Ep 282 | This Bible Prophecy Warns of an Islamic Takeover? | Bill Cloud | The Glenn Beck Podcast
Bill Cloud identifies Twelver Shia Islam in Iran as the Antichrist's army, linking the "river to the sea" slogan to Psalm 83 and predicting a Green-Red Marxist-Islamic fusion mirroring Nebuchadnezzar's dream. He warns that anti-Israel sentiment reflects a spiritual delusion rejecting Old Testament covenants, while advocating for faith like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego to survive an inevitable religious war. Ultimately, the discussion frames current geopolitical tensions as end-times precursors requiring repentance before Christ's return from Jerusalem. [Automatically generated summary]
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It makes it very clear that this is the last kingdom of man who will exist as a superpower in the last days before the Messiah returns and he destroys all these kingdoms.
But what scares me is not the Alchemenis of the world as much as it is the Mandanis.
In many countries, especially Europe today, you probably would be in jail for saying a lot of this stuff.
If things are getting darker, it doesn't push me away from God.
It draws me closer to him.
Bill, you look at the Bible like I look at the news.
God gives some people a special ability, I think, to see dots, things that are not necessarily connected and be able to go, no, those all belong over here.
You see patterns.
And you see patterns in the Bible and I see patterns in the news.
And one of the things I remember saying to one of my researchers back in 2004, maybe, was, would you go and look at the ideology or the how do you say that word?
Eschatology.
Yeah.
Would you go back and look at the eschatology of the 12vers?
Because with what they were saying, I thought if they're, it's got to be the opposite of ours.
You know, their good guy has to be our bad guy and our bad guy has to be their good guy.
He came back to me a couple of months later and said, how did you know?
And I'm like, I don't, I didn't know, but it just fits.
And ever since then, I've been looking at the people in Iran that are running the country, that are the true believers, the 12, the 12vers from Shia, as this is the army of the Antichrist.
That is such a crazy statement to make.
Can you kind of flesh that out with actual facts?
Well, first of all, let me say I agree with you.
But it is important for people to understand that, you know, whether it's the news or whether it's the scripture, there are these patterns.
And, you know, the Bible even tells us in Isaiah chapter 46, and I'll paraphrase it.
If you want to understand what's going on in the end, you have to go back and understand the beginning because God tells us the end by telling us the beginning.
In other words, there are patterns throughout all of these scriptures.
So when we go back from the very beginning, you can kind of see the story, all these dots that you referred to that if you're dancing over it, you're just trying to read through the Bible in a year.
You'll never see it.
But if you want to look below the surface and understand that there are some things to kind of dig out from below the surface, there's some real treasure there in terms of knowledge and understanding and then wisdom.
So as it relates to your statement about Shia and the army of the Antichrist, He is the beast, the Antichrist, the son of perdition, whatever term you want to use there.
He doesn't come posing as Christ, as some people have, you know, said, I don't believe so.
He comes opposing Christ.
And so you're.
Hang on just a second.
Their philosophy is that he comes and their philosophy is that he would come at the end, Christ would come to testify that this is the real God.
Right.
Which we know they have.
But they have Christ.
They have Jesus being, you know, second to their Messiah.
Correct.
Jesus comes back and says, hey, guys, sorry you were duped.
I didn't really die on the cross.
I wasn't really resurrected.
But I'm here to point you to the true faith now, which, according to the Bible, Glenn, that right there is the definition of the spirit of Antichrist.
So we can very, very plainly, very confidently apply that definition, the spirit of Antichrist, to what we see, particularly in Shia Islam and the Twelver doctrine and the al-Mahdi, the 12th Imam, who's going to come back and basically rule the world and expand the influence of Islam throughout the globe, where, again, Jesus plays this secondary role in their theology.
So that's why I say I don't believe that the Antichrist, the beast, the 12th Imam comes posing as the Jesus figure, if you will.
He comes.
Right.
He comes to everything he is and is for.
So that's kind of a concise definition, I guess.
Okay, so can we put this into perspective and please break this down for people who don't, you know, they don't read the Bible every day.
They, they're not familiar, you know, they might be familiar with the high points, but break it down as simply as possible.
Because we are talking about Iran.
And you say that you can look at the Arab Spring to Mamdani and show the dots on what is actually happening.
So where do you want to start?
Well, I can see how the Arab Spring and Mandani and all these things connect with what scripture has already laid out for us.
But you have to follow the patterns.
Again, if I can take the time, I'll go back all the way to the beginning.
You've got a guy by the name of Cain.
Cain killed his brother.
He didn't listen to what God was trying to tell him to do.
He killed his brother, and then he's sent to wander in the east.
He goes and dwells in the land east of Eden.
So from the very beginning, you've got this idea that the east is associated with rebels.
It's associated with those who reject the authentic and the true word of God.
