"Progressive" Politics and the Antichrist

Here's a You Tube video about Antichrist candidate, Maitreya, heralded by one Benjamin Creme -- You can find out more about them by listening to Scott Johnson's talks I linked in a post below, the first one at least, or the first two. (Lord Maitreya, the Antichrist? Also Mars, Lord Maitreya, the Ascended Masters & Strong Delusion Also the PDF file that goes with it.)

Maitreya is presented by Creme as "The Teacher," but also The Christ or the Imam Mahdi or The Messiah and so on, the fulfillment of expected messianic figures of all religions. "Maitreya" is the name of the Buddhist expected leader. He's to be a spiritual AND political world leader who has plans for setting the world right. The idea is that we're in such a mess it's going to take such a leader of course. He also predicted a worldwide economic collapse, by the way, but then many of us have been predicting something along those lines.

Creme CHANNELS Maitreya, who speaks to him inwardly, the way a familiar spirit communicates with a medium. Maitreya "chose" Creme for this function back in the 70s, the same way a demon chose Helen Schucman and dictated the New Age teaching A Course in Miracles to her. As I've pointed out before, A Course in Miracles is one of Oprah's favorite pieces of demonic wisdom which she is sponsoring for this entire year.

Well, guess what Maitreya's message is? SHARING with others. Share International is the name of his site, and it has connections to the United Nations.

Soft Marxism. The Progressive line. Leftist economics.

Capitalism, according to him, here represented by his channeler Creme, is inherently evil. Just look around the world, he says. America has great wealth but so much of the rest of the world lives in dire poverty and we're going to have to learn to SHARE. Then everything will be set right, and the whole world will live in peace.

That's pretty much the Leftist idea, right? Obama represents it too. First an American socialist antichrist will get himself elected with help from powers and principalities, and then the Satan-possessed world leader will appear with supernatural powers, and we'll all come under socialism. By force, of course, because that's how it's always done. The change Obama has in mind sure has nothing to do with freedom.

Creme speaking for Maitreya also said that the message of 9/11 is that we have to share with the underprivileged, implying that 9/11 was justified revenge on the wealthy nation. Yup, wealth is not produced by hard work, nor is it a blessing from God, and poverty is not the result of bad practices and bad governments. No, the inequities are all just a terrible natural accident of capitalism. Creme's talk is straight Leftist (just as Obama's is). We're all so "intolerant" and "divisive." This is what has to "change" in our world of course. Evil capitalism.

Aside from the fact that America is already the most generous nation in the world and has been for a long time, this explanation of the causes of wealth and poverty is just insanity, as Marxism always has been.

Just what we need, right? A supernaturally endowed religious figure coming to impose socialism on us. It isn't just a national political platform, it's the program of the United Nations, it's the program of the New World Religion, it's the program of the Antichrist.

The Role of the Bible Versions in the Last Days

Since it's the Bible versions controversy I've spent most time on in this blog I suppose I ought to attempt some sort of explanation where it fits into the last days scenarios that are the overall framework I have in mind here.

The extremist KJV-onlies are always characterizing the modern Bible versions as part of the Great Apostasy of the last days and I think they are right, but I don't like their conspiracy thinking and general tone. Believing as I do that the Revised English Bible Westcott and Hort came up with is a travesty based on corrupted Greek texts and an unconscionable mutilation of the English as well, I can easily attribute it to a work of the devil. Of course. But that doesn't mean I think that Westcott and Hort consciously served the devil. Most service of the devil is done by human beings without the slightest idea that's who they are serving, and there is no reason whatever to suppose them to be conscious of their complicity. Westcott and Hort probably thought they were serving the true church of Christ (of course so do the Mormons and the Jehovah's witnesses and so on, and Liberal "Christians").

That said, the question remains what the devil's purpose was in doing this.

In a way it's obvious of course. Anything that corrupts the Bible would make the devil happy. But in specific, doesn't it lead people into sin who assume the right to judge scripture for themselves? With so many versions out there, pastors feel obliged to investigate the Greek or Hebrew in order to best preach a passage, and even rank-and-file Christians are encouraged to use their Concordances and Greek and Hebrew lexicons to determine for themselves what the best reading is. This is done casually, as if the Bible were just like any other book rather than the word of God. Well, that's the legacy of Westcott and Hort, who treated it as just like any other book. That has become the attitude of the entire church in these last days.

