Antichrist Can't Rise WITHOUT These 3 World Leaders

Antichrist can't rise without these three world leaders. There are three leaders who will unknowingly set the stage for the Antichrist coming. And their rules are already unfolding right now.

Is it possible that the road to the end times isn't paved by villains, but by guys who think they're heroes? We're looking for a monster to build the third temple, but the Bible suggests it requires a friend of Israel, not an enemy. We're looking for the Antichrist to start a war.

But prophecy demands a divider. A leader who shatters a Middle East superpower saves the world only to find out he's creating a vacuum for the beast. Daniel 11 speaks of a mysterious leader whose unlikely defeat opens the door for the beast.

So, who are they? And are they already on the world stage? Let's figure it out.

Welcome back to the channel. I'm Nelson Walters and this is Applied Bible Prophecy. And today we're going to be looking at one of the great mysteries of the Bible, which is that with all of its movies and books, tradition has taught us to look for an evil villain first rather than what the Bible suggests, which is the road to the Antichrist is paved with good intentions.

But if you read the text carefully, and that's what we do here, we look at the text first. The end times begins because human leaders are trying to fix the world without God and it backfires and that leads to the evil villain, the Antichrist, the guy we've all been watching for, you know, the villain ringing his hands. So instead of looking for Antichrist, which is what you've heard your whole Christian life, we need to first look at the roles the Bible says will set the stage for him.

We're going to look at leaders who build the infrastructure the beast will use. Leaders who are likely celebrated by the world and the church as peacemakers, strong men, visionaries, you know, the good guys. Prophecy requires certain things to happen.

The land of Israel must be divided. The temple must be built. A geopolitical order of the Middle East must be shattered to make room for the 10 kings, and a leader must lose a battle he was supposed to win.

Now ask yourself, who does those things? The Antichrist? No, the Antichrist exploits those things.

Once someone else does these things first, someone tries to do the right things and they turn out to be the wrong things. We're going to look for three men to fill these roles. Three prophetic mandates, a builder, a divider from Daniel 8, and the mysterious man who's going to lose the war that he should have won.

And we're going to do this the right way. We're going to look at it text first, history second, and then finally looking at the future. Before we identify the specific roles, we have to understand though the environment that creates them.

Because once you see this pattern, you're not going to unsee it. Paul warns us in 1 Thessalonians that sudden destruction comes specifically when people are saying peace and safety. Now think about that for a second.

They aren't saying war and famine. They're celebrating a perceived victory. They think they have solved their problems.

And this is what you won't be able to unsee. The three men who launched the Antichrist career think they're working for peace. This implies there's going to be a period of military and political success before the rise of the Antichrist.

And only then will the three men realize they haven't created peace. They've unleashed the monster. So first let's look at the builder.

The man who builds the infrastructure that the beast will take over. You know the antichrist needs a temple to be used in his defining moment. The moment when he declares himself to be God and the builder negotiates the deal to build it.

Many Christians ask about a Cyrus figure. You've heard this. Israel even put Donald Trump on a coin heralding him as the modern Cyrus.

And those that think about this role are right, but maybe not in the way they think. Let's look at history. Let's look at who Cyrus really was.

He was a Persian king. He was a non-believer. He was not a believer in Yahweh.

Yet Isaiah 45 calls him God's anointed. Why was that? Because he had a specific role to play.

The role was to release the captives and rebuild the temple. Now, fast forward to today. We know from scripture that the Antichrist will eventually sit in a third temple or a tent of some kind and declare himself to be God.

Paul tells us this in 2 Thessalonians 2:4. Jesus references the abomination of desolation standing in the holy place in Matthew 24. That means a temple or tent or tabernacle of some sort must exist.

Currently, it does not. And here is the problem that most people ignore. The political hurdles to build a temple on the Temple Mount are almost impossible.

It is the most contested real estate on earth. If a normal politician tries to lay a cornerstone today, well, would start a massive war with the Islamic world. Well, how does it happen?

It's going to require a special person. It's going to require a leader who doesn't care about political norms. It's going to require a leader who breaks every rule in the book.

and he's going to need to do it on Israel's behalf. He will possibly be the greatest friend that Israel has ever had. Think about the concept of the deal of a century, possibly in the role of an ultimate dealmaker.

A future leader trades the division of Israel's land for the right to build a temple. You get your state, Israel gets their temple. That leader would be hailed as a hero by the Jewish people.