The next thing you see in the pattern, and I am trying to make this very concise, but you've got a guy by the way, Nimrod, who takes a group of people who are journeying to the east, it says in Genesis chapter 11.
And this guy, Nimrod, says, now let's all come together.
We know that God has told us to spread out and go subdue the earth, but we're going to come together for one common purpose.
And he builds this place called Babel or Babylon in the East, in the land of Shannar, Mesopotamia, this region of the world.
So again, the East is associated with people who are basically rebels.
When it says that Nimrod was a mighty hunter before the Lord, literally it says he's a mighty hunter in God's face.
He doesn't pose as, he opposes God.
And this is very early on, it's associated with the East.
So we're in Babylon.
We're in Mesopotamia.
We're in the land of Shannar.
We're in the area that would become Iran, Iraq, and all these different places.
Then we come on down the road, and you've got a guy named Joseph who is in Egypt.
Don't have time to go through all that story.
Read your Bible.
You'll find out how he got there.
But he is put in a position of power whereby the people of God, Israel, is going to be spared.
And for that matter, everybody during a time of famine.
But there is a dream that Nebuchadnezzar has, excuse me, not Nebuchadnezzar Pharaoh.
There's a dream that he has in which an east wind blows.
And this east wind actually causes everything to be blighted, to be scorched, and it initiates a seven-year famine.
So there's the east is associated with rebels.
The east wind brings this drought.
It's an east wind that brings in a plague of locusts into Egypt later on in the days of Moses that they covered the entire earth.
And so just this little bit in the very beginning of the story, things that are associated with the east, and we're not talking the far east.
I'm not talking China and that area.
We're talking about the East, Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, these areas, that the Bible starts establishing a pattern that there are things that come from that area that are in opposition to God's purpose.
And so again, this is the spirit of Antichrist starting to show itself.
Can I ask you, is there a pattern with the number seven as well?
Isn't the tribulation seven years?
Well, my understanding- Famine hits for seven years.
Well, seven typically denotes something that has to run its course and then it's complete.
So there's six days of work.
There's a seventh day that you rest.
And so that cycle is complete.
So seven is typically associated with that.
It takes seven years for something to really run its course and then it's completed, generally speaking.
So I would presume that that has some kind of connection to why God chose it to be that.
Okay.
All right.
But anyway, just going ahead very quickly here, and I'm trying to develop or connect the dots between what the East represents in the Bible as it relates to what's going on in the East today, the Middle East, and how there are these factions, there's this ideology, there are these armies, to borrow from a word you said earlier, that always are,
they're always predisposed to come against God, come against God's people, come against Israel, come against believers in the Messiah.
In Joel, it's an army of locusts that invades the land to chew, devour, to consume.
And they are coming from the desert.
And so if you start seeing that pattern develop, you realize that something is going to come from the east, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, these places that is going to be in opposition to God's purpose on the earth.
So when you start seeing things like Iran and the 1979 revolution and how Persia becomes this different kind of nation, Iran, under the Mullahs and the Khomeinis and people like that, and you see this continual aggression toward Israel against America, people who believe in the Bible, things like that, you see that this spirit of Antichrist has been at work in the world, not again,
not posing as the Christ, but opposing the Christ, opposing his people, trying to destroy them, undermine them.
That's why it's, you know, the United States is big Satan.
Israel is little Satan.
That's why you've got people marching around saying from the river to the sea.
It's that same spirit at work.
So let me pause here.
Hang on.
Let me just pause here on Israel.
Okay.
There is so much anti-Israel stuff from Christians.
For the first time, I believe, Americans are siding with the Palestinians over Israel.
And to me, it's just shocking, but I made my mind up about Israel and what God says about Israel a long time ago.
But explain why that is so important to understand the role of Israel and not being on the wrong side of that.
Sometimes, well, it's common for us to get our eyes on a person, you know, or a policy or something like that.
You know, there's a lot of people who hate Trump.
There's a lot of people who love Trump.
You know, I don't think there's a lot of in-between.
But a lot of times people, they're focused on the person.
They're focused on the personality, not necessarily the purpose.
And so when it comes to Israel, the same is true.
A lot of people can get focused on, well, I don't like Netanyahu or I don't like their policy where Gaza is concerned or the so-called West Bank.
But what we need to do is people who believe the Bible, who believe it is the word of God, we need to look beyond the person and the policy and see the purpose.
God has sworn that where Israel is concerned, I've engraved you on my hand.
If I can't forget you, you know, until the heavens and the earth pass away, you know, I can't forget you and that's never going to happen.
I'm paraphrasing another prophecy.
So we have to see the purpose.
I don't agree with everything that Israel does as a government, but for that matter, I don't agree with everything our government does.
But that doesn't mean that I don't see God's purpose in it.
And so what is going on here, you know, among Christians or some Christians, I think they're looking at the policy and the person.
They're not seeing the purpose.
