Global Watch

D THE MEDITERRANEAN UNION

THE ROME BYZANTINE THEORY The Rome Byzantine Theory has made a significant play on the rise of the Mediterranean Union and is based on an unorthodox interpretation of Daniel 2 and the description of Nebuchadnezzar's dream of the great image. Daniel was given a dream interpretation which detailed Israel's long-term future. Specifically, Daniel saw a great statue which consisted of different metals. There were four distinctly different metals in this statue. The head of the statue was made of gold, the chest and arms were silver, the belly and thighs were made from bronze and the legs were made of iron. This would be confusing and difficult to understand, but Daniel was given a full explanation of the meaning of this statue in Daniel 2:36-49. These four metals represented the 4 gentile empires that would rule over Israel, successively through time: Gold Head: Babylonian Empire (626 BC - 539 BC)

Silver Chest/Arms: Medo-Persian Empire (539 BC - 330 BC) Bronze Belly and Thighs: Greecian Empire (330 BC - 63 BC) Iron Legs: Roman Empire (63 BC ->)

Note that Daniel was told that only 4 empires gentile empires would rule over Israel. Daniel was also told that the last empire, the Roman Empire, would ultimately be destroyed by Christ at the Second Advent (Daniel 2:35 The Byzantine theory teaches that that the two legs are considered to represent the split that took place in the Roman Empire, into a Byzantine Eastern half (Constantinople) and a Roman Western half (Rome).

After Constantine became Emperor of the Roman Empire, in 330 AD he moved the capital from Rome to what was then called Byzantium. He renamed the city to Constantinople, the “New Rome”. He also kept the symbol of the city, the crescent moon and star, as his flag. This established the Eastern Roman Empire, which also was known as the Byzantine Empire. When the Eastern Empire began, it controlled Jerusalem. This Empire, The Byzantine Empire, remained until 1453 AD when it was taken over by the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman Empire was a theocracy, with the sultans dedicated to the advancement of the Sunni branch of Islam through military means. With the decline of the Ottoman Empire during World War I, four dominant states arose: Greece, Turkey, Syria, and Egypt—which were restorations of the four heads of Daniel’s third beast, the Grecian Empire. Thus according to this view the dominant power of today’s eastern “leg” of the old Roman Empire seems to lie with the Arab nations. This had led proponents of the Byanztium theory to postulate that the final ten nation Revived Roman Empire super power will be composed of five nations from Western Europe and five nations from the Middle East. A KEY PROBLEM WITH THE BYZANTINE THEORY One of the problems with this view is that the eastern leg of the Roman Empire (called the Byzantine Empire) did not come into existence for a few centuries after the time of Christ. Yet Daniel 9:26 — the verse that teaches that the Antichrist will emerge from the Roman Empire — says he will come from the same people who destroyed the city and the sanctuary. This destruction occurred in 70 A.D., when the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and the Jewish temple. Since the eastern leg didn’t exist in 70 A.D, then the Romans who destroyed the city and sanctuary couldn’t have referred to the people from the much later, eastern leg. This is why prophecy scholars have

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