They would even possibly see him as a messianic figure. The Sanhedrin would likely honor them and the world would hail the accomplishment of peace in our time. But remember when they say peace and safety, but look at the prophetic consequences in Daniel 9:27.

It says the sacrifices are stopped by the antichrist at the midpoint the 70th week. It also says on the wing of abominations will come one who makes desolate. Now think about that for a second.

You can't stop a car that's already parked. It has to be in motion. And you can't stop sacrifices that are not already started.

So someone, not the antichrist, has to start the sacrifices because the antichrist, he's going to want to stop them. He does the opposite of start them. So someone has to be there, a builder to build the temple and start the sacrifices.

This is the tragedy of the Cyrus role. He builds a house that the man of sin will eventually invade. The builder is not the abomination.

The builder prepares the place for the abomination unknowingly. And he will likely be cheered by the whole world when he does it. Imagine you're some average Joe Christian watching the news, someone who does not follow prophecy and you see a leader helping craft a M East peace plan and you think, "Hallelujah, peace and safety.

" And you would be right. But you might not realize that this blessing is setting the stage for an ultimate curse. This leader is going to think, "Yeah, I'm the builder.

I'm the man. I'm the one who did this. But they don't realize they're actually the contractor for the Antichrist.

And there's one other aspect that we need to talk about. They don't realize they're also going to bring God's judgment upon the nations. Let's look at Joel 3:2.

This is a verse many of you know, but we need to look at it in the context of these good intentions. The prophet Joel tells us that upon his return, Jesus enters into judgment with the nations. And he gives two specific reasons for this judgment.

Number one, the scattering of his people. And number two, the dividing of his land. For decades, the entire geopolitical weight of the West has pushed for a two-state solution.

Why? To create peace. To stop the rockets, to stabilize the region.

Hey, it sounds noble. Sounds like the right thing to do. But look at the mechanisms being proposed today.

Boards of peace, international coalitions to manage the borders. This isn't random everyday Middle East politics. This is the infrastructure for the division of a land, the land God gave Israel in an everlasting covenant.

A future leader might pride themselves on being the ultimate dealmaker. A prideful man who finally solves the Middle East crisis by trading Israel's land for a temple. I did it, they will say.

I brought peace to the Middle East. So, in so doing, they're going to bring about the exact judgment that Joel 3:2 tells us about. They're going to divide the land of Israel and bring down God's wrath on the nations.

Let me say that again because this is really key to understanding the deception. The builder thinks he's creating an environment of peace, but he's actually bringing judgment and destruction. And the reason is he's trying to create peace without the prince of peace.

And that can't be done. That is a really key thing to remember as we go forward in this video. No peace without the prince of peace.

Our second role is the divider. Another role that a world leader is going to play is one where he thinks he's bringing peace. also a role that involves war to achieve peace.

A role I call the divider of the goat. In our Daniel 8 series, and if you haven't seen that, you really need to. We talked about a vision of a ram and a goat.

The ram represents modern nation Iran, Persia. And the goat represents a power from the west, Yeavon, that defeats Iran and becomes what the Bible calls very great. Now, Daniel 8:8 is the key verse here.

Let me read it carefully. Therefore, the male goat grew very great. But when he became strong, the large horn was broken, and in place of it, four notable ones came up.

Now, I want you to pay attention to what we just read. It seems to make no sense. It says that this world power, the goat, and its leader, the horn, are broken when they become great.

Not when they're declining, not when their power is drifting away, but when it's increasing. They are broken when they become great. Why?

Consider this view. We know from Daniel 8, the antichrist rises from the four horns that come after this great horn is broken. But who breaks the horn?

And like we asked, why do they do it? Let's speculate. What if the great horn represents a rising Middle Eastern coalition?

Like we think a consolidated Islamic caliphate or a new Ottoman Empire. They'd have oil. They'd have money.

They'd have military power. And with Pakistan, even nuclear weapons, any Western leader, whether American, European, or Russian, would view this rising empire as an existential threat to their own national security. And what would a strong Western leader do?

Huh? They would crush it. They would shatter it.

They would break it up before it becomes too strong. If a new confederacy forms and a superpower decides to shatter it, that act of breaking is exactly what Daniel 8 predicts will happen. That leader will think they're saving Western civilization.

They'll think they're destroying a budding new superpower of terrorism. and they'll say, "Look at that. We did it.

We brought about peace and security for the world. " And then what would they do? It's very likely they would never want this superpower to rise again.

