Faith-based musings from a decidedly Biblical Protestant point of view, on just about everything, including Bogus Bibles, New Age Deceptions, Corrupt Politics and other signs of the Last Days before the World ends.
Lately I've been listening to more of the "Coast-to-Coast" late night Spook Fest, not a lot just a little more than usual. UFOs are still the biggest topic it seems, but they've had protgrams on witchcraft, the "Good" kind of course, psychic powers, "remote viewing" etc. I'm just fascinated with how seriously they take all this stuff, study it, have theories about it and so on, because of course I judge it all by the Bible which pretty drastically simplifies the possibilities.
Many of them claim to believe in God but judging from their opinions about these paranormal and supernatural phenomena it isn't the God of the Bible they believe in. Demons or Fallen Angels account for most of the spooky stuff, UFOs, ghosts, apparitions, etc etc. They can manifest physially under some circumstances and apparently have power over physical phenomena to some extent since they produce the "craft" that make people wonder who is so technologically ahead of us.
Demons are the main actors, but the Bible also mentions the hybrid angel-human "Nephilim" in Genesis 6 which is also mentioned in the New Testament. I don't know of they have anything to do with the phenomena discussed on the radio show but demons must account for most of it. Then there is what Watchman Nee talks about in his book "Soul Power" which may account for the paranormal powers such as psychic ability and remote viewing and that sort of thing. He explained it as the remanants of powers originally possessed by Adam and Eve which were mostly lost at the Fall but remain in some people in distorted form. They are also manipulable by demons so altogether they aren't to be trusted. But those on the radio show don't know anyh of that and treat them as legitimate.
George Noory, who is the host of the show, claims to believe in Gode but also thinks UFOs are extraterrestrials who are the real creators of human beings. (Violent eyeroll).
If the world is about to go into the final seven-year Judgment of God all this would easily contribute to the Great Delusion coming on humanity. As many have suggetsed, UFOs would make a handy explanation for the Rapture, since few would be disposed to accept the real explanation, which is that Jesus took His true Christians off the planet so that we would not have to suffer God's wrath with the rest of hu;manity. Cuz of course they aren't expecting wrath, they are expecting a nice humanistic solution to all the world's problemsw, would probably think UFOs hold friend ETs who just want to help us out and so on. Witchcraft of courswe isn't the evil consorting with demons, it's just a nicey nice power for the good of all. And so on and so forth.
Surely some will wake up to the truth. Try to tell them about it now, no, but maybe when things start to look like something other than they were expecting.... Well, many have tried. I've tried.
UPDATE: I shouldn't short-shrift this topic as I did, but I'm not up to commenting on it except to say that what Biden did is unspeakably evil, on top of all the other evil things he's done. I smell the sulfur of the pits of Hell. All I can do is pray that God will have mercy.
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I've begun to wonder if perhaps the Premill scneario is more wrong than I've been considering it might be, that we are already into the seven years of the tribulation period. This is a fallen world, yes, and Satan is the prince of this world, but I still didn't expect such blatant evil to manifest as it has been doing, I expect it to come in the tribulation and the Day of the LORD. I suppose I'm wrong, and unfortunately it really could gt worse, hard though that is to imagine. Concentration camps for conservatives and Christians and the unvaccinat4ed and and and... But God is still in charge. Pray pray pray pray...
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... what I'd like to see is a few hundred Democrat politicians thrown out of office. Or better, tarred and feathered and sent south from our southern border accompanied by the illegal aliens th4ey illegally and dangerously brought into the country.
On a more humane note perhaps, if they really care about the people of Latin America they should move there and teach them the principles that made America prosperous. Sadly I don't suppose any of them have any idea about that, they'll just join in the ideological destruction. Yeah I know I switched horses in midstream, more than once too, but oh well.
Chris Pinto on his Noise of Thunder radio show nails it again. He talks about the provisionion for Quarantine camps as described in a CDC document which is pretty clearly aimed at the unvaccinated. He mentions that the governor of Tennessee signed an executive order which includes the building of such quarantine facilities. He traqces the history of the "plandemic" etc. He covers the science which contradicts all the official policiesw. His recommendation is pushback and more pushback and of course lots of prayer.
Since I've been pondering some of the aspects of the Premillennial dispensational end times scenario I keep running across elemants of it I think are wrong. I don't know where I'm going to end up but it isn't as if I'm just discovering these elements, they've bothered me for some time but I haven't put my mind to answering them.
