When America and Israel attacked Iran, killing the ayatollah who had led the country for 37 years, the status of the Iranian regime and the future of the country instantly leaped into top headlines around the world.

But it has been making Trumpet headlines since our earliest issues, starting a year after Iran selected its new supreme leader.

1989

Rewind to 1989. The Reagan years had just ended. Rent was $400 a month, a new Ford Taurus cost $13,000, gas was $1 a gallon. People were buying their first microwave ovens, answering machines and camcorders. Someone somewhere was describing a wild idea for something he called the “World Wide Web.”

The big news of the year was the Exxon Valdez tanker oil spill, the fall of communism in Eastern Europe, and the atrocities of communism in Tiananmen Square.

And most Americans had heard almost nothing about Iran.

Iran was a rogue nation with a struggling economy and a spent military. The “Islamic Republic” had expended eight of its 10 years of existence in a vain war of attrition with Iraq that killed between half a million and a million people. Many Iranians were still prisoners of war in Iraq, hundreds of thousands were widows and orphans, and portions of cities and crucial oil terminals and tankers were still bombed out.

This was Iran in 1989. There, in June, the revolution’s founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, died, and a man named Ali Khamenei became supreme leader.

And in December, in Oklahoma, a man named Gerald Flurry established the Philadelphia Church of God (pcg) to proclaim the warning of Bible prophecy. Two months later, he published the first issue of the Philadelphia Trumpet.

These two events would prove to be connected.

Why did Mr. Flurry establish the pcg, with less than $100 in “funding” and only 11 supporters? Because he was compelled to carry on the work of Herbert W. Armstrong and the Plain Truth. For decades Mr. Armstrong had preached the truth of the Bible, including a strong, God-inspired message of Bible prophecy—a warning of coming tribulation and a hope-filled message of God’s soon-coming Kingdom. But after he died in 1986, that message was suppressed. His successors subtly subverted it—then brashly destroyed it.

Mr. Flurry fought back. He gave everything to preserve, proclaim and publish that message, taking a leap of faith to uphold the truth as God had revealed it through the Bible to Mr. Armstrong.

That makes the connection between Mr. Flurry, Bible prophecy and Iran all the more intriguing. Because, unlike almost everything else Mr. Flurry was teaching about the Bible and prophecy—from the Sabbath and the holy days to Israel to weapons of mass destruction to healing to the Holy Spirit to Church government to the sacrifice of Jesus Christ—his teaching on the prophesied “king of the south” differed from Mr. Armstrong’s.

God was continuing to reveal Bible prophecy, now to someone new.

The history of Mr. Flurry’s “king of the south” prophecy is almost as fascinating as what the prophecy itself foretells.

‘The Rise of the King’

In the Plain Truth magazine, World Tomorrow broadcast and hundreds of articles and other publications, Mr. Armstrong had taught and proved since the 1930s that Bible prophecy is alive and applies to nations, institutions and individuals in our time. God used him to declare powerful and specific prophecies about the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia, Germany, Europe, Russia and other nations. The book that most directly built the Church under Mr. Armstrong was The United States and Britain in Prophecy.

In the black-and-white photocopied fifth issue of a new magazine as rudimentary and small as the early Plain Truth had been, Mr. Flurry wrote that Mr. Armstrong had taught from the Bible “an outline of prophecy that has been fulfilled precisely. However, his understanding of the king of the south was incomplete. Partly because he couldn’t see what we see today, [Mr. Armstrong] erred about when this king would appear on the world scene” (Philadelphia Trumpet, September-October 1990).

This was a bold statement since it differed from what Mr. Armstrong had taught and since, obviously, no human being has any control over the future. Mr. Flurry had written in the June 1990 issue that true Christians were commanded to “hold fast” the truth God had restored through Mr. Armstrong, but that God was continuing to give new revelation about prophecy.

JAMSHID BAYRAMI/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

“Egypt was the king of the south in past history. But who is this mysterious man and nation today? This king is a key player in the book of Daniel—and at the very end time” (ibid).

“Mr. Armstrong thought Daniel 11:40 transpired in World War ii and expected the global war prophesied in the Bible to occur during his lifetime,” Mr. Flurry later wrote in his booklet The King of the South. “A number of prophecies were fulfilled or began to be fulfilled before he died in 1986, but some did not click into place until after his death, and some still have yet to unfold. The rise of the king of the south is one of these prophecies that was revealed after Mr. Armstrong died. …

“Only God can reveal the meaning of Bible prophecy. He did so through Mr. Armstrong with many prophecies that other churches never taught correctly or at all. But God waited until after Mr. Armstrong was gone to make clear the timing of the king of the south prophecy.”

Mr. Flurry focused in on the detail that “at the time of the end shall the king of the south push at him”—that is, the king of the north (which Mr. Armstrong had showed to be German-led Europe). The word push, he wrote, is key.

