Thanks Guys,

Its interesting Eric that preterists must tweak the symbology here and interpret mountains to suddenly mean single kings-or Caesars.

My position is that The rule of Islam contained in the various Islamic dynasties and empires, primarily the Abbasids, the Ummayids and then the Ottomans speak of the Seventh. If we view the “Islamic empire” as one entity, it certainly fits the pattern and flow of what we would expect if the bible prophesied another empire after the Roman.

Like all previous empires, it ruled over J’lem and the ME. It also defeated the previous empire before it. (When Constantinople finally fell to Mehmet in 1453) It perhaps perfectly bears the anti-Semitic, anti-Yahweh and anti-Chrsit spirit more than any other previous empire. It is responsible for the decline of the earliest church communities more than any other entity on the earth. Bat Y’eor’s The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam (or is it under Dhimmitude?) is perhaps the best source of primary source documentation of how severly Islam misplaced and defeated the Christian religion throughout the ME. It wasn’t a tolerant spread at all.

When Malik ibn Umar entered J’lem and built an ad hoc Mosque on the temple mount, Sophronius, Patriarch of J’lem at the time is recorded saying on more than one occasion (including his last words) “The abomination that causes desolation is in the Holy place”

But eventually the Ottomans fell. So if there is a seventh and and eighth (and final), could not the Eighth be a revival of sorts of the seveth? A new Islamic Empire?