No New World Order?

Teaching 


There will be no New World Order. How do I know? Because the Bible tells me so.

Many quote the Bible as the evidence for its coming. They believe that passages in the books of Daniel and Revelation predict that one day soon:

(i) A world leader will emerge, the Antichrist, to set up and lead an authoritarian or totalitarian one-world government.

(ii) He will begin with a ten-nation confederacy and put down a rebellion by three of them.

(iii) That he will make peace in the Middle East by way of a seven-year peace treaty between Israel and the Arab nations and allow the Jews to rebuild their Temple on the Temple Mount. However, after three and a half years, he will reveal his true identity, turn on Israel, and usher in a time of warfare and great tribulation until Jesus returns to stop him.

(iv) That he will set up a cashless society, funnelling all buying and selling into a financial system only available to those submitting to some kind of device implanted on their right hand or forehead.     

They therefore see any trend or move towards globalism in trade and finances as leading to or facilitating this New World Order.1

None of this will happen other than that the Antichrist will emerge. I do believe he will come soon, as soon as anytime in the next decade, but we’ve been looking in the whole wrong direction. There’s much that needs to be said about this (see Slouching Towards Bethlehem: the Rise of the Antichrists) but here’s a part of it.

Rereading the Texts
What do the Scriptures actually say? Daniel, chapter 7:

  1. “… I kept looking in the night visions, and behold, a fourth beast, dreadful and terrifying and extremely strong; and it had large iron teeth. It devoured and crushed and trampled down the remainder with its feet; and it was different from all the beasts that were before it, and it had ten horns.
  2. “While I was contemplating the horns, behold, another horn, a little one, came up among them, and three of the first horns were pulled out by the roots before it; and behold, this horn possessed eyes like the eyes of a man and a mouth uttering great boasts.”2

You can see why NWO proponents believe as they do: they see the beast’s ten horns as a ten-nation confederacy and the little eleventh horn as the Antichrist who will subdue three. Then Daniel’s vision reveals the coming of Messiah:

  1. “I kept looking until thrones were set up, and the Ancient of Days took His seat…
  2. “… And behold, with the clouds of heaven One like a Son of Man was coming, and He came up to the Ancient of Days and was presented before Him.
  3. “And to Him was given dominion, glory and a kingdom, that all the peoples, nations and men of every language might serve Him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion which will not pass away; and His kingdom is one which will not be destroyed.

So what was Daniel actually predicting? He had this dream about four beasts in 553 BC (Dan 7:1) and he was living in the time of the first – it was the Babylonian Empire. He was predicting that it would be followed by three more (the Medo-Persians, the Greeks, and the Romans) that would rule over Israel until the Son of Man came. Daniel’s “fourth beast” was the Roman Empire.

None of these beasts were, are, or ever will be the NWO. They were the four great Gentile empires that had historically ruled over Israel from Daniel’s time until Jesus came.

Who was/is the Son of Man that Daniel saw coming who would be given an everlasting kingdom? Jesus said it was Him and He also came in the time of the Roman Empire:

  1. …the high priest said to Him, “I adjure You by the living God, that You tell us whether You are the Christ, the Son of God.”
  2. Jesus said to him, “You have said it yourself; nevertheless I tell you, hereafter you will see THE SON OF MAN SITTING AT THE RIGHT HAND OF POWER, and COMING ON THE CLOUDS OF HEAVEN.”3

This coming will be His return but that will be at the time of the ten horns that grow out of the fourth beast, the Roman Empire.

The Ten Horns
So what about these ten horns? In the 1970s, I was told the ten would one day be Europe which at that time was creating the European Economic Community comprising six nations. The EEC was even founded by the Treaty of Rome so it all seemed eminently possible.

Unfortunately for our interpretation, the six quickly grew to nine, then twelve, twenty-two, and today this confederation comprises the twenty-seven nations of the European Union. We therefore considered OPEC (now 13 nations), the Arab League (22 nations), G10 (now 39 nations)… But then one day, I read Zechariah’s prophecy:

Thus says the LORD of hosts, “In those days ten men from all the nations will grasp the garment of a Jew, saying, ‘Let us go with you, for we have heard that God is with you’.”4

‘The LORD of Hosts’ says that ‘ten men’ represent individuals from ‘all the nations’ – in other words, ten can be a metaphorical number meaning ‘all’. We find this also in Deuteronomy, where Moses told Israel:

“So He declared to you His covenant which He commanded you to perform, that is, the Ten Commandments; and He wrote them on two tablets of stone.5

The covenant actually has 613 commandments but they are represented by the Ten on the tablets. Similarly, the ten plagues on Egypt were to humble all the Egyptians and their gods;6 the tithe, or one tenth, was to represent all of the harvest;7 the ten virgins represent all the people of God;8 the ten talents for the ten servants represent all the talents of all God’s servants,9 etc etc.

