Evidence is accumulating that the current, global civilization we enjoy is rapidly moving toward a crisis of expensive resources, water security, global warming, and potential military conflict centred in the Middle East. The Bible suggests that God anticipated the situation we see today as an inevitable outcome of our selfishness and greed.

In this first of two volumes, author Ian Foley proposes the idea that the decline and collapse of this civilisation is part of the end-time picture that the Bible gives. The Old Testament book of Daniel lays out the first half of this picture, starting from the Jewish exile to Babylon at the beginning of the sixth century BC and tracing the rise and fall of ancient empires. It then introduces the founder of the final empire, which will be completed when Jesus returns. Through all this history, Daniel depicts the tiny nation of Israel surviving exactly as the prophet Jeremiah predicted.

Like an unfolding detective story, God's drama is revealed piece by piece, so that we gradually come to understand-up until the fall of the Roman Empire-with the final exciting revelation in Daniel 11- 12 completing the picture. This study begins to reveal why there is so much confusion with our end-time theologies and suggests a new revelation that is clearer and less ambiguous, integrating the books of Daniel and Revelation into a single, unambiguous message.