When will Jesus Christ return? The answer is inside mankind’s instruction manual, the Holy Bible. While the Bible says that the masses will be caught unaware, you don’t have to be. You can understand the surprisingly detailed events that the Bible prophesies will lead directly to the return of Jesus Christ. In fact, your life depends on it.

One strikingly detailed prophecy is found in Daniel 11. Many specifics in this prophecy have already been fulfilled, but much of it remains to be fulfilled in our lifetime. God inspired Daniel to prophesy the precise timeline of events that will take place directly preceding and culminating in Christ’s return.

Daniel 11:40 reads, “And at the time of the end shall the king of the south push at him: and the king of the north shall come against him like a whirlwind, with chariots, and with horsemen, and with many ships; and he shall enter into the countries, and shall overflow and pass over.”

This verse describes a provocative push by one world power, “the king of the south,” which motivates a forceful response by a far stronger world power, “the king of the north.” From this verse onward, Daniel 11 describes a cascade of events leading to world war and finally the return of Jesus Christ.

The countdown begins with a powerful push by the king of the south.

Islamist King of the South

For over 30 years, Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry has forecast that radical Islam, led by Iran, will fulfill the role of the prophesied king of the south, and that a 10-nation European bloc led by Germany will fulfill the role of the king of the north.

By understanding Daniel’s prophecy of the king of the south, Mr. Flurry forecast in 2001 that America would fail in Afghanistan, Iran’s neighbor to the east. He repeatedly emphasized that it was Iran, not al Qaeda, that was the real head of the terrorist snake. As of 2015, al Qaeda had moved its global headquarters to Tehran, where it operates under Iran’s watchful eye.

In 1994, Mr. Flurry forecast that Iran would dominate Saddam’s Hussein’s Iraq, Iran’s neighbor to the west. When the United States invaded Iraq with over 100,000 troops in 2003, Mr. Flurry doubled down, saying that Iran would emerge the victor. In February 2015, he foretold that the Islamic State’s demise in Iraq would allow Iran to fully dominate the nation through its Shiite militias. This has all transpired.

Mr. Flurry also forecast in 1994 that Egypt would become part of the king of the south alliance, headed by Iran. He based this on the statement in Daniel 11:42-43 that the king of the north will target Egypt right alongside Iran, implying a strong alliance between Egypt and Iran. In light of that, Mr. Flurry prophesied that the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood movement would likely rise up to dominate Egyptian politics. This happened in 2011 with the election of Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohamed Morsi as Egypt’s president: He quickly began turning the nation toward Iran. Morsi was soon ousted from power by Egypt’s current general-turned-president. Still, Mr. Flurry has maintained that this is a temporary reality, and that Egypt will revert to being an Iranian ally.

Three decades of accurate forecasting by Mr. Flurry and Iran’s continuing rise prove that Iran’s radical Islamist alliance fulfills the role of the king of the south. And Iran’s aggressive foreign policy will be the push that tumbles the world into war—and starts the clock that counts down to Christ’s return.

Barack Obama and Radical Islam

Understanding Iran’s role in prophesied events reveals the enormous danger of America’s Middle East policy under Barack Obama and Joe Biden.

For eight years, Obama sought to fundamentally change America, including its alliances. He viewed most of the world’s problems as the legacy of white-man’s colonialism. The current nations of the Middle East were created largely by imperialist powers following World War i, powers that subsumed the will of the inhabitants to that of British and French leaders. Later, the U.S. became the dominant power intruding into the Middle East and, according to this worldview, caused only evil.

During President Obama’s first term, when Islamic extremism was still a major issue, he engaged the Middle East with a message of popular will, where no outside power, especially the nation he led, had the right to interfere. “I’ve come here to Cairo to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world,” he stated in a major 2009 speech in Egypt, “one based on mutual interest and mutual respect, and one based upon the truth that America and Islam are not exclusive and need not be in competition.”