I'm thinking here of the Abomination of Desolation that Premill eschatology makes yet future and recalling that I've heard teaching that convincingly places it at the time of the Roman destruction of Jrrusalemt and the temple in 70 AD. Thos4e who had been warned by Jesus to flee when they saw that abomination did in fact flee and were saved from what was a bloody slaughter of such magnitude most of us have no idea. If I find a really good discussion of the historical facts I'll post it but for now I just want to say that I think there is good reason to consider that part of Jesus' prophecy in the Olivet discoverse to have been fulfilled in 70 AD.
In the book of Daniel this abomination of desolluation is referred to some four times and three of those times refer to the Greek period after the breakup of Anexander's army when the Seleucid leader Antiochus Epiphanes desecrated the Jerusalem temple with swine's blood in 167 BC. He was driven out by the Maccabees who cleansed the temple, there was the miracale of the continuously burning candes, and that is what is celebrated at Hanukkah. The remaining Abomination of Desolation belongs to the Roman period after that, and now I'm 98 percent confinced it was fulfilled in 70 AD.
It has bothered me all along that this futurist eschatology seems to anticipat4e the rebuilding of th4e physical temp0le in Jerusalem as a good thing. It can't be, it's an abomination in itself, a blasphemy against the Lord Jesus whose one-time sacrifice fulfilled and did away with the role of the animal sacrifices that were the main function of the temple. If an Abomination of Desolation was set up in that rebuilt temple it woulde not be an abomination of d4esoluation because the temple itself is the abomination.
And of course I'[ve already d3ealt with the idea that the Antichrist is yet to present himself as God in a physical temple: it was when the Bishop0 of Rome got elevated to Pope and dominated all the other offices of the Christian churches as well as having civil power in a reconstituted version of the Roman Empire, that he, the Antichrist, sat in the temple which is the people of God, declaring himself to be God, which all the titles given the Pope declare of him.
So far so good. I'll probably pare away more from the Premill eschatology, God willing, time permitting, eyesight allowing. I'm still particularly disturbed at the idea of two separate bodies of Chirst, one taken in the Rapture, followed by another that comes through the Great Tribulation. That one I don't yet have a way of resolving.
Here's Bennett talking about the neverending efforts of the RCC especially through the Jesuits to destroy Protestantism. Ecumenical agreements b4etween Rome and Protestant churches is one way that is happening today.
Worse than Marx: Pope Francis on economics. There's nothing wrong with stealing, that's the basic mesage, no matter that it's one of the Ten Commandments and the thought of what happens when people just take whatever they want from womenever they want is terrifying. Sounds like the Great Reset to me, and I can't remember if Francis is a member of the WEF, but I know he is associated with them. This insane philsophy also goes back to Aquinas, according to Bennett, it's not just Francis or any particular Pope for that matter. He answers the question about Francis starting about 9.
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About Richard Bennett: When I first started my blogs and they settled into categories I felt God wanted me to discuss here, I kept getting divine hints as it were that one of the topics I was to cover was the identity of the Antichrist. I already understood that the Pope had all the qualifications for the role, I'd quit a charismatic organization because they treated the Pope as a brother in Christ, and the derivation of the number 666 from the Roman numberals in one of his titles in Latin had wowed me since my nephew called me up to tell me about it.
But I wasn't expeting to delve into the subject beyond what I already believed. The divine hints, however, led me to listen to teachings on the subject at Sermon Audio and that's whre I found Richard Bennett. Bennett is probably the most scholarly teacher on the subject in our time. Later I got a lot of information from Chris Pinto as well, butI think it is Bennett I would most want evangelicals to study. He died at age 81 two years ago but his website is still up: Berean Beacon.con. some of his talks are on You Tube as well as Sermon Audio.
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Many Christians naively believe that the Pope can't be the Anticvhrist becaus4e he doesn't fulfill the definition given by the apostle John that the Antichrist denies the Father and the Son, and that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh: 1 John 2:22 and 1 John 4:3
If a Pope assembles together some words that seem to affirm that Christ has come in the flesh this is accepted as sufficient evidence that he can't be the Antichrist. The many blasphemous statements made by Popes that put Mary in the place of Christ and the Pope himself in the place of the Father, also in the place of Christ and the place of the Holy Spirit, are ignored while an empty affirmation is accepted. Since apparently there are many who are deceived along these lines I want to post here the reasoning of an ex Catholic priest, Richard Bennett, who shows the many ways the Popes deny the Father and the Son:
He talks for over an hour about how the Popes are Antichrst but right at the bginning he makes it clear that simply by usurping the titles of the Father and the Son they deny Christ.
