We are living in extraordinary times. Before our very eyes, the stage is being set for the fulfillment of ancient prophecies foretelling the end of this age.

Nonetheless, there are skeptics who scoff at the suggestion that anything out of the ordinary is happening. Among the doubters are postmillennialists, reconstructionists, preterists, and others who do not believe in the literal, premillennial return of our Lord. They point out, and correctly so, that many religious groups, at various times, have issued warnings about the impending end of the world. Up to this point, obviously, they have all been wrong.

The Y2K scare focused the world’s attention on certain Christians who warned that the so-called millennium bug might signal the end of modern civilization—yet another example of misguided apocalyptic fervor.

Some ministries tried to make a connection between the Y2K phenomenon and Bible prophecy. In 1998 and 1999, the Christian publishing market was flooded with books and videos explaining the supposed prophetic implications of Y2K. Some preachers claimed that God would use Y2K to mete out His judgment on a sinful and unbelieving world. One well-meaning Messianic rabbi even claimed that he found prophetic warnings about a Y2K disaster encoded in the Hebrew text of the Torah!

Meanwhile, the scoffers chuckle and say, “See? Those premillennialists are all crazy!” Although their indictment of our movement is based on the irrational pronouncements of a lunatic fringe, they paint all of us with the same datesetting, sensationalist brush. They insist that there is little or no prophetic significance to the events occurring in our world today.

Yet these same critics are hard-pressed to explain how such an incredible combination of world events and conditions, foreseen millennia ago by the biblical prophets, could converge in our generation unless it was by divine design. How could these developments all intersect at once—right now—merely by coincidence?

The Roman Connection

Standing at the threshold of a new millennium, we see that one of the most notable developments in our world has been the resurgence of the ancient Roman Empire. Some prophetic scholars refer to it as a “resurrection,” but in reality the Roman Empire never died. Its government was disbanded and the caesars were deposed, of course, but the Roman spirit and her many, diverse cultures never passed away. They have remained in place, changing and adapting with the times, for all these many centuries.

The Encyclopaedia Britannica aptly observes: “Probably more than any other city in the West, possibly more than any other in the world, [Rome] is a city whose history continues to shape nearly every aspect of its being but, at the same time, whose contemporary consciousness of that history projects it into the very core of modern life” (“Rome,” Britannica CD 2000, Copyright ©1994-2000 by Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.).

The Roman Empire ruled the world for roughly a thousand years before its government and political institutions declined and eventually disintegrated. But it has continued to exist in spirit, exerting its influence all over the known world during the past 1,500 years.

Again, the Encyclopaedia Britannica offers this perspective:

For well over a millennium, Rome controlled the destiny of all civilization known to Europe, then fell into dissolution and disrepair. Physically mutilated, economically paralyzed, politically senile, and militarily impotent by the late Middle Ages, Rome nevertheless remained a world power—as an idea. The force of Rome the lawgiver, teacher, and builder continued to radiate throughout Europe.

Although the situation of the popes from the sixth to the fifteenth century was often precarious—at times tragic, ridiculous, or shameful—Rome knew glory as the fountainhead of Christianity and eventually won back its power and wealth and reestablished itself as a place of beauty, a source of learning, and a capital of the arts (Ibid.).

Western civilization today is a continuation of the ancient Roman Empire. Styles, designs, and building techniques developed by the Romans are predominant in modern architecture. Roman roads, bridges, and aqueducts served as models for engineers in later ages.

The Romans developed many farming techniques (like crop rotation, for example) that are still practiced today. They originated the science of selective breeding of plants and livestock.

Much of the world’s population today speaks Romance languages derived from Latin, the language of the Romans. Roman law provided the foundation of modern jurisprudence. The governments of the United States, Great Britain, and other countries of the world were based on Roman principles of justice and republicanism.

And now we are witnessing something remarkable: the rebirth of Roman government and political institutions. No longer does the Roman Empire exist only in spirit.

For the first time since the days of ancient Rome, the nations of Europe and the Mediterranean world have come together, forging alliances, setting up institutions, and functioning effectively as a United States of Europe. The 15-member European Union (EU) has become the greatest economic superpower in the world with a greater combined Gross Domestic Product (GDP) than even the United States.

The EU’s website is located at europa.eu. There you will find a wealth of information about the EU’s emerging government, which includes a unified economy and common currency, a system of courts, a Secretariat General, a 20-member Commission, and its main governing body, the European Parliament. Plans are also in the works for a combined EU military force to function in concert with NATO.

The Roman Empire is alive and well in the twenty-first century!

The Not-So-New World Order

In his January 1991 State of the Union address, during the Persian Gulf War, President George Bush said, “It’s certain that we stand at a defining hour. Halfway around the world, we are engaged in a great struggle in the skies and on the sea and sands.

What is at stake is more than one small country. It is a big idea—a new world order, where diverse nations are drawn together in common cause to achieve the universal aspirations of mankind—peace and security, freedom and the rule of law.”

Well, it may have been a “big idea,” but it was certainly not new. The Romans had the same idea 2,000 years ago—that is, to establish a universal world order that would unify the nations and bring peace, security, and prosperity to all humankind.