I would dare say that a lot of those people, and this is just my opinion, I think a lot of those people have completely discounted all of the scripture that comes left of Matthew.
By that, I mean the Old Testament.
And they base their theology and their positions on everything from Matthew to the end of Revelation, which means they skip over all the promises that God has made to Israel, what God has said he's going to do with Israel.
There are so many times when God would raise up a nation to correct Israel when they were in the wrong.
But if those nations took it too far, God would turn right around and he would deal with them.
And there's a lot of scriptures that address that too.
It is very bothersome that people who profess to be Christians and Bible believers are taking this position because as far as I'm concerned, they are aligning themselves with people who say from the river to the sea.
Spiritual Issues and Prophecy00:15:21
I mean, that's what it amounts to.
Now, maybe they don't say that, but, you know, what they're doing.
I'm sorry.
What's that mean to you?
I know what it means.
What does that mean to you?
What should it mean to Christians?
Yeah.
When they say that, it's to eradicate the name, the nation, the people called Israel.
Psalm 83.
God, come help us.
And again, I'm paraphrasing everybody.
Come help us because your enemies have risen up.
They are making a bunch of noise.
And they're saying, let us wipe Israel off the face of the earth.
That's what Psalm 83 says.
That's what from the river to the sea means.
So when we align ourselves with people who chant those things, who align themselves with people who are Hamas or Hezbollah and things like this, that again is that spirit of Antichrist rising up.
It's showing itself.
And it's starting to show itself in places that you would hope you would never see it.
You expect it in Iran.
You expect it in Iraq.
You expect it in Saudi Arabia.
But we're seeing it in the streets of America, but we're also seeing it in churches.
Yes.
Yeah, exactly.
We're seeing it in churches, which is shocking to me.
Okay.
So take me to, you know, our special next week is all about the blueprint of the Islamization of America and the West and how it has combined with the Marxists, which I think is an absolute evil ideology.
They have combined with the Marxists and it's the Green and Red Alliance, if you will, and also the Islamists.
And they have a friendship.
And this has happened before in the past.
I mean, that was the revolution in Iran.
The Marxists are all killed in the end.
Can you tell me any patterns on this combination and what you're seeing, the spread of Islam throughout the West and what happens?
Let me briefly go back to the locust in Egypt, that east wind that brought them.
When the locusts came in, that was the eighth of ten plagues, which in a way, in my mind, the pattern is the locusts come in, they devour everything.
Then you have darkness, spiritual darkness, and then you have death, the death of the firstborn.
In Revelation chapter 9, a pit is opened, and you have these locust-like things come out.
But that is what is the forerunner, if you will, of the beast who comes from the pit.
So as it relates to the question, 9-11, 25 years ago now, you would, at that point in time, people were just awakened to the threat that radical Islam is.
25 years later, we've got people in this nation who are aligning themselves philosophically with the same people who brought that terror to America.
Literally.
Literally.
So back in Daniel, the book of Daniel, Daniel's in Babylon.
Remember, Nimrod's the one who established that.
Now Nebuchadnezzar is the king of Babylon.
And he has a dream, by the way, that God gave him.
That's always been fascinating to me, that the dream that was given to Pharaoh, the dream that was given to Nebuchadnezzar, these two pagan kings, idol-worshiping kings, God gave them the dream, but he didn't give them the ability to understand it.
That's why you had to have a Joseph.
That's why you had to have a Daniel.
But Nebuchadnezzar has this dream and he sees this image of a man and it frightens him.
It's got a head of gold, chest and arms of silver, belly and thighs of brass, and it's got two iron legs.
And then you come down to the end and it's two feet ironed, mingled with clay.
And it makes it very clear that this is the last kingdom of man who will exist as a superpower in the last days before the Messiah returns and he destroys all these kingdoms.
So real quick, feet are intended to trample.
This goes back to a prophecy in Genesis chapter 3.
I'm a teacher, so if I ramble and get off on a little trail, you have to bring me back to the main course here.
If people will stay with me here for just a moment.
Back in Genesis chapter three, when the woman took the fruit from a tree that was good and evil, she was shown a fruit that presented itself as good, but the good was just to camouflage the evil.
And by the time she had ingested that and then given it to her husband, who then ate it, when they realized they were naked, it was too late.
They had already ingested the evil.
But it was a mixed tree.
It was mingled good and evil.
And it was very, very seductive words that convinced her to partake of this tree.
So that idea you see throughout the scripture.
And that is when God said, I'm going to put enmity.
I'm going to put a state of war between the woman, the serpent, her seed, his seed.
And so this spiritual war that we are in, I heard you talking about that at the end of your program, how we actually are in a religious war and have been in a religious war for millennia.
And it started right then and there.
And God is the one who put that distinction between the two.
So that's important for people to understand how the adversary works.
He wants to come present something as if it were good, concealing the evil in it all the while.
So we come back to Nebuchadnezzar now.