Bennett names many who regarded the Pope as Antichrist down through the centuries. He stronly laments our current popular eschatology that puts the Antichrist into the future, ignoring all the historical fulfillments of Antichrist in the papacy.
Instead of 606 AM by the emperor Phocas he holds that it was Justiniah who made the Bishop of Rome universal Bishop and Pope in 538 AD. I've heard this also and I don't know which date is most pertinent. In any case it's clear that the papacy does not go back to the apostles.
He says around 20 that Justinian established a law that gave civil power to the Bishop of Rome and that this power is now law for the European Union as well, which of course we don't hear about from other sources.
The temple of God the Pop0 sits in is identified as the people of God according to Paul's identification of believers as that temple, and then he goes on to quote canon law on the powers of the Pope that clearly "exalt him above everything that is called God.
So. If we are to understand that the Antichirst has already been revealed and that he has been operating in the world for some 1500 years, does that mean we should completely scrap the popular eschatology that puts all this into the future?
At this point I don't think so but it's posible I'll change my mind. I think both can be true and this is the position I've held, that the Antichrist has been revealed as the Pope, all the Popes, but that there will yet be a last Pope who will be THE Antichrist at the end, after the true Church has been raptured and the Roman Church resumes its former political power on a global scale headed by the Antihrist Pope of that time,which will see the reinstatement of the Inquisition against all nonCatholics.
I have other problems with the Premillennial eschatology I hope will be resolved,but I don't see how I could give up the basic eschatology of the seven years Tribulation or Day of the LORD since it so perfectly dovetails with the prophecies in the book of Daniel. If I live long enough maybe I'll have answers to my questions eventually.
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PS I was thinking of making a separate post on this subject but it's really just a postscript so I'll include it here.
This is a talk by Dennis Prager about the evils of Lefiism and he covers many aspectsw of it but at one point he brings up Pope Francis, identifying him as a Leftist, which he is. He says this is because he comes from Latin America, which has some truth to it but the truth is deeper than that. In fact you could say that Latin America is Leftist because of the Popes, or because of the Roman Church. Francis is a Jesuit and it was a Jesuit who invented the idea of Social Justice. Marx had Jesuit connections as did many Communist and Fascist dictators. It's one of their inventions for the purpose of destroying their hated enemy the Protestant West. You could say that Catholic Latin America is the model for what they want to do to the United States.
What Prager said was that people from Latin America do not share our American values. If they did, he said, they would be rich because they have all the natural resources we have. So they are coming here and bringing their povery-making value system here, which is app0arently what our current Leftist politicians desire for our future. And they are helped by the Catholic Church, surprise surprise.
His remark about their values keeping them from being rich, by which he meant their Leftism of course, reminded me of observations I ran across wh4en I was listing books on my catholicisim blog. I don't know the analyses behind it but more than one writer mentioned that Catholic countries produce poverty and dysfunctional societies. Leftist is certainly one expression of that but apparently it is Catholicism itself that creates such misery. Yep, that's where we're headed under our current administration with the eager help of the Roman Church and myriads of Jesuits whspering in the ears of American leaders, teaching in the universities and so on and so forth.
Now I'm put in an uncomfortable ppsition. Just saw a recent excerpt from a John MacArthur sermon -- "Who Is HOLDING BACK the Antichrist?"-- in which he expounds on the identify ot the Restrainer I discussed in the previous post. Since I criticized that interpretation I am put in the position of defending what I just argued.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Be--qqpyp94
MacArthur's theme is that the Antichrist himself is being restrained, his power in the world is restrained, not just the revelation of his identity is being restrained, which is how I read it and apparently the Reformers read it. Of course the only one who can restrain the power of the Antichrist, who is Satan, is God himself.
But the passage does not desribe any supernatural restraint of the power of the Antichrist himself, what it describes is the restraint or withholding of his appeaing, the time not being right for that yet, and the revelation of his identity. I see no implication that the time of his revelation implies the time of his great power in the Tribulation period of the book of Revelation:
2 Thess 2:3 ... for [the day of Christ] shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition;
4 Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself[th4e day of Christ] that he is God.
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5 Remember ye not, that, when I was yet with you, I told you these things? 6 And now ye know what withholdeth that he might be revealed in his time.