Concerning the differences in the Greek texts, KJV supporters point out that the majority of verses found in the KJV that are not found in the modern versions do have doctrinal import, concerning the Deity of Christ and the supernatural events that validate His identity and mission. The new versions people answer that none of these doctrines have been completely left out of the new Bibles and are taught just as faithfully from these Bibles as from the KJV. They also theorize that it wasn't that they were left out of the new versions, anyway, but instead that they were added into the textual tradition behind the KJV. James White called this the "expansion of piety." This is merely a plausible hypothesis although they treat it as if it were a fact, and also treat the opposing point of view as if it were unquestionably wrong, that those verses were subtracted instead. What seems to go generally unrecognized is that either way, whether by adding or subtracting, this is condemned by God, and it isn't something to be lightly glossed over. Both the new versions and the KJV CANNOT be God's word; either one or the other is based on corrupt texts, texts that were tampered with and changed against God's clear warning.

So the devil is happy to create such a dilemma and get people to deny it as well, to subtly demote the Bible in people's minds, lead them to subtly put their own judgment above God's, subtly dampen their sense of reverence for God's word, introduce doubt as to its trustworthiness that simply has to come along with the multiplicity of versions, and so on, but does he also have an ultimate last days mission for the new versions?

Some think so. Assuming the KJV-only position that the corruption was a subtraction of terms that existed in the original, it is easily explained as serving a Gnostic view of Christ that deprives Him of His identity with God among other heresies. With such an agenda most of the new versions could be used to feed the Antichrist's imposture of Christ (called The Christ in much of New Age teaching). It's not too hard to imagine that some verses which affirm the true identity of Christ in the KJV could be quoted from the new versions, where they are without the cues to Deity, in order to affirm another's identity as "the Christ" in some contexts. People who don't know the Bible wouldn't have any objection, they could be shown it right there in black and white, and those Christians who have the new versions wouldn't be able to say without great effort that a particular verse really meant the true Christ if at face value it doesn't necessarily. And if they don't know the Bible well, they too can be misled.

Well, it's possible.

Some Candidates for Antichrist

OK, I have to confess that I am fascinated with the talks given by Scott Johnson at Sermon Audio and try to keep up with them. I'm also slightly embarrassed by this fascination because his stuff is definitely out there on the fringe (New Age, Antichrist, the Illuminati, witchcraft, satanism, UFOs and the like), and he doesn't always give convincing support for his claims --- he's pretty good with the evidence MOST of the time, however.

Maybe the topic he covers that I have the biggest problem with is the Masonic influence behind the founding of America and especially the Masonic allegiance of many American leaders. Some of the "evidence" for this is really questionable. Also the conspiracies he finds in the pharmaceutical business. So I listen to all those with a huge grain of salt, and get what I can out of them. Staying away from drugs as much as possible is a good idea whether there is conscious intention to kill us or get us possessed by demons or not, and it's interesting to know about the Masonic order even if some of the people involved in it aren't in on the conspiracy as he assumes they are, but don't have much sense of what it's really about themselves. I also have a problem with Johnson's mistakes that show his utter lack of familiarity with many of the personalities and movements he's discussing, mistakes like mispronouncing the name beyond recognition. His English grammar also leaves a lot to be desired.

BUT with those caveats, I do recommend his talks. He does do his homework and most of the time it's pretty solid, and if you believe as I do that we are in the very last of the last days, this is the kind of material it could be very useful to know, as he presents the possibility of some pretty spectacular signs and wonders to accompany the rule of the Antichrist that would certainly deceive many, including Christians, if we aren't forewarned. If only half of what he says bears out in reality, it's worth knowing about. If you don't think it's possible to be deceived in these last days you really don't have much of a sense what the devil is able to pull off when he has God's go-ahead.

I can't remember if I discovered him by searching for "Antichrist" at Sermon Audio (There's an ex-Catholic priest there, who has some great talks on the Antichrist system of the Catholic Church, Richard Bennett, well worth listening to), or by searching Google for comments on Oprah Winfrey's promotion of the New Age Course in Miracles which she started this year. Johnson has talks on both subjects and covers them well.

