By Jan Willem van der Hoeven

Deeper Revelation Books, 2009 (revised edition)

The cities of Babylon and Jerusalem figure prominently in the Bible’s discussion of the end times. One represents man’s attempt to make a perfect world; the other, God’s intervention and salvation. The author, who is founder and director of the International Christian Zionist Center in Israel, gives a very readable summary of the forces striving for supremacy.

There is the New Age plan for an absolutist global government and its occultic influence on the Third Reich. He shows that an end-time apostate Church that sides with an evil governing power has already been active down the centuries, because the Jewish people have experienced it. Proofs are the Inquisition and the Vatican’s involvement in helping leading Nazis escape to South America after World War 2, or the US Church’s silence during the Holocaust. Other minorities could well say the same.

In the Middle East he covers forgotten but recent history; the expulsions of Jews from Arab nations and the PLO’s atrocities against Christians in Lebanon. The book is surprisingly slim, so it’s well worth giving it to a younger person whose education will not have covered these matters.