Absent from the audience that day was Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, a longtime American ally, whose strong-arm tactics had kept at bay Islamist forces like the Muslim Brotherhood for decades. Present instead were members of the Muslim Brotherhood. Obama was rejecting America’s traditional ally and endorsing the Muslim Brotherhood’s position.

Two years later, Egypt erupted in a massive popular movement that the well-organized Muslim Brotherhood—sponsor of Hamas and leader of Sunni Islamism worldwide—took advantage of. It ended in Mubarak’s resignation (at Obama’s urging) and the election of the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood to power.

But even more dangerous in that speech was this statement from President Obama: “No single nation should pick and choose which nations hold nuclear weapons.” This was four years before he announced that the U.S. was engaging in nuclear talks with Iran. Yet his intention was already clear.

“In other words,” Mr. Flurry wrote, “he believes America by itself should not prevent another nation from getting nuclear bombs—a signal to the world that America the superpower is dead! That means America has no right to forcefully stop Iran’s nuclear program, even though Iran is the number one terrorist-sponsoring nation in the world by far!” (Trumpet, August 2009).

Not only did the Obama administration do nothing to stop Iran from attaining nuclear weapons, it actually drafted a deal to legitimize its path to nuclear power and provided massive, immediate financial incentives that probably saved Iranian radicals from losing power. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action nuclear deal was implemented on Jan. 16, 2016, a year before Obama left office.

This history is important because it shows two main strategies of Obama’s Middle East policy: First, strengthen popular Islamist movements at the expense of anti-Islamist strongman autocratic rulers. Second, empower the radical regime of Iran.

In biblical prophecy terms, Barack Obama’s policy was to strengthen radical Islam, led by Iran—the king of the south!

Empowering the King

The Jewish state was deeply concerned by Obama’s Cairo speech. The president’s favorability among Israelis plunged to an unprecedented 4 percent. It was clear to Israelis that a policy of empowering Iran and other Islamist movements directly threatened Israel, enemy No. 1 for Muslim extremists.

For four decades, successive U.S. administrations had made support for Israel the cornerstone of the nation’s Middle East policy. This reflected the will of the American people, who share the values of democracy and Judeo-Christian beliefs with Israelis. It also made sense strategically. Supporting Israel provided what has been likened to a large aircraft carrier at the center of the world’s discontent.

This advantage grew even more valuable after the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran, when the U.S. allowed the nation’s shah to be deposed and replaced by ayatollahs who regularly preach, “Death to America” (and “Death to Israel”). American policy also created alliances with Arab leaders who restrained radical Islam within their populations. This contained the fight within the Middle East and mostly away from America and its allies.

Barack Obama reversed all these policy advancements. Why?

Michael Oren, Israel’s ambassador to the U.S. during Obama’s first term, writes in his book Ally, “More than policy … Barack Obama was about ideology, and a worldview often at variance with Israel’s” (emphasis added).

Obama publicly said America would have it both ways: It would use Israel as a security ally, but it would hold it at arm’s distance diplomatically and embrace its Islamist rivals. But the truth was clear: Obama was breaking the alliance with Israel.

“Unlike in the West, where security is measured in tanks, jets and guns, security in this part of the world is largely a product of impressions,” Oren writes. “A friend who stands by his friends on some issues but not on others is, in Middle Eastern eyes, not really a friend” (ibid).

Because of his worldview and ideology, Obama favored populist Islamist uprisings over autocratic allies, took America away from standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Israel, and signaled to the world that Iran could pursue nuclear weapons. All three of these massive shifts in America’s Middle East policy came within the first six months of his first term.

Over the next 7½ years, Arab autocrats weakened as popular Islamist uprisings surged. Israel was targeted and maligned and the Iranian regime was strengthened and emboldened. In terms of Bible prophecy, Obama was empowering the king of the south to push harder and harder.

Restraining the King

Judging by the fruits, Obama’s Middle East policy severely weakened Israel’s position and strengthened Islamist powers led by Iran.

