[Darris McNeely] Time for another installment in my BT series "Books that Feed Us for a Long Time." This is a series that I've begun to talk about books that I pull off my shelf for a second or third time because there's information there that really does help me understand the Bible, understand life or that has touched me in certain ways. And I know you've got books like that as well.

One such book is a book that I have read before called "Justinian's Flea." "Justinian's Flea" is a story about Justinian the Great, an emperor of the Roman Empire out of Constantinople in the 500s AD, about a 100 years or so less than the time when the city of Rome fell. Justinian figures into a very interesting story, and why would I pull this book off of my shelf once again? Well, the reason I did is I just came back from a trip to Istanbul, where I had a couple of days there to just go over the city, visit some of the historic sites, and get the picture of Istanbul, formerly known as Constantinople or Byzantium, get it into my mind as to how it is all situated there in a very critical part of the world and the story there.

And this book ''Justinian's Flea'', brought some things out. And I've used parts of this book to teach out of the Book of Revelation, particularly in Revelation 13, where it talks about one of the heads of a beast in Revelation 13, receiving what is called a deadly wound and then being healed. Bible scholars have long understood that that deadly wound refers to the fall of Rome. The healing of the wound is also understood to be the time when Justinian restored part of the Roman Empire from his base there. This map shows how out of Constantinople there to the right, the Byzantine Empire recaptured across North Africa, the Italian Peninsula and parts of Europe, parts of the Old Roman Empire, and actually restored it. It's called the imperial restoration in history. Justinian did it through his great general named Belisarius.

Now, in doing that, it helps us to understand a bit again, that prophecy in Revelation 13, about the deadly wound being healed. Things happened in history, according to God's purpose and plan and outlined in the prophetic books of the Bible. And it's important to understand that. And every once in a while, I run across books that help to solidify what we've long understood about these prophecies from a purely secular point of view. And reading this about Justinian and how after he had recaptured all of these lands, his court historian, a man by the name of Procopius, wrote this, and listen very carefully, ''It is not at all by the wisdom of men or by any other sort of excellence on their part that events are brought to fulfillment.'' He's speaking of history and great things that happened in history, in this case, he's talking about the recapture of these lost parts of the Western Roman Empire. He goes on, ''But that there is some divine power which is ever warping their purposes and shifting them in such a way that there will be nothing to hinder that which is being brought to pass." "Some type of divine power," he says, ''warping their purposes and shifting them in such a way..." That's a description of things that happened in history that historians themselves can't always explain. But when you understand the keys of Bible prophecy, then it begins to make sense.

And what Justinian did, recapturing these lands of Italy and North Africa and the Western part of the empire was for a moment restored that deadly wound advancing the story into the next phase of the prophetic narrative. ''Justinian's Flea'', well-written, an easy read, a book I highly recommend for the tale that it tells about history, but also for the deeper understanding that we get in many different ways about Bible prophecy, and especially the shape of our current world as it shapes toward that time at the end of the age.

That's "BT Daily." Join us next time.