So how would Daniel’s prophecy read if the ten horns represented ‘all the nations’? We don’t have to guess because Jesus told us what would happen during the time of the Roman Empire:

“…and they [Israel] will fall by the edge of the sword, and will be led captive into all the nations; and Jerusalem will be trampled underfoot by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.”10

The Romans razed Jerusalem in 70 AD and the Jews passed from being under Roman domination to becoming captive in all the nations. That may just seem to be ancient history to most of us today but… on May 14, 1948, everything changed for the Jewish people.

On that day, Israel once again became a sovereign nation after 2,000 years in exile and look at how it happened: the United Nations, which represents “all the nations” of the earth, gave them the right11 to be so, to be free at last from Gentile domination.

The Eleventh Horn
The little eleventh horn that subdues three of the ten is not the Antichrist – it is the spirit of antichrist, which John describes:

…just as you heard that Antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have appeared…12 the spirit of the antichrist, of which you have heard that it is coming, and now it is already in the world… 13

In other words, the Antichrist will come but, for us today, the spirit that will inspire him has already been around for the last 2,000 years. In John’s day, it inspired the 1st Century Romans to worship their emperors as the living image of their empire instead of worshipping Jesus as ‘the image of the invisible God’.14

That may sound simply superstitious to modern ears but consider this – “worship” comes from an old English word, “worth-ship”. To worship something is to award the highest “worth” to it. It was this spirit which inspired the 20th Century Russians to worship Stalin, the Germans to worship Hitler, the Chinese to worship Mao Zedong, the North Koreans to worship Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong-il, and Kim Jung-Un, etc. For details, see Slouching Towards Bethlehem: the Rise of the Antichrists.

What then of the three horns that are uprooted? If the ten represent all, three out of ten represent a third of the nations15 or, if you prefer an exact figure, 30%. Today, the United Nations consists of 193 nations, of which 50 are Muslim-majority and 7 strongly Muslim, i.e. one third, or more exactly 30%.

What connection does Islam have with the spirit of antichrist? To be a Muslim, you have to commit yourself to the shahada:

There is no god but Allah and Muhammad is the apostle of Allah.

In other words, Islam’s defining creed is that Muhammad has replaced Jesus as the only reliable representative of God. Antichrist doesn’t just mean ‘opposed to Christ’ – anti- means ‘instead of’, or ‘in place of’, so an antichrist is anyone taking the place of Christ. Muhammad made this claim in the 7th Century and his followers have steadily increased over the last 1,400 years until today he is believed by not only a third of the nations but 1.9 billion people, a quarter of the earth’s population. Details in Slouching Towards Bethlehem: the Rise of the Antichrists.

We find then that while we have been taught to patiently wait for Europe to one day somehow prune itself back to ten nations so that a future leader can subdue three of them, the eleventh horn has already fulfilled Daniel’s prophecy. The spirit of antichrist that John described has not only afflicted the planet for the last 2,000 years but has already gained control of three of the ten horns.

And, as we will see, that’s all this spirit needs, a third. And instead of us having to wait for the Jews to reclaim the Temple Mount so the Antichrist can reveal himself there, we find the Muslims already have it for their Mahdi to declare himself at any time. 

One-World Government?
Not necessary and will never happen. How do I know? Because Daniel had another dream, fifty years earlier in 604 BC,16 which further explains what will be happening in the world when Jesus returns to set up His kingdom. In this dream, “all the nations” are not pictured as ten horns that follow on from the wild beast of Rome but as ten toes on a statue of four metals and some pottery. Read it for yourself in Daniel, chapter 2.

This statue also predicted the four Gentile empires that would rule over Israel from his time until Jesus came: Babylon was represented as its golden head, Medo-Persia as the silver torso, Greece as bronze loins, and Rome as iron legs. Daniel then saw the statue being pulverised by a stone “cut out without hands”,17 i.e. not man-made. He was told this stone is the kingdom of God18 and Jesus said He was  introducing it in the 1st Century:

“The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.”19

“I say to you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people, producing the fruit of it. And he who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; but on whomever it falls, it will scatter him like dust.”20

So what of the feet with ten toes which were to follow Rome in ruling over Israel? They were “all the nations” that were to hold Israel captive until 1948:

  1. “In that you saw the feet and toes, partly of potter’s clay and partly of iron, it will be a divided kingdom; but it will have in it the toughness of iron, inasmuch as you saw the iron mixed with common clay.
  2. “As the toes of the feet were partly of iron and partly of pottery, so some of the kingdom will be strong and part of it will be brittle.
  3. “And in that you saw the iron mixed with common clay, they will combine with one another in the seed of men; but they will not adhere to one another, even as iron does not combine with pottery.”21

The feet and toes are a mixture of iron and pottery because one iron leg of the Rome Empire, the Western, continued on in the West until 410 AD while the other iron leg, the Eastern, until 1453. The iron, however, was mixed with the clay of every other nation so “it will be a divided kingdom” (v. 41) and “they will not adhere to one another, even as iron does not combine with pottery” (v. 43). They will try intermarriage, as the ancients did, and as Europe did in the 19th and 20th Century with many of the royal houses belonging to the same family, but it did not work and we had two World Wars.

