We have established that the first horn and older horn and soon-to-be shorter horn of the Persian ram is the office of the Iranian supreme leader; whether it be Khamenei or his successor does not matter.  This is all part of the Second Signpost as I wrote about in my book, Hidden In Plain Sight.  We have also been watching the second horn of the ram, the one that has now grown up, to see it finally reach the place it is destined to reach per Scripture.  Of course in Daniel 8 there are a total of six more horns in this vision of the ram and goat – the first horn of the goat, the four horns to emerge after the first horn, and the little horn to grow out of one of the four horns.  Up to now there really was no way to identify them because they are in the future.  Until possibly now.

We may actually have a candidate who is the first horn of the goat, and he is the current Prime Minister of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (pronounced red-chep tajip aerdo-an).  This one snuck up on me, and I found myself astonished yet again as the theology of the Four Signposts seems to be explaining everything in these years happening prior to the Tribulation.  Let me explain why I find that the first horn of the goat may very well be Erdoğan.

As I was thinking about this, suddenly a goat with a prominent horn between his eyes came from the west, crossing the whole earth without touching the ground.  (Daniel 8:5    NIV)

The goat with the prominent horn of course is what begins the Third Signpost.  This horn according to popular theology is assigned to Alexander the Great.  Although popular theology calls for an ancient fulfillment of this vision which I argue in my book as being incorrect, and the vision of Daniel 8 has an end time fulfillment, I do believe that this first prominent horn of the goat will be a leader that will be on par with someone like Alexander the Great.  He will need to be someone who is the one leader in a hundred who stands out, changes the country for good in a dynamic way, and is very popular with his people.  And as I show in my book, the first horn of the goat must be a Turk.

So who is Erdoğan and what has he done and what is he doing?  He was jailed in the late 1990s for being too Islamic in government.  This was soon to change though because when he got out of prison he founded the Justice and Development Party (known as the AKP from the Turkish language) in 2002.  He became Prime Minister in 2003 when his party won 34% of the votes and so took over the majority of the seats in parliament.

Under Erdoğan’s watch the GDP of Turkey tripled.  He tripled the average wage of the Turkish worker and thus the GDP of Turkey making it an industrial country.  Double digit growth year over year was the norm.  That all by itself will win elections.  In the elections of 2007 and 2011 he and his party won ever larger percentages – 47% and 49%.  No one since Ataturk himself 90 years before has been able to achieve that.

Under Erdoğan’s watch the Turkish military became world class and is now the second largest military within NATO, second only to the United States itself.

Under Erdoğan’s watch the cycle of military coups maintaining the Kemalist or secular style of governance in Turkey came to an end.  He had arrested and successfully trying the entire top brass of all the branches.  He declared that the era of the military coups which had gone on since Ataturk was now over.  Though this may not have made him popular it contributed to his legacy as a leader because where Kemal Ataturk was the politician who began modern Turkey, Erdoğan is the politician who fostered Turkey moving on to the next chapter in its history which is the gradual transition to Islamism, per fulfillment of Third Signpost prophecy.

Upon winning his third election in 2011, he said in his victory speech that his victory is a victory for Turkey as it is a victory for Skopje, Sarajevo, Cairo, Damascus, Baghdad, Amman, Baku, and Jerusalem.  These of course are all capital cities of countries that used to be part of the Ottoman Empire.  It has been noted that Erdoğan’s foreign policy supports neo-Ottomanism, i.e. the return of Turkish power in the lands of the old empire.  The idea of expansion of Turkish power is therefore not a strange concept to him.  The black swan event of the Iranian invasion of the Second Signpost would be just what he needed to expand.  He aslo said in the same speech, “We will become much more active in regional and global affairs.”  That could very well be prophetic.

If all that is not enough you should see what he is trying to do now.  He is working to have the Turkish constitution rewritten to expand the powers of the President, so he can win that election and have greater power leading turkey.  He cannot run again for Prime Minister due to the term limits.  He is working a few strategies at the same time to achieve this end.  One of the strategies is to have the Kurds approve the constitution by working out a peace plan with them ending the civil war that has been going on for twenty years in the southeast corner of Turkey.  Wouldn’t that also be quite a feather in his cap right next to the tripling of the Turkish GDP.  On a lighter side note he was talking about work on the constitution and was asked what if it doesn’t happen.  He said, “It won’t be the end of the world. We will continue to serve under the current constitution.”  Well, actually, Mr. Erdoğan and his actions are part of the end of the world as we watch the Signposts unfold.

And finally, Erdoğan is only 59.  If the Second Signpost occurs all within the next ten years and he indeed forms the Sunni Confederacy of the Third Signpost to re-conquer the Middle East and form one great nation, he might live for ten years after that to see his new nation achieve greatness just as Daniel 8:8a.  He would be just the right age to reach old age, pass away, and the final act of the Third Signpost occurs – the splitting up of the new nation into four pieces.  Politicians as great as the first horn and perhaps as great as Erdoğan are not common.  Such a leader would hold such a union together due to popularity and charisma, which successive leaders would not have.  I found a video of his speech in Turkish.  You can clearly hear his voice which is melodious and projecting, and he does not use notes or a teleprompter.  When you listen to him remember, you may very well be hearing the voice of the man who is to be the first horn of the goat.

The only way I could see Erdoğan not be the first horn of the goat is if he falls out of politics due to some event or death, and a new leader in Turkey takes the reigns.  I tend not to think so though since politicians like Ataturk and Erdoğan are truly rare.

Categories: Signpost #3: Four Nations