The world is watching—and China knows it. It has fully exploited the opportunity of hosting the 2008 Olympic Games to announce itself to the world as a power to behold.

Nothing embodied this fact more than the opening ceremony, an incredible display put on by the Chinese. For four hours, thousands of Chinese filled the stadium with their artistry, their presentations depicting China’s long and rich heritage, and their sheer numbers. Everything about it was big, including an immense 482-by-72-foot led screen on the stadium floor and the oceans of Chinese performers who passed over and around it. In one portion of the ceremony, 2,008 martial arts experts, who had practiced for a year for up to 16 hours a day, performed a shockingly well-coordinated, impressive and massive display of Tai Chi. Even the Chinese Olympic team was multitudinous: 639 athletes paraded through a stadium that was by this point bursting with pride.

It was a ceremony that put on center stage the fact that China is home to a staggering 1.3 billion people. More than 90,000 spectators and an untold number of television viewers worldwide got the message: China has arrived.

Although the performers were told they looked too scary during practice and smiled during the performance, the size, scope and magnitude of the display was clearly meant to accent Chinese might and modernity. In fact, the sheer size of China’s populace, economy, wealth and ambitions partially revealed in the Olympic spotlight are an eerie foreshadow of events that might hit our world before the next summer Olympics begins.

The event brings to mind a forecast in Revelation 9:15-16, which speaks of a mammoth 200-million-man army to be fielded by the Asian nations, including China and Russia. This fact alone seems almost impossible for our minds to fathom. China’s current army—the largest in the world—at this point is listed at 2.25 million troops. The United States is sixth, with fewer than 550,000 troops. Watch a clip of the opening ceremony and imagine adding 197.2 million more to that Chinese army. Unlikely? It may seem like it, but those are the facts that we will soon be facing, if your Bible is as right about this forecast as it has been about dozens of others. What we are seeing at this year’s Olympics is only a foretaste of what is coming: an Asian superpower.

“The ceremony showed the nation’s newfound strength, local Chinese citizen Li Yuming said. ‘Right now, the country is rich and people are strong, and we Chinese are really standing up. Twenty years ago, no matter where we Chinese stood, people looked down on us. But now no one dares to invade us anymore’” (Washington Post,August 9).

The Bible passages of Ezekiel 38, Daniel 11 and Jeremiah 50 tell us that this massive Russo-Asian alliance will form in our time. The Bible calls it the “kings of the east” in Revelation 16. To learn more about the coming world superpower that dazzled the world just days ago, read Russia and China in Prophecy.