Sometimes when reading the paper, I think to myself, “Wow, does anybody else realize what this is saying?!”

Just this past Tuesday on the front page of the New York Times, next to a disturbing photo of the 21-year-old Islamic Jihad suicide bomber who killed nine people the day before at a falafel restaurant in Tel Aviv, was a story about rebuilding modern-day Babylon to rival its former power and splendor.

As I wrote earlier this month on this site (Editor’s Note: Scroll down to “The Gang Who Couldn’t Fly Straight,” dated Friday, April 7, 2006), a restored literal Babylon figures very prominently into biblical end-times prophecy as a world commerce center from which the Antichrist sets up his headquarters.

Of course, not a word of this is mentioned anywhere in the long Times article, which amazingly doesn’t bring up any of Babylon’s tremendous biblical history and significance except to say it was the site of the Tower of Babel and was once run by King Nebuchadnezzar.

“One day millions of people will visit Babylon,” assures Donny George, head of Iraq’s board of antiquities, in the Times story. “I’m just not sure anybody knows when.”

Phillipe Delanghe, an official with the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, which is said to be currently “pumping millions of dollars into protecting and restoring Babylon,” predicts in the article, “Cultural tourism could become Iraq’s second biggest industry, after oil.”

As the Times informs, both United Nations officials and Iraqi leaders are “working assiduously to restore Babylon, home of the Seven Wonders of the World, and turn it into a cultural center and possibly even an Iraqi theme park.”

“Factories are churning, Iraqi security forces are patrolling and the streets pulsate with life—children bounding to school, crowds wading into markets, taxis gliding by,” the Times reports. “Emad lafta al-Bayati, Hilla’s mayor, has big plans for Babylon. ‘I want restaurants, gift shops, long parking lots,’ he said. God willing, he added, maybe even a Holiday Inn.”

After the Rapture (the sudden future moment when all Believers are physically removed from earth and delivered up into heaven), the prophetic “end times” program involving the rise of the Antichrist will in quick fashion begin to work itself out.

“Over and over and over in the Bible the Antichrist is called the Assyrian and he’s a fellow who comes out of the part of the world known as Syria and rules from the literal city of Babylon,” says my pastor, Richard Jordan, in a study he gave around the time of the Kuwait invasion of 1990. “Babylon’s going to be rebuilt and become a commercial, and political, and banking, and religious center in the world; it becomes a great power in the world.”

Speaking in Isaiah 10:5-6, God Himself says, “O Assyrian, the rod of mine anger, and the staff in their hand is mine indignation. I will send him against a hypocritical nation, and against the people of my wrath will I give him a charge, to take the spoil, and to take the prey, and to tread them down like the mire of the streets.”

This is a reference to the Second Coming of Jesus Christ and deals with the nation Israel in that time period. In essence, God’s saying, “Because of your sin, Israel, I’m permitting the Antichrist to clean your plow and he’s going to be the rod of my wrath striking you.”

The Apostle Paul, along with Daniel and John in the Book of the Revelation, provides pertinent details about the person of the Antichrist, his activities, career and ministry.

In II Thess. 2:3-12, for instance, Paul writes, “Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition;
[4] Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God.
[5] Remember ye not, that, when I was yet with you, I told you these things?
[6] And now ye know what withholdeth that he might be revealed in his time.
[7] For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way.
[8] And then shall that Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming:
[9] Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders,
[10] And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved.
[11] And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie:
[12] That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.”

Obviously Paul’s given the Thessalonians clear instructions on how the Antichrist will act and when he’ll do what, explaining how it all unfolds.

“I imagine Paul had a travel ‘chalkboard’ in a satchel he carried with him and he flopped that thing up on an easel and drew them a timeline of Daniel Chapter 9,” says Jordan. “When Paul says, ‘And now ye know what withholdeth,’ there’s something keeping back that day of wrath when the Antichrist will be revealed. That old English use of the word ‘letteth’ refers to the one holding back on the rope, letting it go just this far, ‘until he be taken out of the way and then shall that Wicked be revealed.’ What’s taken out of the way is the Body of Christ (at the Rapture).”

Today’s dispensation of grace is exactly what withholds the final fulfillment of the prophetic program. Paul’s making reference to the mystery of Christ revealed to him, which he says “in other ages was not made known to the sons of men,” meaning no man of God before him knew about it, wrote about it or took it into consideration when they calculated prophetic time elements and events.

“The dispensation of grace is not a part of the outworking of the prophetic program and when you look around you today at the world and its turmoil and strife, as well as the blessings in the world, you’re looking at events that are taking place because this is the dispensation of grace and not the age of prophecy,” explains Jordan.

Jordan says preachers and others will look at Paul’s warnings about the “last days” and say the events we’re seeing in the Middle East today represent “shadows” of end-times prophetic events.

“The little caveat preachers like to use is, ‘Well, maybe it’s a shadow,’ and maybe it is—I don’t know,” says Jordan. “I do know that Jerusalem has to be in the land of Palestine before the Antichrist can ‘rescue’ them. I know they have to have a temple in order for it to be destroyed, so that isn’t there yet. That still has to be rebuilt.”

Specifically, Paul warns in II Tim. 2: 3-9 “that in the last days perilous times shall come.
[2] For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy,
[3] Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good,
[4] Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God;
[5] Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away.
[6] For of this sort are they which creep into houses, and lead captive silly women laden with sins, led away with divers lusts,
[7] Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.
[8] Now as Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, so do these also resist the truth: men of corrupt minds, reprobate concerning the faith.
[9] But they shall proceed no further: for their folly shall be manifest unto all men, as theirs also was.”

Jordan says of this passage, “Notice there’s not a thing in that list that couldn’t fit today. You say, ‘Does that means it’s the last days?’ Yep, sure does. You look down through that list and there are general moral and spiritual conditions of declension that are true in any age.

“You know why it is that way? These are general trends because at any time the Lord could come and take away the Body of Christ. It’s a mystery age and the conclusion of it is a mystery too. So when you look around and think, ‘Boy, things are so bad the Lord’s just gotta come,’ that’s what you’re supposed to think! You’re not supposed to look around and say, ‘Man, things are so good the Lord could leave us here for another 5,000 years anyway.’ You’re supposed to be conscious of the imminence of His coming at any moment.”

As an aside, Jordan recalled how during the ’60s a few of his peers in Alabama carried around a laminated copy of a Dear Abby column in which a mother had written in describing the woeful and wayward things kids were doing and asking if there was any hope for the current generation.

Abby devoted a whole column to rantings about how terrible the youth of the day were and how society couldn’t last with the way things were going. The surprise at the end was the remarks were signed by Aristotle.

“Her point was 2,000-plus years ago somebody was saying the same thing you’re saying now and yet the wheels are still turning, things still going,” says Jordan. “So she was just saying, ‘Don’t worry about it.’ Somebody asked me this morning, saying, ‘Boy, if what you’re saying is true about the Middle East, then a lot of these prophecy preachers are all wrong.‘ And I said, ‘Yeah, they are.’ It’s not the European Common Market. It’s the Middle East. It’s not the revived Roman Empire in Europe. It’s the Middle East where the attention of God will be focused.”

(Editor’s Note: To be continued. . .)