by Michael G. Mickey
(1-22-10)

Daniel 7:7: After this I saw in the night visions, and behold a fourth beast, dreadful and terrible, and strong exceedingly; and it had great iron teeth: it devoured and brake in pieces, and stamped the residue with the feet of it: and it [was] diverse from all the beasts that [were] before it; and it had ten horns.

In a vision the prophet Daniel saw a powerful 'beast' was going to play a dramatic role in the last days - a dreadful beast of great strength and apparent ruthlessness.

Daniel 7:24: And the ten horns out of this kingdom [are] ten kings [that] shall arise: and another shall rise after them; and he shall be diverse from the first, and he shall subdue three kings.

In Daniel 7:24 it is explained that the great end times 'beast' is actually going to be a kingdom that will be led, oddly enough, by not one but ten kings. When I read the headline of a 12-29-09 article written by EUBusiness.com entitled "'Hydra-headed' leadership takes over EU", the first image that popped into my mind was that of a hydra with its many heads, much like the one pictured in this commentary - and Daniel's prophecy, of course.

The following is an excerpt from the EUBusiness.com article:

A new-look leadership structure designed to streamline the European Union begins in earnest Friday when Spain assumes the rotating presidency alongside the bloc's first president, Herman Van Rompuy.

But as Spain's Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, Van Rompuy and EU commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso jostle for position at the bloc's top table, critics say the situation is risks becoming more hydra than hybrid.

"In fact, the new system is no less complex and multi-layered than the previous one," said European Policy Centre analyst Antonio Missiroli, warning of a "hybrid situation."

"Making it work will not be an easy task."

Van Rompuy's position was created under the terms of the EU's Lisbon Treaty which also creates the role of a foreign policy and security supremo, a post which the 27 EU member states bestowed on British peer Catherine Ashton.

While the much-vaunted treaty was supposed in part to answer Henry Kissinger's famous question "who do I call if I want to call Europe," he may find that in fact the EU phone book has just got bigger.

Isn't it interesting, surreal even, to see what is presently taking place in the European Union, the revived Roman empire of bible prophecy, in light of Daniel's prophecy?

By creating a new position of EU president under the Lisbon Treaty but keeping the old rotating system of EU presidencies intact alongside it, the EU has only complicated what was already a mess where definitive leadership was concerned. But all of this confusion only serves to bring us closer to the infighting that the prophet Daniel foretold would come to exist within this "hydra-headed" end times beast.

As European Policy Centre analyst Antonio Missiroli put it, making the EU's new multi-headed governmental style work isn't going to be an easy task. In fact, as we look at Daniel's prophecy, we can be sure that, sooner or later, a conclusion is going to be reached that it isn't working effectively which will bring us even closer to fulfillment of Daniel's prophecy.

Daniel tells us the number of kings (or horns) that will be calling the shots in the rising new world order is eventually going to reach ten. The only questions left to be answered are how the European Union will eventually come to have ten kings (leaders) leading it and how the struggle for power will unfold that will see the prophesied Antichrist, the "little horn" of Daniel 7:8, rise up after the ten are seated and pluck three of them out en route to becoming the world's final and most evil dictator.

Day by day we are closer to the fulfillment of end times bible prophecy. Strikingly, and by no coincidence in my opinion, many of the news stories documenting events presently taking place in the world around us use similar wording and imagery to that the prophets of old used to describe the last days to us, hard to miss from where I'm sitting.

Keep looking up! Jesus Christ is Lord and He is coming soon!