This dream that he has of this image that has two feet and the iron is mixed.
It's mingled with the clay, suggesting that something very fierce, something very strong is going to be mixed with something that's more fragile, comparatively speaking, right?
So that word in Hebrew, or actually it's in Aramaic, but it coincides with the Hebrew.
The word that is translated four times as mixed or mingled in Nebuchadnezzar's dream, the two feet, iron, mingled with clay, is the root word al-rav.
And we would say Arab.
And that is why almost a thousand years ago, there was a gentleman, a Jewish philosopher and commentator by the name of Abraham Ibn Ezra, who predicted that in the last days that East and West would intermingle, that Christianity, the remnants of Christianity, and the followers of Ishmael and Islam would intermingle for a while before the very end came.
So as it relates to people embracing these ideologies, these positions that take this anti-Israel stance, and quite honestly, if you really dig into a lot of it, you'll find that it's not just anti-Israel, it's anti-God.
It's anti-His word and people who truly believe that.
But it's because this spirit is so pervasive and it's so persuasive that if people aren't really rooted in what the scripture says, they're going to be seduced to think that something that really is evil looks good, just like the woman.
She took and she ate it because she thought it was something to be desired.
It was something to be longed for.
And then she convinced her husband to partake of it as well.
They realized they were naked and then they were sent out of the garden toward the east, by the way.
So that's the pattern.
It's a spiritual war.
It's a religious war.
God put that enmity between the woman and the serpent and their respective seeds to distinguish the two.
So that it's just like day and night, light and darkness.
God puts these boundaries there so we can tell light from darkness, day from night.
But what does man do?
He tries to erase all those boundaries.
He tries to get rid of all those boundaries and he tries to replace it with something that mixes things together that were never to be mixed together.
And that's what we see going on right now.
It is, it's amazing to me because I keep saying, look, if you look at true Marxism, what some of these really zealot Marxists are saying, you look at the Islamists and then you look at some of these progressive things like MAID up in Canada.
It's a death cult.
And it has always shocked me that people can't see the Lord said, choose life, choose life.
And millions are choosing death now and saying that that's good and righteous and right.
And I mean, honestly, I don't know why I'm lucky enough to see it and how so many are so blind.
Can I respond to that?
Yeah.
There is a passage in scripture that says that because people did not want the truth, they didn't love the truth.
They didn't want the truth.
And so as a result, God sends them a strong delusion that they should believe the lie.
So it's kind of like when Israel was in the wilderness and they've been eating manna for all these years and they finally said, you know, we're really tired of all this manna.
Give us some flesh.
And really what they were wanting was what Egypt had to provide.
So the Bible says that God sent them quail, but he sent them, he said, you're not going to eat it one day, 10 days.
You're going to eat it 30 days until it's coming out your nostrils and it becomes loathsome to you.
Point being, when people set their hearts on what they want in opposition to what God says is best for you, there will come a time that God says, all right, I'm going to give you what you want, but you're not going to like it.
I'm going to give you what you want to teach you.
What you want is not what you need.
And so I believe, Glenn, I'm convinced of this, that what we are seeing is this strong delusion that is being sent to people who do not love the truth.
You, I believe, are a lover of truth.
I think you are a seeker of truth.
I think you are someone who has put your life on the line, I dare say, to speak truth.
And that is the kind of person, the kind of people that the source of all truth, the creator of all things is looking for people who will speak what is true, not what people want to hear.
And that angers people who don't want the truth, who want to believe the lie.
And that's exactly what is happening right now.
I'm going to throw this out at you.
And there's so many of these prophecies that connect.
You know, you said all those, mentioned all those dots earlier and you read it and what does that mean?
And what does that vision mean?
And all these things.
But when you see the pattern, you can't unsee it.
When you see how this connects to that, you see it showing up in all these things that are happening right in front of you.
So in regard to people just giving into this philosophy and this ideology that you would think they would be, it would be anathema to them.
It would be abhorrent to them.
And yet they're embracing it.
There is a passage in regard to a dream that another prophet has in Zachariah.
And it's complicated and it's confusing and perplexing.
And I will try to boil it down.
Basically, he sees something that is regarded as wickedness.
That's what he called it, wickedness.
And this wickedness is related to what the Bible says is the curse that goes out and envelops the entire world.
And there's a Babylonian connection here.
There's a lot of other dots that connect.
But here's what I wanted you to hear.
That word in Hebrew that says, this is the curse, that word is Allah.
If you have any Hebrew students out there, it's spelled Aleph Lamed Hei.
And so to distinguish between the word curse and the name of the Islamic God, the Lamed would be doubled.
It would be Aleph Lamed Lamed Hei, as opposed to Aleph Lamed Hei.
That's just for the sake of any Hebrew students that might be out there.
But the word in Hebrew means curse.
And what this curse is specifically, it is the curse.
It is the consequence of an oath violation.
