Is Nero Caesar the Antichrist?

Heard a preacher on the radio saying that the early Christians who were persecuted under Nero regarded him as the Antichrist and that his name Nero Caesar can be calculated in Hebrew or Greek, it wasn't clear which he meant, to add up to 666.  When I've looked it up I've found it very hard to find a clearcut proof of this, it usually involves adding a letter or a title and I'm still not clear whether it's in Hebrew or Greek that it's supposed to be calculated.    Here, see the Wikipedia article that discusses this. The original is Hebrew but it's worked back from the Greek, and there's even a form in Latin. I don't find any of this very convincing, especially considering how convincing the Latin title of the Pope is that so clearly adds up to 666 without any fuss or bother.

This is a favorite view of Preterist eschatology, which interprets much of New Testament prophecy as over and done with in the past, which is of course the case with this view of the Antichrist.  No need to think about it any further, no big final Antichrist in our future, all over and done with.  I wonder who might have a vested interest in promoting this viewpoint, hm?

If I find a convincing calculation for Nero, OK, but even if I did I could only think of him as the first of the line of official Antichrists, the papacy having picked up the role down the centuries to the present. This could be justified since the papacy in so many respects is clearly a continuation of Roman paganism, from the weird garb to the title "pontiff" from "Pontifex Maximus" to the godification as it were of the Pope with his supposed infallibility and kissing his ring or foot or whatever.  And for the papacy there IS a definite 666 that can be calculated from the Pope's title Vicarivs Filii Dei ("In the place of the Son of God"), in LATIN of course, because the Antichrist is to be the leader of the revived ROMAN EMPIRE according to other Biblical prophecies (Think Holy Roman Empire with its failed version the Third Reich, and now the European Union).

Now of course you will find all this challenged by those with a vested interest in avoiding the connection with the papacy.  And a lot of deceived Protestants have bought into it too.  You will for instance find the title itself challenged as never having been an official title of the Pope.  But then Chris Pinto did prove that it is, only I'm lousy at keeping notes so I'll have to go find that information again. 

And of course there is the papacy's masterpiece of deception, the "oldest" Bible manuscripts which have 616 instead of 666.  And everybody eats that up too, although Codex Vaticanus is surely a forgery and Codex Sinaiticus is highly questionable if not proven to be a forgery. At least it is certainly a corruption created in the early centuries as John Burgon believed. But since these two manuscripts only showed up in the 19th century we can at least say "Hm, I wonder what vested interests might benefit from that little discovery?"  But Chris Pinto is a much better researcher than I am, he has all the info on this so go check out his site, Noise of Thunder Radio.

We Need to Repent FROM the National Day of Prayer: It Can Only Bring More of God's Judgment Down on the Nation

May 1st this year is the National Day of Prayer. I used to be all in favor of this event, even went to a few of the public gatherings.  Sounds like a good idea, but I've become sadly aware that organized prayer on behalf of this nation is usually ecumenical and that isn't going to do the nation any good at all

George Bush's prayer meeting in the National Cathedral to pray for the nation after 9/11 brought together Christians and Catholics and Muslims and Jews, NOT a formula for success at getting the ear of God.  Anybody want to know why the prayers have done us no good, there's your answer.  People pray their hearts out for the nation and things get worse.  Some good ministries and good solid Christians form these groups or join these groups and don't seem to notice that even their best efforts are going unrewarded.  There were a couple of prayer meetings on the day of Obama's inauguration to his second term.  Things gotten any better?  Why aren't we paying attention to this simple cause and effect?  If we appeal to God surely things SHOULD get better. But we have to do it right. We can't pray with antiChristians and be doing it right.

Well, sure enough, the National Day of Prayer is also ecumenical, calling "people of all faiths" to pray together for the nation:

The National Day of Prayer is an annual observance held on the first Thursday of May, inviting people of all faiths to pray for the nation. It was created in 1952 by a joint resolution of the United States Congress, and signed into law by President Harry S. Truman. Our Task Force is a privately funded organization whose purpose is to encourage participation on the National Day of Prayer. It exists to communicate with every individual the need for personal repentance and prayer, to create appropriate materials, and to mobilize the Christian community to intercede for America’s leaders and its families. The Task Force represents a Judeo Christian expression of the national observance, based on our understanding that this country was birthed in prayer and in reverence for the God of the Bible.

It talks about the "Christian community" and mentions "reverence for the God of the Bible" but that would include Catholics and even Muslims and Jews depending on how the phrase is understood, because the Jews are of course the people of the Old Testament, and the Muslims revere the Bible along with the Koran.  It would also include Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses, cults that consider themselves to follow the Bible.