“All the nations” have been “a divided kingdom” for the last 2,000 years.

However, in 1945, the creation of the United Nations provided a forum to air differences between nations to prevent wars and to restore sovereignty to the nation of Israel, as they did. The nations are still divided, having very different forms of government and can disagree on anything, as they often do.

‘One Purpose’
Only one thing will ultimately unite “all the nations” – having “one purpose” – and John was told that won’t be until the last hour:

    1. “The ten horns which you saw are ten kings who have not yet received a kingdom, but they receive authority as kings with the beast for one hour.
    2. “These have one purpose, and they give their power and authority to the beast.”22

At that time, they will be uniting against the Lamb and His purposes23. Some therefore believe this means ‘all the nations’ will one day unite under the Antichrist to form the totalitarian New World Order but that’s simply not necessary to fulfil all the Bible’s predictions – they only have to agree on one issue, to take Jerusalem away from Israel.

How Will That Happen?

  1. And I saw coming out of the mouth of the dragon and out of the mouth of the beast and out of the mouth of the false prophet, three unclean spirits like frogs;
  2. for they are spirits of demons, performing signs, which go out to the kings of the whole world, to gather them together for the war of the great day of God, the Almighty…
  3. And they gathered them together to the place which in Hebrew is called Har-Magedon.24

The Battle of Har-Magedon, usually called Armageddon, will be for Jerusalem. So who are these three spiritual entities that will unite and gather “all the nations” there?

  • ‘The dragon’ = ‘the serpent of old who is called the devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world’25
  • ‘The beast’ = in its final manifestation as the seventh head with the ten horns which represent “all the nations” i.e. the United Nations
  • ‘The false prophet’ = the spirit of antichrist who is most vocal today within Islam and will finally manifest in the Antichrist.

How do they do it? By ‘unclean spirits’ coming out of their mouths (v. 13) i.e. lying propaganda.

“The City of Peace”?
What do we hear today from ‘the serpent of old’, the UN, and the Muslim world regarding Jerusalem?

(i) Satan

John saw him being released after a thousand years to…:

  1. …come out to deceive the nations which are in the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together for the war; the number of them is like the sand of the seashore.
  2. And they came up on the broad plain of the earth and surrounded the camp of the saints and the beloved city, and fire came down from heaven and devoured them.26

Whether you believe ‘a thousand years’ is a metaphor for the time between the first and second comings of Jesus, as Peter taught,27 or a literal time period in the future, this vision reveals Satan sooner or later will attack Jerusalem. For John, there was only one ‘beloved city’ (v. 9) and Satan will ‘deceive’ and ‘gather’ all the nations from ‘the four corners of the earth’ (v. 8) to besiege it.

(ii) The United Nations

When Israel finally regained Jerusalem after 2,000 years, in the Six Day War of 1967, the UN immediately began calling for them to give it up. Security Council Resolution 242 refers to the:

…inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war and the need to work for a just and lasting peace in the Middle East in which every State in the area can live in security.28

The UN want Jerusalem to become an international zone and have called on Israel for more than fifty years to hand it over.

(iii) The Muslim world

Muslims call the city al-Quds, Arabic for ‘The Holy’ or ‘The Holy Sanctuary, claiming the Temple Mount as their third holiest place after Mecca and Medina and Iran’s elite Quds Force was created in the 1980s to ‘liberate’ Jerusalem. The Dome of the Rock is a shrine, venerating the place where they believe Muhammad ascended to heaven, having flown there on a winged steed one night in 621 A.D. The nearby mosque is anachronistically named Al-Aqsa, lit. the Farthest Mosque, built decades later to fit the reference in the Qur’an:

Glory to (Allah) Who did take His servant for a Journey by night from the Sacred Mosque to the farthest Mosque, whose precincts We did bless… (Surah 17:1)29

‘The Sacred Mosque’ was and still is in Mecca but on that night in 621, ‘the farthest Mosque’ was in Medina. It wasn’t until 637, five years after Muhammad died, that the Muslim armies took Jerusalem off the Byzantines and were able to build a wooden mosque there. In other words, ‘the farthest Mosque’ couldn’t have been in Jerusalem but fifty five years later, in 692 A.D., Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan, the Caliph of Damascus, built a more permanent mosque and the Dome of the Rock to cement their claim.

