Thursday was an embarrassing day for the Obama administration. First, during a congressional hearing on security threats facing the United States, cia Director Leon Panetta said there was a “strong likelihood” that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak would step down that evening.

In that same hearing, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper described the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt as a “largely secular” group that has “eschewed violence.” Clapper’s office later released a statement clarifying his remarks. It said the Muslim Brotherhood worked through a political system that is largely secular and that Clapper was well aware of the fact that the Brotherhood itself is not a secular organization.

Then, as the world anxiously waited for Mubarak to announce his resignation last night, President Obama couldn’t resist the urge to jump to the front of the post-Mubarak parade. “What is absolutely clear is that we are witnessing history unfold,” the president said yesterday in a speech at Northern Michigan University. Freedom-seeking young people, he excitedly said, were fueling this “moment of transformation.”

Two hours later, after Obama endorsed the “young people,” an embattled Egyptian president stepped to the podium inside his palace and announced that while he would transfer much of his power to Vice President Omar Suleiman, he would not step down.

“We will not accept or listen to any foreign interventions or dictations,” Mubarak defiantly said in response to intense U.S. pressure for him to resign. His statement marked the latest surprising turn in the crisis and sent Obama’s national security team scurrying back to the drawing board.

As far as Egypt is concerned, no matter how the details play out in the days or weeks ahead, Bible prophecy reveals that the turmoil will ultimately result in an Islamist Egypt.

Another fascinating angle to this story is what it reveals about the United States. It’s not just that America is abandoning its traditional allies and appeasing the forces of extremism. It’s how America’s standing in the world is widely viewed as irrelevant.

In the Middle East, it boggles the mind to think about how fast American power and influence has diminished. Not that long ago, as the Washington Post recently noted, whenever protests or uprisings occurred in the Middle East, they generally featured burning American flags or crude effigies of U.S. presidents hanging from nooses. In Cairo, however, “references to the United States have been conspicuously absent,” the Post wrote, “a sign of what some analysts are already calling a ‘post-American Middle East’ ….”

America is also conspicuously absent from European affairs, as intelligence analyst George Friedman observed on December 7. After spending a month traveling in Europe, Friedman was struck by America’s invisibility within decision-making circles. “Eastern Europe is not making calculations based on what the United States will or won’t do,” he wrote. “The European Union dominates all minds. nato is there as well, a distant second. The Russians are taken into account. But the United States has stopped being a factor in European affairs” (emphasis mine throughout).

The United States is becoming a non-factor when it comes to the most significant developments unfolding in Europe and the Middle East! It’s all happening exactly the way God said it would happen in the last few verses of Daniel 11.

In that latter-day prophecy, Daniel tells us when World War iii will start, who will start it and how it will end. “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” (Daniel 11:40). In this prophesied clash between the kings of the north and south, the same two forces that often fought during the Crusades will once again square off—Roman Catholic Europe and radical Islam.

The Islamic power, headed by Iran, will aggressively “push” at the German-led European Union, until it finally provokes the northern “king” to lash out in a whirlwind response.

Verse 42 reveals that Egypt will be aligned with the Iranian king of the south, which is why we have predicted for years that Egypt’s government will soon undergo a radical transformation.

Then there is the United States, which is conspicuously absent from this prophecy. What Daniel describes is a spectacular clash that triggers the start of World War iii—and the United States of America is not even mentioned!