So they would carve it up into administrative districts just like Germany was carved up by the Allies after World War II. again to preserve peace and safety. Scripture tells us that these are the four horns and eventually the little horn, the antichrist comes up out of one of them.

We learn that in Daniel 8:9. So in breaking the horn, out of a desire for security, whoever does it paves the way for a greater threat. By crushing the great horn, they create a power vacuum that allows the little horn to rise in the chaos.

He may even think that he's saving the world from the antichrist. You know, there are going to be a lot of Christians who actually believe this man, the great horn, is the antichrist. met some that you need to keep in the back of your mind so that you know when he arises that he is not the antichrist.

You need to know the sequence. But the divider is going to say look I have saved the world. But the great horn is not the antichrist.

The antichrist rises from the ashes of the great horn and brings about the worst time in human history. And this leads us to the most mysterious and final role. Scripture calls him the prince of the covenant.

We find this in Daniel 11:22. Context here is the rise of a vile person who we know is the antichrist. Here's what the verse says.

Then a flood of armies will be swept away before him, before the antichrist and destroyed, including a prince of the covenant. What a strange verse. The Hebrew here, the word for prince is naged.

It means a leader, a commander, some kind of authority of great power. And the word for swept away tells us it is a total military defeat. So why is the prince of the covenant coming at the antichrist?

Because that's what's happening in this verse. He's attacking the antichrist. Well, we often think of the end times as God versus Satan.

And ultimately, it certainly is. But in the political realm, it starts with a civil war within the kingdom of darkness itself. It starts as the beast versus Babylon.

Revelation 17 shows a woman riding a beast. We have to understand this relationship. Initially the woman who is the global economic and political system in one way or another, the woman controls the beast.

She rides him. She directs him like he has a bit in his mouth. But eventually, the Bible tells us that the 10 kings and the beast will come to hate the woman, and they're going to burn her with fire and destroy her.

The antichrist doesn't want to be subservient and he has to overcome the existing global power, the old world order to usher in his new world order where he is in charge. That's a view you may never have heard before, but it's an important aspect of the end times that if you don't read Revelation 17, you may not get. So, who is this prince of the covenant?

Some scholars see a political leader allied with Israel. Maybe a leader who helped negotiate the covenant mentioned in Daniel 9:27. You know, that's maybe why he's called the prince of the covenant.

A leader representing the old world order, a leader representing the status quo. And that old world order rides and steers the beast for a time. But eventually, the beast bucks the rider.

The antichrist betrays the system that helped him rise. This would explain perhaps why the prince is broken in Daniel 11:22. It isn't that he is the antichrist.

It's because he is the thing standing in the antichrist's way. The tragedy of the prince of the covenant is that he thinks he can manage the tiger. But as he goes out to face the antichrist, he is the one that is destroyed.

Just like the divider rule, he feels that there's this threat in that region in the Middle East and he goes out to defeat it with his armies, his great armies. He is expected to win. But unlike the goat, the antichrist has supernatural assistance that helps him win the battle.

Daniel 11:38 tells us he will honor a god of fortresses. He will attack the strongest fortresses with the help of a foreign god. A foreign god.

Supernatural help. With this supernatural help, the prince of the covenant will be defeated against all odds. And ask yourself, is this the moment when the world starts worshiping the beast?

When the world asks, as we learn in Revelation 13:4, who is like the beast and who can fight against it? Did the prince of the covenant inadvertently cause this worship by losing the war? Everyone thought he would win.

So today and tomorrow and next week as you look at the headlines that are going to fill our news cycles, we need to stop looking for superficial answers like who is Antichrist? We need to start looking for the deeper structural answers that are included in the roles that people who will be assumed to be good people will be making decisions they'll be making. We need to watch for the roles.

Who will be the Cyrus, the builder of the temple? Who will be the breaker of the great horn when it becomes strong? And who is the prince of the covenant destined to be swept away by the rising flood of the man of sin?

And although we may have suspicions about who some of these people are, we really don't know who they are just yet. But I can tell you this, the stage is already being set. Next time we're starting a new miniseries on the third temple, whether a temple of stone is needed at all and how quickly can a temple be placed on the temple mount.

You're going to be shocked and what current events right now are leading to the temple. We're going to use applied Bible prophecy to uncover all of this. And if you want to understand who the antichrist is and how he comes to power and those four administrative districts that we talked about, well, then you need to see this video right here.

If you click, we will show you the current world events that are setting up what is going to happen that we talked about in this video. And I'll see you there. This is Nelson and this is applied Bible prophecy.