As for the Muslim voice in the UN, Muslim nations are not only a third of all the nations but also half of the UN’s Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) voting bloc so when it comes to any issue of Israel and Jerusalem, their voice prevails. The only restraint historically has the USA’s veto in the Supreme Council and that was withheld for the first time in 2016 by President Obama when Resolution 2334 was introduced by, shamefully, New Zealand’s Murray McCully to again deny Israel’s right to Jerusalem.

Can you hear the frogs croaking?

Zechariah’s Prediction
Lastly, consider this yet to be fulfilled prophecy from about 520 B.C.:

  1. The burden of the word of the LORD concerning Israel. Thus declares the LORD who stretches out the heavens, lays the foundation of the earth, and forms the spirit of man within him,
  2. “Behold, I am going to make Jerusalem a cup that causes reeling to all the peoples around; and when the siege is against Jerusalem, it will also be against Judah.
  3. “It will come about in that day that I will make Jerusalem a heavy stone for all the peoples; all who lift it will be severely injured. And all the nations of the earth will be gathered against it…
  4. “And in that day I will set about to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem”30

“That day” (v. 9) will be the Lord’s return. Given that the UN’s armed forces are increasingly seen as the most legitimate vehicle for world peace-keeping, is it hard to imagine that someday the terrible plight of the Palestinians will lead “all the nations” to take action against Israel?

So… What Is the New World Order?
Many of us been taught to wait, since at least the 1970s, for the Antichrist to appear and take over a European ten-nation confederation and set up a totalitarian, one-world government, or New World Order.

We’ve been taught the Scriptures predict this but they don’t. Daniel’s and John’s revelations of a kingdom comprising ten toes or ten horns were not speaking of one yet to come for us but one which has been around for the last 2,000 years – it was “all the nations” and they ruled over Israel from 70 AD until 1948.

As Daniel saw, this “divided kingdom” consisted of nations which, like iron and pottery, were never able to “adhere to one another”.31 John was told, they will only be able to unite when they “receive authority as kings with the beast for one hour” and “have one purpose.”32 One third of them have been slowly but surely subdued by the spirit of antichrist over the last 1,400 years as Islam has continued to spread.

The unclean spirits issuing from the mouth of the dragon, the beast, and the false prophet have been at work for the last 50 years, ever since Israel regained Jerusalem in 1967.

What then of the New World Order? Unnecessary and irrelevant. It’s just an idea – a hope by some like Woodrow Wilson and Winston Churchill after the chaos of World War II but a nightmare to others who fear it going terribly wrong – but it is only that. An idea that will never come to fruition because the Lord will come back before it ever could. Friends, we need to get busier with the gospel now because, as He told us, “Blessed is that slave whom his master finds so doing when he comes”!33

Microchip Mark of the Beast? –  Read More >>

No Seven-Year Peace Treaty? – Read about Daniel and his 70th Week here >>

Which Tribulation? – coming soon

Jerusalem By Andrew Shiva / Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=30066666
Murray McCully: U.S. Department of State from United States – Secretary Kerry Stands With New Zealand Foreign Minister McCully Before Their Meeting in Christchurch, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=53009022
Barak Obama: United States Senate – United States Senate (Wayback Archive), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3810434
  1. For example, David Jeremiah’s New York Time’s best-seller, What in the World is Going On? 10 Prophetic Clues You Cannot Afford to Ignore.
  2. Dan 7:7-8
  3. Matt 26:63-64
  4. Zech 8:23, emphasis added
  5. Deut 4:13
  6. Num 33:3-4
  7. Deut 1422-29
  8. Matt 25:1 ff.
  9. Luke 19:13
  10. Luke 21:24
  11. General Assembly Resolution 181, 29th Nov, 1947
  12. 1John 2:18
  13. 1 John 4:3
  14. Col 1:15
  15. ‘A third’ is a common theme of John’s Revelation e.g. ‘a third of the earth’ (Rev 8:7), ‘a third of the sea’ (Rev 8:8), ‘a third of the rivers and springs’ (Rev 8:10), ‘a third of the sun, moon and stars’ (Rev 8:10), ‘a third of mankind’ (Rev 9:15).
  16. Dan 2:1
  17. Dan 2:34
  18. Dan 2:44
  19. Mark 1:15
  20. Matt 21:43-44[emphasis added
  21. Dan 2:41-43
  22. Rev 17:12-13, emphasis added
  23. Rev 17:14
  24. Rev 16:13-14, 16
  25. Rev 12:9
  26. Rev 20:8-9, emphasis added
  27. 2 Pet 3:4 & 8
  28. United Nations Research Guide, United Nations, June 27, 2012. Retrieved June 27, 2012.
  29. Yusufali, www.cmje.org/religious-texts/quran/, 23 May, 2020
  30. Zech 12:1-3 & 9, emphasis added
  31. Dan 2:43
  32. Rev 17:13
  33. Luke 12:43