7 For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way.
The Falling away or apostasy would have been occurring over the years preceding the rise of the Pope/Antichrist, the accumulation of false doctrines that became absorbed into the Roman Church And again, we don't need to wait for some special occasion for the Anticvhrist to exalt himself above God because the very attributes and titles assigned to the Pope usurp the identity of Christ and God the Holy Spirit and God the Father.
Again I emphasize that if Paul was referring to God the Holy Spirit he would have had no reason to speak in such veiled terms, he would have come right out and said what he meant. But he is referring to something he had told them before without naming it, something that had not been put in writing, which implies some danger in naming it.
This refusal to name the Restrainer doesw not fit with the end times scenario that is coming about in our time, but does fit with the Reformers' interpretation that the Antichrist was revealed to be the Bishop of Rome elevated over all the other powers of the Church, which occurred in 606 AD with a decree of the Byzantine empoeror Phocas. This elevation created the Pope of the Roman Catholic Church, a leader who had both religious and political power and wielded it over the next thousand years in western Christendom.
He didn't yet wield the ultimate power we expect of him during the Tribulation period, but he certainly functioned as Antichrist. the Popes were notorious for their evil lives, their sexual sins, their greed for power and wealth, their murders. Popes had fifty million true Christians tortured and murdered along with Jews and Muslime and others, he was carianly not restrained in the sense MacArthur is saying. The Roman Antichriwst Church absolutely dominated the Middle Ages. The Pope made kings and he ruled over the kings. The Roman Church grew in the superstitions of the pagan religions and the gospel message got more and more buried under those superstitions. It never completely disappeared so that true Christians remained in the Church although most of them were dissenters outside the Roman institution, such as the Waldensians. Yes the Pope did indeed put himself in the place of the Caesars, continuing the Roman Empire and calling it by that name. Christians used to know all this, many books were written about it, but all that has been lost in our day and we ar4e laboring under a half-baked eschatology concerning the identity of the Antichrist while the true Antichrist still rules over more than a billion lost souls and is jockeying for the top position in the revived Roman Empire Number Four that has been shaping up and will come to power when the Protestants are gone.
Ti ihe Pope was recognized as Antichrist by true believers outside the Roman church He operated as the Antichrist in the "Holy Roman Empire." THAT was the revived Roman Empire people are looking for today. It is already here. Its power rose and fell and just about disappeared after the Protestant Reformation but in fact did continue in the Kaiser and then Hitler's THird Reich. MacAZrthur speaks of the Roman Empire as dead. It was not, it continued as a different sort of "empire" dominated by the Pope. Now we are seeing the struggle to bring it back in the form of the European Union. The Fourth Reich. It never disappeared completely but this would be its final most powerful manifestation in the Great Tribulation period.
He's been revealed to those who understand this history, but of course he will have a more complete revelation after the Church has gone and he comes forward as the leader of the international forces that have been brewing for decades now. He's always been a political as well as a religious figure although this is not well known: the Vatican is a political entity, a sovereign state unto itself.
The true Church is ignorant of history, that's the biggest problem. I only got some inkling of all these things by listening to ex-Catholic priest Richard Bennett and to Chris Pinto who has made himself an expert on the machinations of the Jesuits to destroy the Protestant Reformation in all its forms. They infiltrate churches, they infiltrate governments, they teach their doctrines of devils in the universities and corrupt the youth of a nation, they work tirelessly to restroe the Roman Church as the ruler of the world. Too few have any sense of this and that allows the Roman Church to appear subdued and even to be treated by Protestants as just another denomination.
John MacArthur is a staunch opposer of the Roman Church and yet they fly under his radar too. No, Dr. MacArthur, we are not waiting for the revelation of the Antichrist, he's been revealed, he's been operating in plain sight for centuries AS the Antichrist over the Revived Roman Empire which is largely composed of the Roman Church itself, with all its pagan Roman trappings, weird pagan religious garb, doctrines of devils and superstitions , lying signs and wonders which have always characterized the RCC, and general inheritance of the religion of Babylon, which Alexander Hislop demonstrated in his book The Two Babylons. Not to mention the statue of Nebuchadneazzar's dream of the ssuccession of empires which tites all the heathen nations together with Rome as the ultimate expression of them all.
I have no power to influence anyone of coruse, my blogs are restrained by the censoring powers of the day, but I pray for what I write to get to the people who need to know it. I guess that's arrogant of me but oh well.