But something happened at the end of 2016 that unexpectedly and abruptly stopped this trend: the election of Donald J. Trump. Most importantly for Obama’s ideological goals for the Middle East, President Trump’s main campaign promise regarding foreign policy was to end the “dreadful Iran nuclear deal.”

That deal with Iran and several other nations was the main mechanism Obama was using to break America away from its traditional allies and to enrich Iran through international recognition, access to open markets, and outright massive cash payments. Meanwhile, Iran was not bound to stop developing ballistic missile technology, which could carry a warhead as far as Europe. (To learn why Obama would empower Iran in this way, read “The Barack Obama Mystery” at theTrumpet.com/22704.)

However, even with the fawning support of the mainstream media, the nuclear deal was deeply unpopular with Americans. People asked, Why are we giving Iran a bunch of money for just waiting longer to build nuclear bombs? Why are we suddenly negotiating with terrorists, let alone the world’s biggest state sponsor of terrorism? Why are we abandoning Israel, one of our closest allies in the world?

Those ordinary Americans, whom the pro-Obama media couldn’t convince, came out and voted for Donald Trump—by the tens of millions.

President Trump delivered a foreign policy opposite of Obama’s. Where Obama strengthened Iran, Trump sanctioned it. Where Obama provided Middle Eastern nations with motivation (fear) to support Iran, Trump supplied incentives to sign peace deals with Israel. Where Obama allowed American servicemen to be humiliated, deployed to bases they shared with Iranian troops, and targeted, Trump ordered the killing of the leader of their international terrorist programs. Where Obama sidelined autocrats in favor of the Muslim Brotherhood, Trump strengthened them, including Egypt’s President Abdel Fatteh al-Sisi and the Gulf monarchies. Where Obama pushed Israel away, Trump was the most pro-Israel president in U.S. history, recognizing the Golan Heights, declaring that Israeli construction in the West Bank was not against international law, and moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem.

In terms of Bible prophecy, the four years of the Trump administration were a restraining of the king of the south—temporarily.

All Obama’s Men

For the international community, a lot was riding on the 2020 American election. In the Middle East, there was little doubt how high the stakes were. If President Trump lost, America would revert to Barack Obama’s destructive policies. If he won, there would be hope for containing and perhaps even replacing Iran’s radical Islamist terrorist-sponsoring regime.

This is what President Trump desired, and even why he reached out for backchannel talks with Iran at the United Nations General Assembly in September 2019. However, Iran rebuffed the talks. It turned out that Iran’s foreign minister was already conducting clandestine talks with other Americans.

The Washington Times reported on February 21 that officials from the former Obama administration, such as former Secretary of State John Kerry and Obama’s chief Iran deal negotiator Robert Malley, were in regular talks with the Iranians while President Trump was in office and while they held no official authority to deal with foreign governments. Their message was: Hold out. Don’t negotiate with Trump. We will make your life easier when we return to power.

“What I’d like to see with Iran, I’d like to see them call me,” President Trump told reporters on May 9, 2019. “You know, John Kerry speaks to them a lot. John Kerry tells them not to call. [He] has many meetings and many phone calls, and he’s telling them what to do.” Obama was doing nothing less than running a shadow government. His men were conducting a clandestine foreign policy with Iran—actively colluding with the enemy of the United States—in order to undermine the president.

Well, return to power they did. Now Kerry is in President Biden’s cabinet, as is Malley, who has returned to his post as chief envoy to Iran. And they are going right to work empowering Iran and attacking Iran’s chief Arab adversary, Saudi Arabia.

Watch Out, Saudi Arabia

In his final year in office, President Obama outraged the Saudis by calling on them to “share the neighborhood” with Iran. Such smooth-sounding words were typical from Mr. Obama. But he had just dropped more than $100 billion in the lap of their chief enemy just across the Arabian Gulf.

Now that Team Obama is back, they are using American power more forcefully against Saudi Arabia.