You've made a covenant with God.
You've agreed to keep that covenant with God.
And then you forsake that covenant with God.
And he sends you warning after warning after warning after warning.
And finally, he says, okay, you want to believe the lie?
You're going to get the lie.
And he sends out the curse over the whole earth as a consequence of people who were in covenant with God, who know the covenant with God, but who have broken the covenant with God.
This is the consequence.
And so I can't overlook that and think that that's just some weird happenstance, some cosmic coincidence.
I believe it's God's way of saying, this is why this is happening in your world.
This is why this is happening in America, a nation who, I believe, asked God to enter into covenant with us.
And just one other, on that note, that same word, Glenn, Allah, translated curse, Daniel prays that or acknowledges that when he's praying about why did we end up in Babylonian captivity?
And he realized it's because we didn't hear your prophets.
We didn't obey your commandments.
And so the curse that is written in the law of Moses had been poured out upon us.
And again, that word is Allah.
Aleph Lamed Hei.
And it's kind of an interest to me.
That's in Daniel 9, 1, 1, 9, 11.
So not anything to base any theology on there, but just kind of an interesting footnote.
But this is why.
It's what it boils down to, because we're in a spiritual conflict because there is a spiritual problem.
There's a spiritual issue here.
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So, this seems pretty bad.
Is there a way to push this off?
Is this just a problem?
What's this mean?
Well, first, we need to wake up.
We need to shake ourselves here out of our spiritual slumber.
And this is what bothers me.
Can we put this off?
I want to come back to that question, but I want to say this.
What bothers me is that a lot of Americans do not see this as being a spiritual issue.
It's a political issue.
It's this kind of an issue.
It's that.
But I don't know that there's enough Americans who really believe that this is a spiritual issue.
And that's a problem because I guarantee you that the radical Islamists in Iran, in Iraq, and those that are here in this nation right now absolutely do see it as a spiritual issue.
They see it as they're destined in their theology, they're destined to rule the world.
And that includes the West.
And the West has been this big obstacle to overcome and to neutralize.
So can we put it off?
I believe we can because God doesn't tell things to us without leaving us a path to hope and redemption and reconciliation.
In Joel, I've got to mention the locusts again.
These locusts are coming into the land to devour, to consume, to destroy.
And he's telling the people, weep, mourn, repent.
Don't rend your garments, rend your heart, and turn back to me.
And if you do that, perhaps I will relent.
And instead of bringing a curse upon your land, I'll give you a blessing.
So, yes, there's hope.
There's always hope.
There's always a path that leads to reprieve and restoration and reconciliation.
But the requirement is that we have to recognize that this is a spiritual problem.
And I would even say that I don't even know that it has to be the majority of Americans or the majority of the people in the West, but it has to be people who are.
I'm sorry.
It just has to be enough.
It has to.
Well, Abraham prayed that God would spare it.
You know, if there were 10 in Sodom, would you spare them?
And God said yes.
If there were only 10, but he was going to do it because of the one.
So it becomes a matter of the people who truly believe in the God of Israel, the God of the Bible, who believe his word, for us to humble ourselves.
And if we do that, he says, you know what?
I'll hear your prayer.
I'll forgive your sin and I will heal your land.
So I don't think he says that if it's not possible, but it's up to us to make sure that we awaken people to you're in a spiritual war.
Whether you like to be spiritual about things or not, you're in a spiritual war.
You're in it.
You're part of it.
So it would behoove you to know what's going on here.
One other thing, just to kind of address the idea of, can we push this back?
And I'm probably going to set some people's hair on fire with this one as it relates to theology.
But when the Messiah was riding into Jerusalem, he said this.
Now, he's coming in just before he's going to be crucified.
This is the plan of God.
He's going to die.
He's going to be resurrected.
And those who believe in him can be saved.
This is the plan of God.
And he's riding into Jerusalem for all these things to happen.
And then he says, you know, Jerusalem, how I've longed to gather you to me as a hen gathers her chicks, but you were not willing.
So now see your house is left to you desolate.
And he says, he began to weep because he didn't, these people didn't recognize the time of their visitation.
That suggests to me that if they had recognized the time of their visitation, if they had been willing to be gathered rather than to refuse, maybe the outcome would have been different.
God's word and plan would have still gone forward.
But as to your question, maybe there's that little hint in scripture that, yeah, there are some things that are set, but God always gives us opportunity to take a different path.
So yes, I do believe it's possible.
Is it likely?
I guess is the question.
Go ahead and answer it.
I mean, whether or not the nation, whether or not the West wakes up and responds as we should, that is to repent before God, to return to God with all of our hearts.
not just half of it.
I mean, it doesn't seem likely.
But then again, even if it doesn't work out that way, that doesn't mean the plan of God stops.
That doesn't mean God's purpose for you or for me or for the people who are listening to his voice stops.
It just means that the darker it becomes, the brighter the light is going to shine.
