The Middle East is central to current news reports and is, by all means, a media hot spot for the 21st Century. Not many, however, realise the significance of current events in Israel, Iraq and Iran, as well as other Arab nations, in the Christian study of End Times.

This week, the Evangelical Church of Bermuda hosted its annual World Missions Conference with guest speaker, Dr. Jimmy DeYoung, an expert on the Middle East and Eschatology, the Christian doctrine concerning the destiny of mankind.

According to Dr. DeYoung: ?One third of the entire Bible is prophecy, eschatology. We need to be studying all of the Bible.?

In fact, during Jesus Christ?s last six months on earth, ?he focused on prophecy. He wanted them to understand the times when he would return to this earth and use that to motivate them?.

As for Christians today: ?It helps us to quit being so egocentric and become Christo-centric, and, in fact, it helps us to understand the times and the days in which we?re living, and thus then we can prioritise what we need to be doing and energise to go do what he wants us to do.?

Dr. DeYoung, who was called to full-time Christian ministry at the age of 17, originally studied music at Florida State University, where he eventually became the part-time music minister at a local church.

From there, he and his wife, Judy, were called to start a church in a small southern Georgia town.

?I was supposed to teach them the Bible, but I was only three feet ahead of them in Bible knowledge, so I had to go away to school,? Dr. DeYoung said.

However, his interest in the study of the Book of Revelation was piqued when Jack Wyrtzen, the founder and former director of Word of Life, challenged him to teach children aged six to 12 from the book of Revelation.

?I had five half-hour sessions with them, and by the end of the week, I developed a little walk-through of Revelation, which is the overall big picture of the book, and they could grasp that. So I said, ?man, if I can teach little children, I can teach anybody!?.?

Time eventually brought the DeYoungs to New York City, the media and financial capital of the world, and then to Washington, DC, the military and political capital of the world, and then finally to Jerusalem, the religious capital of the world, just days before the start of the first Gulf War in 1991.

?Walking into a war zone is? an un-nerving experience, I can tell you that for sure,? Dr. DeYoung explained. ?It?s an exciting experience, but we knew that God wanted us to go there, and that opened a great opportunity for us to communicate to Jewish people why we were there.

?They couldn?t understand. Most people were leaving, if they weren?t citizens of Israel, they were leaving the country. And here?s this young American couple coming into the country in this time of disaster, as far as they were concerned.

?Scuds being fired on the country from Iraq; it was a full-fledged war. But it opened up and gave us a rapport with those people like nothing else.?

The time in Israel also brought the opportunity for Dr. DeYoung to broadcast reports via radio and television as a stringer for several news agencies, including Salem Radio Network, Moody Broadcasting Network, CBS and CNN.

Following current events as they unfold is key to Dr. DeYoung?s ministry, Prophecy Today, which publishes news reports from the Middle East from a Christian perspective on its website, www.prophecytoday.com.

Dr. DeYoung also produces regular radio broadcasts and podcasts. His ministry has paid particular attention to events such as the recent success of Hamas in the Palestinian election and the threat of Iran?s nuclear intentions.

Both groups, he feels, were predicted by the ancient Jewish prophets.

?Hamas has a different motivation than any other member of the Palestine Liberation Organization. The PLO is a conglomerate of Palestinian groups that would like to remove Israel from the Middle East and destroy every Jew they can get their hands on.

?All, except Hamas, are basically motivated by power and monetary gain. Hamas is motivated by religion. Hamas is a part of a people that is talked about in the Bible, going all the way back to Esau.

?And in his mother?s room, God told Rebecca, his mother, that he would come forth, Esau, and become a people, a nation. His twin brother would become a nation also.

?That was Jacob, he became the Jewish nation. Esau became the Palestinian people of today. And with the dedication that they have to the Islamic faith, Hamas is the greatest threat that Israel has had to face.

?It?s just a part of the whole radical Islamic faith that is moving across this world.

?We?ve seen the beginning of the end and from here, Bible prophecy is going to be fulfilled exactly like the ancient Jewish prophets wrote and its by these players that are on the stage today.?