First it is necessary to understand Daniel’s prophecy of the 70^th week. Though that is not the focus of this article, know that Daniel, via an angel of God, has divided Jewish history remaining from his time until the end, into 3 parts, totaling 490 years. Two parts, comprising 483 years, have already transpired. One part, the final seven years, never happened.

Why a gap in history? In God’s eyes there is no gap. But at the death of Jesus, there was a major shift in the reckoning of time. Well is this age called “Anno Domini”, the year of the Lord, for we live in the age called grace between the year 483 and 484 of Jewish prophecy fulfillment. We call it the church age. It is a time when God is calling Gentiles to himself. It is an unprecedented era of ingathering made possible by the great love of God. But it shall end. And when it does, the countdown begins.

Lately some have speculated that at this moment the church must be raptured to Heaven. The Biblical picture is of a church that falls away to impotence, and is later annihilated by antichrist. The world will be left with clear signs, but not the imagined escape of all believers. That only comes when God’s final wrath is to be poured out on the earth, at the end of the seven years.

So what will be going on here when the curtain goes up for the last seven years before Jesus comes? Piecing together portions of Daniel and the book of Revelation, it becomes clear that the world will be picking up exactly where it left off at the end of the 483 years: It will be decidedly Rome-based, with a powerful world leader in charge.

An entity that grows out of the Roman Empire will be the dominant power on earth. America will have been set aside either by nuclear devastation or merely financial realities. But it will no longer need to lead the affairs of the planet. I speculate that its growing moral degeneracy will make way for its loss of world influence.

The first leader of this new Roman amalgamation, which will contain a mixture of political types, such as democracy and monarchy etc., will be a man of peace and unity, a man of extraordinary powers, but not yet the supernatural powers that will follow. Somehow he will be able to form a coalition of ten Mediterranean nations. The re-forming of the Middle East, together with the needs of Europe, as I write this in the year 2011, may foreshadow what is to come.

Pseudo-Christian Papal forces will perhaps join hands with Islamic powers to forge a peace whereby the most militant Islam is curbed, Israel is given what it wants, and the Pope’s centuries-old dream of a world Reign becomes an awful reality all in one master stroke.

And what is it that Israel wants? Jerusalem. The land. A Temple. The Temple Mount. Sacrifice. Return to the old days of Jewish worship. Yes, the plans for all of these things are in the making now as I write.

The re-entry of Jewish sacrifice seems to be the key to the re-opening of Jewish history. That history stopped in God’s eyes and the eyes of the world when Jesus died, and God reached down to rip the veil of the Temple in two. God was finished with merely pictures of the True. The True had come.

But hardened Israel – as opposed to the many Jews who have accepted the Messianic sacrifice – was not finished with it, and continues to dream of the day when bulls and goats will once more end their lives to picture the rolling away of Jewish sins, until the “real” Messiah comes.

The new world order and the accompanying new world leader will accommodate Israel. Daniel is clear about that. The Jews shall have their sacrifices and offerings again. In defiance of the one who offered the true sacrifice and destroyed the veil between God and man, Israel of the last days shall rudely erect that veil again, and proudly proclaim to the world that Judaism lives, and Jesus’ blood means nothing to them.