In fact, there are four striking similarities between the way ancient Rome brought the world together and today’s emerging New World Order:

Ancient Rome sought to bring the world together with a common system of government.

The Roman Empire actually began as a democratic republic—the Roman Republic—in which political power was shared by two elected consuls and a senate. Ordinary citizens met in public assemblies to vote on proposals and to express their views. Everyone had a right to be heard.

After roughly 500 years, unfortunately, the Roman Republic succumbed to a series of devastating civil wars. It was re-placed by the Roman Empire, in which absolute power was vested in the emperor, or caesar. Democracy, then, paved the way for dictatorship.

Ancient Rome sought to bring the world together with a common language.

In those days, the universal language was Latin. Millions of people in the world today speak the Romance languages—French, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, and Spanish. These languages are direct descendants of vernacular Latin, the everyday language of the ancient Romans.

In the eastern Mediterranean region of the Roman Empire, there were actually three common languages: Aramaic, Latin, and Greek. John 19:19-20 tells us that the sign on the Cross (“Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews”) was written in these three tongues. Aramaic was the language spoken on the street by the first-century Jewish people. It is so close to Hebrew, it is sometimes referred to as “Hebrew-Aramaic.” Latin was the official imperial language, spoken (or at least understood) by virtually everyone. Koine Greek was also understood all over the known world and was often the preference of cultured and educated people because of its sizable vocabulary and wide range of expression.

These were not the only languages spoken, of course. Indeed, hundreds of regional languages and dialects were spoken throughout the Roman Empire. However, people who cannot understand each other cannot easily live and work together. When God confused the languages at Babel, work on the great tower to Heaven stopped virtually overnight, and the people were scattered all over the face of the earth (Gen. 11:1-9). That is why a universal means of communication was needed to hold the empire together.

Ancient Rome sought to bring the world together with a common religion.

The Romans worshiped many gods and goddesses during the course of their nearly 1,300-year history. In the 300s BC, they began adopting Greek deities, giving them Latin names, and building shrines and temples in their honor. By the first century, however, the Romans had lost interest in their traditional religions, and Rome was essentially a secular state.

It was about this time that Yeshua of Nazareth was born in Bethlehem, an obscure village in the Middle East. He was crucified during Passover week in either AD 30, 31, or 32. He was resurrected three days later and subsequently returned to Heaven. At first, virtually all of His followers were Jewish men and women who lived in Israel. Later, however, as the Christian message began to spread among Diaspora Jews all over the empire, many Gentiles also believed in Him. Much of the New Testament consists of letters written to Messianic congregations (that is, local churches consisting of both Jewish and Gentile believers in Messiah Jesus) in places like Rome, Galatia, Thessalonica, Philippi, Corinth, and Ephesus.

The imperial persecutions began in AD 64, the tenth year of Nero’s reign. From the reign of Trajan (AD 98) to Constantine (306), Christianity was outlawed in the empire. The “Great Persecution” began in 303, and the Emperor Diocletian burned so many copies of the Scriptures and executed so many believers, he actually thought at one point that he had succeeded in destroying the Church. He reportedly erected a monument over the ashes of a Bible with the inscription, “Extincto Nomine Christianorum”—literally, “the Name of the Christians Having Passed Away.”

By the time of Constantine, however, the futility of trying to stamp out Christianity by force had become evident. The underground Church was thriving while the emperor’s political problems were mounting both at home and abroad. So Constantine decided to “convert” to Christianity.

No one can truly know another man’s heart. Nonetheless, Jesus Himself said, “. . . by their fruits ye shall know them” (Matt. 7:20). Historians have long debated the sincerity of Constantine’s conversion for a number of reasons. For one thing, he altered the character of Christianity by purging it of much of its Jewishness and infusing it with pagan elements. Teachings like chiliasm (the belief of the Early Church that the Messiah would return to establish a literal kingdom on earth) were condemned as ridiculous “Jewish fables.” Replacement Theology (that is, the notion that the Church replaced Israel in God’s plan, and that God had rejected Israel once and for all because of her unbelief) became the official position of the Roman Church. In 325, the foundations were laid at Nicea for “Christian” anti-Semitism with Constantine presiding.

Another factor that seems inconsistent with a genuine conversion is that the Arch of Constantine, a monument the emperor commissioned three years after his “conversion” to commemorate his stunning military victory over Maxentius, features pagan rather than Christian symbols. There is not even a cross anywhere on it. The Latin inscription describes the emperor’s conquest but says nothing about the Lord.

Something else that has prompted some historians to question the emperor’s sincerity is that he steadfastly refused Christian baptism until he was on his deathbed in 337, 25 years after his supposed conversion.

Many church history books portray Constantine as a great hero of the faith, but it is more likely that he adopted his modified form of Christianity for political, rather than for spiritual, reasons. He desperately needed a cohesive force to hold his faltering empire together. Constantine may have thought that Christianity could provide that cohesiveness. So he tried to unify the empire with a common religion: Roman Christianity.

