite states.
As Turkey is being prepared for its role, Iran must also go through an evolution that brings about the impasse that results in the great conflict of Daniel chapter eleven and eventually leads to the rise of the antichrist. The prophecies of Daniel speak of four successive Persian kings in the ramp up to the great conflagration. Daniel 7:6 shows the leopard beast having four heads and Daniel 11:2-3 explicitly states there will be four kings. The great warrior king comes from the land of Javan when the fourth king of Persia brings the conflict to a boil.
Iran is under the rule of its second supreme leader whose edicts cannot be overridden. Assuming that the four kings of Persia are being fulfilled by the supreme leaders of Iran, when the fourth supreme leader rises to power expect a great conflagration between Sunni and Shia that will eventually result in the rise of the antichrist; the message of Daniel eleven and twelve. There will always be issues between Israel and the Palestinians but they pale in comparison to what is coming.
Many in Christendom may think, so what? The Church will be Raptured away before all this happens. Not likely. These chapters speak about the ramp up to the Tribulation prior to the rising of the antichrist. Perhaps the messages to the churches in Revelation chapters two and three are intended to encourage the saints to focus on Christ’s return as these prophecies of Daniel unfold. After all, the seven churches of Revelation were located in modern day Turkey.
May God bless you in your study of His word.