The darkness has this way of accentuating the light.
The worst things get, and you see it in the news, and the worst things get in the news, you come out and you preach to people.
Look, guys, this is what's going on.
As I see it going on, I look, this is what the scripture has said.
And if nothing else is going to provoke people that know the truth and want the truth and are going to uphold the truth regardless of what happens, are going to declare the truth.
Arise, shine, for your light has come and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you.
Darkness shall be upon the nations and deep darkness the peoples, but the Lord will arise over you and his glory shall be seen upon you and kings will be drawn to the brightness of your rising.
So even if the darkness continues, which, as I said earlier, the locusts, which I believe is talking about the people of the East.
I didn't get into this, but in the book of Judges, the story of Gideon, the people of the East, that was the Amalekites, the Midianites, the Ishmaelites, the people who came from Arabia.
They came into Israel and they devoured every green thing.
And the Bible says that they were as numerous as locusts and they covered the land.
So it's talking about people.
It's talking about a certain people who have a certain ideology.
And that is in opposition to God and his people.
They came into the land.
They covered it.
They swarmed it.
And they were as numerous as locusts.
They were devouring things.
And by the way, the book of Judges, it said that they did that for seven years.
There's that pattern again.
But in the midst of that, what did God do?
He found a man by the name of Gideon who raised up a small army and he reversed that invasion.
He reversed the course for the nation.
I'm sorry.
Phil, I just, I'm listening to you and I think to myself, in many countries, especially Europe today, you probably would be in jail for saying a lot of this stuff.
The pushback on you must have been enormous.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And if certain people have their way, it may end up being that way.
You know, I mean, here's what, okay.
Al Khomeini was a dangerous, evil man, obvious to everybody, really, with eyes to see and ears to hear.
But what scares me is not the Al Khomeinis of the world as much as it is the Mandanis of the world.
Because those are the ones that they wear the veneer of things that are good.
They want to appeal to the masses.
They want to appeal to people good.
But the evil is lurking beneath.
And they come in and they present themselves as doing what is in favor of the people.
But there's an ideology there that's underneath that veneer.
This goes back to the kingdom that Nebuchadnezzar saw in that dream, iron mingled with clay.
It's these two things that are not supposed to go together.
And yet there is this concerted effort to make them go together.
And with the idea of stamping out two feet, stamping out, putting the heel on what God's purpose is.
And this is what's going to happen at the end.
That's going to be the last power, the last superpower of man.
There is, again, this Jewish commentator that I refer to, he was convinced a thousand years ago that the Bible was plainly saying that in the last days, he called it the rule of Ishmael.
He's talking about the people from Arabia and Iraq and Iran, that they're going to somehow or another intermingle with the people of the West.
And they're going to come together with some kind of, I don't know what it looks like.
I won't pretend to know what it looks like.
There's going to be 10 kings that are going to oversee it, but it's going to be this fusion briefly between these two things that are not supposed to go together.
And Mandani or Mamdani, excuse me, I'm not saying he's the guy.
I'm just saying he's kind of the pattern.
He's kind of representative of what I'm talking about in order to appeal to people in the West, the Marxists, the anarchists, the socialists, the atheists, you know, the people who don't see things the way you and I are seeing them.
And they're going to be susceptible to that because in conjunction with that, you don't want the truth.
I'm going to send you strong delusion, the Lord says, to believe the lie and be damned.
So I just see that thing starting to take shape a little bit.
And unfortunately, even in America, it's already swept through Europe and now it's here.
I described Mamdani as a carrier.
He's a bridge.
He is both socialist and I believe an Islamist, but you don't know which one he really is.
You know what I mean?
And he's this bridge, bringing them together and making sure everybody knows they fit together nicely.
And it's amazing to me how these two, the Marxist and the Islamists come together almost every time.
And it ends the same way with the Marxist, you know, being killed, jailed, tortured every time.
That's what's going to happen.
But you've just summed up what Nebuchadnezzar saw in that dream, the iron mingled with clay, the two feet.
You just summed it up just then because the clay is going to crack.
The Marxists, the socialists, the all the other compared to the strength of Islamic fundamentalism, they're going to crack.
And when the clay cracks, all you have left is the iron and the fierceness of it.
And that is where we get into this idea that Al-Mathi comes onto the scene.
You know, Isa or Jesus is going to come before him and say, hey, guys, I was kidding.
He's really the guy.
And people are, they're going to embrace a lie because they've been predisposed to internalize one.
You just summed it up.
I know you can't say, it's next Tuesday, but when do you see this really hitting?
Nations Must Decrease00:14:58
And where's America in this?
Is America just gone by the time of the tribulation?
Boy.
I've been studying prophecy a long time.
And one of the greatest lessons I've learned is I'm smart enough to know that I'm not smart enough to know everything.
And just when we think we've got it all figured out, God says, watch this, you know, and there's something else that you just didn't see.
