Information Related to "The Element of Surprise"
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The Communist leader of East Germany, Erich Honecker, boldly proclaimed in 1989 that the Berlin Wall would stand for another 100 years! Ten months later the wall was gone, but his infamous quote lives on in a newspaper headline glued to little pieces of the wall and sold to tourists. I bought one not long ago on a trip to Europe.
The Berlin Wall fell suddenly-Nov. 9-12, 1989-and Honecker wasn't the only one surprised. Its dismantling, and the failure of the entire Eastern European communist system it symbolized, came with a speed that surprised the entire world.
Almost instantly a building boom began, and the East Berlin drabness was soon replaced by modern, impressive skyscrapers, business towers and entertainment centers. That transformation, too, came so fast it was almost stunning.
Surprising Muslim protests and European backlash
It was also while I was in Europe that the Muslim world violently reacted to the cartoons depicting Muhammad that were originally published in a Danish newspaper. This reaction, too, erupted suddenly, its intensity catching many governments and pundits off guard. Just as quickly, a backlash flared up as many Europeans began venting their long-simmering anti-Muslim sentiment.
I thought at the time that it's not hard to see how, in such a divided and sensitized world, the prophesied conflict described in Daniel 11:40 could reach a boil virtually overnight. Daniel describes a "king of the South" pushing at the "king of the North" (see our booklet The Middle East in Bible Prophecy for more details). Today tensions sufficient to set the world on fire can spark suddenly, and in a variety of ways, easily catching people totally off guard.
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