Also, we are NOT, or were not originally, a "Judeo-Christian" nation.  If we are, GOD WILL NOT BLESS US!

It also mentions "personal repentance."  Sounds good, sort of, if you don't think too much about it.  What we need is God's true people not only repenting personally but repenting on behalf of the nation, and the best place to start is by repenting of the abomination of ecumenical prayer!

How does any Christian think that God would honor prayer by people who deny the essentials of the Christian revelation?  This is like calling for prayer to Molech or Dagon along with God, but God clearly denounced all the deviations by His Old Testament people into worshiping both God and the false gods of the nations around.  Simply worshiping God without following His instructions is condemned. Yet I've never heard any pastor even mention this offense concerning the National Day of Prayer.

Although certainly the nation could be said to have begun with the original Pilgrims and Puritans who were definitely Christians, and there were many true Christians among the founding generation as well, and at that time and for some time to come the citizens of the nation were at least culturally steeped in the Christian faith, this disaster may actually go back to five of the main Founders who were NOT Christians:  Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Franklin and Paine.  I'd recommend Chris Pinto's film "Hidden Faith of the Founding Fathers" if you want to see the evidence.

There's plenty of history we could delve into, and the inauguration of this day in 1952 may have been ecumenical from the beginning, and may even have had a worse effect on the nation than the ceasing of prayer in the schools some ten years later, in fact it may have been why that happened. 

But all we really need to know is that God will not hear the prayers of those who deny Him or do not worship Him according to His revelation.  That's enough to tell us that participating in this event can't possibly benefit the nation and may actually hasten its destruction.

YOU WANT TO SAVE THIS NATION? START BY THROWING OUT THE IDOLS! STOP CONSIDERING CATHOLICISM TO BE CHRISTIAN, THAT'S THE BIGGEST MISTAKE WE MAKE.

START BY REPENTING FOR THE NATIONAL DAY OF PRAYER AND OTHER ECUMENICAL SLAPS IN THE FACE OF GOD.

Another out-of-body encounter with "Jesus"

Another Phony Near-Death Conversion. A regular epidemic of these deceptions coming on now. Like appearances of "Mary" and other demonic manifestations.

This one isn't new but I just happened to find it promoted by a Christian at another blog.

Atheist professor’s near-death experience in hell left him changed

By Mark Ellis

In some near-death experiences, people report they were drawn toward “the light.” But in this horrifying near-death experience for an atheist art professor, he was drawn into the darkness of hell, which dramatically altered the course of his life.

...On the last day of a three-week European art tour he led, his group had returned to their hotel in Paris after a visit to the artist Delacroix’s home and studio. As Howard stood in his room with his wife and another student, suddenly he screamed and dropped to the floor in agony.

[Later in the hospital] ...he had a very unusual out-of-body experience, and found himself standing next to his bed, looking at himself lying there. As he stood there, he noticed he didn’t feel the pain in his stomach. He felt more alive than ever, and his senses seemed more heightened than usual.

...“I saw my body lying on the bed, but I refused to believe it was me. How could that be me if I was standing there,” he wondered.

Suddenly he heard people outside the room calling for him by name. ..“Come with us,” they said. “Hurry up, let’s go.”

Howard left the room and started to walk with them down a long hallway, which was very dimly lit – almost dingy. “They took me on a very long journey through a grey space that got increasingly darker and darker,” he recalls.

They walked a long time, and Howard wondered why he was not tired when he had just suffered the worst day of his life.

...Howard’s fear and apprehension grew at the same time he lost trust in his guides. “Finally it was so dark I was terrified and I said, ‘I’m not going any farther. I want to go back.”

“You’re almost there,” one replied.

Howard dug in his heels. “I’m not going any farther,” he said firmly.

...His guides began to push and pull at him. Howard fought back, but he was horribly outnumbered.

“We had a big fight and the fight turned into them annihilating me, which they did slowly and with much relish,” he says. “Mostly they were biting and tearing at me. This went on for a long time. ...

He lay there motionless for a few moments, completely spent. Then he was surprised by a small voice inside his head that said, ‘Pray to God.’

He thought, ‘I don’t pray. I don’t even believe in God.’

Then he heard the voice a second time, ‘Pray to God.’

‘But I wouldn’t know how to pray even if I wanted to pray,’ he thought. Whose voice was this, he wondered? It sounded like his voice, but the words were completely foreign to his own thinking. Then he heard the voice a third time repeat the same message. His mind drifted back to his days in Sunday school as a child. “I tried to remember things I memorized when I was very young,” he says. He struggled to think of something he could pray.

Then he managed to blurt out, “The Lord is my shepherd and I shall not want…”

When the people around him heard his attempt to pray, they became enraged. “There is no God and nobody can hear you,” they cried, along with other obscenities. “If you keep praying we will really hurt you.”