And so it almost never happens the way men think it happens.
It always happens the way it's written.
So that said, my opinion, and I want to underscore that word, my opinion.
There has to come a day where the nations, including America, have to decrease so that God's promises to Israel may increase.
It's like John the Baptist.
He's the forerunner of the Messiah.
And he's getting people's hearts prepared for what's about to happen.
But when his mission has been fulfilled, he says, now I must decrease so that he may increase.
And so when, I don't know, but I believe that America has, well, America was raised up for a godly purpose, a covenantal purpose.
You know, you've got men like Winthrop inviting God, please come into covenant with us.
And if we are true to this covenant, then our prosperity and our blessing will be evident.
We'll be this shining city on a hill.
But if we abandon that covenant, then we will be a parable and a byword.
And he took all of that from what Moses had to say to Israel.
I don't know how you feel about it, but there are two unique nations in the history of the world as far as I'm concerned.
Israel, because God invited them to come into covenant with him.
United States of America, because we asked God to come with us.
In Hebrew, the United States is known as Adsot Habrit, the lands of the covenant.
But what happens if we break that covenant?
What happens if we turn our back on that covenant?
According to the prophecy in Zechariah, he sends out the curse.
But if he does that, just like he did in the days of Gideon, when these people from the east were coming in, what was that intended to do?
It was intended to provoke repentance, brokenness, to return to the covenant.
So I said all that to say this.
There will come a day when Messiah will return.
And when he returns, he's not coming to Washington.
He's not coming to Chicago or L.A. He's coming to rule and to reign from Jerusalem.
And so all nations will go up to Jerusalem to worship the king in that day, which means that all nations have had to decrease and to bow to his purpose for Israel.
So that day will come for America.
But I pray, and I know you feel this way as well, that when that day comes, it's not because he's had to put us under the heel of some tyrant, but it's because we are on our knees in submission to his purpose and his will, that we gladly lay aside our crowns, so to speak, so that his purpose will go forward and that the purpose for this nation will have been fulfilled righteously.
So I know that really doesn't answer your question.
When does this happen?
I wouldn't pretend to know that, you know?
But do I see it happening?
Do I see these things starting to take shape?
I absolutely do.
Bill, do you think that there has been, I mean, because I've thought about World War II.
I mean, the apostles thought it was right around the corner too.
But, you know, singing about World War II, if you saw, you know, Adolf Hitler coming around, you'd be like, wow, that seems like an Antichrist figure.
Now, you didn't have things that, you know, big prophecies that had not been fulfilled yet.
But I can imagine that people felt, the average people that knew the Bible somewhat, had to have felt, boy, are we entering the end times?
Now you have the prophecies.
I mean, what's left to fulfill before, you know, what's left before we could say, yeah, it looks like this might be the time.
I think that what's going on right now in Iran may have a really big role in that.
Again, I'm not, well, there are seen, it seems to me that there are some things that have to happen.
There are particular battles that are described in scripture for us that have not yet taken place.
Ezekiel 38 and 39 describe some of those.
And I believe that this formation of this last kingdom that we were talking about, I call it the mingled kingdom, that has to take shape before Messiah returns.
He returns when that kingdom or that power is in power.
So that has to happen.
How does this thing with Iran, how might it play a role in it?
Well, my opinion, once again, is that, you know, Khomeini and all those guys, the cup of iniquity is full.
And when the cup of iniquity is full, God begins to act.
And you have to answer for that.
So I am not predicting this.
I'm just saying I would not be surprised that if there is a brief return to how things were before the Ayatollahs and things like that, but there's still this ancient hatred that exists there.
And it's not just among the Ayatollahs.
It's in that region.
I'm trying to answer your question, but you have to understand I might have to go down a little rabbi trail every now and then.
That's right.
All right.
Yeah.
You understand that we don't war against flesh and blood.
We're warring against principalities.
And there are principalities that are over these different regions of the earth, and they influence people in those regions.
Daniel talks about how he prayed and fasted for 21 days, and the angel finally appears that God heard you the first day, but I've been detained by the prince of Persia.
He's talking about a principality, some spiritual entity that's over that land.
And he said, I got to hurry now because the prince of Greece is coming.
Point being, there is a principality that is over that region of the world that hates God's purpose.
So, when if the Ayatollahs are on their way out and this radical iron-fisted government is removed and there's a temporary return to some semblance of democracy, I don't know how long it's going to last because these battles that has to take place in Ezekiel 38 and 9, as it relates to the last days, one of the names of the nations is Persia.
I wouldn't even be surprised if they revert to the old name.
Again, that's not a prediction.
That's just an outlandish thought, perhaps.
But I wouldn't be surprised to see it.
And then everybody will be saying peace and safety, but that's when sudden destruction comes.
So I'm kind of waiting to see, like everybody, how does this thing in Iran really turn out?