Ancient Rome sought to bring the world together with a common infrastructure.

Rome’s strategy for world governance included a system of international travel and communications. To this day, the Roman Empire is famous for its vast system of roads. The old adage, “All roads lead to Rome,” was really true—in ancient times, Rome was the hub of a weblike network of roads that literally spread out all over the known world.

Believe it or not, some of those ancient Roman roads are still in use today, like the Appian Way, for instance. This 2,300-year-old highway begins near Rome and follows a southeasterly route across the Italian peninsula to the city of Brindisi on the east coast. It is a virtual certainty that the Apostle Paul, and perhaps other biblical characters, traveled on this very road. Several catacombs—underground caverns where early believers secretly lived, worshiped, and were buried during the imperial persecutions—are located at points along the Appian Way.

The Romans also provided public utilities. Roman engineers designed an elaborate network of aqueducts to deliver fresh water to more than 200 cities across the empire. Rome alone had nine aqueducts capable of delivering more than 85 million gallons of water a day from mountain springs to the north. Roman aqueducts were so well designed, some of them still stand today, including one that we often visit in Caesarea, Israel, with our tour groups.

The Romans made communications a priority. Augustus Caesar developed the most highly organized system of mail delivery the world had ever seen. It employed an ingenious relay network in which mounted couriers rode throughout the empire, stopping at “post houses” to rest, get fresh horses, or pass their messages to another carrier. Two thousand years later, the Roman model became the basis of early “pony express” mail delivery in the United States.

The Roman Empire also had a unified economic system. One could go anywhere in the known world and use Caesar’s currency to make purchases. The central bank in Rome issued gold, silver, copper, and bronze coins. They even had a monetary authority that controlled the money supply, much like our Federal Reserve does today.

This highly developed infrastructure greatly enhanced travel, commerce, and communications throughout the Roman Empire. The world had never seemed smaller.

Parallels: Then and Now

If it’s true that the emerging twenty-first-century New World Order is a modern manifestation of the ancient Roman Empire, we might reasonably expect it to share these same four characteristics:

Common Government

In 1987, President Ronald Reagan stood at the Berlin Wall and publicly challenged Mikhail Gorbachev, his Soviet counterpart, to “tear down this wall.” With the utterance of these words, a wave of democratic “fever” began to
sweep over Europe and the Soviet Union. Solidarity, an organization of trade unions in Poland, began pressing harder for free elections. Two years later, Poland held its first free elections in more than 45 years.

That same year, the Romanians, who trace their ancestry and language back to the ancient Romans (Romania means “Land of the Romans”), overthrew the ruthless Communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and executed him publicly. People took to the streets, and similar demonstrations took place in Hungary, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, and Bulgaria.

Since that time, democracy has taken hold throughout much of eastern Europe and the FSU (former Soviet Union). The United States and/or NATO have intervened in the Baltics, Yugoslavia, Africa, the Middle East, and other parts of the world in the interest of “promoting democracy.” The New World Order is using the promise of democracy to extend its influence, consolidate its power, and bring down its opponents. But democracy can quickly turn to dictatorship, as we saw in the history of the ancient Roman Republic.

Common Language

René Descartes, the French philosopher who lived in the 1600s, originated the modern idea of a universal language. He felt that if language barriers could be overcome, the world would be brought closer together and people could live in harmony.

Since that time, more than 600 universal languages have been proposed, including the most popular one, Esperanto, which was created in 1887 and is spoken today by an estimated two million people worldwide.

However, it is no longer necessary to invent a new language that everyone in the world can learn and use. We already have a universal language—English! Travel virtually anywhere in the world, and you will find someone who understands English.

English is the official language of international aviation, and is spoken by thousands of pilots and air traffic controllers worldwide. Schoolchildren in many European countries, the Middle East, the Far East, and South America are required to study English. For billions of people worldwide, English is a second language.

Common Religion

Revelation 17 suggests that the Anti-messiah (the “Beast”) will form an alliance with the leader of an end-time, global religious system. This religious leader is called “the False Prophet,” and his one-world religious system is known by the code name “Babylon.” Like Constantine in ancient Rome, the Anti-messiah will seek to use a common religion to help consolidate his power and bring the world under his control.

Later in this study, we will see in more detail how the ecumenical spirit of our age is preparing the way for this end-time religious system, the great Prostitute of Revelation 17.

Common Infrastructure

The ancient Romans could have only dreamed about the kind of infrastructure in use today. The world is knit together with the Internet and World Wide Web, air travel that puts the most remote destinations within reach in a matter of hours, satellite and wireless communications, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the United Nations, the World Court, and many other factors. We already have a global economy, as evidenced by the fact that you can go virtually anywhere in the world and use a credit card to make a purchase. The world has never been smaller than it is today.

The pieces of the end-time puzzle are falling together. There can be little doubt that the foundation is being laid for the global government of the Anti-messiah!

(These articles are adapted from the series of studies Gary is currently presenting on the Messianic Perspectives Radio Network. The entire series of 26 programs is available on a set of three CDs [GT-47CD] for a contribution of $18.)

Continued Next Week