Mr. Flurry wrote in that September-October 1990 article, “King of the South—Is He Now on the World Scene?”, that from the unification of Italy in 1870 “to the present, no king of the south pushed at the king of the north! … No such push has caused the king of the north to respond in kind—yet! But the stage is being set—right now—for this to occur!”

This new identification of the king of the south was built on the foundation of prophecy Mr. Armstrong had taught. Ninety percent of prophecy is for the end time, and Daniel 11:40 specifically says the king of the south would “push” at a specific time: “the time of the end.”

“Herbert W. Armstrong prophesied for decades that we should focus on the Middle East. That is where the world order would begin to unravel—triggering World War iii!” (ibid).

Perhaps the signature geopolitical prophecy Mr. Armstrong emphasized was the rise of a unified, Catholic, German-led European empire, the “king of the north” in Daniel 11:40.

One could argue that the identity of “the king of the south” is Mr. Flurry’s signature geopolitical prophecy. He locked into Daniel 11:40 from the earliest issues of the Trumpet and has held to it and emphasized it ever since.

‘Radical Islam, Headed by Iran’

In that first article on the king of the south, Mr. Flurry wrote that Iraq, which had just invaded Kuwait in August 1990, could be this prophesied power bloc.

On Jan. 16, 1991, the U.S. went to war against Iraq, leading a 35-nation coalition. The 43-day Persian Gulf War drove Iraq out of Kuwait and destroyed much of Iraq’s army. Though Saddam Hussein’s regime remained in power, leading to later conflicts, the war dealt a major blow to Iran’s primary regional competitor and enabled Iran’s rise.

In the July 1992 Trumpet, Mr. Flurry zeroed in on a statement in Islamic Affairs Analyst: “The main strategic aim of Iran is to dominate the Persian Gulf and environs. An important step in achieving this goal is to gain undisputed leadership of the radical Islamic camp.” He returned to the Bible, to Daniel, to “the king of the south” prophecy and wrote, “[I]t is looking more now like Iran may produce this king.”

“It looks very much like the end-time king of the south will rule the radical Islamists!” he continued. “Iran is a natural leader for many of them today. Iran also has a goal to lead this group.”

What an extraordinary forecast. Between the early 1990s and now, anything could have happened. Forecasting Iran’s future would be like trying to forecast the weather 35 years from now. The new ayatollah could have been compromised, exiled, had a heart attack. Sectarian divisions could have weakened the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the Basij could’ve been abolished. The economy, currency or financial system could have faltered or collapsed.

Numberless analyses, articles, forecasts and speeches have come and gone since. And many notions about who the king of the south is have been voiced by streetcorner preachers, megachurch pastors and commentators like Glenn Beck.

The three decades that have transpired have witnessed several threats to the regime, widespread protests, uprisings, attempts to throw off economic impoverishment and political repression. Some have brought millions of Iranians into the streets with shouts of “death to the dictator!” The regime could have weakened or fallen.

People want this radical regime to fall. They have protested and sacrificed, risked deprivation, torture and murder. The regime has responded by jailing protesters and killing many, sometimes hundreds, sometimes thousands.

Many such regimes do fall. Many have been writing this regime’s epitaph for decades. Yet through it all, Mr. Flurry has held firm that radical Islam, led by Iran, is the king of the south.

In 2001, after 9/11, when the U.S. started the “War on Terror,” Mr. Flurry said that somehow Iran would emerge stronger. In 2003, the U.S. toppled Saddam Hussein in Iraq, and U.S. troops parked in Afghanistan and Iraq, flanking Iran. Mr. Flurry said this would pave the way for Iraq to fall—to Iran.

Last summer, when President Trump was bombing Iranian nuclear facilities with stealth bombers and the largest nonnuclear bombs in America’s arsenal, Mr. Flurry said the regime would survive.

Over and again, the regime has survived. Over and again, it has tightened its grip on radical Islam. Over and again, censorship, information blackouts, Internet shutdowns, mass arrests, brutality and murder have succeeded in preserving and increasing the regime’s power rather than eroding it, as has occurred in many other revolutions in many other countries.

For 34 years, the Iranian regime could have fallen. But Bible prophecy forecast otherwise, and the meaning of Bible prophecy has been accurately explained by Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry.

The Bible explains the role Iran plays in end-time events. Despite the drubbing it has taken at the hands of American and Israeli power, don’t expect this to change. Don’t expect it to transform into a Western-friendly democracy. Somehow, Iran will remain a pushy, radical, ideologically driven power. Expect this war to end prematurely. Expect Iran to draw together the loyalties of several other radical states in the region, as well as Shia Islamist groups and cells around the world. Expect it to provoke Europe into a catastrophic war.

And as you see this happening, think on the God who foretold it and the prophetic voice to whom He revealed it in this end time so you could know it! God gives these warnings for a purpose: to inspire awe—and repentance and obedience—in all of us. Ultimately, the whole world will come to know the living God of prophecy!