Is it just we got rid of one group and another group is going to take their place?
Or is there going to be a regime change and the people try to institute some kind of self-governance?
I don't know.
But it's a major event as it relates to, as far as I'm concerned, how all these other things in the last days fall into place.
Might it be that the Islamists see that if you're a Khomeini or one of these really awful, obviously blatantly evil men, that's not going to work when the West, like the United States, is so powerful.
We're going to have to take another route here if we're going to advance our goal of global domination.
Maybe we have to find somebody that kind of poses as someone of the West with Western values, so to speak, but yet is one of us, you know, the Mandanis of the world, for instance.
You haven't improved my mood much.
I'm sorry, Glenn.
I really am.
But the truth doesn't always soothe my flesh.
I know.
The truth indicts my flesh to provoke me to die to it and to yearn for what God desires for me.
So I know that I didn't always have this point of view.
And maybe it's because I'm getting older.
But I you don't always get what you want.
And sometimes when you do get what you want, you really regret it.
And the only thing, you know, that has brought me comfort in the days of the darkest of days, looking at the news and looking how all of this is coming up.
And I mean, you can see we are headed for a war with Islam, whether it's over Iran or Europe or, you know, the United States.
It's happening.
It is going to happen, whether it's today or 50 years from now.
It is inevitable.
And it will be a religious war.
And the only thing that has really given me comfort is the thought that, you know, maybe Jesus will come soon.
And that's really saying something because I know what happens before Jesus comes and don't know if I'd survive that portion where, you know, Jesus is waiting in the wings to come.
But when you have the faith of it's all going to work out the way he wants, you just have to do the next right thing.
You have to stay close to him or you're going to get wildly lost and just stay close to him.
It's comforting.
It's comforting.
Is that how you keep a smile on your face?
Oh, most days.
Sometimes I have to turn off the news because I scream at the television.
Yeah.
No.
But for me personally, if things are getting darker, it doesn't push me away from God.
It draws me closer to him.
And so even though we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.
Your rod, your staff, comfort me.
Your word, your correction, your reproof, always working on me.
That's what gives me comfort.
To abide under the shadow of the Almighty.
You know, a thousand are falling over here, 10,000 are falling over here, but it doesn't come near to you, the psalmist says, because you've put your trust, your confidence in the Lord.
You've made him your refuge.
So I'm like everybody else, you know, I love my country.
I fear for the future of my children and my grandchildren.
What kind of a world are they going to have if Messiah doesn't return next Tuesday?
But that concern, I guess, should be provocation for me to be as close to the Lord as I possibly can and to show them by example today to know the truth, to live the truth, to speak the truth, regardless of what everybody else around you is doing.
Because it's been those people that the God of Israel has used.
Shadrach, Meshach, Evednego, people who were in Babylon.
They worked for the government, by the way.
But you know the story.
Nebuchadnezzar, actually, the image he saw, the head of gold represented him.
What did he do?
In the next chapter, he made an image completely of gold.
It was an image of himself, which, by the way, speaks to what happens in the end of days.
But those three men would not bow down.
They would not bow down.
And they end up being thrown into fiery pit.
Can't get much worse than that.
But the most powerful man on earth, Nebuchadnezzar, in that day, he looked into the pit.
He didn't see the three.
He saw four and one likened to the Son of Man.
And he, because of that, he confessed that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is God.
So maybe, maybe in your world, me and my world and others, whatever we do, whatever we do for the kingdom, what we've been doing all this time is just preparing for what's about to happen to be full of the truth, to be armed with the truth, and to be committed to deliver that truth regardless of what the circumstances around us are.
That darkness that is coming upon the world is, it serves to amplify and accentuates the light that burns within it.
When the darkness that followed the locusts, and I know I keep going back to that, and there's a whole lot more to that, but the darkness that fell on Egypt followed the locust.
But it said that this darkness whereby the Egyptians couldn't even venture out of their homes, it says there was light in Goshen.
And God used the darkness to amplify the light.
And when Israel finally did leave Egypt, there was a lot of Egyptians that left with them because we're going to follow this God because this God is God.
You know, that's what Nebuchadnezzar admitted.
The God of Abraham, excuse me, the God of these three men is God.
So maybe, maybe what we want isn't necessarily what God has for us, but what God has for us is so much more than what we could ever want.
God's Greater Plan00:00:47
Yeah.
Well, Bill, I thank you so much for being on with us.
I thank you for your work.
Thank you for your bravery.
I mean, it is amazing to me how there's not a lot of courage in the world, but I'm seeing more and more of it every day.
And for you to run a church and be a pastor and step to the pulpit and say these things in today's world is remarkable.
Very man full of courage.
Thank you.
Thank you, Glenn.
I appreciate the opportunity.
It was an honor to be with you today.
Just a reminder, I'd love you to rate and subscribe to the podcast and pass this on to a friend so it can be Discovered by other