During his campaign, Joe Biden spoke of the need to make the Saudi kingdom “pay the price” for human rights abuses and “make them in fact the pariah that they are.” In his first week in office, he reversed the designation of the Iranian-backed Houthis as a terrorist group and announced that the U.S. was ending its support for the Saudi-led campaign against the Houthis. His administration annulled weapons deals the U.S. had signed with Saudi Arabia and enabled Iran to export weapons to the Houthis by ending United Nations snapback sanctions.

The Biden administration has also gone after Saudi Arabia Crown Prince Muhammed bin Salman. His father appointed him in 2017, replacing Muhammad bin Nayef, who had a strong relationship with Obama’s Central Intelligence Agency. But Salman is firmer against Iran and has aligned Saudi Arabia with Israel by assenting to Israel’s peace deals with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. Now, the Biden administration is trying to take him out by claiming that he “approved an operation in Istanbul, Turkey, to capture or kill Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.”

“By damaging [the crown prince] in this way, the Biden administration has empowered his Muslim Brotherhood enemies who want to bring him down and return Saudi Arabia to an even more repressive ethos—as well as enmity against the West. What perversity is this?” wrote Melanie Phillips on March 1. “America will again shockingly become what it became under President Obama—anti-anti-Islamist. Which, whether the Biden administration wants this to happen or not, will put it on the side of the Islamic fanatics, whether the Sunni Muslim Brothers or the Shia ‘Twelvers’ who are all at war with the West.”

In terms of Bible prophecy, Biden is using American power to remove all opposition that threatens the supremacy of the king of the south.

Who Will Stop Iran?

Until President Obama, America sought to contain Iran’s conquest of the region. With America switching sides, former U.S. allies are left with two choices: Go the way of Mubarak, who watched Islamists take over his country and wheel him into court for war crimes before he died—or reach out for help from elsewhere.

Already, there are reports that Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Israel are building on Trump’s Abraham Accords and discussing closer military ties. According to the Jerusalem Post, a well-connected source in Abu Dhabi confirmed that Israel, the U.A.E. and Bahrain are ready to build an alliance, and Saudi Arabia is still considering the move. Such an alliance is likely, considering America is enabling the rise of the king of the south.

However, the Bible states that a regional alliance will not be enough to stop the king of the south. Instead, the prophecy of Daniel 11, combined with one found in Psalm 83, shows that it is a German-led Europe, known as the king of the north, that will join forces with the anti-Iranian alliance.

Read Daniel 11:40 again: “And at the time of the end shall the king of the south [radical Islam led by Iran] push at him: and the king of the north [German-led Europe] shall come against him like a whirlwind, with chariots, and with horsemen, and with many ships; and he shall enter into the countries, and shall overflow and pass over.”

Knowing who the king of the north and the king of the south are in this passage makes the United States’ current policy of empowering Iran at the expense of its former allies supremely significant prophetically.

The Biden administration assures us that the Middle East will not be the focus of its foreign policy. As one informal adviser told Politico on February 22, “They are just being extremely purposeful to not get dragged into the Middle East.” True, the U.S. might not be dragged into it, but it is providing Iran the ammunition it needs to light not just the Middle East, but the world on fire.

In terms of Daniel 11, Barack Obama’s foreign policy is empowering Iran to make the prophesied push against Europe. Prophecy shows that when that happens, there will be a blitzkrieg response from Europe to put down this radical Islamist power.

However, more importantly, that push from Iran against Europe is one of the main signs that this world is on a countdown to the coming of the Messiah.

How can you know when Jesus Christ is about to return? Watch for Daniel 11:40 to be fulfilled.

Watch for the United States to continue to empower Iran. Watch for deserted U.S. allies to form a partnership and look for help from Europe. And watch for Europe to become more resolute against Iran’s provocative moves. These trends directly precede the fulfillment of Daniel 11:40. And know that once Daniel 11:40 is fulfilled, then this world is on a countdown to the coming of Jesus Christ. It all starts with a push!