The reason I'm bringing up Scott Johnson's talks now is that yesterday a political blog I sometimes watch had a You Tube video of Louis Farrakhan calling Barack Obama the "messiah." Then this morning my brother called me to tell me he's decided Obama has to be the Antichrist. He hadn't seen the Farrakhan video, he just figured that with Obama's inexplicable charisma and popularity with so many otherwise intelligent people, despite his known history with Islam, the terrorist Ayers, his Kenyan cousin Odinga (the political leader who was behind the riots there a few months ago), the anti-American pastor Jeremiah Wright and so much more, he fits what we would expect of the Antichrist. Especially his ability to make his evil associations appear to be fabrications by his political opposition. A child shouldn't be deceived by what he gets away with but millions of adults are nevertheless deceived.

I could see his point but can't agree with him because there are too many other candidates for Antichrist to consider. I said I'd send him some other material to ponder, which I'm going to include here too.

Many of us know the Antichrist has to be just around the corner. The one thing that needs to happen before Jesus returns, according to Biblical prophecy, is that the Antichrist be revealed. Whether Christians will be raptured before this event is a theological point I don't yet have a solid position on.

I've got to say that Farrakhan does a good job of playing the role of the Antichrist's prophet when he calls Obama the messiah. Farrakhan has a bit of an identity crisis, however, having identified himself as Jesus and Elijah, both, at different times.

Then there's the fact that Oprah Winfrey has endorsed Obama, Oprah who is a little antichrist prophet herself, pushing her false version of Christianity and various forms of quasi-Eastern religions and New Age witchcraft such as A Course in Miracles.

So Obama has some good credentials for the job.

But so does the Pope, or many of the Popes. Many have noted that the papacy is an antichrist system, including many leaders of the Protestant Reformation. But then there was A.W. Pink, of the Reformed tradition himself, whose writings I usually love, denying that the Antichrist could be a Pope because the papacy is an institution and not an individual. I think he really missed the boat there. An individual Pope could well fit the Biblical requirement when the time comes.

The Pope's qualifications for Antichrist start first of all with his styling himself the Vicar (or Substitute) of Christ, which is as good as an official title for the Antichrist -- kind of like wearing a name tag saying "I am the Antichrist," except of course people are blinded to such obvious truths. And it has a nice little bit of numerological evidence to support it as well: The Latin title for Vicar of Christ is Vicarivs Filii Dei (Literally, Substitute for the Son of God) and when you count up the numerical values of the Roman Numerals embedded in the title they add up to a very neat 666. Try it. (That "u" is written "v" remember). All the numerological proofs for various other contenders don't come close to the elegance of this one.

Then I also found a medieval prophecy that concerns the whole line of the Popes to be quite fascinating, as it prophesies that the very last one is going to be the next one, the one after the current Pope Benedict XVI, who, if the prophecy is correct, will be known as Peter the Roman and will reign in a time of great persecution right before the return of "the formidable Judge." Of course in Catholic lore this Pope is to be a great hero.

So the last Pope is also a very likely candidate for Antichrist, better credentialed in many ways than Obama. However, one better credential Obama may have is that he well fits the Biblical prophecy that the Antichrist will be a "little horn" that arises through intrigue very rapidly to a position of influence.

At the very least, of course, all these contenders would be strong players in the Antichrist regime in one role or another.

But now consider yet another candidate. This is Scott Johnson's candidate. He's quite a contender, having already shown some "signs and wonders" for credentials, along with endorsement by the United Nations yet. Johnson has a multi-part series of talks on this guy:

Lord Maitreya, the Antichrist? (part 1 of 7 parts) (The description of this guy has something in common with Obama politically -- the feed-the-hungry socialist part anyway -- but when you get deeper into his characteristics you'll see how he's very different when it comes to supernatural powers).

Here's an earlier talk on the same subject: Mars, Lord Maitreya, the Ascended Masters & Strong Delusion This talk has a PDF file with it that covers a lot of the same material and includes pictures. You can save this PDF file to your computer.

And since Obama and Oprah have come up in this context, here are a couple of talks by Johnson related to them as well:

Oprah Winfrey boldly leading Humanity to the New Age Antichrist
(Scott Johnson doesn't believe Obama is the Antichrist but there's no doubt he is AN antichrist and Oprah is actively promoting him as well as a slew of New Age demonic doctrines this year, but Obama isn't the subject of this talk).

The Spell and Deception of Barack Obama (Johnson doesn't believe he's The Antichrist and I personally think he overestimates Obama's charisma, but then many do seem to swoon over him so he has some bona fide qualifications for the great deceiver.)