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US-European relations continue to deteriorate while the European Union continues to expand in numbers, geography and influence. The EU has announced its intention to grow to more than 25 nations by 2005. Many students of Bible prophecy believe Daniel predicted a ten-nation conferacy arising out of the old Roman Empire will come to being in the last days. Still others believe the entire Book of Daniel is a forgery and point to the expanding European superstate as evidence of that contention.

"And after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off, but not for himself: and the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary; and the end thereof shall be with a flood, and unto the end of the war desolations are determined." - Daniel 9:27

Because of the breathtaking accuracy with which the prophet Daniel foretold the fall of Babylon, the rise of the Medo-Persian Empire, the rise and fall of Alexander the Great and the rise (but not fall) of the Roman Empire, many skeptics argue that Daniel could not have been written from Babylon in the 6th century BC.

There have been no other world-empires since. Efforts have been made to unite the divided sovereignties of Europe by royal intermarriages and by conquest, but the iron and clay cannot be forced to cleave together.

"And through his policy also he shall cause craft to prosper in his hand; and he shall magnify himself in his heart, and by peace shall destroy many: he shall also stand up against the Prince of princes; but he shall be broken without hand. " (Daniel 8:25)

The rapidity of the Greek conquest is symbolized by the swift leopard with four wings; its division by four heads.

The Roman empire is diverse from the others — it was a republic and its iron strength is dissipated among the nations which followed it and which exists today, still iron and clay, loosely confederated as the economic/political entity of the EU.

The skeptics say the book of Daniel is a forgery. The theory of the rationalistic critics is that some “pious and learned Jew” wrote the Book of Daniel at that time to encourage the Maccabees in their revolt against this bad king; that the book pretends to have been written in Babylon, 370 years before, in order to make it pass current as a revelation from God. This theory has been supported by numerous arguments, mostly conjectural, and all provably worthless.

We've done the math on Daniel's 70 Weeks previously. If Daniel were really a late forgery, circa 163 BC, then it was a good guess, because it still worked out to the exact day of the Messiah's crucifixion 195 years later. Clearly an idiotic argument.

Daniel is better attested to than any other book of the Old Testament. Ezekiel mentions Daniel by name. ("Behold, thou art wiser than Daniel; there is no secret that they can hide from thee: Ezekiel 28:3) Ezekiel lived in the same historical period as Daniel - they were contemporaries. Jesus mentions Daniel as a 'prophet.'

("When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet" Matthew 24:15, Mark 13:14). Those are impressive credentials.

And there is a pesky problem of the Roman Empire, not yet come to power in 163 BC, yet its decline as an empire and revival as a loose confederacy of democratic nations (part iron, part clay) occurred exactly as Daniel foretold.

The prince that is to come is the antichrist that breaks the covenant half-way through. His people are those who destroyed the city and the sanctuary in AD 70 and dispersed the Jews into the Diaspora. History clearly establishes the identification of those people as the legions of the Roman Empire.

If Daniel is a forged book, then Ezekiel must also be forged. Moreover, Jesus was either fooled into believing Daniel was legitimate or He was deliberately lying. In either case, if Daniel is fiction, then so is Jesus.

Daniel's 70 Weeks run concurrently from Xerxe's command to Ezra to rebuild the Temple to the Crucifixion, then the clock stops during the Church Age. Daniel doesn't see the gap. To the prophets of the Old Testament, the Church Age is a mystery.

Daniel sees the Crucifixion, the destruction of Jerusalem and the covenant between the false messiah and the Jews as an unbroken chain of events.

Even Daniel didn't understand it. "And I heard, but I understood not: then said I, O my Lord, what shall be the end of these things? And he said, Go thy way, Daniel: for the words are closed up and sealed till the time of the end." (Daniel 12:8-9)

The revived Roman Empire of the last days that Daniel saw in his vision is the modern European Union. I say that categorically because I believe it categorically.

It was reborn at the precise moment in history that Israel was reborn. The 1948 Benelux Treaty created the first European Economic Community since the Roman Empire while the UN's extension of recognition to Israel in 1948 created the first Jewish state since the destruction of the Temple.

It was born out of six nations, that became ten. Today that ten-nation assembly is called the Assembly of Western European Union. It remains a unique core group. The last to enter this closed circle was Greece in 1996.

The subsequent and proposed new members of the EU are offered associate membership, but only the original ten are full members of the Brussels Treaty of 17 March, 1948.

U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Rockwell Schnabel spoke to the American Hellenic Chamber of Commerce on October 15 in Athens. His speech was entitled "U.S.-EU Relations: Drift or Common Destiny?"

Schnabel focused his remarks on the changing nature of the European Union, the global reach of EU regulation, and how the United States and the EU can best manage their differences and work together.

Schnabel noted that the relationship is a changing one "largely due to changes within the European Union, not the United States."

His speech went on to cover the problems between the US and EU, expressing particular concern with EU's global economic reach.

"But the area of greater impact in my opinion, and one that has only just begun to receive wide attention in government and media circles, is the global reach of EU regulation. That is how companies all over the world now produce goods that must conform to EU norms. . . Although the U.S. economy is larger, the EU regulates more often and more rigorously than we do, having written an estimated 80,000 pages of regulation since 1957 [Treaty of Rome]", he said.

Schnabel's speech underscores the deepening rift between the United States and the New Europe. A rift exacerbated by European global economic regulations, deep differences over Iraq and the Middle East, and especially over the best way to handle the Arab-Israeli conflict and the final solution to the Jerusalem Problem.

We aren't simply moving in the general direction of Bible prophecy. We are watching the final pieces of the puzzle fall into place. The picture grows more clear with each passing day.

We are living in the last days. Jesus will be returning soon. Everyone you meet, from the bag boy at the supermarket to the guy in the cubicle across from you to the waitress at a coffee shop -- has an eternal destiny. They will spend eternity with Christ, or in eternal torment apart from Christ.

We may be the only bridge they have between a Christless eternity and eternal life.

And there is not much time left for us to throw them a life preserver.

Jesus is coming back. And soon.

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