But Howard noticed something curious. The more he prayed and began to mention God, the more they backed away from him.

Emboldened, he began to shout out bits and pieces of the Lord’s Prayer, “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” and “God Bless America.” Finally, he was screaming any fragments of God’s truth he could muster from the moldy recesses of his memory bank.

It seemed to work! Even in the darkness, he could tell they had fled, but not too far away.

As he lay there, Howard began to review his life. “I came to the conclusion I led a crummy life and I had gone down the sewer pipe of the universe. I had gone into the septic tank with other human garbage. I was being processed by the garbage people into garbage like them.”

{Does he know they are demons?]

“Whatever life was supposed to be about, I missed it,” he thought. “What I received was what I deserved and the people who attacked me were people like me. They were my kindred spirits. Now I will be stuck with them forever.” Feelings of self-loathing and hopelessness filled his mind. His thoughts floated back again to himself as a nine-year-old in Sunday School, “I remembered myself singing “Jesus Loves Me,” and I could feel it inside me. As a child, I thought Jesus was really cool and he was my buddy and he would take care of me.”

...“I’ve got nothing else to lose. I’ll give Jesus a try.”

Then he yelled into the darkness, “Jesus, please save me!”

...Within an instant, a brilliant light appeared that came closer and closer. He found himself bathed in a beautiful light, and for the first time he could clearly see his own body’s miserable condition, ghastly for his own eyes to behold. “I was almost all gore.”

Immediately he recognized Jesus, the King of Kings, the Rescuer, the Deliverer.

[Savior? Cross? Atonement? Forgiven sin?]

“His arms reached down and touched me and everything healed up and came back together,” he recalls. “He filled me with a love I never knew existed.”

Then he picked up Howard, like one football player picking up a fallen teammate on the field, put his arms around him, and Howard cried like a baby in His arms. “He carried me out of there and we headed to where God lives.”[Is God somebody different from Jesus?]In his mind, Howard began to think that Jesus made a terrible mistake. “I’m garbage and I don’t belong in heaven,” he thought.

They stopped moving, and both Howard and Jesus were hanging in space, somewhere between heaven and hell. “We don’t make mistakes,” Jesus said tenderly.

[Cross? Atonement? Repentance?]

“He could read everything in my mind and put His voice into my head,” Howard recalls. “We had very rapid, instantaneous conversations.”

Then Jesus told Howard He had angels who would show him his life. “It was a terrible experience because my life deteriorated after adolescence. I saw I became a selfish, unloving person. I was successful, a full tenured art professor at 27, the department head, but I was a jerk.”

In this replay, he saw his heavy drinking and adultery. “I cheated on my wife proudly. It was horrible.”

...For the first time he realized the way he lived his life hurt Jesus. “I was in the arms of the most wonderful, holy, loving, kind person and we’re looking at this stuff. Embarrassing doesn’t even begin to describe it.”

As they watched together, Howard could see the pain and disappointment on the face of Jesus. “When I did these things it was like sticking a knife into his heart.”

“Do you have any questions?” Jesus asked.

“I have a million questions,” Howard replied, and proceeded to unburden himself of anything and everything he could imagine asking an omniscient being. Jesus answered Howard’s questions kindly and patiently.

When Howard couldn’t think of anything else to ask, he said, “I’m ready to go to heaven now.”

“You’re not going to heaven. You’re going back to the world,” Jesus replied.

Howard began to argue, but it was to no avail. Jesus told him to go back and live his life differently.

[Forgiven? Under the blood? Through the cross? Or just through his own will?]

...At 9:00 p.m., Howard was back in his hospital room...Less than 30 minutes had elapsed since he lost consciousness.

...When his strength returned, Howard began to devour the Bible. “Since none of my atheist friends believed me, I started memorizing verses and I would give them Bible lectures, but that didn’t go over very well,” he recalls.

He grew “desperate” for fellowship in a church, and began to attend Christ Church in Fort Thomas, Kentucky, part of United Church of Christ.

...He also wrote a book about his experience, “My Descent Into Death,” which he says was written primarily to non-believers.

Howard and his second wife, Marcia, a strong Christian, are both involved in missionary work in Belize. He maintains a passion for painting, with much of his art devoted to spiritual themes.

[Why couldn't Jesus help him strengthen his first marriage, why didn't He convert his wife? Jesus said God hates divorce.]

I just encountered this story on another blog and realized I had to write about it although I don't yet know enough about it to say more than ask the questions I've raised in the brackets. I think that's enough to show that it's just another bogus demon-inspired deception of course, but it always helps to get more evidence.