TUESDAY, JUNE 26
Daniel 11:44-45
Revelation 13:1-4

“… and all the world wondered
after the beast.”

EXIT KING OF THE NORTH

We now come to a crucial phase in the power struggle between the emerging Antichrist and his arch enemy on earth, the King of the North. In a decisive action, the King of the North is destroyed. The beginning of the final phase of Antichrist’s career is preceded and surrounded by a number of astonishing happenings. Whitcomb give us the following six points:

1. The Antichrist receives “the wound by a sword” which nearly kills him (Rev 13:14).
2. He thus enters into the realm of the dead and “is not” (Rev 17:8, 11).
3. He then is enabled to ascend “out of the bottomless pit” (Rev 11:7; 17:8), to begin as the eighth and greatest enemy of Israel (having previously been the seventh, Rev 17:10-11).
4. He immediately kills God’s two witnesses (Rev 11:7), suggesting that his apparent death and return to life occur in Jerusalem.
5. The false prophet then erects an image of the Antichrist (Matt 24:15, “the abomination of desolation … stand in the holy place”), is enabled to give it the breath of life and the power to kill all opponents (Rev 13:14-15), insists that the Antichrist is God Almighty (2 Thess 2:4), and brings down fire from heaven to demonstrate it (Rev 13:13).
6. The Antichrist breaks his seven-year covenant with Israel (Dan 9:27) and begins a forty-two-month persecution of the believing remnant of Israel (Rev 12:6).

How is the mighty King of the North destroyed? Ezekiel has the prophecy: “I will rain upon him, and upon his bands, and upon the many people that are with him, an overflowing rain, and great hailstones, fire, and brimstone … upon the mountains of Israel …” (Ezek 38:22; 39:4). With this King of the North removed out of the way, the Antichrist Beast gains full control of the world. We see, then, God’s hand removing the great King of the North, and setting up the Antichrist Beast at the midpoint of the seventieth week.

THOUGHT: Every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.
PRAYER: Grant me understanding, Lord, as I live in these last days.